#but B is clearly the intended 'endgame'

[kurokoros]

I hate you cross-tagging! I hate you pointless love-triangles! I hate you fics that shove in multiple love interests just to get as many readers as possible! I hate you writing that develops more/better chemistry between the ship that ultimately doesn’t work out!

[randonwilmonfan]

I'd love to talk more about the locker room scene in S2 E2 of Young Royals, where Wilhelm tries to convince Simon to get back together with him, in the process (sadly) demonstrating that he believes his mother's feeble offer to "talk" about him possibly coming out when he's 18. This takes place after his almost-removal from Hillerska.

Plenty of people have already pointed out how Henry snitched on Wille and Felice’s kiss, but apparently didn’t choose to tell anyone (as far as we’re aware) about Wilhelm almost pleading with Simon to get back together with him during that post-almost-dragged-out-of-Hillerska conversation. And that's definitely an interesting thing to chew on. But there's more...

Here are a few other things that stand out to me too:

First -

I think it’s worth pointing out the obvious — Wilhelm clearly sees Simon in his future long-term (possibly for the rest of his life). The way he casually says to Simon “So, we’d only have to keep it a secret for 2 years” implies three things very clearly.

a) He immediately and easily sees himself together with Simon in 2 years and beyond. Actually, specifically, definitely beyond. Because his eye is on the prize: coming out and living openly with Simon *after* he turns 18 — implying his focus is entirely on the intended afterwards period. He doesn’t even blink at that idea; it’s obvious to him.

b) He also really doesn’t seem to think 2 years is a big deal. For a teenager who’s only lived 16 years on this planet (only approximately ~11-ish of them in a state where they’re forming conscious memories) to think 2 years is just a drop in the bucket is kind of wild. Even 6 months feels like forever to a kid. So Wilhelm — a child — viewing time from this perspective suggests he’s likely balancing 2 years out against a much longer expanse of time; hence why those 24 months would look so minuscule and shrug-worthy by comparison. In other words: he sees himself with Simon in the LONG long term. Two years is nothing if you’re imagining growing old with someone and spending the rest of your many decades on this Earth with them. (All of this is pretty much confirmed later on in S2, when Wilhelm offers to abdicate the throne for Simon.)

c) He also doesn’t seem to think Simon should be appalled by the idea of waiting for 2 years. Yes, sure, we can chalk part of that up to selfishness and lack of mentalization / empathy for Simon’s point of view. But I’m going to suggest it’s more than that. My takeaway is that he assumes Simon also sees them as endgame, and so naturally wouldn’t be bothered by waiting a bit longer in order to spend forever together. (Sadly the conversation does not play out that way for him; ouch. Though no shade to Simon: what he said in response was realistic and fair.)

Second -

I think we have to rewatch his interactions with Simon as Henry slams a door and slowly walks past them with a raised eyebrow. Because, in S1, that Wilhelm would have immediately jumped away from Simon to create distance and try to pretend there’s plausible deniability about what their relationship has been and could be again. That’s (one) part of the whole point of S1: Wilhelm is not ready to be brave enough to face a homophobic aristocratic world and take a bold stance to stand by Simon.

Instead, in S2 E2, he sits still. He stays right next to Simon. In fact, he *leaves his hand resting directly on Simon’s thigh.* And he knows someone is coming their way! He heard the door slam inside the locker room. Obviously he knows someone else is here. But he doesn’t jump. He actually doesn’t really stir much at all.

He sits there like it’s of no importance, and he doesn’t care who sees. Or, even, who overheard this very intimate, vulnerable, and pleading conversation. A conversation in which the future King of their country is almost on the verge of begging his ex to please be his again… not just for now, but for multiple years’ time. I mean we’re like 2 steps away from Wille practically offering Simon a “promise ring” (not sure if that concept holds up in Europe, but it’s basically a very pre-engagement type thing in the US; it’s not common though). (Their convo also makes it very clear Simon was the one who dumped him and that he’s having trouble accepting that and moving on.)

Yet he doesn’t seem perturbed or disturbed by Henry’s presence and overhearing and seeing them. He doesn’t seem embarrassed at all. He’s not ashamed of his love for Simon. Even more specifically, he’s not afraid of people (Henry) seeing him put his heart out on the line, and of them knowing that he wants Simon back - not for just a hook-up, but for a very long-term, serious, committed relationship. And he doesn’t make any moves to emotionally or physically distance himself from Simon, despite Henry’s clear witnessing of this private moment.

This is a subtle way to show that, even though Wille hasn't yet gone through his full S2 journey of self-awareness and self-growth, he has still already begun changing and growing after the end of S1. So he’s at least started to learn some of his lessons about what he needs to do differently.

Anyhoo, the whole point I’m trying to make is… gosh there were so many fascinating things happening in that scene. And they rush right past us in the blink of an eye! But there is so much meaning built into every small interaction and non-interaction there, and into every nonchalant assumption the characters casually voice.

I’m sure there’s more meaning and are more details I missed, too! What did you think? I’d love to learn more from others’ perspectives, too. :)

[buddiebeginz]

Considering how annoyed I get when I see comments about bucktommy endgame I can see why they’re combusting because that comment section is 90% Buddie 😂 when we flood a comment section we’re crazy and harassing people and will be punished by Tim for it but when they do it it’s just because BuckTommy deserve all the love. When we do it we’re “biased and showing we only watch the show for Buck and Eddie”(proven wrong considering like half the Buddie comments also include comments about other characters like Ravi and Henren) but when they are clearly only watching the show for a guest star with minimal screentime that’s perfectly fine.

100% nonie. I'm constantly amazed by their level of hypocrisy. Like they relish in calling us delusional. They say we're seeing something with Buddie that was never there and or will never happen. Yet many of them used to be Buddie shippers so they clearly saw something there. They've built this thing between Buck and T*mmy up to be something so much more serious than it's clear the show has ever intended it to be. No one on the show has even called T*mmy Buck's boyfriend at this point and they're sending stuff to Tim about how T*mmy is Buck's soulmate. But we're delusional for thinking that Eddie putting Buck in his will means something important. 😒

They also have the nerve to call us homophobic and fetishizers yet they're the ones who have harassed people (even journalists) for shipping Buddie or seeing Eddie as anything but straight. Not to mention so so many of the things I see them post is about sexualizing Buck and T*mmy's relationship. And there's nothing wrong with envisioning the sexual relationship between two fictional characters you love but without a doubt I know that whenever there is a post about Buck they'll come post on it and make it something sexual about B/T. They literally just commented the other day on a pic of the medal ceremony with Buck, Chris, and Eddie on what if T*mmy was under the table (giving Buck a bj I assume they meant). Yet we're fetishizing Buddie because we've seen the love that has developed between these two men and the family they've built together and we want to see them take that next step.

Oh and about them having a problem with us flooding the comments with support for Buddie at least most of that is actual individual people. Our fandom doesn't have to create burner accounts to pretend there's more support for our ship than there actual is because there is a ton of real support for Buddie including people that work on the show.

You're also right about us showing love for Henren and Ravi. I've seen tons of Buddie shippers talk about how we want Ravi to be a main character this season yet the B/T stans have said repeatedly that T*mmy should be a main, T*mmy deserves a begins episode, T*mmy should even be on the s8 poster. They seriously care about him more than any other character on the show.

[voylitscope]

I have been feeling sick for the past couple of days. So, while fevered and with cold medicine in my system, I rewatched the Cap trilogy one night and then the Avengers movies as if they were a trilogy on the next. (There are three of them if you don't watch Endgame!) I also wrote down nearly 5,000 words of, honestly, unhinged thoughts about the Cap trilogy and another just over 3,000 about the Avengers movies while I watched.

And many of these words are me repeatedly, often in capslock, saying, at relevant points, that either a) Steve is the actual cutest, b) Steve is correct about everything at all times, c) Bucky did nothing wrong and deserves none of this, or d)it is still astounding to me that lines like, "Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky,'" are actually canon. Which, you know, was incredibly valid of my fevered self.

But, rereading all of those words now that I'm a bit more coherent, I thought this note I made during CA:TFA was especially correct and valid:

No one in the HISTORY OF FILM has ever refused to Not Die unless the Other Person with them Also Did Not Die, with the sheer force and will and determination of Bucky Barnes. "No, I will NOT survive this without you!" Bucky yelled, and it was the very most ardently that type of line had ever been delivered in all of cinema.

And I know we talk about that a lot, but I feel like we could always stand to talk about it more, honestly. I feel like we should maybe never stop talking about it.

I also made this note during CA:CW, and I think my fevered, tired, multiple hours-into movie-watching, self had a point here that we could also talk about more often:

Okay BUT: Vision becoming so distracted by Wanda he makes a mistake in targeting is meant to be read as romantic re: Vision and Wanda. This is clearly intended canon. So, okay. Sure. Steve (in this same movie!) becoming distracted by Bucky's mere mention and missing clocking that bomb in Lagos, is, then, by that same logic ___?

[whitetrashjj]

do you believe jiara was 100% fan service, or do you think jonas had sorta planned it already from the very beginning? like i know we had some jiara moments even in season one ("did you tell jj?" "i know that door's locked") but it feels like most of them were improvised and came purely from rudy/madison's chemistry irl during that era. also, if it was the plan all along, why would they make kie have sex with pope? and kiss john b? what was the reasonnnn

First. We gotta adjust our perception of ‘fan service’. It’s something that show runners should do. Adjust your plan to what the audience is seeing for what they want too see and be prepared for the story to change as it unfolds. When you don’t you get things like the himym finale. Where they didn’t waver from their original plan from 10 years ago, despite the story taking its own natural road and the fans responding more to a ship. And you end up with with a disaster of an ending where everyone is left disappointed. Now, fan service for sure can be done wrong when it’s rushed or pandering or doesn’t make sense. But as a whole it’s not a bad thing to listen to your audience.

Now as for the whole ‘jiara wasn’t planned’ thing. The creators have said that and I believe them. However, I think that is widely misinterpreted to mean there was no hint to jiara in s1 and people completely made it up. It’s obvious to anyone with a scrap of media literacy that it was there. Explicitly. They were very clearly playing into this idea of all the boys having a thing for her and giving a ‘who’s she going to end up with’ sort of thing. Which I don’t like. But clearly at the end of s1 they chose pope - I don’t get why they didn’t wait until s2 for this but whatever. Which means. Jiara wasn’t planned. As in Kie was going to end up with Pope and they weren’t going to take the jiara crush further than that.

But obviously they shifted in s2 after the fan reaction. But they had already committed to pokie so they needed to play out and to the most part I really liked what they did. And all the while they subtly laid the ground work for jiara. With parallels of how much better Kie works with jj than pope. For how they get along. And how their wants from life align. This is fan service done well. I was actually blown away by how well jiara was done in s2. It was subtle but a clear nod that they just had to tidy up the whole they got into and they’ll be right with us. They had to change their plan but they didn’t rush it, they are taking their time.

Would I have loved it if we didn’t have to play out pokie? Of course. Could we have done with out the jb and Kie blip? For sure. But as one of the s3 articles said. They aren’t repeating history, they are finally doing it right. Because those other momentary flings (JB wasn’t even that) showed again and again why that’s doesn’t work. Why something was missing. And that even more set up and pay off for when jiara finally get together.

At the end of the day. No, jiara being endgame wasn’t planned and never intended to be seriously explored. But, that doesn’t mean it was purely platonic in s1. Because saying that completely ignores canon entirely.

[aric24915]

Week 11 – Compulsory Q1

For the CTS B group project in week 11, we were tasked with creating a manifesto that encapsulated the key principles from all 7 weeks. Each week is meant to depict the core values of design and help as a guide to follow. The purpose of CTS B group manifesto is to conceptualise the morals of being a designer and bring what we learnt over the semester together.

A manifesto can be defined as a collective statement that outlines the beliefs, goals, and intentions of a group of people. In relation to design, it outlines their beliefs of design, creativity, and the impact of their work. Typically presented as a written statement, design manifestos depict a set of principles and ideals that communicates a shared vision of the designer.

Our group manifesto features an ornamental border design to enhance its visibility, while ensuring clarity for the viewer regarding the manifesto's central message. Each group member contributed to designing a section of the border, allowing individual expression and connection to the overall design.

The 7 key principles outlined in our manifesto are as follows:

To be expansive and connective.

Understanding the context of other viewpoints as well as my own.

You can’t design in a vacuum.

Understanding where you come from, gives you perspective.

Be critical and self-reflective to understand your audience.

Analyse your creative practice.

You don’t have to have an endgame, but you have to have a sense of direction.

As for my personal manifesto, I would also include “having the freedom to express your creativity and push your boundaries in design”. This is important to me as a designer as it conveys my values through visual art. I believe that being able to relate to someone’s design which shares strong core ideals are essential in creating art that will leave a lasting impact on the viewers.

Throughout the 7 weeks of CTS B, I found the significance of critical self-reflection as it helps me to understand myself better as a designer. Knowing what makes your design unique is crucial in making you stand out as a visual designer among the others.

In relation to Studio, the manifesto contributes to the design process of creating a festival project that effectively communicates the intended message to the audience. Knowing how to clearly communicate the intention and identity of the festival’s poster through constant self-reflection. Using what we have learnt in CTS B over the semester, I understand better how it correlates to the function and aesthetics of the event visuals.

(Word count: 427 words)

[yibennianyaji]

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

So, friends, what is going on with the MCU? We're now at the end of phase four (I think? I've lost track of that sort of thing entirely) and there's a very palpable sense of the air coming out of the balloon. By which I mean not that the movies have gotten bad—some of them are (Eternals) but most are still falling squarely within the same C-minus-to-B-plus range that has characterized this franchise from day one. And yet, without very much having changed, it's clear that something has changed. The MCU used to be something that I—and a lot of other people—enjoyed talking about, and maybe even more than that, arguing with. When it was bad, that was something that felt worth calling out. Now it's just something to shrug at.[1] What I want to do with this post, then, is not so much review the new Ant-Man movie (which is definitely at the C-minus end of the aforementioned scale but still isn't that exciting to talk about) as to try to work out what it can tell us about why the MCU feels so inessential these days.

There are several obvious culprits when trying to identify the cause of this shift. Avengers: Endgame put a period on an eleven-year film and TV project that maybe made it easier for people to hop off the bandwagon. The pandemic following soon after shook people out of the habit of going to see the latest Marvel offering in theaters two or three times a year, and it's hard to regain the sense of FOMO that made doing that seem reasonable. The Disney+ MCU shows we watched instead of the movies have fallen in an uncomfortable middle ground between the two mediums, not as compact as the films but not reaching for the classic TV virtues of building character arcs and relationships either.

To me, however, it seems as if the problem is both simpler and more profound. The reason that Marvel superhero movies aren't landing the way they used to is, well, the superheroes. Avengers: Endgame saw off Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and Scarlett Johansson, three of Hollywood's most charismatic performers, who were playing three of the franchise's biggest draws. Chris Hemsworth and Tom Holland have subsequently made soft exits. Other MCU stalwarts—Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen—have transitioned to TV (and in Olsen's case, had their characters killed off). And, of course, the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman has removed what was probably intended to be a central figure for this batch of movies. There's a void at the heart of the franchise, and while new characters may eventually come to fill it, right now feels not at all unlike where we were during phase one, still trying to figure out what there is here to care about. Except now the novelty of the cinematic universe concept has faded, and the star power that made that concept seem plausible is absent.

It's in the context of this void that we have to consider the decisions made with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Scott Lang is one of three MCU characters who are still standing and capable of headlining a movie.[2] It makes sense to try to make him, alongside Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel, into the core around which the next stage of the MCU can be built. Makes sense, that is, until you remember that Scott, despite starring in two previous MCU movies and having major roles in two others, has never cohered as a character. He's a tech genius who walks around with a permanent air of confusion. A self-destructive fuck-up with criminal tendencies who is also a genial dad and a bit of a fuddy-duddy. His superpowers are mostly used for gags—the franchise has never figured out how to make the genuinely awesome power of miniaturization work in a fight scene—and his heroism feels largely informed. When he rises to it, it's usually because of a risk to his loved ones—most often, his daughter Cassie—or because he's too awed by another hero to say no.[3]

In fairness, Quantumania is clearly aware of all of this, which you can tell because the movie opens with a voiceover by Scott saying everything I've said in the previous paragraph, albeit more generously phrased. The purpose of the movie is thus to reposition Scott as a genuine hero, not the heroes' comic relief. It does so, first of all, by making him not a hero at all. As the film opens, Scott is retired not just from the Avengers but, seemingly, from any other job. He's written a book about his adventures, but doesn't seem to be doing anything else except playing devoted boyfriend and father to Hope and a now-teenaged Cassie. This frustrates Cassie, who believes her father should be using his powers to help people, and has been getting arrested while using miniaturization tech to fight off cops who try to break up protests and clear out homeless encampments—a radical note that the film raises and then immediately shies away from. At the same time, Scott learns, Cassie has been developing a device that sends signals into the quantum realm, where Hope's mother Janet spent decades before being rescued in the previous Ant-Man movie.[4] Despite Janet's warnings, the device malfunctions and sucks the entire Pym-Van Dyne-Lang family into the quantum realm.

The quantum realm, as it turns out, is inhabited with all the things that make for a good adventure backdrop—there are strange and dangerous creatures to run away from and/or make friends with, a marketplace where unsavory characters haggle over dubious wares, a bar where you're as likely to be stabbed as get a drink, and badlands where mysterious nomads roam. And there's a villain, Kang the Conqueror, another variant of the character introduced in the first season of Loki. Kang arrived in the quantum realm decades ago and was rescued by Janet, who then joined forces with him to repair his ship's power cell so they could both return home. Right at the moment of their triumph, Janet realized that Kang was the perpetrator of multiple genocides, acts that he'd resume if allowed to escape. She sacrificed her own chance to get home by destroying his power cell using Pym technology, but not before he regained some of his powers. Kang then began to take over the quantum realm, rebuilding his empire in miniature. The arrival of our heroes gives him access to the kind of tech that could restore his power cell and allow him to escape, while the rebels who have been fighting him for decades hope to use that tech to defeat him once and for all.

This is, in other words, the kind of story we've seen many, many times over the years, in books, film, and TV. It goes all the way back to Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars, and examples of it are as recent as Tron: Legacy. And the two things that need to be said about how Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania executes this story are, first, that it doesn't make a lot of sense for Scott Lang, and second, that the film doesn't even try to make it make sense. The standard template for this story sees the hero dropped into a long-running conflict and quickly embroiled within it. Their original goal may be simply to get home, but by the end of the story they're supposed to be emotionally invested—they've fallen in love with the leader of the rebellion, or discovered something essential about themselves in this new world with its new opportunities for heroism, or become so disgusted by the villain's perfidy that they whole-heartedly adopt the rebellion's creed. None of that happens in this movie. Scott's goals remain what they always were—to protect Cassie. He never gets particularly involved in the rebellion.[5] Right at the end he makes the same choice Janet did, to sacrifice his chance to get home in order to prevent Kang from escaping, but the emotional foundation for that sacrifice hasn't been laid (and immediately after he makes it a new way to get home appears, so it isn't even that much of a sacrifice).

There is some good stuff here. Jonathan Majors's second take on Kang is as magnetic as his first, and makes the idea of him as this chapter's ultimate villain an enticing one. The flashback in which we see Kang and Janet's friendship grow and then shatter is extremely well-done, and Janet's self-sacrifice lands incredibly well for a character we've known for less than an hour all told. The rebels are a fun motley bunch, including an enjoyably dry performance from William Jackson Harper, some zany CGI creatures, and a hopefully star-making turn by stuntwoman Katy M. O'Brian as rebel leader Jentorra. Late in the film it's revealed that the ants Hank was experimenting on, who were also drawn into the quantum realm, have spent subjective thousands of years evolving, eventually developing a hyper-technological socialist society—an idea that deserved much more space in the movie[6], but is pretty neat for what we do see of it. But as you'll note, none of these things involve Scott, who ends up feeling like a bystander in his own movie.[7]

Of course, that last bit isn't new. Scott has always felt like someone who stumbled into his own stories, all the way back to when he fell into heroism after trying to rob the wrong house. The second Ant-Man movie leaned into that by making Scott the relative straight man to an ensemble that included his semi-criminal friends Luis, Dave, and Kurt, his FBI monitor Jimmy Woo, his ex-wife and her husband, and a villain, Hannah John-Kamen's Ghost, whose story aroused more pity than disdain. The result was one of the best MCU movies for reasons that, I think, tell us a lot about why the franchise has started losing steam. It's not just about the characters. It's about the relationships.

There was a period, roughly between 2012 and 2015, when it seemed like the MCU was interested in doing the thing that creates fertile soil for a fandom—let its characters grow and change, and let the relationships between them develop. To let Tony Stark grow past his need for an armored suit. To sit with the tragedy of Steve Rogers's separation from Peggy Carter, and his determination not to let the same thing happen with Bucky Barnes. To make the Avengers friends as well as teammates. That all proved a mirage, of course. The MCU's now-famous tendency to devour itself, to end one story on a definite note of change and then roll that change back as soon as the next story starts, quickly asserted itself. But the fumes of that impression carried the fandom forward all the way to Avengers: Endgame, kept our investment in the characters going even though what was showing up on screen was flat and samey. Once that story ended, however, the fumes dissipated, and it's now easier to see that there's nothing in this franchise worth getting invested in.

There's no better encapsulation of the MCU's determination not to do the things that attract fans to stories than the fact that Quantumania discards all of Ant-Man and the Wasp's supporting cast[8] in favor of a parachuted-in "family" theme with Hope, Hank, and Janet that it then singularly fails to earn. As I've noted in the past, in the new MCU the only people who matter are the ones whose names are in the title, so it's obvious why this movie doesn't want Scott to have relationships with people like Luis or his ex anymore. But it also doesn't sell the relationships it does want us to care about. We don't feel the love that supposedly exists between Scott and Hope, or the connection that has formed between Cassie and her step-grandparents. Even relationships that should have been a slam dunk, such as Hope's attempts to reconnect with her mother after decades of separation, don't land. And despite all the emphasis the film places on it, Scott's connection with Cassie still feels generic, the standard protective dad template we've seen in a million movies rather than a relationship between these two specific people, who are starting to figure out how to relate to one another as adults.

As phase four draws to a close, it's clear that Marvel has put all its eggs in the cosmic basket. In multiverses and variants and a villain with a thousand (identical) faces. What's been left by the wayside is any reason to care about all of this. As Quantumania demonstrates, that reason will not come from the legacy characters, who are being flattened out of what little personality they had in order to suit the needs of this new, gargantuan, story. Again, I don't think this will lead to the vaunted "death of the MCU". It will take much more than that for people to stop going to see these movies. But I do think we're witnessing the death of the MCU as a fannish phenomenon—a death that, in all honesty, has been a long time coming.

[1] When you say things like this, some people start talking with great yearning about the looming death of the MCU, but I don't see any reason to anticipate that. Cultural currency is, after all, something very different from actual currency. As Avatar: The Way of Water recently demonstrated, it is possible for millions of people to spend billions of dollars watching your movie, and not have a single further thought about it as soon as the credits start rolling.

[2] Yes, I know that officially the title of the movie includes Evangeline Lilly's Hope Van Dyne, indicating that she is a co-equal hero to her male counterpart. That was barely true in the second Ant-Man movie, however, and it certainly isn't the case in Quantumania, in which Lilly gets virtually nothing to do and is repeatedly upstaged by the actresses playing her character's mother and stepdaughter. This is presumably due to her much-publicized anti-vaxxer positions, so good riddance.

[3] It's never stated outright, but between how the incident is described in the previous Ant-Man movie and this one, it seems very clear that Scott has no idea what the fight he was roped into in Captain America: Civil War was about. This is both hilarious and horrifying.

[4] Cassie has only known Hank, Janet, and Hope for a couple of years at the outside, but has nevertheless become proficient in miniaturization technology and even has her own supersuit. She also calls Hank Pym "grandpa". This all feels very awkward and like a way of shoehorning in a family theme for a character who already had another family, which goes almost entirely unmentioned here.

[5] Cassie does, but Cassie is the latest in a long line of teenage girls whom Marvel are clearly positioning as potential heroes going forward, and by far the least interesting and individualized of the bunch. Her affinity for the rebels never rises above the generic.

[6] If nothing else, in order to create the callback to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids that this film so obviously demands.

[7] One character who does interact with Scott a lot is MODOK, a cyborg killing machine who turns out to be Darin Cross, the villain from the first Ant-Man, now transformed into an enormous, floating head. This is such a weird plot element that I have no idea what to say about it, but I knew I couldn't let it go unmentioned.

[8] Jimmy Woo appears in a brief, wordless scene, but everyone else is absent. Including Cassie's parents who, again, raised her on their own during the entire five years that Scott was missing during the blip, a point that the film seems almost eager to elide.

[gayofthefae]

Lumax works romantically where Elmike doesn’t because they revamped and they’re self aware. It makes me SO happy.

Like Elmike, Lucas and Max bonded and got together over the course of a week. But they didn’t pretend to be a bigger deal than it was - I think El’s “death” exacerbated this for Elmike. No, they, realistically as two people who got together in a week, were very on again off again with poor communication skills and it was not romanticized. They were clearly kids in a relationship. From poor communication to throwing skittles in each other’s mouths.

They weren’t trying to be endgame existing like that. So they were broken up when we saw them again 9 months later in season 4. They had had a year and a half now to develop a relationship, friendship, even if right now there was distance. Then their buildup started again. And THIS is what I love, how they saved it - saved being used here to mean not that they messed up and fixed it as writers, but that they always intended to acknowledge that what they had was NOT A STURDY BASIS.

One week is not a sturdy foundation. Elmike tried to build a skyscraper on it, so they’re straining and collapsing. Lumax, on the other hand, saw that it was unsturdy. So they took it down. And they REBUILT THE FOUNDATION. And they tried again. When they were 13, they liked each other. Now they’ve grown as people and can actually fall in love all over again as the new people they’ve become. They liked each other as 13 year olds. I think they love each other as young adults. And not the young adult versions of the 13 year olds they were, either. They allowed themselves to grow, and that’s what’s really important.

It sort of reminds me of if Jancy had tried dating during the time she and Steve were broken up but things hadn’t worked out and she had still gone back to Steve - then everything else happened the same. Of course it wouldn’t have worked. They had one week of trauma-bonding basis. That is the level of quality you can expect out of your romantic relationship that way. You can’t strengthen a foundation while you’re building on top of it. But the reason they work is because they didn’t do that and because they HAD a year of friendship FIRST.

And I think there’s also something to be said for Mike’s heteronormativity and “growing up and getting girlfriends” and the way he is much less mature in his relationship because he’s trying so hard to be. He’s trying to make this relationship last for the sake of it. He’s pressuring himself to never have ANY issues so that it does. But that’s what’s breaking it. I think she’s treating it more as it is. She even says it: “he’s my first boyfriend”. She loves him, so she says it. He’s trying to force himself to mean “I want to die next to you at 85″ when he says it and that’s why he can’t. He even tries to say it that way when he finally does give the speech. That’s now what she’s asking for. She just wants to know how he feels now. And he does love her right now, he’s just putting too much pressure on himself to mean more than that. They need to take it moment by moment and I think that his parents and heteronormativity and conformity made him think he needs to like girls and he needs to date the girl he likes and he needs to build a life with the girl he dates, but they are teenagers. He’s honestly pulling a Steve here, but in a more forced way because he thinks it’s what he should want.

They can be the sweetest friends and like each other and even love each other but they hold on too tight, and if they refuse to let go enough to rebuild that basis, they’re going to fail romantically. But that’s okay. As people, they could still do what Lumax did, but narratively, even without the love triangle, they don’t really have the time anymore and should have done it when Lumax did if they were going to. But like I said, it’s okay that they’re not romantic. It’s okay that she doesn’t need him. I think that’s really what he was asking for in that van scene - to be relieved of that pressure. She can just want him and the nice thing about releasing yourself from those romantic constraints that are harder lines is that friendship is much easier to naturally build a basis for - in fact, it is a basis...even if that is just for closer friendship.

Hidden underneath it all, we’ve actually seen them at their happiest when they weren’t pressuring themselves to stay together. It was easiest when they weren’t trying so hard. In season 1, when they were friends who liked each other. In season 3, while they were broken up (he was able to say I love you and treat her like a person not just “his gf”). In season 4, in the pineapple pizza scene. They’re happy that way. They deserve to allow themselves to be and to not force themselves to be together 24/7 just to say that they are. It’s driving a wedge between them and stopping them when some days, they might want to be together that much, but it won’t work if they make themselves every day like in early s3. They need to let themselves be themselves not just in personality, but in relation to each other. And that pressure is coming from their romantic relationship. They love each other so much, they need to let it exist the way it does.

Overall, I really think Elmike is a reverse Lumax. Lumax had more of a platonic foundation, demonstrated beautifully by how Lucas “won” the love triangle when he stopped competing in it and just treated her like a friend, but it was still too small so they were more of friends who were dating and the dating was on and off again until they had built that friendship strong enough to really sturdily put a romance on top of it. Elmike had a romantic basis of getting along and liking each other and tried to just go from there but it didn’t work so they were able to reach these happier points of friendship in between before trying to force themselves back together again, but being together is either tense for them or good because it’s them acting as friends with a different label so they need to take that basis they’ve mislabeled while together and apply it correctly BY breaking up - which I think has too distancing of connotations. They will get immensely closer as soon as they “separate”. It’s going to be beautiful.

Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 4

[musclesandhammering]

I read the ask about "gay Cas." Respectfully, I disagree that the so-called confession was unambiguously romantic - and I am not one of "the straights," I'm a member of the LGBTQ+ community myself. I do think it was intended to be readable that way, as a nod to shippers, while not being something that can ONLY be read that way. The problem is that they were - perhaps unwittingly - giving that nod to the biggest bullies in the fandom. While your other anon may have encountered mostly people using "gay" for Cas as an umbrella term, I've seen people literally saying "he only likes men" to taunt and bully people like me, a Megstiel shipper/Megstiel endgame truther (they DID end up in the Empty together, so my ending's as likely as anyone's). The same people will refuse to acknowledge fact that Cas was very clearly shown to still have feelings for Meg in Season 15 and even try to insist that all of their previous romantic interactions no longer count but claim that I MUST concede that Cas was *in* love with Dean. I don't, and I don't think you have to either.

Disclaimer that I am also an anti-Dean megstiel-shipping member of the lgbt community, so I’m very biased in your favour, BUT.. I completely agree with everything you said here.

I sort of saw the confession scene as the writers blatantly pandering to the d*stiel shippers to try to gain more publicity (because the writers are trash and don’t actually gaf about the show and that’s absolutely something they’d do), but I sort of agree with what you said- that they probably meant it to be open to interpretation so as not to piss off any one group of fans. Which is annoying and cheap, but… so is most of the show. So.

I also agree that- while I can concede that there are a number of people just using “Cas is gay” as a shorthand for “Cas is a member of the queer community in some way”- the vast majority of people saying it are d*stiel shippers (because they make of a majority of the fandom, let’s be honest) that wanna rub it in the face of all the rest of us that “SEEEeeEEeeeE!!! CaS Is ONLY iN lOve wItH DEEEAAAN!!!” Which is annoying as hell because A.) Cas IS a member of the queer community, but he absolutely is not a homosexual male- which is what they claim- and his identity ends of getting ignored because a lot of the ones claiming him as lgbt are doing it in such a fetishistic and reductive manner B.) There’s no evidence Cas was ever in love with Dean whatsoever up until the confession scene and plenty of evidence that they straight up hate each other, and C.) Castiel CANONICALLY was attracted to and cared about Meg. Like… that’s not up for dispute, that’s not a matter of opinion. That was intentionally written into the script. You can argue that it was an unhealthy relationship or that it was a poor plot choice or whatever, but it WAS canon. Period.

But anyway…

[kitkatopinions]

The sad thing is that Blake's most healthiest option romance wise is someone who gives her space and willing to let her go. Sun fits this description perfectly. But they went with a codependent toxic relationship partially held together by guilt in which one side is clearly submissive and the other too worried and insecure.

Yeah, tbh, the send off to Sun at the start of volume six made me think they would pick up the relationship where it left off eventually for a couple different reasons, but one of them was this reason.

I want to preface this post by saying that A. I don’t really like Bumblebee and I don’t need a reason to dislike it even though I have reason to dislike it, B. I’ve shipped BlackSun from Sun’s first introduction, and C. also I’m coming at this as someone who has been in a co-dependent relationship, so all three of those things means I’m naturally a little biased. I’m not pretending this is all a super objective, impersonal interpretation. This is just me talking honestly about my thoughts towards a ship I don’t like. Bees, I’m sorry if this shows up in your tags, Tumblr is being screwy and I’m not trying to rain on anyone else’s posts. I’m using filterables and putting this under a keep reading to try and make it easier for Bumblebee fans to not see this.

I had - when I saw season six’s opening ep - given the show mad props for writing a romance driven relationship where the partners didn’t have to stay together all the time to still care about each other and be secure. It felt like the perfect move to me to get some distance between their characters while firmly establishing that Sun had never done the things he’d done ‘to win the girl,’ and didn’t consider himself ‘letting Blake go.’ Sun not only being willing to spend this time away from Blake, but to not even need it really said, and to have his own stuff he needed to do as well... All of that felt like a healthy, independent relationship. I don’t mean to get personal on main, but I’ve been in a relationship where I felt partially responsible for my partner’s happiness and he tried to do things like keep me from my friends or guilt me into things. I ignored the red flags because our relationship was important to me, but it made me feel pretty unhappy because I was always worried that if I didn’t do the things he wanted, he would get upset and over-react, and put himself down until I built him back up, and if we didn’t spend the majority of our time together, he would start talking about feeling like I didn’t really care that much about him and how lonely he felt. This was really exhausting to me, especially since I’m an introvert.

Sun always seemed like such a good partner for Blake because he was always so self-possessed, so confident in who he was already, independent and happy and accepting of Blake’s independence. Sun was always there for Blake, but he also was the one usually pushing her towards interacting with others too, they were able to go do separate things and even go on completely different missions with confidence and without drama. For a character who had previously been in a destructive, possessive, controlling, abusive relationship, it had seemed like a scene that clearly established Blake and Sun’s relationship as one where Sun wasn’t expecting Blake to stay with him all the time, respected her goals and her independence, and had his own life and his own friends too. I had kind of just assumed that the choice to have Sun leave the group and go to Vacuo was to further their relationship. Upon rewatching the scene later now that I know that the writers were already starting to try to implement Bumbleby, I can see how the show writers might’ve been intending that scene to be an amiable goodbye where Sun confirms to Neptune that they aren’t actually an item with his ‘it was never about that.’ But I just have to shake my head, because I was giving the writers credit for something they didn’t do.

Instead, they were trying to tie off the relationship between Sun and Blake by having him leave, not cementing Blake’s independence and Sun’s encouragement of that (and they tied it off badly imo because Blake freakin’ kissed the boy lol.) And once they had Sun leave, they started setting Blake up with Yang. I want to clarify that there’s nothing wrong with the writers deciding to go with Blake x Yang, and the ship itself was not a totally baseless one. I’m personally disappointed that one of my favorite RWBY ships isn’t going to be endgame, and I personally don’t like the idea of Blake and Yang as a couple. But my problem isn’t really with the ship itself, it’s with how the show writers have chosen to write the ship in execution.

Getting past the queerbaitery nature of Bumblebee as a ship, the choices surrounding Blake and Yang seem faulty on both sides (which I also think is important to remember. I’ve seen loads of people recognizing that Bumblebee as written in the show is destructive to Blake, but I’ve seen much fewer people talk about how it’s not the best for Yang too.)

Let’s start from the fact that Blake is an abuse victim. She was previously in a relationship with Adam and talks about his destructive and violent behavior. Blake has a really hard time trusting people because of how Adam had acted. He was explosive, manipulative, and he got angry at and hurt Blake specifically for leaving him. The last thing Blake would need is a relationship where she feels personally responsible for the stability of another person. The last thing she needs is to be pressured into staying with someone. The last thing she needs is to be expected to be with that person without the option of ever working with others. The last thing she needs is to be in a relationship where she can’t be apart from someone even temporarily without that person getting anxious and insecure or without having to feel guilty and like she did something wrong.

And yet the show has her in a relationship with someone that has abandonment issues. The show has her promise to stay with Yang in a moment of huge trauma, Blake crying out a desperate denial to the accusations of the abusive ex who had made her life hell, after he tried to again separate her from anyone she loved and she was forced to kill someone she had once deeply cared about. It was also a really weird choice of the writers to have the characters respond to a question over if they’d ever thought about working with other partners with dismissive and cold behavior as if the very idea was somehow wrong (especially since Yang spent quite a bit of time pre-volume six working with Weiss and Blake spent so much of her time working with Sun.) And the writers chose to frame Blake and Yang leaving on temporary separate missions in volume eight to result in insecurity and anxiety from Yang and guilt for Blake. On top of that, Yang is a person with a strong temper and aggressive tendencies. Although she seemed to be trying to work through those problems in seasons four and five, Yang backslid and seems just as controlled by her anger and her insecurities as her volume 2 self now, who had lashed out at Blake and angrily pushed her for not listening in ‘burning the candle.’

As for Yang, she lost her mom when she was very young (Ruby was a toddler,) and her dad temporarily shut down after that. She soon found out her biological mom had left her when she was a baby and spent her whole life wondering why while her uncle spent that time flitting in and out of her life and taking on dangerous missions - the same types of missions that had killed the woman who had raised Yang for the first part of her life. Yang has deep seeded fears of being abandoned and losing her loved ones, and she also has a history of trying to take care of and support the people around her even at her own personal expense. While Yang’s more selfless moments in season five - like giving up her dream of getting answers from Raven to follow and protect Ruby even when she clearly wasn’t wholly healed from her trauma - are admirable, what Yang absolutely doesn’t need in a partner is someone who she feels like she has to protect and save and sacrifice for. What Yang absolutely doesn’t need in a partner is someone she feels like she can’t rely on to be there for her. What she doesn’t need in a partner is someone who can’t give her stability or struggles to trust her. What she doesn’t need in a partner is someone who won’t call her out when she goes a little too far. And yet the writers chose to put Yang with someone who runs on the regular, the only member of their team who thought Yang might be lying about Mercury, someone who needs time and distance when Yang clearly needs someone who is consistent and present. And then the writers made it so that Yang and Blake spend very little time with anyone else. The writers made it so that they can’t be apart without guilt and anxieties.

And you guys, Blake in seasons 6-8 feels so needy. She’s consistently in need of saving, consistently doesn’t stand for herself, seems like she needs a lot of reassurance in her relationship, she’s consistently waiting for other people to make moves, etc. Even when Blake convinces Yang to divulge top secret information to Robyn, when Ironwood confronts them about it, Blake backs up and leaves Yang to explain their actions. In the early seasons, it feels like Yang cares more about their friendship than Blake does and that she’s putting in more effort, which don’t get me wrong, makes total sense since Blake had just gotten out of an abusive relationship and Yang’s clear anger problems (and her using a laser pointer to try and force Blake to talk to her,) might’ve made Blake hesitant to get close to or open up to Yang. But while it no longer feels like Yang cares more, it still feels like Yang puts in more work. Yang is constantly reassuring, protecting, comforting, and stepping up for Blake, while Blake is so passive and acts so dependent that I personally can’t help but feel like Yang must be exhausted. Yang needs stability and reassurance too, Yang needs a partner she can talk to and rely on to be there. When the writers did write Blake as trying to comfort and take care of Yang, it was way too much and had undertones of ableism. And I know, I know they had this ‘we’re taking care of each other’ moment when they were fighting Adam, but that’s just what we were told for one scene, and not what we’ve actually seen in their relationship.

The worst thing is that it didn’t need to be that way. Bumbleby could’ve been a really good ship that built on their foundation. Blake used to be an independent, brave, strong, active character. Blake stood up for herself to Weiss, told Ozpin to his face that he needed to do more for the Faunus, used to have a great, creative fighting style, used to be this sassy girl who’d banter with Sun and with Yang and when she did start opening up to Yang, it was a great way to start evolving their characters to be a strong relationship. In V3 when Blake admitted that she had doubts about Yang due to her past experiences with Adam, but opened herself up and decided to trust Yang anyway when Yang looked her in the eyes and told her sincerely exactly what had happened... That was so great and it really showed off the dynamic the two of them were starting to adapt. CRWBY might’ve immediately separated the two, but A. Seasons four and most of season five had great set up for them to work through their problems and then continue to grow that great dynamic we started seeing in the first three seasons. And B. their respective arcs continued their growth as characters even apart from each other. While I wish that RWBY had let the two work some of this out together, the growth that we were getting did make them more suited for each other. I’ll always ship BlackSun. But Yang getting a hold on her emotions, maturing, starting to work through her abandonment issues, and displaying just what a caring, honest person she was, at the same time that Blake was working through her past and her fears, learning to let people in, strengthening her resolve, and coming into her own as a leader... Come on, those two characters could’ve easily developed a good, healthy, strong, independent relationship and I’m legitimately sad that’s not what we got, especially since we sacrificed so much of Blake’s personality to get a worse ship.

I don’t even know what to say about it, tbh. Idk what else the writers expected us to think with how they wrote things. I’ve heard before that there was probably a cut scene in volume eight that included Yang and Blake fighting (which would then justify Yang and Blake’s reactions when they reunited,) and I do believe that, but the writers chose not to include it, and that made them look worse as a couple. Just like they chose not to include a scene where Blake and Yang work through the problem of Blake having left Yang without a word of explanation at the end of Volume 3. And they didn’t include a scene where Blake explains herself and Yang realizes that maybe she was being a little shortsighted about the trauma Blake had also gone through. And they didn’t include a scene where Blake actually learned that she didn’t have to protect or take care of Yang in volume six. And they haven’t included a scene where Blake puts just as much effort into their relationship as Yang does. And they didn’t include a scene where the two make it clear that they’re fine being apart. If anything, CRWBY has established the opposite, and it isn’t enough to just say that they’re taking care of each other, when they don’t show that to be the case. 

Sun being not only willing to let Blake be with others, go her own way, and be her own person, but encouraging of that, made him a very compelling romantic prospect for her. Unfortunately I just don’t see that with Blake and Yang. Their relationship feels co-dependent, and maybe it’s just my personal experience talking and making me chafe, but I personally just don’t like it.

However, fans have been queerbaited long enough. So personal opinions aside, CRWBY give Bumblebee some confirmation you fucking cowards.

[firelxdykatara]

If you interpret Katara’s aggression towards Zuko as romantic affection, then you have some serious issues of your own. Is a very dangerous message for teenage girls indeed. People who ship Zutara have to seriously analyze how unhealthy the message of the pairing would be. Katara hated Zuko for a valid reason, and to twist it into something it’s not is massively disrespectful to both the character. The outdated and ridiculous notion that a girl who acts like she doesn’t like a guy is simply “confused” and “denying her feelings” is so sexist and degrading. Take her emotions at face value. It's never been

Yawn. Boring. This is the same old tired argument I’ve heard a million times before--the one that proves a) you don’t actually understand how relationships work, and b) you’ve never read a single zutara meta in your life, because that’s the only way you could seriously get the ‘good girl is secretly in love with the bad boy and hopes to fix him’ read of a relationship that bares absolutely no resemblance to that particular collection of tropes either in the show or in our fandom.

But ok! I’ll bite, since you clearly want so badly to be educated and evidently don’t have the time to watch the show yourself, nor the reading comprehension necessary to understand the sort of media analysis that goes on in a lot of atla and zutara-focused meta in this fandom.

Which probably means that anything I write here will fly right over your head, but oh well, what can you do?

At any rate, the first mistake you’ve made here is assuming that I (or zutara shippers in general, but since you came into my inbox, I’m going to be taking this just as personally as you clearly intended me to) interpret Katara’s aggression towards Zuko as romantic at any point in the series prior to their reconciliation (after which point, there is no aggression from Katara aimed at Zuko for anyone, me included, to interpret romantically in the first place). I don’t, and I never have, and neither does a vast majority of the zutara fandom in the spaces I frequent (which encompasses tumblr, occasionally twitter, and the very large zutara discord server I’ve been an active part of for two years now). Pointing out oddly suggestive tension in early parts of the series (such as the “I’ll save you from the pirates” and “you rise with the moon, I rise with the sun” lines, or the fact that Zuko wore Katara’s necklace around his wrist for like nine episodes when there was absolutely no need for it) is just that--pointing out tension.

There doesn’t need to be feelings for there to be tension, antagonistic or otherwise, but that tension is the foundation from which their relationship arc throughout the series grew, developed, and eventually evolved. This is what is generally known as relationship development, and it occurs when two characters go from having one kind of relationship to another within the course of the story.

For example, enemies, who become friends, who become lovers.

Now, your mileage may vary on this next part (although I really hope not, cause Y I K E S), but I, personally, think that ‘if a boy kisses you without your consent, but he really really loves you, then you owe it to him to love him back, especially if he just saved the world, and you should never expect an apology because since you suddenly decided you return those feelings, that means the violation of your boundaries was ok since clearly you really liked him all along’ is a much more damaging message to send to young girls--and boys, to be frank, especially since learning about consent is hugely important at young ages--than ‘if a boy who was your enemy goes to great lengths to better himself, to the point where you forgive him for when he hurt you and become close friends with him, then it’s normal for those feelings to grow and change, even to the point of becoming romantic, and it’s ok to explore them’.

And guess which one of those is canon to the AtLA finale?

Next, you say ‘Katara hated Zuko for a valid reason’ as if that was ever in dispute. It wasn’t--certainly not on my blog. I know there are some people who hate Katara because she was ‘too mean’ to Zuko, but I don’t agree with them, nor do I associate with them, since I have no time, energy, or room in my life for Katara slander. However, do you know what the operative word is in that sentence? Hated. As in past tense. As in, ‘Katara used to hate Zuko, but by the end of the show that is no longer the case, and they are extremely close friends with a deep bond and multiple life-debts between them’.

Why are you so insistent on not only denying Zuko’s hard-earned and bitterly fought for redemption, but also Katara’s emotions and feelings, which you end this weirdly disjointed ask by insisting they be taken at face value?

And it’s actually really funny (ironic funny, not so much ‘ha ha’ funny) that you use the word ‘confused’ there, followed by the phrase ‘denying her real feelings’, and then call that ‘sexist and degrading’, as if that isn’t exactly what happened in Katara’s canon endgame in the show.

She said point blank that she was confused, she showed with her words, tone, and body language that she was not open to Aang’s romantic advances, she had completely forgotten about the last time he’d kissed her without her consent, rather than reflecting on her romantic feelings as one would expect of a girl who’d been kissed by someone we’re supposed to believe she’s had feelings for since book 1, and was completely taken aback by Aang’s reaction to the play and his weird believe that they ‘were gonna be together’, when she had never once indicated that she wanted to be with him in any romantic sense. And yet, he kissed her--and while she got angry about it and stormed off in the moment, he never apologized for crossing her boundaries, and they also didn’t have a single significant scene together between that moment and the epilogue.

What happened to taking Katara’s emotions at face value? What happened to how ‘sexist and degrading’ it is to assume that if a girl says she’s confused, that must mean she’s ‘denying her feelings’? What happened to caring about Katara’s agency, even a little bit?

Anyway, I’m gonna wrap this up by saying: I do not believe Zuko and Katara should’ve been making out in the finale instead. I actually hate the fact that the final shot of AtLA was a romantic kiss (particularly for such a poorly written pairing), rather than a shot of the gaang together like it should have been to show what the series was meant to be about. I think that focusing on the romantic relationships in the finale undercut an already weak ending to an otherwise great (not perfect, but certainly good enough that it deserved much better closure) show.

That said, I also think a Zutara kiss would have been more earned, at that point in both of their narratives. Because Katara’s feelings had been the focus of their relationship throughout its entirety. Zuko’s feelings mattered, too, of course, (in stark contrast to how they were treated during his relationship with Mai), but Katara was the one who got to choose when and why and what she felt about him. She got to choose when to forgive him. She got to choose to help him, and to save his life, and her emotions were frequently the focus in a way they never were during her relationship with Aang, so nudging those into a more romantic light not only would have fit better with her character arc, it also would have been far less jarring to see that as the culmination of their respective storylines, rather than a romantic kiss coming out of nowhere when her very last scene with him was being kissed without her consent and storming off about it because it upset her.

My most fervent hope, anon, is that some day you actually watch the show, Avatar: the Last Airbender. Because Katara and Zuko are amazing characters, they have amazing storylines both separately and together, and it’s really a crime whenever someone misunderstands both of them so badly. I hope that when you do watch the show, you pay attention. You may see something amazing.

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

so I wrote most of this...four days ago, and then somehow didn’t get around to finishing it until just now, which feels super weird because after writing this I started getting worried about future episodes again for a variety of reasons, and of course now we’re at T minus 10 minutes? (honestly if I’m somehow late for my own funeral I’m pretty sure no one will be surprised.) but I still wanted to post this to go over some of what I liked so much about episode 4, even if...I am no longer anywhere near as confident as I was a few days ago about where the show might be going. whatever.

***

I’ve done almost nothing for the past day or so except chew over episode 4 some more, partly trying to figure out why I liked it so much when it was broadly very divisive, and I realized that a lot of what I’ve been feeling from this episode is relief.

the thing is I’ve been paranoid since at least Infinity War about Marvel doing setup that looks like it’ll lead to a big payoff and then nothing (Loki’s death, but also Gamora’s and maybe Vision’s, and the general fact that the “fix” to IW was convoluted, took place much later, and caused as many problems as it solved, and just, Endgame in general), so I don’t really trust Marvel that way anymore. plus Marvel has pretty badly fumbled a lot of different things in the past, especially on various social issues, by introducing unfortunate implications that apparently didn’t occur to them even though they’re obvious to literally everyone else...stuff like Thanos’s “sacrifice” of Gamora, or how the Flag-Smashers were portrayed and Karli was a villain for no real reason, or how it would’ve been so easy to add a couple lines in WandaVision that would fix the whole thing where the Maximoffs weren’t just whitewashed but they also voluntarily worked with Nazis and they whiffed that too. 

so, while I’ve been enjoying the show, a lot of that enjoyment has been based on meta I’ve seen and me sort of going “this interpretation is really cool and it makes a lot of sense, but at this point I can’t know if it’s something the showrunners are doing on purpose or if they sorta accidentally implied depth where there wasn’t any and it’s not actually leading anywhere” with things like the TVA being very clearly authoritarian but also supposedly the good guys, Loki being constantly described as an awful person, Loki sometimes being manic or incompetent, etc. etc. etc., along with the similar interpretation of “sure, we fans know all this stuff about how Loki is not an awful person actually, thanks, and the people who arrested him aren’t automatically Good Guys just because they’re in opposition to him but casual viewers--including not-casual-but-not-fannish viewers who should really know better--have not figured any of this out and so the show needs to go out of its way to demonstrate things that are obvious to us” but I wasn’t sure. the second half of episode 1 made me feel pretty good about where the show was headed as far as Loki’s characterization and emotions were concerned, but the more lighthearted aspects of 2 and 3 had me wondering again.

so then what happens in this episode?

the TVA goes fully mask off. the Time-Keepers are in fact fake, the Sacred Timeline by extension is also basically fake, the people who work there are all variants, the ones we know (C-20, B-15, Mobius) show grief and anger over the lives that were stolen from them, Sylvie is arrested as a child who did absolutely nothing wrong (and then put through the same process Loki was in episode 1, which is cool because a lot of it was kinda played for laughs then but showing the same things happening to an innocent child also serves to reframe what happened to Loki as, hmm, not that funny after all maybe!), Renslayer is willing to prune innocent people--friends and coworkers, even--just because they learned too much, all the sinister propaganda WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SINISTER

Loki gets very serious very fast in this episode. he displays a lot of genuine emotion and trauma but he mostly does it in a calculated way that shows just how fast his brain works and how he’s always, always thinking about what other people want/expect from him. (like--even the complaint about too few guards seems to fall into that category, given that he only says it after Mobius insists he must be wanting to make some kind of quip!) his self-image is garbage but through Sylvie he’s starting to maybe work on that. he goes up against multiple armed enemies while completely unarmed and holds his own until he gets a weapon. he pushes back when it matters and doesn’t just accept everything Mobius throws at him. he lies, pretty competently (the fact that Mobius doesn’t believe him is...really not his fault, considering Mobius wouldn’t believe him at first about the truth either, so I’m pretty sure he wasn’t planning to believe anything Loki outright told him), when it actually matters, primarily in what sure seems like an attempt to protect someone he cares about.

and Mobius. says that Loki WAS RIGHT. ABOUT THE TVA. FROM THE BEGINNING!!! I would still love to hear him say explicitly, look, I said a lot of shitty things to you and tossed in some actual physical torture at the end there oops but the vast majority of it was stuff I didn’t really mean and was only saying to get a reaction and/or information and of course it turns out I was wrong about all the TVA stuff, so I want to say for the record that I was wrong about you personally in many different ways and I’m sorry. (which, honestly, would probably be very awkward for both of them because I doubt Loki has much experience receiving genuine apologies.) but I’m mostly okay with it if he doesn’t, because I feel like you were right from the beginning, and by the way you can be whatever you want does a decent job of implying most of that. (...enough for casual viewers to pick up on it? well, I’m not hoping for miracles but sure, probably some of them.)

in other words? all that stuff the casual viewers were missing (not helped by misleading statements from the showrunners), about the TVA so clearly being bad guys, and Loki being a pretty decent person who presents different versions of himself in different situations and also has some shitty coping mechanisms, and the other Loki variant also not being evil just because they were trying to take down the TVA? we were right. that is, in fact, how the showrunners intended all those things to be taken. they didn’t want to come right out with that stuff at first because they wanted to tell a story and have some twists, and the fact that these things were twists for casual viewers is exactly why it was frustrating to a lot of fans, because it felt like obvious things were being misrepresented or overlooked. I still think that’s reasonable, because see above on why Marvel doesn’t necessarily deserve that trust, but at this point I’m a lot more comfortable believing that this specific show more or less knows what it’s doing.

I mean, yeah, there were some cool fan theories that went nowhere, like the whole thing with the broken TemPad, and I agree that was dumb and it’s very annoying that it really was just sloppy writing, but I guess specific things like that just...don’t bother me as much as more systemic, overarching elements like the characterization of Loki and the TVA. and yes, of course I’ll always be annoyed that we’re apparently never going to get explicit confirmation that Loki’s alliance with Thanos was coerced at best. but, you know, what we got isn’t nothing. 

[ginmo]

How do you think the Bran and Jaime’s meeting will go in the books? I’ve read theories guessing he might end up as King Bran’s Hand, meta where the writers want him to become a mentor or father figure to the Starks in a full circle of his redemption arc, while others don’t want or think he should be involved with the Starks long-term either because of his and his family’s sins against the Starks or because they view his arc as reclamation rather than redemption or atonement. 1/2

This is what GRRM said about Bran and exploring time. 

“It's an obscenity to go into somebody's mind. So Bran may be responsible for Hodor's simplicity, due to going into his mind so powerfully that it rippled back through time. The explanation of Bran's powers, the whole questions of time and causality - can we affect the past? Is time a river you can only sail one way or an ocean that can be affected wherever you drop into it? These are issues I want to explore in the book, but it's harder to explain in a show.” - Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon

Hodor’s name reveal is neat and all, but Bran’s power to manipulate the past doesn't exist just so we can randomly learn Hodor’s pointless name origin. That would be ridiculous unless the scene was used to introduce that ability. Hodor’s name reveal is important to the narrative, and I believe its purpose is to set up a much bigger event/reveal involved around Bran interfering with the past, not just observing it. I’m pretty sure GRRM was hint-hinting to D&D about this, which is why he told them about the random ass Hodor scene that was already written, thinking it would be obvious what that means for the overall plot and letting them run with it but………………..

Because of this, I think it’s possible Bran brought himself to where he is. 

IF Bran isn’t involved in The Push, then he could have been involved with Jaime killing the Mad King. I kinda like the idea of Bran playing into Aerys’ madness, causing him to stock up on wildfire around the city, because then the wildfire would be an essential future plot element for a bigger purpose towards the end of the series and it would be a question of time, “a river you can only sail one way, or an ocean that can be affected wherever you drop it,” but for the entire series. (And, as someone with a passion in astrophysics, I’m a sucker for discussions around time. BUTTHAT’SJUSTME) 

Do I totally subscribe to this theory? Eh. I’m still not convinced Bran is King of All of Westeros for reasons, but I’m open-minded. I DO think Jaime is surviving the series, for reasonsssss, so I’m putting that disclaimer out there right now. I will never claim with absolute confidence that he is surviving though because, I mean, nobody fucking knows, and there’s an argument for death. I’m just going off of narrative clues that I perceive to be clues, and taking other character arcs into consideration. After literally drawing up a table because I’m weird, the column for Survive has more evidence and justification than the column for Dies, so that’s why I lean the way I lean. SO with that being said, I think it’s possible he has more of a political future.

IF this is what GRRM is writing, Jaime would still be responsible for pushing him, of course, but future Bran would want to be pushed. He'd be setting everything in motion to create the butterfly effect that makes it happen. 

Even if that isn’t what GRRM had intended with exploring time, it’s highly likely Bran’s character development is taking him down a path of apathy over it, meaning he wouldn’t be needing Jaime to do something for the purpose of redemption for him. 

Speaking of Redemption…

-deep breath-

I’m going to go off on this a bit because it IS relevant, I swear. 

“Limits of redemption” is probably the biggest wtf interpretation fandom has when it comes to what GRRM actually said. I’ll try not to go off on it too much here but -

Interviewer: Both Jaime and Cersei are clearly despicable in those moments. Later, though, we see a more humane side of Jaime when he rescues a woman, who had been an enemy, from rape. All of a sudden we don’t know what to feel about Jaime.

GRRM: One of the things I wanted to explore with Jaime, and with so many of the characters, is the whole issue of redemption. When can we be redeemed? Is redemption even possible? I don’t have an answer. But when do we forgive people? [...]  I want there to be a possibility of redemption for us, because we all do terrible things. We should be able to be forgiven. Because if there is no possibility of redemption, what’s the answer then?  [x]

I bolded “we” from the interviewer, because it gives context to GRRM’s answer with “we” being the readers, not the characters or Jaime himself. (I think there’s another interview where he says “limits of redemption” but it’s in the same context. I could be wrong but I SWEAR I heard it. Anyway…) 

“I kind of tried to ask, ‘do you think he’s changed?’ to get him to talk about Jaime’s redemption arc, so he said something like he wanted to explore the concept of forgiveness and whether it’s possible to be forgiven for doing such horrible things, and that his goal was to ask the question, not give an answer.” [x]

Fandom thinks this is the characters giving Jaime forgiveness, and maybe there will be a small element of that in the books, but the question is for the readers. No, Jaime is not actively seeking redemption from people. His redemption is for himself, through living his best life, by rediscovering the person he used to be. Yes He Will Be Redeemed and No He Will Fail assume redemption is some arbitrary checklist determined by One Big Act, and they’re answers to a question GRRM doesn’t want to give an answer to. 

The purpose of Jaime’s POVs is to ask the readers, and the most obvious moment of this was the bath scene. GRRM smacks us over the head with the Aerys confession, and then as we’re introduced to more and more of his POV chapters, he slowly chips away at the Jaime illusion that was intentionally established the moment he pushed one of the perceived child protagonists out of a window. It’s brilliant, and I’m sorry GRRM that a large chunk of your fandom is too dense to get it. How frustrating lol. I’ll be insulted for him. (I’m legit wondering if his recent angsty tweets about grey and redemption about real life stem from a concern that his fandom won’t understand the point of the series.) 

To give you an idea of where these people are coming from, at least one BNF idiot on Twitter believes redemption hasn’t been explored with Jaime yet. 

But uh… 

GRRM mentioned his intent is to “explore redemption” after delivering Jaime POVs, because... it’s... not a spoiler… he’s already exploring redemption, because the question is being asked TO US. We were supposed to have an “oh shit” moment, realizing this is more complex than the surface level, biased perspective we were delivered at the beginning of the story. “Maybe Westeros and my protagonist have it wrong.” -cough- the people in the village in BatB -cough- 

No matter how much fandom likes to pretend they love GRRM for pushing the boundaries of fantasy, they secretly fucking hate it. They love to be comfortable, dude. That’s why they read this series as if it’s a clear cut Good vs. Evil, because a) ego and b) that’s easy. If GRRM was writing Jaime as doing everything with ill intent then…. his… question isn’t being asked. They think everything he does right now is selfish and Bad, so they’re waiting. They want it spoon fed to them. They want classic fantasy. They want Starks = Good, Lannisters = Bad. 

But… if the author sees Jaime’s actions as grey and complex, enough to ask the question to the readers if he’s redeemed in their eyes or not, then he’s not going to write an endgame that punishes the character for narrative payoff, because he doesn’t see his actions as “sins” or “crimes” in the same way that these people are. Once upon a time, a person on tumblr reblogged one of my posts and said that Jaime will rape Cersei before he kills himself and that will be his endgame. But GRRM doesn’t view Jaime as a rapist, so he’s not going to write Jaime as a rapist. I’m bringing that up, because it’s the same phenomenon. People can ignore authorial intent all they want, but NOT when it comes to predicting narrative trajectory. The general fandom is terrible at that lol. 

The exploration of redemption for Jaime comes in the form of confronting his disillusioned self and everything attached to it. Before someone thinks, “lolllll he isn’t disillusioned” 

 “he actually was a very idealistic young man who was disillusioned by life” [x]

Jaime’s redemption is the path of returning to that idealistic man for himself. It’s by feeling ashamed of the things he’s done to hide his love for Cersei. It’s by gaining independence and detaching from the toxic relationship that caused a mess outside of them. It’s by wanting to be like the knights he admired in his youth, and like the woman warrior that inspired him. 

So when I think about narrative payoff for Jaime, I don’t see it framed as him being “punished” for actions viewed as “crimes,” when GRRM clearly established those “crimes” as complicated and grey with a character already going through some positive development, and especially when the characters judging are written to be flawed as well.

On the other side, having him be “punished” by succumbing to hatred and anger is for sure giving an answer (this just… -sits on hands- don’t even get me started on THIS fucking hot take). That answer would be a clear, solid, “No, no matter how hard he tries to turn his life around, he can’t be redeemed, because he’s a hateful, angry, fucked up person.” I’ve legit seen people think “limits of redemption” is a boundary of redemption drawn in the sand that Jaime is walking towards but he won’t be able to cross it. I-......................... 

And what’s even the point of his handchop if scenario number 2 happens?  

“And Jaime, losing a hand, losing the very thing he defined himself on is crucial to where I think I want to go with the character. And he questions what do you make of yourself if you’ve lost that.” - GRRM [x]

(I’m going to put this quote in every post sorry not sorry) 

So he’s going to take Jaime on this big identity journey just for him to be like “lol nah he isn’t that” …?? That makes the loss of his hand meaningless, not “crucial.” Is it really crucial for him to lose his hand if he’s bringing him back to the beginning? Is it really crucial for him to lose his hand to make himself realize he’s hateful and a failure and murder Cersei and then himself? No. He could have still met Brienne and been inspired by her knightly ways, attempted to live a better life, found out about Cersei’s affairs, etc. He doesn’t need to lose his hand to reach a point of fucking murder/suicide lmao fuck (not saying he’ll do that but I KNOW people are thinking it). 

The loss of his hand is “crucial,” because GRRM has bigger endgame plans for him in the form of politics, and the journey to believably get there requires the forced loss of his warrior identity and everything that the hand symbolized. 

AS FOR THE ACTUAL HAND THEORY...

Even though I’m undecided on it, I CAN see it IF Bran is King. I get it. Jaime’s missing his right Hand, he becomes the Hand to the kid he pushed out the window. Hardy har har. I understand how that would be pleasing.

And we all know GRRM said something about how the best ones for power are the ones who don’t want it…  

And… this suspicious scene at the very beginning of the series… 

“You should be the Hand.” 

“Gods forbid,” a man’s voice replied lazily. “It’s not an honor I’d want. There’s far too much work involved.” 

Bran hung, listening, suddenly afraid to go on. -AGOT

BUT IF that happens, it wouldn’t be there as some sort of #atonement #forredemption. It would be there because of Jaime’s growth as a character after developing into a political player, after asking himself, “what do you make of yourself if you’ve lost [the swordhand]?” He’s no longer the warrior he once was. He dislikes any sort of political position, because he feels most alive with a sword in his hand. But that was Warrior Jaime, and the point of “what do you make of yourself after you’ve lost that” is Jaime going down a different path after discovering that Warrior Jaime has died. I mean, he’d never be actively seeking power and thinking it’s the best career ever, like he’d probably be all -sighhhhhhh- about it, but he’d be doing the responsible thing and what’s necessary. He’d make himself useful in a new way. 

“The Warrior had been Jaime’s god since he was old enough to hold a sword. Other men might be fathers, sons, husbands, but never Jaime Lannister, whose sword was as golden as his hair. He was a warrior, and that was all he would ever be.” - AFFC (Do I really need to make a post about how GRRM foreshadows? Mr. Bran: “I never fall”...?)

Jaime losing his hand was the narrative consequence for The Push, making all of his development post handchop -ALL OF HIS POVS- the redemption theme. It was the hand that pushed Bran, fucked his twin, killed his king, swung the sword against fandom’s Precious Protagonists… 

“You ought to be pleased. I’ve lost the hand I killed the king with. The hand that flung the Stark boy from that tower. The hand I’d slide between my sister’s thighs to make her wet.” - AFFC

So if Jaime becomes his Hand, it would be the two characters meeting in the middle, not Jaime groveling at his feet, begging for forgiveness, framed as a punishment for sins - “sins” that fandom views as “sins” that need narrative payoff, because they don’t understand intent. 

[captjones]

it’s so confusing to me that the writers of TVD have said that they always intended for stefan and elena to end up together at the end of the show (but then couldn’t b/c nina left)?? when to me it is so clearly from the beginning the intention that it is written as damon and elena’s love story. like if stelena is your endgame why would you have elena be drawn to damon just to go back to stefan at the end? if stefan and elena were truly soulmates why would she be drawn to anyone else?? makes no sense. whereas damon and elena from the beginning of season 1 have had a special connection. i just can’t picture how the writers could have possibly written elena and stefan getting back together before the end of the show and have it be convincing at all 

[rpd-rookie]

Hi! I saw that you're requests are open so i decided to write mine lol. How about the reader being jealous of Ada Wong because she thinks Leon still has feelings for her? And then Leon confesses to the reader and reassures her he only sees Ada as a friend(at best). Just some angst and fluff basically. Thank you!

There it is. I hope I won’t disappoint. ;-) It’s angst. It’s fluff. You’ve been warned. 

Blue Is His Favourite Colour - Leon S. Kennedy x Reader

Sitting there in your blue dress, you were staring at the woman in red in front of you, scrutinizing her with - what you hoped - was an expressionless look as she was calmly drinking a cup of coffee, her legs crossed like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct.   But the truth was, if looks could kill then the one you were giving right now would be the deadliest. You were not only looking daggers at her. No you were looking an entire arsenal right now (rocket launcher included), feeling an intense jealousy eating you up more and more with each second passing in her presence.     But that didn’t make Ada Wong drop her serene demeanour nor her over-confidence.

“That’s a good coffee.” You frowned at her sultry voice that was nothing else than her usual voice, you were sure of it. After all, that woman was oozing so much sexiness it was making you sick. “But I guess you didn’t pretend to be Leon to just chitchat with me around an espresso.”           “What’s going on between you and Leon?” She smiled and placed her cup on the coffee table before her, fixing her beautiful almond-shaped black eyes on you.     A scoff escaped her lips showing how amusing this situation was for her. But you wisely chose to ignore it. The woman in front of you was the kind that loved playing games. It didn’t take a genius to see it. It was part of her femme fatale persona. “You look way younger than I imagined. Guess that explains your insecurity.” You gritted your teeth at her commentary, probably because she was somewhat right. But the thing annoyed you the most was that she knew about you which meant Leon had talked to her about you. “And you look way older than what I imagined. Guess that explains the stripper dress.” You scornfully eyed at the short tight red dress she was wearing and that fitted her like a glove, not sure that this was appropriate for an afternoon coffee with a friend (which was the reason you had found to make her come here when you had texted her last week, pretending to be Leon). “That being said, you don’t answer my damn question.” “Ouch.” She grinned, not an ounce hurt by your words, before she eventually slouched a bit into the couch, knowing that you would not let her live your place without answers. You slightly glared. Even her lazy drooping posture was attractive. That was enraging. But despite your uncontrollable contempt for the woman, there was a part of you that couldn’t help but silently admit she was a very beautiful woman and that secretly wished you would look like that yourself. Even just a tiny bit. After all, you two couldn’t be more different.

Ada was the woman of all men’s dreams. Sexy, confident, mysterious. The type of girl that used to overshadow you in high school and definitely the type of woman that could outshine you even today. Who were you, wearing that baby blue dress, in front of that bombshell in a red dress? No wonder Leon had a thing for her. Cause he had, right?

“What do you want to know?” Ada asked. Finally, someone ready to talk and not treating you like a paranoid.             “The truth.” That was simple as that.       You were tired of Leon’s secrets. You were tired of him not telling you anything whatsoever about the mysterious Ada whose name was written on the silver compact powder you had accidently found in the drawer of his night stand one night when you were simply looking for a condom. But most of all, you were tired of fighting with him each time you were trying to put a conversation about her on the table.           “That might take a while. We have a lot of history. It goes back to Raccoon City.” You nodded, that sentence not coming as a surprise but tugging at your heartstrings nevertheless. Of course they had history. Had she been a one-night stand or just a simple ex-girlfriend, Leon would have never eluded all your questions about her. He would have talked about her as freely as he had talked about his previous girlfriends.     “But I strongly believe Leon would tell it better than I would. You should ask him.”

You were not stupid. You knew she wanted to hear you say it. You knew she wanted the ‘He doesn’t trust me and I don’t trust him’ speech, the crying and everything that went along with it and you were sure as hell not going to give her that satisfaction.           “Look, Y/N. You seem to be a sweet girl - a bit jealous and insecure sure, but sweet. I’m sure you’ll give Leon a flock of blue-eyed baby Kennedys playing in a garden with your golden retriever.”           “Seems like you played that scenario quite a few times in your head actually.” You spat. “I have yes. But I was never playing the role of the brood mare.” You fleered, not liking the comparison at all. But then again, Ada didn’t really exude mother material to you. “Let me guess. You were the homewrecker.”       Ada laughed, enjoying your sass a bit too much than she would have expected. “What I’m saying is that that scenario is what Leon secretly wishes. But that’s not what I wish. We’re different he and I and believe me when I say we both came to realise a long time ago that we would never work. I can’t give him what he wants. We can’t be endgame; despite the feelings we can have for each other … or had, since, judging by the feminine touch of this apartment, you must have definitely been living here for a while.”

Her long monologue barely comforted you. Actually your brain had stopped functioning at the ‘feelings we have for each other’ part. That bit had hurt like hell. Guess looking an entire arsenal at Ada Wong is useless when she has the right dagger to pierce your heart in her perfectly manicured hand.       “You’re wrong. He still has feelings for you. I can feel it in my bones.” You struggled to keep the nascent tears in your eyes, not wanting to look weak, or worse, childish.     “Y/N” Ada sighed and bent over to put a hand on your knee. Her voice was suddenly very compassionate. It surprised you. She was about to say something when the door of the apartment slammed open.

Leon barged in the living room, furious and - to your surprise - not even a bit astonished to see Ada sitting on the couch, meaning he knew that she would be here. “You can’t be serious!” He harrumphed, clearly mad at you and you couldn’t blame him. You had gone behind his back after all. “Alright. I believe it’s my cue. I’ll let you two discuss this among yourselves.” Ada stood up, took her coat and without saying another word headed towards the main door. “Thanks for calling, Ada.” Leon said as he glared at you. Of course she had told him. “Anytime.”

The door shut, leaving you and Leon in the heavy silence of your apartment. You didn’t dare to look at him, dreading to cross his eyes and most importantly fearing the inevitable argument. And right now, given the circumstances, you were certain that this one would make the walls tremble like never before. “Why would you do that, Y/N?” He sounded hurt. Was he trying to make you feel guilty? Because that was working but you didn’t need him to feel guilty right now. “Texting Ada, really? I thought you trusted me.” Those last words made you go through the roof.             “I thought you trusted me.” You repeated, probably louder than intended. “But at least you know how it feels now!”           “I know how what feels? My girlfriend spying on me?” He shouted, mimicking your tone. “That’s overstating things, don’t you think?” That was not the time for sass as Leon made it crystal just by the way he narrowed his eyes and slightly shook his head, showing how exasperated he was. “Then tell me what is it that you’ve done?”   “I went looking for the truth that you were refusing to give me. And guess what? That hurt like a bitch! Do you have any idea how I felt in front that woman?” He threw up his hands in annoyance. “You’re the one who invited her!”     “Yeah but it is your fault. I would have never asked her to come if you had been honest with me. At least, Ada told me what I wanted to know.”             “Oh, and what amazing thing did you learn?” He fixed his eyes on you with a ‘go on, give me your bullshit’ look that you found so irritable.         “Nothing very particular but the part about your ‘long history’ and your ‘feelings’ was more than enough to make me understand I was right all along and that YOU. WERE. LYING.” You pointed your finger at him to accentuate each word. But you weren’t done just yet. You needed to vent a little bit more. “She’s not ‘no one’ or ‘nothing that should concern me’! You have feelings for her.”         “ You got to be kidding me! How can you think that?”   “ Oh easy. A) we don’t keep a girl’s compact in a night stand if she means nothing.” Leon rolled his eyes, not believing you were mentioning that stupid compact again. “Here it goes again.”         “ And b) …” You weren’t even able to finish your sentence that Leon escaped the living room in the direction of your bedroom. He wasn’t leaving this fight? Right? Right?

“I’m not finished, Kennedy!” You yelled as you rushed to follow him. “Oh, but I am.” He growled as he opened the drawer of his nightstand. “I. am. fucking. done!” He said as he gritted his teeth, rummaging through the drawer. And suddenly he turned towards you and raised his hand. You covered your face by reflex and yelped when you saw Leon throw something with a brutality and a rage you had never thought he was capable of. Whatever is was, it smashed against the wall, far away from you with a loud clank. “There! Happy?” He asked with an angry voice before storming out of the room, slamming the door behind him so violently that you jumped.  

You turned your head towards the object Leon had thrown against the wall to see what it was even if you had quite an idea. A tear rolled down your cheek when you saw the silver powder compact lying on the floor, completely shattered. You were not the kind of couple that would normally break things during quarrels.   You sat on the bed and took your face in your hands to cry your eyes out. This, all this Ada story had gone way too far. You had gone too far. You and your stupid jealousy. You and your insecurity.

You don’t know how long you sat there, thinking about all the things you had done and that had led your couple into this mess. But you knew that it was enough. You dried your tears and wiped the mascara that had run under your swollen reddened eyes before you eventually silently left the bedroom.     You found Leon sitting quietly in the living room, with a glass and a bottle of whisky in front of him that you stared at with guilt and sadness. Leon was only drinking when he was feeling terrible. And if he was drinking right now, then it was undeniably your fault. You went to sit by his side, putting your hand on the glass before Leon could take another mouthful of the amber-coloured liquor. “I’m sorry.” You said softly.         Leon put the drink back on the table and looked at you, his blue eyes mirroring the same sadness and pain that were in yours.     “ I just don’t get it, Y/N. Why this obsession with Ada?”           “ No, Leon. Please. I don’t wanna talk about her anymore.” You confessed, letting another tear run down your face. “Sweetheart, we have to. Cause this whole thing is killing us and I can’t bear that.” He cupped your face with his hand, wiping the tear with his calloused thumb, waiting for you to talk, to finally tell the truth.      

“I’m afraid I’m not enough for you.” You admitted, glancing away from him. “ And when I found that stupid compact, I thought … I thought…” You didn’t know what you really thought. So many things actually. That Leon was having an affair or at least that he had feelings for another woman and that you were just a pastime, someone he would leave for her sooner or later.         “… that Ada still meant something for me.” He finished your sentence when he realised you wouldn’t. You met his eyes. If this was truth time then you needed to ask. “Does she?”   Leon sighed. But he was not annoyed at you this time. No he was annoyed at himself. “No. Not anymore. Look.” He took your hands in his. “I don’t know why I kept that silly compact. Truth is I didn’t even know it was still in my nightstand until you found it.” He had told you the same thing weeks ago. He had repeated it on and on actually but this time, contrary to the previous ones, you actually believed him. “She gave me that compact years ago, at a time when yeah, I had feelings for her. I’m not gonna lie. But here me out.” He cleared his throat to find the strength to talk to you and sat up straight on the couch.       “Ada was a part of me I will never be able to forget.” That sentence was painful. It made you sob but Leon continued. You needed to hear what he had to say. “I met her in Raccoon City. She saved my life back there and she kept on saving me many times ever since. But the thing with Ada was that my feelings for her were leading me nowhere. And whatever relationship we had, it was just some cat and mouse game meaning I was running after her and she was running away. And apart from some very occasional sex, nothing ever truly happened.” You grimaced. You could have lived without knowing that. “But I was okay with that … until I met you. And I realised that whatever I was feeling for Ada was nothing in comparison to what I was feeling for you. A love that consumes me, that gives me a purpose, that makes me keep fighting everyday and want come back home every night, that make want to make this fucked up a better place. I love you, Y/N. And I should have told you all this since the very beginning.” You sniffed, looking at the sincerity and the love in his gorgeous blue eyes. “ Why didn’t you?” You asked, genuinely curious.         “ Cause I’m stupid. Cause I thought that burying my past would be better for our couple.” That was indeed stupid. Had you known all this, it would have caused the both of you less pain “But I look nothing like Ada. How can you love me?” You asked.   “ You just said it. You’re nothing like her. You’re my everything.” He grabbed your chin and laid a soft kiss on your lips that made shed a tear because of the intense love you could feel in it. “And, didn’t I tell you that blue was my favourite colour?” He joked with a wink. Good, cause as you were gazing at his eyes, you couldn’t help but think blue was also your favourite colour.

[jonathanrook]

legally i have to give you intern 2

em you have awoken an ungodly beast inside me so i need to warn everyone that this post is. incomprehensible. but so is mymusic so i guess we're all used to it.

How I feel about this character:

i watched mymusic as it was airing/running/coming out specifically bc i'm a jack stannie, and as a kid melvin was my second favorite character (w scene being in first, obvs) for mostly that reason. he basically hovered around this ranking until my most recent rewatch in the summer of 2020, which was actually spurred by some events in my personal life that vaguely reminded me of scene's season two arc w jeff, and i thought it'd been a funny/nostalgic way to get my mind off things.

(i want to side note here that -- i know you didn't ask, but -- i love jeff. i have since i was a kid. like, obviously not as a person but i think he's honestly the best written character in the series, w indie close in second. idk what it says about the f*nes that their most interesting and well rounded characters are the villains, but i digress. to this day i'm salty that jeff never got added to the theme song and wasn't really included in promotional merch.)

however, in said rewatch, certain things about how he was written started to really get under my skin, and certain moments in particular have really stuck out to me in a negative way. like, for the entirety of season one and a good chunk of season two he's one person, and then he leaves mymusic and we have an entirely different person, but not in a nuanced character building sort of way.

i've said a few of these points before but i'll repeat them here regardless. at the risk of sounding like i've put on a tin-foil hat, it's my sneaking suspicion that scindie was supposed to be endgame, but since fan reception to it was pretty neutral, and scenechart stans were, at the very least, more vocal, changes were made to the intended finale, which is why in the last scene he's basically just. indie. like, if everything about the show was exactly the same but indie was the one who had ended up w scene in the end that would have made so much more sense since a) scene had a crush on indie that he/everyone knew about and b) indie was kind of a dick despite the half-assed attempts at redemption, so both combined make it slightly less weird/out-of-nowhere that he kisses her w/o her consent (since, even though like. implied consent is not real at worst and a fuzzy subject at best but you could argue that scene would want indie to kiss her); and this isn't even taking into consideration that c) melvin is heavily queer-coded in both seasons, with his friendship with nerdcore being, dare i say, homoerotic at times, and his arc about leaving the company and changing his name mirroring nerdcore's almost perfectly (with nerdcore being a character who b*nny [at least] has all but confirmed is actually gay).

i've also been on the fence about melvin's behavior in that final scene making more sense for indie's character being an intentional decision as a way of shoe-horning in a theme about the lasting effects of abuse/cycles of abuse/the corruption of power but i also don't think the f*nes are smart enough for that. however, for the sake of defending my straw theory, i also point to the scene where indie comes to visit the acid factory after melvin told him to shut up, and we see melvin use reggie as a foot-stool, going as far as to say that it feels good to do so (which, in all honesty, i think is a bit that was entirely improvised, since the f*nes were "notorious for never saying cut" [paraphrased from a bts video], but work w me here). he's also given a seltzer mug that perfectly resembles indie's kombucha mug. in these moment melvin is directly emulating the behavior of his previous abuser, purposefully or not, literal moments after being promoted to an equal position of authority, which was totally just included as a joke, but could also be argued is meant to show that he's becoming indie; or, if we acknowledge that the f*nes have no fucking clue what they're doing and were just directing like chickens with their heads cut off, it at least shows that melvin's new position of power is leading him to understand where indie was coming from, which is supported by their conversation in the finale.

the following contains a couple brief mentions of irl sexual assault so if that's something you'd like to avoid skip to the next section!

HOWEVER, that alone isn't what i have a problem with, since i think melvin is completely justified in being a dick to indie (and also reggie enthusiastically consents to being used as an ottoman so good for him i guess). the issue comes completely in how he treats scene in the scenes where the f*nes clearly thought what they were writing was super romantic. like, the fact that the only thing he's got hung on his cubicle wall is a single picture of scene taken from the fucking opening credits (like. how hard would it have been to have. literally any other photo[s] esp since there's an abundance of cute bts pics of the cast in costume that could have been put there) and him scrolling through her twitter at work really creep me out (and at the risk of oversharing the weird, like, social media stalking angle really fucks w me bc that may or may not have been the exact fucking thing i was trying to escape in rewatching mymusic in the first place). also, having him sexually assault scene as a means of comforting her after she had just been sexually assaulted in the same way by someone else was... a choice (which is also, uh, personally familiar).

again, i recognize that demonizing melvin wasn't what the f*nes were trying to do here, and i perhaps seem hypocritical for opening liking jeff, but what makes jeff work is he's intentionally "the bad guy." having melvin do the same things as indie and jeff uncritically only proves further that the f*nes can't write for shit, and ruins his character which had, up until he quit mymusic, been unironically good. like, it's obviously not beneficial that the exact asshole things he does are personally triggering, but the character would still be a mess and i would still dislike him regardless.

i want to say though that jack delivers a surprisingly great performance despite how shoddily his character is constructed and how little experience he has as an actor. like, it's clear he was having a lot of fun on set and i would love to see him in something, like, good; i think he could pull off even like, guest television roles, which is a lot more than can be said for other youtubers.

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All the people I ship romantically with this character:

nerdchart should have been canon i'm sorry. i know that close, nonromantic male friendships are valuable, esp between queer men, but also gd wouldn't it have been baller to have a canon interracial mlm ship. like. c'mon. and they could have been such a good friends to lovers story! we already got to see how melvin was the only person nerdcore could really be himself around so it would have been so cool if melvin's self-advocacy arc/flowchart arc had revolved more around nerdcore with a little role-reversal! and then they kiss! like god intended!

also i ship him and indie bc i'm a grubby little gremlin man ohoho. enemies w weird sexual tension? sign me up. not even enemies to lovers i'm not saying this one should have been canon i just love the vibes. do you think melvin and indie ever explored each other's bod-- *gunshot*

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My non-romantic OTP for this character:

i wish him and scene had just been bros. god remember in season one when they were just bros that was the life.

alternatively, i wish we'd seen more bonding w him and metal, as a means of reconciling that. uh. moment from season one. along similar lines i would have loved to see him get closer w rayna in a similar way to how she bonded w nerdcore in season two. i think that could have also worked to show how she'd grown between the two seasons.

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My unpopular opinion about this character:

HIM. AND. SCENE. SHOULD. HAVE. JUST. BEEN. BROS. (though i think my general dislike of him is pretty unpopular, lmao).

when the show was coming out i don't think it's unfair to say that scenechart/scenetern 2 was the most popular ship (aside from potentially techstep whatever) but luckily we're all gay and have better taste now. unfortunately i totally fell into this camp and scenechart was even my otp for years (until it was arguably more unfortunately usurped by reddie in 2019) and i didn't even realise that it's a hot mess until, again, the summer of 2020.

when actually watching the show the choices the f*nes made in regards to how the ship actually became canon are so odd and out of place, too? okay, so, on one hand everyone just shipped scenechart bc it was the whitest hettiest ship in the show (esp in season two when idol left) aside from scindie (and we already discussed what's wrong w that). but, on the other hand, lainey and jack clearly also just got along? and i suspect that lainey probably also admired jack's work and was happy to be working with him bc we have so many shots throughout even the first season when the ship wasn't the intended endgame of lainey scene looking really fondly at jack melvin at times when it doesn't make much sense at all, esp since she's smitten w indie? this trend continues into the second season which arguably works but it still seems really out of place for him to be the one to ultimately make the first move on her since it's clear she was the one crushing this whole time and also he's gay! this bitch is gay what the fuck!!

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One thing I wish had happened with this character in canon:

at this point i'm struggling to think of anything i haven't covered yet. oops.

i've talked at length before about how he should have been a woman/lesbian, but the tl;dr is that it would have solved a lot of the queer-coding "problems" that just didn't get resolved in the show. if he'd been a lesbian then not only would the friendship w nerdcore still made sense, but scenechart would have as well (not even mentioning that both of scene's other relationships w men make a lot of sense as comphet anyway).