#I don't think it was handled well

[lazylittledragon]

no she's not coping thank you so much for asking

(extra page for my patronis <3)

[isnt-that-wizardd]

there is just something about the difference between edwin's love interests and having the cat king's reaction to edwin in hell being "i'll be waiting when he gets back" vs charles "no version of this where i don't come get you" rowland convincing a powerful trans-dimensional being to open a door to hell just so he could get him back

i am insane

[halfbaked00q]

Im soooo weak to when Bond is like casually being used or exploited at his expense for some ostensible Greater Good except the situation doesn't HAVE to come to that, not really, and he's so inured and even numb to it that he barely pays it any mind; meanwhile, Q absolutely minds and is very indignant on his behalf and works overtime to like either try to avert or forestall the situation before it gets to the point where Bond has to dig his own claws into more of his soft underbelly to offer up on the sacrificial alter of politics of all tawdry things, or to manufacture a way in which he does the needless "needful" so as to spare Bond at least one unnecessary additional wound upon his psyche.

bonus if Bond finds out and maybe after being angry or indignant about it - I don't need you to do my job for me, Q, this is what I'm here to do - and either Q tells him/lets slip or he deduces that like, this isn't Q thinking he can't get the job done, this is Q finding him precious and worthy of protecting, and like. he's just very in awe of that and does in fact feel very safe and cherished within the cradle of his Quartermaster's regard

[fadetouchedsilk]

taash is like. fine for the baby nb character (they're 20 iirc so yeah a lot of their personality tracks) but personally if it were up to Me and i was told 'hey man we need a nb qunari for the companions' it would be a 40 something bisexual butch vashoth who uses All pronouns & feelings towards gender can be summed up as 'i literally just exist this way'

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Peeped the horrors

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[the-crooked-library]

"Louis and Armand were still in love in Dubai!!" "Louis and Armand never loved each other!!" - no. it's worse. they were on the precipice of something good, but Armand couldn't recognize that, so he ruined everything they had, right when Louis had actually come to love him. the love was there for a fleeting moment and it was ruined irreversibly, never to return, even after decades they'd spent together out of desperation and spite. it's worse and that's the point

[ferryfoam]

Would you guys burn me at the stake if I say that I think Chrysalis is actually a really important insight into Julian's character and his view on his own life and the people around him at the time it takes place. It's an episode that doesn't hold up today cause of the very ableist writing and kind of shitty moral but I think it's necessary that it's there and also occurs at the time it does in the show

I'll have a more insightful analysis on it one day cause I really want to talk about it (I want to make better researched ds9 analyses with actual clips from the show and whatnot instead of just vaguely referencing events from memory that could be completely wrong but unfortunately I do not have the time to be doing all of that. I would really like to in the future though)

[sunderwight]

Thinking about the weird camaraderie that exists between demons but not angels in GO.

Have we ever seen two angels who are actually friends? Or even friendly to one another? We have met angels with a capacity to be friendly in general, but I think the closest we've come to two angels actually getting along would be Gabriel making a point to laugh at Sandalphon's terrible "can't have a war without War" line in S1.

Most scenes between the angels actually seem to have an undercurrent of absolute hostility. Teeth-clenched teamwork. No wonder it took them so long to notice that Aziraphale wasn't on the same page as the rest of them! The rest of them are barely on the same page as one another, either! When Gabriel goes against the majority vote, no one bats an eye at demoting him and wiping his memory. Michael and Uriel immediately begin vying for his job. The only times we've seen angels team up is when they're working together to bully someone else, like when they're trying to intimidate Aziraphale in S1 or going to the aftermath of the bookshop raid in S2.

Saraqael's overall neutrality towards Muriel is the closest we get to two angels in Heaven getting along, and it's more a lack of hostility than any kind of friendliness. At least until Gabriel loses his memories and Muriel shows up to spy on Aziraphale, and Aziraphale decides to be kind to both of them.

Demons, on the other hand, actually seem to form alliances and even friendships among one another. Hastur and Ligur are awful, but Hastur seems genuinely distraught over Ligur's death, not just fearful of suffering the same fate. Shax and Furfur conspire together and even though the 1940's investigation into Crowley's fraternizing doesn't work out for Furfur, it's not due to any double-crossing on Shax's part. Unlike the angels, who stick almost exclusively to making threats until the Metatron decides to try dangling a carrot at the end of the season, demons actually offer rewards to other demons when trying to work together. Beelzebub offers Crowley a promotion if he can bring them Gabriel, Furfur offers to back Shax up politically if she goes for the Duke position opening, and Crowley successfully stalls Hastur in S1 by pretending everything was a test and he's going to be put in charge of a legion as a reward for passing. They're still not great at socializing, but they're significantly ahead of the angels.

Of course, it's a fact that demons are awful to one another (Eric's treatment is really bad, they throw that random demon into holy water just to test it, "it'd be a funny world if demons went around trusting one another", etc) but they still seem more capable of forming friendships than the angels do.

I think that's because Hell cramps and crowds everyone together to try and increase their suffering and hostility, whereas Heaven isolates angels to decrease the odds of questioning or rebellion. Hell's methods are unpleasant, but it still ends up putting demons together, and some of those demons inevitably forge alliances and make friendships. Because as Crowley and Beelzebub demonstrate, demons are still social creatures with the capacity for love and affection, even if it's strongly discouraged and buried under nine million layers of trauma and a cultural mandate against kindness.

Angels are the same, but isolation makes is harder to form connections than overcrowding. Muriel and Jimbriel are both so eager to make friends, but Muriel's spent the past millennia shut in an empty office, and Gabriel has been distanced from his peers both through his position and also through Heaven's culture of fear and surveillance. He only breaks away from it when he finds something that's stronger than "choosing sides" (stronger than the fear of being rejected by Heaven and Falling, in fact strong enough that Falling seems worth it if he gets to be with someone he loves). Both Muriel and Gabriel are only able to start forming connections when they're away from Heaven.

I just think it's interesting that demons, despite being supposedly devoid of love, have an advantage in forming relationships compared to angels. Angels are supposed to love, but have far fewer opportunities to actually do so. Demons aren't supposed to love, but they make connections anyway.

[a2zillustration]

A little rooftop conversation

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[wardensantoineandevka]

related to my longer post just now, but it is also kinda funny when people try to frame Lucanis as being reluctant to be First Talon because he is struggling with a conflict between a gentler spirit and the work of being a killer when one of the reasons Lucanis preferred not to be First Talon is because it would cut into the time he spends stabbing people to death. like, he likes the killing people part of the job so much that he's trying to turn down a promotion that might affect how much directly killing people he'd be doing.

[buddiesmutslut]

I know I've said it before, but I think this upcoming episode is going to be so interesting, even if we don't get Queer Eddie OR BT Bones (neither of which I'm fully convinced are going to happen on Thursday), & it's really for this one interesting phrase that Ryan & Oliver have both used.

They have both mentioned "rose-colored glasses" when it comes to Tommy & Shannon, and I would argue that they each have to reckon with these relationships before we can have any movement towards Buddie.

Eddie thinks that Shannon was the love of his life, that he failed her and has to carry that guilt with him for the rest of his life. I believe that Eddie placing Shannon on a pedestal is partially what's stopping him from realizing his queerness (along with the catholic guilt and repression, but a lot of that is also tied up in Shannon & their failed marriage.)

Buck's convinced that his big feelings last season were all about Tommy, and I'm not saying that some of them weren't, but I don't think it'd be too far of a stretch to say that he figures that he's in this relationship now and that obviously everything is fine now. He figured out this part of himself and he's dating a man and that means everything is Fine and he absolutely does not need to do any further digging or searching or learning, despite the fact that he and Tommy don't really seem to like each other all that much, nor do they seem to be all that compatible.

Buck has to reckon with the fact that realizing his bisexuality and immediately jumping into a relationship with a man that he wasn't even sure he wanted (his speech at the coffee date) might not be the solution to all the problems he's had, and Eddie has to deal with the fact that Shannon was not perfect, that what she did was not the same as what he did, that she's responsible for her own actions and that this romanticized vision he has clung to of their lives is not real and is not consistent with the actual relationship that they had.

There's a Divorce Arc this episode - which I'm begging does something with Eddie - and an uncomfortable truth learned about Tommy's past; it's not completely out of left field to assume that the Rose-Colored Glasses come off this episode.

And the fact that it's happening for them BOTH, at the same time? In the relationships that I think are the biggest obstacles to them realizing/accepting their feelings for each other???

I'm never fully convinced they're actually going to go there with these 2, but it will be SO interesting to see how this episode plays out, regardless.

[austenpoppy]

Dick and Bette Kane - part 1

I started writing this as an answer to the people who claim they love Dick's "petty" side/him not being welcoming to specific people he supposedly has a grudge against. The problem is, those same people tend to mention Helena Bertinelli or Jean-Paul Valley as examples of that happening, when it doesn't reflect at all the relationship he had with either of them in the New Earth continuity (which is generally the one being referred to).

I will do a breakdown of Dick's relationship with those two in separate posts, but it got me thinking about a "heroic" character Dick's been consistently uncomfortable around in that same continuity, and one he openly doesn't appreciate much : Bette Kane, a.k.a Flamebird. Yet people do not seem to ever list her among the characters Dick's not very fond (for very good reasons).

Bette Kane's an interesting concept as a character, because she's not a very good super-heroin, but she's extremely competent in other areas of her life. As a teenager, she began playing tennis in competitions, and she was so good at it she quickly became "a pro", and was considered something of a celebrity.

Yet Bette dreamed of something very different. She openly admired Robin (Dick) and wanted to imitate him by becoming a super-heroin of her own. She even designed her costume as a tribute to him, and chose the code name Flamebird. That's somewhat ironic considering Flamebird was originally Nightwing's partner back when Nightwing was an identity Superman had used.

Bette as Flamebird's New Earth origins are recounted in Secret Origins, vol. 2 annual 3, which is focused on a mental attack Dick suffers at the hands of the Gargoyle. Here Gargoyle narrates one of the first acts Bette did as Flamebird, which was saving Navy men hanging to lifelines attached to an air-craft carrier that was being lifted into the air. Other super-heroes helped resolve the situation, and that teamwork is what prompted the creation of Titans West.

Secret Origins, Vol. 2 Annual 3

Interestingly, you can see that Dick wasn't really aware of how much he'd inspired Bette, and this mental fight with the Gargoyle happened several years after his first meeting with Bette as leader of the Titans, and years after his first meeting with Bette at all.

At first glance, this may seem surprising, given that Bette was obsessed with Robin and wasn't remotely subtle about it. After becoming Flamebird and rescuing the Navy men, she was part of the unofficial first meeting of Titans West along with Gar, Hank, Dove, Charley, and Lilith. And her first reaction was to be delighted at the idea of seeing "Robin" again, calling him "a cute hunk". When Lilith asked her to tone it down and be serious, she instead went further by commenting on Dick's legs.

Secret Origins, Vol. 2 Annual 3

Then when it became clear the newly formed Titans West would have to seek help and go see the official Titans in New York, all Bette cared about was that she was going to work with Robin.

Secret Origins, Vol. 2 Annual 3

When the two teams finally met, it wasn't love at first sight. Once they finally started discussing the case they were working on, Dick suggested a plan of action that involved the two teams splitting up. Bette cut him off as soon as he said it to contradict him and affirm that she was going with him, which she ended up doing.

Her behaviour was honestly creepy. She cut off Dick just because she'd decided that she was going with him. She didn't refer to him by his code name, but only by the part of his body she'd commented on before, calling him "legs". She took his face between her fingers. And the sentence "I've waited too long for this", coupled with the nickname, would've made my skin crawl. It sounds like she'd fantasized about Dick for a while, was going to have what she wanted no matter what, and had no problem announcing it out loud.

Secret Origins, Vol. 2 Annual 3

After the case was over, the two teams had a fight over what team had done more to solve it, and over the legitimacy of Titans West. Wally criticized the way they'd come into the headquarters like they belonged, Bette said they did because they were Titans too, and appealed to Dick to validate her opinion - calling him "legs" again, which implies that this was the nickname she gave him the entire time they worked together.

Dick said he wasn't sure whether it was a good idea for the others to be Titans, because he wasn't sure he would be able to lead two teams, one of them long-distance. Members of Titans West were affronted by Dick's speech, including Bette. She went with the others, talking to Dick again to tell him that "[he'd] never know what [he'd] missed", making her departure partly about a romantic/sexual golden opportunity Dick didn't take. Appreciate the fact that she called him "Robin" again now that she was irritated by him.

Secret Origins, Vol. 2 Annual 3

Titans and Titans West had a couple other team-ups before Titans West disbanded, during which Bette learned Dick's secret identity. From the way Bette acted during the one team-up recounted in details in New Titans #56, we can deduce that every time she met Dick she kept trying to seduce him, persistently, relentlessly, in obnoxious ways that sometimes border on sexual harassment.

It was well-known that Bette was obsessed with Dick - not like Bette was trying to be subtle about it, she had no problem making her intentions clear and that publicly. There's a panel I couldn't include in which Hank scoffs at the idea that Lilith "trusts" Dick and tells Charley that "she's got the hots for him. Just like Bette."

I'm sad I couldn't include it because there's this hilarious exchange after in which Hank bemoans "Man. That burns me. What's he got that I haven't ?" and Charley answers "Look in the mirror and weep" (lmao).

But as I was saying, Bette kept trying to hit on Dick. In the panel below she asked him whether he needed help (the "sure" implying it's not the first time she asked the question), only to say that it was "[his] loss" when he said no. Dick was very polite in his answer, thanking her for her offer, but was turning her down all the same.

New Titans #56

Not long after, Dick told off Hank and Charley who'd gone in an argument over leadership and about their association with the Titans, before having the conversation about Dick I mentioned above. Bette immediately cheered him on, calling him "handsome" as she got close to him. Dick ignored her.

New Titans #56

During a fight she called out to Dick to warn him about an assailant, and had to sneak in a comment about his butt (whoever said this kind of things was recent was lying). Dick was clearly uncomfortable, answering with an embarrassed "Uhh, thanks, Flamebird" - the "uhh" plus the two commas in a three-word sentence indicate he didn't know what to make of her comment. He also corrected her to make sure she knew he'd seen the assailant she was talking about. It was a way for him to reaffirm his skills as a crimefighter (she's not the first one he said those things to), but also a way for him to reject her attention.

New Titans #56

She was also very physical around Dick. I can't include all panels of her, but she seemed to be near Dick most of the time, would touch his shoulder for no reason when they came in a lab, or, like in the panel below, latch onto his arm. Dick wasn't shown shaking her off, but he wasn't seen reciprocating either.

New Titans #56

So in the end, it's not a surprise Dick had no idea Bette'd wanted to become a super-heroin because she'd been inspired by him. Not when most of their interactions revolved around her attraction for him, not when she kept making comments about his looks.

As an aside, this is one of the reasons I can't take seriously anyone who says it's Devin Grayson's fault if Dick's been sexualized. Hard to do that when you have an entire character who could've been one of the best tennis players in the world but decided to become a crimefighter because she was obsessed with Dick, and kept gushing over his legs and butt. Dick's been dealing with that kind of things since the 80's, guys.

Part 2

Part 3

[queerofthedagger]

i love fingon so much just. he's so good and so reckless and he loves so fiercely it makes him do the most stupid shit, and in turn no one ever quite puts him first. I'm going to eat glass

[tapeworrmart]

So I finished reading The Night of The Hunter book today.... Man. I already love the film anyway but the book digs so much deeper into this horrible 'child coping with trauma in real time' element which had me putting the book down and getting a bit emotional on several occasions. I adore how beautifully it was written, the vivid sugar-sweet descriptions of the world and seasons jarringly coupled with the cold harsh animalistic Preacher, and childlike confusion grasping the abject horror and fear unfolding throughout is like nothing I've ever read before. Not to mention both the film and novel don't shy away from the implications carried with this type of environment of a child feeling unsafe and isolated around an adult, making it twice as uncomfortable to read through the eyes of poor John. Overall, highly recommend if u like the film or if u want something incredibly tense and nail biting, upsetting but in the end cathartic, exploring trauma responses and ptsd in childhood, wrapped up in religious themes. Idk I just wanted to talk about it.

[onesnoopyaday]

Snoopy #14

15/10/2024

[kirby-the-gorb]