#whether they become canon or not.

[daniclaytcn]

no offense but when it comes to the resolution of the eddie/chris stuff...i frankly think y'all are putting too much faith in the guy who thought dead wife doppelganger was a genius idea, who cut the only important eddie and chris scene that actually gave the slightest hint of depth to this stupid storyline, who's been dragging out said stupid storyline for literal months with zero resolution and no real development on eddie's side either (for months).

[starcurtain]

Sometimes I think about Aventurine in the moment he first discovered his Pathstrider abilities. The moment he first realized he could shield not only himself but also others. The very first moment he realized he could be a source of safety, rather than a burden--than a curse.

Sometimes I think about the hatred he must have felt for himself in that instant.

Where was this power when their camps were burned to the ground with every last one of their meager possessions? Where was this power when his mother died begging as he cowered, playing dead in a bath of the blood of everyone he knew?

Where was this power when his sister stood tall, a silhouette against the lightning, and used her body as the shield? Where was this power in the maze, when it could have spared the screaming child who was the first to die?

You could have saved them. You could have saved them. You could have saved them.

[juniemunie]

If we're not giving up, don't give up wherever you are.

That's a promise.

[sleepymim]

Ok so this is going to be my attempt to put all of my thoughts about Silco and Vander and their relationship and how they might achieve reconciliation into one coherent post because I cannot! stop! thinking about them!

As we see in s2e7, reconciliation between them is definitely possible. However, I think it definitely wasn't easy, and it wasn't motivated by a single event like Silco finding Vander's letter or Vi dying. I think a million little things needed to perfectly align for them to find back to one another. As others have already said, and I agree with this, I think the "happy" timeline is a statistical anomaly for them.

So what was needed for them to find back to each other? And like, disclaimer that this is obviously only my own interpretation of events.

First of all, I think one of the prerequisites for reconciliation is that Silco doesn't start working with Singed and doesn't get into Shimmer, which is supported by his eye having healed normally in the alternate timeline.

I also think that Vander's letter could only ever be a starting point for their reconciliation, something that would get them in the same room to talk again. After that, I think they'd still need a long, long time to get back to how things were.

Vi's death imo has absolutely nothing to do with whether they reconcile or not, because in the alternate timeline she dies during what would be Act 1. Silco is already past the point of no retunr here, he doesn't give a shit about Vi or the other kids, he's deep into his Shimmer business. He's literally planning to kill all the kids in episode 3. He would not give a fuck if Vi died in that explosion. If Silco and Vander are to reconcile, it needs to happen pretty soon after the betrayal.

But I think the most important aspects for their reconciliation are violence and ideology.

Obviously the actual betrayal is horrifically violent and traumatizing. Vander actively chose to drown Silco which is just like, such a brutal way to die. He does this because he puts the blame for the bridge fight escalating on Silco. This is unjustified, and the show wants us to know that Vander was in the wrong here. Vander himself admits in s1e3 that he has regretted what he did to Silco since it happened. In general episode 3 in my opinion very clearly communicates that Vander overreacted and that what Siclo did (throwing the first molotov) does not justify Vander's reaction (violent murder).

However! Vander also clearly still thinks Silco is dangerous and despite regretting how he reacted still puts some form of blame on Silco.

In the apology letter, he says the blood is on both their hands. The letter in general is shit considering the weight of what Vander did, and what it shows is that even though Vander feels bad about what he did, he does still put the blame for the bridge fight on Silco.

In act 1, Vander also says there are worse things than enforcers in the Undercity while looking at his brace that covers the scar Silco gave him while escaping. This is, presumably, before he knows Siloc has been funding Shimmer development and getting into human experimentation. He thinks Silco is worse than enforcers based on whatever happened between them in past. With s2, this is explicitly Silco's escalation on the bridge.

So obviously despite the time that has passed and the fact that Vander can admit what he did was unjustified, he does still believe Silco is dangerous based on their differing ideology. Benzo, too, obviously still holds a grudge against Silco for what happened.

So really the crux is that even though Vander feels sorry, he does not change his stance on non-violence being the right way forward for the people of Zaun, and thus he can never truly forgive Silco for what he did on the bridge - he still believes that Silco is responsible and that his own way is the right way.

I think as long as Vander keeps his ideological stance, reconciliation between them isn't possible. From both sides, because Vander thinks Silco's ideals are dangerous, and from Silco's side because he thinks Vander is a coward and a sellout.

Then let's look at Silco's side of things a little bit.

I think there's two aspects to his forgiveness/reconciliation with Vander: the violence and the ideology.

Canon pretty much tells us that Silco is willing and able to forgive the violence Vander inflicted on him. We see this not only in the alternate timeline, where they're obviously close again, but I think s1e3 tells us the same. Silco kidnaps Vander, but still offers him the chance to join him in the fight against Piltover again. I don't want to talk here about Silco's methods at this point in time, but he's obviously willing to put the murder attempt behind them IF Vander is willing to switch to his side again. He even says that his hatred for Vander passed with time. I think this implies that, somehow, eventually, with time, in a nicer timeline Silco could really forgive Vander for trying to kill him.

However, and I think this is the much bigger issue for them, there's still the matter of ideology. Vander betraying their shared goals, turning towards a pacifist, more passive approach to revolution and ultimately striking a deal with Grayson is what really drives the wedge between them.

This is what Silco despises Vander for: For turning his back on violence. Silco encourages Vander's violent tendencies, he wants him to become the person he used to be again, wants him to embrace that part of himself again. I think this supports the assumption that Silco would forgive the violence inflicted against him much easier than Vander abandoning their shared dream. Until the end, he wants Vander to embrace that violence again.

And a Vander who is committed to non-violence is a Vander who stands in the way of Silco's goal of a free Zaun. So as long as Vander stays firm on his ideological stance, Silco is always eventually going to get rid of him. There is no way for them to find back to one another if they remain on opposite sides of the struggle they used to fight together.

This is, I think, the crux of my interpretation of them:

Reconciliation doesn't only depend on Silco coming back to Vander and forgiving him for the violence Vander inflicted upon him. It also depends on Vander coming back to Silco, internalizing that the bridge figth was not Silco's fault, and being willing to compromise his non-violent ideology and take action again for their shared dream.

It's about the two of them coming back to each other.

[basilbots]

Much like in the show Sun and Moon didn't actually get along when they first met. The two were captured and thrown in an aquatic facility by humans and. Fought and bickered and didn't get along those first few weeks :'D Very different mers very unhappy about being locked up in this small place. In their situation though they were all they had, eventually growing very close and adopting each other as siblings/podmates who would be inseparable once they got out.

[justaz]

Oh. Imagining happy ending au Ekko and Jinx living in the firelight base together with Isha. When Ekko cut her hair after finding her/before going into battle, he cut it like Isha’s. After everything was said and done, Jinx faked her death so Piltover would leave her alone and she went home to her husband former enemy partner best friend and daughter and had Ekko and Isha dye her hair brown like Isha’s so they look more alike since the blue has faded from Isha’s hair. Everyone is the Zaun knows Jinx is still alive but they respect her peace with her family and never give the enforcers anything to go off of. Piltover might know she’s still alive but that’s neither here nor there.

ANYWAYS I was thinking about Isha, Ekko, and Jinx in their home and Jinx puts on a random record and starts dancing with Isha like they used to do in Jinx’s base/hideout/lair/whatever and Ekko hears the song that’s playing and trails out to see his wife former enemy partner best friend dancing with their daughter her daughter their daughter Isha to the song Ma Meilleure Ennemie and laughing. Ekko smiles and steps in, joining in their laughter and dancing. Then he and Jinx slowly make their way towards each other and just start dancing together. So similar to that other world but so different but still the same woman he loves in all universes, in all timelines.

Isha watches them with a giddy smile, her parents are so happy and so loving and she couldn’t be happier

[lgbtlunaverse]

So I've been wondering about one particuar point on the "Jiang Cheng marriage recquirement" list and it's the one about low cultivation.

Now on its face, except for the "must be nice to jin ling" point, the whole thing just looks like the most standard list of "ideal wife characteristics under a patriarchal society." naturally beautiful, graceful and obedient, coming from a good family, voice not too loud, etc. This leads to either the interpretation that jiang cheng really wants that (doubt dot png) or just... put all the most stereotypical things on a list even though that's not what he really wants.

In that context "cultivation must not be too high" sounds like a typical "men are scared of women who are smarter/stronger" thing. you know, the dudes who feel 'intimidated' when their wife or girlfriend makes more money than them.

...Except wasn't Yanli openly mocked for her low cultivation? Like, wasn't one of the reasons Jin Zixuan was such an ass to her initially because he shallowly assumed her lower cultivation made her an unworthy marriage candidate? Jin Guangshan may hate women who can read but society overal doesn't give the impression that high cultivation in women is seen as something undesirable. I mean... a wife that never looks like she's over 20 even as she starts aging? yeah I have no problem believing a misogynistic society is okay with high cultivation.

So if it's not there just to fit the stereotypical standard of an ideal wife...

Jiang Cheng, are you just describing your sister?

LIke?? Every single point on this list applies to Yanli. All of them. I don't mean this in a freudian incest-y way but in a "jiang cheng are you so unaware of what you want in a partner you just took the only woman you've had an unambiguously good relationship with and hoped no one would notice???" way. Does he know the difference in what you should like about your sister and what you should like in a spouse? Is he even aware he's doing this? Jiang Cheng answer meeeee.

[brookiidookiii]

maybe if we all hold hands and sit in a circle surrounded by dimly light candles and manifest hard enough, theyll become canon

[zieroses]

For fellow lovers of Emmrook and fellow purveyors of angst, allow me to submit:

A world in which Rook would never deny Emmrich his lifelong dream of lichdom, but also secretly knows it spells the end of them. Because things are going to be different no matter the reassurances; because Rook knows that they’ll never truly feel Emmrich’s skin again; because Emmrich said that flowers may lose their bloom for him, and what if all the ephemeral things of mortality lose their bloom for an undead lord? And Emmrich says he wants to be of service, wants to protect, but Rook has a sick feeling in their stomach that this is more about his fear of dying, and isn’t it so much worse to watch the ones you love die rather than dying yourself? And isn’t it so much worse even than that, to watch the ones you love become something unfamiliar, something you can no longer touch?

A world where Rook says, I can’t help you with this, I can’t make this choice for you - but whatever you choose, I’m here. Even if not in the same way as before. Even if it can never be the same as before, and it kills them. They’ll be there on the other side, brokenhearted and alone.

[chipsncookies]

Planet destroyers 🌎💥

The pink girl is Alma, 80's friend who's also a planetary investigator who decides whether humans get to live . I think it'd be really bad if these three meet 😬

[potato-lord-but-not]

ok so. trying to slowly piece together the ALH3B narrative here and figure out who is romantic who bones who doesnt bone etc. what are we doing here. does everyone get nasty. did charlie and oscar have sad sex while arthur was gone. did oscar call charlie 'arthur' in bed once and charlie just rolled with it cos he felt bad for oscar. did charlie wake up from a nightmare wanting arthur there to ground him as the only other person who knows what the torture of the kiy is like but oscar was all he had and so they just talked about arthur over tea and beer. do arthur and charlie have flirting competitions. im insane about this world now btw

well okay I have a few aus rolling around right, it’s on a spectrum of most canon compliant to least compliant, and that goes something like: most of my character headcanons -> holy ghost monster hunting (platonic) -> Ourthur au where the monster hunting did happen but there’s more romantic tension there.

so for the sake of ALH3B, the only two that are explicitly not romantic are Arthur and John, well technically with Arthur being arospec he’s not really romantically involved with anyone, but John’s Different, he’s doubly not a romantic partner. they’ve all got a weird qpr going on, but I’d say Noel and Oscar are probably the closest on that front. they spent a lot of time together trauma bonding, over their pasts and their relationship with Arthur.

They definitely all get freaky with each other tho don’t get me wrong my head is too far in the gutter for that not to be the case.

[ashpkat]

in my idealized version of the books (the Good timeline), jericho and constantine’s relationship is not the one aaron and calls relationship parallels — it’s constantine and joseph. in this essay i will *gets taken out by cassandra clare’s snipers*

[epiphainie]

I completely agree with you in that there are many bad faith interpretations of tommy and buck and tommy’s relationship. I don’t know if this one I’m about to share would necessarily be a bad faith interpretation but I’d like your take on it. In the scene where buck comes out to eddie, eddie says to buck “this changes nothing between us” and buck responds with something along the lines of “uh good, that’s a relief”. I’ve seen a lot of people interpret buck’s facial expressions as not showing just relief but relief mixed disappointment because a part of buck wanted things to change between them, in the romantic sense, he just doesn’t realize it. I do agree that buck’s expression as he says the words is interesting but I don’t personally think it has anything to do with him harbouring romantic feelings for eddie. for me it felt like one of those moments where you dread the reaction for so long, that when you finally face the thing and open up, even if the other person’s reaction is positive, it takes a minute for you to really internalise it and let yourself believe it.

Another moment that people often talk about from this scene is reaction to buck saying he can’t stop thinking about tommy. People often say eddie’s facial expression shows some sort of disappointment but again, I don’t know if that’s it? again, it is an interesting expression so I get why people would pause and focus for a minute but to me, it reads as eddie searching for a moment to give his honest advice to buck in the scenario.

Anyway, I’d love your thoughts on those particular moments and how you see them. Again, I’m not saying that the interpretations people are making of that scene in relation to buddie are necessarily in bad faith. I know it’s fun to analyze and interpret scenes in ways that you enjoy and I’d never want people to stop doing that. I just feel like Oliver and Tim have been very clear in that they do not want to tell a story where a guy comes out and is in love with his best friend and if buck was truly disappointed in hearing eddie say nothing’s going to change between them post buck’s coming out, that would be a quite bold contradiction.

Hi anon!

I'm not sure if you actually meant to send this to me because I'm kind of the exact opposite of a person who engages in the practice of reverse-engineering actors' faces to find deep secret meanings that doesn't actually exist in the script. I think it's a slippery slop of a fan practice where if you go "haha he looks jealous here" and want to make it gay in your fantasy world and are capable of compartmentalizing that from the actual text, it's great! If you look at it like it's subtext that is meant to one day come to surface, as some sort of proof that this is not the actual story, you're either too deep in your world that you treat these characters like they have agencies and thoughts and feelings and are not, yknow, fictional - or that actors are making the conscious choice to layer their performances with breadcrumbs for a plot that doesn't exist at the time.

I've seen all these arguments with almost every scene this season. Eddie's face when Tommy enters the bachelor party. Buck's face when Bobby says Tommy is good for him. Bobby's face when he says Tommy is good for Buck. Eddie's smile when they enter the hospital room. Most of these are insignificant and the others have in-text explanation (Yeah, Bobby smiles weirdly in that scene. Guess what, he's kind of planning to kill himself). And like I said, if people want to read these in a pro-Buddie sense and go do fandom stuff with it, that's great. But we all know this fandom is taken over by the question of "will Buck and Eddie happen?" so everyone who's not even doing this in bad faith (I don't think all do) are looking at it in "does this support canon romantic Buddie?" lenses. So much of shipping Buddie is about speculating for the next episode, next season, next whatever that I think it's so easy to find yourself on that slippery slop where you fit every shot, face, editing choice to your interpretation. There's also the sunk cost fallacy at play here - once you do it for so long, it's hard to give up on the belief that it'll happen.

I think both Oliver and Ryan great actors - and that scene is one of my favorites in the season - but no, I don't think there's more to their faces than what they're given to play. Which is as all of them mentioned a billion times, a scene of a guy nervously coming out as queer to his best friend and receiving support. If I'm wrong and the rest of this fandom is right and the production/writers/showrunners are actually fully married to the idea of canon romantic Buddie but The Powers That Be are keeping gay Eddie in the closet as if he's a real person and they're the evil step-mother, and come S10 Buck realizes he's been in love with his bff all along, then yeah in-text, that would recontextualize all their performances. It still wouldn't change what the writers' intention has been with the text as it exists today or be proof that Oliver and Ryan are making acting choices for a hypothetical future SL.

[theartthatleavesthemark]

this post probably exists out there somewhere but. you know the book la galatea? the one Flint leaves for Miranda in 2x3? uhh well it was written by Cervantes the man most well known for creating the patron saint of lost causes (don quixote) but that isnt even the most insane part this book was a collection of pastoral poems loosely wedged into a narrative now, what were these poems about you may ask? well, pastoral stories for those of you who do not know are about love specifically they are about overpowering love making people do insane things and many of these stories in this book end either in tragedy or very ambiguously. essentially the love was there but it didnt change the ending. now the frame these tales are set in? well, THAT is the story of two gentleman, one of noble birth named Elicio and one of low birth who is nonetheless quite well-spoken named Erastro (sound familiar?) who are both in love with the same woman (the titular galatea). they agree that their shared love will never interfere with their friendship. now if you, like me, are throwing objects at the walls at this point, wait for the best part: la galatea is UNFINISHED. Cervantes wrote only part 1 and IN DON QUIXOTE there is a scene in which part one is BURNED and a character comments that it will never be any good without a second half. which he never wrote.

[canisalbus]

What do you think would have happened if (somehow, idk how but somehow) Machete rose to the rank of pope?

To be perfectly honest? I think most realistically he would've ruled maybe six months at best and then keeled over from stress and exhaustion.

[caiusmarciuscoriolanus]

I hope whoever asked ebon about sydrichie and genuinely thought it was a good idea has perpetual hell temperatured pillow syndrome on both sides and loses ample amount of sleep from it. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? WHY DO Y’ALL ALWAYS DO THAT WITH EVERYTHING THAT IS SACRED TO ME? That was meant to stay in this space and you weird mothertruckers in fandoms that just have to know what actors think about ships think it’s okay to ask (ALSO ALWAYS AT EVENTS THAT DONT EVEN PERTAIN TO THE SHIP). LIKE Y’ALL ARE RUINING IT.

ALSO JUST TO ADD ON, THIS IS THE TYPE OF SHIT THAT CAUSES WRITERS AND ACTORS SO SHY AWAY FROM SCENES INVOLVING CERTAIN CHARACTERS INTERACTING BECAUSE THEY DONT WANT PEOPLE TO “GET THE WRONG IDEA” WHEN REALLY ITS JUST THAT Y’ALL DONT KNOW HOW GO BE NORMAL ABOUT ANYTHING.