#intertextuality of sorts

[elisaenglish]

Forever deep will I endart mine eye, for looking liking you...

[chiropteracupola]

Creamthing d'or passant reguardant, by a sheaf of arrows percée ...and Montjoy also.

[creamthing is the creation of the inimitable @samsketchbook; despite this choice of adjective, I have nonetheless tried my best at a little heraldic creamthing]

[hairierduballs]

revachol, forever

DOLORES DEI - "It's all gone. I have to go to the aerodrome. I have to leave Revachol and you. And you have to be alone -- in hell, forever. That's just the way it is."

-

RADIO - "Revachol (Zone of Control), 0° centigrade, black ice warning."

-

SHIVERS - Outside, the howl of the wind has picked up. The waves crash against the stilts again. It's as if you think the thought, but in someone else's voice...

SHIVERS - REVACHOL FOREVER

-

SHIVERS - YOU CANNOT LEAVE. SO MUCH HANGS IN THE BALANCE.

-

INLAND EMPIRE - A little rhyme jingling in your mind's attic... "Of the future, of the past/ Of all that is not made to last"...

-

MAIL COLLECTION BOX - The mail collection box seems cathartic, thankful even. So do you. You shudder. Then you swallow.

SHIVERS - And then suddenly you see it: over all the other graffitos someone has -- using the tip of a very sharp knife -- cut the words: REVACHOL FOREVER.

-

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Hordes of wild homeless people roaming the lands, nomads scattered across an endless plain in a dystopian world where tare is the only valid currency... and people eat each other to stay alive.

LILIENNE, THE NET PICKER - "I don't mean to complain about my pauper life. We are warm and fed here and..." She smiles faintly and plucks some seaweed out of the net. "I don't know, there's just something about this shit hole."

SHIVERS - A sudden gust of cold air blows in from the sea. The waves flow and ebb, around you the fishing village takes its slow and steady breaths... its many wooden structures worn by bitter years of salt and storm.

YOU - Shake off the stupor.

SHIVERS - Even at the worst of times, Revachol cares for its inhabitants.

-

YOU - Was I right?

SHIVERS - YOU WERE.

-

SHIVERS - The wind stops and for a moment there's silence. The cold dissipates into your parietal lobe like a dissolved bullet. All is quiet on the Martinaise inlet...

PERCEPTION (HEARING) - A dog barks and a gunshot echoes off the walls of some distant building. A woman's voice...

SHIVERS - REVACHOL FOREVER.

-

INLAND EMPIRE - No storm will ever drown Revachol, the great solution to the riddle of history.

-

YOU - "History loves to rhyme. I'll bet Revachol has its day again."

-

YOU - "What is this place? Where am I?"

KLAASJE (MISS ORANJE DISCO DANCER) - "You're in a hostel, sir."

YOU - "No -- *where* are we? Where in the world?"

KLAASJE (MISS ORANJE DISCO DANCER) - "We are in Revachol."

ENCYCLOPEDIA - Revachol is the disgraced former capital of the world, divided into zones of control under foreign occupation -- half a century after a failed world revolution. She is central to our moment in time.

YOU - "Revachol forever."

-

SHIVERS - And ever and ever...

-

JOYCE MESSIER - "Forever?" She cocks her head sideways. "In twenty years Revachol went from a king to a commune to a Zone of Control. She *is* forever. But the next thing she will be is something else."

-

SHIVERS - The lights of the orphan district are reflected in his glasses: the red and golden orbs of the motorway sliding like pearls on a string, from East to West, as Revachol commutes back to the suburbs. Tomorrow is Tuesday. Monday is over.

-

INLAND EMPIRE - Compared to the intersection, in front of Video Revachol 24 -- it's nothing. Compared to that, everything is possible.

SHIVERS - Stop and you can go to the Burnt Out Quarter. And meet me there -- wafting above the burnt ruins. Like the smell of caramel -- Le Retour is waiting.

[ words sourced from fayde ]

[telvayns]

what’s ur ao3?

you can find me here!

for anyone who didn't know, in a couple days' time i will be posting the first chapter or so from my fitzier pale rider (1985) au, revelation 6:8, for cowboyshowfest!! i'm very happy w/ how it's turned out so i'm really excited to see what people think of it.

you can get a taster for it from the first art i did w/ this au right here!

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

Olive Llewellyn says she doesn't want to write autobiographical novels but she's a character in one and the same. Emily St. John Mandel wrote Station Eleven in 2015 and five years later look what happened and then she wrote this. Olive wrote a novel about a pandemic and then nearly died in one and went on to write science fiction. Olive doesn't want to write autobiographically but she is WRITTEN so. every character in every book has something of the author in them, or at least I think so and it's how I myself write, but it's so so clear in this book who their author is. and she's so GENTLE about it!! invites the reader into her mindscape for a little while: all things are delicately interconnected. there is nothing new under the sun. they had light inside as well as cold, I've been thinking a great deal about time and motion lately. nothing happens the same way twice and everything balances on a needle's edge the way it is-was-has-is going to happen. we don't understand what or who strikes that balance, sets things in motion, opens that door to access the light. we don't know we're an autobiographical character in an author's story, or at least, can't fully comprehend that. sometimes it all leads back to an airport, for whatever reason. any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is NOT entirely coincidental. survival is insufficient. what if it's always the end of the world?

[joycrispy]

I have had a very good day today. :)

I am very much in the mood to plow through my reading list (which is quite beefy atm --been lazy this last week, so there's a slight backlog), maybe give GOmens another rewatch, and then we'll see what comes out of that. Almost certain SOMETHING will.

I will now plant my face in a book until I pass out.

[napneeders]

so I asked for smut prompts, @brigdh provided "burning up", my brain took a sharp turn to less smut and more angst. (probably M rated. ~900 words.) based on The Little Match Girl by H. C. Andersen. (a few sentences are lifted from the translation by Jean Hersholt.) I may or may not edit this more at some point; constructive criticism is welcome.

It was so terribly cold. A biting sleet bombarded the streets, the last stragglers hurrying home few and far between. Izzy hunched his shoulders against the rain, though little did it do to keep him from getting damp to the bone, drowned in an ice bucket like a weak kitten.

He couldn't remember why he was here, on land, in this shithole town that his brain screeched at him not to recognize. It was New Year's Eve. The streets were empty and dark, only lit here and there by the spill of light from a window; houses filled with families warm and merry and sated from a meal as extravagant as each could afford.

There was no going home for Izzy; if there was a home, it would be cold and miserable, his father drunk, his mother taken to bed by midday. But that was far in the past, anyway.

All he had managed to steal from rich people's pockets all day were a few pennies, a book of matches, and the cruel fleeting sensation of soft fur lining tearing at his frost-bitten hands. The pennies were long gone, and so was the brief respite from hunger a bowl of soup had lent him.

From the side of an imposing stone house, a narrow awning stuck out. Against his better judgement Izzy slowed his steps. He would rest under it for just a moment. Give his face a reprieve from the biting rain before going on. He squatted under the awning amid a few forgotten tools, the space not high enough to stand, the ground not dry enough to sit. He wasn't wearing leather – but why had he thought he should be?

Digging his hands into his pockets for a modicum of warmth, he found himself fingering the matchbook. He should hold onto it; goodness knew he would need to light many a fire yet if he was to survive in this cold unforgiving world. But perhaps he could light just one match to warm his hands. It was so cold.

He took out the little flat package and looked inside. A few matches were gone; many more remained. Izzy struck one against the cold wall and cupped his palms around it. It burned like a little candle, but what a strange light it gave! It felt almost as if he was curled up in front of a fire, a plush blanket wrapped over his shoulders, perhaps spread there by caring hands. Red and yellow tongues of flame leapt and licked at each other, warmth engulfed him, filled him up inside –

But just then the match turned black and bit his fingers, and the fireplace disappeared. He was back in the cold, wet, freezing night.

He would light just one more. The match stuttered into a bright flame, and he could see, as if through a glass window, into a room bathed in the gentle orange of innumerable candles, crowding the surfaces of entire tables, wax melting together at the base and dripping to the floor. The dancing light glimmered on the gold embroidery of a translucent curtain, drawn in front of an alcove; two shadows moved behind the veil, fluid and entwined, as if embracing – 

The flame died. Just once more he would trade security for the fleeting comfort of – but he could not name it; he struck another match. In the wavering light he saw a man, as if from above, languishing in satin sheets, beautiful in such a way that made the soul ache. His eyes were shut, dark lashes quivering against his cheeks, mouth parted to sigh, and long black hair fell around him like a halo. Izzy would be a strand in his hair, a molecule in the flame. A red robe fell open; the man threw back his head –

Quickly and without thought, Izzy's stiff fingers fumbled for the next match, willing the image not to disappear. But he saw another man now, golden-haired and kind-eyed, mouthing words that Izzy couldn't hear. The image was so warm and close that it was almost as if he was right there, and as the man reached out his hand, Izzy extended his own –

Match after match he lit, driven by yearning and chased by shame; and before his eyes fingers twined together, gentle hands touched skin, mouths sought each other in passion; the tiny flames fizzled in and out; the two men touched each other without a shred of clothing or shame between them, melting golden in the firelight. Izzy would be a shadow on the wall, a pattern in the silk, a whisper of air to be near them. With each fleeting image he burned higher; with each crackle of sulphur he set ablaze another strand tethering him to the world.

But the little matchbook was getting damp, the fire harder to coax out. In a final desperation he tore off the last handful of matches, and struck them all at once. And the matches burned with such a glow that it became brighter than daylight. The two men grew resplendent, tangled in each other, he could see them clearly now in their bed behind the gold-trimmed veil; and he was in their mingled breath and in their shared release of tension, in the flexing of muscles against each other, and he was warm and dry and at peace.

But under the narrow awning, fallen to his side, lay the body of an unremarkable ageing man, frozen to death on the last evening of the old year.

*

*

aaaaand it's up to you whether he dies alone in a miserable little bed somewhere or whether this is a fever dream while Ed and Stede dab at his forehead with a cold rag.

[intermundia]

So the reason I love fanfiction is intertextuality. I love allusions to canon woven into a new narrative, and building in my mind the complex web of references that all contextualize each other. It's those links that add depth of meaning to a fanfic, metatextual weight to characters and locations. I think the better the transformative process of fanwork, the more of the original it carries inside, the denser and richer points of reference to the story on the other end. If you think of a canon fact as a color, the more vibrant the fanwork, the bigger thrill I get from it. It lights up more of my brain.

There's this thing I like to do where I will find a media property that I know nothing about but has a sufficient high quality body of work, obikin, geraskier, merthur, etc. I will read thousands of fanfics and build up a mental map of the series in my mind, noticing things referenced by multiple stories in different ways and trying to extrapolate back to an original event in the canon story. The more references to an event, the more specific and real it is, whereas other things referenced by one or two people exist in a quasi real state, smaller nodes in the network as it were. 

Once I've built up a robust mental map of a story, I will watch the series. I will watch the Clone Wars, the Witcher, Merlin, etc., and compare my expectations with the reality of the canon narratives. I will observe the ways in which fandom skewed the story via emphasis, or where it improved the story via giving interiority to characters in traumatic or intimate moments. Once I've finished watching the series, and have canon fixed in my mind, I reread all my favorite stories with a richer mental picture of each one, really savoring the work of the author in engaging with a story I love.

I genuinely think this is a sort of wish fulfillment from my time as a classicist where all we could do was build up a mental map of the extant texts, but there was no way to ‘watch the original’ as it where, no way to check how historians and poets transformed their experience. It's a guilty pleasure to apply the same conceptual mapping skills I learned for antiquity to pop culture, one degree removed from reality, but I enjoy it so much and spend way too much time doing it (when I should be writing). I wonder if other people do this though, it's kind of a tumblr ass hobby lmao

[hauntingofhouses]

BRB thinking thoughts about Taigen's character, the TaiMizu ship, and a big chunk of fandom's perceptions regarding both those things.

(Inspired by @farintonorth's post related to this topic that just got my brain going brrrrr)

OK so let me just... start off by saying that I think that reducing stories to their tropes is seriously detrimental to the way some people are interacting with fiction, and while that honestly warrants its own post about the subject, I wanna talk specifically about how this affects the way some people in the fandom talk about Taigen and TaiMizu.

Because yeah, tropes are useful shorthand to refer to certain dynamics or archetypes etc, and they are indeed the building blocks to any story. But in a well-written story, characters and their relationships, actions, and motivations, are much more complex than just tropes. Because in a story that has characters who are more than just cardboard cutouts, their behaviours, backgrounds, motivations and all of that, are inseparable from the context of the overall story they exist in.

So like, sure, you can say Mizu and Taigen have an enemies-to-lovers or rivals-to-lovers dynamic. I also use those terms because it's easier. But I also think this is where things start to get a bit twisted, especially from an intertextual sense. Because "enemies-to-lovers" is also commonly used to refer to other ships in other media, whereby it tends to be rooted in an imbalanced power dynamic, such as oppressor-oppressed and bully-victim.

And while that's a whole can of worms that I won't be getting into because it can quickly derail into a whole separate sort of fandom discourse, I'd just like to make it clear that Mizu and Taigen, in particular, do not have an imbalanced power dynamic. They are not bully-victim or oppressor-oppressed. The only understandable reason why someone might actually think their relationship is imbalanced is if

A) they only watched the first episode, or

B) they cannot grasp the slightest bit of nuance in a character, or

C) they're being obtuse on purpose simply because the Mizu/Taigen relationship, or Taigen's character in general, just doesn't suit their tastes.

While yes, Taigen, along with his whole gang, had bullied Mizu when they were children, that dynamic does not exist between them whatsoever in adulthood. Whatever imbalanced bully-victim power dynamic that had once existed between them was decisively ripped apart the moment Mizu beat him in that duel in the dojo, and then completely obliterated by the end of the season.

Mizu is not a defenseless victim at Taigen's mercy. Mizu can beat Taigen's ass any time she wants (and she DOES, repeatedly in fact), and could even kill him if she felt like it. She taunts him openly and without fear ("I like your hair"; "I can beat you with any weapon you choose") and all he does is bark back, because that's pretty much all Taigen ever does. Time and time again, he yaps about how much he wants to kill her, but time and time again, his actions prove that all of it is just an empty threat. Because though his words say "I hate you", his actions demonstrate the complete opposite. He's shown how protective he is of Mizu, how unhesitatingly he sacrifices himself up for her, how loyal he is in enduring days-long torture to not give up information about her, how even when near-death and in pain, he's still willing to keep standing back up so he can fight by her side and help her win against her enemies.

And Mizu is not an idiot! She sees that too. She does not see him as a threat, an enemy, or even a bully. Especially not by the end of Episode 3, and definitely not by the end of the season. When she finds him in the dungeon in Episode 6, she smiles from relief, and doesn't think twice to take him with her. Mizu finds him, at best, an annoyance, or at worst, an infuriating hindrance on her quest for vengeance. Which is why, when Taigen is about to say, "It's a shame our duel's set for tomorrow; I have to kill you before you get your revenge," Mizu whacks him on the head without a second thought before he can even finish his sentence, and leaves him lying unconscious, face-down, in the snow.

And this further emphasises how he does not hold any power over her. There is no abusive power dynamic between them. She is more powerful than him, he knows this, and all he's ever done after they've met up again in adulthood is get his ass whooped by her, get mad about it and pester her and follow her around, get his ass whooped by her some more, and put his life on the line to protect her.

"OOoooOOoooH b-but he called her a demon at the end of Episode 7 and threatened to kill her again!!!" Oh my god. He called her that because he's calling her out on her selfishness to stay silent about her knowledge of Fowler's plans to attack Edo. Because to him, loyalty and honour as a samurai is more important than anything. So in his own brash-and-immature Taigen way, he felt betrayed that Mizu did not hold the same principles. That's why he got angry. He wasn't even that mad about letting Akemi get dragged off by the Tokunobu guards. It was about saving the Shogun and the Shogunate as a whole. That's why the first thing he does in Edo is not find Akemi, but try to warn the Shogun about Fowler's attack.

Look, I'm not defending his stupid ass, of course. Because calling her a demon especially after their cute little wrestling time was obviously rude and inappropriate, especially since words like "demon", "monster" and "Onryo" have had such a deep effect on Mizu throughout her life, and continue to contribute to her self-hatred. But like? That's the fun of realistic and flawed characters, and realistic and flawed relationships. They're not perfect, and it's why we as an audience root for them, wanting to see them work through their shit and find a way to prevail despite it all.

Also, him saying that was in the heat of the moment. He was angry, he felt like his initial belief of who Mizu was—a strong and loyal samurai, just like him—was shattered, and so he lashed out. Was it rude? Definitely. Was it immature of him? Yes, incredibly. But it's also very much in line with his character, because even though he's grown a lot over the course of the season, the show isn't over yet, so obviously his character arc is just beginning, as that is also the case for the other three main characters: Mizu is beginning to accept herself, Akemi is beginning to grow into her position of power, Ringo beginning to train under Master Eiji, while Taigen is beginning to simply be a better person.

On that note, when speaking of Taigen's immaturity, I think that's also one of the main things that people tend to gloss over when it comes to his character. Because when you boil everything down to its bare essentials, Taigen is, essentially, a boy. I've talked about this before, but to reiterate, Taigen very much behaves like an unhealed child. Even as an adult, he is insecure, prone to throwing tantrums, and is desperate to latch onto some material goal in hopes that it will make him feel better—initially he was chasing status/glory/greatness, and then when Mizu tells him that "Nothing comes from being a samurai but death," he immediately decides he wants to run away with Akemi in hopes that he will be happy.

And it's a big step, acknowledging that he doesn't truly want greatness, but had always just assumed it was his only path to a good life. But it's clear he still hasn't really figured it out. Because if he did run off with Akemi to get married and live in the countryside, he still wouldn't be happy. Because he still doesn't know who he really is, or what it is he really wants. Marriage at this moment is the last thing he needs, and as he is now, he would be a pretty awful husband. A simple life would be good for him, but would he be good at a simple life, when he still has so much he needs to work through?

So anyway, what I'm getting at here, is that he's trying and he is learning and growing. So yeah, he is flawed, but honestly? So is Mizu. And the funny thing is that they're flawed in very similar ways.

Because Mizu is also an unhealed child. That's why she's so angry all the time. That's why she pushes people away. That's why she, just like Taigen, is so happy when given the chance to playfully wrestle in the forge, laughing and rolling around like children without shame or pretense.

Again, this shows there is no imbalance between them. They had grown up together as peers from the same town. And while Taigen had had the upper hand back then, because he'd had a gang of other kids with him, that is definitely not the case anymore. Today, they are equally flawed, equally strong, equally skilled swordsmen, and equally bull-headed.

However, yes, Mizu is definitely leagues more mature than Taigen. But she still holds a lot of childhood wounds that mirror Taigen's own. And we see this especially in relation to her mother. Similar to Taigen who had an abusive and alcoholic father, Mizu's Mama was an opium addict and had hit her, berated her, had shaved her head without her consent as a child, and as an adult, had constantly emotionally manipulated and guilt-tripped her. Mizu's love for her Mama was what had driven her to a path of vengeance in the very beginning. And when she'd found out Mama was still alive, she had wanted nothing more than her Mama's love, and it was this alone that pushed her to agree to the marriage with Mikio in the first place. And now, knowing from Fowler that her birth mother is someone else entirely, is what makes her agree to keep him alive and haul his ass to London to seek answers.

Thus, integral to Mizu's self-hatred is also Mizu's intense longing for love and family. Just like Taigen, whose pompousness comes from his insecurity about being the son of a poor fisherman, Mizu's goals are also shaped by who her parents are. Remember, her vengeance is not against just anyone who's corrupt or evil, but specifically against the men who she believes had assaulted her mother, the men she believes had made her a monster, the men she believes had abandoned her to die and continue to try to kill her. Her vengeance is against a father, on behalf of a mother. In The Tale of the Ronin and the Bride, Mizu is not merely the Ronin, the Bride, or the Onryo, but also the Child.

This is also why Ringo is so good, not only for Mizu, but for Taigen as well. Ringo is wise and caring and considerate, but above all, he is in tune with his inner child in ways that Mizu and Taigen are not. He is always earnest and positive, he sees the world with childlike wonder, but is not naive or blind to its ugliness. His whole life has been a battle. Ringo brings out the best in Mizu, consistently acting as her moral compass and conscience, and Mizu's choice to save Akemi in the final episode is only because she promised Ringo that she would. Because it's the right thing to do. Ringo inspires her to be a better person, and to think outside of her narrow-minded goal of revenge. At the same time, Ringo also brings out the best in Taigen. While at first Taigen had looked down on both Mizu and Ringo ("Half-limb to a half-wit"), by the end of the season, he's proud to have Ringo as a friend and ally, he listens to Ringo's advice ("What would Master do?"), and asserts to the fucking Shogun that Ringo is a worthy warrior to have by his side.

Okay, I've gone on a bit of a tangent here, but my main point is that Mizu and Taigen are incredibly similar. They are equals. They are both flawed, unhealed children who are chasing some impossible outlandish goal in hopes that it will fill the void in their hearts. They also both have a long way to go in terms of character development if they were to ever build a healthy romantic relationship (either with each other, or even with anyone else). So while I believe things will be rocky (because duh, it's a story, we all live for the drama, etc), I think with Ringo's help, they'll get there eventually.

[binomech]

this is another long meta post about kim kitsuragi. mostly.

i just talk about shared themes with scott summers (x-men) + matt murdock (daredevil) because 1) i like those characters 2) i really do think they're a good parallel lens -- feel free to engage, or not. i realize the overlapping audience for these three dudes is 0 people as far as i'm aware

i find myself once again haunted by the recurring Themes of the characters that i like and i worry that in my search for intertextual relations i might accidentally tropeify and corner these beloved blorbos into a collection of traits separate from their circumstance and medium. which would be very un-historical-materialist of me. but this is a fandom post, so here's a disclaimer about it.

things that i could have made into a shitty venn diagram graphic but didn't:

they're all repressed assholes

whose repression is so big they're only capable of getting into relationships with people that are mildly to severely psychic

eye-related trauma

their childhood was taken from them

their personal and societal value comes from the ability to enact violence

their moral code is held together with duct tape

scott + kim

here's a quote from uncanny x-men (2013) that haunts me

[WHAT WAS THE REVOLUTION SCOTT?] OUR LAST CHANCE. OKAY? We have nothing left but threats! We fought for them and they hate us! We fought alongside them and they kill our children in the streets! We pack up and move to an island and they destroy it! We move to another island and the fucking avengers storm the fucking beaches. We’re supposed to be the next step in human evolution yet we’ve become an endangered species. We’re everything they are not and we’re a shadow of our former selves. All we have left is threats. The threat of revolution. The threat of a fight we hope they dont want. So, yes, I got in front of any camera that would show my face and I looked their world in the eye and told them – they better leave us alone. I stood on the bridge of the helicarrier and I threatened them. because nothing. else. has. worked.

thinking about the RCM in le retour as a sort of liberal intermediary between revachol and the coalition being sort of like the x-men mediating between humanity and the mutant brotherhood, and generally how both kim and scott are Finally fucking ready to admit that maybe their own contributions defanged the negotiation. by cooperating with the liberal mediator they took all the leverage the revolutionaries had to liberate all of the mutants/revachol.

i have mentioned before that i think kim's itchy trigger finger is an overcompensation: "if i work hard enough my eyesight won't make me a target. if i have a lethal weapon i can hit back" -- and he's in a permanent state of alert about everything and everyone because he has painted a target on his back (through his enlistment) only to be able to say I Told You So. and then scott being left behind because of his disability denying him control over his own destructive power. both xavier and the RCM recruit with the promise of control and the upper hand and scott and kim, respectively, destroy their sense of self over and over for The Cause because the cause is synonymous with personal worth and safety from their own failings.

user @askaniritual has expressed an idea that i find relevant as well very eloquently:

i think the ppl [Scott] attracts to him tend to be people who like. believe themselves to be monsters and see how hard scott is trying and how much he cares about doing the right thing. and tend to pin all their hopes for salvation onto him. like i think jean and emma and logan all believe that if they follow scott, and if they help him achieve his goals then they'll achieve some sort of partial redemption by association. (...)

kim and scott being isolated from the world, yes, but also from their own desires in their sublimation of their selfhood for the x-men/the RCM = only a mind reader can see my true self = the only self i have is what is reflected to me by the mind reader = the reflection is dehumanizing and it fits poorly into my sense of self = oh god i'm hollow there is no real me

and of course, the obvious reading of Harry as someone who in many ways believes Kim to be a beacon of justice and kindness and in that way dehumanizes him and feeds into the 'my self is an empty hall of mirrors.' but also, I think, different because Harry can come to understand Kim as someone flawed who's trying to do good, breaking the illusion of saintly behavior and pushing through the friction. Maddy is a flawed parallel to Jean, and Harry is a flawed paralel to Ambrosius Saint-Miro: it's their flawed humanity and not the psychic quality that allows for genuine connection.

matthew + kim

[note for the hypothetical daredevil fan reading this: i do not think catholicism is a core of matt's moral code, much like i don't think moralism is at the core of kim's adult morality. i think both of them spent enough under spaces that valued it to realize its limitations which is precisely why they turn to violence-as-a-means and view it like some kind of slightly cringe-but-fond memory. i think the important remainder of its influence lies in their incapacity to reconcile their mistakes with their capacity to do good -- when i say they think of themselves as just, i don't think they believe themselves to be just. i think they are in a sunk cost hellscape where they can't tell themselves anything else unless they want to have an existential crisis.]

the violence of dogma and the alienation from your body due to disability and, in kim's case, race sits at the core of this parallel.

i don't think moralism and christianity have a clear-cut parallel but i think the beliefs that guide them as they do most religions of unity, redemption, collective identity and moral guidelines are blatant traumas for these two.

when matt gets interested in law depends on the timeline just like his sight loss but my timeline of choice is sight loss - law interest - dad death. like sure, yes, you're raised casually catholic and everyone tells you about god's mercy and all-encompassing justice beyond human action and then you get blinded by essentially an OSHA violation.

i don't think that warrants enough of a faith crisis especially when you're like, 12, but certainly it makes you think a little bit about cosmic justice and why me and we could do things better by the book because by the book is the bible and the bible says the world is just and magnanimous thanks to god. and also workplace safety sounds like an extremely good idea right now. so you sink yourself into law as a moral arbiter.

and you start noticing like, hey, uh, my dad is doing some shady business huh -- and you're a 12 year old boy so you go: dad this whole mob bribe thing this whole... selling your body as a weapon. sounds a lot like harlotry to me. and your dad is like. this is the only reason we have enough to eat, ever think about that?

and then he gets killed because he didn't want to be a disappointment to you, because he was also catholic and he did not want to feel guilty for selling his body to survive.

and you're taken into a catholic orphanage so you're mulling this shit over until college. was dad's death divine punishment? is god kind? does god exist? if he doesn't then my dad's death was senseless. if he does my dad's death was cruel. is the universe just? can i make the universe just?

i'm going to gloss over all the Mentor plotlines because they are different depending on the universe and largely irrelevant except for the way they all have the 'give matt moral OCD' common denominator.

now imagine kim kitsuragi in a potentially-dolorian definitely-coalition approved orphanage thinking: were my parents really terrorists? why does the theory of communism and the reality of the war clash? will it happen to me? will it happen to people i love? can i change this? am i part of something good?

so matt goes and studies law and starts a bureau because he has faith in doing things by the book, until the book fails him, and then he decides he has to do right by his values, so he turns to vigilantism and violence in the name of the law. / so kim goes and enlists in the rcm and climbs through the ranks because he has faith in the collective, in being a piece of the sky that approaches justice with a slow step until the collective shows him again, and again, that it's counterproductive and then he turns to vigilantism and violence in the name of the law.

and both matt and kim are in a perpetual crisis of faith, and they know. matt goes to confession booths and sardonically tells priests about him beating people to death. kim smokes a cigarette and tells you about stealing hubcaps and the electric chair and the dire consequences of handing a fine with a smile on his face saying he doesn't think he's a moralist anymore.

but after matt gets out of the church, he is at ease, he does it again because if he doesn't, how can the world go on. but after, kim will tell you he believes in the RCM because he has to believe that he can do something, anything, or the world falls apart.

matt murdock isn't matt murdock, he is daredevil, he is justice. / kim kitsuragi isn't kim kitsuragi, he is a lieutenant of the rcm, he is justice.

if you're not matt/kim, you can't get it wrong when you do your best. god is wise. the coalition is wise. and if they aren't, you are. because if no one knows what to do then the world falls apart.

so what if you're blind and/or seolite? you can beat people up. you can shoot them. you can ruin their lives in two seconds. it's not personal, and they can't make it personal. you didn't do it because you're human or because of your trauma, you did it because you're justice incarnate.

you know what's good and what's more, you can make things good again, if you do it by the book. if their book is wrong, tweak it. if your mistakes haunt your dreams, make better ones.

[crazyexdirkfriend]

Hi Tony i want to ask something of you. In fanon more often than not i see Jake becoming slightly more unhinged and unnerving as he gets older. Do you think this would hpapen canonically? Or are all these fanartsits and writers just projecting what they want from jake on jake

This isn't a hate on it by the way, I just realised the other day I see more often the idea of Jake becoming more unnerving as he gets older alongside Dirk and that i'd accepted it and I'm unsure if its canonically viable or not.

I actually think the nature of Jake is that people project what they want on to him-- be you an author, an audience, or a character within the text. It's an interesting concept because Jake is a character who is never afforded free will and even in fanfiction and transformative works made to give Jake free will, he's still a character doing an author's bidding ultimately.

There's a bit in Meat that discusses this with Calliope and Dirk iirc. Calliope wants Jake to have free will, but Dirk argues that Jake is incapable of free will. And truly, even on a metatextual level, the existence of a narrative voice renders basically everyone, but especially Jake, incapable of free will within a narrative.

I don't know if you've seen Revolutionary Girl Utena, but there's an exchange in Utena that I believe they're referencing intertextually here between Utena and Touga about Anthy. Utena insists that Anthy does not want to be the rose bride, and Anthy confirms this. But when Touga defeats Utena and takes Anthy as the rose bride himself, Anthy claims being the rose bride is all she's ever wanted. Touga then says Anthy is incapable of free will and her expressions of "wanting to be a normal girl" when with Utena were just Utena projecting her own wants on to Anthy and claiming them to be free will.

(pinch of salt, I haven't rewatched Utena in a few years, but this is how I remember the scene)

In many ways, this is what Calliope, and us as authors, do to Jake, and what in text Dirk is criticising as a concept. He's like, well I'm projecting my desires and wants on to Jake and you say that's bad but at least I'm being honest about it. I'm treating Jake like a puppet, but that's all he's ever going to be anyway.

Er. I think I've got wildly off topic from your actual question.

I think getting older in many ways is realising that being 14 is a state of mind and that's just who you occasionally are for the rest of your life. So yeah, I think ageing does come with this element of derangement. I have a lot of thoughts about Jake as effectively this ageing child star, put on a pedestal on Earth-C at 16 and it becoming insidious, exploitative.

Jake is self aware of his lack of agency on a literal level within the narrative, perhaps even of the narrative itself-- like a gilded bird cage of his own making and he probably could slip out between the bars but then who would he be, where would he go, would everyone hate him and abandon him? He'll just stay trapped, stay pretty on display, stay hurt until everyone probably leaves anyway because an audience is a very very fickle thing.

And I think that does sort of lead to an angle for me of Sunset Boulevard, tearing the yellow wallpaper, the starlet breakdown. Which is the depressing, almost Swift approach to it. And then you have the Ultimate Jake approach to it, the Snap. And yeah, I think historically Jake takes and takes and takes and bends and bends and bends and is called selfish for that and eventually that would snap anyone. If on top of that, he's aware of Dirk's actions and of the narrative, of being on display constantly even if he escapes that little bird cage, if the only way to ensure people stop fucking looking at him is to destroy the audience itself-- yes, I would accept that story as viable for his character.

[elisaenglish]

-Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf-

Draw us dreams of one eternal. Per noctem in nihilo vehi...

[xx-vergil-xx]

Can I ask what pushed you to end Hounds the way you did? It's a fantastic ending, but I'm curious. I expected the Fates to revive Dream, or allow him to inhabit a new form (such as one made by Daniel, so that Dream becomes a dreamthing), etc. But instead, his death is made to have never happened. Which makes it partly feels like Hob's whole road trip journey was for nothing since he lost all those memories and connections with Matthew, the Corinthian, Delirium, Despair, Desire, Death, etc. (thank god he kept the farmhouse). But it's almost like he traded all those memories and connections for Dream. Unless I missed something while reading (I was crying very hard).

Again, fantastic ending, and I'm also glad it's a happy ending. But I'm curious as to why you didn't go in the other direction

howdy! thanks very much for the ask — an excellent query, one which i’m happy to answer

(verg of the future: this answer ended up long! there’s a short form at the top here and at the end <3)

in brief: he did make that trade you described! but not strictly for dream — it was the price of swapping genres!

an explanation:

what i had in mind while planning and writing was less the idea of erasure of prior narrative action and more a subversion of the expected genre, in particular the genre tropes that follow dream in the original arc of the comics, where his story is very classically tragic (with the understood weaving of hob into that tragedy, this being a dream/hob telling and all)

for reference, i also drew a lot of inspiration for hob’s road trip odyssey from the aeneid, an epic that is, yes, about the founding of rome but also (at least to my reading) a fundamental tragedy — the cost of founding rome is aeneas’ home, many of his friends, much of his core family, and the very end of the story is not some victorious depiction of the glory of rome to be (which we do get earlier in the book, with the ekphrasis on his shield) but aeneas, overcome with fury and loss, killing a man who begs his mercy. i’ve always felt that the aeneid, while certainly stepped in the expected amount of roman nationalism, is centrally about a single man and his singular suffering as an instrument of higher destiny.

i wanted to model hob’s arc around the aeneid (minus, y’know, some of the chunks that are strictly battle sequences <3) both because intertextuality is a huge part of how i wanted to handle hounds (story about stories, made of other stories, etc), but also because hob and aeneas are fundamentally parallel characters — nomads with exceptional ordinances, permanently displaced by the passing whims of higher powers, men who are made to reckon with both extraordinary wonder and extraordinary tragedy regularly while still, at their core, just being human. that’s what makes aeneas so compelling — he’s just a man. and so is our beloved hob — that’s his whole thing, his whole narrative function and his whole central ideal, humanity

so then, approaching hounds with both the thought of the sandman’s original tragic contours (see: the whole lead-in to daniel. christ above is the way that goes devastating to read) and the man vs fate core of the aeneid, i was considering a lot of things about how to mess around with both notions without gutting them entirely. i tend to dislike tragedies that become un-tragic without some sort of Serious Payment For It (not to say i don’t like happy stories because i very much do! but i get ticked off when high stakes get deflated too quickly) and i didn’t want to undermine the very real fact that the Fates are typically not versed in notions of empathy and/or leniency, and that dream and hob and those around them did experience and endure devastation and loss, and that death is a fact typically immune to argument.

the world of sandman is not one with easy answers, and to my mind there’s no such thing as a bargain with the Fates where you break even. for hob to get what he wanted, something had to be given, something dear and vital and real. there’s more to what hob actually gives the Fates than he verbally stipulates, which i tried to address largely via the corinthian and his perception of the situation, especially those last conversations with dream in the “swamp”. i have a lot of options about the corinthian in his function as “dark mirror” having a blistering clarity of understanding much of the time, which is why i foisted the onus of those complexities onto his dialogue, rather than hob, who (and i say this with love) is a creature of bias and often blinded to greater repercussions of his actions insofar as they extend beyond his immediate objectives/enjoyments, or dream, who can see the bigger picture but i think often really keeps himself from doing so when it comes to anything at all that’s personal (king of stories has a blindspot for his own). what hob gives the Fates actually costs him almost nothing, in the long run, if we operate with the idea that he cannot remember, nor is there any lasting effect from, his 600-ish heavily-relived years. there’s narrative and symbolic weight, of course — he gives them love as an oath and as nostalgia (sidebar: his driving force is an almost pre-nostalgia, a continual love of the moment as the moment is passing, but anyway) (cuff links), he gives them in a captured moment the lovely discomfort and simultaneous brilliance of being alive (the hook, the finger prick the blood), and he gives them a rich and complicated experience of humanity (those 600 years). but practically, what is actually taken from him that he doesn’t just get back?

only those few months — and in them, a web of real and known connections, all of which matter, and all of which change his understanding of and relationship to things like grief, and loneliness, and fear, and forgiveness. those are important changes, real changes, that would affect how he operates in the world going forward. that development is gone. he returns instead to the (of course, fought-for and hard-won) stasis of what was, which becomes what will always be. in making the Fates and their judgement more complex, he has actually made his own life less complex. now, i’m not going to sit here and argue that “suffering has inherent value” or some shit like that because i think that’s bullshit! pain is just pain. but he does lose experiences which would have shaped him in new ways, and, i think, good ways. even important ways

and he may well be shaped towards similar courses with dream (especially re: learning that lesson about loneliness — i think hob suffers from the curse of always, ultimately, being alone (immortality etc there’s so much discourse about this), and the road trip was in part about him learning that though it is the simplest path it is neither the sole nor the best path), but he certainly doesn’t learn them the same way, with the same faces, with the same acuity and clarity and intensity.

the thing with the Fates (to me anyway) is that you don’t ever just win. maybe you can get what you want, but it’s not easy (it make take a thousand repetitions of your lifetime until friction and the touch of your hands wears the sisyphean boulder down to a pebble — like the parable of the bird scraping its beak on the mountain), and it’s sure not free.

so yes, those months are lost. that’s a big part of the price. and we don’t know, at the end, how much of that thing he really gave ultimately comes back — his new relationship depths with deanna or cori or the other endless, those things aren’t seen. the main arc is resolved — hob and dream — but there are still pieces missing. he loses a piece of his human experience, he gets tossed back around through the wringer of his life (which is often distinctly not pleasant), and he is, as he ever was, a character with a path whose impetus and dictation rest heavily on external forces. even in attempting to channel his life elsewhere, he still has to bargain, and is still subject to the choices of the fates, and in some ways the story remains irrevocably a tragedy, in that one way or another it has loss in a central place. in the latter half of hounds hob really became my attempted version of an aeneas type — a man with a quest and a fated directive, a deeply human and flawed individual, who can alter the path and even irrevocably change the genre of his own narrative, but only at cost.

of course let’s be clear! some of all the actual rendering of this ended up as it did partly because i am not always a clean writer, and for that i apologize! but i did genuinely want that sense of gaps — of faces and voices given over to the gravitational well of the principal narrative arc of hob/dream versus the Fates. i think those things are gone. the narrative is forcibly re-centered around hob and dream, and in doing this — in shifting the story genre — other ties and bonds are not just cut, but unwoven entirely. when you change the kind of story you’re telling, the change is done at the expense of something else. kind of like how there’s a fixed amount of matter in the universe? you can’t create or destroy matter — to make something new you have to take from another place. (sidebar: wow i’m realizing something about my fundamental storytelling beliefs right now! laws of physics! anon your ask has really got my cylinders firing, and most sincerely thank you <3)

still, they might come back. though i didn’t write it as fully as i could have (i will freely admit there was a great deal of burnout at play towards the end there), i had a lot of thoughts re: repetition and density, namely that if you stack a thousand repetitions of a lifetime against each other it’s the equivalent of writing a word over and over and over on a page. when you erase it, the channels remain. language flows most naturally in the direction once etched for it. maybe hob learns those same lessons and knows the same people in the same way — maybe he and the corinthian find that odd patch of common ground, maybe he takes a long drive with delirium through rural maryland. maybe there are echoes. maybe even if it is gone what was still shapes the topography. maybe a kindness or a word exchanged still ring out when you can’t see them or remember them. while the milestones of our lives rippled the most visibly, i think we’re shaped a thousandfold ways by accumulations of small things we can’t distinctly remember. only a feeling of a thing, or the negative space it leaves.

well. tl;dr — i didn’t want to let hob get away without actually giving anything up, nor without his choice to bargain affecting others besides himself in equally irrevocable ways (sidebar: at his core is a selfishness that is both charming and ignoble — he wants to do a good thing for dream but also he makes a call that changes a plenitude of lives other than his own, and i don’t think he really asks, he just does — grey areas are his whole gig to me), because nobody makes a deal with the Fates for free, and changing genre has a price tag. it was my effort to make the tone of the whole beast more authentically sandman-esque, since sandman does a lot of that sort of water-muddying, especially when using understood narrative models/archetypes/etc etc

i am. sorry this was as long as it is! jesus! but i’m sending it off all the same. anyways, anon, thanks very much not only for your lovely kind words and the high honor of your tears (no pulitzer could mean more to me than knowing a thing i wrote really moved someone, seriously thank you) but also for giving me a blank check to go buck wild and ramble about my own damn writing and Things I Just Think <3 i hope you have a lovely day/morning/noon/night, and thanks a bunch for dropping by <3 <3 <3

[thedrarrylibrarian]

I cannot tell you how excited I've been to have this lovely writer on to rec - I fell in love with the fic she recced and I think it's a great pick for the holiday season. If you haven't read it before, I think it'll be the perfect read to get you into the Christmas spirit. Without further ado, here's the lovely @skeptiquewrites!

I was delighted to be asked to write a Happy Hour for December by the Drarry Librarian. I still consider myself more of a reader than anything.

This time of year represents a lot of contradictions for me: the joyfulness of gathering with my loved ones, the loneliness that springs up as I revisit old places and things. I love all the lights and candles, and bundling up against the cold. I can’t stand the disappearing sun, and the long hours of darkness in my part of the hemisphere. It’s sweet, but sorrowful too.

So back in July, I knew I had to pick @sweet-s0rr0w’s Waking Up Slow with all of @ihopeyoubothstaysafefromharm’s beautiful illustrations. Wireless has always been one of my favourite fests in current fandom, and 2023 was no exception.

Waking Up Slow by @sweet-s0rr0w (24,941 words, rated E)

'Twas the night before Christmas, although it’s July Draco’s a shopkeeper, no-one knows why There’s hiking and witch caves, freak snowfalls and more Bad Christmas jumpers, nosy neighbours galore Narcissa’s here too, but… something’s amiss And what’s in those chocolates that’s making them kiss?

From the first paragraph, I was in love with Pickerings Christmas Shop and Cheddar, Somerset. It came to life with careful, beautiful writing of Harry’s curiosity and Draco’s initial sharpness, and Joy’s saturated, poignant use of colour.

Besides the writing, I love how many direct references to other fanfics that Sweet has with the footnotes. It always reminds me how key intertextuality is to fandom. We’re all in conversation and all participating in a gift exchange of sorts.

Waking Up Slow is just as wonderful in December for a read (or re-read in my case) as it was in July. Scorching, weighty, interesting, and I can recommend it for a slow morning, lazy afternoon or under the covers late night fic reading.

After all, ‘tis the season.

Thank you so much, @skeptiquewrites for joining me for Happy Hour with Friends of the Library! And seriously, check this fic out!

[milgram-tournament]

MILGRAM Best Song Tournament, Round 1, Match 4 HALF vs. MAGIC

Propaganda for both options under the cut!

Propaganda for HALF:

kazui may just be an old gay man but HE CAN SING.

its. literally stunning.

like aside from his character and everything else, half is just really really beautifully written

THE INSTRUMENTALS.

HIS V O I C E??? its so pretty

heartbreaking lyrics. i dont love kazui as a character but i have bawled to half

GAY RIGHTS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love amane but she will undoubtedly win when her purge march poll rolls around, so lets let the old man have a win shall we?

---

half propaganda let's goooo sorry i'm sobern't in true kazui style so this probably won't make a bit of sense

theatre kid man. i love him, incredible mv.

this song is pure ASMR to me

visually aligned with Cat and it's so lovely to see that continuity

the GRAINY MOVIE DOTS THING ON THE MV <3

kazui is so dramatic. i love him i love him

dapper gentleman. such clothes

the key change is so well done

AND THE . THE PART WITH THE. THE ENDING SORT OF LYRICS OVERLAID WITH SPEAKING. and then his quieter singing and, and, and o h my god. im sorry. im not very coherent abt this rn

every part of the song is amazing but once it gets to the key change and after it keeps stepping up the amount of being perfect

kazui is in it

um

kazui is in it

go my psionic warriors vote for everyone's favourite failhusband

no children were tortured in the making of this MV (cough looking at You magic)

---

Allow me to present my Half propaganda!

- The slower tempo adds a very relaxing feeling to the song. Kinda ironic, but I like it! It sort of reminds of old indie songs from 2012 (especially with what I think is whistling added in the instrumental in-between chorus and verses.)

- Kazui’s voice. Enough said.

- It’s very easy to listen to, and I find it’s one of the only songs from Milgram that I like to listen to out of context (besides After Pain, Backdraft, and Purge March, oddly enough.)

- The MV is rife with imagery, and is used to beautiful effect. It really makes you feel for Kazui and his situation.

- The scene with him and Hinako before the key change… that makes me so emo.

- The overlapping part at the end… the lyrics combined with the dialogue in the background makes me really sad in a way I can’t explain.

Propaganda for MAGIC:

MAGIC MY BELOVED MAGIC!!! Its one of the best MVs in the entire series, even including T2. Magic is visually stunning and has some fantastic art direction but also is very clever in how it conveys its themes and ideas. Magic doesn't really hide anything from you, not really. It's all symbolic but it Tells You Things. It shows you the abuse, it shows you the cat. There's a fun little relationship going on here where, In Magic. Amane's pain and suffering isn't taken seriously by the people around her and the Audience we are discouraged to take it at face value due to the fictionalized nature of Magic. It's so cool. I'm so fond of the song as well, it's one of the best in the series purely cause of the Layers in it. The implications of this Inability to be good is seeped into Magic. Amane knows this isn't reality, Magic knows it's a show, she watches it at the end. And it's so Sad to me that even in her fictionalized happy world she Cannot be a good girl. It's a standard completely out of reach for her and that idea is just conveyed so well visually.

Im not even talking about the goddamn cat yet- the cat symbolism goes Deep. That cat is HER it has the same wounds Amane has in Purge March. I- I cant talk about the intertextuality of Purge March and Magic here this is Magic propaganda only- I- there's so much good stuff to Magic. I Re watched it over and over again. It has some the Best Writing and Visual Communication in Milgram and I will Die on this Hill.

---

shoutout to magic for having pretty props AND being vague as fuck about the crime! diversity win!

seriously though amane looks SO cute in it! the mv has such a pretty and colorful style and even with that it's able to show the horrors of what amane went through.

adding onto my last point. that scene where the cat is hyperventilating and you see the camera shaking???? that scene where the mascots find amane helping the cat and they're all standing over her? CHILLS. im repeating myself but the fact that they were able to portray the awful things amane went through in a genuinely emotional way while still keeping the cute cartoon look is soo impressive

there are SO many layers to itill the entire cartoony style making it look like a tv show… utilizing the cartoony effects and bright colors to show amane downplaying her own pain… the transformation after she gets punished barely changing anything to show just how manipulated she was from the start… ueueueue

ALSO ALSO ALSO THE SCENE AT THE END WITH AMANE STARING AT THE SCENE? OHHH ITS SO GOOD it adds such a feeling of dread and reminds you on top of this whole thing that all of this is truly horrifying! something is going on here!

this song is so catchy it gets stuck in my head CONSTANTLY

"Dear wise one, Am I worthy? Is it ok to spoil myself?" AMANE... UEUEUUEUE

the little ding sound effects in the instrumental?????

amanes voice is ADORABLE

THE INSTRUMENTAL IN THAT PART WHERE SHES HELPING THE CAT HAS THAT GODLY TYPE SOUND YOUD TYPICALLY ASSOCIATE WITH CHURCHES AND STUFF AND I DONT KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN IT PROPERLY BUT JUST RELISTEN TO IT AND YOU WILL KNOW WHAT I MEAN. ITS SUCH A NEAT DETAIL

i could go on about this mv for days but i am not a theorist unfortunately. just. magic sweep

[thesherrinfordfacility]

Just whacking this out there, but I mean, much as I do think the "past exploits" comment serves as a warning about Heaven's rules/standards, and reach, and the fact that they've exposed Aziraphale's 'crimes' - sort of a 'you know what we expect from your conduct, and you've been continually stepping way out of line, and we're choosing to overlook it for now, but know that we know, and that we will know about future missteps as well, that we don't approve and could still intervene' flung out there for no immediate particular purpose, just to serve as a reminder - by and large, I find the whole restoration offer thing much more bribe than threat, and, well, frankly, personally, I'd consider a bribe of such proportions more concerning than any threat could have been, no?

hello lovely!!!💕 i think ive shared my thoughts on this in dribs and drabs over multiple posts but no harm in going over it again, fuck it-

essentially, i completely agree with you. splitting those two parts of the conversation into two, i definitely see the first part as a warning, and simultaneously an unspoken threat:

what particularly speaks to me is how the metatron hesitates over both 'previous exploits' and 'partnership', as if he's specifically searching for the right turns of phrase. trying to make light of it, keep it friendly and unassuming. but the small, smirky, private smiles, compared to aziraphale's reaction of flitting eyes and tight lips - it feels like metatron is playing a cat-and-mouse game... the guise of it being that it's all a great opportunity, but truthfully they both recognise the unspoken threat is there

(but - to clarify - i don't think the metatron realises that aziraphale has seen it as a threat. ie the metatron thinks he's being slicker than he actually is, when aziraphale is very much able to read between the lines).

i remember making the comparison in a meta somewhere but it just simply strikes me that - if we're continuing with the 'sleeper/secret agent in the height of the cold war' allegory - the metatron is playing the part of the seedy villain that is doing the 'i've been watching you all along, i know precisely what your pressure point is and why' bit that we all know and love from any kind of dramatised espionage story.

essentially, as you said, "we could still intervene" - ie. 'dont think that i haven't seen every single thing, because i have. i know how deep this 'partnership' runs'. there doesn't even need to be an allusion to what metatron could do with this breadth of knowledge - just simply that he has the knowledge is enough, and aziraphale can draw his own horrific conclusions quite easily, even if they never come to fruition.

(on an intertextual level, metatron kinda reminds me of how i'd imagine karla to be - from the john le carré novels... a little bit, idk.)

now as for the second part; the restoration thing:

i completely agree - this absolutely feels like a bribe. 'i know crowley is your pressure point, and you'll fight tooth and nail coming back without him in tow, so im going to offer it to you - this amazing opportunity that you can graciously bestow upon him! "go tell your friend the good news!"'

the metatron may well be disguising a threat in the exchange, but i do think that he believes aziraphale to have taken the offer to return to heaven at face value, in earnest, and therefore he believes that he has aziraphale squarely under his thumb (and none the wiser for it). however, i personally think aziraphale may be constructing his own hasty game - ie. using the offer as an opportunity to "make a difference" as he and crowley would see fit... but the spanner in the works was that crowley refuses to come with him to play on 'their side' in this little counter-game he's trying to devise.

in terms of functionality of bribe vs. threat - absolutely, a bribe promises a greater yield. threats only work so long as it's a) inescapable enough, b) serious enough, and c) the threatened person is sufficiently scared enough that they won't toe out of line. which may well be effective in getting someone to comply, but the problem with making people scared of you or hate you, is that then they all secretly want to see you ruined or destroyed.

bribe someone, however... give them something that they might have always wanted (or, as i think is the case for aziraphale - gives them the opportunity to give another what they've always wanted), and you have a greater chance of having an ally in them forever, someone forever indebted to you.

i definitely think this is where the metatron's reasoning lies. instead of threatening crowley's life, so to speak, he's offering him the chance essentially to defect - and that's way more appealing to aziraphale and likely to get him to fall in line.

for me though, it's all a gross underestimation of aziraphale on the metatron's part. i will die on the hill where aziraphale sees through what the metatron is saying - has indeed read between the lines where he doesn't have a choice one way or another - but chooses to play the part that the metatron expected him to play (of marginalised-angel who is actually the-very-kind-of-angel-heaven-needs, and therefore very-grateful-to-given-the-top-job-thank-you) so that the metatron will keep underestimating him. bribe or not, aziraphale did not want to go back to heaven... but if he doesn't have much of a choice regardless, he's going to make it work for him.

now this ask has led me to another thought: i do wonder if the restoration is actually a thing? ie. the metatron wasn't bluffing, it's actually possible.

the metatron is putting an awful lot of bank on crowley saying no, when by all accounts - even if the metatron was directly involved in crowley's fall - the metatron doesn't actually know him... right? he likely knows that crowley is resentful and angry still at having fallen, and the unfairness of the whole shebang, but does that guarantee that crowley wouldn't want to take the restoration offer? id hazard no - so the metatron has to have a failsafe for either eventuality.

either crowley says no, and aziraphale is left broken-hearted/rejected, and that suits metatron fine because then he has aziraphale ridden of crowley's influence. alternatively, crowley returns, and is restored!

...but is restored to the same position as he was when he fell - essentially like restoring a backed-up file where the last save point was ~millions of~ years ago... and that would suit metatron fine also, because then crowley is simply not crowley anymore. plausible deniability on the metatron's part too, for the latter option - 'restoration has never happened before, didn't know what to expect, but you've gotten what i promised you!' idk, interesting thought