#hitball

[verakeras]

Dear god. They're going to Ban hitball

[s0l4rb4llsf4n]

uhhhh i think mrspherical took my life :p

[paranaturalpop]

I shoot awake some nights thinking about the brilliance of the hitball arc. It gets so increasingly absurd as it goes on. It has the pacing of the most over-the-top Shōnen sports manga. Alliances are formed, secrets are revealed, characters have entire emotional arcs after which they are fundamentally different. and ITS JUST A GAME OF DODGE BALL. The stakes are real, people actually get hurt, but the characters remain within the bounds of the rules of this game of dodge ball to the point of braking a kid's arm for it. The whole class cloud of turned on Hijack right away like they do at the end because of the golden switch, but they don’t, because their in that middle school mind set of not having ‘permission’. OF COURSE no one goes and gets a teacher (except violet). Of course everyone keeps following the rules. it’s ridiculous, its satire of itself.

and then, later, we learn why this all happened. The big bad, the ‘insidious infiltrator’… is a kid. He’s a kid too. He went along with this convoluted high-stakes game and broke Max’s arm because he’s a child. He didn’t know any better.

its the same story if you flip perspective from the activity club to hijack. Instead of this grand show of camaraderie against and intruder it becomes Hijack's big heroic solo showdown against a crew of bullies and their misguided enablers.

One of the things that's so great about Zack Morrison’s righting is that every character is a fully fleshed out individual with their own clear motivations. Every kid in that hittable arc is viewing themselves as the ‘hero’ of this story. Max, Dimitri and Izzy are fighting an ‘insidious’ paranormal intruder, Johnny and Cody are protecting their friends, the student council is upholding their duty to the school rules, and Hijack is on a super-secret mission to help his mom ‘save the world’. Everyone has good intentions, but they’re opposed anyway.

The hitball arc isn’t just satire of over-the top kids media, its very literal. These character’s immaturity and self-centered thinking leads to this real over-the-top ordeal that could have been prevented at anytime.

Its the same thing Isaac (who was conspicuously absent from this arc) struggles with all the time. He sees himself as a constantly victimized potential hero and is struggling to reconcile that self-image with his actual actions witch are… consistently less than heroic. He’s not the nicest person. He wants to be, but just like Hijack, he’s sees life as a TV show or comic where he’s the main character, and everyone else is with him or against him. It’s not a coincidence that Hijack and Isaac finally meeting was so climatic. They where both essentially at the same stage in their very similar arcs. They both hurt Isabel and Max specifically! Hijack and Isabel had their moment of understanding, followed by Isaac apologizing to max, and Isabel reaching out to Isaac. Everyone has to learn to see things from other’s perspective, witch may sound trite to adult readers, but be honest, how good where you at that in middle school? and you didn't even have to fight body-snatchers ever probably!

It was a perfect choice to leave the audience out of the loop on what Hijack’s ‘deal’ was. He looked and acted like a monster! We were all rooting for the characters we already knew and liked! We had to learn to step out of our main character centric thinking at the same time that the actual characters did.

oof this is all really rambley and i don’t think I’m even getting my point across. basically what i’m saying is:

Disclaimer: Vice-principal is an exception to all of this. idk what the fudge her deal is and I hope I never know. A full adult watched all that hitball stuff happen and pretended to be a floating child the whole time instead of the authority figure she really is who could have just stopped it all immediately. She did this to get info on someone who might have done stunts on a bus???? NO layers JUST villainy.

[the-nerdy-fangirl]

Okay but he really would deserve to take down Hijack. Hijack has spent the morning living in his best friend’s body, injuring other friends, damaging property, and getting Jeff into unbelievable amounts of trouble. If I wasn’t praying for Hijack before I sure am now.

[cartoontriper]

The Golden Switch Ball 

[willmuzzi]

Today we’ll be playing HITBALL

(’cause DODGING was never the IMPORTANT PART of the sport anyways)

[studybadly]

Can Alex see spirits? Or is she just spacing out?

[paranaturalpop]