Prompt 47
Hear me out. Amity Park gets shifted in universes slightly- maybe it’s from Pariah, maybe it was a wish, maybe they did so on purpose to escape something- and they end up in the DC-verse. The thing is, thanks to the media blackout and the shields, no one in the new universe notices.
The Amityville Paekers know about outside, can go on the internet and leave whenever they want, but they’ve all become more than a little liminal. More than a little off.
Movements too graceful, eyes too sharp, ears too pointed and teeth more akin to predatory fangs. Skin with a soft glow, hair moving as though underwater or being tussled by the wind- bodies seemingly unaging after a certain point.
They’re so ecto-contaminated that they’re unsure they can even be counted as human anymore, and it wasn’t like the city wasn’t already practically self sufficient. Add in a portal or two through the Infinite Realms to get supplies to start a few fields or some fish farms and well, they’re pretty good. Sure it’s resulted in them using a mixture of modern and older money and having several extinct plants and animals running around but that’s fine.
There’s magic in this world! Actual magic, that they can learn! And use? Oh this makes rebuilding after a sparring incident go so much faster!
This results in the hero who stumbles across this place to believe they’ve stumbled across some sort of city of fae or elves.
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lonely
[ID: A limited palette of green and pink, Vashwood comic. The first page serves as a prologue. The first panel shows Vash speaking to someone off screen while Wolfwood is lingering behind him. A black arrow is drawn pointing at him. In the second panel, Vash is buying donuts in the distance while Wolfwood is once again in view, lingering. and the black arrow is drawn pointing at him. In the third panel, Vash is leaving a cubicle and turning towards his right with a slightly peeved expression. He sees Wolfwood, leaning against the cubicle, waiting for him, and with the black arrow drawn, pointing at him, implicating the consistent hovering of Wolfwood’s presence during Vash’s everyday. At the bottom of the page, they’re drawn out of panel with Vash turning to Wolfwood and saying with an irritated expression, “You’re really following me everywhere, huh?” Wolfwood responds, “What, you got a problem?” Vash responds without hesitation, “Yeah, kinda...”
The second page starts with a new day. In the first panel, Vash is seen alone, weighing apples in his hands at a mart, with crowds passing behind him. In the second panel, he turns to his right and starts to say, “Hey, Wolfwood...” In the third panel, he’s startled from seeing a stranger, whom he’d accidentally called out to when he was expecting to see Wolfwood. He says, “Oh, you’re not him. Sorry!” In the fourth panel, the stranger walks off and Vash muses, “Right, he said he had something to do today...”
The third page begins with a close up of Vash's miffed expression, the continuation of Vash's thoughts, "Now that he's not here, this is just like how I used to be, but... It feels lonely somehow. Oh well, I'll see him again tonight, like always." In the second panel, it shows Vash walking through the marketplace crowd, alone. In the third panel, the door panel is a close up of the door opening with a peek of Vash's head. He says, "Wolfwood!" In the fourth panel, Vash is holding a bag of food with a bright smile and says, "Are you hungry? I got you something to eat today!"
The fourth page begins with a shot of the room, two beds being highlighted, one of them being made properly with the blanket draped over the bed and the other with the blanket folded and pillow sitting on top of it. There's no sign of Wolfwood. The second panel shows Vash with a disappointed look as he thinks, "He's still not here?" The third panel shows Vash putting the bag of food on the table. Stapled to the paper bag is the receipt with a written note "For Wolfwood." Vash's thoughts continue "He does like to stay out so, I guess there's no reason to worry..." The fourth panel shows Vash sitting his bed somberly with his thoughts continued, "It's not any of my business anyway..."
The fifth page starts with a close up his blank expression as he looks downwards, thinking, "Even if he left completely... That'd be understandable and better for him. I'll just travel alone again... like before... Huh?" The next panel shows Vash's composure break, tears welling up in his eyes suddenly, as he didn't expect to cry. He starts to sob, putting his hands to his face to quiet himself and wipe at his tears, as he says, "Ugh... Dammit... I miss h..." The last panel shows Vash leaning over into his hands, still crying, and in the back, the door swings wide open with a bam as Wolfwood walks through with the punisher swung behind him. He shouts, "SPIKEY! You in here?!"
The sixth page starts with Wolfwood confused, looking at Vash and Vash looks back, just as confused, with tears in his eyes and snot out of his nose. Wolfwood starts saying, "Ah? You..." No longer in panels, at the bottom of the page, Wolfwood takes the Punisher off of himself and starts to walk towards Vash, continuing with slight concern, "What's wrong with you? Did something happen?" Vash, hurriedly begins to wipe at his tears, denying immediately, "No! No, I'm fine! Nothing happened!"
The seventh page, Vash points towards the table, with a hand still wiping at his tears and he smiles as he says, "I uh got you food. On the table." Wolfwood looks towards to the table and responds, "Oh. I was getting hungry, thanks." He turns his head back to Vash immediately after with an uncertain expression, knowing the other wasn't responding to his concern, and says, "But, I know you're an idiot with this stuff, so I'm reminding you again. Don't brush it off if it's an issue, alright?"
The eight page, Vash's tears have dried and he looks to Wolfwood with a soft smile and responds, "Yeah. It's okay though..." A panel at the center shows a side view of Vash approaching Wolfwood. At the bottom of the page, with no panel, is a close up shot of Vash's hand, holding onto the edge of Wolfwood's jacket sleeve, as he says, "Because you're here now. Wolfwood."
The final page is a back shot of both of them standing next to each other, Wolfwood's head tilted slightly to the left, not fully believing Vash as he says, "That doesn't answer anything, Spikey." Vash responds, "There's no need to talk about it! You should enjoy your food. Let's have a drink too?" Wolfwood responds, "Tsk, tsk. Fine, yeah. I could use one." END ID]
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exactly one (1) person asked for my thoughts on jackie’s pov of jackieshauna so me being me i obviously wrote an even longer essay than my shauna essay. so. here you go anon, SORRY or you’re welcome.
we can all agree that if you boil jackie down (um... sorry, too on the nose?) to her bare essentials, what you’re left with is basically a huge pit of insecurity. shauna is incapable of facing other people, but jackie is incapable of facing herself. jackie is incredibly inwardly/emotionally unstable but she doesn’t actually realize it because she does such a good job of distracting herself by curating her environment, her image, the people she’s surrounded by, their image, her hobbies, and on and on and on. she (without fully understanding that this is what she’s doing) tries to impose order on her outer world in the hopes that that will, by extension, bring order to her inner world.
so, here is my thesis statement: i propose that shauna is both jackie’s biggest source of stability AND her biggest source of instability.
shauna is the only one who’s always been there for her. it’s so telling that out of all the things jackie could’ve complimented shauna on in that scene (her intellect? her depth as a person? her looks?) she chose this. it shows us what jackie’s priorities are and why she values shauna: shauna is her rock, her best friend and trusty sidekick, she’s steady and loyal.
thing is, shauna isn’t. while shauna saintifies jackie after death and turns her into an idea/symbol, jackie kinda does the same to shauna in life. she needs shauna to be her rock, and she needs it SO badly, like survival-level badly, that she just can’t leave space for shauna to be anything else. this sucks for shauna, because she doesn’t feel like jackie truly sees her in all her complexity. but it also sucks for jackie, because she just doesn’t realize when things are going downhill - and she doesn’t realize that her search for stability in shauna has been doomed to fail from the get-go, because shauna has a mind of her own.
and this is when shauna becomes jackie’s biggest source of INstability: when she goes rogue. or, maybe more accurately, when she does what jackie interprets as “going rogue” - aka going against jackie’s carefully laid-out plans, whether or not she truly meant it as a snub. exhibit a: voting to go to the lake instead of stay at the crash site. for a healthy, secure person/relationship this would’ve been a simple difference of opinion. but for jackieshauna it drove a wedge between them for an entire day or possibly more, because by defying jackie, shauna destabilizes jackie’s very, VERY tenuous grip on the TINY amount of control she feels like she has over her world.
this control is EVERYTHING to jackie because it’s the only thing that can alleviate her internal turbulence. and she is DESPERATE for her fix, so she reaches, grasps, searches for the stability that she needs, that she only knows how to find in shauna, and it always seems to be just out of her reach, and of course we know it’s impossible to find internal stability through external things, but jackie thinks if she just stretches a little further and holds on a little tighter, she’ll get what she needs, so she clings onto shauna more and more desperately, not realizing that squeezing so tight could have unwanted side effects.
and just like with shauna - there IS genuine love here! but as much as shauna has warped ideas about what love looks like (and boy does she!), jackie has some messed up ideas about love too! jackie adores shauna, but part of that adoration is tied to how jackie builds shauna up in her own head, and when shauna fails to live up to the role that jackie needs her to play, it sends jackie into a tailspin and she lashes out. and i think jackie thinks that because she loves shauna, she can’t possibly be hurting her. it’s not a cage if i make it cozy, right? if i put some blankets down and keep her nice and safe? she’s not trapped, i’m taking good care of her, she’s choosing to stay, and if she wanted differently, she’d say so. (but shauna can’t/won’t say so, as we know.)
so. to sum it up. on a good day, shauna keeps jackie afloat, but on a bad day, shauna sends jackie spiraling. jackie needs her so desperately and the tragedy is that she loves shauna so much and she’s so terrified of losing her that she does everything she can to prevent it, but her desperation blinds her to the fact that, by holding onto shauna so tightly, she’s contributing to the very situation she hoped to avoid: shauna leaving her.
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I think one of the reasons why the theory that Arya will go away at the end of the story because she’s too far gone to assimilate back into society is so unconvincing is because she literally spends the latest two books (AFFC and ADWD) doing that very thing! Like her training hasn’t been about her being a reclusive murderous hermit. She literally spends the two books talking to people, making friends, integrating into new cultures. She’s around people all the damn time! And even if we bring up her ACOK and ASOS arcs which were rather dark in nature, she’s still around people interacting with them, still being a part of society (even if she’s quite low on the totem pole in those books).
Arya is a character who feels so strongly and whose arc is often dictated by how she interacts with the people around her. So to take that away from her is not only a bad understanding of her character arc (not to be condescending or anything), but it’s also not very satisfying as far as character/narrative progression goes. Because if the narrative has proven so far that even in her darkest moments, Arya can laugh and love and be such a passionate member of society, how then does it make sense for her to go away and be on her own?? How does that make sense when AFFC and ADWD prove that she still loves being around people?
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I think what makes Antony Starr's portrayal of Homelander such a great villain is that his motivation throughout the entire series has always been love and it SHOWS. It's twisted and warped but all Homelander wants is love. He wants to be loved and season 3 did a great job of pushing this to the forefront, as well as showing us that - despite how tall and old he is - he's just a kid. He never matured emotionally because he never received the proper love and attention as a kid, so his whole moral system is warped. That smile at the end, where the crowd cheered for him straight-up murdering an innocent civilian, was so much like the kind a kid gives after doing something funny for a crowd where you can see the wheels turning, going "this will earn me attention." Soldier Boy read him correctly that he was needy, which is why his perfect defeat isn't death but total irrelevance.
And, on the flip side, Billy's anger at the world - which has been such a common motivator amongst villains - is his driving force to combat Homelander and be the 'hero'.
The usual motivators between heroes and villains have been flipped and presented with so much care it's amazing.
The Boys put so much intention and thought into all their character choices and that's what makes the end product not only a masterpiece, but one of the most brilliant satires of our generation.
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Dick + not getting phone calls
1. Bruce makes Jason Robin (Batman 416)
Dick: "It was quite a kick for me to learn about the new Robin in the newspapers."
2. Jason dies (New Titans 55)
Dick: "Bruce never called to tell me what happened to Jason. He didn’t know I was half-way across the universe, but he didn’t even leave a message on my machine. If Danny hadn’t found out... Blast him. Why didn’t he call me?"
3. Bruce picks Jean-Paul Valley as the next Batman (Robin 13)
Dick: "You left Tim alone with a lunatic. The kid could have been killed."
Bruce: "There wasn't time."
Dick: "No time to pick up a phone? No time to call me? ... I thought there was one guy who'd have faith in me. But when it comes down to the test, you picked someone else to succeed you."
4. Alfred quits after Bruce's back gets broken in Knightfall (Nightwing: Alfred's Return)
Dick: "Bruce didn't send me. I came because I'd like to know why the guy who's been like a father to me suddenly upped and split without a word! Because my best friend has been gone for months - the Bahamas, Antarctica, England - and I didn't even get a call! Not even a postcard!"
5. Donna's son dies (Teen Titans Vol. 2 12)
Wally: "Man, Dick, I'm sorry! I thought for sure she would have called you!"
Dick: "Robbie was her world. Why didn't she call? I could have helped. I would have... I'd do anything for her..."
6. Wally's wife miscarries and...it's complicated, but for the purposes of this list you just need to know that he didn't tell Dick or ask him for help (Flash 210)
Dick: "What I said earlier, I didn't mean for it to come out that way. You're my best friend. You have been since we were kids. And after everything you went through, I just wish I was the one you came to for help - instead of Hal."
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