#forgive whatever is going on in the background and that railing

[traincat]

To think I almost missed my Sunday question ☹️ just got done with finals and (massive plot twist I'm sure) I still have Johnny on the mind.

So here's another big question that you can feel free to answer in whatever depth you'd like!

How has Johnny and Ben's relationship evolved through the years? The panel that really made me ask this question is the one where Johnny's asking what he can do for Ben to forgive him. (Also when the rest of the family disappears and they start losing their powers). It just got my brain working. (I also always enjoy their interactions in your fics so I was curious abt how you see their relationship being).

Thanks! ✨

Yeah, I definitely think there's a lot of evolution to Ben and Johnny's relationship, and that Johnny specifically is very, very emotionally dependent on Ben. I'm not saying Ben doesn't love Johnny just as fiercely, he's pretty readily demonstrated he would die for Johnny, but that Ben has other relationships he can rely on in that corner, whereas Johnny tends to self-destruct without Ben's presence.

(Fantastic Four #5)

I think there's a perception that Johnny's teasing of Ben, especially in the early days, is cruel or malicious, and I think that's an unkind reading of the situation. Yes, Johnny does make fun of Ben often, but here's the thing (badumpsh): Johnny doesn't tip toe around Ben's condition. Ben is the one who calls himself a monster, who rages in the early days, who is the one who (in early canon) is the most physically impacted by the cosmic rays. (Later canon will explore Johnny's depth of self-control with his powers, in addition to the Reed and Sue's own control of their powers.) Johnny is sixteen, his sister is frequently busy with her boyfriend and their new responsibilities -- he's in pretty close contact with Ben, probably more so than anyone else on the team. He's teasing him and playing practical jokes to get his attention and to take Ben's mind off things.

Ben says it himself in The Thing #23 (during a period where he and Johnny very much are not on good terms): "Nah, I wuz never really mad at ya, kid... sure wanted ta moider ya sometimes... but I still loved ya."

Ben has the least reason to be emotionally close to Johnny. He's not his girlfriend's kid brother, after all. But it's clear from early on that Ben is attached to Johnny and that he does love him, even if wants to "moider" him sometimes. Early canon Johnny is a magnet for trouble. His Strange Tales run is really where that shines. He's easily manipulated by slick criminals. He's targeted by a fake Captain America. He gets tied to sign posts, the rail road tracks, and a porpoise. He absorbs a bomb's explosion to save a town.

(Strange Tales #112) "If anything happens to that kid, I'll... no!! It can't happen!" Fantastic Four makes it clear very early on that as much as they fight, this isn't a purely antagonistic relationship. Ben loves Johnny, he'd just rather walk through Times Square in the buff before he admits it.

As for Ben being Johnny's rock, literally, there's a couple of big examples of Johnny just absolutely going off the deep end without Ben present. Johnny already generally does not tend to do well when the team is not together.

(FF #191)

The incident you outline, where Ben says he never wants to see Johnny again, is probably the best example of this, although I have two others. For background: by total accident, Johnny once messed up once of Reed's attempts to cure Ben of being the Thing. Reed decides that neither he or Johnny will ever tell anybody about this, especially not Ben. Of course, the truth comes out, and at a terrible moment, when an outside force is trying to tear the team apart. Johnny's powers are gone (something that already puts him in a precarious place emotionally), and Sue and Reed have lost custody of their kids.

(Fantastic Four v5 #7) Gonna blanket rec volume 5 on the whole here. It's the last run before corporate took the book off the market over movie rights for three years, and it's a very good, very cohesive story. (I don't like what it does with Sharon Ventura. But I don't like what any Fantastic Four book has ever done with Sharon Ventura, save for Marvel Knights 4's brief cameo.) But Johnny's been through the wringer here already. He's lost his powers, both of his careers, and his sister has lost custody of his niece and nephew. But he only goes totally off the rails and disappears into his "party boy" persona after Ben cuts off contact with him.

(FF v5 #10-11) "Johnny's a mess." Luckily he's got an incredibly handsome and devoted """best friend""" (canon JohnnyWyatt when) and also Spider-Man to drag him out of it, but Johnny reuniting with Ben is definitely a huge part of what drags him out of this state.

(FF v5 #12) "So you love me again, big buddy?" "Maybe."

There's the more recent example, where after Secret Wars (2015), when Reed, Sue, and the kids were assumed dead, we know Ben and Johnny had some kind of huge fight. Ben went to space, Johnny -- spiraled. Hard. Harder than the above example. This sets up a romantic relationship with Medusa which I feel pretty critical about, in part because the writer clearly didn't actually read Medusa's tenure on the team. (She and Johnny were friends! They were actually really good friends!) I believe it could have happened, not just because I'm an annoying canon purist, but because it kind of falls into previously established territory -- Johnny, in an emotionally vulnerable state and with Ben off planet, gets into an ill-advised romantic relationship with a member of the Fantastic Four's social circle. That's basically the exact setup for when he got into a relationship with Alicia. (Which, as I've previously said, was a relationship that, pre-Skrull spy retcon, was about Ben.) So I buy it, because Johnny does not make good romantic decisions when he's spiraling, I just kind of hated the writing surrounding it. Even after Ben came back, Johnny was too hurt by everything else to really recover. Ben's solution to this was to take Johnny on a multiversal wild goose chase to find Sue and Reed (Ben very much believed they were dead and was stalling for time) that went, uh, bad. Also they both lost their powers.

(Marvel 2-in-One (2018) #8) They made up! Off screen. When Sue and Reed returned. Johnny might have been living with Wyatt at this point, it's really unclear. (Tinfoil hat on, I do fully believe Slott originally intended to soft launch canon JohnnyWyatt. If he didn't do it intentionally, he did it unintentionally, because it's very difficult to read the beginning of his run any other way.)

But I think a bigger example of Johnny going off the rails without Ben is when Ben dies. And, very importantly here, Ben dies because he manages to overcome mind control for only long enough to tell Reed to kill him to save Johnny.

(FF #509)

In the aftermath, Johnny goes running, which is pretty typical for him. Rather than disappearing into a party boy persona, though, he takes Johnny Storm off the map entirely, working in an auto shop and avoiding Sue's calls.

(FF #509) "Hey, squirt, you... you know I ain't really here, right? That ya really are just makin' believe?" "...Yeah. But this is how I get through the day."

Johnny's grief is mirrored by Alicia, who has locked herself in her studio to do nothing but sculpt Ben all day.

(FF #509) "She says it helps her pretend Ben's still with us. Isn't that sad?" Yikes.

Ben gets better, of course, and Johnny bounces back, but I do think about it in context of Johnny Storm's Last Stand, where Johnny bodily pushes Ben out of the way (seconds before Ben transforms back into the Thing) so he can take his place defending the Negative Zone gate.

(FF #584 and #600)

I do think this is a case where Johnny can't let Ben die for him again. It's a relationship with such an intense amount of emotion. Yeah, they fight a lot, and the (mutual) prank war has been going on forever, but they will both sacrifice themselves before they let the other put themselves in danger.

(FF #535) And I don't think it's a relationship where you can point to moments that caused that intense loyalty and love for each other. I think it's a slow slide into it, a result of living in each other's pockets for so long. Johnny was young when he met Ben -- for him, Ben is one of the constants in his life, the person he can depend on. When he doesn't have Ben to lean on, he's lost.

For Ben, Johnny's the little brother he never had, the thorn in his side, his partner in crime. He might be able to get along without Johnny's presence in his life, but he wouldn't be happy, as much as he protests otherwise. He goes to incredible, if misguided, lengths in 2-in-1 to try and protect Johnny, largely from himself. I think, for Ben, the depths of Johnny's self-hatred is something he hates thinking about, but he knows about it, and so he does what Johnny did for him in the early days: he picks on him to him to distract him. It's never malicious. It's their dynamic.

(Marvel 2-in-1 #3) "'Cause you're broken."

For some fun, largely overlooked Ben and Johnny content, I really like the brief period where they were on the team with T'Challa and Storm while Reed and Sue were on a second honeymoon.

(FF #545) "Is Ben going to try and fight him?" "Does Wolverine go through a lot of gloves?"

It's very brief, from #544-550 (although I'd read #543 as well for Ben and Johnny content), but it's fun and it's a good look at them on their own when they're both in a relatively good place.

In conclusion, I love them, your honor.

(FF #570)

[heliza24]

In which I try to figure out Armand:

My brain has been ticking away thinking about Armand ever since episode 2.1. I have been fascinated and irritated by Armand in the off-season, so to speak, because I love Daniel and relate to him so much, and I know Armand is going to be very important to him. But we were given so little of Armand last season it has just felt impossible to get a grip on what his deal is. I am admittedly not a book reader, but I also feel like these feelings are still justified because the show version of Armand is so different than the book, in circumstance at least. So he’s the character I’m most interested in this season.

We still didn’t get a lot of him in ep 1, but I’ve been thinking about him and synthesizing some of the stuff that people have been saying about him in interviews, especially about his relationship to control. I’m specifically thinking about Hannah describing him as “Louis’s creature” and saying that he’ll do whatever Louis wants, and that this is part of their sexual dynamic as well. I think this makes sense with what we’ve seen in the trailers; it seems like Louis is the more sexually dominant one between them. So Armand is happy to be more of a sub in the bedroom and in their original flirtations. Maybe in their earlier dynamic as a couple too, we’ll have to see. Meanwhile, he’s in the background, arranging scenery, pulling strings, trying to do everything he can to hold onto Louis and keep him at least passingly happy. This, by the way, perfectly meshes with his role as director at the theatre. Never in the limelight, but always in control. (The stage management school of sexuality, if you will.). I think that emphasis on control probably becomes more pronounced as the years go on, and Louis is sitting in his grief for Claudia and more of their initial spark dies. But it also perfectly explains the Rashid act. Armand is comfortable playing a servant role. He’s comfortable observing from just off stage. He’s comfortable doing those things if it means ultimately having a better grasp on the way the scene unfolds.

For his part I think Louis is probably drawn to the way Armand seamlessly irons out the bumps in his life. The penthouse is a cage, but Louis is his own jailer; Armand isn’t the one keeping him there. There’s probably an interesting comparison to be made against Lestat here. Lestat revels in melodrama and high emotions, while Armand is intent on maintaining a facade of calm stability. It makes sense to me that Louis would have leaned into this facade, even if he knew it was partially a falsehood, after losing Claudia. I think this is true even around Claudia’s death. It was easier for Louis to forget and forgive whatever part Armand played in it, and allow Real Rashid to hide those diary pages away, than to really reckon with Claudia’s death.

I think Louis requested the interview as part of his general goal to narrativize and soften his own memories and grief, and Armand acquiesced in order to keep Louis. The original goal of the interview was for Louis to convince himself he really had killed Lestat, literally and maybe emotionally too. I think it’s possible that Lestat is back in the picture somehow and the interview is Louis’s last ditch effort to convince himself not to return to his maker. But then of course the whole thing goes off the rails and Louis ends up facing down his true memories for the first time in years. It makes sense that when put in an uncomfortable situation- watching Louis talk about Lestat- Armand would default to his old role of manipulating things from the wings of the metaphorical penthouse stage. Him stepping into the interview is a big departure from that, and shows how effectively Daniel has rattled him.

So how this plays against Daniel is interesting. Armand is putting on a big show about how he and Louis were able to manipulate Daniel in San Francisco. But I wonder how true that ever really was. I imagine even in San Francisco, Daniel represented a completely opposite dynamic to Armand’s relationship with Louis, which would have hooked Armand’s attention. If Louis appeared in control on the surface, but relied on Armand’s ability to arrange the periphery of his life, Daniel would have appeared to be easily (and perhaps happily) dominated, but resistant to Armand’s larger attempts to control his life. Obviously I don’t know exactly how they’ll play out a 1970s devil’s minion scenario. But I imagine that Daniel’s addiction, and Armand’s misguided attempts to protect him from it, will play a role in whatever kind of break up and memory erasure ensues. Whether it was the addiction or his personality or something else, there was some element of Daniel that was too wild for Armand to tame. He threw him back into the pond, all memories of being snared on the fishing line erased. And it’s entirely possible that Armand feels this loss of control very deeply. As heartbreak and loss, but also as a scary moment when his grip on the love that he needs in his life faltered. It’s possible that the break up with Daniel made him even more determined to control outcomes with Louis. And it’s also possible that the pain that he felt when he originally lost Daniel is causing him to revise and edit his own memories of his relationship with Daniel. If Daniel broke Armand’s heart, it would be a lot easier to remember him as a silly boy Armand manipulated in tandem with Louis than someone Armand actually found fascinating. Admitting otherwise means admitting his own weakness. So memory becomes the monster, again, even if you are the one controlling the vampire amnesia.

For what it’s worth, I currently think that Louis doesn’t know about Armand’s past with Daniel. I don’t think Louis would be as vulnerable with Daniel if he knew. And that would point to Armand once again subtly manipulating and managing Louis, completely hiding his connection to this mortal from him.

Regardless, I don’t doubt that Daniel was less fearsome in San Francisco than he is now in Dubai. (The show’s insistence that an elderly disabled man is just as powerful in his own way as an immortal vampire is perfection, and it makes me want to kiss all the writers on the mouth). He’s even less controllable by Armand than he once was (if he ever was), and he’s intent on finding out Armand’s truth, and the truth of their connection. I was really struck by Assad saying in an interview that the thing that Armand wants most is acceptance. He craves love and acceptance, but is terrified to show his real self and be vulnerable. Thats why he’s continuing to play stage manager to Louis’s love. But Daniel is coming for his true self in Dubai whether Armand wants it or not. And I imagine that is both extremely confronting but also ultimately attractive to Armand.

I deeply hope we get to see Daniel crack Armand’s sense of control. I hope we get to see Armand being vulnerable to Daniel and Daniel being receptive to that. I also hope we get to see Daniel facing down Armand as the source of his trauma (because being stalked, bitten, and then having your memories forcibly repressed is trauma, even if Daniel was attracted to Armand through it). I hope we get to see the way that trauma and fear and desire and love intermingle. And I also hope that when Daniel breaks Armand’s sense of control and sees his true self, he still likes what he sees. Because I would like Armand to get that acceptance from someone, even when his worst tendencies are laid bare.

(Oh, and while I’m making predictions- I’m not worried about 70s Devils Minion not happening, or them interacting in the 70s but it not turning into some form of romance. There is simply no better way to add stakes to the Dubai iterations of the characters than to give them this hidden history, and Rolin has talked extensively about needing to bring Daniel into the story in a personal way and crank up the conflict happening in Dubai. The penthouse is no longer just a framing device, but a site of active conflict and growth, and the only way you do that is exploring past and future DM dynamics. In ep 1 it’s still mainly acting as a frame, but I’m really excited to see its importance grow over the season).

Armand is such an intriguing mystery, but if I’m right about some of this stuff I actually relate quite strongly to him too. (I am reminded of a Brennan Lee Mulligan quote, where he describes characters you love/play as being garages attached to your actual personality of a house, and sometimes some piece of writing or improv shoots a sniper rifle perfectly through the garage door into the house and hits you in the heart)

@bluedalahorse warned me that this is how you really get stuck on a ship, when you see pieces of yourself in both characters, and I do fear that she is right.

So we’re really in it now, is what I’m saying. Send me your Armand thoughts, I want all of them. I will be counting down the days until episode 5 and obsessing until it airs. I’ll check back in on this meta later, I guess, to see how correct or incorrect I was.

[unsoundedcomic]

Hey Ashley! Forgive me if you've been asked this before (wish tumblr had better search) - what do you like to have on in the background while you work on comic pages? Is there anything that helps you focus on the grunt work of comicking? When you're at that point where you've drafted the major parts, and know what you want the page's final result to be. And are at that step where you have to physically put in the time to finish it off/refine everything? I have trouble focusing in silence, but music or videos/shows seem to also be distracting!

Hey Anon!

Each page takes two days, and the first day is the drawing and the thinking day. I can't have anything on but ambience. I usually go with rain, an aquarium, or rail cams on youtube. Here's a particular favourite of mine, it's like turning my second monitor into a window open to the PNW~

But I know just what you mean about needing something to power through the grunt work. Day two is inking, flatting, and colouring, and that can be a slog. Have you considered podcasts or Youtube? We get too used to music and start to tune it out, and yeah, videos require your eyes. Youtube really works for me. I even pay for it and then deduct that off my taxes as a work necessity. Because it is!

I like Red Letter Media, NPR, various sceptical programming like Paulogia, Gutsick Gibbon, Bart Ehrman, The Line Network, and small travel vlogs like The Carpet Bagger; in the past I've gone through great shows like My Favourite Murder, and the entire video catalogue of Ask A Mortician.

Whatever your interest, there's an expert on Youtube talking entertainingly about :) Try it!

[errorscriber]

observing the camera angles in half (with brief analysis)

feeling very fucked up thinking about how Kazui's theatre has balcony viewings, or the reason why the creators chose this theatre as a metaphor for kazui's story.

like aside the fact from the obvious symbolism of how indifferent and indecisive kazui has felt towards his life, or how hes too analytical to a fault where he has no choice but to watch his life unfold, it's just kinda funny and sad that the other reason why is because they have a second floor with balcony viewings. of course!

in the latter half of Half (lol), where Kazui is mask-less, the camera puts a lot of emphasis towards the audience.

the sequence begins with kazui looking upwards to the audience. (you can tell the stage is at the back with the lines and the front having reddish blocks)

kazui turns away from the audience. hes moving as if hes in an argument or in a confrontation with someone. you can see the curves in the side of the room, and the railings next to it. i find this scene to be very notable out of the rest because this is one of the only scenes where we can see the balcony floors in its fullest view.

kazui goes to the front, bowing towards the audience. (again, you can see the lines at his back; that's the curtain/stage walls + before he goes down u can see the stage light at the ceiling) is he apologizing to someone? did he see something fall?

camera changes again. he looks aside police kazui (or the chair), looks at his hands, and then puts his arm up at the air, as if he wants to catch someone? he's staring and putting his arms out towards the balcony floor, as if someone was going to fall. his palms open, and then he grasps them tightly in this scene; did he manage to catch whatever he wanted to catch? is he begging for mercy? is he trying to catch his dreams?

was it futile? the shot of his face prolongs for a little while. we can see his eyes slant. whatever he wanted from up there, it seems like he failed to get what we wanted.

the stage scenes end with kazui bowing towards the chair, like he just finished explaining things, or probably wanting to apologize towards the chair.

...meanwhile, when Kazui was still masked:

the camera is clearly Within the audience, shooting Kazui on the stage (vs the camera With kazui when he's mask-less, shooting Kazui's perspective of him to the audience).

there is no emphasis on the background, but instead, focuses more on kazui himself and what he's doing on the stage.

a lot of people think about the final bits of Cat, or the brief flashbacks in the screen at the final seconds of half as what happened before hinako's death, but i wonder if the mask-less stage scenes have the answers we need? maybe if we combined all of them together...

i have always interpreted the maskless scenes as Kazui re-enacting everything that has happened, and the info we have from Cat proves this even more to me tbh.

thank you for reading this far if you have! this is my first time trying to make a big post about milgram so please forgive me if this was hard to read, idk how to format these types of posts ;;

(this might've already been obvious to some people but I just felt like it was cool to point out, with the information we have from Cat.)

[ineffable-endearments]

This is the most specific season 3 "prediction" I have so far. I'm not very committed to it and there are SO MANY loose ends I'm aware it doesn't tie up, but pieces of it feel right enough to put here for curiosity's sake.

Background: This is not something I know much about, but I'm pretty sure the Book of Life is what determines who is Saved when the Second Coming happens. In other words, it doesn't work immediately, as Michael threatened, but people who are not in there will eventually be erased. Michael doesn't have the "authority" to erase anyone because they don't have the ability to start the Second Coming.

Imagine: Aziraphale spends years thinking he can rules lawyer the Second Coming by adding literally everyone to the Book of Life. He works his ass off, simultaneously following all of Heaven's rules and editing the Book during every moment he would have to actually think about anything.

Except when coming up with Great Plan-related stuff, Aziraphale does not think. Does he miss Earth and its people, its hot chocolate and concerts and wine? Well, he would, if he thought about it, which is why he doesn't think about it. Instead, he adds names. Even the names of people who've been in Hell for millennia. Forgiveness is one of his favorite things, and as long as he moves the Great Plan along, nobody cares if he hands forgiveness out like candy.

Over a hundred billion names he has to add. It wouldn't be possible for a human, but this is the scale angels work with. Still, it keeps him busy.

Yes, it will mean sacrificing Earth as a physical thing, the natural wonders and the material pleasures. But everyone will be together for eternity. It's an opportunity to ensure no one has to lose anybody ever again, to take away all the pain of mortality. Loss, programmed into the fabric of the universe?! If Aziraphale thinks about it - which he doesn't - it seems like a stupid idea. Surely the Almighty, being, well, Almighty, could have come up with a painless existence, right?

BUT.

The Book of Life will only recognize Heaven-given names. It's all in angelic language, whatever that language is that we see in S2E6 when Crowley is in Heaven. The Book of Life is, after all, a tool of the system that created it.

And guess who's erased his own former angelic name from...well, from everywhere, including his own head, leading to patchy memories? The one person Aziraphale wants to Save the most.

Aziraphale comes to Earth with Jesus on some kind of pretense, but the real motivation is to come find Crowley again and try to figure out how he might be able to figure out his angelic name.

Crowley flatly refuses to even try. You'll have to let them destroy me, he says, if you go through with this bullshit. Creation has value besides as a temporary testing ground before the Afterlife. It's not just here to twinkle. Maybe Crowley even says this as an Archduke of Hell. Maybe he took that position specifically to fight the Second Coming.

That's how Aziraphale realizes consciously what he actually loves about Crowley: his love of choice, his fierce individuality, the very way he has connected Aziraphale to life on Earth. Perhaps there are adventures on Earth that help him extend this realization well beyond Crowley, too, to the rest of the world, to the material things he assumed could be sacrificed for the sake of the people. But he's troubled. He knows the Heavenly machine is way bigger than him. Accepting that the Book of Life plan is wrong would also mean giving up any hope of controlling the damage that Heaven intends to do.

At some point, the Metatron, having realized his Supreme Archangel went predictably off the rails and withheld information until this very moment, tries to tempt Aziraphale by revealing that he alone remembers Crowley's angelic name, and if Aziraphale proceeds with the Second Coming, he can easily save Crowley.

But Aziraphale is now armed with the understanding that Crowley isn't truly himself when he's in Heaven's Book. His most Unpredictable Decision so far is to refuse the Metatron's offer. And the Second Coming starts, and Aziraphale and Crowley once again have no plan but show up anyway because they care too much to lie down and die without a fight, and humanity saves them once again.

Yes, obviously in all this, Aziraphale becomes disillusioned with Heaven. But it's more about figuring out that he doesn't want a universal Goodness Police than about any one particular incident.