#both about the story itself and the way the fandom reacts and talks about it

[toxifoxx]

How does it make you feel that M Preg is a canonical thing in FNAF?

i mean i kind of have mixed feelings it's obviously used as a tool of horror and is supposed to be gross and shocking, and it's always used as a shocking thing in the fandom too. not that it's unexpected but you can tell people think of a man being pregnant as something hilarious and outlandish/impossible, it's either something to laugh at or be disgusted by. and as a trans man myself it's just kind of like hmm. Hmmmm

[stonegoldsxcrxt]

Ah, Star Wars fans. Once again perpetuating the Draco in Leather Pants trope to the point where we're all sick of it. Do I have to beat someone with the 'He's-Supposed-To-Be-Evil' Stick or something?

yeah. the acolyte itself as a show is straddling a line right now that, I'm sorry, I kind of don't think the Star Wars fandom at large is media literate enough to understand.

I've already seen a number of tiktoks and tumblr posts saying, "omg now I understand reylos," which besides being exhausting and annoying, immediately proves my point. There's obviously some differences between reylo and whatever osha/qimir is called within both production and the narrative, but overall what I'm baffled by every. single. time. is how weirdly everyone in the star wars fandom reacts to an attractive male villain blatantly manipulating a young woman.

I think the acolyte is clearly aiming for us to see and understand that Qimir is manipulating Osha. We know Qimir is clever. We saw him successfully worm his way out of being caught by the Jedi by playing up the "quirky sidekick" shtick. What I don't think a lot of the audience picks up on is just how smart he is. During one of his and Osha's conversations, he lets her suggest things and make assumptions, ie:

Osha: Where’d you get that scar?

Qimir: How do you think I got it?

Osha: Looks like someone stabbed you in the back.

Qimir: Someone who threw me away.

Osha: Your Jedi Master?

And then he doesn't correct her or elaborate. He lets her assume the worst. He lets her imagination wander. He's not interested in explaining because he knows the real story, whatever it may be, doesn't make him look as favorable as her idea. It's exchanges like that that are subtle examples of his manipulation, less obvious than the outright goading he uses against her when he gets her to admit she thinks of herself as a failure and that's why she left the Jedi.

There's also the earlier exchange:

Osha: He’s found me before, and his strength in the Force is very powerful.

Qimir: You think that’s his strength? That’s your strength in the Force, Osha. Someone ought to teach you that.

To a lot of people, that sounds like a compliment. But it isn't. Qimir makes a statement vague enough that successfully implies the Jedi have been lying to Osha about her own strength in the Force while also keeping just enough information to himself that he knows Osha will stick around to find out what he meant, instead of swimming to the ship he points out to her right after. And she does exactly that, continues to follow and engage in argument and conversation with him.

In fact, Qimir knows the more Osha talks to him, the more Osha even entertains the idea of talking to him instead of leaving, the more he can get inside her head. His naked swimming jaunt isn't him flaunting or showing off for Osha in some genuinely romantic way– it's yet another manipulation tactic. Though, if she is seduced, that helps him too.

Qimir purposefully makes himself into a vulnerable state in front of her to lull her into a false sense of security. He leaves his weapon with his clothes so she has the opportunity to take it; he is signalling to her that he is "completely" disarmed, though that is not true, since we know he is far stronger in the Force and in combat, and, perhaps, more cunning than Osha. His nudity forces Osha to acknowledge he is human, and Qimir benefits from Osha thinking of him as just a quirky, charming loner who's the victim of the Jedi, who offers her soup and disrobes in front of her.

The reason I know that none of this is genuine is simple. He goes back and forth between flat out acting as if he pities Osha ("Why do you love people who can only go so far?") but that doesn't get him the reaction he's looking for, so he bounces back to antagonizing her ("Why aren’t you a Jedi, Osha?) to finally, convincing her that she is similar to him ("I understand.") None of these things are actually Qimir trying to get to know Osha. Sure, he needs to understand her to manipulate her, but he'd do or say anything to get her to stick around and allow him to corrupt her further.

to me, Qimir is kind of the Star Wars equivalent to like a mimic species in the animal world. He's smart enough to know that in order to get what he wants, he has to act a certain way that isn't necessarily his real personality, and he can exploit Osha's (and anyone else's, for that matter) feelings by molding his personality and actions to achieve his goals so his victims are less likely to notice that he's using them.

The problem is that a big portion of the audience doesn't appear to recognize it, either. We know the rules of the Star Wars universe very well by now. Force Users this deep in the Dark Side cannot actually love someone. Sure, they can be obsessed with someone, but they cannot actually reciprocate feelings as the Dark Side corrupts them.

I've come to the conclusion that the majority of people watching Star Wars are not watching with the intention of picking up on any of this, despite the fact that the acolyte is actually doing it quite masterfully. They are paying attention to Manny Jacinto's muscles, and little else. You cannot argue or convince people who do not want to listen. They did not want to listen in 2017, when the reddest of red flags "You're nothing, but not to me," line was delivered, which had all the subtlety of being hit over the head with an anvil, and they are not listening now. If people are able to be gaslit by Kylo Ren into believing his victim card was validated, they will certainly and inevitably be gaslit by Qimir, who, so far, is much more cunning.

the acolyte even *plans* for this though, deliberately and suddenly cutting to the scene of Jecki's lifeless body, reminding the audience that Qimir is not the quirky, charming, harmless loner who he presents himself to be, but actually a man who we know to be capable of unspeakable acts of violence towards even children. at this point, I can't actually see any reason why the fandom continues to act like he is in love with Osha in any kind of genuine manner when it's so mind-blowingly obvious that he is male manipulator #1.

I think does a huge disservice to the story the acolyte seems to be trying to present at this point to be so blind with lust or whatever it is the fandom feels towards this guy that his own tactics have begun to work on them. it's actually so incredible that it makes me a bit ill. they may find him hot all they want, but for the love of Leia Organa's Star Wars at least recognize his tactics for what they are instead of also allowing yourself to be fooled!!

[analysisn3rd]

Sherlock Holmes is autistic. I will tell you why.

Although I feel like this is something that’s talked about a lot in the Sherlock Holmes fandom, I wanted to write about it just because I like talking about it; Sherlock Holmes is autistic. There’s a lot of things, clues, pieces of evidence, whatever you want to call it, present in the ACD canon to prove this and I will present it to you.

Autistic stereotypes and how Holmes fits into them and doesn’t simultaneously

There are many autistic traits that are considered stereotypical, but the one I mean here is the “cold, emotionless, non-empathetic, calculating machine” autistic stereotype, which Holmes does fit into, but he also doesn’t. Despite the use of this very description in several of the short stories, Holmes doesn’t fit this description quite well. It may be what people see on the surface, it may be what people are first faced with when they meet Holmes, but it’s not the truth, or, more accurately, it’s not the complete truth.

As I’ve written before in one of my analyses about Holmes, he doesn’t lack empathy. He’s quite empathetic, and he cares a lot about people (specifically Watson, Mrs Hudson and his clients), but he shows it in a different manner than others normally would. He shows it by listening to people and believing their stories and caring about them, not just for the thrill of the case or the mystery behind it. There have been several cases where everything was mostly resolved, he didn’t need to dig deeper than he had and the answer was not as unclear as it normally is, but Holmes didn’t leave it be until his client got the closure they needed. There have been other cases where he didn’t think that it was going to be an important affair, but, because he understands what his client might be feeling, he heard them out and helped them to the best of his ability. With Watson, there have been several examples of him showing that he cares about him and that he truly values him, and the same goes to Mrs Hudson.

Holmes also isn’t emotionless; he tends to express emotions in different ways than “normal” people would, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t possess them. He also reacts differently from “normal” in some situations, like how, during one of the more grim cases, he was able to take his mind completely off of it and talk, rather animatedly, about one of the topics that he was researching (which is probably to do with his research subjects being his special interests, something that’ll be talked about below)

Saying that Holmes is a “calculating deduction machine” isn’t necessarily incorrect, but I think that it takes away from his humanity quite a lot. The reason why he’s so good at deduction (well. It’s not really deduction, it’s induction, but that’s a discussion for another day) is because of his pattern-recognition ability and high attention to detail, both of which are things that are quite common within autistic people due to the way that their brains process information; something that’s called ‘bottom-up’ processing, where the details are processed before the big picture.

I will now talk about certain autistic traits and aspects of being autistic and how this is found within the Holmes canon.

Special Interests

A great portion of autistic people have specific, sometimes called rigid, interests that are also called special interests. Holmes has several of these and they’re mentioned quite a lot within the series.

The most evident one is deduction in of itself and mysteries. As we’ve seen several times within the series, when Holmes doesn’t have a case, or anything that he finds engaging like another special interest of his, he feels awful, to put it in simpler terms, and he experiences what Watson calls his “black moods”. 

Some of his other special interests are chemistry, especially when it involves forensics, which is something that he’s seen doing quite a lot and spending hours upon hours carrying out experiments to see if his hypothesis was correct or not, much like what he was doing when he initially met Watson in ‘Study in Scarlet’. 

Music is another one, which is something that he’s quite knowledgeable about, and he likes to engage with this particular interest by attending concerts with Watson and by playing the violin, where he either plays melodies to reflect his thoughts and feelings or composed symphonies that he and/or Watson enjoy.

Another is bees (and nature to an extent), which is something that he’s very interested in, considering how he took up bee-keeping during his retirement and how he’s written several monographs about it.

Aside from his special interests, he’s also had various hyperfixations throughout the stories, which he’d write monographs about as well.

Social differences

It’s very obvious how Holmes interacts with people differently compared to other characters, and the ways in which his social interactions differ is very similar to that of autistic people. 

One of the ways in which this presents is how blunt Holmes is. He’s very truthful and he doesn’t realise that what he’s saying, which he mostly means in a very literal, very genuine way, could be taken in another way. An example of this is this quote, which is from ‘The Hound of Baskerville’: “It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it”. This, amongst several other compliments from Holmes, tend to sound backhanded and they’re mostly read as him being snarky or simply mean to whoever he was saying them to, but I think that he just meant it in a very literal way.

Another way that his social differences present is how he doesn’t quite understand other people, especially women, where he tells Watson quite often that he’s the one who understands and appeals to the “fairer sex” from the both of them. His not really understanding people also shows up in how he’s never really having a friend before Watson or Victor Trevor; he’s never really understood anyone aside from them and I don’t think that anyone, aside from them, tried to understand Holmes back. I also think it’s evident that he doesn’t understand social norms by how he chooses not to comply with them. Holmes is a very logical person and if something doesn’t make sense to him, he simply wouldn’t do it and would probably deem it stupid.

Another thing that I don’t think is a social difference as much as it’s a difference in how Holmes sees the world is how he has a really strong sense of justice. His sense of morality is interesting, to say the least and I’ve discussed it before in one of my analyses of him, and his sense of justice kind of ties into it. Regardless of what he views as “right” and “wrong”, he will strongly defend what he believes and he wouldn’t let anything that he thinks is “wrong” slide. As I’ve written earlier, some cases had a fairly clear resolution and he could’ve just let them go, but it’s because he cares about his client and because he absolutely cannot let injustices simply pass without the persecutor getting punished, he solves the case until it’s completely resolved.

Masking

Generally speaking, Holmes doesn’t mask, and I think it’s mainly because he doesn’t really see a point in doing so; he doesn’t do it often, and the only instance of him masking is the beginning of ‘A Study in Scarlet’, when he and Watson hadn’t known one another quite well yet. He would hide parts of himself, he wouldn’t try to talk about any of his interests at all (to the point that Watson didn’t even know what he did for work until months after knowing him) and he made sure to be very neat and organised with everything, which is something that he most likely struggles with. However, once Watson found out about everything, he didn’t really bother masking again. 

Holmes’ struggles in relation to his autism

There are several things that autistic people struggle with (including communication, which I already discussed above) that Holmes also struggles with.

One of which is how he struggles with eating. I think that’s mainly because he doesn’t exactly feel hunger cues as most people would; he doesn’t exactly realise that he’s hungry until his stomach is cramping from the lack of food or he’s on the verge of passing out, which I think is a very believable conclusion considering how often he forgets to eat and Watson has to coax and/or remind him to do so. Another thing that Watson really helped him with is his injuries. I think it’s very likely that he doesn’t feel pain normally, which is something that happens to some autistic people, where they either feel it too much or too little; the latter is what Holmes struggles with. He doesn’t really notice injuries that he gets on cases because he doesn’t really feel the pain. This is most likely why he has several scars and acid burns on his hands when Watson first met him.

Another thing that I think he struggles with is executive dysfunction, especially when it comes to chores like cleaning his space and laundry, which is something that I recall Watson complaining about Holmes not doing in the beginning of one of the short stories. It’s possible that he has his own system when it comes to his organisation, but it was said in ‘Study in Scarlet’ that he was a very neat man, so I think it’s more reasonable to think that it’s just something that he always wants to start but could never really get to doing it due to executive dysfunction.

It’s also possible that Holmes struggles with sensory issues regarding his hair touching his face, which is why he always has it gelled back, and that he has them regarding facial hair, which is why he’s always described as clean-shaven (though I know that both of these could be due to other reasons as well).

I think that cocaine was Holmes’ way of self-medication. He needed something to help him through feelings of overwhelm and under-stimulation from the lack of cases, so he used it. It served as a distraction to him from his overwhelm and scarcity of mental stimulation that’s enough to keep him satisfied.

Similarly, I think that his habit of smoking was a way to keep his hands busy instead of stimming.

Due to all of the aforementioned reasons, I think that Sherlock Holmes is autistic.

[howlsofbloodhounds]

hey I was wondering, do you have any thoughts or headcannons about Crescent? (Killer and Nightmare most popular fanchild) I always thought that his existence would be very interesting for the interaction between the two but the fandom kind of completely ignores them when it comes to Crescent, which is really annoying because this has so much potential to traumatize both of them (especially Killer)

Oh man, it’s been awhile since i thought about anything related to shipkids or Crescent. Now I did talk about how I think Stage 2 Killer, the Killer Crescent is most likely to be familiar with, would think of, react to, feel about, and behave around children in general right here.

All is to say, i don’t think Killer would ever want children of his own. Any kids he may potentially have would be on accident or something he was not willingly doing or had a hand in.

I do still think Stage 2’s ways of thinking about people in general—not full “people,” unreal, objects of fascination and study, NPCs running on scripts and predicable, tools or resources, targets, threats, etc—would extend to his own kids.

If it was something he didn’t willingly partake in, he’d avoid confronting his lack of agency or desire for such a thing—and he wouldn’t think of any kids as his. He’d think, “they’re not mine. Just another way this body was used.” Or “the results of someone else’s choices” or in some cases, “a means to an end.”

At most, if the child was an accident and unplanned, he may begin to see the kid(s) as “his.” But not in the way a parent typically thinks about their child; just as a fact. They’re “biologically” or magically, I guess, his. They may even be his in the same way that, say, the phone I’m typing on to respond to this ask is mine.

I wouldn’t want anyone touching it without permission or going through it or breaking it or stealing it from me. I have a password to keep it safe. I have a case on it so its screen doesn’t break when I drop it. It’s a cute case. I make sure to charge it when it needs to be charged, manage its storage, try to avoid giving it any bugs or viruses and try to fix it if it does get any. I make sure not to overcharge and overheat it.

Sometimes I play around in its settings and try to figure out how it works, what it can and can’t do, what I can and can’t change about it. There’s ideas and worries and thoughts floating around that my phone could be used against me, leak my personal information, explode and hurt me, etc.

When it doesn’t work as intended or in a timely manner or does anything that happens to regular phones and are just natural or inconvenient, I get annoyed with it and think about throwing it at wall. I don’t do it—but killer would have a much harder time with a kid in this analogy then I would.

I am not conditioned to respond with violence to certain triggers—it just mildly annoyed me. And he may just have to forcibly remove himself from the situation/kid, if only because he doesn’t want this kid “controlling” him.

If I lost or broke my phone id be annoyed and frustrated, upset about all my data and photos and videos and memories being lost—but would ultimately move on with my life. I would more so be upset that I wasted the money of the person who bought and gifted the phone.

Of course things with Killer and any kids of his in this phone analogy don’t fit perfectly. For one thing he wouldn’t even bother getting a “phone” in this case, and if he ever accidentally ended up with one and he wasn’t able to “share” it with someone (raise the kid alongside the parent as support or have any form of support), he’d find someone else to take it.

If he couldn’t find anyone else to take it, and the phone was capable of being taught to care and look after itself, he might do that if he’s in the environment to do so (aka not with Nightmare), then leave once he’s sure it can. Probably wouldn’t think much of the phone again.

Now back to Crescent specifically. I forgot what his story was so I had to look up a wiki, which may not be reliable, but something in particular stood out to me and kinda made me laugh.

“Killer doesn't care about Crescent. When Nightmare said that they now have a child together, Killer commented on this news with an emotionless "Wow".”

Very silly of him to do. But makes sense, since it’s to my understanding that this kid was not made out of any love between Killer and Nightmare—Crescent was made purely for Nightmare’s plans.

It’s mentioned that Nightmare is the mother, and maybe possibly given birth (?) to him, so at least Killer didn’t have to experience the body horror of unwanted pregnancy. But the way it’s said makes me think he still definitely wasn’t given any choice in this matter.

I remember hearing around that Nightmare actually raised Crescent in his early years due to wanting to raise him “right.” I personally don’t see Nightmare doing any of the child rearing honestly, i think it’d actually be left to Killer.

And I already talked about how I think Killer would fare with having been ordered to care for a child in the linked post, but there’s the added bonus of Crescent being Killer and Nightmare’s kid, Killer’s unwanted kid, the fact that he was likely ordered by the Boss to train and basically indoctrinate Crescent into whatever plans Nightmare has for the kid.

It was mentioned that Crescent is resentful and resistant towards Nightmare and his plans, hiding the full extent of his powers simply to spite Nightmare. And while I do think Killer may be all for spiting Nightmare, there’s the fact that Crescent himself isn’t likely to face the consequences for his disobedience; Killer is.

Hell, in the darkest timeline, Killer may even be the one ordered to dish out any punishment on Crescent himself; encouraged to give in to his conditioning while also having to restrain himself from killing the kid.

But it’s more likely that Killer would face punishment from Nightmare for any disobedience Crescent displays. Which in turn builds Killer’s both resentment and feelings of being powerless, but also leads to deep repression which increases his apathy and indifference.

All in all, i think Killer would both fear and hate that kid deep down. Very deep. But enough that whenever he’s in Stage 1, he’ll stay far away from Crescent; and warn the kid to do the same. He may even arm Crescent with a way to protect himself from Killer, similar to the way he tells Color he has to kill him if he ever goes Stage 3.

Crescent would likely be raised with the knowledge that his father—the one whose been taking care of and raising him all these years, but may have also been the one to have greatly wounded and betrayed him (regardless of choice or not)— is a danger to him, and one day, he may have to kill him—or he’d die instead.

[theheirofthesharingan]

Do you believe in the "curse of hatred" that Tobirama won't shut up about? Are Uchihas really dangerous like that?

I've never really gone into Tobirama's head because I don't personally like him as a character/person, but I did do some research for this ask.

So, he dislikes Uchiha. He lived in the Warring Era with Uchiha clan being their worst enemies and their biggest rivals. Of course that would influence his views on the clan and its people, because as soon as he sees Sasuke with Orochimaru, his instant reaction is to lump him with the man, without knowing anything about him.

However, at the same time, he also associates Uchiha clan with love.

As someone who had battled against them, saw how they fought and their strengths and weaknesses, he has a fair idea of the psychology of the Uchiha. What he's describing has a living and shining example in none other than Madara himself.

He seems to begrudge and admire the Uchiha. He's prejudiced against them and it's only natural because of their shared history. So, when he's calling out the Uchiha, it has a good reason. If the Uchiha were asked about the Senju, they would most likely have the similar opinion. Not all, because, yes, they accepted Tobirama's leadership over Madara's, but still. And if you notice, Tobirama specifically mentions people who shared Madara's will. He had a positive view on Kagami Uchiha.

Anyway, like I said before, he understood the Uchiha pretty well and it's not right to say that his judgement was "wrong" because what he's describing is actually a very human response, and that much love can lead to that much hatred too. It's just the extreme of the emotions and he's objectively not wrong about it. He's wrong to associate those qualities only with the Uchiha, though.

Sharingan reflects one's deepest despair and pain and we know extreme trauma awakens one's Sharingan and Mangekyo Sharingan. And the more an Uchiha suffers, the more powerful their eyes become. Sasuke is a prime example of it. Kakashi, who isn't even an Uchiha, when he felt pain and regret of the insurmountable level, he also awakened his Mangekyo. Was he an Uchiha? No. He was a human who had suffered extremely in a moment and reacted to how Tobirama describes an Uchiha would. Yes, Kakashi doesn't go out of his way to cause destruction like Obito does, but that's simply because of the outside influence of the people around them.

Kakashi was surrounded by people who loved him and Obito was lonely and manipulated into thinking he could change some things. In short, Obito's vulnerability and loneliness were taken advantage of, while Kakashi found people who cared about him.

Furthermore, people in the fandom defend and justify the Uchiha hating Senju, because of everything, but then turn a blind eye to whatever Uchiha did to Senju as well.

This, baby Itama was surrounded by a bunch of grown Uchiha men.

And killed.

Senju are evil and cruel for killing Izuna and anyone who loves that clan is depraved according to the fandom activists, but hey, how dare Tobirama hold grudges against the Uchiha for doing this to his brother.

The endless cycle of hate and violence that the main story repeatedly talks about stems from this. Truthfully, both the Uchiha and the Senju were at fault for perpetuating it. For what happened to the Uchiha clan, only Senju were not responsible, but also Madara.

Senju and Uchiha were both prejudiced against each other and they both institutionalised it. Madara through raw power when he continued to attack Konoha after becoming rogue, and Tobirama did it through the political power he held. Neither of them were innocent. But as is said, victors write history, and the narrative glorifies the idealogy shared by Naruto, Uchiha's love is antagonised and Senju are shown as good guys.

The Shinobi system itself is ruthless. It doesn't see humans as humans. I wouldn't call Tobirama a perpetrator of it, because he's the product of two system too, but he fails in his judgment, and is quite wrong about what he thinks about the Uchiha.

We see intense and violent reactions in many other characters in wake of losing the people they and the heartbreak that follows. How many of them were Uchiha? Konoan? Gaara? Nagato? None.

Tobirama doesn't see Uchiha in the positive light and it is understandable. He wants people who are loyal to Konoha. I believe we know more about Hashirama and his ideology regarding the village than we know about Tobirama. For Hashirama, the lives of people were important and that's why he wanted to establish the village. But what did Tobirama want? Did he care about the land? Did he care about the people? He seems completely okay with the fact that Uchiha clan was exterminated.

And contrary to the popular belief in the pro Uchiha camp that claims he "praised" Itachi for massacring his clan, the man doesn't see Itachi any differently, despite hearing the whole story from his own student and successor. What was he really so fixated on the village for if he cannot love its people?

Tobirama describes the intense and powerful reactions in an Uchiha that has them cursed. He says "cursed clan" rather than the "cruse of hate", because I can't find the exact words where he says that (I'd add those if someone can provide me with page/panels).

He has bad experiences, but his problem is that despite being in the position of the power and being responsible for everyone, he refused to grow up. He refuses to sympathise with a child whose family was murdered at the orders of his successor. He refuses to sympathise with a child who was forced to kill his parents and then died at his brother's hands.

He sees his own pain greater than the others (Sasuke's, Itachi's, Madara's) and justifies his prejudices based on them.

[saintsenara]

asenora i will listen to anything you have to say about these characters ever. please tell us what the tea is with dron

as i rummage through the backlog of messages in my inbox the thing that i have discovered is that you girlies [gender neutral] are absolutely clamouring for citizenship of dron nation.

[thank you to @spectral-kitty, @thesilverstarling, and two mystery anons!]

to which i say, the borders are open, baby. you just have to read the following manifesto:

why fandom needs to stop sleeping on dron

something i am continually banging on about, as regular readers know, is the harry potter series' fondness for assigning [male] characters to narrative mirror pairings.

exploring these pairings is interesting in and of itself without a romantic dimension being involved - i could talk for hours about the mirrored approach to guilt and grief in snape and sirius' characterisation - but it's also true that several of the most interesting ships which can be drawn [however non-canonically] from the text are between the two halves of each mirror pairing.

tomarrymort is the obvious one, snack [or starprince or snirius or whatever we're calling it] is starting to get the attention it deserves, but people are still sleeping on draco malfoy/ron weasley [and also, may i say, on lucius malfoy/arthur weasley and narcissa malfoy/molly weasley], largely - i fear - due to the sheer popularity of drarry and dramione.

i'll be honest that i really don't like dramione, and i'm generally ambivalent towards drarry, but i do love dron. and the narrative mirror aspect is entirely the reason why.

ron and draco begin the series as mirror archetypes within the genre conventions of a children's boarding school romp. ron is the loyal, humble sidekick of the everyman protagonist, draco is the everyman protagonist's posh, stuck-up rival. both are insiders to the world of the story - whereas harry, the reader surrogate, is not - who introduce harry to the positive and negative aspects of the wizarding world respectively.

as a result, ron and draco are mirrors in terms of personality, and are much more similar to each other than either is to harry or hermione. this doesn't, of course, preclude ronarry [a ship i adore] or romione [which i've defended here] or drarry or dramione [if ya nasty], but it introduces a specific - and very interesting - tension into the pairing which is absent from these other ships.

both ron and draco have shared positive traits - they're both loyal [and their loyalty is very practical and pragmatic - ron is not hagrid, whose faith in e.g. dumbledore is totally unwavering; draco is not bellatrix, whose faith in voldemort is the same], they're both highly observant, they're both quick-witted, they're both capable of doing the right thing - if not always immediately [which is, in fact, more admirable than being preternaturally willing to suffer and sacrifice], and so on.

they also have shared negative traits. they're both attention-seeking [ron fucking loves nearly being knifed by sirius and you just know draco was seething], self-aggrandising, insecure, sulky, and predisposed to jealousy.

and this is a gift for authors, because it means that dron butt heads in a relationship in ways which allow for real character growth... or otherwise.

one issue that i have with drarry is that it often feels like the change either one goes through within a fic is kind of out of character. for example, you have a harry who feels insecure and haunted by his ill-treatment of draco [this is a man whose response to committing attempted murder is to be raging that it reduces the time he has free to hit on ginny], or a harry who is chasing after a cool and sophisticated draco who eventually learns to open up [whereas if there's two things draco isn't, it's someone who keeps his thoughts to himself and someone who isn't a distinctly unsophisticated flop].

dron, however, react to conflict in the same way - which means that the two of them finding themselves in conflict with each other absolutely slaps. they also have similar levels of emotional intelligence, and are likely - if they're inclined to - to be able to communicate with each other and work through issues surprisingly effectively. they can be a mess, or they can be a happy-ever-after, and i like that in a ship.

but, while ron and draco are mirror archetypes, they are specifically children's literature mirror archetypes. ron's role as harry's guide to the world diminishes in the later books, as the series' horizons move beyond hogwarts to think about wizarding society and voldemort's impact upon it more widely [he is replaced by characters such as dumbledore]; while harry becomes considerably less bothered by the pettiness of draco's rivalry with him [concerned as it is with things like being good at quidditch and getting away with misbehaviour at school] as the enemies he's focused on shift to being the resurrected voldemort and his death eaters.

which is to say that dron makes considerably more sense within a hogwarts setting than drarry.

as i've said elsewhere, an issue i have with drarry is that it's frequently written in a way which suggests that harry and draco have a mutual obsession with each other - while the actual evidence of canon is that, while draco is [as his archetype demands] preoccupied with what harry's doing, harry rarely gives the impression of caring what his rival is up to unless directly compelled to by draco's own attention-seeking.

ron, in contrast, spends a lot of time noticing things about draco unprompted - he can, for instance, recall overhearing him boasting offhand about what broom he owns in philosopher's stone - and retaining this information in order to deploy it at the opportune time to get a rise out of him. he delights constantly in his misfortune [him being hyped for days because draco's annoyed harry gets a firebolt is beautiful]. he's ready to throw hands with him at any given opportunity, often giving those of us who thrive on cheap innuendo plenty of material in the process [draco finds himself, for example 'on all fours, banging the ground with his fist' after having ron's wand pointed in his face... same, girl.] and he tends to consider draco much more integral to the various shenanigans which take place in the castle than harry does [ron is the main proponent of the 'draco malfoy is the heir of slytherin' theory in chamber of secrets - and he is shook when draco reveals that he's wrong].

and draco does the same. he comes into the trio's compartment on the train in goblet of fire and immediately starts telling ron how unfashionable his dress robes are. he obsesses over ron's position as gryffindor keeper for months - and, of course, makes up a song about it, which isn't exactly helping him pull off 'i don't think about you at all', is it? - and ron is profoundly affected by the taunts in way that harry, who doesn't really care what draco thinks of him, isn't. and he constantly goes out of his way to provoke ron into trying to punch him [him shoulder-barging ron in half-blood prince just after harry's essentially outed him as a death eater in madam malkins... exquisite pettiness].

all of which is to say, their interactions feel very teenage and petty and silly all the way through to the end of half-blood prince in a way that draco's interactions with harry and hermione don't, and - therefore - i sincerely think that dron can be made to work much more plausibly as a pairing in fics set while the characters are at school.

my final point in favour of dron is that they mirror each other in their approach to their other relationships, and the tension this causes is really interesting to explore.

both ron and draco have mirrored attitudes towards their place within their own families - something neither harry nor hermione can have with draco for obvious reasons. ron is one of many siblings and feels overlooked in the crowd; draco is an only child and feels overburdened by the visibility, especially once his father is sent to azkaban. they both conform to behaviours expected of them by family [they are both in the same hogwarts house as generations of their family, they share their families' political views etc.]. they are of the same social class and their families both have a reasonably similar level of political influence [despite what we're told about his insignificance, arthur weasley is known to everyone in the ministry and he's able to throw his weight around to influence policy even before the promotion he receives in half-blood prince], but their material circumstances are divergent. they both heavily resemble their fathers - to the extent that they are immediately recognisable as each man's son - and spend their schooldays defending family honour by playing out lucius and arthur's own petty feud [lucius and arthur - and, indeed, narcissa and molly - are also narrative mirrors, and we deserve many more enemies-to-lovers fics featuring them]. and the course their lives take during the war is dictated as much by their role within their families as it is by their relationship with harry - the scrambling post-dumbledore order operating out of the burrow is a mirror image of the ascendant voldemort operating out of malfoy manor.

they are also obviously defined by their mirrored relationship with harry - most interestingly by a major similarity in their attitude towards him: that both struggle with how jealous they are of harry.

this leads to lots of excellent tension which just isn't possible in drarry or dramione. how do both sets of parents react to the news their sons are in love? how do ron and draco's relationships with harry change as they find each other? how does draco cope with the hustle and bustle of life at the burrow? how does ron deal with having to have dinner at the manor [particularly interesting because the world in which draco lives is one that's familiar to him - he's not going to be shocked by any of the weird stuff in that house, he knows how it all works, so he can ruin christmas by deciding to have his dad arrest lucius for fun instead]?

it's messy, and fun, and it sustains me.

and some recs for the lads?

collateral damage by @danpuff-ao3, which starts out with both of the lads working out their... issues with harry and ends with declarations of going to lunch with each other's mothers.

dance the night away (aka it's true love, you bastards) by evandar, which has as its premise ron and draco ending up, largely by accident, going to the yule ball together.

this great stage of fools by @nanneramma, which correctly demonstrates how ron is charming enough that him being supremely annoying is actually loveable.

[directdogman]

Hey dogman, idk if you answered this

Who, out of both DSAF and Dialtown, was your favourite to write and/or create?

It's very hard for me to pick favourites with my characters because I don't tend to give characters a lot of screen-time unless I find a character interesting or fun to write. You've caught me in a talkative mood, so warning, there's an onslaught of text coming!

DSaF: Dave was the most fun to write for, as I remember it. I mean, the guy is the walking personification of chaos and even when he's being constructive (eg, rigging robots to do insane stuff), it's usually in a destructive capacity. Dave will do LITERALLY ANYTHING but contribute to society in meaningful/valuable ways.

In terms of what character-writing I was most 'proud' of, I was also pretty happy with Dr Henry Miller, as a villain. Namely the research he embarked on, described in his logs in DSaF 3 (which the fandom evidently agreed with, as I got really strong feedback on those logs.)

One issue a lot of people (including myself) have with canon William Afton is that he's this kind of mad scientist character but his research doesn't really seem to be... idk, going anywhere? Other than using remnant (soul nectar?) to make kids possess robots, it's kind of a mystery how he got to this point he did from running a bad fast food restaurant. William gets fleshed out motivations in TSE and even then, it mainly revolves around his relationship with Henry Emily, iirc. It's actually pretty accurate to how real serial killers think, imo, but there's a pretty wide berth between this kind of serial killer and becoming a sci-fi fast-food mad scientist... So, I decided to try to bridge that gap.

DSaF Henry's logs actually mention where the idea for his research came from, namely the fact that he existed in a world with normal scientific rules just like ours and seemingly discovered something supernatural, and he approaches it like an amoral scientist would - trying to figure out how to figure out more about the fabric of reality using the newly discovered phenomenon of possession. The 'joy of creation' phrase people pulled from Golden Freddy's phone call in FNaF 1 is given context - Henry is trying to find out what's on the other side (and eventually, how existence itself formed.)

There's other aspects to his character that make him more interesting too, like the implication that his research is partially an excuse for him to act on an underlying sadism (with scenes implying that he inflicts damage on others than can't be justified as assisting with his research.) His background as a dissident/quack laughing-stock scientist (thanks to pushing his soul theory in a best-selling book, which is considered pseudoscience) BEFORE he embarked on his journey to become a fast food tycoon also makes it less farfetch'd that he'd be capable of y'know, harvesting human souls intentionally to continue his research?

I had more for the character on paper that people haven't seen but some of it wasn't revealed due to it feeling a bit too disturbing to publish. None of the contents would've been all that controversial, more just too tonally disturbing when written about in detail (like a omitted part from his backstory/lore post where he managed to pick up a hazy audio of his wife + son's crying from the radio of the car his wife/son drowned in and reacted with genuine elation upon realizing he'd discovered a new scientific phenomenon (as this was the first time Henry witnessed soul-possession.)) Yeah.

I don't feel much of a need to revisit Henry as a character because as a series villain, he was pretty thoroughly-written and he did his job effectively... And his fate was well earned! (He even got an epilogue short-story a few years back, further cementing his fate!)

Dialtown: From the characters/writing that the fandom has seen? Tough to say. I genuinely really like every DT character. Gingi and Mayor Mingus are two of my favourite characters to write for because they're both really insistent and react to adversity in a really comically indignant way. Mingus is more like Gingi than she cares to admit in very specific ways, which is the core hypocrisy of her character - she's one of the most abnormal things IN Dialtown, and spends the game on a quest opposing abnormality that she, herself, can't stand.

Many absolute rulers have debilitating physical and/or mental cruxes and despite that, usually have the final say on what is/isn't okay, often guided by arbitrary preferences. It's funny to remember all of the ancient kings and emperors who dictated how others should act, talk and even think, when very many of them themselves were anything except a good reflection of their own subjects! It's an irony I quite enjoy and leads to a fun character to write for!

My favourite DT writing is probably some of my Callum Crown speech drafts. I have a definite bias here since Crown's character is based on many figures I've encountered in my own reading (and his story relates to topics I enjoy reading about.) A lot of that is real nerd shit that wouldn't be interesting to 99.9% of DT fans (like a long conversation where Crown + Milt discuss a campaign speech Milt wrote for Crown and they bicker about if the wording/arguments used are truly honest.) Again, not super relevant to Dialtown-proper, but it explains a lot about why the world of DT ended up the way it did.

Realistically, the story of Dialtown itself is basically a weird little epilogue to a story that ended decades upon decades ago, centered around a bunch of small-town nobodies circling around the carcass of the last surviving main character of the old story.

I'm also very happy with Gingi's character partially because I know more about Gingi's past/future than you guys do. Gingi has such rotten memory that Gingi's backstory before DT's story begins is basically a complete mystery. Thanks to Gingi never getting close enough to any humans before laying its eggs, there's nobody in Gingi's life that can fill in the gaps. Companionship means so much to Gingi because prior to meeting The Gang, Gingi is aware of a massive and unknown block of time that's a complete mystery precisely because Gingi had nobody in its life. To Gingi, this time was basically akin to being non-sentient or dead, and Gingi would never go back.

While I was making DSaF, I drafted a ton of other stories on paper. I considered making most of them, but decided not to for various reasons, despite getting some solid feedback from collaborators. Bits of almost all of those project ideas made it into DT, with Gingi having traits from several other main characters I prototyped years and years ago. This includes where Gingi came from and what exactly Gingi is. I don't want to mislead people into thinking Gingi is more important than it is, like Gingi is the key to unlocking DT lore (I promise there's a LOT of aimless scuttling/devouring in Gingi's past and relatively little else!) BUT: Of everything from those old scrapped projects, Gingi is what I decided deserved to survive the most. And that has to count for something.

One day I'd love to make sequels to DT and perhaps explore some of the stuff I've described above, like why the hell the world of DT is the way it is or maybe where the hell Gingi spawned from. Thanks

[hamletshoeratio]

you say i can like a characters and acknowledge their flaws. Okey, did you acknowledge Kate and anthonies flaws???

What's y'all's obsession with Kate and Anthony? Genuinely asking here because some of the anons I've gotten have been saying absolutely vile things about Kate and Simone Ashley, which I refuse to post or give the time of day.

But anyways, I have been critical of Anthony before, particularly of how he handled the "love triangle" in season 2. I also hated his treatment of Sienna in season 1. I can acknowledge that his and Sienna's relationship was an important arc for his character, how ever much I hated his treatment of her. She deserved better. Additionally, a certain section of the fandom has to check their misogyny because the language used to talk about her is absolutely vile - and beyond hypocritical when compared to how the same people talk about Anthony.

Kate was mishandled by the writers. Full stop. The changes from the book were most detrimental to her and Edwina. I think Simone did amazing with what she was given, but they took out so much of Kate's development from the book. Most of my gripes with show!Kate are just frustration with writing decisions.

A lot of the writing decisions in general are just tone deaf. There's been a lot of rightful criticism on how the show has handled its bipoc representation. How Ruby Barker was treated in real life by netflix and the producers was disgusting. The way they've treated both her and her character has been vile. I hope to god her story in the show does not end the way it did in the books because that would be beyond horrific. If you're going to tell stories involving mental health issues, do so respectfully and responsibly. Otherwise, don't do it at all, because you're just doing more harm than good. Additionally, we've only had two minor queer characters for a show that prides itself on its representation. And those characters only appear in season 1. I'm not counting Brimsley because he only got proper characterization and arc in QC, and we have literally no clue where Reynolds is in the present timeline. And, while I enjoyed QC on the whole, the romanticization of Queen Victoria's birth as some sort of win for feminism took me out of the fantasy every single time. I'm not expecting the show to be historically accurate at all, the costuming confirmed to me that it wasn't trying to be back in season 1 and thats ok because its fantasy, but my god the way they include elements of real life history is beyond tone deaf.

Penelope herself was also mishandled by the writers. By making lady whistledown a far more active force in the show, they did not take into consideration what that would mean for her as a character. In the books, the Bridgertons react to the LW reveal like "oh OK, ride on Pen!" because LW hasn't been as destructive a force as she's been in the show. In the show, it makes no sense for them to react like that given what's been written about them and the impact that its had. LW, in the books, was far less harmful. By giving it a more active role in the story, they've unwittingly made her an antagonist because of the harm she's caused. Harm, I may add, that she's been mostly apathetic to. Show!Penelope needs a redemption arc, but she's probably not going to get one.

[arkus-rhapsode]

So I am both really excited and really nervous about how the internet is gonna react to Luluci's backstory from Witch Hat Atelier when it gets an anime. Its a very powerful story about a young girl experiencing sexual trauma. But also it cracks down on voyerism itself.

It did not mince words on how that made her feel as a woman to be subjected to sexual predation. And in the same chapter strongly condemning a man who tries to downplay the severity of trying to look in on people's naked bodies using magic see through goggles and claims there are far worse things you can get upset over than just a guy who wants to look at people naked.

Now its easy to anticipate the usual performative culture war nonsense about "shaming me for enjoying muh anime!1!" Though to be honest by the time it makes it to point in the series, you would have to be pretty much not paying attention to which way Shirahama points to on the political compass.

But it will also be very interesting to see how artists are gonna feel given that this is an attractive female character in a potentially high profile adaptation with this knowledge.

Like I'm not shaming anyone for drawing lewd stuff or being into that. Fiction is fiction and removing it from certain context for exploration of sexual interests is fine. But its basically a guarantee with any pretty looking character in a pretty looking series that gets popular. It's just something that might end up being a talking point both in relationship to this instance and also fandom/culture as a whole in this very divided internet we have.

[crystallizedkingdoms]

Haiii sie & johann *passes by* thank you very much for your kind words (I think in general besides art, your comments are a joy ^_^) OUT of curiosity what’s your writing process like when it comes to Yiik (How you deconstruct these guys in your work is something I definitely envy HA,..)

HAIII FOX :3 nice to see you <3 i will gladly tell you all about it i have been Dying to talk abt how i write yiik bc honestly, my fics for this game have been among my favourite to write! i might even have to put this under a read more lol

SO okay heres the thing. it helps to separate the story of YIIK into layers of reality. my personal layers (because god knows other people interprets it differently): there is Alex’s Reality (the story of YIIK taken completely as factual, delusions and lies and all. the year is 1999), and there’s the Outsider’s Reality (strip away all of Alex’s delusions and try to find what really happened. Michael being years older than Alex and moving away is here. the year is 2016). theres also the 4th wall which is self-explanatory.

so with these layers, there is no really hard line between any of them, including the 4th wall. it’s damn near impossible to ever truly tell how much of the characters we know is part of which reality, especially the Outsider’s Reality. we’ll likely never know Vella’s true name, how Rory actually interacted with Alex, what Michael really thought of Alex. the game of YIIK itself is riddled with allusions to other media that can only be pieced together understood by us the players, and never the characters themselves.

but here’s the thing: it doesn’t really matter. When i write fics and deconstruct their character, i either pick one layer of reality to strongly settle in (december came too fast is settled in Alex’s Reality while the thing about explorers is: is settled in Outsider’s Reality) or i heavily oscillate and obscure the two, similar to how YIIK the game itself mixes both (both my Michael fics deal heavily in that territory).

When you’ve got that fundamental setting built, that’s how you can strongly probe how the characters react to each other and what theyre feeling inside. for example, Alex in his Reality is everything he wants and fears to be, and by god he acts like that. He’s snarky and self-centred, but he also has the mask of a Hero and a video game world that he can hide behind, so there’s a sense of untouchability to him. No matter what, he knows he’s going to be okay, if miserable.

But when i take him out of that reality and into the Outsider’s Reality, where he’s just a helpless kid with a broken family and broken friends, he can’t be the same. Unlike in his Reality where he can try to ignore and bend things out of existence, in Outsider he can’t. hes forced to confront his feelings for Michael and forced to confront his hatred for his sister (obligate nestling soroicide). It traps him. and trapped characters are the easiest to dissect.

Trapping the characters in YIIK is easily the best way to dissect them for me, because what is the game if not a trap? It’s Alex’s trap for everyone around him, including himself. So i explore that trap in a million different ways. Alex trapped in his reality. Rory trapped in grief for his sister, or trapped in a relationship with Alex. Claudio trapped in the chase for his brother, Claudia trapped in the expectation of mourning. All the different ways they react when they are trapped/free play off each other really well.

Anyways, the last and most personal point to me is the 4th wall, and specifically the use of allusions. YIIK is so open and proud about the fact it takes from different media to add and enhance the story, and while I’ve always let my other interests play a part in my fics (song lyrics as titles my beloved), YIIK’s openness to using other stories as blocks for the characters lets me do that with a billion times more confidence than any other fandom. if Alex can be Don Quixote, then he can be Marvin/Christopher Columbus from In Trousers, he can be a cuckoo bird. Rory and Vella can be Orpheus and Eurydice. Michael can be all the dogs in every poem, and he can be the New World.

tangential to the above i also just get really fucking loose and silly with it. Rory drowned his sister in a water well (which is physically impossible) because he believes it, so it is true now. Michael has a leash on his neck because that is what he’s feeling. Rory hooks up with the personification of Death as an allegory for his suicide because isn’t that weird and fucked up? (haven’t posted that one yet but its coming)

ACTUAL LAST POINT I PROMISE: it also really really helps to first understand the character at face value before deconstructing them. that sounds obvious as fuck but Trust Me it’s harder to really study who the character we see first is before we make any assumptions on what the hell is going on inside of them. Studying their speech/reactions/physical body language is something that really helps, and I’ve been procrastinating working on a guide for it.

anyway uhhh sorry for the essay. thank you for the question and if you wanna know anything specific/talk more abt it just shoot me another ask or a dm ^_^

[brucenorris007]

All right, it seems that a. . . not insignificant number of people take issue, or at least are upset by, the reaction of Sonic and friends to Metal Sonic in the final story of Heroes.

Yes I did just reblog that specific post, scroll down a just a little for reference.

I think the anguish and angst of Metal's perspective of the situation definitely warrants exploration; and HELL YEAH if we got to see that in any official media. I do caution against vilifying Sonic and his friends for how they reacted to Metal Overlord, though; nuance, everyone, nuance. (Not saying that was the intended purpose of that other post, I've just seen takes like that get twisted in fandom a lot before and would prefer it nipped before anything starts. Far be for me to want to even try to preach, of course.)

Would Metal interpret all the smack talk thrown at it as genuine hatred, as ignoring what might be a very dramatic and destructive cry for help? Yes, it's certainly possible. But A) Sonic and friends don't hate Metal whatsoever, since even Omega, who based his entire personality around destroying Eggman robots, gently gathers Metal into his arms after everyone else leaves and B) that angst isn't really theirs to address.

Keep in mind, the titular Heroes of the game are all teenagers and kids who just heard Neo declare "All living things, kneel before your master!" before turning itself into a lightning rod to trigger a transformation into Metal Overlord. Mitigating that alarming statement and the aggression packaged with it is their first priority; and if that involves a smack down, that's kind of Sonic's style anyway.

As for the fact that they lob smack talk in the first place, well, group think is a thing; and Shadow, amnesiac or otherwise, and Omega are both quite proud creature who don't kowtow to anybody, to say nothing of Omega's animosity for anything Eggman made. And honestly, I think Sonic might have been less likely to throw around and encourage smack talk if Tails and the other kids hadn't been present.

But Cream, Charmy and Tails were present, and being the youngest, likely scared of Overlord who, let's be honest, looks fairly monstrous. The adventure up to the point of the Final Story took all of three days when they were all on the move; worn out and frightened, people like Vector and Sonic would've carried themselves a certain way.

"Hey little buddy, this is just business as usual; nothing to worry about, yeah?" etc.

As for the line everyone knows from the Super Sonic fight of this game "You thought you could defeat me by transforming into a monster" yeah, yes, absolutely that isn't going to help Metal's turmoil whatsoever.

BUT. Consider the events of Sonic's most recent adventures: Chaos' rage, simmering for thousands of years, threatened to destroy civilization when it was released. The Biolizard, fused with the ARK, was minutes away from destroying the planet.

By comparison: "Oh, this guy doesn't care about destroying things, they just want a piece of me; I can handle that eight days a week!" would probably feel like something of a relief and a step down in tension and stakes.

Sonic's not out to hurt Metal's feelings, he's just leaning into what he sees as a fight with a rival. That Metal's personal stakes on the fight are much, much higher than that isn't a fact he's really privy to.

And the ultimate question at the end of it all, when Neo reverts back to Metal and, using the last seconds of a voice box it has left to ask "Why can't I defeat you?"

That question isn't really for Sonic to answer. It's not for anyone to answer except maybe Metal's shitty dad. Because there isn't a single thing Sonic could say in that moment that wouldn't worsen Metal's angst. I think the nearest to helpful that Sonic might have been able to give Metal that doesn't break character would have been:

"Because you keep trying to be me; and you're not."

Say what you will about whether or not Sonic and friends listened to Metal during final story, but Metal was never going to be able to listen to any answer Sonic had for it, no matter how helpful.

Literally.

Metal's programmed to see Sonic as The Enemy of All; to the point of paranoia. Despite the fact that Sonic's open invitation for a rematch is his way of saying he's down to hang out, Metal cannot interpret anything Sonic says as anything less than mockery, an insult or a threat.

In fact, that actually why the whole plot of Heroes kicks off; Metal's obsession with Sonic, with conquering the 'threat' briefly superseded its loyalty to Eggman. That's how deeply ingrained its fear of Sonic, and the pre-packaged identity crisis that comes with it, is.

Because that's the way Eggman made Metal.

[xxguardiantreexx]

!!SPOILERS FOR OMFD S2 FINALE!!

I want to talk about the finale of OFMD, and specifically about why exactly Izzy's death makes me feel so despondent.

So I usually try to stay out of discourse, especially when it has a fandom as divided as this one seems to be now. And I sincerely don't want this to be taken as me being JUST ticked off or anything. But I feel like Izzy's death, while upsetting on it's own, speaks to a larger problem this season struggled with.

Season one, to me, was a gem. My mom's the one who discovered it and told me to watch it, we ended up watching it together and I was hooked (no pun intended) and flat out thrilled to be watching a show that so lovingly showcased positive queer rep and had a tight, hilarious, and touching storyline front to back. I was a wreck (why all the accidental puns today??) when it was over and couldn't wait for season two.

And season two WAS good! It was funny, I loved Buttons arc and Calypso's birthday and all the other great moments this season had. But to me, the biggest problem is that the pacing was really rushed and the writing too convoluted and crammed full of plot points that didn't fit together in the time allotted.

I've seen people on Twitter saying that the episodes never gave the story room to breathe, to let the audience finish reacting to One Thing before moving on to The Next Thing. They introduced new characters, villains, big monumental moments, and I never once felt like I had time to take any of it in with the love and appreciation I would have liked to because things just kept happening.

I don't know if this was a product of the writing itself being flawed on it's own, or HBO not giving OFMD the amount of episodes it deserves, or both. And just to be clear, I do not condone or agree with anyone harassing the creators for answers, or telling them they're dicks or whatever, because that's wrong.

But in my opinion, this season just didn't work. Season one did a great job of balancing it's episodic shenanigans with it's ongoing storyline, and while nothing is perfect, it was very well written and paced.

And that is why I have a big problem with how they handled the death of Izzy Hands being the completion of his character arc.

Here we have a very repressed, battered and broken man RELUCTANTLY coming back from the brink of death, struggling with his handicaps, damaged relationships and purposelessness on The Revenge. And we slowly see him begin to rebuild himself from the ground up. He creates meaningful emotional bonds with the crew he outright hated throughout all of season one, finds a place for his years of experience again when teaching Stede how to be a real pirate, and comes to terms with his relationship with Ed, and Ed's relationship with Stede. He makes peace with all of it and lets the love of the crew, of family, drive him forward for what little time he has left, because he was always on borrowed time by this point.

Ending a character arc with having said character die sucks, because it hurts when it's a character you care deeply about. But it can work, and it HAS worked. That's why writers keep torturing us by doing it.

The problem for me comes back to pacing.

It's the fact Izzy died by a random gunshot wound because he was standing in the wrong place. It's the fact Izzy died for what reads very much as a way to progress Ed's character arc, not end his own. It's the fact Izzy died and the reaction of the rest of the crew was shown so minimally, with nary a word said about it in the aftermath. It's the fact Izzy died and we were immediately swept off into the wedding scene and the introduction of the inn, without giving us, the audience, a quiet moment to grieve as well.

I'm not saying he necessarily needed a bombastic death scene, or for the season to end on an exceedingly somber note. But I feel like Izzy, for all he'd done this season and the growth his character attained, more than deserved a heroes death and clearer acknowledgement by his family. Not to give Ed, who's just kind of existed this season to me, a pep talk with his dying breath and for everyone to just move on immediately.

If there had been time given for this story to breathe, as much as it would have saddened me, I think this could have worked. I think Izzy could have died and it would have had more meaning, the meaning I'm sure they'd hoped it would when they decided to kill him off.

But it didn't work. Not to me at least, and I'm sad about it. A lot of us are sad about it, and will continue to be. Because we still need time to grieve before we can move on. I know it's just a show, and he's just a character in it, but it's a show that's meant so much to so many people, made us feel seen and accepted in a world where that's harder to come by than it should be. And to see a character so beloved get treated as a plot device to an extent at the end of his journey... I would have just loved better for him.

R.I.P. our brash, loud, exceptional unicorn, Izzy Hands.

[fireheld]

— I really enjoy thinking about Billy’s character as he’s presented in canon and that for the sole reason that Billy, as a character, is very failed. It’s shown again and again that Billy’s action are nurture rather than nature and there has to be a reason for that, and the reason presented repeatedly, is the idea of failure.

Billy is failed by every adult in his life, he has no meaningful connections to any teenagers his age and despite constantly being around adults trained to see the signs of abuse, withdrawal, whatever, there is staggering evidence that Billy is also incredibly lonely.

This doesn’t take away from his actions but now there is a cause behind them. Billy doesn’t lash out for no reason, in fact, Billy is even mildly playful in situations where he could easily be annoyed and turn that annoyance into violence (ie Halloween Party). He routinely shows fight and fawn, it’s actually quite interesting the ways in which he shows these different responses to stressful situations. While fight is his immediate reaction, the way he shows fawn shines a much darker light on the unknown aspects of him. Billy only fawns for his father and older women. His father is an obvious, he’s scared of him and what he will do to him, so he shows his underbelly and does what he can to get away unscathed. His fawning towards older women? A different story entirely.

Billy’s relationship with the mothers of Hawkins is obviously an inappropriate one, he’s sixteen upon meeting them and seventeen when he dies, he’s the same age as their children, but Billy is never seen as a child. It’s actually another common theme, both in the show itself and in fandom, that Billy Hargrove is seen as an adult for both his actions and the reasons behind those actions. If we’re putting Billy on trial, he’s going on trial for the wrong things. Billy needs to be perceived as a child for his action to make sense.

Billy wasn’t born racist, he was taught racism, Billy wasn’t born mean and angry, he was taught to be mean and angry. This circles back to how his actions are more nurture than anything. He’s raised by an angry, abusive and racist man, with very little control over his life that isn’t being ridiculed by that man in some way, there is no other way for him to have turned out.

Billy is seen from a very modern perspective, with things like the internet and social media at our fingertips but we have to also realise that Billy does not have that. His world is incredibly small, especially making a move from a large city like San Diego to somewhere as small and secluded as Hawkins. Not to mention, Billy mimics Neil. Look at his actions towards Max, while they aren’t good, these are not just actions he does at random, these are taught.

He was not taught to show anger or annoyance or fear in healthy ways, he was shown that anger is violence and that violence is the only way he will ever receive respect because that is how Neil takes the respect (which is just fear, let’s be real here) he wants from Billy. It’s no surprise whatsoever that Billy does any of the things he does because he cannot imagine a world that doesn’t revolve around anger and posturing and violence and that doesn’t make him a horrible character, that just makes him a sad one.

It’s never driven home enough that Billy is only sixteen. For years of his life he was alone with a man who hurt, degraded and abused him who then up and left the place he’s lived his whole life with the implication of that being Billy’s fault. There is no reality where Billy, who has been proven to not have very stable emotions, is not pissed about that.

I think the fight with Steve is a bright focal point on Billy and his trauma. It’s the way he talks to Steve, it’s the way he listens to him lie to him, it’s even the way he reacts to the idea of Max with a boy so much older than her. (While Billy doesn’t outwardly show concern for Max, I do think it’s important to note that he calls Max his sister as if to tell Steve just how badly this looks). His reaction was beyond anger, and this really drives home the idea that Billy is so angry that he could have very well killed Steve and not have realised it and that’s something that I think isn’t touched on enough.

How is he so angry, so driven up to hysteria by that anger, if there’s not a reason behind it?

I started this by saying Billy is failed time and time again and I’ll finish it by saying that. There are so many times in which Billy could have been saved, where he could have been seen as a child who needed help and both within the series and in fandom as a whole, I really think people gave into the idea of morality over humanity. Morality is easy, it’s easy to say ‘the things he’s doing are wrong and therefore he is a bad person’ as compared to leaning into the humanity of the character.

Does Billy do bad things, even some things that may be unforgivable? Absolutely, the cause of his actions doesn’t erase the fact that he did them but did he deserve to die for that? No. There’s so much wrong with that, the idea that Billy died having been abused his whole life, having been angry for so long, that the only place he could receive softness and apologise for his actions was his deathbed.

[hiemaldesirae]

Question: how would your characterization of demon Alastor react to finding out for the last 60+ years that what he thought was Vox breaking up with him was actually Demon!Valentino drugging/r**ping him with his venom/aphrodisiac and Vox has No memory of what he and Alastor actually had? No memory of anything except maybe the last month? And to find out Valentino only did this so Vox (who was becoming a TV mogul) would put his pornos on the tv. How would he help Vox remember? What would he do to Valentino? Would Velvette also suffer?

okay so. nonny, i wont blame you for not knowing, especially since ive never explicitly talked about it on main, but for future reference, im not that big on the whole abusive staticmoth dynamic. i can see why others enjoy it, and i do read stories with it from time to time simply because the premise captivates me that much, but in general id say i much more prefer a version where val and vox are at the very least best friends if not crossing into the sort of blurry best friends who smooch sometimes territory.

now having said that, i'll still answer your question because again, not very fair of me to just brush you off for no reason when i never made my preferences clear beforehand. (this gets long, so i'll leave a readmore.) warning: my demon radiostatics are always freak4freak no matter what. so this does get a little iffy in terms of ethics

my favourite interpretation of radiostatic is two sickos who are just as closely obsessed with each other, so in the unlikely case that al would let vox go for that long, when he realizes again the first thing he's going to do is go and. well. for lack of a better term, atticwife him (i hope to god this isn't just a term used in east asian fandoms because if i have to explain this ill eat lead). maybe after a little bit of time, he'll allow vox some liberties, but even then it'd be very little. ill put it this way- imagine the most toxic irl relationship you can: someone who tracks and micromanages their partners every move, barely lets them outside the house without going with them, monitors every friendship that they allow their partner to have, and there you have it. thats radiostatic! ah, young love. so sweet, dont you think? after all, alastor can't risk his muse's eyes slipping off him again. he's been deprived of that attention for far too long, and it wasn't even by his own doing! that's an offense in and of itself.

now im assuming that its only val who's doing the exploitation here so presumably vel would have no hand in any of the mess, and perhaps not even be fully aware of the nuances behind the scenes. i mean, it wouldn't really matter either way because once alastor finds out the reason why his other half hasnt been reciprocating their insane little song and dance he's getting rid of any and all obstacles, permanently. vox doesnt need anyone else so long as he has him- and hey, he was friends with him, rosie and husk first, so its not even as if its much of a loss. the only people he'd presumably leave alive would be voxs own contracted souls, and even then thats a bit of a gamble depending on just how bad i want the both of them to be: without his contracted souls, vox would be weaker and more susceptible to whatever alastor wants, so i guess its a matter of whether or not i want the freak4freak relationship where theyre both equally strong but vox willingly submits because he gets more thrill out of it that way or whether i want freak4freak where vox has to struggle way harder and still ends up giving in anyway because al is simply stronger

as for what he'd actually *do* to val. i mean. he does still have that radio broadcast of his, doesn't he? i think you can probably put the pieces together. the thing with animal sinners is that theres simply so many parts of them to break... show-wise, i never understood how overlords like alastor or val could even rise to their position, with the amount of weak spots they must have. that broken antenna vox and val share is certainly something that speaks to their higher vulnerability. and moth wings are especially fragile: i owned little silkworm moths at one point (they were my babies, i loved them for the month or so i got to care for them) but their wings were so thin they were wearing holes in them by the second or third day. val's coat-wings look much thicker in comparison, but of course, my perception is limited by the show only. so i mean, who knows? im sure whatever happens, itll make the best entertainment in al's eyes :)

[outrunningthedark]

i feel like i watch the show the same way you do. i pick up on the ~vibes~ and see how buddie COULD work if they went that route, but i don’t think they ever will and i also see how if they did it would come completely out of left field to a casual viewer

Yep, this is exactly it. I was absolutely 100% in the same boat as the bloggers coming up with ways in which every Buck and Eddie story line can bring us to canon!Buddie back when I first joined fandom (in time for season four) right up through 6x01, but after that...sometime between Eddie not going to Buck to talk about Chris's quest for independence (despite CONFIRMING that if Chris would confide in ANYONE it would be Buck) and Buck actually being a successful sperm donor after what you'd think would have been multiple "signs" from the universe that he shouldn't go through with it...my brain like, rewired itself where I just...stopped looking at everything as a shipper. And listen, there's nothing wrong with only watching a show for a ship - I have admitted many times that the Buckley-Diaz fam is what interests me most because of Chris's presence - but realizing that this show and this ship doesn't dictate my happiness or my reason for existing on tumblr allowed me to step back and take the content for what it is in the moment instead of trying to figure out what secret meaning there could be behind it *if* (I think there are some folks who definitely forget we're speaking in hypotheticals!) the show runners are contemplating making the transition from friends to romantic lovers. Everything we've seen from Buddie so far in s6 is an extension/continuation of something from a previous season, save for Eddie showing legit fear when Buck was dangling from the wire, but...even in his delirious state post-shooting he was worried about Buck, right? The concern was elevated a notch to match the circumstance. (& then Oliver had to come out and be like "Please do not read into it right now. It's how a best friend should react.") The biggest reason why it felt/feels "different" to people is because we just went through well over a full season of both characters in relationships and the show couldn't throw either of them into ANOTHER ONE right away, so we were bound to get Buddie/Buckley-Diaz content while living the single life to mirror s3. The funny thing is, though (it's one more thing nobody wants to point out)...Buddie content outside of work was nonexistent in 6A because of "different dynamics" WHILE THERE WERE NO LOVE INTERESTS. Once 6B came around and Eddie's dating arc was about to start? Once Buck was about to meet Natalia for the first time? Oh. Look who can be friends again. How, exactly, is that different from what we witnessed in s4 and s5? Uh huh. That's what I thought. :)

[nitewrighter]

Hi! I'm very new to the overwatch Fandom and am currently obsessing over your fan kids (specifically Seye bc I don't see a lot of doom content and I love him) ANYWAY, doomfist does die, right? If so, who is it that kills him, and how do Seye and his mother react? I did read the post about Seye eventually destroying the doomfist with some help, but am super curious about some of what happens in between and after :>

Wow! Asks that make me dig through my ancient 'Marsey' tag.

To be honest, I used to be SUPER protective and vague when it came to stuff at this stage of the story I wanted to tell with my fankids, and was also being sadly dangled along by Blizzard's breadcrumbs of lore---I was in a dance with Blizzard where, I did have a very strong idea of how I wanted the story to end, but I was also dependent on Blizzard for canon lore so that I could make my ending the most accurate, the most satisfying. But seeing as there's basically only lore drops now because Blizzard no longer gives a shit about continuity or quality, and basically the cast has expanded so much since I initially plotted it out that I'll probably have to reconfigure this ending in some capacity anyway, I can talk about it now.

Basically there were two avenues I could have taken with Doomfist, the first one, that actually had those Marsey fics, where it was basically a 'continuation' of the Doomfist cycle, that is, some guy challenges Doomfist for the gauntlet and is able to kill him and take the gauntlet, which obviously puts Seye into a lurch as Doomfist's son and the previously assumed successor. I literally didn't have a name for this would-be killer, and in a way, it didn't really matter because you as the reader weren't supposed to see Doomfist's killer as the rightful bearer of the mantle and Seye's whole arc would be defeating this guy (with Marti's help) and then basically shutting down the weird Metal Gear-esque war cult that's risen around the Doomfist gauntlet as a symbol.

The other option was that Doomfist would be killed in the Final Battle™ at Nepal by... drumroll... Junkrat and Roadhog. NOW BEFORE YOU YELL AT ME, Junkrat and Roadhog would also die in this fight. Roadhog would die before Junkrat, but Junkrat would basically be talking to a very clearly bled-out-past-the-point-of-no-return-and-unconscious Roadie like, "It's okay, Roadie, you can take a nap. I can wrap this up," Before pulling all of the pins on all the grenades on his little chest harness while clinging onto Doomfist. Okay you can yell at me more now. But mostly I loved the combination of dramatic irony of Doomfist being consumed in these fires of chaos, and of the ~Junkers~ of all people going out in a blaze of glory against one of Overwatch's Final Bosses. I had this in my brain for years before Junkrat even got his "I killed the Doomfist!!" elimination line, btw. Doomfist views conflict as its own sort of order, but ends up getting killed by the wacky Mad Max randos who have kind of been the comic relief this whole time. Basically the fact that the Doomfist gauntlet itself would also be destroyed in this kind of fight would aslo be the thing that ends the cycle. That was also the battle that was vaguely referenced in this fic.

In both potential deaths for Doomfist, Seye becomes disillusioned enough with Talon as an organization to basically split off and form his own splinter mercenary organization (I was going to use my Talon Goon OC's as his starting lineup, haha), and he also attempts to create his own mantle as "Earthshaker" but he's still deeply affected by Doomfist's death because that's so much of his identity and he's had this enormous fear of irrelevance all of his life. Like this isn't just the grief of losing a father, this is the threat of oblivion that he's dreaded his entire life. As for Seye's mother, Tejuka, it's less of a blow to her--she more or less came to terms with the fact that Doomfist really doesn't have the philosophy or lifestyle to "go peacefully in his sleep," and that's one of the reasons why they divorced and she put so much effort into grooming Seye to actually be the successor of Ogundimu Prosthetics. Dying is easy, living's harder, etc, etc.