#i support women's wrongs etc etc

[halcyon-autumn]

Maybe Kipperlilly just needs more enrichment in her enclosure. Let her team up with Bud Cuddy to destroy the government. Anarchy would fix her, I think.

[oliveroctavius]

Thoughts on Lily Hollister?

Oh man, I've been thinking about her a lot recently. She's from a period of ASM that I do not always like or understand but she fascinates me as a character.

I remember my first impression of her and Carlie being a cynical "Okay, MJ and Gwen 2.0". I still think she was introduced as part of a "back to basics" push to assemble a neo-CBG, but I have no hard feelings there. Parallel civilian drama is always a plus in a Spidey comic and they are quite cute.

But—as a big HarryMJ fan—this isn't really a rehash. (And not just because Harry is now also meant to be a ditzy glamorous party guy.) MJ was just a teenager dicking around while Lily's non-party goals are political and focused. Note that this "love triangle" kicks off when she realizes Peter is an insider at a paper that opposes her dad. I wasn't reading the letters, but—surely someone guessed Menace's identity the moment "he" turned out to be backing Hollister, right?

She's definitely pulling Harry's strings on the politics side, but isn't emotionally avoidant and spends a lot of private time with him. (If we believe her later, worry about his well-being triggered her origin story.) It seems fair to say she appreciates familial devotion.

ASM #586 is my favorite flavor of Spidey Reveal. The villain is someone we knew and almost trusted, and when we look back the seeds of motivation are there, paralleling our protagonist for dramatic tension! Your dad whose reputation you're curating loves your roommate more than you, you say? He always wanted a son, you say?

There's a deliciously Lady Macbeth flavor to this whole speech.

That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold. What hath quenched them hath given me fire. My hands are of your color, but I shame To wear a heart so white.

Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty!

"Okay, you won't be jealous?" she asks seemingly genuinely, in a voice so deep and a body so muscular that everyone has he/him-ed it up until now. The ongoing goblin theme of violence = power = masculinity is blinking neon here. Obvious jokes about Harry's taste in women aside: what kind of philosophy does a woman have to have to be attracted to what the Osborns represent, thinking she's special enough to not be chewed up and spit out?

And she does say she still loves him! You could read that as a manipulative lie, but to me it's more interesting if she does like Harry in her condescending way.

After all, she seems to love her dad similarly, going behind his back to "support" him in ways he'd never want.

It's too bad that this super-intense characterization of Lily is mostly only retrospective. ASM #588 and the jig is up.

Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear And chastise with the valor of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round, Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem To have thee crowned withal.

It's very possible that the gender element is writers being weird about a black woman as a love interest. (I have a whole thesis on how Black side characters are compared/contrasted to the Osborns somewhere.) But I believe that just a little weirdness can add flavor. It seems significant that Menace, as Lily's fantasy of power denied to her, reads as a nonblack male, as though she hopes that becoming an Osborn will grant her whiteness, too...

Unfortunately, I don't think anything has lived up to that reveal. It kind of feels like nothing has even tried.

[sighs extremely deeply] American Son. Throwing out her whole villain speech to have her bear a super-soldier goblin son for Norman to use as the next Real Osborn.

Macbeth once says to Lady Macbeth:

Bring forth men-children only, For thy undaunted mettle should compose Nothing but males.

But that's right after Lady Macbeth says she'd murder her own baby with her bare hands if it was personally politically advantageous. Why is Lily "if you want something done right, steal your man's role and do it yourself" Hollister now an obedient heir-producing accessory? And that to a guy she beat the crap out of in ASM #571 for being a waste of rich white dude advantages?

We have gone all the way to the other side of Weird. Where did her jealousy and personal ambition and all the weight behind it go? Where's her guilt for ruining her relationship with her father for good? Why is she calling Norman "babe"?

Origin Of The Species (ASM #642-6) makes some attempt to reconnect to the original character threads with the whole friend group banding together to deal with the fallout of Lily's decisions.

But she still feels mostly like a plot device, and her guilt is more wet blanket than "out, damned spot" levels of satisfying. (She jumped to murder to bolster the name of someone who would never have wanted that! Are we ever going to come back to that part!)

Protecting her child from Norman should redefine her allegiances, but she just... got dragged back to bit-part appearances as an accessory to whichever goblin is the biggest deal at the moment. And got memory wiped for a while and became a black cat ripoff.

I feel like this wouldn't have fallen so flat if Bill Hollister hadn't vanished right after her reveal. Did he ever know about his grandson? A severely underrated element of the classic CBG is how many of their parents/mentors knew each other independently of the kids. The larger web of political + financial + circumstantial connections meant that interpersonal family shockwaves stuck around after the first arc, doubled back, mirrored each other in interesting ways. These should've! This should've.

God this post got long. TLDR crazy first arc that nothing else has even remotely lived up to in my mind yet; it would have to follow up on her bonkers family relationships and deeply jealous personal philosophy (or whatever's left of it).

[pyjamaenzel]

Death's companion.

[glitterslag]

ok this is my last one of these. maybe

[eledsart]

haha i love D̶̛͙͇̩̤̟̼̒̓̌̑̇̄͛̂̽͋̍̔͋U̶͉͓̹̟̬̰̖͕̞̱̯̯͕͌̓̽̚͜L̶̗̯̳̳̫̗̬̹̝̭̭̞͂̎̒͐́̇̅́̀Ċ̶̡̢̛̳͓̼̪̪͉̣̗͉̩͒̈͑̉̈́̆̈́̑ͅI̴̡͖͓̽̊̔̽̇̄̐̓̈́̚͘͝N̸̨̛̛̦̰̜̘̣̗̪̜̞̻͎̳̘͙͂͐͛̒͗́͗̑́͆̓̀E̷̢̝̦̝̹̦̭̦̮̪̩̤̦͒̄̈́̀́͠A̶̧͚̮̖̦͈̫̬̙͊͑̌͑͝͝ sooo much 🥰

[emily84]

the sad thing about armand being the puppet master / controlling evil villain etc.

is that, in the end, he isn't controlling anything. his husband of 70 years still yearns about his ex with every molecule of his being, he's shit at leading a coven, he wasn't able to control claudia so he had to *dispose of her, he can't keep his husband close or his weird reporter away unless he manipulates their memories and he fails at this too, spectacularly, he can't control or own his own memories,,,

like??? controlling the narrative? he can't even escape the cycle of abuse

[baltharino]

[ehlnofay]

Summerfest Day 2 - SECRET

All the air in the room shivers and gusts like an expulsion of breath; the sluggish, oil-slick water below resumes its flowing; Arabella, liquid metal curled lacelike over her skin, starts laughing.

It’s dark, in this dank cavern. Karliah left the lamp she carried outside and did not suggest lighting another. Perhaps it would be sacrilege. For several minutes, all had been shadow; but now if Arabella squints, she can vaguely make out the motion of the water, the distant shine of filigreed armour, the bird-mark on the floor. She can make out Karliah on the middle plinth and Brynjolf on the distant one; she can make out the cracked stone below her; she sinks down, low, into a crouch, hood pulled down over her forehead, and cackles. It echoes in her mouth, against the fabric-smoothness of her mask.

“Well,” says Brynjolf’s voice, blankly, from across the room, and again, “well.”

“The first meeting can be… overwhelming,” Karliah says, tactful. Like Arabella’s cracked under the pressure of watching someone talk to a big not-light in a hole so soggy-stale it feels as familiar as the cistern. She is still laughing – she can’t help it (it’s either funny or it’s very serious, and she’d rather not take it seriously) – as she rolls her shoulders back the way she practiced in the armoury, lets the metallic carapace unravel itself, shrinking and sinking again into her skin, to the cold metal mark she pressed like tattoo ink into the back of her neck. (She’s been branded – she’s been gulled – perhaps she should be taking it seriously, but it’s so ridiculous that she doesn’t want to.) The armour goes away. She can, just about, see her skin again.

She is still laughing, birdlike high and delighted.

Brynjolf shakes his head – she catches it only because of the way his eyes glint in the mask – and says, “Didn’t wake up this morning thinking I’d be meeting a Daedric Prince.” He sounds very deliberately careless; taking everything, very intentionally, in stride. “Suppose I’m honoured.”

“Oh, yes,” Arabella crows, “most honoured bargaining chip –” and she goes off in peals of laughter again. Her language is bleeding into Bos, a little – she’s getting her grammar mixed up in her head, blending her words in ways that should give them layers but instead just turns them to gibberish. Most-honoured, ill-weighted, played like lamb-tendon lute-strings, all an unintelligible mess of sounds. It’s all so patently ridiculous.

Brynjolf pauses, asks, “Does this happen, often?” with a nigh-audible furrow of the brow.

“Arabella,” Karliah says. “Arabella. What, the hysterics? No, or, I’ve never – Arabella, pull it together.”

“Lest your Lady think –” and the rest of it is lost to scrambled syntax, but then Arabella wipes her mouth – probably smudging her paint, she realises after the fact, damn it – and stands up straight and says, gleeful, “You liar. Well done.”

“Are you listening, now?” Karliah asks; when she moves, she gleams, ever-faint.

Arabella echoes, “Will you tell us, now? You’ve been so dreadfully surreptitious.”

Karliah gleams again. “I’ve been sworn to secrecy. I’m sorry I’ve had to mete out information so slowly. But now that you’ve transacted the oath –”

“Such a vague oath,” Arabella remarks, shark-toothed.

“I would like to hear more about the oath,” Brynjolf puts in, “and whatever else, but do we have to have this out in the dark?”

“I would like to hear about how it’s supposed to make us more powerful,” Arabella says, “and why I can’t feel any bloody difference.”

Karliah moves – coils her fingers, maybe, so her armour can slink off to puddle in her hand, pulled night-dark in toward the mark at her wrists – and Arabella can see her a little better, then, a ghostlike shape standing ill-defined on the platform. “That,” she says, soft-voiced, “relates to what I was going to say; Mercer’s –”

“Do you feel a difference, Brynjolf?” Arabella calls.

Sharply, Karliah says, “Stop interrupting.”

The water burbles quiet below them. Arabella’s smile is pinned so broadly to her face that her cheeks sting.

“We’re going back into the hall,” Brynjolf decides. His armour sloughs off as he starts picking his way back down the shadow-cracked stone. Halfway down, he looks over, his face a smudge in the dark. “No. But it’s new.”

“New indeed,” Arabella agrees, the soles of her shoes ringing against the marks in the stone; she holds her arms steady for balance as she steps onto the spit of rock. “Whatever power we expect, Karliah – it won’t come up until we’ve made amends with your goddess, will it?”

She is so very spectral, in the dark. Blue-grey, distant-pale. “Nocturnal’s favour alone is a powerful thing,” she says, clipped. “It will give us an edge.”

“Will it,” Arabella says. It is not a question. She is putting considerable effort into not giggling again.

Even in the dark, even without the masks, she can just about catch the shine of Karliah’s eyes as she looks at her. There is a lengthy pause. “It might.”

Brynjolf, a shadow almost at the end of his stone-spit tightrope, pauses. “Ah,” he says, and then, faintly disgruntled, “Really?”

“She played us well,” Arabella tells him with airy unconcern; her teeth scratch against the meat of her lip. “Very cleverly. I bought it just about enough.”

“It might help,” Karliah insists, dogged; “I – I hope it will. And I couldn’t tell you the whole truth if you remained outsiders – we would have been ineffective, barely a chance –”

Arabella slides the last half-metre of damp stone on the flat soles of her shoes, skirt flaring, hair in her mouth. She says into the dank cavern, “You sold us to curry favour.”

“Yes,” Karliah snaps; she strides down back to the ground, quick and practiced, a blur against the stone. “Yes, all right – we need her favour if we’re going to be able to return what Mercer stole, which you still won’t let me tell you about, we need – it’s been a decade.” (Arabella remembers the thick patterns of dust in these strange halls.) “It’s been a decade, Arabella, this is my life, and if bringing it back isn’t – maybe it won’t help! But I told you, it’s business.” She tosses her head; she’s still hooded, and it’s still dark, so this conveys very little. “Yes. I negotiated acquittal. And if you want to be angry about it, that’s fine, but do it less obtrusively so we can actually start –”

“I’m not angry,” Arabella says, and she licks her teeth. Karliah looks at her; in the dark, her eyes don’t flash. Her face is an ink-smudge. Arabella grins. “I just wanted you to admit it. That’s truly astoundingly selfish.”

“In fairness,” Brynjolf says, before Karliah has a chance to rail at that, and he gestures, quick and loose and just fast enough for her eyes to register it, to the lax little circle they stand in, like the points of a lopsided triangle. “Would you expect anything less?”

It’s still so dark – so little light comes in even through the entryway – but the water sounds cold and quick as it runs, and Arabella is good at taking up all manner of sensory space. “Touché,” she says through beaming teeth; shrugs, exaggerated, the motion rippling the metalline mark pressed into the back of her neck. “Really, Karliah, I don’t mind. Nocturnal can have my soul. What worth is it to me?”

[gemsofthegalaxy]

i knew the freaks on tumblr would have my back rise up people who love Judith from 36 questions the podcast musical

[yellowocaballero]

oh geez kakashi of the roleswap au is rin?? That's why Obito stabbed him bc he got the sanbi and then they thought he was dead but he was in akatsuki- is this anything am i crazy (if this is spoilers then you don't have to answer but) WOW if I'm right this is really big brain roleswap, bigger brained than what i already glimpsed of this 😍😍😍😍

I don't want to say everything, partly because it's not very definite and set in stone for me, and partly to preserve some of the mystery (Also partly because you guys have such good ideas, I wasn't planning on keeping her alive before you guys made me think about it jkasldf) .

Once you decide that Kakashi just doesn't have the right kind of crazy to do the shit canon!Obito does, and that we need to dedicate the story to women's wrongs, the roleswap gets really hard. Because a) Rin has no character. and b) there's no third person to swap with Rin. It ended up becoming a sort of shell game, where Obito's role got split up and Rin ended up adopting some other roles from other characters. Lots of room for creative freedom. Maybe the essential evil of the story can be a girl who saw the world fail the people she cared about, and decided to rewrite the world to create a safe place for the people she loved. In Naruto, it takes a very kind and loving person to be a genocidal megalomaniac.

Kakashi, meanwhile, is somebody most marked by his loyalty. His love is less idealistic and large, and more cynical and gritty. I connect him to Konan: somebody who follows the dreams of the person they love, and who makes the dreams happen. Yes he is absolutely just fucking around in the Akatsuki, being a lazy bum and annoying Kakuzu and Hidan to death. Yes he is Rin's personal assassin and shadow monster. He has layers. To me, he's a somewhat-comedic loyal goon/wifeguy who loves his partner-in-crime/world peace and who sometimes enters a dissociative state and commits atrocities. What, is that a crime all of a sudden.

The Ame 3 ended up being a big part of the swap, and a lot of the swap ended up happening between Rin & Nagato and Kakashi & Konan. Yahiko, this is YOUR hero academia! The Akatsuki are NOT a terrorist organization! They're nice guys! Look, Deidara and Sasori are artists, they're respectable - okay, Hidan and Kakuzu aren't respectable, why are they in our peace loving organization - why do our political enemies keep dying - Konan, what do you mean 'don't worry about it' -

[passionfruitbowls]

ok if i was in this universe marceline would’ve sucked out my soul in a matter of seconds bc i’d be so taken aback by how gorgeous she is

[tomsensibly]

no you guys dont get it. shes a teenager with rage issues and the only therapy she was getting was from the counselor of her school, who by the end of her first year became the foster father of 3 of the people she has been complaining about. to his face. he's doing his best to remain neutral but she knows his relationship to the bad kids. she must have been wondering if he's secretly thinking less and less of her each time they had a session. can you imagine what that would do to a teenager with an already deep seated issues.

[ms-ladylaur]

I simply adore women.

Scarlet Witch [Wanda Maximoff]❤

Threnody [Melody Jacobs]🧡

Psylocke [Kwannon]💜

Timeslip [Rina Patel]💚

Frenzy [Joanna Cargill]💙

[pyjamaenzel]

a bunch of random Fia sketches (and a Rogier) I never posted.

[faaun]

i feel rly sad and conflicted abt one of my best friends on earth but idk who to ask for advice bc i usually would have consulted her in this situation lmao

[homosekularnost]

gaslight gatekeep gblackmailyourboss