I'm not the first person to bring this up but, I do feel that the general response to the gun range scene has mostly failed to acknowledge the context that would call for such extreme levels of self-defense training in the first place. We know from episode 23 that even just a few years after the release of the doodler (when Lark and Sparrow themselves are still just teens) things are already pretty bad (to the extent that in Lark's case the stress of it all has already begun to take a physical toll on him- don't forget that he and Sparrow too were once kids who had the world placed on their shoulders), and one need only look at how quickly the situation with the mayor has degraded to imagine how bad things would have gotten by the time Hero was 12. Training your six-year-old to use a gun in a normal or at least mostly normal world? Batshit crazy. Training your six-year-old to use a gun in a world overrun by an eldritch horror where danger, death, and the possibility of corruption from said eldritch horror are around every corner? Still intense but, much easier to understand the reasoning behind.
oh oops it's a long post woops woops woops
In Sparrow's case in particular, we know that he behaves quite differently under alternative circumstances, and that Normal (Hero too for that matter) lives a pretty different life in a post code purple world:
Not that it hasn't been Sparrow's intent and priority to mitigate the extent to which Normal was caught up in everything from the get-go, as evidenced by his namesake. Recall what he had to say on the matter:
In some ways this extreme self-defense training is a "two sides of the same coin" sort of deal vis-a-vis Grant's extreme isolation of Lincoln for his protection, a major difference being that Lincoln still deals with this in a post code purple world (to the extent that he literally had to pretend to starve himself to get his dad to let him go to public school), whereas Normal and Hero get the chance to live mostly normal lives and do as they please (the disapproving words of a drunken and partially-doodlerized Sparrow aside), now removed from the immediate threat of the doodler.
Hero's case is, at least from what we currently know about the prophecy, more complicated than Norm's. It is easy to reprimand Lark and Sparrow as being the worst parents (and/or uncles) whilst forgetting that their circumstances are fundamentally different from the other kiddads. The first half of this lying in their shared responsibility (and guilt) in releasing the doodler. Grant and Nicky can retreat to their respective homes on the basis that this is the best they can do, resolving to put their energy into protecting their closest ones first and foremost. At the end of the day, they aren't really any more responsible for dealing with the doodler than any other bystander. The same cannot be said of Lark and Sparrow, who can't exactly look away from the fact that they were the ones who brought the doodler into the world. At least from their perspectives- of course Lark (and Sparrow by extension) in reality was a child that was manipulated into doing what he did, which as some people have pointed out is not dissimilar to what happened to Normal at the end of this episode (and if Sparrow felt the need to rid Normal of his memories of this event in particular, perhaps it was to spare his child from feeling guilty about it for the rest of his life).
The second half of what differentiates them is, of course, the prophecy (right- now we can actually get to Hero lol). We must remember that, as far as the twins knew, the only way to actually "defeat" the doodler permanently was through the chosen one, i.e. Hero (probably- after last episode I'm starting to think that Norm may be more directly involved in the prophecy than previously thought, but that's a tangent). "Continue to let the being you released into the world kill and torture millions (very likely billions) of people, which could wind up including both of your children, or put your ill-fated child through very intense and ultimately traumatizing training to put an end to it, potentially losing her in the process", is essentially the choice the twins were given. Hero isn't made to kill a deer with her bare hands for the hell of it, she goes through what she does because Lark (who likely did not see the same thing that Normal did on the throne- or at the very least interpreted things very differently) and Sparrow had no reason to believe that there was any other possibility. This certainly does not negate or undermine the extent to which Hero was deeply traumatized by it all, but it's not exactly a detail that you can choose to ignore when discussing the ethics of Lark and Sparrow's decision-making.
And yet, despite it all, Sparrow and Lark do ultimately chose saving their children over saving the world. Not before significant damage has already been done (to Hero that is), but they do decide to go through with the one plan that allows both of their children to (hopefully) live a doodler-free life: code purple. Code purple, which ultimately reduces to a trolley problem with a presumably near-equal number of people on both tracks, with the important difference of sparing their own children in one case, and likely not the other. And if we want to talk about Henry's ethical stance in the matter and how it compares to the twins, we need to consider what it says about him if he was *not* in favor of code purple, with all of this in mind. Not to come to any hasty conclusions about Henry either- I think there remains too many unknowns on that front to assume much and... Ultimately it's a complicated matter! But that's kind of my point.
Even post code purple, Lark and Sparrow (and the rest of the kiddads) try to pursue that which they believe (or at least hope) will both put an end to the doodler without involving their children and without the enactment of the prophecy. Is blowing up an entire world with the sun to save all the others a plan I'm gonna sit here and defend? I don't think so lol, but you can't exactly look at it and pretend that Lark and Sparrow don't care about protecting their fucking kids.
My point isn't that Lark and Sparrow haven't made a lot of mistakes and questionable decisions, my point is that their circumstances are so much less black and white than the majority of the takes I see on them make them out to be, and a lot of the conclusions I see people jump to when it comes to the twins' feelings and intentions strike me as... Pretty odd? Tangentially-related: if you don't think Sparrow is someone who is affectionate with and deeply loves his kids despite his flaws, I don't really think we're listening to the same podcast. But even in Lark's case, yes he's more subtle about it and yes, Lark can be quick to anger (not that I personally read him yelling in the last episode as anger so much as panic but all the same), but affection can be sewing bulletproof material into your nephew's mascot costume, or secretly taking him out for pizza, or pretending to be his dad so that you can tell him you're proud of him, or putting your gun down when he asks you to. The twins are anything but perfect but, fuck if they aren't trying (and changing, and improving). And yes, they deserve some damn nuance.
Also, okay, I couldn't really find a neat way to bring this up in the above but, speaking of no-nuance and bad faith takes, can we talk about the locks? Or lack thereof, rather. "How could they be so stupid as to leave the door unlocked?" you're right, that does seem odd, and Anthony made a point to explain that every other door was very thoroughly locked, and Normal seemed to have practically been moved into opening the door against his own will so... Hear me out, maybe, just maybe, the door usually *is* locked??? And something fishy or unusual is afoot? I also wouldn't take their immediate, knee-jerk reactions to a dangerous flesh monster being released to come to any conclusions on whether or not Lark and Sparrow "blame" six-year-old Normal for it. In Sparrow's case, I struggle to even imagine it. In Lark's case, though I wouldn't put him above getting angry over it, my doubts on his deeper feelings are still high. Conversely, if he actually did place some of the blame on Normal, at the very least there is an interesting discussion to be had on how this relates to Lark's own guilt over what Willy manipulated him into doing, and subsequently being denied the catharsis of punishment. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Like I said, a lot of important things are yet unknown.
*breathes* okay end of overdue ramble [insert proper conclusion paragraph here lol], thank you.
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my notifs recently got me thinking about the very random concept of "what if there is a second, secret CHB. directly below normal CHB." and i ended up brainstorming it in the discord.
context for how this originated: one was just a random notif on my post talking about the tunnels under the Hephaestus cabin, and the other was some tags from @drksanctuary on my fake readriordan article mentioning the idea of a chthonic demigod camp.
so. my brilliant (read: "smashing my 2 brain cells together") idea: the elaborate and seemingly infinite tunnels under cabin 9 are remnants of an abandoned underground CHB that exists directly underneath camp. It's basically just normal CHB except in a big cave system, probably connected to the labyrinth somewhere and has the separate tunnels, and instead of the Olympian cabins it has chthonic cabins. there's probably also some infernal nymphs and etc down there too. since all chthonic demigods can learn to shadow-travel they probably used that to get down there, and a lot of chthonic demigods probably have geokinesis just by nature, ergo the tunnels (for when they don't want to shadow-travel, or can't).
in brainstorming with the discord we decided it could be cool if some of the cabins lined up with the above-ground cabins, either for thematic purposes or associations or whatever. Like there's maybe a Hermes and maybe Poseidon cabin in the chthonic CHB too that just link to the above-ground ones, but also like Persephone cabin lines up to Demeter cabin because of course it does. and maybe Hecate cabin lines up to Cabin 8 cause Artemis is sometimes 1/3rd of Hecate. Maybe Angelos cabin is beneath Cabin 1, and Zagreus cabin is beneath Cabin 12. Things like that.
The other ones i thought of were either Hypnos or Thanatos cabin lines up with Apollo, because twins, and the other is just right beside it (because twins). And Charon's cabin is beneath Cabin 9, ergo why the tunnel system connects to it (because Charon. Ferryman. Surface access. It makes sense in my brain).
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i think a big reason bo burnham is so popular with people of a younger age groups, especially gen z, is that the views he expresses surrounding social media and technology and how they're affecting the youths are some of the most sympathetic and nuanced i've ever really seen.
as a member of this kind of age group myself, most of the people i know have at least some level of hatred of social media and the way its taken over all of our lives. however, when people start talking about how terrible social media is for us, especially if they start fully blaming us or saying it's stopping us from forming any real connections, i find that most of us (me included) tend to get really defensive about it. and to me, that makes sense, what they're saying doesn't line up with our experiences.
these views are typically very black and white, and very rarely take into account the aspects of social media that those most affected by it find harmful, for instance, the way that the culture that has been established on the internet means a lot of people my age find it very easy to overshare but very difficult to be emotionally vulnerable in any way.
the ideas bo burnham conveys, however, are much more cognizant of the actual root of these problems. i think there are two main aspects of this: his discussion of how this generation's addiction to social media has essentially been manufactured, and his deeper understanding of what the problems with it actually are.
in contrast to the idea that's pretty widely pushed that young people are pretty solely to blame for all being glued to our phones, bo explores the way that being the first generation to grow up with technology having this kind of prevalence in our lives has affected us. for instance, in 'make happy' when he says "the arrogance is taught, or it was cultivated", or in that bridge of 'welcome to the internet', when he says "mummy let you use her ipad you were only two/and it did all the things we designed it to do", for me, at the very least, i felt a lot more seen by those lines than i ever really have in discussions about the harms of technology in the past. i think the fact that he doesn't entirely absolve young people of our responsibility for ourselves and our actions (e.g. the line in '30' about "your fucking phones are poisoning your minds [...] when you develop a dissociative mental disorder in your late 20s don't come crawling back to me") is what, to me, makes it an actually effective critique of social media, because the way he expresses these ideas is actually sympathetic to the problems we face, but it's still sort of saying 'ok, things are fucked for you guys, so what are you going to do about it'
similarly, when he talks about how social media has been harmful, i think it's more empathetic to the difficulties we face as a part of it. for instance, in my opinion, in 'welcome to the internet' the ideas he discusses of "a little bit of everything, all of the time" and "apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime" are much more significant aspects of the damage technology has done than a lot of the mainstream arguments against social media. for me, i know as a kid before i had super regular access to the internet, i hated being bored more than anything, but now that i'm a bit older and i can literally do or see anything i want at any time, i'm never truly bored anymore and i miss it so much. similarly, in 'make happy', bo's description of the way social media makes us "perform everything, to each other, all the time for no other reason" actually gets at the core of what has made this generation the way we are and why our relationship to social media is as fucked as it is. by actually discussing the issues that young people view as problems with social media, bo is able to make a truly effective and genuine critique of social media and gen z's relationship with it that has done more to inspire me to distance myself from social media than pretty much any other critique on the same topic
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thinking about how danny spent very little time with steve before he (correctly) deduced that he suffered a lot of parental neglect ('you weren't hugged as a child, were you?'). of course, steve's knee-jerk response is to deny that because people who had an abnormal childhood don't realise it wasn't the norm because it's the only life they knew, only when they tell a 'funny' story that is met with a horrified look of someone who grew up in a well-adjusted family that they are confronted with the uncomfortable truth: that the perfect 'childhood' they lost after the trauma wasn't so perfect after all.
the fact that steve was only angry because of abandonment and not the cold bootcamp way he was raised shows he didn't know any better. even when he had a mother she wasn't the kissing-a-skinned-knee-better kind. it would still take years of therapy and gentle coaxing from danny for him to unpack all of that.
i can imagine many a time steve probably shared what he thought was an amusing 'anecdote' from his childhood only for danny to go all compassionate 'aw, babe' on him.
'what's the story behind this scar?'
'oh, it's kind of a funny one, i was playing outside by myself and heard pathetic whining nearby. turned out a stray dog fell into a construction pit. poor gal couldn't get out on her own so i climbed down to get her out, except my hand landed on a piece of rebar and... well. it was a kind of deep cut, but clean, i couldn't stitch it up by myself yet because i was seven so i put some antiseptic on it and waited for my mom to come home from work. it hurt a lot but i didn't cry because my mom always said 'big boys don't cry'. when she saw what happened she yelled at me and since it wasn't infected she said there's no need to go to the doctor, sure it would scar without stitching but the scar would remind me to be less clumsy and not to jump into pits willy-nilly. anyway, isn't it funny how clumsy i was when i was 7. why are you looking at me like that?'
it's honestly a wonder steve ended up with such a soft and big heart despite everything, because neglect could have made him cold, selfish, hard, insensitive to the feelings of others because no one cared about his.
instead, steve loves 'fixing broken toys' (literally and figuratively, ex. him gently gluing back the small cat figurine that danny broke) this 'child forgot lessons of love untaught' is surprisingly good at comforting people and being gentle.
there's a reason his big soft heart is what danny loves most about him. because he understands, given his background, how easily steve could have been different, could have perpetuated the cycle instead of breaking it.
truly, he has so much love to give. because no one wanted it from him, he never had anyone to give it to.
he was taught to shove all those soft feelings deep because they are only an obstacle in being a perfect soldier.
and then there's danny who says 'i'll take it, give it all to me, i want it, it doesn't make you weak, it makes you strong, that's why I love you, babe', and steve can finally pour all that love he's had pent up into someone, show his gooey centre without fear of being stabbed into it.
it is any wonder he decides he is gonna love danny till his dying day. tragically, since no one's taught him what love looks like he never realises danny loves him in return.
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