hii i want some meenah (and or kankri) analysis >:3 love the way you explain things
HEARTTTTTTT thank you mio <3333 you will have to forgive me because the beforus trolls really really are not my wheelhouse outside of, like, talking about the ways that they represent (generally) interpretations of the beta trolls that hussie found shitty and obviously the whole obsession he had with owning the teenage SJWs for being messy about their critique of him as if he did not create the confines and energy of that space in the first place.
that said meenah is one of my favies of the bunch and i think i already have said a little bit to you about why i find her compelling on twitter before but UHMMM cracks knuckles
okay so i am a big fan of the characters whos isolation plays into the ways that make them harder for the rest of the cast to sympathize with. isolation is obviously an element of homestuck that is generally relevent to every characters story but for some of them that makes the friendgroups they have cultivated a source of empowerment and for some of them it functions to magnify why they hold whatever particular place in the narrative they do. why the narrative, as something alive and malicious to the characters living within it, grants some of them agency and denies others. and in some ways meenah gets agency, i mean she is the catalyst for every major decision that ensures the outcomes of her session! she has massive influence and control of her own future and is very strongheaded in her refusal to give that up, i love it for her.
that said she also is another victim of fitting into a character slot influenced by hussies biases. i think it is a little bit too simplistic when people try to paint the hemospectrum as just racism flipped on its head (plus that doesnt really account for the lowbloods who are written to be brown), but the makaras and the peixes get the worst of the messiness that IS there, where both on individual levels their characterizations end up saying some extremely fucked up things and revealing a lot about what hussie thinks black culture, like, is. and in a more general sense they invoke the uncomfortable undercurrent of antiblackness and anxiety surrounding black culture becoming a dominating cultural force that troll society is built upon. ive seen this spoken about better, and by actually black fans, so i wont try to hard to restate it all, but the ways that alternia (and beforus by extension) invoke black culture especially in the trolls we are meant to understand as holding societal privilege is like, so so so fucking weird!, and the choice to insert meenah the way that he did, long after discussions about this had started to really permeate the sphere of critique to me cant really feel like anything but a conscious decision, and retroactively erased any chance at him claiming ignorance with what he was doing with gamzee. the decision to double down on the concept that any of these behaviors are instinctual is also the bane of my existence. all of these characters who are loaded with blatant racism and then forced into roles of antagonizers are the ones i feel the most need to align myself with forever no questions asked.
to roll back around to meenah's isolation though, i think a lot of people kind of forget that for as much as she idolizes her post-scratch self, she felt so trapped by the prospect of ruling on beforus that she literally chose to run away and go into hiding and live! all by herself! this is so sad to me and especially drawing back on that metanarrative string of being a marginalized girl we are supposed to read as privileges (eugh!), i think it speaks so blatantly to her want for a nice life where she can be with her friends, even if i think her own conditioning makes her not entirely aware of that because shes spent her entire life being told she is meant to want power and her attitude of embracing that in the least-beforan way possible is so clearly the escapist fantasy of a teenager whos been told all her life how to be who hasnt quite unlearned the idea that power and riches and status are what makes you important.
even despite our entire view of her through her active role in the story being basically hussie telling us over and over and over again what a violent and selfish person she is, everything we hear about her actions in their session point more to meenah just being an abrasive girl who doesnt really know how to express her feelings, especially the ones that make her feel vulnerable or forced onto equal footing with people when shes always been told that isnt what shes meant to do. she bakes them a cakeeee for their anniversaryyyy come onnnn :o(((( i love her. even the stuff she does to damara is all only ever done with the intent of making sure her team can survive the game she has brought them all into (their dynamic is my favorite part about the beforus trolls one day i will speak on it). and ofc her entire plan to kill all of them to make sure they dont all end up wiped from existence!
ok um i am admittedly losing steam with my thoughts here so i will end this there but tldr she is everything to me
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I don’t think any of us should ever overlook Celeborn’s love for Galadriel, because it’s really something.
Usually in Tolkien’s texts, it’s the girl following the guy. Lúthien followed Beren to Tol-in-Gaurhoth and Angband and later into death itself, Níniel followed Turambar to Cabed-en-Aras, Elwing followed Eärendil to Valinor, Éowyn followed Faramir to Ithilien, Arwen followed Aragorn to Gondor and later into death itself, etc. Not that this is a bad thing, not at all. (It should never be deemed disempowering for a woman to follow a man she loves and who loves her and treats her right, if that is her choice.) But overall, considering the wide variety of couples in Middle-earth, it does get repetitive sometimes.
Yet with these two, it’s the opposite. Celeborn always followed Galadriel.
When Galadriel departed Doriath, Celeborn went with her. He left all his kin behind to be with her. We don’t know for sure how his kin reacted to his relationship with a Noldo, but it could very well be that they eloped. She was just that important to him.
Then for the next 2 ages, they endured all sorts of trials and tribulations together across Middle-earth and eventually settled down in Lothlórien. There, Celeborn never tried to make Galadriel subservient to him. She had as much say in how things were run as he himself did. They were true co-rulers, equals in every way.
Then finally, Celeborn temporarily let Galadriel go. He was alright with her leaving on the White Ship to see their daughter and her parents and brothers again, while he stayed behind to finish what needed to be finished. He didn’t force her to stay with him when he himself could not (yet) leave. He didn’t hold her back from reuniting with people she loved and had lost so long ago.
And ultimately, Celeborn followed Galadriel once again. Though he was a Sindar born and bred, and never before had any desire to cross the Sea, he left his own homeland behind forever to reunite with her in her homeland. She still was just that important to him.
This guy was down bad for this girl. He lived his whole life drunk on wifeguy juice. Respect Celeborn.
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YUTA WAS ALWAYS SELFISH
I was originally going to make this post the week the big twist with Yuta in Gojo's body happened, because of the massive subversion that it was. It was the kind of twist that made you question if everything you ever knew about the character was wrong. Namely, Yuta one of the most empathic sorcerers we see in the series - the character who seems to lack the selfishness of the other sorcerers that make up jujutsu society. The kid who fights with the literal power of love.
Was Yuta a monster to begin with and we just didn't see?
So ignore the clickbaity tagline, Yuta is one of my favorite characters I'm not going to start calling him a terrible person. Rather that Yuta is dismissed as a soft kid or a wifeguy, when he's actually more cunning and cutthroat than anyone gives him credit for.
If a sorcerer is nothing more than a con-artist, then if the talent for trickery he displayed in the Sukuna fight is anything to go by Yuta is a true sorcerer down to his bones. Yuta turning Gojo's body into a puppet seems like a massive twist, and almost out of character for Yuta who was so devoted to Gojo.
His earlier fight in the culling game even seemed to hint that Yuta was too soft and he didn't truly have the attitude to fight someone like Ryomen Sukuna who was the embodiment of a calamity.
These panels seemed like a prophecy that Yuta was doomed to fall short against Sukuna. That he could never live up to his title as the next Satoru Gojo, because unlike Gojo and Sukuna who can stand on the top alone Yuta clings to his loved ones.
Sukuna got to where he is by rejecting love. Sukuna is Sukuna because he's never needed anyone to satisfy him. So how can Yuta who needs to be surrounded by his loved ones at all time to validate him and tell him it's okay for him to be alive even compete?
However, even in JJK zero Yuta's love is questioned on whether or not it's as selfless and "pure" as it seems. To begin with, Maki calls him out early on for attracting bullies by playing the victim a lot. He pretends to be a good and innocent person put upon by his circumstances and bullies when really he doesn't want to help himself. Instead of standing up to the bullies he's always let Rika protect him and then condemned her for being a monster. He's let Rika take the blame for all the destruction, even though Rika is HIS cursed technique, created by HIS emotions, and is protecting him.
Yuta doesn't make any attempt to try to learn to control Rika, or even work with her, he just shrivels away in fear.
"You act like a good person, but it feels fake..." Yuta has always adopted the facade of a good person. He seems soft, socially anxious and withdrawn, even after he gains confidence as a sorcerer those traits don't go away because they're a part of his outward persona. Jung divides the psyche into two parts, the persona a mask that faces the world the parts of yourself that come out in your social interaction with people and then there's the shadow your repressed personality.
Yuta's shadow is a literal monster that declares her love for him and then expresses that love by violently destroying everything around him.
Yes, Rika initially contained the soul of someone else but Rika the curse was created by his technique, her power corresponds to his emotions, she comes from his shadow, and even after the real Rika passes on the Shikigami RIKA still remains completely under Yuta's control. Rika is Yuta, the embodiment of his twisted definition of love that would curse his loved ones to keep them by his side forever because he can't live without them. All of Rika's insane possessiveness? That's Yuta's too. Rika's violent overprotectiveness? That's Yuta.
How poetic is it really that Yuta and Rika are so codependent that Yuta's shadow, the other half of his personality is literally RIKA. Yuta cannot exist without love, and without someone too love, he's so terrified of being alone that he cursed Rika and then turned her corpse into a puppet after death. He uses his loved one as a weapon to fight his enemies.
If you think about it for more than five minutes Yuta's cursed technique and Rika has some seriously messed up implications, but it's hard too because as messed up as Yuta's love is it's still genuine.
Love is a curse, but in 236 Nanami speculates that sometimes curses can save people too, just like how Jujutsu Sorcerers use curses to fight and protect others.
So Yuta's love is a screaming, raging, overprotective monster, but it's also what give shim the motivation to fight ofr others. Yuta's love is a curse, but curses can save people too.
Yuta on the other hand isn't aware of his own darker nature most of the time.
The big twist in Jujutsu kaisen Zero is that just as Maki accused him of from the beginning, Yuta was playing the victim all along. He acted like Rika cursed him with her dying breath, but Yuta was the one who cursed her because he couldn't bear to live without her.
However, even this apology is a bit telling of Yuta's self-centered nature. He immediately turns everything into his fault and starts beating himself up over it. He doesn't look at anyone else's perspectives or that other people had a role to play. He deliberately ignores Rika's feelings on the past few years, which Rika is quick to point out for him.
This scene has a parallel later where Yuta ultimately, only thinks about himself first and foremost. In spite of wanting so badly to be surrounded by his loved ones, it's more about him loving them, and less about their feelings for him.
After all he's completely willing to commit a double suicide with Rika to protect his friends, ignoring the fact Rika doesn't want him to pass on just yet, and Maki, Inumaki and Panda wouldn't want him to disappear either. This scene has a direct parallel a year later in the fight against Sukuna when Yuta gives up his body.
Maki almost breaks character from her usual culling game arcs stoicity to fight and argue with Yuta to stop him form doing this, and Rika who one year earlier told Yuta to live a long life so she wouldn't have to see him on the other side so soon is reduced to screaming and sobbing while holding his dead body.
Yuta loves people, or at least he feels an intense amount of love for people, but he can be as self-centered as the other sorcerers we see in the story. Geto even points this out right away, that Yuta is selfish, that he's seeking self-affirmation first and foremost. He needs other people's approval, their love, to feel like he deserves to exist. He'll do anything to earn that love, and once he has it he'll do anything to protect it but it's ultimately for himself.
It manifests in Yuta's technique itself copy, which first and foremost requires Yuta to consume parts of his loved ones that can never be healed if he wants to keep their copied technique. Yuta gets stronger by literally eating his loved ones. We have canon confirmation that Yuta fed part of Inumaki's severed arm to Rika.
Yuta's cursed technique is to emulate the strengths of all of his loved ones copying them and making them a part of his oqn technique, because Yuta will take any shape and form in order to be loved. It's also the perfect technique for fighting as a part of a group, because someone like Sukuna will naturally assume that Yuta's technique STEALS instead of COPYING so he'll forget that the original still retains their technique.
Yuta's not only selfish and has a very selfish, overprotective love for others, but it's those exact qualities that make him an effective sorcerer strong in the area that Gojo is the weakest. Group coordination.
Gojo is in his element when he's alone, but Yuta is so codependent that he literally cannot exist unless other people are looking at him. His strength comes from the things he copies and takes from his friend, and he turned his loved one into a puppet to fight others. Is it really that surprising that this kid would willingly use Gojo's body as a weapon after death when that's literally what he did to Rika.
How telling is it that like Yuta learned that Rika was cursed by him, went so far to exorcise her spirit, and then after finally letting go after her spirit passed on he made a second Shikigami named Rika a few months later made out of the small remnants of cursed energy that Rika left behind as a gift after passing on. The dude is not over Rika, he's like, Geto and Gojo levels of not over Rika.
Yuta's cursed technique being the literal weaponization of his love and his loved ones makes him the best character for group coordination in the entire series. Yuta even adopts apsects of hakari's persona when making his plans against Sukuna since he decides to gamble at several key points in the plan.
Several of the key moments in the fight are all Yuta's plans, with some collaboration from Angel. He makes several bets too like Hakari would. The first being going to finish Kenjaku by himself and using both Todo and Takaba in conjunction to trick him. The second is the bet that he'd be able to make it back in time to rejoin the fight in case Higuruma's plan fail.
It was Yuta who let his own domain barrier down on purpose to let Sukuna think he had the victory so he would let his guard down and make it easy for Maki to ambush him. Something that also required perfect coordination between Yuta and Maki working in tandem with one another.
Yuta set up Hana to do one large jacob's ladder when Sukuna least expected it because he knew Sukuna would forget that his technique is COPY and not steal. He also made the biggest bluff which was leading Sukuna to believe that he fed Rika his last finger.
These aren't just good bluffs, they require near perfect coordination with your allies and taking several chances on them. Nobara might not have even woken up so the last finger / resonance Gambit was perhaps the biggest gamble. Maki and Yuta had to coordinate with each other well so Maki would be there when Yuta dropped the barrier. Yuta needed Takaba a relatively new and inexperienced sorcerer to survive against the threat that was Kenjaku, and he needed all of his allies to stay alive while he was prioritizing Kenjaku.
These are all plans Satoru Gojo would never have been able to pull off, because Gojo only ever relies on himself. If Yuta and Hakari had intervened in the Gojo and Sukuna fight then he would not have been able to go all out, whereas Yuta REQUIRES people collaborating with him in order TO GO ALL OUT.
This is Yuta. This is his strength. Yuta is nothing without love, so he takes on the forms of the people he loves and takes things from the people he loves in order to gain the power to protect him. Yuta copies everything from the people he loves, so is it really that much of a surprise that he'd become a monster just like Gojo.
In some ways, Geto and Yuuta were the same. Geto was too sincere. To someone like him, the reality that the world of sorcerers presented to him was just too cruel.
’…that in a world like this, I couldn’t be truly happy from the bottom of my heart.’
To live for the purpose of being yourself. And for that goal, Geto could only continue to pursue his twisted dream, drowning himself in the curse that lies in the gap between ideal and reality.
Love is a weapon for Yuta. Just like his curse technique can take any form, so does Yuta's love, and so does Yuta himself. Love always wins, and in order to do so Yuta will take any shape necessary, no matter how twisted.
Love is the worst curse of them all, and Yuta will become the worst monster of them all if it means protecting his love ones.
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Who do you think would be the best DC hero to appear in MAWS and why is it Wonder Woman?
...I think the best DC hero to show up in MAWS is Mister Miracle, actually.
-We already have hints at Apokolips as one of the factors which took down the Kryptonian Empire and Scott was raised on Apokolips.
-MAWS already has a major focus on technology as part of its worldbuilding and Mister Miracle is a very tech-y gadget-y superhero with the added benefit of also being from space like Superman. Also the fact that his flight is dependent on his Aero-discs would give him a noticeable visual contrast to Superman's style of flight.
-Scott's Mister Miracle definitely has an aspect of PERFORMANCE!! and SHOWMANSHIP!!! as part of his overall superhero persona which would be a fun contrast against Clark's more warm and gentle Superman.
-It would literally be so so so funny to see Scott nearly kill himself multiple times with his crazy Mister Miracle stunts and freak Clark the fuck out only for Scott to be perfectly fine.
-You have a very cool potential drama factor since Scott could be a refugee of both Apokolips's general suckiness and Krypton's attempts at conquest, so he could have a lot of potential interactions with Kara.
-Mister Miracle and Big Barda are basically a package deal, which means MAWS would have TWO wifeguys now, plus Scott and Barda also have a size difference like Clark and Lois but it's gender-swapped.
-Introducing the New Gods is a good way to HINT at Darkseid without immediately cramming Darkseid down everyone's throats.
-Introducing non-trinity Superheroes is a good way to significantly expand MAWS's universe without elbowing out Lois and Jimmy as Clark's primary co-stars.
-I love them.
BONUS: Basically since we see Clark be very conscientious about how much damage he can do as Superman, it would be very funny to have that contrasted against Scott and Barda, with Barda FUCKING WRECKING EVERYTHING and Scott cheering her on.
I love Diana, I do, but the heart and soul of her character is magic and mythology, and I feel it would be really difficult to introduce her to the MAWS-universe in a way that meshes with that show's worldbuilding without changing massive parts of her character. Again, I stress: I would prefer if other members of the Trinity got their own shows establishing them in their own rights rather than just being shoehorned into MAWS.
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