#Narrative mirrors

[bisquid]

At some point Aragorn meets Jon and is like 'oh look a spiritual twin, allow me to buy you a drink and help troubleshoot Logistics'

Aragorn, 87, So Fucking Done: okay so you probably know this, being like 40, but teenagers, like hobbits, do not possess survival instincts unless Forced To By The Narrative

Jon: I'm seventeen

Aragorn: you're WHAT

[notbecauseofvictories]

I'm re-reading the Discworld series for reasons, and honestly the most relatable part of reading these as an adult is how many of the protagonists start out being tired, used to their little routine and vaguely disgruntled by the interruption of the Plot. Sam Vimes wants to lie drunk in a gutter and absolutely doesn't want to be arresting dragons. Rincewind is yanked into every situation he's ever encountered, though he'd much rather be lying in a gutter too. (Minus the alcohol. Plus regretting everything he's ever done said witnessed or even heard about fourth-hand in his whole life.) Granny Weatherwax is deeply suspicious of foreign parts and that includes the next town over; Nanny has leaned into the armor of "nothing ever happens to jolly grannies who terrorize their daughters-in-law and make Saucy Jokes"

Only the young people don't seem to have picked up on this---and that's fortunate, because someone has to run around making things happen, if only so Vimes and Granny and Rincewind have a reason to get up (complaining bitterly the whole time) and put it all to rights. Without Carrot, Margrat, Eric, etc. these characters don't have that reason; they're likely to stay in the metaphorical gutter and keep wondering where it all went wrong or why anything has to change.

............well, that's not quite true. You get the sense that Vetinari knows how much certain people hate the Plot. And as the person sitting behind the metaphorical lighting board of Ankh-Morpork, he takes no small pleasure in forcing the Plot-haters specifically to stand up, and say some lines.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

None of our hands are clean

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[autisticrosewilson]

"Oh Steph wouldn't like Jason just because they have similar backgrounds because he kills people/is a criminal/fights the bats!!"

This is in the 90's BEFORE he even tortured her. She doesn't go through with it, but she sees the evil he's capable of and its enough for her to justify it. She only doesn't because it "goes against what Batman taught her" but well.

That's the same man who would let her dad's friends infest her house for MONTHS until BLACK CANARY came to Gotham and handled it

A grown man who would go on to verbally degrade her, withhold the tools he gave everyone else, keep her intentionally isolated and then use her lack of resources against her.

So yeah. I'm sure Steph's faith in Batman and his teachings have wavered plenty. Just because DC casually discarded the way she was treated so she could play happy family with the boys, but she has NO REASON TO. Before she was aged down there was definite tension between her and Tim, and while Babs worked to get that relationship back, Bruce did no such thing. "Oh I'm just as proud of you as I was with the boys" when he thought she was dying doesn't fucking change how he treated her.

And of course, there's her own forray into betraying the family and being a criminal in The Next Batman series.

That's without getting into how she was compared to Jason, the way she watched a murdered east end kid be toted as another violent, reckless, idiot who didn't think and got himself killed.

"Oh but he tried to kill Tim!" First of all, you didn't read that comic. Jason was TESTING him, they were 2 years apart MAXIMUM, and Tim FOUGHT BACK. Jason gave him a little cut and a nose bleed that he slapped a bandage on and was fine. Damian also started his first meeting with Tim antagonistically and even though he was actively hostile to her, Steph still formed a close sibling bond. Her first meeting with Tim she threw a brick at him. He spent a not significant amount of time belittling her and telling her she wasn't cut out for hero work when she came back. This is the same guy who hallucinated Jason just so Jason could be like "Oh I got myself killed don't be like me!" Can we be real she doesn't give a shit. I guess you could count Hush but. I know they retconned it so that was Jason but when the fuck would he have had the time to do that between death, catanoia, the All-caste, and his murder tour.

Stephanie understands better than anyone that desperate circumstances lead to desperate people who do bad things. Stephanie understands being belittled and compared to a rich white boy who never had to fight to survive like you did. She understands being isolated from the hero community. She understands the evil that exists and the ways the system is corrupt, and that the bad guy never STAYS caught. And it's not like she has any big problem with people who kill, Babs said in 90's she would fucking LOVE Joker to drop dead and Dinah has killed multiple times. She literally switched places with Lady Shiva? These are both women Steph looks up to. You don't think Steph would feel any admiration at all for someone who gave Bruce a taste of what it feels like to be shown up? Someone who made Roman's life hell? Someone who made Tim put action behind his shit talking? An alley kid who came back and refused to be another statistic, who showed everyone who spent the last decade calling him stupid and reckless EXACTLY how cunning he can be? None? At all?

I just find it a little hard to believe.

[mendingbone]

“Bad” victims— @ꜰɪʟʟᴇᴅᴡɪᴛʜᴜʀɪɴᴇ ᴘᴏꜱᴛ // ʀɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ ꜱɪᴋᴇɴ, ꜱɪᴅᴇᴡᴀʟᴋ // ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴠɪᴇᴡ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇ ᴠᴀᴍᴘɪʀᴇ (2022) // ᴍᴇʟᴀɴɪᴇ ʟʏɴꜱᴋɪᴇ ᴏɴ ꜱʜᴀᴜɴᴀ ꜱʜɪᴘᴍᴀɴ // @manywinged ᴘᴏꜱᴛ // ʙʀᴇɴɴᴀɴ ʟᴇᴇ ᴍᴜʟʟɪɢᴀɴ // @ʟᴀᴛᴇɴɪɢʜᴛᴛᴀʟᴋ ᴘᴏꜱᴛ // ꜱᴜᴄᴄᴇꜱꜱɪᴏɴ (2018) // ɢɪʟʟɪᴀɴ ꜰʟʏɴɴ, ɢᴏɴᴇ ɢɪʀʟ // ʟɪᴅɪᴀ ʏᴜᴋɴᴀᴠɪᴛᴄʜ, ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʜʀᴏɴᴏʟᴏɢʏ ᴏꜰ ᴡᴀᴛᴇʀ

[whetstonefires]

Thinking about the parallels set up between Wei Wuxian and Mo Xuanyu, and how actually most of them are oddly specious.

The sketch of the backstory lines up, but on close examination they're mirror images.

Wei Wuxian wasn't kicked out of his sect, he left it. Wei Wuxian didn't hate the house he grew up in, he loved it, and getting the people there killed was the absolute last purpose for which his dark powers were ever intended.

Jiang Cheng was no Mo Ziyuan--his jealousy was a complicated thing all twisted up with love, and while he would lash out at Wei Wuxian both as a casual means of shit communication and more damagingly in moments of high tension, he had neither the desire nor the ability to bully him, and in general respected his boundaries almost too well.

When Wei Wuxian destroyed himself about Jiang Cheng, it was to give him cultivation, and protect his life and happiness. He would never have killed him.

Madam Yu was a domineering aunt-like figure, who hated Wei Wuxian for reasons of reputation, and because she had resented his dead mother, but she crucially did not have the power to actually disrupt his lifestyle to any significant extent.

Mo Xuanyu was shut up in a small room to rot; Wei Wuxian didn't even attend classes unless he wanted to. Mo Xuanyu was weak and disliked; Wei Wuxian was brilliant and popular.

Mo Xuanyu's uncle is a cipher of a figure, without character or agency, a nonentity who is resented to death apparently mostly for what he didn't do; in theory he is the master of the house, but he certainly never protected his wife and son's punching bag from them.

And this is what got me thinking along this track: because people keep interpreting Jiang Fengmian as this, as exactly like Mo Xuanyu's nameless uncle, a nonentity who lets his wife make all the decisions, and is contemptible therefore.

He shows up in fic characterized this way all the time, handled narratively as a gap rather than a person, an absence where there should have been a parent, and it's...totally inaccurate? The man only has a few scenes but the things that are most firmly established about him are:

he regularly goes out of his way to protect Wei Wuxian

he's extremely fond of Wei Wuxian

he cares a lot about ethical behavior

he's conflict-avoidant and gentle

he can and will overrule Yu Ziyuan when he's made up his mind, and there's nothing she can do about it

his communication skills are mediocre at best

he doesn't understand jiang cheng

he has a dumb sense of humor

Now almost none of this made it into cql besides point 4 and maybe 6, 5 is technically there but buried by the cinematic framing, so I totally get why the fandom on the whole struggles to characterize him well, and it's easier to write him off.

But it keeps bugging me to see him and Yu Ziyuan squashed into the mold of the Mo, because not only is that boring and reductive and kind-of-missing-the-point, it's like. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's characterization suffers a lot when you alter the environment and take away the influence exerted by their shared father figure.

Jiang Fengmian was Wei Wuxian's primary adult role model and it shows.

Jiang Cheng's relationship to his own sense of ethics is fraught because 'teaching him good ethics' was his dad's number one parenting goal, but they misunderstood each other so badly (partly because Yu Ziyuan kept loudly misinterpreting them to each other, which is so realistic I can't get over it, that's exactly how it works good lord) that Jiang Cheng has a direct association between the concept of 'doing the right thing even when it's hard' and a feeling of personal inadequacy.

The fact that Wei Wuxian got their dad-person's approval for being exactly himself and Jiang Cheng not only couldn't do that, he couldn't even get that same level of approval when he really pushed himself to rise to expectations, because Jiang Fengmian did not intend that warmth as a 'reward,' and so never realized he was withholding it, and therefore misunderstood Jiang Cheng's visible jealousy as a dangerous sense of personal entitlement that had to be carefully restrained, which reinforced his distrust of Jiang-Cheng-the-person and fed into a shitty loop where they were less and less able to relate to one another--that's fantastic. That's so human! I love it so much.

Both their failures are their own but at the same time it would never have gotten so bad if Yu Ziyuan hadn't been interjecting herself in there, in the middle of their relationship, fucking it up. That's family, baby.

I would ofc like if there was more fic engaging with the subtleties of all this because it's so good, mxtx did such elegant work here and it is not sufficiently appreciated. But it's the kind of thing that's hard to write good fic about; I am struggling with it myself.

So mostly I wish there was just more fic that didn't impose Mo Xuanyu's cliche angst backstory on Wei Wuxian, who has a whole different thing going on.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

she turns, makes direct eye contact with you, smiles,

[rivereverie]

When Astarion is talking about how Cazador starved him, giving him only as much blood as he needed to function, he says this:

"I existed. That was enough for him."

Meaning Cazador valued him only as a tool.

The relationship he forms with Tav/Durge is the exact opposite, though the words could be the same.

You exist. That is enough for me.

Meaning they demand nothing of him. He doesn't need to be anything other than himself in order to be loved and valued.

[inafieldofstarflowers]

thinking about noah as a gansey mirror again.

gansey with his journal crammed full of notes about his quest and whelk remembering noah’s handwriting scattered across their notes. their flashy cars. noah coming up with the idea for raven days and gansey being the raven king.

the fact that they both start the series as ghosts, that they have both died and somehow come back but the coming back didn’t fix everything. the fact that they both see something softer in ronan than what is on the surface, the fact that noah can kiss blue because he’s dead and that gansey can’t or he will die. the way gansey says excelsior before they start off and the way noah took the bold first steps into cabeswater.

the way that both of their deaths caused the ley line to stir, the way that both of them lived past those first deaths because of glendower. the way that noah comes back as something other and gansey, though he is perhaps something more real, does as well, and the way they both experience time not quite correctly, not quite linearly.

it’s noah who comments that he was something more when he was alive and gansey not just wanting but needing to find glendower because he feels that there is a hole inside of him. it’s the way that noah thinks that they wouldn’t have liked who he was when he was alive, and the way gansey hates that he can’t stop being a gansey. it’s how very real gansey looks when he’s next to noah.

it’s gansey planning to use glendower to save noah, even though he knows that this is the year he will die. it’s noah using glendower to save gansey, to give him a reason to go on, to meet the people who he will save and who will save him.

it’s gansey being rebuilt out of his friends’ memories of him and noah slipping slowly out of time.

[whatisamildopinion]

Kyoto- Phoebe Bridgers

Pro-tip: don't think too long about how Moonshine and Bev have ouroboros arcs with family members and devils and saving the world at great personal cost. Don't think about it too hard. I definitely haven't (lying)

[demigod-shenanigans]

Sometimes I think about how Reyna killed her father (who was, at that point, a mania rather than actually alive) in self-defense when she was a child and how she spends her entire life afterwards with this fact hanging over her head, thinking if it gets out it will doom her. She’s tormented by ghosts for this, saying she’ll be never escape her crime, calling her a traitor and a murderer. Nico tries to tell her that her father was gone by then, and she did what she had to do to protect her sister, but Reyna tells him it doesn’t matter. Her punishment will be the same regardless.

Sometimes I think about how Jason dispelled his mother’s mania and it’s treated as a narrative triumph. He’s chosen his family and she is not a part of it. He has two homes and she doesn’t have a place in either of them. She is in his past and has no power over him. She cannot hurt him anymore.

Sometimes I think about the fact that they never get to fucking talk about this.

[mintytrifecta]

Like one of the reasons I'm so entranced by daring is a character is how he's so self-centered but sooooo unapologetically kind and earnest to other people. He acts with a frankly egregious sense of grandeur that is definitely in part an act an act, yes, but he's willing to admit his mistakes so easily. He's so quick to accept and forgive and it's so clear the happiness of other people is something he deeply values. Prince Charmings are raised to be grand heroes with zero fear, but at their core they're about helping others and being there for them. Daring might not be a destined prince charming anymore, but he exemplifies the core aspect of kindness for kindness's sake without ever asking for anything in return. There's something poetic about it. He couldn't save someone when acting as Prince Charming, but when he was just being himself, genuinely just trying to help someone in danger, he did save them. Daring has a bleeding heart and hides it under the illusion of self-importance. I don't believe that it's all an act, I think he does very much love himself (even if it can get unhealthy) but it's so clear he loves other people just as much. There's a reason he's the gold standard of prince Charmings, and it's not his brevity or combat skills.

[solibrie]

the facts:

katara was born in the southern hemisphere (SWT)

azula was born in the northern hemisphere (FN)

in a few of the ATLA supplementary materials, they claim that benders tend to be born during the season associated with their element

if the season is important for avatar-world spirituality, then it follows that being born on an auspicious or otherwise spiritual day could foretell a bender's potential for being especially prodigious

summer in the fire nation would be at the same time as winter in the southern water tribe

conclusion:

azula and katara could (and should!) share a birthday (the solstice)

[justcallme-ange]

Got some feelings about c!Dream and his whole arc. So I’m making it everyone else's problem XD

The Beginning

The End (Wishful)

Also for those that like Angst: The End (Actual)

[snevins]

the day people stop dropping brain dead john walker (mcu) takes is the day i will finally know peace

like he’s such a morally complex and interesting character who was a perfect narrative foil to sam and the long-standing arc of what it means to pick up that shield and be captain america. he perfectly displays the sentiment we got back in the first captain america movie “not a great soldier, but a good man”. the us government picks a great soldier, the greatest one they have available. they do not understand that being captain america is so much more than that. a guy like john walker thrives in the morally grey environments of war but you make him the beacon of morality and goodness that is captain america and he crumbles. he was not made for it. the us military made him into a soldier, a weapon, and asked him to be something else. he acts the way that a soldier acts, does what a soldier would do, but captain america was never supposed to be a soldier, so he fucks up and makes the wrong decisions at almost every turn. he’s doing his best but he wasn’t built for this so it isn’t enough

his character is also such a good commentary on the us military, how the government asks terrible and life ruining things of its soldiers and then leaves them behind at its earliest convenience.

like john walker is the definition of “i am what you made me”. they made him exactly who he is, he lived his life by their mandates, he did everything they ever asked of him, and it wasn’t enough because they asked him to do something he could never do, stop being a soldier

[casually-eat-my-soul]

Don’t think about the fact that’s it’s implied stiles has his mother’s eyes. That every time he looks himself in the mirror he sees her eyes looking back at him. That when he looks at himself with deep hatred he sees his mother calling him a monster. He sees her eyes as she tries to kill him. Somedays that’s all he can see. So he avoids looking at himself in the mirror.

Don’t think about seeing void with his mother eyes, eyes that once again hold violence.

Don’t think about stiles holding head in hands. Thinking that the only thing his body has left of his mother is his eyes. That maybe if he gets rid of them, then his father would be able to look at him again.

Slowly digging his nails through the skin above his eyes. Thinking about gouging his eyes out and giving them to his dad. But not being able to do it but using the action to ground himself. Repeating it again and again and again over the years. Leaving scars just above his eyes to give him something else to look at. Something else to see that isn’t his mother’s hatred looking back at him.

Don’t think about his father falling into alcoholism. Tiny 8 year old stiles thinking that his father is grieving, and so he drinks that night. And the night after that and the next. And the drinking isn’t stopping but instead becoming more frequent. Don’t think about stiles holding onto hope that his father might tuck him into bed instead of reaching for the bottle. Stiles picking up whiskeys from the floor with the same colour of his eyes. Don’t think about the moment stiles realizes that his father is trying to drown himself in hopes of reaching Claudia at the bottom. The moment when he has to come to terms with the fact that he might lose both of his parents.