I just finished watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. I thought it was fantastic, though I have one☝️ complaint...
It is CRIMINAL that the Gaang never addressed/discovered Appas fear of fire. 😤
Poor Appa was sold to a fire nation circus where he was abused and whipped with fire and forced to preform which made him scared of fire. Azula even ADDRESSES THIS FEAR. "Ah, afraid of fire now, are we?" SO ITS A LEGIT FORMED FEAR. BUT ITS NEVER BROUGHT UP OR DISCOVERED BY THE GAANG?? EVEN THOUGH SUKI WAS THERE AND WOULD KNOW ABOUT HIS FEAR TOO???
How a sky bison gonna fight the fire nation IF HE'S SCARED OF FIRE? They TOTALLY should have addressed that. it could have been a bonding moment between Toph, Aang and Appa and everything!😭😭😭😭
HOW SWEET WOULD IT HAVE BEEN IF THE GAANG FIGURED OUT WHAT HE'S BEEN THROUGH BY THE BURN SCARS ON HIS PAWS, THE HOLES IN HIS BACK/SHOULDERS/HEAD/FACE, THE WEIGHT HE LOST AND THE STRAINED MUSCLES AND HAD A WHOLE EPISODE PAMPERING APPA AND TENDING TO HIS INGURIES?? 😭😭
Especially since at this point he'd been missing for like 4 weeks by this point?? Making an episode where everyone has a special reunion moment with Appa and showing the Gaang helping Appa physically and mentally recover from EVERYTHING he's been through would have been the best. 😔😔😔 Would have been my favorite episode by FAR.
I would LOVE to draw a comic about this myself but that would be a TON of work and research to make sure I write everyone's characters correctly and have the timeline of events all line upppp... and I could write it but the truth is I'm a lousy fic writer and I don't think it would come out the way I wanttttt 😩😩😩
Hopefully I can find a fix-it fic for this particular issue or the post war comics will surprise me with its Appa content 👀👀👀
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Danny and Tim have this unspoken bond, both of them constantly walking the line between life and death—Tim with his brushes with danger as Red Robin, and Danny being, well, half-dead. You’d think that shared experience would bring them closer, but instead, it’s just one more thing that separates them.
Tim feels like he can never fully reach Danny. There’s always a distance, an invisible wall between them, and it eats at him. Danny can phase through walls, but somehow, the emotional ones are harder to break down. Tim’s used to distance, though—he’s felt it his whole life—with Bruce, with the Bat family, and now, with Danny.
Danny tries to reassure Tim, tells him that he’s always there, but Tim can see the cracks. He knows what it’s like to hold everything together, to be the one everyone depends on, and Danny’s doing the same thing. Tim sees the strain in Danny’s smile, the way his eyes glaze over when he thinks no one’s watching. But what kills Tim the most is that Danny won’t let him in—not fully. Not in the way Tim wants.
Some nights, it feels like they’re both ghosts. Tim, drifting through the Batcave like a shadow, barely noticed, and Danny, flickering between his human and ghost forms, unsure where he belongs. They’re both alive, but neither of them really feels it. The constant brushes with death, the danger—it’s left them numb in different ways.
Tim wonders if Danny’s afraid of hurting him, afraid of getting too close. Danny’s power—his half-dead nature—it’s a part of him, and Tim knows he doesn’t want to accidentally phase through Tim’s life, leave him behind, like he’s done with so many others. But Tim’s already used to being left behind, and maybe that’s the worst part. He’s so used to it that he’s convinced himself it’s just how things are meant to be.
They don’t talk about it, about the distance or the loneliness, but it’s always there, lingering like a third presence in the room. Danny, half-dead. Tim, feeling like he’s not fully living. Both of them too scared to confront it, to say out loud what they’re both thinking—that maybe they’ll never really fit anywhere. Not with the Bat family, not with the ghosts, not even with each other.
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analysing vance hopper because he lives in my head 24/7 !
tw for like. literally everything the black phone covers!!!!!!
also there's some special effects gore rather far down in the post idk just i feel like i should warn you just in case
okay so before anyones like "but bee!!!! he only had 6 minutes of screen time in a 102 minute long movie!!!!! he was only on screen for 5.8% of the movie!!!!!" and to that i say i Know it was a real tragedy so a lot of this will be built on personal interpretation and subtext and stuff said behind the scenes and whatnot
so firstly i wanna rot about what his childhood/upbringing might've been like..... i havent quite decided on something definitive but i think we can take one look at his character and realise that is glaringly obvious he had a bad childhood, in one interview the actor that plays him (brady hepner) says "the background i had set up for vance is that the reason he was the way he was is his home life was fairly difficult, you know maybe his dad was either not there for him or he wasn't supportive, maybe he was fairly abusive, and so that creates a hair trigger sense of rage in vance" hair trigger meaning his patience is literally as thin as a strand of hair it does Not take a lot for him to snap
there more to it after that which i'll get into soon but yea thats the gist of it it's clear he had absent/neglectful/abusive parents and that would certainly contribute to why he's so angry all the time, maybe acting so explosive was the only way to get his parents' attention, either good or bad, so he just internalised that. obviously rage and anger issues like vance's lead to violence (not in all cases but in his case it does) and i think a neglectful and abusive upbringing would obviously expose him to more violence than a normal childhood would, therefore normalising it and desensitising him to it, whether he's seeing it play out in his own home and/or on television or something like that (because i doubt his parents would be the kind to monitor what content he's viewing)
i feel like he has little control over his life and that only adds to his anger, which in his case leads to a fight when his buttons are pushed too many times. i think he probably takes great pride in being the toughest in town and whatnot and winning fights and being perceived as strong and scary is good to him and helps him regain control/power, something he doesnt have at home. the rest of the quote from the interview i mentioned earlier states "this pinball machine could have been the only thing that he has in his heart that's like, good, like 'holy cow i did this, i set the score,' so when someone comes along and messes it up for him, it takes away the only thing that he has. i think that that's when he switches to a 'now you're gonna pay for that'"
similar to what i said about fighting, the pinball machine and his high score is something he has control over and its an important part of his reputation/image like. hes literally pinball vance ! and the whole thing about that high score being the "only thing he has in his heart that's good" implies that hes. well. pretty shit at everything else, which is pretty much canon if you remember that gwen said vance was held back twice in school. makes me think that while he's not the brightest in school he's certainly street smart
moving onto ermmmmm him getting kidnapped era because im sure youre wondering "well bee if he's so street smart then why did he get kidnapped" so may i raise two theories (this is. literally all i got and its not even concrete, me and my friend gray (@staggersz) tried to figure out how this could even happen and this is the most plausible thing we've got. so shoutout to him real quick he has had to deal with me being unnormal about vance for like a year and a half thanks king couldnt have done all this without my rotting buddy)
so either he got taken by surprise (most likely option) or vance's trust was gained first via getting given quarters at the pinball machine and small talk and shit like that but this is unlikely because i feel like it'd take a loooooong time for someone like vance to trust a some random stranger adult man when he clearly has issues with trusting and respecting people older than him and people with authority (e.g. cops, his parents, or school officials) so yea being taken by surprise would probably be the most realistic option, i always see people on tiktok being like "how did the grabber kidnap vance hes so strong!!!!" dude its a 15 year old boy against like. a 45 year old man who's already claimed two lives its really not gonna be a fair fight here
before i get into the next part i wanna quickly address a theory i absolutely Hate and it is so easily disproven and that is the theory that vance is the grabber's son or is related to him in some other way and i see it Far too often on tiktok and i HATE it. from what ive seen this all stems from his dream sequence where he kicks open the fence to albert's house and, presumably, goes inside after being dropped off by the police after the grab n go fight. idk if some people just straight up didnt realise this but clearly in real life he is going to his Own House??? in the dream it's only albert's house because this is how he chooses to show gwen the house she's trying to find her brother in, the house that he himself was killed in??? i hate the theory i hate it sm
the dream sequence itself is interesting though as the ghosts seem to only be able to conjure up what theyve seen in real life (like how bruce can picture the outside of the house and show that to gwen but the house number is all flipped and not right beause he doesnt know it) so vance being able to picture the house and the number and the gate and every detail would imply that hes seen it before, but im going to explain that away as either he got out once before like with finney's failed escape attempt, or the house is most likely on the route he walks to school or the grab n go or something and he hasnt actually been there prior to being kidnapped
mini rant over now onto being kidnapped i guess, so i used the missing posters to try and estimate a timeline of how long each ghost boy would've been in the basement for (although the missing posters are notoriously unreliable for details such as looks/height/age/etc, the dates seem to all line up). so we know the order is griffin, billy, vance, bruce, robin, finney, right?? if we use the poster date then billy was taken on may 4th, 1976, a month and two days after griffin was taken (april 2nd 1976). vance was taken on september 23rd 1977, almost a full year later (stay with me im going somewhere with this), and after that bruce was taken on july 18th 1978, again almost a full year later
its established in the movie that the grabber stalks his victims before he takes them (canon because we literally see the van watching finney and gwen as they walk home from school early on in the movie) but we dont know how long he does this for since griffin/billy and robin/finney were taken such short distances apart and then the others were taken such long distances apart, also it's possible he could stalk his next victim while the previous one is still alive, etc etc lots of confusing factors, but if i've done the maths right then the absolute maximum time vance could've spent down there is 9 months and 25 days, or 298 days, so erm . let that sink in !
howeverrrr in the movie gwen states that vance went missing "last spring" and september is definitely not in spring, meaning he could've been down there for a year or even longer. an explanation or excuse i could think of for the movie and the missing poster saying different things (other than the missing posters being known for some areas being wildly inaccurate) is that maybe he was taken in spring but wasnt labelled as officially missing until september, when he was properly linked to griffin and billy's similar disappearances and the mysterious grabber? i can imagine it'd be very easy for law enforcement, especially in the 70s, to dismiss someone like vance as a runaway until they get solid evidence that he was taken. idk though thats just my personal excuse / angsty headcanon for the difference in information
not sure what exactly killed him but we do hear from vance himself that "he took his time with me" so it was probably blood loss from a variety of injuries, if we look at him in his ghost scenes we can see his hair is absolutely covered in blood which indicates head injury, he clearly has a broken nose and bruising around his eyes as a result of it, he has these deep cuts on his abdomen area (apologies for the image quality but i believe they're like. sfx pieces you would wear under clothing)
and he also has just like. minor bruising (like the fingerprints on his arm) and other random blood splatters on his face and neck (assuming the blood down his neck comes from wherever he was bleeding on his head) so Yeah overall very unpleasant way to die obviously
okay now the part thats actually in the movie and it only took me 13 paragraphs to get here: vance as a ghost!! first thing i wanna point out is appearance wise i just want to say that when he's a ghost he's missing his choker and that fact Pains me. anyway personality-wise i feel like being violently murdered has, understandably, kicked his rage up to like. the highest level it could possibly go. he's insanely snarky and downright rude to finney on the phone, showing no empathy to the fact that finney is literally in the exact situation he was in
i feel like the whole "this is the nightmare end of your pathetic little life" and "if you knew what you had coming, you'd be fucking terrified" thing is definitely to scare finney on purpose and to get him to do something, vance might as well have just told him he's never going home cuz thats how it came across LMAOO, it is startling though because vance is clearly speaking from experience, that he was literally fucking terrified, and he is warning finney in his own weird way
the thing i think sets vance apart from the other ghosts is that while he does help finney, he does it for a different reason than they do. the other ghosts want finney to escape, to get out, to be free, to live, but personally i dont think vance cares about that. the only thing he wants is for albert shaw to be dead, for someone to seek vengeance, to do what vance couldn't. vance doesn't care if it's bruce or robin or finney or whatever boy could've come after that, he doesnt care as long as that man gets what he deserves after what he put vance through, and i see this through the scene at the end of vance's call where finney thanks him for his help and vance says, and i quote, "helping you? this isn't about you, fuck him! and apologies for being repetitive but to me it just literally proves that to vance, this isnt about finney or his escape, its just about revenge
we dont get to find out what happens to the ghosts once the credits have rolled, and i dont think we quite know enough about tbp's version of ghosts to guess what theyre up to, but i have a few theories :3 maybe theyre no longer bound to those two houses and they can now go anywhere they want in town? or maybe since their shared goal of stopping albert has been achieved, the ghosts can finally pass on to whatever is waiting for them next. i dont think vance would be content to pass on that quickly or easily as anger lingers, but i hope he'd be able to let go of it eventually, and hey we might find out in the sequel. i pray it mentions him cuz i will just die if it doesnt
sometimes, ok thats a lie, frequently i think about an au where he survived or escaped or whatever but ohhhh boy this post is already a train wreck so that au would deserve its own essay of a post :3 if u actually genuinely read this far then Wtf thanks for reading the ramblings of an absolute madman, only pure delusion could get like 20 paragraphs about a guy with 6 minutes screentime but hey thats how i roll, thanks again to my pal gray for letting me rot and thank u to my other pal ana for also enduring all this rot
hope u enjoyed my interpretation of vance hopper im going to crawl in a hole now and probably brainrot some more, thanks again for ur time :3
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Something about a fifteen year old running away from home isn't out of the ordinary. But, it truly does conjure the question as to why he had and never even came back either. He could've returned to his mother at any moment, but must've chose not to.
And another thought I've had. Was he alone for all those years until he reached his mid twenties and had met Hosea? Did he run with minor gangs or was he a "lone wolf", and kept to himself?
If he was by himself all that time then hell, that's nearly 9 years. And even if he "ran" with other people, he probably never grew an actual connection like he had with Hosea, and was still most likely extremely alone and lonely.
AND. Back to his relationship with Greta. Usually there's a reason children / teens run away from home. And, shocker, that reason's usually never the greatest. Kids will be reckless, they'll disobey sure, but to never go back? Well, now. That's a different story. Not much is exactly said of his mother, expect his quotes in The New South mission. Sure, his gravestone indicates she was a very loving mother, but with how he spoke of her I do think otherwise. Maybe I've read into his tone too much, but he feels slightly distasteful from the thought of it.
Before this "I left home at fifteen and didn't see her again." brief pause~ "She and I didn't always[pause] see eye to eye.." another pause~ "I wasn't always a very obedient child." Said certainly? Said bitterly, as if he's been told that by her before- huh what who said that? Seriously, before that there hadn't been many pauses, he spoke coherent. Wasn't hesitant.
His tone softens as he says the next "Still.. I loved her[brief pause] in my own way[pause], and she me in hers." Then he makes this joke "Somehow, even from the grave, she managed to have the last laugh." Like a "well she is my mother I can't just not love her how ungrateful would I be to ignore her love" if that makes any sense. I don't think she was the spawn of satan, but, I do not think she was the greatest mom either. And it probably left him feeling not-so-good(to put it politely ) as he grew up without much guidance, if any at all.
AND- AND, final thought lol. If he didn't properly grieve Hosea, he most definitely did not properly grieve his father's death. He was, If I had to guess, near 9-10 of age? Could be younger, I might be incorrect. But that's still quite young to lose a parent, and you could rightfully assume he didn't know how to deal with that properly( proper for himself) because he was a child. That's where resentment builds. Towards not only the southerners, but his father, too. Maybe not as vast as those whom murdered his father, but a stem of resentment for leaving him alone. Not being there.
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