#it's complex

[oswinix]

HEROES (2006-2010) Season 1 - Chapter Ten: Six Months Ago

[unclear-contributions]

Happy birthday to @shinesurge! I'm going to give them the gift that every creative wants: FAN ENGAGEMENT.

This one's about PHINEAS KIDD, the sunchaser, the girl who is so pissed about how the universe is run that she is going to go take it up with management. Because she can do better.

...right?

Spoilers for all of KC below!

One of the core themes at the heart of KC, by my reckoning, is the evil of indifference. A lot of the major antagonists we've seen either directly or indirectly have been built around indifference to people and the world around them, either wrapped up in their own idea of what's right, what's righteous, or what's good.

This is, naturally, contrasted with Phineas Kidd. The girl* who cares, cares so so so fiercely that it is the core of her monstrous strength, to randomly pick fights with demigods and devils for no other reason than she kinda likes one of the people inconvenienced by them.

Phin cares, and she cares deeply. This care and connection is the core of who she is.

We see this throughout the book, where Phin comes up against all sorts of people, sometimes who frustrate her deeply, like Monterey and Raven and the Caravan -- but ultimately she seems very devoted to the idea that you care for people around you. She gives Raven Slight a kind ending, she stays for Agatha, and even offers to let her go if she wants, time and time again she picks people.

She gets angry, sure, but in my experience anger can be a very caring emotion -- you get angry on behalf, not because you don't care, but because you do, and Phineas exemplifies that wonderfully. Phin genuinely seems to care about the people around her, and tries to treat them kindly even if they're afraid or terrified of her.

She's not always good at it, but that's besides the point.

A fact which is also true is that Phineas is...distant. She notes it, people around her note it -- she gets all up in her own fury, sometimes, stuck in her head and her righteous certainty of what things should be. This is her strength...but it's also a very well written character flaw, IMAO, especially because distance and indifference are related.

There is one notable example where Phineas does not show mercy, and that is to the Tain in the starstone mines.

The Tain...fascinate me. I'm a sucker for a good entropic force, a good death god and dark mirror, and the Tain are a wonderfully done example. Every star has a shadow, and the shadow is the universe's cleanup crew, recycling, devouring, and generally janitoring it up.

Phineas chooses not to give mercy to the Tain.

Rather emphatically.

The Tain respond with the following:

Godhood and distance and indifference all seem interlocked in KC. Phineas is halfway between godhood and humanity, and self-professed has been wanting to make god human.

But we do see Phineas go distant and cold and indifferent, at times. We see that righteous certainty operating in her, that same righteous certainty that lets her challenge the Sun in the first place also causing no small amount of trouble.

Phineas, sometimes, will choose to not care.

This is very interesting, because nobody likes the Tain. Surely, surely, they're acceptable targets for her righteous indignation, yes?

Buuut.

This doesn't seem to be the case.

Agatha, for whatever reason, relatively easily accepts her shorn shadow, and develops a fuckin' adorable relationship to the wee bugger. It picks up a name.

So we have, as Phineas' first two crewmates, a character who is plagued by doubt and uncertainty of whether she can cut it, enough greed and ambition to drag the sun from its throne, and enough god in her soul to go drifting into indifference...

...are two people who have demonstrated their remarkable ability to connect, care, and ground Phineas.

Anyway, I just love how Phineas' character contains this contradiction, this thread of divine Surety that looks so so so so similar to the gods and demigods she's throwing hands with.

She's a microcosm of the narrative as a whole -- and only time will tell whether she's able to beat the odds and defy everyone's expectations, or whether she'll be another in an endless chain of would-be-saviors ruling with an iron fist.

Fun!

[cringebuttfree]

So, after your last post, I have to ask: what is the appeal about Kyle in some type of mental health field? I've seen quite a lot of people in the fandom who love this idea. But the thing is...Kyle would be an absolutely TERRIBLE therapist/psychologist/psychiatrist etc. I always thought that was part of the "joke" of him being the school counselor in the Post-Covid bad timeline: part of his unhappiness was that he was in a career he was completely unsuited for. He had become the new Mr. Mackey lol.

Don't get me wrong, I think he really, genuinely wants to help people, and I think he would do very well in a lab setting, but working one-on-one with people and having patients and everything? Absolutely not lol. His personality and flaws are such an ill fit for that.

But hey, maybe you can convince me;).

(The funny thing is, I actually do think he would be a fantastic lawyer:)

Oh I can 100% see that being the joke. YMMV on this so...

I do want to say off the bat I'm coming at this as someone who is:

a) a law student/future lawyer within the next couple years and b) has a best friend who did her phd in Clinical Psychology

I see Kyle as an idealist, and generally in law, you do have to compromise idealism in service to something larger a lot of the time. Like for example, you can do BigLaw (which is what I HCed Gerald did pre-Kyle's birth) and you'll make a ton of money, but you will have basically no work-life balance, and will often be defending sleazy corporations. Government work is stable and has decent work-life balance but sometimes that means you're an instrument of a really shitty government or legally defending opinions you don't agree with (as you can see with the current state of the US right now lol). Same with in-house (hi banks and oil companies). Public interest lets you keep your values, but you'll be making peanuts and will never be able to pay off the law school debt that you WILL have (even if you have a father who's a lawyer like Gerald).

There's also smaller practice where you're free to do more, but that comes with its own set of issues. Additionally, as a lawyer, there will be times when you are managing your client's mood and emotional responses, so sometimes you're stuck doing therapy. Fun times.

I think Kyle would be GOOD at being a lawyer (all the technical aspects of it he'd excel at), but he'd also be more easily disillusioned regardless of if he does civil or criminal law (to say nothing of constitutional/public law lol). One reason I think Gerald's a good lawyer is S20 demonstrates, he's perfectly fine compromising morals for the lols or whatever.

I also picked clinical psychology because it's not really hands-on counselling like being Mackey II would be (respect of course to people who like this for him and I do actually think Kenny would excel in that role as much as I love him as a genius physicist). They work very carefully to diagnose mental health/developmental conditions and work closely with doctors to ensure patient care. I think Kyle's someone who's genuinely interested in how people behave and that element would 100% appeal to him. It also doesn't QUITE have the same level of trade offs that being a lawyer has (people can be awful in research, but that's not necessarily the job). Research is also a big component (developing new treatments etc).

Shallowly, there's good opportunities close by (CU Boulder's Clinical Psych Program is ranked as one of the top 10 in the country if you want Kyle to do research and Academia... even if you want him to stick close to home for school, Boulder's psych program is T20) so he could theoretically stay in South Park and still do more stuff.

[oliverwolfboy]

Oh god the kpdh fandom has already developed a problem with over correction

[pinkboxess]

I'm always in a state of dilemma when it comes to this blog because part of me doesn't want to bring negativity and discourse about the show writing onto the blog, y'know just keep things light and enjoyable and fun, but then also a big part of me sees the discourse posts and I'm like "that's a fucking great point that I agree with"

anyway Ted and Rebecca should have kissed and it's not silly of me to think that

[creation-help]

I wish there were more love stories other than romantic ones. The other kinds of love are important too. For family, for friends, for a place or object, for a stranger, for the world you live in, for an experience, for a memory.. Ykno. Love

[vaspider]

I truly love the trans dude solidarity. It feels... frustrating and strange, though, sometimes, to be part of conversations that talk about "transmascs" but then seems to mostly focus in on trans men, as if the two are synonymous.

They're not, of course. And while a lot of the general assumptions of how transmisandry/transphobia/misogyny/and lots of other shit land on transmascs and trans men are similar, they're often not the same.

I will never "pass" as the "correct" binary gender, bc I don't have one. This fact threatens my safety in a unique but overlapping way. I will have different pressures on me from the trans community, undergo similar but different lateral aggression -- including from binary trans men! -- face different medical pressures and in some cases be required to lie or only tell half the truth if I want medical care which fits my gender.

I stand in total solidarity with trans men; I only ask that the assumption not follow that because I am transmasc, that my needs and difficulties are identical to those of trans men. As we move our conversations forward and into greater nuance, this can only serve our greater solidarity.