#him not wanting to commit is pretty clear and that’s the most important point IMO

[chainofclovers]

Ted Lasso 2x11 thoughts

For an episode that ends with a journalist Ted trusts but has (understandably) recently lied to warning Ted that he’s publishing an article about his panic attacks, it was fitting that this episode seemed entirely about what all of these characters choose to tell each other. And after most of a season of television that Jason Sudeikis has described as the season in which the characters go into their little caves to deal with things on their own, it turns out they are finally able to tell each other quite a lot.

Which is good because, um, wow, a lot is going to happen in the season finale of this show!

Thoughts on the things people tell each other behind the cut!

Roy and Keeley. I absolutely loved the moment during their photoshoot in which they bring up a lot of complicated emotional things and are clearly gutted (“gutted”? Who am I? A GBBO contestant who forgot to turn the oven on?) by what they’ve heard. We already know that Keeley and Roy are great at the kinds of moments they have before the shoot begins, in which Roy builds Keeley up and tells her she’s fucking amazing. From nearly the beginning of their relationship, they’ve supported each other and been each other’s biggest fans. But their relationship has gone on long enough that they’ve progressed from tentative arguments about space and individual needs into really needing to figure out what they mean to each other and how big their feelings are and what that means in relation to everything else. Watching these two confess about the uncomfortable kiss with Nate, the unexpectedly long conversation with Phoebe’s teacher, and—most painfully—the revelation that Jamie still loves Keeley didn’t feel like watching two people who are about to break up. (Although I could see them potentially needing space from each other to get clarity.) It felt like watching two people realize just how much they’d lose if they lost each other, which is an understandably scary feeling even—or especially—when you’re deeply in love but not entirely sure what the future holds. Not entirely sure what you’re capable of when you’ve never felt serious about someone in quite this way, and are realizing you have to take intentional actions to choose that relationship every single day. I’m excited to learn whether Roy and Keeley decide they need to solidify their relationship more (not necessarily an engagement, but maybe moving in together or making sure they’re both comfortable referring to the other as partner and telling people they’re in a committed relationship) or if things go in a different direction for a while.

Sharon and Ted. I’ve had this feeling of “Wow, Ted is going to feel so intense about how honest he’s been with Sharon and is going to end up getting really attached and transfer a lot of emotions onto the connection they have and that is stressful no matter how beneficial it has been for him to finally get therapy!” for a while now. And Sharon’s departure really brought that out and it was indeed stressful. But the amount of growth that’s happened for both of these characters is really stunningly and beautifully conveyed in this episode. Ted is genuinely angry she left without saying goodbye, and he doesn’t bury it some place deep inside him where it will fester for the next thirty years. He expresses his anger. (I also noticed he sweared—mildly—in front of her again, which is really a big tell for how much he has let his carefully-constructed persona relax around her.) He reads her letter even though he said he wasn’t going to, and he’s moved. I don’t think Ted has the words for his connection to Sharon beyond “we had a breakthrough,” but Sharon gets it, and is able to firmly assert a professional boundary by articulating her side of that breakthrough as an experience that has made her a better therapist. And is still able to offer Ted a different kind of closure by suggesting they go out before her train leaves. No matter how you feel about a patient/football manager seeing their therapist/team psychologist colleague socially, I appreciated this story because IMO it didn’t cross big lines but instead was about one final moment in this arc in which both Ted and Sharon saw each other clearly and modeled what it is to give someone what they need and to expect honesty and communication from them. I liked that Ted ends up being the one saying goodbye. (The mustache in the exclamation points!) I like that whether or not Sharon returns in any capacity (Sarah Niles is so wonderful that I hope she does, but I’m not sure), the goodbye these characters forge for themselves here is neither abandonment nor a new, more complicated invitation. It’s the end of a meaningful era, and although the work of healing is the work of a lifetime, it’s very beautiful to have this milestone.

Ted and Rebecca. So, maybe it’s just me, but it kinda feels like these two have a few li’l life things to catch up on?! (HAHHHHHaSdafgsdasdf!) I really adored their interactions in this episode. I maintain that Biscuits With The Boss has been happening this whole time (even when Ted’s apartment was in shambles, there’s biscuit evidence, and I feel like we’ve been seeing the biscuit boxes in Rebecca’s office pretty regularly too), even if it might have been more of a drive-by biscuit drop-off/feelings avoidance ritual. It was really lovely to see Ted on more even footing in Rebecca’s office, joking around until she tells him to shut up, just like the old days. And GOSH—for their 1x9 interaction in Ted’s office to be paralleled in this episode and for Ted to explicitly make note of the parallel in a way Rebecca hears and sees and understands?! MY HEART. In both of Rebecca’s confessions, she is not bringing good news but it is good and meaningful that she chooses to share with Ted. In both situations, Ted takes the moment in stride and offers acceptance equivalent to the gravity of what she has to confess. And in both situations, he’s not some kind of otherworldly saint, able to accept Rebecca no matter what because he’s unaffected by what she shares. He is affected. When he tells her about Sam, you can see a variety of emotions on his face. Rebecca is upset and Ted is calm, and even if I might have liked for him to try to talk about the risk the affair poses to the power dynamics on the team or any number of factors, I also really liked that he just accepts where she is, and—most importantly—does not offer her advice beyond examining herself and taking her own advice. A massive part of being in a relationship with another person (a close relationship of any nature) is figuring out how to support that person without necessarily having to be happy about every single thing they do. It’s so important that Ted connects what she’s just told him about Sam back to what she told him last season about her plot with the club. These both feel like truth bombs to him, and he is at least safe enough to make that clear. These are both things that impact him, things that shape how he sees her and maybe even how he sees himself. He cares about her and is capable of taking in this information; he has room for it. But it’s not something he takes lightly, and neither does she. See you next year.

Tumblr user chainofclovers and the TV show Ted Lasso. My brain is going wild thinking about all the ways the next “truth bomb” conversation could go in 3x11 or whatever. Maybe they go full consistent parallel and Rebecca confesses something else, this time about her and Ted or some other big future thing that impacts him as much or more as the other confessions have. (The same but different.) Maybe the tables turn and Ted has something to confess to her. While the 1x9 conversation ended in an embrace and the 2x11 conversation ended with a bit more physical distance (understandable given the current state of their relationship and the nature of the discussion), the verbal ending of both conversations involved voices moving into a sexier lower register while zooming in to talk specifically about their connection to each other, so I have to assume there will be some consistencies in s3 even if the circumstances will be completely different. I don’t really know where I’m going with this and I obviously will go insane if I sustain this level of anticipatory energy until Fall 2022 but I have a feeling my brain and heart are going to try!

Sam and Rebecca. I know there’s been a lot of criticism about whether this show is being at all realistic about the power dynamics and inevitable professional issues this relationship would create. On some level, I agree; I like that pretty much everyone who knows about the affair has been kind so far, but you can be kind and still ask someone to contend with reality. But I also think that in nearly every plot point on this show, the narrative is driven by how people feel about their circumstances first and foremost. (It’s why the whiteboard in the coaching office and the football commentators tell us more about how the actual football season is going from a points perspective than anyone else.) This episode reminded me how few people know about Sam and Rebecca, and how much their time together so far has been time spent in bed. The private sphere. I thought this episode really expertly brought the public sphere into it, not—thank goodness—through a humiliating exposure or harsh judgment but through an opportunity for Sam that illustrates not only all his potential to do great things but how much Rebecca’s professional position and personal feelings are in conflict with that. Could stand in the way of that. I don’t have a strong gut feeling about where this will go, but I do think Sam’s face in his final scene of this episode is telling. He started the episode wanting to see Rebecca (his most recent text to her was about wanting to connect), and Edwin’s arrival from Ghana really exploded his sense of what is possible for his life. If he’d arrived home to Rebecca sitting on his stoop prior to meeting Edwin, he’d have been delighted. Now he’s conflicted, and whatever decision he makes, he has to reckon with the reality that he cannot have everything he wants. No matter what. And Rebecca—she has taken Ted’s advice and is attempting to be honest about the fact that she can’t control Sam’s decisions but hopes he doesn’t go, and even saying that much feels so inappropriate. And I’m not sure how much she realizes about the inappropriateness of the position she’s putting him in, although maybe she’s getting there considering she exits the scene very quickly. I’ve honestly loved Rebecca’s arc this season. I think it’s realistic that she got obsessed with the intimacy she thought she could find in her phone. I think it’s realistic that her professional and personal ambitions are inappropriately linked. (They certainly were for Rupert. It’s been years since she’s known anything different; even if she’s done some significant recovery work to move on from her abusive marriage and figure out her own priorities, she’s got a long way to go.) I know there are people who will read this interaction between Rebecca and Sam as a totally un-self-aware thing on the part of “the show” or “the writers” but what I saw is two people who enjoyed being in bed together and now have to deal with the reality that they’re in two different places in their lives and that one has great professional power over the other. If that wasn’t in the show, I wouldn’t be able to see it or feel so strongly about it.

Edwin and Sam. I really enjoyed all the complexities of this interaction. Edwin is promising a future for Sam that doesn’t quite exist yet, though he has the financial means to make it happen. He offers this by constructing for Sam a Nigerian—and Ghanaian—experience unlike anything he’s found in London. Sam is amazed that this experience is here, and Edwin’s response is to explain to him that the experience is not here. Not really. The experience in Africa. Sam has of course connected to the other Nigerian players on the team, but this is something else entirely. I’m really curious if Sam is going to end up feeling that what Edwin has to offer is real or not. That sense of home and connection? So real. And so right that he would want to experience that homecoming and would want to be part of building that experience for others. But at the end of the day, he went to a museum full of actors and a pop-up restaurant full of “friends,” and is that constructed authenticity as a stand-in for a real homecoming more or less real than the home he’s building in Richmond? (With other players who stand in solidarity with him, and with well-meaning white coaches who say dumb stuff sometimes, and an a probably-doomed love interest, and a feeling that he should put chicken instead of goat in the jollof, and the ability to stand out as an incredible player on a rising team.)

Nate and everyone. But also Nate and no one. Nate’s story is so painful and I’m so anxious for next week’s episode. For a long time I’ve felt that a lot of Nate’s loyalties are with Richmond, and a lot of his ambitions are around having given so much to this place without getting a lot back, and having a strong feeling that he’s the answer to Richmond’s future. But now I’m not so sure; his ambitions have transferred into asking everyone he knows (except Ted, of course), if they want to be “the boss.” But Nate is all tactics and no communication. When he wants to suggest a new play to Ted, he hasn’t yet learned to read Ted’s language to learn that Ted is eager to hear what he has to say. And while Ted has been really unfortunately distracted about Nate and dismissive of him this season, he clearly respects Nate’s approach to football and was appreciative of the play. Nate just can’t hear that. The suit is such a great metaphor of all the things Nate is in too much pain to be able to hear clearly. Everyone digs at him for wearing the suit Ted bought him (including Will, who’s got to get little cuts in where he can, because he’s got to be sick of the way Nate treats him), but when he gets fed up his solution isn’t to go out on his own and find more clothes he likes; he asks Keeley to help him. And then crosses a major line with her...and no matter how kind she was about it, she was clearly not okay. Everything is going to blow up, and I’m so curious as to whether Nate will end up aligning himself with Rupert in some way or if he’s going to end up screwed over by Rupert and in turn try to screw over his colleagues even worse than he’s already done. Or try desperately to make amends even though it could be too late for some. Either way, I’m fully prepared to feel devastated. (And there’s no way I’m giving up on this character. If he’s able to learn, I truly believe he could end up seeking forgiveness and forging a happier existence for himself. Someday. Like in season 3 or something.)

Ted and Trent. Trent deciding to reveal his source to Ted is a huge deal, and I’m torn between so many emotions about this exposé. I’m glad it’s a Trent Crimm piece and not an Ernie Loundes piece. I’m glad that Trent made the decision to warn Ted and let him know that Nate is his source. I fear—but also hope—that this exposure will set off a chain reaction of Ted learning about some of the things he’s missed while suffering through a really bad bout with his dad-grief and panic disorder. The things Ted doesn’t know would devastate him. I wonder if Ted will want to figure out a way to make Nate feel heard and reconcile with him, and I wonder how that will be complicated if/when he realizes Nate has severely bullied Will, gets more details on how he mistreated Colin, etc. I wonder if Rebecca, whom Nate called a “shrew” right before she announced his promotion, will be in the position of having to ask Ted to fire him, or overriding Ted and doing it herself. So many questions! I have a feeling it’ll go in some wild yet very human-scaled, emotionally-nuanced direction, and I’ll be like “Oh my GOD!” but also like “Oh, of course.”

This VERY SERIOUS AND EMOTIONAL REVIEW has a major flaw, which is that none of the above conversations include mention of the absolute love letter to N*SYNC. Ted passionately explains how things should go while dancing ridiculously! Will turns on the music and starts gyrating! Roy nods supportively! Beard shouts the choreography like the Broadway choreographer of teaching grown men who play football how to dance like a boy band. Everyone is so incredibly proud when they nail it. I love them.

I cannot believe next week is the end. For now. I’m kind of looking forward to letting everything settle during the hiatus, but I’ve really loved the ride.

[reginarubie]

I really like your opinions. Can you give your opinion on Sansa going to Cersei and how it leads to Ned arrest and their capture? Many blamed Sansa for it but I think she was blameless as she had no idea what's going on. Plus it's more of Cersei taking advantage of Sansa and used her for her games. Even LF betrayed Ned before.

Hello!

First of all, thank you! I am glad you enjoy my opinions on the asoiaf world and thank you for the ask. It is a pretty tricky topic so this will probably turn very long, like most of my ramblings — apologies in advance for the length this will probably take.

The matter of Sansa betraying Ned is somewhat the original sin for which everyone seems to judge Sansa, forming their opinion on her based almost exclusively on this incident.

I kind of agree with what you say, especially in the light of the analysis of the events consequence; I haven't read AGOT in years, but I will brush up my knowledge of the text to give you the most throughout reply I can muster, though better meta writer than me have already spent incredibly compelling words on this matter — putting it much better than I did.

I think that one thing is understanding the reasoning behind a certain action which can justify it, and another is completely putting the blame (or taking it away) from the child who committed it only because of the circumstances that led her to act a certain way.

In a bit I will express why.

As you said, LF has betrayed Ned the moment Ned set foot in KL for we all know LF wanted Ned gone; so trusting LF (against his better judgment, convinced by Cat) was, imo, a very important step toward the bitter end Ned faced. But I truly believe that Ned' greatest fault (and Sansa's to a degree) is his idealism.

Sansa betrayal served little at the point in which it happened (but to have her in the place the author needed her to be, to create strife between her and the queen, to help her open her eyes) and much more of what happened to Ned has been a product of Ned' own blindness, bad parenting and LF' hand in it; what it is, is a plot device to have the Stark' eyes in KL, to create the consequences adapted to make Sansa start her journey the way the author wanted it to evolve.

So, the beginning of Ned' ending, imo, starts with Ned' own blindness due his idealism and trusting LF but beyond that:

In Eddard XII, AGOT (chapter 45) Ned, who has discovered the truth about Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen confronts the queen about it and gives the woman the head's up.

It was never clear to me how much of Varys telling Ned the queen wanted Bobby B killed during the melee was actual truth, yet that should've played a very important part in Ned's plans (spoiler alert: it did not) — let's not forget that Varys had worked long and hard to bring back Aegon to Westeros and that the Baratheons and Lannisters were in the middle of that and he hoped to have the Lannisters removed using Bobby B's love for Ned as he himself state:

"They had hoped to kill him during the melee.” For a moment Ned was speechless with shock.

“Who?”

Varys sipped his wine. “If I truly need to tell you that, you are a bigger fool than Robert and I am on the wrong side.”

“The Lannisters,” Ned said. “The queen . . . no, I will not believe that, not even of Cersei. She asked him not to fight!”

“She forbade him to fight, in front of his brother, his knights, and half the court. Tell me truly, do you know any surer way to force King Robert into the melee? I ask you.”

Ned had a sick feeling in his gut. The eunuch had hit upon a truth; tell Robert Baratheon he could not, should not, or must not do a thing, and it was as good as done.

“Even if he’d fought, who would have dared to strike the king?”

Varys shrugged. “There were forty riders in the melee. The Lannisters have many friends. Amidst all that chaos, with horses screaming and bones breaking and Thoros of Myr waving that absurd firesword of his, who could name it murder if some chance blow felled His Grace?” He went to the flagon and refilled his cup. “After the deed was done, the slayer would be beside himself with grief. I can almost hear him weeping. So sad. Yet no doubt the gracious and compassionate widow would take pity, lift the poor unfortunate to his feet, and bless him with a gentle kiss of forgiveness. Good King Joffrey would have no choice but to pardon him.” The eunuch stroked his cheek. “Or perhaps Cersei would let Ser Ilyn strike off his head. Less risk for the Lannisters that way, though quite an unpleasant surprise for their little friend.”

Ned felt his anger rise. “You knew of this plot, and yet you did nothing.”

“I command whisperers, not warriors.”

“You might have come to me earlier.”

“Oh, yes, I confess it. And you would have rushed straight to the king, yes? And when Robert heard of his peril, what would he have done? I wonder.”

Ned considered that. “He would have damned them all, and fought anyway, to show he did not fear them.”

Varys spread his hands. “I will make another confession, Lord Eddard. I was curious to see what you would do. Why not come to me? you ask, and I must answer, Why, because I did not trust you, my lord.”

“You did not trust me?” Ned was frankly astonished.

“The Red Keep shelters two sorts of people, Lord Eddard,” Varys said. “Those who are loyal to the realm, and those who are loyal only to themselves. Until this morning, I could not say which you might be . . . so I waited to see . . . and now I know, for a certainty.” He smiled a plump tight little smile, and for a moment his private face and public mask were one. “I begin to comprehend why the queen fears you so much. Oh, yes I do.”

“You are the one she ought to fear,” Ned said.

“No. I am what I am. The king makes use of me, but it shames him. A most puissant warrior is our Robert, and such a manly man has little love for sneaks and spies and eunuchs. If a day should come when Cersei whispers, ‘Kill that man,’ Ilyn Payne will snick my head off in a twinkling, and who will mourn poor Varys then? North or south, they sing no songs for spiders.” He reached out and touched Ned with a soft hand. “But you, Lord Stark . . . I think . . . no, I know . . . he would not kill you, not even for his queen, and there may lie our salvation.”

Eddard VII, AGOT (chapter 31)

So, it was always pretty clear to me that Varys was likewise using Ned to forward his plans; my point is, Ned knew that Cersei allegedly tried to have Robert killed — possibly because of his indiscretions with the whores and the bastards — yet, in Eddard XII AGOT (chapter 45) well after Ned and Jaime have confronted each other and Cat has apprehended Tyrion on her way back North (so the war is already almost a certainty especially since Ned thinks Robert will attack the Lannisters to avenge his pride and their treason) he tells Cersei he knows of her children and intends to tell the king. ��� talk about idealism here: Ned is telling a possible murderer (someone who, to his knowledge, has already tried to kill the king and has plots to have him gone and her son — a bastard son — on the throne) that he intends to corner her. I wonder, how o' how that could go. Spoiler alert: with Ned's head severed from his neck. That's how.

“Why here?” Cersei Lannister asked as she stood over him.

“So the gods can see.”

Talk about idealism. He's not only bloody giving the woman head's up, but he is also keeping her privacy (even knowing that most people of KL — Varys, LF and others for sure — must know the truth as well). Yes, he is doing it for the children (even Joffrey who later has him killed and his daughter humiliated and mistreated as well as beaten — good job, Ned) who holds no guilt over the actions of Cersei and Jaime, nevertheless his idealism (protect the children) is blinding him to the very dangerous enemy he is confronting even after Varys has told him not only that she is dangerous, but also that she is having him watched very closely (“It would not do if certain people learned that we had spoken in private. The queen watches you closely. This wine is very choice. Thank you.” — Eddard VII, AGOT; keep this in mind, we will return to it).

"I know the truth Jon Arryn died for"

(...)

“Your brother?” Ned said. “Or your lover?”

“Both.” She did not flinch from the truth. “Since we were children together. And why not? The Targaryens wed brother to sister for three hundred years, to keep the bloodlines pure. And Jaime and I are more than brother and sister. We are one person in two bodies. We shared a womb together. He came into this world holding my foot, our old maester said. When he is in me, I feel . . . whole.” The ghost of a smile flitted over her lips.

“My son Bran . . . ”

To her credit, Cersei did not look away. “He saw us. You love your children, do you not?”

Robert had asked him the very same question, the morning of the melee. He gave her the same answer. “With all my heart.”

“No less do I love mine.”

(...)

Ned thought, If it came to that, the life of some child I did not know, against Robb and Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon, what would I do? Even more so, what would Catelyn do, if it were Jon’s life, against the children of her body? He did not know. He prayed he never would.

“All three are Jaime’s,” he said. It was not a question.

“Thank the gods.”

(...)

“I do not know which of you I pity most.”

The queen seemed amused by that. “Save your pity for yourself, Lord Stark. I want none of it.”

Listen to the woman, Ned, she's telling you herself.

“You know what I must do.”

“Must?” She put her hand on his good leg, just above the knee. “A true man does what he will, not what he must.”

(...)

“For a start,” said Ned, “I do not kill children. You would do well to listen, my lady. I shall say this only once. When the king returns from his hunt, I intend to lay the truth before him. You must be gone by then. You and your children, all three, and not to Casterly Rock. If I were you, I should take ship for the Free Cities, or even farther, to the Summer Isles or the Port of Ibben. As far as the winds blow.”

“Exile,” she said. “A bitter cup to drink from.”

“A sweeter cup than your father served Rhaegar’s children,” Ned said, “and kinder than you deserve. Your father and your brothers would do well to go with you. Lord Tywin’s gold will buy you comfort and hire swords to keep you safe. You shall need them. I promise you, no matter where you flee, Robert’s wrath will follow you, to the back of beyond if need be.”

The queen stood. “And what of my wrath, Lord Stark?” she asked softly.

(...)

“You should have taken the realm for yourself. It was there for the taking. Jaime told me how you found him on the Iron Throne the day King’s Landing fell, and made him yield it up. That was your moment. All you needed to do was climb those steps, and sit. Such a sad mistake.”

“I have made more mistakes than you can possibly imagine,” Ned said, “but that was not one of them.”

“Oh, but it was, my lord,” Cersei insisted. “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”

Eddard XII, AGOT

Now you see, not only Cersei has Ned been watched very closely, but Ned — out of idealism — has told her, his whole plan and has plainly stated what will happen to her (exile, her children being haunted for their whole life, of Bobby B' whole life) exactly after Cersei tells him she wanted to have Bran killed because him knowing was dangerous for her children. This is foolishness brought forth because of his idealism. And therein lays Ned' fault.

But that is not his only fault in this mess. He has accepted Robert' offer and became lord Hand, has betrothed his daughter to Joffrey and has not tried to break the betrothal until the very last moment, investigated a very dangerous topic (the murder of the previous Hand and opened a can of worms) all under one assumption he best have not made — and made anyway despite everyone telling him otherwise — that everyone would be as honourable as him; that Cersei, who tried to kill the king, who laid with her brother and had bastards from him, the same one who had his son pushed off a tower to defend her children would act honourably, take her children and run away, condemning them to a life of difficulties and danger instead of acting, maybe even say "thank you" because he helped her escape instead than delivering her directly to Bobby B. It is a wild, foolish assumption only an idealist would make.

Then, he organises the coup after Robert returns dying from the hunt. He tramps with his best-friend will — writing true heir instead than my son Joffrey — trusts LF, turns down Renly and his forces to put Stannis on the IT and organises for his daughter to leave before him so that they will get North safe before shit goes down. But, when Robert actually dies, Ned acts before his daughters — who are undefended — are safely away from court thus putting them even more in jeopardy; again because he is working with the assumption that everyone will be as honourable as he is and will think as he does. A bad assumption to have, especially when not only your life, but that of your children are on the line.

So, this is how idealism become the catalyst for Ned' own end. LF wanting him gone plays a part as well, a very big part, though I am uncertain about how much he actually wanted him already dead, or wished to dispose of him after having had more use of him yet.

Because Cersei was already aware of everything Sansa might have told her — after all, Sansa just told her more that Ned wanted them gone, without even saying goodbye, something Cersei has no care over at all — she knew Ned would expose her secret and endanger her children, what more, she knew Robert would believe Ned without doubt, because Robert loved Ned more than he did her.

Bad parenting plays a very important part in Ned' end.

Why?, because Ned while being an understanding and doting father to Arya, just assumes Sansa will do her duty, will not question his order and will obey without as much as a say-so. He doesn't tell her how dangerous is the place where they are, he doesn't tell her how dangerous and difficult are the people they are sitting beside, he doesn't tell her she cannot trust the Lannisters, he does not pay her the same courtesy he does Arya. Why? Because Ned has bigger things to worry about now, and he trusts that Sansa will make no fuss, he is unused to Sansa being the wilful one, because above all, being more mature than Arya he trusts that Sansa will act like a sensible woman and not a stubborn child.

He does not think that Sansa will benefit from being sat down and talked about the true dangers of the court they are walking in; he just assumes that Sansa will do as he bids because it's what Sansa has always done and been — the obedient child. Which means that he is looking at his daughter superficially, also because, he should know BOTH his daughters are children prone to be wilful and headstrong. When he tells them he is sending them away, Sansa is the most vocal against it, Sansa is the one who has rebuttal for anything Arya offers to say (even when Arya offers to make her a new dress, Sansa is whiny about that), Sansa is the one stubbornly refusing anything but Joffrey; in a way similar to how Arya behaved when Lady and Mycah were killed; yet he sat down Arya and spoke to her, now he was too engrossed in the politics of it all that he overlooked the very possible great flaw in his plan: his daughters. Had he spoken more plainly to them, told them they were in danger — their lives were in danger — they would've trusted him and posed, possibly, no problem to him and his plans. Instead he knows Arya never liked KL anyway, save for Syrio (who he promise to offer to come along, so that's resolved), and the prospect of an adventure is enough to have her happy to leave the capital so he does not worry about her, but Sansa?, Sansa whose dream of a life — for how young and short and sheltered it had been so far —was there, just beyond her reach, was understandably more upset. Yet he overlooked that, assuming that Sansa would do her duty, not even bothering to sit down with her and tell her how dangerous the situation was. Ned' assumptions were the bane of his existence I tell you.

And yes, Sansa does go to Cersei, and yes it's wrong that she did. BUT can we really blame her for something she had no knowledge of? As far as Ned explained, as far as Ned told them, he wanted them gone from the capital just because of reasons he sees fit not to tell his daughters and thus they do not understand:

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Sansa pleaded with him. “I don’t want to go back.” She loved King’s Landing; the pagaentry of the court, the high lords and ladies in their velvets and silks and gemstones, the great city with all its people. The tournament had been the most magical time of her whole life, and there was so much she had not seen yet, harvest feasts and masked balls and mummer shows. She could not bear the thought of losing it all. “Send Arya away, she started it, Father, I swear it. I’ll be good, you’ll see, just let me stay and I promise to be as fine and noble and courteous as the queen.”

Father’s mouth twitched strangely.

“Sansa, I’m not sending you away for fighting, though the gods know I’m sick of you two squabbling. I want you back in Winterfell for your own safety. Three of my men were cut down like dogs not a league from where we sit, and what does Robert do? He goes hunting.”

Arya was chewing at her lip in that disgusting way she had. “Can we take Syrio back with us?”

“Who cares about your stupid dancing master?” Sansa flared. “Father, I only just now remembered, I can’t go away, I’m to marry Prince Joffrey.” She tried to smile bravely for him. “I love him, Father, I truly truly do, I love him as much as Queen Naerys loved Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, as much as Jonquil loved Ser Florian. I want to be his queen and have his babies.”

“Sweet one,” her father said gently, “listen to me. When you’re old enough, I will make you a match with a high lord who’s worthy of you, someone brave and gentle and strong. This match with Joffrey was a terrible mistake. That boy is no Prince Aemon, you must believe me.”

“He is!” Sansa insisted. “I don’t want someone brave and gentle, I want him. We’ll be ever so happy, just like in the songs, you’ll see. I’ll give him a son with golden hair, and one day he’ll be the king of all the realm, the greatest king that ever was, as brave as the wolf and as proud as the lion.”

Arya made a face. “Not if Joffrey’s his father,” she said. “He’s a liar and a craven and anyhow he’s a stag, not a lion.”

Sansa felt tears in her eyes. “He is not! He’s not the least bit like that old drunken king,” she screamed at her sister, forgetting herself in her grief. Father looked at her strangely.

“Gods,” he swore softly, “out of the mouth of babes . . . ” He shouted for Septa Mordane.

To the girls he said, “I am looking for a fast trading galley to take you home. These days, the sea is safer than the kingsroad. You will sail as soon as I can find a proper ship, with Septa Mordane and a complement ofguards . . . and yes, with Syrio Forel, if he agrees to enter my service. But say nothing of this. It’s better if no one knows of our plans. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

Sansa III, AGOT

Now, while I do agree that what Sansa told Cersei, in the end, had little service for her, save to give her a time or place (which others have analysed better than me) for the queen was already expecting it and planning against it accordingly; and while I agree that most of the blame must be taken away from her because of her being a literal child, ignorant of what is happening around her because no one bothered to tell her, no one bothered to explain to her she isn't in my opinion entirely blameless.

Sansa disobeyed Ned — who asked her to say nothing about his plan to have them moved away from KL — and while she took that decision herself (and she knows so) we must also correct our judgment basing it on some very simple facts:

Sansa is eleven, yet she is treated like a grown up, worse, she's left completely in the dark, while just assuming she will obey without a naysay about something which deeply upsets and shakes her.

Sansa feels unheard, un-listened to. And this is not even a one-time deal, for Sansa herself thinks on how Arya is forgiven everything she does (even when that means disobeying their parents) she constantly feels overlooked and her wishes, when they are in contrast with her parents, unheard by them. It was easier with Cat, as Sansa felt at ease with her mother and their wish often coincided (Sansa marrying a prince), but Cat is not there in KL and Ned does not bother to speak with Sansa, to explain to her, even after he sees how unsettled and upset she is by it all. Why? Because he doesn't deem it important enough, now, as Sansa has always been obedient and dutiful and he doesn't feel like it's important to listen to her, with everything else going on. And while that is understandable knowing what Ned was going through, Sansa did not know of it because Ned did not speak of it (not even in a under-12 version of it). She is stumbling blinded around in a very dangerous place, around dangerous people whom Ned, inexplicably, doesn't warn her from.

Sansa has her father's idealism, coveted also by her mother's education, thus it's only natural that, as Ned made the terrible mistake of telling Cersei, Sansa does the very same thing. And, she knows she is doing something wrong, she does, but Sansa is also a child, and cannot be expected to act like an adult, and since she has not been explained the gravity of the situation — worse she's left hanging on the "he's sending me away because somewhat I've displeased him with my behaviour" because he doesn't take the time to comforts his child for her fears — she sees no reason why her being wilful will be different than all the other times Arya did the very same thing (notice also how, in contrast, Arya' plead and wish — not to leave Syrio behind — are immediately answered and comforted as Ned promises before going away to try and have Syrio join them). It is not unthinkable that Sansa would feel left-out (especially since it has been assessed already that she feels that way) and unheard.

She was the good girl, the obedient girl, but she had felt as wicked as Arya that morning, sneaking away from Septa Mordane, defying her lord father. She had never done anything so willful before, and she would never have done it then if she hadn’t loved Joffrey as much as she did.

Sansa IV, AGOT

So, Sansa knows she's doing something wrong here, she does it anyway because she doesn't understand the danger of the situation because Ned, no matter his promise of speaking to them the next morning, does not do so, so Sansa cannot know the imperative importance and danger of what is happening, she only knows that she has not been listened to, she has not been talked to, and (as it probably happened in Winterfell) she went to the motherly figure, and in KL that motherly figure was Cersei, who — just like you said — had been manipulating and using Sansa all along.

Sansa timing acts so that all she does is simply telling Cersei that what she had been expecting maybe three hours later (and later during the day) had been moved earlier due the death of the king. Something the queen might have suspected on her own or simply aided by LF who was on the Lannister' payroll since before. So, her supposed betrayal serves nothing but the plot-device to have Sansa in KL (the same way Arya is with Syrio so that she may escape).

So, I think that as you say, Sansa should not be blamed for what happened to Ned, as, what happened to Ned was a direct product of Ned own actions — telling Cersei beforehand what he meant to do, trust LF — it's entirely possible (and to me certain with Ned stating he has learnt how to die for a long time now, though he is astounded when Varys points out his daughters are not and undefended) that Ned had always taken into consideration the very high risk that he might become a prisoner or an hostage, which is why he meant to send the girls ahead back home; I refuse to think that a man who instigated a rebellion would not think he might end up being imprisoned. He wished to spare his daughters that fate, but by acting on the spur of the moment without making sure his daughters were safely away before actively putting forward what most of the people at court would have believed a treason he actively creates the situation people blame Sansa on provoking by going to Cersei.

So, we have no one to blame for Ned' demise but he, himself and his enemies (Cersei and LF). Certainly not Sansa.

Yet, we cannot ignore that Sansa' actions did play a part however small (infinitesimally so) in that, though, taken them away nothing would've changed save for the fact that Sansa and Arya would have been PROBABLY away from court, which is disputable since Ned acted BEFORE he had made sure his daughters were safely away, because he assumed everyone would be as honourable as him around him, barred from Cersei, perhaps (since he gave the woman the head's up). So, it's entirely probable that even if Sansa had not gone to Cersei NOTHING would've changed.

Ned is the sole author of his own demise, for he helped greatly his enemies in disposing of him.

So, yeah, Sansa acted impulsively and stubbornly, she herself knows it; and she did it exactly like Arya did and like Arya would've done. If Arya is not to blame for the consequences her actions may have brought because she was unaware of their importance, the same courtesy should be extended to Sansa.

This is what I don't understand of this fandom, one of the accuses they move to Sansa is that she betrayed Ned and sold his plan off for the possibility of marrying Joffrey, and when pointed out that she did not do that, or that if she did (which she didn't), it was because she wasn't aware as she ought to have been they comment on how Arya would've known not to trust the Lannisters, which is untrue on so many levels.

When the Lannisters arrive in Winterfell Arya is not enamoured by the queen — like ladylike Sansa is — yet she is curious and well-disposed toward Jaime and Tyrion because they are more interesting in her eyes because of her interests.

Let's say that Jaime had done something similar to Arya as what Cersei had been doing to Sansa all along — playing along with Arya wishes, letting her train with the swords and indulged her the way Ned did, but did not bother to do for Sansa, and the roles were reversed, so Ned did not care about her sword lessons or acted opposed to them without explaining why — and Ned would have overlooked her plea that Syrio was taken with them, she probably would have, as wilfully as Sansa ran to Cersei, run to Jaime and told him, in hope he managed to get her to stay or at least convince her father to bring Syrio along. But I am sure that if that was the case, Arya would be excused much more throughoutly than the fandom excuses Sansa. Thought inducing, isn't it?

I think, in the end, by now, everyone knows Sansa did not betray anyone, also because, to betray someone it means you have to understand the full magnitude of what you are doing and do it anyway, what Sansa did was by her own admission a childlike act of disobedience and wilfuness in all completely similar to what her sister does everyday and she had no reason or way to know the consequences would have been different because Ned did not bother to extend to her the same courtesy he did Arya; yet they have to find something to fault her over. And her supposed betrayal of Ned is the easiest handhold to which they manage to grip.

So, while this reply come out extremely long, in the end, yes I agree with you, Sansa should not be blamed for it, especially because she was a child being used as a pawn by adults she had not been warned against — kind like Simba in the Lion King with Scar at the beginning of the movie — and her actions were not intended that way, because yes, intention plays a very big part in betrayal. We can agree Sansa acted stubbornly and wilfully, that she disobeyed Ned and her actions played a part (minuscule) in the whole event but the blame does not fall on her on this one.

So, to resume. Ned' demise is brought forth:

his idealism (which brings him to trust LF and give Cersei the head's up)

his enemies' plots

bad parenting on his part

I hope you enjoyed the read! and thank you again for the ask! Hope you have an amazing day!

[curlsofsagesmoke]

TMNT (2012) DID DONNIE DIRTY WITH THE HALF-ASSED LEADERSHIP PLOTLINE AND HERE’S WHY

not to turn into a tmnt blog or anything but I've been watching the 2012 version and I have some Thoughts about the weird leadership conflict subplot between Leo and donnie that the writers started going for and then abandoned. admittedly I've only seen up until a few episodes of season 3 so I don’t know if they ever do go back to this, but from what I've seen this plot had amazing potential but it was handled in a truly awful way!

keep in mind also that I really love this show. I watched it as a kid, I think it holds up pretty well even now. it does have its flaws (many, many flaws) and the worst flaw is the writing imo, which can be lazy, ignorant, or just straight up bad at times. 

with that out of the way, buckle up and hold on to your butts cuz here the heck we go!

you cannot talk about leadership in tmnt without starting with the leader, Leo. the writers gave him a really interesting arc at the beginning of season one where he was really eager to become leader (splinter gave him the job because he asked for it, after all) but then he started to realize the burden that came with the title and started to crack a bit under the pressure. the most well-known character conflict in the entire tmnt multiverse is the tension between Raph and Leo, and this iteration of the show is no different. Raph is very obviously upset about Leo becoming leader and he (and donnie, but we’ll get to him in a bit) tries to argue that he should be leader instead. ultimately he fails and this does create tension throughout the rest of seasons one and two.

this tension comes to a head during an episode where Leo, tired of Raph always questioning his decisions and needling him, decides to fuck off for a little bit, leaving Raph in charge (”New Girl In Town”). from a writing standpoint, this episode is important for many reasons, but in terms of this subplot it is a moment of crisis for Leo which he inevitably overcomes by accepting the burden and responsibility of leadership; and for Raph it is a moment of realization where he finally accepts that he wouldn’t be a very good leader and he doesn’t want the burden that Leo carries all the time. after this episode, Raph and Leo do have their arguments, but overall Raph is much more accepting of Leo’s position as leader and only calls him out when Leo starts to go on little power trips.

which brings us to donnie. donnie also argued that he should be leader in the first episode, but it wasn’t treated as seriously as Raph’s argument, and after that there wasn’t much conflict between Leo and donnie (except for the technology vs. tradition thing surrounding metalhead, but I’ll get to that later). donnie and Mikey are presented as generally pretty laid back. when Raph becomes leader in “New Girl In Town”, they exchange a lot of “yikes” looks in the background but are willing to follow his lead and give him the opportunity to actually be leader. of course, this comes to a head when they confront the villain of the episode, snakeweed, in the sewers. they’re getting their asses kicked, Mikey is knocked out, Raph is having a panic attack, and donnie is left to fend for himself against snakeweed.

instead of having that little “I must meet this challenge and overcome it” moment that you’d expect, Raph gives in to the panic and it’s donnie who not only incapacitates snakeweed to give them time to escape, but also snaps Raph out of his panic attack and tells him what to do (namely, get Mikey out of there and retreat to safety). it’s not given any more attention after this so it’s kind of blink-and-you-miss-it, but this is the first instance we see donnie reveal a bit of his potential as leader.

this is in direct contrast to “Mousers Attack!” which came a few episodes before New Girl In Town. that was the episode that introduced the a-team/b-team dynamic, and in that episode we saw that donnie, while attempting to lead him and Mikey, was able to come up with a bunch of plans to infiltrate dogpound’s operations but wasn’t decisive enough to actually commit to anything. thus in New Girl In Town, we’ve already seen very obvious growth in donnie and the way he approaches leadership, but it’s very much pushed to the background, and for good reason. this is simply laying the foundation for the big showdown between Leo and donnie.

the next significant moment of leadership potential we see from donnie comes in the episode the Pulverizer. donnie gets stuck with Timothy in the lair but soon  becomes willing and even eager to teach him the basics of self defense, because, as he tells splinter, he knows Timothy is going to keep putting himself in dangerous situations and he’d rather Timothy be able to protect himself. splinter tells him that anything that happens to Timothy will be donnie’s responsibility, and donnie accepts this and begins training him. at the end of the episode they all make it out okay, Timothy goes on his way, and donnie seems to have become just a bit fond of him.

significantly, this is the first time donnie is given full responsibility over the fate of another person, and we see that even though he doesn’t really like Timothy, he takes this responsibility seriously. here he shows great leadership potential, as well, though again, it’s not really commented on narratively.

the next significant moment is, as you might’ve guessed, The Pulverizer Returns. in this episode we find out Timothy has joined the foot and is willing to pass information on to the turtles. Leo and Raph jump at the opportunity, Mikey is ambivalent as usual, and donnie is the only one who shows any concern. this is most likely because the last time he saw Timothy, splinter told him Timothy was his responsibility completely, and he obviously takes that seriously still. the entire episode, he tries to get Timothy to leave the foot and his brothers to take this seriously, but his worries are brushed off until they find out the shredder is about to mutate Timothy as an experiment.

so they race off to save him, and donnie ends up in a warehouse without his brothers to help, weaponless (because of some bullshit lesson splinter is trying to teach them, and as a side note, this was the first episode where I started to seriously dislike splinter as a character, because the way he was written here is just awful). the villains of this episode are dogpound and fishface. if you’ll remember, these are two serious villains, and up until this point they’d only ever been subdued, never defeated, and even then the turtles had to double team them in order to win. so it was of course surprising and incredible to see that donnie, armed with literally just a broom, was able to hold off a squad of foot ninjas, dogpound, AND fishface by himself for a good while, all while keeping Timothy away from the mutagen.

then Timothy IS mutated and a bomb is activated, and in just two minutes donnie comes up with a plan and executes it, getting them all out safely. when he starts barking orders at his brothers, they don’t even stop to question him. they listen immediately and that’s part of the reason why the plan succeeds. so what does this tell us? it tells us that donnie has a very strong sense of responsibility, protectiveness, and determination; that he is extremely capable when he’s focused and is good at thinking under pressure; and that his brothers trust him enough to follow his orders when he does give them. these are all incredible qualities for a leader to have!

notably the episode after this is Operation Break Out, where donnie goes off on his own to rescue April’s dad from The Kraang and they only make it out because his brothers followed him and intervened. clearly, then, donnie’s not really ready to be a leader and still lets his emotions cloud his judgement, which is a narratively sound writing decision. the big donnie-as-leader showdown doesn’t come until the end of season two, anyway.

and then season two. the tensions between Leo and donnie aren’t as obvious as the tensions between Leo and Raph, but they’re there, even if no one explicitly challenges Leo’s position as leader any more. here’s a quick rundown of the two significant episodes:

“Follow the Leader”--> Leo wants to stick to the old, traditional ways, but his brothers insist on unorthodox methods of fighting. Leo eventually comes to accept this to a certain degree when he admits it’s a good strategy to use against the footbots.

“Metalhead Rewired”--> donnie upgrades metalhead’s AI and Leo is suspicious of it. on the trail of The Kraang, Leo blames donnie for a few of metalhead’s mishaps, but apologizes when they realize that metalhead was leading them to a Kraang mutant prison. metalhead sacrifices itself to save them. Leo is sympathetic here because donnie is really upset, but it’s clear that these two are still fighting over the tech vs. tradition thing

and then we get to The Invasion, the season two finale. the synopsis makes it clear that this is where all of these moments that I've been discussing come to a head: “Leo and Donnie disagree about their plan to stop The Kraang invasion. When Leo makes a critical mistake, he is separated from the team and Donnie must step up as leader.” So we’re off to a good start as far as concluding this character arc goes. I was excited to finally see donnie live up to his leadership potential (and I thought this could be a good way to give Leo some closure regarding his issues with holding the world on his shoulders/blaming himself for every mistake/basing his self worth on his position as leader).

but I was sorely disappointed! in the episodes, donnie’s and Leo’s tech vs. tradition conflict comes to a head when Leo wants to flee the city (this seems very out of character for him) but donnie wants to stay and fight in his new combat robot, the turtle mech. this disagreement lasts until they are attacked in the tunnels and donnie is injured; Leo draws the Kraang robots away (I assumed this was his critical mistake: separating himself) to give the others time to escape. they go to April’s apartment to hide and regroup while Leo is hunted down and almost killed by the shredder. Raph and Casey rejoin the others, then shredder throws Leo through the window of the apartment, and they escape but barely. donnie then makes the decision to fight Kraang prime in the turtle mech (which is, I assume, his big leader moment, though of course it doesn’t even happen on screen). they fight Kraang prime and almost die, but Casey arrives in the van, saves them, and drives them out of the city. donnie apologizes to Leo’s unconscious body and says that Leo was right, and then the episode ends.

so. let me first say that this was quite possibly the worst way to end this really interesting and nuanced character arc that the writers had set donnie and Leo on. first of all, we barely got to see donnie act in any kind of leadership role. in Leo’s absence, they made most of their decisions as a team, where I had expected at least some sort of “I need to overcome my fears and anxieties and lead my family to safety” moment from donnie. secondly, Leo wasn’t entirely correct. yes, they ended up evacuating the city anyway like Leo wanted, but he was wrong about the turtle mech; it ended up destroying Kraang prime’s robot body thing. and donnie wasn’t entirely correct, either: the turtle mech was a great weapon that did some significant damage, but it wasn’t enough to stop the invasion. so we have these two characters who were both wrong in their own ways, both face the consequences, but no one ever discusses it.

so not only did we not see any significant character development from Leo; and not only did donnie not really get to act in any significant leadership role; but also worst of all, these two characters never got any closure! I'm a good handful of episodes into season three, and not one single character has even mentioned the tension between Leo and donnie during the invasion. everyone acts as if it never happened, so now as a viewer I'm stuck here waiting for the other shoe to drop or for one of these characters to finally snap, but I don’t think it’s going to happen, which sucks. in other iterations of tmnt (like the 2007 movie or the show from 2003) we get to see Donatello act almost like Leo’s second in command. I think that’s a really, really interesting direction the writers of the 2012 show could’ve gone in and I think it’s a waste of this subplot’s potential to just abandon it the way they did. I'm not sure what’s going to happen in season three, but I think a good conclusion of this arc would’ve been donnie and Leo confronting the argument they had, doing a little more maturing, and eventually donnie becomes Leo’s second in command. instead I'm really worried about how the writing of this show is going to devolve as I get further into the later seasons.

(as a side note: I'm currently working on a series of tmnt fics that addresses this issue, as well as the sometimes shitty ways the brothers treat each other and the stupid-as-fuck donnie/april/casey love triangle. so if that floats your boat, keep an eye out! I'll be reposting this with the link attached once I upload the first fic, so give my blog a follow or keep an eye on my ao3 account, heyassbuttimbatman)

[violet-t-9]

My take on why Caleb doesn’t trust Essek

I’ve seen a lot of discussion about “why doesn’t Caleb trust Essek” and here is just my two cents (spoilers, written after the new episode 131 talks machina). This will be very, very long, so beware. 

Before I start, this post is not meant to be against Essek and he is actually one of my top favourite characters. I wanted to get my thoughts out because I saw many people take Essek’s side and I want to consider Caleb’s perspective.

Also, the quotes are not EXACTLY accurate, but please bear with me. NOTHING I say reflects anything other than my own, biased interpretation of the events, so take it with a grain of salt. 

While it has been a long time in real life for us, in game time the peace talk was not that long ago. Liam has mentioned both as Caleb and in talks that Caleb had been very paranoid about Essek for a long time, thinking he was working them for his own agenda and could be Dynasty’s traitor. However, it is also confirmed that Caleb started to actually trust Essek because “the other shoe never dropped” and consider him a true friend - right before (“like two days later”) being the first one to discover (through Frumpkin) that he had been right about Essek since day one.

Imagine what that would do to Caleb, to finally letting himself trust just to get betrayed right away and to have his paranoia proven correct all along. Of course he still doesn’t trust Essek now, of course he is hurt. After the peace talks, Essek didn’t even seem to regret what he had done (he straight up said “I can’t say I regret what I have done”, also said seeing Adeen in chains was “freeing”). The first time he showed a genuine change was in episode 124, even then, Caleb failed to read his intentions with a nat 1 insight check, so he could not actually confirm that Essek was telling the truth (he was just given the “hard to read”) so basically he had no way of knowing if Essek was lying.

When Caleb thinks back on their past interactions, he would have to think about how everything Essek had said could be a lie, and that would taint any good memories they had. Even if we, as viewers, know that Essek was probably sincere most of the time, Caleb doesn’t know that. 

Essek had been lying to the party since they first met, he got close to M9 precisely because he wanted to use them to cover his beacon heist, to make sure that they “did not get too close to the truth”. He steered the party in the directions he wanted them to go in, like actively directing them to focus on Obann. And Essek was GOOD at what he did. M9 told him a lot of secrets - that they suspected a mole and that there are two beacons in the empire, etc. Essek succeeded in his objective and got a lot of information he wouldn’t have gotten otherwise because of his deception. Yes, he started to care for them somewhere along the line. At some point, he found himself actually wanting to be friends with M9, but that is a separate issue. He kept them in the dark, lied to their faces, betrayed their trust before they even met regardless. Now obviously he was in a very difficult position and probably felt like he could not tell them the truth (how would he tell them, anyways?), but it doesn’t change the fact that he used them for his goals and succeeded. 

Now Caleb and Essek had a mutually manipulative political-game-like dance going on when they first met, but that was more or less on equal footing and they probably both knew what each other was doing (they were both pretty obvious). Caleb also used his training to “keep [Essek] on the rails”, but that imo kind of pales in comparison to Essek using M9 to cover up his entire heist. Essek did help them a lot, but he did those things for favours, at least at first. He never cashed them (except the one vial Caleb gave him) but he didn’t have to - the favours worked, M9 decided not to expose him because he went out of his way to help them. Even after discovering the truth (that he was the catalyst of a war between two nations, one of which is 3 party members’ homeland), the M9 did not try to fight him or report him to literally ANYONE which would have gotten him killed. Caleb even gave Essek the hope that there IS a path to redemption when Essek didn’t believe in it. So yeah if I were Essek I would too be very grateful to M9. If I were Caleb I would probably never trust Essek ever again. 

Essek is shown to be completely uninterested in the Eyes of Nine but it was a valid concern. He did commit high treason for knowledge, it’s really not that much of a stretch that he’d be tempted by the city (exhibit A: Caleb himself, exhibit B: poor, poor Yussa). Good for him that he is not tempted, but Caleb’s suspicion was not uncalled for.

The thing is, M9 do trust Essek still. They told him literally everything about the TT and the city. Caleb even showed Essek the eye. It just makes me uncomfortable every time people say that M9 are “bad friends” for leaving Essek alone, or that Caleb is “mean” to Essek for not trusting him (by the way, the line about “that won’t help with the inside” was meant by Liam as “commiseration, not condemnation” if you didn’t know) but look, M9 doesn’t revolve around Essek? They have a lot of things to deal with and Essek was not on their top priority. They don’t have a responsibility to “fix” Essek’s morality issues (tbf, they still kinda did kick start that process). And hey, it’s great that Essek has obviously been doing pretty well for himself in terms of personal growth without the M9, and he could have reached out to them if he really wanted to. Remembering to use slots to message and check in with people is never M9′s strong suite.

Caleb also really didn’t endanger Essek more than Essek himself did. Caleb did used dunamancy in the empire (not resonant echo that he specifically learned from Essek, but something he reverse engineered by himself), but Trent would never have figured it out if Essek didn’t voluntarily work with Trent and the Assembly in the first place. Also, Caleb did apologize for endangering Essek (like he was supposed to, Essek deserved that apology).

So yeah, imo Caleb is right to not fully trusting Essek right now, for reasons I have mentioned above. However, Caleb clearly still cares about Essek, from the “just breathe” moment, the worry he felt, how he emphasized on the amulet. A lack of trust does not mean he just doesn’t care. Caleb was also very adamant about trusting Essek (“one person we can trust is better than three we cannot”) over his old friends (and obviously Trent). So again, I don’t really see him saying “we trust you more than my old teacher” as an issue - it’s just a statement, which is true, they do trust him more than Trent even if Trent may come with more power and numbers.

Yeah, Essek is very remorseful now, but they’ve seen this side of Essek for exactly two episodes (124 and 131), so I am not really surprised that they don’t just immediately go back to full trust mode with Essek. It will take some time, some bonding, but I’m sure the trust can be re-established. 

Just want to make it clear, I’m NOT saying Caleb is perfect. Caleb is a very flawed character (e.g. a hypocrite in terms of the eye tattoos) and I can see why some would see his interactions with Essek as problematic (but really, it’s from both sides). However, I do believe that some people twist Caleb’s words to Essek a lot and interpret them to be more vicious, manipulative and colder than he intends them to be/than they actually are because they dislike Caleb, or like Essek a lot, or for many other reasons. This post is about Caleb’s perspective so I’m not going to list all of his own flaws. I just think that in many posts I’ve seen people take Essek’s side and blame Caleb or the M9 and seem to forget that Essek did betray the M9 and “did a lot of shitty things” like Matt said. So this is just an alternative perspective for those people to consider.

Feel free to disagree, like I said these are only my opinions. That said, I’m really looking forward to the next episodes. I feel like they can establish how Essek may fit in the M9 now and maybe start some great trust-building. I cannot wait to see Essek’s interactions with M9 and I think the next few episodes will be very important for the character dynamics. 

[frenchphobic]

long fucking post on why a c!dream is a shitty person and probably should not have a redemption because it is unpog

honestly i just want to refute dream apologists thats why im making this post. i think that dream as a villain is interesting but i think that trying to make him out to be secretly a good guy is just bad ngl. also /roleplay and all

tw for abuse and mentions of suicide

dream as a villain

dream is a villain. he is chaotic evil according to wilbur, deliberately does not stream to appear less sympathetic (and yet), and is set up as an antagonist to tommy who bears the title ‘hero’. dream is not a good person, no matter how you look at it or try to justify his actions.

‘but he wants to unite everyone to be a big family :((’ the ends dont justify the means believe it or not. having a vaguely positive goal does not excuse the actions you’ve done. it also goes hand and hand with saying dream is correct for punishing tommy the way he did because he acted up. if i socked you across the face and then suddenly said ‘sorry there was a roach on ur face’ does that make it okay? probably not i still punched you, enacting an unnecessary amount of violence. thats a very simple analogy i will admit and there are more complex comparisons. another example off the top of my head is say a child just scribbled all over you walls with crayons. would hitting them be a justified answer? if u said hes thats really fucked of u go seek help u loon. violence as a punishment is very toxic, just because it gets the job done does not mean it is okay. at the end of the day, you still committed this act and the harm you caused is real, having a good motive doesnt suddenly make it okay.

‘but tommy causes all of the conflict’ the disk war wasnt even caused by tommy, it was sapnap and then tommy got involved. and the reason why tommy even caused conflict was because of the discs, because he wanted them back. and most of the time there was a level of antagonism from another party, such as schlatt exiling him, dream taking the disks in the first place, dream threatening l’manberg. and if dream wanted to end the conflict so badly, why didnt he just give tommy back his disks? tommy upfront said everything started with the disks, so he wants them back so he could end the conflict. notice how after tommy got his disks back he has been staying out of conflict, apologizing to everyone, and the only bad thing hes done is try to scam people but everyone does that. this would have been the most peaceful option, yet dream chose the path that would further antagonize tommy which then draws everyone else into conflict. why did dream need to have leverage over tommy so badly? why did he want to hold power over tommy so badly? its because of control, and that’s ultimately dreams end goal. sure he wants a big server family, but would said family have a free will?

‘but dream is sad’ the thing is dream is completely at fault for everything that happened to him. he pushed away sapnap (and george ig). he tried to take control over the server and their possessions. literally everything that happened to tommy. literally everything involving ranboo. villains can be sympathetic, i am not arguing against that. but it does not mean that they should be left off the hook. that doesnt mean u should ignore the shit theyve done because ‘oh no theyre sad’ because it doesnt make anything better. dream had this shit coming for him.

now people also skirt around calling dream an abuser. which is fair ig, its a very loaded word. its much easier to say manipulated. that being said, dream can classify as abusive. and no, tommy is not abusive. abuse is about control and a power imbalance. dream has power over tommy, but tommy does not have power over dream, at least not in the way dream does. he’s taking back power to stand up for himself, dream uses power to control.

the reasons i listed for why dream is from the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project so if u want a source on that, there you go.

using coercion or threats: dream often threatened tommy, such as the pit thing and often employed violence on him. while normally this could be attributed to Normal Minecraft Player Go Smack. minecraft mechanics cannot always translate to real world since violence is pretty normal in minecraft however we also need to consider the context of the scene. dream gave an order, tommy refused, dream applies violence, tommy submitted. thats why its a threat, it has tangible effects that can correlate to real life.

using intimidation: dream blew up logsteadshire as a punishment. dream also destroyed tommys items anytime he visited. dream also hit tommy with his axe i believe. he killed mushroom henry, one of tommys pets.

Using Emotional Abuse: dream guiltripped the shit out of tommy for just hiding things and pinning the blame on tommy for just wanting his own private items. he definitely played mind games on tommy, pretending to be his friend. honestly i probably dont even need to go as in depth because it was so obvious.

Using Isolation: putting him in exile in the first place. destroying the bether portal so no one could visit tommy anymore. i really dont think i need to expand upon that.

Minimizing, Denying, and Blaming: dream in tommys stream when he got trapped said that exile wasnt that bad. he does shift the blame onto tommy for logsteadshire being blown up, even though dreams reaction was entirely unjustified for not listening and hiding.

Using Economic Abuse: see this is where i attempt to parallel minecraft mechanics to real life. obviously, there is no monetary system in place, so when i mean economic, i will use valuables such as armor, food, etc in place of currency. the idea behind economic abuse is to limit the victim’s resources so that they are dependent on the abuser and cannot escape. dream only really allowed tommy to have the armor he gave him while not giving access to armor so he does not regain a sense of power, and in the prison stream, dream holds all the potatoes which puts him in a position of power over tommy. this argument is more ambiguous i feel cause the whole minecraft mechanics thing is kinda weird so u don’t necessarily have to take this part in.

i feel like i need to emphasize this very strongly because dream is not a good person. abuse cannot and should not be a response to someone. its an awful mentality to have. i just want to prove the point that dream is not a good person, his reasons absolutely do not justify his actions.

what makes a good redemption

redemption arcs are tricky. when done right they are great. when done poorly, its a slap in the face. rn im going to establish a formula to what makes a good redemption with an example.

the most well known example of a good redemption is zuko from atla. first, its the magnitude of what theyve done and why. zuko did commit some shitty actions, since he was in a position of power in the fire nation but its because he is a child being abused and wanted to regain honor. zukos real awful acts was season 1 and the whole betrayal thing. thats not to say that zukos actions suddenly are okay, he did shitty things. but its something that can be traced to a higher entity or seem less malicious then the other villains. the thing also about the magnitude of actions is that there is a certain point of atrocities that there is no redemption. some people simply cannot be redeemed because the actions they commit are so ingrained in their character or the action itself has serious moral issues that it would just be wrong.

the next is acknowleding what they did was wrong. a genuine reflection on the self and analyzing what they did and why it was not okay. zuko realized what he did to uncle iroh was bad for example. he turned his back on his father, realizing he didnt and shouldnt seek acknowledgment from someone as heinous as him. its pointing out your actions and going ‘hey, this wasnt right i should not have done this’ and not even excusing ur actions. its also going straight for the root of the problem and figuring out to stamp it from the source. just because a character is sad does not mean they are reflecting, sometimes they are attempting to garner pity. it has to be direct and clear acknowledgement of the injustice.

and finally, an important part about redemption arcs is the actual redemption part. its when you make amends. zuko made amends with katara by trying to help her get revenge, he fought against the fire nation and tried to make things more peaceful in his rule. he apologized to iroh. an important part of the amends section is that it does have to be a genuine desire to change and become a better person, not to change a person’s perception of you. the thing is u cant expect a person youve hurt to forgive you. you cant expect people to be sympathetic towards you nor should u attempt to make urself sympathetic. u shouldnt be expecting a pat on the back or an award. redemption is about internal and character change.

why dream should not be redeemed

ive already established the key points to a good redemption (imo) but heres where dream falls short. his actions are extremely heavy so redemption may not even really be possible. abuse is not something you can wave off so it does cross to the point of fucked up. acknowledgement of what he did was wrong? all he said was that he changed, yet never explained why he changed or was too vague. he needed to label specifically what he did and bring it up. attempting to make amends? he’s been doing the exact opposite in fact he continues to manipulate tommy and ranboo. its not a genuine change. he is still repeating the cycle and has given no indication of ceasing. at the moment he does not have any signs of redemption.

and the thing is most of the attention around a dream redemption comes from either justifying his motives (which i do want to emphasize does not make anything suddenly okay) and because he is sad in prison sad face. these are not good reasons. its gonna pain me severely to bring this up but snape from harry potter does have some form of sad character ig yet he very much abused his authority to bully children as old as 11 just because he said ‘aight gonna die’ doesnt suddenly make his general bigotry and abuse suddenly okay there is a threshold. again im so sorry for using harry potter as an example none were coming to mind and i needed a popular one i do not like harry potter please dont say i do i would pass away.

and the last thing to consider is the audience. keep in mind that the audience is composed of minors and while yes there are adults, minors are the main component of the fandom. keep in mind that there are quite a few people who can relate to tommys character because they might be in the same position or have gone through his experiences. tell me what kind of message does it send to that audience that abusers can be redeemed. this is not a narrative u should push to this audience in these situations and the writers are seemingly aware of it. remember how in exile tommy spiraled into a suicidal mentality? consider how fucked of a message it would be if he just committed suicide instead of escaping abuse and attempting to recover from his experiences. tommy did an excellent job in not going that route and having a message of ‘it will not get better’. its the same thing here. victims are not obligated to care for or forgive their abuser, and portraying an abuser as sympathetic might fuck with the message a lot, even change their perception in that ‘oh, maybe my abuser was right, maybe they had a reason for treating me the way they did’. this is not to say that every victim watching this will internalize this message, but people also look up to these characters. there can be a degree of influence from the story onto oneself and thats the dangerous part.

conclusion

all in all dream is a shitbag asshole and probably shouldnt get a redemption because it would not be pog thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[myersesque]

Tell me about how telltale batman has the most in character bruce despite being divergent to a lot of established lore - more so than a lot of the comics themselves imo

YES YES EXACTLY YOU GET IT

quick disclaimer that my comic knowledge will obviously be limited to the comics i've personally read. comic writers love to take characters and do their own thing with them, so i know for a fact there are probably a million comics that contradict this post, but that's not the point.

even the telltale side of things in this are gonna be a little biased and full of personal interpretation, because telltale's game format means that everybody's bruce wayne is gonna look a little different. but, i mean, i guess the way i play bruce is the way i see him anyway, so whatever.

ANYWAY! i hope you wanted an essay because oh boy did i get carried away:

one aspect of bruce's character i think is important is his motivations. he didn't just wake up one day and decide to be batman - he made that decision for a reason, and i think that reason is inherently important to his character, because having a different idea on his origins can give you a completely different idea of how his character should act, if that makes sense?

in my personal opinion, bruce wayne should always be motivated by love. he's motivated to fight crime by his love for his parents, and his love for gotham city, and his love for innocent people who don't deserve his parents' fate. my favourite comic panels are always the ones where bruce lets his scary persona slip a little, where he cradles a child against his chest to comfort them; batman was created to be scary, yes, but he's intended to scare criminals, not innocents. whilst bruce's parents' deaths definitely jumpstart his vigilantism, they are not the centrepiece of his entire morality - he doesn't care about gotham's citizens because he's imagining his parents in their place, he cares about them because he genuinely loves his city.

i think a lot of comics i've read have sorta forgotten that aspect of his character. white knight's entire plot revolves around the idea that bruce, blinded by his own anger, has become just as brutal and careless as the criminals he fights, and has ended up causing harm to innocent civilians because of it - whilst i think that's certainly interesting, and i am a sucker for a good "heroes aren't always good people" storyline... it feels icky. i struggle to reconnect that bruce, snarling and chained and unable to sympathise with the innocent people he's hurting, with the bruce who held children to his chest and promised they'd be okay. a lot of comics don't consider bruce's motivation to be his love, they consider his motivation to be his hatred, which leads to characterisations of bruce that are cruel and uncaring and, in some instances, outright abusive. it's like they frame his entire morality as "getting revenge for his parents' deaths" - which is funny, because i think it's pretty commonly agreed upon that bruce wayne shows his parents' murderer mercy. i think a lot of the issue is that people dehumanise batman, and bruce in turn; he's not a man, he's a monster.

which brings me to telltale bruce!

i think what makes telltale bruce work so well is the way they instantly humanise him. the opening scene of season 1 flickers between batman's fearless crime-fighting and bruce wayne gritting his teeth through an injury and getting ready for a gala. his relationships with the other characters - harvey, selina, john, tiffany, everybody - are shown in halves; you see just as much of bruce as you do batman. you'll see batman shielding harvey from attacks followed by bruce sitting by his side in his hospital room; batman repressing fond smiles behind his cowl as he talks with john; bruce at lucius' funeral, filled with despair, knowing that batman is to blame. it is incredibly, painfully clear that batman is not a myth or a monster - he's bruce wayne, the same bruce wayne who flirts with reporters and makes bad puns and goes on fake-dates with his friends to help them learn how to talk to girls. he's human, in a way that comics often seem to forget he's meant to be.

(part of the draw of batman, to me, is that he's human. he's got fancy gadgets and a cool suit but underneath it all he's just a man, just a human being driven by emotion like the rest of us. he feels real, in a way. i used to look out of my bedroom window and imagine batman coming to save me from my problems; i could never quite do that with superman, or wonder-woman, or any of the others.)

not only that, but thomas and martha wayne are removed from bruce's motivations pretty effectively - they're outed as awful people, the kind of people bruce fights against. they did to oswald what joe chill did to him. so rather than falling into blind rage, rather than the unfortunate "batman fights for revenge", you get a bit of nuance - bruce has to come to terms with being wrong, and learn where he stands, torn between awful people who he loves and good people who hate him. he's fighting not to avenge his or oz's parents, but to prevent any innocents from meeting the same unfortunate fate, and to redeem himself.

they let him be wrong without totally becoming a villain: they let him punch out oswald cobblepot on live TV and deal with the consequences; they let him instigate riots for his own benefit; they show him crouching in the back of a truck, surrounded by criminals he's been willingly helping, staring guiltily at a bat-signal he's ignoring; they let him feel guilt for all the friends he couldn't save.

he doesn't beat his friends-turned-enemies with glee. he doesn't take joy in putting them away. he doesn't use them as punching bags for his own anger and trauma.

he keeps harvey from committing suicide and tells him, earnestly, that there's still hope for him. he sits across from john and admits, hoarse and teary-eyed, that he truly did consider them friends. he gives up being batman for alfred's sake. he visits john in arkham, with an honest smile, despite all they went through. these choices may be optional, yes, but with the way telltale writes their characters, every one of these options is perfectly in-character for their bruce. you may play him a little angrier, a little more vengeful, a little less sympathetic - but at his core, he's the same. at his core, he still looks at gotham city, and the villains he goes up against, and says "i'm sorry this happened to you, i wish i knew how to make it better". he cradles them against his chest.

i don't know if any of this made sense, but tl;dr: telltale writes bruce as a flawed person, yes, but at his core he is loving and charismatic and bittersweet, and that's who i've always thought he should be.

(this kinda turned into bruce loveposting halfway through, but hopefully i still got the point across.)

[ooops-i-arted]

Child development/Dad-thoughts for Season 2 Episode 8???

Poor little guy.  He has to be so terrified and traumatized by the time we see him again - ripped away from his father by scary bad droids, threatened by Gideon and his scary black sword, weakened from using his powers and blood loss, and we don’t even know if he was awake for any medical procedures that surely would have involved his autonomy, personhood, and fears being completely ignored let alone scary ouchy needles/medical tools.  It’s hard to gauge how he’s doing since we don’t have the entire picture of what he experienced, although we can assume it had to be terrifying.  But when we see him again, he’s patiently sitting by Gideon, apparently having complete faith that Dad will come save him and defeat the bad guy.

I do feel this episode hugely dropped the ball by not showing us Grogu being reunited with Din once Gideon is defeated and Din unshackles him.  It’s such an important missing piece - last we saw Grogu was so terrified he was giving in the Dark Side and harming stormtroopers, then he’s sitting (I infer) paralyzed with fear/scared enough to be quiet and still because of Gideon, and next we see he’s tucked in Din’s arms again.  How was he feeling to be reunited with his dad?  Did Din comfort and reassure him (it would be ooc for Din not to at this point imo)?  Did he feel better knowing that Dad came for him after all?  Sure, we can infer all that, but it’s a big emotional beat that should’ve been present because it impacts The Big Grogu Moment we get later:  Grogu choosing to go with Luke.

I’m not gonna lie, I was really surprised the show went this direction since it seemed like they were setting up Din choosing to keep Grogu as his own and I have my reservations about the story going this way tbh.  But I think Luke taking Grogu (for now) does work.

Season 2 Grogu is a much happier, well-adjusted, and more mature child than Season 1 Grogu.  Season 1 Grogu was quiet, subdued; he had moments of comfort or testing limits but overall generally made himself less noticeable and was hesitant to indicate his needs or wants to anyone, even Din.  Season 2 Grogu is a much more average child; he knows he can indicate what he needs to Din and it will be provided for, even something as the simple emotional comfort of uppies; he chatters more often and isn’t afraid to be more curious, more defiant, and just express himself.  In Season 1 Grogu didn’t even ask for food - probably thinking he’d be ignored - he just caught that frog by himself; Season 2 Grogu has a loving dad who tells him “I see you’re hungry, we’ll get you some food.”  Season 1 Grogu generally just follows Din around, not wanting him out of his sight but rarely requesting interaction until the end of the season but waiting for it to be offered instead; Season 2 Grogu is always running to Din the second he needs anything.  Does trauma magically go away?  No, Grogu is still affected.  But he’s clearly healing and growing under Din’s care, and having a stable adult in the child’s life is one of the biggest things that can reduce a child being affected by Adverse Childhood Experiences.

Grogu seems to know who Luke is, or at least recognize him as a Jedi.  My guess is he did connect with Luke during the Scotty Beam Me Up scene.  So it’s not like a stranger showed up to take him away, this is someone he has “met” and “talked to”.  And since Grogu has the Force, he can sense for sure that this is a nice person and someone who truly can teach him, which eliminates some of the guesswork you usually get when a kid meets their new teacher/a stranger.  So while it looks to Din like some random guy just showed up for his kid, there was more stuff going on below the surface that Din (and the audience) didn’t really see because It’s The Force.  So it isn’t like Grogu is being sent off with the first strange Jedi who rolls up (like on Corvus).

Grogu certainly doesn’t act afraid of Luke or anything other than friendly.  The only issue is separating from his beloved dad.  Grogu will not go unless the person he loves and trusts most in the entire world says it’s okay for him to do so.  He goes up to the screen and almost seems like he wants Din to look and show him “This is an okay guy.  Look he kills things just like you, Dad.” before pointing and trying to get the adults to open the door.  And I definitely got the impression Grogu is calling or otherwise trying to commune with Luke through the Force, telling him “Hey we’re on the bridge, come save us and meet my Dad.”  So Grogu is open and willing to start interacting with Luke - as long as it’s okay with Din.  (And Din in turn trusts Grogu enough to open the doors when Grogu says it’s cool, this guy is okay.)

The #1 thing that makes Luke taking Grogu work for me is that everyone’s consent is involved.  Grogu may be a small child who still needs an adult guardian and guidance in his life but that doesn’t mean he should be carted around without taking his feelings into consideration.  This isn’t like a few episodes ago, where Din tried to hand Grogu over without really seeing if Grogu or Ahsoka were okay with it.  Luke addresses Grogu directly and treats him like a person, accepting that Grogu needs to be involved in this decision; Luke also addresses Din’s worries and even speaks up on Grogu’s behalf (”He wants your permission”).  Grogu is clearly open to the idea of going with Luke - if he didn’t want to, Luke would certainly say so - but also wants to make sure Din is okay with it.  And while Din balks at first, once he realizes that Luke can offer Grogu the training he can’t, he gives Grogu permission to go and even gives him a special good-bye so that Grogu knows how much he means to Din.  And the face-touch seemed to me, at least, to be Grogu saying, Don’t worry Dad, it’s okay to try and reassure him.  And Din tells him in turn “Don’t be afraid.”  The separation is hard, but Din and Grogu both realize that Grogu needs to be trained to use his powers safely.  They’re willing to do what’s right, even when it’s hard, which takes a lot of emotional maturity.  Grogu has certainly grown indeed.

Realistically this probably should’ve taken a lot more time - Din going with Luke to help transition Grogu - but 1. this is a tv show and 2. this is still better than small children usually get in media anyway, since people tend to lump anyone under age 5 as “cute and/or annoying prop for the adult characters.”  Also, we the audience know Luke (the real one, not the OOC Rian Jackoff version).  We know Luke is compassionate and kind and will take good care of Grogu.  If Grogu is troubled by leaving his beloved dad, Luke will do his best to guide Grogu through it, and I personally think that if Grogu ultimately decided this wasn’t for him and wanted Dad?  Luke would pack him up in the X-wing and fly him right to Din.  So ymmv but Luke training Grogu works for me and I think Grogu is in good hands.

I don’t wanna super go into The Discourse but since I know it’s gonna come up in the fandom and since I am a big Jedi fan, I’ll briefly address the whole No Attachments/Jedi Attitudes thing:

No Attachments refers to No Possessiveness, not You Can’t Love Anyone.  The Jedi don’t discourage compassion and love and even family ties, just the whole I’d Commit Genocide For My Loved One (looking at you, Anakin).  This post specifically refutes the comments Filoni made in the Making the Mandalorian show and goes into it way better than I could, if you’re interested.  I’ll just pull out this George Lucas quote: “But [Anakin] has become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padme and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation.”  So Grogu loving and caring about Din isn’t an issue - it’s only an issue when he’s willing to harm and endanger others over it (like choking Cara) or when he becomes so afraid he lashes out without thinking (the stormtrooper free-for-all).

Which is why it’s so important Grogu be trained by someone who knows and understands the power he has.  Even if Grogu still decides not to be a Jedi, he needs to know how to control himself and his power so he doesn’t hurt anyone.

Jedi are allowed contact with family and embrace their original cultures as shown throughout Star Wars media.  There’s no reason to think Luke will snatch Grogu and never let him and Din see each other again even if Luke did follow the prequel Jedi completely (which he didn’t in Legends anyway, which honestly makes more sense to me since so much Jedi knowledge was lost/destroyed by the Empire).

People have always been allowed to leave the Jedi Order.  If Grogu or Din decide “Nope, can’t do this, I want him back” Luke would 100% support them making a decision that works for both of them.

We follow Anakin and Revan because they’re interesting characters and because conflict makes good stories.  The Jedi Order didn’t work for them but most Jedi seem pretty well-adjusted so... I don’t tend to think Anakin is really the baseline we should be going by, y’know?  Grogu has past trauma but he’s been with people who care for him and listen to him.  And not to knock Din at all, but Luke being able to communicate with Grogu is a huge advantage and will actually probably be really good for Grogu.  So I think Grogu is in good hands and won’t be Ruined Forever by training as a Jedi.

And of course Din says they’ll meet again.  He promised.  (And Din & Grogu are Disney’s chief moneymaking duo these days, you want to make your audience worry about your dream team, not break them up permanently.)  So I think Grogu will be reunited with his beloved dad.  And while the parting was certainly heartbreaking, for now he’s in good hands who will help him continue to grow and thrive.

[anextraordinarymuse]

I need your thoughts about why you read Shane and Oliver being intimate in To The Alter. The longer the better.

Well, I am happy to oblige!

As I mentioned in that original post, I have no doubt that this isn't a popular take on Shane and Oliver's relationship, and I know that SSD is a faith based show, but I think that Shane and Oliver's interactions in To The Altar were purposely written to be ambiguous. So, let's break it down, shall we?

To start, I personally don't believe that Oliver and Shane sharing that last intimacy would diminish either their faith or their connection in any way. Oliver is old fashioned, but only to an extent, and while this is a faith-based show it also doesn't exist in a vacuum. Hence why I think there is ambiguity in the way their interactions are presented: so you can interpret them in whatever way you like.

So. In To The Altar, we see Shane and Oliver interact in ways that we have never seen before. It's not out of the ordinary for Oliver and Shane's wardrobes to match, but right at the beginning of the movie they don't just match: they're dressed almost identically. Both are wearing their dark green plaid outfits; Shane's coat is blue, and Oliver's tie is almost the same color blue. This is pretty innocuous except that it immediately made me wonder how they pulled that off, because the match is too exact to be accidental (IMO). My first thought was "how cute, they must have done that on purpose", and then the next thought was "well, how would they have done that?" Now, this isn't really important except that it's what kind of set me on this track in the first place.

The first interaction that really set me off was the teasing between Oliver and Shane on the post office floor. Oliver tells Shane that he can't bend the rules just because "You and I are ... especially because you and I are ...". But Oliver can't finish the sentence, and his inability to articulate what exactly they are triggers something playful in Shane. She gets right into his personal space, goes up on her tiptoes and whispers in his ear, "I love it when you get all 'Ms. McInerney on me.'" Now, we've seen Shane being playful before, and Oliver as well to some extent, but this is ... well, this is new. The way Shane whispers in his ear can be interpreted as being at least lightly seductive; the fact that Oliver can't seem to stand still while Shane is in his personal space seems to indicate that this moment makes him feel some sort of way as well. He literally bounces on his feet - more than once - but there's no discomfort in his expression. He's smiling, but it's a playful, secretive sort of smile. Honestly, there's so much playful intimacy in this moment that it should be illegal. No matter how you read it, it's clear that these are two people who are very comfortable with and in love with one another. It was all of these things together that struck me: here they are in identical outfits as if they got dressed that morning together, sharing a playful and perhaps thinly-veiled seductive moment, and Oliver can't finish his sentence with "just because you and I are dating?" There are two alternatives here: one is that Oliver doesn't say dating because he's already started thinking about the future and what ends up being his proposal ... and one is that the end of his statement would have referenced their new intimacy, which he could not find a way to do appropriately so did not finish the sentence at all. This interpretation would also tie in nicely to Shane's sudden teasing, because she knows what he's trying not to say and decides to tease him about it.

The very next scene that Oliver and Shane share is the infamous wedding dress scene. The intimacy of their previous moment is directly carried into this one. The way that Oliver steps forward to fasten the buttons and then he and Shane watch each other in the mirror is just ... my brain immediately went "oh, they've done this before." I don't know how else to explain it, except that this moment felt new to us as the audience, but not new to Shane and Oliver. Shane has been caught with the wedding dress, yes, but that's where the surprise of the moment seems to end. This moment is reminiscent of countless romance movies where the leading man zips the leading woman into (or out of) her dress. Oliver is the playful one in this moment, and all of Shane's shyness stems from the fact that he's seeing her in a moment that she didn't intend on him seeing; again, aside from the wedding dress, this moment seems so familiar to them that Oliver is comfortable teasing Shane. That's a huge thing in my mind, because Oliver is not playful in moments of discomfort or uncertainty. Also! We don't see Oliver approach Shane at all - one moment he's staring at her from a few feet behind her, and the next moment he's reaching out to do up her buttons. How did he know that the buttons were undone? There's no way he could have seen that detail from where he was first standing - so did he know that they were undone because he knows that Shane has a hard time reaching that spot? It just felt so .... deliberate that we were shown Oliver's hands buttoning the dress.

The next scene that stood out to me was actually the moment between Norman and Oliver at the tuxedo fitting. Norman has just admitted that he and Rita are both virgins, and that he's nervous about "going to the movies" as he's termed it, because he's afraid he won't be good at it. Oliver's advice is both sweet and confident: "Norman, you aren't going to the movies, you and Rita are the movie. You are the stars of your own love story. And when the time comes you will know your lines, and it will be beautiful." Now, nowhere in this moment does Oliver seem to overtly draw on anything personal, and we know that he's just good with words and giving advice overall. This moment could be nothing - just some beautifully worded advice - but in many ways, Rita and Norman are foils for Shane and Oliver. If Norman and Rita are both virginal, then the foil would be for Shane and Oliver not to be. That tracks with their characters, since we know that Oliver was married before and Shane is not as old fashioned as Oliver (so theoretically might not have the same 'wait for marriage' attitude that many people assume Oliver has). Again, this moment might be nothing, but given that it comes after those moments with Shane and not before it makes me think that Oliver is actually drawing on how he feels about his relationship and intimacy with Shane to set Norman's mind at ease. Also, since we've moved past Holly so completely at this point it wouldn't really make sense for Oliver to be drawing on those experiences (especially at what is, in many ways, the height of his relationship with Shane). Thus, if Oliver is drawing on anything personal in this moment it must be with Shane.

Now, at the beginning of the movie Shane and Oliver's wardrobes are either very in sync/complementary or downright identical, as mentioned before. But as we get to the middle of the movie and later, their wardrobes are no longer as in sync (or are in the same color palette, but not really similar). This coincides with Oliver's preoccupation - but it also made me wonder if it doesn't signal the nights that Oliver and Shane spend together vs. the ones they don't. Since Oliver is old fashioned, and Shane isn't, there could be a compromise there: maybe they spend one or two nights a week together, but not all of them.

So. I think these things were meant to be ambiguous so that the audience could interpret them how they chose. It could be that these interactions are clues hinting at the evolution of Shane and Oliver's relationship ... or not. There's not a lot of them, but the fact that they exist at all - and that these interactions really aren't present in any other movie, or with any other couple - is what caught my attention. Obviously I fall into the "their relationship has evolved" camp. Given what we know of the characters I think this the most realistic interpretation. Oliver and Shane are at least in their mid-thirties; one has been married and the other has had at least one serious relationship previously; this isn't a first serious relationship between young people (like with Norman and Rita). By the time we get to To The Altar, Shane and Oliver have been dating for a year (based on when the movies aired, since we don't have a concrete timeline in the show), and I think based on the giddiness of their interactions that any intimacy they've shared is still new, so we can safely assume that they probably took their relationship progress slowly. A year is a long time for two adults in a seriously committed relationship to wait to have sex. Like I said, I know that this is a faith-based show, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum and it aired in 2018. Also, I wish I had gifs of all of these moments to include here!

The best thing about this is that it can be interpreted in any way that you want it to be. I have interpreted it the way I have based on the things I've laid out above, but that doesn't invalidate any other interpretation.

So, what do you think?

[justalitlecreacher]

Ok as much as I hate the events of the Rako Hardeen arc in Clone Wars and deeply wish that the council/Obi-Wan had at the very least told Anakin and Ahsoka what they were planning, I feel like the arc represents a very important turning point in Anakin’s fall and actually shows an important bit of character growth from Attack of the Clones.

Tl;Dr: The Rako Hardeen arc is my favorite and least favorite arc in all of Clone Wars because while it puts Anakin through unnecessary pain it also gives a lot of insight into why he may have fallen in Revenge of the Sith and shows some important character growth

Ok; the most important part of this post/analysis (I think) is to remember how close Anakin and Obi-Wan are. Anakin was placed in Obi-Wan’s care at the age of 9 and from then on Obi-Wan practically raised him. In Attack of the Clones we see Anakin refer to Obi-Wan as the closest thing he has to a father not once, but twice, and one of those two times was directly to Obi-Wan.”OBI-WAN:  Why do I think you are going to be the death of me?! ANAKIN:  Don't say that Master... You're the closest thing I have to a father... I love you. I don't want to cause you pain.”(Attack of the Clones) and later to Padmé “...He's [Obi-Wan] like my father,...”. This is especially important because when Anakin leaves his mother to become a Jedi in The Phantom Menace, Obi-Wan is literally the only friendly/familiar face in the Temple. Plus in the comics (disclaimer: I have not read all the comics just bits and pieces) we get a glimpse of Anakin training with the other padawans and it’s made clear that at least some of them don’t like Anakin at all. One padawan even refers to him as “just a slave” when shit talking him during training.(which like super fucked up; they def should’ve gotten in trouble cause that don’t seem very Jedi of them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Anyway; we’ve established Anakin and Obi-Wan’s bond. So let’s turn our attention towards someone who deserved so much better; Shmi Skywalker. Her death in Attack of the Clones was the first major turning point in Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side. There is really no excuse for Anakin’s actions after Shmi’s death; he goes to a very dark place, and likely taps into the dark side of the force during the massacre of the Tusken Raiders. But that’s not what we’re talking about rn so back on track.

I bring Shmi’s death up to say that while Anakin was tracking down Obi-Wan’s “murderer” I didn’t fully realize that Obi-Wan had disguised himself as Hardeen and I was genuinely worried that Anakin was about to unalive an innocent man. I really believe that the only thing that stopped Anakin from trying (and maybe succeeding) to kill Obi/Rako was like he said: he knew that Obi-Wan wouldn’t have wanted him to. This is important because the last time Anakin lost a family member he brutally murdered an entire village of Tusken Raiders, children included, and I think it’s safe to say that Shmi “the biggest problem in the universe is nobody helps each other” Skywalker would not have wanted that. I’ve finally arrived at one of my main points; this arc shows a crucial bit of character growth by showing an Anakin that is capable of thinking his actions through and not just reacting out of anger even after the loss of one of the most important people in his life; something he was previously shown incapable of when his anger and grief blind him. This turns this arc into an sort of midway point on Anakin’s fall; he’s clearly tempted to give into his anger and pain again, but he is able to resist this time. A younger Anakin may have killed “Hardeen” then and there. 

This scene really contrasts with Anakin’s actions in Revenge of the Sith in a way im not sure how i feel about yet. On one hand it has potential to make Anakin’s actions in Revenge of the Sith feel too out of character. We just saw Anakin able to see past his own emotions in the wake of the death of a loved one so what makes this different? On the other hand this arc can be used to show just how desperate Anakin is to not have to feel that way ever again. It’s also good for showing how much influence Palpatine has had on Anakin in the space between this arc and Revenge of the Sith. As for why Anakin may be unable to think past his own feelings in Revenge of the Sith when he appeared perfectly capable in the arc, a likely reason is that there really wasn't anything Anakin thought he could do for Obi-Wan anymore because he believed him to be dead, but with Padmé, Anakin knew she could be saved if he could just get her the proper care. But his fear of being exiled from the Jedi Order, and his increasing lack of faith in the council led him to believe that he had no choice other than to trust in Palpatine. And no hate to Yoda but im sure when Anakin did try to reach out (even as vaguely as he did) Yoda’s response of “Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.” didn't appear to be very helpful (especially considering that he is well aware that listening to Ahsoka’s visions and responding appropriately saved Padmé’s life (not sure if Anakin knows about that though)). These three episodes show pretty well how/why Anakin may have felt that he had nowhere to turn but Palpatine.

These groups of episodes actually show negative character growth (is that the right term?) in Anakin. He goes from commiting mass murder rated E for everyone to understanding that his loved ones would not want him to seek revenge in this way, but then he backslides into this lightsaber is rated E for everyone by Revenge of the Sith. Logically he should know that Padmé would never have wanted him to do what he did; he has to know what he’s doing is wrong, but he’s incapable of seeing another way out because he cannot handle even the thought of losing Padmé. He’s too desperate to not lose her, and so sure that there’s no other option that he manages to convince himself that he needs to do this for her. I find this entire arc really interesting but unless i want to be here all day the most i can do here is point out that it exists and that it peaks in the Rako Hardeen arc. Surprisingly i do have a life outside of writing long posts, and i lack the time and energy to analyze all of Clone Wars and write about every event that led to Darth Vader (there are so many). On top of that i actually haven’t seen all of Clone Wars; just the episodes most important to understanding Anakin’s fall.

Onto my next point, we just talked about the growth Anakin showed in this episode; now onto why i believe that this arc was instrumental in Anakin’s fall. (Disclaimer: I do not think that removing this arc alone could have saved Anakin, but i do believe it would have helped a good bit). I’ve already touched on Anakin and Obi-Wan’s bond so im not gonna do that again. 

Ive said it before and i will say it again; it was super fucked up of Obi-Wan and everyone else on the Council to use Anakin’s (and Ahsoka’s) reactions Obi-Wan’s “death” for their own gain. It was super manipulative and they absolutely knew what they were doing.  Obi-Wan even explicitly says, “Keeping Anakin on the outside was critical. Everyone knows how close we are. It was his reaction that sold the sniper. I'm sure of it.”(Deception season 2 episode 15). He knows just how devastated Anakin would be by his death, and he uses like Anakin and his mental and emotional well-being mean nothing to him (I know this isn’t true but its probably not hard to believe that someone doesn't care about your feelings when they’ve just tricked you into thinking they’ve died for their own gain). The Council really proves time and time again that they do not care about Anakin’s (or maybe anyone’s; Anakin was far from the only one close to Obi-Wan left unaware of his deception) mental or emotional wellbeing, but tbh i think this is the worst example of how callous the Council can be. And on top of all of that it was Obi-Wan who decided to keep Anakin in the dark Obi-Wan who should have known better; if we assume that Anakin is at least 20 in Clone Wars; Obi-Wan has known Anakin for at least 10 years, and has practically raised him from the age of 9, and yet somehow, somehow he had this idea and didn't see a single thing wrong with it. (And they really picked the worst possible person for this; like yea let’s trick the most unstable Jedi we have into thinking his closest friend/ father figure was murdered)

This arc’s main purpose (IMO) is to really show the beginnings of Anakin losing faith in the Jedi and putting more and more faith in Palpatine. Anakin trusted Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan betrayed that trust. Beyond that Palpatine is able to make Anakin begin to doubt how much the Council is telling him if they didnt tell him something as crucial as this. We even see Anakin parroting Palpatine’s “concerns” of the council not telling Anakin the full truth the Obi-Wan and the end of the arc. This arc is instrumental is establishing Anakin’s loss of faith in the council and shows how much he trusts Palpatine and sees him as a real friend.

Anyway I’m sure I had more I wanted to touch onand if I remember I will definitely edit this post but for the now I just wanna say. A) I love Obi-Wan a lot; this arc just really was not it. I do not understand how he thought this was in any way acceptable but I do still really like him. B) i fully understand that Anakin’s actions are his own and he does take a share of the blame for his own fall.

[hamliet]

Who are your top 10 female villains? And your top ten male villains? Thank you!

Oooooh. Well, in this list I am including antagonists (people I see as conflicted/not committed to like, the bad side, if there even is a bad side, but basically oppose the protagonist at some point). Also, they are in no particular order:

Female Villains:

Cersei Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire)

She's sympathetic enough so that we understand how she came to be the way she is, yet terrifying and depraved enough that we fear for the characters around her. I don't think that's an easy balance to strike for a character: if you make them likable it's hard to keep audiences from rooting for them, but the balance is struck perfectly with Cersei.

Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

As @aspoonofsugar wrote recently on Azula, I think she is a fantastic female villain. I think she is sympathetic despite her actions, and I wish the story had explored her redemption, which was clearly hinted.

Claudia (The Dragon Prince)

The first three seasons have kind of been Claudia's fall. While as a whole I don't think TDP is very well-written, I do think that Claudia, Viren, and Soren's family dynamic is a polished gem of writing that literally carries the story. I fully expect to see redemption for Claudia down the line, but not until she spirals further and further. At the end of season 3, Claudia resorts to killing someone to save her father's life when she has nothing and no one else left, and she makes this choice after her brother Soren (now redeemed himself) chooses to kill their father in front of Claudia, devastating her. Their choices are clear parallels and both are somewhat negative, somewhat sympathetic. Soren can't kill his past: he has to live with it, and Claudia can't cling to the past: she has to let it go.

Delores Umbridge (Harry Potter)

She is awful and I hate her, but you're also supposed to hate her. Her comeuppance is hilarious ad perfect, and just--I think she's a fantastic villain because she reminds every single one of us of an albeit exaggerated version of a teacher we all know.

Karren von Rosewald (Tokyo Ghoul:re)

Karren is TG:re's best written character in my opinion. Her tragic arc takes place throughout the first three arcs, which imo is also the highest point in the series. Karren just wanted to be loved, and if she had to die, at least she got to die as herself. 

Nora (Noragami)

Nora! The reason I read Noragami is pretty much for Nora and her redemption arc. The fandom hates her for... reasons, but she's always been primed for redemption. Her name is in the title (which yes also refers to Yato, etc.) She's important. I wrote a few metas on Nora, notably here.

Enoshima Junko (Danganronpa)

Despair. It's fun to find a character who is, well, just plain fun, but who is also bored, despairing, cruel, and terrifying. She's unique and a brillaint character.

Toga Himiko (Boku no Hero Academia)

I'm not the first one to say that Toga is BNHA's best written female character, but I do agree that she is. She, like Junko, is fun and interesting, and she has an arc that is compelling. Her actions directly move the plot; she’s bloodthirsty and yet uniquely empathetic and compassionate. 

Yoshimura Eto (Tokyo Ghoul)

Eto's backstory and her motivations were fascinating. She was one of the most complex characters in the entire story, and despite the fact that you understood why her father gave her up, you also understood her pain and justified anger at his doing so. She perfectly illustrated the divide between human and ghoul.

Male Villains:

Shigaraki Tomura (Boku no Hero Academia)

BNHA's best-written male character, imo. His backstory and the current chapters that focus on him are extremely well-done, thematic and full of character development, and detailed artistically. He gets so much focus that I can tell he's important to Horikoshi, and I'm excited to see where he goes.

Dabi (Boku no Hero Academia)

I'll admit there's a lot missing here. Namely, we don't know his identity for certain, but it seems basically certain that he's Todoroki Touya; however, we still don't have his backstory. Still, his fury at the presumed father who destroyed his family and yet has the audacity to be a "symbol of hope" is fascinating to me, and I'm excited to see how he develops as well. (Both Shigaraki and Dabi seem primed for some kind of redemption).

Adult Trio: Illumi Zoldyck, Hisoka Morow, Chrollo Lucilfer (Hunter x Hunter)

Am I counting these three as one so that I can get extra characters? Of course I am. In all honesty I really think all three of these antagonists are really well done, sympathetic and/or likable. They're the shadows of the three MCs they foil: for Illumi, Killua, for Hisoka, Gon, and for Chrollo, Kurapika. They represent the traits the three protagonists (sorry Leorio) don't want to acknowledge in themselves, and therefore their encounters with their shadows are particularly thematic and powerful. Also, one doesn't usually kill their shadow, but instead integrates with it, so I highly doubt the three of them will be killed by their respective protagonist.

Meruem (Hunter x Hunter)

Yes, again, HxH. It has great antagonists. But Meruem's development is literally one of the most powerful I've ever read about. I don't know anyone who starts his story not loathing him, hoping he dies, and then by the end of it, ebfore you've even realized it's happening, you're crying for him and Komugi. His arc explores human nature at its finest, most horrific, and ultimately most beautiful.

Furuta Nimura (Tokyo Ghoul:re)

Furuta's a fantastic villain whom I wish got a better ending (not even redeemed really, but just... something more). He was so damaged by the system of an unfair world that he made it his life goal to become the villain and burn the system down, destroy it no matter what it took--and also hoped to destroy himself in the process, as he was born knowing he would die young and longed for it. I wish he had been forced to live.

Mori Ougai (Bungo Stray Dogs)

Mori's utilitarianism is chilling. He's not exactly unlikable, despite being absolutely morally repugnant, and the Beast AU from Asagiri himself shows us that Mori is certainly capable of a positive life and positive change; however, within the canonical story, I don't see that for him. He's been set up IMO as the final boss of the series, and his habit of targeting the most vulnerable (especially children) to control people is almost certainly going to bite Dazai in the ass eventually.

Eren Jaeger (Shingeki no Kyojin)

I can't believe I'm writing this. I don't know what to call Eren: he's the protagonist, and he's sunk to becoming the final boss. While it's possible he, like Furuta and like Lelouch of Code Geass, is playing the villain, I really hope not, as I think the themes are much more powerful if Eren sincerely believes what he proclaims to believe. He's a kid who has always wanted to fight for freedom and for the people around him, and now we're seeing the dark side of those traits, wherein he's destroying the world via genocide to save the people close to him. He's driven by fear and by anger at the cruelty and unfairness of the world, and he's forgotten the beauty of it. I hope Mikasa can  remind him before the end.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Bungo Stray Dogs)

MY BOY. Look if a character is named after my very favorite real-life author, I must stan. But actually I do think Fyodor is well written and a master manipulator. He's modeled after my favorite character in all of fiction, Dostoyesvky's Demons' Alexei Kirillov. He really seems to want human connection, to live, and has forgotten that empathy is an important and necessary part of both of those. I hope--and think it is likely given BSD's prolific redemption arcs--that he will remember eventually.

Lee Yut-Lung (Banana Fish)

Again,, he's less a villain than an antagonist. Like Ash, the main character, he is a teenage boy betrayed by the people who were supposed to protect him and abused his whole entire life. He's driven by a desperate need to be loved and jealousy that Ash is loved while he is not. His ending, when Sing finally tells him he will in fact be staying by Yut-Lung's side and will help Yut-Lung redeem himself, "because you're in pain... your soul's bleeding, even now" is literally the perfect ending for him.

Jin Guangyao (Mo Dao Zu Shi)

I've written a lot on Jin Guangyao, but he's a walking tragedy. He ties with Wei Wuxian, the protagonist, as my favorite, and the reason is because they are two sides of the same coin--in fact, they're the same side of the same coin. They're not very different, and the fact that he finally at least got empathy in the end and was able to push the person he loved most to safety because of that--well. Brb time to cry.

[sometimesrosy]

i know what kind of the show the 100 is, but i really expect at least a good ending for bellarke and i hope your spec is right and we get some kind of that with them, in the past years shows did end in dissapointment, so i hope jason is in the group of 12 monkeys, bones, castle, shadowhunters, OUAT....

okay. but are you SURE you know what kind of show The 100 is?

What kind is it? 

Yes, it’s the post apocalyptic sci fi action tragedy, but there are actually two kinds of post apocalyptic stories, the kind where there’s no hope and humanity is doomed and the kind where there IS hope and humanity can be saved.

This one is DEFINITELY the later. Hope is important in this show. THIS kind of pos apocalyptic story CAN have a happy ending, or at least a happy ending that costs a price, a bittersweet happy ending. JR has told us that there would be a “The 100 style” happy ending, and the last time he said that would happen was with one couple in s5, which we now know was Marper, who got to live their lives on their own terms, alone and without people, but in love and happiness and peace while guiding their people towards a new future. I suspect the ending of the series will *match* that description of a happy ending, but with Bellarke, who was HIGHLY mirrored with Marper in the finale of s5.

And seeing as our heroes have had a happy ending with a cost every single season, what we’re watching is a story where there is hope. And *probably* hope for Bellarke.

But. I see that you aren’t really concerned with the story, you’re concerned with if Clarke and Bellamy get together, and this, to you is what’s in doubt, because you’re looking for a romance novel, or bellarke fic or something.

For you, the story ending in disappointment is the story not ending with Bellarke romantically together with a kiss/confession/sex. Or at least that’s what is seems to me, because as I’m watching, I have not felt denied bellarke since season 2. S1 I didn’t ship them yet, not really. S2 gutted me when she left because of bellarke. S3 they were together and closer than ever, S4 okay i was gutted when she was left behind, but had hope for bellarke with the 2199 radio calls. S5 I was not disappointed with bellarke because of that last part of the finale. S6 was so freaking romantic and ended, for all intents and purposes, with that romantic, intimate bellarke hug in the sunrise, so to me, it was clearly romantic bellarke, even without an official kiss(apparently kiss of life doesn’t count)/confess (apparently all the conversation of love and care and pledges not to leave or let each other die, or the confession that he needs her don’t count)/sex.

This is why I ask if you do know what kind of story this is. Because you are acting like my spec about bellarke is based in my personal feelings and not the development of the narrative that I’ve been following, but I don’t know if you have, or you’d see that bellarke is already a romantic story, and has been since AT LEAST season 5, when bellarke shippers abandoned the show because b/e existed, instead of recognizing a canon love triangle when they see one. (I will admit that this has been what has made me most frustrated with the Bellarke fandom. They’re giving us what we want and we’re acting like it’s not happening in canon on screen.)

Like my “spec” is pretending there’s a love triangle, or the love triangle is just an interpretation rather than written in the script, the direction, the cinematography and the acting. 

I cannot tell you if JR will back out of the bellarke love story or not, because I am not in control of what another person creates, but I can tell you that the story of The 100 has been an epic love story, truly from season 1, because it has been about GROWTH, but as a main plot line from season 5, or the end of s4 when he left her behind. 

If you say you know what kind of story The 100 is and you don’t recognize the actual romantic story of Bellarke, then you don’t know what the story is. 

This is not fanon. This is canon. It’s not my speculation. It’s the narrative. JR has called it an epic love story. He has told us it would happen eventually. He has said they were soul mates. He has said they love each other. And the story he is telling has them revolving around each other closer and closer until they connect. 

When I speculate that the story might be following the structure of The Divine Comedy, with the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, giving us the darkest moments in the beginning and ending up NOT a tragedy, that’s a speculation that is based on a remarkable similarity to the narrative and also literal allusions to the text and a painting we stared at in TWO seasons to point out the connection and character names like Dante and Blake to make the connections. So yeah. I’m speculating on the theme of the story that won’t, perhaps, be clear until the end, but it’s less a speculation and more a theory-- a theory has evidence to support it while a speculation doesn’t necessarily. 

There IS a point to the story, though. He’s told us there is. And it will be clear at the end. What I’m saying is that in order to tell a good story, he needs to incorporate that point into the whole story so we can follow along and it will all add up at the end. So I’ve been looking for those breadcrumbs that tell us where it’s going. This is what I do, and I’m pretty good at it. Finding those clues. I know not everyone knows how to do that, and I know a lot of people have been gaslighted by those who have been telling us Bellarke is not romantic or not the central relationship, or not the heroes, or are actually the bad guys, or are unimportant etc. 

Back in season 3 after Hakeldama, I wrote a meta theorizing that this whole story was about Clarke and Bellamy coming together. That in order to succeed, they must be together. It was based on some significant evidence from the first 2.5 seasons, but it has been proven correct in the following 3.5 seasons. This show is DEFINITELY about bellarke, the head and the heart, being TOGETHER and saving the world. There were points where it could have been a sun/moon story, never getting together. There were points where it could have remained platonic with no romantic connection. Those points have all been passed now, and they MUST be together and it is ALREADY romantic, so the eventual COMPLETE union of Bellarke is going to be romantic. They are already married, imo, committed, pledged, intimate, loving, devoted, respecting, trusting, and the ONLY thing separating them from what fandom wants is the physical. Because it has already moved into the romantic (EVERY love triangle is a romantic story, even for the losing couple, it’s still a romantic story, therefore, in the IMPOSSIBLE event that bellamy choses Echo over Clarke, it’s still romantic, just a broken hearted romance without the necessary genre happy ending,) it is no longer a platonic relationship.

What I CAN’T do is tell you how it’s going to end. If Bellarke will live or die. They might die and that’s always been a possibility that I’ve said for the end of the series. Here are the possibilities i can see for a Bellarke ending. In all but one (very unlikely possibility) Bellarke are kiss/confess/sex canon romantic, even if they don’t get a happy ever after.

Bellarke alive, together, romantically, married, raise a family and a peaceful society with their friends. (Happy Ever After ending common in the romance genre.)

Bellarke alive, together, romantically, married, have a family and life with their friends but there are more struggles coming, like maybe another apocalypse or political upheaval or violence. (Happy For Now ending also common in the more ‘realistic’ romance genre or romantic stories.)

Bellarke alive, together, romantically, married, have a family.... but not with their friends who are left behind to create the peaceful society. (Marper ending, The 100 Style Happy Ending, as described by JR. Bittersweet. This is the one I think is most likely in some ways.)

Bellarke dead, together romantically before they die, their family and friends go on without them to create a peaceful society. (Happy Ever After for humanity, but not for Bellarke. Bittersweet. A Romeo and Juliet ending, and though Bellarke has never been framed as R&J it’s possible. This could happen. The sooner they get together romantically in season 7 the more likely they won’t get a happy ending.)

Bellarke together romantically, but Clarke dies saving them, and Bellamy carries on in her absence, broken, perhaps eventually settling for Echo, or perhaps not. He creates a peaceful society for their friends in her name. (this is Happy Ever After for humanity, but a tragedy for Bellarke. I believe this was the ending of s4, and I think it’s developed past that so I don’t think it will happen.)

Bellarke together romantically, but Bellamy dies saving them, and Clarke carries on in his absence. The only way I think this could happen is if she has his baby, so carries him with her. She creates a peaceful society for their friends and her children in his name. (Happy Ever After for humanity, but a tragedy for Bellarke. This was the ending of s4 for Clarke with Madi as the substitute child. I believe we’ve developed past that so I don’t think it will happen.)

Bellarke together platonically... i do not think this can happen, it would have to RETURN to platonic partnership, because we’ve left platonic, but let me explore it. Clarke would need to give up Bellamy to Echo because it was “the right thing to do” and Bellamy would need to stay with Echo because it was “the right thing to do,” and neither of them would make the claim on the other. But I believe part of the journey of s6 was about Bellamy CHOOSING Clarke because he loves her. It’s part of the narrative. So he’s already chosen her, so something would have to happen to reverse that decision and I don’t know what it could be. Clarke looks like she’s ready to wait for him. I don’t think this story would have them together platonically with Bellamy sacrificing his happiness being with Echo, who is Ash and doesn’t want to be king/spy anymore, and leaving Clarke pining for her soulmate. That’s a bad story because there’s no reason for them to not admit they love each other. Staying with Echo because he promised is a bad reason and disrespectful to all involved. But okay. Bellamy chooses Echo and Clarke eventually finds someone else and they lead a peaceful society without fully engaging the heart. Oh that doesn’t make sense. They’re the head and the heart. That would not be living up to what Monty asked of them. No it doesn’t work. This ending is already off the table, sorry. Unless JR really is the asshole that you all think he is. If it happens, I’ll admit that you were right and he’s a dick as bad as D&D. But if it doesn’t happen, then y’all need to go apologize to JR for doubting him and hating him and calling him evil and a bad writer. 

Where I am now, I think the most likely is a mix of the above. I think the bittersweet ending will include a happy ever after for Bellarke, like Marper, as they are separated from their friends and family and assumed dead. So Bellarke will die together saving their people, but they won’t die, rather they will be separated from them so they can have their happy ending although it is alone and they’ve lost everyone they love, except each other. It fits the narrative, the circular storytelling, the bellarke mythos, the breaking of the cycle, clarke and bellamy’s characters, the sacrifice theme, the head and the heart, the marper foreshadowing, “together,” wanheda, the survival plot twists where we think they’re dead but they’re not, soulmates, the bittersweet endings, the victory but with a price, etc. 

[handlewithkara]

@peggystormborn I think Iris Barry is the exception for a variety of reasons (imo partially race, partially the committment of the writers to the couple). But Oliver and Felicity did A LOT OF triangles before they committed and some of the writing for them was terrible on the romance front. People like to just remember the endgame, but they forget how terrible the road there was (Laurel, Sarah, Oliver marrying another woman, Oliver having a child with another woman, an entire crossover dedicated to a fantasy wedding between Laurel and Oliver, evil!Oliver being married to Kara). Granted in a lot of ways it was because Felicity wasn’t the original OTP and I think it took Marc Guggenheim a long time to finally accept it (I think he’s one of those writers who deep at heart doesn’t really like romance at all, and just eventually only grudingly accepted it, but I think the earlier seasons feel like there was a lot of latent animosity from the writers towards the storyline). 

(and one can debate how Barry/Mirror Iris is something like a triangle, even if it is a triangle made up by writers who desperately want to maintain the “pure” status of an OTP, I mean, as long as you don’t think too hard about the implications of Mirror!Iris [I also think that the fact that Iris and Felicity predominantly don’t have superpowers makes it slightly easier for them to work as a functioning couple])

People thinking that the writers have handled Kara’s Kryptonian relations poorly doesn’t change that if the topic does not interest the writers they are not going to write it (and if they write something really tonedeaf about it, that is usually a sign that they don’t really care about a topic). It’s a very common trait of fanbases to take certain topics more seriously. Criticisms of co-dependency and calls for therapy are very, very common examples of this in a multitude of fandoms. 

You have this all over the Supernatural ending, with people saying “Dean was acting suicidal for years, it sends a horrible message that the show ends up with him dying” and “John Winchester was a horrible father, it’s a horrible message that the show ends up with him being in heaven as part of Dean’s personal heaven and the show never doing a story where Dean recognizes that John screwed him up and fully breaks ties with him” and “the brothers were co-dependant, the show getting rid of all the characters who are not them and making the ending exclusively about them is a horrible message”. 

I think it’s pretty clear that these things weren’t written because the writers intended to send that message, they just clearly see the characters very differently and many things the fans obsess over they see as just not that great a deal. Fans often latch onto characters and stories because they see part of themselves in them and project their own experiences and their emotions about those experiences into those characters (look no further than Lena’s fans and what they think is most important about her character). Fans also love their characters and want their angst to be explored, while most shows just want to keep the plot going. That’s why you will have amost every fandom clamoring how the show should do a therapy plot for their favorite character. To them that makes sense, they love their favorite character, so them sitting on a couch and talking about their feelings of course is going to sound fascinating. Doesn’t mean that the writers tick that way at all. 

Supernatural can show pretty clearly how there can be a fundamental miscommunication between the fans and the creators. Where maybe writers might think that Dean’s dogged loyalty is his most fascinating trait, while fans might think his angsty woobie appeal is his most fascinating trait and his loyalty is boring or just a jumping off point or even actively harmful. Social media and fandom, I think it just has a habit of attracting people who have problems in their real lives and they are likely to project their own problems into these characters, but that does not mean that the writers are anywhere the same headspace (particularly in regards to how abusive or co-dependant a relationship is, I think just like with John Winchester, writers are way more likely to have a more positive view towards relationship and stories like that, because to them, those relationships are something good in their world because they are drivers of drama, providers of dramatic scenes). 

And I think history has shown, no matter how annoying it is to the fans, new showrunners just will not be beholden to the themes and messages of previous showrunners. They will pay tribute to whatever part of previous seasons they like, but they are likely going to come in with their own spin, their biases and their own takes of the characters. 

(for what it’s worth, I theorize season 4 started out with the plan for a sister season, to explore (via Red Kara and Elseworld and Amnesia) what is Alex without Kara, what is Kara without Alex and they just sort of lost the main plot somewhere in the middle between introducing Nia, introducing Lex and poorly thought out political metaphor) 

Right now, what little we know of season 6 makes one hopeful that it could have a significant Alex and thusly sister focused plot, with Alex playing around with being a vigilante and there being rumors of another young sisters episode. 

What is interesting about this is that either of Alex most likely developments, Alex becoming a hero in her own right OR Alex finally getting her baby and family provide interesting jumping off points for Kara to reflect on her own life. This does not mean that the writers will actually take this opportunity seriously, but it is at least possible. 

Alex has been a physical fighter working with Kara since forever, but her getting her own costume could be a signal that she is getting her own hero identity. Alex being her own heroic person rather than just the no-name who supports Kara ideally should be an interesting change up in their dynamics. Either with Kara cheerleading and supporting Alex they way Alex has always supported her or with Kara realizing that maybe she has to step back a little and let Alex be her own hero and trust her that she can handle things on her own (potentially culminating with Kara leaving the protection of the city and Earth in the hands of Alex). 

I could picture Kara having a relationship with William and eventually rejecting him symbolically but I just really wouldn’t expect it to be about Argo. But I could picture a plot where seeing Alex thrive as a hero makes Kara think she has the freedom to kick back and focus on her romantic relationship or focus on being just Kara Danvers for a while (and in the end realizing that that is not enough for her, I just would expect this NOT to be about Kara Zor-El but about Supergirl, Kara realizing that she needs to be Supergirl to be happy even if being Supergirl has made her life more complicated in many ways). 

On the other hand, if Alex were to finally get her child wish fulfilled it could a be a good story to explore what the equivalent is for Kara (while with Alex, she has always been protective of Kara, so her having somebody else to raise and be protective over would also provide good emotional dramatic potential). 

But it could just as equally be that they parallel Alex being happy with a baby and a girlfriend as their little family with Kara just getting William as the nice unproblematic understanding boyfriend, forming their own family unit albeit without a child. Or it could be Kara just getting gratification of being a supportive and loving aunt. You never know. Supernatural shows that just because the fans are convinced that the show will go one way (Family is about more than blood ties! The show will end with showing how Sam and Dean have evolved beyond “the two of us against the world!” and their family unit now includes Eileen, Castiel and Jack) doesn’t mean that the writers see it the same way. 

It’s very interesting in how this reaction mirrors the reaction to the How I Met Your Mother Finale where the writers thought it made sense to circle back to the start and most of the general audience disliked it because they felt the characters had developed beyond the original premise. But it still shows how this particular pattern of thinking is one that writers are very likely to fall into. 

Finales often have a way of exposing whether one’s (or even the audience in general) perception of the characters and their relationships and perceived moral takeaways align with the one’s of the writers. I don’t even think that that is something that can just be “fixed” by telling writers “don’t be the Game of Thrones finale, don’t be the HIMYM finale”. If powerful writers just have a certain perception of characters, that’s just how they see them and they can’t just break out of. 

I guess one can argue that maybe it’s a sign of poor writing (even if it might be good business sense) if a show supports such a variety of readings till the very end (are we watching a story about co-dependant siblings which should end with them lovingly and supportively letting each other go? or are we watching a show about siblings through thick and thin, more powerful than anything?), but I think in some cases it just arises naturally because of the way fans can project themselves into characters in ways that was not intended by the writers and that can’t fully be controlled by them (and since those projections are heavily influenced by people’s very varied personal experiences you also can’t just please everyone).  

[ducavalentinos]

I’m working on the borgia asks my lovely anon(s) send me about Cesare and I’m writing here and reading some quotes and I just had random thought:

Cesare’s biographers, Borgia biographers in general, usually claim that Cesare’s good administration of the Romagna, his consideration for the inhabitants of the cities he conquered had nothing to do with any genuine personal concern of his. It was just egotist and pragmatic measures to ensure the favour of the people to his side, and so making it easier to establish and maintain his power in these places. And here’s the thing: They’re not entirely wrong, it would be hard to deny he acted on his self-interest,—not that it really matters tbh since in politics, at least as far as I’m concerned, concrete actions weighs more than intentions when making a judgment of a government. Intentions are nothing but an sketch, what truly impacts people lives in the end, are actions. And on that front, it’s equally hard to deny (although some scholars do try) that Cesare’s actions were positive for the Romagna—but then again I don’t think it’s so black and white as they make it seem.

A quote from of Julius Caesar’s biographer, Cesare’s role model and hero, gets closer to the political mind and the complexity of both men: 

“Caesar was a paradox as a politician. On one hand his priority was always Caesar. He wanted to advance himself. But on the other hand, instead of always supporting the side of the wealth and powerful, he would try to extend more benefits to ordinary people.” - Barry Strauss.

Of course Cesare put himself and his family first, of course he was ambitious and he wanted to advance himself, and it is a wise to make your subjects love you instead of hating you, there’s a pragmatic, some would even say opportunistic side to that, or even a sort of a “populist policy” even though the term populist is a confusing one with many definitions, and it is sometimes used pejoratively or as a synonymous for demagogy too, and I have my own disagreements with that on some cases, but in Cesare’s case in particular, it’s clear he is linked to these political concepts because he was a charismatic and strong leader, who was popular among his subjects, and whose policies tended to benefit them more than previous rulers who exploited them with heavy taxes with little return towards their stability or safety of their goods and lives, and oppressed them violently if they dared to complain. In a way, Cesare was following his father's policy along with a more than evident influenced policy from his mancrush mentioned above.

But at the same time, just as Bradford concedes to Lucrezia, that when she had the opportunity to express herself, she would prove to be compassionate and good (and she followed both her brother and father's policies as well at Spoleto and Ferrara so yeah it was a family thing) the same can and should also be applied to Cesare. With the administrative measures he took in the Romagna, a case could be made that although his actions might have been the result of a pragmatic policy, they could also have been the result of his own convictions about governing, and a genuine concern. We can see that wherever he was in position of power, he proved to be good, compassionate and just for those under his rule, while his alleged "cruelty" was as Woodward says: “severity of the sort needed to repress crime and to nip political disorders in the bud.” Otherwise peace and prosperity are impossible and you cannot govern at all. These different notions can coexist, it doesn’t have to be one or the other and I think it’s a more reasonable assessment than to say he was your “typical demagogue” as Deus misleadingly describes him, or that everything he did was only for selfish reasons. Clearly it wasn't, Leslie Garner in his work about Cesare acknowledges that, and he was hardly a sympathizer of him.

We know that he listened patiently to all the complaints made by the inhabitants of Forlì, even though he didn’t really had to do that, he could have listened for a few hours maybe, and then delegated to someone else on his staff. If his concern was only a front to gain popular support as it is assumed, that would have had sufficed imo. His popularity wouldn’t have suffered because just the mere fact someone was listening to them at all was, in itself, a suprise for these citizens. But he made it a point to be there himself through the whole thing, and to also punish his own men in order to give them, his new subjects, justice. That shows his commitment to some degree, it shows he was deathly serious about his bans against any plunder or violence against the citizens, it wasn’t just pretty words to please them and later on forgetten, surprisingly. He did that more than once. It was important to him that things were done right, and that justice was made. Even Sacerdote, who like Leslie Garner, was hardly a sympathizer of Cesare and his family, has to grant him that he was "a lover of justice" and we see it through his own letters as well.

If Cesare appealed to the masses exclusively for his own ambition and benefit, which sometimes leads to a ludicrous comparison to Nero for example lol, since he is known as that type of emperor (most likely unjustly) it would have been more transparent imo, eventually the true colors of a leader make themselves known, esp. considering all eyes were on Cesare, all the time. His efforts to administer his duchy alongside his close proximity, and the time he spent with citizens of Cesena, Imola, Forlì, to the point that he even criticized by the members of the elite and had to tone it down because oh my god! a ruler cannot be this acessible these peasants! what is this?! The scandal! was as much part of a clever policy as it was a characteristic of his person and his own preferements.

It’s almost impossible not to notice that he actually seemed to prefer the company of 1) his Spaniards and 2) his romagnols subjects than that of nobles and their ambassadors, which could help explain in part why he made himself so hard to be accessed by them. And honestly I can’t say I blame him. I too, would rather be in the company of people that wouldn’t just love to stab me to death if they could, or regarded themselves superior to me because of their ancient bloodline, or that I knew that in my presence they were all compliments and smiles, but the moment they walked out the door, they would keep insulting me and my family and writing half truths or lies about me. 

The point is: as with everything concerning Cesare, it’s almost never one thing or the other, just as his actions can not be explained by one reason alone. It's an ensemble of many factors, from his personal feelings to his own personal set of beliefs and vision, to his political thinking, and the ever-changing political scenarios around him. And I think his administration goes into that, a lot. More than anything else in his life I’d say.

[fwippysays]

Why’s he Doing all this? (or: Fwippy’s Grand Unifying Theory of RC)

So, with the reveals in chapter 169, I feel there’s enough evidence in the text for me to commit some of the Thoughts I’ve long held about RC’s motivations to writing.

In the interest of full disclosure regarding the subjectivity of media analysis, RC is my favorite character in the series and I have been hyperfixating on this dead kid for like 2 1/2 years, so I have some Strong Opinions on some issues where I feel his characterization has been misconstrued or flattened in the English-speaking fandom.  BUT!! I am absolutely Not Here to woobify this character or claim that, idk, he’s some kind of “uwu babey who did nothing wrong ; ;”- I’d argue that he’s absolutely in the wrong! Just for reasons that are more nuanced and, imo, more tragically compelling and thematically relevant than “he’s Evil and he’s just Too Damned Smug.” (and really, in a series where everyone has a hidden side, can we really take someone so transparently, cartoonishly sinister at face value?)

I’m also relying on the English translation for all this, but since English and Japanese are constructed very differently in terms of subjects, I’m going to try to focus on the gist of what’s being said rather than point to the specific phrasing in the YP editions as evidence for my assertions.  That said, if any of what I say below is built off inconsistencies in meaning introduced by the art of translation, please let me know, because that wouldn’t be good analysis otherwise.

If you couldn’t tell from this preamble, this is going to be long-winded (over 5k words!!), so without any more gum-flappin’

The Point of All This

So, this is the part of this whole long thing I’m most confident about, since the text is actually fairly explicit in that typical Yana fashion of “stating something Really Important almost as an aside and it won’t get drawn attention to until several years later.”

I’m of the opinion that RC’s goals are as follows:

Get his brother to stop maintaining the identity “Ciel Phantomhive, Earl of Phantomhive and Queen’s Watchdog”

Get rid of Sebastian

He and his brother are together now! Hoorah!

This, to me, seems fairly obvious.  I am far from the first person on here to suggest this, and it’s stated pretty much point blank in the text: when RC says to OC at the staircase that he can “stop lying about who he is because RC’s back”; RC telling Sebastian to his face that he’s gotta leave in Chapter 142 (plus UT’s repeated attempts to kill him); RC has expressed a clear desire to “be with” his brother both in the flashback and in present time (see Chapter 149). 

Where I take issue with most of the presentations of this material I’ve seen around here is that I do not for one second think that “OC being with RC forever” is the same as “OC will be made to be dependent solely on RC/ will be RC’s blood slave/ will be quite literally sewn to RC by UT/ etc.”  Like, I Get It: RC is Extremely Creepy and Smug and he has a really disconcerting manner at all times, so it’s easy to translate that into him having Creepy and Nefarious Motives.  The problem I have with that interpretation is that there is nothing in the manga to suggest RC wants command over his brother, and I think to assert this would be to impart motivations on him that are not substantiated in the text.

“Alright Fwippy you wise-ass, then why do you think he’s doing this?”

So, the reason I’m posting this now, post-169, is that there’s now enough in the text to support how I’ve interpreted RC’s reason for doing all this shit to his brother.  I’m first going to present material from the text, then go into how I’m extrapolating his motivations from this material.  Some of these will be directly pertaining to things said to/by RC, others will not be.  I’m going to try to stick to a mostly-chronological order, but I’m going to jump around too.

Part 1: The Text

Let’s first look at what I regard as a really significant scene for grasping RC’s character motivation: The end of RC’s tantrum in Chapter 133.  You can tell that this is an important scene because we, the readers, are seeing a scene in OC’s flashback for which he was not actually present- there’s a panel of him closing the door to leave, he had already gone off to study at that point.  Of course, Rachel’s speech about the ring clearly left an impression on RC, since he nearly quotes it verbatim to his brother when they’re in captivity.  But what, specifically, is it that gets RC to stop throwing a tantrum?  It’s not the speech about the ring, it’s not hearing that “they’ll always be brothers even if they’re apart,” it’s the prospect that (loose translation here) “it would be really cool for the elder brother Earl to come to his little brother’s aid in his time of need.”  And what does he say in response to that? That he understands, and that he’s got no choice but to be Earl- that he has to do it.  And then he smiles that close-eyed, super-fake smile- the first time, chronologically that he does so iirc.  (This is somewhat of a digression, but lest one be tempted to think that this little parent-child exchange is only in the manga to explain why OC felt he had to dig the ring out of his brother’s corpse: If the purpose of this entire scene is only to justify RC’s later mention of the ring, why include the rest of what Rachel says?  For all OC knew, RC pulled that whole ring speech right outta where he’s about to put the genuine article out of nowhere; as far as the narrative’s concerned it doesn’t change anything if RC’s repeating what Rachel said to him or saying something original, it’s the first time OC’s heard it either way.  So, I’m not so certain Yana would put this much focus on a flashback scene solely to justify another flashback scene- I’m positive there’s more going on here that I’ll get to below.)

Next one’s a quickie, but let’s just bear in mind a certain order of events at the end of RC’s life that may have some Ramifications down the line: Bad Shit is going down, OC is terrified, and RC tells his brother not to worry, that he’ll protect him.  And then what happens?  He gets killed and his soul is used to summon a demon who’s currently in process of cooking his brother.

In chapter 139, OC tells Sebastian that he’ll give up his soul readily upon completion of their contract, since he’s only living for revenge [emphasis mine].

In Chapter 111, Blavat exposits how OC has an amazing radiance in him that’s in danger of being swallowed by Sebastian.  He offers to help if OC wants to get rid of Sebastian.

In chapter 123, Blavat meets with the star lords, and all are worried about the Blue Star falling.  Later on in the same chapter, OC’s plan to get dozens of innocents killed to expose Sphere Music Hall is made explicit.

In chapter 141, RC offhandedly mentions that (loose translation here, and this is where Japanese being a null-subject language may come back to bite me but this is also the least important thing here) “he died and left OC alone.” (Update: Thank you to Chibimyumi, who has confirmed that the original Japanese text is neutral, and there isn’t really anything to read into as far as what R!C’s motivations are in this line)

In 151, RC states, upon learning about Funtom, “even though my brother said he was living only for revenge [emphasis mine], he made his dream come true.”

Part 2: Where am I going with all this?

I think RC is doing all this as a means of taking responsibility, and that’s why he’s staged this elaborate fight instead of, idk, writing him a letter or something.  Almost every arc in this manga boils down to how love can be warped by grief into tragedy, and I think this one’s no different.  Or in other words:

Homeboy’s guilty.  And if he’s not quite guilty per se, then he at least believes himself to be the only one who can put a stop to the current state of affairs.  RC is approaching this from the angle that everything that has happened to his brother, every miserable ounce of trauma and the untimely end he’s going towards, is ultimately his fault, so it’s his job to fix it, no matter the cost.

This does not make him a woobie, and let me explain why!  RC has consistently been presented, both in flashbacks and in the present, as someone very focused on roles and responsibilities: nobles do one thing, working class people do another; men do one thing, women do another; servants have a particular role to play and deviations will not be tolerated, etc (and yet Bard and Finny interrupt him without getting verbally smacked down like Sebastian *insert thinking emoji here*).  When he speaks to Francis and Alexis about becoming the Watchdog, he phrases it in terms of a familial duty he must uphold, not as a dream or desire he is finally able to achieve.  He seems to have a really transactional view of relationships- even in 132 he phrases aristocratic responsibility as “we have to provide for the people or they’ll leave like unfed sheep.”  Life is a zero-sum game, and everyone has their end of a deal that has to be upheld.  And of course, he’s someone with quite a lot of responsibilities: he has to be the Earl, he has to be the Watchdog, he has to be Lizzie’s fiance- he doesn’t get to have dreams like his brother does.  On top of that, if he can’t uphold his end of these responsibilities his sickly little brother will have to do it instead- there’s a spare waiting in the wings to replace him if he’s not good enough.  Growing up with all these pressures bearing down on him, what are his options?  Keep throwing tantrums and running away from his responsibilities because he’d rather be with his brother- and thereby disgrace himself? That’s just not done- to be in his position is to accept that he is a collection of roles to fill first, and a person a distant second.  He may be a Bizarre Doll now, but he was always somewhat of a doll for others to play with, imo.  Of course a child in that environment would instead cling to a kind of just-world hypothesis where, so long as he pays his dues, he gets what he wants- to be with his brother.  It’s like a contract- he fulfills his terms, he gets his reward.

But what happens when he can’t fulfill his terms?

As a Bizarre Doll, RC is being driven by his episodes, and there’s not much to suggest that being Earl or Watchdog is something he desired, so much as a duty he feels compelled to uphold.  In Chapter 151 he doesn’t exactly seem happy to start managing the estate, more annoyed-but-determined.  There’s nary a word from UT about the Earl being able to achieve one of his Episodes.  But RC certainly did talk a good game about protecting his brother immediately before he died.  Do I think his endgame is actually “getting revenge” against his brother?  Not for a second.  I think that all truly is for the sake of the Blue Star, Lord Sirius- that is to say, OC.

Changing gears for a second, let’s talk a little bit about where OC fits into all this.  We now know that OC is Lord Sirius, and there’s really no reason to believe at this point in the narrative, with this arc having gone on for so long, that this is RC lying, even if Polaris is extremely unstable.  What would RC even get out of telling Polaris that he isn’t Lord Sirius any more?  Is Polaris gonna go and speak to the Yard? Unlikely.  Let’s recall that the actual star Sirius is a binary system, so it’s not totally out-there that both twins can be Lord Sirius as the situation requires, plus this isn’t the first time OC’s been identified as Sirius- Blavat calls him that in public and in private in the police wagon.  So if OC is the Blue Star (and I’m approaching this from the view that he really is), what then does it mean for “the Blue Star to fall”?  What does it really mean that “everything is for the sake of the Blue Star”? Polaris seems fixated on it just being that RC needs his People Juice, but really, hasn’t Blavat told us what this is really all about already?  The Blue Star falling- OC falling- would be him being swallowed up by Sebastian, his radiance- his soul- being extinguished.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the cryptic speech between Blavat and the stars about all that in 123 is directly paired with the revelation that OC has been up to some pretty horrible business, even for him.  If ever RC’s brother was “in a time of need,” it’s now- so of course to RC it would be time to take drastic action.  But if all this blood-collection business and he and UT throwing their lot in with the Aurora Society is just a means to an end, with the end being to save OC, why put OC through all this terrible cruelty of being exposed, accused, and chased out of his home?  Why not just come before OC and tell him outright “hey bruh this demon is Bad News, we’re getting rid of him, kthx”? Why make it a fight?

I’m interpreting all this as: when you’re seriously fighting someone, fighting for your life, you can’t stand on ceremony or sentiment.  You have to throw everything you’ve got at your opponent.  RC is demonstrating his strength, his cunning, his worthiness to his brother- he’s showing him that he’s become someone who can uphold his end of the deal, someone who’s strong enough to protect him; that he’s no longer the “pathetic excuse for a brother” who broke down in front of OC when they were captured.  But what about OC? He certainly didn’t agree to this fight.  And yet, in 147 he declares his intent to fight in full.  Jumping to 169, Polaris can’t understand why RC is so happy that his brother is, in essence, killing him in slow motion.  But I think it’s the same reason RC was so elated in 151 upon learning about Funtom: OC is bound to a demon.  If he’s going to be saved from this contract, he’s got to want to be saved, to cut ties with the predator who’s been leading him down his terrible path.  Remember, in 151 RC repeats OC’s words about living only for revenge almost word for word (*I think?? If it’s different in Japanese please lmk)- you know, the words he said when he first met Sebastian, the words UT certainly heard when he reviewed Sebastian’s cinematic record on the Campania?  I’d say the odds are high that UT filled RC in on exactly what he saw in those records down to the finest detail- and it paints a pretty bleak picture of OC’s circumstances.  But if OC is in fact living only for revenge, wouldn’t cutting him off from everyone be a boon?  Now he can go and, let’s say, kill Queen Victoria without having to worry about what will happen to the manor, his family- everything! Everyone’s abandoned him now, so nothing matters!  So why else would RC be so over the moon to learn that his brother ended up founding that toy company, that he’s not holding back on fighting his brother, unless this knowledge makes his job easier- OC may not be able to admit this to himself, but he isn’t only living for revenge.  The desire to be saved, the desire to live, is already within him- he just needs a particularly strong push to realize that.  And what better push could there be than stripping everything that has to do with being Ciel Phantomhive from his brother, so that he’s left only with himself, and the allies he’s gathered that have nothing to do with that name? 

When the twins were first in captivity, RC says to OC that they’ll escape and start over- and this is it.  RC will take on all the burdens that encompass being Ciel Phantomhive, OC gets to live on his own terms after realizing that he’d rather not be eaten by that nasty old demon (with UT’s help, of course), and will certainly be ever-so-grateful to dear elder brother that he’ll want to be by his side foreeeever and ever, right?  Neither brother will have to be alone and miserable anymore and everything will be Just Fine, right?  Right???

Oh no!! I forgot that this series is called Black Butler, and not Blue Brother.

...yeah, this kid’s Doomed.

Fwippy also has some Silly (Cielly??) Opinions, and here they are!

Let me digress into little discussion here that I will fully admit derives solely from my fondness for RC as a character.  RC said to OC on the staircase, “I’ve come back here now, so you don’t have to lie any more.” My (overly) charitable reading of that would be that he’s not just talking about his name, but about all those terrible lies you tell yourself when you hate yourself.  We know that OC has a lot of hostility towards himself- there’s the guilt over all the blood he’s spilled (but whuh oh! he doesn’t seem very guilty when he’s consigning a bunch of people to die at Sphere Music Hall- thaaat might be cause for concern), but more than that he has, on more than one occasion, let slip to us readers that he believes that it’s his fault RC is dead. He outright thinks to himself “it’s my fault Ciel died” when Sebastian first appears, he takes Sebastian’s statement that he sacrificed his brother at face value (and mechanically, sure he did, but that’s absolutely not the same thing as having the intent to do so.  Update: Chibimyumi has a great series of posts detailing how OC believes himself to have actively sold RC’s soul for power, even though that’s Not What Happened At All- do check out her blog!), and during his mental break during the Emerald Witch Arc, dream-RC casts everything OC has done as “Ciel” as a result of sacrificing him.  Remember, RC has been monitoring his brother throughout his traumatic time as the Watchdog, and he’s fallen in with UT, who is also fixated on OC being miserable.  So let’s look at this statement again and gloss it: “I’ve come back here now [to protect you, as is my responsibility], so you don’t need to lie [about being a bad person and about everything being your fault / about living only for revenge] any more.  I understand you because I actually Am in the position you’ve convinced yourself you’re in.” 

This next part is a stretch, I’ll admit, and what I’ve written in the previous interpretation section works just as well with or without it, but wouldn’t it be some pretty great narrative work on Yana’s part if we returned to that flashback refrain of “My brother and I look alike but I’m nothing like him” from the opposite end- that they’re not so different after all?  If RC feels just as inadequate, just as guilty, as his brother does? (or, to put it another way: you’re really telling me that 3 of Claudia Phantomhive’s 4 grandchildren constantly grapple with feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing, but all that totally passed RC by? Suuuure.)  Do we all really think that RC’s breakdown when reuniting with OC in captivity, apologizing for being so pathetic, came out of nowhere?  That the praise OC received in his youth for being so noble and considerate while RC was just told to stop fidgeting, sit still, and stop throwing tantrums didn’t at all sink in?  I don’t know if this is Intentional, or just How Yana Draws Things, but that radiant smile OC gives his brother in chapter 132 when he says “I’m going to become a toy maker because it’s something only I can do” is so much like the horrible fake smile that RC does all the time that I have to wonder- has RC been trying to imitate his brother all this time?  Trying to get some of that radiance for himself?  We know he imitates his father often- he does it all the time in 99.5, and the language he uses about “not being mad” at OC for lying is the exact same language Vincent says to him in 133.  For someone who doesn’t get to chose their path in life, who just has to be a collection of masks, who’s just a doll for others to play with- a fiance doll, an Earl doll, etc- wouldn’t that smile in the face of adversity be terrifying in its strength- something utterly beyond his grasp?  Something that makes him realize how weak he really is in comparison to his brother?  Is RC so immediately concerned that OC “wants to leave him” as soon as he sees that smile, hears those words, because he thinks OC will abandon him once he realizes he’s “stronger” than RC? Could RC’s desire to be “stronger than anyone- strong enough to be invincible” have just been a way for him to express that he wants to be more like his brother, without losing face, without having to cop to always being weak and useless?  And if this is the case, how might he feel to see how that smiling younger brother has turned out in his absence?  Bearing his name, bearing his responsibilities, heading towards a grisly end because his soul became demon chow?  Remember what Paula said about Lizzie in chapter 129? How horrible it is to see your best friend broken? I wonder if RC feels the same way.  Is that another reason this is such a vicious fight?  Is part of the idea also, “Fight me with everything you have so that you’ll stop turning against yourself- hate me so you’ll stop hating yourself”- “I’m here, so you don’t need to lie any more- I  am your opponent”?  Just like how OC almost certainly forged his contract not just to avenge himself, but to punish himself (at least at first), is RC going to all this length because he believes that the suffering is a payment he has to exchange to win his brother back?  That so long as OC is hurting, he has to be hurt too through an enforced separation from his brother while OC gets all his frustrations out on him?

It would be really sweet if weren’t so, monstrously, selfish.

RC is Wrong, Actually

So, a lot of digital ink has been spilled about how OC and RC are mirrors of each other, opposites of each other, and for the most part I’m all for it.  But I find a lot of this particular discussion a bit too, idk, flat?  Like, it’s not as simple as “OC is Selfless and Good, RC is Selfish and Arrogant and Wicked.”  For me, the tastier thematic contrast would be “OC claims that he’s horribly selfish but frequently engages in really selfless acts without a second thought (how he’s brought on his servants, saving Harcourt at Weston, etc), while RC thinks he’s being selfless by going through all this mess to save his brother but actually he’s doing it for himself.”  If the twins are really mirrors of each other, then I’d think it would stand to reason that all those accusations that OC denied for why he seeks revenge during the Emerald Witch arc- that he’s doing for his brother’s forgiveness, that he’s trying to leave his weak self behind, that he’s the kind of person who would save someone just to say that he did it, that he wants what his brother had- are actually what’s motivating RC, not that he’d acknowledge it.  It’s not just that RC wants his brother to be saved, it’s that he has to be the one to save him, because, after all, every relationship is transactional.  OC would neeever want to be with him otherwise, right?  A running theme in this manga is that so much of human suffering is self-inflicted, that we all live in Hells of our own making.  I think it would be really thematically appropriate if it’s RC’s self-inflicted Hell, the belief that he has to prove himself to his brother (no matter how much blood has to be spilled in the process), the belief that OC wouldn’t otherwise want to be by his side unless he shows that he’s A Big Strong Guy who can protect his sad little brother, that will be his undoing.  The fact of the matter is, RC is really arrogant, he does have far too inflated a view of himself- both of his own responsibilities and his own capabilities.  In the end, he’s made it all about him.  If everything is because of him, that completely invalidates everything that OC has done- it completely disregards OC’s agency.  RC does underestimate his brother, and sure, he can be happy about it when he’s proven wrong in a way that aligns with his worldview- “I’m delighted to see how far my brother’s come [because at least then I haven’t Totally ruined him],” “I couldn’t be more pleased that my brother’s winning our fight [because if he’s not going to let me kick him around, he’ll realize he doesn’t need to let that demon do the same]”, but I’m sure that his lack of understanding of his brother’s drive, his brother’s greed, is going to come back for him. He doesn’t understand that it is Not his job to protect his brother, that his brother isn’t going to leap into his arms in gratitude at the conclusion of their fight (it’s just as Sebastian says to OC earlier in this arc: “no one can shackle the heart of another”).  RC isn’t going to win this fight, because ultimately, he was right all along- in terms of sheer willpower, OC is stronger than he is.  OC has chosen who he wants to be, whereas RC seems to only believe that we are who we have to be- and this is a manga that’s firmly on the side of the former.  I don’t know how things are going to end up for RC- in my heart I totally want him to stay on as part of the main cast, cede the role of Ciel to his brother, and chose his own path in lif- er, undeath, but in my head I know that he’s probably going to die by OC’s hand (prove me wrong Yana!!), with him having served the narrative purpose of becoming the vehicle by which OC gets to truly chose who he is.

There are other tidbits below, but I want to leave off with this: Every time we’ve seen RC in the manga, we’re observing him, but we haven’t ever gotten inside his head.  It’s likely that we haven’t yet been privvy to his thoughts because once that shoe drops (or as I like to call it: The Real Ciel Real Deal Reveal) it’ll sap any narrative tension out of the arc.  But the closest we’ve come to seeing masks-off RC, this character with out any front of arrogance or pretense, is at the end of Chapter 149.  To me, that single scene encapsulates what makes RC such a tragic and thematically compelling character.  He passes out, body failing, but with a smile on his face from thinking of his brother, that the longing he’s feeling at that moment is what his brother felt for him in their childhood.  Just as OC has drawn strength from becoming “Earl Ciel Phantomhive,” RC finds the strength to go on from the belief that his own pain draws him closer to understanding his brother- even if he isn’t truly by his side, if he can be more like him, he’s happy.  Before he loses consciousness his says to UT that “he just wants to go to his brother’s side right now, but he can’t because of his body.”  But that’s the tragedy of it all- it isn’t his body that’s keeping him from connecting with his brother- it’s his choices.  His pain isn’t inevitable, it’s self-inflicted.  Just like his brother, RC’s greatest opponent is actually himself.  And OC won’t just win this fight by triumphing over RC, but by triumphing over himself- something he’s already begun to do as of 147.

Other Assorted Tidbits about this Dead Kid

Ok, but what about all the creepy shit he does? Like:

The matter of, “Who stole the candy from my tummy?” Well, who did?? Remember, OC tried to get the ring from his brother’s entrails, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.  It was Sebastian who actually removed it- and RC acknowledges this in chapter 130 when he says he hasn’t forgotten what Sebastian “did to him that day”- and then the next panel is a close-up of the ring on OC’s finger.  So yes, the question is directed at OC, but OC himself is not the answer to that question (he just thinks he is because he blames himself).  It makes sense if we’re approaching this from the POV that RC and UT are trying to get OC to reject Sebastian.  Also, galaxy brain take but: could we see this writ large as the question meaning not just “who stole the ring” but “who ripped the soul from my body” or even “who stole my brother from me?”  Same answer either way...

But why’s he always acting so creeepyy??? Is it because he’s dead and *gasp* Has No Emotions?? Listen, RC is walking a precarious rope here.  He’s surrounded by untrustworthy maniacs, he has no reason to believe that Tanaka or the Midfords are actually on his side (he is probably justified in this assumption, lbr), and he’s facing down an honest-to-goodness Demon who has proven to be adept at taking advantage of human doubt and fear.  Under these circumstances he simply cannot betray any weakness.  What’s he going to do- burst into tears upon seeing his brother?  Start apologizing for being such a weak, pathetic failure?  Oh yeah, I bet that’ll totally have Sebastian shaking in his boots, that’ll absolutely instill faith in him by OC /s.  What RC does have over OC is his demeanor: he’s much more used to faking it than his brother- he’s been wearing masks all his life.  There’s also absolutely 0 evidence to suggest that the absence of a human soul is the same as the absence of the capacity to feel.  The language and imagery Sebastian uses when talking about hearts (i.e. feelings) being shackled is totally different from that whenever souls are brought up (imagery-wise, the star-shaped lanterns).  Emotions are manufactured in the brain, and RC’s brain is what’s driving him forward.  We have no reason to believe that the numerous, numerous times he expresses emotions- joy, frustration, rage- as a Bizarre Doll are him faking it- why would he fake being annoyed with UT in private?  In light of RC’s comments to Polaris in 169 that Polaris can’t function for too long (plus Polaris apparently looking pale and his hands visibly shaking after his outburst), I also have to wonder if a BD’s physical state, or how long each day before they reach their “limit,” is directly linked to their emotional state.  Without souls, they’re all just brains convincing their bodies that they’re alive, after all.  If emotional instability disrupts this process and translates to physical instability, perhaps RC has to consciously keep as calm and measured as possible to avoid unceremoniously passing out at an inopportune moment.

But he threw away those Bitter Rabbits! He wants to Destroy Funtom!! D: So, putting aside that those toys in 151 were production models that he was under absolutely no compulsion to keep, let’s also take a look back at that statement in 99.5: “I don’t need fake brothers.”  What is Bitter Rabbit but a plush, rabbit-eared stand-in for OC?  A fake version of his brother?  The particular doll that RC was cuddling and apostrophizing to even had his brother’s eye patch for goodness sake!  I have always interpreted his throwing away of that doll as just another restatement of “not needing fake brothers,” a reminder to himself to keep his eyes on the prize, and I will stick by this interpretation unless expressly proven otherwise.

Are we forgetting that Agni was murdered??? Ok yeah that one’s pretty inexcusable.  We don’t know if the intent was always to kill Agni or if Polaris just interprets any threat as grounds for murder, and for that matter it’s not entirely clear why Soma was attacked but then left alive when Polaris was more than capable of getting him out of the storeroom (was the goal just to frighten Soma away? Drive him from OC’s side?  Did Soma reaching down to touch his head trigger a traumatic flashback to his abuse [and we know Exactly what kind of abuse the twins suffered, you’re going to have to read between the lines here as to why an adult-sized person seemingly making a move to grab his head would be so enraging, I don’t want to type it]  that made RC pivot from ‘use force to drive this guy from my brother’s side’ to ‘kill this fucker right now’? We don’t know, we’ll find out in XXX years when we get back to Soma I guess).  It’s my personal opinion, however, that it would be really weird for RC to not know that Funtom- the thing his brother is publicly known for- existed, yet to also somehow be completely aware that Soma is OC’s self-styled friend and big brother when he did not say that part in UT’s presence (all he- and Lizzie- said at Sebastian’s funeral was that they “wouldn’t leave OC.” And now both of them have!  OOPS!)  That said, this is still one thing RC isn’t going to be able to sweet-talk his way out of.

What About the RCMT: Sorry y’all (this is a lie, I’m not sorry), but I do not put any stock in RCMT.  Yes, he’s always had an unhealthy fixation with his brother, yes him just taking the ring from his father’s corpse is Kinda Messed up (even though with Vincent’s clearly pried fingers being as stiff as they were when OC found his body seeming to indicate that he was already long dead when RC happened upon him), but we’d have to jump through a whole hell of a lot of narrative hoops to explain why UT keeps him around, or why Tanaka didn’t just cut him down when he got back to the manor before OC could arrive on the scene if he actually murdered his parents.  Yana’s also said on twitter that she hates how children are always the victims of the world’s cruelty (full disclosure, this was in response to horrifying real world events, so maybe not my best decision to use this as evidence of narrative intent), so I really doubt that she’d then make RC the mastermind.  (I’d rather the Big Reveal about all that just be that RC is nowhere near the “brave, kind, good” person OC thought he was- just as OC thought when looking back at RC’s corpse upon setting out with Sebastian, “I’m the brave and strong Earl, the one I’m looking at is just a blubbering coward.”  That while OC’s Ciel persona is based on lies, OC himself is the real deal.)  Now, RC might have information about the attack to which OC isn’t privvy that I hope he’ll pry out of him before he strikes the killing blow (and we still don’t know what Tanaka was talking about when he mentioned Ciel before he was stabbed), but that is, at least to me, a separate issue from “RC is a yandere and he totally murdered his family.”  I do have some agreements with certain aspects of the RCMT- namely that RC’s current actions are motivated by a sense of guilt or personal responsibility.  Where I differ significantly is that I’d argue he’s not acting out of patricidal guilt, but rather the fratricidal guilt of OC’s contract and subsequent death being “his fault” and therefore his responsibility to prevent. (There’s also this tweet thread from Yana from the premiere of the 15th anniversary exhibit where she outright says that Sebastian never would have been summoned without RC, which to me is a pretty strong statement that the author of the series is approaching the whole premise from that angle.  This is also echoed by Sebastian’s statement in chapter 140 that RC’s death is what allows him to be there in the first place)

But Volume 28 outright says RC wants revenge!  Ok, so the official translation for Volume 28 mentions, and I quote “ The Phantomhive blood, it would seem, runs thick with the thirst for vengeance...”  Shame on me, I know, for relying on the English translation, but I posit that this is a load-bearing “seem,” the exact kind of weaselly phrasing that Sebastian uses all the time to kinda-sorta get around not being able to lie.  Boy howdy, it sure does seem that RC’s goal is vengeance, doesn’t it? OC would have absolutely no reason to suspect anything else is going on, so there’s nothing holding him back from fighting with all his might on his own counter-vengeance.

So are you saying that all the evidence to suggest that RC is too possessive over his brother is just a red herring?  No, not at all.  RC is, without question, an entitled little brat who vastly overestimates what he’s owed and is alarmingly quick to assume the worst of his family members.  Kid’s got a bad personality by Yana’s own admission.  I don’t even think it would be a stretch to suggest that his manipulation of Lizzie and publicly exposing OC in front of the Midfords/driving them away from him are, in some small part, because he’s convinced himself “None of you helped my brother for almost 4 years and he’s suffered because of it, and you all immediately assumed the worst of him when you found out he wasn’t me.  Therefore, none of you Deserve to be with him- unlike me, RC, the hero of this story!”  But him being overly possessive and domineering isn’t necessarily the same thing as him wanting, as his goal, to rip OC’s life from him permanently.  (I’ll also point out that during his life, it’s not as though RC was always together with his brother either- we’ve seen every indication that he spent a lot of time voluntarily playing with Lizzie and his father while OC stayed in his room, so by that token I’m still not convinced that, all things being equal, a Sebastian-free OC would be thrown back in the proverbial cage of not having any agency)  Could it be?  Could Yana still ultimately present RC’s actions as wanting to actively take OC away from everyone else, instead of taking away OC’s stressors so his “radiance” can continue to shine?  Sure, yes.  Would that be disappointing after all the evidence to suggest that there’s more going on under the surface?  Also Yes, says me.

__________________________________________________

Also, this is neither here nor there, really, but:  For as much as RC seems like a master planner, the narrative just as often paints him as kind of a close-minded little dirtbag, doesn’t it?  Case in point, in chapter 132, RC’s line about needing to provide for the tenants on Phantomhive estate so they can work hard and don’t wander away like sheep is mostly a restatement of what Vincent said in the immediately preceding panel about the Earl needing to care for his people so they can focus on their work, he’s just mixed some of his transactional-relationship/abandonment issues in there as well.  OC, on the other hand, goes a step further by bringing it back to how, for the Earl, it’s a difficult job to keep everyone satisfied.  RC repeats, OC analyzes.  I’m not going to go into a whole Thing here about how Vincent has parlayed his likely reluctance at being the Watchdog into becoming an emotionally-stunted manchild with a major allergy to sincerity (he totally is, but this is a monster of a long post as it is), but I don’t really interpret his sidelong glance at the twins as, “My elder son is Selfish and disregards people but my younger son is Kind. Good for him!” (Vincent is also selfish and disregards people, almost pathologically, why would he care about that?), but instead as “My littlest son recognizes that I, Vincent, actually lead a hard life and must shoulder so much as the Earl and Watchdog and that I am the True Victim here, he Gets me- this gives me faith in his capabilities.”  If anything, this conversation is a demonstration of yet another way OC has RC beat- OC is one smart cookie, and RC is...kinda...not??  He can’t do basic analysis, he grouses when he has to do work, he wants UT to do his work for him...RC really kinda sucks, doesn’t he?  The only thing he’s got going for him is the likelihood that he realizes how Fucked Up the inherent premise of the story is and he’s Not Going to Stand For It (this is why I like him as a character)

[bigskydreaming]

kai06leaf replied to your post:

Ended up all night, with sleep derailed by a RUDE...

Um I had asked for a link for your batman related works?:)

Oh score, this is actually weirdly timely then! FlashinthePan is my Batfam pseudonym (https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlashInThePan/works), its just it hasn’t been useful for much other than to use my bookmarks page there as a fics rec list. Since the only other things still up on it are the YJ WIP I haven’t updated in a couple years and an elephant’s graveyard collection for the random ficlets I often write on here while forgetting they’re usually long enough to be actual one-shots...and that I then forget to actually add to that one, that I created for the specific purpose of putting all those in one place. My mind. Its just....*staggers at the Legend of it all*

I’ve been on a pretty committed “No more posting unfinished WIPs kick” for the past couple years but am finally at a point where I have stuff to post without cheating, so that streak officially ends today, when I finish my read-through of the first fic* in question and hit publish. “The Requiem Rites of Robins,” the ten chapter first story in an AU Battle For the Cowl fix-it series, “A Legacy of Robins,” with TRRoR being roughly 40K, focuses on Dick and Jason and their issues with each other and Bruce’s believed death, picking up and going AU at an indeterminate time not long after the end of BFTC. 

Specific goals of focus with this particular fic were addressing Bruce’s bullshit last will and testament to Jason (ugh), the eternally unremarked upon moment that was Dick watching his brother refuse to take his hand and instead fall to what at the time must have seemed very likely to be Jason’s second death, in a pretty fucked up parallel to his parents’ death (ugh), various other unaddressed issues between the brothers that kept them making like they were Cain and Abel instead of two people who loved each other and very much could use each other while grieving for their father or even just pretending they weren’t....and also steadfastly jumping their combined train of events well off the tracks before Morrison’s whole...”Jason” thing ever happened at all (ugh).

Just a headsup for readers for whom certain characterizations of Bruce are a dealbreaker - full disclosure, this fic and its sequels do consider various less pleasant moments between Bruce and his two eldest to be in character and canon, with NTT #55 and the ending to UTRH the most touched upon and relevant. For what its worth, my intention there (and hopefully my execution of things) was not to vilify or bash Bruce, or to make it at all a question of whether or not both really loved Bruce and he them. 

To be clear...I do categorize Bruce’s actions towards Dick and Jason at those times/specific others as abusive, but a huge part of my reason for even writing this particular fic was to explore and examine the reality of loving a parent even despite a history of actually abusive behavior on their parts. Of how to mourn for someone you loved at some times and hated at others, who was both the person who made you feel whole again and the one who made you at other times feel the most broken. 

Especially when you’re two people who pride themselves on being heroes, who are ‘supposed to know’ that there’s no defense, no excuse for some of the things their father did, but that doesn’t always change or erase how much they want to. And who are both looking for an answer in the other, as to how they’re supposed to live with the fact that deep down, there’s a part of them that will always still be those ten and twelve year old orphan boys who came to believe their father was a man who could literally do the impossible...even mend what was broken, make things right with them and the world as they knew it just like he’d managed once before, when he’d first come into their lives and they’d been just as certain then that there were no more happy moments in their futures at all. 

And with the both of them still, even after everything, having held onto that secret hope that someday he was going to find the secret loophole, the magic words that let them forgive him, that let them let the past all just be in the past and the future all that really mattered, that their best days as a family weren’t all behind them yet and there was still time for things to be different, for him to be different....because their dad wasn’t like other ordinary dads, their dad was the Batman, he was a superhero.....

....who was also still just a man, and sometimes men die with their most important deeds still left incomplete.

This first story is centered firmly on just Dick and Jason, because I have a tendency to let things get too widespread and expansive plot-wise the more characters I focus on, and because this first story, about mourning Bruce and finding a way to move on, needed to be just Dick and Jason, although Cass and Tim and Damian, as well as Steph and Babs and Alfred all have things in the wake of his believed death that IMO they needed explored, and that were never explored in canon. But Dick and Jason had to be the first two and a solo act except for each other, especially as this series is still geared towards Bruce’s eventual return, and just to a much different status quo....because the thing about Dick and Jason at this specific point in time, is that they were quite possibly the only two people in the world who would ever have the relationship with Bruce that they did, to see him the way they both at times did, and nobody else ever fully grasped. 

They knew him at his highest and his lowest points, the best parts of him and the worst, the center of their whole universes and the destroyer of them....and for them, at this place and time, its about being forced to realize that for as much as come between them over the years, they each are the only ones who will ever fully be able to speak to the entirety of their father as not just Bruce Wayne, the Batman, the myth and the legend, but Bruce the man, the flawed father who was supposed to be better than his worst mistakes with them, because he was supposed to be a hero. 

Even as close as others were to Bruce, there were specific slants to the light they saw him in....for Alfred, even when making his worst mistakes, he was still his son, for Cass he was still the father who fought her personal demon not because of what he wanted her to be but so that she could be who she wanted to be, for Tim, he was imperfect but still larger than life, the hero he’d still first only come to know through the lens of a camera from a great distance, a perspective he’d yet to entirely shake, and for Damian he was still largely a figure of make believe, a bed time story he’d been told all his life. 

There’s an inherent goodness, a nobleness around the idea of Bruce for most others in his life, that defies coming face to face with the realities his failings could be.....which only Dick and Jason could ultimately attest to, as losing the ability to keep sight of that innate shine was why they’d found themselves so disillusioned by their father at the lowest points between them. And so in a lot of ways, the ultimate goal of writing this fic was trying to get Dick and Jason to a point where they could share their full, messy, complicated as hell feelings about their father with each other, but simultaneously feel a need to preserve the way each of their siblings still saw him, because the truth is that if there’d been someone who could have preserved that shine for their own eyes, to keep their memories of him clear and unobstructed by complication....they would have been glad to have been left just missing Bruce their father, and not the mess of feelings forever tied up in a Gordian knot upon by his death.

So yeah. LOL. That’s the link to my Batfam works, though there hasn’t been much on their for ages, but stay tuned for Chapter One of The Requiem Rites of Robins, later today.

“In the wild, a group of robins is called a round. But Gotham’s birds have always been of a different sort, something entirely unique. And the only proper plural for them, I’ve found, is a legacy.”

An investigation leads the newly minted Batman to London, alone and without Robin’s back-up for the trip. In the past couple months, Dick Grayson has barely found time to breathe, let alone to grieve for his father and come to terms with his new role as the Dark Knight’s successor. But his distracted state leaves him vulnerable, and when a new villain’s one-man war threatens to make a casualty of him too, he’s left with no alternative but to work side by side with his rescuer - at other times better known as his brother, his successor, and a couple times his would-be killer.

(Their family always has been one of over-achievers. And if you’re going to pick a pair of brothers to play compare and contrast against with that in mind, its hard to go wrong with something biblical.)

But Dick seeming no more happy about it than he is, doesn’t do much to pick up Jason’s mood. He’s come to London for his own reasons, and no, he’s still not inclined to share. Curiosity killed the cat, but he’s sure Selina wouldn’t mind if innate nosiness knocked off a few birds here and there as well. Well-earned paranoia aside, however, secrets and cynicism can only carry them so far when the two are forced to rely on each other to fight their way free of a city turned death-trap. Both are keenly aware that the last time they’d fought side by side like this, they’d been all the way back on the other side of Jason’s first untimely death. And as far as potential omens go, that one’s about as shitty as they come.

But a mixed curse and blessing are nothing new for them, and so that’s not just a painful reminder, but also proof that things were different once. That the brothers they’ve become were not always the brothers they were supposed to be. It was time and pain and bloody loss that weighed them both down so much further than the altitudes that came most naturally....not fate, or destiny, or even them. And as their new enemy forces them deeper and deeper below ground, it becomes all the more clear there’s only one skill in either of the brothers’ arsenals that will see them through to the other side of all this: 

And only if they can not just remember, but rediscover, how to shed all of that and finally fly free again.

[rvblabyrinth]

the formatting’s a little wonky ‘cause i had to paste it from discord messages, but i tried my best, the analysis is under the read more

He asked me how to write Texas, I think I wrote like a full fucking paragraph in response.

& I was like. “Well, depends. Is it her pov or Church’s or someone else?” ’Cause firstly, it depends. Church’s pov? The easiest for me to write because you have to kinda put her in the center of that world because that’s their dynamic, they don’t have to be in love, or really on speaking terms, but they’re both gravitated to each other & that’s important to portraying the dynamic. If it is something where they do love each other, again, she’s the center of the universe & time & time again Church does stupid shit to keep her around.

Some people choose to write her as the villain in some fics, like "she BROKE church's heart. What a heartless, cold bitch" which isn't exactly right imo & it's kinda eh to read imo because I think it can be written better- giving her some sort of motivation in that rather than being quick to be like "fuck Texas. hate that bitch."

But then again, some people just don't like Tex & write her like that because they don't like her, which is what I do with characters that I don't fucking like. If you're writing her from someone else's pov that isn't Church. it's important to include the intimidated part, because like, she's scary. She deadass tries to kill like everyone I think. She is super strong, who would not be at least kinda scared of that?

If you're writing from her pov, it depends if it's Beta or Epsilon-Tex.

Beta is a bit more oriented to her own goals, saying "fuck you" to Freelancer, & killing/tracking down Omega in the beginning. She also knows she's an AI but has to pretend because no one else knows.

Epsilon-Tex is more angry at the fact she was brought back, & is a bit more open with that kind of thing with Church. & this is clear in canon because of:

Tex: I didn't ask to be paired with you. I didn't wanna come back. But I'm here now, so I'm gonna put an end to this.

Tex: You can't even help yourself. That's why you made me, Church. You made me to take on all the things you can't handle. Just like you always have. Well guess what, I'm gonna handle it. Wash and Meta will be coming now. I have some things to get ready.

She's quick to call Church on his bullshit & set it straight

It’s clear she hates the fact that Church is quick to the "we're made for each other." She hates it. She doesn't like being tied against her will, so she fights against it. She's programmed to care about him but that doesn't mean she can't be angry. In a way, she kinda hates him, for what the Director did, for bringing her back, etc. She hates being a "shadow" because she isn't just a caricature of what the Director saw in Allison- she's become her own person but time & time again she's dragged back to where people think Tex = Allison.

So yeah, it's important to highlight these kinds of things in writing, instead of simply brushing it off as "maybe Allison was a bitch. Texas is just aggressive & mean." She's guarded, & you can't necessarily just simplify her entire character because you're removing the depth that separated Texas from Allison & you're conflating them into one

I also think she likes the Reds & Blues more than anyone else because they don't really know Allison, which means they only know Tex & they're not holding up the burden of Allison.

The Freelancers were focused on the rankings, but they also couldn't really be friends with her through that because she was at the top of the leaderboard, too. Like, look at how Carolina acts, Carolina freaks.

Tex considered Carolina a friend at once, but Carolina couldn't see Tex as anything more than competition, something wedged between her & her father, & the favoritism tore Carolina to pieces, which is part of why I think when Carolina survives the fall, she doesn't go back to the MOI. There's nothing left there for her, especially not York, because she knows he's gone.

It kind of severs her & her father completely. I like to think she waited a little to see if anyone was coming. They had to know what happened to her. No one came. He (the Director) gave up on her, & she gave up on trying to salvage the once close relationship they had.

Okay, I headcanon like, after Allison. they got closer, because if he got distant, what would've kept her? She wouldn't have been as competitive in Freelancer. She would've hated her father. They had to have been close, & then the project started, so naturally, he offers her a place. She takes it because she loves her father. They're close.

Then, Alpha creates Beta, & he withdraws. He realizes he has Allison now. so he focuses on that & nothing else matters. Carolina is left in the dark because he doesn't tell her shit, so she gets to the top of the leaderboard- he has to notice her then. Instead, he uses it as a way to pit Tex & Carolina against each other, & that's why she stays. & she sees Tex steal her place, & takes York too.

Carolina doesn't consider York "her man" but they were exclusive. She takes it hard because he was there during the fallout with her father, so it fuels her. fuck Texas. Texas took everything from her. That's why she's so motivated to fight Tex. if she doesn't win, then what does that mean?

When the Director tells her that Texas attacked Wyoming for his AI & his equipment, she accepts it, because that makes sense. She sees a demonized version of Texas. Sigma inherently knows her, & sets her up for his meta thing. He convinces her to take both AIs. He knows she's going to go for it, & he knows that she's distracted with Tex.

I'd like to think he & Gamma & Omega conspired together, too. Sigma acts, in a way, that they're gonna be whole if they get the Alpha & the other fragments, but he wants to be the main personality or fragment or whatever. He doesn't care about becoming part of Alpha again, it's for him.

I think Carolina never exactly "knows" Texas is her supposed to be her mother, in a way? I’d like to think Church & the Director didn't exactly tell her, 'cause she's once like "Did I ever tell you about my mother?" & Church kinda knows because he's the memory of Alpha & the Director, but that's not the most important thing. What's the key here is that in my headcanons, Allison technically chose her work over her family.

Or, to the Director, that's what it seemed like, because you don't see Tex ever really stick around, in a way. She's gone a lot, which makes sense because Allison was in & out on deployments, but she doesn't seem sorry about ever going. So I'd like to think the Director was mad, because she was his everything but it seemed like the reverse wasn't the same. & then he lost her. He never tells Carolina, he's kinda like "Your mother loved you so much," because what the fuck is he supposed to say- "Oh your mother didn't really like us so she kept away until she died in duty," which isn't true but he sees everything in his own way.

They had different habits, & where he showed love one way, Allison showed it another, & he didn't quite understand it, so he & Carolina grow closer when Allison dies- Carolina is all he has left of Allison, & he loves her.

She keeps him grounded where he otherwise would've faded away, & he nurtures her so she can be her best.

It's Project Freelancer's fault. He thinks he can help turn the war with the use of AIs & super soldiers- lovingly taken from one of his colleagues. It's like the SPARTAN-IV program except butchered because that's not his thing. I'd like to think all of the Freelancers had augmentations in a way, like they're less human more something else but nothing like the SPARTANs. & like I've said before, Beta is what fucks everything up.

I'd like to think when he first comes across Beta, it's like Alpha & Beta chatting together. They're having some conversation about philosophy or something, & he has a fucking heart attack

probably drops his cup of coffee. He separates them immediately, has the Counselor rate Beta- Texas for active duty. She gets cleared, & there's something they do so she doesn't really understand she's an AI. However, they do put her in a robot body. They tell her she's a cyborg, which kinda makes sense. They tell her she lost certain things in the war, & it makes sense. It's not entirely right, & she knows it, but she thinks the Counselor is creepy & assumes that's what the bad feeling is. So she integrates successfully into the program, & she quickly rises through the ranks, which pisses off certain people- Carolina & South.

She's sent on solo missions usually before that, to judge how she works out on the field, but it's clear the Director would do pretty much anything she asked. She could ask him for all the AIs & he'd probably (with a bit of hesitation) give them to her. He falls in love with her. He thinks its Allison.

When she finds out she's an AI, that she's Beta, after CT dies, it severs anything that the Director had for her, in a way. He's more bitter, because she's just like Allison. She withdraws. She goes rogue. She takes Agent York with her. Both the Director & Carolina hurt from it, like father like daughter. Except at this point, the Director is kinda fucked up.

He's been torturing a version of himself, committing a bunch of crimes, he's kind of lost any sense of like... shame I think? Anything that's necessarily good.

He wants Agent Texas back, but he also, on the side, keeps trying to "fix" her. He wants his wife back, he wants her to stay this time, like he begged.

But that's never how Texas comes out.

She comes out angry, all fists & bitterness & he doesn't fucking understand. He gets really frustrated about it, & when Carolina "dies", he's more preoccupied. Maybe, in a way, he thinks that if he could make Tex, he could fix her & just as easily bring back a Carolina.

Or, her armor sends out a recovery beacon, but it eventually stops, when he doesn't send anyone for it 'cause the ship crashed & they need to get their shit together, & then they have to deal with the meta. They say Carolina's KIA, but somewhere, deep down, he knows she's not.

Carolina returns home from then, hides away on a little planet & recovers. She hates her father. She decides she's gonna take down Project Freelancer. She's not the only one. Washington knows everything, as much as he fucking wants to forget it. He buries any positive feelings he had for Project Freelancer, friends & everything gone. York looks for Carolina, but gives it up quickly.

York's not like the Director in many ways, & he moves on where the Director never could

& the Director never could because he never got to settle it. He was angry at Allison for leaving, he was angry that she didn't put him & Carolina first. He could never move on.

It's hard to get over something when you don't get closure, & that's exactly what he didn’t get. He got into an argument with Allison, a quick conversation before she had to go fight, limited because they're not allowed to have anything more than a few minutes since the Covenant can track human comms. She was angry at him. He didn't apologize. He thought he had more time., his last words were something like "I'll talk to you later. Someone has to take care of our daughter."

Allison hates when he does that kind of thing. She's a good parent, she can't help that she's a fucking soldier, can't he lay off? Their relationship is stressed in a way it wasn't before. The deployment was only good because it kept them apart, but it was also the main stressor.

Leonard tries to convince her to take a position closer to him & Lina. She denies it (in my hcs she's an ODST & there's nothing like being an ODST, so she'd have issues adjusting) & that's another thing they fight about. This dynamic also pops up in Beta & Alpha, because they argue quite a bit, but it's usually alpha instigating it.

It also comes up in Epsilon & his Tex, because she's honest with him. She's tired of being brought back, can't he let her rest? But epsilon takes it (at first) as an attack on him.

Why can't she do something for him, for once?

It’s only within the unit that he works through it. It's always been his fault.