#but yeah like. genuinely i think it's interesting how he's seen as villain-coded

[donnie-and-their-backup-turtles]

i kinda think part of why people treat donnie as less caring than he is is like. sometimes not knowing when he's joking? like that time he threatens to be "semi-lethal" when splinter's in the truck with meat sweats. like i'm sure most of you knew he was joking but like. do some of you realise he like, would not have done that? like remember how he was sad? when splinter actually got hurt? same with leo in the movie? and all of them at every other time?

like he's self proclaimed funniest. and also a mad scientist aesthetic doesn't make a character a villain by itself it's what you actually do with that (yes he has done bad things within that area (haunted stare towards mind meld) but you have to admit he like. did fix those. and feel bad and hopefully learn his lesson but hey that's another analysis)

i have mixed feelings on villain donnie stuff, as an example, because like. ANY character put in a situation where they lose their way is really fun and if in character is really interesting as to what could cause that.

but when it's treated as like. inevitable. who he is, or phrasing his brothers are the only thing stopping him being evil. it's like hm. ugh. kind of hurts a bit actually but that's probably because i relate to him ghfdjk

like the seen in snow day with the tech bo chainsaw like. all he really DOES is cut a snowman there but he's just like. leaning into being "evil" with the chainsaw but like he's just being silly with it. acting like that's proof of anything is wild to me, without any other data points.

also kind of separate but i think there's a dissonance between what is like. seen as evil? between me and like most people lol. like the scene in the movie as well with like "finally, man and machine, entwixt in perfect bionic synergy" someone i watched it with was like "haha evil moment" or whatever where i was just like. yeah real that would be rad as hell. honestly gender also.

not saying he's never done anything wrong but i am saying he immediately tries to fix all of those things

anyway he does have a really interesting relationship with morals in my eyes but like, at his core he really cares about people, you know?

this isn't hate to anyone btw i just care about donnie a lot as a character and as really layered autistic representation

[canonically-a-genloser]

Please explain all the genloss characters to me

All I know is the stuff from the live I haven’t kept up with anything else

oh boy you're gonna have a TIME reading this one brother i'm gonna spend hours typing out the insane stuff the randy collective has come up with

okay so the insaneification of genloss started with sneeg. FANON IS WRONG ABOUT HIM HE IS WRONG IN EVERY FIC THE MASSES DO NOT UNDERSTAND HIM . so basically to be true to the canon sneeg mutual started actually talking about the trauma he would have and how genuinely fucked up he would be and that's how the randy collective started. anyways i touched on the whole being raised by showfall thing which ties into kids theory. charlie and sneeg would have been so so so codependent and toxic and they love each other and they're all over each other like animals but they'll also fight to the fucking death because showfall can just revive them. (there's a creature au as well that is very cool but i'll talk about that later if i remember.) frank was sneeg's boyfriend and he got permakilled for it and i will come back to this (but also. side note. yellow is frank's color. that's the color of the number code ran chose to put into the computer. maybe this doesn't mean anything but i think the yellow connecting to frank and the fact that he was dead was foreshadowing but take that as you will. moving on)

generation loss charlie. everyone talks about him. everyone loves charlie. they don't care about sneeg. charlie knows this and he will use it against sneeg any way he can. he's the favourite and he flaunts that at sneeg and knows showfall would kill sneeg if he said the word. at the same time sneeg knows this and he would be so fucking jealous of that. he would kill charlie for it. he'd regret it but that wouldn't stop him. it's the cain and abel symbolism and it could be explained so much better but i really really love this point so i had to mention it.

another thing about charlie being the favorite. charlie genuinely doesn't have anyone without sneeg. so when frank comes along and starts talking to sneeg and basically taking his brother away from him he gets jealous of that. there's multiple endings to this one but it was an interesting point.

last thing about charlie for now the charlie mutual made headcanons for transfem/transmasc charlie separately and they are so cool. i can't remember who had the idea of aroace charlie but we love that too. we spin him in the washing machine

i have my own version of ran as well. in all my post escape aus they use hearing aids and prosthetic eyes from where the box messed up their face. (SHOWFALL EMPLOYEE AUS GO SO FUCKING HARD WITH THIS ONE. TO ME. i literally cannot forget to talk about this later.) but yeah that's my basic design idea and the headcanons for this guy are crazy. one of my favorites is the one that sneeg and charlie were literally on top of each other all the time being brothers so ranboo adopted that kind of show of affection post escape. they're fucked up brothers your honor

hETCH IS NOT THE VILLAIN. HE IS A VICTIM TOO. the popular headcanon is that he's also gay for the founder and sometimes we like to think about how it would be funny if the founder were gay for him too but honestly hetch is most likely just their emotional support wet cat. but yeah charlie mutual started making headcanons about charlie and hetch being blood brothers and i was never able to erase that from my memory /vvpos . i love thinking about that dynamic too for so so many reasons. hetch staying with charlie and sneeg and basically raising them and there's just so much in there that i can't even get into yet because i haven't explained the employees BUT I WILL I PROMISE

niki is such a fucking fun one to think about too. i don't have much on her because she's actually characterized decently well from what i've seen but @/white-collar-cannibal has an au where she cuts off her hair and just. the butch niki headcanons. it's such a cool concept. because we've discussed her too and as popular hcs go niki was brought in as a teenager. i think we said 14-15 (but don't quote me on that i could be wrong). but the basic idea is showfall made her be pretty and she wants to be like sneeg. she wants to fight and be able to stomach stuff like all the gruesome stuff showfall fed sneeg and charlie as kids and ough. it's just so cool to think about i love her character

I'M GONNA REBLOG WITH STUFF ABOUT THE OC SHOWFALL EMPLOYEES (AND ANYTHING ELSE MAJOR I MISSED SO FAR) BUT I'VE BEEN TYPING FOR SO LONG AND THIS PROBABLY MAKES ZERO SENSE THE WAY I WORDED HALF OF THIS SO .

EDIT: tumblr notifs ate it but @/white-collar-cannibal actually came up with the transfem charlie hcs! my bad on that one i don't remember who does what sometimes!!

[veraynes-blog]

Fave Shows tag game

Rules: List 5 favourite shows (in no particular order) and answer questions accordingly.

Doctor Who

Good Omens

Life on Mars

Blackpool

The Thick of It

@johnsimms thank you for tagging me, this one was super fun to think about!

(Nobody look at me about the fact there are maybe 3 individual actors stretched across those 5 shows, I am. Aware. 😶)

~

1. Who is your favourite character in 2?

I feel slightly like I’ll get lynched for picking a favourite, but - Crowley. Hands down. Not just for the DT factor, although I’m sure it contributes. I just really love everything about how his character is presented in the TV show, from all his performative showing off to the very obvious insecurities and nerves he’s trying to cover up at any given moment, I think he’s lovely. I want to wrap him in a blanket and give him tea. Which is very Aziraphale-coded of me.

2. Who is your least favourite character in 1?

Uhh… that’s a vast sea of characters you’re asking me to pick from. I can’t pick villains, cuz let’s face it my very favourite is the most villain. If I restrict myself to main companions, I guess… Yaz? I know that will be an unpopular opinion, I just don’t think she was super compelling as a character, and her relationship with the Doctor felt very anticlimactic to me, so as a companion she just fell flat for me.

3. What’s your favourite episode of 4?

I’m trying to pick… Either episode 2, because of the scene where Carlisle and Natalie go on the date in the drag club (because, unironically, I remember getting actual butterflies at how romantic I thought it was), or the final episode 6,  watching Carlisle throw caution to the wind and fully come into his own as utter manipulative bastard to get what he wants. Actually, yeah, that one.

4. What is your favourite season of 5?

Because I tend to watch them all in one big chunk, I’m struggling to remember what even happens in separate seasons. I really liked Hugh in it, so either Season 1 or 2.

5. What’s your favourite relationship in 3?

Sam and Gene. Easy one! 😄 I don’t even care if it’s platonic or romantic, I think they had amazing chemistry that clashed against each other constantly and made it so compelling to watch. I love that they very genuinely irritate the life out of each other and just as reluctantly like each other.

6. Who is your anti relationship in 2?

Think I’m going to have to steal an answer here, but Newt and Anathema because I also don’t like the ‘prophesy said so I guess’ foundation of it. It didn’t bother me massively as a pairing, I just wasn’t very interested in it.

7. How long have you watched 1?

Casually since I was 15 and it started coming out again in 2005. I’ve watched every new series with my mum, but only joined the fandom (got obsessive) around 2019.

8. How did you become interested in 3?

John Simm. That’s the whole answer. My joining the Doctor Who fandom led to TenSimm shipping, and from there stalking the filmography of both David Tennant and John Simm as truly excellent actors. I watched a lot of shows I’d missed out on previously from them both during the downtime of the pandemic, Life on Mars was an enduring favourite.

9. Who is your favourite actor in 4?

I mean… does it even need stating since DT is a lead in 3 of my 5 picks? Definitely David Tennant (although Blackpool sold me on David Morrissey as a great actor as well, he’d be a close second).

10. Which show do you prefer 1, 2 or 5?

Difficult. In terms of raw numbers, I’ve rewatched TTOI more than any of them, I used to play the four seasons on literal repeat for days. Good Omens makes me giddier than anything I’ve ever watched. But in terms of longevity of interest, I’d have to say DW.

11. Which show have you seen more episodes of 1 or 3?

That feels a very unfair comparison given Doctor Who is as long-running as it is, but yeah easily Doctor Who. 😅

12. If you could be anyone from 4, who would you be?

I guess Natalie?? Swept off her feet by a dreamy looking guy absolutely set on breaking law and morals to be with her? Yeah I’d be okay with that. 👀

13. How would you kill off your favourite character in 5?

Well, that’s Malcolm, so I guess shady political assassination? Something that generates conspiracy theories and memoirs and newspaper thinkpieces for years afterwards. It’s what he would have wanted. ✌️😔

14. Would a 3/4 crossover work?

Yes. Oh my god yes. 😶 Can you imagine?? People start breaking into song and Sam is convinced he’s off his coma meds again. Carlisle fully willing to out-shade Gene. The clash of Manchester and Scottish slang. DT and John Simm working together again, the chemistry.

Quick, somebody please slap together a fanvid or a fanfic or a headcanon or something, I am possessed by this idea. 🤯

15. Pair two characters in 1 that would make an unlikely, but strangely okay couple.

I’m gonna be basic and still think about the Doctor/Master pairing, but if we’re talking unusual iterations of it… Spymaster and Ten just absolutely outdoing each other in the needy olympics would be fascinating. Thirteen and Missy is a close second. Missy would so appreciate Thirteen’s barely-contained feral vibes. She’d wanna keep her on a leash, it’d be great.

16. Overall, which show has the better cast, 3 or 5?

Ooooh that’s so difficult. I love TTOI for the insane improv skills of Capaldi and the rest of the cast, but in terms of raw chemistry it’s gotta be LoM.

Tagging @linz33y @countessrivers @imdoingawesome @roxannepolice @tardis-ghost-blog @ten-nan-th-doctor @mothmanyeetus @best-enemies @bluebird-appreciator and really anyone else who wants to have a go! A lot of the questions are super fun to answer 😊

[fauzhee10069]

JJBA part 4: The Sad Case of Kawajiri Family

You still had a chance to fix it, but would you?

Previously I had briefly talked about 'romance' in JoJo, despite romance is not being a strong point there, this manga is realistic enough to show things that could happen in romance, including ‘relationship fail’. There are quite a few examples but the most interesting for me is the case with Kawajiri family.

To protect his identity, our main villain Kira Yoshikage was forced to disguise himself and steal the identity of Kawajiri Kosaku, a salaryman who already married and had his own family.

Eventually, Kira inevitably had to live at Kosaku's house and take his role, but when he arrived at his new home, what he discovered was this:

DIU chapter 104: Atom Heart Father - part 5

Instead of a warm and loving family, he ended up with a broken one.

Now, I will mostly use Shinobu (the wife)’s point-of-view for my analysis. Why? Because I think her POV is the most genuine, rather than using Kira's POV (fake!Kosaku) or Hayato's POV (the kid who finally uncovered Kira's masquerade). Let’s begin…

Seeing her husband come home, Shinobu did not even care anymore. She thought that her husband was a boring man, living like a zombie or a programmed robot, “work” “food” “bath” “sleep” “work”, dull and monotonous. The wife has lost her passion-NO, both of them have lost their passion.

Shinobu was so tired of her husband's monotony that she was too lazy to even cook him a dinner. Actually this is also her code to say that "I'm sick and tired being with you". But surprisingly, her husband cooked his own dinner, and even cook for her too. Shinobu noted that she had never seen her husband cook and even doubted that he could.

Yeah, Kira Yoshikage is the best waifu amongst JoJo villains

Now, a little backstory of how Shinobu ended up with a guy like Kosaku, from how she was attracted to him to how she eventually fell out love.

DIU chapter 105: Kira Yoshikage's New Life - part 1

So actually, when Shinobu was dating Kosaku back in school days, it was not purely out of love, but rather to look cool in front of her friends… until she finally conceived Hayato and was 'made' to marry Kosaku which was more or less to cover their disgrace, in other words: married-by-accident.

So I think, their marriage was never really based on love. From the beginning they were forced to live together and raise a family.

Actually I think, Shinobu was still hoping that her married life can work, that over time, they could truly love each other and raise a normal loving family. Besides that, it did not mean that she was not grateful that her husband was a decent man, quite responsible and take good care of his family.

It's just that all those time, there has been absolutely no 'passion' in their lives. Living with compulsion, that was what they have lived. “Well, let’s make this work, I’ll be a good father so, be a good mom!” probably something like that could be what was in Kosaku's mind.

Being a cat lover she is, Shinobu confronted her husband who accidentally locked their pet cat outside. But Kosaku’s reason was quite surprising her (“seems like he cares about our cat,” that was what Shinobu probably had in mind).

Well, Hayato is actually the real victim of this family disharmony, a broken home kid, who in general also become 'troubled kid'. Shinobu wanted to blame him too for her trapped situation. Does this make her a bad mother?

The rent collector came and confronted the Kawajiri family. It turned out that the family was often in arrears on rent. Then if they often have difficulty in paying, why do they rent a house like this?

I think the house they rent is quite big, too big for their small family of only 3 members to live in. Unless they really plan to have a big family, but it was highly doubtful considering the relationship state between Shinobu and her husband.

Therefore, back to Shinobu's lifestyle, who used to date Kosaku just to look cool, so it's no wonder that this family forced themselves to rent a quite big house just to look cool too.

The cornered Kira (who did not know the lock combination of Kawajiri family’s safe) was forced to utilize his 「Killer Queen」 to trick the rent collector, and it worked.

And his mischief eventually impressed Shinobu and made her fall in love again.

Here I started to think that Shinobu’s real type of guy is a cool guy, not only from his outward appearance, but also by his nature that is kinda delinquent. Perhaps she had thought that Kosaku was that kind of person, but when she started living together with him, it turned out that he was a sub and hollow man.

After seeing her husband's change, since then for the first time Shinobu found the passion in her life. She's getting excited again and she was even the one attempting to make an approach, one of them is by serving him a tea…

…and her body…

DIU chapter 112: Kira Yoshikage's New Life - part 2

Kira almost broke his masquerade by killing Shinobu, but managed to surpressed his desire. Shinobu thought that Kosaku was either being aggressive for her liking or gentle (by unbuttoning her dress). Whatever it was, it made her fall in love with him even more.

Hayato the broken kid being weird for spying his parents’ bedroom, I don’t know since then. What was more important, he implied that his parents had not gotten laid together in a long time.

DIU chapter 127: The Cat Who Loved Kira - part 1

When a stray cat broke into the basement and being territorial, a frightened Shinobu asked Kosaku for help, which turned out to be part of her seduction attempt too. She really thought her husband was very handsome now. Surely when you fall in love, the person you have a crush on will look very attractive in your eyes.

The cat died and Kira had to burry him. Apparently, the cat had previously been pierced by a Stand arrow and he was reborn as a 'Stand'. The stray cat held a grudge against Shinobu and wanted to kill her, which ultimately forced Kira to protect her.

DIU chapter 129: The Cat Who Loved Kira - part 3

Now, moving on Kira’s POV for awhile, did he really care to Shinobu?

DIU chapter 129 & 130

I think, actually, there could be a chance for Kira to move on from his old life and try to live a new normal life. Though honestly I don’t condone his action of stealing Kosaku's identity (and even killing him) and stealing that person's life. But he could change himself for the better, love a woman in normal way, have a family and be a good husband & father… if only he wanted.

This option may be good for Kira, but is it for the good of the others?

After all, Kira was a serial killer who had been roaming around and living freely in Morioh, there had been many victims and none of them got justice.

Is it fair to just let him move on and have a better life?

I truly respect Araki's decision to consistently write him as 'the villain', irredeemable and deserves to be punished.

Back to Shinobu, now that stray cat had been dealt, to clear up Shinobu's confusion as a Standless person, Kira lied that she just fainted and had hallucinated prior to that.

DIU chapter 131: The Cat Who Loved Kira - part 5

And again, Shinobu shyly madly fell in love with her own husband and made another approachment attempt to reignite their love.

On the other hand, Hayato was increasingly suspicious of his father, who is he really?

Approaching Bites The Dust arc, Kira desperately hid his murder of Hayato, but in Shinobu's mind was only her concern for her husband: what happened to him? Is he alright?

DIU chapter 153: Another One Bites the Dust - part 1

Truly a progress, Shinobu who was originally a wife who was indifferent towards her husband, has now turned into a wife who is ready to take care her husband of her own accord.

DIU chapter 154: Another One Bites the Dust – part 2

In the end, during the BTD arc, Kira decided to entertain Shinobu for a while by giving her her long-awaited goodbye kiss, much to Hayato’s dismay. But if you put yourself on Shinobu’s POV, you too will definitely felt delighted at that time, as if your love has finally been reciprocated.

DIU chapter 159: Another One Bites the Dust – part 7

Remember when Shinobu wanted to blame Hayato for wasting her life? Eventually, she was also happy when her son displayed his affection for her too. Perhaps her annoyance at Hayato back then was actually her sadness over her son's cold behavior. But we also can't blame Hayato for acting like that, because he is also the victim, product of his dysfunctional family.

After the BTD arc ended and Kira died, getting his punishment over his deeds. At the same time, Kosaku was completely gone forever. Meanwhile what was happening in Kawajiri family was...

…an endless waiting by his wife who loves him very much.

DIU chapter 174: Goodbye, Morioh- Golden Hearts

And this is the effect of Kira's murders that have been allowed to run rampant. So it's only right that our protagonist ended it and brought him to justice.

Actually, I also don't agree that Shinobu has to suffer by waiting forever for her husband to return. The death of real!Kosaku in Aya's salon has become unknown to anyone (except Josuke's gang). But Kira's death as Kosaku had been witnessed by many.

But wasn't his face then crushed and unrecognizable? Does it matter? Before he died, his face was still quite recognizable right? In order to activate 「Bites The Dust」, he was about to tell his real name to a nurse, but it never happened.

There were Josuke's gang, including Hayato, right? I thought it was wise enough for Hayato to keep his mother in the dark regarding Kira's masquerade, that the husband she had loved all along was not her real husband, which meant that Kosaku's actual death at Aya’s salon did not need to be known to her.

Josuke’s gang or Hayato himself should have told the people at the spot that the one who had just died by an ambulance was 'his father'. Which in the end the news could soon reach Shinobu, so she did not have to suffer, wasting her entire life with false hopes.

What can we learn from this?

That as long as we are still together, there is still a chance to mend our relationship.

Especially for those of you who are already married and have families.

Divorce is indeed a solution if there is no way anymore (especially if 'abuse' is already involved).

However, this solution will leave another issue that can affect your life and that of your children’s.

What I want to say is, in the case of Kawajiri family, regardless of their conflict, there was no ‘abuse’ or 'violence' in it.

And that making ‘divorce’ as the last priority for solution.

Separation in a childless dating couple and separation in a married couple with children is a very different matter.

There must be one who initiates the change, in Kawajiri’s case, it was fake Kosaku (accidentally).

And also there must be one who welcome the change (and that’s Shinobu).

The tragic thing about this family is that the real Kosaku never get his chance.

But during his life before he crossed paths with Kira, did he even try?

Had it ever crossed his mind to make a change?

Maybe we can blame Shinobu instead, why didn't she make the 'change'?

Whatever it is, we shouldn’t cry over spilled milk, instead we should appreciate of how Shinobu welcomed the changes from her husband.

And when her love had grown back, it was Shinobu who tried to approach and win back her husband's heart.

Now if only… if only this was the real Kosaku…

… surely this Kawajiri family which began as an 'accident' and 'forced relationship' could have turned into a very harmonious family.

FIN

[whos-your-space-daddy]

I just started watching My Hero Academia, because it was everywhere on my sicial media and I thought I'd give it a try.

(I just binged about 14 eps)

I figured I'd note some things down and update as I go.

1)All Might: looks ridiculous, I honestly thought he was gonna be a stupid character but hes actually a super cool and wise, genuinely fun character.

2)I hope Todoroki gets a larger part than he currently has because I'm really fascinated by his powers and characterization. The character designs in this show are either 100% amazing or 100% awful. There is no in between. Sorry🤷

3) Bakugo: Cool but kinda overrated tbh. Maybe it'll change but right now I dont get why everyone loves him so much.

4) I love Tsu. Like a lot. There's definitely some neurodivergent coding to her and I'm here for it. Also frog powers? Hell yeah.

5) Iida is a dork but I just love him. Such a goodie two shoes but also a capital GB Good Boy(tm).

6) Can we just universally agree to throw Mineta in the garbage. We dont need him, and hes a complete and total creep. The show would be 100% better without that creepy little baby man.

7) Shigaraki is coool! I wanna know what his deal is. Whats his quirk really? Whats his story? Whats with the hands? Hes kind of a whiny monologue-y kinda villian but his design is impeccable. I dont cosplay but I immediately started thinking about how to make the hands if I ever decided I want to. 10/10 interesting villain.

8) Aizawa is so relateable I cant even be attracted to him despite him being my type. That man is me in a scruffy brunette body. Hes also an asshole. I feel like that says more about me than him. I like him.

9) Toru and Ojiro's friendship is hilarious. Like I think I've maybe seen then on screen for less than 3 minutes collectively and I just laugh everytime. Its adorable and their screen chemistry(yes I know they're animated but) is so so good. You cant even see her bc of her quirk but their lines and his interactions are so good.

I know all of this will change as I get farther in. But come talk to me about MHA. I have opinions and headcanons galore despite only being 14 eps in.

[hamliet]

The Girl Who Gets to Have It All: Buffy Summers

So with @linkspooky​‘s encouragement, I have binged Buffy the Vampire Slayer and relived my childhood culture. And, it's a 10/10 for me. Not that it doesn't have flaws, but it's genuinely one of the best stories I've seen, with consistent character arcs, powerful themes, and a beautiful message. It's also like... purportedly about vampires and demons and superpowered chosen ones, but it's actually all about humanity.

Buffy was able to be a teenage girl, allowed to like the things teen girls are scorned for (boys, shopping, etc), to be insecure about the thing teenage girls are insecure about (future careers, dating, school, parents), and to be a superhero with its good and its bad aspects. The story wasn’t afraid to call Buffy on her flaws (sometimes she got in a very ‘I am the righteous chosen one’ mode) and to respect and honor each of her desires (to be a good person, to be loved, and more). The story listened to what she wanted and respected her desires, giving her the challenges needed to overcome her flaws while also never teaching her a lesson about wanting bad boys or romance is silly or any manner of dark warnings stories like to throw at teenage girls. 

It respected teenage girls--nerdy girls like Willow, jocks like Buffy, lonely wallflowers with trauma like Dawn, and popular/snobby ones like Cordelia, girls gone wild like Faith. It never once reduced them to the stereotypes that were lurking right there: each character was fully rounded, human, flawed and yet with respected interests and goals. This is so rare for a story that I’m still in awe. 

The story as a whole follows Buffy from 15 to 21, of her as she grows from teenager to adult. She acts like a teenager and grows to act like a young adult, wrestling with loneliness and duty. The adults, like Giles, Joyce, and Jenny, are not perfect either, but neither are they “bad parents” or “bad mentors” necessarily. Joyce in particular says something terrible to Buffy, but she tries to do better, and it’s rare to see a parent in YA stories shown with such nuance. Basically, it wrote the long-lasting adult characters as human beings, too. 

Speaking of growing up, I appreciated how Buffy’s love interests mirrored this. Angel was someone Buffy loved and admired, wanted to be like, but who was always either extreme good or extreme bad, and combined with Buffy’s own tendencies towards black-white thinking, made for a beautiful relationship to help her grow, but didn’t necessarily form a foundation for a long-term partner. Spike, on the other hand... they both saw each other at their worst and were drawn to each other even then, and were inspired to become better because they couldn’t bear to be a person who treated the other person so wrongly. They pushed each other to become the best them they could be, and believed in each other. Also, Spuffy is an enemies to lovers ship for the ages. 

(Also, most of the other ships were well-done or at least can be understood. Riley was very obviously wrong for Buffy which paralleled Harmony and Spike in being 100% wrong for each other. Cordelia and Xander were a fun ship even if we all knew it would never last, and Willow and Oz were beautiful and cute. But Xander and Anya and Willow and Tara? OTPs. As were Giles and Jenny, the librarian and the computer teacher.) 

That said, it’s not a perfect series. No story is. All of the characters and ships had problematic aspects to them worthy of critique, and the writing is very 90s in a lot of ways. It’s a product of its time, and in many ways it’s good society has progressed beyond some of the tropes/metaphors used in the show. In other way, though, the show was ahead of its time, and in a good way it wasn’t bound by the fear of purity policing with its takes on redemption (many characters would never fly today). 

So, in order of seasons ranked from my very favorite to my “still enjoyed it very much” (no season was actually bad, imo), here’s my review. I’ll also review my top 10 villains in the show, because Buffy does villains very well in terms of the redeemable and irredeemable.  

Season 7:  Yep, the final season was my favorite. 

Overall Opinion: Buffy's finale is literally "f*ck them men, our power is ours" and while it seems cheesy it actually works (also, f*ck in both a literal and figurative sense). The series strongly hit all the themes: love as strength, and redemption. Buffy consistently shows love as her strength--*all* kinds of love. Friendship w Willow/Xander, familial with Joyce/Dawn, romantic with Spike/Angel. These types of love are also never pitted against each other as is so often the case in current-day media. It's beautiful. Also, Spike’s confrontation with Wood was so powerful in terms of exploring forgiveness, redemption, and reconciliation: where they overlap and where they don't, and what it means to move forward. 

Unpopular Opinion: I have seen a lot didn’t like the inclusion of Potential Slayers, and while I agree they could have been better incorporated/characterized, it was a great way to show Buffy’s final stage of growing up to be ending her chosen one status and projecting/multiplying her powers over the world. 

Biggest Critique: Kennedy was female Riley--the anti-Tara to Riley’s anti-Angel (by ‘anti’ I mean opposite in every way). Kennedy was annoying and immature. Her role, like Riley’s, was less about exploring her as a character and more about her just being stamped as “love interest: lesbian.” 

Favorite Episodes: Beneath You, Lies My Parents Told Me, Touched, Chosen

Season 6: 

Overall Opinion: I said this on Twitter, but I felt like this was Buffy’s The Last Jedi or Empire Strikes Back moment. It is polarizing and dark, deconstructing the tropes it stands on--but by digging to the core of these tropes, it actually makes what’s good about them shine brighter. Everyone’s enemy was the worst versions of themselves. Giles left Buffy, Willow's struggle to relate to the world led to her trying to destroy it, Buffy hurt everyone through her anger, Xander abandoned Anya at the altar, Spike... yeah. It ages well as an integral part of the story, and the Trio were eerily prophetic. 

Unpopular Opinion: Dawn is a great character with a good arc. A traumatized teen acting out and struggling to come to terms with loss and identity? She wasn’t whiny; she was realistic. 

Biggest Critique: Willow’s addiction coding (I’ll discuss this below) and Seeing Red as an episode. I see the argument for both of its controversial scenes from a narrative perspective: Willow starts the season not grieving Buffy but instead being determined to fix it with magic and needs to learn to grieve, but. Still. Bury your gays is not a good look. For the Spike scene... he conflates sex/passion and violence (”love is blood, children” is something he said way back in season 3), but like Tara’s death, it had more to do with Spike (as Tara’s death did for Willow) than with Buffy’s arc, and as for the actual execution... they really botched that. Did it like... have to go on that long or go that far? No. Also, the framing was good, but inconsistent with the rest of the series (Xander to Buffy in the hyena episode, Faith to Xander and to Riley, etc.) 

Favorite Episodes: Once More With Feeling, Smashed, Grave

Season 3 (tied with Season 5):

Overall Opinion: The opening continuity of Buffy meeting Lily/Anne after saving her life in Season 2 was sweet. The Witchhunt episode had really powerful subtext: stories of deaths that aren’t even true are actually demons that possess the town and convince them to turn against their children in the name of protecting the children. It’s a good commentary on, oh, everything in society. Faith’s character arc was fantastic, and her chemistry with Buffy was off the charts (look, I may be Spuffy all the way, but Fuffy has rights). The finale was satisfying in so many ways, seeing the entire graduating class unite to destroy the Mayor and the school with it, symbolizing Buffy et al’s readiness to move on to college. Oz's relationship with Willow was very sweet and meaningful for a first romance for Willow. 

Unpopular Opinion: I actually don’t really have one. Maybe that the miracle in Amends was earned? I think you can make a decent case that Season 3 is the best written of the seasons, but can only truly be thematically appreciated to its full potential in the light of subsequent seasons (which finish Faith’s arc and deconstruct Buffy’s).  

Biggest Critique: It forgot Buffy killed the hyena guy in Season 1, making her continual insistence that she can’t kill people very ????? 

Favorite Episodes: Lovers Walk, Amends, Graduation Day Part 2 

Season 5, which ties with Season 3:

Overall Opinion: The entire season is about family and what it means, from Tara’s to Buffy’s to the Scoobies. I loved Glory aka Enoshima Junko as the Big Bad, I loved Dawn’s interesting meta commentary on retconning (like, the fact that she’s retconned in matters), and most of my ships are still alive. Joyce’s relationship with Spike is one of the most heartwarming aspects, and Spike’s arc’s desire is clearly highlighted: he wants to be seen as a person. The episodes after Joyce’s death are the most honest portrayals of grief I’ve ever seen, and absolutely brutal to watch. 

Unpopular Opinion: Buffy’s choice at the end seems a deliberate inversion of her choice at the end of Season 2 (sacrifice a loved one to save the world), but it actually isn’t: much like at the end of Season 2 where Buffy skips town because she’s devastated after killing Angel and doesn’t want to sort out being expelled, her mom knowing she’s the slayer, and her own trauma, Buffy’s sacrifice here was as much about her wanting the easy way out of relationships, family, college, etc. as it was about saving Dawn. Buffy’s death is coded as a suicide, which Season 6 emphasizes as well. 

Biggest Critique: Like Season 3, I don’t have a lot to critique here. I wish the suicidal coding had been a little more obvious in Season 5 itself, but also I’m not sure it could have been more obvious; it’s pretty apparent if you pay attention. Maybe also that Buffy and Riley’s relationship failing should have been more squarely blamed on Riley, you know, being insecure and cheating. 

Favorite Episodes: Family, Fool for Love, Intervention. 

Season 2:

Overall Opinion: Heartbreakingly tragic but exciting and revealing at the same time. It asked the viewer interesting questions about redemption and forgiveness and atonement through Angel being honest about his past, and then decided to show us his past now reenacted, challenging us. And still, we saw them save him in a parallel to saving Willow in Season 6 (but Season 2 was tragic because it wasn’t enough, while Season 6 was not). Jenny’s death was agonizing, and the scene were Angel watches Buffy, Willow, and Joyce get the news through the window was powerful. We didn’t have to hear them to get the grief. 

Unpopular Opinion: Jenny’s death isn’t a fridging; it works for her arc too when you consider her history. She worked to save the person whose life she was tasked to ruin, and it cost her her own--yet she still succeeded, because Jenny brought joy and wisdom to the show. Kendra’s death, on the other hand... was because they needed the stakes to be high--but we already knew that before she died. So, her death was useless. 

Biggest Critique: The subtext was Not It. It was essentially “do not have sex. Your older boyfriend will lose his soul, kill your friends, you’ll lose your family, your school, your home, and have to kill your true love or else hell will literally swallow earth.” 

Favorite Episodes: School Hard, Passion, Becoming Part 2.

Season 1:

Overall Opinion: I really liked it; it’s just lower on this list because the others are just better. It’s a great introduction to the series and to its characters, from Giles to Buffy to Willow to Jenny to Cordelia. It has great subtext a lot of the time (for example, Natalie French as She-Mantis is a literal predatory bug who engages in predatory behavior with students). Additionally, it subverts the typical YA trope of two guys and a girl, in which the girl is usually the least interesting character. Buffy and Willow were both fully fledged characters from the beginning with distinct strengths (even before Willow became a witch, as she wasn’t one in season 1 yet), while Xander was the more ordinary of the group. 

Unpopular Opinion/Biggest Critique: Xander’s arc showed its first flaws that unfortunately continued throughout the series: his writing was either very good or very indulgent in ways it never was for other characters.  (cough, the hyena episode, cough, in which he gets to skirt responsibility--and acknowledges that he is skirting it--for something the show will later hold others to account for). Xander’s just kind of inconsistent, which weakened his character over all. (Which is why both his love interests--Cordelia and then ultimately Anya--were good for him: they did not indulge him.) 

Favorite Episode: Witch, Nightmares. 

Season 4:

Overall Opinion: it’s still a good season. It’s a good portrayal of college and the growing pains of branching out, the strains of college growth on relationships (romantic and platonic). It shows us the first hints of Spuffy, giving us some serious Jungian symbolism between Spike and Buffy early on, and does well in establishing Xander/Anya and Willow/Tara as beautiful OTPs. Faith and Buffy’s foiling is fantastic. The Halloween episode was very fun as well. However, it suffers because its Big Bad, Adam, is not all that compelling thematically--yet, he could have been. See, the final battle pulls off the Power of Friendship in a really strong way but notably the season does not end there. Instead, it ends on dreams of each character’s worst fears, continuing what we saw in Nightmares in Season 1. Why? Because it shows us that the characters’ wars aren’t against monsters, but monsters of their own making: their flaws. Adam, as a literal Frankenstein, exemplifies this, but it wasn’t capitalized on as well as it could have been. 

Unpopular Opinion: Beer Bad isn’t a bad episode, at the very least because Buffy gets to punch Parker. It’s not one of the series’ best, obviously, but it does give Buffy an arc in that she gets her daydream of Parker begging her to come back, but she has overcome that desire and her desire for revenge. If we wanna talk about bad subtext in Season 4, Season 2′s Not It sex subtext continues in the Where the Wild Things Are episode in this season; it’s a powerful callout of abusive purity-culture churches, until the fact that the shame creates a literal curse undermines the progressive message it’s supposed to send. Also, the Thanksgiving episode (Pangs) is a nightmare of white guilt and Oh God Shut Up White People. 

Biggest Critique: Riley is awful. Like Kennedy, he had “love interest:normal” stamped on him and that was it. The thing is, he could have worked as an Angel foil, representative of the normal-life aspect of Buffy to Angel’s vampire/supernatural aspect, but the writers never explore this and seemed to even try to back away from that later on. They threw all the romantic cliches at the wall to see what sticks, from klutzy “I dropped my schoolbooks, that’s how we met” to cliché lines that had me rolling my eyes. Do you know how bad a romance has to be to make me dislike romantic tropes? 

Favorite Episodes: Fear Itself, Hush, Restless

Villain rankings: 

Dark Willow, the only villain to be truly sympathetic. While the addiction coding was insensitive and, while unsurprising for its time, aged extremely poorly. That said, Willow’s turn to the dark side after Tara’s death worked well for her character and the story: it was believable and paid off what had been building since Season 1's “Nightmares” episode (Willow’s inferiority complex). 

Glory managed to be genuinely terrifying, and humorous/enjoyable too. Her minions and their numerous nicknames for Glorificus were hilarious, as was her intense vanity. Her merging with Ben--a human being who genuinely wanted to be kind and good--added complexity and tragedy to her role. 

The First. A really good take on Satan. The seventh season as well as the First’s first appearance in season 3′s “Amends” had kind of blatant Christian symbolism, and so the First being essentially Satan works. Their disguising themselves as dead loved ones and the subtle manipulation they used to alienate people was really disturbing and well done. 

The Mayor, who was a terrible person but a truly good father. He provided an interesting contrast to the normal ‘bad dad’ bad guy character, in that he provided Faith exactly what the other characters refused to: he saw the best in her and offered her parental support, while the heroes didn’t and wound up pushing her away. 

The Trio, who were villains ahead of their time: whiny fanboy reddit dudebros, basically. The stakes seemed so much lower than fighting Glory, a literal god, the previous season. But that’s why they worked so well for Season 6′s human themes, and were especially disturbing because we all know people like them. I also appreciated the surprisingly sensitive takes on Jonathan and Andrew, who got to redeem themselves, but Warren did not, and I don’t think he should have either. 

Angelus + Drusilla. I’m ranking them below the Trio because Angelus was just sooooo different from Angel that it was difficult for me to feel the same way for him. He was still Angel, so it wasn’t possible to enjoy his villainy, but he also wasn’t nearly as sympathetic as Dark Willow, had no redeeming qualities like the Mayor, and wasn’t as disturbingly realistic as the Trio. However, the emotional stakes were excellently executed with him as the Big Bad, in that you were never quite sure how to feel and it just plain hurt. Also, Drusilla was a favorite recurring character. She was sympathetic and yet batsh*t enough to be enjoyable as a villain at the same time. 

The Master, who was just completely camp and really worked as an introductory villain. He was scary enough to believe he was a threat, and was funny enough to introduce the series’ humor as well. He was, like Glory, an enjoyable Big Bad. 

The Gentlemen, the one-off villains of Season 4′s Hush who were genuinely terrifying. It’s not as if they got a lot of explanation or any backstory, but they didn’t need it. 

Caleb, the misogynist priest. Fitting with the First’s Christian symbolism, Caleb serving as a spokesperson of all bad religious beliefs felt appropriate. He was also a good foil to Warren--being actually supernaturally powered instead of a wannabe--and to Tara’s family in being full-out evil. I despised him. 

Snyder. Okay Snyder is not a Big Bad like Adam is, but let’s face it: Adam is lame compared to the other villains. But Snyder as a principal? He was so irritating and yet really well used in the series to critique overly strict, hypocritical teachers. Like, we all know teachers like him. I loved to hate him, and his ending was so satisfying. 

[sebastianshaw]

I got my ask cleared, so Munday rambles time! For new mutuals, this is just a pile up of OOC that’s irrelevant to the blog or my rodents.

- I am one of those people who adamantly Does Not Like Kids but volunteering at the wildlife sanctuary has shown me I'm actually great with them when animals are involved. Like Saturday I answered all the questions of this little boy at the coyote pen even the ones that were irrelevant and weird like "what if you were stuck on an island with only fruit and cows" and I helped another boy handfeed Ferdinand by guiding his hand with mine and holding it steady since he kept freaking out and dropping the lettuce. And didn't get outwardly annoyed with the girl who kept howling at the coyotes or the little shit who threw a rock at the fence (also his mom yelled MAVERICK and ma'am if you named your child that I think you asked for this) - Started reading Ra’s Al. Ghul stories and he’s indeed really interesting like I thought! I like him a lot. I like his motive as an eco-terrorist, and I also like that it���s in a way very different than Poison Ivy; Ivy loves plants and the lushness of forests and jungles and flowers, but Ra’s loves the bleak barrenness of desserts and snow-covered mountains, and wants the entire world to be like that. I also really like that he’s one of those “villains with a code” types---yeah, he wants to wipe out humanity, but he spares the lives of Alfred and Robin in one story because they WON’T sell out Batman, and he respects that loyalty, and it’s noted he dislikes taking hostages so only does it if he feels the stakes are so high that he has to. I know he’s def not un-problematic in his very Orientalist origins and portrayal but I just love how he feels like the lead of a Gothic novel to me. Talia of course is great as well, but I knew that already! - I notice that the writers make Ra’s a little more shitty with each retcon about his past concerning women. Originally, it’s that he was celibate after his first wife up until he met Talia’s mother. Then it becomes that actually he was with other women until they began to age and then he ditched them, and was petty/horny enough to straight-up engineer Napoleon’s downfall to get with his mistress. As with Shaw, that’s the sort of thing I’d be ok with if it was from the get-go, but the fact it WASN’T and then was shoved in there later directly contradicting previous canon for no real reason except to make him look sexist, bugs me. Like, is he not evil enough? Why add that? Similarly, the fate of Talia’s mother goes from her dying in an accident in which she fell into a in-progress Lazarus Pit and thus presumably could not be resurrected, to that she died of a drug overdose and Ra’s chose not to resurrect her for undisclosed reasons, to that she never died at all but Ra’s just cast her out after Talia’s birth. Like, why? - Speaking of Batman characters, I just found out about Silver St.  Cloud and even though I have not seen or watched a single thing with her in it, I like her because she’s PRETTY. - That said I just find it colossally gross that she informs Alfred the reason she calls Bruce “DD” is because the first night they had sex, he made her orgasm 11 times (double digits) It’s not that I think that’s bad, or that talking about sex is bad, it’s just it feels like something the writer shoved in as a self-insert sort of fantasy? The writer of that one, btw, was Kevin Smith, who is also the writer who decided that the reason Black Cat steals is because she was raped, because that super makes sense. These are the only two parts of Smith’s comics writing career I know of and neither gives me a high opinion of him, which is a shame because I do genuinely love Clerks and Dogma. But apparently you can’t ever let him write hot women in comics or you get this shit. 

[itsclydebitches]

I adore talking about this with you, it's so cool to be able to agree, everything I've read is just excusing yen lmao.

And with "geralt would rather do and say things Yen wants to avoid pissing her off" LIKE YEAHH I guess I annoyed yen with my answers and she teleported Geralt out of the tower thing, and then threatened to do it again like??? Like he pissed her off so she has fuck all care about him, was over water thank god but like girl??? omg and her refusing to tell the wticher bros what she was planning on doing to Uma, like I get that they would be hesistent but I mean it's cause it's cruel and painful and they have that trauma around that. She just expects everyone to do what she asks when she asks no questions. (Lambert's "I'm not geralt" when he and Yen are kinda arguring, bb red flags)

I just assumed she didn't believe him cause if she did whats her excuse for behaving how she is lmao??? Like you believe he has amnesia and you still blame HIM over the person who maniplated him KAY.

And goodddd that fucking scene when Triss and Yen see Ciri in Kaer Morhen is genuinely the worst, Triss and Yen see their sis/daughter (not gonna get into how weird I find it that Triss considers Ciri her sister and Geralt is Ciris father and she still wants to fuck him, uncomfy) for the first time in forever, she's alive and well and while Triss is hugging Ciri, Yen kisses Geralt and Triss throws a glare at her. I hated that scene so damn much, it's stupid and shouldn't have been there. (aso I get emotions and all but Yen kissing Geralt is so bitchy, idk even full of gratitude and emotion I wouldn't kiss the man who just dumped me lol, especially not in front of a situation like Triss)

I'm still mad about the women, I really wanted to like them fuck meeee

YOU GOT TO THE PART. Oh thank god, anon, I've wanted to talk about this since we started these conversations lol

Okay, let's set the scene, shall we? You arrive to find that, with our playthroughs anyway, your ex has barged into your home. I say "barged in" because although we (Geralt) know that Yen's help is necessary and she'll be tagging along, the other witchers living there are given no prior warning and, according to Vesemir, Yen teleported in without so much as a "Hello." She then immediately starts ordering everyone around like her servants, failing to explain the situation beyond there being a curse that they have to help with. No, this isn't negotiable. She (still being an ex) takes your old room for herself, which just happens to be the biggest in the keep, and proceeds to toss a bed out the window. It's only later that Vesemir recalls that Triss used to use it, so prior to that everyone apparently just accepted that Yen was destroying their stuff for no understandable reason. Classic Yen. You go upstairs to find her cursing a blue streak at her failed experiment and when you try to lighten the mood, she snaps at you. If you're of the opinion that Yen's every order must be obeyed, this is when you're supposed to drop the conversation entirely, because she said to. Except, funnily enough, you'd like to know why she's up here being The Worst Guest Ever and destroying your property. She tries to justify this by saying that destroying a bed is better than how she could be dealing with her anger over Triss. Be grateful and all that. Except, it's not really about Triss, is it? The line is "You shagged my friend. For upwards of a year. I don't know what your witcher's code says on the matter, but ordinary folk would consider it obscene, base, vile." The blame is not on the woman who knowingly manipulated Geralt into having sex with her while he was vulnerable, it's on Geralt himself! He is the "obscene, base, vile" person for... daring to have amnesia? And when you point that out - "Yen... told you already. I lost my memory" - she yells that she's "lost [her] patience" and teleports you into a lake! This is, apparently, how she really wants to deal with her anger. Not by destroying beds, but by attacking you for things outside of your control. And I do consider it an attack. Yen is meant to be insanely powerful, she is leveraging her magic as a weapon here, particularly when Geralt has spent the whole game commenting on how much he hates portals. Yen knows this. Not just because he says so in her presence, but because she frequently reads his mind, something else he's expressed discomfort with. She's not just demonstrating her power (controlling) and sending him away when he makes a point she doesn't want to acknowledge (immature), she chooses the one thing she knows makes Geralt uncomfortable, perhaps even scared. Then when you've swum your way back to shore and returned to, despite all this, begin her list of chores, she makes a dry comment about how next time she just might drop you high enough for the fall to be fatal. With the next time implied to be, you know, the next time you disagree with her. The next time you dare to do anything other than agree with her every belief and jump at her every command.

The fandom interpretation of all this: "Lol Geralt getting yeeted is so funny. And their banter is just 😍"

Me:

You mentioned red flags and yeah like that ENTIRE SCENE is a crimson banner for me. I mean, by all means, love the fictional ships that are super messed up (I often do), but it astounds me how many fans honestly think this is just a cute interaction with absolutely no problems attached. Nothing to question here, folks. I've mentioned before, but last I discussed this in depth the asker wanted to know if I'd been an asshole to Yen and... that's it. That's the perspective. Any disagreement with her, any pushback, anything that's not complete, blind obedience is something she will not permit AND something most fans take as a given. If you're not doing what Yen tells you to, you're automatically the asshole, and if you're the asshole, you automatically deserve any punishment she chooses to dish out.

Comic spoilers coming up if you want to skip, but this is made abundantly clear in "Curse of Crows." Yen and Geralt are at their best in the moment below, enjoying one another's company on a nice day. Yen asks if Geralt wants to swim and he says nah, he'd rather watch her. She appears to like that idea and, indeed, swims naked while Geralt admires from the shore.

Actually cute right? I really liked this moment! They're cuddled up together and exchanging smiles. It's a rare moment of peace where I can believe that they truly care for one another, outside of passionate sex and not wanting the other dead. Finally, something beyond that incredibly low bar.

...except Yen starts flirting with a young man who shows up, invites him to travel with them, all while refusing to explain why she's interested in his company. The sudden third wheel is clearly bothering Geralt, but Yen continues to ignore his questioning. The answer she finally gives later that night?

She did it purely to mess with Geralt! It's his "just desserts" for "refusing to swim with [her]." She is "not one to be refused - I thought you needed reminding" by giving him "a flick on the nose." When I say that Yen treats Geralt like a dog I mean she literally treats him like a dog. He's a servant who must jump at her every command and if he doesn't, he'll punished for disobedience. He might not even know why he's being punished for a long stretch because Yen enjoys making him think she's a normal person capable of accepting that he doesn't feel like swimming right now - insert the Kaer Morhen scene where she wants to go have sex upstairs, but Geralt wants to catch up with the brothers he hasn't seen in an age here - only to reveal that actually she's made their formerly nice outing uncomfortable because he needs to be put in his place. All of which is followed by, "So... willing to join me now?" The message is very clear! Geralt had better get his ass in that tub unless he wants to be punished some more. Whether he wants a bath right now or not is inconsequential.

This is also the run where she scares the women Geralt was with, despite them being separated right now. Why? "I could."

Claims that Geralt is allowed to return to his companions (who he actually waves away) only for him to realize she's cast a spell to burn him with the water. Yen loves pretending she's okay with things only to punish Geralt for them later - sometimes with physical punishments. And what would have happened if the women had actually joined him again? Do witchers weather hot water better than the average courtesan? Who knows, but Yen clearly doesn't care who might get hurt.

Just like her time in Skellige and at Kaer Morhen, she refuses to explain what's going on. She just expects people to obey her, so-called loved ones included. Geralt was to get her cider, and arrive before her bath went cold, not question what they're doing on this dangerous hunt. He's a servant.

And my favorite, petty moment: transforming her awful inn food into a lavish meal without offering to do the same for either Geralt or Ciri.

"But, Clyde, that's just the comics. They're not really canon." Nah, questions of canon aside, this is 100% Yen's characterization. She's prideful. Immature. Beyond controlling. And punishes anyone who dares to tell her "No." Fans are always pointing out that she's meant to be horrible, she could have been a villain in another life, like any of that explains why I'm supposed to root for this relationship or enjoy her existence outside of being a complex character. Yen is interesting, but she's interesting in a "I can't wait to see her get her own just desserts" way. Not "Wooo now I get to watch this story ignore her behavior again to push a True Love narrative."

She punished Geralt frequently during their first meeting, she punishes him whenever they get together, and, I think, she punished him during the reunion with Ciri. Given our playthroughs, do we really think that after breaking up with her and all this fury over Triss - an anger so deep she destroyed the bed and attacked Geralt - she's just overcome with such joy that she forgets they're not together anymore and forgets the anger she's been nurturing for years? Yen doesn't forget. She's staring at Ciri during that moment, right where Triss is currently running towards them, and then after a considering look at Geralt pulls him in for that kiss. That was calculated. She did that to make a claim she no longer had. To punish them both: make Triss uncomfortable by playing at the "perfect" family reunion; make Geralt uncomfortable by kissing him when she knows he doesn't feel the same way. But of course, the popular reading is that she just loves him so much she couldn't help herself. Riiight.

It's just all SO BAD. (Including, as you say, the ickiness of having Triss lusting after Geralt and referring to Ciri as "little sis.") I love a lot of the women in Witcher - Cerys is a fave, Ciri, Saskia, Philippa, Keira, etc. - but the two I'm supposedly meant to fall in love with are just the worst lol.

Basically:

Half the fandom: TEAM TRISS 🤬

The other half: TEAM YEN🤬

Me: TEAM REGIS 😭

[kettlequills]

yeah can you break down miraak or ulfric's ass?

Uhh so I fucking hate Ulfric, and the fact I can only kill him once in game upsets me. He's a lazy racist warmonger and while I'm no fan of the Empire either, deciding to lead a group of ethnonationalists in the name of Literally Some Guy who frankly is more of an Imperial god anyway sucks and has done  direct harm to the country and culture he claims to care about.

As a character, though, he like the rest of Skyrim is not really taken to his full potential or written compellingly in a way I would like. His narrative goals are not only deeply unsympathetic in every possible way but reinforce the ignorant views of the game devs, and the wider context of the emergence of rising racism around Skyrim's release is important when analysing his purpose in the story, and the reasons behind the very sympathetic endorsement of the Stormcloaks, into account.

Secondly, though, he just isn't particularly interesting to me personally. We are told, second-hand, not shown, that he is a victim of the Thalmor. Aside from reading into his portrayal as a stereotypical sternly spoken Nord with dramatic, cool lines like "Legends don't burn down villages" who believes in Honour as a desperate cover up for a possibly more realistic or interesting responses to the trauma he has undergone, there is nothing in Ulfric himself to tell us this about him. His core character as an extremist who thinks he's a hero restoring justice within the binds of a strict moral code could be interesting if it is seen to be questioned or even displayed in its different facets in any of his subordinates or the scenes he's in. Why do people follow Ulfric? I don't believe everyone cares about Talos or the Thalmor. What is he actually promising them? Where is the impression we are supposed to gain of the charismatic man we are told, not shown, that he is?

Also. Windhelm Sucks. It's the shittiest city and Yes, I am including Riften. Get a better city or better yet walk off Windhelm bridge.

People I  ship romantically with him: Not many, tbh. I prefer to imagine him as focused on his campaigns mostly. Galmar perhaps? Other than that I cannot stress how little I view Ulfric as a romantic creature.

Platonic OTP: Galmar. Ulfric has one bestie only but you have to hand it to him the bitch is ride or die.

My unpopular opinion about this character: I don't think any of my opinions are that unpopular tbh, Ulfric sucks and I think most people know it. I do think though that he probably did kill Torygg perfectly in accordance with Nord law.

One thing I wish had happened in canon: The opportunity to overthrow Ulfric not as an Imperial soldier but by supporting the disenfranchised within Windhelm to rise up.

Miraak!

I enjoy Miraak because he is, at the base level, kinda a silly character to me. He has crotch spikes on his dragon aspect. His mask looks like a tentacle face. He decided to make a pact with Mora then thought trying to outwit the Prince of Secret Knowledge in secret would go well. He turns up to steal your dragonsouls and says catty one liners about how much he's better than you and then immediately gets his ass whooped when you're there in person.

He is pathetic in the fun way and I heartily wish I had the option to proverbially steal his lunch money.

As a character, a lot of his appeal to me is how little we know about him. Anyone who has had the immense patience to follow me all this time knows that as a rule, I have a soft spot for powerful, usually villain, characters with a distant past and an "out of time" arc to them. I also have the capacity to make him as fucked up looking and eldritch as I want. He is an easy character to lend to exploring some really dark and tragic situations, which is my fic bread and butter, and also easily allows for playing with unreality, abuse of power and control. The narrative mirroring of the Last Dragonborn and Miraak makes them interesting, either if you decide to make them foils or not. I think he is probably the best villain of the game? None other have an even slightly personal relationship with your Dragonborn unless you create it.

Romantic partnerships: i actually. Cant list all of them without spoiling some of the secret miraak fic I'm working on, but as a general thing the last dragonborn (specifically, my ldb laataazin), or Vahlok the Jailor (What can I say, I like tragedy. What if Vahlok hadn't fought him at all but Mora still stole him away, and it was easier to explain? How hard, how painful, to raise a sword to the one you love when his lust for power grows.). I don't think canon Miraak would honestly consider many other people as close enough to his equal to bother giving the time of day to, tbh, though as I enjoy him as a character I frankly ship him with near as damn every other character in the game.

Platonic: Sahrotaar, Relonikiv and Kruziikrel. They've been locked together in Apocrypha for thousands of years. What's that like? When one of you is mind controlling the others into obeying you, that's clearly going to be very unhealthy and festering, but years of being locked up together and you've got to imagine they end up at least somewhat codependent.

My unpopular opinion: Miraak is a scalie. And for the love of the divines this man is not smooth. He has terminal angry wet cat syndrome and is about as romantic as a fistful of sheepshit in your boot.

One thing I would change: sAHROTAAR SAHROTAAR SAHROTAAR. let me free the dragons. But also. PLEASE let me acknowledge somewhere that bend will is an extremely fucked up Shout to not only use but create and what that says about Miraak's mental health and ability to actually, genuinely recognise and connect with other people as equals to himself. Obvi I wish we could spare him but frankly he is not the most important one to get out of Apocrypha.

[bitch-for-a-rainbow]

Lex Luthor: I actually really like him and Supergirl made me mad

     So, Lex Luthor is a very interesting, sometimes thought provoking, but most of all very enjoyable character.

     Lex is many things, a classic egomaniacal villain, an example of what lies can do to a relationship, a walking, talking red flag, a warning of how hubris and jealously can destroy you, and much, much more. He is not the typical strain of insane— if crazy at all, highly competent, and best of all knows every one of Superman’s buttons and exactly how to press them.

     I love watching Lex in every media I’ve ever seen him in going back to the original Christopher Reeve Superman. Every media, that is, except Supergirl. Why?

     Because she isn’t fucking Superman.

      Obviously, I love Supergirl— I run a blog with her in my icon— but there are certain things she is not and was never meant to be. Nemesis to Lex Luthor is right up there with a mass-murdering nazi (which is why the multiverse exists-- so that you can make her the first super on earth, Lex Luthor’s ex-friend, and not completely ignore the foundation of who they are as characters)

     Lex is fun because he’s so smart, but also because of the personal stake he has with Superman. Lex felt jealous. In many cases, he felt betrayed. He let that fester into mania and then he built an evil radioactive robo-suit and committed mass murder. You know, like reasonable people do.

     Lex was Superman’s friend and that gives his hatred of Kryptonians not only purpose, but emotional weight. Their relationship has that itching tension of painful history. In addition, Lex is extremely prideful. To him, Supergirl would be second class, she’s backup. And there is a story there: a story when Lex has a breakdown when backup knocks him into the sun, or the (in my opinion, less entertaining) version where Superman shows up to save her, reaffirming Lex’s worldview that he’s everything and defeating Superman means that Lex is the greatest and smartest, and even more stories beyond those that still adhere to its core principles— Kara and Lex as characters.

     But Supergirl chose neither. Instead they chose another recycle Superman plot. And then another. And another.    

     I should make time to say that I like Jon Cryer; I think he’s doing a great job with what he’s been given. He’s got the charisma. He’s got the smarmy self-congratulating swagger down perfectly. The scenes where the real Lex pokes its ugly head through his facade are just great. I think in anything else he would have made an excellent Lex Luthor, but not here.

     I was… disappointed with season 4. I liked 4x20– Kara and Lena investigating was fun at worst and at best had some really good edge of my seat moments. I thought that 4x16 “The House of L” was one of the best episodes of supergirl in a very long time and it still holds its place at least in my top 10, probably my top 5. But you will notice Lex wasn’t even in 4x20 and his places in 4x16 I actually enjoyed could easily have been occupied by any other intelligent villainous character. From a very basic point of view Col. Haley would have fit the mold of the manipulator training the compassionate but confused alien to kill— Wouldn’t have been her first time.

     The later usages of Lex in Supergirl are also attempting a common Superman plot. Lex “redeems” himself, tricks the public into trusting him again by framing Superman for something, and eventually is once again revealed to be evil. It sounds like a repetitive, boring plot that would lose the audience suspension if belief after a few tries— “Seriously, this again. How are they not expecting this by now?” And that complaint works for Supergirl. Because Supergirl isn’t Superman.

     Clark Kent was Lex Luthor’s best friend. Clark Kent ignored every warning sign and red flag waved in his face because Lex Luthor was his best friend. Clark Kent harbors a deep, abiding hurt and resentment from Lex’s betrayal. He has no trust for Lex, just like any hero would, but he also has the built up anger from repeated clashes with Lex and the initial betrayal. So when Lex returns, once again proclaiming he’s changed his ways, Superman’s response is a very public, very obviously bitter “yeah, right.” When Lex lays one of his traps for Superman, Clark is a little too rash. Lex Luthor knows how to push all of Clark’s buttons, even if he doesn’t know that they’re Clark’s. Lex can play him like a fiddle, and as for the general populace— would you be so steadfast in your trust of the invulnerable alien that could laser you in half in the blink of an eye and seems to be getting a little too comfortable in his role as peacekeeper? Would you, when even the slightest chance could slaughter your entire planet and you would have nothing and no one would could stop him— except, of course, Lex Luthor?

     We’ve been shown through many media that when Lex can’t manipulate his opponent, when villain comes that is simply too big for him to work on, he is at incredible risk. There are several stories I can think of of the top of my head where Lex becomes a temporary ally of the heroes simply because he realizes he can’t manipulate this new, powerful player and that therefore they are a risk to him (I actually really like those stories because the dynamics between him and the heroes are incredibly fun and interesting— you start to get an idea of who Lex is underneath all of the wit and ego).

     This is Supergirl’s great failure with Lex. The show understands that he is a genius— makes a great fuss about it. They understand that he is a manipulator— it’s his entire plot line with Lena. But they fail to understand that Lex’s ploys don’t work because he’s just so smart like the smartest ever. They work because he knows Superman and he knows that people are afraid of him— even the ones who trust and love him live with the knowledge that if he gets mind controlled or goes crazy, he could kill them all with ease, and that it’s happened before.

     Supergirl wasn’t around for Lex’s turn. This Supergirl wasn’t even in that steady of contact with Clark. She has no stinging betrayal, no anger and bitter history to make her rash and predictable. Certainly by now, two seasons into Lex’s placement in the show, she is angry— but by all the evidence we’ve been given, Kara’s anger just makes her more volatile, unpredictable and sometimes genuinely down for murder, which is definitely not something Lex needs. We have seen her both let Lex “fall to his death” (when she wasn’t all that angry— she just accepted his suicide without trying to force him into prison) and nearly shoot him with laser vision (this time she was angry and emotionally unstable after the death of Argo and the more Lex centered anger that he revealed her identity and destroyed her relationship with Lena. There is no question that she would have killed-- or at the very least maimed-- him if The Monitor hadn’t intervened). If Superman just murdered Lex when he got angry, he would have died a dozen times over.

     Lex doesn’t even have a basic understanding of Kara’s mindset. He can’t. Superman was raised by American humans in Kansas— he has a worldview that Lex could easily pick up on because it is at least based on watching most of the same events unfold as they grew up— and that’s if they had never met before they started fighting. Sure, he could assume Superman had some quirks from being an alien, but the base Americanized cultural standpoint was already affecting Lex’s machinations because he was an American. He’s familiar with the culture and values Superman follows— not so with Kara. I don’t even know if it was possible for him to obtain information on her religion, let alone the cultural views on justice. His research on her past fights would have been choppy at best, given that there are so many things that only Kara or the other Superfriends were there for. He can’t have the information about that fight on Mars where Kara literally disintegrated at least 3 white martians. He can’t know what happened with Reign beyond “she’s not going to be a problem anymore”. He might have more information about the Daxamite invasion through government records and his mother but the information is still limited. As for Non and Myriad, we don’t even know what happened to Non, and did they report to the DEO that J’onn literally tore Indigo in half (very graphically I might add). Or did they just say “They won’t be a problem anymore.” Lex may have been spying on Kara since Season 2, but how much is watching her civilian life going to help him understand her, when Kara’s civilian life was constructed to hide? Kara Danvers doesn’t say a lot of what she thinks to avoid notice, and even Supergirl keeps her mouth shut a lot of the time to try and maintain human-alien relations. The episodes where she squabbles with the Col. Haley and President Baker are full of her smiling and gritting her teeth through statements that clearly make her very angry.

     Lex “falling to his death” and then getting shot at the end of season 4 was a great moment— it fit with the characters motivations, but it also unfortunately illustrated the problem with Supergirl characters interacting with Lex. J’onn was a soldier who kills people. Kara has killed people. Alex has killed people. This scene was not the first time we watched Lena try to murder someone with that gun. They are not restricted by the moral code Superman uses, which makes it both more difficult and more dangerous for Lex to try manipulating them— so he doesn’t and instead they skip the intermediary and rely wholly on him being able to manipulate the public. This works to an extent with Red Daughter, but only because anti-alien sentiment was at an all time high with the Children of Liberty, and because Lex lucked into an amnesiac supergirl clone. So little of the heavy lifting was actually done by Lex it feels less like his accomplishment and more like he cheated off of 3 different people and then bragged about his math skills. I said it before and I’ll say it again. The season 4 villain could have been anyone with moderate intelligence and resources. After crisis, the excuses just get weaker and weaker. I mean come on, he confessed to trying to mind control the whole world in front of the jury while screaming vile things at his sister who’s sitting there visibly flinching at his words and they unanimously voted not-guilty? Are you kidding? (Also after watching all the courtroom scenes in Supergirl... do they know how courtrooms work? I mean, I laughed as hard as anyone at the “I plead the 5th” line, but seriously. Do they?)

    And Crisis was… a choice. I personally hated that they brought Lex back to life— more so because the in-universe reasoning was so weak. Lex Luthor does not face a whole lot of consequences, it’s true, but that’s because he has the genius, guile, and money to avoid them. To give him such an unearned out— especially after all the damage he’d done by dying— really hurt the both the stakes and the character. Lex is a human, and he fights Superman by taking advantage of very human things: corruption, anger, and fear as well as ingenuity and resourcefulness. He loads the deck in his favor— he doesn’t win on luck. And Lex in the CW Supergirl, seems to only win on luck. First he finds Red Daughter right when anti-alien sentiment is blowing up, then he is resurrected, then he finds out the crisis world loves him. He has had exactly 1 major victory based on his own work— manipulating Brainy. A manipulation which was really hard to believe when Brainy was, in canon, much, much smarter than Lex, familiar with his tactics, lying to the superfriends for no reason, and had no emotional reaction to cloud his judgement. 

      And even so, this one plot line was one of the more interesting ones in season 5 and the most Lex Luthor-like plot line the show has had. Even when I felt my suspension of disbelief slipping, it wasn’t entirely in tatters. Lex’s win felt somewhat earned. 

     He has been in the show for 2 1/2 seasons and he has had 1 major victory that felt at all earned. 2 and 1/2 seasons. That’s currently around 45% of the show’s run time.

     All in all, we have 4 deeply related problems that plague the CW Supergirl Lex Luthor:

Lex Luthor’s plans rely as much on effective manipulation of Superman as they do on his own genius. Without that manipulation, his victories rely much more on happenstance and luck, making them feel less earned.

Lex Luthor cannot effectively manipulate Supergirl— at the very least, not in the beginning of their relationship, which CW Supergirl focuses on— nor does he try to manipulate her or much of the cast beyond Lena and once with Brainy.

Supergirl kills people. Supergirl has killed Lex. Superman doesn’t kill people.

Lex fighting Supergirl does not have the kind of inherent emotional weight that Lex fighting Superman does.

     There are some other issues I have with the CW supergirl version of Lex, but I think if it was a Superman show I wouldn’t have minded. The large amount of screen time dedicated to him would make sense there, and the fact that he’s a cockroach seemingly impervious to any plot consequences would also fit more in line with Superman’s increasing frustration and make his manipulations more effective.

     The only problem I have that wouldn’t been solved purely by making it about Superman is the crowding problem. In season 1, Non and the DEO were highly connected and fed each other as villains. Season 2 also fit that same block of alien vs. anti alien. Both of those secondary villains (the army/DEO in s1 and Cadmus in s2) were very much not as big a villain as the main. Season 3 sort of had a secondary villain with Morgan Edge, but he was mostly just a Lena problem. All of these seasons had a good balance between the villains screen time and also between the villains and heroes. It got a little more complicated with the extra world killers in s3, but still functioned fairly smoothly with focus on Reign. This is one of the main reasons that seasons 1 and 3 are my favorites. S4, however, got more cluttered. A lot more cluttered. Manchester Black, the Children of Liberty, Lex Luthor, Red Daughter, and Eve Tessmacher were all villains with multi-episode arcs handled directly by Supergirl herself. There was too much to cover, not enough connection, and not enough time— plus 2 new main cast members (Look, I love Nia and Brainy but that season had way too much going on). Season 5 had Leviathan, Lena Luthor, Lex Luthor and 2 new mains. Each of those villain arcs had their own distinct plot from one another and screen time started to become more choppy and spread out. Season 6 now has so far Lex Luthor, the phantom zone, and Nyxly, as well as the Zor-El mini-arc, and while I’ll give them some leeway for Melissa Beniost’s maternity leave, there is again too much in too little time. Villains are underdeveloped or not given weighty closures, each main gets less and less personal screentime, and every shot that doesn’t serve a good or entertaining purpose feels like pouring out water from a canteen in the desert, especially now in the last season. Lex has greatly suffered for this both in the rage at how much screen time he gets compared to other characters, Kara in particular, and because of how his arcs are still hobbled by the lack of it.

    I just find myself wishing they’d restricted Lex to a 3 or 4 episode mini-arc, or just season 4 and saved him for the Superman and Lois show. They could have played the crisis resurrection as just an unfortunate coincidence of fate and had it be Superman’s problem from there on. 

    To Jon Cryer, may you never see this. It’s so very not your fault.

If anyone actually reads this whole thing and I got something wrong let me know. I’d love to discuss it. Today, I’m just trying to isolate the main issues I have with Lex in Supergirl. 

[monstcrmade]

headcanoning villains as lgbt is super problematic and you shouldn't do it

Bruh.

You already sent me this like...a week ago?????? I think??? I responded to it here

Get like a hobby or something, I am begging you, rather than try to virtue signal at me. Twice. With the same exact message. 

As a queer person, I genuinely do not care what the fuck you think I should or shouldn’t do with LGBT+ headcanons for any character. I like thinking that Primo is queer. This might sound weird to you, but Primo is a comfort character of mine. Yes, he’s a bad man, he does bad things. He’s part of the fucking Calabrian mafia, but by God I love him to bits. (And despite what so many on tumblr think, that doesn’t mean anything about me as a person. Shockingly, you can like bad people and not be bad or even agree with the things they do). He lives in my head rent free.

Primo also literally has so much queer-coding in the series and I made a post about a bunch of it here. Even my fiancee who re-watched the series with me agrees with the headcanon and was also pointing things out as well whilst watching and agreed that Primo is very much queer-coded. We both say that Primo bugging Leonardo like he does is him flirting with the other man ffs. There is also absolutely zero heterosexual explanation for sharing his coke with Paul like he does in episode.4.

And don’t come at me with ‘but Primo called Gail hot!’ I mean, yeah, of course he did. He possesses working eyeballs and Hilary Swank is a beautiful woman. Queer men can appreciate female beauty. And literally outside that one like throw-away line which, for context, is when he’s high off his ass and making plans for how he wants the ransom money from her delivered, he shows zero interest in any other woman. The scene takes place in a strip club. Tons of scantly clad women around him and this man doesn’t give a single flying fuck. He was sitting with a prostitute in this scene as well and nothing at all about their interaction carries the least bit of sexual anything to it. And when do we see the prostitute character next? When she’s helping Primo to kill his misogynistic, abusive, piece of shit uncle lmao. Again, not a sexual interaction between them.

That one line in episode.9 is nothing compared to all the queer-coding of Primo Nizzuto. He’s gay af. This man has never seen a vagina in his life except the one he came out of.

I can and will headcanon characters anyway I want. If I want to headcanon Primo as gay, bi, trans, genderqueer, WHATEVER, I can. Him being a “villain” (and frankly even that’s debatable if he’s the real villain of the series. I say no though I do say he’s still a bad man cause he is) changes nothing for that. I like me some queer villains too. Cisgender straight villains only is the most boring shit in the world.

Now leave me to write Primo however I damn please. Keep pushing me and I will be forced to piss you off more and just make LGBT+ headcanons of ALL of Luca Marinelli’s characters (except Fabrizio de André because y’know, he was a real fucking person).

[maevemarethyu]

The Pack (2/?)

(Not my GIF)

(Bucky Barnes x Reader)

The Night Wolves. New York’s most prolific and secretive gang. Always watching yet somehow always out of reach. Always slipping through the Avengers grasp.

Until they got you.

You were a street rat. A grunt working for the most gruesome group of criminals New York had ever seen.

Captain America wasn’t expecting much when they brought you in, he certainly wasn’t expecting you and his best friend to get along so well. You were a courier, nothing more.

Or so they thought.

Warnings: Violence, Cursing, Talks of Murder, Actual Murder, Talks of Abuse, Kidnapping, Depictions of Abuse, Crude Humor, Sexual Humor, Bucky Barnes (because he needs a warning all in himself), Sad Boi Hours.

You spent the next day and a half sulking in your room as one does when they’re being hunted down by an organization of murderous thugs hellbent of destroying New York City’s peace.

Or, at least you think that’s how one would act if that were happening.

Despite Sam’s attempts at brightening your day and Steve’s encouraging speech, you feel most at ease when Barnes metal hand raps on your door, barely loud enough to be heard and ever so polite.

“It’s almost dinner time. Steve wants to know if you feel up to joining us tonight.” You never thought you’d be able to say that you could hear velvet until you met Bucky Barnes but, you count yourself lucky you can. That man’s voice should be illegal.

You’re about to say no just as you had last night when he speaks again. “Wanda’s coming home tonight.”

You bite back the groan that wants to crawl up your throat. You had made it seem that you were a bit too interested in the Witch. Turning down the opportunity to meet her would definitely raise some suspicions.

Shutting the laptop that had been provided to you, you shuffle to the door before opening it a crack; the mask of Valerie Mason slipping onto your face easily.

“R-Really?” You ask timidly, your voice an octave higher that normal. You have to crane your neck to look into his ocean eyes but, the way he smiles at you makes it worth it. Criminal.

Everything about this man was criminal. Figuratively and literally.

“Yeah. She’s excited for there to be another girl in the compound; especially after-“ His voice trails off and his smile disappears. You didn’t need to ask why. You knew what happened to the Black Widow and Iron Man and everyone else who sacrificed their lives to stop Thanos.

Heroes. Each and every one of them.

You want to resent them for it, you were everything they weren’t but, you couldn’t. Not when you were aware of what would have happened if they didn’t save the day. You’d be dead. Flora and Maeve too.

Even your cat Gracie would have been wiped and that would not have flown with you.

Barnes clears his throat, breaking you out of your thoughts.

“Oh. I-Is there a dress code?” There sure as hell was one at your place but, that was only when there were guests.

“It’s Wanda’s choice. She normally asks us to wear pajamas and watch movies.” If you squinted, you swore that you could see the faintest blush on the man’s face.

A movie night was something you were familiar with and you could appreciate the Scarlet Witch’s way to wind down after a mission but, there was one small problem.

“I don’t actually have any pajamas. I didn’t get to pack a bag before I left.” You mutter, finding it difficult to bite back the Cheshire grin that wanted to grow on your face. If you had your way, the sleeping clothes you would have pack would not have been movie night appropriate.

Maybe you’d show him some day. If he were lucky.

Confusion shines on his handsome face like a beacon and his next words prove to you that Bucky Barnes doesn’t think before he speaks.

“Then what did you sleep in last night?”

Your silence answers his question and the slight blush from before darkens visibly much to your amusement.

“It’s fine I can just-“ Your attempt to put him out of his own misery is thwarted when he coughs suddenly, making you believe he had somehow forgotten how to breathe.

“No! Sorry. Its- Wait here.” He leaves you dazed and confused when he nearly sprints from your door and down the hall.

You have half a mind to close your door and go back to watching Derek Morgan kick down doors but, the other half of your mind was curious to see what the hell Barnes was doing.

The curious side wins out so you open your door fully and poke your head into the hallway just in time to see him emerge from a door down the hall with a dark red bundle in his hands.

Ducking back into your room before he can catch you spying on him, you manage to trip over your own feet and land on the floor with a loud thud. By the time you manage to pull your eyes up from the floor in front of you, Barnes is standing in your doorway, blocking out most of the light from the hall with his hulking frame.

You should be embarrassed but, the first and only thought in your brain is how this was not the way you wanted to end up on your knees for Bucky Barnes.

“You okay?” His worried voice slaps you back into reality and a genuine heat creeps up your face when he offers you his hand. He’s pulling you up before you can fully take in how much larger his hand is than yours.

“I’m good, Sarge.” You huff, looking away from his face with a pout. “Just a klutz is all.”

Once again, the smile he gives you is borderline criminal before he seems to remember why he was here in the first place. His eyes find the floor increasingly interesting as he holds the bundle in his hands out to you and muttering something incomprehensible.

“What was that?” You hum, eager to regain whatever ground you can with the man. Despite it fitting the character of Valerie well, your pride refuses to let you be seen as some easily flustered, pining, girl.

You are Y/N Y/L/N. You do not pine.

“Wanda’s room is locked.” He tries to explain, still refusing to look you in your face. “You can use this.”

Realization creeps into your bones and you have to fight the cat-like grin that tries to grow. Unfolding the admittedly soft bundle, you hold the shirt up against your body.

Forget his hand. The man is huge.

To be safe, you’d wear your leggings under it but, you don’t really feel its necessary. You look back up at Bucky as a faint smile lights your face. He wanted you to wear his shirt.

How disgustingly thoughtful and cute.

“Thank you-“ You trail off, not sure what to really call him; your usual nickname of Sarge didn’t feel right in this situation.

“Bucky.” He supplies, finally looking at you. “You can call me Bucky.”

“Thank you Bucky.” You hope you sound sincere enough to hide your very insincere thoughts. Thankfully he looks none the wiser when your eyes lock onto his.

Logically the next step in this whole awkward exchange would be Bucky excusing himself and leaving so you could get changed but, that doesn’t happen. Instead he stands in your room shuffling from foot to foot.

You let a moment or two pass before speaking up.

“Uh, Bucky?” You begin.

“Yeah?” He perks up at the sound of your voice and a smile creeps onto your face at the sight.

“I kinda need to change and…”

“Shit right. I’ll just…go?” He begins backing out of your room. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Once your door is closed you can’t help but laugh out loud at his cringeworthiness. Who would have thought that the nightmare of villains everywhere like his shirts soft and could barely string a sentence together due too his social awkward nature.

Or maybe it was the decades of HYDRA torture he endured? That wasn’t your baggage to unpack.

Without further ado you strip off your two-day old shirt and pants before hopping into a boiling shower. You vaguely remember reading somewhere that hot showers were bad for both your skin and hair but, obviously the person that wrote that article didn’t understand the pleasure of nearly melting your skin off in the pursuit of cleanliness.

One thing the Stark shower had that yours didn’t was a small screen that allowed you to customize all of your showerly needs- shampoo, conditioner, bodywash, the whole shebang. You tack that onto the list of things to add to your new home once Maeve and Flora get you from this heavenly hellhole.

By the time you exit the shower your skin is hot to the touch and you smell like orange blossoms. The scent sticks to you even after you dry off and slip Barnes’ shirt over your head. It feels even softer than it did in your hands and you relish in it before wondering when the last time you wore someone else’s shirt. It had to have been before the Night Wolves.

Almost six years then.

You pause midway through putting on your leggings. Had it really been that long? You had started the Night Wolves, quite literally, the day after the Snap. You hit the ground running and you haven’t stopped since.

Maybe this month would be good for you. You could think of it as a forced vacation.

Unfortunately for you pausing mid way through putting on your pants has you falling over and ending up on your floor once more. The impact leaves you with a bruise on both your ass and your ego.

“Miss Valerie. Miss Maximoff will be landing in two minutes.” FRIDAY’s voice blips into existence and somehow adds to your embarrassment along with the paranoia that your room was bugged and all of the Avengers just listened and or watched you fall half-naked on your floor.

With the same grace as a newborn deer you manage to finish dressing. Looking up at the ceiling from your position on the floor, you can’t help but wonder what the Scarlet Witch was like. Was she snobby because she knew how powerful she was? Or was she sweet? Or sad?

You’d be sad if you went through what she went through. But, you didn’t. You went through your own shit and you’re angry.

You’re pissed off and spiteful and that spite is what has you walking to your door and pulling it open. You were going to meet the Scarlet Witch, you were going to survive this forced vacation, then you were going back to work, and then you were going to ring those street rats’ necks.

As soon as the hall lights hit your face, you plaster on the most believable mask you can and walk down the hall towards the kitchen you had briefly seen the day Bucky walked you in. Sooner than you had hoped, you hear the voices of both Wilson and Rogers echoing a bit too loudly for your liking.

The talking stops as soon as you enter the room. Much like that day in the interrogation room, you feel like you’re under a microscope as both men stare at you. Although, this time, you feel as though they’re not staring at you as much as they are staring at what’s on you.

It’s the Falcon that breaks the silence.

“Is that Buck’s shirt?” Your first instinct is to laugh at the incredulous looks on their faces but instead you eye the floor shyly. There’s a grunt and you’re guessing its because Steve landed a elbow to the Falcon’s gut.

“I-I don’t have any other clothes and Bucky offered so-“ You trail off while picking off imaginary lint from the shirt in question.

“You brought this woman here and didn’t even give her extra clothes?” A woman’s lightly accented voice brings your attention to the new presence in the room.

Wanda Maximoff is the type of beautiful that makes your heart skip a beat while your stomach curls in envy. She takes up a room when she steps in and you can feel the power radiating off of her even when she’s wearing mickey mouse pajama pants and a black tank top.

“Ah well. I mean Buck brought her right here after she almost got mugged the other day and-“

“She’s been here for more than a day and nobody thought to bring her clothes? Where is Pepper?”

Both men stutter instead of answering and the witch rolls her eyes before walking over to you and extending a hand. “I’m Wanda.”

Her smile is bright and very obviously real to the point you almost flinch. Thankfully you’re able to shake her hand without embarrassing yourself. “I’m Valerie and I can’t believe I’m actually meeting you.”

Valerie Mason slips over you like a blanket and suddenly you’re no longer Y/N Y/L/N. You don’t lead a ruthless group of murderers. You’re not a stone cold bitch.

You have a sick dad and help out your old neighbor with his shop. You live in a shitty apartment on the bad side of town. You’re innocent and safe under the watchful eyes of the Avengers.

You feel rather than see Bucky walk up behind you and you don’t miss the look Steve, Wanda, and Sam share. Chancing a glance behind you turns out to be an awful idea because if you thought the man was fine in street clothes, he’s absolutely sinful in a pair of grey sweats and long-sleeved undershirt that is definitely a size too small.

If he wasn’t so innocent looking, you’d accuse him of doing on purpose.

Wanda’s voice brings you back to reality. “So Valerie. What kind of movies do you like?”

Tags: @cherryblossomskye​  @hollarious

[kittensinsocks24]

Spinel is one of the best examples of trauma and emotional parental figure abuse I’ve seen in media: an essay nobody asked for

As some may know, the television film special for Steven Universe, appropriately enough titled Steven Universe: The Movie premiered on Cartoon Network last night after being announced one year ago at SDCC. It was here where we would get our first glance at the villain of the film, who we would come to find out upon release is named Spinel. 

I as well watched this stephen university moving picture show. And, despite my initial jokes about “this bendy-and-the-ink-machine lookin’ ass bubblegum bitch”, by the time the credits rolled I looked like a drowned cat, and had wept real tears of pain over this poor, poor strawberry shortcake clown infant. But why? Why was I openly sobbing over a literal one-braincell jester girl with the color palette of magenta printer ink? Then it hit me: Spinel is many things, but she is, most importantly, a great mirror. A mirror for me, and any and all other victims of being taken advantage of by somebody you trust, look up to, and admire, most often than not, parents. 

TW: Spoilers below for Steven Universe: The Movie as well as discussion of abusive guardians, short mentions of physical abuse, and discussion of  emotional manipulation

While it’s true that Spinel is self-proclaimed to have been Pink’s “best friend”, I feel that to a more obvious extent she is coded to have had a parental, one-sided-admiration relationship with Pink. This is confirmed to me by her obvious youthful, playful and childlike behavior in her original state, her clinginess to the person she respects, and most importantly, her unquestioning belief in Pink Diamond’s love and belief in her best interests, despite obvious signals otherwise to an outsider. 

Let’s start at the beginning: Past Spinel is, self-described, “innocent, loving, .....stupid.” Spinel was created, metaphorically and physically, to keep Pink Diamond happy and entertained. Her default state was to naturally seek Pink’s approval, to earn her admiration and joy, similar to how most often a child’s first and prevailing desire is to earn their parent’s approval and love. Despite it not being Spinel’s fault that Pink decided to leave her there with the false hope of her returning, Spinel inherently blames her own naivety and desire for Pink’s love for her current predicament. Maybe if she hadn’t been so trusting, had questioned what Pink was making her do, she wouldn’t have been alone all those years. That’s a feeling I think most trauma victims have looking back at their past selves and childhood, something that further drew me to Spinel’s arc as a metaphor for such. 

“And then she smiled, that’s what I’m after: the smile in her eyes, the sound of her laughter.” 

This is a situation I believe most if not all children of emotionally and/or physically abusive parents can relate to. The tale of an abusive parental relationship often starts off with a parent either having a child they weren’t emotionally mature enough to raise, or, more relevant in Pink’s case, “having” a child for selfish reasons of personal entertainment, or to fill a void in their lives somehow, realizing only too late the independent personhood of their new “toy” outside of them. 

I’ve seen some say that Spinel was understandably left behind because she is shown throughout to be “clingy” and “annoying”, but you know who else frequently has those traits? Children. Especially children before they emotionally mature like Spinel does after her revelation about Pink. I can assure you for a fact that I was a very annoying child. Does that make it right that my parent emotionally withdrew after I was no longer pleasing or entertaining to them? Does that make it right that they hit me? No. 

When Pink first “had” Spinel it’s clear that she genuinely enjoyed her company. Most toxic relationships have this sort of “honeymoon” phase, a time before things were so bad that the victim will often wish to go back to, not unlike Spinel. Even though Pink’s later actions erase any goodwill towards Spinel and make it clear that even in joyful times she never really cared for her, as somebody scarred by trauma Spinel inherently longs to go back to these days even if Pink was not actually as happy or good as she remembers. 

Later on, we as the audience, privy to more knowledge, can see that Pink has grown irritated/bored with Spinel. But Spinel, much like a child, isn’t aware of this. Spinel loves and is devoted to Pink, and if Pink is happy, she is happy for her. Her trust in Pink loving her back and unwavering confidence in her actions blinds her to what is coming next. “Every day was so much fun! At least.... that’s what I thought.....” She even is so confident that Pink loves her back that she is 100% positive Pink will take her along to Earth. 

“I was so excited! A whole new place to play!” 

Pink instructs Spinel to stay put in the garden and not follow her, lying straight to Spinel’s openly trusting face that this request is the start of a “game”. Spinel, again only seeking nothing but the love and admiration of her pseudo-parental figure/person she obviously admires, does so without question. In her mind so full of love and genuine belief that Pink would never do something wrong to her, she never even questions that this may not be a game, that Pink is seeking to dispose of her, or that Pink may not return. Spinel takes Pink fully at her word, and thus waits, and waits, for 6000 years. 

At first, Spinel remains ever the optimist she always is, entrusting that despite the obvious gap in time that Pink, having her best interests in mind, will come back to love and play with her. 

As literal years go by, we can see that despite her best efforts the wait for Pink to “come around” (physically, but also emotionally if we view this as a metaphor) has taken a toll on Spinel. She’s visibly weathered, with tired eyes and a weaker smile. However even though this is clearly not good for her she continues to believe that, yes, Pink does love her and would never hurt her! She will come back! 

Worst of all, and something even more stinging when looked at through the lens of an abuse metaphor, is Spinel’s line during this part of the song:

“Happily wondering, night after night, is this how it works? Am I doing it right?”

Annnnnnd this is where the waterworks really burst for me, folks. Spinel has begun questioning Pink’s actions, but her continued belief that Pink, again, would only do the best for her makes it so Spinel has begun, to some extent, to blame herself for how long it’s taken for Pink to return. Spinel feels perhaps she did something to displease Pink, that she messed up their “game” somehow, and this is why Pink has not returned to love her. She must strive and continue to be the best at this “game” or she is to blame for Pink not wanting to play with her. It’s a powerfully impactful line, but even worse for any child who went through a similar trial-and-error, self-deprecating process of trying to earn their parent’s unachievable love through grades, performance, or going above-and-beyond in any other sort of field. 

Spinel is so desperate to finally get Pink’s love “back” that even though it is straining her mentally and (albeit to a lesser extent) physically, she will continue to do whatever Pink asked and even doubt herself and her ability to do things right if it means even a sliver of potential attention down the line.

Then, Spinel has a watershed moment most every child of an abusive guardian will have: she realizes she’s been abused. Through Steven’s broadcast, Spinel indirectly learns two things: 1, Pink is dead, has been dead, and was never intending on coming back for her even after all of Spinel’s silent years of devotion and trust, and 2, Pink proceeded to give others the love and attention Spinel could never earn despite all she did immediately after moving on and leaving Spinel for dead. 

It is in this moment that Spinel not only physically “snaps” and changes into her much more threatening form seen in Act 1, but that she also breaks. 

Spinel entertained and loved Pink for who knows how long before she disappeared, and even in her absence and the absence of love and affection continued to trust and care for her, and Pink instead simply chose to devote herself to new people, a new place, without them even having to earn her like Spinel did? It’s more than unfair, it rocks Spinel’s worldview.

Emotionally, the revelation that the person she adored, loved, trusted and respected and that she naturally looked up to not only did not care for her but actively chose to love others and ignore her despite all the mentally-taxing devotion Spinel gave her is more than she can bear. 

“You keep on turning pages, for people who don’t care, people who don’t care about you. And still it takes you ages to see that no one’s there, see that no one’s there, see that no one’s there. Everyone’s gone on without you.” 

Spinel transforms, a transformation symbolic of the venom and bile of her trauma. Despite her cocky attitude and speech about her “new look” upon initially showing up with her injector, Spinel notably is not proud of her new form. She views herself as broken. 

Scarred beyond repair by Pink’s abandonment and actions. Something too messed up and warped to love, unworthy of affection and friendship.

Traumatized.

I’ve never met another person traumatized by parental abuse who didn’t also feel like they were too far gone. A monster, transformed and shaped into something horrible by their abuser’s actions.  

“All that stuff’s easy for you to say! When you change, you change for the better! When I change, I change for the WORSE! I used to just be not good enough, not good enough for Pink,- but NOW, I’m not GOOD AT ALL!” 

~                                 ~                                       ~

“Spinel, you’ve met The Diamonds before, right?”

“Yeah, but.... (notably hesitant) they’ve never seen me like this.” 

With Pink gone, Spinel has nobody direct to confront about her traumas. Without any better coping mechanisms, Spinel’s only desire is to lash out at somebody, anybody for her pain. She specifically chooses Earth and The Crystal Gems for having been the objects of the affection Pink never gave her, despite not actually having a personal relationship with them. 

“Y’know, I came here to take my anger out on a bunch of strangers, [...]”

When I first wisened up to the fact that what my parent did wasn’t normal, wasn’t something I should have gone through as an innocent child, I lashed out at any and everybody I felt was involved in some way. My father for never being around when it happened, never stopping her when it did, never getting her help, never calling CPS. My brother for never having to deal with her wrath, for always raising the bar with his good grades, making it feel harder and harder to earn the love I felt like I had to have.

Spinel’s maladaptive way of handling the situation is an all-too-common chapter in the life of the abused, and something that further strengthens the connection her arc has to real life people in similar situations.

When Steven confronts her that this isn’t the way to handle things, Spinel doesn’t see any other way. She doesn’t feel like she can trust anybody again, and doesn’t feel herself worthy of love. During “Found”, she’s noticeably hesitant and even resistive to Steven’s assurance that she’ll find somebody who truly does love her one day, too scarred by Pink’s deception to open herself up to the idea of healing.

Even when she does, it’s notably a delicate process. After turning off the injector, her own insecurity and trust issues due to her traumatic incident leads her, without any real evidence, to assume that Steven and the Gems value her as little as Pink did. She is both afraid of what she has become, again feeling she is too traumatized to be accepted and loved, and also afraid that they will leave her as easily and quickly as her abuser. 

After failing to ever earn Pink’s love fully and the physical and emotional transformation her trauma has had on her, Spinel doesn’t genuinely believe anybody could ever want her company ever again. 

“I’m the source of all your problems. Don’t pretend you want me here.  What’s your plan for me, huh? Ya gonna put me somewhere? Gonna - LEAVE me somewhere? Gonna LEAVE ME ALONE?”

However, after the emotional catharsis of lashing out, sharing her traumas with Steven, and then spiraling into another emotional rage over what happened to her, Spinel, having begun to process her trauma, realizes that her hurting those only vaguely, tangentially related to her abuser and situation will do nothing to heal the pain inside her, and, more importantly, realizes that doing this is only pushing people away from her and failing to allow herself to open up to loving again. 

And, of course, this is via a breakdown complete with agony-driven laughter, because Rebecca loves rendering me bald and taking an icepick to my similarly traumatized heart.

“(cracking with emotion)....What am I doing? Why do I want to hurt you so bad? I’m supposed to be a friend. .....I just want to be a friend.”

As low of a point as this is for Spinel emotionally, it shows that she has begun the slow but ultimately fulfilling process of healing. This new path continues in her next scene, where she opens herself up to The Diamonds with Steven’s coaxing, despite the person who spurned her having been a Diamond herself (this also easily could be viewed as a metaphor for opening yourself up to trusting mentoring relationships again and finding a healthy new parental relationship in someone either non-blood-related or in other members of your family). 

In probably the most heart-wrenching scene of the movie for me, as The Diamonds reprise their song about opening their hearts up to a new member of their family (this also furthers my argument of spinel = child figure to Pink, considering the last person the trio sung this to was Pink’s literal biological son), Spinel sings part of Found again, finally believing Steven’s statement that she will love again, as she connects and converses with people who genuinely like her despite all she’s been through and become. 

Spinel learns and accepts, for the first time in the movie, that she is worthy of love, and is not too broken or changed by her trauma to receive it. 

And so I cried like the winner of a horseradish paste eating contest. 

In summary, to me, and I’m more than sure to other experiencers of childhood emotional and/or physical abuse at the hands of somebody they trusted, Spinel is one of the best media representations of the complex moods, highs and lows, and experiences of going through, repressing, and processing trauma. Not only that, but unlike some other characters I can think of, Spinel gets a hopeful ending. She’s not so warped and broken that the writers deemed her too far gone and thus only worthy of killing off. No. Spinel is a trauma victim who goes through a dark period of coping in negative ways, but then comes out the other side ready to open herself back up to the idea of healing and moving on from her trauma and abuser. Despite all her baggage and scars, the movie assures us Spinel is just as worthy of a happy ending as any other person. 

And I don’t think I’m alone in saying that if MY pained ass at the beginning of my traumatic processing years ago had seen that I could, that I CAN be okay despite it, that it would have meant so much to me. 

And even though I’m still still learning to love again myself, I think deep down all victims hope we can become our own Spinel someday. 

Somewhere.

Somehow.

We’ll love again. 

TL;DR Rebecca Sugar wrote one of the best arcs about abuse on television ever and its star was a rubberhose baby who sounds like Betty Boop and whos shoes make the spongebob walk cycle noise sample and thats why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. 

[bi-dazai]

ok my bsd predictions for major plot points in the future

1.

If dazai were to be killed off in bsd, chuuya would probably be killed with him in a final act of coded symbiosis.

Tbh tho that's such a major thing that it probably wouldn't happen until when the manga is finishing up so

2.

Chuuya will either become the PM Boss or he'll join the ADA.

So chuuya is strongly suggested in two ways for his future which is HM INTERESTING. So the way that Mori clearly recruits him not just for his ability but for his leadership skills, plus the how chuuya has been developing those skills, is something I was thinking about a lot in S3. Mori is very clearly not happy with Dazai being the heir, even though he was the best choice. Dazai would have probably killed Mori and taken his place by the time he was 20 if odasaku hadn't died. Chuuya has loyalty to the mafia plus the fighting and leadership abilities. He's also got a certain obedience and controllability that if Mori was to step aside and not die he would like. Also something ppl forget is that chuuya is actually good at negotiation and staying calm under pressure, it's suggested that dazai particularly triggers his anger because dazai is an annoying shit who seems to be in canon attached to him whenever they're in the same room.

HOWEVER. Now I don't think I've ever said this on this blog despite me constantly thinking about it but Fukuzawa's ability is the perfect thing for Chuuya, as it has the possibility of actually reigning in corruption. If chuuya joined the ADA he would actually be able to use corruption's ability of throwing black holes without losing control of himself. Arguably that would also get rid of the need for dazai's intervention although it's been established that skk were thought of as a perfect fighting duo for a year before corruption even first manifested in a fight, so I don't think this would kill skk. And chuuya joining the ADA would mean that he and dazai have to interact on the daily. It also means that the mafia is left without any clear heir. People have vouched for kouyou in this situation but I think it's clear that kouyou is being forced to be in the mafia, she's given up on leaving and doesn't want to be there actively.

I don't think the second outcome is very possible plotwise for a few reasons. These are all totally writer's arguments so appeals to logic and plot aren't exactly going to work here, but as a writer myself these are the planning issues that stick out extremely badly if we get chuuya to defect:

- it would have to take something extremely major to get chuuya to leave the loyalty of the mafia

- chuuya becomes even more OP. asagiri kafka has said that though he really likes chuuya (as evidenced by the amount of goddamn times chuuya comes up in the novels), he avoids putting him in the manga because chuuya is extremely overpowered. If he and dazai were logically paired together for each issue every arc would be solved far too quickly for things like character development, or like...story...to take place. This is why chuuya is constantly sidelined. You have to actively make it so that chuuya isn't on people's minds constantly, or get him out of the picture immediately, so that your narrative can actually develop. Chuuya is honestly a mistake in a writing sense. But he's a strong character and he and dazai were written in tandem to each other so he's absolutely unremovable. A character like chuuya NEEDS to exist. So the way chuuya has been toned down is Corruption. Chuuya's ability by itself is just...incredibly powerful. He's virtually indestructible. However Corruption, the ultimate form, is shown to actively kill chuuya. The only times we've seen corruption used is cthulu, shibusawa, and shibusawa big dragon, all extreme threats. So chuuya's life when he's pulled out as the deus ex machina is tied to dazai. This makes chuuya's unchecked OP a little less unchecked and a little less OP. Chuuya is actually a fantastic example of why you CAN have OP characters, you just have to write them a certain way.

However in writing them a certain way, the most stupid thing you could do for your narratives would be to bring corruption under control, and to bring chuuya into the group of protagonists. you have to find excuses in every problem to why chuuya can't just come out and handle this himself, like you were before but now dazai's absence isn't an issue PLUS your readers are paying more attention to chuuya because he's around all the time.

So yeah, chuuya being in the ADA would be a bad choice narrative wise unless it was for like...one arc or smth. Chuuya becoming the next boss of the port mafia is wayyyyy more likely to me. I don't think chuuya would like it but he's really the most obvious choice

3.

Dostoyevsky/rat arc is going to be mega arc/s.

one of the exciting things abt this series is that I have no idea how long this conflict with the rats will go on for. At first I thought it would be an occasional and ongoing plotline that is explored not as one big set arc but interspersed with other non-rat arcs. However by the way it's going it looks like we have two options, either 1) the rat issue is being dealt with across one mega-arc or 2) rat issues will still be dealt with like I thought, interspersed, but each time they pop up it will be a mega-arc like it has been so far. I genuinely don't know how this will be resolved, and I'm actually kind of wondering if the characters will finally leave kanagawa prefecture and maybe head to Russia to defeat the rats. I think this could be a good start to travelling the characters to settings outside yokohama.

4.

Agatha Christie is going to be matched up to Ranpo.

Like Dostoyevsky is dazai's foil because their works IRL were similar in tone, Agatha Christie and Ranpo match up in that way perfectly. We've already met the trick foil (we thought he would be, but he wasn't) for Ranpo in Poe (IRL Poe actually did write mystery at times, and his works do contain elements of suspense and unknown). Ranpo is clearly going through hell in this arc which makes me feel like he's going to start being a much more major character in the future.

Agatha Christie and Edogawa Ranpo's works both fit in the mystery genre and were both alive irl around the same time. They both played historic roles in developing the mystery genre of their language's literature and are pretty well-known in non-literature circles because mystery often has a pulp, mass-consumable aspect to it. It was actually surprising to me that they were made into characters considering the other characters are named after authors of much "higher grade" Literature, as in Literature capital L. Mystery authors especially like Agatha Christie don't fit that bill, but they've played a central role in developing the fiction industry so I don't find it odd. Plus there's a bit of a debate what counts as Literature and every person has different opinions. Mine differs to asagiri kafka's which evidently seems to be that if the author has had a significant impact on the literary field then their works become Literature, thus they become 文豪 (Literary masters), thus they become a bsd character. I think that's fair, even if it isn't what I would personally say Literature is. This is par for the course tho lol, p sure any person who is into Literature will have a different thing to say about what gets that capital L.

But yeah, I think Ranpo and Christie are clearly going to be each others foils.

5.

Christie is going to be cold. Like. COLD.

Dostoyevsky is more obvious evil, it shows on the surface. But Christie will have a polite veneer, a charm to her. We've seen her in a shot, and she sits tall, she enjoys tea, she dresses expensively and lives in colourful rooms. But she had no hesitation to destroy Yokohama if a situation wasn't dealt with within half an hour in the cruelest way possible. Christie was actively ready to incinerate Yokohama alive, that was her first instinct when contacted for help. Christie very clearly has a lack of care for the lives of others, OR she wants to destroy Yokohama in particular. However considering this is the goal of Dostoyevsky and Christie will probably be the next major villain after Dostoyevsky, repeating that goal and motivation is pretty boring and not very bungou stray dogs.

6.

The order of the clock tower will not come to yokohama first.

The Guild were the ones to come to yokohama and threaten it up close. The order of the clock tower was a major threat to yokohama from across the continent. That's terrifying. The ADA/Mafia will have to work proactively

7.

The end of the clock tower will have major repercussions.

The order of the clock tower seems to have its claws in everything and has a tight maintenance of leadership and control over almost every gifted organisation we've met. The Order seems to literally keep order. But they've clearly got a goal with sending the guild and the rats after the book. If the order is destroyed then certain aspects of gifted society slip loose and create new problems. This will probably be the creator of an arc or two after the order arc is over.

8.

Chuuya's backstory is linked to Dazai's.

Chuuya was used by the military and experimented on until he could contain a god of destruction, after which he went haywire, blasted a huge crater in yokohama, and became a feral child.

Dazai was...we don't know. The furthest back we can tell is that some time in his early teens he was taken in by Mori. Before that he was apparently wandering around trying to find some kind of emotion, something to make him feel. He eventually found that with the violence and adrenaline rush of the mafia.

Now I don't think that dazai is a psychopath. It's easy to say he is with the way he seems to talk about the hole in his heart and the absence and emptiness. However dazai very very clearly cares. He cares about odasaku, he cares about atsushi, he cares about the ADA, and he even cares about chuuya (this is not my shipper brain talking, I am literally talking about canon). Dazai very clearly CARES. He isn't a psychopath.

My belief is that dazai is the most clear argument for my case that the series is about mental illness and self worth. Dazai very clearly has a major depressive disorder.

I also think that dazai is extremely traumatised. Obviously he's traumatised by being in the mafia at 15 and by odasaku's death, but I also think dazai may have been traumatised even before then.

Atsushi is dazai's mentee, the half of shin soukoku. He's shown to have childhood trauma. Akutagawa also has childhood trauma. Chuuya has childhood trauma. This may be a coincidence but almost every main character in this series has some form of early trauma.

Dazai IRL was not called Dazai Osamu. Dazai Osamu is actually a very sad name but Dazai's birth name is Tsushima Shuuji. IRL dazai/Tsushima was the son of a rich family that lived in Aomori prefecture (which is very rural lol). Dazai had an absent father and a sick mother and wasnt raised by his parents but rather by servants and his aunt. His father died when he was young (not that he got very old) and his life was plagued by constantly running off with girls, getting his allowance cut for being a marxist, and, yes, suicide attempts.

So my ideas for how this may translate into bsd dazai is this:

- dazai ran away from home when he was young

- dazai never had a good parental figure

- dazai is from a rich family in a rural area very far away. Like for those who don't know Aomori is at the northern tip of Honshū, just below Hokkaido. Yokohama is just south of Tokyo. The region in between is mostly forest and smaller cities. Most of Japan's (major) cities are cloistered around Tokyo and Kyoto and Fukuoka which are towards the south. So dazai is a country boy who has wandered japan after running away from home.

- dazai's real name is Tsushima Shuuji and there's a personal reason he's distanced himself from that. This one im not sure about but yeah

- thus follows that why would dazai be so fucked up if he isn't a psychopath and he did come from a rich family? Dazai to me reads that something major happened. In shin skk it's clear that atsushi and alutagawa share a past of abuse at the hands of parental figures and loneliness. With all the similarities and parallels drawn between the characters in skk and shin skk it seems logical to me that chuuya's past of torture may be similar to Dazai's in a way. It would be disappointing to me if dazai's past was covered and it didn't in some way affect him. The clearest parallel between skk is that they both lacked parental figures most if not their entire lives.

There's also this comment that dazai makes when the head of atsushi's orphanage dies. It's that relationships with fathers are messy and even if they were terrible it's natural to cry. This seems like bsd dazai may share irl dazai's father's death early in his life. It's hinted therefore that dazai's father was either abusive or neglectful and died when dazai was younger.

Anyway this went longer than I thought it would but I invest far too much brain time into bsd so it's gotta seep out at some point lol

[malkumtend]

Thought I'd do one of those Warriors Questions things just to get it out of the way. I won't make this too detailed as there are a lot of questions:

1) How'd you get into it?:

I was aware of the fandom for a long time but I never actually got into the series until last year. I finally ended up watching a short skit video about the three and Breezepelt stuck in the caves and I ended up hooked. Then I bought the first arc of books and the series consumed me.

2) Favourite character?

Squirrelflight. I've loved this cat ever since she was a scrappy little apprentice. She's just one of those characters who I love because she knows she's usually right and hates being told otherwise XD I'm so happy it looks like she'll finally get her nine lives.

3) Least favourite character?

Blackstar. I can understand why people like characters like Ivypool or Bramblestar (both I'm not fans of) but I have never seen what I'm supposed to like about Blackstar. I think he's to me what Breezepelt is to alot of fans, a character who is borderline evil and is just not a cat I can see any natural good in.

4) Favourite arc?

I love Into the Wild. It just has the best protagonist for me, also it was the best thought out in terms of a story. But... I am loving where The Broken Code is going!!

5) Favourite book (series):

The Darkest Hour. It has my favourite battle of all the series and it just gives the best story arc for Firestar. (And then he became boring as mud after that...)

6) Favourite Super Edition/Novella?

I'll answer both! Crowfeather's Trial - love the development for my angsty boy. Pinestar's Choice - I genuinely love this novella! It has heart, a genuine relatable situation, and I find myself reading Pinestar's interactions with the kittypets over and over again, I just love it.

7) Least favourite book (series)?

The Forgotten Warrior. SOL WAS WASTED AS A VILLAIN.

8) Least favourite Super Edition/novella?

Squirrelflight's Hope - I hate this book with every fibre of my being. Don't get me wrong I love my ginger queen, but I hate the sisters, I hate how Squirrelflight is treated, and I HATE BRAMBLESTAR SO MUCH!!! Kate Cary, I know you hate Squirrel but this was overkill man! This is my favourite warrior and you put her through an abusive relationship only to shrug your shoulders and forget it ever happened! You are seriously harming the chances of children knowing what to do if they encounter these verbally abusive relationships! At least Spottedleaf's Heart had its heart in the right place.

Speaking of which. Yeah, Spottedleaf's Heart sucked. Again, I do give Vicky credit in that she clearly TRIED to present the themes of pedophillia in a respectful light. But she failed. It isn't even Thistleclaw's manipulation of a child that presents him as a clear villain to Spottedleaf, that only happens when he kills in the Dark Forest. Again, really mixed messages. Still, I respect that the book had good intentions, it just got muddled up.

9) Least favourite Arc?:

Vision of Shadows. I hate the protagonists, I find the story uninteresting, and the only interesting part of the books (Darktail) feels underdeveloped. Seriously, he had SO much potential, I love the guy but he doesn't make up for the rest in this borefest.

10) Saddest death?:

Cinderpelt. It's like Vicky said, the moment in the beginning of Twilight is heart wrenching for me. The poor desperate cat just has to deal with the unfairness of reality. It hits me in the feels every time I read it.

11) Favourite ship? (Canon):

I love Firestar and Sandstorm - love my enemies to friends romance!

12) Favourite ship? (Non canon):

I feel most people would already know this, but Squirrelflight and Crowfeather. I just think it would have made an amazing, fun dynamic to see these two bickering kids from other clans slowly fall in love.

I also really like Ravenpaw and Barley :3 my two farm boys deserve each other xxx

13) Least favourite ships?:

I'll just put em all in.

Clear Sky X Starflower (IT'S F***ING CREEPY)

Firestar X Spottedleaf (They literally spoke like three times... She was alive for ONE book)

Lionblaze X Heathertail (sooooooo boring.)

14) What would you change if you could?

I would make Spottedleaf a villain. I'm just in love with the idea of her slowly plotting in the background, with hints of it shown through interactions in each arc, until it is all finally revealed in the battle in Omen of the Stars. It would certainly be more fulfilling than her kinda basic guide role in Firestars dreams. If she was trying to cause chaos due to her feeling that Starclan abandoned her by letting her die so young, making her use false prophecies in order to manipulate events in the real world, it would make a pretty interesting manipulative villain. It could have been the end all of plot twists! I don't know, I like the idea.

Okay I think that's enough. Hope you guys found my opinions interesting (you probably didn't) and if my opinion goes against yours, please don't think I'm trying to insult you. It's just my silly two cents after all. Keep on loving and hating what you like.

At least we all agree that we're Warriors fans!

[spookieloop]

♡ Tag 9 people you would like to get to know better ♡

Tagged by: @undead-gearhead 🥰 Thank you for tagging! I think you might know me from one of my sideblogs, I have a TON (you probably know me as wrath-of-eden)

Top Three Ships: Yeah I mainly ship OC/Canon or characters from my original works, but I KNOW I have canon ships...if my brain will cooperate and let me think of them lol(suddenly I have forgotten every media I have ever enjoyed)

• VEGEBUL, okay this one is my genuine OTP, ever since I was a little girl. Vegeta and Bulma are some of my favorite characters IN GENERAL, and I just love them so much. I love how Vegeta was a villain and yet he turned out to be a MUCH better husband and father than Goku has EVER been

• CLASSIC Joker and Harley: Look, pls don’t hate me for this one, I grew up with Mark Hammil’s Joker, and I DON’T read New 52. Growing up extremely isolated(I grew up in the middle of the woods, so no other kids nearby), mentally ill, and interested in Science, I CLUNG to The Joker since he was the first INTELLIGENT outwardly stated(not just coded) mentally ill character my tiny child self had ever seen; that was what made me understand that being “different” didn’t mean I was dumb. Harley was doubly important to me because she was female, and smarter than The Joker(I liked Ivy too for this reason, but Ivy has never sat quite right for me because my mom was my abuser, and she is also a plant-loving redhead) I’m not going to lie, I took a huge interest in psychology as a kid purely because I loved Harley.

Don’t get me wrong, I know their relationship is anything BUT healthy, but they’re villains, they aren’t supposed to be healthy(In BTAS Harley and Ivy’s relationship wasn’t healthy either) I did like though, that when Harley herself feels a line has been crossed(typically when she doesn’t get the attention she needs) she is MORE than willing to leave The Joker’s crusty ass; I always thought that if the physical abuse truly bothered her she would just leave. (I am not defending the Joker, just stating that Harley is NOT trapped and helpless)

• The Entire Human Scooby Doo Gang: Look man, it was the 70s, they all lived in a van together traveling the country; try and tell me they weren’t all dating

Lipstick or Chapstick: I wear chapstick a lot more often since I am a mom, and I don’t like to get lipstick on my kiddos little face; but I am also a semi-professional fetish model, and I ROCK that red lip when I do photoshoots. (Before I had my son I wore a LOT of lipstick, my favorite colors to wear were three different shades of red, and BLUE. I LOVED TattooJunkee matte lips, since they are cheap and have SERIOUS staying power. NYX Liquid Suede is MUCH more comfortable though, and Kitten Heels is my favorite red lipstick)

Last Song: Strangelove by Depeche Mode

Last Movie: I watched Rugrats in Paris with my son, it’s his favorite and we watch it every day. Last movie I watched that WASN’T a kids movie was Rob Zombie’s 3 From Hell

On Amazon Prime: I think it was Carnival Row, but I don’t actually seek out to watch series’s a lot though since I am usually pretty busy. Usually my husband puts a show on in the background while he eats lunch before work

On Cable: Bitchin’ Rides. I love classic cars, and my son’s eyes are always GLUED to the screen any time we watch a car show

Last Book: Salem’s Lot by Stephen King; it is my favorite book. Visualizing the characters, I realized that how I pictured Ben Mears(main character) was very familiar but I couldn’t place why; rewatched Rob Zombie’s 31 and realized I had pictured Richard Brake(Doomhead) as Mears; I decided that if I ever meet Richard Brake at a convention I am going to ask him to sign my copy; he is going to be so confused, but it will have meaning to me lol

Tagging: @naromoreau @xredskullxx @chazz-anova @aimsharpfloora @atomkatz @fadedjacket