#i'm on a meta roll

[stagefoureddiediaz]

So our yellow and blue high school coming back to us in 804 in another episode with home in the title and the connection to Eddie we got in 504 and seem likely to get in 804 got me thinking.

The mascot of that high school is the bluejay and they have very interesting symbolism connected to them, all of which play very well into what has been set up for Eddies journey this season!

Bluejay's are considered strong and protective birds and can be seen as loud, and aggressive, but the can also be seen as lucky or a symbol of good things to come.

Bluejays are connected to to the throat chakra - birds generally are connected to the throat chakra because both are connected to the element of air, but the bluejay is also connected through the colour blue. The throat chakra is related to authentic interpersonal and creative self expression and gives voice to the heart. It is said that if your throat chakra is blocked the person will have trouble expressing themselves and their truth and finding the words to explain how they really feel.

It is said that seeing bluejays in your life is telling you that you you need to work on your self - that you are not being honest in your communications because you are afraid that if you speak your truth you will not get what you want or need.

Bluejays are also connected to confidence - encouraging us to behave more confidently so that we can achieve more and gain the outcome we want and live our truth. The other aspect of the bluejay is judgment, both by ones self and by others. Bluejays are often judged because they appear bold and strong and can be aggressive, but those traits are signs of strong survival instincts, loyalty and intelligence - both intellectual and emotional. Seeing bluejays in your life can be a sign you are receiving unfair judgement from others, possibly because holding strong boundaries is triggering that persons ego.

Bluejays mate for life and stay with their partner all year round (some birds don't do this even if they mate for life!), they are family oriented birds - remaining loyal and protective of their family group. Their appearance in your life, especially after the breakdown of a relationship is said to be a sign that you need to work on healing your wounds so that you can honour the truth of your heart and move on and be happy.

Doesn't all of this sound very much like Eddie and what he is struggling with?! It does to me!

The fact that there are so many heart metaphors connected to bluejays and that they are being tied into the Wizard of Oz theming on the show - as we saw early on in s5 in the build up to 'Home and away' and again so far in season 8 in the build up to 'No place like home'. Its very telling!

Things just keep on getting louder and the idea that Tim is basically doing a redux of season 5 but as he would have actually done it had Fox not blocked things is feeling realer than ever!

[monstrousparalysis]

Hey y'all! Since it's Love Loses Wednesday for all who celebrate and I have plenty of thoughts about it, here's some of those thoughts I've had for my fellow enjoyers of Chip Bastard from the insanely powerful podcast Just Roll With It!

So.

Chip being so focused on family and friends, on finding Arlin and keeping his co-captains and crew safe, while the most he ever shows interest in romance is in brief, jokey flirting that's quickly brushed aside.

Chip buying a love potion, only for it to sit unused in his inventory for literal months until it unceremoniously drops into the mouth of the Electrodon.

Chip being unnerved or even downright scared when somebody shows a sign of being attracted to him (Amanda with the marriage, Jazz and his flirting, the frantic denial to Ollie that Gillion kissing him meant anything (which was then followed by barely any change in their relationship. A typically romantic act, done as an act of love between friends, and yet those friends never did start a romance. Curious))

Speaking of Amanda and the marriage: Chip waking up one day and suddenly being expected, even morally obligated, to be in a romantic relationship with somebody he doesn't even know, for reasons he doesn't even know. And even when he clarifies that he doesn't want this, that he won't give up being a pirate with his friends for it, he still can't leave behind the expectation fully, because Amanda, and thus this expectation, is literally chasing him. Sometimes it even comes from his own friends, because no matter how much he would prefer to just Not Be Married, there's no way for him to get out of it, especially not ones Gillion would likely accept, and therefore the expectation that eventually, he'll be in a romance, is inescapable.

And even more interesting, he's not opposed to the idea of getting married in general. He wasn't wholly against the notion of marrying Igneous just for the AC boost it would give them. Clearly, the problem he had wasn't with the marriage itself, but with the fact that he was expected to form a romantic partnership.

And lastly: Chip having his literal heart ripped out of him, and staying nearly the same. Making jokes about how his heart was stolen in a way that was literal instead of romantic. Writing to his wife that if death do them part, then now it has (and doesn't it even say something that the only way for him to escape the marriage, the expectations, was to die?)

He cares for his friends just the same. He cares for his crew just the same. He wants to find Arlin just as much as ever. And his avoidance of his wife, of the expectation that he perform romance, stays the same. But even if he's the exact same, he has an excuse for this now. Because clearly, somebody with no heart couldn't feel romance, and who cares that he didn't really seem to before he lost his heart either?

Chip being aromantic, on a textual, metaphorical, and thematic level.

[theerurishipper]

Tim Drake, for no reason at all:

Dick Grayson, Tim's big brother in every conceivable way for the past several years:

[necrotic-nephilim]

@profandomhopper i was going to reblog the original post this comment was left on but i felt it divorced itself from the original topic so much, you get your own post for giving me delightful permission to ramble about this. buckle in people this is long.

so, DC is a big fandom that expanses a lot of different types of content, and like anything, is subject to crossovers. the obvious ones like Marvel are for the reason of being a similar and equally popular superhero world, so it's easy to transpose the worlds onto each other and overlap the characters. both of these worlds deal with multiverses and endless, endless heroes. it makes sense and there's no real stretch to think Batman and Spider-Man could co-exist. i mean, there have been canon crossover comics. and even some more random crossovers like White Collar have pretty easy to trace origins, being an actor in WC was a popular Dick fancast back in the day so there was some bleeding over that led to a well-loved niche crossover space.

but Danny Phantom and Miraculous Ladybug are where it gets interesting. because at a surface, MLB sort of makes sense. it's a superhero world, you're following a teen girl superhero and sure the mechanics are pretty contained, but the crossover should make sense. but when you compare it to the crossover numbers of other superhero media like say My Hero Academia, Ladybug takes the *crown* with such a bizarre popularity. and of course, DP feels like it makes even less sense. sure, you *could* lump it into at the very least, superhero-adjacent media, but it's not a true hero world like MLB or DC is.

but, the thing to always understand about DC, *especially* the Batfamily (which is where the crossover content propagates the most) is this: a *very* good chunk of fans don't interact with the comics. i would venture to say even most Batfamily fans don't read the comics and actively talk about it. we've all read a very fandom big Batfam fanfic where the author's note mentions the writer has never touched a comic in their life. typically, these fans are either cobbling together their understanding from fandom content, or by frankensteining unrelated DC adaptations to understand each character. you take Bruce from Batman: TAS, you take Dick from the animated Young Justice, you take Jason from Batman: Under The Red Hood animated movie, you take Damian from the DCAMU Batman vs Robin, and you read some fandom metas to fill in the rest and well, you've got some sort of an understanding of these characters. read enough incorrect quotes, some genfic, a couple of character metas, and boom, you understand the Batfamily fandom enough to start creating your own content. and of course now. now you have Wayne Family Adventures so it's even *easier*. a pretty easy to pick up webtoon that's filling in all the gaps for you. but i've been in this fandom long enough to remember before we had WFA and even then, this was still a common, if not the most popular way, to ween yourself into the DC fandom space. you cherry-picked the canon you liked and then plunged into the depths of fanon.

i'm not here to make in depth commentary on if i think this is a good or bad thing. trust me i have that commentary in my head, but that would need it's own post. i'm very split on it and my feelings are complicated. my feelings on WFA are even *more* complicated. because oftentimes, the attitude expressed by these fans who are frankensteining this version of the Batfamily/DC world they have in their head is they don't *want* to read the comics. the comics don't contain the content they're after. and to an extent, i understand that. if you're looking for light-hearted vibes of the Batfamily all getting along and having the occasional hurt/comfort moments but in the end, they hug and make up, you're right. largely, you won't find that in canon. of course there are so many comics to recommend for Batfamily interactions, but you have to get specific. you'll find them interacting in small groups, Tim and Dick bonding here, Duke and Cass bonding there, but largely, the comics don't care to balance the ridiculously large cast they've given themselves. but fandom does. it's easy to toss them all in a blender and ignore the parts you don't like. the default argument to ignoring the comics or writing something OOC is always "well the comics are OOC and inconsistent too" which, while a flawed argument that massively misunderstand how comics work as a medium, isn't an entirely incorrect one. you could serve on a silver platter to these fans, an easy and accessible way to get into comics and they wouldn't be interested. it's not what they're here for. fandom is always character-driven above all else. it's driven by character relationships and dynamics. if someone wants to consume content where Tim idolized and stalked Jason as 'his Robin' and now is trying to help him rehabilitate and they're super complicated but have this long epic forgiveness arc, why *would* they read the comics? because they're sure as shit not going to find that dynamic in the comics. it's laughably OOC and not canon at all, but that doesn't matter. what matters is the sandbox. most Batfamily fans care *far* more about the sandbox canon gives them than the actual canon itself. feel how you feel about that, this really isn't being negative toward that attitude, but it is a common attitude.

so, you have Batfamily fans playing in the sandbox and building their own narrative. common fandom headcanons are so common, you could practically write a guide on how the fanon Batfamily works with how consistent people are about it. or you could just read WFA, which is practically the new manifesto of it. even now, with this sudden spike in people talking about canon accuracy and "actually this happening in the comics", they don't actually care about the comics, just what they can cherry-pick for fodder. (even if they rob it of so much context they're just as OOC as they were before. see specifically: the recent phenomena with Tim Drake going from the woobified weakest member of the Batfam who everyone needs to save constantly and he's the smart boy but he's also the one with a sad tragic neglectful past who gets overlooked being the way Batfamily fandom played with Tim for years. but recently, people seem to be pushing this idea of a ridiculously badass Tim, Tim who *totally* has a kill count because of his actions in RR (2009) if you take them completely out of context, Tim who bested Ra's and is even more badass than Jason and he's the 17 yr old CEO of Wayne Industries being cool and flawless it becoming the new fandom zeitgeist. neither of these versions of Tim are canon, and the second fundamentally misunderstands his arc in RR (2009) but the shift has undeniably happened and it's been fascinating to watch. the same thing happened with people suddenly deciding Jason isn't the "angry violent Robin", he was a sunshine sweet boy who was perfect as Robin. neither of these are true, but the second feels more transgressive and new to fandom from cherry-picked panels.) the point is largely, Batfamily fans would rather build their own canon than play with the actual canon.

and then, you have Danny Phantom. i'm not into DP and have no interest to get into it, but what i know about it via fandom osmosis is this: DP fans sort of also don't give a fuck about canon. once again, the canon of DP is a sandbox, not a rulebook. the concepts and the characters are the draw, not the plot itself. i've seen DP posts explaining characters who are essentially OCs, but have become so dominant in the fandom via fandom osmosis. there are concepts and ideas about how Danny's powers work and potential concepts with his ghost nature that either aren't in canon or only happened once in canon and fans decided to expand on that and doesn't care about it's own in-universe logic. i've seen a lot of DP fans also express they haven't seen the show and they don't have plans to see the show. because the show is just some children's cartoon with some inconsistencies and a simple plot, as you'd expect from CN. the show isn't the point. no one cares about it's plot, they care about it's characters. they care about pushing the concept of half ghost boy to a logical extreme and seeing what you can get out of that. can you make it weird and fucked up. how much can you highlight on his trauma and body horror. what identity crisis can you give him and how can you build his interactions with other characters in his world around that and also make those characters fun and unique on their own. sure, the skeleton of canon is there, but the meat lies all in the fanon.

Miraculous Ladybug also exists in this similar vein. the characters, the concepts, those hold intrigue. and not even mentioning the fact the original concept for this show was supposed to be aimed to an older audience, so you can see the bones of something a bit more mature and nuanced under this typical, villain of the week magical girl transformation show. the show itself is a bit shallow and that's not a *bad* thing, it's just the medium it exists within being aimed towards children. but the concepts of a teen girl who's basically a sort of chosen one, a boy who doesn't know his father is the big bad of the show, and their weird identity porn love... square thing. those dynamics are *so* complicated and such a fun sandbox to play in with character-driven fandom.

so, at the core, you have three fandoms that care more about the culturally accepted fanon than the canon, with a good chunk of people often not even consuming the original canon content. and well, DC is an *easy* world to transpose just about anything onto. a boy who's half ghost and fighting supernatural threats? that makes sense, DC has ghost heroes like Deadman already. a girl who has this magical item that gives her animal themed superpowers? i mean that's practically the same thing as Vixen's Totem so that one makes sense too. they fit in pretty easy, no needing to change the world to accommodate them. and of course, if you're a fan of *one* fandom where you don't care for the canon content and only like the fandom sandbox, chances are, you'll get drawn in pretty easily to another fandom with similar mechanics. if you can teach yourself the DP fandom rules/concepts, you can teach yourself the Batfamily fandom rules/concepts. and well, since there's so much crossover in fandom members, why not write the fanfiction? crossover fics will always exist, but with such a shared member base, you have a really big boom.

it's why the characters you see DP interact with in DC are *always* characters who are far more driven by fanon than canon. Danny and John Constantine is a *massive* concept. for people who don't read Hellblazer comics. my poor partner, @divine-dominion has lamented to me pretty often about finding DP content in the Hellblazer tag that is essentially turning Constantine into an OC. because whatever version of Constantine is being written about isn't one bit comics accurate, and really, isn't trying to be. and the same thing happens with Shazam. you watch Young Justice and understand him well enough, you get drawn in by the character concept that you just run with it. people put their favorite blorbos in the same place because hey, wouldn't ghost boy be pretty cool in a city like *Gotham*. how would Batman even react to him. and then, the shipping. because ages for the Batfamily can be easily hand-waved and moved around based on where you plop Danny into the timeline, you have your pick of the litter with him, and same with Ladybug. of course there are the most popular ships but largely, the world is your oyster.

i don't think this is the worst thing in the world for either fandom. it's not hard to filter out the crossover tags and scroll past content i don't like. and sure, i see the appeal of making your blorbos from two different places meet. i've got my drafts *full* of DC/MHA crossover ideas because well, i like them both and think that would be cool. i think my only gripe with it is when DP or MLB crossover content seeps it's way into the wrong tags. using the above example, if you're writing about Danny and Constantine but there's zero content of the actual Hellblazer comics, i don't think you need the Hellblazer tag, just the Constantine character tag. tbh i wish this extended onto Ao3 and people utilized fandom tags better. if you're writing Batfamily fanfiction that is very clearly and obviously WFA driven in characterization and concepts, i would far prefer those fics be tagged with the WFA fandom tag rather than the Batman (comics) fandom tag. because well, you're not writing about the Batman comics. and there's nothing wrong with that, but it helps if you don't confuse yourself for content striving to interact with canon more. (this especially extends to Young Justice, by the way. if you're writing for the Young Justice tv show please, please stop using the Young Justice (comics) fandom tag. i'm at my wit's end- /lh)

the whole thing is fascinating. i've got zero interest in entering DP or MLB as fandoms because that's not my speed, but witnessing it as an outsider is my favorite pastime. i see a *lot* of posts going around the DC x DP space that are helping explain to people who's who, what's what, and understanding the canon/fanon of both of these properties so others can better enter the space. which is not something you'd need in a fandom driven only by it's canon content, but it is sweet watching others try to help newbies enter the space. it's a very inviting fandom space, i think, whether you lament it's existence or not. they're just sitting in their corner with their blorbos, and i gotta respect that. the posts explaining the Batfamily to DP fans are always fun for me to read, even if i disagree with some of the characterizations in them because it helps shine a light on what the fans of this crossover regard as "important" enough about each fandom to be worth including those sorts of primers. very fascinating stuff.

[menciemeer]

Sometimes I think about Louise Hobbs for too long and start going a little crazy.

Garret Jacob gets all the attention on the show. Abigail gets it from fandom. The absence of Louise is almost invisible. She’s not there. We don’t think about her.

We don’t think about her, of course, because she’s not in canon in the first place. She has no lines. Her name is not mentioned in dialogue. She only barely appears on camera.

Here is Louise Hobbs alive and well. Striking about this bit, once I was looking at it: she doesn’t look towards the camera, she doesn’t look towards her family members, and her family doesn’t look towards her. They move around one another and don’t directly interact. Look at it: Abigail and Garret Jacob Hobbs are communicating, here, in a way that she’s entirely cut off from.

(And, ok, listen, I’ve gotta sidebar. Even before Abigail actually picks up the phone, GJH is keeping track of where she goes. There are no clear frames of this tiny interaction, but look:

he’s keeping tabs on her. The minute she moves, he’s checking over his shoulder to see what she’s up to. By contrast, he doesn’t look at his wife even once.)

(One other thing about this tiny little scene of them playing house. GJH has absolutely no chill. He is tense and intense even before he gets on the phone. It’s not really possible to tell what Abigail is thinking through all of this--we know from later that she’s a pretty good liar--but Garret Jacob Hobbs is not subtle. He’s jumpy as fuck, and he’s probably that way all the time.)

Continuing.

The next time we see Lousie, she’s being shoved out the front door. Think about that. GJH didn’t kill her immediately. He’s not interested in seeing her dead. He’s using her to buy time in the kitchen with Abigail because he knows he doesn’t have any left.

The way I remembered Louise dying was with a cut to her throat, but look at it. She’s got wounds on her arms, on her torso. He wasn’t careful, or quick. He didn’t hold out his hand to her and ask her to come closer. He attacked her, shoved her out the door, and slammed it behind her.

That is the end of Louise Hobbs.

Hobbs family dynamics just. Absolutely fascinate me. (Too much.) I so desperately want to know what it was like to be Louise Hobbs. I want to know how much she knew, how much she suspected, and how much she refused to let herself understand. She’s the cannibal the show cares about the least. She’s the one who dies so that someone else can have a little more time.

The show constantly returns to the idea of murder as a way to break or make families. Besides the Hobbs family, there’s the children and foster mother from Oeuf, Gideon killing his wife in backstory, Lawrence Wells who killed his own son, Margot and Mason, and of course Dolarhyde’s obsession with killing families together. Louise Hobbs’s is a murder to break a family. She is, very literally, cast out.

We do see her one last time:

It’s interesting that, when Abigail sees this, Alana is the one who becomes her mother. Whatever you want to say about the long-term feasibility of the Murder Family, it’s indisputable that Hannibal was never interested in planning a future with Alana. She’s there nearly by accident. Holding a place meant for Will. She is not part of the plan.

If Abigail mourns for Louise, she does it off-screen. We see flashbacks to her interactions with Garret Jacob, but, after this, Louise never returns. We’re left to wonder, or to forget, all on our own.

[sehtoast]

i'm so devastated knowing that the firecracker and homelander thing is going to happen. the vibe is clearly there that this is blind admiration, that it's the same obsessive fanatical behavior he loathes. that look he gave her was so clear.

i feel like she'll use the milk fixation as a way to access him and be another person using him as a means to an end for what they want. there is nothing from the spoilers that hints that this is a mutually enjoyable relationship (quite the opposite, actually) and that it's specifically so he can get his milk fix and she gets access to him.

the same way madelyn used him to boost her career and guarantee her own safety

the way stormfront used him to further her pursuit of an 'ideal' (gag) world

i think, arguably, the least toxic was maeve. but we don't know enough about their relationship to really say

but blind admiration is not love. using someone is not love. utilizing them as a means to an end, with love as the carrot on a stick that you beat them with, is not love.

is it any wonder he is the way he fucking is??

so many of his love interests have used him like a toy. the world uses him as a toy. humankind has treated him as one since the day he was born- their toy, their tool, their weapon.

what is one more notch hacked into the tree if not the one that topples it

[kenobihater]

so we all know the explicit sakai deer imagery, right? despite stags being associated with kazumasa, deer are still an appropriate symbol for jin as well (fast, silent, peaceful rather than predatory by nature but still capable of killing). since jin = deer, what would ryuzo best be represented by? maybe there's some textual hint, or hidden dialogue that we could go off of? maybe it's not explicit, but-

yeah, no. the game literally awards you this trophy right after you recruit him. the only way i think they could get more explicit with the shady wolf analogy is by calling the trophy "the big bad wolf", or "wolf in sheep's clothing".

ryuzo - passionate, unpredictable, violent ryuzo - being compared to a wolf is fitting, even more so when you consider the trophy refers to multiple wolves, meaning the straw hats. he was taken in by them, an unruly, masterless group, and he became their leader. despite betraying jin, he doesn't lack loyalty entirely; he only remains loyal to those he views as family after they took him in following the tournament.

his primary motivations in the narrative are staying fed, and providing for his family. he doesn't care about playing nice, or fighting clean, or lessening collateral damage. if his belly is full and his family is fed, none of that matters, and i can't think of a more apt description of that mentality than wolfish.

[jamiesfootball]

After careful consideration and a lot of angry tags, I think I have pinpointed for me where Ted Lasso, especially season three, fails to succeed all the way at the themes it explores.

The narrative uses the deconstruction of toxic masculinity to paint their characters as being stronger for having let go of their preconceived notions of acceptable behavior - but the narrative also never lets their characters be weak or fragile without having toxic masculinity to blame. And there are a lot of situations in this show where you would expect someone to go ‘hey man, are you okay? Are you doing alright? because that was a shit thing that happened. it’s okay if you’re not okay.’

And it never does.

There’s an undercurrent in how scenes play out that suggests that the male characters should be strong enough to deal with hand they’ve been dealt. The narrative suggests that they’re the ones who need corrected. They can act better, but they can not be treated better themselves as a result. The male characters are allowed to express themselves, but they are not allowed to ask for anything back from the situation.

Which is why you can have a fight with your assistant coach, but when he comes back to apologize you don’t articulate how it made you feel. You don’t tell your friend how he hurt your feelings. You just accept it and move on.

The Diamond Dogs give advice on how to handle external problems with  emotional roots. They never discuss how they feel internally on its own merit.

The closest we got to a male character just having a bad one and expressing it without a clear source of external conflict? Jamie in the boot room. And that was played for laughs.

Which is why you could be in a deep depression over losing your career of twenty years and part of your mobility, I guess. But also maybe that’s a problem of you not being able to let go, and maybe you should apologize for not moving on sooner? We should pity Roy for getting so stuck in his own shit all the time. Not because the man has lived an incredibly stressful and emotionally isolated life in a high pressure environment for so long he doesn’t have the tools to deal with it, but because the narrative would like us to know if he just stopped getting in his own way all the time, this wouldn’t be a problem.

Is your ex-wife seeing someone else, who happens to also be the person who was your marriage counselor? I don’t know man, relationships are hard. Don’t worry about how hard that must have shaken your trust in a profession that already made you feel skittish. Maybe you should stop obsessing over her and move on.

Your girlfriend can tell all your friends and coworkers how you’re too smothering. Yes, this is the ‘learn how to communicate better’ show, but that was on you, really. Good on you for apologizing for smothering her.

The women may have worrying relationships with people who love bomb them or turn out to be controlling, but Jane and Beard are just a bit weird. Don’t worry about it, Higgins.

You can take accountability for your actions, but if it was your email who was hacked - who cares? You apologized, and everyone is very proud of you. We won’t ever bring up how incredibly mortifying that must have been for you to realize, because something more mortifying happened to someone else.

You can show your emotions, but not the angry ones, not the bad ones - those you should get a hold on, no matter how warranted they are. The stronger you are, the more divorced from toxic masculinity you are, the less those things should matter.

Struggling with your abusive dad and how his relationship with you has literally scared you so badly that you keep looking over your shoulder, afraid he’ll be there? That is clearly the anger talking. This is definitely not a situation that calls for your pseudo-father figure to put his hand on your shoulder, look you in the eye, and say, “i’m really sorry to hear that, son, but you know we got your back. Ain’t nothing bad gonna happen to you while we’re here.” 

No no, this is a you problem and you can correct it by forgiving that man who hurt you. In fact, you thank him for motivating you. It was the anger that got you this far. It wasn’t getting up at 4am every morning for extra training. It wasn’t your mentor, the one invested all his time in helping you. It wasn’t the coach who gave you a second chance when you blew your whole life up to get away from that man. It wasn’t your own drive and passion and love for the sport that pushed you towards succeeding in a career you only had a one-in-a-million chance of ever getting. No, it was the anger that carried you. You should let that go. And hey - what if hypothetically speaking, he might try to be better too one day? You can’t hold it against him. You should let that go too.

Breakdowns and displays of crying are fine, but expecting people to care or show concern afterwards? The narrative doesn’t know her. The narrative will not validate that. We don’t see what happened after Wembley. We don’t see what happened when Isaac came back to the locker room after blowing up. What the show will validate, however, is moving on. Just be a goldfish, or forgive and forget. 

And finally-

Embrace your feelings, but not too hard - you can’t be trusted with them, actually.

Can you imagine that we actually got a scene of Roy telling Jamie that he was worried if either of them pursued Keeley it might ruin their friendship? Can you imagine? From the beginning they have butted heads. From the beginning, Roy has struggled to actually articulate his feelings, especially to the people they involve. And here is Roy doing exactly what the narrative has been teaching him to do - he voiced a feeling that was bothering him to the person who was involved in the problem. Unprompted. He did that on his own. After three seasons of being told that is what he should do when he has a problem, that should have been the moment of narrative reward. That would have been the audience’s release of tension: they’re still at odds, they’re still the same bull-headed people they’ve always been, but they’ve learned to talk about it. No matter what happens next, at least, they’ve gotten this far.

Instead the narrative rewarded him, and us, by having them fight it out in a back alley. Because they’re idiots, and they can’t be trusted to handle their feelings without someone else in the narrative (Keeley) setting them straight.

Yes, people backslide in real life all the time. But when the narrative backslides at the very end of the story - that’s just nihilism. That’s what this felt like - all that progress and promise that you can be better, and two of the people who struggled the most tripped at the finish line. The audience don’t even get to see them pick back up. I mean they’re fine now, I guess. They went for kebabs. I have to assume it worked out. I guess after that they found a way to be happy, but I would have preferred to see them find a way to be happy by way of their own actions. Not in a fanfic. Not by way of imagining how it went afterwards. Not by what’s implied in a montage. By the story actually showing me they could get there on their own.

And the worst part about all of this is that when the show gets it right? It fucking sings. The team coming together to repair Ola’s? That sings. Ted’s ‘ain’t nobody in this room alone’ speech? Wonderful. Trent telling Colin that ‘some people need time to adjust; it’s not fair, but they do’? So delicately wielded, so painful. Beard’s speech to Nate about stealing a loaf of meth? Chef’s kiss. Ted forgiving Rebecca when he learns why she brought him to coach Richmond? The tears in his eyes when he tells her ‘divorce is hard’?

The hug at Wembley.

That’s what I wanted, from start to finale. When the show knew how to wield its empathy, it wielded it like a knife, cutting into the deepest parts of your heart.

Which is why when it does mess up, it hurts so much worse. Because by season three, the show has sunk so far into the deconstruction of things that it’s forgotten that what it fixed were not the only problems those characters ever faced. The show zoomed in too close on the themes. It forgot that at its roots, the its biggest strength has been its empathy. And that to me is where the show failed.

[stuffnonsenseandotherthings]

Joke is a Fresh Spring Roll (and Zo is a Picky Eater)

So it seems that Hidden Agenda has decided to play with it's food....

As an audience, the first thing we learn about Zo is that he likes to play it safe. He absolutely hates being taken out of his comfort zone and will seek out the familiar when and where he can. Case in point: he's had a crush on Nita for YEARS and he can barely bring himself to walk past her when they're in the same room.

It also seems like his desire to play it safe also extends to his food; he has a set dish - basil chicken with fried egg over rice with no basil - and a set drink - chrysanthemum tea - and he has absolutely no interest in deviating from them. He knows that he likes those two things, so that's what he'll have and it's what he'll continue having until the end of time if he has it his way.

Unfortunately for Zo, however, Joke has other plans.

Almost as soon as they start spending time together, Joke is on a mission to expand Zo's taste buds, get him to try new things, and challenge his ideas of what he likes. It starts as early as sealing their pact with the Roselle juice (which Zo does not like), then carries over into their dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant (which Zo makes a show of not enjoying), and then on into their second dinner date.

Joke is constantly trying to get Zo to try new things and will even go so far as to make their deal of him helping win over Nita rest on wether or not Zo will try his food:

Joke is trying to use food to open Zo up to trying new things that he doesn't think he likes.

Just like with his basil chicken and rice, Zo has never considered other options on the romance menu and Joke is well aware of this. From what we've seen so far, Zo has never considered liking anyone other than Nita, no matter how unsuccessful his suit is. Further more, it doesn't seem like it's ever crossed Zo's mind to consider men as romantic interests and even if he has, he's definitely never seen Joke as anything more than someone who annoys the heck out of him....

And because of Zo's very closed and risk-averse mindset, this in unlikely to change on it's own.

So Joke is wooing him with food, new food to be precise. Using their little dinner dates, Joke seems to be trying to (very gently) get Zo used to trying new things, to going out of his comfort zone and to becoming open to the idea that what he thought he liked (basil chicken and Nita) aren't necessarily the only things he likes and that maybe he likes other things more (fresh spring rolls and Joke).

And the thing is, it's working.

Zo may not have liked the Roselle juice but even with all the fuss he put up in the restaurant about eating the spring rolls, he still liked them enough to want to order them alongside his chicken at the lunch stand and when Joke said he'd feed him the macaroni, Zo eventually gives in by (albeit fake grudgingly) going to try it himself.

Joke's love language is apparently food and what he's currently telling Zo is "You're a picky eater and I'm a spring roll but maybe (just maybe), if you try me, you'll like me"

[Also a side note but using the act of trying new food to represent (and act as a prelude to) the journey of queer self discovery is pretty darn cute and while I'm not expecting anything overly deep or groundbreaking from this show I am definitely here for it]

[devouringbodies]

Missing Hannibal so much hours so here's some s4 musings and contemplations (even though I don't Actually want a s4, but I do, but I don't, but I'd do, so let's just pretend)

YES to locations in Cuba/Latin America, bright, saturated colors like in the first few episodes but instead of fall it's very clearly summer for the first time ever in the show. I just love this as a contrast to the forever winter the show seems stuck in.

Along with that, maybe contrasting back to Jack and the FBI back in the states still stuck in the winter?? Another allusion to Will and Hannibal being "free" together in some regard in their warmth.

Also With This mayhaps Margot and Alana somewhere in a safe house in Norway or Iceland somewhere.

Wound care flashbacks to after the fall, Will is the one who saves Hannibal from the water, forcing him to consciously make the choice for them both to live.

Will in turn struggling with the ramifications of having made that decision.

DOMESTICITYYYYYYYYY

Hannibal in linens. Will in hideous button ups. period.

I have this vision of an opening into s4 of a brightly lit saturated scene of a needle dropping onto a record, there's breeze coming in through sheer curtains from an open window, segue into a beloved familiar cooking montage, but the tones are different, the lighting is brighter, the kitchen, accents, and utensils are markedly more Spanish in design, shots of forearms and hands wielding knives, slapping meat on cutting boards, everything we're used to, but pull back, and its Will cooking, as familiar in this kitchen as anything, as he brings two plates out and serves both him and Hannibal, the latter of the two sitting at the table ready and beaming.

This is the song the needle drops and is playing through that above scene btw.

Scenes of Will at a farmers market speaking Spanish to vendors please. For science.

Therapy scenes and talk 2.0 only this time it is more Hannibal discussing and learning to express what he wants, what he desires, and Will entertains him and uses his empathy to barrow on Hannibal's psychotherapy techniques to help Hannibal express and "cultivate" these urges he has. I.e, that he wants to go hunting again, and wants it with Will.

Will, who's using these sessions as a distraction, is actually also DESPERATELY craving this too. I'm talking Will is full blown Dexter urges to kill feels it under his skin now, but of course, doesn't want to admit this, and is doing everything in his power to distract and hold it back, maybe even hallucinating a few familiar faces about it along the way.

Sex scene that is literally just almost entirely insanely close up shots of teeth and skin and mouths, hands and flesh, so close most of the time you can't even tell what's going on, it's so abstract, so soft and slow, before it gets increasingly suddenly violent, flashes in between tender love nips suddenly cut with skin ripping and tearing, teeth rending, chewing, swallowing, the music turns dark and terrible and quickens, and finally an enormous horrific wide shot of just them in a bed and there's blood literally everywhere, blood pouring down the walls, camera at the foot of the bed as it pans down and you just see blood continue to splatter the headboard as they slip from view.

That's all I got rn, just some stuff for fun.

[essektheylyss]

Thinking about Loxlee Manufacturing is so wild because, you know, they make lightbulbs. Those lightbulbs are the reason countless people in the Fold survive and make do, and those aren't even people within the Trust. They are probably the vehicle through which the Trust is able to establish notaries beyond their current boundaries and make a convenient example for notaries to put forward. The fact that it bears the name Loxlee allows the Loxlees to automatically be the Most Valorous People in Trust society, and they're not even the ones making the lightbulbs. In fact, they're employing child laborers— ahem, I mean, disadvantaged young interns who are getting an education and experience.

Really just makes me want to do a propaganda flyby of the Loxlee Headquarters islet and drop the Communist Manifesto in pamphlet form because holy hell somebody's gotta do it.

[mommyashtoreth]

what do u think of mommy issues crowley

Tbhhhh I don't really see Crowley as someone particularly Deeply Traumatized (just like Normal Traumatized. We've all been there girl!), especially in a "daddy/mommy issues" sort of sense. If anyone is going to have "mommy issues" related to God, it would most definitely be Aziraphale. Crowley is, at this point, so detached from God that the idea of conceptualizing Them as any sort of parental figure (which is a funny sentence to say about a 6000-year-old demon who also looks fifty) would be quite surreal to her. Meanwhile Aziraphale is like, an adult daughter who's moved out but can't quite shake her parents off her back. She's TRYING to move past it, but that sort of validation is still the only thing she craves. Her "mother" bestowed too much responsibility on her too early in her life and she has never recovered from it. No one ever thinks she has issues because she is demure and bookish and polite, but inside it's tearing her to pieces how much she still wants to please God. This is all part of my ploy to explain why Aziraphale would want Crowley to mommy dom the shit out of her yuristyle, which no one wants to hear about but I'm going to bring up anyway

[presiding]

What is your favourite thing about Billie Lurk?

(Answers are obvious possibly but i love when people talk about her👍)

thanks for the ask!! YEAH ME TOO I love when people talk about Billie! I can't say I have a favourite thing specifically, but I can explain why she's my fav. apologies for not taking this qn literally, but -

short answer: she’s really cool

& you can stop reading there, or, for the maybe 2 mutuals who might have time to read this my thoughts on her as a character, her meta, and her character as raw potential...

long answer:

i considered making this entire thing a gush so you could read a gush about Billie. but, part of what draws me to her is that she’s not always well written, and in fandom she’s underrated for a literal protagonist.

since you ask...

billie is a cool character

when I played Dh2 (hadn't played Dh1), I was excited to see a black woman with disabilities who was captaining a massive ship by herself. wow.

then I discovered Billie’s backstory with Deirdre, the way she responded to that, then having to survive while living on the run, and her bisexuality. as well as her history with daud & delilah. fascinating!

she’s an outsider who has so much to lose, and knows what it's like to lose everything - having lost everything not once but three times - but nevertheless speaks truth to power. she's so brave! she went and helped Emily & Corvo and she must have known they might kill her! plus, she’s smart, she’s funny, she gets shit done, she’s gorgeous.

but... the meta

mild critique of fandom & arkane incoming.

skip this bit if you want - you've been warned twice now - jump to tired Hayao Miyazaki and read from there if you'd like my thoughts on writing her.

i thought Death of the Outsider was going to be amazing and then... well. *sad trombone* i've written about that before so i won't keep banging on. i figured others must be disappointed too, so I joined a few fandom spaces in hopes of finding camaraderie.

most people with complaints about DotO didn’t like how the Outsider and Daud were handled. which is valid & I agree. but it seemed like most paid no attention to Billie; when people talk about her it’s with respect to Daud, as opposed to in her own right. you could argue for fandom misogyny because people don’t talk about adult Emily Kaldwin that much either, but in Billie's case, it’s misogynoir (compare & contrast with the popularity of thomas, particularly the popularity of thomas portrayed as a white man for no particular reason that i've been able to discern - i keep asking around, is it in the books???).

i think this is a LOT better now than it used to be, which is fantastic. or perhaps i have found the correct echo-chamber? ha.

ultimately, The Fandom is a fraction of the entire picture, and not even the important bit since The Fandom is not who these games are made for. you can't make money relying on only your hardcore fans even if all of them spent a fortune on merch, this is true for any AAA game.

while it's true that Billie is underrated from a fandom perspective - but Billie as an underwritten protagonist is squarely Arkane’s fault.

it was reasonable when she was a side character - the lack of info in Dh2 makes perfect sense (if anything there was more lore in Dh2 which is kind of wild)-

- but as a protagonist in Death of the Outsider?

.... there’s lousy writing, and there’s whatever is going on with Billie Lurk, a black woman who mostly exists as a foil or saviour for light-skinned characters. In her own game there’s barely any of her own lore except where it's relevant to saving two dudes.

lore hints at, but barely touches on what race means in the Dh universe (xenophobia is stronger in Dh1; separate essay i guess), but Arkane has patted themselves on the back for portraying non-white characters, which feels like the same thing as the aesthetic of diversity we're seeing in advertising currently because it’s in marketing trend guides. it's self-congratulatory and it's a missed opportunity for deeper storytelling.

you can see an example of diversity at its most shallow in the way that Billie’s written: there’s little engagement with her as an entire person with history & wants & preferences, and the world she walks through in that game feels like it has nothing to do with her. you could make a case for alienation as a theme, but then, how do you handle the titular premise of 'Dishonored' without ever letting Billie make changes in an environment without a chaos system? it's disappointing from that angle too.

in my opinion, whatever it's worth, it was an accident Arkane created such an awesome character - they needed someone to betray daud. congrats billie.

all this said, it makes her an underdog as far as characters to enjoy & create art & stories for. it's nice to find so many like-minded, switched on people! <3

billie's character potential

she’s got a wealth of unexplored lore, being deeply intertwined with both Karnaca & Dunwall’s fates & criminal underbellies, as well as her connections to the witches & whalers, and three Empresses.

she’s lived a few distinct lifetimes and in the games we get to meet her at two peaks (KoD & DotO) & a low (Dh2 as Meagan).

her voice is very distinct, her dry & often dark humour is entertaining & fun to write. her perspective is really interesting - she’s had the widest variety of void-powers of anyone canonically, and she’s also lived through the highest highs and lowest lows.

she's got everything going for her :) i couldn't really pick a fav thing!

[immobiliter]

so i'm officially free from work and on leave for the next week !! i'll be catching up with dms and such ( plus the dain quest and clorinde sq on genshin ) and, while i never make writing a priority when i'm off work because i'm too old and tired when it comes to tumblr to feel obliged to write on here nowadays, chances are i will be here to do some writing over the next week or so !!

[piracytheorist]

I wonder what Anya's thoughts are in regards to the possibility of Twilight finding out that she knows about him. At first she understandably fears he'll immediately eliminate her, but then, in the pivotal moment of the story and her dynamic with him, she finds out that his biggest motivation for becoming a spy was to protect the children of the world.

When you know he's dedicated his entire life to such a cause, it's hard to imagine him killing an innocent child because she found out about his real job.

It's what convinces Anya to stay; despite the danger, despite the very real possibility of him abandoning her when the mission is over, it's that noble cause that she reads from him and decides that he's worth it.

With that in mind, both for Twilight and Yor it'll be terrifying to learn about Anya's powers, no matter how much they've grown to care for her at that point. It's not only that from the first moment she met them, she had been reading their most private and personal thoughts, it's also that she became a walking liability for their secret identities. Her knowing puts all of their lives and jobs at risk.

Anya understands how important it is to keep those secrets, both of her parents' real jobs and of the fact that she knows. Perhaps she understands that, with Twilight's end cause being to protect children, he most likely won't cause her big harm if her secret comes out, but she also understands it will most likely be a deal breaker. Same with Yor - as much as Yor loves her, the safest route for her keeping the job would be to remove herself from Anya's presence.

And like, if I'm honest, I cannot imagine what would actually happen in such a case. Twilight and Yor have invested too much in her (even if Twilight won't accept it yet) to either kill her or to even tell their organizations that she knows, because those people won't have a problem executing Anya. So... a relocation, or something? Being watched closely for a few years? Idk I'm just spitballing here.

In any case, Anya's mind powers is what brought the Forger family together, but them being revealed could very easily break them apart. Again, it won't just be Twilight and Yor feeling upset that she knows their deepest thoughts - it will also be the knowledge that they were compromised from the first moment.

And it's why she's so terrified of telling them about her powers, to the point where she chose to try and protect Loid from the bomb all on her own instead of coming clean to Yor and asking for her help. Because if she did, Yor would immediately realize that Anya knows she's an assassin, she would leave, Operation Strix would be aborted and Twilight would leave her too. It's still too early in the story for her to feel comfortable and secure enough to know that her powers being revealed would cause none of them to leave, and so she does her best to work around Loid and Yor not finding out about them.

(No manga spoilers please 😁)

[uniiiquehecrt]

s/b: i don't like that thor features a love story

me: well let me tell you about how mcu!thor's core trait is his love and that includes love for his people, love for his homeland/home planet, love for his family and his brother in particular, love for the nine realms and earth in particular, and how that all boils down into love for jane— who's the most human of humans to him; who taught him how to be human too — so of course in the film where we're introduced to the mcu depiction of thor, his story is quintessentially a love story in both hope (jane) and tragedy (loki) and how those two things constantly conflict and contradict one another, and leave thor stranded in the middle because he loves both so dearly; patrick doyle crafted a beautiful OST featuring STRINGS and PIANO instead of just drums and horns because thor is strong and heroic, yes, he is, in fact, a hero but he's a beautiful hero because of his love because he is SOFT and it's reflected in the strings in both of his themes and—