#but so far i like that this is very much Dana’s story

[starlooove]

That was delightful

[kerink]

putting aside my issues with continuity (because i know there's a debate about what "continuity" means in wtnv) and putting aside my personal preferences, i'd like to talk about what's made me unhappy the last two seasons:

i think the story telling is bad

that's not to say brinknor aren't creative people and good writers, they are. that's why i listen to and enjoy the show. i've also read their more stand-alone and self-contained works, i know they are talented. this is not a dig on them or their abilities. if i didn't like them or their work i wouldn't bother with it

the main issue, for me, is that i think the last two seasons have been trying to cram in more ideas than the season length has air for, so we're not seeing the complete story. i think too much is being left intentionally vague for fans to play with in a way that doesn't work

year 10 ends with carlos becoming a night vale citizen and him reflecting on whether or not he's okay with that, whether or not he feels like he actually belongs here, despite that having been his main struggle while he was trapped in the dow. we saw that although carlos has committed to and prioritized night vale, and that was ostensibly enough for him to be accepted, he did not actually accept night vale back. we assumed that carlos' commitment to cecil over his work was him finally finding his place, but all it was was him finding his priorities. maybe it wasn't that night vale had rejected him, maybe it was that night vale was attempt to protect its voice, and only allowed carlos back once he agreed to love cecil like the town does

and then janet shows up. at the end of year 11, janet said that her primary motive for coming to night vale was to get back at carlos. we saw blake bullying carlos for having abandoned the university and how he's viewed as a disgrace. we saw the university staff threaten cecil. janet ruins the town that got carlos' name on the map. all of these events are congruous with the above struggle: does carlos belong in night vale or does he belong in the real world? is carlos a citizen or an interloper?

but that isn't the main struggle that plays out. other than what was stated above, and janet making a few backhanded remarks about carlos' bad science, there is zero evidence that janet's primary motive was to hurt carlos until she says so at the very end. in fact, at the beginning of the season, she stated that he primary motive was to make night vale normal. that's in line with her actions far more than hurting carlos is. hurting carlos feels like a bonus to what janet actually wants: to be in control and in charge. the majority of the season is spent antagonizing dana (which was narratively unsatisfying because it was a bland rehash of the a matter of blood arc, but i digress). carlos is not a participant in this story, he hides and he lets the city protect itself, he lets cecil take the heat for him

and when we step back and look at y11 in the context of the primary theme of y10's finale we learn the answer: carlos is an interloper

as soon as science becomes threatening again the town turns on him. they reject him, they strip him of his power, they judge cecil for being with him. the town did not accept carlos, they had a truce with him formed out of his marriage to cecil

y11 left a lot of questions unanswered: how long has carlos actually been gone? what contact did he have with the university after y1? who is still looking for him? what role does dr. kayyali and her search party have in this? was the glow cloud (all hail) the only perma-death?why did janet's explanation of the glow cloud (all hail) not kill its child too? why did the university have such a large staff? why did the entire staff turn on janet so easily and so quickly?

and narratively it feels unsatisfying because janet's stated motives were not in congruence with her actions. which fine. people lie. maybe janet was lying about what she wanted to prevent carlos from meddling. maybe she did want to ruin night vale for him but got distracted by the whole doubles thing so picked that up as a side project. maybe we only heard so much about what janet was doing to dana because cecil cares about dana and carlos asked cecil not to talk about the plan he was forming to defeat janet. i can accept all of that, i just wish we'd gotten a whiff of it instead of having it entirely being left to interpretation

so we leave y11 with questions about what the point of it all was when a) there was only 1 permanent consequence that we're aware of and b) it didn't provide us any new information. we got the most about carlos' backstory we've ever gotten, but that was really the only thing you could say came out of y11. and even learning that about carlos felt violating, felt inappropriate, furthered our question of who is carlos and what role does he have in town

and it seems like carlos felt it too, because he decides to go back to the dow. when he was there he gained wisdom about himself and who he was and what he wanted from life. he figured himself out and found his place in the night vale. after a year of having his status as professor robles of the university of what it is questioned and derided by janet and her team, and having his status as carlos the scientist hero of night vale scorned and rejected by the town, he wanted to return and gain clarity on how he picks up the pieces of himself

but that's not what happens either!

the boy shows up and the story becomes about him. we don't learn where the boy came from, how he appeared in night vale, why he's in night vale instead of desert bluffs, how the timeline supports there being two kevins when back in e106 and e209 the timeline made sure to kill the duplicate cecil. how did no one see that the boy looked like cecil? it could have been a fun reveal if everyone thought it was another little cecil (also playing into all the palmer childhood lore this season) only to bait and switch it being a young kevin. we don't learn why tamika specifically took over raising him or how carlos instinctively knew to keep the boy away from his family. we don't learn how the boy was rapidly aging while in night vale or what age he wound up stopping at when kevin took him away. we don't learn why mother lauren absorbed him instead of killing him outright, since she seemed more than happy to try to get rid of kevin. what happened to the boy's desire to be his own person and create his own timeline away from kevin's fate? isn't the finale a tragedy and not a happy ending? what did this season matter if everything he learned about himself and the world was erased? the boy does not get a full story because too much air was given to lauren and kevin

with lauren we don't learn how she re-made a name for herself in desert bluffs too, how she got in the smiling god's good graces, how she manifested the power she presented with in night vale, how her rise to power impacted kevin's control over dbt, what the state of dbt is after lauren left for night vale, what was her motivation for even coming to night vale, what did the night vale chapter of the joyous congregation think about this, did carlos' killing the centipede matter at all and does anyone care? lauren does not get a full story because too much air was given to kevin and the boy

with kevin we don't learn what becomes of his theocracy, what becomes of his control of the church, what did his speech on changing even mean and how does it impact things when he's choosing to create a time loop? when kevin said he was going to bring someone back with him, who was he talking about? where are charles and donovan and what do they think? why do kevin and carlos not interact even a single time? does the night vale chapter of the joyous congregation care that their prophet has returned and what does kevin's defending of night vale mean for their beliefs? kevin does not get a full story because too much air was given to the boy and lauren

some of these questions are nitpicks, some are good things to leave vague and up to the audience. the main issue here is that: 1) the boy does not get a beginning to his story, the middle of his story ultimately didn't matter because mother lauren erased it, and he has no true ending because we already know what that looks like and in its being a time loop it will never end; 2) lauren does not get a beginning or a middle to her story; and 3) kevin's motives are totally all over the place. does he want to change or is he still so afraid of losing control that being able to control his own terrible future brings him some kind of closure? why is the best he can offer the boy the same horrific life he's spent the last century trying to recover from?

and carlos does not get a story at all. none of this mattered. carlos wanted to go back to the dow but he never did, he never got the chance, we never saw what he did with the time that he had. is carlos doomed to living in this space of not knowing who he is or what his role is because he quite literally had to pull the plug on the one place that offered him a safe haven to explore himself?

in trying to tell the stories of 4 people, no one got a story at all

and that's what's really frustrating, it's just felt like the last two season's haven't mattered, moved along the primary story, or evolved any of the characters in satisfying ways

y1 carlos decided to stay in night vale; y2 strexcorp was defeated; y3 cecil freed himself from lot 37 and carlos confirmed his decision to stay in night vale; y4 night vale freed itself from the beagle puppy and hiram mcdaniels was brought to justice; y5 night vale fell apart and had to find a way to anchor itself in reality; y6 focused on resting after y5 and had the 2 and 3 parters, diving deeper into specific characters; y7 was about fixing time and the consequences of doing so; y8 was about the delta flight; y9 was about frank chen; y10 was another character-focused rest season concluding in carlos becoming a citizen; y11 was the university of what it is; and y12 was about the boy

other than y11 and y12, all the previous seasons had lasting consequences on the story at large. they had domino effects into how future seasons would be focused. the outcomes of those seasons had permanent changes on the town and its people. everything janet did was erased by carlos. everything the boy went through was erased by mother lauren. janet's season should have led carlos down a path of continued self-discovery and reinvention. the boy's season should have led kevin to further growth and change, and could have paralleled the palmer family story by showing how kevin was trying to overcome his own trauma and build a family with charles. maybe it's just too soon. frank chen was murdered in y1 and it wasn't until y9 that his story was resolved. maybe i'm just hyper critical and impatient

but i feel like a lot of people are noticing this trend and are speaking up about it. i was active in the fandom from 2012-2015, and then picked it up again in 2021. it wasn't until y11 that i felt that a season wasn't finished. other seasons had left me with questions, had left some loose ends, but i always felt satisfied with where we were at once the summer hiatus hit. i don't feel that way with y11 and y12, i've walked away from both now going "okay now what? so what? huh?"

i don't know. i'm kind of running out of steam for this post. the point i wanted to make is this: y11 and y12 have not had character motives that have strongly correlated to their subsequent actions; i don't feel like characters are being given complete stories with beginnings, middles, and ends; and they've both left me feeling like none of it ultimately mattered

anyway. that's my two cents.

[scintillyyy]

actually it is interesting how dixon has tim discover his feelings for steph over the course of and in contrast to what was ultimately his failing relationship with ari & like. listen i'm not here ti cast judgment on either tim or steph here, but it was very much written by dixon as like. steph knowingly was very pushy about wanting to be in a relationship with tim even knowing he was actively in a relationship and fundamentally did not care about tim's girlfriend as a human being because steph saw tim being in a relationship already as basically minor inconvience because she wanted tim & tim clearly seemed to want her so he should just be with her instead. and like tim's hands clearly aren't entirely clean here either, because he did kind of ultimately just going with the flow and letting things happen. (but!! i am on the side of both of them are messy teens in their first relationships & neither deserves lifelong castigation for 14-15 year old messiness, let's be clear). but the circumstances around this messiness even being able to happen is because ariana is fundamentally unable to truly know what's going on as she's never privy to the secret. she had no way of knowing what tim is doing or who he's meeting--sure she gets jealous when she sees tim notice steph, but she never knows that there's another girl in tim's life exists & can't know. meanwhile the whole time steph is flirting with tim she is well aware that ariana, or "tim's girlfriend" exists. tim & steph exist because at the time of his relationship with ari, tim was allowed to actively and consistently interact with another girl while actively in a relationship with another one & steph was well aware and a participant in that.

and that's kind of by design--dixon, i do think dixon fairly early on decided that he was more interested in tim&steph over tim&ari, but i do think it's important to note that when dixon created ari he's on the record of conceiving of her as a lois lane type romance interest for tim, she was clearly originally intended to have long term sticking power for him. but then--*readers* didn't vibe with her. there's letters in old issues basically asking--"hey, is steph going to come back, hey is steph going to date tim, hey love steph when are they getting together". so while dixon got fully on board with tim & steph i think it's safe to say he was also. probably very cognizant of readers deciding they like a different love interest better.

so there's an interesting pivot in dixon once tim & steph are firmly on the "getting together" train and it's that tim is not allowed to exist of breathe near other female characters without being chaperoned by steph or it involving steph somehow in deference to steph's jealousy issues. with steph's entrance into tim's life, tim is moved away from the mixed more sex friend group (that existed with callie & ariana) of gotham heights high to 1) homeschooling in keystone 2) all male boarding school brentwood. the only female friendship he gains is star, and that's used in a story for steph to misunderstand and start stalking star and her brother in an attempt to find tim & catch him in the act. tim is no longer allowed to team up with girls his age or a little older without stephanie there. he's not even allowed to be concerned about random adult woman dana (his stepmom) without steph breathing down his neck despite the fact that once they start dating tim is doggedly pretty loyal to steph as far as girls were, far more than he ever was with ariana. & like. in universe this is an interesting character beat for steph considering the start of their relationship being that steph pushed tim while he was in a relationship & is paranoid of all other women, that they'll act like she did. but from an out of universe perspective you can tell dixon was absolutely shutting down any other relationship possibility for tim other than steph. he knew the pain of creating a love interest that got subsumed in interest by another and was under no circumstances going to let anyone else in that that could become a threat to his girl. hence, every time he teams up with a girl after steph has to be there, monitoring & chaperoning. which is very interesting. considering their beginnings and steph's own willingness to hang out with a guy known to be taken without his girlfriend there & her eventual disallowment of tim to do anything with girls who aren't her.

[brawlite]

some horror fic recs for october 👻

i wanted to put together a rec list of my favorite horror fics for the spookiest month. there are a bunch of different flavors of horror in here as well as a number of different fandoms, so hopefully you can find something that tickles your fancy (though ngl i would still rec reading these bad boys even if you don't know the fandoms at all).

i tried to tag tumblrs when/where i could find them, but if i couldn't, the author name links to ao3.

a reminder as always: this is horror—please read all the tags.

thanks for reading and i hope you find something to enjoy!

also, pretty please feel free to reblog and add your favorite horror fic recs.

👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪

the ghost apple tree by @thefearofcod

10k words, rated m song lan/xue yang/xiao xingchen (the untamed/mdzs) summary:

Fixing up a decaying house in the woods is the same as addressing your problems. (sxx is haunted)

brawls' notes: i think about this fic a lot; i'm haunted by it. this is by far one of my favorite horror stories i've ever read—the vibes are off-the-charts and horrific in a very visceral, tense way. made me feel weird (positive). i hope it makes you feel weird too (this is a threat).

—

convergence by @astrophyllitely

33k words, rated e lan zhan/lan xichen, lan zhan/jiang cheng (the untamed/mdzs) summary:

Lan Wangji regains consciousness in a crashed spaceship on an unfamiliar planet. He is not alone; Lan Xichen is there. He is not alone; Jiang Wanyin is there. But never both at once.

brawls' notes: space horror? check. psychological horror? check. uneasy and tense alien vibes? also check. beautiful push and pull of the narrative, paired with an an intense feeling of claustrophobia. there's a particular moment that had my heart right in my throat. stunning.

—

mockingbird by MarInk

82k words, rated e stiles stillinski/peter hale (teen wolf) summary:

Stiles works tirelessly to keep the roof over his heads and longs for a proper challenge for his brains. Peter chafes under his sister's authority and nurses big, bloody dreams. One day, the two are connected by a mistaken text message. One never knows who is on the other end of a wrong number. Sometimes it's somebody one will come to cherish and adore. Sometimes it's a ruthless, unapologetic monster. Sometimes it's both.

brawls' notes: sometimes you read something and are just blown away by it, forever altered. that's what this was for me. want a type of monster-au you've never seen before? this is it. also: ostensibly a wrong-number au, but don't be fooled. (i was.)

—

never meant by nonhicsumus

3k words, rated m alex krycek & dana scully (the x-files) summary:

Sometimes the past isn't worth digging into.

brawls' notes: whump and psychological horror? plus alex krycek?? my favorite. every word of this is perfection—i instantly wanted to read it again for the first time. you can.

—

fais do-do by @moku-youbi

18k words, rated e will graham/hannibal lecter (hannibal)

summary:

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” ― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (this fic does not have a summary, but begins with this quote)

brawls' notes: a different-meeting au packed with everything you need for the perfect horror story: violence, blood, a chase scene, and an unreliable narrator. delightful.

—

blackbird, fly by @acroamatica

19k words, rated m kylo ren/armitage hux (star wars: tfa)

summary:

One sunny afternoon in the mountains of Washington state, Ben Organa-Solo walked out into the woods. He never came home. Six years later, a journalist specialising in missing-persons cold cases decides to follow his footsteps and see where they might lead.

brawls' notes: a masterpiece of vibes. this reads so much like a spooky mystery novel, but with a creeping, anxious dread. perfect for the season if you want that true autumnal sort of chill. i've carried this fic in my heart for nearly a decade now—it has inspired me in my own writing so much over the years.

—

grey stars on the rise by @iodhadh

4k words, rated e song lan/xue yang/xiao xingchen (the untamed/mdzs) summary:

Xiao Xingchen comes back. Xiao Xingchen comes back wrong. It takes too long, maybe, for Xue Yang to realize something is wrong with Song Lan too.

brawls' notes: the exact embodiment of: be careful what you wish for. brutal and crushing and so deeply, utterly satisfying. absolute yi-city perfection: the vibes are wretched but strangely romantic (chefs kiss).

—

half your life you've been hooked on death by @whatever-you-can-give-me

4k words, rated m vash the stampede/nicholas d. wolfwood (trigun) summary:

Wolfwood is cornered in an alleyway. Things get worse before they get better.

brawls' notes: and what's a horror rec list without a little bit of gore? whump and blood and near-death-experiences—oh my. this is brutal and feverish and exactly the right flavor.

—

black rock mountain by @bokuno-jinsei

24k words, rated e will graham/hannibal lecter (hannibal) summary:

Will is a hitchhiker with questionable hobbies. Hannibal is a man who has questionable motives. When Hannibal drives by Will who just so happens to need a ride, things quickly take a turn from the questionable to the downright depraved.

brawls' notes: you know That Fic that is really the epitome of that pairing for you? yeah, this is it for me. perfect alternate first-meeting fic. lives rent-free in my head.

👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪

and hey, why not be a little self-indulgent: i can't help but rec a few of my own horror fics here, too:

old growth

21k, rated m song lan/xue yang/xiao xingchen (the untamed/mdzs) summary:

There’s something in the woods outside of their hometown. Xue Yang and Song Lan are going to find it.

brawls' notes: i tried something new with the formatting on this one and i think it panned out solidly and was a desperately fun way to tell the story. this is full of spooky, sleepless forest vibes.

—

what's real or isn't

57k, rated e kylo ren/armitage hux (star wars: tfa) summary:

Hux's new house is not haunted. It isn't.

brawls' notes: i honestly love playing favorites and this is one of mine. this was a load of fun to write—it's chock-full of vibes, personal experiences, local history, and love notes to my favorite horror stories.

—

acquiesce

16k, rated e original luo binghe/original shen qingqiu (svsss) summary:

After seeing the gentle and loving Shen Qingqiu of the other world, Luo Binghe returns to his own with a hunger that can only be satisfied by one thing—a Shizun of his very own.

brawls' notes: this isn't spooky or haunted, but it is psychological horror—packed with nightmares, flashbacks, dread, and manipulation. enjoy!

👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪👻👁️🎃🔪

and that's it! hope you find something fun to read for this october 🖤

and again—please reblog and add your own horror recs if you are feeling so inclined!

[eregyrn-falls]

Gravity Falls Revival Prospects Teased by Disney TV Boss (Exclusive)

By Russ Milheim Posted: June 05, 2024

(From "The Direct", original article linked above.) While Gravity Falls may have ended in 2014 on the Disney Channel, fans are still hoping for a revival—thankfully, that doesn't look too far out of reach, at least according to an update from a top Disney executive. The series may have ended in 2014, but since then, creator Alex Hirsch has published several books in the universe. This included Gravity Falls: Tales of the Strange and Unexplained, Lost Legends, and Journal 3. In fact, another book is even coming out later this year, called The Book of Bill, which tells the story of the show from the perspective of the big bad. However, while books are great and all, a continuation of the show would absolutely thrill the franchise’s fanbase. In an exclusive interview with The Direct’s Russ Milheim while promoting the release of Big City Greens the Movie: Spacecation, Executive Vice President of Television Animation and Disney Branded Television Meredith Roberts gave a hopeful update on a possible Gravity Falls revival. She confirmed that they��re “in conversations with [creator] Alex [Hirsch]” before ending with an encouraging “never say never:” “You know, we're in conversations with Alex. He's about to publish a book with Disney on his project. And we also do some shorts. So never say never.”

What Could Be Next for Gravity Falls? While the update is a small one, plenty of fans will be thrilled to see even a slight glimmer of home. Sure, the new book releases are exciting, but not nearly as much as having the show back. If the show were to return, creator Alex Hirsch would likely want to introduce a new threat other than Bill. Admittedly, that's a high bar to clear. Perhaps a continuation would also age its leading characters, Dipper and Mabel. However, having older leads could transform Gravity Falls into a much different, more adult-based narrative. Either way, there's plenty of demand from fans to see the world of Gravity Falls again. Hopefully, that's something Disney can capitalize on sooner rather than later.

Since this is going around, and I haven't seen it posted here... well, here you go. What does it mean? Nobody knows! It may not mean anything. It's hard to tell whether this is just a Disney exec making noises for promotional purposes or what. I honestly would take this with a grain of salt until or unless Alex himself posts or tweets about it.

(My own thoughts: to be worthwhile, I strongly feel that any new Gravity Falls content would need to have the involvement of Alex Hirsch AND a good chunk of the other folks who worked on the show. People like Rob Renzetti, and others like Matt Braly, Alonso Ramirez Ramos, Emmy Ciceriega, Dana Terrace, Matt Chapman, Jeff Rowe, etc. etc. It would probably be difficult to impossible to get everyone back, unless it was for a very limited project, like a TV-movie or something.

I'm not saying they would ALL need to be back, and I do also think you could find some new folks to work on the project who would be very good replacements for some of the original crew who might not be able to come back. But, I've said many, many times: Gravity Falls was not the work of only one man. I respect the hell out of Alex Hirsch, but, the show that we love had contributions from a lot of other people that went into creating the final product. If what we want is something as good as the original show, then I think it would need input from those people.

And even then, we still have to keep in mind that it can be difficult to recapture lightning in a bottle. Even if they got back a majority of the original team, it's 10 years later (ish), and all of those folks have been through a lot, and most haven't been working with each other. There's a groove that the crew of the show got into at the time, and they'd have to recapture that groove. It would be different in at least SOME ways. Maybe a GOOD different! A lot would depend on the enthusiasm they had for doing it.)

So, we'll see! Keep an eye out, though, for more news.

[smolsleepyfox]

hello! I've been listening to Wake Up the Wicked on loop pretty much constantly for the past couple days and keep finding new things to love about it! in particular I have many Thoughts about the way Powerwolf's songs with women as the focus have shifted over the years. unfortunately when I try to articulate those thoughts they mostly just come out as "AAAAAAAA Vargamor and Kyrie Klitorem and Joan of Arc just FEEL like such an important thing! I've been a fan for so long but something about these songs makes me (as a fem-adjacent person) feel like I can actually be part of the group!" in one of your posts about your thesis, you note how there's never been a Powerwolf song with a woman werewolf — I'd never noticed that until now, tho Vargamor and Dancing with the Dead feel close. examining that distinction is fascinating!

considering you've got a whole thesis on it and so will likely be able to go deeper than me, I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on how gender is handled in this album as compared to others, and in general, who "gets" to be a monster!

Okay this is a great question and also funnily enough something I've spoken about with another friend recently.

So the thing about monstrosity is that it is very heavily gendered. This doesn't start but is reflected in the Middle Ages where monstrosity is physical (since the distincion body/mind didn't really exist) BUT directly related to gender roles. The example most scholars go with are the Amazons, the mythical warrior women. They are monstrous because they only have one breast AND because they take on both gender roles, making clothing (female) and hunting (male). If you behaved weird people would assume you had a physical abnormality and a physical abnormality could be a sign of somethig wrong (e.g. witch marks). Note that "monstrous" isn't technically synonymous with "bad/evil". From what I gather, bestiaries and collections of monsters from far away lands were a curiosity with no inherent moral dimension, although it obviously held implications for the treatment of queer and disabled people, foreigners etc. Dana Oswald splits monstrosity into hypermasculine, hypersexual (feminine) and hybrid. Hypermasculine is exactly what you think it is, werewolves, giants, anything that is large and hairy and ravenous. The theme here is Taking. Wealth, sex, someone's life. Interestingly, exaggerated sexuality in the middle ages was culturally feminine, so centaurs are monstrously feminine due to their exagerrated sexuality. Another example are sirens. Hypersexual/feminine monsters seduce instead of take by brute force.

About werewolves specifically, let me open with Willem de Blecourt's opening line in a book about werewolf history: There is no werewolf history. What we today see as a werewolf (and Powerwolf uses as a mascot) is a modern cultural concept that is only an approximate to other times and cultures. Let's take the Varcolac, a creature from Slavic mythology (spelled differently in different languages). The Varcolac is often translated as werewolf, but if you look at the mythology it is - simplified - a reanimated corpse that drinks blood. Usually it's a person who was evil/frivolous/was excommunicated in life that rises again. So for all intents and purposes it's a vampire. Powerwolf does have some werewolf/vampire hybrids in their music and on tshirts, but since werewolves and vampires are both hypermasculine monsters that's only a side note.

To talk about as actual a werewolf as possible, you know 1589, you know the story of Peter Stubbe. Peter Stubbe was a highly publicized case that influenced later ones. Elements of his case reappear in trials in the low countries, Germany and England, but not in France because the pamphlets telling his story were not translated into French afawk. Some details also bear striking resemblances to earlier French cases, so it's very difficult to know what actually happened. Peter Stubbe single-handedly (heh) cemented the image of the cannibal werewolf for the early modern public BUT he's an outlier. Werewolf Georg if you will. Cannibalism is definitely a defining trait of many werewolves but almost everything else is different from our modern understanding. The persecution of werewolves in central Europe was almost completely tied to witchcraft allegations. Without getting into historical witchcraft as a whole, there was a concept of male and female witchcraft in line with the gender roles of agrarian society. A werewolf was related to violence against people and livestock as well as sexual threats. Just like witches, werewolves were assumed to transform with an ointment or belt given to them by the devil. The transformation is not physical, just like witches can't actually fly but fall into a trance (induced by the devil). [Note that the idea of physical transformation has been a MASSIVE point of debate for church scholars for as long as said church existed. Go take a look if you're curious.] More modern werewolf lore (1960s) from the B/NL/DE border region shows werewolves to be a shorthand for unacceptable liaisons and sexual assault, possibly homosexuality and bestiality, but usually just people dressed in a wolf pelt taking the piss. The modern idea of the werewolf, specifically the bipedal form and painful transformation is a Hollywood product. We can quite easily pin the origin on one specific film: The Wolf Man from 1941. The transformation and visual presentation was driven by the improved special effects of the film industry and their desire to give people a spectacle. This is also a central trait of monstrosity: It is physical because people want to see it.

SO! If we're being pedantic, no, werewolves are not inherently male. A handful of women were prosecuted as werewolves, though they were the minority within the already minor number of werewolf trials. But it is a fact that the majority of werewolves are male throughout history and werewolf characteristics are - as Dana Oswald puts it - hypermasculine, meaning they exaggerate and therefore threaten the dominant concept of masculinity in a given societal context. That's the baseline of monstrosity- it breaks boundaries and threatens the system it inhabits while reinforcing a rule for the listener.

It's notable that female werewolves in modern film are almost never seen transforming, including in staple films like Underworld. You have those beefy werewolf guys and the women just. Stand there. An outlier that gets quoted in almost every paper I've ever read is Ginger Snaps, which directly deals with the way Ginger's lycanthropy makes her monstrous both in breaking the boundaries of human/animal but also what is acceptable behavior for a girl. I don't have the sources to back this up yet but I see a strong parallel in this to women in Metal in general. Think about it, Metal music is counterculture and is almost defined by depicting monstrosity (satanism, violence, etc) and breaking the boundaries of what is music. Women in Metal are "monstrous" by associating with the transgressive scene the same as men - except they get held to a completely different standard. Metal is so male-dominated the ideal (visual, behavioral) gender presentation cannot include femininity or at least makes two clearly gendered molds. Women in metal, then, have to balance being "Metal" and being sufficiently feminine to be accepted. The male ideal I like to call the 'Metal warrior', because he's so often inspired by historical warrior culture but primarily defines himself by being large, strong, possibly aggressive and definitely drinking a lot. Everything that is masculine but juuuuust over the line of polite society. Which is what Powerwolf sings about as well, they just made it a furry.

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ANYWAY sorry for the long-ass background info, I got carried away lol. Note that for the next section, I am doing this off the top of my head since I haven't gotten to that part of the analysis yet. The deadline is approaching, send help.

I like to call Powerwolf my problematic faves because as camp as their performances are and as self-ironic as they try to make themselves out to be, their lyrics and videos are profoundly cishet. This isn't a criticism, just an observation. As far as we know they are cishet men from a rural part of Germany (and one Dutchman). I know we make jokes about the homoeroticism between Falk and Attila but I would not be surprised if they had no idea that's what they're doing. Most cishet people do not think about queerness unless they have a reason, and in a lot of social circles there simply is none. They just don't even consider it. There's something to be said about homosocial bonds in metal music but that's a topic so large I'll skip it for now. The only queer aspect I've seen in the entire history of Powerwolf is that lesbian kiss in the music video of No Prayer at Midnight and that was so blatantly male gaze-y I'm not sure if it even counts. So, fair warning, I'm going to say men and women as in cis men and women because I'm on mobile and typing is annoying as is.

First off, to answer your question: Yes, women have absolutely become a bigger part of Powerwolf's repertoire. Joan of Arc is a historical story that they implemented beautifully, and so is Vargamor. While I personally don't like Kyrie Klitorem it's definitely interesting to analyze in a wider context. What does stick out is that the majority of women in Powerwolf's music are sexualized in some way along with sexuality becoming a larger part of their theme in general. As far as I can see, sexuality was actually not a major part of the Powerwolf brand until Sacrament of Sin. Coleus Sanctus and Resurrection by Erection are from albums before that, but they're single songs on albums otherwise concerned with werewolves, vampires and that warrior image I mentioned before. Their earlier videos have almost never any side characters and it's mostly about spooky priest things and/or werewolves (kind of mixed with vampirism, which is a parallel to the Varcolac).

In general I would say there are two 'roles' that characters in the PW universe take and it was kind of hard to find the right wording, because depending on your reading they have VERY different connotations. I'm just going to call it the 'active' and the 'passive' right now until I've explained what I mean.

Women are sexualized in the music and the videos/artworks. That's just a fact, and hasn't changed much from the beginning until now. It's not even out of character for Power Metal as an heir to classic Heavy Metal and Glam Rock. Powerwolf sing about sex, specifically hetero sex, and mostly from the perspective of cishet men. Matt even said in an interview many years ago that he's unsure if he could write about pussy because he doesn't have one. Yes, really.

The language of the music is clerical, and commonly from the viewpoint of a religious person/priest of course, which reinforces the themes of wildness/hedonism by contrasting them with what is 'proper'. Circling back to my explanations of monstrosity - improper behavior and improper physical appearance are linked, so to break the laws of faith is to become monstrous, possibly physically. The band constantly portrays this overstepping of boundaries in a religious context. Call of the Wild quite literally says "To praise the wild while the bible we're tearing". Corpse paint I would argue I'd a visual marker of monstrosity as well, especially since the band are usually the only ones in that type of makeup.

Just visually, women are a big part in Powerwolf's art and video as side characters, especially burlesque dancers, and they're typically a shorthand for desire and sexuality. Open sexuality is a massive taboo in the Catholic Church, especially in the pseudo-medieval world their music inhabits. And a woman being active in her sexuality, even choosing what, who and how to desire is far over the line even in many modern societies. (Ginger Snaps tackled this as well.) So let's take a look:

There's Demons are a girl's best friend, which is on the surface a warning against being "corrupted" by demons (sexuality) but can also be interpreted - as the title suggests - that the female protagonist is quite aware of what she's doing and likes it. Kiss of the Cobra King shows the female protagonist in white, standing in for purity, before being corrupted and possibly killed for her transgression. Still unsure about that video tbh. Dancing with the Dead is less sexual and leans more heavily into the corruption (by witchcraft?) angle. I feel like there is a disconnect between text and video in this one because in the video, the female protagonist doesn't look at all willing to dance and Attila forces her to, whereas in the text the protagonist seems quite aware and in control of what she's doing. Undress to Confess is pretty fucking clear that the woman is having fun and the artwork shows a nun, while naked, in a dynamic, powerful pose. This is what I'd call the active role. There's also the flip side of that active role that isn't passiveness but control:

Kyrie Klitorem is about how women have power over men by virtue of their sexuality. Powerwolf often uses 'we' in their lyrics and while that's technically a non-gendered pronoun, the songs suggest the narrator is a (cishet) man. Venom of Venus is also similar in topic and structure, and the vampire queen from the Killers with the Cross video is also clearly in control while being sexy (as are the hunters).

So in the 'active' role, women can be corrupted, seductive as well as empowered, it really depends on your reading. Same goes for the videos by the way - the dancers can be shown in an objectifying way, but thinking of the dancer in My Will be Done she is on equal standing with the other characters asking Attila for something. (Also, burlesque dance is an awesome art form.) Angel and Devil in that same music video are portrayed by women. However, the reduction of a woman to her body is obviously part of a long history of sexualization.

Which brings me to the passive role and the use of the nun image. Nuns have been sexualized for absolute ages. There's drawings and gossip from the Middle Ages about nuns and priests doing stuff they shouldn't. Good for them etc pp.* Powerwolf is really not reinventing the wheel by contrasting the nun's modesty/virtuousness with unrestrained sexuality. I mean look at this.

The role of women in the Catholic Church is an entire can of worms by itself. In Powerwolf's art, the love of Jesus/God is just placed on a different figure. I actually hesitate to interpret what the intention is, if it's critical of the church or a power fantasy. They absolutely criticize religion in their songs (Glaubenskraft, Sinners of the Seven Seas) but their visuals are also heavily inspired by historical art and can just be meant to look cool. That's something the band stresses in almost every interview when they are asked about deeper meanings: It has to be entertainment first. Their cover artist Zsofia Dankova told me the same: Looking cool has priority.

So nuns are in general portrayed as subservient, as they are in history and art, and sexualized. The focus on the band in performances - which in itself isn't really that surprising - and Attila's and Falk's role as 'clergy' does put them into a position of power. Here's where it gets interesting, because the bottom line of Powerwolf has been and is Have fun. In Wake up the Wicked it's a major plot point that one of them actively invites the young priest (altar boy? Idk I grew up Protestant). The artworks draw on art conventions from pulp fiction and classical works, but if you look at the lyrics involving women** it's either about submitting yourself (to pleasure) or actively seeking it out.

This has gotten way too fucking long but here's a minor detour before we get to the end. What else does PW sing about? Yes, werewolves, and history, but regardless of the underlying inspiration (Blood for Blood is about an Irish legend, I wouldn't have guessed that just from the lyrics) they sing about either bravery and power, or excess and hedonism, sometimes both. I've already mentioned the warrior ideal in my introduction, and that does a LOT of heavy lifting. Many of the artworks and merch have some sort of military theme, especially the crusades because that's fitting for the medieval-ish vibe the band has. The 'holy' knights as werewolves is both commentary on the actual crusades in a way, but also puts the listener into the body of a powerful beast heading into battle, which is just plain fun. Plenty of music is about riding into battle, Viking Metal exists. I spoke to Zsofia Dankova, Powerwolf's resident visual artist, and asked her what she thinks about the werewolf being implicitly male. She said she doesn't really see the werewolf she draws as gendered because it's just a symbol, something that stands in for power. I was a bit dubious about that answer at first, but it actually shows my own cultural bias, because that is the connotation of the werewolf at work, not the artwork itself. You can absolutely argue that the positions and clothes the werewolf is in (see image above) are men's, but for the most part, the wolves in their art are clothed in simple robes or armour that anyone could wear. It is just convention that makes it seem male. Growling (the vocal technique) is also male-coded even though men and women who growl sound identical.

I'm not going into more detail about the depiction of masculinity because y'all can read my thesis for that. Instead, I want to return to my introduction about what is considered monstrous: The breaking and exaggeration of social norms. Sexuality is what makes the women in Powerwolf monstrous - alongside a proclivity for witchcraft. Vargamor shows her to be a mother as the name implies, but more importantly a wise leader and powerful magic user. It's implied that she can fight, but the chorus is more insistent that she dwells in the shadows and is a steady presence for many different iterations of the pack through the years.

The men on the other hand are shown to be monstrous by being violent, hedonistic beasts. The songs again and again reiterate wildness and unrestrained summer fun battle prowess. Technically you could argue that 'we' doesn't have to mean men, but that would ignore centuries of cultural connotations and that it needs a pretty good in-text reason to assume an all-male metal band is writing their songs in a female lyrical I (we?).

Powerwolf quite simply portrays monstrosity as it has been since the Middle Ages, along gendered lines. This makes sense because they draw on given cultural conventions, history and folklore, they're just on the side of the monster. There's definitely something to be said about the sexualization of women in Metal and the male gaze, but the wolves have also very clearly heard the call for more female representation.

If anyone is still reading, congratulations I nearly drove myself insane here.

* As with most things in life, this isn't black and white. Nuns had some social advantages and there were most likely plenty of consensual relationships, but as women in a patriarchal society they were still under the authority of men who could harm them. ** I excluded Glaubenskraft because that song breaks with the Powerwolf universe by adressing a current, real-life injustice. Completely different topic.

[fuzziemutt]

On Miguel and Motivations Behind his Behaviors Towards Miles

An analysis point I haven't seen much around (<- says the man who never looks in the tag) is the idea that Miguel was trying to be the very thing Miles could blame when (in Mig's eyes) he's unable to save his father.

Miguel's main motivation for his actions across the board are in his most iconic line:

"I don’t always like what I have to do, but I know I'm going to have to be the one to do it."

This line is very defining for him because it's reflected on how Miguel shoulders the responsibilities of the Spiderverse and any unsavory actions it might have to take for whatever reason. He alone makes the decision, the action so "no one else will have to" feel that guilt*.

*which I should note. Comic book Miguel is very much noted to have severe guilt with being S-man ("No, with great responsibility, comes great guilt!") but constantly states "he has to do it because who will?". Being S-man isn't a freeing thing for him... It's an obligation, a way for him to "atone for his sins" (from the man with severe Catholic trauma).

However, his need to be the one to "make the hardline decisions" out of guilt isn't the only influencer in his actions towards Miles.

Because another important note about comic Miguel is his biggest trait in all his relationships: he is the scapegoat.

From his mother, to his father(s), to his ex-girlfriend, ex-fiance, and even his brother himself. Miguel is always a means for people to escape blame. He is always a means to place responsibility to "fix it" because only /Miguel/ can fix it* for them (wow his oldest sibling disorder is showing).

*Gabriel, his brother, is seen multiple times demanding Miguel to "fix" the situations he finds himself in such as getting his girlfriend out of jail as Miguel "owes it to him" for working with Alchemax.

--

Furthermore, Miguel is seen having /quiet/ anger responses towards how others treat him; i.e. when Dana, his then-fiance, comes to him after talking to Tyler Stone, (later known: his bio father) who is untrustworthy and whom also Dana is cheating on Mig with (this fact is unknown to Mig at the time too), Mig is notably upset yet never raises his voice, he keeps his anger to himself and quiet.

This allows others to easily project onto him- Dana then projects her own view of what Miguel must be feeling in the next panel (which- she is often severely incorrect in her assessments as stated by Miguel himself in several instances of self-reflection)

And thus, Miguel has every intention to allow himself to be the scapegoat for others as long as he lives. Especially one Miles Morales.

Because Miguel is not happy preventing Miles from saving his father, he almost cries about it, he /wants/ to comfort Miles the whole time. He doesn't like what he has to do.

But Miguel has come this far (ensuring everyone's safety) and he can't let Miles make the same mistakes he made. Because to Miguel, he tried to alter his story and tried to fight what he didn't even know what would become the canon theory.

Yes, there are circumstances, there could be exceptions*, there's a possibility everything will be alright but Miguel /does not/ know this. He didn't know about canon theory or what would happen to Gabby then. All he knows now is that he flew too close to the sun and killed billions of people, and now, he doesn't want to allow Miles to "play god" and find himself with no home. It's "better" to be safe than sorry as he'd say <- through gritted teeth and tears.

*Whether the canon theory is true or not is not really important in this reading. The theory is just meant as a metaphor for whole vs one, risk vs caution, and the suffocation of fear-

-

So Miguel does what he doesn't want the others to do. He plays the scapegoat, the guy you can put all your anger towards, the thing you can blame when it just doesn't work how you want it to, and focus all your hatred on instead of yourself.

He doesn't order any of the others to throw the containment field at Miles (they didn't even know he was going to), he doesn't order the others to talk about the canon theory (also because he's reminding himself about why he's asking a kid to let his father die and to remind everyone of Mig's own faults- takes the blame as the sole destroyer of worlds despite us knowing Gabby's dimension isn't the only one that's collapsed thus far and strictly by Miguel's hands), he even leads majority of the apprehension of Miles himself.

Hell, he even lets himself be the scapegoat for why Gwen and Peter B don't visit Miles. We don't know enough about that conversation to say how much Miguel said "no, don't see him" but he sure isn't trying to fight* any possible allegations of how that conversation went either via clarifying /what/ it was he said.

Lastly, Miguel's control issues really appear in these interactions even, in this choice. Because, Miguel is taking on the choice for others because he thinks he can control others' grief if he just "does it 'right' for them", and that's just not /possible/.

You can't choose the how and when for others, you can't "fix this" for them, you can't make sure no one ever gets hurt because you'd rather someone scream at you for stopping them or taking the choice from them, than for them to experience something that's an inherent part of life and mature and grow from it.

To receive that "just punishment" that you're always seemingly striving for because you care so deeply about everyone and everything yet can't comprehend that others might care for you as well.

You can't keep suffocating others in your own fear, Miguel.

"And all this time, /I've/ been the only one holding it all together."

Yeah, Miguel has severe issues, he's projecting onto this kid, he majorly fucked up this interaction, but I feel Miguel's insistence on placing any and /all/ blame onto himself is a very vital piece of his character that we shouldn't ignore especially in analysis.

+ Another note of Comic Miguel's character: Miguel is very prone to allowing anyone to say literally anything to him. He's called horrendous things and he /never/ denies these things. He never tries to make anyone believe otherwise because Miguel agrees with them-

-Yes, he's Gabriel's slimeball brother who's arrogant and egotistical and a jackass and impossible to work with and a terrible, no-good son. Because no one has ever said one nice thing to Miguel O'Hara. They've only praised Spider-man.

[mr-damian-s-power]

Sorry I did not mean for this to be this long.

I have two, both relating to the worldbuilding. This one is about how the visual aspect fails and the other is the written aspect, but they boil down to this: The Boiling Isles is the most bland, boring ass ‘dark’ fantasy world I’ve ever seen.

First off, even in the background it never really feels like fantasy world, maybe just a historic district with Halloween decorations.

The woods are just regular woods in autumn, Bonesborough is just a standard medieval/renaissance town with some eye and teeth iconography. The only time I felt we were in actual fantasy world was that brief scene in Latissa, the buildings look like they’re made of flesh, there’s pustules acting as street lights, the overview shots are far more natural and feel like they belong in the environment. The colors are dark yet vibrant, and it gives off a spooky, kind of Halloween-Town feel. I love that!

But we literally spend 98% of the time in Bonesborough, whose colors are predominantly shades of muted blues, grays and whites, and overall it feels too empty and tidy, like it’s not really a place where people have lived and worked for centuries at the very least. Yeah it has doors with eyes on them or roof races in the shape of teeth, but imho, they showed that one shot in the first episode and never lived up to it again, only harking back on it slightly for occasional ‘character observing the area’ shots.

Honestly I thought the Collector-controlled Isles were far prettier and more fantastical. Part of this I think is due to the artstyle, especially with the character design, bold, vibrant colors work better. And a lot of scenes just have such cold, impersonalable backgrounds. They don’t even have to be some eye-bleeding color explosion, just…not gray. There are some cartoons that have gray and muted backgrounds but they work with their art style.

And the woods aren’t much better. We seemingly only get ‘oh right, dangerous fantasy world would have scary woods’ when it’s plot convenient, but otherwise? It’s just more muted colors in a honestly pretty sparse forest. They apparently originally wanted far darker colors but it melted together too much so they opted for ‘bloody red’. I’m sorry but go look at the woods and tell me in what world is that a crimson color?

I know there’s a lot of crap that goes on behind the scenes and that with backgrounds and environments it’s especially difficult because you don’t want to muddy it up or distract the audience but I think that Latissa is a good example of how to do it right, it’s simple yet feels like it’s it’s own place with history and environment. Just a few bolder colors, make it more cramped and claustrophobic, that kind of thing.

The other thing with the environmental storytelling part of it is Dana took inspiration from Heirymonous Bosch’s paintings of Hell and illuminated manuscripts, and I just don’t get the feeling at all with the Isles we see for the majority of the show.

The second of far more agregous in my mind.

It’s seemingly stuck in the middle of wanting to be ‘like Earth but with magic’ and ‘ooh look at how different and inhospitable it is!’ For a world that’s supposed to be filled with monsters that will kill you for breathing and just stepping outside is risky to your life, the characters seem able to galavant about both civilization and wilderness without a care.

We get all these little asides in the first season about how they have boiling rain, skin-eating fairies, etc, but pretty much never factor into the story, and when they do, it’s either easily brushed off or used in the stupidest way. *coughBelossdeathcough* We have characters mock Luz and say she’s not strong enough to handle it, and even ignoring any Mary-Sue claims Camilla seemed to have no trouble with the more dangerous Collector Isles when she had nothing but a bat. When taking Luz’s OPness with sticky-note magic, it really neuters the dangers of the Isles, because it seems that half of the problems can be solved by being physically strong or clever with no magic required.

I am more forgiving of this, but the magic, especially near the end, went kinda off the rails in some aspects in power scaling, but also didn’t really stuck to the cooler concepts of that.

Abominations went from just creating and controlling golems to being able to craft anything with the material, yet we don’t get to see anything really big or flashy or even practical, Darius’s goo-form appears twice, making weapons or shields only happens a handful of times and it’s very quick and forgotten about(imagine if Amity went full on Mecha with abomination goo in the finale).

Bard magic can do completely OP things like control someone’s body like a puppet or change the molecular structure of something(put a pin in that) yet in the finale Raine just keeps flicking their bow across the strings to send out energy blasts and doesn’t use it to try and control things and sabotage Belos.

Illusion magic is able to dip into Oracle magic a bit and see memories, we even get a shot of Gus seeing Belos’s entire backstory yet this is never used or mentioned outside of Gus knowing Hunters a grimwalker. Even without that we see Gus can craft gigantic, in-depth illusions that can confuse and pyschologucally harm people, yet he never does this after Labyrinth Runners.

Plant magic, which in a fantasy world like the Isles would mean a number of poisons, toxins, and man-eating plants are at your disposal, and Willow’s only move is…vines. Granted, vines that seem indestructible and are able to take down things that likely wouldn’t be vulnerable to vines, but still…vines. (Which are also green despite the plant color of the Isles being red and it could e been a cool little aside for both Luz and the audience having to get used to seeing red for plants but oh well)

And the others…we don’t care about. The closet one is potions that seem to cover a wide variety of magic types(scrying potion-Oracle, Eda’s potions-Healing)and don’t need magic to do but whatever, why have Eda use her Potions upbringing to supplement her lack of magic when she can turn into a harpy and fly and..that’s kinda it.

Magic also supplements as variety of things, such as technology, and honestly? Not the biggest fan of how that was used just to give our quirky teen protagonists phones and computers-that they don’t even use that often so I don’t get why they were necessary except for ‘haha that Instagram right? Sooo relatable!’ It’s there just for asides and making the world confusing. Like how we can seen scrolls being used in Thems the Breaks, 30 years prior. Yet they seem to be only used for Penstagram, which also apparently only got updated to 2.0 during the second season, so what were they being used for before? And why is Penstagram so established if it’s that new and scrolls were used for other things before? I mean, as background jokes they used searching up disinformation and conspiracy theories and had characters not recognize any media site or conspiracy theories when using the Internet, so it might be a case of wanting their cake and eating it too.

Which is another issue that I can’t stand in isekai/other world type media. Regular human/person growing up it’s a regular human is able to reconfirm e the fantasy version of something, yet their mythical friends can’t understand that a car is like their horseless carriage.

Luz can catch on to the fact that scrolls and crystal balls are just our phones, computers and televisions but from a Halloween display, yet the witches can’t even tell what a shoe is (when they are 99% humans with pointy ears), or when one was made of mud. They refuse to accept animals or concepts that have the most basic information and dismiss Luz, like seriously, how hard is it to figure out what a paper clip is? Or that opposum are real when you know that animals like raccoons exist? Or the most annoying, there is a thing called a crow phone. We hear them call them ‘crow phones’ several times. But when Amity went to Willow for help about Luz? ‘I don’t know what this…pho-oo-on is?’

It’s done only for jokes and yeah it’s not supposed to be taken seriously but all it does is make the witches and demons seem incredibly stupid. Seriously Belos probably didn’t have to put that much effort into his campaign because apparently the residents of the Boiling Isles will accept literally anything at face value(didn’t even use that to make a point on propaganda smh).

This extends beyond the witches’ mental capacity and into ‘what exactly is this world?’ They don’t have technology above some steampunk blimps and automata, except for when they do because how else do they have modern western clothes like t-shirts and sweats? You can’t even say ‘oh it came in through a trash slug’ because Eda can literally customize and order t-shirts. In the literally the same episode, we see witches referring to the ‘four humors of the Titan’, which many people took as an idea that they have very limited medical and scientific knowledge, like no further than the 1600’s…only for Raine to be like ‘I changed its molecular structure!’ And it’s like what? How do you know what molecules are, or how to use your magic to change them in a way that just improves taste? You guys can’t figure out what a cheese grater is but you know about molecular properties?

Honestly I’d rather have a fantasy world just have phones and cars but they run on magic than this, because at least I don’t have to wonder how they know all these common modern ideas yet can’t figure out an umbrella even when someone tells them point blank.

Yeah, maybe it’ll be harder to explain an umbrella, but it’s not like the world tries to make any sense with he boiling rain thing. In fact, pretty much everything in the natural world in the show doesn’t make any sense because right when you can excuse it as ‘total fantasy, rule of cool’ it throws in something that kinda ruins it. In the case of the boiling rain, that’s not how boiling water works at all. I saw someone suggest it just being ‘stomach acid’ from all the titans’ giblets leaking into the sea, but even if we do that ‘it’s magic’ explanation of clouds heating the water up before it rains, it still has the thing of ‘if this is such a common thing, than why is anything vulnerable to it?’ Like the flora evolved and grew from the Titan, yet it doesn’t have natural protections against the rain? That leaf that Eda, Raine and King use in the finale seems to hold up fine so why isn’t all flora like this, or at least have it be part of their life cycle? On further note, why isn’t every building infused with a rain protection spell? Why isn’t there building material made to be rain resistant? Why does Eda have that magic barrier umbrella when we’re first introduced to it and never see it again. In fact, why isn’t that a thing? They have mass-produced clothing merch and stress toys yet they can’t make a push-to-activate protection spell for commercial use? It would’ve been cool to see how witches adapted and changed to the hostile environment, and far better than ‘lol like our smartphones’.

The ‘because magic’ excuse is also lame because it doesn’t even go that far or use it for crazy environments. Like the Titan is the size of Vermont, which is huge for a living being, but it is so tiny in the show. Apparently the Titan is based off of ‘the Earth is a corpse’ motif in several real mythologies but those corpses are far, far bigger, so big you can’t even recognize that it is a body. Yet several times characters get across the isles in minimal time, covering distances that shouldn’t be possible-not just in air, but on foot too. How did King and Steve get around the entire Titan in a motorcycle(even though the most advanced vehicles were steampunk airships) on dirt and cobblestone roads? How can something the size of Vermont(for reference, that’s about the size of Sardinia and Sicily and twice the size of Jamaica)be viewed in its entirety from a bird’s eye view and close enough off-shore that individual buildings can be seen? Or that it’s big enough to sustain several different biomes that are alluded to(but never seen)including a desert?

Then in the finale it’s big enough to reach into space from a prone position…yet we also see that the world is a globe. So these creatures, who were numerous and loved food, lived on a planet that was so small compared to them that they could reach into space by laying g flat and extending their arms straight up. This would’ve been a great spot for pure ‘because magic’, like the entire realm is a giant flat plane that eventually just falls off into nothingness and above the sky is like celestial heavens, but apparently not!

Also despite the fact that earlier it was stated that all landmass is made up of Titan carcasses there apparently was regular land just off shore, so close that the Titan is nearly touching it. Which from how much of the isles can be seen from just off-shore makes you wonder how nobody ever noticed that land or went over there.

There’s a lot of other things, like how abominations was said to be a good career path yet we don’t see evidence of that outside of Blight Industries which seems to be very exclusive, or that the ‘authoritarian’ government is completely laughable, but overall the isles feel like a bunch of people say around, said ‘hey wouldn’t it be cool if?’ And then added it in without any thought. But then both the show and fandom act like every aspect is some never-before-seen, not-like-other-shows star when it can’t even decide on its tone for the main setting.

You know, I was talking about this issue with a friend not too long ago. The Demon Realm loses its 'edge'. When it's introduced, they wanted to make it out like it's a dangerous place to live. There are vicious monsters around every corner, vegetables run away from being eaten, people have no qualms with harming or even killing children. Bump doesn't step in to stop Boscha from bullying Luz because it 'wasn't fatal' or something. So they clearly want to set this place up as a 'survival of the fittest' World.

But then, if they kept it this way, it would interfere with the story. You see, the Demon Realm is supposed to be a world worth saving, and the way it was initially presented isn't really that. If they kept everyone how it was, would the Day of Unity really have been THAT bad? "Hmm, is it really that bad that a bunch of bloodthirsty psychopaths are going to die?"

To achieve this, they had to really 'neuter' the Isles. Now, later in the series, a lot of the danger is just gone. Characters walk around willy-nilly with no threats around them. Where's the Witch-eating furniture? Where's the Boiling Rain? The monsters? Painbows? Gorenados? Where did they all go? Having your cake and eating it! This show's mantra!

Amphibia does a better job selling a dangerous world IMHO! There's a monster around every corner and the world is quite inhospitable, but the people are resilient and make due.

-

Ugh, yep! This is a world with 'magic technology', but the characters are still stupefied by our normal tech. This would have made sense if the Demon Realm were a low-tech medieval world, but it isn't. They want the characters to have magic phones, but still go "durr, what is this 'phone' you speak of?" It really does make the Witches look stupid if anything!

Owl House has plenty of issues with its worldbuilding! We could be here all day discussing them!

[wildcardjoey]

Anita jean!

ANITAT JEAN!!!

Alright so the Little Wren AU is basically just 'Bruce manages to find Anita after she fakes her death' and she actually does become his first sidekick. She isn't a fighter, Bruce puts her under three layers of armor, and she basically fills a mage and healer role with first aid (mostly for civilians and criminals) and the virtual reality gas drug, the use of which allows batman to remain a cryptid for far longer.

Anita also takes longer to get the hang of grappling hooks because she's less coordinated than even Tim but she does get them probably not too long after Dick comes to the manner since the two can train together. Her inability to use grappling hooks when she first enters the field is why The Whirly-Bat was made, named The Hummingbird in this au because it's Anita's and was named before Dick was adopted into the family and took a bat-gimmick to every piece of equipment in the cave. Before he joined the team, Bruce and Anita were work shopping names for a lot of their stuff but hadn't come to decisions for most of them, so Dick still gets to do that, but not for Anita's Hummingbird.

Rather than the dynamic duo, this au has either a tritastic trio of Batman, Wren, and Robin, or the dynamic duo is seen as Wren and Robin, as Batman's sidekicks. When Tim ends up at the manner, Anita basically tells him he's too tactical to be Robin and gives him the Wren mantle, which she either had already left behind or was in the process of considering it. Steph ends ends up becoming his paired Robin, for much longer than Canon.

Steph initiating that plan that required Matches Malone probably still happens, but with Anita's help she's able to salvage it, but it opens up an entirely new set of problems because at that point Anita was already on the verge of discovering The Court of Owls (because their one give away was a nursery rhyme and she wanted to find out it's origin because it's her hobby) and now The Court sees the bat clan take control of the city basically in it's entirety so those two things combined make The Court release the elite talons. A temporary alliance with The League of Assassins and the timely first arrival of Cass in the city means they just barely manage to win. This is also the family's first introduction to Damian and a recently resurrected Jason is probably also there, but dressed like the rest of the assassins so he isn't recognized.

Anita herself, which is what this au is actually about, is going to be depicted as better adjusted due to not living her life since she was, like, eight alone and eventually dedicated to revenge. She has hyperfixations on birds, nursery rhymes, programming, and tech and is an excellent detective. I already mentioned she's less coordinated starting out but that doesn't mean she's weak, she'd probably be able to beat Dick in a fight when he first gets to the manor since he's at that point just a gymnast but she's been training as a martial artist for like six months at that point.

Speaking of Dick, I really look forward to writing their banter. They are going to be so sassy to each other but very protective of each other. Almost as much as they're both protective of every one younger siblings, which, and seeing some of your posts this may be disappointing, isn't going to be terribly long. Finding a way to fit every obscure batfam character in is for my other dc au, the same one that my ruleset for Claire's powers is for, but I do have Calvin, Charlie, and and Dana (Talon, Misfit, and Strike) as sure-shows for Little Wren.

Long-Term, the au's story-arc will focus on the eventual take down of The Parliament of Owls as the main antagonists, as it feels fitting for an Anita Jean focused story for previously stated Nursery Rhyme related reasons, although I do also plan for The League to be taken down due to Tim still having his globetrotting adventure and then the batfam actually capitalizing on it.

Edit for Addendum: the first paragraph makes it sound like Anita never fights, I should clarify that her role on the team does evolve as she gets older and Bruce becomes more lenient.

[darkesttimelinestuff]

"Do you recognize this?"

Day 7 of Fictober! How am I still doing this? Really proud that I've been able to write every day.

I had a lot of fun finding pictures for today's story.

Prompt #7 - "Do you recognize this?"

Find me on Ao3

Scully had turned her office upside down and inside out looking for her passport. She knew exactly where it was. Where she always kept it. Or, at least where it should have been. 

Maybe Mulder had moved it. He sometimes tossed things aside without realizing it. That’s how she had lost her paycheck once, until it turned up at the bottom of some of Mulder’s papers. Neither was quite sure how it had happened, but from then on Scully was certain to keep important documents as far from Mulder’s reach as possible. 

“Mulder, are you sure you didn’t touch the things in my desk?” she called across the room.

“I’m sure!” he shouted back defensively. “What business would I have going through your desk?”

“Because I always keep my passport right here,” she said, pointing to a drawer, “and I don’t see it. And if I can’t find it, we can’t go to Mexico tomorrow.”

Mulder stood and crossed the room to her desk. “Let me check,” he offered. “Two sets of eyes are better than one, right?”

She motioned with her hand, giving him permission to look.

“Be my guest, but I doubt you’ll find it. I’ve searched that desk twice,” she insisted, slumping in a nearby chair in frustration. 

As Mulder bent over the desk in concentration, Scully checked out his ass. Even in his 50s he had killer buns! 

“It’s so unlike you to misplace these things,” he was saying. “I’m a little disappoint…”

And then he stopped. 

“What?” she asked, worried that maybe he found her passport but it was damaged or expired. 

“Oh wow!” he exclaimed, standing up and examining something she couldn’t quite see. 

It looked like a small paper and she suddenly became very self-conscious. 

“What is it?” she asked, reaching for his hands, hoping to pry them open.

“Oh, it is the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen,” Mulder said, “and I can’t believe you never showed me!”

“Mulder, what is it?” she demanded, cursing her short stature. 

“Do you recognize this?” He held up a photograph.

“Oh, my god,” she said, feeling both embarrassed and defensive about the picture. “I haven't thought about that in a very long time.”

The picture showed a young Dana Katherine Scully on a bed in a black lace push-up bra and panties. She hated that word, but there was no better term for it. They weren’t underwear; that was too plain. No, these were panties. The kind a partner used their teeth to slide down your legs. 

This was Dana, not Scully, and she was bold and sensual, rather than pragmatic and sensible. Her smothering eyes said, “come fuck me,” and you couldn’t deny her anything. 

“Well,” Mulder said, licking his lips, “this is fucking incredible.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes! I love this! I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this.”

“There are,” Scully said hesitantly, “more.”

“I need to see them,” he replied, almost too excited.

“Well, this was back when I first started at the F.B.I.,” she said, searching for the other pictures. “My friend suggested it and I don’t know what possessed me, but it seemed like a good idea.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No, not at all! I’m very proud of these pictures. But they’re more for me than anyone else. Ah! Here they are,” she said, handing him the rest of the photos.

The pictures showed a progression of Dana Scully shedding a man’s white button-up shirt, so that she was hugging her lace-clad breasts, posing suggestively on a bed, and, in the last one, looking right into the camera with nothing but a sheet wrapped around her.

“Well, I would be honored if they could also be for me.”

“They aren’t a secret. I just forgot about them,” she admitted. “So much has happened to us.”

“We’ve known each other, what, over twenty years,” Mulder said, “and you never thought to show me these?”

“Twenty-five years.”

“I’m really glad you lost your passport,” Mulder said, studying each and every photo.

[lou-syd]

So I read the first issue of Red Hood: The Hill and my expectations were admittedly low because of how poorly Jason is handled most of the time so I'm not disappointed like I've seen some people be (if you are, that's totally valid though, I def get it). I feel entirely neutral about it. I think it wasn't a strong start for an already very, very short run, and with it being a flashback its pacing worries me a bit.

I think it could be interesting going forward but I'm definitely getting the vibe that this is not going to be Jason-centric like a lot of people are. I do think it's too early to tell but it's definitely possible this will focus more on Dana and her crew which like I guess?? I like Dana and I don't mind some of the focus being on her at all. She's interesting and I like when Gotham-set stories actually feel like it's a real but weird place with real people living in it. I enjoy it when they show how much of a mess the city is and how the people living in it have to adapt to get by. Dana's dynamic with Jason has potential and that being the focal point of this whole thing could lead to a more compelling narrative overall. The idea of Jason being the one to try and guide a friend entering into this world could offer up a lot of good character beats for him that we haven't seen a lot of in a while. That being said, it feels like Red Hood is more of a vehicle for this story about The Hill so I'm not holding my breath for it. Retroactively changing his backstory around to fit this place into it also doesn't give me the best feeling either.

As for the rest of the 'new' characters, I don't really care for the little neighborhood watch crew outside of Dana. There's not much to go off and seeing Jason interact with them does nothing for me and just feels forced (but then again most of his relationships are forced in general). Having this many characters with such a short run is not going to allow for any of them to be fleshed out enough for them to feel like they matter in the grand scheme of things. By virtue of this being a flashback, the stakes already feel pretty low so having a cast of characters that aren't particularly compelling and whose relationships with Jason evolved off-panel doesn't help. They have cool designs though, I'll give them that.

I don't like that it took getting through almost halfway through the issue for Jason to show up and when he does it's underwhelming.

So far, it's shaping up to be a one-off story with low stakes. Which is fine. A short, contained story can be good if it's written well and there's something to take away from it. Otherwise, they're just slapping Red Hood on the title for readership's sake and calling it a day. Which like, nothing surprises me anymore but it's lame that this is what we get for Jason after the nightmare mess that was Gotham War and TMWSL.

Apparently, Zdarsky is planning on including Jason in his upcoming Batman arc according to some posts I saw so take that with a grain of salt but the thought of that happening makes me want to grind my teeth into a fine dust.

At this point, I feel like I'm just holding out for nothing with Jason. I don't like any direction they've taken with him outside of some interesting bits here and there so I hope this run picks up.

[killerheelsonadiscodancefloor]

seeing with new eyes | egon spengler x reader

author’s note: so hi! this is my first little story i’m posting on here, very exciting stuff! i love love love requests so feel free to hit me with them :) i’m planning on putting together more of a comprehensive list of what i write for and such, but for now, ghostbusters fanfic

warnings: purposeful lowercase, jealousy, distant egon, flirting to make someone jealous, possibly ooc (it’s the first time in writing for ghostbusters), lmk if you guys see any i missed

it had only been a few weeks that i had been working with the ghostbusters to help janine take calls and make appointments, and thus far, they were the most exciting few weeks of my life.

i could hardly remember what my day-to-day was like before i scored my job at the fire station. coming in every day at eight to help janine schedule appointments, starting the coffee brewing for the boys, making sure the proton packs were ready for the specters they would face that day. it was all a routine that flowed so well it was practically second nature.

i even fit in well with janine and the ghostbusters themselves. well, almost all of them anyway.

there was ray, with his kind eyes and bright smile, who had immediately gone out of his way to welcome me to the station. he gave me the tour, teaching me all the little tricks along the way- “if you ever have business around here later at night, that stair kinda creaks—peter hasn’t gotten around to getting it fixed yet, you know how that is,” -and always made sure to keep me in the loop regarding information that referred to before i was hired. ray was easy to joke with and fun to share a snack with on our lunch break.

then, of course, winston. he understood better than anyone else what it felt like to join the gang a little later and made sure i knew he was always available to chat with. while spending time with him i learned more of the practical parts of hunting ghouls, “just in case!” he always said. winston was also one to not sugarcoat things and had pulled me aside after my interview to kindly but seriously caution me as to what the job entailed. i cherished the time we spent walking to the local sub shop and fixing up the ecto-1 together.

peter was an unavoidable presence around the station, although not an unwelcome one. the whole flirtatious douchebag bit he had going was a lot less obnoxious once i got to know the snarky but sweet man that laid behind it. peter was truly devoted to dana and seeing them together put a smile on face; this was due in part to how nice it was to see the two in love, but also because it gave me ammunition to make fun of him with. we playfully messed with each other often, switching between several of our running jokes in the same conversation—much to the confusion of the others.

and finally. the ghostbuster that seemed none too fond of me at all: egon. i admired him greatly for all of the things he’d invented while discovering more scientific information about ghosts than anyone in the field before him. and, sure, maybe i also admired the way his hair fell into his face when he was examining a new specimen and the way his eyes lit up as he jotted new findings down into the various notebooks he had scattered about. but that’s not very relevant. at least, that’s what i try to tell myself and janine. but after my first week working here, our interactions had been extremely limited.

———

while on my tour from ray, we wandered down to the lab. “this is the spot egon frequents, so if you ever need to find him, this is the best place to look.” ray informs me in a quiet undertone. the stark contrast in the boisterous way he’d been speaking upstairs sobered me. suddenly this whole operation felt much more serious-more real, even. we continued further into the room from the staircase to find egon bent over a microscope.

“egon!” ray greets with a slap on his friend’s shoulder. “ray.” egon mumbles back distractedly. his brows furrow as he adjusts the magnification on the equipment, before moving back and shaking his head.

“hard at work figuring out the molecular breakdown of that goo?” i ask, testing a joke to gage just how professional egon truly was.

while ray smiles, egon merely stares. he seems to be at a loss for words as he considers me and before i can apologize, he rushes out, “yes, actually. we got this when peter got, well, ‘slimed,’ we’ll call it. figuring out it’s exact components could help leaps and bounds in figuring out how exactly these specters manifest and what we can do to stop the influx new york has had thrust upon it.”

“oh! so this is definitely some, uh, important ectoplasm then. i have to admit, i don’t know much on the science side of all of this. would you mind if i borrowed your notes sometime?” i asked, shifting my feet. while it was slightly painful for me to have to ask egon for help understanding, i figured, who better than the brains of the bunch? if i was going to be working here for the foreseeable future, it would be good to have a deeper understanding of the creatures i’d be (indirectly) dealing with.

again, egon hit me with that look, as though he’s never seen something like me before. after an awkwardly long beat of silence, ray nudged egon with his elbow. egon suddenly sprung back to life, quickly maneuvering himself off of his stool and to a desk on the other side of the lab. he grabbed a stapled packet of paper and arrived in front of me, offering it to me with a fully extended arm. “it’s a thesis of sorts, you can read it before i submit it to the new york times.” egon says after i take it, tucking it gingerly into my bag.

i expressed my appreciation and shook his still outstretched hand, introducing myself despite the fact that janine told me she had already told all the guys about me. egon shot me a tight smile, and sensing rather than guessing that he wanted to get back to his ectoplasm, ray moved forward to continue my tour.

three days later, i ventured down to the lab on my own to return egon’s thesis. despite his occasionally overly scientific language, the paper had been a good read. i told him as much when i handed him the papers, making my best attempt at ignoring the flutter in my heart when our fingers brushed. “you thought so? it’s good to hear, peter was saying it may be too advanced for ‘normal people,’” at this point, he did air-quotes with his fingers and i tried my hardest not to be endeared by it. “i think he was just messing with me, ray agreed with me that it was a good middle ground of being too academic and too simple.”

with a jolt, i realized his dark eyes were directed to me for my opinion. “definitely! anything that was kind of complicated, you can deduce through the context. and from what i can tell, peter is always messing with everyone, i wouldn’t take his critiques too seriously.” i reassured, a broad smile on my face as i did so. egon opened his mouth to respond when the siren blared, signaling the beginning of a new case and then end to our conversation.

“well, i’ll catch you later! maybe you can brief me on your goo findings.” i added a wink at the end, trying to get a bit more friendly with the doctor. he stumbled his way through a goodbye before leaving the lab-not seeming to realize that he had his suit down here.

———

since that day, it seemed like egon was avoiding me. i wasn’t sure what i had done wrong. maybe the way i joked about his work? but no, he’d seemed fine when i did that before. the fact that i’d read his thesis? then again, egon had been the one to offer it to me.

i took my concerns to ray, where they were promptly overheard by peter.

“don’t worry your pretty little head about it, newbie. egon gets freaked about my jokes all the time and we still put up with each other!” he said bracingly, shaking my shoulders to make his point.

ray looked as though he wanted to interject, but winston called him from downstairs. he grinned apologetically and slid down the pole to see why his friend was calling him. before long, peter and i were sharing the left over lo mein on the table and discussing golden girls (a guilty pleasure of his.)

egon entered midway through this conversation without even glancing our way. he began to brew a new pot of coffee with his eyes fixed sternly on the machine. i felt a frown tug at my lips before i was able to pull myself away from analyzing this behavior and back to peter’s reasoning about how sophia was the best character. something was different though, i noted as peter scooted his chair closer to mine. my mind switched rapidly between peter’s sudden flirtatious behavior as he hooked his foot around mine to egon’s tense shoulders and white-knuckle grip on the cabinet.

“what do you think?” peter’s voice drew my eyes to him as i tried (and failed) to not notice egon in my peripheral. “about sophia.” he prompted again.

“oh, well i guess i would agree with you-” i began, before peter whooped excitedly.

“yes! i knew there was a reason i liked you!” he proclaimed, snatching my hand up and pressing a dramatic kiss to it. i raised my eyebrows at his prolonged eye contact before drawing my hand away with a chuckle.

“peter, we both know you only like me for my pretty face.” i joked. “well, it certainly doesn’t hurt.” he fired back quickly. suddenly egon snatched the whole pot of coffe, turning swiftly on his heel and closing the door harshly on his way out. “sheesh. looks like someone’s a tad jealous. you know, for egon being the scientist here, i’d sure love to study his brain. not for his supposed genius either.” peter scoffed good-naturedly.

i blinked at him in shock. “jealous? egon? no way.” i denied easily. the guy was extremely pragmatic and intelligent, i doubted he would let something so petty effect him. that and he’s completely avoided me the past couple weeks.

“watch, i’ll show you.” peter insisted. i stared at him before finally relenting with a roll of my eyes. “what’s in it for you anyway?” i asked. “well, an opportunity to bother egon, not to mention flirt with a beautiful lady-” i cut him off quickly, “goodbye peter!”

and so peter’s plan commenced. he flirted with me to apparently make egon jealous, despite the fact that i was sure egon despised me. when i told ray how ridiculous i felt this whole charade was, he agreed but chimed in with something that shook me. “although, if this is what it takes to get egon to make a move, i guess it’ll be worth it.”

i spluttered in shock. “what? it’s true! me and the other guys are sick of him being too skittish to do anything but stare at you.” ray continued as if he hasn’t just flipped my world upside down.

before i could retort, the door swung open and egon, the man of the hour, entered. ray quickly switched the topic to our shared favorite snack, cheez-itz. i stared incredulously at the choice in conversation but he gave me a look back that said ‘just go with it.’ we continued talking about cheez-itz until he left the room. “that was ridiculous.” i mumbled, putting my head down on my arms. ray patted my shoulder sympathetically, unable to reassure me because it really had been.

the following day, there was a new box of cheez-itz on my desk. i stopped a couple of feet away to examine the scene. “what’s the matter with you? you’re blocking the space.” janine said as she steered me to my desk. i silently pointed at the box.

“oh. huh.” she said, apparently also stumped. “wasn’t there yesterday.” i mumbled. she hummed as she took in the scene, before we flinched in shock as ray roughly opened the door. “(y/n)— oh, did you get more cheez-itz?” he asked reaching for the box.

“no, i guess someone… got them for me.” i concluded with a smile. ray handed them over with a shrug. “wasn’t me.” him and janine chorused. i shook my head. that much had been obvious. i sank into my chair as i tried to figure out who would gift these to me, when peter strolled in.

“venkman! what is this, some sort of courting gift?” i asked with a raised brow. “courting g—what are you talking about?” peter replied in bewilderment. i held up the cheez-itz in answer. “ah, no. not from me anyway. also you’re gonna have a visitor soon—” before he could finish speaking, egon hurriedly enters the room with winston trailing behind him.

“so there’s a party and no one invited me? real cold.” winston joked, coming to stand next to ray at my desk. before any of us could retort, egon turns to me and clears his throat.

“could i talk to you, (y/n)?” he asks, eyes shifting from me to the rest of the room.

i blinked in surprise. what was with these guys and catching me off guard today? “um, sure!” i replied, standing up so quickly that my chair rolled back. egon nodded appreciatively and walked back out into the stairwell. with a nervous glance at janine and the guys, i followed.

i shut the door behind me, finding egon standing tensely in the hallway. “are you alright?” i asked gently. he looked at me contemplatively before asking, “did you know peter is attracted to you?”

my eyebrows raised in shock. egon took this to mean no and continued. “that’s the reason he’s asked you out to dinner. he wants it to be a date.” he stared at me as he waited for my response. “oh. huh.” i said intelligently. i hadn’t been informed of this plan. i guess peter may have just started saying whatever he could to make egon jealous. i refocused when i saw egon take a deep breath in.

“do you want it to be a date?” his voice was strained. “um, i’m not sure. i guess i’d have to think about it.” i trailed off uncertainly. egon’s gaze lingered on my fidgeting hands before he burst out, “(y/n), i’d like to tell you something before you consider this date with peter. i… i have feelings for you.”

my mouth parted as i stared at him in complete shock. sure, i’d been told that egon liked me. peter had even started this whole scheme to prove it. but i never really thought it was possible. now though…

“well. this definitely changes things.” i mumbled, my mind going a thousand miles a minute. egon seemed uneasy and maybe regretful. “i-i’m sorry if i’ve ruined things—”

“you haven’t.” i replied firmly. i stepped closer and took his hand in mine. egon’s dark eyes searched mine before he slowly leaned in, bringing the hand not holding mine to rest against my collar bone and play with my hair. a smile involuntarily curled my lips up until i couldn’t contain myself anymore. swiftly, my hand caught his tie and i pulled him to me until our lips pressed together.

egon’s hand moved from mine up to my back and he pressed me closer to him, deepening the kiss with the new angle. i brought my other arm around his shoulders to keep my balance. he was a bit taller than me, and kissing him had me on my tip toes.

“does this mean we aren’t going out this weekend?” venkman’s pouty voice broke me and egon apart. his grip on my waist tightened slightly. “the jig is up peter. you can go crawling back to dana now.” i snickered. “yeah, well, sacrifices needed to be made. she’s been waiting on you two to get together longer than me.” peter replied with an overly dramatic roll of his eyes. he exited with a ‘you’re welcome!’ called over his shoulder. loud cheers erupted after he entered the room again.

“going off all the noise, i guess everyone knows we’re together now.” i hummed, turning to look back at egon. he stood with a puzzled furrow between his brows. “so all of the flirting peter’s been doing, it was all to make me jealous?” he asked. “yeah, he said there was no way you’d confess otherwise.”

at egon’s scoff, i raised an eyebrow. “well, would you have? confessed?” i inquired with a grin. his silence was answer enough. i began to giggle while egon merely shook his head and pulled me closer. “maybe venkman’s smarter than we all think.” he mumbled into my hair. i only laughed harder at this, clutching egon’s shoulders.

“so, wait—” i said, pulling away so that i could see egon. “the cheez-itz, were those you?” i asked in wonder. egon ducked his head, smiling bashfully. i gasped dramatically. “look at you being all romantic with the secret admirer stuff!”

egon moved closer once more, pressing another gentle kiss to my lips. “well, it’s not so secret anymore.” he whispered, before i pulled him in once more. at least now i knew that egon definitely didn’t dislike me.

tags! @maraudermap000

[yesiknowimshort]

looking at the fanon from canon with tim drake

(to the best of my own knowledge; take with a grain of salt; i’m open to discussion and disagreement; we can take this like an english lit class analysis)

this is inspired by discussions with @boredandboredmind about misconstrued info with jason and tim on their own posts about it.

also do not take this as hate to tim fic writers, you’re amazing and you best believe i’m checking the tim x reader tag constantly. i just want to be able to help give you easy access to half-canon-compliant info, and you can choose to take it or leave it.

and especially if you only know tim through online media (which is always valid and i’ll hear no argument!), it can be hard to differentiate between what it is “out of character, completely fanon” behaviour, and what is actually plausible.

RELATIONSHIPS

with his dad

tim’s relationship with his dad is extremely complicated. they both loved each other… but both of his parents had a very different way of showing their love to what tim needed.

for the majority of his life, his mother and father were super neglectful of him and his interests, which of course is how we had nine year old tim drake running around figuring out people’s identities and tryna convince nightwing to go back to batman bc tim said batman wouldn’t cope without a robin, as if he knew them personally.

bruce generally disapproved of tim being left alone while his parents were on business trips, so he looked out for tim a lot during those times.

after the death of tim’s mother, his father was all moody for a bit bc his company had gone to shit… oh and his wife died. anyway he was acting like mr crabs when he loses his money for a while until his physiotherapist dana winters was like “yo get a hold of your life man”. so jack attempted to reconnect with his son… but tim was already deep in the mantle of robin and hanging out with bruce wayne.

tim was a little reluctant at first but after a while he did really appreciate his dad trying to be a dad for once… but it conflicted with the life he had already made for himself.

tim was sneaking out to do hero work, skipping school, coming home in the early hours beat and bruised, being snarky and angsty to his dad, super secretive; basically coming off as a reckless hooligan teenager (even tho he really wasn’t) which made jack incredibly angry at tim a lot of the time, causing them to have a lot of fights.

jack was also super insecure as his position as tim’s dad as he felt inferior to the relationship tim had built with bruce.

so one day while tim was out, jack raided tim’s bedroom (10/10 parenting skills there, well done jack) which dana winters was horrified by and actually sided with tim when tim came home and blew up at his dad -anyway jack found out tim was robin.

he stormed to bruce and was like “fuck you and fuck my son’s role as robin. he’s going to boarding school”.

long story short, tim resumes the mantle of robin and his dad deals with it and they begin to really get along again, like a true father and son… and then his dad is murdered. tim finds him and is distraught, and that’s when we get this classic image of tim and bruce:

(it’s horrible obviously but i love this illustration so much. the way tim’s half in and out of the robin gear, the single eye you can see, the way he’s half collapsed over his father’s body and clinging to bruce for dear life) anyway then tim goes into the care of bruce wayne.

with bruce

lemme start of by saying: tim would only ever use the wayne name for business means as future ceo/controlling shareholder of W.E.

tim will always be a drake.

he quite literally made up a fake uncle so he wouldn’t get adopted by bruce, even though bruce really wanted to adopt him. not only that- he went as far as to forge a new will including this fictional uncle to avoid being bruce’s son

he struggled a lot with bruce’s “affection” after his father’s death since he never saw bruce as a father beforehand, only ever as a mentor. and of course, up until later in his robin career, he wasn’t even an orphan. he still technically wasn’t since dana winters ended up marrying his dad and becoming his step-mum, but she’s basically forgotten sadly.

he also consistently makes a point to make sure people know he made himself robin, and it wasn’t batman’s choice at all.

he appreciates bruce of course, but it’s more on an intellectual and emotional level than anything else. tim came from money (albeit, new money), and even though his parents' company basically died with his father there would’ve been some amount of inheritance money. not to mention without a shadow of a doubt, he would’ve had an account his parents had been saving for him.

living in another manor house and working around international companies and important people, wouldn’t be too different from what his life would’ve become had his parents not died.

tim would appreciate bruce not for the life he gave him, but simply because of bruce being intellectually stimulating for him. remember; tim sees the life he has as the life he made.

he reminds me of damian in the fact that both of them would struggle with dealing with people who bored them, people who couldn’t offer them anything.

anyway bruce = respected equal, bruce ≠ tim’s new dad.

 with jason and damian

boom. all you need to know.

nah but seriously...

jason attacked tim in the tt tower when he came back to life but can you really blame him? he was replaced, and it made sense for him to come after tim since as we know, tim forced himself into the role and did, technically, steal jason’s spot before bruce realistically would’ve replaced him.

but they never held that grudge throughout jason’s reintegration into the family. of course they’d have sibling fights (note that tim doesn’t think of any of his adoptive brothers as real brothers; but jason is closest to), but a little roughhousing is normal. i’m the eldest of 6 brothers and believe me, we fight all the time. literally yesterday one of them and i bit each other while fighting (if you don’t think damian and tim would do that, you’re kidding yourself). but we love each other, and if anything happened we’d jump to each other's defence.

moving onto damian...

the way tim views damian is very telling of tim’s worldview and childhood. when damian arrived, tim demanded that regardless of being batman’s son or not, damian must work to earn the love and respect of bruce, “like everybody else” he had said. clear projection from tim here, since up until dami, tim was the only one who wasn’t “wanted” per se, and also tim’s had to work for people’s affection and attention his entire life. look at his parents; they were the half-arsed “that’s great honey” and then back to their phone call type of people (well we know where tim gets his steadfast work ethic from).

anyway, tim finally had the spotlight on him for a while only to have it turned for some little genetic abnormality.

tim’s suffering from the “been the only/youngest child for too long” phenomenon; they do not believe there is room enough in one's heart for more unconditional love. it’s quite sad if you think about it; he was in his mid-late teens by this point.

tim was quite patronising of damian when they were introduced, but he quickly pulled the “i’m just messing with you” card and did try to fix it, but stubborn-as-tim damian just started to preach his favourite “i’ll inherit everything without even trying” play. this obviously pissed off tim to no end. it seemed damian knew the perfect way to get under his skin, and it was putting tim even more on edge. it made him feel insecure in his place with bruce. for the first time tim didn’t think he was gonna be able to get his way easily.

eventually though, batman assures tim that damian being his biological son doesn’t change anything that he has with tim, and that tim doesn’t have to prove anything to him.

yes, if you look up tim and damian, you can see that damian has done some horrible things to tim and the two have very thin patience for each other, but that’s simply because they both understand the perfect ways to piss each other off. it’s just so easy for the both of them that they can’t help themselves.

i also will say that damian views the relationship as much more “mortal enemies” than tim does, but he is a child several years younger than tim, so it’s natural for him to view it as a bigger deal than tim.

all in all, jason and tim, and tim and damian are simply just brothers, and if you have more than two siblings, i’m sure you know as much as we deny it, everyone had a favourite and a least favourite sibling -it’s natural. for tim, his favourite is jason, and his least just happens to be damian.

just like damian’s favourite is dick, and least favourite happens to also be tim.

with stephanie

(now i don’t know as much about steph as i do for tim so feel free to correct me)

stephanie brown got into the hero scene by being the best little shit i’ve ever heard of and messing up her villain dad’s plans. her dad was cluemaster, a friend of the riddler, and she would literally just show up and spoil their plans in annoying ways (hence her name; spoiler).

she was tim drake’s girlfriend -it’s important to note that she wasn’t robin’s. she had no clue about his double life and broke up with him because she thought he was being unfaithful (fair enough).

when tim’s dad took robin away from him, steph stepped up to the plate with a made up robin costume and (like tim) demanded to be the replacement.

her 71 days in the spotlight as the first female robin ended in a couple different ways (thanks comics for making it hard). bruce dismissed her for his belief that she couldn’t follow orders, but he also didn’t believe that she could live up to tim... ouch. he didn’t even approve of her as his partner until she was killed. oh god here we go again...

i personally don’t acknowledge that she died. just- nope. i always look at it as wrong place, wrong time for steph. she could’ve been a great robin, but tim left massive fucking shoes to fill, and i reckon bruce was looking for any little reason to fire her -disobeying one order to not involve herself in a fight just happened to be the perfect opportunity (according to bruce). not to mention steph (and this isn’t necessarily a wrong thing) was undisciplined in hero-ing.

not to say tim was straight-laced and serious, more that him being at an equal mental level to bruce, and the both of them having built strong trust in each other, gave him a lot more leeway to do what he wanted and have the means to back up his actions.

ORIGINS OF POPULAR FANON

obviously i’ll never know exactly where something came from. this is more my speculation and attempt and supplying the headcanons with canonical evidence or debunking them.

where does “tim is a sickly boi” come from?

his lack of a spleen.

i’m not sure if most people now know that’s the reason why, but that’s gotta be how it started.

without a spleen, our body's other organs like the liver can take over many of the spleen's functions. you'll still be able to cope with most infections but there's a heightened risk that a serious infection will develop quickly, especially from certain bacteria and parasites like malaria.

if he got on antibiotics and rested when he started to feel ill, he’d be fine, but tim would never remember to take antibiotics and gods forbid he let himself rest so... he’s working until his body forces him to take a break.

mimi approved fanon  👍

where does “tim doesn’t care for himself” come from?

he’s a stubborn person. people don’t emphasise this enough. usually, people just use the motivation of depression (which, fair, it could be included in it). however, he will literally do whatever the fuck he wants because he’s tim fucking drake and that's all the excuse he feels he needs. like he is prepared to sacrifice everything *cough cough* himself to see his plan go through.

he’s also stubborn in his need to prove himself as we know. as a self-appointed robin; his mantle had felt fragile to him. not to mention damian made his grand appearance to push tim into that sweet sweet middle child category.

and as we already know, his dad also forcefully took the mantle from him and stopped him from seeing bruce. every time things start to go well for tim... it all seems to go to shit.

this in turn led to the fanon of ‘chronic perfectionism to the point of halting self-care in order to complete x, y z to prove himself’.

he also canonically doesn’t care much for sleep; in teen titans when superboy finds him awake tim just goes “it’s only three, i’m checking my emails”.

mimi approved fanon 👍.

where does “tim’s a coffee addict” come from?

he actually is only ever depicted drinking/buying coffee like 3 times (i don’t know for sure, please correct me if it’s more/less).

it ties in well with the previous point; tim’s coffee addiction is a way to justify how he can still function when he’s on 5 minutes of sleep, battered and bruised and still able to kick arse and be intelligent.

mimi approved fanon 👍

where does “tim have abandonment issues” come from?

his mum dies and he loses how his dad used to be.

he gains a better version of his dad and then his dad acts like an arsehole.

his dad gets better again and then his dad dies.

he had steph and then she left him because he just couldn’t explain who he was.

he gets bruce and then damian shows up.

he gets bruce back and then bruce dies, and nobody believes him when he says he’s alive.

yeah... it makes sense.

would be mimi-approved fanon, but i’ve never like the way i’ve seen it portrayed in fanon.

i see a lot in fics he does the “i’m pushing you away first to protect us both” and i just don’t personally agree with the depiction. call me petty but that’s my thoughts.

where does the perception that tim’s the soft one come from?

no fucking clue honestly.

mans blinded deathstroke’s (/jericho, hard to explain) good eye on purpose while delivering a one liner about fighting blind, and then told the man he just fully blinded that he agreed with deathstroke that he (tim) could be vicious when he had to be.

that one-on-one moment in the teen titans comic is demonstration enough of tim being the opposite of the soft one. none of the robins are soft. if we’re going off who’s the most “sensitive”, then it’d be dick or damian -those two have the shortest fuse.

tim blinded someone by throwing his fucking birdarang at the guy’s one good eye and was sure enough and committed enough to what he planned to do that he had the precision to make sure not to take the eye out completely -only debilitate him. that’s some calculated callousness right there.

he also boasted to the teen titans about lying to batman, after he just lied to starfire about staying put in a fight (and his lie used that ‘goody two shoes’ perception of himself; he’s self-aware of how he can come off)… and then he broke his friends out of the tt tower by cutting glass in the shape of a bat. dudes cocky as.

not to mention he literally stalked batman and ran around solving murders and dropping off the evidence to gordon before even being a robin. he was on the CIA’s watch list for crying out loud.

tim is extremely underestimated. to the point where (as @forcesofnatureunleashed accurately described) this “uwu” version of tim has taken over the fandom and made him out to seem like a mega wimp and a quiet tortured soul.

i’m not dismissing the shit he’s actually gone through, i’m just saying he’s gone through enough that you don’t need to make up that he was berated by his dad, can’t talk about his pain, and relies on his tech, when he’s quiet literally the best martial artist in the family and highly respected by ra’s al ghul.

you don’t just get respected by ra’s al ghul; especially if you were an overly sensitive, shaky-knee-ed, spineless, weakling.

STRONGLY mimi disapproved fanon 👎

[xxsksxxx]

Almost Heaven

Summary:

Mulder’s attempt to find more exciting cases to investigate while stuck in the bullpen turns into another weekend trip to the forest.

Meanwhile, Scully is faced with a tempting offer that could change both her future and their lives.

This story is complete, and I’m going to post one chapter a day.

AO3 | Back to the Beginning | @today-in-fic

Chapter 7: To the Place I Belong

Alpos Lodge and Inn, Davis, WV Sunday, November 29th, 1998, 7:33 am

The sun had just started to rise, casting a warm light over the still-damp forest around their motel. The air was still cold, though, and Scully shivered, rubbing her arms over her jacket.

She opened the passenger door, getting in, while her mind was a mile away. She felt Mulder glance at her, probably still wondering about her swift departure last night. Scully knew he had been confused by her reaction to his perfectly reasonable suggestion to follow up on their case with the gunmen. Reasonable—if you had planned this trip only for a case, that is, she thought.

They slowly left the parking lot, the gravel under their tires crunching. Scully turned her face towards the side window once again. This time it wasn’t to suppress a yawn or a smile like she had done on their way into West Virginia the day before.

The trees began to blur into a green haze as the car picked up speed, and the only sound was Mulder cracking sunflower seed shells between his teeth once in a while.

The slow hum of the car��s engine was almost hypnotic, and Scully’s thoughts drifted back to Friday night’s call—and the job offer. It was a huge compliment that she was being considered for this role. And she was very aware of that. A decade ago, she would have jumped for joy. It was everything her younger self would’ve dreamed of. And even present Dana Scully couldn’t completely ignore that she felt flattered and honored.

But there was more to the offer than just a stroke to her ego, she knew. It was a chance to get back to the reason she had joined the FBI in the first place—that she had wanted to make a difference—answer a calling that she felt was true to herself and who she was as a person. She had gone against her father’s wishes to pursue this path—even to a point where she wondered if he could ever feel proud of her again.

This job could mean all of that and more. She would be able to make a difference in the way she had intended, and she knew it was a path her father would have respected. And she would also get back to their search for the truth. Their search, not Mulder’s. That’s how she had started to think of it ever since her sister had been murdered in her place. It had become as much her search for the truth as it was Mulder’s. Mulder. How was she going to bring this up to him now? After yesterday, I know even less what I want to do.

The car hit a pothole, and she gripped the door handle when they drifted slightly to the side.

“Sorry,” Mulder said quietly, glancing at her. “I didn’t think it would be that deep.”

Scully nodded and raised her wrist to check the time. She must have been deeper in thought than she realized because it was nearly 9:30 a.m. and the forest had given way to crop fields and farmhouses scattered throughout.

Mulder glanced at her again and added, “We’re not far out anymore. Another hour at the most.” He grabbed another sunflower seed from the bag perched in the center console and bit down on it.

Scully felt her stomach grumble and realized that they hadn’t stopped for breakfast yet to not lose time. “You want to get some coffee and something to eat at the next diner we pass?” she asked casually.

Mulder nodded. “Good idea. Let’s take a break there as well, we’re making good time so far.”

Scully turned her head back to look outside the window. A break. The word brought back last night’s exchange in Mulder’s room—the way, he had been confused by her suggestion to take a break together—to spend the day doing normal things, relaxing, and enjoying each other’s company. She cringed and closed her eyes against the memory. He’s just single-minded. And frustrated, she tried to rationalize. So am I. Doing meaningless tasks for Kersh, basically being put on the sidetrack, would be frustrating for anyone. And she knew that always hitting dead ends took its toll on him as much as it did on her. Probably even more. This had been his quest since he was twelve years old. Having his work sabotaged had to irritate Mulder to no end.

She chanced a glance in his direction, studying his features in the sunlight.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t been looking forward to researching this Mothman—or whatever Mulder expected to find this weekend—as well. But it isn’t just about the case, Scully thought. What about everything else? His and her definition of a normal life differed, she knew. But this felt like one step forward and two steps back—from nearly kissing in his hallway, to not even wanting to spend a day doing something other than work.

This is merely existing and not living, she sighed, resigned. Living seemed increasingly out of reach with each passing day. And time was not something she was willing to waste anymore. She’d learned that the hard way. Weekends in wet forests, chasing elusive monsters, and nights staking out abandoned warehouses in search of secret government conspiracies left little room for personal relationships outside what she had with Mulder. And he, with his single-minded focus, seemed oblivious to anything beyond their work.

Her mind flashed back to Mulder and last night and how he’d stopped her from checking his head—touching him really—for they both knew her checks for head trauma were more of a caress than an actual medical treatment. And she felt the rejection deep in her chest once again.

Mulder turned his head and gave her a lopsided smile when he noticed her looking at him before turning his eyes back to the road.

Did I completely misinterpret it all? Mulder’s a tactile person, maybe those constant touches are just his way of being close to someone he cares about. Maybe calling me every night is more about having a human connection. The realization hit her like a fist to the stomach.

What about the near-kiss? her inner voice questioned. Well, that had been a highly charged emotional moment. She’d just told him that she was going to leave. He must’ve felt like he was losing her. ‘You’ve kept me honest. You’ve made me a whole person. I owe you everything, Scully. And you owe me nothing,’ had been his words. Well, apparently that meant being his other half on the X-Files, but nothing more, she thought bitterly. Maybe he’d even regretted trying to kiss her later. That would explain why he hadn’t tried again—or at least mentioned it.

But before she could contemplate the confusing implications of a kiss that might have been, her phone buzzed, pulling her from her reverie. She glanced at the screen of her cell phone and recognized the number immediately. Skinner. Her heart raced as she answered, trying to keep her voice steady. “Hello?”

Mulder’s eyes flicked towards her; curiosity piqued, but he remained silent.

“Agent Scully, I wanted to follow up on our previous conversation,” Skinner said on the other end, his voice tinny over the hum of the moving car.

Scully’s grip tightened on the phone. “Can you hold on a moment?” She turned to Mulder, forcing a casual tone. “I need to take this. Would you mind pulling over?” She hesitated, then added. “It’s… personal.”

Mulder nodded, his expression unreadable. “Sure, hold on.” He pulled the car to a stop on the side of the road and turned the ignition off.

Scully stepped out of the car, walking a few paces away to ensure Mulder wouldn’t overhear, and turned around. He was sitting motionless in the driver’s seat, looking through the window at the crops to their left. She took a deep breath before putting the phone back to her ear, her mind racing with the implications of the offer.

“Sorry, sir. I’m able to talk now,” she replied, and Skinner continued. “I haven’t heard from you yet, and I’m aware this is all pretty short notice, but an opportunity like this doesn’t present itself very often. I’d like to set things in motion as quickly as possible. If you don’t want to take the role, I’ll have to find another fit that would be in line with all of our interests.”

Scully nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her. “Yes, I’m aware. And I’m very flattered that I have been presented with this chance, sir—which is why I want to give it the contemplation it deserves. I will get back to you until tonight,” she replied.

“Yes, that would be great, Scully,” Skinner responds, his voice tight and Scully knew he was under as much pressure as she was.

She heard the click of the disconnecting line and put her phone back into her coat pocket, slowly moving back toward the car.

Mulder was watching her out right now, a question all over his face. She swallowed and took a deep breath. It was time to make a decision.

[xplrvibes]

Looks like colby has a new play thing👀

I'm gonna be honest, I debated not answering these at all, like I've done in the past with stuff like this.

But I need everyone to read this shit and think about this.

You've got two adult human beings who took a picture together and posted it online. You don't know the one human being AT ALL, and have no idea what her connection is to Colby.

But he put his arm around her for a photo, so now she's been boiled down from a whole ass human being to a "plaything."

Aside from "plaything" being a pretty derogatory way to define someone, the fact that you automatically assume that every person Colby breathes on is someone he's a) fucking and b) breaking the heart of, based on very little evidence, shows that you don't think that much of him, either.

Newsflash: he never promised to save himself for marriage. He is a twenty seven year old, single, good looking man living in LA in 2023. He can fuck if he wants to. He can go on dates if he wants to. He can have friends of opposite genders if he wants to.

Can you all indulge me while I point something out?

Colby spent the entire first half of the year on the shelf with cancer, but since July, there has been ONE (ONE!) girl that he was actually confirmed to have been going on dates with.

ONE.

And DATES. Not girlfriend, not whatever else you wanna throw around - he took her on a few dates and hung out with her here and there. That's it, as far as we know.

Anyone else anyone may think he's had a thing with was all based on the internet taking a tiny little kernel of information (oh, he followed her instagram! oh, he took a picture with her!) and taking the high-speed train to Rumorville with it.

There has been, oh I don't know, ten-ish people that people have freaked out over recently and assumed he was dating for some dumb reason or another.

One of them was Shea, and we're not even going to cover why thats utterly laughable.

One of them was Dana, who he's known and been friends with since the og traphouse days in 2017.

One of them was Kris, cause Kris said she had a crush and it just had to be Colby, cause Colby is a horrible flirt and a frivolous slut, right? Even though it turned out to be that oompa guy and has anyone apologized for going after Colby for that? No? Ok, I'll move on.

One of them was ms singer's friend, simply cause he posted stuff about her on his story.

At least three of them were people he followed recently on instagram - one is a girl rumored to be linked to Jake, one is someone they wound up collabing with, and the other was someone both he and Sam followed after a party (and since Sam is an innocent flower and all of HIS follows are innocent and pure, that should take this girl out of the running here, right? Or should we start talking about Sam's recent follows and activities? Or would that be DISRESPECTFUL TO HIS PRIVACY AND TO HIM AS A HUMAN)

Even if he were dating, hooking up, or fucking all of the above - hell, if he set up a booth on Santa Monica Pier and was dicking down all of LA - why is any of this such a personal offense to some people?

Here's the thing: I get that it's fun to gossip about this stuff. I get it. Sometimes, the speculation and stuff can be fun. But this automatic and almost eager jump to brand this man and any woman he breathes near with a scarlet letter is so...I don't know what the word is, really. Misogynistic? Slut shamey? Puritan?

Weird?

Definitely weird.

[lazaruspiss]

Hi, I wanted to know if you've read Red Hood: The Hill and if so I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

I liked issue 0 but my enjoyment kind of teetered off with issue 1 & 2

i dont read n52 but i gave it a go just for u <3 under the cut is a bit of a "brief" live read. TLDR: it's good, but it seriously does stop being about jason very quickly. if you read issue 0 and get really invested in dana then i think you'll like it, if not, then issue 0 is still a good read with great art.

Issue 0: some little timeline/canon details throw me off, but thats to be expected for any n52 story. the art is fantastic, and the shoe thing is so real. i still have no clue why sneakerheads are the way they are lmao. again, the art is phenomenal so far. Croc my beloved <3<3 i like how it's clear that Jason picked up on the secret identities pretty quickly, but its not really told to us so much as gestured towards via innuendo.

also, denise is pretty. i love her earrings in the diner scene. she also just kind of says what I've been thinking, that there's a risk to an independent neighbor watch the same as there is for any vigilante crime fighter. not just for the vigilantes safety, but for the safety of the people theyre supposed to protect as well. both sisters are justified in their position and i think it's a really well done conflict. it also manages to keep jason involved in the middle without making it just feel awkward or taking away from the importance of dana and denise.

"Batman swings on rooftops. I work the streets." <3 jason cool. and back to our main bad, i love how clearly image obsessed he is. it's done in a way that feels super believable too, like you could really meet a guy that insecure and egotistical lmao.

ohhhh and this is interesting. they're leaning into a family themeing, and the references to bruce make me feel like they're setting up a mending between those two. it's a bit... i have trouble with that. i don't think a mended relationship between bruce and jason is necessarily the best story direction for all their history. but The Hill so far is doing a positive light Jason-Bruce relationship better than most things ive read. It makes sense to have him be sentimental about his father when he has to stop a vigilante from killing. the end sort of, i guess i can call it a villain twist? I like it.

though the nods towards bruce make me uneasy. thats a very difficult relationship to balance, and its feels like its very much going to skew a certain way rather than falling into that "its complicated" territory that i like.

Issue 1: murder grandma! very jarring very cool. the writing still isn't bad but i think it might be a problem of issue 0 being so strong that the after feels lackluster. the writing is a bit more on the nose, and more emotional/character related aspects fall to the wayside for the action parts.

Issue 2: oh. ew. splicing a makeout scene with narration about an uninvolved man's life falling apart. i saw someone say it ended up being more about dana than jason, and im really starting to see what they meant with this issue. it's not the worst thing in the world, but it's understandable to be disappointed by that. the writing is also just gradually starting to lag. i havent checked, but if this is the same writer as issue 0 then im tempted to say it mightve been a crunch time problem.

back to the actual story, jason is less the main character and more taking the role of a mentor figure for dana. it keeps getting less and less about jason and more and more noticeable that it is less and less about jason.

Issue 3: croc <3<3<3 and yeah this series really stops having much to do with jason. we learn which vigilantes the neighborhood watch would smash tho, lol.

there's even references to the fact that jason plans on moving back towards batman's parts of gotham, like this is not a series about him at all after issue 0. i thought they were setting up development of bruce and jason's relationship, but there were really just setting up an excuse for jason to leave. "This is your bad guy, Dana. And I told you. I'm not staying." this series is 100% meant to set up dana as a bigger character. I feel conflicted about it, bc obviously that's not what people are necessarily expecting/hoping for when they pick up something titled Red Hood. but how else can you try and introduce a successful new character? I know dana isn't entirely new, but it's incredibly difficult to give a foothold to characters that haven't been around for long enough. i think that's partially a side effect of how DC operates, and just a result of general familiarity bias.

anyways. issue 3 ends with batman showing up. i don't think I'll be checking back for future issues.