#i mean sort of not even really anti just analysing

[antianakin]

Didn’t get a picture but I saw someone on the internet claiming that

a. Ahsoka, unlike Obi-Wan, was actually good enough at combat to defeat Anakin properly at Mustafar and should have gone instead. (and just that she’s the best at combat out of all the Jedi or something along those lines) b. because of her training and goddess-ness it means she’s the Most Powerful Jedi now. I feel like your blog is a good safe space to express my complete annoyance with everything going on here. why. Why. I am so tired of this (and all the anti-Jedi people in the fandom as well.)

and also, I love all your analyses on Star Wars and they always brighten my day! Thank you!

Lollllll this is a VERY safe space to express annoyance at these takes.

For one, Ahsoka literally DOES go up against Anakin and she FAILS. Anakin punts her off the side of a cliff (it's technically a battlestation but they're very high up so whatever, I'm calling it a cliff) and she only manages to snag off a piece of his mask because she runs up behind him while he's distracted with Kanan and Ezra rather than because she's genuinely able to overpower him through skill alone. She gets LUCKY.

People seem to forget that Ahsoka does NOT recognize that he's Anakin for the beginning part of that fight on Malachor. Like technically, deep down, she probably DOES know, but she's convinced herself it isn't true and Anakin confirms that at the beginning by saying he's the one who destroyed Anakin, so Ahsoka can just... go at him with everything she's got with zero conflict at all. There is literally NOTHING holding her back here, this is Ahsoka at FULL FORCE and she fails pretty epically.

She doesn't really do any better once she DOES know it's Anakin because she's immediately refusing to go on the offensive at all, she's JUST defensive because she doesn't WANT to kill Anakin. And more than that, she REFUSES to kill Anakin. She feels guilty for what's happened to him because she's decided that it's her fault for having left him behind. That's the whole arc she's gone on in Rebels, it's why her line to him once she can't deny that it's Anakin anymore is "I won't leave you. Not this time." That's not the kind of thing you say to someone you're prepared to defeat and/or kill. Ahsoka is prepared to DIE here because she'd rather die than abandon Anakin a second time and killing him would ABSOLUTELY be counted in that category for Ahsoka.

So not only is she just not competent enough to have beaten Anakin, I don't think it's reasonable to argue she would've even WANTED to. If Ahsoka had been on Mustafar, Anakin probably would've killed her, and then he would've been able to capture Padme and the twins and who knows what he would've done if he'd been able to do that.

And even within the Ahsoka show, she goes up against Baylan more than once and loses EACH TIME. Baylan literally tells her that she CAN'T beat him. She just isn't good enough. And this is a FILONI-RUN SHOW, there are zero other writers on this show, so if Baylan is telling Ahsoka that she isn't good enough to beat him, then presumably Filoni himself believes that that's true, at least for now. I imagine that she WILL beat him eventually, but it may end up similar to her win in season 1 where she's relying on distractions from other people or assistance or something. Who knows. But either way, she can't even beat a regular Jedi like Baylan, so how the fuck is she supposed to have beaten a major powerhouse like ANAKIN when he would've been hell bent on her death and destruction?

Obi-Wan DOES defeat Anakin properly on Mustafar, he just can't full-on kill him because the narrative sort-of requires Anakin to survive. He does LEAVE Anakin to die, though, and if Yoda had succeeded against Palpatine, Anakin WOULD'VE died. Obi-Wan CHOPS OFF THREE OF ANAKIN'S LIMBS AND LEAVES ANAKIN TO BURN ALIVE, I'm not sure how much more properly defeated it is possible to get.

Also, the reason Obi-Wan defeats Anakin is almost never due to power levels. It's a combination of being centered/balanced in the Force and knowing Anakin so well that he can predict his moves extremely well. His win in ROTS on Mustafar isn't because Obi-Wan happened to be more powerful than Anakin, he's not. He just is aware enough of his surroundings to take advantage of an opportunity when he sees it and lasts long enough to be able to find it. The stunt choreographers also have explicitly stated that they intentionally choreographed this fight sequence with Obi-Wan consistently GIVING GROUND to Anakin in an attempt to give Anakin time to calm down and come to his senses. So not only is he just good enough to take advantage of an opportunity when he sees it, he's good enough to hold BACK for a while and still live through the fight. And if he's explicitly holding back in the fight, it means that there's even more power he could've been exerting and it's entirely possible that he might've been able to end the entire fight much earlier had he chosen to do so. There's never any kind of indication that that's true for Ahsoka during her one fight against him. She doesn't let herself get tossed off a cliff on purpose lol.

And of course in the Kenobi show, Obi-Wan wins in the flashback scene due to being SMARTER, not more powerful. In the final confrontation he wins because he's more BALANCED and is more willing to put everything he's got into his attacks and changes up his fighting style so he can take Anakin by surprise, so when he slashes off a piece of his helmet, it's not just because Anakin was distracted, it's because Obi-Wan genuinely fought Anakin down enough to make that hit.

Obi-Wan might genuinely be the ONLY person who could go up against Anakin and WIN by the time you get to the Rebellion era. And it isn't because he's more powerful than anybody else, he just happens to have an advantage against this particular opponent which means that the disparity in power-levels is canceled out by Obi-Wan's knowledge of Anakin and the fact that he is just straight up smarter in a fight than Anakin is.

Ahsoka, by contrast, was taught by a dude who tends to rely on brute force to win his fights, and so that's often ALSO how we see her win her own fights. Most of the fights we see her winning are against opponents who are far weaker than she is, like Inquisitors or Mandalorians. Occasionally she fights someone like Maul and has to be a little smarter about it, but most of her major victories are against weaker opponents. She's a brute force fighter, not a smart fighter most of the time, because she CAN be. But she's not more powerful than ANAKIN, and she'll never be able to brute force her way through a fight with him, and she's not smart enough to outwit him, even if she WAS willing to hurt/kill him.

I'm not sure what "training" this person might've been referring to, either, because Ahsoka gets 1.5-2 years of official Padawan training MAXIMUM and some of that would've been Anakin's bullshit blaster blocking training which isn't exactly going to help Ahsoka against ANAKIN HIMSELF. As for the goddess thing, while it's definitely sort-of in there and implied, it's not technically confirmed and so far nothing has really been shown about it that makes her exponentially more powerful than anyone else. She has to flee a fight against Baylan, she'd have died fighting Morgan and the zombies if Sabine hadn't stayed behind to help her, she'd have died on Malachor if Ezra hadn't jumped in to help her, etc. She doesn't seem to have any super special goddess powers that we've seen so far, so it seems a little early to be counting that in her power levels.

Not to mention that in the "Most Powerful Jedi Alive During the Mandoverse" competition, she doesn't have a shit load of competitors she's up against here. The only other options to compare her against that are currently confirmed to be alive post-ROTJ are Luke, Leia, and Grogu. All three of them are shown to be pretty powerful in the Force, but Leia likely isn't super well-trained and Grogu is still a child, and therefore it doesn't seem fair to compare them to Ahsoka at this point. But Luke? I have a hard time believing Ahsoka is MORE powerful than Luke. Close, perhaps, we know she IS supposed to be fairly powerful in general, it's why she was able to be a Padawan so early, but possibly not MORE powerful.

And power alone does not actually guarantee a victory. She could be more powerful than Baylan, but if he's a better fighter, he'll still beat her. As shown with Obi-Wan and Anakin, power alone won't win a battle if your opponent is smart enough to simply outwit you. Obi-Wan can beat Anakin, and Baylan can beat Ahsoka. Ahsoka can be an extremely powerful Force user and still not be able to beat someone with better training than her.

I'll also note at the end here that Ahsoka isn't even canonically a Jedi at this point. She's never once claimed to be in the Ahsoka show and she explicitly says she isn't one in Rebels. She makes comments about how there's more to being a Jedi than using a lightsaber, but that isn't confirmation that she CONSIDERS herself a Jedi or that she'd call herself a Jedi. So she can't be the most powerful Jedi if she's not a Jedi at all. Same goes for Baylan, Grogu, and Leia.

Which leaves us back at Luke as the most powerful Jedi in existence within the timeline of the Ahsoka show because out of all of our options, Luke is the single person alive willing to actually identify as a fucking Jedi.

[cosmicjoke]

As an eruri shipper I wanted to thank you for your callout post. For nearly a year now I have gotten so much hate on my fics that I thought about deleting them, I haven't tho, thankfully. I found out about the spiteful troll and so I did my best to ignore it. However, the hateful comments my work was getting was beyond me because I hardly ever care what people ship or do and was simply minding my business writing what I like only to be told that I'm a jealous loser and I should stop writing Levi together with the "ugly bitch" (referring to Erwin) and that I should touch grass or slit my throat ... which?? And they made it sound like shipping Levi with a man was illegal or that the ship was inappropriate in some way.

I don't know who is really behind those hateful comments but if it's really her I hope karma hits her way very hard. Don't tell people to kill themselves over fiction EVER. That's common decency.

And about some eruris seeing you as an anti shipper. I'll admit I thought you were one as well. It didn't bother me as everyone is free to do whatever they want, but it's a pleasant surprise to know you actually like the ship and write fics for it. If anything, I admire how you can put your shipping goggles aside to write your analyses. It's very impressive.

Don't know if this is relevant but self shippers scare me a bit. Some of them have mean girls energy and I don't want to be attacked so that's why I'm staying on anon🙏🏻

First of all, let me truly thank you from the bottom of my heart for reaching out. It means the world to me, and I admire you for sharing your experience too. I'm super glad to hear that you didn't let the person leaving hateful comments on your stories drive you to delete them. I understand completely where you're coming from, as I've deleted stories of mine in the past due to an overabundance of negative comments. But I've never had anyone actually leave me death threats, or wish for harm to befall me on any of my stories, and to do that is truly the lowest of the low. Not just because it's over something as harmless as a piece of fictional writing, but just in general, it's never okay to wish harm on someone who's never harmed anyone else, or over something as ridiculous as a disagreement.

And yes, given what I've seen from this person on twitter, claiming Erwin is some "old man", they seem to think shipping him and Levi is tantamount to pedophilia, which is so absurd it doesn't even warrant a response. Erwin is at most maybe 5 years older than Levi? If even? They're both in their 30s. Shipping them is totally normal and healthy, lol.

I just think this person has some sort of raging, disgusting prejudice against gay relationships, and they view all gay relationships as perverse in some way. It's truly their problem, not anyone else's. I don't know either if it's the same person I got into an argument with here on tumblr, but so much of the language is the same, and the things they say are so similar to what was being said on twitter and a03, that I'm more than inclined to believe it is the same person. I can only hope my post helps inform more people about them and what a toxic, horrible person they are. Hopefully it will lead to them being blocked so that it isn't so easy for them to harass others. Though I already know they have multiple accounts here on tumblr, since they saw my post and started ranting about it on their blog, even though I had them blocked.

It also means the world to me to know that I've been able to clear up with you my stance on eruri and shipping in general. That was big of you to not be bothered by me when you did think I was an anti, but I'm glad I was able to show you that I'm not. I'm really, really not, lol. I love eruri. It's my favorite ship, and all my favorite AoT fanfics are eruri fics, lol. You can find comments I've left on too many to count at this point. I just try to keep it out of discussions which focus on "Attack on Titan" itself and Levi's role within the story, because I just don't see his relationship with Erwin in canon as romantic. I just think you have to keep the ship separate from canon because if you're going into an analysis of the narrative and Levi's or Erwin's role in it with some preconceived idea that their relationship is romantic in nature, then that's going to color one's ability to objectively analyze the motivations and the reasoning behind both Levi's and Erwin's actions. But I was never, ever against the ship, or against the idea of them being shipped. I think I got the reputation of being an anti because for a long time, I was being inundated with anon asks basically accusing me of being homophobic for saying eruri isn't canon, or anon asks trying to "prove" to me that it is canon and then getting angry at me when I disagreed, or when I lost my patience with them for simply not accepting my stance on this issue. And I think this small group of people then went around to other eruri's and spread to them that I was some sort of aggressive eruri hater. But again, I never was and never will be. I talk more about Levi's relationship with Erwin than any other character, and I find their canon relationship to be incredibly moving and powerful, and further, I love Erwin as a character. One thing I hope all of this will also do is make it clear to other eruri shippers that I'm not against them or their ship at all. I really don't want to be anyone's enemy, least of all eruri shippers. That was never something I set out to do, haha.

But yes, I'm right there with you regarding some self-shippers. Obviously, most of them aren't like this person. Most of them are normal and understand what they write and do is just for fun. But after "Bad Boy" came out, it seemed like the most push back against analysis of that story and its implications came from the self-shipping community, particularly people that seem to actually labor under some sort of delusion of actually, truly being with Levi in a romantic, sexual relationship. I don't understand that at all, because Levi isn't real, lol.

But they seem to get so upset at any discussion of Levi's trauma, or of Levi being affected by his trauma, because acknowledging that trauma and the impact its had on him ruins whatever fantasy, dom-daddy version of Levi it is that they've concocted in their heads. They like to claim Levi is some hard-ass, stoic, unaffected, domineering sex god, because that's what turns them on, and any discussion about what the actual reality of Levi's sexuality would likely be, due to the sexual trauma he's been exposed to, needs to be shut down, because it ruins the fantasy they have. They can't claim that the way they characterize Levi is objective or accurate to canon if Levi's sensitivity or vulnerability as a person is acknowledged, so they like to claim he's not affected at all by his past trauma, that he's just too hardcore to ever succumb to or be profoundly impacted by the things he's lived through. They like to imagine he's just come out the other side totally a-okay and that his stoicism and rudeness is 100% just a product of him being kind of a mean person, again, because they like the idea of being treated meanly by him in a sexual setting.

But Levi isn't a mean person, at all. He's literally the opposite of mean. He's the most thoughtful and considerate character in the series, constantly going out of his way to express his gratitude and ease the suffering of others. He's just awkward, like Dimo Reeves says, and isn't good at filtering his words or expressing himself. That some of these people refuse to acknowledge that the way Levi grew up, the environment he grew up in and the way he was raised, didn't have an impact on his ability to navigate social situations is patently absurd and stupidly unrealistic. It also undermines the severity of abuse Levi suffered in his upbringing, to deny that it had any sort of negative or harmful impact on his ability to interact socially with others. He was raised by a serial killer, for Christ's sake, lol. He wasn't ever taught how to talk to people in a way that would make them more comfortable. He was only ever taught violence and how to kill by Kenny, and he was too young when his mother died to learn anything from her, and he was also abandoned and left on his own at the age of ten, in the most cutthroat, dangerous environment there is inside the walls, surrounded by criminals, rapist, murderers and human traffickers, as well as just desperate people who would resort to plenty of bad shit just to survive. He probably didn't have a single, normal social interaction in his life until he met Furlan and Isabel. I would like these people to explain to me, then, how it is they think that didn't have an impact on the way Levi interacts with others?

He's an exceptionally honest person, too, and he also isn't someone who's concerned with being well-liked, so he doesn't try to ingratiate himself to others by acting friendly. But Levi never sets out to hurt anyone's feelings. He isn't malicious or cruel. He just says what he's thinking and sometimes it comes out sounding unkind. And we see, when Levi realizes it, that he tries to explain himself, again, not because he wants to be liked, but because he doesn't actually ever intend to hurt anyone's feelings. This idea that Levi is a mean person is totally wrong.

Anyway, I went off on a bit of tangent there, lol. Sorry about that. But again I just want to reiterate how much I appreciate you reaching out like this! And don't let these freak shows get you down.

[princeescaluswords]

I know you're not the biggest Derek fan but I just rewatched some of his scenes with Scott and I got cracked up by how consistently he campaigns for the title of President Of The Scott McCall Fan Club.

He brings this energy every time he mentions Scott to somebody:

Really weird that people think he'd *ever* badmouth him to prop up characters he canonically doesn't give a single thought to.

First, I know you sent this as a three part message, but I found things to talk about in each one, so I'm going to answer them separately!

Second, I may not be the biggest Derek Hale Fan in the world, but I am a fan. I love a well-crafted redemption arc, and Derek's story is one of the better ones I've seen. In fact, I wanted more of it. But, for me, the key to a good redemption arc is that it is an arc. For Derek to grow and change and become a better person and for it to have meaning, he had to start out in a state that, frankly, wasn't. That's why I insist in my analyses that Derek was an antagonist in Season 1 and an outright villain in Season 2.

I do have seven pages of posts on Tumblr marked anti derek hale. I wish I wouldn't have to label them that, because I do not hate Canon Derek Hale. I simply recognize that he did terrible things, and that while they were understandable within context, that doesn't make them not terrible. Yet, his manipulative treatment of the teenagers of Beacon Hills, his embrace of lethal violence as his primary strategy, and his trauma-induced selfishness all served to fulfill his role as a foil to the heroic protagonist, Scott McCall, and fans shouldn't shy away from discussing this, but I have learned that Tumblr etiquette, when it is followed, demands that negative evaluations of a character's behavior be tagged properly so people can avoid it.

I wish some of the fans who hate Scott McCall would remember that, but I digress.

But I do recognize the weirdness you are describing. To me, Derek's admiration for Scott McCall is a natural evolution. He starts out in Season 1 trying to sell Scott on the realities of his life as a werewolf (even as Derek is using him): Scott's fate is to become like him. "So you and me, Scott - We're brothers now." Derek wants a new family, one that won't be destroyed, but through tragedy, pain, and violence he learns that you can't create one using brute force -- by coercively reshaping others into versions of himself. He sees that when Scott forms his pack, his family, Scott does it by accepting his friends as they are. Scott accepts Stiles with his sarcasm and insecurity. Scott accepts Allison, with her family and all that demands. Scott doesn't want Isaac to get hurt, remembers Kira's name, and tells Liam that he's not a monster. And Scott accepts Derek, even after Derek manipulated him, beat him, sold him out to Peter, and tried to kill innocents. So by the end of Season 6, Derek has instead sold himself the idea that his goal is to become like Scott. "You came back for Beacon Hills? No. Came back for you."

And that is what parts of the fandom can't stand. With all the tragedies Derek undergoes (manipulation by Peter which causes Paige's death, manipulation by Kate which causes his family's death, manipulation by Peter again which causes Laura's death, his execution of Peter, the disasters of his attempt at a pack), they want Derek to be redeemed without the necessity for change. In other words, Derek deserves nice things, not because he earned them, but as some sort of cosmic balancing for what he has suffered (and, frankly, his identity as an attractive white man and a 'bad boy').

But this misguided empathy runs counter to the themes of the show. Scott's the heroic protagonist not because he suffers more than anyone else (and he absolutely does suffer a lot, a fact that fandom uselessly tries to deny) but because he doesn't let that suffering, that injustice, determine who he is or who he cares about. This is what makes him a True Alpha, because he could have let Peter or Derek or Gerard or Deucalion determine his nature. He could have rejected Derek and Stiles and Liam and Theo and Malia and Jackson after they attacked and hurt him. He could have wallowed in the pain caused by his mother's rejection, or his father's absence, or Allison's death, or "Some of us are human!" He could have placed his own safety and well being first, and hid or ran from Kira or the Dead Pool or the Doctors or the Beast or Monroe. But he didn't. And that's what Derek saw, and that's what Derek learned.

Instead of acknowledging that learning, those choices, and that growth, certain parts of the fandom decide that what Derek should have done is resented Scott for not allowing Derek's pain to control Scott's life. They decide that Derek thinks Scott is stupid for not thinking of the world in terms of "us vs. them." They decide that Derek's repeated submission to the tragedies of his own life couldn't possibly have made him weak -- after all, he's rich, good-looking, white, and werewolf "nobility" -- and instead of what happened to him being the consequences of his own choices, he was bedeviled by the metaphysical forces known as 'the writers.' Oh, and Evil Tree Wizard Deaton and his Moron Tyrant Protege, Scott McCall.

Yeah. It's very weird.

[threewaysdivided]

I just wanted to say: I love your art and especially your banner rn by talos! also your fic as well thank you for creating everything that you do for people, it’s awesome!

Second: what’s something that you’ve been chewing on lately, story wise? What character conflict, or plot point can you tell me about (that doesn’t spoil too much of course)? I wanna hear your thoughts about the characters you write and your head-cannons on them too! Just spit some word vomit at me!

Thank you! 

My current banner art is actually a crop of the first paired piece I ever did to go with my Deathly Weapons fic.  (Specifically Chapter 11, which I still have a soft spot for since it’s one of earliest chapters that really let me lean into scratching the thing-I-haven’t-seen-too-often-in-fanfic itch.) 

I recently got my hands on a discounted Wacom (my digital art process got tanked a few years ago when my poor art-compatible hybrid tablet-laptop was tragically taken from us by a cracked motherboard) so I’m looking forward to getting into a faster art workflow again and maybe putting some new pieces out more easily.  I’d like to do more comic art pieces for the Chapter 18 mission, and there’s a silly little concept drawing for the planned Mission 5 that might be new-blog-banner material if it turns out nicely.  We’ll have to see how that goes.

As for what I’ve been chewing on story-wise lately… I’ve sort of been all over the place.  I’m still on burnout recovery so I’ve been letting myself move non-sequentially, working on the bits my brain feels like focussing on rather than trying to force creativity where the juice isn’t flowing.   (One of the things about being my type of writing-nerd is that “self-indulgent” for me means a story with plenty of material to analyse, which is very fun as a reader but has created a lot of work for myself as the writer.  As mentioned in another post, I have a full-blown TV-show-style story-bible for this one.)

Recently, my authorial ping-pong-ing has been going into a fair bit of spoiler territory.  There are some chunks of the Act III endgame plan which are underdeveloped in the specifics of what the big-boss bad-guys’ plan is, whether I want to involve the Anti-Ecto Acts more, and the logistics of both the counter-strategy our heroes are planning to use and how to make its more action-heavy parts look cool in writing.  When I’m not doing that I’ve been focussing a lot on the upcoming Wally-centric chapters, which are a set I’ve been wanting to keep schtum about since there’s a small potential spoiler mixed in and I don’t want to risk giving the game up or pre-setting people’s expectations before they have a chance to blind read (even if a few people have already made some close guesses in the comments).  It puts me in a bit of an odd-spot right now because the chapters I’m drafting are an immediate spoiler, the later sections I’m working on are a major spoiler and there’s a good chance that a lot of the character stuff going on in the middle won’t make a whole lot of coherent sense without prior context because of how I like to layer foreshadowing/development.

That said, Wally-centric chapters mean Wally thoughts, and of those I have plenty to share:

First of all, I want to establish that I really do like Wally as a character.  The DW chapter set comprising Flashpoints through to Equilibrium is going to explore and develop some of his flaws and insecurities, which means he isn’t going to be looking his best, but it’s not meant to be a Ron The Death Eater situation.  He’s just a complex person, and taking him warts and all means sometimes you have to get up close and personal on the warts.

Something that I’m maybe a bit over-conscious of when reviewing my DW story notes is worrying about letting Wally slide into just being punching-bag joke-fodder.  Wally is quippy, irreverent, a little tactless and prone to being a bit of an impulsive goober who sometimes gets possessed by teenage boner-brain, which makes him easy to fall back on as a default source of incidental levity (whether cracking the joke or being the punchline).  Because I’m now writing an 8-character ensemble where most non-focal characters only get a few lines per conversation, it’s easy for characters to slide into being defined by their strongest surface level trait(s)… and something I worry about with Wally is that his availability as a source of jokes runs the risk of Flanderisation into a disposable Scrappy/ Flirty Comic Relief, which isn’t his character.  Wally is actually really important – not just for his scientific book-smarts but for his perceptiveness, earnestness and ability to function as one of the emotional barometers for the squad – so I always have it in the back of my mind to make sure I include enough moments that actually demonstrate those qualities and the other characters’ appreciation of them/ their friendship, so that it counterbalances the more light-hearted goofery.

I think he’s walking the same tightrope as Sokka from Avatar: the Last Airbender – yes, he tends to take the L more often than the others for comedy purposes and sometimes he gets stuck with supremely dumb side-plots for the sake of tonal balance, but to claim that it’s the entirety of his characterisation really misses the point by a wide mile.

On that note, I actually really like the decision YJ!Animated decided to go with in its first and only season (ahem) in giving Wally a normal and functional family background.  I know that’s not the typical background for his comics counterparts (and no shade on other fan-writers who want to write AUs exploring the abuse dynamic, those are really interesting stories) but I think it was a smart deviation for the purposes of a large ensemble, and offered a fair bit of potential for cast-balance.  It lets him serve an important role as the normal one – not only as an easy window into what the current lives of ordinary middle-class civilians look like (which is good because ordinary people are who our heroes are donning the masks to protect) but also as a touch-stone for the others, most of whom either come from different cultures or from very atypical backgrounds.  Even if we discount the Impure Atlantean with military training, the ostracised White Martian and the Half-Alien clone-weapon, the other members of this line-up are an orphaned circus acrobat adopted by a billionaire, a girl from a dangerously dysfunctional criminal household where she was forced to fight her sibling, and a fledgling sorceress raised by an overprotective single Dad.  The others might intellectually understand what a “normal” childhood and family look like but they don’t necessarily know it as intuitively and intimately as Wally does.  That normality gives Wally the potential to be a more stable foundation for the others, a source of emotional contrast and of a necessary wholesome mundanity.  That is a good thing for the Team to have.  I think it also speaks volumes to the heart of his character.  For this Wally, the Flash and heroism weren’t an escape from a bad personal situation.  His life was actually pretty comfy and privileged - he didn’t experience a brutal wakeup to the injustices of the world or some other personal call to action.  This is a Wally who opted into the game because he loves the players and sincerely believes in their values and mission.  And while that might mean he has a more romanticised idea of what heroism entails – and will probably face some rough shocks down the line as that rosy vision runs into those more brutal realities – it also means he brings a sincere hopefulness to the job that is less hardened than a lot of his roughed-up, pre-jaded peers.  Underneath the teen sarcasm and surface-level lancer/smart-guy traits, this Wally has as much power to be a stealth-Heart as any of his Flash!counterparts.

Something else I find interesting when using Wally is how a lot of his strengths and flaws feed into each other – and I think this alternate backstory is part of it.  For all of his good heart Wally can come off as insensitive, and I think some of that could be read as a product of living a more charmed life.  I think he’s susceptible to a thing that a lot of real people do – universalising their own personal experience as the default – and that while he is canonically a geek and somewhat genre-savvy about hero cliches, he’s a geek about in-universe media so he probably doesn’t think to apply those tropes to “real people” like himself or his colleagues.  While this Wally is a skeptic, he’s not a cynic, and I think he might forget how much of an outlier he is in a world where things like living parents and loving parents are often mutually exclusive.  He’s smart enough to connect dots but there’s a little blind-spot where he simply might not think to until one of the others jabs an elbow into his ribs, because his default view on humanity is in some ways a little kinder than typical due to that small but still significant amount of privilege.

At the same time, Wally is also someone who has probably run into (or watched his mentor run into) a lamp-post at high-speed at least once in his career.  He contains multitudes and among those multitudes is an endless capacity for some absolute Looney-Tunes nonsense, which the world is 100% better off for having.

I love him, your honour.

[tamelee]

Hello! I hope you’re an amazing day :)

I want to ask if you know any good metas/analysis about Kakashi out there? Or perhaps have you written posts about him? So far I’ve only read one that were very… ooc to say the least. They were less analysis than they were fan-pages where fans praise Kakashi for every single thing he does and completely ignore the times he might’ve not been the best person in the world. They agree with every little thing he does even when he contradicts himself, and then act like they love Kakashi for his flaws (even if they apparently don’t think he has any) and use the joker card "he’s traumatized" to justify his actions. And I understand why him being traumatized would impact the way he acts, of course… but still, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t criticize his behavior when necessary

If you have good reads about him I would be very thankful if you could respond, because right now I haven’t found anything very interesting yet 😅

Also I wanted to say that I really like your drawings, you’re so talented and creative

Hello~! 💕 I have, hope you do too! Thankyou for liking my art *-*!

Kakashi analyses? Hm, I don’t immediately remember any but I stopped reading them a while ago for the reasons you state, but also because of the complete opposite where the only focus is on criticism and nothing else, so I can't help you with that. I rarely talk about him. I like Kakashi a lot but whenever I do say anything, regardless of it being positive, there’s always either a cowardly anti or fan indirectly responding to it and making their own posts starting with some sort of “omg I can’t believe people think Kakashi-!!!!” or “I can’t believe people don’t see that Kakashi is-!!!!” And then proceed to cherrypick moments while failing to understand the context of the original question I responded to in the first place. Moments that I already acknowledged but won’t (dis)prove the conclusion by itself. Meh, it's not worth it. It’s like the entire point flew over their heads and I’m not even sure whether it’s deliberate or not. Kinda like grabbing a blob of butter and smacking some flour on the side claiming that it’s a cookie now. Like, what are you saying? 🙄 Okay, okay, petty rant over. 

“- then act like they love Kakashi for his flaws (even if they apparently don’t think he has any) and use the joker card "he’s traumatized" to justify his actions. And I understand why him being traumatized would impact the way he acts, of course… but still, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t criticize his behavior when necessary.”

I mean....... 👀😬😬... I think it goes both ways though because this is very much a fandom thing and uh.. certainly not only Kakashi’s 💀 

Let's not think too long about it xD Just saying that the Naruto-fandom in general is very weird about which character is ‘allowed’ to do what in regard to a trauma response or what coping mechanism is okay, if it's even recognized as such. Yeah characters having flaws are so crucial. I don't see why it's always seen as criticism or something negative when you point something out. I could write entire essays on Naruto's flaws which.. despite them usually being limitations or something to overcome, in the end these traits were proven very necessary. For example his arrogance is seen as a flaw, both in the fandom and in the story. He even got lectured about it by Itachi. Being arrogant and not engaging with teamwork ('relying on comrades') by default is a character flaw for stories like these especially for a main character, but it's not like you can blame Naruto for being forced to only rely on himself while growing up. It's not his fault for being abandoned. He copes by believing in himself ("believe it!") and his own efforts because that's the only thing he could somewhat control thinking he'd succeed if only he works himself to the bone and finally gain some acknowledgement like a human being. Although he'd learn quickly that it's very conditional. In that sense, yes, his flaw is justified through trauma. Aaaand, it has purpose. It's not a bad thing. It’s depth and complexity that help make a character interesting and flaws can make them more relatable to the audience if done well. Without flaw there is no conflict and thus, no story. It’s otherwise nothing more than a powerpoint where a meaningless sequence of events is presented, but it won’t make you feel anything. You’re not engaged because you don’t care about what happens next. Nothing is solved because it wouldn’t be necessary and the author has nothing to tell nor would it be convincing if they had. Had Kakashi been flawless I wouldn’t even have liked him because these Mary Sue characters are boring as hell. Of course, it depends on context.. is it relevant to the story? Is it necessary to play their role? Does it have any impact? Is it consistent? How does it contribute? etc- I especially appreciate Kakashi from a storytelling perspective but I understand that not everyone wants to shove it all under that category. But answer questions like that and you can figure out whether something is worth exploring to see if it's a valid point of critique.

[nalyra-dreaming]

I do start to understand what you guys mean by that some new fans are being “mislead”. I am starting to get a bit annoyed by some articles saying that this relationship is “doomed” and have also seen an analyser on YouTube calling their relationship “narcissistic and doomed to fail” in the headline, also a similar headline on a video about Lestat (didn’t watch the videos, so can’t judge it fully). Not saying that these things aren’t true, I mean, their relationship is doomed and narcissistic and they are both insane. But this is just how it is and how they are, you know? They get their happy ending to my understanding (I’m a new fan).

In contrast to this, I heard their were a few people on Twitter that said that there need to be “a safe place for people to hate Lestat etc”, which is fair, but I also personally felt like that was a bit silly. Like, is their any other fandom that has had to make that sort of agreement except for this one? Maybe I’m dumb but I thought that was a bit weird.

Though, I do think this reactions of many new fans come from how they may have gotten a little surprised how beloved Lestat (and loustat) is. I think some are forgetting the fact how old this fandom is and how week respected this character has gotten over time.

Idk, I just think this proves the idea that Anne Rice isn’t REALLY for a massive audience (not that she’s undeserving). There is no point to really argue about disagreements; if you get you get it, if you don’t you don’t.

Yes, some of the reviews, podcast and articles are not helping.

And I have said it before, I don't quite get it, because these books have been around for almost 40 years - shouldn't there be some research before you classify something as "doomed" when of the 13 books Louis and Lestat are some kind of item in 10+? I mean... *sighs*

And yes, Lestat and Louis do get their HEA :) It's written^^.

That safe space for haters is... weird. Lestat is the anti hero of the chronicles, he'll be around. I think those articles and reviews and other, more... morally simple shows have led people to believe this will be an easy ride. Which it won't. And I think the people calling for a safe space now are slowly realizing that.... The Vampire Chronicles are a very special beast, and it does not seem as if the show is trying to lessen even one aspect of it. And I personally love that.

So - welcome to the fandom!!! Buckle up and just enjoy would be my advice :) And feel free to ask whatever^^.

[queeringdiedreiausrufezeichen]

Die Drei Ausrufezeichen Social Media AU

but it’s just them having Tumblr blogs, cause they would! (Might eventually add other social media platforms.)

-

Kim:

Main blog:

thecodesofcrimenovels

Blog title: Solving crimes and the mysteries of coding

Kim - Eng/Ger/Thai - She/Her - coding, writing, crime novels primarily

Die drei Fragezeichen side blog:

justusjonasesautism

Blog title: PB&J my beloveds

Kim - Eng/Ger/Thai - she/her - Die drei Fragezeichen side Blog, my main blog is: thecodesofcrimenovels

Franzi:

Franzi has one blog and one blog only.

thatqueermayhem

Blog title: I survived my ‘Not like other girls’ phase and figured out I’m not a girl at all

Franzi - Eng/Ger - She/He - D3F and Vorstadtwache mainly, occasionally Tatort though I haven’t really gotten into it yet, Queer stuff, Trans stuff, German stuff, just what ever - Trans af, your conservative family members worst nightmare - PB&J warrior first, Human second

Marie:

Main blog:

flowercourtprincess

Blog title: Aesthetics and T Girl Swag!

Marie - Eng/Ger/Fr - she/her, sie/ihr, elle

Die drei Fragezeichen side blog:

rockybeachesqueeryouthcentre

Blog title: Rocky Beach’s Queer Youth Centre

The three investigators/Die drei Fragezeichen Side Blog, Mainly fan art with occasional separate headcanon posts (all my headcanons are integrated into my art anyway haha), main blog is called: flowercourtprincess

Some posts they would make:

thecodesofcrimenovels

Had a writing workshop today and it was great! We had sort of free range to decide what exactly we wanted to do. The premise was to choose a novel of our liking, analyse the writing style and then imitate said style in a completely different genre. So we had some people using the flowery description heavy language of a fantasy novel to describe a mundane day in the real world. Or the creepy dispense of a horror novel used to describe a fluffy movie night between two friends. (The friends were watching a rom-com so it wasn’t like they could somehow match the vibes to the movie.) It was great!

#writing #my posts

Not to be a cliché Trans Girl, but gosh I love coding so much. It’s so much fun.

#coding #my posts

[D3A’s group chat right after Franzi sees that post.

F: Is your Coding club girlfriend finally back?

K: I have no idea what you are talking about and she is not my girlfriend.

F: Not yet. Which is why you should finally ask her out on a date. Or Marie should. You two are so badly crushing on that girl and neither of you have yet to actually make a move. If you take any longer I’ll do it for you.]

justusjonasesautism

Justus Jonas is half Thai! Cause I project onto him.

#Asian American Justus Jonas is actually so canon thank you very much #like what do you mean he isn’t canonly half Thai? #he clearly is #like have you not paid attention? #I will go down with this headcanon! #justus jonas #die drei fragezeichen #d3f #the three investigators

| #Asian American Justus Jonas is actually so canon thank you very much #<- previous tag #yesss #fight me #spreading the Asian American Justus Jonas agenda #justus jonas #d3f

| #Asian American Justus Jonas is actually so canon thank you very much #<- previous tag #yes! Exactly! Also -> #spreading the Asian American Justus Jonas agenda #funnily enough I’m working on an art piece of him right now #and this is fuelling my inspiration #I’m debating making him Blasian because I just want to #because I do like the headcanon that Justus is Black #but I don’t know yet #justus jonas #headcanon tag #reblog

The urge to write a whole ass essay on the racist stereotypes in the old books and the continued anti indigenous racism even in the newer ones, is so intense right now.

#racism in Die drei Fragezeichen #die drei fragezeichen #d3f #the three investigators

| #Do it!

The wish to listen to the early cases and the wish to not hear racist slurs and racism filled stories, currently fighting each other. Like please why can’t I just to listen to “Die drei Fragezeichen und das Gespensterschloss” without needing to mentally prepare myself for a bunch of racist stereotypes including the Z-word (the German version of the G-slur). Seriously…

#racism in Die drei Fragezeichen #die drei fragezeichen #d3f #the three investigators

| #yes it’s exhausting sometimes #also yes unusual reblog I know #not art #reblog

thatqueermayhem

See the reason I relate to Bob Andrews is because he is a trans fem surrounded by trans mascs while I’m a trans masc surrounded by trans fems. We mirror each other.

#he is literally so trans fem ahhh! #trans fem bob andrews #nonbinary bob andrews #bob andrews #d3f

| #I love trans fem Bob Andrews so much as a concept! #trans fem bob andrews #nonbinary bob andrews #bob andrews #die drei fragezeichen #d3f #the three investigators #reblog

| #and we love you very dearly! #trans fem bob andrews #nonbinary bob andrews #bob andrews #headcanon tag #reblog

Kelly Madigan my beloved!

#that’s it #that’s the whole post #kelly madigan #d3f

| #so true! #I love you Kelly Madigan #you are the best #kelly madigan #die drei fragezeichen #d3f #the three investigators #reblog

| #not something I typically reblog onto here but also yes! 100% #gosh I love the girls so much! They are awesome #kelly madigan my beloved #kelly madigan #not art #reblog

Kommisar Brockmeier is queer. Helmut Grevenbroich told me himself.

#I said what I said #kommisar brockmeier #vorstadtwache #helmut grevenbroich

Would y’all believe me if I said I saw Helmut Grevenbroich kissing a man?

#helmut grevenbroich #true story #I’m gonna tag this as #queer stuff #because I can

[Helmut Grevenbroich was in fact asked if he was okay with the post, before Franzi posted that.]

flowercourtprincess

Todays question is if I’m actually lesbian, AroAce or any of the mspec labels? Stay tuned for the answer. Yes, I’ve been listening to “fall in love with a girl” by Cavetown ft. Beabadoobee. Why are you asking? Blame thatqueermayhem for playing “worm food” on a loop.

#no matter what I’m queer af #if you have a problem with that kindly f^ off #just queer things #my posts #queer #aroace #lesbian #mspec #bi #pan #poly #omni

| Sometimes you gotta be a stereotypical trans masc, what can I say? 🤷 It’s not like y’all aren’t enjoying the songs.

#queer stuff #trans stuff #I love my girlfriends and I also love listening to Cavetown yes these two are related

Being trans is actually so great! Who ever told you otherwise was a big fat liar. Being trans is freaking awesome.

#trans is beautiful #just trans things #trans #transgender #transsexual #my posts #even though there are probably a decent amount of similar posts already floating around on here #I don’t care #you can never say it enough

| #This! #gosh I love being trans so much #reblog #trans things #trans #transgender

| #yes #queer stuff #trans stuff

The romantic tension of being taken care of by your friends after being hurt.

[private conversation after Kim and Franzi see that post.

Franzi: You get hurt and that’s your first instinct? Posting a vague post on Tumblr?

Marie: *shrugs*

Kim: Well, it’s vague enough to just seem like random thought with no real life implications.

Franzi: Seriously??? … What ever.

Marie: I mean people are reblogging it and agreeing.

Franzi: *looking at the post and reblogs* They are assigning characters and ships to it…

Marie: Well obviously.

Franzi:… I don’t even know how to argue with that.

Kim: Franzi. It’s not that serious. You are just stressed right now.

Franzi: Well we are in the freaking hospital after all!

Marie: Wanna hold my hand to feel less worried?

Franzi:… yes.

Marie: *looking at Kim* You too?

Kim: *nods and the three end up holding hands to calm themselves down*

(It’s mainly Franzi that needs calming down, but the others also appreciate it.)]

rockybeachesqueeryouthcentre

Jeffrey Palmer wears blond faux locs. (Cause I want faux locs right now, but I don’t have the time for an appointment and I just got braids done.) He would totally wear goddess locs, cause he doesn’t give a damn about “gender rules” and that’s all I’ll say.

#I’m working on a Portrait drawing of him right now and just head to share that headcanon really quick #jeffrey palmer #die drei fragezeichen #the three investigators #d3f #headcanon tag #my headcanons

| #uhh I can’t wait for the drawing! #and you are sooo right! #jeffrey palmer #d3f

| #jeffrey palmer #die drei fragezeichen #d3f #the three investigators #reblog

Unusual post for me but it needs to be said. I feel like the authors of “The three investigators” tend to fall into the “we were trying to be misogynistic but ended up accidentally writing something with queer energy” category quite a lot. An audio drama example: Switching out Kelly for Jeffrey in “Die drei Fragezeichen Das Geisterschiff“. Now you made it unintentionally queer, cause you so desperately didn’t want to include Peter’s canon girlfriend. Anyway thatqueermayhem and justusjonasesautism just had to listen to me rant about the misogyny in these books.

#not art #the way Kelly gets treated by the authors hurts sometimes #Kelly is such a darling and I love her #die drei fragezeichen #the three investigators #d3f #kelly madigan #rant sort of? #my posts

| #reblog #jeffrey palmer #kelly madigan #Die drei Fragezeichen Das Geisterschiff #die drei fragezeichen #d3f #the three investigators

| #yep #and Kelly always gets the short end of the stick #I love you Jeffrey #but Kelly deserves better #jeffrey palmer #kelly madigan #d3f

If I see one more post of someone claiming “The three investigators” doesn’t have misogyny/sexism, I’m gonna scream. Y’all can’t be serious, when these stories are littered with misogyny/sexism. Like I get it. You don’t want to admit that there are flaws in these stories you probably liked since you were a child, but for the love of it, stop it! They literally wrote out female characters, cause the audience supposedly disliked them. And you are claiming this series doesn’t have misogyny??? Well when there are barely any female characters chances to see misogynistic characterisations are rarer. (Psst they still exist. Like it’s not that the few female characters don’t fall into sexist stereotypes sometimes. And just because you don’t notice them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.)

#not art #rant #die drei fragezeichen #the three investigators #d3f #my posts

| #nothing to add here! #die drei fragezeichen #d3f #the three investigators #reblog

-

I was debating cutting the part of Kim mentioning the anti indigenous racism, cause D3A also has (at least) two instances of the I-word being used, but I decided against it, cause it’s something I think she would post. And I personally would like to believe that all the characters (also the characters from the D3F universe) would stop using it if they were made aware of the fact that it is a racial slur.

The only times I’ve seen people claiming D3F doesn’t have misogyny was when they where putting down D3A as so much worse. Arguing that D3F supposedly didn’t have misogyny while D3A had.

Slightly of topic, but I really do want to draw Jeffrey with goddess locs now. Ahh! He would look so pretty with them.

Is this shamelessy plugging some of my personal D3F headcanons? Yes. I don’t care.

Listen if I was immersed in the Miss Marple books, I would have also added posts about that. I am how ever not at all immersed with the stories. (I wish I could do Franzi’s love for the character justice.)

(Planning on drawing this in the future. Don’t know when yet. I don’t know how to do these fake screenshots of social media accounts.)

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #644

Top Ten Taylor Swift Songs

Taylor Swift is quite a big presence round our house. Basically, you can tell which daughter has put the music on; if it’s the Hamilton soundtrack, then it’s Daughter #1. If it’s Taylor Alison Swift? Daughter #2, our nascent Swiftie.

I didn’t really “follow” Swift, because I don’t really “follow” any popular music, because in this modern age of streaming playlists I’m able to constantly curate my own bespoke station cultivated exactly to my whims and foibles, comprised almost entirely of 1980s soft rock, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and songs featured in Quentin Tarantino movies. So I never really encountered a Taylor Swift song in the wild all that much, until we had kids, and the phrase “Alexa, play kid-friendly pop” became a relatively common utterance. It’s quite funny actually, because in those earlier days of the sprogs listening to stuff, it turned out that I did hear a few of her older bangers – Love Story, You Belong With Me, that sort of thing – without realising it.

The critical mass of her superstardom mean that eventually it would bleed into other aspects of my life (sooner or later she got to something I do care about, possibly when she was in an Actual Film, even if that film tuned out to be Cats). This sort-of coincided with Daughter #2 getting really into her because people talked about her at school/on YouTube, and also happened to take place just before the fabled Eras tour kicked off. As such, the last two years have been very Swift-y, really. And it’s allowed me to really consider her musical oeuvre.

Because – and this should come as little surprise – it turns out she’s very good at this sort of thing. She really got my interest when she did the whole “Taylor’s Version” thing, because that is – as they say – a flex. Re-recording all your old songs and asking stations to play the new recordings so as to utterly devalue the original recording that a dickhead refuses to sell back to you? One hell of a power move, lady. The fact that her songs were floating around our personal ether meant that I could analyse the lyrics and melodies a bit more, get under the skin. And Swift is one of those artists who almost demands a biographical approach to her work: you don’t need to know who she’s dating or who she currently has a beef with, but most of her best work is so concerned with being Taylor Swift that you do end up thinking about the real-world references in her words.

This phenomenal amount of waffle is really just a preamble to me, a fortysomething dad, listing my favourite Taylor Swift songs. Obviously what interests me is going to be different to what interests your average nine-year-old; just as what interests any of us is going to be unique to our own circumstances. What more is there to say, really? I guess I’m just trying to fill all this blank space, hehehehehehehehe.

Blank Space (2014): I’m not good at articulating why the music of these songs is great, so let’s stick with words and imagery. This tale of a troubled serial monogamist features fantastic use of both, as it links the jaunty teen vibe of Swift’s early work with the darker introspection she’s now know for, with an almost cynical unravelling of its protagonist, and some terrific lines: “it’ll leave you breathless or with a nasty scar”. Beautifully dark, twisted, and sort-of romantic.

Anti-Hero (2022): eschewing the romance altogether and just focusing on a sort of quasi-autobiographical examination of “Taylor Swift”, this song’s inherent bleakness contrasts beautifully with its rather upbeat tone. The tale of a self-defeating woman with – clearly – some proper issues, we get Swift comparing herself to a kaiju and plotting bitter revenge against imaginary children. Bitterly hilarious.

Is It Over Now? (2023): a song that, apparently, was written a while ago but only released recently, it fits in well with her work from a decade ago in terms of its overall tone and treatment (another tale of a love gone sour), but it’s got a maturity and, well, bit of grit to it. Raking over the coals of a relationship in which it appears both parties deserved some blame, it’s another one with great lyrics; the refrain of “three hundred takeout coffees later” is neat.

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived (2024): The Tortured Poets Department was the first time I actually ended up listening, unbroken, to an entire Taylor Swift album, so a lot of these songs hit harder for me. There are a few bangers, but this incredibly bitter revenge anthem – a furiously hilarious diss track – is the highlight. It’s so fabulously mean-spiriting, skewering so many aspects of the titular bloke, from his try-hard on-stage antics to the insipid paranoia he invoked. Plus, of course, you don’t call a man “small” without it having more than one meaning.

I Can Do It With a Broken Heart (2024): another song that’s so blackly comic it could be a Coen Brothers movie, this incredibly jaunty, upbeat bop is all about how unutterably shit it is to be Taylor Swift. Telling the story of a consummate entertainer who is always joyous and smiling and perfectly performing whilst hiding her sorrow, there’s nothing much to say beyond “incredibly depressing” and “consistently hilarious”. Lights, camera, bitch, smile indeed.

You Belong With Me (2009): Swift’s earlier, more country-flavoured songs skew to a certain template; basically musical versions of She’s All That. Swift is a smart enough performer to put a little bit of quirk or edge onto things though; this is a relatively straightforward story about a homely girl in love with her friend, but in both the wordplay (“she wears short skirts, I wear sneakers/she’s cheer captain and I’m in the bleachers”) and the amount of sheer heart Swift puts into it, makes it very effective.

Look What You Made Me Do (2017): the almost staccato electric beat of this one feels a bit different; a bit more urgent, a little bit darker. It’s another one unpicking the seams of “it’s hard being a megastar” and “my boyfriends all suck”, but the unravelling of the Taylor Swift persona is amusingly done. It’s the musicality of it that, well, sing; the chorus – repeating the title in different intonations – is a thing of trippy beauty. Also, whilst I’m really just analysing the songs themselves, shout out to the incredible video.

Love Story (2008): Daughter #2’s favourite, apparently (she’s very annoyed that I only have it at number eight), and that kinda makes sense; it’s so perfectly calibrated to the mode of “benign teen romance”. Yes, it’s just a tale of boy and girl and how – despite obstacles – they eventually get together. But the lyrics are great, evoking everything from Shakespeare to The Scarlet Letter, with some nice wordplay. One of Swift’s earliest, and defining, hits; not as interesting as her later work but still a great example of what she’s capable of.

Maroon (2022): a melancholy examination of a failed romance, holding a magnifying glass to the highlights of a relationship but finding the roots of its dissolution. Musically it’s nice, and has some great lyrics – love the intonation of “your roommate’s cheap-ass screw-top rosé” – but the clever-clever bit is the repeated imagery of, well, red stuff; “Maroon” indeed, from wine to blood to, well, a hickey. Also: first time I heard Swift drop an F-bomb in a song. Shocked I was. Shocked to my core.

Karma (2023): most of these songs have had a bit of darkness to them, apart from the ones that are just the aural equivalent of an early noughties Lindsey Lohan movie. This song, though, isn’t particularly dark, but it is very funny, Swift singing about, well, karma, and how it’ll come back to bitecha. It’s the use of imagery, of how karma is a beautiful thing that benefits her, where the funny lies; karma, it turns out, is a lot of things, most of them amusing.

[hmslusitania]

A meta about Buck and Eddie’s current relationships compared to their past relationships (but it's under a cut so that I don’t have to tag the characters for people who have them blocked, thereby putting this into those characters’ Tumblr-wide tags and summoning angry stans back to my inbox)

Because I haven’t seen anyone else mention this and it’s sort of been driving me nuts. On the one hand there’s a relationship where it’s:

someone he was previously with and this is a renewal of what might have been

someone who he has serious sexual chemistry with but a blatant emotional disconnect

who he separated from and time (roughly two years) has passed during which interim there has been no contact between them

and now they’re trying it again and although he clearly forgives her for past transgressions he still doesn’t trust her when it comes to the most important things, even if he's enjoying spending time with her to a certain extent

but he’s decided to have her back in his life after some negotiation which definitely included her saying at least one excoriating thing against his character that cut directly to the heart of his insecurities that made him feel like he'd failed and needed to do better ("I needed you to have my back" vs "You're so needy")

And when it was Eddie and Shannon, the resolution of that relationship was Eddie deciding that he wanted to try and make it work, build a family and a future together, only for Shannon to bail on him (again). And obviously we haven’t seen the end of Buck and Taylor but based on everything we’ve seen about Buck’s development and growth, it seems pretty clear that what he’s looking for in the long run is to build a family and a future, most likely with children.

Now, we don’t know enough about Taylor to know how she feels about that sort of future trajectory but based on the very little we do know about her, I would hazard that this sort of future seems…unlikely as something she might want.

And obviously, the relationships came about in different circumstances, but the structure of season 4 Bucktaylor versus season 2 Eddie and Shannon feels like a funhouse mirror to me.

And then on the other hand, there’s a relationship where:

It starts after they met once a while ago

With a person who is also presented as a contrast and possibly a more reasonable choice than the other relationship mentioned above (“Ali’s a more grown up and less wild choice than Taylor” vs “such a healthy choice moving on from Shannon with Ana”)

Which begins with a coffee date

And which is all the development we really get in the relationship until an episode that seriously implies doom ahead

And ends with him getting severely whumped

with her there for the initial homecoming

But there’s something kinda off about that homecoming (Ali being unsure the firefighter lifestyle is for her; Eddie kissing Ana on the cheek the same way he kissed his grandmother?? Like my dude my guy there are perfectly acceptable chaste and polite ways to kiss someone on the mouth if you’re worried about scandalising the Youths or the Elders and that ain’t one of ‘em)

And the resolution of that relationship is that Ali was gone without ever officially saying the words “we should break up” before the next season began, and based on behind the scenes sleuthing while it seems like we will see Ana at least once at the start of season 5, it doesn’t seem to be a significant presence.

And idk!! I don’t know what to do with this, but like it seems really obvious to me that in a structural way, Taylor is Buck’s Shannon and Ana is Eddie’s Ali, even while the characters of Taylor and Shannon don't really resemble each other (and I'd argue we don't actually know enough about either Ana or Ali to say how alike or different they were/are, but they don't strike me as similar people), and I hope the boys both get the same as things out of these relationships as the other did -- just with better resolutions.

I want Buck to be in this relationship and evaluate what he wants from his future the way Eddie figured out he wanted to try being in a family, but I want him to have the opportunity Eddie didn’t and I want him to come to the conclusion that if he wants that future, it’s not going to be with Taylor because that’s just not who she is. And I want him to get the opportunity to end it on his terms in the way Eddie never got to.

And I want Eddie to — god I’m sorry this somehow circles back around to my entire shitpost about getting back on the horse/learning you don’t like horses — but I want him to acknowledge that his relationship with Ana, while important for his growth and for moving on after the traumatic end of the most significant relationship he’d had before, simply doesn’t go beyond that. It’s a relationship and it’s “nice” and “easy” but it’s not where his heart is and even though ending a relationship always hurts a little, it won’t devastate him. But most importantly, I want him to get to acknowledge that he’s choosing what he wants, which Buck sort of didn’t get to do with Ali because she made that choice for him.

And then, because I’m me, once they’ve gone through each other’s relationship mistakes and hopefully learned from each other’s example how to do it better, I want them to embark, nervously but so glad to be doing it, on something new and untried together.

ETA: Eddie and Ana’s first date was explicitly not coffee, but it had the same vibe as Buck and Ali’s first (coffee) date in that it was a casual café setting and we know nothing of it after the initial “its nice we’re doing this right?”

ETA(2): Both Shannon and Taylor have “changed” when they’re brought in to be love interests in season 2 and 4 respectively but Shannon’s change ultimately turned out to be insufficient for building their relationship forward. We have yet to see how deep Taylor’s apparent change runs and it’s clear that so far Buck does not trust it.

[narutakijune]

About ATLA Relationship Arcs

So, this is me, finally trying to write some meta after lurking in my little tumblr corner for months! Hi!

Although I’ve tried to tag properly, if you are a Kat*anger and just want to enjoy your favourite couple in peace, this might not be the post for you. I am not trying to bash characters but I do have a lot of critical stuff to say about the writing.

Anyway, you have been warned and here is my story about my personal first Atla experience: I watched the show this year for the first time, and after the end of Book 1 I decided to look up spoilers, because after what happened to Yue, I wanted to make sure that Zuko and Iroh would be ok. So I knew what was going to happen: Kat*ang endgame and absolutely no Zutara at all. Still, by the end of Book 3, I was convinced that I had read wrong - that there would be an epilogue with a different ending or at least that Aang would only get together with Katara post-show- in that Korra series or something - because anything else wouldn’t make sense- right?

….

After I got over my shock and surprise, I went online and found out about that decade-long aggressive passionate ship war and how even the showrunners got involved.

And then I really worried that I might have missed a few points. Apparently ”Aang and Katara were the DNA of the show”, according to the creators themselves, and “Zutara could never have happened”.

Another popular anti-ZK argument I found was: Why do you always go on about Katara and Zuko? Just look at Zuko and Aang! They are the hero/ anti-hero and each other’s foils, their relationship is much more meaningful!”

So I tried to find out what it was that I apparently couldn’t see.

(Another disclaimer: I love analysing stories (like many Zutarians apparently) and this will get long and rambly. If you get bored to tears when people start talking about “narrative structure” you will probably not like this.)

Talking about narrative structure, I do believe that, in order to let your story, your characters and their relationships really shine, a good basic structure is important. There should be a recognizable development and individual parts of the story that build upon each other and lead to consequences and change, until there is a completed arc - because it is all about the journey that takes you to a satisfying ending, right? So that’s what I tried to do, with my personal Kat*ang vs. Zutara take, I tried to look at the structure and development of their relationship arcs.

The argument that threw me off track for a while is that compared to Aang and Zuko, Zuko and Katara’s relationship is not supposed to be that relevant for the plot. After all, Zuko is the foil, the anti-hero, the deuteragonist to Aang, who is the hero protagonist.

This is all true of course. But then why is it that in every finale, Zuko’s main opponent (and later ally) is not Aang but Katara? Why is it that their sun/moon, red/blue, fire/water dichotomy is so obviously highlighted?

I think one reason why Zuko and Katara are paired off so frequently in the story - as opposite elements, as opponents and as allies - is that they BOTH are Aang’s deuteragonists. While Zuko also acts as antagonist and Aang’s foil/mirror, Katara takes over the more traditional deuteragonist role of confidant / best friend/ narrator.

Protagonist Aang is what connects them, although they are on opposite sides: Both need Aang because he represents their hope to save their world. Very simply put, Katara protects him, so he can make the world a safer place again, and Zuko wants to capture him, so he can go home and be safe again. That rivalry between them is already established in the first episode, even before they meet each other: Katara, who hopes that the Avatar will return (as she tells everyone in the intro), and Zuko, who seems to be obsessed with finding him for more sinister reasons.

And just to make sure, I am not talking here about the characters’ feelings and emotions! This is just about the abstract roles they have been assigned within the narrative.

When regarding Zutara’s special connection to Aang and their rivalry with each other, it makes absolute sense to stress their “same but different”ness as well, visually and metaphorically: Red and blue, fire and water, sun and moon, arguably Painted Lady/Blue Spirit, and, when you put into account their story arc, also Oma and Shu.

With this basis, which puts them together and sets them apart simultaneously, their relationship already becomes very dynamic and interesting, even before you consider any romantic potential.

And here’s another thing, Zuko and Katara also have their own story arc within the main plot. Although they don’t have many scenes together before Zuko joins the Gaang, when they do meet there is always a new shift in their relationship and in quite a few cases their interactions are important for the main plot as well. If you just look at their “end fights” at each book’s finale, there is an obvious and consequential build-up, like any decent story arc should have:

Book 1 starts with Zuko as the powered-up enemy and Katara as the weak newbie waterbender. Both are battling over Aang. At the end of Book 1, they are finally established as equally powerful fighters but still fundamentally different (You rise with the moon, I rise with the sun!)

In CoD at the end of Book 2 happens the next step: they realize that they are not different at all! But Aang still doesn’t represent the same for them and they end up on opposing sides of the war again.

In the Book 3 finale, when Zuko has completed his own (anti-) hero's journey and Aang represents the same “hope” for both of them, they do not only join forces: Their “same but different”- traits make them such a uniquely suited match that they are even able to save each other’s lives during their fight with Azula (who in turn happens to be Katara and Zuko’s antagonist/mirror/foil).

And in addition to their own story arc they even get an individual recurring theme, which also appears in every book whenever their relationship status changes: The lost mothers, especially Katara’s mother.

In Book 1, Katara’s necklace (the symbol of Kiya) plays not only a major part in two of Zuko’s capture attempts, it is the reason for their very first one-one one encounter in the story.

Their first friendly connection in COD in Book 2 happens because they start talking about their mothers. And in Book 3, their final reconciliation (sealed with a very cathartic hug) happens after their life-changing trip which is, of course, all about Katara’s mother.

Again, I am not even trying to analyse their characters and motivations within the story - there are many metas that have already done that much better, more detailed and with screenshots. This is just dry structure and tropes and themes. But I think people recognize and connect with a well-structured arc, even subconsciously, which is one of the reasons that makes Zutara such a compelling couple. They complete and contrast each other, their relationship dynamic constantly changes, builds up, falls apart, reconnects. Such a setup is the perfect playground for a lot of creative takes on what-ifs and alternative scenarios and of course, shipping them romantically is extremely tempting - think of all the possibilities! It’s no wonder that the Zutara fandom is still so active decades after the end of the show. And it’s also no wonder that the Zutarians are known for “over-analysing everything”. You can only over-analyse if there is anything that gives you enough food to analyse to begin with. Which brings me to

KAT*ANG

I just go right to the top and take the quote from Br*yke themselves:

Kata*ng was in the DNA of the thing from the start…. [Zutara] was just dark and intriguing.

If you read this quote and then start watching the show, I would (grudgingly) agree that:

Aang and Katara understand and complement each other really well. Aang gives her the chance to have fun and go on adventures and in turn, Katara is his fiercest supporter from the very beginning, something that he really needs after he lost all his people AND has to find out that the world thinks the war is sort of his fault. In turn, the journey to the North Pole is as important to Katara as it is to Aang, because it is her dream to learn waterbending properly. That’s what she literally says when Sokka & Co try to banish Aang: (Sokka: Where do you think you’re going? Katara: To find a waterbender. Aang is taking me to the North Pole.) In that way, they are friends who give and take equally and are equally taken care of. They even have the last Airbender/ last Southern Waterbender status that connects them. The few times they have a fight, Aang does something in the end to redeem himself (perform some heroic feat) and Katara sees that she is right to believe in him.

Aang has this very sweet crush on her and it will be very sweet and wholesome when Katara will return his feelings at the end of their adventure after he has hit puberty. On the other side, there is also some heavy shipbaiting with Zuko: I save you from the pirates. The betrothal necklace. June and her excellent shipping taste. But in the end they are enemies, they barely know each other and, come on, it would be too dark and intriguing! There is no real threat against friends to lovers Kat*ang, the soft heart of the story. It’s very straightforward and there are a lot of simple “the hero saves the day” scenes for Aang but that’s fine! It’s not really my kind of ship but that’s not the point, it works for the story they want to tell.

End of Book 1.

In my - probably harsh- opinion, everything you really need to know about the Kat*ang relationship has been told by this point. If you want to be really mean, already by Book 1, episode 3.

That explains maybe why many (not all! but many) pro-KA arguments sound as if their shippers have not watched Book 2 and 3 at all. The Book 1 synopsis also perfectly sums up Bry*ke’s quote above. But then Book 2 and 3 are still there and I don’t know what happened but it seems as if they somehow decided that the Kat*ang story does not need any new and lasting input. Maybe because they were afraid that too much new development and change would stray too far away from their original Kat*ang vision. But there are still 2 more books and more adventures and Kat*ang somehow has to be kept apart until the finale.

So the tension in their potential romance is based largely on the question whether or not Katara will return Aang’s feelings. In general I don’t have a problem with that will-she-won’t she-technique. It works well in books where the love interest is not a POV or in shows/ movies where the love interest is not one of the main characters. But Katara is not only the female lead but also arguably the narrative voice of the whole story! As a result, this kind of writing makes Katara look as if she doesn’t have any agency in their relationship, which is not surprisingly a very popular anti-KA criticism.

Additionally, since her dream - learning waterbending - has been fulfilled by the end of Book 1, the relationship work becomes a bit one-sided. Of course Aang is the hero and his journey is the heart of the story. But in order to highlight their special connection it would have helped to give Katara another personal agenda, which Aang could have supported in some way. She is still the last Southern Waterbender and he the Last Airbender but this is not really explored in the Kat*ang relationship. And her other personal agenda, her mother, is already reserved for the Zutara arc.

Instead, in Book 2 and 3 the Kat*ang story is somehow all over the place. Of course there is new conflict and a few romantic scenes as well. But obstacles are either introduced too late or just dropped when not needed anymore, conflict is not resolved and their flirty, romantic moments never lead anywhere- and if they do, they lead to more conflict that is not resolved (yes, I am looking at you, EIP Kiss!).

Take for example Katara’s very sudden argument that they cannot be together now because there is a war going on. We hear her saying that for the first time in the very last episode (EIP) before the 4-part finale. That is too late to have any impact! That she has these kinds of thoughts was never even alluded to before. Not once.

Or the pattern Aang runs away/ is flaky - Katara is upset - Aang comes back and does his hero thing - Katara is relieved. In regards to their relationship arc, nothing changes here between Book 1 and the finale, only the stakes for Aang’s heroic performances get higher.

Or Katara being the one who is able to calm Aang down when he cannot control the Avatar state (which, in my personal opinion, is neither romantic nor healthy). This is also connected to the problem with the seventh Chakra, that Aang needs to let go of his attachment for her. I will be angry forever with how they wasted this for a possible relationship development! That Aang has to decide to either do his duty or save his forever girl (because let’s be fair, he did try to let go and only ran when he had the vision of Katara in danger) - that’s a fantastic setup!

But no, it doesn’t have any real consequences for Kat*ang at all. Instead there were only half-baked attempts – Aang does lie about his failed practice with Guru Pathik but the ultimate reason why his chakra is blocked is Azula, not his decision to run. Aang does try to let go of Katara for a little bit but then Azula shoots him. Nothing in Book 3 shows any change in his feelings that could have been a result of his instant let-it-go. If anything, he gets weirdly obsessive - which could have been used as a side effect of his blocked chakra but – again, no, nothing happens.

I suspect the whole thing was just introduced to create temporary drama for poor Aang, but it is never explained why Katara holds him back, what aspect of the attachment is blocking him or what would happen if he did let her go. Maybe they tried to make a statement about how love is more important than Avatar rules – which would have been fine but it’s also never properly explored. Instead, as soon as that plot point becomes inconvenient it’s simply dropped like a random rock™.

Compare all that to the Zutara arc, where both characters’ feelings about each other are always very much in the open, and where every interaction causes lasting effects in their relationship. Yes, it is unfair to compare that to Kat*ang, because up to the end of Book 3, Zuko and Katara almost never meet, while Aang and Katara spend almost every episode together – of course they cannot do meaningful things all the time. But on the other side, with Kat*ang, there would have been a great chance to show a subtle, gradual build-up instead.

It also doesn’t help that the Zutara arc seems hellbent on sabotaging every romantic moment Aang is allowed to enjoy:

There is Kat*angs first maybe-kiss in the dark before the background of the Oma and Shu legend. But it does not lead anywhere. Instead, Zuko and Katara almost reenact the legend itself in the Book 2 finale as two real enemies to almost-friends, including a glowy rocks-backdrop and the right costume colours, just so nobody misses the message.

In Footloose The Headband, Aang and Katara have a really sweet dance together, and everybody can see how they almost intuitively know each other's moves. This could be a great hint on how well they will fight together in the finale. But is it plot-relevant? No, because the final tag team is Katara and Zuko! While Aang gets paired off with random rock™.

Then there is Aang’s riding off to battle- kiss in DotBS, which Katara is not even allowed to enjoy, because keeping her feelings vague is apparently more important than character development at this point. It is the only romantic moment that gets mentioned again, but in a way that sinks the former cute and wholesome ship into the deep ocean, and the reason is - Aang is jealous of Zuko!

If all of this was only done for the sake of shipbaiting, then it really went out of control at some point.

In the end, the showrunners still had their reasons to choose Kat*ang, maybe because that corresponded more to their own vision, and there are still enough people out there who agree with them. Which is absolutely fine! In the end, what matters most is how you personally connect to the characters and nobody needs to defend their personal taste. But the typical anti-ZK claim, that all the Zutarians with their crazy analysis and rambling meta essays are reaching and delusional and that they desperately try to construct something that isn’t there, is not only a very lazy argument but simply not true.

And I’d claim that in spite of the canon choice, Zutara is technically the better written relationship. By far.

[elriell]

Some jumbled up thoughts about Elain, Lucien and Azriel + Mating Bonds

There have been a lot of conversations regarding this topic and I thought I’d flesh it out a bit myself, but these are facts/observations that as a fandom many have noticed, discussed, analysed. I just wanted to dive in myself fully.

I want to talk about each of them individually as well as, as a whole. Their emotions and mindsets, as someone who loves all three characters and wishes for all of them to get a happy ending. I will preface this with saying I will be discussing why it is very likely Elain will reject the bond and such things, so along the lines of Anti-Elucien. If you are a fan of them, thats cool, just skip this one if you happen upon it. 

We are going to dive in to the following;

Lucien & Elain  (their choices)

Lucien & Azriel  (contrast)

Rejecting the Bond

New Bonds

Fate & THE POV 

and why the writing is basically telling us everything we need to know...

Lucien 

Lucien is noble male, he has a good heart and has suffered his plenty, and this is why people want what is best for him, to be the happiest he can... Unfortunately I think that in this case Elain is not it. 

He is right to feel that way, just as Elain has a right to feel as she does. I think it is incredibly interesting that when we finally see from his POV we see that in a way he feels as though this has been thrust on them. 

That with his last love he had a choice and so did she.

It reminds me very much of this line about Rhysand’s parents, who were an example of an unhappy mating bond.

We will deep dive in to wrong matches further down, but the fact is that mated couples are not always indicators of true paired souls, that they very well could be the couple that do not end up happy together.

I speak on Elain and her agency a lot because I feel like a large portion of the fandom like to discard it as if it means nothing, and even judge her for it but if we actually take a look at Lucien’s behaviour he is not all that more happy.

There are some key differences between them though, Lucien as a male feels their bond to a different degree than she does, and he also has been raised to believe and respect the bond. And thus he feels a certain obligation to honour it in the best way he can. 

This doesn’t mean he thinks she is right for him, any further than his attraction to her (which like same dude same), he hasn’t displayed any signs that they actually aline as a couple. And I feel like SJM clearly highlights this when she sets examples of his gifts not being... well right for her. 

The gloves we know she never wears show us how little they know each other as she loves to get dirty [which Feyre had told him] and the pearl necklace is then contrasted by Azriels which was very personalised to Elain. 

(The rose, the secret beauty of it hitting the light etc...)

These are all deliberate moves by Sarah to showcase their misaligned bond.

And during Elain’s section I will also be pointing out some Lucien moments that really don’t read well for him. I genuinely believe he is much happier amongst the Band of Exhiles than he is when he is seen with The Inner Circus.

Elain

Here is the thing, this situation isn’t any easier on him that’s true but people need to respect Elains feelings, and the fact is she does not like him. Not only does she not like him but she shrinks in on herself, she looses all the progress and confidence she has made since the Cauldron. That is not a good sign of anything healthy.

If this is suppose to be a romance we root for why is she doing everything in her power to make it seem the opposite? If she genuinely was playing the long game she would have at least started to make them comfortable around each other, goodness they don’t even have to talk, but she does the opposite.

She emphasises that he brings out the bad in her. Again, no bueno. She quite simply does not want to be around him and with SJM’s writing I think this is highly deliberate on her part. 

[And let’s be clear there are countless quotes from the other books that do NOT reflect well on their relationship but I am trying to stick to ACOSF, as it is her most recent work, otherwise I would be here all day.] 

Rejecting the Bond

We have almost a two page discussion on why mating bonds are not an exact science, and that they can be more harmful than good. We are given two examples of it, with both Rhys’ and Tamlin’s parents. And then we get a very subtle hit at Azriel. This is all in the book Sarah said she began planting the seeds for the sisters journeys.

We also know from this there is a choice. But that many force it, because they feel it it right, (much like Lucien is probably doing right now, because he feels a duty and hope that it will work out.)  

Then we have the fact thrown at us that a lot of males believe that their mate belongs to them and will challenge the other male, which we now have a call back to with Rhys’ mentioning “The Blood Duel”. 

There is literally not one reason Sarah would put this in TWICE only for it never to happen or come close too happening. How anyone can question at this point that Elriel will happen is confusing to me, she has laid all the groundwork for it.

Now I don’t believe for a second that Lucien wouldn’t respect her choice, I think it will most certainly come down to Beron forcing his hand to wage the war we know he wants.

I think despite what Rhys said in Azriel’s POV under immense stress, TNC will protect Elain and ultimately stand by her decision. 

Not only does ACOSF spend a great deal of time creating a further divide between Elain & Lucien it also add a shockingly large quantity of easter eggs about “Elain choosing bonds” “Other Mate” “What if it chose wrong?” and again in this book like in ACOMAF we bring back up a failed mated pair to remind you of it’s existence.

All possible signs lean towards them breaking the bond.

And frankly from a storytelling perspective having three perfect bonds that are basically the same overarching love story (enemies to lovers) is boring, she would want to shake it up and throw a little curveball.

Lucien + Azriel  &  Why I think Azriel will have a bond with Elain.

“If anyone can sense if something is amiss, it’s a mate” And low and behold it is Azriel who figures out what was going on with her. Not to mention in the reveal SJM further displays that Lucien has no clue what was going on with her.

I don’t know what bridge holds their bond but I wouldn’t trust crossing it personally... :/

Further still, Lucien cannot hear her heart. Their bond is definitely not strong but you could also argue that is not an element of the bond at all but rather of her abilities perhaps. Since we know she could hear the sea too though it was nowhere close by.

But Azriel did hear her, he did pay attention and he figured out what was amiss. 

It is interesting to me that people took such issue with this when I believe very few have issues with Rhys or Cassian fighting for their respective partners. Now I have gone in to it in depth about how I think that this was pure emotion and illogical on Azriel’s part, and I don’t believe he would kill Lucien so carelessly.

I think it speaks to the same blind emotion a lot of them have displayed for their mates, Lucien may have wanted to see if she was worth it but Azriel knows she is worth the fight.

And for all intensive purposes in that moment he was willing to fight for someone he believes shares his feelings.

Now let’s tackle the whole “Possessive” crap.

First of all, all of the male pairings in this series have shown moments like this, so if it is bothering you here why isn’t it bothering you at other points?

Lucien has been just as instinctively possessive from their bond, and let me clarify, I am not shaming him for that anymore than anyone else. What I am pointing out is the double standard, if anything Azriel has more reason to feel like he can fight for her because she has actually shown him care, interest and attraction. 

They have actually bonded a lot more than she has with Lucien thus far.

And if they truly do have an upcoming bond then judging him on three paragraphs when we don’t know what the heck is going on is just ridiculous.

On the same note of that scene, let’s talk about “deserve”

First of all he never said he deserved her, Rhys implied that is what he was gleaning from the conversation and that it is just lust, which we know is not the case. Clearly Rhys perception is not accurate at all so to take his statement at face value and call it fact is a bit disingenuous.

Azriel wasn’t claiming he deserves her, did you read his POV at all?? He didn’t even feel like his hands should touch her let alone deserve her. Please go back and read that chapter again if you can’t see that.

Not to mention I think that the idea of FATE, and believing in hope even when the odds are stacked against you (AKA her having a mate) is actually very consistent with SJM storytelling and Az. Remember this;

The fact that he is hopeful despite the despair of his situation is exactly what people have valued about him. Not to mention after Rhys says this to Azriel he says to them;

So Rhys too believes they were brought in his family for a reason, some sort of fate.

Amren too thinks they are blessed by fate. Why is it so shocking and offensive that Azriel have a little hope that there is a reason they came in to their lives? Because he isn’t with your fav?

Let’s be honest he didn’t exactly get over Mor in ACOMAF, ACOWAR and then even ACOFAS there are slight moments, thats over a long period. Three sisters didn’t just arrive and he went TAG “I want one.”

No, he genuinely grew to care for Elain, and let go of his past, and in watching Elain not find any connection with her mate he saw it as a sign that the Cauldron was wrong, which we know it can be. 

I don’t know if people are selective readers but if you think that he doesn’t care for her as a person beyond being a “sister” I don’t know what to tell you, we are not reading the same books.

ANYWAYS back on topic.

I think Sarah has laid a lot of groundwork for her breaking the bond and perhaps choosing a new one. I know not everyone is keen on another bond as they feel her free will and choice is enough, that’s fair and I agree to a point. 

I just wanted to analyse the data at hand, and I do believe after ACOSF (I never thought it prior really) that they are mates in some capacity, whether that is because of the Cauldron or something that will occur... I think she has laid enough groundwork for them being Soulmates at the least. Hence why I love the idea of a Carranam bond.

There are so many parallels between Rhys, Cassian & Az that could be taken as little signs but honestly this is long enough I am sure you all want to kill me already for making you read all that hahaha 

One last little morsel, it very well might be nothing but Az shouting after they take Elain is an interesting choice, it’s ambiguous enough that you can take it to mean the pain but it could also be another little crumb.

Basically with all said and done I think she will give Elain her agency back and break it.

And potentially something will occur with Azriel as a result but thats certainly more grey than the rest of it.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk!

Obviously, to each their own opinion, have fun and ship whatever you want these are just my thoughts on the text at hand!

(Also I am sorry I got like 20+ messages to get to in my inbox, yeah I kinda ignored everyone and worked on this today, sorry!!! I’ll be back tomorrow)

[lucemferto]

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT TECHNOBLADE (or A Narrative Analysis of the Dream SMP Doomsday Event) - Script

Heyo! Per request I am posting the script to my video of the same name here on tumblr. I must warn you that just reading the script will probably not give you the full experience, so I would encourage you to watch the video (linked above).

There might also still be a lot of grammatical errors in the text, because I don’t proofread.

Okay, so! I don’t want this to turn into a reaction channel OR a Dream SMP channel for that matter! I am planning on doing a big dumb, way too long analysis video on the Dream SMP which will – at my current pace – come out in five years. I am already way too late on this one.

Spoiler Alert for the Doomsday Event that took place on the 6th of January in the Dream SMP. Surely the worst thing to take place on the 6th of January 2021 … I’m sorry, what’s this about the Capitol?

In case you don’t watch the SMP and need context: The Dream SMP is a Minecraft Multiplayer Server, that, throughout the last year, has transformed from a normal Let’s Play to an ongoing new-media series streamed by multiple high-profile streamers such as Dream, TommyInnit or Technoblade. It comes complete with script – by which I mean loose bullet points – and story events. It has attracted a large fanbase specifically invested in the story and less so in the actual gameplay content. Like I said before, I will probably do a big video on the Dream SMP at some point in the future.

The storyline is long and complicated and trying to explain it all would take up the majority of the video and there are other channels who have already done a much better job than I could ever hope to do, so give them a watch. I’ll try to summarize all that is pertinent to what I will talk about in this video.

Okay, let’s speedrun this summary. Cue the music!

Major Players here are TommyInnit, a founder of the independent nation of L’Manburg, Technoblade, an anarchist who was deep in conflict with L’Manburg, Tubbo, Tommy’s best friend and current president of L’Manburg, and Dream, the ruler of the Kingdom of the Dream SMP (even though he is not the king, but we’re not going to get into that right now). Tommy had in the past been exiled by Tubbo for endangering L’Manburg’s shaky peace with the Dream SMP. Tommy had then teamed up with Technoblade, who was hellbent on destroying L’Manberg after some prior altercations – more on that later.

Tommy and Tubbo came into conflict during a festival set-up to celebrate the friendship between L’Manburg and the Dream SMP. After punching out their feelings, Tommy came to the realization that his friendship with Tubbo was more important than his vendetta against Dream and those who exiled him. Techno took that change of heart badly and teamed up with Dream to destroy L’Manburg … and that’s exactly what happened.

Techno and Dream, with little to no opposition, obliterated L’Manburg with no hope for recovery leaving its inhabitants stranded hopeless and alone.

… And that’s what you missed on Dream SMP!

Okay. So, usually I just put whatever thought slime drips out of my mouth hole into your subscription box. But then I asked myself: “Am I not taking this a largely improvised nonsense story from a bunch of 16–24-year-olds a little too seriously?”. And then I remembered. I’m a pretentious bitch. I made an 18-minute video explaining why the popular commentary YouTuber memeulous is secretly the time travelling Anti-Christ, REASON HAS NO SWAY OVER ME!

So, like the English Major drop-out that I am, I will present you with two theses, which I will then combine into one … supratheses! That word doesn’t exist, I just coined it, it’s mine! I am very smart!

[I know words, I have the best words!]

 Thesis #1: The Fandom focuses too much on Character Analysis in Favour of Narrative Analysis

The Dream SMP is truly something special. It is uniquely singular in how it tells a story of this scope through its chosen medium. While there is an overarching script that lays out the plot points of the future, each of the 30+ streamers on the SMP are their own cameraman, director, writer and actor. You cannot watch “the Dream SMP” – if you attempted that, you would be 80 by the time you caught up to the Doomsday Event. You have to choose whom to watch. You have to choose your focal point character.

Because by the way the story is told and consumed – aka in such a compartmentalized fashion; you watch one streamer and get one character’s perspective – it has sort-of unintentionally conditioned fans to look at the SMP and its characters less as one coherent story with messages and themes and more as sports teams they can root for. You’re Team Techno or Team Tubbo or Team Tommy or Team JackManifoldTV (formerly known as Thunder1408) and every other side is in the wrong! It’s like Twilight for a decade old children’s game about virtual Lego!

Okay, I’m exaggerating, but the amount of discourse perpetuated by and revolving around so-called “apologists” – a terrible term that unfortunately has caught on – is really not something that I think is good for how we interact with the story of the Dream SMP.

The Dream SMP is discussed a lot on character-based level, which is, like I said before, hugely advantaged by the way the story is consumed by its audience. With traditional, visual media such as film for example, the audience can be made more aware of what messages the narrative might try to communicate on a narrative level without the need for an explicit narrator to tell you the moral.

As an example, in a movie you could have a smash-cut from the Butcher Army’s discussions about neutralizing the danger Technoblade poses to Techno being nice around villagers or taking care of animals. This would communicate on an extradiegetic level, that the Butcher Army is in the wrong with their assumptions. Alternatively, you could contrast Techno’s declarations that power corrupts and that Tubbo’s administration is cruel with Tubbo choosing not to punish Ranboo for his association with Techno – thus the narrative would communicate that Techno’s view of Tubbo and by extension the government is one-sided and not true to reality.

Stuff like that helps the viewer understanding a story holistically and manages to communicate stuff like themes and morals without having to solely rely on in-character logic and argumentation, which, as Ghostbur put it so eloquently, is comprised of a bunch of unreliable narrators.

Character analysis is great if we want dive deep, if we really want to give a character flavour and understand their motivations. It helps make the universe feel like it is alive, like it’s real. But – and this might be a shocker for you – it’s not real. It’s written. It is construction – and as such, in its construction, it has messages and themes and morals, intentionally or unintentionally.

By being so focused on specific characters and their individual journeys, viewpoints and motivation we really run the risk of not looking at the bigger picture and fail to see what the overarching narrative is actually communicating. And we may also fail to understand how characters might or might not fit into the overarching narrative.

Speaking of which …

 Thesis #2: Technoblade experiences very little Meaningfultm Thematic Conflict

Okay, let’s talk about Technoblade. I’m sure I’m not going to get any hate for this one.

I want to preface by saying that I don’t watch Technoblade’s streams; I catch up though clip channels and summaries. I’m mainly watching Tommy, Tubbo and Quackity – which is honestly already more than I can handle – but I want to be clear that while I’ll try to be as even-handed as possible – like I explained previously – the way I consumed the storylines will undoubtedly leave me with some bias.

Also, needless to say, I’m talking about the character Technoblade, not the actual content creator, unless I specifically say so. That should be obvious.

Now, I’m not doing a Technoblade character analysis, because that would be hypocritical of me – seeing how I just bitched about the overwhelming amounts of character analyses in the fandom – but I’ll try my best to summarize what is necessary.

Technoblade’s interesting in that he is a very static character – at least inwardly – he doesn’t change much. He is very steadfast in his beliefs and ideals and has very little introspection. He doesn’t question himself; he doesn’t waver, he is never in a bind about whether what he’s doing is right or wrong. He is very much a parallel to early TommyInnit – who, of course, famously said “I’m always in the right”.

And I want to emphasize that I mean this in no way as a critique of Techno’s character. A static character provides a nice contrast to more dynamic characters and can balance them out. It can also be utilised by the writing as a character flaw – which is what I hope content creator Techno is going for.

Like Techno doesn’t have a lot of empathy in the sense that he is particularly skilled at or interested in trying to see the viewpoints of others. There is never an attempt to reconcile, for example, the goal of the Pogtopians to reclaim L’Manberg and install another administration with his desire for an anarchist society. This is also compounded with his overreliance on violence as the only tactic for conflict resolution – Techno has a whole thesis statement about violence being the only universal language. I’m sure you’ve heard the quote.

And lastly, what really drives this all over the edge, is his all-or-nothing approach when dealing with the enemy – he is not so much eye for an eye as he is – to use another biblical example – you make fun of me for being bald and I’ll sic two bears on you that maul and kill you and 41 other children.

There’s also the open and completely unacknowledged hypocrisy of a self-described anarchist working together with a man that installs and dethrones Kings with his every whim – someone who – and I cannot stress this enough – hits about every box when it comes to the definition of tyrant.

So, what I’m saying is that Technoblade is the Dream SMP equivalent of Dick Chenney. C’mon you know it’s true! He will bomb that freedom into your country whether you want him to or not. That’s some cogent political commentary in the year 2021.

Okay, so now that I’ve outlined his character, what kind of conflicts does Technoblade face. Well, it’s mostly physical or external. He fights a lot whether it’s against Quackity or Sapnap or bodying Karl Jacobs five times in a row. And – with the exception of maybe Sapnap – none of it is challenging. Technoblade is the best PvP-Player on the server – there really isn’t much tension to be had from a purely physical fight.

So, how are these fights supplemented emotionally. Well, internally there is not a lot going on. As I said before, Technoblade isn’t really an introspective character. Even during his shouting match with Tommy there’s not a sense that Technoblade is wavering or unsure of himself in the way that Tommy is. He exposits that one of the reasons, he acts like he does is that he feels dehumanized; that people only use him like a weapon and then discard or even try to neutralize him once he’s no longer useful.

But that is not something that Technoblade has to grapple with – it’s not conflict for him, it’s more conflict for Tommy. Technoblade is self-assured in that he’s a person and not a weapon – it’s almost like there was a character arc there, where Technoblade self-actualizes and breaks away from the people that want to use him. But we didn’t see any of it. Technoblade unleashes the withers; then he goes into retirement because he wants to be, I suppose, and then he returns to violence as a reaction to the Butcher Army. There is a story of vengeance here, but not any conflict about being used. There is never a point where we see Technoblade come to this realization or comes to assert himself.

In season 1 there’s never a push from Pogtopia where the narrative frames them as exploiting Technoblade. He fights with them of his own volition, he gives them weapons and armour of his own volition. Nobody pressured Techno into procuring their inventory for the fight. And in Season 2, he’s the one to approach Tommy about their potential partnership – he is in the position of power here, explicitly not Tommy.

Like, I’m sorry, if this ruffles some feathers, but I really don’t see this arc where Technoblade is being used. There’s a story of misunderstanding and maybe co-dependency – but not of dehumanization. This entire line of thought seems to solely reference that moment, where Tommy says to Sapnap “I have the blade” during one of their wars – which, to base an entire emotional arc around that without any further set-up, is, and I’m sorry to say that, incredibly flimsy.

Okay, so we covered physical and emotional conflict? But what about conflict on the narrative level? Well, that leads me to my suprathesis …

 Suprathesis: The Narrative is Unclear on how it treats Technoblade … and that’s Not Good.

Here’s a Hot Take: The narrative of Season 1 treats Technoblade way less sympathetically than that of season 2.

Let me explain. The narrative of Season 1 revolves mostly around Wilbur and Tommy. The emotional fulcrum of the overall narrative is Wilbur’s rise and fall from Grace – and Tommy succeeding him as symbol of L’Manberg’s “special”-ness. Now I will talk about all that more in detail, when I talk about Season 1 of the Dream SMP. So, you’ll just have to go with me on this one for now.

Technoblade, by contrast, doesn’t really have much going on thematically in Season 1. He mostly exists as a sort-of utilitarian character – he is an accessory to make story beats happen. Like him executing Tubbo doesn’t open up any sort of thematic conflict involving him – on a character level it sets up antipathy between him and Tommy and it grants us some insight into how he operates with his violence speech – but on a larger-scale narrative level it really just shows how far Wilbur and Tommy have drifted apart in how they react to the event.

His biggest contribution is during the Season 1 finale, but even there he plays second fiddle to Wilbur. Not just because Wilbur does way more destruction with his explosion than Techno does with his Withers, but also because Wilbur had an emotional and thematic climax to his arc and by extension the entire storyline. Like Techno’s is a cool moment and very epic visual but in terms of thematic relevance, his Theseus-speech is really more set-up for Season 2.

And Season 1 is very unambiguous about L’Manberg being good and Tommy’s ideals ultimately being morally justified – I mean, they have a whole speech about it in the end and it was built-up throughout the entire Season – Techno is cast in a … less than sympathetic light. He is, if not a villain, then definitely an antagonist.

But with Season 2 the narrative is either uninterested in or not very clear on exploring Technoblade’s flaws.

Like ask yourselves: is Technoblade’s character ever consciously challenged by the narrative? Are his actions ultimately shown to not be in the right? Are his beliefs about government and power ever called into question? Are the negative consequences that his actions cause ever shown to be larger than the “good” he does?

I think what exemplifies this the most is how the Butcher Army event played out on December 16th. Now, during that event, the Butcher Army, which was comprised of Tubbo, Quackity, Fundy and Ranboo, managed to apprehend Technoblade, who at that point was living the quiet retirement life, and tried to have him publicly executed – without trial.

Now, smarter people than me have pointed out that the Butcher Army had a bevy of in-character reasons that can justify or explain their actions. And that’s definitely interesting, but as I said before, I want to get away from that and look into how the Butcher Army is treated on a narrative level. Because this is one of the few instances where the otherwise grey-loving Season 2 has some very clear narrative intent when it comes to morality.

The Butcher Army is very deliberately framed as almost cartoonishly corrupt and violent. They very forcefully investigate Philza, mock him and then put him under house arrest – and there’s just no remorse in the script even from normally sympathetic characters like Tubbo.

Compare and contrast with the Tommy-exile scene, which is also an act of moral ambiguity and is treated as such. And things get even worse once the Army arrives at Technoblade’s abode and attack him after he softly tells them that he has left that live behind him. They then proceed to take his horse hostage, mock him and execute him without fair trial – and I haven’t seen it but from live commentary I gathered that Techno really played up the whole softie-schtick before the Butcher Army arrived. I mean, before the big Technoblade vs Quackity fight, Quackity had whole villain monologue for Christ’s sake.

And even afterwards, the Butcher Army really plays up the corrupt angle with Tubbo proposing a festival as a guise to publicly execute someone. And again, I know that on an intradiegetic there’s nuances and it’s not really comparable to the Red Festival, but in combination with what the audience has seen up until that point and with how much it feeds into the already established themes of history repeating itself and becoming like your predecessors, it really does not paint a pretty picture of the Tubbo administration.

You can feel the heavy hand of the script on your shoulder, which is a feat seeing how – as discussed before – that’s not something that can be easily accomplished in this medium.

And that is what I mean when I say that Technoblade is not really challenged by the script and is in this case even emboldened by it. Because after this whole ordeal the thought of Technoblade taking revenge by destroying L’Manberg doesn’t seem like such an extreme response to the viewer – even though in my opinion, it is.

As of right now it is too early to say how the narrative will judge Technoblade’s actions in the future. Will they be framed as extreme but ultimately justified or perpetuating a cycle of ever-escalating vengeance? Will we ever see a government that’s not just at best misguided and at worst completely awful?

Ultimately, I believe and hope that Technoblade will be challenged by the narrative, mostly because a character that cannot, believably, be physically challenged, who doesn’t have any meaningful internal conflict about what he’s doing; and who does come out on the other side having everything he always believed in be proven completely in the right by the narrative, would be incredibly boring. Not just to watch but also to play as.

As it stands now, if the destruction Techno, Phil and Dream inflicted upon L’Manburg is framed as ultimately in the right, I would find it personally a distasteful message to send. I would ultimately say that the “correct” way to counter corruption in government is to completely obliterate the entire country. Like we’re not talking simply disbanding the government – that’s not what Doomsday was – we’re talking complete and utter annihilation. And that would be cynical and depressing. Like, call me a big softie, but even bothsidesing this argument would be bad.

Like, I’m not calling for Technoblade to be transformed into or treated a monster like Dream. But I personally feel like the narrative needs to acknowledge that the Doomsday was something that was taken way too far and that it ultimately brought more harm than good. And Technoblade needs to held accountable by someone who is not a cartoonishly corrupt government-official or who is in conflict with him anyway, like Tommy.

I thought Philza or Ranboo could do that but seeing how their storylines are progressing I don’t believe that will be the case. But who knows, maybe Captain Puffy will come through for us. We stan a Queen.

 Conclusion

So, yeah, I made this entire video just to air out my grievances with how one-sided the mode of analysis is in the fandom, because no person actually involved with the production of Dream SMP will ever see this.

But after everything I am cautiously optimistic, that content creator Technoblade knows what he’s doing. He has talked in the past about how his character is a bad guy and he loves his Greek myths. After all what’s more Greek myth than hybris being rewarded with punishment? [Technoblade never dies] That bodes well for him.

Also, this isn’t the video I promised at the end of the last one!

[loudest-subtext-in-tv]

Something I know no one will ever contend with when they just want to write a hit piece about us, but...

When Moffat said on the A Scandal in Belgravia commentary, “If you watch the show carefully, there’s subtext about John’s drinking,” what did he mean? He wasn’t being flippant, he’s said one of his favorite writers is William Goldman and writers should study him because he “knows everything.” Goldman’s Ten Commandments on Writing say to “put a subtext under every text” and not to be too on the nose. 

So what is the “real” subtext to why John drinks, and why does John drink when he’s alone with Sherlock and trying to get him to open up, or otherwise thinking about Sherlock? If the subtext is not about John’s relationship with Sherlock, then like... who else is in the room in those scenes, what’s going on, who is John actually thinking about, and why is it so important to the story that Moffat would include it? What storyline does the subtext of John’s drinking pertain to? It must be pretty big to not have been revealed yet, so it shouldn’t be hard to make a case for.

Similarly: When Moffat and Gatiss say that The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, a movie noteworthy for depicting Holmes as a homosexual in love with Watson, is the inspiration for their adaptation, what do people imagine they adapted from it? Because it wasn’t the characterization, they don’t much resemble the BBC Sherlock characterizations. Barely any plot points were borrowed, and minor ones at that. Why did they pick the big overtly gay adaptation for the basis of their show from a hundred straight alternatives? Why did Gatiss say the thing he liked about it was that Holmes was in love with Watson?

I mean, I know people who hate us will never actually watch it, but the movie is not subtle. The movie isn’t a bunch of gay gags, the movie makes very clear that Holmes is genuinely homosexual and in love with Watson in a deeply painful way that queer people can recognize and relate to, and the same vibe is heavy in series 3 especially. For example, the endings of TSoT and HLV are not gay gags, they are things that happened in the plot and were not presented as remotely funny.

There are two reasonable perspectives on this:

1) It is not especially weird for people who pay attention to what the writers have said about their stories to think all the gay stuff is intentional, and its not weird to have fun chasing down things the writers have taken care to talk about. That’s what fans do, they try to predict where stories are going. No one made hit pieces ridiculing Jon and Daeneyrs shippers because they recognized what the foreshadowing in Game of Thrones was saying, and they were basing it off almost nothing compared to what the showrunners of Sherlock have said and taken care to include in the plot and subtext. People write hit pieces about us because they deeply believe it’s stupid for queer people to think a gay romance could be depicted, we had the misfortune of having a sense of humor about ourselves (calling it a “conspiracy” and ourselves a “cult”), and were enthusiastic about the show and writers whose fandom we’re a part of.

2) The gay stuff is intentional, but all a big joke despite appearances to the contrary. Most of the antis even argued that the gay stuff was intentional, they just thought it was to fuck with people or be provocative. Some of them were even dreading S4, including while it was airing, because they thought we were going to be proven right and we’d be insufferable. If people who hated us worried we could be right, then how delusional could we be?

I can understand someone thinking it all being a big joke is more likely than a TV show depicting a gay romance, but it does not follow that people deserve to be an object of public ridicule because they recognized a bunch of queer allusions and painful queer life experiences that resonated with them and considered that the writers, one of whom is queer and unabashedly obsessed with the works in question, may have positive motives for including those things. It feels like punishing people for doing their due diligence of actually researching the writers’ feelings about things and their influences, rather than just piling on and calling them homophobes. I’m not trying to invalidate anyone’s opinions if that’s how they feel about Moffat and Gatiss nowadays, I’m just saying it’s not some shameful thing for people to actually investigate these things and conclude differently. It’s okay to think writers are talented and clever, and their fandom should be a place where it’s okay to explore that.

What makes me most sad about this is that there is genuinely no area of life where people can just play around anymore without being hunted down. Like, politics is fucking miserable, the pandemic is miserable, I just had a friend kill himself a few months ago because of how bad life is lately, a close relative who I never thought would have suicidal ideation has it now, I have been fighting wanting to die for years, in the U.S. none of us have any idea if we’re ever getting any sort of pandemic stimulus again -- so many of us are suffering immensely right now, it should be okay to be goofy and creative in a fandom without someone deciding its their prerogative to profit off us because they think we’re weird, or whatever. 

The reason there’s a lot of crazy meta analysis is because this was supposed to be a relatively safe, creative place where people can try their hand at analyzing stories without being graded or made to feel inadequate, so we treat metas a lot like fanfics where it’s not really appropriate to just rip people’s shit apart no matter how illogical it is, and we find things we like about analysis we don’t agree with in that same spirit: it’s a cool idea anyway, it’s artistically inspiring, it got close to a more compelling idea, etc. I have a big packet of fan mails where several people told me they had been scared and self-conscious to share their thoughts on things, and TJLC helped them open up and inspired them to major in literary or film-related majors. People start somewhere and it’s cruel to make fun of them because they weren’t great at something that doesn’t fucking matter. 

FANDOM IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A SUPER SERIOUS SPACE. NO ONE PUTS ON A TUXEDO BEFORE THEY LOG IN TO TUMBLR. NO ONE NEEDS SOME OUTSIDER TAKING THE THINGS THEY OFFERED IN THE SPIRIT OF FUN OUT OF CONTEXT TO PRESENT TO A WIDER AUDIENCE THEY DELIBERATELY AVOID BECAUSE THAT AUDIENCE IS MEAN AND SENDS THEM DEATH THREATS AND HOMOPHOBIC AND MISOGYNISTIC SLURS AND SUICIDE ADVICE. IT IS ACTUALLY NOT AN ENORMOUS CHARACTER FAILING TO SHARE BAD ANALYSES OF A TV SHOW, AND SHOULD NOT BE A MATTER OF NATIONAL INTEREST. 

But places where people can open up and try things out increasingly can’t exist anymore, because even in a low stakes environment like a fandom there are busybody ghouls who want to profit off being condescending about how people spend their leisure time. It doesn’t add anything to the world except their bank accounts.

[blockgamepirate]

Feel free to ignore, if you don't feel like answering! But I'm so interested in your thoughts on the newest Wilbur-stream and what it revealed about his character. I'd love to hear your insights (if you have any particular insights, that is!) Always appreciate your analyses!

Aww thank you!

Tbh I have a lot of thoughts but nothing properly sorted yet. (Also idk how original any of my thoughts are because I’ve barely been reading other people’s thoughts. I’m just kinda dealing with some minor health issues rn, it’s draining all my energy.)

I guess the clearest part is that this confirmed a lot of things about past-Wilbur, that he did in fact lie to Phil (I mean I didn't doubt that but it helps to hear it) and that it likely was because he didn't want Phil to worry/be disappointed in him which is basically what I assumed.

Also that L'Manburg really wasn't as serious for him as he used to imply, although I think part of that might also be that it's been 13 years since he cared about it and being trapped in limbo would probably make anyone re-evaluate their priorities and maybe realise that the specific country wasn't as important as what that country represented for him. Which is a healthy conclusion to come to. I don't think it's all about the re-evaluation though, I've always read Wilbur's relationship to L'Manburg as less noble than what he wanted others to believe. A tool to "stick it to the man" kind of makes sense. What he didn't say explicitly, but what I think was pretty heavily implied, was also that it was a tool to gain power for himself, to benefit from division on the server. (See also the very last scene with Quackity's letter.) He’s an opportunist and L’Manburg was an opportunity for him. I think he did get invested in it along the way, though, I don’t think all of that was fake.

The way he manipulates Tommy is also pretty similar to how he originally got Tommy on board with his potion scheme and later L'Manburg. The difference is that Tommy is much more aware of it this time so we'll see how it goes. Right now he seems to be falling right back to his role as Wilbur’s... idk, sidekick I guess, but he’s also at least somewhat aware of the fact that it’s happening.

Other stuff is more complicated.

I think the most relatable part of Wilbur's character now is just how happy he is to be alive and to meet other people again, which makes a lot of sense. And for all that he made fun of Ranboo, he seems to be starting out trying to have good connections with everyone, he basically apologised or otherwise reconciled with everyone he met, or at least tried to be somewhat diplomatic. I think that's basically him trying to start over and get a sense of where everyone is at right now, for future plans. My guess is that both in character and out of character Wilbur knows that allegiances might be very different this time around. Although he still wants to include Tommy. I'm curious to see whether that's going to happen or not, Tommy is so wary of Wilbur but then again I know the two of them like to stream together so they might actually end up having their characters team up despite everything and hooooo boy....

That said I hope it won't be too much like the Pogtopia arc, I hope Tommy will have a bit more plot agency and not mainly just exist to criticise Wilbur and to try to convince him not to do what he's planning to do. (I was always really disappointed that the Tubbo, Tommy, Niki team up never happened after the Red Festival. IMO it was built up and then it just went nowhere, idk if it had something to do with irl issues or if it just didn't fit the plot outline but in any case it was a missed opportunity.)

Wilbur living with Phil is kinda... I have mixed feelings because I'd love to see them interact more but I'm pretty sure it won't end well and I don't know which bad ending is going to be the one that happens. I just care about Phil's character a lot. And oh god the Syndicate...

I have NO IDEA how Wilbur is supposed to know about the Syndicate and I'm not a fan, honestly. There better be a really good explanation for it because Wilbur didn't just know vaguely that there was some kind of anarchist society that had formed which could be common knowledge what with how unsubtle those nerds are, but he even knew what it was called, which implies that either somebody snitched or there's something weird going on.

I'm kinda worried because I wanted the Syndicate to actually get to have SOME development before it had to face a crisis.

Also damn you Wilbur for that "government" comment, I don't have the spoons to go through those debates again. I don't particularly care what his intent was, it's painful either way.

I guess overall I'm both excited and worried because I do like Wilbur's content and his character (well, except when I don't) and I genuinely love his style of storytelling which was already a huge breath of fresh air, but I hope it won't end up sidelining other plots. Quackity has barely even gotten started and the Egg arc hasn't yet had a full conclusion. I hope they'll all be tied together, rather than just happen awkwardly in parallel. (I know Dream promised plotlines would be tied together but Dream has promised a lot of things that turned out to be misleading, I don't trust him lol)

(I mean I personally don’t even care that much about the Egg plot, it’s really just not my thing, but it’s there and it would just make it even less satisfying if it basically just ended with the Banquet. It was built up as such an existential threat and it really hasn’t been that at all. Something that ominous kinda needed to actually take over the entire server, or at least cause a proper bloodbath, otherwise it just loses its menace.)

I don't know, we'll see. What I'm hoping is that Wilbur's first plan is to break Dream out because that's been a long time coming and would be more interesting than just "Wilbur starts a new scheme with Tommy". I mean he's obviously going to start a new scheme, but I just want the prison break plot first. And I'm guessing now that Wil lives with Phil, Techno might also be involved which would FINALLY resolve the "favour" which has just been hanging in the air for ages, and hopefully also some of the tension between Techno and Dream's characters which goes back even further. And Techno's character, as an anarchist, just should be anti-prison in general.

Idk, like I said, I lots of thoughts, nothing properly sorted yet.

[phoneybeatlemania-bit-the-dust]

I’d disagree with the anon that Paul was “incapable” of love, but I do agree he was very distanced, and pretty cruel (to women) when he was younger. (It was unfortunate they bought into the love at first sight myth, but he was also a charmer, and dropped affection and got colder after fucking them.)

But I just can’t see romantic interest on Paul’s end. I’m sure he loved John, but a lot of the “sexual/Romantic evidence” really can just be as construed as platonic love. I feel there may be some confirmation bias looking for “clues”. (Not an attack on anyone, but some of the analysises seem to try too hard, really).

He does make references, with the whole “calling him babe during concerts”, and “in bed” but that could just mean he’s not uncomfortable with coming off “gay”. He has a quote about it somewhere I think. He’s supportive of the community at any rate.

This is kind of my own bias, but at times I think he…plays it up a little during the present day? Again, I’m positive he did love John a lot, but with how he is, a charmer, good at manipulating his image, he knows there is a benefit to building up the “magical” Lennon McCartney dynamic. John’s dead, and the old conflicts have faded, so he has no reason not to. I don’t think he’s anti-social, or a psycho or anything, but he certainly does put a lot of thought into his image, especially now, with how he wants to leave his legacy.

I’m less knowledgeable about John, and the speculation about his mental illnesses, but on his end, I can certainly see it. Maybe he’s just blind, but the looks are very much…yeah. He does seem to rely Paul a lot, and hold him in very high regard (REGARDLESS of what those old male biographers might make of him). You just know he was suffering over Paul, poor bastard.

Not sure if anything happened. I think Paul knew though, and either ignored it, or was kind, knowing John wouldn’t act on it. OR he didn’t notice! With the whole “we shared beds A LOT. you would think he’d make a pass at me, darling~”

I guess that’s how I see it. I don’t really have strong feelings on the nature of their relationship, or want them to be “confirmed”, so I try to be as objective as possible! Not a shipper, but not a male biographer. In fact, I was very put off learning the ship was a thing at first! With every fan base “having to” ship the main male leads, that’s what I thought this was. But after three years, reading actual books, primary stuff, I’ve began to change my mind on its legitimacy, and this was my conclusion. But new information can always change!

(Sorry for the long long analysis, god! I just took my adderall and I should go eat! Feel free to block me for spam/harassment.)

Yeah, this is basically my big mclennon dilemma: did Paul love John?

Of course he loved him, but I mean did he harbour any homosexual feelings towards John - and I just go back and fourth on that a lot.

In my last response to an anon I wasn’t necessarily trying to argue that Paul was romantically/sexually attached to John, because all in all, I don’t believe he did - but it probably came off that way because I didn’t particularly like the way the anon had phrased some stuff (like calling him “a master manipulator” and “incapable of love”) and so I just sort of wanted to show that the relationship was more nuanced then just “john was simping for paul”. My overall point with that response was more so that whilst I think Paul struggles in showing real affection and emotions, I don’t think he was incapable of love prior to Linda. I think he did really love John (in whichever form of love you want to take it: romantically, platonically etc.)

And so my point I guess wasnt so much that Paul was always capable of love (because I think he did at least love his family, his close-friends, probably Jane etc.), but maybe more so that he was always capable of intimacy with another person, though he struggled with it.

But yeah, he was quite cruel to a lot of the girls he slept with in the 60s, but I wouldn’t say that suggests he was incapable of love (i know thats not what you’re saying but other people might interpret it through that lens) I would just say he was young, dumb, ridiculously rich and famous and not emotionally mature enough yet to really empathise with most of those girls. Not trying to completely excuse him, but like, i dunno, i always just try to view people from the most human perspective. Everyones an twat sometimes yknow

I also really struggle to see romance on Pauls behalf towards John - the only times I think “wait but maybe he did fancy john back” is when I read some of his lyrics (like in ‘Coming Up’, ‘Yvonne’s The One’, and to some extent ‘Here Today’ - though I think interpreting Here Today as strictly platonic love is still a valid interpretation). I mentioned this in a different post though, that analysing his lyrics just isnt particularly convincing for me, because it feels more like speculation - and also as someone who does write songs, I know that a lot of lyrics just arent as deep as we wish they were. It is really difficult to be truly introspective and honest in a song, without exaggerating or hyperbolising or fictionalising any autobiographical aspects.

I do see your point with Paul possibly playing up the “Lennon/McCartney m a g i c” - im not entirely sure how much I agree, but I do agree to some extent. I think he’s always been very image conscious, and being in what is probably the all-time most famous pop band definitely wouldve heightened that. Even as a teenager I think he’s always just had this natural charm about him, and that tends to stem I guess from a need to be liked; I think you can see it in every interview he’s ever done to be honest. Its not necessarily a bad thing, (because id take a charmer over a rude knobhead any day) but I guess it sort of just shows that Paul is flawed like everybody else. Also, just read @mothernatures-sons tags and I agree with her - Paul just knows when to be a nice person! Nothing wrong with that! It isnt manipulative like the last anon suggested, its just how most people are: polite :) Ive heard a lot of anecdotes from people who have worked with or met Paul and the majority of them say he was a just a nice guy. Not saying he was never an arsehole (cause yeah he was pretty cruel to those girls in the 60s) but I think overall, hes a pretty good guy 👍

On the other hand though, you could also say that superficial journalists are looking for superficial answers - and Paul knows what the people want to hear. But occasionally ill hear an interview that does seem more intimate then most - I havent listened to it in awhile, but the interview he did with Sean I remember felt more honest to me then most. And when he said he’d like to spend the day “in bed” with John, to me that felt like a genuine and fitting response. Because, whilst it has sexual connotations, it also just feels like he’s saying he’d just like to sit around, chat, dont chat, just whatever with John for a day. Like he would just like another moment of intimacy with him.

I think we are pretty much in agreement on most of this though! At first I was also like “nah, mclennon isnt real, teenage girls just love shipping guys!” (I am a teenaged girl and I can confirm this lol) but then it just sort of became apparent to me through reading more and more about their relationship that there probably was something more on Johns behalf. If John wasnt in love with Paul, then it feels as though a lot of things he said and did just dont add up (the big one for me is him marrying Yoko so soon after Paul married Linda - like I really cannot come up with a heterosexual explanation for that!)

But when it comes to Paul, though ill have moments of doubt, I dont think he was in love with John (homosexually) and I do think a lot of the evidence on Pauls behalf seems like a stretch (but like you, im not having a go at anyone, because I understand that it is easy to carried away, plus its fun - but realistically, most of Pauls evidence just is not convincing to me). He’s comfortable with his sexuality, and I really do try to respect that and not force a gay interpretation of quotes or songs from him, unless it is genuinely making me question his sexuality and mclennon.

PS dont worry, I didn’t take this is spam at all!! And also, I would never block someone just for disagreeing with me! I enjoy discussion and I think its good to engage with people who disagree with you! To be honest, id only block someone if they were purposely being a real arsehole <3

[the-ice-sculpture]

Loki Episode 1 initial reaction

Mixed opinions so far. I could write an entire essay on this, and maybe I will at some point, but here are my initial thoughts, starting with the negative:

I really despised the first twenty minutes. It’s so jarring. Loki’s dialogue, especially, doesn’t sound anything like Avengers!Loki. His speech patterns and entire dialect are suddenly different, much more modern and filled with too many Earth-specific terms with no explanation. There’s no easing the viewer into the difference, it’s just suddenly there and it’s horrendously whiplashy

The same applies to the presentation of his character. Avengers!Loki was grandiose and majestic and witty, even when he was being defeated. This Loki... isn’t. He comes across as juvenile, bumbling, over the top in more of a cringey way, and he’s the butt of the jokes that rely on his humiliation. He doesn’t feel like the same character from any of the movies to me, or, at least, not for the first twenty minutes

With the desert scene... Yes, it bugged me that his hair was suddenly shorter and didn’t just look like a messed up version of Avengers!Loki’s hair. And it also bugged me that Loki didn’t understand what the humans were saying in a different language. Was the Allspeak not working? Or if Allspeak doesn’t exist in the MCU, are we supposed to believe he studied the English language or that Asgard and Earth happen to share a common language?

I wanted Loki to put up more of a fight. I don’t mind him being defeated by people more powerful than him, but it felt like he resigned too quickly and allowed himself to be shoved around by them too soon. I wanted him to struggle more, it felt weird for him not to try harder to go all death and destruction and for it to not require more pain inflicted on him to get him to (reluctantly) go along with it

The humour in this show didn’t do it for me. It felt out of place and not even particularly funny to begin with. Yeah, yeah, I get it, they want their show to be irreverent and zany, whatever draws in the largest audience, right? But if they were going to go for that style of humour, it could be done so much better than how they did it here. And I’m reiterating please just let Loki be witty, please

Once it got to the part where Loki’s watching himself on the screen, everything got a lot more palatable for me and the last half has made me more hopeful

I’m liking Mobius so far. He actually tries to understand Loki and listens to him. He has empathy but he isn’t going to let Loki walk all over him either. Mobius sort of feels like a guide for viewers who are unfamiliar with analysing Loki’s character and not taking him at surface level, and he asks some of the right questions. I want to see where they’re going with Mobius and Loki’s dynamic

From the instant I saw Loki watching himself in the trailer, I was hoping he’d learn about his hand in Frigga’s death and his own death, and we got that! And more! We also got Odin's death and Loki and Thor’s reconciliation. I liked that they gave it time for the emotional impact to hit, this was the part that started giving me hope again. This was the first time when Loki’s character felt actually recognisable to me. Also, yes, I did enjoy the ouchies

The whole D.B. Cooper thing didn’t feel like something that Thor 1!Loki would have done in his past. It just didn’t. When I saw that in the trailer, I was hoping it’d be a variant Loki or our Loki having to be in disguise or something, but nope, it’s supposed to be part of our Loki’s past

Neat. By the sounds of it, Mobius will be ‘hiring’ Loki to help him catch a Loki variant. I was hoping for that and the play of Loki’s worst enemy being himself

He escaped faster than I thought the show would let him. I mean, he isn’t all the way out yet, and I don’t think he will be, but still, at least he managed to do something and tried to put up more of a fight. I’m still surprised there were no deaths though

The whole ‘we use Infinity Stones as paperweights’ thing... I get that they’re trying to establish the TVA as a more powerful entity than any we’ve come across in the entire universe, but at what point do you stop keeping having to one up the power of what’s already been established in the MCU? This isn’t so much a criticism as it is something I find interesting as a discussion point

On the bright side, at least most of the stuff I didn’t like in the trailers is out of the way now

I was hoping to come to a more solid conclusion about whether or not I’ll like the show after the first episode, but I’m still undecided. It’s so frustrating because a lot of the issues with it could have been so easily fixed. It’s set straight after Avengers Assemble, therefore Loki should feel like Avengers!Loki. I don’t know why that’s controversial. Just look at Avengers!Loki’s speech patterns and apply them! How hard could that have been? Even if they wanted more ‘accessible’ dialogue for him (and, yes, I’m tired of the anti-intellectual trend these days), they could have gradually eased him from the more Shakespearesque stuff to the dialect he has in Ragnarok, and that could have had an in-universe explanation of him picking up language/assimilating or whatever. But they didn’t. Just, bam, it’s different now because we said so and we don’t care if it doesn’t make sense. I’m so tired of things being constantly retconned and I still don’t know if I have the energy to justify it to myself to myself anymore.

But yeah, I think there’s a good chance of the worst being out of the way now. Could be famous last words, but my hope hasn’t been completely destroyed. The first half really didn’t sit well with me at all, but the latter half was far better, even if it wasn’t perfect.

And I’m sure I’ll think of a bunch of things I should have added to this list straight after posting, but oh well.