#honestly i mostly live in my fanon version

[icyrambles]

the cassettes are a group of characters where if i think about them for too long i start to get physically ill.

because i really like the cassettes. they're really fun and i adore the concept of a guy who happens to have a gaggle of goons to do his dirty work. the combination of making them actual cassettes who live inside of soundwave (and/or blaster but this is gonna be a soundwave cassette focused post) is really interesting.

unfortunately most bits of canon (and fanon to be entirely honest) do not treat the cassettes as actual beings with their own thoughts, feelings, and personalities outside of "soundwave's little guys."

for the sake of clarity i will only be talking about the continuity that i have the most experience with, that being idw1 and my post will mostly be talking about those versions of the characters. i've been told that the cassettes feature more prominently in the g1 marvel comics but i haven't quite gotten around to reading those in depth so i won't be discussing those.

back on topic.

i always feel so disappointed at the actual cassettes as characters. they're often sidelined into being background characters and the majority of the time when they show up in fics they're never majour characters, just background guys to pad out the cast. i'm honestly not gonna judge fan writers and fan artists too harshly because most canon sources don't really feature the cassettes as actual characters worthy of having attention paid to them.

idw1 is specifically the continuity where i feel a bit sick whenever i think about the cassettes because they go through sooooo much shit and it's never brought up. like okay, laserbeak, buzzsaw, and ravage are mostly chill. obviously they probably have the whole beastformers are lesser beings thing going on but they're overall the most well rounded of the cassettes. (ravage especially since he's actually allowed to be a character outside of soundwave)

rumble and frenzy are were my stomach starts to like... explode. because they didn't get a choice in being soundwave's cassettes and it's never brought up, ever. megatron basically tells them that they're gonna be reformatted and neither party ever brings it up. like do rumble and frenzy just tolerate soundwave because it could be so much worse? do they genuinely respect soundwave and fight beside him because they want to see him succeed in a similar manner as the beastformers? like... phase 2 shows them reformatted again into motorcycles and they seem okay with it, like neither of them seem to be hung up on no longer being cassettes.

but also i have issues and problems with rumble and frenzy always being shown as a package duo. like i think they're a fun combo, especially as siblings because i adore platonic relationships but most pieces of canon treat them as interchangeable. like it's an ongoing joke in the fandom that they swap paint colours to fuck with people and in actual canon sources they don't have consistent colours so it's harder to actually treat them as genuine individuals. and that makes me soooooo mad. i don't like it when twins/duos in media get treated as a weird conglomerate individual with two names. it's boring and it's lazy and i wish it would stop happening.

side tangent. i hate what how skybound treats the cassettes. like okay yeah sure it's fun to see soundwave go "you hurt my ravage" but what about his other cassettes. either rumble or frenzy is dead and soundwave just doesn't fucking care? does he play favourites, boy i sure would like to know but daniel warren literally fucking said that he killed off one of the twins because he found the colour debate to be annoying and that grinds my gears a bit. if you don't like them, don't fucking include them or idk, have mike spicer, the colourist, keep their palettes consistent.

and skybound also treats ravage like an object. he's not an actual character with thoughts and feelings and emotions, he's a fucking toy for soundwave to moon over whenever warren needs soundwave to be less of an asshole than shockwave. like yeah sure, soundwave being so desperate to get ravage repaired in skybound is good for his character but that dynamic, where ravage has no actual dialogue and no actual personality outside of "soundwave's cassettte" makes him so much less interesting to me. skybound is getting a small benefit of the doubt because there's only 11 issues so far, but i will critique it to all hell because any emotional tension involving ravage and soundwave falls apart for me because ravage could easily be replaced with literally any other cassette. he's not special and the comic doesn't do anything to make me genuinely care about soundwave and his relationship.

tangent over. i'm going back to talking about idw1.

specifically it's time to talk about the fucking elephant in the room that i'm always thinking about whenever soundwave's cassettes come up; ratbat.

now to preface this little rant of mine. ratbat sucks. he's a terrible person who actively believed and contributed to the oppression of millions of cybertronians. he used soundwave as nothing more than a tool and proved himself to be a slimy scumbag with the few moments that he was on screen.

however, that does not stop me from feeling just a tad bit bad for him considering how soundwave treats him. it's one thing for the decepticons to murder the whole senate, those characters don't really matter in the long run, they're nameless, they never get brought up ever again and the story just doesn't care about them once they're dead.

but ratbat is different because rather than killing him, soundwave shoves his dying spark into a cassette body and for all intensive purposes, turns ratbat into his slave. because ratbat doesn't get a choice, he doesn't get the ability to say no. he just has to be toted along and do whatever soundwave tells him to do and that alone makes my opinions on idw soundwave.... well they're not great. because later stories treat idw soundwave like he's a good guy, he's the dude who wants to make the decepticons what they were originally, he wants to be done with cybertron's bullshit.

and i have to sit there, fist clenched, wanting to grab him by the fucking shoulders and ask "WHAT ABOUT RATBAT? WHAT ABOUT THE GUY WHO YOU LITERALLY MADE INTO A SLAVE FOR AT FOUR MILLION YEARS AND WHOSE DEATH YOU DIDN'T HAVE ANY REACTION TO WHATSOEVER? DOES LIBERATION AND EQUALITY ONLY MATTER WHEN IT COMES TO GUYS WHO DIDN'T PERSONALLY FUCK YOU OVER?"

ehem, anyways, yeah i do not like the fact that idw just brushes over the fact that ratbat is not willingly soundwave's cassette. they do not ever focus on the fact that soundwave stuffed his former employer's spark into a completely different frame and then proceeded to do exactly what ratbat did to him for around four million years. and then didn't react whatsoever to ratbat dying.

like in early idw1, ratbat doesn't have any dialogue. he's a nothing burger character like all the other cassettes. but idw phase 2 specifically makes him a political rival. he's the guy in charge of the cons (along side shockwave to some extent) and then prowl fucking orders arcee to kill ratbat and no one ever talks about him ever again...

i have complicated emotions regarding ratbat because the story really wants you to see his treatment and go, yes, he deserves this treatment, he's evil and he was mean to soundwave and therefore he deserves to be imprisoned by another and used as a weapon for four million years and once he's dead we'll never talk about him ever again.

and i don't think that's fair. ratbat should've been a crucial character to soundwave after he died. soundwave should've had a moment in phase two where he realises that the decepticons have been terrible from the beginning, that he was actively a part of that terribleness, and he should've made the active decision to change the decepticons into something that stands for equality and freedom and peace.

i'm gonna move onto ravage because i feel so bad for ravage. he got shafted hard. oh the one hand, i love mtmte ravage, i adore seeing the cassettes in environments that don't involve soundwave because it means the writers have to actually care about them as more than just little guys that soundwave bosses around.

unfortunately, ravage goes from being soundwave's little guy to being megatron's little guy in mtmte. which like... okay, fine, megatron needs a guy who he can bounce off of and ravage fits that role pretty well (though i'd argue that having megatron potentially bounce off of an autobot whose morals are a bit lax is much better than simply having a decepticon who already likes him.)

but the point is, ravage, rather than being his own character who has thoughts and opinions, only exists to be a buffer for megatron. the devil on his shoulder if you will, trying to see and understand and coax megatron back into being the fearsome leader he was before. and it works to some extent, ravage getting fatally injured is literally what prompts megatron into ripping the djd to shreds. but unfortunately, that's ravage's only real purpose in the story. we don't see him interacting with any other characters means that he's entirely dependent on megatron for any insight to his character development. nautica is an exception but i have my own issues with the fact that she treats him like a pet upon first meeting him and like... to my knowledge she never really gets over that whole cute kitty aspect of their relationship.

and this makes me so mad because ravage is really interesting. he's older than most of the characters on the lost light and should reasonably be a fascinating insight to how beastformers are treated and discriminated against during the pre and post war eras. but instead he's relegated to a side character who gets murdered to further the arc of megatron, a character who sort of forgets about ravage as soon as lost light starts. this isn't helped by megatron's character arc being rushed and happening mostly off screen but ravage's death feels so unnecessary to me. he would've been much better had he been forced to be separated from megatron for most of lost light.

and unfortunately this is much the same for most other continuities. transformers prime my forever detested treats laserbeak like a fucking drone. it doesn't have any voicelines, it's just a little creature hooked up to soundwave's chest. (i haven't read the books because i cannot be bothered with aligned continuity and also if i have to go to external sources of canon beyond the original show to get key character information, it probably wasn't too important to begin with)

earthspark is fun in season 1, i'm happy that frenzy and laserbeak are allowed a few moments of time outside of soundwave but they're very minor characters and unfortunately ravage isn't much of a character considering he can't speak (which is weird because laserbeak can) and only gets a few scenes throughout seasons 1 and two.

cyberverse only has laserbeak and once again she/he (i don't think they state their pronouns) only exists to be soundwave's little guy.

tfa soundwave is so nothing burger that i genuinely forget that he exists 90% of the time. so his cassettes, as to be expected, not characters and just random objects to be played around with.

my point in all this is that the cassettes deserve better. they deserve to be actual genuine characters who are treated as more than just set pieces for soundwave and the other decepticons. i hope that in later transformers series, the writers give the cassettes the opportunity to shine.

[mamawasatesttube]

8, 19, 22?

8. Who's your favorite artist (fanon or canon)?

OOH. paul pelletier (artist for early superboy and the ravers) draws one of my favorite kons ever in canon (the curls. the curls!!) and of course i really like dan mora and jorge jiminez and also bilquis evely's art. shoutout also to fatima wajid for my Favorite smot cover, and david talaski for my second-favorite smot cover dsfkjlds

as for fanartists. rubs my little hands together and stares at all my mutuals who i adore. @cowboysorceror has some of the bestest colors on the entire planet. @litta-jpg's lines and shapes make me want to put every pic directly into my mouth. @mysterycitrus draws everyone so pretty i dont even know what to say here??? @byeara has sooo much personality in all of their character designs!!! @ghostiiest also just has such warmth and flavor to his art even as i study him under a microscope. @crimzoncrow has the mythical ability to make even the most cursed shit adorable. this is getting long i will stop here but every single artist mutual pal i am blowing you guys kisses please know this

19. What do you like about being a comics fan?

WELL as a guy who loves inhaling lore, connecting dots, engaging in general pedantry, and sorting through various bits of canon to pick my favorite versions,

(my first ever fandom, by which i mean the first one where i started like engaging in and creating stuff and reading meta or fics or looking at art, etc, was tolkien's legendarium, aka the silmarillion plus histories of middle-earth, if that tells you anything about me.)

22. Any comics you're looking forward to?

sldjflkdjflK NO but mostly because im terrible at keeping up with whats actually ongoing and upcoming. i dont know shit about fuck unless kon is there, at which point i do pay attention (so like, i DID know about smot and kept up with dates there) (and now i'm back to living under a rock). except that i also generally don't like a lot of postflashpoint takes on characters i liked preflashpoint, so i never really look forward to those without a degree of trepidation. (for example. stares at the lex luthor psychic bomb retcon. what the fuck is that.)

um... are there any upcoming cool minis like city boy and spirit world with new characters?? thats mostly the kind of thing i'm enjoying as far as modern comics go!!! so... if there's anything of that sort. that'll be what i'm looking forward to skjdhfjkds but honestly i don't know!!

[haemosexuality]

FNAF MOVIE SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT DONT READ IF YOU HAVENT SEEN IT YET I MEAN IT!!!!!!!

my thoughts on the movie UwU

ok first of i LOVED what they did with mike's character???? its different from the games canon (or different from the most popular theories??? i can never remember what is actually canon and whats accepted fanon) but its sooooo interesting. making him the brother of one of the victims was SO unexpected but it worked really really well. tho going into the movie with preconceived notions ab the story fucked me up somewhat bc i took so long to accept he wasnt michael afton 😣 tho i feel the movie mightve been setting fans up that way lol

on that note his brother confused me somewhat? cuz he was one of the missing children but he wasnt one of the 5 spirits was he??? maybe he was and i just didnt notice KSBSKDBSKD ill look out for it on my second watch

WILLIAM. MOTHER FUCKING AFTON. OH MY GODDDDDDD THAT WAS FUCKING INSANE and honestly seeing everyones reaction to it was SO cool. when springtrap appeared everyone screamed and clapped. when he started dying everyone screamed and clapped even louder. and when he said "I ALWAYS COME BACK" everyone LOST THEIR FUCKING MIND SCREAMING CRYING YELLING CLAPPING WHOOPING IT WAS SO FUCKING GOOD

AND THE VANESSA REVEAL????? i think thats completely different from game vanessa lore mostly bc william aftons daughter in the game was elizabeth/baby and shes fucking dead but idk vanessa lore so who knows. all i know is that it WORKED MAN i did NOT see that coming but i HONESTLY REALLY LIKED IT AND AGAIN EVERYONE IN THE THEATER LOST THEIR MINDS WE WERE ALL LIKE "WHAT?????" (edit: i saw an youtuber point out that this cant be the same vanessa from sb bc this is set in like the 90s and sb's in the future. maybe this is something like, they put two vanessas so we know that sometimes different characters just have the same name and dont get too hang up on mike smith vs michael afton lol)

i also like how they did williams character. i usually dont like purely evil 2d villains but i feel that fits afton way more than "sad scientist goes insane cuz he lost his kid oh no :(". like it just fits fnaf!!!!!!!

another thing that was completely different from the game was the animatronics. like in the game theyre "like animals" but in the movie they all seemed very, aware??? msking decisions? they def had a mind and it was cheesy sure but i also liked it. i just loved this movie. and everything about it. i went into it knowing it was absolutely not going to be 1:1 with the game so i dont mind im just so happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IT IMMEDIATELY STARTING WITH A JOKE ON DREAM THEORY LMFAOOOOOOOO. "SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE IT"

MATPAT? MOTHERFUCKING MATPAT ARE YOU KIDDING ME

THE EASTER EGGS!!! THE REFERENCES!!!!!! THERE WERE SO MANY AND THEY MADE ME WANT TO SCREAM AND CRY EVERY TIME OH MY GOD

im not gonna remember all of them but I WANT THE MIDNIGHT MOTORIST HOODIE

max did NOT deserve to die that upset me. she was fine!!!!!!!

also the violence wasnt anything super crazy but it was def more than i expected. also they swore

THE ANIMATRONICS ARE SO FUCKING COOL DUDE OH MY GOD I CANT BELIEVE THEYRE REAL

also golden freddy wasnt a girl in the movie. F cassidy

i like mikes character sooooo much ive said so before and im saying it again. vanessa too

THE SONG THE FUCKING SONG THE LIVING TOMBSTONE PLAYING IN THE FUCKINF CREDITS OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD I CANT BELIEVE IT OH MY GOD DUDE DUDE DUDE DUDE DUDE

this one is only for the brazilians in here but i actually liked the dub? this sentiment might change after i watch the og version but it wasnt terrible. williams voice was 10/10

balloon boy was funny every single time. fuck this bitch. also the cupcake

THE ITS MEEEEEEEEEEE i wish they did more its mes BUT I SAW THAT!!!

the scene were mike calls abby to the kitchen so they could 'talk' and the aunt was there.... actually broke my heart how dare you

i missed phone guy 😭

OH IM PRETTY SURE I SAW THE FAKE DOG ANIMATRONIC PEOPLE THOUGHT EXISTED YEARS AGO???? I DONT REMEMBER HIS NAME BUT I THINK HE WAS THERE IN THE LIKE STORAGE PLACE i might be crazy tho dont quote me

i thought i wouldnt like it but i love how expressive freddy is its so funny. chica bonnie n foxy too but him especially

ok i those were all my immediate thoughts!!! i wrote this a few hours ago when id JUST gotten back from the theater and now im gonna go watch it again so bye <3

[wtfwhy]

SPOILERS!!!!!!! Unorganized Teen Wolf movie review basically

I actually... really liked it??? Like it's not that good but I enjoyed watching it! A lot of parts were genuinely funny and the plot was like passable! (Quite a few unanswered questions tho)

There were some things I found confusing or weird, like idk wtf Harris had against the pack (his reveal was funny af tho) and a few other things, but they were mostly just because of the lack of Stiles, Kira, and and Isaac

The Kira 'stand in' girl (I think her name was Hikari??) Was pretty cool, obviously sucks that Kira herself wasn't there but that's a whole different conversation 👀

Honestly, as a huge Stydia shipper I was hoping they wouldn't break them up and just have him like watching their kids or something (I think I saw a funny post of that once) but they way they broke them up? Not actually that bad? Like Lydia left him because she loved him and I was just worried that they wouldn't love each anymore so I'll take what I can get! Tho not expanding on the dreams she was having is a bit of a lost thread, but since it wasn't really apart of the main story, I'll let it slide lol.

I did not like how they just pretended Issac didn't exist, that was pretty fucked up. Like I predicted that Scott and Allison would get back together by the end, but damn rip Isaac for real 😔

Anyways, about Derek's death... Honestly, since I wasn't taking the movie that seriously in the first place, I didn't really feel anything about Derek dying? Like don't get me wrong, I love the man and if they killed him off in the actual show I'd be bawling, but the movie to me is just a silly little suggestion to canon than law. There's real canon, fanon, and the third secret canon that lives inside my brain ☺️

But like, I don't really care that he died in the movie, I was just surprised tbh. Rip king you deserved better 🙏 (I don't understand how he just like, disappeared, after being burnt?? Like maybe I didn't notice it but his body was gone like huh???)

I never liked Scott and Malia together so I'm glad they broke up, but Malia and Parish was weird as hell and was just so random. I think that ever since Malia and Stiles broke up the writers just couldn't figure out what to do with her? Which is a total shame cause Malia is queen. But none of her relationships post stiles make sense or work out so rip (I do love me some stlia on the side ngl)

Jackson was GREAT, funny af and just like how I would imagine the redeemed adult version of the asshole from season 1, 10/10

Lots of missed opportunities for interactions, (like Liam and Mason) but it's only a 2h movie so I get it

I thought both Scott and Allison were great, tho I'm not sure how I feel about her staying alive afterwards. Plus I always shipped Scira more but you know 👀 love that Scott was the same great guy ☺️ when he hugged Chris I literally cried it was so cute 🥺

UNEXPECTED TWIST for me!!! I came into the movie, very lightly shipping Chris and Melissa, and came out of the movie shipping Chris, Melissa, and Peter 😳 I didn't expect that! But they were such a cute trio omg it was amazing

Eli was cute and I don't think that he was that much like stiles, but there obviously similarities

And Jackson and Lydia brotp??? Absolutely!!!

So that's basically it, I'll give this a solid 6/10

PS: saw some people legitimately mad that sterek didn't happen, fuck those people. You are not allowed near my blog...unless you want to send funny hate anon that I can roast

(like one person brought up the whole, sterek was "queerbaiting" thing, which is such bullshit. They literally never fucking liked each other, even platonically. I would say by the end of the show Derek just barely tolerates Stiles. The real queerbaiting was the writers being to scared to confirm that Stiles was Bi because it's ridiculous how many scenes pointed to that, especially in seasons 1-3 smh)

I might take about more later but it's bedtime!!!

[xrawanger007]

Friendships to get to know me

I was tagged by @joy-4-joy​ so thank you for making me scrape the barrel of 5 platonic relationships: (FYI, this took way too long to think of a solid 5)

**Rules**: Name at least five (no upper limit) platonic relationships you love. Each from a different fandom

1. Dick Grayson & Tim Drake (DC Comics)

I just love them okay? I know people say Jason was Tim’s Robin, which is as fanon as you can get, but I grew up on Tim and Dick being brother’s, and although I was tempted to put Tim & Cass on here instead, Joy had already done it and I wanted to be different.

2. Peter Parker & Johnny Storm (MARVEL)

This interaction lives rent free in my brain. Yes, maybe a controversial one, but I like them platonically, and I find their friendship to be the right amount of insulting and fun. They’re real bro’s.

3. Jason Grace & Percy Jackson (Percy Jackson)

They live by the word bro. Honestly, rivals to best friends is a trope that I usually only read for the eventual lovers, but these two work as simple competitive bro’s. Also, R.I.P Jason

4. J.D & Turk

“It’s guy love!” If you’ve watched the show you’ll understand the reference. But honestly? These two made my childhood and my teens, they’re great chemistry on-screen lead to many memorable moments, that I still laugh and smile at. And the fact that they’re friends in real life makes this so much better.

5. Sakura Haruno & Ino Yamanaka

Now while I may ship these two to the moon and back, Let’s go lesbians!!!, I do recognise canon, mostly, and they have an amazing rival/friendship, like if not for Ino, Sakura may never have become a ninja, and they support each other even if they are rivals. But, isn’t that one of the best kinds of friends? The one’s who push you to be the best version of yourself?

Anyway my recommendations for people to try this are:

@sohotthateveryonedied​ @thatblondeperson​ @waterbenderkat​

Good luck!!!!

[usagihoppu]

Getting to know you game!

Relationship: Yep yep, 5 years in March!

Favourite Colour: Purplllllle

Favourite Food: yakiniku, specifically the kind we made at my first job as a teen. Still make it some days as a comfort food.

Song stuck in my head: Slowdance on the Inside - Taking Back Sunday

Last thing I googled: Glimmer, from Shera. I needed reference photos lol

Current time: 5:05

Dream trip: Japan. Honestly the only travel I'd do.

Comfort Movie: Kimi No Nawa; Your Name

Comfort Food: aside from my fav food, fried chicken 100%

Comfort clothes: none lol maybe panties but mostly I'm most comfortable nude.

Comfort Song: My Blue Heaven (acoustic live version) - Taking Back Sunday

Comfort Book: I don't really have one? I tend to read what interests me at the time and don't have a dedicated favorite I return to.

Comfort Game: Minecraft even after all these years.

3 ships: Adora x Catra (canon), Momo x Jiro (fanon), Loid x Yor(canfanon?)

1st ever ship: omg Kagome x Inuyasha as a young teen. Jesus talk about a throw back.

Last Song: Cute without the e(cut from the team) by Taking Back Sunday...seeing a musical trend with me yet?

Current read: no books, but Spy x Family and Frieren: At Journeys End are the two manga I'm into right now

Currently Consuming: Chickie nuggies n fries n a coke

Currently watching:

Currently Craving: Coffee. Espresso. Mocha. Etc etc

tag @seradae

[galaxycampfirecollective]

honestly it sucks being so connected with your source and yet being unable to even interact with it

like, me and Nemesis (and to a much lesser extent, Stars and Guide) are sourced from different areas of mcyt, specifically 3rd Life/Helscraft for me, and YHS for Nemesis.

I can’t stand interacting with canon ever since Secret Life finished. Fanon is even worse sometimes tbh. Nemesis is so out of pocket that no existing content really allows them to feel connected.

and for us, it’s hard. Stars is mostly able to disconnect the mcyt part of their origin (with an asterisk saying ‘excluding their life partner’), and Guide is very loosely connected for the mcyt areas of their source.

meanwhile for me and Nemesis, we have nothing outside of our sources. Sources that don’t reflect us. Sources that feel like a mockery of our lives. Sources that we can never really see as us. But sources that cannot be separated from our identities.

I hate how canon me acts. It’s like reading a story about your life, but everything is wrong. Because I was never a hermit. Secret Life didn’t happen. All our relationships were so different. Hell, my kids do not exist. And so ever since the discomfort over secret life reached all time highs, I just… stopped interacting with the fandom. I haven’t been keeping up. I’ll reread a few fanfics every now and again, and I have a few posts in our likes, but to speak about the versions of my friends who are nothing like I remember as if my own timeline doesn’t exist, it hurts. So I don’t.

and Nemesis… I don’t know if not having anything resembling your timeline is worse. They’re disconnected from Hermitcraft/traffic life, but instead they’re from a series they never appear in. They had friends, and they literally cannot exist without their memories, because that’s who they are. But nothing’s the same. They’re from an AU the host made whole going through a tough time. An AU only briefly shared publicly. I feel bad for them.

[antianakin]

Yeah like I don't even generally include the Jedi Apprentice novels as part of my personal canon much at all. I LIKE them, and I think there's some really interesting choices made in them, but there's a lot in there I have little to no interest in considering towards what I personally consider canon for the story or the characters.

MOST of the fic I did end up reading about them back in the day was far less on the "Qui-Gon the abusive/neglectful asshole" train and more about Qui-Gon truly loving Obi-Wan even if he didn't/couldn't acknowledge it and allowing that relationship to start to heal in the aftermath of Melida/Daan. And that's what I DID like about those stories was watching the two of them have to acknowledge the pain that was there and work through it to something better and brighter and healthier. To me, that's the whole point of it in some ways. That's what allows it to hit that extra tragedy button that Jude Watson seems to be aiming at with the knowledge that Qui-Gon dies in TPM.

But these days, I'm reading slightly different areas of fic and I feel like every time Melida/Daan comes up, or just Obi-Wan's past in GENERAL, it always ends up being used to say that Qui-Gon was a bad master or to explain why Obi-Wan can use a gun better than anyone else or both. The amount of times I have seen a scene where Cody realizes Qui-Gon "left Obi-Wan behind in a war zone as a child" and decides if Qui-Gon weren't dead already he'd probably kill Qui-Gon himself, are NUMEROUS. And it's so sad because that's NOT THE POINT. There's actually such a cool way to connect Melida/Daan and Qui-Gon's choice here with the Jedi's situation in the Clone War because one of the major reasons Qui-Gon refuses to stay on Melida/Daan is because the Jedi aren't supposed to be soldiers. They don't take sides like that, they don't fight wars for people. Their job is to keep conflict from happening at all or to come in and help mediate a peace after both sides have already chosen to try for peace. It's not the Jedi's job to fight a war on the side of the Young and put them in power. And of course, in the Clone Wars, the Jedi are now forced to be soldiers and fight in a war on behalf of the Republic. There's some really interesting comparisons to be made there that I've never seen get made at all because everyone wants to be on Obi-Wan's side and feel compassion for the Young and say that Qui-Gon was just the asshole in the situation.

I was absolutely in the target age-range for the books, I just couldn't ever find them when I WAS at the target age-range and had to wait until I was older and had a friend who could ACQUIRE them for me to read once I was far out of that age-range and so most of my enjoyment of them came from making the comparisons between what I knew from fic and what was actually written in the book. There were aspects I didn't like much, like I'm not particularly fond of the New Apsolon arc since it makes a hard pivot away from Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's relationship with each other and into this weird tragic romance with Tahl and Qui-Gon instead, and I honestly didn't care for the writing style of the first book that was written by David Wolverton at all and it nearly turned me off of reading the entire series. It's not at all a perfect series, nor do I necessarily ever recommend it to ANYONE given its specific target demographic and the fact that it's so non-canon. But it remains one of the primary sources for fanon backstory for Obi-Wan and still comes up relatively often whenever Obi-Wan's past gets discussed, so it feels worth it to keep talking about how it seems to have gotten wildly misinterpreted in certain areas.

I don't tend to like either "abusive asshole" Qui-Gon or "most perfect Jedi to have ever lived" Qui-Gon. I actually RARELY find that second one because I think I personally attribute him way more to anti-Jedi content than the abusive asshole version. The abusive asshole version tends to come along mostly with Obi-Wan whump, but that doesn't actually have to go hand-in-hand with Jedi bashing at all. Quite often I find that it's other Jedi characters sort-of acknowledging that Qui-Gon was a bad master and being sympathetic to Obi-Wan in those instances, or it allows specific characters like Anakin or the clones or Ahsoka to like... see Obi-Wan in a different light somehow. So I tend to end up reading more of the abusive asshole version than the "most perfect Jedi" version because I don't think you can get the most perfect Jedi version without SUPER anti-Jedi content that I just absolutely don't read anymore. If Qui-Gon is being turned into this perfect being, it feels like it's always done at the expense of every other Jedi around him. The abusive asshole version doesn't tend to have that impact in my experience, it's isolated to just Qui-Gon himself mostly.

But also both versions tend to really just make the Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan relationship BAD. Obviously the abusive asshole version sort-of removes any of the actual care and companionship that was in their relationship entirely and if Obi-Wan has any fond feelings left for Qui-Gon they tend to be in the realm of like "He tried." Like I said, I don't tend to read the perfect Jedi version, but what I know about it just feels like it ends up a comparison where Qui-Gon is BETTER than Obi-Wan and just relegates Obi-Wan to one of those other Jedi who just don't Get It the way Qui-Gon does (and of course the added caveat of how Qui-Gon would've been a better master for Anakin than Obi-Wan and if only Qui-Gon had lived to train Anakin than maybe everyone would have been miraculously saved).

And I LIKE Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's relationship. A lot. My love for that relationship basically defined my entire relationship to Star Wars and its fandom when I was a kid. So it's always saddening to see it get flattened one way or the other rather than recognizing how close they genuinely ARE in The Phantom Menace, how much they care about each other, how in sync they are, how much Obi-Wan grows and learns through Qui-Gon's teachings.

And I genuinely do like what Jedi Apprentice was trying to add to that relationship, I just feel like a lot of what it was trying to do kind-of... didn't actually makes its way into the fandom osmosis understanding of it. And so what we're left with are some pockets of like sweet little stories about how the relationship began rocky but got better after Qui-Gon figured his shit out or just Obi-whump stuff, and basically nothing about how Obi-Wan made mistakes too and what he had to learn in order to help the relationship heal. Poor Obi-Wan just kind-of gets left behind a little. That's why the probation thing bothers me. It's not just about allowing time for the relationship to heal, it's an acknowledgment on Obi-Wan's part that the choice he made, though done out of compassion, was an impulsive one that did cause harm he didn't intend. It broke trust with the Council and it seems to have cast doubt on other initiates near his age that they now have to struggle through. Part of what allows Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's relationship to feel so interesting in this series is that they BOTH fuck up and have to acknowledge that before they can actually come together again. And it's not an instant fix, either, we see them struggling through it during the Zan Arbor books before they finally get to a place in the finale years later where they actually communicate and trust each other enough to truly be in sync as a master/padawan pair.

It's really sad that the Jedi Apprentice series and its impact on Obi-Wan's character in fandom is reduced to a combination of: uwu sad Obi-Wan with trauma, Qui-Gon is an abuser, or "this is how Obi-Wan learned to shoot a gun/fight a war."

When there's honestly SO MUCH you can do with Jedi Apprentice and its impact on Obi-Wan that goes way deeper than that and really takes the themes and messages of the story into account. Like all the lessons about attachment and how Obi-Wan was so caught up in wanting to be a Jedi Knight that he couldn't conceive of any other future for himself and saw everything else as inferior and the fear of the uncertainty in his life if he couldn't be a Jedi Knight consumes him to the point of hindering his relationship with Qui-Gon and his understanding of what it means to be a Jedi at all. Obi-Wan learns to understand what being a Jedi is all about because he makes a mistake that ultimately has a lot of unintended consequences that he can't really undo, either by himself or at all. Obi-Wan has to learn to take responsibility for his own choices and accept that life is often uncertain before he can truly be a Jedi. This is what makes Obi-Wan such a GOOD Jedi later on. This is why he can connect so well to Anakin even, because he's felt many of the same fears that Anakin would be struggling with upon joining the Order.

You can look at the impact of different kinds of friendships Obi-Wan makes within his first few missions, from a fellow slave to Service Corps members to the children of Melida/Daan. They're all from very different walks of life and have radically different personalities and agendas, and Obi-Wan learns things from all of them that he takes with him. And none of them are romantic! Because he doesn't NEED a romantic love interest to be interesting or relatable or a foil for Anakin.

And his relationship with Qui-Gon is so interesting because the two of them are suffering from many of the same issues and have to grow through them together. They both see themselves as failures due to the actions of others (Bruck's bullying and the rejection of the other masters for Obi-Wan, and Xanatos's betrayal for Qui-Gon) and only by learning to see each other for who they are rather than the symbols of their regrets and fears are they able to truly connect to each other and move forward in their relationship. It's honestly really beautiful! They are neither of them perfect in their handling of their relationship, that's the POINT. They both make mistakes and screw up and have to deal with the fallout and figure out if fighting for each other is worth the possible pain if they make a mistake again. And it is. Of course it is. They both make each other BETTER because their relationship with each other allows them to see themselves more clearly.

Jedi Apprentice could be a really interesting basis for Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's characters if more people were willing to do a more than skin deep analysis of it.

[helianthus21]

Hi yes hello THANK YOU FOR MURDERING ME. I watched The Untamed because of you in like a week and now I'm dying. You suck. (But not really I love you and also, any recommendation plz I'm new to not-English TV Dramas and legit dying here)

okay but i’m laughin bc this was basically my reaction at @inessencedevided for telling me to watch this show:P like. why would u do this to me, i 100% can sympathize😔 i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, plan in AT LEAST a 6 month recovery period, esp. if you watched it all in a goddamn week i mean congrats but also why would u do this to yourself:P

anyway now you can join me in the happy fanon version of the show that lives in my head where it’s basically a romantic coming-of-age war comedy where everyone i like lives:)

idk if you meant you want other tv show recommendations or fic recs? but i’m giving you my personal fave fix-its anyway (disclaimer: basically all i read of this show is yunmeng bros reconciliation or yanli lives fic):

Lynchpin by ShanaStoryteller

from the other side of sorrow series by Sour_Idealist

a bow for the bad decisions by curiositykilled

a grave so familiar by half_right_writer

With Absolute Splendor by Lise and like. generally everything by this author

[xoxo-ren-xoxo]

Rambling About Hunter (The Owl House)

Warnings: discussions of neglect/abuse & dehumanization. Kinda sad and angsty in general.

Basically I just binged The Owl House and I think I deserve to be a little autistic about it. Especially about my favourite character Hunter because he’s my special little meow meow or whatever. This all probably won’t hold up after the finale (I’m writing this on 24/05/22) but eh I have my speculations about his character and I want to ramble about them. Mostly about What he is and how badly he is dealing with it lol.

Canon-inspired fanon, angst, and spoilers (duh) under the cut

Ok so. Hunter. The Golden Guard. Caleb? Uh, whatever you wanna call the guy. He’s a grimwalker (that reveal got me in the heart) and he is messed up and I have a lot to say about him ok. Let’s go.

First I wanna talk about how Hunter doesn’t want Willow and Gus to know he’s a grimwalker. Like, we the audience know they wouldn’t care, but it seems like Hunter thinks they would. Like they would see him differently somehow knowing that he’s a grimwalker. Which leads me to believe he thinks he’s somehow less/different now because of what he is. He doesn’t even KNOW what he is, really, aside from that he’s a copy.

And copy is a really interesting word to me. I think Hunter uses it himself. It implies something unoriginal, replaceable, and perhaps even less valuable than the ‘original’. Although Belos calls him a ‘better version’ of the original, he also says that Hunter was the most accurate to the original, which has gotta mess with your sense of self, right? Individuality must be really confusing for him, like, who is he, what is he, and is he truly his own person if he is a copy of someone else. Of course he is, but does Hunter believe that? God, it makes me too sad let’s move on to sadder things.

He’s lived his whole life trying to impress Belos so that he won’t be replaced, because that’s his biggest fear (likely because being replaced means being Dead) and now he finds out there were potentially HUNDREDS of copies before him? (Belos has been alive for hundreds of years so, I would say he’s probably had quite a few Golden Guards). The shot of all the masks strewn across Belos’ mindscape with Hunter just looking at them, horrified, was honestly haunting to me. Being so innately replaceable must just have messed with Hunter, and Luz barely acknowledges it (fair enough, she had her own shit going on) so I’m not surprised that Hunter ran away after that and decided to start living out of the trash. He was already a mess before then. What kind of teenager fears his boss so much that he legitimately starts digging his own grave in defeat? Hey that’s some real PTSD type shit don’t think I forgot about that.

Hunter is also 16, by the way, which I kept being reminded of by the show itself. Thanks show. And that makes it way more horrific to me. Like, the other Golden Guards are implied to have not lasted very long either, so I doubt any of them made it to their 20s or 30s. Which is some legacy to live up to, right? As someone who never quite thought they would reach 20 (and it is getting closer every day oof) I understand what it feels like to look in the mirror and still see a child who doesn’t know how to handle all of this. And I think Hunter, being so young and put into such an important position, might also be feeling that way even before he found out he was a grimwalker. It’s sort of a live fast die young kinda job.

Also, this is pure speculation, but because Hunter was Created, and the grimwalker info in the book doesnt seem to imply a timeline, just illustrations, we have no way of knowing how old Hunter ACTUALLY is. Like, maybe grimwalkers are born and then mature in a matter of days/weeks. Because how would Belos have the foresight to make a new one 16 years or so before the current one dies? Hunter knows nothing about the previous grimwalker, and only really seems to mention his trials before entering the emperors coven, as part of his ‘childhood’. But what if he’s only been alive for a few years and his memories are fake, placed into his mind to make him believe he’s a generally normal witch? That is something I would be freaking out about if I was Hunter. It’s a lot to take in. Very Blade Runner.

Back to Willow and Gus. Is Hunter upset that Luz found out about the grimwalker thing at the same time as him? It doesn’t seem like he wants anyone to know about it, maybe because he’s worried they will also see him as replaceable (like Belos did) or that he will have to start proving his worth so they see him as an equal. God. I don’t think Hunter fully trusts all of our protagonists, he still has his guard up at all times (cough cough PTSD) and he’s visibly more nervous than when he was the Golden Guard. It’s just smthn to think about.

Also the fact Hunter has scars? When there’s a healing coven that can clearly heal wounds leaving no scars (we have seen this!). Like, yes there have been other characters with scars, but they seem to be characters who have been way more severely hurt (eg Eda’s dad) and more deeply scarred. I think there are three possibilities as to why Hunter has scars:

Belos didn’t let the healers help him after he got hurt, so the scars healed naturally

The scars were super severe but they look less bad now because of healing magic

Belos made Hunter wait a while before summoning healers, giving the wounds more time to become permanent before being healed and therefore leaving scars

The last option is the most “fun” (not really) to me because what I mean by it is, maybe Belos hurt Hunter (as is implied throughout the show) and didn’t want the healers coven to know he was the one who did the damage, so he made Hunter wait (because he couldn’t risk the healers noticing the pattern of Hunter visiting Belos and coming back with wounds) for a while then claimed he was hurt on a mission of some kind, to cover his tracks. OR it was pure neglect, Belos forgetting/being too busy to call the healers coven and leaving Hunter to deal with it by himself. Both options are fucked up but also lead on to my next point:

Hunter finally realising why Belos was careless with him, why he hurt him, why he sent him on dangerous missions despite Hunter being unable to perform competent magic. It was because he’s literally a replaceable clone. I don’t think Belos wants Hunter to die on a mission, purely because making a grimwalker seems difficult and this Hunter especially was apparently most like the original. But I think Belos doesn’t care that much- doesn’t care enough to make Hunter’s life particularly safe. That realisation must be fucking crushing for Hunter- the person he has looked up to all this time never cared about him, always saw him as a weapon/tool, and really just hurt him for the hell of it. Fuuuuuck.

And now Hunter is seeing all the love and appreciation and determination coming from his new friends, and he cares enough to help them like they help him and I think what he’s scared of is all of it being a lie. Like Belos. Who he is now terrified of (and perhaps always was). He doesn’t want them to see him in the same way Belos sees him. Ugh he has so many issues he needs so much therapy. God.

Anyway seeing all the love around him must fuckin. Be difficult. Like, Luz and Amity, obviously, but just like all of his friends. They care about each other and I don’t think he entirely trusts that yet? But he is getting there and I would die for him and... cries.

anyway puts him on the shelf of characters i will never shut up about. the end

P.S. the fucking palisman. flapjack my sweet boy. cries again.

[the-skzverse-isa-myth]

Clones vs Alternates

If you start to do a little digging into the skzverse you’ll come across alot of different theories, but there are a few elements that alot of STAYs seem to hold as true. or you at least see them brought up alot. i say these things are “Fanon”, since Canon would mean the creators behind the skzverse would confirm something, meanwhile these are things that many Fans believe to be true.

And the “thing” I have seen considered to be fanon, is the skzverse containing parallel universe and/or clones. and i have some opinions on which it is.

*id like to first mention i talk more about how clones and alternates/parallel universes are used differently in media. I tried to look a little more into the science side of clones but im more interested in the moral dilemmas the two bring up.

 i doubt both parallel universes and clones exist in the skzverse simultaneously. Parallel universes are canon in the skzverse, while “clones” are mainly fanon. In Chans room #57, Chan talks a little about what he calls the “skzworld” (seems like he doesn’t use the term “skzverse”). at one point he states that Levanter and TOP are parallel universes of each other. While this does confirm a parallel universe situation between the two MVs, i don’t know if its correct to say that parallel universes existed before these two mvs. one could say that in Side Effects the universe split into two and Levanter and TOP are the two possible endings to the split universe. But then how do we explain Hellevator? It’s pretty much fanon that there are two different versions of skz and at the end the Han’s of each group get swapped. And it ends with us seeing Han-in-the-Dark-Clothing running with Skz-in-the-Light-Clothing through the purple plain.

kinda crappy pic I know, but you can clearly see the different outfits in the mv. This implies to alot STAYs and myself included that the parallel universes existed in Hellevator, but it is not canon. 

sorry this has mostly been a side tangent, I won’t get into my personal thoughts on this whole shebang, but rather i just wanted to point out that the parallel universe idea is canon at least between Levanter and TOP. BUT the clone theory is only fanon and honestly most STAYs are using the term “clone” for alternate skz’s from a parallel universe. which i think is incorrect.

TBH i am using the more literal definition of a clone, meaning i understand a clone as being a genetic copy of some other being and that it was produced asexually* with the purpose of replacing their original**. STAYs may be using the word clone more loosely which is describing something as a clone of another thing because of how similar they are.

*for animals at least, what they do is obtain a whole cell or nucleus from the donor and fuse it to an egg cell and then place this egg cell (now embryo) into a surrogate to grow.

** the “purpose of replacing the original” is more of something ive witnessed in media story telling when human clones are produced.

I choose to use the more literal version since that is the definition i most closely associate clone with. but illl explain why else i dont like the term clone.

 Lets say you have two parallel universes with a huskie living in both. These two huskies are the same dog, they just live in parallel universes to each other. Both huskies came from the same biological parents. they are genetically identical. they also do not rely on the others existence to exist themselves. So for instance, in one universe huskie 1 dies during birth, that doesnt mean huskie 2 in a parallel universe will also die due to huskie 1 dying. Rather huskie 1′s death and huskie 2′s not - dying just show the different possible outcomes of parallel universes. in one universe huskie 1 dies in birth while in another huskie 2 manages to survive. Also while this is confusing given i coined them huskies 1 and 2, these two dogs are THE SAME DOG. 

this leads me into the moral dilemmas parallel universes bring about. if you have other “Yous” in parallel universes, you are all technically the same person. just the same person in different universes with different circumstances. the different environments and choices your other “yous” make affects them and makes them into a unique person but they are all still “you”. you came from the same biological parents. because of this parallel universes lead us to question the what ifs of life, free choice, the butterfly effect, and how much this impacts our identity. Lets say in one universe you decide to pursue medicine, but you end up not getting into med school and you feel like a failure for years. but then in another universe you pursue zookeeping and you excel in it and you have incredible confidence due to it. these “yous” are the same person but because of the different choices they made and the different circumstances that arose they became vastly different people. it leaves you with an overwhelming feeling of importance when it comes to our decisions and how they shape our identity (as well as the impact of environment and how that affects what choices we make.)

Clones are different though, according to how i define it. A clone IS reliant upon the existence of its original.*  (if the original never existed than how you could you make a clone of something that never existed?) A clone is an asexually reproduced being that is genetically identical to its original. The original is birthed by their parent while the clone isnt always birthed by the same parents. Rather the embryo most likely will be planted into a surrogate. they’re also usually created or manufactured for the continuation of the original’s purpose. Clones are made usually purposefully to fulfill some role their original held but no longer can. They’re a “perfect replacement”. Therefore a clone and its original are not the same person in the same way two alternates from two different universes are. Also i believe that a clone and its original must exist in the same universe initially (since the clone on needs its predecessor to exist in order for itself to exist), thus making it harder to understand the theory of clones and parallel universes existing simultaneously. also then its incorrect to call an “other you” from a parallel universe a clone of yourself from your own universe.

*you could say a clone is “existent dependent” on its original while an alternate is “existent independent” of its other alternates in other universes.

This bleeds into the dilemma where alot of the times clones don’t know they are clones. Then once upon finding out, there is a massive identity crisis. when they find out they are a replica, a clone will struggle to understand their identity since they were never really intended to have or make one. They were just made to continue their original’s work or purpose. the clone upon finding out seeks to define their identity outside of their original, which contradicts the purpose of their creation since they were not made to form an identity separate from their original.

To sum up, alternates deal with the effects and consequences of our freedom to make choices that create and change our identity while clones deal with whether it’s possible for a clone to create an identity separate from their original that is their own.

Based upon what i’ve seen in the skzverse when it comes to these “copies” of skz and given what Chan said in Chans room 57 confirming a parallel universe, i believe the creators behind the skzverse intended only to portray parallel universes and alternates. . Levanter and TOP are two possible endings to a story, and we see how skz’s choices affect them. The same can be said about Hellevator. Therefore i think the skzverse has parallel universes and we would call these “other skz” alternates or parallel counterparts, not clones since the definition doesnt really make sense.

As i continue to explain my interpretations of the skzverse, i’ll expand on some of the nuances of skz’s alternates as well.

*i’d like to mention that my ideas of moral dilemmas caused by human alternates/parallel universes or human clones is shaped by representations I have seen in media. Therefore i recognize it may not be scientifically accurate as to how cloning or parallel universes actually are/work. i tried to understand the correct scientific use of clone, but i don’t know the science behind parallel universes. i instead looked at the issues parallel universes or clones bring up in media storytelling and wrote about that here. its therefore an opinion and one im more than willing to hear advice and criticism from. i dont claim to be an expert on the actual science side of clones or the possibilities of parallel universes.

[lycan-troth]

Yeah, I can see that. It would be awkward for him in that aspect, and from Kaylee's (in your fanon), it makes sense for her to not feel as uncomfy. It must be pretty awkward to have their dad dating someone around their age, I don't think it'd be good irl, but it's fiction ✨️I really like how you flesh out their relationship,I find it interesting and they have good chemistry, and all based/inspired from what is in the game too 👀 Haha, thanks for entertaining that thought, it could be he'd have one in wolf form, but don't they have no genitals? I've always thought that detail was a bit odd, like they'll show you a decapitated head and someone getting their face blown off, but they draw the line at werewolf bits it's kinda amusing tbh.

That's sad, but it does make sense for your fanon of him, and in canon tbh. He seems sort of lax about it in the game. Obviously, finding Silas would be great, but you're right it's mostly Travis who is pressured and actively goes looking for Silas. Your version of him deep down accepting his curse as being something he's stuck with adds up to me. He needs to keep hoping for the sake of his kids, but it's been years, and still nothing. I don't blame him for losing faith in finding Silas. It's a depressing situation with their family life, mental health, work, trying to keep his thing with Ryan neutral, and the hikers he sometimes has to bury. I think a lot of the fandom focuses on Travis more because he gets more screen time. Therefore, he's more likeable than Chris, who doesn't get much screen time and is depicted as a bit sus and strict during that time. This is honestly one of the things I was disappointed about, I wanted Chris to get more screen time. David Arquette did what he could with it and left me wanting to see some more, so I think he did good depicting him. Also, I realised I'd seen Travis (Ted Raimi) before and couldn't remember where, anyway I was rewatching early seasons of Supernatural and he's in S4 during the episode "Wishful Thinking" it's not relevant to my ask, but I also found the ep name ironic considering Travis yk, but it can appeal to Chris too. I'm honestly low-key, surprised that Travis/Laura fans haven't done an au of that episode yet. His character in that (Wesley) makes a wish with a magic coin to make a girl fall in love with him, and she does, sort of. The coin takes wishes and twists them, so the girl becomes obsessed with him to the point that she doesn't have any autonomy. It gets so bad that she goes and makes a wish too, and her wish was for lightning to strike down the mc (Sam), who wanted him to take back his wish of her loving him. Sorry, I know this bit is super rambly and you probably don't know the show I'm talking about, but idk I feel like Travis/Laura shippers are missing out on a potentially interesting au there, lmao.

I think you're depicting his obsession fairly well atm. So far, we've seen the cracks like you've said, Chris is slipping more and more each day. I can only imagine what he's going to be like when it's out in the open. It's funny I still don't quite get why Chris enjoys watching him so much. Don't get me wrong, the content you're serving us is delicious, and I love it as always, but I still don't quite get it. He's obsessed fr, and I'm living for it. He just loves watching him, ig. It makes me think of this sound on tiktok I saw one time: "Despite his criminal mind, this man is behaving well. His reward is the canoe. This time, he can sit in the canoe for up to an hour." I know before you told me it was about feeding his obsession, of being able to be up close to Ryan but not really. I just know Ryan is gonna like the attention (in theory). The barn scene was so awkward for him, like damn, lmao. And the way you showed us Chris cracking a bit there was great. We could just tell what was lurking underneath it all, and Ryan, too, to an extent. I feel bad for Chris fighting back and forth with himself like he does. It makes sense for him to wanna "protect" Ryan from himself by staying away, but he wants him to come back at the same time. I find that element of Chris, that selfish part of him wanting Ryan to keep coming back, to stay close to him; I find it kinda cute tbh. I feel like it shows what you said about him not really having someone like Ryan in his life, so it's easy to obsess. To have a person that needs him and wants him in the same breath. Tbh, before I was thinking of Ryan being the clingy one, which he totally still is in my mind, but with this insight, I can see Chris being a bit clingy too. I know this is probably maybe gonna be a given since GP is the more obsessive darker route for them, but will we be seeing an openly possessive/obsessive/territorial scene of them? When I say open, I mean that it's not really something they hide from each other like they did in ASB and have been doing more or less so far in GP. Buuut back to the previous ask, Chris willing to push back his selfish wants to prioritise Ryan's wellbeing/needs is the angst that keeps on giving. It's like he (you) are dedicated to making me sad, lmao. Ryan really wouldn't appreciate it much at all, haha, and yeah WCA depicts that very well. Ooh yeah, that most certainly was a dick move on Chris's part. I was thinking the same like "Chris, what do you mean 'shoot me'? He's just killed someone for you, wdym you wanna die now? *sigh* smh." Ryan's refusal to kill Chris in that, and him feeling like Chris wants to abandon him was SO sad. I'm still not over that 🥲.

Aww, that'd be cute! The moving in together au without moving in together, haha. I can imagine Ryan settling in a place near/in town or something when/if he'd get the money to buy his own place. The differences he'd face in the country I can only imagine, haha. I grew up in a busy place/main road, not in a city but yk, we didn't have a garden or amything that was very uh "nature" 😂. I remember going to a forrest/wild nature walk place where I live now, and I was sooo out of my element, haha. The bugs, the animal shit, the smells, the ground hurts depending on the type of shoe you wear, and my sense of navigation is shit. So I can only imagine suddenly living in a place like Hackett's quarry, especially with it being SO hot, I'd perish for sure in that heat, haha. I like the idea of them spending a lot of alone time like that. Aww, it's so cute when Ryan doesn't wanna worry, Chris. He knows he'd go out of his way for him when he probably shouldn't considering their financial situation. feel like there'd be good opportunities for bed sharing. It's not like there'd be anyone to question or hide it from.

Apart from maybe Kaylee or mostly Caleb, lol. Maybe Kaylee and Caleb would finally have somewhere else to run off to when they're sick of being at the house with their grandparents. Imagine Ryan's just settling in for the night when suddenly they just pull up to his cabin and state that they're staying the night. Ryan just gradually gets used to spontaneous sleepovers forced upon him. Poor socially awkward introvert hassled by werewolves, tbh that could be a way he finds about them. Like they just become so comfortable around Ryan that they let him in on their secret, and wouldn't that resolve how they were feeling, or at least how Kaylee said they felt in her letter to Constance? They'd finally have someone to confide in, or at least not hide from. Their whole thing was being upset at hiding from people, so maybe having that one person, a bit similar to Chris being able to listen to them and understand/validate them could be enough to soothe them a bit.

Haha, I think I beat you with my response. It's a bit more rambley and longer than yours, lmao. I get carried away with my ideas/ramblings. There's no judgment here, haha 😂

How do you think Kaylee and Caleb think about Ryan and Chris? In ASB, Kaylee was trying to subtly push them together a bit, so I got to wondering how they view Ryan liking Chris and their dad liking Ryan. This sent me down a mini rabbit hole of thoughts that somehow led me to thinking, "Does Chris have something like a knot like in popular werewolf fiction?" I honestly can't remember how I got to wondering about that, and idk how it'd even work either, lmao.

Then, from that thought, I naturally jumped to the next randomised one, which was wondering about how Chris spent the year when Ryan wasn't there? The tapes he has of Ryan wandering around and staring into space got me thinking that maybe he'd watch those sometimes? They have eachothers phone number, too, so they call like they did a bit in ASB. It was just interesting to think about in the context of GP because the nature of their relationship is different. Chris has his obsession, and Ryan atm isn't quite on the same level rn, but he's still pretty fixated on Chris. With these things in mind, I just wondered how it might change how Chris feels/reacts to Ryan's absence during the off-season of camp.

Then, finally, I thought, "What if Ryan stayed with Chris during the off-season?" Idk what the circumstances would be, but Ryan just doesn't go home or doesn't live with his family anymore? I was thinking about what they'd do, obviously with Chris's parents around, he can't bring Ryan to the house. So they'd be at the lodge, or at least Ryan would be. It leaves a lot of room for potential domestic fluff or smut. Without the campers and counsellors around, Ryan would truly be in the wolfs den. I'd imagine Kaylee and Caleb might visit more without the noisy campers and nosy counsellors there.

i’d say, that they prob don’t think about it too deeply. like, ryan’s crush is pretty clear to everyone, who bothers to inspect his and chris’s relationships for more, than 2 minutes. but while kyalee thinks, that it’s fun and might be good for chris, i feel like caleb sort of avoids the topic. and not bc the hates the idea of it, more so, bc it’s very awkward lol. i mean, he’s the older out of the 3. he views ryan on the same level as kyalee, like as someone, who’s clearly younger than him. and his sister has a habit of having new, non-serious crushes pretty often. so he might assume, that ryan is the same in that regard. like that he’s confused or smth. and then, chris is his dad, who he considers to be good-natured, but a bit lame. not to mention, that ryan is around the same age category as them, and learning that your father is a ‘dirty old man’ surely doesn’t help, haha. so yeah, caleb would try to not dig too deeply into it. and nope, chris doesn’t have it, haha. i mean, in human form surely not. in werewolf one, he prob does, haha. but i struggle to imagine ryan surviving such an encounter tbh. 

ah, that’s a good question. i imagine, that chris has a lot to do around the campground, even when no one is around. then, he and the rest of the hacketts prob try to track down silas and all that business as well. but i feel like, chris doesn’t really believe, that they would ever find him. one would imagine, that it’ll be travis, who low-key gave up on everything, when in fact, trying to kill silas is in part of what keeps him going. compared to this, chris has a more cynical view on it. at least, in my fanon, haha. i guess, i always picture him as a guy, who really wants to help others, but considers himself to be beyond help. or maybe, not even worthy of it. i mean, i feel like while fandom adores fawning over travis’s situation, no one ever considers why chris had to be the one, who runs the camp. i don’t think, that it was a gift from his parents. i actually, assume that he was ‘trusted’ (read conditioned) into that position, bc travis was always a scapegoat of the fam, but in a way, he was ‘let go’. he could do whatever, bc no one cared all that much, which is still pretty bad, don’t get me wrong. but with this in mind, and added fact, that bobby is clearly the favorite child, it would mean that chris was automatically put into position, where literally no one, but him could ‘inherit’ the hackett’s quarry. and where he had to be the one to have a family, and be ‘the ideal man’ or whatever. all eyes were on him, bc there were things expected from him. nothing was expected from bobby. and in a way, from travis as well, but for different reasons clearly. with this being said, i don’t think that chris had it ‘worse’ than travis or smth, it’s just that he had to suffer through different sorts of parental pressure and most likely abuse too. travis has a stockholm syndrome toward his family, and chris was basically conditioned into filling the role, that no one else could. sorry, tangled up, haha. 

but like with all this in consideration, it’s fairly easy to imagine why he would get so obsessed with ryan. and yeah, he for sure would rewatch the tapes, and enjoy phone talks, that they have. he never had anything like this before. a thing to truly look forward to. his kids are adults, so in all fairness, they no longer need him like they used to, and i feel like chris gets very aimless, when there is nothing for him to do, no one to care for, bc he has no idea how to live for himself at all. and yeah, in GP ryan’s and chris’s levels of obsession are a bit different. i suppose, partly bc chris’s mental state is also worse, than it was in ASB. he tries his best still, but cracks are starting to show more and more often. as for how he feels, when ryan is not around for months, i think that it’s a tricky question. chris is party terrified of himself and what he can do, so rational part of him says, that it’s good that ryan is far away from him, and that it might be better if he never comes back. but then, he also always longs for him to be back all the same. need vs care. obsession vs common sense. chris is very morale dualed, haha. esp when it comes to ryan. but i feel like, he’s prob one of the rare kinds of characters, who can overpower his own selfishness more often, than not. like, if i had to put all my supermassives otps into situation, where they had a choice to basically keep their ‘better half’ with them or have a chance to let them go with hope, that they can do better, that it would essentially be better for them, only chris and andrew would be capable of smth like lmao. everyone else, ryan included, would have the ugliest tantrum imaginable. even john with a similar level of self-hatred as chris, wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from being terribly selfish and keep andrew, no matter what it would have taken. this is partly why chris was okay with ryan killing him in WCA. he just assumed, well, it would be better for ryan. kinda a dick move tho. like ryan killed people for him, and he then, asks him to shot him lmao. 

and oh, funny enough, i had un-used plot, where ryan gets kicked out of the house by his mother. idk, where his grandparents are. maybe, they don’t exist in that au or they’re not close. so as result, ryan literally has nowhere to go. he asks kyalee and caleb, if they can hook him up with some temporary place, until he finds a job and will get out of their hair. but naturally, they call him an idiot and say, that he can just stay on the campground during that time, chris won’t mind. i imagine, that ryan would ask them to not tell chris why he’s here, make up some story. it also leaves a lot places for humor, bc ryan is city kid, he doesn’t know much about life in the country. but chris be there to teach him. so yeah, they would spent a lot of time together. just two of them. kyalee and caleb would also indeed have a chance to hang out with ryan more often, show him around and such. for a while everything will be alright with the world. which is smth that i really about the quarry tbh. their set-up is so deceptively cozy.

[remosdeerica]

More DamiJon Shit (why I love dark-ish Jon)

(Disclaimer: I'm one of those people that knows way too much about comics without actually having read any of said comics -mostly cause I can't handle DC's bullshit- so this is posted through the lens of Fanon cause I like it more)

I've posted a couple things already about my vision for future dark-ish Jon Kent. This is mostly just in regards of the DamiJon fan fiction I have in the works but I wanted to explain why it is I love the idea so much (besides my obsession with angst and morally ambiguous characters)

While they're kids, Damian is often depicted as the protective one. He is the jaded ex-assassin and Jon is essentially a normal happy-go-lucky kid that just so happens to have superpowers.

I imagine Damian often hid gruesome evidence (like a murder or a brutal assault) or censored the stories he told Jon of his time with the League of Assassins, not wanting Jon to ever have to see or hear of things like that.

And on the one hand it's very cute to think about Damian wanting to protect Jon's innocent view of the world, all I ever really feel is sad for Damian. The fact that he feels like he has to keep a part of himself hidden away from his only friend because their childhoods were so vastly different, and because Jon just couldn't understand, emotionally exhausts me on Damian's behalf (not to mention he probably does the same thing with his family a lot of the time. Bruce wasn't exactly subtle in how he disapproved of Damian's upbringing)

But then the concept of Jon getting lost in time and coming back as a 17yr old happened and I jumped on it.

I honestly don't know a lot of that happened in regards to canon, but here is my quick and dirty version of events (I have a more detailed version in Fic form here):

Jon was kidnapped by Jor-El (Clark's Bio-dad) at 10 as an attempt on Jor-El's part to mould him into a mindless killing machine. Didn't work; Jon eventually killed Jor-El and escaped. He searched the multiverse (as he and Jor-El had been universe hopping) to find his way home and eventually came across the Legion of Superheroes. They helped him get back home, but for him it had been 7 years, for his family and friends he had only been missing for 2 week. Jon and his family tried to figure out how to live together after everything that happened, but ultimately it's too hard on all of them and Jon goes back to the Legion, though he visits periodically.

Fast forward a couple of years: Damian is 17, Jon 20, they get reunited (situation varies depending on the fic):

Jon has seen and done things his family would never be able to understand. He is tired. He is angry. And he feels isolated from everyone he loves. The happy ten year old he used to be is gone.

Then there is Damian, who's life has pretty much been a shit show from the start.

Coming back together their relationship is different. Now they're on more equal footing.

Damian spent so much time during their friendship trying to keep the darker parts of himself hidden from Jon, but now Jon is confiding his own darkness in Damian. And Damian get's it. He understand's what it's like to be feared by those who are supposed to love you. He understands what it's like to have your own grandfather use you as a weapon. Most of all he understands what it's like to look in the mirror and see a monster looking back at you.

They both finally have someone in their life that they don't have to hide from.

And THAT is why I think the idea of dark-ish Jon is beautiful. I just really want Damian (and Jon, honestly. Now that I have given him a tragic backstory he is my son just a much as Damian is) to have someone in his life he doesn't have to pretend with. He was a fucking assassin! And yes, maybe he doesn't kill anymore but his main reason for that is just because he know's it upsets Bruce. Sure he knows it's wrong but although I think that Damian is objectively a good person, I think he is also more than willing to commit atrocities to protect the people he loves. And I want someone in his life to understand what that feels like.

I will post a part 2 to this because I did not get across all the reasons I love this idea but this post is already massive. However I will leave you all on one cracky note:

Imagine a Super with the trauma and paranoia of a Bat.

[srapsodia]

I cannot tell you enough how much I love that you draw games geralt but show dandelion. I honestly do think they'd get on SO WELL. Jaskier is basically book dandelion but younger / less polished and we all know book geralt and dandelion are bffs. I love them

kjsddjf well most of the time i think i draw My Own version of geralt, if that makes sense. A mix of my favorite parts of canon and fanon, usually can be recognized by having the scar over his left eye, but the circular medallion from the show (he's mostly game!geralt tho, because i love him with my life). If I mean for him to be Full Game Geralt then i give him the spiky wolf medallion, and if I mean for him to be Show Geralt I remove the scar. it's a small thing i dont think most people notice??? jkdfnsd but it's how i decide just what level of Gruff he is hahah

BUT YES AGREED. Game geralt and show jaskier would get on extremelly well and I think they deserve to live in corvo bianco together

[stxleslyds]

Robin Jason, a friend and ally of the Titans.

PART 2.

Hi! Welcome to Part 2 of this post, as I said in the last one, I will be talking about Robin Jason’s moments and not reviewing the issues from a story point of view but I think I will have to give a little more context in this one because honestly I am a little lost with this particular storyline, there is too much going on and Jason isn't part of many pages so yeah, I hope this post isn't too boring or bad though.

I will link part 1 Here!

Let’s begin!

·         NTT (1884) #26-28

In my last post I talked about how Jason would be called by Donna to help the Titans save Dick and Raven from Brother Blood’s people. We start #26 with Mother Mayhem giving a public speech on television. What you have to get from this is that this cult is using the image of the two Titans/Heroes (Nightwing and Raven) that they captured as propaganda for their intentions, their intentions being resurrecting Brother Blood and making the world believe that they are good people. Obviously, Dick and Raven are not there because they are supportive of their cause, they were both brainwashed.

In this issue the Titans team that had fallen apart in issue #19 is back, so we find Donna, Beast boy, Cyborg, Joey and Wally together once more and they are trying to figure out what to do because they have two problems, on one hand Beast Boy’s father is killing people and captured Garth and on the other a whole ass cult is doing cult-y shit and captured Dick and Raven. In the end they choose to go save Dick and Raven first but they do it because Beast Boy says this “I…don’t know. I can’t say what we should do. We need Dick here…he’s a tactician. We need him as out leader”. Never in my life would I have thought that I would agree with beast boy but yeah…hard agree.

Donna understands that even though the team is (mostly) back on its feet they still need more firepower and that’s why she calls Jason. While it was kinda rude of Cyborg to say that Jason is not all that (in terms of firepower) any kind of tension is quicky gone because Starfire comes back (talk about firepower).

We have various moments of Beast Boy being a perv towards Kory (thanks a lot Marv) but that’s not important, what’s important is that now the Titans have to tell Kory that Dick has been captured and they are on their way to save him.

They all leave to Zandia (where Brother Blood’s Church is located) and a fight ensues as soon as they arrive, they fight but their goal is to get to the Church as fast as possible. Jason doesn’t say anything in these panels but he is fighting alongside the others. When things get a bit more complicated Jason starts to feel that maybe he isn’t that capable of handling himself but he doesn’t have to do anything by himself because this time he has a team that can back him up. Kory gives him a lift as soon as Jason is surrounded, he is of course thankful and a little bit pervy (thanks a lot Marv).

Kory is shot just after she gets him out of trouble and Jason as the adorable kid that he is becomes worried for her well-being. After Beast Boy is also injured in the fight the Titans decide to leave back to camp. Thankfully both Kory and BB are okay but they are all still worried about how they will get to the Church. We see here once more Donna being a bit overwhelmed with leading the Titans and beating herself up over what happened in Switzerland (#20 and #21) but Jason reassures her instantly that she did a good job and she doesn’t need to be so hard on herself.

This interaction here is particularly nice because Jason reassures Donna without her asking for it. In my last post Donna looked for reassurance in Robin several times but she didn’t do it because she actually wanted Jason to give his thoughts, she did it because she was hoping Jason would act like Dick and eventually take over the team’s leadership. Here that isn’t the case, Jason just tells her what he thinks.

After Donna talks about her doubts Kory says that she is impatient and worried about Dick but also expresses being unsure because the last time that she saw Dick they kinda left things off on “bad terms”. I say this because just like it happened with Jason and Roy, Jason and Kory also have differences, she is a grown and experienced woman that is going through adult problems and Jason is a kid that is just happy that he was called to join them on another adventure.

If we back a few panels to when Jason said that Kory “was a sight for sore eyes” Kory responds saying “first Changeling, now you. It’s got to be puberty”, she is obviously not pleased about Jason making that comment about her and it’s also made clear that he is just a teenager.

This is where I rant about how different what we see here is from what we get later in New 52. Just like Roy (in New 52) Kory is also seemingly very close or the same age as Jason and she is the one that is written as wanting to take Jason to bed or, at the very least, attracted to him. Kory being an adult in comparison with Jason is taken away from her and she is just transformed into something to fit Jason’s new beginning as the Red Hood. Lobdell didn’t do Kory any favours, he annihilated her character and made her out to be just eye candy that can come off as stupid and way too reckless just to prop Jason up, believe it or not Jason sometimes was the voice of reason to both Roy and Kory’s antics.

It’s even worse when you consider the fact that in this issue Kory is feeling better and more confident because she finally understands what she wants and has accepted Earth as her real home, all of that is gone in New 52, Kory is lost, insecure, she even depends on Jason a bit too much at the start (because she “didn’t remember” her time on earth or Dick) and goes back to killing. All in all, Lobdell’s version of Kory was very damaging and a disservice to her past history.

Back to the issue, as Donna and the others are going to start coming up with a plan (with only two days until resurrection day) we move scenes and find ourselves in a meeting where people are complaining about the Titans messing up their plans, but that is not what matters, apparently the people in that meeting wanted to “summon the Brotherhood” and here is where we are introduced to the person who will make the Titans’ lives a little more complicated…Twister. She is one of the people that were victims to Brother Blood’s brainwashing and experiments.

In the next page we see the Titans resting but Cyborg is awake so thanks to that he hears someone coming straight to them, here Kory takes the lead and she says once more that she will not kill whoever that is, that she can’t and won’t do that anymore…I wonder if Lobdell ever read these issues, maybe not.

The attacker was Twister and in seconds she twists the Titans’ reality and leaves them all incapacitated. She then goes to look for and recruit the Brotherhood of Evil. While she did that though the Titans slowly made their way back to the city and are now getting ready to attack. Donnas plans as we soon find out don’t include Jason as one of their front line fighters, in fact he has to be left behind as back up.

Jason is not very happy about this; he is the boy wonder! But because it’s the plan and the Titans are experienced, he decided to stay put (at least for now). Its funny to me that even Beast Boy calls Jason a kid. What is sad from these panels is obviously the last thing that Jason says “I can’t wait until I am sixteen!”. I mean, this issue came out exactly two years before Jason’s death, there was no way they could have seen that coming but yeah, it’s just sad. Jason really was in a better and happier place around this time, little did he know everything would turn upside down after a while.  

The rest of the Titans fight, Donna starts to feel like she is finally in control and that she is doing a great job at keeping the Titans together, Kory is having her inner turmoil about Dick but she is doing her job and when she decides to go help Cyborg and Joey they come across the Brotherhood of Evil. This is where #26 ends.

Issue #27 starts with a very difficult fight for Kory, Cyborg and Joey, it ends with Kory injured, Joey captured and with Cyborg thrown off a window. The only one of them that Donna, Beast Boy and Jason are able to save is Kory.

The Titans that re left have to retreat and find a place to recover, Jason is very silent all the time but Donna and Kory are the ones that are having interesting talks, they have to find out where the Brotherhood has Joey and Cyborg and their time to save Dick and Raven is running out but if they don’t save the others they might die. It’s a complicated situation and they are both impatient but Donna tells Kory this “Dick would be the first to tell you to plan first, attack later”, I bring this up because nowadays its very common for fanon and current writers to think of Dick as someone that doesn’t plan, that doesn’t think before jumping. Even Beast boy called him a tactician, I know this is a Jason post but its also a post about how characterizations are also kinda destroyed. Dick has suffered a lot from mischaracterization so its nice to go back to these stories and see that what we think Dick should be now isn’t something that we once imagined but something that mas modified or taken away from him either by fanon or current writers.

After the Titans decide to wait for the storm to pass to go looking for Joey and Cyborg, we actually see that Cyborg is in the city looking for shelter, he is injured and as he falls unconscious we meet a couple that decides to save him. Back to the Titans once more we have Jason say that the storm that is forming look “like something out of Ghostbusters” its then that the Brotherhood makes itself known, they are taunting them and they have roped Joey to the top of the capitol building and they are asking the Titans to surrender or Joey dies.

Its here where Donna takes full control of the Titans and even though she and Kory have different ideas of what to do she says that she is the leader now and what she says gets done. Donna will be in charge of saving Joey while the others will make their way towards the Brother Blood Church to help Dick and Raven.

Before they go their separate ways Jason says this about Donna “Wow! I wouldn’t wanna be in her shoes for all the garbage pail kid stickers in the world.” I am going to be honest, I had to look those stickers up and all I have to say is what the hell. But I am not here to talk about stickers I am here to talk about how funny its that Jason is being so uninterested about leading a team. Now, don’t get me wrong, Jason has the ability to lead, yes, but he is better at leading himself or an operation, we have all read UtRH, we know how well the Red Hood can handle himself and his plans but a team of heroes? Controversial opinion but I think that Jason should have never been given a team and I am talking about Kory and Roy as well as Artemis and Bizarro. Was Rebirth better than New 52? Absolutely. But I just don’t see Jason as a leader of a team of heroes and it’s also incredibly repetitive, just because he was Robin doesn’t mean that he needs his own team. I know that Robin Jason and Red Hood Jason aren’t the same person and that they might think differently but if Lobdell had never come into Red Hood/Jason Todd’s life when he did we might have never seen Jason lead his own team and that to me is proof enough that it should have never happened. I quite enjoyed the Prince of Gotham storyline in Red Hood: Outlaw, he didn’t have a team but he had an operation going on and people working FOR him not WITH him. In my opinion that’s better for Jason (if you would like to see me review that storyline let me know).

There is a lot happening story wise and I am finding it more and more difficult to continue talking about Jason’s moments here without giving context so I am going to resume what happened between Donna leaving to save Joey and Jason’s next appearance in this issue. Here we go, Brain tells Monsieur Mallah that he decided to “help” Twister take down the Titans because he wants to use Brother Blood’s Blood Pool because he is dying, Twister goes back to her family’s home and we get to see how brainwashed she is, her family is shocked to see her and they are also the ones that took care of Cyborg while he was unconscious, Cyborg leaves to find the Titans but Twister sees where he left to, she tells the Brotherhood where he might have gone to but protects her family by not telling them that they were the ones that protected Cyborg in the first place and Donna was able to save Joey. I think that was everything.

We see Jason again when he is just outside Brother Blood’s Church with Kory (who is giving him a lift) and Beast Boy. But because life can’t be easy for them the Brotherhood of Evil teleports there and a fight ensues. Kory takes the lead and Jason gets to work.

Kory praises Jason for his work here not because she can’t do anything but because she is seeing that a kid is doing an excellent job. Make no mistake, she is the one with experience but she is nice and gives credit when its due.

Cyborg arrives and the fight continues. We see Beast Boy warning Jason about some of the villains’ powers and Jason being the excellent Robin that he is pays attention and escapes Plasmus’ touch.

I might not think that Red Hood is a team player but Robin Jason absolutely is, and the Titans are nice and care for his safety.

While all of this was happening, Cyborg had made his way to the Church and there he gathers all kinds of information including the location of Brother Bloods main Church in the US. He also makes the alarms sound so everyone leaves because he set up the Church to blow up. Somewhere else Monsieur Mallah is threatening to kill Brain after the later insults him again. And there is where this issue ends.

In issue #28 Jason and the rest of the Titans appear after several pages of Mother Mayhem being a creep, Azrael the angel rising and trying to resurrect Brother Blood through the power of prayers, people watching the live broadcasting of the event and Dick trying to break free from his own head but as soon as he does it Mother Mayhem brainwashes him right away.

The Titans are back in their tower where we see Wally again but that is not all, Frances Kane and Robotman come in too. After all the people who are willing to fight get together the Titans make their way to Brother Bloods Church.

It’s in the jet with Wally that we see Jason and this time he gets to talk too! Jason is talking about how much braver the Titans are compared to him but Wally calms him down by saying that even though he has been doing this for a while he is also scared.

The fact that Jason joined the Titans on another adventure without mentioning it to Bruce is funny to me, he was probably so happy that Donna called him again! Maybe Jason was more bored of being with the Bat than he let on and maybe he didn’t feel appreciated enough or heard. I also like to think that Donna got Jason’s number through Dick, like do you remember that Dick gave Jason his number if he ever wanted to talk shit about the Bat with him? What if they did talk and then Dick put Jason’s number on the Titans’ data base? That would be cool and really sweet!

Jason continues to be a team player and being useful during the fights, he has the Titans’ back as much as the Titans have his.

They fight their way in Brother Blood’s Church and once there they find a dude called the Confessor with Arella (Raven’s mother) but he tells the Titans that she is dead. Somewhere else though is where the real trouble is at, between Azrael and Raven, Brother Blood has finally been resurrected. 

It’s in the last page where Brother Blood is looking all mighty and powerful that Dick seems to have broken free from his brainwashing once more.

 That’s the end of that issue and this part of the post. This one was super difficult to write and it’s even longer than part one, I hope I didn’t make it super difficult to read. At some points I felt like I was explaining too much and in others too little. I guess it’s very difficult to show how one character participates in a story without giving context but I just didn’t want this post to be too plot heavy.

These issues had some cool Jason moments but the ones in issues #29 to #31 are even better!

[ashdumpsterpile]

Ohmygod YES Susan Pevensie is awesome please talk to me about Susan i want to know everything you have to say

Literally THANK YOU for asking me this bc Susan Pevensie is a character I never get asked about and I have So Many Opinions.

I'm going to start by saying that Susan used to be my least favorite character in the series. This goes for the books and the movies. Some of it was for personal reasons--she reminds me of a couple of annoying ppl I know irl--but it was also bc I watched Prince Caspian which shoehorned her into a relationship with Caspian which I hated.

HOWEVER. I ended up rethinking this position after interacting with Susan fans and realizing that there are so many wonderful things to love about her!

(putting under the cut bc this got long)

Things Ash Loves About Susan Pevensie

Aight I'm not going to do a formal analysis yet on her, but instead rant about some of the unrelated things I adore about Susan Pevensie.

Susan the Archer

Look we all love archery here. I don't have anything more to say.

Okay, I actually do have more to say. I love the fact that Susan is a complete badass with the bow. You get the general impression that she's one of the royals in charge of public relations, traditions, foreign policy, etc. and yet she's the most competent archer in the series. One of the few things I liked about the movies is how they didn't downplay this. They actually let her be a badass and show off her skills.

Also the part where she kicks Trumpkin's ass was awesome.

Susan the Gentle

Susan being the most passive Pevensie was something I definitely underappreciated as a teenager. I think my non-ability to see past "I'm not like other girls" narrative and the combination of Susan being described as the most traditionally feminine woman in the Narnia series is what initially turned me off from her.

HOWEVER, now it's one of my favorite attributes! I love that Susan is a badass and the most beautiful woman in Narnia. She has hair down to her feet, every man and woman in the kingdom want to fuck her, and she's still a fucking badass who will not hesitate to kick your ass.

Susan the Sister

Most of my thoughts of Susan as an older sister mostly stem from my own personal headcanons, but she is an awesome sister to her siblings. She's Peter's voice of reason, Edmund's sass partner, and Lucy's big sister.

Susan the Mom-Friend

She is a literal mother-figure for Corin.

"[...] the most beautiful lady he had ever seen rose from her place and threw her arms round him and kissed him, saying: "Oh Corin, Corin, how could you? And thou and I such close friends ever since thy mother died. [...]"

-The Horse and His Boy, 33-34

Most everything I have to say about this ventures into headcanon territory, but I love the idea of Susan basically adopting Corin after his mom dies. The way she trusts Cor--who she thinks is Corin in this chapter--is really sweet and I wish we could've seen more of that relationship.

Susan the Flawed

Something I notice from the fandom is a lot of people who hate Susan tend to because of her flaws. On the other hand, most Susan stans like to wave away these flaws and blame C.S. Lewis for being misogynistic or Aslan for being a "cruel god" and ignore the fact that she is a deeply flawed person.

Susan gets something of a "reverse redemption arc" in The Chronicles of Narnia. This makes her not only a fascinating foil to Edmund--as both are analytical, logical people--but an interesting character by herself.

She starts out in TWW as very skeptical of Narnia and it's whole deal and also very condescending to Lucy throughout. She ultimately does admit that Lucy was right and does get on board with the whole prophecy at the same time Peter does, and ends the book being crowned "the Gentle Queen."

In The Horse and His Boy, she has a very interesting dynamic with Edmund and in even more interesting relationship with Rabadash. They don't even interact on-page with each other, but it's highly implied that she was interested in him when he was a guest in Narnia. His behavior obviously changed when she visited him in Tashbaan, but you have to wonder what their dynamic was like before for her to travel all the way to his home when relations between the countries were strained at best.

Prince Caspian is where the cracks start showing through. Susan has lived an entire life as an adult in Narnia, gets thrown back to England with her siblings, and is yet again in Narnia as a child. This book is what really emphasizes her one fatal flaw: convenience.

(Put a pin in that thought, I'll get back to it.)

Susan denies once again that Lucy saw something that the rest of them can't seen. She continues this narrative until every other sibling finally acknowledges Lucy in the right and only then does she apologize.

The last mention of Susan is in The Last Battle, where all of her flaws rise up against her in the worst way possible. I have a lot of controversial opinions on this that I'm going to address later, but I just want to say that Susan's reverse-redemption arc is something I actually like about her.

(There is also evidence that Susan does get a full redemption arc, just as Edmund and Eustace did, but C.S. Lewis was pretty much done with The Chronicles of Narnia at the point and instead encouraged fans to write their own version of how that went down.)

Okay, back to convenience being Susan's fatal flaw. So the one thing that comes up time and time again in the series is that Susan is very focused on material comforts. I believe it's implied that she's vain, and it's canonical that her own personal comfort spurs her to make decisions.

"[...] I really believed it was him — he, I mean — yesterday. When he warned us not to go down to the fir wood. And I really believed it was him tonight, when you woke us up. I mean, deep down inside. Or I could have, if I'd let myself. But I just wanted to get out of the woods and — and — oh, I don't know [...]"

Prince Caspian, 81

Prince Caspian has the strongest examples of Susan doing this, but certainly there's evidence elsewhere. There are a lot of fans who are distressed by this, claiming that Aslan and the others are too hard on her and shouldn't judge.

Honestly, I like that she's written with this flaw. Not only is it very relatable--(my own personal comfort and convenience is something I highly prioritize too)--but it humanizes a character who otherwise is ridiculously op and basically the Helen of Troy of the series. It may sound like I'm using this as an excuse to rant, but I really wouldn't have her any other way.

Susan As Portrayed by Anna Popplewell

Movie!Susan is a fucking delight.

She's sarcastic and badass and awesome and I could spend hours heaping praise on Anna's acting and her portrayal of Susan, but I can already tell that this post is going to be long so, I'll just stop here.

(10/10 want to be stabbed by her tho.)

Personal Headcanons

Let's talk about my fanon thoughts. I have many.

Susan is Aro

There's canonical evidence for this! Susan is a character who is heavily pursued by suitors everywhere, and even lets herself be courted by many of them, but chooses not to settle down. Even when she gets back to England and is described as only having interest in parties and material things, boys aren't mentioned.

I like to think that in The Horse in His Boy Susan was interested in Rabadash at first because he was a brilliant conversationalist. Nothing she says about him implies romantic interest, before and after she realizes the truth of his intentions.

Susan and Edmund Were Best Friends

This might be my love for The Horse and His Boy showing itself, but I think Susan and Edmund were thrown into circumstances where they interacted the most with each other.

Edmund is the ruler in charge of politics. Susan is the ruler in charge of Cair Paravel's public image. I imagine they spent time as ambassadors to other countries and planning royal functions.

They're also the most level-headed and logical out of their siblings, so they probably found a lot in common.

Susan Fancast

I literally just said I loved Anna's potrayal of Susan's (and I love what they gave us of older Susan too in LWW!), but I read the books in 2008 and my parents didn't let me see the movies bc I was like...nine years old and they thought it would be too scary.

So I had to headcanon my own interpretations.

Queen Susan the Gentle:

For some reason Merlin wasn't too scary for me to watch and I fell in love with Katie McGrath in like. Two episodes so. (On an unrelated note, I also fancast Bradley James as Peter at the time.)

Anyway, fanon Susan is basically Morgana Pendragon pre-evil arc. Sassy as hell, hot as fuck, and can kick your ass.

Unpopular Opinions

Yeah, feel free to skip this part if having controversial fandom opinions is a deal breaker for you.

The Problem With Susan Isn't Actually A Problem

I'm about to start so much discourse in the Narnia fandom, but C.S. Lewis's choices with her in The Last Battle weren't misogynistic. Bear in mind, I'm not saying that all of his writing choices in the series were A++ or excusing away certain racist/sexiest bits, but it's honestly baffling to me that people are so up in arms over Susan's exclusion in the final book.

So the part that everyone loses their shit over is as follows:

"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia."

"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"

"Oh Susan!" said Jill, "she's interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up."

"Grown-up, indeed," said the Lady Polly. "I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can."

The Last Battle, 83-84

There's a lot to unpack here and I first want to say that everyone's opinion on this part, no matter how different than mine, is valid. I'm going to be quoting some other ppl's opinions on here and by no means am I bashing them. I just want to address my feelings on the matter and the best way to do that is to cite the thoughts of ppl who have opposing ideas.

Here are some arguments on Tumblr I've heard regarding "The Problem of Susan":

"How about we talk about what might have happened if Narnia hadn't deserted Susan? [...] What if we didn't tell Susan she had to go grow up in her own world and then shame and punish her for doing just that? She was told to walk away and she went. She did not try to stay a child all her life, wishing for something she had been told she couldn't have again."

"Narnia is filled with metaphors (often not very subtle ones) that are supposed to teach us how to be, and the most glaring one for any young girl to absorb is that it's okay to be a girl like Lucy, unthreatening and cheerful and valiant and faithful, but to be a girl like Susan gets you punished - in fact, you aren't just punished, you're destroyed."

"why do we call it ‘the problem’ where’s the problem about a young woman dealing with her trauma and choosing her own path, actively making the choice to keep living and to stay and to carve a life out in England when her siblings couldn’t? what is the problem about susan forgetting to somehow cope with what she’s experienced? why is it ‘the problem of susan’ that she recontextualised her faith?"

And then there's JK Rowling who said this:

There comes a point where Susan, who was the older girl, is lost to Narnia because she becomes interested in lipstick. She's become irreligious basically because she found sex. I have a big problem with that.

It's weird how I'm still finding new ways to hate JKR in the year 2021. Again, there is absolutely zero implication that Susan had sex when she came back to England. ZERO. Did she actually read the books? IDK. If someone shares this opinion pls reply with actual canonical evidence.

Back on topic, I'm a firm believer of death of the author and interpreting art via your own experiences. Which is why I'm also going to share my own interpretation by saying y'all are wrong.

Susan Pevensie was not abandoned by Narnia. She was not barred from Narnia because she is traditionally feminine or because she "owned her sexuality" (another opinion I didn't have time to condense down for this post) or because she recontextualized her faith or even because she deserved to be punished.

I also fail to see how Susan recontexualized her faith, as the entire point of it all is that she has none. Bringing this back to Susan's fatal flaw (personal convenience/material comforts), her prioritizing herself over her own faith is the reason she is "no longer a friend of Narnia." Not...whatever fanon y'all are imposing on her character.

Susan is not being punished for liking lipstick and looking pretty. Susan's not even being punished. Y'all read Neil Gaiman's The Problem of Susan and forgot it wasn't canon.

There are many reasons Susan is not in Aslan's Country (one of them being that she's not actually dead yet), but the main one has to do with this:

"[...] But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”

Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 215-216

Yeah, okay that's why Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia. The implication when the Pevensies are told that they can no longer enter Narnia is that they are to find Aslan in other places. Susan doesn't do this, instead choosing to focus her life on material things. It isn't the lipstick, it's that she only wants the lipstick.

Susan Had Sex In The Books

Oh and not in the context y'all are thinking. (Again, there are no implications that Susan was barred from Narnia for having sex or that she had sex when she came back to England.)

So there's actual canonical evidence that Susan and Rabadash had a sexual relationship. Sort of.

"What think you? We have been in this city fully three weeks. Have you yet settled in your mind whether you will marry this dark-faced lover of yours, this Prince Rabadash, or no?"

-The Horse and His Boy, 35

Edmund calls Rabadash her lover. Not her suitor. I don't know if the word had a different meaning in 1954, but it feels like C.S. Lewis is saying that they're fucking. I'm not really happy with the idea of Susan sleeping with an abuser, but really proud of her for Getting Some as a woman born in a time period where having premarital sex was a big no-no.

This also invalidates the weird opinion going on that Susan was barred from Narnia because she had sex.

Suspian Is The Worst

I haven't really talked about Movie!Susan much, but as long as we're talking unpopular opinions, it's worth noting that I hate Suspian. Some of it is the "Susan is Aro" headcanon screaming inside of me, but it's also the fact that it's written poorly, does nothing interesting for either character and generally comes across as awkward.

I feel like they were trying to make Prince Caspian sexy and relevant to teens. It came across as super heteronormative and unnecessary.

It also gets really really weird bc the next movie then gives Caspian and Edmund mad chemistry and we're all just like........ok.

Final Thoughts

Susan may not be my favorite character in the series, but she's grown on me over the years. I have many issues with fanon interpretations of her--which definately fueled some of my disdain for her initally--and I don't identify as a Susan Apologist.

I do however adore Susan and have many headcanons for her not mentioned here. I love reading fanfic, writing fanfic and meta, and generally having conversations about her and would love to talk more about it.

I welcome criticism (CONSTRUCTIVE) and conversation on all of my opinions and observations. Please drop into my inbox. <3