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c0unt3rc0m84t · 2 months ago

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Okay so Thunderbolts came out. Spoilers ahead and potential trigger warnings. Reader discretion advised

Trigger warning SH

Yelena is perfect. That is all.

In all seriousness I've seen a lot of people talking about this and some had good to say and some not so good. I needed this movie. I think a lot of people needed this movie. As someone diagnosed bipolar and borderline, a lot of things hit. Watching a marvel movie with the big fight being with someone who was deep in the darkness and everyone reaching out to save him was beautiful. The thing that got me the most though was the self harm and self destructive parts. Hearing Yelena the entire movie struggle with direction and watching 3 times as she walks a tightrope with death hurt. The opening took me out. That felt personal. The way she just accepted they were going to be incinerated also hurt. Finally her just walking into the void (which idk if im weird but I still don't really feel like she knew there was a way out or way to save him) just fucking hurt. It all hurt but to actually see someone who I relate to like Yelena just openly express how much she wants to give in was kind of cathartic. Watching her protect her younger self was cathartic. Hearing Alexei (who I've expressed having a lot of anger towards because of the beginning of Black Widow) tell her how pure he sees her and how much he loves her and is trying to be there even though he is a fuckup was cathartic. I've been alone a lot of my life and to see her journey was so beautiful to me.

Yeah there are still some problems. We didn't see Bucky or Alexei or Ava's void dreams and it sucks. I think we have seen enough of Bucky but it would have been cool for him to look the Winter Soldier in the face and confront it even for a second. I dont know if there's much for Ava honestly we know about her past a decent amount. The one that bugs me is Alexei. We don't know really anything about his past or how he became Red Guardian and I wish we had gotten some of that but I think the movie worked without it. It definitely felt Yelena, Bob and Bucky centric and I hope the next one will expand on the others if we get another (probably).

What I really enjoyed though is how the real antagonist wasn't Bob or even Void. The real antagonist was (obviously their own traumas but) Valentina. Having the big antagonist be someone who's just a manipulator for the trauma movie kinda hit. Val sent all of them to kill each other and they became a team instead. I think many people have had situations where a manipulator pointed them at someone and then you become friends with that person and realize the manipulator was manipulating (that felt english). The fact Valentina made him his "best self" and tried to make him obedient to her just to try to kill him when he turned is contrasted with him trying to kill the team at his darkest and they showed him compassion and understanding and empathy and helped him heal the wounds instead of just putting an image over him was amazing. Yeah it felt a little cheesy at times and the conflict being solved with a hug is definitely cheesy but I loved it anyway. It came down to a bunch of antisocials finding others like them and becoming a team.

Honestly I understood why Walker was how he was in FatWS but this movie while not giving him as much as I wish it could have did a good job at showing that he's a soldier first (perhaps a trigger happy one). He doesn't act like a person that much but I think its nice to have kept that as something he finds comfort in. While Yelena was comforting herself and masking with sarcasm for some humor and Alexei masked with being grandiose, John was kind of masking with his soldier roots. I think it was intentional to show how important being a soldier was to him. He lost being Cap and was kicked out of service but he "gave his life for their mandates".

Ghost didn't get much and I think that's a bummer but also to our knowledge her biggest trauma is the fact she could die at any moment because of her intangibility (understandable). I think for her she was just happy to have connection with people. She only had Bill Foster in Antman so I think she needed friends. I hope we learn more and get more depth for her going forward because she's cool and yeah.

I will say I wish Bucky got to do more. Like yes he had some badass fight scenes and was a mood grumpy old cat man style but if they were going to do mental health than I think Bucky should have been the one to help them heal more. I think Alexei was good for Yelena to heal, but Buckys arc in FatWS was learning to heal. My biggest complaint in this was him being reverted back to being grumpy and depressed when he was so happy at the end of FatWS. Him going back felt like a regression. I do think its interesting he's helping Yelena call the shots and clearly I love Yelena but I think where Bucky is he should be the one leading. If he goes out in Secret War or Doomsday I think that's when Yelena should have taken over. Personally I think Yelena needs a bit more time although I do enjoy how they're pushing her to the forefront currently.

Bob was adorable and it'll be interesting to see where he'll go. I dont have much to say honestly he felt like a plot device with some character to me. I think it'll be interesting to see how he fits in with the rest of them with his status at the end.

Taskmaster I think should have gotten a bit of time. I think they could have given us a bit of depth to her and then if they still wanted to kill her do it then but make us feel a bit more for her. That also would have made her death have more of an impact. That's like the other ball I felt was dropped. She deserved better and I think they catered a little too hard to the haters of Antonia in this one. Anyways that's my thoughts on it. Thank you for reading.

#thunderbolts #marvel #yelena belova #robert reynolds #bob #james bucky barnes #alexei shostakov #red guardian #ava starr #ghost #taskmaster #antonia dreykov #contessa valentina allegra de fontaine #tw sui ideation

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c0unt3rc0m84t · 8 months ago

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Polaris, an Unsung Hero

Anyone who hasn't seen some of my more recent posts, to recap, I think Polaris' chances of good near future treatment out of Marvel are extremely slim verging on nil.

It was already bad enough that Marvel is going all in on unthinking 90s nostalgia, which was terrible for Lorna in how it restricted her to "Havok's supporting character girlfriend." Even worse, the X-Men comics have an element of 80s nostalgia as well, so current X-Factor added the "abducted damsel in distress for Havok to have manpain about it" angle too. Pair that with too many X-Men fans I've run into making excuses for poor treatment (one even explicitly saying Lorna "deserves" terrible characterization) but then getting upset when their own faves like Pyro get similar poor treatment, and it's worse. But the United States 2024 election results were the last straw for me. While I have serious doubts that fuckery isn't afoot, the Dems aren't even trying to stop fascism in any way, and in fact are trying to throw trans people under the bus as an excuse.

So what we're left with is the suggestion that a majority of voting Americans want racist, sexist, trans hating pedophiles running the country as long as they "get mine," an attitude echoed in X-Men fandom ("Polaris getting fucked over is fine as long as my fave is treated well"), and the people with the greatest ability to resist these problems instead eagerly jumping headlong into exacerbating them.

It's fucked. And it's left me feeling like Polaris doesn't have a shot at good work in the short term, cause how do you build awareness of what she deserves and get people to understand and respect it in this atmosphere?

At this point, you're wondering why I said all of the above when it seems far off from the title of my post. It's connected because it's had me thinking differently over the past few weeks.

I don't think I can "fight" for the character, because I don't see a path forward to do it. What I can do, though, is simply share my feelings and what I see.

And folks. I was reminded of something important last night.

Progress in this world isn't something that gets rewarded for the people and forms that initiate it. It gets punished. Daring to break the mold, daring to move the needle forward, daring to pave the way for others, that gets punished sharply.

That's what happened to Polaris.

I don't know how many people know this, but Marvel comics was rife with sexism, and still is but to a lesser degree. Sue Storm started out as only able to turn invisible, and treated very often in the sexist supporting character vein. Some depictions of the Fantastic Four even had Reed threatening to smack her around.

In the X-Men books, at the time Lorna was introduced, Jean Grey was placed in the common mold of female characters at the time. More regressive, more supporting character in nature. Both Jean and Wanda were often set out as the "token girl" for the respective men around them. It wasn't exactly a progressive spot to be in even as just the idea of a woman on a team at all could arguably have been progress (when you compare to how Wonder Woman was first added to the Justice Society as their... secretary).

Enter Polaris. Although her introductory issue had a tinge of the "for a dude" in how Iceman got to save her at one point, the majority of her first appearance - and of some (not all) depictions pre-Claremont - made her very progressive in her time.

When her powers and relation to Magneto were learned, the X-Men feared her. Before learning those things, they saw her as just another woman in need of help. But after, they saw her as a full-fledged threat who could really tear them apart if she so chose. By herself. Not even adding in the potential mutant army at her beck and call there. But then, she decided to resist the "evil blood" of her father (note: this was before Magneto was established as Jewish, when Magneto was a mustache-twirling white man villain and nothing more) and follow her own path.

We had two progressive acts in her first issue. She was established as a truly dangerous woman, and she decided to be her own woman rather than simply do something because that's what her father would want from her. Then some depictions between this and Claremont let her speak more feminism by chastising Havok and Iceman for fighting over her instead of caring about the mission at hand, or by Lorna saying she's "nobody's girl" when Jean started suggesting it.

This progress was punished.

Gradually, Lorna was reframed as "Havok's girl." As his almost property. As a character who isn't allowed to have her own thoughts and feelings, only caring about what Havok wants and what matters to him. Claremont exacerbated this with his tenure by not only reinforcing the idea, but turning Lorna into a punching bag for villains and even other X-Men like Storm. Got bad enough that Claremont even had Zaladane steal Lorna's powers and then add extremely generic powers (super strength, invulnerability) alongside basically a "hate sink" power where the concept was for literally everyone she ever meets to feel their most negative emotions and want to kill her (even if they kill themselves in the process) just cause she's there.

That's where Lorna's stuck. Any time she makes any tiny modicum of progress, she gets forced back into the role of damsel and punching bag, if not explicitly like Claremont then implicitly with jokes and insults aimed at her (see also: 2020s X-Factor having Lorna say she's a "big gun" and then immediately having possessed Siryn mind control her and outright call her stupid for being written as stupid).

Every time I think of all of this, it makes me sad and angry. Polaris deserves a fuckload better. Even if you pretend she wasn't made until Claremont or until the 90s, like so many at Marvel like to do, she still deserves better. She's been wronged and savaged and had so much of what she offers torn apart and handed off to other characters.

Did you know they recently "created" a new character to "follow in Magneto's footsteps" named Magnetrix? Using Lorna's own first codename from before she was given the Polaris one, to promote a brand new character meant to steal yet another thing from her, the notion of her as heir to Magneto's legacy. While she's stuck as a supporting character girlfriend on X-Factor that gets abducted for Havok's sake.

Yet in my recent thoughts, after all the apologism from X-Men fans, after the US 2024 election, I find myself looking at something else here instead of the horrific injustice that looks like it'll never get fixed in my lifetime (maybe not even in the lifetime of anyone alive today).

Even though Claremont set it, ironically, Polaris is a very appropriate code name for her. Because it represents the north star, a guiding light. It steers people in the right direction within the darkness.

If someone uses that star to get where they're going, the star is rarely given accolades when they show up as needed. People don't go "Let's hear it for the guiding star! Yeah!" They just revel in where they are.

That's Polaris and her influence in a nutshell.

Yes, the progress seen in Sue Storm, Jean Grey, Scarlet Witch, Storm, the bulk of it comes from good work focused on them. Just like the bulk of a ship getting to its proper destination comes from the good work of those people on that ship who moved it along. But that ship needed a guiding light for those efforts to matter. That ship needed someone or something to light the way.

Polaris lit the way for all of those female characters and more.

I know most fans of those characters will balk at the suggestion. They'll say it was all self-powered, that Lorna did nothing for any of them. Some of those fans will even say Lorna made it harder for their faves. And I can understand why they would be so defensive of their faves in that way, I really do.

But the truth is, you need someone else to go first. You need someone else to stand out, take the beatings, set the precedent.

None of these characters, including Polaris, would have gotten anywhere if not for Wonder Woman and any characters who inspired that character. Wonder Woman set a precedent herself by being a female superhero who actually got shit done, and being extremely progressive in her time (even despite the sexism of things like being assigned secretary of the Justice Society). Just being a female superhero was blazing a trail.

Polaris blazed a trail herself by introducing most feminist ideals with her coming onto the scene. She created an opening for Jean and Storm and all of them to be able to get more progressive characterization. Lorna took the beating so they could move forward.

That's what happened. That's what's still happening. To this day. She built up the value of Magneto having an heir with his same power set, and now not once but twice, Marvel's introduced two female characters meant to take Lorna's place in that role so they could send her back to sexist treatment land. The upcoming "Magnetrix" is just the newest. There was also a recent story set in the past with a different character whose name I can't remember doing the same thing, seemingly carrying Magneto's legacy.

When Claremont decided to make Lorna into a hate sink for her power set, as shitty as it was for him to do, the truth is he was just making the implicit into something more explicit.

No matter what good Lorna does, no matter what trails she blazes, she's never rewarded for it. All she ever gets is punished and put down. All she ever gets is people saying she deserves to be treated shitty. Or people saying she doesn't deserve to be Magneto's daughter. Or people insisting she can't be anything more than Havok's girlfriend on X-Factor, and that X-Factor is all she's good for.

But despite all of that?

She's in the end doing good for everyone. Even though Marvel and too many X-Men fans at large will never, ever respect her for it.

They'll happily take advantage of the openings she creates. They'll love how she makes it easier to make their own faves do the things she already did, but that they can take credit for it with a different (sometimes new) character. They'll never give her her due. They'll just take take take.

And I guess... that's her real legacy. And why she's an unsung hero.

She gets nothing for the beatdowns in and out of the fiction. She gets nothing from the repeated character assassinations, the taking away of everything she is to hand off to other, "more deserving" characters. Any time she makes progress, it's instantly lifted for others to reap the benefits.

She's never going to be who and what she should be, and should have been for decades.

So maybe the best approach is really just to bask in the afterglow of what she accomplishes in secret.

Without her, what progress we do have wouldn't exist. Jean Grey and Storm would not have solo books today. Or at least, it would've been a much harder uphill climb for them to get those solo books. So many paths and ideas within X-Men and wider Marvel comics that get celebrated for being progressive, simply would not be if she hadn't taken the bullets for daring to stand out.

This doesn't mean I'll start reading Jean Grey or Storm comics. I'm not really interested in either of them, and truthfully, the way my brain works, reading those comics would actually just leave me more upset that Polaris will never get anything even remotely close to the same thing. I don't like to engage in stuff that just upsets me in a bad way like that.

But from afar, I can still think of how much my favorite character has done in secret, with no accolades and respect to show for it.

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c0unt3rc0m84t · 8 months ago

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here’s a blurb about rachel i wrote while i had the flu / it was supposed to be a prologue to a fic i never ended up writing / forgive my adhd stream of consciousness she makes no sense sometimes

The Great Impersonator - Rachel Amber

Rachel Amber wanted to be many things.

When she was seven, she wanted to be a ballerina— wanted to be adored as she twirled around the floor every night in pink satin. When she was twelve, she wanted to be a rockstar— like Alanis Morissette or Dolores O’Riordan, performing in a different city every night to crazed fans. A dazzling actress on the red carpet. A model enchanting the lens of a camera.

She felt so deeply, inside her bones and across her muscles, that she could be anything. A hero, a villain; big, small; fleeting, eternal.

So much more than she was now— a high school theatre kid in a dying town.

Though, no one else saw her that way. To the rest of the world, Rachel proved to be so much more— she was a magician, of sorts. And her most captivating trick was one everyone had a front row seat to. It was immersive, enthralling— leaving the crowd to wonder of the girl when they laid their heads down at night. It was art.

But all good artists are tortured by their own creations; always unsatisfied. And Rachel was deemed exceptional.

In the gaps between roles, she felt nameless. Faceless. Dangling over a void of anguish so fiery it rivaled the sun’s rays; burning questions lingered that would never be answered; how and why.

How could this be it? Why couldn’t it be enough?

In another world, she knows, one role is enough. She doesn’t need to feel larger than herself. She doesn’t need to get high, or perform, or implode. In another world she knows peace. Forgiveness.

(She’s thought about it before. Of course she has.)

On the top of a hill in Northern California, a house with a blue door and white panels. Three bedrooms, plenty of windows, an SUV in the driveway. Behind every wall is evidence of love; carvings in the walls, wrinkles in the sheets, laughter in the air. She knows it’s love, because despite herself, she’d know love anywhere, in any lifetime—

(Chloe is in every corner of the house. Rachel doesn’t think Chloe would like the house, or the color of the paint or the SUV. But it was her world and so she got to decide what was there.)

Piles of laundry and taxes and bills and dentist appointments and grocery shopping and God it would suck but it would be real. It would be real, and it would be theirs. And no amount of obsession or money or greed would ever interfere with that.

In the gap between roles, she is angry because she’ll never be at peace folding laundry. And maybe she could be at peace loving Chloe all her life but she would never find out, because she wasn’t in that world. She was in this one.

So she’ll keep performing her show. Mirroring people, giving them what they want— showing them what they want— often what they expect of her. She’ll feed off the thrill of their excitement and admiration, hoping it’ll be enough to distract her from falling into the void forever.

Even if it kills her.

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c0unt3rc0m84t · 8 months ago

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An analysis on Ed’s comic childhood, how that impacted his OCD*, and how that translated to the Gotham TV show

Alternatively: GTV Ed’s Biography

*(and also how it very clearly gave him cptsd but they don’t explicitly Say that bc DC is full of cowards)

Normally I’d say comics don’t impact tv continuity, especially for a show like Gotham where so many things are changed, but the thing is? Cory Michael Smith specifically went out of his way to read the riddler comics when he accepted the role of Ed Nygma. He acted accordingly and did an amazing job trying to salvage the show’s poor writing. There are many tiny moments where he does things that reference Ed’s typical backstory despite the show, in all its 5 seasons, never bringing it up

Childhood wise there are typically two widely accepted routes

1 - his mom was around but neglectful and off her head with drugs n alcohol

2 - his mom left when he was a toddler due to not being able to handle his father anymore, which kinda kickstarted the abuse being focused onto Ed instead

I will be continuing this analysis with #2 because it is the most popular and explains his abandonment issues

Comic Based Childhood

So this guy basically grew up with Only his father. His father who is a dumbass, an alcoholic, blames Ed for his mother leaving, incredibly abusive physically, and couldn’t accept that 1) his kid is smarter than him or that 2) a kid so Weird cough traumatized and neurodivergent cough is anything but an idiot

A major sticking point was that he always thought Ed was lying, constantly, about everything. This will be important later.

And when Ed finally started going to school and getting A’s?? Yeah no Obviously he had to have been cheating so Mr Nashton just got More angry with him. Could Ed have dropped his grades on purpose to avoid this? Yeah. Did he? Absolutely not. Academic success was the one thing he could be proud of and the only thing that gave him any sort of praise or validation. He was clinging to it for dear life.

No matter the universe, this is a guy who craves attention.

There is difference between academic success and school life itself, because Ed is awkward n dorky n, especially at this point in time, anxious n quiet. So he didn’t have friends. In fact it’s usually written as either him having been bullied or being ignored entirely

The boy was not doing ok at all. So understandably he ran away as soon as possible and changed his name.

Now, this is the first point where Gotham’s canon ties into this in a Very interesting way

We know Ed’s official birth year from the ID card in the show. It’s canon. In season one he is 26. We know this. And it’s is insane for a few reasons!!

He is So Much Younger than his coworkers holy shit

Bullock is old enough to be his dad and he’s not nice, no wonder Ed doesn’t like him

He works in forensics. At 26. And he’s implied to have been working there a year or two before Jim joined the precinct.

Now, I had GENUINELY assumed that he was in his 30s like Jim. BECAUSE HE WORKS IN FORENSICS. But no he’s just actually a botched Spencer Reid because he’s 26 in season one.

A degree in forensic science takes 4 years.

If you want a masters it’s an extra 2 years.

Factoring in the time he would’ve needed to spend interning and working just to QUALIFY for a job at the GCPD???

If we assume he ran away n got into college at age 17 and got his bachelor's he’d be 21 by the time he graduated, 23 if he got his masters which of course he would, and then that leaves us only 3 or 1 year/s for internships and stuff before he joins the GCPD. What. What.

No wonder his apartment is so shitty!!! This is a man with hella student loans

But yeah! Hes only 26 and his 40 year old coworkers are bulling him for being weird. I’d hate my job too.

Bullock is 48 and I’m fully convinced he, like me, thinks Ed is at least 32 (Jim’s age) because. What.

So yeah that’s his general backstory, NOW the ways that plays into his mental state and how his actor managed to fit it into the show

So, you can reasonably assume he’s traumatized.

And!? There are so many subtle moments in the show where Cory acts his character accordingly for this. He flinches when people raise their voice, he’s visibly spooked when men in the GCPD get huffy (usually it’s Mr James Anger Issues Gordon). He’s skittish as a mouse. In the watermelon scene, when Gordon busts into the room, Ed immediately falls over himself to explain what he’s doing in there. The guy was terrified. Of James. Who’s never done a thing to him.

Beyond that? CPTSD -beyond the regular symptoms of flashbacks, triggers, and hyper awareness- also includes difficulty regulating emotions, feelings of shame/guilt, and trouble staying in relationships.

Ed Nygma is a damn textbook case. He has meltdowns, he falls into substances, he does ANYTHING but cope when he’s overwhelmed. He is constantly trying to prove he’s smart, there’s a gut deep shame when he doesn’t hold up to genius standards. And you’ve seen his relationships.

Basic info ab OCD: it’s an anxiety disorder and the two main things are obsessive compulsions and intrusive thoughts, both of which are present in Gotham but not handled nearly as well as they are in the comics

Compulsions first!

These tend to stem from subconscious thoughts and people won’t always know Why they have a compulsion but they’re generally a way of preventing a vague yet all consuming Bad Thing.

Now, with Ed one of his major sticking points in comics AND the show is he cannot tell blatant lies, especially not with yes/no answers.

This is part of why he compulsively leaves clues for absolutely everything and tries to be so vague when he is lying. He also jumps through hoops so that he won’t need to lie.

Lying = incredible all consuming dread and anxiety, so he just Doesn’t and uses his little hints and clues as a loophole. Very obviously from his father’s influence.

In the show this is shown multiple times but just for a few:

Lucious asking if Jim is at Ed’s house and when Ed tries to say no he seems almost forced to correct himself

The compulsive clue in “Tom’s” note, even when no one had asked him if he knew anything he still couldn’t keep it entirely to himself. The note is a loophole. Technically he told on himself. They just didn’t figure it out. (Well. Kristen kinda did but denying it aka lying sent him into an anxiety attack the moment she left. So.)

When Sofia Falcone was torturing him to find out where Oswald was, he told her. He just told her via a riddler he knew she didn’t understand! No need to lie!

In the car ride to the docks Oswald also calls him out directly by saying he’s so predictable because he’s driven by obsessive compulsion. This is the most the show acknowledges it.

Beyond his compulsions he’s got explicit intrusive thoughts regarding a few big things. (Should be noted that these tend to drive compulsions but not always.)

being viewed as stupid

Ergo his criminal history just being a big show to prove how smart he is. Again, his fathers influence.

being actually stupid

Not knowing things stresses him out So Bad and he takes it So Personally. He NEEDS to know everything. The world is a puzzle and he is Going to solve it.

Side note: That’s why I do LOVE that Gotham made him a forensics specialist!! He’s always had, to quote a DC podcast where he’s talking to Batgirl “-and you have that terrible all consuming pathology which comples you to find answers” “AnD i HaVe tHaT tErRiBlE aLL cOnsUmiNG PaThOLoGy wHiCh coMpELs mE tO FiNd AnSwErS- Yes.”

Biggest for last: being like his dad

This one is specifically fun because it was almost represented so well. ALMOST. His entire relationship with Kristen was downright molded by it, as shown in the file room anxiety attack. Yes that’s what I’m going to call it.

He is constantly fretting over being like Tom, even when he clearly isn’t because he is disgusted by Tom. No mysoginist is going to see someone with the same thoughts as gross. No guy who thinks women should be “put in their place” is going to have such a physical reaction to hearing that be said. No abusive pos is going to have that reaction at all. At least, not in the way that situation went down or in the way Ed’s afraid of being. We aren’t discussing emotional harm or Nygmobblepot today. But he frets anyway. And if we chose to interpret his riddler hallucination as a Really poor way of representing intrusive thoughts? Yeah. Yeah. His brain is making him panic about doing exactly what he hates so much.

*it should be noted that compulsions are often reinforced by intrusive thoughts. specific example: if he lies he will be saying something wrong, he can not be wrong, everyone is going to think he’s an idiot if he’s wrong. You can see how the two things connect. This applies to the majority of compilations in some way.

Now, a moment where I deviate from discussing what Did happened because I’ll forever mourn this particular writing fuck up:

His thing with Kristen could’ve been perfect. It could’ve been the best live action riddler origin to date. Because this is a guy with OCD who’s very traumatized and would have a strong personal reaction to finding out a friend is facing domestic abuse. That would make his relationships complicated too because of the thought loop it would create off the risk of “turning out to be the type of person he hates” or “what if I hurt her like I was hurt.” That would have been so compelling? AND? AND YKNOW WHAT? MY BIGGEST GRIPE? HIS FIRST PUSH INTO VIOLENT CRIME BEING STABBING AN ABUSER WOULD BE PERFECT. It would be on point. Exceptional foray into crime and murder. BUT THEY DIDNT PLAY IT LIKE THAT. No instead it’s highly tainted by “who gets the girl” and I just. N o. Ugh. They fumbled it!! They fumbled it So Hard. THEY MAKE HIM CREEPY AS FUCK TOWARDS KRISTEN. Like- physically blocking her into small spaces and imposing on her and talking over her when, if they HAD actually leaned into the OCD on purpose, he would probably be hyper aware of not doing.

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c0unt3rc0m84t · 8 months ago

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Page from Star Wars: Darth Vader #50, by Raffaele Ienco.

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c0unt3rc0m84t · 8 months ago

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selina kyle as a testament to the girls who have to grow up too fast. she can’t afford romantic fantasies: she thinks she has teeth under her skin when she gives her body away to strangers who hurt her. she learns to bite back. she learns to separate sex from love from a young age, learns to find intimacy in unusual ways - stealing kisses in the middle of heated rooftop battles & possessively claws out scars in comfort that she won’t be the only one who has to sacrifice her flesh this time.

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c0unt3rc0m84t · 8 months ago

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this ending

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c0unt3rc0m84t · 8 months ago

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Agatha All Along deep dive: episode 2 part 1

(Wandavision entries: [1][2][3])

(AAA entries: ep1 [1][2][3][4] ep2 [1])

Hey tumblr queers and agathario enthusiasts (I see you guys in the comments! @crybabyheathen, sorry to cause you so much distress! @onceuponalegendbg: I KNOW, RIGHT?? @ragnarockz thank you for being a butch!Agatha truther ❤️❤️)

Let's start episode 2, Circle Sewn with Fate / Unlock Thy Hidden Gate. Which, yes, has no Rio. But it has Lilia! Se let's count our blessings!!

oh my god girl, calm down! she's gone! focus!

that's a beautiful composed shot, with billy's head next to the rabbit, already telling us that he's going to become a son to Agatha

lmao she's about to bolt

aaaand she stops dead in her tracks when Billy mentions the Road. Look at her reflection again! that's so deliberate and so intriguing. how would you guys interpret it?

the Ballad theme playing in the background again. Agatha takes a whole step back when she hears the words "the Witches' Road" and immediately says no. she might be despicable, but there's no way she's getting a kid involved. especially not this kid. because they are somehow connected, otherwise how would she know about the car crash? even without knowing that this is Billy, she already cares about him. and she doesn't lie to him, even the tarots will say so. she might just, you know, omit things or even tell the truth from a certain point of view (already working on her obi-wan ghost mentor tricks)

"The road is no place to a kid." and so he was christened

but I can't stop staring at that rabbit picture. were the set people told to find the brightest bunny they could find? they really want you to notice it

now he's hopping like a bunny too! yes his legs are still tied, but I'm telling you it's all deliberate!! (insert either the pepe silvia or the I've connected the dots meme here)

don't tell him THAT. now he's gonna internalize it and accidentally kill you all one by one. christ.

girl you just got thrown around the room like a rag doll. you put together that outfit in two minutes, didn't even take a shower. you have no make up on. are you wearing ralph's shoes. is that his hat. (her being so frazzled speaks of how shell-shocked she is, she would usually take time to perfect the way she looks, because her looks is her armor)

billy is bullshitting too, he just googled her last night. I mean, I'm 100% convinced he cares about Agatha, but he is faking at least some of that trust and innocence (and good for him because she's a menace)

great, she found the brooch and nicky's hair. who needs a heart anyway, here, tear it out of my chest why don't you

Lilia has such beautiful handwriting. what a multitalent

NO, agatha. BAD agatha. now she had decided she might as well throw a little Road together and kill two or three idiots while keeping the boy safe on the side, which HISTORICALLY HAS NOT WORKED WELL FOR HER. how can she be so smart and SO STUPID

this also goes in the Top 5 Funniest Things Agatha's Ever Done list. now picture again all the dramatic car scenes from episode 1

covens are drawn together by fate and are the truest form of sisterhood??? why is rewatching this show kind of like being repeatedly stabbed in the heart???!!!??

look billy, it's the house where you were born! it was incredibly weird. a stork was there. (oh god, I just realized Billy is 3 years old)

Agatha spits at Wanda's home because a) she hates wanda and b) she hates that people hate wanda. this is the equivalent of being a queer kid and seeing f-ggot written on a locker (do I need to censor words? do tiktok rules apply now? I haven't written tumblr posts in so long)

except that, as Lilia will tell you, agatha has done a lot to smear witches' reputations, so yeah. consequences of her own actions etc.

be cool, man. mama is having the worst hangover of her life.

oh yes, Billy's boyfriend, Boyf.

shut up agatha, you know you wanna protect that little twink with your whole life

I almost wish I had an extra hour so I could gif agatha throwing the pen out of the window.

don't steal other people's pearls you hooligan (but see? clothes and accessories are props to her)

(by the way you won't find any Billy hate here, because I adore parent-children, mentor-mentee and found family relationships. and I think he's a sweetheart)

agatha discreetly snatching the eviction notice from the door. always thinking ahead, always scheming. the con master at work

*angel choir*

✨✨LILIA CALDERU✨✨

this show gave me a tragic villainous middle aged lesbian, which is literally my catnip, and she's only like, my second favorite character. which tells you all you need to know about the powers of dame Patti LuPone (I know she's not technically a dame) (yet) (I don't care if she's american Chucks, get to it!)

that's all I have time for tonight, can't wait to get me some ✨✨✨✨Lilia scenes ✨✨✨✨

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c0unt3rc0m84t · 8 months ago

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The coven of chaos as Epic songs

Agatha

Billy

Rio

Jen

Lilia

Alice

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c0unt3rc0m84t · 9 months ago

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btw kathryn hahn confirming witches dont need men to have children proves that billy and tommy were 100% her real children

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c0unt3rc0m84t · 9 months ago

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Since I've been seeing more and more anti-Wanda stuff lately, I thought I'd write something out and express my thoughts in a low-key venty manner.

I really don't trust the vast majority of Wanda criticizers*.

There is so much misogyny, victim blaming, dismissal of trauma, etc. I cannot believe it. And most of this started during WandaVision.

Okay I saw criticisms before mostly for Age of Ultron but it was your classic "poorly written" criticisms which I disagree with I think that in the majority of movies she was in they did a decent enough job of writing her. The only major ones I saw were because they wrote her and Pietro as part of Hydra initially. A) That definitely was not the most well thought out decision of Marvel's, given that they are Jewish and Roma in the comics but of course they've been whitewashed so Feige didn't see it as a concern. B) If it weren't for their ethnicities, it would be kind of genius if it had been fleshed out more. Real life Nazi organizations prey on young people who have been mistreated (or perceive themselves to be mistreated) by the government or other authority figures and groom them to be fascists. Don't get me wrong, definitely insensitive to have that happen with these two given ethnicity, but unfortunately that is kind of accurate still. Unfortunately, this fascist groups manage to get POC, LGBTQ+, and other minority groups to join them. TL;DR: the way AoU handled it was not written well, but it definitely could have been something note worthy if the time had been taken to analyze this. Never claimed that Wanda was written perfectly, will be the first to admit that there are problems as well. But I will say that I used to see lots of people claiming she was "boring" pre-Infinity War. Idk, maybe I wasn't seeing what everyone else was, that's 100% a possibility. Like I said, this is more of a vent post than an academic paper.

Infinity War and Endgame I didn't see that much criticism, but those are the movies where they let Wanda be awesome and powerful so yeah guess no one had too much to say. Other than the occasional dudebro being mad that women can be powerful characters, there wasn't much I saw.

Then we get to WandaVision. Now y'all no by now that I am not a fan of the majority of newer MCU stuff. WandaVision is definitely one of those exceptions. Brilliant series. I was going wild as it was being released. I was so unbelievably hyped for Multiverse of Madness after this (Stephen and Wanda! Two of my favs! Together!). And the majority of it was really good, loved the other characters (or loved to hate them, in the case of Hayward lol), loved the sitcom references, it was a very enjoyable series. And as it came out, I didn't see much criticisms other than the reasonable ones (it isn't a flawless series). But we started to run into some things I hated, and it would just get worse and worse as time would go on.

People have no ability to understand morally grey characters these days. Any Wanda, Bucky, or Loki fan will tell you this because Marvel's been doing them dirty and the fandom hasn't been much better.

What was WandaVision about? Grief and trauma and how difficult it is to overcome these. And I think they did a pretty dang good job at that. But then what does everyone do? Freak the heck out because Wanda took over Westview. Well, first off the series suggests that Wanda wasn't even aware of it for the first couple episodes. Then at the end it implies that Wanda was not aware that she was causing pain the citizens were feeling and she tried to get them all to leave once she found that one out. And you've got Agatha who was messing around, killing dogs, manipulating Wanda, and mind controlling Ralph. And let's not forget the pressure from S.W.O.R.D and Hayward being irrational about it (he literally shot his gun at kids and his employee who tried to protect them and people try to defend him). All Wanda wanted was to be happy and have her family (no one gets mad when other MCU characters do that, such as Tony in Endgame). By no means does this justify her actions, but she is villainized so much over something when clearly her motivations are not out of ill intent but out of trauma, grief, desperation, and also being provoked by Hayward right before she got to Westview. She is feeling all of these emotions, and clearly her powers somehow got stronger/she unlocked or leveled up/something idk that's never explained as she is feeling all of this. I mean, if I had powers as ridiculously strong as Wanda's, it'd be hard for me to control them on rough days.

WandaVision introduced us to this very complex narrative of Wanda doing something wrong but not because she had ill intent yet not wanting to give up the little happiness she is feeling while she is also being manipulated by Agatha and Hayward. It isn't black or white. She isn't a villain, but she isn't Westview's hero. She's a grieving woman that needs therapy and also help to learn about her growing magic (ie what Multiverse of Madness should have been).

But half the time you see anything about Wanda in WV it's just saying that she was evil, that she was purposely hurting the citizens, that it was for nothing but fake kids, etc. Dismissal of trauma. Victim blaming. Misogyny. Let me tell you, if Wanda was a man everyone would claim that he was a good father and that he only wanted to build a family. But noOoOoO, she's a woman so she can't be complicated.

Then we get to Multiverse of Madness. Pretty sure Waldron never watched WandaVision (a literal masterpiece) before writing the flaming pile of trash he calls a script. There's so much to unpack about how Waldron didn't write her well, how she became a villain out of literally nowhere, how while Agents of SHIELD definitely supports the idea of a Darkhold twisted villain even still Radcliffe never was pure evil he was simply misguided by a sudden overflow of information that didn't happen all at once, etc. There's a lot. But, hey, it basically sums up what antis have to say about Wanda. Because Waldron seems to hate every single character he has written other than some select people in the TVA!

Now, even more motivated by the awful writing of DSMOM, antis say that Wanda was crazy for a desire to have kids (again, would they have said the same thing if she was a man?) and that she was actually this villainous the whole time (show me your receipts because even the beginnings of Age of Ultron showed her not being completely evil). And I could go on, they say so much. But, as I have said, all of it is dismissal of trauma, victim blaming, and/or misogyny.

But it's caused me to be very suspicious of people who claim to hate Wanda. Which obviously no one has to like her. Totally understand that she might not appeal to some people that like different tropes and whatnot, that is definitely understandable. But whenever anyone starts to lean into anti territory, I just have to wonder why. Why do you hate Wanda so much? Tell me why? Because generally when I find out why, it's because she's evil and insane and tortures whole towns without remorse (canonically not even true).

*Disclaimer: I am not referring to anyone criticizing the MCU and it's whitewashing of Wanda. That is a reasonable concern. I am talking about everything else listed in the post.

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