#got plenty more characters to discuss from this series and how they relate to the AU!

[tgammsideblog]

Analysis on Scratch's past and human life in ¨The End¨

After so much build up and teasing from previous episodes, we finally get to learn about Scratch's human life before the events of the series and how he became a ¨ghost¨ in the Season 2 finale and series finale as whole, ¨The End¨

The episode starts with the Mcgees hanging out in a Brighton festival. Scratch is talking to Geoff and suddenly has an idea of eating funnel cakes by possessing Brigton citizens who are waiting in the line. He is having fun eating them, going from one person to the other, until he possesses a human named Todd, who often appears as background character in plenty of episodes.

When Scratch possesses Todd, he gets hit with flood of memories of Adia coming back to him. He is close to having a panic attack for the sudden flow of flashbacks and gets out from Todd's body, leaving him confused.

He goes to Molly and the others and tells them about this vision he had he thinks it was thanks to eating funnel cakes. Molly goes to help Scratch getting more funnel cakes to unlock more of his human memories while Ollie and Libby think there is something else going on that made Scratch get back some of his memories.

The scene that follows is Molly and Scratch showing a presentation to the rest of the Mcgee family (Pete, Sharon and Darryl) who are skeptical when they are told about the funnel cakes. Molly and Scratch sing a song about how Scratch and Adia travelled around the world together and how his life was a ¨never ending parade¨. They were going on adventures together and went to a different place every day. Scratch suggests he didn't remember any of this stuff because ¨he had nothing to regret¨.

In the song sequence we see Adia as adult and Scratch in his ghost form. All the memories that are shown in the scene never have Scratch on his human form, only potrayed as his ghost self.

After they are done with their presentation, Pete and Sharon bring up that they still don't know how Scratch died. While they are discussing how he could have died, Darryl is looking for something on his phone. He shows to Scratch an adventure influencer called ¨Adia Williams¨ who Scratch recognizes as the Adia he knew from his human life.

Molly finds a way to get a personal interview with Adia to ask her about Scratch. Adia remembers that he was her best friend when she used to live on Brighton and talks about how ¨Scratch¨ was a nickname she gave to him because he had an habit of scracthing his arm when he got nervous. She tells to Molly how they used to build planes and boats out of boxes and pretend they travel around the world. These games inspired Adia to become an adventure later in life.

Molly mentions that it must have been great to travel with Scratch around the world. Adia seems confused by this and explains that Scratch never came anywhere with her. She asked him many times but he always turned her down. Scratch's expression turns into a devastated upon learning he never went to those places he sang about earlier. Molly tries asking to Adia about Scratch's dead and she says that Scratch isn't dead before the interview cuts out.

This scene puts many things into context. The song ¨My Life was Awesome¨ in reality was about games that Scratch and Adia used to play as kids and not real things that happened. Scratch never went to those places, he thought he did. In addition to this, it explains why Scratch is in the series usually connected to navy related things and why he didn't know how be a captain in ¨All Shark No Bite¨, that's because those things were based on these memories he had playing with Adia on a fake boat.

Molly and Scratch are left very confused with the interview. They are interrupted by Libby, Ollie and Geoff, who tell them the investigation they have been carrying out about Scratch getting some of his memories back. They asked June to look into Brighton's cameras from the festival that took place at the start of the episode. They watched footage of Scratch posessing people and eating funnel cakes until he tried posessing Todd and got expelled out. Molly doesn't get why Todd would unlock these memories and describes him as ¨having no soul¨ and Scratch answers with ¨because he is me¨.

We get a song flashback sequence of Scratch narrating his life a human (Todd). He describes that in his life he never took risks and played it safe. He didn't have ¨adventures, stories nor romances¨ and stayed at home. He would make plans but cancel them. Because of his extreme anxieties, he would stay on himself, never trying out new things or making connections with others.

Adia would going on adventures and travel to different places while he would never tried anything. Adia would always try to invite Scratch to go with her but he always said ¨Maybe Next Time¨.

In the song we see Scratch feeling remorse for being always fearful. He says that he feels like ¨he wasted his whole life¨ for playing it safe and he ¨was so afraid of dying that he never lived a day¨.

As time moved on, Scratch ¨became numb¨, in the sense he stopped caring about things. He became indifferent. Being always so consumed by his own fears made him incredible miserable that was ¨dead¨ on the inside. This went on for a long time until a moment he was talking with Adia by text phone and Adia didn't answer, indicating that they grew apart and, feeling like he lost one of the only things that brought joy to the emptiness of his life, his ghost part of him separated from his own body, probably with the desire that he didn't wish to feel anything anymore.

Scratch says that his memories started to go as the years passed. Ollie and Libby explain that this is a common phenomenon with wraiths, which is what Scratch is. If a wraith ghost spends too much time away from their human body, they start to forget who they are.

Scratch answer to that that maybe he didn't remember anything because ¨there wasn't anything worth of remembering¨ and flies away, feeling emotionally devastated from learning about his human life.

This whole sequence put plenty of things in hindsight about Scratch's character.

First, that Adia is his unfinished business, as it was the desire of travel around the world with her that stayed with him to the point that as a ghost he went to Adia's house and stayed in the attic where they used to play games. It is one thing he dreamed of doing as human but never did because he was always too afraid of trying. This explains why he remembered Adia as kid and the time the hanged out together.

Second, that Scratch buried himself with work as human, a work that seemed to make him unhappy and miserable. This does give an idea of why he is so lazy as a ghost and why he never follows the rules. Maybe subconsciously he didn't wish to do anything of that because it made him remember of how miserable he felt as human or just couldn't bring himself to care as he used to.

Third, that it gaves some justification as for why Scratch shows childish traits as a ghost. While Scratch can be seen as a neurodivergent person based on things like his own anxieties and other traits, it is worth of noting that he went back to the place he used to play games with Adia as a kid. It's easy to assume based on this that his mind turned into one of a kid again or/and he wished to back to those days he was a kid.

On last point, Adia seems to be the only person that Scratch remembers of his human life. Part of this is because he avoided getting close to anyone to make true friendships or fall in love, but, the fact he never says anything about his family is quite telling. There are many things that hint that Scratch didn't have a good family as human in the show and this confirms the idea even further.

We don't know how Scratch's relationship with his family was. One thing that can be assumed is that they were likely neglectful or distant that didn't make Scratch worth of remembering them.

Scratch suppressed most of his human memories because he found his life too depressing to be worth of remembering. When he became a wraith he sort of created a new identity for himself, going by the name of ¨Scratch¨. The only thing he really seemed to hold on were his memories of Adia, mainly his childhood memories. This supports the idea that Scratch has a ¨double identity¨, one as human and other as wraith.

After for searching for Scratch everywhere, Molly realizes that one place he could be is near what used to be his human house, Todd's house. Molly finds him sitting on the sidewalk across the street, looking at the house sadly.

He wonders what his life would have been like if he hadn't always play it safe and accepted Adia's invitation. Molly suggests that he could go ¨back to living¨ except this time he says yes. Scratch thinks of this for a moment and decides to pass. Molly stops him and tells him that he is still ¨playing safe¨ and how he is still afraid. Scratch answers to that that she should be afraid too since that as a wraith he forgot about his human life and he isn't sure what would happen if he becomes human again.

Molly tells him that it is a risk, but ¨taking risks is what makes life worth of living¨ and that's how you know you are actually alive. Molly talks about how Scratch still ¨played it safe¨ when he became a ghost and he was scared of being hurt, getting rejected and being left behind. She tells him that that's how he used to be when she first met him but he isn't like that anymore, he has grown and he isn't afraid sharing himself with the world. She knows that is one thing he won't forget.

Scratch decides that Molly is right. The two say goodbye to each other and Scratch apologizes if he isn't able to remember her. Scratch rings Todd's bell house and waits for the door to open. Todd answers and Scratch goes to his body, becoming a human again. He smiles at Molly, with his eyes shining in gold light.

There is apparently a short time skip that shows Scratch, now as human, preparing himself to going for a trip. He is wearing a new more colorful style than the one Todd was used to wear in the series. Different characters like Libby, Darryl, Sharon and Pete try stopping him in different ways to see if he remembers them, only for them to not recognize them and telling them that he has to go.

Molly is in the bus station, Scratch sits besides her while he waits for the bus to arrive. He tells to Molly that he sold his house, quit his job and now he is going to see the world. He talks about different places he is going to visit. Molly is shown to be happy for Scratch finally being able to follow his life dream.

The bus arrives and Molly tells him that no matter where he goes, he remembers the friends he made on Brighton. Scratch reassures that he will and maybe he will return one day to visit. Scratch uses the Molly catchphase ¨sweet baby corn¨ and ¨enhappifying¨, not sure where he got from. He finally says goodbye to Molly, calling her ¨Moll¨. Molly notices that he never told human Scratch her name, realizing that Scratch retained his some memories from when he was a wraith.

The end credits have Scratch going to different places around the world, enjoying every moment. The final photo has him meeting with Adia hugging each other, which cuts to a painting of Molly and Scratch hugging. He is finally able to follow the life dream he always wanted, keeping himself the things he learned as wraith during the series.

[sofiadragon]

Welcome, Friend

I've been writing fanfiction since the '90s. While I do post in-progress snippets of fanfiction I am writing here (you can check the "my writing" tag for that) the main place to read my written work is on AO3.

In case of shenanigans here is the address: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SofiaDragon/works

I use my bookmarks as a collection of stories I have read and enjoyed enough not to lose. I also use the Recommended Stories feature, so if you want to see a list of fantastic stories, you can utilize the filter or just click here.

I reblog a lot of things that catch my attention, but mostly fandom stuff and current events. There are a lot of different fandoms I am interested in, and sometimes I'll go back to the stories that first got me interested in writing. From Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek to the latest MCU movie and Spy X Family - I like a wide range of story types so long as the characters are well crafted. Give me someone who seems so real they can walk right off the page, and I'm happy. If you like that sort of thing, pull up a chair and stay a while.

More personal stuff about who I am under the cut!

I do a lot of worldbuilding in my writing and I'm told that I'm skilled at inserting humor and dramatic irony. In IRL conversation I'm sarcastic and enjoy ethical and political debates - and I have the privilege of coming from a family where we don't take those disagreements personally and will happily "devil's advocate" a position just to prolong the discussion. Especially on the internet, hot intellectual debate without catching feelings is a rare commodity.

I studied world religion, psychology, and creative writing as an Early Childhood Education major for my first round in college. Then I had to go make money due to a family calamity, so I swapped to Small Business Management and learned about economics, politics, teaching adults, and bookkeeping. Eventually, I took a job at a small chocolate shop and learned how to make gourmet chocolates, because the stress of my office job was actually killing me.

I believe that some of the hard fan criticisms of series and movies come from a place of love, since we wouldn't care so much if we weren't invested. You will see posts tagged "critical" or "criticism" related to fandoms that I adore. That thing I said about intellectual debates? It absolutely applies here.

I also use the tag "us politics" or "us politics falling on its face" for political posts. If you don't want to see commentary on real life drama than skip those posts, there is plenty of fictional drama to talk about.

I've had some mental health struggles related to my poor physical health and a hormone imbalance caused by working in an office where the boss used testosterone cream irresponsibly. I'm very strong on trans/genderqueer issues partly because I have experienced the distress of my body doing masculine things like growing a full beard against my will and partly because I have a cousin 20+ years older than me who transitioned when I was a kid and is one of the most actualized and happy people I've ever known.

Nobody should be forced to use their body or perform their life in a certain way for the benefit of other people so long as they aren't hurting anybody else. This also includes medical privacy and legalizing [while responsibly regulating] drugs. You will see this theme in some of my stories and it colors all of them in the sense that my idea of what is morally correct includes that kind of freedom.

[theromanticscrooge]

Video Topics I'm Considering

Character analyses or videos about O.K. K.O. in general are a given at this point. That's going to be an ongoing series until I just can't think of any other discussion topics or feel like I've covered everything I want to (and it's gonna be a long time before I get anywhere close to that. I still feel like I'm just getting started).

This is more of a list of other cartoons, anime, and various topics I'm considering talking about at some point.

Top 10 Favorite Bob's Burgers Episodes

Bob's Burgers is my favorite adult cartoon or animated sitcom hands down. And I've watched through the entire series a few different times to the point I feel confident in making a top 10. There's already plenty of YouTubers making fantastic character and series analyses and I don't feel like I have anything interesting to add. But I want to talk about it anyway so I will.

Sims Retrospective

I was 11 when I first got into The Sims. This is one of my favorite evergreen topics and this would be an excuse to gush about one of my favorite games ever. I'd only be covering Sims 1 and 2, though. I avoid Sims 4 like the plague and I'm still getting reacquainted with Sims 3.

Is Reigen Arataka Sexy?

I have an older post/unfinished draft starting to scratch at the surface of this. The whole fandom debate over how fuckable Reigen is cracks me up and horribly fascinates me.

Hooty, the Best Example of An Annoying Comic Relief

Hooty is my favorite Owl House character. I have thoughts on him and how he fits the 'annoying character' archetype. This is the only idea I have related to The Owl House that I think would translate well to a video (or feel like I can give a unique take on, anyway). There's already videos and thorough discussions on everything else.

Something AleHeather Related

AleHeather is a well-known ship from the Total Drama series and....my no.1 OTP. Sarcastic Chorus already has a fantastic video talking about their in-show dynamic so I'd be covering this from a different angle. I'm not exactly sure what I'd be doing yet.

Something El Tigre Related

I've been debating giving El Tigre the same character analysis treatment I'm giving O.K. K.O. I freaking love this cartoon. It's easily one of my top 10 and I definitely want to revisit this one.

These are just topics I'm considering for my main channel. I'm gonna be particular about stuff that gets a time-intensive video essay.

I'm a lot more open to more contemporary topics like Digital Circus or whatever else for art time-lapse voiceovers. I want my other channel to be a lot looser and goofier!

[likealittleheartbeat]

so (unrelated to atla but related to the themes i look at on this blog), i am currently watching fruits basket (2019) for the first time and reading up analyses as one does. Based on what i've seen and have read about the ending of the series, a lot of people (who write about this kind of thing) have taken this manga and the show at face value regarding it's flamboyantly explicit queer representation--we've got multiple characters cross-dressing, homosexual exploits and flirting expressed openly. The idea that the conclusions the show depicts (characters grow out of their cross-dressing and end up in heterosexual relationships) represents the show's attitudes towards queerness is wild to me! That would have to mean that this is one of the most queer-phobic shows of all time in a exceptionally spectacular way!

So much homophobia and transphobia exists as ignorant side-jokes and or stereotypical and shallow character depictions. Other homophobic and transphobic strategies in media simply don't include them; the creators forget they exist in the world, perhaps, because they don't travel in the same circles, or, worse, they want to actively deny representation so as to discourage influencing others from following even those shallow models.

Fruits Basket, if it really stands at that face value of its plot points (again, I haven't finished it yet!), would be exceptional in filling its story with incredibly fleshed-out and sympathetic queer characters, whose queerness is not even subtextual, in order to make an argument that healthy development in an environment that encourages love and acceptance will allow these suffering queer characters to, pun-intended, straighten out. What's especially wild is that, if that's the case, the show crafts this narrative, with its resonant and well-understood dynamics of abuse, with such fulfilling beauty (which perhaps should alert us to the possibilities that even concepts like "acceptance" and "recovery" to be rhetorically co-opted to move us and connect us to arguments we politically disagree with).

In all honesty, I'll be shocked if I get to the end of the series and agree with these face-value analyses. I've never seen a show with so much explicit queerness tied into its thematic core that would be driving towards the kind of conservative conclusions that my readings would have be believe I'm heading toward. I expect to see a lot more possibilities for queer-coded readings of the ending once I finish it, but even if it doesn't, how incredible it would be to see a show make a conservative argument about queerness without demonizing or making pariahs of its queer characters, unafraid to be queer and sexual as it made these arguments, even regarding the painful experiences queer people have had to live through with a deeply empathetic light.

At the end of the day, it would still be wrong, in my view based on what I know from lived experience and plenty upon plenty of research. A story like this queer-phobic version of Fruit Baskets I've read about (still haven't finished it! so check back later) would simply be the psychological disease model that emerged alongside the rise of psychology in the twentieth century, with the benefit of a developmental understanding that prioritizes acceptance and some integration of attachment theory (all the animal zodiac curses in the show are related to parental neglect and abuse, after all). It's a lot less abrasive than other gay therapeutic methods we've heard of. But perhaps it says something about the world we live in (or just me lol) that the simple idea that queer people could be treated with humanity when being discussed in a conservative lens feels exceptional. what's most interesting watching this show for me, is that i agree with its empathetic methods and themes so deeply and have such a hard time believing i'm going to disagree with its conclusions the way others suggest i will, but it feels a little thrilling to me to be challenged in a much subtler way than usual. for a show to offer such incredible queer representation (what everyone demands), not only in characters but in little asides and even core tenets of the show! and then to search for what small point we diverge on to reach such different perspectives on what acceptance means and can do!

[expertmaster1]

Where Can I Watch The Secret Life Of The American Teenager?

Are you ready to dive into the dramatic world of teenage secrets and tangled relationships? Look no further than "The Secret Life of the American Teenager"! This hit TV series captivated audiences with its compelling storylines, relatable characters, and plenty of juicy drama. Whether you're a fan looking to re-watch this addictive show or a newcomer eager to discover what all the fuss is about, we've got you covered.

In this blog post, we'll explore where you can watch "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," discuss the pros and cons of diving into this teen soap opera and more. Get ready to immerse yourself in a world filled with love triangles, unexpected twists, and coming-of-age dilemmas!

What is the Secret Life of the American Teenager?

The Secret Life of the American Teenager is a popular television series that aired from 2008 to 2013. It revolves around the life of Amy Juergens, a teenage girl who becomes pregnant and must navigate the challenges of young motherhood. It explores how one decision can change the course of someone's life and affect those around them.

Throughout its five-season run, The Secret Life of the American Teenager garnered a dedicated fan base who were captivated by its relatable characters and compelling storylines. The show tackled important issues faced by teenagers including sex education, peer pressure, and self-identity.

One aspect that sets this series apart is its ability to balance drama with moments of humor and heartwarming scenes. It presents an honest portrayal of teenage life while also providing entertainment value.

If you're looking to watch The Secret Life of the American Teenager, there are several options available for streaming or purchase online. Whether you prefer subscribing to streaming platforms like Hulu or Amazon Prime Video or purchasing individual episodes on iTunes or Google Play, you can easily find a way to enjoy this beloved series.

So if you're in search of a captivating coming-of-age drama that will keep you hooked from start to finish, give The Secret Life of the American Teenager a try!

From Where you can watch  the Secret Life of  an American Teenager

One option for streaming "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" is Hulu. With a subscription to Hulu, you'll have access to all five seasons of the show, so you can binge-watch to your heart's content. Another streaming service that offers the series is Freeform, which allows viewers with cable or satellite TV subscriptions to stream episodes online.

For those who prefer purchasing individual episodes or seasons, platforms like Amazon Prime Video and iTunes offer options for buying or renting episodes. This way, you can watch at your own pace without committing to a full subscription.

It's important to note that availability may vary depending on your location and streaming platform preferences. So before diving into any particular service, make sure it offers "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" in your country.

Now that we've covered where to watch this beloved teen drama series let's explore some pros and cons associated with watching it.

Pros and Cons of Watching the Secret Life of the American Teenager

Pros

1. Engaging Storyline: The Secret Life of the American Teenager follows the lives and relationships of a group of teenagers, tackling real-life issues such as teenage pregnancy, love, friendship, and family dynamics. Its relatable storyline keeps viewers hooked from start to finish.

2. Strong Characters: The show features a diverse cast with well-developed characters, each dealing with their unique struggles and growth throughout the series. From protagonist, Amy Juergens to supporting characters like Ricky Underwood and Adrian Lee, the depth of these individuals adds layers to the narrative.

3. Emotional Details: It explores themes such as identity crisis, self-discovery, heartbreaks, loss, and personal growth.

Cons

1. Unrealistic Dialogue: While the show aims to depict authentic teen conversations and issues realistically portrayed at times dialogue can feel forced or overly dramatic which might not sit well with some viewers seeking more naturalistic dialogue.

2. Stereotypical Portrayals: Some critics argue that certain character stereotypes perpetuated in this series may oversimplify complex social issues or reinforce harmful tropes about gender roles or sexual behavior among teenagers.

3. Pacing Issues: At times there are pacing problems where certain storylines drag on for too long or seem repetitive while others don't receive enough attention resulting in an imbalanced viewing experience.

The  Life of  American teenager Netflix

One popular platform where you can watch "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" is Netflix. This streaming service offers a wide range of TV shows and movies, including this beloved teen drama series.

Netflix provides convenience and accessibility when it comes to watching your favorite shows. With just a few clicks, you can start binge-watching "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" from the comfort of your own home. Plus, with Netflix's user-friendly interface, navigating through episodes and seasons is a breeze.

Whether you prefer to devour each episode in one sitting or spread them out over time, Netflix gives you the freedom to choose how you consume this addictive series.

Additionally, another benefit of using Netflix for "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" is that it allows for seamless streaming across multiple devices. Whether you prefer watching on your laptop, smartphone, or smart TV, Netflix ensures that you can enjoy this show anytime and anywhere.

However, while there are many advantages to watching on Netflix, it's important to note that availability may vary depending on your region. So before getting too excited about diving into this teenage drama series marathon session, make sure that "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" is available in your country's library.

Overall, "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" promises an engaging storyline filled with romance, drama, and relatable coming-of-age themes. Opting for Netflix as a platform allows fans old and new alike, enjoyment at their convenience.

Conclusion

As we come to the end of this blog post, it's clear that finding where to watch "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" can be a bit tricky. However, with a little persistence and some online searching skills, you'll be able to find a platform that offers this beloved TV show.

Remember, there are several streaming platforms out there like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video. While "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" may not currently be available on these popular services, don't get discouraged! There are other options available.

One great alternative is to check if the show is available for purchase or rental on platforms like iTunes or Google Play. Additionally, keep an eye out for any special deals or promotions that might include "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." Streaming platforms frequently update their content libraries and offer limited-time discounts.

By being resourceful and persistent in your search for where to watch "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," you'll soon be able to enjoy this captivating series from start to finish. 

[mikey-media-society]

Blade

Part of me finds it kind of funny how the audiences for the MCU are finally receding, and no, not in a snobby film critic sort of way. I, myself, enjoyed the Marvel movies while they had everyone eating out the palm of their hands and you were a fool and you would regret it if you skipped out on one of their movies during that era, even if it was starring one of the lesser iconic characters. I do not typically hop on bandwagons myself but I can safely say that I was a MCU fan and went to every movie with my friends. Not only were the movies charming and entertaining and led to an awesome and satisfying conclusion by bringing all those worlds together, but I think they were also good conversation pieces and I recall sitting and discussing those movies sometimes just as fun as watching them. However, I admittedly struggled staying in the loop with what Marvel had to offer after Endgame, and an increasing amount of viewers are beginning to feel the same way. When they implemented shows from Disney+ into the mix, there just seemed like there was way too much to keep up with in order to understand everything. You went from 1-2 movies a year, to that and a handful of mini-series. And eventually, oversaturation comes with burnout and I think that’s what many Marvel fans are going through. I have not watched anything post Shang-Chi, but I typically hear repeating complaints and sentiments by most people online and offline regarding the current Marvel movies.Many people say things like “corny” or “cheesy” or even “full of itself”. The standards that Endgame left everyone with, alongside the chore of keeping up with every MCU-related piece of content, nobody knows if the MCU will ever hook and reel everyone like it did before. But the reason why I brought all of this up is because when I hear criticisms like this, there is a part in the back of my head that has a Marvel movie, one that predates the cinematic universe, that basically fits those descriptions to a T. That movie is the story centered around Eric Brooks, but you might know him better as Blade.

When I first watched Blade, the entire runthrough, all I could think to myself was how it is the perfect encapsulation of 90’s edge. After decades of clean-cut and filtered media, a rebellious wave dominated the scene and edginess was in. Movies, television, toys, and commercials were all feeding into that type of energy and Blade was no exception. Blade’s attempt to win you over is by overcompensating with dark and muted colors and an unapologetic bloodbath and fascination with gore, along with the kinds of one-liners that were cool to drop back then, but big eye-rollers now, like “I’m going to enjoy this”. Blade was doing everything in its power to make you think it was cool. The movie that is, believe it or not, the actual character of Blade didn’t have to lay it on so thick in its attempt to impress you. Blade himself is one of the few elements that is surrounded in a world of exaggerated deaths and cheesy one-liners is just naturally cool. Played phenomenally by Wesley Snipes, Blade is a cold, skilled, badass vampire slayer who doesn’t let anybody get in his way. Sporting a trench coat and sunglasses while wielding swords, daggers, knives, all things sharp that he uses to hack and slash through his enemies.  And to top it all off, he’s got a silky smooth voice. As mentioned before, Blade is a vampire slayer and lucky for him, there are plenty of vampires to slay. They’re everywhere, lurking the streets by day, sinking their teeth into people by night. However, one particular vampire and antagonist of the film, has desires of something more for the vampire race, he believes they have the potential to both dominate the overworld and the underworld, seeking out ancestral powers that will turn him into an unstoppable force and conqueror of both worlds in the process. But Blade is not going to let that happen. Now feels like a good time as ever to talk about Blade’s hatred for the vampire race and what drives him to kill them in the first place. Well, for starters, spoiler alert: Blade is half-human and half-vampire, or known as a day-walker by the vampires. “Born from a mother ravaged by vampirism and gifted superhuman abilities by a bite from Morbius, the Living Vampire, Blade is the Daywalker—a skilled martial artist who possesses most vampire strengths and none of their weaknesses. His life is the tireless pursuit of eradicating the world of the beasts who seek to destroy innocent life.. But he is never conflicted between picking sides, as he views all vampires as scum for infecting his mother, giving him the powerful abilities he has today” (Marvel.org). That’s an important detail, remember that for later. Soon after that, Blade had been abandoned and had been brought in by Abraham Whistler, serving as both the mentor and father figure in their relationship.  “Whistler took Eric in and became a father figure to him.He helped Eric overcome the self-hatred stemming from his inhuman nature.He gave him a mission in life: hunting vampires to avenge his mother’s murder and the loss of a normal human life. Eric took a new name to signify his rebirth — Blade” (Writeups.org). While Abraham helped Blade transform into the cold-blooded vampire hunter that he is now, he doesn’t hold that against him nor does Blade credit all of his success to Abraham for how trained in combat he is. They have a mutual respect for each other. You also have Dr. Karen Jenson, a woman who has been bitten by a vampire and has minimal time to find a cure for herself. Admittedly, her and Blade’s relationship isn’t anything notable but she does something significant to Blade’s character by the third act.

Speaking of, a ton of significant things happen to Blade’s character by the third act, Deacon Frost gets personal by killing Abraham Whistler, which sets off Blade to show these vampires no mercy, unfortunately, things don’t get any better for Blade though, as his perception of reality and everything he stands for is crushed when it is revealed his Mother has banded together with the vampires. The sole reason why Blade pursued being a vampire hunter was to avenge his mother, only to see that she has switched sides and loves being one. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21TKB3TDoNg) Blade, at the culmination of his most vulnerability, goes completely savage. He puts the ritual to the halt, killing every vampire in sight and releasing their demons, his mother included. By the end of the movie, Dr. Karen Jenson has discovered a cure for vampires and offers it to Blade, only for him to decline. I speculate the reasoning behind this is because Blade realizes the responsibility he has more than ever before, who knows if there are other vampires or supernatural beings out there and after witnessing the negative impact the vampires had on his innocent mother and having those abilities without that kind of upbringing, that makes Blade the protector of the human race against vampires, whilst being half-vampire himself. “Blade's destiny is to hunt and destroy those who'd prey on humanity, to rid the world of evil” (Marvel.com) And for those reasons Blade can be cool without him needing to be in your face about it.

References

[twitchesandstitches]

Some Overwatch in Crossthicc thoughts:

Omnics are pretty much as in canon, robots created to be menial labor who resented their lot in life, rose up and caused a massive war with tons of collateral damage and body counts. Unlike canon, though, they are far older; Crossthicc’s Omnic Crisis took place eons ago, and was part of the cataclysm that wrecked the multiverse. Additionally it wasn’t just Omnics but robots of all kinds (basically all intelligent robots that are not naturlaly revolving mechanical lifeforms), generally referred in positive tones by historians and is seen as having been a historical inevitability. There are many Omnics in the Endowed Nomad Fleet, generally super curvy fembots, but they are numerous enough to be present in all factions.

Note that, due to the much broader scope of Crossthicc, there is no garuantee that canon characters have any relation to each other, or even know one another unless specifically stated or are related.

Reaper may be the main Ghost Rider of this setting, given his powers and habits. Otherwise he is pretty much the same as in canon. This version of him g oes with the idea that his actions are deep cover spy games; he is a genuine hero here, if something of a total troll, and is the unofficial leader of Task Force X. He may be extremely old, dating back to the times of pre-spaceflight Earth. This would make him over four thousand years old; at the very least, he doesn’t’ age. Is a team dad to the Task Force, and scouts out poential recruits. Looks absolutely horrifying beneath the mask, but is legit a good guy, and a buff beefcake at that.

Widowmaker/Amelie Lacroix was at one point an assassin in service to a minor organization in service to the Ringers, but was freed of her programming. She has since taken her services to the Task Force in hopes of redeeming herself. Hyper hourglass and super limber, with spider-themed mutations and gadgets. She may be from a line of designer clones engineered to be absolutely Perfect. Also possibly from a sci-fi version of Dragon Age’s Orlais, which may be used in-setting as a Space France of sorts.

Winston: Originally from a technocratic society of hyper-intelligent sapient apes, from gorillas like him, to orangutangs and chimpanzees, some of which are anthro monster people, and others are not. A member of the Endowed Nomad Fleet, humbly considering himself a regular engineer but is one of their most respected and admired super-scientists, with many cybernetic intelligence enchancements, and an ace pilot of mechas and powered armor. In a close relationship with Athena/EDI (see below). He has some unspecified conflicts with a famous criminal warlord of his home society, Grodd (of DC comics) and they have polar opposite views on non-apes.

Pharah/Fareeha Amari: A super-soldier kitted out with high grade cybernetics and enhancement mods, she operates an ace custom suit of powered armor called the Raptora, capable of flight and massive bombardment, and can slot into a larger mecha for REALLY big fights. (It is patterned after her Thunderbird skin, aesthetically, and this version of her leans a bit more towards her First Nations ancestry.) A member of the Endowed Fleet, and she is also Endowed herself; a hyper curvy amazon, with obvious cybernetics and giant size. Also has explosion-based superpowers and falcon-themed mods, including feathery hair, talon fingers, and even genuine hawk wings.

Ana Amari: Mother to Fareeha, and a Fullmetal Alchemist-styled alchemist, mixing up and experimenting with mods and power-up potions. Despite her age, she is far younger than she looks, appearing even younger than her daughter. She’s got more hips than Fareeha’s curve balance does. Can use her alchemy skill offensively, and acts as a combat medic otherwise, and works as a doctor aboard the fleet. Is also Endowed herself.

Symmetra/Satva Vaswani: Member of the Endowed Fleet, and she is also Endowed herself; hyper hourglass, with an extremely small waist and absolutely massive hips/bust ratio. Not really bio-modded, but makes heavy use of cybernetics to make herself impossibly limber, agile and ludicrously fast. A physicist and gadgeteer in excellent standing on the fleet! Specializes in a variety of ‘hard pixel’ the fleet uses as a somewhat plausible take on hard light, and uses powers to weaponize it somewhat. Fairly close with Jade Harley, in a friendly rival way, as their technological discoveries are similar. (they have probably fused.)

Other characters below!

Zarya: Independant, originally part of a group dedicated to fighting kaiju and from the same broad group that includes the likes of the Neon Genesis Evangelion characters, and the as-yet-undetermined cast from Pacific Rim. She fought on the ground, using potent biological enhancements, though she has a lot of conflict over this, developing something of a fear of misuse of power. She’s otherwise a super soldier, and her dislike of robots stems from conflict with the Decepticons... which would give anyone a phobia of robotic life. The Dinobots love annoying her whenever they cross paths. Since her original group dissolved, she’s gathered a group of like-minded ‘protect the helpless from evil’ military-types and formed an informal mercenary band that takes helpful jobs. Mega-amazon body type, like canon but bigger, bustier, and with more obvious enhancements.

Zenyatta: An omnic who was born quite recently, his fabrication line going all the way back to the catacylsm. He is a Doctor Strange-style sorcerer, using potent magic harnessed from the realms and his enlightened understanding of the cosmos, as well as soul energy. Initially he was a monk studying within a vast and great library (possibly one belonging to a mighty knowledge spirit named Wan Shi Tong, possible one more mundane in nature), but when the Endowed Fleet came there seeking information, he joined them with a thirst to see the multiverse in person. He’s also a healing wizard, and helps restore damaged people and parts.

Angela Ziegler/Mercy: An incredibly ancient human, possibly around Reaper’s age, but she is something of a sci fi lich, though a very pretty one; preserved through unusual procedures to survive through the ages, radiating the healing energies she employs to restore others. Being technically undead has no effect on her ethics (as this setting doesn’t do that kinda thing), and she serves as an advisor to a large and multi-species federation going throughout the multiverse and trying to establish order. Hyper thicc MILF body type, with biomechanical angelic wings. She may also have an angel of some kind merged with her, until an unspecified task is done.

Bastion: Not the only one of their kind! The Bastions were a weapon originally created during the cataclysm in order to combat some terrifying menace, but resented being made to be unthinking weapons and rose up to claim their freedom. While few survived the conflict, the standard template to create them survived and has seen use in anti-Transformer conflicts. our bastion is an ancient and power one one, dating back to that ancient conflict in the cataclysm, but whatever happened was so intensely traumatic they cannot consciously remember it, and being forced to remember sends sthem into a terrified panic. Is mecha-sized here, and might be able to shift into a more fembot-style form for the heck of it? A member of the Endowed Nomad Fleet, usually happily wandering around the agriculture ships and taking care of the beasts and pets at the zoo facilities.

Athena/EDI: A composite character of Athena from Overwatch proper, and EDI from Mass Effect. A powerful AI so intelligent and mighty that she is actually a member of the God Squad, and may even be a goddess, or hit some kind of singularity that she is on that level. While she exists as one of the fleet’s ships, its systems are not powerful enough to truly embody her, and so she is not entirely online. She also exists as a wide variety of extremely curvaceous fembot bodies modeled after the same ones used by the likes of Aradia and others who download themselves into super curvy robot platforms. These are not quite powerful enough to express even a fraction of her power, but she is improving them all the time. In a close, romantic relationship with Winston (mirroring both her canon friendship, and EDI’s romance with the pilot Joker/Jeff Moreau). She is Endowed, and rumor suggests that she can transform her ship body into a massive ultra-thicc MILFy body, and gets larger the more powerful the ship is. In theory, her true humanoid forms could be larger than planets.

As Athena is probably a goddess, she does have a wide range of divine powers, usually themed around wisdom, guardianship, and strategy. Whether she is actually the Athena (since I’m still not too sure about using real life mythologies all over the place) is a matter of some debate. It might just be a name... or not.

[olderthannetfic]

Your blog just keeps turning into the place to discuss the discourse of the week lol. To make this an actual ask, how many books do you read? I've personally found my actual book reading dropped off after starting to read fanfiction do you feel the same or?

--

I have experienced that, but it hasn't been uniformly true in recent years.

Up through high school, I read regular big publisher fiction voraciously. I read many different genres and a lot of books that weren't entirely my thing. Whatever was handy, I read. We're talking the 90s here, so while I lived near a ton of amazing independent bookstores, it wasn't yet a time when you could find literally anything.

In college, my pleasure reading dropped off considerably, especially my reading of fiction. After college, I didn't pick it up again, at least not to the same degree and not for a while. My mother once described the same process in her own life. I think it's common.

I started reading fic at 13 in 1994, so no, my fiction reading did not drop off at once.

Since that time, my fic reading has waxed and waned, usually in relation to whether I'm in any fandoms big enough to have a steady supply of fic. I don't tend to be able to stick to big fandoms for more than 6 months or so (BTS being an exception), and I seldom reread fic, so I don't always have anything to read.

In 2016, I suddenly discovered the world of "m/m romance", which is a niche that tends to be indiepub and selfpub, very fic-like, and primarily produced and consumed by AFABs. My favorite thing is casefic with first time ship, so novel-length m/m genre fiction with plots was catnip. I'm not as into the contemporary romances or series romance (in the 1 ship/book industry sense), but I fucking love the series urban fantasy mysteries +/- historical.

I spent that year reading through the backlog of famous m/m romance authors and read very little else. But, eventually, I ran out of obvious things from recs lists and got distracted by fandom again. Just lately, I've mostly been reading BTS fic when I've read fiction.

Throughout all of this, even in college to some degree, I've read stacks of nonfiction. I do tend to read on subjects I'm specifically researching now rather than just picking up any book that's sitting around.

--

Basically, I think there is a common experience where bookworms read everything when young but eventually figure out what they like most and stop reading things they don't really care about just because they're there.

Many people who like m/m on AO3 don't know about m/m romance ebooks or translations of danmei novels or scanlations of BL manga or whatever. For them, AO3 is the primary and best source of this type of content. It's only natural that regular books start to look less appealing. Why waste time on something kind of okay when there's something you love right there?

Some people will say that it's all about the familiar characters giving you an easy entry point, and for some people, I'm sure that's true, but I think plenty of people would stop only reading fic if they could reliably and easily find original work that actually caters to them.

--

To answer your specific question, at any given point in time, I probably have two or three long nonfiction books I'm in the middle of reading, but finishing could take months since these tend to be reference books and weighty academic tomes.

[yabai-korra]

The reasons why we're getting Manorian book

There has been a lot of speculation whether SJM is going to favor us with book/novella about Manon Blackbeak and Dorian Havilliard, recently I saw some fans doubting it, so here's a list of logical reasons why it's happening.

1. It's SJM

This woman writes two 500+ pages books per year, for her it would be a piece of cake.

2. There have already been books focused on side characters

a) Chaol and Yrene - Chaol was one of the most unpopular characters before Tower of Dawn (which made me love him hehe) and she still wrote a 600+ pages long book about him, just imagine what she'd do with the most popular character (Manon) and one of the most popular ones (Dorian).

b) Nesta and Cassian - this is ship is the closest to Manorian equivalent in ACOTAR series, aka starting from a physical relationship that develops into a sentimental one. Also 6th ACOTAR book will be focused on a new characters (most probably Elain)

3. Favoritism

SJM has talked multiple times about her love for these two. When asked about her favorite TOG character, she said Aelin, but Manon was a close second place and she said that she absolutely loves writing her.

In another interview, when asked who she would go on a book tour with and a few similar questions, she answered Dorian.

Now, I haven't seen all of her interviews ever and I'm not sure how much she loves Nessian and Cahorene (seems to love Nessian a hella lot tho), but it's definite that Manorian are some of her favorite characters and it's just logical that she would write about them.

4. Unfinished story/Unresolved feelings

Ships at the end of TOG:

Rowaelin - married

Elorcan - engaged

Lysaedion - engaged

Chaorene - married with a baby on the way

Nestaq - engaged

Manorian - hug and "we'll see"

All the ships basically got engaged in the last chapter (it's not like I didn't like it hehe) and their stories, romantic-wise, were pretty much finished and they have no unresolved tension between them. Manorian on the other hand, have enough of it for all the ships lol.

KOA spoilers ahead!

Keep in mind, Manorian relationship was mostly a sexual one, and they don't quite yet have a way of communicating their feelings properly. So there is a lot of unaddressed between them, even though they obviously care a lot about each other.

The unresolved things between Manon and Dorian:

"“And if I asked you to stay?” / “I’d need a very convincing reason, I suppose.” / “Because I don’t want you to go.” - they just fucked and Dorian left for Morath later, which impacted Manon a lot but they haven't discussed it

"I even care about you." - Manon got up and left

"There is only one witch who will be my queen." - Manon doesn't know about this

Manon saved Dorian from Valg demon even when Aelin couldn't. It was the worst thing to happen to Dorian and he still bears scars from it, yet he didn't have an appropriate situation to thank Manon for it

Dorian knows that Erawan lusted after Manon, which got him pissed of course, and he didn't have a chance nor time to ask Manon about it. It might be nothing, but if I were Dorain and my girlfriend who doesn't show feelings was locked up with a crazy guy who has a thing for her, and have seen the way he treats women, I'd be concerned. Erawan was a Valg king, a tough opponent even for Manon. If he had done something to her, and he had plenty of means and opportunities and wish to do so, Manon would never openly tell anyone (maybe Asterin) about it, because it would imply opening up and being weak, which is Manon's worst fear. Again, SJM, as the Queen of Foreshadowing, wouldn't just randomly throw in the main villain having a thing for an important character, everything in her books always has a meaning and purpose.

"Would you miss me if I didn't [come back]?" - Manon didn't reply

This is how SJM described Manorian marriage: "She would be his wife, his queen. She was already his equal, his match, mirror in so many ways. And with their union, the world would know it." - and you're telling me it's not deserving of its own book? Not just that, Manon asked Dorian for marriage and they, again, just had sex, with Dorian loving the idea but deep down knowing that Manon would feel caged in a marriage. And that attitude won't just change out of the blue. It takes time and development which is something SJM writes amazingly.

With the Thirteen gone, beside Abraxos Dorian is the only creature Manon cares about.

Dorian's mortality (although as you'll see in point #6 I'm sure he's not human)

The dreaded "You could just marry each other." / "We'll see." (Thanks Yrene :)

5. Foreshadowing

Listen here, SJM IS THE QUEEN OF FORESHADOWING. She thought of a detail (Dorian's dad's name) in the first book that would matter in the last book. Of course, there are many many many more examples of that, but if we got "We'll see." then we'll fucking see it happen.

6. Unresolved things about Manon and Dorian as individual characters.

Manon and Dorian and both pretty broken at the end of KOA.

Manon lost the Thirteen, the only people she cared about. That is a huge trauma that needs to be addressed, especially with someone so reluctant to show feelings and heal like Manon.

Dorian can't be human?? He has fae abilities due to his relation to Gavin and Elena even though he's not even called a demi-fae. He possesses powers no one else does, phantom hands for example, which he didn't steal like shape-shifting. And Maeve pointed out that due to his father being possessed by Valg when Dorian was sired, it's possible he got some of the Valg abilities. (Also she said that he's stronger than Aelin) The main villain, especially written by Queen of Foreshadowing, wouldn't just let drop it there and that's it. Also not to mention Dorian's own struggle with depression and self-worth.

They have both just become rulers of their kingdoms, completely new to it. Dorian has spent a big part of KOA imagining what kind of a king he wants to be (one that will have a witch queen hehe) and it was a major point of his character. And addition to that affecting them as characters, the future of Adarlan and Witch Kingdom could make a good plotline.

7. Other TOG characters

Although pretty much all the readers would die to see Chaorene baby, Lorcan in Perranth, Aelin and Rowan ruling Terrasen, Lysandra and Adeion officially adopting Evangeline, Nesryn and Sartaq becoming Khagan and Empress of Antica, all of these don't make enough of a plot on its own. They are great side-plots.

We know all of these characters love each other and are happy together, there isn't that much to be added to their personal stories other than kids. (same way Feyre and Rhys got a baby in Nessian book) Manorian however, they haven't even kissed without it leading to sex, they hugged at the end of KOA and it was the pique of their relationship. Their relationship is merely at the beginning, whereas others have pretty much reached their ultimatum (ofc SJM can decide to add some drama with betrayal, kidnapping, pregnancy etc. but for now everyone is good and settled beside Manorian)

Not to mention the way other relationships would affect them. Chaol, Dorian's brother, and Yrene, Manon's wannabe bestie and Manorian shipper, would bring their baby to meet his/her uncle Dorian and aunt Manon, and imagine Manon with a baby lol.

SJM loves Aelin and other characters way too much not to give us an insight on them as married couples, but since her books are huge and it's her, it needs a plot with drama, addressing traumas, repressed feelings, worldbuilding, and sex, and Manorian's got all of that.

8. Abraxos

We need more Abraxos, that's just a fact.

Wow that was a long one. Anyways, in conclusion, we're getting that Manorian book. Pretty sure it's gonna a book rather than a novella (TOD was also planned as a novella but then guess what) because there is just SO MUCH possible content.

[deardragonbook]

Mental Health representation - The implied, and the stated

Mental health is important, it always has been, but now it is coming to the public’s attention, with it comes a lot of discussion about media representation. 

I remember when I was a teenager and the Big Bang Theory was all the rage, there was the constantly questioning of, “What is Sheldon?” And the public seemed to collectively agree he was autistic. 

The show runners at the time denied the statement, saying, “We don’t know what he is.” 

Arguments would later emerge, some people argued it was “bad” representation and din’t represent the community! While others saw themselves reflected in the character. 

And here’s the thing, no one character can ever present a community. Writing mental health requires a lot of research and if you’re going to say something by name, you better know what you’re talking about. So with that in mind, I think the show runners made the right choice, not confirming or denying the theories. 

However, there is the argument that the show “profits” of autism without ever offering true awareness... but it’s impossible to know if the creator of the character was aware of autism and had it in mind or it was merely coincidence. Also, are we really going to now allow media to represent a relatively general series of characteristics (or symptoms) just because we can perceive them as a mental disorder? 

The Big Bang Theory has plenty of issues, but still a number of people found Sheldon relatable and even though the name was never used, it still served the purpose of representation for them. 

So, should we represent mental health in our writing? And should we give it a name when doing so? 

I think the simple answer, and the one we’re all sick of hearing is: depends. 

If you want to write a story about mental health, obviously name it. And do A LOT of research. Talk to people with the disorder you wish to address. Acknowledge when you’re writing it in an author’s note because sometimes research and terminology changes and be ready to address that later on. 

But what if it’s not the focus but you have a character somewhere who suffers one of these disorders? 

The general rule I follow is if I am 100% confident in my ability to talk and represent this issue, I will not name it. In my own stories, depression, anxiety and PTSD are mentioned and talked about by name (or alternative names that are very clear in some fantasy settings). 

However, other disorders such as ADHD, autism or OCD are not. There may be characters who are intended to represent that collective but the disorder is not mentioned by name. 

But not being mentioned doesn’t mean they are ignored. I usually have characters address it at some point. Character’s speak openly about the symptoms, how they deal with them and the fact that somebody is different. 

They don’t pretend there just “weird”. Naming a mental disorder is just a tag at the end of the day, for a lot of people it’s very helpful, but it isn’t always necessary to close statements fully. 

This also leads into the bonus of when several disorders share symptoms it can be easier for people to feel represented when there is no tag than when there is one. 

Not to mention that many people live with these disorders without ever getting a diagnosis, and their experience is different. Not naming the disorders can lead into characters who are closer to that experience. 

Anyway, this is a reflection piece, it’s based of my experience and the experience of others I’ve talked to. But I’m not a therapist, psychologist or any kind of expert. So if you’ve had a different experience or a similar one and you’d like to add to this conversation, I’d love to hear from you! 

As usual, check out my book, stories I’ve written plus other social medias: here.

The ARC application form is open if you’d like to read my main series for free and before anybody else. I’ve recently made accessing my free stories more direct and hopefully comfortable. I’ve now got a newsletter you can sign up for. And if you need to reach out to me for anything (I don’t check Tumblr every day, I’m about to press add to queue and disappear into the abyss) there’s an email at the bottom! (all of this in the link above). 

Happy writing and reading! 

[sealofreconciliation]

Fates: was the story as bad as people say? a response/debunk (finale part 1: Themes)

Link to original post here.

Before anyone asks, yes, the original post is enough of a shitshow to necessitate me having to split this response into multiple parts; blame u/Odovakar, not me.

> The reason why I didn't discuss themes in the main story is simple: it's subjective. Now, you might argue that everything I've said is subjective but for the main routes and DLC campaigns you've at least got to base the discussion on the script.

Wouldn't everything in this series, including discussion of themes, have to be based on the script, due to being where someone would have to get evidence for their claims from?

Also, if you're trying to argue that most, if not all, of your arguments in the main posts were written on the basis of you talking about the internal consistency of the script, which is the only thing i can gather from this line and the rest of the post; lol no. You're so far removed from that standard of discussion it's insane to even imply you were basing your analyses on that.

To give some examples, let's take a small look at the kind of “tangible”, “script-based” criticisms you made throughout the posts:

Complaining that Corrin didn't stay and ask Azura or Yukimura for more information on the Yato or the dragonstone, not because it would make sense for them to do so (it would be a massive character assassination for Corrin to do that, as a matter of fact), but because you personally wanted more of an expostion-dump on those things than the game gave (prologue); assuming developer intentions in order to accuse the game of “forgiving” Corrin of their moral wrongdoings (prologue and part 1 of Conquest); criticizing the game for the cast being “Corrin-centric” without giving any in-universe reasons as to why that's illogical or bad (prologue); criticizing the way the game was *sold*, proceeded by immediately conceding that said criticism has little to do with the game's writing and that it was only brought up due to a personal dislike of the split (ending of prologue); criticizing the Hoshidan/Nohrian siblings for talking about Corrin in their battle/defeat quotes during the route split, which MUST be personal bias against Corrin given how obvious the counter-argument of “Corrin literally just betrayed them, of course they're still going to be thinking about them and being upset about their treason a few minutes after the fact” is (part 1 of both BR and CQ); saying that Xander's obedience to Garon being more understandable if you look at it from the lens of how japanese parent/child relations work is a stupid and silly argument because Xander's from Europe, giving no evidence whatsoever that Nohr shares it's child-raising culture with that of medieval Europe (BR part 2); criticizing Corrin for not killing themselves trying to fight Hans's troops and their own for no other reason than because he found it personally distasteful for someone to let bad things happen (part 1 of CQ); criticizing Corrin and Azura for being happy that the royal families negotiated a temporary ceasefire instead of whining 24/7 about a war that hasn't started yet (part 2 of CQ); dedicating roughly a fifth of part 3 of your Conquest analysis to addressing defenses for why the Nohrian siblings, especially Xander, are loyal to Garon, with all of the responses boiling down to “yeah but we're not shown Garon being nice to his kids, therefore all the plentiful evidence people have found for why the Nohrian sibs would have a strong emotional attachment to him are automatically null and void, also them being afraid of him is invalid because the game portrays them as heroes”. Which is not only pathetic, given how much time he's had to formulate counter-arguments, but also has nothing to do with the script. (CQ part 3)

Tl;dr you should have read your own posts better before claiming they were focused on the story and/or were “tangible”.

> Pointing out that Corrin should logically ask Azura more questions about the crystal ball, for example, has a basis in something very tangible.

The only basis it has is that it's something that happens in the story and can be discussed about, in the exact same way that estabilishing a theme and discussing whether it's well-developed or supported by the plot is based on the fact that said examples show up in the story through various ways and can be discussed about; you really don't understand thematic analysis or discussion, don't you?

Also, the crystal ball point sure as fuck doesn't have a basis in logic or character consistency, if that's what you were trying to imply; Azura uses it immediately after bringing it out and it breaks as soon as it's done showing Corrin Garon's true self. It's use case is obvious, and Azura already explained who could and couldn't use it; at most, it's weird for Corrin to not ask Azura where the ball came from, but she'd already told them they couldn't talk about Valla in the outside world; assuming that they'd already guessed that it came from Valla and, as such, that it'd be a bad idea for them to talk about something so heavily related to the place when they don't know the full extent of the curse, coupled with the fact that they're going to be busy thinking about the new information they just got and contemplating the fact that they'll have to join the war in order to dethrone Garon, it's pretty reasonable for them to not ask Azura for more information about the crystal ball.

> Themes, on the other hand, seem to mean whatever is convenient for the person arguing about something.

> This is a pretty straightforward definition of what a narrative theme is and yet there's so much room for people to say basically whatever they want without technically being incorrect, and therein lies the main problem.

It means a repeated message that a story is trying to estabilish, develop and talk about. It can be estabilished by how many examples of it there are throughout a story and how relevant it is, which can be debated about by people with differing viewpoints, much like the kind of narrative analysis you've been trying to make. Someone trying to claim something is a theme in a story without any evidence to back that up is likely to be ignored, just like when someone tries to claim something happens in a story without providing any evidence to back it up. Isn't it fun to learn about a narrative concept you should have already known since grade school?

> Even so, I figured I should at least give discussing the themes of Fates a shot since using themes to defend a work is very popular because it's easy. "I think it's about this and that's fascinating to me" is simple to say and hard to dispute; the debate has by that point already devolved into vague, subjective interpretations, and even if the theme in question is only tangientally relevant, you can't convince someone to feel a certain way about something.

It doesn't seem too hard to dispute; just provide counter-arguments as to why something isn't like that, which you should be able to do if you think they're wrong with their stance.

Also, stop trying to pretend like your analyses are any different or have any more depth to them than some random fuckwit on the internet saying something is good because it made them feel good; as i've already proven, large portions of your criticisms are just cleverly-worded ways for you to say that Fates is bad because it made you feel bad.

> If you've read my previous posts you'll probably not be surprised when I say Fates doesn't handle its themes well at all. Why? Well, first, let me ask a question: what would you say Fates' themes are? Family? Anti-war? Finding the truth?

Birthright is trusting in your allies, Conquest is finding what justice is and what must be done to achieve it, Revelation is being true to oneself, and the main theme of the game overall is cooperation and setting aside differences for the sake of the greater good. You managed to go 0/4 on Fates' themes; that's morbidly impressive, i must admit.

> The theme of family is undeniably heavily pushed by trailers and really the game itself, but I'd say Fates actively works against that theme at every possible opportunity.

It was pushed by the trailers, not the game. I want you to give me a single instance of family being a theme anywhere in the game, let alone a big enough one for you to claim that it's the major theme of the game overall.

> First, the big one: Corrin can S support all the Nohrian and Hoshidan siblings, as well as their own cousin. Being able to S support every single character in the game seems to have taken priority over letting Corrin find out about the lie that they're not related to the Hoshidan siblings, as the protagonist never once reacts to this in the game. In Revelation, Corrin says nothing about this, while in Birthright, should you S support a sibling, they're just happy to be able to have sex without people raising an eyebrow.

Corrin doesn't care about their relation to the Hoshidan siblings and barely sees them as family already, which is why they don't care about the revelation. The only reason they side with Hoshido in BR is because they know Garon needs to be stopped, and are willing to side with a bunch of strangers they don't know or even particularly care about in order to do so. What does it say about a theme when it's existence is never estabilished, developed or supported by the game?

> However, that's not all there is to it. Azura routinely gets ignored by the Hoshidan siblings despite growing up with them. Even though the "betraying your family aspect" is played up a lot with Corrin no matter the route, I'm not sure Azura doing the same in Conquest even gets acknowledged outside of optional battle dialogue.

The Hoshidans don't care as much about Azura as they do Corrin, plus the “family betrayal” aspect is mostly relegated to Birthright, since the Nohrians are the ones with an actual relationship to Corrin, not the Hoshidans. The Hoshidans barely try to use the “we're your birth family” argument anywhere in Conquest, mostly guilt-tripping them for siding with Nohr in the first place, and it shows up again for a *very* short amount of time in Revelation as part of Xander and Leo's character arcs there, which is resolved by something that has nothing to do with family (Garon telling them he wants to burn Nohr).

> What does it say about a theme when a character whose backstory mirrors the protagonist's is all but excluded from it?

That said character has a different theme in order to differentiate them from the protagonist due to their being wildly different people.

> And then there's Lilith, who's *technically* Corrin's *real* half sister, but this is relegated to a snippet of a DLC campaign and is never made relevant or acknowledged outside of it.

Anankos made Lilith out of magic; this is the equivalent of claiming that a desk is someone's half-sibling because their father was a sculptor and made said desk.

> You have to pay for this information, but what does it add to any character,

It adds to Lilith's character by expanding on her motivation for protecting Corrin.

> and to repeat a similar question asked above, what does it say about a theme when it locks something like this behind a paywall?

That the theme was developed further later on in the story in paid content. These little gotchas aren't nearly as smart as you think they are.

> Speaking of not adding anything, as /u/Warlord41k put it in an earlier post of mine, the twist that Corrin's biological father is Anankos has no bearing on anything. Corrin's draconic powers are never made relevant in the main story

Their draconic powers and/or heritage are the reason they're able to drive the Vallite army and Sumeragi out of Hoshido, the reason they're able to visit Valla in Conquest, kick-starting the rest of the plot, the reason Anankos tries to corrupt them into becoming his new vessel throughout Conquest and Revelation, and is the reason why they can transform into a dragon despite the royal bloodline being so dilluted they can't even remember the last time someone could do that. It's pretty fucking important.

> This might have been to give Anankos a more sympathetic backstory, and if you're being *very* generous you could see this as Corrin's true parents not mattering and that the family you choose is the one that matters.

It's there to add tragedy to Anankos by having him have a child he's never going to be able to properly meet and that will spend the rest of their life thinking he was nothing more than some random evil dragon, along with providing an explanation for Corrin's draconic powers. Why should it be anything more than that, and why is it bad that it isn't?

> However, for that to make sense or have any sort of impact, I think Corrin themselves would have to acknowledge that fact, as well as the lack of any blood relations with the Hoshidan siblings. Corrin doesn't do that, however, and these things become mere setpieces for fanfiction authors.

Explain why Corrin not caring about their blood family needs to be spelled out to the audience to make sense (?) or have impact, and especially explain how you're not being hypocritical for making such a request and still daring to criticize Fates for apparently not having any subtlety.

> All of these points lead me to believe that when the theme of family isn't ignored, like with Azura, Lilith, and Corrin's lack of reaction to finding out the truth about not being related to the Hoshidan siblings, Fates is actively sacrificing the theme in order to appeal to certain players by allowing you to marry the siblings and Azura.

It could also mean that you took the trailers way too close to heart, internalized that as the main theme of the game, and failed to realize that pointing out the multiple ways in which the theme doesn't exist in the game proper is you debunking yourself. Just some food for thought.

> This is without getting into the utter lack of chemistry between the Hoshidan siblings in particular and how they remain strangers to Corrin in all routes, including Birthright.

Seriously, how in the actual fuck do you not realize that maybe, *just maybe*, the fact that there's little to no evidence to support family being a theme in Fates means it isn't a theme, especially when, by your own admission, Corrin's relationship to one of the two families in the game is, at best, them being respectful allies to each other, even in the route where they spend the most amount of time together? How can you write this and not realize how easy this is to debunk?

Also, nice to see you being as tangible as ever. “I don't personally see chemistry between a group of characters” is absolutely not a vague, subjective and undefined point that's going to be very hard to properly discuss, unlike estabilishing what the themes of a story are with evidence; bury the thought.

> You could argue that the important theme isn't family, but rather loyalty vs. justice in the form of Conquest and Birthright respectively, but that carries with it its own issues, chiefly that Revelation merely existing renders that theme completely moot.

Firstly, while justice is basically the reason Corrin chooses Hoshido, they choose Nohr due to a combination of not wanting to kill their own family and friends plus wanting absolute confirmation that Garon was responsible for the attack on the Hoshidan capital. If anything, i'd say that their reason for choosing Nohr is more out of hopefulness.

Secondly, Corrin's initial reason for picking a side isn't a theme of the game at all; It's Corrin's motivation for choosing their side in the first place, but they are never developed, estabilished or mentioned nearly as much as either of BR or CQ's actual themes (“trust” and “where justice lies” respectively), therefore it can't be considered a theme, or at least not a major one worth mentioning in this post.

Thirdly, why does Revelation render that moot? The Corrin from BR and CQ couldn't have known that refusing to take sides was the best option and, as such, chose either justice or hope; why does the fact that a better option existed render different thematic explorations null for a Corrin that didn't know that?

> There is a right choice to make here, but even if Anankos weren't a thing, the game is so heavily morally in favor of Hoshido that Corrin going back to Nohr *should* be portrayed as a strictly selfish and stupid choice, but the script goes out of its way to forgive the protagonist for everything they do.

I already debunked the “muh forgiveness” point in my Conquest responses more times than i care to count, so instead i'll ask you to explain what about Corrin's choice to go back to Nohr was stupid or selfish, especially when they had every reason to believe they'd be rewarded for their stellar performance, no real proof Garon wanted them dead, and a dream that they'd be able to stop the war from ever even happening by changing Nohr from the inside.

Also, how very tangible of you; “yeah, maybe the theme is something else, but they're still broken because the game doesn't portray a character as being solely stupid for following their heart instead of their head in one of the stories and a tiny minority of characters forgive them for their actions, therefore it's not about loyalty”. Not only is this a complete non-sequitur, not only does it blatantly not make any sense on it's own merits, this is very clearly based on your own personal feelings, not the story; why did you ever think it would be a good idea to try and claim that your posts are mostly based on what happens in the story at the start of these posts?

> It becomes less about loyalty and more about "Corrin can't make a wrong decision".

Going back to Nohr is the worst choice Corrin can make, but that doesn't mean they can't try to fix their mistakes or make something good out of the bad situation they put themselves in, which is the entire point of their monologue at the end. Not only is it still very much about loyalty/hope, it's also about “some choices are better than others, but that doesn't mean you can't at least try and make the best out of a bad situation even if you make a mistake”.

> I find the argument for this being a central theme interesting, because Fates is in no way more anti-war than any other entry in the series. It is astoundingly easy to include lines that the vast majority of players can agree with, like "killing is bad, peace is good", or "don't steal from poor old people", but the inclusion of such lines doesn't mean there's a deep theme there.

I don't see what it being deep or not has anything to do with it being a central theme of the game. I could write a story that had all the characters say “war is bad” every five paragraphs and never delve into the inticracies of that, and it'd still objectively be the central theme of the story. This is a massive non-sequitur.

Also, where did the “Fates is more anti-war than the other games” argument come from? You just proposed that it was a central theme of the game, not that it did so more or less than other games; is there some argument you had that i'm not privy to that would explain this bizzare leap in logic?

> Here is the problem: Conquest goes so far out of its way to forgive Corrin for their role in the war that they even get absolved from the guilt they're meant to feel by characters who've already died.

No they don't; Azura was the one to comfort Corrin and convince them to keep fighting after they had a mental breakdown after witnessing Ryoma kill himself, and Ryoma had already told them he trusted them in his dying moments. The Ryoma, Mikoto and Takumi pep talk was entirely centered on telling them to not give up now that the war's basically over, which would make their sacrifices all be in vain, along with upgrading the Yato so they could beat Takumi.

> We're told over and over again that Corrin is basically a messiah who will bring about a new era of peace, and Corrin keeps saying that they're doing this for everyone's sake. After sacrificing Hoshido and killing off the evil leadership, all problems are swept away.

Because they're going to change Nohr from the inside and bring everlasting peace by killing Garon and (accidentally) Anankos; the war was just a means to an end, not the end itself.

Besides, Hoshido would have lost the war no matter what Corrin did; they spared the nation a worse fate by at least minimizing the bloodshed. Saying that they sacrificed it is a gross misrepresentation of their motivation for joining the war.

> There's a peace treaty and Hinoka and Sakura still love Corrin and will work hard so that they can visit Hoshido whenever they like (Hinoka says she'll address "misconceptions about Nohrians").

Firstly, the Nohrians line is a fabrication from Treehouse; in the original jp, she just says she'll try to get her people to stop hating Corrin and Xander.

Secondly, prove that she succeeds at that. Someone trying to do something is not proof that they'll succeed at it, let alone something as difficult as trying to amenize tensions between victims of war and the people that conquered them; if anything, due to the tone of that conversation, it's pretty clear that Corrin's never going to be welcome in Hoshido again after what they did, which seems like a pretty big consequence to me.

Thirdly, i'm not so sure the peace treaty was by choice; Nohr just finished effortlessly bodying Hoshido while it was in it's own home turf. Hinoka probably just accepted the fact that trying to fight back at that point, or ever, given the strength of the Nohrian military, would be a terrible idea and just counted her blessings that Xander regretted the war and wanted to make amends.

> Basically, Conquest portrays the war as a necessary sacrifice for peace.

No it doesn't; Corrin joining the war was a last resort after their original plan to gain enough favor with Garon to change Nohr from the inside fell through, a plan that would have very likely worked and led to peace in a non-violent way were he not possessed and wanted nothing more than to watch the world burn. Even when they join, they don't say that the war is necessary, only that Nohr winning is a foregone conclusion and, as such, the only thing they can do to help Hoshido at this point is try and minimize the collateral damage of Nohr's victory by trying to spare as many Hoshidans as they can during the war, which they can only do if they're in a leadership position. This is a massive strawman.

> Am I saying that Fates is pro war? No. But I am saying that arguing there's a deep anti-war message is giving the game too much credit.

Again, who said anything about a central theme needing to be deep to be a central theme?

Also, Fates is lot more anti-war than you're trying to portray it as being, not that it's a major theme of the game anyway; both countries have pretty reasonable reasons for engaging in warfare (Nohr's land is infertile and they would all starve to death if they didn't do it, and Hoshido, being an isolationist paradise, doesn't care to try and understand the issues plaguing Nohr, leading to them having to defend themselves after Nohr finally goes after them directly after centuries of letting the country starve while they hoard all their plentiful resources for themselves), but the conflict is still portrayed as a terrible thing for all the people involved that's only solved by achieving a mutual understanding between the leaders of the two countries, allowing them to work together for the sake of a brighter future (which happens in all the routes).

It's still more subtext than actual text, therefore i wouldn't argue it's a major theme of the game, but there's more depth there than you're giving it credit for.

> If I were to choose a Fire Emblem game which really managed to sell the theme of war being bad it'd be Radiant Dawn, as it focuses on the plight of civilians and the losing side of a war through Daein, and demonstrates how keeping the peace even after a victory is difficult but worth the struggle through Crimea. Fates lacks any of these nuances.

Stop dickriding Radiant Dawn and talk about Fates. Those two games are so wildly different there's basically no point in comparing the two, even if this was a sensible comparison, which it isn't; if you're going to analyze a piece of fiction, do so by it's own merits, not by complaining that it's not another piece of fiction you like more when the first one probably doesn't even want to be like the second one.

> **Finding the truth**

> Like I've said, this is the argument I've seen the least, and I think there's a good reason for this. Why? Because Azura already knows everything worth knowing about the conflict. You've just got to pay for the right version and she'll let you in on the secret.

In truth, Corrin just needs to appeal to her emotionally and earn her trust in order to be let in on the secret, but yeah, “finding the truth” isn't a theme of the game in any way. Glad you could at least see it that way, unlike your other two examples.

> And really, how is this portrayed in Revelation? Corrin spends 10 chapters running around the entire continent flailing their arms around and that manages to convince their siblings to jump into an abyss with them.

Bullshit. They spend 10 chapters going around convincing people that there's more to worry about than their petty grievances, which convinces their siblings after they're given ample reason to believe in their claims and follow them; anyone can make any story in existence sound stupid when they reduce it down to such a basic level and remove so much of the nuance and context of said story.

> “Finding the truth" sounds good. It sounds deep, like you've grasped what Fates is *actually* about.

Yet again, explain why a central theme needs to be deep to be a central theme.

> It's also completely defeated by the payment model of the game so that even if it *were* expertly written, it would be seen as a cash grab to sell you the right answer as an extra DLC route which you can't buy on its own anyway.

Irrelevant; i don't give a fuck about how a piece of fiction was marketed or sold in relation to it's content, and neither would anyone actually interested in analyzing Fates purely based off it's writing. Just say that there's not enough evidence to support truth-finding being a major theme of the game and prove it with examples, of which there are plenty of, and leave it at that; there was no reason for this section to have gone on longer than it's first paragraph, and it's all the worse for trying to stretch it out like this.

> I don't think every game needs themes, or at least ones present in every facet of the story.

The vast majority of games with even the barest hint of a story have themes, and even some that don't have a story have themes explored through their gameplay.

> However, a game that does want to really convey something likely makes its message more obvious and prioritizes trying to make it resonate with the players. If players can barely even figure out what the themes of a game are, or if themes are sacrificed in favor of something more superficial, then they were never important to the game in the first place, and using themes to defend the game is giving it more credit than it's due.

It's not the game's fault that you're incapable of picking up on themes as on-the-nose as “whether or not to trust in your allies”, “what justice is”, or “staying true to yourself”, decided to make up new themes that the game never had any intention or promise of exploring, then called it badly-written for not doing what you wanted it to do.

Also, “theme didn't resonate with me/was hard for me to figure out/wasn't spelled out/wasn't important, therefore bad”; regretting your opening statement yet?

> Fire Emblem is also extremely character focused. The units have names and a unique portrait to make you care about them. Support conversations are there to deepen your understanding of the character and make you like them more. This doesn't mean Fire Emblem can't have themes, but given the way Fire Emblem is structured, the story and characters making sense takes priority.

Not necessarily; which aspects of a story take priority are entirely dependent on what the writer wants to do when writing said story. I fail to see the correlation between “characters in Fire Emblem are given depth” and “the most important thing for any FE story is the plot and characters”; this is another non-sequitur.

> I think this is an important point that is often ignored by people who value themes above all. Themes may convey something the writers want to tell you, but they are still a narrative tool.

Without themes, there wouldn't be much of a point to story-telling as a concept; it's extremely easy to argue that a thematic throughline is one of the most important aspects of a narrative, if only because of how heavily integrated it always is into a story.

> What I mean by this is, for example, the Nohrian siblings' loyalty to Garon. They seem to be loyal to someone we rarely see them interact with and never hear talk about positively. This could be boiled down to "he's their father!" which is what they say at the end of Conquest, but nothing has been done to earn that reaction; Garon is ostensibly the symbol of everything the Nohrian siblings hate about Nohr.

What the fuck does this have to do with themes? You're talking about characterization right now; the Nohrian siblings liking Garon isn't a theme, it's a fundamental aspect of their characters that drives the plot forward.

Also, Elise praises pre-game Garon as a kind and wise man in Birthright, there are multiple lines throughout all the routes of the Nohrian siblings excusing his increased temperament as his old age getting to his head, Camilla says that none of them can afford to disobey him if they want to live, and Xander tells Slime Garon to his face in Chapter 27 of Conquest that he's nothing like the man that raised him and his siblings and that he only obeyed for as long as he did because he held out hope that Garon could return to his senses one day and they could go back to being a happy family; the game beats you over the head with the fact that the Nohrian siblings are obeying him both out of sentimentality/wishful thinking and because they're not strong enough to stop him from doing what he wants. Your ignoring important story and character details to push an agenda of Fates being poorly-written isn't the game having bad writing, it's you being disingenuous.

> Leo executes two people for being blemishes on Nohr's "grand legacy" and earlier in the game talks about how often and skillfully he and the other Nohrian siblings undermine Garon's authority by limiting the damage caused by his evil orders.

The “grand legacy” line was added in the localization; JP Leo only says that it sickens him to think that someone like Zola was a part of Nohr's military, and tells Iago that he's a disgrace to Nohr, not it's legacy. Even going with the localized script, what's wrong with him thinking that Zola and Iago's cowardices are blemishes on Nohr's legacy, which would be winning battles via direct confrontations?

The undermining point is completely irrelevant; just because they disagree with Garon's actions doesn't mean they're going to dislike the man who raised them and who they have a bond with.

> I'm not saying they have to be thrilled over killing Garon, but I am saying that the game using "he's their father!" to excuse their lack of spine isn't just unearned, but also reflects poorly upon how the Nohrian siblings are characterized.

I'm incredibly curious about how much of a spine you would have if you were forced to work for an all-poweful tyrant under threat of death if you ever disobeyed even the slightest order, especially when said tyrant is someone you have a deep personal connection with.

Also, explain how it reflects poorly upon the Nohrian siblings' characterization.

> The game hasn't earned using the theme of family as an excuse,

It doesn't use the theme of family as an excuse, because it's not a theme of the game; it uses the characters' estabilished relationships and history with Garon as an excuse for why they remain loyal to him.

> and all of these theories about the mental state of the Nohrian siblings have practically zero basis in the main story.

Xander's cutscene confronting Slime Garon begs to differ, as does my rant a few paragraphs ago. Stop dismissing well-supported theories solely because they cause you to look stupid for being wrong about a game's story and characters.

> Simply put, themes shouldn't be something you use to defend a game's writing with, but rather something which enhances the overall experience. That takes skill and effort and requires prioritizing on the side of the developers.

Does it? What authority do you have on how game development works to make such a claim, especially game development as it pertains to adding themes to a story?

Also, explain why people shouldn't be allowed to care more about a theme than about the plot or characters.

> There is no hidden theme or subtle brilliance which turns everything on its head which only a handful of enlightened people can understand and appreciate; themes just weren't a priority for the developers and they didn't have the skills to pull off a thought-provoking narrative.

Funnily enough, this entire response is me proving that you fundamentally misunderstood what Fates' themes were, so yes, there unironically were hidden messages and brilliances in Fates that you simply weren’t enlightened enough to understand and appreciate. Hubris before a fall, i suppose.

[supersquiddy]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but did the movie basically say Kaworu’s fixation on Shinji was “wrong” and then have Shinji get with Mari and Kaworu get with Rei at the end? I don’t get why they put so many romantic connotations in kawoshin just to say homo bad, het good.

Hi! For me personally, I saw things a bit different. Yes, Kaworu did say he misunderstood Shinji's happiness. Yes, Kaji said that it was Kaworu's happiness Kaworu wanted. But he also said that Kaworu wanted Shinji's happiness to make himself happy. I don't think this is necessarily a condemnation of Kaworu's actions. It seems like if Shinji was happy, he was happy, he just had to make Shinji happy. But he didn't know how. He assumed what Shinji needed to be happy. And yes, it is wrong to assume what someone needs, but Kaworu really doesn't know what else to do. From my understanding, in 3.33, Kaworu's understanding of what Shinji needed to be happy was that Shinji needed to pilot again. They needed the spears to reverse the damage Shinji did to the world. However, things didn't go as planned. It was actually a trap. Kaworu thought Shinji's happiness would be found in an Eva again but he was wrong. That's why in 3+1, Kaworu apologizes to Shinji about misunderstanding his happiness when Evas were brought up.

And it's a lot like real life, some people want to help another person but they don't ask the person what they really need. They just do what they think is right for the person. They are wrong but they aren't bad people (usually) for it.

Personal example: I have a friend who I love to bits. He's pretty much the Shinji to my Kaworu (platonically.) There have be plenty of times when I felt so similar to him. (The "I'm you. I'm just like you." line from Kaworu hit me so hard cause I thought about how I felt about my friend.) I'm always trying to help him, trying my best to help him be happy because that makes me happy to. Especially since I feel so similar to him, it's like I'm giving myself the help I never got. But oftentimes, I project my own ideas of what it means to be happy on him instead of concidering what he wants. It isn't out of malicious intent, it's just comes from the strong desire to help him. But it isn't right. So Kaworu's scene hit home to me and I got it cause I experienced it in a way.

I personally don't think that since the movie said he misunderstood what Shinji wanted, doesn't necessarily mean he was a bad person. I think the movie was just trying to flaw him like all the other characters since Kaworu is, compared to the main cast, pretty flawless. However I wish they did a better job since I've seen many people disappointed or confused about this choice. I wasn't bothered by it at all because I related to it. Hopefully my rambles make sense to you!

Now to address the other part of your ask! What was that ending? To keep it short, I believe that these "pairings" aren't set in stone. Mari and Shinji did flirt with each other but does that 100% mean they are dating? Not exactly. Rei and Kaworu were seen standing and talking next to each other, does that mean they are dating? Not exactly. One thing I've noticed that is sometimes lost in online discussion is interpretation. Not everything we watch has a set meaning. You and I can watch the same thing and have wildly different takes from it, and that's perfectly fine. Everyone won't always agree what they feel or think a piece of media has to say. As far as I know, Anno did not come out and confirm it himself that Shinji and Mari are dating and that Kaworu and Rei are dating. So it's all up to how you interpret their relationship. Some might see it as purely romantic, some might see it as purely platonic, they are both interpretations that can work. I think it's interesting at least that Shinji and Mari are shown on one side of the track. While Askua, Kaworu, and Rei are shown on the other. They are all, I asume, dead. But Mari was able to retrieve Shinji. So it's the classic one side has the living, the other side of the tracks have the dead visualization. I have nowhere to go with that but I just wanted to point it out.

I find it also interesting that they showed Kaworu and Rei next to each other. This movie compared Kaworu to Gendo. Kaworu is determined to make Shinji happy just as much as Gendo is determined to see Yui again, and they both fail to make things go as planned. So very interesting things can be taken from seeing Kaworu and Rei together. Since they are representations of Shinji's parents, they could be dating. (I don't believe that but I'm trying to show that things can be interpreted in different ways.) Or, if you want to go the more "deep route", they are important halves to Shinji's whole. Kind of like you are half one of your parents and half the other. (Very lose explainion of genetics but you see what I'm saying???) I'm not saying that they literally ARE his parents, but are halves of Shinji similar to how one is "half" their parents. Think about in EOE. First when Kaworu was another part of giant Rei. And then that part where Rei and Kaworu were with Shinji, helping him decide between humanity and Instrumentality. Shinji asks "what are the two of you within my heart?" Rei responds that "We are the hope that people will one day be able to understand each other." And Kaworu says "We are the words, "I love you."" Shinji just wanted to be understood and loved. However, Shinji says it is just a pretense, just a claim. But that isn't important to dive into for the point I'm making. Kaworu and Rei are reflections of what Shinji desires. And it's a decent thematic choice to have them resemble his parents in 3+1 the since they are halves of Shinji's heart that makes up his whole. Shinji's WHOLE character is driven by the desire to understand, but how? He is driven to be loved, but how? Kaworu and Rei reflect that.

All of that to say that there are a lot of things you can take from just the little bit of information. I wasn't fond of the ending but it didn't make me feel like the movie was saying that straight was good and gay was bad. HOWEVER, I do not fault you at all for seeing it like that. Because, on the surface it really does look like that....it really does. Both Kaworu and Mari are queer coded and seemly put in het relationships. But in Evangelion, things aren't always what they look on the surface. There is so much you can take from one scene, there are different ways to read what you're presented. I can't pretend to know Anno and his intentions for the Rebuilds, especially this one, but I don't believe he wanted things to be so cut and dry.

As you can see, I'm very passionate about this!!! Hopefully what I said made a lick of sense. And if not, please Anon ask me to clarify some things. Or maybe you want to challenge what I said! Which is cool too. Eva is a series I really love and I learned quickly that you got to realize that not everything is as it seems in the show.

I'll leave you with this: Remember that Kaworu and Shinji's names are written in the Book of Life. They are bound to meet each other over and over again. Being linked that way is pretty romantic. I'm with you Anon, kawoshin has so much potential that was seemingly shattered by this movie. But there are still some beautiful albeit brief moments between the two.

[edgarsabandonedrocketship]

I’ve written up some of my thoughts after watching the episode (as requested by @middleagedresidentofriverdale). I put it under the cut, since it got kind of long. I wrote it pretty fast and I’m exhausted, so I apologize if any of it’s incoherent.

I think that the people who’ve theorized that this episode is Archie’s skewed perspective (on people, situations, etc.) might be on to something.

Take for example, Dr. Curdle Jr. being a family practice physician/OBGYN/pediatrician or whatever he’s supposed to be in Rivervale. I could see Archie thinking that a medical examiner’s expertise is easily transferrable to treating those (living) patient populations.

Plenty has been said about Betty's OOC behavior. Her voice is unreal when she talks to Archie about all non-work-related topics. It’s almost mommy-like at times, like when she soothes him after his nightmare. Sometimes, her giggling came across as girlishly naive. She was never like this with Jughead (or anyone else for that matter). The voice also appears when she gets goo-goo over Baby Anthony. She wasn’t like that with Polly’s babies, so when did this character trait develop? However, when discussing investigations and such, Betty sounds more like herself, which is interesting. 

In Rivervale, Mary Andrews comes across as overbearing (is that really how Archie sees her?). Also, Archie can’t just be straightforward about what Mary was apparently pestering him about on the phone, but dances around the subject (like, if you’re ready to reproduce, you should be able to speak about it frankly). And then, we learn that Betty has been “dreaming of starting a family with Archie since the 6th grade.” As others have already stated, yeesh. 

(I really think this is what Archie believes, not what is actually true about either of these women)

Archie insists he has to have biological children. He notes that Fred always said most the fulfilling thing in his life was becoming a dad, but it seems like Archie’s more focused on his legacy than actual parenthood. Which makes his demise even more satisfying. In Rivervale, he’ll never even meet his son. He’s nothing more than a sperm donor. But hey, his genes will endure right?

Meanwhile, Veronica and Reggie are Rivervale’s “premier power couple,” who are all about the money (they even have sex on a bed covered with it, which is highly unsanitary, but whatever). However, they’re certainly not equals. Like always, Reggie is an afterthought. He’s someone's second choice.

(tbf, that’s actually how I’ve always interpreted Reggie’s arc, but I think it’s also how Archie perceives him. Reggie is always competing with him, but he never really wins)

Veronica refers to Reggie as a "colleague," but he's not even part of her meeting. He’s insecure and she seems annoyed by this, though she does half-heartedly try to reassure him. But actions (and pictures) speak louder than words, which we see when Reggie points out that Veronica forgot to give him an office when having the blueprints drawn up for the casino. 

Then we have Jughead and Tabitha, for whom things don’t seem to bode well from the start. We learn that it’s Tabitha’s “first time living with a beau” (while it seems like Jug has lived with every girlfriend he’s had), because she’s always been too guarded to take this step in the past. The real estate agent signing over the keys then says something like “well, you can never be too careful,” in an ominous manner. 

(Also, why is Jughead not part of this conversation? Tabitha appears to be taking care of it alone at work, while he’s running around doing what? Narrating? Who knows?)

Betty and Archie help the couple move into their new apartment (Betty’s living with Archie by now, so did Jughead still live in Archie’s garage until that morning, or?). Archie makes a remark about Jug’s massive comic book collection, which seems like a new piece of information. Like, was Jughead this into comic books during the series, or is this Archie’s idealized version of his old chum, Forever 12 Jughead? And is that why he comes across as sort of clueless and immature throughout this episode? 

To me, Jughead seemed almost patronizing about Tabitha’s bug worries. After he kills the spider and she worries that it might jinx them, he’s fairly dismissive and basically walks off to do whatever, leaving her to fret alone. Her face actually appears a bit distraught once he’s gone. Maybe she’s having misgivings already?

(Also, going into this episode, I really expected a sex scene, or at least a heavily implied one, given that this was their first night cohabitating. I’m actually kind of surprised the writers didn’t do a sex montage, tbh. What’s more, they don’t even kiss the entire episode, despite plenty of opportunities to do so. Not that I wanted to see this, it just struck me as odd)

In another scene, Tabitha is out of bed (they’re not even shown in it together), freaking out about being “eaten alive.” Jughead gets up, looks over the bedding, and says he doesn't see anything. She says she was having a nightmare about spiders. He walks over to her and says something like "well, then that's what it is" (just a nightmare). He does put his hands on her shoulders reassuringly and they hug. (I don’t remember Jughead ever acting this nonchalant about Betty’s concerns, but it’s just my interpretation)  Then there’s a scene in their bathroom, where Jug's half naked after showering, brushing his teeth. Tabitha walks into the bathroom and notices his back is covered in welts (which makes me doubt there was even any off-screen sexy times, lol) similar to the ones on her arms and legs. He wasn’t aware that anything was wrong until he looked in mirror. Even then, he still seemed kind of dismissive, saying "well, we changed the sheets..." She persists, so he says "alright, we'll wash the sheets with hot water and bleach." She gets upset then, saying something like, "Are you kidding? That's not going to do anything. we're infested!” She tells him she’s calling an exterminator and leaves. 

We then get a scene with Cheryl and Tabitha at Pop's. Cheryl notices the bug bites on her wrist and her tired eyes from sleepless nights. "Tell me, what demons torment you, Tabitha?"  Tabitha tells her that the "apartment is riddled with bugs and Jughead and I are being eaten alive.” However, they can’t afford to move, and the bugs would probably follow them wherever they go because “they’re in everything.” Cheryl offers to make a cleansing formula to take care of "any and all bugs and curses," but there’s a price. Tabitha, who can’t afford to move, says she'll “pay anything.” Cheryl says that both Tabitha AND Jughead need to participate in all maple festival events. 

(We aren’t treated to the off-screen scene where Tabitha informs her new roommate of this deal, which seems like it might be important. Does he agree on his own free will? Does Tabitha give him the paste without telling him and he becomes brainwashed? Also, what was meant by “any and all bugs?”) 

[fanfics4all]

Arranged Marriage

Request: Yes / No 

Requests are closed <3 Have a nice day/night

Draco Malfoy x Fem!Parkinson!Reader 

Word count: 2320

Warnings: Nothing I think?

Y/N: Your Name 

A/N: Possibly making this into a short series.  Bingo card made by @slyttherins

PLEASE DO NOT STEAL MY WORK, I WORK HARD ON MY FICS AND IT’S NOT COOL TO STEAL SOMEONE ELSE’S WORK! 

If you want to be on the tag list for anything (My series fics, specific character fics, or just all of them) All you have to do is send me an ask and I will add you! 

Masterlist 

(Not my photo, credit to whoever made it!)

I had a free period and like most I spent it in the Great Hall reading a book. My slightly older sister was sitting with her friends at the other end of the table. They all hated me since I was the complete opposite of Pansy. She was mean, loud, had to be the center of attention, dramatic, and wasn’t incredibly bright. Despite all that I still loved her, even if I was one of her victims. The two of us only shared one thing, our crush on Draco Malfoy. Although she never knew about that and I would never tell her. 

I was enjoying my book when a letter landed in front of me. I closed my book and glanced at it confused. My family’s owl sat on the table in front of me. I picked up the letter with my family’s crest stamped in emerald green wax and opened it. 

‘Y/N,

Your Mother and I decided to arrange a marriage for you. We are concerned that if you make a decision like this on your own, you will make the wrong decision. It is no secret that we are disappointed in your association choices. Because of that, you are going to marry Draco Malfoy. Next time you return home, you will be engaged. Once you both graduate you will be married and produce heirs for both our households. This is to ensure the blood-line. 

~Philip’

I stared at the letter with wide eyes. I glanced over at Draco, who was reading a letter of his own. I turned my attention back to my book and decided to ignore the letter until I returned home. 

“What’s in the letter Drakie?” Pansy asked and I rolled my eyes at her horrid nickname for him. 

“Nothing, just Father informing me of a dinner party we’ll be having next time I return home.” He answered her. I was surprised he didn’t tell her, or maybe his family didn’t tell him his fate yet… 

Later that night, after all classes and dinner had been finished, I was sitting in the corner of the common room working on homework. It was really just me in here, besides a few first years. However, when the door opened and Draco walked in everyone’s eyes were on him. 

“Everyone out.” He said and all the first years scurried off to who knows where. I simply stayed in my place, ignoring his command. 

“Parkinson.” He said and I glanced up to find him standing in front of me now. 

“Can I help you?” I asked. 

“I’m sure you got a letter telling you about our situations as well.” He said and I simply nodded. So he did just choose not to tell my sister. Interesting… 

“You better not tell anyone about this.” He said and I looked back down at my homework. 

“I wasn’t planning on it.” I said, simply. 

“Because if you do- wait, what?” He asked, cutting himself off. 

“I said I wasn’t planning on it. My Father didn’t tell my sister for a reason and honestly I’d rather her not know until it’s too late. I don’t need her bullying to get any worse, or yours for that matter. So, we can just pretend it isn’t happening until the dinner, then we’ll figure it out from there. I wouldn’t want to stain your reputation you’ve worked so hard to preserve.” I said, not even sparing him a glance. I wanted him to know I didn’t care, even though I was a bit excited to be marrying him. 

“Um, right. Well then, till the dinner.” He said and left me to be. 

The months leading up to the dinner felt like nothing had changed. I suppose nothing has changed yet. Draco was still a bully along with his friends and I was their helpless victim. My sister still clung to Draco any chance and he was still annoyed by her actions. A very small part of me wanted to rub it in her face that I was the one to be marrying him, but I wasn’t that type of person. When it was finally time to return home for a short time, I spent the whole train ride thinking about the dinner to come. When everyone stepped off the train, Pansy hugged Draco goodbye and then she made her way over to our parents. 

“Girls! How has school been?” Mother asked with a smile. 

“It’s been alright, that Potter boy is incredibly annoying. Just because he ‘survived’ the Dark Lord’s attack he’s special? He was a bloody baby.” Pansy said, rolling her eyes. 

“He doesn’t want the fame.” I said. 

“You would know, traitor!” She hissed. 

“Enough girls!” Father said and I bowed my head. 

“Sorry Father…” I said, even though I never truly did anything wrong I always felt like I needed to apologize constantly. 

“There will be no fighting while you are home, is that understood?” He said. 

“Yes Father.” We said in unison. 

“Good, now let’s go home.” He said. 

A few days had gone by and my parents hadn’t mentioned anything about the dinner to me. I was sitting in the den reading, while my Mother was having a cup of tea and my Father was reading the paper. 

“Pansy, come down here please!” Father called her. 

“Yes?” She asked, walking into the room. 

“Aunt Paisley wanted to take you shopping tonight, would you like to go?” He asked. 

“Is Y/N coming?” She asked. 

“No, just you.” He answered and her eyes lit up. 

“Really? Just me and Auntie?” She asked and Father nodded. 

“Oh yes! I’d love to go!” She said and rushed upstairs to get ready. 

“Hurry dear! Your Aunt is already waiting for you!” Mother called. 

“I’ll be finished in a moment!” She called back. Sure enough after ten minus she was back downstairs, dressed to go out. It was the fastest I’ve ever seen her get ready.

“Right, take some floo powder and go to her house, she’s waiting for you there.” Father said and she nodded. 

“She said you can stay the night if you’d like.” Mother mentioned. 

“Oh yes please!” Pansy said, happily. She gave me a nasty smirk before taking some powder and saying our Aunt’s house. Off she went to have a nice night out with our Aunt. 

“Now, you go upstairs and get ready, your Mother picked out a dress for you to wear tonight.” Father said and I looked at my parents confused. 

“Ready for what?” I asked. 

“The dinner, we’re going to Malfoy Manor.” He answered and I was even more confused. 

“Why isn’t Pansy coming?” I asked. 

“Because, as much as we love your sister, we don’t want to hear her complain about your engagement for the rest of our lives. So she’ll find out when we’ve already planned the wedding and you two are getting married.” He answered and I couldn’t hold back my smile. 

“You’re lucky Draco didn’t tell her when he got his letter.” I said, placing my book on the table and went off to my room. Laying on my bed was a simple emerald green dress, with a slit down the side, and silver accents on both wrists. There were a pair of simple silver heels to match. I smiled at the outfit, it was really quite beautiful. Once I was dressed I did a simple spell to get my hair and makeup perfect. 

I walked downstairs and my parents were both ready to go. My Mother offered me her hand which I accepted and the three of us apparated to Malfoy Manor. The sky was already starting to darken, but the sun still peaked out, giving the sky a beautiful painting of pinks, purples, oranges, and yellows. We walked up the steps and my Father knocked on the door. A house-elf answered and I smiled, earring a glare from my Father. I bowed my head, he never liked how well I treated them. He always said those creatures deserve no kindness. I thought differently, house-elves deserved plenty of kindness, after all they’re very helpful. I always snuck into the kitchen at night and had lovely conversations with our house-elves, being careful not to catch the attention of anyone else in the house. 

“Mr. Parkinson, Mrs. Parkinson, Miss. Parkinson, please come in.” The little house-elf said. 

“Wolkey will inform Master of your arrival.” He said and left to get the Malfoys. 

“Ah, Philip, Oliva, Y/N, so glad you could make it.” Lucius said while shaking my Father’s hand. 

“What a lovely dress Y/N, don’t you think so Draco.” Narcissa said, gently nudging her son. 

“Yes, it’s a very lovely color on you.” He smiled, but it didn’t quite meet his eyes. 

“Thank you.” I smiled. 

The dinner was normal, our parents discussing business relations while Draco and I simply ate. It wasn’t until dinner was cleared and dessert was being served that the atmosphere changed. 

“I believe Draco has something to ask you Y/N.” Narcissa said with a smile. Draco cleared his throat and walked over to me on the other side of the table. He gently grabbed my hand and kept his other in his pocket. 

“Y/N, we’ve known each other since we were children and you’ve always been such a beauty. We’ve been friends for a while, but now I feel we should be more. Will you do me the honor of being my wife?” He asked. I could tell they weren’t his words, but they still made my heart flutter. Everyone looked at me expectantly, like I could say anything other than yes. 

“Yes Draco, I’d love to.” I smiled. Draco smiled and took out a sliver snake ring with a small emerald, the Malfoy family crest engraved on the bottom. 

Draco took my hand and placed the ring on my finger. 

“Draco, why don’t you take Y/N into the garden, I’m sure she’ll love it.” Narcissa said and Draco nodded. He gently helped me up and led me outside to the porch, looking over the garden. 

“That was all my Mother.” He stated as soon as we were away from our families. 

“I know.” I smiled at him and he looked at me confused. 

“How can you smile in a moment like this? You’re being forced into a marriage.” He asked confused. 

“I can tell you Mother picked out all the flowers.” I said, changing the subject. Before he could say anything I walked down the steps into the garden. 

“Hey! Wait!” He said and followed after me. 

“Will you answer my question?” He said, slightly annoyed. 

“Have you ever looked around here and really took notice of the beauty in your backyard?” I asked. 

“I’ve looked around here plenty if that’s what you’re asking.” He said, rolling his eyes. 

“Oh look, you have some wilting flowers.” I frowned. I kneeled down and cupped the flowers gently. 

“What are you doing? You’ll get your dress dirty.” He said, but I ignored him. 

“Herbivicus” I whispered and the flowers grew to their original form. I stood up and smiled, glancing at Draco who had a shocked expression on his face. 

“Where did you learn that?” He asked. 

“A book I read.” I answered. 

“You learned that just from a book?” He asked. 

“Yes, I have an eidetic memory. I remember everything I’ve read or what people have said to me.” I answered and looked down at my dress. There were some dirt spots, my parents would be upset with me. 

“Scourgify” I said and my dress was good as new. 

“The reason I can smile about our situation is because I’ll be making my parents proud for the first time since they’ve heard I’m friends with people they call traitors. I love my family, even my sister, shocking as that is, family is important to me and I’d like to make them proud of me. So if marrying you is what it takes then so be it. Perhaps we could even fall in love with each other, or even just be friends.” I finally answered his question. 

“You really are quite strange, aren’t you?” He said after a moment. 

“I just think on the positive side.” I smiled at him. 

“We can’t tell my sister until the very last minute, by the way, my parents don’t want to hear her complaints.” I mentioned and he gave a light chuckle. 

“I suppose even they don’t enjoy her company.” He said and I shook my head. 

“They love her, but yes, sometimes they don’t enjoy her complaining.” I answered. 

“How are you going to explain the ring?” He asked. 

“A surprise gift from my Aunt, that’s where Pansy is right now.” I answered and he gave another light chuckle. 

“Smart.” He said. 

“What if she tries to take it from you?” He asked. 

“You know my sister well.” I giggled. 

“My Father is going to spell the ring so only you or I can take it off. And if I need to take it off for whatever reason I have a spelled jewelry box, she’ll need my voice, DNA, and wand to get it open.” I answered with a smirk. 

“Very smart.” He said, slightly shocked. 

“I like to take caution when it comes to my sister. It’s a very beautiful ring, thank you.” I smiled.

“It’s tradition that the Malfoy proposing makes a special ring with the crest engraved on it. My Mother had it made, but asked for my opinion before it was finished.” He said and I smiled at him. 

“Still think this is a bad thing?” I asked. 

“Suppose there could be worse people to be forced to marry…” He said. 

“I’ll take that as a complement.” I said and stared down at the ring that fit perfectly on my finger. This was really happening. I was going to marry Draco Malfoy.

Tag list: @les-bio-lie​ @tashy-bear​ @ashwarren32​ @hollie-blogs-blog1​ @schisbro87​ @lover-of-books-and-teas​ @nerdygaloresposts​ @teenwolfbitches2​ @genius2050​ @drw0301bieber​ @lady-of-lies​ @ravenmoore14​ @ravenempress101​ @cillianchamp​ @rowanthomasknapp​ @rachelxwayne​ @in-slytherin-we-trust​ @accio-rogers​ @sambucky8​ @bruisedfists-and-splitlips @answer-the-sirens​ @andreasworlsboring101​ @vanessa-kom-skaikru​ @impulse-anchor​ @dracoswhvre​

[vickyvicarious]

Leverage Redemption Pros/Cons List

Okay! Now that I've finally finished watching the first half of Leverage: Redemption, I thought I'd kind of sum up my overall impression. Sort of a pro/con list, except a little more just loosely structured rambles on each bullet point rather than a simple list.

This got way out of hand from what I expected so I'm going to put it all under a cut. If you want the actual bulletpoint list, here it is:

PROS

References

Continuity

Nate

Representation

Themes

New Characters

General Vibe

CONS

'Maker and Fixer'

Episode Twins

Sophie's Stagefright

Thiefsome

You might notice the pros list is longer, and that's because I do love the show! I really like most of what it does, and my gripes are fewer in number and mostly smaller in size. But they do exist and I felt like talking about them as well as the stuff I loved.

PROS

References

There is clearly so much love and respect for the original show here. Quite aside from the general situation, there's a lot of references to individual episodes or character traits from the first show. For example, Parker's comments on disliking clowns, liking puppets, disliking horses, stabbing vs. tasing people. The tasing was an ongoing thing in the original, the stabbing happened once (S1) but was referenced later in the original show, the clown thing only had a few mentions scattered across the entire original show. The puppet thing was mentioned once in S5, and the horses thing in particular was only brought up in S1 once. But they didn't miss the chance to put the nod to it in there; in fact with those alone we see a good mix of common/ongoing jokes and smaller details.

We got "dammit Hardison" and "it's a very distinctive..." but also Eliot and Parker arguing about him catering a mob wedding, and Eliot being delighted by lemon as a secret ingredient in a dish in that same episode (another reference to the mob episode). Hardison and Eliot banter about "plan M", an ongoing joke starting from the very first episode of the original show. We see Sophie bring up Hardison's accent in the Ice Job, Parker also makes reference to an early episode when describing "backlash effect" to Breanna, in an episode that also references her brother slightly if you look for it.

Heck, the last episode of these first eight makes a big deal out of nearly reproducing the iconic opening lines of the original show with Fake Nate's "we provide... an advantage." And I mean, all the "let's go steal a ___" with Harry being confused about how to use them.

Some of the lines are more obviously references to the original show, but they strike a decent balance with smaller or unspoken stuff as well, and also mix in some references between the team to events we the audience have never seen. If someone was coming into this show for the first time, they wouldn't get all the easter egg joy but most of the references would stand on their own as dialogue anyway. In general, I think they struck a good balance of restating needed context for new viewers while still having enough standalone good lines and more-fun-if-you-get-it callbacks.

Continuity

Similar to the last point, but slightly different. The characters' development from the original to now is shown so well. I'm not going to go on about this too long, but the writers clearly didn't want to let the original characters stagnate during the offscreen years. There was a lot of real thought put into how they would change or not.

It's really written well. We can see just how cohesive a team Parker, Hardison, and Eliot became. We get a sense of how they've spent their time, and there's plenty of evidence that they remained incredibly close with Sophie and Nate until this past year. The way everyone defers to Parker is different from the original show and clearly demonstrates how she's been well established as the leader for years now - they show this well even as Parker is stepping back to let Sophie take point in these episodes. Eventually that is actually called out by Sophie in the eighth episode, so we might see more mastermind Parker in the back half of the show, maybe. But even with her leading, it's clear how collaborative the team has become, with everyone bouncing ideas off one another and adding their input freely. Sometimes they even get so caught up they leave the newbies completely in the dust. But for the most part we get a good sense of how the Parker/Hardison/Eliot team worked with her having final say on plans but the others discussing everything together. A little bit more collaborative than it was with Nate at the helm.

Meanwhile Sophie has built a home and is deeply attached to it. She and Nate really did retire, at least for the most part, and she was living her happy ending until he died. She's out of practice but still as skilled as ever, and we're shown how much her grief has changed her and how concerned the others are for her.

There's a lot of emphasis on how they all look after one another and the found family is clearer than ever. Sophie even calls Hardison "his father's son" - clearly referring to Nate.

Nate

Speaking of Nate! They handled his loss so, so well. His story was the most complete at the end of the last show, and just from a narrative point, losing him makes the most sense of all the characters. But the way he dies and his impact on the show and the characters continues. It's very respectful to who he was - who he truly was.

Nate was someone they all loved, but he was a deeply flawed individual. Sophie talks about how he burned too hot, but at least he burned - possibly implying to me that his drinking was related to his death. In any case, there's no mystery to it. We don't know how he died but that's not what's most important about his death. This isn't a quest for revenge or anything... it's just a study of grief and trying to heal.

Back to who he really was real quick - the show doesn't eulogize him as better than he was. They're honest about him. From the first episode's toast they raise in his memory, to the final episode where Sophie and Eliot are deeply confused by Fake Nate singing his praises, the team knows who he was. They don't erase his flaws... but at the same time he was so clearly theirs. He was family, he was the man they trusted and loved and followed into incredibly dangerous situations, and whose loss they all still feel deeply.

That said, the show doesn't harp on this point. They reference him, but they don't overwhelm new viewers with a constant barrage of Nate talk. It always serves a purpose, primarily for Sophie's storyline of moving through her grief. Anyway, @robinasnyder said all of this way better than me here, so go read that as well.

Representation

Or should I say, Jewish Hardison, Autistic Parker, Queer Breanna!

Granted, Hardison's religion isn't quite explicitly stated to be Jewish so much as he mentions that his "Nana runs a multi-denominational household", but nonetheless. He gets the shows big thesis statement moment, he gets a beautiful speech about redemption that is the emotional cornerstone of that episode and probably Harry's entire arc throughout the show. And while I'm not Jewish myself, most of what I've seen from Jewish fans is saying that Hardison's words here were excellent representation of their beliefs. (@featherquillpen does a great job in that meta of contextualizing this with his depiction in the original show as well.)

Autistic Parker, however, is shown pretty dang blatantly. She already was very much coded as autistic in the original show, but the reboot has if anything gone further. She sees a child psychologist because she likes using puppets to represent emotions, she stims, she uses cue cards and pre-written scripts for social interactions, there's mention of possible texture sensitivity and her clothes are generally more loose and comfortable. She's gotten better at performing empathy and understanding how people typically work, but it's specifically described as something she learned how to do and she views her brain as being different from ones that work that way (same link). Again, not autistic myself but from what I've seen autistic fans find a lot to relate to in her portrayal. And best of all, this well-rounded and respectful depiction does not show any of these qualities as a lack on her part. There's no more of those kinda ableist comments or "what's wrong with you" jokes that were in the original show. Parker is the way she is, and that allows her to do things differently. She's loved for who she is, and any effort made to fit in is more just to know how so that she can use it to her advantage when she wants to on the job - for her convenience, not others' comfort.

Speaking of loved for who you are.... okay, again, queer Breanna isn't confirmed onscreen yet, and I don't count Word of God as true canon. But I can definitely believe we're building there. Breanna dresses in a very GNC way, and just her dialogue and, I dunno, vibes seem very queer to me. She has a beautiful speech in the Card Game Job about not belonging or being accepted and specifically mentions "the way they love" as one of those things that made her feel like she didn't belong. And that scene is given so much weight and respect. (Not to mention other hints throughout the episode about how much finding her own space meant to her.) Also, the whole theme of feeling rejected and the key for her to begin really flourishing is acceptance for who she is, not any desire for her to be anyone else, is made into another big moment. Yeah, textually that moment is about her feeling like she has to fill Hardison's shoes and worrying about her past, but the themes are there, man.

Themes

I talked a bit about this yesterday, so I'm mostly just going to link to that post, but... this series so far is doing a really good job in my opinion of giving people arcs and having some good themes. Namely the redemption one, from Hardison's speech (which I'm gonna talk a little more about in the next point), and this overall theme of growing up and looking to the future (from above the linked post).

New Characters

Harry and Breanna are fantastic characters. I was kind of worried about Harry being a replacement Nate, but... he really isn't. Sure, he's the older white guy who has an angsty past but it's in a very different way and his personality and relationships with the rest of the crew are correspondingly different. I think the dynamic of a very friendly, cheerful, kind, but still bad guy (as @soundsfaebutokay points out) is a great one to show, and he's got a really cool arc I think of learning to be a better person, and truly understanding Hardison's point about redemption being a process not a goal. His role on the team also has some interesting applications and drawbacks, as @allegorymetaphor talked about. I've kind of grown to think that the show is gradually building up to an eventual Sophie/Harry romance a ways down the line, and I'm actually here for it. Regardless, his relationships with everyone are really interesting.

As for Breanna, first of all and most importantly I love her. Secondly, I think she's got a really interesting story. She's a link to Hardison's past, and provides a really interesting perspective for us as someone younger who has grown up a) looking up to Leverage and b) in a bleaker and more hopeless world. Breanna's not an optimist, and she's not someone who was self-sufficient and unconcerned with the rest of the world at the start, like everyone else. She believes that the world sucks and she wants it to be better, but she doesn't know how to make that happen. She outright says she's desperate and that's why she's working with Leverage. At the same time, Breanna is pretty down on herself and wants to prove herself but gets easily shaken by mistakes or being scolded, which is a stark contrast to Hardison's general self-confidence. There are several times when she starts to have an idea then hesitates to share it, or expects her emotions to be dismissed, or gets really disheartened when she's corrected or rejected, or dwells on her mistakes, or when she is accepted or praised she usually takes a surprised beat and is shy about it (she almost always looks down and away from the person, and her smile is often small or startled). Breanna looks up to the team so much (Parker especially, then probably Eliot) and she wants to prove herself. It's going to be so good to see her grow.

General Vibe

A brief note, but it seems a fitting one to end on. The show keeps it's overall tone and feeling from the original show. The fun, the competency porn, the bad guys and clever plans and happy endings. It's got differences for sure, but the characters are recognizably themselves and the show as a whole is recognizably still Leverage. For the most part they just got the feeling right, and it's really nice.

CONS (no, not that kind)

'Maker and Fixer'

So when I started writing this meta earlier today, I was actually a lot more annoyed by the lack of unique 'maker' skills being shown by Breanna. Basically the only time she tries to use a drone, the very thing she introduced herself as being good at, it breaks instantly. I was concerned about her being relegated into just doing what Hardison did, instead of bringing her own stuff to the table. But the seventh episode eased some of those fears, and the meta I just wrote for someone else asking about Breanna's 'maker' skills as shown this season made me realize there's more nuance than that. I'd still like to have seen more of that from her, but for now the fact that we don't see a lot of 'maker' from her so far seems more like a character decision based in Breanna's insecurities.

Harry definitely gets more 'inside man' usage. His knowledge as a 'fixer' comes in handy several times. Nonetheless, I'm really curious if there are any bigger ways to use it, aside from him just adding in some exposition/insight from time to time. I'm not even entirely sure how much more they can pull from this premise in terms of relevant skills, but I hope there's more and I'd like to see it. Maybe a con built more around him playing a longer role playing his old self, like they tried in the Tower Job? Maybe it's more a matter of him needed distance from that part of his past, being unable to face it without lashing out - in that case it could be a good character growth moment possibly for him to succeed in being Scummy Lawyer again down the line? I dunno.

Episode Twins

This was something small that kind of bothered me a little earlier in the season. It's kind of the negative side to the references, I guess? And I'm not even sure how much it annoys me really, but I just kinda noticed and felt sort of weird about it.

Rollin' on the River has a lot of references/callbacks to the The Wedding Job.

The Tower Job has a lot of references/callbacks to The White Rabbit Job.

The Paranormal Hacktivity Job has a lot of references/callbacks to the Future Job.

I guess I was getting a little concerned that there would be a 'match this episode' situation where almost every new Redemption episode is very reminiscent of an old one. I love the callbacks, but I don't want to see a lack of creativity in this new show, and this worried me for a minute. Especially when it was combined with all three of those episodes dealing with housing issues of some kind. Now, that's a huge concern for a lot of people, and each episode has its own take on a different problem within that huge umbrella, but it still got me worried about a lack of variety in topics/cases.

The rest of the episodes failing to line up so neatly in my head with older episodes helped a lot to ease this one, though. Still, this is my complaining section so I figured I'd express my concerns as they were at the time. Even if I no longer really worry about it much.

Sophie's Stagefright

Yeah, I know this is just a small moment in a single episode, but it annoyed me! Eliot made a bit of a face at Sophie going onstage, but I thought it was just him being annoyed at the general situation. However, they started out with her being awful up there until she realized the poem was relevant to the con - at which point her reading got so much better.

This felt like a complete betrayal of Sophie's beautiful moment at the end of the original show where she got over her trouble with regular acting and played Lady Macbeth beautifully in front of a full theater of audience members. This was part of the con, but only in the sense that it gave her an alibi/place to hide, and I always interpreted it as her genuinely getting over her stagefright problems. It felt like such a beautiful place to end her arc for that show, especially after all her time spent directing.

Now, her difficulty onstage in the Card Game Job was brief and at the very beginning of being up on stage. @rinahale suggested to me that maybe it was a deliberate tactic to draw the guy's attention, and the later skill was simply her shifting focus to make the sonnet easier for Breanna to listen to and interpret, but he seemed more enraptured when she was doing well than otherwise in my opinion and it just doesn't quite sit well with me. My other theory was that maybe she just hasn't been up on stage in a long time, and much like she complaining about being rusty at grifting before the team pushed her into trying, she got nervous for a moment at the very beginning. The problem there is that I think she'd definitely still get involved in theater even when she and Nate were retired. I guess she could've quit after he died, and a year might be long enough to make her doubt herself again, but... still.

I just resent that they even left it ambiguous at all. Sophie's skills should be solid on stage at this point in my opinion.

Thiefsome

...And now we come to my main complaint. This is, by far, the biggest issue I have with the show.

I feel like I should put a disclaimer here that I had my doubts from the beginning about the thiefsome becoming canon onscreen. I thought the famous "the OT3 is safe" tweet could easily just mean that they are all still alive and well, or all still working together, without giving us confirmation of a romantic relationship. Despite this, the general fandom expectations/hopes really got to me, especially with the whole "lock/pick/key" thing. I tried to temper my expectations again when the character descriptions came out and only mentioned Hardison loving Parker, not Eliot, but I still got my hopes up.

The thing is, I was disappointed pretty quickly.

The very first episode told me that in all likelihood we would never see Hardison and Parker and Eliot together in a romantic sense. Oh, there was so much coding. So much hinting. So much in the way of conversations that were about Parker/Hardison's relationship but then Eliot kept getting brought into them. They were portrayed as a unit of three.

But then there was this.

I love all of those scenes of Parker and Hardison being intimate and loving and comfortable with one another and their relationship. I really do. But it didn't escape my notice that there's nothing of the sort with Eliot. If they wanted a canon onscreen thiefsome, it would by far make the most sense to just have it established from the start. But there aren't any scenes where Eliot shares the same kind of physical closeness with either of them like they do each other. Parker and Hardison kiss; he doesn't kiss anyone. They have several clearly romantic conversations when alone; he gets important conversations with both but the sense of it being romantic isn't there.

Establishing Eliot as part of the relationship after Hardison is gone just... doesn't make any sense. It would be more likely to confuse new viewers, to make them wonder if Parker is cheating on Hardison with Eliot, or if they have a Y shaped relationship rather that a triangle. It would be so much clumsier.

Still, up until the Double-Edged-Sword Job I believed the writers might keep it at this level of 'plausible hinting but not quite saying'. There's a lot of great stuff with all of them, and I never expecting making out or whatever anyway; a cheek-kiss was about the height of my hopes to be honest. I mostly just hoped for outright confirmation and, failing that, I was happy enough to have the many hints and implications.

But then Marshal Maria Shipp came along. And I don't really have anything against her as a character - in fact, I think she has interesting story potential and will definitely come back. But the episode framed her fight with Eliot as a sexyfight TM, much like his fight with Mikel back in the day. And then his flirting with her rode the line a little of "he's playing her for the con" and "he's genuinely flirting." The scene where he tells her his real name is particularly iffy, but actually was the one that convinced me he was playing her. Because he seems to be watching her really closely, and to be very concerned about her figuring out who he really is. I am very aware though that I'm doing a lot of work to interpret it the way I want. On surface appearance, Eliot's just flirting with an attractive woman, like he did on the last show. And that's probably the intention, too.

But the real nail in the coffin for me was when Sophie compared herself and Nate to Eliot and Maria. That was a genuine scene, not the continuation of the teasing from before. And Sophie is the one whose insight into people is always, always trustworthy. She is family to the thiefsome. For this to make any sense, either Eliot/Parker/Hardison isn't a thing, or they are and Sophie doesn't know - and I can't imagine why in the hell she wouldn't know.

Any argument to make them still canon leaves me unsatisfied. If she knows and they haven't admitted it to her - why wouldn't they, after all this time? Why would she not have picked up on it even without an outright announcement? Some people suggested they wouldn't admit it because they thought Nate would be weird about it, but that doesn't seem any more in character to me than the other possibilities. In fact, the only option that doesn't go against my understanding of these people and their observational abilities/the close relationship they share.... is that the thiefsome is not a thing.

And furthermore, the implication of this conversation - especially the way it ended, with Eliot stomping off looking embarrassed while Sophie smiled knowingly - is that Eliot will get into another relationship onscreen. Maybe not a full-blown romantic relationship. But the Maria Shipp tension is going to be resolved somehow, and at this point I'm half-expecting a hook-up simply because of Sophie's reaction and how much I trust her judgement of such things. Even if she's letting her grief cloud her usual perceptiveness... it feels iffy.

It just kinda feels like I wasn't even allowed to keep my "interpret these hints/maybe they are" thiefsome that I expected after the first couple episodes convinced me we wouldn't get outright confirmation. (I mean, I will anyway, and I love the hints and allusions regardless.) And while I'm definitely not the kind of fan who is dependent on canon for my ships, and still enjoy all their interactions/will keep right on headcanoning them all in a relationship, it's just.... a bummer.

Feels like a real cop-out. Like the hints of Breanna being queer are enough to meet their quota and they won't try anything 'risky' like a poly relationship. I dunno. It's annoying.

.

That's the end of the list! Again, overall I love the new show a lot and have few complaints.

[mcustorm]

In Defense of a Black Cyclops

In case my username didn’t make it clear, the single most anticipated visual project for me is the MCU’s interpretation of the X-Men, which hasn’t even been announced yet [officially]. And ladies and gents, I have found your Cyclops:

Good ol’ Alfred Enoch, who we all know from Harry Potter and How to Get Away With Murder. If you’re not familiar with HTGAWM, know that his character goes from the de facto leader of the ragtag (murderers) and most cherished protege of Viola Davis’ Professor X to taking more of a grimdark turn after his girlfriend’s death. Sound at least somewhat familiar?

Enoch also embodies the physicality of the character well, seeing as to how he’s “slim”, 6′4(!!), black, and notoriously lanky. Wait, one of these isn’t like the others.

In general I hate fancasting. Everyone generally picks from the same pool of about 30 actors (Peeps, neither Taron nor Daniel is a good Wolverine choice. Argue with your mother!), and most all of it is based on physicality, except when it absolutely should be (like say, choosing a ~5′10 dark-skinned black woman for Storm).

And I think there’s some malarkey afoot. I think there needs to be some serious consideration on part of fancasters and actual casting agents alike to rethink race when it comes to the [white] X-Men, especially since they’re the X-Men of all teams. So I’ll make the case for a black Cyclops: 

1. There is no quota on Black X-Men: There’s a bug in your ear that’s been whispering lies to you for years, it says something to the effect of “We need a black person on the team for diversity. How bout Storm?” And you’ve gotten complacent. Storm does not have to be the only black person on your X-Men roster.

2. The X-Men represent diversity: Iceman is gay, Cyclops and Prof. X are disabled (sorta), there are plenty of women, oh and everybody except Storm is white. Of the A-List X-Men, there is only *one* POC character. I’d argue that an MCU X-Men needs to champion diversity like never before.

3. The X-Men represent minority struggle while being mostly white: There’s a cognitive dissonance in the metaphor that has always been there, and for the most part, nobody cares. To appeal to the white readers of the 60′s, the X-Men were all initially white. That way, the message of the mutants could be related to the audience with a familiar face. We don’t need to approach the problem that way in 202?

4. Just because that’s the way it’s always been, doesn’t mean that’s the way it should be: The first line of defense. Sorry, that will never be a good justification for literally any idea. It’s time for some more critical thinking.

5. We don’t all want to be Bishop: So say you’re white and you have a kid who for his birthday having a costume party. You’ve bought some X-Men costumes and you want each kid to pick one. 9 white kids and one black kid show up to your house. As the kids deliberate who gets what costume, be it Cyke or Wolvie or whatever, you yell at everybody to “STOP!”, point to the one black kid and tell him “You’re gonna be Bishop. That’s it, end of story!” 

We don’t all want to be Bishop. The black child could have the best Cyclops interpretation within him, but you’ll never know if you don’t let him try. And that’s no different from the Black actors of Hollywood. There’s no reason why all of the black talent should *have* to compete for the role of Bishop or Storm, which I’ve discussed, while Joe Schmo can walk up and audition for literally anybody he wants.          

Jharrel Jerome is 23 and has an Emmy to his name. He needs to be in the MCU in some capacity, period. Stephan James is another. How bout Damson Idris. Ashton Sanders. But no, no, let’s fancast Dacre Montgomery or Ansel or Joe Keery again as [Human Torch, Wolverine, Iceman, Angel, I’ve literally seen it all.]

6. Nobody wants to see the B-team if it comes down to it. The next line of defense from your racebending naysayers after “That’s the way it’s always been!” is “Well, what about Psylocke, Bishop, Forge and Jubilee?” who are otherwise known as B-tier X-Men. The problem is, we’ve got limited time and limited spots.

So since the X-Men is all about wonky metaphors that make half sense, let me give you another: Let’s say somebody approaches you and says “Hey buddy, I got two free concert tickets for ya! You can either see Michael Jackson Sings the Blues, or you can go see Justin Timberlake. Free of charge!”

Now, are you used to MJ singing the blues? No! Do you have a problem with going to see Justin Timberlake? No, he’s fine on a Wednesday! He had that one little diddy we liked that one time. We’d love to see him eventually! But are you gonna say, “fuck that, I’m going to see MJ Sings the Blues” regardless? Hell yes, because that’s still Michael Jackson. He’s gonna give the same amazing performance he always does, it’s just gonna be the blues. And speaking of blues...

7. Black is not Blue, Brown is not Blue: Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard this one: “I don’t care if you’re black, white, purple, or green, I’m going to treat you all the same!” I will not say all have this intention, but some fancasters have noticed that the racial diversity is kinda low within the A-List X-Men, so they oh-so-generously give the following roles to a black or brown person: Iceman, Nightcrawler, Beast. 

Notice the pattern? It’s a microaggression, and it’s bullshit. What these fancasters are implicitly telling you is that, yes the actors will be black or brown, but when the action starts we can ignore that. They’ll be blue by then. In other words, you in fact do care if they’re purple or green. Nobody will cry foul if Dev Patel gets to play Nightcrawler (because that’s a common one I see), but should Anna Diop be Starfire or Michael B. Jordan be Human Torch, I bet there’d be backlash. Oh wait. If that’s you, please stop acting like you actually value diversity. You don’t want to see black or brown skin, period. Unless of course, it’s Storm (refer to point #1).

But wait, there’s more! When brown characters get whitewashed in these movies, it’s crickets! So eventually it’s revealed implicitly that proclaimers of point #4 only care about it one way.

8. Professor X should not be black if you’re not willing to change anyone else: The next line of defense is that some people say the professor should be black, if anybody HAS to be racebent. Something something MLK Jr., Civil Rights or some shit. Number one, I’m not reducing Professor X to being a magical negro for 9 white people (and Storm!) who for all intents and purposes get to have all the action. Number 2, the Professor X/MLK/Magneto/Malcolm X comparison is an oversimplifying disservice to ALL FOUR of those people. I hate that line whenever I see it, please watch a documentary my friends. 

9. The Candidates for Racebending: For me, the A-List X-Men are Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Angel, Beast, Wolverine, Storm, Gambit, Rogue, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Kitty Pryde. Now, who should be exempt from the racebending? Storm, she’s our designated minority. Gambit, he’s Cajun and they’re white (generally speaking, that’s a fun bit of research). Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler, because their nationality/ethnicity was the whole point of the Giant-Size premise in the first place. Angel, because his character embodies a privileged white male. Beast and Iceman, I don’t care one way or another (Point #7).

That leaves Cyclops, Rogue, Jean Grey, and Kitty Pryde. Now Jean Grey is a redhead, and we all know that every time a redhead is racebent people sharpen their pitchforks (Mary Jane, Wally West, Iris West), so I will cede the ground on Jean if only so that my ginger friends can get their rep. Kitty Pryde is Jewish, but Jews of color exist. Rogue is from the South. And Cyclops is, well, just Cyclops. That makes those three characters good options for more diversity. But allow me to make the case for Cyclops, specifically.

10. It’s not just diversity for diversity’s sake: If you had to pick who the main character of the X-Men is supposed to be, most would say Cyclops. And so in a series that highlights racial discrimination in society, it makes sense that our main character be black. While changing Cyclops’ skin color should not change who he is as a character, it *should* recontextualize it. Now, as an eventual increasingly radical leader of the X-Men, Cyclops would evoke real life figures such as Colin Kaepernick or, shall I say, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Not that most X-Men fans and writers truly think about what it means to be black anyways. Storm’s minority status is almost always put through the lens of her being a mutant and not her being a black woman. In other words, you can’t argue that making a character black will fundamentally change his or her character when you haven’t even analyzed the racial context of the black character(s) you already have. Another concept that the MCU X-Men should tackle: intersectionality.

11. Representation matters: I have to say it: Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther hit different. And now he is tragically gone. At the end of the day, the MCU moving forward is down its most prominent black male superhero. Which has implications beyond just the movies themselves.

The women are in good hands. Shuri, Okoye, and Nakia are badasses in Wakanda, Valkyrie is ruling Asgard, Storm is almost assuredly on the way, RiRi Williams has already been cast, and Monica Rambeau is here and she’s not even at her most glorious yet. That doesn’t even include variable Δ, or the number of characters who can and will be racebent. And I’ll note again that to me, Gamora doesn’t count, because she’s green (#7 really pisses me off because it’s so blatant. I hate it). Of course from a behind the camera perspective we love black women getting work.

The men are a completely different story. Imma just go out and say it, I can’t stand Falcon and War Machine [in the MCU] because they’re not characters, they’re just two of a slew of MCU minority sidekicks who have essentially been at the beck and call of Captain America and Iron Man, respectively. You cannot tell Falcon’s story without mentioning Cap. The reverse is not true. There’s a whole essay that could be and have been written on “Minorities in the MCU, pre-Black Panther”. Remember, there’s a reason BP made so much noise in the first place.

So excluding those two we have, let’s see, M’Baku, Blade, and Fury who aren’t exactly the most superheroic superheroes, Eli Bradley is proooobably coming, I doubt Miles Morales is coming (because he’s just Peter Parker in the MCU), Luke Cage(?) Bishop(??), Sunspot(???), Blue Marvel(????). Not only are they not A-List, I would not put money on any of them being in the MCU any time soon.

Cyclops is thee Captain America of the X-Men. He’s the frontman. He’s the poster boy. He’s the “boy scout”, which in other words means he’s the hero, if there has to be one. It would mean a lot right now, and specifically *right now*, if he were to be black. The MCU needs it. It NEEDS it.

12. The X-Men is the Summers Story: I’ll even make the case that if just one character needs to racebent, then it should be Cyclops, because that of course implies that other related characters need to be black because half of the X-Men universe is in fact a part of the Summers family. 

So now Cable is black. Corsair is black. Havok is black. And one of the most central stories in the X-Men mythos, the Summers family drama, is now a black family drama set in space or the future or where the fuck ever. The concept is boundary pushing. When white families have drama in the media, it gets to be Game of Thrones or Star Wars, while when black families have drama in the media, it has to be black people arguing in a kitchen or living room about their various earthly traumas (I’m @’ing you, Mr. Perry). I mean, that’s all fine and good often times, but I want my black family drama in space, dammit.

And again, this is the X-Men, the series that’s all about *minorities* and their struggle, so again, why not?

Oh, and I’ll even throw out a Havok fancast for you: How bout Jharrel Jerome?