#also i do think he was psychosexually obsessed with her and not the other way around

[visenyaism]

Let's discuss Aegon being the Jailer but Aemon being The Jail for Naerys please please can we Discuss

i have!!!!! it’s huge!!!!! but yeah as an extension of institutional monarchical power the kingsguard have always functioned as both a violent arm of the king’s wrath and a cage for the people obligated to the king in whatever way. to join the kingsguard is to lose your identity in order to enmesh yourself completely with feudal power. And Aemon is absolutely an example of that where he had the physical power to intervene or even just get his sister out of that situation and instead he kept her there until it killed her.

The reason Aegon was able to hurt his sister for so long is because he got off was on making Aemon watch because he KNEW Aemon wouldn’t do anything because his Kingsguard vows were more important. I feel like it’s really pointed that she was extremely religious as like her only means of finding solace that she had in her entire terrible life and then Aemon is described as the Warrior incarnate. and she spent her whole life praying and neither of them saved her. 

in my mind aemon got off on being the perfect knight and the ontologically good brother, and if he ever let Naerys out of her cage, she might become a human person and fall from grace from being a perpetual victim who always turned to him and only him for comfort. and that was worse than losing her to him. the only way out was a lifetime of self-martyrdom and he decided she would have to be a martyr with him because the alternative was. well we call it a madonna-whore complex for a reason

[milfjessepinkman]

i hate walter as much as the next guy. but man he is such an interesting character. like he really isnt that machiavellian, i feel like thats mostly the fanbase talking. he is pretty much only really really good at cooking meth. gus is the machiavellian one, the one who is willing to put in his dues, to wait, to bide his time, to manipulate. walts solution to LITERALLY EVERYTHING is to either kill it or blow it up. (or both). Like every time he "makes a move" it is just him ordering other people to kill people or him blowing stuff up. he sucks at manipulating, he couldnt do it w. skyler she saw through his bullshit sooo early in the series, bc he is SO BAD at lying, and when she does work with him its not because she suddenly loves him again or whatever, its more pragmatic for her. he failed so hard at manipulating mike/gus/etc. the only person he actually successfully manipulated was his 24 year old junkie former student. not exactly the most difficult catch. also because he isn't machiavellian hes way more fun to watch -- he doesnt just do things because they're the best move, like gus. gus would more more boring a protagonist bc his moves are predictable, always optimal. but walts moves are also driven by his family and keeping up his lie and stuff. and sometimes he just does shit because he is a human being who cares about things. like when he ran over the dealers who were gonna kill jesse with his car. that move did not benefit him at all, like why did he do it?? I mean i know why he did it, hes obsessed w jesse and expresses "love" (devotion? loyalty?) through violence, but i think theres a lot of reddit bros who would be genuinely at a loss to explain his motivations in that scene. professionally walts a failure. for most of the series in the criminal underground he is also a failure. he can only get off on killing people and chemistry. he lives in the suburbs. his wife is 12 years younger than him. hes psychosexually obsessed w his former high school student. he drives a 2004 Pontiac Aztek. if he didnt get lung cancer he probably would just continue to be a shitty person in secret until his death. hes having a baby. albuquerque new mexico is a fantasy world and he is the chosen one. he gave a speech about how there were so many worse plane crashes to a building of people mourning a plane crash. hes a retail worker. the first thing he does as a criminal is come up with a cool fake name to sell drugs with. his solution to being missing is to get naked in a grocery store and it works for, like, a significant amount of time. he kills the big boss by blowing half his face off. when his making-meth assistant acts too cheerful he gets him fired and brings back the junkie former high school student instead. crazy guy!!

[rappaccini]

hi im just a rando that somehow arrived at your blog, but i just wanted to say that i am FROTHING at the mouth for your spider-gwen takes (also just read your fic rachnophobia!! it was super good and so frifgin cathartic). your analyses are just so so ridiculously good. they put into words every thing i felt when i first read the spider-gwen comics when i was much younger and couldn't read between the lines (sitting in a tree was so icky and i didn't know why, even murderdock has more chemistry with gwen).

i don't really know how asks work on your blog so sorry if im intruding/being a bother, but if it's not too much i want to hear more on your take for gwen and murderdock's relationship (you know that one scene where gwen almost kills murderdock and they have a talk before gwen dimension hops), it left such an imprint on my mind, but their dynamic isn't talked about nearly enough for my taste.

(also totally unrelated but gwen-65 and the Mary Janes reminds me of dazey and the scouts + mommy long legs 🧍)

hello! no problem re: the asks, you're not intruding at all.

and like. fuck yeah let's talk about murdock. let's unpack the insane psychosexual obsession matt murdock 65 has with gwen.

putting aside the tiny things like him earnestly loving the mary janes' singles, or matt and gwen having the same catholic guilt haunting their subconsciouses, or him having a situationship with the woman who would've become spider-woman if gwen hadn't gotten bitten instead, and discarding that woman for gwen...

it makes me insane that he's a reluctant villain who was pressganged into joining the hand as a kid, who despite excelling at it, hates his job so much that he's preparing to kill himself and the only thing that stops him from going through with it is seeing (... 'seeing') spider-woman.

just knowing that she exists makes him want to live. the only reason why he's still getting up and going through the day is because he wants to see her, and be close to her. he wants to get to know her, and teach her. he wants her at his side. he straight-up admits at the tail end of the life of gwen stacy that the only reason why he hasn't ditched dimensions with his stolen portal watch is that he's staying for her and that matters more to him than his work, his reputation or his life.

like he looooves her. but in an extremely fucked-up, possessive way. that on a personal level, is a deadringer for the way an abuser loves their victim. on a thematic level, is symbolic of the patriarchy gwen's up against, and on a meta level, of all the men, real and symbolic, who keep the character of gwen stacy trapped in an awful narrative.

on the surface, his actions towards her do read like he's protecting her. he orders a hit on captain stacy to demand the cops leave spider-woman alone. he turns up at george's house when he deduces gwen's identity to tell him to his face that he knows their secret, that he isn't a worthy mentor or protector figure for gwen, and offer his legal services. he makes an offer of mentorship to gwen because he wants her to be a better fighter, and actually attempts to train her. he has a pack of ninjas dispatched to follow her around and protect her. he makes enemies of other villains to protect her secret identity. he refuses to kill her (... because tbh if she's dead he'd probably just kill himself). he's like a creepy villainous suitor.

(... @ the spiderverse migwen stans, read her comics. matt murderdock and gwen are literally everything you think miguel and gwen are doing, but it's actually canon.) matt doesn't want to be her dad. he wants to be her daddy.

but to be clear his intentions for her were never good. he's not misunderstood, or seeking redemption. before he's committed to goading her into killing him, his dynamic with gwen is still fundamentally abusive. he inserts himself into her life and turns up at her house uninvited. he isolates her from her friends and family. he has her jumped, beaten to a pulp and humiliated when he 'mentors' her. he lets the cops continue to chase after her to make her feel anxious and disillusioned even though he has the power to shut down her case at any time. that ninja bodyguard outfit is really there to report on her to him, and are not-so-subtly out to kill harry, her kind-of-love interest (... and therefore matt's rival). he sics hitmen on them when they run away together.

yeah, he doesn't want anyone to hurt her... unless he has allowed it. he doesn't see her as an equal, he wants her to serve him. he doesn't want her dead, but that's only because if she dies, then he doesn't get to screw with her anymore. he wants to possess and control her.

the entire power-up pill arc reads like he's her wealthy, older abusive boyfriend who keeps her coming back to him with his resources (she desperately needs his legal counsel when her father's in jail)... and with drugs. he even describes their relationship like he's a drug she can't quit. he loves that she's dependent on him for her power-ups and gives them to her as rewards for obedience and associating with him.

which is all but confirmed when sitting in a tree juxtaposes matt with miles. both of these guys are attracted to gwen in a shallow way she fundamentally does not return, both see her as a symbol instead of a person. (look at how he talks about her:)

and both are offering her a relationship with them that'll lead to her having an easy fix to being persecuted on her homeworld, and power on the surface but little agency in reality. they don't love gwen, they love spider-woman; they want a powerful trophy girlfriend who can reassure them that selling their souls was worth it.

and she rebuffs them both. she sidesteps miles and runs away from murdock at the same time, even, in the predators arc. (... and does so by running off with harry, the only straight guy who's into gwen who actually gives a shit about her feelings and respects her boundaries.)

and murdock loses it. he goes full if-i-can't-have-you-no-one-can and has the venom symbiote created specifically to drive her out of control for good. he's preparing to dose her with the hard stuff, to keep her totally dependent on him and break her will.

not by killing her; by psychologically breaking her down. he wants a symbolic murder-suicide. the way he saw it, if he convinced gwen to go villain, then he has a little companion to be evil with, and she can reassure him that his terrible actions are unavoidable and natural.

... and if she kills him, then he's still corrupted her and he doesn't have to live with himself anymore. he can die knowing he's permanently changed her for the worse, that she'll never outrun the effect he had on her, and that he doesn't have to deal with the consequences.

and to top it all off, at the end of the run (aka when the writer knew he was getting canned and could just fucking go for it), matt straight-up confirms that his interest in her is sexual. it's not subtle.

"my dick is on fire. and here you are: moth to my flame." sir.

see how the moth/flame reference happens twice? it's a callback to him referring to the symbiote as a way to sap harry's powers out of him. a 'moth to a flame.' so uh. textually, he sees a sexual relationship with gwen as a way to further depower her. and he would have started one after gwen took on the symbiote and was fully out of control (and after harry was taken from her. one more layer of humiliation). she barely got out of there in time.

yeah uh now we have go back and to reexamine the whole power-up arc with the knowledge that if gwen hadn't left him when she did, he would have started sexually abusing her. he wasn't just grooming her to be his evil apprentice. he was, you know, grooming her.

look back. it's all there. look at how he's always touching her as she's squirming away from him, even in broad daylight in front of cops he has on his payroll, or even her own dad.

look at the double entendre in gwen acknowledging in predators that he literally wants her on her knees in front of him. look at all of his talk about 'teaching' her things might have nothing to do with combat. look at how he became infatuated with her when she was underage and does not care that she's barely nineteen and he's in his thirties, or that she's completely indifferent to his advances and may be queer.

[sidebar: look at how felicia hardy and kitty pryde are also young women with superpowers and complex issues with their fathers, and are canonically bi in 616, who are pressured into compromising situations by murdock that lead to their villainy and imprisonment. he has a pattern of behavior. gwen isn't unique to him, she's just his newest plaything.]

look at how gwen's so viscerally disgusted by him that she can't stop venom from popping out when she has to touch him.

there's a Lot to unpack there.

through the entire latour run, gwen's dodging unwanted and harmful affection from men-- peter the incel who tries to kill everyone when she isn't into him, harry the ex who loves gwen and wants to punish her for what she did to peter (... but realizes he was wrong and redeems himself), rhino the villain of the week who gropes her during their fight, miles the Nice Guy who wants to take her away from everyone she loves and turn her into a trophy girlfriend who makes his spiderbabies, the dozens of spider-men who see her as a vessel for girlfriend trauma venting. and matt, as her nemesis, is the ultimate culmination of all of that put together. he's a groomer and an abuser to his core.

which makes the way gwen deals with him all the more poignant: after trying to evade, work with and placate him for her entire run, and finally snapping and turning on him, she has him on his knees. not because she personally has defeated him, though she did kick his ass-- because the system he's destroying himself to support has discarded him after eating him alive.

she doesn't try to See The Good In Him, she acknowledges that there simply isn't any. he isn't misunderstood, he isn't a woobie, he's absolutely not sexy or alluring. he was never cool or badass. his tragic past doesn't justify the harm he's done in the present. he doesn't have anything valuable to teach her and he never would have protected her. he's a pathetic little man who tries on personas to hide his sense of inadequacy and could have always risen above his circumstances to be a better person but simply chose not to.

(... tiring of the fandom to not pick up on any of this and treat murdock like a badass. he wasn't. that's the point.)

she doesn't kill him, she leaves him behind to presumably be arrested, tried, jailed and have to live with himself in the way he never ever wanted to. no more personas to hide behind, no more wealth or followers he can use to bully people. he's in hell, just not the one he was hoping for.

and she never interacts with him again.

he's just an absolutely incredible villain for gwen. his relationship with gwen works to activate her redemption and evolution into a full hero; gwen's entire latour arc is about grappling with the consequences of her irresponsible and selfish behavior. like matt, she's done some terrible shit, is tied up with bad people, and hates herself for it. but unlike matt, she wants to be a better person and puts in the work to do it.

he's a physical representation of the meta forces that are holding gwen stacy the character back: men who see gwen herself not as a person but as a sex object that can make them look impressive or feel less inadequate, who want to deny her any agency or her own relationships, and take them away when she does obtain them, so they can make her all about them. and who only see her power as something annoying that should be stripped from her so she can be an accessory to a more powerful man, or as a fun bonus feature that can only be used for that man's advancement. the character of gwen stacy is literally stuck in a cycle of abuse where she's killed, resurrected, killed again, and never gets a break. and spider-gwen breaks it, not by existing-- by putting in the work to give herself a narrative that frees her from that status quo.

watching gwen's relationship with murdock evolve solidifies the symbolic narrative about patriarchy running through the entire run.

(we watched matt be absorbed into a violent, male-dominated system against his will as a young boy, and consciously choose to keep perpetuating it, even though it makes him miserable to the point of wanting to die. and the thing that makes him buy in fully is the idea that hey, he might be miserable, but if he gets a girl to submit to him, he can take out that misery on her, gain status for having her under his control, and use her to advance that agenda against others.)

we watched gwen, as a young, naive girl, try to avoid the patriarchy entirely and girlboss her way through life, insisting that she can do whatever she wants because she has powers.

we watched her get the shit kicked out of her in her origin story when it caught up with her, cornered her, and she realized she wasn't the exception. and murdock is the source of this realization because he's the one who instigates the hit on george stacy that causes her to reveal her identity to him.

in the power up pill and sitting in a tree arcs, we watched her literally flirt with the idea of selling out to it, and try to work with it when it offers her special privileges for doing so (cough gwiles cough)

in predators, we watched gwen realize any safety or special treatment it offers her is bullshit and the cost of playing along will violate and destroy everyone she cares about and her most of all

in gwenom, we watched her embrace her most uninhibited self and attack it head-on

in the life of gwen stacy, we watched her realize that a full awakening means embracing other women, and taking responsibility for protecting them and her community, rather than simply beating the thing oppressing her until it's dead

we watched her call it and all its enforcers and believers who still cling to it useless little bitches and turn her back on them for good.

this is the gwen that gets away from the male gaze. (or at least she was. thanks spiderverse.)

and even though gwen's defeated murdock, his influence lives on.

gwen's constantly dealing with villains who are attracted to her, whose attraction to her is the basis of their violence towards her (peter 65, harry and em jay for a time, rhino, matt, jackal, maybe johnny storm if the mcguire run hadn't been canned).

she's constantly being knocked around the multiverse and shoved towards miles with a kiss-me sign around her neck because of the same possessive patriarchal bullshit that matt tried to impose on her.

she has serious intimacy issues, particularly with romance. she's flighty, she can't commit, she excuses toxic behavior in em jay, she can't stand up for herself around miles or peter and deny their advances bluntly, she's constantly on this carousel of nearly coming out of the closet and ducking back in.

and though much of this, in-universe, stems from her knowledge of gwen stacy's role in the multiverse, murdock's psychosexual obsession with her is the direct visceral source of that trauma on a personal level. and she hasn't really unpacked this.

he still looms large in her subconscious in a way that no other villain has ever matched. thank you for letting me soapbox about this.

[modernghostfare]

Hi... It's me ... I like how you portray Krueger and I would like more hcs of him if you're inspired OR. also. We know he's abnormal but how do you think he conveys his affection? Well "affection" from Krueger ranges from "actual emotion he sometimes feels like a normal human would" to "psychosexual obsession" but.

heeheee :)c the question about how he shows affection is rly interesting bc i feel like he sort of is affectionate? in my mind this sort of affection is just like. him being touchy. like i can see him with his hand on the small of syds back or an arm around her shoulders and thats not even him like.. trying to get something or "prove" that hes normal he just. likes syd. as a friend. and he puts his hands on people. hes not big on respecting personal space with people that are comfortable with him. he likes that he can push peoples boundaries even in small ways, but even that is like a subconscious act to him its just in his nature to be fucking with people. like with golem when they speak to each other in their co-op lines here you can tell he does like golem hes just. pushing at him picking at him alongside being "sweet" to him. hes very complimentary, in tune with him, while also playing this game with him. plainly he just thinks everything a game! even when hes not in his own mind actively fucking with someone he Is doing things to set people off. hes SICK hes OBSESSED with it. i just think to people he doesnt actually like he doesnt do that sort of shit he does keep his distance and hes very quiet compared to how he will speak frequently and casually with others. unless some crack shows and he pinpoints someone as an easy target for fun but even then like. he has to like you. for that to happen. you have to be interesting to him.

[grayintogreen]

im abt to be so predictable but: director's commentary on the vox/lucifer/lilith dynamic during the months where alastor was away?

HEE HEE. Predictable, maybe, but I've wanted to talk about it.

And I shall do it in a bulleted list!

So Lucifer did not end up keeping Vox's soul contract very long, because there was absolutely no way that Vox was gonna be able to FIND Alastor in a place where very few people ever actually go in Pride and well out of range of technology. Vox absolutely tried though and when that failed, he came back to execute PHASE TWO. Take everything Alastor holds dear! My hotel now, loser.

Obviously this posed a problem when he sat there in the metaphorical door with metaphorical shaving cream on his hands for a MONTH waiting for Alastor to come back and meanwhile Charlie is standing beside him like "have you considered that maybe you put way more effort into hating Alastor and being obsessed with him than is healthy." Vox didn't appreciate this.

He does realize that Alastor might not be coming back and that, in that month, Lilith has been trying to soften him up because she's hotter than Charlie and also scarier and she's very, very persuasive, so he decides, eh for a lark, he'll indulge the "therapy."

Therapy kinda works?? But it's mostly working because he off-sets his psychosexual obsession with Alastor with a new psychosexual obsession: becoming the evil vizier to the royal family. (Not his words, my words.)

Lucifer doesn't trust him, but he appreciates Vox's incredible organizational skills and his ability to actually do interviews and press for the hotel without panicking. They work shockingly well together, which pisses them both off, but Vox is delighted because he's cemented himself as Lucifer's right hand and Lucifer is happy because he isn't forced to do public speaking anymore. Both of them also bond about Alastor sucking and how they kinda both secretly miss him. Lucifer does not tell Vox about the time he visits Alastor, because he knows he'll make it weird.

Lilith doesn't trust Vox either, but she has Charlie's unflappable faith in people coupled with the willingness to destroy you if you break what trust she places in you, so Vox's dick is so scared of Lilith in the worst and best possible way. If there was a way for him to watch Lucilith have sex (there's not- Lilith's wards are amazing), he would be doing it. Instead, he just kinda showers Lilith with compliments and kisses her ass to make Lucifer roll his eyes, because he doesn't really get jealous. At least not over people like Vox.

So to recap: Vox has kinda replaced Lilith and Lucifer as surrogate Vees, except Lucifer is more of a stand-in for Alastor than he is for Valentino. He is thriving in this trio and believes it fully to be because he has them wrapped around his finger because he makes himself EVER SO USEFUL TO THEM.

they know what he's doing. they're not stupid.

they both are kinda into him in that "he is so clearly desperate for attention and approval and we are both dealing with a lot and despite his clearly overinflated sense of importance and villainy, he is actually VERY competent at what he does, so like fine we have an evil vizier now whatever."

Vox is actually winning even if he is still not fucking them. Fuck you, Alastor.

Charlie, for her credit, only thinks about this situationship in terms of "yay progress" and refuses to indulge that Vox is either secretly still evil or fucking her parents. The other hotel guests/employees have actual money on whether or not they are fucking.

DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY ASK GAME.

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 1

Propaganda Under Cut

Casca

She is part of a weird fucked up love triangle with two dudes. All three of them are honestly kind of terrible for each other but she gets shoved aside in favor of the two dudes in most fics and is not allowed to grow past the toxic relationships of her past. Also she’s a cis woman who dresses pretty masculinely (because she’s in a mercenary band) so she gets type casted as the mean lesbian friend, when she’s straight in canon

Probably an instance of this being taken to canon, as Griffith (Traitor) tortures her to victimize Guts (protag), because Griffith's psychosexual desires to control everyone, especially Guts. Fandom types side with Griffith because he is an attractive white boy. 

She's an incredibly interesting character in her own right with really good dynamics and parallels to Griffith and Guts, and the way those three play off of each other is integral to the story, but most of what I've seen completely ignores her in favor of focusing on only Griffith and Guts

Shiv Roy

She's honestly kind of a canonical victim of yaoi almost. She and her husband Tom have a loveless marriage but never end up getting divorced. Tom has a weird psychosexual obsession with Shiv's cousin Greg and at one point literally compares them all to the time Emperor Nero pushed his wife down the stairs and then castrated and married a slave boy named Sporus (Tom is unwell). Anyway the show just ended and long story short Tom is now CEO of Shiv's family's evil company and she is reduced to being his pregnant wife (which is the result of her voting not to authorize either of her brothers as CEO in order to save them from themselves) and Tom made another weird comment about literally owning Greg. And now people who ship Tom and Greg are like "omg it's canon we won" but I don't. Think that they did. Sorry I'm rambling it was just a really good finale idek if this counts but

I will be honest I'm not really tuned into the tomgreg fandom, but tons of people wanted tom to leave shiv and get with greg and tons of people thought shiv was the devil incarnate and refused to see any nuance in her character and I don't think those two things are a coincidence. 

She gets a lot of hate from fans, largely just for being a woman who reacts in a non pretty way to abuse and for doing the exact same shitty stuff her brothers do. But also a large part of the hate she gets comes from the people who ship her husband with her cousin. To the point where people claim she's abusing her husband who views her as an accessory, a baby factory, and a ticket to money. Don't get me wrong, their relationship is incredibly toxic and unhealthy, but it is so on both of their parts. But Shiv's the only one who gets criticized for it

[susandsnell]

🌻

I almost missed this one!!

I'm a big fan of all kinds of gothic romances, absolutely morally bankrupt characters (and the fucked up ways they might fall in love or lust or obsession or something in between), villains and foes and psychosexual nightmares, all that good stuff. I do not believe fiction needs to be moral or didactic in this respect. I say this as a preface to what I have to say next because I think it's a genuinely unpopular opinion:

This is an Edward Rochester hate zone.

I cannot abide this man. I hated him when I was thirteen, and I hate him at twenty-five. (I believe I once wrote "he should have gotten crispy in that fire" in some free reading assignment or other.) His Byronicisms all fall just in the wrong way for me, in large part because they are gross in a way that feels painfully real that isn't fun to read about, and they aren't tempered by any traits to recommend him. I find him not at all interesting and entirely unsympathetic. The only time I ever liked him was when he was doing the most with the drag act, but even then that was pretty loaded.

This all makes him a realistic jerk so he is perhaps well-constructed and well-written, but I for the life of me have never gotten the appeal of this dickwad. He's so mired in his own privilege and unearned self-pity that I genuinely find him to be insufferable. This is a bit bizarre to me as I have adored characters who have done objectively far worse and behaved far more cruelly and violently than he ever did, but again, as asserted earlier - I can get into an awful person being awful if they're doing so in a way that's interesting to witness, and/or if this is balanced out by humanizing elements. Heathcliff abuses women and children and kills innocent animals and he's still intensely sympathetic. Sweeney Todd did all of that and I feel for his plight and love his wry sense of humour and capacity for deep love. The Vampire Chronicles' entire thesis is that even the truly monstrous among us are made human by their ability to connect to art and to one another. To clarify, I know that a character need not have suffered/had a tragic backstory to be sympathetic or interesting just as people we know don't require xyz to be deserving of compassion (for instance I enjoy Dracula being The Worst because he's interesting, he's irredeemable with some zazz), but in terms of what he feels and how he acts, I cannot find any avenue for this connection to come in. I know that it's not uncommon as a modern reader to feel horror for Bertha Mason rather than at her (and it's not '''purity culture"/Puriteens/whatever paper skinned English majors are coming up with now to dismiss any critical discussion of books they like to feel this way!), and this plays a large part in my reading, but he's also cruel and dehumanizing to Jane in a way that feels very much like a Victorian era equivalent of negging/overpraise, which strikes exactly the wrong nerve in me compared to other destructive romances I've liked. That's not to say that one is more or less realistic than another, and comes down to personal bias, but I feel what I feel, and this is a free opinion sunflower emoji ask lolol.

I understand Jane Eyre and like most of it. I understand what a huge step it was as a protofeminist work, the reversing of the power balance by having him be humbled and reliant on her by the end, the emphasis on Jane's freewill and self-worth in the face of her horrific struggles and turmoil.

I cannot grasp wanting to be around this man for more than five minutes. Truly no judgment to those who get something out of this guy, but I just Don't See It.

[doublydaring]

Are the Doppels a rival gang or bounty hunters coming after the guys?

i have to admit firstly that im not a huge doppels head. I am of course psychosexually obsessed with Gwen, she occupies my every thought, i literally carry her picture in my phone case but as far as the others... i tend not to give them too much thought.

that being said!

(note: as i was writing this I realized i was calling him Davy because shortening raggedy andy to just andy is too confusing but then i was like well what would they shorten it to? and I think they would call him Dee <3)

I think Dee makes the most sense with this right? they could send other version of his model after him which would be sick and twisted. I really like the idea of them trying to appeal to him by being like, they can never understand you like we do, they're flesh, they're weak. you're just like us, come back with us." and Dee being like "oh? that's interesting." and the guys having to be like, that is the most textbook sinister and evil thing to say, do not listen to them. and Dee being like "okay got it" *thumbs up* <- they just taught him to do this

As far of the rest of them... its interesting I do like the idea of BLI developing evil version of people but its sort of important to me that the guys are not particularly important until Dee comes about, its very much like the fab four and the girl, where they want her and the guys get in the way. So I think that this is a thing that can happen but happens later. My problem is I can't really think of how they would end up being reflective of the boy's respective personalities, Babyface makes sense, he's sort of just evil Micky but Why would they make evil Mike a girl and a princess. That would be really funny.

I've thought a little more about it. I think it sort of plays into their fear and insecurities.

Shorty is worried about being mean and a tyrannical leader of their ragtag gang. I think for a long time he insists that he be in charge, despite it very obviously coming to Carlisle a lot more naturally and make them do his plans which very frequently end up in messes. He also freaks out and can't make decisions in tough spots, so Carlisle will take over when he shuts down. Eventually there is an unofficial transfer of power where Carlisle ends up calling the shots and Shorty realizes this is a lot less stressful. Anyway! He is really insecure about this. So. Babyface being the leader of the doppelgang and being this harsh commander really gets to him.

Princess Gwen -> Girl. Carlisle Wheeling -> whatttt could this POSSIBLY mean? for him? insecure? noooooo. surely not. (i don't have time to get into this. i have too much to say).

Alexei? God. I need to re-watch the card carrying red shoes. I mean I know he's like, just sort of the button joke at the end, and I don't really know what his like fanon personality is. He's uptight and serious though, everything Love is not, and I think he's kind of a coldblooded killer. I think Love is like, it doesn't bother me. I don't care. He isn't me, I'm not him, they built him to upset me. And then, he sees that Alexei is deeply important to the team, and productive, and USEFUL. and he is so insecure about being this extraneous hanger who can't help because he won't fire a blaster and this is what bothers him (this of course was BLI's ploy the whole time)

[tibby]

Tibby idk if we are mutuals but to me you are the one whose article about how men in movies and tv are the same as teen girls in other tv and movies I would read and trust.

I hope I am conveying this ok! I mean I feel like the way you draw connections between various media and like depictions of girlhood and fraught connections between girls in media is really interesting!!!

OH LMAO thank you!!! i take some issue with the way twitter and tumblr and tiktok try to present "girlhood" as this unifying thing every woman on earth can relate to, as if every single woman (or woman adjacent, given that i personally do not identify as such but that is how i was raised and how i am perceived. but i digress!) have had the exact same experiences across the board. and a lot of it results in tenuous links between various characters in media who have nothing in common except...being women. maybe sharing a genre.

and it's funny to me, because the same links can be made between just about any character if you try hard enough, and the idea of writing off middle aged men as teen girl coded is entertaining. i don't think there's enough there to ever explore it outside of joke posts, but also if there's one truth i know, it's that peter strahm is betty cooper coded. but betty cooper is not necessarily peter strahm coded. SHE is the blueprint and he is the copy, and she actually outsmarted the killer who had a psychosexual obsession with her, so.

and maybe that is making a mockery of quote unquote girlhood but also the idea of ""girlhood"" as presented on tumblr is so empty and hollow and reinforces gender roles and acts like a universal concept when it really isn't.

like. jason blossom fulfils the role of laura palmer and lawrence gordon is a quinn fabray kinnie and eduardo from the social network would relate to the melodrama alsbum. does any of this fucking mean anything? not necesarily! but neither do "womanhood is [specific experience of the op who doesn't realise not everyone lives in suburban ohio]" posts.

anyway this sounds like me being a hater and also now i'm concerned i misinterpreted what you were trying to say, as i sometimes do. but much love anyway and never forget that in a world where the term has been butchered to mean "any woman in a horror movie," matias o'brien IS a final girl <3

[atopvisenyashill]

Hi! I loved your speculation on what if Tywin died instead of Joanna. What do you think could've happened if he had died of natural causes or in a freak actual accident weeks after Joanna, and the Lannister Three had lost both parents within approximately a month or so? Do you think Kevan would've been regent? How would he and the remaining Lannister family have influenced baby Tyrion and the increasingly amorous twins?

I do think its likely Kevan steps in as regent yes, and considering we know Genna had a huge hand in raising them, its likely Genna is also de facto Lady of Casterly Rock for a while too. A lot of the problem with this is that neither Kevan nor Genna have Tywin's political and martial mind nor are they as hubristically ruthless as Tywin and they're also not as observant as him or Joanna (clearly, or one of them would have suspected the incest but we have no real indication they ever suspected much of anything).

While I think this probably means Tyrion's life is a little easier - Kevan might force Tyrion to set Tysha aside, for example, and he may even be awful enough to think to put her on a walk of shame but I don't think he has the imagination or evil in him to do *gestures broadly* alla that. Genna seems to be arguably fond of Tyrion so in a household where he's likely either ignored or occasionally talked down to, he's better off emotionally (if still frustrated and longing for similar things). I ALSO think without Tywin and Joanna there, things get real rough for the twins real fast. Jaime is still going to be interested in fighting and likely still participates in the Crakehall thing, which means he comes to Aerys' attention while Kevan is matchmaking. While I don't think Kevan is bold enough to suggest Cersei to Aerys, I dare say Genna is, and she's much more likely to get rejected than Tywin, but while all this is happening, Cersei is more than capable of scheming with Aerys to get Jaime on the Kingsguard - and being able to deprive Tywin of his heir after he's died and can't have any more IS absolutely something that would appeal to Aerys.

So while canon events are likely still more or less happening, the trauma of losing both parents back to back is going to make them cling even harder to each other, and it's going to make the incest worse for everyone. Maybe there's some slight differences - maybe Kevan doesn't send Amory and Gregor to go kill Elia, maybe he joins the rebels a little earlier, maybe he stubbornly DOESN'T join the rebels - but I can see, with Kevan as acting Lord of Casterly Rock, him moving in the same broad way as Tywin during this era and Cersei winding up married to Robert but a Cersei and Jaime that have been even more deeply trauma bonded than before, and potentially a Cersei/Jaime that have been separated a bit less (bc Tywin isn't going to and from court constantly) in my opinion, have REALLY OBVIOUS TREASON rubber stamped on their foreheads lmao. Robert already didn't abuse Cersei as much with Jaime around, but a Jaime that is more psychosexually obsessed with her than he is IN CANON? He's just gonna kill another king, and people are gonna start asking hard questions about Cersei's kids. And Kevan is not brutal enough to give Cersei the cover she needs to flagrantly commit treason the way Tywin did, which means House Lannister is fucked wayyyyy earlier than they are in the books.

[thestobingirlie]

tbh i think ppl dramatically overestimate how much ppl actually liked billy. i can see how ppl think he would get cred for beating up steve in terms of not wanting to fuck w him but (if ppl knew about that bc we don't actually know that they do? the "you've never won a fight" s3 scene w robin is the gauge for general knowledge based on her reaction but she doesn't have much of one) considering how hurt steve looked i don't think ppl would like billy or be comfortable being around him generally after seeing that. esp if steve was hurt enough to have to stop playing basketball. we only know that girls (and middle aged women 😶) think billy is hot. i also can't see him being made captain of the basketball team the way i see written a lot bc i don't think any coach would look at his super aggressive behavior and the fact that there are at least rumors of him seriously hurting the previous captain then just ignoring that. esp when he's already a bit of a wildcard since he's new that year. there's more to being chosen as captain than being the best player. like we only really see billy w tommy from what i remember and the way tommy desperately latches onto billy as a contender for top dog at school also lends credence to the idea that tommy and carol were the ones to lose status after steve dropped them tbh. also i could honestly buy other ppl noticing billy's psychosexual obsession w steve and being weirded out by it (even just the way dacre acted it it is v obvious and strange imo) - tommy is immune to this bc he is also psychosexually obsessed w steve.

i think people would see steve come to school brutally beaten and think, what the fuck. i know i wouldn’t be applauding some new guy beating up my classmate, i’d think he had issues!!

i can’t see billy making captain either. it would have to be someone that knew all the team and was good at all that shit. from the brief moment we saw him play, billy didn’t really seem like a team player, and looked like he was more interested in bothering steve then actually helping the team score/train. that guy isn’t leading the team. and then you get into the fact that he beat the old captain up, and it’s likely most of the basketball team doesn’t like him much because of that.

yeah! tommy was so desperate to be able to bag a king, and that doesn’t scream someone comfortably popular. looks more like he’s trying to claw his way back to relevancy.

literally lmao. billy is just out here grinding against steve at basketball practice, showering next to him, and leaning in Far Too Close!!! everyone else is just kinda like… yeah that dude’s really fucking weird about steve. tommy’s just thinking that that’s how everyone acts around steve ahaha

[thesilverlady]

Do you think the way book!Aemond and Alicent thinks about Rhaenyra is psychosexual?

Alicent

i can't be sure about alicent tbh. Perhaps in a fanfic scenario where we stretch things, add and cut whatever we please it can totally work. But in f&b, alicent came off more as insecure than anything else. She became competitive about who would be the first beautiful lady of the realm and her opponent was a child.

Then after she finally gave birth to her sons, she was pinning more blame on Rhaenyra. Certainly she was angry with Viserys for overlooking their children and not recognize their worth. In her eyes, not making aegon his heir was probably humiliating because it had never happened before and socially it was not expected.

From my perspective, while things probably soured with Viserys as time went on, Alicent is a hypocrite and it's easier to blame a girl for doing [insert whatever she comes up with on the spot] wrong than to recognize the flaws her sons had.

Viserys wasn't cruel. Flawed definitely but he loved rhaenyra and helaena. And notice how there's never a praise about aegon or aemond from within court before the war started? That's on them. But of course Alicent wouldn't see it that way.

I imagine Alicent as that toxic boy mom who would blame the entire world before her offsprings. Yet, that love is still suppressed by the hatred she seems to have towards Rhaenyra. There was a certain point where you have to wonder what even keeps that strength going? Even after Alicent had lost everything she still willingly sent her small granddaughter to attempt an assassination. A child against a child. 0 thought on the repercussions jaehaera could have faced. In the end her hatred won even the supposed love she was meant to have for her own blood.

I don't know if I would call this psychosexual rather than obsession at its purest form.

Aemond

With Aemond, things are easier 'cause boy does he have chunks of misogynistic thoughts centered only on Rhaenyra... 💀

He's furious that she's a female ruler and whatever neglect he was feeling from his father is blamed on her (guess who taught him that). Whatever hurt and injustice he must have felt has been twisted into hating her 'cause everything is Rhaenyra's fault. Now consider their twisted Targaryen sibling relationship - since he's always more than willing to talk about her sexuality, as evidenced in the book, he never misses the opportunity to undermine her status by discussing her sexuality.

On the one hand, I can picture the resentment over this woman who so boldly keeps fighting about a throne he doesn't believe she's entitled to and on the other being torn between wanting her dead and wanting to own her for what she represents.

Few days ago, a mutual of mine started a similiar discussion and a very interesting point they brought was this:

I think it’s also notable how people emphasise that aemond wants what aegon has, but this could also be taken to mean rhaenyra since she’s the elder and the idea of betrothing them had been presented. like “aegon may not care about the throne and the sister that was stolen from him but /i/ DO”.

Forever striving for what Aegon has and could have had, including even hypothetical possibilities. So I'd say the way he thinks can definitely be read as psychosexual.

[cassatine]

I would love to know your ideas about Daemon/Rhaenyra and their deranged love!

Ongoing manifesto is [here]

that being said idk that’s a bit. too vague and open-ended a question. pls be more specific next time but for now:

They’re the same person in different bodies and they both looked at their mirror self and thought yeah I’d tap that?? And after ten years of separation, ten years of distance from the mirror self, the only one that truly understood them: I’d rather burn the world down I’d rather be feared than live without that again?? Heights of Targ psychosexual fuckery right there!!

They both subscribe to the idea that only dragon people are real people! Targaryen exceptionalism all the way for them. Why do you think even Rhaenyra’s love for Alicent did not translate to understanding or protection or anything beyond ‘love me fear me adore me’.

Not to deny the unhinged romanticism of the “meant to burn together” line but what I’m personally obsessed by is “they will fear what else we might be capable of”, like that’s their thesis statement and political program rolled into one and it’s hot as fuck. Also stupid as fuck, because that program hasn’t worked out that well for any dynasty in the long term, like, ever, but also: better burn together than keep on living a half life. Viserys called them “restless and chaotic” back when he first thought they’d shagged and really, he’d pegged them right. They tried normalcy (as much as feudal people with pet metaphorical nuclear weapons can be normal) and it turned out to suck ass — “happy enough”, says Daemon of his time with Laena (which, ouch), “droll tragedy”, says Rhaenyra of her life, of her years trying to play by the rules (also ouch). And they’d have gone back to it if not for each other — one spousal funeral reunion shag of tenderness and they were like “meant to burn together” never gonna be separated again!! No cost too dear!!

I get that the argument that they’re getting married for political reasons only get people’s hackles up, and lbr it is on the level of saying water is dry, but imo swinging the pendulum to the other extreme (nothing to do with the political at all) isn’t that much better in the end. It is a political partnership. Rhaenyra doesn’t say “with you as my husband and prince consort my claim wouldn’t be so easily challenged” for people to say that she hasn’t taken the political repercussions of a wedding into account. And whether Rhaenyra is really, really crap at maths or whether she’s fudging the numbers because she wants Daemon that bad (it’s the later, of course it’s the later), the fact is that she makes a political argument for their getting married. Sometimes people both want to climb each other and to be a political power couple steamrolling all opposition until everything explodes in their face (better have everything explode in your face than go through life like you’re already dead for one minute longer than needed).

Rhaenyra has it bad for Daemon, but she has it bad for the throne too. If she didn’t she’d cut her losses and they’d move to Pentos or wherever, and she is very much not gonna do that. They love each other insanely, but they love power too.

Laenor is a darling and we love him but by ep7 it’s kinda obvious that while Rhaenyra does like him she’s been disappointed in him as a political partner for a while (ftr it’s understandable that he’s flaky, what with the trauma of what happened re: Joffrey). He gives her the ‘ready to commit now’ speech and for ten years she’d have had to take it even with no way to know whether Laenor would follow up on it, because she had no other option, but alas for him he gives her the speech after Daemon pops up, freshly single, while the situation with Alicent and the Greens hits No Return Point, and Rhaenyra says: actually yes I deserve a husband that supports me, a political partner I can actually trust to look after my interests, one who will kill a bitch for me, and that ain’t you.

She didn’t free Laenor!! It’s not a victory for the gays!! She functionally exiled him because she chose Daemon over him. She told her husband and friend of ten years to fuck off to Essos and never come back and let his family believe him dead because her mirror self was back and it’s her mirror self she wants. Let her and Daemon be selfish on that one instead of dressing it up as a victory for us queers.

Everyone goes on about Rhaenyra having a case of gender, and she sure fucking does, but you know who else does? Fucking Daemon, that’s who. Viserys says he’s the Visenya of the family. He straights up wields Visenya’s sword. He was sent off to Runestone where his wife was in charge, and where all that would have been expected of him was to do the do and bring forth some heirs, which in Westeros is what's expected of women (also he’d obv. have resented being married to a normie and not another Targ, because only dragon people are real people), and being a cursed mix of extreme insecurity and overblown dragon pride he simply couldn’t handle any of it, hence the extremely unhappy wedding with Rhea, but also his tendency to overperform masculinity à la westorosi (violence). And yet he’s gonna fucking kneel to Rhaenyra!!

Daemon is literally going to crown her!! I am the crown (I am the realm) she told Criston and what’s the one title Daemon will take? Protector of the Realm. He’s going to die for her!! Fighting her war!! Just like Rhaenys died fighting Aegon’s war!!

Ok. Look. Wherever canon goes — at the end of the day some people see incestuous legacies fuckery and like clockwork they go, oh the latest generation has to fuck and do it in full ancestors cosplay while insistently calling each other by familial relationship terms, and they have to make it weird for everyone else, and they also have to kill a lot people to maintain their grasp on power, and by some people I mean me.

[synthient]

Watched the utopia three-parter, and okay yeah. Wrow

Fun departure from the more typical dynamic where the antagonist is one-sidedly/unequally obsessed, for the protagonist to have just as unhinged and worrying an obsession right back. The thing where he was going to take him home and keep him like a dog at the end? Inspired (and evidently he does do that for part of the Missy arc?)

The casual background slavery and wife beating did kill the fun somewhat. Presumably they weren't planning to have him be The recurring antagonist-frenemy for the next couple decades, and felt less restrained about including more grounded evil alongside the cartoony; fascinating choice to have the next two masters be a white woman and a man of color

Fun and valid when he was just running around giggling his way through political assasinations though

(I've had Martha for 3 episodes and I already see what team #justiceformartha was talking about. I can only hope this three-parter was playing up his treatment of her at least slightly(?) so it would feel as natural as possible when she dumped him, but jesus christ)

Simm brings a lot of fun energy to the role; Tennant is fine & I've absorbed at least some secondhand blorbo-in-law affection for him over the years. I still don't think I'd be able to get full-on Obsessed with this particular set of actors, and I doubt I would with the other two sets - no matter how much they may be queering heterosexuality, it's just not toxic yaoi. I do still plan to do a taste test of the other two recent master runs though

Is there. a reason that Tennant needed to turn into a badly cgi-ed little goblin for a good chunk of the finale (I do love his goku spirit bomb form, no notes)

I'm more convinced than ever about Rogue. There are the obvious parallels everyone's been pointing out ("fight/argue across the stars;" the master as pop song girly). But also: you're Russell T Davies. You're vocally uninterested in having the Master be the big bad again, but it's doctor who, so you are kind of contractually obligated to have him in there somewhere. What's the one thing you'd actually care about bringing him back for? Taking the insane psychosexual hero-villain homoeroticism you were only allowed to hint at in 2007, and having them kiss onscreen (in appropriately insane psychosexual fashion)

[platoapproved]

okay okay my shadow and bone season 2 hot takes are burning me from the inside out so here we go:

these are in no particular order but sadly it did feel kind of like a miss for me with nikolai :/  i was worried it was going to be way worse but there were a few changes that were just Not It for me. like you CANNOT just bring in Dominik and have him still be alive. he should’ve been dead the whole time, because that’s nikolai’s whole thing.  he has his charming prince / dashing privateer / all around witty fun guy façade, and underneath it is grief. over a normal commoner, who died wastefully in an unimportant battle.  it MATTERS that that death matters so much to nikolai

AND it’s really not the same for him to get randomly wounded 0.02 seconds before the civil war is completely over, and then later realize some weird magic shit is going on with the wound.  like instead of being DELIBERATELY made into a monster and then spending weeks? months? however long as a mostly mindless monster, unable to help his friends or his country and lowkey maybe eating people.  like that’s that 👏 good 👏 shit 👏 .

it also matters that he’s not visibly scarred afterwards? like literally “king of scars” hello? even if people outside his inner circle don’t know what really happened they still think the darkling tortured him for months or whatever.

anyway the point is the show needed to hurt nikolai a lot more.

kaz was perfect i love him, love how they delivered on his story, definitely the thing this season landed the best.

BUT it does somewhat irk me that pekka is still in the mix after kaz’s takedown.  he runs away, and then just as he’s thinking about maybe coming back, inej finishes it and he’s just OUT. the last chapter of the duology is him just being like “i can’t DEAL with how vicious these teens are i’m too old for this shit i’m FINISHED”.  i just think kaz brekker would not be satisfied with him still being in hellgate having any power whatsoever.

LOVED how little mattias content there was.  cut him out entirely. five of crows.

giving the darkling a weird underling with bad bangs and 90s lipstick and spending so much time on her was a strange move considering how many other things they were trying to cover, like y’all don’t have room to be adding new OCs.

JUSTICE FOR DUNYASHA why was inej fighting some random taxidermy man instead.  her appearance in crooked kingdom always DELIGHTS me because she just shows up out of nowhere declaring herself to be inej’s great rival and being psychosexually obsessed with her and inej is just ?????? because she has no idea who this fucking person is. changing her to some random dude is a homophobic attack on me personally.

i am glad they gave jesper some serious moments this season finally, but also a little sad with how much they rushed the grisha stuff for him. i think it’s probably an inevitable book-to-movie thing but they didn’t do enough with how much hiding his powers was fundamental to who he is. it’s like, the root of his frankly suicidal recklessness and addiction and shame.  his feelings about his powers are tied to his mother and her death but also to his father and how he taught Jesper to lie about himself and also made him feel ashamed/guilty to have powers.  AND most importantly it’s not just parent stuff, it’s a response to the world around him where grisha are hunted and persecuted and kidnapped and enslaved and conscripted and experimented on.  it’s not just that he’s sad about his mom.  it’s one of the many responses we see in the books from grishas towards a world that is so hostile to them.  you can’t just make it about the personal circumstances.  the social and political ones have an impact too.

i do get why they never get into it but man. i also missed jesper’s pathetic fucked up crush on kaz.  just another moment where the show provided the outer show (jesper being charming and having plenty of little flings and encounters) but not the knife-twist beneath it (him pining for kaz all those years and both of them kind of knowing it but never saying anything about it, and kaz just absolutely 100% not into him like that but not NOT stringing him along with little bits of kindness, unintentionally or intentionally).  like one of the things that is great about wylan and jesper is that it’s jesper deciding finally that he deserves more than waiting for little scraps of nothing from kaz and just going on a date with a nice boy, y’know?

i wish nina and inej had more friendship moments :c they haven’t known each other as long in the show. :c they’re supposed to be besties. :c i need them to be in love. :c

okay that’s all the hottest of my hot takes i think, overall i had a lot of fun with it and the main takeaway was that the kaz stuff was /chefkiss

[quillyfied]

Hellaverse Theories: Hazbin Hotel S1E2

Welcome to Quilly’s Hellaverse Theories, where I overthink the entire Hellaverse!

Here we are at Hazbin Hotel, s1e2 (and it's much shorter than s1e1, thank goodness):

Sir Pentious. My darling. My dearest. What a dweeb. What a maroon. This isn’t a theory, it’s a fact: I love him.

Okay, here we go, the ultra-dangerous Vees that I think get underestimated in their own ways. For a start, they’re a collective of three Overlords actively working together, which isn’t something the show seems to suggest is normal for Overlords up until this point. It’s also interesting to me that Valentino is the most universally hated, to the point where certain folks woobify Vox and Velvette into being his unfortunate victims, but. I think that’s giving Val way too much credit, and certainly not giving Velvette and Vox enough. As the tweet that Viv cackled over goes, Val is Karen to the other two’s Regina and Gretchen. And I don’t know who takes Regina George’s spot, Vox or Velvette, and I’m sure they’d fight pretty viciously for it, but all three of them are terrible and especially terrible together. How calculating and smart Velvette is will be expounded on more later, but Vox can literally hypnotize thousands of people when given the right tools, and I know we collectively aren’t ignoring how horrific the television industry can be in real life. So imagine that culture in Hell, run by a guy with a psychosexual obsession with a deer man who rejected him and a tempestuous situationship with Valentino of all people. Yikes.

Anyway, to the more important bit: the first hint that sinners can be killed and regenerated. Valentino is wrecking Velvette’s department and tore up her best model. And the show can’t wait for that unlucky bitch to pull herself back together. Could be a glib reference to how the model is useless to Velvette double-dead and how dare she die on the job. Could be more literal and sinners can regenerate from deaths that aren’t inflicted by angelic steel, it just takes some time depending on the method of death. This is too VAGUE, I need CONCRETE EXAMPLES AND REFERENCES.

Like okay to get back to the “all the Vees are terrible” argument, VELVETTE LITERALLY SELLS A DATE RAPE DRUG DISTILLED FROM VALENTINO’S VENOM. VOX TAKES ADVANTAGE OF HELL’S PANIC OVER THE EXTERMINATION TO SELL HIS BRAND AND THEN OFFERS TO FETCH A GROUP OF UNLUCKY EMPLOYEES FOR VAL TO SHOOT. Granted, his orders to his assistant seem promising, with wanting to get in touch with Carmilla about actually developing angelic security, but there appears to be no follow-through and Vox is more than happy to sit safely in his tower and peep on everyone else while the Extermination is happening, so. Y’know. Screw that guy. Anyway.

Moment of adoration for Joel Perez and his voice acting. The RANGE. The DRAMA. The FABULOSITY. Valentino is absolutely a scumbag but what a great performance.

I need to know DESPERATELY if the minions that Alastor summons are constructs of his own power, or other, less notable souls that he owns. Husk retaining his own form could be because he used to be an Overlord himself. Niffty…unsure if Alastor actually owns her soul, but it’s a good bet, and Alastor seems to like her most anyway. Valentino has moth demons that look like him manning his doors when Vox comes to see him, but it could be a uniform; Vox and Velvette both have people working for them (that they may or may not own, but it’s another good bet that they do) that have distinct looks. Which means that if Alastor’s little minions aren’t souls he owns in their own uniform, but manifestations of his own power that do his bidding, then that’s another difference that sets Alastor apart from other Overlords that’s worth exploring.

Also I keep forgetting about his shadow and I’m very curious to know if it has unique properties other than letting him teleport around. Alastor changing his form so often also seems something unique to him. The mouth-droolies that are probably blood (unless it’s Valentino and then it’s his venom) seems to just be a quirk of Viv’s art style, since Vox, Alastor, Valentino, and Lucifer all do it when they need to seem more deranged, but Alastor changing his entire look to be bigger and scarier is something we see Stolas and the Sins do in Helluva Boss, not Overlords in Hazbin Hotel. The Goetia family and the Sins are on a different level than Overlords in Hell’s power structure, but Alastor himself seems to be something else on top of that. Perhaps he’s becoming something closer to Adam and Lilith, though again, more on what I think is up with them on a later episode.

The funny thing about the Vees is that alone, any one of them wouldn’t be too much of a threat, but together, they are absolutely dangerous, and that’s fascinating. It’s the dark side version of working together making people stronger and better. But although Vox’s obsession with Alastor isn’t shared by the other Vees, they don’t fight him when he insists they have to keep an eye on the situation with him and Charlie. I don’t believe for a second that any sinner in Hell cares about the authority of the royal family outside of how the royal family can destroy them power-wise, but it’s interesting to me how even when they don’t care about Charlie as an authority figure, they do care when she spends time with other potentially powerful figures. This is a hint of Charlie as a dormant untapped power source. Most of Hell doesn’t care about who she is or what she does, brushing her off as a sort of ornamental figure. Except for Alastor. Who very correctly has singled her out as a future powerhouse, though what he intends to direct that powerhouse towards (and if it was even his idea in the first place) remains to be seen.

Moment of silence for Valentino bedazzling a gun with glue and rhinestones during a meeting with his business partners, that is good background comedy.

Alastor has a different job title every time he’s referred to in his capacity to the hotel and I find that greatly amusing. Also telling as to the quality of management at first. Because, come on, the whole premise of the hotel is based on a wild hair that Charlie has, and the sequence with Sir Pentious pretending to fit into the hotel model is a blinding spotlight into the flaws of Charlie’s thinking. The behaviors that she’s attempting to get Pentious and by extension Angel Dust to model are a very rudimentary and I’d go so far as to say childish understanding of what sin versus virtue is. But as is revealed later—it’s all they have to go on. They can see the state of Hell and make assumptions about what landed them there, but Adam himself is a glaring contradiction to the assumptions, top to bottom. It makes the whole Sir Pentious farce seem even more shallow, which is a brilliant narrative choice to laying the groundwork for Angel’s character arc, because the shallowness of it all is what hurts him.

And, most importantly: while Charlie dismisses Angel in this episode to focus on her shiny new toy, it’s Angel that she relies on to prove her point to Heaven later, a sharp counterpoint of real change to the very obvious fake change in Sir Pentious in this particular episode. (Before. Y’know. The real change Sir Pentious undergoes at the end of the episode. And then again at the end of the season. But Sir Pentious, while in Hell and obviously with his own issues, also isn’t quite as complex or deep a person as Angel Dust is. Perhaps he didn’t have as far to go to make a real change in himself. Until the nature of the rules for who goes where when they die becomes less arbitrary, we can only make educated guesses.)

But back to Charlie and how she’s the absolute perfect princess for the Pride ring: she is sparkly and sweet and naïve, but she is so sure that she’s right that she pulls the entire cast into this madcap adventure with her to try and redeem sinners without actually knowing what it means. She is so sure she’s right that she, a Hellborn demon, is determined to talk to Heaven—HEAVEN, and not just Heaven, but THE ANGELS WHO RUN HEAVEN AND AS FAR AS SHE KNOWS ACTIVELY CELEBRATE HER PEOPLE’S EXTERMINATION—and just knows she can get them on her side if she pitches it well enough.

If Charlie wasn’t so earnest, and self-aware by the end of the season as well, it would make her unlikeable, smug instead of sincere. But, like the magical casting of Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet that makes him an earnest and likeable character instead of a self-obsessed smug asshole, it’s that core of absolute genuine care in her that saves her from being a terror. She’s learning, and she is going through her own coming of age and understanding the world around her. Not to mention that she has an immense amount of pressure on her that her parents seem to have succeeded in shielding her from until she starts actively pushing at the boundaries of her world and taking on more and more of that weight. Charlie doesn’t have to put herself out there for sinners. Lucifer tells her that. Adam tells her that. Lilith never did, as far as we can tell, but her absence is pretty telling on that front. She could let the status quo continue and live in her own happy little dream world with nothing to trouble or vex her.

But that isn’t Charlie Morningstar. She’s a dreamer with fierce independence. And while her Hazbin Hotel redemption plan is RIFE with hubris, it’s also indicative of her strength of character, and it’s admirable to watch.

In HB, the Sins that we’ve seen so far have had elements of understanding their power—I saw one post describe it as embodying their opposite Virtue as well as their Sin. Beelzebub is the Sin of Gluttony, but she is cautious about others around her indulging too much to the point of harm (Temperance). Asmodeus is the Sin of Lust, but he rejects lust by force and accepts real love in his life that’s more than just sexual chemistry (Chastity). Lucifer is most certainly the Sin of Pride, but the argument could be made of his humbling, not just at Heaven’s hands, but by breaking down his own misconceptions and worldview keeping him and Charlie from connecting and listening to her and choosing to believe in her (Humility). Charlie is heir to Pride, at the very least; she’s well on her way to accepting the slice of humble pie that comes with it.

The ring model of Hell in the background of the entire “It Starts With Sorry” sequence really makes me question if HH Hell isn’t in the same universe as HB Hell, because it’s not just a one-and-done cameo piece; it shows up several times, a fixture of the background that gets at least two different angles. So here’s another theory I’ve been cooking up: HH Hell has two moon-like objects, one that looks obviously Heavenly, one that looks obviously Hellish. I’m wondering if the Hellish moon is either Lucifer’s palace (prison), or the rest of Hell. Admittedly, that theory doesn’t work with HB, what with Blitzo setting up his business specifically to cater to sinners and thus the Pride ring is clearly connected to the rest of Hell and not its own floating sky-entity, but then again, the ring model of Hell isn’t exactly literal, from what I read in the wiki; if they can road trip to Sloth, maybe they can take a magic elevator to Pride because it’s a moon and not a ring. Who knows. I certainly don’t. And it’s not like an atlas of Hell is ever going to be released, despite how very much I would love one.

Not as much to discuss re: my overarching theories about the nature of Hell and its power structures in this one, but the next episode most certainly does, so I will keep this consistent and in its own post.