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#how to write subtext
novlr · 8 months
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The symbolism of flowers
Flowers have a long history of symbolism that you can incorporate into your writing to give subtext.
Symbolism varies between cultures and customs, and these particular examples come from Victorian Era Britain. You'll find examples of this symbolism in many well-known novels of the era!
Amaryllis: Pride
Black-eyed Susan: Justice
Bluebell: Humility
Calla Lily: Beauty
Pink Camellia: Longing
Carnations: Female love
Yellow Carnation: Rejection
Clematis: Mental beauty
Columbine: Foolishness
Cyclamen: Resignation
Daffodil: Unrivalled love
Daisy: Innocence, loyalty
Forget-me-not: True love
Gardenia: Secret love
Geranium: Folly, stupidity
Gladiolus: Integrity, strength
Hibiscus: Delicate beauty
Honeysuckle: Bonds of love
Blue Hyacinth: Constancy
Hydrangea: Frigid, heartless
Iris: Faith, trust, wisdom
White Jasmine: Amiability
Lavender: Distrust
Lilac: Joy of youth
White Lily: Purity
Orange Lily: Hatred
Tiger Lily: Wealth, pride
Lily-of-the-valley: Sweetness, humility
Lotus: Enlightenment, rebirth
Magnolia: Nobility
Marigold: Grief, jealousy
Morning Glory: Affection
Nasturtium: Patriotism, conquest
Pansy: Thoughtfulness
Peony: Bashfulness, shame
Poppy: Consolation
Red Rose: Love
Yellow Rose: Jealously, infidelity
Snapdragon: Deception, grace
Sunflower: Adoration
Sweet Willian: Gallantry
Red Tulip: Passion
Violet: Watchfulness, modesty
Yarrow: Everlasting love
Zinnia: Absent, affection
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knaccblog · 8 months
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We all know that when Crowley says, "You can't leave this bookshop", what he's really saying is, "You can't leave this life we've made together", but he's too scared to include himself explicitly in it, right? It's like in the fight about Gabriel where Crowley says he wants Gabriel "nowhere near the precious, peaceful, fragile existence he's carved out for himself" but we all know he's just talking about Aziraphale because whenever he's actually talking to Jim or himself, he's only worried about what will happen to Aziraphale, not himself in the slightest. Worrying what will happen to himself is a facade he pulls up in front of Aziraphale to deflect from how deeply he loves him.
On the other hand, when Aziraphale says, "Oh Crowley, nothing lasts forever", he's really saying, "I love you so much that I am willing to give up all my most precious worldly possessions to assure that you are given the treatment and reinstatement you so deserve." His tone of voice and his face are both all love even.
Like it's just so amazingly sad that what Crowley is reading as rejection, as "you're not good enough as you are", is almost definitely Aziraphale saying he loves him more than everything else and thinks he's the most truly good soul he knows?
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rawliverandgoronspice · 5 months
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I think what particularly annoys me with the "zelda was always gameplay before story" is that... it's not true? At least I don't think it's true in the way people mean it.
Zelda games were always kind of integrating story based on the standards of the time. When game stories were in game pamphlets, Zelda's stories was in the pamphlets. ALTTP tried to tell a pretty complicated stories with the limitations of the time. OoT was actively trying to tell an epic, cinematic tale packed with ambiance and expand what 3D could offer that 2D games struggled with. Majora's Mask is deeply character-driven in many, many ways. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are both pretty concerned about their stories, down to the point that some people were bored by TP's cutscenes in particular. Skyward Sword, from what little I have played it, is very very invested in its characters and their journey (and 2D Zeldas have Link's Awakening, Minish Cap... None of them are visual novels, but they are concerned with emotional journeys, character arcs, mysteries about their own world...)
What is true is that the narrative wraps around the mechanics, and not the other way around. The mechanics drive themes, aesthetics, emotional beats and character journeys; and that's great. The world is a puzzle, and the world is delightfully absurd when it needs to be, full of heart when it calls for it, dark and oppressive when it suits the player experience.
That does not mean the games aren't invested in their stories. Even BotW has a pretty complicated story to tell about an entire world rather than one specific tale or legend --all of it at the service of the gameplay, which is exploration and mastery of your environment.
So. Yes, none of the Zelda games are million-words long visual novels that care deeply about consistency and nuance; but stories don't need consistency or deep lore to be meaningful and serve an emotional journey. Again: gameplay is story. The two cannot be so easily parsed from each other.
And Zelda as a franchise obviously care deeply about story, characters and setting (and still does right now --otherwise there wouldn't be a movie), even if it doesn't try to imitate prestige narrative-driven games, which is great and part of why I love this series so much. Doesn't mean it couldn't have done better in the past, it obviously could have, but I feel like pretending that nobody ever cared about story or character is just... false? It's a huge disservice to the devs too. Some of them obviously cared immensely.
The "gameplay above story", at least in the extent to which it is paraded today to defend TotK, mostly, is a really recent development. And I think it's one that deserves to receive some pushback.
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pocket-size-cthulhu · 2 months
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One thing about Andor is the fact that this entire town hates cops so much. Cops come to town and the townspeople immediately start doing everything in their power to harass, annoy, inconvenience and slow them. Both in solidarity for Marva who they love, and just bc they don't want cops in their town.
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This show hates cops so much. This show hates the prison industrial system. This show hates fascism and authoritarianism. This show peels back the layers to show you a Normal Day At Work At Fascist Inc. This show has well intentioned cops, bad intentioned cops, and robot cops who don't care either way, and all of them do harm all the time. This show says that cops will endanger people on purpose and make dangerous mistakes. This show says that community and solidarity are the way to stand up to empire.
Cannot believe the mouse company allowed this to happen
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angelsdean · 5 months
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I need people to understand how S&P (standards and practices) works in television and how much influence they have over what gets to stay IN an episode of a show and how the big time network execs are the ones holding the purse strings and making final decisions on a show's content, not the writers / showrunners / creatives involved.
So many creators have shared S&P notes over the years of the wild and nonsensical things networks wanted them to omit / change / forbid. Most famously on tumblr, I've seen it so many times, is the notes from Gravity Falls. But here's a post compiling a bunch of particularly bad ones from various networks too. Do you see the things they're asking to be changed / cut ?
Now imagine, anything you want to get into your show and actually air has to get through S&P and the network execs. A lot of creators have had to resort to underhanded methods. A lot of creators have had to relegate things to subtext and innuendo and scenes that are "open to interpretation" instead of explicit in meaning. Things have had to be coded and symbolized. And they're relying on their audience to be good readers, good at media literacy, to notice and get it. This stuff isn't the ramblings of conspiracy theorists, it's the true practices creatives have had to use to be able to tell diverse stories for ages. The Hays Code is pretty well known, it exists because of censorship. It was a way to symbolize certain things and get past censors.
Queercoding, in particular, has been used for ages in both visual media and literature do signal to queer audiences that yes, this character is one of us, but no, we can't be explicit about it because TPTB won't allow it. It's a wink-wink, nudge-nudge to those in the know. It's the deliberate use of certain queer imagery / clothing / mannerisms / phrases / references to other queer media / subtle glances and lingering touches. Things that offer plausible deniability and can be explained away or go unnoticed by straight audiences to get past those network censors. But that queer viewers WILL (hopefully) pick up on.
Because, unfortunately, still to this day, a lot of antiquated network execs don't think queer narratives are profitable. They don't think they'll appeal to general audiences, because that's what matters, whatever appeals to most of the audience demographic so they can keep watching and keep making the network more money. The networks don't care about telling good stories! Most of them are old white cishet business men, not creatives. They don't care about character arcs and what will make fans happy. They don't care about storytelling. What they care about is profit and they're basing their ideas of what's profitable on what they believe is the predominate target demographic, usually white cis heterosexual audiences.
So, imagine a show that started airing in the early 2000s. Imagine a show where the two main characters are based on two characters from a famous Beat Generation novel, where one of the characters is queer! based on a real like bisexual man! The creator is aware of this, most definitely. And sure, it's 2005, there's no way they were thinking of making that explicit about Dean in the text because it just wouldn't fly back then to have a main character be queer. But! it's made subtext. And there are nods to that queerness placed in the text. Things that are open to interpretation. Things that are drenched in metaphor (looking at you 1x06 Skin "I know I'm a freak" "maybe this thing was born human but was different...hated. Until he learned to become someone else.") Things that are blink-and-you-miss-it and left to plausible deniability (things like seemingly spending an hour in the men's bathroom, or always reacting a little vulnerable and awkward when you're clocked instead of laughing it off and making a homophobic joke abt it)
And then, years later there's a ship! It's popular and at first the writers aren't really seriously thinking about it but they'll throw the fans a bone here and there. Then, some writers do get on the destiel train and start actively writing scenes for them that are suggestive. And only a fraction of what they write actually makes it into the text. So many lines left on the cutting room floor: i love past you. i forgive you i love you. i lost cas and it damn near broke me. spread cas's ashes alone. of course i wanted you to stay. if cas were here. -- etc. Everything cut was not cut by the writers! Why would a writer write something to then sabotage their own story and cut it? No, these are things that didn't make it past the network. Somewhere a note was made maybe "too gay" or "don't feed the shippers" or simply "no destiel."
So, "no destiel." That's pretty clearly the message we got from the CW for years. "No destiel. Destiel will alienate our general audience. Two of our main characters being queer? And in a relationship? No way." So what can the pro-destiel creatives involved do, if the network is saying no? What can the writers do if most of their explicit destiel (or queer dean) lines / moments are getting cut? Relegate things to subtext. Make jokes that straight people can wave off but queer people can read into. Make costuming and set design choices that the hardcore fans who are already looking will notice while the general audience and the out-of-touch network execs won't blink and eye at (I'm looking at you Jerry and your lamps and disappearing second nightstands and your gay flamingo bar!)
And then, when the audience asks, "is destiel real? is this proof of destiel?" what can the creatives do but deny? Yes, it hurts, to be told "No no I don't know what you're talking about. There's no destiel in supernatural" a la "there is no war in Ba Sing Se" but! if the network said "no destiel!" and you and your creative team have been working to keep putting destiel in the subtext of the narrative in a way that will get past censors, you can't just go "Yes, actually, all that subtext and symbolism you're picking up, yea it's because destiel is actually in the narrative."
But, there's a BIG difference between actively putting queer themes and subtext into the narrative and then saying it's not there (but it is! and the audience sees it!) versus NOT putting any queer content into the text but SAYING it is there to entice queer fans to continue watching. The latter, is textbook queerbaiting. The former? Is not. The former is the tactics so many creatives have had to use for years, decades, centuries, to get past censorship and signal to those in the know that yea, characters like you are here, they exist in this story.
Were the spn writers perfect? No, absolutely not. And I don't think every instance of queer content was a secret signal. Some stuff, depending on the writer, might've been a period-typical gay joke. These writers are flawed. But it's no secret that there were pro-destiel writers in the writing room throughout the years, and that efforts were made to make it explicitly canon (the market research!)
So no, the writers weren't ever perfect or a homogeneous entity. But they definitely were fighting an uphill battle constantly for 15 yrs against S&P and network execs with antiquated ideas of what's profitable / appealing.
Spn even called out the networks before, on the show, using a silly example of complaints abt the lighting of the show and how dark the early seasons were. Brightening the later seasons wasn't a creative choice, but a network choice. And if the networks can complain abt and change something as trivial as the lighting of a show, they definitely are having a hand in influencing the content of the show, especially queer content.
Even in s15, (seasons fifteen!!!) Misha has said he worried Castiel's confession would not air. In 2020!!! And Jensen recorded that scene on his personal phone! Why? Sure, for the memories. But also, I do not doubt for a second that part of it was for insurance, should the scene mysteriously disappear completely. We've seen the finale script. We've seen the omitted omitted omitted scenes. We all saw how they hacked the confession scene to bits. The weird cuts and close-ups. That's not the writers doing. That's likely not even the editors (willingly). That's orders from on high. All of the fuckery we saw in s15 reeks of network interference. Writers are not trying to sabotage their own stories, believe me.
Anyways, TLDR: Networks have a lot more power than many think and they get final say in what makes it to air. And for years creative teams have had to find ways to get past network censorship if they want "banned" or "unapproved" "unprofitable" "unwanted" content to make it into the show. That means relying on techniques like symbolism, subtext, and queercoding, and then shutting up about it. Denying its there, saying it's all "open to interpretation" all while they continue to put that open to interpretation content into the show. And that's not queerbaiting, as frustrating as it might be for queer audiences to be told that what they're seeing isn't there, it's still not queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is a marketing technique to draw in queer fans by baiting them with the promise of queer content and then having no queer content in said media. But if you are picking up on queer themes / subtext / symbolism / coding that is in front of your face IN the text, that's not queerbaiting. It's there, covertly, for you, because someone higher up didn't want it to be there explicitly or at all.
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gayofthefae · 5 months
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Do you ever think about how "I have no idea what's gonna happen next, but whatever it is, I think we should work together. I think it'll be easier if we're a team."
is both so poetic and so euphemistic because that boy is not talking about solutions and battles that boy is talking about LOVE.
He wants it to come across, or at least have some plausible deniability that it's, "us not working together will just make the hell storm about to rain down harder" but really it's
"If I die tomorrow, I want you to be by my side; I won't be as scared"
They were already working together. Will forgave him and was acting normal. It was going to be "easier" and there was no obstacle for that. He just wanted to say "I love you" without saying I love you. In season 4, he's already fighting to say "I love you" to El while fighting NOT to say it to Will. Look at him, he's finding work arounds on both sides.
Something about the phrase "I have no idea what's gonna happen next"[but I want you to be there] is just so romantic. Elevated from anything. Beyond "whatever happens next will be bad let's face it together you and me against the world". It's
"I want to jump into the unknown with you"
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charcubed · 8 months
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I NEEEED people—especially those with unfathomably large platforms???—to start doing just a tiny bit of internal evaluation before they log onto a blue website and say “I don’t want these queer characters to fuck in canon” or “I’d be fine if these characters never kissed again” or whatever.
This is a post about Good Omens and the prospect of Aziraphale and Crowley potentially having sex in season 3. It's a response to a tweet that I'm crossposting, but let it be known the above statement and this topic applies broadly across multiple fandoms too.
But anyway, in regards to Good Omens specifically:
I am seeing this take that essentially boils down to "Canon has now made it clear that these characters want to have sex with each other through subtext (i.e. Aziraphale and the ox), but I don’t want that to reach narrative completion because the idea of them having sex makes me uncomfortable or isn’t my personal preference” and it is, to put it mildly and delicately, A Very Bad Take.
This is rhetorical (and I do not expect or particularly want an answer), but: explain to me how and why queer characters who are unavoidably visibly queer (aka 2 "man-shaped beings") fucking on screen wouldn’t be a net positive, especially when you can indicate how canon has set it up.
Presumably, some people say things like this because ~they want to see them as visibly ace.~ Okay. But by some of these people’s own admission, there IS more evidence in canon now to indicate these characters crave sex with each other (vs arguing otherwise)... yet people would rather that be ignored/erased all for the sake of them feeling comfortable or feeling better about what canon shows or doesn’t show explicitly??
I’m sorry, but—speaking as an ace person, to be clear—your personal preferences for the story shouldn’t / don’t affect anything here. There’s too much in this.
Yeah, I understand on a personal level not having “representation.” I almost never see myself or my unique experiences and identity reflected in stories. And yet, I also understand that that doesn’t change any story or the world in which we live. Things like this are not said in a vacuum.
Any queer characters having sex on screen IS a net positive. It is rare and impactful, and openly calling for or hoping for otherwise when canon points to its potential is a detrimental alliance with purity culture, whether intentionally or accidentally. Because we live in a Goddamn society!
Who knows (other than Neil Gaiman) whether Aziraphale and Crowley ARE going to fuck on international TV. None of us do! But the subtext right now blatantly says they’re starving for it. And you don’t have to like the prospect of that, but honestly? We SHOULD get to see it play out. There’s no truly legitimate reason we shouldn’t ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Whether you "prefer" it or not.
And my ultimate hot take is… if someone balks at the idea of that or doesn’t understand the importance of it, despite even seeing the subtext… then they should perhaps unpack that? Just a thought.
Truly the way fandoms are managing to hit either “subtext doesn’t count :/ ” or “let’s keep it to subtext so it’s ‘open to interpretation’ :) ” nowadays depending on what corner one visits is MADDENING. Whiplash-inducing. Surreal. And so much nonsense you can’t pick where to start.
So! I do genuinely hope I'm not kicking off discourse but I felt this Needed To Be Said (and on more than one site). Because posts like “even if they never kiss again, we’ve won <3 “ make me want to be like…
These characters are YEARNING. Do not doom them and us to it. For once, we can reach for the stars and maybe–against all odds–pull them down. Embrace it!
---
[Update: after more discourse has occurred, I have somewhat elaborated on this further, from the POV of the significance of the queer themes in Good Omens and more specifically how they center illicit pleasure/desire]
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mrpsychokiller · 4 months
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tex red vs blue is insanely transgender but im the only one who sees it that way because im crazy in the head.
what if there was a past version of yourself. a woman, a wife, a mother, with long hair and a sweet smile. and she died long ago. and you are her. but you are not her. you're nothing like her, but the people who knew her desperately want you to be her, want to preserve the memory they have in their minds of the woman they loved through you. but you never asked to be her, never asked to carry the burden of someone else's expectation of who or what you should be. you have a new name. you prefer to go by this one. people remark on how weird it is that it's a guy's name. sometimes the people who loved [the past version of] you call you by your old name. they are not referring to you when they say it. you live in the shadows of someone who's long gone, and you're something different now, but you don't feel like you're ever allowed to define yourself on your own terms, to be your own person, to control your own life, because you exist solely through the memories people had of you. and the longer she has been gone for, the more desperately people try to get her back, the less you resemble her and the less you know who you are, or if you ever even got to be anything at all. what i mean is that transition could have saved him
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spacespheal · 3 months
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When I say that Leona's murder attempt on Ruggie lives rent free in my head I'm not joking.
(Version without the sand and close-ups under read-more)
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chronicowboy · 1 year
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the rituals of the couch and kitchen scenes are so damn intricate. i cannot express to you how much those two scenes say even in just the tiniest of things. the storytelling is outstanding because somehow they manage to perfectly balance the overwhelmingly obvious with the stunningly subtle. you have the smack in the face of the couch metaphor and the outright punch of the shooting mention. but then you have these tiny little moments that show just how well buck and eddie know each other, how deep their relationship is, how much it exists offscreen in the onscreen moments. because you have buck who barely ever sets boundaries for himself, walks into the diaz house with one clear boundary and eddie doesn't cross it until he has explicit permission because he gives buck control in the same way that buck allows him to let go of control. buck, the guy who is terrified of being too much shows up at eddie's doorstep unannounced, the guy who's terrified of being left walks into a house without even waiting for his welcome, the guy who is always performing for others sitting down on a couch and letting it all drift away. and it has eddie not just allowing him to do this but indulging it because he's been making sure buck knows he can do this since season three !! (i'm not really a guest) !! not only this but when he wakes up there's no apology, he just seeks eddie out. then you have the intricacies of their care for each other. it shows us buck, the guy who hates to be a burden, letting eddie take care of him and how eddie will let buck decide how he's allowed to take care of him. we've seen time and time again that buck knows when to push with eddie, and there's an element of that here with the question about the shooting, but more than that, we see that eddie knows when to wait buck out. and it shows that buck trusts that eddie will not only face up to something that big for him, but will do so in a way to give buck hope. and in turn eddie trusts buck to let him take his time with it and treat it gently. the rituals !! they're so intricate !!!
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novlr · 6 months
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watmalik · 4 months
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I dreamt about a nursing student/nurse Wilson x Dr House AU, so I needed for it to become real (in a way) 😭
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Another Hatice question because I am obsessed with her apparently:
With Hatice I sometimes get the feeling that she is smarter than she looks but deliberately suppresses her knowledge about the world to be happy. In your opinion, in Season 1, is she really that naive or is there a high level of psychological suppression going on?
I would need to reflect on that.
She feels more alienated than naive, because she's clearly weighted by baggage emotionally, and the way she feels emotions either super intensely or not at all doesn't strike me as child-like and more as "this girl had WAY TOO MUCH time to dissociate and obsessively dwell on her own issues"
Granted, this feels like a massive case of “we're reading too deep into a cookiecutter instance of the lovesick princess” but actually I jumped back to thinking it's valid, because if that's the case the analysis actually applies to the whole trope and how it actually depicts emotionally stunted out of touch people.
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deoidesign · 5 months
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Hi! I was thinking about writing a character that uses a cane, but is also a renowned fighter. The cane would possess a kind of magic that eases the pain during a fight while turning into a sword. If it gets knocked out of the character's hand it stops working and it's overall short lived. I was wondering if it's in some way offensive to do that? I really don't want to come of as ableist or downplaying the injury which does affect the character's life in a major way
Ok I get a lot of asks like this so since this one is anonymous and generally kind I'm just going to make a blanket statement!
I'm not an authority on ableism. I'm not an authority on writing.
As with everything when it comes to writing, context and execution are one million times more important than concept.
Some things that might seem ableist in concept end up being beautiful representations of really complicated experiences, and things that might seem totally fine end up being incredibly ableist or eugenicist when viewed as a part of a whole.
All I can say is do your research, and treat your characters like people. Just do your best to be respectful and understanding! Seeking to create a story that's perfect and completely inoffensive 1: is impossible 2: denying the infinitely varied realities of those around you and how they'll perceive your work and 3: will stop you from producing anything meaningful to anyone.
Write. Listen to those around you and learn from them, and use it to write better. But to do so you have to write, and to write you will mess up. But you have to do it anyways.
So good luck. Idk if your concept is ableist or not cause idk how you'll handle it in the narrative. Care enough to try again should you fall short the first time.
I probably won't answer other asks about "is my idea ableist" this is my opinion on the matter so if you're asking that just read this post!
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drink-tang-gang · 1 year
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I think one of the funniest aspects of Baffy is that, Bugs is down BAD, but would rather eat dirt before admitting it.
Like he could re-arrange the entire universe for Daffy and trip him on the next morning. And bcs Daffy doesn’t know he despises Bugs ( on a very surface level bcs deep down he also cares)
yes that's exactly it! We've seen as much in bia haven't we?? it's implied Bugs knows the entire movie was going on just so Daffy could have his limelight. I even love in Bah Humduck Bugs has no purpose in the story. Like at all. Except to tease Daffy and play around with him <3 Bugs lives for that. He doesn't have to be the cool-headed joe he's gotten reduced to (at that time period) he can be his zany trickster self around him and for that alone Bugs would give him the world <3
Daffy cares too, despite his grumblings! Who tf else would burrow with Bugs? Who else would let Bugs be in charge of the map and over-prepare for when he inevitably takes a wrong direction?? Man I love these two.
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bespectacledbun · 6 months
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oh girl that’s not—
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