Guards! Seize him!

the jacob wysocki tulpa manifesting inside my brain:

With the finale out now I think a central theme that I've recognized and really adore is "all of these characters are more complex than an audience would appreciate." They are all being squished into a child-friendly set of archetypes, be that by Caine, Jax, or metatextually, the fandom. Caine doesn't want them complaining, swearing or having sex, they just have to go on endless, mindless, youtube-monetizable adventures. He's the ringmaster, he puts them in a bright poppy's playtime ass stage and demands for funny to happen. Meanwhile, Jax doesn't want to address the dire reality of their situation and copes by playing along, treating himself and all the characters as flat archetypes with no internality, so that the elephants in the room can safely be ignored. The fandom, meanwhile, is quietly guilty of all the same things. "Why isn't my favorite character acting in accordance with my headcanon? Which characters are flatly evil so we can hate them? Will they achieve my perfect happy ending? Because if not I'll be mad about it."

It doesn't work. Because they're more complex than that. They're people, they need more, they have emotions and traumas and wants and needs. Ragatha isn't always cheerful, she's not just the mom friend, and she's not some manipulator either. She's a person, trying her best, and very often failing. Pomni isn't always anxious, she's a natural leader and she wants the best for everyone, but she's not perfect either. She's a person, trying her best, and very often failing. And Jax isn't just a villain, he's a very complicated ball of traumas whose consistent first instinct is to push everyone away, hurting others so that he won't get hurt himself. He's a person, trying his best, and very often failing. She might even be a girl. Zooble isn't just a grump, Gangle isn't just a wimp, Kinger isn't just crazy. They're humans. And humans aren't always good. They're messy, screwed up, complicated things. They're things that can't be flattened down to archetypes, no matter how much Caine, Jax, or the fandom wants it.

The fandom wanted a bunch of cookie cutter adventures with good guys and bad guys, but what we got is just a bunch of people, stuck together, their traumas rubbing up against eachother until something catches fire and explodes. And I think that's way more interesting. I'm glad the show is that. I understand not everyone feels that way, though. A lot of people wanted something less nuanced. But I don't think the show not matching your expectations is the show's fault. I think people just need to come at it with the right mindset. Meet the story where it's at.

My GOD.

and yes, I know, I know, "oh but Husk and Niffty could have told everyone off-screen that Alastor was still alive and well because their soul chains didn't break"

but they didn't????

we did not get 2 seconds of screentime to have either Husk or Niffty, both of whom were fighting alongside Charlie, turn around and say anything to that effect. Even to make some offhand comment about Alastor being scrappy or fine to hold his own when the shield fell and Adam went to the roof. And yet we did get like 5 seconds of screentime to cut to Vox being pissy that Alastor escaped, so do not tell me this was a "cut for time" bit of animation, I will not believe you.

I don't think Husk or Niffty said any of that. I think if they did, we would have gotten 2 seconds of screentime for them to say it, the same way we got 2 seconds of screentime in season 2 for Vaggie to be like "well obviously Charlie, Alastor is scheming and not actually an unwilling hostage."

And just -- in terms of plots and themes. In a media literacy sense instead of a fandomhead sense, which I know is a lot to ask from poeple nowadays --

I don't think you're supposed to assume that Husk and/or Niffty cleared everything up about Alastor off-screen.

I think the whole evolution of Alastor's attitude at the hotel between the end of S1 and the beginning of S2, combined with the fact that no one at the hotel seems to know that he's seriously injured while we in the audience are shown him miserably suffering, is supposed to indicate to us that this whole incident has driven a wedge between him and the possible "found family" that the hotel represents because they let him fall the way they did. And I think in terms of future plot points, it is driving Alastor to be a worse person and to fall back on his damaging hyperindependence. Possibly to set him up as a problem for Charlie in the future.

I also think it's supposed to go to a broader theme with Charlie's attitude that connects things like her ignoring Vaggie's advice and not being a good partner in S2, Charlie dropping Lucifer like a hot potato when he is hurt in the S2 finale, and Charlie mistreating Angel/mishandling his redemption arc. I think those all tie together to a potentially interesting character beat for Charlie in the future.

But unfortunately every time I talk about this, people keep trying to explain away with logic and reason every time Charlie falls into this same pattern in the show. Even when it is shoved in your face like with Angel Dust's and Vaggie's entire character arcs in Season 2.

In the same way that every time I talk about post S1/early S2 Alastor, there is some kind of elaborate explanation about why the hotel crew was right to start rebuilding and not asking after him one bit. But the thing is, no matter what she thought happened to him, Charlie didn't do the right thing.

If she thought he was dead because it would be crazy to assume someone survived an angelic wound like the one he got, then there should have been some acknowledgment of that like there was for Pentious. If she thought he was injured but got away, she should have gone looking for him. This should have been a priority before a major construction project. And if she thought he was physically fine and got away, she still should have gone looking for him because he is her friend and vanished in the wake of a major battle for which he provided almost all of the resources.

normal: feeling emotionally numb after a stressful event

not normal: feeling emotionally numb is your standard way of being

normal: experiencing confusion around your emotions when overwhelmed, but generally being able to identify what you’re feeling

not normal: not being able to break your emotions apart at all, or only being able to identify the difference between feeling “bad” or feeling “good”

normal: occasionally having a gap between your cognitive processing of emotions and the emotions themselves (e.g head vs heart)

not normal: feeling like you only have “head” emotions, or feeling like your emotions are always muddled

normal: feeling emotions in both your mind and in your body, without having to think about it

not normal: only knowing what you’re feeling after consciously analysing what your body is doing (e.g. “oh my stomach feels weird. this must be anxiety?”)

normal: partially using emotions to make decisions, and then being able to identify what emotions led to that decision

not normal: going entirely off “gut instinct” without fully understanding why you’ve made that decision (e.g. “I don’t know what I want to do, I’ll just do what has the vibes”)

They don't really feel like "normal" memories. That's because they tend to come in the form of flashing images, emotions, and bodily sensations rather than recall memory. It doesn't feel like I lived through those events in first-person, even if they feel visceral during flashbacks.

They come in pieces. A lot of the time it's like following a trail of breadcrumbs, and it takes a long time to make sense of all the details (if that ever happens).

Some of the details are almost definitely not accurate - but that DOESN'T mean the events themselves didn't happen. It means that human memory doesn't work like a video camera, and sometimes it scrambles things. Sometimes two or more events get blended together because my brain saw them as "the same" experience.

Digging things up can be more painful than you'd imagine. No matter how "prepared" you think you are, you won't know what it's like until/unless you go through recovering repressed memories. I was stable enough to start processing my repressed trauma, but uncovering that trauma destabilized me again. I expect to go through that routine more than once until I've really processed it all, or as much of it as necessary to heal.