#i am not taking any arguments on this

[mcytships]

Behold, the healthiest soulmates in double life

[kaiserouo]

Well someone has to give it its driver updates, Gabriel

[sunnymainecoonx]

How many people witnessed softie food addict horror who needed something in his mouth or he would actively kill and turn to cannibalism 🧍‍♀️ or was that just me.... anyways honestly it was silly.. he'd maybe get along with cook horror... I just like fanon crossovers guys*sadge

Anyways canon horror is also silly(really silly. What an asshole, man)(no seriously he's actually such an asshole.. I might love him for that but-) I don't think he would get along with the others(loser)

[wardensantoineandevka]

you're really annoying but in, like, a refreshing way?

I'm sincerely flattered, anon. I worked very hard to become really annoying. 💞✌️

[doctahchang]

wish the revelation that janeway's choice led to borg assimilating a whole race in hope and fear had more weight. like idk girl stranded her ship because she wanted to save alien species in the first place. which led to the destruction of another one. maybe they shouldn't have ended that episode on an upbeat note. i like how chronologically the next episode after that is night, in my mind it also played a part in janeway falling into depression. would have been delicious if it was mentioned tho. she could have countered chakotay's argument that she saved ocampa with this one, making her choice to sacrifice herself even more obvious to her

[hellofastudysession]

the thing about stanley is that he knows he can never be hurt by the narrator in a way that matters and that is exactly why he gets hurt in the end. the thing about stanley that no one gets is that he always has the upper hand over the narrator. there is a reason he stays and its not because hes trapped. until he is. because he wants to be. the thing about stanley is that making him either a completely full-fledged literal office worker or a nothing-at-all blank slate player character ruins the best part about him, which is that, if you reach the end, he chose to be here

[necrotic-nephilim]

i recently remembered DickTim Week 2024 is happening very soon and i looked at the prompts again to see if i could get anything out for it and. the Hades & Persephone AU prompt for day 1 has got me really thinking so here's a vague concept i plan to write.

i've been pretty burnt out on modern Hades & Persephone retellings because of how they always seem to fall into the same generic "innocent wide-eyed girl runs from her evil mean mother into the arms of a dark mysterious man because actually she went willingly and chose to marry him" which has gotten repetitive for my tastes. (for clarity i don't care if this retelling is your cup of tea personally, so long as you're not actively trying to rewrite the original myth and claim untrue things about it, if this is your favorite flavor i sincerely hope you enjoy the buffet i just have little interest in it since it feels overdone for me and exhausted of it's supposed commentary atp)

but? but. biblically accurate Hades & Persephone AU has me all kinds of interested. because wait listen so hear me out right. Hades!Dick and Persephone!Tim, obviously. i feel it'd be more loosely inspired by with themes and imagery (though playing with death and nature powers could be interesting, i haven't decided) rather than explicitly making them gods and all. but. something dark and fucked up where Dick and Bruce are especially estranged. maybe to do with Jason's return, maybe to do with them just clashing and having their usual explosive arguments. and Bruce knows the peace needs to be kept, if he and Dick are at odds then everyone starts to pick sides and things just fracture so he needs a peace offering.

and the peace offering is Tim.

Bruce (the stand-in for Zeus) offers up Tim. agrees to have Tim move to Bludhaven and be Dick's... whatever Dick wants him to be. knowing that with the implication comes the likelihood of Dick grooming Tim. and Tim has no real say and is hesitant to put up a real fight. he doesn't want this, he knows what this is going to imply Dick will do to him, but he also knows if he says no things have the possibility to just... fall apart. so he's the unwilling bride, dragged off to the metaphorical underworld (Bludhaven) with Dick, away from his family, his friends, the life he built.

and on the flip side, i think weirdly enough, your best pick for the Demeter stand-in is *Jason*. just, hear me out on that. not necessarily on the side of it being motherly, but on Jason being just estranged enough from the Batfamily to be the one willing to call it out for being bad and wrong and raising bloody hell to get Tim back. maybe it's because Jason wants Tim for himself, maybe it's truly out of a concern for Tim to have autonomy, i'm toying with the idea of it primarily being Tim's POV and him genuinely not knowing which of these is true. (and the truth possibly ends up being a complicated middle ground) and because i like Helena, i think you can use her as the Hekate stand in, the one who strikes a tentative alliance with Jason and tries to go find Tim and bring him back. Tim stuck with Dick, getting groomed and hyperaware of it, possibly even getting fucked the whole time as well, knowing he can't go back without causing massive issues for Dick and Bruce because well, Bruce did promise him to Dick. so he has to adjust his whole life, try to figure out being a vigilante in this new city with Dick breathing down his neck the whole time.

and then much like the ending of the myth, a sort of compromise is struck that's a shaky deal for everyone involved. Tim is put on an essential timeshare, going back and forth between Gotham, where he has friends and family and a support system, then getting dragged right back to Bludhaven with Dick in this brutal cycle that he slowly gets used to and stockholm'd into even liking it. Dick isn't so bad, once he gets used to the quirks of their unbalanced 'relationship'. the sex is even something he can adjust to as well. not quite a happy ending but one that sits in this realistic grey area that becomes Tim's life.

i will write this, eventually, but i don't know if i'll get to it before DickTim Week ends so by posting the idea i'm essentially putting it out into the world so the peer pressure holds me accountable. i just. really like the potential of making Hades/Persephone AUs as fucked up as they can be simply by adhering to the source material and making it a raw story of being stolen away and forced to like this new home you didn't ask for.

also a less fleshed-out aspect of this idea i have ties into Persephone becoming the Queen of the Underworld when she's taken and how the transition from Kore to Persephone could be reflected in Tim. how he makes the best of the worst situation and becomes something far more dangerous and dark when he's in Bludhaven, possibly takes on a new vigilante name/identity and leans into the worst quirks of his personality he tries to tamper because there's no point in not going full tilt Obsessively Weird if he has no choice anyway and it being one small way he takes back his autonomy, and that inevitably making Dick *more* into him, because he gets to see Tim finally just. let loose.

[compassmili]

I kinda really hate how I've been treated throughout my life

[lesbianredhoodedmercenary]

wait kromer rant sounds interesting

Ohhhh the Kromer rant.

Nobody in Limbus thus far has been hit with the fandom flanderization "she would not fucking say/do that" beam harder than Kromer. I've seen both absurdly sexualized "yandere" Kromer and woobified to hell and back Kromer. I think a large swath of people just... ignore that the central pillar of her character is that she is an ableist cult leader.

Yes, she is probably only around 23-24 years old, and yes based on the source material she probably came from a much poorer family than Sinclair. But trying to twist that into her being a hapless victim of circumstance leaves a sour taste in my mouth when we're first introduced to her through the fact that she considers anyone with a prosthetic less than human. Like. We can't ignore the violent bigotry here. N-Corp may have decided to give her a platform for it, but it's not like they groomed her into wanting to kill everyone with prosthetics. She was already like that, and N-Corp simply enabled her to do that on a wide reaching scale because they could make a profit from it (N-Corp's singularity is memory extraction iirc, and the nails are able to extract memories from the people they kill, which in turn are sold by N-Corp as "Experiences" and also what they feed to Nagel und Hammer members to brainwash them).

And as for whatever yandere shit I've seen, I think that's just a refusal to engage with the themes of the text. A shipping-brain only reading. Like, the reason Kromer is obsessed with Sinclair is because if she can convince him to join her, that is a powerful talking point for her cause. "Look, the son of a major prosthetics manufacturer is on our side! His family was going to force him to get a full-body replacement. Isn't it cruel to force that on someone who's barely out of high school? Aren't prosthetics cruel. Aren't they inhuman?" It's a game of rhetoric to her. Sinclair was going through the stress of not wanting a cosmetic surgery and Kromer saw how she could use him as a pawn in her anti-prosthetics agenda.

And Lust as a skill does not necessarily refer to sexual desire. I already said this but since greed was replaced with gloom, lust becomes the de-facto sin for desire. Bloodlust, lust for power, lust for revenge, ect. The fact that some people will take the themes of Kromer's story; how a corporation will platform the most violent bigot they can find to increase their profit margins, how inherently hypocritical Kromer's ideas of "purity of the flesh" are, and how if you give someone so violently bigoted an inch they'll take a mile, and just throw all those out the window in favor of her being some kind of evil succubus obsessed with Sinclair because she wants to fuck him is just incredibly, mind-numbingly frustrating.

And the concept of "Vagina Dentata" needs to be put up on a high shelf until anyone who wants to say distorted Kromer has one can pass an elementary level reading comprehension test.

[morningmask27]

Honestly I'm also not fully happy with what they did with Whis this book

[pikkish]

Yeah we've already talked about how outright stupid the lore n writing for modern Doom is, but tbh I can understand why they had to do something with Doomguy, why they had to make him The Specialest Boy instead of Just Some Guy. Do I like how they did it? No, I would've taken it a different direction. Do I think that hugo could've done it well even if he took it in the direction I would've? No, I have minimal faith in his story writing. But realistically, how many times can a guy singlehandedly accomplish the impossible before you have to acknowledge he's very much not Just Some Guy who happened to be at the right place at the right time? I think that, with how every single other person on the Phobos UAC base were killed in Doom I, doomguy stopped being Just Some Guy the moment he decided to do anything other than just lie down and die.

[britcision]

Anyway in case anyone was wondering why I do firmly aver I did not get to DPxDC from DC and am not a DC fan despite having consumed all of the Harley Quinn and Suicide Squad runs up to 2018

(And have an exciting grab bag of shows, movies, and assorted trivia under my belt besides

Batman vs Dracula was fucking great fight me)

It’s because DC as a whole is hostile as fuck to the concept of being a casual fan

(And about 90% of the main heroes annoy the hell out of me for the very tropes that DC is known and praised for in their heroes I am here for villains, antiheroes, and sidekicks exclusively)

There is no such thing as consistent characterization, especially as you consume more content or fall down a rabbit hole, and the rabbit holes are ENDLESS

Everyone cameos everywhere else, referential jokes are often dropped in as Easter eggs for people who have read every single other DC comic put out in the same decade and yet within the same comics you get glaringly inconsistent characterization and different retcons for the same events

Big stories are retold and retconned every couple years, we got 3 separate Spiderman origin movies and the exact same Batman origin in more than half the live action movies; DC PAYS PEOPLE to make up their own different versions of canon events

There is a REASON that the Marvel and DC cinematic universes are both officially divorced from comic canon; the sheer volume of canon content is inaccessible to most of the population, and DC and Marvel know it

That’s why the New 52 was a big divorce from all previous canon too - it’s an on ramp for new fans, because sorting through the web of old content is off putting as fuck

It’s the one thing not a single DC fan I’ve spoken to who complained about “canon characterization” has bothered defending or even acknowledging, and yet it has been the core of all of their arguments:

“Canon is what I want it to be, not what any of the sources say”

And listen, I was a Torchwood fan, we were the archetypal example of “canon only happened if I acknowledge it” (so sad that show ended after only two seasons and nothing else ever happened again Children of Earth who), you just gotta acknowledge that that’s what you’re doing

But you frankly cannot have a serious conversation about canon characterization with someone who does not acknowledge entire swaths of canon and cannot understand why that makes their argument completely invalid

Any kind of conversation about the “right” characterization for a DC character necessarily has to involve the acknowledgement that it’s your personal preferred characterization, not a One True Canon, because I guarantee there are canon incidents for every single big name and most of the small ones that directly counter the ones you like

You may note I share a bunch of posts with things like “My Batman would never do this”, as opposed to “canon Batman would never do this”

Hell, on Batman specifically there are hundreds of beautifully put together posts talking about how the different canon runs get him wrong; I too prefer a Bruce Wayne who does genuinely care about his family and tries to protect them, but isn’t perfect or always right over the massive asshole elitist who just grunts and treats them like soldiers

Canon Batman slaps his kids around, it’s the meme that broke containment and you don’t have to like it or accept it as something your Batman would do!

But it’s still canon

Both versions have a massive well of canon support, and exist simultaneously in the multiverse

Every single characterization of a character is true and exists in the multiverse

And that is why the idea of a “canon version” of any DC character is utterly meaningless

TL;DR: write DC characters however the fuck you want and do not worry about it for more than 10 minutes together, that is what the paid DC writing staff do

There will be at least two pieces of canon media to back up whatever interpretation of the character you pick

Not everyone will like that characterization or agree with how you see the character, and that is all fine and good! But “canon” is meaningless in this context, neatly encapsulated by the “multiverse” explanation

Everything is canon, which means that nothing is canon

[shrinkthisviolet]

If I had a nickel for every time someone used Iris’s “we’re kinda like brother and sister” quote to prove Barry and Iris are siblings, forgetting that she goes on to say “because we’re NOT brother and sister, it can get really weird and awkward to talk to me about girls,” I’d have way too many nickels 🤦‍♀️

[seventh-district]

it's always something. PLEASE can i just go One single day without there being Something

[rose-tinted-nostalgia]

being told you don’t deserve kindness or empathy because you won’t fuck someone is so ridiculous you’d think it wouldn’t hurt to hear, but it does. it really fucking does.

[secondpersonpoetry]

hi! oh my goodness. i am SO sorry i didn’t say anything earlier. i did read everything a couple days ago, and i Have been chewing on it, rotating it in my mind, etc etc…..and the graphic has been my phone lockscreen since i first read it!!!!!

frankly i am obsessed and have also been a little frazzled this month lol. saw your post late because of the general whirlwind that is december and then couldn’t quite get my thoughts into sufficient words n got worried “oh no would it be weird to say something now…..” which is incredibly silly in retrospect, so sorry for that. 

i’m relatively new to hockey fandom and the Narratives don’t always quite click for me (yet, at least :)) because i don’t know all of the lore for a lot of the popular pairings haha, so it means a lot that you’ve taken time out of your day to break things down for me and share your own thoughts <3 tysm. again, super sorry for the delayed response. i’m very sorry if you felt as though you’d wasted your time or something along those lines :’) just wanted to let you know that i really appreciate you and the time it took you to get everything down and make the graphic!!!! and like i can’t overstate how much your tags both over here and on your other blog have helped me to Get It since the start of this season, so thank you.

but now the house is quiet, the in-laws are gone, and no new work stuff until january :) so i can finally get some stuff down. every point you brought up hits in it own way but gosh you are very incredibly right the mcstrome of it all…..that’s sort of the lens i’ve been listening to the song through since you mentioned it.

the golden boy and the “draft bust” and the ever present notion of “isn’t it all about old friends? like everything? all of it?”.  like idk looking back on a bestfriendship from when you were a teenager that was Super intense and the lines were blurred and maybe realizing (if you hadn’t had the words or the “guts” or awareness or wtv to put a name to it at that point in your life) that y’all were a smidge more than just friends. 

best friends forever until you just aren’t! growing up and growing apart. it’s just the way things go but it can and will ache for a damn long time! you think you’re over it until their birthday or the holidays roll around and you wonder in a distant sort of way who they’re spending it with. what you would’ve hypothetically gotten them as a present if you still spoke. what do they even like nowadays, anyway?

maybe having the friendship end subtly. going from playing and traveling together and living in one another’s pockets to 2,080 miles of distance? (i may have my timeline/details confused here so sorry in advance) texting as much as you can at first but he’s a phenom he’s mcjesus he’s the next in line he’s expected to win the cup with his new team and end the drought for Canada. and they have him now but he was yours first, wasn’t he? but it’s fine. because you’re busy too. you’re captaining the team now. you’re gonna get the memorial cup that he couldn’t. it’s fine. you’re fine. you don’t even have time to worry about it anyway. 

one conversation a week turns to one a month turns to once in a blue moon turns to stale words until it goes cold. these days you can’t quite seem to remember who ended things, but does it really matter all that much now?

or maybe it doesn’t end like that at all. maybe it ends in a flurry of angry words and digs in some or other of the endless hotel rooms you’ve shared together over the years. who knows!

and that’s not even getting into the rest of the 2015 draft class. or the ld19 of it all! ooh hoo hoo. you grew up with him but he’s not your waiting room. he grew up with you but he’ll grow “old” (end his career) with someone else. and isn’t that just something! 

i don’t think it’s totally them, but sort of the sentiment of “I hope you get everything you ever wanted and I hope I never hear a word about it.” I want one ticket off of your carousel!!!! merry christmas, please don’t call!!!!!!!

dylan being sent up and down and traded around until finally landing in washington, a place where he is clearly at home and LOVED for the guy and player he is!!!!!!!! watching a game and seeing all the strome jerseys in the crowd……..wagh.

all that said. some other songs that are mcstrome to me in various ways: hot & heavy by lucy dacus (lol kinda the whole song). before the world was big by girlpool (“i just miss how it felt standing next to you wearing matching [jerseys? sweaters?] before the world was big”). happiness by Taylor swift (“i guess it’s the price i pay for seven years in heaven”), cut your bangs by radiator hospital (maybe? possibly? unsure. i like the whole dog thing there). i’m so glad i feel this way about you by insignificant other (!!!!!). there are so many THEM lyrics in there……..waough.

anyway. other things off the top of my head: 2015 connor specifically saying something like “hey let’s wait a minute so we can see this” to stand by the stage when dylan was getting drafted after him. MAN. you reminded me of the fact that they couldn’t even make eye contact at the handshake line!!!!!!!!! they didn’t go to each other’s weddings!!!!!!!!!! (do you think once upon a time they ever thought they’d being each other’s best man?). just a couple months ago dylan liking the tweet of connor getting that goal during the playoffs!!!!!!!! makes you wonder if he texted him………..

lol this was all over the place and i was probably wrong on some things and there’s SO much more that someone else could say way more eloquently, but i digress. i dunno everything about them is so nuts to me!!!!! needless to say i will be incredibly sat for the game january 21 🙂‍↕️

thank you again for your time :) hope you have a good one and a happy rest of the holiday season! <3333333

what a lovely message to receive 🥰😭🥹 i had to break it up into chunks because i couldn't sit down to read all of it at once without just. bouncing right back up and shrieking. i am also at heart terribly shy so i understand the struggle but it is never too late to say something <3 you are always welcome here

first!!! i love sharing!! i think most of hockey tumblr loves to see people finding out the Lore for the first time and the wonderful thing about hockey is that. it keeps going on. so there's years and years and generations and generations and always something new to learn about. i've learned to just not be afraid to ask!!! between different teams and players i'm always discovering new narratives (learning about the sharks old man yaoi rn... cbj rarepairs...)

no... to my heart's despair... you have the timeline right. i think in the best most tragic sense there's a mcstrome narrative where it is truly that nothing went wrong. the love was there. we couldn't do enough to save it because we didn't see it slipping away. i didn't notice when you didn't call until you never did. i don't know you now but i still remember when i did, do you?

HE'S NOT YOUR WAITING ROOM?? passing out. i do see "i hope you get everything you ever wanted and i hope i never hear a word about it" as them because!! they didn't go to each other's weddings!!! i don't wish you harm but i'm not going to put myself through that!! i hope you're happy and i'm never going to look on purpose.

i love dylan strome so much and the best part is that they all love him so much too. he wore a cool vintage ovechkin jacket!! and got slapped in the face with a tortilla!! he loves to gently rag on the rookies!! it just takes some time, everything'll be just fine. you're only on the middle of the ride.

OKAY WHEN I READ THIS PART I SCREAMED BECAUSE I DO HAVE A MCSTROME PLAYLIST AND!!!! HOT & HEAVY BY LUCY DACUS IS IN FACT ON IT!!! SO IS CUT YOUR BANGS (BUT BY GIRLPOOL SO DOUBLE JINX)!!!! i have dorothea by taylor swift on there but i don't know happiness so i'll have to give all the other songs a listen. mostly i just shrieked because i was like NO YOU GOT THE VIBES EXACTLY

🧠〰️🧠 truly the mind meld happening here. the handshake line. the mutual wedding non-invitations. i won't block your number or your name on twitter i just hope i don't see it come up on screen!! i do think that we got confirmation the last time they played each other that dylan did text him to say congrats on a milestone but i would have to check the archives

p.s. i think you said it perfectly eloquently :) what matters is that you said it at all and i was delighted to read it 💕