#i think this might also be a generational thing. jon's seen real change

[racerback-parallels]

okay i know i'm not a comics expert but this strikes me as such a bizarre characterization of clark. like. you can't do more because you're not from here? what? do you also think that people who are adopted from overseas shouldn't have citizenship? and you're not even gonna talk about abuse of superpowers? what are we doing

[oleworm]

16, 18 asoiaf

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

The weird animal husbandry angle that some people have when it comes to important female characters, but sometimes male ones as well, like with Jon Snow--focusing on who they should marry or reproduce with for ideal social and genetic results. I've seen a lot of "It doesn't make sense for Dany to become queen because she can't reproduce," "If Jon / Aegon / whoever were to marry her it would be a bad thing because they wouldn't have any children to continue their line," or "Will Jon be able to have children after he comes back from the dead?" and so on. It also overlaps with real people being racist against the Dornish, an ethnic group that doesn't exist.

I know a lot of background characters are only there to give birth but it's not as if GRRM isn't emphasising that though limited under patriarchy and feudalism women and disabled people do have personalities and, you know, inherent human value. And that there are more important things than fighting over power and land. Such as climate change.

18. it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

I need to think about this for a moment because all the ASOIAF blogs I follow have pretty cool things to say... I think that in the general fandom people have expressed that they are bored with how the Bran chapters are written, that they are too slow and uneventful, but I really enjoyed them because it draws on the mythology and anthropology of "shamanic" religious specialists (using quotes here because shaman is a culturally specific term). That is, someone who travels between worlds and is able to communicate with beings that regular people would not be able to. It is a topic that is dear to me because I used to read about it a lot, and I like how it incorporates Bran's disability into it. In many cultures a person comes into this role when they have a disability or when they go through a life-threatening, life-changing illness--often it is said that that is how they come into contact with this other world in the first place. It's not a change that happens instantly but a process that can be long and arduous and Bran's story shows that, vs. characters in this and other stories that are shown already having some kind of power. I like the general idea of strength through transformation but also all the little references to things I've read about! I also understand that it might be too niche for most people to enjoy in the same way.

[hamliet]

Rereading A Clash of Kings

In light of my recent Fire & Blood reread, I decided to reread the whole ASOIAF series because, well, why not. Below are some general observations/musings on the themes, character arcs, alchemy, and foreshadowing of book 1. I’ll do this for the others as well. It’s not really a meta so much as observations and thoughts.

Thoughts on A Game of Thrones here.

Themes

Duty vs Love

"Do you want to be loved, Sansa?" "Everyone wants to be loved."

"I see flowering hasn't made you any brighter," said Cersei. "Sansa, permit me to share a bit of womanly wisdom with you on this very special day. Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same."

Incorrect.

But actually, it's not so simple. Yes, love makes you weak to a degree, but love also restores, and a loveless existence is something that turns you into Cersei. Not a good thing. Stannis, too, doesn't need to be loved, and this will destroy him.

However, all of our heroes mention wanting to be loved. Tyrion pays Shae to pretend she loves him. Sansa wants to be loved. Daenerys wants to be loved. Arya even thinks it. Theon desperately wants love from his father, and does terrible things to get it.

Catelyn also betrays her own son to free Jaime out of love--love for her daughters. She utterly throws duty away for love, which is very understandable, and yet also something that is going to contribute to the Red Wedding in the next book.

Identity and Illusions

A key element of Romantic literature is focusing on the internal, not the external. Part of that includes a focus on the self: who am I? where do I fit into the world? Y'know, that Jungian and human stuff.

A Clash of Kings focuses on that to an extreme, deconstructing the assumptions the characters have about themselves.

We have Catelyn at her childhood home in Riverrun, watching her father's life flow out. She angsts about her role as a mother, and loses more and more children. Robb is a king now, and their roles are now reversed to a degree: he gives her orders, not the opposite. Her sons Bran and Rickon are "killed." Arya and Sansa are lost. In the end, she becomes a traitor, the thing Ned was falsely executed for, against her own son.

Arya chooses many new names for herself. She never felt like she fit in as a girl, so at the start of the book, she's a boy named Arry. When Yoren and the others are killed, she adopts the name Weasel, named for a real girl who ran off into the woods and hasn't been seen since. There's longing here: Arya sees herself in the child, who grieved openly and loudly and annoyed everyone else but whom Arya couldn't abandon. She gives herself that name, but she still cannot grieve openly. It's not safe.

When you cannot grieve, you turn to vengeance. Arya murders a man in cold blood with her own hands escaping Harrenhal at the end of the book. Hot Pie expresses horror, which yes, is negative framing even if it's not for no reason that Arya did it.

Jon affirms himself as a man of the Night's Watch over and over, but at the end of the book he's told by Qhorin Halfhand that being a man of the NW might mean betraying the Night's Watch. Sometimes, duty itself is betrayal--and of course, it's a change in his identity. He's to infiltrate Mance Raydar's troops. Since Mance too was once a Night's Watchman, it taunts Jon with the possibility of losing identity.

"They only spare oathbreakers. Those who join them, like Mance Rayder." "And you." "No." He shook his head. "Never. I won't."" You will. I command it of you." "Command it? But . . . " "Our honor means no more than our lives, so long as the realm is safe. Are you a man of the Night's Watch?"

But we're also given hints that identity is not always what it seems. Ygritte tells Jon "Be that as it may, what's certain is that Bael left the child in payment for the rose he'd plucked unasked, and that the boy grew to be the next Lord Stark. So there it is-you have Bael's blood in you, same as me." Who is a wildling, and who is a Stark? It's not clear.

Theon is an identity mess in this book. He asserts himself a Greyjoy, but his father mocks him as being a Stark. Even when he's committing atrocities on behalf of House Greyjoy, he does it thinking of... well:

Theon told himself he must be as cold and deliberate as Lord Eddard. 

He keeps waffling about whom he is, and then plays on identity himself. He murders and burns the miller's boys, calling them Rickon and Bran. And he takes Reek into his service, when Reek turns out to be Ramsay Bolton. Reek, of course, is who Theon will become--and it is also who Theon could become. Not the sniveling, pathetic creature Reek, but instead Ramsay himself, if he lets his lack of love from his father consume him.

Sansa, of course, must pretend to be in love with Joffrey, while clinging to her blood as a Stark. She does all she can to stay herself, to believe in knights and kindness, and saves who she can when she can.

Davos, too, has a primary conflict about identity. He is a father, a smuggler, a loyal servant to Stannis because he admires Stannis' justice. But when he sees Melisandre and her demon shadow babies, he clearly wonders whether or not Stannis is still justice, even if subconsciously. After losing three sons in the battle of Blackwater Bay, he's set up to see a conflict between his identity as a father and his position with Stannis.

Tyrion... oof. I've already talked about how he asked Shae to become Tysha, under the delusion that he would be in control this time. He falls for Shae anyways, that is very clear, and everyone gets hurt for it. He hasn't been able to grieve openly for Tysha, and as a result he's stuck in a cycle. Plus, throughout the book he's the one saving everyone in King's Landing, and he still gets the hatred of everyone around him for it. When the novel ends, he's survived battle and an assassination attempt, and he now looks like the monster the people call him. But is he? (No.)

Daenerys... I'll talk more about her in the alchemy section below, but her entire arc is about learning who she is as the last Targaryen. She also learns about what magic is, and how rotten it appears under the surface. The heart in the House of the Undying is "a human heart, swollen and blue with corruption, yet still alive. It beat, a deep ponderous throb of sound, and each pulse sent out a wash of indigo light. The figures around the table were no more than blue shadows. As Dany walked to the empty chair at the foot of the table, they did not stir, nor speak, nor turn to face her. There was no sound but the slow, deep beat of the rotting heart." If you lose yourself in prophecies, you become a shadow of a person.

Look Back or Be Lost

In addition, Dany's prophetic narrative connects strongly to Jon's in terms of themes: sometimes to accomplish goals, you must do something that looks like the opposite of accomplishing your goals. It's all part of the journey. Sounds like a theme that might be emphasized by oh, the hero accidentally burning King's Landing:

"To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow."

Still, I do think this indicates that Daenerys's journey ends in the north, not in the south. Quaithe would have otherwise said "to go south, you must go north." And technically, Dany still is going to stop in the east (Essos) before going west (to Westeros). To go forward and be a hero, she'll have to look back. In contract to "if I look back, I am lost," looking back is exactly what will save her in her darkest hour, I believe. While Dany assumes the shadow references Asshai, and it's possible this was once the plan, I think there are lots of other interpretations of this... including Jungian. Symbolically, to be a hero, you have to accept your shadow, or the negative elements, which Dany is absolutely denying in this book with "If I look back, I am lost."

Alchemy

Let's start off with Daenerys and identity. I talked about how A Game of Thrones ends with her reborn as red sun, as opposed to white moon. She then wanders through the Red Waste, which is filled with pools that are "scalding hot and stinking of brimstone." (Brimstone is sulfur.)

The rest of the story is about her encountering white and moon and finding it does not fit her anymore. They stay at an abandoned city "pale as the moon and lovely as a maid." It's abandoned, empty, filled with only loneliness. Then they arrive in Qarth, a white city, only to find it is rotten to the core. Daenerys has to leave the white behind. She's even noted to no longer be comfortable under her old markings:

 Dany's tight silver collar was chafing against her throat. She unfastened it and flung it aside.

Other marking details include Sansa being solidified as white and the moon, with her wearing "a moonstone hair net." However, both Sansa and Arya have been having attempts to dye them red... that aren't good things. Most notably, Arya throwing wine on Sansa's white silk in the first book, and here:

The Lorathi brought the blade to Arya still red with heart's blood and wiped it clean on the front of her shift. "A girl should be bloody too. This is her work."

Arya ends the book after murdering a man thinking that the rain (water) will wash the blood off her hands.

Metals

Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends. And Renly, that one, he's copper, bright and shiny, pretty to look at but not worth all that much at the end of the day."

Stannis isn't just iron; he's lead and tin as well. Robert is iron. Renly is copper, the highest of base metals (probably the best to be a king among the Baratheon brothers), but still, well, a base metal.

Oaths

The oaths the Reeds swear to Bran seem to be somewhat alchemical in nature:

"Hearth and heart and harvest we yield up to you, my lord. Our swords and spears and arrows are yours to command. Grant mercy to our weak, help to our helpless, and justice to all, and we shall never fail you." "I swear it by earth and water," said the boy in green. "I swear it by bronze and iron," his sister said. "We swear it by ice and fire," they finished together.

All the colors that had been missing from Vaes Tolorro had found their way to Qarth; buildings crowded about her fantastical as a fever dream in shades of rose, violet, and umber. "On the morrow, you shall feast upon peacock and lark's tongue, and hear music worthy of the most beautiful of women. The Thirteen will come to do you homage, and all the great of Qarth.

Foreshadowing

Again, George's foreshadowing is sometimes odd. Still:

Varys smiled. "Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less." "So power is a mummer's trick?" "A shadow on the wall," Varys murmured, "yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow."

This pretty clearly foreshadows f!Aegon, the "mummer's dragon." He's a shadow, which may kill but also is not real because he isn't the actual Targaryen Aegon VI. Tyrion concludes this conversation by asking Varys "who are you?" again hinting that Varys' identity is the key to his motives (he is a Blackfyre).

Arya and Sansa's relationship was troubled in AGOT, but they miss each other. When Arya wishes for King's Landing to be destroyed by water (again water=Arya), she thinks: Sansa was still in the city and would wash away too. When she remembered that, Arya decided to wish for Winterfell instead.

Bran has a crush on Meera for sure: the girl caught him staring at her and smiled. Bran blushed and looked away.

Catelyn thinks to herself: the face of a drowned woman, Catelyn thought. Can you drown in grief? Well, considering what will happen to Catelyn's body after the Red Wedding (being resurrected out of a river)... seems pretty clear foreshadowing.

Lastly, Daenerys's prophecies will get their own section, but another thing of note is that right after Dany's chapter about the blue rose that smells sweet growing from a chink in the ice, Jon's next chapter contains this line from Qhorin to Jon:

Sometimes a man forgets how pretty a fire can be.

Both have beauty associated with the other, along with their primary element.

Prophecies

Oh Seven the chaos. The first visions of Dany in the House of the Undying are obvious--Westeros being ravaged by the war; Robb turning to Dany for justice for the Red Wedding (again, Dany is seen to be a friend, as hope, to/for the Starks, not an enemy).

She then sees two visions of her past, bringing back the "If I look back I am lost" idea. She sees her childhood home with the Red Door, and she sees the dangerous past that she hasn't let herself face yet: her father, Aerys, essentially screaming to burn them all.

Then here's the chaos: Viserys's death, Rhaego (what could have been). Rhaegar's death, saying Lyanna's name.

mother of dragons, daughter of death

Dany has embraced the former, but she also needs to embrace the latter. That doesn't mean becoming a harbinger of death; in fact, facing her legacy of slavery and death (the Targaryen history) means the opposite.

Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow....

A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . . mother of dragons, slayer of lies . . .

Oh hi, Stannis and Aegon. Aegon's not a real Targaryen anymore than Stannis is the real Azor Ahai: instead, she has to slay both of their lies.

Her silver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . . mother of dragons, bride of fire . . .

This seems to pretty clearly represent Drogo, Euron, and Jon.

 . . three heads has the dragon . . .

Pretty standard ish? I would guess it's Daenerys, Jon, and Tyrion, though Bran is a possibility.

three fires must you light . . . one for life and one for death and one to love . . .

Okay. Again, I think for life is clearly understood to be Drogo's pyre to hatch the dragons. Death is likely the conflagration to burn King's Landing, even if accidental (my guess is Dany knows some of KL will burn but sets off the wildfyre, but not intentionally). To love is likely to defeat the Others.

three mounts must you ride . . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love . . .

There seems to be debate about whether this applies to literal rides or to Daenerys's love interests. If the former, it would likely be Dany's silver, then Drogon, and then... no idea. This seems likely to me, yet the distinct lack of a third one makes me question whether this is really the accurate interpretation, or if it's intentionally something that can be interpreted either way.

The husband one could be Drogo/Daario, Euron, and Jon. Yes, Euron. I do think Danaerys's struggle in A Dream of Spring will be between love in Jon and power in Euron. Again, the positioning of the ship between the clear Drogo/silver mount and Jon as the blue rose makes me think this is a distinct possibility.

three treasons will you know . . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love . . .

Again, Mirri Maz Duur is likely the first one, and possibly Jorah or the Harpies are the gold, or even Illyrio, or something to do with King's Landing. But the last one is interesting. I think people assume this is Jon killing Dany thanks to That Show, but I think the preposition indicates something that breaks a pattern. She's going to know three treasons. Who's to say she's the betrayed in every instance? "For" implies action, which makes me wonder if Daenerys will "betray" Jon in the endgame to save the world, via not sacrificing him as her love but instead sacrificing herself to save the world and him in it.

Again, the obvious thing is that love is Dany's endgame. Love, love, love. Not choosing ambition over love, Show That Shall Not Be Named.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

SUPERHERO CHOOSINESS

It’s strongly being suggested that the superhero movie bubble is bursting…

There’s the more mixed critical reception of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s remarkably stuffed but hasty Phase Four, and then there’s the equally fast Phases Five and Six… whose ending feature AVENGERS: SECRET WARS is still set to open in the summer of 2026… Meaning that this Multiverse Saga only will last five years, compared to the eleven year span from IRON MAN to SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME… Like, wow!

And not only are there a lot of movies, but there were plenty of shows. So many from 2021-2022 alone: WANDAVISION, THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER, LOKI Season One, WHAT IF…? Season One, HAWKEYE, MOON KNIGHT, MS. MARVEL, and SHE-HULK: ATTORNEY AT LAW. In addition to those, you had the “Special Presentation” featurettes WEREWOLF BY NIGHT and the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY HOLIDAY SPECIAL.

For me, it was starting to become homework to keep up with what was going on. And this is coming from someone who has seen all but two Marvel Cinematic Universe movies in a theater. The two that I missed were THE INCREDIBLE HULK, and BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER.

Then of course you have the DC movie-verse, which is being hard-reset in a few years under the new leadership of James Gunn and Peter Safran. Prior to that, it was an always-changing mess of visions and intentions. Faithfuls kept up with the series, some left afterwards because of these changes, general audiences seemed to stick around for most of the movies. It’s a clustercuss of its own, and further discussing that will likely get me into hot waters… But what happened with The Rock and his apparent strong-arming of the DC movie-verse with his BLACK ADAM project and plans really shows just what kind of directionless mess the whole thing was for ten years…

So we’re now left with a few movies that were locked and ready to go before the Gunn/Safran take-over, the first of which, SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS… Opened with roughly $30m. A pretty blah take, and well below the $53m take the first SHAZAM! took in back in 2019. It’s been said before, but the whole “these won’t matter in the long run” attitude has probably deflated attendance… But many other things do as well… People being choosier with movies, ticket and concession prices being absurdly high… A statistic in 2014 stated that the average American family hits the flicks four times a year. I believe it. I’ve been working at a movie theater since August of 2015, and I see what I charge my customers… Both movies and for snacks… Yeah, I do not wonder why… Especially in the pandemic era, that people are choosier with movies. I feel we see the same thing with animated movies as well. Those are also usually four-quadrant family titles... And then around the corner, them being on streaming. Be it Disney+ for an MCU movie, or HBO Max for a DCU movie.

A month earlier, ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA opened pretty great with $106m. That was way above ANT-MAN AND THE WASP’s mid-70s opening weekend haul, and an overall fine opening for an MCU movie... but the legs? Abysmal so far. It looks to barely score a 2x multiplier, which is pretty bad… It might be the first MCU movie to completely miss that. I don't even know if I'll make time for it, myself. (I've missed a lot of movies in theaters lately because of other lifestuff going on at the moment.)

What does this all tell me?

Is it truly superhero movie fatigue? Are audiences catching on to the perceived problems of these big budget shared universe movies?

Here’s what I think is happening…

Choosiness...

I, in true form, am going to relate this to animated movies… And I mean “animated movies”, because let’s face it… There’s lots of animation in your average MCU or DCU movie. QUANTUMANIA, from the looks of it, is an animated movie with some real people in it. Much like GRAVITY, AVATAR and its sequel, Jon Favreau’s THE JUNGLE BOOK, LIFE OF PI, etc. etc.

Once upon a time... $100m at the domestic box office was a magic number for an animated feature film. And I mean a $100m gross on the film's first ever theatrical release, not $100m via the original release and added theatrical re-issue totals (like classic pre-Renaissance Disney films, like SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS and 101 DALMATIANS)...

Only Disney scored $100m domestic totals for their animated movies. Hybrid WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, released through Disney's Touchstone banner, broke the barrier first and grossed $156m in the summer of 1988. Then, an all-animated movie broke the barrier nearly four years later in early 1992... That was Disney's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, which got to its high total through strong word-of-mouth and legs throughout the holiday and post-holiday season. It was slow to start in November 1991, because back then... Theater-to-video release windows were longer. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was released in American movie theaters in November 1991, and the videocassette and LaserDisc release wouldn't be until... October 1992!

So, an unreachable number for everyone else. Don Bluth, former Disney animator and hot competitor, seemingly peaked with AN AMERICAN TAIL and THE LAND BEFORE TIME, both of which collected in the upper-40s at the domestic box office. His last box office hurrah, the 20th Century Fox-released ANASTASIA (now owned by Disney), grossed $57m by the end of its run in early 1998. Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes hybrid movie SPACE JAM came very close with $90m, two years prior. BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD DO AMERICA put up a decent fight, with over $60m in 1996/97. That was a record high for a TV-to-movie animated adaptation back then, beating out A GOOFY MOVIE, JETSON: THE MOVIE, DUCKTALES - THE MOVIE: TREASURE OF THE LOST LAMP, and plenty of others.

In fact, Disney *themselves* missed $100m on occasion. HERCULES, made up at Feature Animation, the mainline studio, just missed it with a $99m domestic gross in 1997/98. The Disney MovieToons GOOF TROOP movie, A GOOFY MOVIE, made less than $40m stateside. THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS made an impressive $50m back in the day, and became a massive cult classic through video and TV. Hybrid JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, which was also a Henry Selick-Tim Burton Skellington Productions joint, missed $30m.

Then there was a little movie called TOY STORY... The first-ever all-digital animated feature film.

By the end of its theatrical run in early 1996, TOY STORY grossed $191m domestically... No doubt helped by being a Disney release and being the first of its kind, and a genuinely really good movie that audiences loved. So in a way, the only movies to make $100m domestically *before* TOY STORY were Disney Feature Animation movies (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, ALADDIN, THE LION KING, and POCAHONTAS), and a hybrid movie made by Amblin and Richard Williams Animation but released by Disney...

So Disney still had $100m under lock and key, and TOY STORY was their first non-Feature Animation endeavor since ROGER RABBIT to get it...

Believe it or not, the first-ever animated movie that was a NOT a Disney release, to score $100m domestically... Was... THE RUGRATS MOVIE. No doubt getting there off of the show's sheer popularity at the time. Despite first airing on Nickelodeon in 1991, some seven years earlier, RUGRATS seemed to be at the peak of its popularity in the late 1990s, after the show was renewed for more seasons following highly successful re-runs and the few specials that Nick and studio Klasky-Csupo did after the show's early seasons. I was there. I was 6 when THE RUGRATS MOVIE came out, and I felt the hype. Everybody I knew back then watched and liked the show, I watched it frequently with my sister back in the day. RUGRATS was one of those cartoons that everyone knew and everyone watched. Almost as ubiquitous as THE SIMPSONS, I'd argue. Paramount released THE RUGRATS MOVIE, and it broke that barrier, in addition to being the highest grossing TV-to-movie adaptation animated movie... By a country kilometer.

THE RUGRATS MOVIE came out in November 1998, just one month before DreamWorks rolled out THE PRINCE OF EGYPT, the second animated movie to cross $100m domestically... Two months prior... ANTZ came out, and grossed an impressive $90m. Pixar's sophomore feature A BUG'S LIFE opened, infamously, amidst this four-movie fall shakedown, and won the race with $163m.

So two not-Disneys made $100m domestically, and two not-Disney Feature Animation movies made $100m domestically... This was a turning point in theatrical feature animation, and it would come to benefit - for a brief while - all CGI animated movies.

We'll focus on those now...

1999 saw the release of Pixar's TOY STORY 2, which broke $245m. That was above every Disney animated movie *except* THE LION KING. Wow!

In 2000, Disney released their hybrid live-action/CG feature DINOSAUR, which has been counted as a Walt Disney Animation Studios canon movie since 2008... While that movie didn't make enough money to justify a sequel or to keep the collaboration studio behind it (The Secret Lab) alive, it still broke $100m domestically.

2001... DreamWorks' SHREK and Pixar's MONSTERS, INC. break past $250m domestically. Paramount/Nickelodeon's pilot movie JIMMY NEUTRON: BOY GENIUS takes in a respectable $80m. 2002... Newcomer Blue Sky's ICE AGE makes over $175m domestically. By this point in time, several hand-drawn animated movies... From all the studios: Disney, DreamWorks, 20th Century Fox, Columbia, etc. Largely losing money theatrically, with few exceptions in between. Many of them are missing the titan $100m threshold. For context, only Disney Feature's LILO & STITCH broke that barrier in mid-2002. CGI movies seemed foolproof. Guaranteed blockbusters...

2003 brought Pixar's FINDING NEMO, which became the highest grossing animated movie of all-time, unseating THE LION KING... Then SHREK 2 came out the year after, made that record look like nothing, becoming the first animated movie to break **$400m** domestically. In addition to SHREK 2, 2004 saw the release of DreamWorks' other CG hit SHARK TALE ($160m+), Pixar's THE INCREDIBLES ($260m+), and Warner Bros.' motion-capture pic THE POLAR EXPRESS ($160m+). In 2005, DreamWorks' MADAGASCAR came super-close to $200m, Blue Sky's ROBOTS cleared $120m...

So, unstoppable, right?

The one exception seemed to be the 2001 release FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN, a mocap feature based on the game series of the same name. That one puttered out at $32m domestically, and fell well below its hefty budget with all the worldwide take factored in... But this seemed like an anomaly more so than anything. You also had a few super-limited releases of foreign CG films, like KAENA: THE PROPHECY, which was a French film.

2005 was when it all seemed to be up... VALIANT, a British animated movie distributed stateside by Disney, performed quite badly... Despite it being a CGI movie and touting "producer of SHREK" cred. Disney Feature's first all-CG feature, CHICKEN LITTLE, managed to make more than $100m domestically, but its worldwide total didn't measure up to the budget. HOODWINKED!, an independent venture that only cost $8m to make, was released by The Weinstein Co. at the end of 2005. It made less than $60m domestically.

Then... 2006 happened...

The features that crossed $200m domestically: Pixar's CARS, and only CARS. ICE AGE: THE MELTDOWN and Warner Bros.' HAPPT FEET came very close. ICE AGE 2 won the race worldwide.

The features that crossed $100m domestically: DreamWorks' OVER THE HEDGE.

Everything else... Missed $100m. Some movies got by on being lower budget, like Sony Animation's debut picture OPEN SEASON, and the Nickelodeon TV show launcher BARNYARD. But some of the big flops included DreamWorks/Aardman's FLUSHED AWAY, the Disney-released Canadian feature THE WILD, and Warner Bros.' THE ANT BULLY. CGI and celebrity casts and talky scripts couldn't save them. Then you had movies that just did abysmally, like Fox's EVERYONE'S HERO, and DOOGAL: the Weinsteinized version of THE MAGIC ROUNDABOUT.

For a little while, computer animated movies were a novelty for audiences. No one had seen anything like TOY STORY when it first came out in Thanksgiving 1995. Like, this wasn't an episode of REBOOT or a glossy production company ident... This was over 70 minutes of fully animated 3D characters in convincing 3D environments, that stayed watchable the whole time, and on top of that... It was really well-written! Lots of people tend to make remarks about TOY STORY's more, dated, visual qualities... But it remains a classic because of the passion that went into it. And despite some of the aspects that didn't age well, it still *looks* appealing and watchable. Woody and Buzz and the rest of the gang have pretty much kept the same designs over the sequels and shorts/specials, only the human characters have seen slight design changes that matched the much-better rendering over time. (It's already a big difference with Andy and his mum from TOY STORY 1 to 2.)

But enough about that. My point is, audiences ate CGI up circa 1995-2005. Big time. It was the future, it was the **way** to make animated movies. Even with CG incorporated into them, hand-drawn movies failed to keep up. Whether the movies did actually appeal to audiences (TARZAN, LILO & STITCH) or not (TITAN A.E., TREASURE PLANET)... It just wasn't enough. $171m from TARZAN just didn't compare to, say, SHREK's $267m haul. When even your best isn't enough...

Capitalism, ya know?

But soon, audiences began choosing what computer-animated family movies they'd go to see, not seeing all of them each and every calendar year. In 2007, for every RATATOUILLE, there was a HAPPILY N'EVER AFTER. Even a good film like SURF'S UP that year had trouble. Release that movie in 2002, it would've made **bank**... In 2007, it had a hard time appealing to audiences. Let's apply this to 2008 as well. WALL-E and KUNG FU PANDA do great, THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX - a book adaptation - makes $50m and fails to double its budget. So every year, there are the family-friendly CGI movies that do pretty great! And then the ones that lose money.

And eventually, it caught to everybody. Even the heavies.

Pixar saw their first money-loser in 2015 with THE GOOD DINOSAUR, breaking an astounding 15-film hit streak.

Disney Feature Animation's CHICKEN LITTLE did so-so, MEET THE ROBINSONS two years later outright lost money. BOLT did so-so as well. They wouldn't have a genuine CGI flop until STRANGE WORLD, because we gotta mulligan RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON and ENCANTO. Ya know, COVID and release strategies and such.

DreamWorks suffered badly in the mid-2010s, with money-losers like RISE OF THE GUARDIANS, TURBO, and MR. PEABODY & SHERMAN... It was to the point where it seemed like the lights would go out.

Blue Sky's final film, SPIES IN DISGUISE, lost money. After a streak of successes (the ICE AGE sequels) and respectable hits (FERDINAND). That likely played a big part in its shuttering, after Disney had bought 21st Century Fox's film and TV assets.

Sony Pictures Animation had some financial losses, too. The aforementioned SURF'S UP was one such flop, and there was also their Aardman collaboration ARTHUR CHRISTMAS.

So much, like a good hand-drawn animated movie, a competently-made CG film wasn't gonna cut it every single time... Even from a big studio. That's why many of those studios got smart with budgets... Especially Sony Animation and DreamWorks.

Now... Superhero movies...

Superhero movies have been around for a while. Serials, yes, all the way back to the Golden Age of Hollywood. Max Fleischer's SUPERMAN cartoons from 1941-42, every modern superhero movie owes it to those in particular. Long-form superhero movies, I believe, really got their start with the 1978 SUPERMAN movie... But you'd get a big superhero movie every once in a while, or a comic book action hero movie if you will. In the 1980s, you had SUPERMAN II - starting off the decade, and then Tim Burton's BATMAN ending the decade with a blockbuster gross. A big phenomenon. What else was in-between? Well, there was Lucasfilm's infamous adaptation of Marvel's HOWARD THE DUCK that tanked hard. You did see a brief boom in this kind of movie in the 1990s because of BATMAN '89, but plenty of those movies actually went belly-up. DC adaptation STEEL did poorly, movies like THE PHANTOM didn't make much of a mark, but you did have the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES movie doing quite well, ditto BATMAN RETURNS and BATMAN FOREVER. BATMAN & ROBIN's not-so-great performance in 1997 put the Caped Crusader's theatrical future in limbo. SUPERMAN puttered out back in 1987 with a badly-received fourth movie. So, this was a bit of a false start, if you will? Batman, Ninja Turtles, maybe something else that did okay-ish at best... That was about it, circa 1999.

Then along came BLADE in 1998, which would be the first Marvel movie to do pretty well. HOWARD THE DUCK bombed back in 1986, and the 1989 PUNISHER and 1990 CAPAIN AMERICA went straight to video in the states.

Then, X-MEN came out in 2000, that did even better.

Then, SPIDER-MAN came out in 2002, made a **gargantuan** amount of money...

After the release of X-MEN and SPIDER-MAN, both Marvel adaptations, you saw **some** action going on. More Marvel movies came along. HULK, an ambitious film from Ang Lee, opened big in summer 2003 but had trouble staying afloat. FANTASTIC FOUR did okay in 2005 despite poor reception. GHOST RIDER did okay in 2007. SPIDER-MAN 2 and SPIDER-MAN 3 made biiiig money, and there was also a FANTASTIC FOUR sequel that also did okay. The next Batman-inspired DC movie, CATWOMAN, came about in 2004 and bombed quite badly. The year after CATWOMAN came BATMAN BEGINS, Christopher Nolan's then-bold new take on the Caped Crusader *and* the superhero movie in general. It did pretty well, a sleeper hit that relied on strong word-of-mouth. Then in 2006, a year later, you had an attempt to reboot SUPERMAN with SUPERMAN RETURNS. While it made money, it wasn't enough to cover its then-titanic budget, so it seemed like a non-starter. The other DC adaptation released amidst this was CONSTANTINE, whch did pretty well (and is finally getting a sequel after all these years). Funnily enough, amidst these Marvel and DC movies, you had Pixar's THE INCREDIBLES... A then *rare* animated superhero movie, and it did great business. There was also HELLBOY, too. Non-Marvels and non-DCs had their time to do pretty okay, too. So, superheroes had a healthier time in the early-to-mid 2000s...

But where it really all took off was in 2008...

IRON MAN started the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a BANG! in May of that year, and BATMAN BEGINS sequel THE DARK KNIGHT - no doubt accelerated by the tragic passing of Heath Ledger, who gave his iconic performance as The Joker - was **massive**. It was the first movie since TITANIC to clear $500m at the domestic box office, and make the then-magic $1b worldwide... Only TITANIC, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING, and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST made that amount of money... Nowadays, it seems like there's one billion-dollar smash every year, excepting 2020 of course... Back in 2008, though? Magic number. Very few movies did **that** well...

And from there... Lots of hits. The MCU had barely a stumble, and their highest highs at the box office went very high. They had no trouble getting audiences to come out in big numbers for... Checks notes... Movies based on THOR, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, and ANT-MAN. Warner Bros. had tried very hard to keep a consistently successful DC movie-verse going, but despite the valleys (JUSTICE LEAGUE, BIRDS OF PREY), they too saw some big peaks: WONDER WOMAN and AQUAMAN. BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE and SUICIDE SQUAD made a lot of money, too, despite not meeting particular expectations. Animated superheroes brought home bacon, too! BIG HERO 6, INCREDIBLES 2, SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, need I say more? Sony's own Spider-Man villain movies VENOM and its sequel did very well, too! Almost everybody was winning the superhero sweepstakes post-2008, with very few actual losers in-between.

But now... Well, with so many of them around, and both cinematic universes from the heavies... Again, Marvel and DC. Known commodities... We don't see any movie-verse for, say, Image Comics, no do we? Well, again, money is tight, theater visits are costly, and the movies aren't always delivering satisfying experiences when other endeavors are next door...

Last year, we saw TOP GUN: MAVERICK, a legacy sequel to a 1986 blockbuster that isn't a superhero movie in any way, mop the floor - domestically and even worldwide - with both Marvel and DC's most anticipated movies. AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER was in second place domestically, top dog worldwide. We're starting to see other movies have a say again, and smaller movies are having their fun again, too. ELVIS and NOPE did very well, as did BULLET TRAIN and THE LOST CITY. Bread-n-butter movies that used to fill up the yearly box office charts quite nicely. We see that nowadays in the form of things like WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING, THE BLACK PHONE, THE WOMAN KING, TICKET TO PARADISE, BARBARIAN, SMILE, VIOLENT NIGHT, A MAN CALLED OTTO, M3GAN, CREED III, etc.

So... With QUANTUMANIA and SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS past us... Here's what I think... Much like in 2006, where some computer animated family movies did great and others not-so-much... That'll happen with this year's crop of superhero movies.

I think the guaranteed hits are GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 and SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE. The former? Well, those two movies functioned well as a standalone story not connected to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Like you had some things here and there, like an Infinity Stone or the presence of Thanos, but they're both self-contained, VOL 2 even more-so. They're genuinely good space adventure movies that audiences actually quite dig, the characters are so likeable, and the movies have director James Gunn's authorship all over them. That's a night and day difference from many of the other MCUs... SPIDER-VERSE... Need I say more? The original is beloved, it was a passion project for everyone involved. It was not just a great Marvel or great superhero movie, it was a great movie, period. Rian Johnson himself described it as "The Velvet Underground of superhero movies." That is *high praise*.

Those are both poised, I feel, to make beaucoup bucks.

Everything else? Well... The DC movies coming out this year are much like FURY OF THE GODS. They don't really matter, because the hard reset is coming up with SUPERMAN: LEGACY two years from now. I suppose THE FLASH could do well because of Michael Keaton **and** Ben Affleck's Batman returning, in a sort of NO WAY HOME-esque manner. I don't think much of the general public is in tune with star Ezra Miller's controversies and wrongdoing, so I think this one's appeal hinges on whether fans/audiences see it as pointless or not. I think the novelty of both Batmen being back, alongside some other DC faces (such as Michael Shannon's go at General Zod from MAN OF STEEL), could help it a bit. BLUE BEETLE? I couldn't tell ya, it'll probably come and go. AQUAMAN made over a billion back in 2018/19, and is the highest-earning DC film ever... But will fans and audiences be back for, again, a movie that seems pointless in the long run? Also at the end of the year comes the MCU film THE MARVELS, the sequel to CAPTAIN MARVEL and also a follow-up to the MS. MARVEL TV series... Plus you have Monica Rambeau in it as well, who - as an adult - was a major character in WANDAVISION. That all could help it, but I'm starting to think it falls quite short of CAPTAIN MARVEL's impressive take in 2019. CAPTAIN MARVEL had the benefit of opening right before AVENGERS: ENDGAME, the penultimate episode to the big climactic event... THE MARVELS is just, well, the sequel... With two other faces. I think it'll do pretty well, but not excellently. Disney and Marvel Studios were smart to delay the film from July to November after the CEO-switcheroo with Bob Iger this past autumn. I can only hope they delay all of the other movies, too. Like, two a year is fine, guys. AVENGERS: THE KANG DYNASTY and AVENGERS: SECRET WARS can wait. They don't need to come out in 2-3 years from now, in addition to like 10 other movies and 10-20 other Disney+ shows...

And next year, I think, will show as well where this is all going... Like, I don't see the likes of CAPTAIN AMERICA 4, THUNDERBOLTS, DEADPOOL 3, and BLADE hogging up the top slots anymore. I forgot to point out that these movies seem a lot more frontloaded. Big fans and those who were always going to be there *will* be there on opening weekend, but it collapses after that, as OTHER audiences save their money for other things that they'd rather see... Maybe the JOKER sequel, not really a superhero movie but still based on a DC villain that's tied to one of their most well-known superheroes, could repeat the massive surprise success of the original. Maybe not. BEYOND THE SPIDER-VERSE should do pretty great... I think other biggies are what's gonna surprise this year and next year, and take the Top 3 slots... A new INDIANA JONES movie, a MARIO movie, a two-part MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE epic, AVATAR 3, maybe even something like GLADIATOR 2. 2025 is when the DC hard-reset comes, so it'll be interesting to see how SUPERMAN: LEGACY does, in addition to whatever Marvel movies end up coming out that year. KANG DYNASTY or no KANG DYNASTY...

If anything, the budgeting should be smarter from here on out. Then these movies can come and go, make adequate amounts of money, give *other* kinds of movies the Top 3-5 for once, and then the wheels will spin. Something new will come along and spam up the top slots, even. Maybe we're in for an area of legacy-quels following TOP GUN 2's massive success. I really do think INDY 5 has the chance to somewhat repeat that, and GLADIATOR 2 even. How long till, say, another sequel to a beloved '80s or '90s movie drops? And then too many of those happen and they get tiresome?

All a cycle in Hollywood...

But yeah, I do see the parallels between superhero movies now and CG animated family movies circa 2006...

[dickwheelie]

real quick before pride month ends I wanna post this thing about jon being bi that i've kind of been trying to write for months now. I think I've finally managed to articulate how I feel about jon being bi and how I feel about being bi, and this is very much a melding of the two. a lot of this is very specific to me and I can only hope other people find it interesting, and maybe some of you out there will share some of my experiences. anyway please enjoy, and happy pride all <3

___________

He supposed that there must have been a part of him, deep down somewhere, that had always known. That was how it worked, wasn't it? Something in his DNA, or a hardwired part of his brain; it must have been in there somewhere, all his life.

But of course, in the world he was raised in, he'd never had much of a chance to investigate that sort of thing. Before he went to uni, all he knew was that men liked women, and women liked men, and there was a small group of people somewhere else, off to the side, who did things differently. A strange, exotic group of people that had nothing to do with him.

Uni had been less of a wake up call and more of a gradual rise to consciousness, a slowly dawning awareness that most of the people around him were, in fact, members of that strange group that did things differently. And they were all perfectly ordinary; not exotic at all. Many of them were like him; they went to the same classes, the same pubs, studied the same subjects. He remembered once, in his first year, speaking to a woman he'd sat next to in class for half a semester and being shocked when she mentioned, off-handedly, that she was trans. All he could think for the rest of class was, I had no idea.

He also remembered the first time he'd ever considered that he, himself, might actually be one of these people who did things differently. The thought had never really crossed his mind, despite the fact that he was surrounded by them, and that he felt at home with them, somehow, more than any other group of friends he'd had before. It was shortly after he'd met Georgie, when they were friends but not yet dating, that she was sitting with him in a pub and pointed out for him all the people in the room she thought were cute. She pointed out a couple men, and then a few women, and then someone whose gender was entirely a mystery to him. And then she'd asked him, what about you? And he had looked around the pub, at all the various types and shapes and colors of people, and he'd pointed out a few women, and a couple men, and a handful of people whose genders were a mystery. It was easy, he realized then. He hadn't even had to think about it. It had been there, somewhere deep down, all along.

He didn't tell Georgie right then, but later, when they were together, he'd confess that that was the moment he'd realized. Georgie laughed, kindly enough, and told him she'd been surprised herself. I hadn't pegged you as queer, she'd said, but when you said it I thought, of course he is. I know how to pick 'em.

Which got at one of his problems, post-realization. He wanted people to know, to be seen as part of that group that was once so strange to him, but for the most part, people just . . . couldn't tell. He dressed a certain way, and spoke a certain way, and though he'd never been the most masculine person in the room nobody ever suspected he was anything but a hundred percent straight.

And it . . . hurt, in a strange way. He'd look around at all of his loud and proud friends and classmates, people who dyed their hair and dressed in fantastical outfits and spoke in particular ways, people who you couldn't mistake for anything but who they were, and he would feel somewhat apart from them. Compared to all of their colors, he felt very grey.

He made attempts at flirting with men, but he had never been very good at that sort of thing and none of them seemed to notice. It didn't help that he knew, no matter how good he got at flirting, there was a part of that scene he'd never really belong in. By then he'd discovered that about himself, too, though strangely it was less of a revelation. He supposed some part of him had always known about that, as well.

His attraction to men, he found, was rarer than women, which might have been why he hadn't noticed it for so many years. It wasn't that he disliked men at all, he just found them harder to trust. With men there were certain expectations, of masculinity, of sexuality, of language, even, that Jon couldn't even begin to fathom. It was just easier, with women. He liked the way they spoke, and how they moved their hands as they talked, and all the various ways they'd wear their hair. He wasn't the sort to kiss many people, but when he did get the chance, he liked that their lips were soft and that they often smelled very fragrant.

Of course there were exceptions to all of these things, but in general, he found he was more comfortable with women. He worried, for a time, that perhaps he had internalized some sort of heteronormativity from his youth, that maybe liking men was just a frightening discovery about himself that he was still trying to process.

But liking men didn't frighten him at all. Maybe some men intimidated him, maybe he didn't feel entirely comfortable with some of them, but the idea of liking them was . . . it was nice. It made him feel sort of warm, when he thought of it. He'd daydream sometimes about kissing someone with a beard, or a larger hand holding his own.

He never got the chance to do anything like that in uni. He wouldn't get the chance for many years. Instead he sat quietly off to the side, in his grey little corner, hoping that someone would see him for who he was. It was, he would be the first to admit, a poor way of going about things, but at the time he wasn't sure what else to do. The idea of changing his wardrobe was already too much for him, let alone marching around with a flag in his hands. He wished there was some kind of secret code, known only by those who were like him.

Then he left uni, and suddenly all the colorful people he'd been surrounded by were gone, and the backdrop of his world felt as grey as he was. And that was fine. He was an adult now, he didn't need reassurance or external validation. It was fine.

He was working in research when he met Tim, and suddenly there was color back in his life. Tim was like the people he'd gone to uni with, loud and proud, with the hair and the clothes and everything else. He began to feel that strange longing again. I'm like you, he wanted to tell Tim, have you noticed? Can't you tell? He said nothing, of course. It would be weird to say something, and probably inappropriate.

But then a day came when Tim just . . . asked him. They were getting drinks with a few other coworkers and Tim leaned over and pointed out the bartender. He's cute, right? he'd asked. Are you into guys?

And he hadn't known it could be that easy. But it was. It was the easiest thing in the world to reply, Yeah, I like men. Women, too. And yes, he is sort of cute.

It was easy, but it felt unbelievably warm to say aloud.

It didn't change anything, not overnight. There was still that underlying greyness he felt, that invisibility, when he was on the train or standing by the copier or ordering from a restaurant. But with Tim, and then Sasha, and much, much later, with Martin, he felt noticed, and known.

He never did end up marching around with a flag, or changing his wardrobe. Instead he carried it with him constantly, in the feeling in his chest when he saw a pin on someone's bag and in the way Martin looked at him and in the way his coworkers laughed when he made dry little jokes about liking only two things.

Which made sense, didn't it? After all it had always been there, deep down. It had always been his. And it wasn't going anywhere.

[transdemigod]

Cutting Yourself Off from the Entities: A Comprehensive Guide

I am once again overanalyzing the Magnus Archives for fun. This topic is super interesting to me, and I haven’t seen it explored as much as other theories, so here we go.

So, you’ve pledged yourself to one of the Dread Powers, but decided that you’ve had enough of terrorizing others. Not to worry, there is a way out. Melanie King did it and lived all the way to the end of the series!

Here is the summary, though I’m sure a full explanation will be more satisfying:

To escape the Buried, lose yourself to the emptiness. To escape the Corruption, kill what loves you. To escape the Dark, give yourself to the sunlight. To escape the Desolation, choose kindness. To escape the End, cut yourself off from dreams. To escape the Eye, blind yourself. To escape the Flesh, give up control of your body. To escape the Hunt, tear out your teeth and claws. To escape the Lonely, bind yourself to others. To escape the Slaughter, remove your emotions. To escape the Spiral, destroy your voice. To escape the Stranger, make yourself known. To escape the Vast, trap yourself in a small place. To escape the Web, give up your autonomy.

The rest is under the cut. Let me know if you have any ideas that you think I missed, I would love to discuss theories.

We know for sure that the way to escape the Eye is to gouge your own eyes out. The other entities have less information, but we get a few clues here and there. In the season 4 Q&A, Jonny and Alex joke about leaving the service of the Stranger by running naked through the streets. They also mention that the Desolation can be left by an act of true altruism. With these details, as well as other details in the rest of the canon, we can make a list of criteria that must be satisfied for an act that will cut someone off from each of the 14 Entities.

Firstly, it isn’t enough to just stop feeding your god. Daisy and Jon both tried to abstain and ended up wasting away, and it is implied that they would have died if they had continued. Dying is certainly one possible way to escape the service of a Fear, but we’re going for living out the rest of your natural life here.

Secondly, there has to be some sacrifice made that relates to the specific power. This is where the Desolation’s explanation kind of falls apart; doing one good act doesn’t stop you from just continuing to be destructive, so the act must also include giving up the thing that ties you to your Entity. In the Stranger’s case, one could argue that exposing yourself does count as giving up your anonymity, and there are several Stranger avatars that seem to thrive on being unknown. My theory is that each Entity has a draw of some kind, a power that it gives its followers, which you would have to completely give up if you are to leave it for good. Jon mentioned that the blinding has to be permanent, so I’m assuming this applies to the others as well. Basically, the avatar who wishes to leave must give up something that one who does not wish to leave would never want to.

Third, the change can be physical or symbolic. Obviously blinding yourself is a very physical change, while committing acts of altruism or making yourself known are less so. Some of the Entities will have pretty clear parts of the body that connect you to the power, others will need a bit more of an explanation. In special cases where a person gets their power from an artifact or a Leitner, destroying the thing would probably be enough to cut them off from that power. And of course, if you are as lucky as Georgie Barker and manage to completely get rid of your fear, that would probably be enough to cut you off from them as well.

So, here are my explanations for what you would have to do to cut yourself off from each of the 14. I’m basing it on examples we get in the series, the few rules I have decided to set, and what would seem thematically or symbolically appropriate. Realistically, each individual would have their own personal journey and each avatar is different, but it’s more fun this way.

The Buried- The draw of the Buried is a little difficult to narrow down, we’ve heard about restfulness, the comfort of enclosed spaces, the desire to be a part of the earth, etc. The thing Buried avatars seem to dislike the most is wide open spaces, though I don’t know how that would translate to something you can change about yourself. How would a person cut themselves off from the earth? You could move to a place that is very open, but you could also just leave. I’m not sure if there is a way a person could give up the concept of space, so I’m probably going to have this same problem when I get to the Vast. Probably the only thing you could give up that makes sense is the type of space the Buried is tied to, so you’d have to keep away from enclosed spaces. However you’re supposed to do that, I have no idea. This one is just going to have to be a less satisfying answer, unless I find another idea later.

To escape the Buried, lose yourself to the emptiness.

The Corruption- Most people who get into the Corruption get filled with bugs, and we know from Jane that it is appealing because you have a sense of belonging and purpose. The Corruption focuses a lot on toxic love, and I think communities specifically because the things we think of as infections are multitudinous: insect hives, bacteria, fungal colonies, etc. Even in the case of that one guy with the beetle wife, it was implied that there would soon be many more beetles. So, I think to stop being fed by the Corruption, you have to get rid of the infection in whatever form it takes. The one woman in the statement about the cult ended up leaving, but she wasn’t a full avatar, so I think that would require a bit more drastic action. If Jane had wanted to leave, she would probably have had to kill every worm inside of her. Knowing what we know about her, she would never want to do that, but she also had no regrets about becoming the Hive. Someone like John Amherst would have to get rid of all the diseases inside of him, so it might be as simple as a hospital visit and getting pumped full of antibiotics. If you got hollowed out by bugs, you might have to fill in the space somehow to be able to move, but I’m sure you could find a way. Maybe some help from the Flesh? It does seems to be in opposition to the Corruption in many ways, so that would work thematically.

To escape the Corruption, kill what loves you.

The Dark- Another abstract one. What’s the opposite of blinding yourself? The Dark, aside from the literal definition, includes things like weird science and unknowable things that lurk in the dark. Seeking knowledge would be a good opposite to darkness, but that’s not making a sacrifice or a permanent change. It’s not very clear what avatars of the Dark would hate to lose. Manuela Dominguez describes hating the light, how traditional divinity and knowledge are unnatural as opposed to the dark state of the world. This might be another location based one. Apparently, the sunniest places in the world are in northern Africa and the southwest parts of America, so moving there might do it. There isn’t an easy permanent change to make, but committing yourself to being in the sunlight as much as possible would probably work. Change your sleep schedule, move somewhere sunny, just avoid the dark in general. Maybe even start worshipping the sun; that would be in opposition to the cult following the Dark has.

To escape the Dark, give yourself to the sunlight.

The Desolation- We know it’s an act of altruism. I think it might need some adjusting, though, to make it more of a sacrifice by the person who serves the Desolation. This fear is all about sacrifice and loss, so it’s a bit tricky to think of something a Desolation avatar could give up when they’ve already committed to giving up everything. Well, everything except themselves. Many avatars, like Jude Perry, have shown themselves to be selfish, but I don’t think even they would be opposed to going out in a blaze of glory. No, the hardest thing for them would be to settle down and live a prosperous life. This one probably would have to be continuous effort instead of one grand sacrifice. It doesn’t fit with the others, but it does fit the theme of the Desolation. Yeah, I’ve just gone in a big circle. Altruism does make the most sense. Just make sure that selfless gesture counts. It’s not a real choice if you don’t mean it. I guess that would be really difficult if you’re used to burning everything around you, so maybe it’s more of a sacrifice than I thought.

To escape the Desolation, choose kindness.

The End- We actually already have a canon answer for this one: lobotomize yourself. Adelard Dekker found an End avatar that was killing people with carbon monoxide through their dreams, and he stopped him by cutting through his pre-frontal cortex- the part of the brain that lets you dream. It’s implied that this didn’t completely work, but I think the reason for that is that the avatar was not the one to make the choice. It’s emphasized again and again that serving the fears is all about personal choice, so it makes sense that any attempt to cut someone off wouldn’t take if the person hasn’t decided to give up their connection. The End is associated with dreams in most appearances, so I believe that a person who chooses not to dream would no longer be bound to it. Oliver Banks could see those whose deaths were coming in his dreams, which directly led to him becoming an avatar, so if he had decided to stop dreaming, that would be it. This procedure might be a bit difficult, I can’t imagine performing your own lobotomy would go very well, but I’m sure getting someone else to do it would count if you were the one to make the decision. Of course, Terminus would still have you in the end, but that will happen no matter what you do.

To escape the End, cut yourself off from dreams.

The Eye- This one is already answered. The draw of the Eye is the power to watch, so you have to give that ability up. Simple, straightforward, and definitely fits the theme.

To escape the Eye, blind yourself.

The Flesh- Oh boy, this is a weird one. We have dysphoria, consumption, body horror, I can’t say this one sounds very appealing. But it must be, or else it wouldn’t have people serving it. A lot of the draw to serve the fears could be interpreted as dishing out what you can’t take. You don’t have to be afraid of being watched if you do the watching, you don’t have to fear harm if you harm them first. Maybe the appeal of Flesh is making others share that fear that you are nothing but meat. I don’t think it’s really possible for people to give up their corporeal form, unless it’s metaphorical but I have no idea what that could mean. I think those who serve the Flesh thrive on being “more” than others. More body parts, more mass in general. You could go on a diet or become a vegetarian, which I think the writers may have joked about once? I want a more concrete solution, though. Diets are easy to break. You can’t fully give up food without dying, so I guess you could give up the control of food. Giving up your sense of taste would be interesting, but I’m going to keep it more general. No easy answer for this one either.

To escape the Flesh, give up control of your body.

The Hunt- People are drawn to the Hunt by that deep, primal desire to chase and attack. Humans have both predator and prey instincts inside of us, so you would have to completely leave the predator behind to escape the Hunt. I think a good way to do this would be the get rid of your teeth, or nails, whichever you use to cause harm. Daisy was able to temporarily leave behind her power in the Buried, but as soon as she got out, she started starving. I think this is a good argument that you could partially cut off your power by using a power that opposes it in some way, but you would have to give up a part of yourself to make it stick. As soon as she had the freedom and ability to hunt again, that was when the urge came back, and she eventually succumbed to it. Getting rid of the parts of your body that do harm wouldn’t completely stop you if you were dedicated enough, but it’s the choice to do so that matters. This one is a bit more of a symbolic choice, and you could probably do something else to your body that would prevent it from hunting, but I am going with the cooler option.

To escape the Hunt, tear out your teeth and claws.

The Lonely- Probably all you have to do to escape the Lonely is just…be around other people. I’m sure this is easier said than done, but there are lots of ways to commit to other humans. Get married, join a club, make a blood pact and permanently bind yourself to another human. The possibilities are endless! This one, I think more than the others, would require a bit more of a continued effort. I know that the whole point is to make one drastic, permanent change, but the Lonely feels like something that’s easy to relapse into. Maybe it’s the depression metaphor, I don’t know, but I don’t think this one has as easy a solution as the others. It’s hard work forcing yourself to stay connected to others, and it’s something most people in real life struggle with. Giving up any of these powers is a difficult choice, which is the whole point. Life is hard, and we have to make tough decisions. Anyway, I’m okay letting this one be a bit more abstract.

To escape the Lonely, bind yourself to others.

The Slaughter- This one is very similar to the Hunt in terms of actions, so I think the solution might be similar as well. Destroying your weapon would fit well, but it is just way too easy to pick up something else and continue hacking and slashing away. To give up violence entirely, you might have to destroy a significant part of your body. For the Slaughter, I think we should go with a less physical act. The opposite of violence is healing, so maybe become a doctor? You would have to really commit to helping others instead of hurting them, and that is too easy to go back on. I think the sacrifice made here would have to be emotion. Anger and the desire to hurt would go away if you couldn’t feel anymore. I don’t know how you would do this, except through drugs, but that isn’t permanent. There is probably a part of the brain you could destroy that causes emotion. It’s not the same as the prefrontal cortex, which we destroyed back in the End section, so at least it’s not the same solution twice. Honestly, the drugs could work if you did them long term, it’s about the choice anyway. However you do it:

To escape the Slaughter, remove your emotions.

The Spiral- The draw of the Spiral is the power to lie and deceive. There are many ways to do this, and there are probably just as many ways to stop yourself from doing it. However, there is one way that I think fits very well and is absolutely a permanent change: destroy your voice. This is actually the first one I thought of because even though it’s not technically the only way to stop yourself from lying, it fits very well thematically. Michael as the Distortion calls itself the Throat of Delusion Incarnate, so what better way to break yourself off from the same power then by tearing out your throat? It’s not perfect, but I like it so much that I’m going to pick it. I don’t know how one would go about destroying one’s voice, except with very careful surgery. Or screaming for a very long time.

To escape the Spiral, destroy your voice.

The Stranger- We got our answer to this one in the Q&A. Run naked through the streets, and make sure to engage with everyone who talks to you so that you can’t hide. Utterly terrifying. It makes perfect sense though; we heard from the Not!Them that beings of the Stranger hate losing their anonymity. Whether by switching skins, tricking the mind, or looking so generic that no one can remember your face, being known is antithetical to the Stranger. There are probably other ways to go about losing your anonymity then running around naked. You could get up on a stage somewhere and pour your heart out, or publish an autobiography. Basically anything the Eye would like. As long as you are putting yourself out there in a way that you can’t take back, you should be able to successfully cut yourself off from that uncanny fear.

To escape the Stranger, make yourself known.

The Vast- This one might actually be easier than the Buried, because it’s not purely spatial. It includes things like longevity, our insignificance in the face of a massive universe, and large scary things in general. A Vast avatar would hate to be enclosed, but they would also hate to be made responsible. They enjoy making others afraid of their insignificance, but what if they were important to the universe? What if the world was actually very small, and they fit neatly into it instead of being lost? There’s a lot of different ways to go here, so narrowing down one sacrifice might not be the best answer. I can’t really think of any one action that makes a person feel as though the world is small and trapping them. Giving themselves to the Buried would, probably. A direct contrast is the easiest answer.

To escape the Vast, trap yourself in a small place.

The Web- Avatars of the Web are manipulators, through and through. There are so many ways to manipulate a person that no one action could prevent you from doing that, so this one would likely vary a lot between individuals. That movie director who had people puppet him in his own house comes to mind, I think giving up your freedom like that is a good way to do it. Being paralyzed wouldn’t stop you if you used your voice to control others, and giving up both would suck, but if that’s what you need to do, then I guess it’s your choice to make. Maybe all you would need to do is let someone else tell you what to do, and fully trust them. That would be difficult, coming from the Web where everything is tied together and you know how easy it is to manipulate you.

To escape the Web, give up your autonomy.

[nat-20s]

 Part 8 of the wonderful! Au: the boys answer some questions! Up to you to decide if they actually clarify anything!

(also on AO3)

~*~

Martin: Hey everyone! I know what some of you are thinking right now: it's not Tuesday, why is this episode in my feed? I know significantly more of you are thinking: I don't consistently keep up with podcast releases, how much free time do you think I have, buddy? To answer your queries: this is a bonus episode! We're answering listener questions to clear the air and/or have fun. Also, I don't know, around 20 to 40 minutes a week, as that is the average amount of time per episode? Maybe during your commute? My husband's omnipotence has been gone for five years, we just have to guess at that sort of thing now.

Jon: For legal reasons, that last statement was a joke. In fact, to cover all of our bases, we do not guarantee that any of our responses are genuine.

Martin: Just because we say we'll answer things doesn't mean we'll answer truthfully. Though, honestly, I think we might make it more enjoyable if we do tell the truth. Like, I don't necessarily have a fun lie prepared for our first question from konspiracyking97: "What's their fuckin deal anyway?"

Jon: Is this referring to the oblique references  we've made about being from a parallel reality and only ending up here as a consequence of ending one apocalypse and potentially starting another or the general premise of the show?

Martin: Oh, it's gotta be general premise, yeah?

Jon: In that case, I'm Jon, the other voice you're hearing is Martin, we're married, and we talk about things that are..nice? Good? Usually generally but occasionally rather specifically pleasant.

Martin: That pretty much covers it. It's not a complicated show. Uhh, next question comes from Shane: are either or both of you aliens? Nope!

Jon: Well..

Martin: No. We are 100% human people from Earth, we are under no definition extraterrestrial.

Jon: Eh..

Martin: Okay, first off, I know the tone of that 'eh' and "not fully human" is not synonymous with alien, so even if 100% is being a bit generous, we're still from the same planet as our listeners.

Jon:..

Jon: But. We sort of aren't though. Technically speaking.

Martin: No no no no no. I don't care if it's parallel, Earth is Earth is Earth, regardless of whatever nonsense metaphysics might be occurring.

Jon: So what you're saying is that if you got sucked through a portal and landed on an Earth where dinosaurs were still the predominant species, you wouldn't consider yourself to be an alien?

Martin: Nope!

Jon: I'm certain that they would consider you an alien. All of their mammals are probably shrew sized.

Martin: Sounds like a them problem.

Jon: Sounds like a-?! You know what, no, this will be an off the record debate, for now, I suppose I concede that the two Earths and our physiologies are similar enough that we might, maybe, not count as aliens.

Martin: Thank you. Anyway, our next question is from anonymous, and asks, "Is all of this an ARG?"

Jon: A whomst?

Martin: Alternate reality game. It's a method of storytelling that's interactive with audience, and usually has, I dunno, a certain suspension of disbelief to it where it pretends to be something actually happening in the real world until a dramatic reveal. A lot times it was used as a marketing gimmick, but others have done it just for fun. I can show you some examples after the show?

Jon: So it's in essence a more involved creepypasta?

Martin, delighted: Aw, babe, I'm never going to have a handle on what pop culture you are and aren't aware of, huh?

Jon: We were born within a year of each other, and I've told you that I was a deeply morbid teenager, you should probably be able to intuit some of things, love.

Martin: This coming from a man who has yet to see "It's a Wonderful Life", but has seen every film in the "Banjo Cannibals" franchise, including the Easter special. Jesus doesn't exist in the Banjo Cannibals universe, why does it have an Easter special?

Jon: The movies are rather shoddily translated from Russian, so I'm fairly certain the Easter component of that special was invented wholesale in the English version.

Martin: You say that like it answers more questions than it raises.

Jon: Yes, because it does. Oh, and to answer anonymous's question, no, this isn't an ARG. From my understanding of it, if it were, it'd be a poorly constructed one, as there's no real game element to any of this.

Martin: Hmm. Well, sometimes the game component is just trying to figure out what's going on with the story, or if there's any deeper content, and people are definitely doing that with this show.

Jon: That's not by design though. It's more a side effect of us having poor brain to mouth filters, I'd say.

Martin: Harsh, but fair. Oh, this next one is from Zac, no K, who asks, "Are you two actually even married?"

Jon, flat: We are, but it's under false names because this whole thing is an elaborate insurance scam.

Jon, incredulous: Yes, obviously, we're married. What did you hear in this podcast that would make you wonder otherwise, and how do we rectify it?

Martin: Clearly we need to up our quota for how "disgustingly in love" and "horrifically sappy" we are per episode. Which segues nicely into the next question from Gwen, "What's your favourite wonderful thing you've brought so far?" My answer: my husband. He's kind of my favourite in most things, you know?

Jon: Boooooo

Martin: Why, what's your favourite thing?

[Jon reluctantly sighs]

Jon, indulgent: being married.

Martin: A: serves you right for trying to pretend you're the less horrifically sappy and romantic one even though earlier today someone put a love note in the lunch they packed for me-

Jon:- Lies and slander! I have never, in my life, done that, even once.

Martin: Oh, sure, not even once. And you definitely don't reserve the lilac sticky notes specifically for my lunches because you know I like the colour. 

Jon: I..I don't.. you're rather ruining my image here.

[Martin snorts]

Martin: Can't have the audience think that you are, on occasion, an incredibly doting husband-

Jon: -A title I would argue we both share-

Martin: - which is obviously why, even with it being your favourite thing you've brought, being married to me is just a small wonder-

Jon, audibly rolling his eyes: As I already explained-

[A Pause}

Jon: Actually, you're right-

Martin: Wait-

Jon:- I really should have brought it as a larger wonder-

Martin: Wait-

Jon: though I should warn you, I think I'd have far too much material for just one little segment-

Martin: No no no no no-

Jon:- In fact, I think I might have too much material for just one little episode-

Martin: Joo-oon-

Jon: I might have to do a whole series! Where would I even start? I mean I could talk about how every day I get to watch the early morning sun highlight your curls when I get up first, or hear you quietly humming and shuffling around the kitchen when you do, or I could talk about how the lunch notes only started in the first place as retaliation to the notes you would leave on the mirror for me to find, or how every time I get to see you at ease in a way that you aren't with anyone else, it takes my breath away, or I could talk about how cute I find the lines between your eyebrows that you only get when you're thinking something petty, but you know it's petty so you don't want to say anything-

Martin: Okay, okay, Christ, I give !up I surrender, and will cease my teasing on this particular topic.

Jon, probably making the :3 face: You don't have to stop. I mean, I could also discuss how very, very attractive I find your voice when it takes on a teasi-mmph!

[There's a pleased hum, then a pause.]

[The audio quality is slightly changed, as if the recording has been stopped and then started later]

Martin, giddy: Uh, heh, anyway, Eric asked what the least favourite thing we've brought was, and because of Jon's attempt to embarrass me live-

Jon, overlapping: It's definitely not live-

Martin:- on air, I'm gonna say it's my husband.

[Jon scoffs]

Jon : If the past few minutes are any sort of indication, I'm going to go ahead and saying that you are lying.

Martin, sighing contentedly: Maybe a bit, but how was I supposed to resist when your indigance gives you that adorable little nose scrunch? In reality, my least favourite thing was probably, um, mini golf? Which, I still don't think is inherently bad, definitely superior to regular golf, but when it's the only thing a next door two year old wants to do with you, the charm begins to wear off a bit.

Jon: Wow. A rather scathing review of a toddler.

Martin: Not so much a scathing review of a toddler as it's a scathing review of minigolf's inability to keep its appeal after the third time in the same week.

Jon: Mmm, the sound effects rather quickly go from part of the atmosphere to part of the irritation, don't they?

Martin: So what's your least favorite thing we've covered here?

Jon: Oh, love, I'm not going to pretend to have nearly enough memory of what we've covered so far to have a least favorite.

Martin: Really? Nothing that you regret or rescind?

Jon: Well, regret, certainly. It was one of the weeks where you went first, and your second item was mutual aid funds, and what they can do for marginalized communities, and I had to follow it with fucking Slapchop.

Martin, poorly suppressing laughter: In your defence, Slapchop, or whatever offbrand we have, is pretty useful, especially when either your scar or my arthritis is acting up.

Jon: I'm still not convinced you didn't somehow see my notes for the recording and decided you get revenge for the first year that we knew each other.

Martin, no longer suppressing his laughter: Yep, you got me! This marriage wasn't an act of insurance fraud, but it was a near decade long con to humiliate you on a podcast that about twenty people listen to. I'll draft up the divorce papers immediately, and then we can finally go our separate ways. 

Jon: I'm glad you've at last admitted it. Such a weight off of my shoulders. Goodbye forever then.

Martin: Right.

Jon: Right.

[A beat.]

[There's a pfft from one of them, before both dissolve into giggles that lasts a good 30 seconds.]

Martin, slightly out of breath: I can't believe we're the kind of people that talk this much about speciality kitchen gadgets.

Jon: Sorry about that.

Martin: God, don't apologize. I'm, like, deliriously happy with our varying degrees of useful cooking ware filled life. If you had told 25 year old me that one day he'd be debating the merits of getting a tortilla press with his husband, he'd have wept, I tell you.

Jon: Funny, if you told 25 year old me the same thing, he would've said "You don't know the future,piss off" and then quietly have a bit of a panic at 3 am that night.

Martin: I bet you were insufferable in your mid-twenties.

Jon: First of all, who isn't, secondly, I was fresh out of Oxford, and third, I was insufferable in my late twenties, as you can attest to, and I'm insufferable now, as you can further attest to, so extrapolation would indicate that, yes, I was insufferable back then.

Martin: Probably a different kind of insufferable, though.

Jon: There are different kinds?

Martin: Of course! You used to be "prick boss" insufferable and now you're "smug in a way that I can't admit I find hot or it will go straight to your head" insufferable.

Jon, in the aforementioned smug tone: Oh, really?

Martin: See, see! Straight to your head.

Jon: Well straight is probably the wrong descriptor-

Martin: Oof, 4 out of 10 joke, babe.

Jon: That would be a far more convincing rating if you weren't grinning right now.

Martin: It's a genuine review, I'm just well known to be a sucker.

Jon: You and me both, darling.

Martin: Okay, if you're pulling out darling, you're clearly in too giddy of a mood to be focused on recording. Last question, from Jess, "You two mentioned meeting at work, but how did you actually end up together?" That's easy, Jon pulled me out of a hell dimension and then we went on the lam together to Scotland.

Jon: If that's not the way to tell a cute boy you like him, I don't know what is.

Martin: All right, that wraps up this bonus episode, and as the old saying goes, hiding from murderers in a cottage is more conducive to romance than suggesting you gouge out your eyes together.

Jon, cut off: Hey-!

[fedonciadale]

Many fans had called out the infamous rape of Sansa in s5 calling it was unnecessary, disappointed with Sansa kneeling to Tyrion, rightfully called out LF and Tyrion for harassing a girl child. But then they flip and cry how D&D cut out Sansan which was a romantic ship in books and how their romantic interactions are cut. I really don't know why they behave self righteous claiming Sansa was a child and should be protected and then go ahead and ship Sansan.

Hi there!

I just saw a post by @esther-dot about fandom history and how Sans@n came to be a huge ship. I agree with them that it was actually people who wanted Sansa to have a love interest and romance. Remember the first books came out in the 90s and there were different ideas about romance in that time. And 'bad man gets changed by pure love of a nice girl' was a prevalent trope. It was a massive trope. A trope that is nowadays seen as 'problematic' because it gives girls the idea that this might actually happen in real life.

I actually don't blame people for falling for that and at the same time realising that Littlefinger and Tyrion are villains. You can see one aspect and be blind to another. Ary@ stans see the problems of patriarchy and how it hurts her but they fail to see how patriarchy hurts all girls even the ones that fit in. So, I think it is possible to see Tyrion and Littlefinger as the villains they are and yet come to the conclusion that the Hound will be different because he 'surely' will change - just like in the trope that has been done multiple times. So the frustration of canon Sans@n shippers derives from that. The story did not go as they expected it to go. And I can relate to that frustration. It must have been especially hard since Sans@n practically being 'canon' was the general opinion of huge parts of the ASOIAF fandom for decades.

We Jonsa shippers are used to be ridiculed but we are a big enough ship that you don't have to feel bad about shipping Jonsa. Now imagine the pre show fandom, how Sans@n was a big ship and how it was validated not only by many shippers but also by a huge part of the fandom who mostly accepted Sans@n because it played into their ideas that Sansa needed to be punished for being superficial. So Sans@n shippers were told how clever they were to decipher the hidden meaning of the Beauty and the Beast trope and Sansa's endgame and everyone was happy. It was a weird alliance of people who - I think - liked Sansa and wanted romance for her and people who hated her and saw Sans@n as a safe way to that. And it even had textual evidence.... (Misinterpreted, but I don't want to digress). I myself came across some Sans@n meta before the show and I didn't like it but I thought they made interesting points.

Now imagine your confidence in your ship being canon boosted for decades.... (And the few puzzled reactions of the author to the ship could be explained away).

And then the show happened. Rory was cast for the Hound and it began to dawn on some shippers that there might be a problem... But there was still hope? Several seasons to go etc.

And with season 5 and the rape plot people who liked Sansa got angry. It could have let people to question all the abuse Sansa suffered in book and show but it's hard to let go of an idea and a ship.

And season 7 and 8 were so badly executed that there is a valid point to the argument : "there is no way the books are going to end the same."

And can you argue against that? Not really. We all do! If D&D had tried to reach the endgame in a meaningful way instead of prioritising 'we have to hide that Dany is the villain' and sacrificing consistency and story telling on that altar people might be more ready to accept the ending.

I don't blame them. I still haven't accepted Tyrion as Hand and you'll have to take Jaime as Hand and Ary@ killing Dany and Jon taking the blame from my cold dead hands (or GRRM has to destroy my headcanons himself).

The thing is: people should try to re-evaluate the books with what we know now. I see Bran as king foreshadowing now that I haven't seen before. And the fact remains that the show didn't go for Sans@n, not at all.

People also could re-evaluate their opinion on canon according to how our perception of tropes has changed since AGOT came out. You might still come to the conclusion that GRRM goes for Sans@n but you might also see this as a bad thing for Sansa. That some trope has come out of fashion and is seen as problematic now is no hindrance to the author to go there! But our perception of that might be different!

I think that the evidence for Sans@n is overrated and mostly misinterpretation. I also think that regardless of the author's intention it would be a bad ending for Sansa. This is why I think canon Sans@n shippers (and only them, fanon does not come into this - I don't care about the ship but they stay in their corner and do their thing and nobody forces me to look at it) are mistaken about the interpretation of the book and they don't really care about Sansa for whom it would be a horrible ending. But that is my opinion.

Honestly, I don't like the ship, I think it is creepy, but people have shipping goggles and I can at least relate to the wish to negate the evidence of the show. Lol.

Thanks for the ask!

[amuelia]

How do you think Roose will meet his demise? Or will he survive? What's your best Roose end game predictions?

Thank you for the question! This will be a long post under the readmore, going into my thoughts on the show ending and exploring what the books may have set up in regards to themes and characterization, as well as a bit of general analysis of Roose' story arc in a Dance with Dragons (and some speculation about Ramsay as well).

If you click on the readmore i will have divided the post into sections with bolded Headers, if you want to only read my specific endgame ideas you can skip ahead to the "His Endgame?" section.

In The Show

The show had him get killed by Ramsay in s6, which informs a lot of the fandom speculation about this storyline.

I am not a fan of the show's scenario as it was both similar to tywin and tyrion as well as a mirror of robb's death; it would also be offscreen in the books since neither of the characters are PoVs and Ramsay would need to do the act in secret. This would ultimately undercut Roose' role and impact, being a death scene that is not very unique and also isn't shown to the reader directly. Since no PoV is even in Winterfell currently, we would just hear of it from afar and not witness the consequences.

The show also has a different dynamic in the Bolton storyline, emphasizing Ramsay as the "main character" of this arc, and elevating him to the main villain for s5-6 to fill Joffrey's shoes as an evil character played by a very charismatic actor. Ramsay's show writing is informed by the needs of a TV setting that wants shocking moments and capitalizes on "fan favourite" actors; his rising importance in the show thus is not necessarily an indicator of his book importance. The show was also missing many central characters like the northern lords and the Frey men in Winterfell.

The show had a tendency to kill off characters early when they wanted to cull storylines or had no plans to adapt more of the character's story (like Stannis, Barristan, possibly the Tyrells...); In Mance Rayder we have the most obvious example, where they killed him off for real in a scene that in the book was a misdirection. We also have characters like Jorah where it appears the showrunners had their own choice of how they want his storyline to end, even if Grrm has his own ending in mind.

"For a long time we wanted Ser Jorah to be there at The Wall in the end," writer Dave Hill says. "The three coming out of the tunnel would be Jon and Jorah and Tormund. But [...] Jorah should have the noble death he craves defending the woman he loves." - Dave Hill for Entertainment Weekly

So a death in the show does not need to be an indicator that the books will feature an equivalent scene, even if it gives a hint as to what may happen. By s5 the show has become its own beast, and the butterfly effects from radical changes they made as well as the different characterizations results in the show having to cater to its own needs in many cases when it gets to resolving a plotline.

"We reconceived the role to make it worthy of the actor's talents." - Benioff and Weiss for the s5 DVD commentary, on Indira Varma's casting as Ellaria

In The Books

(Since this post was getting out of hand in length a lot of these arguments are a little shortened/not as in-depth as i'd like! Feel free to inquire more via ask if something is unclear or you disagree)

In the books i find it hard to make a concrete guess as to how it will end. Occam's razor would be to assume the show sort of got it right and that it will vaguely end the same, which could very well happen and i will not discount the possibility; Ramsay is cruel, desires the Dreadfort rule, and is a suspected kinslayer and has no qualms to commit immoral violence.

"Ramsay killed [his brother]. A sickness of the bowels, Maester Uthor says, but I say poison." - Reek III, aDwD

Reek saw the way Ramsay's mouth twisted, the spittle glistening between his lips. He feared he might leap the table with his dagger in his hand [to attack his father]. - Reek III, aDwD

Arguments against this or for a different endgame come down to interpretations of the themes in the story arc and opinions on dramatic structure/grrm's writing, and are thus very subjective.

The way the story currently is going, Ramsay killing Roose treats Roose almost as a plot device; his death brings no change or development to Ramsay's character as we already know his motivations and cruelty align with such an act, and we can assume that he would feel no remorse about it either. The results of such a scene would be firmly on a story level, as it brings political changes and moves the plot along into a specific direction. Roose himself cannot have any relevant character development about it as he does not have a PoV and we would not be able to witness his reaction from the outside.

“The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.” - William Faulkner, often quoted by Grrm

Further, killing his father is very difficult to pull off in secret (Roose is frequently described as very cautious, and employs many guardsmen). And even if Ramsay pulls it off (people often interpret Ramsay as Roose' blind spot, assuming he might be caught by surprise, not expecting Ramsay would bite the hand that feeds him), Roose is the one that holds his entire alliance together; The Freys would be alienated by Ramsay who would antagonize Walda and her son as his rivals, The Ryswell bloc appears to dislike Ramsay (especially Barbrey), and the other northmen are implied to not even like Roose himself. Killing Roose would quickly combust the entire northern faction, and hinder Ramsay's further plans (another reason why I am not convinced of a book version of the "Battle of Bastards"). Though this might of course, if we look at it from the other side, be grrm's plan to quickly dissolve this plot and move the northern story forwards.

"Ramsay will kill [Walda's children], of course. [...] [She] will grieve to see them die, though." - Reek III, aDwD

"How many of our grudging friends do you imagine we'd retain if the truth were known? Only Lady Barbrey, whom you would turn into a pair of boots … inferior boots." - Reek III, aDwD

"Fear is what keeps a man alive in this world of treachery and deceit. Even here in Barrowton the crows are circling, waiting to feast upon our flesh. The Cerwyns and the Tallharts are not to be relied on, my fat friend Lord Wyman plots betrayal, and Whoresbane … the Umbers may seem simple, but they are not without a certain low cunning. Ramsay should fear them all, as I do." - Reek III, aDwD

Roose' death at Ramsay's hand also removes him thematically from the Red Wedding, as we can assume such a death might have happened regardless of his participation in the event (seeing as Ramsay is getting provoked by Roose constantly in normal dialogue, and has a general violent disposition). Roose already took Ramsay in before aGoT started, and married Walda very early in the war, which is already most of the buildup that the show's scenario had. It also has little to do with the The North Remembers plot except set dressing, since the northmen are presumably neither collaborating with/egging on Ramsay nor would they appreciate the development.

Themes: Ned Stark and the rule over the North

Roose is treated as a foil to Eddard; They are often contrasted in morals and ruling styles, while also having many superficial similarities that further connect them (they are seen as cold by people, grey eyed, patriarchs of rivalling northern houses, etc...).

Pale as morning mist, his eyes concealed more than they told. Jaime misliked those eyes. They reminded him of the day at King's Landing when Ned Stark had found him seated on the Iron Throne. - Jaime IV, aSoS

They both have a "bastard son" that they handle very differently; Roose treating Ramsay in the way that is seen as common in their society. Ramsay and Jon as a comparison are meant to show that Catelyn had a reason to see a bastard as a threat (since Domeric was antagonized by his bastard brother), but also shows that her suggested plan for Jon would not have stopped any danger either (as Ramsay being raised away from the castle didn't help).

And if his seed quickened, she expected he would see to the child's needs. He did more than that. The Starks were not like other men. Ned brought his bastard home with him, and called him "son" for all the north to see. - Catelyn II, aGoT

"Each year I sent the woman some piglets and chickens and a bag of stars, on the understanding that she was never to tell the boy who had fathered him. A peaceful land, a quiet people, that has always been my rule." - Reek III, aDwD

It appears to me that Roose' story functions in some ways as an inversion to Ned. He makes an attempt to grab a power he was not destined to (becoming warden of the north), where Ned did not want the responsiblity thrust upon him ("It was all meant for Brandon. [...] I never asked for this cup to pass to me." - Cat II, aGoT). Where Ned rules successfully and his northmen honor his legacy ("What do you think passes through their heads when they hear the new bride weeping? Valiant Ned's precious little girl." - The Turncloak, aDwD), the Boltons are largely hated and there are several plots conspiring against them ("Let me bathe in Bolton blood before I die." - The King's Prize, aDwD).

It seems possible to me that in terms of their family and legacy, Roose might also live through an inverted version of Ned's story; where Ned died first, leaving his family behind, Roose already lived to see the death of his wives and trueborn heir, and might thus also live to see Ramsay's death. Ned leaves behind well raised children and a North who still respects his name, and even though he dies it will presumably all be "in good hands" in the end (in broad strokes, obviously this is all much more morally complex). Roose however built up a bad and toxic legacy, and also built his way of life around evading consequences; it makes sense to me that he would be forced by the story to finally endure all the consequences of his actions and witness the fall of his house firsthand. After all we already have Tywin who fulfils the purpose of dying before his children while his legacy falls to ruins, and a Feast for Crows explores this aspect thoroughly.

Roose' arc in A Dance With Dragons

The story repeatedly builds up the situation unravelling around Roose, and him slowly losing a grip on it and becoming more stressed and anxious.

Reek wondered if Roose Bolton ever cried. If so, do the tears feel cold upon his cheeks? - Reek II, aDwD

Roose Bolton said nothing at all. But Theon Greyjoy saw a look in his pale eyes that he had never seen before—an uneasiness, even a hint of fear. [...] That night the new stable collapsed beneath the weight of the snow that had buried it. - a Ghost in Winterfell, aDwD

Lady Walda gave a shriek and clutched at her lord husband's arm. "Stop," Roose Bolton shouted. "Stop this madness." His own men rushed forward as the Manderlys vaulted over the benches to get at the Freys. - Theon I, aDwD

It also directly presents him as a parallel to Theon's rule in aCoK, who similarly experienced a very unpopular rule and his subjects slowly turning against him. Presumably, the point of this comparison will not just be "Ramsay comes in at the end and unexpectedly whacks them on the head". Both Theon and Roose invited Ramsay into their lives, giving him more power than he deserves, and causing Ramsay to make choices that increasingly alienate others from them (the death of the miller's boys for example has repercussions for both Theon and Roose). Grrm is likely steering this towards a difference in how they will deal with this situation.

It all seemed so familiar, like a mummer show that he had seen before. Only the mummers had changed. Roose Bolton was playing the part that Theon had played the last time round, and the dead men were playing the parts of Aggar, Gynir Rednose, and Gelmarr the Grim. Reek was there too, he remembered, but he was a different Reek, a Reek with bloody hands and lies dripping from his lips, sweet as honey. - a Ghost in Winterfell, aDwD

"Stark's little wolflings are dead," said Ramsay, sloshing some more ale into his cup, "and they'll stay dead. Let them show their ugly faces, and my girls will rip those wolves of theirs to pieces. The sooner they turn up, the sooner I kill them again." - The elder Bolton sighed. "Again? Surely you misspeak. You never slew Lord Eddard's sons, those two sweet boys we loved so well. That was Theon Turncloak's work, remember? How many of our grudging friends do you imagine we'd retain if the truth were known?" - Reek III, aDwD

Roose' arc is deeply connected to the relations he shares to the other northern lords, which has been heavily impacted by the Red Wedding. It stands to reason that they are going to be an important part of his downfall, and we see many hints of them plotting to betray him.

The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer's farce is almost done. My son is home." - Davos IV, aDwD

Themes: Stannis and kinslaying

The books set up Roose and Stannis as foils as well; Both lack charisma and have trouble winnning the people's support, Stannis and Roose both parallel and contrast Ned, Stannis appears as a "lesser Robert" where Roose is a "lesser Ned", Stannis represents the fire where Roose represents the ice, both struggle over dominion in a land that doesnt particularly want either of them, etc... What i find interesting is how they are contrasted over kinslaying:

"Only Renly could vex me so with a piece of fruit. He brought his doom on himself with his treason, but I did love him, Davos. I know that now. I swear, I will go to my grave thinking of my brother's peach." - Davos II, aCoK

"I should've had the mother whipped and thrown her child down a well … but the babe did have my eyes." [...] "Now [Domeric's] bones lie beneath the Dreadfort with the bones of his brothers, who died still in the cradle, and I am left with Ramsay. Tell me, my lord … if the kinslayer is accursed, what is a father to do when one son slays another?" - Reek III, aCoK

Stannis is set up as someone who is very thorough and strict in following his own code and his "duty", even if he does not like what it forces him to do.

Stannis ground his teeth again. "I never asked for this crown. Gold is cold and heavy on the head, but so long as I am the king, I have a duty . . . If I must sacrifice one child to the flames to save a million from the dark . . . Sacrifice . . . is never easy, Davos. Or it is no true sacrifice. Tell him, my lady." - Davos IV, aSoS

The armorer considered that a moment. "Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends." - Jon I, aCoK

Roose however is frequently characterized as someone who tries to get as much as he can while avoiding negative consequences, and who does not have a consistent moral code and instead bends rules to his benefit to be the most comfortable to him.

It is often theorized that Stannis will end up burning his daughter Shireen; the Ramsay issue might then serve to contrast the two men. If Grrm intends it to be compared by the reader, I can see it going two ways: Either Roose will be forced to finally act in a drastic way after avoiding his responsibility in regards to Ramsay and he will be forced to get rid of his son, making him break the only moral hurdle he has presented adhering to during the story (though analyzing his character, the kinslaying taboo is probably less a sign of moral fortitude and more him using the guise of morals to explain a selfish motivation). Or he might not act against Ramsay and suffer the consequences, presenting an interesting moral situation where some readers might consider his action "better" or more relatable than Stannis', breaking up the otherwise very black and white moral comparison between the two men. It serves as an interesting conflict of the morality of kinslaying compared to what readers might see as a moral obligation of getting rid of a monster such as Ramsay; contrasting Shireen whose death would not be seen as worth it by most. Ramsay as a bastard (who was almost killed at birth if he hadnt been able to prove his paternity) also makes for an interesting verbal parallel with the bastard Edric Storm, and might be used for a look at the utilitarian principle of killing a child (baby ramsay/edric) to save countless people from suffering that underpinned Edric's story.

"As Faulkner says, all of us have the capacity in us for great good and for great evil, for love but also for hate. I wanted to write those kinds of complex character in a fantasy, and not just have all the good people get together to fight the bad guy." - Grrm

"Robert, I ask you, what did we rise against Aerys Targaryen for, if not to put an end to the murder of children?" - Eddard VIII, aGoT

"If Joffrey should die . . . what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?" - "Everything," said Davos, softly. - Davos V, aSoS

However Grrm decides to present these conflicts or which actions the characters will take in the end, it will result in interesting discussion and analysis for the readers.

His Endgame?

Looking at the trends of the past books, it is probably going to be hard to predict any specific outcome; every book introduces new characters and plot elements that were impossible to predict from the last book even if their thematic importance or setup was aptly foreshadowed.

Roose has a lot of plot importance and characterization that has, in my opinion, not yet been properly resolved in a way that would be unique and poignant to the specific purpose his character appears to fulfil. However I also have a bias in that i did not like the show's writing of that scene which makes me averse to see a version of it in the books, and i really like Roose as a character and want to see him have more scenes in the next book(s). This leads me to discount plot speculation that cuts his character arc short offscreen early. Roose is only a side character; however, i have trust in grrm's writing abilities and that he would give him a proper sendoff that feels satisfying to a fan of the character.

"…even the [characters] who are complete bastards, nasty, twisted, deeply flawed human beings with serious psychological problems… When I get inside their skin and look out through their eyes, I have to feel a certain — if not sympathy, certainly empathy for them. I have to try to perceive the world as they do, and that creates a certain amount of affection." — George Martin

Considering my earlier analyis, there is a case to be made for Roose killing Ramsay; however it appears grrm might have a different endgame in mind for Ramsay, foreshadowed in Chett's prologue:

There'd be no lord's life for the leechman's son, no keep to call his own, no wives nor crowns. Only a wildling's sword in his belly, and then an unmarked grave. The snow's taken it all from me . . . the bloody snow . . . - Chett, aSoS

I tend to think something might happen to Roose/the Bolton bloc later in the book that would cause Ramsay to attempt to flee the scene again like he did back in aCoK fleeing Rodrik's justice; perhaps Ramsay is sent out to battle but then flees it like a coward, or he sees his cause as lost. This time, the fleeing and potentially disguised Ramsay would not make it out to safety though, and get killed without being recognized as Ramsay, dying forgotten. This would serve as dramatic irony since Ramsay so strongly desired to be recognized and respected as a Lord of Bolton, without being too on the nose.

As for Roose, i could see him getting captured and somehow brought to justice (either when someone takes Winterfell or in some sort of battle). I see it unlikely that he will be backstabbed like Robb was, because it seems very "eye for an eye" and ultimately doesn't teach much of a lesson except "he had it coming"; But the various people conspiring against him could lead to his capture by betraying him (giving a payoff to the northern conspiracies and the red wedding). I would find a scene of him standing trial interesting since i believe we didn't have one of these for a true non-pov villain yet, and it would be an interesting confrontation that he cannot escape from (he also loves to talk so it would be a good read to see him make a case for himself).

I assume Roose will be out of the picture when the Other plot finally properly kicks into gear (whether dead or "in prison"). With Stannis as a false Azor Ahai and Roose as a false Other (with his pale, cold features), their struggle in the north seems to be a representation of the false "Game of Thrones" that distracts people from the "real threat" of the Others.

As always this is just my opinion, and it could all go very differently in the books! There could always be something that completely uproots my analysis and goes into a direction i did not expect from the material we had; But i have fate that Grrm as a writer will deliver and give me something i can be satisfied with.

[oakleaf--bearer]

@jonmartinweek day two - injury!

also on ao3

When dealing with matters of the heart, Jon was about the furthest from a natural that there could be. 

He was... rusty to say the least. Awkward was a generous way to put it. Completely and utterly useless was far more accurate. 

So when Georgie had laughed and asked when he and Martin had started dating, he had been understandably taken aback and politely asked her what she meant by that. ("Georgie, what the fuck?" had been his exact wording). She'd shrugged and patted his knee, telling him that he should probably talk to Martin as soon as he got back to the Institute. 

He stared down at the ring sat on the table, a frown creasing his forehead. It had been something of a whim purchase. He had bought it several years ago after reading about the concept online, and he'd just....not taken it off. Every time it left his hand, he'd itched to put it back on as soon as possible. 

And now, a blistering burn mark on his hand was stopping him from putting it back on. A small, mostly insignificant piece of his identity stripped back and taken away from him. 

A gentle knock at the door startled him out of his quiet contemplation. 

"Hello." Martin poked his head around the door. "Tea?"

"Thank you, Martin."

Martin smiled, and Jon remembered Georgie's assumption. Would he? It wasn't the most unimaginable thing in the world. Martin was friendly. Charming, comfortable, welcoming. But dating? Maybe... But Jon had done dating before. He'd explained what the ring in the table meant to enough people that he was tired. Tired of the assumptions, the questions, the idea that there was one person out there who would change his mind, all he needed was a good- 

Martin wasn't that person. When Jon ran through the mental 'relationship checklist', he could imagine so many different aspects with Martin. Holding hands, going on dates, even waking up next to each other, but that particular facet of a relationship was completely unimaginable. It wasn't that Martin was unattractive, simply that Jon just didn't see the attractiveness like that. 

"What's that?" Martin gestured to the ring. 

"Oh, uh, nothing." Jon covered it with his good hand. "Just a- nothing."

"Riiight." Martin placed the tea on his desk, in easy reach. "Keep your secrets then."

"Hmm." Jon hummed, still examining Martin's face. 

"Jon? You alright?" 

"Oh!" Jon realised he was staring and quickly looked away. "Sorry." 

"It's okay." Martin said with an audible smile that made Jon's heart do something ridiculous. 

"Martin..." Jon didn't really know what he was going to say. "Are you- I- Hmm." 

"Take your time."

"Have lunch with me. That is, if you want to, please don't feel like I'm pressuring you, you can say no if you-"

"Jon." Martin put a hand on his desk, gentle, a calming reminder of a calming man. "I'd love to." 

Jon stared at the hand. It was larger than his own. When he'd arrived back in the archives, trailing blood and exhaustion behind him, Martin had sat and re-wrapped the clumsy bandages he had put on it, patiently telling him off for not going to a doctor and getting it checked. Jon hadn't been able to look away from his hands then either, just gazing at them with sleepy eyes, his mind fixed on the image of Martin taking care of him. Carefully picking up the pieces he had left flung about the place and putting them back together, gently slotting them back into place.

Martin took him to a sandwich place around the corner from the institute. Jon stared at the menu, trying to decipher the swirling font. The letters swam slightly as he read them, the words jumbling together. 

“Jon?” Martin bumped their shoulders together lightly, bending down to Jon's height to compensate for the difference. “What are you going to order?”

 “I-  What do you recommend?” 

Martin smiled. “Hmm. How about the tuna and sweetcorn? It’s a classic, you know?”

“Sure.” 

Martin ordered for them and nudged Jon towards a table in the corner. Jon went willingly, content to listen to Martin chatter away about the wait times and the various bouts of  people-watching he had gotten up to in this cafe. Despite Jon’s lack of contributions, Martin seemed to be fine carrying the conversation on his own. A couple of people gave them odd glances, no doubt wondering what Martin, kind, gentle-looking Martin, was doing with a grumpy sack of exhaustion. Externally, they didn't match. They were diametrically opposed, two entities that shouldn't exist in the same space without causing some kind of epoch changing event. 

But the more Jon pondered it, the more he realised that he wanted to be here, sat opposite Martin, listening to him talk, letting him order his sandwiches and hold his hand-

Jon’s brain skipped a beat. 

Martin had placed his hand over Jon’s where it rested on the table and was staring at him, concern across his face. “Jon? You okay?”

‘I care about him’, Jon realised with a start. ‘This is my friend.’

Martin nudged his hand around so that he could properly take it in his own. The motion dislodged the ring that Jon still held clutched in his bandaged fingers. It clattered out, its black outline stark against the faded beige of the tabletop. 

“Oh, sorry.” Martin picked it up to hand it back to Jon. “You might want to be a bit more careful. You don't want to lose this.”

“What?” Jon stared down at Martin’s hand. It felt ridiculous to see Martin holding out his ring and for Jon to feel this weightless. The gentle curl of Martin’s fingers around the band set Jon’s mind whirling down avenues lined with graffiti reading ‘Just tell him’ and ‘Maybe it will go well’. 

Jon took a deep breath and took the plunge. 

“I’m sorry, Martin.”

Martin blinked. “R-right? What for?”

“All of it.” Jon reached out and covered Martin’s, still holding Jon’s ace ring up in front of them. “You were always- I’m glad you're here. With me.” He carefully took the ring and let go of Martin’s hand. It looked shockingly sad sitting in the palm of Jon’s bandaged hand. Another piece of who he was now associated with pain. An uncomfortably familiar reality that Jon was steadily becoming used to. 

Martin reached across the table and gave Jon’s hand a quick squeeze. Jon hissed at the jolt of pain lacing up his arm. 

“Oh god, Jon, I’m so sorry, I didnt- I didnt think, that was stupid of me-” Martin’s hands fluttered in the air around Jon’s. “God, that was awful of me, I’m really sorry-”

“It’s okay,” Jon said, grabbing at Martin with his uninjured hand. “It’s fine, it's already passed.” 

Martin gave him an apologetic smile, but didn’t argue. “That’s important to you, huh?”

“Hmm?”

“The ring. I’ve seen you wear it a lot. Does it mean something?”

“Oh.” Jon hadn't considered the possibility that Martin might be aware of the ring's existence. In his head, it existed in a bubble, separate from work and his colleagues. It made sense, he supposed, that Martin was able to see into that bubble, since its edges had been bumping against Jon’s perception of Martin for a little while now. “It, ah, its a- Its a sexuality thing.”

To Martin’s credit, he didn’t even blink at the idea that Jon might not be straight, just nodded and smiled encouragingly. “I thought so. Asexuality, right?” 

“Wha- Yes.” Jon had been gearing up to explain the intricacies of asexuality, not for Martin to already have that knowledge. 

“It came up when I was doing research trying to figure out my own sexuality.”

That caught Jon off guard. For some reason, throughout all of his deliberations trying to figure out where on Jon’s internal spectrum Martin sat, he had failed to consider the actual real life possibility of Martin’s queerness. “You’re-”

“Oh, I’m not ace.” Martin shook his head. “At least, I don't think so. Labels,” he chuckled. “Confusing stuff. I usually just go with gay and trans to sum me up.” 

A small, overlooked lightbulb in the back of Jon’s mind flickered to life as a couple of pieces of information fell into place with a quiet ‘oh!’

“I saw the ring but I didn't want to ask in case it was just a style thing. A lot of people don't know about this stuff and it's sometimes hard to tell, you know?”

“Right.”

“I guess the bandages stop you wearing it, right?” It was a non-sentence, a piece of idle observation that Martin was making. But it still stung. 

“It feels somewhat ridiculous to say but- I think I’m going to miss it. It’s just a ring, it's not my entire sexuality, I’ll still be ace without wearing it, but I’m still- It feels like I’m missing a piece of something that I was trying to hold onto, you know?”

Martin nodded. “I understand. Here-” he reached up and unclasped a thin chain that had been hanging around his neck. “You can borrow this. I’ll take these off for now.” He slipped off a couple of charms that had been hanging on it. Smiling, he held out the chain.

“You- You’re sure?”

“Yeah.” Martin wiggled the chain in the air between them slightly. “You can give it back when your hand is better.”

Wordlessly, Jon took the chain and looped the ring onto it. He lifted to try and fix the clasp around his neck, but he couldn't get the clasp open. Martin pushed his chair back, coming to stand behind Jon, taking the chain out of his hands and closing the clasp for Jon. 

“There.” Martin smoothed Jon’s collar down. “That looks nice!”

“Thank you.” Jon whispered, then louder, “Thank you, Martin. This- This means a lot.” 

Martin shrugged a little awkwardly, cheeks turning red. “No trouble. It means a lot to you, so, you know, you should be able to carry it with you.”

He smiled down at Jon, and once again Jon felt the small jolt of recognition, of comfort. The bubble in his mind fully merged with Martin, creating something new that, at least for a few more long, exhausting months, Jon didn't know to call love.

[karliahs]

It’s been months since he was this close to anyone. It might have even been Jon the last time, too; helping him walk down in the tunnels. How did they get from there to here? How-

“Tim?” Jon asks softly, pulling back to look him in the face, and it’s the loss of that warmth and pressure that makes Tim realise he’s started breathing in great, shuddering gasps. He screws his eyes shut and Jon reverses their positions, pulling Tim into his chest with unpracticed but fervent hands. His T-shirt is soft against Tim’s face; he hadn’t thought Jon would own anything so soft.

Tim’s throat is burning, but as long as he keeps his eyes screwed shut then he isn’t crying. He isn’t crying on Jonathan Sims the night before they both-

“It’s alright, Tim,” Jon says, searching for words of comfort he only half believes himself. “It’s - whatever happens tomorrow, it can’t - we’re safe here.”

Tim laughs bitterly. “Nothing’s fucking safe.”

Jon seems unable to decide between rubbing soothingly at his back and just holding on as tight as he can. Tim shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be giving into this. But there's a reason he lost so much time when he should have been searching for the thing that killed his brother. The Institute was full of potential answers, but it was also full of bright, lovely distractions. He's buried in the arms of one of them.

Tim didn't used to think of that as weakness - but he didn't used to think there were worms that burrowed through your flesh, or creatures that took every true memory of your friend without you ever noticing, or monsters that played with skin, played with the fabric of who you were, because it was fun.

Tim doesn't know fucking anything, and maybe he never did, and now all that's left is to-

"What can I do, Tim?" Jon asks, and he sounds so honestly lost.

"Turn back time," Tim murmurs into his shirt. "Don't let go," he adds a moment later.

“I won’t, I won’t.” Jon clutches him impossibly closer. Tim’s world narrows down into warmth and pressure. “Tim, we don’t - we don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do this.”

The gentle vibration of his words is almost enough to distract Tim from the words themselves. He turns his head so he can speak un-muffled, and immediately misses the comfort of being closed in. “I do, Jon. I can’t…” Tim fumbles for the right words, wondering faintly if this is how Jon feels all the time, struggling to give voice to the unspeakable. “The worst thing in all of this, the worst thing would be if they hurt someone again while I’m just standing there."

Still not crying, not as long as his eyes are tight shut. He feels Jon hesitate, then push forward anyway. "Even if...Tim, even if you had moved, what could you have done?"

Tim squeezes hard at Jon's side and isn't sure if he means it as a warning or a plea.

"I'd never have met you," Jon says, so soft Tim isn't sure if he was meant to hear it.

"Was just thinking before,” Tim replies, because he’s fucked up enough that he might as well keep going, “I wish I'd met you somewhere normal."

Jon’s hands still, and for a moment the rise and fall of his chest does too. It’s the closest thing to absolution Tim’s ever offered. He’s glad he can’t see Jon’s face, can’t see whatever shock or gratitude is playing out there. At some point, he made himself into someone who no one expects to be kind. He wonders, vaguely, whether it counts as forgiveness, to want someone to spend what might be their last night on earth forgiven.

from: enemy of my enemy, aka jon and tim sit in various rooms and talk: the fic

thank you for asking!!! here we go:

It’s been months since he was this close to anyone. It might have even been Jon the last time, too; helping him walk down in the tunnels. How did they get from there to here? How-

do you ever just think about how fast things went wrong for the s1 crew...they were friends just a few months ago!! a few weeks in between no current supernatural experiences -> trying to survive supernatural experiences together by physically holding each other up -> complete alienation. some experiences just defy comprehension, emotionally speaking, even when you can see every step that led from there to here

i also like to make myself sad by thinking about the practical day to day aspects of everyone in the archives being alienated from everyone else. like...when were either of them last touched (non-violently)

so much has changed but they've circled back around to each other

“Tim?” Jon asks softly, pulling back to look him in the face, and it’s the loss of that warmth and pressure that makes Tim realise he’s started breathing in great, shuddering gasps. He screws his eyes shut and Jon reverses their positions, pulling Tim into his chest with unpracticed but fervent hands. His T-shirt is soft against Tim’s face; he hadn’t thought Jon would own anything so soft.

'person starts crying without noticing until someone points it out' is a trope i generally try to stay away from partly because i just can't imagine that ever happening to me and therefore it doesn't ping my realism senses, but i get one (1) because it is undeniably juicy

this fic is very zeroed in on tim's perspective in terms of small sensory experiences, for a few reasons - drive home emotions, portray dissociation, and because i like writing about how it actually feels to be in a romantic gesture, to make it more real than just like...an image of people holding each other

small detail that jives with bigger points - jon's shirt unexpectedly soft, jon's surprising ability to still provide him with gentleness and comfort

i think jon here has no idea what to do but has been given permission to touch so is living his best tactile life with this inexpert hugging and is hoping that does something

Tim’s throat is burning, but as long as he keeps his eyes screwed shut then he isn’t crying. He isn’t crying on Jonathan Sims the night before they both-

“It’s alright, Tim,” Jon says, searching for words of comfort he only half believes himself. “It’s - whatever happens tomorrow, it can’t - we’re safe here.”

Tim laughs bitterly. “Nothing’s fucking safe.”

tim spends a lot of this fic having his inner-monologue cut off to try and show as well as tell that he's struggling to stay present

that 'both-' hurts me, honestly. hurts more than it actually being spelled out, i think. write to upset yourself, maybe you will upset others in the process

half is a word i absolutely overuse in writing but cannot stop. no one ever does something all the way, they are half- believing, wondering, worrying, etc.

i'm never 100% sure if i'm accurately capturing the way that jon speaks in canon but i did always like and want to emulate the fact that he speaks kind of hesitantly, trips over his own words, etc

Jon seems unable to decide between rubbing soothingly at his back and just holding on as tight as he can. Tim shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be giving into this. But there's a reason he lost so much time when he should have been searching for the thing that killed his brother. The Institute was full of potential answers, but it was also full of bright, lovely distractions. He's buried in the arms of one of them.

Tim didn't used to think of that as weakness - but he didn't used to think there were worms that burrowed through your flesh, or creatures that took every true memory of your friend without you ever noticing, or monsters that played with skin, played with the fabric of who you were, because it was fun.

again, jon does not know what to do so he is just trying. just trying to do any kind of soothing hand thing

i thought quite a lot about reconciling the seemingly happy-go-lucky tim that gets presented to us early on vs learning why he came to the institute in the first place. tim here is framing that as a failing because he's miserable and traumatised and guilt-ridden, but i think at least part of it was actual healing. he was taking time and enjoying the people around him and trying to make the best of things, until it all went wrong

related, the self-recrimination of tim hating himself for not having seen any of this coming, even though they were not predictable events...very human nature after you have been through something terrible. how dare i have not anticipated every trouble that ever befell me

'played with skin, played with the fabric of who you were' - a lot of this story was me just enjoying the themes of stranger-horror. i love the terror of knowing there are creatures who can change aspects of you that should be unchangeable, physically in skin and otherwise in terms of identity and memory. love applying that to jon and tim, who have been fundamentally changed against their will by trauma and their roles in a story neither of them wanted. skin as metaphor for identity, and learning that people can take away your skin is then utterly terrifying to someone who already feels like his identity is being forcibly eroded. and then that shared terror brings them back together, just a little

Tim doesn't know fucking anything, and maybe he never did, and now all that's left is to-

"What can I do, Tim?" Jon asks, and he sounds so honestly lost.

"Turn back time," Tim murmurs into his shirt. "Don't let go," he adds a moment later.

this fic...is so sad. why did i write this. why am i being attacked by my past self and their awful words on this day

explicit admission that tim wants/needs jon here...even a chapter ago he was like yeah i'm going to america with jon bc i am regrettably relying on him as my reality-anchor, nothing emotional here

“I won’t, I won’t.” Jon clutches him impossibly closer. Tim’s world narrows down into warmth and pressure. “Tim, we don’t - we don’t have to do this. You don’t have to do this.”

The gentle vibration of his words is almost enough to distract Tim from the words themselves. He turns his head so he can speak un-muffled, and immediately misses the comfort of being closed in. “I do, Jon. I can’t…” Tim fumbles for the right words, wondering faintly if this is how Jon feels all the time, struggling to give voice to the unspeakable. “The worst thing in all of this, the worst thing would be if they hurt someone again while I’m just standing there."  

Still not crying, not as long as his eyes are tight shut. He feels Jon hesitate, then push forward anyway. "Even if...Tim, even if you had moved, what could you have done?"

Tim squeezes hard at Jon's side and isn't sure if he means it as a warning or a plea.

warmth, pressure, vibration...continuing to be fascinated by the little tactile details of what it feels like to be close to someone

emotional logic is so powerful. tim moving most likely would have either made no difference to the outcome or worsened it (because both him and danny would have died) but of course for tim standing still while someone he loves was destroyed counts for everything about who he is. sometimes blame feels better than helplessness, which mirrors what happens with his friendship with jon - is it scarier if they are all helpless, or if this one guy is The Enemy

‘give voice to the unspeakable’ sometimes i like poetic descriptions of jon’s role as archivist

"I'd never have met you," Jon says, so soft Tim isn't sure if he was meant to hear it.

"Was just thinking before,” Tim replies, because he’s fucked up enough that he might as well keep going, “I wish I'd met you somewhere normal."

Jon’s hands still, and for a moment the rise and fall of his chest does too. It’s the closest thing to absolution Tim’s ever offered. He’s glad he can’t see Jon’s face, can’t see whatever shock or gratitude is playing out there. At some point, he made himself into someone who no one expects to be kind. He wonders, vaguely, whether it counts as forgiveness, to want someone to spend what might be their last night on earth forgiven.

:(

tim views talking with and connecting to people as fucking up. how much of that is even slightly shrouded in logic and how much is just - tim is depressed and deep in self-loathing, somewhere still at the core of him tim loves people and making connections, so of course doing the thing he wants to do is wrong

‘At some point, he made himself into someone who no one expects to be kind.’ tim has this thought once and then worries at it like a sore tooth because his default state is hopeless fury with himself, with everyone. i also think this demonstrates how new information/realisations often can’t help you out of a bad mental state on its own, because it’s all too easy to slot it into your existing thought patterns. pushing everyone away was making tim worse - he starts to feel like that was a mistake, but it just becomes more self-recrimination

forgiveness is one of those words that seems to encompass so many different concepts that i find it hard to know exactly what it’s meant by saying you forgive someone. specifying what’s meant by this little shard of maybe-forgiveness makes it mean more, at least to me

may i reiterate: :(

[she-wolf-of-highgarden]

I think where I have a hard time with Arya and Sansa’s relationship is that Martin gives Sansa a defense mechanism where she doesn’t look back at things. And I’m not saying Arya is terribly self-reflective, but he allows her to have more than he does with Sansa. 

Your little sister was hiding in the woods for three days? Don’t think about it. 

Your little sister is missing after the brutal purging of your household? Don’t think about it. In fact, forget to ask about her.  

The last thing (that the readers know) you said to your little sister was how much you disliked her and how you thought she should be dead? Don’t think about it. 

That lack of reflection can make it hard, especially when you compare the two. Arya thinks about her sister. Arya misses her sister. Arya gets:

“Arya sipped at her tankard cautiously, between spoonfuls of pie still warm from the oven. Her father sometimes let them have a cup of beer, she remembered. Sansa used to make a face at the taste and say that wine was ever so much finer, but Arya had liked it well enough. It made her sad to think of Sansa and her father.” - Arya II, ACoK

“When she thought of seeing Robb's face again Arya had to bite her lip. And I want to see Jon too, and Bran and Rickon, and Mother. Even Sansa . . . I'll kiss her and beg her pardons like a proper lady, she'll like that.” - Arya VII, ACoK (she shows she’s willing to change her behavior if only for a little while to make her sister happy)

“So the singer played for her, so soft and sad that Arya only heard snatches of the words, though the tune was half-familiar. Sansa would know it, I bet. Her sister had known all the songs, and she could even play a little, and sing so sweetly. All I could ever do was shout the words.” - Arya IV, ASoS

“Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell's grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan's stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow's smile. He used to mess my hair and call me "little sister," she remembered, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes.” - Arya II, AFfC

And I’m not pretending that Arya doesn’t have some not nice things to say about her sister. She does. But Martin balances it better with her than with Sansa. And part of that is the defense mechanism and part of that is that Arya insults Sansa’s interests which is not okay, but she never actually calls Sansa herself stupid. Martin, however, does have Sansa insult Arya herself. Not just her interests or friends (which she does but in fairness Arya does that to her too so it kind of evens out), just Arya herself. 

“She treasured every chance to spend time with him, few as they were. The only thing that scared her about today was Arya. Arya had a way of ruining everything. You never knew what she would do.” - Sansa I, AGoT

“What could you want to see?" Sansa said, annoyed. She had been thrilled by the invitation, and her stupid sister was going to ruin everything, just as she'd feared. "It's all just fields and farms and holdfasts.” - Sansa I, AGoT

“The kitchen yielded no lemon cakes, but they did find half of a cold strawberry pie, and that was almost as good. They ate it on the tower steps, giggling and gossiping and sharing secrets, and Sansa went to bed that night feeling almost as wicked as Arya.” - Sansa III, AGoT

“Hodor!" Sansa yelled. "You ought to marry Hodor, you're just like him, stupid and hairy and ugly!" She wrenched away from her sister's hand, stormed into her bedchamber, and barred the door behind her.” - Sansa III, AGoT

“It was for love," Sansa said in a rush. "Father wouldn't even give me leave to say farewell." She was the good girl, the obedient girl, but she had felt as wicked as Arya that morning, sneaking away from Septa Mordane, defying her lord father. She had never done anything so willful before, and she would never have done it then if she hadn't loved Joffrey as much as she did.” - Sansa IV, AGoT

Arya ruins everything , Arya is wicked, Arya is stupid. 

And do we have good points that come from Sansa? Sure. But there are still moments where Martin will kind of take away from the moment which is a problem when you have only a few moments. 

For example in ASoS we get:

“Lady Leonette gave her lessons on the high harp, and Lady Janna shared all the choice gossip. Merry Crane always had an amusing story, and little Lady Bulwer reminded her of Arya, though not so fierce.” - Sansa II, ASoS 

which is followed by 

“Sister. Sansa had once dreamt of having a sister like Margaery; beautiful and gentle, with all the world's graces at her command. Arya had been entirely unsatisfactory as sisters went. How can I let my sister marry Joffrey? she thought, and suddenly her eyes were full of tears.” - Sansa II, ASoS

That’s kind of rough. Yet after this we do get a nice moment between the girls. 

“She scooped up a handful of snow and squeezed it between her fingers. Heavy and wet, the snow packed easily. Sansa began to make snowballs, shaping and smoothing them until they were round and white and perfect. She remembered a summer's snow in Winterfell when Arya and Bran had ambushed her as she emerged from the keep one morning. They'd each had a dozen snowballs to hand, and she'd had none. Bran had been perched on the roof of the covered bridge, out of reach, but Sansa had chased Arya through the stables and around the kitchen until both of them were breathless. She might even have caught her, but she'd slipped on some ice. Her sister came back to see if she was hurt. When she said she wasn't, Arya hit her in the face with another snowball, but Sansa grabbed her leg and pulled her down and was rubbing snow in her hair when Jory came along and pulled them apart, laughing.” - Sansa VII, ASoS

And we know from Arya (and that Alyane chapter in TWoW should it ever come out) that there were nice moments between the girls, even after the Trident. I mean Sansa does confide in Arya. 

“Suddenly Arya knew where she had seen those dogs before. The night of the tourney at King's Landing, all the knights had hung their shields outside their pavilions. "That one belongs to the Hound's brother," Sansa had confided when they passed the black dogs on the yellow field. "He's even bigger than Hodor, you'll see. They call him the Mountain That Rides.” - Arya V, ACok 

And Sansa even tells Arya about Jeyne Poole’s crush on Beric Donderrion or at least it is implied. 

“Dondarrion? Beric Dondarrion had been handsome; Sansa's friend Jeyne had fallen in love with him. Even Jeyne Poole was not so blind as to think this man was fair.” - Arya VI, ASoS

“She told me." It all seemed so long ago. "Her friend Jeyne Poole fell in love with your Lord Beric.” - Arya VII, ASoS

So they obviously talked. We just don’t really get to see it. And its important to note that we get it from Arya. Sansa doesn’t usually think about it or mention it. Because that is her whole deal. In order to protect herself, she just doesn’t deal with things. 

Does that mean she is unsympathetic? No. The poor girl deserves sympathy. What it does mean is that is difficult to show what she feels about her sister because she doesn’t think about her sister. Arya thinks about Sansa more because Martin gave her a different defense mechanism. We can point to places where Arya thinks positively of Sansa and it is harder to do that with Sansa. Is it because Sansa is awful? No. It’s because Martin decided that her defense mechanism was to just not think about upsetting things and so she doesn’t think about Arya the way Arya thinks about her.

I would also point out that I think part of the problem is Martin is iffy at writing female familial relations in general. It gets better as the books go on, but still. Your  telling me we couldn’t get one scene with Cat and one of her daughters? Really? Martin doesn’t really show us female familial relations in general, you have a few instances of it, but its rare. We dont even get a scene where Cersei is alone with Myrcella. We know for a fact that Sansa and Arya have good moments, but Martin doesn’t show it in real time and that is kind of annoying. 

[mrfrogmouth]

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

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

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

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

     Because she isn’t fucking Superman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[samnyangie]

Personal reviews on RSL filmography

Rsl, iI thought it’d be a good idea to record my thought on each films rsl was in, it was something I always wanted to do...

Rsl in total, was starred in (excluding tv series etc) 27-ish films, to be honest, considering his years as an actor(approximately more than 30 years) he wasn’t starred in that many. We all know why lol

Just saying I’m not a film expert, therefore the list is very subjective.

The reviews with trigger warning (r*pe, g*re etc): Tape, Killer: Journal of Murder, A glimpse of hell. Tho in the writing I’ve censored them with * since I don’t feel comfortable saying them here

There isn’t particular spoilers except for dps, tape, and ground control

The favourites (literally my life time films)

Dead Poets Society

I assume many would agree, and as many would have, it was my first ever rsl film, like I was on the plane and it was one of the films they offered, and I was like, oh I think i heard of this, so I watched and instantly loved it. The message is very relevant to this day, the cinematography is very beautiful and somehow nostalgic. I was horrified with Neil’s death. Tbh now I’ve seen too many memes and all kind of things from the fandom (which I’m grateful for!) I thought the heartfelt I once had would deluded a bit, however when I watched it again last April with my family at the cinema and it still moved me very deeply.

The age of Innocence

Okay, unpopular opinion here, I love this so much. It’s my all time favourite rsl film. It even outruns dps tiny winy bit haha. Aside from how he had tiny winy screen time, appearing at the end but the fact that he played quite an important role and him being gorgeous in it just<33 I couldn’t help but smiling! It just the whole film was so much of my cup of tea? The melodrama and the hypocrisy hidden by elegance among the upper social classes in 19th century is just what I needed. The more I watch it, the more I understand the characters and their emotions, it’s one of those films you should keep visit to discover the things you weren’t aware of before. I watched it again this morning and i couldn’t stop thinking about it. However, I know some people find it boring and I understand why, my sister is one of them lol(except for a bit where rsl was in) but i think it’s more complex than what it appears to be at a first glance haha. In conclusion, it became one of my comfort film to watch time to time. 

The ones I like<33

Swing kids

At first viewing, I didn’t expected much because it had underwhelming reviews but when I actually saw it, I thought it was quite decent and more and more I watched it, I felt like it was underrated. Yes, I think some directing choices were bit old fashioned and cheesy especially the ending, I’m not saying it was a perfect masterpiece but it deserves more recognition than it has now. Also in spite that there’re some parts being too simplified, it touched on something other films about ww2 normally don’t. It was interesting to see the German perspective on it than Jewish or the allies perspective like many of them does, but of course the latter perspectives matter, it could be argued that they more valid than the former, which partly was where sk criticised for, however, the portrayal of the varied reactions of the German people (in this one particular the teenagers) has its value in their on way. Anyway along side with it, the music and the dance scenes were great, without exaggeration, though Swing kids isn’t my fav, peter’s solo dance scene is my favourite scene in any movies I’ve ever watched. I mean that scene had both visuals and meaning as it demonstrated Peter’s determination as well as resentment with a hitch of unsureness. Rsl acting in that scene was just phenomenal, it’s not about showing off the dancing skills but he portrayed every mixed emotions peter has from his expression and the moves, I just can’t talk about this enough especially this scene was the reason I started fallen for him. lol

Much ado about nothing

Much ado is something I never seen anything like so it was a refreshing exprience. I barely watched Shakespeare on screen kind of thing. Though I felt there were some bits too cheesy for me but they are also the charms in the same time, and the cinematography was pretty also Claudio aka rsl, it was like an official announcement of declaring my worship on this man. Especially it was after SWING KIDSSSS so I couldn’t help it now everyone knows how I fallen for him but no one can blame meeeeee Anyway, it’s a really good film to watch when you want be relaxed with cup of tea maybe hehe

In the gloaming

I heard about it before I watched it, that it’s a heart wrenching, tearful piece, though I didn’t managed to cry, it’s just.... painful and in a way heartfelt. I liked that story telling was calm and collected rather than forcing you to join the sob party, just showing the characters to carry on. And thanks to the great acting from the cast, the characters could be emphasised and understood, personally the older sister was the most relatable character for me, well, eldest complex lol. In short I liked it but it’s not something I would watch it often.

Last days of Disco

As a person who looks at aesthetic in films, I simply enjoyed this for that tbh. I don’t know, I just liked the feeling. But I don’t think it’d be everyone’s cup of tea. I love the day time clothes the girls wore in the film. Tbh I love the music too, I think I love all the films of rsl with music in it. Speaking about rsl, oh rsl, he’s.... His character might be bit unlikable but he was just.... This is why I can’t unlove his characters even the debatable ones<33

They were decent! (I would recommend it)

Married to it

This is the first and last ever attempt of rsl of romcomssss The film itself is cliche to be frank it’s like love actually but it’s about marriage life + it’s not christmas but I like heartfelt cliche stories like this, if anyone also loves this type of story, it’s really worth watching, it’s one of my comfort films, also, rsl is so pretty I mean he always is but to see him being a office man with a baby face made me go awww my baby grew up heheh I wish he did another romcom like this or more preferably, melodramatic romance, I’d have made a shrine of it and worship it every morning lol

The boys next door

I kind of smiled while watching it throughout, if you want something that is heartfelt and touch on some serious topic about social workers and the people with mental disorder, Rsl plays a character who has (I think it was) Schizophrenia and troubled relationship with his father(Deja vu I know) but general atmosphere tend to be quite humourous. I don’t get me wrong, though it’s light hearted, it doesn’t mean they treat the topic in the same way. There’s a scene where the protagonist imagining the one of the characters with the disorder talking eloquently and honourably at the court on the rights and the dignity of the people with mental disorders deserve to/should have and they’re just the same people as the people without mental disorders. It was a powerful scene.

My two loves

Rsl’s first ever screen debut film! Hehe it’s about a woman who is discovering her sexual identity and the conflicts within I personally thought it was fairly sensible depiction but I can’t say for sure whether it was accurate or else, since I don’t think it’s my place to say it:) But if you’re interested, it’s on YouTube, you can just search for it or go to this post I made. Fun fact: since it was his debut film, it credits him as he’s real name, Robert L. Leonard, I just find it amusing haha

Tape

It’s another type of film I don’t encounter that often, I enjoyed it, especially with Neil and Todd’s reunion lol. Rsl mentioned how he enjoyed it because it felt like doing a play, my first impression was that the structure is like a play, though the camera work made me quite dizzy haha. But the dialogues, the acting, I think it was quite spot on. Especially the human contradictions and hypocrisy side of it. The most people assume the baddie in the film is Jon the character rsl played and has a distaste for him. I mean how can anyone love a character who is accused of r*pe but to be honest, Vincent for me seemed just as problematic, both of them are hypocrites for sure in their own different ways but in the end we can’t be sure what’s really the truth or not. It’s about the vagueness, and phychology and the uncertainty from the audience on who to believe(well, myself included, most would trust on Amy’s claims since she’s the victim in the accusation, but by her denying the claims, making everything way unclear,) so I don’t know. I don’t really have an opinion haha tho I don’t believe nothing happened because Amy denied so, even Umma Thurman who played her, said that her interpretation was that Amy lied. I felt it’s endless rabbit hole this film. Sorry I couldn’t worded it better.

My best friend is a Vampire

It’s cringey and weird but there’re odd charm to it. Vampire rsl’s so cute as well.... and I think it’s the only film, he acted kind of flirty ? So for that itself I’d like to appreciate itttt And it’s so 80s/90s, like it has general odd nostalgia like all films from that age has. I saw a Korean blog about rsl films and this was mentioned, that- they said- it’s a bible of rsl’s adorableness and I think that sum up the film perfectly.

Mr&Mrs Bridge

Before this was in ‘I mean it was fine” category, but I watched it again and now I want to retract my statement lol Still isn’t my fav but I noticed how delicately depicted each characters are, Mr and Mrs Bridge in particular. This film is alternatively about the changes in the young generation regarding liberty, feminism, free expression especially on sex. It’s in the perspective of the bridges, the mother and father who is old fashioned and conservative (as it was normal in their previous generation) and the children who are the young generation, and the misunderstanding and conflicts between them. After all it all happened not only because of the difference but also the lack of communication, which rsl emphasised in his interviews. I found it interesting that they made it seems like the Bridges truly existed with the video footage and (with the ending) describing what happened to each family member in text with photos. When I watched it at first I was really confused if it was based on a real life. I think what they wanted to suggest was that the Bridges every typical American family at the time. It was something everyone was going through. I said previously I didn’t get why Rsl’s character (the youngest in the Bridges) treated his mother so coldly. Honestly I do get why, but I guess I felt so bad so the mother haha

I mean it was fine

The safe passage

It was okay but to be honest it didn’t stood out to me. It was okay. The story, the characters weren’t that interesting. I wish they extended it longer to go depth with their family relationship or something.

A painted house

I find it likeable, it has a chill, old folk story vibe, but same as previous one. it didn’t really stand out except for shirtless rsl, do close ups you cowards

Bluffing it

I was really fond of the premise of this film and I think it has great intention. It was specifically made to promote the awareness of illiteracy and how to get support. However, I don’t get the reason of Jack the protagonist’s illiteracy. Unless, it was common occurrence in America at the time, I feel like it’d have been more convincing if he was in poor family hood, so there was no time to learn at school due to working at young age...? I mean, just finding it hard to believe he passed the high school just like that, I mean the teachers or anyone should have noticed it, maybe I’m missing something here but it seemed unlikely to me.

Ground control

Again, I liked the message, as it depicted how frightening and difficult job the ground controller is, by one mistake could take away the lives of hundreds, especially as someone who goes on planes a lot... But it was quite cliche throughout, I just couldn’t get engaged to it. But I do admit at the end when the protagonist runs off to the landing zone see the pilot who he had just saved, they acknowledged each other and have eye contacts was truly wholesome. Rsl as cocky, bad boy was such a icing on the cake, I loved it so much. Chewing gum in every scene lol I hope he plays these sort of characters more often. I saw someone criticising him saying he has narrow spectrum of just playing nice boy roles like Neil but I really wanted to debunk the narrative and this could be one of the examples! 

Chelsea walls

I knew that this has split reviews but nonetheless I think worth to watch it, 1. Ethan and rsl re union, 2. Ethan is the directer of the film and rsl sing in it. But I have to say, it’s one of those hard to follow art indie film so I couldn’t finish it on one go. I feel like I have to devour it over and over again. Maybe later on I grow fond of it more lol But his character, I loved him so much. He’s just has everyone don’t touch me, I’m a cocky artist vibe, there’s a scene where his annoying friend annoying him and he looks up and says: ‘Fck off’. Absolute golddddd not to mention he sings and plays guitar so beautifully<333

Well... it’s not my cup of tea

The Manhattan project

I don’t think the film it self was that bad, it’s about high school boy who find out the existence of some nuclear energy research lab and stole the energy to make his own nuclear bomb. I just don’t get the thinking process of the protagonist. It really frustrated me. He seemed apathetic and unlikable I disliked him throughout and that’s why I didn’t really enjoyed it. I mean it has humour and ridiculous storyline might be humorous to some. But more importantly there was such little screen time for rsl!! LIKE WHY? WHY PEOPLE?? HE LOOKS LIKE A FRESH HUMAN MOCHI!!! It makes me soooo mad to think about it

Killer: Journal of Murder

Well, first of all, it had a lot of graphic things than I imagined, brutally murd*red bodies, execution, and r*pe scene, gosh I was strucken by it when I saw that, I had to skipped that scene. It’s based on a real event and a real criminal called Carl Panzram, so if you’re aware of it, it might be more intriguiging to see. But personally for me... meh, I don’t think directing was good as it failed to portray it enough for me to comprehend fully.

A Glimpse of Hell

This is also based on a true event of a tragic accident in the us battleship in Iowa in 1989. They shows tragedy lin a blunt, brutal way by showing horribly damaged bodies of the soldiers torn into pieces, all the horrid things directly so be warned about that. I was quite alarmed because i didn’t expect to see it haha there’s no much to say. The film quality was so so for me. I feel their approach wasn’t appropriate, they were clearly trying to make it dramatic which is fine but in a melodramatic emotional way. It didn’t work because first, there aren’t enough portrayal of the characters for me to get attached, secondly it added the unnecessary exaggeration it prevented me from being emotionally involved or even to think about it. In my opinion, I think it’d have been better if they made it more restrained, dry, focus on the accuracy. For example like 1987 or Zodiac, I mean both of them has dramatic elements since they’re not a documentary but they were not overdone, in a contrary added emphasis to their message/conclusion. I know it’s easier said than done but it was something I consistently felt during it.

Sir.... I’m sorry but-

Standoff

Haha... it’s very peculiar... the directing is off and it just weird. I knew it was bad already but I watched it because rsl as a cop with gunssssssss just... so rare and just.... something else. There’s no way of me missing that seriously. Tbh him doing an action stunt isn’t what I imagine when it comes to him and there’s really any actions scenes anyway but it really was something. Like the character he played here really became my soft spot Hehehehe he was pretty and plus, tbh it’s kind of film I’d make fun of while watching so everything was (alomst) forgivable. There is a recent thing I think about, since this is about a cult, I kind of hope he’d at some day play a role like Eli Sunday from There will be blood: a manipulative, deceitful and maddened priest with twisted faith. Though Paul Dano did a grand job, the idea was in my head the whole time. Well, it’s a shame he wasn’t any of those here lol

Driven

From what I seen, the majority of people seem to unanimously hate this film, and after watching it I became one of those ppl. At least Standoff could be make fun of and rsl held gunssss but this...... I want to say so many things... I feel like they should have chose either fancy, fast paced, thrilling racing film or detailed depiction of emotions/relationships with the racers and people involved in it, I know both can be done, but I think that was outside of their ability, but since they tried to do that at once, it became a mess that doesn’t go either way. And the characters, any of them, including rsl’s are narrow or impossible to understand. I mean rsl did great himself, it was not about acting, the problem lies on the script and editing in my opinion. Also there were so many unnecessary characters made me question of their existence. Luckily rsl’s character isn’t one of them, however because of them, he had to squeeze in and unable to elaborate, which is a shame as he was an interesting character and someone rsl rarely plays; a arrogant and opportunist agent/brother of the protagonist, who would do anything for success... ha.... whyyyyy

This is it. If I watch other stuff I might add to it in the future. Overall, I know I’m biased but I do like His filmography, I do have appreciations in every one of them in different way to the good ones to bad. He may have disagree, but I love his acting on screen, well, I barely seen him on stage (crying)

Edit: as some of you could see, I’ve edited this over and over again haha elaborating on thing or the contrary. I can say with a glimpse of hell I practically managed to watch every rsl films out there lol except for the i inside and the short film he did called a dog race in Alaska. But with the former I’m not interested and already know the storyline, and the latter is just impossible to find, trust me I did my best;; 

So to sum up: I HAVE MASTERED THE RSL FILMOGRAPHY!

[bubonickitten]

Relistening to TMA yet again (new hyperfixation, what can I say), and I can’t emphasize enough how much these early episodes kill me.

Because for a long time, Jon doesn’t realize what he’s becoming. And yeah, that’s obvious -- but it’s even more heartbreaking on a relisten, because he senses that something is off, but from his perspective the changes are so incremental that he doesn’t realize how much he’s changing until he’s in too deep. 

He finds himself getting attached to this tape recorder (even when he initially hated it), but tries not to think too hard about that. He’s becoming obsessed with recording everything, and tells himself that he’s doing it for posterity’s sake. Jon is adept at using outward denial to hide his inner, nonstop, overthinking doubt. (Eventually it escalates to full-blown paranoid information gathering, which I think is where the Eye’s influence really starts to show, but more on that later.)

At first, it’s a safe half-lie (or at least not full-truth) to tell himself. He’s an academic, a researcher. He no doubt has a deep appreciation for the preservation of history, for the documentation of human experience -- that part is probably true. It’s how he makes sense of the world (and that started when he was a child, when the main way he interacted with the world was through books). And let’s be honest, the man is a nerd, and (I say this lovingly and with a tendency to infodump myself) he was probably prone to infodumping long before he became the Archivist. (Giving a Wikipedia summary of emulsifiers at a coworker’s birthday party, anyone?)

But beneath all that, Jon is just... scared. And Jonathan Sims comes to fear a lot of things, but one of his first fears was being forgotten. So it’s no wonder he takes so well to the compulsion to record, document, archive. 

Makes sense; he was, by his own admission, emotionally neglected as a child. And sometimes harassed. He chalked it up to being “a deeply annoying child,” which -- oof, no wonder he acts like an ass sometimes. Even if he was adept at social interaction (which he’s not), keeping people at arm’s length can feel a lot safer than letting them close and risking rejection when they decide you’re too much to handle. 

Point is, being ignored or ostracized was already painful, but it became his normal. Being forgotten, though, would be a existentially terrifying step beyond that. 

All of this is put into even starker relief after “A Guest For Mr. Spider.” At 8 years old he witnessed someone get snatched from the world without a trace – someone ten years his senior, who died because he made the choice to torment Jon and just did so at the exact wrong moment (or perhaps right? Maybe the Web decided that early that Jon was more useful alive). But despite the fact that it was his bully, Jon has survivor’s guilt over it. He feels responsible. He admits that it’s illogical for him to think he could have done anything  differently—he was eight—but he still comes out of that experience with the fundamental belief that being forgotten would be a unique kind of punishment that he believes even his bully didn’t deserve.

It’s such a raw, vulnerable moment when he finally admits it out loud: “Because I’m scared, Martin!” All that denial was external, and so fragile that it took one panicked moment for him to drop the veneer. But internally? Jokes about his obliviousness aside -- and, yes, in a lot of ways, Jon is that smart dumbass -- he’s got some self-awareness. He’s put two and two together, realized that the “real” statements don’t record digitally. He’s seen the artifact storage. He’s had a Leitner-based trauma, like so many statement givers. He’s just scared and he Does. Not. Want. To. Talk. About. It. 

He tries to hide it early on behind a cold, stoic academic demeanor, but that… doesn’t last long, and once that veneer drops, he absolutely spirals into open paranoia and fear. And going forward, he really doesn’t hide his terror much. When he’s threatened, we hear him beg for his life. Even when he thinks the world might be better off without him, he still doesn’t want to die. He’s afraid of death, and after S1, he doesn’t try to pretend otherwise. (I really appreciate a horror protagonist who shows fear even when they’re trying to be brave.) 

So, by the end of S1, we get to see him start to admit that his new obsessive behavior is not just a detached academic interest, or his workaholic urge to do his job well. It’s because he’s scared. But beyond that, through S2 and into S3, he starts to admit that beneath that, there’s something else going on. His rapidly escalating paranoia spiral is due to trauma, as well as the realization that Gertrude was murdered, as well as the general sense of uneasiness and distrusts that permeates the Institute (the Eye loves that shit), but also, honestly?? I think this is where the Eye starts to really get a grip on him. The Ceaseless Watcher, the fear of, in Gerry’s words, “needing to know, even if your discoveries might destroy you. The feeling that something, somewhere, is letting you suffer, just so it can watch.”

Beyond the tape recorder obsession, Jon doesn’t seem to notice early on that when he reads statements, it’s almost like he’s in a trance. (I think one of the first episodes where he starts to notice this is actually in MAG 32, when he’s reading Jane Prentiss’ statement. His introduction to the statement is shaky, stilted, like he’s dreading it; when he’s reading Jane Prentiss’ words, it’s like he’s channeling her tone and delivery in a far more extreme way than he has before; and when he’s done, he’s clearly unsettled by the experience.) 

(Another thing that stands out to me on a relisten is his tone shift when talking to Elias in MAG 40 -- he has an almost dreamy, trancelike delivery of the line: “Tens of thousands of... things without mouths screaming as one.” Like he’s reliving a flashback, yes, but there’s something else in his delivery of that line that continues to show up in his later spooky-Archivist-powers moments. And Elias pauses, and I can only imagine him thinking in that moment, all smug and conniving, Good. Jon is starting to become The Archivist.)

And, of course, Jon also doesn’t notice when he starts being able to compel statements--which is kind of funny, because my first thought when listening to early statements was, “How are all these statements so detailed and coherent? Did all these statement givers take creative writing classes or something?” But Jon doesn’t really seem to question that at first. It becomes more clear when the archive assistants try to take statements -- the statement givers can’t stay on topic, can’t remember details, can’t relive the moment in the same way they can if they’re forced to through compulsion. Adelard Dekker mentions that in one of his letters to Gertrude, too. It’s also sad, though, because he kept getting accused of forcing people to answer questions when he didn’t realize he was doing it (e.g. his interviews with Basira, Daisy, and Jude). 

It’s just... such a gradual downward spiral. And yeah, there’s something tragic about that--and it isn’t going to end well; this is a horror-tragedy story after all--but one of the things I like about Jon is that he works so, so hard to change and become a better person in spite of what the Beholding is trying to turn him into. 

I’m getting way off-topic. Basically, Jonny Sims is... very good at character development, and it’s fun to relisten and start to pick out the moments when things start to go wrong, the little details that maybe didn’t stand out so much on my first listen. Admittedly I, much like Jon Sims, have my own little conspiracy corkboard flavor of overthinking, so some of this might just be me reading too far into it. But still, I like all the layers going on here. 

[alinaastarkov]

Are there any specific Jonrya Quotes that doesn't mean sibling love? If so which ones?

Yes! Loads! Thanks for this ask.

She [Ygritte] is no older than I am. Something about her made him think of Arya, though they looked nothing at all alike. "Will you yield?" he asked, giving the dirk a half turn. And if she doesn't? - Jon VI ACOK

I don’t know about you guys, but it’s not often I’m romantically attracted to someone who immediately reminds me of my sibling. But hey, maybe that’s just me.

Ygritte watched and said nothing. She was older than he'd thought at first, Jon realized; maybe as old as twenty, but short for her age, bandy-legged, with a round face, small hands, and a pug nose. Her shaggy mop of red hair stuck out in all directions. She looked plump as she crouched there, but most of that was layers of fur and wool and leather. Underneath all that she could be as skinny as Arya. - Jon VI ACOK

Once again, I tend not to imagine my (future) romantic partner’s naked body and think of my sibling. I’m starting to sense a pattern 🤔

"NO!" Arya and Gendry both said, at the exact same instant. Hot Pie quailed a little. Arya gave Gendry a sideways look. He said it with me, like Jon used to do, back in Winterfell. She missed Jon Snow the most of all her brothers. - Arya I ASOS

Even Arya is comparing her (future potential) love interest to Jon. It’s an epidemic!

She reminded him a little of his sister Arya, though Arya was younger and probably skinnier. It was hard to tell how plump or thin Ygritte might be, with all the furs and skins she wore. - Jon II ASOS

Yet another instance of Jon thinking of Ygritte’s body beneath her clothes and thinking of Arya. Hmm, suspicious 👀

"If you kill a man, and never mean t', he's just as dead," Ygritte said stubbornly. Jon had never met anyone so stubborn, except maybe for his little sister Arya. Is she still my sister? he wondered. Was she ever? - Jon III ASOS

Kind of strange to question his relationship to Arya, especially after all of those inappropriate thoughts regarding Ygritte. And to question only Arya? Seems like someone really wishes they weren’t blood related so it wouldn’t feel wrong to think of her that way...

"It wasn't Longspear, then?" Jon was relieved. He liked Longspear, with his homely face and friendly ways. She punched him. "That's vile. Would you bed your sister?" "Longspear's not your brother." - Jon III ASOS

Real smooth, Jon. Real smooth. Notice how he totally dodges the question? How we never get an answer on if he would bed his sister? Perhaps because the answer is yes?? Notice how this sounds a lot like it might tie in to “their passion will continue to torment them until the secret of Jon’s parentage is revealed in the last book”? Very suspicious.

"He's with the Night's Watch on the Wall." Maybe I should go to the Wall instead of Riverrun. Jon wouldn't care who I killed or whether I brushed my hair . . . "Jon looks like me, even though he's bastard-born. He used to muss my hair and call me 'little sister.'" Arya missed Jon most of all. Just saying his name made her sad. - Arya VIII ASOS

“I know where we could go," Arya said. She still had one brother left. Jon will want me, even if no one else does. He'll call me "little sister" and muss my hair. - Arya XII ASOS

Maybe not explicitly romantic per se, but it is telling that she genuinely believes her own mother and brother would not want her for superficial reasons and because of the people she killed in self-defense, but her belief in Jon doesn’t waver for a single second.

Jon has a mother. Wylla, her name is Wylla. She would need to remember so she could tell him, the next time she saw him. She wondered if he would still call her "little sister." I'm not so little anymore. He'd have to call me something else. - Arya VIII ASOS

Arya’s questioning her relationship with him too?! To distance herself from him and subconsciously make it easier to deal with romantic feelings in the future?! Will it ever end?!

"It's just a sword," she said, aloud this time . . . . . . but it wasn't.  Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell's grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan's stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow's smile. He used to mess my hair and call me "little sister," she remembered, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes. - Arya II AFFC

This is so sweet and the specificity of his smile over the more general descriptions of the rest of her family mark it out as different in some way.

She had never cared if she was pretty, even when she was stupid Arya Stark. Only her father had ever called her that. Him, and Jon Snow, sometimes. Her mother used to say she could be pretty if she would just wash and brush her hair and take more care with her dress, the way her sister did. To her sister and sister's friends and all the rest, she had just been Arya Horseface. But they were all dead now, even Arya, everyone but her half-brother, Jon. Some nights she heard talk of him, in the taverns and brothels of the Ragman's Harbor. The Black Bastard of the Wall, one man had called him. Even Jon would never know Blind Beth, I bet. That made her sad. - The Blind Girl ADWD

Arya loves Jon so much she wishes he could meet her alter-egos too. Ugh, the romantic angst is too much.

"He's to marry Arya Stark. My little sister." Jon could almost see her in that moment, long-faced and gawky, all knobby knees and sharp elbows, with her dirty face and tangled hair. They would wash the one and comb the other, he did not doubt, but he could not imagine Arya in a wedding gown, nor Ramsay Bolton's bed. No matter how afraid she is, she will not show it. If he tries to lay a hand on her, she'll fight him. "Your sister," Iron Emmett said, "how old is …" By now she'd be eleven, Jon thought. Still a child. "I have no sister. Only brothers. Only you." Lady Catelyn would have rejoiced to hear those words, he knew. That did not make them easier to say. His fingers closed around the parchment. Would that they could crush Ramsay Bolton's throat as easily. - Jon VI ADWD

Once again, Jon thinks of Arya in a way that a brother really shouldn’t think of a sister. Funny how he specifically says “Ramsay Bolton’s bed”, and not just any man’s bed? Maybe because he can imagine her in someone’s (his)? Either way, weird thing to think about, Jon. And a very violent reaction to your sister’s marriage. Way more than his reaction to another sister’s marriage. Definitely intense feeling that goes beyond sibling bond.

"I have no sister." The words were knives. What do you know of my heart, priestess? What do you know of my sister? Melisandre seemed amused. "What is her name, this little sister that you do not have?" "Arya." His voice was hoarse. "My half-sister, truly …" - Jon VI ADWD

Need I say more?

Jon felt fifteen years old again. Little sister. - Jon IX ADWD

This is not so big in terms of non-sibling feelings but it is a very intense reaction and also I love Jon being such an emo little shit here cause... Jon, bby, you’re sixteen. Calm down.

The girl smiled in a way that reminded Jon so much of his little sister that it almost broke his heart. "Let him be scared of me." The snowflakes were melting on her cheeks, but her hair was wrapped in a swirl of lace that Satin had found somewhere, and the snow had begun to collect there, giving her a frosty crown. Her cheeks were flushed and red, and her eyes sparkled. "Winter's lady." Jon squeezed her hand. - Jon X ADWD

This is such a romanticised scene and the fact that it mentions Arya at the same time, and Jon’s intense feeling again, gives me pause and made me put it on this list.

It had been so long since he had last seen Arya. What would she look like now? Would he even know her? Arya Underfoot. Her face was always dirty. Would she still have that little sword he'd had Mikken forge for her? Stick them with the pointy end, he'd told her. Wisdom for her wedding night if half of what he heard of Ramsay Snow was true. Bring her home, Mance. I saved your son from Melisandre, and now I am about to save four thousand of your free folk. You owe me this one little girl. - Jon XI ADWD

Again, veeeerrry intense feelings, the mention of her wedding night again, and the fact that he once more questions his relationship with her. It’s too repetitive and obvious not to mean something.

You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird's nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … "I think we had best change the plan," Jon Snow said. - Jon XIII ADWD

So, Jon thinks of his former lover and Arya right after, repeats the phrase “I want my bride back” specifically in reference to Arya, and imo “bride” is not what you call someone you have only platonic/ familial feelings for. That would be very weird. Then he abandons all his vows, something he had the opportunity to do and didn’t at least 3 separate times, for and only for Arya, and if that ain’t just the most romantic shit you ever heard. And then of course he literally dies with her as his last thought. Romantic. As. Fuck!

There is more than this, but you asked for things that don’t also mean sibling love, so here you go! 🤗