#wednesday meta

[districtsleepsalonetonight]

"Sure, besides maybe having someone to share it with." She says this in the long-vowels teasing tone she usually applies to Ajax. At first I think she means herself, and I think she's right. It does feel better now that she's here, and she's the only person I've ever been able to truly say that about. I'm about to muster the courage to put the sentiment into words when she continues. "Thing may have blabbed about your date with Tyler. How did it go?" This is such a hard one-eighty that it takes me a moment to calibrate. It's certainly no longer time for a compliment. I haven't thought about Tyler all night, even when I was coordinating Xavier's arrest with his father. But Enid seems to want to discuss the date. "It was....interrupted," I say. It's the only word that feels honest. Enid's smirk widens. "Maybe it's time to finish it? I heard Tyler is working the late shift..." It would never have occurred to me to do any such thing, but then I think maybe this is what Enid wants from me. Someone to discuss boys with. Dates. All the trappings of adolescent girl friendships I've always avoided like the plague. Maybe this is what she shared with Yoko. The thing that made the other girl the more attractive option when all I could do was fixate on attack patterns and organs in jars. There's more to parse out, of course. Part of me wants to confess that I'd rather stay here...."I'll tell you all about it when I get back," I promise her, and I head out for the Weathervane.

-from the novelisation of Wednesday.

So...

Wednesday notices that Enid is addressing her, while talking about having someone to share things with, in the same tone she uses to address Ajax-which is explicitly described earlier as flirtatious.

From earlier:

"Ajax," Enid says in that flirtatious way people sometimes do. Drawing out the last vowel.

And Wednesday, thinking Enid is talking about herself and Wednesday....agrees, and is about to reciprocate.

And then Enid reveals she was talking about Tyler and Wednesday's date-meaning she was definitely talking about having someone to share things with in a romantic context-and Wednesday reveals she hasn't even thought about Tyler all night.

And even with the knowledge that Enid was definitely talking romantically-Wednesday is disappointed to realise Enid wasn't talking about herself and Wednesday and had been about to reciprocate the sentiment to Enid.

And then Wednesday admits she doesn't even want to go and find Tyler-but she does so because she thinks that this way, she and Enid will have something to talk about, and that their bond will be less likely to end. (It's also made clear she doesn't want Enid to prefer Yoko to her.)

So Wednesday reluctantly goes out to continue the date with Tyler-with the clear implication that if Enid had been talking about herself and Wednesday, she wouldn't have done. She's only going because, in her mind, Enid just made it clear that she sees Wednesday and Tyler as a couple-and because she wants to have something to talk about with Enid in their friendship that Enid actually enjoys talking about, with her thinking that "maybe this is what Enid wants from me". Which kind of has a note of "Maybe this is only what Enid wants from me."

I was going to say it reads like that trope of the main character going on a rebound date when they've been about to confess feelings for their love interest only for a miscommunication to lead them to think the love interest doesn't reciprocate and then realised that's basically exactly what it is.

In the novelization, at least, Wednesday canonically believes Enid is talking in a flirtatious, romantic context to her and is about to reciprocate.

[trainsinanime]

What amazes me most about Wednesday is how the show manages to be so good when so much of it is objectively just kind of crap. Not terrible crap, but kind of lack-lustre and easily dismissed and ignored. But somehow it manages to pull something great out of that.

The most obvious thing is that in tone and vibes, it largely ignores what the Addams family is, how they work and what they stand for. It's actually horror, not horror comedy, and it isn't really any contrast to what we consider normal life. Which is explained in-universe, sure, but I'm not actually convinced that it's the most interesting thing they could have done.

Its setting in a store brand Hogwarts is hardly original. They themed it around Edgar Allan Poe, for seemingly no reason other than that he's cool (I don't think he was a founder or alumni, and he certainly doesn't super relevant thematically). There's the vague idea of "what if Hogwarts had american high school cliques", which they don't do anything with. Harry Potter is nowadays much maligned and for very good reasons, but it did know how to make its fictional school seem interesting, deep and mysterious, and Wednesday is very lacking there. The biggest issue is that we don't spend enough time exploring the various students and their deals. We do it a bit, but it could have been more.

The wider world building creates the idea that the world has "norms" and "weirdos", which seems to be the officially accepted nomenclature, and treats them almost as if they were different sub-species. Some people are just born "weirdo", from "weirdo" families, and that's how it is. That's basic urban fantasy stuff - very basic, in fact. And again, it's not that interesting, and the show doesn't do anything with it. A key bit of classic Addams lore is that they consider themselves to be normal, and everyone else a bit weird, and thus question our ideas of what is and isn't normal. In Wednesday, these things are clearly delineated, which helps with the oppressive tone of the show, but makes it overall less deep.

And then there is the murder mystery, which is the big driver of the plot. Except it's barely a murder mystery at all. Everything we learn is because the main character has a vision that just tells them a key bit of background, or where the next important scene will be set, or, eventually, who the murderer is. Things barely ever flow, and there is very little deducting and reasoning; we just get told stuff. Again, it's not terrible, none of this is, but it could be better.

As for things that are actually terrible, I think enough has been written about the love triangle already. It never feels like Wednesday is ever interested in either the boys (her bond with Eugene is considerably stronger and more important). I think what goes underappreciated in discussions of the love triangle is that both boys are suspects in the murder mystery, and remain so until the final episode. As a result, there is always a certain distance. We don't ever actually get comfortable with any of them; we're always supposed to be wary and keep our distance, and indeed, Wednesday does. In the end, we totally get why the boys are in love with her (how could you not be? Just look at her dancing), but she barely shows any signs of attraction, and they certainly never become close friends. That's not the only problem, but it really doesn't help.

But despite this the show works anyway, because while the overall plot is a bit meh, the moment to moment stuff and in particular the actors are just stellar. Jenny Ortega: Amazing. Gwendoline Christie: Love her, she should be in everything. Thing is just perfect. And while the show drops the ball on the official romance, they really nail the relationship between Wednesday and Enid, the emotional cornerstone of the whole show. I just love watching these two together.

In the end, we have the kind of show where I logically agree with basically every single mean-spirited criticism I've ever seen about it, but at the same time I love it with my whole heart. Because it is flawed on a high level, but it nails everything in the details.

[gffa]

*slams this comic down and yells about it* It's not that feelings are wrong, it's that they are Level 100 Space Psychics whose emotions are the foundation of their connection to the energy field that gives them those abilities. A Jedi can literally crush someone's windpipe with their mind. A Jedi can move so fast a regular person could never keep up with them, they could slice right through you before you could do more than twitch. A Jedi is placed in a position where lives are going to depend on how well they can handle a crisis. Feelings are normal, natural, and the Jedi have never said to suppress them. But instead that control is vital and this is exactly why--because using the Force through anger and fear is the dark side, that's literally what the Force is, your emotions. Jedi have to have higher standards than most people because otherwise people will die. Qui-Gon is not the first to say this (off the top of my head, I remember instances of Obi-Wan saying it in The Clone Wars, I remember Depa saying it in the Kanan comics, this is basically what Yoda was talking about in ESB) because this is what the Jedi teach and live by. Check yourself before you wreck yourself, because wrecking yourself is going to get a lot of people hurt.

[ladystoneboobs]

imo one of the biggest proofs of sansa's character growth post-agot (which seems to be overlooked) is this, where grrm makes sure we know how her perspective of the trident incident has indeed shifted. why else even say this? it's not what the tyrells wanted to know, they asked about joff's treatment of her in particular, and "he lied about the butcher's boy" means nothing without context (and even if she said the lannisters used that lie to justify killing mycah, i doubt olenna, at least, would care). but for sansa atp, joffrey's sins against mycah are worth remembering and reporting as his first crime (known to her), that incident is now recognized as evidence of joff's montrosity, the wrongs committed against mycah by joffrey personally (as in not even his death) are on par with sansa losing her wolf and being beaten by the kg. sure, she still has some classism remaining, but to say she cares nothing for the smallfolk, and is still the same girl disgusted by mycah's smellyness, who later repeated joffrey's lie about him weeks after the fact and blamed arya for lady's death more than joffrey, that's just demonstrably untrue.

[knightedgem]

Waddle Dee Want Me, Blippers Fear Me

Waddle Doo Turn Their Eye Away From Me As I Walk

No Beast Pack Dares Make A Sound In My Presence

I Am Alone On This Barren Star.

[tunemyart]

So I've just watched the finale and I'm feeling... Weird. I think part of it is because this show started with everything I like in a story (cool badass ladies, a queer romance, found family, redemption, etc etc) and ended up being... Not all that (most characters die, the romance is doomed, and I guess the redemption mostly happened but wasn't entirely satisfactory to me). Also, I'm someone who as Trauma (tm) with death so, I guess my brain's first reaction is "fuck that I just want them all happy and safe" and it takes me a while to accept when stories take these paths, however well written they might be.

Still, I thought it all went a bit fast in the last 2 eps, with parts of the show ringing just a little bit more hollow than I would have expected? I'm left feeling like the characters of Alice, Mrs Hart and Jen were treated a bit superficially (Lillia's story felt more complete). I also wished we had seen more of Agatha's past because spending centuries just conning witches then killing them is... a bit boring? (maybe we learn more about her in WandaVision, I haven't seen it). And obviously I wished we had seen more of Agatha and Rio. It's like the show couldn't decide if it was about Agatha or about Billy (partly because, I'm guessing it's setting up a 3rd show about him?), and with this short format we ended losing a bit on Agatha's part.

Anyway, curious of what you think of all that because your analysis are always super interesting, and like I said my own brain might be a bit biased towards resistance with this one. And obviously would love to read your fanfic(s) should you write any!

So, I've started and restarted a reply to this a few times, but I think what my answer boils down to is: we're meant to have multilayered responses to this finale. We're meant to sit with it. It's meant to change our experience of the show we've had to this point.

I think the best metaphor for this is the fact the revelation that Rio is Death. Bear with me, because I know this got spoiled for us way early on and we all knew it and were all just waiting for the revelation to drop - but imagine for a second that we didn't know that Rio, Agatha's ex-girlfriend and spooky fun vaguely-a-psychopath as played by the delightful Aubrey Plaza, is death. Your perception of Rio would have been turned on its head. Your perception of Agatha would have been turned on its head. Your perception of the Witches' Road and what we're even doing here with Death walking alongside us as a tourist would have been turned on its head.

Now, we all had an incredibly fun time even with the knowledge that Rio is death before we should have had it. But I think some of the power for what it meant for the story - and our perception of what was really happening - was muted.

Jen, at the beginning of 1.08, says, "She told us who she was from the very beginning."

Sit with that - because the same is true of this story.

---

It turns out that the Road is a metaphor for death. This isn't fully illustrated for us until Nicky, the author of the Ballad, walks down the road with Death's hand in his, and we go, oh. Oh.

Agatha tells us in the beginning that the Road doesn't exist, a rare instance of her giving anyone unbridled truth. And sure - the Road that our coven walked down doesn't exist. The Road that all the witches Agatha lured to the deaths believed in doesn't exist. It's a fiction. But it's significant that Agatha lured them all to the Road and killed them. They wanted to walk the Road. They died. Not "they died instead" - it's a two-fold statement. They wanted to walk the Road and they died. In a gruesome way, Agatha's been taking witches on the Witches' Road since the 1750s.

I don't think the significance of that is lost on Agatha, either, especially where we pick up at the beginning of 1.08. Lilia's dead, and everybody's reeling.

Perhaps Agatha more than anybody.

---

I also want to quickly take a look at Rio's accusation of Agatha regarding Billy.

"The bodies are really piling up." "Did you doubt me?" "Yeah, I did. I thought there'd be a trick in there somewhere. And there was! You were distracting me from him."

Because this is a revelation about Agatha's actions toward not just Rio, but any audience watching her - i.e., us the viewers. She's been distracting us! Not from who Billy is, we know that of course, but with regard to what the Road itself is. Agatha's known the Road isn't real the entire time. She's been protecting Billy from that knowledge. She's been protecting Billy from Rio. She's been protecting the coven itself from disintegrating. And, the biggest con woman move of them all, she's been distracting us - with less and less success as the show goes on - from the fact that she is not even the slightest bit in control.

---

So I definitely want to circle back to what you said about how the show started out with everything you like in a story, because oof, yeah, I felt that. I felt that hard in the finale. Coming off the impact of the incredible storytelling in 1.07, and the queer jokes and campy Wicked cosplay balancing out the sad, I think many of us spent the next week expecting some kind of emotional resolution that probably involved the remaining coven banding together in some more of that found family we've felt them becoming along the way.

Here's where things starts going wrong, right off the bat: they don't. Instead, they splinter. Not only are you aware of just how few of them are left (Jen, Billy, Agatha), but Jen and Agatha can't handle Lilia's death. Jen's distraught. The close up on Agatha running away out of the trial and back onto the Road, alone, shows her looking hunted and wild in her guilt. Everything that follows has its seeds in that moment of rending that began with Lilia's death.

From the beginning, the point has been that Agatha Harkness is a covenless witch. It's something we've seen her revel in - maybe simply because she has no choice but to own it. But the fact is that here, for the first time in centuries, she had a coven. She didn't intend to have one - she intended to kill them all in her basement and not think twice about them again. But events transpired the way they did. They became her coven. And one by one, they all died on the Road.

Rio, of course, has the words to cut right to the quick: "Your coven is shrinking," she teases Agatha cruelly. Agatha looks wild - because she's right. The worst thing is that she killed Alice - and she didn't mean to. She didn't want to. But she did, and in exactly the same way she'd intended to kill her at the beginning, the same way she's been killing witches for hundreds of years. "Your coven is shrinking," and it's Agatha's fault. It's Agatha's coven. It's Agatha's coven.

Hold on to that, too.

---

One of the things that I've been mulling over most is Agatha's character. She's so much fun in the beginning. We're all fucking charmed by her. We also don't have the full context of just how much of a serial killer she is.

So for me, at least, watching 1.08 and not only not getting found family, but getting an Agatha so far away from a "redemption" story that she only just barely is willing to not sacrifice Billy for herself, was kind of a rude awakening. Agatha's a lot more of a villain that I was prepared for. Surprise!

Agatha's so far away from "redemption", in fact, that she's only just barely starting to feel empathy for other witches. She's just starting to be affected by people who aren't #1. And that's a trauma response. And it's so, so, so deeply rooted in her that she's only just starting to be able to conceive of the idea of people who care for her. Of the possibility of being able to live in community. She's not ready for a redemption arc. There was no way that the kind of redemption arc she'd need could fit into nine episodes, because so much of it would for her be predicated on a mental shift that Agatha just hasn't arrived at yet. She's still so angry. She's still so traumatized. She's done almost none of the work. And even at the end, even with the final gesture of sacrificing herself for Billy, that's not a final act of redemption, oh Agatha's now a good person/forgiven/insert word frame of choice.

What this show did in terms of redemption for Agatha was set her up to be in a place where she might want it - where she might want to do and be better for Billy, and someday, for Nicky.

And it's significant that that point comes for Agatha in dying… and after death.

---

This show is about death. The Road is about death. Death is a character on the show.

Like, okay, you're saying. Fine. But what about my gay fun times? What about my queer romance, my found family?

And please know that I'm there with you.

I'm not hugely in touch with what the larger fandom is saying and how they're reacting because I have my little echo chamber here on tumblr and a few friends who have actual social media, but even here I get the sense that we're all kind of :/ for fairly similar reasons. What happened to the show I fell in love with?

And for me, the last few days, I think it's been important to realize that the fact that the show I fell in love with didn't suddenly become a different show. It didn't pull a bait and switch. No twists were in bad faith. Everything has been right here in the text of the show from the very beginning.

And I think it's important to see the story that Jac Schaeffer et al. were actually telling vs. our expectations of what they were telling, or worse, what we wanted them to tell. For just one example, I was convinced we were going to see Alice again - maybe Lorna Wu, too. I wasn't expecting it to be for the sole purpose of recognizing that not only is she dead, but to give Alice herself the space to say that it wasn't fair, that she wasn't ready, that she'd just broken her family's curse, that now she can really do something with her life! Because, ugh, yeah! It's not fair, for all those reasons! But that's also death. Likewise, Sharon's just dead, and worse, her death was pretty much meaningless. Lilia rediscovered herself again, and she chose her death to save everyone else - extremely meaningful. But at the end - she's just dead. We don't see her again. She's gone. She, like the others, walked the Road and away with Death.

I loved these covenless witches. I loved them finding themselves together. I loved them bonding around the campfire and discovering community. I miss them all, so so much. But they told us from the beginning how haunted by death all of them were: Alice and her mom, Lilia and her coven in Sicily, Billy and William Kaplan, Agatha and her son and her ex-lover. And of course, Death herself. Forget haunting these individuals - she came to actually join the temporary coven. Like, fuck. They told us what this show was about.

---

This show is about death, but it's more complicated than that: we'll take our cue from Rio again, who, in being Death, is also the original Green Witch. In short, this show is about Green Craft, "growth and decay in constant flow."

So yes - almost every single witch in the coven dies. Yes, it's permanent. No, the queer romance isn't resolved happily. No, Agatha doesn't have a redemption, satisfying or otherwise. And no, none of it follows what we've come to expect from found family story trajectories.

But the focus shouldn't be solely on the decay. There's a whole cycle of growth coming up after it, even now, and it's being made possible by the death and decay that we just witnessed. And most importantly, it's confirmed that this isn't the end of the story - just the end of "Agatha All Along."

---

I'll finish by actually answering your question - I've been sitting with the finale for a few days, because I also felt weird about it. And I think that's the right word: "Weird." Very spooky season-esque, first of all, but also not tipping all the way right into "bad".

The first thing to acknowledge is that no story is perfect - they were limited by nine episodes by what they had the space to show, and finales are really hard to get just right. The second is that you're allowed to not like any or all of it, especially when something happens that asks you to change your entire understanding of the story thus far, i.e. the Road isn't real, or when you have a particular trauma around death and it turns out that that's what the whole show is about in ways we hadn't fully realized. The third is that it's worth sitting with stories sometimes and seeing how they marinate and develop in your brain and your soul over time. All of these things can and should coexist.

This isn't my first go-round with a series finale that initially made me ???, so I was fortunate in that I felt like I had a cheat sheet. I've still got some marinating to do to see how this continues to change for me. But it's helped me to realize that my ??? reaction is what the story wanted me to have - that the characters are reeling right along with me. Not just Alice in shock about her death, but also Billy at the implications of his creation of the Road regarding his responsiblity for what happened on it. We're meant to feel this way… and then we're meant to reconsider the journey we've been on, the Road we've walked with all of them and the death we've died alongside them, and see it anew for what it really is.

[pnfc]

i dont wanna shoot down the idea that perry’s spurs are artificial but i also don’t think that’s necessary when, intersexuality exists. but above that i dont think perry would have gender dysphoria about his platypus body. his gender is ‘human guy’. nobody’s gonna tell perry he’s not enough of a dude because he lacks crural venom spurs, definitely not the humans in his life, and his life is made up of humans and non-platypus animals. anti-animal discrimination is his daily concern, not the one freak who’s made it his life mission to be transphobic to platypuses on the basis of venomous spurs. although like, wow, how high effort, that's almost commendable

[queenie-ofthe-void]

🪱🧠Wiggly Wednesday 🧠🪱

Tagged by @wheneverfeasible 💜 I'm a week late but I got there. This is also me tagging you back!

~~~

I'm thinking about Steve Harrington growing up hating everyone.

His dad is cruel, so he hates him.

His mom tells him men are dogs. Men are pigs. Men will do or say anything to get what they want. So he hates her.

The boys at school are cruel like his dad, just like his mom warned him, so he hates them.

He starts high school. He's tall, with big eyes, thick hair, and cute lips. Girls were nice to him, he thought they were friends. But they only did what they did and said what they said to crawl under him and wield him like a trophy. So he hates them.

Hates them less when he's buried inside them. Hates them more when they leave the same night.

He's a man now, just like his dad. So he hates himself.

Carol's the same as other girls, but different. She leaves but comes back sometimes. Hangs around. She meets Tommy, and Steve likes Tommy. But they're mean to Nancy, and Nancy's the only thing Steve loves. So he hates them too.

He hates Billy. Hates him as much as he hates his father. Billy's easy to hate.

Nancy thinks he's bullshit. He tries to hate her, but it's hard.

The kids... he can't find a reason to hate them. They're loud and obnoxious and snappy, but they like him. They always come around. They call him out when he's bitchy, and he likes that. He chases after them, drives them around. Shoots hoops with Lucas, let's Max teach him how to skateboard, does most of the heavy lifting for Dustin's experiments.

There's no way he can hate them.

And that's when he realizes how fucking draining it is to hate that many people. He's exhausted. So he decides to stop.

Robin wants him to hate her. She's desperate for it because that would make everything so much easier. He doesn't hate her. And she finds she can't hate him in return.

Eddie's the first person he meets who likes him. Doesn't want anything from him, isn't using him, doesn't hate him, doesn't just see him as a protector or babysitter or a good fuck or a failure or an idiot. Eddie likes him for him, exactly the way he is.

It's easy to love Eddie.

@runninriot @carolperkinsexgirlfriend @sadisticaltarts @devondespresso @just-my-latest-hyperfixation

@strangersteddierthings

[achromatophoric]

hey there, can you do a incorrect quotes for yoko and divina only?

Shortly after the Crackstone Incident, Yoko lays with her head on Divina’s lap while venting her frustrations.

Yoko: It totally sucks! I’m supposed to be her best friend. Like—who helped her paint that canoe? Me. Who got freaking poisoned for being on her team? Me.

Divina: *listens while stroking Yoko’s hair*

Yoko: Who spent countless girls nights listening to her go on and on about Beardjax when she was obviously howling for the other side of the moon? ME!

Divina: *patiently nods along*

Yoko: And! And who did she stay with after Scarinette Dupain-Cheng was a miraculous bitch and left our nascent queer a sobbing mess?

Divina: You, babe.

Yoko: No cap! This patient, wise, and dependable vampire. ME. Yoko Fucking Tanaka, favorite daughter of Kenichi Tanaka, member of the Nightshade Society, and the most stylin’ undead bitch on campus!

Yoko: *deflates with an exaggerated sigh* Fuuuuck...

Yoko: It’s just— I dunno. Have you ever felt like—totally unimportant? Like you were meant for something more, but instead you’re just… just an afterthought. A background character.

Divina: *thoughtful hum*

Yoko: *lowers shades to peer up at Divina*

Divina: Babe, what’s my last name again?

Yoko: What? It’s—uh… it’s…

Yoko: 🤨

Yoko: 🤔

Yoko: ☝️😲

Yoko: 😦

Yoko: 😐

Yoko: Huh.

Divina: See? I get you, babe. Don’t worry, I’m sure when class starts again, everything will feel better. New semester and all that, ya know?

Yoko: Yeah, you’re right. Thanks, Divi. I bet next semester is gonna be a banger!

[why-i-love-comics]

Batman/Santa Claus: Silent Knight Returns #2 - "The Holiday Party" (2024)

written by Jeff Parker art by Lukas Ketner, Michele Bandini, & Marcelo Maiolo

[cupoteahatter]

No One:

Me: Anyone ever think about how because Tyler was tricking her, he accidentally ended up as the one person who was seeing Wednesday for who she is and not who everyone wanted her to be? Specifically not who he wanted her to be, because he didn’t even have another image of her to fall back upon? Weems saw her as trouble/her Mother, Gates underestimated her, Sheriff Galpin only saw her Father, Xavier as his childhood hero, Enid blatantly assigned her a social mask but Tyler looked her full in the face and took her as she was? From their first meeting to their last, seeing Wednesday as she is, as she comes, all her dark edges and bright ideas and meeting her as an Equal Opponent, never underestimating her, never covering her up…. Just her. Only her. (And that in turn blinds her to who he is, until she pulls his mask off by accident).

Me: Anyone else ever think about that?

[sunsetsover]

that post really got me goin a lil crazy especially in the context of kant putting that stencil on him. because bison keeps going 'higher, a bit more, a little higher' yknow. and ofc kant is like well if i go any higher i'll be in his underwear so obviously that's what he wants. but then the moment he tries to go there bison is like um? what do you think you're doing? isn't this against the law? and kant tries to push it thinking bison's just playing a lil coy but no. do you not see? he just wanted you to put the stencil on him, duh!

and there's this power struggle where bison directly mirrors kant's behaviour. kant slaps bison's thigh, bison slaps kant's hand as he tries to sneak into his underwear. it's so unnecessary. he didn't need to slap his hand. he definitely didn't need to slap it that hard. but he did, because mr 'you have to let me be in control' is at it again, and bison's not having that, not at all. the control has never been kant's since the moment he walked up to him in that bowling alley, before all the intentions got muddled. kant approached, bison dismissed him. then he called him back and kant came running. why? because the power has never not been bison's. and it's about time kant understood that once and for all, isn't it?

[gffa]

Shmi finding the echoes of Anakin in the Tusken that delivers a black melon to her because Anakin helped them when he was young, that she finds comfort in the stories of him, the way he affected the world around him, that's so much what George Lucas was going for with the concept of letting go--forcing someone to stay with you because you're afraid to let them go will only hurt them, will only crush them in your hand. But if you let them go, if you can find happiness in them working towards the dream they had, then you'll see all this beauty in the ways they affected the world, you'll find that they're in your heart, you'll find happiness in their happiness. Of course Shmi misses her son and Shmi has had a life that no one should ever have to live, but the message of Star Wars is that in loving other people, in letting them go on to do what they were meant to do, you'll find true joy and everlasting contentment. Shmi is one of the strongest people in all of Star Wars, because she took her pain and suffering and turned it into love for her son, she let him go, and if it weren't for Palpatine, I honestly believe that Anakin would have overcome his issues and become the brightest star in all the galaxy.

[quinn-pop]

let’s do some autistic meta knight headcanons!! over explaining my interpretation of meta knight yet again wooooo

this orb has NO idea how to talk to people!!! outside of work anyway. a lot of this is partially due to upbringing (suppressing his emotions all the time) but he does not know how to express emotions, like…at all.

this goes into a few things

1. yeah talking is hard. even after figuring out what he wants to communicate he will struggle. conversation can be so overwhelming, especially under pressure. he will need time lol

2. because of that, forming connections is hard. i really don’t think meta is much for shallow relationships, and certainly not early in the timeline. which also means he has very little experience with friendship. so a lot of the relationships he did have went kinda neglected, and issues that probably could’ve been worked on by talking became…*cough romk* escalated.

3. honestly i wouldn’t be surprised if meta convinced himself he couldn’t feel emotion (anymore) until like. katam-ish. he tried very hard lol

vulnerability is terrifying. (though this gesture here is also just comforting, like his little cape cocoon thing he does.)

unmasking—yeah im taking the mask thing very literally here—is a big deal and a very slow process for mk. i’m sure he has a lot of feelings on that lol. it served as a way to ensure no one could ever, y’know, see him.

i can’t say i think he’d ever fully ditch it—there’s always gonna be some days that are more stressful than others and if having it could help him get through it, it just makes sense. mainly when working.

it really is about vulnerability. granted, i don’t think he has the most expressive face (in my head every astral just tends to stare at things) but i doubt he has much control over it. can’t fake a smile but also can’t hide it. probably blushes easy because yeah, astrals; just look at kirby’s face.

just the idea that someone might be able to read his expression and know what he’s feeling before he’s ready for them to (or even understands it himself…) yeah he doesn’t want that

but emotional turmoil aside, i think his mask also hides a lot of his stims

remember that whole “suppressing your feelings” thing? yeah turns out that ignoring half your instincts isn’t a good idea. so in true meta knight style, he tries to stim as subtly as possible

1. he has the least control over his wings, so they will flick and twitch on their own. they’re usually a good indicator of how he’s feeling, not unlike the body language usually seen in cat ears and tails lol. flapping is also an extension of this of course, though he probably suppresses it more.

2. this also effects when he takes his wings out. pretty much every time he’s excited or nervous it just happens. kinda makes me wonder if his wing cape ordeal might also go into the suppression thing… (i’d say yes, but using a cape is also very comforting so it’s not necessarily a bad thing)

3. going back to the mask thing; he stims a lot underneath it. think like biting or pursing your lips. he bites his tongue and clicks his mouth. that sort of thing. his mask also makes it harder to notice that he is constantly sighing, humming, grumbling…all that

one nice thing about the mask though is that it helps a little bit with lights!!! woo

(look at him and his magically floating glasses)

sensory stuff—i think he’s mostly bothered by light and sound. maybe a bit of texture. he’s pretty sensory avoidant and perfectly happy standing off to the side not touching anything.

the one exception to this is physical affection, which is, despite all of this, most of how he shows affection. it’s a lot easier to hug someone than to try to explain your feelings for them, after all.

i think he would like pressure though. so that’s probably part of it. and i’m pretty sure there’s some connection in here to fighting (dang, is that the only way he knows how to get his energy out?)

anyway, pretty much all of this is in contrast to kirby, who i would gladly nominate as the champion of Doing Whatever He Wants. he might pick up a few bad habits, but he will never mask the way meta knight does. he might not understand how he feels, but he’s in tune enough to express it…usually.

this is a very good thing for meta because it helps him to do the same thing. kirby’s so energetic, it’s hard to not want to stim with him. it reminds meta to be kinder to himself and explore his own emotions. he can also help kirby understand themselves, so this connection is very important.

yeah, at the end of the day, everything kinda just boils down to kirby and mk as parallels

this is the conclusion i promise

to me, meta’s arc is about growing stronger by growing kinder, and this is mostly by learning to be kind to himself. letting himself be a person again, loving and understanding other people, and eventually, letting go of all the expectations placed on him and doing the things he’s always wanted to do…

autism headcanons are fun for me because it’s cathartic to write, but at the same time, it just makes sense in this sort of narrative. meta is, to me, inseparable from these things. and so is kirby! that’s a dynamic that’s a lot of fun to play with, and it’s at the heart of my kirby interpretation.

if you actually read all this WOW thank you

[ladystoneboobs]

the younger starklings about robb (robb the strong and brave big brother, the perfect heir, the fierce and unbeatable young wolf):

arya

bran

sansa

meanwhile, actual robb (robb the lord and then robb the kitn):

before arya ever promised to be strong by using robb as her benchmark, the definition of stark strength, ned had to remind robb to be strong as the ruling stark in winterfell. (strong for bran and rickon, the brothers he thought he failed by sending their would-be killer away, leading to his great moment of weakness in jeyne westerling's bed.) as his siblings' faith in his ultimate triumph held strong, even after the loss of the north, robb himself was struggling with despair.

as grenn once told sam, maybe everyone is just pretending to be brave, maybe that's how people become brave. robb was faking it to make it too, imitating his father's lordly attitude as bran later tried to imitate robb's. as his younger siblings remembered him as their shining example, robb was trying to live up to his father's example. not the ned who'd been in his circumstances, a teenager unexpectedly turned into a lord and fighting a war to save his family. no, ofc, he never knew that young ned. the ned he knew as his father, the standard to measure himself against, was an adult man in his mid-30s who'd ruled the north for ~15 years. but was that standard for a 15/16yo any more fair and valid an expectation than 8/9yo bran believing he was almost a man grown and holding himself to the standard of 15/16yo robb as robb's heir?

and the only person left close enough to see robb as the boy he still was died with him.

[ghostbny]

Feliz día de muertos!