#the narrative was not. it wasn't GOOD storytelling

[anxiouspotatorants]

So I finally watched 6.08 in its entirety and of course I have my two cents on the (in)famous “WhY did you DROP out of YALE” speech:

From what I’ve gathered, some people seem to think Jess saved Rory with that speech and that there was no way she was going back to Yale without it. I’ve also seen mutterings about how Jess’ speech was rude and presumptous and that Rory would have gone back regardless of Jess’ presence. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

There’s no denying that things in the dropout life were piling up for Rory. Moving in to the main house had her dealing with Emily’s surveillance in full force, she was spending most of her time organizing events she had no interest in and driving her drunk boyfriend and his drunk friends home in the night, and she was shown to miss academic life several times. Richard and Emily had started fighting over whether they had taken the right path for getting Rory back into Yale, and Lorelai insisted that Rory would find her way eventually. Something was going to happen at some point.

But returning to Yale wasn’t guaranteed. Not because I think Jess was the only one who could get her back to Yale specifically, but because re-enrolling was a time-sensitive issue. Without someone to give her some kind of rant, Rory could very well have sunk deeper into a hedonistic route with Logan, or waited too long for re-enrollment and had to apply elsewhere. She’d still get somewhere, but it would take significantly more time.

So she needed someone to shake her furiously for two minutes begging her to figure out what she wanted to do. In theory, that person could be any significant character on the show, but when you add in context, the list narrows down a lot: 

We were shown multiple times that Lorelai wasn’t going to be the person because they were at a test of their relationship and Rory was doubting her mother’s judgement.

Luke wasn’t going to do anything like that without Lorelai’s OK.

Richard and Emily would only be able to convince Rory with financial extortion, and that would ruin the relationship they fought so hard to keep with Rory.

While Logan was her boyfriend at the time, he was also the person who had known her for the least amount of time. He would also have been accused of hypocricy by Rory due to how he probably would’ve dropped out if he could too (or at least acted like it during season 5 and early season 6).

Paris’ opinions on Rory’s life decisions tend to be written as jokes, so even if what she said made sense, Rory probably wouldn’t have taken it seriously. At best, Paris’ words could become support to an argument made by someone else.

While Lane could’ve been an interesting choice (especially since she’s Rory’s oldest friend and arguably knows her in ways not even Lorelai or any of the boyfriends do), she’s never established as truly questioning of Rory’s life decisions. The only real fight they have is over Rory spending too much time with Dean in season 1, but other than that Lane tends to support Rory with any decision she makes.

Dean had kind of lost any sway he had with Rory by the final breakup. Him warning Rory over half a season before she actually dropped out would’ve been possessive (considering he could only warn her about Logan and the LDB), and the breakup showed that he essentially gave up on fitting into the elder Gilmore world or helping Rory make her own.

Which leaves us with Jess. There are multiple reasons why Jess ends up working. The first is the fact that they haven’t seen each other in ages. While everyone else has seen the slow descent, Jess comes in having last seen Rory doing just fine at Yale and getting close with Dean again. He’s missed a lot, and realizing that helps Rory understand just how much she’s changed. Second: he comes back improved. A lot of people have already pointed this out, but Jess actually becoming a writer and making something out of himself essentially proves to Rory that she was right about something everyone else that she was wrong about. It also shows her that it’s possible to come out of the lowest lows up to doing something you love. And finally: Jess has a history of telling things like they are. He demanded clarification at the start of season 3 when Rory still dated Dean after their kiss. He had multiple complex fights with Luke. And he also knew how to be supportive without being a blind cheerleader (see: the car scene in season 2). Rory has known Jess long enough to understand that he isn’t trying to be malicious, and also long enough to know that he does actually know her. It’s not so much that he knows her better than everyone else as much as the combination of how close they once were, how time shows the shifts in her life, and how Jess’ glow up can inspire her.

[navree]

"cleopatra movie starring zendaya as cleopatra and timothee chalamet as octavian" i was having a good day and now i have an anger headache

[schoolbusgraveyard]

Also after talking abt it w my husband/despite neither of us wanting to believe Thomas is a plant I'm more willing to accept it now DJDNDJ

[container-of-apple-juice]

Holy shit I'm looking up reviews for chapter 697-698 of Naruto and some of these are destroying me

“Soo gay T_T” too true bestie

“Fanfic vibes” I’m cryin just say gay

REAL

We all know their hands were touching symbolically through their blood, so I guess that cinches it /hj

BROKE-ARM MOUNTAIN

I’m fucking wheezing

[mochinomnoms]

Future WIPs and their synopsis:

“Rewrite the universe (and spit in the face of god)”—Ace x Reader

themes/tags: yandere, angst, doomed by the narrative, time loop, Madoka Magica au

Everything is dark when you first opened your eyes in the coffin. It all seems familiar: the small direbeast with fire in his ears, the squawking headmage who's flakier than the dandruff of someone's head, and the ginger-haired boy with a heart over his left eye. The ginger-haired boy who speaks to you like he knows you. The ginger-haired boy who seems to hover over you no matter where you go and who you're with. The ginger-haired boy, with a teasing smirk, a gleam in his eyes as he looks at you like you're a ghost. He looks at you like he's done this all before. Like he would do it again and again, every time he helps you get out of trouble. You think if he could, he'd drag God down from the spigot in which they drink their divinity and present it to you in a golden chalice. If just to do what he wants. He acts like he already has.

“Remedies, Poisons, and Other Uses for Medical Herbs: An Apothecary's Guide”—Kalim x Reader

themes/tags: humor, suggestive/lewd humor, potentially smut, episodic storytelling, friends-to-lovers, consorts/courtesans, inspired by the Apothecary Diaries

He only wanted to give you the taste tester position because you needed someone to employ you for your senior internship. Just until a position opened up in his family estate's apothecary! He should've known that you'd eventually be made to do your job, no matter what he said to his parents. Kalim stared at you from the corner of his eye, though based on Jamil's raised eyebrow, he wasn't being as slick as he thought he was. But can you blame him?! You had such a blissful, almost orgasmic look on your face! Was the soup really that good? Licking the broth from your lips, and placing the spoon back in the bowl, you cleared your throat. Drawing the attention of the other taste testers and the nobles at the table, you brought your napkin to your lips. You smiled, something sweet and soft, it made Kalim's heart thump against his chest, as you announced: “This soup, has been poisoned.”

“Two's Company, three's a Crowd, and six is a riot”—Overblot boys x Reader

themes/tags: humor, time travel, fluff, mild angst, happy ending

Malleus and the others were never really sure what to expect from you. After your involvement of the last six overblots (the last, everyone hoped), they all hoped that you wouldn't get into any more trouble. Wishful thinking, on their parts. But honestly, how else were they supposed to react to the 6 different versions of you from the future?! All of them claiming they were married to one of them in their future?! Is it a delightful surprise? Yes, though most of them won't admit it. But now they must discuss, which timeline are they currently in, and who gets to stake their claim in your heart? Perhaps it's time to take advantage and learn from their respective “Yous” how it is they managed to woo you and put that potentiality into reality. Now if only they could find you, current, time-period you, and put some new learned skills into practice… Or: A freak magic accident replaces you with six potential future versions of you that the overblot boys married. Now they learn a bit about, you, themselves, and their future, all while trying to bring you back to present-day (where ever you are).

[juliametzgerart]

I have shared versions of this on other platforms before, so I might as well make a tumblr edition: here some tips for MtG portfolios I gathered and might be interesting for some people who follow me. 1. Since this is a trading card game, here comes the obvious one first: Always keep in mind that these are card illustrations, they have to be readable in super small. Which means that strong silhouettes and value structures are a must have. If you work digital, check the zoomed out version on regular basis, or even have some jpgs to check their thumbnails in your file browser. That can give you an idea about their readability. Traditionally you can of course take some steps back, or take some photographs to look at smaller previews on your devices. Also: print illustrations often come out darker than their screen versions, be careful with your darks! It's rather easy for things to go muddy, even if they look good on screen. In doubt, increase the brightness a bit. It's okay to have different versions for screen and print to meet their needs.

2. Be versatile about your topics and compositions. Zoom in, zoom out. Don't fall into the trap of your own comfort zone zoom level of showing things, or one way of doing things. It can be positive to offer purposefully unusual options.

3. Be aware of the focus. If you have a magician with a staff, ask yourself if the card is about the staff(artifact), the mage (creature) or perhaps even the spell. The composition and focus of the illustration should shift accordingly! Clear action is important for readability – since that is not just visual hierarchy here, but also storytelling. Which brings me to the next point: 4. Good narrative matters, but mechanics matter even more. So, again, be very aware of your illustration's focus. You can potentially add extra elements for the story to make it more fun, but it should not get too convoluted, and even less should it distract from what the card it actually about. If you come up with your very own ideas for a portfolio this is of course much more open than if you work from a description. But you can find a bunch of official MtG descriptions online which are super useful for training.

5. Show care. Plan the illustration, get the references in place. It's the best time to get good habits in place, and really finish the pieces. Don't make them weaker by going too fast, that is not convincing. It just lets people assume worse things for tight deadlines. This does not mean everything needs to be rendered to death - but shape design should remain thoughtful and purposeful even where soft and lost edges are used.

6. It's potentially okay to have your specific stylistic or thematic niche. It can mean less assignments at times, but can also mean more special ones. It's cool though for your voice to be visible as long as the other needs of the product are met.

7. Never stop using those references. Get them, make them, use them - take them seriously. (at least for any of the more realistic styles). It's one of the most repeated tips for any student to actually just use more references. They do a ton to get complicated things like anatomy and lighting right, but also cultural references and versatility. Many of the best Magic artists also make the best references – it's not a coincidence. Learn from the people who have already established themselves, they have great wisdom to share. 8. Your quality has to match the current roster. Yeah, sorry, no way around that one. You need at least to be as good as the currently "worst" artist in the roster to have a chance. And the ADs need to be sure that even on a bad day your art can meet their quality bar. Which is the reason why you likely need several art pieces at the required level, to prove it wasn't just some lucky fluke. Though once you're really there, that also means a bit less pressure to perform, since you're likely comfortable at your skill level and can only go up from there.

[shockyeahmiguelohara]

The post(s) I've seen on my dashboard discussing the explicit and weasel-y language used to describe Miguel O'Hara in the script for Across the Spiderverse, doesn't surprise me.

Doesn't surprise, but otherwise confirms what I was feeling about how they approached the character wasn't at all inaccurate.

And to top it all off, their language towards Gwen Stacy's father, or and cops in general (including Jeff Morales), is couched in the most blatant "good cops, bad apples" sentiment.

And, when you think about the fact that Miguel O'Hara's character was established and lives in a future where all of Nueva York is a Judge Dredd-type police state, and he is routinely attacked by said police? A script calling him an "animal" but asking the audience to capitulate sympathy for Officer Stacy, is some ole bullshit.

These fools really decided that, out of all the Spider-Man affiliated characters to use in their movie about Miles Morales, they were gonna pick the Spider-Man character whose entire narrative was antithetical to their storytelling.

And then on top of that, create a "utopian" Nueva York specifically to cast criticism on Miguel as a character, who is a cop-esque character hunting down a Black teenager.

I've seen the argument that if he'd been characterized as he was in the comics (leaning more towards whiteness than anything), the writer's sympathies might've been for him. I honestly don't think that'd be the case.

In a lot of ways, Miguel's character is defined by the fact that he is Mexican first before he's white. It's like how Miles was advertised as "Half-Black, Half Puerto-Rican" and that colored everything about Miles as a character was approached pre-Into the Spiderverse. Specifically what parts of his character weren't addressed.

I think you can make the argument of how Miguel was initially promoted to the masses in the 90s ("he's not the nice Spider-Man") carried with its some uncomfy ideas about Mexicans and aggression. (And now carries the consequence of allowing certain writers to mishandle him.)

His whiteness is his access to capital (his job, etc), his general outlook, most of which forms so much of his story. Oppositely, his status as "half Mexican" is typically only used or mentioned in passing. A way to highlight the poverty of his dysfunctional family.

(It doesn't have the presence of say, Miles' connection to his culture through his parents and his neighborhood in the Insomniac game and PS5 sequel.)

And then there's his choice of costume (an outfit he modified from a Dia de los Muertos shindig) and sarcastic references to his status as a biracial child.

His being a biracial Mexican man, and the dystopian future he lived in has always been a big component in framing him as the "take no prisoners" Spider-Man legacy character. But, for all the problems that come with how PAD approached in his titles, there was always context for Miguel's actions and his environment.

And I feel like Across the Spiderverse stripped Miguel of that nuance.

It's also why we ended up with Bendis', "Who cares if I'm Black? I'm also half-Puerto Rican!" speech from Miles in the comics back in 2015/2016.

[sungbeam]

𝐟𝐚𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞

spiderman!kim sunwoo x reader (slight eric x reader)

6.7k words, spiderman across the spiderverse au, superhero au, est. relationship au, swearing, spoilers for the atsv movie! but some details of the plot are tweaked to fit my narrative (you'll see that i basically took one of the iconic scenes and put it in writing lol), mentions of death, mild violence, low-key not a full plot..?, kissing, slight angst, BARELY PROOFREAD IT'S LATE I'M SORRY

a/n: apologies in advance for shit poor storytelling in this one 😭 i just wanted to get this idea down and out before i chickened out TT

His name was Kim Sunwoo, and you happened to know his story pretty well. After all, he was Brooklyn's one and only Spiderman.

"AHHH HOLY SHIT—"

You pulled your phone away from your ear with practiced grace as Sunwoo screeched through the speaker. The words from your textbook blurred as your focus drifted completely away from your assignment.

"BABY, I ALMOST GOT HIT BY A BUS."

"Again?" You teased, flipping the page backward to restart your reading. There was no way you were going to be able to get anything done while on call with your boyfriend, especially while he was actively swinging across New York traffic.

You heard his huff over the long blast of a car horn. "Hey! It wasn't even my fault this time; that guy definitely had headphones in, which is totally illegal."

Snickering, you leaned back in your desk chair and peered out the window of your apartment's bedroom at the city beyond. He would probably be here any minute now. "You should go arrest him then. Aren't you Mister Superhero now?"

"Mister Multiversal Superhero," he corrected with a tone that definitely sounded like he had the biggest grin on his face.

You rolled your eyes good naturedly. "Uh-huh. So is Mister Multiversal Superhero almost here or do I have to find another superhero to come rescue me?"

Just as you said this, your eyes spotted a blur of black and red swinging himself around the apartment building at the end of your block. He was steadily making his way to you, as you knew he had been.

"Woah, wait, have you been seeing other superheroes?"

You rested your cheek against your fist as you watched him get closer and closer. "Well, now that we know that there are multiple universes out there, who knows?"

Spiderman landed quietly on the metal railing of your fire escape, hands braced between his legs in the iconic pose. His suit was black and tight to his skin, leaving close to nothing to the imagination and allowing for easy movement. The ensemble was completed by a red spider symbol drawn over his chest, and a black hoodie thrown over the uniform.

Sunwoo gazed at you from behind the white lenses of his mask on the other side of your window. His heart never failed to literally fly out of his body when he saw you look at him like that. "Ma'am, I'm going to need you to open this window up," he coughed in his forced deep voice, even though he knew that you knew exactly who he was. It was all for fun and to see you smile anyway.

You put your mouth near the speaker of your phone. "It's open, tiger."

Oh, dear heavens…

He could have fainted off the fire escape then, backflipped through the air, and landed kur-splat on the Brooklyn sidewalk while still maintaining the hearts in his eyes. He ended the call feeding through his mask's wireless control, before going through the familiar motions of wiggling the locking mechanism, hauling the window up, and slipping inside your bedroom. He was hit with the smell of your soap and your laundry detergent, and took in a lungful of it. This was what home smelled like. It was simple, yet quaint and soft and nothing like the busy, dangerous world outside.

You stood from your desk chair and walked into his embrace as he shot his web shooters at the window shutter strings and yanked your shutters down and closed. "Show off," you mused, wrapping one arm around his shoulders and using the other to gently pull the mask up and off his lower face.

"Only for you." His pouty lips smiled, and his arms came around your form. "Hi baby."

"Hi tiger." You grazed your thumb over his lips. "Everything okay today?"

"Mhm," he hummed, rubbing his lips together. "You're not gonna take the rest of the mask off?" He chuckled.

"I kind of like you like this."

"I knew it; is this what you use me for? You only love me for my—mmmh!" You shut him up as you yanked him over to you and drew his mouth to yours in a proper greeting kiss. He melted into you with a soft moan, hands cradling you at your waist and lower back as your fronts melded together.

When you both pulled back, Sunwoo took the opportunity to tear his mask off and shove the garment into the pocket of his jacket. The two of you shared a grin.

"So, I hear you're in need of rescu—"

BONK!

You and Sunwoo froze at the sound of the metal railing outside your window rattling, followed by a swear and a familiar-sounding voice hissing, "Ow!"

Sunwoo's smile slipped into an annoyed frown as he yanked the shutter string to send the shutter flying upward. The motion revealed a young man perched where Sunwoo had been just a couple of minutes ago, except in less of the classic Spiderman pose, and more of a one-foot-balance-act situation. The newcomer wore a costume in dark red and black, but a larger percentage of red than Sunwoo's red spider. He rubbed his forehead furiously from where Sunwoo guessed he had hit his head on the fire escape for the apartment above yours.

The thought made him break his irritated expression and laugh. "Changmin hyung, do you just suck at aiming or something?"

The scarlet spider's white eyes narrowed slightly, and he simply held the place where his head hurt. "Hey, you try swinging around in an alternate New York City! Your universe is similar enough to mine, but I feel like everything's been moved, like, an inch to the left. Absolutely ridiculous."

You smiled in amusement, too, taking a step back to settle down in your desk chair again while Sunwoo leaned against the wall next to the window and poked his head out. "Welcome to Earth 412, I guess," you chuckled.

The alternate Spider man made a little waving motion with his hand. "Yeah, thanks, Yn. You know, it's so weird being back here."

"Why are you back?" Sunwoo asked. "As much as I enjoy you cockblocking me—" He hissed as you delivered a swift kick to his shin, "—yah! Okay, okay, I'm sorry!—Sangyeon hyung only said to use the watches when called for." He gestured to the sleek, black watch wrapped around his left wrist. It was a way to communicate between universes, as well as perform a variety of different tasks, one of them being traveling from universe to universe, as well.

Changmin, the spider of Earth 115, sighed and scratched the back of his head. "Well, I actually came to warn you."

Sunwoo tensed. "Huh?"

"Sangyeon's going to call you in soon."

"Oh, okay. I don't exactly see why you would need to warn me about that."

Changmin shook his head. "No, you don't—I can't… really tell you. Not here." His eyes flickered over to you, who sat listening intently. You and Sunwoo exchanged glances, and then Sunwoo looked back to his friend.

"Don't be held up on my account," you piped up in an attempt to lighten the mood. You stood and planted a kiss on Sunwoo's cheek. "Go do what you boys need to do."

Sunwoo smiled at you, grabbing your hand to give it a squeeze, before donning his mask once more. "I'll be back for dinner," he called back to you as he slipped out onto the fire escape with Changmin.

Your laugh rang in his ears as he swung away. "I'll hold you to it!"

Sunwoo grabbed onto the fire escape above yours to give him a swinging start, fingers triggering the firing mechanism of his web shooters as he defied gravity. With a WAHOO!, he slipped through the New York City skies, Changmin following closely after him. There was a place Sunwoo had in mind where the two of them could speak in private, without worry of anyone else eavesdropping or seeing them.

Behind the massive billboard face of Nike's most recent Air Jordans release, the two spider people landed near silent onto the cement rooftop. Sunwoo hopped up onto the railing behind the billboard, holding his arms as he walked across the beam with no problems. Changmin climbed up next to him, leaning against the end pole.

"So what's this all about?" Sunwoo asked above the cacophony of New York below.

Changmin crossed his arms. "You know when we recruited you?"

He stopped, turning to face his friend. "Yeah, what about it?" Sunwoo had been recruited to Sangyeon's team of multiversal spider people several months ago, when a particle collider in his universe threatened to dismantle the entirety of space and time as you knew it. When Sunwoo had stopped the collider from being restarted the first time, the resulting test had brought a handful of multiversal spiders crashing into Earth 412. It had been a mind blowing experience to learn about the multiverse, and that, for once, he wasn't actually alone.

He finally met people who understood him. He didn't have to carry the weight of this all by himself.

"We didn't tell you everything." There was a tension in his friend's shoulders and posture as he said this.

Sunwoo eyed him with trepidation and let out a nervous laugh. "What—what does that even mean?"

A tingling sensation erupted in Sunwoo's head, and both he and Changmin's focus whipped over toward the rooftop below where a large orange portal appeared. It felt as if it had torn a hole through the air, shoving its vacuum-like opening through the world. Sunwoo's heart leapt into his throat; it looked like he was about to find out from the man himself.

He briefly heard Changmin's curse disappear in the wind, and the two spiders leapt off the beams to meet the others coming through the portal to greet them.

Through the portal came one other, a Spiderman dressed in dark crimson and gold, a gold colored slab of lightweight metal attached to his back where four robotic metal legs would emerge when summoned. His helmet retracted, folding inwards on itself like that of a gradient—nano technology, as the wearer, Chanhee of Earth 426, had explained to Sunwoo when they first met.

"Did you tell him?" Chanhee asked Changmin.

The scarlet spider gave a brief shake of his head. "Nope," he said. Sunwoo could hear the disappointment in his tone.

"Told you coming earlier would've been better," Chanhee replied, inclining his head as he turned back to step into the portal, a silent beckon for them to follow.

Sunwoo exchanged glances with Changmin. "It's nice to see you too, hyung," Sunwoo teased.

Chanhee sent a look back to Sunwoo just before he stepped fully into the vortex portal. "You won't be saying that pretty soon."

He didn't have time to question any of this interaction, absolutely none. His brain ran wild with possibilities as he followed Changmin and Chanhee back to Earth 114. There was a sinking feeling in his gut… something he didn't even need his spider sense to tell him. Maybe he should have told you he wouldn't make it back for dinner after all.

The New York of Earth 114 was home to the headquarters of the multiversal spiders called the Spider Society. It didn't matter how many times Sunwoo saw it with his own eyes, he could never take the awe out of his mouth. His lips parted in wonder as he passed by criss crossing pathways slicing to his left, right, and above and below him. Spider-beings passed by him in masses, all ranging in different varieties from their own diverse universes.

His friends walked ahead of him whilst making quiet conversation with one another, though it seemed like a hushed argument. That was why he refrained from butting in; something made him stay out of it. He didn't know why he feared what came ahead. For once, it wasn't his head saying it; it was his gut.

The scarlet and iron spider were leading him deeper into headquarters to where the shadows ran darker and the machinery ran faster. They passed by Chanhee's usual workstation where he manned the Go Home Machine, the device that scanned a being's target DNA and sent them back from where they came. Usually it was meant for Anomalies, beings that managed to crawl through the cracks between universes and ended up in one that would not be able to sustain them. Usually.

Instead of Chanhee manning the helm, however, there were a couple other spiders Sunwoo didn't recognize trying to labor over it and watch the machine do its thing. Maybe they were his protégés?

"Hey! You guys aren't teenagers; keep an eye on it, would you?" Chanhee barked at the spiders there, who immediately jolted into action.

Chanhee shook his head with an aggravated sigh. "This is what happens when people can't do what they're supposed to." He sent Changmin a pointed look, to which the latter pointedly ignored.

Sunwoo raised a hand in greeting as a few of his other friends passed by. "Hey guys!"

"Sup man," Kevin, Earth 223's resident Spider, exclaimed back in a wave. He, Juyeon, and Haknyeon all seemed to be headed out somewhere together, most likely on an assignment of their own. There were a couple others who Sunwoo had yet to see just yet, but he had a feeling that was about to be remedied.

They passed all the way into the inner lair, a large tunnel space that opened up into a taller tower-like area, housing a floating platform that acted as an office space of sorts. Navy blue light shone through the skylight at the very top of the tower, washing all of the specimens below it in that cool toned filter.

"—just a kid, Sangyeon."

"I've already made up my mind. Don't fight me on this, Jacob. He's already here."

Sunwoo swallowed at the sound of the distinct voices; he had a sneaking suspicion that the he Sangyeon and Jacob were referring to was him. He fidgeted with the watch on his wrist, trying desperately to calm his palpitating heart.

Changmin and Chanhee led him to the edge of the dark tunnel to peer up into the blue tower office. "We brought him," Chanhee said, his voice echoing against the tower walls.

The raised platform began to slowly make its descent, and Sunwoo gradually saw the spiders located onboard. There was Jacob of Earth 530 with his black uniform and pale yellow accents; and then there was Sangyeon of Earth 114, this Earth, with his broad shoulders fitted in a blue and red costume, a spider on the back that looked closer to fangs rather than the insect itself. Sangyeon was different from most of the spiders here—he was self-made, in the way that he had to continually inject himself with this red shit that made Sunwoo squirm in order to retain his powers… at least, that was what Changmin told him.

When the platform had lowered enough to fully view Sangyeon and Jacob but not enough for it to reach the ground, the two executives turned to face their guests.

"Hi hyungs," Sunwoo greeted, attempting to force the nerves out of his voice.

Jacob shot him a sunshine-like smile. "Hello Sunwoo. Nice to see you." He jabbed Sangyeon in the side with his elbow, urging the eldest to make his greeting.

Sangyeon's stony expression did not change. "Do you know why you're here?"

Jacob made an exasperated face, but said nothing else.

Sunwoo swallowed. "No sir. I'm guessing it's not for tteokbokki."

From beside him, he heard Chanhee snort and had to turn his head away to laugh.

Sangyeon merely lifted an unamused brow. He silently walked off the platform and landed on the ground floor with ease. Jacob followed swiftly after him. "When we first recruited you—and I use that term loosely—" He narrowed his eyes at Changmin in nod to his unconventionally forceful method of getting Sunwoo onto the team, "—we failed to mention something to you."

"I've pieced that much together," Sunwoo said, hand reaching up to cup the back of his head.

"Do you know what we're all connected by?" The blue and red spider asked. "Not simply by the names or insect we represent, but the destinies, the canon events written into our very DNA."

Sunwoo cracked his knuckles, heart kick-starting in his chest again like it was chugging up the incline of a rollercoaster. "What… what do you mean by canon?"

"A canon event is something like a pattern. It's a solidified event in your life, Sunwoo—in all of our lives." Sangyeon activated something with his watch, and the room was engulfed in a living hologram of orange. Lines zigzagged amongst each other like the connected dots, and Sangyeon expanded them with a flourish, revealing a familiar lineup of spider people to whom Sunwoo was acquainted with.

The lights of the hologram cut across the shadows of Sangyeon's face like a nightmare. "We're all made who we are by these canon events. Each spider being from each verse is shackled to the death of a mentor figure—"

Scenes of uncles and fathers being murdered flashed before Sunwoo's widened eyes, his body going slack at seeing his own uncle's dying breath leave his body. He couldn't even figure out what to say or think; his tongue had gone heavy in his mouth, words stringing together as slow and thick as wet sand. He couldn't breathe, all of a sudden. His uncle's eyes lost the light in them, they dimmed and dimmed and dimmed—hadn't it been all his fault? Couldn't he have been there to stop the robber?

"—and the death of one Captain or his… child."

More hunched over figures, one after the other, blood, tears, death—why was this being shown to him? Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes. Wait—did he just say Captain or his child?

"What," blew out of Sunwoo's mouth, breathlessly. "Wait, are you saying that—that Yn, my Yn, or her father is supposed to die?"

Sangyeon didn't answer immediately, but instead said gravely, "Canon events must happen, Sunwoo, or the fate of that world would be at stake. It would implode in on itself and destroy millions of innocent lives."

Sunwoo felt his heart rate spike, head whipping around to Jacob, to Changmin, to Chanhee. He imagined his eyes looked wild. "You're telling me she's going to die? Or her father—and, and what? What's the point of telling me all this?"

He couldn't let you die. He couldn't bear that devastation—not without at least trying to save you or your dad.

"When?" He huffed, fingers diving into his hair, mask fisted in one of his hands. "When is this happening?" He demanded.

A beat. "Three days."

Everything went quiet… and then the sound came rushing back in like a tidal wave crashing toward the shoreline.

"I have to save them—"

Jacob's voice cut in. "Sangyeon," like a warning.

But Sangyeon shook his head. "Oh no you don't."

Blood thundered in Sunwoo's ears as he yanked his mask back over his head and made a dash for the exit, only to have an orange, crystalline cage trap him in his place. Panic clambered into the dregs of his throat, suffocating suffocating suffocating…

"Sangyeon!"

"Sangyeon, don't do this!"

"He's just a fucking kid—!"

The world was spinning, and Sunwoo grunted as he punched and assaulted the cage walls, his friends pressing up against the outside and attempting to break through, too. "LET ME OUT!"

There were deep shadows beneath Sangyeon's eyes and he watched on with little to no sympathy. "It's for the good of the multiverse, Sunwoo. You'll understand someday."

Sunwoo bared his teeth. "You can't fucking expect me to not fight you on this."

"It will only be for a few days."

"Fuck you!" The amounting rage in Sunwoo's veins accumulated in a mass of electricity, and he forced that energy out at the force fields trapping him in. He screwed his eyes shut, arms swinging over his face, as he protected himself from the blast. When the cage shattered and blew his colleagues backward, Sunwoo wasted no time in sprinting down the hall.

An enraged roar followed after him—a web shooting past Sunwoo's face—not to grab Sunwoo, but instead to rip the watch right off his wrist.

He swore under his breath as he tripped over a piece of metal, cursing even more as he racked his brain for a way to get back to his earth.

"Bring me Kim Sunwoo," Sangyeon's voice boomed throughout the Spider Society's headquarters, accompanied by whirring red apocalypse lights, "don't let the Anomaly go home."

Anomaly—?

But Sunwoo had little time to dwell on that choice label as he slid through a closing doorway, nearly missing another spider's web flinging at his face.

"Okay, Sunwoo," he said aloud to himself as he emerged into the main quad area. It was bright out here, and hundreds of spider beings milled about like they were all at one massive Spider convention.

"He is an Anomaly, and considered armed and dangerous."

"Oh, shut the fuck up!" Sunwoo cried in distress, aiming his web shooter for one of the high rafters as everyone in the room set their eyes on him.

Dodging skilled versions of himself was not the easiest task, and he weaved through the masses like something akin to a thread through the eye of a needle.

He dared not look back as he crashed through one of the windows of the society headquarters and went soaring down into Earth 114's main city. The city itself was a funnel dive, forcing Sunwoo to zip his limbs to his side and thread the needle through multiple layers of hover transportation and floating roads. Cars were turned up on their sides and he nearly hit his head on a dozen traffic lights.

"Get him!"

"This guy is everywhere!" Sunwoo groaned as he leapt from hood to hood, eyes scanning for a place to duck into and hide. The tingling sensation in his brain was ever-present, and kept him well informed of the encroaching Lee Sangyeon.

"AHHH FUCK!" He screeched, forcefully diving off the side of the road. A long, screeching honk echoed after him. "It's always the buses!"

The level below became a labyrinth of metal rafters and pipes. Steam blew out from unseen origins, but provided the perfect cover for Sunwoo to slip through and catch his breath. He pressed his back up against one of the cool, metal bars, his fingers pressing against his eyes in an attempt to keep the tears at bay.

His heart was five palpitations from clearing his ribcage at this point. He needed a plan—he had to have a—

"What the—" Web slapped against his back and yanked him into an abandoned alcove, "—shit!"

Sunwoo groaned as he crashed to the hard ground, furiously rubbing his tailbone after the impact. He glanced up and met Changmin's eyes, who kneeled down beside him.

"Before you go all rage on me," Changmin said and held up his palms in surrender, "just hear me out, okay?"

Sunwoo's chest rose and fell rapidly. He narrowed his eyes on his friend whose face was hidden behind his own mask. "Yeah, okay… fine," he huffed, "but only… only because—" he staggered, climbing to his feet, "I need to catch my breath."

Changmin cocked his head as if he didn't believe that. "Ohh-kay whatever you say." But even as he said this, he still kept his hands out as if placating a hungry lion. "Sunwoo, I know it's a lot to take in—"

"Yeah, no shit," he spat. Fear spiked in his chest, so hard that it was experiencing a heart attack each time. His uncle's death replayed in his head over and over—but now your eyes, draining of life, joined that visual. It was enough to make dread weigh in the pit of his stomach, an anchor that dragged him down. And yet, the adrenaline was still there, the instinct to do something about it.

His friend suddenly tugged his mask off, revealing his face and mess of curls glistening in sweat and worry. "Hey man, I know it's scary and I know that it is unfair—"

"Hyung, he wants me to let them die!"

"It's to save lives, Sunwoo!"

"So you would let your own significant other die? Even if you have the foresight to save them?" Sunwoo scoffed in disbelief. "You would leave their life or their father's life to whatever bullshit—a canon event—dictated?"

Changmin's brows furrowed and he swallowed. "It is not that simple."

"It sounds pretty damn crystal clear to me."

His friend inched toward him. "We're all mad about it, Sunwoo—devastated, destroyed, even. It's not something easy to digest—and, and I admit that I haven't even fully digested it myself. It's not something I've really… I've really thought about."

Sunwoo stared into Changmin's eyes as if he could peer right into his soul. There was pain in Changmin's voice, a sort of tension that he could identify with. A tension that was human. Sunwoo's hands shook. "Changmin—" he exhaled, "—Changmin, I'm scared."

There was that sheen of compassion in Changmin's eyes as he planted his hands on either of Sunwoo's shoulders. "It's okay. You're gonna be okay. I got you."

And for a second, Sunwoo believed that.

Beep beep beep… Both heads whipped toward the watch on Changmin's wrist. "Target acquired. Changmin, we are heading toward you now." Sangyeon.

Betrayal ripped through Sunwoo, a strike of lightning, and he tore away from Changmin, stumbling and knees shaking. The latter gaped at him, then the watch on his wrist, mouth open like a gaping fish. "I—I swear to god, I didn't know it could do that—!"

It was no use. Sunwoo didn't have the time to entertain what ifs—he launched himself out of the alcove just as the walls crashed inward with the arrival of backup.

Think, Sunwoo, think!

Sunwoo furiously stumbled, clambered, whipped himself up and through vehicles screaming toward him and at him. His ears rang with the echoes of their horns, along with the distant (but encroaching) sound of Sangyeon's voice.

Why was keeping Sunwoo at bay so important? There was no way that stopping two people from being murdered would cause a rift in the space-time continuum. He couldn't be that important in the grand scheme of things—?

A hand grappled his ankle and Sunwoo yelped.

"Kid, you're making a mistake!" Sangyeon yelled above the cacophony of traffic raging all around them.

Sunwoo, heart beat tittering on the brink of collapse from the jumpscare, held firm to the hood of the SUV headed up and out of the main city. He peered under him, where Sangyeon stood just below, his hand stopping Sunwoo from going any further.

"You have nowhere to run, you know."

Sunwoo knew. God, he knew. "How could you step aside and let them die?" He exclaimed with his whole chest. He couldn't bear the thought.

A muscle feathered in Sangyeon's jaw. "You would choose the life of one person over millions? You're too young to understand, Sunwoo."

Youth, that was always the fucking argument, huh? Sunwoo's lip curled in disdain. "Just because you couldn't save whoever in your past doesn't mean that I—can't!" With the last word, he stomped Sangyeon's hand away with his other foot and flung himself further up to the next vehicle.

He heard the growl of rage behind him as he scrambled to swing himself up to the next thing. He slammed his fingers against his web shooter, spitting web fluid against the wind berating him at anything, literally anything it could catch.

When it caught onto something, he went flying with it—soaring up toward the sun on the high-speed train.

A flurry of spiders followed swiftly after him as Sunwoo continued his climb. Heart pounding, he gasped for air at this altitude, head twisting backward to catch a glimpse of how he had done so far.

You have nowhere to run, you know.

Well, Sunwoo didn't have to run anywhere. He just had to get far enough.

Sangyeon was the closest on his tail, his teeth bared, and for the first time, Sunwoo could see the threatening gleam of his razor-sharp canines. He made one massive leap up to where Sunwoo was, yanking down on his legs, clawing at his back. Sunwoo kicked his legs out in an attempt to fling him off—shot web fluid in Sangyeon's eyes, but it only seemed to irritate him even further.

Sunwoo cursed as he rolled out of the way of an incoming punch, cursing again when Sangyeon fisted the material of hoodie and pulled him into his grasp, predator meeting prey.

Sangyeon grasped him by the back of the head and slammed his face into the metal— "Maybe I should just get rid of you," he growled into Sunwoo's ear as the latter tried desperately to swing out of this hold, "you weren't even supposed to exist anyway."

Something foreign tugged at Sunwoo's chest. "Man, you gotta stop talking in riddles—!"

He pressed his side against the train car and horse-kicked Sangyeon's lower waist as hard as he possibly could. As if it happened in slow motion, he watched Sangyeon lose his grip and fumble to stay on board the train, but it was enough.

Sunwoo dove straight off the metro and headed straight for the now abandoned headquarters, hands jamming into the pockets of his hoodie and catching the wind to slow his fall. Wind roared through his ears, muffling the sound of Sangyeon's pure irritation as the older spider no doubt dove after him. Sunwoo's eyes zeroed in on his desired landing place, cradling his head with his arms to soften the impact.

The window shattered on impact—he tucked, rolled, and ran.

This time, he willed himself to turn invisible to the eye, even heightened spider eyes. His brain scrambled as he made a mad dash for the Go Home machine. It was somewhere around here—which damn hallway was it in—?!

"Where did he go?" Sunwoo heard from down one open corridor, which made him crawl up onto the ceiling and remain there until he got to his desired location. It hadn't been Sangyeon, but all of his friends had been chasing after him just the same.

He couldn't trust anyone.

Steeling his resolve, Sunwoo leapt off the ceiling and played around with the controls, dancing around the control panel and trying desperately not to panic. He couldn't have possibly run for an infinite amount of time; he only needed to buy himself time to use the one other option he had to get back home.

"Fuck fuck fuck," he muttered to himself when the monitor began playing a very loud song out of the speakers. But it was too late, even as his hand slammed down on the button to mute it.

"SOMEBODY'S PLAYING MY BALLROOM EXTRAVAGANZA." Yep, definitely a Chanhee playlist.

Sunwoo felt the sweat trickle down his spine—but then he swiped his way through controls and somehow managed to hit gold.

"Sequence initializing," announced the machine, and Sunwoo could have screamed with delight and relief.

That was, if he wasn't currently being hunted.

Still shrouded in his invisibility, Sunwoo swung himself onto the steel platform poised at the center of the massive chamber past the control board. A metal arm emerged from the side of the board, an amber orange light scanning over his form.

Chanhee and Changmin barreled into the room, going straight for the control board having yet seen Sunwoo on the platform.

"What's happening?" Changmin cried out as he gripped the edge of the railing, his eyes whipping between the platform and the computer.

Chanhee's two arms and mechanical spider limbs worked furiously to override the sequence. "I don't know!" He grunted. "It's not listening to me!"

"DNA match found. Go Home sequence, commencing."

Sunwoo's physical appearance materialized on the platform just as the machine arm began crafting a crystalline-like webbing around him from the ground up. When both Changmin and Chanhee saw him there, Sunwoo's arm raised, fingers poised over his web shooter trigger.

"Don't stop me," he said, forcing power into his voice. He was trying hard to not let his knees shake right now.

His friends gaped up at him. "Sunwoo, you can't—"

"WHAT'RE YOU DOING? STOP HIM!" And just like that, Sangyeon and company rushed into the chamber like a stampede of buffalo, the former of which going straight for the platform Sunwoo was on.

55% completion.

The crystal had just finished encasing Sunwoo in its cocoon, and Sunwoo yelled as Sangyeon slammed against the outside.

He flinched back. "Just let me go home! I want to go home!" He cried out, hugging his hands to his chest.

Sangyeon beat at the outside with his fist, at first, doing nothing to the crystal—but when it began to crack, Sunwoo's heart dropped clean into the pit of his stomach. "You know why you can't," the man grunted, rearing his fist back to land another solid CRACK to the cocoon, "I have to save the multiverse, and you're in my goddamn way."

75% completion.

"Just leave me alone!" Sunwoo shot back, then backed up against the opposite side of the capsule as Sangyeon's arm cracked through.

90% completion.

He cursed, feet scrambling against the platform as he tried to stay out of Sangyeon's reach.

"You're gonna regret—"

Sunwoo didn't catch the end of Sangyeon's sentence, though he could probably guess what it was. He felt the familiar, yet somehow alien, suction of the vacuum portal. One second, Sangyeon was breaking his fist against the crystal cocoon, and the next, Sunwoo was gone.

Sunwoo emerged in New York to a glorious late afternoon and fell straight out of that saturated, blue sky. He swore colorfully as he just managed to shoot his webs up at the nearest building and swing himself to safety. He landed on the edge of a rooftop, but he couldn't find the Air Jordan billboard he'd been at earlier.

But he noted Time Square just a few blocks down from him, and a few buildings he recognized from central New York City.

"Get to Yn," he muttered to himself, breath heaving as his heart palpitated in his chest. He determined the direction he had to go in, then began making the trek across the city.

His first priority was to find you, to warn you. He didn't know what or how the canon event would play out, but he desperately needed to make sure you and your dad were okay. You had to be okay—

Tears stung at the corners of his eyes as he narrowly missed another screaming bus, turning the corner to your apartment. The sun was sinking into the horizon now, casting an eerie, blood orange tint across the skyline.

He could barely get his thoughts in order: you, your dad, dead, alone, alone, alone.

As he neared your apartment, he could recognize your silhouette in the window as you hunched over your desk, no doubt studying hard as usual. A smile crept onto his face, a giddiness only you caused, sending a jolt of energy down his spine. He was relieved to be in your arms again soon, maybe even in time for dinner—

Wait.

He paused, web latching onto the fire escape above yours like usual, you never had sheer curtains. They were always shutters—

An internal alarm in his head screamed.

A blur of red and blue crashed into Sunwoo's body, sensing him and the body that tackled him, straight to the alley below. For a split second, he panicked at the thought of Sangyeon already finding him so soon, but it didn't take long for him to realize that… this wasn't Sangyeon.

He and his blue and red assailant wrestled on the floor of the alley, throwing punches that missed, ripping webbing from their eyes—Sunwoo swore as the other guy kneed him in the stomach and pinned his wrists and knees down.

"Who the fuck are you?"

Sunwoo's eyes widened as he came face to face with himself, but red and blue in all the weird places. There were silverish lines criss crossing across his suit mimicking the lines of a spider's web. This guy didn't sound like him though… He glared. "Who are you?"

With a surge of courage, he whipped his forehead upward and straight into his opponent's, sending him cursing and scrambling away.

Sunwoo wasn't in much better shape either, but though his forehead throbbed, he forced himself to his feet.

He and this… alternate Spiderman stood across from each other, walking in a tantalizingly slow circle, assessing the other. It felt awfully familiar, this experience; maybe he'd seen it in a meme somewhere.

"I'm Spiderman," Red and Blue drawled out slowly, carefully. His head cocked to the side. "Who are you?"

Sunwoo froze. "I'm Spiderman."

Red and Blue Spiderman stopped short. The white eyes of his mask narrowed. "Who sent you? Osborne? Doc Ock?"

Sunwoo made a face. "Who?" What was a Doc Ock...

"And what the hell do you want with Y—I-I mean, that… uh, that random girl in the apartment?" Red and Blue scratched the back of his head awkwardly as he stammered out a cover-up.

"Nice one," Sunwoo deadpanned. Then, as the information marinated in his head and the cogs in his brain began to turn, a realization dawned on him… and it filled him with pure terror.

Red and Blue must have sensed Sunwoo's dread. "What? Got nothing to say now? How about I—"

"What Earth is this?" Sunwoo blurted, head swiveling to and fro to find some kind of indication that he hadn't just royally screwed up. He shot a web up to the top of the nearest apartment building and swung himself up.

Red and Blue blinked. "Huh?" He swiftly followed after him. "Dude, dunno what rock you crawled out from under, but there's only one Earth in this solar system. You learn that shit in first grade." When he landed on the rooftop, he trailed after Sunwoo, who was busy soaking the skyline around him with a new pair of eyes.

Everything looked relatively the same.

It all smelled the same.

"—as always, this is your daily reminder to keep your eyes peeled for the Spider Menace!—" Sunwoo tracked that awfully annoying voice broadcasting from an electronic billboard more than a few blocks to the west. Featured on the screen was an older man with salt and pepper hair, and a mustache shaped like a broom. His face looked like one of those that were trapped in a perpetual state of irritation.

He made a face. "Who the fuck…"

Red and Blue made a guttural sound of disgust. "J. Jonah Jameson. My absolute best bud."

Sunwoo's head turned toward him. "People don't like you here?"

A snort. "I wish. Tough crowd, I guess."

Sunwoo pursed his lips into a small frown, but nodded. He could relate to that. The authorities and public had mixed views of him, especially at the start of his career. Even if he aimed to save people every time, he couldn't exactly pay for all of the damages done to buildings and structures and… well, people.

"You're not from here, are you?" Red and Blue said after a moment.

The dread, the panic, the fear, was beginning to creep into his nerves again. Sunwoo cracked his knuckles, trying to wrack his brain for next moves. Anything, anything. "Yeah," was all he could voice. Reality was a quicksand he was sinking into, deeper and deeper.

"I'm guessing that doesn't mean you're from LA, does it?"

Sunwoo laughed, but it was a sad sound. "I wish. No, it's more like… a different universe."

"So... you have your own Yn in that universe?"

Sunwoo swallowed. "Yeah."

His colleague gave a small nod, unable to find anything to say to soothe Sunwoo's nerves. There was so much trembling in his voice, his fingers, his knees…

From out of his periphery, Sunwoo spotted a hand extended out to him. "Well, since it seems we're both spider people—I'm Eric."

Sunwoo glanced from the hand offered and the red and blue mask, eyes locked on him expectantly. He clasped Eric's hand. "Sunwoo."

With a firm shake, Eric said, "Well Sunwoo, how about we find a way to get you home, huh?"

He hadn't even realized tears had dampened the fabric of his mask until he sniffled. Sunwoo released a shaky breath, eyes wandering back to the skyline that had looked so close to his, but was now a complete foreign entity. He had less than three days to get back home to you with seemingly no way back at all.

a/n: honestly unsure of a sequel lol but it would be cool to explore eric's spidey universe

tbz m.list

permanent taglist: @crazywittysassy @seomisaho @stopeatread @enhacolor @rnjfy @jaehunnyy @kpopjackie @spiderrenjunfics @soobin-chois @stayarmytinyzenmoa-l @mingiholic @ja4hyvn @vatterie @yogurteume @ethereal-engene @hyunjaespresent-deobi @justalildumpling @hongyangi @pxppxrmint @nerdypastacalzonespy @miusgirl @zhaixiaowen @wtfhyuck @winterchimez @sodafy @fluorescentloves @tinkerbell460 @kflixnet @gyulfriend

[scintillyyy]

I love your Stephanie Brown post. It verbalized this feeling I've had about her character for awhile but didn't quite know how to phrase.

Just wanted to thank you for that!

ah thank you <3

yea to me, the super frustrating thing is that dixon's sexism gives her flaws that i find super narratively compelling and interesting and 3-dimensional and overall strong in a way that other writers somewhat miss the mark for me (i actually have a lot of criticisms about bg2009 and how bqm wrote her--overall i find it a very surface level girl power story veneered over pretty standard 2009 era sexism wrt the dynamics between women that has not aged super well and doesn't do much for actually giving steph interesting depth as a character & i find it's weakened by the fact that it is a doylist apology for the absolutely horrific way editorial treated steph prior to her death (which. she does deserve an apology and to be treated better), but also by doing that it makes almost every other character such as babs seem unreasonable and bad for their very understandable watsonian response to being wary of steph for many valid reasons and also makes it hard to actually give steph any flaws that aren't just quirky or clumsy--she's not perfect because she's adorkable). dixon steph has so many problems, being written by dixon, but she's truly my favorite flavor of steph because despite how horrid dixon is, you can absolutely tell how much he truly cared about her as a character. like. i bet if you asked him, he would have nothing but positive things to say about her personality and other characteristics. in fact, i believe a lot of the letters to the editor that talked about her back in the early robin issues had a lot of super positive things to say about her! like he created her! she's his blorbo! he wants to put her through the struggles!

like so many of her struggles when he's writing her is so much due to his sexism (she's never quite as competent as tim, and shouldn't be because she's The Girlfriend--compare to characters like babs and dinah and helena that were women but also written as extremely competent and good at what they do) and also because he wanted to put her through the wars, give her adversity to overcome! like steph is treated horribly a lot. by everyone. but it's partially because he wants her to perservere through it because he likes her and wants her to succeed. like a couple of very common threads through dixon's storytelling for her are the following:

tim is condescending (because that's how boys and girls are. see also: every 90s tv show that had a beleaguered sensible man with a nagging, over the top, ridiculous woman who does silly things that the man Puts Up With) -> steph gets mad -> tim thinks to himself that he shouldn't be so hard on her and usually apologizes -> well, actually tim was probably right because steph did get into trouble but steph making constant mistakes isn't actually narratively seen as "hey, maybe she should stop if she's making mistakes" because dixon wants her to continue.

or

more experienced vigilante (male or female--tim gets a lot of flack, but honestly, almost every single vigilante in batbooks at the time seemed to think steph wasn't quite good enough--batman, dick had his reservations about her, barbara didn't really necessarily want to train her, *cass* straight up told her she shouldn't be doing this, dinah didn't want to be her mentor, etc) tells steph not to screw up -> steph screws up -> steph has to get bailed out by more experienced vigilante -> steph keeps trying despite this

like so many of her diary entries that steph writes involve some flavor of "i've been told not to do this, but i have to, it's something i need to do despite all the naysayers". and it's sexist! because chuck wouldn't necessarily write the 'screw up and overconfident which usually leads to needing to be bailed out but keeps trying anyways' kind of a narrative for a male lead character (male characters get the 'i'm super competent but insecure/humble about it and when i make mistakes i'm able to figure out how to fix them by myself' narrative). but at the same time, it's what he truly believed for her--that she deserved to keep going despite any naysayers. if he truly believed that steph shouldn't be a vigilante or thought poorly of her, she would have been written out and/or he would have written her as making a mistake so bad she wouldn't have continued her activities as spoiler and finally agreed with everyone that she's not cut out for this. but he didn't. dixon writes her as not as competent as her peers because he has a worldview where girls are lesser and not capable of being as good as the boys. but he writes her with dogged determination to keep trying despite this because dixon truly thinks she deserves to keep going despite any mistakes he writes her making and that her perseverance should be rewarded.

like consider the arc where steph finds out tim's identity. dixon makes steph seem unreasonable for daring to change her mind and realize that yea, she does want to know the boy under the mask she's dating after all (because dixon thinks that girls are fickle and change their minds and boys shouldn't have to put up with that kind of nonsense behavior, not because this is a super valid thing to want) -> he has her go beat up an innocent boy named tito and stalk him in the hospital (because dixon is a sexist who things girls are just like this) -> tim does rightfully get mad about this and leaves in a huff -> batman tells steph tim's identity and she gets what she wanted?? -> tim is mad at her and batman until JLL when this is all swept under the rug and they go back to happily dating again + at this point everyone is open to training her/finally giving her a chance (until murderer/fugitive when she gets locked out again--which also leads into the era where dixon is no longer writing her--and after this is when we really get a lot of the really iconic unfair treatment towards her because at this point didio wanted her gone). and it creates this absolute interesting dissonance where you can see the overt sexism in dixon's writing and it's infuriating. and at the same time dixon also rewards her for the sexist way he writes her and she does generally get what she wants because dixon wants to give her the reward for her perseverance.

hell, consider the pregnancy storyline which is beyond overtly sexist and conservative but is probably the part where steph is most treated the best/in the right. tim and her mom are shown as in the wrong compared to her "correct" decision to keep the baby and they have to come around to support her. not just that, but for her to be given a teen pregnancy storyline in the 90s and not be shown as a Bad Girl for getting pregnant as a teen? dixon hates women and yet to him steph is a good girl who makes a mistake (something something he'll judge others, but when it comes to his daughter that's a different case. exceptions apply.) and she gets an ultimately supportive good boy boyfriend who helps her go to birthing class despite the fact that i'm sure dixon looks down on unwed teen mothers a lot.

it's just. i want to study it under a microscope. there's so much to unpack there.

[so-that-was-okay]

"Tommy was homophobic and racist, and now he's Buck's love interest?!"

Yes. Life it not a perfectly smooth line. Real life is not a friends to lovers 200k words fanfic you pour your wholesome fantasies into. For many people, life sucks then sometimes, it gets better.

I know it's tempting to say that Tommy was an asshole before the writers decided to change his narrative, and it's an important discussion to have. Because at first he kinda was, for what we could see. Though they only showed the 118 back then with 2 probies, Chim and Hen, so we don't even know how it would have gone with a white cishet probie.

But if you're dead set on thinking Tommy didn't change, or just conveniently changed, you really need to meet more people outside of people your age, your social circle and your fandoms.

A scared closeted person, and especially a man, will not hesitate a single second to over perform as a "real dude" and use any kind of discrimination as a defense mechanism and to fit the mold. Tommy was evolving in a very white and macho environment. The 118 was a real white boys club. Survival is also about being able to hide in plain sight and sometimes it means acting like the worst to make sure people see the character and not what's under the mask.

I'd have to rewatch the episodes from season 2 to be 100% sure but I think at the time, we see Tommy look around when things get tense. I don't know if Lou was directed to do that or if he just chose to play Tommy like that but Tommy is looking at the others, especially to Gerrard, to see how they react, probably to match their reaction. Like when Hen makes her great speech about "seeing them", Tommy turns around to see how Gerrard is taking this. And I took that as him waiting to see how he's supposed to react based on how the leader will react. This is also what you do to hide in plain sight: you keep your enemies, or potential threats, closer. You laugh at their jokes, you shake the same hands, you reject the same things. When Chim tried to befriend Tommy, Tommy just stayed silent, but Chim really wanted to start a conversation so Tommy had to say something mean so Chim would leave him alone. You can't be seen befriending the outsider either.

Then Chim saves Tommy and the whole dynamic changes because bros will be bros (and for the sake of drama and a positive storytelling, etc, etc.). They also make Tommy openly admit to Chim that his favorite movie is Love Actually and this wasn't a random choice. Tommy probably started to feel safe around Chim without giving too much away.

Also the Twilight gay "joke"? I mean come on, Tommy played dumb to make it look like he was so not gay he didn't get it. And I'd love to know if the writers really wrote Tommy as possibly queer at the time, because this reaction in particular was way too obvious. It's almost on the same level as Buck panicking during his date with Tommy and saying they'll find hot chicks after that. Again, over performing to protect themselves.

So to me, going from Tommy at the 118 to Tommy being out and proud of being who he is absolutely makes sense and I love that for him. We do love a good character growth, and drawing this kind of parallels with real life also needs to be done. Because it definitely happens in real life.

Also, don't forget it's a TV show. They will write nonsense sometimes and contradict themselves, and make questionable choices for the sake of keeping the story on rails.

[crimeronan]

i'm still a little mad that the only way i ever saw anyone talk about the owl house on this site for like 2.5 straight years was just "it's soooo gay and cute and it's gay and there are girls and it's gay and they hold hands in a gay way and it's soooo sapphic and sweet and cute and it's GAY can you belieeeeve that the showrunners are so BRAVE to make a show GAY for KIDS and it's gay so it's soooooo good!!" because i honest to fucking god spent those 2.5 years increasingly resentfully being like RAISE YOUR FUCKING STANDARDS. NOT EVERY CUTE UWU GAY SAPPHIC THING IS THE NEXT COMING OF MEDIA JESUS. IF THIS IS ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT IT THEN IT MUST BE FUCKING AWFUL. and then only after a full year of pestering from my brother did i finally watch it, with an attitude mostly of "ugh FIIIINE let's get this tf over with for my sibling whom i love."

and it was good.

and it wasn't even good because of the gay shit. it was good because of 10,000 other things that No One Ever Fucking Talked About. that i had no fucking idea Existed. (the gay shit added to and reinforced the overall themes in pleasing narrative ways but was not REMOTELY the best part of the show for me. bc. it has that many storytelling high points.)

which. made me SO MUCH MADDER. i missed out on the entire fandom up thru the end of s2 because tumblr is BAD AT MEDIA PITCHES??????? LEARN TO SAY THINGS ABOUT THEMES AND EXECUTION OR FACE MY BLADE,

[cloudmancy]

Your graph really spoke to me. I've never been a huge Fantasy High fan in the overall scheme of D20 (I'm only really into half the pcs and I think there are some fundamental storytelling flaws in FY and SY). So I came into this season with pretty low expectations. But the downtime mechanics, stress tokens, and mystery all got me super excited and started to build my hopes way up. And then The Last Stand happened and I had to go "Oh, none of the characters are growing at all this season and none of this has any consequences. Huh." And then it was downhill from there

fhjy was genuinely shaping up to be the best d20 season of all time. I'm not even a fantasy high main and it was pretty much the pinnacle of the type of storytelling I wish they could've done on the other seasons irt pacing, mechanics, rp, good old fashioned fun, mystery, and interesting npcs. I am actually not convinced this pt 1 wasn't an elaborate rage aura ruse and pt 2 will reveal the satisfying and interesting thematic nuance we've been building toward for the past 18 weeks but if it ISN'T that deep and the rat grinders were NEVER meant to be engaged with on a narrative level at all I'm just like. how did this happen? was there a gas leak in the dome? did the gas leak happen during the last 3 episodes of filming or way back when brennan set them up as narrative foils and then decided no matter how many times Emily rolled to engage with ruben he wouldn't reward her with any character development or concrete action on rubens end? is the gas still leaking?

[thedemonscrawler]

I'm just gonna do this to Ruin

LIKE. YES I KNOW HE DID EVERYTHING WRONG. BUT HAVE YOU CONSIDERED HOW SAD HE MIGHT BE ABOUT IT

Like aaaaa I'm cursed to only like characters when they're losing I guess, and a Pyrrhic victory counts as a loss. I didn't CARE about this guy when he was the main antagonist, and then Eclipse 3.0 chucked him in the back of a car and kidnapped him and I was suddenly interested. And NOW, when everyone is very much upset about Solar, I'm off to the side shaking this bastard around because we finally got some concrete answers to what's going on in his head.

Just! This whole thing-- this is an exceptionally Moon thing for him to have done. To go 'I'm going to completely and totally remove this possible threat from ever occurring, and I'm fine with being the bad guy to do it'? That's some Old Moon kind of thinking. This wasn't a plan he came up with in the past few months, this took him years.

And speaking of years! Fifty years of playing pretend! Of acting like you enjoy hurting people, that you don't care as your body literally falls apart around you. I'm not a fan of the idea that he was never infected, I like the perspective better that he was infected, it just wasn't as responsible for his behavior as he made it out to be-- but still. At some point he had to have gone numb to it for the sake of his own survival.

What does that do to your mentality? Your outlook? What's it like knowing that your whole world was brought to its knees by your creator? What's it like being the only semi-stable person you know for half a century? What's it like realizing that you're also changing, and not for the better?

He's just... so painfully isolated, in a way that Eclipse doesn't even come close to touching.

And! And even after being 'cured'! He's still isolated! Like it was a good thing he WAS up to something-- can you imagine how crushing it would be if he'd been genuinely not doing anything, and he was still treated with suspicion for a solid like 4 months? By probably the most consistent group of animatronics he's had to talk to that weren't infected with a weird virus?

Like, the man didn't get repaired until 3 months after being cured, after Solar made a blueprint in his spare time. He didn't get a bed until Moon felt guilty about rummaging around inside his head-- and tbh I don't know if he ever got to actually use that bed. He let them call him Ruin.

Ruin never had a home in 'our' dimension.

And hhhhngh like I'm not even sure he cares, because he's past the point of caring. He's got one of Sun's worst traits as well, "There's no point in sharing what I'm thinking because no one is listening". He could have approached Moon and Solar with like "Hey okay so I started on this plan to do this thing like 10 years ago, I would like some input" and maybe an alternative could have been found!

But he didn't, because he's alone. He came up with the best plan he could, weighed the risks, and acted on it, all by himself. A single weird Eclipse against 5,000 Creators, because he felt like that was the greatest threat.

And like, lets be real-- Solar's death was 100% a narrative necessity. Otherwise we the audience wouldn't really care that Ruin had wiped so many dimensions from existing, it'd just be a number. That thing of like, you gotta make it personal to have impact. Very good storytelling right there.

(Though from a in-universe perspective, man it must have been an unpleasant shock to learn that of course the only other dimensional refugee was from one of the worlds you had to destroy. Like, come on, what are the odds)

He did something horrible. A multi-dimensional catastrophe to prevent a multi-dimensional catastrophe. He probably accepted the ramifications of it ages ago. He just... utterly lacks any hope, you know? No hope of forgiveness, no hope of improvement. He survived his world long enough to do this thing, and he has nothing else going for him.

He's just waiting for them to finally kill off his body, because he already died years ago.

Anyway I'm desperately trying to find an angle that can be used to maybe pull him out of his coffin here and so far I'm not seeing one qq but maybe future eps will give me something to work off of.

[lesbianabril]

My S6 BTVS rewrite

I know this season has a lot of haters but I actually love season 6, I don't mind the depressing parts (meaning: most of the season) because I think it all makes sense for where the characters are at, and I think that after fighting a literal God having a season where the villain is Life really works storytelling-wise.

Having said that, though, I think that a lot of things could have been handled better and since all I have are correct opinions I'm gonna tell you what those are.

1. Willow's magic addiction

Basically I think they went too far when the magic became drugs in the most basic sense, when they start acting like she's "taking a hit" every time she uses it.

I think all of the important plot points could have been kept while making willow's addiction to magic about her need to be in control of everything (and everyone). Up to Tabula Rasa I wouldn't change anything, her use of magic is wrong because she starts using it to bend the world at her will, empowered by having successfully brought Buffy back to life.

After Tara leaves her she starts using even more magic while being reckless with it, she injures Dawn and she commits to stop using it because she realizes it wasn't healthy for her or for the people she loves.

I would eliminate Rack and his stupid crack house hide out, and everything that has to do with the physical withdrawal of going "cold turkey".

I think this also makes Willow responsible for her actions, while making magic = literal heroin absolves her of the blame, in the end. The fallout of having to deal with her dependence of it would also be way more compelling.

2. Spike's attempted r4pe

I would keep their toxic relationship and everything that led up to that god-awful bathroom scene, my only change is that I would make it so Spike is trying to turn her instead.

Hear me out. It would make a lot of narrative sense because all through the season he's trying to convince her she's a dark being just like him, he wants them to be equals because he doesn't think himself worthy of her so he's trying to lower her to his level. So, after Buffy rejects him again he's not thinking clearly and, in his desperation, tries the only thing he swore himself he wouldn't do since he loves Buffy because of her goodness.

After it happens, Buffy feels betrayed, Spike leaves and decides to try to get to her level, to truly change himself instead of trying to change her.

This is a minor thing too but in this rewrite after Spike leaves we don't know where he went and we don't see him again until the start of s7 when he already has his soul. I know this couldn't be done because of James Marsters' contract but in my dream s6 we don't know what happened to him so when we see him again everything about his sudden disappearence and current mental state is a mystery and we find out along with Buffy.

3. Xander dies instead of Tara

Ok maybe this one is based on my dislike of Xander and my love of Tara but I think this would work really well:

Willow and Tara haven't gotten together yet, Willow is working on her more controlling tendencies and they're just friends right now. When Warren shows up Buffy is in the garden with Dawn and Xander went up to Willow's room to talk to her, so both Buffy and Xander get shot, Dawn takes Buffy to the hospital and dark Willow is born after she's not able to revive Xander.

After that things are mostly the same, only this time we get a grieving Buffy trying to deal with the sudden loss of both of her best friends. She's devastated and a part of her says that yes, Warren deserves to die.

After everything happens and Willow is close to destroying the world, Tara is the one who shows up, she appeals to Willow's humanity and, through her love and compassion, saves the world.

[stickthisbig]

I have no idea what this is but I decided to write down my grand theory of Star Wars and how authorship affects the ways in which stories are good and bad? Come for media critique, stay for the analogy at the very end about how Star Wars is like college, also there's gifs

The original trilogy is a series of derivative works. That's not a pejorative, but a description of their content and structure; they are constructions that use existing pieces to tell a new story. They are samurai movies, they are meditations on Joseph Campbell. They are the work of a film nerd trying to create a story that is Everything. There's nothing novel about the storytelling of the original trilogy; it was just particularly well executed, because they were made with love by a craftsman, surrounded by a team who kept him from giving in to the worst of his narrative excesses (most notably but not limited to Marcia Lucas).

There's a lot of No Reason in the original trilogy. Why's Darth Vader so strong in the Force? No reason. It doesn't have time to delicately explain everything, so it relies on the audience's understanding of the shape of the story to fill in the gaps. It's the time in the story for someone to fall in love, so a romance plotline it shall be. The author is trying to do something, and he successfully does it.

The prequel trilogy represents an older creator for whom derivative works were not enough, who had been creatively stifled by the very thing he created. (I strongly recommend Patrick H Willems's series about Frances Ford Coppola if you want a really interesting take on George Lucas and the tragedy of his career.) Extremely importantly, they represent a creator with almost unlimited cash and no one to tell him to tone it down.

Everything that is bad about the prequel trilogy is because they were made with a vision by a creator who was trying to do something. George Lucas has six hours and fifty-eight minutes of material prepared about diplomacy, representative democracy, and how all unchecked power is always all bad and by god we are all gonna sit here until he finishes it. The writing is so clunky because it is not there to build character or relationships; it is there to convey information. The sequences with the Gungans are such a mess because they're the injection of (very inadvisable) comic relief into a story that is not supposed to have any relief at all.

One of the worst sins of the prequel trilogy is the rejection of No Reason. It continually poses questions that do not need answers and then takes pains to answer them. Why's Darth Vader so strong in the Force? His mother conceived him as a virgin birth because of the Force, by way of midichlorians, which as we all know are the powerhouse of the cell. It is such a deeply unsatisfying answer, but George Lucas seems incredibly sincere about the fact that this is important. He is trying to position his derivative work within a new fandom context that conceives of his work as wholly original, and the wild thing is, I think George Lucas always thought all of this and just wasn't allowed to put it in. Improbably, the problem is not that he hasn't thought enough about his own lore, as a common charge goes; he appears to have thought about it way too much.

I have to confess to not being a prequel trilogy fan, but probably the single biggest thing to come out of it is Obi-Wan. Ewan McGregor almost instantly became the canonical version of the character. It's because the same thing that made it bad also made it good. It's a story that is trying to do something, and that is opening wide an almost Stendhal-syndrome-esque array of locations and people and stories. Fuck yes I want to hear everything about the person Alec Guinness used to be when he was young and badass, tell me everything about the weird desert guy. Of course I wanna go to Space Italy and see what the galaxy was like before it got dicked up. Sinister rise to power of Darth Vader's master? Check. Seeing the evil enemy built as a series of actions is the shit prequels are made for.

When the prequel trilogy is boring, it's because the pacing is fucking awful, especially in Revenge of the Sith. The dizzying array of new stuff is never boring, and you can all fight me on Kamino being one of the best planets in the whole series. When it's good to be in George Lucas's mind palace, it's extremely good. For better or worse, he did it. He gave his almost seven hour lecture, he said what he had to say, and he left.

And then we move forwards in time, into an era of Star Wars as a strategy rather than a story.

(I didn't see Solo, so it's not gonna be in here. Neither are any of the TV shows or the EU, because I have other shit to do with my life.)

The Force Awakens was not the first Star Wars film that was made by someone else; the authorship of The Empire Strikes Back is complicated- George Lucas kind of managed to ghostwrite his own movie?- but he definitely didn't direct it. Empire was very much still a Lucas production in which he was intimately involved.

The Force Awakens has a point, but it ultimately doesn't do anything.

It resets everything back to the start: an evil empire represented by British people in suits come to power; three heroes arise; a mentor who's incredibly important apparently despite only knowing the heroes for five minutes is murdered by a cloaked Force user; something is blown up. It is meant to stoke the fires of nostalgia, and it provides nothing substantive in terms of plot. In fact, it represents a retrograde movement. It is a very fun watch and a movie with absolutely nothing to say, at least nothing that wasn't written into the series thirty years beforehand.

It's not a surprise that, since it's just meant to get people hype and then serve them what they already know, the best thing it provided were its new characters. I was so stoked to see a Black person in a Star Wars movie; we got three new main characters and not a white man among them?? But let's fuckin' table that shit, because we all know what's coming.

[I was gonna put in a Kylo Ren gif but he looked like such a dipshit in all of them, you're welcome]

Actually I lied, I forgot that what came next was Rogue One. The purpose of the film is to make a war movie about Star Wars and like many/most war films, what the movie is trying to do is meditate on the duality created by the futility of war and the value of sacrifice, it fills in a blank in canon but is really a tone piece meant to make you have feelings and reflect, I watched it once and it was so touching and horrible that I've never been able to watch it again, 10/10 no notes

And then we have The Last Jedi, which is weird.

The Last Jedi represents a step back to a craftsman at the helm, and the exact same shit happened again.

It shouldn't have, because it happened again in a completely different way! The Last Jedi is a singular vision with one creative direction, and that is the cause of everything that is bad and everything that is good about it, but Rian Johnson wanted to do something radically different than George Lucas. He's not interested in giving you his Star Wars lecture; he's interested in breaking Star Wars open, thrusting it bodily in a new direction. The Last Jedi represents at least as much movement as The Empire Strikes Back.

So it's not like a shock that the movie was wildly divisive, and lists of the best and worst things are the same items shuffled around. I honestly think Admiral Holdo's death is the finest moment in the entire trilogy, in terms of visuals and in terms of emotional impact. I fuckin' love that Luke was sitting on PTSD Island sulking, because it's some Luke shit to do. "Let the past die. Kill it if you have to" got me HYPE to see where this would go. I wanted to go on that ride. I've loved Star Wars since I was a tiny child, and I wanted to go on a journey into something that was entirely fresh.

Other people hated all of these things, and honestly in this case, I don't agree but I can't say they're wrong. Wanting Rose to be deleted from the series simply for using oxygen is racist. Wanting Snoke to have had more impact on the story is a difference of opinion. Either you were interested in this ride or you weren't, and you're not a bad person for not wanting that out of your Star Wars.

But on the other hand, it's not a very good movie.

The problems that make it not very good are the result of having one guy at the wheel. It's clumsily made. It feels like it ends three times before it actually does. The Canto Bight sequences are the work of someone who doesn't want them to be in there, and somebody who could play ball would have finessed the story to make them organic. Some of the CGI work represents a lapse in professional judgment. The Force dyad stuff does not make any sense at all, because it plays like somebody who couldn't really explain a thing they were doing but refuses to stop doing it.

It's so good when it's good. I just wish it had had another screenwriter who could have fixed what was bad.

I didn't care for Rise of Skywalker.

By the time it came out, I was experiencing a kind of numbness surrounding Star Wars; not literally, because I got my tattoos finished up just before it came out. I didn't have any idea what was about to happen. There were a lot of rumors circulating about the extent to which things had gotten rewritten, but it was pretty clear that whatever it was going to be was fully an Abrams/Disney thing.

And indeed, this time, they did make a movie that tried to do something. Extremely unfortunately, what the movie was trying to do was reinforce the status quo. It did this on every level- Holdo's sacrifice was made meaningless, the minuscule amount of queer content was palatably deletable, a woman of color's lines were given to a white man who was buddies with the director, the story reverted from "everyone's a Star Wars" to "there are only four people in the galaxy who matter", Poe's awesome storyline from the comics was thrust aside for a frankly kind of racist replacement, every bit of story development from TLJ was cast aside. There are no consequences for anything, because all that matters is moving to the end of the story; I cannot believe that absolute motherfucker made me watch Chewbacca die with my own eyeballs just to wave it away literally two minutes later in the clumsiest way imaginable. In the prequel trilogy, in Rogue One, in TLJ, everything everyone does matters so much. The minutest actions have huge consequences. In Rise of Skywalker, nothing matters even a little bit. Everybody just waits around for the main characters to get finished dicking around.

I cannot believe that it's a thing I would possibly think ever, but the only thing that got any work put into it was Kylo and Rey's relationship. Trust: I didn't enjoy watching it. There's a piece of Wishful Drinking where Carrie Fisher and Billie Lourd are trying to figure out if Billie is related to the guy she's dating, due to a bunch of Hollywood marriages. Even after the shitstupid reveal of Rey's parentage, it still really, really feels like the same vibe. But by the time they kissed, I was like, "Yeah, I mean I hate it but I see where it happened."

Star Wars is like the end of a semester in college. The prequel trilogy is the period where you're studying, trying to cram so much stuff into your brain that you're never gonna remember. The original trilogy is exams, exhilarating and rocky but ultimately liberating.

The sequel trilogy is the party you go to afterwards. At 10 PM you're at The Force Awakens, singing along at the top of your lungs to a song that's catchy and doesn't have to be good. At midnight you're at Rogue One, where you break down sobbing in the bathroom. The Last Jedi is 2 AM, weird and full of promise, as if anything could happen.

The Rise of Skywalker is 11 AM the next day, when you've already broken down the details at brunch and are now lying in bed unable to nap, with the horrible certainty that this is all there is, you will never be more than yourself, just a regular person who carries no special importance.

I didn't like it in real life; I sure didn't want it from Star Wars.

[naranjapetrificada]

The first thing I should ever have said about Izzy and the last thing I intend to say until at least October 26th.

[Although I am not Her strongest soldier, so who knows if I will stick the landing.]

So to start with, I was a "late" arrival to the show. I knew it existed of course, but I only occasionally saw things that reminded me it existed. The first time I saw a mention of "grumpy/sunshine" it was with a picture of Ed and Stede, so I guess on some level I knew there was shipping going on, but that was literally all I knew. I didn't even know it involved Blackbeard lol.

Which is all to say that I first approached and watched season 1 removed from basically anything anyone had to say about it. I think what actually got me to watch it wasn't anything anyone had to say either, it was from youtube recommendations? Like I think I had watched a couple Taika interviews or something and ofmd stuff started showing up? So after catching a few clips and intentionally spoiling the kiss for myself (life is too short to be queerbaited) I watched it in April/May 2023, and was Changed by it the way so many other people were. It grabbed me so hard I started looking for fics, and when fic grabbed me even harder I became a regular tumblr user for the first time ever in June 2023.

What I didn't do, before the second half of 2023, was care particularly much about Izzy Hands.

I remember describing him as psychologically fascinating to the first IRL friend I talked to about the show, and joking that he just needed a good dom. As much as his decision to call in the navy was a threat to Stede's and Ed's lives, I saw his actions as part of a thing needed for the story, and while I knew he was one of the season's villains there wasn't really any heat behind that assessment.

For me he was there to set things in motion, and to serve the narrative in certain ways, to be a foil, more storytelling tool than man. That doesn't mean I didn't think Con did an excellent job adding layers to him, he absolutely made Izzy take up space and feel more present and textured than he otherwise might have. But when I began to zoom out and consider things on meta level, Izzy existed to do a certain thing or occupy a certain place in relation to the narrative and other characters more than anything else. And that was fine.

Then I started reading meta here, and found myself surrounded by passionate conversations about Izzy from many directions occurring with an intensity that I couldn't wrap my brain around. I saw people tying themselves into knots to justify and excuse the behavior of a textual antagonist, and I was baffled and because I still saw Izzy for what his role in the narrative was, it literally made no sense to see his behavior explained away. In the framework I brought to the fandom when I first arrived, trying to explain away Izzy's behavior would be like looking at a forest fire and trying to explain away processes like combustion and oxidation. Or if you'll allow me to borrow another extended, nature-based metaphor from a fic in an entirely different fandom:

Again, because from where my head was at, it didn't make sense to look at Izzy's morality as a zero sum game because in this metaphor, he was functionally just a brackish body of water. I'm not saying the morality is brackish, I'm saying the morality was literally not the point because like an estuary, an antagonist "must exist" because antagonists exist for specific reasons directly related to storytelling goals.

So there was no real heat behind my feelings about him or his actions, beyond the natural emotional reactions we have to characters and their behaviors before we zoom out. I was of course upset with his treatment of Lucius, which was targeted compared to other members of the crew. I was annoyed with the way he talked to and about Ed. I laughed when his plans had the equal and opposite results of what he intended, which you could argue happened with every single plan he made for the entirety of season 1. And yes, especially as a Black person living in the US, I felt the fear and betrayal that comes from seeing someone call the cops (which given the show and its writers, it does not feel like a stretch to describe calling the navy that). I wondered if there was any coming back from a choice like that, which is a big overriding question for the series as a whole.

I'm not here to debate any of the points in the previous paragraph. I know how I feel and you feel how you feel and there's already been so much said about the morality of it all by people who have explained themselves well, so let them convince you or not. Instead I've been trying to talk about the two sides of my experience before and after getting into the fandom with Izzy.

Before: Izzy Hands, Narratively Useful Antagonist Portrayed Compellingly And Effectively by Con O'Neill.

After: Izzy Hands, Unfortunate Avatar Of The Sadly Common Tendency For Certain Fans To Hyperfocus On A White Antagonist Or Secondary Character When There Already Exists A Protagonist They're A Foil Of (And Also It Looks Bad TO Do That When The Protagonist Is Someone With A Marginalized Identity).

I'm not here to argue the merits of those assessments either, because that's not the point. The point is the vast gulf between them and how the latter does such an incredible disservice to the Izzy we were given and that so many people claim to love. The latter comes from a place where morality is the focus, which I'm sorry y'all, feels like it originates with people who refuse to countenance Izzy's role in the story as well as his characterization.

Viewers who were willing to see Izzy as an antagonist, who don't view the word "antagonist" as a value judgement in and of itself, who don't think that finding an antagonist charismatic or compelling means anything about their own morality, those people can look at the show we were given and take it for what it was made to be. I'm not saying that it's only the Izzy stans (not enjoyers, not jar people) who start fights or that people who understand that Izzy is an antagonist don't also have deep morality related feelings about him and his actions in the first season. What I am saying is that sanding off Izzy's rough edges and trying to make him into something he isn't poisons even the possibility of having a discussion about him because people enter the conversation with two completely different understandings of reality. If you cannot accept the job that season 1 Izzy was given to do to move the story along, well you might as well have watched a completely different show for how much that fanon Izzy has anything to do with the canon one.

This show deserves better than that. The writers deserve better than that. Con O'Neill deserves better than that. Israel Basilica Hands deserves better than that. We all do.