#but also fuck this trope i hate it
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grimalkinmessor · 1 year ago
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Ranting about the Death Note amnesia trope below, if you like the No-Memories ending scroll past because this is just me expanding on why I don't like it
I think that the reason I tend to despise the Memory Loss ending is because it's framed as a happy one. I can understand it when it's written as a sad or bittersweet end, but not when it's written as a hopeful or wholly happy one.
Not just because I don't think it's happy, but also because it just seems disingenuous, especially when framed as a loving ending.
I don't know, it just—it takes away a lot of what I like about Lawlight as a ship. Enemies to Lovers at its core is about seeing the darkest parts of someone, having someone know every nasty, cruel bit of your soul, and falling in love with them anyway. Not even in spite of it—with Lawlight specifically, I see them as people that fall in love with each other BECAUSE of those parts of themselves. The parts that they hide away from the world, the parts that no one else accepts.
The memory loss trope just,,,wipes all of that away. It takes away the struggle of getting better. It's cutting out the parts of your lover that you don't like or that don't fit your narrative to "fix" them.
I think, at its core, what bothers me most is that it takes away the choice.
Without his memories, Light is stripped of his choice to decide whether or not he wants to better himself. Personally, I don't see L as someone who can redeem him (that's also another reason I dislike this trope), so for L to yoink Light's memories of being Kira and say "All fixed!" is like someone sticking a bandaid over a gaping wound. Because he's not someone who can stitch it closed, who can help it heal, because he is an intrinsic part of Kira's story. As an antagonist. An equal.
It rubs me viscerally the wrong way, especially when it's framed as the only way for them to be happy together. L isn't a good person. Light isn't a good person. If they were I wouldn't be nearly so invested in their relationship.
Don't get me wrong, I also hate it when L just,,,,magically gains a moral compass. If he wants to be a good man I need him to work for it, I don't want him OR Light to have an easy way out, to have a magic Get-Rid-Of-The-Difficult-Things-About-My-Lover-Free button.
But also, just. Let them be fucked up. They're toxic and awful and perfect for each other and I want them at each other's throats hand in hand for the rest of their lives.
I think that's my bottom line—I don't like the memory loss ending because it makes them both out to be something they're not.
L is not a good man with pure intentions. If he wants Light to give up his memories I take it to mean he wants the easy route. He wants to be with a Light that doesn't remember that he hated him or why, that doesn't remember all the bad things he's done, that's still an innocent child in a lot of ways—because it's easy. It's fast. He doesn't have to work for it. He doesn't have to work for forgiveness or try to give it because the man that he needs to forgive and be forgiven by doesn't exist anymore.
Light isn't an innocent little boy that's been corrupted by an evil entity. He's a man who's made mistakes, who's arrogant and closed-minded and stubborn and in denial, who calls himself evil but refuses to believe it, who smiled while he killed a grieving woman, who smiled while he killed a friend and held them close, who was so terribly lonely that his first friend was a monster.
And, if you're going to go that route, acknowledge that it's toxic too. Acknowledge that Light is going to struggle and he won't remember why. Acknowledge that underneath everything he's still Kira, because Kira was just a set of decisions that Light made, not a malevolent entity that possessed him. Acknowledge that Light giving up his memories is him giving up attempting to redeem himself, or attempting to exist in certain capacities completely.
An add-on—personally, I don't see L as someone who would want Light to give up his memories. Because L doesn't usually take the easy way out. It's a game between them, and he's playing to win and win completely. While he DOES play dirty, he still wants his opponent to acknowledge that he won, and he wants them to remember it. Light losing his memories would be a loss for L too, in a way, because then he's lost his playmate. He's lost his equal. He's lost the person that's going to fight him on everything that matters and yet agree with him on everything that doesn't. He's lost the person that can appreciate every move he makes.
Plus... there's something to be said for evil husbands that are on opposite sides, isn't there? ;3
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mossy-aro · 2 months ago
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i hate to be a Downer but no i don’t think making the tenth generic post abt how ‘true love’ is and always will be the most powerful force in the universe and that nothing else compares gives you a personality actually. sorry.
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necrotic-nephilim · 3 months ago
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@sasheneskywalker i love when you enable me to ramble about things because oh my god do i have thoughts.
so recently, i made a post discussing the phenomena of DC x DP and DC x MLB crossovers and why they exist and part of that post was discussing how largely speaking, at least half, if not more of the Batfamily fandom doesn't read the comics. if they interact with canon DC material, it's adaptations that are their own sequestered universes and oftentimes not remotely comic accurate or seeking to be. the most obvious example is the Young Justice cartoon. i'm adding a cut to this post because it just got so long i'm so sorry.
a lot of times, when people are discussing the "why" of this oversaturation of fanon-only fandom, they blame Wayne Family Adventures. and i think, to a point, i agree WFA is responsible for a boom in this fandom. but as someone who's been in the fandom long before we had WFA, to me it's the other way around. WFA was DC's way of meeting the demand for this easy-to-get-into, easy-to-consume content about the Batfamily that predicates itself on the comics just enough to be vaguely the same characters, but has a more sitcom, slice-of-life sort of vibe so DC could profit off of this section of the fanbase that otherwise wasn't consuming its primary material. and well, it's definitely worked. not only that, but i have a weird theory that the decline in the MCU also led to the rise in the Batfamily fandom. when you consider the fan content that made the MCU popular within fandom, it's that 2012 "they all live in Avengers Tower and Thor is eating poptarts and Clint is in the vents and there are movie nights every Friday" sort of vibe. those were the fics that were a hallmark of the fandom. and as the MCU has strayed from well... quality content in general, but specifically well-thought-out crossover content where characters can have their own arcs but also exist in a wider story where they clearly care about each other, that fandom was sort of homeless. so where do you go, if you like a superhero found family where you can have villains for angst but also stick them all in one big family-like home for silly crack and have a plethora of options for gay ships? well. you go to the Batfamily. if you write a crack/fluff Batfamily genfic with silly vibes and low stakes instead of say, a fic about a very specific comic issue even if it's a popular comic, you're *going* to get more traction for the former. because the fanbase largely just isn't reading the comics.
and i feel... complicated about this. because on one hand, Don't Like Don't Read has been a tenet of my fandom experience. i'm very pro-fandom and that includes fandom content i don't like. and to an extent, i do think this sort of should apply to Batfamily fanon. i enjoy having my moments with other comic purists, giggling over exceptionally painful OOC headcanons or even facepalming in pain over some content but it is on me to not interact with that content. you don't make fandom a better place by being hostile to fans who engage with canon in ways you don't approve of. and frankly? we as comic readers are not going to get non-comic fans to read the comics by being asshats to them. no one is going to want to pick up any comic if we get a superiority complex about it. and also, i feel like we're all lying to ourselves a little bit insisting comics are so, so easy to get into. they're not. we can just all agree, they're really not. i've been single-handedly helping my sister get into comics, specifically Wonder Woman and no matter how simple i make it, i watch her get frustrated trying to understand what pre-Crisis and post-Crisis and New-52 and Flashpoint and all these things mean and what a retcon vs a reboot is and what a Crisis Event is and what the hell Diana's current backstory even *is*. sure, you can give someone a beginner list of comics to start with and slowly dip their toes in the water but sooner or later, *something* is going to confuse them. comics as a medium straight up aren't going to be everyone's cup of tea. and if someone *just* wants to read silly fluffy fanfiction about the Batfamily, i can't entirely begrudge them for not wanting to take the hours and hours out of their day to understand this medium. it's not an accessible medium to get into. "read this and this, but this run is out of print and this run wasn't collected in trades at all but also make sure you read that event in order and this is a good comic but the backstory in it is retconned and you *have* to read this it's so important but it's also really bad because the author kind of sucks" sounds. ridiculous for someone who like. just wants to read some stuff about Nightwing. sometimes, we all make reading comics sort of sound like a chore, not a hobby.
so my point is, i do extend some grace to Batfamily fanon for existing. i think my biggest gripe is, as i said in my other post, misuse of tags (if you're not creating content about comics, maybe you don't need the comics fandom tag on Ao3, just the all media types umbrella tag) and my far bigger gripe: when panels are taken out of context to support fanon only headcanons. if i could impart *anything* onto the Batfamily fandom as a comic fan it'd be this: if you haven't *read* the comic, don't spread the panel. if you don't even know what comic it's *from*, don't spread the panel. it's fine to use comic panels to discuss your headcanons, but so often i see someone spreading a comic panel from a comic they haven't read, and when asked where it's from, they can't source it. a silly example that comes to mind is a post going around, taking a panel where Dick, in his internal monologue goes "here comes the sun. do do do do." and the post is claiming it's from him getting buried alive. when that panel comes from Nightwing (1996) #140, and he gets buried alive in Nightwing (1996) #127, two completely different moments frankensteined together. if you're going to not read the comics, that's completely fine, but unless you're sure of the source and the context, panels shouldn't be spread around. i'm sick of this specifically happening to Red Robin (2009), with ppl claiming Tim has totally killed people because he blew up some of Ra's' bases, when those panels within context, make it clear he gave everyone time to escape. and in a later arc in that very comic, Tim grapples with the idea of murdering Captain Boomerang, and *specifically chooses not to*, because he doesn't agree with murder, even against the person who has hurt him the most. if you'd like to write fanfiction where Tim is pro-murder and has done some sketch things, i'm totally on board and would probably like to read it. but there's no need to pretend it's canon from a few panels you saw out of context.
beyond that, i think it's not *entirely* correct to say that fanon is harmless. whenever i see very WFA-positive posts, they often default to the argument that WFA is fun and silly, and comic fans are killjoys for not liking it. which. i think is complicated because the issue is, WFA and fanon don't exist in a vacuum. if you like WFA power to you, i don't think it's the worst thing ever, but i do think it's degrading to these characters because honestly? they feel incompetent in the webtoon. it's one thing if WFA was solely a slice-of-life sort of deal, just having silly episodes where Bruce is taking on a PTA mom or they're all fighting for the last cookie. but when WFA attempts to take on more serious plots with these characters, it *fundamentally* falls flat in understanding them. i get it, Bruce comforting Jason having a panic attack because a noise reminded him of the crowbar felt cute in a microcosm, but i'm so serious when i say that storyline destroyed how like. half of this fandom understands Jason Todd's relationship to his trauma. it doesn't understand how he reacts when he's triggered, what coping mechanisms he seeks out, and how he would handle Bruce comforting him. even if i can believe for a brief moment Jason *would* be triggered by something like that, him running and trying to hide and then getting a hug from Bruce to make it okay is just. painful. WFA needs everything to be wrapped up in a nice, neat little bow. so even when it starts to tackle interesting concepts, it makes them fall flat with its need to be soft, low stakes, hurt/comfort. there was a two-parter episode that dealt with the complicated mutual hatred/jealousy between Tim and Damian that *almost* really interested me because for once, it felt like the webtoon wanted to explore canon messy dynamics. but of course, it had to be fixed with one conversation and a hug. you don't mend the *years* of issues these characters have like that. WFA isn't in character because these characters are hyperbole cartoonified versions of themselves to fit within the medium and be a cute happy family.
because that right there, is the crux of it. the Batfamily fanon seeks to simplify the Batfamily and force them into a nuclear family. there are so many fantastic posts on here discussing how the nuclear family-ification of the Batfam is eroding decades worth of complex histories so i won't go too far into that. but what i will say is that there's this need, in the Batfamily fandom, for the Batfamily to exist as a unit. they are a *family*. (honestly i think calling it the Batfamily is a misnomer and has been for years but we're in too deep now.) they exist to each other first, and any teams or friends they have come secondary to this family unit. you can *specifically* see this demonstrated in what headcanons are becoming popular these days. i have an entire lengthy meta in my drafts about how i *loathe* the "the Batfamily meets the Justice League" genre of fanfic because it makes no *sense*. in order to have this genre of fic exist, you must operate under the assumption that no one in the League, or adjacent to the League, knows the Batfamily exists and are thus utterly shocked to discover Batman has kids. and to make *that* work, you have to strip *every single Batfamily member* of such important dynamics and friendships so you can lock them all in Gotham for their whole lives. Dick can't have the Titans, Tim can't have Young Justice, Duke & Cass can't have the Outsiders, Jason can't have the Outlaws, Damian can't have the Supersons, Babs can't have the Birds of Prey, and so on. because if they had these relationships, they would be known to the League. the Batfamily fandom doesn't care about this, it's just "silly fanfiction", it's not trying to be serious. but how can you say you like Dick Grayson as a character if you don't understand the Titans *are* his family? at some points of his life, moreso than the Batfamily even is. it is constantly repeated to us in most comics with Dick how much the Titans mean to him. he *needs* them to be who he is. the same extends to every other Batfamily member, most of which have been full League members at this point. but in fanon, that doesn't matter. the Batfamily are a sequestered unit first, and all of those side relationships are secondary and easy to toss away, if it makes your fanfic work better.
and because they have to be a unit first, you have these forced relationships that dump years of actual canon material for the sake of making them get along. the Batfamily fandom has its favorites and well. it's no secret it's usually the boys. Jason and Tim by *far* stand out as fandom faves so, their dynamic is a heavily explored one. it does matter that in canon they don't tend to get along and especially don't see each other as family. what matters is that you can push dynamics onto them. and so fanon gets all twisted up about which Robin Tim actually idolized as a kid (Dick) and what member of the Batfamily is pro-murder but still an older sibling figure to him and looks out for him (Helena, or if you want the dynamic of once tried to harm Tim but they've reconciled, Jean-Paul) in favor of who's the most popular. Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian are always going to be the standouts for popularity, but it's specifically Jason and Tim who are getting fanonized the most. and that's because really, we don't have much canon content of Tim that *isn't* the comics. for Dick you've got Young Justice (tv), for Damian you've got the DCAMU, for Jason you've sort of got the Under The Red Hood movie, but Tim sort of lingers in this limbo. (yes, he's in Young Justce (tv) and Titans (live action) but in neither is he the main character nor given much depth) so, he gets a *lot* projected onto him and has become fanonized. and even with Jason's animated movies, you don't see him interact with Tim, so people build it from the ground up how they want to see it, disregarding of canon comics. i think it's what makes him so popular in the first place- he's malleable into whatever you want or need him to be.
and of course, the fanon ignores other characters in the Batfamily it doesn't know about. i feel like you could create a tier list of Batfamily characters by their popularity, going from the fandom main characters: Tim, Jason, Bruce, Alfred, Dick, Damian. to the underrated: Steph, Duke, Babs, Cass. to the forgotten about unless they're convenient for a story: Kate, the Foxes, Helena Wayne, Carrie, Selina, Harper Row, Maps, Minhkhoa Khan. to the absolutely unknown: Helena Bertinelli, Jean-Paul Valley, Onyx Adams, the Clovers, Julia Pennyworth. it's not lost on me that the ignored characters tend to be women and people of color. which is both a canon and fanon problem, DC will continue adding interesting characters to the Batfamily, play with them for a few years, then drop them to default to the "Batboys" again. and it's a vicious cycle of the fandom only caring about the "Batboys", and thus people entering the fandom via fanon osmosis won't have content about the other characters, therefore, they won't be interested in those characters enough to create it, and it's just this ouroboros consuming itself, no matter how much canon content we have of these other characters. and it's ridiculous just how large the Batfamily is becoming because of this, which is why i'm a pre-Flashpoint fan, because then the Batfamily was contained enough to actually feel like a family with every character having nuances relationships with each other, but i digress because those thoughts could be their own post.
and the thing about fanon is it doesn't exist in a vacuum. DC has started turning the comics to accommodate for what fans are asking for, because fans will beg and beg for content they're not going to consume. Tim Drake: Robin had Tim as a coffee drinker because that's the fanon accepted headcanon. and the resolution of the recent Gotham War arc was for Bruce to buy this new manor for everyone to move in and call him. nevermind that most of these characters have their own homes and have zero reason to be moving in with Bruce. Tim had his marina in Tim Drake: Robin, Dick has Bludhaven, Cass and Steph have their little side of town in Batgirls (2022), and so on. these characters are being forced together as a unit, as one big happy family living together, to appease what non-comic fans want and it's damaging comic relationships. Robin: Knight Terrors saw Jason and Tim team up and working together, which i've seen varying opinions on but i personally despised. their interactions made zero sense for any of their canon history, but it appeases them being this close sibling relationship that fanon acts like they are. also the fears they faced in their respective knight terrors didn't make sense for either character and *only* worked as a moment of bringing them together so they could reassure each other and have this weird dreamscape bonding moment. the canon is bending itself to the will of fanon rather than building on the pre-existing complex relationships. Tim barely even gets along with his most important team in Dark Crisis: Young Justice because it seems the only important relationships the Batfamily can have is with each other. and when we do see them outside of the Batfamily, it only seems to be to relive the glory days like with World's Finest: Teen Titans, instead of developing them as they currently exist. this isn't recent in the comics, it feels like you can trace it back to the New-52, but it does feel a *lot* worse over the recent years. WFA is fine when it exists in its own bubble, but the simple truth is, DC content never exists on its own. the adaptations will reflect back onto the comics. (the damage the Young Justice cartoon has done to some characters should honestly be studied) and so it does frustrate me a bit when fanon-only or adaptation-only fans act like we're being nothing but killjoys for being frustrated with this. since they don't read the comics, they don't see how the comics are suffering as a result of this.
people argue about what's out of character for the comics they don't even read. i'm sorry, but "bad dad Bruce" is consistently canon. that man is just kind of shitty. when you take someone who has the drive he has, who has this need for the Mission first, who needs a teenager in spandex next to him to keep him off the ledge, that guy is sort of going to be a shitty father figure. he just is. not on purpose or with malice, but when you compare him to any other dad in a big DC family, he sure takes the cake. it's why characters like Oliver Queen tend to *really* fucking hate Bruce for how he treats his kids. Bruce loves fiercely, but he doesn't do well with putting that love first. and his love is a controlling one, he is very particular about controlling how others in the Batfamily are "allowed" to operate. it's what drives the wedge between him and Dick, it's why Steph is never a true daughter to him. (besides the reason of her needing to be a love interest to Tim first, anyway-) i've never understood the massive outcry of people reacting to Bruce kinda being shitty in comics they're not reading. there are some moments that get ridiculously OOC with how cartoonishly evil he is (the whole Gotham War arc and that... complicated mess with Jason) but largely if you want sitcom loving nuclear father Bruce, you have to accept that is a fanon thing, not a canon one. the Batfamily being a nuclear family in *general* is fanon. most of the "Batkids" don't actually see Bruce in a particularly fatherly light and begging for moments where he calls them his kids or they call him dad outside of incredibly specific circumstances is just OOC.
it's getting harder and harder to exist peacefully in this fandom it feels like, if you don't comply to the standard fanon has set. i'm happy people are having fun with their blorbos, even if in ways i dislike, but that "harmless fandom fun" does ripple it's way back to canon, eventually. so i end up pretty tangled with my feelings because are fans at fault for DC making these poor decisions? probably not, but it certainly feels like an unfortunate cause-and-effect situation whether at the end of the day, nobody is happy. and of course, i know some fanon-only fans are striving to be more canon accurate and care about canon dynamics more than others, but for them it's always going to be an uphill battle with the above-mentioned out-of-context panels thrown around and ever-pervasive fanon overtaking anything that's truly seeking to be canon compliant. so really, it sometimes feels like we're all losing.
#necrotic festerings#batfamily#batfamily meta#dc comics#fandom meta#fan studies#fanon vs canon#i deleted paragraphs of this to try to make it shorter. it failed btw.#anyway i got into comics when i was like 12 with the dark knight returns#and if i hadn't been into this medium for a decade i don't think i would be able to get into it as an adult so i get it#bc i'm trying to get into marvel comics and fuck ME am i confused as fuck.#do marvel comics have like. an equivalent to crisis events?#is the ultimates like their version of the new-52? i do NOT know#it's so hard and daunting so trust me i get it#if you never wanna pick up a comic god i respect you you're so right this is fucking miserable#i want to live and let live in fandom but *god* i'm struggling here#i used to bend to the will of fanon fun fact#i wrote my share of tim and jason fics playing into fanon tropes. god i hate them *now* but they did fucking numbers.#and i used to care more about getting attention in fandom than being accurate#i've matured now. it's why i write on anonymous so much to remind myself this should be for me.#anyway i could do a character study on every batfam member as fanon vs canon#ESPECIALLY tim and jason. i know so much about them trust me.#jason todd fans annoyed me so much i once sat and read almost every fucking jason comic. i didn't even like him.#but i tell you what i know that man and he will never leave my top five characters on league of comics.#this is so long. is anyone going to read all of this.#if you do you're a fucking trooper i'm saluting you.#this isn't even all of my thoughts i had to condense myself.#bc i also have thoughts about how this means some characters no longer get to exist outside of the batfam#because they only exist as a member of the unit#ergo we have very little current content of helena bertinelli or onyx adams or duke thomas
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mainalias · 3 months ago
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thinking about compiling screenshots of golden/silver age batman exclusively calling dick his ward to combat the allegations that it was “initially a father-child relationship”
#dc#batman#brudick#i don’t even ship it#i think i'm still mad at the poll when people were trying to refute the brudick points#by saying shippers are also biased and ignoring the history and that it really was a familial relationship early on#me the only asshole on this website enough of dumbass to try to read early batman “no it fucking wasn't”#if you hate the ship fine but don't back up your argument with complete lies#the pro-brudick camp has receipts which gives them way more validity than the haters#i'm sure somewhere out there there's dick grayson pre-crisis saying bruce is like a father to him#there's so many comics and i've barely scratched the surface#but i did read both the first golden age compilation book of batman and silver age world's finest compilation#and neither of them say anything like that#and no “his ward dick grayson” is how he's called constantly it's one of the stock phrases in the ever present narration#early comics fundamentally didn't understand they were a visual medium and are full of very tedious and unnecessary text panels#and to be fair each issue needed to function as an intro to someone who had never heard of batman and robin before so#“and his ward dick grayson”#every damn time#their relationship was adult man and his plucky kid sidekick he inexplicably hangs out with#which doesn't make sense and doesn't parallel to real life real social interaction#but neither does a man going in a batsuit to fight crime#and the out-of-universe explanation is because this comic was aimed at kids who were supposed to project onto dick grayson#and the kids want to be batman's kid-partner not his kid-son#it's not that complicated this trope still exists today#kid who should not be here but is because it's a kids' show/book/movie/etc#i stg i'm gonna become a brudick shipper out of spite at this point#and WHILE I'M COMPLAINING i am also going to be mad at the people who get all up-in-arms#about all the evil heroes doing child endangerment on their poor abused sidekicks#should there be kid heroes? no but cape comics would suck without them so stop complaining and enjoy yourselves#RL vigilantism is also always bad stop bringing real world standards into this they don't apply
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butterflysonnets · 10 months ago
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yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.
to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!
i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.
also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.
they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.
they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.
i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.
#eve text#elmike#stranger things#byler#only tagging byler because i feel like yall will like this take lol#tagging tagging tagging WHAT ARE EVERYONE ELSE'S THOUGHTS#god i can't believe i'm making a post about stranger things. this feels like poking a bear#i'm not particularly anti m*leven but like... they'd have to do something pretty special at this point for me to feel like it's viable#i'm seeing the bts of s5 and it's got me Having Thoughts#elmike friendship is something i am so passionate about#even before i ever liked byler (didn't ship at all until s4 even though i knew it was a thing before) i've felt this way about elmike#i always believed they were close friends at heart and needed to break up#the romance part of them felt very distinctly young and very much “he was a boy she was a girl” to me#and it hasn't deepened into anything more mature and i don't see how it could based on the current state of the writing...#the fact that lumax exists — a young relationship that is actively maturing and is healthy — makes that clear to me#and the “love confession” in s4 and how disingenuous and miserable it felt was just the nail in the coffin#also the fact that will (who is IN LOVE with mike) was instrumental in making it happen? ... uh... okay... interesting choice…#fucked up and reductive if they make it another queer unrequited love sacrifice for the sake of pushing the heterosexual agenda YUCK#so i really hope the speculation about a m*leven breakup is real!! i think it just makes sense for their characters but who knows#i don't believe in the notion of love at first sight or one true love and i think the writers don't too???#love to me is an accumulation of experiences and we inevitably choose it at some point rather than fall into it... but idk#tv is so fixated on keeping couples together... sometimes it's just not reality guys especially with young people... LET IT GO...#like i said though i'm not 100% sold that they're going to give up their “golden couple” LMAO#stranger things hasn't historically subverted too many tropes if i'm being honest#anyway i seriously need this season to come out quickly... i'm so bored and getting my master's is crushing my soul#i need frivolity#ALSO btw i won't respond to hateful messages about this so please don't bother. it's not that serious. this is a netflix show
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chrliekclly · 7 months ago
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i lov shipping deetress its so funny like 'yes dee's leading a basically kidnapped waitress n w a bag over her head nd she also proceeds to rip th waitress' hair out of her skull to remove it then blames HER for it but look @ that full body contact arm over th shoulder walk look how th waitress leans nto her'
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beta-adjacent · 7 months ago
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Hot take: bond marks (as commonly seen in the literature) are a little bogus. What do you mean bonding should be exclusively for mates? Why can’t I bond with my best friends instead? Does it really need to be romantic? What do you mean it’s a permanent scar??
Granted, I do love all those tropes a lot; they hit a really deep soft spot for me. And lots of new work nowadays are redefining how bonding works! I guess I just wanna keep that conversation open
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sinistersuns · 8 months ago
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gods i gotta be honest the way mizu’s body was. revealed. in blue eye samurai makes me so uncomfortable. “gasp.. they have boobs and a vagina… clearly this means… WOMAN!!” like????? am i the only one who really doesn’t like how that + the “i was forced to be a man” line was handled?? it immediately reminded me of the “parents forcing their daughters to be trans” rhetoric. i feel insane like i CANNOT be the only transmasc who was super uncomfortable with how mizu was written
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vigilskeep · 1 year ago
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i need to wynnepost. somebody has to
#its crazy how people will assume she is all the tropes she subverts and then ignore her#also how sympathy for circle mages’ indoctrination only lasts until they get old i guess and then fuck them#because its not as if they were ever a terrified child who’d never had anything better than a single templar’s mildest kindness and any kind#of home even if it was the tower#so an orphan kid who had no memory of anything but scurrying between farmsteads and hiding in barns#didnt want to leave. what a shock. you guys dont get the place comfort has in keeping circle mages complicit#so it’s violent and terrible and you never have privacy and your children get murdered and you’re always watched and hated#its also a warm bed and community and a chance to succeed#do you honestly think every kid from fucking THEDAS knows theres anything better out there#that doesnt make the circle good. it makes it horrific that they prey on vulnerable kids to teach them the world hates them#and only the circle is ‘safe’#i just think there should be some sympathy for those kids and what they grow up into#its easy for the player to walk in and say their character would hate the circle and never have listened to the templars#its easy for say an amell or even a surana with a family back home to not fear what they left behind#wynne genuinely thinks without the circle mages would all be murdered and she’ll fight and die protecting her fellow mages#from the right of annulment#yes its a flaw that she goes on to teach others the circle must be tolerated and that is precisely how the circle is perpetuated ove#over generations#but its amazing to me to just act like its her fault#well. this is more tags than i expected it to be
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callonpeevesie · 4 months ago
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the horse lesbians! i love them i miss malory towers. also gave clarissa her glasses because Reasons
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unsurebazookacore · 4 months ago
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hot take, mike and el arent in love, because they are fourteen
well i guess mike is fifteen but still like as someone who has been fourteen/fifteen
GUESS WHO I WAS NOT DATING:
A. THE LOVE OF MY LIFE
B. MY FUTURE SIGNIFICANT OTHER
C. ANYONE WHO I WOULD BE ABLE TO SAY "I LOVE YOU" TO AND ACTUALLY FUCKING MEAN IT
D. ALL OF THE ABOVE (the answer is D by the way)
LIKE Y'ALL THEY ARE FOURTEEN
THEY MET WHEN THEY WERE TWELVE
"I knew right then and there in that moment that I loved you" MY ASS
#byler#mike wheeler#like i truly need to stress this so much this is NOT mileven hate like this is putting any like feature or fact about their dynamic aside#they are children#and yes i know there are people who meet their partners when they're young kids childhood friends to lovers is a trope for a reason#but no one NO ONE (or at least statistically very few people cuz i know my ass was not)#is making for real love declarations at Fourteen (or Fifteen humor me)#and “oh rey then how can you ship lumax-” LUMAX HASNT SAID I LOVE YOU YET#LUMAX IS THE MOST ACCURATE DEPICTION OF AN EARLY TEENAGE ROMANCE IN THE ENTIRE GODDAMNED SHOW BECAUSE THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS ARE SO AWKWARD#AND ITS ADORABLE#AND THATS IT#THEY HAVENT EVEN KISSED SINCE SEASON 2#YOU WANNA KNOW WHY??#BECAUSE THAT'S REALISTIC#BECAUSE THEY ARE KIDS AND KISSING IS GROSS#listen im not saying this with the intention that ohh kids are immature they dont know what true feelings are blah blah blah#kids have feelings no shit#but esPECIALLY when it comes to mileven it seems so goddamned performative#like it FEELS like they both just watched a bunch of romance movies and are now mimicking whatever they've seen the adults in those movies#(who are supposedly in love) do#like watch lucas's talk with max in the back of the like trailer thing where he tells her he wants her to stop pushing him away watch that#and then tell me mike's aMaZinG AnD drAmaTiC LOvE cONfESioN doesnt sound formulaic as fuck#like you wanna know how a teenager makes a love confession#they say smth emotionally vulnerable; want to die after saying the emotionally vulnerable thing; and then tell a shitty joke to salvage it#not “I don't know how to live without you. I feel like my life started that day we found you in the woods” no fucking teenager says that#and that is why lumax is as mr mclaughlin said himself: “real love”#damn i kinda cooked with the tags on this one#(also fun fact i learned that tumblr has a tag limit by making this post which is why half of the tags are at the 140 character limit)
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moophinz · 5 months ago
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When they’re:
🥀 Mafia romance
🖤 He is obsessed with him/Extreme loyalty
♥️ Touch him and die
🥀 Revenge
🖤 Strangers to friends to lovers
♥️ Billionaire romance
🥀 Yakuza boss x right hand man
🖤 Mafia heir x Rags to riches
♥️ Morally gray
🥀 Jealous love interest
🖤 Sports (MMA)
♥️ Saving each other/Invincible by their side
🥀 Forced proximity
🖤 Fell in love for the first time
♥️ Tragic ending
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jasontoddenthusiastt · 1 year ago
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Imo Jason is “irredeemable” by default because I don’t see what he needs redemption from.
#I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but joining this fandom made me fucking hate the word ‘redemption’#no person I’ve seen who is in love with the concept knows the who what where when why or how it should work in a story#apparently it isn’t just themes and tropes anymore people don’t understand the proper use of the word ‘villain’#kelseethe#also hilarious: Jason should recieve sensitivity training HR style from Bruce ‘I’m the government and children are my cronies’ wayne#if Jasons headstrong/‘answers to no one’ attitude towards vigilantism is what makes people think he's villainous#I hate to be a broken record but the baddie you’re describing is Bruce#nobody thinks he’s a villain for only trusting in his own methods/self and repeatedly isolating himself#and on top of that gaslighting and hurting people around him in attempts to do what HE **thinks** is the right thing#you people always thought *him* heroic not problematic for all these traits#the only difference is Jason isn’t psychologically abusive & controlling#yet he’s still the bad guy just cause he liberally kills folks in the crime business.#l'd argue goth ham war is the b*tman story to remind you of everything that makes Bruce authentically himself#Idk how to tell you that Bruce mentally compromising/crippling his son in a twisted attempt to ‘save him from himself’#is perfectly in line with slitting the same son’s throat because he couldn’t stand to see him avenge his own killer#and yk what a redemption arc could be interesting for someone like Bruce#because he rarely questions or doubts his choices esp wrt Jason. no matter how morally dubious they may be#I think it would be quite fun to witness his extremely restricted worldview be challenged/shattered he deserves that humbling experience
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m-art77 · 1 year ago
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Do you guys ever think about how if redeemed!Durge pulls out of Gortash’s alliance after returning with Orin’s Netherstone that Gortash literally cannot rationalize their betrayal (and them now trying to kill him) by blaming their urge? Like how much of a complete mindfuck that would be for him. The Dark Urge just told him they’re 100% cured and now they’re trying to kill him? You know, the person who’s always been by their side, their partner in crime, their equal, and their (potential) lover; and now they’re trying to murder him. And prior to the amnesia, Gortash could always rationalize that if The Dark Urge tried to kill him one day that he could hand wave it as “they just couldn’t help themselves anymore” because of Bhaal’s hold on them. It doesn’t mean they wanted to.
But now, Bhaal is gone and The Dark Urge is moving in to kill him. There’s no way to rationalize it as anything else. The only person who ever cared about him is going to kill him, and he’ll die knowing everything they once had is completely gone. The Dark Urge doesn’t remember him. Their love for him died the moment Orin split their skull. The urge isn’t the reason they’re doing this. He’ll die knowing that they hate him.
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konigceo · 9 months ago
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modern booktok romance books SUCK and i'll leave it at that
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cannibalhellhound · 8 months ago
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This is for @topgunalternateuniverse bingo
This one was Hanahaki
The petals are white chrysanthemums because I love them.
There is a second piece I'll paint at a later date (it's sadder imo)
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