KEEP IT CRISPY.

I would like to preface this by saying I truly love Blinky, he’s probably my second favorite character after Walt. And Blinky is a wonderful father figure  who deserves credit for being one of the primary emotional anchors for Jim, but please consider:

- It was both Blinky’s job and a huge honor for him to mentor the Trollhunter, regardless of who the amulet chose. It was against Strickler’s entire culture to care about Jim at all, and then Jim got the amulet, and caring about Jim was escalated to a death sentence. - Strickler lied to Bular and Gunmar’s faces to provide Jim safe spaces from them - Strickler was given an ultimatum to Kill Jim or Die, and instead rebuilt Merlin’s amulet just so they both had a chance to live another day - Strickler had every opportunity to kill Jim and be Gunmar’s champion before Jim knew he was a Changeling, and instead he let Bular get suspicious of him to buy Jim time, and himself time to figure out a way for them both to win - Strickler offered an olive branch to Jim after Jim learned that he was a Changeling, and still came with a backup plan to not have to kill him when that olive branch was rejected, despite knowing that failing here meant he would be executed - Strickler only got serious about harming Jim when Jim threatened to expose every changeling in the world by releasing the familiars. - Strickler repeatedly chose to be bullied and abused by Bular rather than letting him go after Jim

- and several more examples I can’t think of off-hand Look, I’m never going to argue that Blinky deserved the hugs. He does! Blinky’s wonderful. And Strickler is far from perfect, obviously. His relationship with Jim is rocky and recovering. This much is both true and fair.

But Blinky’s life was never at risk over Jim. Blinky’s people were never put at risk by his caring for Jim. Even when Trollmarket didn’t want Jim, Blinky had both the Amulet and eventually the Soothscryer on his side. His tradition and his culture protected him from scrutiny. Strickler had Gunmar. And Bular. And the Janus Order. All of whom wanted any living Trollhunter’s head on a pike ASAP and needed the amulet. And knowing this, Strickler kept all of them from doing Jim any real harm for as long as he possibly could. 

Strickler was the only one who understood being part of two worlds. Strickler was the one who knew Jim was a teenaged human boy and shouldn’t be dealing with all of this weight. Strickler was the one who understood from Day One that Jim didn’t deserve this, and played both sides of the field to help him until he literally couldn’t anymore.

My point is:

this post was mostly aimed at the recent movie and how it seemed to strongly portray strickler as like... Jim's Real Dad All Along and blinky/his relationship with jim just... didn't seem to show up all that much in a meaningful way? that didn't really sit right with me. i think regardless of the behind-the-scenes ways strickler might have been sticking his neck out for jim, blinky was more consistently a positive source of guidance to jim (at least in ways jim was more directly seeing/experiencing.)

i think at the end of the series, jim and blinky already had a pretty strongly established father/son relationship while - as you said - strickler and jim were just now starting the process of developing (or arguably REdeveloping) that father figure/son bond in earnest which is fine! it makes perfect sense!!

you can absolutely have more than one father/mentor figure in your life!! lots of people do! (and they won't all work the same!) but the film almost seemed to act like this wasn't the case in order to, i guess, give closure to the Mystery Of Jim's Dad. and, to me at least, it felt like they portrayed jim and stickler's relationship as having progressed much more quickly than i would have expected towards complete trust/friendship... and the portrayal of jim and blinky's relationship seemed very unjustly downplayed in the film by comparison.