Hot Take: TPOT 7 made me love BH even more—both he AND Fanny deserve better ;-;
Honestly, I don't think he would be reacting this way if the people around him treated him more like a person and less like a force of nature to outmaneuver or take advantage of. Why do his teammates talk over him and leave him out of the loop? Why didn't Pen just ask him to stop sucking up the blocks? Why didn't Fanny urge him to explain himself better—why force him to kill one of his closest friends?
No one realizes that he wants to move past his destructive nature—that he, more than anything else, wants to be a good person. That death is such a uniquely painful thing to him because of the circumstances of his creation and the fragile world he inhabits. He's sucked up the Recovery Centers before—who's to say that won't happen again? He can never have the same carefree attitude most everyone else has because so much more can go wrong in his eyes. He always has to be careful. He always has to be sure.
A death preventer is all that he is. It's all he can ever be without hurting the people he cares about. Why wouldn't he become obsessed? Why wouldn't he be upset when someone he considered a friend decides it's no longer as important (then not important at all)? What does that say about him? How can they not love the world as deeply as he does?
It's incredibly boring and reductive to see this episode's conflict as just him being stupid; it's not about who's more rational. It's not about winning. It's about being understood. Fanny/Lightning (and a good chunk of the fandom, apparently) don't understand Black Hole just as much as he doesn't understand them. They both deserve better. They both deserve to be heard :)
Both the contest AND preventing death are important—they both just need to realize it.
areudirty
blakekathryn
kianamaiart
