#but it's also too simplistic

[lnsfawwi]

Heroism in TFATWS

Let's establish one thing which is that the show operates in a superhero trope, which means there are good guys and bad guys, and the good guys always win. This is not to say that characters are morally clean-cut between good/bad. The Flag Smashers acted out of good intentions; Walker did want to do good things when he took over the mantle. But that doesn't mean they aren't the bad guys in the story, because a person is not only judged by their intentions but also the means and the ends of those intentions.

Sam and Bucky are the heroes in the story, they beat the bad guys (the Flag Smashers) and saved the world. That's how the story ends. That's how all the superhero stories end.

But the show isn't quite that simple, not in the sense that it deals with moral greys, no. Rather, the show really fucks up the boundaries between good/bad, right/wrong, and by extension, the heroism of the show.

Let's say Karli has some vague cosmopolitan worldview, and let's say that's better than the state system so Sam is justified to sympathize with her cause, and sam is rightfully asking the governments to be better. What's the actual, feasible way to achieve Karli's vision? Nice speeches notwithstanding, Sam isn't offering a solution. States aren't going to abandon the system that made them a state just because some hero dressed in an American flag descends from the sky and tells them to. Forced displacement and/or re-settlement happen because the population distribution is screwed, especially in Western Europe where Karli is from. Those states simply do not have the capacity, spatially and financially, to accommodate all the people while the others would be faced with devastating labour shortages. Statecraft is not just about morals, some IR scholars would even argue it's never about morals, you have to do the rationalist calculation. (also sam's speech to the politicians is so.........wrong. it sounds like a 16-year-old wanna-be socialist who spends too much time on leftist tiktok)

Here's the thing, you can agree with the political ideology or not, because it's not about whether it's right or wrong. It's about Sam being a hero who comes from a heavy political background, who represents a set of values that is meant to transcend a single country, advocating that ideology whilst being completely naive about it.

Steve embodies a similar idealism that makes him a hero, but not a leader. He's a leader because he can lead, he assesses the situation, sets a goal, and gives out tasks to achieve that goal. In the show, Sam is not demonstrating effective leadership, although not entirely his fault.

When you have the 'hero' indiscriminatorily endorsing the villain's philosophy, it doesn't mean the hero is empathetic, it means the hero is fucking bullshit. What makes a hero isn't merely stopping bad guys, it's also offering a better alternative even when the villain kinda makes sense. Superheroes are supposed to offer moral lessons through their heroism, which often takes place as they defeat evil. Without that, they're just dudes stopping fights, not heroes fighting for causes. The only moral lesson Sam offers is 'hey maybe radicalization is bad', which is completely ignored by both Karli and Zemo.

Sam's sympathy towards Karli is even more absurd. Even if he agrees with her cause, she's an unrepentant killer. 'Don't call them terrorists.' really, Sam? What would you call them? Just bc the Soviets fought the N@zis doesn't mean they were the good guys.

Furthermore, we see the contrast between her and the other flag smashers. They were invisible victims while her body was gently carried by Sam as phones and cameras were recording. In a show where they tried to make sense of racism, the stark contrast between Karli and the rest of the group happens to be mostly PoC is kinda hilarious.

The problem isn't Sam. It's the terrible horrible writing. You can't take a Watsonian take when it's so obviously a Doylist problem. The show claims to be a lot of things it got wrong is just pathetic.

What about Bucky? His arc is pretty detached from the main storyline and he basically did nothing significant in the show so I don't even know what they want to convey about his heroism. He was literally just running around punching people (not even very good at it too) while being blamed for things he wasn't responsible for. He only told Karli that killing was bad. What a novel lesson. Again, there is nothing from the good guy.

Who is the hero then?

Zemo is the true anti-hero of the show. Throughout the show, Sam and Bucky - the good guys - oppose killing in general, but their method is proven ineffectual and in the end, all Flag Smashers are killed with a majority of them killed after they were lawfully arrested. The Flag Smashers were terrorists, they were the villains, therefore narratively, this makes Zemo's end goal - killing all supersoldiers, in this case, the Flag Smashers - right. His ideology - the desire to become superhuman cannot be separated from supremacist ideas; supersoldiers cannot be allowed to exist - is positively reflected in the story. His success inevitably justifies his ideology, which stands in contrast to both Sam and Karli. I'm not saying what he did was heroic, but from a storytelling perspective, Zemo is the 'hero' who ultimately eliminated the evil in this superhero trope.

The result is that Sam, the supposed hero of the show, has done nothing. He didn't stop the bad guys, he didn't offer an effective alternative to Karli (or Zemo) practically and ideologically, while Zemo did all that. What does it say about heroism and the idealism that comes with it? That it's nice to talk about but useless when a real battle takes place? That end does justify means? Because that's not what Cap trilogy conveys.

[dewwshi]

princess of mithral hall

[ronkeyroo]

SPLIT / IMAGE

[magicicephoenix]

happy 414 day!! time for another silly photo op :D

without text below cut:

[punknerdmusings]

Hera design for that game I'm making. She's still a rough sketch technically, but I'm also not the most experienced in pixel art 😅 Especially at this size (150 by 200 was original canvas size). Hilariously, smaller is sometimes easier.

Her hair is one of my favorite details, it's braided close to her head but the ends are left loose to be a hair sculpture reminiscent of peacock feathers.

@creatingblackcharacters Thought you might enjoy this one!

[nellasbookplanet]

Emilia Conly (and bonus Stirling) as she appears in the epilogue of Corruptive Shell, Rotten Core!

[ananke-xiii]

Rowena and the thick, bloody umbilical cord between choices and faults.

In a previous post of mine I’ve explored a little bit how Mary and Kelly represent a sort of “missed opportunity” for, respectively, Sam and Jack.

At the beginning of s13 Sam resents the fact that he hasn’t been proactive in seeking to create a relationship with his mother and now that she’s (presumably) gone he doesn’t want to deal with that reality. He had wasted his second chance. Jack, on the other hand, never even had a first opportunity to begin with but, unlike Sam, has experienced a sense of unity with his mother so extreme that one of the first things that he tells Sam is that he was his mother(!!!).

S13 reinforces the Mother-Son symbolism because, after Jack’s birth, a rift is opened in space (apparently not in time?): Kelly stays (dead, rip girl I love you) on one side of it while Mary crosses it and finds herself in Apocalypse World. To make things even more clear, this is no random parallel universe: this is the alternate reality where Mary didn’t deal with Azazel. So mothers and their choices/faults are a central theme in this season. Or, well, more or less.

To complete the mothers’ trimurti or, better, tridevi we’re missing the final mother, the destroyer who is, of course, Rowena. It’s therefore quite apt that Rowena reaches her highest potential this season and even confronts Death. What motivates her in an interesting blend of (missing)love and (lacking)power. Lucifer is as part of her story as Kelly’s and Mary’s. Unlike these two, though, she doesn’t have a son who resurrects her, nor a turned-benefactor cosmic being who offers her resurrection as a gift to her son. Rowena has to resurrect herself. Not once but twice. She is, perhaps, the loneliest character in the whole series.

This is actually quite ironic because, if we look back on previous seasons, her “choice” to kill Oskar, her putative son, was what triggered the whole chain of events (the freeing of Amara first and Lucifer second) that directly link Rowena with Mary and Kelly.

It’s only natural, then, that s13 Rowena keeps representing the reversal of the Mary and Sam/ Kelly and Jack relationships because there is no son who’s looking for her, rather she is the mother who’s looking for her (dead) child. Like Sam, she also needs someone who can access another dimension to bring Crowley back but, unlike him, she’s not successful. Now, ngl, this pisses me off to no end, like of course I can understand the real reasons why Crowley couldn’t be brought back, still I kinda hate how it was narratively framed.

When, in "Funeralia", Rowena says that life is unfair she is right but not in the general, pessimistic sense of the phrase: she's right because in-universe some deaths are more important than others and people get back on board depending on whether or not they're still a role to play for them. Rowena's faith in magic is actually justified because magic is the only thing that can help her. And the tragic thing is that it's also what damns her in the process because it's the only form of power she can have access to. There are no angels or cosmic entities looking out for her. She's just... alone.

So, perhaps, it's not that I necessarily hate how her failure to bring Crowley back is described, I just see it as further proof that Rowena is the best example to show how in Supernatural the game is rigged from the beginning and we didn’t even need an interfering and pervy God to realize it. That's all we've been seeing it since S1. All those infinite, booooring talks about being good/evil or doing good/bad actually mean nothing because, at the end of the day, in this show what really matters is how useful you can be, to whom and why (and this is way less booooring, you learn a lot of interesting things about these characters if you go down this road, it's grim but it's more rewarding).

S13 is also when the final connection between Rowena and the Winchesters, Sam to be more precise, is established which is indicative of the fact that she will inevitably die. Before S13 her story was her own, after “Funeralia” it cannot be extricated from Sam’s. To some degree, it’s quite similar to what happened with Crowley and Dean. What’s more, just like Crowley’s powers and shrewdness are what really carry the plot from s6 to s12, magic and spells (and therefore Rowena’s role in the story) will be the key for many plot points from s13 to s15. But there is a big difference.

Both Crowley and Rowena’s sacrifices are described as heroic but, let’s be honest, only Rowena’s was. Crowley’s demise was a clean-up after his own mess at best. It also proved to be unnecessary. Rowena and that awful MBOL’s egg thingy would have managed to confine Lucifer, like, they actually did it. It was Crowley who perverted the spell for reasons that I personally find OOC. I would’ve liked the Crowley vs Lucifer power struggle but not the way it was done in s12 because it felt very nonsensical to me. As in: I can see you need a reason to keep Lucifer around and this is what you’ve come up with but it’s still quite illogical.

At its hidden and secret core S13 is the season of the “let’s reframe the sons’ stories and blame it on the mothers”. Just like Kelly is blamed for Castiel’s ideal vision of Jack and Mary’s "choice" is established as the most important point in the whole show, Rowena-as-Mother must face the same fate: it was her fault if Crowley, Fergus!, ended the way he ended. It’s a naaaaaaaaaaaaaah for me.

This is what we’re told in “Funeralia”:

Rowena: Oh, but it is. Death has something I want. Sam: What’s that? Rowena: My son. After you told me he was gone, how he died, I had an unexpected reaction. We had our differences, but it’s my fault he went down the path he did. I left him. Dean: We’re talking about Crowley-- demon, King of Hell? Rowena: We’re talking about Fergus-- a man abandoned and loveless, tricked by a demon, died in a gutter. He deserved better from the world. From me.

Now, just to be clear: yes, Rowena had the responsibility to do better; yes, she was the absolute worst; yes, she played no small role in her son’s story. However, I personally don’t like all these negative associations between “worlds” and “mothers” as if every fucking thing in the universe is dependent solely on them. How did we end up here? It’s almost as if absent fathers are, like, not THAT bad after all (and the show, as far as I'm concerned, ultimately approves of and absolves absent fathers). So I’m very suspicious of the way motherhood is portrayed specifically in s13 and Rowena’s attempt at redemption well demonstrates that there is reason to be so.

This dialogue in “Funeralia” confirms my gut feeling:

Sam: You know, what happened with Crowley? That wasn’t your fault. Rowena: He never had a chance. Dean: He made his choices, just like we all do. Look, every one of us has done something that we have to live with, that were trying to make up for. Every one of us. Sam: Even without all that extra juice, you’re still the deadliest witch around [Sam's flattering Rowena. He's gonna ask for her help in 3,2,1...]. Rowena: Flatterer. Sam: Yeah, well, we, um... we may need your help [Here we go!]. To save our family. To… hell, to save the world. Dean: You wanna be redeemed? This would be a pretty big step. Rowena: And do you think I still can be? Dean: Yeah, I do.

I mean, not to be rude, but who the fuck cares if Dean Winchester thinks that Rowena can be redeemed? Like, how is Rowena’s redemption (which is strictly connected to her being a bad mother and not, among other things, a zero-regret murderer, which she also happens to be, for instance) connected to saving the Winchester’s family? Don’t get me wrong, I understand that this is SPN and that Sam and Dean’s problems are Apocalypse-level problems (lol, they really did that, when I say that their story is like a cosmogony maybe I’m not that wrong) but, as I’ve said, I cannot help but notice the similarities between Rowena’s arc this season with Mary’s and Jack’s, i.e. you can be redeemed if you either do something useful for the Winchesters or... realize that it's not your "fault" that your sons suffered terribily because "choosing" to deal with Azazel was actually the right choice... for the world. How come fathers saving the world are framed as heroic while mothers actively creating worlds by making hard choices that benefit the greater good need redemption?

So to sum up: while fathers invade S13’s main storyline as solvers, restorers and fixers, mothers are the bones of the story, they carry its weight and its sins but get little if nothing in return: Kelly stays dead, Mary ends up helping out a world that absolves her of her Original Sin but that’s nevertheless a mess (you can never win lol) and Rowena can’t get her son back (but she can save Sam and Dean's family the world!). Looks good, right? Hurray mommy!

[astromechs]

honestly, calling glinda the villain of wicked would be the kind of myopic, black and white take this site would produce

[maeamian]

Look, I'm not saying that the first name thing is never a sign of disrespect, but one reason people call her Kamala instead of Harris is because that's the campaign branding she used in the 2020 primaries. Same thing for Hillary, she decided on campaign branding that focused on her first name because quite simply there had already been a president with the same last name. But at the same time, there's Bernie, there's Beto, there's Mayor Pete, they are known by their first names in politics because that's the political branding that they went with.

Similarly when it comes to last name branding Donald has gone all in to the point that you probably had to think for a fraction of a second to get to Trump when I used the first name. I understand that sexism exists, but I am not positive that these two candidates having their more common used name be their first one is a good example of it.

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

I honestly think it’s too soon to know for certain whether Cheng Xiaoshi is truly doomed or not. I feel like we’re still missing a lot of important information here

[prismatiger]

Homunculus

[pauls1967moustache]

What do u think of beatles fans who hate yoko? Personally, I genuinely don't understand what yoko has done to stand out in the beatles lore as a particularly heinous character in the story. Had to unfollow several authors on Tumblr bc they usually gas john up and put yoko down, like they didn't come in a set.

I don’t think anyone’s required to like Yoko but I also agree that many people seem to hate her for behaviour that they’d happily overlook from any of the Beatles. The main problem here is no one is typically joining this fandom cause they’re interested in Yoko, ykwim. They’re here because they liked the Beatles and all the lore comes after that, so naturally everyone’s going to have a bias for the boys themselves. Yoko did do some insane shit to John (and is also within the Beatles narrative in an antagonistic position to Paul) so it’s natural that people who love John will find that off-putting, even if it’s not necessarily a fair way to view her, but they never really look at the crazy shit John did to her or anyone else in the same negative way. Plus, as with any fandom, there is racism and misogyny at work.

But there’s plenty of people in this fandom who do like Yoko, which is good! I think her position in the Beatles story is so fascinating because she is in this weird confluence of like getting blamed for shit that isn’t her fault while also doing some absolutely fucked up stuff herself. She’s not an easily definable character in the lore and she’s not “relatable” the way, say, Linda is relatable, so you sort of have to do some work to make sense of her. I think my main gripe with Yoko haters is they don’t give her the grace of trying to understand her the way they do for anyone else in the Beatles story.

[starflungwaddledee]

Do you take commissions? If so, do you have a commission sheet? I’m sorry if this is an annoying ask I just really love your work lol

not annoying at all! i really really appreciate this a lot, thank you!

i have done commissions in the past on other platforms, but for now i am not taking them here. i'm not saying that i never will, because sometimes life is.. you know. Like That™️. but for now i'm steering clear of it to try and keep my passion up! 👍

[rexscanonwife]

Ok the last one wasn't very popular but I was still very proud of it, so I wanna make more short-form animatics and I have a few in mind! I'm already in the process of the next one but after that

Cast your votes this week!! No need to rb but maybe reply and lemme know which one you voted for cause I'm curious 😆💖💖

[imogenkol]

🎵 ORIGINAL CHARACTER PLAYLISTS — IMOGEN KOL

[inspiration]

tag list (ask to be added or removed!): @adelaidedrubman @florbelles @marivenah @simonxriley @shegetsburned @voidika @kyber-infinitygems @v0idbuggy @inafieldofdaisies @statichvm @socially-awkward-skeleton @aceghosts @jillvalentinesday @risingsh0t @unholymilf @thedeadthree

[tombware]

astarion's arc mentioning redemption doesn't make as much sense as it seemed it was going to in EA. like Ulma mentioning he might achieve redemption doesn't make much sense now since she's talking about victims he got while being almost literally puppeteered.

Originally it seemed pretty clear we were going to find out some heinous shit he did to the Gur as a magistrate out of his own free volition.