#and then end up with a million of them for parallel posts lol

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

All that bloodshed, crimson clover, the bombs were closer / My hand was the one you reached for all throughout the Great War -> You fire off missiles 'cause you hate yourself, but do you know you're demolishing me? And then you squeeze my hand as I'm about to leave

[heatwa-ves]

what actually happens in the zelda games?? i had a friend who loved breath of the wild but i have no clue what the actual plot is lol

In very vague terms the series revolves around the triforce which is this holy power created by the goddesses and it looks like three triangles making up a bigger triangle and each represents courage wisdom and power and there's these three guys link zelda and ganon who have one of those triforce attributes respectively and there's like 30 games or something and most involve link as the hero zelda who helps you out sometimes she's kidnapped and you have to save her sometimes she's a pirate sometimes she's just chilling sometimes she's even a lesbian and once in the most recent game she's the main playable character... And then ganon is the villain. Most of the time but sometimes he's not. Anyway the first game in the timeline has the first ever zelda and link and at the end of the game link defeats this primordial evil who puts a curse on all their bloodlines that the three of them are forever tied together and there will always be a link a zelda and a ganon/various other evil guy in every timeline etc.

anyway the actual plot of each game varies a lot we've got link washes up on an island that becomes more and more surreal as you learn more about it we have link travels to a parallel world and gets cursed a bunch and uses the masks of dead people to transform into them and stop the moon from crashing into the world and destroying everything in a timeloop we have link turns into a wolf and has a lesbian sidekick who's actually a princess from another realm and definitely has a thing going on with princess zelda we have the whole world floods and link sails around on a boat that is actually the dead king of hyrule ummmm. Many such cases. Link has a train at one point he's an engineer that works on a train and he drives the train around and zelda is a ghost I think

breath of the wild is pretty different to the other games in terms of game structure and while I do like it it's not one of my fav Zelda games.. anyway it's set 100 years post apocalypse and link wakes up to find he was put to sleep 100 years ago to stop him from dying and so he has to save the world basically. He had a fish girl best friend but she died so sad. Tears of the kingdom is the sequel and it's kinda the same but it has sky islands and the zonai who I don't really like and Zelda gets transported a million years into the past and turns herself into a dragon. Anyway!

[mermaidsirennikita]

i remember people saying that the duke and i and the viscount who loved me were very simmilar books when season 2 was coming out but having since read the them i have to disagree. i think the similarities they do share are just common genre tropes (and low-key julia's lack of creativity) but thinking they're the same book is silly to me. it doesn't help that they're back to back in the series i guess but idk that feels like someone who doesn't read a lot of historical romance would think.

Yeah, I've seen those comments, and like... Again, I hate to sound like a snob, but that's another "tell me you've only read the Bton books without telling me" flag. Marriage of convenience/marriage after being compromised is a CLASSIC historical romance standard. Certainly, it's not the only one. But it is VERY fundamental to the subgenre, and you can have a million differentiations of it that sound similar in theory but are incredibly different in execution.

All genres traffic in tropes, but I find that because of some perspectives on romance that aren't at all fair, romance gets dinged for more openly using tropes. The trope marketing has gotten old (though right now it works and I get why authors do it) but romance is no trope-ier than like... fantasy, tbh. Acting like a marriage after compromise thing is the same as any other marriage after compromise is like acting as if all chosen one arcs are the same. Harry Potter and Star Wars both have chosen one arcs with dead parents and older mentors who keep secrets and ultimately end up dying, PLUS prominent villain redemption arcs and backstories heavy on personally conflicted battles fought by the previous generation and parallels to real world fascist regimes and political conflicts, but I don't think anyone would say that if you've seen Star Wars, you've read Harry Potter.

The Duke and I and The Viscount Who Loved Me have very different heroines (Daphne is a girl next door who wants to be seen as more, Kate is a spitfire who doesn't outwardly care to get married), very different heroes (Simon falls into the icy duke category, Anthony is a Rake Classic if not a very scandalous or frankly rakish one), they do both involve compromising to marriage, but Simon and Daphne are not NEARLY as combative as Kate and Anthony, and additionally Simon and Daphne actually do get up to stuff and thangs, whereas Kate and Anthony don't go nearly as far before they're caught. Like, they kiss before then, but he's not actually trying to fuck her when they're caught lol. I think the marriage is much more jarring for her.

Also, Simon and Daphne have a huge issue between them re: kids, but it's not like Anthony and Kate wherein Anthony is outwardly, intentionally determined to not fall in love with whoever he is married to. So. Fundamentally different post-marital conflicts, imo, even beyond the basics of "Simon won't come inside her". (Anthony has zero damage with coming inside Kate, lol.)

Personally, I think that a lot of people just stubbornly refuse to read anything more than Julia's books, and even then a lot of them *say* they're reading the books and actually only read highlights about their faves lol. Which is fine. But admit it.

[cha1cedony]

CSOTD! Ummm. Thinking about Lincoln ‘Boss’ M. Kicks Li-Wilson etc. tonight. What else is new

I could write for a very long time about the Wilson family and the divide between childhood and adulthood etc., but I think it’s an especially big motif for Lincoln. He really was never young.

Even as a baby, I’m sure he had some kind of physical trauma from nearly being trampled on a sinking ship, and from being separated from his mother so suddenly, and from being unadjusted to the food and water and air and perpetual darkness of the 2040s. Kids don’t consciously remember trauma that happened to them as babies, but they can still have reactions for years, never understanding why they’re so upset.

Growing up, he was almost exclusively surrounded by adults. Outside of video games and soccer (Grant’s hobbies), everything else he did for fun was with his parents or his grandparents or their adult friends (trains, bridge, dance, probably others I’m forgetting). But at the same time, his helicopter dads treated him like he was even younger than he was: like their trick-or-treating costumes lol, plus a million other examples I can’t be bothered to list rn. Not sure how much of that was because they wanted to keep him safe and how much was because they wanted to do encourage him to do whatever he wanted to do, which were often childish things. I’d like to believe it was mostly the latter (and obviously they had good intentions with the former; it just ended up being overbearing, etc.) Idk dog this isn’t a treatise on the Li-Wilsons. I’m just writing of my silly song posts dog. (I’ll probably write the aforementioned treatise someday though lol, but @//babacontainsmultitudes wrote a really good one a few weeks ago)

And of course the simulation. He’s already lived a full adult life. I feel like we forget how early in the season that was, too! Literally S2E2! He didn’t change much externally after that episode, but I can only imagine what he was going through internally after that. And then Tony Pepperoni’s death. The parallels to Grant’s ‘becoming a man’ with the chimera in S1. Urgh

Okay this is getting incoherent now and I have a stomach ache and have to edit this essay but. Yeah ^_^ Good Link song LMAOO

[degozarumyu]

okiiii ep90 spoilers timeeeeeee (very long very rambly very image-filled post ahead)

ohhhhhhh my fucking goddddddddddddddddd aaahahjahjajhhjhudsghiuydaghuygduysajhgdjsahdha (shaking) (crying) (vibrating at dangerous speeds)

this episode completely changes the context of valvelgear not being yuuhi's disk in the s3 visual and I am!! not ok!!!!!!!!!!!!! they may be 8.88 million faceless npcs but they are my 8.88 million faceless npcs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

grrrrggahrggharhgarhghgargharaghrgaghjeagrahjgadfgdashgfghahgsda ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

HEY GUYS CHECK OUT HOW HARD I CAN CRY like ueueueueueue see kuaidul? you didn't need to become someone else to be loved by the creator bc he already loves you :((( gwahhhhhhh

can i also just appreciate how consistent they made the animation this ep like u can tell that some scenes at the end for example seem to be done by the person in charge of a lot of yuuhi duels e.g. vs tell/vs yuuna by the way they do yuamu's hair and background faces but its a lot more 'on model' than usual lol, I love their style regardless but they rly put in a lot of effort this time!!! <3<3 thank u gr staff i love u and owe u my life 💕💕💕

also. BRUH

yuuga stop disappearing for 2 seconds challenge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wonder if its bc now that kuai is 'dead' the creator is released? and there can only be one of them existing in that 'reality' at a time for some reason?? 🤔 or he just straight up got yoinked in the world switch lol (or with the preview showing the hat parasite aliens attacking maybe the non-kaizo parts of his weird goha president helmet thing had something to do with it haha)

after seeing it mentioned by a jp fan on twitter I've started to wonder if they rly are in some sort of alternate reality/parallel universe to 7s tho given the 'inconsistencies' e.g. questionable kamijou family timeline, luge and zaion being aliens but luke and neil being (presumably) human, aliens/mik/uts seeming to not exist in 7s era....... i'm still not even halfway through 7s so I can't speak on any of this at all lol but I found it interesting! plus they mentioned rovian and london being cousins and romin and roa also being cousins wouldn't make sense if they were descendants/ancestors :thinking:

I love basing theories and speculation purely off of 'wouldn't it be cool if...' B)

ANYWAYS the way kuai made his final perfect monster representing his ideal (merged) self in transamu prime full armour nova and yuudias could Still manage to take it from him :)))))))) can't have shit in kuaidul spacetime

haha. im so normal guys.

its a very simple solution really, love someone but are also jealous of them? simply absorb their soul and become them! gg ez

how to get the approval of your father figure that you absorbed in 1 easy step!

oh yea speaking of full armour nova who else up staring at the card art for 15 hours straight

btw i am also normal about how in this imagined fusion of their soul galaxies while it has aspects of both transamu rainac and prime the actual body is yellow bc kuai wanted to become the milky way to be closer to the creator but not necessarily become yuudias because he wanted to receive that love and acceptance for himself :))))))))

eldest sibling kuai who was made to do the hard work and raise (literally create) his other siblings without appreciation vs. 'perfect' youngest sibling yuudias who was the favourite child given everything the oldest could never have from birth................

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

im really so glad they let kuai redeem himself in the end by choosing to let himself die (?) rather than taking advantage of yuudias' kindness and possessing him.... as much as I would have adored keeping him around by letting them share the body lolol

on that note yuudias!!!!! I know boundless generosity and honesty and kindness and most significantly 'virtue' is like. the entire core of his character but bro!!!!!!!!!!!!

pls have more concern for ur own wellbeing,,,, pls,,,,,,,,,, cri

unrelated but it was interesting that the dudi ducasse aliens r actually considered velgearian too! like its something thats pretty obvious now that they've said it since like. they're literally from the velgear star cluster but still lol

the way yuuga always speaks so calmly and like he's detached from everything is so funny lol 'some problems' i mean. yeah

average sibling interaction

btw this was the face where I was like 'ohhhh' abt the lead animator bc this is The Luke Face (i just rly like how they do the lines around the sides of the eyes :3)

average sibling interaction part 2

random thought i wonder if yuuhi will still have darkness jointech tyrant after all this? or is it a card that only existed in the spacetime... did yuuhi even have a corresponding card in kuai's prime deck??? hm

look how pretty :] (too bad they fuckin. killed him LOL) (i am sad)

this is obviously nothing but.... the colours of the galaxy gem thing kinda match lol

this was cute :3 their relationship has changed so much recently that I'm still a little confused if they're meant to be like. friends or not at this point?? or if its like a 'we've been this close for this long that even if we air out our grievances and try to go our separate ways we're still in sync' kinda thing which is cute

and speaking of cute duos luge and zaion stood (i use the word stood very loosely) directly next to each other this time 🔥🔥🔥 zailugers stay winning

#nishawsweep (if velgear acts like a surname for velgearians is dudi actually a name adopted by everyone from the dudi ducasse system rather than a personal name? 🤔)

i know its been 3 eps of this now but aaa im not over how cute it is that everyone's so small compared to yuudias so they kinda look like little fairies :((((( so adorable.......... 💕💕💕

yuuga who tf r u........ who tf is the creator.......... who/what tf r the oudous........ where is everyone's parents actually

ok i have sadly hit the image limit so I will stop my ramble spam now.... grrrahhrahgrhghgarhahhrgghrgrghghgh i really really enjoyed this episode and this duel as a whole and especially kuaidul as a character!!!!!!!!!

but before I leave i just wanna say isn't zwijou's galaxy so pretty?? its like a reverse of the crab nebula... idk i just think orange and teal is one of the most colour combinations of all time :)

[sirdust]

you know what stolas can be a part of the blitz/fizz/ozzie polycule but only if he shapes up and stays as autistic and silly as he was in the last ep. idc about mopey pining stolas just have him keep saying shit like "i love words :3" and i'll be completely satisfied with it

you know what x2 i'm too lazy to make another post so i'll summarize my thoughts on the ep as a whole here too

this episode was deeply flawed but more fun than any other s2 ep so far. the biggest problem is that so many things were unearned and clearly coasted off of fanon in order to make any kind of sense. "fans have already explored blitz and fizz's fallout and hatred of one another in a million different ways, so why not skip the drama and go straight for a reconciliation" is perhaps the most egregious lmao.

at the same time, having the accident be such a blameless event does make the quick reconciliation a little more acceptable, strictly in the context of what actually happened in the show. if blitz had borne even a little more responsibility for what happened it would have been utterly unbelievable for fizz to forgive him in this episode, regardless of blitz saving him.

it's also an issue because this episode sees blitz actually mending a past relationship. that is HUGE for his character. in fact it's so huge that it needed to come later in his arc, bc the central question of his character up until now has revolved around whether he can ever create meaningful relationships with others again after his past trauma surrounding relationships.

on a different note, i'm admittedly a little worried about fizzarozzie. the ending of the episode had weird undertones ("you won't have to again" over fizz's sad face is the big one) but it doesn't feel intentional and that means that the potential ambiguities of this relationship will probably not be addressed. that's unfortunate because it makes them less interesting as a foil/parallel to stolas and blitz, and it also means they have less room to develop in their own right. but then again, the show has a 4-season plan, so i could be wrong.

that's about all i can think of for now. i'm hungry so i gotta go eat lol.

btw this is unfortunate but i gotta mention that squiderdoodle on twitter did vizdev work for the episode that went uncredited which is super uncool, especially considering the fact they're one of the artists that has spoken up about how unprofessional the working environment at SH is 🤩 super tight ship you're running there, guys

[amtrak12]

@cassiopeiasara replied to your post “@cassiopeiasara replied to your post “Alright...”:

A good plan. Also would totally be reading this fic if I could have made it through the series but the show was so not for me

​OMG I totally understand that! Let me tell you, if someone had sat me down with the pilot episode and said 'Let's watch Lucifer! It's great!', I would've walked out when Linda tried to jump his bones in the middle of that police interview -- and that's assuming I hadn't walked out sooner. Because like what the everloving fuck???

But nOoOoOo, I stumble ass backwards into this show when both my spouse and my mom were rewatching the entire series before the last season dropped. They were both in S3. It was year 2 of the pandemic, and I had already stumbled ass backwards into my spouse's rewatch of both The Originals and Fraiser and got hooked on both enough to watch the rest of the series with him so like my bar for watchable television was so goddamn low when I watched my first Lucifer episode.

Also S3 had Charlotte Richards played by the very, very pretty Tricia Helfer and like I'm really supposed to walk away from that? And then S4 gives me EVE and which leads to MAZE/EVE and they've got the bullshit soulmate vibes with Lucifer/Chloe going on WHICH YOU KNOW I'M WEAK FOR and I was just screwed.

It was months after finishing S6, that I finally went back and watched it all from the beginning and HOLY SHIT was that rough through S1 :S Do I think it was the correct starting point for all of the characters? Yes. It's not like Parks and Rec where the show was still clearly trying to figure out who these characters are. Lucifer knew who the characters were and (roughly) where they would be going by the end of the series. I just hate them all in S1 lol

So could I ever recommend Lucifer to anyone? No. I don't know how I could without a million caveats. I don't know how anyone got hooked on this to begin with, let alone get hooked enough to get it picked up by Netflix after Fox canceled it. But I'm glad they did, because the character arcs were solid and the use of parallels in the storytelling hits all my meta-loving buttons.

But also there's a reason the show never caught my interest until I tripped and fell into the middle of someone else's rewatch. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[butchviking]

Analysis of top 3 Gerard pics?? I expect you to be insane about this.

ok so i am always saying i hate doing "top ____" lists i can never really stand by them i change my mind all the time because i just love everything so much. THAT SAID here are 3 that came 2 mind right away. i cant say that i have much analysis tho idk ive already talked about two of them a LOT lmao.

#1 of course Thee image THE gerard way photo THE cheerard photo that ive had as my phone bg since the moment it dropped and have in tiny little stickers all around my home and have in fact stuck in little corners in many establisments across north england. im not analysing cheerard rn ive written enough on that subject but i think this is easily one of the most darling gerard images ever. and yes i know the photographer later released a much clearer cleaned-up version but this grainy original will have my heart forever and ever. hey remmeber when i put this photo on a cake and got to consume what i love that was so neat. shes with me forever now

#2 i dont even know why i thought of this so immediately or so strongly but i did and i think of it very often. i dont have any analysis for this its just neat and i think he's neat and i love that he just does shit like this. also this is how i end up looking on almost any given night out lol

#3 im obsessed w this one i think about it all the time i think about it every time i listen to danger days or conventional weapons it encapsulates so much. he is a christ figure 2 me. i know ive posted these two together a million times but it's a direct parallel in my mind to this still from the jesus christ superstar 2012 arena tour

will you touch will you mend me christ won't you touch you can cure me christ... heal yourselves!! though i know how much you hate this are you gonna be the one to save us from the black and hopeless feeling.. if you all keep believing i'll keep believing.. hail hail cause the king is gone... you understand.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS (ie a selection of SOME of the other images that easily could have made the top 3 if youd asked me some other time some other day

[zosanbrainrot]

ok @riot-control-camp I need to shout you out because you wrote it SO WELL in your tags, it's like you peered right into my brain gdkdjfdjf

(long ass post incoming)

YES YES YES They're communicating, they're miscommunicating, they're talking with and past each other, they are doing in ALL With Sanji it's the never ending push and pull of wanting to be honest and not letting himself be so. And for a million reasons: it's too dangerous, it's my mess, so I need to deal with it, I don't want anybody to get hurt, I don't deserve help... OBVIOUSLY deep down Sanji knows he doesn't wanna be there, he wants to go back to the crew and feel safe with them again, BUT HE CAN'T ASK FOR HELP, he fears the threat is too big and even if the crew were somehow to be allright after angering both Big Mom and Germa, which is insanely unlikely already, what about the Baratie? what about Zeff? Sanji convinced himself he has to do it alone, that it's the only way, besides... the strawhats can just go and find another cook, right? It'll be better for everyone involved if Sanji just goes along with Judge's demand... The safest way, noone dies, he just has to grit his teeth, suck it up and cut ties with everything he holds dear. At least they won't kill him, not right away at least... Not until he's useful one last time. He can't keep his facade fully with Zoro though, he always got under his skin and after already fighting both Luffy and Zoro, it just becomes too much.

THIS ^^^ That's exactly the way I meant it! I wanted to convey that he's hinting at what's really going on in the most roundabout way possible, OFC HE CAN'T SAY DIRECTLY! It's like he's saying to Zoro "I'm doing this to protect the crew and you owe me one, nothing happened, like you asked, now you do the same for me". It's not like with Kuma, Zoro can't take his place this time, noone can, there's no way out... And that still panel, I was debating on whether I should add dialogue there or not, but ultimately they are not gonna reach agreement lol I hope that, after Zoro says "That was different" it leaves you with the space to ask... was it? I mean, of course it was different, but... was it? I have no answer to that, I just wanted to draw a parallel between the two situations and leave it up in the air, I don't think it needs a conclusion And Zoro needs time to process what's happening lol

read me like an open book lmao, that's so awesome!! Anger that's not JUST anger!! You put that so well!

Truth be told I didn't think that much about that first panel lol But I love that it lends itself to an interpretation like that!! I love your observation that usually Zoro takes out more swords the more serious the fight, I wanted him to take out all three at the start in the previous part to show that he leaves no chance for this not going his way, he treats Sanji as a serious opponnent. The only reason he's not wearing his serious-business-bandana is for aesthetic reasons lmao

With that panel I mainely wanted to hint at how the fight went without you know, drawing it all, so I positioned the swords away from the characters in positions that Zoro would not put them away willingly, like they got there during the fight and there was no time to retrieve them before dodging the next kick. Like you say, discarded! Also to show that they're quite evenly matched in a fight with Sanji successfully disarming Zoro and leaving him only with Wado. And what other sword could I leave him with lol it had to be this one.

part 3 is here!

01 02 03

Hii! it's been a hot minute since the previous part, you can see my style shifted a bit, especially when I compare Sanji's hair lol I never know how to draw it, in canon it's more straight but when I'm not thinking about it I instinctively give him more of a wave. It's also generally a bit more loose and sketchy then in the previous ones, I used to use less lines back then. I somehow didn't notice the shift until I was done lmao

I remember I sketched out most of it right along the previous two, but wasn't feeling the panels after "nothing happened" and BAM over 2 months pass and I drew the panels with the hands and OH MY I'm so happy with those, they are a bit dramatic I admit lol but I love a good closeup shot, the way you can push forward a story with just showing small gestures!! And it's something different from the constant ping-pong of the shots where you can see them talking, so it's a breather but it's also holding a lot of tension!

In this sequence MagicPoser was a real help, I posed the models and moved the camera around so I had anatomy refs from any angle I wanted!

I can't wait to show you the next part, I'm so excited to see what you'll think!! I hope to update sooner than later, but I'm gonna be busy with a freelance gig for a bit :(( hope it goes smoothly!

[sylvies-chen]

okay I’ve refrained from posting my thoughts on the ted lasso finale until now in the interest of making sure they’re expressed properly so that people understand how correct my opinions actually are. but I’m here and I’m queer and LET’S DO IT FOLKS:

TED LASSO FINALE THOUGHTS

THE GOOD:

Nate!! Nate was a timid, sweet note in this episode. It was such a gentle little reintegration of his character back into the team and seeing him get a secure happy ending after all that time of insecurity was the part of the episode that provided the MOST payoff. Seeing Nick Mohammed’s post about Nate and his family life and understanding how much he put into that character was so beautiful to see too. I adore actors who very publicly (and in a nerdy way) love their craft!

His conversation with Ted also made me cry like I have never cried before.

COLIN KISSED HIS FELLA AFTER A WIN!! Ugh such a beautiful payoff and full circle moment for him, I was truly squealing with joy <3

The team’s rendition of So Long, Farewell had me GIGGLINGGG oh my god, I’m a die hard Sound of Music fan so I loved it! I would have maybe liked a little more emotion from Ted, I felt like his reaction was kind of… meh? meek? but other than that the song itself was FANTASTIC.

Obviously I love that they won the game, duh

They also had a lot of really amazing and thoughtful callbacks in this episode, like Keeley’s parallel to her entrance in the pilot was great, Ted’s bbq sauce mantra, Nate leaping into Ted’s arms, the ussie guy, the winning play being the play from season 1. All of those little moments showed a strong attention to detail I truly loved.

I love that Rupert made HIMSELF unlikeable in the end. Rebecca didn’t need to ruin his life; she stopped caring and soon saw he was doing a perfectly fine job of doing it himself. Karma truly is Rebecca Welton’s boyfriend!! Or is it?

Jake the motherfucking client seducer over here turning out to be a total dud like yesss!! I don’t want Ted and Michele back together by any means but fuck that guy lol, glad to see she and Henry were getting sick of him

BELIEVE. 😭

Which leads me to…

THE BAD:

I know you all know I ship Tedbecca, but this is truly not coming from a shipper standpoint when I say that that first scene of them was absolute BAIT. It was pretty disappointing because I know Ted Lasso’s been prone to red herrings and fakeouts every now and then but I didn’t take it as a show that would truly bait their fans with something like that??

I don’t care if I’m biased, I don’t care if the writers were trying to be avant-garde with their ending for rebecca, I’ll say what I’m about to say a million times: writing off 1 of your 2 most main characters into a happy ending with a man whose name the audience doesn’t even know is literally never a good writing decision. I think this should be obvious.

I have no hate to Boat Guy, Rebecca’s whole thing with him was basically the plot of Before Sunrise + Before Sunset (all hail Richard Lanklater) if someone watched those movies and then tried condensing them into fifteen accumulated minutes of television

Keeley, Roy, Jamie… they did you three so fucking dirty my babes. Keeley you especially. I’m beyond disappointed, bordering on genuinely hurt, by how much they screwed up Keeley and all of her adjacent storylines this season.

I loved RoyKeeley so much in seasons 1 and 2, they had such a sweetness and a magic to them. There were so many elements like that to season 1 and 2 that I feel the writers gave up on in the name of growth or… honestly, at this point, I don’t know why they did this. Roy was a little insecure in seasons 1 and 2, but I never felt like he was needy. It felt so cruel to have shown us RoyKeeley in all of these moments of such stability, such healthiness, and such genuine love for so long and then rip it away for some version of Roy Kent that felt hollow, twisted, and who just Did Not Get It. It makes me so sad.

It makes me sad for Jamie too. Him falling for Keeley again was like the last thing I needed to see from his character. There’s so much else they could have done with him, and instead they took that beautiful moment of him being accountable and respectful with Keeley and the tape, and they turned it into something ugly: they had him weaponize it as a bargaining chip against Roy.

I don’t understand why they thought having our favs engaged in this very sexist outdated convo with such possessive language in the name of comedy was a good idea. I get it was poking fun at them but it was the kind of fun that shouldn’t have to be poked at by now. They’re not these men, I don’t recognize this version of them. It’s such a regression.

speaking of weird and uncomfortable shit being played off for laughs… beard and jane got married! ted wasn’t even there! she shredded his passport to keep him in captivity! how creepy! (see the joke is that they’re crazy and do toxic things to each other. you’re supposed to laugh.)

[preemshots]

the definitive post of WHERE IN THE WORLD IS JOHNNY SILVERHAND’S BODY?

AKA the post of HERE’S WHY I WANT TO BELIEVE WE ARE GONNA GET JOHNNY’S BODY BACK IN DLC. 

buckle up, gamers. it's time for some lore. this is a very long post. 

warning: this will contain a million spoilers. both for details of multiple game endings, a wee bit of the “where’s johnny” comic, and the cyberpunk RED book. if you want a sparknotes version this is the post for you. my main source here is the cyberpunk RED book as well as as some references to the cyberpunk 2077 world book to cross examine the lore. 

i have no idea if someone has made this post before or what anybody else has been finding in their own lore diving. this is just me documenting my own findings from the sources i’ve been using.

it would be disingenuous not to preface this with the ways in which cyberpunk 2077's telling of the arasaka assault differ from the version told in the TTRPG books. the books =/= the game. pondsmith acknowledges in the intro of RED that this is a bridge between the old cyberpunk world and the new world of cyberpunk 2077. 

we also know that johnny's an unreliable narrator and his memories presented to V are often different than real events. but on top of that we don't know if the reason why many elements are changed is simply CDPR editing/adjusting/condensing the storyline for their own canon, or if it's due to johnny's construct being manipulated by outside influences such as arasaka.

some of the main differences you need to know from cyberpunk RED canon:

in 2023 johnny doesn't bring the nukes to arasaka tower. he's solely there to free alt.

johnny and rogue and their team from the atlantis/the aldecaldos are actually hired by morgan blackhand. 

morgan blackhand is the one who plants the nuke, unbeknownst to many members of the team. 

morgan blackhand promptly disappears after this event and no one knows if he's alive or dead. (claire confirms this fact to jackie and v before the heist in 2077 canon)

johnny's silver cybernetic arm is its own character, separate from himself. it seems to have a mind of its own and johnny interacts with it and/or is influenced by it.

when he, spider murphy, rogue, thompson, shaitan, and a team of los lobos from the aldecaldos (who are there in place of santiago, as he’s busy as the leader of the aldecaldos at this point) are attacked by adam smasher, johnny and his arm actively choose to draw smasher's fire in a deliberately suicidal move. smasher downs him instantly, but the distraction is enough to also save his friends.

spider murphy shoves a mysterious chip in johnny's dying head as they escape that alt had downloaded to her a long time ago.

johnny's body is later "rumoured" to have been retrieved from the rubble by a full-body borg groupie that was a first responder to the ground zero of AHQ and then hidden away in a nearby garage.

here comes the political lore that makes my eyes cross, so hopefully this accurately summarizes it: the 4th corporate war begins to end. arasaka is ultimately blamed by the NUSA government to have nuked themselves in a political move to protect their secrets and promptly banished from the USA. arasaka denies this all the way back to japan, then eventually returns to “liberate” night city in the unification wars.

but what the public doesn't know is that kei, saburo's oldest son, had actually hidden an EVEN BIGGER MORE DEVASTATING NUKE at the bottom of the tower to, well, do exactly what they were being accused of doing, even though blackhand was the one who actually dropped the smaller nuke on them. and luckily the bigger one didn’t go off.

arasaka tries to find their nuke in the rubble so they don't get in even bigger trouble, only to discover that it was moved and hidden away to... surprise! a nearby garage.

to compare with 2077:

in RED: we have no johnny loading the nukes into the elevator. no johnny being carried off the premises. no meeting saburo. no johnny getting soulkilled.

in 2077: there's a parallel moment to RED's version of events right after johnny uploads "liberator" from alt's old cyberdeck with spider's help into the arasaka mainframe in saburo's office. adam smasher comes for him as he's trying to escape, knocking him off the second floor of the atrium into the rock garden below.

visually this is the same atrium we always meet alt in in cyberspace and also where V meets johnny for the first time. hmmm. meaningful, perhaps.

not unlike what happens in RED, johnny unloads a clip into smasher at that point, but from there the scene instantly cuts to him running to the roof attempting to board the AV with rogue, where smasher shoots him down again. it’s possible johnny actually died to smasher in the atrium and we have some fabricated memories going on. 

either way, in 2077, we lose the character beat of johnny dying for his friends, and the current-day general consensus from rogue and others is that he’s perpetually a selfish asshole with ulterior motives. 

and, just to wrap up the politics of it all: morgan blackhand is rumoured to have been secretly hired by the militech-backed NUSA government to help end the 4th corporate war by... you guessed it! nuking arasaka.

HERE'S WHERE JOHNNY'S BODY ENDS UP IN CYBERPUNK RED (SPARKNOTES VERSION):

RED ends with a story called "black dog" set in 2045. black dog is the last song johnny recorded right before the assault on arasaka tower, but the final copy is a bootleg copy of the song and only a fraction.

we're introduced to a fun group of cybernetic-enhanced characters that represent the classes in the TTRPG and based on/designed by real people in collaboration with CDPR.

this group includes trace santiago, santiago's son, who is a media that is curious about the mystery surrounding the circumstances around his father and the arasaka bombing. 

just connecting lore here: if you talk to saul at the aldecaldo camp in 2077, he confirms that santiago was killed for his involvement with johnny and the bombing, something that rogue and johnny reference when they talk about their now-dead crew from the afterlife, and in chippin in, santiago is a friend that johnny lists as someone he had disappointed.

the group sets off to find any info about black dog, and meet up with a full conversion chrome woman named samantha in a garage who is blatantly a johnny silverhand fangirl. trace discovers she has a history with johnny, having rescued him from a studio fire at some point in 2015 and speculates she could have been a groupie also.

she mysteriously has a more complete recording of black dog, though not perfect, and offers to trade it for a service: she wants the group to transport a large crate to a facility in new mexico, asking them not to open it.

shit goes down. evidently everyone in night city wants to kill them for this package once it starts moving. eventually they open it. it's the arasaka nuke that had been hidden and never went off, emblazoned with warnings.

trace inquires about the circumstances surrounding the arasaka assault with an older member of the lobos who had been present with rogue and johnny. the man mentions that it was weird, because morgan blackhand organized the whole thing and then ran off immediately with a mysterious bag that we now know contained the nuke. 

michiko arasaka intercepts the gang, explaining the situation around the bigger nuke, that other factions in arasaka want to utilize it for their own goals (presumably hanako and yorinobu) and her father's legacy, that she feels responsible for. she escorts them to new mexico so that the nuke can be dismantled once and for all.

they meet up with a woman named angel in new mexico that takes the crate from them, at a facility that specializes in nuclear material. she gives the group the full recording of "black dog". the group leaves successful.

this woman is also a johnny silverhand stan. once alone, she calls up samantha, who says, "i promised i would get him to you in the end" and reveals that she had already gutted/dismantled the original nuke and discarded the material into the bay.

angel opens the "nuke" to reveal a hidden cryochamber, and greets the face of the person inside with, "hello, my love."

i mean, holy shit. okay! so that’s DEFINITELY johnny’s body. cool!

now let’s go into all the references to this story in the actual game of cyberpunk 2077 that SUGGEST we are going to pursue this story AND johnny's body since it’s such a HOT FUCKING TOPIC. 

and i know many of the following can just be considered easter eggs. but my personal interpretation of this game is that it has a really delightful way of intentionally glossing over important story details—and not by ONLY putting them in shards (which people tend to dislike because lol reading) but by also hiding them in plain sight, constantly deferring to V's own ignorance, distracting us with shallower, shinier things, encouraging us to actually play as the fool hero of this story. 

so here's the fun list of “””evidence”””:

this one’s a reach, but fun. in the initial arasaka assault flashback in 2023: we can interact with the groupies at kerry's show as johnny. samantha doesn't appear to be present, but the first person and groupie you can encounter in the flashback has a passing resemblance to angel in that she has a cybernetic arm.

in chippin' in, where we go to johnny's "grave" in the oil fields: if we are to take the 2077 retelling of events as truth, the story could instead be pretty easily be changed that samantha procured his body from there.

mike pondsmith, who wrote these stories and created the TTRPG can be heard on the radio narrating various conspiracy theories. and sure, these can just be easter eggs, intended to reference the differences between the TTRPG lore and the game, so take it with a grain of salt:

johnny. bro. tell him it was morgan blackhand

to top it all off, mike also directly references the actual WORSE nuke arasaka had hid in another arasaka conspiracy: 

SPOILERS FOR GAME ENDINGS AHEAD.

in the rogue ending of the game we discover rogue has a son. it's possible her son is trace (edit: nvm NOT LIKELY, since in RED’s black dog story rogue is listed separately from santiago’s mom in conversation) OR possibly one of the other characters. she tells her son to "pull over and look at the stars" or something along those lines. maybe just details, so that screams nomad to me.

rogue also has a photo of herself and johnny with mike pondsmith in her apartment/office in the afterlife. i initially read this as a delightful cameo but it also can mean mike the CHARACTER knew johnny and rogue, and rogue therefore has some kind of relationship to him and these conspiracies on the radio. and why the fuck not make him a full on character? we have a smattering of streamers and personalities already integrated into quests in the game. the creator of all this should be no exception. fuck it! 

rogue and johnny constantly dance around this accusation of her “selling out”. it’s repeated over and over that she and adam smasher worked for "the same people". i'm beginning to wonder if this wasn't meant to imply only arasaka since smasher mysteriously disappeared after the AHQ assault in 2023 and returned to SOMETIMES take jobs from arasaka... but possibly morgan blackhand and/or by extension, the NUSA or any other greater influences. (like nightcorp? we still don’t know where all this shit with nightcorp/the peralezes/sandra dorsett’s discovery about their research into mind control is gonna go) this also doesn’t account for the multiple factions inside arasaka with VERY different motives. 

morgan blackhand and adam smasher are rivals in the TTRPG, a role that appears to be at least partially filled by johnny instead in 2077. in relation to the arasaka factions, it’s worth nothing that smasher specifically works for yorinobu as his bodyguard at the beginning of the game, in part i assume because yorinobu is avoiding working with arasaka security details as he stole the relic and is plotting against his father. he is then promoted to head of security by yorinobu when yorinobu assumes power. 

in the ending as you work your way through arasaka tower with rogue and shaitan and johnny, rogue remarks:

michiko at this point in 2077 is the leader of the more “liberal” faction within arasaka, so it’s possible we’re seeing that while rogue and smasher work for the same people/family, they couldn’t be more different. 

you can also encounter rogue more than once on the phone fighting with wakako, who has apparently crossed her. wakako also seems to have her own ulterior motives and works mainly with the arasaka-backed tyger claws. she notably gives v/takemura the parade security info for “play it safe” without asking for anything in return, enabling hanako’s kidnapping. my theory is that yorinobu intentionally leaked the parade info to her to give away to put hanako in danger or at least continue to destabilize arasaka. 

in the takemura/devil ending of the game, there is a point where violence breaks out at the arasaka board room meeting when yorinobu-allied security open fire on them. one of the only people that survives along with hanako is michiko arasaka, who was at odds with hanako’s decisions, but  very involved in the preceding discussion.

and now for is my favorite detail! in the afterlife AT ALL POINTS IN THE GAME (but it can only really be inspected in the rogue ending when we are allowed behind the bar), we can find a photo of the squad that transported johnny's body from samantha to angel on the shelf below johnny's tequila, of them hanging out in front of the afterlife sign:  

this implies rogue has some relationship with them, and sentimentality, if we're to judge by the placement. she maybe even took the picture. i don't know, it's charming, it could be all easter eggs. who fucking knows.

either way, rogue and these kids both have in common that they worked with or at least interacted with michiko arasaka. 

and you know what my final evidence is? more wishful thinking! black dog plays on the radio in game. we got a full recorded version of it by refused. if not an oversight, i go ahead and take it to mean the final version was finally released to the public by those kids that were looking for it. 

i haven’t the slightest idea how this is gonna wrap up in future DLC. who has johnny’s body now in 2077, decades after it was dropped off in mexico? what is the truth?? where the fuck is morgan blackhand?? from the devil ending, we know that arasaka stole jackie’s body and put his soul into mikoshi, so the idea that they would just toss johnny’s corpse has always been laughable. the “where’s johnny?” promotional comic was even about thompson unsuccessfully trying to find johnny’s body. i know i am biased here but i cannot fathom all this talk about johnny’s body ending off with us NOT finding it, whether it’s just to bury it, shove johnny’s engram back in it, make out with it, or WHATEVER.

if you made it through this slog, congrats. thanks for reading! 

[embraceyourdestiny]

@shaa-ki reply got too long so a reblog instead lol

No you’re good, that’s an interesting angle that I hadn’t considered! Stepping away from canon facts and actual events that happen and moving more into viewer interpretation, personally, I think the “usefulness” of the Winchester depends on “which lens of the kaleidoscopic you’re looking through”, so to speak. The Michael lineage comes from the Winchester bloodline and the Lucifer lineage comes from Campbell family, if I got that correct. Seeing it that way (I hadn’t considered that yet because it only happened an episode or so ago, so it hasn’t sinked in yet lol), they could both be considered unimportant without the other half, or important on their own as inherent vessel bloodlines destined to fulfill the Plan. But my personal interpretation in this meta-thinking is seeing how the different vessels are shown to be important within the Winchester’s sphere of the world, not the Divine Plan, and comparatively because of that, how The Michael Line and everything with Michael as a whole is much less of a big deal for their family compared to alllllll the shit going on with Lucifer, lol. Lucifer as an angel has a much stronger, immediate connection with the Winchester’s family, he single-handedly tried to ruin their life by trying to intact “his” version of The Plan, and Michael is kinda just some annoying guy bothering them at this point in time on my watch through lol So that was my thought process on posting “John isn’t as important in the universe” if that makes sense! (You didn’t spoil anything btw so you’re good! just reiterating I have limited knowledge based on my watch through so my thoughts are 90% to change with more context later)

Honestly, though, even looking through the Divine Plan lens, I feel like Lucifer is still kind of a bigger deal than Michael, to god, to the fate of the world, and that is also a parallel to Sam and Dean. And that’s also something Michael so far seems jealous of, and def the other angels are too. Wanting all the attention from daddy lol.

There’s more of. A Hubbub with Lucifer/Sam. Their issues end up being a much bigger deal / focus then there ends up being devoted attention dedicated to the older brother. younger brother things, I guess lol

Like, Lucifer is the one to start it all. He falls. His action starts the chain of events, not Michael. Michael reacts, not acts. Michael is someone who kinda got roped into it. He wasn’t at the center of the blast zone, if that makes sense. He wasn’t the bomb. So, comparatively, since Lucifer is needed to enact any version of the apocalypse, and Michael is necessary for the Specific Plan but honestly kind of a side-factor in any of the other millions of ways The Plan could go (the ultimate plan simply being the end of the world. The angels have their bet on how it will/should happen, and all the big players have their own version too, but honestly it’s all semantics. As long as the world ends, it don’t matter how. Based on what I’ve seen at least!)

I hope that makes sense. I totally see how if you believe in the angel’s plan Mary would be useless without her matching key, but so far my interpretation is a little different :)

Thanks for sharing your interpretation by the way, I loved thinking about this situation inna different way! Please feel free to share any more thoughts you have, I’d love to hear <3

Also i can’t wait to learn the context for the things that’ll be funny. Irony and hindsight is a really big, funny part of being into supernatural honestly lol

Cupid: John and Mary Winchester, huuuuge deal. They couldn’t stand each other at first but after us, perfect couple.

I fucking knew it.

Well, no, I didn’t know that the angels organized the union of Mary and John Winchester, but I knew that Mary and John weren’t a good couple. I knew that even if they still were alive and. together, they wouldn’t have been happy. I don’t know why, but I could feel it. Something about how Mary, or anyone, really, didn’t seem all that bothered by John being dead in the “good” timeline where she lives and Sam and Dean don’t get along. How life was good even if he wasn’t there. (How Sam and Dean don’t need John at all.) How Mary never mentioned John in any of her “returns/visits”. How they just seemed like a couple that would argue and not get along, with divorced energy even if they both lived.

It’s so demented and a complete violation that the Higher Powers forced two humans together against their will for their plan.

The Winchesters never had any free will. Heaven intended it. They were nearly patchworked together by circumstance. I don’t think even Sam and Dean feel attached to John the way they do Mary. He was merely an outsider used as a piece in a game. He doesn’t belong with the Winchesters. All he gave was his name.

[staliasjeronica]

I’m about to send you so many asks buckle up. First, if you would: Veronica Lodge for the character thing pretty please

Favorite thing about them - She’s so powerful and successful and headstrong and despite STILL (being forced to) revolving around toxic relationships that aren’t good for her, she’s still one of the most caring and loving characters in Riverdale 🥺💞

Least favorite thing about them - It’s not necessarily HER fault but the fact that every time she wanted to stand up and get away from her father and get away from the toxicity, she immediately went back on it and stays in these awful dynamics, and then marries someone who’s her dad 2.0 😭😭😭 she deserves so much better

Favorite line - “Are you familiar with the works of Truman Capote? I’m Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but this place is strictly In Cold Blood.” Mostly because it’s one of the biggest parallels to Jeronica AND it’s iconique™️

BROTP - I pretty much ship her with everyone romantically and platonically but I guess Archie, they were really cute in s1 but their chemistry and the romantic aspect of their relationship quickly died out so they’d be a million times better off as best friends (like they should have been after realizing they didn’t quite fit during s2!)

OTP - Jeronica, as you all know, is at the very top, but SweetVee, Lopaz/Cheronica/Verchoni, Veggie, and Beronica (my version, canon is toxic and one sided) and maybe more are all in the running as well. She’s just so shippable and has chemistry with everyone.

NOTP - I wouldn’t necessarily say VA because if I had to choose between BH and VA I’d choose them, but they’re cute sometimes and are aesthetically pleasing, however they’re the closest to a NOTP. Maybe canon Beronica, too? Because Veronica gives their friendship her all and all Betty does in response is stab her in the back and slut shame her 😭😭

Random headcanon - When Veronica is upset or worrisome or what have you, she’ll bake and cook all day munching on goodies and she’ll call Jughead over to enjoy it with him, and then at the end of the night she/they will watch a movie marathon ❤️❤️

Unpopular opinion - Out of the core four, Veronica is the most intriguing character because of the fact that the writers refuse to go in depth for her backstory and such—it’s why despite having the same plot lines and the not letting her explore her emotions over anything happening, she remains of the best characters in the show

Song I associate with them - Honestly any badass girl boss song, but Power by Little Mix

Favorite picture of them - Literally every picture of Cami/Veronica she’s absolutely beautiful it makes me sob. If I had to choose though...

I think Cole took it and it’s a BTS picture, and it’s just so cute and carefree and I wish they showed that kind of side to her in the show!

ALSO: self promo but idc, I have a blog dedicated to the pictures I’ve saved to my phone that the cast has posted. You may have to edit some but if you need them, go apeshit lol

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/riverdalecastpics

[softpine]

a tag by @herpixels​ ♡

WRITING PROCESS - Show us a part of your script or explain how you write your scenes. Do you write in screenplay format or novel format? etc.

here’s an example from [this post]. i didn’t end up putting stevie in the scene at all, because i figured it would be redundant. my notes are just that; notes. i never end up following them to a tee!!

SCENE BUILDING - Show us you in the middle of scene building through pictures, gifs, or a video. Explain what is the best thing about scene building and what is the worst!

ahh i don’t have any pics & i’m not currently working on a post, but i actually love scene building! it’s one of my favorite parts of the process. making cc, poses, building, decorating the area, posing the sims, etc. is probably my favorite because i almost feel like a director or something? it’s just cool to see my vision come together like that!

CC / POSE MAKING - do you make your own cc/poses for your scene? If so, what is your process like to create? Do you just go off the top of your head? Do you use reference photos?

i usually do make my own poses or adjust pre-existing ones! i also make pose accessories or edit meshes to suit my needs. here’s a blender shot from [this post]

i don’t usually use reference images, but i do occasionally “frankenpose” to save time! (don’t do that if you’re planning on uploading your poses though, fyi)

GETTING IN THE ZONE - What do you do before working on a scene? Playlist you use when working on a scene, what’s your go-to scene snack/drink, etc.

i literally live on black coffee, i always have a pot going lmao. i also have a million [spotify playlists] for each character, so i can get in the right mood! but when i’m actually writing, i only listen to instrumental music. usually life is strange ambient music!

SCREENSHOT FOLDER - Give us a look into your screenshot folder to show us just how much goes into ONE scene for your story.

i’m an absolute mad man when it comes to screenshots jksjd i take anywhere between 400 to 700 pictures for one post!

CAPTIONS - are you a caption on the picture kind of storyteller or captions in text box type of storyteller? Why? Do you do both?

i put them on the photos themselves, and then if there’s a bit of extra dialogue (but not enough to make a second post), i’ll put that in the caption. i like to caption my pictures because i feel that it’s a better way to incorporate imagery and emotion into the story. i don’t think i would even want to take screenshots if i didn’t put words on them, like.. what would be the point lol

EDITING - explain and show us your process editing a scene through a video, gif, or picture. A Before and after will suffice if you aren’t in the middle of editing a scene as you answer this.

before vs. after!

THROWBACK - show us an ANCIENT story scene you did in the past and explain how you would do the scene differently today!

omg... i think i’ll do this one in good faith and choose a picture that i was actually really proud of when i took it:

if i retook this now, i would make sure they’re actually looking at each other when they speak (beth is supposed to be talking to caroline here, not that you would know it by looking at this lol). i would realign the picture to have more parallel lines instead of strange angles. i would clutter the table up a lot more. i would add more personality to their outfits. and i would do something cooler with the decoration & lighting, to really lean into that 50s diner vibe.

[saltedcaramelchaos]

yippeee indeed!!!!! i am the other person with a tma au, so sorry if i end up yapping more about comparisons between them than your actual guys 😔 the brainrot is real i fear

OOOOO that's so fun.... absolutely dying imagining jonathan jarchivist sims and dakota cole interacting. i love them your honor

End/Lonely Dakota sounds so cool whattt- I can see the Lonely thing, but I'm so curious what your thoughts on End Dakota are ?? is he kinda like oliver banks where his whole thing is preventing people from dying? that's so sick

End Wiwi is definitely a given but i love the web thing too.... he's so. gestures at the he. web makes so much sense i love it

STRANGER VYNCENT.... ok im so curious, what would he give a statement about :0?? Are the greats still in his bain in this au? I made them all avatars too- I'm curious how they would work hereee

Buried Tide is so interestinggg, what's the inspiration for that ? I can see Vast 'cause he's like, water guy, but Buried is such an interesting choice :0 (also I'm curious what his relationship to pd is ?)

ok also i have to ask . do you have ashe in your au... looking at u with my big curious eyes..... (/silly)

END CHIP END CHIP END CHIP!!!! How do the events of 109 happen in the tma-verse i am so curious. Is captain widow just an avatar. that's so funnnn

Web Jay...... she would wouldn't she. spiral is also amazing for her, she would slay as a helen distortion distortion parallel...... i love it

CORRUPTION GILL IS SUCH A GOOD CONCEPT OH MY GOSH- is he like, corruption as in not holding on to his ideals anymore? or is he just Bugs? both is good <3

YAAYYYY EXPLANATIONSS!!!! Dude this is so hype, I love ittt :DDD

riptide mechs is so funn- what are their mechanisms ? also please tell me that a) niklaus is dr carmilla and they pushed him out an airlock or b) ensa is dr carmilla and she and jay get lesbian with it (/silly, i am curious how they got to be mechs though? :0)

TROY AS JACK THAT'S SO PERFECT... do the characters directly parallel the ones in ouatis or is it more of a vibes thing? super fun either wayyy

JUDGEMENT CREW AS COWBOYS!!!!! sorry the mental image overtook me for a second. thats incredible, no notes

(very fair!! i love playing with universes like dolls)

YESSIRRR I SHALL DO SO o7

(Ok so I know this is like, a million questions to answer and it might get hard to answer them all without it being confusing- first off you don't have to, i just absolutely love this idea and want to yap about it with you lol, and secondly feel free to split a response into multiple posts and tag me if you feel so inclined ^-^)

if i had a nickel every time someone had a jrwi/tma crossover and also had a jrwi/mechs crossover i would have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's totally sick that it happened twice :0

anyways tell me about yours, I'm so curious 🫵 (/nf ^-^)

omg i get to talk about my silly lil crossovers!!!!! yippee!!!!!!!

ok so the jrwi tma crossover will definitely be more like my bsd and tma one where the universes simply exist in the same space and the tma characters are just gonna fuckin end up interacting with everyone but i’ve got some solidified alignments rn

Dakota Cole: End and Lonely

William Wisp: End and Web

Vyncent Sol: Stranger and Spiral

Tide Lambert: Buried and Vast

Chip: End

Jay Ferin: Web and Spiral

Gillion Tidestrider: Corruption

AND YES I WILL IN DEPTH EXPLAIN MY THOUGHT PROCESS TIED TO THESE ACTUALLY!!!!!

The mechs/jrwi one is more putting jrwi characters in the roles of the characters and that one is even less fleshed out currently but i’ve got some solid plans

the mechanisms: Riptide

OUAT(iS): wonderlust

HNOC: judgement

(also all of this is subject to change as i start fleshing out stuff but it’s been fun to play with the concepts)

PLEASS ASK ME QUESTIONS ABOUT THESE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

[mittensmorgul]

A lot of people keep saying that 15x20 was Chuck's ending, but... it wasn't? All of Chuck's endings had Sam and Dean sacrificing themselves or one another or otherwise "going down swinging", but what we saw instead was a random accident. No fanfare, no blaze of glory or sacrifice of any kind, no "epic tragedy". Kind of like getting poisoned by a bad taco. Unless Chuck just got fed up with the story and, taking notes from Gabriel, wrote a nonsensical boring ending purely out of spite.

It was Chuck’s ending in that if he’d actually been defeated, Sam and Dean would’ve been free. They were not. One still died “so the other could live,” and the finale even cancelled that bit with the Sam Wig Montage and having him end up dead, too.

For all the nightmare scenarios Chuck showed them, for all the “one brother murders the other” prompting he gave Sam, that was never the true core of his story. It was always about one sibling dying/being removed from the story so that the other could control the entire narrative. That was his original story with Amara. That was the “justification” he sought through every retelling of all his greatest hits. That was ultimately the story that “won” in Supernatural.

I’ve now been discussing this with some kind folks on discord, and we’ve gone down about a million tangents... but I have a few links to meta written on the subject I’ll provide as a result. But first, a short diversion into my own contribution to this conversation:

Recall how it seemed obvious that Dabb's authorial self-insert character was Billie. How from her intro she was both the character most intent on finding Balance in the universe AND had a Final Antagonist coding to her, in that she was the End Of Their Story in a very literal way. [12:55 PM] (I am going somewhere with this, I swear) [12:56 PM] Then she was shown in her library, with the myriad possible deaths Dean could suffer, and we wondered why he had so many books with so many different endings especially when the books could "rewrite" themselves as people lived and made choices that altered their fate. [12:59 PM] Chuck's hand-- even if he couldn't "read" those books himself or mess with them directly-- could "write" so may potential endings for Dean that would all have to be accounted for by Fate. Cosmically gaming the system by making it impossible for Dean to make ANY choice that wouldn't be accounted for somewhere. Which is the hamster wheel Dean described of never actually having lived his own life... [1:02 PM] But this is now making me furious. Because Billie was supposed to be the END of the story. Dabb was supposed to finally CLOSE the book of fate, having mended the imbalance of the universe. But like Billie, who Chuck disliked for "meddling" in his story despite her meddling being entirely focused on repairing the ever-worsening cosmic imbalance his story was creating, Dabb was sort of growing desperate toward the end. He slipped up. His plan to kill God was ALWAYS doomed to fail (because the network forbade it... it was NEVER going to happen, EVER, and loads of US knew that and it left me completely side-eyeing Billie's whole plan with Jack, because I KNEW it could never happen that way... yet Dabb kept driving the bus in that direction despite us all knowing it had to fail, that they would not be allowed to kill God in primetime network tv...) [1:03 PM] And that was Billie's downfall... because "the plan" was doomed to fail. [1:03 PM] And that was also Dabb's downfall, but he held the authorial intent to keep making it seem like a possibility, to his own detriment. [1:04 PM] Once Billie's plan failed, and she was sucked into the empty with Cas, all that was left was Chuck As Author.

I've been thinking of Billie's downfall as a sort of Winchester Derangement Syndrome, [1:05 PM]

There is zero doubt in me that Chuck was the ultimate winner.

But like... secondary derangement as a side effect of her position in the cosmos as the balance point of life and death, and the absolute Chaos Vacuum generated around the Winchesters by Chuck's constant meddling.

but at the end we learn it was ALL CHUCK. The Winchesters wanted to retire from fucking with cosmic forces! They never wanted that AT ALL. That's what Chuck wanted them to play with, though, so kept setting scenarios where they would have "no other choice" but to run headlong into another cosmic battle

every time they mentioned the toes in the sand, or any hint at wanting anything outside of hunting and cosmic disasters, it was a red flag that Chuck was about to step in with a new Hammurabi-Gun-Level fuckery [1:11 PM]

(pardon the timestamps from discord, I’m too lazy to delete them all)

(we’re now discussing how Becky actually was the best writer in the show, how Chuck couldn’t take criticism from her AT ALL and his only reaction to her being literally RIGHT about it being an awful story was to snap her out of existence... so like... makes the ending even that much worse, that it looked like he surface-level stole a few snippets of Becky’s preferred story-- doing laundry and talking to each other-- but then dismissed all that and flipped to Chuck’s preferred narrative of bringing on the monsters. Pointlessly, hopelessly. It’s like a sad, emotionless pantomime of the sort of story Becky would’ve told. But Becky recognized her issues and sought out therapy. Chuck... never would, and never did.)

(lol we’re now serving up fresh shattered glass in the discord server)

There is no explanation for this finale aside from “Chuck’s story won in the end.” He was vindicated by it. It functions as a “moral justification through parallel” of his own actions-- fridging Amara to maintain full control of the narrative.

And now those links I promised... a tumblr post on monsters in Supernatural:

https://trisscar368.tumblr.com/post/638157515063951360/of-villains-and-monsters-and-the-tragedy-of

and a post on AO3 (too long for tumblr, about 7k words about Death In Supernatural... even if you’re not up for a read that long, scroll down toward the end and at LEAST read the tl;dr of the finale segment of the essay)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28831941

Sorry if this is a bit incoherent. I’ve been tabbing back and forth on this for like an hour now, in abject frustration over it all. If you’d like clarification on any point I attempted to make here, I invite further questions. But short of writing a thesis-length treatise, I don’t know if I can possibly explain it all more concisely than this ^^