#please make this fanon

[gettingovershame]

I love the idea of Bumi II being aroace. 🧡💛🤍🩵💙

I like the idea that he defies expectations just by being himself.

I like thinking that this sailor/soldier and world-famous-nepo-baby DOESN’T have a lover waiting for him at every port. And that his wild adventure stories are never a seduction tactic… they just are!

And sure there’s the obvious source of angst: “The firstborn child of the Avatar and the last Waterbender of the SWT (two of the strongest benders in the world) turns out to be a Non-Bender.” … but there’s also the implied angst: The likelihood of Bumi II wanting to produce children that are SWT benders or that carry Airbender genetics/Air-Nomad heritage is lower.

Im just saying… with how much time Katara and Aang spend in their tweenage hormones throughout ATLA … it’d be ironic if their first kid was just unconcerned with all that mess.

[bereft-of-frogs]

There’s that post that’s like ‘everyone should get into a tiny niche fandom at least once’ fully agree, that was really fun -- but I would like to add that everyone should get into a fandom where their opinions run counter to major fanon because it really teaches you about sticking to your guns and trusting your interpretation of the text without having to rely on peer validation

because WHAT are people talking about sometimes

[lizardpersonyknow]

It's so incredibly funny to me that somehow some people think Tim is a boring straightlace and Jason is deranged and unhinged

Like Jason at his worst is a murderous crime lord who also has a moral conscience, protects children and sex workers, works to make the worst parts of Gotham safer and wants to know that his dad cares

Tim at his worst on the other hand.... Rampant murder with NO morals, becomes Batman and uses the gun that killed Bruce's parents, dictator, takes over like half of America, goes back in time like a couple times to tell his younger self that this is their inevitable end just to fuck with HIMSELF

Jason at his best is the happy robin, loves school, cares for sex workers becomes a crime lord to help make sure the people who are addicted aren't being given toxic shit

Tim at his best is entirely unhinged, stalking Batman and Robin through the streets, blackmailing Batman, all the young justice shenanigans, creating a fake uncle to avoid adoption, beefing with a like 9 year old (deserved imo 9 year olds are MEAN), lies to everyone including batman and take pride in it

Like besties one is exponentially more of a black sheep and it isn't the drug lord, it's the heroic sidekick of batman

Yes Jason is still out on the streets wildin and feral but I don't think people give enough credit to how normal he is for his background

Yes Tim is CEO but he's also been 17 for years and probably has taken cocaine to see what it felt like

[phobic-human]

Today 11/1/2024 is the seventieth anniversary of the publication of the Declaration of 1 November 1954 and beginning of the Algerian War of Independence.

The Algerian war was a landmark decolonization war. Algeria had been colonized in the mid 19th century by the French, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Algerians were killed out of 3 million. The following decades continued with brutal oppression, Algeria was unique because it was legally classified as an integral part of France

The aftermath of the Second World War provided a unique situation. The imperial powers had fought themselves to exhaustion, suddenly formely colonized nation's were able to rise up and begin to cast off the imperial yoke.

The conflict between The National Liberation Front (FLN) and France was incredibly violent. France responded to the revolt with extreme brutality and repression, utilizing mass killings, torture, and concentration camps, 8,000 villages were destroyed and between 500,000 and 1.5 million Algerians were killed. Ultimately the Algerian people prevailed and won independence in 1962. The Algerian War is an important reminder of the horrors of colonialism and the valiant struggle for freedom.

I highly recommend A Dying Colonialism by Frantz Fanon as an excellent look into the Algerian struggle. Fanon once said "having a gun is the only chance you still have of giving a meaning to your death." These words ring especially true today for all people's engaged in a decolonization struggle.

May the independence struggle of the heroic Algerian people never be forgotten.

Long live Algeria

[justiceiscalling]

wild opinion i know people will hate me for: i strongly dislike alfred pennyworth. i know what you’re thinking, “how could you hate him! alfred does no wrong!!!”

(loud incorrect buzzer) WRONG. omg, alfred can only do wrong in my mind. he is such a fucking enabler and then he wants to play devils advocate. recently, before starting ‘what the future holds’ i reread robin 1993—specifically tim’s birthday arc.

if you don’t know what that is i’ll tell you. on tim’s sixteenth someone delivers a package which is a holographic message from a future-alfred essentially telling him someone in the batfam is, like, evil, and trusting him to figure it out. eventually it’s revealed that the message was a test, part of bruce’s training, and ‘future’ alfred was actually just current alfred. it was a really good read, i believe it was issues #116-120.

point is, alfred WILLING sided with bruce on that shit. alfred was not held at gun point, his life was not under any threat, he was asked to assist and he. did. that. shit.

and after he had the audacity to be apologetic! ‘i’m so sorry master tim’ like no tf ur not???? like u did this, you allowed him to feel like everything was HIS responsibility and like he couldn’t trust anyone. which is just so fucked up on another level. he watched tim isolate himself and beat himself up over trying to solve this and he?? just?? let?? it?? happen???

and some how he can do no wrong?????

when tim first became robin, who gave him the suit? i’m pretty sure it was alfred. yes, tim was a relentless little kid—but that’s just that. he was a fucking kid, no older than thirteen. alfred gave him the suit. sure, it was to save bruce, but why did it have to be him? why couldn’t he call dick or superman or, hell, go out there himself? why’d it have to be the nosy ass neighbor?

also when bruce and dick used to beat the shit out of each other alfred didn’t do anything. he lowkey just let it happen. like how much is bruce paying bro for him to let that slide?

ALSO ALSO i would love someone to correct me on this, PLEASE tell me i’m wrong, but wasn’t alfred the one who put up the good soldier memorial? everyone hates on bruce (who, in a lot of ways, is a bad father) for that memorial being up but it was alfred. and i get he was but jason wasn’t just robin, he was so much more. and most importantly, he was a son. i know things were rocky for him and bruce but, god, that’s his son! like what the genuine fuck, yk?

and maybe this is only in some iterations but alfred literally influenced bruce to train to be a vigilante. he trained him when he was young, after his parents deaths. and yes, he was another one of those relentless kids, but there were things alfred could’ve tried to stop him from doing this.

what i’m trying to say is, im so fucking tired of this ‘saint alfred’ BS. he’s in the wrong! maybe not all of the time but a lot of the time. and i don’t know if that ‘jason loves alfred the most!’ thing is fanon or canon but either way i hate it. if you’re going to make bruce a bad dad, if you’re making jason and bruce’s relationship rocky, then alfred can’t be the exception. he should be held accountable as much as bruce.

like, if jason loved alfred so much and saw him as a grandfather, why isn’t he pissed at alfred for not killing the joker. sure he wanted bruce to do it but after bruce didn’t, why didn’t alfred take it into his own hands? alfred has no problems with killing people who deserve it. he was a soldier for crying out loud!

if jason and alfred are as close as fanon claims then jason should be beefing with alfred as much as he does with bruce for not avenging him.

okay, this turned into a rant about jason and alfred’s annoying fanon relationship but you get my point.

i don’t hate alfred, i hate fanon alfred and i hate this fandom and how they love to hold bruce accountable for wrongs that lowkey could be alfred’s fault too. and i also hate that’s it’s so hard to dislike alfred because people will yell at you for it. in my fics i try to keep him as out of it as i can because god forbid i make him how he is in the comics.

alfred is a flawed character—just like bruce and jason and tim and dick and damian and duke—and that’s okay! it’s better when they’re not so one dimensional, it makes them way more interesting as a character and also allows fanon to create perfect character development over the span of long ass fics that i love to binge.

thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[hauntingofhouses]

Very interesting to me that a certain subset of the BES fandom's favourite iterations of Mizu and Akemi are seemingly rooted in the facades they have projected towards the world, and are not accurate representations of their true selves.

And I see this is especially the case with Mizu, where fanon likes to paint her as this dominant, hyper-masculine, smirking Cool GuyTM who's going to give you her strap. And this idea of Mizu is often based on the image of her wearing her glasses, and optionally, with her cloak and big, wide-brimmed kasa.

And what's interesting about this, to me, is that fanon is seemingly falling for her deliberate disguise. Because the glasses (with the optional combination of cloak and hat) represent Mizu's suppression of her true self. She is playing a role.

Take this scene of Mizu in the brothel in Episode 4 for example. Here, not only is Mizu wearing her glasses to symbolise the mask she is wearing, but she is purposely acting like some suave and cocky gentleman, intimidating, calm, in control. Her voice is even deeper than usual, like what we hear in her first scene while facing off with Hachiman the Flesh-Trader in Episode 1.

This act that Mizu puts on is an embodiment of masculine showboating, which is highly effective against weak and insecure men like Hachi, but also against women like those who tried to seduce her at the Shindo House.

And that brings me to how Mizu's mask is actually a direct parallel to Akemi's mask in this very same scene.

Here, Akemi is also putting up an act, playing up her naivety and demure girlishness, using her high-pitched lilted voice, complimenting Mizu and trying to make small talk, all so she can seduce and lure Mizu in to drink the drugged cup of sake.

So what I find so interesting and funny about this scene, characters within it, and the subsequent fandom interpretations of both, is that everyone seems to literally be falling for the mask that Mizu and Akemi are putting up to conceal their identities, guard themselves from the world, and get what they want.

It's also a little frustrating because the fanon seems to twist what actually makes Mizu and Akemi's dynamic so interesting by flattening it completely. Because both here and throughout the story, Mizu and Akemi's entire relationship and treatment of each other is solely built off of masks, assumptions, and misconceptions.

Akemi believes Mizu is a selfish, cocky male samurai who destroyed her ex-fiance's career and life, and who abandoned her to let her get dragged away by her father's guards and forcibly married off to a man she didn't know. on the other hand, Mizu believes Akemi is bratty, naive princess who constantly needs saving and who can't make her own decisions.

These misconceptions are even evident in the framing of their first impressions of each other, both of which unfold in these slow-motion POV shots.

Mizu's first impression of Akemi is that of a beautiful, untouchable princess in a cage. Swirling string music in the background.

Akemi's first impression of Mizu is of a mysterious, stoic "demon" samurai who stole her fiance's scarf. Tense music and the sound of ocean waves in the background.

And then, going back to that scene of them together in Episode 4, both Mizu and Akemi continue to fool each other and hold these assumptions of each other, and they both feed into it, as both are purposely acting within the suppressive roles society binds them to in order to achieve their goals within the means they are allowed (Akemi playing the part of a subservient woman; Mizu playing the part of a dominant man).

But then, for once in both their lives, neither of their usual tactics work.

Akemi is trying to use flattery and seduction on Mizu, but Mizu sees right through it, knowing that Akemi is just trying to manipulate and harm her. Rather than give in to Akemi's tactics, Mizu plays with Akemi's emotions by alluding to Taigen's death, before pinning her down, and then when she starts crying, Mizu just rolls her eyes and tells her to shut up.

On the opposite end, when Mizu tries to use brute force and intimidation, Akemi also sees right through it, not falling for it, and instead says this:

"Under your mask, you're not the killer you pretend to be."

Nonetheless, despite the fact that they see a little bit through each other's masks, they both still hold their presumptions of each other until the very end of the season, with Akemi seeing Mizu as an obnoxious samurai swooping in to save the day, and Mizu seeing Akemi as a damsel in distress.

And what I find a bit irksome is that the fandom also resorts to flattening them to these tropes as well.

Because Mizu is not some cool, smooth-talking samurai with a big dick sword as Akemi (and the fandom) might believe. All of that is the facade she puts up and nothing more. In reality, Mizu is an angry, confused and lonely child, and a masterful artist, who is struggling against her own self-hatred. Master Eiji, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.

And Akemi, on the other hand, is not some girly, sweet, vain and spoiled princess as Mizu might believe. Instead she has never cared for frivolous things like fashion, love or looks, instead favouring poetry and strategy games instead, and has always only cared about her own independence. Seki, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.

But neither is she some authoritative dominatrix, though this is part of her new persona that she is trying to project to get what she wants. Because while Akemi is willful, outspoken, intelligent and authoritative, she can still be naive! She is still often unsure and needs to have her hand held through things, as she is still learning and growing into her full potential. Her new parental/guardian figure, Madame Kaji, knows this as well.

So with all that being said, now that we know that Mizu and Akemi are essentially wearing masks and putting up fronts throughout the show, what would a representation of Mizu's and Akemi's true selves actually look like? Easy. It's in their hair.

This shot on the left is the only time we see Mizu with her hair completely down. In this scene, she's being berated by Mama, and her guard is completely down, she has no weapon, and is no longer wearing any mask, as this is after she showed Mikio "all of herself" and tried to take off the mask of a subservient housewife. Thus, here, she is sad, vulnerable, and feeling small (emphasised further by the framing of the scene). This is a perfect encapsulation of what Mizu is on the inside, underneath all the layers of revenge-obsession and the walls she's put around herself.

In contrast, the only time we Akemi with her hair fully down, she is completely alone in the bath, and this scene takes place after being scorned by her father and left weeping at his feet. But despite all that, Akemi is headstrong, determined, taking the reigns of her life as she makes the choice to run away, but even that choice is reflective of her youthful naivety. She even gets scolded by Seki shortly after this in the next scene, because though she wants to be independent, she still hasn't completely learned to be. Not yet. Regardless, her decisiveness and moment of self-empowerment is emphasised by the framing of the scene, where her face takes up the majority of the shot, and she stares seriously into the middle distance.

To conclude, I wish popular fanon would stop mischaracterising these two, and flattening them into tropes and stereotypes (ie. masculine badass swordsman Mizu and feminine alluring queen but also girly swooning damsel Akemi), all of which just seems... reductive. It also irks me when Akemi is merely upheld as a love interest and romantic device for Mizu and nothing more, when she is literally Mizu's narrative foil (takes far more narrative precedence over romantic interest) and the deuteragonist of this show. She is her own person. That is literally the theme of her entire character and arc.

[nuinokata]

If you ever find yourself questioning your own intelligence, just remember that Jujutsu Kaisen gave us a character who is the undisputed strongest living being in his universe (so much so that his birth altered the balance of the entire world around him) and is canonically able to do anything he tries; who could have decided to spend his entire life doing absolutely whatever tf he wanted because there is literally no one and nothing with the power to stop him, but instead chose to use his strength to protect and train the next generation to be strong and intelligent enough to overhaul the current oppressive system that would have stripped those innocent kids of their lives and precious youth in the same way it did his own generation, and this was a good portion of the fandom’s reaction to said character:

mostly based on one (1) line removed from 5 layers of context. When the majority of the story wouldn't have taken place at all if not for his strong sense of morality. I am so Tired.

[malwarechips]

unparalleled innocence design :3

[buffygirlfail]

mourning the loss of the potential anyataraspike bestieism we could've gotten

[blackkatmagic]

really wish that fandom would at least acknowledge in passing that Alpha-17 is not some squishy father figure but a dude who was literally about to murder infants on the off chance they might not be fanatically loyal to the Republic. like, I get wanting to attach the Dad label to any random clone that stands still long enough, but it makes him so much less interesting.

can we just have ONE character who does not get sanded down to fit a fandom trope?? Please???

[bsdlvvr]

this happened after that one scene in dead apple, trust. [wip]

i love them dearly

[yall-send-help]

yeah yeah jason having lazarus pit madness is cool or whatever, but why is that always the excuse anytime jason does something a little unsavory? why can’t he ever just be completely accountable for committing horrendous crimes against humanity? why can’t he just want to shove a bunch of heads into a duffle bag just bc he can instead of blaming it all on some mystical pit that only slightly enhanced his anger for like a few weeks and stopped having any affect at all months ago??? why can’t he just be ~like that~ why does there have to be an reason?

[azaharinflames]

I need to get this off my chest—with all due respect and love:

911 isn't that deep. I know we love our theories, headcanons, and the idea that writers might be foreshadowing future storylines. Admittedly, the writers are skilled at setting up characters and connecting the dots when the opportunity arises. For instance, they did an excellent job crafting Buck’s backstory, perfectly tying together everything we know about him and explaining who he is as a person. But they aren’t constructing some grand, deeper plan. What we see on screen is what it is.

In episode 704, it’s Tommy that Buck is spending time with when Eddie interrupts them, which already sets the stage for how the story will unfold and who’s creating the tension. From the first scene with the three of them, it’s clear—Tommy and Buck are the focal points, with Eddie acting as the disruptor. Buck wants to be invited to Trivia night to spend time with Tommy. He goes to the basketball court for the same reason. When Buck sees Tommy’s attention on Eddie during the game, he craves it for himself. Later, Buck is thrilled when Tommy shows up at his apartment.

If Buck were truly interested in Eddie, he would have been hanging out with Eddie from the start, with Tommy as the one interrupting. He would’ve accepted Eddie’s previous invitations to the basketball game. The conversation at the apartment would have centered around Eddie, not on making Tommy feel better.

Whether people want to admit it or not, Eddie was the obstacle in episode 704—something Tim Minear himself has stated. The idea that Buck was jealous of Tommy for getting Eddie’s attention just isn’t true, and it’s embarrassing to claim otherwise. Yes, I’m especially referring to certain so-called journalists who thrive on riling up fans.

We’ve agreed countless times that some fans lack media literacy. But sometimes, it’s truly shocking how much they refuse to see what’s actually canon.

[reinedeslys-central]

HOLY MERLIN ARE YOU TELLING ME NARA SHIKAKO ISN'T A CANON NARA COUSIN SHOEHORNED INTO MINOR CHARACTER STATUS FOR CANON DIVERGENCE FICCING PURPOSES

[melrosing]

would jaime shop at Zara

my unpopular opinion is that jaime wears nothing but hideously expensive gym clothes that he doesn't know are expensive because he's too rich to have any true concept of money