#canary curse though

[cricket-moth]

“do you think we’re soulbound in every universe, jimmy?”

“I would never wish that on you, tango.”

[pinkbear-13]

thank you to this post for giving me brain rot

[jimmyswings]

“I haven’t left the desert” “I haven’t left the ranch”

I haven’t left bread bridge send help.

[sometilememes]

here's my thoughts on the canary curse:

it was never about dying first. the canary's job is to warn about gasses before it's to late. even if he doesn't die first he can still have done his job. a canary can't predict the mine collapsing.

[miningroseakira]

ello, another doodle i made when i was drawing lifers in anticipation for wild life. have a jimmy

he's technically from my personal headcanon au if anyone wonders why he has the closed eye on his hand. but it's not super relevant, honestly i just wanted to draw a jimmy lol

btw my personal headcanon is that he got the canary wing symbol after 3L and it's unclear to everyone whether the canary curse is an actual curse the watchers put on him, thus the canary wing mark, or whether the mark is simply intended as a symbol to immortalize his failure in 3L and onwards directly on his skin and has no actual sway on whether he does or does not die first. fun times

[fivepoints]

So I’ve been thinking (re: obsessing) about the canary curse since I saw the last episode. And I read @goldenwitherphoenix13’s analysis which you should definitely check out here! And I realized that when

Jimmy died first, there was always a good chunk of players that would perma-die in that very same episode, and the series would end in either the episode after or the one after that, with many perma-deaths spread out along the way. 

But, in secret life, the only people who died after Lizzie were the others in the mine (Mumbo+jim). And, the series ended a whole 3 episodes after with the next perma-death being that final episode. This is way more indicative of a freak mining accident taking out a few people than of a canary falling silent due to CO2 which would then spread quickly to the others. I, obviously, don’t have any data on the rest of the perma-deaths for wild life, but it is important to note that mumbo’s death was not followed by anyone else’s immediately.

That being said, I do love diversity in headcannons within fandom. So, if you do prefer the headcannon of the canary curse being passed on, then there is definitely an argument that Lizzie and Mumbo actually did their jobs as canaries (successfully warding off death for a good while). Contrast this to when Jim fell silent, it was already too late to escape the cave.

[prismatic-ink]

what if Lizzie didn't die?

nobody's ever fallen out of the void before, so no participant has ever come back to tell the tale of what that's like. the communicator says she's eliminated, and everyone shrugs and carries on, because for all they know, she is. Maybe there is a ground to hit down there, or some monster that swoops in and kills in a single blow.

but the thing is - there's no end in a void. it just continues forever. and ever. and ever. it's simple physics; a void/vacuum is a blank space, a complete and total absence of anything at all. there's nothing there that could have killed Lizzie because, by definition, nothing is in the void at all. not even time could have gotten her.

now imagine being condemned to a place (or as close to a place as the void can get) where you will never see anything again, hear anything again, falling falling falling, towards a ground that will never appear. a place where you can never look into anyone's eyes ever again. eventually, a green streak in brown hair is the only memory you have of another human existing that hasn't been lost to the millennia you've spent falling. this place where you will be the only thing that exists, the only thing that will exist, and the only thing that has ever existed, slipping through the cracks of time, eternally in solitude.

wouldn't that be a fitting place for a woman who spent all her time on solid ground alone, with almost nobody to care for her? falling so far out of the bounds of reality even the watchers don't know she's still alive? so beyond the reach of anybody that nobody will ever hear her calls for them to come to her, let alone heed them? and let's be honest, if they could hear her, would they even come?

and who knows, maybe when the next season rolls around, for some strange, inexplicable reason, the watchers can't find Lizzie. It's no trouble, they can construct a new Lizzie from her memory, even if it's one season behind. and maybe this time, Lizzie has better luck and lots of friends. she doesn't really get why Scar is so apologetic, or Joel so clingy, or even why she constantly feels like she's teetering on the edge of a precipice, about to fall. but that's just her being silly, right?

all the while the original Lizzie falls forever. forgotten again.

[tubbytarchia]

Oh no people are suddenly seeing the Joel proof of concept animation. I forgot to note that I wanted a creature-esque representation of him to appear throughout as initially like a predator hunting down its prey (or at least putting on a scary face like it's going to), and then mercilessly being hunted down itself. Imagery like that really fucks with me and I wanna subject everyone else to it too 👍 it'll be more apparent when I finish the storyboards for the whole thing but that will take a hot second, I've been busy moving rooms so no time to draw :(

[basil-the-bulbasaur]

Every time Jimmy hasn't died first in a life series has been when Tango wasn't there

No coalmine

[qoldenskies]

FIRST DRAFT DEFEATED!!! its 54k words currently

[lunaloos]

just saw a comment on jimmys video that was like oh it was going so well i though skizz or scar would be first out you really stole defeat from the jaws of victory and. yep. thats my guy

[thechanglingchronicles]

HEADCANNON TIME HEADCANNON TIME???

(I really think this might line up with what Martyn will do hehehhehe)

Hear me out… as punishment for subbing in Gem gets put in the game full time and Lizzie gets Jimmy’s curse.

I hc them both as listeners though Martyn only considers the listeners helpers? So that’s why they are being punished the watchers want full control.

They’ve destroyed Jimmy’s confidence so much and they know they’ll still have control over him even if his curse is broken because he was mean and evil and red like they wanted him to be

[hptx7777]

I doodled this yesterday before Pearl’s video came out.

Oh how right I was 🥹🥹

[astrowarr]

after watching several povs, there's something so striking about the way mumbo died.

he dies at home, first of all, which is notable in its own right because so much of his time was spent running about, usually in pursuit of kills. he dies with grian, too— to a thing grian created, no less, but it isn't actually grian's fault for once.

mumbo dies in that tall tower and when lightning strikes, from all across the server, everyone looks. their eyes land on that tower, and everyone is watching. even in grian's perspective, you can see everyone at renwood mound, lined up and staring. those at the bamlands looked on too.

they didn't see mumbo die, but they saw grian's grief. grian, who, throughout this season, has seemed cruel and untouchable to those outside of his circle due to his involvement with and knowledge of the wild cards. they watch grian immediately crumble under the weight of mumbo's death; several of them even explicitly comment, "look at grian, he's grieving, he's in mourning."

i like to think that, until that moment, grian was almost god-like in their minds; now, though, he's the quintessential concept of humanity. grief can be religious if you do it right, after all. even beyond the grian aspect though, isn't this just the most despairing omen of what's to come?

i mean, there's something about this image of a man fallen from grace, crying out as he holds the mangled corpse of his friend in the home they made together, high in the sky, on display for all the world to bear witness to. and the world did bear witness, be it with pity, horror, joy... it doesn't matter, because they saw.

the canary curse has been broken, but this was a fittingly foreboding, tone-setting image that did a stunning job filling its shoes

[the-lesbian-orpheus]

I can already see the angsty animatics and I don’t think I’m emotionally prepared

The way his voice just cut off omg

How do the silly block people always manage to give me emotional drama this shouldn’t be allowed

joels last words being “grian, its not going well” hurts so much

[wonderjanga]

Marvel and the YJ

So, Marvel in the YJ. He’s one of their den mothers and all that. So like, in this AU, and in fact in all of my posts so far, Billy’s kept it under wraps that he’s a kid. So, as a result, the YJ think he’s just this really cool big brother (dad (they just don’t know it)) type of dude. Like he’s so nice. And he’s so nice to them especially. Like, he treats all of them the same way he treats adults. He doesn’t doubt their abilities, and when they fail, he’s still there to encourage them to get back up and he doesn’t even make them feel bad about it.

Like, the one time he was asked to spar with the YJ cause they wanted to for funsies I guess, he positively whooped their asses and somehow, someway found a way to still compliment their abilities, even if they didn’t last that long because the battle was a little one-sided. To be fair though, they had asked him not to go easy, which he didn’t. In the end, he got promptly scolded by Canary heavily when she found out he quite literally used Kid Flash as a rag doll and threw him at Aqualad. She said that the entire tape of him having a “friendly spar” with those kids, was essentially just him bullying them. To which Billy tried to defend himself by saying those kids were plenty capable. The defense didn’t work.

Then, there was this time Kon mentioned he couldn’t fly and Marvel offered him a lift. This somehow ended up with Marvel sort of T posing mid air as Kon and Robin hung on one arm, Artemis and Aqualad hung on the other arm, then Kid Flash held onto one leg while M’gann held onto the other.

Flash: “Wow.” *looking up at the YJ and Marvel* “That’s… actually kinda majestic, not gonna lie.”

Superman: *also looking up at Marvel and the YJ* “Is it though? What if one of them falls?”

Flash: “Eh. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Kid Flash proceeds to almost slip off and fall, which almost gives both the speedster and Kryptonian a heart attack. Thankfully, he catches himself by moving his feet really fast to boost himself back up. Worst part in their opinion is that Marvel didn’t even seem to notice.

Then, there was the time M’gann with Robin about something. Batman was also working nearby on a computer.

M’gann: “Hmm… We need advice.”

Robin!Tim: “We need an adult.”

Batman: *keeping an ear out cause he’s always happy to help one of his kids*

M’gann and Robin!Tim: *thinking before they speak up at the same time* “Marvel.” *they then both walk out of the room to find the Captain*

Batman: *a little upset that Tim did didn’t come to him for help but also a lot more concerned as to why they thought Marvel was a suitable choice to ask for advice, especially considering the fact that just earlier that day, he had caught the man scribbling on one of the meeting tables like a 5th grader scribbling on their desk*

Contrary to what Bruce thought might happen (I.e. something going wrong) apparently Marvel’s advice wasn’t too bad, seeing nothing had gone wrong yet. (He later found out that the two had asked for the best advice on how to incapacitate your enemy quickly. He found this out when he saw Tim throat punch a man. Said man went down almost immediately. When prodded for information for as to why he did that, he proudly proclaimed “Cap taught me”)

Also a little tidbit from the Marvel Cursing post about the YJ thinking that Marvel called one of them a dumb cunt. Courtesy to @helps-the-writing-brain-go

Billy’s recently noticed that the kids are acting funny. Though, he supposes it’s not a bad funny. If anything, whatever’s got them acting weird has got them doing better on missions, but still. It’s weird. What’s weirder is that whenever he compliments them, they shine twice as brighter than they normally do. What’s even weirder than that is that whenever they’ve messed up recently they look twice as nervous. Speaking of which, this was one of the moments they’ve messed up.

Marvel: “So… Uh- that didn’t go so well.”

YJ: *obvious signs of anxiousness on some and subtle on others*

Marvel: “But that’s okay! But that’s okay.” *trying his best to make the anxiety in them disappear* “We just have to try to be better next time. Like, and I hate to say this, maybe try calling in an adult next time? Like me? I could’ve zoomed over and helped you guys.”

YJ: *look at each other*

Artemis: “Wally’s the one who said that we shouldn’t call you in a try to do this on our own.”

Kid Flash: *dramatic gasp* “You know why I said that! It would’ve helped us all if Kaldur had tried to put the fires near the gas tanks out with his water powers!”

Aqualad: “I was busy being attacked by nearly five different people.”

YJ: *dissolve into arguing*

Marvel: “Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wally what did you mean by it would’ve helped you all? Me not being there would’ve been good?” *confused*

YJ: *immediate silence*

Kon: “Wally found out that you think one of us is dumb cunt.”

Kid Flash: “Dude! You guys need to stop ratting me out!”

Marvel: “What.” *stares in befuddlement*

M’gann: “And then he told us. So we’ve been trying to think of ways to not be uh… dumb cunts.”

Marvel: *blinks rapidly* “Again, what? Wally, where did you get this information from?”

Kid Flash: “When you were making cookies! I heard you say blah blah blah, what a dumb cunt.”

Marvel: *still staring in confusion*

Kid Flash: “Then, when I asked what you were talking about, Mary said you were talking about our performance on missions.”

Marvel: “…Okay. I’m going to be completely honest with you. I don’t remember a thing of what you’re talking about.”

Marvel then goes on to make a speech about how they’re wonderful heroes who shouldn’t let one person’s words guide them, especially in risky situations like a mission. He then told them that he was now going to stress bake and make some Minnesota cool whip, jello, fruit, not really salad, salad. (Courtesy to @jedipirateking) On the bright side though, the speech did leave the teens feeling better.