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regallibellbright · 3 months

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Honestly I think I'd hate Arthur Cantabella less if they'd simply removed the whole "Yeah no this is a government-condoned psychological experiment" aspect.

TESTING WHAT?! No, genuinely, what? Using the contaminated groundwater/weirdass Silver Fainting Allergy and/or the flower ink as a drug? Because uh, if that's the case, then I'm pretty sure using them both in conjunction contaminates your results.

Is it something about mob mentality? In-groups and out-groups with the elaborate tech crew made of convicted witches and victims maintaining the whole illusion? In that case, I think the fact that you're drugging and gaslighting the entire experiment group is also contaminating the results.

Also the whole fantasy setting is probably a confounding variable for Something.

Okay sure parents could consent to taking part in this experiment for their children, but uh, I'm pretty sure some of these kids were born AFTER the experiment began. Given the aforementioned Large Amounts of Drugging From Multiple Origins going on here, I have some concerns!

No seriously. Please. PL vs PW writers. Give me the grant proposal Arthur Cantabella submitted to get anyone to fund this project. I know it's Bill fucking Hawks, but even he's got limits! I don't see how he benefits from half this shit even if he wants to use the other half (I assume the drugs.) Why is he paying for the rest? There's a reason why Clive is established as being a lone schemer with obscene amounts of money who's keeping all his scientists in the dark and/or coerced to keep building, and it's so that we don't have anyone there questioning why he's building an elaborate fake town populated by actors in addition to his Underground Vengeance Mecha!

The fact that you somehow managed to get this cleared as a psychological experiment establishes that you know the field of psychology exists. Why in the name of all that is holy did you think building an elaborate fake fantasy town with an elaborate magic system which you make real through the power of drugging people, knocking the ENTIRE TOWN out every time a spell is used, changing things around them to simulate "magic" using the most ridiculous Renn Faire stage crew ever, and manipulating the clocks so no one's aware time is passing, with a system that prosecutes witches and burns them so that they can join the Renn Faire Stage Crew along with their victims, and positioning yourself as the all-powerful Storyteller who writes their reality into being would be a better solution than therapy?

Honestly I'd respect "I had a god complex, lol" more. Especially for that last one, but like. In general. Descole's out there living his worst life, he KNOWS he's an asshole supervillain agent of chaos, and I respect this because he has clearly CHOSEN to be Like This. You do you, man. Ditto for Don Paolo but like, less effectively.

This is not how any of this works.

Okay, setting... ALL OF THAT aside, you're doing this because your and your best friend's young daughters are understandably incredibly traumatized because they wanted to ring the bell early and the Weirdass Groundwater-Induced "Allergy" That Makes You Faint When You Hear Silver Ringing caused them and everyone else to pass out, and as everyone in the square below was having a fire festival, this caused a massive tragic conflagration. Okay. Yeah, this is bad. (I have. MANY questions about how this bell was made, excavated, and mounted in the square without anyone ever ringing it and realizing something had happened, but we're going to gloss over those for now, it's Professor Layton and I would otherwise be all over this incredible bullshit. It's great up until it asks us to think THIS was ever a remotely reasonable idea.) One of your daughters is all but catatonic because a story you told her earlier has convinced her she either is or will be taken by The Great Witch Bezella. Sure. (You suck.) Why the FUCK is your solution based on the other one unpersoning herself to her best friend and doing all the work to make the magic real? Yeah, sure, she agreed to it. SHE'S LIKE EIGHT TO TEN. HER BEST FRIEND THINKS SHE'S AN AWFUL MONSTER AND WON'T REACT OTHERWISE. OF COURSE Eve's gonna help, but that doesn't mean you should put the entire burden on her! She is ALSO horribly traumatized to the point of repressing what happened. Get her help too. The fact that the game seems to put their actions on remotely even footing when one of them has been treated like shit since she was TEN and one of them was an adult who PURPOSEFULLY AND INTENTIONALLY set up a system that would put her in this shitty situation means that yeah, no, they fundamentally are not. Of course her decisionmaking is misguided and terrible! She's a twenty-year-old who's been horribly mistreated for more than half her life! HER DAD JUST COMMITTED SUICIDE OUT OF GUILT FOR HIS ACTIONS IN SETTING UP THIS SYSTEM.

No one's going to hold them responsible for the deaths. This was a sequence of events so thoroughly unforeseeable that literally no one could have predicted it. It won't even reflect poorly on you and Belduke, because you two somehow managed to find the bell, excavate it, and mount it without ever ringing it and realizing it knocked you out and you all had an environmentally-induced silver "allergy" and at that point this goes into "acts of a cruel and malicious Writer-God" territory.

Also it was totally predictable that this elaborate system of misogyny would not actually help Espella in the long term as she instead repressed her memories and further internalized the whole witches = evil thing so that when those memories inevitably came back she would be in EVEN WORSE shape, this is why you should have gotten an actual psychologist who could have told you this whole thing was a terrible plan to write your grant.

No like does he drug all his requests to whoever he reports to (it has to be directly to the person signing checks) in the mind-control ink? This is my only explanation here.

Why. In God's name why. Did you not. Simply. DESTROY THE FUCKING BELL TOWER. You have a crane here! What possessed ANYONE to think just covering it up with Vantablack and gaslighting so people couldn't see it was a reasonable solution to the Trauma Tower? (There may be an explanation for this, it has been ten years, but this man's problem solving has been established to be so poor I award him no points.)

And if you were going to do this, why didn't you tell Newton? Or was it just that the lightning strike burning up the Vantablack was itself a reminder to him that you can't repress the past away and he was suddenly aware of how overwhelmingly POINTLESS all this suffering was? (Edit: I think it was this. No but seriously you could’ve just taken a fucking wrecking ball to that thing while you were rebuilding the town.)

Seriously why the fuck did Newton Belduke go along with letting you use his traumatized daughter like this? What the hell, man. What an asshole.

Also. Your problem was that you had two severely traumatized little girls (even if you only acknowledged one of them was traumatized.) Your solution was... to traumatize a shitload more young girls?

TO THE POINT WHERE AT LEAST ONE OF THEM ATTEMPTED SUICIDE?!

And then your best friend actually committed suicide?!

Like. Seriously. If these are the actions of a single, seriously traumatized person, the fact that you are making Literally The Worst And Most Inexplicable Decisions Ever Which Make The Problem Worse For Literally Everyone Involved is more... well, conceivable. I buy a traumatized eighteen-year-old with an obscene amount of money building an elaborate fake London that is allegedly London ten years in the future, hiring actors to populate it, kidnapping scientists, making them build an Underground Vengeance Mecha to destroy the city, and then kidnapping the Prime Minister who is the source of that trauma and hooking the engine of the mecha up to his heart. And then roping in the one guy who could conceivably solve the whole problem and stop him and Clive would let it. It's a bad idea on EVERY conceivable level, don't get me wrong, on an UNPRECEDENTEDLY terrible scale, but it's a bad idea in which it is very clear no one at any point has asked the person what the fuck they think they're doing here, what they are trying to accomplish, and why they are doing so with this objectively absurd method. Because they have not let anyone in close enough to key them to The Full Absurd Terribleness. It's either this or become Batman.

But Arthur? Apparently his decisions have been vetted by OTHER PEOPLE, and this just boggles my mind. I refuse to believe this. I refuse to believe NO ONE went "have we considered this is like eight hundred terrible ideas bundled up into The Worst Idea Ever?" And I refuse to believe he's anything but a massive asshole when his plan had so many awful consequences for literally everyone BUT himself!

Like, don't get me wrong. There are SO MANY examples of unethical experimentation on human subjects in the real world, psychological and otherwise. But most of them are not this incredibly convoluted, implicitly expensive, and we all generally recognize these days that they were bad.

Also, none of them were enacted as an elaborate setup to (incompetently) handle the trauma of the experimenter's daughter after he told her if she was bad a scary evil witch would possess her and then she and her friend accidentally enacted a tragedy whose scale and fundamental absurdity rival the Boston Molasses Flood, but without corporate greed. There were solutions to this that were so much easier, less convoluted, less EXPENSIVE, and less harmful to... well, everyone else involved, except Arthur Cantabella.

#drugging #gaslighting #attempted suicide #suicide #psychological experiments #unethical science #mass death #pl vs pw spoilers #pl spoilers #going to try to avoid maintagging here inasmuch as I can because uh. Yeah. Preeeeetty critical.#the thing is I genuinely LOVED like 90% of this game. Adored it. Had a blast RIGHT up until the reveal.#and then the reveal and the ways it's handwaved just kill it for me even though I usually enjoy Layton Plot Twist Bullshit #(the Underground Vengeance Mecha is my favorite thing ever. Unironically. It's delightful.)#because it's like... multiple people vetted this terrible idea in-universe? Why the fuck?!#and we DWELL on the consequences in a way we rarely do for most Layton Bullshit and see that oh THEY ARE /BAD/.#(I'm pretty sure it's established Jean's still a teenager. She was under Belduke's care /for five years./)#meanwhile the game only BARELY seems to recognize that this dude is in fact the Actual Villain Of The Game. Like. Eve's justified.#but she's still given more of the Sympathetic But Misguided Layton Antagonist treatment whereas he's MAINLY 'sympathetic but misguided.'#which... no. just. no. You're an adult and you had options and you were in a position to choose them. Why was THIS your choice?#again I respect Descole so much more for being like 'well I'm gonna make myself Everyone Else's Problem but mostly Layton's.'#own that you're terrible. Embrace it. Laugh as you seek your revenge on the entire world.

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oh-cramity-its-amity · 2 months

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its so weird to read some of my old fics (do NOT do it but i'm just being hypothetical rn) and reading it. like who even was this person?? i completely was in a haze back in 2020. i literally was posting 3 chapters a day. A DAY. what in the WORLD was that shit.

anyway i remembered some STUPID sappy shit and i didnt remember if i'd put it into a fic or not BUT I FOUND IT.

She and Hope had been dating in secret for months anyway, and any attempt to go talk to Ryan only filed her disposition of displeasure upon knowing that she couldn’t tell anyone, Molly especially, it destroyed herself mentally. They couldn’t really go anywhere near the school, always having to lie to everyone about having projects together when Molly wasn’t around them. It’d consisted with 9 PM - 2 AM intervals of being able to actually see each other. Hope would sneak through her small bedroom window with a portable record player and whatever she had gotten from the vintage record store downtown, and Amy would always fall asleep around eleven because of her internal clock. She would always wake up to find a single sticky note stuck on the edge of her desk whenever she woke up to her alarm the next morning. One of them, Amy still had tucked inside of her phone case, a heavily detailed human heart, with blue and red ink sketched onto a neon pink sticky note, there was a caption that headed the small paper reading the phrase over every now and again makes her almost melt every time. “You have my heart.”

yeah idk why the fuck but i thought of this fucking idea again today and i was like "omg did i ever put that heart note thing in a fic???" yeah you fucking did.

all that to say ME AND WHO???? imagine. thats so fucking.... RAHHHH.

#NOT TOH FANFIC #see this is why i write fanfic. to enact some gay ass shit like this.#the fucking STICKY NOTE WITH A DRAWING OF A HUMAN HEART AND SAYING “YOU HAVE MY HEART” I AM ON THE FLOOR.#*sighs* sucks i cant reuse it on lumity though.#my friend making me realize i actually have rizz but am just too much of a disaster to actually understand cues with people #its a MESS. im just all over the place. i literally ranted to THE SAME FRIEND yesterday (or the day before??) abt some girl jesus.#anyway i remember writing A LOT OF POETRY back in hs about this one girl and then the same girl i got to talk to--#--my first actual conversation with her i blurted out that i wanted to shave my head. she was like.... oooooo god i was A MESS #still slid into her school dms during covid and was like “haha guess what i actually mf did???” anyway all that to say underlying dysphoria #they're nonbinary now too and i kinda ghosted them like a complete idiot :(. its been two years or so but i still think of them... a lot...#actually i have more lore about this person and its like istg they actually really liked me but i could not pick it up.#we had such SUCH good chemistry and vibes. n they were really pretty. ughhhhhh.#anyway yeah idk crushes are weird sometimes. the universe knows how unstoppable id be with a partner #i feel like i was the reason they were able to find themself and their identity because when we were talking i always encouraged them #and told them to do what felt right. im glad they did. i think sometimes that brings me peace. like i served a purpose.#STILL showed them toh. STILL SHOWED THEM TOH.#we were talking about amity LMAO “this green haired girl seems interesting” SHE SO WAS.#...yeah i wish i could text them but i kinda probably fucked it up.#shitposting shit #idk what this post is i just wanted to talk about this dumb sticky note thing because im rotating it in my brain and remembering how #mentally ill i was back in 2020 #talking into the void yk how it isssss

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notthestarwar · 1 year

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Snippet from: When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it. Chapter 5

Ghost Mace speaks to past Jaster (alive) and tells him what he knows of Jango's future, in the life he lived.

Mace's brow stiffened. "When we realised what we had done, we tried to find him but we could not."

"We tried to find the True Mandolorian's but the survivors had fled in all directions. We did try and see justice done, there was an overhaul of our internal mission preparation process. We changed our training. Dooku left the order as did his apprentice."

"None of it could make up for what we did. Years after the fact, I learnt that Jango was sold in to slavery by the governor. It took him years to escape. I learnt of the weight of what we had done in helping end the True Mandolorian's. In leaving Death Watch unchecked."

He meets Jaster's eyes. "We are here to discuss why we haunt Jango, but it would be remiss of me to not tell you that your son has haunted me every single day since the day I left on a mission to retrieve him; to attempt to offer reparations for what my peoples neglect brought down on him, and came home empty handed."

" We thought him dead, but I did not forget him. From that day, I've carried the weight of what we did to him. I have often thought of him over the years." Mace shook his head.

"You hold no blame here, but we just might."

And isn't that a thing. His son haunting a Jedi even before that Jedi might haunt him.

Jango is tangled up in something here far beyond Jaster's reckoning.

Mace is laying out the constituent parts that when put together, make Jango in to the man that is responsible for the death of every single person standing in that warehouse. Jaster isn't sure where that leaves him, because once he's done hearing this story, in the years that lay ahead of them yet, every single one of these horrible pieces is going to fall in to place. Tragedy after Tragedy ready to be pasted and slapped on to the boy he loves, his son, in order to make him in to the man that did this.

How the hell can Jaster stand by and let that happen?

There are no rules that apply to Jaster, not anymore. He doesn't care about morality or the ethics of fucking with a future that's apparently already happened. He has no care for his own code, not now. None of it matters.

Jaster is Jango's buir, before all else. He has been from the day he stepped in to a smoldering farmhouse and against the odds saw signs of life dancing across his HUD. The Ka'ra gave him Jango and by god, it can stand back while he brings his son back from the abyss.

Mace is watching him. "Jaster, you had no hand in making Jango Fett the man he became at the end. You did not abandon him, you were taken from him. I need you to know this. You should know that none of this was your fault. "

Jaster doesn't care. It doesn't matter if its his fault or not, he is responsible all the same; because he wants to be. He didn't fall in to parenthood, he walked in to it willingly. For Jango, there is no monster that Jaster will not face.

The ka'ra has given him one last gift. The opportunity to see Jango's life after Jaster, and a few precious years in which to try and change them. It may not be in Jaster's power to save his son from himself but by god, he'll die trying.

He looks at the Jedi. "Tell me the rest."

Some of my thoughts below the cut

Some of my thoughts (because clearly rambling in the comments hasn't been enough for me lol)

I had a lot of fun with this one. I've written about ghosts before but with this one, I went at it from another angle. In this au, ghosts aren't bound by linear time. If you do something that leaves a ghost tied to your soul, they are tied to you in the past as well as the future. Jango and Jaster are both Force Sensitive (tho with a Mando understanding of it. They call it 'star touched') and so can see ghosts.

In this fic, moving in with Jaster sets Jango on the path that brings him to the prequels. Once he's on that path, the ghosts that'll be tied to him in his future, can move freely along the timeline, with each of them pulled to a particular version of Jango. Jango will obviously be responsible for the deaths of quite a few people, there are his bounties, the Jedi and the clones and so on; but when the first ghost appears he's just a kid. The story deals with Jaster coming to terms with the fact that his kid, who he loves beyond reason, even if he stumbled upon him quite by accident, one day becomes the person that will make all these ghosts.

At first there's only one ghost in their time, but Jaster can't let it go (tho he knows he should), he needs to know what happens. So he keeps asking until she admits that she isn't the only ghost and that they are tied to Jango as he's responsible for their deaths. Then, he keeps pushing until she introduces him to the others. She gathers them in a warehouse (so Jango doesn't see) and takes Jaster there.

In the part of the story this snippet is from, Jaster has just been confronted with an excessive number of people (including children) who are all tied to Jango as he's responsible for their deaths. He's had a (understandable) freak out, and ghost Mace has taken him aside and offered to tell him what he knows of Jango's future, and how it led to the death of so many people.

What follows is a buddy up adventure between Mace and Jaster (unlikely duo) in which Jaster tries to come to terms with what Mace has told him, and the horrible events that led to Jango becoming the man that would one day be responsible for all these ghosts. While he tries to save Jango from himself, long before he needs saving.

The idea behind the fic is the inevitability of a tragedy. There's a feeling when you're watching a tragedy play out, that it's all so unnecessary, that it didn't need to happen, but you only know that because as the audience you know that they are in a tragedy, the characters don't know. So what if a character did know? Jaster is served advance notice, will having that allow him to save Jango, or will it just feed in to the fulfillment of this prophetic future?

I wanted to explore the fact that there's only so much one particular character can do, in trying to prevent the end another is headed towards and also, the power of familial love, even when it's found somewhere unexpected. Jaster isn't Jango's blood family, he didn't even know him till he was an older child, which I think makes his love for Jango in spite of knowing what he will become, all the more powerful. The glimpse of Jango's future is disgusting to Jaster, it goes against all he believes in, but its Jango so he can't hate him for it, he loves him too much and so, he's determined to save him from himself. He's willing to do the impossible.

Then there's Mace: so in this au, Mace is sent out shortly after Galidraan, when it becomes clear to the order that they've made a mistake, to find the survivor they left in the hands of the Governor, and to right a wrong. He isn't successful, he looks everywhere but he can't find him, and in the end the order write him off as dead. In this au, Jango was 18 on Galidraan and what Mace sees as his failure to save someone that was little more as a child, and suffered so greatly thanks to what the order see as their own neglect, haunts him for the rest of his career.

Its that idea of 'the one case you couldn't close'. It's at the start of his career and he goes on to do amazing things, Mace is peak Jedi, he invents a new form, he's one of the youngest Jedi to be elected to the council, he ends up heading that council, but he is still human (or near human lol sw complicates everything. he's 100% human in a fallible/emotional/sapient sense) I think that as a Master Jedi he's very aware of his own weaknesses, and he tries to work through it, he talks to it with other Jedi, and he certainly doesn't let it affect his judgement, but he can't forget it all the same.

So it's this version of Mace that ended up meeting Jango in the arena. Which I think adds such an interesting angle.

#Jaster Mereel #Mace #I've been thinking about this one (and a part of chapter 7 which i might post as another snippet)#cause i saw a poll talking about who was responsible for Jango's death and I've got a lot of opinions about that #that can not be contained by a poll lol. it's something i explored in this fic #pretty much. i think that Mace had no choice but i don't think he'd agree with that. i think he'd struggle with having killed Jango and #how he killed him. (decapitation. a particularly violent move. which i don't think he had a choice in. but yeah think he'd struggle)#i think that Jango pretty much ensured his own end and was too intelligent to not realise he was doing that so i think that was a #self hatred/survivors guilt/'i have lived past my end' kind of thing #i also think that Jango was only the person that always would have brought death upon himself like that because his past made him so #and i think his past was bad enough to make him that because it suited the greater narrative to have him end up like that #it suited palps ends pretty much. did palps know he was doing that or did the universe just work in his favour? who knows.#still worked out well for him #the poll got me thinking about Mace which got me thinking about this fic but writing about the fic has me thinking about this fic again #kinda tempted to go through it again and give it a bit of a face lift. old once over. shine it up a bit #I've always hated that it's 17 chapters tbh. want it to be 15 or 20. i don't think I'll address that this time tho.#might just try an edit however #has this???? no i won't say it. not to curse it but... the editing/ read back block may... be shifting. possibly.#considering an edit hadn't seemed so possible in a while.#there are so many things i need to look over once i can lol I've posted things still in draft state #that's cool tho. no problem. not thinking about that just thinking about how nice it would be to give this old thing a shine #Mace is so ready here to absorb all the blame for everything on the order (and by extension him) but its really not on them

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many-gay-magpies · 1 year

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the thing that always messes with me about villains whose entire motivation is "i wanna rule the universe and become a god" is that im just left wondering why? like if a character becomes a villain because theyve been hurt and want revenge or something i can get that but why would you even want to rule the world. whats the motivation behind that. it seems like it would be really stressful

#magpie thoughts #this is partially something im realizing about morando in 3below #most of the toa villains before him had been really 3D and interesting; like gunmar was pretty single-minded but #i always took that as him being the LITERAL PERSONIFICATION OF THE CORRUPTION THAT THE SURFACE WARS WROUGHT #and then bular just wants to be with his dad and angor has been manipulated for literal centuries #even colonel kubritz is kind of understandable with her whole wanting to protect earth from invaders shtick even if its like. aggressively #-prejudice and xenophobic. but then again thats like half of actual earth officials so thats not to unrealistic #BUT THEN you have morando. i feel like he wouldve been more interesting if his motives had more to do with him feeling injustice because of #-fialkov and coranda's shit ruling. and at first it kinda seems like thats the case! but no hes just a power hungry dick taking advantage of #the royals' shit ruling to get allies because he wants to rule the universe. like WHY #and then i kinda feel like the toa villains from there on out just get kinda. worse?#mainly the arcane order honestly #because their entire thing is hating humanity and wanting to remake the world or whatever #which is cool in THEORY but it never goes any deeper than that. WHY do you hate humanity what did they do to you. idk man #ANYWAYS #concluding my rant lol #toa #tales of arcadia

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wrenhavenriver · 2 years

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#i submitted an application to go back to school god help me 😬#i already have a bachelor's so thankfully the general studies requirements for this one should be waived #but. i want to work with Birbs or animals in general or maybe in conservation #and the jobs in those areas that pay Livable Wages seem to require a bachelor's at minimum in a scientific field #and my local university has a biology program that doesn't require a million hours of chemistry and calculus #which has always been my barrier before #plus there are really cool options for minors and a professor who does a lot of field work with birbs!#i hope they accept me #i've taken classes there before and gotten mostly A's and been liked by my professors so i think my odds are pretty decent #plus all the 'reapply for the love of god we need tuition money in this covid plagued world' emails from the last few years #but we'll see!#it's weird to have something to look forward to again #makes the anxiety flare up with that 'but what if it doesn't happen and/or family/financial calamities happen' voice #just trying to tell myself that Sometimes Good Things Happen and it's okay. the universe doesn't have to punish you for it

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smallhatlogan · 6 months

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Invincible is good when it doesn't feel like a slightly more mature version of like, Young Justice or something but sadly most of the time it feels like a slightly more mature version of Young Justice or something

#so like. that universe where Mark sided with Omniman seems interesting but the actual superhero shit is boring to me #idk i love a deconstruction of superheroes and invincible is like. every once in awhile tilting towards that #like 'look atom eve is quitting being a superhero to ACTUALLY do stuff that matters' 'look this superhero is a bad person'#but more often than not Invincible feels very much like a DC animated series with the 'superman is evil' dark spin #like what's the point of making all these expies of DC characters but then making it pretty straightforwardly the same basic thing #like DC has literally done evil superman

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pesteringchum · 11 months

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seeing ppl hate on gil and say that they hope they completely change gils personality/storyline makes me feel like ppl did not understand him, both as a “person” and as a character. like gen 1 had VERY obvious racial commentary in it and though its debatable how well they handled it, its one of the biggest themes in the show so i think gil and lagoona’s relationship was pretty important.

most of the complaints ive seen about gil are about him being racist. personally, i cant really remember any instances of him actually holding racist views [i have only seen the web series and a couple of the movies, so maybe im missing out on a huge thing that happened]. i can only remember him being worried about what his parents, who were racist, would think about his relationship with lagoona. gil is, what, 16? his parents are a HUGE part of his life still, so i dont blame him for being scared of them and what they think. i mean, if his parents get pissed off at him enough, he could not only lose his parents—who, at that point in his life, are likely huge pillars of both his financial and emotional support systems—but also get kicked out, which are both terrifying prospects for a teenager. no matter how wrong you know that your parents are, telling them that can feel like a life or death decision [and sometimes CAN BE a life or death decision depending on how shitty your parents are]. but you know what else gil does? he becomes confident enough to actually tell his parents off! as a person, i appreciate that gil is a teenager who is in a tough situation and may not yet feel safe to stand up to his parents. this doesnt mean that i think lagoona was wrong for feeling upset or that gil wasn’t being shitty. imo, the situation was VERY unfair to lagoona and i think that breaking up until gil was ready to be open about their relationship would’ve been the best course of action. i just think the situation and the characters involved are more complex than “gil is MEAN and BAD for NO REASON AT ALL” like how some people seem to see it.

as a character, i appreciate gil and his storyline. i think that this kinda thing is believable and adds some depth to the conflicts, characters, and the world of mh. it would’ve been easy to lump all water monsters together, but its interesting and realistic that there is fighting within species/between similar species*. i also appreciate when topics like bigotry are addressed in ways that dont deal with people as Good or Bad. i think its important for kids to see characters who are discriminatory in some way or who are hesitant to speak up against discrimination since that is a very relatable flaw to have. like i said, gil DOES build the self confidence to speak up against his parents. he grows as a person, and its important to have that kind of growth in media. i think that the current view that a lot of ppl on the left seem to have that being A Racist inherently makes you an irredeemably bad person makes it harder for people to recognize and challenge their own racist biases bc no one likes thinking of themselves as A Bad Person. if bigots are solely represented as cartoonishly evil people, then people will think “but IM not a bad person! therefore i cant be racist!” and not challenge their own bigoted ideas.

i actually hope a similar storyline is carried over to gen 3, if with a little more grace, because i think its an interesting and important story to tell. i think the main problem with the storyline in canon is that gil’s arc took so long to resolve. i know if the show was being realistic, this kinda thing probably would take a while to resolve. but also, this is a kids’ show so it would be more effective to deliver that message in a shorter time frame and with a little more focus on it

#*are salt water and freshwater monsters different species? i have no clue lol. hashtag fake fan #gil webber #lagoona blue #monster high #long post #chum pesters #q #also as someone who was in a mixed race relationship i actually really relate to gil #im korean and my high school ex is white but my ex’s family ADORED me #like when we broke up they were worried that i would stop coming around they like me sm #my parents on the other hand were upset when they found out i was dating a white person #i ended up panicking and pretending to break up w my ex and hid our relationship from them #like a lot of ppl seem to liken their relationship to white [gil] + poc [lagoona] but ppl of any race can be prejudiced #ik poc being prejudiced against white ppl is completely different from the inverse in terms of social dynamic but still: shitty situation #imo i see their relationship in universe as more akin to smth like korean + japanese #like theres a lot of bad blood there but to someone who isnt asian [or a water monster in this case] they seem pretty much the same #but yeah. parents suck sometimes and thats a hard thing to navigate!#especially when you are as dependant on them as a teen would be!

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