#this is just a -why Amy is fucked up and the way she is- analysis

[m00n-pr1sm]

Amy Dunne Character Analysis

Disclaimer

This analysis will be of Amy’s character from both the book and the movie, although the 2014 movie adaption takes greater precedence with only some additional details and quotes included from the book as it does delve deeper into Amy’s psyche and add further characterization. Thus some traits may be accentuated further than they are in the movie, not being completely faithful to either story. It’s an analysis of Amy in her totality across mediums, of course being entirely my opinion. There are of course adaptational differences but I will not include the major ones from the books (ex. her relationship with Hillary Hand). This is an analysis focusing primarily on Amy’s neuroses she demonstrates and the childhood links to them, it doesn’t cover in-depth the events nor themes of Gone Girl.

Amy Elliott Dunne, the ever enigmatic dual protagonist- antagonist of Gone Girl is one of the most iconic female villains in modern memory, and one of the paragons of the “good for her” trope in media, is, frankly, one of my favorite characters of all time. As such I have been dying to write a full analysis examining her neuroses and characterization. Beneath the cultural perception of just another “crazy psycho” for girls to claim “she did no wrong” or “she just like me fr!”, lies a fascinating character who is masterfully written and developed by Gillian Flynn, as well as perfectly portrayed by Rosamund Pike. Amy Dunne is a character with a deep, complex psychology that I will do my best to thoroughly explore in this analysis.

From Amy’s childhood we first see the emergence of a literal high ego ideal, Amazing Amy. Of course this is the children’s book series created by her parents with a fictionalized version of Amy being the eponymous protagonist. This was a version of herself that rectified her own personal failures. Amazing Amy became a prodigy at cello, when Amy quit at 10, Amazing Amy made varsity volleyball, Amy got cut freshman year. Even in the (at time) final book in the series, Amazing Amy got married, a task Amy had not yet done. The entire book series revolved around Amy always making the most virtuous, the most selfless, the most perfect decisions.

>”With me, regular, flawed, real Amy, jealous, as always, of the golden child.”

An interesting detail in the book that is omitted from the movie is Marybeth’s numerous miscarriages and stillbirths (which totaled 7). All of these girls were named Hope, until Amy was born. Amy expresses her jealousy towards them, as they were always seen as perfect without ever living; meanwhile Amy herself has to live life everyday knowing that she will never truly live up to the Hopes. That she has to try everyday to be the best she can be. Her very birth was mired in the expectation of a perfect child; given that she was practically a gift from the heavens to her parents.

This sets up Amy’s perfectionism, as the childhood experience of never living up to a projected ideal led her to want to be perfect (and as we’ll later see, the expectation that everyone else is too), to live life always through the gaze of another. Evidently this leads to a loss of one’s inner essence, one’s individuality and sense of self.

>“-I’d never really felt like a person, because I was always a product” (Book Quote)

Amy’s obsession with personas can be seen as emerging from this, as she adapts a personality depending on who she’s interacting with, as to always be the most appealing she can, she is Amazing Amy after all.

>”I’m not sure, exactly, how to be Dead Amy. I’m trying to figure out what that means for me, what I become for the next few months. Anyone, I suppose, except people I’ve already been: Amazing Amy. Preppy ’80s Girl. Ultimate-Frisbee Granola and Blushing Ingenue and Witty Hepburnian Sophisticate. Brainy Ironic Girl and Boho Babe (the latest version of Frisbee Granola). Cool Girl and Loved Wife and Unloved Wife and Vengeful Scorned Wife. Diary Amy.” (Book Quote)

This general attitude leads to people trying to impress her as she places herself as someone special and especially someone to keep around. She entices both the characters and viewers of the film through her manufactured charisma and enchantment. However, we’ll see this dramatically backfire in her relationship with Nick, just you wait!

For now we can focus on the beginning of their relationship as well as what I believe to be Amy’s view on romance.

I believe that Amy has an impossibly high standard of love, one that stems from her perfectionism and general inability to let down her guise of being amazing. Not to mention how her parents were a perfect match, Amy even referring to them as soul-mates.

>”They have no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflicts, they ride through life like conjoined jellyfish—expanding and contracting instinctively, filling each other’s spaces liquidly. Making it look easy, the soul-mate thing.” (Book Quote)

In her childhood it’s implied that she was into romance novels, specifically Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which obviously contributes to the idealization of romance, of a literal scripted love.

>”You were an alienated teen and only Elizabeth Bennet understood you”

I think this little quote is incredibly indicative; it establishes a sense of alienation, of Amy never quite fitting in and blending with others.

>”So many lessons and opportunities and advantages, and they never taught me how to be happy. I remember always being baffled by other children. I would be at a birthday party and watch the other kids giggling and making faces, and I would try to do that too, but I wouldn’t understand why. I would sit there with the tight elastic thread of the birthday hat parting the pudge of my underchin, with the grainy frosting of the cake bluing my teeth, and I would try to figure out why it was fun.” (Book Quote)

Back to the topic of romance, through these stories it allowed her to imagine her perfect romance: if Amy could find that one person that truly understood her, beyond the illusion, that then would constitute a perfect union of love. She does deep down (whether consciously or not) want to be loved for who she is; not the idealized, palatable, literal marketed version of herself. Thus she holds trust as a premium, expecting that if she does the Herculean task of unspooling and revealing herself to another, that the other person would love her no matter what.

>”Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you?” (Book Quote)

However all of this culminates in an impossibly high standard of a lover, of a practically divine mythical love; where one loves totally and absolutely. Of course where this neurosis is most demonstrated is in Nick and Amy’s relationship.

Amy comments that after meeting Nick she finally felt like a person as he brought out a side of herself that hadn’t been seen, in her own words “a lightness and an ease”, something that Amy enjoyed. In her eyes they had the perfect relationship in the beginning, Nick was her compliment with the witty banter, with their inside jokes, and charm.

However this doesn’t just vanquish her childhood neuroses, through her desire to be seen as perfect, she modifies herself to be a “cool girl” for Nick, complying endlessly to standards to maintain this perception.

>” When I met Nick Dunne, I knew he wanted a cool girl and for him, I’ll admit, I was willing to try.”

Amy essentially became Nick’s image of a perfect girl, witty, fun, and most of all easy-going and forgiving.

Yet one cannot live forever in images and ideas; and as such, the real, true Amy emerged. The Amy that cares too much, that’s hard to get along with, that is a controlling perfectionist. She also tests Nick through the treasure hunts, weaving in little details about their relationship as to challenge Nick and hope that he remembers the things they do together as deeply as she does. Combined with the 2008 recession and declining health of Nick’s mother (the consequences of which will be explored later). As well as Nick’s growing dissatisfaction in the relationship (evidenced by his worsening performances in the treasure hunts, the cheating, using her for sex and ignoring her otherwise, etc). The illusion both Nick and Amy were living in crumbled; they couldn’t possibly sustain their relationship as they were both striving to fulfill reciprocating images for the other.

One of the biggest parts of her character is Amy’s elitism and entitlement, in which she thinks of herself as someone superior, someone that deserves to be loved absolutely for who she is, although only to people she considers worthy.

>”She’s easy to like. I’ve never understood why that’s considered a compliment—that just anyone could like you.” (Book Quote)

Once again this stems from her childhood, in a seemingly contradictory way, she also sees herself as special for being the one that survived from her mother’s attempts, as well as the fact that her birth was so tumultuous that she would be an only child. From this also stems her entitlement for love.

Amy actively looks down upon women she considers “average”, whom she sees as coming from mediocrity and continuously perpetuating that in their lives. She scoffs at them with her wealthy parents and NYC background until her marriage with Nick crumbles. Only then does she realize that she’s become the very woman she would previously disdain. A woman with a failing marriage, the loss of her previous wealth following the recession, and moving to a failed development in Missouri (What the hell’s in Missouri?) for Nick’s mother.

I truly believe this, combined with Nick’s infidelity, and most importantly the loss of her idyllic love culminated in the iconic Gone Girl plan.

>”Nick took and took from me until I no longer existed, that’s murder. Let the punishment fit the crime”.

Nick took Amy’s identity, her sense of self that she so generously revealed to him and rejected her. Implying that she would only be loved if played the role of the “cool girl”; stripping her of who she really was, losing herself in yet another persona. Although Amy admits she doesn’t really have a personality and lives through personas, she still has a semblance of self that she holds dear.

>”-made me realize that there was a Real Amy in there, and she was so much better, more interesting and complicated and challenging, than Cool Amy”. (Book Quote)

Worse yet, Nick had cheated on her with a “newer, younger, bouncer Cool Girl”, leaving Amy in the dust, surely damaging her pride.

But Amy truly fell in love with her idealized version of Nick, believing that she was responsible for shaping that version of Nick. That she deserved that man in his entirety, of course what gets Amy to come back to Nick is the Sharon Scheiber interview, in which he promises to make up with Amy in just the way that makes her think that Nick is the one person who gets her. He makes the little references to their inside jokes (2 fingers on the chin when they’re not bullshitting the other) and a reference to the end of the treasure hunt (always a contentious issue in their relationship). She’s reminded of who he was, that he was once perfect for her, who else could know how to appeal to her heart in just the right way? With the same passion and conviction she reverses the judgment on Nick, clawing her way back to him. She does so in an especially brutal manner, slashing Desi’s throat with a boxcutter right after he climaxes. Putting aside my enormous personal bias against Desi, he was technically an innocent man, taking a great risk in sheltering Amy. However it’s clear that Amy sees him as merely an asset and something to be disposed of once he serves his value, as another prop in her ever evolving masterplan; she did string him along for years through their letter correspondences. He was just another casualty in Amy’s search for idyllic love. She comes back dramatically, literally falling into Nick’s arms while still covered in Desi’s blood like a dress; fabricating an elaborate story about a love obsessed former boyfriend kidnapping and violating her. Despite the glaring holes in her whole story (If Amy’s marriage was as bad as she made it out to be, why did she go back to Nick so easily? How did she get access to a knife and kill him so seamlessly? Why didn’t Amy do anything when she discovered the stuff in Margo’s shed? etc), law enforcement, media, and the public all fully believe it, infatuated with the persona and narrative that Amy’s created for herself. In the end she traps Nick into the marriage and eventually, the family. The last shot of the film is a haunting recall to the beginning shot of the film, as Amy has both revealed and secured herself to be the master of the narrative, finally obtaining her perfect love, no matter what the cost may have been.

Conclusion

Through a constant demand in Amy’s childhood emerges a need for perfection, simultaneously bringing about a sense of superiority and entitlement. The use of personas and façades facilitate this, painting Amy as the most amazing cool girl for whomever she’s performing for, to feed her need to be seen as perfect and desirable. Yet there emerges a psychological detachment from others; as the need to perform inevitably leads to an internal hollowness. However underneath all these layers there also lies the true Amy who has the deep unconscious desire of wanting to be loved absolutely, to have a perfect union of love where she can reveal herself fully and be loved for who she is truly.

>disclaimer for tumblr lol, this is not me trying to claim Amy was innocent I am fully aware that she’s a terribly entitled and narcissistic person but she can still be complex and have relatable desires & be a person even if she’s massively fucked up!!

[ewingstan]

Going into Ward, one of the things that interested me is that pretty much everyone who read it, no matter what the felt about it as a whole, seemed to like what it did with Tattletale and incorporate it into their understanding of the character. To a certain extent this makes sense, outside of Amy people's problems with Worm usually aren't that characterization had been changed. But few other aspects of Ward have been talked about with so much relative positivity, or influenced so much retroactive analysis of Worm.

After reading her interlude, I'm starting to understand why.

From the bat we're given blunt and effective portrayals of how alone Lisa feels. Half of her descriptions of other characters focused on how they reminded her of people she's lost. The Heartbroken are primarily described by the ways they do and don't resemble Alec. Aiden by how he does and doesn't resemble Taylor. Imp and Rachel get mentioned but don't get to make an appearance at all, furthering the effect—reminders of her closest connections are everywhere, but the connections themselves are nowhere. She's left with the "expanded Undersiders," and is painfully aware of how they either dislike her or will never form a close connection with her.

There's a lot more emphasis here on how her power is a separate entity than there was in Lisa's Worm interlude. She's snarking at it, talking about it as something that interjects, drawing a clear divide in her head between what it figures out and what she figures out. Is that her knowledge of its nature developing, or simply a new way of looking at how it always worked?

The framing in the passage above seems to suggest that its encouraging her to distance herself from others, pushing her to interact but specifically feeding her information that will prevent close connections. Questions of agency and identity aside, I do like this as an aspect of powers-as-coping-mechanisms: she was triggered by failing to save someone she was close to, not recognizing the signs that he was unwell. Her power helps her see the signs she couldn't before, but it also seems to try to prevent those close connections from forming so she can't be hurt the same way. Not that its successful. Can't stop betting on losing dogs and all.

What she calls people internally is interesting. I figured she had been calling Sveta "Garotte" earlier to needle her, but she continues to call her that in her own thoughts, as does her power. Valkyrie gets to be "Valkyrie," and Vicky isn't called a cape name at all. There's a few ways to interpret this; I'm tempted to say that Lisa sees Victoria as a relic of pre-Gold Morning days, and sees Sveta largely in that context. Though I also feel like there's some refusal to see her or Rain as people who are separate from what they've done in the past. A lot of the comments I've read while reading the last few chapters are people debating whether she should've gone "white-hat," and I get the sense that she sees something dishonest in that. Leaving behind the things you've done isn't something she can do—even Lisa Wilbourn can't leave behind the failures of Sarah Livsey.

That might be something to think about in the context of Victoria claiming Tattletale is awful because she represents "giving up on something better." Its kind of baffling in that context; many people have pointed out that cutting the number of overdoses in half was way better than anything the heroes ever did, but Victoria resents that TT saw merely halving it as acceptable. She prefers methods that highlight a certain attitude towards a problem over methods that are effective at dealing with a problem. Having zero tolerance for overdoses and being able to do fuck-all about it becomes preferable to halving it, because not giving up on an ideal world is better than actually making the world better. As little regard as I have for Victoria's position, it seems that the text is giving it some credence by positioning Lisa not just as pursuing the methods that will make an actual difference, but also as rejecting the idea of "something better." Sveta can't be more than Garotte, overdose rates can be halved but not lowered further. Its weirdly reifying of Victoria's position, making Lisa a foil to it rather than a reflection of an entirely unrelated worldview.

There's a few team leaders in the parahumans-verse who get characterized as encouraging and benefiting from chaos within their ranks. Jack Slash had a self-image of himself as a master manipulator who knew just how to keep the Nine at each others throats to keep them in line, though of course his power was pulling heavy duty there. Trickster exulted in sowing chaos, but while he could use it to his advantage when working alone it explicitly got in the way of the Travellers as a whole during their operations. Lisa incorporates aspects of both; she seems to be cultivating a "this chaos is all part of my design" air for Faultline and Victoria while actually always being on the cusp of losing control of her own team. It seems less like something she's doing deliberately and more like something she has to deal with, even if she later frames it as part of preparing Aiden or something similar.

Man, her relationship with Aiden. First explicit mention of Taylor we've had since the beginning and its for a blunt confirmation that she sees herself as failing Taylor in the same way she failed Rex, and is terrified of doing with Aiden. It feels both like she's holding him at arms length and that she's desperate for a close connection with him.

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

Okay, I've Read Worm: A Retrospective Part 1: How The Fuck Did I Get Here?

I don't know exactly what I'm going to be doing with all these posts, but at a minimum, we will be having the following, not necessarily in this order:

A discussion of some of the parts of Worm I liked most. Some genuine and well-earned praise for Wildbow.

An analysis of Amy Dallon as she exists in Worm, though more for unpacking my own thoughts in one place rather than some deep literary stuff.

A discussion of things I was genuinely surprised by in the Text itself versus the stuff I picked up via fandom osmosis and fanfic. Expectation vs reality and stuff.

A discussion of just who the fuck the target audience of Worm actually probably maybe was, and what the fuck I just read.

And a detailed (for my own unpacking of thoughts than to convince anyone of anything) discussion of why I'm not going to read Ward. Nothing new there, but still, it'll be nice to put it all one one place.

But first, let's take a step back and answer one very important question: How in the bloody fuck did I end up here? How the fuck did reading Worm even happen? Because as I've said before, superhero media isn't my thing, I'm definitely not the target audience for Worm, and while I enjoyed it, only liking it 60% is a barely passing grade, as it were.

So how the blue hell did I end up here?

I don't know exactly when I first became aware of Worm. What I do know is that I was loosely aware of it by 2019, because I was active on SpaceBattles, and of course, Worm is all over there. I'd see the name, and I knew it referred to a work of fiction, but that's about all I knew. It might have been before 2019 that I first heard the name, it might not have. I say by 2019, because I know that sometime in 2019, I was in a discord server associated with one of the many spinoff sites to Spacebattles (I believe it was Frozen in Carbonite, which was honestly a pretty noxious website but I didn't know that going in) and I made a post using this meme:

And I got an answer that was something to the effect of 'It's an edgy villain protagonist superhero story'. And so I shrugged, and I moved on. Not my speed. Superheroes aren't my thing, not really, not in of themselves. I first got into AoS watching it with my then GF back in... 2015? And then I got into shipping Skyeward in it. Then I watched Arrow because some of the people I followed from Skyeward were into it and again, pretty much stayed for the shipping and certain characters. Flash and Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl were entered into as branching off from Arrow.

And yes I've watched a good chunk of the MCU, but mostly because why not watch a movie and there's a handful of characters I liked. But I've never read a single superhero comic book, as far as I can recall, and I've never really been super into any superhero cartoons, just watched them if they happened to be on Cartoon Network when I was a kid.

At some point between then and this year, I found a Worm CYOA on r/nsfwcyoa, and despite never having read it, gave it a look, played around with it, and picked up random errant facts about the story and characters therein. I would revisit this CYOA and similar ones as they got updates, and along the way got my first exposure to the whole 'fanon' problem of the Worm fandom, when one of the options in one of the CYOAs was to make certain popular fanon true for the version of Earth-Bet 'your character' appeared in for the CYOA. Things like making Woobie Amy true, or turning Vicky into the Collateral Damage Barbie she's cast as by some people, et cetera.

And then, at some point probably late last year or early this year, I think, I was on Questionable Questing (the pervert uncle of Spacebattles, as it were) and I saw a fic get posted that was Worm - so, prepared to ignore it - and then I saw it was also tagged with several of my kinks. And I've read smutfics that aren't for one of my fandoms if I really like the kinks and it's just a smutfic, so I gave it a show. How much do you need to know about the source canon for a smutfic, eh?

I don't remember much about that fic, or even which of my kinks in particular it had, but I would read a few other such stories here and there until sometime in... probably May or so, maybe late April, when I made an errant post on QQ in a thread discussing stories you considered but never actually read, that I had considered Worm (because by then I had, ish, after some of the various go-arounds with the CYOA and picking up bits of osmosis here and there) but that the whole thing sounded too bleak and grimdark and depressing.

This spawned a conversation about Worm, and if it was really grimdark (one person I think went so far as to say it wasn't even depressing or bleak, and oh to live in that person's world) and if it was really a deconstruction or a love letter to superhero media or a takedown of superhero media or w/e. And at some point, someone made a comment about Wildbow having disdain for his fans, or something like that.

And I was like 'I feel like there's a story there'. And yes there was. One of the things that came up were the so-called 'retcons' of Ward re: Amy (whether or not they are actually retcons is beyond the point of this post, please don't discuss it here). And here's the thing, my thought then was: I've been there.

I've been there when characters have been set on, or are seemingly being set up for, some kind of redemption arc, and then some new installment pulls the rug out from under the character in a way that feels very, very deliberately aimed at fans of the character. Grant Ward is the most notable case of this for me. 2015 and 2016 me had quite a few things to say about that. 2024 me lacks the energy or desire to go into detail.

It's not fun, either way. So I sympathized. And I figured that probably meant Amy Dallon would be my sort of character. But I didn't want to read Worm - it sounded depressing, it was 1.6 million words, Taylor didn't sound super appealing and I knew she was the main POV, and superheroes aren't my thing.

But it wouldn't leave my head. So I started poking around on places like r/parahumans (a den of bad takes and noxious fans if there ever was one) and r/WormFanfic and the Parahumans wiki and looked through a few threads on SB and started trawling the Amy Dallon tag here on Tumblr and developed some thoughts.

Amy Dallon, and the injustice of what happened to her in Ward had crawled inside my head and it wasn't going anywhere. I ranted to my friends about all the shit I'd learned and was like 'I HAVEN'T EVEN READ THIS WORK AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF I WANT TO AND IT JUST WON'T LEAVE MY BRAIN!'. I remember seeing a post saying something about how someone who had read worm couldn't relate to people who hadn't and weren't constantly thinking about Amy and I reblogged it saying 'I haven't even read Worm and I'm constantly thinking about Amy' and I think the OP of the post reblogged my reblog and called me a whole new kind of person or something. I don't remember and don't care to go digging.

The things that held me back the most continued to be the sheer length of Worm, a fear that Taylor would be insufferable and the fact that it still sounded godforsakenly depressing. (2 out of 3 ain't bad, as Meatloaf Says). So eventually I decided to go poking around and read some fic to get the idea if I'd actually read it. I don't remember all the ones I read in this period, but they included: I, Panacea, Desperate Times Call For Desperate Pleasures, Queen of Blood and More Than Meets The Eye. It was around this time I also started getting multiple Worm Fic Ideas, which was... fun. Because you know, it's one thing to read fanfic without knowing the source canon, but I've always loathed in previous fandoms when people say they're writing a fic for a canon they've only read fic from (and was always an immediate X-out for me) and I have too much dignity self-respect as a writer to do that myself.

Now, fic ideas don't mean I have to write them. I have ASOIAF and TVD fic Ideas I'm never going to write, and my notebooks across the ages are littered with fic Ideas I had and then put aside and never wrote. Some still haunt my dreams like Edgar Allen Poe's Telltale Heart. But still.

Eventually, after someone made a comment to me to the effect of 'with all due respect, if you haven't read Worm, shut up about it' I decided to at least make an effort to read it. Spite was my original intent - I wanted to see if my opinion about Amy's storyline in Worm specifically would remain the same (and it broadly has) and if so, I would feel satisfied I'd been right.

(For the record, It did remain the same (pretty much, more on this in a future post) and I do feel satisfied that I was right.)

And so, on June 16th, half on a whim and half because I knew I'd have things to say and I wanted to section them off my main blog, I made this blog and began reading Gestation 1.1. I gave it even odds in my head I'd give up before I was more than a few arcs in.

Wasn't even tempted until Arcs 12 and 13. Then was tempted again in the absolute nadir of the work, 17-19. And then again during the Behemoth fight. Once I got past that, I was never temped.

So that's I got here. Existing adjacent to Worm for years, some osmosis, an ill-timed comment, some snarky responses and a character that burrows into my brain by hitting all of my buttons.

[clockworkreapers]

you should pretty please explain why you chose each classpect for each gas station character I want to see an analysis

ohohohoh BOY do I have a classpect breakdown for you (rubs my grubby little hands together) Jack: Mage of Doom, Derse Dreamer Doom is all about fate, suffering, empathy, wisdom and the inevitable. Whether he likes it or not Jack is tied to fate itself- he IS the main character after all, for better or for worse (usually the later). His own fate was even meticulously planned out from before the books even started everyone who has read vol4 knows what I'm talking about. He's the unknowing harbinger of doom y'all remember halloween night in vol 1? YEP! Even in tales from the road there is literally an entity telling him about an impending doom he can't avoid. He will survive it though, doom is about the journey but never the ending, mans not allowed to die permanently because without him you have no storyteller, he'll get to go though every painful thing the universe throws at him and still get back up. He's done this before, he'll do it again, he knows how it works, he will just suffer through it. He's a smart guy, he figured out how Bedside Manor worked and how to break it, he figured out how to cheat fate at the end of vol 4 by doing something he would NEVER do. He's learned the ins and outs of how doom works and once he does he can use that knowledge to find the loopholes, just like any other Mage of Doom. Jerry: Rogue of Breath, Prospit dreamer Breath is about freedom, adaptability, motivation, change and are all extremely social people.

You'd probs jump to Jerry as oh he's a Hope player, all the cult stuff- HOWEVER Jerry kinda royally fucked that up due to his own want and need for freedom. He didn't even care to follow his own rules he refuses to be boxed in by anyone or anything including himself. He's a flamboyant, chaotic social butterfly goblin of a man with a good heart who refuses to be restricted by others he's just as free and volatile as the wind. The fact that Breath players are also known to sweep others up in their own personal pursuits.... y'all know what he did- ON TOP OF LETTING IT GET WAY OUT OF HAND. He DID the Rogue thing, he took freedom at first a lotta people's freedom but since he didn't want to be in control he gave alllllllll that freedom back and that freedom ended up being completely misused. Past that though Jerry is selfless, sure he steals and takes from others but he's never doing it for himself, he's always doing it for someone else. Man stole food and clothes to give to homeless people, he steals shit from the gas station all the time but he overpays for each item he takes (we know he's the one leaving all that extra money in the register) he doesnt even do it for attention either he just does. Rosa: Sylph of Blood, Prospit dreamer Blood is the bond aspect, stubborn but charismatic, magnetic and uplifting, they are your most loyal friends to a fault.

Rosa... is so damn stubborn- dude that girl came back 3 times- 3 fucking times while Jack (not fully his fault) kept ghosting her while they were trying to hire new employees during vol 2. Not only that but she hung on to him though the whole mess of vol3 and still was like nope you're stuck with me you are going to be my friend and I am going to care about you no matter what shit you get into even if i have no clue what's going on. Oh man then in vol 4??? She did the thing- she literally did the sylph thing where they teach others how to heal their aspect- she helps him heal that broken connecting he has to Sabine. She is the only reason he figures out how to talk to her again she helps him heal that link even though its hella painful for him. She's also the only one who has ever gotten him in the vicinity or talking about his blood relatives and while she agrees that bond would better be broken than healed she does sorta help him come to terms with it all which is healing in itself. Amy: Knight of Light, Derse dreamer. Light is the straight up raw knowledge aspect, accuracy, perfectionism to the point people think its straight up luck. Considering Amy is a cop and she also actively looks into her cases because a lot of them confuse her (the town is weird) she is seeking knowledge at every corner. I'm not only looking at this from what she does in vol 2-4 but also during Finding Vanessa. She also plays detective, she on her own tries to figure it all out and uncover all this hidden stuff the town is hiding, and you can pick up on it when you go back and read her scenes. In Vol4 you get to see how much she actually HAS figured out without ever talking to the rest of them or even asking for help. If you read closely and you know how stuff works from Finding Vanessa there is a tell in vol 4 in the morgue when she steps out to take that call. She has far more knowledge of the events happening than she says aloud and she uses every bit of that knowledge to protect the other three at every turn, especially Jack. She actually does her job trying to protect the innocent unlike the majority of the cops in town, she even gets one past Roger in the end cuz she outsmarts the debt because she has the knowledge on how the deals work. Spencer: Prince of Time, Derse dreamer Time is about the beginnings and the ends, independence and perseverance and they have heavy connections to death.

What can I say, Spencer gets shit done. He has his grubby little mitts in everything moving the plot forward outside of Jack. Also like....isn't he technically undead/ immortal? Either way he's a time player, he is incapable of just accepting things as they come oh no, he never sits down and takes anything he's always pushing forward, always moving, he's always doing something. Dude is playing 4D chess though out the books in the background he works with the impossible, frankly its a bit terrifying cuz he never slows down or stops. Even when he's waiting its to strike at the most opportune moment. All of that is what also makes him a Prince (please make fun of his stupid pants and tiara) he is destructive and terrifying and he LOVES the attention he gets from it. Princes really like getting recognized for their efforts, whatever they may be, Spencer is no different he loves the thrill he loves to scare people and have power over them. If you think about someone who destroys peoples time... the guy who ends a lot of people's time? Sabine: Muse of Space, Prospit dreamer Space is always the aspect of creation, abstraction, inventiveness, new beginnings.

Oh yes... we have a Master Class. Sabine being a Muse makes perfect sense considering how shrouded in mystery she is- not to mention how she is NEVER actually there though out the whole story. Her presence lingers and she has massive sway on the journey Jack and all the others take. She's the ghost that haunts the narrative who has left such an impact on it she's forever influencing the world without her ever being there. And if you know vol4... with Spencer as the Time player and Sabine as the Space player.... mhm you see why that works? She gives everyone space or leads them to the place they are now, for better or worse. We saw their memories, she showed up in all of them influencing them to be where they are now. Space is creation, its new life, she makes sure others can have that, even if it means she sacrificed herself so someone else can start again.

[whywasthissohardtomake]

okay. time for the romantic entanglement analysis thingymabobber. I'm using my laptop so you know things are serious (and also that my grammar and typing will be better lmao).

okay. this is becoming really long, so I'm gonna put one of those keep reading barriers.

So, the thing is, is that I like Cassandra and Asiao. Like I like them as characters and they are also likable. Fun to read and pretty well-rounded for side characters. They don't have as much depth as like, Jason or Sophie or Farrah, but they're not as important to the narrative as those three are, and they're characterization is on par with other characters of their same importance, like Danielle Geller. Amy is a good character but I don't like her on a personal level due to my extreme bias towards Jason. I like her, but also like what the fuck Amy?? why would you do that? (I know why but it's still a dick move.)

So, we have established that I like all of Jason's current and past romantic entanglements (girlfriends as they are usually called lmao). But I don't necessarily like them with Jason. This isn't because I ship him with someone else, but because I feel that they are not really great matches with him. and also that he really shouldn't be dating anyone.

They are all clearly not endgame, and I find their dynamics to be relatively... not shallow, but not emotionally vulnerable to the extent they should be. Maybe I'm just a romantic at heart, but for romantic partners of the kind Jason seems to be seeking out, they do not have the depth of bond that is wanted in those relationships. And I feel that they never would have them.

I just realized this whole thing is gonna be so rambly oh my god. I'm so sorry in advance.

but anyway, Jason doesn't trust a lot of people. He may seem to, but he doesn't. not with himself. His reaction to emotional upheaval is still to run away and hide his pain, as shown in the aftermath of Makassar (I think this is the right city. Unlike character names, I can actually look up cities in Indonesia and how to spell them. Yay!!). he may trust Asiao with the secret of the door and of saving the world, but he would not so readily bare his heart. And I know I'm contradicting what he does in canon. Because he often talks about how bad he's doing, but that's because he's doing so bad. I firmly believe that if he were given moments to rest he would downplay things. WAIT NO HE STILL DOES THAT. JUST NOT IN THE WAY IM THINKING. I FUCKING KNEW I WAS RIGHT. he is downplaying his experiences!! but not by not acknowledging them but by comparing them to others and finding his own trauma wanting!!

what's so surprising about that though is that in the aftermath of the torture he was all about getting the healing he needed, and yet he still doesn't seem to have the coping mechanisms that he should. I don't know, he's both aware that he's doing poorly, has skills to work on it, but still downplays his own pain but only when comparing it to others.

waiiiiit. I think I'm figuring something out here. If Jason and someone else were tortured together, he would be more worried about them than himself even if he was worse off. or he'd feel guilty that he didn't get them both out sooner. He doesn't downplay his pain as much when he can't find something to feel guilty about or when it only affects him. I think I'm getting more of a handle on Jason's responses to trauma and stuff.

FUCK THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT HIS GIRLFRIENDS OH NO. tangent over. back to romance!!

okay! so! what's interesting is that Jason is more willing to be vulnerable with friends than he is with his romantic partners. Farrah knows him best and while she also has waaaaayyyy more knowledge about Jason and has seen him through more things, I can't imagine him having the easy kind of trust between him and Asiao. Which Farrah even acknowledges. that these are two different kinds of trusts, and it's not surprising Asiao can't trust him completely yet.

but the other thing is, is that both of his relationships that develop within the series start immediately as romance. Well, I mean Asiao starts as high school acquaintances, but when he comes back their relationship develops quickly to romance. Cassandra was immediately romantic. I feel that Jason would have a better relationship, a deeper one, if they started as friends and developed more into romance over time. But I wonder if he'd ever be willing to do that again due to what happened with Amy. If he'd be willing to pursue a friend romantically when the last time that happened she married his brother.

What's also interesting is in who pursued who in his relationships. He wanted Amy first and (from what we are told) seemed to... not pressure, but something less manipulative in the same vein, her into a relationship. We are also told that she only accepted his advances when he started taking an interest in Asiao. As this is all told from either perspectives too close to the relationship at hand or too far, I'm taking all of that with a heaping spoon of salt.

With Cassandra, he started the flirtation, but it seems to have been mutual in its growth. To be honest, Cassandra has been my favorite of Jason's love interests, though Asiao might be my favorite of the three women as characters if we ignore the romance-Jason aspects.

With Asiao, she basically pursued him. Yes he was open to it, but he wasn't seeking it out. If he was really invested in trying to date her, he might have tried to get the bracelet and see if she'd be willing to wear it try some dates. But he didn't. he even says that he's not as emotionally invested in the relationship as she is, though he feels he could become more invested. (If my theory is true, he is becoming more invested only to BE FUCKING STABBED IN THE BACK.)

anyway, I don't know if the above means anything, but eh.

OH!! as to why Jason shouldn't be dating anyone: he has so much unresolved trauma surrounding romantic relationships. He has said over and over that he does not have to get over Amy and Kaito's betrayal, that he hasn't gotten over it, and that he doesn't plan on getting over it. I honestly believe this man should not be dating anyone until he works through that. I don't care that I haven't seen any noticeable trauma responses when it comes to his relationships. He may not be hurting anyone due to his unresolved trauma, but I doubt it's healthy for him. I need this man to go on vacation with his friends and just chill. No dating. no monsters. no nothing. just him and his family and his friends who are family.

anywho, this is the post! as always, pls no spoilers

[billerak]

Ok so I saw the take that the reason Ami does everything she does during the second half of Toradora is explicitly for Ryuji and his happiness and like

I am honor-bound, as the owner of Minami/Aminori, to refute this understandable take with my own delusions. I won't say where I saw this take cuz I don't wanna have beef with no-one but I can't not answer either.

So I'll just pick the scene the scene that seemed to prompt this take and say nuh-uh. The fight after the room discussion. "Ami knew the guys were in the closet and she was just trying to get Minori to confess that she likes Ryuji, or that she doesn't like him, to give him a straight answer."

This one's easy to disprove. For starters, Ami has no way to know the guys were in the closet. At best, she can guess Taiga is there, thanks to the towel. Could she extrapolate Ryuji being there? I mean, sure, maybe. It's a bit of a leap in logic but let's say she figured it out.

EVEN WITH THAT!

She literally disproves it herself. She wants Minori to be honest with her, and that's what's pissing her off. I already made a whole ass analysis of this entire episode here and here (and of pretty much every important moment for Minori and Ami just check the Toradora tag in my archive) so I won't be going on a whole rant about it here but yeah.

I mean, she's not angry that she couldn't give Ryuji the answer. She's explicitly angry she can't get Minori to be honest.

Could Ryuji also be influencing her? Oh, totally. She still likes him... kinda. At this point she's so fucking done with it all.

It's true she was pushing Minori and Ryuji to be together, presumably for his sake too. But... We're in chapter 21 already bro. You think Ami doesn't know full well what's going on?

This stopped being about Ryuji at least 4 chapters ago. 5 if you push me. It's also why she's feeling so guilty! She's been pushing Minori to be honest and only ended up hurting her and Ryuji!

But why is she going through all this trouble?! Think, random internet user, think! If she already knows Ryuji and Taiga will end up together (And she fucking does), then the only person who actually stands to benefit from being wholly honest is Minori! Ryuji doesn't need the closure of a straight answer, it's Minori who needs to be relieved of the burden of a not-pursued love!

This shit ain't for Ryuji, not fully. It's for Minori.

Why go that far? Well you can check my other posts or draw your own conclusions. I have my own lmao.

[randomthefox]

A couple of things about the Knuckles Anniversary comic:

1) Why does the comic focus so much on Trip instead?

2) Was Trip established to be the last Sungazer in Superstars?

3) Is it possible that some of the cut content from Superstars might have influenced the comic?

4) Flynn seems to have based her character on pre-development with no clue of how she should be after

5) Considering how mant notes they tend to give, what are the chances this is a sign Sonic Team don't plan to use Trip past Superstars?

1: I know right? This is supposed to be a Knuckles 30th anniversary comic, and yet it's practically ABOUT Trip. Why isn't the KNUCKLES COMIC exploring the things that make Knuckles such a long lasting and impactful character? Why isn't it about him going on treasure hunting adventures, or safeguarding Angel Island? Why is this KNUCKLES ANNIVERSARY COMIC some kind of weird fucking Archie-esk tie in with Sonic Superstars a game that's a year old by this point?

2: I wanted to make a post dedicated to this. But I'm lazy. I already played through the game and gave my thoughts and analysis about it under the "Sonic Superstars" tag if you're curious.

It is very clear from the content of Sonic Superstars with levels like the Golden Capital that there was once a great and opulent civilization on the Northstar Islands, but that civilization has now gone. The fact that Trip is the only sungazer encountered, the giant El Dorado esk city of gold, in which there is a secret vault which houses the Chaos Emeralds along with a mural showing a cataclysm of the past, makes it very clear that Trip is the only thing that's left of whatever great civilization once inhabited the islands. The lack of explicate confirmation is a FEATURE, not something that needed to be "corrected" with explanations especially explanations that DIRECTLY CONTRADICT the storytelling of the game. The fact so much is left to your imagination is a STRENGTH of that game's story, not an oversight -_-

3: they don't even fucking MENTION the evil black dragon final boss dude, so no I cannot imagine that anything involving Superstars development had anything the fuck to do with this comic. I doubt Ian Flynn even fucking played Sonic Superstars, let alone thought it prudent to ask for production material about the game to expand on things the game couldn't portray. He obviously just wanted to stroke his Penders Echidna Obsession, but since SEGA won't allow him to do that with the actual Echidnas he just turned the Sungazers into discount echidnas so he could "get away" with it.

4: I would highly doubt he based his characterization of her off of anything but his own biases and preferences as a writer. The dude has most definitely never actually played Sonic Superstars the video game either way though.

5: Considering the way things have been trending lately, I would actually assume the opposite and figure Sonic Team might release something official themselves which features Trip. And which directly disregards everything this comic contained =P That really seems to be how Sonic Team has been operating lately. It's hard to interpret a lot of the things they've been producing as anything besides direct and personal refutations of the dumb shit the IDW comics and Ian Flynn have been saying about the franchise. I would not at all be surprised to see Trip show up in a new Tailstube video where she talks about how "it's hard being the last of her kind but she found solidarity with Knuckles since he knows that struggle too and the friendship with Amy has shown her she's not alone." Or a new Sonic Channel art piece or something like that.

Seriously Sonic Team keeps no-scope dunking on the stupid shit Ian Flynn runs his mouth about lately and it's really fucking funny. "Oh you made a robot daughter for Eggman in the comic? That's nice. SAGE. Oh you introduced a sheep girl authority figure in the comic? How nice for you. ARIEM." and so on lol

Flynn has also directly stated that he can basically disregard the feedback notes from SEGA if he wants to. He said in a podcast that they were not happy about him using the Shadow Androids to kill off the Diamond Cutters. But he did it anyway. IDW Editorial is the one who calls the shots about what truly makes it onto the final page.

[squarebracketsmileyface]

It's bad takes music anon back at it again with probably my worst take yet... Jay would 1000% listen to White Horse by Taylor Swift and cry himself to sleep about Alex... Back in college Jay? Current Jay? Your pick, I see both.

-🚫🎵

Dude, if your takes are bad takes I have no idea how freaking amazing the good takes must be because oh my god??? Yes??? This song is perfect????? (it got kinda long and messy again so, weird very rubbish song analysis hidden away)

This song is definitely one Jay first found in uni/college (after Alex started dating Amy and just up and dumped him, except technically he didn't dump him because they were never technically together, so Alex going off and talking to Amy with the intention of dating her was also technically not cheating) and it fucking destroyed him, like, full on breakdown every time he heard it, it was actually a problem. ALSO. I think Alex got him into Taylor Swift (yes I'm making Alex a swiftie in sorry it's locked, shut up I can do what I want lmaooooooooo) and so by extension Alex introduced him to this song, which just makes it even more painful :D

After uni he got a little better about the song, it still made him sob like a baby, but he had a bit more control over it and didn't just break down instantly. It's that song you put on when you need a really good cry, for him.

Then after seeing Alex again in Sorry It's Locked it comes all the way back full circle to how it was when he first found the song. He's completely fucked up by it all over again and there's nothing he can do about it but cry until he can't breathe. Like, dude is not okay. He needs copious amounts of therapy. ALTHOUGH!!!! I do think that it'd also be the song that (if Jay were to live long enough) would help him finally finally get over Alex a bit (with Tim's help). Because damn if I don't have songs and bands that a 'ex' got me into that ended up helping me get the fuck over them lmfao.

"'Cause I honestly believed in you"

"Stupid girl, I should've known, I should've known"

Ouch, yeah, Jay's thoughts back in Uni 1000000% He sat in his car and cried to this shit on the radio so bad lmao (I'm ignoring the fact that technically this song wasn't out when he was in uni/college cos it came out in like 2009 or something and I'm pretty sure Jay finished uni in like 2006? ANYWAY It was out when he was in Uni in this universe)

"This ain't Hollywood, this is a small town"

I mean, Hollywood isn't exactly known for its queer rep, but Jay 100% imagined himself and Alex as the love interests in shitty movies (especially in the shitty movies Alex made him watch and talked over the entire time with complaints and shit, because this is Alex Kralie and of course he would). He totally understood why Alex didn't want anyone to know they were fucking, but damn if it didn't hurt when he realised that that was never going to change and that they wouldn't ever graduate to dating in secret. And that Alex would go and get himself a girlfriend out of nowhere to try and pretend like he was straight so that no one knew. (Alex is bi in this, and Amy is Panromantic asexual because I say so, and she absolutely laid into him when he eventually told her all about his and Jay's thing)

"Maybe I was naive, got lost in your eyes

And never really had a chance

My mistake, I didn't know to be in love

You had to fight to have the upper hand

I had so many dreams about you and me

Happy endings, now I know"

This whole verse. Just. Yup. Poor Jay. This just explains every damn thing for him, like, idk how to explain it this was just his and Alex's relationship back in uni. This was it lmao.

"'Cause I'm not your princess, this ain't a fairytale

I'm gonna find someone someday

Who might actually treat me well

This is a big world, that was a small town

There in my rear-view mirror disappearing now

And it's too late for you and your white horse

Now it's too late for you and your white horse

To catch me now"

Jam :]

Jay in uni 100% didn't think he'd ever get over Alex (aaaaaand he doesn't entirely, but he does a little bit so) but after meeting Tim again he definitely starts thinking like this, like maybe if Alex came back he wouldn't just immediately go back to him, like he'd hesitate and maybe even refuse and instead choose to stay with Tim.

[munsons-maiden]

Yes selling ketamine to a vulnerable teenager is bad but Eddie is a worse person for the way he treated Lucas and encouraged Lucas' friends to act.

Even if you hate jocks and hate sports and hate parties and whatever.... it's pretty obvious Lucas didn't have friends outside of Hellfire Club and the fact Eddie scheduled the campaign final specifically on the night of the championship game (he wouldve known the exact date, there wouldve been posters and announcements for months prior and hes not stupid) had to have been on purpose. And if he was trying to make Lucas choose a side? That's fucked up. Let a kid have a hobby outside your realm of interests you gatekeeping prick.

If by chance he genuinely didn't know the date? He could've postponed. People postpone D&D campaigns all the fucking time and it's not like Eddie had a job so he had to worry about scheduling issues. It's clear why you can't just move the date of a championship basketball game for 7 nerds to play a boardgame. No, he did this on purpose. To weed out the jocks in his nerd club. To ostracise Lucas specifically.The way Eddie interacts with Mike and Dustin shows he knows the people in Hellfire Club. He would've known who Lucas is. He wouldve known he loves D&D as much as the rest of them but because he also has a different interest that Eddie dislikes (not even for a moral reason but just because its popular), he's forced out. A group supposedly for outsiders is excluding one of their own for *checks notes* being an outsider? It's fucked up and just plain mean.

And Lucas will never forget that none of his friends NOT A SINGLE ONE went to the championship game that he won.

What say you, Kiki The Maiden?

Okay first of all, a disclaimer: I disagree with about everything you said. I love analyzing things, and everyone has different headcanons and interpretations, but the writers took great efforts to canonically exclude these arguments. I mean if it were like you said, I'd agree, but it canonically isn’t. I rewatched the key scenes for this reply and transcribed the relevant dialogues for the following analysis. Again, this isn't meant to be rude - you asked about my honest opinion, I'm giving it.

1.”Eddie selling ketamine to a vulnerable teenager”:

The scenes:

Eddie bumps into Chrissy in the woods, sees her obvious distress and asks whether she's okay, obviously concerned. From the context, it's obvious Chrissy initiated the deal and made him come to the woods because that's how most drug deals work and Eddie himself is obviously surprised that Chrissy asked for this deal.

They sit down, Eddie takes off his leather jacket and denim vest, his "shield" against the world as the costume designer Amy L. Forsythe calls it, thereby taking off his guard like he did in the D&D sequence. He canonically makes himself less intimidating because since people think he's mean and scary because he's a metalhead who plays D&D and deals drugs, and he wants Chrissy to see she doesn't have to be scared.

Chrissy asks how the deal works, Eddie explains it. His tone is neutral, the little quip about "and for obvious reasons...no receipts" meant to set her a bit at ease by making a little joke. He then proceeds to ask her whether his conditions - 20 dollars for the half - are okay, giving her control over the situation.

Chrissy stays jumpy and distressed. Eddie relates it to himself, takes the drugs away, out of her line of vision, avoids eye contact as he tells her "we don't have to do this. Just say the word and I'll walk away." He's defensive that she sees him as a danger because that's obviously how most people conceive him and it hurts. And since he doesn't want to pressure her into anything, he offers her a way out - no consequences, no questions asked; he puts Chrissy in charge again. He moves to go to show her he means it - and he does mean it, what he sees is that Chrissy obviously doesn't want him there from his POV - until Chrissy says: "No, it's not that. I don't want you to go."

That's where Eddie realizes she isn't scared of him, and does what she asked him to: he stays. He tries to build a connection, a common ground to talk about and set her at ease. He does. He yeets himself off the bench, making her laugh AND giving her more physical space. He's a little self-deprecating in a charming, sweet way (the yeeting off the bench and rolling on the ground, "we actually got a crowd of about five...drunks") and they get along well. Whether you ship them or not doesn't matter: they both are at ease with each other and laugh together, both sides have their guards down and the interaction is genuine and void of any ulterior motives, as the Duffers as well as Grace and Joe confirmed in various interviews.

Eddie offers Chrissy a 25% discount, which reaffirms he's not interested in the money. I mean, yes, he deals because he needs the money, but he wants those deals to be consentual and in Chrissy's case, he likes her. Again, no matter whether you ship them or not, he wants to be nice, no ulterior motives.

Chrissy asks him "do you have anything maybe...stronger?"

Eddie reacts shocked/surprised.

Chrissy is smiling very hard when she steps out of the van and follows Eddie into the trailer, which implies she didn’t seem nervous on the way or anything like that. (she only starts to get nervous/panic when she starts hearing Vecna’s clock - and even then, she doesn’t try to escape the trailer, but she tries to get to Eddie)

At the trailer, Eddie stars searching for the ketamine, which implies - as well as his "no, no, no, I got it. Somewhere." - that he doesn't often sell other things than weed. His confusion as to where he placed the ketamine is genuine.

Chrissy dies. Another thing: even while Chrissy is in her trance, Eddie respects her boundaries. He stays a few feet away, dancing, snapping, clapping to wake her up and only when she doesn't and he realizes she's in actual danger from something, he crosses into her personal space to grab her shoulders and as a last resort pat her cheeks to wake her up. If we compare the whole scene with that of Eddie and Steve in the UD, we can see the glaring contrast: Eddie sways in and out of Steve's personal space.

Ketamine isn’t classified as a hard drug, btw; its risk of causing addiction/dependency is as high or low as that of weed, and the risk of a deadly overdose is so low there’s not even a statistic for it.

Yes, Eddie sells ketamine to a vulnerable teenager (bear in mind that Chrissy is canonically 18 and Eddie is 20, there is no power imbalance, they're both seniors) - but he doesn't know Chrissy is vulnerable. We, the audience, know it, because we see Chrissy's POV, her ed, and we see her getting targeted by Vecna and we even get a glimpse at the abuse she suffers through her mother.

Eddie, from his POV sees: Chrissy Cunningham, the Queen of Hawkins High, from a good middle class/upper middle class family, the most popular girl of school, on top of the hierarchy. He doesn't know she even has struggles. We see the picture Chrissy paints for everyone is a perfect one (the little kiss she blows Jason at the Pep Rally symbolizes that). For all he knows, Chrissy is the Queen of Hawkins High who wants to be a bit rebellious before her graduation in one and a half months, the good girl being nervous about her first drug deal, or she’s simply having a bad day. The last time they canonically interacted was in middle school, and Eddie doesn’t know her. He doesn’t know how she usually acts or how to tell that she’s vulnerable.

Chrissy asks him to do the deal in the woods, Chrissy is the one who tells him she doesn't want him to go vehemently enough to make sure she means it, and Chrissy is the one who asks him for something stronger than weed (he never offers it!). Chrissy is initiating things, and she's her own autonomous person capable - at least from Eddie's POV - of making her own decisions, having her own agenda; she’s not some helpless little vulnerable girl. She’s a senior, just like Eddie. Stop vilifying Eddie in this situation. It wasn’t a good thing to do, it’s a flaw, but he never had ill intentions or ulterior motives and he had no way to know that Chrissy was vulnerable.

And selling drugs is what he does. It's a flaw, and one that makes him a complex character. He's a person, and sometimes people do stupid things. It be like that.

2.Eddie not postponing the campaign:

I'll sum up all four scenes relevant for this because again, what we see in canon and what is obviously canonically implied are the facts.

The Pep Rally: At the pep rally, during Jason's speech, we find out that the Hawkins tigers won the game "last night" which means that they're in the championship finale "tonight". Dustin and Mike react shocked that the championship game is "tonight", and Max explains "they call it a tournament. you win one game, you go on and so on until only one team is left." It's canon that they only knew 24 hours beforehand that the championship game would take place because they only won the final game to enable it the night prior.

Walking back from the rally, Lucas tells Dustin and Mike to "just talk to Eddie", which they both at first refuse, instead trying to coerce Lucas into not attending the championship game but the end of the D&D campaign, a campaign which has gone on for the "past semester" as Dustin points out, "we need you." To which Mike adds, "Yes, and the Tigers don't. You've been on the bench all year."

Lucas tells them that the point isn't only the game but "I'm getting good with these guys. I'll be in the popular crowd, and then you guys will be, too. Mike: "Has is ever occured to you that we don't want to be popular?" Lucas: "So you wanna be stuck with the nerds and freaks for three more years?" Dustin: "We are nerds and freaks." Lucas: "But maybe we don't have to be. Look, I'm tired of being bullied. I'm tired of girls laughing at us, I'm tired of feeling like a loser. We came to high school wanting things to be different, right?" - Dustin and Mike nod. Lucas: "So now we have that chance. I skip tonight, that's all out the window. So I'm asking you guys, as a friend, talk to Eddie. Get him to move Hellfire. Come to my game. Please."

The cafeteria scene begins with Eddie reading out the article linking D&D to satanism, sodomy, suicide and murder, poking fun of it before launching into the table speech during which he shows and states that he's tired and defensive and angry at his hobby being not only labelled as "less" than band, science, parties or basketball, but as evil, once again painting him as mean and scary, a freak "because we like to play a fantasy game."

When Dustin asks Eddie to postpone the campaign in the cafeteria, ALL the rest of Hellfire protests before Eddie yells "STOP" so he can speak and say he won't postpone, telling them to find a sub for Lucas.

Those are the relevant scenes. Now, on to your comments:

Even if you hate jocks and hate sports and hate parties and whatever....

he resents them for kicking him down, for having hobbies which are deemed good while his own, absolutely harmless hobby, is called less and even dangerous. The resentment of someone who got bullied and still gets bullied and scorned upon all his life simply because he dresses differently and his hobby is different. We see what those little pricks in season 1 did to Mike and Dustin and Will for being nerds and playing D&D - we all know for Eddie, it hasn't been any different. He jusged people the same way he gets judged and doesn't realize it, which, yes, is a character flaw, and one he very quickly strips after his encounter with Erica who, rightly so, absolutely roasted him to which he realized he didn't act nice and did the shitty thing people were doing to him and owned it and did better, genuinely welcoming him to Hellfire even though he just got roasted and insulted ("long-haired freak", the name freak something Jason calls him and which in the cafeteria scene is revealed to be a very sore spot for him) by her in front of his friends. Flawed? Yes. Learning and doing better? Yes.

it's pretty obvious Lucas didn't have friends outside of Hellfire Club

Canonically wrong. It's not obvious. It might have been if he and Eddie were close, but they aren't (later a bit more on that but bear with me.) The canon facts:

1.The costume design already shows Lucas, at the start of ST4, belongs more to the jocks than the nerds: he wears his basketball attire while Dustin and Mike wear the Hellfire Club shirts. It's the game of the pap rally where everyone wears their club's outfits (the Cheerleaders, the Jocks, the Nerds) so it's not the common outfit but it already separates Lucas from the rest of Hellfire/his friends Mike and Dustin.

2.Lucas is sitting with the basketball players.

It is canonically implied, in two instances, that Lucas started sitting with them regularly, leaving Mike and Dustin to sit alone with each other even before they joined Hellfire/met Eddie. a) in the cafeteria scene when Eddie remembers the moment he invited Dustin and Mike into Hellfire: "You were sitting on that table right there, looking like...looking like TWO little lost sheep" and b) in the scene where Dustin tells Max that Eddie has to be innocent: "When we got to High School, Lucas made all his sports friends. Mike and me? I mean no one was nice to us. No one except Eddie." -> Lucas had started leaving Mike and Dustin behind for the jocks long before Eddie invited them to Hellfire. Implying that Eddie as Hellfire's leader invited Lucas, who was already starting to join the crowd of jocks Eddie dislikes, into Hellfire despite him becoming one of the jocks.

3. Lucas canonically never hangs with Hellfire and Dustin and Mike because the jocks didn't know Lucas was friends with Eddie or anyone in Hellfire. They didn't even know he was friends with Dustin and Mike.

At Benny's when Jason rallies his mob:

When the mob shows up at Corroded Coffin's band practice:

Lucas: "Hellfire isn't a cult. It's just a D&D club. D&D? Dungeons and dragons? It's like a...it's like a game. It's fantasy."

Andy Warren: "And how exactly do you know all of that, Sinclair?"

Lucas: "Uh...well. It's my sister. Yeah. She's like...she's like a total nerd."

DISCLAIMER: Lucas lies here because he wants to find out what the jocks plan, not because he means it. He's a double agent already if you will, I'm only quoting this because obviously the jocks don't know Lucas is in Hellfire or even affiliated with any of its members, canonically implying that Lucas takes care not to be seen with anyone in Hellfire at school. When Jason attacks Garreth and forces him to tell him where Eddie is and Gareth says "Dustin Henderson" there's no indication that the jocks know Lucas is even friends with Dustin, else, they'd have asked Lucas about him.

Gareth: "Lucas? What are you doing with those douchebags?"

Jason: "You know these freaks, Sinclair?"

Lucas: "Uh. They know my sister. They tried to recruit me to their club, cult."

Lucas has friends outside of Hellfire, and he chose them, and it's canonically implied that he doesn't even hang around with Mike, Dustin or the rest of Hellfire during school. His reasons are totally relatable, I'm just saying your point is canonically wrong.

Eddie scheduled the campaign final specifically on the night of the championship game (he wouldve known the exact date, there wouldve been posters and announcements for months prior and hes not stupid) had to have been on purpose.

As per the dialogue in the episode with Max, Mike and Dustin didn't know, and Eddie had no way of knowing since he wasn't at the pep rally where it was said. There can't have been announcements etc because as I said, it's canon that nobody knew until 24 hours prior that the championship game would take place that night. If anybody had known that the game might take place at that date, it would have been Lucas, but since Mike and Dustin didn't know, I don't think Lucas thought about telling them, if he even knew. Canon is only that Mike, Dustin, Eddie and the rest of Hellfire didn't know because the whole school didn't know until 24 hours earlier.

And if he was trying to make Lucas choose a side?

Eddie never threatened to kick anybody out of Hellfire and as we got to know him in the later episodes, he never would have. It was about ONE night, the finale of the campaign, not generally about being part of Hellfire. Plus, Eddie never put Lucas to the test to see which side he'd choose, and he never even implied that he would've kicked Lucas out of Hellfire. It was about one single night. Again, petty and definitely selfish - but there was no ulterior motive, no mind games or power play going on.

That's fucked up. Let a kid have a hobby outside your realm of interests you gatekeeping prick.

Everything in canon implies that it wasn't Eddie's intention. He didn't know the date. He learned that day in the cafeteria. There were loads of equipment for the game and the setting - candles, chalices, all that stuff, and since Hellfire shares the room with the theater club (which is canon by the scenes and the lightning etc. that it's the theatre room) it means he needed to book the room to make sure it was free, meaning that it took work and time to organize everything so the campaign could take place. It never once is even implied that Eddie tried to gatekeep - and from everything we know, the one time when he did try to gatekeep D&D with Erica, he realized the mistake and stopped gatekeeping immediately, holding no ill will.

If by chance he genuinely didn't know the date?

He didn't know the date, that's canon, as I pointed out.

He could've postponed. People postpone D&D campaigns all the fucking time and it's not like Eddie had a job so he had to worry about scheduling issues. It's clear why you can't just move the date of a championship basketball game for 7 nerds to play a boardgame. No, he did this on purpose.

Eddie is the leader of Hellfire, but he's not the only one calling the shots.

The three others - Gareth, Jeff and Freak#3 as he's called in the credits - protested VERY loudly and vehemently as soon as Dustin asked to postpone, before Eddie even got to react. Eddie called them to stop protesting, and it was evident that out of 7 people (Eddie, Lucas, Mike, Dustin, Gareth, Jeff, Freak#3), 3 had already made it clear that they were firmly against postponing, Mike and Dustin wanted to postpone, and Lucas - who wanted to postpone - didn't even go to the trouble to show Eddie the courtesy of asking him himself whether he could postpone the game. Yes, Eddie is Hellfire's leader and DM, but it was 3 against 2 without Eddie and Lucas and 4 against 3 with them, a clear democratic decision not to postpone.

Part of Hellfire are Dustin and Mike who never, not once, asked him to postpone because they wanted to be at the championship game to support Lucas, but because Lucas couldn't be there because of the game. Eddie never knew it was important, Mike and Dustin never voiced that they wanted to support Lucas at the basketball game because they didn't want to and they made it clear with Lucas, only being swayed briefly. It's easy to point at Eddie and say "he didn't want to postpone, we had no choice!" when Eddie didn't even know Mike and Dustin wanted to go to the basketball game (which, again, they didn't make clear was something they wanted).

Had they told Eddie they wouldn't make it to Hellfire alongside Lucas, because they wanted to support him, Eddie and the rest of Hellfire would have had no choice but to postpone, with three missing players. Dustin and Mike had a choice here, and they chose against Lucas.

About the 7 nerds...yes, Eddie doesn't have a job. But what about the other three, Gareth and Jeff and Freak#3? We don't know whether they had jobs, other scheduling issues. You tend to forget that Hellfire isn't just Eddie, but 5, (without Dustin and Mike 3) other people who are included in scheduling decisions. It doesn't work this way that the DM is calling the shots and everyone else follows - no club works like this, except when it's a cult.

To weed out the jocks in his nerd club. To ostracise Lucas specifically. The way Eddie interacts with Mike and Dustin shows he knows the people in Hellfire Club. He would've known who Lucas is. He wouldve known he loves D&D as much as the rest of them but because he also has a different interest that Eddie dislikes (not even for a moral reason but just because its popular), he's forced out.

No, he wouldn't have, because Eddie wasn't close to Lucas, canonically, he didn't know him outside of the D&D games where you play and don't talk a lot about anything outside of the game. It's already been established that at school, Lucas was with the jocks, never with Eddie or Hellfire because else the jocks would have remembered seeing one of their own with one of the "freaks". And Lucas left before Mike and Dustin joined Hellfire, which implies Eddie never ostracized anyone, he never was responsible for Mike and Dustin growing apart from Lucas. They simply had different interests, like teenagers do. People grow apart, interests change. Lucas (and Mike) didn't show much interest in D&D in ST3 - that was Will's whole storyline! - and it is in no way implied that Lucas is sad to miss the campaign (he's sad that Mike and Dustin would miss his game, not that he wouldn't be able to play D&D, judging by the entire dialogue) or that he still loves playing D&D as much as he did. We don't know how he was during the campaigns when there were no jocks around to criticize Lucas and Lucas was free to be himself at Hellfire, but since Lucas never stayed Eddie and the rest of Hellfire during school, while Mike and Dustin did because Lucas was with the jocks and they didn't want to be with the jocks, it's canon that Lucas and Eddie weren't close, and maybe not even friends before the events of ST4. Another proof: Lucas at first actually believes Eddie killed Chrissy (which is relatable since everyone not knowing Eddie, Max included, came to that first conclusion until learning of Vecna and getting to know Eddie):

Again, relatable and Max showed the same reaction but Dustin knew Eddie didn't do it because Dustin was very close to Eddie, much closer than Lucas was.

Lucas: "You guys know he (Eddie) killed Chrissy, right?"

Dustin: "That's bullshit. Eddie tried to save Chrissy."

Lucas: "Then why do all the cops say he did?"

Not once was it implied that Eddie didn't want to postpone because he didn't like Lucas having other interests. It was, however, implied in several instances that it was the moment a whole semester-long campaign had been leading to.

A group supposedly for outsiders is excluding one of their own for *checks notes* being an outsider? It's fucked up and just plain mean.

It would have been, would it have been the case, yes. Canonically, it isn't the case, and Lucas is no outsider. He is an insider with the jocks (Jason: "I should've never let you in." - Lucas:"I shouldn't have knocked."), albeit within the circle of jocks, he's an outsider. We don’t know whether Eddie knows that.

And might I remind you that Eddie's last breath, the last moments of his life after sacrificing himself "for a town that hated him", were spent to make Dustin promise he would look out after all the lost little sheepies because he couldn't anymore? Yes, he did gatekeep (with Erica, not Lucas) but he had a lot of character growth during the series regarding his us-vs-them perspective (with Chrissy not being mean and scary, with Erica being a D&D nerd despite being an eleven-years-old girl, with Steve not being a douche, with Nancy Wheeler having guns, plural, in her bedroom) - but Eddie did never intentionally ostracize anyone. His entire character was written to embody exactly the opposite in the narrative: someone who founded a club for those who'd been ostracised from the rest of high school hierarchy. That was a canon core of Eddie's character and narrative.

That was the canon. Here's my opinion, based on those canon facts and implications I listed:

It was a fucked up situation for ALL of them, and that it went the way it did is their fault, all together, and I'm sorry for all of them that it went this way.

Lucas' POV is relatable: he's tired of being bullied and sticking with Jason and the jocks is his ticket out, and he genuinely believes sticking with the jocks to become part of the popular crowd will benefit Mike and Dustin as well, in the long run, to not being bullied anymore. He never has any ill intent towards anyone.

Mike and Dustin's POV is less relatable than Lucas', in my opinion: They want to play D&D instead of watching the basketball game they're absolutely not interested in even if it's their best friend on the bench and maybe even playing (nobody could have known he'd be playing, he only was because another player was injured, but Mike’s jab at Lucas being a benchwarmer is mean) - they wanted the old times back, they wanted to play D&D alongside Lucas but they chose to play without him instead of supporting him. Eddie never threatened to kick anybody out of Hellfire and as we got to know him in the later episodes, he never would have. It was about ONE night, the finale of the campaign, not generally about being part of Hellfire - they could have opted to support Lucas and Eddie would have needed to postpone. They didn't.

Eddie's POV: He doesn't know Lucas as well as he knows Dustin and Mike because Lucas never spends any time with him outside of the campaigns outside of school. Lucas doesn't even ask Eddie himself to postpone, which, in my opinion, is a bit rude. There has been a lot of work involved for Eddie, preparations for the setting as well as planning of the campaign since he's the DM. By not asking him himself, Lucas didn't show Eddie it was important to him that he could partake in the campaign so no, Eddie didn't know it was important to Lucas, who was sitting with the jocks while he let Mike and Dustin do the talking so he wouldn't be seen with Eddie and the other "freaks and nerds" as Lucas called them. Eddie was petty, yes, but he didn't have any ill intent either, neither towards Lucas nor towards Dustin and Mike - he simply wanted to play D&D and didn't know it was important to postpone because the only explanation Mike and Dustin gave was "we need Lucas as a player", to which the obvious solution was "get a sub". Plus, Eddie never put Lucas to the test to see which side he'd choose, and he never even implied that he would've kicked Lucas out of Hellfire. It was about one single night. Again, a bit petty and definitely selfish and a flaw - but there was no ulterior motive, no mind games or power play going on.

I'm not saying Eddie doesn't have flaws: he has, and that's important because they make him relatable. He acted selfish and ignorant because it was about basketball, and he did gatekeep with Erica until he realized he was and corrected the mistake immediately without being childish about it. Yes, he judges people prematurely and stacks them in neat little boxes just like they do him, and he learns it later on and stops doing it because he’s self-aware. Yes, he was stupid to sell Chrissy ketamine. But canonically, none of these things happened with ulterior motives or ill intent, and the narrative and writers went out of their way to show that because else, they would have failed to depict Eddie as the lovable character he was meant to be.

[antirepurp]

time for me to be obnoxious about an april fool's game at almost may wahoo ft. an unexpected moment of character analysis because i have no chill

TRAIN.

i hope this game is canon because rouge doing petty pickpocketing is my favorite thing actually

he has a wallet? and a home?

i could go on about how much i love these kids being unhinged and chaotic but unless i want to reblog this post a million times i have to cut it down. let it be known that i adore the kids and their antics tho

you know what i also adore? blaze committing crimes in the chaos dimension because she can get away with it. i think i need more of that in my life actually

although right after he says he doesn't wanna do more crimes i'd like to think he grows out of that opinion eventually. let the little guy steal stuff i want him to hang with rouge and have her make him worse actually

look here shadow's had it rough in the writing department for a while but i very much appreciated this plot point of him going out of his way to get concert tickets for amy and even (reluctantly) agreeing to go with her to said concert even if it isn't his cup of tea. i know it's more presented as him trying to y'know be polite and considerate and he's going about it in an edgy way but i'd like to think it's just his way of presenting things if you will? like he know what amy's favorite band is and sees how hard the tickets are to get so he goes out of his way to get them because he cares about his friend and knows how much attending a concert like that would mean to amy. and in terms of this screenshot in particular i also appreciate amy appreciating her friends' presence at her party even if they hadn't gotten her anything! sure it does kinda come across as her being bummed about not getting gifts from them and maybe she is but i think that's okay? like she's 12 (or 13 now i guess?) getting excited about presents is pretty normal, and it's not like she's super upset about it anyway. i think she genuinely appreciates her friends attending her party more than anything

i also found this a lovely little detail lol and it does kinda make sense! the bitch has been in stasis for 50 years and computer technology has taken leaps in that time, of course he'd be a lil rustier with them compared to his peers

more on shadow, this guy's brain goes overdrive the second he realizes he fucked up and needs to get something nice for his friend now. like i don't have the brain power to form it into words atm but i just love what this all says about him as a character!!

i could flail about the art in this game the whole evening honestly it's so lovely and colorful and pretty and i love how this scene is composed and shadow being seated on the windowsill idk this just put a big smile on my face when i saw it :)

frankly obsessed with amy's unhinged energy can we please get more of this bc i live for it

the fucking blowdart. i cannot tell you how fucking off the walls these teens are like espio's instructed to use a blowdart on sonic with non-lethal poison and he's like yeah that checks out and sonic's just like wow cool guess i'll snooze for a bit then like this shit is exactly why teenagers should be given superpowers and be put into Situations(TM) i love it

not an april fools game making me emotional over trains

and why yes i am obsessed obviously

it was a fun game! like tbh with a bit more content i would've been happy to pay a bit for this honestly (like. when im not broke lmao) like it's so charming and there were a lot of fun details and the jokes were enjoyable too. i just think it's neat :)

but yea that is all im glad sonic the hedgehog got murdered it was a great time

[eemoo1o]

Shadow has never been stated to be 18 or 20 though, he has only ever been stated to be physically 15 /nm

(Long post ahead. Tags are also important in advance. I will admit this post spirals into a tangent on how this matter started as well as stuff about other characters, and despite all linking together under the same theme-gazebo, it kinda derails, so feel free to read at your own pace.)

I don’t know much about the games—and that may make you feel “oh then why are you..” yeah, I mean like I don’t check manuals or have played them but I watch analysis videos, avidly Google shit and revisit the wikis now and then.

Just putting that out there.

The Sonic News Network wiki page merely renders him as ageless, whereas the Sega Wiki wiki page (where I got my information from last post) stated three (kinda) ages for the character:

(Please note that the Wiki is themed in a darker grey to what the image is here. Same with the following. I turned the exposure up on each for visual clarity.)

Oh, look, they even included a canon birthdate!

Oh…

Well, I know Wikis aren’t always accurate, so to back up the apparent evidence I had, if I’m just to Google his age just to double check—

Hey! That’s the game, damnit.

Think this was my mistake in the previous reply, so I suppose I should apologise. And I do. I think my train of thought was: “He’s 18 years of age (y), with some range in other games (17-22y respectively)”, which isn’t right—but every source I could find on the character’s age came up with 18y and not 15y, so I stand by the claim that even though he’s “ageless” (immortal, basically) he’s physically 18.

It also doesn’t make much sense that he is “ageless”—perhaps due to his origins of being put into stasis like some sort of autobot, or something—when a physical age for him has been stated to be 18 (which makes sense, as Knuckles was, by technicality, the original Shadow, having been invented seven years before Shadow was, and as far as I remember is meant to be a year or two older (16 or 17) than Sonic (15)—it also makes sense because Rouge is also 18, apparently, and I’d have imagined them to be of very similar age). Technically that should just let him do an Edward Cullen and be 18 forever.

(I will note that I’ve never liked the prospect of Shadow being immortal. Or the duration it took for him to come out of stasis just to link to Dr. Robotnik somehow. Perhaps I’m just biased, but to me it feels heavily unjust—I wanted Shadow and Sonic carrying their rivalry all the way to the old folks’ home, damnit. And now that vision is ruined.)

Overall, being immortal really doesn’t suit Shadow’s character, in my opinion, and just feels like a plot point now simply discarded and forgotten. It really wasn’t necessary in the first place, and making him 18 (immortal or otherwise) would have been much easier, rather than the oh-so-enigmatic “ageless” genotype we all know and love today.

To remedy this, I like to think red-eyed Shadow is different to brown-eyed Shadow in the sense of age and therefore backstory. I made a post on it—in fact I think it’s probably the post right before this one on my blog—but currently my main focus is going to be on Prime, which is why I’m now so bitter about Shadow’s age, and Sonic character ages as a whole.

None of it really fits, and I think they all need to be updated (Sonic and Amy’s, especially). I mean, I know Amy’s was back in the day, but with how she’s depicted now as opposed to back then, even post-redesign (she went from an 8yo Sonic recolour to a 12yo what-we-know-now). I mean, I know her main, more “well regarded” character arc is learning how to mature, but with her literally being fucking 12 is just a pisstake.

Sonic’s age is less annoying as opposed to Shadow and Amy’s (respectively) because I don’t think too much into it until I notice it doesn’t suit him due to the situations he’s in. Yes, he’s young and he’s a teenager—a cocky one at that, which is one of the many good things Hardcore Sonic Fans (aka the “bronies” of this fandom, for lack of a more adequate word) praise Prime for depicting—so it’d make sense for him to be such (15yo), but to me it’s make much more sense for him to be like 16.

I’d be willing to say “maybe even 17”, but 16 just seems so perfect and on the nose. It’s such a nitpicky little detail but to me Sonic’s age wouldn’t seem so absurd if they just made him 16. It’d both make an immense difference and yet basically none at all that would force any impact on his characterisation.

Amy’s the most absurd—her age still hasn’t been updated from 12 and even though it’s an improvement from her being 8, it’s still ridiculous. If you’re (and by that, I mean the creators, not you, the anon) not going to change Sonic’s age, at least change hers. To me, she seems like she should be a year younger than Sonic at least.

Same could be said for Tails. To me he feels similar to Amy, or at least in the terms of arcs. He should be younger than Sonic, and either the same or younger than Amy, too. He’s still eight, and with how his character has evolved over the years, especially in the modern era, he needs to be just a mite older, like 12 or something.

I feel like Shadow’s age, I most have a problem with for literally being 50 (I don’t care if he’s “physically” 18 or whatever. He’s not Edward Cullen, although that too is also pretty creepy) and as for the coma thing, put it like this: if Timmy fell down the well at 8 years of age and woke up from his head-trauma-induced coma 50 years later, he isn’t automatically excused from picking fights or relationships with kids.

I added the “relationships” into it because this (the thing with the coma) seems to be the primary excuse for Sonadow shippers (I suppose with Rougeow it isn’t so bad because she’s canonically 18, probably to make her past sex appeal to humans somewhat legal, but still). I mean, I’ve seen the same being said for other ships, but not really. The primary ship seems to be for Sonadow, seeing as Amy’s age is always disregarded anyway, especially in the Sonamy side of the fandom.

Shadow was my favourite part in Prime, I’ll admit—I liked his banter with Sonic, and I liked his voice actor (oh, Ian Hanlin, how I love your vocal range so)—which is why my anger for Shadow’s age and backstory made a resurgence (it was either mid-last year or the one just before, where I went through a Sonic phase on my blog after revisiting Boom, and somewhere during that I’d said the same thing, although not to this much feedback from an anon/anons).

I also made the post about Shadow’s eyes because if noticed they were brown in Prime but didn’t really pick up on what exactly was off until I’d googled it. One could argue they’re red for TV as opposed to the games, but in Sonic X they’re red, like in the games, and in Sonic Boom they’re a more saturated colour, making them mostly dark red, borderline brown.

So, I assume as the modern era of Sonic-based media progresses/progressed, they’ve turned from brown to red. It’s subtle but I hope it says a lot. Mostly for his backstory, because god, do I hate Shadow’s backstory.

[sk1fanfiction]

the many faces of tom riddle, part 4

-attachment, orphanages, and yet more child psych: time to add yet another voice to the void-

FULL DISCLAIMER THAT THIS IS JUST MY OPINION OF A CHARACTER WHO DOESN’T HAVE THE STRONGEST CANON CHARACTERIZATION, AND THUS ALL THIS IS BASED ON MY CONCEPTUALIZATION.

I'm going to be super biased, because my favorite portrayal of Tom Riddle is actually Hero Fiennes-Tiffin as eleven-year-old Tom Riddle, in HBP and I get to chat about child psych in this one, sooo here we go.

First of all, I’m just so impressed that a kid could bring that much depth to such a complex character.

This is the portrayal, I feel, that brings us closest to Tom’s character. Yes, Coulson’s brought us pretty close, but by fifth year, the mask was on.

We don't really get to see Tom looking afraid very often, but it's fear that rules his life, so it's really poignant in our first (chronologically) introduction, he looks absolutely terrified.

The void being the fandom's loud opinions on a certain headmaster. I wouldn't call myself pro-Dumbledore, but I'm certainly not anti-Dumbledore, either. (Agnostic-Dumbledore??)

Since I'm not of the anti-Dumbledore persuasion, I decided to poke around in the tags and see what the arguments were, so I don't make comments out of ignorance.

Most of the tag seems to be more directed towards his treatment of Harry and Sirius, but a few people mentioned that Dumbledore should have treated Tom with ‘exceptional kindness’ and tried to ‘rehabilitate’ him.

As I said in Parts 2 and 3, I am 100% in favor of helping a traumatized kid learn to cope, and I don’t think Tom Riddle was solidly on the Path to Evil (TM) at birth, or even at eleven. Not even at fifteen.

Could unconditional love and kindness have helped Tom Riddle enough for the rise of Lord Voldemort to never happen? Possibly, but...

Yes, I'm about to drag up that Carl Jung quote, again.

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

The problem with this is that if you’re going to blame Dumbledore for this, you also have to blame every other adult in Tom’s life: his headmaster, Dippet, his Head of House, Slughorn, his ‘caretakers’ at the orphanage, Mrs. Cole and Martha, and possibly more. In fact, if we're going to blame any adult, let's blame Merope for r*ping and abusing Tom Riddle Senior, and having a kid she wasn't intending to take care of.

Furthermore, you cannot possibly hold anyone but Tom accountable for the murders he committed. (I should not have to sit here and explain why cold-blooded murder is wrong.) And if you like Tom Riddle's character, insinuating that his actions are completely at the whim of others is just a bit condescending towards him. He's not an automaton or a marionette, he's a very intelligent human being with a functioning brain, and at sixteen is fully capable of moral reasoning and critical analysis.

I've heard the theories about Dumbledore setting the Potters up to die, and I'm not going to discuss their validity right now; but he didn't put a wand in Tom's hand and force him to kill anyone. Tom did it all of his own accord.

And while yes, I have enormous sympathy for what happened to Tom as a child, at some point, he decided to murder Myrtle Warren, and that is where I lose my sympathy. Experiencing trauma does not give you the right to inflict harm on others. Yes, Tom was failed, but then, he spectacularly failed himself.

We also have no idea how Dumbledore treated Tom as a student.

In the movies, it’s Dumbledore who tells Tom he has to go back to the orphanage, but in the books, it’s Dippet. We know that Slughorn spent a lot of time around Tom at Slug Club and such, yet I don’t really see people clamoring for his head.

I regard the sentiment that Dumbledore turned Tom Riddle into Lord Voldemort with a lot of skepticism.

But let's hear from the character himself -- his impression of eleven-year-old Tom Riddle.

“Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time?” said Dumbledore. “No, I had no idea that he was to grow up to be what he is. However, I was certainly intrigued by him. I returned to Hogwarts intending to keep an eye upon him, something I should have done in any case, given that he was alone and friendless, but which, already, I felt I ought to do for others’ sake as much as his."

Now, assuming that Dumbledore's telling the truth, I'm not seeing something glaringly wrong with this. No, he hasn't pigeonholed Tom as evil, yes, I'd be intrigued, too, and it's a very good idea to keep an eye on Tom, for his own sake.

“At Hogwarts,” Dumbledore went on, “we teach you not only to use magic, but to control it. You have — inadvertently, I am sure — been using your powers in a way that is neither taught nor tolerated at our school."

Again, it seems like he's at least somewhat sympathetic towards Tom, and is willing to at least give him a chance.

More evidence (again, assuming Dumbledore is a reliable narrator):

Harry: “Didn’t you tell them [the other professors], sir, what he’d been like when you met him at the orphanage?” Dumbledore: “No, I did not. Though he had shown no hint of remorse, it was possible that he felt sorry for how he had behaved before and was resolved to turn over a fresh leaf. I chose to give him that chance.”

Now, I think Dumbledore is pretty awful with kids, but I don't think that's malicious. Yeah, it's a flaw, but perfect people don't exist, and perfect characters are dead boring. I am not saying that he definitely handled Tom's case well, I'm just saying that there's little evidence that Dumbledore, however shaken and scandalized, wrote him off as 'evil snake boy.'

It's also worth taking into account that it's 1938, and the attitudes towards mental health back then.

Why is Tom looking at Dumbledore like that, anyway? Why is he so scared? What has he possibly been threatened with or heard whispers of?

"'Professor'?" repeated Riddle. He looked wary. "Is that like 'doctor'? What are you here for? Did she get you in to have a look at me?"

"I don't believe you," said Riddle. "She wants me looked at, doesn't she? Tell the truth!"

"You can't kid me! The asylum, that's where you're from, isn't it? 'Professor,' yes, of course -- well, I'm not going, see? That old cat's the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they'll tell you!

Tom keeps insisting he's not mad until Dumbledore finally manages to calm him down.

I'm really upset this wasn't in the movie, because it's important context. Instead we got these throwaway cutscenes of some knick-knacks relating to the Cave he's got lying around, but I just would have preferred to see him freaking out like he does in the book.

There was extreme stigma and prejudice towards mental illness.

'Lunatic asylums,' as they were called in Tom's time, were terrible places. In the 1930s and 40s, he could look forward to being 'treated' with induced convulsions, via metrazol, insulin, electroshock, and malaria injections. And if he stuck around long enough, he could even look forward to a lobotomy!

So, if you think Dumbledore was judgmental towards Tom, imagine how flat-out prejudiced whatever doctors or 'experts' Mrs. Cole might have gotten in to 'look at him' must have been!

Moving on to the next few shots, he is sitting down and hunched over as if expecting punishment or at least some kind of bad news, Dumbledore is mostly out of the frame. He’s trapped visually, by Dumbledore on one side, and a wall on the other, because he’s still very much afraid. uncomfortable, as he tells Dumbledore a secret that he fears could get him committed to an asylum (which were fucking horrible places, as I said).

It brings to the scene that miserable sense of isolation and loneliness to that has defined Tom’s entire life up to that point (and, partially due to his own bad choices, continues to define it).

And, when Dumbledore accepts it, his posture changes. he becomes more confident and more at ease, as he describes the... utilities of his magical abilities. 

"All sorts," breathed Riddle. A flush of excitement was rising up his neck into his hollow cheeks; he looked fevered. "I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to."

Riddle lifted his head. His face was transfigured: There was a wild happiness upon it, yet for some reason it did not make him better looking; on the contrary, his finely carved features seemed somehow rougher, his expression almost bestial.

I do think Harry, our narrator, is being a tad bit judgmental here. Magic is probably the only thing that brings Tom happiness in his grey, lonely world, and when I was Tom's age and being bullied, if I had magic powers, you'd better believe that I'd (a) be bloody ecstatic about it (b) use them. And, like Tom, I can't honestly say that I can't imagine getting a bit carried-away with it. Unfortunately, we can't all be as inherently good and kindhearted as Harry.

Reading HBP again, as a 'mature' person, it almost seems like the reader is being prompted to see Tom as evil just because he's got 'weird' facial expressions.

So... uh...

Nope, let's judge Tom on his actions, not looks of 'wild happiness.'

To his great surprise, however, Dumbledore drew his wand from an inside pocket of his suit jacket, pointed it at the shabby wardrobe in the corner, and gave the wand a casual flick. The wardrobe burst into flames. Riddle jumped to his feet; Harry could hardly blame him for howling in shock and rage; all his worldly possessions must be in there. But even as Riddle rounded on Dumbledore, the flames vanished, leaving the wardrobe completely undamaged.

Okay, one thing I dislike is Tom's lack of emotional affect when Dumbledore burned the wardrobe, in the books, he jumped up and started screaming, instead of looking passively (in shock, perhaps?) at the fire. Incidentally, I can't really tell if he's impressed or in shock, to be honest. I think they really tried to make Tom 'creepier' in the movie.

This is one of the incidents where Dumbledore's inability to deal with children crops up.

I think he was trying to teach Tom that magic can be dangerous, and he wouldn't like it to be used against him, but burning the wardrobe that contains everything he owns was a terrible move on Dumbledore's part. Tom already has very limited trust in other people, and now, he's not going to trust Dumbledore at all -- now, he's put Tom on the defensive/offensive for the rest of their interaction, and perhaps for the rest of their teacher-student relationship.

Riddle stared from the wardrobe to Dumbledore; then, his expression greedy, he pointed at the wand. "Where can I get one of them?"

"Where do you buy spellbooks?" interrupted Riddle, who had taken the heavy money bag without thanking Dumbledore, and was now examining a fat gold Galleon.

But I'm not surprised Tom is 'greedy.' He's grown up in an environment where if he wants something, whether that's affection, food, money, toys, he's got to take it. There's no one looking after his needs specifically. I'm not surprised that he's a thief and a hoarder, and I don't think that counts as a moral failing necessarily, and more of a maladaptive way of seeking comfort. It would be bizarre if he came out of Wool's Orphanage a complete saint.

Additionally, I think given that the Gaunt family has a history of 'mental instability,' Tom is a sensitive child, and the trauma of growing up institutionalized and possibly being treated badly due to his magical abilities or personality disorder deeply affected him.

And there are points where it seems that Dumbledore is quick to judge Tom.

"He was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control."

"Yes, indeed; a rare ability, and one supposedly connected with the Dark Arts, although as we know, there are Parselmouths among the great and the good too. In fact, his ability to speak to serpents did not make me nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy, and domination."

"I trust that you also noticed that Tom Riddle was already highly self-sufficient, secretive, and, apparently, friendless?..."

And while this is all empirically true, these are (a) a product of Tom's harsh environment, and (b) do not necessarily make him evil. But the point remains that child psych didn't exist as a field of its own, and psychology as a proper science was in its infancy, so I'd be shocked if Dumbledore was insightful about Tom's situation.

But I've gone a ton of paragraphs without citing anything, so I've got to rectify that.

Let's talk about Harry Harlow's monkey experiments in the 1950-70s.

If you're not a fan of animal research, since I know some people are uncomfortable with it, feel free to scroll past.

Here's the TL;DR: Children need to be hugged and shown affection too, not just fed and clothed, please don't leave babies to 'cry out' and ignore their needs because it's backwards and fucking inhumane. HUG AND COMFORT AND CODDLE CHILDREN AND SPOIL THEM WITH AFFECTION!

I will put more red writing when the section is over.

This is still an interesting experiment to have in mind while we explore the whole 'no one taught Tom Riddle how to love' thing and whether or not it's actually a good argument.

Andddd let's go all the way back to the initial 1958 experiment, featured in Harlow's paper, the Nature of Love. (If you're familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, him and Harlow actually collaborated for a time).

To give you an idea of our starting point, until Harlow's experiment, which happened twenty years after Dumbledore meets Tom for the first time, no one in science had really been interested in studying love and affection.

"Psychologists, at least psychologists who write textbooks, not only show no interest in the origin and development of love or affection, but they seem to be unaware of its very existence."

I'm going to link some videos of Harry Harlow showing the actual experiment, which animal rights activists would probably consider 'horrifying.' It's nothing gory or anything, but if you are particularly soft-hearted (and I do not mean that as an insult), be warned. It's mostly just baby monkeys being very upset and Harlow discussing it in a callous manner. Yes, today it would be considered unethical, but it's still incredibly important work and if you think you can handle it, I would recommend watching at least the first one to get an idea of how dramatic this effect is.

Dependency when frightened

The full experiment

The TL;DW:

This experiment was conducted with rhesus macaques; they're still used in psychology/neuroscience research when you want very human-like subjects, because they are very intelligent (unnervingly so, actually). I'd say that adult ones remind me of a three-year old child.

Harlow separated newborn monkeys from their mothers, and cared for their physical needs. They had ample nutrition, bedding, warmth, et cetera. However, the researchers noticed that the monkeys:

(a) were absolutely miserable. And not just that, but although all their physical needs were taken care of, they weren't surviving well past the first few days of life. (This has also been documented in human babies, and it's called failure to thrive and I'll talk about it a bit later).

(b) showed a strong attachment to the gauze pads used to cover the floor, and decided to investigate.

So, they decided to provide a surrogate 'mother.' Two, actually. Mother #1 was basically a heated fuzzy doll that was nice for the monkeys to cuddle with. Mother #2 was the same, but not fuzzy and made of wire. Both provided milk. The result? The monkeys spent all their time cuddling and feeding from the fuzzy 'mother.' Perhaps not surprising.

What Harlow decided next, is that one of the hallmarks being attached to your caregiver is seeking hugs and reassurance from them when frightened. So, when the monkeys were presented with something scary, they'd go straight to the cloth mother and ignore the wire one. Not only that, but when placed in an unfamiliar environment, if the cloth mother was present, the monkeys would be much calmer.

In a follow-up experiment, Harlow decided to see if there was some sort of sensitive period by introducing both 'mothers' to monkeys who had been raised in isolation for 250 days. Guess what?

The initial reaction of the monkeys to the alterations was one of extreme disturbance. All the infants screamed violently and made repeated attempts to escape the cage whenever the door was opened. They kept a maximum distance from the mother surrogates and exhibited a considerable amount of rocking and crouching behavior, indicative of emotionality.

Yikes. So, at first Harlow thought that they'd passed some kind of sensitive period for socialization. But after a day or two they calmed down and started chilling out with the cloth mother like the other monkeys did. But here's a weird thing:

That the control monkeys develop affection or love for the cloth mother when she is introduced into the cage at 250 days of age cannot be questioned. There is every reason to believe, however, that this interval of delay depresses the intensity of the affectional response below that of the infant monkeys that were surrogate-mothered from birth onward

All these things... attachment, affection, love, seeking comfort ... are mostly learned behaviours.

Over.

Orphanages, institutionalized childcare, and why affection is a need, not an extra.

His face is lit the exact same was as Coulson’s was in COS (half-light, half-dark), and I said I was going to talk about this in Part 3. I think perhaps it's intended to make Fiennes-Tiffin look more evil or menacing, but I'm going to quite deliberately misinterpret it.

Now, for some context, Dumbledore has just (kind of) burned his wardrobe, ratted out his stealing habit, and (in the books only, they really took a pair of scissors to this scene) told him he needs to go apologize and return everything and Dumbledore will know if he doesn't, and, well, Tom's not exactly a happy bugger about it.

But interestingly, in the books, this is when we start to see Tom's 'persona,' aka his mask, start to come into play. Whereas before, he was screaming, howling, and generally freaking out, here, he starts to hide his emotions -- in essence, obscure his true self under a shadow. So this scene is really the reverse of Coulson's in COS.

And perhaps I'm reading wayyy too much into this, but I can't help but notice that Coulson's hair is parted opposite to Fiennes-Tiffin's, and the opposite sides of their faces are shadowed, too.

Riddle threw Dumbledore a long, clear, calculating look. "Yes, I suppose so, sir," he said finally, in an expressionless voice.

Riddle did not look remotely abashed; he was still staring coldly and appraisingly at Dumbledore. At last he said in a colorless voice, "Yes, sir."

Here's an article from The Atlantic on Romanian orphanages in the 1980s, when the dictator, Ceausescu, basically forced people to have as many children as possible and funnel them into institutionalized 'childcare', and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

There's not a whole lot of information out there on British orphanages in the 30s' and 40s', but given that people back then thought you just had to keep children on a strict schedule and feed them, it wouldn't have a whole lot better.

The only thing I've found is this, and it's not super promising.

The most important study informing the criteria for contemporary nosologies, was a study by Barbara Tizard and her colleagues of young children being raised in residential nurseries in London (Tizard, 1977). These nurseries had lower child to caregiver ratios than many previous studies of institutionalized children. Also, the children were raised in mixed aged groups and had adequate books and toys available. Nevertheless, caregivers were explicitly discouraged from forming attachments to the children in their care.

Here's a fairly recent paper that I think gives a good summary: Link

Here, they describe the responses to the Strange Situation test (which tests a child's attachment to their caregiver).

We found that 100% of the community sample received a score of “5,” indicating fully formed attachments, whereas only 3% of the infants living in institutions demonstrated fully formed attachments. The remaining 97% showed absent, incomplete, or odd and abnormal attachment behaviors.

Bowlby and Ainsworth, who did the initial study, thought that children would always attach to their caregivers, regardless of neglect or abuse. But some infants don't attach (discussed along with RAD in Part 2).

Here's a really good review paper on attachment disorders in currently or formerly institutionalized children : Link

Core features of RAD in young children include the absence of focused attachment behaviors directed towards a preferred caregiver, failure to seek and respond to comforting when distressed, reduced social and emotional reciprocity, and disturbances of emotion regulation, including reduced positive affect and unexplained fearfulness or irritability.

Which all sounds a lot like Tom in this scene. The paper also discusses neurological effects, like atypical EEG power distribution (aka brain waves), which can correlate with 'indiscriminate' behavior and poor inhibitory control; which makes sense for a kid who, oh, I don't know, hung another kid's rabbit because they were angry.

Furthermore...

...those children with more prolonged institutional rearing showed reduced amygdala discrimination and more indiscriminate behavior.

This again, makes a ton of sense for Tom's psychological profile, because the amygdala (which is part of the limbic system, which regulates emotions) plays a major role in fear, anger, anxiety, and aggression, especially with respect to learning, motivation and memory.

So, I agree completely that Tom needed a lot of help, especially given the fact that he spent eleven years in an orphanage (longer than the Bucharest study I was referring to), and Dumbledore wasn't exactly understanding of his situation, and probably didn't realise what a dramatic effect the orphanage had on Tom, and given the way he talks to Tom, probably treated him as if he were a kid who grew up in a healthy environment.

In case you are still unconvinced that hugging is that important, there's a famous 1944 study conducted on 40 newborn human infants to see what would happen if their physical needs (fed, bathed, diapers changed) were provided for with no affection. The study had to be stopped because half the babies died after four months. Affection leads to the production of hormones and boosts the immune system, which increases survival, and that is why we hug children and babies should not be in orphanages. They are supposed to be hugged, all the time. I can't find the citation right now, I'll add it later if I find it.

But I think it's vastly unrealistic to say that Dumbledore, who grew up during the Victorian Era, would have any grasp of this and I don't think he was actively malicious towards Tom.

Was Tom Riddle failed by institutional childcare? Absolutely.

Were the adults in his life oblivious to his situation? Probably.

Do the shitty things that happened to Tom excuse the murders he committed, and are they anyone's fault but his own? No. At the end of the day, Tom made all the wrong choices.

And, for what it's worth, I think (film) Dumbledore (although he expresses the same sentiment in more words in the books) wishes he could go back in time and have helped Tom.

"Draco. Years ago, I knew a boy, who made all the wrong choices. Please, let me help you."

[jmblyajones]

Eagles: New Year Eve 3x10

All the theories and conjecture come down to this episode. I don’t think I’m ready but I’m hitting play anyways 😂

(prepare yourself, this is long as hell)

1. Felicia checking into mental health/rehab facility, BLESS!! And the girls dropping her off made me smile. I really hope she gets the help she needs and the help she’s searching for. This all can’t be easy and it’s one day at a time. Wait that just leaves Amie and Klara… things seem to be good right now but I’m proceeding with caution 😂. I like that all three of them are checking in with each other on what’s going on with in their personal lives.

2. Oh lord Andreas pls… He said their sound sounded like piss.. no bby, you sounded like piss. I’m sorry y’all, I can’t fake like screamo.

They puttin shit in mailboxes now???… Oh hell no.

They need to set up security cameras or other security measures like a trip wire? Lock the mailbox? Idk. But Jack’s lyin ass needs to be dealt with…preferably with high powered attorneys and not a gun lol.

3. Is it bad i’m out of breath watching Elias work on the ice? I really just caught myself unconsciously huffing and puffing wtf 💀 I see what Mats is trying to do. He’s trying to let Elias know that’s all the things Mats thinks Elias is stressing about are okay, Felicia, the hockey board ect. but things are way deeper.

WAIT SHUT THE FUCK UP……FIVE MINUTES IN!! FIVE…. WHAT THE FUCK…

I was really over here thinking, nah he’s not gonna ask his dad advice about this… WTF. I am SCREAMING. I still have it paused at him saying he thinks he is in love!!! I can’t press play because i’ll literally just fall apart rn. I’m trying to hold it together yall but… FIVE MINUTES 😭😭 Is Elias gonna tell Mats that it’s Amie?? Lawd I can’t wait to see Mats face when he finds out 😂😂. But when he does, I need him on his knees praying to high heaven that Elias and Amie don’t follow in his and Petra’s footsteps leaving her ass at the airport.. Yall think I’m playing?..

Why does Elias think it’s too late to express his feelings? Look at Mats being a father, awww. I really love this scene. This is what I wanted from this man and he’s giving 😭.

Y’all are no good trifling over there for cutting this scene like that! lmaoo

4. Klara’s momma, you gotta lot of shit in your mailbox you need clean up. Heavy duty that maam. Sassy Klara is needed but directed at the right people imo. I will say this scene is giving me very Brooke and her mom vibes and reminded me of me and @warrenslayla ‘s OTH analysis a couple weeks back!! Ur changing me a bit 😂

5. Petra saying she was a rebel in her past life? Yeah right 😂 Nah, jk. Sometimes the strict parents were the most rebellious lol.

Okay so Eagles are the ones having a party!! Guys, we are getting our groove ooooon! What did I tell y’all! We are twerking EVERYTHING!! Shoot if y’all don’t I definitely will. I love Petra pushing Amie to perform, she has always been supportive of her music. I just hope maybe she gets a chance to see her on stage sometime. Now it’s time to get my girl dressed up to the 9’s pls. 👏🏾👏🏾

I see Elias over there trying to flirt text my girl….. Yall…. quit playing with me 😂 We see what y’all are trying to do over there in the writers room. Y’all think y’all are so slick trying to make sure Petra and Mats don’t know about Elias and Amie. I see y’all.

6. I’m really glad to see Mats and Leila spending New Years with Felicia so she isn’t alone. I can’t believe Leila copped to her boy toy and Mats didn’t trip! I call this growth

7. Omg…. is it bad I forgot that Ludde doesn’t know about Felicia… I feel bad because I completely forgot 🥴 Elias… you should know by now as a man “newly” in love that the heart wants what it wants. That doesn’t stop the yearning or Ludde’s possible future attempts to see Felicia. Loving this brotherly bond though! Those two have definitely come a long way from headbutts.

8. I am predicting for the Eagles next season, an equivalence of a state championship (in America) for hockey in Sweden.

Oh, my girl looks sooooooooo GOOOD. We now have to address her as Pop Queen Amie from now on. I don’t make the rules 🤷🏾‍♀️

9. I’m glad Klara did the right thing in the end and sponsored the Eagles

10. WHO DID AMIE’S LOOK?? I hope they kept this person for her looks next season bc… this look slaps so hard rn. Name a better look? You can’t!! Everything is on point!! Hair on point. Make up, nails, outfit, EVERYTHING!

11. I know we aren’t suppose to laugh at the shitty mailbox but… i’m sorry

This letter ain’t getting opened… as soon as he put it in his pocket I knew. We will never know lmaoo

12. Everybody is speaking English up in here.. they catch me so off guard because I never know what to expect but Ludde sounds like he was the one who spent half his life in America lol.

Felicia and Amie teaming up to get Ludde into that London school, wow! I love an unexpected power play!!! Oh shit….. Andreas and his damn gun…

13. DID AMIE JUST SAY “I WANT TO TOUCH YOU” AND STARE AT ELIAS??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? YALL ARE SOME FREAKS OVER THERE!!! OH MY GOSH.

THIS WHOLE EXCHANGE WITH THEM EYEING EACH OTHER AND HIM BLUSHING…. SEND MY HAPPY ASS TO THE MOON!!!

I am literally watching these two eye hump each other from across the room. I feel like I shouldn’t even be watching this

I really want to know how the actors thought the fans would react to watching this… 😂

14. Klara… sis… we got 4 minutes left, I don’t think a conversation is really how anyone wants to spend this remaining time left no offense.

15. Dammit Andreas, Ludde should have called him to let him know about London as soon as they hung up with him. Get this jack-ass off the screen!! The way he even came out that house party… Ugh his whole persona is just garbage. This fake suave “i’m better than you” bs is tired. Pick a new gimmick boo!

16. THIS IS NOT WHAT WE NEED RIGHT NOW WITH LESS THAN 3 MINUTES. We don’t need Amie catching Elias and Klara hugging and assuming it’s an intimate thing, NOO! Jesus 🤦🏾‍♀️

17. HOLD THE PHONE…… ELIAS SAID LOVE AND AMIE IN THE SAME SENTENCE…. I heard that right?

Y’all heard that right? right? He said he loves Amie? ELIAS SAID HE LOVES AMIE!!!!! I have to pause because if there is a kiss, i’m afraid to receive it. I am already falling apart right here 😭

THE 360 FIREWORK SPIN RAIN KISS!!!!! WE FUCKING WOOOOOOOOOON!!!!!

18. This is such a weird feeling… two years yall… two damn years and we finally got our bbys. I’ve replayed this scene so many times and just realized the amount of takes they had to kiss to get this *chef’s kiss* of a scene hehehe.

Yup, winner winner chicken dinner all the way to the bank, cha ching!

Aww. My girl was on her tippy toes at first too hehe.

19. (1) It should not take Ludde that long to call his brother (2) Jack if Andreas was some violent thug as you portrayed him to be, I wouldn’t be kekeing and laughing at him like my life wasn’t in danger you miserable pos… I’m done.

You know, I really think the person who got shot is all who we want it to be lmao. That way Jack would still linger in their life’s after death, so cruel 💀. How naive of me to think Andreas would just point the gun, force Jack to retract his statements while he soiled himself out of fear?Andreas could be the one to get shot and they have him on life support? Chile this could go either way. We ain’t sleuthing out nothing with this random hand. Hell that hand might as well be one of the crew members 💀

[lea-andres]

just for fun, character analysis for Jerk? what about them is so appealing?

😍😍😍 It's been a hot minute since I've ranted about these two, huh?

I love the initial shock factor of the size difference. He's a massive polar bear, she's a tiny beetle. This was literally the thing that made the ship in the first place. I told @bitter-sweet-coffee we need to ship Jewel with one of the 6 foot tall Power characters because the size difference would be so delightfully jarring, and Izzy fucking delivered. 😂

But, they've got their similarities: the big one being they're both the impulse control to their crazy best friends (or at least they TRY to be). These two could relate SO HARD to the stresses the other has suffered thanks to the struggles of keeping Bean and Tangle alive. 😂 They also, if you choose to translate Bark's mutism as a symptom of social anxiety like I do, both suffer from some amount of anxiety, so they could provide some amount of understanding and comfort to each other on that front too.

Jewel could be scared of Bark upon first meeting him (we're exploring this aspect in my fic When the Day Met the Night, if you're new here and this is your first time seeing this ship or my antics 😂), but she'd come around when she realizes what an absolute gentle sweetheart he is. Like his and Amy's interaction in IDW, but with a romantic context, because I cannot foresee a situation where Bark WOULDN'T like her to some degree upon first meeting her. She's just too sweet and cute. 😂

They're a well deserved break from their usual crazy associates. While Jewel WOULD end up being the crazy one of the two (we'll get into why in a bit), she can't hold a candle to Bean or Fang, neither one of them can even come close to Bean or Tangle's antics, so they can actually relax for once and not have to be constantly on guard for something to explode or for Tangle to fling herself head first down a pit of spikes. And, if they're together and something crazy DOES happen, they know they can count on each other for back up. They're both used to this shit.

And both of them would complete each other so well if they were a couple, or at least friends. Bark gains a voice, figuratively AND literally. I've joked before Jewel's the "they asked for no pickles!" One of the couple, but she totally is. If she's not protesting to a situation/plan of action/how someone is treating Bark because it's what she'd say in that situation anyway, she's doing it specifically for Bark. She knows what he would say in that situation if he could (mostly because it lines up with what she would say herself anyway), and so she'd ensure Bark's heard by saying it herself. Doesn't matter if she succeeds or fails, Bark would appreciate being heard either way.

As for Jewel, she gets a spine, essentially. Much needed confidence and bravery when the going gets tough. As I mentioned before, Bark is HUGE. We've seen him go toe to toe with KNUCKLES on several occasions in the comics, the guy's a powerhouse. And he's significantly calmer than Jewel is in the face of danger. So when Jewel's got to go up against some threatening enemy, Bark would back her up, 100%. And people are going to take the two foot tall, very puntable bug seriously if she's got a 6 foot tall, pure muscle bear lurking around behind her, giving them a "fuck around and find out" look.

...And this is where Jewel becomes the crazy one. The power of "no one wants to touch me because Bark would pound them into a pulp" would go to her head a little bit, and Jewel would slowly (testing out the waters, seeing what she has the guts to actually say or do in each scenario) become a lot more confident and would talk back to her enemies more often. So she'd occasionally blindside poor Bark by responding to Eggman's ludicrous threats with "Why don't you come over here and DO IT?" Or by calmly telling Zavok to fuck off back to Lost Hex, but at least she's more confident in herself now???

Also, this is so minor, but it makes me so feral: warm blooded and cold blooded. JEWEL WINS THE WARM CUDDLES GAME, 100%. TRY TO TOP POLAR BEAR IN GIVER OF WARM CUDDLES, I DON'T THINK YOU CAN!!! Plus Bark strikes me as a physically affectionate guy (to make up for the lack of words 😂), so Jewel would just have an endless supply of warm cuddles. And he's so much bigger than her! She'd never get cold again, he'd make sure of that. 😍 My favorite is to envision them sleeping together (in the literal sense, not the NSFW sense!): Either Jewel's tucked into his arms like a teddy bear, or she's just curled up on his chest and he's pretty much her bed. He wouldn't hurt her, Bark knows his strength and can be very gentle with her. 😍😍😍

...Okay. Rant over, I think. Thank you for enabling me to brain dump about my rare pair! 😍

[all-seeing-ifer]

apparently i’m just in a Mood to talk about jo n laurie and the proposal scene today (insert obligatory when am i fucking not joke here) and this isn’t really me making any analysis and more me spitballing about what directions i’d want to go in if i were to hypothetically write my own adaptation, but one specific part of the scene that i’d love to see taken in a different direction is the line right at the end when Laurie tells Jo “there'll come a time when you will care for somebody, and you'll love him tremendously, and live and die for him. I know you will, it's your way, and I shall have to stand by and see it” (taken from the original book).

Every adaptation I’ve seen has played that line straight, that Laurie genuinely believes that Jo will one day find someone else who she loves instead of him and is heartbroken about it. BUT, and maybe it’s just my insistence on looking at every single aspect of this fucking story through the “Jo is aroace” lens but I can’t help but read this moment as like. laurie legitimately knows deep down that jo’s right about how she’ll never marry, and is saying this specifically to get a rise out of her, because he’s upset and angry and she’s his best friend and he knows that implying she’s going to eventually “grow out” of her aversion to marriage will get under her skin in a way that literally nothing else can. which yeah, is obviously a way less romantic reading of that moment, but A) I’m aro and I do what I want, and B) I legitimately really love how the 2019 film played the proposal scene as a whole - that it’s not a love confession scene, it’s a fight. They’re best friends who care about and understand each other deeply and this is the worst fight they’ve ever had. I think that’s a genuinely far more interesting and compelling take than any of the other adaptations of this scene, and I’d be interested to see it taken even further.

There’s definitely an argument that it would make Laurie seem too mean-spirited, but also I think the scene where he drunkenly implies that Amy’s given up on her artistic ambitions because she’d rather be Fred Vaughn’s trophy wife demonstrates that he’s absolutely not above being super mean when he’s upset. It’s kind of one of the main parallels between him and Jo, actually (and also I’d say arguably Amy). They both have a tendency when they’re upset or angry to do/say legitimately hurtful and cruel things, and then when they’ve calmed down immediately have a moment of Oh God Why The Fuck Am I Like This.

anyway, i’m not entirely sure what the point of this post was, but let it be known that i just have a lot of feelings about this scene and thoughts about how i’d adapt it if given the chance

[bookspined]

❝ that’s all history is after all: scar tissue. ❞

{ cis-man, he/him }  huh, who’s FROY GUTIERREZ? no, you’re mistaken, that’s actually SCORPIUS MALFOY. he is a TWENTY-TWO year old PUREBLOOD wizard who is A HEALING APPRENTICE. he is known for being CAPTIOUS, RETICENT, FACETIOUS, DISMISSIVE, and DRAMATIC but also RESOURCEFUL, CONSCIENTIOUS, FERVENT, INNOVATIVE, and OBSERVANT, so that must be why he always reminds me of the song IN DREAMS BY BEN HOWARD. i hear he is aligned with THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, so be sure to keep an eye on him. { merry, 24, gmt, she/they }

CHARACTER PARALLELS: Amy Santiago (B99), Claire Temple (Daredevil), Chidi Anagonye (The Good Place), Giles (Buffy TVS), Michelle Jones (MCU), Simon Tam (Firefly), Elizabeth Swan (PoTC), Spock (Star Trek), Clarke Griffin (The 100), Harley Keener (MCU), Gregory House (House) suggested honorable mention Gizmo (Gremlins) 

pinterest [blood, medical imagery tw]

wanted connection ideas

Full Name: Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy Gender/Pronouns: Cis man | he/him Age: Twenty-three Birthdate: January 20th Parents: Draco Lucius Malfoy & Astoria Céline Malfoy (née Greengrass) [Not biologically Astoria’s due to her health, if you ever point this out he’ll flay your eyeballs] Siblings: N/A. Birth place: St. Mungo’s Hospital, England Height: 5’11” Weight: 56 kg Sexual/Romantic Orientation: Demiromantic Bisexual Nationality: British Body Alterations/Marks: A ragged diamond shape scar at the base of his throat.

Blood Status: Pureblood Hogwarts House: Slytherin Wand Arm: Right Pet: His pet toad, Jarvis, recently passed away. Patronus: Arctic Fox Wand: 11 2/3 inches, Willow, Supple, Dragon Heartstring.

Willow is an uncommon wand wood with healing power, I have noted that the ideal owner for a willow wand often has some (usually unwarranted) insecurity, however well they may try and hide it. While many confident customers insist on trying a willow wand (attracted by their handsome appearance and well-founded reputation for enabling advanced, non-verbal magic) my willow wands have consistently selected those of greatest potential, rather than those who feel they have little to learn. It has always been a proverb in my family that he who has furthest to travel will go fastest with willow.

Personality Traits: Brilliance, innovative, empathetic, individuality, openness, social consciousness, inventive, logical, practical skills and self assertion; lack of attachment to people outside his circle and the “real world,” over-intellectualizing of the emotions, dismissive, anxious, crotchety tempered, facetious, rigid, prone to self-isolation, intellectual arrogance, and stubborn. Zodiac Sign: Aquarius/Capricorn Cusp Moral Alignment: Neutral Good Core values: Loyalty, Knowledge, Hope Four temperaments: Melancholic  

HOGWARTS HOUSE ANALYSIS

Slytherin Primary and a Burned Ravenclaw Secondary.

Slytherin Primaries prioritize their own selves and loved ones first. Slytherins don’t feel guilty or selfish about this– they feel righteous and moral. The most important thing is to look after your own. Abandoning or hurting one of your own is the worst thing you can do.

A Burned Ravenclaw Secondary might want to be skilled, curious, and prepared, but they feel like they are (or like people think they are) limited, clumsy, or inconstant. Gathering knowledge, hobbies, skills, or tools is the right way to achieve their goals, but Burned Ravenclaws know that’s not going to work within their capabilities. So they take other paths and use other tools– maybe a Gryffindor’s bluntness, a Slytherin’s flexibility, or a Hufflepuff’s slow and steady dedication.

You may have a Hufflepuff Secondary Model.

Hufflepuff is the House of grit, reliability, and determination, and Hufflepuffs use those values to help live, act, and succeed. If you model Hufflepuff Secondary, you also value these things and like to live by them. You like to be hardworking, dedicated, and consistent– but you wouldn’t feel guilty for abandoning those values in the service of other, higher priorities. If there’s another, easier way to get what you want– you’d take it. You think hard work provides valuable rewards– and those rewards are why you work. The work doesn’t have persuasive value in itself.

Despite his very best resistance he’s always been pretty empathetic in nature, he tries to rule his emotions as well as he can but fails more often than not. He was always one of those toddlers that if another kid started crying he’d be right along with them, not because he wanted attention but because he just couldn’t not. A bit of a crybaby, has researched how to magically seal up his tear ducts. Obviously managed to keep the family’s flair for the dramatic there as well. After a few years he leant into the sarcastic vague-snobbishness to hide the core of overwhelming anxiety.

Just managed to scrape through his schooling with nearly all top grades, this isn’t really due to him being a model student. He has always accrued information with a voracious appetite. Any knowledge he could find, even if most people would consider it entirely useless. His mind clicks into that place? You can’t keep him away. However, when there is not an immediate stir of interest on his approach to a topic he has to fight with himself tooth and nail to carry on. 

Predictably found exam season highly stressful, was never open about it but was quietly competitive and silently smug over his good grades. Could comprehend well above his reading level from an early age and would often look into experimental research and complicated magic but found himself lost in OWL level History of Magic when chapter upon chapter lay ahead of him about something that didn’t catch his interest. Some people he beat just to spite cause he hates them. It worked, whatever.

Tends toward introversion and finds himself tired sometimes quite easily by a large amount of social interaction. Witty and big-mouthed when he feels comfortable or is in the presence of those that embolden him and very likely to get flustered and snap at people when things are becoming a bit too much. Especially if he feels however unjustly that someone is blocking his escape. Has matured slightly in this since leaving school but it happens still, he’s just anxious. Quite fickle and can at the drop of a hat decide that he’s done with you for the day once his Give Me Attention Meter is maxed. Could be an absolute bloody brat when he felt like it but feels he has grown out of it, which he mostly has.

Always been very, very aware of many people’s distrust of him and his family, he used to sneer and play it up if anyone tried to bring up his dad and go on the offensive but was genuinely affected quite deeply by it all. In his early school years, despite his weakness to the cold, he constantly had his sleeves rolled up to the elbow so that his blank forearm was bared as a statement to just about everyone. I am not marked, I never will be. Now he’s older he has more of a handle on things and can be diplomatic in situations where people are clearly discomforted by his presence and his family history.

Even though the war culminated far earlier in this verse I imagine Scor would have had to have been relatively sheltered as a child if not for how emotionally sensitive and prone to periods of ill-health he was, it was definitely for his own safety. He is still the grandson of a known high-ranking Death Eater and that made him a media target and put one on his back for anyone else that might happen to be watching. 

Never produced much of a talent for offensive magic and wouldn’t resort to those methods unless he had literally no other choice, not a front line fighter by any means. His talents with strategy, potion-making, healing and his perseverance with defensive magic are what define him to the Order. While everyone kind of knows who he hung out with at school and who his friends are he is deliberately very mischievous with releasing rumours and misleading people. He deliberately keeps his cards very close to his chest so most people don’t know that he is aligned with anyone, he usually uses glamours or a scarf to conceal his identity if he has to. 

While he is knowledgeable about healing and anatomy, he is the WORST at taking care of himself. The literal embodiment of Healers make the worst patients, tends to forgo sleep and basic bodily needs if he’s locked into what he’s focusing on. Sometimes needs reminders to sleep and eat, like a child. 

Healing is the most satisfying part of his life and he would never give it up, he likes to experiment as he has a fascination with magic and muggle science and where they might intersect. A fucking nerd honestly. While he thinks he’s being fairly subtle about it a large part of his academic life has been doused in research into blood maledictions, for obvious reasons. He does his best not to flutter too obviously around his Mum. She is capable and ten times stronger than he is. 

Lives in a small studio flat in Diagon Alley that is mostly stacks of books and makeshift shelves.

the stillness of the world the moment you take the first step into fresh snow, cashmere and fine wool, the pearlescence of dreamless sleep draught, the scratch of a quill on parchment, faintly tremoring fingers, a shiver up your spine in a warm room, the exhilaration of a problem solved, a thunderous grey overcast sky, the bite of a stitching charm, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, petrichor, the burn in your eyes before a well of tears.

Always had somewhat fragile health tending toward sickly. Hands are never warm, his existence is an endless heat seeking mission. 

Went to one Slug Club meeting and used his time to verbally berate and or challenge most of the contacts in attendance, he was not asked to return. 

Potions Club, Charms Club, used to sometimes be willing to be dragged to Dueling Club but didn’t enjoy himself. 

Plays quite a bit of chess.

Bruises like a fucking peach and scars so easily.

Views quidditch as a good fly spoiled. 

Is a very skilled pianist almost entirely due to his Grandmother’s tutelage. 

Surprisingly great with children/toddlers/babies, no one including himself expected this, he mostly feared them beforehand. 

Bit of a mummy’s boy in that he practically GLOWS when people talk of Astoria’s achievements. 

When he has time off from healing he will have chipped black nail varnish on. 

Highly intelligent but rarely manages to match a pair of socks, chews his quills but no one else’s. 

While very eloquent and well spoken, he is markedly less posh than when he first arrived at Hogwarts.

When he isn’t prone to bouts of insomnia he can take a nap pretty much anywhere. He was once found in a tree after several frantic hours search.

[ CREDIT : CHARACTER PSD template by @karmahelper (defunct url) I tried to find a current social this week by messaging around but couldn’t find anything unfortunately. Forgot to copy this over from the google doc! ]