#also this is the meta version of my last shit post

[juanabaloo]

it's 2024 and Eliza's Faith Lehane is STILL the MVP!

so yeah, yet another Eliza Dushku appreciation post!

(I'm remaking this in 2024 to keep it positive. Felt like my last version of this got overly negative about a certain character and ship.)

Yes I am still not over the fact that Faith didn't have a last name until 2 years AFTER BTVS went off the air. She literally DID NOT HAVE A LAST NAME the whole time she was on the show. (Neither did Kendra BTW.)

In the literal dictionary sense: Faith is technically a minor character in terms of screen time. (Whaaaa???) She was in 20 episodes of BTVS and 6 of ATS. She was never listed in the main cast for either. She was not in the BTVS (or ATS) 20 year cast reunion.

We know Eliza played Faith as having a crush on Buffy. In cons Eliza consistently supported the idea of Fuffy (Faith x Buffy). If your view cuts off the right gif caption, it's Eliza saying "me and Buffy should've made out."

26 years after her debut, and people are still talking about Faith Lehane! There's gorgeous gifsets and insightful meta essays and brilliant shit posts and cute text posts and amazing webweaving poetry posts and even polls about Faith. And all the same for Fuffy! (I'm not even talking about the fanfic, even though new Faith and Fuffy fanfic is still getting posted.)

(also pretend there's a gif here from that 2022 movie Crush where Chantal says "I post to tumblr all the time. That's mostly just like Buffy, Faith...")

Faith and Fuffy are still inspiring people, even though the show has been off the air for 20+ years now!

So... also proud to be a part of FUFFY Nation. Sometimes I get a little choked up (like Buffy here) and sometimes I get impressed and thoughtful (like Faith here).

Happy Faith Lehane Day y'all!

Faith debuted 26 years ago on October 13th. The show would not have been the same without her. And neither would we!

-----

I make no gifs! GIF credits:

top (sweet on her) is from BTVS 7x20 by raggeddypondond (Kelly's growth) from lactose-intolerant-nihilism (drink and porch) both from BTVS 7x19 by shelly-johnson (left con quote) is from thisyearsgirls (right con quote) is from goaskmalices (damn) and (right in the feels) both from BTVS 7x18 by cwladiesdaily

[relaxxattack]

Piggybacking off the last anon, what is it you like about Jane so much? I find my feelings on her kind of mixed but I lean towards positive.

okay i haven’t read act six in probably like 5 years so bear with me here. *cracks knuckles*

jane is sooo so interesting and it’s really a shame people miss like everything fun about her.

pre-scratch she used her detective work to literally succeed at tearing down the crocker cooperation, to the point that HIC has to fucking abandon ship and head into another universe to have another shot at her evil empire. pre-scratch jane is also fucking hilarious! if you didnt enjoy her antics with john as nannasprite you must just have no heart

meanwhile HIC breaches a new universe, and her FIRST fucking order of business is to NEUTRALIZE JANE CROCKER because of how goddamn detrimental she was to HIC’s plans the first time around.

not ONLY does HIC pump subliminal messaging and brainwashing into nearly every aspect of jane’s life, she also tries to straight up mind control her basically whenever possible! she ALSO sends assassination attempts after jane 24/7! (people will seriously try to say that jane lived a safe normal life… as if she wasn’t almost killed by walking into her backyard.) this is because HIC is fucking scared of jane, as she very well should be!

jane is also NOT a boring weepy annoying crybaby like everyone and their mother complains about. jane is literally the most fucking supportive friend and emotion-repressing dumbass you could ever hope to meet. jane combines john’s emotional repression and jade’s intentional cheerfulness together into one of the most fucked up cases of emotional repression in the whole comic

act 6 suffers from a LOT of shitty writing choices, but it’s not jane’s fault the whole act turns into a soap opera— and she’s ALSO not the only one who acts all soap-opera-y either! literally all of the alpha kids suffer from this, people just like jane the least so they project it all onto her. despite the fact that she did her very fucking best to NEVER talk about her feelings, to the point where she ONLY started telling people about shit when she was mind-controlled or took mind altering substances to make her do so! and you can say “ohhh that’s stupid she shouldn’t repress things in the first place how dumb” but, one she’s sixteen, and two, everyone eats that shit up when it comes from like. literally any other character.

people (cough hs2 writers) act like she would actually be “pushy” with a relationship on jake— as if she wasn’t literally the one who helped him make the decision to explore dating dirk?? because she thought it was the right thing to do???

jane is incredibly thoughtful and mature and people really throw all of those traits out of the window with preference for a version of the story where she Comes Inbetween Their Fave Gay Pairing as if she wasn’t, again, the one who got them together. jane is also extremely interesting in terms of queerness; she’s got the makings of a really interesting arc, not to mention she’s the only human girl that dresses mainly masc! there’s a lot there that people just don’t care to explore.

people just have less patience for the prospit kids in general. not to mention homestuck fans love to be misogynistic and berate jane for stuff they love the men doing, or claim she’s coming between them when she’s not, etc etc. and then because no one was writing fun meta posts about her, nobody ever rereads the comic to grab little scenes or lines to expand the online discussion about her! and then because there’s no discussion about her, people assume she’s boring and don’t go looking for bits to start discussing, which cycles on and on forever until we have the ripple effects we see of that misogyny today. which mostly consists of, “oh i hate jane because she was a villain is hs2”, or, “i know hs2 isn’t canon but i still don’t care for jane because she doesn’t do anything that interests me.” (and she’s only not interesting because of the cycle i mentioned before causing NO ONE to have meta discussion about her).

idk, it’s been a while since ive read so i could be talking out my ass but that’s what i’ve got.

TL;DR: jane is fucking COOL, she just suffers from intentional fandom ignorance. and she’s also a canonically hot, fat, masc woman, so i don’t know what else you could possibly want.

[fellthemarvelous]

Staged and Good Omens: The discontinuity of a story within a story within a story.

I'm watching the third season of Staged again right now, and I think I've figured something out.

The discontinuity that people are talking about of Good Omens 2.

Staged 3 was a very modern version of A Christmas Carol. Ep 1. Is there a version? (David and Michael work with Simon again) Ep 2. Who's Playing Who? (Scrooge, episode was a farce) Ep 3. Past (Michael and David are co-dependent af) Ep 4. Present (Michael and David fail to write a script) Ep 5. Future (David tells everyone they are doing a live show) Ep 6. Knock, Knock (Simon gets even, ending is sad but not really because they are just taking a break and breaks don't last forever, and Simon gets a job offer based on his script for Knock, Knock, the one story he didn't write.)

The epic trainwreck that is David and Michael's live version of A Christmas Carol is actually a hit, but everyone else has to convince them to stop the show because it can't go on forever. So they end it with Michael and David agreeing to take a break from working together even though it makes both of them sad.

But the whole premise of Staged was that everything was filmed on iPads, computers and cell phones. And it was submitted to Simon so he could piece it together.

Simon Evans wrote Staged as a love story between David and Michael. Simon writes what he sees and finds ways to incorporate fiction into reality. He saw them on Good Omens together and he saw the chemistry between David and Michael, and he turned it into a comedy about these two eccentric actors who clearly love each other. And they agreed to star in it.

They improvised most of it, but Simon laid out the framework of the plot for them to follow, and then he let them be themselves.

The entire show has layers upon layers of meta weaved into it.

Anyway, my point is...

This post is one of several that covers the different ways discontinuity seems to occur during Good Omens 2. The evidence is very compelling.

I'm not here to point all that out because I don't have the strength of some of the meta writers in this fandom, and they're already on top of it, but if we look to Staged as an example, what is the plotline that Good Omens 2 is following?

Good Omens 2 is a modern version of.... Ep 1. The Arrival Ep 2. The Clue (A Companion to Owls) Ep 3. I Know Where I'm Going (The Resurrectionists) Ep 4. The Hitchhiker (Nazi Zombie Flesheaters) Ep 5. The Ball Ep 6. Every Day

What are the stories happening around Aziraphale and Crowley? They're the focal point of season two, but what else is happening?

Neil Gaiman has said that everything means something. They aren't just showing us these things by accident. There is a story happening outside of Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship. And we are all looking closely for that person doing a very odd thing just out of sight or objects being moved around without knowing how they got there in the first place.

There was literally an entire scene in Staged where they are trying to figure out who is playing Scrooge and Simon is so anxious that he keeps moving his plant between two different spots in the room. It also ends up with Georgia accidentally planning her own birthday party because David is in Tokyo. But then they cut at one point and you learn David was actually in his bedroom and not a hotel room in Japan and Georgia didn't really just plan her own birthday party. That chaos was scripted. David has to change clothes, they have to go several minutes back in the scene they just did, but as Anna points out, the sun is not in the same place it was when they started the scene. And then Michael loses his shit at Simon and storms off.

You think that's the reason Simon left, but then we get the episode where Georgia tells David Michael wants to write the script and then tells Michael that David wants to write the script. She does it so she can get them alone in a room together because people love watching them argue. They find out she set them up about six hours later. They are hungry and hot and annoyed and mad at her so she gets Simon to come back to work with David and Michael. Simon comes back from cosplaying as a dentist, brings the food Michael ordered hours ago, and sits down to write. Michael gets pissed off at Simon again because Simon forgot the prawn crackers, so he throws his food at Simon.

Some of these are of the past. Some are of the present. They were all filmed at the same time though so you don't know what happened when or why.

These scenes are all cobbled together. They tell a complete story though. The order just isn't exact.

The story we are seeing in season 2 isn't the real story. It was happening around Aziraphale and Crowley, but with them at the focal point, you get a romantic comedy and it distracts you from what's going on in the background.

There is more than one story in season 2. It's basically a jigsaw puzzle that we can try to piece together, but we won't know what's actually happening until we get the much needed context of season 3.

There are clues all over the place in Good Omens 2. The story is being told through so many other methods except for the one that makes the most sense to us because someone doesn't want us to see what's coming, so we get distracted by Nina and Maggie, Jim, Aziraphale and Crowley.

We know Muriel and Saraqael are up to something. We know Shax and Furfur are up to something. We know the Metatron is up to something. What we don't know is where God went. We hear God's voice in Companion to Owls and we hear God's voice speaking through and with Jim when Crowley orders him to tell them what is going on. It ties directly to the first time Crowley and Aziraphale ever worked together.

We know that Aziraphale is going to Edinburgh and he knows exactly where he's going because he and Crowley have been there before. It challenges the concept of good and evil because Crowley does the good thing and gets sucked into Hell. Right next to Gabriel's statue.

We know that Aziraphale picks up a hitchhiker even though he doesn't want to, and it turns out to be Shax. She reminds Aziraphale of the time that Furfur caught them working together. There were zombies and human magic tricks and Aziraphale uses sleight of hand to save Crowley from being dragged back down into Hell again.

The episode titles of Staged 3 all represent different chapters of A Christmas Carol. But it was more than that because Michael is upset with David for doing adverts without him after they were both asked to work together at first. They love each other and they love working together, but it's preventing them from doing other things they want to do. Hence the break from working together.

It's a story within another story within another story.

And I think that's what we are witnessing in Good Omens. Things aren't happening in the right order. Beyond the sadness of Aziraphale and Crowley splitting up, there is still the next apocalypse to deal with. The story we are getting in season two isn't happening sequentially. It's being manipulated to hide the signs that things are already underway by giving us a love story as a distraction.

And it works very damn well. Because the love story was beautiful.

Staged 3 ending

Good Omens 2 ending

[wildglitch]

What if Zombies!Spidey x DCU LETS GOOOOOOOOO-

O K-

So, This is the (Probably not the last, don't worry) post with ideas for my What If Zombies!Peter In the DCU AU. This is the post that (Finally) Focuses on the DC side of things. This post Is also going to be mainly focused on Peter and what he's up to cause he's the focus of this AU, but I’m probably gonna make another post with info on the other heroes, so If your interested in that, don't worry cause I am thinking about them (Bucky & Loki = Brainwashed bros)

Its also part 1 of Idk since this post kinda got away from me with its length (oops)

Anyways, without further adieu, let's start :D 

-So! starting this off with something fun and not that serious that I just found out. this should have probably gone in the first post but I didn't know this until now so here, a +1 info on “facts about the zombie apocalypse” tm. 

Ok, so at this point you know I like to play around with the timeline right? Ok so, I’m researching the dates and events things take place in right? Turns out, the snap happened in either May or June, and one source even said that it happened on May 31. Now, with this in mind and the fact that I said the apocalypse lasted between 7-8 months, what happens if you subtract 8 months from May? You get October. And if you add the date to it? Guys…I accidentally made it that the zombie apocalypse starts on Halloween! That's just insane!

The official timeline now is 7 months of the zombie apocalypse, no more no less, sorry, I don't make the rules :^ (omg I made Antman & the Wasp a halloween movie lmao. It fits)

-Alright so, Peter, Head Scott/w the cloke and T’challa are on a plane on their way to Wakanda when all of a sudden, well, how many of you seen the Young Justice Episode s1e19 Misplaced? (Btw have I talked about how much I love Billy batson? I will one of these days ok, and that's a threat) well anyways

Airplane squad: *”peacefully” traumatized on a plane to Wakanda

Airplane squad: *the people on the plane fucking fazes out of reality leaving him alone to fly the plane*

Peter: *Panik*

Peter: *feels a pull wanting to take him but fighting it off as he tries to fly a fucking plane*

Peter: *also fades out of reality but much later the other and is now falling to certain doom in the middle of the ocean*

Peter: “Oh What the F-”

Ya that-

I mixed aspects of the snap and scene from misplaced as their way of splitting up. And, they did split up. A high speed plane plus the time it took them to disappear firmly separates Peter from the rest of the heros. And thus the adventure commences

-unlike Billy who can fly, Peter falls head first at top speeds and a thousand meters high into the ocean.  This can happen a few different ways

1) Peter is stranded, and is found by Young Justice or any superhero team that was passing through the ocean and thinks “Oh shoot, that's a child”. And this is how he ends up with the league. This one is kinda fast and there wouldn't be any identity reveal since at this point this Peter has no concept of such a thing. But a good way to work around this is memory loss. Not really my cup of tea but I can very much see this happening considering how hard he hit his head

2) …So Peter fucking dies-

Listen! I somehow started off with my 2 most opposite extremes of ideas, but hear me out. The fall? It kills him. But lets say that some cult or the league of assassins or some shit find his body, realize he’s a “meta” and decide “Yeah, this is a good revival candidate” And they revive the poor sucker. He is held captive HYDRA style and they try to turn him into a weapon. Obviously, he escapes, set free onto the world with a few months of trauma and a stolen one way ticket anywhere. And that anywhere just so happens to be Gotham. I’ll let your mind take it from there

3) This is the last version of events I’m gonna mention and I think this one is the one I'm sticking with, purely for the comedic potential I can see coming out of this. So Peter fought back the spell right? Well unlike the snap where he was fighting a force of nature were he would not have won, Peter was fighting Loki off, which,

Peter: Fighting off that staticy feeling that's trying to take him

Loki: *Genuinely struggling to get this non magic kid to corporate with him*

Loki: Damnit CHILD! I'm trying to save your worthless life!

Peter: *Legit almost wins and gets left by himself in the zombieland* 

Loki: …What did they feed you?

Yeah, so since Loki had to focus on getting that idiot spider child to cooperate, he loses track of everyone else, and all of a sudden, the fuzzy mental image he had of everyone dissipates, and Peters becomes the full focus. This lets him save the kid from the crash, but he now doesn't know where all of the others are, including his brother, and now he can't really get to any of them.

-Peter is saved with a spell that's basically the bubble from steven universe but Loki style. He can breathe just fine, but he can't get out or call for hell. He spends many Hours like this.

-Ok so, Loki is a god. We have established this, I keep mentioning it (sorry) he himself brings this up multiple times. What is something gods tend to have sometimes? Avatars, people who act out their will on Earth. You see where I'm going with this? Since Peter is the only mortal from his world he has access to, and because he is stuck on the watchtower, he decides to make a deal with Peter to make him his Avatar and have him look for the others (Thor). Peter, after having most of the situation explained to him, accepts his offer, with a few conditions here and there that prevent Loki from taking full advantage of him. But at the end of the day, they are both desperate and accept the others' offers and conditions with little fuss.

-Deals and conditions for the avatar contract between Peter and Loki

Loki’s Mission: Find the other mortals and spread chaos as his agent Loki’s Offer: Slight magical aid, “ability boost”, Protection from other magical entities, Godly guide and knowledge and Loki wont force Peter into doing anything too grotesque Loki’s conditions for Peter: He will be able to access anything Peter is seeing and be able to take control of any situation if he sees it fit, he must go on the missions he sends him on, And if the situation ever truly demands it, he will listen to everything Loki tells him to do Peter’s Mission: Finding his friends and finding a cure to his world in this new one as Loki’s Agent. He must also make good impressions on other Magical being in this world as to not shame the god he’s representing Peter Offer: His loyalty and tentative trust, he won't argue too much and will do his absolut best to find Thor. he will Listen to Loki and do what he says Peter’s Conditions for Loki: Will become his Avatar as long as he gets to keep being a hero and doesn't have to hurt or kill people. He will only do a mission once a month, and he will not advertise the Avatar bit. Peter gets free will, He can refuse to do something as long as he isn't demanded of it.

With this, a hand shake, and some blood, The deal is made in the bubble in the middle of the ocean.

-Peter is now Loki’s Avatar, Moonknight style, Yay! They don't really like each other that much due to circumstance but it's fineeeeeee. I did this because 1) I thought of a scenario that didn't really make sense unless Peter was somehow talking to him 2) It’s a little nod to the fact most of the fics have the snapped souls with Peter on his adventure. I thought that this way he can still have his voice in his head , it's not that crowded because it's only one voice, and it's not that Intrusive because Loki isn't going to be with Peter 24/7 only when he needs him, he's using some of his powers, or when he can sense distress or danger coming from Peter- Other than that he's stuck at the watchtower trying to plan his next moves. And 3) Cause the thought came to me and i thought it was fucking Holirouse.

-With Some trickery, Peter sneaks onto a boat and spends his time hidden under the deck pretending and hides like a corner spider the whole trip

-Peter in his, Hasn't been around actual living breathing humans for such a long time, self, breaks down and cries at the docks. Coincidentally, The bats are doing a drug bust there and a wearhouse not 10 feet away from him blows up. 

-Peter in his typical fashion, Puts on his mask and runs into the building looking for survivors.

-The bats, not knowing what happened, see’s this costume stranger helping the thugs get away and immediately clocks him as a villain. Opps

-They fight, misunderstandings happen and now, The friendly neighborhood Spider-Man Is on the front page as gothams hottest new Rogue. Well shit

-Peter being the smart guy he is, squats at an unoccupied apartment and claims it as his. Then Loki shows up after weeks of radio silence, takes one look at the place and says, hell nah, and fixes the place up with magic making the place more than livable. With some (probably magical) persuasion, the guy renting out the place actually puts him on the lease with 50 bucks of monthly rent. Does Peter feel guilty…well? Gotta roll with the punches man. Plus, this place looks nice, ignoring his 20 something neighbor that has enough blood on him to turn his white hair dye red that had sent his spider sense. This is fine.

-With some help from the voice in his head and walking through dark alleys at night, he finds a guy that works for immigration and was selling sketchy (But legit) identities. Not really trusting the guy but in desperate need and ID for the lease he was about to sign, He coughs up all the savings he had, took a Photo, and Ben P. Riley was born. He said he didn't trust the guy.

-Peter has decided to go by an alias for a few reasons, like not knowing if there was already another Peter Parker in this reality and not really wanting to risk it or the plain fact that he didn't really trust anyone in this new reality with it  (Loki and his magical guidance, he has firmly decided to never give out his name so freely ever again). His name is one of the last things from his past life that he can call his own, And if his “Villainous” identity was revealed as Peter Parker, he didn't know if he could handle it. The most simple reason was that he just missed his family and wanted something in this new life he was making for himself to remind himself of them. Ofcourse, he still added that P in there middle so as to not completely erase himself.

-Peter spends a full month just trying to get used to living in a society again, This causes some problems and misunderstandings.

-After many series of misunderstandings and mishaps, everyone thinking he's evil, Peter decides, YK what's, If I can't beat them, join them. Peter starts going out as the “Villain Spider-Man” doing sketchy shit (normal teenage shit) and causing a commotion in Gotham. Peter counts this as his act of mischief and Loki agrees when he sees the kid sell his own photos to the newspaper. Peter isn't actually doing anything evil, it's just his presence that brings fear. The fact that the bats have caught him breaking into multiple high security facilities doesn't really help his case

-Peter spends his months looking through files and files of info searching for the others, but has just about no luck on anything.

-Peter, forced by a mission, goes undercover in Gotham prep to follow one of Loki’s leads. He doesn't really know what he's doing here, but this Tim guy is pretty nice

-Cause of the amazing pictures he keeps selling to the paper, the company hires him full time as their photographer for special events and even lets him write a few articles when they see the notes he puts next to his pictures that provide contexts and stuff like that. This job opens Peter to search to a whole new horizon.

-With Peter's new job, hes sent to many different cities which introduces him to many different people

-He meets Jimmy Olson on a trip to Metropolis and hits it off pretty well with the older man. Jimmy introduces him to his friends and coworkers Lois and Clark, both of whom are just a delegate. Though that Clark guy as not stopped setting of his spider sense since he met him

-The next place he went to was a city called Fawcett, where he was sent to help with a story with one of the local reporters who was apparently his age.

Boss guy: Ben, meet Billy. You two will be working together on the report for this years summer festival

Peter: *Looks at Billy*

Billy: *Looks at ‘Ben’*

*Insert that one Spider-Man meme*

The two sniff each other out as godly “employees” and exchange numbers. And thus, a friendship was born as Billy decided to keep an eye out for any other reality travelers, and Peter is put as one of his emergency contacts to help him get out of shit since he was “technically 20 according to his ID”

-Peter is also sent to Gothams sister city Bludhaven. Peter,ends up meeting a weird police officer that keeps expecting him to take pictures of the guy. But he's nice enough and bought him a hotdog and a cinnamon roll(even though he now thinks he's allergic to them), so the weird outweighs the good.

-On his trip to Bludhaven, Peter decides to go out as spider-man. Not to cause trouble, but to go sightseeing and swinging without the interference of a bat. He ends up sitting upside down on an old building (like that one Atsv scene)  working on some leads he has when all of a sudden, Nightwing appeared right behind him dangling off the side of the building like a mad man giving him a heart attack. Nightwing is about to confront the spider after his sneak attack was caught, but before he does, Peter holds out the cinnamon roll towards the vigilante as a peace offering rushing out the words “Please don't hit me!” and Nightwing just stares. He stares long and hard looking between the treat and the Spider mask. Peter was about to run from them when Nightwing sort of just…sits. Or sits at the best of his abilities with no gravity defying powers. He actually does a pretty good job at it. Nightwing takes to offering with a nod and the 2 just sort of sit there in silence. It's awkward and weird, and quiet but for some reason he doesn't feel as uncomfortable as he thinks he should. Even less when he feels the ringing of his spider senses slowly die down as the minutes pass until it's just a constant hum at the back of his head

-They don't talk after that but from here is a turning point as to how the Bat clan view the spider.

More? Nay I say! (There will be a part 2 to this specific post, but it has gotten too long and I need to go to bed. So hopefully this will do for now :^) Plus this feels like agood stoping point since I feel like that ending would mark the ending to an arc

Please let me know what you think of this AU. I love seeing other people's ideas and thoughts. It fuels me lo

And make sure to keep an eye out for Part 2 of this post.

Later

[ennn]

How are you feeling about the aaa finale? idk I’m loving this show so much and I’m so afraid of being disappointed by the ending. I was still hoping for everyone to come back but now I’m accepting that they are gone, gone and the way it’s going Agatha’s coven will only be her and Billy and I like him but not nearly as much as I love everyone else

And then there is Rio, hopeful I’m just being too pessimistic but I fear the show will just end with her still being the antagonist, they will fight, there will be a truce and she won’t kill Agatha and Billy and they will part ways. The only way we will get that kiss is in the flashback which will be worth it but I still wanted more. idk the interviews usually makes me excited for what’s next but this time it made me conflicted

but Jac saying the show will be all about Agatha to the very end was nice to read. I can’t stand all this talk about where is wanda??? who knows but not in this show hopefully!!!

Hello Anon! Well, I would say my emotional state towards the finale has been about the same for the past few weeks, which is a mix of absolute excitement and nerves.

Probably not the best for my emotional and mental health so maybe I should be glad this is a limited series! My body certainly will be.

I was entertaining the thought of dead coven members possibly coming back but Lilia's death was so beautiful and her choice despite it being also her destiny, and her arc was about accepting the life she had and making the best of it and embracing her power.

As for Alice, it's possible she comes back, but it's also possible her character gets closure and moves on, given that we do know there's a scene with her post-death coming up. And Jac Schaeffer seems big on delivering emotional satisfaction at the end of her stories (not to say she's guaranteed to deliver, but it's her goal at least).

Putting the rest under a cut because omg this got long

I have some meta thoughts brewing about this episode's take on destiny and fate and time and death (alongside other death personifications in media) and as hinted at in the latest Schaeffer interviews, there's definitely stuff the show wants to say about it.

On another note, I've mostly processed my feelings about the tragedy of these two as star-crossed lovers in this post if you haven't read it it may help. For me it's still hard to get a read on Rio as they're building new lore with this version of Death. This is definitely not the same Lady Death from Marvel comics.

But I do think that it's actually a good thing that Agatha and Rio are getting into open conflict, the same way Agatha and Billy are having it out in the open, because the characters need to deal with their shit.

And I feel like... especially from the last episode, the show isn't setting up Death to be evil, or necessarily bad. Death is Agatha's antagonist because – as Schaeffer puts it – she refuses it, she refutes it. Lilia ran from her visions because she wanted to avoid seeing death but ultimately embraced it. Agatha's a rule-breaker, a trickster but witchcraft is inherently rooted in nature.

There isn't a simple or clear answer here on what's right or wrong, which is why I'm really interested to see how the finale unfolds. Schaeffer genuinely seems to love ambiguity and the discussions around her shows.

Like yes, Agatha and Rio are going to fight. That's not really new for them? Okay maybe the scale of this will be. But as we've seen with all these reveals, what really matters is how and why and all the details in its crafted execution.

And again, Schaeffer has said that she's aiming for an emotionally satisfying conclusion. Even if the stories for these characters continue beyond, this series is designed to stand on its own. And the Agatha-Rio relationship has been important to the show, from the very first episode.

I'll also be making a predictions post for the finale for funsies, if you want to see what my guesses and expectations are.

[cdroloisms]

also, (sorry to soapbox, i promise this will be the last of it), as an added note to the little conversation from yesterday about dreblr--i have to say that there's been ,,, uh, a slightly concerning amount of "us versus them" rhetoric especially about c!tommy apologists recently, as far as i've observed. and look, i get how the fandom's history plays into this, but dreblr isn't some separate special "better" version of the dsmp fandom. we're just dsmp fans who tend positive towards c!dream, which is a valid way of enjoying the story, but you know, so's hating c!dream's guts, lmao. people aren't unable to have valid opinions on the story or on c!dream just because they're negative about him and positive about c!tommy, which is like, literally just normal too, lmao, c!tommy is the generally good-aligned character we follow for most of the story and c!dream is the generally evil-aligned character that hurts him? being an analyst in dreblr doesn't automatically equal being "more correct" just because it's dreblr, and dismissing others' opinions just because they're a c!tommy apologist or whoever apologist isn't exactly a helpful way of approaching meta, either.

obviously no one is obligated to interact with anyone in this fandom that they don't want to interact with--we're here to have fun, it's not actually a professional field of analysis and debate. that being said, there is nothing about liking c!dream that is inherently superior to other dsmp fans. i know i've made a lot of general posts about dreblr versus "the greater fandom" which probably haven't helped with this feeling -- they're largely generalizations based on my experience in this fandom, and i don't want to come off as meaning that bad analysis is something that is Only found outside of dreblr (i've definitely been guilty of shit analysis more than a few times, lol) or that there's nothing that the rest of the fandom outside of c!dream apologist spaces has to offer. when it comes to individual enjoyment of the fandom and the characters, the point im making isn't that everyone has to do outreach to communicate with a c!tommy apologist or anything, lmao -- just that, you know, the general shady comments about how much better we are at analysis than those darn c!tommy apologists when they're not really relevant don't reeeeeally have to be as common as they are.

[x-for-a-y]

re: my last post (again) here are my thoughts on what kind of reasonable lasting or short-term effects being goners would have on the doatk cast in a post-canon revival setting:

jake: i already headcanon him as being disabled, something akin to chronic fatigue or insomnia or POTS. so getting all the wires out... either his preexisting conditions make recovery harder or the lasting effects themselves are mainly just exacerbating his old issues. but regardless. rollator jake real guptill: the main thing he'd have to deal with is just being fucking Out Of It. getting used to having direct, normal control over his body again. like in the long-term he'll be alright it's just going to be a rough first few days being back in his body edmund: this would be easier to determine if he were less ambiguously human from the get-go so. fuck it. heightened allergen sensitivity acquired star warriors: kirby bounces back fine, he just needs a few days to relax some, and his friends like bandana dee notice he's more tired & give him some help & kindness. meta knight also probably could use some time off but he's not going to give himself any, & his crew certainly can't get him to, so eventually dedede's the one who buckles down and makes sure all his buddies are feeling well again demo: she's fine. i don't have anything else to say hamood: now on one hand that's a fucked up transformation. on the other hand that's a lot more to clearly get reset back to normal. & on the other hand he's, what, 5? i think he does end up with slightly out-of-whack proportions from all this- his wings in particular turn out on the side of too large -but it'd probably take another 8 years for stuff like corrective surgery or just physical therapy & shit to be considered at: unfortunately i never watched this show so while the long-term effects are pretty up in the air i don't think the short-term effects are any worse than what can be covered in, like, a couple episode's time. like maybe jake needs a good pep talk or two from people to feel comfortable in his body again & finn has to learn to not run away from his issues. something like that kebian + will: will goes home and vents a little about the experience to his partner(s? i don't watch all his stuff). kebin, meanwhile, only turns to a bit of introspection out of competitiveness for what ian does, and thinks to himself that maybe the wall is a little fucked up then goes no further; ian takes up yoga/other mindfulness-focused athletics in order to feel more at home in his body. korone: probably spends the first few days aching like a motherfucker, the sort of full-body soreness you only get from like climbing a mountain or a way-too-intense workout. once it stops hurting to breathe she probably goes back to gaming just to keep her mind off stuff & maybe picks up streaming again not long after but it's at least a couple weeks before she's at base physical performance again. morty: dude i don't know. i think it makes the most sense for him to fuck off & resume a lifestyle of peaceful hedonism & self-care. no way he's going to start being introspective about stuff until he's like. 40. i don't watch the show dreem himself i have nothing to say about but, going with the assumption that the puppet, me, & you are all versions of the same person: physically i can just say they deal with generally reduced stamina, mentally meanwhile. for their own health & safety they log the fuck off most places and try to enjoy the music they like without getting bogged down in the awkwardly online social kinds of things and then. i don't know, some kingdom hearts shit happens to it- it spends time offline & otherwise with friends trying to figure out its own emotions -and it regrows a heart/soul. mozart: he got hit with the hypermobility beam! oh shit! knee braces wrist braces a brace for the spine, you name it he uses it. bonus roommate: two dimensional in the adam ruins everything animated insert way. yeah it's fucked up. yeah he'll never fully be, like, a regular human.

[kittyilana046]

THE DC UNIVERSE MASTERLIST - BATFAMILY EDITION

TTHE BATFAMILY MASTERLIST

Started: 12/18/2020

Last Updated: 12/29/2022

This master list is a collection of analysis essays, headcanons, and comic book panels posted by my favorite bloggers. I did not write any of the posts linked below, and I do not own any pictures used. All credit goes to the original artists and bloggers who created this content. 

I created this master list intending to archive my favorite posts. I am sharing it because I believe this list is a perfect jumping-off point for new fans who want a comprehensive guide to understanding these characters.

I encourage you to interact with original bloggers and also comic canon. 

Please send me an ask or DM if you want to talk about comic books.

Thank you 

~ Haleigh 

Links

DC UNIVERSE MASTERLIST

META / ESSAYS

Batman (Bruce Wayne)

Bruce Wayne outside of Batman

Bruce firing Dick vs. Dick firing Tim

Bruce Wayne’s childhood + a short analysis his relationship with Alfred Pennyworth

Do Bruce and Selina truly love each other?

Does Bruce love Damian?

Did Bruce love Jason?

Is Bruce a good dad?

Is Bruce nice?

Jason was Bruce’s beloved son and DC’s writers are doing shit.

Tips for writing Bruce Wayne

Batgirl (Barbra Gordon)

Thoughts on Barbra’s independence and how it affects her relationship with Dick

Batgirl/Black Bat/Orphan (Casandra Cain)

Does Casandra know ASL?

How does Casandra process anger?

Huntress (Helena Bertinelli)

Helena’s relationship with Tim Drake

Nightwing (Dick Grayson)

Dick Grayson’s moral compass + how Bruce’s expectations shaped him

Dick Grayson’s strengths and weaknesses  

Dick Grayson’s guilt complex

Dick Grayson and Temper

Dick Grayson and fashion trends

Dick, you’re so spoiled (Discussing and his relationship with money)

Do Dick and Jason get along in comics?

DICK I’LL BE THERE FOR YOU GRAYSON

DICK GRAYSON AND ALFRED PENNYWORTH’S RELATIONSHIP META

Do Dick Grayson and Roy Harper have commitment issues?

Does Dick Grayson wear a metaphorical mask like Bruce Wayne does? 

Objectification or Empowerment: how writers express Dick Grayson’s sexuality

Superman and Dick Grayson’s first meeting

What is Dick Grayson’s ethnicity?

Robin (Damian Wayne)

Do you guys ever think about how much of a crappy life Damian has been having since Rebirth? Because I do.

Is Damian sexist?

Proof Damian has a heart p1

Things I Wish Writers Would Explore More with Damian

Red Hood (Jason Todd)

Jason’s time as Robin

Jason Todd’s less known skills appreciation

Jay and Dick are musicians? What do they play?

Jason Todd and the Ladies: Post-Resurrection

Recontextualizing the death of Filipe Garzonas

The Jason Todd Book Club (books that Jason has mentioned in canon)

What kind of father was Willis Todd?

Where did Jason get his Respect Women Juice?

Red Robin (Tim Drake)

Does Tim Drake conically suffer from depression?  

How did Tim Drake’s trauma affect him?

Is Tim Drake insecure?

Is Tim Drake sexist?

I wanna talk about Janet Drake

Tim Drake’s childhood

The beginning of Tim Drake’s career as Robin

Was Tim Drake born a genius?

Was Tim Drake the CEO of Wayne Enterprises? What was his job at W.E.? Did he like it?

Your Tim Drake coffee headcanon is whack

Spoiler (Stephanie Brown)

How did the batfam react to Stephanie’s death?

What is the canon surrounding Stephanie’s economic status?

The Signal (Duke Thomas)

Duke is not a boring character – Here are some of his achievements

Duke thomas isn’t the sane one! A guide by pepper

Who is Duke Thomas?

MORE INFO HERE!

CANON VS. FANON

Batfamily canon things that we should not let fall into obscurity

Characterization cheat sheet: the batfamily boys

The Batkids views on money

What are in your opinion the biggest difference between the comic and the fanon versions of the other Batfamily members?

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

The history of the “Robin” title

The ages of the Batfamily kids according to Secret Files timelines

What are the Batkids legal names/adoption status?

HEADCANON

How would the Batfamily comfort someone who's sad? 

Is Dick Grayson demisexual?

Is Dick Grayson a romantic?

Dick Grayson and Kids

Would Bruce Wayne be a good boyfriend?

What would Bruce be like if his parents never died?

What should happen after the Ric Grayson arc ends?

What hogwarts house would jason todd be in?

Where would you sort the Batfamily?

THE ROBIN'S RELATIONSHIPS WITH EACH OTHER

All Robins are great and they all bring something to the table

Advice on how to write Damian and Tim brother dynamic

Damian & Dick: analyzing their relationship

Another analysis of Dick and Damian’s relationship

Do you think Dick and Damian have a brotherly relationship?

The Batboys calling each other brother

Where does the “little wing” nickname come from?

COMIC PANELS

Batman (Bruce Wayne) 

Batman #42 by Tom King and Mikel Janin (Bruce and Selina get captured)

Batman being a Batdad to his Batprincess

Banana Muffin is Superman and Batman’s safeword

Batman & Robin Eternal #22 (Bruce being kind to Damian)

Detective Comics (2016-) #1017

Gotham Knights #11 (“I am a model of mental health”)

How Bruce deals with trauma

Injustice 2 #51 -”Have you tried turning it on an off again?”

“My favorite superhero is Superman” “…He’s my favorite, too”

Robin (Damian Wayne)

Deathstroke #5 - “Mirrors” (2016) (Damian taunting Deathstroke)

Damian talks a lot in front of his favorite people

Injustice 2 #8 (Proof Damian has a heart p2)

Robin Son of Batman 011 (Damian being done with Bruce and Talia)

The Shadow/Batman #3 (Ra's al Ghul threatening Damian)

Super-Sons My Best Friend

Nightwing (Dick Grayson)

Everyone loves Dick Grayson

Dick beating up Bruce compilation

Dick is that type of brother…

Dick you whore

Dick imitating a crowbar

Unpublished pages of Nightwing #30

Red Hood (Jason Todd)

Batman: Urban Legends - “Cheer II” (2021)

Detective Comics (2016) #976 (Jason standing up to the Batfamily)

Robin 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular #1 - “More Time” (2020)

Red Hood and The Outlaws (2016) #52

Red Robin (Tim Drake)

Tim and Dick talking: A Compilation

[thewebcomicsreview]

Oh hey, Homestuck 2 updated! I was expecting this to be an 11/11 update since that's a Homestuck arc number, but it's the least important of those by far.

Egads! What a despicable plan, devised by a devilish dame with a dastardly disposition. The wretched wiles of a wayward woman with a penchant for the wicked. A hullabaloo most hideous and heinous, hammered out by-

One of the biggest mysteries of Homestuck 2 is who's narrating Candyland with Calliope gone, and the more narration-heavy style of the new team is really calling attention to that. This is very flanderized Jake English dialogue. Also a dramatically more active Jake English than we've seen all...ever?

Under no circumstances can you allow her to get to The Point.

Gonna have fun with that MacGuffin name, huh, writers? It occurs to me that Jake was supposedly a spy the whole time but this is the first indication that he's actually been telling the resistance anything instead of just calling himself a spy as a cope.

I like this art a lot. But also what the hell is Meenah doing here? Last time we saw her, in the epilogues, she was out in space and stole the Ring of Life from John before escaping into a server beacon. Did it lead her into the black hole (lmao get owned), or is this an alternate timeline ghosts? Are her eyes closed in order to drag out that reveal?

JAKE: Shit, sergeant! Cant you add her to the groupcrab? MEENAH: groupcrab MEENAH: cod damn thats good MEENAH: i just been callin em prawnference calls

As fish puns go, "Prawnference calls" is excellent.

MEENAH: idk but hypothetically speaking if i was posted up in my big mean bitch pants just gettin my empress on and you told me insturgeonts were tryin to shore up on some kinda mythic skaian artifact

So, Meenah has her eyes closed to prevent me from knowing if this is the alpha version or a doomed ghost, and now she's dropping very vague hints about what the plot point is. This does feel very homestuck, in that it's teasing out the reveals to maximize speculation. Skaia is, of course, related to SBURB, and thus this is confirmation of the fandom assumption that they're going to start a new game, without actually saying much else.

I have no idea why this air vent is Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff style, but Vriska kicking the sound affect is still funny.

The comedy quotient has increased notably under the new team.

VRISKA: John, she's a Vriska. She can handle herself! I'm sure she can take anything this fake-ass timeline can throw at her! JOHN: what?

Wait, John doesn't know? I thought "Everyone 'knows' candyland is fake and that why they're acting so weird they're just LARPing" was kind of my headcanon for a lot of the weirder candy stuff.

VRISKA: This whole universe is like someone's shitty RP, and everyone's out of character! None of this reads! VRISKA: Like, who the FUCK is Yiffy!!!!!!!! Why should I or anyone CARE????????

I'm so meta even this acronym

JOHN: a long time ago i was supposed to go back and defea- VRISKA: SNOOOOOOOORE! VRISKA: Your ecto-human-guardian-si8ling or whatever is pro8a8ly sending a squad of 8ozos to apprehend your ex as we speak. So I say the less we talk and the sooner we 8low this gru8sickle stand, the sooner we can get there 8efore we lose access to our shortcut. JOHN: yeah when you spell it all out like that i can see what y- JOHN: wait, WHAT!!! JOHN: why didn't you just say that earlier?! VRISKA: John. That's what I've 8een doing this whole time! VRISKA: Now, c'mon! Race you there!!!!!!!!

I don't ship them or anything, but this John/Vriska dynamic where John is kind of the oblivious straight man to all this wacky nonsense is one that Homestuck has been very light on since Act 6.

That was a good update. It was funny, it moved the plot along, and it gave us stuff to speculate about! And the art was really good!

[bandedbulbussnarfblat]

Alright, here are some screenshots from the new iwtv s2 trailer and me theorizing over them like a rabid fangirl. Hafl meta, half madness.

ok, so this bit of dialogue here where they are talking about Daniel and the interview

Armand: He wants you in pieces for the privilege of putting them back together as he sees fit. Louis: It's his job. Armand: It's his drug. He's reveling in it. You should end it.

Is Armand bitter? Is this how he saw his and Daniel's relationship? If so he is big mad. Like, this man has had decades to stew in that post-breakup anger. Memory is a monster and all that. So he's had plenty of time to do that thing where people breakup, get pissed off, and only remember the bad times. We twist our own memory all the time, that's one of the ways people get past shit. So Armand has probably twisted what he and Daniel has. Because my boy does not handle rejection well.

Or maybe he is projecting? Messing with Louis' memories (which it seems like he did. though i do believe he thought he was helping Louis at the time. a monster in love is still a monster) could very well be putting him back as Armand sees fit. That's what he may believe he did to Louis. Though the definition of 'as he sees fit' could have multiple meanings. I think personally that Armand sees (or at least justifies) messing with Louis memories as for Louis own good.

Either way, he does not want Daniel poking into Louis' head.

this is just some loumand cuteness. look, Armand kisses Louis on the cheek. i think Armand is or was probably pretty affectionate when him and Louis were alone together. I remember that interview with Assad saying there was a tenderness to Louis and Armand's relationship. there's a whole bunch of cute little shots of them together. but they are hard to get a cleat shot of because they sort of fade into each other in the video.

like, i know in my heart the loumand breakup is coming this season. but i'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. bc this version of loumand has got me hooked. i have to confess, i was never really a big fan of loumand in the iwtv book. the whole claudia of it all ruined it for me. but i am so fascinated to see how these two made it work for 77 years.

and this. the way Claudia and Armand look at each other when they first spot each other. that quick second before the mask can slip into place. they do not like each other. they are enduring for Louis' sake. at least until he picks one of them.

then like a split second later, she has this tight smile on her face. my baby girl is not happy

look at their faces y'all. this is during Louis' 'life is shit' bit of dialogue. where he tells Claudia to stop feeling sorry for herself. he also says they 'can't be running away again' do they find other vampires before Paris? According to her diaries, they were in Romania in 1941. And Louis says something about they can't be the only 'good ones'

We also know they were in Paris, Nov 14 from Claudia's diaries. The interview is set in 2022. Louis mentions earlier in the clip him and Armand have been together 77 years. So they'd have to have gotten together in 1945. Given how quickly things happened in the book, I'd say they were probably only there a few months.

this has to be Allesandra. it has to be. I can't wait for this Armand backstory stuff.

y'all look at this fuckery. Santiago is kissing some woman while riding a motorcycle. idk if she is a victim or another vampire. and i think possibly the bike might be flying? I can't tell. It looks pretty cool though.

oh look, a scythe. i wonder what that could possibly be foreshadowing. they have to have the scene, the way they've shown a scythe in a few different teasers/trailers now.

this might be Madeliene, but I don't know. The hair doesn't fit what we've seen so far. my theory is that this is Madeleine's sister who dies via vampires. in the books she lost a daughter, and it was why she was so eager to play mother to Claudia. Having a child that could almost literally never die would have had to seem like, the greatest thing ever. switching it to a sister would be fitting, seeing as Claudia is playing the role of sister to Louis

So my thought here, (and I know I am theorizing based on nothing but vibes) is that Madeleine is looking into the vampires bc her sister went missing after going to a show at the Theatre des Vampires. And at some point, Claudia will reveal what they are to her.

That may be why she looked so scared in that other teaser we had. These pics are from it and they are blurry af, so sorry bout that

This could be the vampires warning her to mind her business. Why not kill her outright? Bc they like to play with their food. Or bc Claudia wants to keep her, and Armand knows he has to get Claudia out of the way to be with Louis. So he could just like, order the coven to not kill this one human. And then later 'convinces' Louis to turn her into a vampire, so Claudia will have her own companion and gtfo

like, i know it's hard to tell from this one shot, but Armand seems to be on the verge of having a full on tantrum. while saying Lestat's name over and over. Probably bc he heard how much Louis was talking about Lestat to Daniel. he's probably mad jelly, but like, in both directions.

look at this shit. Armand straight up hisses and pushes Lestat away with his vampire powers. (this I think is may not 1945 Paris, but around when they first meet. idk though)

this is how Lestat seemed to be dressed in the image above. and given the whole look of him (you know, in full health) i think this is around the time Lestat meets the Children of Satan

y'all I am screaming. this is Lestat drinking Armand's blood. did they fuck? did Lestat hit it and quit it?

At least Claudia gets to tell Louis off for picking Armand over her. But she definitely was not loving Paris.

as witnessed here, by Daniel reading from her journal "fuck these vampires"

so here we have Daniel saying he wants to get out alive (then we have him making this strange face where it looks like he wants to cry, another shot of Armand) while this other dude says that Daniel fears Armand and that he should fear the other one. Who tf is this guy? Are they still in the penthouse? Did Daniel leave and go out somewhere to meet this guy? Who is this man? Maybe another vampire that paid a visit? Is he this Leonard guy we've heard about? bc that does not look like David Costabile, but tv hair and makeup can perform magic, so maybe it is?

here we have Louis throwing his cup of blood at a painting. it's ok baby boy, you are entitled to a hissy fit every now and again

Here we have Louis hallucinating Lestat, so that's fun.

And now bitch ass tumblr says I can't post anymore images, but i am only halfway through the trailer. so I guess i will post and reblog

[jade-of-mourning]

sooooo I’ve recently stopped being dead to the world

I had to backtrack and reread down to your answer to my last ask (which,,, thoughts,, when you manage to beat them into submission pls pls pls pls share everything) because I haven’t touched tumblr in a hot second but then I saw your post about lok s1 (and specifically s1 korra) and,,,

okay so this is me and my dumb hyperfixation talking but how do you think the rest of tlok would’ve gone if makorra wasn’t ruined. like just in general, what do you think would’ve changed?? if anything??

keeping this short but like. brain worms are munching. cuz the way their characters developed and how they each influenced each other. how would that have ended like. romantically. like what if korra burned bright and bright and bright and offered her soul and her strength and every one of her fingernails in love and mako bit his lip hard enough to offer blood in a kiss. what if they were a little bit insane by the end of everything.

sorry that doesn’t make any sense!

love

🐌

hey snailon!!! i've missed you <3 i've been hella busy myself (cough i have four ap tests in a row next week) but it's always lovely to see you around haha

hmm there are definitely a fair share of really well written meta regarding a not-slanderized makorra, but i don't really have any specific links on me rn. i'll just give you my sparknotes version of what i'd imagine, which might end up combined with stuff i've read from other people that i don't remember reading

i'd probably postpone them more than the series did — which, granted, they did write it with one season in mind, so i'll give them that. (i would argue that it's still a valid explanation for certain writing choices, because even though the books were commissioned before the release of their predecessors, it's not like the writers get to just rewrite the ending spontaneously bc episodes aren't constructed chronologically lol) okay ignoring that tangent

i'm okay with the love triangle in season 1 as it is because even though it's insane, it also checks out on all parts for korra, asami, and mako in terms of backstory and personality at this point in the story. korra is socially unaware because she never interacted with people her age or really Society, asami is desperately lonely and values good intent above all else, and mako is also impressively socially stunted and has the pressure of financial concerns as well. (if it were up to me, i would either just commit to korrasami or makorra from the start and add in the third if going in the throuple direction. i'm going off on a tangent again)

i have conflicting feelings about endgame. on one hand, makorra is so full circle by concluding the way they do here — mako's first encounter with korra he treats her like he doesn't give a shit that she's the avatar, the first person to ever do so; yet, by the end when korra's absolutely devastated and believes her only value was as the avatar, mako tells her straight up that he doesn't care if she's the avatar or not, as he has all along. it's genuinely so cute and i could honestly write so many more words about it than i did. but at the same time, i just would like to think that after the shitshow love triangle, they would put off getting together, perhaps as an overcompensation upon recognizing how they hurt asami.

since the latter route is the au i've decided to follow, so be it. in endgame, korra and mako still have their full circle moment and spinny-hug, but instead of kissing in front of naga they just longingly pine into one another's eyes. excessively so the viewers know. okay cut

season 2 they are rekindling their friendships with asami and asami is tired of watching them dance around their feelings for one another and also maybe pining just a little bit for korra but huh what. i would actually have to rewrite the entirety of lok to shift s2 into a readable mess. korra is still amazing as always and saves the world as always. oh also throw in some korrasami with the family betrayal theme. yeah i don't want to think too hard about this

see the struggle is that i love krew!friendship in season 3 so much but at the same time i feel like end of season 2 is the perfect time for a makorra get-together instead of a makorra breakup, seeing that korra has literally changed the entire world all by herself because she is so amazing. so alas, we'll go with end of season 2. mako no longer lives under his desk to hide from korrasami and in the two weeks between s2 and s3 they are done with their honeymoon phase so they'll just be as they are through s3 tbh. honestly there was so much makorra shipteasing throughout canon s3 that i don't really think there'd need to be too much rewriting. they're still the level-head/kick-the-door-down-subtlety duo within the krew dynamics and they're still clearly very important to each other specifically. the makorra hug before korra goes up to face zaheer might be drawn out even more and maybe something sweet couples say idk. (i have so much rizz i know wht i'm saying)

korra gets even more trauma for a lifetime (again), and three years pass. korra writes to asami once as in canon because by the time she feels human enough to pick up a pen, she doesn't even know how to talk to mako, let alone try to address the guilt of ignoring the guy who devoted himself to her so thoroughly. asami understands what it is to lose. mako (& bolin) has lost more than anyone else once perhaps but i think that the trauma repression means that that was never processed and he would be terrible to talk to about any of this. he's been there, but he doesn't understand it, if that makes sense.

okay so korra comes back, makorrasami dinner (ig the shitling that canon wu is is there also), makorrasami train fight, then we have remembrances and beyond the wilds — y'know, the korrasami/makorra episodes respectively. korra is now experiencing feelings for both of them Oh Fuck. by default i would say that masami has been hooking up through these three years but since makorra was a thing through s3 then i retract that; however, their friendship has rekindled very deeply as the only two members of the krew left in the city. and mako & korra have not discussed what they were or what they want to be at all, just been adamantly dancing around the subject.

blah blah kuvira blah blah city blows up then the wedding then bam!!!! mako's love confession to korra is actually a love confession to korra (wdym "i'll follow you into battle no matter how crazy things get; i've got your back and i always will" ISN'T a confession of love). korra is joined by both mako and asami after tenzin leaves, asami grieves, and the three of them have a moment together that has very heavy implications for throuple-ism. then bolin pulls up very devastated that he has missed the final krew party. cue the laughter, cue korra's final delivery of "i'll always try to restore balance" bc it should've been here instead as the three of them stare at the changed city before them, and cut.

(yes krew should've had the final scene together. i've said it before that i don't think korrasami was particularly well written, but i still like them and the ending is still very sweet. however, i hate that they completely disregarded the rest of the cast for the final episode instead of giving them a scene together, even if not the very last one, bc of how that translated over into the entire fandom… i mean what. and the spirit world vacation is a sweet sentiment but also i feel that korra would never immediately go leave on a vacation immediately after everything that just happened and her declarations of duty. i don't think i articulated that very well. but yes.)

[thegeminisage]

as someone who wasn't around in 2014....can you tell me what it was like? (stucky) can you give me a taste of the gardens of babylon etc

what was it like...this is such a fun question i want you to know i gave serious thought to my answer and also discussed it at length with my 2014 friend last night and i know already it's gonna be so long. sorry that i answered your ask at fuck o clock in the morning i am scheduling it to go up later and also at the time you sent the ask in to make sure you see it

ok so like. i mean, you're on the fandom website, right, so i assume youve been in fandoms. idk if youve ever been in a really, REALLY big fandom, at the same time that said fandom was also producing content (even if the source material was not). think d*stiel post nov 5, or undert*le circa late 2015/early 2016, or z*lda after totk came out, or h*rry p*tter as the seventh book was being released. (i'm censoring to avoid a false positive of anybody's blacklist except in the case of the last one, which i am censoring out of <3 disrespect.) like there's something REALLY luxurious about being in ANY large and active fandom and it's mostly the power of crowdsourcing. st*r tr*k 2009's tarsus iv headcanons. the storm trooper lore re: the f*rce awakens before the second two movies came out. everyone just kind of agreeing that dean w*nchester was a teenage hooker. you know?

like, that's "just fanon," sure, but part of the beauty of it is that no one person makes up fanon, we all gather in the biggest writing group in the world and collectively go insane and bat ideas back and forth. there are a hundred THOUSAND fics about bucky barnes on ao3 and that's just the people who were writing, not even counting artists and gifmakers and meta-writers and people who just reblog stuff. i can't possibly begin to put an accurate number to how many people are in any given fandom at any given time, but imagine (on the low end, i'm sure) there are THOUSANDS, perhaps tens of thousands, of people going nuts about stevebucky at all times. tens of THOUSANDS people doing "yes and" with each other on the internet 24 hours a day seven days a week. it's just like being in any fandom, you log on to your dash and see what the mewchies posted while you were gone, but in a fandom so huge and so active you were getting bombarded with idea after idea after idea every single second, so if you don't like one you're spoiled for choice in what you engage with next. it didn't even matter that cap3 was two years away or that it sucked when it finally got here because we collectively wrote cap3 a million times over. like, genuinely, it was a mass creative exercise. it's the biggest writing group in the world. for better or worse, we were shaping our own version of that universe, without any input from or regard to the people who actually created the characters and movie, in a way that compelled most strongly to our own tastes and demographic.

what made this particular movie/fandom special though was a few things. firstly i still genuinely believe it was ahead of its time...marvel shit pre disney was allowed to be political in ways it is ABSOLUTELY not now. like, cap2 could say "the government is secretly full of nazis and they all need to burn" in 2014 two years before the 2016 election and 7 years before jan 6. like you just couldn't say that now. "war bad" is an oldie but goodie, but "our entire government is corrupt and needs to be torn into flaming pieces and cast into the potomac" is um. pretty radical. so is, by the way, "men as victims" and "men having emotions" etcetc. like, not in fandom, fandom all but invented that shit, but as far as dumb superhero movies go. i can't tell you the number of metas i read AND WROTE discussing steve rogers and masculinity and how all that was portrayed, intentionally or not, in that fucking film. i had entire separate universes built up in my head for steve who was born a cis girl and steve who decided later in life that "nonbinary" or "trans woman" was a better fit and then steve who was born as a cis boy and remained a man his whole life but felt weird and different ways about being queer which clashed with the weird and different ways BARNES felt about being queer. i'm not saying the film (or the fandom! good lord) was perfect, it was a product of its time, but it was also WAY ahead of its time too. it was weird to expect the next film to come out and actually, like, be good. it wasnt, but we fully believed it would be and that wasn't delusional behavior because the last one had been. i would never have that kind of faith in a marvel project now because they've been bought by disney.

oh yeah and that's the other thing too like. speaking of queer people. gay marriage wasn't legal in the US on a federal level until 2015, and you couldn't just flip on your TV and see them whenever you wanted. ten years doesn't seem like that long ago in the grand scheme of things but like, we lived on glee and cw/mtv queerbait (disclaimer that i personally only participated in cw queerbait) and that was it. we had crumbs. and like when people write gay characters theyre Just Gay, but if you decide to be crazy stupid in a slash fandom you can decide these layered characters are gay and that's even better rep than um whatever was going on in other pieces of media. these guys are both so lonely and out of step with time and lack other people with "shared life experiences" (girl what the hell was that) and their connection w each other keeps them afloat in a world that doesn't want them so like of COURSE it seems like it's supposed to be romantic. and like, i could and did make myself and my tumblr buds crrrazy (and got made crazy by them) thinking about:

how steve's size when small and again when big interacted w his gender identity and his sexuality and how that sexuality manifested. barnes's identity As A Man hinging on his ability to go to war for his country bc Thats What Men Did but now he's no longer fit because theres worms in his brain. loss of bodily autonomy which usually happens to women and natasha being later in that journey than steve and bucky are and so close to being at peace with it but not there yet. stigmatization of seeking treatment for mental health issues lessened by the presence of sam who could have been a Macho Tough Guy but actually gives off strong Talk About Our Feelings And Be Soft vibes. don't even get me started on the relationship (predatory) between steve and rumlow and how it parallels the one between barnes and pierce (and if any of you motherfuckers BREATHE a word of that h*dra tr*sh p*rty shit in my direction i will END you) and the stigma that comes from being preyed on when vulnerable As Men. steve's depression and ptsd and him getting triggered by, yes, the fucking ALS ice bucket challenge. the collective belief that he was conscious when he was frozen even though nobody said that so that he and barnes could have that in common too. the headcanon about barnes having roma heritage - shoutout to not easily conquered my beloved, and the 14k smut coda i wrote for it✌ speaking of smut, i would be remiss also not to mention there was a STRONG element of collective lust involved. i'm immune to 99% of it bc im ace but the winter soldier was uh. VERY graceful. you know? i didn't write 14k of porn because i was uncompelled. we were on one. we went fucking crazy. fandom in general but especially big fandoms have a kind of nonstop endless well of creative energy born from obsession that is the absolute envy of people like my mortal enemy grrm. we NEVER quit.

also, HISTORY (and other vaguely educational subjects). we were all so desperate to know how steve and bucky would have lived in the years we couldn't see them it sparked a sitewide interest in 1940s american history. there was a thing about bananas tasting different now because of a plague. m&ms being invented as wartime candy. stuff about how shoebox apartments looked and how rations worked. 1940s recipes and radio shows. the 1940s queer movement and how it interacted with ballroom dancing and private drag get-togethers. how amputations work and how prosthetic limbs work in real life so we could extrapolate it to fantasy. how to hand-draw that fucking arm in photoshop. why soldiers are trained to say their serial numbers when captured. what ww2 was like. what dog tags are for. what did they get in the ration packs. what brand of cigarettes did they smoke. what brand (and i am being so serious, i STILL own a tube) of LIPSTICK did peggy carter use. caloric intake of someone with a 4x speed metabolism and how much famine peanut butter he'd need to eat daily to keep from starving to death. oppression of irish immigrants and their children/grandchildren back in the 1940s. the difference between conservatives and fascists, back when there was a difference. what activities generally took place on these mysterious but ever-present new york city docks. just exactly HOW many terrible movies and tv shows has sebastian stan been in ranked by his resemblance to james buchanan barnes in each one. (i personally went through his entire imdb list at the time and then made a venn diagram.) electroswing! teachers and professors would have killed for their classes to have the kind of enthusiasm a bunch of mentally ill teenagers and 20-somethings on tunglr dot edu were showing about this one very specific set of subjects. this film also sparked my love of fight scenes. if you've read this fic or this fic and liked the Big Fight Scenes in them, you can thank cap2 for leading me down that path.

and then yes there was also discourse. my personal most hated thing was the above mentioned h*dra tr*sh p*rty (DO NOT GOOGLE THAT, i will just tell you it's nazi rape porn🤢 and i hope everyone involved is having a bad day today) and also the fact that SOME FUCKING PEOPLE can't understand "don't be shitheads about a fanfic where the author can see you doing it." but then ofc people were also sexist about nat and racist about sam and minimalizing those guys (and every other character besides tony really but sometimes him too) for the two white male leads was a whole thing. and on the funnier side of things you had (justifiably, i suppose) bitter st*ny fans who HATED what those two got in avengers and got real mad when stucky started outpacing them on ao3. and people complaining about the characters being too uwu soft. and then other people arguing whether or not barnes counted as disabled when he was missing a Whole arm. and THEN discourse about was it ethical to remove the arm and build him a new one ESPECIALLY without his consent (if people don't know they're being ableist in their fanfics hypothetically is it still ok to kill them with hammers?) and why was tony doing it if that guy killed his parents and is it ok that we keep making tony not that mad about his dead parents is it not enough that barnes stole his limelight as the guy who gets shipped with steve but what if all three of them fucked but can you really fuck the guy who offed your folks but ACTUALLY isn't it cringe to like tony anyway since RDJ and gwenyth paltrow are bad people and who says chris evans are sebastian stan are such good people etcetcetc. and let us not even get started on the plausibility of the avengers tower fanon after age of ultron came out and it turns out nobody became friends and they all still hated and mistrusted each other. and whether or not the avengers could be considered found family if the other characters were constantly getting shafted into being barnes's little support animals. and then ofc every once in awhile one of the actors of people involved creatively would say something ranging from mildly controversial to absolutely horrible on the internet and we'd all fight about THAT for awhile like a dog with a bone. i mean. typical infighting of any fandom tbh.

but i was very happy. it was all the most enormous thought experiment and creative endeavor (and semi-educational adventure??) that we all participated in daily for like two-ish years without stopping ever. i loved doing it. AND, when you click with a piece of media like that, you also click with other people who clicked with that same piece of media, so in addition to the sheer level of dopamine going into my brain at all times i also formed decade-long friendships that will certainly last the entirety of my lifetime, and when we're in our 90s in nursing homes i will be able to say, "we are friends because i wrote 14k of smut for your fanfic" or "we are friends because i couldn't get enough of your gifsets" or whatever because you know, we quite literally went to stucky together.

[officialgleamstar]

:3 Any class (and subclass) headcanons/ideas/theories for Lark? Vaguely related, I can't stop thinking about the fact the he just whistled up a fucking portal last episode?????

i have always assumed lark was a ranger, which is one reason why i was so flabbergasted by grant being the kiddads' ranger. i still think he should be a ranger, a horizon walker ranger specifically, even if it would be dumb and unbalanced for them to have two rangers. literally it makes the most sense. lark is the most ranger guy ever. however, i already made a full post about ranger subclasses for grant, including the reasoning for horizon walker that also applies to lark (namely what you said - WHISTLING TO SUMMON A PORTAL? HORIZON WALKER TYPE SHIT.) SO i will delve into some different ideas instead

if he's not a ranger, then i would guess that he is a fighter, battle master subclass, or a rogue, assassin subclass, with likelihood (in my opinion!) being in that order. thats the tldr. heres the long version LOL:

fighter - fighters are known for being able to wield a wide array of weapons, which makes sense for lark, since he is such a doomsday prepper. he would want to be able to use any weapon he got his hands on. also, indomitable fits lark really well in my opinion. if we wanna talk gear, i'd probably give him chainmail (flavored as bullet-proof vest), two martial weapons (two daggers), a light crossbow and 20 bolts (flavored as a pistol and ammo), and the pack i'm not sure on. i dont think im gonna do gear on every single class but its just part of being a fighter to me to consider that-- subclass wise, we have a few options, listed in order of most to least likely (subjective.)

battle master - the most likely one to me, though now that sparrow seems to be set up as more of the leader than lark, that might change (though i do think that maybe sparrow just takes the head in talking since he's more. uh. sociable than everyone else rn LOL). given how much enemies monologue in dndads, 'know your enemy' would be a super useful skill, and i think if he was spec'd out similar to gerard from neverafter (mostly in the ability to grant other players extra attacks), this would make a lot of sense for him.

champion - listing this because on a meta-level, its extremely easy to play, which makes it an easy pick for anthony. however, i dont think it fits him character-wise because lark would never heal himself LMAO though, to be fair, i dont think the kiddads will ever level up that high

arcane archer - not the best subclass, but very cool to me, and fitting for how all of the kiddads are gun-heavy. banishing arrow would be super useful and fit the general theme of planes and dimensions.

eldritch knight - not as likely, but i think it would be sooo so cool for lark, especially if the eldritch part came from his connection to the doodler. ohhh the drama of gaining power from the eldritch being you swore to eradicate… plus, we get LARK CASTING MAGIC, even if its not as powerful as anything his family can do! so cool!!! this subclass isnt as good for range, but i could see anthony allowing war magic to apply to ranged weapons rather than just blades for the cool factor.

samurai - in general, this subclass is not lark. however, i wanted to mention it because i think their 18th level ability 'strength before death' specifically is very lark. basically, if you get knocked down to zero HP, you can use a reaction to get an entire turn and then you go into death saves. theoretically, you could use this to heal, but its lark - he absolutely would use it to go down swinging.

rogue - other people have made this point for me, but rogues are good for guns if you flavor hand crossbows as such. i actually dont really like rogue for lark, but i dont have a reason why LOL it just doesnt really? do it for me. however, i agree that its likely to fit due to what we know about lark, so i will play my own personal devil's advocate here. i think it makes sense for lark to be the sneaky attacker while the others draw most of the attention, especially since it seems like there would be three magic users (terry jr, nicky, and sparrow) in the group. magic can be used sneakily, but im sure nicky and sparrow at least would lean towards showiness, lol. plus, i think it would be really interesting to flavor 'slippery mind' as like, lark growing a resistance to the doodler after so many years under its influence! once again, subclasses are listed most likely to least likely.

assassin - this works from both an in-character and a meta standpoint, and from what i've seen, this is what people mean when they say lark should be a rogue. its an easy subclass to play, so its good for an NPC. character-wise, with lark's extreme paranoia, it makes sense that lark would spend time studying how to most efficiently kill people. he doesn't want to risk anyone in a drawn-out fight, he's not grant. he just wants things dead as fast as possible.

scout - am i just saying this one is likely being its the ranger-flavored rogue subclass? maybe. but like liSTEN LARK SHOULD BE A RANGER HE IS LITERALLY A RANGER HE IS-

phantom - not very likely, but SEVERELY COOL from a character standpoint. walk with me here. phantom is a rogue subclass where you talk to the dead, but imagine that reflavored as lark being able to talk to like, eldritch beings, even beyond the doodler? or like, maybe the spirits of those killed and used by the doodler? holy SHIT!! it would be COOL.

unfortunately none of this has an explanation on lark whistling a portal Which Is Why He Is A Horiz- [shot] im guessing he has a magical item tho!!!

[hexhomos]

I'm sorry if you've been asked this before but what are your thoughts about Arcane potentially being canon? I do not like it.

And if you don't mind answering another question, how do you feel about the way people sort of interpret Jayce and Viktor?

I don't think it's a good idea and it strips away many of the interesting things about these characters and the *universe's story as a whole* to exclusively represent the simplified, time-limited version of events that could fit the runtime of a TV show.

I've been asked this before and I always say this: Arcane is the MCU version of league lore; with the same strengths (improved visuals, the fast pacing of a cinematographic adaptation) and same biggest weaknesses (flimsy story summarizations that sacrifice a lot of the compelling narrative and kill entire characters)

I've been a comic fan for nearly as long as the MCU has been viral and I can tell you every attempt to retcon MCU events into the estabilished comic universe has not worked. It has the opposite effect of interrupting character arcs and stories people actually like and undoing pre-estabilished facts about the magic of the universe, driving away fans of the original medium while failing to attract the new movie/tv-show audience to check out the original, because those are completely different demographics.

It's even worse with Arcane, as we already KNOW one big joke in the fanbase is "even if you like the show, dont play the game. It's stupid bigoted redditor shit and it sucks" - there's an entire genre of arcane fan accounts who are militant about not playing the game and encourage others to never play the game. I don't think league's execs understand this, though, which is why we are seeing this current trend of a DRASTIC pullback in any and all lore-related content for league coming from higher-ups, and some of the old estabilished writers leaving the company while CEOs promise they're trying to find "an unified version of the narrative experience."

To stay on topic here and also answer your second question; ive rambled at length about jayce viktor interpretations in my meta tag. I reccomend you to look there! You'll notice i havent gone into specifics about what in arcane's narrative is weaker since its included on those.

I'd like to finish this post in another way though. In the long run, I don't think it matters that execs are trying to force narrative retcons despite the internal and external negative response to it. Fans will always like the specific thing they like, and in this scenario, start to define what versions of the universe/character they're talking about by release year or authorship, which is already happening in league. This is why the vikjayce codex exists and will not change, and this is why you see people using "2011/2016 lore" and "jayce giopara", etc.

Remember all these MCU retcons I mentioned? Whenever a movie is past its expiration date and the story element they tried to fit into original canon is considered a fad, it's just rewritten back to what it used to be. The newest marvel news this month is that CEOs decided to kill kamala khan ahead of her upcoming movie, as the MCU couldn't fit her signature elastigirl powers and they want to swap those out for the dumb purple magic the movies gave her instead. This will not last, as these never do. In 4 years she'll be back to normal, and in the meantime, elastigirl kamala will continue to exist in all her source books and videogames. The same way league's original bios are preserved and spin-off game content like the LOR comics or Convergence will continue to exist; I can't change any shortsighted decision from the CEOs, but fans as a whole have systems to define different universes and pick the version they like best.

Arcane has been called an AU by people who've worked in LoL's narrative, and is just the newest shiny thing. It is not "canon", as it never fit any part of the current game universe, and any future attempt to "make it canon" is just another permutation of an AU. I would encourage anyone who's nervous or anxious about retcons to not give a shit and disregard it altogether. If it doesn't work, you can always change it back.

[whistlingstarlight]

For character thoughts Crutchie cause I could straight up talk about him for ages

Same same same! I love Crutchie 💖

Okay now usually I tend to refer to the more common depiction of him as a polio survivor, but I wanna talk a bit about him in the UK show, as Matthew Duckett gave me some very interesting insights when I talked to him on one of my last visits:

According to Matthew, his Crutchie is neither a polio survivor nor does he have cerebral palsy like Matthew himself does. Instead, his Crutchie likely received his injury in a trolley accident, either getting on or off whilst trying to sell to passengers.

This is a bit of a morbid backstory, but honestly I love it. Accidents happen, shit happens. A lot of newsies lost limbs, eyes and such in a variety of ways, accidents like a trolley running over your leg isn't out of the equation.

To me that implies he had another name as a newsie before the accident, whether that was his birth name or perhaps a different nickname. Was the switch to Crutchie one he came up with to adjust to the situation, or one given to him? If it's the latter, did he accept it willingly or take time to adjust?

I've seen some people interpret Crutchie as having developed the polio before being a newsie or during, but Matthew's backstory confirms his version of Crutchie became disabled during his time selling papers. And as someone who also received a long-term injury on the job, I feel very seen.

I plan on asking Matthew more about this when I see the show again next month, the amount of research he's done on newsies and how disabled people were treated in the time period makes his portrayal feel very authentic.

This ended up a bit more meta than intended😅 If you're after more headcanon stuff you can find some on this post: https://www.tumblr.com/whistlingstarlight/719507295742115840/if-youre-still-looking-to-infodump-about-the?source=share

[esther-dot]

GRRM's treatment of Ratgar is something I go back and forth on a lot and is a prime example why Death of the Author is a thing lol. I saw one fan say that anyone with critical thinking skills (so let's remove Targies from the equation) would see R as a douchebag but she was annoyed because she thinks GRRM himself does not see R that way and I kind of agree lol. I keep seeing some meta writers saying that GRRM "definitely thinks badly of R and R/L is some commentary on grooming", etc., and I'm not saying I totally disagree, but I 100 percent believe when GRRM conceived of R/L he meant for it to be a romantic, completely consensual star crossed lovers situation and R was meant to be a tragic, but Capital R romantic figure. However, that fan also said that because so much time has passed since he wrote the first book (90s to 2023 lmao) a lot of the shit GRRM romanticized is now seen as problematic and would need to be "fixed" or retconned. That being said, I don't think ADOS will see the light of day so we may never get the full R/L backstory or GRRM may choose to have what happened with R/L forever be some amorphous mystery (the more I think of it the more I think this will be the case for various reasons). I also don't think GRRM himself has a lot of what happened worked out in his head as he is not a plotter, but a seat of his pants writer and changes things as they go. He's the type that puts things in his writing that look/sound cool or interesting and then needs to find a way to bring it together which is one of the reasons it's taking him forever to get the second to last book out.

(in reference to this ask)

I agree we need to remember the impact of his style of writing. He made a blog post last year talking about that, how he can reach a dead end or explores and finds something wonderful, how he’s discovering things as he writes, so it’s good to strive to be as open minded to revelations as the author is. Although yes, we should all feel free to dislike and criticize some of those developments!

My hesitancy to believe Martin has changed his perspective on Rhaegar is that in AGOT we get Lyanna’s anti Robert stance (anti unfaithful husbands) which imo is the biggest “Lyanna wouldn’t have wanted to go with Rhaegar” sign we have. And then it is in ACOK I believe, that we get prophecy baby as an additional motivation for Rhaegar to pursue Lyanna, not love. It’s later, ASOS (I think), when we learn she wept while he sang which to me would be where we see the “love story” theory really enters the picture. That’s why I feel like Martin’s version is likely “complex” rather than one thing. As in, to me, he’s adding layers, making us understand the initial story isn’t entirely correct and slowly unraveling the truth, not changing directions.

Agentrouka has talked about parallels between R/L and Jon/Ygritte, with Jon in the “maiden” role being moved by the singer, but Jon believed he loved Ygritte, and Sansa believed she loved Joffrey (another Stark maiden charmed by someone who sang to her), which is why I think Lyanna willingly went even if in the end, she regretted it. But even that...when I read Ned’s memories of her dying while holding the crown of roses...idk. It’s definitely romanticized. Like, holding a lock of hair or a dry flower from a lover as someone dies is something I’ve read before, so perhaps we’re meant to read that and damn Rhaegar for being the cause of her death, but I’m not sure. Whenever/if I ever do a reread, I’ll be open to being swayed in either direction.

I’ve said before that I think Martin has a much more expansive view of people than I do, as in, he truly doesn’t want us to allow one bad thing they do to negate the good, and on the one hand, cool, we’ve all made mistakes so we can appreciate the concept, but on the other, I’m not sure I agree with him on what is or isn’t a forgivable wrong. Based on things he’s said about Dany, I know that we don’t have the same view of teen girls, and that has impacted what I think he’s capable of writing.

I do agree that there will be a lot of things that we have conflicting views on without getting a clear cut answer. It might feel like a cop out, but it’s interesting to deny the reader an emphatic, authorial “here is the truth” and leave them to determine it themselves. For a series utilizing the POV structure, that seems fitting, and I’m sure that will be true for some prophecies as well. What is the truth? We have to determine it. 🤷🏻‍♀️