#i'm literally so done with my family :)

[necrotic-nephilim]

this is not a ship post, but something that frustrates me a lot in fanon concerning Jason Todd that attempts to soften Jason's return to Gotham for the sake of found family domesticity or easy hurt/comfort or just sliding him into the Batfam sooner, is they all seem to fundamentally misunderstand Jason.

because there seem to be a lot of fandom popular concepts of Jason coming home much sooner and just not having his whole Under The Red Hood arc. which in theory is fine and i can see the want to simplify canon to make room for your lighthearted more fluff-leaning concepts. but in everyone without fail, the way they address the clown-shaped elephant in the room is by having some throwaway line that "oh Jason quietly kills the Joker and moves on".

when the Joker being dead or alive is not the *point*. if by some chance accident, the Joker had died prior to Jason's return, whether by ridiculous freak accident, getting whacked by a fellow villain, hell even someone actually doing so to avenge Jason, it *would not* satiate Jason's anger. because Jason's end goal in UtRH is not to simply kill the Joker: it is to make *Bruce* kill the Joker. Jason's anger is directed to the idea that to Jason, if Bruce truly loved Jason, he would've killed the Joker. that is love, for Jason. compromising your personal values for love and not letting someone go unavenged. when Jason was Robin, almost every angry or misguided thing he did was born of love. he wanted to kill/hurt Two-Face because he believed Dent killed his father. he was so angry at Felipe because an innocent woman was dead due to that man's actions. he wanted to save his mother in a situation he knew he shouldn't be in because he loved her. his anger, his violence, it is driven by love and feelings of righting wrongs. that is how he thinks wrongs *should* be righted. that is how you avenge and *love* someone.

because so long as Jason's return to Gotham doesn't end in Bruce killing the Joker (which, it never will bc Bruce is Bruce), Jason will never forgive Bruce. you cannot wave away the layers of hurt and complicated trauma by killing Joker offscreen. because Jason will still be angry that Bruce didn't avenge him. in his eyes, that means Bruce did not love him enough. he was not truly loved by Bruce the way he loved Bruce. bc Bruce was Jason's whole *world*. prior to being taken in, Dick and Tim, they had support systems. they had loved ones. they knew what stability and healthy family love looked like. Jason *didn't*. and that's not to say that Catherine Todd did not love him with her whole heart and thus he loved her, but it certainly wasn't a stable and safe support system for Jason to grow up in. Bruce was Jason's first real sense of a stable, healthy life. and so of course Jason poured everything into Bruce and loved Bruce so devoutly. Bruce was his world. like he says, if it had been Bruce, Jason would've stopped at nothing.

so his betrayal is rooted in that he was not avenged, not that Joker is alive. so long as the Joker does not die by Bruce's hands, it will never be enough for Jason. (in this era, at least.) notably, this is also why i don't think it would change a thing if Jason knew the whole "oh Bruce wanted to kill the Joker but Superman stopped him" tidbit that fanon has really latched onto as a way to pacify Jason's anger toward Bruce. Jason knowing that wouldn't change a thing, in my opinion. because Jason knows Bruce. and a tenant of Bruce's character is that he grapples with murder *every day*. the whole point is how *easy* it would be for him. he is a human weapon, trained by killers, trained to be deadly. he is the greatest strategist to exist. he knows he could kill someone and get away with it. *no* trace, no proof, nothing. and he knows he *wants* to. wants to kill the Joker, Joe Chill, anyone who's hurt him that viscerally.

but he *doesn't*. that's the point. Bruce wakes up every day with that question on his mind, and every day the answer is the same. Bruce's morality is not a decision he made in an alleyway when his parents died, it's a decision he continues to make every day and he *must* continue to make in order to remain who he is. Jason is quite familiar with the fact that Bruce grapples with this daily. i do not think it surprised nor fazed Jason to know that Bruce did *consider* killing the Joker. that he wanted to. maybe even planned to. but a consideration, a want, a plan, is just a thought. it's nothing substantial, and substance is everything to Jason. at the end of the day, Bruce didn't. he was talked down by *Clark* of all people with an excuse of diplomatic immunity, as if Jason and Bruce don't both know that Bruce could've *easily* found a way to make it look like an accident or some other loophole. because he's Batman. there's always a loophole. he always finds a way when he actually intends to. but he never actually intended to kill the Joker. so he didn't. and Jason would know that there was never an intent. it's an interesting piece of fodder to add to the nuance of Jason and Bruce, but honestly, i think it'd make Jason angrier to have that excuse thrown in his face. as if Bruce hasn't beaten Clark half a dozen times by now. it's a flimsy nonsense excuse that Jason would rip to shreds.

so while yes, i understand the wish for easy lighthearted fanfic that doesn't have to deal with the nuances of canon, i think that Jason's character will always be so deeply robbed and altered if you try to fix his thirst for vengeance with an off-page killing of Joker at Jason's hands. it was never the point. the point was that -in his own eyes- he wasn't loved enough for Bruce to make an acception. he realized that not even his *death* would come before Bruce's Mission. Jason truly believed that Bruce loved him and held him as the most important thing in the world, and now he has proof that Bruce didn't. because the Mission mattered more.

i'm not saying i have a solution to this conundrum if you're attempting to solve it for fanfic/fanon, nor am i even saying it's a bad thing it exists. i just think it becoming overwhelmingly common has led to misunderstandings surrounding Jason's motivations and feelings about this arc and it's an unsatisfying solution that only seeks to pacify Jason's rage and his trauma responses for the sake of found family-ification.

[riddlerosehearts]

But what about MIRABEL?

[chirpsythismorning]

Fun fact: In the original pitch for Stranger Things, El had a little brother.

After being rejected by almost 20 studios for the Montauk pilot, the Duffers were finally green-lit by Netflix. It was at this time that they began casting and then writing the first season officially, which included reworking a lot of that first episode.

This led to the removal of the brother reference, and with it, removing any sort of arc El could have had about her apparent brother.

But the thing about this moment, is that it might not have been scrapped entirely...

Going into the final season, no one can explain why or how El recognized Will back in 1x02. And while there are plenty of things on the show that are left unexplained, with a small portion likely left that way with the intention to uncover it later, what sets this moment apart from the rest is that there are very few possibilities here.

Because for starters, the story presents El's ability to see people in the void in s1 as requiring either a picture of that person for reference, or having met that person before.

But when El see's this picture of Will, she's never met him before. Or maybe she has, but we wouldn't know because they never showed us. They could have just not done this scene at all, given that it's clearly a copy/paste/edit of something scrapped from the pitch. Or they could have even still included it, but explained it.

One explanation could be that the lab had shown El a picture of Will before, similar to what they did with the Russian agent they wanted to spy on. But then that begs to question, why would the lab show El a picture of Will? Why would they want to see what he was doing? That alone is incriminating in and of itself, implying that Will is more connected to the lab than we realize.

The only other, and frankly most likely explanation, would be that El stumbled across Will at some point on her journey between escaping the lab and Will going missing. This is actually something that happens in The Other Side comic, which explores all the things Will may have experienced during his time in the Upside Down.

Though it’s worth noting the comics aren’t technically canon, and I highly doubt they would outright spoil everything in relation to Will’s time there, years before it was intended to be revealed. But still, let's humor this for a moment given that I do think Will's time in the UD is going to be very relevant in s5, which means it's highly likely they will finally address how exactly El saw him.

Basically, in the comic, Will see’s El walking through the woods, almost apparition like, glowing as she passes by, while also sporting the Benny’s burgers shirt. This means they would have crossed passed within a short span of time, between when El escaped Benny’s when the agents arrived, but before she was found by the boys.

Though it’s worth noting that we’re seeing this all from Will’s perspective. This means from the UD, Will was capable of seeing El on the other side, despite them being on different sides. And not only that, but she also looks back at him.

What confuses me about this, is that it doesn’t make sense for El to be in the woods, only to randomly decide to pop in to the void for a moment. She was trying to escape the lab and everything that came with it. I doubt she had any desire to lurk back there for some reason, not until someone encouraged her to. Not to mention, it would make no sense for her to go there and see Will if she wasn't even looking for him in the first place. And so this would mean Will and El could see each other, with Will being in the UD, and El being on the other side.

While it does seem pretty far off, given that you would think Will and El wouldn't be able to see each other from different sides, it is true in the story that El not only recognizes Will, but knows that he is in danger. She mentions that he is hiding specifically.

Which means she has likely seen him within the last 24 hours regardless.

This, in combination with Will being able to respond to El in the void at the end of the season in Castle Byers, when no one else outside of Terry and flayed-Billy have been able to, seems to imply that there is indeed something special about Will that makes him capable of communicating with El from the UD. Not only that, but El also seems to have an ability to be in this constant knowing state of how Will is doing, without even checking again to confirm. She's just certain of it. And she seems terrified about it.

Going forward, El never uses a picture of Will to find him. She never did. And more often than not, they don’t show us what she see’s either, not until the very end. And that’s the moment they reveal that he was able to communicate with her.

Again, there was really no reason to have El recognize Will. If anything it complicates things. But the fact that they chose to introduce this concept, with a scene from the original pitch that was related to El’s younger brother, with her pointing at his name cryptically, startling Benny, only to revamp it and have El not say anything at all while pointing at the picture of Will, startling Mike… It just really makes you stop and think.

Which brings me to the other aspect of this that might have people doubting, which is that El’s brother was originally younger than her.

We know Will is not younger than El, so how could this apply to him?

Well, it might be helpful to consider that in the original script, El was actually 10 years old, while the boys were always 12. Meaning that for some reason, they decided to age her up to the age of the boys, aka the same age as Will…

Ever since @erikiara80 shared this brother discovery with me, I have been sort of reeling. It then led to other little discoveries of changes they made between Montauk and Stranger Things.

It’s important to understand that the Montauk bible and the original script precedes what we ended up with in the final product, with it finally changing and evolving months, maybe even a year since that original vision. Even casting occurred before writing started for the first season. We know this because casting announcements were made in June and August of 2015, with writing not starting until August going into early 2016, simultaneously while they were filming.

And believe it or not, what I've discovered is that a lot of the changes they made between their original plans and what we see in the final product, have to do with not only Willel, but also Byler.

If you've read the original script for Montauk, you'll know that Mike's crush on Jennifer Hayes was focused on right from the jump, along with the birthmark on his face being focused on, which was the main cause of the bullying he experienced.

This has actually been talked about recently, and some of the claims people make do fit with what I am genuinely starting to consider here, which is that the initial plan for what makes Mike an outcast shifted.

I think when they completed casting, and started actually deep diving into what they wanted this world to look like, both from a short-term and long-term standpoint, they were presented with some pretty interesting discoveries, arguably already hiding in their initial plans without realizing it.

And this is where it sort of becomes a 'chicken or the egg' situation. Because which one came first? Byler or Willel?

I can't say for certain, because obviously this is all just speculation. But in the case that Willel came first, I think Byler would come very naturally after that.

The Duffers themselves are twins. Then they hire Noah, who is a twin. Then they're thinking and planning for El's past and how her family all fits into this, and they're thinking... wait a damn minute... We could totally Star Wars this bitch!

And then when they think it couldn't get any better, they uncover another layer that they hadn't planned or really considered in their initial plans.

While Will was always going to have sexual identity issues according to the Montauk bible, meaning that the writing process for him likely involved sitting down imagining scenarios that encapsulated this arc for Will from the beginning, they were simultaneously now finding very interesting aspects of Mike's character that made it hard not to at least consider the possiblity that Mike is not exactly straight.

Just think about it. The Byers and Wheelers are basically polar opposites on the spectrum of what a family looks like. While Will's discovery and acceptance of his queerness is interesting to explore because he comes from a low-income, single-mom household, all while having been bullied for years based on his perceived queerness, he also has a mother and brother constantly reinforcing that they will accept him no matter what. They've been sort of hitting us over the head with it for years, and so it wouldn't be very satisfying for his entire arc to merely lead up to something we've known all along. It's pretty much a given at this point.

On the other side of the spectrum, Mike comes from a more upper-middle class family at the end of a cul-de-sac, more aligned with what a nuclear family looks like. Mike's family is also presented as being more conservative, and while Karen does give that very queer-coded speech to Mike in s1 (I'm convinced they only wrote this after deciding to explore queer-coding more heavily with Mike), it also comes with comments from Ted and even still Karen that hint that they are probably not as open-minded and accepting as Will's family is to him. Which means Mike's arc would be a lot more about acceptance around him from his loved ones who we have been led to believe might not be as accepting of his queerness in contrast to Will.

And so as they're putting this story together, and they're being presented with something very interesting. Two similar experiences that play out in different ways because of the characters circumstances.

Will goes missing, and his twin sister with a buzzcut pops up and has the ability to help them find Will.

This leads to several moments where El is being compared to as not only a boy, but Will as well.

Now suddenly, their initial plans to have Mike's arc be about having a girl be interested in him and to hopefully have his first kiss and feel like less of a loser, starts to look a lot like what the experience a queer kid in his position might encounter growing up in the environment that he did.

And if you don't want to take my word for it, just hear the Duffer's themselves hinting at what they initially planned for Mike and the fact that it changed.

The changes don't stop there.

Believe it or not, 'It was a seven', did not exist in the initial pitch. When the boys went outside bickering over Nancy, they leave right after that.

Another thing that changed from the first script, was Scott Clarke's introduction:

And so you might be thinking, who cares? What does that have to do with anything?

Well, it's interesting because the line we end up with on the show is arguably one of the most on the nose Twelvegate proofs to date. Mind you, this is from the first episode:

Why chuck the original version, which was arguably more interesting and fascinating in terms of it hinting at the mysteriousness surrounding this story, only to replace it with him listing off tips about their upcoming test?

Well, I think it's the irony of it all. Here Mr. Clarke is practically telling us where to look to figure stuff out for ourselves what is going on, with all the kids filing out and ignoring him...

I relate to Scott a litttle too much in this shot here, any time I try to drop Willel evidence.

And the changes go on, as they obviously would.

Things like Terry Ives not even being El's mom, but actually a man who more so aligns with the characterization of Murray.

And one very interesting one I almost overlooked was in Hopper's introduction, where instead of a kids drawing done by who we assume to be Sarah, we actually see a picture on the wall of him and his wife and daughter... Interesting that they decided to switch it something that is a lot less definitive in presenting what Hopper's past looked like...

If you've made it this far, congratulations.

If you still think I'm out of my mind, just remember that El was going to have a brother in the original script, but they scrapped the scene and gave a near identical one to introduce her connection to Will instead 😘

[katakosmos]

hello primcess talk to me about rosier twins/macaulay twins parallel. and also the incest. lots and lots of incest.

you sent me this ask so casually, i imploded and wrote an essay about it. love you 🤲

so, i would like to start with pandora, because for me she is the reincarnation of camilla. i must admit that pandora started to take shape in my head after reading the secret history, so they have many similarities. what immediately struck me about camilla was her mysteriousness; because we know nothing about her except for what richard tells us, and he focuses particularly on her physical appearance.

"Being the only female in what was basically a boys’ club, must have been difficult for her. Miraculously, she didn’t compensate by becoming hard or quarrelsome. She was still a girl, a slight lovely girl who lay in bed and ate chocolates, a girl whose hair smelled like hyacinth, and whose scarves fluttered jauntily in the breeze. But strange and marvellous as she was, a wisp of silk in a forest of black wool, she was not the fragile creature one would have her seem. In many ways she was as cool and competent as Henry; tough minded, and solitary in her habits, and in many ways as aloof."

one aspect that camilla definitely has in common with pandora is her being apparently sweet, angelic and delicate. even if camilla is more often described as almost masculine (because she's very similar to her brother) it's clear that both she and those around her are well aware of her femininity. she was not the fragile creature one would have her seem. her being a woman masks her true nature (which is what, in the end, makes her part of that group, a boy's club); but, while camilla's femininity is perceived as natural and spontaneous, the femininity that pandora transmits is enormously forced.

she uses her beauty and the desire she inspires in those around her with great subtlety and cruelty. not only does her femininity change the perception others have of her and hide her true identity: she wants to appear the opposite of what she actually is. she has very long hair, she only wears skirts and dresses (no one has ever seen her in pants, except evan), she also wears makeup, smiles often and acts all sweet. and yet, she has a strong personality and a very sharp mind, even if it isn't at all evident.

another difference is that camilla seems to simply exist in the group, and she has a secondary/background role (fuck you richard). instead it's impossible to ignore the presence of pandora in the group formed by her, regulus, barty and evan. she's the center of it, the most important element: the boys would give their life for her without thinking twice. she's pampered and protected by everyone, even if the only one who completely falls into her trap is barty (a perfect richard) who sees her only as a beautiful girl to have the worst fantasies about.

her central role depends heavily on evan. he's objectively the most mysterious and interesting person in the group (a sort of henry) and, even if he voluntarily prefers to close himself off and leave the role of protagonists to his friends, he builds the group dynamics.

i can't imagine evan completely as charles, but one thing they definitely have in common is violence and the desire for obsessive control and possession over their twin. charles's anger develops as a result of bunny's murder, throughout the book he's described as mostly calm. i've already talked about it, but for me evan has been a victim of a constant need for violence all his life, and he suffocates it until he simply explodes. however, if he finds himself in stressful situations like charles, he's also unmanageable. he controls his anger as he controls every aspect of his life, including his sister (and, being so close, pandora is often a victim of his mood swings).

(speaking of mood swings, i realize i often portray evan as a horrible person, but when he's not going crazy he's honestly kind and good, especially with pandora. he loves her with all his heart, and this deep feeling often causes uncontrollable emotions like desire and possession. but caring for pandora is the most natural thing for him. like charles: he hurts camilla several times, but when she gets hurt at the lake he's so scared that he can't even help her ← thanks beth for reminding me of this).

now, one thing that certainly shines through in the incestuous relationship of the macaulay twins is coercion. it seems to us, and it's probably the truth, that camilla is forced by charles to indulge his desires. instead, i believe there was a long period in the lives of the rosier twins where they both started an incestuous relationship voluntarily. evan and pandora grew up in an almost unapproachable environment and, during their teen years, they always detached themselves from everyone. they knew romantic love, but there was no one else they could pour it on other than their own twin.

i've talked about this a bit here, but i like to think that pandora and evan hated the idea of growing up and changing. and this was a start of their twincest, the inability to accept a more detached and healthy type of relationship.

charles doesn't seem to care about the unhealthy nature of his relationship with his sister, and it's something he shares with evan. while camilla realizes it right away, pandora takes a while but there's a moment when she too realizes she wants a different life. and both of them, even if they start to please their brothers under constraint, don't suffer so much because they're forced, but because they're ashamed of it. they are ashamed of being trapped in an incestuous relationship: they are not scared of their siblings' behavior, but they are madly afraid that the people around them might know what is really going on.

despite the love they feel for their twins, both camilla and pandora eventually decide to take their lives into their own hands and run away, without looking back. and they both manage to get what they want, even if it's fleeting, temporary.

in conclusion, this is so confusing (and it's more of a comparison than a parallel). i could say so much more if only i had a copy of this book, because fun fact: when i read the secret history, i bought it and annotated it as a birthday present for one of my friends, so i don't own a single copy of that book.

if anyone reading this has anything to say or add, please share it with me 😣😣

btw: you don't know what i would do to know the story from camilla's point of view...

[reshirfuse]

i hate that i have to fight my insurance to get my hysterectomy but my doctor and i are trying to get them to approve of it medically and we are trying the "cancer can spread to the uterus because there's possibility of the tumor having ovarian cancer" and "my gender identity would like this thing Gone" and i gotta think of some shit but like idk what to say other than "hi anthem blue cross fuck you and if i don't have this thing removed I Will KMS!!!" or "my body made me have this problem cause it hates my ovaries and uterus so damn much it will just make another problem that may kill me just to get it approved of to remove!" LOL

[kindahoping4forever]

Ash IG Story

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Something I've seen a couple people saying is that they want to make sure that Laudna understands that she's not the only one who has been through trauma. But like. Laudna is not the only one who needs to learn that lesson. Actually, it's not even that Laudna needs to learn that she's not the only one that's been through trauma at all, because they're all very aware of what they've all been through. This became an inevitable confrontation when Laudna decided to let Delilah back in, though, and after rewatching the scene, I actually think the only people who managed this situation correctly were Imogen* and Ashton.

Orym and Laudna are both more focused on their own pasts with the sword and not thinking about each other. Orym should have talked to the group and come to a decision with them about using the sword and Laudna should have talked to him about it instead of trying to steal it.

*my feelings about this are still up in the air don't read into this too much

[b4kuch1n]

I actually for real feel like my phone's scanning quality has dropped monumentally while I was away on thing so that's a fun thing to figure out now. anyways

[taraxacum-vulpes]

why is everyone pretending like cyberpunk edgerunners is good. the writing is so bad i hate it

[battywitch]

I just can't believe that zero pain is the normal amount to be in

[mad-hunts]

the thing about barton and his own 'foil' as she should technically be considered, as she is technically the complete opposite of him in every way that matters, is that sumire [ whom i have talked about a few times on here, albeit briefly, so i will give you a brief refresher on her and that is that... her character eventually commits these killings based on the twelve main tarot cards in a deck based on them not fitting her idea of what 'perfect' looks like (kind of like barton BUT much different at the same time) ] and barton used to know each other as they were best friends as kids — even if it was only for a few years.

and as strange as this may sound, a broken promise between them was partially the catalyst behind what started her descent into feeling this need to 'judge' people, which is quite the coincidence as it may seem. because where do most of her victims end up dying? in these settings where she has set up these 'mock trials' for people. so, i know that i said i would talk about how barton had inadvertently created a monster a longgg time ago, but i now am sharing it with you all. because although one cannot blame barton fully for her actions as sumire, of course, has to take responsibility for them herself; but this did play a part in being a catalyst for her feeling all of this resentment and hatred for the world / people around her that led up to her first murder.

which, as you might have it, was the chariot: a tarot card that symbolizes revenge, willpower, and essentially tries to subconsciously put off this message that you are moving in the 'right direction.' i don't think it's so much just the promise itself though that makes this important — it's also that barton himself essentially forgot about the promise he made to sumire, as terrible as that may sound. it actually kind of gives you more insight as to what was going on in barton's mind as a kid because he basically made sumire promise him this: that, if he ever got on the 'wrong path,' that sumire would be there to show him a better one. and that she would attempt to reconnect with him if they ever got separated somehow / give him a sign of some kind that she was still there, so he could meet her.

and i say that this provides more insight because i haven't really gone into depth about this, but barton has expressed this idea in one roleplay on here. + that is that he didn't want to end up like this. however, regardless of that statement, there is no washing away of all of the heinous things he's done and he chose to do them anyway. i'm just thinking about how messed up it is that sumire, up until the point where she started her murders, had casually been searching for barton because the way in which his victims were found was vaguely remiscent of the way that wesley used to kill his victims. + this meant that he was definitely on the wrong path and she would eventually end up on the wrong one too.

[pollen]

hi fellow neurodivergent people

i hate to jump on the "i think i might have adhd" bandwagon, but if i think i might have adhd, how do i bring it up to my care team as a 28-year-old cis woman who was a massive overachiever until i couldn't keep up the ruse anymore?

[starbuck]

FIVE monologues to write

[maybemeursault]

look okay it's bad to erase marvin's canonical sexuality and the fact that She Likes Men but i literally genuinely with all my heart think that she is a trans woman

[kate-apologist]

god i hate moving. i hate moving so much. i'm so sick of moving i'm not gonna move again for at least 24 months this is such bullshit