#they deserve each other imo

[petrowriting]

the revelation that claudia’s rebirth was such a twisted and horrible moment, with louis dragging her like she was a thing, a stranger who neither of them knew but he kept saying over and over “our daughter, our beautiful little daughter” to lestat, really solidified the way she was never the main character of her own story. she was always an accessory to some or the other of louis’ whims: his guilt, his loneliness, his conflict of being a killer, his rocky relationship with lestat. there was love there, love from both her fathers, but it was never enough. lestat saw her too much as a wretched mirror held up to his own self, and louis was always too steeped in his own feelings to care enough about hers. claudia’s story truly was the greatest tragedy in this tale, treated horribly by every man around her, even her fathers, relentlessly exploited and brutally ignored, always second and never first. the only one who loved her the way she deserved to be loved was madeleine, and the moment she truly had her, her happiness was torn from her. and just before she died, she got to see someone actually choose her in her entirety, not for what she can be but for who she is, and it still wasn’t enough. she still burned alive in the sunlight. the love was there, but it wasn’t enough to save her.

[kimaisalloren]

Alright gang. You have life saving surgery that needs to be performed. Which doctor are you picking.

I made icons for them.

The Distortionist just fits them too well I’m hmghghfhfhfhhf

(Idc if you use but a tag would be nice)

[jackwhiteprophetic]

Madney wedding should have been more fun and silly. Buffridays theme. Why would Chim NOT want a karaoke party? Why were the Buckley parents so involved so it looked so formal and not like them and there wasn't enough WHIMSY! YOU'RE TELLING ME THE INVENTOR OF THE OODIE WOULD WEAR JUST A NORMAL BASIC TUX TO HIS WEDDING? TO THE WIFE HE IS SO LOVINGLY OBSESSED WITH? Please can we have more fun and silly for them next season please.

[crypticpuffin]

editing bride of re-animator cause my brain won't leave me along about these goddamn freaks but I keep getting distracted by how pretty francesca is...?? I mean not to be a lesbian but oh my god wow. what the fuck

[recurring-polynya]

[zeroducks-2]

I remember Hal telling Wally to get his ass up and start running for Barry during that event but was there another event where he tried to bring him back? Was it during his parallax arc (can't remember the issue). Anyway, I wanna believe that they just thought Barry was truly dead that's why they didn't look for him but yeah his family can be quite insensitive to his feelings. He returned a little bit suicidal but everyone just went yay! and didn't bother checking his mental health :(

It is during Hal's Parallax arc indeed. Bringing back dead people was one of Hal's point during that time, and he would have managed if he hadn't been stopped.

But see, Barry's family had moved on. After he got back, he didn't have a place where he fit anymore. The stories that go from the Rebirth Mini to Flashpoint are centered around this dynamic; how Barry was put on a pedestal and idolized like a hero, but then no one knew what to do with the actual real person when he was physically brought back.

And Barry himself knew this. He knew no one was looking for him, he openly admits to being aware that Iris had moved on, that Wally had forged his identity as the Flash and was now comfortably filling Barry's shoes. He hadn't raised his children or his nephew, hadn't met Wally's kids. Everyone else was painfully aware of this too, and indeed after being back Barry didn't manage to find a way to slot himself in any comfortable space - to the point where in his crippling loneliness, he ends up going back in time to try and save his mother in the attempt to have back the one person he knew would have accepted and loved him unconditionally.

There's a reason why he did not want to come back after all. Eobard had to pull him out of the Speed Force (and I quote) "kicking and screaming", because Barry subconsciously knew there was no place for him anymore. Which is so fucking sad by the way.

There's a whole comic in which Iris stages an "intervention" with the pretense of an emergency happening, in which she, Wally, Jay and Bart chide Barry one after another about how he isn't the person they used to idolize anymore, and how dare he be not 100% all the time, how dare Barry Allen of all people feel down and make mistakes and need time for himself. He gets pushed in a figurative corner and called selfish, shamed by the people who should be there for him regardless of the circumstances, because he dares not be the perfect person they remembered him to be. I don't have the spoons to look for the panels right now, but if you want to check you'll find them in The Road To Flashpoint, Part 3.

Keep in mind that when Barry came back, his life story had been dramatically altered. He used to be bubbly, extroverted, good at sports, good at dancing, very confident and with a ton of friends. But then he comes back and he's an orphan, he grew up isolated and riddled with insecurities, and very deeply traumatized by his mother's violent death and his father's unjust imprisonment. He very much WAS NOT the person everyone remembered anymore, but this was impossible to accept for anyone, and the result was a "came back wrong" situation which has been spiraling down since then.

The "flashfamily" isn't all sunshine and rainbows. There are toxic dynamics going on and at this point Barry is everyone's elected scapegoat. Wally very much knew that Barry was alive in the Speed Force anyway, because for one, Barry had manifested via a thunderstrike to save Wally's ass that one time he decided to go after Eobard, and secondly because Wally knows better than anyone else that Barry IS the Speed Force. He was the first one who found out. He knew VERY WELL that Barry was in there.

[bellarkevirtuoso]

This hurts t admit but I actually wanted ted and rebecca to get together

[floralovebot]

and yknow when i say that koryak should've lived and him and garth should've become besties i don't mean that they would have a perfectly healthy cute brother relationship. i mean they should've trauma bonded aldhg

garth and koryak are two very different people, who lived very different lives, and have very different opinions of arthur. if the two of them were forced to bond in any capacity, it would be messy and petty! koryak would continue to be upset that arthur wasn't there for him in his youth and jealous that he raised a kid who wasn't even his. and if koryak stuck around, we'd see more negative emotions from garth ie him being upset/jealous/worried that arthur now has another biological son. it wouldn't be rational from either side, and garth would definitely try his best to be nice, but both of them have reasons to not like or trust the other.

that being said, at the core of it, their emotions stem from the same issue. they both just want to be arthur's son. and while i do think it would take a lot of time, eventually they'd be forced to see the other's perspective and realize that the other is just as jealous as they are. koryak may have missed out on having a bio father in his life but... so did garth. garth worries that arthur doesn't see him as a true son but... so does koryak. yes, they've had very different upbringings, but they also have the same fears and worries regarding arthur. and personally, i think it would've been more interesting to see them reconcile and bond over that.

maybe koryak would be brave enough to ask garth what his childhood was like under arthur's care. maybe garth takes the time to ask about kako or his culture. maybe he even tells koryak the truth about what happened with jr. maybe koryak starts to get upset on garth's behalf that arthur raised him but didn't even see him as a son, and had the audacity to say it to his face while trying to kill him. maybe garth gets upset on koryak's behalf because arthur keeps pushing him aside and treating him like an untrustworthy stranger.

and yknow maybe they never become friends or talk to each other... but they still understand each other, they still yearn for what the other had, and they're increasingly more disappointed in how arthur treats his family. i think that would've been nice and more narratively satisfying than koryak dying.

[lesbianutena]

seeing people go on about how naive and foolish and blind and stupid utena is and i’m just sitting here like. she’s 14! i disagree strongly with the idea that utena is willfully or maliciously ignorant. like yes, while i think she does often fail to fully comprehend whats happening (especially in the last arc) she’s also finding herself in increasingly horrifying and new situations with no point of reference for how abnormal it all is?? she is doing her very best to make sense of things as a 14 year old child who has no parental figures or guardians, no friends who aren’t also somehow in on the manipulation happening to her, nowhere to go outside of ohtori. and that is on top of trying to navigate her experiences and identity as a queer and gnc person!!!! i feel like folks are wildly overestimating the comprehension the average closeted teenage lesbian has of systematic heteropatriarchiarcal cycles of abuse! she’s literally 14!!! save the scorn for the willfully ignorant for akio

[moonilit]

having so much emotions over Jote and Joshua I can’t even articulate, like

[adrift-in-thyme]

So I finished the Odyssey…

[peachesandhunii]

GET THEM GRACE I'LL HELP YOU DRAG THEM

[finnitesimal]

dungeon meshi is prime material for oc x canon actually

[kuromi-hoemie]

i just finished iron blooded orphans and need to lay down for a bit

[total-drama-brainrot]

So if the roles for Courtney and Heather didn’t swap what do you think would Heather do or be like? I don’t think she’d have much to do if she wasn’t a manipulative antagonist. So would she even be in the show as long as she was? Also I don’t think it was a last minute decision but an intentional switch and bait. But then they switched their roles in the second season and then they switched it again and again still but without a good pay off that fit their character for the sake of dramatics. It’s like they got mixed up like in a Looney Toons scene.

I think, in the case that my hypothetical swap would take place, Heather's role as the antagonist and subsequent actions would be shifted over to Courtney- which in turn would mean Courtney's actions would be shifted onto Heather.

So, instead of forming 'alliances' (read: taking advantage of the more vulnerable/easily manipulated members of her team) and orchestrating events to have her teammates/competition eliminated, Heather would instead take to bossing around the Screaming Gophers whilst hate-flirting turned flirting with Duncan on the side.

And, given her archetype of the "Queen Bee", it isn't entirely out of left field to imagine someone as haughty and entitled as Heather to elect herself as the de facto leader of the Gophers. In fact, that's exactly what she does in canon. Her intrinsic need for control and power over her teammates might've been an aspect of her "villainy" in canon, but it's also characteristic of every single "Queen Bee" in pop culture (think Regina George from Mean Girls, or Heather Chandler from Heathers) regardless of if they're an antagonist or not. Though they are primarily antagonists because of this.

Also, I think her rivalry with Gwen would still be a significant plotline for Island, even if she never fully delves into the full-on antagonism of her canon self. Because her and Gwen's enmity isn't necessarily an aspect of her role as the Main Antagonist- despite the narrative framing it as such, given Gwen's role as the unwritten protagonist of Island- in very much the same way that Duncan and Harold's dynamic doesn't automatically label Duncan as a villain (just an asshole).

So, I don't think she'd lose all of her plot significance, but she wouldn't be nearly as apparent/crucial to the story as a whole. She definitely wouldn't reach the final three, especially since her personality would remain unchanged meaning she'd still be just as bitchy and as such as universally disliked by the other contestants- just this time without the power of plot armour to save her.

(Essentially, the role swap would literally swap both of their plotlines and their elimination orders. Does that mean Heather's elimination would be a result of Harold rigging the vote to spite Duncan? IDK, maybe 🤷‍♀️)

As for your second point, Courtney's role as Action's antagonist really does feel like the writers realised her potential as a villainous force, after seemingly forgetting how they set her up to be a central character in the first couple of episodes of Island and not really doing anything with her (outside of the Duncney subplot). Of course, re-establishing Heather as the main antagonist of Action wouldn't've worked plot-wise, given that the characters themselves are fully aware of her tricks and thus wary of her, so they obviously needed a different source of conflict/a different antagonist. It just so happened that they had a character with a confrontational personality and a fitting motive. (Two if you count Justin, though his own brand of 'villainy' feels like the off-brand cola to Courtney's coke, if that makes any sense?)

In the context of the hypothetical I suggested, Heather would just swap places with Courtney in Action, making her the surprise antagonist of the season whilst Courtney is delegated to being outcasted as public enemy #1. I doubt she'd be as aggressive towards Duncan, but she'd be just as controlling/high maintenance as a girlfriend leading to their relationship's eventual decay.

I don't think their role swap in Action is uncharacteristic, per se, given than both Heather and Courtney are repeatedly established as strong competitive forces and ruthless in their endeavours throughout the series- making them prime Conflict Character material. But I do think that Courtney's antagonism, at least, had little payoff for what the writers made her do/go through. Heather at least gets her semi-redemption arc in World Tour, wherein she's the reluctant hero to Alejandro's villain ("You mean I'm the good guy?"), but Courtney? Her story doesn't get a happy/satisfying ending. (I haven't watched All-Stars yet, but I've heard that Sundae Muddy Sundae is a terrible episode for her)

[ovrarches]

if I’m reading elams and there’s no eliza/john……… like I’m going to fucking kill you