mattykaye

[mattykaye]

She missed him.  She missed his voice, and his humour, and his warm arrogance, and those moments when she realised that this was when she came alive - finally living, by the side of a dead man. --- "Don't worry , sweetie. I know what it is. All those hormones raging, you have all these conflicting emotions..." Valkyrie raised her hand to push at the air, but Marr was faster. The air rushed around her and Valkyrie hit the wall and dropped to the floor. Marr strolled towards her. "You had a crush on him before he was pulled into hell, didn't you? A little one? You can tell me. It's sad and pathetic and highly amusing, but I promise I won't laugh." --- If she [China] bothered with idle conversation, she would have told the poor boy that this thing with Valkyrie was never going to go anywhere, not when Skulduggery got back. Valkyrie's life revolved around Skulduggery now - she was caught in his orbit, and someone like Fletcher didn't stand a chance. Skulduggery and Valkyrie were made for each other. China could see that now. They were meant to find each other, to form this bond and to affect each other's lives. The best the boy could hope for, the best anyone could hope for, would be to stand in the wings and look on.

Dark Days

[mattykaye]

I guess neither of our lives are very funny. But I’ll tell you something about yourself that not even you know. You may be insufferable. But in your heart, you are a kind and generous soul.

Raven, to Damian Wayne (from Justice League vs Teen Titans)

I don’t even remember how long it has been since I posted this years ago. But thank you all so much for keeping it alive (since it has been deleted on my dashboard).

[mattykaye]

In a Writers Meeting

Amy: Alright. So as I've emailed to all of you, we're going to adapt the Trigon arc for Teen Titans Season 4.

David: I'm looking forward to this. I think this season has the chance to be our best yet. We're working with great source material here, like in Season 2.

Rob: I agree... But there's something nagging at me.

Greg: What is it, Rob?

Rob: We are 40 episodes in, and I just realised that we have almost written no significant interactions between Raven and Robin.

Richard: I would say that their quasi mind-meld in "Haunted" is kind of a big deal.

Melody: Sure, but that's the extent of their talking to one another, don't you think? Raven has had more episodes where she interacts with Cyborg (Car Trouble), Starfire (Switched) and especially Beast Boy (The Beast Within).

Tom: Oh crap. I see your point.

Rob: We're going to have to cram in as much dialogue between those two "Bird" characters as much as possible, just so to make up for lost time.

David: Ooh, I don't know.

Amy: What makes you say that?

David: We've said in an earlier meeting that Robin x Starfire is canon. By focusing on the Robin/Raven relationship in the way you just described for the upcoming season, we might be giving the audience the false impression that Raven might have a thing for Robin, and/or vice versa.

Melody: But I think this is a tightrope act that we can get away with. We just need to avoid some easy pitfalls that can lead viewers to that conclusion.

Amy: Really? What do you have in mind?

Melody: We'll get the most obvious rules out of the way. First, we can't write scenes of them doing something that looks intimate, like hugging.

Greg: Oh, I see now. I also think we can avoid things like hand-holding.

Tom: Yeah. When characters of the opposite gender do things like hugging and holding hands, you're almost signalling to the viewers that there might be something going on between the two.

Rob: We also want to avoid scenes with the two characters being alone with each other. It's not a hard-and-fast rule per se, but we want to reserve these sorts of "alone with each other" moments for Robin and Starfire, not Robin and Raven.

David: Yeah. It's best to add dialogue between Raven and Robin while the rest of the team is in close proximity. The audience will just treat the exchange as character building, but also banal.

Rob: These are all rules of thumb that we can follow well enough. I mean, it's not like we're going to write a scene where Robin goes to hell and back again to rescue Raven from Trigon. I mean, think of the implications and questions that hypothetical moment raises!

Amy: Oh, perish the thought.

David: The chances of us writing that scene is about as likely as having this show extended to a fifth season. HAH!

[mattykaye]

I, for one, would buy all three of those games.

[mattykaye]

In the 2003 cartoon series, Robin reminds Raven that her destiny is what she makes of it, and that she is the most hopeful superheroine he has ever known. In Justice League vs. Teen Titans, Raven worked to remind Robin that he is a better person than he lets on, and that he need not go down the destructive path set for him by the League of Shadows.  I know it's two different Robins, but I love the symmetry here.

Me

[mattykaye]

I was discussing the upcoming NBA playoffs with my friend, about whether the Rockets could really challenge the Warriors, where my beloved Celtics will end up, and what the Lakers need to do in the coming offseason etc etc.

Then he abruptly asked a more awkward question: What is that wallpaper of mine? (pictured above, it’s made by Kira0503 from DeviantArt)

I showed it to him and told him that it was inspired by the Ben 10 cartoon (which he seems to have heard of) and told him that the characters in the picture are Ben and his cousin Gwen. Yep, didn’t even try to hide the fact that they are related.

I wonder what was going through my friend’s head upon hearing my answer. If you ask me, I think he now sees me as a diseased maniac : ) 

[mattykaye]

How did you feel about Robin and Starfire's relationship being sanctioned and confirmed in the movie ???

The question almost insists that I’m in denial about RobStar, and I’m not XD. I watched Trouble in Tokyo several times, and knew that it confirmed Robin and Starfire as the Official Couple of Teen Titans. But I’m allowed to explore counterfactuals and what-ifs, right?

In other words, I acknowledge RobStar as canon, but RobRae is still my favourite ship regardless.

[mattykaye]

When I first saw RobRae week, I was a younger, cheerier and more optimistic version of myself. What remains of me today is nothing but a mush of cynical bile XD

BUT in all seriousness, five years?! Did time really fly that fast?

i’m so excited about the turn out this year, our fifth year is definitely gonna be one of our most successful :D

[mattykaye]

The arc episodes in Season 4 were so Robin-and-Raven-centric that it's no wonder some viewers like myself came away thinking that there's something's going on between the two.

Me, after a long hiatus

[mattykaye]

Bwen is such an interesting ship because it pits us against our own societal taboos and assumptions about the boundaries of the relationships between cousins. We are confronted with the question of whether mutual consent, or the perfect clicking of personalities, can override said taboos and make the romantic relationship between cousins valid and legitimate. We are then, finally, left to ask where our prejudices against incest even came from.

Me, on the Ben x Gwen ship

[mattykaye]

Ben Tennyson: Why are you being soooo annoying to me, you dweeb?

Gwen Tennyson: Because when your actual love interest comes along, I want you to be totally ready for the belligerent sexual tension you are going to experience around her, doofus.

[mattykaye]

If Digimon Tri is about the Digidestined growing up, then (most unfortunately) it seems to only envision Sora’s maturation as a question of which man she will end up with and bear children for.

Me, after writing and rambling about the topic

[mattykaye]

Sorry, I left on my shipping goggles. I’ll turn it off now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[mattykaye]

Raven had plenty on her mind to process once she tapped into Robin’s deepest and darkest memories. Though she never told anyone of her experience, she could see herself in the Boy Wonder’s story. She could related to having a terrible fate thrust upon one, and can see her inheritance of a cruel father as a parallel of Robin’s loss of two loved ones. Her quest to do good things by fighting evil is similar to Robin’s superhero life as a means to honour his family’s memory. In a sense, Raven realises that she isn’t the only one carrying upsetting secrets and burdens. It’s one thing to sympathise with losing something one has worked so hard for (think the episode with Cyborg’s car), but it’s another matter entirely to empathise in Robin’s whole raison d’etre. This might have been the first Raven ever used her powers in such a deeply personal and emotionally resonant manner. 

[mattykaye]

I’ll always remember A Pup Named Scooby Doo as the show where the girls did all the heavy-lifting within the gang (Daphne as Team Mom, Velma as Mary Sue and Deus ex Machina) while the boys do their damnedest to make fools of themselves at every turn.

[mattykaye]

It's pretty rich that some Japanese fans still do not want Sora to play soccer, considering that Japan's national women's soccer team has been among the best in the world since 2010.

Me, keen observation and brief perusing on Wikipedia

[mattykaye]

For all the Bwen fans out there. It’s an adorable moment.