#i miss you helena!

[lady-arryn]

THE WHITE QUEEN 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY WEEK | Day 2 — favourite villain

[stars-and-spice]

Realising Agatha is the latest in a long and glorious history of characters from fantasy/sci-fi series who were dark haired ladies with villainous tendencies, child related angst, and sapphic (sub)text

[fogbreo]

helegala week day 6: gift

it's for their anniversary

[tbcanary]

Edit Requests: Helena Bertinelli in "Batman/Huntress: Cry for Blood" for @misspickman

"He didn't know if he was a man who had been dreaming he was a butterfly..." "Or a butterfly dreaming he was a man. Yes, I've heard it before."

(ID under the cut.)

ID: Six animated banners with images pulled from Batman/Huntress: Cry for Blood.

1: Helena Bertinelli stands off to the side in her Huntress uniform, holding a crossbow. Cursive script beside her reads, "Helena Rosa." Graffiti text slowly appears behind it, spelling out "INFAME."

2: Helena in a sports bra and sweat pants, training. She holds a crossbow in the first frame, which turns purple for a moment. The second frame shows her throwing knives, and turns purple immediately after. The third frame is a bull's eye with arrows embedded in the center. It turns purple last.

3: Two framed portraits of Helena. The first shows her as a small child, crying. The second is her in her Huntress costume. The two portraits are facing away from each other. Dozens of candles sit in front of the frames and the flames flicker randomly and intermittently. Text appears in three scrolling boxes and reads: "You want justice served? You want vengeance taken? You want honor restored? Then you do it yourself. That's omerta."

4: A large grayscale photo of a young Helena, being held by her mother Maria. In four frames beside it, Helena practices Tai Chi before curling up on the ground hopelessly. Each frame lights up in full color before turning gray.

5: A closeup of Helena's face in front of a purple background with repeating text at low opacity that reads "HUNTRESS." Scripted text lights up white one at a time before turning black: "A killer / Family / Your other half."

/End ID.

[necrotic-nephilim]

re: your thoughts on new52 version of jayroy because roy harper was done so dirty that I can’t stand that ship, but you can make it good and I appreciate it

I have a vague idea for a jayroy/outlaws rewrite that leans into roy’s pre52 characterization because honestly I think they could have a decent friendship, like you said Roy isn’t a stranger to working with people he morally disagrees with. Roy also has a habit of taking people under his wing when he think they need support (I miss grant) and I think that if he saw Jason at his worst, angry, violent and hurting, then he’d still try and help him even if he wasn’t his best friend’s little brother.

I think that a romantic relationship between them would be a little harder to justify when you keep to Roy’s original character, he knows a lot about trying to fix people with love and just how much it doesn’t work. sleeping together casually is one thing but dating is another, and rule number 2 for recovering addicts is don’t get into a new relationship, is it the same for recovering villains? He can’t be that person who takes advantage of someone at their lowest Or be a conscience for someone, talking them down from bad decisions. I imagine that Roy sets pretty firm boundaries early on, and Jason doesn’t push him on this since it’s supposedly just causal.

The best way to shake things up between the two of them is to add a third person to the mix lmao, things would never progress past the fuckbuddies stage without some drama. You’ve gotta add Dick or Tim or Helena or Donna or Bruce for some spice

first of all, for you to just passingly mention the idea of HelenaJayRoy without any further thoughts how DARE you anon that was the most enlightened thing you could've said- /lh

BUT YES I AGREE. i think Outlaws *could* have worked, which is the most frustrating thing about it. i don't think Kori was the right pick, simply bc *why was she there* but i do agree, you *could've* made Roy work. there's this belief in Outlaws that somehow Jason is the one saving and helping Roy get back on his feet and Roy is leaning on Jason. but for me to make it work, it'd *have* to be other way around. like you said, with Roy being the one trying to take Jason under his wing and set him on the right path.

bc when it comes to superhero teams, a lot of times you can shove just about anyone together under the right justification or circumstances. so Jason and Roy working together could *easily* be pulled off, i just think they needed another more grounded, street-level vigilante/anti-hero to balance them out instead of someone like Kori who either feels like the deus ex machina solving everything *or* incredibly nerfed so the plot doesn't just revolve her fixing things instantly. really a lot of picks could've worked, but i *love* the idea of Helena. just bc i'd give anything for DC to give us a proper comic team-up between Helena and Jason. on a surface they *seem* like they should work well- lethal justice, protector of the marginalized, driven by vengeance. but i could see them heavily clashing and arguing over schematics and each other's methodologies. so putting someone who doesn't believe in murder at all like Roy in the middle is fun. especially with Roy finally having some semblance of adult stability after his addiction and having a child, he'd naturally fall into the role of being the one in charge, trying to guide the others. he has a habit of wanting to help others get their lives back on track bc well, he knows how it feels to be at rock bottom and feel like everyone gave up on you. there's definitely levels where Roy could sympathize with Jason, and possibly even agree with him. Roy's storyline with addiction existed to be meta-commentary on how parents fail their children going through addiction by not providing communal support, so a lot of Jason's feelings on how he was failed by Bruce (and adult heroes fail their sidekicks as a whole) can be reflected in Roy's experiences. Jason's beliefs on how sidekicks shouldn't exist and superheroes don't do enough is something Roy could possibly even agree with. i would've *loved* to see an Outlaws run acknowledging that Roy is far more emotionally mature than Jason and trying to help Jason out as Jason doesn't want it.

and like the said, that makes the relationship more fun. bc even if feelings develop, Roy's not going to jump on them for fear of taking advantage of Jason and potentially backsliding Jason's progress they've made inch by inch. it makes their friendship and relationship far more slow and careful. and adding Helena, imo, is a lot of fun. bc while she agrees with Jason's lethality, she'd have a bit more emotional stability going into the team. this is a woman who has a full time day job as a teacher and has worked on the Birds of Prey. while she doesn't have the teenage sidekick experience, she certainly has a level of "real world" experience, and a closeness to growing up around crime and tragedy. while Helena also has her emotional misgivings, they're very different from Jason's. a lot of Helena's character is driven by feeling trapped as a little girl, paralyzed by fear, witnessing a tragedy she can't stop. and Huntress is her way to try and break free of that. she's running from her trauma in a way, where as Jason is running *at* it. that's the difference. Jason wants to boldly face his trauma in bloody ways and force everyone else to face it too, even if it means that's all he'll be, bc that's all he sees himself as anyway. Helena wants to escape it and prove she's bigger than it. she doesn't want it to be her defining trait. sure she got her vengeance, but she tried to move on from it and make her identity something more.

so i think she could provide a level of stability to the relationship in that she'd try to force Jason to move on from the worst of his feelings. his trauma is always going to follow him a little, but he can't keep letting it define him. especially when they're all trying to work together on a team. it makes the three of them getting together a lot of fun bc there's balance in all directions. Roy cares about them both and has getting very comfortable with working with them, and they all have clear, unspoken feelings. i think it's fun if Roy is trying so hard not to take advantage of Jason while Jason is pissed that Roy thinks Jason isn't in the mindspace to make his own decisions about what he wants. i think he'd make a move on Helena just to prove his point and get Roy to finally cave and join in. Roy knows Helena won't take Jason's shit and won't let Jason go off the deep end just bc he's upset, she's very no-nonsense about it all to contrast Roy's more gentle attempts to reasoning.

anyway now i have a new rarepair idea ty anon i'm in love with you. i usually say i don't ship Helena/Jason just bc i think they're too intense for each other, but with Roy in the mix there's a really good balance that makes it work *so* well. i'm going to be thinking about this forever.

[annah-kitathryne]

respectfully, no one cares.

Respectfully, you're incorrect because I am a someone, and I care.

[fuckyeahelenapaparizou]

[x]

[boyfridged]

Do you agree that Jason, as written by Winnick in UTRH and Lost Days, acts out of character post-resurrection if we take into account his post-crisis robin days? If yes, how would you have him act/react to stuff after he comes back from the dead?

tldr: i definitely agree. moreover, classism plays a huge role in it, and i don’t think that at this point the storyline could lose these implications, which makes trying to conceive what an “in character” (for robin jay) version of these events would be quite difficult. 

let’s just start from saying that i don't think it's a secret that i don't really like winick in general. despite his work being mad interesting on a conceptual level (and style-wise, genuinely well written!), he has no love for the characters he writes about. 

imo utrh shouldn't even ever make it into the mainstream batman timeline. i am aware that this is a radical opinion, but my take is that it would do best as an elseworld story (and in this version too it would need some tweaks here and there), because it made damage both to the mythos of batman and jason's legacy that can never be undone. the very premise of the story is so deeply disconnected from jay's original place in the narrative, and so classist at its roots, that there's not much room to truly fix it. 

(i want to say, preemptively, that i am aware that there are people who read utrh as a story of a revolutionary and a victim – and they have the right to do so, but ngl, my view has always been that it was never written as that. utrh reinforces so many stereotypes that it overshadows the revenge tragedy spirit of it all.) 

another disclaimer is that, to be honest, jay doesn't have a very consistent characterization even in his 80s run, and it also has some classist implications that ideally should be either erased or addressed in the text (that winick instead exaggerated and put at the very front of his storytelling.) starlin's writing is, at the end of the day and very much ironically, more sympathetic and gentler in evaluating jay (simply because at the time he would not get away with changes too blatant) but details such as jay saying that "all life is game" and his random nonchalant behaviour that has its origin in the very beginning of starlin’s run are already signs of it. some readers will trace jason's arrogance prevalent in his red hood era to these issues and say that his actions post-res are therefore a logical extension of his robin days, but i don't buy it. even if you want to lean into starlin-esque characterisation, if you consider the core problem of the garzonas plotline – which is power, jay shouldn’t look into the solution of anything in climbing to the top. and if he did, it would have to be written as a “becoming what you feared/hated most” kind of story, which i can see a certain appeal in (and which would at least acknowledge that it was not his initial personality), but which would go back to its classist assumption of cycles of violence and doomed fates.

so – how to make his post-res era more accurate to his post-crisis robin days (and least classist in the process)?

if we were to follow my fav iterations of his characterisation (barr’s detective comics and the ntt appearances) tbh I don’t think a lot would happen, because his personality is quite mild, and just so hopeful there that i wouldn’t expect any extreme actions from him – but then again, the circumstances that he finds himself in post-res, the trauma, and his sensitivity do warrant grief that should become a driving force in his life from now on. the question is, what to do with this grief as a plot device?

i know that plenty of jason fans hate this take but I actually think the concept of jason trying to be detached and cruel but being bad at it might be one of the least offensive to his 80s characterisation. it’s def not accurate to pre-52 canon (apart from countdown perhaps) but imo for jay to be authentic and nuanced he should be conflicted about his own actions. his overconfident behaviour should be a pose – just as his frantic acts in his origin story as robin were. (again, something that many readers don't take notice of – but reading the rest of collins' writing wherein jay quickly settles into being easy-going and even a bit shy is proof of it.)

these two points lead to the “no good deed” narrative that I often talk about - the reading that jason saw his intuitive and self-sacrificial kind tendencies as something that brought him pain and that never was quite efficient, and that post-res he intentionally tried training himself out of. there are some flashes of it here and there throughout the years of the red hood publishing history, but it never got a true spotlight. and if i were to write lost days, jason flinching at his own violence would be a focal point of the story. 

moving on to utrh; i have spoken about it at length before but I think if he were written 1. with more political sensitivity 2. to have retained the same maturity re: the social order 3. to have the same idea of morality, he should have followed more of actual revolutionary tracks and the whole “drug lord” authoritarian figure schtick along with the idiotic idea of “controlling crime” would have to be thrown out of the window. 

and, later on, forgiveness should play a big role in his story. he's so quick to forgive and justify everyone in his robin run – this is also why i reckon his team up with harvey in tfz was a wasted opportunity.

so, in conclusion – perhaps not that much would have to change re: his actions but definitely a lot should change regarding his emotional journey and his position. i would def throw out a lot of mindless violence and power posturing out of it though. and perhaps make him a bit more polite just for the sake of more consistency (this is not me taking a moral stance btw nor tone policing a fictional character. i just think it would be more faithful to his 80s writing unless you want to make him explicitly scared. and it would be funnier tbh.)

[b6d11f]

belinda says that heaven is a place on earth well, so is hell

[britneyshakespeare]

I don't know who needs to hear this but the Black Parade isn't even a tad bit overrated

[imdawndenbo]

Helena Peabody's first appearance in The L Word

[dangerousdan-dan]

I was reading Catwoman Vol. 3 (past Brubaker's run) and raging and wondering why it was suddenly so damn bad and with weird, senseless relationships thrown in there and then I realized... Dan fucking DiDio

[kiras-monkey-bum-face]

why did no one notice I'm neuodivergent while I was growing up? why was I allowed to think I was a freak and weird all those years? how am I still having to learn how to live with myself being different? how come my parents are asking why my therapist still hasn't stopped me having what they don't realise are meltdowns? like I've worked in a school with undiagnosed kids and all the teachers discussed and suspected children so WHY didn't any one of mine notice me? why is it so unfair that I was left to slip through the cracks

[nomairuins]

had 2 take a break 2 think abt a different one of my princesses. back 2 it

[mieux-de-se-taire]

Helena - MCR Interview

Stars & Scars Interview - 4/17/04

Paragraph 8

Interviewer: What song on “Three Cheers” means the most to you and why? Gerard: “Helena” -that’s my grandmother’s name, and it’s about her. Originally, I wanted the lyrics to be more directly about her. It ended up being more of a song about her writing to me. The lyrics are very aggressive. It’s more about me ragging on myself for being away so much. After we had toured for about a year and a half straight, she died the day after I got home. She had been in the hospital, so I couldn’t see her because I was sick, too. I got home, and the next morning I woke up and she was dead. I was very angry with myself for that. I didn’t regret it, obviously, because she would have wanted me on the road. The song’s very aggressive towards myself. That’s kind of what I do. That song definitely means the most. It’s awesome. It’s one of my favorite songs on the record.

/

MTV Backstage Pass Interview - 10/26/04

1:10-1:34

Gerard: I believe the next single's gonna be "Helena." Frank: I think that'd be good because it means so much to... (gestures) Mikey and Gerard. Gerard: Yeah, like, it's about-- it's about me and Mikey's grandma, who passed away, so it'll show kind of a little closer to what we're more about. Not that we're not about stuff like "Not Okay," but "Helena's" definitely more aggressive, and I think you'll find the record has more aggressive songs on it than "Not Okay."

/

Fuse Daily Download Interview + HD - 11/24/04

11:36-11:54 (HD 1:45-2:04)

Gerard: The next single, I think, is gonna be "Helena," right guys? Frank: Probably Gerard: Yeah, we're actually discussing a video right now. Steven Smith (Interviewer): What about the video, what kind of stuff? Gerard: Um, right now the only thing we're talking about is a funeral. Steven Smith: Yeah? Gerard: But we're also talking to Marc Webb again, who did the last video, 'cause we love-- he did such a great job. Steven Smith: It was awesome. Gerard: And he's talking about choreographed dancing.

/

Steven's Untitled Rock Show Interview - Feb/March 2005

0:32-0:53

Steven Smith (Interviewer): (After cutting back from the music video for "Helena") That was My Chemical Romance with "Helena." What was your favorite part about making that video, um any fond memories of creating it? It's kind of bizarre but very cool. Gerard: Yeah, well, um, the coolest thing was seeing the dancers for the first time, I think. It was a really hard video to make 'cause it's such a personal subject, but it was a really good closure-- I think that's what I'll take away from it-- me and Mikey especially.

/

KROQ Interview - 5/21/05

0:35-0:40

Gerard: (Responding to the prompt: favorite songs on the album (Three Cheers)) The most important song, to me and especially Mikey, on the record is "Helena" 'cause it's about our grandmother who passed away.

/

Rolling Stone Magazine Interview + alt - 6/18/05

Page 3, paragraph 11

The inspiration for much of Three Cheers came from the death of his maternal grandmother, Elena Lee Rush, in 2003. "Helena," [Gerard] says, "is an angry open letter to myself for being on the road so long and missing the last year of her life."

/

Kerrang #1072 - 7/23/05

Page 6

Gerard: When we did 'Helena', I knew it was going to be heavy. I was almost afraid of the song. I knew we were going to be singing it on TV, we were going to make a really expensive video; 'Helena' was going to become a thing, and I was afraid because I knew how great it was. When I showed up for the video shoot it was grim: it was set up like a funeral and it was like walking back into my grandma's funeral (the song is about her). We chose to use a young woman not so it connected with kids -- it was to make people take it more seriously. So that people could connect with it on a broader level; when somebody older dies, you kind of expect it, when somebody younger dies, it's more tragic.

Page 7, paragraph 4

Gerard: That's when 'Helena' happened. We had this song, which wasn't about anything, then all of a sudden I said, "I think I want to make this song about grandma". So from that point on, that's what the whole record became about: loss.

/

Galaxie Magazine Interview - Sep 2005

Page 2, paragraph 5

Interviewer: What does it feel like to suddenly be in the same league as the bands that influenced you? Do you feel like you're in competition to be heard? Gerard: It is actually flattering. You need to play the radio game (to be heard on national radio). We were worried about Helena because all these heavy-hitting records from Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, Foo Fighters, and System of a Down came out at the same time. All these major major platinum-selling bands dropped albums and, based on what had come before, we thought Helena was done. Then all of a sudden we noticed that it wasn't. Helena remained on the charts when other songs went away. Now we are not talking shit, but our song got bigger and it made us feel that we had a chance at making a career out of this. To be able to make music that is relevant for as long as possible, that's all we want.

/

Zero Magazine Interview - Oct-Nov 2005

Page 7, paragraph 2-4

Interviewer: Hence the record company's decision to re-release I'm Not Okay? Gerard: Re-releasing I'm Not Okay is more of a reintroduction to the band 'cause Helena has taken off. I'm Not Okay was like this very simple, direct song about multiple high school depressions, suicide attempts, alcoholism -- it's about being an outcast. So that's Not Okay. Helena was the one that really encapsulated the band so in a way I'm happy that Helena did better than Not Okay. It was a very personal song (it's about Gerard's late grandmother), and it was the song that shaped the record. It's the most important song on the record for me. It feels great to win stuff 'cause of the subject matter, but at the same time, what it's done to people is more rewarding than awards. Like I said, awards aren't always the most validating thing, so the fact that Helena touched so many lives, even in death, I think that is really what's amazing about it.

/

Matt Schichter Interview - 11/30/05

0:00-0:28, 13:11-13:16

Interviewer: First "Helena" 'cause that's my favorite song on the record. Gerard: Thank you Interviewer: Why don't you tell us a bit about the song, I know you wrote it about your grandma, not many people know that. Gerard: Yeah, me and Mikey's grandma passed away, um actually after the initial writing period for Revenge, and it had a very definite concept at that point, but after she died, it all kind of changed and became about really missing her. And that's really what a lot of the record is about. Interviewer: Do you still think about that when you sing the song live? Gerard: Yeah, that song in particular.

Interviewer: Song you've written you're most proud of? Gerard: "Helena." Mikey: Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with that one as well.

/

Spin 2005 Readers' Poll and Interview - Dec 2005

Page 2, paragraph 17-20

Interviewer (SpinMag): "Helena" was voted Best Song of 2005 by our readers. Did you ever think a song about a grandmother would become so huge? Gerard (NotOkayHelena): I did have some sense it was going to be huge, but it almost had to be to honor a woman so amazing. When she died, I told her we would make a record so fucking loud that she would hear it all the way in heaven...ot wherever it is you go. I was worried about it being huge because it was so personal--I didn't want to exploit my pain and her death. Interviewer: Did people accuse you of that? Gerard: Not to my knowledge. I was more concerned with my own accusations. You can't be in something unique and creative if you give a fuck what people say about you.

/

MTV Interview - Aug-Oct 2006

3:09-3:13

Gerard: (Drawing parallels between Jawbreaker's Dear You and Three Cheers) Like "Helena" is basically "Accident Prone," in a lot of ways.

/

Metal Hammer Interview - 1/11/07

Page 5, paragraph 3

Gerard: [The Black Parade is a] really personal record; this is us laying it out there. It changed things. It's not so much that as when I was doing 'Helena' though. That was a lot tougher because I wasn't really ready to deal with my grandmother's death so head-on, and then when we put the record out it was, 'OK, you're going to be dealing with this for the next eight months.' There was no death that spawned this record."

/

Kerrang #1142 - 1/17/07

Page 14, paragraph 4

Written in tribute to Gerard and Mikey's grandmother, the opener to 'Three Cheers...' was initially painful for Gerard to sing. "I remember one critic said something like, 'Why would you want to watch this guy run around onstage whining about his nana'. How fucking shitty a human being do you have to be to say that?

/

Metal Edge Magazine Interview - 3/10/07

Page 6, paragraph 6

Gerard: I was surprised, but we always knew that song had a lot of power because of what it was about. The video itself was like a time stamp. I was just excited to see something like that on MTV. It was a funeral--it was a rock band playinga funeral--you never saw anything like that on MTV before, and it was just awesome to see that. To so directly make people face death and look at death in that way--as not just a tragic thing, [but] as a celebratory thing at the same time, and have people to actually face that, I thought it was pretty incredible.

/

Ultimate Guitar Interview - 4/28/07

Paragraph 10

Interviewer: How would you describe the previous album musically? How did you intend to make The Black Parade different? Ray: I think in Revenge you're hearing a band that necessarily didn't find its legs yet. It didn't find what it truly was. I think that there are flashes of that in songs like Helena and Not Okay and some of the other tracks. But I think it was our first record that we had written with Frank. At that point, he had been touring with us for a while but still kind of a new member. The way that me and him kind of played together was very different from the way we play together now.

/

Kerrang Podcast Interview - 11/22/10

5:56-6:10

Gerard: (Responding to the prompt: if you could put one song in a time capsule to represent the band, what would it be and why?) Probably "Helena?" (points the mic towards Mikey) Mikey: Yeah, "Helena," definitely, absolutely. Yeah, that song I think encapsulates everything about us, and, you know, sonic quality, message, everything about it, yeah.

/

Grammy Museum Interview - 1/26/11

4:51-4:57

Frank: (In response to the question: what songs have been emotionally therapeutic for you, Frank specifically talking about how songs carry emotions and associations that arise during the writing process sometimes before hearing the lyrics and how the lyrical message of a song may differ from his personal connections with it, see 4:19 for more context) Like "Helena" I'm thinking about, you know, my wife, like when I play those parts.

/

The First Ever Podcast - 3/16/22

1:23:08-1:23:32

Frank: I remember recording with Mike Plotnikoff, who was the engineer for Howard Benson (producer of Three Cheers), and we went into "Helena," and I played my guitar parts for the chorus of that song. And I remember them hitting the space bar, and Plotnikoff like looked at me going, "Damn, that's a fucking chorus." And I remember being like "Yes!"

/

The Daily Beast Interview - 2022

Paragraph 18

Gerard: I lost my grandmother before we started writing ‘Revenge’ and that loss really impacted me, because she had been the person to sit with me and teach me how to draw or make me go to the piano with her. And she would play and she would make me sing along with her and stuff, so that we had a really amazing relationship. So it was that loss and wanting to get over that loss and kind of triumph over that loss to kind of make her proud that drove me in songs like ‘Helena.’

/

Two Minutes to Late Night Interview - 8/15/22

17:48-18:08

Frank: There's a few songs off [Three Cheers] that we do-- have played a lot, you know. I mean, of course like "Helena" or "Not Okay." And what's funny about say like songs like that, or even "Venom," that we've done so often, you would think that they would start to get unfun or annoying, and they don't.

/

One Life One Chance Interview - 10/31/22

39:11-39:45

Frank: And then "Helena" they were like "Alright, we're gonna put this as like a second single." And I remember there was a time like when the-- they put the single out, and there was like a week or 2 where like we got sat down by like the radio people, and they were like "Hey, you know, we tried really hard. We're sorry." And we were like "What? Sorry? This is amazing!" And then all of a sudden, like the next week, it took off, and it became like the bigger-- it became bigger than "Not Okay," and that was like-- I think everyone's surprised that that happened, and we were just like "Okay," like-- "hey, listen, either way is great."

[thebramblewood]

After weeks of preparation, including too many late night practice sessions to count, Helena wiped the floor with her debate opponent when it mattered most! The topic: if UBrite would be making a stronger statement to any former or future Foxbury vandals by restoring their statue to its former glory or letting the graffiti stand. With her dormmates cheering her on, Helena argued in favor of restoration and walked away victorious.

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