#guys what defines a meta

[forestofsprites]

to attempt to categorize aziraphale & crowley's actions into the simple dichotomies of 'correct' and 'wrong' or 'good' and 'bad' is to employ the exact same fallacy that the show warns of. throughout season two we see aziraphale struggle with morals and their ambiguity, no matter crowley's assertion (and demonstration) that there is no true 'good', no true 'evil'- that the lines are not only blurred but frankly non-existent- aziraphale can't move past the principles he was raised on. good actions are good (inherent to angels, inherent to heaven), evil actions are evil (inherent to demons, inherent to hell). aziraphale's decision to try to 'fix' heaven is the perfect representation of the reality of the universe. he believes it to be a simply good decision, something angels do and heaven is all about (he'll get heaven back to normal! back to being good!) but the reality of his decision is so much murkier than that. it isn't that aziraphale did something bad or evil, nor is it that he did something correct or good, he did something that, like many things in the universe, embodies both.

#i haven't done meta in a year guys i am so sad and rusty #i just mean that #you can't define the show that seeks to reject the good/evil fallacy by employing that fallacy to denote their actions #i mean absolutely aziraphale thinks he is being good. he made that choice in the faith that it was a good one. something inherent to him #as an angel #but that decision was never so clear cut. there was no right or wrong within it. he was given a choice and he chose it #it's not going to achieve what he thinks it will. it isn't the path to his happiness #and i definitely think crowley is closer to that path in terms of understanding the reality of heaven and hell- good vs evil #but neither are simply right or wrong #neither is a simply good or simply bad option #the whole point is an 'us' #a middle ground #an understanding that choices and actions are not good or bad or wrong or right. they're just choices. they're inherently made with a bit #of both #good omens #good omens s2 #good omens season two #good omens spoilers #rambling #that tag hasn't been used in sooo long #good omens meta #good omens rambling

[agnesandhilda]

thinking about wyatt and surrey my good pals wyatt and surrey.... imagine working so closely with your friend that centuries down the line your names have to be mentioned in the same breath because academics can't definitively say which of you wrote what

#bolo speaks #yes I just got out of medieval literature class. what of it #I mean this at the meta level of course. I don't presume to know anything about these guys' actual personal relationship #but isn't the idea of a friendship so strong that it becomes *the* defining legacy of each of the people involved beautiful?

[kikai-sentai-zenkaiger]

hot take but i'm glad the meta for mario kart 8 is changing because of the new updates. my go to character + kart combo just so happened to be a part of the old meta (Donkey Kong on the biddy buggy if you are inch rested) and I got tired of being accused of tryharding for using them. I promiseeeee I don't care abt competitive mario kart Donkey Kong is my favorite mario character and biddy buddy is my favorite mario enemy :]

#i've been playing a lot of mario kart lately. #I always have bad luck with mario kart where my favorite character to play is like. meta defining #& people who are in the know abt that particular MK game always think im tryharding #in DS I was safe I don't think rob was meta #but I like Funky Kong in MK Wii and DK in MK8 #I dunno what to tell you guys! I like funny monkeys!!

[miru667]

What exactly is Once-ler Destiny and how does it work? :o

It's a fun meta concept that came from the fact that the fandom had so many onceler askblogs! After hundreds of askblogs were created, some people eventually decided to make their askblog oc self-aware, and some askblogs are actually entirely based off of this self awareness. Here's a taste of Once-ler Destiny existentialism and the ways I've seen it explored:

What makes a onceler a onceler? Why are you a onceler living in a multiverse with so many other oncelers? If you're born with the onceler name, are you doomed to meet the lorax, become a successful business man, bigger too much and too fast, experience a catastrophic downfall and then isolate yourself for 50 years until a kid named Ted comes to visit you? Like so many other people named Once-ler have gone through? Spiderverse may have copied the onceler fandom but at least they were able to give us the neat term "canon events" to describe this series of certain plot points of Once-ler Destiny.

And then, are you a onceler who even knows about this destiny? Would you believe it if someone tries to warn you, or do you think you'll be that one special one that succeeds? Or maybe you think it's a bunch of BS and any onceler who believes they can't control their own life is an idiot? But then what then, are you still a real "onceler" if you DO deviate from or escape this destiny? Destiny is called destiny for a reason, you know. So CAN you escape this destiny, and if you can, then were you ever a real "onceler" in the first place? In other words, is a onceler defined by whether Once-ler Destiny applies to them? What if you sold something other than thneeds, or does the product not matter? What exactly are the canon events of Once-ler Destiny anyway? What about deoncelerization, are you safe if you deoncelerize? And on the opposite end, what if you were just a normal guy with a normal name, but then you decide to take on a onceler persona? Are you willingly stepping into Once-ler Destiny and dooming yourself?

Much to think about.

#miruask #onceler destiny #articskele #my audrey also knows about onceler destiny for the record so i get to have a lot of fun with the concept too wheeheehee #onceler

[indigovigilance]

Sovereignty, Citizenship, and the Bookshop

Credit to @flameraven for scripts

Read on Ao3 at: Sovereignty, Citizenship, and the Bookshop (1702 words) by indigovigilance Summary: The rules regarding who may enter the bookshop, and who may give others permission to enter the bookshop, are revealed by events rather than exposition. Parallel themes surround the Bentley. In this meta I generate a theory of sovereignty and citizenship as it pertains to the Bookshop, and what that implies about a statement Crowley makes and Aziraphale's final decision in S2E6.

What actually is the Bookshop?

First, Aziraphale explains to Crowley:

S2E5: AZIRAPHALE: We're perfectly safe in here. Technically, this bookshop still counts as an Embassy.

But then, speaking to Shax, Aziraphale further defines the bookshop:

AZIRAPHALE: Out of the question. Might I remind you, that this bookshop is technically an independent embassy. Being a former outpost of Heaven, and as such…

Which doesn't actually make any sense.

An embassy, by definition, is a satellite of another larger nation. It is usually the residence of an ambassador, and is considered the "soil" and jurisdiction of the home country, regardless of where it is in the world: "An embassy is considered “foreign soil,” meaning that it operates under the jurisdiction and laws of the home country, not the host country (the country where the embassy is physically located)." [ext source]

So an embassy, by its basic definition, cannot be independent. It's an oxymoron. I'll interpret this to mean that the Bookshop constitutes its own nationstate (and that Aziraphale just doesn't say it that way because he's a funky little guy).

Bookshop: A Sovereign Nation of Two

There has been extensive discussion about why Crowley seems never to have told Aziraphale that he was living in his car, and why, if/when Aziraphale figured it out, he didn't say anything about it. (I wrote a meta discussing how we know that Aziraphale knows by the beginning of S2E4 that Crowley is living in his car. Additionally, in S2E6, Aziraphale doesn't seem to look particularly surprised when Crowley announces to the room that he's tired of living in his car; you can interpret this as being distracted and phased out but I don't think Aziraphale is ever so dissociated that he would miss a statement like that and simply not react. So by then, he certainly knows.)

I posit that Crowley did not ask to move in and would have refused to do so even if offered for one very simple reason: moving in would have made him a citizen of Bookshop, and therefore a point of vulnerability for Aziraphale. Because as he explains to Shax in S2E3, he can't technically invite her in:

SHAX: if you won't let me in… CROWLEY: Not technically something I can do.

Of course, Crowley is a demon: he could be lying. But let's take the statement at face value, since Shax, also a demon, who seems reasonably familiar with the rules of entry, doesn't question it. So Crowley, by never establishing citizenship, ensures that he can never be coerced or tricked into letting anyone into the Bookshop. He maintains his foreign entity status on purpose to protect Aziraphale.

One more note, in passing: Crowley stays at the shop in S2E3 and S2E4, but he has been charged by Aziraphale to "mind the bookshop, and Gabriel." His role is more akin to a house-sitter than a houseguest. He's there on work visa, and it does not establish citizenship.

So Crowley isn't a citizen of Bookshop. But someone other than Aziraphale is.

S2E1: MAGGIE: I can be out of here in two weeks. AZIRAPHALE: Out of here? Why? Don't you like it anymore? MAGGIE: Oh, Mr. Fell, I love this shop! I've loved it since I was a baby. But I know how behind I am on rent. (…) MAGGIE: You can't just forgive me eight months' rent. AZIRAPHALE: Oh, I can. I'm very good at forgiveness. It's one of my favorite things. Now, you have paid your rent, I have my music, and I know exactly what I'll be doing for the next 21 minutes. [he giggles and leaves] (creepiest most disturbing giggle in all of cinematic history BUT ANYWAYS)

We've established that Maggie not only is a tenant of land owned by Aziraphale, but that her accounts are all paid up. Her citizenship (or at least, permanent residency) is secure. If simply renting out the space wasn't enough, we learn that she is a fourth-generation resident of the space owned by Aziraphale, which started inside the bookshop itself, and so Maggie may have been born into citizenship. Either way, the consequences of this arise in S2E6:

AZIRAPHALE: Maggie, what just happened? MAGGIE: I… I think I might have just told them they could come in.

Crowley can't tell demons that they can come in. But Maggie can. My explanation for this is because she actually lives (and is up on her rent) in a territory of the nation of Bookshop. It could be posed that Maggie can invite demons in because she is a guest of the ball, and so this is a temporary power, but Crowley was a "guest"/house-sitter and didn't have this power, so I reject this explanation and affirm it as a citizenship/residency power.

The Metatron's Offer

At time of writing, the fandom has spent two months trying to figure out why Metatron offered Aziraphale the job of Supreme Archangel. Was it to get him back into Heaven where he can keep a closer eye on him? Was it to get him away from Crowley? Did Metatron realize that he is a wellspring of power and wants to tap into it for nefarious purpose?

I'm going to propose a different, much simpler reason: he needed to get Aziraphale out of the bookshop. To explain that, we look to a line that Crowley delivers during the Conversation:

CROWLEY: I mean, if Gabriel and Beelzebub can do it, go off together, then we can. Just the two of us. We don't need Heaven, we don't need Hell, they're toxic. We need to get away from them, just be an us. You and me, what do you say? AZIRAPHALE: Come with me… to Heaven. I'll run it, you can be my second in command. We can make a difference. CROWLEY: You can't leave this bookshop.

Hang on, didn't Crowley just say that they should run off together? Why is he now saying that he can't leave the bookshop? These statements seem contradictory, but through the lens of sovereignty, they're not. You see, if Aziraphale goes off to Alpha Centauri without rejoining Heaven, the Bookshop still belongs to him and constitutes the sovereign nation over which he rules. It is the anchor and touchstone of his independent status. What ever new residence they establish will, in turn, be an embassy of that "independent embassy." The Bookshop then (I hypothesize, and posit that Crowley does too) grants Aziraphale protection from Heaven and Hell no matter where he is in the universe.

A Brief Aside on the Mechanics of Satellites

We have some evidence that Bookshop rules extend to wherever Aziraphale happens to be "residing," in that when Aziraphale borrows Crowley's car, Shax must trick him into giving him permission to enter (S2E4):

HITCHHIKER: I'm so sorry, can you be an angel and give me a lift? Only m-my car's broken down and my phone's dead. Just to the next town, there's a garage there. AZIRAPHALE: Oh… yes, well… I suppose you better climb in, then.

Thus establishing that, theoretically, Crowley and Aziraphale could "go off together" and still have the protection of the Bookshop.

The Consequences of Aziraphale's Final Decision

Crowley tells Aziraphale that he cannot leave the bookshop, but then we know that Aziraphale takes the job and ascends to Heaven. Metatron looks extremely relieved. No sooner do they ascend than Muriel enters the bookshop, where we know Metatron has placed them. Let's take this point by point.

The Bookshop is no longer a sovereign nation

By rejoining Heaven, Aziraphale has reclaimed his citizenship as an angel of Heaven. I'm going to go ahead and say (for sake of argument and because it is thematically consistent) that Heaven does not honor duel citizenship. Therefore, Aziraphale has given up his citizenship of Bookshop, but as it still belongs to him, it is now territory subject to the jurisdiction of Heaven. Muriel has been placed there as a representative of Heaven. Having been (we can surmise) the only "independent embassy" in existence where both angels and demons had to ask permission to enter, it is once again a good and proper embassy of Heaven.

This is important because now, neither Aziraphale nor Crowley have any place to go that is protected from both Heaven and Hell.

Muriel has unfettered access to Aziraphale's collection of books

My very simplistic theory for why Metatron went to so much trouble to get Aziraphale to cede control of the Bookshop is that he needs access to his collection of books. Specifically, he needs a certain Scrivener who enjoys reading to set up camp there and peruse every single book. This is because he is looking for something.

Gabriel left Heaven with a large box; he arrived at the Bookshop with an empty box. We can punt around all sorts of possible reasons but let's say, for sake of conjecture, that Gabriel stole the Book of Life on his way out to protect himself and Beelzebub from erasure. We don't know where the Book is now, but Metatron (who doesn't know the box was empty) has good reason to believe that the Book of Life is somewhere in the bookshop. But it's too dangerous to admit that they've lost track of it, so the best way to find a Book in a bookshop is to get the owner out of there, install an avid reader as steward, and wait patiently.

Other consequences of this theory of citizenship

We are given to believe that Crowley and Aziraphale are both outcasts of Hell and Heaven, respectively, yet Aziraphale seems to be the only one of them that benefits from the protections of independence. We could say that it is because Aziraphale owns land, and so that allows him to establish a nationstate, whereas the Bentley does not, but since Aziraphale brings the protections of independence with him when he borrows the Bentley, that seems flimsy. I find it more likely that in S3 we're going to learn something about Crowley that explains why he lacks these protections, and if I dare to make conjecture, it will be the subject of another meta.

I didn't get around to a discussion of the consequences of Aziraphale throwing his halo and "declaring war," or that war declaration being maybe-cancelled by Crowley; suffice to say, that may again be it's own meta.

~~~

If you enjoyed this, you may enjoy: Honolulu Roast: the story of a coup

another meta on the topic of ownership re the Bentley by @ineffable-endearments can be found here.

~~~

edit: I was reminded by @rekishi-aka to note that in S1, Gabriel and Sandolphon walk right in, because at that time the bookshop is an embassy of Heaven. For all of S2 except the final 30 minutes, celestials all have to ask permission to enter, including Michael, Uriel, Saraqael, and Muriel, because the Bookshop is independent. After Aziraphale throws his halo, celestials just appear inside the Bookshop: by declaring war, Aziraphale has relinquished his protection. It's unclear whether it would have been reestablished by Crowley cancelling the war, but it's a moot point because then Aziraphale agrees to become the Supreme Archangel.

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens meta #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands #neil gaiman #good omens maggie #muriel #good omens muriel #maggie #metatron #fuck metatron #ivoc

[anarglitch]

Scott pilgrim takes off inhabits the same artistic space as the matrix 4, or even the final fantasy 7 remake. I mean this as a good thing. It has the distinct touch of an artist that made something that defined a generation revisiting the art that outgrew them a thousandfold with more maturity and different interests.

These interests usually skew meta, they're about what drives someone to revisit something made by a past version of oneself, about the experience of suddenly gaining more influence than anyone could reconcile, where criticisms of your work (which you also, no doubt, have many) become synonymous with criticisms of your culture. If you've been here a while, you probably know (and are tired of) what I'm talking about, manic pixie dream girls and aloof average male protagonists, toxic nostalgia, pick your theme and it's a video essay title.

Imagine having every read of your 2004 funny video game-coded coming of age comic reverberate infinitely toward every direction, people saying your main character taught a whole generation of men to be self-absorbed while the exact opposite type of people rant about how your secondary lead "ruined a whole generation of women" because of hair-dye or whatever. Imagine Edgar Wright makes a movie adaptation of your cute little comic that somehow launches the careers of half of the current celebrity pantheon simultaneously. How would that change you?

Well, for one, it makes you less relatable. The truth of an aloof nerdy guy dating in his early 20s is a lot more universal than the truth of an artist in his 40s forever defined by the event horizon of a thing he wrote half his life ago. The matrix 4 couldn't stop talking about how it feels to have created the matrix. The final fantasy 7 remake can't help but to constantly examine what it means to remake final fantasy 7. It's easy to see why someone would hate that indulgent meta trend, I'll probably never write a generation-defining story, why would I care about the first world problems of someone who did? It can feel distant, and at its worst it can feel insulting. Like it's pointing the finger at the fans, whispering 'you did this to me'. I get that.

I get that, but I love it.

It's the fundamental difference between wanting something that is like something you liked, and wanting someone that is from the same creator of something you liked. The difference between feeding the mona lisa into an AI and finding a new authentic da Vinci. You can't make something entirely new if you religiously stick to using the parts of something that's already there. The human behind the work will always have influences you didn't realize, thought patterns and aesthetic preferences that weren't entirely clear in their previous work, no matter how much you deconstruct it. More importantly, the human will also change, and this organic self-continuity will reflect on the art. I don't want the creator of something to hold their own creation with the same zeal as its fans, because someone who did that simply wouldn't have been capable of creating the original piece in the first place.

I don't want a product, I want art.

Scott pilgrim, the original, indulges the most earnest impulse we have-- that of self-mythologizing, of creating a narrative off of our own lives. To depict the mundane as fantastic, interpersonal relationships as adventures. It resonated with so many people because it was earnest, and it was also picked apart to hell and back because it was earnest. Its flaws were on display, and not just the ones it intended to show. But in my opinion, the opposite impulse, that of washing off everything that could be criticized and presenting the cleanest possible image of yourself through your art, is just... bad. it makes for bad art, or it just freezes you. The very first hurdle of creating anything is getting over that, then maybe the spotlight will fall on you. If it does, you'll get everything you ever wanted, but everyone gets to see through you.

So, how do you revisit something like that? You have two options. Either you take all the pieces and try to reassemble them exactly how everyone remembers it, signing your name as a formality, looking at a mirror in which you no longer see yourself, or you talk to it. You dialogue with your own work, with who you used to be. You travel in time and talk to yourself. You question them, acknowledge them but also teach them a thing or two. You don't respect the product, you respect the feeling. You find the same earnestness that made you put pen to paper for the first time, and you point it towards your new loves and fears. Maybe you make it less about the main guy, take the chance to develop your secondary characters, maybe you give the girl more agency. Maybe you summon the future and refuse its answers. Maybe you fight yourself.

That's the harder choice. It submits your new self to the scrutinizing eyes of a whole new generation, it risks alienating the people who identified with your previous piece. It's riskier, probably less profitable, and by any pragmatic lens probably a bad idea. But it's the only way you can make art. It's truth, the truth that got you there in the first place.

It's how you get it together.

#scott pilgrim #scott pilgrim takes off #review #bryan lee o'malley

[technicallyverycowboy]

playboyy: no fags, no femmes

okay, so. playboyy meta. thanks to @lugarn, @chaos0pikachu, and @cryptidafter for talking all this out with me <3

i originally started this post with "not to be that guy," but honestly, i do want to be that guy. because so much of the critique and analysis of playboyy i'm seeing is a) grounded in a lack of knowledge about queer history and aesthetics and b) veers unintentionally but wildly into unexamined homophobia.

so, given i'm going to reference susan sontag's notes on camp several times, i've decided i might as well go full queer studies major about it and copy the list style she uses. (i would highly recommend reading notes on camp. it is academic and somewhat dense, but it's a tame 13 pages)

1. so many people are confidently asserting that playboyy is not camp, regardless of what the creatives behind the show think. to which i have to ask: how are you defining camp? what things are campy to y'all?

2. the personal definition of camp that i arrived at after writing a bunch of papers about it is two-fold: camp is exaggeration, treating things that are serious casually and treating things that are casual seriously. camp is about an aesthetic of inhabiting a role, where something is a little bit off or being something that it's not meant to be.

and to be clear, this is a wildly incomplete and simplified definition, because one of the points of camp is that it's a vibe, not something concrete. It’s also something that shifts over time the relationship between queerness and society changes.

2a. camp often intersects and overlaps with surrealism, like in rocky horror picture show. very often media that is campy exits the mundane world and enters a heightened world of exaggeration and stylization. 

3. so, is playboyy campy? i sure as hell think it is. i think lugarn and chaos0pikachu both made really good points about the campiness of playboyy and it being specifically sexwork camp. (both replies are at that link.)

4. a brief list of things that specifically resonated as campy to me: first throwing american dollars in the pool for soong to catch, zouey's fantasy of feeling up teena in art class, every single element of nant's room (especially the projected images), captain's sports plot that involved zero doing the sport and 100% fucking and fantasy, the softly romantic framing of nuth and phob's sex scenes, jump's pleather tank top & coverall combination, prom wearing assless chaps to a rooftop party at 2:30 in the afternoon, the entire concept of investigating a disappearance via a themed party... i could go on and on, but i said this was brief.

5. i think the actual problem a lot of people have with playboyy is that it doesn't care about straight people.

6. what i mean by that is that playboyy is not a universal story. you could not plug different characters with different sexualities into the plot and preserve the essence of the story. the gayness of the characters is integral to the plot. the sex work is integral to the plot. this is not a world where homophobia doesn't exist and being gay is just like being straight.

7. additionally, these characters are all performing gender in a specifically queer way. they are femmes and fags, they are obvious, they are clockable, they're visible. when nice gays talk about the people who are giving gays a bad reputation and making it harder for everyone (to assimilate into heteropatriarchy) they're talking about playboyy gays.

8. comparing playboyy to only friends is low hanging fruit at this point, but i would argue that the reason boston stood out in that cast and was so viciously punished by the ending is because he was a fag stuck in a nice gays narrative.

9. and this is where the fandom homophobia comes in. so, so many people describe these characters and chaotic and messy, watchable as incoherent and vaguely amusing from a distance, but without real substance. the resulting narrative is often that no one could take their characters or their stories seriously or resonate with them.

10. again, why? why was ray and sand's high and low, blow up fights, calling each other whores relatable but soong and first's miscommunications about what they mean to each other unbelievable chaos? why is white taking black's place an acceptable plot point, but nont pretending to be nant is absurd?

11. most bls do not deal with flamboyance except in limited capacities by comedic side characters. flamboyance is a baseline trait for most of the playboyy characters. so if they feel too much, too loud, too out there, consider asking yourself why they do.

12. to a large extent, i think a lot of the criticism of playboyy is rooted in a bad faith refusal to engage with the show beyond a surface level pearl clutching about the sexual content. the unspoken belief here being that sex scenes are inherently vulgar distractions. they can't be integral to characters or their relationships. they can't be vital pieces of a narrative.

to which i say, there are nine thousand other BLs out there where the kissing is chaste and sex scenes are ~tastefully abstracted shots of shoulder blades and hands. watch those instead.

13. if you decide you want to watch it anyway, take a couple minutes to examine what parts of the show make you uncomfortable and why. and to be clear, i think there’s a lot of value in watching things that make you uncomfortable; media is often one of the best ways to dip into interrogating your emotional responses from a safe distance. 

but don’t use discomfort to dismiss the possibility that there’s meaningful artistic and stylistic choices made to serve a meaningful narrative. take a second to sit with your reactions and ask yourself where it’s coming from. 

#playboyy #playboyy meta #i want you all to know i hunted through three emails to find the rhetoric of camp essay i wrote in college for this

[wutheringskies]

Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian aren't the same.

Jin Guangyao is one of the best written characters I've come across. A villian that doesnt look like one, doesnt act like one, is likeable, has strong motivations and a defined personality and extremely fun to read fanfics about. But what I dislike is the role that fanon gives him; specially his role in the story with allusions to Wei Wuxian, casting Jin Guangyao as someone similar to Wei Ying. The "poor children turned to forced villains" trope. This meta is about WHY that's NOT true.

The humiliation of his mother didn't give him the right to burn down an entire brothel. (personally, I found it satisfying but). The desire of acceptance from his father was a motivation for his crimes, not a factor that validates those crimes. Often, Jin Guangyao is treated as the counter part of Wei Wuxian. They both share only three similarities, however:

1. Both came from low backgrounds and struggled a lot in their childhoods. Meng Yao had food, but witnessed constant humiliation. Wei Ying had nothing, and then got tangled into the fucked up dynamics of the Jiangs.

2. Both were found to be much different than what people believed them to be. Wei Wuxian was supposed to be evil, hateful, a murderer who kills just to satisfy his blood thirst and need for power, a monster. Jin Guangyao was supposed to be the guy who worked hard and rose to the top, humble, kind, honest and pure of heart.

3. Both had their reputations destroyed from targeted rumor mill.

That is all.

Other than that, Jin Guangyao is NOT at all similar to Wei Wuxian by any measure. He had to do bad things because he desired power, and to gain, power in a corrupt world, you need to be even more corrupted. He killed all those who looked down upon him (not bodily harm him). He clenched his teeth and killed everyone who protested against him or questioned him. He silenced everybody before they could silence him. He isn't SOLELY responsible but he only played the cards that would bring HIM benefit, not the cards that were righteous, or good, or kind.

Wei Wuxian never desired power, was willing to give up a limb for the safety of his sect. When has he ever raised his sword or his flute if not in self defense? When has he ever attacked first and when has he ever killed an innocent? The only innocent he's most directly responsible for is Jin Zixuan and that was too, in an ambush, where he was asked to back down.

Not just that, everyone is always talking about the Nightless City massacre but never about the Burial Mounds Seige 2.0 where all of the cultivators WOULD have DIED, if not for Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian.

If your reasoning behind justifying Jin Guangyao's actions and murders is the "intention" then you come across as hypocritical if you condemn Wei Wuxian for the Nightless City massacre, ignoring everything that led to it. His prowess in cultivation, his natural genius, and his terrifying powers that he built himself even after losing a core are not crimes that he should be punished for, but he was. Because he's supposed to be just the son of a servant. How dare he be so powerful? So many attempts on his life were made and he survived them all. So many attempts to summon his soul, and they didn't work.

Is surviving a crime? For the Jiang Cheng stans who always thrust the survivor narrative onto JC, this is a question for them. Was Wei Wuxian wrong to have survived incidents in which he was being attacked? Should he have died for doing absolutely nothing wrong, other than having a different voice? For standing against a structure that always prioritizes one being above all, being the ultimate voice that cannot be questioned?

Here I'm going to quote some parts from the ExR translation of Villanous Friends:

He Su, “What was the irresistible trend? What was stirring up trouble? Jin GuangShan wanted to establish the position of chief cultivator only to imitate the QishanWen Sect in being the only ones at the top. Do you think all the world is ignorant? You frame me like this only because I spoke the truth!”

When you really succeed, all of the world of cultivation would see the true face of the LanlingJin Sect. Do you think killing me alone would put you eternally at ease? How wrong you are! We, the TingshanHe Sect, teem with talent. From now on, we’ll unite and never surrender to you Wen-dogs of another skin!”

Sounds familiar?

After a few laughs, he continued, “Sect Leader Jin, let me ask you something else. Do you think that, because the QishanWen Sect is gone, the LanlingJin Sect has all right to replace it?”

Wei WuXian added, “Everything has to be given to you? Everyone has to listen to you? Looking at how the LanlingJin Sect does things, I almost thought that it was the QishanWen Sect’s empire all over again.”

Wei WuXian, “Did I say something wrong? Forcing living people to be bait and beating them up whenever they refused to obey—is this any different from what the QishanWen Sect does?”

These were voices that questioned the greater powers. This is what happened to these voices:

Jin Guangyao: That’s not the way to go about things, is it? The TingshanHe Sect rebelled and schemed to assassinate Sect Leader Jin with all its forces before it was caught red-handed. How could that be called without a reason?”

Flashback to Wen Chao, asking if the disciples in the Xuanwu Cave were rebelling when they protected Mianmian who was asked to be the live bait of a monster.

Also, flashback to Wei Wuxian standing up for the Wens and being called a rebel when he stood up for the Wens who were being used as live baits to strengthen the Jin.

The ones over there cried, “Brother! He’s lying! We didn’t, we didn’t!”

Flashback to Wen Ning "losing control" at Koi Tower probably due to Xue Yang's invention. But the point to be taken away is that Sect Leader He Su's younger disciples, who are harmless, are framed as murderers. A position similar to what Wei Wuxian was put into.

He Su, “Utterly nonsense! Open your eyes and fucking look! There are nine-year-old children here! Old men who can’t even walk! How could they rebel against anything?! Why would they assassinate your dad out of nowhere?!”

Funny how the evils of society comprised of old grandmas, uncles, a toddler, a doctor, a fierce corpse, and a cultivator with no status, no core, no money, no voice living in a cave with a pool of blood, digging the Burial soil to grow some potatoes.

And not those who were sitting on their thrones, reveling in riches and ordering people around.

Jin GuangYao, “Because you made a mistake and committed murder, Young Master He Su, while they refused to accept Koi Tower’s conviction of you, of course.”

"A mistake" reminds me of the incident at qionggi path. Even if Jin Zixuan hadn't died that day, they would've kept cornering Wei Wuxian until he'd have no other choice but to go on the offensive (which is what he did.)

Turns out even being sooo powerful that he could shake mountains, he eventually died.

Yet, at such a place, nobody would listen to his protests. Sitting before him were two villains who already treated him as though he were dead. What they enjoyed was precisely his dying struggle. Smiling, Jin GuangYao leaned back, waving his hand, “Hush him up, hush him up.”

"You shut them in live?"

Xue Yang turned around, curling his lips, “Wei WuXian never used live humans, but I wanna try.”

So, Xue Yang is an actual demonic cultivator who's protected by the Jins, murdered 2 entire clans and this is the third one and godness knows how many more. Absolutely very few people give actual fucks about what cultivation methods to employ. The one who really cared was perhaps, Lan Wangji.

Jin Guangyao as you can see isn't being "forced" to kill people because he's of lower birth and nobody accepts him :(

He's killing people to silence those who speak against his and his father's (and they both are one and the same entity. he's acting on his father's orders which he could've disobeyed and run away but he would lose his sect reputation and standing.)

Why does his reputation and standing mean more than the lives of all these 70 people ?

Were they trying to kill him? No.

Did they attack him first to the point he would lose his life? No.

Would they have thrown him into a whore house? No.

Let us please not compare Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao.

MXTX wants us to know what's said and told may not be right. Wei Wuxian isn't fond of the techniques that are used to confirm Jin Guangyao's demise. He's critical of how nobody else is concerned. He's unsure of what NHS's motivations are - does he now want complete power? or did his plan only extend up to his revenge? He's critical of how only yesterday people were all over this guy and today they hate him. Critical of how society works on what is favourable and not what is true.

But he's not SUPPORTIVE of Jin Guangyao. He's sympathetic to people turning onto you, but not empathetic towards Jin Guangyao. He believes Jin Guangyao to be a cruel man.

Those are two different things.

Nobody knows better than Wei Wuxian how it feels to be set up at every step:

1. Firstly he was used as a punching bag for Madam Yu and an emotional one for JC throughout his childhood

2. The Wens completely played him up, setting him as the cause of LP's fall.

3. Then, he was played by the Jins and the cultivation world until his death by validating JC's jealousy against him, by villianizing him and estranging him, by setting up the ambush, by sending JZX, by making false promises, by not checking for validity, by controlling Wen Ning, by setting up the seige parade, by getting JYL there, and finally the seige. (even after his death disrespecting his all)

4. He was brought back to the world on the revenge plans of NHS and tossed like a tennis ball from the plans of NHS and JGY. Yi City arc? children would've died -> NHS. Burial Mound seige 2.0? everyone would've died -> JGY. if LWJ wasn't with him at every step of the way, Wei Ying would've once again been in such a spot. Without any status or authority he would've gotten no help, no aid, and been villianized once more. He would've been stabbed and captured with nobody to save him. He would've made himself the bait without anybody to fight the monsters off.

Each of us have individual capacities and also, each of us have the one thing we cannot let happen:

1. Wei Ying can't let injustice prevail and sit by the side doing nothing

2. Jin Guangyao can't take in being stripped of power and being a lowlife again.

Those are two very different things. JGY made every decision he could to escape his grand fear, which was personal. I don't condemn his motivations personally cause I find them hot. Similar to how I find his character hot. Yet, he's not the hero on the opposite spectrum. He's not the lowlife who was killed because people can't handle people from lower birth statuses being on the top chairs for making decisions - but that is also true - but is not the reason behind his tragedy. Not the sole reason and also not the most important reason.

The most important reason is as it is said: he believes himself to be different and values his life over others, similar to Xue Yang. Their personalities vary greatly, yet his "true" friends were Xue Yang and Su She. (He showed glimpses of the truth and of his reality to LXC. So, he's hiding the truth and LXC doesn't wish to dig deeper anyways thus not a true friendship.) One wished to take revenge in extremely unfair shares, a clan for a finger. A clan for a son. The entire cultivation world could die but he couldn't be badmouthed or put on trial or killed. The other - Su She, wished to be recognized by those who he equally hated, despised and considered arrogant and also was jealous and envious of. So, these two traits - great desire for revenge onto everyone who's ever said anything mean about him, and the desire for power. You may argue how this developed from his childhood trauma but you can't argue that this justifies his cold blooded crimes because it doesn't. Another thing I'd like to add is that, his friendship with Lan Xichen also shows his personality; not wanting to take the messy, big path (such as showing up to your own death planning party, or planning a death party) and his relatively calm nature. Yet just like the friendship it is fragmented and fake; a composure that is stuck onto the cold, and hot brimming desire for power.

There was one character who had to kill a large number of people or would have no other option left and it wasn't Jin Guangyao. There was one character who was hated by society solely because of his background and his desire to protect people and it wasn't Jin Guangyao. There was one character who had to give up everything for what he believed in and it wasn't Jin Guangyao. There was one character who ended up being the indirect reason for the passing of loved siblings due to the unjust society.

and it wasn't Jin Guangyao.

(but there were two characters who had confirmed sex before marriage. one of them was Jin Guangyao)

#mo dao zu shi #mdzs #mdzs meta #wei wuxian #jin guangyao #xue yang slaughtered 2 clans and was protected by the jins #xue yang #cultivation world bullshit #jin zixuan #wei ying #burial mounds #wen remnants #my meta #my thoughts #my essays

[cleromancy]

one thing i think people miss when trying to nail down the like nitty gritty of like-- okay. so post-crisis post-resurrection Jason's a hypocrite, right? and hes purposely fancast himself as the villain opposite bruce in utrh.

but also even while Jason's doing this he *has a point,* and he *knows it.* Jasons got a lot of big moral ideas hes spouting, and from what we see, he mostly only abides by *some* of them. so while you're like acknowledging that utrh/lost days jay is motivated by his emotions and doesn't act in ways that align with his moral principles, but also he *keeps bringing **up** those moral principles*, you start to wonder like. What the hell is going on in that big brain of yours jay.

and what i was getting at. the thing i think most people miss or forget when exploring that. is jasons appearance in outsiders 2003.

im looking through the tpb so im not giving you the exact issue numbers for any of these panels sorry but its 44-46 plus the annual.

but here is the crux of the matter:

cutting for length!!

so whats going on here in outsiders! is that black lightning, aka Jefferson pierce, aka anissa pierces dad and one of the few really good dads in the dcu, got (basically) framed for murder by deathstroke; believed he (accidentally) actually did the murder; eventually turned himself in to serve his time in prison.

jason happens across this information entirely by accident, and goes out of his way to deliver that information to dickie, who has an on-again off-again relationship with being the leader of the outsiders at this point in time. and im just going to post a lot of it, both bc i like it and also so you see what Jason was going against JUST TO DELIVER THIS INFORMATION:

skipping the first page to save images but jason asks dick to meet up with him in Gotham; the next pages:

im skipping a bit of really enjoyable fighting after that as well but pls know its there. jason asked dick to meet up and dick fully said okay ill come to your rendez-vous *just* to beat the shit out of you. and he was so valid for that. but this aint about him so lets get back to jason:

why does jason bring this up + how does Jason come by this information? well

ok. now youre as caught up as dick is.

some times fools and jackanapes say to me. but sisky why would jason do this and bring this information to dick. why would he try to break black lightning out of prison. why would he do such a thing when he is a known knave, neer do well, scoundrel, etc. to which i say HE TOLD YOU!!! HE TOLD YOU WHY HE DID IT

JASON FUCKING VALUES THE *GOOD GUYS.*

(and also sidenote. winick is writing this so we have to assume he knows how competent and resourceful jason can be bc... as the guy who defined the character after his resurrection... he *made him that way.* so based on utrh we have to assume both that 1) jason could have pulled this prison break off solo and 2) jason *knows* he could pull it off solo...

but he also knows he's a Bad Guy now, and he realizes that *if* he sprung black lightning hed just fucking! turn himself back in! so jadon needs to convince some big goddamn heroes to do it....

so he goes to dick.)

((and also secondary sidenote. willis todd canoncially spent enough time in and out of prison that jason assumed hed wound up back there without telling him or catherine before she died and jason wound up squatting, and he only found out otherwise when he read the entry on the batcomputer on two-face.))

the point is. jason has a *lot* of moral ideas he is not, at this point in time, capable of living by for a variety of Jason Reasons, ill do more meta on that some other time. so he's inhabiting the bad guy role, but sometimes he keeps slipping and falling and accidentally caring about things, and...

god damn it dick, black lightning is one of the *good* guys. like *you're* one of the good guys. aren't you going to fucking help him??

i will probably elaborate on this more in the future as well. i just need to hit send rn LOL

#jason todd #dc #text #outsiders #meta

[mistymisfit]

So long, Marianne III

Summary: Reader is a spy working undercover in Gotham when she meets Jason Todd, who despite her better judgement she forms a very close friendship with. This story follows their escape from Arkham asylum, their fall out and the times they run into each other as they get older.

Relationship: AK!Jason x Meta!Fem!Reader

Warnings: Mentions of reader being at the beach and wearing unspecified swimwear, mentions of Jason being taller than reader, the shittiest vaguest smut you'll ever read (it's separated with ** in case anyone wants to skip it), mentions of past SA, and graphic descriptions of depression (like straight out of my psychopathology textbook). So minors DNI!!!!

Word Count: 6,5K

Read on ao3

Masterlist - Mobile masterlist

Years passed and you got better, better at handling your feelings, at smothering them down so you wouldn't make the same mistake again. Countless identities after and you haven't even been close to getting involved with someone the same way you did with Jason. Now you lived and moved under the name "Penny Lewis", a fake identity as a journalist that would allow you to move around countries to wherever they sent you.  You wouldn't lie to yourself, it was lonely and on some nights you wished you would've said yes to him. But you wouldn't have forgiven yourself if you let your life be defined by him. You knew the consequences of deserting and any happiness a life with him could've bought you would have been overshadowed by guilt. You heard of Joker's death from some people you walked past last time you were in the States, realizing he finally died of whatever disease he was making you slow down on the very same night you escaped. You also found out Batman was still alive and kicking, after that you wondered were Jason was, wasn't he hellbent on killing him?

Now you were stationed in Venezuela, the closest headquarters of your agency were in an entire different country so you were all on your own. Your only company being the agent who you got partnered with, a serious guy, with not much muscles but was a tech expert. The cover was that you were a regular couple on a holiday, but what you were really doing was investigating, someone was training people and forming an army there. You had to find out who and why. You've felt bad about certain missions before, especially when after getting the information you needed your bosses decided not to do anything about it because they deemed the situation was "not important enough", when you were there available and ready to stop a tragedy. What would be the reason for someone to form a secret army in a country under a dictatorship? Maybe they were just trying to get their rights back, free their country. But you sighed and pushed it all down, at least you get to enjoy the sea for a moment.

Unbeknownst to you, you were being observed from a distance . He was doing a routine perimeter check by himself, using it as an excuse to take a walk and be on his own, when he looked around and thought he saw you in the distance from the cliff he was on. He thought it'd be impossible but still presses on the side of his helmet to zoom in, so it was you. You had a different haircut, and hair color but he'd recognize you anywhere. He takes in the sight of you, now older and no longer the teenager he remembered. You were talking to someone, the other person stands up when you turn around to take off your dress and leave it on an arm-chair. He doesn't mean to but his breath hitches when he sees you in your swimwear, guess he didn't get over his crush like he thought. His expression under the mask changes when he sees who you were talking to, a guy, a very friendly guy who puts a hand on your hip and you kiss his cheek. What the fuck? Is the only thing he could think about. Until he feels a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"Are we losing time spying on girls on the beach now?" The scoff he lets out in response is almost inaudible under the electronic voice the helmet gave him.

"Fuck off, Wilson" He brushes off the hand on his shoulders and moves along, clearly you were not who he remembered. You moved on when he couldn't, he was holding onto a memory and a moment of his life he knew would never come back. He had to force himself to see what you really were right now, a threat to his plan not an old friend.

Knowing of your presence and your line of work, he instructed his men to run more frequent perimeter checks and be more wary of any breaches or intrusions. So, a few nights after he first saw you, you find yourself sneaking into his base. You were good, stealthy and well-trained, light on your feet and fast- with the addition of being able to stop time. You avoid all eyes, and hide in the dark using the lack of lights to your advantage. Of course the secret military base would have the least amount of lights outside of it to avoid attracting any attention. It was close enough to the city in case anything was needed but also far away enough to go unnoticed. Whoever was running this operation knew what they were doing. You climbed to the roof of the main building, where you thought was most likely to have an office, which would have papers or a computer that you could use to find out who they were. Quick fingers work on picking the lock of a door on the back of it but as soon as you open it you are stopped.

A gun is pressed to your temple and you thought "fuck", you almost made it in.

"Don't move an inch, sweetheart" The man next to you speaks, and then moves your hair with the muzzle "I remember you, no powers, make a move and I'll shoot you"

You weakly nod in response, how did you even get caught? You've been studying their shifts, their patterns, everything. He was not supposed to be here. You raise your hands, signaling defeat, a bullet to your head was one of the things you couldn't heal. He opens the door and pushes you in, it leads to a dark storage unit. With the gun still fixed on your head he walks behind you, telling you were to go. Until you made it to the main room, a few gasps and whispers from the men there are heard, shocked to see someone made it past through all the security measures. You could feel the uncountable amount of eyes on you, the attention making you uneasy- not that your life being threatened didn't make you feel uneasy enough. But if he had orders to kill on sight, you would've been dead by now so you may still have a chance of escaping.

"Someone call the Knight!" He shouts, getting somebody to bind your hands behind your back with a zip tie "this gun leaves her head and we're all fucked"

He was right, you'd go for him first. Maybe only for him and then flee, they wouldn't make a fuss over one casualty. You could still complete your mission. Then you see him walking towards you, a tall man, wearing a helmet- was it electronic? huh? You assume only the helmet is robotic because he moved like a real person, it wouldn't be the weirdest thing you've come across. A robot leading a secret militia, that's a funny story to tell. Everything from his posture to the way he walked and held himself made you think he looked like the boss of this place. His gloved hand holds your jaw and leans down, like he's getting a good look at you under the blue screen of his helmet. You debate for a second if it'd be a good idea to spit on it, you were already fucked there's no other way than down now.

"To think such a pretty face could take us all out before we noticed" You barely hear the whisper of the modulated voice. And you don't know why it angers you to the point all logic is thrown out the window and you decide to take it out on the --much taller than you-- guy in front of you. He acknowledged your strength, what you were capable of doing and called you pretty while he was at it too.

You headbutt him below his chin, figuring that might be a weak point in the helmet. Had he not worn that you would've gone straight for his forehead, it was his fault for putting himself so close to you. He stumbles a few steps back from you, and you could hear the "ohh"s and gasps from the men there. It feels good for about 5 seconds, then you start wondering why you haven't been shot yet. Wasn't the man who found you supposed to be a hit man or something like that? And you were also severely outnumbered, this could have been over a while ago. You hear a robotic chuckle, it probably didn't even hurt him, and then hes grabbing your arm tightly, pushing a gun to your side.

"Adorable" He mocks

"Fuck you" You whisper under your breath, still not ready to go without a fight.

"Party's over, go the fuck home" He screams , squeezing your arm so hard you'll think it will leave a bruise "I'll handle her myself"

He starts guiding you away and for a second you have trouble keeping up with his much longer steps. You huff in annoyance, sure that if you were to stop walking he could hold you up and drag you with how strong his grip was on you. You move quite a lot, you didn't expect the place to be so big, you even go up a set of stairs until he finally opens the door to what looks like an office-kind of. It doesn't look like the place gets much use, and the sole desk only has a few things scattered over it, you doubt any of them had any importance if he took you there. There wasn't even a computer on it and you noted the chair on the other side even had dust on it. What you didn't hear on your way out was the words exchanged between the men, which would definitely have let you guess who hid under the robot mask.

"They know each other?" One of the Knight's most trusted lieutenants asked.

"She's an old ex-girlfriend of his," He clarifies, remembering how you got away. "used to be a real pain in my ass once"

"He knew she was coming?"

Slade just shrugged and walked away, avoiding anymore questions. Of course the kid knew, that's why he had doubled the perimeters check, he wasn't stupid. But it wasn't until now that he put two and two together and realized you were who he was staring at the beach the other day.

He turns you to face the desk with your back to him and it makes you nervous. What was he going to do? You'll freeze him and escape if he tries anything weird, screw a cover. They already knew too much about you so it's not like your cover mattered much anyways. He takes out a knife, God knows from where, and to your surprise uses to cut off the zip tie around your wrists.

"Why are you freeing me?"

"Because I know you wont try anything funny" You recognize the now non-modulated voice, of course it's him. Who else would be running a militia like this? It almost makes you want to laugh, sure this is how you find each other after 5 years. You see the helmet dropped at the desk but you don't dare to turn and face him just yet. You had 5 years to think about everything, to make peace with every choice you took but you were still a little afraid to face him.

"This usual for you?" He asks when you keep quiet, you don't even look at him. He wants to say he's disappointed but he can't. He knows someone like you, pretty and perfect, won't dwell in the past like he does. "Getting caught?"

"No," you reply in a weak whisper "this is my first time actually"

"What about the time-"

"It was on purpose, I was ordered to let myself get captured" You cut him off, crossing your arms in front of yourself, as if trying to shield your body from something you were not quite sure what it was. This was one of the things that would be easier to tell him without looking at his face, not like you are not dying to stare at him and see if he's changed with the years.

"Of course," He scoffs, a gloved hand resting on your shoulder "you just happened to run into your kidnapped boyfriend, lucky me"

You blush despite the situation you were in, you never thought you'd live to see the day you heard Jason calling himself your boyfriend-even if he was using that tone. Even if he had an attitude like that, was he still pissed? even after all this time?

"Jason" You sigh, what now? You tell him about how you were ordered not to look for him any further? How you disobeyed and got yourself punished from insubordination? Though that is probably how you ended up with that suicide --let yourself be captured-- mission that led you to find him.

"What? Can't even look me in the eye?" He sighs too, ending the sentence by whispering your name. "You hate me now?"

"Don't ever say that" You quickly turn around to face him. Was he always this tall? And this huge? He's obviously gained a lot of muscle since the last time you saw him, and probably grew a few inches taller too. Do boys keep growing after they turn 18? Or did he always tower over you this much? You made yourself a mental note to look it up when it was safe. Yeah, you saw him moments ago, but he had the helmet on, you didn't know you were looking at Jason it was different.

He, obviously, still has the J scar on his face, and he looks even more rough than what you remembered. You still think he's handsome, though. And his eyes are just as pretty as you remembered. It feels like the world stopped on its axis when you look at him, your memory pales in comparison to the real thing. Even if his presence has changed, and he feels much more dangerous now, you still see the same boy who would sneak to your room to get his broken ribs fixed and cuddle you. You wanted to believe he was still in there, that all the trouble you went through to help him wasn't for nothing. He's staring at you too, he has been since you entered his view, but now he is not wearing the mask so you can see his eyes trained on you.

"I could never hate you" You wanted to reach for him, touch him, just to make sure it was real but you refrained from doing it. You didn't know if he'd be okay with it, you had to bring yourself back to earth and think about how much he could've changed in the past few years.

"There you are, looking prettier than the day I left you" He apparently has no problem grabbing your face and squeezing your cheeks.

"Oh so your memory is intact" you push his hand away, his words reminding you that you were supposed to be mad at him.

"Come on, baby" He's trying to butter you up with the pet name, and you're ashamed to say it's working "You promised me some answers"

"Then ask" You tease, leaning backwards to the desk and resting your palms on it to support yourself.

"Why Marianne? Why Penny?" He asks, your legs were caged in between his not allowing you to leave as he towered over you. Hot, you thought against all logic and reason. You are not surprised to hear him say your new alias either, he must've done his research too.

"They're songs from the sixties" Your head tilted to the side with your gaze still fixed on him. You were just trying to update your memory of him, for future reference.

"The Beatles?"

"And Leonard Cohen, you should look him up." You suggest.

"Who's the guy with you?" You chuckle at the petty question.

"Jealous much? Don't worry about him, it's all make pretend"

"What about your family?" Jason questions, not letting you linger on the fact that he was in fact very jealous of the guy he thought to be your boyfriend.

"My parents died in the accident that gave me my powers... or at least that's what they told me." You sigh, ouch sensitive topic, but you had promised yourself to tell him everything he wanted to know because of the guilt that ate you up when you thought he was dead. You never saw their bodies or any confirmation that this was true. All you had to go from was their word, and they could've killed your parents to secure you as an asset for all you know. "It also gave me amnesia, so I don't remember much of that"

"And you don't have a missing sister?" He follows up, remembering what you told him all those years ago. That you were not interested in fighting crime like he was, you were sneaking out at night to try to find your missing sister. Something you wouldn't tell him much about, and he didn't pressure you into giving out more information because he thought it was a sensitive subject.

"I have a sister," you look down and to the side, as if hiding your face from him "she isn't missing. She's got a normal life and it'll stay like that"

"Is she why you didn't leave with me?" His hand gently guides your chin so you look up at him again, this time you grab his wrist to stop him. Yes , you wanted to say.

"Lose the gloves," You try to change the subject, now holding the most intense eye contact of your life "touch me seriously"

He's taken aback by your request. You wanted what? Him touching you? He's not sure if he should do it, ever since his time in Arkham he's been keeping to himself. Jason's pretty sure the last time he felt skin to skin contact was the last time he saw you, when he grazed your skin pulling your hair back.

"How do your powers work?" He asks, changing the subject too. You were just two people trying so hard to avoid the other to step on their emotional landmines. If one of you got too close the other would be quick to push them away, not allowing yourselves to fully open up despite promising to be honest. It almost makes you want to sigh in defeat, you were still holding his wrist so you put his hand on the desk behind you as close to your body as possible.

"I control time to a certain degree, so when I heal you I just turn your body back to before it was injured," You explain "it wouldn't work on any disease your body was going to develop anyways, I can slow it down but your body will always progress to it"

"Like Alzheimer?" You nod "So when you stopped Deathstroke you...froze him in time?"

"Pretty much, yes"

"What about bullet wounds?"

"Can't do much if the bullet's still inside, I can only stop the bleeding so much"

"And what abou-"

"Jay" You cut him off with a plea.

And with the look you give him he decides to give it a shot, just for you. He roughly presses his lips to yours, to test if he'd be able to take it. It almost knocked the air out of your lungs, first he refused to take off his gloves to touch you and now he's kissing you like this.

"I want to..." He whispers, his hands holding your face to make sure you won't go anywhere. "I want to try"

"We can take it slow" You offer and he nods along, letting go of you to finally take off his gloves.

First he touches your face, taking in your soft skin and you let him. You've wanted to feel his hands on you for too long, he can touch you anywhere he wants for all you care. Then he moves them down to your waist, and pulls up your black shirt until it's not tucked in your pants and he can sneak under the clothing, your breath hitches but you allow it. The second he's kissing you again he's completely disregarding what you told him about going slow. If it wasn't for him holding you, your arms on which you were resting your weight would've given out.  

"Can I?" You barely manage to get away from him to ask, and he nods quickly before kissing you again.

Your arms go around his neck, just enough to push him closer to you but at the same time trying not to overwhelm him. What did slow mean again? He realizes how touch starved he is, that it's not that he didn't want to be touched at all, he wanted to be touched by someone he knew would never hurt him. He needed to know that said touch wasn't meant to harm him or didn't have any second intentions to do so. Jason understands, right in that moment, that he wanted you back as much as wanted revenge on Batman. He's lifting you up so you sit on the desk, a hand leaving your waist just to guide your legs to wrap around him. He starts to lift your shirt up, but you stop him. You couldn't bear the feeling of someone else's hands taking off your clothes, not again. It almost felt like you could hear her voice again, telling you all about how you were such a cute thing and you were lucky her and her homicidal maniac of a partner were looking out for you from other immates-- and staff members. Worst part was you knew deep down she wasn't lying about that. You desperately don't want to go back there, not now.

"I'm sorry-"you whisper, and he recognizes that tone and that look in your face. It's the same as his own "let me..."

He only hums in agreement and gives you some space so you can take your black shirt off. Your fingers curl trying to get a hold of the chest-plate of his armor when you drag him back to kiss you. You feel his warm hands on your waist again, lowering down and keeping you in place. There was no running away now, not that you wanted to. Jason was not letting go of you tonight, his hold staying the same as his kisses go from your lips to your neck, right over your pulse point. He guides your hand to where you could take the suit off, and you learn fast working on undoing buckles and belts to rid him of the unnecessary layer of metal right now.

"I missed you" he whispers against your neck, you were blushing now.

"I missed you too" You sigh, the chest armor dropping to the floor with a loud noise that almost makes both of you flinch.

You had your eyes closed up until that moment where he stopped. You caught him staring at the tattoo on your hip. They were numbers small enough not to draw attention to them, written in a way you could've passed it off as a date in case anyone asked but its real purpose was to serve to recognize you in case you died. That was if the tracker under your skin was taken out or your face was unrecognizable. It made you feel like branded livestock, as if you were just an object. You always avoid looking at it and he should do the same. Now it was your turn to grab his chin and lead his face to look at you. Jason wasn't the only one troubled in this relationship, you had your own issues too.

"Don't" you scold, setting a clear boundary. Which he respects, he won't ask about it and if you don't want him to stare he won't.

He evens you out by taking the black long-sleeved t-shirt he wore under the suit and you don't want to stare but good God... Your eyes rush from his abs back to his eyes and you catch him smirking, you let out a giggle at the thought of him teasing you for it. He was about to do the same to you, make you look up so you wouldn't pay attention to his scars but when he noticed they were your eyes looked he knew that's not what distracted you. It felt almost normal, like you were a normal girl and a normal guy about to hook up. Of course in the back of your head you knew it wasn't the case but you allowed yourself to cling into that sense of normalcy. He's grateful that you ignore his more visible scars, that you still see him as the guy you met in Gotham so long ago. He wants to think that in your eyes at least he wasn't a failure.

"I'm sorry," He whispers, both hands cupping your face tenderly as if he wasn't holding your entire skull in them "I get it now... why you couldn't tell me, and that I treated you like shit"

"Yeah, you were a bit of an asshole" You tease with a chuckle.

He presses a soft kiss to your lips and you almost paw at his wrists when you feel like he's pulling away from you. "Will you forgive me?"

"Jay-" You murmur, seeing the tears forming in his eyes, it's the softest voice he's ever heard "I already have"

*.*

His mouth only meets yours again for a few seconds before he pushes everything off the desk, dusty papers falling everywhere and all over the floor. He's pressed up against your core when he lays you down on your back. This is were he belongs, your legs wrapped around him as he plasters kisses all over your jaw, your neck and collarbone, just anywhere he could reach. How soft lips welcome him again and again, it's like a dream come true, and your warm skin against him which he can't get enough of. His hands are steady at your waist, making sure to keep you in place, yours busy themselves tugging at the short hair on the back of his neck.

"Jay" you moan, closing your eyes. Fuck, if he wanted to have you like this he could.

"My-my ro-room's over the-" He stutters, you've barely even touched the guy and he already felt like he was melting at your touch-you were making him soft and hard all at the right places. "over there"

"You wanna take me there?" You flirt with a pout and he nods with a weak uh-huh.

Soon he's dragging you up to pick you up, a giggle escapes your lips feeling his hands on your ass. You push away the thought of how much it was turning you on to be manhandled like this.Your hands slide down to his shoulders to steady yourself as he takes you to the well hidden room connected to this office. You don't get much time to appreciate the room decor--there isn't any-- before you are laying flat on your back again, this time against a mattress. He unties your boots so you can kick them off, then your pants come off with only a bit of help from him with dropping them to the floor and he takes a step back, getting a good look at you.

"I don't have any..." he hesitates, " 'm not really sleeping around here"

"You're not?" You tease, a feet reaching for him playfully and he catches your ankle to stop you rolling his eyes in the process, his gorgeous blue eyes. "I won't catch anything from you?"

"Fuck, no" Jason scoffs, as if he didn't test himself for every disease know to man when he got out of Arkham. Besides, like he said he wasn't sleeping around, he wasn't sleeping at all--in every sense of the word.

"It's okay"

"I won't catch anything from you?" He repeats the question, and you shake your head no with a smirk "not even a kid?"

"Don't worry about that," you blush, looking away "it won't happen"

He hums in acknowledgment as his hand slides down from your ankle to your knee, parting your legs so he can settle between them again. Your heart was racing at the feeling of his hand trailing higher up your thigh, until he pushed your underwear to the side. His eyes were fixed on you, watching every reaction you had to know what you liked. What made you feel better.

"Jay-" you moaned.

"Hm?" It was almost mocking how he hid his face on your neck plating wet kisses on your skin.

"Want you"

"Want me what?" He teases, and you can't take it anymore. You grab his face with both your hands to make him look at you again before kissing him.

"Want you to fuck me" The determination in your voice had him nodding and sliding off your underwear and his own remaining clothes.

He bites back whatever sound wanted to leave his lips when he slides inside you, he's too busy watching your mouth part in a gasp and your eyes shut. He takes it slow, letting you adjust-- and getting used to the overwhelming feeling of being so close to you. He's over you, he's surrounding you like he's the only thing that exists in this world. His heartbeat slows down, looking down at the most beautiful sight he's ever seen. Jason thinks that just like this he may as well eat you alive, at least that way there will be no more lies . That if he somehow managed to swallow you whole then he could know everything about you, the way you do about him. He's only pulled back to reality when he feels your hands at his shoulders, moving faster than what he could think he grabs your wrists to pin your hands over your head. His breath hitches and his heart skips a beat when your eyes meet again, only then he starts to move.

"I love you" he lets out after a few moments, letting go of your hands, his voice is low too low.

"I love you too" You nod, noticing the tears rolling down his cheeks and softly wiping them away with your thumbs.

He brushes it off, he's not ready for this-all of this intimacy. He doesn't stop though, he just moves away to stand upright, throwing your legs over his shoulders. You moan when you feel how much deeper he could go like this. He can't help himself around you, every wall he put up to distance himself from others disappear whenever you were around. It wouldn't matter how much you lied to him, or how much you hurt him, you took his heart and it would stay with you no refunds. I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm all yours, he wants to say but wouldn't bear the thought of you not saying the same so he'd keep it to himself.  

"What-what's wrong?" You ask in a whisper when his movement falters, your cheeks flushed. You are so close.

"Nothing, just keep taking me like that pretty girl" The nickname makes you go crazy, now? He used to call you that only because he knew how much it embarrassed you. Unlucky for you, he liked seeing you flustered.

" 'M close, Jay" you whine, and he lowers a hand right where you needed it, the added pressure throwing you over the edge.

The way you feel around him is enough to push him over the edge mere seconds later, coming undone with a string of whispers of your name, again and again like a prayer. His head falls on your chest as you both try to catch your breath. Him wrapping his arms around your waist, holding himself closer to you if that was even possible as you pressed kisses to the top of his head.

*.*

"Hey, Jay" You call out to him in a hoarse whisper "are you awake?"

You get no answer from his sleeping form next to you, at some point you decide to trace his figure with your fingers, as if it'd help you remember him when you leave. You start with his jaw, then to his neck and his shoulders, feeling the rough skin under your fingertips. He really ought to buy some moisturizer, you scoff to yourself. You press a kiss between his shoulder blades before working your way down his arm. Your eyes got a bit teary looking at his scars, the carved out H+J in heart, the long slashes, the burn scar over his right shoulder. He had been through so much and he was still alive and kicking, sleeping next to you. You wish you could've come for him sooner, you didn't blame him for hating Batman. Hell you even had a few run-ins of your own with him because of it. Batman's own grief be damned he was supposed to be the world's greatest detective looking for his partner , the teenager he got to join him and the kid he was meant to take care of . He wasn't supposed to replace him that easily, it made you feel like you were the only one who cared about Jason. All this suffering he went through... it could've been helped, he didn't have to endure that. Your mind wanders to what that psycho did to him, if it was even worse than what you were put through, if he begged him to finish the job, the sight of him covered in blood- his own blood, beaten and branded, his empty eyes when you first saw him and then the flash of hope when he saw you which quickly washed away when he realized that you were there too.

You have to push back the images of what was done to you too, before you feel like you're outside of your body again or that you lose your grip on reality, again. You would never admit it to him but after he left the safe house you were brought back to the headquarters and couldn't get out of bed for almost six months, nothing felt real, your own thoughts felt too slow, your body too heavy too move. A major depressive episode, that's what your superiors classified it as. You knew it wasn't losing him that triggered it, it was the added of weight you'd been caring on your shoulders for too long and the fact that now you had nothing in your life that you even liked. Normaly they would've force-fed antidepressants to whatever agent that went through what you did but you wouldn't let anyone get closer than 2 meters, freezing more than one poor medic or nurse that was sent to see you. Or when they got to you and you reversed the effects of it, just out of spite. Eventually they gave up and waited as not even threats to your sister phased you. "Kill her and see how it goes for you," you said on a rare day where you found yourself able to speak "you'll have nothing to keep me here"

"What are you doing?" You don't even register him asking. He turns to face you and he notices you crying, only then do you realize he's awake so you wipe your tears as fast as you can. It is good for nothing, he already knows you're crying.

"I'm sorry, 's not the best thing to wake up to, huh?" You chuckle trying to pass off your own wave of sadness that just hit you.

"What's wrong?" He insists, was it him that made you so upset?

"Nothing's wrong, Jason" You lie, and he can see right through it.

"No, come on... keep going" He's using that tone again, the one that has you weakening every resolve and your knees giving out just to give him whatever he asked for, that whiny and needy voice that was reserved just for you. He also takes your hand and pushes it to his chest, wanting you to take off from where you left. Instead you move your hand underneath his to hold it, fingers interlocked as you leave a soft kiss to his knuckles. The feel of your lips on his skin, his harsh and calloused skin that has only known violence, has him blushing.

"I have to leave," you state, finally breaking the bubble you two were in since he took you to his office "I'd empty this place asap if I were you"

He steals a look at the watch behind him, the hours he spent with you are still on a single digit, that's all he gets with you. You get up, looking for your clothes that had been discarded all over the room mere hours ago.

"Fine" he scoffs, sitting on the bed and crossing his arms over his chest. Acting all tough and annoyed as the wound of you leaving reopens. He knows you'll never change your ways, he should've known you were heartache from the moment he met you. Jason knew nothing had changed, he doesn't know why he was even sad about you not choosing to stay with him. "Will I ever see you again?"

There's a beat of silence, you have your back turned to him so he can't see what kind of face you're making but he can see how you're pulling your pants up your ass. "I hope so, that was..." you puff and fan yourself with a hand.

He grabs your wrist when you get closer to the bed looking for your shoes, a sigh of your name has your gaze softening as you look back at him. Your lips pull up in a smile, caressing his face and sitting on his lap over the sheets."Bludhaven, find me there when you're done with whatever this is"

He nods, a hand of his going to your nape. He's trying to make you stay a little longer, even if it's just for a few moments and you know it so you give his scared cheek a sweet kiss. Find me when you're done with whatever this is, he can do that. He can wait a few more weeks for you.

"Where-" he starts, but you're no longer there. He felt your weight on him just a moment ago and now you were gone, he didn't even see your eyes light up before you made your way out of the place. You were probably on your way back, lying through your teeth about what you've been up to. And to that he sighs, getting up to get dressed and thinks "I've got to get my shit together, haven't worked this much for nothing"

A/N: not to copy paste all of my author's notes but I referenced like 3 songs so if you notice lmk :D

#w: jason #i mean this is part of a series but you could read it on its own i think #w: slm #jason todd x reader #ak!jason todd x reader #jason todd x reader angst #jason todd x reader smut #(kinda ig???) #jason todd x you

[extraterrestrialechos]

Edward Teach: How to (de)Construct a Legendary Villain

The show introduces us to the legendary Blackbeard as a traditional Hollywood villain. He’s positioned, specifically, as Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head of the global criminal organization SPECTRE. 

This character came to define the trope of the criminal mastermind, including the trope of never showing the villain’s face. The chair obscuring Ed’s body while his minion takes orders from across the desk is classic Blofeld. 

Along with Black Pete’s story, this is meant to pour in information about and expectations for Blackbeard in the short three episode buildup to his reveal: He’s big news, he’s bad news, and he’s the undisputed big dog whose underlings are cogs in his evil schemes.

Yet even in his first scene, the show begins to highlight the artifice at play and humanize Blackbeard and his subordinate. 

Izzy is doing his level best to play the sufficiently professional henchman. Edward flirts with him until he’s forced to drop the pretense, his henchman act collapsing into an exhausted and familiar “Oh, Edward, can't I just send the boys?”

And, if we look closely in retrospect, the reason Ed doesn’t turn to the camera is that his leg is elevated to give relief to its nagging knee injury. There’s a cane in the bin in the foreground beside Izzy. These stereotypical trappings of villainy are partly a product of Edward’s high seas career wearing his body down. 

On to Episode 4

Episode 4 isn’t a significant departure from any other day at SPECTRE flotilla headquarters for Edward. Yes, he meets a fun new guy. He also shows off what kind of brilliance is routinely demanded of him by his profession (of being a criminal mastermind) day in and day out, even if he hits a hitch. The emotional beat of the episode is exposing how this intense workplace grind is wearing him down. 

Next, he decides he’ll sail with that fun new guy, murder him, desecrate his corpse and take his identity. The kind of nefarious scheme a pro would expect of himself. 

The subsequent plot, then, does not come out of the idea that Ed, as Blackbeard, is any less than a man who’s achieved the pinnacle of Big Bad attainment, who in conversation with his subordinate checks off on killing entire crews as part of “the uzsh.” He really is that good, and Stede really would have made the perfect and unwitting mark Ed identifies him for. 

Two things are true at once:

Blackbeard is his world’s all time pirate villain overseeing the dispatching of countless lives (we see the population of a whole merchant vessel butchered just in Episode 5 — but laugh, because the sequence is shot through with camp), and

Ed Teach “works for Blackbeard.” 

Blackbeard isn’t who Ed is but a product of Ed’s theatrical skills. 

The show has, already, in Episode 4 cast a realistic light on the inevitable psychological toll of being the Big Bad mastermind keeping yourself at peak performance all the time. 

On to Episode 6

In Episode 6, the show deconstructs how one man, who has one gun and one knife just like everyone else, could feasibly construct such a legend.

This is, at the same time, a meta interrogation of how much effort a man like Blofeld and his infinite villainous counterparts across all cinema would have to actually put in to maintain their seemingly effortless style. 

Here, the answer is Ed is a theatre kid at heart, relying on all the same techniques the real life crew themselves are using to bring us the show.

We’re given a scene of Ed seemingly teleporting around a clouded ship, delivering cinematic lines like “Flee and survive, or face me and burn!” 

Barrels of sparklers stream flash powder into the air. The unnatural fog turns out to be the product of stagehands hard at work behind the scenes. We can extrapolate the flashes of lighting were likely, seeing as we can’t assume stage lights, the product of even more flash powder prepped in the style of old time photography. 

Ed ends up in an elaborate harness. One that Izzy’s doubtlessly removed him from countless times, as he reminds Ed if they don’t work together Ed’s balls will chafe. (Ostensibly, this all used to go smoother before stress aged their relationship to the point of its present squabbles.)

Now we can spy back earlier in the show and see even in Episode 3 they were employing theatrics. 

The smoke steaming behind Izzy as he fixes his spyglass on the Revenge isn’t mysteriously atmospheric. It’s from a big cauldron kept stoked on the deck of the ship, the handle of which peeks through. It’s a constant effort to keep the Queen Anne billowing across the ocean. 

And Forward to the End...

Ed goes through multiple phases of trying on different Eds in the next four episodes. From living as tea with seven sugars Ed, to deciding he needs to physically move on if he’s not going to ice this guy but being prompted by Lucius to explore being “being in a relationship Ed,” to us seeing Jack’s Ed and his ability to relish brotivities, to stripped down Ed on the beach, a blank slate now able to open himself to considering what to paint there, to Ed choosing what to paint there.

Unfortunately, while it’s a new work, it's a dark one.

Having been rejected by Stede and Izzy successively as they see him trying out tidying house, become upset for individual reasons, and walk out of the room in nearly identical scenes, Ed takes stock of what he has left and what capacities in his repertoire will assure his future security. 

We now see Ed pinning (stabbing) up a picture of the archetype he’s going to take on. This is Ed in his make-up trailer, looking to a character design by a concept artist and building a costume around it.

Grease paint, sword earring, jacket shrugged back on, full gloves, and, we see later, Stede's black cravat tight around his neck as @speckled-jim describes (and discusses further here) “like the albatross of Ancient Mariner fame,” reminding him that love itself can be a burden and to never allow himself to be that vulnerable again. 

This new Blackbeard variant cuts a genius, poetic, unmistakably more dangerous image than the comparatively relaxed tough biker pirate we first met.

His newer, dialed up villainous persona, the Kraken, is face revealed with, among the many cinematic variations on the trope, what tightly resembles another more recent Blofeld shot, at once telegraphing this Ed is the Big Bad again and reminding us that being any Big Bad is a high camp performance.

The seams are already fraying. Fang and Ed are both shown drinking heavily to help cast off their sympathies for their recent associates and loose their MUAHAHAHAHA laughter. Already, before this scene, Izzy’s “Blackbeard is himself again!” is paired with the manic smile of a man who knows that whoever the new boss is, it’s not the original Blackbeard and he's in over his head.

But the three of them cut imposing figures on deck, and the future will tell if the movie magic holds.

Errata

Why would they think "Blofeld"?

It might be SPECTRE's trademark giant octopus.

#ofmd meta #edward teach #ed teach #extechos #ofmd

[veveisveryuncool]

Please share some of your 8587420 metadede wedding headcanons, I'd love to hear them /gen

YEAHYEAH YOU GOT IT ANON!!!!! order up under the cut :D

Kirby was sosososo excited to be the flower girl and kept making an absolute mess out of the flowers during rehearsals (Ribbon got to practice with him and cheered the hardest when he finally made it down the aisle in one piece)

Kirby definitely did that thing you see in cute wedding videos where he saw Meta Knight and Dedede at the end of the aisle and sprinted towards them

Bandee was also really excited to be the ring bearer but also had an equal amount of anxiety

but he did such a good job and was super proud of that, good for him :]

Since Kirby and Bandee already had spots, MK and Dedede asked Sailor Dee and Adeleine to walk as their family (kinda like a mother of the bride/groom, but since both their parents don't exist/are super dead, they used the people they considered family)

Adeleine nearly broke down in tears when she realized that Dedede saw her as family

Sailor was just absolutely ecstatic and promised that she would do the best she could (they both did)

The entire wedding had a star/heaven motif (partners who shook the heavens, anyone?)

twas lovingly chosen by the decorations commitee, aka Taranza, Adeleine, and Prince Fluff

oh fun fact i was originally going to have Fluff be the officiator bc royalty, but let's be honest this guy was probably playing the most gorgeous piano piece during the ceremony

Bandana Dee, Adeleine, and MK all got to keep their character-defining headwear during the wedding. This is important.

Out of the reformed villains club (Magolor, Susie, Taranza, Marx), Taranza was the only one allowed to work on the wedding. To everybody else, he acts humble and modest about this privelige, but to their little club, he is rubbing it in everyone's face

Taranza also picked out the flowers for Kirby and the decorations, given that MK and DDD know jack about floral design

You can be sure as hell that all the Meta-Knights and Halberd crew were there, all crying a river

Like even Captain Vul was getting teary eyed

They had the most legendary bachelor (+ Sailor Dee) party ever

All the Castle Dedede waddle dees were there.

All of them.

they took up at least 80% of the seating, but Dedede made sure everyone had a place to sit

Instead of wedding rings, they used bracelets!! (they have,, no fingers guys)

It’s a simple silver band engraved with a hammer and Galaxia on it (yes inspired by that one fic)

because nothing says “i love you” more than you and your partner’s weapon mains crossed together

Meta Knight proposed first because face it this guy is whipped af

He’s been trying to propose since Robobot but every time he tries, he gets comically interrupted by Kirby or Bandee or an eldritch horror or even Dedede himself

They’ve been acting like an old married couple since literally forever, why not make it official? 

But also Dedede was overjoyed to have an official big beautiful wedding

Their vows were both meticulously crafted, and while MK was extremely secretive of his, Dedede often pouted about how hard it was to put how much he loved him on paper

like DDD even practiced on MK multiple times just to get it right

In the end though DDD just winged it on the day of

and it was the most pure, lovingly said speech Meta had ever heard

During the kiss, MK did that thing where he used his mask to cover their faces like in old western movies 

Marx and Magolor, who only came for the potential face reveal, were monumentally disappointed, “oh cOME ON” “what a ripoff! i can’t believe i changed my hat and got a new bowtie for this! i demand a refund!”

Susie was also lowkey miffed but she found Marx and Magolor’s reactions way funnier

Kirby and Bandee, however, were hyped up more than anything for the wedding

“If your dad marries my dad, then that means that we’d be siblings for real!!!!”

they were honestly more excited and impatient than MK and DDD were lol

now they have officially become a big happy family <333

#meta knight #king dedede #metadad #dededad #metadede #kirby #kirby series #kirby headcanons #have fun with this #rb with your own hcs i love to read them!! #anyways they are so <3 i love them

[celestialholz]

The P(aldea)-Solariser and the P-Lunariser (or 'you're really gonna give me sun and moon men outside of Alola, huh')

... Oh, @prince-kallisto, buddy. Look what you've done. xD (/j, been meaning to talk about this for MONTHS.)

My good pal spoke recently on the subject of Hassel's eyes and the significance of Baxcalibur, and it's reminded me yet again how Hassel is painted in the Paldean narrative as the sun, and how Brassius is painted as the moon - and the fact that that's deeply, deeply gay. Now, I've already discussed the fact that Hassel is a Sunflora, and further how one of The Harvests is both Dragon-coloured and features small suns, but let's go more in-depth, shall we? :D

What follows is every example I can find of sun and moon symbolism within these husbands. (They can't keep getting away with this shit. It's just unhinged.)

Let's begin with... well, eyes.

You know what this is based off? It's a parhelic circle, also known as this thing:

This is defined in scientific terms as following:

'A luminous halo, each side of the sun parallel to the horizon, caused by refraction of sunlight through ice crystals.'

... Huh. Ice crystals. Almost like the man owns an Ice type, and shows off a literal ice crystal in his classroom!

And just in case, for a singular half-moment of your day, you thought that there wasn't absolute equality in this marriage...

... Here's the lunar version, also known as a paraselenic circle. And I think, guys, I've seen this somewhere before...

You know that thing, of looking at someone like they hung the moon because they're the most important person in the world to you?

... Bit like this, in fact? Yeah. Look at these men, stood here with their fucking sun and moon eyes. I hate both of you intensely. <333

Next, the Sunny Day TM is in Artazon... next to a Surrendering Sunflora.

(Forgive my jank screenshot here - it's an old one.)

I happen to know from my five-hour meta on these bad boys that this Sunflora also faces solar south, or the part of the day where the sun is highest on the horizon. So, you've put the Sunny Day TM on a cliff that's nearer the sun, facing the sun, beside the sun. Okay Game Freak, very cool, I see you... Brassius' life has been brightened to blinding degrees, yes...

Whilst this isn't the only TM in this game that's in a hilariously appropriate location - TM92 Trick Room being on the roof of the professor's lab, directly above the time machine, springs to mind - it is the only one that's this gay, so... notable.

Next... Brassie is a dragon fruit. Look at this man.

Because, y'know, half-dragon, half-plant. Like Flapple.

Why is this relevant in a sun and moon meta? Well, the dragon fruit comes from a cacti, and its flowers?

Which again, seems really familiar...

... Sweet fucking Arceus. And it gets even better, because dragon fruit also comes in yellow!

And as with its flowers, yellow dragon fruit really likes the sun.

... The flower that blossoms only under moonlight, and the fruit that only flourishes in sunlight.

There is an entire world of spiritual symbolism surrounding Hassius and dragon fruits by the way, which would be going hugely off-topic here, but I'll leave you to chew on these two:

Mm...

... Mmmmm.

And just in case this all hasn't killed you off as much as it's killed me, pals, let me stick the final knife in for you.

Flapple's portrait in the Paldea dex is at dusk.

... Halfway between the day and the night.

Halfway between the sun and the fucking moon.

#ephemeralartshipping #hassel x brassius #hassius #hassel #brassius #pokemon scarlet and violet #... this game is a circus and I am its primary clown #paldea is like onions - keeps giving you layers and keeps making you cry #... just fuck both of you honestly lmao #/j I adore you both #pokemon sun and moon #... except not really #pokemon meta

[specterthief]

there is actually one thing i personally found ddlc did better than totono, which is monika's role as a character herself! miyuki is not only a love interest but the enforced first love interest, the Main Girl, but monika is hitting on a very specific character niche in bishoujo games and their fandoms (the cutely-designed female side character with no route who develops a cult fan following, inspires tons of doujin work, and maybe ultimately gets focus on a fandisc if fans are lucky) and an important mechanical role in genuine dating sims (the tutorial/info guy) and i think that actually serves the meta plot in a far cleverer way

she's a character evoking a trope all about the players, their desire for something out of reach and the creativity that can inspire, playing a gameplay role that in true dating sims is basically part of the user interface more than a character allowed to be part of the action - again, a role defined by interaction with the player themself. having that character be the one to fall in love with the player rather than the main character and rewrite the game to give herself the opportunity she doesn't have in a narrative she's not meant to be an active player in is really smart and something that really shines if you're familiar with the genre conventions she's playing with! totono might have done the game-altering fourth wall breaking metanarrative and tokimemo4 might have done the female info guy turning into a hidden yandere love interest, but the combination of the two is genuinely really good.

it's a shame plus seemed so determined to tear down so much of what the original built tbh

#ddlc #visual novels #dating sim discourse

[scoobydoodean]

I've been thinking about your meta about 5.16 as a Zach manipulation. It reminded me of the theory that the Ash scene is Dean's 3rd heaven room. It has Dean's coolest friends, Ash and Pam, and they reassure him they don't blame him for their deaths. Ash persuades him you can hack heaven and have fun with it; Pamela tells him heaven is great. All this propaganda for a special Dean heaven as a final reward for being Michael's meatsuit, like the angels later promise Adam will see his mum?

Pam does hit Dean and say "That's for getting me killed" in that scene. Ash is cool with being dead though, and Pam ends up saying heaven is a better place. I actually think Pam throwing in a dose of guilt then cooling it with the balm of heaven being a real paradise is perhaps more indicative of potential manipulations in play than her telling Dean she didn't blame him would be, because two primary component of Dean's motivations when running off to say "Yes" end up being 1) Minimize the destruction of the earth (i.e., the harm to others) 2) The weight of guilt over what happens if he's wrong—if they can't find a way to win, and then when EVERYONE dies (like what Zachariah showed Dean in "The End") Dean thinks it'll all be on him—it'll all be his fault that the world burned.

Bringing Pam back in 5.16 is interesting, because Dean's lowest point in season 4 was arguably "On The Head of A Pin", and that episode opened with Dean talking about Pam's death the previous episode.

SAM What's your problem? DEAN Pamela didn't want anything to do with this and we dragged her back into it, Sam. SAM She knew what was at stake. DEAN Oh yeah. Saving the world. And we're doing such a damn good job of it. SAM Dean— DEAN I'm tired of burying friends, Sam. SAM Look, we catch a fresh trail— DEAN And we follow it, I know. Like I said, I'm just—I'm just getting tired.

The episode closed with Dean saying that if HE was supposed to stop the apocalypse, "You guys are screwed". He followed that up by saying these burdens were too big, overwhelmed to the point of tears.

So bringing Pam back recalls a lot of negative emotions and a sense of deep hopelessness. Pam basically functions as a voice to remind Dean that he isn't qualified to stop the apocalypse. It's too big and he isn't strong enough. He'll fail (he's already been blamed for failing to stop Sam at the end of season 4 repeatedly). People he cares about will get hurt/die (and already have, like Pam and Ellen and Jo). Pam is also a reminder of risk. No matter what plan Team Free Will might come up with, it'll be risky—and Pam was the collateral damage of one of Dean's risky plans. Contrast this with how Pam represents heaven as a peaceful certainty. "No matter what happens, everyone will come here and it'll all be okay". So Dean might as well stop fighting, stop torturing himself, stop hand-wringing, and give in.

I also think that's a great point about Ash making heaven feel more "real" by giving the possibility of hacking it. All of this feels like a direct attempt to refute 4.22 when Dean fought with Cas in the beautiful room and said life on earth was better than heaven because it's real—that he'd take the pain and the guilt because it was a lot better than being some Stepford bitch in paradise. Pam says it doesn't matter if it's fake, and Ash represents being able to be in heaven without being a Stepford bitch. And the thing is, I wouldn't be surprised if Zachariah overheard that fight between Dean and Cas in 4.22 (especially based on how immediately he appeared to try and stop Cas when Cas returned to help Dean escape). If Zachariah overheard that, he'd know it was a defining aspect of not just Dean's but Cas's reasons for rebellion as well. Convincing Dean to abandon this perception of heaven as a false paradise would not only weaken Dean's resistance, but also weaken his bond with Cas as well by making Cas feel betrayed (which is exactly what ends up happening). 5.16 attempted to weaken Dean's resistance, but 5.13 through 5.16 were also all about weakening the unity of the family as a whole, starting all the way back with John and Mary, working through Sam and Dean's relationship with Bobby, Sam and Dean's relationship with one another, and then Dean and Cas's relationship.

What Pam says reeks of heavenly manipulations already (how does Pam know all of these details about Dean being a vessel anyway?) but Zachariah's influence also seems likely based on how Sam and Dean get inside the Roadhouse, and then what happens the moment they leave. What gets them into the Roadhouse is Zachariah "looking" for them in the woods. It's obvious he knows exactly where they are, but he appears to toy with them for no reason. He keeps popping up in front of them everywhere they run, until they bump right into Ash who leads them away. Sam and Dean are meant to believe they'd escaped Zachariah's awareness of their location by following Ash, but we immediately know that can't be true, because the moment they leave the Roadhouse they immediately fall right into Zachariah's most overt trap inside the old Winchester family house, and inside that trap, Zachariah confronts Dean with a completely fake Mary—so why wouldn't he have lead them to a completely fake Pam and Ash?

#mail #5.16 #season 5 #angels lie #angels and demons lie #zachariah

[lime-bloods]

Not an Enigma, and Certainly Not a Curse: the "Ultimate Self" in Hussie's Own Words

I've found myself, lately, in several conversations in a row where the other guy and myself weren't on the same page about what the Ultimate Self meant; and though I welcome the opportunity for discussion, explaining my position over and over again has cost me minutes of my screen life that I simply won't win back. So this post is a departure from my usual fare in that it's more for my own benefit than that of anybody else.

I've been over Davepeta's "superceding bodyless and timeless persona that crosses the boundaries of paradox space" enough already, so if you're interested in the Ultimate Self as it is in Homestuck, I recommend you read "Homestuck's Gnosticism: The Conflict", and then, if that piques your attention, you continue with the follow-up "The World/The Wheel". For the purposes of this post, though, I want to keep analysis, interpretation and hypothesising to a minimum. As the title indicates, this is the Ultimate Self not as I describe it, or as characters describe it, but - so to speak - straight from the horse's mouth.

In Andrew Hussie's commentary on Homestuck: Book 6, p. 312:

Oftentimes, when characters lose certain qualities that came to define them, there's this sense of liberation they seem to experience. They become a happier, more relieved, easier-going version of themselves. When Aradia ditches a defining quality we came to know her by (being dead), she becomes a much happier and self-actualized Aradia. Sollux also seems to be chilling out now that his defining properties (bifurcation, etc.) have been KO'd. He had a mouth full of gnarly teeth that gave him a wicked lisp (gone), eyes full of nasty laser beams (gone, along with his eyesight), and a brain full of doomsday visions and bipolar disorder (also gone—well, maybe not the bipolar thing, because that's probably not how that works, but whatever). You get more of this kind of thing in even higher degrees with some of the fusion stuff that happens later (Arquius, Davepeta), where characters become almost euphoric versions of themselves for having been completely liberated from certain self-limitations which previously defined them. The concept of an "ultimate self," which appears much later, probably has its roots way back to stuff like this, which got the ball rolling on the idea that a more complete or fulfilled self is one that becomes free from mortal limitations, or the idiosyncrasies which comprise a specific instance of one version of yourself. Hence an ultimate self is an aggregate of someone's full potential. It's not just doing away with negative traits, but summing up all iterations of yourself, including ones without those traits, allowing you to move beyond them. Or maybe more accurately, to view them as insignificant in the grand totality of what a person really is.

Importantly, what Hussie does here is draw the conceptual line from the themes of Acts 1-5 to what are often interpreted by some as radically different, even left-field themes through Act 6. Think of this as an extension of one of Homestuck's meta-themes, where the comic undergoes a series of escalations that take simple conflicts to their logical extremes: we start the story worried about a Reckoning which might destroy the Earth, then end up with the more pressing concern that a Rapture is about to end reality as we know it. The Ultimate Self is the end result of the exact same kind of escalation; where the God Tiers are a method of becoming a better version of oneself by merging with one's "ideal" dream body, the Ultimate Self is the logical conclusion that one can become the best version by unifying with every body.

To draw my own conceptual line back to Homestuck: Book 5, page 409:

This connects to the basic question of whether to embrace the regimentation of a heroic path conveniently laid out for you (the expectation), or to reject it as the shallow and rigid confinement of personal destiny (the deviation). These issues are expressed through the fundamental language of platonic idealism: perfect ideas of things, and then specific, imperfect instances of those ideas, or varied permutations, evolutions, or hacks of those ideas through alchemy. The way Sburb "should" go is an ideal (expectation), but the disastrous, chaotic way it actually goes is an imperfect instance (deviation). An "idea" of a person, such as Rose, along with her regimented heroic quest for growth, and all the great things she might imagine herself to become if she followed it, is an ideal (expectation). The messy, flawed, yet more genuinely human individual she does become resulting from her errant choices and rejection of formalism, is an imperfect instance of an ideal (deviation). What's the bottom line here? This is a lot. I know it's a lot. Homestuck is, in fact, a lot.

I've added some of my own emphasis there again, but that whole extract is worth reading. The reason I bolded that part is because this "Platonic idealism" is something Hussie talks about a lot in his commentary, and I think that commentary is essential reading for anyone who wants to even get their foot in the door on this topic. Again, this is something I've blogged about extensively already, so there's more than just Hussie's word to take for it if you're really interested; but for the sake of this post, I'll finish off with, again, what Hussie himself has to say on the matter, all the way back in Homestuck: Book 1, page 123:

With things like Athenums and Perfectly Generic Objects locked and loaded, Sburb architecture seems to be circling widely around a game abstraction-based systemization of Platonic idealism. Homestuck deals with what I am going to roughly characterize as THEMES.

#homestuck #homestuck commentary #ultimate self