#entire teenagerhood; a 30 second exchange about climbing safety was 'one of the longest conversations he'd had with a kid' before maddy

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

having thoughts about nine, and i think one of the biggest things i would personally do to fix him and his role in the story (without making him a flat out villain) is to change the core theme of his character from 'missing stair will not and should not ever be held accountable for their actions,' to:

cruelty and defiance are not the same thing. existing out of spite is not an evil thing; refusing to lay down your weapons under the guise of being small and soft and palatable is not evil; defending yourself and others from being wiped out or made less than you are is not evil. it is not cruel. making good on 'fuck around and find out' can be one of the most important things you will ever do.

and because it's not cruel, it does not excuse cruelty. 'kind does not mean nice' doesn't mean 'cruelty is acceptable as long as it's for a Good Cause'; it also doesn't mean that cruelty in some instances and kindness in others balance each other out. if anything, the latter just ends up becoming part of the former with a different face. it doesn't matter how soft or palatable or loud and rough-edged you are: either your worldview is built on kindness or it isn't, and that will show in how you act on it no matter how hard you try to quarantine one philosophy from the other.

there are lots of other things i'd change; a major one being to pull the fuck up on said cruelty by a LOT, holy shit. as well, don't make him abusive, whether as a) a tactical abuser who pretends his trauma took out the filter he absolutely still has, or b) someone whose trauma has taken out their filter, and left them a disoriented, barely functioning wreck with no idea what the hell is going on inside or outside their own head; whose confused flailing manifests as lashing out in abusive ways, and who wants to do better, and would actually improve with both help and accountability for their actions. that last one has worth as a narrative, but it requires pulling on the sensitivity gloves so far up your arms that it's just a whole spandex suit, and these writers have well and truly proven they are just not fucking capable of that lmao

but in the end, one of the things that does absolutely have to change is that his character has to have a point other than getting away with being a missing stair. there might be other ways to write him as a static character and still a good one; they do have their place! but given that the conventions of the genre would generally involve a growth arc for a character like him, i feel like this interpretation is one that probably falls closest to what they were actually going for.

(or at least, what they wanted to trick the audience into thinking they were going for. lol)

anyway yeah, i have a piggy bank full of cents about this and that is two of them. tl;dr justice for nine, we could have had it all

#lorien legacies #LL number nine #LL crit tag #LL tag #the crit files #take a hammer and FIX the canon #which i think is going to start being my tag for that to differentiate it from just Screaming #bc the other half of the awfulness of recognizing Bullshit is the joy and satisfaction of using that knowledge to create something better #also re: the 'two types of abuser' thing i am planning on going into that in its own post; but the tl;dr is that abuse is a learned skill #the inclination to do it isn't; but the process of putting it into practice /is/ #sometimes people are looking to meet a need and find an easy button to mash to fill it; because unskilled or not #Abuse Works :') #but the patterns of control and manipulation that nine use are ones that require practice; observation of people; and gathering a toolset #even if they haven't had a victim they've managed to Trap yet; they've spent a lifetime developing that skill passively #testing what they can get away with; how people react to things and the effects they have on them; taking notes from other abusers #fine-tuning What Works #post-escape nine is both inclined to be abusive /and skilled at it;/ the first in a way we don't see him at all inclined toward beforehand #and the second in a way he absolutely /could not have learned/ in the circumstances of his life pre-capture; he was completely isolated his #entire teenagerhood; a 30 second exchange about climbing safety was 'one of the longest conversations he'd had with a kid' before maddy #the only place he'd have been able to pick up a toolset like that from would be to lift it wholesale from sandor; and as abusive as sandor #was; & much as you can see some seeds in there of nine's later BS; it's not anything like as much or as blatant as nine would need to copy #and like. tactical abuse vs button-mash abuse is very much a spectrum #but if nine came out of captivity inclined to abuse people it would /absolutely/ not look what we ended up with #it would be HARD on the button-mash side of that spectrum #and what we got was on the same level as him being a bullshit unbeatable charming-and-debonair death machine #and fck y'all writers for portraying trauma and mental illness as magic wands to turn someone into an abuser #to try and force people to like your godawful edgy obnoxious creator's pet; by pretending it makes him sympathetic and complex 😒 #lmao anyway. will probably repeat a lot of this tag rant when i type up The Post about it but yeah