#me? posting meta about a show that ended in 2014?

[virgoiscariot]

Richard saying he left Wisconsin because he didn’t love Emma anymore was such a bullshit cope lmao

He said he looked at her and “felt nothing”, but I imagine he was very depressed and outright suicidal after returning home with both the trauma of war and disfiguring/disabling injuries. So his initial thought was apathy towards life and towards his sister, and his feeling about that thought was shame. Reminds me of this quote from Slaughterhouse-Five:

She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrased and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all.

After all Emma had done to keep him alive, to tend to his wounds, to feed him, to keep him safe and healthy as she could, he didn’t want to live. he didn’t care about her or himself or anything, and he was overcome with guilt over those feelings(or lack thereof). that’s why he left.

and regardless, every sad, blithe thing Richard has to say about love and relationships is directly contradicted by his actions. he immediately forms a close bond with Jimmy, he dreams about Odette, he still reads all the books Emma sends him even though he says he doesn’t like them anymore, he keeps a little scrapbook with pictures of happy families and couples, he cares deeply for Margaret and the children, he lets Angela see his bare face and cries when she dies, he is FIERCELY loving and protective of Tommy, he falls in love with Julia at first sight… “the basis of fiction is that humans have some sort of connection with each other… but they don’t” yeah right you fucking sap keep telling yourself that. you fall helplessly in love with everyone you meet

[arshipweek]

AR Ship Week - Scorpia Backstory in the Book and the TV Show

This is the last weekly post in the lead up to Alex Rider Ship Week. Only one week left!

This week we have a guest post by @icebluecyanide​ about the differences between Scorpia in the book and TV canons.

Scorpia Backstory in the Book and the TV Show

After two seasons of ominous statements and mystery, series three of the TV show finally dove deeper into the criminal organisation known as Scorpia, and the way their history intertwines with Alex’s. But what is their backstory, and how does it differ from what we see in the books? 

In this meta, I will be diving into some of the changes in how Scorpia is presented in the book (Scorpia) and the TV show. Since this is a rather broad topic, and could potentially lead to me listing every single difference from the book, I will focus specifically on the Scorpia backstory and on the structure of Scorpia as an organisation.

I’ve used book quotes throughout this meta, including page numbers. The page numbers refer to the 2014 Walker Books (UK) edition.

Scorpia 

Let’s start this off by taking a look at how Scorpia is described in both the book and the show. I’ll first give an overview of Scorpia in the book, then move on to the TV show and do a comparison.

Scorpia in the book

Scorpia was all over the world. It had brought down two governments and arranged for a third to be unfairly elected. It had destroyed dozens of businesses, corrupted politicians and civil servants, engineered several major ecological disasters, and killed anyone who got in its way. It was now responsible for a tenth of the world’s terrorism, which it undertook on a contract basis. Scorpia liked to think of itself as the IBM of crime - but in fact, compared to Scorpia, IBM was strictly small-time. (Scorpia, p. 39)

In the book, Scorpia is a criminal organisation that has its roots in the early 1980s, during the last decade of the Cold War. As we learn in Scorpia (2004), it was founded by people who were involved in the Cold War as spies or assassins or secret police for various governments, and who realised that as the Cold War came to an end, they would be able to make more money going into business for themselves.

It was a fanciful name, they all knew it, invented by someone who had probably read too much James Bond. (Scorpia, p. 38)

The name of Scorpia is taken from their four fields of operation: Sabotage, Corruption, Intelligence and Asassination. They will take on any client that is willing to pay them, and don’t care about who gets caught in the crossfire. They’re a powerful organisation, and as Julia Rothman mentions, sometimes even the intelligence agencies make use of their services for jobs that cannot be traced back to them. They operate very much as a business, and they don’t make things personal, but they also are ruthless in getting even and don’t make hollow threats. Scorpia don’t forgive and they don’t forget.

Scorpia is led by an executive board consisting of the original founders. Of the original twelve, only nine remain at the time of the book, including Julia Rothman (the only woman on the board) and Max Grendel (the oldest executive). The executives on the board are equal partners, but for each project one of them is assigned as the leader, in alphabetical order. (It’s unclear how this works for The Australian, who in some editions doesn’t have a name.)

At the time of the book, the project that Scorpia is focused on is Invisible Sword, and the executive in command is Julia Rothman. There is a client, who is offering a great deal of money for Scorpia to break the special relationship between the UK and the US, and most of the Scorpia board seem unconcerned about the principal target of the weapon being children. The only exception to this is Max Grendel, who is old and has grandchildren of the same age, who has enjoyed getting rich working for Scorpia over the years, but who now wants to retire and not be a part of the new project. Sadly, his retirement gift is a suitcase full of deadly scorpions, so his retirement is rather brief.

Scorpia are an international company, with offices and people all over the world. However, Alex first runs into them in Venice, where Mrs Rothman has a large mansion on the grand canal that is referred to as the Widow’s Palace. On the island of Malagosto, near Venice, Scorpia also has a school where they have a training and testing facility for their assassins. This is where John Rider and Yassen Gregorovich were tested and trained, and it’s where Alex also takes part in lessons. 

Scorpia in the show

Blunt: At that time, we already knew that SCORPIA were the single most dangerous emergent threat since the Cold War. (3x07)

At first glance, the Scorpia we meet in the TV show appears to be from a canon divergent AU where the organisation was all but destroyed around the time when Alex was just a baby. This is a fascinating change, and also makes intuitive sense, as of course the third series of the show came out twenty years after Scorpia (2004) did. From the start, we get hints that Scorpia in the show is different from the one in the books. 

We first learn of the name Scorpia at the end of s1, as Mrs Jones and the rest of the Department realise that Yassen Gregorovich was behind Ian’s death, and that he is still alive. Going by the descriptions we are given, Scorpia was as powerful in the past as they were when Alex met them in the book:

Smithers: I know the file, of course. At one point, they were responsible for a tenth of the world’s terrorism. 

Crawley: And political assassinations, personal vendettas. All available to the highest bidder, without remorse or compunction. (1x08)

In 2006, Scorpia was taken down by the Department, in a well-coordinated operation based on the info John Rider was able to gather. Alan Blunt was in command as all over the world, the bases and known locations of Scorpia were raided. In the chaos, some members of Scorpia went missing and managed to escape, such as Julia Rothman and Yassen Gregorovich, but when they failed to resurface in the five years that followed, their files were closed and they were assumed to be dead.

After this, Scorpia seem to have retreated to the shadows, and operated almost entirely in secret. While they no longer have the same presence in the world, they still have both funds and technology to continue their work. They have no problem spending several millions to fake the payment for the assassination of the US president in season 2 at Yassen’s request, and they have a system set in place with a phone line that can be reached only with a specifically assigned code, or else the number will be disconnected, as we see when the Department pretend to call as Martin Wilby to determine who he got his orders from. In the first two seasons, Scorpia took jobs such as helping with Dr Greif’s plan at Point Blanc, and Damian Cray’s Eagle Strike plan, and they still appear as ruthless as in the book, not caring about the deaths those plans would cause.

At first, we mostly encounter Scorpia in the scenes with the Department, where Scorpia (through Yassen) have turned Martin Wilby to pass on information about the Department and got him to lure Ian Rider to his death at Yassen’s hand. Interestingly, Ian appears to be the only person still looking for Scorpia:

Crawley: I don’t think they ever went away. I think they just got better at hiding. And we were so confident we’d finished them. Only Ian was still looking, of course. (1x08)

Ian seems to have been aware of Yassen’s survival, and presumably who he works for (“Oh Martin, you have no idea who you’re working for.” - 1x01), but none of the rest of the Department have any idea until Alex mentions having seen Yassen at Point Blanc:

Blunt: Scorpia.Mrs Jones: It explains everything. The sophistication, the global reach, and Wilby. Given our history, of course they would target us.Crawley: But we finished them.Blunt: Well, clearly not. (1x08)

In season three, we see Alex (together with Tom and Kyra) actively looking for Scorpia by visiting old locations mentioned in the files on Smither’s phone (that Kyra stole). These include Berlin and Venice, where presumably Julia Rothman had her Palace like in the book. They end up finding Julia in Malta, where she is from. This is a change from the books, where she is Welsh. We meet Nile, her apparent second-in-command, and Max Grendel, who apparently also survived the takedown.

As Alex is pulled into Scorpia, we also learn that they are planning an operation called Invisible Sword. Unlike in the book, this is not a job they took on for a client, but something Julia Rothman came up with personally. As the season goes on, we discover that while she explained it as a way to demonstrate Scorpia’s power and boost their reputation, the real objective was to take revenge against the Department for the blow they dealt Scorpia seventeen years ago.

Scorpia Leadership

Let’s narrow in further for a moment on the question of who is in charge in Scorpia. There do appear to be some changes in the leadership of Scorpia in the TV show, and part of these can be explained by the canon divergence, while others suggest that perhaps this has always been a different Scorpia. Firstly, it’s good to note that instead of talking about an executive board, the leadership are referred to as council members:

Nile: I wondered if perhaps one of the other council members decided to push their luck. (3x01) 

In general, the show appears to have less of a ‘business’ vibe compared to the book. It may be that this is a change that only came with the new Scorpia, but this may also always have been different in this universe. Similarly, we hear that Julia Rothman was elected as leader, which suggests that also the way of picking a leader isn’t the rotated schedule from the books. It appears that Julia Rothman has been elected after the failed jobs with Dr Greif and Damian Cray, in an attempt to bring Scorpia back to prominence.

Razim: We elected you because you promised to restore our influence globally. And so far, we have seen nothing. (3x01)

Speaking of Razim, we get another change from the book. The name Razim is a reference to one of the new board members brought on in Scorpia Rising in the books, and he wasn’t present in the original Scorpia book. It makes sense that with most of the organisation taken down years ago, they will have filled their ranks with new members. However, there is some suggestion that perhaps Razim was actually part of Scorpia leadership before Julia:

Julia: Razim’s always resented me. He thinks when Nicolai died, inherited my place at the table. (3x01)

Julia Rothman

Max: And besides, we both know you earned your place. (3x01)

It appears that unlike in the books, Julia Rothman was not a founding member of Scorpia in the show. This also matches up with what we learn about her from the Department file on her, where it states she ‘possesses broad knowledge of Scorpia Operational Structure and is being groomed for command’. She was most likely part of the inner circle through her husband Nicolai, given the comment about inheriting her place.

Nicolai Rothman/Mrs Rothman’s husband definitely appears to have been alive and married to her for longer in the TV show than in the book, although in both she is eventually known as the Widow.:

Mrs Rothman’s multimillionaire husband had fallen to his death from a seventeenth-storey window. It had happened just two days after their marriage. (Scorpia, p. 45)

Also an amusing detail is that in the book Nicolai Rothman is a multimillionaire, while in the TV show he’s referred to as a billionaire. Julia Rothman is canonically richer in the TV show!

Malagosto

Let’s take a moment also to look at the differences in how Malagosto is portrayed in the two canons. In both the show and the book, Malagosto is a training facility for Scorpia operatives, but that appears to be where the similarities end. The location is different in the two canons, with it being on an island near Venice in the book, and on Malta in the show. Specifically, we discover that there is a Scorpia base located underground in an old Cold War listening post on Malta. It might be that the original location had to be abandoned after Scorpia was raided, but the fact that The Department show no recognition to the name later suggests that they have never heard of it before. Definitely, the base in Malta was not known before. 

This raises some questions about whether John Rider actually trained at Malagosto in the show as he did in the book. We do have the following quote from Julia Rothman, which if taken literally suggests that he was on Malta with Alex:

Julia: Twenty years ago, your father stood where you are now. Ready to join Scorpia. (3x04)

However, if John trained at Malagosto, it is strange that this location wasn’t known to the Department or raided in the operation to take down Scorpia. So perhaps the quote should be taken metaphorically, with Alex being about to join Scorpia as his dad was, and perhaps John never trained with Scorpia. After all, in the book, he was likely only tested rather than trained, so he may have been tested elsewhere and simply put to work.

THE STUDENTS

Another difference related to Malagosto concerns the students or recruits who are present when Alex is there. In the book, d’Arc (the principal or headmaster of the school) mentions that there are usually around ten to fifteen students. Most of them appear to be people who were either part of the intelligence world or soldiers who have defected:

Alex knew all of them by now. There was Klaus, a German mercenary who had trained with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Walker, who had spent five years with the CIA in Washington before deciding he could earn more working for the other side. (Scorpia, p. 174)

They are people similar to John Rider, who already have had training of some sort that makes them suitable for Scorpia. In this sense, the school is firstly a testing facility, where Scorpia checks if people have the right skills to become part of Scorpia. Alex himself is an exception due to his age, but as d’Arc and Mrs Rothman discuss, he already has experience from both his missions and his uncle’s and MI6’s training. The other students are all older, but treat Alex surprisingly well and are friendly to him.

In the show, the recruits are all orphans and likely closer in age to Alex himself. There is no indication that Alex himself is an outlier in terms of his age. The other recruits also don’t appear to have had prior training if we take Alyona and Oleg as examples. They seem to have been children without families, either taken from orphanages or similar. Some, like Oleg, may have shown a propensity for violence which drew Scorpia’s interest, but they were not the trained soldiers or intelligence agents we see in the books.

This change could perhaps have been a result of Scorpia needing to operate from the shadows. While in the books they could recruit rather blatantly and without worrying about being noticed, they have tried to keep a low profile in the show. Perhaps they have shifted to training teenagers into operatives instead, as they have ‘No baggage, no background. It helps.’ (3x04).

It’s also noteworthy that there are only four other students aside from Alex present at Malagosto. Again, this is easily explained by Scorpia having shrunk in size and operating in more secrecy, and no doubt it made it easier for them to make the commitment of training teenagers. Sadly for Alex, they are not as nice as in the book, and he gets beaten up for being seen as weak on his first day there.

THE BUILDINGS

Another change seems to be in the buildings themselves. As mentioned, Malagosto in the show is located in an old listening post dating back to the Cold War, and that’s reflected in the lack of natural light and the bare, metallic and industrial vibes of the interior. The listening post also appears to be on a remote part of the island, but all that’s visible on the surface is a few abandoned buildings, and Scorpia seem to keep their presence low-key. 

In the book, we see the same outside appearance of abandoned buildings, as Scorpia has retrofitted an old monastery for their needs. The appearance is deceptive, however, as the insides have been modernised and Alex’s own room is much more luxurious than the one he gets in the show:

They left the main building and walked over to the nearest apartment block that Alex had seen from the boat. Again, the building looked dilapidated from the outside but it was elegant and modern inside. Jet showed Alex to an air-conditioned room on the second floor. It was on two levels, with a king-sized bed overlooking a large living space with sofas and a desk. There were french windows with a balcony and a sea view. (Scorpia, p. 164)

Alex was left alone. He sat down on one of the sofas, noticing that the room had a fridge, a television and even a PlayStation 2 - presumably put in for his benefit. (Scorpia, p. 165)

The other buildings are similarly updated, and students can train outside as the island is sheltered by trees and away from the mainland. It makes sense that in the show this is less of an option, because Scorpia are much more motivated to keep their presence hidden from the authorities. In the book, they have a legal reason to be there, as they bought the island on a lease from the Italian government, but in a world where Scorpia is assumed to be destroyed, they would need to be more careful. This explains why we only see the students go outside once for training, and that was during a night incursion exercise.

THE TEACHERS

Malagosto is a training facility, and a training facility needs instructors. This plays a larger role in the book, where we are introduced to several of the teachers at Malagosto in Alex’s time there. There is Gordon Ross, the technical specialist who teaches about weapons and explosives, Professor Yermalov, who teaches martial arts and practical skills, and Ejijit “Jet” Binnag, who teaches Botany (focused on poisonous plants). There are classrooms and textbooks and lessons as if it were a real school, but also more practical lessons such as diving and gun practice.

In the show, it’s a bit unclear who normally teaches at Malagosto. We only see two people acting as instructor – Nile and Yassen – and Yassen appears to have been assigned to Alex as a tutor rather than having general teaching duties. Nile appears to take on the role of instructor, but we also see him running around taking care of things for Julia Rothman outside, so he can’t be a full-time teacher. Perhaps we simply don’t see other instructors (much like how we don’t see the catering at Malagosto), or the training is handled more informally, with students working on their skill individually as we saw Syl doing in her first appearance.

One other thing related to the teaching at Malagosto is that in the book, John Rider is mentioned to have been an instructor there. During this time, he was also in charge of Yassen’s training for a while. This isn’t mentioned in the show, and while we get Alex asking if John trained with Yassen, we never get an answer. As Malagosto wasn’t known to the Department, as mentioned before, John was probably not a teacher in this universe.

Since we already touched on him briefly, let now take a look at John Rider and his mission to dive deeper into some of the changes.

John’s mission

Blunt: The intelligence John gathered during that time enabled us to strike at the very heart of Scorpia. Within months, we’d dismantled their entire operation. (3x07)

Based on what we are told, John’s mission is largely the same in both the book and the series. We learn that John was a decorated soldier who was in the Parachute Regiment and had seen combat before (in Afghanistan and Iraq in the show, Northern Ireland, Gambia, and the Falklands in the book). But everything seemed to go wrong for him when he killed a man in a bar fight, and was sentenced for manslaughter. 

He goes to jail for two years in the show, while in the book Mrs Rothman claims he was there for less than one, and there is some ambiguity about whether he went to jail at all:

“Everything Julia Rothman thought she knew about your father was a lie.” Mrs Jones sighed. “It’s true that he had been in the army, that he had a distinguished career with the Parachute Regiment and that he was decorated for his part in the Falklands War. But the rest of it — the fight with the taxi driver, the prison sentence and all that — we made up. It’s called deep cover, Alex. We wanted John Rider to be recruited by Scorpia. He was the bait and they took him.” (Scorpia, p. 347)

Scorpia took the bait, and John was recruited by Scorpia. In the show, we learn that John spent three years embedded in Scorpia, learning names and details about the organisation, including their long term goals and ambitions. In the book, the timeline is fuzzier, but we know he spent several months in the field as an assassin before working as an instructor at Malagosto. We are simply told that he ‘had told [MI6] as much as [they] needed to know about Scorpia’ (Scorpia, p. 348).

The reasons for breaking off the mission were similar then in both the show and the book. The risks were increasing, John had discovered most of what he set out to discover, and Helen was pregnant with Alex and John wanted to be with his family. In the book, we also specifically learn that there was a risk due to Julia Rothman, who had fallen in love with him. 

This is a point where the canons seem to deviate slightly, because the show is more explicit about John being asked to get close to Julia Rothman. The file on the Widow (Julia Rothman’s codename) mentions that a Department operative Hunter (John Rider) was assigned to develop a relationship. Julia Rothman herself told Alex that his dad was a ‘very close friend’ of hers, and showed him what are clearly love letters describing John’s feelings for her (3x03). 

Now, some of this is also in the book. Julia Rothman tells Alex she was very attracted to his father, and that he was a handsome man. And one of the letters from the show is taken straight from the book: 

My dearest Julia, A dreary time without you. Can’t wait to be at the Widow’s Palace with you again. John R. (Scorpia, p. 151)

Interestingly, we do see that Julia apparently went by her code name despite the fact that she and John became close enough over the years that she passed him information about Scorpia. John himself was known as Hunter to the Department rather than this being his Scorpia code name like in the book (although the code name isn’t mentioned in Scorpia itself). He signs the letter with his initials JR in the show, and she clearly knew him as John Rider.

It’s well possible given the way Julia Rothman doesn’t mention Alex’s mother in her initial story to Alex about John, that she was not aware at the time that he was married or that John was already with Helen. In the book, she specifically mentions that while she was attracted to him, he was married to Alex’s mother, suggesting that they never acted on the attraction.

The story of John’s capture is roughly the same, there is a trap set for him (on Malta in the book), and he is captured. A few weeks later, Scorpia kidnap a senior British civil servant (or his son, in the book) and MI6/The Department make them an offer to return John Rider to them in an exchange. This takes place on Albert Bridge in the book, while in the show it’s on another bridge somewhere. John’s death is faked, and the idea is that he will be given a new identity along with Helen and Alex so they can live quietly and without Scorpia knowing he was actually a spy.

This is the point where we get the biggest divergence in the backstory, as in the show the information gathered by John’s mission is enough to take down most of Scorpia. The operation is largely orchestrated by Alan Blunt, which is part of why Julia Rothman’s plot in the show is also aimed at him:

Mrs Jones: I’ve been looking at how we brought down SCORPIA 17 years ago. Really was an astonishing operation. Dozens of agents. Coordinates across three continents. Forty-seven key figures, dead or arrested. The entire SCORPIA hierarchy decimated overnight. You waged a private war against Scorpia, made it your mission. (3x06)

It’s not specified whether the take down of Scorpia happened before or after John and Helen’s plane was blown up by a bomb. Blunt tells Alex that ‘within months’ they were able to dismantle Scorpia’s entire operation, while Julia Rothman took six months to track John down. It seems more likely that Scorpia was taken down first, as this would give the Department an extra reason not to suspect Julia Rothman as being behind the bomb on the plane. Blunt’s reaction to Alex’s suggestion that it was Julia Rothman suggests that they didn’t have a clear suspect for all those years, which makes sense if Scorpia were believed to be defeated and not heard from again (aside from the bombing of the plane itself). WIth Scorpia gone, it also makes sense that perhaps someone became too careless in hiding the fact that John Rider is alive, as there would have been less reason to worry. 

In the book, we are first told merely that there was a bomb on the plane, which exploded and killed John and Helen and the pilots instantly. Mrs Jones and Alan Blunt seem to have no doubt about it being Julia Rothman, who had discovered the truth, although they are not clear on how she learned about it. MI6 learned valuable information about Scorpia through John’s time as an undercover spy, but they either don’t know enough to take Scorpia down for good or they don’t act on their information. 

In a way, the book takes a more cynical approach to the relationship between Scorpia and MI6. Scorpia are too large to take down completely, and any half-hearted effort to destroy them will lead Scorpia to seek revenge. And if you can’t beat them… As Julia Rothman herself points out, the secret services may nominally oppose Scorpia, but they are not above making use of their services:

The secret services can’t do anything about us. We’re too big and they’ve left it too late. Anyway, occasionally some of them make use of us. They pay us to do their dirty work for them. We’ve learnt to live side by side! (Scorpia, p. 132) 

Wrapping it all up

So what does it all add up to? As we’ve seen, the show’s portrayal of Scorpia shows an organisation that was nearly brought down seventeen years ago, and that has been operating in secrecy ever since. This single divergence explains most of the differences that we see in the present day structure of Scorpia, from younger recruits to the new leadership. However, we also saw that some aspects have always been different in this universe. The code names for both Julia Rothman and John, as well as the fact that John never mentioned Malagosto show that the backstory in the show was different even before Scorpia was taken down.

In the end, Scorpia is a different organisation in the book and the show, but in many ways it is also still the same. They are a group of people who are ruthless in their pursuit of power and money, who have no compunction about killing and even enjoy it. Scorpia may have been brought to the brink of destruction in the show, but even while hidden from the world, they have been able to keep up their activity for seventeen years. 

Until they encountered Alex Rider, that is… :) 

[fantastic-nonsense]

hey i saw your answer to the ask about alfred making damian robin in battle for the cowl. while i 100% agree that is not what happened in bftc, outside of that comic i think alfred has a lot more involvement. im not sure if this is a post-crisis exclusive blog, but in secret origins (2014) #4 we see alfred's feelings on damian and his conclusion that damian would listen to no one else except his father. so alfred forges a letter from bruce that asks damian to be robin. the end of the comic shows that dick knows alfred forged that letter but imo leaves it pretty open-ended as far as dick's decision. if you ask me, i think dick talked to alfred about damian being his robin or alfred picked up that things were going to way and decided to pull this to make that transition easier for everyone. sorry is this is weirdly nitpicky or contrarian im just really a sucker for alfred and damian's relationship.

[referencing this response on how the transition from Tim to Damian as Robin was handled]

Preface: I am not a post-Crisis universe exclusive blog (far from it), but since 1) the New 52 era's attempts at dealing with the Batfamily are a mess and a pain to deal with for a variety of reasons, and 2) the post-Crisis universe was and remains the definitive interpretation for most of the Batfamily's history and the basis for their interactions with each other, it's what I tend to default to when writing meta...especially in cases where the events under discussion originally happened in post-Crisis continuity. The exceptions to that tend to be characters introduced post-Flashpoint (ex: Duke), who have no previous continuity bogging them down, and characters who have had the majority of their stories and development take place post-Flashpoint (ex: Damian).

That being said, while I am aware that Secret Origins (2014) and particularly that story exists and have read it, I tend to default to ignoring it for a few reasons:

One, it's a story whose events make little sense within either post-Crisis continuity or post-Flashpoint continuity as they otherwise exist; minimally, the timeline doesn't match up in either case.

More specifically for the purposes of writing a meta about the transfer of the Robin mantle from Tim to Damian, it rewrites Damian into the pre-Reborn era Batfamily very awkwardly by pretending he was always there. It shows a League clothes-clad Damian taking on Victor Zsasz and Professor Pyg (which he did not do until he was already Dick's Robin) while pretending that Bruce had time to try and connect with him before he "died" (which, he didn't; Damian appears in two stories prior to Battle for the Cowl—Batman & Son and Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul—and his interactions with Bruce are fairly minimal in Resurrection).

It is a clumsy attempt to integrate Damian into the pre-Batman R.I.P timeline that ignores all of the ways in which Damian's early relationships with his father and the rest of the Batfam (particularly Dick and Tim) are directly informed by the fact that he wasn't there during that time period:

[Alfred, Dick, and Tim watch The Magnificent Seven in Wayne Manor in the immediate aftermath of Bruce's death. Damian is not present, as he was still living with Talia. An empty chair between Dick and Tim marks Bruce's usual 'movie night' seat] -Nightwing #151 (2009)

I thus find it very unhelpful to use in any capacity when discussing and analyzing interactions between those characters in the aftermath of Bruce's death.

Two, while I have no love for Battle for the Cowl, Tomasi effectively ignoring it completely beyond "Gotham was in chaos following Bruce's death" doesn't sit right with me either, especially since it was referenced (even obliquely) in several other New 52-era books.

Three, I love Alfred and Damian's relationship. I think it's one of Damian's most important relationships and we should talk more about it. But I also love Alfred and Dick's relationship, so I'm not particularly enamored with a reimagining where Alfred is the one who orchestrates Damian's takeover of the Robin mantle largely unilaterally. That's not his call to make beyond a suggestion to Dick that it might be good for him. I also think it takes a lot of agency away from Dick in the one transfer of his mantle that he canonically actually has control over and undermines a big aspect of Dick and Damian's relationship development to take those decisions out of Dick's hands and give them to "Bruce."

Four, and probably most importantly: that story is never referenced before or after that issue. That origin for Damian is long gone. Its portrayal of his childhood was revamped in Robin: Son of Batman. Its reconceptualization of Damian's entrance into the Batfamily has not been acknowledged since. DC's larger refusal to acknowledge Dick and Damian's time as Batman and Robin beyond subtle references ended during the Rebirth era. New 52!Tim quite literally wasn't Tim Drake and was only restored to being himself again post-Rebirth, so 99% of the interactions between Tim and Damian from 2011-2016 have been effectively discarded as non-canon. And whenever Damian becoming Robin is referenced after Secret Origins #4, it is nearly always referenced as Dick choosing him as Robin rather than him becoming Robin "at his father's request." So there's little incentive for me to acknowledge it given that it generally appears to not be canon beyond the scope of the New 52 era of post-Flashpoint continuity.

I'm sorry that this probably isn't the answer you wanted to read, but I hope this gives you a better idea of why I specifically choose to stick to post-Crisis and post-Rebirth continuities when discussing the transfer of the Robin mantle from Tim to Damian.

[explosionshark]

Your turn!

It's halfway through the year! Got any favorite albums/books/tv shows/whatever to recommend?

thanks to you @badwolfwho1 who both asked me!

music:

right off the top i'm gonna recommend 3 pop albums bc i almost never have this many TO recommend. but tei shi's valerie, empress of's for your consideration, and shygirl's club shy EP have all been on constant repeat for me this year.

big year for metal also - in particular crypt sermon, job for a cowboy, darkest hour, gatecreeper, aborted and tzompantli were all incredible. i feel like between seeing them live and the release of cure, this is the first time erra has really clicked for me and i'm loving it.

for post-hardcore i've loved the debut LPs by with sails aheads and your ghost in glass. the EP lonely people by love rarely was on repeat for me for weeks also - really great stuff.

i got heaven by mannequin pussy slaps too. and i also really, really want to recommend you could do it tonight by couch slut - if you love the queasy, depraved noise that chat pile make, you absolutely should be listening to couch slut.

i threw a couple little playlists together to roundup some of my faves:

(extended version here)

honorable mention: as was really apparent from my charts this year, i spent A LOT of time listening to the saosin s/t again. but also got really back into grouper this year - especially her 2021 album shade, which i missed entirely when it came out.

books:

okay for music i focused mostly on 2024 releases but for books i won't be so strict.

shirley jackson: a rather haunted life by ruth franklin was REALLY good and provided a lot of great insight into jackson's work and also just had some really interesting history in it. really enjoyed it.

hit so hard by patty schemel a rock music and addiction memoir by the drummer of Hole. very dark and upsetting at points, but compelling. was very illuminating re: the 90s seattle music scene and the drug culture around it, provided a lot of context and detail to some stuff i thought i already knew about. really great stuff.

penance by eliza clark - this is a fake true crime book that REALLY got under my skin. it's a meta commentary on true crime as a fandom and an industry and the exploitation inherent in it. it's a mirror to make you stare at your own internal biases. it's SO fucking 2014 tumblr. i've gotten like three other people to read it and they all went insane like me. highly recommended.

hex by thomas olde heuvelt - very late to the party on this one but i loved it. translated AND localized from dutch, with very interesting results. almost goofy to start and ends up totally bleak. i adored it.

magic for beginners and white cat, black dog by kelly link - REALLY falling in love with kelly link this year. read these two and currently re-reading stranger things happen and i just adore her style. weird but SO heartfelt, surreal and dreamy, as often horrifying as it is sweet. she's so talented, i'm really excited to read the book of love later this year.

between two fires by christopher buehlman - FINALLY read this and i loved it. absolutely deserves the hype. kinda wild that dark ages horror isn't more of a thing? i re-read buehlman's the blacktongue thief too and really loved it, definitely cemented it as one of my favorite fantasy books. i'm reading the daughters' war now and enjoying it a lot.

i also re-read the golden enclaves by naomi novik and had such a great time with it.

tv shows:

finished my buffy re-watch! been watching a ton of xena with @holdsteady and @nataliving this year too - we just finished s3 and it was insane and i loved it soooo much.

i watched under the bridge and thought it was very good, but i'd recommend people learn a little about the real reena virk case before engaging.

hacks season 3 was INSANE it made me crazy i loved it so much.

haven't watched much tv aside from that!

[violivs]

NMTDaily: And So It Begins

- Beatrice’s first vlog! What an opening line, I love it lol. I remembered the hand wave on “hello, people of the Internet” having a wider arc across the screen than it actually does, funny enough! Glad I didn’t specify the wide wave when I referenced this line in MARRIED, the fic I posted on the 25th.

- “I’m not too old for Halloween”, girl after my own heart!

- Always thought it was interesting that Bea’s mother is American. I wonder how/why they decided that. It’s the kind of super specific detail that makes Bea feel so real, because who would make that up? It’s also interesting that it means Bea and Ben’s families are both somewhat international. Another parallel for them, another thing they have in common.

- I bet the Aunties’ wedding was the cutest thing ever, imagine Hero and Leo standing up with them! That’s probably the last time all of the Dukes were together before the story starts.

- I’m surprised Bea’s parents moved because her dad got a promotion. I would have assumed her mom did, because we get the impression of her as the high-powered businesswoman. But good for Bea’s dad. Is it canon that he’s a university professor? (Promotion = tenure?) Or did I make that up for fanfic and/or confuse him with Ben’s parents being professors in canon? Listening for that. Maybe Bea’s dad was actually also a business person all along and that’s how her parents met. Who knows.

- Bea says Australia like I say Indiana, lol (no hate to anyone from Indiana though! Just another of those inborn rivalries with the neighbor, like the Oz/NZ one.)

- “A great science program” I forgot Bea was a science person!

- I always loved the set decoration in this room, I remember it’s Hero’s room, and it’s so artsy and cozy and pretty. Love the wall art.

- “Leo and I are in charge of the house for the next six months” Excuse me, does this series really only take place over six months? Well, it ends in the first week of November, so that’s seven full months. I think it felt like it lasted a whole year when it was airing though. Time slowed down during a certain arc for sure.

- “in-joke with myself!” Classic. I kind of love that the text on screen saying “good one Beatrice” is Bea talking to herself again in-world, but out-of-world it’s kind of the Candle Wasters talking, interacting both with their own main character and with the audience. Meta.

- “Sorry my life is so boring” are like, THE famous last words for an LIW protagonist. Honey, you got a big storm coming!

- I was always so incredibly impressed with Beatrice’s independence, her comfort with leaving her parents and essentially being on her own before she even finished high school. I was alone in a college dorm hours away from home when I first watched this, second semester of freshman year if I’m not mistaken, and I could barely believe I’d managed it. I couldn’t imagine doing that any earlier than I had. I thought she was so brave and cool. I think Bea actually shows more hesitation and nervousness than I realized she did in this episode, both because she’s not used to vlogging yet and because being in a new place is nerve-wracking, but I still think she’s so brave.

- It’s so interesting that in a reversal of the play, it’s our Beatrice who comes from away to Messina to start the story, instead of Benedick and the other men returning from war. Of course, we’ll see how the boys’ arrival on the scene is modernized soon enough!

- Harriett does such a great job making you care about Bea and like her right from the start. You just want to keep listening to her talk. I can’t wait to do just that over the next seven months.

- The Benedict Cumberbatch crush is a stroke of genius, but what are the odds that there happens to be a super famous guy named Benedict that you can reference who is at peak relevance in the exact year your MAAN modernization premieres? Truly, this series as it exists could only have happened in 2014. It was the perfect time and the perfect people. What luck.

- Oh, this is the wider arc hand wave I was remembering! It’s just at the end of the video and not the beginning. Funny!

- Covering the camera with her hand and ducking out of frame at the end of her first video is a direct parallel to what Bea and Hero do in their final NMTD video, sliding out of frame and all. Love that.

- I can’t believe how much there is to talk about even with these early episodes. These posts are gonna get so long they’ll have to go under a cut for the later episodes!

💖🦩🥭

[shesnake]

@1995lahaine tagged me to post 8 shows to get to know me 🤔 I'm only going to do shows that have ended which I think are worth revisiting. tagging @akajustmerry @anthonysperkins @summoneryuna @sonyarebecchi @toraks @a24thegreenknight @holly-mckenzie

Utopia (2013-2014) created by dennis kelly. beauty is terror we quiver before it etc etc oh this show is so violent and beautiful and so deeply human I explode every time I think about it. you know cristobal tapia de veer from the white lotus soundtrack but that is Nothing compared to the work he did on this.

Bojack Horseman (2014-2020). as someone who loves movies this show is truly the best meta fiction out there about Hollywood that isn't afraid to throw punches. hilarious and brutal. the animation format and animal absurdity allows them to tell real unrestrained narratives that I don't think live action could ever achieve. Raphael bob-waksberg will never get his foot off my neck

The Bisexual (2018) despite the title I genuinely think desiree akhavan made the greatest lesbian story of all time with this. short, sweet, and soul crushing precarious fleabag type miniseries. also she's sooooo hot oh my GOD

Mr. Robot (2015-2019) it's a shame people forgot about this show towards the end and stopped watching because it is truly theeee speculative epic of all time speaking to issues of capitalism and identity and rebellion. between this and the lazarus project it's like a spiritual sequel to Utopia in the way it explores how much of yourself you have to sacrifice to escape from All This. probably got my favourite needle drops of all time.

The Hour (2011-2012) can you believe the bbc cancelled a show about a bbc show trying to be cancelled? between this and the newsreader yeah I'm obsessed with dramas about people who don't get to tell the truth

Les Revenants (2012-2015) are you sure. are you sure you're not a ghost?

Cowboy Bebop (1998) of course.

Westworld (2016-2022) I hate this show so fucking much there's so many things wrong with it that get my blood boiling but it's also one of the greatest shows I've ever seen. the only thing that makes me feel human is the way I'm treated. I choose to see the beauty. motion picture soundtrack. ramin djawadi is everything to me.

these are my mains but I also highly recommend (other than the obvious succ/yj/iwtv/etc) :

WE ARE LADY PARTS

SORT OF

Mythic Quest

Black Sails

The Third Day

The Lazarus Project

The Newsreader

The Great

Glitch 2015

Better Call Saul

Rutherford Falls

Ghosts BBC

Luther

The Thick of It

Brave New World 2020

Moriarty the Patriot

Elementary

Miss Sherlock

Tuca & Bertie

Some Girls 2012

Misfits

Community

Mad Men

True Blood

Lost

[esther-dot]

why do ppl keep saying sandor was sansa’s sexual awakening? it’s so weirrrrrd

This is something I'm aware of, but I hadn't read the theories, so I found a couple, and I'm gonna share some quotes and links so you can read the full metas if you want, but with the understanding that y'all are gonna come and bitch in my inbox, and not try to argue with any shippers about this, ok? ok!

Decide if this is something you actually want to expose yourself to or not, anon. 🙃

So, here's one of the earliest places I see that statement (2014) in a reblog to a post:

My point is, Sandor is intricately tied with her sexual awakening (for lack of a better word) in a way that Petyr is not. Petyr is actively trying to be a part of that, which can qualify as sexual abuse, whereas Sansa herself is associating, at least on a subconscious level, Sandor with these various instances I mentioned above. (link)

And I'm guessing it's an evolution of this post/others like it from 2013:

That said, Milady has to declare that, speaking as a clinician with knowledge of real life mismemory cases, GRRM’s depiction is messy and makes bloody little sense! Sansa’s mismemory doesn’t resemble a mismemory as much as it resembles a sexual fantasy. And Milady would go even further and contend that GRRM has taken an utterly typical and comprehensible teenage first sexual fantasising and passed it off as mismemory for narrative purposes. [...] There are dozens of distinct variations of this experiment, and all of them show the extent of human memory’s fallibility and unreliability, nothing else. But bear in mind that for a mismemory to be considered as such, it has to come out of the mental realm into the realm of reality, otherwise it’s fantasising, pure and simple. Thus, as far as Sansa’s imaginary kiss remains in her thoughts, it’s only her imagination at work. We cannot say yet if GRRM will decide that it will develop into a permanent mismemory or will be dispelled either by herself or Clegane, but we do know that the developing of her sexuality that started with it hasn’t finished yet, and her fantasy has already started to disconnect from the Blackwater, moving on to another stage where sexual dreams take place, dreams that have the purpose of rehearsing attachment-related scenarios during sleep, to process affective and mental content from daytime life, and that, were this not fictional, should be already explicit at this point. (This post is simply too long and technical for me to relay it all so I will share the link if you are morbidly curious--but again, I'm trusting y'all. Let's keep our feelings in-house!)

Here is another long meta from 2016:

I do not in any way negate Sansa being attracted to men and boys in aGoT before this erotic fantasy of aSoS. Infatuations, puppy love, a crush, admiration, limerence and love can befall elementary school aged children. Children can experience chemistry and attraction. I do not deny that Sansa is subconsciously sexually drawn to a man, such as Sandor, before this Loras daydream. What I do point out is that there is a marked alteration from the (prepubescent) romantic fantasies of Sansa in aGoT to those of an explicit erotic nature in aSoS. Her menarche at the end of aCoK was the physical evidence of adolescence, while the Loras fantasy is the mental evidence of it. And it is very peculiar that it happens for the first time, right in the middle of that particular song, on which GRRM puts that much emphasis by writing it in capital letters. It suggests a link between Sansa hearing the song to the sexual maturation of Sansa to a new level, literary or effectively. Definitely most interesting though is that lo and behold, in Sansa II, just one chapter later, we first learn of Sansa’s invented unkiss about Sandor, exactly like we learn a chapter after Dany being kissed by a bear to have re-awakened sexual desires. [...] Fundamentally, both Loras’ kiss and Sandor’s Unkiss are fantastical in nature here. The maiden Sansa is not exposed to an actual kiss from either a knight or a bear yet (unlike Dany). It is one of song only. The immense difference is that with Loras she is conscious of it being imagined, while Sandor’s kiss is a false memory she believes has actually occurred. [...] The bear-maiden song’s appearance heralds Sansa’s sexual maturation into that of the erotic fantasy, which is set not long after her menarche, most likely around her ovulation time, and therefore is reminiscint of the masculine maturation where the first ejaculation archetypically coincides with an erotic wet dream. (link)

I'm not sure the year for this, but it's from the "Pawn to Player" (fandom famous) essays:

Sex: Sandor is in between a menstrual pain and her first period. I have a hard time thinking this is a coincidence. With the events and dreams that come later, this is symbolic of Sandor’s part in Sansa’s sexual awakening. In this case, he is literally in the middle of it. [...] Sex: Where do I even begin? Well, let’s start by location. It takes place not only in Sansa’s room, but on her bed. The bloody cloak is another obvious symbol. A bloody sheet is often a sign of girl losing her virginity. A cloak works just as well. In a slightly disturbing example, after the song, Sandor’s tears are described as wetness that was not blood. I’ll just walk away from that double entendre. [...] But more importantly, she doesn’t seem to feel like a victim. She adds in the unkiss and later has erotic dreams about him. (link)

So, you get the idea. I believe it was sansxn shippers who originated/popularized a more sympathetic reading of Sansa and the idea that she would learn from LF and become a political player—something people still won’t accept—hence that “pawn to player” thing, so I appreciate that, although the direction they went with that is just, not one I can agree with. They also have very sympathetic readings of the Hound which means we get a twisted version of “the unkiss” and that made some reinterpret the assault? And then all of Sansa memories of it? I find it an easier thing to conclude that Sansa can’t quite accept that the man who at point saved her intended to rape her, so she remembers something far more manageable, (the unkiss), but they, sometimes in an effort to give her agency, say imagining she was kissed is a sign that Sansa wanted the Hound to kiss her. The problem with that is that this quickly becomes victim blaming, and I’ve had Sansxns in my inbox in the past arguing the Hound didn’t intend to rape Sansa and didn’t assault her—so apparently, it also leads to full fledged denial of what was happening in that scene.

If you imagine the Hound as a misunderstood hero, rather than a violent man who brags about killing women and children, their interpretation is easier to understand. But that ignores that there is a reason Sansa is frightened by him, and it isn’t merely his appearance, it’s because he is dangerous. Back in AGOT he rode down a little boy and murdered him, remorselessly. I actually argue that the Sansa under the Hound's cloak is a callback to that, it is a damning indictment of him, not romantic, so again, we just interpret the ideas behind their interactions very differently (link). In that post, I also point out, she thinks positively of Tyrion and LF too, not because she's in love with them, because this poor girl has been surrounded by enemies for so long that their moments of intervening on her behalf are all she has to cling to. Anyway, what seemed to be the refrain was the significance of “the unkiss” and that it means actually, Sansa is attracted to the Hound instead of him just being a perv who traumatized her/threatened her life repeatedly. So, apparently, that’s what they mean by calling him her “sexual awakening.”

[byebyelemonpie]

byebyelemonpie's december 2024 recommendations

My december top 5 movies:

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024, dir: Merlin Crossingham, Nick Park) [First time watch] Best film of the year, I don't care. Wallace unleashes a new wave of robots who become evil thanks to the criminal Feathers McGraw, and our best boy Gromit takes it upon himself to restore peace in the town and save Wallace's name. This is a great commentary on how AI or newer technologies could never take the place of art, and work better if used as tools. I loved it. -

Paddington and Paddington 2 (2014 / 2017, dir: Paul King) [Rewatch after 5 years] This is a perfect duology, and I'm still waiting to see the third one later this month. Paddington is a lovely funny talking bear who finds a family, but keeps his home country in his heart the whole time. It's genuinely joyful. And the prison sequences are amazing. -

The Wild Robot (2024, dir: Chris Sanders) [First time watch] My gosh, this literally made me sob. If you've been reading these posts, you might already know how sappy I get when the story is about different characters who find each other and create a family out of just them. It's everything to me. So you already know this lonely lost robot, this lonely baby duck, and this lonely lone fox are absolutely everything to me by the end of this film. -

Ammore e malavita (2017, dir: Marco Manetti, Antonio Manetti) [First time watch, AKA Love and Bullets] This is a musical!!! It's a crime comedy set in Naples, about a mob boss trying to quit the business, a hitman who meets the love of his life, and what all of them need to do to find a way out of that shitty murdery business. It's also very fun, and the songs are mostly in Neapolitan, which is a very lovely language. -

That Christmas (2024, dir: Simon Otto) [First time watch] I didn't expect to like this as much as I did. It was a very lovely fun movie, with some cute scenes and a classic Christmassy feel.

Favourite series in december:

Interior Chinatown (US, 2024) [First time watch] This was really cool. A series which is tagged as a comedy but it delves more and more into meta, almost as a Truman Show heir, to end in an existentialist question the audience has to ask, together with: "What the hell just happened?" I was glued to the screen the whole time. Absolutely recommended. -

Hanno Ucciso L'Uomo Ragno - La leggendaria storia degli 883 (Italy, 2024) [First time watch] When 883 were at the top of their fame I didn't even exist, but I was always aware of at least some of their songs (Music teacher who made us play "Hanno Ucciso L'Uomo Ragno" and "Nord Sud Ovest Est" on the flute, I salute you), so when this series came out and everyone was praising it, I decided to give it a watch and I was really surprised at how fun it was, and - even though not everything in the series has exactly happened that way - it was interesting to see how a slice of the Italian music industry looked like at the time. -

The Devil Judge (South Korea, 2021) [First time watch] As with every show I've seen from S. Korea, the cinematography of this is absolutely gorgeous. This is specifically about a dystopian future in which the government decides to trust a Judge hosting his trials on live television, and letting the audience be the jury by choosing on their phones if the person on trial is innocent or guilty. The high society will not be safe for long, though, as this Judge is trying to get revenge. -

Junior Taskmaster - series 1 (UK, 2024) [First time watch] The original Taskmaster show is absolutely hilarious, and a comfort show for me. This junior version, though, sees 25 children as the protagonists of a tournament who will try to get high scores in several tasks, judged by the Junior Taskmaster. It was an absolute blast seeing those kids being hilarious and really smart!

[byebyelemonpie's 2024 recs]

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

I watched WOT because of you!! Show fan only although I adore all your meta posts. I really am enjoying it a lot and hope Brando doesn’t get to touch scripts (his complaints about the finale worried me) because I love how it is written and the focus on all of the kids/characters vs hearing my (male) acquaintances talk about “the big three” as just the dudes. But anyway. I am having a great time thank youuuuuuuu for the nudge!!!!!

YES YES YES YES YES WE GOT ANOTHER ONE LADS!!!!

This makes me so happy I’m so glad you enjoyed it ❤️❤️❤️

I know for a fact that some people straight up read those books by skipping all the pov chapters of the women which contributes to how we end up with so many book fans who only care about the ta’veren boys. Jokes on them! You can’t just skip all the girls’ scenes and have it make sense!!!

If Brandon Sanderson keeps talking shit about the show I’m gonna burn his house down be so annoyed about it. I have always disliked the choices he made finishing the books, idk why he thinks his opinion on the show is important. If you don’t want your name associated with it then stop being a producer Brandon!!!!!

Anyway again very glad to hear this, if you wanna talk about what you enjoyed in the show or know anything specific from the books or that the show didn’t explain fully yet hmu (and i will try to remember I haven’t reread them since 2014).

Adding another mental tally to my list of mutuals I’ve persuaded to wotch wot 😎

[in-g-major]

About Me: ATLA Edition

When I started watching the series: 2006 First episode I remember: The Winter Solstice Part 1 (Iroh and Zuko are what got me intrigued) When I realized I loved the show: by the time the main cast gets to Ba Sing Se Favorite Characters: Iroh, Zuko, Katara Underrated Characters I Love: Ty Lee, Long Feng (as a villain), Pakku (as a flawed mentor figure who ultimately learns better), Jeong Jeong, Ursa (the fascinating and mysterious mama bear we got in the show, not what she became in the comics) Favorite Episode: The Crossroads of Destiny (almost no other show has so successfully delivered such an emotional payoff after a season of buildup) What kind of bender would I want to be: Water Ships: Zutara, Sukka *I rarely get invested in shipping when I'm just a viewer/spectator, but thinking about it as a writer is a different experience. Sometimes it just makes sense narratively and emotionally for characters to end up together. My Biggest Problems with ATLA: every canon ship besides Sukka - the general decline in writing quality after Book 2 - Bryke's creative control of the franchise starting around Book 3 - the lack of acknowledgment for Elizabeth Welch from official sources and the larger fandom - lack of representation for the cultures being adapted in the creative process behind the show, which hopefully future adaptations improve on My relationship to the ATLA fandom: I was posting about the show on forums from 2007-2010, lurking in ATLA spaces on tumblr in 2014-2018, got back into the series in 2023 and wanted to experience that shared passion for ATLA again. Tumblr has long seemed like the gathering place for the brightest and best minds in the ATLA fandom, so I'm happy to be here! I plan on sharing my general thoughts on the show so long as they aren't just repeating someone else's meta analysis, plus my own fics eventually.

[amtrak12]

Hey hi! I read your Helena Wells meta earlier, from ten years ago, and I found it so interesting and spot on, and at the end you were so sad that you felt like you didn't have a good grasp on the character - do you feel that has changed, since then? And if so, how? Or, what do you think of Helena these days?

(the meta you posted and linked here: https://www.tumblr.com/purlturtle/736985181321314304/your-helena-tangent-got-me-thinking-and-yes-this )

Oooo fun and deep questions! :D Thank you!!

Obviously, that was 2.5 high schools ago so I had to reread my original meta to refresh my memory. My first thought is: OMFG LEARN PARAGRAPH BREAKS!! O_O But then, as I kept reading and saw how many spaces were missing after periods and how the sentences after the missing space read like a new paragraph -- my second thought is, I think Tumblr did me dirty at some point in the last 10 years of formatting changes and I actually did use appropriate paragraph breaks originally. Rude. -_-

But on the point of your actual questions! lol

I don't remember writing that exact post, but being nervous and uncertain about my Helena characterization does ring a bell. I was DEFINITELY more confident in analyzing/meta-ing Myka or Pete (if it was in relation to Myka). HG made me nervous and that was only like 10% because she's British and I'm American.

Some of my uncertainty probably came from my lack of historical knowledge (which has not improved. Fun fact: this is why I nearly never invented an artifact for fic). A not-insignificant portion of my uncertainty probably also came from how confident the rest of the fandom spoke about Helena. It seemed like she was meta-ed more often and by more people than Myka was. (Which makes sense as -- in general -- Helena was/probably still is the more popular character in the B&W ship.) I don't remember ever feeling like someone was way off base or out of character with Helena, but I do remember reading meta/fic sometimes and struggling to decide if I disagreed with a character trait/action that the person assigned her or if it was an accurate aspect of Helena's character that I hadn't internalized yet.

Basically I had Opinions about how Myka (and Pete for that matter) should be written and definitely noticed when a fic disagreed with me. But figuring out HG was like the wild west to me and I could never pin her down with firm barriers on who her character is and isn't.

I am very, very rusty on my Warehouse 13 knowledge because it's been nearly a decade since I was deep in my analyzation of the show. So, I wouldn't say I have a better grasp on Helena's characterization today than I did in 2014. But there are some aspects I feel like I could understand better if I took the time to rewatch and meta.

Loss of a child -- look I don't have children, but I do have niblings now that I adore. I'm also raising a dog who taught me I do not have the energy or anxiety coping mechanisms to raise a human child, because worrying about her almost does me in on its own. And I'm in my mid-30's now and seem to have a better understanding of parent-child relationships (or I'm at least way more interested in exploring them now, both from the view of the child and the view of the parent). So, exploring Christina's death and just how much that affected Helena would absolutely be on my list of deep-dives. I never ignored this before, but I'm certain I could pull more out of this backstory today than I could've in 2014.

Helena's guilt -- I started rambling at the end of that post about which things Helena felt guilty about and whether she felt guilty at all. As far as I remember, I usually wrote her as feeling some measure of guilt for her past actions. (Although I was also usually writing full AU settings so it was a moot point.) But I also wasn't wrong when I pointed out how she didn't show any obvious signs of regret over her S2 actions, unless it was something that had hurt Myka. If I was going to go back and meta WH13, I would explore this topic deeper for sure.

Interestingly, it's not something I could've explored deeper prior to 2022-ish. But now I've watched the series Lucifer which deals entirely with guilt and has a protagonist with shut down emotions who doesn't regret things and then, through incremental changes over 6 seasons, opens up, learns to feel every emotion again, unpacks a lot of shit etc. And I have been FASCINATED by how the writers pulled that off, because on the surface it is not a show (or a protagonist) that I should care about. (And if I had watched it from ep 1.01 instead of completely ass backwards, I wouldn't have cared about him.) BUT I DO CARE! And I want to know how they pulled off Lucifer's character arc. And then I want to use some of the techniques they used to explore guilt and pain and apply them to Helena to see what emerges in her character. Because I think it would be really interesting.

And then finally, I'm not sure I have anything new to bring to the conversation around what Helena's future with the warehouse and/or happy ending looks like. But I could also never make up my mind on what would work best for her. Does she return as an agent? Does she become a regent? (Probably not, but you never know.) Does she just become the live-in inventor who doesn't venture into the field unless absolutely necessary? I have absolutely no idea what her future with the warehouse would look like if a romantic relationship with Myka is her happy ending. (Which is my personal goal obviously lol).

Because -- and this is where my Opinions on Myka come into play -- our girl Myka Bering is not leaving that warehouse. Ever. She is the new Artie. She will take over as the lead agent when he retires/partially retires. And then she will die there. In South Dakota of old age (because I refuse to let her die on a mission). Pete? Oh, my boy Pete will meet an awesome lady and retire to be a stay at home dad. He'll walk away one day. Myka? Absolutely never. You're burying her at the warehouse. Which means Helena will have to have some kind of relationship with it again, and I would have to figure out what that looks like because both today and in 2014, I can't decide what option fits her best.

I hope this answers your question! It was so deep and I love it :D I just don't have new thoughts on WH13 yet because I haven't looped back around to a full blown obsession with it yet. (It will happen. Round 2 of BERING AND WELLS ARE THE BEST THING EVER will absolutely happen at some point in my life because that's how I roll and they are.) So this is less meta about how my thoughts on Helena have changed, and more about how my approach to her character would change given the experience I've gained in the last ten years.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS ASK!

[fortuna9]

EXPLAINING MY 2010S DR MORE!

☆ Nicknames I have: Barbie, Bunny, Ellie, Ali

☆ Most popular songs: Cruel Summer, DDU-DU DDU-DU, Run away with me, Genie, Something like a party, Shooting Star, b2b heartbeat, Vroom Vroom, Tattoo, Boom Clap etc

☆ I'm the face of Thierry Mugler

☆ Other endorsements: Mattel, Sanrio, Sailor Moon, Nintendo, Toidoki, Dolls Kill, Versace, H&M, Jeremy Scott for Moschino, Blumarine

☆ I have a reality tv show that runs from 2010-2016 (so ages 15-21) (I also scripted that it won't be too hectic so I can have decent teenage years)

☆ I also am THAT girl, the it-girl to end all it-girls it's so serious

☆ There will be a Barbie doll line made inspired by me, and I will also have a cameo in the Barbie movie dressed as one of those dolls (the meta of it all)

☆ I also have cameos in movies I'm on the soundtrack for (Catching Fire, Dork Diaries, Percy Jackson and The Titan's Curse, The Great Gatsby, Barbie etc.)

☆ I also scripted that the Percy Jackson movies weren't dookie and that Dork Diaries got 3 films.

☆ I want to live that Nikki Maxwell lifestyle, so I also go to North Hampton Hills (on scholarship), I won Valentine's Sweetheart, I won an Ice Skating competition, I ran my school's newspaper's advice column, I write in my diary a lot.

☆ My rise to stardom came from my win on a talent show in 2009/2010 (the timeline here is a bit wonky)

☆ Songs I covered: Together again, Halo, Love Story, Just Dance, Umbrella, Fantasy, Loverboy

☆ Original songs I performed: Message in a bottle, Enchanted, I AM, Teenage Dream

☆ I stole Barbie's entire house from Life in the Dreamhouse zxncaskl I just scripted that no-one questions my endless closet (Elektra Crystal...yeah of course we don't know when her closet ends...makes sense)

☆ I scripted 6 albums so far (7 if you include the songs from the talents show). I scripted a trilogy (2010-2014), UTOPIA (2019), and The Phantom Pulse duology (2022). I'll post about them soon!

☆ I have two singles (Really Bad Boy released in 2016 and DDU-DU DDU-DU released in 2017). I also have a few songs I did for ads specifically (Peek-a-boo for a Halloween themed pizza commercial, Speed Drive for a Barbie ad and ICONIC for a Nike ad)

☆ I also did the soundtrack for a Nintendo game I scripted in (Odyssey), released in 2021.

☆ I'm considered the best performer of my generation.

☆ I had a mega tour from 2015-2017, bigger than the Eras tour. It was a cultural phenomenom, and the demand lead to the tour being extended.

☆ I also scripted that I know everyone's secrets cause I don't want anyone playing with me I will END your career.

☆ Still questioning if I should script young coriolanus in...I could write style about him...save me blonde tom blyth...save me..

Anyways that's all for today, that's for tuning in, you're shifting today, hope you know ♡

[theladysherlock]

Talk Shop Tuesday: how many fandoms are you a part of? Are those different than what you create for? Which one is your favorite and why?

The Leviathan Trilogy will always be my favorite until the end of time I think. I've been obsessed with those books since 2012 and they aren't going anywhere. But the fandom is perfect, honestly. We've all been around for so long that we all know each other so it definitely feels like a proper community. The Leviathan fandom is consistently lovely and it's an honor to know them.

I'm also somewhat active in Lockwood & Co., definitely more so between 2014-2018 than now. The vibe shifted after all the books were released, and then it shifted again when the show came out, so I'm not nearly as involved in that as I used to be. (I think of myself as a L&Co. curmudgeon, honestly, which I admit isn't very fair to some of the new fans)

As for other fandoms that I'm in, my involvement tends to be inversely proportional to its popularity. For bigger fandoms (Percy Jackson, Star Wars, ATLA, etc.) I tend to reblog art and meta posts and shitposts but I don't make anything myself. For medium-to-big fandoms (Dimension 20, NADDPOD, etc.) I might draw a thing or two or make a meta post / shitpost myself but I'm not necessarily trying to build community with anyone there. I've been the most consistently active in small fandom situations, where it's just me and a handful of other people having fun. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but it's probably something about drama being easier to navigate when there are fewer people involved.

[orionsangel86]

Sincere question, your response to the like-scolding post doesn't make sense to me. I already reblog often, so I don't need convincing, but I also don't feel the need to convince others to and don't understand when people do.

If a blog was empty, you weren't going to follow them anyway. They have zero impact on your dash.

I don't understand why following the tags, following blogs that make stuff in the tags, using tumblr's orbit thing or blog suggestions wouldn't be anymore sufficient than asking strangers that may not even care who follows them to make your personal dashboard more interesting.

I was hesitant to answer this, because I try not to get too involved in general tumblr discourse and I already have had a few passive aggressive remarks about my response to that post. I don't wanna open myself up to hate here so please know that this is just my opinion at the end of the day. I am one person and I have been on tumblr a long time and my reasonings for all of this is simply that I love this stupid website and want it to thrive.

Let me start by clarifying that I have nothing against likes! Likes are great! Likes are exactly what it says on the tin - a way to tell someone that you like their post. So I didn't have an issue with the sentiment of the original post that likes are not meaningless and are instead a way to tell people that you like their stuff! That's great!

But your reasoning here is flawed because of how tumblr works. No matter how many likes someones post gets, if no one reblogs it it will dissapear into a void. Tumblrs tagging system is not great. Tumblr's "in your orbit" section is something that most people ignore and do not use. The userbase on tumblr finds posts by following blogs and relying on the blogs they follow to reblog posts. The posts that circulate far and wide on tumblr are posts that are reblogged by users. Posts that have plenty of likes do not help a post gain any extra traction or help spread it to those that may be interested in it. Posts that are just liked and not reblogged do not get circulated and will get forgotten about and never find their audience.

This isn't about lurker types who never reblog anything and therefore won't ever get followers (nothing against lurkers!), its about this strange mentality nowadays which tumblr never used to have which is that people seem to be more particular about the kind of posts they'll reblog. People seem more hesitant to reblog long posts, or writing posts, or anything that doesn't immediately grab their attention. There is an expectation that for a post to be reblogged it has to be of a higher quality that a post that you may reward a simple like.

I think it is heavily tied to cringe culture. There is a mentality that your blog should be heavily curated and therefore you should only reblog the highest of quality which you feel is worthy for your own blog - rather than just reblogging anything that you may like or find fun or interesting. It is very much an instagram mentality and its been creeping into tumblr over several years - and because of it, fandoms are dying, its far more difficult to find fandom content, and it is becoming much harder to engage and build community. People are hesitant to add comments onto reblogs nowadays - when back in the day that was kinda how tumblr worked! You reblogged with commentary and thats how legendary tumblr shitposts were born! That's how Supernatural fandom "always has a gif for that" started! Because back in 2014 people didn't care about what others on tumblr thought about their blogs, because their blogs were all about the fun, about committing to the bit, about engaging with each other and adding commentary and additions, and speculating about your favourite shows on long posts where you could have an entire community of meta writers each adding a bit of their own analysis so you ended up with a huge post that was absolutely mind blowing. That's how artists on tumblr could have thousands and thousands of notes and gain huge popularity and be able to make a living based on their fanart.

I miss it so. fucking. much.

This place is a graveyard sometimes. Even among my current fandom. I will post something and ask that people add commentary. I will state quite plainly for people to please engage and add their thoughts, let me know your opinions! There are no wrong answers! Lets joke, make fun of the characters we love, write dumb little thoughts and headcanons and engage with them via reblogs, add reaction gifs and images with speech bubbles and just soak up the joy that can be found in engaging with fandom in this way - and stop being scared that your reblogs will be judged by some external source, that you will somehow lose followers or make OP hate you if you dare to add a comment to their post (in which case OP can go fuck themselves as far as I'm concerned because I ADORE comments and additions on MY posts). Just ENGAGE. Because a like, whilst appreciated, is literally the bare minimum, and if all we are doing on this site is the bare minimum, then what is the fucking point anymore? If there is no real engagement and community, if you aren't interesting in actually talking to each other and sharing posts among each other and just interacting with each other, then tumblr will die. I find that so fucking depressing. So yeah, I had a bit of a moan on that post, because I don't think y'all newbies understand how good it used to be here. Quit with the instagram mentality and start actually engaging. Because if y'all actually listened and started doing that, you'll bring this place to life again, and find so much more joy in it.

[bearballing]

lol 2 birthday cake memory posts showing up on facebook. forgot that my sister had to make the one in 2018 because I was like 2 weeks post meta (i always make my own cake)

and the one from 2014 showed up too. that was the year i lived by myself and was trying uni again. i was like dangerously suicidal in march that year and was this close to checking myself into some uhhh not psychiatric ward but like. some kind of recovery type house. in london. the only reason I ended up not going was because I got sick and didn't want to travel all that way and make myself worse. then I dropped out of uni, moved back home (having the landlord company on my ass for a while because student housing is predatory as fuck), and getting a job as a cleaner which sucked shit.

kind of wild how bad that year started compared to how it ended, with me starting to date my friend in the usa (who is now my wife) and about to start a training course for admin roles in the nhs (which would end up with the only job I didn't quit after a few months and actually liked).

and now 10 years later it's like. night and day. i am taking a couple of days off work where everyone likes and appreciates me and where i am very good at what I do and earn "above average", will chill in my house that I own with my spouse in a place that never Really gets cold, inlaws had a surprise party for me last night which was fun as hell, and me and aforementioned spouse will be going on a 3 day trip in a couple of weeks as like a bday present to myself.

I'm so glad I'm about to be 32 and not 22

[daenerysstormreborn]

BNFs are people who post a lot of metas and answer a lot of ask and ended up kinda shaping the fandom's perception of some things with their theories (a big one that gets brought up often are the various theories about Tyrion Dany and Jon as the three heads of the dragon ending the series with heroic sacrifice) . They were more Active in 2014-2016 and now only a few remain so I think so the concept is often confusing for people newer to the fandom. There are a lot of bad takes and misinformation about them bc both sides of the discourse perceive them as biased as a whole against their side even when its not necessarily true (obviously some of them as human beings did have biases)

Mmm okay gotcha gotcha. Thank you for the ask!Back during the end of when season 7 on the show was airing is when I started to get into it and engaged with other fans somewhat since I went to comic cons and cosplayed Dany. I heard a lot about the three heads of the dragon and the notion that Tyrion may be a secret Targaryen and that Jon would kill Dany to bring forth lightbringer. I remember seeing a lot of political Jon theories too. But I didn’t really touch any of that because I didn’t want to imagine Jon killing Dany 🤡. During the season 7-8 break I actually went to a comic con with a Jon cosplayer and someone wanted to take some footage of us. We jokingly did a little bit where he fake stabbed me with Longclaw to turn it to lightbringer. We both ended up looking back on it like

(I still hold firmly in my position that I would be fine with mad queen Dany if well-written, but it was rushed in the show)