#just me word vomiting a bit

[thattransboyaled]

reasons why i think havers was in love with the captain (but also me rambling really. bare with me, this was written at 1am)

1. the way he looks at him

honestly one of the main reasons i believe he loved him, because you do not simply just look at people like this. this man is in love (i think the last picture shows this best). in the first picture, the pain in his eyes, i think he’s regretting his decision here, looking at how upset captain is.

2. he is close to the captain

as we know, cap does not laugh/make jokes very often (as seen in 03x01). in the office scene, he mimes punching havers after the line ‘you make sure you give them a bloody nose!’ (and havers goes along with this).

cap also trusts havers. he takes havers suggestion of initiating the emergency lockdown protocol (which i think he would be too proud to do if it was someone else).

so for me, this shows that they are close and that cap is comfortable around havers.

3. just the entire transfer conversation

just before he tells him he has put in for a transfer - on the ‘i want to get involved in the fighting’- you can hear his voice wobble a bit, almost like he is holding back tears. (this might just be peter sandys-clarke’s voice breaking or something, but knowing he does stage acting which requires a lot of control over your voice i think this is probably an intentional decision)

(a video for reference)

he also cannot look cap in the eyes when he says that he has put in for a transfer. when he looks at him afterward and sees how upset cap is and, as i mentioned earlier, i think this is when havers starts to regret his decision a bit. he sees his reaction and is almost like “oh shit. maybe he does care about me.”

(an extra point - i think he also has moments of regret/realisation like this after cap says ‘i shall miss you havers’ + ‘so soon?’ in the office scene)

4. he seems disappointed when cap takes back what he said about missing him

this might be a bit of a stretch, but he doesn't smile straight away and seems upset for a second, but then i think he realises himself and politely smiles to hide his disappointment.

5. the line ‘well. if that’s all?’

the way this line is delivered, he sounds almost hopeful, and again he seems hesitant to leave and disappointed when cap says yes. i think here, for a split second, he himself considers confessing. but it is far too dangerous, and i think he believes (since cap is such a stickler for rules) he would get reported if he had read things wrong. so he is giving cap the chance to confess, to save him from any repercussions.

6. how he reacts to caps ‘i say, havers?’ 

he turns around immediately and leans back into the room a bit, like he’s ready to shut the door and come back in if he needs to. i am so mad we do not get to see his immediate reaction after cap says ‘it’s a bally shame we won’t get to finish the operation together’ but i also think it’s completely intentional. because i think he’d have another moment like in point 4, where he’s disappointed but catches himself. but i think it’s slightly different here. i think he realises that this is caps own little way of truly saying he will miss him. because working on operation william would surely include a lot of time just them, working on paperwork and stuff. so, by cap saying it’s a shame they won’t finish the operation he’s saying it’s a shame they won’t have any time alone together anymore, basically meaning he will miss him. (also i fully believe he walks out so quickly because he is upset here and he doesn’t want cap to see.) 

7. when he leaves 

he looks up and searches for cap in a window, probably because he wants to say one final goodbye, when he sees him there he smiles. then how he stands there for a few seconds, again hesitant to leave and i think regretting his decision again. realising that this is it - he is actually leaving. he probably won’t see cap again. 

anyway i am 100% convinced havers was in love with cap and here are my reasons. i know a lot of it is opinion based and not 100% based on canon, but as i often say, canon is just a suggestion. i would love to hear your thoughts on this!

[mothy-graves]

random 3 am Malevolent thought about exactly how John has Arthur’s eyes

we know that John doesn’t actually control Arthur’s eyes; the Butcher asking him what’s wrong with his eyes. his pupils don’t focus on anything. so if John doesn’t actually possess Arthur’s eyes, how does he see what Arthur sees?

he controls Arthur’s occipital lobe. which would also be why Arthur doesn’t have spacial awareness on his own; i.e. when he ran into the dock early in the series. as when theres something wrong with the eyes themselves, the brain can still process objects, because their occipital lobe is still in tact. however if there is damage to the occipital lobe, it can be lost. if John controls Arthur’s though, he would lose that too. which we see in the series

I know it’s supernatural and it might be silly to explain exactly how these things work but my brain brought it up and I had to express it cause humans are weird, and brains are weird, and John controlling an actual full part of Arthur’s brain I feel in a way adds to the horror of it. like a fucked up puppeteer. not controlling everything, but having just enough control to be vital for their survival. while yes Arthur could, in normal circumstances, survive on his own, obviously, as blind people exist, would he be able to survive the abnormal shit he lands himself in? likely not

OH MY GOD THE LACK OF SPACIAL AWARENESS WOULD ALSO EXPLAIN WHY HE FALLS INTO HOLES SO OFTEN

[zuzu-draws]

So after the spoilers for Chap 257 dropped, I saw some tweets clarifying the meaning of the Kanji Sukuna used in the chapter when referring to his mother, and the overall reveals in the chapter got me thinking.

I’m making this post as a way of gathering my thoughts, personal speculations and where I think all of this connects to Sukuna’s character and the information Gege has given us over the years. Nothing I say is by any means new information, but like I said, I’m just collecting my thoughts here. By the way, just a warning, this post contains SPOILERS for the JJK Manga! If you don’t like that, please don’t read this!

Something I’ve noticed is that the theme of “Hunger” and symbolism of “Cooking/Food” is heavily referenced with Sukuna throughout the Manga. Gege in a previous Fanbook has disclosed Sukuna’s favorite Hobby to be “Eating”.

This theme is again very much ingrained within Sukuna’s cursed techniques and even his Domain Expansion, the “Malevolent Shrine”. With his two main techniques being “Dismantle” and “Cleave” are cutting-type attacks. He is also able to use a Flame-Arrow, and Fire is essential for making Food. The Shrine in his Domain Expansion literally has mouths on all sides, looking eager to chew down anything in-front of them!

This symbolism also heavily influences Sukuna’s own manner of speech, and the way he speaks to other characters in the series as well. With his post-fight chat with Jogo before his death, Sukuna mentions Jogo lacking the “Hunger” to take control of his desires, preventing him from reaching the heights of Gojo Satoru. Before the Start of their fight in Shinjuku, Sukuna called Gojo a “Nameless Fish on top of his cutting board”, and that he was going to start by “Peeling off the scales”(refering to Gojo’s infinity). There’s also further symbolism that supports this by analyzing the Kanji and meaning of Sukuna’s “Malevolent Shrine” but I’m not very educated on that so I won’t be opening that point here.

What all of this points to is that Eating and Food……is extremely important to Sukuna, to the point that it literally affects him in manners innumerable.

Eating is an instinct, a necessity for the survival of every single living being.

And In the face of extreme Hunger and starvation, even those with the strongest will could lose their Humanity and revert to the basic animalistic side of their existence. (The Heian Period also had a Famine, although I believe the timing to be a bit off, but do with this info as you see fit)

In JJK Chapter 257, it is revealed to us that Sukuna and his Twin were most likely starving in the womb of their starving mother.

On the brink of starvation, Sukuna had to consume his “other self”(his twin), so that he could survive.

Btw, this tweet and this thread gives additional characterisation to Sukuna:

Link to the original thread: Link.

More context (and reactions :P):

Link to original thread: Here

This reveals to us that indeed, Sukuna was born a twin. And as we all know, “Twins” are seen with extreme scrutiny in Jujutsu Society, they’re not well liked. This too in a period where Cursed Spirits and Jujutsu Sorcery was at its peak, it is not far-fetched to assume that his Mother may not have been treated very well by the people in her surroundings, especially as she bore twins.

When Kashimo asks if Sukuna was born the Strongest or if he made himself the Strongest, this is the response Sukuna gave to him:

When you think about it, how do you think the people around them would have reacted when the woman: who was supposed to birth two twins, gave birth to a single child instead? and that child had consumed his other twin in the womb itself?

No doubt people would’ve been horrified, disgusted and even revulsed. With the woman and her newborn child.

This would’ve led to their further ostracisation in the already very close-minded society. Unable to fend for herself and her newborn child, it must’ve been difficult for Sukuna’s mother to survive. I feel like somewhere along the line, Sukuna was left alone to fend for himself at an extremely young age. To protect himself from both Curses and Society alike.

This is why I believe Sukuna knows what true starvation, weakness and hunger feels like. Both in the emotional and literal sense. He was left without another person caring about him or his well-being, in a cut-throat period where it was “Fight or be killed”.

Powerful curses roamed all across Japan, nowhere was safe. Simply be strong, or you'll die. There's no room for weakness. And initially, a kid!Sukuna was weak, as anyone would be in the beginning when they're just starting out in this world. (and maybe, he didn't have much to eat, leading to long periods of starvation? :') )

I believe it is this debilitating hunger, and feeling of weakness that eventually led to Sukuna’s current Hedonistic mindset.

He’s essentially traumatised by it, and believes that it was his own weakness that led him to experience this sheer starvation. That he deserved to feel this way because he was weak then. Perhaps, the people around him were right, that as long as they have the power and strength to overcome anything, they’re free to do as they please; And there is nothing anyone else could do about it.

I feel like the irony here is that Sukuna himself, must’ve been a “weakling” before eventually rising the ranks to become History’s Strongest Sorcerer. This is also why he values Strength so much.

Ultimately, Sukuna has decided that there was nothing more important than being strong enough to fulfill your own desires. And “eating” is one of his most important desires. It’s his favourite thing to do, the one he derives the most pleasure out of. And like an animal, whose main focus is to consume, consume and consume. He too, simply consumes.

Most morals likely have no meaning to him. He doesn’t care who he hurts, what he does, as long as he’s able to get what he wants. And this isn’t limited to eating.

This is why people referring to Sukuna as a “Natural Disaster” is so befitting of him. Because Natural Disasters also don’t care about what or who they’re destroying, they just come and go, wreaking havoc appropriate for their nature and magnitude.

I believe Sukuna himself has said lines similar in nature, when talking to Kashimo:

Now I’m not sure how Sukuna perceives or even experiences this “Love”, because I think he has a rather very warped idea of it. I do think that this definition of love is similar to the one that Gojo also understands, but I don’t think he knows what “love” truly is. I’m not sure how I could comment on this, but I do think that Sukuna’s emotionally starved, whether he realises that or not.

Because, like Kashimo himself asked Sukuna “What is the point of dividing your soul into 20 different parts and then traversing across time if you’re satisfied with this?” we do not know the answer to that yet.

But many people have speculated that “Black Box” panels in JJK manga represent a curse (either self-inflicted or put by someone) on the speaker. Like, take a look over here where Sukuna reiterates the same dialogue, except it looks like he’s trying to reassure himself:

This once again shows that Sukuna has only ever strived for himself, in the same hedonistic fashion, to a very very extreme degree. It is possible that he's been lacking something, and he himself does not realise that he’s lacking it. Maybe it was this subconscious feeling, that led to Sukuna agreeing to Kenjaku’s plan of dividing his soul into 20 different parts, and to traverse across time as a Cursed Object.

Sukuna’s an incredibly complex character, and I’m excited to see where this goes. Gege has put extra care in the way he characterizes and depicts Sukuna, and again, I’m really sad that a lot of that characterization gets lost in translation. Still, I’m going to try my best to understand and get the most accurate feel of his character as I possibly can.

If you made it this far, Thank you for reading! And if you would like, please do leave a comment in the tags or replies because I would love to read what other people think of this and just Sukuna in general. I do not see a lot of people doing critical analysis of him, and a lot of his actions are seemingly swept under the rug. I don’t like that, so hopefully this contributes to people focusing more on Sukuna and his character. (/^v^)/ <3

[ivvyela]

an irondad frozen au that is both not entirely thought out and incredibly thought out at the same time. buckle up. i have a lot to say about this.

the fight with thanos is much, much earlier in the timeline. tony doesn't die from the snap exactly, but he isn't the same. essentially, the stones embedded themselves in his hand. and sure it's weird, but thanos is gone and the world is safe, so it’s a small price to pay. regardless, tony’s seen first hand (no pun intended) how dangerous the stones can be, and is very cognizant of the fact that people may not find it comforting that iron man has the very stones that wiped half the population and nearly destroyed the world, so it’s decided that this new development will stay under wraps for a while.

and all tony really wants is to relax, maybe move out to a secluded cabin by a lake, but there are people who have lost their jobs, homes, family, and he feels partially responsible so, of course, stark industries helps however they can - including hiring a certain recently widowed and homeless nurse for their medbay, and offering her a place to stay while she tries to find someplace new for herself and her wide-eyed ten year old nephew, who is practically buzzing with excitement to be "living with mr. iron man stark sir!"

but the kid is smart, real smart. and tony - against his better judgement and newly bejeweled arm - takes a liking to him. with his aunt's permission, he takes him down to his lab and honestly, tony has never seen anyone so excited. one trip turns to two, then five, and before tony knows it, one peter parker has somehow wedged his way into tony's heart.

peter's full of surprises - the biggest being that once seeing the after effects of the war with thanos, peter's not scared. he's actually floored at how "awesome it is that iron man is magic now!"

so, lab nights became magic nights, too. peter was just so amazed by it, that tony felt like these stones could actually be used for good. they talked about ways the stones can be integrated into tony’s suits, how they could help so many people, how one day tony will build that cabin by the lake, and everyone will come, and they can create anything and everything.

and that was fine, really.

until peter got hurt.

now, tony's seen a lot of scary shit. but watching peter crumble to the ground unconscious and unresponsive, and a gray streak appearing in his hair where he was hit, that was definitely up there.

they rush him to strange, who is, thankfully, able to help. "help", meaning erasing all memories of the stones from peter's mind to keep him safe. they were lucky, apparently, that peter was hit in the head, rather than his heart.

tony won't risk it, though. not again. so, since that night, he's kept himself a safe distance from everyone he dared to care about - especially peter, a kid who almost died because of tony's carelessness.

peter didn't understand. but tony would rather live with peter broken hearted because of him than peter dead because of him.

but peter parker is relentlessly stubborn. and his hero shutting him out one day out of nowhere? that won't fly.

three years pass, and everyday, peter knocks on tony's door and talks to him. tony never responds (he wants to, really, he missed this kid) in hopes that one day, peter would just stop. he never does.

so, tony listens to all of it. he listens to him rant about how some kid with a stupid name keeps bugging him. he listens to him pridefully boasts about how he got a full-ride scholarship to midtown high which tony knows nothing about, and had absolutely no part in.

he listens to peter hold back tears as he tells tony how he had to bury his aunt. listen to him come to terms with how he is the one parker left, worry about where he was going to go now, quietly ask why wasn't tony there, up until he is reduced to hitched breaths and tears.

(tony sits against the door throughout all of it, wishing he could hug the kid on the other side.)

time goes on, peter stays in the tower until they can find him a family, and peter parker lives a lonely little life, wanting desperately to be wanted.

his life becomes decidedly less lonely after a certain gala to celebrate five years since tony stark saved the world with a single snap, as well as tony stark's first public appearance since. for peter, what really matters is that this marks the first time in what feels like forever that he's going to be around people that aren't pepper, rhodey, or happy. he has his first conversation with tony that lacks a door and involves actual responses, and it's awkward and weird, but peter can pretend he''s ten again, in tony's lab, and everything is okay.

he meets this man, quentin beck, who says he knew his parents, and cares about what peter has to say, and wants to adopt him. wants him. and his lonely little life seems to be growing into something full, and happy, and -

and tony says no.

which is rich, considering he does everything in his power to avoid peter. and peter, after years of being ignored, finally lets himself be angry. angry that tony shut him out - and the world out - with no reason why. angry that tony wasn't there when he had to bury may. angry that tony thinks he has a say in this, but he isn’t his dad,

and then, there’s a flash of something, a crumbling building, and tony stark, his fist glowing with infinity stones no one knew he wielded, watching guests cower in fright because of him. because he has the very things that almost destroyed the world, and he hid that.

and shit. peter knew this was his own, stupid fault.

tony disappears to god knows where, and despite many protests, peter sneaks out to find him. he doesn’t remember much from when he was younger, but he remembers a cabin and a lake. and that’s a start.

he asks beck to try his best to keep press away from the tower. he’s insistent that he will find tony, and even if tony was bothered by peter, he would never hurt him. he runs into a scary girl, mj, and her much-less-scary friend, ned, who decide to help him as long as peter can slip their resumes into the stark internship files. and, surely, you can imagine what will come next.

i could keep going, but this is probably long enough as it is. but… please. take this. write it. draw it. make something of it. ask me about it. i’ve yet to see this done and i am begging someone to take this silly irondad frozen au from my incapable hands and give it the life it deserves.

[scintillyyy]

hm. tbh i do think that one of current bernard's "problems" as a character isn't the oft claimed he's just boring & there's nothing you can do with him (like, actually, on a purely hypothetical level, i do think that he has the potential for some pretty interesting conflict hooks with tim, or as much as tim's other friends that could have been brought back), it's that he's actually a surprisingly tricky character canon logisticswise to bring back & i don't think fitzmartin necessarily cared about canon logistics so much as she cared more about the emotional parallels she wanted tim to have with the era bernard was created in. and, like, the emotional connection is a good hook for the coming out story, but for bernard to be a long term love interest that people get invested in (especially as a character who was *brought back to be a love interest* versus just creating an OC), you need to be able to hook him into his past canon and explore and expound upon the past canon connection. and bernard is actually a pretty hard character to do that with.

bc the unfortunate reality is that he's intrinsically entirely tied to war drums/war games by virtue of his origin and to be able to bring him back & explore his & tim's shared past you have to....dig into war games. which no one is ever going to want to do. sp you have fitzmartin, who brings him back based on the emotional connection of the uncertainty of identity war games era tim with the feelings of uncertainty of his sexuality & it's not a bad choice give the parallels, it's just very fanficcy by nature. and fitzmartin, who has bridged the gap of original bernard & her current bernard in her head for probably a long time and wants to focus on the coming out vs how we even met bernard to begin with, brushes past the canon logistics of bringing him back. bringing him back explicitly re-canonizes war games, which is a huge thing that would create a lot of conflict hooks for his character given everything that happened there. however, no one at dc is going to touch the implications of re-canonizing that event & all that entails to bring depth or focus on conflict hooks or the shared past tim & bernard have based on war games. hell, even fitzmartin prefers instead to create new trauma for bernard (the chaos monster, his evil homophobic parents) rather than significantly delve into and tie their reunion into their shared past.

and fitzmartin, when it comes to bernard as a character, has the benefit of having his journey in her head & is able to tie him emotionally to tim & wants him to be tim's perfect boyfriend & a really meaningful choice for emotional thematic reasons, but other writers don't and won't have that of him & because she tied so much of bernard into her personal perception of how she thinks he should have grown (hence the. bernard is basically her oc), she writes him as the kind, supporting, loving boyfriend without any conflict because it's about the now emotional stability of tim having fully accepted himself. which is nice! but doesn't particularly lend to long-form storytelling outside of maybe one arc or to storytelling by other writers when he is so ill-established and the relationship.

bc other writers don't have that basis or personal investment. they have war games & fitzmartin's finished product to go off of when it comes to the relationship & what there actually is to dig into between them. they are probably fairly uninterested in her finished product because so much of it is implied about him so it's hard to nail down--who is bernard really, they'd just once again be making him into a basically new character. and it's hard to use war games when 1) it's war games and nobody is ever going to ever write it because the complexities involve the girlfriend people are made tim broke up with starting a gang war that got bernard's best friend murdered and 2) fitzmartin already established their stable relationship completely bypassing the complexities of the canon logistics and conflict hooks of their shared past. their main option is to continue to keep making bernard have either no conflicts or newly engineered conflicts that have nothing to really do with his history and the oc-ification where he becomes far removed from his origin to the point where people do generally wonder why you bothered to bring someone back when he's basically just a new character with no real connection to his or his & tim's shared past outside of vague references.

so it's not that he's a bad choice or anything to have been brought back, it's that there's actually a lot of tricky complications surrounding him being the one to be brought back that makes it a bit harder to work with him and be able to meaningfully connect him to his post-crisis self which is generally what you want when you're bringing back a character with shared history specifically to become a love interest. and so you're forced into a bit of a box & he ends up becoming more generic/this story could have probably been told with anyone there's nothing particularly unique to him.

[brain-rot-central]

I don't wanna go to work. I just want to write vampire smut, cook good food, and bake bread.

[yelenabeloveds]

about the ending I am a FIRM believer of minato-yori lived bc otherwise what's the point. I say this bc yori said when it reached the point of breaking the universe turned back in time to the very beginning, and everything would be reborn. n kore-eda has said that the final scenes depicted them being 'reborn', n though he's talking about the scene where they crawled through the waterway representing rebirth, for me it extended through the consequent scenes showing the joy of acceptance and freedom you can only get by getting reborn—by returning to the beginning. a return to the beginning would be akin to getting a second chance to live, and you can only start over ultimately through forgiveness.

we saw it throughout the climax: hori's regret, hori and the mother's reconciliation, minato's acceptance—these are all forgiveness in some ways, for another persons and for yourself. forgiveness seemed impossible for saori whose anger had been shrugged off and for hori who had almost jumped even and for minato who ruined someone's life for his own safety and so it is something grand, something that's almost a victory won after long, straining battle where everything in your world has piled up into a mess, and so it's fitting that forgiveness is the breaking point allowing everything to go back to the very beginning—allowing rebirth.

the bad end route doesn't satisfy me because it doesn't allow rebirth to fully happen: what kind of second chance the mother and hori will get without minato-yori? it strips the kids away from the very stories that would allow the mother and hori to have a second chance. what kind of second chance minato gets with himself in a world that doesn't bother him, where he could live his life to the fullest anyways? that strips his struggle away from the very story that even allowed him to forgive himself in the first place.

minato-yori dying would leave the stories in the living world empty they would become completely different stories. like you don't get an ending with an afterlife bc nothing happens and nothing would break it's just A Thing and I feel like it would betray the whole movie which has grabbed us by the collar to show the complexities of humans n their social lives. you won't get an ending in the real life either—whatever it was that they have faced, they would have to face it again.

what you only get is a second chance. and that journey, that life, the sheer brutality of it is what I feel makes monster Monster. and you simply can't get it by dying

[homielander]

the most interesting character detail about maeve through which i have extrapolated at least half my understanding of her is that she prefers to be called maeve. i frequently see "maggie" pop up in meta and fic as her chosen name, but quite literally nobody calls her that, including (and most significantly) elena. elena is maeve's tether to her humanity and her refuge away from vought, yet even elena only ever refers to her as maeve. (and in season 2, we learn that maeve started dating elena before she joined the seven -- before queen maeve's popularity would have become so inescapable that she would feel compelled to introduce herself by that name.) it's especially notable that in her final scene, maeve refers to starlight as annie for only the second time, but she is still called maeve by both annie and elena.

here's what we know about maeve's life as maggie: she had a rocky relationship with her father whom she doesn't seem to speak to anymore, she's from a "cousin-fucker hick town" as described by homelander -- i can't imagine this place being terribly lgbt-friendly, and she generally lacks connection with anyone she would have known before becoming queen maeve. she doesn't have fond memories of this time of her life, and perhaps that extends to all associations with it, including the name maggie.

i tend to think that becoming queen maeve was, in many ways, self-actualizing for her. the act that garners her national attention and earns her a ticket to vought is a heroic one -- she breaks every single bone in her right arm to save a school bus from falling off a bridge. and i know madelyn says she is responsible for the mythos of queen maeve, but this character was still aspirational, and likely someone maeve wanted to live up to. in any case, this new identity gave her a purpose and tools to achieve it: she wanted to help people! by her own admission, maeve enters vought bright-eyed and hopeful, not far off from annie. (maeve is also one of the only supes in the seven not to know about compound v -- she doesn't strike me as religious but believing she's among the very few born with powers would have strengthened her internal drive to be a hero.)

it's for the same reason that i think maeve actually... liked having powers? of course she says otherwise in her last season, but season 3 maeve is cynical and weary from about two decades of dealing with vought and homelander's abuse. they've used her first as the token woman and then the token gay person of the seven. after growing largely passive to the brutality of the job, the flight 37 incident forces her to confront all of the violence she's witnessed and tolerated. she's given pieces of herself away and she loathes the husk of herself that's left. i don't find it surprising that she would want to relinquish every single connection to vought, including her powers.

assuring herself that she will be better off without her powers comes with an added benefit: she gets to distinguish herself from homelander, who would be lost without his powers. and i think she is eager to make this distinction in her mind because there are some uncomfortable similarities between their initiations into vought. the mantle of homelander allows him to exert agency for the first time in his life, just as the mantle of queen maeve endows her with purpose for the first time in hers. (crucially, none of his current circle call him john, either.) they both enjoy being the most powerful superheroes in the world, the unending public adoration, and (in my interpretation) each other. they're also both overwhelmingly lonely and they know it -- homelander teases her multiple times about how she has no friends with a bit more bite in every passing season, while maeve is keenly aware of his isolation and exploits his yearning for love pretty effectively.

maeve steadily grows disillusioned with her position at vought because she still has a moral code, suppressed though it may be. even so, she nearly relents to homelander's vision: that they will be lonely at the top but lonely together. she's pulled out of her miserable state of inaction by annie and elena. annie reminds her of what a hero should be (what she was, once); elena offers her a way out of vought, serving as maeve's light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak.

she escapes that tower as maeve, not maggie. she rejects homelander's god complex which engenders his cruelty towards regular people and 'lesser' supes -- no one will call her queen maeve ever again, at least -- but it is still important to her to be a hero, and for better or for worse, she found that as maeve. i feel like she'd struggle to exist without her powers (possibly the self-awareness hasn't settled in yet) for all the reasons mentioned above. i like to think that eventually, she'll circle around to helping people and resisting vought however possible -- albeit on a smaller, more covert scale so she can continue living a peaceful life with elena.

[cherrirui-official]

Friendlocke Violet Gijinkas (Part 3/7)

PART 3 RAAAAGH!!! SO SORRY THIS ONE TOOK SO LONG AAAH!!!! But it's here now, yippee!!! And just in time for Christmas too, wowie!

I plan on posting them in order by groups of three, so there's gonna be seven parts in total, all of which I'll be linking here when done vvv

(Part One) (Part Two) (Part Four) (Part Five) (Part Six) (Part Seven)

!! These will contain personal headcanons I have for the cast, little fun facts, and also spoilers for Friendlocke Violet (for both the edited vids and the streams) !!

@saltydkart-reblogs

Designs under the cut!

GRACE:

The light scars/ cracks on her body were injuries formed while she was accidentally sent through Turo's time machine. Unlike the paradox pokemon/ miraidon, GrAce's body isn't made of iron or metal, so her body wasn't able to withstand the large amount of tera energy used to power the machine as easily as the paradox pokemon were.

Luckily, she was just barely able to hold out against the time machine's energy until she made it to Turo's lab in the present day. Unfortunately, she can't be sent back because she would literally die if she went through the time machine again. Sooooo she's stuck in the modern era.

Very familiar with Area Zero and the various pokemon that reside down there, but moved out in order to continue producing music as well as familiarize herself with current-day Paldea.

She only vaguely know Clavell back when he was a rebellious teenager, though she didn't know his name. Clavell, on the other hand, was one of her biggest fans back in the 50s-60s.

Funny enough, when she sees "Clive" for the first time, she recognizes him! But not as Director Clavell, she just barely recognizes him as the random teenage fan that would occasionally ask her to sign various GrAce posters he had bought. She is also under the belief that he too, was sent from the past into the present, unaware that he simply just grew up.

Likes doing random poses for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

BRAIDY:

Believes that everything can be solved without violence, but can and will throw hands if need be.

Everyone in Braidy's family greet each other by playfully ramming into one another. So when Peppy and his team were getting chased down by Braidy's family during their journey, they weren't trying to attack them, they just wanted to say hi!

Braidy is really good with kids due to his experience with being the eldest sibling, as he'd often have to take care of his younger siblings.

Mykyie and Braidy shop at the same clothing store.

Speaking of Mykyie, the lighter parts of Braidy's fur appeared only after Mykyie passed...

As of now, he's still an apprentice, but he has great potential to become an all powerful wizard... someday.

CHRISTENE'S:

Artist's note: I couldn't fit their children in the bio sorry girls and gays. I'll probably draw them out later on after I'm finished with everyone else.

Their stomachs are basically voids, so every time they eat the food just disappears, which is why they're ALWAYS hungry.

HIGHLY flammable.

It is speculated that they're poppets, but you don't have any proof of that, do you?

If you listen closely, you can hear soft bell noises every time they walk. It is unknown why this happens, but I believe it is best not to ask.

Aaaaand that's it! I plan on taking a short break from these bc I wanna draw some other stuff. Dw, I'll continue to work on these very soon!

[crystallizsch]

hi ian i come bearing angst fuel for the yuusha as twsted elsa (maybe an idea for her possible overblot idk she kinda reads to me as someone whod preemptively isolate in the case she feels...blotty)

(also seeing that art of her playing violin totally didnt fuck me up im still nursing my bruised heart 🥴🥴💕💕)

https://youtu.be/NDldNaEZTt8?si=Wm71pgTltuJLjFvk

^^this is from the frozen musical where they gave a song to elsa to explore her emotional turmoil and it just fleshed out her character so much more than the orig movie (ok i havent seen frozen 2 oops) but just this section here:

Is everyone in danger as long as I'm alive?

Was I a monster from the start?

How did I end up with this frozen heart?

Bringing destruction to the stage

Caught in a war that I was never meant to wage

anyways lmao i jus think the song is neat i think yuushas neat (i wanna see more of her ahehehe i love seeing infodumps abt ur yuus)

-diodellet

(throwback to this “what if yuu had magic” ask where i had a ✨realization✨ and this more recent yuusha lore drop that i gave zero elaboration on 🙃)

very rough ob yuu design??? idk i came up with it on the spot ;;; and it’s kinda based on disney’s concept art of elsa when she was supposed to be the villain.

evil ice queen vibes :3

also i know the ob monster is supposed to be based on the villain— which is elsa in this case— but lowkey. an ice monster is way cooler.

also also i just realized after i drew this i couldve done a grim/yuu tandem overblot ough 🤧🤧 (next time I'll do that instead if i ever go back to this concept)

(read more below because it got SO long)

AAH anyways hi hi dio!!! when i saw your ask i went —

— with this entire post

AAGH HOW MANY MORE UNINTENTIONAL CONNECTIONS ARE GOING TO BE BETWEEN FROZEN AND YUUSHA

i guess watching the movie everyday when it came out when you’re like 9 does something to your brain chemistry (and still haunts you at least a decade later) 💀

but anyways the angst ;;; overblot yuu ;;;;; my brain is rotting and the worms have taken over

also i didn’t even know that there was a frozen broadway musical so im gonna have to check it out later 🏃💨💨💨

(also dont worry frozen 2 is a nice watch for the most part but the way they concluded the characters did not feel 100% satisfying to me 😭 BUT i love some of the songs tho ;;; kristoff’s goofy 80s ballad song is one of them specifically, i need everyone to listen to it)

hfgnnfhfgv anyways thank you so much i’m chugging that angst fuel as i expand more on a possible ob yuusha with another infodump 💪💪💪

⚠️⚠️⚠️ ALSO IM SORRY BUT mentions of taking one’s own life so please proceed with caution ⚠️⚠️⚠️

i had to reread what my initial thoughts about it bc it was months ago??? and after rereading im just like, huh what was i on— (just that feeling when you just cringe at your old posts ;; but idk i think the insanity/cringe sometimes can loop back into being a genius and the cycle just continues)

anyways i’ve been on and off writing yuusha’s bio and overblot yuu was just at the back of my mind chilling but i didn’t really do anything with it.

but now that i have the opportunity,,,, im gonna go on the magicless route this time bc i feel like I've said all what i thought if it was an overblot due to her own magic.

so uh from what i gather overblots are a mix of overuse of magic + intense negative emotion.

since it’s magicless yuu, i guess the one of the general headcanons around the fandom is that they’ve been too exposed to overblots and then intense negative emotions suddenly just triggered their overblot.

uh anyways onto the elsa parts

Is everyone in danger as long as I'm alive? Was I a monster from the start? How did I end up with this frozen heart? Bringing destruction to the stage Caught in a war that I was never meant to wage

THE LYRICS ARE SO GOOD ;;; i really love how some broadway interpretations expand on the source material

and yeah you're right 🤧🤧🤧— yuusha would try to hide and escape, especially as she overblots bc she would try to avoid hurting people (and like elsa, it'd only hurt others more trying to escape bc of probably how she leaves destruction in her wake trying to make others stay away from her 😔)

(this is a small tangent but i remember thinking about an overblot kalim and i imagine him to be similar, like he would not hurt anyone intentionally in his overblot.)

anyways so the way it would go is that i imagine her friends got fatally injured either because a) she feels that she’s too “useless” without magic to help and wasn’t able to do anything OR b) her attempts at helping to try and prove that she can help without magic made everything worse.

and then she just goes into a guilty spiral then boom — overblot.

ALSO in the song, the way elsa briefly contemplated taking her own life but then realizing there’s no guarantee that would solve anything hnghgh (<- another unintentional parallel to my yuusha lore because that’s actually how she ended up in twst except she did NOT have the latter realization)

there’s this “yuu is dead” theory i’m just using and that the black carriage actually just caught yuusha’s soul after she took her own life from all the burden.

also some bonus angst context for that violin post :3

yuusha back in her homeworld is raised and known to be a gifted musician. people can feel the life and soul in her music but when people interact with her, they are usually met with an ice-cold (heh) personality.

the dead family member was the one who taught her music and the only one who was kind to her.

there’s always an expectation from her family to perform well and to keep up appearances as to not be a humiliation since anything she does can reflect on her entire family. (also hi, slight yuusha/jamil parallels maybe???)

the way she presents herself also stemmed from an incident as a child when she went apeshit on another kid bc she was defending a friend.

so from then on she was taught taught to conceal don’t feel those emotions — which just unfortunately extended to any positive ones, not just negative ones like rage.

so when she is brought to twst, there’s no memory of her being forced to hold back her emotions so she’s just unapologetically affectionate and open with everyone bc that’s how she really is.

but every now and then, memories of her breaking down haunt her in her dreams or as subtle reminders in the waking world.

then yuusha just goes on her day like she just wasn't reminded of her past.

(unnecessarily tragic lore my beloved, but anyway—)

another extremely brief tangent and bonus -> the two songs i had on loop while drawing pre-twst yuusha

lindsey stirling my beloved i love her music

the songs are such a vibe

her instrumentals in “lose you now” especially makes me feel some sort of way 😖

[arctic-bookclub]

imagine loving someone so much you’ll leave to keep them out of danger, your heart hurts but it’s to keep the danger that follows you away from them, imagine being comforted thinking the ones you love are strong and healthy, they’ll be fine just like they always have been without you, your children are protected by the one you love, someone strong and dependable, imagine going to sleep comforted by this information… imagine being so distant from the ones you love to be so unaware of just how false your false sense of comfort regarding their wellbeing is, not knowing how close to the one you love, the one you see as strong and undefeatable, is to giving up, to let himself get lost forever, and just how much pain all those you love have endured and are haunted by

imagine leaving to protect someone you love, only to unknowingly risk losing them forever to a threat you could’ve never even imagine

i’m thinking a bit too hard about qmissa and just how unaware he is of the fastly declining mental health of his family, hiding in an attempt to keep his family safe while not knowing just how desperately he is needed by them :(

[corviiids]

complaining

[bugflies00]

hey! i’m doing a little study thing to prove a point (honestly terrified to send this ask, been thinking about it for weeks) and i totally understand if you’re not comfortable enough to answer. i gen get it, there’s no pressure. what are your current views on like, ermmmmm, religion things? specifically chrisitanity? i’m excepting negative and positive answers lol

hi! well i have a pretty neutral view of religion in other people as a whole if that makes sense? like its just their thing and it doesn’t impact my life (obviously apart from when arguing with right wing religious extremists but thats a very specific minor case) like live your life man. i got baptised catholic but my parents never practiced so even though i went to catholic school to a few years its not important to me. sometimes depictions of religion make me a bit uncomfortable so ill block tags etc but its purely a personal thing ^_^

[lara60]

i read through all of invincible only once, all the way back in february, and i'm literally terrified of re-reading it for some reason. i started a re-read a week ago (from around chapter 42) and had to put it down cause i was so overwhelmed you know when you care about something so much that revisiting the canon material just makes you feel like a crazy person ?? ? and its all just too much but you cant really explain why??

i guess the second time reading somehow hits harder because i know the characters well, i have attachments to them (cough thragg cough) and i know all their fates, so scenes that were completely mundane to me on first read now hold so much more weight. idk. im going through it

[stillcominback]

*puts on rick grimes expert hat*

just emotional thinking about rick having what looked like a panic attack (or something similar) when he and michonne were ✨starting to get intimate✨ let’s say — and i mean bless his sweet heart he needs to HEAL — but anyway:

it’s clear to me that he’s craving this physical intimacy so badly. even in scenes when they’re fighting or just have fought, there’s moments where you can see he wants to be near her, touch her, etc. but he stops and won’t allow himself. he even struggles to get himself to go after her when he knows he wants to (and that’s also layered with trauma from the crm and the fear he feels of course but still).

i feel like the physical intimacy is what starts to breech those walls he’s put up, it starts to close that distance he’s been trying to force (in his mind, for their own safety). that’s what starts to “bring him to life” again, and i think that panic just hits immediately.

he purposefully shut himself down and “died” inside because he felt like because of the crm he’d lost carl, he’d lost michonne, and just had nothing left to live for … so he “died” to keep living. his only mission of sorts to just keep moving in the hopes of keeping his family safe from a distance.

he’s so afraid to come back to life again because there’s so much more to lose (again). allowing michonne to get close, to wake him up in a sense — it’s terrifying and his body responds accordingly. the idea of getting close, to opening himself back up again and then having to SEE her die or see his children die … it’s too much. being detached and pushing her away, to him, is easier and safer because the alternative is a risk of loss he couldn’t cope with.

i’m SO GLAD that michonne forced him to emote and just communicate his feelings and fears — as much as it broke my heart, he needed to release that and share that with her. @katanaes told me she saw a post saying she “loved him back to life” and i really feel that in the depth of my SOUL tbh. she gave him the talking to he needed (the metaphorical smack on the head), but then was still his rock and safety and someone who loves him SO completely that she can just pull that out of him. and his love for her is so deep and special like *rolls around*

i’m just so happy she brought rick grimes back from the dead for real — the most formidable duo! can’t wait for them to kill jadis and burn that shit to the ground, but most importantly: get home to their kids and live the life they all deserve. period.

[howtosingit]

S4 E1 Thoughts

Overall I definitely thought this was one of the show’s weaker episodes. It felt messy and clunky and not really what you expect a premiere episode coming back from an 8-month hiatus to feel like. I thought there was too much carnival but also not enough interesting carnival moments. I also pretty much completely checked out after the Tarlos bunk room scene as my brain struggled to wade through that mess, so I just don’t have much to say about all that Owen stuff and Tommy’s new guy 🤷🏻‍♂️ But obviously I’m gonna have some thoughts about the Carlos plot. Oh, that Carlos plot. I will say that, generally, I’m not excited about it. There are things that I get and there are things that I don’t, but honestly at this point I’m just hoping that it can be salvaged by the end of this 4-episode arc. 

There is always a certain amount of handwaving that you have to do with a show like this, when it feels like the writers are just pulling stuff from out of nowhere and throwing it at the characters. Tim has very much gloated about writing this way for the past 4 years, so it’s not a surprise. For me, I think that Carlos has very much escaped that kind of free-spirited story slinging in the past, so it’s unfortunate to see him now be the center of some of it. Anyway, now that a bit of the shock (though we really did all see it coming) has worn off, I’ve been able to sort some things.

What I Get:

I get Carlos coming out to his parents, them not reacting the way he wanted, and then his willingness to please everyone in his life leading him to try and “fix” his problem.

I get him being friends with Iris and him only getting close to Michelle when she disappeared. I’ve had that thought since season 1, so while it wasn’t explicitly planted that season, obviously there was something there to infer.

I get that Iris was the only person there for him after his coming out and that she loved him and he loved her, even if not romantically, and she was feeling just as lost as he was, so these young and confused kids (around 18-20, I’m guessing) made a decision that felt the best for them at that time (or the only option really)

I get that the marriage didn’t work out, that maybe their friendship was damaged as a result, and so they walked away from it all. They grew apart. They saw other people. Iris met Dustin and at some point, her mental health began to suffer.

Then Iris disappeared and for 3 years, Carlos came to terms with the fact that she was dead. He got close to Michelle, and tried to move on. I get that that’s where he’s at when we first meet him.

Then he meets the man that he knows almost immediately he wants to marry, but it’s rough and not straightforward and complicated. Also, Iris is alive! But Iris isn’t doing well, so she needs his healthcare to get the help she needs. Of course Carlos isn’t going to deny her that. And he’s right at the beginning of his relationship with TK, so in Carlos’s mind it doesn’t need to come up right then 🤷🏻‍♂️

So, like, I truly get how and why everything happened the way it did in the beginning.

What I Don’t Get:

I don’t get why they didn’t get a divorce when the marriage first fell apart. Carlos just says it was complicated. Maybe that means we’re getting more of it in the next few weeks, maybe “it’s complicated” is all we’ll ever get. But I still don’t get it.

I don’t get how Carlos was not a bigger deal in the investigation into Iris’s disappearance/possible murder. Like, I’m sure he had an airtight alibi and it was 3 years later when we met him, but... how did this never come up? This just makes Detective Washington look bad at her job, honestly. Not a single mention of their marriage status during all of those conversations? 

I don’t get why it took this long for Carlos to tell TK. Sure, at the beginning of their relationship, maybe it didn’t need to be said since the marriage was really just a piece of paper at that time. But did they never talk relationship history? They moved in together, they bought a loft together. How, at the very least, did it not come up during the conversations about Carlos’s will? Or even during the proposal? Why the damn delay? Especially when he presented it this episode as such a non-thing... it would’ve been even more of a non-thing if he hadn’t waited until they were LITERALLY. GETTING. MARRIED.

[This one I’m going to answer here because it has a reason but not a good one: it’s a TV thing. It didn’t come up before now because the writers weren’t interested in it coming up before now. While I do buy the relationship history between Carlos and Iris being established back in season 1, I do not buy that it was a marriage. I think that was created solely to happen during the Tarlos season 4 wedding plot to complicate the Tarlos marriage. So, Carlos Reyes as a character is suffering and being dragged through the dirt because the writers just decided to make this a thing EVEN THOUGH THE MAN HAS BEEN WITH TK FOR THREE FULL SEASONS AND TAKEN ALL OF THESE STEPS TOWARDS A LIFE TOGETHER. The writers failed Carlos here by thinking that the top of season 4 was the right time for this to come out and that it wouldn’t undermine so much of his character from the past 3 seasons.]

I don’t get TK being so damn chill about it. I hope he doesn’t remain so. That scene was incredibly painful to watch. I didn’t understand either of them. I didn’t understand what was happening. I just didn’t get it. I hope TK gets a moment to really feel about this in the coming weeks because oh my fucking god

[Though let’s be honest, Carlos hasn’t always gotten the opportunity to feel about things either so I guess TK is just getting that same treatment at the moment. The show loves to be like “nah they’re all okay with this now” and just skate on past.]

I don’t get Gabriel and Andrea. Sure, their son comes out to them and they hug him and tell him they love him. Sure, they don’t bring it up again because they think it’s best not to spotlight it or make it into a big deal (I get that impulse, even if it’s a misstep). But then their gay son brings home a girl and then marries her and they just... never talk about it?? According to Carlos they have literally never said another word about his sexuality to him. So, okay, sure, they’re probably thinking the gay thing was a phase and so they accept Iris. But then that marriage falls apart... do they ever ask why? Then Iris disappears. Do they... react at all?? Then they see Carlos at the market with TK and apparently immediately know that they’re together so... the gay thing is back on the table?? Without any conversations in the years between?? And then they’re just like “Yes, TK, we love TK!” But they never question why Carlos never tells TK about his marriage?? And then they get engaged and it’s not the first thing out of someone’s mouth?? What the fuck is going on with these two and the weird-ass whiplash that must be happening in their minds?

[I realized as I was writing that maybe since it’s established that Gabriel and Andrea never brought up the coming out again, maybe they also decided to just never bring up the marriage again to Carlos after it fell apart or after Iris disappeared? Which begs the question... DO THEY EVEN KNOW IF IRIS IS STILL ALIVE?? I tell ya, these next episodes better crack this Reyes family wide open or I swear to god...]

Other Thoughts:

That bunk room scene was really not great at all. Oof, that writing. It felt choppy, so I think they definitely cut a number of lines throughout it. Also, it was just a giant exposition info dump that ruined the flow of the scene’s emotional arc. They had to wedge in the reveal, remind everyone exactly who Michelle and Iris were, have Carlos poorly explain his reasoning, establish his shame and guilt that is clearly going to carry through the next few episodes, have TK be understanding so that the wedding isn’t just suddenly called off, and get us back to the venue update to set the timeline. There’s literally no room for any of it to breathe. Ronen and Rafa do the absolute best they can with dialogue that nearly suffocates them and becomes more confusing as the scene goes on. They struggle to find the through-line of it because it’s just... you can see the puppet strings! OOF. That needed another pass for sure. Or to just, y’know, go in the garbage bin altogether.

FINAL: I really dislike this. I’m convinced that it’s going to be a thing for 4 episodes and then, like everything else in the Reyes family, never mentioned again. It sounds like Carlos is really going to crack open as a character during this arc and while I am incredibly excited about that and I know Rafa is going to do great work, I wish it didn’t have to be riddled with plot holes and characterization inconsistencies. I wish it didn’t taint the return of these characters. I wish it didn’t (slightly) taint all of the great things that we’ve gotten before this. I don’t know what it’s going to do for the future Tarlos scenes, at this point I’m feeling hollow about them. I guess I’ll know in about 3 weeks when they wrap this all up and move on from it. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to move on from it just as easily as Tim Minear... 🙃

But truly, would it kill a whole fucking room of professional writers to actually think through major character decisions like this?? Did anyone ask any questions at all??

Okay, I’m done for now.