#that it's to the point of dismissing other characters which is injustice to even getting the story

[epickiya722]

"Only Yuji influenced Sukuna's decision to choose a different path!"

"Only Uraume influenced Sukuna!"

Maybe a hot take! Maybe an unpopular opinion, I don't know but...

As someone whose favorite character is Yuji and also likes Uraume, like that's my ice icon right there, I think it's absurd to think that only one of them played a part in Sukuna's decision in the afterlife to choose a different path, let alone argue over it.

I say that they both had influence over Sukuna's decision for a different path.

[thankskenpenders]

Part1: Thank you for the reply! Sorry if I keep pushing the subject, but what I don't understand is Penders' disdain/hate for Chronicles. For someone who always boasts about his contributions to the Sonic IP, one would have thought he would have been elated to be the inspiration and starting point for what would become a plot and setting of the IP's core media, games. Plus, you said it yourself, to everyone's knowledge (Even Penders, maybe?) they were seen as fair game at the time of production.

Part2: I would understand if he was asking for acknowledgement/compensation, but his ownership claims seems to be made out of malicious spite, rather than a proper sense of injustice. Like if DC would have dressed Superman in a red & white costume for a few issues after the Fawcett case (I know it's not exactly the same legal case). But why do you think he acts like that? I would love to read your thoughts as you are one of the few capable of reaching unbiased conclusions when it comes to him.

So the thing with the Sonic Chronicles case is that by that point Ken had discovered Archie had lost his contract, cooked up the story that it never existed, and started filing for copyrights for his work. As such, he argued that Sonic Chronicles taking inspiration from his work was an instance of copyright infringement. In his eyes, Shade literally is Julie-Su, and the Nocturnus Clan literally is the Dark Legion, just with the names changed, and if he never signed a contract then that stuff wasn't fair game for other Sega projects to touch. To him, it wasn't uncredited inspiration, it was theft.

The case was dismissed in court because the Archie v. Penders case to determine who actually owned the copyrights for his work was still ongoing, and then by the time that was settled the statute of limitations for the Chronicles case had passed. (In basic terms: it had been too long since Sonic Chronicles came out to sue over it.) So it ended in a stalemate, with both sides still arguing ownership, and Ken would only be able to revive the lawsuit if Sega did something new with Sonic Chronicles or those characters - a sequel, a port of the game, Shade appearing in new stories, etc.

Since then, it's basically turned into a game of chicken with the copyrights. Ken believes Sega has just washed their hands of Chronicles because they don't want to deal with the legal trouble, which is honestly probably true. Meanwhile, Ken has been testing how far he can push his claims of ownership over Shade before Sega does anything, such as when he announced that Shade NFT that declared she was literally the same character as Julie-Su. (Or at least it would have if he'd ever released it.) If Sega doesn't do anything about it, then they're at risk of forfeiting the copyrights, which Ken will take as a sign that they've fully abandoned Sonic Chronicles as their property and therefore he can do whatever he wants with its elements.

So, basically, yeah, he's still just bitter and spiteful over the plot of Sonic Chronicles being based loosely on his Knuckles comics without his involvement. And to a certain extent I'd get that. Comic artists and writers are paid in table scraps and get no benefits, then they see the companies who own their work turn it into billion dollar movies and video games and mountains of merch, and they don't see a penny of those profits. They don't even tend to earn royalties off of their comics' sales. It's unfair. But while I think he deserved some form of credit and maybe some form of compensation, there's a difference between adaptation and inspiration, and Ken's just being a copyright troll here.

There's immense irony in Ken believing that Bioware's homage to Julie-Su should be seen as the same character as Julie-Su in the eyes of the law, while he's out here publishing a comic featuring K'Nox, The Legally Distinct Character Who Is Totally Not Knuckles. Also, like, one of his pet characters has always been a blatant homage to James Bond. He was out there basing Archie Sonic stories on Star Trek episodes and Superman comics and shit. My favorite Sonic story of his literally just ripped off the plot of "For the Man Who Has Everything." I don't see him out here cutting Alan Moore a check. He's nothing if not a hypocrite.

[deramin2]

I think anyone complaining about Bell's Hells morality as we near the end of Critical Role Campaign 3 and whether they truly get to claim they're representatives of the Exandrian people should go watch How To Blow Up A Pipeline (2022) about direct action environmental rights activists. And the documentary Hit & Stay (2013) about the anti-Vietnam War Catholic Far Left activists while you're at it. Or The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972) which is based on a play written by one of the priests profiled in Hit & Stay about their trial (grandstanding in the trial was one of the intents of being arrested).

It turns out that when you're not in a binary morality unquestioned heroism YA novel that what is justified in fighting systems of oppression and what the right thing to do is actually becomes hard to determine and largely driven by internal feelings and rage at injustice.

Who determines who gets to have a big say? Who determines what actions are justified when no one will listen to the harm being done? Who determines what is overall the more harmful action? Especially when you can't know the future except that there is no option where tremendous harm is not done. Who determines which step along any road is "right" or even "wise?" Especially when they are taken one by one by specific people who are swept up by the events of their own lives and not predetermined by an all-seeing all-knowing Author writing backwards from the ending?

Playing a game isn't the same as acting in the real world at great personal cost, but real life is a kind of improv. Long form improv doesn't start with how the ending should get tied up. It's about how every single split second decision adds up to a cumulative finale. Things not turning out how you'd have played them out if you already knew everything and were living someone else's life is what reality is like.

The normal state of affairs is people making decisions you don't agree with. "They shouldn't have done that" is boring and useless analysis that shuts down further thought and dismisses what anyone else has to say. "Why did they do that" is what media literacy is about. Campaign 3 was never heroic fantasy (arguably C1 & C2 weren't either). It's a character study in people doing what they feel they must in the moment it's happening without any assurances at all that it's the right thing. It's about not having confidence and surety but having to act anyway. That's the entire point.

How To Blow Up A Pipeline (2022) is a great expression of that same dynamic. They have enough confidence to keep telling each other this is the most necessary action they can take because they don't know what the future looks like, but one where they did nothing isn't one they can stand to live through. Is blowing up this pipeline in the way they are planning to the best possible course of action morally and strategically? Literally nobody knows that. They can't possibly know that. It only matters that these people got to that point, and now it's all happening flaws and all. For love, for revenge, for discord in the face of a society that acts like this is normal. A bunch of righteous fuckups just trying to survive in a harsh world made harsher by the status quo.

If nearly 437 hours of game play was too much to sit through to get that point across, maybe 104 minutes will work better.

[lizardanya]

incomplete pafl classpecting notes. feel free to disagree or to add:

katya - heir of doom. she is empathetic and a 'listener', however she is surrounded by doom. her impending doom kicks off the narrative, as she participates in an experiment that would likely lead to her death, she, in a way, seeks out her own doom as she chooses to go alone rather than sticking with dima, resulting in her recapture. she 'inherited' her doom as her mutation resulted from one or both of her parents being affected by the zone. she surrounds herself with doom, surrounding herself by hopeless people who don't see their own future. she, ultimately, becomes doom as she haunts the narrative, becoming the motivation for yura to further make things worse and doom others.

sanya - maid of void. sanya's character is defined by her lack of narrative relevance, the inability to meaningfully change things or actively participate in its events. she is incredibly passive, kept in the dark about many things, deliberately uninvolved and sheltered. void players are often defined by disconnection and loneliness, the kind where they may be physically around, may have friends and such, but are largely alienated from the people around them, which sanya consistently experiences in her relationships with most people in her life - not being able to quite break down yura's facade, being kept at a distance by sergei, not even knowing katya is a mutant until she's taken away. furthermore, maids are often defined by a lack of agency, feeling 'locked' into a certain role, as sanya is both sheltered against her own will and 'locked' into going along with yura despite not being fully on board, and much of a maid's character arc is overcoming that lack of agency, which sanya is beginning to do.

yura - thief of breath. thieves are defined by a lack of their aspect in the beginning of their arc, as yura starts off lacking freedom, conviction and the will to act. eventually, however, yura gains that sense of need for action, gaining a sick and twisted sense of 'heroism' in which he's willing to rob others of their own freedom and agency for his own goals (literally sending olya to jail, coercing dima and anya into his plan). he gains the admiration of sanya without really trying, getting her so carried away in his life to the point of, in many ways, robbing her of her agency within her own narrative because of her care for him, being dismissive of her own wants and attachment to him.

anya - page of hope. anya is deeply concerned with her injustice, her opinions on society and being steadfast and confident, however in reality she's much more timid and lacks resolve compared to the facade she puts on. pages take the longest to realize their full potential, and often have to be pushed by others into doing it, generally being quite passive and getting bossed around in the beginning of their story. anya is generally still figuring out what her personal convictions are, having had one push by dima and taking a stand against what she perceived as olya trying to turn dima in, and currently having the push of yura using her and manipulating her into going along with her. pages are often naive, unaware of their own strength and insecure, all traits being ones anya displays at some point or another. she is also unknowingly a representation of hope for others - she represents the hope of a normal life for dima, and the hope of being able to get what he wants for yura.

olya - sylph of space. space is associated with creation and motherhood, as are sylphs, which olya embodies more metaphorically: she literally provides dima space by letting him stay at her apartment, as well as literally sacrificing herself for yura to be able to be free. she looks at the bigger picture, with realizing dima is a mutant but still letting him stay, she is deeply caring but is detached in showing that care. space can be associated with 'passing the torch' so to speak, which olya definitely does by taking care of the kids she encounters in a way in which they can continue living their lives and create their own paths. she is not a guider, but rather a provider.

[iamnmbr3]

you know what's sooo stupid to me that it's almost bound to drive me crazy?!

The fact that whenever i see you sharing tom riddle metas about how traumatized he was and trying to look from his pov, i think that FUCKING MAIN VILLAIN, lunatic voldemort who was a reason for so many deaths and did everything to achieve his end is vastly understood. bellatrix, the cruelest witch(after umbridge lol), who knows nothing but voldemort has a not lil fandom

BUT jkr says Draco doesn't deserve fans' love & THERE IS NO GOOD INSIDE HIM (says about the guy who despite his environment and his own desire couldn't be bad & cruel..even if coward, still he didn't do several things in spite of his fears) so we shouldn't be that attached to him!!!!

And many people agree!!!! Like is Draco the only bad guy here? Is he actually a bad guy?

Like🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

(i don't have any problem with you guys talking about tom riddle or bellatrix having fans, just the injustice of it makes me insane)

First off, thanks for your patience in waiting for an answer to this ask! Second of all, I think two things are going on here. On the one hand, we have the fandom response to the series. On the other hand we've got JKR's response. While it's true that Tom Riddle and Bellatrix both have their fans (most of whom acknowledge the problematic things their faves have done - and indeed find their flawed actions and complexity to be part of their appeal) within fandom spaces the same is very much true of Draco. He is an extremely popular character within fandom. On AO3 he is the third most tagged character (after Harry and Hermione), drarry is the number one most written about ship, and dramione comes in at number 3. So I think in fandom spaces Draco gets a lot of attention and there's generally an interest in and understanding of the fact that he's a complex and grey character and not by any means a one-note bad guy.

However, JK Rowling does not seem to share that view at all. She's been very dismissive of his character and of fans who like him on a number of occasions and indeed seems irritated by his popularity - even though it is driven by writing choices SHE made. She claims Draco never got a redemption arc even though she herself wrote that he ultimately changed his opinions and behaviors...aka had a redemption arc. She seems to be someone who has a great deal of trouble admitting she was wrong and who is also very threatened by anyone having a different interpretation or view of something than what she wants. So I think she's especially bothered by people responding to Draco - particularly because she's on such shaky ground. Most Bellatrix fans admit she was a die-hard Death Eater - and indeed that's something they embrace about her character - so that's probably not as threatening to JKR as people pointing out that Draco changed his mind is. I think she also hates drarry.

And yeah it strikes me as really unfair that she singles out Draco fans and claims anyone who likes him is just a girl who is confused due to being attracted to the actor (wow. way to be heteronormative, misogynistic, and a misandrist all in one go). Which is bizarre and problematic on so many levels and also especially weird when she has no problem with Snape fans or Regulus fans and doesn't seem to think that a similar problem could occur with people thinking Tom Riddle had a redemption arc just bc the character is canonically attractive and played by an actor generally considered to be attractive in the second film for example.

[booradigm]

To be honest, you and the other user just proved right the guy who rudely commented on your experience with VADTD: hate will get us nowhere and only makes the fandom more tense for all parties involved.

It's always welcome to vent about injustice, but in the end you end up paying more attention to them. Instead of focusing on what we like.

Yeah, we have to live with opinions that we don't agree with and, worse, that may seem rude, but we can always put warning tags or simply block people.

For both parties, it is best not to interact and not pay attention.

P. D.

Personally, I was disappointed by "Your throne" because of the poor handling of the plot and its characters. A shame, because it started out pretty well.

I get the point you’re trying to make- that focusing on negativity can make fandom spaces more tense- but, I DISAGREE with the implication that holding discussions about flaws in a story is the same as "spreading hate" or fueling unnecessary drama.

I agree that "hate leads to nowhere". But CRITICISM will not. It's criticism that leads to people actually THINKING and being able to justify themselves.

But some people can't seem to distinguish between criticism and hate (even though it's only a Google searchbar away). Criticism- especially when backed with reasons- is NOT THE SAME as spreading toxicity or hate.

Also, THIS is the anon you said is "proven right"?

They didn’t just 'express disagreement', they DISMISSED my opinion entirely, implying that I must be unhappy or "ragebaiting" just for criticizing the novel.

That kind of response WASN'T about promoting a healthy fandom. It was about SHUTTING DOWN CRITICISM and trying to delegitimize opposing viewpoints by framing them as irrational and malicious. (Go back and read the original post if you want to see further clarification.)

If discussing flaws in a story makes it tense for all involved, then the issue isn’t the discussion itself- it’s how people react to differing opinions. Disagreeing is fine. Dismissing criticism as "just focusing on the negative" is not.

Fans SHOULD be able to express both enjoyment AND disappointment without being accused of contributing to some endless cycle of hostility.

You also suggest avoiding these discussions entirely (via blocking or ignoring), and while that IS an option, it doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be allowed to analyze what they read or see. If we only ever “focus on what we like” and ignored all criticism, how would stories, fandom spaces, or people themselves ever improve?

You say it’s welcome to "vent about injustice", but then at the same time YOU CONTRADICT YOURSELF by suggesting that people should either ignore negativity or block others- basically to 'stay quiet', which isn't always the best choice.

If bad arguments are being made in public spaces like social media, engaging with them is COMPLETELY VALID because silence doesn’t always 'break the cycle', sometimes it just ALLOWS MISINFORMATION AND TOXIC NARRATIVES TO BE NORMALIZED AND GO UNCHALLENGED.

And ngl, I put Your Throne on hold after the hiatus so I don’t really get yet why people don't like its recent state, but if you personally disliked it due to its "poor handling of plot and characters", then you also must understand that criticism ISN'T inherently negative- it’s just a natural response to disappointment.

That’s EXACTLY what I’ve done with DITOEFTV, but ironically enough, my criticism is just being reduced to "hate” while yours can just be a "personal preference," and THAT kind of DOUBLE STANDARD is PRECISELY what I was calling HYPOCRITES out on.

If anything, it's YOU that's proving my point.

What really causes tension in fandom is not the varying opinions, but the expectation that everyone 'MUST' either love something, stay silent about its flaws, or "just stop reading if you don't like".

There is a DIFFERENCE between focusing on what we enjoy vs pretending that flaws don’t exist.

Criticism ISN'T inherently toxic, and I stand by my points about the fandom's selective favors. If people can PASSIONATELY PRAISE a work, others should ALSO be able to discuss its FLAWS with the SAME LEVEL OF PASSION without being reduced to just a 'ragebait', ESPECIALLY when there are ACTUAL points being made.

Regardless, I do appreciate that you were at least somewhat respectful, as it does seem like an attempt for deescalation (even though you're probably the same anon you're trying to put on a good light). Have a good day.

[summerwritesfics]

🍓No Tricks, Only Treats

Pairing: Hanzo Hasashi/Kuai Liang Length: 1316 Words Rating: Teen Warnings: Costume Party, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Halloween Party, Fluff, Bunny Girl Outfits, Kuai Is A Cutie Pie, Hanzo Has Vague memories Of Either MKvsDC or Injustice (whichever you prefer lmao) @anyfandomfluffbingo: Costume Party

Summary: Hanzo & Kuai Liang attend Johnny’s Halloween party.

AFG Fluff Bingo Masterlist

Notes: Heeeyyyyy Happy Halloween :) I was looking through my bingo prompts because tbh, I need to really start working on them, and I realised this prompt was perfect for a short little Halloween fic! So, enjoy!

Halloween was an oddity to Hanzo.

He didn’t really get the point of it if he was being honest. Trick and treating, while he could understand it being fun for kids, didn’t really sound appealing to him. Dressing in silly costumes even less so.

But when Johnny Cage invited you to a party, it was very hard to say no. Especially with Kuai Liang extremely enthusiastic about the idea, wanting to experience as much of what a normal life would feel like as possible. The fact that it was a costume party just seemed to excite Kuai more. He’d never worn a costume to a party before, the idea so novel that he’d been basically talking about it non-stop. The kids had offered to take him shopping for one and he’d eagerly agreed.

Hanzo hadn’t gone with them, and hadn’t seen Kuai’s costume yet. Due to their schedules they were also arriving to the party separately. He wondered what ridiculous outfit they’d managed to persuade Kuai to buy. He’d heard Cassandra pitch some ice queen outfit from some animated movie, but if that was the direction they’d gone in he didn’t know.

Hanzo himself had just gone kind of simple, and a little classic according to Johnny Cage. His pirate costume had been relatively inexpensive, and it was not exactly good quality, but he hadn’t wanted to spend a lot on something he was going to use once. The other guests' costumes seemed to vary in effort. Cassandra and Jacqueline had gone all out with quite intricate outfits. Supposedly they were a pair of supervillain lesbians, but Hanzo had no idea what they were referring to. Then you had Sonya, who’d thrown a bit of fake blood onto a blouse and called herself a zombie. According to Johnny, that was her outfit every year.

“Nice costume, Grandmaster,” a voice broke him out of his musings. He turned to find Kung Jin standing next to him.

“Thank you.” Hanzo looked Kung Jin up and down. He wasn’t completely sure on what Jin’s costume was, but given it was green and he had a bow and arrow he could make somewhat of an educated guess. “Are you meant to be Robin Hood?”

“I’m Green Arrow!” Jin sounded offended at the idea he was anything but this “Green Arrow” person. “Anyone would think you’ve never read a comic book or something.”

“Uh huh,” Hanzo sarcastically hummed. So he was also a superhero then. Seemed the kids were going for a theme.

From the corner of his eye, someone else peered around him. Even with an almost full face mask on, Hanzo could tell it was Takeda.

“I’m Batman,” he announced, putting on a gruff voice that made Jin burst into laughter.

“See, now, Batman I know,” Hanzo told Jin, lazily pointing at Takeda. “I don’t like him, but I know him.”

“What?” Takeda exclaimed, dropping the voice and standing straight. “How can you hate Batman?”

“I just have a weird feeling about him.” It was like something had happened in a past life in relation to the caped crusader. Which was absolutely ridiculous when he thought about it. Batman was a fictional character and didn’t exist, so the feeling was completely irrational. Still, something about it made him uneasy. He cleared his throat and quickly changed the subject with “so, what? Did you four convince Kuai Liang to be a superhero as well?”

“Nah, we let him do his own thing.” Takeda made a dismissive motion with his hand. “He seemed happy with what he got though.”

“Think you’ll be happy with it too,” Jin quietly chuckled as he took a sip of his drink. Hanzo couldn’t help but eye him suspiciously.

“What did you guys let him buy?” He asked, narrowing his eyes at Jin. He could just imagine that Kuai was about to walk in wearing the most absurd thing the kids could convince him to buy.

Jin bit his lip and smirked, “oh. You’ll see.” He then pointed across the room. “In fact, he’s here.”

Hanzo looked around just in time to see Kuai Liang walking into the party. His jaw dropped at what he saw.

Kuai Liang in what Hanzo could only describe as a bunny girl outfit.

He watched as Kuai was greeted by Johnny and Sonya, both clearly amused by what Kuai was wearing. It was a light blue bodysuit without straps and fishnet tights. He had a pair of bunny ears perched on his head, a small ball of fluff attached to his ass like a tail, and to top it all off a pair of high heel shoes the same colour as the bodysuit. Hanzo could feel his face getting hot, he completely understood Jin’s snide comment. Kuai did have a habit of wearing revealing clothing but this was the furthest he’d ever gone in public before.

“Have fun~” Jin sang in a teasing way, reaching under Hanzo’s chin and closing his mouth, teeth loudly clacking together. Hanzo glared at him, but Jin just laughed in his face. All Hanzo could do in retaliation was watch as Jin and Takeda walked away.

“Hanzo,” Kuai greeted cheerfully as he made his way over. The bright smile on his face was a beautiful sight. Even if Hanzo had originally had reservations about coming to the party, it was worth it to see Kuai experiencing pure joy from something so silly and simple. “I like your costume.”

“Ah. And I like yours,” Hanzo admitted, taking a better look at it now Kuai was closer. God damn he pulls it off a little too well. “Was this your idea or the kids?”

“A little of both,” Kuai explained with a sheepish grin. “I wanted to but wasn’t sure and they convinced me.”

It occurred to Hanzo that the kids' encouragement was probably an effort to make Hanzo flustered. Kenshi had warned him the group were on the warpath to break past the “Grandmaster Grumpyface” persona. He supposed this time, they actually won. He glanced across the room at them, where the four were now grouped together, watching Kuai and Hanzo, giggling to themselves over their victory.

They are the worst Superhero group I’ve ever seen. 

“Apparently Sonya is jealous because my legs are nicer than hers,” Kuai continued, holding one of the aforementioned limbs up as emphasis. Hanzo snorted at that. “Her words, not mine, to clarify.”

“Well, I do agree with her, you do have fantastic legs.” Hanzo cleared this throat slightly as he stared at the body parts in question. “As well as other assets.”

“Other ass-ets?” Kuai questioned, stressing that particular part of the word, making it obvious what he thought Hanzo was getting at.

“That’s not what I meant,” Hanzo clarified with a huff. Kuai just tilted his head at him. “I mean don’t get me wrong that part of you is magnificent but it’s not the only part of you that is.”

The grin on Kuai’s face just emphasised the point. It made all the features on his face light up and just proved how beautiful he was. Hanzo couldn’t help himself, he lent forward to press a kiss on the tip of Kuai’s nose. Kuai snorted and pulled back slightly while gently pushing Hanzo away, which was exactly the kind of reaction he was looking for.

“Want to go get a drink?” He asked casually, trying to resist another kiss as Kuai’s cheeks were turning red.

“Hm, I could do with one.” Kuai lent forward slightly, bracing a hand against Hanzo’s collarbone. “Lead the way, Captain.”

Hanzo rolled his eyes in jest, but held out his arm so Kuai could link with his. Kuai gladly accepted, letting Hanzo guide both of them. The night was young, and as long as Kuai Liang had a good time, Hanzo was happy to indulge him until he decided it was over.

[halogenwarrior]

Ok, one thing I see a lot of discussion and criticism about on Tumblr is the trope of “person who wants to fight an injustice/change the status quo for the better, who then does inexplicably bad things to show keeping the status quo is good”. And I think this is an interesting topic for analysis, but everyone seems fuzzy about what exactly the trope being complained about is, exactly. By some definitions of it, it is something that I very much hate and get annoyed by to, but by others it seems to go as far as “any story in which the people fighting the status quo are not every one of them unambiguous good guys is propaganda for the status quo”, which is a take very lacking in nuance. This is so common and so hated on the site they even made a whole tournament about it (@copaganda-clobberfest I would love you to see this post). While I love a story in which the main characters heroically fight to change oppressive norms in the world that seem unchangeable, it’s certainly not the only way you can tell a good story without having uncomfortable political subtext. In the end, I think a lot of the confusion comes from the fact that the trope being discussed is really three separate tropes that are being used interchangeably, so here is a breakdown of all three of them, whether they are inherently bad in in their implications and, if not, what framing would make them better. Ok so here we go.

Status quo-defending heroes vs. villains with a good cause

This is the “purest form” of the trope, one I think everyone can agree counts as it. In this version, the villain(s) kick the plot into motion by trying to fix an injustice or oppressive norm in their society, and the heroes fight against them to defend the status quo. To make the villain not sympathetic despite having a sympathetic cause, they either commit atrocities that aren’t logical to advance their goal or they turn out to be hypocrites who don’t really believe in the cause. 

Now, most of the time this is a bad thing in my opinion and I hate it, but even here the “badness” of it isn’t inherent to the set-up I described in itself, but is a result of how it’s usually framed. For one, the injustice is usually framed as only being relevant in the context of it being a motivation for the villains, with little input from anyone besides the villains who were affected by whatever the problem in society is. Because there is no one else besides the evil person/group who is fighting the injustice, it is then often framed as though the cruelty or hypocrisy of that person or group isn’t just an indictment on them, but on the very idea of fixing society. Like Pokemon Black and White concluding in the ending that because the revolutionary movement’s leader was a hypocrite that didn’t really care for the cause, the cause itself can be dismissed and anyone who wasn’t a hypocrite and thus dismissible was only manipulated into believing it’s a problem. Or in the worst cases, the fact that a group was excessively violent in fighting back proves that they really deserved to be outcast in the first place. I had a conversation about this with @bonefall regarding the Warriors (cat book series) arc A Vision of Shadows – basically, the rhetoric of “don’t be xenophobic towards rogues, they are just cats trying to survive” is only put into the mouth of the rogues themselves and the Clan cats duped into following them due to their disillusionment with Clan life. In the end, the rogues turn out to be horrible, and because there is no other voice of anti-xenophobia besides those portrayed negatively, the implication is not just that this group of cats are bad actors due to their actions alone, but had legitimate points in their believes. The point instead is that rogues are bad so the xenophobia was justified all along. And finally, the part of the framing where the implications of the existence of the injustice is ignored for the heroes of the story. The fact that the problem in society exists and the heroes, despite often considerable power and influence, don’t even think much about it let alone do anything to ameliorate it, does not interfere at all with them being framed as ideal heroes. If they are framed as flaws, it is not for their inaction but for unrelated things. 

To be clear, it’s these three things in the framing that make the trope bad. I don’t think that having someone professing to fight injustice either using clearly unnecessary cruelty or being a hypocrite is inherently bad or propagandistic writing. These things happen in real life! History is full of people being irrationally cruel/cruel in ways we can see with the benefit of hindsight are unjustified, including those who are trying to change the status quo. Seemingly random atrocities committed by a side of a conflict with a “good” goal absolutely do happen! This is not to say biased tellings of history and propaganda that make people changing the status quo look worse and less rational than they really are don’t exist, but the existence of propaganda doesn’t mean no such things ever happened in reality, that is getting into denialism territory. And people hypocritically claiming to fight injustice for their own personal goals is also a perfectly realistic plotline. Like Japan in World War II pointing to their region of the world being a victim of imperialism to justify their own imperialism, or any number of colonialists pointing to a genuinely morally bad practice of the people they are colonizing to justify themselves (even as they prove disingenuous by wanting to get rid of anything that is too unlike their own culture). And yes, sometimes such “bad actors” end up becoming the leaders and people with the most powers to enact change in society out of all the people with similar goals (though unlike in some of this fiction, that doesn’t mean that other people opposed to the injustice just stop existing). Deprived of the problematic framing, these stories can actually be interesting. What do you do if you are the resident of a fictional state that has a cruel aspect of it you are trying to fight against, but it so happens that the state that colonized yours used abolishing that practice as one of their justifications for imperialism and doing many horrible things? How do you fight that aspect of your society without being labeled as the same as the colonizers? T(I remember an article I read in a sociology class I took about social movements about just this that really stuck with me, contrasting the abolition of foot bonding with the persistence of female genital mutilation and how Christian missionaries and colonialism played into both). That could be a much more interesting setup than just having the villains being the only ones who point out the problem with a society. 

And just as another note, while I do think that sometimes this sort of plot is intentionally motivated by trying to discredit the belief of the story’s villains (like the Pokemon example I gave earlier, which I definitely think was written to address criticisms of the franchise but using a trick to not fairly address them), but I think more often it’s just a result of unthinkingly plugging into a “standard formula” of heroes and villains for a story. Someone starts out with the assumption that heroes protect their society and world from threats, and then they have to create a threat that will be a villain. But they think sympathetic villains make the story more interesting and more realistic than just evil ones, so they give the villain a sympathetic cause. However, since they only thought of the problem with society in the context of a villain motive, the problem with society is divorced from the rest of the story, the logical implications are never followed through on; heroes never think about the injustice outside the context of the villain, and are not portrayed as flawed for it, side characters might have a passingly negative opinion of the injustice at worst and are never seen actively fighting it parallel to the villains. The authors will then either not realize the characters in the plug n’ play hero and villain story they created don’t really correspond to their roles and create a story where the moral framework is completely wrong, or realize and “course correct” by making the villain do something out of character. In general, I feel this is why it is best to develop your cast as characters first, and then once you have the story and characters and motivations much more, start thinking about who, if anyone, you would “side with”, and who, if anyone, could be labeled “heroic” or “villainous”. Deciding “good guys and bad guys” before you develop them as characters can lead to all sorts of issues of the moral framing not matching the characters’ actions.

I will also note that there are some versions of this trope where the heroes do, in fact, even after a story they spend fighting for the status quo, recognize the villain’s point and try to implement the changes they wanted at the end, i.e the Black Panther movie. While this avoids the framing problems I outlined above, I get why this is disliked as well – it seems to give a message that it’s ok to repress the people who are actually putting their whole lives into advocating for change, and trust the people in power who never before showed any interest in fighting injustice to have a change of heart and reform things. A “fix” for this kind of plot would be probably be including characters who are dedicated and going to great lengths to achieve the change and are not portrayed as villains (even if they have less power to influence things than the villains), rather than having the heroes who were never invested in change in the first place be the only ones.

Villains fight for the status quo, but negatively portrayed anti status-quo characters also exist

This trope is less often bad for a story in my opinion than the first one, but nonetheless there are some framings of it that can have uncomfortable implications. In this, the main villains are fighting to keep the status quo, and the heroic main characters are either trying to fight them or a neutral third party. However, characters fighting the status quo who are portrayed as overly cruel or hypocritical also exist. On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with this – wouldn’t it be naïve to assume that no one fighting for a good cause would ever do anything wrong? But there are three ways this can be portrayed badly (if a story avoids all three I think this is a completely fine setup for a story.

The first is the “both sides are equally bad” framing. This usually involves a neutral hero. In this version, the oppressed and oppressor sides are portrayed as exactly symmetrical, paralleled with each other, and shown as equally bad in every way. The issue with this is again, not in the actions of the side fighting the status quo (like I said it’s perfectly realistic for such people to be unnecessarily extreme in violence), but in the framing that ignores the fact that, by virtue of one side having all the power and the other side reacting to that, it is inherently not a symmetrical conflict. While I agree that this is a bad framing, I do think people are still overly harsh on framings like this due to the primarily American userbase of sites like this, which leads to fictional conflicts always being assumed to be specifically metaphors for American groups or groups that are familiar to the average American audience member. Often, if a story shows members of a group to which bigotry/hate crimes/genocide is committed against to have been in power at some point and done bad things to their current oppressor when they were in power, it is decried as propaganda because the most well-known-to-Americans cases, African-Americans in the US and Jewish people in the Holocaust, were never at any point in power, so therefore the stories are either interpreted as saying one of these two groups is responsible for their own oppression or that, if one was to grant that group equality, they would respond with oppression and genocide towards their former oppressors. But I don’t think these stories are inherently problematic because not every story is a metaphor for things familiar to Americans! There are situations in history that do resemble what I just described (members of a group in power do something bad with that power, and that’s later used as an excuse for bigoted actions by another group), it’s not unrealistic to happen just because that isn’t what happened in the USA.

The second is the “political people are dangerous” framing. In this case, though both heroes and villains fight the status quo, (which again, isn’t inherently bad), but consistently anyone with a defined political motivation falls on the villain side, while heroes are plodding around fighting vaguely for personal revenge or something vague. This article https://newsocialist.org.uk/outlaw-kings-rebel-chic/ explains better than I can just what is wrong with that framing, but suffice it to say that it’s always seemed completely backwards to me; in an imagined revolution, I would feel far more comfortable trusting someone who was defined goals of the system they want to put in the old system’s place than someone who just wants to smash the bad guy and get revenge, who knows what happens afterward.

The third is the “absurdly high standards for going too far” framing. This is where there are both heroic and villainous characters fighting the status quo, but the standards of ethical conduct for who is framed as villainous are unfairly weighted against those fighting the status quo. For example, not just people who go above and beyond in their cruelty are condemned, but anyone who uses violence in any context. The standards are so high here that it makes it seem impossible for a character to do anything to react to their horrible circumstances that would be effectual at all without being condemned as a villain. For example, in the third Wings of Fire arc, where the narrative seems to focus more on how you should only kill the leaders of the oppressive HiveWings and trying to understand and empathize with them than the actual act of stopping the injustice, and despite this focus on targeting the leaders still treated a group being threatened with genocide trying to use mind control on the leader of the group alone to prevent said genocide as making a horrible mistake they had to atone for. Or, even if the status quo fighters are extreme in their cruelty and should be framed as wrong, they are also framed as one-dimensional, unsympathetic monsters, often while the actual oppressors are afforded nuance and sympathy. I think this is also what people’s issue with Avatar the Last Airbender is – in spite of the main plot being the heroes trying to overthrow an oppressive empire’s status quo, and the two negatively-portrayed rebels genuinely harming civilians unnecessarily, Hama is portrayed as wrong not just for hurting civilians but for using bloodbending itself (even to free herself from prison), and Jet Li is portrayed less sympathetically than similarly traumatized and wronged teenagers fighting for the main villains. Now this isn’t a condemnation of any nonviolent movement being portrayed positively – I think a very good story could be made out of the struggles, failures and successes of a nonviolent, but disruptive and far from passive, movement in a realistic world. Most of the hate for pacifist characters seems to come from not the pacifism itself but the use of deus ex machina and contrived circumstances in their worlds to make sure they always win and never have to make compromises (i.e criticism of Steven Universe, Undertale, or Avatar the Last Airbender again). 

Villains disrupt status quo, but villains’ goal is worse than status quo

I sometimes see these types of stories get lumped in with the other two tropes in blanket discussions of the tendency for stories to frame fighting the status quo as bad. This is when the story does fit the formula of “heroes defend status quo, villains fight it”, but the villains are not fighting for an ideal that would be good and noble, were they not murdering tons of people or being hypocritical about it. No, here everyone agrees their goal would be worse than the status quo. They want to take over the world and enslave everyone, or destroy the whole world, or sometimes they are fantasy fascists who take the preexisting bigotry in the setting to extremes rather than aiming to fight it. 

Now, there is totally a place for stories like this in the world, and I often enjoy them as much as stories about changing the world for the better; sometimes it’s good to hear a story about finding good things that already exist in the world, seeing they are worth protecting, and fighting for them. But sometimes these stories can fall into one of the same traps as the first trope. Not the parts about the villains being the only context in which fighting an injustice is brought up, since in this case the villains aren’t fighting an injustice. But the part about an injustice existing in the world, and the heroes solely being focused on fighting the villain and not fighting the injustice to the point that it seems they are callous and accepting of that injustice, and yet they are not framed as flawed and wrong for it. The world they are protecting is flawed, and yet these supposed paragons care only for the protecting and not for the fixing, even though the protecting is certainly something good that has to be done. This is the problem that Harry Potter (whose villains fall nicely into the “fantasy fascist” category I mentioned earlier) falls into. 

So does avoiding this mean that, if you want to write a story about protecting something good in the world, you have to make your setting a utopia? I really don’t think so. You can definitely write a story where the main characters’ main goal is fighting the existential threat to their society/world because that’s the emergency happening right now, but clearly also make an effort to fix the problems with their society. But another interesting thing you could do is writing the “problematic” framing but purposefully. The heroes fighting the horrible threat to the world are uncaring, or at least not as caring as they should be, about the injustices of their society, and this is framed deliberately as a flaw on their part. They might have many virtues and lovable traits, and you root for them because they are fighting something far worse and they are justified in doing that, but they are also intentionally very flawed people in their outlook. Add in characters who are part of a group being oppressed by that society, and the choice they have to make between fighting the threat because it must be fought, but for the sake of a society that will be ungrateful and never care about their contribution and keep being horrible, or resigning from it all in protest to keep their principles but thus neglecting to stand against something monstrous. There are just so many interesting and not problematic ways to frame a story beyond “everyone fighting the status quo is good, everyone supporting it is bad!” Even though, as I said, I love stories like that and I’d love to see more of them.

[thousand-winters]

Tellius is just so fascinating to me because it has, in my personal opinion, the best writing in the franchise when it comes to queer subtext and themes of discrimination, racism and the misery of war.

And the thing is... the duology didn't actually rely on that as its selling point. Outwardly it's the same as it's always been, a little band of fighters that for whatever reason end up swept up in the middle of a war due to someone from a royal family being involved, and it all escalating until they quite literally must fight a deity. The premise is basic, which isn't a bad thing, this is a staple of the series after all.

And yet Tellius performs it beautifully.

I've always loved that Ike genuinely is sort of a nobody. He's no royalty, he even rennounces the nobility title he's forced to take at some point. He has no dragon blood, no divine blood like many of the other protagonists in Fire Emblem. He IS the son of a renowned general, but aside from that, he's technically not special. He's frank and he's kind and he cannot tolerate injustice, he has a willingness to understand that, in a narrative that highlights discrimination and prejudice, gets him far as far as alliances go, he admits to his flaws and owns up to them. That's what makes him special, no divine destiny or anything of that sort, and even the fame he gains from that is something he despises.

But even so, Tellius doesn't shy away from showing the shades of humanity. Yes, Daein is a war thirsty kingdom that attacked Crimea, a kingdom whose royalty wanted to make a difference in the prejudice across the continent. It's a very cut black and white situation, except... it isn't.

We are shown Crimea citizens giving away laguz at the drop of a hat for their own convenience, because being from a "good" kingdom doesn't make everyone perfect and pure and good. We're shown Daein citizens suffering, and being justifiable scared and angry at the Crimean army because they had no say in what their king did, and yet they're still suffering the consequences of it. It's more complicated than a side being purely good and a side being purely bad.

And then there's the laguz and the beorc and the branded.

We see prejudice and ignorance from both sides, not only from "evil" characters but from characters on our side. Because good people don't magically have all the answers, nor are they free from having to reexamine the way in which they see the world, their biases, their privilege. Ike is constantly horrified by the things he hears; Soren's childhood, Muarim's past. But these things aren't uncommon in Tellius, and we get to explore that, the places where prejudice come from, the ways that leads to harm, even from seemingly good people.

Recently I replayed the Talrega chapter in Path of Radiance and I was struck by Petrine being so dismissive of Shiharam and his men due to them being migrants. I didn't remember they included prejudice in that way too. It's kinda ironic due to Petrine herself being a branded and how everyone sees them, but at some level you can understand too why she ended up like she did, living in a world in which everyone has it out for people like her and getting an opportunity to climb the ranks... only to treat others like trash too.

It's never a simple matter. And I think Tellius executes that wonderfully.

[mettatonsfinalform]

One time when I was about four years old my mum took me to see Sooty the Musical (Sooty was a popular puppet show on tv in the UK at the time). We had seats near the front and towards the end of the show me and another kid who I didn't know were chosen to come up onto the stage to play a game. The cast led us to sit on some 'rocks' which I was surprised to find out were made of plastic (obviously I had no conception of set design at that age). So we sat down and the human cast members left the stage to get things for the game we were going to play. Unbeknownst to me this was the set up for the villain, the evil dog puppet Butch, to pop out of a hole in the plastic rocks and recite his villainous monologue, with me and this other kid sitting either side of him. Now what happened next was due to two factors the playwrights must not have considered. The first is that I didn't really understand that the events of the show were not real, and that the puppets were not real people. I was a very tall kid, to the extent that people usually mistook me as two or three years older than I actually was. Perhaps the cast were supposed to pick an older kid who would understand that they weren't sitting next to a Real Villain and would be better behaved, but they messed up by picking a weirdly tall four year old. The second is that I have always been a person of strong convictions and a will to face injustice head on. So when Butch, the villainous dog, who had trapped Sooty and his friends on a desert island if I recall correctly, popped up right next to me, I felt terror and rage flush inside me and the eyes of the onlookers prickle my skin with judgement. I firmly believed I was in a position to do something to stop him and that the audience would judge me harshly if I did nothing. As he began his monologue I took a moment to steel myself and then started beating him with my fists as hard and as fast as I could. Obviously a four year old isn't that strong even if they are weirdly tall but damn I was hammering that poor puppeteer's hand like Sooty's life depended on it. And not long after I started, the other kid started wailing on him too. Butch continued on with his monologue, which I remember no part of due to giving my all in attacking him throughout it. Clearly the damage I was doing with my fists wasn't enough so I picked up a prop from the stage, a plastic silver plate from a pile of 'treasure' Sooty and his friends had dug up, and started beating Butch with that too. Nobody intervened to stop me and this kid in our righteous vengeance against Butch and somehow, despite us, the puppeteer kept going through to the end of his speech, at which point Butch popped back down below the stage. I was left panting and unsure of whether we'd defeated him or not. I was still in a state of fight or flight when the rest of the cast came back on from the wings to make jokes about what had just transpired and play a silly little game with us (which I cheated at but let's brush over that). After the show my mum told me the audience had been in hysterics over my antics which of course elicited the response "why, mummy?" She dismissed it without a proper explanation and it was years before I came to understand why it was so funny. I still feel kind of bad for attacking that guy's hand but proud of myself for being ready and willing to defend Sooty! Anyway, the moral of the story is if you ever feel guilty for not helping a fictional character through their hardships just think about how embarrassing it would be if you actually did.

I love when fiction makes the audience feel guilty about their role as the audience. When something fucked up is treated as a joke but later it's recognised how fucked up it was and the audience feels guilty for finding it funny. When a character breaks the fourth wall to plead for help, and you can't do anything so you just watch. And you know that the characters pain isn't real, but they're begging for help and you're not helping because their suffering is entertainment for you

[stardust-in-my-mind-blog]

sacred agreements

yesterday was not my best work

do I regret it? nah.

he got two chances

in that office to do the right thing

it was almost like I had that one conversation

unconsciously intentional just to place the trap

what character are you going to play?

funny how the only consistency that man shows

is how to neglect your own integrity

until you're nothing but rot and rust inside

I didn't even decide to start monologuing

I just noticed my voice was pretty loud

in that quite office and I was really hot

under my collar and as soon as the lady walked in

I began apologizing profusely

you don't bring your drama into a place of business

unless your drama decides to play co-pilot I guess

she laughed a bit and said she's been divorced too

I excused myself when they said they had to wait

on the funds to be collected or something

told them I was going to do something

about that hanger that was making me less

than a pleasure to work with

I really gotta eat before confrontation

at first she said it would be one check

and you could see him sweating because

they told him it'd be in two per the divorce

but he'd made me another promise

that had the numbers better for me

which was something I never asked for

but did budget once he said he's give it

he agreed to keep the thousand

then he switched again and took it all

when they wrote out two checks

I spent the whole ride to the bank

trying to talk myself out of monologuing there

THEY WILL BEAR WITNESS

really kind of wanted to turn around and go home

but I was there and if the show needed

some fucking razzle dazzle it sure looked like

I was giving it whether I liked it or not

the injustice was like blood on my lips

a frenzy I couldn't put away until later

diplomacy had left the corpse

at one point I called myself Nobody

guess I know who stepped out of

the damn trojan horse for his moment

so freaking embarrassing

but my heart was rioting joyously

to go back on your worthless word

the day after I find out I'm homeless?

the money I earmarked for a hotel

to get things figured out just in case?

something else for you to fumble

until it's entirely worthless?

I apologized to the bank teller too

told her I was sorry she had to be part of that

yeah that was super awkward for me she said

and I told her now that I was coming down from

my high horse of righteousness and burning swords

I could see her experience quite plainly

and can't believe I was on the other side of it

she laughed a bit and maybe expected me

to justify myself or something or dismiss her

the tension broke and there was some more chatting

I told her at least I hope I gave her a good story

twice in one day and I knew the rage would be

even more consuming later that cold night

but I was ready for it and comforted myself

about how opportunities like this

wouldn't fall into his lap anymore to take advantage of

this was the final thing he could promise and take away

well, enjoy it motherfucker

something will come our way at the tune

of seven fifteen twenty-seven

in some way shape or form

and we'll both look at it

and I'll smile

and you will not

I'll patiently await the day

but seriously I went into that meeting

trying to channel calm Mr. Thomas Shelby

and came it blasting pistols

like Madame Calamity Jane

two very different energies

duality I guess

[esther-dot]

targ stans are a bizarre breed of fans. like i get having problematic faves. majority of us have them.

one would argue loki that tumblr once obsessed over is a problematic fave but targ stans mostly see no wrong in their favorites. from not seeing the characters for what they are (i would enumerate but it's a long list) to just cyber bully real life people who don't like targs in general. it feels cultish.

I’m not involved in the Marvel fandom, so I don’t know how they treat Loki, but when I saw fans saying, not just after GoT 8x05, not just after the finale, but even now, “Dany did nothing wrong” and “I stand with Dany” or in other words, “let the children burn” --it does strike me as, uh, worrisome? And then for those same people to harass, threaten, hack, dox etc other fans...well, yes, it does make them seem extreme!

My impression of the Marvel movies was that they weren’t particularly consistent with their framing of things. Civilians were only dying when buildings collapsed when the writers decided they did, before that, it was largely a consequence-free story for the heroes. That’s something other comic book stories picked up on and ran with, and Marvel started writing differently at some point. GoT, even as it veered away from ASOIAF, still had some morals it loosely operated with, the discussion of civilian casualties and injustice was not simply presented somewhere in the story, but specifically presented as a criticism of Dany by other characters from s1 on which meant we had some in-world red flags and guidelines that the fandom chose to dismiss. And even in the gear up to the finale, we had even more thrown on the table, but they fandom still insisted on ignoring her threats about leveling a city, burning POWs alive, destroying the food that would see people through the winter...So many things in the story that indicated Dany was on the “bad guy” (not charming rogue) end of the spectrum. While fans used every misstep of certain characters to condemn them, they refused to apply the show’s own rules/standards to her.

So, it isn’t that they love Dany while knowing what she was/what she was doing (which was how people I know talked about Loki), but that they, like a cult of personality, changed the rules to be as she dictated, rather than holding her to any standard. It was particularly gruesome because they wanted other characters killed for “justice” (anyone they believed wronged Dany) and truly don’t seem to think any of the civilians in KL deserved the same. It’s a shame that ASOIAF was adapted into a story that brainwashed people into thinking that murdering anyone who didn’t welcome their conqueror was reasonable.🤦🏻‍♀️

The ASOIAF / GoT fandom seem pretty inclined to create and revere BNFs, I’m guessing because of the absence of new canon content? They’re ravenous for new ideas? Which allowed this problem of a thought leader + lemmings, so then you not only have the love for the character, but the development of a “doctrine” and how you are (or are not) permitted to interpret things? I think that feeds into the Dany fandom extremism. When you lose the ability to question your opinion, to change your mind, that’s where the problem is born.

To prevent that kind of weirdness, it’s good to remember that Martin hasn’t written what happens next yet. We know King Bran and R+L=J, we know about Shireen and Hodor’s deaths (kinda), the fandom overall accepts Dany burning KL, but we know precious little else. Much of what we argue over is locked away in Martin’s mind and he has mentioned that what he intended to do is evolving as he writes. Good! That means the characters and story are still alive for him, speaking to him, wonderful! But it means for us as a fandom, we must remain open-minded. Reject the notions that go against everything the man has written (mass murder is ok when Dany does it etc), but stay alive, allow your thoughts to evolve along with the growth of the characters and their story. Consider new ways of interpreting things. I’ve said in the past that the best part of the Jonsa fandom was that as long as there was a general agreement about certain themes and characters, there was a lot of space created for good faith disagreements about interpretations of certain passages / foreshadowing / spec. It makes the fandom fun, it allows new insights, it prevents the weird cult stuff.

All that being said, I have seen clips of Aemond from HOTD, so I understand the appeal of problematic favs. That kid wears evil well. 😂

[maxdibert]

Hey, I’ve read your post, and I’ve got to say, I’m a bit taken aback by your approach. You claim that talking about how misogyny in fandom targets Sansa Stark is somehow itself misogynistic, and then you pivot to praising Arya as if she’s the only “normal little girl” worth defending. Frankly, your argument not only misses the point entirely but also ends up reinforcing the very biases you pretend to oppose. So, let’s break this down, this is gonna be long so...

Look, the idea that Sansa’s embodiment of traditional femininity—her sensitivity, her grace, even her vulnerability—is a “flaw” is where you first go off track. Feminist theorists like Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler have long argued that traits associated with traditional womanhood are systematically devalued. De Beauvoir discusses how women have historically been cast as the “Other,” their value defined against a male norm. Sansa, with her courtly manners and her initial naivety, isn’t weak; she’s a product of a culture that’s been set up to dismiss exactly these qualities.

Let’s talk about the male gaze—a concept that’s essential to understanding why traditional femininity gets such a hard time in popular culture. The male gaze isn’t just about objectification; it’s about shaping how female characters are seen and, more importantly, which types of femininity are valorized. In most mainstream narratives, the version of female strength that’s celebrated is one that mirrors male characteristics: aggression, decisiveness, physical prowess.

Sansa’s journey, however, is far more nuanced. While she certainly evolves into a politically savvy leader, much of her early story is steeped in what might be seen as “soft power”—diplomacy, emotional intelligence, and strategic patience. Instead of recognizing these as genuine strengths, a lot of fans, including you, seem to dismiss them as mere signs of weakness. It’s like you’re saying, “If you’re not out there swinging a sword like Arya, you’re not really strong.” That’s a tired, binary way of thinking that not only undermines feminist theory but also does a disservice to the complexity of female characters.

By insisting that Arya’s overt physicality is the only acceptable form of female strength, you’re subscribing to a dangerous double standard. The same behavior in a male character is often seen as heroic; in a woman, it’s labeled as “unladylike” or “aggressive.” This is precisely the kind of bias that feminist scholars like Judith Butler have deconstructed time and time again when they discuss gender performativity—the idea that gender is a set of repeated acts, not an innate quality. Sansa’s “performance” of femininity is just as valid as Arya’s, even if it doesn’t fit neatly into the narrow box of what you consider strong.

Now, let’s address your fixation on Arya. You’ve repeatedly tried to use her as a counterbalance to Sansa’s supposed “flaws.” But here’s the irony: invoking Arya as the standard of “normalcy” is not only a red herring—it’s downright hypocritical. When you claim that Arya is the archetype of a normal little girl who stands up to injustice, you imply that any deviation from her model is inferior. This is a classic example of what Bell Hooks critiques as the “imperialist” mindset that forces a single narrative of empowerment, one that often ends up marginalizing other valid expressions of femininity.

In your view, Arya’s toughness, her physicality, and even her rebellious streak are all markers of a “proper” female character. But what about the quiet resilience, the emotional labor, and the subtle wisdom that Sansa embodies? By putting Arya on a pedestal as the only acceptable form of female strength, you’re not just misrepresenting the original critique; you’re reinforcing a binary that has long been used to exclude and demean those who don’t fit your narrow criteria.

Moreover, you claim that anyone who criticizes Sansa is somehow failing to “side with the abused” because they’re not as proactive as Arya. Let’s be clear: true feminist critique isn’t about choosing one form of resistance over another; it’s about recognizing that all forms of strength, including those that are traditionally feminine, have value. When you pit Arya against Sansa as if only one of them can be a valid model of resistance, you’re doing a disservice to the rich, multifaceted reality of womanhood. It’s not a contest between being “normal” or being “tough”—it’s about acknowledging that both expressions exist and are worthy of respect.

This bias is not accidental; it’s baked into the way we’ve been taught to view gender roles. Feminist critics have long argued that society tends to favor traits that are coded as masculine—decisiveness, physical assertiveness, and even a sort of cold rationality—while dismissing the traditionally feminine traits as signs of weakness. By aligning yourself so strongly with Arya’s style of resistance, you’re echoing this very sentiment. You’re saying that unless a female character rejects her “normal” self and adopts these masculine traits, she isn’t really empowered.

This binary thinking not only distorts our understanding of female agency but also perpetuates a culture of exclusion. It alienates those who find strength in what you dismiss as “traditional” femininity. It’s worth noting that many influential female leaders throughout history—think of figures like Indira Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, or even more contemporary leaders—have often relied on a blend of traditionally feminine and masculine qualities. To reduce the entire spectrum of female experience to a single, narrow form of toughness is to ignore the rich complexity of what it means to be a woman.

You’ve also made some pretty bold claims about what it means to “side with the abused” and how that supposedly aligns with Arya’s character. Let’s be real: no one is saying that Sansa doesn’t fight back or that she isn’t resilient. In fact, her journey from a sheltered, naïve girl to a savvy political operator is one of the most compelling arcs in the entire series. Yet, because her resistance isn’t always loud or overt, it’s dismissed by some as weakness rather than recognized as a different—but equally valid—form of strength.

Your assertion that “Arya is as feminine as Sansa” while simultaneously implying that Sansa’s version of femininity is somehow less valuable is a glaring contradiction. It’s as if you’re saying, “Sure, both are feminine, but only one of them is good enough.” That’s not a critique; that’s a dismissal. By reducing the conversation to whether a character can or cannot be both strong and traditionally feminine, you ignore the broader point: that the cultural bias against traditional femininity is itself a form of misogyny.

It seems you want to frame the issue as if it were a simple binary: either a female character conforms to a hyper-masculine ideal, or she’s just too “normal” to be interesting. This is a tired and reductionist perspective. The original critique isn’t about elevating one form of strength over another; it’s about recognizing that the dismissal of Sansa’s traditionally feminine traits is part of a larger pattern of misogyny that permeates fandom discourse. When you demand that a female character must always be aggressive, unyielding, and overtly defiant to be seen as strong, you’re doing a disservice to the rich tapestry of what female empowerment can actually look like.

Now, let’s go back to your specific assertions. You say, “So very tired of this sexist, misogynistic nonsense from folks whose favorite character ever is Sansa Stark.” Let me ask you this: Is it really misogyny to point out that a character who embodies traditional femininity is unfairly attacked for those very traits? When you dismiss that critique as sexist, you’re not engaging with the argument; you’re sidestepping it by insisting on a one-dimensional view of what female characters should be.

You also argue that, “Sansa is a flawed character who has made mistakes,” and then immediately pivot to a comparison with Arya, suggesting that because you’d protect your little sister, you wouldn’t understand Sansa’s narrative. This kind of reasoning doesn’t address the critique at all—it simply reinforces a double standard. Just because Arya is written with a particular kind of strength doesn’t mean that Sansa’s different, quieter form of strength is any less valid. By using familial loyalty as a yardstick, you imply that real empathy and resistance only come in one form, which is not only reductive but deeply exclusionary.

Your insistence that “Arya is as feminine as Sansa” while also claiming that Sansa’s traditional femininity is somehow a weakness betrays an inherent contradiction. If both characters are indeed feminine, then why is it that one is celebrated and the other is attacked? This selective valuation is at the heart of the misogyny we’re discussing. It’s not that one expression of femininity is inherently better than another; it’s that society has conditioned us to favor certain traits over others. By clinging to this bias, you’re perpetuating a cycle of exclusion that ultimately harms all of us.

And then there’s your remark about education on misogyny. Telling someone to “educate yourself” might seem like a call to intellectual rigor, but when it’s used to dismiss a valid critique of systemic bias, it comes off as a thinly veiled assertion of moral superiority. True education on these matters would reveal how pervasive and subtle misogyny can be—manifesting not just in overt discrimination but in the very language we use to describe different forms of female expression. Instead of engaging with that complexity, you reduce the conversation to a simplistic, almost tribal argument: Arya equals strength, Sansa equals weakness. That’s not just inaccurate—it’s intellectually lazy.

So, here we are. Your reply seems to conflate genuine feminist critique with a narrow-minded preference for one type of female representation over another. By using Arya as a counterpoint, you inadvertently reinforce the very biases you claim to oppose. Instead of engaging with the complexities of Sansa’s character and the systemic reasons why traditional femininity is so often derided, you reduce the conversation to a simplistic “good girl vs. bad girl” scenario. That’s not only intellectually unsatisfying—it’s also a disservice to anyone who’s ever felt that their naturally gentle or reflective qualities were less valuable.

If you’re truly interested in a nuanced discussion about misogyny in fandom and the ways in which female characters are evaluated, then you need to move beyond these binary arguments. Feminist film theory, gender studies, and even everyday observations of cultural behavior tell us that there isn’t one “right” way to be a woman. Instead of insisting that female strength must always be loud, aggressive, and overtly defiant, we should celebrate all forms of resilience—from the quiet, strategic strength of Sansa to the fierce, unyielding spirit of Arya.

I hope this clears things up a bit. Instead of dismissing Sansa’s character for being “normal” or too traditionally feminine, maybe take a moment to consider how those very qualities are unfairly targeted by a culture that’s obsessed with a one-size-fits-all notion of strength. And perhaps, instead of trying to reduce the conversation to which character is “better,” we can all acknowledge that the real issue here is the persistent, systemic devaluation of traditional femininity—a devaluation that harms not only fictional characters but real women in every walk of life.

So next time you feel tempted to use Arya as a scapegoat to discredit a critique of misogyny, remember: embracing multiple forms of femininity doesn’t weaken feminism—it enriches it. And if you’re really interested in feminist discourse, I’d encourage you to dig deeper into the works of Butler, de Beauvoir, Mulvey, and Bell Hooks. Their insights might just help you see that true strength comes in many forms, and that dismissing one form over another is, in itself, a kind of narrow-mindedness that we should all strive to overcome.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to a more informed discussion in the future.

Omg Sansa Starkk!!!! The TV show did her so dirty. Holy shit, they took a complicated layered character (every character of asoiaf is complicated and layered actually) and gave her the most dismissive interpretation possible.

Fuck, when I heard the criticism against game of thrones, it being sexist and the depiction of violence against women, teenager me dismissed it. Then I read the books, and I agree with every criticism 😭

Sansa irritated me in the first couple episodes of season 1, until everything turned and it became a helish nightmare for her and then I felt immense sympathy for her. In the books, she became my instant favorite.

Even Arya had more layers and complexity in the books. Arya was much more human in the books, loved it.

The show assassinated several characters—it didn’t just simplify some, like Sansa, but outright destroyed others. For example, they turned Arya into a complete psychopath, period. The Arya from the last three or four seasons had literally zero personality; she was just a badass who killed people, that’s it. She would put on her psycho killer face, and that was her entire character. She was only there so the male audience could jerk off.

And then there’s Daenerys’ character assassination. And listen, this is coming from someone who can’t stand Daenerys and found her chapters in the books unbearably boring. But even so, I can’t stand it when characters are disrespected in certain ways, and what they did to Daenerys at the end was a complete disgrace. She went from being one of the main characters, always framed as good, positive, and revolutionary by the narrative, to literally a crazy, sociopathic, genocidal maniac—it made zero sense. I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened. Sure, you could spend two more seasons showing how she descends into madness. But don’t do it in three episodes—that’s just pure nonsense. Plain and simple.

And well, WELL—I won’t even get into the rant that is, for me, the biggest crime of the entire trash show: THE CHARACTER ASSASSINATION OF JAIME LANNISTER. Jaime is one of my absolute favorite characters in the saga, and his redemption arc is one of the best I’ve ever seen. It’s truly a masterpiece of storytelling. I can accept that the show’s Jaime was more meh and had less charisma, but what I can’t accept is that after setting up a redemption arc so well, they ended it like that. Like, WHAT. They should have just killed him off during the Long Night—seriously, I wish they had done that. It would have been less painful. What a complete disaster.

Anyway, back to Sansa. She has always been my favorite character from the very beginning, in both the books and the show. I also think she’s a particularly interesting character when it comes to analyzing misogyny within fandoms. Both book Sansa and show Sansa get endless hate for one simple reason: she’s a normal girl. Sansa isn’t a dragon queen, she isn’t a ruler, she isn’t a rebel like her sister. Sansa is just a regular aristocratic girl with regular dreams for a girl of her age and status—someone who has always lived in a bubble. And her reactions, her doubts, and her fears are exactly what any normal person in her situation would have.

And that’s what audiences can’t stand—first, because she’s a reflection of themselves, since most people would act and react like Sansa, not like Arya. And second, because in a patriarchal view of women, a female character is only acceptable if she has traditionally masculine traits (she leads like a man, fights like a man, speaks like a man). A female character with flaws, whose personality isn’t masculine but also doesn’t cater to male fantasies, is unacceptable—so she becomes a constant target.

So yeah, as I’ve been saying for over ten years: hating Sansa Stark is misogyny, and I will not elaborate on this because I don’t do free education for misogynists.

[fanfixes]

I JUST WANNA TALK ABOUT BAD PRESS & THE POSSIBLE PITFALLS OF BRIDGERTON (IN GENERAL)

I’ve held it in for long enough. This is a rant.

I didn’t become a fan of Bridgerton until Season 2. Sure I watched it, because I was interested in Luke Thompson’s Benedict, I read a couple of the books before the series was released and so, yeah - I was interested BUT I wasn’t hooked.

I, just like many others, fell in love with it SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE of Kate Sharma. Simone Ashley’s performance was beautiful, engaging, enlightening, riveting. SHE made me want to tune into what the show has in store for later seasons, when Season 1 didn’t cut it for me. 

I could feel her characters burdens, the unfairness lodged on her shoulders, the loneliness of having to control the chaos around you and the overall injustice of dealing with a spoilt sister in a spoilt society. 

All the actors in Season 2 did a great job, but Simone Ashley was the main actress. Yet, she wasn’t treated as such. 

LOOKING BACK AT HOW THEY HANDLED HER INTRODUCTION TO SOCIETY, IT WAS PLAINLY BAD PRESS. 

She didn’t have enough interviews with Jonathan Bailey alone. They paired them along with Charithra Chandran / Nicola Coughlan. Which didn’t make sense.

So, fans started making reels, cropping Charithra out because their focus was on #Kanthony (which, might I add, made me feel bad for Charithra).

There were promotional posters / pictures / interviews of the casts WITHOUT Simone Ashley. The focus was on Edwina, Eloise, Penelope, Colin. If you want to include them, great, BUT WHERE ARE YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS?

Alluding to my post on Rings of Power, I get that interviews and cast appearances cost money, so its understandable that Netflix couldn’t afford as many as ROP did BUT given the notion, shouldn’t they have arranged the pairings wisely? 

Many fans, like me, depend on these interactions. I’d say that they are an investment to the show as a whole. Failing to know which pairings should have focus and more press is simply just... bad management.

WHICH DIDN’T MAKE ME SUSPICIOUS OF THE SHOW’S TRUE NATURE AND COMPLETE DISREGARD FOR THE THINGS THEY (ALLEGEDLY) STAND FOR, UNTIL THE EXECS STARTED BREAKING THE FORTH WALL AND DISHED OUT THEIR RECKLESS OPINIONS.

Shonda’s favourite couple on Bridgerton is King George and Queen Charlotte. They are not even a pairing in the books. I get that she wrote the first episode of the spin-off, but that answer is so dense. Fans know, when anyone asks you which is your favourite Bridgerton couple, you go for the main 8 love stories, not the side characters. 

The Execs don’t know how to play their audience. If you’ve come this far, you already know how disrespectful the execs have been to Jane Austen, Simone Ashley and to canon Bridgerton arcs. They are reckless with their opinions, offensive, dismissive, rude and arrogant about the shows short lived success. I say short lived, because the more these execs speaks, the more I become sceptical about how they’re going to treat S3 and subsequent seasons.

SHONDA CALLED SIMONE’S PORTRAYAL OF KATE RIDING A HORSE WHORE-ISH. This is the most recent exchange and reckless comment the exec dished. It also spurred me on to write this post. This is shocking coming from a woman whose platform is diversity - I hope it isn’t telling us what production really views their first female lead of colour.

The show is losing its take on diversity which they made their selling point and banged on endlessly in interviews. With the unnecessary character additions, who are mostly white (in a season where the leads are white), will eventually water down the whole mission they set out to achieve. Sure, your BG actors, one or two of the grandchildren (who won’t have lines) would be POCs, but DIVERSITY means these POC characters do more than serve ornamental roles. Otherwise, how are you different from any other show?

I AM AFRAID THAT THE SHOW IS LOSING ITS VISION (or worse, that I was deceived about it from the start)

Too many side plots - Season 2 implicitly sets up Penelope’s family, not her story (mind you) because whatever happened to them in S2 can be easily made irrelevant in S3 (or already is). It was that whole charade with the Featherington’s that made the pace of the show choppy and reduced the amount of time we had to uncover Kate’s story. Kate isn’t just a wife to another Bridgerton, she will be the Viscountess Bridgerton, taking over for her mother-in-law. It is a vital maternal role in the family. Nothing about her past is showcased. In fact, I’d say, with the presence of Lady Mary and her parents, Edwina had more story than Kate.

Skipping Benedict’s Season will ruin and mess-up timelines / storylines / main character arcs, the family dynamics... I can’t even. I mean, Eloise is supposed to be close to Sophie before she meets Phillip. She runs away after Pen get’s married. With Pen marrying first, and Sophie no where to be found, how is the story going to flow? (and this is just one of the many examples).

Irrelevant, unneeded, character additions to the Bridger-verse - It happened with Sienna, Theo and will happen with all the NEW characters announced to be in S3. Look I get it, book-to-series adaptations need more character fillers, BUT this isn’t a normal book to movie adaptation. It sorta works as a limited series BECAUSE the leads change every season. When this happens, what happens to these additional characters is, they could very well disappear. And that story left unaired or incomplete becomes a waste of emotions and screen time. It could also, unfortunately, cause audiences to lose interest in the programme. 

ON THAT NOTE, THE STORY IS ABOUT THE BRIDGERTONS and THEY SHOULD’VE FOCUSED ON THAT! They have a wealth of material to explore  the individual Bridgertons personalities. Instead of keeping them as background characters until “their love story climaxes” (to quote Luke Newton) why not draw them out now?! The actors claim that they’re not BG characters / not waiting in the wings before their season, which I agree, but there isn’t enough about them that we know off for audiences (specially those who haven’t read the books) to be invested in. Not everyone does character studies, not everyone is going to obsessively rewind their scenes to notice their subtle character notes.

In fact, fans love the family interactions. ABC, Ben and Eloise, Anthony with Gregory/Hyacinth. CMON! 

This brings me back to the point that the show-runners have no idea what works or what the fans want because THEY ARE NOT LISTENING.

If they focused more on all the other Bridgertons, they’ll realise that viewers have someone to root for, to enjoy before their season as leads come, and they’ll be more invested knowing that its worth investing into. 

Netflix has been going on a cancellation spree, and while I doubt Bridgerton will be one to be cancelled soon, I fear it might stop at Season 4, REGARDLESS of all of Shonda’s promises or desires to have 8 seasons. To me those promises have become empty. Which is so sad, seeing that the show has so much potential to be one of a kind. 

The wrong people are running it, as seen more and more by the audacity and lack of understanding the execs, whom the cast and crew have done nothing but been respectful to in their interviews, have shown.

Keep in mind, that regardless of how good a show is, if people don’t like the execs, it can be a cause for a show’s failure. Rings of Power is a good example to go by. Don’t worry Darling, which had a lot of negative press during its promotion caused the movie to fail, even when it wasn’t that bad of a movie, to be fair. 

Why is it, that execs, after reaching a certain level of power and influence fail to guard their callousness?

!!!Pride is the bane of their existence, and funnily enough, the object of their all their desire!!!

[edgeanescence]

cyrus has a strange implication of being with rotom.

at first it was more vague, the old notebook found in charons lab could be from any old kid, even if the wording feels oddly familiar. but then the pokemon company furthered this idea.

cyrus wants to look at your rotom dex in usum, and finds it fascinating despite the pokedex containing literal spirit. in masters, cyrus is attracted to rotom yet again, staring at it when interacting with sophocles.

additionally, cyrus only wakes up from his darkrai dream after hearing its cry. he was given a heat rotom in the double battle with mars during the battle tower in bdsp. even during the pokemon center take over event, the in character cosplayer seems to react to the animation regarding the rotom boy with interest.

even if you completely dismiss the rotom boy theory due to the official animation displaying a Much different child then cyrus, you cannot deny he has had some relationship with rotom in the past given how cyrus acts towards it.

rotoms dppt dex entries talk about how its mischievous and often possesses electronics to wreak havoc. the old notebook notes that it can turn invisible and that the electricity constantly spilling out of it makes it virtually untouchable. it also mentions that rotom mysteriously levitates and its name was based off motor but backwards. charons notebook notes that it can stay inside motors indefinitely.

given the heavy focus on machinery rotom has, down to its name, its easy to see why cyrus is interested in it. he enjoys machinery and technology, as stated by a couple npcs who knew him when he was younger and even himself in masters. team galactic sometimes wears a facade of being an energy company, so its electricity only makes it more alluring.

additionally, rotom can be flying type in fan form, lining up with one of cyrus’ eventual type preferences. even outside of it though, it floats due to levitate, making it ungrounded. ghost types arent exactly dark types, but their mannerisms can sometimes coincide with dark types. in rotoms case, its mischievous nature lines up with them.

from this point on, the application of rotoms background splits depending on what background you believe to be true.

if you believe the rotom boy theory debunked, then his relationship could be a bit more surface level. perhaps he interacted with it because of charon keeping it in a galactic building and how he needed to transport it to conduct tests. he could also have just about any other positive backgrounds here that are harder to apply specific elements to or really deduce at all.

if you still go with the rotom boy theory, then you could say that rotom was one of cyrus’ only friends. he is said to be rather asocial growing up, and the old notebook talks about a best friend type relationship with the pokemon. rotoms mischievous nature inspired cyrus to try to prank it back, which ended up in the pokemon shocking him and seemingly running away in shame. mischief feels like something a young child might gravitate towards, even if they were trying to be more uptight because of their parents, kids like to have fun after all.

perhaps he too felt invisible like rotom because of his anti social nature, or how his parents may have treated him. yet, he also felt seen, because this little pokemon shared a genuine interest in machines with him, going as far to possess a toy robot he owned.

as cyrus got older, he got more... prickly. more bitter about life and everything in it. he deemed emotions as a flaw, and decided to do his best to get rid of them. he wanted to fly high, to reach godhood, to become physically untouchable just like how his old friend was, in order to save the world of his own perceived injustice. he still utilizes technology, just for nefarious purposes instead of anything once innocent.

cyrus grew up from a ghost of a child into a corrupt leader with a dark world view. his spark of hope for the future that rotom gave him morphed into desperate flight towards an insane dream.

[the-nysh]

(eisenartworks) hello, resident Garou expert. I in desperate need of ur help. I saw u offer ur take on Garou's sequence, and I did get a few good ones on reddit, but I'm afraid I can't pick. What are your thoughts? :0

Thank you so much 😊

*gasp* 👀👀!!!! YES, @eisenartworks I am here to help! (or provide the content to brainstorm more ideas) 8'D

Ok, so if you wanted to match his character’s progression with the same 5-step sequence as the others, it'll depend on how much ‘completeness’ of his story you want to show (aka from his childhood all the way to the end of his arc - with his eyes opening under the waterfall), or focusing only on certain parts of his story to emphasize, like on the tragedy or a hopeful message for ex. So choosing which moments to include or eliminate depends on that - on what overall theme you want to show.

Because there’s already a symbolic progression of his eyes shown ‘monsterizing’ over time in canon (teetering on a fine line of balance & duality between his human/hero and ‘monster’ sides), so including when one half turns red, to the ‘human’ side waking when he’s on the surface after saving Bang, to the ‘monster’ side opening as human again under the waterfall at the end - that could be a consistent theme to focus on for ex.

Also because he goes thru countless external transformations, so if you want to fit everything into 5 images (unless you compromise room up to 6) we’d have to creatively combine or condense down different parts of his story together, to focus on his most important internal (emotional) turning points of growth/change instead. That means we can confidently exclude all the moments where he’s deliberately unconscious or passively not in full control/awareness of his own actions, because they do not reflect his innermost feelings (or actively progress his heart’s true values/goals). So the part where he’s sleep-fighting vs Darkshine, the part where he’s ‘feral’ unconscious arriving at the surface (vs Bang), and faceless Cosmic Garou (under the influence of ‘god’) can all be eliminated as ‘not actually him’ - we can’t even see his real eyes there anyway. BUT the ‘cosmic’ Garou who’s come to his senses after Tareo’s death - now THAT moment is far more important to his journey’s self-realization. :’D

And I’ve previously compiled a bunch of photosets documenting his expressions that can be used as references, but also confession: I have a wip file of his eyes I haven’t finished. Because I’ve observed how he’s the character with the most panels focused on dramatic close-up crops of his eyes (yes especially even in the webcomic!) and I just wanted to collect them all, but they happen to align with the type of story progression you’re after, so among those panels I can help narrow down which (manga) moments are most important! 8′D

Childhood - if you wanted to begin his story with his childhood (to consistently match Genos & Saitama’s who started with theirs), then it’s the panel where he’s crying angry, bitter tears in frustration at his teacher dismissing and talking down to him after he’s suffered from injustice. The moment he learned this is what he hates about how the world works. Where he’s either surrounded by the mob of ‘Tacchans’ representative of his worst (repressed) childhood trauma/humiliation, or lit by the anime’s dramatic spotlight while he sits powerless and frustrated (at being ‘alone’ and weak, with no one to support or understand him) on the chair. 

Lone Wolf Hero Hunting - so he begins his hero hunt on the night of a full moon, (if you want to document his shifting phases of the moon, cause his arc ends with a gibbous one) complete with the aesthetic of a grinning/hungry wolf (nocturnal hunter). At this part of the story, his dark eyeliner is most prominent (cause it will fade later on). The panels that best represent this stage of his story (imo) are these, especially his ‘my eyes have adjusted (to the dark)’ panel.

Red Garou, Monster Hunter - (condensing more moments now) but here’s where he has the red eye, red hair, and fresh scar. All at once. The turning point (aka a reality/naivety check) where the monsters literally backstab him to kidnap Tareo, and he declares war (alone) on the Monster Association. (Gaining the tattered ‘scarf’ thru facing Rover and getting charred by Orochi’s flames.) Significant because this is the first time he switches targets (from fighting heroes) to unleash true lethal intent vs monsters. The angriest, bloodiest, most intense, and disgusted at real monsters we ever see him (in seething feral fury in response to save/protect Tareo.)

Transformed Monster ‘Hero’ Garou - (so eliminating Spiral Garou pains me, because it was so short-lived) but this part is when his body monsterizes with the external shell of a ‘costume’ - but ONLY after he awakens to himself from saving Bang, with the realization + focus to ‘follow his heart.’ The symbolic, cracked open ‘window’ to his human eye here is so important! ;o; Cause this was the point he took action at his peak (antihero) ‘moral best’ - appearing like a monster, but saving everyone (including other heroes & Tareo) on the surface and destroying the baddest monster cadres with his own power. The moments where he took action because of, or in response to Bang (’awakened’ with the crack over his eye crumbling off his face, or the ‘blessing’ moment with the waves crashing from defeating the Centipede - in contrast to Red Garou’s fire/rage) are probably the strongest representations of his feelings here.   

‘Cosmic’ Garou’s emotional epiphany & resolve - so if the above was him at his peak, this becomes his lowest (emotionally). After ‘god’ interferes to fuck everything up, forcing Garou to learn what True Absolute Evil actually entails (not what Garou ever actually wanted) and experience the traumatic devastation & despair and self-loathing of having unknowingly killed Tareo himself. D: So horrific. (Note: actual Garou fans do not celebrate the faceless corrupted Cosmic ‘God’ entity, because it does not represent his true feelings, his own awareness/agency, or the person Garou actually is at all; he was cruelly used to destroy the humanity he’d previously staked his life to protect.) So it’s only after he finally comes to his senses, with his full face -both eyes- notably showing again, that matters most here. The strongest (most cathartic) moments being when he shares that beat of empathy with Saitama over their mutual loss of their most important person (still with residual ‘stardust’ tears grieving for Tareo - esp if you want to compare/contrast with Garou’s angry tears as a child), and then resolves to fix everything he never intended (choosing to sacrifice himself as a hero to help save the world.) Especially with the aesthetic of him still wearing his cosmic space ‘shell,’ the irradiated night sky with a watchful gibbous moon, or even parts of him turning to salt already.

Bonus: Waterfall Garou - cause whether you include or eliminate this moment (or exclude the first childhood one to include this one for a total 5, instead of 6) I like it because his story ideally shouldn’t end with his ‘death’ it finally shows him being ‘cleansed,’ with that one eye - that had symbolically been half ‘monsterized’ red before, opening up (as human) to new future possibilities.

So if you begin with crying kid Garou and end with him grieving over Tareo, that’s one approach (showing two different kinds of tears, keeping a bookend theme coming back full-circle in a way, and consistent with Genos & Saitama’s by including Garou’s childhood too.) But if you start with his hero hunting and end with the waterfall panel, it shows a more ‘complete’ progression of his active (present-day) journey instead, leaving off on a more hopeful, open-ended note (rather than ending at the implied, doomed tragedy of both his & Tareo’s death.) And because his arc is ‘complete’ anyway, it feels only fair to show most of the whole thing, imo. :’3