#but i think it would be an interesting dynamic all the same

[sammygender]

tbh i think i just find it more interesting to appreciate dean how he is and have zero interest in proving his general goodness. like maybe if i Didnt find that specific type of character so compelling id be more invested in mischaracterisation (though id like to think not <3).

but a lot of hellers/extreme deangirls dont approach spn like a horror show with the thesis 'family is hell' (which is what it initally Is) they approach it like a fantasy-comedy-action show with a funny bisexual mc and his gay angel bf. either because they're not interested or because theyre uncomfortable with the actual show thats there. which is their prerogative! like sure i guess. you do you.

but its interesting bc it means we have 2 fanbases which are rabidly different to each other and get completely different things out of the show and yet keep brushing up against each other. we parcel it into 'samgirl' and 'deangirl' but that makes it sound like its literally just Fans Of The Character when tons of samgirls (myself included <3) love dean. the real dean that is. (also even samgirl fandom is ripe w misinterpretation but all fandoms have that at least theyre kind-of misinterpreting the same show as me. deangirl fandom is something entirely different.)

[awildtei]

Some very unpolished thoughts I scribbled down on my first read of the bonus chapters (SPOILERS AHEAD):

David

-Wymack trying to steer Kevin away from alcohol and into therapy feels a bit retcon-y. I know it works just fine, but I kinda liked that for all his good intentions and overall positive impact Wymack was a very flawed father figure, particularly with something he seems to use as a crutch himself like alcohol is.

-"I don't trust [Betsy]." Interesting in many ways: (a) that makes Neil the third, not second, team member to distrust poor Betsy. (b) he doesn't trust her not to reveal his secrets, so clearly he trusted her just enough to tell her those secrets in the first place. (c) I think it adds a very interesting layer to Kandrew's dynamic, both because Kevin sees Betsy as someone who could get in between them and ruin it and because it's a secret Kevin and Jean shared but Kevin won't share with Andrew (the closest thing to a partner he has with the Foxes).

-"No. Don't ask me that." Exactly what Andrew says on the phone with Higgins. The immediate refusal, the automatic yet almost panicked order... mmm.

-Maybe Kevin's age when Kayleigh died had already been confirmed somewhere but I don't think I knew it, so. Nine. Old enough to (probably) remember her pretty well, to have learned from her and loved her and miss her. Young enough to be shaped into a Raven.

-"but Kevin would always be different." "You're not just a Fox. You're Kayleigh's son." Kill me.

-Kevin's reaction to Wymack talking about his mom is very validating of what I've always imagined he feels about her.

-"When he started thinking about rings he put himself on a plane home." *Holt's voice* VINDICATION!! I've seen people shit on Kayleigh way too often as some kind of cold-hearted bitch who cut Wymack out her life with no hesitation, but he left!! He failed to keep it casual so he left!! "He'd never called her again."

-"Coaches have no honor." Considering what we learned from Jean about Raven coaches... yeah, not shocking. (Did Kevin know Raven coaches were the exception while he was in the Nest? Or did he run to Wymack thinking all coaches are the same, that he would be beaten and punished but what made Wymack a good man was the he would allow him to stay? Did he have to slowly learn to trust that Wymack wouldn't hurt him like Jean with Rhemann?)

-"Your word is enough. Just yours." Throwignnn up :(

-"Nicky wasn't the only one so easily swayed" wait what. Is this about Andreil? Am I missing something? It's definitely about Andrew right?

-Nicky's terrible driving doesn't show up nearly enough in fics methinks.

[shady-swan-jones]

The Kiss: a pop culture-based analysis

The collective uproar about the kiss made me think about why it was there.

Plot:

In order to slip her the pin, it serves as a distraction — a classic move any heist/action lover would have seen coming. James Bond has done it, Person of Interest too; a kiss distracts the antagonists just long enough to do it.

But could it be done another way?

Yes. A hug, like Jake slipping Judy the key in Brooklyn Nine Nine. Or violence, like Hotch kicking Reed with the gun-holstering leg.

Thus, plot is one side of the coin. The other, I propose, is emotional

Romance in Friendship:

Can your romantic partner be your (best) friend? Easily, and that's a mark of a success relationship. The other side is, can romance seep into friendship?

I would argue that many genuine friendships have romantic elements that are left purposefully unexplored. They have the same building blocks, after all. Love and affection. Caring and worrying. elements of jealousy. Our heteronormative, romance-centered culture has claimed all that constitutes a deep bond as romantic. It has delineated the type of touch, as if our human need for tactile connection can be measured, neatly packaged and labeled.

Elrond loves Galadriel. Loves her so much he doesn't hold back when he's at odds with her. Enough to seethe with anger when he believes she strayed, and hold off an entire army at the sight of a drop of blood on her neck.

The entire season has been built on their fundamental disagreement on how to fight darkness, so this moment of unresolved closeness hits hard.

The framing of the scene, the closeup as well as the swelling of the music aid in creating an emotional moment.

It reminds of Nikita, where before the s2 big battle where it's likely they'll die, Birkhoff kisses Nikita goodbye, in front of her boyfriend no less. It's a good kiss, but the intent is clear, and no one is mad. Treat yourselves (x).

Body Language:

As another post explained (better than I could), physical touch varies across cultures, and we can’t always interpret everything through a Western lens where kissing equals romance.

The Celebrian of it all:

We cannot impose our knowledge of the Third Age onto RoP. Yes, Elrond will eventually marry Celebrian, but she doesn’t exist right now. He’s not seeing Galadriel as his future mother-in-law but as his friend. Is kissing her really weirder than holding back because he somehow senses he’ll marry her unborn daughter? I rest my case.

The reception:

After the initial shock, people don't think it's that weird, or at least they see its purpose (according to the poll I made and the part of twitter I haven't blocked). Trolls have blown it out of proportion, as expected, but I'm glad we're having more nuanced conversations here.

Conclusion:

I'm happy RoP is giving us another relationship dynamic, they're not afraid to push the characters emotionally. The scene hit harder with a kiss and it punctuated the doomed feeling of the narrative. Our emotional response is the very proof that it succeeded.

[crumblinggothicarchitecture]

if you ever did an in-depth post about ‘you need to calm down’ i would love to see it because that is my most-hated taylor swift song. like why are you comparing your beef with katy perry to homophobia 😭😭😭

As a lesbian- I have a lot of feelings pent up about "You Need to Calm Down" and all of them are negative.

At the songs core- Swift is showing herself to be horribly ignorant. Are we really all going to accept her propping up the idea that homophobia is the same as having a public disagreement with another celebrity? Not only is she negating the power dynamics that often exist within the propagation of homophobia, by insinuating that homophobia is the same as a disagreement between equals in society, but she is also trivializing it down to a simple disagreement over career related bullshit.

Not to mention that she is NOT an ally- I cannot stand the people who think she is a left-leaning, feminist, LGBT advocate. It's like they have created a fanfiction concept of Taylor Swift in their heads.

She profits off the LGBT community when it is most beneficial- but when legitimate rights are being stripped away, she is silent.

Taylor Swift is really good at commodifying social trends without actually risking anything. She waits until it is safe- then pretends to speak up for people's rights, when, in reality, she is just finally able to turn the social trend into part of her brand. Therefore, she gave a stupid line in the song "Welcome to New York" (2014) about how New York City is somehow a utopia of gay freedom (not true but whatever), and then in "You Need to Calm Down" she was profiting off the excess of emotion and democratic enterprising seeping off the US Election cycle.

Her first use of this profit-first tacit happened in 2014- what happened in 2015? The US supreme court legalized same-sex marriage. Swift simply saw the social trend- and captialized off a topic about which the youth were passionate.

The second time, in "You Need to Calm Down" she published this song in 2019- firmly within her faux activist era, and well-aware that the youth were interested in politics. This was right before the 2020 US election- she once again saw the increase of young people paying attention to the ideological split within the country- bearing in mind her target audience skews young, progressive, and American, she pounced on the opportunity to capitalize off their impulse towards supporting ideological-progressive media. As we all geared up to vote down the conservative-leaning Donald Trump, who aligned himself with right-wing religious ideologies standing to threaten the previous supreme court decision on Same-Sex rights, Swift swoops in with a silly pop-beat and a fake country accent to pretend she is the savior of the young and gay.

If it wasn't so shady- it would be a brillant use of rhetorical analysis to sell product. Capitalism has made a cynic of me- I fear.

Swift saw the fear of young LGBT people- during an election cycle-and decided to profit off that fear not through distancing herself from them, but by pretending to care. Notice, again, how she only mentioned gay rights during these very specific cultural conditions which allow her to somehow make a profit off ideologically aligning herself with one side of an issue or another.

Personally, I find fake care even more heinous than outright hatred.

Once again- in this current year she is using the endorsement of a US presidential candidate to further her own brand and try to re-affirm her place within the general rhetorical circles of "progressive and therefore morally upstanding individual" to the youth.

It's all a calculated move to shake-off whatever negative press she got through her associations with right-wing Footballers and keep her prime audience of young Americans.

I have much more to say on this topic- but for now, this is where I leave you. I have to go eat lunch.

[solradguy]

They b calling Sol Badguy a lesbian again. I gotta point aggressively at like Millia. I-No. The curios and such. You’re familiar

I feel like I'm starting to be an obnoxious asshole about the lesbian Sol Badguy thing so I'm going to explain why I don't care for it in greater depth than I have elsewhere so far and then put something brief about it in my pinned. Not exactly a "DNI" because, ultimately, I think those do more harm to the person sharing it than it does to help them (it's an itemized list of things guaranteed to upset the author), but more of a "I'm very tired, please don't" list.

After I post this, I'm done talking about butch/lesbian Sol Badguy.

My elaboration on this might come across as a little mean so if you're a lesbian Sol enjoyer and don't want to read all that, my feelings can be briefly summarized with: I don't like it and people keep making me see it in places blacklists don't work in.

In essence, I don't really care what people headcanon characters as because, in the end, it's just harmless fun. But the reason I don't care is because I generally have control (via blacklisting, unfollowing, etc) over what I do and don't see. I don't like this headcanon for Sol and people keep making me see it; I can't blacklist what shows up in tags or reblog comments in my notifications tab and it feels really mean blocking every single person that does it.

The lesbian/butch Sol thing came from an innocent one-off kinda jokey comment over on Twitter and people ran with it like it was the best thing ever. I think it's annoying, and I just don't like it. That's the surface level basics of my feelings about this.

The deeper part is that fandoms will pick a cis male character to put femme or lesbian identities/labels on over one of the cis female characters—or even one of the canon trans women, if the IP has it, and GG does have a canon trans woman—in almost every case. I have yet to see as many people call any of the women of Guilty Gear butch or lesbian with the same energy people have for Sol.

There are characters in Guilty Gear that would take far less effort and would have so much more to explore with a butch/lesbian identity than Sol does. There are already characters with very, very, solid evidence suggesting they're lesbian or bisexual women. I-No, Millia, and Elphelt are just 3 of them. Arguments could be made for Baiken, Giovanna, May, Bridget, and Jam too. Personality-wise, Baiken or I-No would probably be the closest to Sol if Sol's pricky-outside-but-softer-inside dynamic is appealing.

Jack-O' is also kind of a blank slate in regards to her interests post-Strive. She's resolved her difficulties with being a vessel for Aria and is now open and excited to explore what the world has to offer her and what things in it she might come to love. If one of the pillars of the lesbian Sol headcanon is his relationship with Jack-O', I don't think it would be hard at all shipping Jack-O' with one of the women with the same level of intimacy she's capable of with Sol.

Her and Sol aren't married, you wouldn't have to divorce them to make it work like a post-Overture era relationship with Ky or Dizzy. Maybe Sol is too clingy and it's suffocating to Jack-O' so they separated, or maybe Sol expected Jack-O' to perfectly fill the void Aria had left (maybe he even eventually slips and calls her Aria?) and it just ended up being too weird so he was the one to break it off. There are even a few points throughout Xrd and Strive where Sol straight up just was not very nice to her and maybe she's thought on it and it bothers her. You could even just say (or not say why at all) that they split with no bad feelings and they're just platonic friends now. There is a lot to work with here.

To summarize: I think this headcanon is very surface level, a disservice to Guilty Gear's female cast, and that it would be more interesting and more fun for people if they explored these dynamics with one of the women instead of doing it with one of the men.

Don't let this post and my feelings on lesbian Sol stop you from enjoying it if it is fun for you and brings any sort of fulfillment, but know that I just don't like it and I don't want to have to keep seeing it. I have blacklists and things set up to not see it when I go into tags, this is almost purely localized in my notifications tab. Don't stop posting it in tags or sharing it just because of me. However, I will see it if you tag it or comment it on an original post I made or a post reblogged directly from my blog.

Thank you for reading. Sorry for being kind of a bummer about this headcanon.

[hehearse]

Have you read both the manhwa and novel for sctir? I just finished reading orv (i will be facedown in a bog for the next seven years about it) and would love to read the novel for sctir as well. i've really enjoyed the manhwa but! i heard that it changed some stuff and mixed up plot points so i'm not sure if i can start from where the manhwa left off or if i need to read from the beginning.

Also your art is gorgeous and im obsessed with the way you draw characters and super dynamic and interesting layouts and also i hope you're having a good day

(i feel you on the orv novel face down in the ditch period.)

i did i did! and i would honestly recommend starting the novel from the beginning. it's incredibly fun!! i started it from the beginning after reading the webtoon and it wasn't tedious at all to go through the same events - first of all you're right, there are some plot points mixed up, and secondly it has a different feel? again, yoojin's inner monologue is a joy to read, and adds a lot to the experience!! i don't think you'll regret starting from the beginning.

(aw THANK YOU i am glad you like it!! it's my pleasure to deliver whatever i can ^^)

[diabolimeservavit666]

No, I don't really ship it but I love the concept of this pairing (for some reason)...

No, I don't want to see a sexual relationship between them. But I wouldn't be opposed to a fanfic where Alastair somehow develops feelings towards Dean once he lets Dean off the table and Dean starts torturing other people. I think it would be an interesting (even if incredibly fucked up) dynamic. This makes it even better.

Well, duh, an actor in his late forties (that seems to have a thing with thriller/horror/paranormals) would be more experienced than your thirty year old self. Something close to thirty, anyway. The difference between Dean and Jensen is interesting and it's not at all what you would expect. Dean is just like "well, you tortured me first so I might as well return the favor" (why the Hell did I read that in Alastair's voice?) and poor little Jensen is like "OMG, his acting is so much better than mine... we have to get rid of him". Perfect comedy, really.

[turtleblogatlast]

Small but significant character moments that I actually really adore are from both the times we see the boys as tots. There is a reoccurrence that happens in both of them that I find so incredibly interesting.

For the turtle tot short, Splinter leaves the boys with weapons. In the short, Raph is the one who suggests they do “what Lou Jitsu would do” and Leo is the one who takes point when Splinter comes back to reprimand them. Leo, in taking point, is the one to defend them and get Splinter off their tails.

And then, in the flashback regarding the Kuroi Yōroi helmet, Raph is the one who grabs and throws “Skully” as a way to replace their missing ball which breaks it into pieces, but Leo is the one who speaks for the group and rushes into action to fix the teapot.

I love this for multiple reasons, but the biggest are how it shows that Raph has always been inclined toward the bold and fun and making the plans to include his brothers in what he loves and believes they’d love, whereas Leo has always been inclined to be the “Face” of the group and shoulder the attention even if it’s potentially negative all while coming up with on the spot attempts to fix the situation.

[beanghostprincess]

Sorry I really didn’t mean I’m attacking you or your ship. I also don’t think it’s a red flag, most gay men I saw don’t really like shuggy either. I mean, probably the entire world prefers any other shanks ships? On almost every site, con or store there’s always tons of mishanks and Bennshanks and never shuggy. I get it’s also about dynamic and connection those two pairs have, like with the parallels to other ships the base for them is extremely strong. But the minimal shuggy does speak volumes. I genuinely wonder about this. Shuggy is unpopular and again while I do agree there’s strong connection between “rival ships” I don’t think that’s the only reason… and like…. Buggy is ugly, isn’t he? He doesn’t have cool style, doesn’t look cool, makes ugly faces all the time, also is a coward. I like him as comedy character and shanks brother though!

I understand where you're coming from when you say Shuggy is unpopular amongst some people (actually, before anyone says anything. It IS an extremely popular ship in Japan but I have seen A LOT of hatred towards it in this side of the fandom, so that's what I'm talking about when I say it's unpopular). I have talked about this before. And I have said a lot of times that the reason why is often because people only focus on looks and Buggy is not conventionally attractive for the fangirly twinkified sexualized gaze numerous sides of the fandom and the general audience seek. Like, I am not forcing people to ship them, but I have had people admitting the only reason they don't is because of the looks, and I personally believe that is a very (despite valid, of course) dull way of seeing ships. And respectfully, I don't care that other gay dudes or all the people in the world agree with you. It's not a red flag to not like Shuggy, what it is a red flag, though, is to come into people's inboxes to do what you're doing!

I know you don't mean to attack me or anybody who ships them but your tone does wonders showing otherwise. Your perception of shipping is just based on looks and the fact that you came here, to a blog that explicitly ships these characters and is fond of Buggy, talking shit about one of the characters' looks... Is just straight-up mean and not following the social etiquette this site should follow, which is "let people do whatever the fuck they want".

So with all due respect, what makes you think I won't find your questions offensive in any way? Because you keep talking bad about a character I like in my inbox for literally no reason. Do you expect me to admit that the ship is unpopular because Buggy is ugly and boring? Well, I do admit people view him as ugly and only a comedy relief, but I don't. Expecting others to find beautiful and interesting the same things you do is having a very close-minded vision that One Piece's plot itself is against.

By the way, you're showing that you clearly don't like Buggy in the slightest because you're only talking about the traits that you find negative about him. But of course, you like him as comedy relief. Of course, you like him as a character in Shanks' story and not as a character himself. Despite Buggy having lots of depth. Your perception of these characters seems, in my opinion, extremely empty and, as I said, only based on looks. And you're free of shipping whatever you want however you want! But please, please, don't do this anymore. This is just petty high school mean girl behavior. Even Regina George would word this in a more polite way.

So, as a little advice for you, let people ship whatever they want without questioning their favorite characters! I am sure you will live a more peaceful life!

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Outdrawn

f/f contemporary romance

two cartoonist who’ve been rivals since uni, and now have competing webcomics online, have to work together on the relaunch of a cult classic at the comic press they both work at

they both struggle with art-related physical and mental health issues, and complicated families

[smoshingatut]

I'm kinda tired of dungeon meshi fans blatantly misinterpreting Kabru's goals, motivations, and character so they can ship him with Laios...like obviously it's awesome if you enjoy Laikabu but can you nooot twist Kabru's intentions for involving himself with the guy who constantly triggers his monster trauma and pisses him off so bad he gets brain damage so that he turns into "the guy who wants to suck Laios's dick" as his entire character? I've even seen people cut off Kabru's words to make it seem like he is admiring Laios because it would disrupt that narrative

[godsfavoritescientist]

Building off of what I wrote in my fic "Sparks," I'm really compelled by the idea of Ford genuinely no longer being interested in sailing around in a boat with Stan by the time they were seniors in high school.

I like the idea of it not being just a symptom of the resentment that had been building between them, nor it being a dream of Ford's that only paled in comparison to west coast tech, but it being a genuine loss of interest on Ford's end. I think it complicates things even further in some really juicy ways.

Like, imagine going through high school slowly losing more and more interest in the dream you've shared with your twin and only friend ever since you were little kids. How do you break it to him? How do you explain it to him without making it sound like a rejection of him? Without it making him hate you?

How do you explain it without it feeling like a spit in the face to all the hard work he's put into a plan that started out as a way of him comforting you by telling you "it doesn't matter what people say about you, you're going to be an adventurer who sails away into the sunset and never has to hear their mockery ever again, and there will be babes and treasure and heroism, and then they'll all see how cool you really are!"

And all through high school you think to yourself, "he's going to move on to more realistic dreams any day now, and then I won't have to say anything about it!" But no matter how many times you mention something else he could do with his life that he seems interested in, or bring up the challenging logistics of traveling around long-term in a boat, he sounds just as committed to the childhood dream as ever, and completely oblivious to how apprehensive you sound.

So resentment grows, little by little. Because that's easier than confronting the soul-crushing levels of guilt that are building up inside of you, every time you don't take an opportunity to tell him you don't want to do the plan anymore. You don't have a single person in your life who modeled how to have difficult conversations for you. As far as you know, having this conversation with Stan would crush him into tiny little pieces and then he would hate you forever, and you can't stand the idea of losing the only friend you've ever had.

So tensions grow. A lack of interest turns into a bitter resentment that, if you were really being honest with yourself, is directed more at yourself than it is at Stan.

And then the falling-out happens, and it seems like you were proven right. Stan hates you now, and he's never going to forgive you for giving up on his dream. But two can play that game, so you try to hate him too. Because if you hate him too, then maybe it won't hurt as much that he never came back. That he never even turned up at school, or by the boat, or in through your bedroom window in the middle of the night. He knows what dad's like, and how he says impulsive exaggerated things when he's angry, and haven't you both dealt with his harsh words countless times before and been able to dust yourselves off and joke about it later? So why isn't he back at home, joking with you about how absurd your dad acted that night, being impossible and belligerent about ruining your dream, but at least now you're even, because you've ruined his dream too.

-

And now imagine you find out he risked the lives of everyone in existence to bring you back, right after you had accepted your fate was to die killing Bill. It would be terrifying and confusing and infuriating. If he cared so much, why didn't he do something to reconnect with you sooner? Why did he ignore you in favor of trying to make it big without you? Why didn't he take the infinitely safer and simpler action of reaching out to you without you having to track down his address and send a desperate plea for help? You were convinced that he didn't care enough to bother with you unless you had an important enough reason for him to come. But even then, he thought your plans were stupid. He didn't want anything to do with you, not even with the world at stake.

Did he save your life out of guilt? Does he pity you that much? It doesn't add up with what he did in the decade leading up to shoving you into the portal. And the dissonance between the version of him in your head that hates you, and the man who held out his arms to welcome you back to your home dimension, is so strong that you feel like you're being lied to again, like you're back in the depths of gaslighting and manipulation that Bill put you through, even though there's no way that's what Stan is trying to do... right? You can't figure it out, so you run away from it. You don't want to know the answer to whether or not Stan hates you, because you don't know which answer would hurt more, so you try to make him hate you more than ever, because at least then you would know for sure how he feels.

And in the end, after he sacrifices his memories for you, and for the world, things seem clearer. The layers upon layers of confusion and anger and hurt seem to have washed away like drawings in the sand, leaving behind the simple truth: that you two had an argument, and didn't move past it for forty years, and despite everything you put each other through, you both still want to re-connect.

So you sail away in a boat together.

And at first, it's wonderful. It's exactly what you want. It feels like an apology to Stan, and a thank-you for saving the world, and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to heal the rift between you two, and it's good to be back on earth, and you wonder why you ever doubted the dream you two once had.

But then, after the first long journey you spend on the sea together, when you get back home to dry land, Stan is already talking about planning your next adventure out on the open sea. He recaps every adventure you had on the first trip, over and over again, and he wants to chat with you all through the morning and long into the night, and you don't have the words to explain to yourself that you don't have enough social battery for this, and suddenly you're slipping back into the horrifyingly familiar feeling of Stan being overbearing and needing space from him and how could you think that? How could you think that about him after everything he's done for you and everything he's forgiven you for? But the longer this goes on, the more you realize that you still don't want to spend the rest of your life sailing around with Stan. It's great fun in moderation, but the idea of your whole life revolving around Stan and going on adventures with Stan and being in a boat with Stan with no time to be by yourself thinking about your own things and figuring out your own dreams makes your skin crawl with a claustrophobic kind of panic that you still don't know how to put into words forty years after the first time this feeling grabbed you by the throat and ruined your friendship with Stanley.

But the first time this happened, it nearly ruined his life forever. You can't let yourself feel this. You don't feel this. You're happy to spend the rest of your life fulfilling Stan's lifelong dream, and making up for the time you crushed his dream, and sure, maybe he crushed your dream once too, and maybe it would be nice for him to support your dreams like you're now doing for him, but you can't say that. He saved the universe, and it would be horrible and ungrateful and cruel for you to try to voice these feelings, especially when you don't know how to voice your feelings without it making other people feel like you twisted a knife into their gut. So you try to pretend the feeling isn't there.

You go out on a boat with Stan again. You planned out another incredible journey together, and this should be fun, and you should be happy about this, but the unspoken feeling you shoved as far down in yourself as it could possibly go is eating you alive. The worst part? Stan is starting to notice. You have never been good at hiding your emotions. The trick to it has always been to convince yourself you don't feel it at all, and not think about it, and that has always worked like a charm. But whenever the emotion claws its way back up to the forefront of your mind, you can tell Stan knows something is wrong. So you can't even give him the happy ending he deserves. You can't even convince him that you want to be here on the open seas forever with him, like he deserves. And you keep trying and trying to hide it, but Stan keeps asking in roundabout ways, like "You're being awfully quiet, sixer," and "whats that look on your face?" and eventually it comes exploding out of you like a shaken-up soda bottle dropped on its cap.

And then it's like you're back at home in New Jersey again, standing in the living room while dad grabs Stanley by the shirt. It all comes pouring out of you, in the worst possible way, with the worst possible phrasing, like a pandora's box of monstrousness, and Stan tries to fight back against the sting of your words, but you're made out of acid and you're burning through him and you can see it on his face, and there's never any coming back from this, not this time, you'll just have to either jump into the ocean or become a monster forever, so Stan can hate you more easily again, and-

-and at the end of the outburst, you're still on a boat in the middle of nowhere in the ocean with your brother, in dangerous waters, and you have things to do to keep the boat running smoothly.

You can't run away from him. He can't run away from you. You're stuck here for at least a couple more weeks, even if you turned around and sailed back towards shore right away.

-

And the thing that compels me so much here, despite how unbelievably angsty it all is, is that it sets up a situation wherein the Stans might end up forced to actually address the decades of resentment and confusion and wanting-to-reconnect-throughout-it-all that they thought they could gloss over and heal with enough time spent adventuring together on a boat. They might end up forced to actually address the crux of the issue that drove them apart in the first place: Ford wanting a little more space to feel like his own person, and to feel like he's able to have his own dreams, too.

It wouldn't happen easily, nor right away, but if they were stuck together on a little boat in the middle of nowhere surrounded by magical creatures they have to protect each other from in order to make it back home alive, then after they had one fight where they brought up all the things they silently agreed to never bring up again, it would probably happen many more times, and each time it would leave them both angrier at each other than ever, until eventually something honest slipped through amidst all the saying-anything-except-what-they-mean bickering. And once enough of these honest moments slipped through, then they would have a thread to tug on to start to unravel the gargantuan knot of their decades of unresolved conflicts.

And then, eventually, maybe Stan could learn that he can have a good friendship with his brother without needing to be glued to him at the hip, and Ford needing a certain amount of alone time doesn't mean he dislikes him or wants to abandon him, and Ford could learn that he can be honest and have a meaningful connection with someone without it driving them away and making them hate him.

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 5!!!

[5-htagonist]

.........im just gonna be real i do not see kabu misu. like period...... like dont get me wrong theyhave a good dynamic but it was NOT mithrun in the middle of his conspiracy board

[see-arcane]

Mina's incredible (and underrated) detective prowess would be very useful I bet. Put her on the helm Integra, Van Helsing praised her brains as being above everyone's including himself for a reason.

I honestly can't guess what the chemistry between Integra and Mina would be. Integra doesn't really click with me as a classically heroic character, for all that she does focus on saving humanity from the undead via Alucard and her forces, being the Boss Lady etc etc. She's miles away from being as insidious as an Amanda Waller, but...

The hotel. The fucking hotel will never leave me.

Yes, the order went directly against 'soldiers of the enemy,' but those soldiers had been lied to about who and what they were charging into. Which was obvious even without being a fly on the wall to know their higher-ups had fed them some BS to march them into death and win their own power grab from Millennium. She didn't tell Alucard to 'make it quick' or even just to 'neutralize.' She told him to search and destroy. Folding to Alucard's egging and negging to seem like a Worthy War Commander in the grand scheme~ of the plot

She's not heartless, exactly, but she is arctic and surprisingly quick to breeze past the loss of lives that aren't under her direct care/command. While she might respect Mina's abilities and investigative skills--I wouldn't be surprised if Mina could intuit Millennium's endgame well before the climax could happen--Integra inherited none of her ancestor's warm regard, supposing Abraham van Hel(l)sing had any of the original's tenderness in him (50/50 considering this takes place in aggro horror territory). We can't even say if this universe's Mina played any big role in cornering Dracula; she might just have been a targeted damsel.

All that said, I think Integra would see Mina as another time-displaced bleeding heart with a few useful skills, same as Jonathan. Someone to be an ally at best, a liability at worst. So I don't see her handing over any reins or offering to be co-girlbosses any time soon :c

[bongo-clash]

Okay this is a little bit of a weird one but hear me out here: Do you remember that bit at the beginning of 13 where Kitty gets stuck in the 'Unworld'??? I've seen some aus where Danny's like the GZ incarnate but what if he was the Unworld incarnate instead?? I just think it'd be really cool because it's this in-between/'other' dimension and embodying that could really come with some eldritch properties. Plus when he was caught in the portal he Was kind of stuck between the GZ and the living realm so it could make sense!!