Rgwitchcraft - RGWitchcraft

hey, can my cat stay on your blog for a little while?

i'm going out of town for the night and could use someone to watch her

You know what. Fuck you.

*unhallows your ween*

My first scene for the Sock Opera Reanimation project

@mrmederick

go benie

she has been flattened

Sometimes I think about how and why some people had such a *bad* reaction to the end of Steven Universe, specifically in regards to the Diamonds living.

Even though they no longer are causing harm to others and are able to actually undo some of their previous harm by living, some folks reacted as though this ending was somehow morally suspect. Morally bankrupt, even.

And I think it might be because so many of us were raised on a very specific kind of kids media trope:

They all fall to their deaths.

Disney loves chucking their bad guys off cliffs. And it makes sense- in a moral framework where villains *must* be punished (regardless of whether their death will actually prevent further harm or not), but killing of any kind is morally bad for the hero, the narrative must find a way to kill the villain without the protagonists doing a murder.

It's a moral assumption that a person can *deserve* to die, that it is cosmically just for them to die, that them dying is evidence that the story itself is morally good and correct. Scar *deserves* to die, but it would be bad for Simba to kill him. So....cliff.

Steven Universe, whatever else it's faults, took at step back and said "but if killing people is bad, then people dying is bad", and instead of dropping White Diamond off a cliff, asked "what would actual *restorative*, not punitive, justice look like? What would actual reparations mean here? If the goal is to heal, not just to punish, how do we handle those who have done harm?" And then did that.

Which I think is interesting, and that there was pushback against it is interesting.

It also reminds me of the folks who get very weird about Aang not killing Ozai at the end of Avatar. And like, Ozai still gets chucked in prison, so it doesn't even push back on our cultural ideas of punitive justice *that much.* and still, I've seen people get real mad that the child monk who is the last survivor of a genocide that wiped out his entire pacifist culture didn't do a murder.

Pony Express investigating the Tulpar case Idea given to me by @aldosesweets

i've seen people use this scene for a lot of interpretations but i personally always saw it as asriel choosing to accept chara despite their flaws. he spent god knows how long clinging to what was essentially just a concept to try and comfort himself, making chara out to be an ideal best friend who was always right about practically everything and whose presence could've solved everything when that wasn't the case. chara was a traumatized and clearly unwell child, just like how asriel is now, definitely not someone to be placed on a pedestal and imitated. even during their lifetime, chara was likely idolized by other monsters aside from asriel if asgore's whole "you are the future of humans and monsters" paired with the prophecy is anything is anything to go by, and that likely fed into their mindset which lead to their plan with the buttercups.

asriel may wish that frisk was his best friend, knowing that likely things would've turned out better if they were there instead of chara. it wouldn't be wrong for asriel to be disdainful and unforgiving of chara, similarly to how you can choose to neither forgive nor comfort asriel. you aren't painted as a bad person for it as asriel *did* hurt people, even if a lot of that was erased via resets. even during the game he can outright kill asgore before your eyes, and likely kills frisk multiple times on the average playthrough as well. similarly, regardless of what chara's intentions were, they were the one that led asriel to his death via pressuring him into following their plan, even if they did have pure intentions.

but in the end, despite all of that, chara was asriel's best friend and he's accepted that, even if they weren't the ideal he considered them to be. he chooses to spend his final moments as what he considers to be himself at the side of his best friend and sibling, seeing them for who they truly are this time. a hurt and extremely troubled child who was unable to cope, like him.

SO SOMEHOW MY YAOI SHIRT ENDED UP IN MY DAD’S LAUNDRY BASKET HELP I CAN’T BREATHE