#but we ALSO do them a disservice when we try to use them as like

[tavina-writes]

okay I think we're coming this from cross purposes because I never said that romance novels don't have other subsidiary themes. In fact, here are my original tags:

#like I need to say that romance novels are not inherently a lesser form of media#nor is like#the lack of ability to interrogate it for gender roles/class/whatever else a knock *against* it#this is just like the naruto fandom trying to say it's “plot holes” for Kishimoto to not have like#explained the economic system of all the countries he has in his universe to the same detail of ASOIAF#like#in the story for 12 year olds?????#this is how I feel about people who go “MDZS society is CLEARLY sexist!!! They disdain Girl Heirs!”#pals we have like all of (2) alive women at the end of this book their names are Mianmian and Little Mianmian#“MDZS society was super classist” we meet no non-gentry people as actually significant characters#JGY doesn't count he became the chief cultivator and his whole deal is being related to JGS and what he deserves AS THE SON OF JGS#anyway#none of this post makes any sense anymore I'm just tired

What this post is commenting on is the stunning regularity where I see other meta posts in this fandom that attempt to comment on aspects of MDZS society or culture or gender roles in ways that we cannot actually apply as true because either the book very much did not say that or the book said several contradictory things about that or the OP has applied a bunch of base assumptions that the book never specified to extrapolate a bunch more stuff that are textually not supported to defend their particular blorbo's various actions as totally justified because the book said [404 error not found].

For example: if we're going to say "MDZS society is deeply classist!" and then interrogate the novel for its commentary on classism and society, we're going to need to define what the actual classes in MDZS are. So a couple questions (see if anyone can answer these with text support from the novel):

what are the various social classes in MDZS and how is power distributed among them? How is the population distributed among them?

what does the criminal justice system look like in MDZS society overall, and who oversees it?

How does taxation and governance work in MDZS? Who is in charge of the government and who collects taxes? What are they used for?

How does gender intermesh with class in MDZS? How are gender roles distributed among the different social classes and are there differences between upper and lower class residents of this universe?

Are there regional differences in attitudes or areas where a person might move from one social strata to another? Can people move from one social class to another? If they do, what mechanisms do they use to do so?

What are the general attitudes towards servitude? How do people become servants? Is this in an inherited role in society?

Like, you yourself say "obviously there are vast swathes of society we know basically nothing about, especially the non-cultivator parts." I'm talking about the genre of post where people make lots and lots of claims about the specifics of both the cultivator and non-cultivator parts with no proof from the book about any of those claims, or discover that there's contradictory information and go "OMG! MXTX is bad at writing because [a thing that is not relevant to the story and requires several genre changes] is not explained IN DEPTH!" not that class doesn't matter to the characters in the book.

I'm not exactly sure how I want to phrase this yet, but I think a lot of the utterly weird takes I see sometimes float by me on our cursed blue hellsite (esp when it comes to mdzscql fandom) is coming from a refusal to meet the genre where it's at.

Like, why are we trying to interrogate classism in MDZS society, MDZS is a romance, the societal worldbuilding is just enough to support some general big ideas and the provide context for the romance. We can't get ANY kind of read on general classim/sexism/anything else from. this source material. if you think you can get granular when your sample size of characters from various social and gender strata are so small and we don't know how the vast majority of people in here live you are making stuff up.

Like, meet the story where it's at: it's a romance novel.

[bumblingbabooshka]

One of the best Voyager scenes to indicate Tuvok & Neelix's dynamic and how I think Tuvok is just as if not more 'annoying'(positive) than Neelix is when Neelix pours Tuvok a fresh squeezed glass of a fruit juice blend and Tuvok's like (paraphrased) "I don't want to drink this." and Neelix is like "Can you please try it?" and Tuvok's like "I don't want to, you're really bad at this sort of thing. It's going to taste bad." and Neelix says that Ensign XYZ said she LOVED it, she even had a second glass! And Tuvok says Ensign XYZ could drink poison without a second thought and Neelix is like "Tuvok could you please just TRY it? Just try a little SIP of it PLEASE??" and Tuvok sighs and rolls his eyes and sniffs it before taking a sip and it turns out he loves it. Turns out it tasted good actually. And then after all that Neelix tries to talk to him over eggs (which he's again cooking fresh for him) and Tuvok tells him he doesn't wanna hear "the life history of his breakfast." Absolutely insufferable this man I would have burned his eggs on PURPOSE!!!!

[shanastoryteller]

i'm going to move on from supernatural posting, i swear to god, but first i'm going to talk about ep 9x07 bad boys

the episode itself is fine and good (i mean it's another example of dean having a support network while sam can't have anyone and dean keeping secrets while when sam does it it's the worst betrayal ever but that's not what this is about and sometimes i think about what this show did two earnest, loving traumatized characters by turning them into the most tragic versions of themselves and - ok, this really isn't what this post is about)

but fandom interpretation of this episode actually drives me up a wall because it does a disservice to literally every character

one, john did not leave them without enough money for food. dean gambled it and lost it. there's nothing in canon to say that john was taking longer than expected, that they were running out of money, none of that. dean gambled food money and lost it and then tried to steal to make up for it. he was 16 when this happened and it was a bad decision but i don't think he should be at all vilified for this. he made a dumb mistake and then tried to fix it with another dumb mistake. john was right to be mad and sam was also right to tell him that he shouldn't beat himself up about it. just like with shtriga - yeah, dean was climbing the walls stuck in that hotel room. but you know who else was stuck in that hotel room? sam. and he didn't get a break to go play at the arcade. again, i'm not blaming dean here, he shouldn't have been stuck taking care of his brother that young and he was a kid and john leaving his his children behind while hunting a child eater, whether he was using them for bait or not, is crazy. but dean stealing food wasn't about john's neglect and all the sacrifices dean had to make for sam. it was about him trying to fix his fuck up

two, and this is the one that really gets me, dean didn't go back with john because he had to take care of sam

listen. listen to me. i am speaking from experience when i say this

parentified siblings are still, first and foremost, siblings. especially with only 4 years between them. the show shameless i think did an absolutely excellent job with this and is why i love the first few seasons of it so much. fiona is without a doubt parentified, she is raising those kids, but she's also clearly their sister not their mother

i know later seasons dean and fandom like to make it seem like dean literally raised sam and john was just a background figure but like. that's not realistic, and frankly doesn't even make sense

the reason dean leaves sonny and goes with john isn't because he feels like he has to keep him sam safe. it's isn't because he feels like he has to raise him. it's because he loves him

you are reducing dean to the most pathetic woe is me archetype with this interpretation and ridding him of all his rich loyalty and care and love to saddle him instead with comparatively flat duty. dean is more than sam's caretaker. he's his brother

there's also no reason for dean to feel this way. he just massively fucked up in taking care of sam - that's why he's with sonny in the first place. john has alternate people to take care of sam when he can't do it himself, as he has just proven, and while i don't think we should turn a couple teenage mistakes into making dean incapable, dean absolutely would - and did! he carries every fuck up regarding sam with him! so right now he's really, really low when it comes to his own estimation to take care of sam and leaving sonny because of that doesn't make any sense

but he looks at his brother and is reminded how much he missed him and loves him and realizes staying means he loses his brother. the good and the bad. so he goes, because he loves sam more than anything else

this is also why sam leaving for stanford cuts him so deep. that's why this moment is a parallel to that rather than being unrelated. stanford isn't about sam leaving dean even though he has a duty to care of him, because he doesn't. dean's 22 and at this point is always hunting with their father so there's no reason for sam to believe his presence is necessary for either john or dean's safety

no, dean's mad because he chose his love for his brother over a normal life and sam didn't

(sam didn't want to choose at all but this isn't about him)

anyway. dean fucks up sometimes and john sucks but not quite in the ways fandom thinks and dean loves his brother past reason or sense

[heliza24]

Consent and Abuse in The Vampire Chronicles (and how it explains things like Daniel and Louis's disappearances)

TW: discussions of abuse, sexual abuse and rape, and CSA throughout this meta.

I’ve now read the first six Vampire Chronicles books, and I want to talk about the role that consent, or more importantly, the lack thereof, plays in the morality the books espouse. When I was a few books in, I discovered this post by @diasdelasombra, which uses excerpts from several scholarly texts to create a schema that helps us understand who Anne Rice considered a “worthy” victim of abuse. To summarize, the characters that Anne favors and who are featured in the narrative were violated against their will, but don’t whine about their misfortune. Instead they extend grace and forgiveness to their abuser. (Think of David or Lestat) The characters who are portrayed as conniving, wicked, or who are punished by the narrative are those who don’t adequately protest their assault, or who harbor anger or plans of revenge towards their abuser (think of Claudia).

When I say abuse here, I am specifically talking about sexual abuse and rape, but also being turned into a vampire against your will. Being bitten by a vampire is obviously sexually coded, and being transformed into a fledgling vampire nonconsensually is a metaphor for a rape. So I’m going to spend this meta talking about nonconsensual turnings interchangeably with rape.

When I read about the dichotomy of victimhood detailed in the original post, the books suddenly shifted in my mind, and I felt like I understood Anne as a writer for the first time. I love these books and their resulting adaptations, but I do believe that Anne had many flawed beliefs, and this insistence that the only proper response to assault is complete and total forgiveness of the perpetrator is certainly one of them. I want to take the theory put forward by the original post one step further, and propose that in addition to imperfect victims, Anne also struggled to write about characters that engaged in sex/vampirism consensually. This feels very Catholic to me; you’re allowed to enjoy sex, but only if you didn’t ask for it. It’s the lust and the longing that’s sinful. It’s this discomfort with consensual desire, along with the insistence that victims must forgive their abusers, that is at the heart of many of the most frustrating aspects of the Vampire Chronicles. It also drives some of the conflict I see in the fandom, and has the potential to impact the TV adaptation in interesting ways. I talk about all of that in detail below the cut:

We can see this central belief about abuse and worthy victims easily in the characters Anne chooses to feature. Lestat, David, and Marius were all turned against their will, but crucially do not linger, protest, or whine once the act is done. Lestat is incapable of holding any kind of grudge, Marius approaches vampirism and eternity with calm stoicism, and David immediately forgives Lestat for turning him against his will.

I think this is key when we try to understand why Anne wanted to replace Louis with David as a companion for Lestat. Louis’s turning is complicated; you get the sense that he did consent to it, even as he tells Daniel that he “can’t say that [he] decided” to become a vampire. And even though he does forgive Lestat at the end of IwtV, the telling of the story in that book is filled with resentment and anger. Louis is not a perfect bastion of forgiveness by any means. Anne talked about how she wanted to move on from the grief that Louis represented and also the passivity he embodies as a character (which she classifies as uniquely feminine, which adds another dimension of meaning to who is allowed to consent to sexual acts and remain angry at abuse) but I also have to assume that she wanted to move on from his anger. Which is actually a huge disservice to Louis, Lestat, and the complexity of the narrative.

The other characters who are turned consensually are all abandoned by the narrative. Madeleine is killed, Gabrielle largely disappears after TVL, Nicki kills himself, and Daniel goes mad and is then simply forgotten.

My love of Daniel is the reason why I started stringing this theory together. Daniel is the most clear-cut case in the entire chronicles of a consenting adult who deeply desires to become a vampire. He has no reservations, no resistance. The Devil’s Minion chapter is unique in that it lingers on Daniel's love and desire. Daniel is briefly allowed to want something unabashedly that is also coded as sinful and evil. And once the consummation of his desire happens, Anne simply doesn’t know how to continue to writing him. Armand’s insistence that fledglings will come to hate their makers seems in some ways to be a result of Anne’s worldview, that desire cannot cannot endure unpunished, rather than something Armand would believe in-universe (he never hated Marius, after all). When fans rail at the way Daniel’s story seems to disappear from the page, this is what we are protesting: Daniel’s desire deserved to be shown, Daniel deserved to evolve, and Daniel’s willingness does not require rebuke.

There is of course another interpretation of the Devil’s Minion chapter, which is that it is Armand playing out his and Marius’s relationship, but this time with Armand in control. In some ways I think the Devil’s Minion chapter is the one successful attempt Anne makes to subvert the cycle of abuse. Yes, Armand is re-enacting many of the things done to him, but Daniel is happy to do this role play with him, at least for a while. While far from perfect, their relationship manages to turn abusive history into present day kink, and exist in a context of mutual care.

Armand himself is probably the most interesting edge case in terms of Anne’s dichotomy of worthy and unworthy victims. He asks to be turned into a vampire, but he’s also a child, which makes his ability to consent unclear. (Whether Anne even believed that child sexual abuse was possible at all is up for debate; she wrote a message on her “fan voice mail” that is still transcribed on her website that defends a convicted pedophile and seems to argue that 14 and 15 year olds are effectively adults and therefore cannot be abused. Yikes yikes yikes.) This kind of uncertainty seems to be reflected in the changing way Anne writes Armand throughout the series. He’s evil at first in the same way that Claudia is evil; a conniving forever child who is smart and vicious enough that what was done to him can be justified. But Anne softened on Armand after Queen of the Damned. As the series goes on, Armand comes to resemble Anne’s perfect victim more and more. He forgives Marius relatively quickly, for instance, for turning Benji and Sybelle without his consent.

For Marius (and Lestat) overcoming victim status also means becoming the abuser, the rapist, the perpetrator of the dark trick. The only way to not be trapped under the cycle of abuse is to perpetrate it. Even though it is hidden in a lot of language about love and forgiveness, this theme is ever present in the Chronicles and to me it’s where the true horror of the books lies.

We see these values begin to be applied to world building and the book’s overarching philosophy more and more as the series progresses. Akasha is the big bad in Queen of the Damned because she represents the ultimate lack of forgiveness. She is angry at all the men in the world for their collective abuses (a world view that seems to originate at least partially from the overly protective and restrictive way Enkil treats her, in my opinion) and seeks to kill them. She is an unquestioned evil, in a way that most characters aren’t in The Chronicles. And Maharet and Mekare, who are much more forgiving towards Khayman, one of the perpetrators of their own rape, are the ones able to defeat Akasha. Forgiveness and grace trumps righteous anger every time.

Memnoch the Devil is an interesting book (even if it is not a *good* one, imo) because it spends its pages interrogating this idea of abuse and forgiveness, but blows it up to a theological scale. Memnoch’s main argument with God is that he lets humans suffer needlessly. Memnoch feels that all that is good and holy amongst humans can be found in the way we love each other and find joy in sex, art, food, and celebration. But God requires humans to suffer through disease and death, and sometimes even violence brought about by religion. When Memnoch is put in charge of hell, he makes souls worthy of heaven by working on them until they are ready to forgive God for the suffering they had to endure during life. That’s what makes you worthy of heaven: forgiveness. I find this so interesting because it almost feels like Anne is arguing with herself over philosophy and religion. Memnoch is very convincing and his belief that joy without guilt is good is given due weight by the narrative. In some ways it’s what these books are about- sensual pleasure without guilt. But on the other hand, Memnoch is the devil (if that- Lestat is never quite sure if he’s really the devil or just a malignant spirit) which means we shouldn’t trust what he says. The idea of God as the ultimate abuser— the person who puts humanity through unspeakable horrors on a wide scale, and then requires our forgiveness in order to find peace— really chimes with the way that Anne writes about abuse in the rest of the series. According to this view, the cycle of abuse is absolutely inescapable. It is decreed by the almighty, and the only way to not be completely crushed by it is to accept its omnipresence and embrace its perpetrators without anger.

This focus on forgiveness is clearly a huge part of Anne’s (and therefore the vampires’) worldview, and I of course find that pretty problematic. But I also think it hurts the reader’s ability to connect to the characters and can have the unfortunate side effect of draining the books of the conflict needed to create a propulsive plot. The vampires’ inclination to completely forgive those who have wronged them, and to not linger at all in any feelings of anger, grief, or resentment, sometimes leads to baffling situations where conflicts that loom large in one book are completely forgotten in the next. The most jarring example of this to me is Armand casually playing chess with Santino in Queen of the Damned. Santino! The vampire who kidnapped him, forced him to eat his best friend, and generally tortured him. And they simply never address this. They just start playing a casual game of chess on Night Island after Akasha has been defeated. Situations like this can make character seem like they are acting completely out of character, and it makes it hard to understand their motives. Yes, there’s the in-universe explanation that time heals all wounds and eventually vampires just live long enough that they can’t hold any grudges. But I still think it’s reasonable to assume that Armand would hesitate before casually engaging with Santino again, no matter how long has passed. This kind of automatic forgiveness also means that we skip over so many conflicts that that would be fascinating to read about. If Armand and Santino really do need to reconcile, I want to see what that looks like. I want to see Armand remember Ricardo when he looks at Santino. I want to see what David and Lestat mending their relationship after Lestat’s violation looks like. But we don’t get any of that and instead the vampires move seamlessly on to something else, which is often much less interesting than these interpersonal conflicts that Anne ignores. And because of that, I think this focus on forgiveness creates books that are less fulfilling than they could be.

I think this focus on forgiveness is also at the heart of some of the conflict I see between book readers and show-only fans. I often see book readers talking about how Armand and Louis come back to each other later in the books, that Louis forgives Armand enough to live with him again for a time. And this makes sense in a book universe that prioritizes forgiveness above all else. In fact it actually signifies positive character growth for Louis, as it means he is becoming closer to Anne’s definition of a worthy victim who can forgive those who wronged him.

Fans of the show insist that the TV version of Louis will never forgive Armand, and for all I know they might be right. The TV show has shown that it’s very capable of taking the events and themes that Anne presented and reframing them. The show is already presenting a more critical depiction of CSA, in my opinion, by doing things like eliminating the incest subtext between Louis and Claudia and making it clear that Marius groomed Armand. I also think the show does a better job of keeping emotional stakes consistent. Louis may forgive Armand, but something more substantial than time passing will have to happen to facilitate that in the TV show. So show Louis may indeed never forgive Armand, given those new parameters.

In its efforts to reframe some of Anne’s themes, I believe the television show is shifting the emphasis on forgiveness slightly. Louis’s arc over the first two seasons depends on him reaching a state of forgiveness, not for an abuser, but for himself. He extends grace to Lestat as part of this process, but I really believe that the catharsis comes from Louis embracing his own failings and his own power, and moving forward with confidence. He has not forgotten his anger or the things that were taken from him, but he has the ability to face the rest of eternity now without self-recrimination. I imagine moving forward that this is going to be a major theme of the show. No matter if you sought vampirism out or had it thrust upon you, you must learn to how to deal with its horrors and its perks. You must learn to embrace your own monstrosity and not shrink from it. And you must find a way to accept the love that those around you are willing to offer, whether or not you always perfectly deserve it. I think these are lessons that Lestat, Armand, and even Daniel have yet to learn in the television show. Those character arcs are going to fuel the show through its coming seasons, and I for one cannot wait to see it unfold.

I’m interested to hear from other readers to see if they picked up on these themes, and how they anticipate the show will adapt them. Please tell me your thoughts! And thank you for reading this far.

[the-main-daine]

Life Series Render Designs:

With a new life series upon us, I've dusted off my tablet to try my hand at solidifying how I draw each of the 18 lifers.

I'm going to post them in bursts of 3, with notes if there are any notes.

Today, we have Bdubs, BigB, and Cleo!

Bdubs!

Human Design. (Not all of them will be!)

I wanted to capture the essence of Bdubs being just a li'l guy.

Rounded shoulders, rounded face, rounded body shape; BDubs is friend-shaped.

His expressiveness is one of the most fun parts of the character, and since I drew him first, he's why all of these have three expressions in addition to the full body.

I know bandages aren't part of his skins, but I feel like they fit the vibe.

BigB!

Also a human design!

Tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome.

VERY tired eyes, in my head BigB has seen some Things(tm) that are starting to weigh on him, hence the blood splatter on his skin.

He also always seems both so sweet and easy to sympathize with, and also so sarcastic and so good at sowing doubt with just tone of voice, I'd be doing him a disservice not to include both of those in his facial expressions.

His hair was super fun to draw. I DO not know if I'm interpreting that neckline right.

I need to draw Creaking BigB once I'm done with this set.

Cleo!

A Zombie, obviously. (Though I will need to draw the zombie apocalypse survivor at least once.)

Her mad, scary rage when she throws caution to the wind is honestly some of my favorite stuff to watch in the Life Series.

As the winner of Real Life, she gets a crown! And Jupiter, to honor her win.

This design is so colorful, and so bright, but I couldn't resist adding a few extra things like the yellowing eyes and teeth.

I am definitely a fan of 'Big Cleo' designs. She has too much of a belly laugh not to draw her larger than life.

[wihellib]

Leviathan in Chapter 7

I am extremely disappointed that Levi tried to kill us again in Chapter 7. I really thought that we were past that stage. Especially after the contract scene in Chapter 6, he did soften towards us considerably.

To me, this action came out of nowhere and seems like a disservice to his character.

Like why? Why did he decide it was necessary to kill us at this moment? His reasons don’t make sense.

Where did these feelings suddenly come from? We were doing fine. What happened?

The only reason I can think of is that, before this, when we think we’re dying, the nobles were very distraught. And maybe this makes Levi think they’re too close to us. Or, on the other hand, he thinks we’re a threat because of our increasing powers as shown with us randomly knowing medical info. Either way we could be used against Hell, so it’s better to take us out of the equation before that happens. But, even if that’s true, they’re still very silly reasons and not at all justified.

It’s also a dumb move, as MC points out.

If MC dies, the devils are doomed. They won’t be able to descend further down the tower. The devils that haven’t broken their contracts will still have their powers restricted. Levi (and Satan) will have their powers restricted again since they made a new contract with the MC. And Levi likes having all his powers, he just told the MC they should have come to Hell sooner for this reason, so you think he’d try to avoid killing the MC because it would restrict his powers again.

The negatives of killing MC far outweigh the positives. And Levi is supposed to be smart, so you think he’d recognize this, but no, killing us for no reason was more important.

It wasn’t even like a quick neck snap, to show kindness, out of respect for his softened feelings towards us. He decided to slowly and painfully strangle us to death. How am I supposed to like this character?

And the MC’s reaction makes it even worse. Why are they blubbering about Levi’s sad childhood as he’s killing them? Why are they perfectly fine with him afterwards despite his attempt on their life? They weren’t okay with Barbatos after he poisoned them, it’s brought up multiple times in the main story, but they’re okay with Levi almost strangling them to death. Why??? Hypocrisy. I hate it.

Levi’s decision not to kill them doesn’t make sense either. We’re told over and over that in order to deal with Levi you have to push back against him. You can’t let him walk all over you.

So, the MC giving up completely and just sobbing as he kills them shouldn’t move Levi at all. So, why did he decide to spare them? It doesn’t fit with his character.

If they wanted a dramatic scene where the MC reveals that they know about Levi’s tragic past, that’s fine, but this was the worst way they could have done it.

All in all, it was a completely unnecessary scene that added nothing to the story other than to increase my dislike of Leviathan.

[clementineofmine]

I'm sitting here rewatching Tua S3 for reasons, and one interesting thing I picked up is that the entire season is really just each of the Umbrellas struggling to define and searching for family in their own way. Here's me laying down some thoughts for y'all:

Luther - For him, family has always been about the team. That's part of the reason he's so drawn to the Sparrows, bc at first they seem to have the cohesiveness that the Umbrellas lacked. Remember, Luther was the last one left at the Academy, then Reginald sent him to the moon alone. So of course seeing a "functional" team is going to be compelling for him, and he desperately wants to be part of it. And then he and Sloane quickly fall in love and for the first time in his entire life, someone wants him for him. It's intoxicating and utterly consuming NRE that is more powerful than anything he's ever felt.

Diego and Lila - For these two, it's about figuring out how to be a family. Both together, but also a little bit with the other Umbrellas. Diego looking out for Allison and Klaus and Lila and Five coming to a truce are part of this - more about Lila and Five in a sec.

Allison - In her mind, her family is Claire and Ray. This one is obvious, but I also think that the writers did us a disservice by not letting us into Allison's perspective. If you think about it, it's completely normal for a parent to put their child above all. While I don't defend her actions, her motivation could have been more compelling and it would have strengthened her character. But sadly she's the character on the show that is most "othered" (which is bad for many reasons)

Klaus - he really dug deep into individual relationships w family, starting with Five (e2 and 5 Five and Klaus bonding are still some of the best bits of the season imo), Diego, Reginald, Sparrow Ben, and then Luther in the afterlife.

Five - Five remains a pragmatist. His bar for family is very low - success for him means the Umbrellas being alive, no matter what the personal cost or sacrifice to him or to some extent others. It is somewhat depressingly delightful to see how he makes his peace with the end of the world as the season progresses. Before that, however, I'd like to meander back to e3 and 4 where Lila convinces him to electrocute himself and then they go on the Commission mission. Both of the actors do a fine job here bouncing back and forth between witty banter and genuine emotion and I love it. It's a quick and subtle piece of dialogue when Five explains how he saved Lila from the Handler. The undertone is that they were both abused by that woman in a similar way - ultimately, she developed and kept them both as pawns in her own game. And I think Five, starting in S2E10 and fleshed out through S3, develops genuine empathy for and eventually acceptance of Lila as family, as one of them, because of this shared experience.

Viktor - Like Viktor in all seasons, he continues to feel out of place with the Umbrellas and compensates by over-prioritizing his relationships with others. Don't get me wrong, I do empathize with him that he lost real love with Sissy and Halan, but I also think Allison was 100% valid to call him out on his lying in E6, and it was on point to verbalize how the constant focus on Viktors pain minimizes her (and everyone else's) experience. (Edit to add: Viktor finally seems to get the message on this, after being called out by Allison, then subsequently both Sparrow Ben and Five, and spends the last few episodes trying to make amends. Real character development here and I like to see it)

Reginald - Well, his overarching motivation since S1 has always been bringing back his dead wife, so I won't belabor that, but also it's interesting to see how he interacted with Klaus particularly - esp in E7 when he sobers up it seems he is experimenting with remembering his role as a father. Now we don't get a ton about his internal motivation here, but you can tell there is some mild curiosity, if not affection, for Klaus, despite the fact that he ultimately is cool with sacrificing him.

Some of these are more obvious than others, but when you tie them all together, the idea that they are all desperately looking for family and the blind spots that that creates for them, some of the messiness of S3 starts to make a bit more sense.

[rigginsstreet]

It feels like Billy's whole character is viewed through unreliable narrators. From the fans and writers. There's so much stuff that is said that just doesn't match up to what we actually see

i think it does a HUGE disservice to billy as a character that we really only see him through max's perspective, and of course she's gonna think the worst of him because she's getting the brunt of his anger and vitriol. especially when you add on the fact she more likely than not has zero clue about neils abuse or at least the extent of it. given that neil so freely hits billy in front of susan and forces him to apologize to her i can definitely see a world where he does the same in front of max but to her its just billy being punished and she doesnt know the history of neil abusing billys mom or how violent he gets with billy. i can also imagine neil plays them against each other and treats max far better than he treats billy. i dont think hes by any means step father of the year to max but like... he's not smacking her around so.

even when we get billy scenes without max its all so performative. he's not treated as an actual person he's just used as a show pony. we get very few glimpses into a billy who isnt putting on an act and when we do he's either completely disinterested and checked out emotionally, or hes overcome with emotion and its all spilling out of him.

billy fans understand this. the wider fanbase does not because well as soon as billy comes on screen they check out or skip ahead idk what theyre doing but theyre clearly not watching his scenes because they never know what the hell theyre talking about when it comes to him and its made abundantly clear

and its also clear the writers have no idea who the hell theyre writing for either. the duffer brothers going from billys interaction with karen in season 2 to season 3 told me everything i needed to know. they dont care about that man. billy was a means to an end. which like... fine? but maybe dont try and create a whole emotional season long arc and redemption for a character you clearly dont give two shits about? and have made zero effort to actually flesh out. its weird.

like listen i understand why billy is so misunderstood amongst fans because the show really gives you crumbs. but also like... there IS a semblance of a story there to pick from like im gonna need people to be a little smarter its not THAT hard

[sabertoothwalrus]

hi !! just curious because i was looking at your adventure time episode guide and i love hearing other peoples adventure time takes !! how come you don't like finn's characterisation in together again?

I've talked about it before here and here!

But also I'm gonna say more and share some art I did in 2021 for a rewrite comic that I never got around to doing

So again to reiterate: Adventure Time is usually VERY good at making it feel like time passes, even when you're not watching. It's something about what they don't show that tells you everything you need to know.

Together Again did not do this.

It really really felt like they were avoiding showing Finn as an adult, as if they wanted to leave his post-show life ambiguous. Which, now that Fionna and Cake has shown us literally that, it makes Together Again feel even more wrong?? Like. imagine you have to pick a moment from your life that represents You™ the most. Together Again said that Finn, after living his whole life and dying as an old man, feels most represented by how he was at 17. I do not buy this. I am 25, and I cannot fathom identifying by my 17 year old self. I was a completely different person then, I was still cooking. I can imagine most people feel the same. And ok, so maybe Finn DOES for some reason feel stuck at 17? Explain to me why!! What needed to happen to him that made him feel that way?

And before you just say "it's because Jake died," there's still too much that was left out. How old was Finn when Jake died? What was Finn like, at that point? What else had they accomplished? What was he doing at the time that was on the forefront of his mind? Where/with who did they spend most of their time? Where were they living after the treehouse got destroyed?

It was like,,, it was like the story Together Again actually wanted to tell was about Finn's grief, and how poorly he copes, and how too much of his identity is tied to Having Jake, and how he struggles to move on. But that's not the story we got. I honestly think-- as interesting as it was-- everything with New Death and Tiffany and Lich just did a disservice to the focus, which was Finn trying to get over Jake.

I think Together Again should have gone like this:

Finn and Jake had always planned that whoever died first would wait in the dead world for the other to die so the two of them could reincarnate. Jake dies first. Jake would be able to "watch over" Finn as he lives the rest of his life, so Jake wouldn't miss Finn as much as vice versa, since he'd feel like he's still there with him. Eventually, Finn dies.

Finn's appearance would change with his emotional state. I thought it'd be interesting to show different phases of his life through the stages of grief.

There'd be a room where they could watch Finn's memories. Finn would walk Jake through the events of his life. We SEE exactly how Finn dealt with grief, with heartbreak, with love, with friends, with community. All the good and all the bad.

By the end of it, Finn is quiet. "Jake... when we reincarnate, will we.. lose all of this?" "Well, do you remember anything from any of your other past lives?" "No.. But that's the point. I don't want to forget you." Finn, despite their promise, despite Jake waiting for him all this time, declines reincarnating. He doesn't want to move on, because that would mean forgetting everything. He wants to say with Jake!! He JUST got Jake back!!

“What if— in the future— what if they forget about us? What if they don’t know about all the stuff we did?” We see Ooo in its current state. It’s changed, but it’s clearly been affected by the two of them. Every person they’ve saved, every civilization they helped build, every hero they’ve inspired. They’ve left their touch everywhere. “They’ll know,” Jake says with certainty. “We’ll know.” We see the future, with Shermy and Beth. We see the Finn Sword, and BMO with all their old belongings. Everything stays, but it still changes. Will happen, happening, happened. These have always been the themes of the show. They reincarnate, together.

[scummy-writes]

Living with a Ghost: Gilbert

A Fanfic and HC post

Tags: Slight angst, ghostbert, modern au for the mc.

If you enjoy this, please let me know! I may consider doing this with more characters, under the same premise.

There was always a catch. You swore to yourself that you had just been paranoid at the time because for once, for once, something good was happening in your spiraling life. A taste of joy that you were clutching tight in your hands, trying to wish away the faults that could be hidden within.

An apartment. Affordable, so affordable, and in great care. No shitty ‘landlord’ specials were hidden about the premises, the view was alright, you weren’t crazy about the buildings around you, but how can you argue with the perfect reading nook right at the window? You knew all you had to do was ignore the way too nice corporate building and focus on the sky beside it to accept the view.

Small, but not cramped. A perfect size for you. Away from frustrating family and previous roommates, away from the town you struggled in endlessly. A brand new start.

And. Well. A ghost.

The first night you slept there, betwist a flurry of boxes and makeshift furniture, nothing… really happened. Maybe a few small things had been moved around, but honestly that could have just been you misremembering where you put things in your initial moving exhaustion.

You could have sworn that you hadn't opened your box of books due to the fact that your bookshelves weren't even put together yet, but you also would use books to lull you asleep , so... It wasn't out of the question that an exhausted version of you blearily searched for a comfort between pages, before passing out on an unsheeted mattress.

Second night, a glass shattered. So out of the blue in the silence as you read that you ended up clapping the book shut when you jumped. You peered around the corner with a broom in hand brandished as a weapon, only to find a mess of broken glass, and nothing more. You kept explaining it away as perhaps there was a lean on the counter, but you didn't remember leaving a glass out to begin with..

Smaller instances kept happening in a similar fashion, until it all culminated into an event you couldn't explain away, because no matter how much you tried, you couldn't deny what you saw.

In it's core, it wasn't as dramatic as chairs or knickknacks floating through the halls, or blood written on the walls. It was simple, really - a figure behind you in the mirror. One that didn't fade away no matter how much you blinked, nor rubbed at your eyes- no, in fact, when you did so, he laughed at you. Mockingly.

And what does a person do when faced with such blatant proof of some supernatural phenominon existing in front of them? Well... They kept in mind how difficult it was to find an apartment at this price, and the stubborness they wield.

Your first method was simply ignoring him - which... seemed successful at first. A couple of weeks containing peaceful silence, until you were greeted by your living room - full of books and memorabilia - overturned completely. Nothing broken, somehow, but enough of a clear How Dare You for ignoring him. Once that had been 'resolved' through many curses from you and what sounded like ghostly laughter, you met face to face with your spector roommate. Well. As much as you could see, anyway.

He sat at your kitchen island as if he belonged there, smiling as you paused in the entryway. Seeing a ghost in the morning light was an oddity. In contrast to his dark clothing - a grey button up it seemed, along with black slacks - the light behind him showed how he wasn't truly opaque. If you weren't careful, you could lose bits of him to your surroundings.

"Come now, don't act as if you can't see me now. You'd be doing both of our intelect a disservice."

Carefully, you sat across from him, trying to keep from staring too intently.

"There we go. I'm growing tired of our cat and mouse games - I suppose this is where we can meet each other halfway." He spoke breezily, as if this was such a normal occurance for you, before narrowing his eyes slightly, "I won't be answering any trivial questions about my... abilities."

"But... What about your intent?" You attempted to relax your shoulders, but found yourself crossing your hands instead, "You keep breaking things, or making loud noises - "

"If I wanted to kill you, I would have done so by now." A pause, and then a sigh, almost a mutter, "I dislike being ignored, little rabbit."

"Little...rabbit?"

He ignored your questioning, straightening up his posture. Serious, but his smile didn't match up with his eyes. "For every question I answer for you, you will answer two of mine."

"Wait-"

"I can always test my abilities with othr objects - you seem to fancy that big, black window in your living area."

You paused, trying to match up the description with - "My TV? You... Oh, you're much older than I thought."

...

In the hours of sitting at that kitchen island together, it's there you learn many facts about him, while he learns too many about you.

He's able to give you the exact years he lived, with more of an assumption of his death. Despite his form, his memory is crisp and solid until it comes to the exact date of his death, but he doesn't seem to mind...?

He toys with the empty cup in front of him - a habit, getting drinks for those you talk to - but focuses entirely on you when you reveal more about yourself.

He pressures you to divulge random things after the basics of details of this current decade and similar - hobbies, interests, small morality tests. He seems to be searching for answers to something, but it's difficult to suss out.

Once night crosses the threshold, his form glistens in some areas, fades with the dark in others. His red eye stares at you expectantly, before sighing dramatically.

"Guess we're now 'room mates'... or whatever it is you called it."

Gilbert has been dead since his original timeframe. His heart condition was what tore him away from his time.

It wasn't unexpected. It came when busy, of course, and he remembers it vaguely due to the amount of pain and brainfog he had at the time.

His most prominant thought from that moment was the lamenting of never meeting his 'little rabbit' on the terms he had wished for. She knew nothing of him past the horror stories, and while it seemed apt and fitting, he had at least wanted to know if she had read his book...

He can't remember the early years of his ghost form, or so he says. He won't divulge to you the way it felt to know he would be stuck watching time go on, the hard work he spent his life achieving to amount to nothing, as it repeated again and again.

How he watched the two closest to him weep in private. How their lives changed even without him there to attempt to maintain them. How he was stuck with limitations on how far he could go, with no hope of moving on.

The years blurred together, centuries passing as he remained enfixed to specific locations, watching it all change listlessly, until his present matched closer to yours.

Apartments were odd, he had decided. The tennants were rare, as he often scared them off when they proved annoying. He was ready to do the same to you until he got a glimpse of how you looked.

it was as if his 'little rabbit' had been reborn. Did he believe in reincarnation? He didn't, no, but given his ghostly form, a gaping hole in his chest pleaded for it. Even just a little. At odds with his inherent skepticism.

But what was the point in attempting to bridge a connection if you were weakwilled?

So he scared you. multiple times. How else was he going to test bringing forth the effort of talking to you? It wouldn't matter if you ran off in the end.

So when you didn't, stubbornly ignoring him as if he was a cat looking for attention, he decided a talk was worth it after all.

It didn't take long for his heart to clench, despite how annoyed it made him. You were nearly the same in many ways, and the parts that didn't add up were likely due to the times.

More visits. More tests. More and more discussions. You started calling him 'Gil'. His heart felt again for the first time in what felt like eons, and he despised it.

What was he doing? He'd have to watch you pass just as he did Roderic and Walter. You'd be gone with nothing left behind for him, and the world would keep spinning.

But...

Was it such a terrible thing to enjoy the moment?

You were learning his moods. He was learning your schedule. You didn't open discussions directly, but deliberately left space for him to sit by you.

Some nights, when ill, you even pathetically called for his company. For him to grab you water from the kitchen, or pills from wherever you left them.

And just as pathetically, he entertained it. Over and over again, until there was the routine of 'sleeping' together.

No matter how much his heart yearned for it, there was no warmth shared between you. His 'body' chilled you at any point of contact. Your touch went through him in fleeting sensations. There would always be a wall neither of you could breech.

But it wasn't in his nature to give up from that alone, was it?

I'm not sure why I wrote this. We looked at prompts back when I used to stream my writing, and it led to me thinking about ghostbert, and wanting a situation kinda similar to the ghost situation in Angel. (If you don't know the show.... i can't recommend it. But scary ghost becomes domesticated roommate for a character.)

it's all over the place, it was originally supposed to be 6 paragraphs and the rest be concise, clear, bulletpoints, but I couldn't stop trying to fill in nonexistant gaps, and here we are. this doesnt feel complete to me, but none of my posts ever are. i put them out to stop writing on them and to be free from my sins once more.

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[sankta-wraith]

So I’ve just learned that people are saying that the fact that Daemon wasn’t there while Rhaenyra was giving birth to Visenya means that he wasn’t there when Aegon and Viserys were born either.

This is just baffling to me because the first half of episode 10 was absolutely full of proof that he actually was there for both.

When Jace asks where Daemon is, he seems angry that he isn’t with Rhaenyra. If Daemon hadn’t been present with Aegon and Viserys, then Jace would presumably be used to him not being with Rhaenyra while she’s in labor. But that’s not what we see. What we see is Jace being pissed that Daemon is not there. Now I’m sure that there will be people who say “Oh he just expects Daemon to be there since he’s Rhaenyra’s husband” but Rhaenyra’s first husband, Laenor, wasn’t at Joffrey’s birth and probably (although this isn’t confirmed) wasn’t at Jace or Luke’s birth either, so Jace wouldn’t expect Daemon to be there unless he had been there in the past.

Rhaenyra also seems to expect him to be there, seeing as she literally calls out for him. If there’s one thing we know about Rhaenyra, it’s that she’s proud. If she doesn’t think her husband will be with her while she gives birth, then she’s not going to scream for him for all the castle to hear. But she does. At this point she’s lived in Dragonstone for 6 years, so she probably knows that her screams will echo through the whole castle. The fact that she calls out for Daemon, even though she knows that literally everyone in the castle will hear her, means that she expects him to heed her call, and expectation she would not have if he hadn’t been with her for their previous children.

Even the Small Council seems a bit surprised that he’s not with Rhaenyra. Every time she screams, they kinda look at him like they think he’s about to leave and go to her. Obviously most of them would not have been on Dragonstone when Aegon and Viserys were born, but they still seem to have heard rumors about Daemon staying with Rhaenyra, because they clearly expect him to react in some way. Remember, in HotD/GoT its pretty uncommon for the father have anything to do with the birth, much less be there, so the fact that they seem to expect it from Daemon suggests his presence at Aegon and Viserys' births.

Obviously, Daemon is not present for Visenya's birth (my analysis of that is here) but using that to say that he's a bad father and husband, and then trying to justify it by saying that he wasn't there when his sons were born (when all evidence points to the contrary,) is doing his character a disservice. I'm not saying that him leaving Rhaenyra alone while she was in labor was the right thing to do, but I think people need to remember that the circumstances during which Visenya was born are extremely different from the circumstances when Aegon and Viserys are born. Stop inventing things to demonize Daemon. We get enough of that from Ryan Condal.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

re: my tags about jgy and qin su in my reblog of that "does your blorbo have ptsd" tumblr poll, can we revisit that excruciating conversation in the jinlintai treasure room in cql? because one of my least favourite reads on jgy's expression and body language here is that he's being "creepy." and to be clear, i'm not trying to say you're wrong to draw those inferences here, because his behaviour is deeply, deeply unsettling, and i also find this scene hard to watch and to read in the novel. but i think if that's where your examination of him begins and ends here, you're doing yourself--and zhu zanjin's exquisite performance--a disservice.

so the 'creepy' bit is preceded by what jgy says to qin su while she has her back turned, and i find his words heartbreakingly sincere and very reflective of a man who has spent his life forced to feel shame and embarrassment over his mother, who he loves dearly and who he watched suffer right up until the moment of her death:

there are a few more very poignant lines in there about his mother and the depth of his gratitude to qin su (these show up in the novel, too), but i think the above encapsulates the same message. then the atmosphere shifts, and so does jgy's expression when he talks about jin rusong and how his death would have been inevitable--essential, even. this is also where i most often see him described as acting like a creep, and i have two separate responses to this that i don't really have the time to get into right now, but which have both doylist and watsonian components to them so 👀 you can probably make some guesses about what my arguments would be. if there's enough interest, i might come back to this later and put together a separate post about it, idk. anyway, i'm not going to get into the 'is he a creep' argument here because tl;dr no, i don't think he is, and also--

i find jgy's expressions here to be more indicative of a man who is, shall we say, Not His Best Self At The Moment 🫠 rather than a man who is intentionally trying to make a wife who, by her own admission, he has treated very well for the entirety of their marriage, uncomfortable. his attention isn't even on qin su or the hell that she is experiencing right now--because he is re-experiencing his own hell. because he, too, is traumatized by this knowledge! he's just had a decade and change to develop some deeply unhealthy coping mechanisms and masking techniques to hide it.

at this point qin su whips around and slaps him, which i know everyone likes to gif and fistbump and holler about in a positive way, but given there is no one in this scene who isn't enduring profound trauma in this moment, i, uh. you know. won't be doing that. i will focus on his face journey in the expressions that follow because they are just so

dissociating

dissociating

dissociating

/executive function switch is flipped in his superbly wrinkly brain, and then "qin su :) we still have so many guests to attend at the discussion conference :)"

a-yao? sir?? hello??? also i do not have the quote from the novel directly in front of me, but iirc he says something very similar here to what he does in the novel, which i'll have to paraphrase: that this revelation is only bothering qin su so much because she is actively thinking about it! it's only thoughts, you see! just don't think about it! haven't they actually been very happy all this time, while only one of them had to live with this knowledge and could not share it with anyone?

to which i can only respond with abject, horrified shock because, like. have you, jin guangyao? been happy and unperturbed by this devastating knowledge? because i think the answer is a pretty definitive no.

anyway i just wanted to quickly keymash my thoughts on this before they fled my brain completely but tl;dr yes, while jgy would not use this language to describe himself, he's absolutely got ptsd specifically around his marriage to his own half-sister, and their son.

---

this post has been added to my dreamwidth meta archive here: https://thatswhatsushewrote.dreamwidth.org/10607.html

[demonic0angel]

Celestial Bodies AU (6/?)

(Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 7. Also on AO3)

Robin moved to attack the other people within the Cathedral. They were quickly chased off into a portal and when he whirled around, his heart lurched into his throat as he watched Nightwing fight against the Joker.

Well, it was more of a one-sided smack down, but it was still pretty bad.

Nightwing was going to kill him!

Robin moved to intercept him, opening his lips to call out, when something soft brushed against his mouth.

Robin froze. He paused, feeling as though a hand was covering his mouth and arms were hugging him.

No, not hugging him.

They were holding him back.

Robin took this moment to watch Nightwing’s back as he swung his fist at the Joker’s face over and over again.

Then he turned to the metahuman that was still putting up the shield.

He tilted his head and a million possibilities flew through his mind as he figured out what to do.

The feeling of being hugged (held down, restrained, kept back) was still there, but the feeling was gentle, like a plea.

Robin had always been loyal.

(And all Robins loved the stars and the sky.)

And so Robin didn’t move.

Robin stayed behind and watched as Nightwing beat the Joker to a pulp. He was beaten so badly that his face was unrecognizable and he was twitching and silent, blood gushing from wounds as Nightwing screamed and raged.

Robin did not watch, only keeping an eye on the metahuman with the shield.

He looked over as Nightwing’s eyes flickered red and he knew it was the influence of a star on him that made him continue to pound the Joker’s face like a meat tenderizer to a steak, rather than stop and catch his breath.

Robin looked up and out the window, where Gotham’s cloudy skies circled the city.

Did the stars wish for this?

He wondered if the stars were going to make him turn to the dark side, and then he thought of the stars and their glowing kindness, and came to the conclusion that this was obviously a one time thing.

The stars were not evil. They did not deliberately wish for pain and suffering for others. They were neutral forces who loved and cared for their Robins and the Earth and it was a disservice to think they would stoop so low as to hurt their Robins to accomplish whatever goal they could’ve had.

They clearly hated the Joker just as much as the Robins did for what he did to Jason.

They could barely do anything by themselves.

It was only normal that they used Nightwing’s hand to deal out Justice.

After mentally justifying the stars’ actions, Robin clenched his fists and closed his eyes, turning away from the scene where Nightwing was beating the Joker to death, for their sake and for Jason’s sake. The sound of a hard fist meeting skin continued to echo in his ears until it stopped.

When Nightwing’s screams turned into whimpers and pitiful sobbing, and the sound of fighting halted, Robin opened his eyes and approached him.

“Nightwing.”

He touched his arm and watched as a dazed realization crossed over Nightwing’s tear streaked face.

Guiltily, Robin reached over and hugged him, trying to warm them both up with their shared body heat. He despised how he cowardly stayed behind until Nightwing finished the deed and started crying, but this was the best decision he could make.

The Joker needed to die.

“… Tim? You’re alive?”

Robin nodded once and then looked back down at the cooling corpse of the Joker.

“We have to hurry. I bet Batman is already looking for you! We have to hurry and hide the body.”

Nightwing seemed to move on autopilot as Robin guided him through hiding the Joker’s dead body. It was almost disturbing how efficiently they worked together to hide it, but by the end, Robin didn’t care anymore.

He was more worried about Nightwing, who looked dazed and distracted.

They poured a dissolving agent over the bloodstains and Robin mopped up the bubbling mess with his destroyed cape before throwing it away. Nightwing was so out of it, that Robin handled the rest, efficiently putting away the evidence like nothing had ever happened. When he came back, Nightwing was sitting in the pews.

The metahuman with the shielding ability was tied up and unconscious on the floor.

Batman and their associates were probably going to storm inside soon.

Noticing Nightwing’s blank stare at him, Robin gave him a small smile.

“I’m really alive, I promise.”

Robin approached Nightwing and then crawled into his arms and sat there, squirming and trying to find a comfortable position.

It took a moment for Nightwing’s brain to reboot but he looked down curiously as Robin tried to hug him.

“… what’s up, Timmy?” He asked.

“Code names,” he said sternly.

Nightwing just stared at him emptily. Robin gave him a small, careful smile. He suddenly felt inexplicably nervous and wanted to explain himself.

“You’re freaking out. Physical touch can bring a person out of dissociation,” then he paused and added hurriedly, “and if you’re hugging me, we can convince B that you found me without the Joker and I was able to calm you down. We’ll say that you chased off the Joker and I held you back, so if we hug, it looks more convincing and—“

Nightwing huffed a laugh and then wrapped an arm securely around Robin.

“Thanks, Tim,” Nightwing murmured, burying his nose in his hair.

Robin was silent, but eventually, he whispered back, “No problem.”

Nightwing held him closely.

Then he said, “I actually killed him.”

“And I hid the body,” Robin replied immediately. “We share the blame, so don’t beat yourself up.”

However, Nightwing’s breaths came out fast again and he was sounding hysterical.

“H-He won. The Joker won! I killed him and I let him win and—“

“Nightwing!”

He startled and looked at Robin as his breath hitched in sobs. Guilt immediately grabbed at Robin’s chest and constricted his lungs.

“I’m sorry,” Robin said. “I should’ve stopped you and did it myself. At least then— maybe I can make Jason proud.”

“Tim, no! It’s my fault— I should’ve been on Earth so I could’ve been there while Ja— I should’ve been there! And now that I’ve killed the Joker… this is my fault. I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have been here at all. I thought you were dead and…”

Robin felt touched and even more ashamed of himself.

Nightwing was tearing himself apart over this, while Robin had stood back to watch him kill someone. He had killed the Joker not only for the people in their lives, but also for Tim. It had been Robin who had made Nightwing take a life.

For a moment, Robin acknowledged the apathy within him about the stolen life of a man and when his mark burned with a silent warning from his star at his self-deprecating thoughts, he inhaled a breath of air and exhaled.

Robin had not taken on the mantle because he was kind like Jason. He did not take on the mantle because he was brave like Dick.

He had taken the mantle because it had been what Batman needed and it had been rejected by Dick.

(Although he himself felt selfish for being Robin, he also felt like if he ever voiced this, his star would probably make him trip over a rock.)

“Nightwing, it’s okay. You did us all a service by taking care of the blight in our lives. By getting rid of the Joker, you helped me, and Jason, and Barbara, and everyone else in Gotham too.”

“B-But I lost… I lost by killing him! The Joker won!” Nightwing whimpered.

“We didn’t lose, Nightwing,” Robin sighed.

How was he supposed to comfort a distraught hero again?

“But we did! I killed him! That means that I lost—“

Robin groaned and turned within his hug to hold his face. Nightwing shut up as Robin aggressively squished his face, looking into his eyes.

“Don’t you get it? We may have lost the battle, but we won the war. The Joker may have won this one time, but what about who else is winning? The citizens of Gotham are winning. The world is winning. Barbara is winning.”

Robin’s voice softened as he moved his hands down to squeeze Nightwing’s shoulder, trying to convey sincerity and seriousness to him. “Jason is winning. And so is his star.”

Nightwing swallowed and looked down at his hands, once bloodied but now cleaned up.

Robin stared at him. “I think that’s why the stars helped us.”

Nightwing looked up. “What?”

“The cluster was helping us. They wanted the Joker to die. That’s why they didn’t stop you, only me. Because the Joker killed one of their siblings too.” He paused and tilted his head. “Couldn’t you tell?”

Nightwing paused. “Are you saying that my star made me kill the Joker?”

Robin looked at him with pity. “They didn’t make you do anything. They just released some of your inhibitions. And maybe your star was the one who made you angrier than normal, but they didn’t make you do anything.”

Like all gods, a being above mortals could not truly be blamed for a human’s actions.

Their existence may have had some influence on humans, but they could not be blamed.

Nightwing clenched his eyes shut and then held his left hand (the one with his star’s mark, Robin realized) to his chest, curling up. He started crying again and Robin bit his lip, guiltily hugging him again.

“I’m sorry. But I don’t blame you. No one is going to blame you, okay? You’re okay, Nightwing. I promise. You’re still a hero. You’re my hero.”

Nightwing sniffed and then whispered, “What about Batman?”

“I’ll take care of it. Just trust me.”

Nightwing nodded, eyes closed as tears fell from his face again and Robin held him close once more. He idly thought about how nice it was to hug someone and for one brief, delusional moment, he wondered if Jason had a comforting touch as well.

Oh well. He probably wouldn’t ever get to feel it.

(Somewhere in the universe, the Cluster started laughing.)

The door opened and Batman, Huntress, and Spoiler strode through, looking panicked. However they calmed down once they saw the two sitting in the pews. Spoiler immediately took hold of the still unconscious and tied up metahuman and took him outside. The other two approached them.

Batman looked around, inspecting everything. His eyes trained on the floor for a second longer than necessary, but Robin knew it was futile. He had cleaned everything expertly.

Batman’s gaze snapped to Nightwing, who was still wrapped around Robin like a tearful octopus, but he addressed Robin in the next sentence.

“Where’s the Joker?” Batman asked and Robin met his white eyes steadily. It almost sent a shiver down his spine, but the warmth of his mark comforted him.

Spoiler came back and through the mask, he could sense her worried and concerned gaze on him.

It gave him an extra boost as he responded calmly.

“I got here on my own after I escaped Killer Croc. When I got here, Nightwing was beating up the Joker but I was able to stop him. After that, he had… a bit of a panic attack and while I calmed him down, the Joker was able to escape.” Robin looked down, fidgeting with his gloves. “I’m sorry. I let him get away.”

His insides writhed and burned from lying to Batman, but Robin needed to save Gotham, and Nightwing was essential to that. If the Batman arrested Nightwing or drove him away, there would be no telling what could happen to the city without Nightwing’s soaring presence.

“… is the Joker dead?”

“I believe not,” Robin said. “The Joker is like a cockroach. He’ll survive anything we can throw at him. He was able to get away, and there was Warp here too, so there’s a high chance that was how he was able to escape.”

Nightwing whimpered and clutched at him.

Robin met Spoiler’s and Huntress’ sympathetic gazes and explained softly, “He’s really freaked out. He… he thought I died, right?”

Spoiler nodded but tried to cheer everyone up. “But it’s okay! At least you’re alright!”

The Batman remained silent.

Robin looked at him with big, wide eyes. “Batman…? I’m sorry that I let the Joker go. I just— I guess I forgot about Warp because I was worrying too much about Nightwing.”

There was another moment of silence.

Huntress elbowed Batman, who flinched before immediately bending down to Robin’s level.

“… it’s okay. Are you alright, Robin?”

Robin looked into Batman’s eyes and then looked down at his hands, clean from any traces of blood. Nightwing clutched him tighter.

He nodded.

Batman looked down at his waist then. He paused stiffly. “Where’s your utility belt?”

Robin replied naturally, “I lost it when I was fighting against Killer Croc. That’s why my uniform is all torn up too.”

Huntress and Spoiler both glared at Batman, who finally moved from his statuesque position. Inwardly, Tim breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that he and Nightwing got away.

Batman patted his shoulder awkwardly and then said, “Let’s go home.”

Robin looked up, a little surprised before he quickly nodded.

He pulled Nightwing along and the two of them followed the others. Spoiler immediately strode over to his side, looking him over herself.

“How are you, Boy Wonder?” She asked.

Robin smiled wanely.

Honestly, he felt better than expected. His mind, however, was racing compared to his casual appearance.

He wondered what she would say if he knew that he had helped Nightwing kill a man. He wondered if she would react badly, maybe even slapping him across the face for letting a man die. He wondered if she would tell Batman and then he would be back to regular old Tim, but disgraced and rejected.

His mark burned on his side.

He rubbed at the mark with a hand as he smiled.

“… I’ll be okay,” he said.

After all, he had the stars on his side.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Gaslight gatekeep girlboss Tim Drake, let’s go!!!

I don’t really know the Huntress that well, so this’ll probably be the last time you’ll ever see her…

I read the comics and the interview where one of the authors said that if the comic was able to end like how they wanted to, the Joker would’ve died and someone named Rancor would’ve been the new Joker.

I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t happen lmao. I would not know how to move the story forward bc 1) idk who tf Rancor is, 2) I don’t even know DC that well, I only know the Batfamily 😭, 3) this story is about the Robins, idk anybody else

Anyways,,, yes! Ding Dong, the Joker’s dead!

The stars did influence their decisions a lot, bc in their eyes, the Joker also took away Jazz so they hate him.

This fic was originally going to be wayyyy darker with more emotional manipulation and gaslighting from Tim but I was like,,, no. Although I love me some dark fluff, I don’t think you guys the readers would appreciate too much of it, so I toned it down. However, I did want to include a lot of my hcs on Tim. To me, he’s very selfless and soldierly, but also very calculating and easy to go rogue.

Does Batman suspect something? Yes. Is he going to find out? Nah. Will anybody else know? If they become a Robin, yeah. Otherwise? Nope.

Next up, Stephanie!! (It’ll come sooner or later, but I’m busy with school rn)

[nayatarot777]

PSA For Those Who Don’t Understand That Shit Ain’t Always Sweet Out Here In This Spiritual/Tarot World

I’m not one of these “love and light” tarot readers/spiritualists. You’re going to hear shit about yourselves in my readings that you don’t like, if that’s what Spirit wants to come out. Idgaf if it’s based on personal topics, relationships, work, health in any aspect - a lot of us self-sabotage. A lot of us are in situations with people and environments due to our own doing (partially). I’m not the reader that’s going to enable your perpetual victim complex and tell you what you want to hear to protect your ego from seeing a side to yourself that you don’t like. I’m not one of those readers who help you to lack accountability over what you allow into your own life despite having the option to do better. Of course I’ll try to put it in a delicate way where I can, but if a difficult pill to swallow is presented in a reading, I’m going to point it out.

I’ll point out your control issues that I see (no matter how much you try to hide or deny them). I’ll point out where you’re betraying yourself, where you’re disrespecting yourself, and where you’re disrespecting another. If you want to focus on love and light, then by all means - do that. But that’s the reason why so many of you are still unstable and imbalanced with no idea of how to balance and ground yourself. You think any of us could exist without darkness and negativity (which isn’t always evil and “bad”)? You think that you can exist only paying attention to the good parts of you without the bad? Go ahead and see how that turns out for you.

So many of you wonder why your intuition is thwarted and why you feel like you can’t connect to your higher self or the spiritual world without a “middleman” (such as myself). It’s because you’re not ready for that. Because you’re not ready to explore darkness within yourself in order to clear out a lot of the bs that’s clouding your vision. Why do you think that so many people who are great intuitives go through some of the darkest manifestations of life itself? Major abuse, betrayal, childhood wounds, just complete chaos - and they STILL come out to be some of the strongest and well-balanced people you’ll ever meet. They’re people who are strong enough to transmute darkness into light. You’re not going to do that by ignoring shit that you don’t like. And the darkness is terrifying. Exploring space, the deep sea, or any type of unknown is terrifying. But what would society look like if not one of us decided to do that? Where would we be as a human race if people with courage didn’t venture into those spaces and bring back a bunch of knowledge for us to expand our consciousness with? We all owe doing that for ourselves. Not doing so is self-betrayal and stagnation.

Intuition is represented by the moon. Does the moon emit light? No. Mother Luna is a dark entity and she lives in the darkness - which is the core of everything. And if you’re a woman/a feminine, you’re doing yourself even more of a disservice. Because darkness is pure, feminine energy. We come from our mother’s dark ass wombs. This entire universe began as a dark ass body of space-and-time before it formed physical planetary bodies and light sources. Reject yourselves all you want, but you can’t complain that you’re out of whack energetically if you choose to do so. Or when what you’re manifesting doesn’t come through (which also stems from the darkness btw). Don’t reject the darkness but expect to be able to use it when it benefits you. Sounds like shit that masculines have done to the feminine for centuries, huh? And so many feminines are doing that same exact shit to themselves. It’s sad.

We’ve seen entire groups of people with weak egos follow the same path of rejecting darkness/femininity and we see how difficult they are as people to co-exist with: ignorant men who have egos as big as the sun because they don’t want to face the hidden sides of themselves - that often times houses some ugly traits because of what they’ve allowed to fester in the dark corners of their psyche. Ignorant, male-centred religious people who identify so much with their religion that they only want to focus on the light, happy parts of their religion while ignoring how much harm that same religion can cause to others (especially feminines/women). Thats just to name a few. If you walk around with this idea that you’re nothing but “love and light” then just know that you’re another ignorant person in this world who is no doubt ignoring very real and human negative effects that you have on yourself and/or others - no doubt. And the darkness doesn’t always have negative effects (obviously) but it will when it’s suppressed and therefore forced to come out in uncontrolled, unconscious ways. If that’s what you want to do, then I’m not the reader for you.

[gudvina]

what changes would you make to sunrise on the reaping, if you were able to?

This question would require a thousands pages long essay as an answer, but I'll try to be brief and concise for the purpose of clarity.

1. The shoe-horn writing

The writing first and foremost. There was no need to dumb down the points in such a way that they feel narrow and with little to no nuance.

Not only does it imply the readers are stupid and illiterate, it's also a disservice to the themes of the story because they deserve to be treated with complexity.

2. The way the themes were executed.

I honestly don't mind the idea of the rebellion taking many attempts and failing before the trilogy's events, but SC's heavy use of revisionism to the point of denaturalisation of the way certain characters or plots were presented did not do the book any favour.

There are certain things that are unrealistic for them to be so retconned in the books. Mags and Wiress being his mentor first and foremost, because it's quite unrealistic that it wasn't known fact in CF.

3. The characterisations.

The way Haymitch's character was presented in Sotr is wildly different to the way he was presented in THG, and there was no need for him to be changed so much.

Yes, Haymitch was sixteen. Yes, when we see him first in sotr he was untainted by what would eventually happen to him. And yes, trauma changes people. But him being a little grumpy, sarcastic and snarky at 50 and a complete sweetheart in his youth with no bad bone in his body isn't realistic. In Italy we have a saying that goes "if you were born round, you can't die square", and while life can change certain aspects of your character, it doesn't mean that certain key features won't stay there.

And I'd give him more agency, making his participation more active instead of passively listening to orders or having everything he has learned in life coming from Lenore Dove.

I have already touched Lenore Dove's character, but so I won't go into much detail here, but i would definitely make her a more rounded person with a defined characteristic, instead of sacrificing her character for the purpose to sprinkle unnecessary parallelisms.

And would definitely eliminate the weird idolisation and the fridging. She deserves to be her own person outside of Haymitch's perception, and to not be a narrative device to further Haymitch's arc story and her death should have been handled in a more delicate way, instead of a scene thrown there just for shock value.

Sid and Ma would also get more exploration, and a better place in the novel, instead of being taken for granted by the narrative. Them being his family doesn't make it less worthy to explore as a dynamic.

4. Certain features of the story

First of all... Chaff. How come we get explored Haymitch's friendship with Katniss' parents or with Beetee's son, but there wasn't a single mention of Chaff? Really? Come on.

I would also change Effie's rebel sympathizer family members and would change the way Effie enters into the industry, because as I've already touched upon it strips her character of a lot of agency complexity.

Also I'd give back to Maysilee the connection to the pin, because I don't like the way it was stripped from her and sort of "assigned" to Lenore. It didn't have to be like that.

I would also change a lot of how Beetee was written, because not only did it not feel like him, but it also takes away the impact of his actions in CF.

5. The parallelisms.

I don't mind a few here and there, subtly placed in a strategic way, but this heavy amount of parallelism strips the story of originality and of independence from the og trilogy.

Certain narrative choices, without them, feel almost nonsensical or out of place.

These are only SOME of the things I'd change, and if you'd like me to go more on detail on certain points you are free to ask, but yeah. I hope my ramblings made some sense!

[spicybylerpolls]

It's a shame how guarded the fandom is regarding sex. First and foremost because sex, and specifically shame around sex, is heavily, heavily tied to Mike and Will's story.

If Lucas can have a 69 sign above his head while he's sleeping, why is it so hard to believe Mike and Will are having sexual dreams about each other? Especially if you ship them and acknowledge the 69 sign was obviously signaling a sexual dream?

If Lucas can have a reference to dirty magazines under his bed, why is it so hard to believe Mike and Will also have dirty magazines hidden around their bedroom?

If Dustin can have a reference to masturbation, why is it so hard to believe Mike and Will are also interested in masturbation as well?

They specifically put these references in the other, ORIGINAL, party members, who are the same age as Mike and Will, while also including references for them too (that people just can't accept), signaling all these boys are starting to think about sex. The difference is, Lucas and Dustin don't have any shame surrounding who they're attracted to.

I don't know about you (however I imagine this is a common experience for many queer people) but before I accepted that I was attracted to the same sex, I'd constantly find myself watching the women in porn and consciously trying to focus on the man. I'd tell myself things like "oh - you're just interested in how your body will look when you're older" or "oh - it's normal when you watch porn" etc - basically anything to reaffirm that I wasn't gay. And this is all between ages 13-16.

This is exactly how I see Mike, specifically. Starting to notice his attraction to men but consciously repressing it, telling himself he's normal and it doesn't mean anything. And I think people forget (or maybe just feel uncomfortable talking about) this part - that the sexual attraction, the shame in the sexual attraction, is a huge, huge part of realizing you're queer and coming-of-age as a queer person.

And that's why Mike doesn't want to hug Will at the airport (or a big part of it). It feels awkward, even if he doesn't know why. It feels awkward because he feels ashamed for liking Will. I mean the first shot we get of Mike setting eyes on Will in Season 4 is of him looking at Will's chest and then quickly averting his eyes. This tells us everything we need to know - Mike is attracted to Will, feels ashamed about it and doesn't want anyone to know (or likely doesn't even fully understand it himself, but at the very least, knows it's not "right").

Point being, his shame surrounding specifically his sexual attraction to men is one of his biggest issues and failing to talk about it is a HUGE DISSERVICE to his character!

It also does a huge disservice to Will's character, too. The repercussions of this shame, a lot of the time, is Will's situation - not having your first kiss, all of your friends growing up before you, hating yourself because you have a crush on your best friend. All because he's romantically AND sexually attracted to men. This is what Will's thinking. If he wasn't such a freak, if he didn't want to kiss boys, if he wasn't starting to feel sexually attracted to men, then everything would be so much easier. He wouldn't feel like such a mistake.

This is why I think they'll absolutely have a sex scene in S5 and also why I think it will be explicit. I previously thought it'd likely be implied and that that'd be enough but I don't see it the same anymore. Now, I don't think this means it has to be racy, obviously, but just that the audience would see some of it. Quite frankly, doing an implied sex scene, while I wouldn't be dissatisfied, is a disservice to the story.

See, with Jancy, the implied sex scene works. The tension between these two characters has been building for a season and a half and we know they want to have sex. We don't have to see it, we just need to know that they do.

But with Mike and Will? That's not the case at all.

First of all, the tension has been building for 5 seasons, which is the entire series. An implied sex scene would ultimately be a tame ending to this storyline.

Second, Mike and Will specifically feel shame about this act, Jonathan and Nancy don't. We don't need to see their reaction but we need to see Mike and Will's reactions because it completes their characters. Because they have felt shame about this specific thing, not showing them feeling comfortable doing this, with each other, would be incomplete.

Third, think about Steve and Nancy's sex scene - we're shown it specifically because Nancy feels uncomfortable.

Ultimately, there's no need to show Jonathan and Nancy having sex because there's nothing left unresolved. That's what the Duffers actually get right - only showing a sex scene when it's important for the narrative and for the characters. Even Hopper and Joyce point to this, despite them being the oldest characters and the most suitable to have an explicit sex scene, opposed to Steve and Nancy. That's because there's nothing else to tell us about Joyce and Hopper through this sex scene - we know they love each other. I don't see why the Duffers would break this pattern now.

And well, even if you don't want the scene, I don't see how you could argue that the moment Mike and Will decide to have sex isn't extremely important for their characters and would tell us A LOT about how they both feel, especially Mike seeing as we don't get his perspective.

You could argue the kiss would suffice but... does it? A kiss isn't really... sexual. And Romantic, sure. But this wouldn't address the shame they specifically feel about sex. Mike starting to cry while having sex with Will tells us so much more about his character than him crying while kissing Will.

Kissing is also a thing children do. Ending a 5 season, 9 year long coming-of-age project, with two characters who have fought inter-dimensional monsters that quite literally represent their shame, simply kissing? Something we've already seen one of these characters do, multiple, multiple times?

Okay, I guess.

Anyway, I know a lot of these points have already been made, and that this was really long, but I just wanted to say them again because it upsets me so much, especially during rewatch when I see all the themes right in front of me. And I know it upsets other people, other young adults, too. Seeing this experience represented so accurately - one that you might even still feel shame about, one that you went through not too long ago - and not even being able to discuss it openly in the fandom, is sad. Being called a freak or a pedophile for simply suggesting that sex is important here and the Duffers are telling us so. Sex... the thing that literally created us all. And that almost everyone starts thinking about between the ages of 13-14.

Sigh. At least we have this blog. Thank you for that. 🫶🏼