#so i'm getting these thoughts out

[crash476]

Thoughts on Andor and Spy Fiction

I want to preface this by saying that I appreciate the aims of Andor, and I do think that the first season succeeded in breaking away from Joseph Campbell's monomyth, while being a clear-eyed examination of how a fascist regime works. Especially from the perspective of ordinary people. But... I am a Rogue One fan first and foremost. And the second season was pretty bad. It was a four season story in one and that's the tip of the iceberg.

I was always bothered by the changes made to Cassian's backstory; they didn't feel right and contradicted what was established in the film. One gets the sense that Chris Weitz, Gary Whitta, and Gareth Edwards had a very different concept of who Cassian was and were likely pulling from different spy fiction than Tony Gilroy. @ruby-red-inky-blue made a good point that Rogue One Cassian is a John le Carré spy, while Andor Cassian is a James Bond/Jason Bourne type. There's a really good book about 1960s British spy novels called Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang by Mike Ripley. One of Ripley's observations is that spy novels of the period could be divided into "spy fantasy" as established by Ian Fleming, and what I call "spy realism," who's king will always be John le Carré.

Bond is the embodiment of post-Imperial British male fantasies. Fleming was an intelligence officer in the Royal Navy who spent WWII as a desk jockey. He was the guy planning the missions that his cousin Sir Christopher Lee (an agent of the Special Operations Executive) would go on. Bond was born from his frustrated desire to get into the field. Thus, Bond is a power fantasy. And Jason Bourne is an American equivalent. I haven't delved deep into Robert Ludlum, but from what I gleaned, he seemed to be a more conspiracy minded writer. Bourne is clearly a product of the revelations about MKUltra. Even then, Bourne plays into American male power fantasies. Bond longs for the days of Empire and sophistication, Bourne embodies the hyper individualism of America.

John le Carré (born David Cornwell) was an intelligence officer like Fleming, but a generation younger - his superiors at MI5 and MI6 would have been Fleming's peers. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was considered wildly subversive in 1963 because Le Carré wrote characters who were "breathtakingly ordinary." His spies are humans, first and foremost. They don't do any impeccably choreographed fight scenes marred by shaky-cam. There's no gadgets. If anything, it's a lot of detective work - espionage and mysteries are genre cousins, imo. Le Carré spies are good at their jobs, but are world weary and exhausted. Being as spy is presented in the least sexy way possible. Other writers like Len Deighton with his working class heroes would follow, along with tv series like Callan and The Sandbaggers. Bit of a tangent, but the creator of The Sandbaggers, Ian Mackintosh, disappeared in the Gulf of Alaska and there's rumours that he was Soviet of Chinese spy. If you want to learn more, Diamanda Hagan has a great video on Mackintosh and The Sandbaggers.

Unlike the spy fantasies, the appeal of spy realism is the promise of a peak behind the curtain. A lot of these books trade on the author's credentials as an insider and knowledge of how the intelligence world works. Now this can cross over with the spy fantasy realm - I would say that's one reason why The Bourne Identity was so popular was because it had the aesthetics of a spy realism film, but was a spy fantasy through and through. It's a have your cake and eat it sort of franchise. But spy realism isn't meant to be glamorous like spy fantasy. Spy realism doesn't really spectacle the way spy fantasy does. Spy realism simply isn't blockbuster fare, but if done right it wins awards. I wouldn't be surprised if Disney was sold a Bourne style series because, not to be insulting to the Americans, but that approach does appeal to American male power fantasies even more than Bond approach. And definitely more appealing than pure spy realism.

This leads me, ultimately, to where I think things went wrong with Cassian. A lot of ink has been spilled about the troubled production of Rogue One and the issues Edwards, and the rest of the writing team allegedly had with Gilroy. But Rogue One wasn't the first time Gilroy has had issues with other creative teams. He had a falling out with Matt Damon and Paul Greenrass over the Bourne films. It's why the franchise is the way it is now. Now Gilroy and Damon have buried the hatchet, but that doesn't seem to be the case with Greengrass. There was this sort of fragmentation in vision and really should have ended with The Bourne Ultimatum.

Looping this back to Andor, I have a hunch that even than playing with his new favourite character, Tony Gilroy really wanted another crack at Jason Bourne without the interference of Damon and Greengrass. Gilroy's famous for writing "director and actor proof" scripts after all. This is so apparent in the second season where Cassian becomes less of a human and more of a cipher. I will always love Identity the most because outside of his super spy mode, Jason is kind of sweet and dorky. I don't know, that's just my opinion. But as the movies progress, Bourne becomes less and less human. He becomes a force of nature no one can stop. And there's a lot of men who would love to be like that.

The spy who I think Cassian should have been modelled after is Alec Leamas of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. If you haven't read it, or seen the 1965 film with Richard Burton, you should. It's a gorgeous film with amazing acting, honestly one of the last greats of the black and white era. Like it's part of the Criterion Collection. This scene about the nature of spies is so good: "What do you think spies are?".

I have no idea if Edwards, Whitta, and Weitz ever read the book or watched the film when they coming up with Cassian. I'm far more certain they were influenced by The Guns of Navarone (it's another film that if you haven't seen it, you should). the version of him in Rogue One could easily be a Leamas in the middle of his career. Not quite cynical and burnt out enough to give Leamas' last speech, but getting there before he meets Jyn, Chirrut, Baze, and Bodhi. At the same time, Leamas has a great sense of humanity. There's a line early on in the book after Control talks about intelligence organizations needing to be as ruthless as their enemies, and while Leamas agrees with Control, it's for very different reasons. The paragraph goes, "Leamas saw. He saw the long road outside Rotterdam, the long straight road beside the dunes, and the stream of refugees moving along it; saw the little aeroplane miles away, the procession stop and look towards it; and the plane coming in, nearly over the dunes; saw the chaos, the meaningless hell, as the bombs hit the road."

Honestly, Cassian in season one had that sense of humanity, even if his instincts are telling him to run and hide. But the point of season one of Andor was that you can't run and hide from fascism. It's the same thing as that supposed Trotsky quote, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." Season two seems to lack a point for Cassian. He's Cassian Goddamn Andor now who's biggest badass spy in the Rebellion. That Cassian wouldn't be able to get volunteers to join Jyn and the Rogue One crew to go to Scarif. That Cassian couldn't do that out of a budding love for Jyn that reminds me T. E. Lawrence's dedication to Selim "Dahoum" Ahmed, "I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands / and wrote my will across the sky in stars / To earn you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house, that your eyes might be shining for me / When we came."

[icewindandboringhorror]

(also feel free in the tags to clarify Why you made the choice you made!! :0c)

[mimimar]

(open pages for better image quality)

the moment I heard elphaba's delivery of "there's a girl i know..." in i'm not that girl i knew i had to draw this comic, i strongly recommend listening to it while you read for the full experience!

this comic is a companion to this piece (which was inspired by glinda's delivery of the same line in the i'm not that girl reprise).

pages 1-4 are from elphie's pov, pages 5-8 are from glinda's.

prints of individual pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

flower meanings in order of appearance:

[frags-fragzzzzz]

Hello ghost trick fandom

[bixels]

in case you wanna know how bad things are on twitter rn.

[raynewolferune]

DC x DP Prompt: Bruce is bad at emoting but at least ghosts are empathic (too bad bat kids are not)

Was reading Twincognito on AO3 when I stumbled across this gem again:

~

" “Danny, Tim. I was just…checking in. Is everything alright?” Curse his inability to make meaningful conversation when it wasn’t a life or death situation.

They glanced at each other and shrugged.

Then Danny hauled himself out of the bed and walked over to Bruce.

Bruce tried not to let too much excitement show on his face. "

~

Now I really want to read a story where Bruce adopts Danny post Meta trafficking and is being his usual emotionally constipated self. His kids keep getting mad at him because he's treating their new meta brother who was trafficked poorly (generally being stilted in conversation with him, walking away hurriedly mid-conversation, avoiding Danny when he's feeling really awkward, etc). They think Bruce is discriminating against Danny for being a civilian, meta, dealer's pick, but really it's just Bruce being horribly socially awkward. Danny knows this because of ghost empathy and find the whole thing hilarious. The whole thing comes to a head with the Bat Kids staging an intervention in the Bat Cave.

[lucabyte]

even dogs pass the mirror test

[cosmicraelum]

I rewatched perfect blue recently

[larkinna]

He's the King of Antiva to me

Inspired by this post by @vigilskeep because they opened my third eye with it.

[hadaldemon]

dumb lil thought I had at work

Shadow Tako/Tako Milk form

[kori-senpai]

Yes, of course Lance became a farmer, he wanted to provide a safe place for his badass space boyfriend to return to. obviously

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

...Turns out gay sex actually was the solution.

(This is basically a redraw, come read the real deal over at Tiger Tiger)

[bet-on-me-13]

Dark Secret

So! Danny was discovered pretty quickly after his first battle against the Lunch Lady. His hair turned white, and his body shape was a little different, but he largely looked very similar to his Human Form, so it was only a matter of time really.

Thankfully he was assumed to be a Metahuman.

He didn't look like any other Ghost, the closest resemblance was his hair and eye color, but even that could be explained away. Also his parents were adamant that he couldn't be a Ghost because he was still Sentient and not Evil, so he must just have powers that just looked similar to Ghost Powers esthetically. Probably as a result of the Portal Accident, which he used as an explanation for how his powers awakened.

Danny also avoided using the more obvious Ghost Powers like Intangiblity and Invisiblity, sticking mostly to the most basic Flight and Energy based Powers he got to be as generic as possible. If anybody saw otherwise, it was a trick of the light or a trick of the Ghosts.

Danny became the Hero of Amity Park, always pretending to be something else. It was his darkest secret.

Unfortunately because the public never saw a Ghost like Phantom on a positive light, their perception of Ghosts never changed. Nobody believed that Ghosts could be anything aside from Evil, and as the knowledge of Ghosts and the Ghost Zone began to spread around the world that perception became more and more commonplace.

If Danny had been revealed in the early days, it could have been salvageable, but nowadays if his secret was revealed he would have to convince the entire world that everything they knew about Ghosts was wrong. It would practically be impossible.

Even when he joined the Justice League when he became an Adult, he still had to hide his secret. Years of hiding made sure he could conceal his true Nature from the magic users on the team, but he still had to be distant from the team just to be sure.

While all this was going on in the Living Realm, his adventures in the Ghost Zone still happened as normal. He saved Pandora and the Acropolis, dethroned the Tyrant King Aragon, managed to defeat Pariah Dark in Single combat, and even became recognized as a Great Warrior by the Far Frozen.

After years of hiding, he actually felt more at home in the Ghost Zone than in the Human Realm. There he could be his true self without having to hide a huge part of his identity, and people accepted him for who he was. Sure he had enemies there, but he also had more real friends outside of Tucker and Sam.

He was content with his double life, acting as a Hero to the Public while hiding his true self, and secretly going to the Ghost Zone to be himself among his friends and even his enemies.

Of course it all came crashing down when he Anti Ecto Acts finally passed.

Now there was a Legal Path for Humans to enter and profit off of the Ghost Zone. Beyond just being able to legally kill and experiment on Ghosts, the Acts also allowed Humans to claim parts of the Ghost Zone as their own Property, enslaving the Ghosts residing there, and destroying the Ecosystem of the Zone because there were no laws preventing it.

And now Danny had a choice.

He could either side with the Humans to which he was a Hero, allowing them to destroy the Ghost Zone and Enslave the denizens living there with the full support of the Government, or he could side with the Ghost Zone, betraying Humanity and the people he had been protecting for years, but trying to save those who had accepted him for his true self years ago.

To him the answer was obvious.

[beif0ngs]

everyone on tumblr @Buggy the 🤡 right now 

[mickules]

Why is it even called a Funeral anyway? There's nothing fun about it.

---

So guess what major life event I had to muddle through huh?

to top it off too, I've also had a bunch of OTHER major life changes all happening at once, including stuff with my job and flat- positive things! But not without their own share of stress

I'm doing alright, no need to worry about me, but as you can imagine any art plans kinda went straight out the window. I just had to get my head back on straight.

I'm back in the swing of things, excited about what's coming up, and have got some fun things in the works!

much love for all your patience.

[cantpickyourgenre]

I believe Bobby is coming back from the dead because I think we deserve to live in a world where Kenneth Choi gets to act his ass off by playing a simultaneously relieved/joyous and angry/furious Chimney, who feels like he has to thank Bobby, but also scream at him until his throat is sore because it wasn't fair to make that decision! he's going to say they should have played rock, paper, scissors and Bobby will chuckle because he thinks he's joking like silly haha Chimney, but Chimney is like "no, we should have discussed it, you died and I didn't even get to say thank you. you died and I owed you a debt I didn't even know about. you let me carry that" and he has to wrestle with the guilt of knowing that Bobby would do that for him, not just theoretically, but actual concrete proof that Bobby would die to save him. which they all know on some surface level that they'd die for one another, but it feels like such a far-off concept until it isn't. but Chimney also has to deal with the gratitude because Chimney is also so incredibly thankful that he didn't die. every step of the way he wanted Ravi, Bobby, Buck, and Athena to commit crimes, because he loves his life and he wants to keep living it. he's so overjoyed that he got to go home to his wife and kid, and that comes with its own guilt because how can he be so happy to be home when Bobby DIED. does that make him a monster? that on some level he's HAPPY that Bobby did that? and now he has to FACE Bobby. so he tries to be the Before Chimney who gets people whimsical gifts, but how do you give someone balloons about choosing your life over theirs? and he spirals because he's different now and Bobby is here and he has so so much he wants to say but all of it feels contradictory and unfair and he would normally go to Bobby for advice. so he does. he goes to Bobby and he says "what would you do, if you were in my position?" and Bobby just says "whatever you need to say or feel, I understand" and that just makes Chimney even more upset because what he needs is for none of this to have ever happened. its like they all got a re-do, but kept the memories and the feelings and now he has nowhere appropriate to put them. anyway, Bobby lives and we get Chimney angst yay <3 forever and ever.