Imagine Percy having a really rough day. His power, what he’s done, who he’s had to be to do those things, are weighing on him. Frankly, he scares himself. He doesn’t know how any sane person would want him around, much less around kids, especially as a counselor.
He puts on a brave face. Maybe if he looks happy no one will remember there’s a person behind that face who can’t look at himself in the mirror.
He doesn’t know how it happened; maybe he agreed to it when he was lost in his mind, putting on the “chill older counselor” face everyone expects, but he finds himself in the sand volleyball pit on the team of campers from the less populated cabins. The Demeter and Hermes cabin teamed up on the other side.
The game itself is a fog to Percy. The only breaks in his gloom come in the form of reminders: that’s only a volleyball (images of a giant hurling rocks at him flash in front of his eyes). they’re calling the ball (the sound of campers crying out for help in countless battles echo in his head). that’s just sand (the phantom touch of Gaia’s earth brush his legs)
Before he knows it his team is cheering: they won. He doesn’t know how–or if–he contributed any. He chastises himself. A good leader wouldn’t let themselves be distracted. Wouldn’t…his shoes are gone.
He could’ve swore they were right there? If he wasn’t so caught up with himself he would know where he put his shoes, that’s so stupid what would have happened if he was in battle and he got distracted, then it’d be on his head if another camper got killed again because of him, he shouldn’t have even played what was he thinking—
A Hermes kid was holding them up, taunting him, retaliating for their loss. He took one step towards them and they took two steps away. Their face was…playful? This was a prank. They’re pranking him. Don’t they know what he’s done, why their cabin is so empty now?
He took another step. This time the kid let out a excited laugh and ran a few feet away. This was a game. For fun. The kid knows but doesn’t care. They just want to have fun with an older counselor. camper. cousin. whatever the relation, they genuinely just want to mess with him.
But why would they—unless. Unless they aren’t afraid of him.
They see him as a leader, and like any other rotten kid, they want to tease whoever’s in charge. The kid is just being a kid, doing kid things. Like stealing someone's shoes and knowing they won't be hurt because of it. Because they believe Percy is good.
He tries to ignore the similarities on the kids face to one he knew so well, one he thought was good when he was the kids age.
I'm not Luke, he reminded himself. A tiny whisper in a corner of his mind hissed how are you any different?
He looked at the kid again, who was still holding out the shoes, attempting to lure him into a chase. The kid took a couple more steps away, grinning wildly as Percy’s face set in determination.
I’m going to be the person Luke needed, and the one he never was for me. We deserve better.
He sprinted after the Hermes kid, laughing lighter than he had in months.
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i think one of the things that upsets me the most about velma and shaggy's relationship in sdmi--and boy there is a lot--is that not only is her constantly ''correcting'' him for minor, harmless, and usually completely reasonable things with physical and emotional abuse, well. abusive by itself. but so many of the things he does that she treats him that way over are very autistic things, and what she subjects him to is textbook abuse aimed at autistics in particular. (including the part where she gets more and more pissed whenever attempts at said emotional abuse fly over his head, because he's too bad at picking up cues for them to land fully.)
[cws: anti-autistic ableism, ABA, self-harm, physical and emotional IPV, victim-blaming, and abuse apologism. it's a lot and it's really fucking bad lmao]
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like. there's a lot of examples there; shaggy's behavior coming across as autistic is worth a whole post of its own, and a lot of media depicts abuse targeted at autistic traits because ✨️hooray ableism.✨️but she straight up tries to Fix Him (read: force him to perform a Presentable Personality) by forcing him to wear clothes that are sensory hell, and trying to condition him to self-harm every time he does some small harmless, reflexive thing she thinks is Poor Socialization until he stops. and to catch himself doing it, and punish himself, without being prompted. i cannot fucking overstate how fucked up that is.
they even got down the fun little aspect of ABA where the methods of conditioning-through-pain are presented as toys and kiddish things: she gives him a rubber band to wear on his wrist, and tells him to snap it as hard as he can every time he says 'like.' 🙃🙃🙃🙃
like. this does not begin to scratch the surface of the abuse she puts him through in general. and again, characters being abused for autistic traits with the approval of the narrative is a common thing in media, which sucks. but holy fucking shit! they really took the 'violent ableism that is done to autistics irl' to the next fucking level here!
.......and it's portrayed as kind of cringey, immature teen drama on both sides. the self-harm, his dread over how much he knows it'll hurt, and the extreme pain it causes him to the point of screaming are all supposed to be funny. and her arc is all about learning to accept that she deserves better, because she was repressed and had low self-esteem and therefore putting him through fucking DIY ABA didn't make her happy.
🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃
anyway if you couldn't tell i can't fucking stand sdmi velma and i have a lot of words in me about it. when one of your main heroes would have made a way more compelling villain as they are, on a more mundane level compared to all the wild fantastical shit they go up against, holy shit go back to the drawing board you have fucked up. she could have been genuinely good representation of a marginalized person dealing with the trauma of her experiences in some shitty ways she has to grow past, and an interesting flawed character, without being absolutely despicable--hell, she'd have made a great foil to pericles if they'd handled him decently too. they have a lot of parallels, which only gain more depth when you add their respective parallels with cassidy into the mix. and it really fucking sucks that we got this instead.
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Johnny’s Fight Scene
***Potential TW: mentions of past injuries, abuse (just say the word once), fighting, and questionable fighting tactics.***
For those of you who might not know, I was in martial arts for several years growing up. In fact that’s where I met my girlfriend! I was in the class for numerous hours a week for over five years, so the things I learned there definitely stuck with me.
And one of those things that I learned immediately jumped out at me as I was rewatching Sing 2 with said girlfriend and their younger brother who was in the class with us. Johnny appears to use a mental method of losing your inhibitions during a fight, something we called flipping the switch, in his fight with Klaus.
Now, this technique is kind of odd to describe. It involves you essentially shutting off all your thoughts and switching into fight or flight mode (we were trained to go immediately into the fight aspect). You stop thinking. Your mind goes blank. All that matters is getting out of this situation and giving your attacker as much hell as they just gave you.
And when I say you stop thinking, I do literally mean that. I once broke a bone during sparring with someone who had “flipped the switch” (that was not the other student’s fault but our teacher’s, I should not have been allowed to fight). And the person who did that? Amazingly sweet guy. Literally like a big brother to almost everyone. Which just shows that this flipping of a switch method is extremely effective since it bases itself off people’s survival instincts.
Now, why would I and my family think that that is what Johnny did during his Sing 2 fight? Because it’s Johnny. We’ve seen this kid trapped in a flooding building, was in a room with angry gang members who seemed pretty chill with murder, at active bank heists, and run from people who want him dead. And yes, he did break his skateboard out of frustration after weeks of literal abuse, but we also see him immediately regret that action. In no other scenario do we see him act on a fight instinct. Ever. Hell, even that skateboard scene started with him running away from what was happening. Johnny’s first instinct isn’t to fight, it’s to run.
So why would this suddenly change? Why would the kid who had been solely on the defensive the entirety of the fight before that point just change to extremely offensive in a second? Well, we know that Johnny likely is trained to fight. His father boxes for fun, and every other member of his family has proved themselves to be extremely good at fighting as well (to the point they can easily take out professional bodyguards). And despite it being a very poor excuse for a gang, Johnny was still in a gang. He knows how to protect himself. And judging by his reaction to being told he has a fight scene, not only is he likely good at it, but he enjoys it.
But the point stands that he didn’t fight back until he looked back up towards the others. Which actually just further proves to me that he used the “flip the switch” method. That technique is harder for some people to learn than others, especially if they don’t like hurting people or are worried about hurting people. That anxiety can cause someone to not fight back in dangerous situations as it essentially stops that survival instinct I was talking about earlier.
To get around this in training, our teacher would either physically place one of the younger kids a few feet behind us or tell us that they were in danger (though that was typically after the physical method had been used several times), trying to get protective instincts to come into play. And speaking as someone who had to be told this a ton as I don’t like hurting people, it works insanely well. Like scarily so. And I imagine it would work for Johnny too. We see just how family oriented this kid is. His dad and uncles are extremely important to him. His theatre family is extremely important to him. He cares a lot about them. He’s willing to do just about anything for them, no hesitation.
And if he was to tell himself during a fight that he had to protect them, that they were in danger, it’s likely that flipping of a switch would be pretty much instinctual (think of all those references to (insert family member)’s love being a powerful force to be reckoned with).
However, it is important to point out that Johnny was still restraining himself during that fight scene. We see Johnny throughout both movies perform acts of pretty extreme strength (ie. lifting giant slabs of concrete with a basic pulley in Sing 1). The fact that the most destruction he causes during that scene is the breaking of his opponents staff shows the restraint that Johnny was using, despite being in a defensive mindset.
This does speak more on Johnny’s character than anything, as he was able to disarm his opponent in a hyperfocused state, especially since he still has to blink himself out of it at the end and be surprised when the scene was over. He genuinely forgot what was going on and was focused on protecting himself and his loved ones. He forgot he was performing. And yet he still managed to avoid seriously harming his opponent.
That amount of control is insanely hard to come by. It takes years and years of training (the shortest amount of time I saw was 4 years) to be in a flip the switch mindset and still be able to subconsciously access the situation. Johnny is a skilled fighter for sure, with an insane amount of control in his techniques.
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TLDR Conclusion:
Johnny used a trick taught in some martial arts classes called “flipping the switch” which involves tapping into a person's survival instincts and essentially only focusing on getting away from/hurting your attacker back during his Sing 2 performance. This shows how skilled he is as it is extremely hard to do damage control subconsciously (ie. Johnny not actually hurting his opponent and only breaking the staff), and that he was likely trained in self defense for years.
TLDR Evidence:
- The look back at family and friends is often used to get your brain into a protective mindset.
- Flipping the switch involves instantly going onto the offensive, which we see Johnny do after behaving purely defensively in the past.
- Johnny would likely know this trick as we know he at least knows how to fight.
- The fact he seems surprised at the audience at the end of his scene is similar to what it’s like coming out of a “flip the switch’ mindset, you’re shocked by reality or where you are.
- Johnny is very protective of loved ones, as seen with him helping Mrs Crawly and Rosita during the escape, as well as never turning in his family to the police despite not agreeing with the gang.
- Johnny’s typical first reaction in dangerous situations is flight (as seen by him running from the classroom before), so the sudden switch would have to have some motivation behind it.
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