#this is important to understand about her character

[flowersforthemachines]

Some facts about Lucanis (and also Spite and the Crows) gathered from the banters

I went through all companion banters on DanaDuchy's channel after playing the game to write down all facts about companions/the world that I haven't seen brought up anywhere in the game as a writing reference (and for funsies).

Note: This list may not be exhaustive. I might have missed some something or didn't write it down because I considered it common knowledge. If you have anything to add, please DM me or send an ask! (do specify what banter the information is coming from, though)

Note 2: Posts from this series (mostly) don't include information from banters specific to quests or between companions and faction members. I plan to do another playthrough to capture more of those and will add any relevant info to the character posts.

Other characters' posts: Bellara, Davrin, Harding, Emmrich, Neve, Taash to be added tomorrow (or on Monday Jan 5th)

About Lucanis: 

Family and the past:

Lucanis learnt to cook while helping the kitchen staff at the villa when he was a little boy. One of his motivations was learning how to make churros

Side note: Lucanis mentions that cioccolata calda was his favourite drink when he was a baby, and he serves churros to a romanced Rook who picks cioccolata calda as their favourite drink. It’s all coming together! 

Lucanis wanted to be a Crow when he was a child (at least most of the time)  

All of Lucanis's relatives were Crows as well, and all of them were killed by a rival Crow house

Lucanis says Caterina would be proud of Illario hiding his plans well, as well as killing her 

Lucanis says that the hard part about setting Illario free would be convincing Caterina 

Lucanis says that nightlife was more of Illario's thing, and he never got out as much

On Crows and Antiva:

Viago still stares daggers at Lucanis for throwing his (Viago's) pet snake out of the window in a dream

Lucanis doesn't like it when people confuse murder and assassination ("Murderers are hobbyists, we are professionals")

Lucanis has taken contracts in Orlais

Lucanis doesn’t know Treviso as well as he once used to 

Heir didn’t train Lucanis

Lucanis says he has never killed an innocent “by his count” (other people may disagree) 

Lucanis doesn’t think of the Crows as a “big organisation” (unlike the Inquisition) because they stab each other too much

Lucanis became a mage-killer at Caterina’s behest (she wanted to tap into new markets)

The nickname “The Demon of Vyrantium” came from Tevinter news-sheets, though Lucanis thinks Viago started it

Lucanis says that there aren't any special tricks to killing mages. Though, if nothing else works, you can try pissing them off, as that could attract a demon that would eat the mage

Lucanis once killed half a dozen venatori while stuck inside an elevator 

Lucanis doesn’t consider himself a gentleman assassin, manners are less important than getting the job done

Lucanis sometimes spares his targets. He mentioned letting go of a servant who killed her master, as well as a 14-year-old boy. He thinks it’s wrong to kill people so young because they still have time to change

Lucanis doesn’t accept contracts without merit, and the merit is decided by the talon of the house

General:

Lucanis can make bread

Lucanis has never been to Ferelden

Lucanis isn’t interested in killing wyverns, just looking at them :)  

Lucanis has a pet snake 

Lucanis stays awake at night by cleaning his gear, exercising, studying Orlesian and knitting ("it’s just another kind of blade work") 

Lucanis doesn’t understand a lot of things people find attractive

(In a conversation with Harding) Thinking about cooking was one of the things that helped Lucanis stay sane in the Ossuary (the other was thinking about killing his enemies) 

(In a conversation with Davrin) Lucanis survived the Ossuary by shutting down and not thinking about anything except escaping

These two points sort of contradict each other. Either an inconsistency or Lucanis describing his experience differently to different people. 

The Wetlands ruined at least one pair of Lucanis’s boots

(If Rook chooses to save Treviso) Lucanis offers to pay for any supplies the Shadow Dragons may need 

Lucanis doesn't get a better bed because he's afraid of accidentally falling asleep 

Lucanis can identify the killer’s weapon and the height difference between them and the target just through the blood splatter left at the scene

Lucanis considers Grey Wardens dangerous 

Lucanis doesn’t like necromancy, because bringing people back to life is a waste of hard work

Lucanis finds the ice coffee from Minrathous offensive (Harding describes it as “snow, but made of coffee, sweet, and with cream and toffee sauce on top”)

Lucanis had never been in a romantic relationship before Rook/Neve

Relationships with other companions: 

Lucanis gets into reading Bellara’s serials (very passionately - they chat about it a bunch)

Lucanis is outraged that the Veil Jumpers don’t get paid for their work and offers Bellara his contract negotiator

Lucanis made biscuits for Assan

Lucanis is sceptical that the griffons will be safe with the Wardens

Lucanis think that Assan shouldn’t go soft (referring to the time he took care of a halla) because he is a predator at heart

(If Emmrich becomes a lich) Lucanis offers to hold a funeral for Manfred

Lucanis and Harding talk a lot about dreams (mostly silly things like showing up naked for the job, getting chased by someone/something etc.)

Lucanis thinks Harding is deadly with her bow

Lucanis offers to pay Harding for being his lookout/aide at the rate of 6000 gold per contract

Lucanis offers the help of his contract negotiator to Neve after he finds out she doesn't have one

Lucanis made deep-fried peppers for Taash

About Spite: 

Emmrich can hear Spite even when he doesn’t take over Lucanis’s body (at least from a close distance)

Spite is impartial to Emmrich, believing him more than Lucanis

Emmrich says it’s impossible to separate Spite and Lucanis without killing them

Emmrich encourages Lucanis to read to Spite to bring them closer. Lucanis agrees to let Spite pick a book

(If Emmrich becomes a lich) Spite asks if he and Lucanis can get rid of their skin too 

(If Manfred is revived at the Necropolis) Spite asks Emmrich to teach him how to use fire magic. Lucanis isn’t thrilled by the idea

Emmrich sets up wards to prevent Spite from leaving the room when Lucanis is asleep

Spite no longer sleepwalks after “Inner Demons” because he apparently understood the concept of space

By the end of the game, Spite has agreed to stop sleepwalking completely

Spite controls the wings (confirmed in banter with Harding) 

Spite wants to try swinging off the astrolabe at the Lighthouse

Spite is very excited about Manfred having hands and feet (Curiosity. Has. Feet!)

Spite finds the wisps in Neve’s room unnerving (as do Lucanis and Neve)

Spite likes to play with whetstones Bellara got for Lucanis (Bellara got them from the Irelin who supposedly got them from somewhere in Arlathan) 

Spite wants to try eating self-lightning candles at Blackthorne Manor

About the Crows: 

Crows frequently visit Nevarra and have received 20 contacts to assassinate the king. The King has been poisoned 7 times

Crows get a lot of contracts for Divine Victoria

Some seers in Rivain are powerful enough that there are contracts on them as well

Caterina once killed a man with a thimble

When Crows kill someone, most of the time they want others to know it was them (rather than presenting the death as an accident) 

The crows buried six different Eight Talons and rarely take contracts in Ferelden after the Zevran fiasco

[timperleyworldofwater]

hey so this is something i covered throughout my degree so i'm somewhat qualified to talk about it, plus i lived in austria (the bit that's in the Alps at that) for like a year. but to spell it out as simply as i can: it's not the geology we have a problem with. you are also not being accused of being a white supremacist here, and if you believe that is something you're being accused of, have a think about that. it's a fucking pervasive ideology that is much, much more than white hoods and nazi rallies. hopefully what i'm gonna talk about will help you understand that.

the Alps were vital to the Nazi Aesthetic because they symbolised a ""simpler way of life"" rooted in ""German tradition"" (read: white supremacy). the Nazis didn't really care as much about the actual agricultural traditions of the region which spanned throughout German, Austrian, Italian and Swiss territories, instead they kinda garbled together an aesthetic not dissimilar to the tradwife/homesteading shit we're seeing online today. they're pretty closely interlinked in fact, but that'll take another post to get into. after Austria was annexed, a decent portion of the Alps became Nazi territory, i.e. it was now for the ""German People"" only. invoking the Alps unprompted rings these alarm bells immediately!

plus (only really speaking for Austria here) the alpine villages are not as Untouched and Remote as you want to think. the state of Tirol has a pretty robust transport system (i know this having lived in Innsbruck, which had really good links to surrounding towns and villages outside the city). you also kinda forget you're in the Alps the longer you live there because you only know the mountains by their local names, like the Nordkette or Patscherkofel. it only really matters that they're the alps for tourism or like. geography and geological studies. it's just not important to people living in the (especially German and Austrian) Alps that they're in the Alps because it gets weird pretty fucking quickly if they talk about it a lot beyond basic geographical information. this is one reason out of many why it wouldn't work with DE's main themes, because almost everyone you talk to has something to say about Martinaise, but if it were a fictional alpine village near a state capital, i doubt that would still be true.

like this is what would happen if it was set in the alps: the young witch finds her neighbour's lost cat within 20 minutes of gameplay after asking around and finding it on a farm not too far from her house. you learn nothing about the place, you feel nothing for the characters. you have gained nothing. you might as well have logged on to the latest mmo slop game and beaten a bunch of 12 year olds over the same amount of time.

so anyway i would love to have a game like stardew valley with its fun mechanics and easy gameplay... but it's about a young venture capitalist who moves to the peak district trying to get planning permission for an outdoor activity centre on some farmland. the locals use it as a route for dog walking and hikes and the farmer who owns it isn't fucking budging.

was talking to my girlfriend about this and i think it's the "in the alps" part that makes the tweet so vile. like it is such a lethal dose of ideology it's really the tipping point between an eyerolling but unremarkable tweet and something that expresses a repellent worldview

[lurkingshan]

Spare Me Your Mercy, Love in the Big City, and the Trap of Pursuing Mainstream Popularity for Queer Art

I read this excellent post by @waitmyturtles yesterday tackling the frustrating failures of Spare Me Your Mercy, a show that was one of my most anticipated of the year, but that ended up so lost in its own confusing blend of sauces that I didn't even finish it. I appreciated her clarity that despite the show receiving strong ratings and finding popularity with the mainstream domestic audience, that doesn't actually make it a success as a piece of narrative storytelling. And if anything, its popularity underlines why it was a failure as a queer narrative, in particular.

Because here's the thing about great queer art—it's almost never popular with mainstream audiences, especially in socially conservative countries. High quality, well-executed, honest and authentic queer art is more likely to be protested than celebrated in places where real queer people are not safe to live free lives. For an illustration of this, look no further than another highly anticipated queer drama of this year in Love in the Big City. Easily the queerest show to ever get made and aired on Korean television, it drew major protests before it even started, forcing the production to release it quickly in one go to ensure it would reach audiences. And why were those conservative groups so afraid of this little old drama? Because even just in its trailer and promotional materials, it was clear this was no sanitized, G-rated drama created to make gay people seem more palatable to the masses (unlike the film version with the same name, which not coincidentally has been much more warmly received by the Korean media establishment). This show was real, and raw, and QUEER in a way that terrified those bigots, because they know one of the most important ways the oppressed can advocate for themselves is by demonstrating their humanity through art. 

Which brings me back to turtles’ post, and the importance of separating the concerns of art and commerce when discussing the different ways media can succeed. This is something I had some good dialogue about with @biochemjess @pharawee @clairedaring @flowerbeasblog and turtles (and even more of you in the tags) when I was still watching and posting about Spare Me Your Mercy. I originally posted to unpack why the show was flopping narratively, which turned into a discussion of the fact that it was getting good ratings from the domestic audience despite this. And while I appreciated understanding how the show is landing with its priority audience, for me, it’s very important to keep a distinction between these two different kinds of success. Especially in discussions of queer art, and especially for a show whose creators explicitly said they were intentionally downplaying the queer romance part of the queer romance ( @benkaben) to avoid “distracting” from their other messaging goals. 

The important thing to keep in mind is that for queer stories, when they are popular with a mainstream audience it’s often because they are stripping any authenticity from the representation of queer people. Turtles addressed this well in her review of 2gether when she posited that part of the reason it was such a phenomenon in conservative Asian countries (aside from the timing of its release in the early days of the global pandemic), was because its presentation of queerness was mostly unrecognizable to real queer people, stripped of any true notion of queer sexuality or the realities of homophobia. Compare the reception of The Miracle of Teddy Bear—a show that absolutely refused to make its central queer character palatable for a mainstream audience, because the fact that he wasn’t palatable was the point—to that of Spare Me Your Mercy, a show whose creators chose to censor their own story. The ugly truth is that when we’re talking about queer dramas, the best and most vital shows are pretty much anathema to mainstream ratings success.

The impulse to pursue mainstream popularity and commercial success for queer art inevitably leads to watering down queer stories ( @twig-tea) to make them more light, comfortable and familiar to a majority heterosexual and socially conservative audience. And yes, of course, some degree of commercial success is necessary for queer art to get made in the first place. This is how the Thai BL market took off, by recognizing that there was an audience beyond queer people who were open to watching stories about boys falling in love, as long as it didn’t get too real. But there is a careful line to walk here, and it’s so important not to confuse popularity with artistic merit. Queer people won’t win liberation by self-censoring queer media to make it more palatable for mainstream audiences. We win when we make queer art so good and so honest that the mainstream is forced to acknowledge it. We win by challenging the mainstream perspective on queer people and how they should behave, not by catering to it. As @bengiyo said in a completely different discourse, the question is not whether the audience can love queer characters whose actual queerness is suppressed for their comfort. That kind of respectability politics is old hat and it never fucking gets us anywhere. The real question he posed is this: “Do you love us when we’re ugly, when we’re sick, when we’re old, when we’re being mean or catty?”

Which is why a show like Love in the Big City ultimately won by being so excellent, and so true, and so undeniable, that it broke through with audiences around the world and achieved some measure of recognition in spite of how very unpalatable it was to its domestic audience. Unlike Spare Me Your Mercy, this show did not get amazing domestic ratings, but its message was heard far beyond those who watched it on Korean television. And that is the point. Making authentic art that advances the struggle of queer people and making nominally queer art that can achieve mainstream popularity are completely different pursuits, and we must keep that in mind when we discuss whether and how these shows succeeded or failed. And while both must exist in a healthy media ecosystem, one will always be more vital for the survival of queer people than the other. 

[whywouldisayprinter]

It's thinking about reverse age Batfam kids/ Robins hours.

Like. It just. Shifts all of the dynamics and especially Bruce's character, but it still is so wonderfully cohesive!

Let's start with Damian.

Bruce is in his mid-twenties, going strong and building a rapport as Gotham's protector when, one day, Talia al Ghul rings on his doorbell with a tiny 7/8 yrs old shadow. It's their son she says. His heir and apprentice, the shadow, Damian, says.

Damian is well trained, as stubborn as his parents and determined to follow his father's footsteps, so Batman gains a Sidekick. A sneaky little thing that seems as much as a mythical creature as its mentor.

After some time, a new kid falls into Batman's path. Duke is bright and righteous, and if Batman didn't decide to train him, he would lead his tiny gang of determined children right into the thick of it without being able to make it through. So Batman trains him, even though Duke returns to his home at the end of the day.

There comes a time when Damian is restless. He wants to train with different masters, go on missions with his team, and make sure that one day he is worthy of being Batman's successor. So he leaves the cave and Batman without a sidekick.

That is until Bruce stumbles over a tiny stalker with absent Parents, who knows their identities. Tim is quick to learn and just as sneaky as Damian and while Damian is proud of his ability to match batman in a fight, he hates that this new kid seems to match Batman's abilities as a detective, even surpass them. Until Tim Drake, Heir to Drake Industries, gets an assassin send after him, and kills him in a frantic fight for survival. He crossed a line. The line. So Bruce sends him home.

Then the Joker decides that this little detective is just so fun, not as stuck up as old Batsy and wouldn't he like to be Jokers sidekick instead? No? What a shame. Especially as his parents just so happened to be in. A bit of a pickle. You see it was easy to kidnap them on their way back from the airport and are you sure you don't want to join the Joker? A well, have FUN at your little family reunion then.

Tim dies laughing against his will.

A few months later, Batman gets hit by a brick in the back while punching a purse snatcher black and blue. Steph is angry. Angry that her father rots in jail. That she wasn't fast enough to safe her mother. That Batman almost killed a guy who was just trying to survive. Angry that Batman is dishonoring Tim in such a way. Her friend would hate to see what his mentor - dad. Almost- became, so she decides that she will make sure Batman stays in line.

She is at his side for almost 4 months, bothering him with a sharp tongue and burning criticism, keeping him upright and most important, himself. Then Batman finds out she's pregnant. He benches her. Of course. She hates it. She hates that she can't argue against it. That it makes sense. That she can't help people anymore and be in the thick of it. Can't keep her Baby and her role as a protector of Gotham. Her family is understanding. They all know the itching under your skin. The burning need to go out at night. So they try to help her. Alfred is the one to suggest turning her focus to the Wayne side of their life's. To use her knowledge of the streets and poor parts of Gotham to help the money flow to where it's needed. She grumbles. But takes the opportunity.

Jason's story stays almost the same. What else is there to do than be a ballsy little kid in the face of Batman. Than to bare his teeth in the face of danger. He's only supposed to stay at the manor for a few days. Until the system could find a better, long term place for him. In the matter of hours Steph and Jason become inseparable. He looks at her like she hung the stars and she regales him with greatly exaggerated stories of her time as Batman's sidekick. They all know that Jason isn't going anywhere after that and Batman needed a new sidekick anyways. (Jason takes his, from Steph appointed, "Batman Wrangler" Job *very* seriously)

Several years later, there's a new player on the field. Cold calculated and able to stay three steps ahead of Batman. The Joker dies. The head is mailed to Wayne Enterprise. A gift, the card says, from Drake Industries. A promise, a threat, for flourishing business relationships. The Joker is dead. And Tim Drake has returned. (Deep deep down in the shadows of Gotham a court of Owls welcomes their newest member. They're like spun sugar, wrapped around his finger)

Darkseid happens. There's a letter addressed to Damian Wayne. A letter telling him that Bruce isn't dead. There's only one person who could have the resources to prove that claim. Prove that the research and theories are indeed fact. So Damian faces his heritage.

When he returns from the League, it's with Bruce Wayne and a shadow. A tiny girl named Cassandra. It takes some time for him to notice, but he wasn't raised by the Bat himself to be unaware of his surroundings. So Damian helps. He sees himself in Cass, a warped and distorted "what could have been". If he wasn't the heir to both the Demon and the Bat. If his parents were just a bit more cruel.

After everything it all ends how it originally began. A visit to the circus. A daring show of skills. A snapped line. And an orphan. Dick Grayson joins the Batfamily, the Waynes last. Hurt, angry and demanding revenge for his family. They all know what it feels like. They all know how to deal with a tiny child with big emotions. He stays. He is loved. And with some time he's no longer angry. You can't be angry when you're an uncle afterall.

[miwiheroes]

Dropping Byler Evidence Every Day Until Season 5

Day 1 - The M&Ms scene

So yeah, this scene is never really talked about that much as like actual proof, more like a funni little thing where Mike looks at Will for a moment when he walks away, but analysis of the cinematography, framing and narrative of this scene can be revealing.

First thing: as soon as El wipes her nose, revealing it was her that helped Mike and Lucas, the camera zooms in on Mike, as if to be like 'oooh wonder how he's going to react'! and the audience is then in suspense, because they're probably expecting him to smile or try to take this opportunity.

What does he do? He just says 'Thanks." And the moment of suspense is broken. It's almost like a record scratch. We will come back to this reaction later, basically because it shows that Mike really does not mind being on these terms with El.

Second thing: At first glance there seems to be 3 main characters of this scene: Mike, Lucas and El. However, Will also seems to be included in this scene unlike Max who is also there. There is no reason to have Will be in some of these shots that, I want you guys to understand, is intentional. The directors didn't just accidentally set up this frame:

They didn't just forget to move Will out the way. In this shot, the Rule of Thirds can be applied. While El and half of Mike are in the second third/ third third, both half of Mike and Will are in the same third. This is also the third on the left, which is where (in western cultures) people begin to look at images from (reading from left to right). The fact that Will looks at Mike when he says 'Thanks' is the first thing that the audience is intended to notice (because its on the left), even if it is very subtle.

It is also important to note that the writers of the show know, in this moment, that Will is in love with Mike, they've had that planned out from the start (this is undeniably canon, unlike Mike's feelings to Will). Therefore, it is interesting that they included him in this shot and the next part too:

Like?? what was the point of the directors putting him in this part? Placing him in an interactional role with Mike in a Mike and El scene is just interesting to me. Like,,,, also could Mike not have talked to El with Will there?

After Will gets up, there is this really awkwardly long part where Will goes from the left third to the right third of the screen and just stays there? Like he's still in the shot (which they can easily catch and retake if they needed to). Why do the writers/directors want you to take such notice of his presence?

Also, going back to the fact that Will has to leave for Mike to be able to talk to El. Again, the directors did not need to put Will in this scene, they could have had him doing something else. Instead, they had him there to subtly further his character arc of being selfless/being shoved away by Mike in favour of El. It's also maybe simply because Mike just can't handle having both Will and El in the same context without ignoring one for the other, because he holds them to the same romantic standard.

We see this mishandling of El and Will in the airport scene, the whole time Mike is with El in the beginning of S3, Rink o Mania, the dinner after Rink o Mania etc. Basically, when both El and Will are around, he feels like he has to get rid of Will to be able to be romantic towards El, despite being able to talk about it to Lucas. When it's just him and Will, he's pretty happy (we see this in the 'Cool. Cool.' scene and the 'Guess it's up to us again' scene which are the only two scenes in S4 where Mike believes he is no longer in a relationship with El and just thinks he needs to team up with Will and go back to Hawkins without El). Therefore, he needed Will out the way because he can't be romantic with his girlfriend with Will distracting him lmao <3

Third Thing: Lucas is the one to encourage Mike to make up with El.

To be honest, him encouraging him alone isn't really that convincing of the fact that Mike is queer coded blah blah, like, your friend is allowed to say 'That was the Olive branch! Your way in!' without it being queercoding. The queercoding however, comes with the reaction to that information.

First, I want to point to something I may bring up in the future of this series. In S1, Lucas is the first person to ever suggest that there might be something romantic going on between Mike and El. When he says "Why don't you just marry her?", Mike does not go all ooooh flustery and blushy, he does not go 'EW GROSS' like a lot of boys that age would, instead he just acts confused. Multiple times.

The first time is when he goes, "Lucas what are you talking about?" The second is in response to Lucas going "Mike, seriously?" saying "What?" again. When Lucas then teases him about caring about her, he just says "Shut up Lucas" in this really tired tone, rather than a flustered or angry one. He basically gets the idea that he probably should like El romantically, if he shows even any care towards her.

Now, throughout S3, Lucas is the one to constantly question Mike's actions towards El. He's confused on why he won't tell her the truth about Hopper, and everything else, which all culminates into this "Oh my god. You're hopeless," when referring to picking up signals about girls.

I must say this rn too: You don't pick up on signals you don't want to receive. You do pick up on signals you do want to receive. I think most of us know what it's like to have a crush. You constantly look out for little things and overanalyse their actions towards you. But Mike has no clue. Maybe because.... he just doesnt feel that way.

Okay going back to reactions. Basically, you would kind of expect Mike's reaction to hearing that his girlfriend, that he's sooooo sad about losing oh nooooo, has decided to reach out and say that she's okay with him would be excitement, right?

When Lucas is describing how he's going to let Mike talk to El, Mike looks extremely nervous, which I get. It's normal to feel nervous in this situation, but the thing is, El seems okay with him, surely he would at least have a little light in his eyes?

When Lucas has to say 'Talk to her, alright?' (as if Mike has no fucking clue) Mike nods and then there is a swell in the music, the camera zooms in on him, and instead of the music swelling to some nice, positive tones, it's almost foreboding, mimicking the mixed feelings swirling in Mike's brain. His face also kind of looks.... weird like he's unsure, or maybe he's disappointed? Nervous? idk

I would understand this to be a little romantic if he smiles, but jesus, he does not crack a single grin at this part.

It almost seems like he's deciding to do something he doesn't really want to. I think he was completely content with the fact that she helped them, but didn't want to do anything about it because he's totally fine being on good terms with her, obviously, but not necessarily on romantic terms with her. Maybe he's fine with the fact she doesn't really want to be with him.

However, after Lucas says this stuff, now he's looking over at her and thinking, wait, maybe she does want to be with me.

But instead of a:

Wow, maybe she does want to be with me! :D

It's a:

Oh, so she does want to be with me.

^basically this means Mike decides, based on his encouragement from Lucas rather than his own feelings, that he should talk to her. What can he say to Lucas here? That he doesn't want to? That isn't really an option for him.

Fourth Thing: Okay this is very small but for some reason this scene is interspersed with scenes of Jonathan and Nancy getting almost killed by the mindflayer army like???

Why would they cut from this very tense scene where these beloved characters are about to be killed to this scene between Mike and El where everything is fine!

It's like.,,,, they want the audience to be tense watching them, even if it's not directly for the right reasons. They want the audience to maybe feel the tension in the foreboding nature of the fact that the mindflayer is in the same building as them, meaning there is always some danger lurking in the background.

Okay hope you enjoyed today's byler evidence :) stay tuned for tomorrow's!

[great-septimus]

I agree with this completely, but I want to add some things. I think something that I've seen people not realize is that in this framework Maruki has no care for the dead. He never cared about Kasumi, or about the sibling's bond with each other, because if he did he could have just brought Kasumi back or tried even a little bit to understand the underlying truth behind Sumire's grief stricken warped perception of her late sister. Instead, Maruki facilitates what she claims she wants, which is to become this warped perception of her sister. To match the strength she idolized. It's the same with Akechi. Akechi's wishes don't matter, Maruki wants to repay Ren for unintentionally giving him the key to accomplishing his goals, and to an extent he sees himself in Ren. Just like how Maruki didn't attempt to understand the truth behind the bond of the Yoshizawa siblings, he didn't attempt to understand the bond between Ren and Akechi. It's not enough that Akechi is alive and """"happy"""" with Ren, they had a unique dynamic fueled by their experiences, and Maruki's shallow understanding of them and what they "want" could never accurately replicate it. He thinks sanding off Akechi's jaded worldview and trauma will make him easier to love, and we know that's not true. Not to Ren. Akechi's autonomy is not granted to him because it would in Maruki's eyes, defeat the purpose of bringing him back as the perfect companion he thinks Ren always wanted but could never have.

This is a big reason why I have problems with people who claim to love shuake but also believe Maruki is right or prefer the bad ending narrative wise. It's feeding into the same toxicity Maruki does. Maruki doesn't value Akechi individually, he is only present as a ghostly giftwrapped puppet for Ren to love. People tend to fall into the trap that Maruki's reality provides, and that's that "look at this character you have grown attached to. Don't you want them happy?" So they are forced to deal with the cognitive dissonance of safe comfort for the character, or what the character would want. Anyone who claims to love Akechi and Ren together but prefers the bad ending doesn't actually care about the bond they have. It's because they play as Ren and they want his "happiness".

Adding onto this because I've yapped for this long so I might as well, I could apply this to any of the other thieves as well. Someone might spend the entire game wishing for Ann to be happy with Shiho, and then when Maruki provides that of course they would consider accepting the deal. But they seem to forget that the only reason they became attached to Ann in the first place is because of the experiences she went through in the course of the game. The Ann they grew to love is NOT the Ann that has Shiho in Maruki's reality. It's an important distinction to make.

forever thinking about royal’s bad ending. my thing with it is that maruki doesn’t necessarily give anyone what they want most, he gives them what’s most appropriate for them to want within a maruki-approved framework. iirc there’s a really interesting text sequence in the game where he just straight up changes someone’s career because they’re not “good” at it, regardless of whether that’s what they actually want. why struggle at all? ever? right?

and so ultimately i don’t think goro akechi’s greatest wish is necessarily ren. i think it’s a wish for sure, but his greatest wish is his own agency. despite any regrets he has and the fact that shido and yaldabaoth treated him like a pawn, he's generally pretty adamant about owning his choices and their consequences. he doesn't want that erased. and instead, you end up with pleasant boy™ if you take maruki’s deal. maybe maruki (incorrectly) thinks sanding off all of akechi’s rough edges will make him easier for ren to love. but the crux of it is really that maruki has to essentially lobotomize him to preserve the illusion of his perfect reality, because their ideologies are so diametrically opposed that akechi would spend every waking moment fighting back.

this isn’t to undermine ren’s importance to akechi btw — he explicitly acknowledges that he wishes they had met earlier, and there are countless moments throughout their confidant that underscore how much it means to him that they mirror each other so well. he absolutely does want more time with ren, just not under these circumstances.

and that’s also what makes ren’s choice on 2/2 doubly devastating. he knows that either way he loses akechi. and if he takes maruki’s deal, he loses him knowing that his last moments with the real akechi involved the two of them being unforgivably out of sync.

[ainnur]

"Pink and Yellow Cover The Pain" -Fanfic

Sumary : After being possesed by Lady Bone Demon, Bai He have white stroke on her hair. She hated how it look because it make her look like old lady and so much like the Bone Demon herself. Then she ask Wukong for help and Wukong help her cover the white hair...

A/N : Soooo Im not really a writer I just wrote this for fun so there will be some mistake. And my english kinda shitty. This base of my au "What Still Frozen au". Character can be Ooc

"Pink and Yellow Cover The Pain " -by Ainnur

"Have you done this before?"

"Nope, I never even touch a hair dye before, can you belive that?"

Hearing that Bai He isn't actually sure how to feel about it. On one hand, she actually scare to let this happend but on other hand, she just doesn't care anymore. What else could Bai He lost? Her hair already demaged real bad because of the Bone Demon and Bai He is forever piss about it.

To put it simple, Bai He loved her hair so much. She loves brushing and styling it however she want and it will look cute. Thanks to her cousin Ayu who always press on how important the hair care is, Bai He able to keep her hair healthy for a long time. Her hair is long like her mother and have a colour of her dad's. What used to be soft and silky beautiful hair now letf dry and kinda dead. No matter what she do, it just seem that she can't bring her old back. She hates that.

Another thing is, being Lady Bone Demon host body left her with ugly white stroke of hair. Not only it make Bai He look like old lady, it make Bai He look like more the Bone Demon herself. Bai He know it just make sense that Bone Demon make Bai He look like be when using her body like a puppet. That old demon bitch... That just make her hated her hair even more and want to get rip of it.. She decide to tell Wukong about it and ask his opinion. He'll understand right? Afterall, he got same white stroke of hair like her. Even he dont understand, he will help her and she just know it. She didnt expect this...

💕

Bai He take a big gulp of water and huff in satisfaction. Right now she at Pigsy's Noddle with Wukong sitting next to her. It's somehow become their little thing to just eating noddle and talk about random things. Bai He enjoy this simple times with Wukong and she always get to eat delicious noddle that Wukong always pay for her. Wukong doesn't seem to mind and Bai He won't complain about it. Why would she? We talk about free food!

Bai He take a look at Wukong who seem lost in thought while waiting for his noddle to cold down. That one thing Bai He notice about Wukong. He always waits for any of his food to cold down. It's not just cold down enough that you can eat the food when is still warm , no, Wukong waited until all the heats is completely gone. Where the enjoyment of that?? But again not like Bai He would say anything about it. If Wukong like his food like that, who is she to judges loudly?

"Umm...you good kid? You kinda looking at me for solid 3 minutes now. Did I have something on my face?" Wukong's voice able to pull Bai He back from her thought.

"No. You're fine Monkey King " Bai He actually double check Wukong's face to make sure of it.

"It's just...." Bai He take few breath try to form a right sentence to tell Wukong. Few seconds pass as Wukong wait for her to tell him whatever she in her mind right now.

"I hate my hair...." Saying that, she get Wukong full attention as he push his bowl of noddle aside wanting to actually hear her.

"I hate what she done to my hair and how it make me look like....Her.. And I just want the damage to be gone." She grab her hair a bit on her palm not actually looking at Wukong as she focus on her hair right now. It's silence for seconds as Wukong try to process what Bai He just tell him.

"Well you can cut it-"

"No" she cut Wukong words fast

"I don't want to cut it.I just...cant..part of with didnt allowed that." Bai He cant actually explain why she didnt want to cut it, she just know she attach to it.

"I just want to 'cover' it like you..." Bai He words stiff while she looking at Wukong this time. Other thing Bai He know about Wukong is that Wukong uses magic thing call glamours or something to hide his real appearance to other. Even from MK. He cover the white stroke of hair using that and make his hair look normal. Bai He is silently jealous of that ability of Wukong because how is that fair? Why he can just look how ever he want with snap of finger and she just cant? Oh how she wish she have the ablity too.

"I get an idea!" Wukong said with smile planning something in his head. Oh boy....

💕.

That bring us to now. Both Bai He and Wukong is walking to her bathroom after Wukong show up next day with big bag full with hair dye. Hair dye .....Why Bai He didn't about that sooner?! Maybe she so stress and that just didnt cross her mind. Bai He was suprise when she saw the bag full with different colours of hair dye boxs for first time when Wukong show up.

"I don't know what colour you prefer so I just bring everything and let you choose " Wukong simply said that and leave Bai He watching him with unbeliveable face. This monkeyyyyyy.

"Well..you like pink, right?" Wukong asks with a smile, holding a box pink hair day in his hand. He right about that, Bai He loves the colour pinks. It's remind her of her cousin who like wearing pink. In other words, pink is pretty colour. Some people would say that pink is not a real colour as it is just shade of red. They were right about that but Bai He doesn't care, It's pretty and that only thing matter. Pink could be lovely colour that bright up the mood but it also can be sickening when it's to much

"Yeah, I want pink" She decide on that with smile. If anything happend it happend and Bai He could not careless. Wukong only respon saying she make a great choice and preparing the dye. While Wukong busy, Bai He want to go through the bag again and that when she notice something is moving inside. "Little monkey!?" Yeah one of Wukong's subject follow Wukong hear in the bag. The little monkey then went to his king and climb on his shoulder. Wukong gigle for a bit and let the little monkey mix the hair dye. "Careful now little one" Wukong remind the monkey. Bai He watching everything with awe and get her attention back to the bag.

Inside of the back she find another colour, yellow. But with specific shade.... It's yellow but not just any yellow, it's have a bit of orange hue in it making it look more golden. It's Wukong type of yellow. Bai He dont know much about colour theory but the colour do remind her of Wukong. This yellow colour bring warm feeling to Bai He. It's provide comfort for Bai He with the bright and fun nature of the colour.

"I want this colour too" Bai He said without thinking. Wukong simply agree with her and Bai He cant help but smile at Wukong. Everything he did right now is for her and she really appreciate it. Colouring her hair with both colour would be fun. But again she didnt want to colour whole head, just the ugly white stroke. Will it look good? They'll find out about that later.

💕

"You sure, you never done this before?" Bai He ask suspicious with Wukong's skill right now. That monkey really tell her that he never dying people hair before but the way Wukong doing staff right now say the opposite.

"Yeahhhhh.....look Im gonna come clean. I watched few video online last night of how to dye hair and tried to do it on my own clone for a bit. " Last night...... Wukong learned to do everything by only a night. Not to mention he just learned it from some video online! Bai He she shouldn't question Wukong ability but to learn something THAT quick is just insane for her.

"Of course and now you're a hairdresser" Bai said sacasticly. Yeah, she bit jealous of that ability, who wouldnt? Wukong just laugh awkwardly at her comment. He so focus on working on Bai He hair with little help from the small monkey to actually say anything as Bai He sit in bathtub.

Bai He herself dont know what Wukong is doing but she trust Wukong completely. Even if everything didnt turn out well she know Wukong would think about something to fix it. Yup, no worry at all. She let Wukong and little monkey pull her hair and wrap it with aluminium foil that Wukong summon using his hair. The smell of hair dye kinda bad and strong.

💕

They have to wait for an hours as the box said. During that time all 3 of them do is watching some random drama from Bai He's phone to kill time. The drama actually good as all of them focus on the phone and not talking at all.

"No offend Monkey King but that women kinda remind me of you" She look at Wukong and back to her phone. The little monkey nod hearing that

"What do you mean?" Wukong raise a eyebrow because that women look nothing like him and many way.

"Both have shitty taste of man" Bai He answers him fast and she can hear Wukong gasping and little monkey cover it mouth.

" ExCuUsE you, I have FINE taste of man"

"Bullshit. You dated Macaque that say everything about you!!"

"Come on! That not fair!" Wukong pout at that. They bicker a bit with Wukong try to defend his pout taste in man and little monkey siding Bai He in this bickering.

After an hour it's finally time to wash off the dye. Wukong let Bai He do it herself as he take a towel for her. Bai He watch the leftover dye going down to the tub's hole. The pink and yellow colour get mix together creating redish-orange colour. Later she take the towel that Wukong give her and dry her hair off.

Bai He take deep breath as she preparing herself to look at mirror again. These past few she isnt doing well looking at mirror because she keep seeing HER. There is still cracks from where she punch the mirror. She still remember how worry Wukong is that time and everything was a mess.. Blood dripping from her fist and some stick to broken mirror. It was Wukong who help her treat the wound. But that is another story. Finally after have courage to look at mirror, Bai He eyes go wide seeing her own reflection.

"Sooooo...do you like it,kid?" Wukong ask softly while having little monkey on his shoulder. Bai He take a look at herself again at her broken mirror that she punched. The white hair stroke is now cover with pink and yellow colour. Both colour stand out from her original black hair.

"I..LOVE it!" Bai He is being honest. In her opinion, the colour was great combo and she love how it look so much. Her eyes sparkels as she see no more of white hair. Lady Bone Demon look nothing like her right now. Did Lady Bone Demon have have a sick and cool pink and yell hair stroke? No, she doesn't .

"Thank you so much, Monkey King!!" Bai He said happily as she hugs her mentor hard

"Anytime, kid" Wukong smile and hug her back. She then let go of Wukong and take out her phone fast as want she talking picture with her new hair colour and Wukong. Everything turn out fine and Bai He couldnt be more happy.

END :3

Thanks for reading! Everything about the au is under "What Still Frozen au" tag. You also can ask me anything about the au or idea for them or other things

[barrenclan]

I'm sure you've probably talked about this already, but I really liked your decision to not have Daffodilcloud forgive Beeface and Plumstripe. Not only do I love seeing her newfound confidence, I see a lot of stories where people forgive the people who put them through a lot of cruelty for the sake of healing. That can be fine, but that's not always the case for some people. Sometimes peoples healing journeys involve removing those people from your life, and I liked seeing that in these recent pages.

That was an extremely important point for me to include! I also wanted to really emphasize the permanence of consequences in a story that is so centered around healing and growth. Sometimes relationships are just irreperably damaged, and you can't force someone to try and fix them. But that doesn't mean that either party should not also try to change and be better regardless of losing that connection. There are a lot of people in the world.

With empathetic and gentle characters like Daffodilcloud, I also think it can get very exhausting always having to be the forgiving one, who is always understanding and reasonable to people who hurt you. Especially if that's just who you are naturally. So it can feel cathartic to put your foot down sometimes and not take on the burden of forgiveness, even if you're still kind about doing it.

[flutterbyoz]

It always surprises me, or maybe it doesn't given what the general TWD fandom can be like, that people are using the fact that The Ones Who Live is a love story as a reason to criticise the show.

The fact it is a love story was never hidden, it was never a secret or kept as a surprise, it's what the show was repeatedly promoted and advertised as. Andy, Danai and Scott never misled anyone into thinking it was going to be anything else, they were quite clear and pointed out that TOWL would be a love story every chance they got. So if someone saw any of the promo, interviews etc whether online or on TV and were going into this show expecting something else then I don't really know what to say other than they probably should have paid more attention.

The show was not aimed at or made for people who hate Richonne. I get that not everyone is a Richonne fan, to each their own for the most part, but when you watch their spin off, what else are you expecting other than a love story? Especially with Andy and Danai at the helm, it seems some people really don't understand the characters at all.

I know some people tuned in just to see what happened to Rick and that's great, the show isn't solely for Richonners but if the love story with his wife and love of his life annoys you so much that you can't continue watching your fave in their spin off and the feel the need to announce that you quit half way through then not only do I have to wonder why you hate their relationship so much but also say that you're purposefully ignoring a huge part of who Rick is and why he does what he does. I don't think you can fully understand and know Rick without his relationship with Michonne and how his love for her and hers for him shapes him into the man he is today. Without Michonne, Rick is a shell of himself, she is his entire world, she and their kids are his reason for everything so you're not going to get a Rick story without Michonne, because without Michonne there isn't really a Rick.

Had this been Rick and Daryl instead of Rick and Michonne, had they been the ones with the emotional scenes I can pretty much guarantee a large majority of the people who complained about Rick and Michonne would have no problem with Rick and Daryl. It's what a lot of them have been calling for since Rick was taken not to mention the people who are bitter that Richonne gets everything they have wanted for their ship for years.

Attacking a show because it is what it was promoted as and did exactly what it set out to do is more than a little bizarre to me but I suppose it's just another way to criticise and disregard Rick and Michonne's relationship and diminish Michonne's importance.

I know, if we see Richonne again, it's going to be another love story and those who complained before will most likely complain again but only one spin off has been the most successful, a hit for the franchise and for AMC, included on numerous best of lists, gained Emmy buzz, received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics and fans alike, has multiple Saturn award nominations and given this franchise a new lease of life. I find it strange to watch a show knowing full well you're only doing so to find something to complain about and though those viewers are just a small percentage of TOWLs overall viewers they did the exact opposite of what they wanted to do. Instead of bringing the show down they're just raising it up even higher!

Nothing will stop this ship, everyone wants a piece of them, they draw everyone in even those who say they don't care or even like them together and that's the power or Richonne!

[monsters00km]

I am so sorry you've had to experience that. I'm a white lesbian woman who grew up in a very conservative area. I am privileged. I have been trying to learn and listen to others' experiences. And i agree that this journey never ends. I try to be understanding and listen. Sometimes, I fail.

Honestly, being a part of fabdoms has taught me a lot about it. People with different backgrounds bring different perspectives when consuming media. And it's important to listen to that. And understand why others might see it differently. But it can be difficult bc of the toxicity within fandoms.

And i agree. I love that her character arc took this very realistic journey. Of going on this solo savior journey. To falling to her lowest point where she has lost herself to grief and rage. To realizing what she is doing is wrong. To accepting that. And to moving forward with who she wants to be. And realizing change takes time, and it is something she can't just wave her hands an get.

This is so real. People don't usually go on redemption journeys as much as we want them to. It is a great story where a privileged person does something horrible and then has a change of heart and swoops in and changes the world. But I have never seen it happen.

And i agree. It's damaging. To me, it's propaganda for the rich.

I think her story is realistic and i like that, and I am glad you see that too.

"Caitlyns redemption arc isn't very good."

Maybe she doesn't have a redemption arc.

May be Arcane isn't about redemption.

May be Arcane is about flawed characters who are neither good nor bad.

May be Arcane is a show that shows us that good people can do horrible things and how our society and the people we have or don't have as support can shape that.

Good people can become horrible. Not because it is innate within them. But because of their life experiences.

[idkkprincess]

Maria Robotnik: Joy as a Weapon

For a lot of my take on Maria, I understand that many people don’t have the same thoughts. And that is okay. But here is how Maria as a character is compelling to me. 

Before the year of Shadow, we had very little Maria. Not that we have a lot right now, but it was much less a year ago. What little we did have of Maria has never been from her perspective, and this trend continues. Since her purpose in the story is how she affects Shadow’s character there’s no reason for her to be more than that. And yet, I find her important.

What we know from Shadow is that she was a kind hearted girl that supported him through his doubts and dreamed of going to Earth. Shadow was created to cure her and he held himself responsible for her death. But then you stop and think of what Maria actually experienced throughout her life, it’s both heartbreaking and profound.

In summary, Maria was pre-teen child, in space with her grandfather, who is experiencing a life debilitating diseases. She had an unknown family past (up until Generations), knew that a creature was made to cure her, and was aware that this creature—Shadow—would have a difficult future due to his alien origins. And through all of this, Maria Robotnik still stayed with a smile on her face, holding it all inside and using joy as her weapon of choice.

Now after Dark Beginnings and Generations, we have a better timeline on Maria’s life. Especially from Gerald’s journal.

She was the first born grandchild and granddaughter, alas she was cursed with the first born syndrome. We can assume this was why Gerald got extremely attached to his granddaughter as he writes that she will be his legacy. 

During her childhood on Earth, she developed NIDS. Her family worked on finding a cure for her on Earth but nothing worked. Gerald insisted on taking her to space, and though it’s unclear how Maria felt about it, Gerald makes it clear that her parents were not keen on the idea. We have to assume that Maria trusted her grandfather, reassuring her parents that she would be back.

When Maria was first brought to the ARK there were no children, but she was adopted as the “granddaughter” of the ARK. 

During her pre-teen years, Maria was experiencing multiple life-altering events that were out of her control, and yet, she remained joyful. She must’ve witnessed people argue, plans being arranged, and had to say goodbye to her family and the Earth she loved. Yet she stayed hopeful. Whatever her role as a patient in the NIDS trials aboard the ARK, she believed it would bring hope to humanity.

Years after she arrived, Abraham Towers was born aboard the ARK. For the first time in a long time, she was not the only child aboard the ARK. She developed an immediate bond with him—someone new, not burdened by the world’s responsibilities.

Her time on ARK was beneficial as she no longer experienced any visible effects of NIDS. Though she still had bad days, her hope remained intact. This is something her family, however, lacked.

Gerald, in his journal, states that he kept her in the dark about her family’s belief regarding her future.

“She has total faith in me. “Project Shadow” will heal her, she says.

Her family on earth has no such faith.

Her family wants her to make a full recovery or just come home.”

Which is understandable. She was taken because Gerald believed that he could cure her. He did everything in his power to get her to be as healthy as possible. 

And Maria, being Maria, did what we have known her for: she became a reassuring and calming force for everyone around her. While she was physically unable to do much, her hope and happiness were all she had to give.

Her positivity comes with many challenges, including the arrival of her new "godson," Shadow. At first, she doesn’t know much about him, other than that he was created to help cure her, and that he’s the "ultimate lifeform" for the government. Another person for her to interact with. Years aboard the ARK, and now there’s someone new.

Knowing Maria, she must’ve read through countless notes on Project Shadow. He was created to cure her, but also to serve the government’s needs. And so, she gave him his first gift: his air shoes and limiters..

During this time in Gerald’s entries there is  the understanding that the Robotnik’s homelife is also not the best. Gerald’s family is falling apart down on Earth and his pressure is growing immense, his only solace is the bright light his granddaughter brings to his lab. 

Soon, Shadow is awakened for the first time. And it’s Maria’s duty to be his best friend, his guide, and his confidante for everything that will come his way. He may have just woken up 30 seconds ago but he needs to see everything and most importantly the Earth!

And between the time Shadow wakes up and future entries on Gerald’s journal the events of Shadow Generations take place.

During their time in the white space, Maria Robotnik learns about what her confidant’s life will entail. She meets a new Shadow. A Shadow who has great skills and undeniable anger for reasons she cannot fully understand. And he somehow looks at her, as all the other doctors back on Earth used to do. The look of condolence. 

The holier than thou, so untouchable, so fragile, like a flower that could break at the slightest touch.

Ah, she can’t quite put it together but she knows. It has been time since he had last seen her. Her time finally ran out. But How? Who knows. But Shadow surely has gone through it. 

Maria knows there must be more to everything than this. Shadow’s future does not seem bright and that’s where her job comes in: to bring hope to humanity. Shadow will show the way to that light. The only way to make that work is to support Shadow in all of his doubts. Make him know that he is okay. Be the emotional support her grandfather forgot to address. 

And so, we return to their current time in the ARK. And her cure does not work. And Shadow’s stress increases and he falls into bouts of despair.

She distracts with hugs of support and stories of the Earth. The stars in the sky and the ocean down below. Life is meant to mean more than just one failed mission. 

Yet she knows why he feels this way. Everything that is happening is because of her. Her parents had another child, because she was no longer in their life. Her grandfather was working himself to the bone because of her. Her Shadow was feeling despair because of her. Her grandfather exchanged the entirety of humanity to an alien race because of her and was hoping that Shadow would fix it because of her. 

They record a video for Shadow. For when the Black Doom returns in 50 years and she will help him defeat the Black Arms. She doesn’t know how far in the future white space Shadow was from. If they continue to work on the cure she will be okay by then. She has to hope so. 

Then a lab experiment went rouge. She must send Shadow to help. He will be able to fix everything and save grandfather.

Fast forward, she is running with Shadow down a hall during the ARK Raid. They need to get to safety. She feels a fierce pain in her chest. And so she frees the one person who had no reason to be involved in her mess. The one person who she will forever be held accountable for. 

“Sayonara, Shadow the Hedgehog.”

Am I reading too much into a dead girl from a franchise about a blue hedgehog who runs to fast...of course I am. That's the whole deal.

[randomfoggytiger]

The Field Where I Died: The Tragic Flaws of Glen Morgan and James Wong

My thoughts on The Field Where I Died are divided into neat little categories for this episode: frustration for what we were given, acceptance of its existence, anger at Glen Morgan and James Wong's behind-the-scenes revelations, acknowledgment of their feelings, determination that the end product's truth was different than what was originally conceptualized, and genuine understanding of others' love for its creativity and vision.

But those thoughts are inseparable from a broader perspective of Morgan and Wong's work on Season 4.

I'm going to be pulling a lot of information from an interview here; but to save time (and sanity), I'll emphasize the quotes in italics instead of continually citing my source.

"I CAN DO BETTER" VISIONARIES

(Credit to: @sleepyscully.)

It's no secret that Morgan and Wong always wrote-- shall we say-- angsty episodes that drove a wedge in Mulder and Scully's relationship. Sometimes that was executed brilliantly-- Squeeze, Beyond the Sea, Home, Never Again-- and sometimes that was executed... badly. Their bent is the nature of conflict, and its potential resolution; or ideals and tarnished realities; or things we thought we knew and understood but never really did. And those are powerful tools... if, like all tools, they're wielded effectively.

They're the difference between the ridiculous conceit of Musings of a CSM-- an episode that set everyone against each other (we'll get to that)-- and Beyond the Sea-- and episode that wowed Carter (convincing him to keep Gillian on the show), fans, and critics alike.

I've already tackled how The Field Where I Died could work here (how Scully broke the cycle) and here (Scully, snakes, and reincarnation.) I have no qualms with the idea that Mulder and Scully themselves aren't romantic soulmates in every lifetime: that was never the magic of their relationship, to me. And I do love the concept that Melissa serves as a contrast for Mulder: as Morgan says,

 One reason why I wrote Melissa that way was my notion that if you’re Mulder and you found your soulmate, the love of all your loves, within the body of this unappealing person, what would you do? I don’t know if we totally explored that. I don’t know if Duchovny would agree with me – he knows more about Mulder – but I think Melissa is the type of women that Mulder would be attracted to. Someone like Bambi in ‘The War of the Coprophages’ is good for a joke, but I don’t really see Mulder going after her. There’s something sad about Melissa. There was a secret within her that was important for him to get at. That mirrors his life, and his own search for his sister. He is a character whose whole drive is to help everybody, but he’s so unsuccessful at that, and with helping himself. All he wants is to find one person that he can rescue – but he’s not too good at it.

No matter how despairing Mulder is, Morgan said, he would not be tempted, like Melissa, to end his life. “I looked at Melissa as if she decided reincarnation might be true, and that if she had chosen this life, at that point she realized, ‘This is a bad idea. This is a miserable life and I’m not getting much out of it. I’m just going back to heaven and I’ll wait for you.’ She wanted out. But Mulder, as much as he’d love to go to the other side to see what’s there, is a life-affirming character. He’s going to keep on looking. He’s not going to quit. Mulder has questions for this life.”

That rings true to me.

What I do have qualms with is that Mulder and Scully's incredible, undeniable, written-into-canon-at-this-point connection (that was established in the Pilot, purposefully, by Chris Carter himself, post here) is boiled down to a destined, warped tri-connection that is part of and secondary to his (chemistry-less) connection with a woman that doomed him in every lifetime. A woman who is an unreliable narrator, and who could easily be swaying Mulder into believing her story because of her own form of mental instability and fragility. It could be a beautiful love story, and it's undeniably beautifully shot (and mostly beautifully written), but it's not Mulder's-- it's Morgan's:

For Morgan, an episode about reincarnation and eternal soulmates was not just a good story for Mulder, but a personal expression of the thoughts and emotions he had experienced during the past year, when his relationship with Cloke grew from friendship into romance (they are now engaged), “I had gone through a failed marriage in which I had really believed,” Morgan revealed. “I had always wanted to believe there is somebody out there for you, and I had been in a situation where that didn’t come true. And I thought, ‘It’s a lie. That person you think is out there for you is a lie.’ But then I met Kristen and I was rejuvenated by that. I really thought. that you can be reborn in this life, not just life after death. I regained faith that there is one person for you, one person who, by being in your life, can motivate you to change the crappy things you were doing before. In this case, it was Kristen. I knew she did a lot of characters and voices, so I wanted to incorporate that.. I wanted to write something for her that challenged her. Also, I wanted to write something for David Duchovny that challenged him.”

("Challenged", indeed.)

And that... that rubs me the wrong way.

NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU

I'm not here for Glen's romance, I'm sorry. I'm here to be persuaded that Mulder might have a soulmate, that Scully might be a soulmate, that all three could be bound in this doomed pattern for lifetimes; and if that cycle was broken with Melissa Ephesian's death. (More importantly: does Mulder and/or Scully believe it's broken?) What we were given instead was a memoir to love in general that shoehorned itself into the show without regard for canon.

I'm not angry with TFWID as much as I am other episodes (most of Existence and canon onward, for example) because Mulder and Scully's characterization never strays-- Field may have been carelessly wedged in, but it was skillful with its emotional exploration. Further, the events and facts presented so summarily contradict each other that there's no real "threat" propped up by its existence. And, while I can't excuse the cringe-inducing acting from Morgan's wife, I can explain why DD's turned out so "badly" (read: jarringly):

Bowman’s director’s cut ran so long that Morgan and Wong were forced to trim twenty minutes out of the episode.... Morgan felt that the emotional impact of Mulder’s hypnosis session might have been marred by the cutting, since it interfered with the flow of Duchovny’s acting throughout the entire scene. “I called David and I said, ‘I’m cutting it this way.’ I could hear that he was upset. I know what actors go through to prepare, and then to have to sit in a chair for a couple of hours in front of a bunch of grips and gaffers and people that they hang out with everyday, and cry – it’s just like taking off your clothes. And then to find it’s been cut out. I had to come home and tell Kristen, ‘Look, this part is coming out.’ She was upset and David was upset. Jim was off prepping ‘Musings of Cigarette Smoking Man’ or doing something and I was just very alone.’

(For context, the hypnosis scene was originally twelve minutes long.)

While I might be tempted to sympathize with Morgan, he didn't extend that sympathy equally to his wife or Duchovny, instead turning this combined loss into a one-sided self-pity party.

MULDER THE SACRIFICE, SCULLY THE SAVIOR

I also have a theory that Carter was writing Scully as a savior and Mulder as a sacrificial lamb for the mainline series (until he made William a magic baby and ruined eight years of build-up), post here.

There's a reason that The X-Files is told through Scully's perspective; and that Mulder is often compared to Ahab chasing the White Whale, to a man on a fated quest, to a boy who lost his sister and can't live freely until he has that closure. There's a reason that Scully is Mulder's "one-in-five billion", his salvation ("But you saved me!"), his constant, his touchstone-- and his "human credential", as David Duchovny put it. There's a reason that Carter banked an entire series off of a chemistry and bond he wrote into the graveyard scene, and maintains that that is when Mulder and Scully fell in love (though to what degree is up for fanon interpretation.) There's a reason that the CSM was wrong to picture Mulder as a Christ-like figure, and Scully was right to walk into Mulder's subconscious and rescue him with the truth ("Get up and fight.") There's a reason that Mulder's rescue in Deep Throat underscores his and Scully's partnership from then on out: he in danger-- be it from Jersey Devils, moth men, fated love triangles, Houston bombs, brain surgery, alien abduction-- and she his rescuer (discussed a little here.)

Why is this important? Because The Field Where I Died's concept is not without canonical merit: Mulder running headlong into danger, Scully holding him back long enough to prevent the cycle from repeating. And it ties into the mytharc's ad nauseam question of Fate v. Freewill (posts here and here.) TFWID could even work if you factor in the theory of Scully's immortality (post here.)

But the reality is, Morgan and Wong were not going for canonical adherence.

THE WONDER OF THE SUPERNATURAL, THE FAILURE OF THE HUMAN CONNECTION

Episodic timeline goofs and gaffes aside, the problems in The Field Where I Died lie deeper than which woman Mulder loves and which one he perpetually makes friendship bracelets with. The greatest problem arrives, settles, and stains with the introduction of soulmates: the recontextualization of the infamous MSR dynamic.

Morgan was focusing again on Mulder and Scully as humans; but he fumbled, amplifying then explaining away their "unspoken" as a supernatural connection rather than the meeting of uncannily similar minds:

Apart from personal considerations, Morgan and Wong wanted to reorient the show’s attitude towards the paranormal, which they felt in the third session had been expressed far too often as something evil or wrong. “The paranormal isn’t about death or evil,” Morgan said. “It’s about wonder.” In line with this approach, he and Wong wanted to avoid writing a conventional villain; instead, the principal conflicts take place between Mulder and Scully or are internal, with both Mulder and Melissa haunted by their pasts, in this life, and perhaps previous lives. 

Morgan and Wong wanted to zero in on two humans, and all their complications as such, brushing up against the unfathomable, neutral force beyond their comprehension... but then ruined that message, that build-up, by justifying the personal, human aspect-- their connection-- by making it inhuman, unnatural, and supernatural, too. All the while, of course, telling us (and believing themselves) that fans were upset because they introduced another romance for Mulder.

(As a side note: why do I excuse-- for lack of a better word-- David Duchovny's similar sentiments towards TFWID and its reception? Firstly, he, and others, genuinely loves it; and I'm happy for him. To David, it seems, love is more powerful when it is guaranteed for a lifetime and beyond-- the insecurity of someone falling out of love, platonically or romantically, is more powerful than a finite and fickle love that can be lost or tarnished. That being his interpretation-- and Morgan's intention-- I can see why he'd love TFWID. It's a powerful sentiment. More importantly, the man doesn't hold it against fans-- he thinks they misinterpreted its intent-- like Morgan thought they did-- understands why it would disgruntle, but maintains that he loves it, regardless. I can respect that position, even if we disagree; because the heart likes what it likes. I, for one, have my own likes that others might hate.)

LAZILY WRITTEN

The greatest mistake of all-- one Morgan humbly recognizes-- is the faults in the writing. Well... more accurately, that he and Wong failed to keep a complete vision that would (most definitely, guys) translate better to audiences. His ideas, I concede, were intriguing; but like all mediums, the final product is what audiences are left to judge and believe in. For TFWID, it was mixed up before the scenes were filmed, and hacked apart after the footage was wrapped-- so much so, that Morgan kept realizing the magnitude of his mistakes after the fact:

Under hypnosis, Mulder describes a scene of death and destruction from the Warsaw ghetto; in this past life, he is a Jewish woman, Scully is his father, Samantha is his son, and the Cigarette Smoking Man is a Gestapo officer. 

Next he [Mulder] becomes Sullivan Biddle, already dead in battle, Scully is his sergeant, and Melissa is there, as Sarah. He has no information on the bunkers, all he sees is death. Morgan wrote these scenes to express the overwhelming sense of loss that Mulder has felt his entire life. The scene was shot in extreme close-up, inspired, Morgan said, by his love of Ingmar Bergman’s films. “To spend three quarters of an act, six or seven minutes, in close-up, on television, is wonderful,” he said. “On TV, we’re always cutting back and forth. We’re always blowing stuff up. Jim and I participate in that. Act Four of ‘Home’ couldn’t be more different than act three of ‘The Field Where I Died.’ I’m proud of that. ”

(And you might have blown it, Glen.)

Morgan’s enthusiasm for the scene was not matched by a good number of the show’s fans, who felt the scene was overwrought, both in the writing, and in Duchovny’s performance. “I think both Kristen and David did a great job,” Morgan said. “David just can’t win. If he walks around going, ‘Scully, I’m going here. Oh. Extreme possibilities,’ everyone says, ‘...that guy just mumbles his way through.’ If he emotes, people don’t want to see that. People can say his acting was bad. I don’t think that it was, but some felt it was obviously ‘acting.’ It’s in a close-up, it’s a long monologue, so it points to acting. 

(An unnecessarily long scene that, unfortunately, had to be chopped; and was chopped so badly that, consequently, it lost its nuance and made Duchovny look like a fool by proxy.)

Bowman’s director’s cut ran so long that Morgan and Wong were forced to trim twenty minutes out of the episode, including eliminating one of Melissa’s personalities, a crude loudmouth named Jobee, as well information that supported Scully’s viewpoint, and large sections from Melissa’s and Mulder’s hypnosis sessions

 “If we’d focused on Scully’s viewpoint more, we could have thrown up the idea that maybe Mulder’s wrong, maybe this is just wishful thinking,” Morgan added. “I know this sounds really bad, but to me the hypnosis scene is more important than a teaser. I was desperate to cut out time, and in favoring emotional content over plot content, I might have blown it.”

[Morgan]: "... I read a post online asking why Scully was always a man in the past, and I hadn’t thought about that. I wish I had altered that; it was a mistake.”

And it wasn't just TFWID that was littered with inconsistencies in service to Morgan and Wong's vision.

TFWID, "MUSINGS", AND THE BLAME GAME

When Morgan and Wong returned from their other writing projects, they had to decide whether to leave the studio-- angry at its interference-- or take a deal and partly work for The X-Files and Millennium. Obviously they chose the latter, and rejoined after a hiatus of one or two years. In that time, the X-Files had become a hit. But M and W had changes, and plans to execute those changes, in mind: they both thought that the show had strayed from its original vision-- again, the "wonder" of the paranormal and supernatural-- and would be set to (better) rights with their input and direction.

Not all of their work was flawed-- Home and Never Again were tightly written-- and not all of their ideas were self-involved. For example: when joining the show, they and the other writers were told this season's purpose was to drive a wedge between Mulder and Scully, and framed Never Again around that idea:

“My understanding at the beginning of the year was that we were going to drive to a point where Mulder and Scully didn’t trust each other,” Morgan said. His own scenario for plotting out the season was somewhat different from what Carter and the other writers came up with this year, but the fundamental issue was the same: trust. “I would have slowly split Mulder and Scully up over the course of the season, then in the last episode have Scully put Mulder away for his own good, which he would perceive as the ultimate betrayal,” Morgan said. “And then the next season, they would have had an entire year’s healing to go through.”

That's not an entirely unreasonable direction to take, either.

The other writers had other plans. For good or ill, it was Chris's show; and Chris wanted to steer it in a certain direction. Those who joined and added their thoughts cohesively helped construct the mainline arcs that bloomed into Season 4's cancer revelation and Season 5's lack of faith, as well as building up Fight the Future concurrently. M and W, however, felt bruised when their visions were either tweaked or countermanded; and left the experience disgruntled. For good or ill, Chris Carter, Glen Morgan, and James Wong all had good and bad ideas; but only one of them had created the show-- something which the latter two couldn't, at times, accept.

Case and point: I detour to Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man because that episode-- from its conception to its creation to its execution-- explains clearly what led Morgan and Wong astray.

Home was successful, The Field Where I Died much less so. For both episodes, Chris Carter seemed content to let Morgan and Wong do whatever they wanted. However, a shift occurred when fans fell out of sync with M and W's vision (TFWID); and that shift manifested when Glen and James immediately wanted to jump into a CSM backstory, the mytharc domain of CC. Both writers felt the big bad of The X-Files had become gutless; and they wanted to inject some terror into him by killing off Frohike in the end. Per their original vision, the narrative element was excluded and CSM would reclaim his villainy via a Forrest Gump monologue then follow through by gunning down an innocent man. Chris Carter, meanwhile, did not want Frohike killed and did not think that CSM would care to waste time murdering a relative nobody to his life and work. William B. Davis, CSM's actor, was also insistent this version of CSM was not his character; and was so dissatisfied with it that he called up CC himself. Carter tried to appease all sides with a compromise: letting M and W write what they wanted (within limits) and reassuring himself and WBD that this episode wasn't canon:

Davis promptly called Carter to ask if this was the real history of the Cigarette Smoking Man (Carter told him no).

...“The Cigarette Smoking Man’s flashbacks were my idea, because I indeed wanted the episode to be a memoir,” Morgan said. But the idea that Frohike could be the real narrator was a Carter-imposed addition to the script, to make it seem as if the events of the episode were not real. Carter even changed the name of the script, from “Memoirs of a Cigarette Smoking Man” to “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man.”

[Wong]: ...“The line where Deep Throat says, ‘Maybe I’m not the liar’ was another change imposed on the script so you could make the leap that perhaps this is all. a dream, or the ramblings of Frohike.”

If that weren't potentially explosive enough, Morgan and Wong went behind Chris's back, consulting others on set to create their vision, anyway. When CC turned down Glen's dogged request, twice, to film an alternate ending, Wong took matters into his own, unauthorized hands:

Morgan and Wong felt so strongly about this issue, that they decided to try an end run around Ten Thirteen. They figured that if they filmed the scene their way, and cut it into the episode, it would be so powerful that Carter would have to agree with them. Morgan called Wong up in Vancouver and told him to take a few crew members while everyone else was at lunch, and get some shots of blood spattering on the sign to the Lone Gunman offices. Wong decided against the stealth approach; instead, he filmed William B. Davis pulling back on the trigger, and Tom Braidwood, as Frohike, getting a bullet in the head. Morgan nearly panicked when he heard what his partner had done; he was certain word of it would reach Ten Thirteen down in Los Angeles. His fears were justified.

Carter, meanwhile, allegedly proved how cleverly his fingers always remained on the pulse of the show:

Wong recalled: “I was in the editing room, and I said to the editor, why don’t we print up the B negative? We’ll cut it in and show Chris. [The “B” negative was the negative with the footage of the Cigarette Smoking Man pulling the trigger and Frohike getting shot.] And the editor told me, ‘You can’t do that.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, we can’t do that? Just print the B negative.’ He said, ‘Well, it’s been taken out of the lab. It can’t be found.” In a move worthy of a scene from an X-Files episode, someone had deliberately removed the negative without telling Morgan and Wong, and they had no idea where it was. 

(And how do we know this was CC's doing? Because every single actor, writer, and director interviewed always marveled at his inhuman ability to be aware of every single, teeny tiny detail on set.)

Apparently, the incident blew over wordlessly, so much so that Chris asked Glen and James to help flesh out Millennium and called them up, years later, to craft the Revival with him (and sat nearby while Morgan teasingly alluded to the above incident, just a few years ago.)

To tie it all back to The Field Where I Died: the work they created-- while beautifully written-- was sloppily fitted into the show they were hired to write for:

And then there were the timeline inconsistencies, which Morgan and Wong didn’t even know about until the episode aired and Morgan logged on and was bombarded with dozens of internet posts complaining that the events of “Musings” couldn’t be for real, because they contradicted the teaser to “Apocrypha.” In the “Apocrypha” teaser, which is set in 1953, a young Cigarette Smoking Man (already smoking), a young Bill Mulder, and a third man, all in civilian dress, question a horribly burned submarine crewman who had encountered an alien in a flashback shown in the previous episode, “Piper Maru.” Morgan’s version proposed an entirely different history, with the young Cigarette Smoking Man and Bill Mulder, both Army officers, first meeting in 1961 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The Cigarette Smoking Man doesn’t even smoke, until he takes his first nervous puff late in the first act. Although Morgan and Wong had seen “Apocrypha,” they didn’t remember the events of the teaser. “Okay, we’re sloppy,” Morgan admitted.

To top off the battle of egos, Glen and James laid a portion of the blame at the nameless feet of some faceless "other" rather than taking it upon themselves... or having the guts to point the finger at one person in particular:

“But somebody should have told us. They all read the script. It was the same thing that happened to us on ‘Little Green Men when we showed Samantha’s abduction.'” Added Wong: “If somebody had said, ‘Hey, you know, in the third season, this was said and this doesn’t make sense anymore.’ And we would have changed it. But nobody told us that And the internet people go, ‘This doesn’t make sense,’ and now we look like idiots. We have part of the blame obviously; we didn’t know. We didn’t catch it.”

(It's easy to feel for them and their position... until you realize that there is no evidence-- that I have found-- of them asking if there was a show bible or other resource to consult. Meaning, again, that M and W have to take some blame for this grievance, as well.)

And last but not least, they-- particularly Glen Morgan-- martyred their pain instead of fully accepting and owning their own part in this ever-evolving disaster:

But their disappointment over the changes they were forced to make “Musings of Cigarette Smoking Man” caused them to withhold the ghost story and look for something else. “I had done a lot of research and I had always wanted to write a feature about Lincoln’s ghost,” Morgan said, “But I felt they didn’t want my heart and soul anymore, so I wouldn’t give this one to them."

CONCESSIONS

While these two scalawags contributed their fair share to frustrating and complicated behind-the-scenes shenanigans, their instincts weren't completely wrong, nor all their conduct unrighteous.

They were right on the money with Home--

“Thematically, Sheriff Taylor was doing the same thing that the brothers were doing. They didn’t want things to change,” Morgan said. Scully conducts an examination on the baby, and when the DNA tests come back, she is shocked to find results impossible to believe; they indicate the child had three fathers.

“It was much more controversial than we thought it would be,” Wong said. “Some fans were repulsed beyond analyzing the show; they were just kind of sickened by it. They were pretty turned off. Some people loved it. There was a lot of really, really negative reaction.”

“I have really been stung by that whole reaction,” Morgan admitted. “To me, the show must have become so big while we were away. I think a lot of people hadn’t been exposed to what we did when we were first on the show. They were going, '...what are they doing?’ and we go, ‘But, this is what we always did!’ We had “Squeeze,” or episodes like Chris’ ‘Irresistible,’ these shocking, horrible shows. Act four of ‘Tooms’ I think is on a level with ‘Home,’ so we were going, ‘What is all the ruckus about?’ We figured a lot of people don’t know that earlier stuff, or certain tones that we were going after then.”

-- and Never Again--

“He’s been caught off guard by not knowing something about her,” Morgan said. “A date with someone in Philadelphia, someone he’s never heard of, someone she’s never told him about. He’s unnerved by his lack of certainty about her, with her being wrong about Ed.” The episode ends with Scully telling Mulder firmly, “It’s my life,” and Mulder saying, “But it’s…” and suddenly stopping. Why didn’t he finish his sentence? “It was our way of saying to the other writers, ‘Here’s where Mulder and Scully are, and now the ball is in your court,'” explained Morgan. “That’s what I always felt was our role. In the first couple of years when we were on the show, we might hand it off and then have to pick up the ball ourselves a couple of episodes later, but knowing we were about to leave and would have no input whatsoever, we just said, ‘Well, here’s this thing, how about this? Now it’s yours.’ I feel that Mulder had come to respect that there’s more to this than just him, that Scully is now a part of his life and he’s a part of hers. I think that she learned the danger of exploring the rebellious side, and that it has to be accompanied by responsibility. What she did almost got her killed. So I think that she probably has it a little in check, and yet she’s always carrying the memory of it on her back. It isn’t anything for her to let go of. But next time she’ll be smarter about it, and she won’t let it get so far away from her.”

--and were misunderstood both times.

They were also wrongfully done by here or there--

Morgan had the unhappy task of telling an understandably upset Anderson that the scene she specifically requested had been cut. 

Morgan and Wong were frustrated once more when the network decided to move “Never Again” out of its post-Super Bowl slot, and substitute “Leonard Betts,” the episode that was originally scheduled to air after “Never Again.” “Leonard Betts” ended with the wrenching realization by Scully that she might have contracted the cancer that afflicted the other female abduction victims she met in second season’s “Nisei.” This revelation impacted the rationale behind Scully’s behavior in “Never Again” in ways never intended by Morgan and Wong. “I felt horrible,” Morgan stated. “Those are not her motives for her actions in this episode. The motives in ‘Never Again’ are completely altered by posing that she has a disease or a death sentence...."

-- but did wrong themselves, despite unprecedented creative freedom (see the previous section.)

The trouble, it seems, is an inability to differentiate the criticisms they receive. The pearl-clutching, deaf-and-dumb moralizers over Home are not the same crowd scratching (nay, banging) their heads over the blatant and illogical inconsistencies in The Field Where I Died and Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man. (In fact, the last episode mentioned aged nicely, if the IMDb numbers haven't lied.) And that trouble compounds when they can't understand why a behemoth ship, constantly taking on mounting expectations and schedules, might halt for pit stops but won't change course for inconsistent passengers.

Lastly, while I can sympathize with the emotions both Glen Morgan and James Wong felt for having their work constantly tampered with, that sympathy dwindles when contemplating a few factors:

They were working for someone else's show, not their own.

They were given unlimited creative freedom upon their return, and were only reigned in after their projects continued to falter.

They were butting heads against two factors that the show runner himself wanted to keep ambiguous or under hat: CSM's backstory and Mulder and Scully's lives outside of work.

Having one's spirit crushed by back-to-back disappointments can't solely fall on the shoulders of the network or show runners when the first two ventures weren't touched, tampered, or changed (except for a run time you knew you had going in); and they can't fall solely on fans when the end results provided were lackluster in quality.

And an important last note: I do not feel that Glen Morgan or James Wong acted maliciously-- carelessly, mostly; overly self-involved here or there, most probably. Their focus remained on fleshing out the characters, exploring the ramifications of their actions, and digging up and handing over imperative context for canon-- attempting to iron out Mulder and Scully's split-up, William's adoption, and Charlie's estrangement in the Revival, for example. But they're not saints; and they still have an edge against criticism and interference that clings to and eats away at the quality of their work. In short, we are only glimpsing one aspect of Morgan's and Wong's lives during an intensely frustrating moment in their lives-- but it was important enough to The Field Where I Died's lore that I felt it was crucial to share.

CONCLUSION

For me, I'm glad Morgan and Wong messed up so badly that Gestapo CSM was still alive when canon CSM was born. To me, I think Morgan was way too eager (kindly, I shall reframe from saying 'self-involved') and way too disinclined to ask for necessary criticism for his projects. To me, I'm certain Morgan and Wong cared more about their concepts than the canon they were writing for-- making Mulder and Scully platonic (but could become romantic?) soulmates without providing essential explanation or further clarity. To me, I think focusing only on what Mulder gets out of this arrangement-- instead of exploring how this would affect Scully, as well-- was a cheap maneuver to vehicle in Morgan and his wife's love story (the same impulse that drove Morgan to write Melissa Scully as a romantic option for Mulder, that inspired the death of Frohike, and that butchered Maggie Scully's deathbed in Home Again: the impulse of wanting things his way.) For me, I'm glad this episode was too long, was chopped up very badly, and was ultimately exposed as a vanity project by fans' negative reactions. And, to me, I believe that negative reaction was largely brushed aside-- ignorantly, though not maliciously-- by Morgan because "fans just wanted Mulder and Scully together."

And, lastly: to me, Glen Morgan and James Wong-- while wrong to some extent-- at least take (partial) fault for their vision going awry. We're all human, we all make mistakes; we all learn and grow.

The rest I leave to you to draw your own conclusions.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

[airconditionertm]

Aemond Targaryen x stark fem reader

Summary: y/n has been sent to kings landing she is to meet the prince Aemond before the arrangements of their marriage are finalized

Word count: 1606

An: I’m sorry for any spelling errors I’m dyslexic this is my first time posting a fic on tumblr. let me know if you want another chapter .

He never really thought about marriage, he had always presumed he would marry whoever his mother brought him. A simple political marriage that would provide both benefits and heirs. His mother told him that y/n Stark would be visiting Kings Landing, he never quite understood why the Starks were so important they weren’t royals they didn’t have dragons all they were known for was keeping oaths. Aemond had never even been to the north. Though from what he heard northern women could be difficult, to say the least unwaveringly stubborn and prideful to say a little more. She was said to arrive in the following days and Aemond was expected to wo her so she might convince her brother to accept the marriage proposal on her behalf. Cregan Stark was ever honorable and cited concerns about Aemonds' character as his main reason to hesitate.

“Your Highness the Lady Stark has arrived the queen has requested you greet her “a servant interrupted his thought. He didn’t respond simply walked off.

The carriage she arrived in was simple it could be mistaken as the one of a commoner though the clear craftsmanship set it apart. Aemond stood a few meters away from the carriage as he waited for her to exit.

She stepped out of the carriage cautiously onto the cobble below. She wore a light silver blue gown that wasn’t as opulent as the regular court dress but still looked expensive. Some delicate silver thread decorated the neckline. She finally looked up at him waiting for him to introduce herself.

“Welcome to Kingslanding Lady Stark I’m Prince Aemond Targaryen “he spoke coldly.

“Well it’s an honor to be here your grace , “ she said curtly. Aemond noted that she didn’t bow as would have been proper.

“The maids will take your things…” and knew it was expected but he was in no mood to however he had a duty ” Would you like a tour of the grounds Lady Stark, “he asked begrudgingly.

“I’m quite tired from the journey, though I would like to at least know where the most important rooms are mainly the dining hall and the throne room oh and the library if you have more important things to attend to as I’m sure you do certainly someone else might show me “ she spoke quite quickly he was only glad she didn’t speak in a northern dialect one of his nurses when he was a child was this old northern lady and he quite frankly could never understand a word she was saying.

“I do not have other matters to attend to I prefer to do all my work in the mornings so that I might use the rest of the day as I wish, I shall show you the most important rooms before you rest “ he explained.

“Thank you-“to maids carried a wooden cage containing a white-grey dire wolf “Wait can you let her out of the cage I’ll take her with me so she can get used to her new surroundings “the two maids looked scared of the wolf but carefully opened the cage which the wolf immediately leaped out of charging at layana for a moment aemond was worried until the wolf started jumping up and wagging its tail. “Mhm you’re excited right good girl now don’t bite anyone and stay with me, “she said lovingly kneeling to pet the wolf, she turned back around to aemond. “This is my dire wolf Lilly I couldn’t stand to go without her don’t worry she’s trained she just might be a little skittish since she’s somewhere completely new, “she says almost apologetically. “Let us go on our tour “he turns around and begins walking.

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At the end of the tour he takes her to the library “This is the library “ he says. He is shocked to see a look of utter awe on her face.” this, it’s truly gargantuan I’m allowed to be in here right it isn’t restricted “she asked

“No it isn’t anyone can visit it though not many do, most of the books are however not allowed to be taken outside the library to prevent damage “ he replied.“That’s reasonable, don’t mistake my awe for thinking there aren’t any books in Winterfell it is just that we cannot keep many the moisture in the air tends to damage them “ she explains.

“ I see, do you enjoy reading Lady Stark, “ he asked. “Yes well it is more that I like acquiring knowledge rather than the act of reading itself, though I fear many of the most interesting texts here may be in high valerian “she states.“That may be true though there are many books in the common tongue to “ he says. “I must admit I’m tempted to try and learn the language just so I can read more books “she says excitedly .“It’s a difficult language “ he says curtly. “I can certainly imagine that “she replies.“If you truly wish to learn there are some guides to the language here too “he was sceptical she truly wished to learn the language many people tried to flatter the Targaryens by praising their mother tongue. Hells he wouldn’t be surprised if she was informed of his own love of reading so that she might wo him.

“The hour is drawing late I’ll call a maid to bring you to your chambers so you can rest and ready yourself for dinner “he turns to the exit.“It is getting late indeed, can I ask you one last question “ She was certainly chatty aemond thought.“Yes what is it” he replied .“What will dinner be like is it a lot of people will it be formal i don’t know what to expect”she asked.“We don’t often eat dinner together however my mother will probably make everyone ,but my father of course, come to dinner tonight to celebrate your arrival so it won’t be many people, it is formal yes but nothing too opulent “

“ I see thank you “A maid walked up to her and showed her to her chambers he didn’t expect that she would be taken into the same wing he and his family stayed in he hoped for her own sake that her chambers may not be too close to Aegons.

———————————————————————

She walked into the dining room on time she wore a more expensive gown than before though it was a similar color. However, it was velvet and tailored to fit more snugly the decoration was also far more elaborate. Her black curly hair was put in a neat updo with silver ornaments adorning it. Aemond had to admit she was beautiful not in the way southern women where it was more intense not so demure and soft. Aemond and his mother were the only ones already there “Everyone else seems to be late my dear why don’t you sit with Aemond“Queen Alicent greeted y/n .” right of course “She shuffled around for a moment before she sat next to him. He could tell she was nervous facing the queen for the first time.” There is no need to be shy my dear you are here in hopes that we may be family soon, so tell me how where you’re travels” Alicent asked sipping from a goblet. “My travels were pleasant for the most part though quite lonely with only my brothers men though I had my dire wolf Lilly to keep me company “Aegon stumbles in clearly drunk “You spent your whole journey only with tall strapping northern men, brother it seems like she’s already ruined “ Aemond of course knew what he meant with ruined, glaring at his brother. “I don’t quite understand, “y/n asked. “Well you know you probably fucked one of them or maybe all of them “he slurred laughing at his own joke. Alicent tried to give Aegon a warning look but it didn’t seem to work.” that is enough brother I will not let you insult her like this “aemond slammed his hands on the table.

“No need to overact brother I was simply joking, you understand that right Lady Stark” he sat down next to his mother.” I’m afraid I don’t understand how that is a Joke, “ she said sternly.” Bo I thought northern women were supposed to be more fun there’s no need to pretend to be all lady like “. She stood up “I am going to be insulted like this at dinner, enjoy your dinner queen Alicent “ and walked away. “Aegon must you destroy everything we need for this alliance with the north “Alicent rested her head in her hands. “Aemond go after her try to salvage this “. Aemond turned around and followed y/n.

“Lady Stark,” he asked cautiously, he had found her on the balcony looking out on King's landing. “Your grace “ she continued to look out her back facing him.

“ I must apologize for my brother, he’s a drunk and a fool “ he goes to stand beside her. “It’s my first night here and I’ve already been humiliated, “ she says quietly. “ it is not you who should feel ashamed it is my brother, to treat a guest like that to question your virtues and be so crude about it it’s deplorable,”he said firmly. She looks over at him “ I want you to know that I still have my virtue “she says. “ I never questioned it, my lady,” he says. “ I just wanted to be sure, “ she says. “Are you enjoying the view my lady? “ he asks. “ yes it’s quite beautiful and I do believe this high up the stench is less apparent “she says.

[vannysarcade]

I understand why people do not like The Mimic. That’s totally valid and I completely understand it.

But seeing the Mimic as a “mindless killing machine” is just a complete misinterpretation of its character. It is definitely not mindless. The entire point is that it’s not mindless.

Yes, the Mimic starts out as a simple AI that is just programmed to copy things and nothing more. But over the course of the story it starts to do things on its own (AND THIS IS BEFORE EDWIN EVEN IMBUES IT WITH AGONY.) Things it was not programmed to do. Things that Edwin finds strange because that shouldn’t be happening! The Mimic is becoming alive and sentient because of David’s love!!

The mimic literally sees Edwin hurt/shake David, and the mimic doesn’t decide to copy that behavior. Instead it chooses to comfort David. And everything is going well until Edwin just snaps after David dies, and completely destroys it. Beating it until it’s nothing. And while you could say “oh, this is where the mimic learned to hurt and kill people. It only hurts people because it was hurt.” And yes, that is..partly true; but I don’t think people get that..the mimic isn’t just hurting because it’s programmed to copy people and it’s copying what happened to it. It’s hurting people because it’s hurt. It is making a conscious effort TO hurt people. Because it wants other people to feel its pain. The Mimic is a victim of abuse. And this is not an excuse for it's actions or the pain it caused, because again...the Mimic is making a CONSCIOUS EFFORT to hurt people. It sees that Vanessa is also a victim of abuse, and chooses to exploit that. Making her relive every horrible memory to break her down even further, making her regress to a childlike state to when she was a helpless little girl. When she did everything her father told her to do. To make her obey and be a good girl. Ultimately, the Mimic being sentient is important to the story, because Security Breach is about a lot of things, but most importantly it's about the cycle of abuse. The Mimic was hurt, and chose to inflict that pain upon everybody else. It inflicted that pain upon Vanessa and Gregory to hurt them and make them hurt people too. And when Gregory is finally "free" of this, both the Mimic and Vanny desperately try to drag him back in. And the only way to end the cycle is with you. By freeing Vanessa and leaving the pizzaplex with her, they are both able to break this cycle. At least for now.

[sircarebearalot]

hehe my take on gelphie, specifically for the wicked movie /(2024) hehe is that Elphaba had a healthy little crush on Galinda in the beginning of their friendship— which was why she was so shocked when Galinda shared that she planned on marrying Fiyero one day— but then as they got more involved in each others lives, Elphaba let her crush go and decided to focus her energy on appreciating Galinda’s friendship. so that will also add a layer of distress when she sort of falls head over heels for Fiyero, bc she literally overcame feelings already to preserve her friendship with Galinda,. The things is, Fiyero is so out of nowhere, where they have mutual interest but not that solid groundwork of friendship, that Elphaba doesn’t really have anything to translate it to, so she’s sort of drowned by these feelings. (So like, giving strong lacy by Olivia Rodrigo, when she sings I’m not that girl bc she does find those aspects of Galinda appealing, but it’s no longer her resisting that and it’s fully her regretting that she has no actual shot again— her interpretation— and wishing she were the sort of person who could be loved and chosen back.)

also, other thoughts I had, was that when Elphaba zapped everyone to sleep except for Fiyero to save the cub, I think it was more like a subconscious, magic-driven thing. She chose the person who would break societal expectations to help her, and she did it without even knowing ot. bc remember she was a bit caught off guard by what her magic did and she was even more so when Fiyero dashed to save the creature. at the end of the day she knows Galinda, knows that she likes being popular and beloved, knows that she sort of needs it to go on being happy and fulfilled. She knows this in some deep level and that’s why she doesn’t turn to her in crisis, despite her undoubtedly being much closer to her than anyone else in the room (except was nessarose there? even then, nessa was always troubled and was outwardly burdened by her sister’s peculiarities) . and I think the reason she chose Fiyero, or her magic did, or he subconscious did, was bc at some level she knew he matched her freak (hehe excuse me) and that he did have a bleeding heart. She sensed that he had more to offer and trusted that possibility rather than the more real chance that Galinda would panic and hinder the cubs rescue, something she wanted to do and hadn’t even planned or thought of yet. but, see, Fiyero did. The second he caught on to what happened, he dashed.

The point is, Elphaba loved Galinda bc Galinda chose her and tried to give her what she always wanted. Popularity, credibility, a community where she was supported and loved and respected. Even more, accepted. And ofc she fell for the other Galinda quirks.

But when Elphaba came to the conclusion that she shouldn’t dream too far, she found true comfort and joy in Galinda friendship.

And when Elphaba made to run away from all of Oz, to live as an outlaw, obviously Galinda wasn’t going to go with her. It’s entirely in her character to want to be on the ‘good side’ of the people, even if it’s the wicked one. She didnt have Fiyeros conviction, athat not the poiny of her character, even if she had run off with Elphaba,, there’s a very real chance she would have resented Elphaba almost immediately or tried to return back to Oz. And that’s understandable bc forsaking an entire hirtosy and land for someone is an insane thing to do.

Something only Fiyero would do.

Anyways, this is a gelphie post so I’m gonna talk about Galinda in all of this. Even tho in my fic I wrote her to be self aware, I genuinely see Galinda as sort of not absorbing all her feelings for Elphaba. They are there and she knows they are importancy and valuable but she doesn’t pick at ot and try and make sense of it. Bc, in her head, if everything stays the same, she could have it all, the prince she always dreamed of, and the person she cherished above all else right within reach. In her mind, everything was going to work itself out so nothing was a problem. So, when Fiyero starts to pull away, when Elphaba seems drawn to him, and when Elphaba eventually tries to run away and take Galinda with her— Galinda freezes. She sort of tries to work with what’s left, her status, her relationship with Fiyero, and she’s trying to reassemble the perfect life she should have had, and she’s absolutely miserable, and every time she gets an opportunity to near Elphaba she takes it. She’d take it in any capacity likely.

Bc she might blame Elphaba for being difficult and not staying or choosing her, but ultimately Galinda has pushed her boundaries and challenged her own worldview for Elphaba without Elphaba asking. Like at the dance scene, where her guilt and sudden understanding of her rival/roommate moved her to risk it all— tho maybe she consoled herself later and dismissed it, claiming her popularity was never at risk— to try and comfort Elphaba and bridge the gap properly, finally. And later, when she changed her name to Glinda, it’s was bc she felt left out, like she needed to prove herself, like the people she had chosen for herself were moving on without her, amd so she made a flashy bid to catch up. And, also, think, briefly, about how absolutely devastating it must be to be so goddamn ambitious and be constantly besides the most powerful witch around. Galinda may have assured herself that her popularity would carry her through, but truly, you don’t see her ego or pride flare up much if at all around Elphaba, fully embracing that they had different strengths, and well Glinda did say that the greatest ppl weren’t necessarily competent but rather popular (wicked foreshadowing and cruelest of ironies) so that likely helped her a bunch. Ok, so, also, think about how instead of retreating or hiding or running off, when everything went to whit with the guards and flying monkeys chasing Elphaba, she followed Elphaba. Like there never really was a choice.

That just sort of shows, there was so many missed calls, so many almosts.

Glinda was tempted to go with Elphaba. She almost did— hence their duet.

Galinda could have won Elphaba’s heart, she had it, but she fell in love too late and recognized was too late. They could have been in love, it almost overlapped.

Galinda is the type of person who Elphaba could love, but not in those circumstances. It was almost perfect. Like actually, roommates, rivals, best friends, crazy codependent, opposites, they literally could have had it all. And they almost did.

But at the end of the day, Glinda wasn’t ready and Fiyero was fucking ready to go, and Elphaba had already dismissed the possibility of romance between the two of them (gelphie I mean) bc it had seemed impossible. And as much as it almost was, they never could be. Not in those circumstances, not the way it unraveled.

anywhas, this was a very long little rant to tell you I have two fics in the work for them, one that is Elphaba centric (w/ her being oblivious and trying to hold onto Galinda’s friendship) and one where they have doomed hanahaki, but Elphaba has it first and is encouraged by Madam Morrible to kill it (bc she can’t risk the star student, ofc, no nefarious reasons…lol) wnd after she removes that and all her romantic feelings, Galinda gets it shortly after when Elphaba leaves Oz and she’s just choking on all the love, waiting for the opportunity to get Elphaba alone so she can confess, make her stay and such, but then she finds out that Fiyeor and Elphaba are in love and she is forced to rid herself of the love, and so when she tells aelphabas story’, there is a cavity where all the romantic love was and she’s mourning that AND Elphaba and it’s so sad

anyways, they’re Lana Del Rey coded. look at:

‘If you dance, I’ll dance’

‘No remedy for memory’

‘Say yes to heaven, say yes to me’

‘And as all the years go by, the other woman will always spend her life alone’

‘But if you hold me without hurting me

You'll be the first who ever did’

(Hehe anyways I only used this website for one lyric but it’s so funny how they read my mind— shh don’t correct me)

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Would love to hear your thought on meowrails break up and who they end up with?! Especially interested in Hal <> Nepeta!

Ok! Just a disclaimer before anything: this is not at all saying you shouldnt ship the meowrails, this is just a canon discussion blog and I have noticed... some stuff... but ship whatever you want, I literally don't care, all HCs are valid, etc. etc.

"Everyone has an important job to do." This is a phrase that gets repeated in Hivebent a few times, which makes it important, as Homestuck often uses repetition to build up an "internal lexicon" and deliberately highlight when situations have similar connotations (Hussie discusses this on their Formspring). So what's the context for this specific phrase? Well, it shows up three times, and for at least two of those times, it's associated with failed moirallegiances.

GA: But It Just Means Theres Got To Be Someone Around To Keep An Eye On Them GA: And If Not Me Then Who GA: Everyone Has An Important Job To Do AG: Ok, so you're spying on me. Kind of creepy! Man, m8y8e you should get a l8fe.

And

CC: I will need to connect after my goofball moirail does so I can keep my goggles on )(is nefarious escapades. CC: Its a toug)( job but its important! Everyone )(as an important job to do.

So, okay, apparently the context of this phrase is "this person is in a moirallegiance that will NOT work out"... well, here's the third time it pops up (though it's the first time chronologically):

Your best pal of all is A LITTLE BOSSY, and people wonder why you even bother with him. But someone has to keep him pacified. If not you, then who? Everyone has an important job to do.

So... hm. This isn't the only thing I have to say about meowrails breakup, but it is the most prominent one, and maybe the most damning, depending on how much weight you put into Homestuck's oft-deliberate use of parallels.

Maybe something a bit more damning is the way Hussie speaks about them in the book commentary? Pretty much every time they turn up, he has some comment to make about how Equius doesn't really "need" Nepeta, and about how he tends to talk over her and usurp her agency, like so many shitty boyfriends IRL.

We don't know much about Equius yet, but we get an awful lot of info about him with this excerpt. He's racist, a huge snob, doesn't like swearing, is stern and controlling, has a patronizing fondness for Nepeta, and thinks archery is cool because of its association with nobility. Combine this with the snapshot of his room we'll see soon, and suddenly we have an extensive character portrait. This was all important to establish quickly, because it helps us understand in record time that Equius is in fact one of the greatest characters ever created.

Equius says he appreciates that Nepeta's angry. I guess meaning that he respects an angry disposition, like his own. Especially early on in his characterization, it's suggested he has anger issues (like him taking his rage out on robot dummy combatants). But I'm not sure this trait holds up. Over time, he seems to show a lot more passion about his weird stuff, his passion for archery and muscular horse men, his submissive obsessions, his deference toward those higher on the hemospectrum and fetish-like indulgence in depraved attraction toward those lower. Ultimately he comes off more as a ridiculous nerd, with a soft spot for a lot of silly and creepy shit. My view on this is, it's not that the text lost track of the fact that he was supposed to be angry. It's more that this was his initial state of mind early on, and the more he started blowing off steam with his various indulgences (Aradiabot, etc.) the less he had to be mad about. We just meet him at a really high-strung point in his life. I think it's more accurate to say his "anger" is a form of hyperintense focus on being stern, aloof, proper, and averse to nonsense, which is a facade serving to cover up his inner personality, which is barely in control at all. Like Nepeta suggests, deep down he wants to play the kinds of silly games she plays. He wants to let go completely, and indulge every ludicrous and depraved whim he has. His arc tends to be more about caving to these indulgences, and all the mixed consequences that follow, than resisting them.

Here's [S] Equius: Seek the highbl00d, another playable RPG game. [...] But Christ, why am I talking about that garbage when we are about to review some truly choice material focusing exclusively on your favorite meowrails. It is a great illustration of their tragic dynamic; deeply committed and caring partners in the diamonds quadrant, and yet compromised by Equius and his stubborn class-driven faults, his pathological reverence for his superiors, his forced and probably not genuinely felt sense of disdain for lower bloods like Nepeta, and ultimately his failure to rise above these flaws when presented with a real test of character and friendship. A test imposed, of course, by a boorish murderclown, who from this point onward just ruins fucking everything, constantly.

Hussie is an unreliable narrator (of the "he's deliberately playing a character who's biased, opinionated, and sometimes wrong, because a major theme of Homestuck is that you have to question who's telling the story and if they can be trusted" variety), so it's difficult to parse exactly what he's saying is salient, especially since he talks so damn much. But even so, he constantly goes out of his way to highlight how the meowrails DON'T work out - which is even pretty canon in the comic.

In Hivebent, the two are established as working along this dynamic: Nepeta soothes Equius's anger issues, while Equius keeps Nepeta from recklessly endangering herself (for example, prohibiting her from LARPing). But as Hussie says, Equius's anger problems become basically nonexistent by the time Murderstuck rolls around, and his actual problem is his overindulgence in his fetishes; meanwhile, his bossy, controlling attitude to Nepeta was always kind of suspect, but it actively becomes a source of frustration to her that she can't wait to shirk (he bans her from talking to the humans, and she goes behind his back to do it anyways - even celebrates when Karkat gives her express permission).

In the end, they die for their failures as a moirallegiance - despite being fresh off a feelings jam in a pile, and so, supposedly at their least likely to hurt themselves or others, Equius's horny gets him killed (Hussie has always maintained across multiple platforms that Equius could've easily overpowered Gamzee, he just chose not to because Hot), and Nepeta doesn't listen to his orders to stay put. In later conversations with ARquiussprite, Equius is always framed as the one here who was wrong - who failed to keep Nepeta safe and has something to apologize for. I think it's also pretty important to notice that in the bubbles, Equius is never seen doing so - but IS seen being really weird to Aradias - fully implying that he's actually been avoiding taking accountability to Nepeta in favor of indulging in his fetish shit, out of shame and guilt.

As Hussie says, the meowrails are an important relationship, and when I say they don't work out, I don't mean they shouldn't have been together in the first place. On the contrary; I think they actually were good for each other, way back on Alternia. Nepeta DID keep Equius's frustrations in check, and Equius DID keep Nepeta out of trouble. But as time went on, Equius just got really comfortable with treating Nepeta like an object he owned - something convenient, which he can use when he's feeling sad, and ignore otherwise - and Nepeta started growing frustrated with his increasingly petty control. They grew as people, their needs changed, and they stopped being good for each other, but they stayed together - out of inertia and sunk cost fallacy on Nepeta's end, and on Equius's end, because it was convenient and pleasant (for him) and useful (for him) so why would he throw it away?

While this is something I think could potentially be worked out with relationship therapy, the thing with Homestuck is that it's big into the idea of soulmates, especially in the pale quadrant (which is described with that exact term). Its ultimate thesis on romance is that, while you have to do a lot of personal work in order to be the kind of person who can BE in a soul mates relationship, ultimately a relationship SHOULD have an element of just... easy compatability, idiosyncracies clicking together in just the right way to bring out the best in both parties. It's idealized, and there's criticism to be made about that, but that's still ultimately how romance kind of functions in Homestuck. The perfect match is out there for you, and while you have some growing to do in order to be ready for it, it's supposed to be easy once you get there. Consider how Eridan can calm Karkat down literally just by talking to him normally, or how Sollux regularly outright professes that Feferi's just fucking amazing - these are relationships where the involved parties don't need to tell themselves "everyone has an important job to do" with grit teeth to justify keeping the relationship going.

Meowrails lacks that inherent compatability, according to the evidence, but of course, that brings up the question of who they SHOULD date in pale instead. Hey, did you ever notice that Dirk (and by extension, Hal) are EXTREMELY Equius-coded?

So here's the thing. Hal's favorite alpha kid is Roxy, who is also pretty Nepeta-themed, being a cat-associated Rogue. They regularly flirtLARP with each other, but when we get a glimpse of this so called flirtLARPing, it's actually Roxy almost, but not quite, getting Hal to admit that he's actually not really that into Jake, he just feels obligated, as an extension of Dirk, to make DirkJake happen. They almost, but not quite, have a feelings jam.

Meanwhile, Hal outright calls his conversation with Dirk, as Dirk grapples with whether or not he should kill Hal, a "feelings jam", and Dirk also has a convo with Caliborn about how maybe he should consider the merits of selfcest.

What these interactions hint at, to me, is Nepeta <> Hal, and Equius <> Dirk... and I think if you consider it from the standpoint of their personalities, it works, too?

Nepeta is pretty consistently shown to have a knack for knowing how other people actually feel. Her shipping charts are incorrect in terms of compatability, but she's got a scary knack for reading intentions and desires - as befits a non-destructive Heart player. She's able to pinpoint that Eridan's advances on her are insincere, but he's not that bad a guy; she notices that Karkat is a big softie who loves his friends so much; she correctly reads that Equius is a big ol' goofball who loves to play games. Hal, as a Mind player, and even more as originally being a Dirk splinter and an AI, is deeply distressed by his lack of "self"-hood; it's Roxy who calls out first and most blatantly that he's clearly his own guy with his own real feelings, which seems to be why he gravitates toward her. Nepeta would do this even harder, since it's kind of her entire Thing, and I think Hal would really appreciate that, since Hal is at his worst when he thinks he's acting in someone else's best interest (Sylph lol).

Meanwhile, what Nepeta really needs IS an enabler. She's a rebellious soul with radical ideas about how the hemospectrum is stupid and dumb, and she's RIGHT and she should SAY IT. Hal's amazing at giving people what they "want", pulling strings to ensure DirkJake happens, while also framing it as something that Jake would want - this bombastic, action hero kiss-in-front-of-a-volcano. Nepeta's clearly attracted to characters with Equius-esque qualities, but after spending so long with Equius, who does nothing but push her down with a patronizing "hush, greenblood, it's for your own good," I think she would do well with an insane partner in crime who instead goes "fuck yeah girl, let's make this shit happen." Especially since her personal insecurities are that other people will find her dumb and silly (an impression that Equius certainly didn't HELP with...) - having Hal in her corner going "uhhh you're literally my favorite and I will engineer situations to fall directly in your favor?" would be a huge help to her.

I'm actually not entirely sold on equius <> dirk - they're maybe too similar? - i have in my notes here john <> dirk and equius <> jake. idk. the shipping web starts to get complicated