#tldr i dont know anything

[chaoswiththeprettyspine]

This is a mean mean take, but I couldn't stop thinking about it so here.

Do you ever think, that somewhere deep down, Dick is a little mad at Jason for dying? Because that was the catalist for Bruce being consumed by his paranoia. Before that they might've had a rocky relationship, but nothing worse than a traumatised teen naturally wanting to step out of his overprotective fathers shadow. It would've been solved in 2 years tops. But after Jason. After Bruce didn't even tell him his little brother died. After he became obsessed with contingencies and training and vengeance...

Do you ever think he just wishes Jason never entered their lives at all?

[hoshizoralone]

reflection

[blueskittlesart]

thinking abt hungergames yuri... how do u feel abt madge and katniss <3 both as friends and as a romantic pairing :>

rereading a book you originally read as a young teenager when you're an adult is a really fun experience if only because i can now appreciate how insanely Sixteen Years Old katniss everdeen is. "yeah she talks to me at school and sits with me at lunch and she came to say goodbye to me and cried and gave me a pin that belonged to her dead aunt but idk if we're like FRIENDS or anything" KATNISS THAT GIRL LOVES YOU. JUSTICE FOR POOR MADGE SHE WAS TRYING SOOOO HARD.

[bisclavret]

like many who have suffered at the hands of bbc merlin before me, i recently indulged in a thought experiment in which i outlined my own version of seasons 3-5 that stay thematically and tonally in line with the show (except they're less fucking stupid). but then i quickly realized that focusing on details is pointless: all you need is to solve the one Big Problem the show has, and the rest will follow. the problem in question? ✨morgana✨

i like the first two seasons. s1 achieves what it sets out to do and has fun while doing it, and s2, while flawed, sets up a ton of potential that the following seasons unfortunately squander, beginning with the insidious season 3. you can only distract me with cute knights and goblins and fart jokes for so long before i start seeing through you, evil, evil season of television.

my hypothesis is that if the writers had crafted s3 morgana into anything more sympathetic than a violent half-alive poltergeist that can never be reasoned with because she's suddenly terminally off her rocker, everything would've fallen into place. a sympathetic morgana would've made real, valid arguments against uther (and arthur) that wouldn't just be the ramblings of a woman possessed. her betrayal of arthur would have stemmed from her feeling increasingly morally superior to him because of his complacency in the face of their father's tyranny. under morgause's guidance she would stop believing that arthur is capable of change, and the whole point would be that she might actually be right. arthur would have to actively try and prove her wrong, instead of getting praised for doing the bare minimum because the bar is on the floor.

furthermore, morgana's prophetic dream about arthur and gwen becoming king and queen and her decision to prevent this however she can is a direct parallel to merlin learning about that same prophecy and making it happen by any means necessary. merlin's desires about his and arthur's futures are subtextually fueled by gay love and devotion, so why couldn't morgana's be? why couldn't she properly express her bitterness that arthur gets to be with gwen in a way she can't "took gwen away" from her, instead of suddenly declaring that gwen is nothing more than a servant, after two seasons of demonstrating again and again that she loves, values, and respects gwen more than anyone else in that godforsaken castle?

following this, an angry and emotionally volatile but still sensible morgana asking gwen to stay by her side during the coup of the castle in the s3 finale and gwen going behind her back to help arthur and the knights would've hurt like a bitch. double-sided betrayal! gwen having a real plot! the proper beginnings of a toxic yuri that would shape a generation!

then there's the utter hubris of having morgana shoot arrows at the same civilians she worried herself sick over for 2 seasons — even morgan, her medieval counterpart that was rooted in every sexist trope in existence, doesn't just go around killing senselessly but instead has (often petty!) personal vendettas against gwen, arthur, and the knights. morgana had every right to be sick of the pretensions around chivalry in camelot (she was always quick to mock it, even in s1), and to lash out at the knights and soldiers after years of feeling powerless in a castle full of armed men that blindly followed her oppressor. the show conveniently forgets that morgana was victimized as a woman as well as a sorcerer those first 2 seasons.

but like i said, this is not just about morgana. allowing her to remain a real and multifaceted character even as she betrays everyone in pursuit of her ambitions would've given the rest of the core four more interesting conflict to work with: merlin because he would have to experience real consequences to his actions, arthur because he would watch his sister go against his father (and his knights, and his birthright) and experience some actual internal dilemmas about it, and gwen because she would be forced to choose between morgana and arthur without the pretense that it's an obvious or easy choice for her to make.

even morgause and gaius would come off more interesting as mentors: neither one inherently evil or inherently good, both jaded by events that happened before our protagonists were even born, both heavily influencing morgana and merlin into fulfilling roles that they think are appropriate, but that morgana and merlin may not have chosen for themselves had they not been under their care.

you get the gist. if the show followed its own setup, morgana's mistakes wouldn't lie in cheap and senseless acts of violence but in alienating the people she loves because she is too hurt and jaded to trust them. meanwhile, everybody else would feel guilt over "failing" her and yet they would be too caught up in their own (sometimes flawed!) beliefs of right and wrong to truly see her point of view.

arthur would convince himself it was sorcery that corrupted her. merlin would know that isn't true but he wouldn't be able to argue without confessing everything, which is the defining conflict between him and morgana and it's cheapened when she's just an evil witch caricature and merlin is framed as inherently virtuous in contrast. gwen, too, would become a more active participant in her own life by choosing arthur over morgana and choosing to rule camelot with him instead of just waiting politely to see where things go.

and, of course, uther's downfall and death would be quick, final, and completely earned — when and why did the show even decide he of all people was the sympathetic villain, anyway?

lastly, and perhaps controversially, i think morgana should've learned merlin's true identity by season 4. her being the first of the main characters to find out makes perfect sense considering their shared history and their interconnected and mirrored arcs. even the show seems to agree, considering she does find out a little before arthur. but the narrative itself tried pointing flashing neon arrows towards this way earlier — there is a whole entire episode in s4 where merlin being emrys is repeatedly spelled out for morgana and she still isn't allowed to see it. that episode makes her look like the stupidest person to ever live, which is pretty funny im not gonna lie, but also another frustrating thing in the endless string of frustrating things that make up this show.

morgana learning that merlin has magic would've transformed the source of merlin's anxiety from a crippling fear of being outed someday to the crippling fear of knowing she could out him at any moment. this would make him want to beat her to the punch (perhaps he'd consider killing her for a minute and decide against it because she isn't a cartoonishly insane evil person in my version of events) and maybe he would even feel some tentative excitement at the idea of coming clean, now that it seems inevitable. after all, he always intended to tell arthur eventually! and i think gaius would have to admit outright that he does not want merlin to tell arthur he has magic because he, gaius, simply cannot risk such a gamble. it would be so interesting to see gaius and merlin clash and disagree once it becomes obvious that it's not merlin that isn't ready for the reveal, it's gaius. delicious!

with morgana's knowledge looming, things would inevitably spiral into a magic reveal by the end of season 4. i picture this season as an absolute mess of miscommunication between everyone at camelot, which is, y'know, canon. growing increasingly cunning and vengeful, morgana would use this tension to her advantage, destabilizing the court from the outside while she creates alliances with other sorcerers outside of camelot (instead of living alone in a hovel for no reason — morgana le fay i'm sorry i'm so sorry they gave you agravaine instead of your all-female entourage oh my god).

and here's where the events would change beyond recognition (aka here's where the meta becomes the fanfic i refuse to write). picture it with me: a militia of sorcerers infiltrates camelot and arthur and gwen have to set aside their differences (assuming gwen kissing lancelot and arthur overreacting happens, which it should) for the good of the kingdom as well as for love. picture high priestess morgana in her element, side by side with a bunch of misfit sorcerers that aren't so easily vilified, chopping down camelot's soldiers and knights and assuredly making their way to the newly-minted king.

then, just as it starts to seem that all hope is lost, in swoops merlin (the actual merlin, not his old fart disguise) on dragonback (kilgharrah hates morgana so much i know his sexist ass would stoop to anything to stop her)!!! imagine merlin showing off the extent of his powers in front of everyone and preventing the sorcerers from getting any further, declaring loud and clear that camelot is protected by him, by emrys. imagine that display of power alone being enough to send everyone home.

imagine the loyalties clearly drawn: merlin on arthur's side, morgana on the sorcerers'. imagine arthur, feeling confused and betrayed by everyone at this point, banishing merlin despite everything he's done for him in the angstiest, most emotionally dysregulated scene the show had ever put to screen. imagine merlin starting season 5 free at last but very lonesome, an embittered dragonlord like his father. imagine the absolute mess camelot would become without him, even with gwen — now queen guinevere — there to pick up the slack. imagine arthur actually earning merlin back, finally growing into his role as king as he does so. imagine the reunion.

all this and more could've been not just possible but inevitable if morgana was allowed to remain a complex character that is neither inherently good nor inherently evil: it was undeniably the biased and one-note treatment of morgana's downfall by the writers that set the precedent for literally everything else that happened after merlin chose to poison her. the show wouldn't have even had to jeopardize its tone or the monster-of-the-week vibe, all it would've had to do is admit that even the "good guys" are capable of mistakes and what makes them good is the ability to feel remorse and change for the better. (as opposed to uther, who was miles beyond redemption since way before the pilot and deserved to lose everything and die alone. OBVIOUSLY???)

in a world where morgana remains multifaceted and sympathetic, mordred would get a better arc as well, so if we really wanted to, we could still end on the same tragic note that the show ended on. with so much harm inflicted onto so many innocent people by the pendragons for so long (including mordred and the many druids and sorcerers that raised him), it could realistically end up being a little too late for anything more than one shining glimpse of king arthur and the sorcerer merlin's short-lived golden age before fate catches up to them. glimpsing that reality just to immediately lose it would've been far more satisfying and far more tragic than whatever the writers thought they were doing with all that pointless carrot-dangling.

and finally, an ending in line with morgana's new and improved arc. in this version, rather than bleeding out on the forest floor alone, she would channel the morgan le fay we know from the legends: sobered up by the reality of her brother dying, she would use her high priestess status (and perhaps also her pendragon status) to be granted passage over to avalon alongside arthur on the boat — a one-way ride — just to make sure he gets there safely. this is her penance for the harm she has caused, the same way arthur's penance is to die and leave the true ruler of camelot (gwen) behind to achieve everything he was too slow and indecisive to build while he still had time.

merlin's penance, then, would be to stay behind and watch them cross over without him, waiting and waiting and waiting until they come back or until he can finally join them. which is a bit fucking harsh if i'm honest, so i'd at least make it slightly more faithful to the legends by having him return as an old man and letting him take a long nap under a tree by the shore, his body slowly enveloped by vines like the cobwebbed fisher king in 3x08, never fully sure if he's dreaming or if there really are strange shapes fading in and out of the fog over the lake. still tragic, but nevertheless a little more open-ended and whimsical than [TRUCK NOISES] THE END!

[wildstar25]

MiqoMarch Day 6 - Secret

The jealousy that began to bubble up, though likely pointless to hide from her of all people, Arsay desperately tried to keep a secret from her dear friend Krile.

[birbwell]

oh [tumblr dashboard] im just feeling real low

[makersruin]

what are your thoughts on azem and what fandom does with the concept?

i like what azem offers as a nebulous idea of something emet-selch (and the other unsundered) believes to be better than the wol and as an unobtainable object of (platonic on my end) desire for them. and i prefer them to be some manner of unknowable entity that is haunting the narrative; i'd rather have a vague outline of them than a real person. in my case, i like having it that way because my wol was already the type to try living up to a memory of someone else, even if he doesn't know what or who exactly that memory is (which is the kind of conundrum that gets him in these existential nightmares to begin with). but even outside of him, i treat azem the way dgs1 treated klint van zieks, if you've played that game. long gone and never to return, but still keeps being relevant in some unknowable way that constantly gives the wol grief. i also prefer if azem were extremely flawed in some way, as if to reiterate that even the 'better' version of 'you' that emet-selch wanted was lacking to the sensible modern eye. all that being said, i really enjoy seeing people's personalized azems with their meaningful true names and tragic stories.

as for what the fandom at large does, generally speaking it's a mixed bag. this is a huge fanbase so there are varying degrees of how closely people stick to the canon when writing their azems. i like to go along with the canon (that everyone dressed the same etc etc) but that's because i have an investment in it that some people don't. my wol's story and the story of my favorite characters can't work if their society was willing to bend the rules even a little for just one person. that's not always the case for everyone. so i can't say every interpretation of azem is to my taste but the ones who go beyond my sensibilities are clearly prioritizing something different than what i am, so it's not even relevant to my interests. while i strongly disagree with the idea of highly customized azems with special robes and extremely elaborate masks who constantly breaks rules, my opinion doesn't (and shouldn't) matter to ppl who would rather just have a good time instead of sweating over the story like i do

[mellosdrawings]

Fandom ask #15! Go! >83

15. Fandom I find annoying

...

...........

..............................

I think all fandoms have an annoying side. And even the fandoms that are labeled "toxic" have their good sides.

At some point it's just a matter of curating one's own experience, I guess. You gotta steer away from the parts of the fandom you don't like and stick to the ones you like. I've rarely disliked my fandom experiences because I just don't stay in the sides of fandoms I find annoying.

Thank you for asking and sorry for the weird answer x)

ASK GAME

[runebears]

sorry im just thinking about bcs but like. why not add a few smaller scenes of gus interacting with his own men? why does it seem like, in comparison, mike is almost immediately elevated to a higher status than those two in bcs purely because we actually get to see him having normal conversations with gus? like i understand they might not keep the plot moving as well because of the fact obviously if victor is currently doing something it’s because gus told him to etc. but for the most part all of the smaller interactions gus does have with those two ends up being in a somewhat high stress situation where it feels very tense between everyone. and it’s just like damn! is it always like that?? why do those two even care that much about their jobs if their boss is a bit of a dick? etc. i think even an additional scene or two with those guys (either alone or the both of them) talking with gus in a more normal situation could’ve both added a bit more depth into how gus treats his employees (we got a lot with how he treats lyle and co., but not a whole lot with the illegal side of things), how comfortable vic and tyrus feel around him in a calmer setting, and exactly why they both feel the need to be as loyal as they are to the guy.

and also on the other side of this i don't think it'd hurt to maybe elaborate on their pay just a bit..? i'm not saying to randomly put a number out into the atmosphere but i just mean some smaller things like. do they buy nicer things for themselves? what's their housing situation? what's their car situation? are the escalade / yukon their own vehicles or does gus just use those two for business situations? do they use them when they're doing their own stuff off the clock or do they have their own cars? etc. that can also help with understanding their motivations a bit. don't get me wrong i don't think they should be visibly rich or something because that's not what gus would want but just smaller things! cause it's easy to write their loyalty off as Well they probably get paid super well, which i'm sure is true, but if they don't show a single hint of that then what's the point. even something as simple as giving tyrus a nice watch, or maybe victor having a nicer looking gun, etc. something small like that. because as it stands right now the average 41 year old viewer who watched the show once only knows and will only ever know victor and tyrus as those two guys in the background who do random stuff for gus with no clear motivation. just the personification of "On it boss (salute emoji)". and to be honest this is true for a whole lot of fans who do watch the show multiple times and enjoy thinking about it more in depth, because on screen we barely have anything about the two.

and to be clear i'm not trying to say we should have an episode just for them or something like no i understand they're side characters. i understand we don't need all that. and i understand this is also primarily Jimmy's show. but it's not like these two are on the same level as like, arlo or paige and kevin etc. these guys have been around since brba. victor was literally introduced in the same episode gus was. and they are a huge part of gus's story, especially in brba. s4 wouldn't have been what it was without victor and tyrus. and in bcs, ignacio's situation wouldn't have been the same if it weren't for victor and tyrus as well. and i just personally believe that if their goal with gus in bcs was to go back and elaborate on how everything came to be and show what he was like a few years younger, they could've dragged victor and tyrus into that. and i think his character would've benefited from taking that extra step with those two.

[end-orfino]

i'm watching superhorrorbro's new video and while i disagree with some things he's saying, one comment got me thinking again about what happened to Otto and his sister, anyway? We don't know much, but I think we know just enough to throw some loose speculations? It seems like only children who were somehow traumatized/badly treated are able to reach the Nowhere (something superhorrorbro states, but it seemed pretty clear considering everything), that's the first thing. Also, if Otto is still not capable of moving on from Sisi's disappearance YEARS later, having lived the majority of his life without her at this point, then that means that she must have been incredibly important to him, and everything could have possibly gone downhill for him after she disappeared. Another thing to note is that Sisi was the older one of them two.

My personal guess was that Sisi and Otto had a somehow bad living situation when they were kids - maybe their parents were abusive, maybe they were entirely left to fend for themselves, I don't know. I don't think we have enough information to speculate on what exactly it was. What matters here is that this would have possibly lead to Sisi, as the older one, to be Otto's main caretaker - someone who carried most of the weight of their situation on her shoulders, trying to make most of what they had for her little brother. At the same time, Otto wasn't offering the same kind of support to her, although I don't think it was because of malice, but because of him being too young to realize how much she struggled and/or lacking a way to help her. (I'm especially basing it off him saying he was just a boy after Noone claimed that Sisi could have felt relieved to be free from him. I'm guessing he would have realized over the years that Sisi was struggling more than he could have known back when she was still with him.)

Still, this DID lead to Sisi being incredibly important for Otto. She would have been the main person who cared for him, and I doubt that his situation would have gotten better after she vanished. I think this would be able to explain why he gets so obsessed with finding a way to reunite with her as soon as an ocassion shows up. After so many years, he could even have a somewhat twisted, biased view of her as a person, thinking of the time she was with him as the "better times", having some kind of weird nostalgia(?) for it.

TL;DR: I think Sisi and Otto were stuck in some kind of bad living situation (eg. abusive parents, but we don't have enough info to speculate about what it could have been.) This led to Sisi, as the older one of the two, caring for Otto most of the time without having much support from anywhere herself. Because of this, she was hurt enough to eventually vanish to the Nowhere, leaving Otto - who she was incredibly important to as his main caretaker - to fend for himself in whatever situation they were dealing with. This would explain why her disappearance had such an effect on him that even now, as an adult, he is not capable of moving on from it, and grows progressively more obsessed over trying to reunite with her.

[termagax]

re: "good girl" i think they say it once randomly as a joke and its just one of those things that gets him wayyy more than they expected it would. so now its their secret weapon and they use it very sparingly and every single time he gets super embarrassed about it but it works ill tell you what.

[jellyaibo]

ヤツメ穴

[todayisafridaynight]

SNAP. art block has washed over me. what do you do when you feel like this?

scream and cry idk but to NOT be smarmy i got two options: brute force your way through it with doodles or just take a break from drawing for a couple hours or days if you've been overworking yourself with drawing

[friendlyengie]

i saw the post about sending tf2 asks so here's my chance. i don't know this blog's opinion on texas toast but i swear the game likes to pair pyro and engie for some reason. pyro has not one but two weapons for saps. in the comics most of the mercs don't really interact with pyro and seem to think they're weird, but the few times engie & pyro are together dell is really nice to them. they have matching little doll cosmetics of each other HELLO?? (pocket pardner & pocket pyro) y'know how heavy n medic have that too? is it supposed to be gay? i wish they did more with this i feel like i'm getting little bread crumbs by valve wtf (also sorry i just realized the block of text i'm sending)

I mean, i think theyre definitely one of the pairs with a designated Dynamic in the sense that yeah theyre paired together a lot in official stuff (re: true meaning comic and all that) but like. They can also be paired together without it being implied to be a gay thing. Sometimes characters simply have dynamics.

But YEAH just in general i would love to see more stuff surrounding any of the merc dynamics tbh… we get so little. Crumbs. Slivers, even.

[blackvahana]

i am really never going to understand why people post "shifting antis dni" in the astral projection tag. "here practice that constantly gets appropriated by us and used as a weird justification for a new set of beliefs that aren't really based in the same reality you work with, and that also gets completely misunderstood by our community because we don't care to understand what you do and just pretend we know it's what we do like christians saying other religions worship the christian god, have a post! Also dni if you don't like our practice that has nothing to do with the one whose tag we just shoved this into"

if you're not astral projecting don't put shit in the ap tag. if you don't even know the difference between AP and RS I dont think your opinion holds enough weight to counter the pushback against flooding a separate practice's tag with "if you dont like the practice I'm talking about in your tags dni"

[ankhisms]

can i be emotionally vulnerable with you all in the torture dungeon