Welcome back to the mess and the drama bitches. In this post, I’ll be talking about—well, mostly screaming and crashing out like I always do on this blog— side characters, often beloved friends or mentors of the main characters who possess dangerous powers that could harm others, or they might be non-human hybrids or full-blooded beings. And the only solution they have is to force these characters to hide or lie or cover up.
But the MOMENT it blows up in their faces, they're like: this is why you were supposed to hide.
And I'm over here like: bitch hiding and covering up was what got us here in the first place. You could have at least TRIED to help or train the characters to control their power instead of demonising, othering and isolating them just coz they could potentially kill someone by accident.
And what really baffles me is that these mutha fuckas end up shocked when the poor kid explodes under the pressure. Like, what did you think was gonna happen when you emotionally repressed THE LITERAL WALKING NUKE??
I have compiled a list of offenders. Let's get into it.
3. Celine (K-pop Demon Hunters)
Erbody who's watched K-Pop Demon Hunters knows who Celine is and her relationship with Rumi. But for those who don't, I gotchu.
Rumi's the daughter of her group mate and fellow demon hunter, who fell in love with a demon, and badda bing badda boom, Rumi was born. Mother dies, and obviously, Celine becomes Rumi's mother figure.
So what did Celine do?
Celine forced Rumi to keep her demon side a secret and hide her patterns from her teammates and group members, Mira and Zoey. She KNOWS that Rumi is half demon, but she CHOSE to ignore it, talking about how she needed to be fixed, and if the Honmoon (magical barrier used to keep the demons out of the human world) turns golden, then her patterns will disappear.
A bit of a stretch, and I had my doubts if it's going to be THAT easy without it doing some damage to Rumi. And even if the Honmoon was to erase Rumi's patterns, it wasn't going to erase the fact that Rumi is BIOLOGICALLY a demon. Identity erasure and self-loathing. Got it
Rumi at some pointed wanted to tell Mira and Zoey that she's half demon, saying that maybe just maybe they'd understand and accept her and also because she didn't want to continue hiding and lying to them. But Celine was like: they won't understand. Until the Honmoon is golden, they can never know. Isolating her from her friends and teammates. Got it.
So Rumi puts pressure on herself to try to make the Honmoon gold so bad that it affects her voice. And she needs her voice to fight.
Then she meets Jinu, a demon over 400 years old and leader of the demon boy band that's fighting to destroy the Honmoon, who she develops a connection because he was the only person who SAW her and validated her. Only for her to have her shame turned into a public spectacle by Jinu (which was because the demon boss man Gwi Ma caught him slacking). Rumi spirals and the Honmoon is destroyed.
Celine knows that Rumi is part demon and saw that she's never hurt anyone. She has proven herself by carrying out her duty as a demon hunter to protect the Honmoon despite her heritage. And she still thought that baby girl needed to be fixed?!
Like ma'am! Rumi never asked to be born a demon hybrid. You isolated Rumi from her friends and made her believe that they'd never accept her. She wanted to open up to them because she didn't want to keep secrets from them. Especially when she herself is the leader of the group. And it's because of this secret, she's been hesitating in battle, and her friends were starting to doubt her.
Then, when they find out the truth, they're rightfully upset that their friend and leader, whom they trusted with their lives, kept them in the dark and had been meeting with the leader of the group their fighting against in secret BEHIND THEIR BACKS.
And your solution to all this was to gaslight Mira and Zoey into believing the demon lord Gwima was trying to break them apart by making them believe Rumi's a demon, like it's some illusion?
When Rumi pushed back and said she didn't want to hide, you couldn't even look at her, even when she asked why you couldn't love her.
And your response was like: see this is why we have to hide our weaknesses so it can strengthen and protect the Honmoon.
Ma'am, secrecy was what destroyed the Honmoon in the first place. Fuck you mean?!
Not only did she isolate Rumi, but she actively wanted to manipulate her teammates not to trust their own eyes, just to maintain control of the narrative. That’s not leadership — that’s cowardice propaganda.
The “we have to hide our weaknesses to protect the Honmoon” line is straight-up laughable at this point because the entire system of secrecy and repression is what broke it in the first place. Like—what part of “maybe honesty and teamwork would’ve helped” didn’t click?
2. The King Agnarr and Queen Iduna of Arendel (Frozen)
Okay, sure, Elsa's ice powers almost killed Anna when they were kids, but tell me, why did you think isolating her was a good idea?!
The gloves weren't working all that much because this girl was on edge and scared for her life that she was going to hurt someone. You SAW her having these mental breakdowns and you didn't think to get some mage or monk to help her process and manage her emotions?!
Fast forward to her coronation, she was trying to keep it together until she snapped, and all of Arendel was in an eternal winter IN THE SUMMER!
Anna came to her asking: hey sis. Arendel is looking like Antarctica. Can you fix it?
Elsa: no i can't! I don't know how!
Me: hmmm, I wonder who's fault is that (aggressively side eyeing the king and queen)
She ended up figuring out how to properly control her powers in the end, but all of this bullshit could have been avoided if you hadn't isolated her and made her scared and ashamed of her powers. All the girl needed was love.
They didn't need to lock her away, close the gates, cut her off from her sister (who wasn’t even the problem!) and then die without ever leaving a plan for what happens when she inevitably spirals. Peak parental neglect disguised as “protection” people. We love to see it.
1. Princess Bubblegum (Adventure Time)
Oooooooh. This one's a doozy.
It’s already bad enough that this bubblegum bitch was leading on Finn ever since he was a minor and not to mention being all of Ooo’s helicopter parent. Deadass this woman had CAMERAS EVERYWHERE.
What my blood boils and made steam leave my ears was how she treated and handled Flame Princess.
So Flame Princess's elemental powers were so unstable that if she experienced intense romance, for example, if she was to kiss someone, she'd turn into a nuke.
And PB's solution to this was to have the Flame King put her in a glass lamp to contain her WHEN SHE WAS A BABY. Meaning that Flame Princess spent her entire childhood until she was 14 in a glass lamp.
Imagine looking at an infant and be like: yeah no. We need to lock this bitch up and make sure she never comes out.
And what's egregious about this is that PB is the smartest person in all of Ooo with centuries of knowledge after the mushroom wars. She has the resources to HELP stabilise Flame Princess's elemental core if she knew how dangerous she was. And sure, we could make the argument that the Flame King was evil and could have used his own daughter as a weapon.
But remember, she 👏🏼 was 👏🏼 a 👏🏼 baby 👏🏼. She could have taken Flame Princess and raised her. I would have respected and understood if PB had actually TRIED, but no. She looked at Flame Princess and was like; lock her up.
She judged and villainised a literal baby for something SHE could have prevented since SHE HAD THE RESOURCES AND TECHNOLOGY TO DO SO!!
And when Flame Princess took over the flame kingdom and rehabilitated her people into good people, and PB still saw her as a threat and sent Ice King to destroy her kingdom, and manipulated her way to get close to her so she could destroy the Sleeping Fire Giants and she wasn’t even sorry about it.
I’m honestly surprised Flame Princess didn’t declare war on the Candy Kingdom over this. And sure, PB did get somewhat of a redemption in later seasons and in the Fionna and Cake spin off (even though it wasn’t really earned in my own opinion).
Flame Princess is better than me. I would have rained hell on the Candy Kingdom.
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