#what a mindfuck for her

[mzminola]

[Image: three panels of Agatha ranting, starting out frustrated: "And I'm the evil madgirl with the death ray and the freakish ancestors- And the town full of minions- And the horde of Jägers- And the homicidal castle full of sycophantic evil geniuses and fun-sized hunter-killer monster clanks and goodness knows what else-

...

And you know what? I can work with that!" /end ID.]

It’s really fascinating to compare the way Agatha handles the Heterodyne Legacy compared to her father and uncle. Because these are the two known generations of ‘Heroic’ Heterodynes after a long, long legacy of the Heterodyne family being known primarily as Evil Bastards - but they have such a totally opposite relationship with that villainous legacy.

Bill and Barry grew up deep inside that Evil Heterodyne Legacy and know all about how truly rotten it really is. Their father was an Old Heterodyne to the bone and an Extremely Reprehensible Human Being. Like, not just Cartoon Evil Overlord stuff - according to the Novels, he forced Bill and Barry’s mom to marry him by threatening her family. And he tried to kill them because they weren’t evil enough to his tastes. 

And when their mom killed him to protect her sons, the Castle killed her in retaliation. The very manifestation of the Heterodyne Legacy has cost them their beloved mother who just saved their life. And all of this in addition to the fact a non-evil Heterodyne was really an unthinkable concept when the Boys started - meaning they had to work extra hard to distance themselves from their family if they wanted anyone outside of Mechanicsburg to trust them.

And Heterodyne Boys worked very very hard to prove to the world that they’re not monsters. Both to fight off against the constant suspicions that they were monsters, and because they most likely wanted as little to do with their father’s legacy as Spark-ly possible. For them the Heterodyne Legacy was mostly kind of a Curse, the thing that tormented their mother and killed her and almost killed them, the thing that makes people wary of them.

And as such, they distanced themselves from anything that’s even remotely to do with that old legacy of monsters, from anything evil or scary or messy or ugly. Much to the chagrin of the Castle, the House of Heterodyne’s many other monsters, the Jager Horde Mechanicsburg’s proud Evil Minion population and many others who felt abandoned by them for the sake of PR.

Then there’s Agatha Heterodyne. And it’s not just that Agatha grew up in a post-Heterodyne-Boys world where the general populace associates the family name less with evil barbarous mad kings and more with good-natured heroism. Where even those who remember the Old Heterodynes are at least willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Where even those who would like her to be like the Old Heterodynes are at least willing to give her some wiggle room to express herself....

It is all of that, but more importantly Agatha didn’t grow up as a Heterodyne at all.

She grew up as Agatha Clay, with the Spark-Suppressing Locket that dulled her mind and made her a miserable klutzy mess who couldn’t do anything right. She grew up hating the constant feeling of being powerless.

And discovering that she’s a Heterodyne came up… pretty close to realizing she’s a Spark, and both of these revelations gave her a certain kind of Power that she never got to have before. She is now both a powerful Spark and a powerful political player in this grand Europa political chess board. 

And as much as she has the same heroic values and upbringing as the Boys did (courtesy of Barry and the Construct Duo), not growing up so up-close-and-personal with the worst consequences of the Old Heterodyne’s evil means she’s not as immediately repulsed by it like the Boys were. 

She encountered all of these old monstrous pieces of the Heterodyne Legacy - the Jagers, the Castle, Mechanicsburg, even just the fear her name can put into people’s hearts - not as the Evil Legacy Forced Upon Her. But stuff that was taken away from her, and she had to earn back. And in a world stacked so heavily against her, so determined to rob her of her agency and newfound sense of power, these things represent the assertion and security of her power.

For the Heterodyne Boys, the worst thing they could ever imagine being was monsters - like their father and the rest of their family was. For Agatha Heterodyne, the worst thing she could imagine is being powerless again. She would take being seen as a monster a thousand times over being condescended and ignored ever again. 

Being seen as a monster isn’t actually all that bad at all, she discovered. 

All of these things together make Agatha not quite the second generation of Actually Heroic Heterodyne or just another link in the Old Heterodyne Legacy - but another new kind of Heterodyne altogether. One that can both retain a moral code and embrace the family’s monstreness at the same time. 

[buffafro]

hey are we gonna talk about how in 2.8 how during The Fight when Sauron says The Line it was with Halbrand's accent. everything else was in that uber-creepy gentle elven-accented Annatar voice but that line was Southlands again. Hey Sauron that was fucked up even for you buddy.

[they-them-pussy]

girl i just wanted mystery inc. season 3

[lunar-years]

Roy and Keeley were only dating for like a little more than a year and yet not only did Roy introduce her to Phoebe very early on, he also enmeshed her in Phoebe’s life so readily and openly that when they broke up they had to have a discussion about not only how they would break the news to her but also how they could arrange for Keeley to still be an active and constant presence in her life. I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I just think there’s something in how Roy doesn’t allow himself to be vulnerable with 99% of the people in his life but once you’ve crossed over into that 1%…well, you’re not leaving it. You’re family and he wants you to stay even after he’s told you to go. Also Keeley and Phoebe are precious and their relationship is one of glorious under-tapped potential and we do not talk about it enough.

[sugarsnappeases]

psychologically traumatising sybill today my darlings… 3.5k words of trauma so far actually and i’m not stopping i don’t think

[bitchthefuck1]

One of the weirdest things about finding out you're traumatized/mentally ill/neurodivergent as an adult is looking back at all the very obvious signs in your childhood and realizing none of the adults responsible for you were paying attention

[you-were-alone-too]

i can't wait until we get a better understanding of the show timeline in s5 because what do you mean max might be in a coma and mike doesn't find out about the painting and they're all living in apocalyptic hawkins for 1.5 years???

[moe-broey]

WHAOFH

This is literally so fucking funny I was just laying down thinking about all the potential for stupid family/found family dynamics and was like. Man... I really haven't given Thrasir a lot of thought .... I wonder when she'll be summonable again..... Oh? Now? Hm. Okay. Freyja color sharing? Augh.... it May be useful to get her........ for studying purposes .......... maybe I'll give it a shot -- AH

[bookwyrminspiration]

????? Phoenix's monster has a name????? since fucking when????

[grimmjowjaegerjaquez]

will also say that all my thinking about bleach and thus also my old bleach ocs, i am rethinking ways to combine two of the stories i had for them (lorcan's story, and alice's story. like they both originally involved a certain bat lmfao) and now i am like. i mean it started as me just thinking "well this would be a good way to consolidate everything" and now i am thinking about shipping them together and i am losing my mind. how do i keep doing this to myself.

[rodeco-the-third]

The "Oh Dear God How Does Shit Keep Getting Worse" Nadir: Titus Andronicus

"problem plays" this "romances" that I'm proposing new and exciting Shakespearean Play Groupings for your amusement!

The Bad Dad Triad: King Lear, Henry IV Part 1, Romeo and Juliet

The "My Wife's A Floozy" Trifecta: Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, the Winter's Tale

The "Me And My Shitty Little Minion Are About To Fuck Up Your Shit Hardcore" Trilogy: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III, the Tempest

The Falstaffiad: Henry IV part 1, Henry IV part 2, The Merry Wives of Windsor

The "Holy Fuck There's Two of 'Em" Saga: Twelfth Night, the Comedy of Errors

The "Dear Diary My Homoerotic Bullshit Has A Body Count Now" Series: Richard II, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus

The "Why Are The Fucking Trees Trying To Kill Me. Hate This Shit" Trilogy: Macbeth, the Winter's Tale, As You Like It

[smaeemo]

Maturing is just realizing you kind of hate everyone and you just have to suck it up and do it anyway.

[confinesofmy]

i'm actually going to go berzerk. my lawyer is fucking me over horribly. i made an appointment with him some months ago about a horrifying legal development and he told me to take a hike so since then i've been exploring extralegal options like "tearful phonecalls" and "midnight googling and contemplating suicide." i've told family about the situation and gotten some begrudging help but it's all really just expanded the idea that nothing can be done without specifically my lawyer's legal help, because his name is the one on the books for this situation, even though he won't help me. my grandmother asked if she could call him (he is her old friend, her recommendation is why he's my lawyer) and i said sure because well. what difference does it make. at this rate i'm going to lose everything so i guess i'll try anything. i'm about one week out from making calls to the governor.

my lawyer told her he can definitely help me out and make some calls and get it all handled. after i've been telling her for months that he refused to help and laughed at me for expecting any. and they've known each other longer than i've been alive. even if he doesn't get this ironed out (though god i hope he does obviously) she's gonna write this down as me fucking things up. i can feel it. she told me on the phone that all she had to say was that she read on the internet that he can handle it and suddenly he was perfectly obliging. i'm gonna kill myself. i guess that's my bad for asking him to do his job, i should have told him that google told me he COULD do his job. duhh. 🙄🔫

[abyssalpriest]

unrelatedly.... Refreshing pickled ginger palette cleanser bc as Ive said Lev uses my english and habits for writing a lot of the time (and im heavily influenced by him lately), and lately ive been like "ugh god i dont know if im just not getting him across..." no lmfao, looking at how Hermes speaks in that last piece YEAH NO IM NOT CRAZY

[violettierre]

I just binged chainsaw man anime and manga 2 days in a row. You call it a waste of time i call it a superpower, we're not the same.

[dollypopup]

#like yes id have loved a little bite back for fun (i wrote a post abt it)#i love people who go 'what if it she said ok he doesn't want this so for his happiness ill call it off' (i rbd a post abt it)#and frankly i kinda wanna write a fic about it bc he'd freak out. we know he would. he'd be like 'no god please i didnt mean that#you have to marry me please please please' it'd be fun i know#but truly truly thinking she should blow the whole thing up bc he said one angy thing is. like. have yall ever been in a relationship or na#at the very least you definitely don't understand theirs#cause this line is also (i rbd a post abt this too) colin holding onto the marriage with his nails. and i think pen knows that a little bit @anastacialy

Respectfully? No.

These tags are so antithetical to what this post is about that it's almost insulting. Because, once again, it misses the entire point of this couple. Write what you want to write, but I don't think you understand just how out of character that would be for Penelope, and for Colin, too.

People WANT this comment to be Colin holding onto the marriage with his nails, but what it really is is a manifestation of his hurt. He loves her and she hurt him, and he's lashing out. Sometimes that's just what it is. Yes, he still wants to marry her, not out of obligation, but because they have history and he has feelings for her. But people really just want to gloss over the fact that she hurt him.

Y'all, she hurt him. Lying to him continuously and keeping that secret from him is a painful thing she did to him. So if she said 'fine, no entrapment then, we're done' that is, realistically speaking, the death of their relationship. He's reeling from the realization that she just kept an entire secret persona from him, and not a cool one with superpowers, but one that has insulted his family and him to the entire city, taken their trust and turned it back on them, and kept that truth from him even after they were intimate with one another. She lied. She lied to him more than anyone had ever lied to him. And he had to find out on his own. His trust in her is broken.

Thinking he'd go 'oh god, please I didn't mean that, you have to marry me, please please please' is such a. . .idk how to even say it- dehumanizing? way to view him? He loves her, yes, but like. . .god, how does that NOT turn your stomach? Taking the hurt and trauma she inflicted on him and then making him beg for the relationship? When SHE should be the one apologizing and trying to understand him?

I guess the closest scenario to compare that is the 'Goodnight Mr. Bridgerton' line. She calls him cruel, and someone writes that he'd be like 'oh, okay? So I'm cruel? Fuck you, then, no more friendship' and she goes 'no no no, I didn't mean that, I missed you, I value our friendship, I was just mad, please please please'. It's equally as out of character of a scenario. Colin understood she was just lashing out because he hurt her, and he didn't hold it against her, but you want Penelope to be petty and cruel to HIM? I genuinely hate the fics where she blows up at him for that line, because there's just such a lack of empathy for Colin's character in this fandom where we just don't CARE that he's hurt, and we can't STAND the fact that SHE'S the one who hurt HIM. It doesn't matter. HE doesn't matter. And Penelope can't EVER be the party who was wrong! So we can humiliate him or kick him when he's down, because he's the only one we want to put emotional labour into this relationship.

Wouldn't it be cute if Penelope bit back at him and then made him beg to have her back in his life after he found out she hid so much from him and lied to him? Wouldn't it be FUN to see Penelope emotionally manipulate him and have absolutely zero sympathy for this man she's claimed she cares about? Isn't it just such a nice, lighthearted read? Your fanon Penelope is an awful partner if she does that. She's coldhearted, and proud, and she's demonstrating that it doesn't matter the magnitude of her own harms, her hurt feelings take precedence over everything. That's not a woman worth holding onto, fam.

But a Penelope who recognizes that Colin is hurt? A Penelope who assures that she loves him? A Penelope who sees that line for what it is and wants to reconcile with him and make amends for the harm she's caused? A sympathetic, warm person who has the comment roll off her back because she knows who he is at his core and that's what matters? THAT'S a woman worth marrying and working through issues with. And that's who she is. Why y'all insist on making her a bad partner, and not to explore her character but just to make Colin an accessory with no valid emotions of his own, I'd never know.

This fandom just doesn't get it.

The entrapment line comes about *because Colin now doubts that she loves him*. He already was spiraling because he believed she didn't, and that she was just overcome in the carriage and didn't actually care for him. She didn't say that she loved him back when he said it, or when they had sex for the first time. She said she had to tell him something, and that something was that she's Lady Whistledown, but then she tells him that she loves him, instead. For the first time. So in his mind, she very well could have been lying about loving him as a save from admitting her secret, because that replaced her confession about being LW, and so the fandom's solution is to have her reassure him that 'Yeah, no, you're right, I DON'T love you' Not enough to empathize. Not enough to stay. Not enough to want a marriage.

We expect Colin to stay through a three year long betrayal, but Penelope to up and leave from one comment?

Y'all don't get Penelope and you don't get Colin either, frankly speaking.

I guess what I find most funny about the 'She should call off the wedding because of Colin's entrapement line!' crowd is like. . .y'all really don't get Penelope at all, do you?

She has loved this man for YEARS. She's loved him through his engagement to someone else, she's loved him through him saying he wouldn't court her, she's loved him through multiple countries, through her family mocking their closeness, through a potential marriage to a Lord. She loved him so much she couldn't even DENY having feelings for him to save what she thought was her only chance of getting married. Do you know how easy it would have been for her to go 'No, we're just friends, I don't like him like that, you're proposing to me and that's what matters'? She couldn't denounce her feelings for him even THEN. Even when she doesn't think he reciprocates them and she's made peace with a life with Debling and is expecting his proposal. Colin was *always* first in her heart, through all those hurdles.

Because Colin has been kind in a cruel world, and he's made her laugh, and he encourages her confidence and he's warm and he's gorgeous and he centers her and he values her and he listens and makes her feel desired and beautiful. He's a good man, and her love for him makes her feel good, she treasures it. Even in the books she says it feels good to love a good person, whether he loved her back or not. And now she knows that he does and you think one line that Colin says in obvious hurt after finding out she's been hiding a secret persona for him is enough to shake that love? She spent what? Half a decade looking out her window pining for him and now on the eve of getting to live a life with him as husband and wife, she's going to chuck that away because of one sentence? How lowly do you think of her? How *stupid* do you think she is? To throw away the love of her life over what? Her pride? This fandom's OOC Fanon Pen is a disservice to Penelope's actual character.

Her love for Colin is steadfast. It's made of tougher stuff than all that. It has survived everything that has been thrown at it. Distance, other people, Portia. And y'all really, truly believe that a singular statement will make her go 'Naw, I don't want it anymore!' PUHLEASE. Even when she offers him that annulment, you KNOW she knows it's not on the table.

Stop playing. OF COURSE she didn't call off the wedding. Of COURSE she chose to understand where he was coming from and went 'I didn't mean to trap you, Colin, I love you'. Of course she asks what the marriage will be and is comforted by the fact that he still wants to go through with it.

Penelope Featherington has loved Colin most of her life. It has been one of the few constants in her existence. He has been good to her in said existence, consistently. He's listened, he's cared, he's apologized to her, he's taken ownership of his actions, he's invited her to be more open, he's joked with her, he's supported her, he saw her when she was invisible. She. Loves. Him. And for good reason.

It's not going away because of one line. Or two. Or three. Come back next time when you actually understand her.