OOOOOH SNAP. Sorry I had to sit on this for a couple days, as it’s been a busy week. BUT–
–and this is an unpopular opinion from what I’ve seen–
I love it.
There, I said it.
And it’s not because he’s adorable (doesn’t hurt, though). I love the absolute potential beyond this. Anyone who’s read my stuff, who knows what I like to read, knows I love melding adventure, tragedy, immortality, supernatural, and the tumulus, emotional struggle in rolling amidst otherworldly cultures and realities. A while after I could (as a viewer) digest the significance of Jim’s permanent status, I started to get really excited. Excited by the prospect that Jim’s time as a human adjusting to a trollhunter’s responsibility was the mere prologue to his entire trollhunting career.
In the same manner I like to ignore the HP epilogue and see the whole boy-who-lived business as a mere prologue to the Master of Death’s story. And, Hitchups, well…
That’s my bad habit: I like to view epic stories as mere prologues to even more.
I’ll briefly touch on the necessity of Jim’s decision, in that it was there. Naturally, the real tragedy beyond losing his humanity is that, perhaps, it wasn’t a necessity. They didn’t have time for perhaps. So they made that decision. That permanent decision. And that’s the sort of storytelling I live for. The dramatic irony. That realism: that we’re often left to adapt and deal with and overcome the choices we make in the moment, not the ones that are plotted out. I get Merlin’s POV. Dude has experience with these sorts of decisions and even alluded to once “being like Jim”, which goes to show that whole “live long enough to be the villain” Batman quote is always in play. Not that Merlin’s a villain; as I said, I get why he is the way he is and I love it. Just another beautifully complicated character in this series that’s too easy to turn into a scapegoat.
As a Human, Jim had a safety net. A support network. Familiarity that he could fall back on. Loved ones and comfortable habits. There was always something to look forward to at the end of the day: “normalcy”. As though, in the back of Jim’s teenage mind, being a Trollhunter was something he was doing “for now”… and not a life-long commitment.
It’s tragic that Jim has a finite time with the people he started this journey with. 100 years from now he’ll have new humans in his life, and a hundred new adventures under his belt, and it’ll still tear his heart apart when he thinks of his mother. 200, a little less so. He’s going to go through emotional circles. When he thinks he has a cap on it, something will happen that’ll drive his mental and emotional state into a tizzy. It’ll be a long, slow, delicious process, and that’s hardly considering the delicate balance between his human emotions and troll instincts.
But it’s not all tragedy and drama and sadness. That’s what I think people are missing.
Jim can fall in love again. And again. And mentor, and parent. And meet other half-human one-of-a-kind beings. Others who were torn from everything they knew and loved and had to adapt. There’s no way in hell he’s the only one, and with a job like the Trollhunter he’s going to get some experience under his belt and meet beings. It’s sad to us, as boring humans, because it’s being violently thrown into unfamiliar territory and away from what we know as good and safe. Jim’s going to do a lot of mourning in his life. He’s also going to experience a lot of joy, and a lot of wonderful, incredible things he, as a human, would never have experienced. And he’ll learn to quietly and calmly accept the mortality of his earliest, closest loved ones, as well as learn to celebrate the life they led and the part he played in it. He’ll learn to accept that death, and loss, and separation are meant to be painful, but experienced. And it’s okay.
That leads me to another point to consider: Merlin’s arrogance. Ah, yes, the arrogance of powerful old men who have seen A LOT™. Merlin says its permanent. Maybe it is. Maybe there are ways that Jim can shift forms. Maybe he can even shift to fully troll. The thing about Merlin is that he’s a human. A wizard, but a human. And, ultimately, a seemingly arrogant old man. If he hasn’t found a solution in the hundreds of years he’s been around (but what’s hundreds compared to thousands?) in the handful of worlds he’s visited (but what’s a handful compared to dozens?), then what possible solutions are there? … As I said, there are other beings out there that Jim will encounter in this far, far more open world he’s been immersed in; beings with different experiences, with different resources, and with different… solutions.
Jim, as a half troll, has a hellova lot more time to meet some other characters.
And if anyone has sat through this slop to the very end, let me give you a little canon reward:
my-many-muse-rp-blog 