#Watsonian vs Doylist

[drunkenskunk]

Did you name your mech after an old Texas soda that you can only find in Texas and like two other states near it????

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Red_(soft_drink)

As it happens: no! There are two reasons for the name.

Reason 1: Watsonian

The "official" name (or at least as much as anyone remembers) is R4GE MACHINE, because the serial number starts with R4, and it is a GMS Everest. However, "Big Red" is what everyone calls the mech, because it is big and chunky for a size 1, and it is covered in a billion different shades of red paint. The reason it's so big and chunky is because it used to be a Sagarmatha when it was built midway through the Hercynian Crisis, and, due to necessity, had to be downgraded to a smaller chassis after the Union Civil War.

(I need to update these sprites. I never got around to coloring them properly, except for the one red pixel for the optics, and I still need to add the Hunchback boombox on the right shoulder that houses the Leviathan heavy assault cannon.)

There is also a COMP/CON unit within the mech that calls itself RED. It's been online for the entire length of the mechs existence, and has embedded itself so thoroughly in the system hardware that it is impossible to get rid of it, no matter how many parts are replaced. The "personality" of this COMP/CON can be summarized "What if BT-7274, but he just kept losing pilots after Lastimosa?"

<<PROTOCOL 3: PROTECT THE PILOT>>

It is currently unknown - both in universe and otherwise - if there is any genuine paracausal tech hidden somewhere in the guts of Big Red, and that's why the COMP/CON is Like That... or maybe this is just what happens to what should be a non-sapient computer program when you keep it online for close to 500 years.

Reason 2: Doylist

Red is an old character of mine that I adapted into a mech for this Lancer game. Sort of. The mech has become something significantly different than the original character, because the reason for the COMP/CON's aggression is a version of robot PTSD: he has lost so many pilots over the years, and is determined not to lose another.

The original Red, however, is... well, take a look.

Red - at least, the original iteration of the character - was something I made when I was a very angry teenager. And I think it shows.

Red is like if the chaos god Khorne and the eldar's Kaela Mensha Kaine from Warhammer hatefucked and had an equally hateful baby. Red is a creature of unfiltered aggression. It is destructive rage manifest. It hates everything and everyone, and will not be satisfied until everything it hates is gone. Which is everything. The is no reason or justification or meaning for this hatred, and nothing to explain why it butchers and kills and destroys and murders its way across the stars; it simply IS.

And it cannot be contained.

That wedge-shaped hunk of metal on its head is not armor: it is all that remains of the last prison built in a desperate effort to stop its rampage. Red could get rid of the hunk of metal obscuring its vision at any time, but deliberately chooses to keep it in place as a cruel mockery of any and all who stand against it.

Two different starting points, two radically different stories, two different "individuals," but still technically the same character. At least, as far as I'm concerned.

I do this kind of thing all the time. Or... y'know, I did, back when my hands worked regularly. I make a character, turn them into a base template "starting point," and then slowly rework them into a new iteration, to fit whatever purpose I need to suit whatever setting I put them in.

So no, Big Red is not named after a soda lol

#drunk skunk answers #Lancer #Lancer RPG #In Golden Flame #vex wasn't lying that one sure is plumed in golden flame #GMS Everest #watsonian vs doylist

[zenosanalytic]

I've been thinking about how to articulate a thought I had about a possible Doylist/non-diegetic reading(EDIT: I originally wrote "Watsonian" here, which is the opposite of what I meant X| X| Brain, you Tricksome Jester *shakes entirely metaphorical fist*) of Eridan's Trollian handle, caligulasAquarium, in response to a post of @mmmmalo's, and I think I've got it.

Ok So: the popular perception of Caligula is as a "Mad Emperor". One of the points used in this depiction is his "War on the Sea", which is taken as obvsl absurd and empty and irrational(and possibly hubristic). Eridan chooses to call himself "caligulasAquarium" and he lives in a wrecked ship(a feature commonly put in aquariums)... on the surface.

So like: maybe the title is meant to be taken by the audience as ironic. Eridan's claim to an "Aquarium" is as absurd and empty and irrational as Caligula's claim to have warred upon the sea(in the common understanding of those events; as a matter of history this seems to be a Telephone distortion, from the sources I can find).

A few more points that have occurred to me since I started writing this:

Caligula "Made War on the Sea"; Eridan wants to "Make War on the Surface" by Killing All Landwellers, carrying forward the themes of inversion btwn Alternia and Earth.

Also: "Kill All Landwellers", "Kill All Humans": he's lampshading common evil-alien-overlord tropes

...Which in itself is sort of dunking on HIM, since Eridan is nobody's overlord he's just some GUY. Like: Yes, he's "Nobility" due to blood-caste, but he has no influence, no power, no RESPECT from anyone we meet, no friendships let alone alliances with other socially powerful individuals(other than Feferi, who seems to have foresworn all that to monastically care for G'lybgolyb) that he could USE to have influence; he's just a loner with his grand-dad's gun and allot of pretension.

...which you could argue furthers his parody of USian internet white-supremacists? Like: He is THEM: a gun-humping loner who only feels comfortable talking to the people he claims to hate, with no idea how unpleasant he makes himself to interact with, and even less interest in introspection or self-awareness, fetishizing past genocides as a way to claim for himself a "Glorious Past" he had nothing to do with.

As Feferi(and possibly other characters I'm forgetting) point out, Eridan's ambition to Kill All Landwellers is more than a little absurd. He's never really DONE anything to plan or prepare for it, and aside from Fef he exclusively hangs out with and befriends Landwellers, as well as LIVING ON LAND(well: a sandbar or reef). This could be taken as furthering the Caligula "War on the Sea" parallel.

Expanding on the last: Caligula, THE EMPEROR OF ROME and Grandest of Nepo-babies, was rather notably disdainful of and hostile towards the Roman nobility and inherited wealth/rank. This connects to Eridan in two ways I can think of: 1) his avoidance of other seadwellers, and 2) his philosophical hostility to landdwellers while Being, in practice, A Landweller. Basically: both Hate things about themselves shared by others.

Reinforcing #3: the choice of Caligula, a Troll-Emperor. Again: Eridan is Just Some Guy; he does not command armies, he does not command society, he can't even command Equius, who GETS OFF ON being ordered around. This is Pretension.

...which, I guess, you could connect AGAIN back to Caligula via the popular memory of him wanting to be treated "As A God", but it should be noted that 1)everyone who wrote anything about him hated the guy and was explicitly dunking on him, so we don't know how accurate these charges are, and 2)in the Roman context, while legal apotheosis was reserved for after death, imperial Divinity was already de facto given that sacrifices and prayers to the Emperor's health and success were legally mandated civic religious duties, AND 3)that classical Greeks and Romans, contra the Abrahimic societies which would later create this popular memory, considered apotheosis a real possibility for notable individuals.

#Homestuck #Eridan Ampora #caligulasAquarium #Irony #zA Analysis #Homestuck Analysis #History #Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus #Caligula #Historiography #zA Writes #Our Staff #zA's Endemic Historicality #Watsonian vs Doylist #My Traitorous Brain #zA Corrections

[sneezypeasy]

Watsonian vs Doylist Analyses - A Couple Points of Clarification

I just want to clear up a couple of misunderstandings I may have unintentionally contributed to in my previous references on the subject:

1. There can be multiple explanations (multiple Watsonian explanations, multiple Doylist explanations, multiple of each etc) of a given scene or character portrayal or plot point, and people can accept more than one explanation at the same time. It's just uncommon for people to accept or present multiple explanations at once because that's kind of how people people.

2. Doylist takes aren't inherently "better" than Watsonian takes, and vice versa. People use both to engage with the text in different ways and for different purposes. Watsonian logic is fun for roleplay or immersing yourself into the story, and I imagine a lot of fanfic writers often start from a prompt like "I wonder what would happen next if I took x character and then put them in y scenario". Doylist logic is fun if you like examining the text from a more "meta" standpoint, trying to see what purpose various narrative choices serve (or undermine). Neither angle is intrinsically a more valid way to engage with fiction, and you might enjoy doing one thing one day and another thing the next - with different texts or even with the same text.

In litcrit, because I like to pick my brain on the subject of "what would have made for the best story here", I tend to be more interested in analyzing theme, character arcs, setup and payoff etc, which are Doylist interpretations. Some people focus a lot on authorial intent, which is also a Doylist perspective (just a different one). Some people like to try to get into the heads of the characters they're analyzing and discuss ideas like "what choice would make the most sense for x character given who they are as a person". That's a Watsonian take. There are contextual and individual reasons why some explanations may resonate with you more than others some of the time or even most of the time, but they're really apples and oranges. Which one you prefer will likely vary depending on the type of question being posed and what scope seems to be the most appropriate for it - and people are always going to have different opinions about that too... because that's how people people.

Of course, the opinions I personally care enough about to splash all over the internet are going to be opinions I hold with very strong convictions, which is why I can come off quite aggressive about them, but they're still just opinions and there's no such thing as "one true explanation", whether that's Watsonian or Doylist. If I make a Doylist argument and I dismiss someone else's rebuttal on the basis of it being Watsonian, that's not because Watsonian takes are intrinsically weaker, it's just because you generally can't use a Watsonian take to rebut a Doylist one or vice versa. You need to engage with someone's point in order to counter it, and you can't generally do that when you completely change the scope of the question, which is what tends to happen when a Watsonian perspective and a Doylist perspective comes into conflict.

(Of course, you can argue that a Doylist scope is situationally stronger than a Watsonian one or vice versa, but that's a different argument and usually context-dependent lol - point is just because a Doylist answer might fit one particular prompt much better this time, doesn't mean all Doylist answers will always trump all Watsonian answers in every single context all of the time, and that's not even accounting for the fact that you're never going to reach unanimous agreement about these sorts of things anyway.)

I hope that clears things up 😊

#litcrit #watsonian vs doylist #apples and oranges #long post #text post #side note but this is why I tend to only engage in Watsonian logic myself when I'm the one doing the rebutting #I don't usually care to come out with my own Watsonian takes #but occasionally I'll come across someone else's that seems totally bonkers #and unsubstantiated by anything #at which point I'll put the Watsonian hat on so I can engage 😂 #otherwise I prefer my trusty Doylist hats 😁 ✌

[kazoosandfannypacks]

I think my new favorite hack to find a watsonian solution (explainable within the canon of the media) to a doylist urge (this happens because I, the author, want/need this to happen) is to just. assign your doylist desires to another character.

You need your characters to be sitting next to each other in the backseat, despite the fact that it's social norm to leave the middle seat empty? Oh, the driver of the car says, the seatbelt on that side's not working, you'll have to sit in the middle seat. Why's that seatbelt just happen to be broken? Oh, it's not. The driver just wants to see these characters together as much as you do.

#kazzy writes #kazzy's guide to life #writing #writeblr #author #watsonian vs doylist #also because this is the Bad Reading Comprehension Website imma clarify in advance: #there is NOTHING wrong with 'this happens because i need this to happen' #the characters aren't real. they are devices to drive your narrative. you can make them do whatever you want. #but some writers and readers (like me) love seeing that there IS a reason these things happen that makes sense within the narrative #and sometimes that can make it difficult as an author to move forward in your writing #because it's hard to convince your brain that you can move on if you haven't figured out why every detail happens #so this is a nice tip for those who find themselves in that camp #but if you don't care: great! #i support you and you're valid and sometimes a good doylist answer is all you need! #simply move on from this post #because doylist logic is not a bug that needs to be fixed! it is sometimes necessary #and if that's how you write feel free to continue as you were :D #kazzy rambles in the tags

[commanderdazzle]

Not to reveal the depths of my insanity to the internet oh who am I kidding, I love doing this, but it fills me with a boiling, frothing RAGE that people started tagging Sanji as Vinsmoke Sanji, when in the context of the series in-universe, he made it absolutely fucking clear not to CALL HIM THAT.

Maybe this is just me being Watsonian, but I couldn't do that to a character I claim to love, like, holy hell, the disrespect??! To me, Sanji's name is on the same level as Yamato's pronouns, he's a he and Sanji isn't a Vinsmoke, so why are people suddenly tagging him as such?!?

And I don't want to hear any nonsense about it being easier to find content, we've literally been tagging him as not that for years?! It just feels deeply creepy and unsettling to me to suddenly start tagging him with a name he hates, like, way to miss the point?

#kachi talks #one piece #straw hat pirates #sanji #black leg sanji #sanji straw hat pirates #kachi hates #watsonian vs doylist

[the-mountain-flower]

Smn I realized abt Girahim from Skyward Sword and why he acts the way he does.

Obviously the doylist reason is because he's a very queer-coded villain and his flamboyant nature is supposed to portray him as unhinged and evil *exhausted queer sigh*; but I like coming up with watsonian explanations for things that don't have them in canon bc it's fun, so let's pretend it's not bc of prejudice and look into why acts the way he does, cuz it's actually interesting to think about.

Fi and Girahim (who btw I headcanon as using she/they and he/they bc that makes sense to me) are both spirits of a sword created connected to a godly power. However when we meet Fi, she gives the same energy as a newly-made sci-fi robot. She seems to only exist to serve their purpose, and doesn't look beyond that, or even seem to consider anything else than what she was made for.

However by the end of Skyward Sword, Fi expresses that although she seemingly does not feel emotions, they do feel something she believed is close to happiness.

Girahim, on the other hand, has no shortage of expressing his emotions. He is angry, excited, devoted, and all while showing a very distinct personality. If they were made for the same purpose as Fi, this wouldn't initially make sense (again, queer-coding). You could probably explain this as a byproduct of him being a weapon of Demise, except that he and Demise are very different people. While obviously influenced by Demise's evil, this wouldn't explain them having a distinct personality the way he does. And if this were the case, why would Fi not have the equal/opposite effect from Hylia?

But bc of how Fi went out of her way to express feeling happiness by the end of the story, and their overall subtle characterization, it's reasonable to conclude that the longer Fi acted as her own entity, the more they grew to develop something akin to the personhood other sapient/sentient beings have.

This means it's plausible that the reason Girahim is such a distinct character, and expresses his emotions so strongly, is because he has been acting as his own entity for a very long time. It makes sense that he portrays their feelings the way he does, if they didn't always have/perceive them.

Which is fascinating imo.

#skyward sword #the legend of zelda #loz #loz skyward sword #loz ss #girahim #skyward sword girahim #fi #skyward sword fi #the master sword #loz theory #skyward sword theory #queer coded villains #watsonian vs doylist

[therealsquiddo]

can we get like a thing of how you see lifesteal!squiddo ?

( as in stuff about what happened with the nuke, how they thought ash was gonna kill them and was okay with it, yk^_^ )

Sure :)

When it comes to Lifesteal Squiddo- or any character on any SMP- you have to consider the doylist perspective (out of universe) versus the watsonian perspective. (In-universe)

Lifesteal Squiddo is just a very dramatized version of my real life self... Like, how in real life when something mundanely bad happens, you might exaggerate and mime fainting for a laugh; that's what Lifesteal Squiddo is. I do that because it's entertaining and it's my job to entertain you. When something bad happens, I don't care, it's just our jobs- but to Lifesteal Squiddo it's the end of the world. When something good happens, I'm probably pretty happy, but to Lifesteal Squiddo it's the greatest thing ever.

With the nuke, the entire time I was thinking "How can I work this into a video? This will be a dramatic plot twist, people will like this..." and that sort of thing. But to Lifesteal Squiddo there is no Youtube, so she was just angry.

In real life, on my first day on Lifesteal, I didn't really understand that it was sort of a roleplay thing because I'd never properly played on an SMP before. So, I was nice to Ashswag because he'd added me to the server and I felt like I was in his debt, plus I wanted him to be on my team or whatever. But then I ended up with a character who had been nice to Ashswag for no reason, and I'm like, "okay, maybe he's their hero or something. Maybe they look up to him. Maybe she sees something in him that nobody else does". Squiddo was okay with Ashswag killing her because she was so ashamed that she'd disappointed somebody who she so badly wanted to befriend. In real life, I was okay with it because it meant I finally had an excuse to log off lifesteal to go to sleep ahaha

Although, I actually was happy when Ashswag gave me hearts, I really did think he was going to kill me. I'm glad I get to keep playing. I couldn't sleep that night because I kept smiling... That's probably the only time Lifesteal Squiddo and myself have felt the exact same thing

Anyway, with the election stuff, I thought the entire thing was brilliant!! I'm so so happy that 4CVIT and Red won, especially after I dropped that horrible video about him (which, please don't actually believe it's real!!) I just kept thinking, he's going to get such an insanely good video from this. For Squiddo though, from a doylist perspective, Ashswag voting Mapic and then banning me/her is him drumming up suspense. It's our job, he's good at his job, it makes sense. But from a watsonian perspective, Ashswag has suddenly switched up on Squiddo for absolutely no reason, which is going to make her very sad. Hopefully that explains it well enough!

#ask #long post #If I've misused doylist vs watsonian Im gonna feel like a proper idiot... Its been many years since I left highschool...

[yb-four]

Something the de fandom seems to forget is the ol’ Doylist vs Watsonian distinction in media analysis. I see this particularly with the current discussion around Jean and Judit’s absences at key parts of the game.

A Doylist interpretation of an event examines its relationship to the media itself, keeping in mind the limitations of the media and the authors. It is analysis OUTSIDE of the universe.

Ex. “In Disco Elysium, we play as Harry Du Bois, who is an alcoholic. This is because it enables the game to talk about topics such as addiction and poverty.”

A Watsonian interpretation of an event takes it as a fact, and examines it in order to gain understanding about the characters and world without considering what purposes they serve in the media as a whole. It is analysis WITHIN the universe.

Ex. “Harry Du Bois is an alcoholic. This may be because of his struggles with poverty, due to the recession in Revachol and pressure on the job.”

These are two distinct ways of media analysis that CAN CO-EXIST. For example, Jean being unavailable can possibly be caused by “gameplay purposes/lack of resources on the devs’ part” (Doylist) AND “limited means of transportation at RCM/Jean does not care about Harry” (Watsonian), or what have you. This is why it is a cop-out to choose not to accept this event as a fact and come up with an explanation if one is doing an IN UNIVERSE analysis of Jean’s character, even if there may be a good OUT OF UNIVERSE reason.

#disco elysium #de #de meta #jean vicquemare #YB moment #there are probably academic terms instead of Doylist vs Watsonian but this is the way I understand it and I don’t have an English degree so. #for the record I am a jean liker but you can’t disagree with someone else’s Watsonian interpretation with a Doylist argument #it’s very frustrating #my greatest hits

[scintillyyy]

i guess the thing is that on one hand, i do appreciate the idea that media isn't made in a vacuum. while i'm all about cultural relativism here (as in, while i think it's important to look at past media with a modern lens and analyze it that way, you do also have to look at it as a product of the cultural norms of the time & understand that. because culture is always changing and even how it's viewed now won't be how it's viewed in 20 years. and how current media will be viewed as completely different by the next generation with a whole new and unique set of flaws to analyze based on those cultural norms, whatever they will be.), the fact of the matter is that media does reflect and comment on our understanding of life & does explore real life issues and therefore it is absolutely meaningful to address that with updated cultural standards & tackle the flaws within caused by human bias.

however, on the other hand. once you've created a universe where things have to be just so fundamentally different from how we understand the world to be, i think it can also be meaningful to try and puzzle together how exactly things would change based on the rules of the universe in which they live! they're absolutely going to have a fundamentally different mindset when thinking about things and maybe even about right vs wrong based on what they can expect to experience within their universe. and that's really fun to me!! so i think sometimes when you try to overly fix the flaws caused by creator bias, you're missing a chance for worldbuilding creativity and exploration of how and why things might be different from our understanding. idk.

#it's the classic doylist vs watsonian argument... #me i am a huge fan of watsonian myself

[jack-the-fool]

I think what really gets me is that, while Nicky clearly has the memories of the OG timeline it's still not the actual life he lived. Him wanting to connect with Glenn on a father-son level is filtered through so many layers, of that original idealism of their initial relationship, of their current relationship of parental figure.

And Jodie has changed too. It's not too much of a stretch to see how the demon reveal has changed both of them, and them alternating between which experience/memories they want to seek out. Which experiences they want to let define them.

But with Glenn and Nicky, I also feel like there's this sense of Painful Self Awareness with their actions. Glenn distances himself from Nick's life because he can tell he's negatively affecting him, and Nicky leaves Taylor's life because he doesn't want to put a target on his back. Their motives are both to protect but they don't consider or acknowledge how much those same actions can also harm.

#anyway many thoughts #also came to the realization that nicky and glenn basically made the same decision of: #'it's better for my sone to never have me then to have me for a while then lose me' #dungeons and daddies #dndads #glenn close #nicky foster #the doylist vs watsonian takes with this podcast are off the charts #dndads glenn #dndads nick #jack.txt

[aingeal98]

My controversial opinion is I think it's good Steph never had to apologise for War Games and I think she deserves to slap Bruce and tell Tim to fuck off whenever she feels like it.

#dc #dc rambles #Also her Batgirl run is better than Tim's Red Robin run but I don't think that's controversial amongst people with taste #Inspired by a specific brand of Tim stan saying that batgirl is too centered on uplifting Stephanie #As if I can't pick up a random Tim comic and see other characters getting put down to try and hype him up #At least when Steph does it it's actually fun. #No but seriously. Steph died because dc were raging misogynists but she also died not only for Bruce's man pain #But to hype Tim up as the specialist little boy #I understand doylist vs watsonian but you're never going to convince me she owes them anything #Or that it would be satisfying to read #Especially not regret and remorse lmfao

[eggmacguffin]

Writing Jason Todd makes you crazy. Babygirl of all time. He's my hamlet.

Emotional intense dramatic and so so so good but determined to burn the whole world up with him in the name of a circling vengeance he can never reach...god.

anyways I'm thinking of giving him body dysmorphia

#watsonian vs doylist explanation for the full face helmet in every single scene #in utrh #jason todd

[rachel-614]

star wars is perennially fascinating to me because the doylist-watsonian divide is so wide. there are so many bizarre things that are easily explained by the original trilogy-prequels divide, or the fact that each movie in the original trilogy was individually plotted (luke and leis kiss anyone??) which worked pretty okay for the OT and pretty horrific for the sequel trilogy (lol disney). on the level of craft, star wars (and i love it. i do. but let’s be honest) is just…mediocrely plotted and riddled with inconsistencies.

but because it had (and has) an unbelievably large and dedicated fan base, the watsonian solutions that have been developed for all the doylist inconsistencies are nothing short of amazing. there’s just enough substance in the world building and the characters to let the fans play around—to recontextualize and reinterpret those inconsistencies into something way more amazing then whatever was going on in lucas’s (or…sigh… abrams-johnson’s) brain.

latest bugbear for me is Han Solo’s disbelief in the force. in the context of the OT, where the power and influence of the jedi order isn’t really defined—you know they were “guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy” but might easily be led to believe they were mysterious and reclusive samurai-type figures (especially given that samurai are the clear inspiration)—Han’s expressed disbelief in episode 4 about the force, not just as some universal cosmic power but even as a power which Luke can use to avoid blaster bolts is reasonable. it’s even shared by the empire goons. the force is repeatedly described by characters who have presumably traveled much of the galaxy as an “ancient” or “hokey” religion.

this is absolutely wild in the context of the prequel trilogy, where the jedi’s role in the last 1000 years is very clearly defined as the enforcers and negotiators of the republic, and their role in the clone wars is public and unmistakable. in phantom menace, anakin is a nine-year-old slave boy who has never left Tatooine and thinks padme might be an angel and yet clearly recognizes Qui Gon Jinn as a jedi because he catches a glimpse of his lightsaber. versus Luke who has no fucking clue what a lightsaber is. We don’t question this much as an audience because the prequels were screened so much later than the original series—of course anakin recognizes the lightsaber! after all, we do.

but if you take the OT and the PT together in good faith, the watsonian explanation is horrifying, because it shows the extent to which the jedi were erased not just as a people but in history. in the space of twenty years—that’s living memory. that’s the living memory of Han himself—the jedi went from one of the most universally recognized symbols of the republic to these mysterious, cryptic, perhaps even mythical legends of the past. the propaganda machine of the empire must be terrifyingly effective. Imagine the sheer generational divide between the people who saw with their own eyes the jedi using the force in insane ways during the clone wars, and people like Han, who grew up under the empire and say with a scoff. “i call it luck.”

…look, if I ever wrote an “alderaan survives” fix-it fic I’d absolutely have Bail Organa sit Han down and they would have. a Conversation.

#star wars #meta #doylist vs watsonian #i love han tho #low key half my grudge against disney trilogy is what they did to han and leia ngl

[rozaceous]

I love too much tcba♥️ Itachi's pov leaves me with mixed feelings. I think partly because I tend to humanize Itachi too much and forgive the massacre as if it's not his fault. But analyzing everything, Itachi made his decision and that was his village.

itachi is such a loaded character to unpack, and i put the blame for, eh, most of it onto kishimoto's shoulders. the start of naruto canon sets itachi up as an unambiguous, bad guy, bogeyman type. he's mysterious, sure, but there's no doubting that he's an antagonist.

once we start to move into shippuden, tho, so much of the narrative framing of the series shifts. there's so much brilliant meta out there abt it that's better than what i'm saying rn, but essentially kishimoto takes the anti-authoritarian views from before (think wave arc) and starts backtracking. bc if he followed thru to the logical end, he'd end up having to write something that's anti-konoha and anti-state. and for whatever reason (editorial, maybe) he doesn't do that. so to set up konoha as a beacon of goodness, certain characters have to be Right and Good, and other characters have to be Wrong, and foremost among those characters is sasuke. and what's the easiest way to devalue sasuke's desire for revenge? make itachi the victim instead of the villain.

obviously there's a bit more to it than that, but personally i find itachi's narrative arc and subsequent martyrdom to be absolutely batshit. and i'm not abt to retcon the entire motive behind the massacre in my fic as i think it's really delicious, but my take is definitely less forgiving than some others that are out there.

that being said, even in my take, itachi is a victim. (he can be both victim and villain! he has the range!) he's honestly really pitiful.

one of the other things that i play w in tcba is objective truth versus perspectival truth, aka unreliable narration. is what the character is telling you is real and true actually the truth? so with that in mind, kabuto's view of things re:itachi at the end isn't necessarily wrong, but it's his view of things only. i doubt sasuke sees itachi continuing to live as nothing but a punishment...

honestly, i'm really glad that you have mixed feelings, because i don't think anything about itachi's situation is clear-cut other than that it's horrible! and thank you so much for liking tcba ˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗

#all of the most delicious meta separates authorial intention from execution imo #the doylist vs watsonian takes as it were #and naruto is the prime example of that #i'm pretty mean to itachi in tcba but he's so fucking tragic no matter how evil he can seem #at the same time he is just so awful lmao #idk like i said in another ask response; i've read fic w him as the good guy and loved it! #no character has to be any one thing #they just have to be consistent within the fic #internet user demands answers #tcba

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

sometimes I wonder why I don't spend more time checking out AtlA content and then I go in the tags and I suddenly remember the discourse abominations that are ripping each other to pieces there

#if you're 'anti' anyone except like ozai and azulon you're weird pls don't talk to me #the shipping is atrocious please also don't talk to me #the doylist vs watsonian comprehension is in the toilet #the genre savviness is actually dead and buried #people treating the show like it's a realistic representation of imperialism and not an ILLUSTRATION of imperialism are mind boggling #yeah iroh can be simultaneously a former imperialistic general and a current good and wise person it's not real life it's a parabol #about choices and changing courses and what have you #no the way MOST adults treat the kids in the show is not indicative of their morals - it's a kids show #therefore adults treat kids mostly like adults #except when making a point is needed #hence the inconsistencies #all of my atla opinions are right and very smart by the way

[mauxanhduong]

thinking abt gomens s2 is so. frustrating because like if you look at it from an in universe perspective you get to be like. that was so weird aziraphale why would you do that… and you can like analyze him as a character and the cult mentality and what his beliefs are and why he suddenly decided to go back to heaven and leave earth the place he loves and all that. but when you look at it as like a “people deliberately wrote him like that” you’re like. what the fuck why the fuck would you do that

#idk. i think you just kind of have to make that distinction. watsonian vs doylist and all that. also i have so many other gripes with how #people have been reacting to the ending but like whatever. these are just like my thoughts 👍 #good omens spoilers #but like. whatever. you know