#orbmanson7

[pinkish-rose]

🎧 ?

archaeopteryx by lemon demon!

[intrulogical]

with discussions of logan and the book from the new sasi short, something i'd love to talk about more is how the sides, most especially logan, fit the theme of "doomed by the narrative" in a more Meta way than usual.

the reason i call it more meta than the usual is the fact that c!thomas CREATED these sides within the narrative itself. the sides are aware they are part of a bigger narrative/content c!thomas produces, often addressing the camera. and yet, they continue airing their personal issues with each other, and you realize there's such a blurred line between these characters' lives and the stories c!thomas constructs sensationalizing his sides.

i was talking to @orbmanson7 about this, and they described the entire situation as: "but the kid gave them sentience to make their playtime more fun, it's so cruel." and i though this was perfect. the sides didn't have to exist, but they were created to personify c!thomas, and later on developed their own personalities independent of c!thomas. and yet, their capabilities are still confined to the fact that they are sides. they're unable to do things but personify c!thomas, and any wish to do something more would be nullified.

maybe for sides like roman or patton, it would be better. they're struggling, but c!thomas still likes them very clearly. but then we get to people like logan and you realize the true dreadful potential of being confined to your side-hood. we already know logan has been gradually losing influence on c!thomas ever since he pursued arts. in a normal person, it would be nothing because we don't have our logics personified. yet, c!thomas did, gave sentience to something that doesn't need it, and for what? for logan to feel like he's failed his job for decades?

i always thought it was horrific for a side to constantly fail at your job because, i mean, what else can you substantially have? they can't have aspirations outside of c!thomas. something i wished people acknowledged more is that c!thomas has more influence over the sides than the sides have on him. he specifically shapes how they are, how they change. and with logan, it's especially terrible because... what's he supposed to do when he can't do the one thing he's supposed to do? what's he supposed to do when there's no way out?

logan sanders, forever doomed by the narrative. a plaything given sentience for fun, only to be ignored and neglected for the following decades.

[plantdeficiency]

comm for @orbmanson7 :D

[rosetintedfever]

THANK YOU SO SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!

Hm

Not the easter eggs for plot? Hm. Maybe, maybe. Maybe it's saying that Logan managing to control all this anger stuff, who knows. Or this is about Thomas himself after all this stuff that happened in this few months.

[intrulogical]

Janus is my fave but Remus is a close second. I find it so interesting how he's the character who's the hardest to get a read on by faaaar. It's actually the reason why I've been looping forbidden fruit so much (alongside it being a bop), because I wanted to try and understand his mindset better.

Something that really jumped out at me is that the very first lines, even before he introduces himself as the duke, are about Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit and gain knowledge/self awareness at the price of sinning and eventually dying. He then really goes on about Thomas learning to know himself and how everyone already sins and dies anyways (so it's not like taking a bite from the forbidden fruit will change anything except the gaining of self awareness).

I think that regardless of whatever specific goals Remus has, he's overall guided by the value of wanting to give people knowledge and self awareness, desiring to dig up everything buried and repressed and bring it to light.

We can see in wtit how that seems to be his main purpose as well. All of the intrusive thoughts he gives Thomas betray an underlying anxiety about loneliness and being abandoned by Nico (or maybe the anxiety about being alone is what caused him to latch onto Nico - it's Virgil that ended up pushing Thomas towards Nico after all - but now he's terrified that Nico will ditch him). Remus is trying to bring those issues to the surface to have Thomas begin to work through them in a way, except Logan (with all of his good intentions and care for Thomas) keeps providing distractions and those distractions - as much as they help alleviate the symptoms - allow Thomas to keep repressing the thoughts.

Honestly, the more I think about it the more I love the double meaning of the title of the episode. Thomas isn't really working through his intrusive thoughts and trying to process them. He's working while he has intrusive thoughts, as if he's working through loud and annoying music he has to simply grit his teeth and endure.

...that was a ramble and a half, sorry. I've been really desperate for someone to talk about the series with XD

OH MY GOD, THIS IS PERFECT

i've always loved remus and his role of self-awareness. i always perceived his role as intrusive thoughts to be somewhat of an alarm clock— his general Presence means there's something that thomas is ignoring. i LOVE the idea that remus is connected to self-recognition because we have to remember he is forbidden THOUGHTS. not emotions, THOUGHTS. i kind of see him as a parallel to logan in a way, where they both dispense truths about thomas' way of life, but because they're so harsh and rooted in the reality thomas wants to ignore, they both get ignored. i could go in detail but i'll probs save it since this is technically not a remus logan post

if you need more wtit analysis by the way, @orbmanson7 has some for wtit that i really like! u can go enjoy some juice there. never feel bad about sending me asks like this (or even messaging!) bc i LOVE talking about sasi meta. i sometimes pop into orb's dm's at random just to entertain another thought i have 😭

[intrulogical]

Hi! I was looking through your various meta posts and I noticed a small thing you posted about possibly writing a meta on Patton's perception of mortality through his catholic lens, and it made me think about how I've noticed a lot of people(myself included) who are more fond of sides like Remus, Logan and Janus, tend to sympathize less with characters like Patton, while also understanding the purpose he serves(I'm not sure if my point makes sense but I am REALLY excited to explain this stuff). I've always, in particular, found the way the other sides(ESPECIALLY Remus) might view Patton due to this strict moral compass Patton took on, even if he's actively trying to remedy it now due to Janus' intervention. It's especially interester me since Roman valued Patton's opinion of him so highly(considering Roman's views up until this point were, at least to a degree, reliant on Patton's perceptions of selflessness), and I always wondered if it would make sense for Remus to have an opinion(or two... or five... or a million-) on that.

this is actually a good talking point! thank you for sending this in :D

dark sides + logan fans being critical of patton is honestly such a phenomenon. i definitely want to preface i don't wanna generalize fans' stances, but i've literally witnessed this thing happened in Real Time. i think it has something to do with lntao? because logan was incredibly villainized by the fandom during that time. the fandom's doing better now, but it really did struggle with the concept of Nuanced Characters back in 2019-2020, which i think brought upon the "logan + dark sides fans hates patton" schtick.

but like you said, i and a lot of other fans do understand why patton is the way that he is. he's such an interesting character because he has such a Grasp on thomas that no other sides have. i want to emphasize i do NOT intend of villainizing patton by saying he has a lot of power, moreso it's quite evident that this season's conflict focuses on how thomas' decision-making is more emotion-centric than it is thought-centric.

even the fact that patton represents morality is big on its own, because black-and-white thinking literally shapes how the sides are visualized. i don't mean it like, his sides are created vis-a-vis black-and-white thinking, moreso the reason why the sides are separated is because thomas upholds this type of thinking. virgil, roman, and thomas look up to patton as a guiding figure, which gives him a lot of power/influence. @orbmanson7 can probs explain it better than i do lol

but if you're asking me if remus would have something to say? YES. of course he would. the entirety of dwit confirms he has a gripe with how thomas is being so "demure" and "safe". remus and janus have always wanted to override thomas' black-and-white thinking, so they obviously have something to say to patton. hell, the reason they are suppressed is because of patton. i'm too dumb to explain it now but always return back to how patton is seen to be the final decider in a dark sides' "acceptance". him w janus is apparent enough, but in dwit we literally see him have to "give permission" to thomas to think icky thoughts.

i'm not saying patton is conceited btw. this shit always boils down to, think of sasi as a metaphor for how our brains work and it makes sense why the moral side is still iffy about accepting things he once pushed away and labeled as evil. and also istg pls no one accuse me of villainizing patton bc i acknowledge he's literally doing all this unintentionally. his arc is definitely gonna end w him being more open to changing his moral views, but yeah patton is a fascinating character to me and one of the best encapsulations of catholic-influenced morality

[illogicallyinclined]

I have to know what items were used to summon joan

yes excellent

the summoning pentagram includes a goalie helmet, a Bright Eyes CD, a copy of Red Dead Redemption, an assortment of pride pins in a red solo cup, and an orange beanie

[amateurmasksmith]

@orbmanson7

Example art from Tumblr users @poltergrease @teenageclown @randomationality

[tangledbea]

Time for a REAL question: Who will win the prize for best metal? Steel or Iron??

Iron. Because without iron, there would be no steel.

[symbolishplant]

Hey question, I love that scorpy design something Fierce and I wanna make an arm puppet that's sort of based off it (more like a combo of your design and my design for scorpy). Would it be cool if I do that? I just really love the cryptid vibe of a broken tv head and it'd be so fun to make, but I wanna know that it's cool if I reference or credit your design as inspo!

totally fine if you want to do that! it's not like I'm the person who came up with him having a TV head in the first place haha

[atalana]

If Five was somehow given a way to assure his family's safety, do you think he'd have the potential to be a true villain? Like not necessarily evil but if he refuses to care about himself or others, would his lack of wanting anything reduce him to an antagonist? Or could he become a hero proper, or something else entirely? I'm curious about your thoughts on this!!

Hooo boy this is an interesting ask, thank you so much!

To first off answer your question, yes, absolutely, Five has the potential to be a villain. Under those specific circumstances, debatable, and there’s a few different factors that could go into it, so lets go into them properly

First off, how is he ensuring his family’s safety, and also does that affect the apocalypse? Because let’s take that one first, if his family survived into the apocalypse with him, Five would not be the Five we know. Honestly, as much as the apocalypse would suck, I think all of them would be better adjusted? It’s one thing to survive on your own, it’s a different thing altogether to survive as a team. They’d learn to work together, they’d get better at not following Hargreeves’ rules and life plan and all of that, it would be miserable sometimes, but they’d have each other, and a lot better mental everything.

If it means the apocalypse never happens, then Five travels into the future to meet his ~30 year old siblings. It would be weird, and he’d probably like to get back, but when he discovers he can’t it won’t be life shattering, because he’s still got his siblings, he’s just their younger brother now. Either way, Five has no reason to get involved with the Commission

But let’s say for the sake of argument that the apocalypse still happens, Five is still the Five in the show, it’s just that his siblings aren’t at risk and so we take that away as a factor.

Well, you’re right, he’s got a lot less of a drive to succeed now. But also, I think he still does want to stop the apocalypse? Because that’s what ruined his life, and Five’s not without morals, even if he frequently puts them aside, given the choice he’d still choose to save everyone, he definitely cares about people as a whole. Like, the closer it gets to the apocalypse in the show the more he starts using “everyone” instead of his family, he criticises the Handler for letting everyone die, he sides with Luther because “there are billions of lives at stake, we’re past trying to save just one”. Five, with no other factors changed, still wants to save the world.

So let’s talk about what would get him to leave everything behind.

Would he do it if his life was at risk? Interesting question. Because I don’t think Five necessarily cares about the world more than he cares about himself, it’s more, he stopped thinking about his own life as a factor ages ago. He’s been driven by this task for so long, he doesn’t know what he is without it. And as we’ve talked about, after everything he went through in the apocalypse, and with the Commission, he really sees himself a lot more as a tool to complete a task than a person with a life. He has absolutely no qualms about throwing himself at a problem to try and get it fixed. I think in a straight up “it’s you or the world” he’d probably choose to save the world? But that’s on pretty shaky ground.

For example, the Handler’s offer. He comes back to work for the Commission, if his family is safe and he gets to stop being thirteen again. In the show, both Five and the Handler went into that agreement knowing it was just a matter of who double crossed the other first. But if that was legit? Well, he still disapproves of the entire planet dying, but he’s killed a lot of people by himself, he’s very good at compartmentalising his feelings away in that respect. And he doesn’t like looking thirteen, he hates that people see him as a child, hates that the only clothes that fit him are the Umbrella Academy uniforms. It’s just that his own body dysmorphia ranks so low on his list of priorities compared to the literal apocalypse. Like, you can see it, he wants to take that offer so badly, it’s why the Handler keeps dangling it in front of his face with things like getting him new adult fitted outfits. The main problem is the Commission part. If that offer came from someone he trusted more than the Handler, I think he’d take it. He may not like what he was doing to the world in the process, but getting to look like himself and go live with his family far away from all of this, that’s a pretty tempting choice.

Is there a timeline where Five continues to work for the Commission? I think only if it was the only way to save his family, as in, they’d be actively in danger and continue to be if and only if he refused to work for the Commission. He may be good at Commission work, but he hates the place, hates what they stand for, sees them only as a means to an end. He’s only worked for them to use them, if he was going to continue working for them past the point they’re no longer useful to him, they would have to have something pretty strong to use against him, and after everything, I think his family’s lives are the only thing strong enough.

Now, villain, antagonist, those are interesting words to use here. Because here’s the thing - to many many people, Five is already a villain. Like, just on screen, people Five has knowingly and deliberately killed to further his own goals:

All of the mercenaries the Commission sent after him, who didn’t know what they were there for, just that they had to kill whoever the tracker led them to

At least one person in Dallas, 1963

37 people from the Hindenburg case, as a way to get the Handler off his back

At least one person fleeing the Commission

At least three Commission agents in the theatre

That’s nearly 50 people right there. And if you count all the accidental deaths Five caused with his actions but didn’t give a shit about, or all the people he assassinated when working for the Commission, the number is easily in the hundreds

To the families of all those people, Five is a villain, it just depends on what narrative you’re looking at. Really, despite being the most driven out of all of them to save the world, Five doesn’t have the moral high ground over anyone in this show. Maybe the Handler, but it’s pretty subjective.

Now antagonist, that’s even more interesting. Because in order to be an antagonist, you have to be working against the goals of the protagonists. Well, who are the protagonists in this hypothetical narrative? If you want to keep any aspects of this story the same, it only makes sense for them to be the other Academy kids, right?

So here’s a narrative for you. The Commission gets the upper hand on Five. They find another way to cause the apocalypse that doesn’t rely on Vanya (it’s possible, there’s one point in the comics where Hazel and Cha Cha literally manage to blow up the earth with a bunch of nuclear weapons Hargreeves had been stockpiling, long story, but they could blow up the moon for the same result as in the show). The Commission just wants this whole situation to be over, so they give him a choice - Five can go live somewhere else with his family and ignore the fact that the apocalypse will happen, or the entire Hargreeves family can die right now. But Five has to convince them to go.

Now, what do you do, when your little brother who you haven’t seen in seventeen years, shows up with a bunch of mercenaries and says the apocalypse is about to happen, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, you just have to go with him and you can all live far away from it if you go right now. Well, you might say yes, if you think he’s being threatened into this, especially if he says your own life depends on it. But if you’ve been raised a superhero, well, you’re a lot more likely to fight back.

And if you see how well he can fight, how willing he is to kill completely indiscriminately, well, you’d probably have a hard time trusting anything he says.

Luther isn’t going to go, because Luther’s duty is to save the world. He’s going to try everything he can to do that, regardless of what Five says.

Diego isn’t going to go, because he cares about these people, he cares about making a difference in the world and doing good. He can’t do that if everyone’s dead.

There’s nothing on earth that could make Allison leave her daughter, and even if she could take Claire with her, I don’t think Allison “trying to be a better person and fix her life” Hargreeves would be too happy about raising her daughter knowing she let Claire’s father die, letting Claire know she’s a coward who took the easy way out

Klaus might go. But Ben would be very very against it.

Vanya will hear Five out, but won’t be able to believe it, and even if she does, she’s got a life here too, and she’s not gonna be super psyched to leave everything just to go with her siblings who’ve always excluded her, and some of whom currently actively hate her.

And let’s be real, Five isn’t going to try and convince them if Five can try and force them. In canon, the only person he talks to is Vanya, and when she doesn’t immediately try to help him, he abandons that plan entirely. He only goes back to his family when he’s out of leads with no idea what to do.

Some of them are going to assume Five is being threatened and try to help him, which Five doesn’t want, because that puts them in more danger. Some of them are going to assume Five’s completely lost it, and is now a danger to them, and are going to try and stop him, which Five doesn’t want, because that’s just letting them all die in the apocalypse.

It would be a disaster, and would go a lot better if these kids could communicate with each other, but they’re so bad at that. I don’t know how the whole thing would play out, if Five would be swayed by their attempts to stand strong against the apocalypse, or if he knows there’s no hope and is just trying to save them against their will, but either way, it would be very fun to watch

[galacticvampirisms]

@orbmanson7

I little manga related rant about Teru because I keep rewatching the scene where he’s attacked in his apartment and Teru-san!

I don’t think Teru really changes until he confronts ???% when Mob is trying to confess to Tsubomi. Yes, he realized his mindset was wrong when Mob went and literally tossed him into the sky with his school, but that realization only sparked a superficial change. 

There’s this song animatic from @one-trash-man to the song The Last of the Real Ones that just... really fits how I imagine Teru seeing Mob (to the point I tried to write a little about it but lol)... it talks about someone being the sun and gold-plated and really really it fits the shallowness of Teru’s superficial changes throughout most of the series. 

What do we know about pre-Mob Teru primarily focuses around this lonely boy who puts on the airs of perfection to the point where he believes his own hype. He’s selfish and self-centered and honestly that doesn’t change during the first Claw arc. Yes, he calls Ritsu out on using his powers against other people, but he’s haughty about it, like he’s miles better than Ritsu despite hiding his shame under a mile of hair. He helps Mob, but he still obviously has no problem using his powers against other people, torturing the one adult in a very blasé manner while Mob stands by (and we know Mob is stressed because Ritsu’s gone and when Mob’s family is in danger his refusal to point his powers at people gets compromised and he primarily follows what’s happening. Case in point - the Claw espers he pinpointed and got to attacked first in S2E9. He reacted to their attacks. It takes a lot to make Mob fight a living human or nonviolent spirit). Teru is in charge, and Teru uses violence to get his way. 

His triple barrier is the last thing he uses to try and protect the prime minister. His other techniques are attacks (and he’s an idiot calling out his attacks like seriously).

But what about when ???% is cutting a line through the city, ignoring literally anything that’s in his path? When Teru is once again shown he’s no match for the sheer force of strength that is Mob’s unrestrained powers and ???% endangers other people?

Teru saves the other people. He knows that Mob would hate himself more if innocent civilians were hurt, and he rushes to protect them, letting ???% go to be dealt with by other people. And I think that’s the moment that Teru changed for real.

Because he realized first that he was pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and he tried to live in that insignificance the same way he did his protagonist narrative, relishing in the apparent smallness of his place in the world in comparison to someone like Mob. He put Mob on a pedestal basically. And it took Teru a second realization - that Mob really was just like him in that he could get worked up over something as “small” as a crush on a girl - for him to really, truly start working on how he sees the world and himself in it.

He’s also just really, really fucking gay.

[etherealumbrella]

[elliington]

orbmanson7 replied to your post: my gf just wrote that post typing like behind my...

Suspicious

shes doing crimes, orb

[fuckyeahasexual]

Has anyone found any books with QPRs in them? I'd love to see some good representation for that

I’m working on my aro list (it’s going slow because there’s a lot) but don’t know any that discuss QPRs specifically. If you know any please let me know!!

[paramar]

orbmanson7 replied to your post: i bet ritsu still voted for mob despite everything...

Rude, I bet Mezato voted for him out of stubbornness from.helping him beforehand, and the body improvement club voted for him out of solidarity

true and valid, and honestly makes lot of sense. even tho i like to think tenga also voted if only to support the shadow leader of salt mid.