#Which is sad because characters making mistakes and bad decisions is like

[walk-to-gallows]

I truly do not understand the visceral hatred this fandom has for John Winchester

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

yooooo!!! you’re my favorite ethan winters artist i just wanna say that first and foremost, thank you for the wholesome content of my comfort character and father figure 🥹🫶

i’m really curious bc i feel like i see a lot of people against mithan (not me personally, i’m p neutral on them!) but i’m curious to know all your thoughts on them! thoughts on their canon relationship, their fanon portrayal, the backlash against them/mia accusations, and your headcanons? i’m just really interested!!! hopefully that’s not weird :”)

have a good day!! sparkle on!!! ✨💖

i heart mithan... i think that they can be so cute...

i personally hc them t4t and i like to think that the dated in highschool before they both had fully transitioned

mia likes to bake and ethan likes to scrap book and he always likes to take pictures of mias cakes/ baked goods and has a album for them 😭

i am a multishipper so i draw a lot of ethan ships so my girl is left out sometimes and im sorry mia 😔

i actually really like their relationship, its a really complex dynamic that i like to talk about with my friends

i think the issue is that when talking about mithan or mia in general, theres just SO MUCH misinformation that its honestly a pain the butt to talk about

people still think that she was responsible for the creation of eveline, people still think that she experimented on eveline, people still use examples of her attacking ethan as if she did it on her own will instead of being mind controlled

in reality she was just someone who oversaw the transportation of evie. im not excusing her or anything because obviously she knew what she was doing, but people really try to accuse her of doing something she didnt and it bothers me alot lol

the problem with the fandom is that people either try to water her down to girlboss who did nothing wrong and fail to acknowledge the complexity/ moral grayness of her character and the other side is misogynists 😭😭😭😭

its hard to talk about her without people either going "stop trying to villainize her and make her look bad!" or people ACTUALLY villainizing her and acting like heisenberg would have treated him better 😭😭

mithan is such a sad relationship because they loved each other so much and that ended up being the reason their relationship fell apart (sort of... its not like the broke up... ethan kinda just straight up died)

i get a lot a trouble for saying this, but mia is a selfish person.

its not a bad thing! well i mean it is but it doesnt make her some evil witch who is somehow worse than the guy how made a werewolf american ninja warrior. its just a major character flaw she has! which is good! mia being a flawed person who makes mistakes and morally gray decisions make her a more interesting person!

she is selfish in the way that she wants to keep her family with her no matter the cost. even if it means lying to ethan about her job so that he wont think different of her. here is a interrogation from the re7 DLC, which is easy to miss!

she isnt necessarily trying to apologize for the things she has done, she is more of a, "u wont need to forgive me in the first place if we just forget it all and move on"

she doesn't try to redeem herself for what she has done, she tries to move on and return to the normal life that she wants so bad. which is fine! everyone copes a different way and she has to right to move on from her trauma. the problem that lies in this is that she has a shared trauma with ethan who still has no idea what went on in dulvey and still effects him till the present (he is mold! this is a important thing to know! most people would want to know if they were a walking corpse)

she played a direct part in what happened in dulvey, and im not referring to the email, she did not send that. she never wanted ethan to come in the first place. she tried her best to send a video to him, begging him to forget about her because she wanted to protect him, BUT it didnt send.

he got involved because she was involved. its honestly a series of really really unfortunate events.

THOUGH! she did know what she was getting into. im tired of seeing the narrative that mia was innocent and didnt know what was going on or was simply a bystander. she knew what she was doing, she knew eveline was a bioweapon, she knew eveline was a child. she used a MACHINE GUN! she knows how to use weapons and was obviously trained for it.

she tried her best to keep everybody out of the mess, ex: warning the bakers not to take them in, warning ethan not to find her, sacrificing herself for ethan in the later half of re7

but again, those are the consequences of HER actions

her consequences just happen to get really big and end up hitting ethan on the head like a metal sheet 😭

their relationship is really so interesting, it makes me really sad to think about sometimes 😭they both went through something that nobody else would ever understand, in the end they really only have each other. they get moved to an entire different country and the dulvey incident gets covered up with a "gas leak"

its really tragic because their marriage definitely had some flaws and bumps. and i know im repeating myself but its because people always take this in the worst way possible but just because i say their relationship was rocky doesnt mean im saying they dont love each other!!! thats the entire basis of mias character!! saying she doesnt love ethan would destroy her entire character!

you can see in the re8 DLC how fondly ethan talks about mia! he loves her so much, though im not sure if his comments in the DLC are him narrating current (post re8) or his thoughts before everything went down and he died (pre re8)

everything mia did was because she LOVED ethan. she would never do anything to intentionally hurt him, she is not a cruel person. she hides the truth of her job from ethan pre re7 because she loves him and doesnt want her job to drive them apart. she CONTINUES to refuse to tell ethan the truth post re7 because she wants to move on a live a happy normal life with him and knows something like her being directly associated with the connections would probably cause (more) problems. she refuses to tell ethan that he is mold because again, hard to live a happy marriage with your husband after you tell him hes a bioweapon.

obviously i dont think it was right that she did this, thats what makes her selfish! she did it for herself! she did it for her family! she thought it would work out, she thought that they could move on and be happy together.

the issue is that ethan didnt want to forget. he wanted to know what happened, he wanted to know the part mia played, he wanted answers! which is reasonable! he knows to some extent that mia was partially responsible for his involvement and he was always suspcious that mia was lying to him about her job which is implied when mia says "you were right, i did lie to you"

she doesnt learn, she doesnt stop lying, her lies get bigger and worse and it sucks yeah but it makes her so interesting!!! she keeps doing stupid things under the idea that this is whats best for her and her family, that if she hides this everything will work out and it will be for the better but its not!

just because telling your husband hes dead and a bioweapon is a hard subject to bring up doesnt mean you DONT bring it up. people shouldnt use that as a reason to excuse mia 😭, its a very bad excuse and honestly highlights how horrible their communication skills were. you cant just not tell your husband that he is actually infected with the mold and not tell him for the tree years between post re7 and pre re8.

im not saying these things to put mia down, or try and villanize her. these are all just actual things her character does! she isnt evil, but she isnt a knight in shining armor either. we need to be able to have talks about complex characters without crying everytime someone points out a flaw. characters have flaws! and mia just happens to have a lot of them!

im not mad at her, i dont dislike her because i think this way of her. shes a fictional character! you can like characters that are morally gray, or villains that drink blood and make corpse soldiers. they are fictional! pointing out the flaws of a character does not mean i dont like them.

i wouldnt call her "the real villain of re8" but i wouldnt treat her like a damsel in distress either. she is a competent person, she knows what shes doing, she has her reasons for doing them. she made bad descions with good intentions behind them! they can coexist and we should let them!

i like mithan! its a complex relationship because they both love each other so much but hurt each other in the process

talking about them is just a pain in the butt because talking about mia is a pain in the butt lol

i really hate how she keeps getting sidelined, its super frustrating to see mia get put in a cage in every game 😭

its even more frustrating that mia straight up just disappears???? in the shadows of rose DLC... like she just stops taking care of rose and theres nothing said about it. no reason or explanation. i dont think mia would ever ditch rosemary because she didnt care about her, but we probably will never know because capcom sucks at writing and they probably forgot the mia ever even existed.

all in all, i think the fandom is really just full of misinformation which make people either think mia is some horrible evil person, or its full of people who think that saying mia messed up is the equivalent of comparing her to wesker lol.

i really love mia, shes a incredibly fun and complex character, its just hard to enjoy her sometimes with the people in the fandom haha.

also ive got no idea what u meant by "the backlash against them/mia accusations" so sorry if i didnt answer that!

thank u for the ask! sorry for the long response!

[kisses-for-you]

Preference: They accidentally hurt you

Titans Characters X Fem!Reader

Characters: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Gar Logan, Conner Kent, Kory Anders, Donna Troy & Hank Hall.

Dick Grayson:

You and Dick had gotten into an argument and it was getting heated. He was risking the team's life by making stupid and reckless decisions, or at least that's what they were in your opinion.

Without thinking, you yell, "You don't have to risk everyone's lives just because Jason died and you think it's your fault!"

SLAP!

Dick's hand makes contact with your face as he slaps you in a fit of rage. The room seems to freeze as Dick's eyes widen with horror at the realisation of what he's just done. Your hand instinctively reaches to your cheek, the hurt in your eyes making your boyfriend feel even more guilty.

Dick immediately recoils, his expression shifting from anger to deep regret. "Fuck. Y/N, I... I didn't mean to," he stammers, his voice filled with remorse. He takes a step back, grappling with the weight of his actions. His eyes search yours, pleading for forgiveness, but the pain in your gaze is palpable.

Dick takes a hesitant step forward. "I didn't mean to hurt you. Y/N, I'm so fucking sorry," he murmurs, regret etched across his face. He reaches out to cup your cheek, however, fear grips you, and you instinctively shrink back, avoiding his touch.

"I need some space," you finally manage to say, your voice trembling with a mix of fear and sadness. He nods solemnly, understanding he fucked up badly.

-

Jason Todd:

You and Jason were training and since you were still fairly new to the team, you thought it'd be nice to train with Jason as you're the closest with him.

You're meant to block his hits but as the bo staff heads your way, you hesitate for some reason and react too late, resulting in Jason accidentally hurting you as the staff strikes you. It's just a small mistake and it doesn't hurt too badly but he immediately rushes to your side.

"Shit. Babe, are you okay?" His concerned expression mirrors his regret. You give him a small, reassuring smile, saying, "Yeah, I'm fine. It's probably just a small bruise anyway. Let's just get back to training."

He shakes his head, still looking guilty even though it wasn't his fault. "No, let's just finish here. You shouldn't keep training if you're hurt. We can always train tomorrow," Jason insists, genuine concern in his eyes. You know there's no point in arguing with him, so you just sigh and nod.

-

Gar Logan:

You and Gar were alone in the Titans Tower, where Gar was struggling to stay in his human form. He was incredibly upset (you didn't know why) and his intense emotions were causing him to shapeshift into an animal, which he was trying to prevent.

"Y/N.. You need to.. go," he whispers, his voice strained as he tries to fight against the transformation. Concern etched across your face, you refuse to leave his side. You assure him, "Gar, I'm not leaving you alone like this."

You try to reach out to touch his trembling hand, but before you can make contact, Gar involuntarily shifts into a green tiger. In his tiger form, Gar loses control and accidentally swipes at you with his claws. The scratch isn't too deep, but it's enough to draw blood and sting, causing you to step back in shock. Gar, now more distressed, manages to regain control, turning back into his human form as he apologizes frantically.

"Fuck, Y/N, I'm so sorry. I- I lost control. I didn't mean to hurt you," he stammered, rushing to your side, panic etched across his face.

You assess the scratch on your arm, trying to downplay the pain, not wanting to make him feel worse. "Gar, it's okay. It wasn't your fault. Besides, it doesn't even hurt that bad."

Gar, tormented by guilt, searches for a first aid kit in the Tower. As he tends to your wound, you insist that it wasn't his fault, attempting to calm him in his distressed state. While Gar is patching up your wound, you notice a mixture of guilt and fear in his eyes. You gently take his hand and reassure him, "Gar, accidents happen. Don't blame yourself." Despite your comforting words, Gar remains visibly distraught, haunted by the fear of potentially causing you harm again.

-

Conner Kent:

Conner had just returned from a mission with the Titans. He looked exhausted but relieved as he walked through the door. You greeted him with a warm smile, knowing how tiring his superhero responsibilities could be.

As Conner hugged you, his thoughts wandered to what happened during the mission. He started to get lost in his thoughts, and his strength momentarily slipped out of his control. He squeezed you too tightly, causing you to wince as the force of the hug became too much. You were left in a little pain, and probably with a bruise. Conner looked concerned as you pulled away, realising what he had just done.

"I'm so sorry, Y/N. I don't know what happened. I started thinking about the mission and then I just..." Conner rambled, trying to explain and apologize to you. But you interrupted him and said, "Conner, it's okay. I know you didn't mean to. Don't worry about it." No matter how much you try to reassure Conner, however, he still feels guilty and blames himself for hurting you, even if it was accidental.

For the next couple of weeks, he's extra careful around you and way more gentle. He also tries to find ways to make it up to you; he doesn't need to though because you know he didn't mean to do what he did.

-

Hank Hall:

You and Hank had been watching a football match on TV together, enjoying the rare day off. As Hank headed to the kitchen to grab you both a drink and some snacks, an idea sparked in your mind. You decided you were going to scare him; it was a fairly innocent idea.

Within a couple of seconds, you start to tiptoe after him, planning to playfully surprise him. You just wanted to see his reaction so you could make fun of him if he screamed like a girl (you never know, he might). As you reach the kitchen door, you take a deep breath, preparing to unleash your surprise.

However, as you sneak up behind him and scream, Hank's reflexes kick in. In an instant, he spins around, his combat instincts taking over. Before either of you can even realise what's happening, his hand shoots out and strikes you right in the face. A gasp escapes your lips as you feel the sudden impact.

Time seems to freeze for a moment as you both register what just happened. Hank's eyes widen in shock and horror as he sees you wince from the unintentional blow. Concern fills Hank's eyes as he drops whatever he is holding in his hands, rushing to your side. "Oh fuck, babe, I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" he blurts out, panic evident in his voice.

You hold your nose, pretty sure you have a nosebleed. "I'm... okay." As the initial shock wears off, you can't help but let out a nervous laugh. "At least now we know that your instincts are top-notch," you quip, trying to lighten the mood despite the pain you're feeling. You move your hand away from your face, revealing a trickle of blood from your nose. Hank winces, guilt written all over his face.

He quickly grabs a tissue from the nearby counter, handing it to you with a mix of concern and remorse in his eyes. "I didn't mean to... I just thought..." Hank stammers, struggling to find the right words to express his regret. You take the tissue and give him a reassuring smile, realizing it was just an unfortunate accident.

"It's okay, Hank. It was my idea to scare you like that so if anything, it's my fault," you say, dabbing at your nose. Despite the pain, you can't help but appreciate the genuine worry in his eyes.

-

Kory Anders:

You and the Titans were preparing for another battle against an intimidating villain who was threatening the city of San Francisco. You were standing by Kory's side, your heart pounding with a mix of fear and excitement. Tonight, the stakes were higher than ever before. The villain, known as Mother Mayhem, was ready to unleash chaos upon the city. Kory's eyes were glowing with determination as she walked towards the impending threat. You followed closely, aware of the danger that awaited you.

As the confrontation continues, Mother Mayhem launches a devastating attack that catches both you and Kory off guard. In a moment of panic, Kory's powers surge uncontrollably, and a burst of energy erupts from her, unintentionally striking you. The impact sends you flying to the ground and pain radiates through your body.

Kory's eyes widen in horror as she realises what just happened. She rushes to your side, leaving the rest of the Titans to deal with the threat. Her concern is evident in every step. "I-I'm so sorry," she stammered, kneeling beside you. "I didn't mean to hurt you." Despite the pain, you manage a weak smile, reaching out to reassure her. "It's okay, Kory. Accidents happen. Besides, we have a more important matter at hand," you say, referring to the villain you're currently fighting.

"I promise, I'll control my powers better next time," she vows, gently cradling you in her arms. She then stops to think, unsure of whether you should get back to the fight in your condition. "Are you sure you want to fight? I don't think that's the best idea for you right now, Y/N."

You nod, determination flickering in your eyes despite the pain. "I'll be fine, Kory. Just a little shaken, but I can still help. We need to stop her before things get worse." Reluctantly, Kory lets you go, her worry etched across her face. She stands up, taking a moment to make sure you're stable before rejoining the battle. 

-

Donna Troy:

You and Donna were strolling through through the dimly lit alleyways of the city. As you turned a corner, a group of menacing thugs emerged from the shadows, surrounding you both. Donna's grip on your hand tightened instinctively as she stepped forward, ready to defend you from the impending threat.

Donna's eyes narrow, her instincts kicking in. She swiftly reaches for her lasso, the golden glow illuminating the dark alley. But you find yourself in the line of fire without even noticing. A sudden movement from one of the thugs causes you to stumble, and in an attempt to protect you, Donna swings her lasso with lightning speed. However, the unexpected jolt of the situation results in her accidentally striking you instead of the intended target.

Time seems to slow as the golden rope wraps around you, the energy coursing through your body. A surge of pain shoots through your veins, and you gasp as the unexpected impact takes you by surprise. Donna's eyes widen in horror as she realises her mistake, immediately releasing the lasso. The thugs seem to take this as a chance to run and escape. Stunned and in pain, you stagger backwards, clutching the area where the lasso struck you. Donna rushes to your side, her concern evident in her eyes. "Fuck. Y/N, I'm so sorry," she murmurs, her voice filled with regret.

As Donna checks on you, you assure her that you're okay, though the pain still lingers. The two of you decide to go back to her apartment to assess the situation and tend to your injuries. Donna's guilt is palpable, but you understand it was an accident in the heat of the moment. Together, you make your way back, Donna keeping a protective arm around you.

-

[soleminisanction]

Okay this misconception keeps coming across my dash and it drives me nuts because it means people are lumping two very different versions of the DC universe under one disparaging banner. So let me just say this to get it off my chest because I'm this close to shaking somebody:

The New 52 ended seven years ago in 2016.

That started a section of DC's history called "Rebirth" in which they started bringing elements of the pre-Flashpoint continuity back into the timeline. The first changes came in a big burst called Convergence -- which is how Jon Kent effectively manifested fully formed at 10 years old -- while other reintroductions like Kon-El, Bart Allen, Cass Cain, etc. were more gradual.

The original plan, being forced through by King of Bad Decisions Dan Didio, was that after ~4-5 Rebirth would give way to another full reboot known as 5G. I could go into detail about the plans but they're honestly not important to this post because Didio was (thankfully, finally) ousted from his role as publisher early in 2020, along with something like 80% of the higher-level editorial staff. DC had a complete creative turn-over at the start of the pandemic and completely changed directions as a result. The material being developed for 5G was retooled into the hypothetical future event "Future State" to buy the new staff time to pull together their new direction.

That new direction is called INFINITE FRONTIER. It started in 2021 and THAT is the era of DC comics we're in now. Infinite Frontier is an active push to bring back the pre-Flashpoint characters, as well as some pre-Crisis ideas and characters, while also keeping the few elements of the New 52 that people actually liked (like Jason Todd's more heroic characterization) and actively pursuing diversity initiatives both in creative staff and in creations. And outside of the big events, they're making a real effort to keep these comics short and self contained in the hopes that that'll make them more accessible. So it's actually really easy, if you read comics pre-Flashpoint and dropped off, to just pick up a series and go with the flow. Anything confusing is just a Google away.

Please, please don't make the mistake of thinking modern comics are as bad as the New 52 just because some people are butthurt their ship isn't getting canonized. There have been some really good comics made in the last few years that you should totally try! Spirit World, Monkey Prince and the entire We Are Legends line has been genuinely fantastic. The new Birds of Prey is shaping up to be a ton of fun. Dark Knights of Steel is an entertaining Elseworld. Urban Legends and Brave & the Bold have done some really fun things with shorter anthology books. One Minute War was a really fun Flash family event and everything Stargirl's done recently is liable to make you cry.

I'm begging people to give these comics a chance. It's just really sad to see them being dismissed out of hand.

[thehollowwriter]

I think we should talk more about the mysgony when it comes to parents in media, and how fathers are favoured and praised for the most the most basic shit while mothers are demonised for making mistakes or being bad. This is gonna be a long one, buckle up.

I hate Mrs Rosehearts as much as the next guy, but it's unfair that Mr Rosehearts is not given similar criticism for allowing his wife to treat Riddle the way he does. I hardly see people bring him up apart from mentioning that Riddle's parents probably have an unhappy marriage, and some people say something along the lines of "poor Mr Rosehearts, struggling with a wife like that".

Of course, we don't know enough about his character to gauge how Mrs Rosehearts treats him, bit it's clear he just passively stands to the side when it comes to whatever Mrs Rosehearts wants to do with Riddle. That itself is very harmful and it's own form of abuse, imo.

The same applies to Alador Blight from the Owl House. He's praised for being a wonderful dad that finally came through and stood up to his "horrible wretched bitch of a wife" (who, if she was a guy, would probably have more people analysing her and trying to find ways to sympathise with her just saying)..

And while, yes, he did stand up to her and that's a good thing, the general consensus is he was a brilliant dad from the start that was held back by his wife's wicked ways. But... that's not true? His first appearance is him telling Amity to stop being friends with Willow. He ignores his children constantly, and, like Mr Rosehearts, stands passively to the side when Odaliah treats her children like her property.

He's a neglectful parent at best and just as concerned with image and status at Odaliah at worst. But... that stuff is just forgotten. Most people just say "we thought he was bad but it turns out he was manipulated by his wife". He is HIS OWN PERSON. You cannot just blame everything on his "evil manipulative wife" (which is also smt that sometimes happens irl when both parents are abusive). He is still fully capable of making his own decisions.

And again, it's unfortunate, but if Odaliah were to be given his treatment or if Alador were a woman, the general response would be "That's sad but not an excuse! I can't believe she was forgiven!"

The worst I can think of atm, is Silco and Vi from Arcane. Now ofc they're not married. But the circumstances are similar.

Silco is praised to the high heavens for being one of the best dads in animation (#1 goes to Doofenshmirtz ofc, which I agree with) and the reasons for this are because he... shows his care, puts Jinx first, and loves her. Wow. Fucking groundbreaking am I right. The bar is soooo high/s

The thing is, Jinx is a child soldier. She works for Silco, protects his shipments of Shimmer, takes out the enemies that need taken out, etc. He found her as a young child, and when we cut to the present, she's murdering people without so much as flinching, even delighting in it, and suffering badly from trauma and hallucinations.

Obviously, Jinx was not given the care she needed, and was instead trained to assist Silco.

Am I denying Silco loves her? Of course not! He clearly does. But that's just not good enough. He's a loving dad, but not a good one. He's not the father that neither Jinx nor Powder needed.

Meanwhile, we have Vi. Vi loves Powder, protects her, cares for her, tries to keep her out of harm, stands up for her, and so on. She cares so deeply for Powder, and you can see it. The moment she got out of prison, her first goal was to find Powder.

However, because she hit Powder once, and shouted at her, she's apparently an abusive monster who never cared about Powder. Reminder, she hit Powder because her entire family was killed in front of her and then she learned Powder was the reason that happened. She was like... 14? And she immediately left to calm down. She did not abandon Powder, she left to take a breather because she realised she was too angry. And when she came back, she was drugged and arrested.

Silco is a grown adult who purposefully flooded the streets of the Undercity with a highly addictive drug, turned Powder into a soldier, and is generally a terrible person, even if he is a three dimensional amd well written antagonist.

Vi started the story as a teenager suffering poverty and discrimination just like Silco, had to deal with her own parents death, then her adoptive family was killed in front of her, and then she was forcefully taken from her sister. And yet, people are convinced Vi is a terrible and abusive sister who never loved Powder?

The only example worse than this, methinks, is Stella and Stolas from Helluva Boss.

Stella is a shitty mother who ignores her daughter, which the the audience is shown via a scene were Octavia is having a nightmare and she tells Stolas to deal with it. She frequently screams and swears at Stolas and throws things at him, with no regard for her daughter's presence or feelings.

This is pretty terrible, right? Of course! Everyone knows Stella is a horrible mother.

Stolas on the other hand, is praised for being such an loving and caring father, who tries his best. He even has a song with Octavia!

Well, he also: openly talks about having sex with Blitz and how much he likes it while she was right there, told her people want her money and her body, generally doesn't pay much attention to her either bc he's wallowing about Blitz not loving him back, and doesn't give her feelings much regard.

And yet, the misogyny extends beyond just Stella because people generally agree that Octavia is ungrateful and doesn't appreciate Stolas enough. They get mad at her for disliking the fact that Stolas is cheating on her mother with an imp who's been nothing but rude to her and ruining their family further, and even mock her for feeling unloved. Hell even Brandon, one of the creators, has allegedly recently called her a "cockblocking slut" which, frankly, is a disgusting thing to say about a 17 year old girl.

Idk man I'm just tired.

[zinya]

OBEY ME INCORRECT QUOTES #2

Hey, is your day going well? I had a question before starting: which OM character do you like the least?

This time there is no mention of blood or injury so you can read in peace

Mc- "I love you."

Lucifer-"Please don't."

Solomon who wanted to surprise MC by cooking a new recipe and ended up burning whatever this thing he calls "dish"

Solomon-"Look, I can explain... "

MC- "At this point I don't think I want you to."

Diavolo: "That's suspicious..."

Lucifer who watched MC and his family "What is?"

Diavolo:"This is the first time youve smiled in fourteen years."

Mc and Asmo who bet on who will have the most likes on devilgram

Mc-"How did you defeat me...?"

Asmo-"Because I have something you don't..."

Mc-"Superpowers?"

Asmo- "Well, I was going to say friends.. but yeah, that too."

Diavolo-"I've decided to run off and become a pirate. "

Barbatos-"But your highness, you have a kingdom to run...

Diavolo-"Not anymore!"

Mc- "Violence isn't always the answer."

Satan-"True, but it is an answer."

Mammon-"You can tell me to do whatever you want-"

Mc- "Good, because need一"

Mammon-"But that doesn't mean that I'll listen."

Mc who enters Levi's room and sees him with his sewing machine

Mc-"What are you making?"

Levi-“Bad decisions.”

Lucifer- "I have a secret."

Mc-"Then keep it to yourself. Knowing you, it's probably something that would get me killed again."

Levi- "I'm going to need a week to recover from this..."

Mammon-"We've only been outside for three minutes."

Lucifer-"And this, is exactly what happens when you don't follow instructions."

Mc- "Last time I checked, life doesn't just hand you a book of instructions when you're born."

Mammon- "Even if life did, who would actually follow them?"

Mc-"You look extremely sad."

Asmo-"Thank you."

Mc-"Well, are you alright?"

Asmo-"Yes, I'm fine."

Mc-"You have tears streaming down your face...'

Asmo- "I'm auditioning for a movie, and I have

to be able to cry on command."

Lucifer- "What is that?"

Mammon"Nothing!"

Lucifer"Well, 'nothing' looks a lot like my wallet. How did you get that?"

Mc-"NO."

Mammon-"I didn't even say anything."

Mc- "You didn't have to. That smirk said it for you."

Here are the ideas coming from: ~ThirzahWriteg~ and @Bookingitonthedaily ( Instagram)

I don't know if you like this kind of format, in any case I have a lot of fun making them, and of course sorry for any spelling mistakes you might see in the posts.

On that note have a good day, believe in yourself and do everything you can yesterday doesn't matter anymore but today does.💙

[antianakin]

So I was recommended Out With Lanterns by SkyBean in this post about other potential masters for Ahsoka back in October, and I've finally gotten around to finishing it (as well as most of the other fics in the series) and I HAVE to say something about it because I feel like this fic has changed my brain chemistry just a little.

For reference, Out With Lanterns is a fic where Ahsoka is chosen by Mace to be his Padawan about a year or so prior to AOTC and follows her life and training with him through the clone wars.

Since this is a fic rec, I'm going to put a few warnings out front. There's absolutely going to be spoilers for this fic because I have a lot to say about it, so if you are interested in the basic premise and don't want to know any of the details so you can experience it for yourself, please don't read past this paragraph. This fic is NOT Anakin friendly, in any way shape or form. It isn't what I would consider a character bashing and he only shows up like 3-4 times total in a fic that's 300k words long, but it doesn't try to be particularly kind to Anakin when he is there. It's also not super kind to Padme or Anidala, unsurprisingly. The fic is completed, but the series is still ongoing. This fic takes the war a LOT more seriously than the show did and it doesn't shy away from some of the darker things that can happen in a war or the violence that the characters might have to go through as a result of fighting in it. Some of the other fics in the series continue past Order 66 and look more in detail at what life might be like for Jedi who have to go on the run and constantly fear persecution. It's dark, it's painful, it's harrowing, but it's VERY very good. This fic is also INCREDIBLY pro Jedi and Jedi friendly.

On to the spoilery bits.

I've been sort-of on the fence about Ahsoka since her show came out last year and it's embittered me towards her character quite a bit, which is sort-of sad because I HAVE really enjoyed her in the past, but nothing about her current trajectory is anything I like or find interesting and in fact it feels like it's leading that branch of Star Wars in a direction I find actively distasteful. And it's hard to look at her character and not REMEMBER where she's ended up, it's hard to look at her in TCW and Rebels and not see all the things that were signs of where she was heading.

But this fic has done a lot to make me like her again. This fic is written by someone who so clearly understands what made Ahsoka a really compelling character initially and focuses in on that in such a way that it makes me remember what I HAVE liked about Ahsoka. It allows Ahsoka to be incredibly flawed, even as she grows and develops and matures, she still makes mistakes and struggles and needs guidance from her master. But those flaws don't make her incompetent or a bad person, quite the opposite. Ahsoka, by virtue of having a real Jedi Master instead of Anakin, ends up capable of acknowledging her own flaws and learning from them. She knows where her strengths and weaknesses are and is able to make decisions with that in mind, and when she makes mistakes she doesn't sit there and dwell on them, but she DOES let herself learn from them. Ahsoka in this fic does not feel like a mouthpiece, she feels like a real distinct character and I LOVE THAT about her.

I love the ways we see her become the Jedi she can't be in canon due to Anakin's influence, the ways she retains so much more of her Jedi heritage as a result of not learning from him, and how that helps her SO MUCH MORE than anything Anakin's training does for her in canon. I also love seeing how much of MACE gets reflected in Ahsoka, the things she specifically picks up from him, both good and bad.

I love the complexities of Ahsoka's relationship with the clones and how it develops from the first initial overtures to the deep friendships she has with them by the end to the complicated feelings she has after Order 66 and after discovering the chips. Her relationships with the various clone characters she interacts with don't feel like they're all the same, they're distinct from each other the way they should be because the CLONES are distinct from each other. I like the balance she has to manage between being their commanding officer and their friend. I like that she can love them and recognize that there are things about the clones that she doesn't want to replicate in herself because it would make her a worse Jedi. In particular, she understands that there's a REASON the war feels very "normal" for the clones and so their reaction to the horrors of it are very different than hers, but she doesn't want to end up becoming numb to the horrors to the point that war starts feeling normal to her because she feels like it would end up making her a worse Jedi down the line. I love the complexity of that, the lack of judgment towards the clones but the recognition that their experiences are very different from hers and she cannot and does not want to be like them in this.

I also love that there's equal attention paid to Ahsoka's relationships with other Jedi and how distinct THOSE feel from each other because the Jedi are also individual people and not a monolith. Her relationship with Adi Gallia is very different from her relationship with Obi-Wan or Agen Kolar or Kit Fisto and Nahdar Vebb. She learns different things from each of them, intentionally or not, and she likes some of them better than others. I love how much Ahsoka loves her own culture and the different ways we see that expressed, from needing to meditate every day to the many times we hear about her interacting with younglings when she's at the Temple. Ahsoka finally FEELS like a Jedi again here and that identity actually means something to her in a way I think canon has sort-of forgotten or intentionally dismissed.

One of the things I think this fic REALLY does well is taking Ahsoka's general irrelevance to the Skywalker Saga and making that a GOOD THING. Ahsoka being Mace's padawan changes nothing. The people who die in canon still die. The war still happens. In general, the missions we know about from TCW still happen and happen almost exactly the same way. Anakin still marries Padme and still joins Palpatine to save her and murders the Jedi. Ahsoka's addition to Anakin's story changes exactly nothing about it because it CAN'T. She isn't the reason he falls, she doesn't save him and never could have, everything he does happens with or without her. So removing her from his story changes exactly nothing about it. But the change in her position within the narrative does change HER. SHE'S impacted by the narrative far more than it can ever be impacted by her. And her irrelevance to the Skywalker Saga doesn't mean she isn't a compelling character anymore, she's almost MORE compelling now than she's ever been before specifically because she's more outside of it and can see it from that perspective. Ahsoka is compelling because she's AHSOKA, not because she's Anakin's padawan the way Felony seems to think. She can be compelling WITHOUT HIM if they would just believe in her ability to tell her own story. And she doesn't need to be relevant to the Skywalker Saga in order for her story to be important simply for being HERS. She has a story to tell and it's a good one, even if nothing major changes because of it.

I love the way that that is woven into the fic because I kept EXPECTING things to change due to Ahsoka not being Mace's padawan. I kept expecting her presence to save some of the people who die during TCW, I kept expecting endings to change somehow, and they just... don't. And even when it DOES, right at the end, when she escapes with some younglings and an injured Mace, and they apparently go on to create an underground Jedi Order, it doesn't change the end of the story in the OT. Luke and Leia still go to Tatooine and Alderaan, they still end up fighting on and over Endor as the final battle, Luke still goes off alone to face Anakin and Palpatine and that confrontation goes exactly the way it did in canon. Ahsoka's presence and the things her new backstory have changed in the background of the narrative have no actual bearing on the major Skywalker Saga. But there are more Jedi survivors in this AU than there are in canon, an entire Order that has been slowly piecing itself together in secrecy for the last 20 years, and even though that doesn't change the actual story, it's not nothing. It's not insignificant that they survived and they're there.

And I think the last thing I will discuss that I absolutely adore about this fic is Anakin's padawan. This character is an OC created seemingly to be a foil for Ahsoka, a mirror into the person she could've been had she ended up with Anakin instead of Mace, a reflection of her canon self even though neither Ahsoka nor this new padawan would ever be able to know that. I love the way that this allows the author to make that comparison for the readers without it being super in your face about it. Ahsoka isn't facing a literal reflection of herself and the new padawan IS her own person with her own personality and struggles, but she still definitely feels like "who Ahsoka would've become if she hadn't been saved by Mace."

The new padawan isn't supported by Anakin, but she's really close with Rex. She ends up feeling almost DEFINED by her years with Anakin and can't really connect to her Jedi upbringing anymore after Order 66 even though she spent far longer without Anakin than she did with him. She's young enough that she can't see the truth about his darkness and defends him to others no matter what, even though she admits after Order 66 that there were signs she can see now and blames herself for not being able to see the truth of them then. She succumbs to her own darkness because it's the path Anakin guided her down and she can't quite figure out how to get back onto the path of a Jedi, no matter how much Ahsoka and Mace try to help her. She's lost, floundering in her own darkness because the person who was supposed to guide her towards balance ended up isolating her from the rest of the Jedi and making her feel dependent on him and then he discarded her like she never mattered to him at all.

And I LOVE how broken and shattered she is, I love how consumed she is by her pain and grief and anger because she's known little else for like two years, I love the way she lashes out because she doesn't know how to control it, I love how difficult she finds it to act like a Jedi anymore, I love how much she feels like she doesn't know who she is anymore. THIS is what I wanted to see Ahsoka struggling with in the aftermath of her revelation about Anakin. THIS is the kind of person I wanted Ahsoka to be in the Ahsoka show. THIS is why I can't agree with anybody saying that she came across as particularly unkind or prickly or broken at the beginning of that show because she really isn't. She's BARELY upset every so often, she's SO calm and in control at all times. I wanted to see her ANGRY, I wanted to see her LOSE CONTROL, I wanted to see her lashing out at people who are just trying to help her because she's lost all sense of who she is in the wake of realizing the person who had guided her on her current path became a monster and she has no idea how much of that has impacted the person she's become and how much it will CONTINUE to impact her going forward. I wanted to see Ahsoka GENUINELY STRUGGLE with the things that have happened to her and see her REALLY changed by it all before being able to come back to herself in the end. And that's not what I was given. Not until this series entered my life, anyway, and it's not even technically happening to Ahsoka herself.

(I'll also point out here that at no point does the padawan ever say anything Jedi critical. Even as an Ahsoka foil who is partially representative of canon Ahsoka, she never falls so far that she blames the Jedi for their own genocide. So despite how much more she's struggling than canon Ahsoka does, she's still a better person than canon Ahsoka has become.)

So if you hated the Ahsoka show, loved the Kenobi show, and want something that's immensely Jedi friendly and Anakin critical that takes things like the war and Order 66 and the ensuing Purge VERY seriously, give this series a whirl. It's definitely an epic (and it's not done yet) and I had to take breaks every so often by reading something a little more light-hearted, but it's SO worth it.

[spotlightlowlife]

Helluva Boss has responsibility issues - Stolas, Stella and Octavia edition

Yep, Stolas is likeable, in his own right and the fact that he's part of a ship, which is a formula to certain success. However we know Stolas, we don't know Stella nor Octavia.

Let's be honest, this drama started off pretty reasonable.

We had no reason to believe Stella had done anything wrong, when we met her in a flashback, what was there to indicate Stella and Stolas didn't like one another?

We even see them sharing a bed in that big whole castle.

Fast forward to the future and Stolas has cheated which lead to their bitter divorce, which is an unfortunate common case, Stolas is in the wrong, doesn't mean he's a monster who deserves the worst to happen to him. Stella on the other hand has put a hit on him, a horrible thing to do yes, but a random act of malice, no.

Yet the worst happened in making light of Stolas's very common mistake and pushing it onto Stella

Why do this? Why take away from his story, his tough decision making and the fallout from his actions, the loneliness he feels in his big dark home and the fear of retaliation? He was a complex character in the making and pretty likeable regardless of his questionable conduct.

He has been absolved of responsibility in an attempt to make him more liked than he already was.

He could have been sympathetic simply down to the unsuitable arrangement and being born to fulfil a purpose, something that seems a theme in his lineage.

Now he's another victim. A victim of years of abuse at the hands of this horrible volatile woman who humiliated him every chance she got who he had no choice but to put up with because arranged of the evil institution of arranged marriage. He initiated the divorce, easily, which would have to be on grounds of his adultery

so Stella moved out, but he had to put with years of this marriage, which had the clause of a child being essential, their child is 17.

Stella and Stolas get given the exact same sob story

yet where Stolas was a cute, innocent and inquisitive child who just met his first friend and crush in little Blitzø, Stella was an aggressive scary fiend from day one, so as Stolas grows up to keep some of his childhood attributes, where does this leave Sella? A mean girl at her core?

This is a absolutely what we get, a simply irredeemable villain, a dramatic woman scorned who put a hit on her ex, then when we learn more, she's elevated to a wicked woman who just loves the drama.

With Stolas being a victim now who deserves the transactional relationship with his first crush and Stella being a evil and proud yet probably set to be shadowed by her probably more padded out brother, we also have their neglected daughter.

We don't have any evidence of Stella being a bad or inattentive parent, just because she was a bad wife that one episode, but we also don't know anything about their dynamic, this rare example of a character having parents, having a mother and being of an age of dependency, but nothing.

One interesting thing about Stolas's backstory was that he appeared to have his own palace, no mother only staff, his dad visited and wasn't sure which of his children Stolas was but what he did know was that this particular one had that purpose and this business arrangement had been made for him. Loneliness and the realisation of dysfunction could have served as Stolas's personal conflict in choosing to upkeep the unsuitable relationship, rather than 'Stella is a meangirl'.

We are used to sad backstories, yet we have Octavia, a child being left behind in real time and as grown as she may seem, she's still a kid, yet she manages to be one of the most sensible characters in this.

On top of maybe knowing about the bounty on her dad (pity we never see how his hospitalization impacted on her as his technical only loved one)

and having to be reminded of his cringy hookups with Blitzø (that dirty talk over the phone in her presence, also the reminder that though Blitzø is our likeable leading character, he's someone deeply obnoxious by design) and the time he manages for him,

along with growning up amungst hostility, she is now a child of divorce, which shouldn't be a bad thing considering her parents open dislike of one another and their marriage being something forced, however there are other factors, the back and forth continues dispite her being old enough for neither of them to speak again, along with her birth alone being the contracts completion.

Yet she doesn't ask for much, a dad who's interested on the occasions we see her, hears her and sticks to their plans. She expressed no idealistic wishes for her parents to be back together nor did she feeling the need to know what their issues were nor pick a side and fight for it.

Her interests are in the stars and sky, Stolas's line of work.

When it comes to interest and investment in a subject that could go on to be her trade, Octavia may be up there with the sin leaders we have met so far. She has been show to want to learn and be resourceful, going as far as to sneak into IMP to steal back the travel grimoire in order go about alone a day out she looked forward to.

It wasn't as heartwarming as I'm sure it was intended to be when Octavia's very valid upset undermined by Loona, who truly doesn't know any better, who advised Octavia to cut her dad some slack, Loona who is in her mid 20s and proved that episode that a toddler has more reason and self control than her. But this was Loona's time to shine in her grow up moment before returning to her usual aggressive self, so that's that.

[iwasbored777]

I know I already posted something like this but I wanted to be more clear and I gotta say it again: the writers completely effed up Peter and Gwen in ATSV and it wasn't Peter and Gwen to blame at all.

(Sorry if I made any grammar mistakes, I write English for years but some mistakes still happen)

Ok, with Gwen, I know she didn't have a choice and blah blah blah but it's heartbreaking to see how much people loved her and now I see such horrible posts about her (some are so unhinged) that it makes me wonder what the writers were thinking when they did what they did with her character. After so much time has passed since the movie was released all I hear is "Gwen is a traitor". I rarely see a person clever enough to explain the situation and many people don't care enough to explain or understand. They love what happened because they hate the idea of her ending up with Miles anyway so this is perfect for them. I swear I had no idea what they're gonna do, I thought she's going to be with Miles and on his side the whole time. And while I know that she's so much more than a love interest and she deserves to be more, in the first movie she was only the love interest and that's exactly how people see her now and will always see her like this. According to the audience she exists only to please Miles, she has no room to have a story of her own, which is why her storyline in this movie was kinda disappointing even to me who really loves her.

But Peter also... At least Gwen has a reason and he just doesn't. You can't tell me that a guy with a character development so great from the first movie, the guy who loves this kid and who started his own family because of Miles, who was depressed and desperate when he lost someone he loves, would tell the same kid he apparently loves "you know it's ok if your father dies bad things happen lol". It's crazy. And him receiving the hate that Gwen receives too, people going from loving him so much to hating him because the writers forgot how much they tried to develop him and Gwen, how amazing their team was in the first movie, and then destroying their dynamic for the sake of drama because they needed a conflict but the first movie was so perfect the only way to create it was to mess it up.

Yeah sure they'll be friends later, yeah Miles and Gwen will end up together, I don't have a problem with it because I love Peter and Gwen and I still ship Gwen and Miles and I don't want anyone who hates them with passion to show up here and tell me about how much they hate them. But they already ruined the relationships and the angst will always be remembered. Fandom is so goddamn toxic that they will keep hating on them, using any racist and misogynistic expression they can think of, and to be honest the movies aren't as enjoyable to me as they were at first because the reaction of majority of the audience made me realize how bad you gotta ruin your characters for fans to go from loving them to hating them so so much. Now every time I see news about BTSV I'm not looking forward to it that much because the story is already effed up. You can fix it but you can't erase what happened. The ending can be satisfying but the journey is not, at least to me.

And it's a shame that no one is talking about this, all haters (and there's so many of them) act like Peter and Gwen are characters capable of making decisions for themselves when they're just products of their writers. But, no. The writers are praised everywhere while Peter and Gwen apparently suck because their characters are ruined by someone who's controlling them against their will. The kinda got the similar treatment to Wanda in MCU, whom I also adore, she had character development and learned how to move on in WandaVision only to go through the exact same thing all over again in Multiverse of Madness because they didn't know what to do with her now.

I don't hate these movies, especially ITSV cuz it's a masterpiece, but I'm just so sad with how the story turned out. I will watch BTSV and I will make tons of posts about it just the same, and I won't make hate posts about this movie, that's for sure. I just wanted to say this. I look forward to hearing your opinions in the comments, as long as they're respectful to the characters. Basically I already said all I had to say here.

[clonehub]

The bad batch has some of the shallowest writing I've seen in ages. The wrong character interactions get the attention, while the audience is left with a "tell, don't show" style of narrative storytelling that just leaves people unsatisfied left right and center. Hunter is upset because he feels guilty (a generous read imo) for letting omega get captured while Crosshair was the one to escape with her. Hunter is not mad at Crosshair for his decision to choose the Empire, which led to Tech's death. Hunter is not mad that Crosshair joined the regime that literally mind controlled him into attempting to set them on fire.

Omega afaik never had a solid, positive interaction with Crosshair the way she did with the rest of the bad batch all during seasons one and two. Crosshair tried multiple times to kill her, under influence of the chip. He objectively knew this and still chose the Empire. Omega also objectively knew this and forgives him anyways? And still has faith in him? She was hurt over his decision to stay, but never harbored any fear or resentment. Just pure and total love. And now she's guiding him through dealing with his trauma by meditating on sunset-lit beaches.

Wrecker is still a non-character who doesn't lead and hardly participates in any meaningful way in conversations. I don't recall him having any extensive conversations with any of the other batchers. I remember Tech being snappy with him, and Crosshair saying he has a tiny mind back in season 1. He has cute moments with Omega, but doesn't get developed outside. He doesn't get developed at all, really, besides following the narrow track of the trope set out for him.

The entire emotional arc of the series is dedicated to everyone around Crosshair forgiving him for his choice to join the Empire, but...he's never once thus far actually seemed remorseful. Does he condemn the Empire's violence? Does he look sad or regretful that he got so many of Howzer's men killed on Ryloth? Does he say "I hate what the Empire did to clones, I hate that they used chips on us, I hate that they made me oppress people throughout the galaxy, I hate that the Empire is a violent oppressive regime hurting innocents"? No. He says "The Empire wasn't loyal to me." He doesn't justify what he did, but he definitely doesn't regret it.

(Which is funny because soon afterwards, Rex is able to sow the seeds of doubt into Wolffe's mind that the Empire is bad because they're making him hunt a child.)

And the writers do the laziest thing in the world by having this potentially massive conflict between two characters and using rescue/saving their life as a stand in for a real conversation. Crosshair saves Hunter from the ice worm, they nod, and now they're chill/more chill. They present this as if anything else was a viable option, as if Crosshair would have reasonably or realistically left Hunter to get eaten by the giant ice worm. Then they frame Hunter and Crosshair's mistakes (for the former, I have no idea what) as on par with one another. After their non-argument, Crosshair saves Howzer's life (?), they nod, and that's it. Forgiven.

Halfway through the season and the writing still feels just as unbalanced as it did in season 1. Multiple people keep talking about how they feel like coworkers and roommates with guns rather than brothers. The writers do a better job saying the word loyalty than actually showing it. The majority of the emotional burden is being put on Omega, the only prominent female character in the series and a child. Why is she the emotional support group for a group of grown men? It's just classic misogyny. I'm amazed that type of trope even reared its head again, it's been so long since I've seen it.

Even the writers don't seem to know how to express the batchers' supposed love for one another. No, saving each other's lives is not proof of a deep love or even respect for one another. That's bare minimum. That's SoP. Them leaving each other to die would be the extreme thing, not the other way around. They hardly mention Tech. They had a forced-feeling "hang our heads in silence at the mention of tech's name", and every time after that he's been mentioned as far as his usefulness to the squad. Maybe the second half of the season will have people actually confront Crosshair about Tech. The "Don't have the heavy emotional conversations" thing has been a problem since The Clone Wars, unfortunately. Pretend Teth didn't happen. Pretend Umbara and the Kadavo arc didn't happen. Don't show Rex's reaction to Ahsoka leaving at ALL. Don't show Omega informing Crosshair of Tech's death, which is WILD to me.

Some people claim that the Bad Batch have had six or so months to grieve and mourn, and they're seasoned soldiers who've experienced loss and death before, so they're used to this. The former I can see, but the latter? Who would they have been losing? They're not connected to other clones, rarely worked with them, and never liked them. What losses have they fielded beforehand? They don't even act like 99 or share his values.

I know I'm not alone in this, and at this rate I'm probably beating a dead horse, but it bears repeating: Crosshair hasn't condemned Empire violence, he's only condemned how they treat him in particular. This is a dangerous way to present fascism and why people choose fascist organization/regimes. There's absolutely a personal element to it. Arrogance. Ego. Material or emotional insecurity. But there's an external part as well: desire for control, hierarchy, order, violence. Fascists understand that the ideology is violent. That's why they join the regime. They want and support the subjugation of those they believe deserve it. In real life, this is people of color, women, disabled people, immigrants, the "degenerates" of society, and others. In Star Wars, that's the aliens and the enslaved, the "traitors" and the Rebels. Fascists being "lead astray" or "misguided" by thoughts of loyalty or personal power come secondary to oppressing others.

Maybe they'll address that in the second half of the season. It's a generous read, but I don't want to make any calls til I've seen everything. Unfortunately, every interaction Crosshair has with people has been designed to service their forgiveness of him, all without him actually apologizing for anything. Yes, he must explicitly apologize. He joined a fascist regime after they made him do terrible, heinous things. The text tells us that Crosshair only left because the Empire wasn't loyal to him. Anything other than a clear apology would be bad and frankly dangerous writing.

[toxicroyjamie]

Headspace is so crazy if my gf was telling all my coworkers and her ex about how clingy and annoying I was I would walk into the ocean. And he apologizes?? Like he’s in the wrong for not reading her mind??? Healthiest couple on the show 💕🫶🥰 this is the future liberals want

Unpopular opinion

I pinpoint Headspace as the exact episode that they took a left turn with Keeley's character and never recovered. I've noticed that some TV shows nowadays try so hard to avoid vilifying female characters that they just end up making their female characters one-dimensional girlbosses while their male counterparts are actually afforded the depth and complexity of real human beings. I think TL makes this mistake in a big way with Headspace and then just digs that hole deeper and deeper until the finale

Simply put, Keeley becomes uninteresting to me post-Headspace because she loses all autonomy. All the bad things that happen to her happen because another character did something bad to her (through no fault of her own, of course) and all the good things that happen to her happen because another character decided to be nice to her.

Prior to the latter half of season 2, Keeley's arc is driven by decisions she makes, for better or for worse. She chooses to leave Jamie. She gets herself a job offer from Rebecca by actively showcasing her talents in a way that the audience can clearly see, and then she takes time to consider whether she can/should accept the offer. She pursues Roy actively. She invites Jamie up for sex. She considers whether she wants to be with Roy and demands a certain level of respect from him before agreeing to date him. She sets boundaries with Jamie. We see her actively doing her job frequently - she finds the pundit job for Roy, she gets various brand deals for the boys, she has to deal with the fallout of the thing with Dubai Air, etc.

Are all of her decisions good decisions? Is she always in the right? No!!!! Which is a good thing, because real people don't always do/say the right thing!!!! But more importantly than whether she's making the right decisions, she is MAKING DECISIONS. She's advancing her own arc!!!!

After Headspace, things start happening TO Keeley rather than because of her, and that's where they lose me. She becomes a fundamentally passive character. What are Keeley's major plot points in s2e8-s3? Jamie tells her he loves her (+ Nate kisses her lol). Jack decides to pick up KJPR, not for any particular reason the audience can see. Roy leaves her. She does choose to hire Shandy, but Shandy pretty quickly becomes the advancing character in that storyline, going off the rails for reasons that have nothing to do with anything Keeley does. Jack starts courting her. Someone else leaks her nudes. Jack leaves her and stops funding KJPR. Rebecca steps in to save KJPR. Then she rejects Roy and Jamie, to show the audience that it's feminism and she ultimately has the ability and good sense to reject both of them, which I appreciate, but feels hollow given the complete lack of autonomy inherent in her s3 storyline

It's just like. Idk. I wish we could've seen even just a little of what Keeley's family and childhood were like and how they influence her behavior, or where her unhealthy coping mechanisms come from, or how she felt about the breakup beyond "sad," etc etc etc. Compare the narrative complexity of Roy, Jamie, Ted, Nate etc. to Keeley. She was completely shafted. She's like a really interesting outline of a character with nothing filled in

[shortpplfedup]

Only Friends Character Rankings Episode 9

A contemplative episode this week, as most of the characters stop struggling and start accepting some shit. But while some people come to correct conclusions (Ray and Mew break up, but can you call it a break up if you were never actually together?), others just decide to make the same mistakes and hope for different outcomes (Sand keeps trusting Ray instead of himself; Mew decides to give Top another chance). We're moving into the last act of the story now, and it's anybody's guess where we land up when the dust settles. Last week y'all judged Ray the most audacious by a mile. Lemme put my glasses on and see who I'm feeling this week.

🔺1. Nick (6)

Team Second Option!

Nick and Sand's loser friendship and their self-awareness of same is one of the most delightful parts of a truly delightful show. I can totally believe Nick suggested them hooking up, this is EXACTLY how these things go. Them dissolving into giggles over their kiss and cuddling each other to sleep was a beautiful friendship moment. Another beautiful moment was Nick's acceptance that he really had just fucked things up with Boston (we will ignore the fact that the boy just can't HELP spying on that man having sex with other people🤣), apologising in a heartfelt way and attempting to move on. I think Nick's heart might be the only one at ease at the end of this ep, so he wins the week.

⭐2. Boeing

My room is right here as well.

IT'S MOND IT'S MOND IT'S MOND MOND IS HERE AND HE LOOKS GOOD AS FUCK! It's time to find out what the hell this is all about, but whatever it is looks kinda fucked which YES.

🔺3. Sand (11)

We are just masochists.

The loser camping trip did a lot to make me feel less irritated with Sand this week. Sand has always been incredibly self-aware about how much him having feelings for Ray is a suck move, but having him state it all so baldly and call himself a masochist this episode did move the needle for me. Architect of his own misery? Yes, but knowing he lowhighkey ENJOYS the misery makes all the difference. You know what king, you do you. Swing wildly between euphoria and despair while you're young enough to find it exciting.

🔻4. Boston (2)

Gay, straight, pan, whatever the fuck you want to be. I just opened your eyes.

Oh sis, I saw you trying there, but the lack of impulse control as always will land you in trouble. He should have sent Atom packing after that party, but sad, lonely and pissed off are a bad combo, and one thing Boston consistently does is make poor decisions when he's feeling some typa way. He clearly served up a top tier dicking though, because Atom is in LOVE. Inconvenient at best. As I keep saying though: you can't keep a bad bitch down, and Boston's one of the baddest. This too shall pass.

🔺5. Ray (12)

I am thick-skinned. I don't care.

*deep negro spiritual sigh* How DARE you bust up the loser camping trip Raymond. I'll not forgive you for that one. Ray, rejected by Mew, demands Sand's company for an ego-boosting dopamine hit (including the sex that Mew denied him, natch), continuing to treat him like a servant and a possession. But this time Sand calls him on it, and that maybe means he thinks about it a little? TBD. I do think Ray WAS actually honest this episode about his feelings (hence the rise in rank), but he was still trying to get what he wanted out of Sand. He and Mew ended their ill-advised relationship as friends though, so that's a positive. Rehab seems to be on the menu next week so anything's possible. I still think these two are terrible for each other, but they're 21, I guess it's allowed.

🔺6. Top (7)

I just want you to know that the person you think loves you the most is not that good.

Watching Top work Mew's moms over all Mew's objections was gross, and I'm fortified anew in my feeling that this dude's vibes are just OFF. Top...circling Mew like this, working Cheum, working his moms, making the move to excise Ray but not actually pulling the trigger because he knows taking the high road will appeal to Mew...look this show has 3 more eps to prove me wrong but something ain't RIGHT with this 'un. Top's money, his good looks, his sweet words, that's all it seems anybody pays attention to, but something underneath...anyway, his strategy's working, right up until the moment Mew runs into Boeing on his fucking doorstep.

🔻7. Mew (3)

I just thought if I became someone else, I'd be stronger.

Well the slut spiral was fun while it lasted, but I guess the morning after a coke bender is generally unpleasant and Mew's a paper tiger not a real G. Mew's trying to keep up the party boy persona but he's not built for this shit, his heart's not in it and Ray trying to literally get in his pants crashed him back to reality. He's totally going back to Top, Boeing or no Boeing.

⭐8. Mew's moms

I saw you on Mew's Instagram. You look better in person.

Oof. Look they're cute and they obviously love Mew, but their son is clearly uncomfortable and unhappy with Top around and they're ignoring that. They may not know what happened, but the room ain't THAT hard to read.

🔻9. Atom (1)

Did I just get nailed and bailed?

Atom tried dick exactly once and it's got him outside Boston's house in the middle of the night begging for more of the same. My bunny boiler hopes have fizzled for both Nick and Sand, maybe Atom is the one I've been waiting for.

🔹10. Yo (10)

Good can't buy love.

Mae Yo with the read this week: 'good can't buy love'. I really want Mom and Cool Stepdad back together. GO GET YOUR MAN YO!

🔻11. Daddy Dan (4)

I'm not going to be your boss tonight. Call me Daddy Dan.

The cringe is through the roof. Well he might get to sniff it but a sniff's all he's gonna get before Nick's back in Boston's bed, and that's just a matter of time at this point.

🔻12. Cheum (8)

The evil spirit left you already, huh?

Will Cheum ever learn to mind the business that pays her? Her lack of interest in her brother's clear and obvious heartbreak is contrasted unfavourably with her overinvestment and overinvolvement in the Mew/Top saga. I also somehow feel like last week's self-interested moment of solidarity with Boston won't survive contact with her brother getting exactly what he asked for and breaking his own heart with it.

[bbycosmo]

Has anyone else noticed this???

Okay... for sure I am not the first to notice this, but I feel there needs to me more people talking about this.

The parallels between Miles Morales and Bree Matthews?!

Both of them at the end of their respective arcs are being told who they are and what they are supposed to be and do. And the general feeling I get from both of them can be summed up by Miles in Across the Spider -verse, when he is being chased and assaulted back to back by Spidermen, women alike from across the whole multiverse, and Miguel is telling him that he was a mistake, that he was never supposed to even be spiderman.. that he is the ANOMOLY and for things to continue moving forward without any further hiccups he has to let his father die.

then he's LIKE!!!!

which I feel is so so Briana Matthews right now. Of course Bree doesn't explicitly say a line like this towards the end of BloodMarked, but ohhhh I totally think we are going to get there in Oathbound.

In both LegendBorn and Bloodmarked Bree is told that her being the Scion of Arthur was a mistake. That she, someone like her shouldn't even be apart of the Legendborn let alone apart of their "traditions" and this was clear after Bree was never going to be allowed to pull Excalibur with the Regents in attendance. They had already made the decision that whatever Briana Matthews is or can potentially be is nothing more than a threat to their existence.

Can you not see the parallels here?!

That question feels like a shoutout to Lord Davis ( or as the #wizardteampod has coined Dud Davis.) and that thought irks me.

(( I will admit that I thought it was Doug Davis for like 10 minutes and I sat thinking... who the hell is DOUG?? ))

Dud David is just so fitting because a dud can be defined as a thing that fails to work properly or is otherwise unsatisfactory or worthless. Which is so funny because his whole plan to call on Camlann by opening the gates 25 years or so ago, was a bust. Yet that man was so delusion that be believes he is the chosen one, the one who will uproot all the corruption and evil, and believed that with Arthurs powers he would be able to do so.

THEN!! THEN!!! when he meets Arthur while he was in the possession of Bree's body EVEN PROBLEMATIC ASS ARTHUR wants nothing to do with him. That was poetic justice.

OKAY BACK TO BREE BREE

We know Bonnie (TVD) and Revenge Katara (ATLA) inspired Bree's character but we have yet to see Bree herself act by her own accord to achieve revenge. ( BECAUSE MANY OF THE TIMES BREE HAS BEEN BAD ASS AND BEATING SOMEONE'S ASS SHE WAS POSESSED BY THAT.... VIRUS OF A SPIRIT, ARTHUR. ALTHOUGH I WILL ADMIT BREE IN THE DREAM WORLD WHEN SHE FIGURES OUT HOW TO HARNESS HER POWERS AND STARTS KICKING MERLIN AND SIR LANCELOT'S ASS SHOULD BE MENTIONED BECAUSE IT'S SO FUNNY TO ME. LIKE NICK AND SEL BOTH HAVE DONE SOME OUT OF POCKET THINGS AND HERE COMES BREE WITH FISTS A-BLAZING )

ANYWAY.. I'm ready to see Ms. Briana Matthews start beating every bodies ass. It's about damn time!!

I do wonder how far her anger will take her in her story because she doesn't (currently that is, because she is with the Shadow King) have a Anng like character to keep her in check. Since she has isolated her self physically and mentally from everyone.

AANNNDD let's not forget she is not the only one full of rage either. William's arc is currently underway, and we do not know how he is going to deal with all the sadness for loosing his squire, Whitty and the anger he feels at the Regents and even himself. Especially towards the end of Bloodmarked where he is dealing with the fact that he is unable to heal Alice or Selwyn because there is no information on his powers being used to treat a Onceborn or a Cambion who has fully transformed.

Brianna says that the Regents will pay for the many things they have done but for making William question himself and breaking him will be chief among them. Can I just say how excited I am to see how this part will play out.!!!!

and of course after the Rites when she is in a drugged state while being interrogated she tells Regent Aldrich

"Not here. Not today. But somewhere. Someday."

And i JUST... UGHHH!!!

there are just so many moments where I can not wait to see how these people get what is coming to them!

ALSO!!! a dishonorable mention... FUCK TOR! I do not want her to get a redemption arc I am comfortably fine with hating her and just like in real life there are some people who never get a redemption arc they stay sick and twisted till the day they die.

back on the parallels', these songs from the Across the Spider-verse soundtrack just feel so Legendborn coded. AM I DREAMING is simply BREE's song and you can not tell me otherwise. She's been beaten and forced into a corner time and time again but even still she hasn't given up. This can be credited to the Oathbound teaser where the Shadow King has given the twins an interesting challenge and as she takes off into the forest she says she has no choice but to master this lesson and the one after this and when she has learned everything she can and finally has control she is going to kill him. (The Shadow King)

I will say ' Calling' can be interpreted as a song for so many different characters. I personally think any one of the trio can probably relate to this song. I on the other hand thought of 1 maybe 2 people while listening to the song. So I'm curious which characters will pop up in someone else's mind.

[mouthlessmaiden]

genuinely fascinating to me that despite the earnestly held intentions by everyone involved in hotd to avoid the mistakes made with female characters in got, they are still falling into basically all of the pitfalls made. you could really really see their attempts at genuinely dissecting the divisions between power and gender in the first episode with aemma’s birth scene (which i loved) and other scenes like alicent being forced to seduce viserys, but it falls apart soooo fast.

i think the main categories of ways the female characters in got fell apart was being stripped of agency based on some “female trait” (cersei’s motherhood, brienne’s love of jaime), committing some heinous action as needed by the plot (dany), and having any softness or femininity removed entirely because “strong women = emotionless women” (sansa and arya). the first two have already started happening in hotd, but i wouldn’t be surprised if we saw the last one by the end.

what’s really sad is that i think these issues are popping up not out of genuinely held misogynistic beliefs, but in an earnest attempt to not ruin female characters like they did in got. take alicent for example. i didn’t care for her in f&b because she was just an evil stepmother, but the way they expanded her character in hotd was great. at first they were making a point by stripping her of agency. but by the end of the season, she was being left out of plotting and sexually assaulted by someone else. these are two things that don’t even happen in the books. how is she being set up to be rhaenyra’s main rival in this story if men are making literally every decision for her? by making her a passive player in her own story instead of reclaiming herself after viserys’ death, they’re forcing her into the same role they’re trying to subvert by turning hotd into alicent vs rhaenyra instead of aegon ii vs rhaenyra. she didn’t need to be sexually victimized again. she didn’t need to be shut out of planning and have the plot to make her son king again sprung on her: she should’ve been leading the plot. alicent has spent the entire show thus far reacting – i want to see her act.

rhaenyra, on the other hand, was a really gray character in the book. sure, she started out as someone yearning for her rightful title, but it doesn’t take long for her to end up pretty far gone. f&b makes a real point out of not having a set villain, despite the one-dimensional characterization of the greens. both rhaenyra and aegon are bad people. but between the prophecy and the white deer, the show solidly sets up rhaenyra not only as the rightful ruler, but as a literally prophetically destined godly ruler. the addition of aegon’s prophecy not only excuses targaryen imperialism, but also makes the targaryen who knows about the prophecy the Rightful Ruler For Sure. if grrm had one point about the dance, it was that there is no such thing as a rightful ruler. so by setting rhaenyra up as more or less the golden child, we have two options later on in hotd: either the atrocities she ends up committing will be an act of sudden and underdeveloped madness like dany, or they’ll be her reacting to someone else’s wrongdoing, which would effectively put her in the same spot as alicent is now.

hotd had a real chance to do something incredible. it could have been a show about women and their relationships and what they have to do to make something out of a world designed to shut them out. but instead of that, all hotd has done so far is box them into their roles and offer all of their cruelty and anger and choices and agency to men.

[vanhelsingapologist]

//scuttles in

Hey you should totally talk about Kasimir

Kasimir And The Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad 400 Years

CW: Sororicide, Child Death, discussion of mental health, discussion on the nature of shame.

This is going to be so, so long. Disclaimer that this is our table's interpretation of Kasimir Velikov. Spoilers for Curse of Strahd and the Dusk Elves abound.

Guilty, Not Remorseful

Kasimir is one of those characters who seems to be very consistent in characterization across tables. I do believe that if you asked DMs to list their Kasimir’s traits, a majority would hit the Trifecta of Misery:

Guilty

Sad

Desperate.

A massive part of our Kasimir’s characterization is how my DM draws the line between regret, guilt, and remorse.

He feels fathomless guilt surrounding killing Patrina, but he never describes himself as feeling remorse. To explain, I’ll divide it like this:

He feels guilty because he knew it would have a repercussion. He did it anyway. Patrina was engaged to Strahd.

He did not expect the repercussions to be all that they were. This was a mistake, but I don’t entirely know whether he sees his decision surrounding killing Patrina as one or not.

He does not feel remorse, because that would require him to regret what he did (killing his sister). Our Kasimir does not feel remorse for killing her, and it makes him guiltier because of everything her death set off, not to mention the love he held for his sister.

He tells himself that he did what he had to do (he did not), and wishes there were another way (there undoubtedly was), which gives way to shame. 

"I had to do it, but I wish I didn't." "... Did I have to? Surely, yes?"

So, he has these interplaying themes connected to the overarching theme of guilt, all of which drive his every action in our campaign. 

He is okay with this.

He is okay with the idea that every day is a punishment. He did what he had to do, he says, and he believes he should pay that price forever. 

The Whole Patrina Thing

In our game, Patrina didn’t seem to be so much in love with Strahd as she was in love with power. My running theory is that she was intending to dethrone Strahd or overpower him once she’d been turned. 

Because (I believe) in our game, he was one of the first vampires, if not The First Vampire, she didn’t quite realize how spawn mechanics worked— and to that end, neither did the dusk elves.

The Story

Kasimir holds to the story he told us. He discovered his sister half-turned, having received two of the three bites required to undergo the bride ceremony. 

I believe he discovered her in the process of trying to feed (a la Lucy Westenra) and came to the conclusion that she had been irrevocably turned into this horrifying, unknowable dead thing. So he gathered the dusk elves and killed her, setting off the chain of events. 

In the years since he’s been confronted with new information regarding vampirization and the process of turning, but he’s also said that if Patrina hadn’t died, she likely would’ve gone through with it anyway. Is this to avoid heaping more guilt onto his shoulders? Maybe. I don't know. Despite his guilt, he still, interestingly, provides a justification.

We have nothing to contradict his word with.

However, he also told us that he’s been experiencing dreams where she tells him how sorry she is, how much she hates him, how much she loves him, and how much she would have changed if he'd let her live.

His foundational beliefs get preyed upon, because what if he was wrong? What if he doomed everyone because he couldn’t compromise his morality for a moment?

Kasimir’s Backstory Is Misery In Case You Were Wondering

In our campaign, Kasimir and Patrina were raised to be the leaders of their communities and witnessed Rahadin’s exile and subsequent alliance with King Barov.

When the Dusk Elves regrouped after a crushing defeat, Kasimir, who is a Druid in our campaign, was voted in to be the head of the remaining families, and Patrina, an Archmage, left for Ravenloft intermittently. 

I think there was an effort for peace being made with a marriage between Strahd and herself, but obviously, the Tatyana Conundrum came in (Kasimir Win!), and then a couple years down the line, the Patrina Conundrum happened (Kasimir Fail!).

By the time he made his big bad decision, he was not only the head of his community but was also the father to a small child and the husband to a man who would die defending their family.

So, as far as he’s concerned, Kasimir is almost directly responsible for the deaths of his entire family.

He’s in a constant internal battle between blaming Ravenloft— perhaps predominantly, Rahadin— for enacting disproportionate revenge and blaming himself for pulling the trigger. Two things can be true. And still, to this day, his remaining people trust him. He still leads them and protects them. Yowch.

Kasimir As The Moral Compass

While traveling with our party, Kasimir was militant about doing what he believed was right. It could’ve been because he might’ve literally snapped in half if he took on any more shame, but probably had more to do with the fact that he was likely projecting heavily onto our party. 

He held his hand on the metaphorical stove for so long that he has nothing but bone left, so when he sees the party tentatively edging towards the fire, he takes action. 

Because he lives in a cesspool of anguish, I think an argument can be made that he wants to ensure his actions aren’t repeated by someone else. That is for HIM.

How It Affects Dynamic

This makes him fun to have in the party, because not only is Sororicide “Hypocrite” Velikov telling us not to do things, but it also provides a good bit of levity to what is otherwise one of the emotionally heaviest characters in our campaign.

Having this ancient elven druid sternly ask if kicking the corpse of enemy #6 made you feel good and having to shamefully tell him ’no’ creates a bond like no other.

It’s also an interesting way to have him trying to semi-atone without explicitly expressing remorse. Because he judges himself so harshly, he judges the party by the same standards.

Kasimir Will Make The Same Mistake Over And Over

The problem is that shame is poison to recovery.

Kasimir does not believe he has a place in a world in which he is not suffering, so whenever he is confronted with redemption, he’ll do what keeps him rotting.

I don’t know how my other players feel about this, but I’m convinced that it’s not that he can’t break the cycle, it’s that he won’t.

In trying to do the right thing, I think he will choose the wrong thing. He will stone her to death again and again and not know why.

There He Goes Again!

It’s why I think these dreams are such a big problem. I think they’re goading him. Whatever’s causing it (the Dark Powers, Strahd, or Patrina herself) knows him well enough that he will make a horrible, horrible decision. As far as theory goes, I think it may really be Patrina, because who would know him better than his sister?

In our campaign, Kasimir is currently acting as a mentor to a half dusk-elven wizard/druid who habitually toes the line between good and evil. He waffles between wanting to save her and wanting to nip the problem in the bud, propelled by his profound shame for wanting to do it.

He knows he shouldn’t have anything to do with it, but whereas Van Richten isolates himself out of necessity, Kasimir creates this wall between them because he sees the cycle starting again and feels helpless to stop it. It’s like he doesn’t realize he’s actively recreating the cycle.

Sound familiar, Strahd?

He and Van Richten are two characters who might have the biggest questions of the nature of redeemability hanging over their head, and both grapple with themes of guilt.

I think they differ because, in our campaign, Van Richten is actively seeking redemption. Kasimir is not.

He can’t imagine atonement even exists.

[dr-futbol-blog]

Letters from Pegasus, Pt. 3

McKay catches up to Ford in a corridor, seeming suddenly to be brimming with energy and good mood despite apparently having slept very little recently:

Ford: Are you ready to record your message? McKay: Already done. Actually, I took the liberty of doing mine in private. Now, it may require some, uh, editing. Ford: Editing. McKay: Yeah, I, uh, I went on a bit. Actually, I used the entire tape. Ford: You talked for an hour? McKay: You see, I found it rather therapeutic, actually.

What is noticeable here is that this McKay is the polar opposite of the one we saw previously. The entire concept of recording messages to Earth seemed to make him very uncomfortable, even sad. And now he seems to have changed his mind to an extent that he actually has to offer Ford an explanation for why he has done this sudden 180 turn on the mater. But his explanation is just an excuse. When we look at the contents of the message(s) he recorded, we get better insight as to his motivation.

I previously mentioned the humorous pastiche on leadership that we find in McKay's recording. Yes, he has been thinking about leadership recently. He has his own department and there is an unbelievable pressure on him in particular to make sure that Atlantis remains viable, that everything works. That all manner of life-threatening problems are solved. This pastiche is humorous to the audience because we are not asked to look at him as a leader but as the magic science man, the comic relief, not because he is not a leader or might not have anything of note to say about leadership.

He does bear the heavy burden of leadership himself but having met and gotten to know John Sheppard is also among the reasons why he has been thinking about leadership so much. He admires Sheppard, and we have seen him emulate him on multiple occasions. When he is at a loss of what to do, he does what he thinks Sheppard would do. He sees Sheppard as confident, capable, strategic, with an iron will and a big heart. Someone who inspires others, who takes care of others. Someone to look up to. He would follow Sheppard to the gates of Hell (or to a Hive, which he has already done several times).

Only, Sheppard himself does not see it like that. Sheppard is very uncomfortable in the role of a leader. The responsibility of authority is a heavy weight and due to his patriarchal family, he has been more or less rebelling against authority his whole life. At the end of the episode, he records a message to the family of Col. Sumner, whose life he was forced to take as an act of mercy and whose death is the reason this leadership role had been thrust upon him. He tells us: "He died with honour and courage in the performance of his duty. He carried the burden of a leader, and he carried it well. I didn't get the chance to know him well, but I know this: considering the type of man he was, and what we're up against, well, I wish he was still here."

In his own mind, John Sheppard is a fraud. He's not half the man Col. Sumner was. Sheppard has made one mistake after another because he is weak, and it is his inability not to feel that makes him weak. His love gets people killed, his love compromises the people he cares about, his love has caused him to make bad calls and wrong decisions, his love makes him see things a little different, his love is forbidden by the rules and regulations of the military he serves and, according to them, for good reason. He is not a leader. His leadership is a charade. If his men knew what he was, they would not follow him. If his superiors knew what he did, they would remove his command. He is wrong in all of this, of course, but that is how he feels. While they can read many things from each other's faces, see what the other person is thinking or feeling, neither man can see themselves through the other's eyes.

Because the character of Rodney McKay is often used as a comic relief in the show, it's sometimes difficult to see the more serious side of him. We are distracted by by his energy, his verbosity, his larger than life persona, so as not to fully comprehend the impact of some of the things he says, to not take them seriously or at face value. This actually started with his introduction in the main show. In Redemption, he has this exchange with Carter:

McKay: I always wanted to be a pianist. Carter: Excuse me?! McKay: A concert pianist. You know, a guy who plays the piano in front of lots of people? Carter: Right. McKay: What did you think I said? Carter: Never mind.

This is made humorous by the fact that Carter hears him saying "penis" instead of "pianist" which, as an aside, just goes to show that Carter does not believe he is straight for a moment. Annoying yes, irritating to be sure, but not straight. Carter's mind interpreted him as saying that he wanted penis like that was a thing that he might have said tells us that McKay has a certain context in her mind. But anyway, this exchange and the fact he is portrayed as comic relief conceals the impact of what he actually tells Carter:

I had a not-so-comfortable childhood. My parents hated each other, blamed me. Music… was my salvation. It had this… perfect order for me. When I was twelve, my teacher told me to quit. A fine clinical player, he said, but no sense of the art whatsoever. I turned to science because I thought it would be different than music, but it isn't, it's just the same. It's just as much of an art as anything else.

He was abused from a very young age and had no safe adults in his life. He needed to be saved so he attempted to save himself. It is absolutely heart-breaking.

This episode uses the same trope. The serious stuff is hidden within the comedy. But we learn many things about McKay:

This is Doctor Rodney McKay speaking to you from my base of operations in the lost city of Atlantis, located deep within the Pegasus galaxy. I record this message on the eve of our darkest hour. As I speak, an alien armada of biblical proportions is on its way, bent… dare I say hellbent--in keeping with the metaphor--on our destruction. We will do our best to stave off their attack but I am afraid that defeat is all but inevitable. I, and the other members of my team, face the most horrific deaths imaginable, as our very lives are sucked from our chests in a, in a, horrific… OK, starting again, starting again. Ford, just, just, cut that, alright?

McKay starts his message confidently. He is clearly a practiced public speaker as an academic. But as soon as he mentions the horrific deaths potentially faced by members of his team, he trails off, shifting his eyes in a way that shows him thinking about something particular connected to the topic of "his team". As soon as he thinks of Sheppard, he loses the thread of his though. This cuts directly to Sheppard and Teyla helplessly watching the wraith attack. When he is recording this, he is sure that they're all going to die. There's nothing that he can do to save the people he cares about. He uses the same term, alien armada, as Sheppard did because they've clearly been talking about this, just the two of them. His message then continues:

My friends. I'm Doctor Rodney McKay of the Atlantis expedition, and as the facts of our heroic struggle against the Wraith and our untimely demise are already known to you, in that light, I'd like to pass along some final thoughts. Now, my extensive education, training and first-hand experience in the field of astrophysics has given me a unique perspective that few on Earth or, well, on any other planet for that matter, can match. I'd like to take a few moments now to pass along that perspective to you. I'll begin with a few observations on a subject that is both near and dear to my heart: leadership.

He is recording this to an audience, addressing the whole thing to "my friends," being the US military. He addresses Ford several times. He is clearly performing. While recording Beckett's message, Ford was concerned with his use of the term 'earthling' as breaking security protocol where pretty much every word McKay is saying here would never make it past any security check. The made it clear that just the notion they were from Earth would be enough to make sure the tape would never get sent further than SGC. Note also that the concept of leadership is both near and dear to his heart. While they were discussing in the jumper, Teyla used the term 'dear friend'. Also, he is heroic and he does have a unique perspective, as in Sheppard's words, a little different. Even now, at the eve of their untimely demise he's thinking about other people and how he might help them. He believes that sharing his perspective here actually is something that people might find useful down the line. And one of the ways in which he is helping Sheppard is making sure that Ford and other members of the military that might be watching the tape understand that he likes blonde women very much:

I almost caught mono kissing a girl in Algebra Club. Missed an entire month of school. Still, the kiss was something, so it was... probably worth it. April Bingham--cute blonde! God--you see, I love blondes, especially with the the short hair. Samantha Carter--if you're watching, the torch is still burning--sadly, soon to be extinguished, but… You know, you should know--I think you are just so, well, you're great--you're really, really great, and I would go so far as saying you're the hottest scientist I've ever worked with. In fact, there's probably not a night that goes by that I don't find myself, uh… OK, Ford, let's, let's lose that. And let's get back to… leadership.

The first time that he kissed a girl he actually got sick. Like, really sick. And not from the mono, apparently. He also missed a whole month of school which was a bigger deal to him. He doesn't seem to know how to feel about the whole thing. He says the kiss was "something," lifting his brows to indicate that what ever it was, it wasn't good. Also, he does not say that this was the first time he kissed a girl. This is the only confirmed time he has kissed a girl, so it might even be the only time he kissed a girl. The only time we know of, anyway, besides Carter pecking him on the cheek to mess with him. He also does not say that this was his first kiss, only that he once kissed a girl.

He has said that he likes blondes previously, and this is just the easiest type of woman to fancy if you're doing it as a performance. Gentlemen prefer blondes, it's a whole trope in itself. But we have to make note of the fact that the following episode (The Gift, S01E18) actually textualizes the fact that he lies about his interest in women but, because it was aired after this episode, it's again a case of being asked to re-interpret earlier scenes in light of later information. Here, he says that he loves blondes like that's a completely normal thing for a heterosexual man to say to a woman, especially if his intention had been to genuinely come on to one. It tells us that in spite of having met some formidable women, he just does not see women as people. Further, he is saying all of this to Ford and to Carter. He even tells Ford "Well, enjoy!" as he leaves him with the tape; he speaks directly to Ford multiple times, I don't know how much clearer it could be made that he recorded all of this with Ford watching it in mind--and he tells Ford that he's not even bothered if his message won't make it through the gate.

What's interesting is that we actually see a heterosexual version of McKay in an alternate reality in the SG-1 episode The Road Not Taken. Unlike the McKay of Moebius who was essentially the same as our McKay but whose life had taken on an alternative course (he is from the same timeline that had split into a different future), the McKay in this reality is not the same as ours. He is one of the "infinite variations of our own known reality where alternate versions of you and I play out events in ways you can't possibly imagine," as explained by McKay in Vegas (S05E19), where we also find either a heterosexual Sheppard--or at least one that prefers women. McKay of this reality is married (not to Keller, who still has her maiden name), so the Vegas-McKay may even be married to Carter himself. Or some dude, what ever. By that time it was legal in Canada, after all. The point is, these two men (Vegas-Sheppard and TRNT-McKay) are not the same as ours, they come from alternate realities and it's interesting that for both of them, one of the most significant things that is different are their respective sexualities.

TRNT McKay has been married to Carter and they have since divorced. Given that Carter seems to have clocked that our McKay is gay, it's also interesting to note that the first thing that McKay suspects of Carter is that she--his ex-wife--is a lesbian. What's fascinating and definitely underlooked is the fact McKay of this reality has married an Air Force Major (Carter is Lt. Colonel by this time in our reality so the fact that he was still a Major in that reality is something). The way this McKay behaves toward Carter, who he has actually married and presumably has had sex with, is almost the polar opposite of the McKay of our world:

Carter: Hi, Rodney. Thank you for seeing me. McKay: Well, why wouldn't I? I mean, we're still friends, aren't we? Saw you on TV. Well, recorded you, actually. Not that I watched it more than once. I mean, I recorded it in order to watch you once--How can I help you?

He is not being sleazy but is almost shy, here. He is nervous, stumbling over his own words. He is going out of his way to show Carter that he respects her and does not just think of her a sex object. When he accidentally makes it sound weird, makes it sound like he might have been doing something that would violate her boundaries, he quickly backtracks and makes sure that she understand that it wasn't like that. These scenes are paralleled in how it is implied that he may have been entertaining himself in private with the thought of her. Only, in their world he is making sure that she understand that he wasn't doing that whereas in our world, he is implying to her that he definitely 100% was. Their McKay is clearly still in love with Carter, has had sex with her, is a "dot-com billionaire" (Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark without the alter-ego)--in other words, who has no need to project heterosexuality on to the world, and definitely not to convince Carter of this fact.

The fact that Carter knows that our McKay is prone to doing exactly something like what he does while he is recording these messages is lampshaded in the episode:

Carter: The Rodney I know is a master of subtle persuasion. McKay: Huh... Oh, you're lying again, aren't you?

Subtle he is not. There's nothing subtle in what we see on his tape.

We can compare these two Rodneys. In the first scene, here, he is having a quick private thought about his ex-wife having sex with another woman:

In the second, he has a quick private thought about someone with short hair.

Now, McKay says "you see, I love blondes, especially with the... the short hair." He starts off talking about blondes which is what he means to be talking about. But as soon as he mentions short hair, his mind clearly wanders off track. He is not thinking about blondes with short hair, there is clearly a pause between his thinking of blondes and his thinking of someone with short hair. And then he suddenly snaps out of his reverie and returns to the topic: Samantha Carter! Blonde, short hair. That's what he was supposed to be talking about. But between April Bingham and Samantha Carter, he zoned out entirely thinking about someone with short hair. And, well. We know that he has spent more than a few moments thinking about Sheppard's hair over the years.

What McKay is explicitly saying is that he doesn't think scientists generally are a particularly hot bunch, and as soon as his mind goes to hot people he's working with, it shifts from there to something he frequently does at night... which also makes him jump down from his chair. It is implied, of course, that he pleasures himself thinking about Carter but, then. He cuts from what he does at night directly back to... leadership. That is the association he makes. He has to swallow down as he speaks the word because he's clearly thinking about something inappropriate, and it is not Carter he has been thinking about in connection with leadership previously in the recordings.

He continues:

Never cared for dogs: too much work, too needy, too unpredictable. I mean, you leave one door open, the tiniest little cracks, and they're gone. You look for them, you put up fliers--it's no use--and since your father refused to pay for a license, the Animal Shelter has no way of tracking them. Y'know, God knows what happened to that little guy. Now cats--now that's a whole different story. Cats are self-sufficient, they're dependable; you shake the box, they come running--cynics would say it's because of the food but my cat… see, I truly believe he enjoys my company. There's something very comforting about coming home from work at the end of the day and having a familiar face waiting for you, you know? Still--I digress. Where was I? Uh, right. Leadership.

Now, I'm not saying McKay doesn't love his pussycat back home. I'm sure the cat is important to him. This whole thing could be read as a metaphor for bisexuality only, both of the animals here are "guys" and this seems to be much more allegoric of Sheppard and Mckay's personalities than anyone's sexual orientation.

Here we are told that McKay actually loves dogs, and it was due to the abuse he received from his father when he was young that he has now learned to say that he prefers cats. He actually loved that dog that he describes in a similar way to how one could describe Sheppard (shepherd obviously being a sheep dog; McKay even makes a reference to leaving the door open to find them gone when we just saw Sheppard leave the jumper door open as he left Teyla to do some reconnaissance back on the alien planet), and losing "that little guy" had been traumatic to him. So he got a pet that would be there and never leave him--only, this isn't what McKay is looking for. Sheppard needs someone that will never leave him, McKay is looking for someone that accepts him unconditionally--like a dog. In other words, McKay is the cat who wants a dog in his life and Sheppard is the dog who needs a cat in his life.

McKay describes the cat as a familiar face waiting for you when you get back home, and that's not what cats are stereotypically like. That is what dogs are like. Cat's don't really care if you're around where dogs are excited to see you come back home. He's talking about his cat but he is describing his love for a dog. He is talking about one thing while describing an entirely other thing at the same time. McKay himself is the cat, self-sufficient, dependable, and comes running when you shake the box. Sheppard is the dog, needy and waiting for you when you come home. Like he was earlier in the meeting. Needy and waiting for him to come home from work.

Each one of these entries ends on the topic of leadership because McKay is thinking about Sheppard. Everything he talks about, he is thinking about Sheppard. And when he says "There's something very comforting about coming home from work at the end of the day and having a familiar face waiting for you," he's not talking about the cat he left for his neighbour to take care of months ago. He is talking about his life right now, here on Atlantis. He told Ford that he has slept only six hours in the past several days, he has clearly been sleeping in the lab, and he has been unable to go back home. And it's not the quarters, old or new or better than their current ones, that is his home. It's the person who is waiting for him. The face that is most familiar to him is the face of the man he can read like an open book.

This is a confirmation of the fact that, at this time, they are most definitely bunking together. And, you know. What ever happens there is their business but the show has gone out of its way to let us know that they do, in fact, sleep in the same place.

The further the recording goes on, the more we find him rambling on about random things:

That's another sight I'll die without having seen. See--to be fair, when you've travelled as much as I've travelled, you'd think that missing Niagara Falls would be no big deal, but you know what? It gnaws at you. A lot of movies I wish I'd seen and won't see now. Never saw "Grease", even though I had a thing for Olivia Newton John when I was a kid. Always wanted to see "Ghandi"; only saw the first half of "The Sixth Sense"--always wondered how that ended. My sister! Ford, if you cut everything else, just keep this part, OK? Jeannie? This is your brother, Rodney… obviously! I wanna say… I wanna say something. Family is important. I've come to realise that because the people here have become a sort of a… kind of a surrogate family to me. Now, I know what you're thinking: I've never really been the poster child for that kind of sentiment but when… when one is contemplating ones own demise, one tends to see things more clearly. I really do wish you the best, you know, and I'm sorry we weren't closer. Perhaps, if by chance I make it out of this, perhaps one day we can be, and I would like that. Now--if there's time I'd like to go back to the subject of leadership.

He is musing about Niagara Falls, one of the most romantic places on Earth where people frequently get married, and about watching films where he had just recently been informed about the kinds of films Sheppard likes (cheesy sci-fi), and may have thought about the kinds of films he might like to watch with him that he himself likes. Things he would like to share with another person. Apparently ones starring Olivia-Newton John and John Travolta, and written by John Briley. I'm not saying that his brain has one track but apparently there's a lot of JohnJohnJohn going on there.

I want to highlight the fact that it is the film The Sixth Sense that finally reminds him of his sister. Again, the scene is supposed to be humourous because the film has a well-known twist-ending. Having missed the ending that everybody knows about is supposed to be comedic irony. He says that he has only seen the first half of the film, and is suddenly reminded of his sister. The first half of the film is about a child that is seeing a psychiatrist who suspects that his patient must be the victim of child abuse. It's pretty dark that it's this troubled, scared child that reminds him of his sister.

Also, later on (McKay and Mrs Miller, S03E08) Sheppard has this exact recording on his laptop. John Sheppard has this recording on his laptop. There is absolutely no reason why he should have it and how he would even have gotten his hands on it unless McKay gave it to him. He not only let Sheppard see it, probably watched it with him, but actually allowed and wanted for him to have a copy of it. McKay was doing this whole song and dance for Sheppard. Weir ends her own message to the families of the fallen soldiers with "I do wish I could tell you more. I'm sure you understand as a military family" again emphasizing the fact that being a member of the military requires an extra mile not just from them but also from their families. And Rodney McKay is also military family by this time. Because he loves a member of the military, there are things required of him that go above and beyond the duties of a civilian.

And the thing is, they both share this sentiment about having found a family on Atlantis. Explicitly so. In Sateda (S03E04), Sheppard and Teyla have this conversation:

Sheppard: Look, Teyla. I'm not really good at... Actually, I'm... I'm terrible at expressing... I don't know what you'd call it... Teyla: Feelings? Sheppard: Yeah, sure, OK. The point is, I don't really have good... Teyla: Social skills. Sheppard: Well, that is why I enjoyed flying choppers in the most remote part of my world before all this craziness happened, but you should know, I don't have... Teyla: Friends? Sheppard: No--I have friends! You, Elizabeth, Ronon, Carson, even Rodney, are the closest thing I have to a... Teyla: A family? Sheppard: I'd do anything... for any one of you. If I had to give up my life the way Ronon was going to, I would.

This is the same exact thought that McKay expresses on the recording that Sheppard has later watched. Sheppard also considers the people he has found on Atlantis as his family. I've discussed previously why he places McKay ("even Rodney") in the final position before (he attempts to mitigate the emotional impact by saying the most important thing last). But here, there is also an actual categorical difference between McKay and the others he mentions.

Yes, he considers all of them family but out of them, McKay is the only one of them who belongs to that second family one forms when one leaves one's birth family or family of origin to make a new family with a partner. The others he mentions are his "found family," a concept with which many non-heterosexual people are familiar with. A found family or family of choice is "a group of people without any blood relation that supports and cares for someone the same way family members would." They are that to him. McKay is his conjugal family, and there is a whole other set of responsibilities (and also privileges) that comes with that. And Sheppard also emphasized the fact his family are not his friends, they are different from that.

The discussion they have on Sateda rhymes with this episode in that Teyla and Sheppard are discussing the topic of family on Orin's planet while McKay is recording his message:

Teyla: Orin was a good friend of my father. Sheppard: I agreed to warn him. Teyla: If someone close to your family--a dear friend--was in danger of being taken by the Wraith, would you have not done the same? Sheppard: Not if it jeopardised the mission.

At the end of the episode, Sheppard says the following: "I'm not sure if Colonel Sumner's parents are still alive. Um, I'm not sure he even has a family back there--not all of us do."

Sheppard does not feel like he has a family back on Earth. As far as he is concerned, he has been disowned by his father and abandoned by his brother. He is clearly uncomfortable discussing the topic with Teyla. He does, however, consider Atlantis his home. Months ago, in The Storm (S01E09) he told Teyla: "Well, maybe in time this place will start to begin to feel like home." And later on, he confesses to the same person that he thinks of these people as his family. Sheppard and McKay feel exactly the same way about their situation. Atlantis is home and the people therein are family. They are family to each other.

And it's also interesting that the difference between a family and a dear friend is emphasized in this episode. Many people find it strange that McKay calls Beckett his best friend later on. But the thing is, McKay and Sheppard were never friends. They have never been friends. They are family but, in spite of just having an entire episode about brotherhood, they are not brothers, they are not cousins, they are not uncles or parents or nephews to one another. They are family but in a very different way than they are family to the others. They share between them that bond that is deeper than words, my friend, deeper than words.

There's a pretty famous scene in BTVS in which Spike shares his observation of Buffy and Angel's relationship:

Spike: The last time I looked in on you two, you were fighting to the death. Now you're back making googly-eyes at each other like nothing happened. Makes me want to heave. Buffy: I don't know what you're talking about. Spike: Oh, yeah. You're just friends. Angel: That's right. Spike: You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love till it kills you both. You'll fight and you'll shag and you'll hate each other till it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends. Love isn't brains, children. It's blood. Blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it.

Family is different from dear friends. Family is having a familiar face waiting for you when you come back home. Especially if you have been pulling late-nighters at the lab and this familiar face usually stays up longer than you. It is home to each other these two are trying to get to every moment they are apart.

Continued in Pt. 4