#and their ages have been retconned since then so they have a smaller age gap now but still

[rappaccini]

... ok i guess a great earth-65 constant is that the timeline's fucked when compared to other universes. because when the hell does movie-gwen's dimension take place. what year and what time of year. does the movie even know.

because it looks like either gwen's universe was FULLY retconned to take place in a version of 1998-2001 with 2010s-era technology or they genuinely have no clue what time it's in or how long she's been gone.

gwen has a smartphone (despite her photo of miles being retconned between movies from a phone selfie to a polaroid, there are still smartphones and laptops in her dimension-- and the clunky 90s tv and computer in her apartment), knows what social media is, dresses like a zoomer, and never mentions that miles's dimension is in the future compared to hers, yet it's 1998 according to this police file.

the file's of gwen's vulture from 65b, not the renaissance one, so it might be of the vulture in general instead of this particular incident at the guggenheim (oh hey he's canonically killed at least one person: check under his photo and the sex of the person the file's on; it's from the med examiner, and the victim is an 87yo female middle school secretary). but if the file's old then it can't be by more than a few years, because vulture's one of gwen's first villains, and she's been active for ~3.5 years. so at the latest, if the file's any indication, it's 2001. which could make sense given that gwen's from peter's generation, not miles's, and peter's got about 10 (ripeter) or 20 (peter b) years on him. so gwen being from an alternate past compared to miles's present would make a lot of sense.

also even though the plot picks up on 1610b in may and gwen's been in the society for about five months, it's somehow also may when she runs away, even though it should logically be january yet she isn't dressed for the weather.

tbh i think it's just that the details are all fucked, especially since it looks like in an earlier draft of the script gwen was only gone for twoish months instead of five, and it might have been even shorter before that; it's possible the audio of the actors saying in character that "it's been seventeen months" comes from a different version of the script from what the animators were working from, and that different sequences that made it into the final film were animated at different times according to different versions of the script. esp since we know how fucked and chaotic that production was.

maybe we can handwave this as 'it's a different time of year in each dimension; for example: gwen's dimension is a season ahead of miles's' -- which means when she goes home it's around october on e65.

or, that the passage of time works different in different dimensions, which means

1) gwen might have been in the multiverse for months, but only a few days or weeks passed on e65. probably a good thing if her dad isn't gonna be in massive trouble for his daughter going fucking missing, and for making their reconciliation more believable. (... and gwen being stranded on 1610b for a week in itsv might convert to being gone for a weekend on 65b.)

2) gwen started aging at the rate of the dimension she was in. so she literally came back to her dad having sprung ahead months in her development. when you think about the difference in how teens look only months apart, man that must have stung. the ordeal of running away literally matured her.

3) from gwen's perspective, it might have been only a few months since she saw miles. which explains why she still has her itsv haircut-- it's not that she kept it, it's that the decembruary-to-may skip was literally only five months for her even though for him it's been seventeen. so she hasn't been manhunted by her dad for years or pining after miles for a year and a half... and the emotional impact of peter's death is still very recent for her.

4) miles is literally aging faster than her. so the fifteen month age gap might be even smaller now (... was she surprised he got older because she didn't expect him to have grown like that, or to have grown at all? and is gwen more interested in him this time around because she's realized that they're much closer in age now?).

5) if they part ways again, each time they reunite miles will be closer in age to her until he's suddenly older, and then the gap will reverse and keep widening. unless she moves to his dimension for good, which i hope she NEVER does. which shouldn't take long if time passes ~3x faster on 1610b than 65b. interesting implications... including the troubling one that gwen is temporally unable to mature as quickly as miles and will never be able to keep up with him as he grows up. the peter pan motif reverses: now gwen can’t grow up.

6) maybe it took peter b longer than a year and a half to reconcile with mj, conceive a baby and raise her. maybe it's been a few years for him.

7) ... how long has the spider-society existed? is it only a few months to a year old? or much, much older?

8) ... how much time will have passed on earth42 by the time gwen and co find miles. might there be a twist similar to the end of atsv's coming where we watch a split pov of gwen and co seaching for miles and him still tied to that punching bag, only to learn when they finally meet again that those two povs are set not in different worlds, but in different timelines, and miles has been on earth-42 for days, weeks or months?

yeah idk.... the timeline of gwen's disappearance and the chronology of her world is so messy and the details all contradict.

i'm just gonna assume that the vulture's file is just cumulative and he was a supervillain who's been active for decades before spider-woman existed and may be part of why she decided to put that mask on, because the sliding timeline is too confusing otherwise.

[sonknuxadow]

somewhat related to that last post. even if we completely ignore the issues with the ship itself. if you genuinely think that sonic and amy are either currently a couple or will become one eventually then idk what to tell you its never gonna happen and the day particularly weird and annoying sonamy fans realize that and stop bothering people about it will be the day i know peace

[bigskydreaming]

Given how completely DC has erased or ignored the IMPACT of Kyle Rayner’s stories and having spent most of his existence as the sole Green Lantern and responsible for the return of the Guardians and the Corps....

Whoops, got derailed by my Bitter.

ANYWHO.

But since like DC seems pretty committed to never acknowledging that because it detracts from the legend of Hal and shifts the spotlight or WHATEVER their reasons may be.....honestly? I’m ready for a makes-no-sense-but-just-go-with-it retcon for him.

Like, long time mutuals or followers know I’ve been railing since YJ S1 about how fucking good the addition of Teen Lantern Kyle Rayner could’ve been...whether in S1, S2 or S3, I’m not picky, lol. But if you’re not gonna do anything with Kyle’s core history as the last Green Lantern, at least do SOMETHING else with him! 

Give him a different history, since DC loves to do that so much! His own past stories are still there, still available to read, they’re untouched by retcons, but now moving forward at least he could have new stories that allow for new contexts and dynamics. 

I honestly don’t think they’ll ever settle on a firm way to integrate him into the Corps because there’s so many reasons why he just doesn’t WORK as a member of the Corps....its too fundamentally opposite what made him Ganthet’s ideal choice for the last Green Lantern in the first place, someone who was INTENDED by the Powers That Be, to be able to make it or break it WITHOUT the Corps being a factor.

So again, if they’re never going to settle on a definitive way to position him within the context of the Green Lantern Corps.....cut him loose! Give him to his peers, his age group, the original Titans and Starfire and the rest. They’ve teased having him be a Titan briefly at various points in the past, but like....don’t just make him a name on the roster every ten years or whatever, INTEGRATE him. Give him actual TIES and connections with the other Titans. 

Remember that he and Wally ended up being BFFs for years, and examine how their dynamic changes when they’re on a team with all of Wally’s original friend group, with Kyle being the odd man out again - like he so often is - and yet so often manages to thrive in spite of that, forming bonds even where people think its impossible for him to.

Bring back Connor Hawke, and let them be BFFs again. Let him and Donna have a past instead of just randomly being Titans at the same time again and meeting for the first time (do NOT get me started on my feelings about Donna and Kyle being as fucked over by DC as Dick and Kory - well not to the same degree given that Dick and Kory had SO many years of history, but like....similar sentiments, given how they went from Kyle giving Donna a freaking locket formed out of GL energy whose continued existence was indicative of how she was always on his mind at least a little bit, and how they used to have playdates with her son, who Donna NEVER introduced other guys too, like going to the zoo and being fucking adorable together, and then DC’s like....lol oh they were basically just a fling. I THINK THE FUCK NOT).

Anyway.

I just. I would so badly like to see Kyle get to have ties and friends among the core Titans instead of constantly being relegated to the sidelines of the GL franchise. He would get along SO WELL with SO MANY of them, and already has at least a little foundation laid with a number of them. And he’s got so much potential to balance out and fill in the gaps in various spots where the Titans as a whole could use another personality to play off in their various one-on-one or smaller group dynamics.

I just.

I have a lot of What If Kyle Rayner Had Been A Titan Or Was Allowed To Be and Like...MAKE IT COUNT THO....umm. Feelings. Yeah, that’s the word.

[elizabethrobertajones]

I've seen people compare and contrast Dean's pearl wish with his djinn dream in s2, but what are your thoughts on Amara giving him what he wants most and the pearl his heart's desire? Given one is his mom and the other his dad. And one needing to be reversed.

Dean’s heart… an enigma for the ages :’D We should throw in from the pile of other smaller instances, the largest plain text one, which is 4x14 and the siren telling Dean that he wanted a brother-figure most in another episode which dealt with manifesting desires… Though that one’s been argued to shreds and has terrible context even taking a straightforward read of it as what it says on the tin, because it’s to force discord between Sam and Dean in the run up to their worst falling out, and so it’s a replacement in a very sinister way rather than the cleanest comparison you make of Amara giving Mary - actual Mary - back and the pearl granting John - actual John - back, compared to every other instance of wish fulfilment along the way. 

Anyway I think it is clear Amara had the better instinct… I feel like we all know about Dean and his issues with John, and I think it’s very much that the pearl picked up on a desire to resolve these things, and especially maybe exactly what the episode ended up being for them with John - just the chance to see the family unit together, and in a way see off the dream of what was missing there. That Mary being back begged a question of why not John as well - why hadn’t Amara restored BOTH parents, and why wasn’t Dean’s desire that SHE read in him to have this completed family with John AND Mary. 

I think the episode dealt with it really interestingly because I keep laughing in disbelief that what I never thought would happen even subtextually but totally had been joking to myself would, was Dean “coming out” to John in some way that set up normative family values against family don’t end in blood aka the weird ass family that he’s collected for himself through the years. 

Even as far back as that quote’s original use in 3x16, Bobby’s supplanted John and steps in as father and a strong subplot of season 3 is Bobby taking on that role, with 3x10 having a lot of this between him and Dean specifically… The show then goes on to not only build this up over the years to the point that Bobby’s the better dad, but in 7x10 goes so far as to suggest that he had been historically, retconning their history just one shade further from the way in 1x22 Bobby comes across almost like a vaguely known family friend to the one who wanted to play catch with Dean and defended their right to be kids with John over the phone, almost to the implication that the reason in 1x22 they’re worried about going to Bobby because last time they saw him he threatened to shoot John… was over their parenting of the boys. 

Like, John not only missed out and has some serious trauma with his boys, but in the family unit the show holds up as better than blood family, Bobby has historically and firmly supplanted John over a long arc through most of the core part of the show and final iconic death episode, so even though Bobby is also dead, we have AUBobby back if we WANT to step-dad him back into the family via Mary, and regardless, it’s clear that from childhood to way beyond John’s life, Bobby set down a challenge and the motto of the show and WON, and John doesn’t actually have a place in Dean’s family unit; he has the place in the NORMATIVE blood family, the white picket fence nuclear family from 1x01 that we see for all of a few seconds before it’s destroyed. But the family that means the most to Dean by all accounts of the show from season 3 onwards is not one that actually includes John and the more people Dean adopts, the less John factors into this, until by season 13 and 14 he’s shuddering out of the last of it by getting to raise a son of his own from tentative horror about inflicting a childhood on him like what John did to them, to actually bonding with Jack and being a better father than John was - thankfully with much lower stakes and 2 other dads to pick up the slack for the hard stuff when he’s emotionally incapable of reaching out at first.

And then we have how in season 1, the entire arc is about finding John, and in 1x16 we get that conversation between Sam and Dean which shatters my heart every time I go through: 

DEAN: Yes, that, but it’s more than that, man. (He returns to the dresser and is silent again, then once more turns to Sam.) You and me and Dad—I mean, I want us….I want us to be together again. I want us to be a family again.

SAM: Dean, we are a family. I’d do anything for you. But things will never be the way they were before. (DEAN looks heartbroken.)

DEAN: (sadly) Could be.

SAM: I don’t want them to be. I’m not gonna live this life forever. Dean, when this is all over, you’re gonna have to let me go my own way. (He and DEAN share a look.)

And then in 1x20:

SAM (Grumpily) That’s probably what Dad’s thinking. Course it would be nice if he just told us what he thinks.

DEAN So it is starting.

SAM What?

DEAN Sam, we’ve been looking for Dad all year. Now we’re not with him for more than a couple of hours and there’s static already?

There’s obviously like, a whole season of material on this but these moments stand out to me about what they want and how compatible the Sam Dean John team really is (without factoring in Mary being alive so there’s some more happiness to it all in what we saw).

In 1x16 Sam has John’s 14x13 idea of a happy end - of getting out of the life and being able to do normal human things and settle down and all that jazz, and John’s really sad that Dean never found it, and just sees a lack in Dean’s life. And then there’s the issue of having John around where obviously there’s a lot of reasons in the 14x13 set up that if it had been permanent it would have been better, but still what we saw was the very rosy honeymoon period of having John back. Like, they weren’t working a case together so we got no leadership conflict, but while Sam and John had the most heartbreaking chat to resolve everything between them, they also had one of those in the iconic “spent it on ammo” scene, which was, you know, wonderful and all, but then somehow John still ends up dying within the week after his last 3 conversations with Sam were all blow out arguments. And John in this episode was snatched from technically the middle of his falling out with Sam about Stanford, when he was coming from whiplash of disowning to wow damn the kid got big and competent and, er, hunter-y. Nullifying that argument from John’s POV just as Sam has lived just too much life to be mad about it when faced with a John of that era. Conveniently for their development in the episode, ya know. John was very cannily picked out of time for the perfect balance of emotions. Multiple time periods of John could be used for what he and Dean went through, but only Standford-era John could be chill and easy for Sam to handle like that.

So. We’ve got John nullified from being part of the core family and we’ve got him being potentially dangerous to keep around for a long time, even if we can assume the cheerful period would be longer. We still had, like, AUBobby. And whatever would have happened getting John up to speed on their lives and putting him to work. Sam is HUNTER BOSS now. Chief. King of Hell by default because the demons are all too scared of him to elect a new one. How’s John going to fit into a dynamic where even AUBobby’s acknowledged Sam’s the alpha? Sam’s issues in season 1 were largely being the kid still, helpless with being only 22 and relatively inexperienced at least compared to John and Dean even though he’s NEVER portrayed as incapable, he’s just struggling with being young and not being the natural leader his personality has always been and he’s always had trouble with. (the 1x10 fury about the kids thinking Dean is his boss is the best microcosm :P The actual argument of 1x10-11 in full explains it all though if you rewatch those 2 with this in mind.) 

And then why does Mary get to stay? First of all, just because they don’t have ANY experience of her, not as hunter!mom, barely as mom, and she’s a sainted concept with no personality so they don’t have a CLUE about who Mary actually IS and all the ways she can be flawed and weird and messy and like them and unlike them. In some ways a problem with John was always too MUCH John became a thing very quickly, while they’ve been thirsty sponges for anything about Mary. Dean remembers the tiniest specs of info about her and Sam is arguably in a worst place of not knowing at ALL. 

She also never got to fuck them up with trauma and getting a chance to fuck up and upset them as adults is wonderful because they get to go through Dramas and Struggles about having mom around and her doing crap things like sleeping with Ketch or whatever and like… that’s still delightful filling in gaps compared to them carrying enormous burdens from how John raised them… Even knowing Mary was a hunter and made the deal etc is a retroactive pain they only carry from season 4, so all their formative years she was a blank slate and John was causing all the damage. Even if we break John and Mary down to how they address Sam and Dean’s trauma, John shows up to make up for/free them from what already happened to them, while Mary arrives to fill in blank spaces and give them an experience they never had before. 12x22′s speech addresses all this in one way or another, about both the history retcon Dean’s had time to absorb since season 4, but also that the trauma came from John, and even the very setting of the childhood kitchen and Mary’s inability to see past her tiny children mirroring their inability to see past Mother Mary at times giving us how much they’re building their emotional landscape over this frozen-in-time leap of 33 years. 

Amara gave Dean forward development he needed most in a way that was ongoing development of a relationship over time, while the pearl resolves something that can be done in an afternoon, and free Dean to move on to a world beyond John and to embracing and understanding his own family values without the spectre of what John wanted for him… Better for them to all get a resolution about John, a good final memory, but then to accept that he came from the past, and to put him back there. While Mary is a scrappy disaster person just like them, and very much a living person with her own crap… John emerged like a ghost, and ~moved on~ like a ghost. But the unfinished business was on the living winchesters, rather than on him. 

… It was fantastically well done, I probably don’t need to say about how I feel on it :’)