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im-totally-not-an-alien-2 · 1 year

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Danny covered his nose with his hand. Where ever he landed smelled absolutely foul, like rotten fruit and burning tires mixed with chem lab.

"Remind me to bring a face mask the next time I explore the Infinite Realms." He muttered, before kicking a soda can down the alley he was in and being repulsed by the squelch sound it made when it came into contact with a very questionable looking puddle, "Better yet, a gas mask." He glanced at the puddle again, "Or I could go full Hazmat." Clockwork had told him this world was full of superheros and villians and to steer clear of it, but once he learned there were aliens in this world he couldn't help himself. Danny had always been weak to his curiosity, but he liked to believe he was cautious, and chose to stay in his Phantom for for added protection.

Turning on his heel he exited onto a deserted street lined on one side by a chain-link fence. The sky above him was filled with clouds so ominous and dark that Danny honestly couldn't tell you if it was night or day, all he knew was that it was going to rain soon and hopefully these awful smells would be drowned out by the downpour.

Danny got his wish only minutes later. Thankfully Phantom was unbothered by the cold and could just bask in the rain as it fell apon him. A lesser known fact about ghosts is that thier clothes are made from thier ectoplasm and are part of thier bodies, much like a second layer of skin, so one would be able to feel things on thier clothes as easily as they would with thier bare skin. The level of sensitivity varies with the type of clothing however. All this to say Danny loved the feeling of the rivulets of rainwater traveling down his ghostly hazmat suit.

He was so preoccupied with enjoying the sensation that he didn't notice anything was wrong until he was jolted forward from the weight of someone landing on his back. The person was quick and precise, taking no time at all to have his wrists pinned behind his back and- weirdly enough- thier teeth digging into the material around his neck.

His parents designed the Hazmat suit Danny was wearing not only to deal with dangerous chemicals, but to fight supernatural foes. The area around the neck was reinforced with the intention of protecting against fatal gunshots and decapitations so naturally someone's jaw wasn't going to be enough to break through to his neck.

Danny let out a laugh as the person kept chewing on his neck like a confused puppy. Oh, Danny thought, they've gone feral. It was odd for someone to go feral but it could occur when a person has gone through something traumatic recently or through extreme stress. It made sense since the person ridding piggy back on him was dressed like a superhero. Danny wondered if that was why the person didn't have a scent. Danny learns facepalmed when he remembered that scentblockers existed and not everyone's scent dramatically changed whenever they went out as a hero. The scent change was probably one of the few things that have kept him alive up to this point to be honest.

"So, I guess you're not going to tell me why you're chewing on my neck like the worlds most pathetic vampire, are you?" No one deserves that title more than the fruitloop to be honest. He made a mental note to use that one against Vlad the next time he saw him.

Chewy whined at this, seeming to slump a bit from the apparent failure to bite him. What was that about? Was this actually a vampire? How would a vampire even react to Dannys ecto-blood combo meal anyway? Would it be like food poisoning? Or would it taste amazing from one undead to another. "I'm not exactly human, are you sure you wanna bite me? I might not taste so good." Danny warned, but the moment he mentioned letting the person bite him they were eager again.

Danny chuckled and unzipped the material only a bit before it was loose enough to move out of the way. The vampires bite came with a sharp pain like he expected but there was no suction. No drinking of blood. Just some weirdo biting Danny on the neck. Huh.

Danny hoped he didn't get rabies from this.

He must have accidentally said that out loud as there was a small laugh from the rooftops above them. There stood another person in a superhero outfit with some really tall dude dressed as a giant bat, and that was when Danny decided to bail. It was one thing to let a maybe vampire bite you in a random street in the middle of the night but more of them? And ones a big scary furry? Hard pass.

Phantom did as Phantoms do and went invisible and intangible, escaping from Biteys jaws and startling the heros. He ignored the distressed whine Munchy let out after loosing their spookyest chew toy and quickly rubbed the scent gland near dannys jaw on the top of thier head as an act of comfort before bolting.

----

Danny poked at the bite mark on his neck. Screw rabies, he better not get turned into a werewolf. He didn't need that on top of his ghostly crap. Sam seemed fascinated by the mark, after all, it wasn't every day that Danny got a scar, especially one so obvious. Most injuries heal quickly and leave no trace of him ever being injured in the first place which helped a lot in keeping his secret identity.

Luckily Danny hadn't needed to lie to mom and dad. He truthfully told them about some wierdo jumping off of a nearby rooftop and plunging thier teeth into his neck and that two other people had tried to corner him during this. He assured his mom that he had gotten away quickly but was a little shaken by it and his dad praised him for being brave and managing to escape.

That was nice. But he still had to figure out what was up with this bite...and why he felt so compelled to go back to that city.

Back to that hero.

-----

Aka an A/B/O au where in Danny's universe all the Alphas are extinct and the betas followed soon after and the DC universe all the Omegas went extinct and betas followed after . Not like a "they finally went extinct in the 1700s after centuries of thier numbers dwindling" thing and became a myth/fairytale (tho I like that too) but a "this might be the missing link between cave men and modern humans" kinda thing.

Its up to you which bat bit Danny and exactly what that means. I love abo aus without smut cause there's so much potential for chaos and I am very much ace.

#dp x dc #fanfiction prompts #prompts #abo #everyone is confused and no one has answers #i would however like some slowburn romance #whichever bat you choose is going to get teased forever for running up to some random meta and biting the crap outta them #i tricked yall into reading an abo prompt didnt i?#i slept little over an hour last night so i woke up choosing violence #its been a very bad day #the store didnt have a lot of the stuff i needed to buy and on the walk home i saw an older kitten that looked kinda like my cat get hit #the car didnt even stop. poor thing got hit by the next car too and i just stared and it started raining like a freaking movie moment #tw: animal death #tw for the tags #so i got new trauma today #gonna make that everyone elses problem #a/b/o dynamics #kinda #just wanted to add the tag incase yall have it filtered

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thefiresofpompeii · 1 month

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the main mistake that people who dislike s8 and put it low in their series rankings make is the belief that, like any other series (apart from s9), it’s a collection of standalone stories tied together by some vague throughline i.e. missy’s ‘heaven’. “oh, this episode’s mid, that episode’s bad” meanwhile it’s not about individual episodes at all. i firmly believe that it should be viewed as a singular long serial.

so grateful that i was extremely late to the party and binged it all in a week instead of watching every episode as they were airing, because sometimes the plots barely matter at all. do you remember what the skovox blitzer actually looks like or what it wanted with coal hill in the first place? hardly. i had to google its name. but what you do remember from the caretaker is twelve acting like an antagonistic prick towards danny, and that’s what matters. almost every villainous entity is some kind of soldier, the contempt twelve shows to everybody but clara becomes the source of their toxicity… in the forest of the night is pretty obviously rubbish scifi, but it demonstrates danny’s fundamental incompatibility with clara, as well as the scene in which clara is ready to sacrifice herself and her students for the doctor’s sake, foreshadowing their reckless, almost suicidal codependency.

point is, but it really does work best as a tightly woven tapestry. sure, some episodes succeed individually, but most of the individual plots are mildly exciting only in a ‘this is fun to watch for kids’ way… UNLESS you approach them from the overarching perspective. i.e. mummy on the orient express has wonderful style, a thrilling mystery, creative concepts and interesting side characters, but its story appeal hinges on the twelveclara failed breakup. listen is frightening enough, but its entire story appeal hinges on just how much clara affects the doctor’s values past and present, and whether or not she has a future with danny (she doesn’t).

what i’m saying is, the narrative in s8 is a non-negotiable package deal. buy one, get them all. and it has no skips. i hate the idiotic pro-life message in kill the moon as much as the next sensible person, but what the episode does well is really hammer home how much of a sanctimonious asshole twelve initially is, which is crucial to his future character evolution.

tldr; the correct way to watch series 8 is all in one go. series 8 is great. more love for series 8

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mommyashtoreth · 5 months

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Coughs. Hello goomenheads. A while ago I had a revelation about the s2 finale and it festered within me until I wrote an essay/article/thing about it bc I'm normal. I worked very hard on it and am very proud of it and I would appreciate very much if people read it and reblogged it and shared it and etc :) Intended to be understood both by Good Omens fans who don't know about the political stuff I talk about, and by gay theory fans who don't know about the Good Omens stuff I talk about so don't worry if you don't know what Randian Objectivism is, I explain it pretty okay

#i'm gonna give this a bunch of tags for exposure okay. sorry in advance #open mick night #good omens #gomens #good omens 2 #aziraphale #crowley #aziracrow #ineffable husbands #good omens meta

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beelzeballing · 6 months

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actually i dont think ive posted my thoughts on ofmd s2 overall here yet have i?

ok here goes: i think it had incredibly high highs, and at some parts i genuinely enjoyed it more than i did the first season, episode 6 being peak imo. however, it had equally abysmal lows with some glaring writing-, tone- and pacing issues that all came to a head in the finale.

i once read someone say that, if you ever feel like a finale ruined the whole story, maybe you should take another look at the story. there were most likely cracks and problems all along, and the finale did nothing besides dashing the hope that these would perhaps be addressed later. very rarely do genuinely well written stories go completely off the rails in the finale and ruin the whole thing.

i think this is applicable here in some ways, SPECIFICALLY in regards to edward. good god edward was a MESS this season, and it's so sad because i loved the starting point! the kraken era was absolutely terrifying and iconic as FUCK but... they shouldn't have leaned so hard into the drama and trauma of it all. don't get me wrong, i loved that it did. it's one of my favorite parts of the season and i'm so glad we got it. but if they wanted this arc to work with the overarching plot as they wrote it, they would've had to lighten up the tone here CONSIDERABLY. had they played the kraken era for comedy then sure! edward's bad youtuber apology would've been funny. his fast redemption would've been less jarring. the lack of consequences less disturbing. but as it stands in the show, this arc is too dark to function with the later episodes.

i feel like they wanted to have their cake and eat it too here. they wanted the gritty drama of ed coming off the hinges entirely but also didn't want to deal with the aftermath of such a heavy arc in their silly pirate romcom. be that due to time constraints and budget cuts or because they were simply unwilling to, doesn't really matter in the end. the result is the same either way: a very tonally messy season with some accidentally troubling implications regarding abuse.

and mentioning troubling implications regarding abuse; izzy. my poor, poor izzy... his arc was absolutely glorious. i liked izzy the second he showed up in s1 and i was absolutely EATING this season up in that regard. and i think in this case, they genuinely did fuck it all up in the finale with that one stupid choice:

choosing to kill izzy was the DUMBEST thing they couldve done here.

ive talked about this over and over and over again. ive reblogged so many meta posts. and still i am left absolutely flabbergasted by how stupid of a decision this was. the fridging, playing at the fallen woman trope, killing the beating heart of the season and the character who delivers what is essentially a thesis statement, killing off the character whose arc is about coming to terms with his disability, having him die in edward's arms, comforting him and apologizing after an entire season of finding community and love outside of edward, the absolutely godawful pacing of it all, the extremely easy and obvious solution of just having IZZY become the new captain of the revenge to mirror s1 and hammer home how much he has developed since then in one go... i could go on. and i have. it was a stupid writing decision, completely fucked the tone and pacing of the finale and took away attention and time from things that really would've deserved a better wrap up (lucius and black pete deserved better)

now. the whole prince ricky & zheng plot line... yeah that shit sucked ass, sorry. they bit off more than they could chew here. i honestly think those are the arc words of this season:

✨️ bit off more than they could chew ✨️

right off the bat: i think he was good as a concept. bringing in a foil for stede who just doesn't Get It as stede does could've made for very good comedy and drama (and to be fair there is some of that). but that shit got away from them extremely quickly. nothing about how he's implemented past his first episode works, and i think this is very specifically because he's mostly played as the comic relief in his debut episode. making this completely bumbling fool, who gets his nose hacked off on his first job, the main villain of your entire season is... definitely a choice. idk. he didn't work for me at all.

ok wow mentioning shit getting away from the writers. this definitely got away from me. this was supposed to be a short lil post. well. i guess tl;dr i loved this season but jesus christ there was a lot wrong with it. if you want to hear more thoughts. ask box is open. be my guest. i have more to say so even if you dont ask i might add more to this at some point but im tired and have work tmrw.

#i was going to do shit today and now look at me.#0:18 at night #laying in bed #writing this shit #i havent even eaten.#christtttt #moogsin'#ofmd #izzy hands #our flag means death #ofmd meta #ofmd critical #ofmd s2 #ofmd spoilers #the izcourse #im not tagging any of the other characters cuz i shittalk all of them 😭#listen i love edward hes my babygirl but this season did him DIRTY.

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geneticdriftwood · 23 hours

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i think people who say that batman should kill should go read terry pratchett’s night watch, and thud! for extra credit. pratchett says it better than i can— someone who works to serve and protect a city cannot play judge jury and executioner, no matter what atrocities someone committed. even and especially when they’re gleefully unrepentant, or have specifically targeted you and your family. understanding sam vimes gives you a much better understanding of batman.

#I mean also people should read those books because they are phenomenal!#discworld #sam vimes #dc #batman #bruce wayne #night watch #bat tag #mine: dc #dc meta #kinda. I want it in my meta tag anyways

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nanomooselet · 3 months

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Episode One/Episode Zero Composition

Sometimes you're scrolling through screenshots because you want to dunk on Hundreds Spoons, and you discover shit like this.

WHAT

@tristampparty

#i think my favourite is the captain getting smacked in the back of the head during ep one #and then his face stepped on in ep twelve #(that's a lie it's the sun and moon one. glorious)#(all those shots at night with the moons in the background = knives's influence is being felt. it's absolutely consistent)#trigun stampede #trigun meta #tristampparty #i dunno if i should still be using the tag but nevertheless

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mzminola · 1 year

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I think it's fun, and consistent with the rest of his character, that while Tim has no faith in the existence (or perhaps simply benevolence) of any sort of divine higher power, he does believe in the existence of souls.

I think that fits really well with Tim having faith in people. That all individual people are important, that they have amazing capabilities for both good and evil, and that they need support from each other to keep doing good. It fits with his continuing balancing act with both faith in and criticism towards Bruce.

Tim finds it totally believable that Greta is both a ghost & connected to some kind of afterlife pathway. He rolls with Anita's parents souls whooshing into the fetal clones. When Kon is worried he doesn't have a soul, Tim is confident that Kon does have one. He gets pissed when Red Tornado is dismissed as "just" a machine.

When Dick fights against Tim using or sampling the Lazarus Pit to bring back some loved ones, asking "What about their souls?" Tim just retorts that "The Pit brings that back too."

Which leads to one of my headcanons: that some time before she died, Janet expressed either belief in or hope for reincarnation. Tim describes his parents as "My mom was a little religious. My Dad not at all." in the Judgment on Gotham crossover arc. In Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul, when thinking of dead loved ones to bring back, he pictures Kon, Steph, and his dad. Not his mom.

Combined with all the above, I'm headcanoning that Tim has reason to think the Lazarus Pit can't bring back Janet Drake. That Tim believes her soul is neither lingering on this plane nor moved on to an afterlife from which it can be summoned, but willingly reincarnated already, and is therefore actually out of reach.

#I'm pretty sure that while Jack comes back as a zombie in Blackest Night #Janet does not? which would support the theory that she has reincarnated #though as that arc was AFTER Resurrection it doesn't have as much to do with what TIM thinks #Tim Drake #Janet Drake #DC #Batfam #comics meta #I think Tim's beliefs and disbeliefs here are neat!#a lot of the time belief in some kind of higher divine power and souls are tied together #at least in Western media #but for Tim they aren't!#personally I also headcanon as Janet having cultural religious practices that are important to her #and ALSO being atheistic #but that's not as relevant to the above and has less textual support #so into the tags instead of body of the post it goes

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calamity-unlocked · 1 year

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#its one of those nights again guys #dndads #dungeons and daddies #breathes heavily. anger causing trauma but also relief. covering the ugly things up only makes them fester #physically stopping myself from making another meta post in the tags

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artbyblastweave · 2 years

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A couple of years ago, when The Magnus Archives was at the height of its popularity, somebody on here made what I thought at the time was a very cogent observation; namely, that Jurgen Leitner, and our collective undying hatred of him, is what you get if you take Welcome to Night Vale’s running gag about Cecil’s interns constantly dying on the job, and then actually took the horrific moral implications of that dynamic seriously and really held the Cecil figure accountable in the narrative lens. Everyone, in-universe and out, rightfully hates and despises Leitner for a pattern of behavior that, in the context of Night Vale, would have come across as a kooky quirk, no worse than anything else in that town. We know this because Cecil is the beneficiary of exactly this.

This isn’t really intended as a criticism of Night Vale, which has to be graded on a different curve because the intent, first and foremost, is to make people laugh, and to occasionally to express heartfelt sentiments. It’s not a pointed worldbuilding project working towards a definitive, thematically resonant end. But one of my big friction points with it, as a long-time fan, is that I do have to elide like 4/5ths of what the town is objectively stated to be like from my mental model in order for a lot of those heartfelt sentiments to land.

I personally can’t take arcs about the community coming together in the face of a larger threat seriously if I’m simultaneously entertaining all the one-off jokes about how everyone in Night Vale is a craven amoral maniac who would sell everyone else up the river for a corn chip. I’d be rolling my eyes at the situations where the narrative does decide to take human loss of life seriously if I were also giving any sort of weight to the fact that the town is described as having like eight different Shirley-Jackson style death lotteries. And, in the same way that it’s generally agreed that all SCP articles can’t be set in the same continuity because the world would be immediately annihilated, all the one-off gags about Stuff That Kills You can’t be granted equal weight or there’d be nobody left alive in the town at all.

I recognize when I’m expected to elide these things, or weigh them selectively, and meet the story where it’s at; the problem is that since I’ve migrated out of my teenaged JK-Lol-so-random phase of my sense of humor, I’ve gotten progressively worse at extending that good will and doing that selective weighing, at least when there’s stuff in the story that I’m also supposed to take seriously. I still can, but it’s less of an organic process. This shift on my end has happened hand in hand with the narrative of Night Vale starting to revisit and unpack some of its old one-off gags; examples of this include the Frank Chen resurrection subplot, and the entirety of The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home Novel, which recontextualized her bit as actually always having been something deeply fucked up, and not in a way they’ll ever be able to successfully make a joke about again. But there is still this tension that, structurally, it won’t ever be able to shake, because it’s still out to be funny.

So. Taking this full circle. I’ve got my gripes with The Magnus Archives. In aggregate I’d probably say that I enjoyed it less than I enjoyed (continue to enjoy!) Night Vale. But it never suffered from that tension. Other tensions, sure, but I never felt like it was annoyingly cavalier with the prospect of a loss of human life. Some of the ways people died are ridiculous on the face of it, sure, like that pig eating that clown, but there’s weight to the fact that they died. It’s allowed to reflect on the person or persons involved, to stick to their character like a burr as they trudge towards the tragic vortex of MAG200. There is a point. There is an ending. And rather than being comically passive reporters, the viewpoint characters are always, always, shown to be personally living with the consequences of how their world is shown to work for the people they observe.

#thoughts #meta #not tagging this TMA or Night Vale #half-baked assessment

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gaylos-lobos · 1 year

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actually before i go to sleep

giving Luz the same kinda shot composition here directly after finding out what happened to King and Eda (and telling Camila that she hasn’t changed her mind about returning back to Gravesfield after rescuing the two) while dressed as Azura (someone she admires) to when Philip arrived to the isles in search and rescue for Caleb (<- if getting there was accidentally or not does not matter) while dressed in his attire or at least clothes that resembles them, truly driving home the point of how similar the two of them are and how they really are just mirrors of the other

#especially the returning back to Gravsfield line is really important to me. both of them wanted to return to a home that isn’t home because #their actual home is the people/person they want to rescue.#how they really are just the other to the left and that’s exactly how Luz and Camila escape the tragedy that Philip and Caleb couldn’t #theres more to say about this but im tiered and need to go to sleep.#but also how the collector is playing out stories they’ve been told and quit literally using the isles and it’s inhabitants to do so #the way Luz in the beginning and Philip project onto it. anyways stopping here #cause i could be talking about the Luz. Collector. Philip parallels all night. which would lead into the once with King. Eda. Caleb so on #and so forth. considering how many characters parallel each other in different ways.#like the quadrant of Caleb and Luz and Luz and Philip and Philip and Camila and Camila and Caleb once.#(<- was just about to elaborate in tags but I should just word that all out properly and make an actual post instead (well another one))#i lost my point im going to sleep. gn #philly cheese steak #meta tag #toh #the owl house #luz noceda #philip wittebane #emperor belos

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reachexceedinggrasp · 8 days

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Danny 'I don't do weird' Pink frustrates me as a character, because I'm honestly not sure whether he was supposed to have an arc or not.

His primary role is as a foil for Clara's arc and, in aid of that, as a mirror to the Doctor. A solider with survivor's guilt and a man of action who can't stand by when people need help etc., in some ways he and the Doctor have a lot in common, but he's also a very grounded and circumspect personality versus the Doctor's being fantastical and adventurous. Danny isn't curious and doesn't want to pursue new things or experiences, instead he wants to be fully present with and grateful for what he already has. The Doctor is incorrigibly curious and always interested in new things.

Danny is someone who desires nothing more than an ordinary life, and looks for beauty and satisfaction in the normal things and people around him. He wants his world to be small and quiet, he values the mundane things others might take for granted. He's normal, patient, dependable, simple, honest, etc. His reaction to trauma hasn't been to disavow the things which lead him to that event, or to seek out stimulation to avoid thinking about it, it's to be thoughtful and cautious and somewhat rigid so he can always apply the mindset and skills he retained from before he was traumatised.

He's very firm and unbending in his worldview and in his self-image. He doesn't seem to ever reassess people once he's decided what he thinks of them. He's not unreasonable or unwilling to compromise, he is in fact maybe too reasonable, but he is implastic. He's extremely even-tempered except for around his identity as a soldier, which he's prickly about, but still pretty quick to let it go as long as he's not being deliberately antagonised.

So anyway Danny represents this other path, and this opposite response to the horror of war and making a catastrophic mistake, but he never learns, he never grows and he and Clara are never much on the same wavelength about anything. He's supposed to be stability, the things she 'should' want, the 'person she's supposed to like', the safe choice, the presentable life which Clara feels like she has to have. He's orderly and ordinary and that's what she wants from him. She has to control her image, her future, and her options.

And their simple relationship, once it exists, functions well as the contrast to her complicated and tumultuous relationship with the Doctor while the companion power dynamic is being dismantled and rebuilt so they can be emotional equals. But like, the set up is confusingly executed.

Listen- they have zero chemistry, they have nothing to talk about and have to resort to talking about work, every conversation goes instantly off the rails, they rub each other the wrong way, there is never any reason for them to keep reconciling and trying again to connect. Like. You are not hitting it off! and keep offending each other bc you're not compatible! Quit!!

Clara is forcing it, that makes complete sense with what she's going through, she's trying to take control of her life and her emotions, trying to prove to herself she's not pining for the Doctor and at the mercy of his whims for her life to be full and complete. She doesn't want to need him or to be dependant on him. She doesn't want to be the heartbroken sadsack whom he abandoned at Christmas or who will take whatever scraps he'll throw her. She wants to control his position in her life and control how she feels about him. Hence her assigning him a specific day and confining their adventures on her own terms. She's trying to keep the Doctor compartmentalised. Having an Appropriate Human Relationship means she's successfully put the Doctor in his box (lol) and neutralised the chaotic power of her feelings for him. I mean, obviously not, but that's what she tells herself.

But what is Danny doing? Why does he keep pursuing this when it's so clearly not a good match?

Again in Listen, and much more so The Caretaker, Danny illustrates that he does not know who Clara is, he's wildly wrong about her and what she's like, and he's very high handed about it as well. He's convinced that the Doctor is taking advantage of her, that the Doctor is domineering in their relationship, that she is not a person who wants to be put into challenging or dangerous positions, that the Doctor is pushing her to takes risks and become a leader where that's not her nature. None of this is true. Clara was always a decisive, assertive, strongly driven person who seeks out new experiences and naturally assumes a leadership role any time that's necessary; she relishes being challenged and facing the unknown. Her blow up with the Doctor wasn't about him 'pushing her too far', it was about him failing to support her when she needed him and condescending to her as a human rather than treating her with the intimacy and equity their bond and history together demands. It's personal and it's about their emotional relationship. It's not about making hard choices, it's about having to make hard choices without her partner being honest with and emotionally available to her.

Clara was always an adventurous person, willing to be spontaneous as long as it's on her terms, and excited by the prospect of authority and responsibility. The danger and challenge isn't an unfortunate side effect or a risk she has to take to see amazing sights, it's part of the appeal. She lied to Danny by omission when she said she went off in the box to 'see wonders', not just because the real reason is that she's in love with Doctor, but also because she doesn't just want to be a tourist. She wants to get involved and save people, she wants things to sometimes go pear shaped. She enjoys and craves that part of it too.

Danny is also wildly wrong about the Doctor, but this is understandable and would be fine except that he's never corrected? He never learns better? What's the point?

In Death in Heaven Danny goes out still wrong about the Doctor, still condemning him cruelly and unfairly while knowing nothing about him. He had a point with his original rant, there was actual insight there, but it's buried in assumptions and bitterness and then Danny keeps tripling down on the assumption. The one which doesn't understand that the very thing he's shitting on the Doctor for (being willing to lead and make hard choices which must be made in order to save people) is something the Doctor has in common with Clara. And always has. The Doctor didn't change her or push her into that, that's who she's always been.

What is the point of Danny calling him a blood-soaked general and mocking him, calling him an officer as a pejorative again, and again because the Doctor is trying to save the planet. Like, memory check, that's what Danny is mad about. The Doctor doing everything in his power to save literal billions of lives. Doing it for no reason, out of altruism. Doing it while always trying very hard not to fight or kill anyone.

I don't understand how we're meant to find Danny sympathetic in that moment, because he comes off like a complete dickhead. And it's all the more frustrating because in the intervening episodes Danny has been eminently reasonable. As I've discussed before, we're exhaustively shown that Danny is 100% okay with what Clara claims is going on, that he doesn't want to get in the way of her friendship with the Doctor, that if it really were only the relationship she's pretending it is, there would be no conflict. He's the one who encourages her to make up with him after Kill the Moon! He tells her to go on travelling and it's fine!

Even when he discovers she's been lying to him and cavorting with the Doctor behind his back (again despite him telling her it was fine!), he's calm and repeats for the millionth time that all he wants from her is honesty. The truth. Which is the one thing she can't give him because Clara knows their relationship is built on the lie. The truth is, as Moffatt said, that Danny never stood a chance. There is a conflict between the two relationships and she's always going to choose the Doctor.

And that does come out, she gives the whole speech to Danny, not knowing it's him, finally being honest. And he seems unsurprised by it, which makes sense because on some level he definitely always knew ('do you love him?' 'no' 'really sick of the lies'), but then nothing comes of it. Clara just soldiers on and he allows her to pretend. He goes off on the Doctor, but not in a way he actually deserves at all, and just sweeps her confession under the carpet. Letting her get away with it again. True to form, I guess! he always did. But shouldn't we make progress?

And it's like... I hate that he dies on that note. It feels like he dies in denial. I guess you could argue it contributes to his decision to not come back, but that feels like a disservice to the character. Saving the kid is important to Danny, it allows him to atone but he didn't need to change or grow to accomplish that and it doesn't provide closure to his actual role in the narrative, which was as Clara's foil. Clara is off the hook, free to go on lying to herself about their relationship. It's not addressed in Last Christmas, either, it's only hinted at.

#clara oswald #whouffaldi #dw #twelfth doctor #dw meta #I feel a constant need to remind people that the first thing Danny asks after Clara explains who the Doctor is #is 'do you love him?'#it's that transparent #and he asks already knowing the answer and immediately calling bullshit when she denies it #and apparently accepts this as not a threat to him on the basis of the Doctor being an untouchable alien incapable of loving her back #like as if she had a crush on a dragon or the Great Wall of China #I can't tell if that speaks to his lack of self worth or if it's just really patronising #I appreciate In the Forests of the Night so much for the scene where he finally realises he should be jealous #but then he's just Extremely Reasonable about it again #he has total faith in his idea of who Clara is- utter conviction #and it's completely misplaced #I feel owed the psychological fallout from this is all I'm saying #calling this meta is being very generous bc did I even say anything #but whatever it's a bunch of words I'll put it in the box with the other words #I've realised 95% of my whouffaldi meta is in tags on gifsets so

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spider-man-2o99 · 1 year

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so, then, what IS up with miguel o’hara’s moral backbone?

lol sorry if y’all’re sick of my 2099 soapboxing. anyways.

while i understand where the reading of “miguel is a morally bankrupt evil scientist and his spider-man is just a violent shitheel” comes from, i just... really can’t ever get behind it, based on what we see in the text of SM2099 v1 (1992-1996) itself.

like, don’t get me wrong-- from our first introduction to the guy, we very quickly learn that he has been a cog in the machine for one of the 2099 imprint’s Big Bads, the ruthless megacorporation in charge of the United States’ East coast: Alchemax.

..but. like.

the whole point of his origin story is changing that. the initial catalyst for his Spidering--getting roofied by Tyler when he tries to quit his job--would not have happened if he had no moral compass to speak of.

narratively, it’s less that miguel himself is changed, after he gets his powers, but that his perception of the world has changed.

just-- just bear with me, yeah?

see, for a lot of his life, miguel was a perfect cog in a shitty machine, and he did everything he was expected to without even thinking to stray from the path set down for him by his biological father and by alchemax overall.

and, then, suddenly, that’s all ripped from him in an instant. and miguel’s left floundering in the water.

he’s no longer on the winning team-- more than that, he realizes that he probably never even was on the right side of things, to begin with.

miguel o’hara’s most-quoted line is his response to the infamous “great power,” bit: Great responsibility? No. With great power comes great guilt.

he’s repressed, and he’s a hypocrite, but a guy can only turn a blind eye so far when something he knows is wrong is happening right in front of his face.

as soon as it’s even suggested to him, he immediately steps out of line and tries to put his foot down on absolutely not using a human test subject for his personal spider-man project. when stone brushes him off and makes them go through with human testing anyways, and then the subject dies, miguel doesn’t hesitate to turn up his nose and walk out right then and there on the spot.

his reward for it, of course, is an ice-cold dose of Reality.

from there, his blinders get pulled harshly off his face, and mig realizes that he really doesn’t want to keep being the person that he has been. his life has been wasted sitting idly by and letting bad things happen because all he knows is helpless compliance, right up until he goes and gets himself The Fly’ed into spider-man.

and once that happens, and he Realizes it, he starts to fight back.

that’s how the run is kick-started, in the very first three issues!

the first ten issues of spider-man 2099 (1992) follow miguel stumbling from a very sheltered life, having been thrust head-first into navigating a world that is not only deeply, deeply unjust, but also wants him very, very dead.

he don’t got a dead uncle to motivate him! all he’s got it his own fear and an inner desire to use his new abilities to try and make the world a better place.

hell, the first time he put on the costume, ol’ miggy boy wasn’t even doing so for the purpose of becoming a superhero in his off-time-- it was just an old spare in his closet that he threw on in a desperate attempt to Not Fucking Die as a bounty hunter tracked him to his home.

it’s only later on, after he’s had time for it all to sink in, that miguel realizes that he can actually meaningfully help the people who had been cast aside by the same society that had previously lifted him up above them.

as much as he whines and bitches and moans about it, he never seriously considers throwing in the towel and hanging up the costume for good. he may hate what has happened to him, but he never once seems to hate what he can now do with his powers, vis-à-vis challenging injustice.

mig’s often stuck between a rock and a hard place, what with the kind of world he lives in. it’s why he don’t work well when he’s stranded away from his dimension. peter can get his villains locked up just fine and dandy, but miguel’s world isn’t like ours like that. it’s brutal and it’s very very much established across the imprint that earth-928 (marvel 2099) is a kill-or-be-killed place to live.

despite how people harp on him not having a no-kill rule, miguel honestly hasn’t even killed enough people to count on one hand; the first was completely by accident, even, and the second told him to his face that if spider-man let him live he’d just keep being a cannibal gang-boss because no one else ever has or would try to oppose him.

is killing people the answer? not if you have any other option. but. mig ain’t a friendly neighborhood superhero. he’s just doing what he thinks is right in the moment while scared absolutely shitless for his life most of the time.

now, i don’t mean to defend his every action--miguel o’hara isn’t a saint, and, good god, but he’s made some questionable choices--but. at the end of the day, he’s still shown throughout the run to be trying to be better.

and, i dunno. maybe i’m just a sentimental little sap, but a story about somebody who finally “wakes up” and struggles to build a life worth being proud of after years of having shut down from heavy early-life trauma? that hits, man.

hits real close to home, to be honest. learning to Live after so long simply Surviving is fuckin’ hard, man.

#spider-man 2099 #spiderman 2099 #miguel o'hara #meta #my meta #comic analysis #atsv #itsv #spider-man #marvel 2099 #marvel #across the spider-verse #talking tag #yarfs this all up on ur laps and skitters away into the night for ever #all this long long post is to really say is just. yknow.#just because they never said the words ''post-traumatic stress disorder'' until the 2010s it doesn't mean he wasn't Coded back in the 90s #slaps roof of spider-man 2099. you can fit so much goddamn Coding in this guy #call me whatever u will but i gotta underline i'm NOT in love with this man he is simply my dark mirror reflection of self #sm2099's my Special Interest i gotta lotta thoughts abt it #'dude this is super biased and opinionated' well. yeah. why do u think i point that out all the time? im coverin my ass for a Reason #always do your own research and take away from a piece whatever you want to take away from having experienced it etc. etc. etc.#this is My Blog where I natter on and on and on abt what i Wanna in between the metaphorical scrapbook-making experience

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scarletslippers · 11 months

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Thinking about how losing Ace physically made Nancy pull inside herself and shut down to protect him.

Thinking about how losing Ace emotionally and losing her feelings for him made Nancy reach out to him and open up honestly.

#HE MAKES IT OKAY FOR HER TO BE VULNERABLE #HIS LOVE FOR HER OPENS HER UP AND MAKES HER BETTER #late night feral thoughts don’t mind me #nace #nancy drew cw #nancy drew spoilers #nancy and ace #i need a meta tag #scarletslippers posts #my meta

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ghostoffuturespast · 2 months

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What’d I miss what’s the thing with the clair de lune piano? 👀 gotta know the backstory

Hehehe I'm so glad you asked :>

I jokingly refer to the Clair de Lune piano (the piano in the Peralez's apartment for anyone reading this) as my arch nemesis, but it's actually one of my favorite pieces of foreshadowing in CP2077. Like it's just one of those things you'd never know, unless you took the time to get to know, and there's just so much of that in this game. A mind-boggling amount of it. It makes my brain very happy and it's one of the many reasons why I love this game so goddamn much. It's just layer upon layer upon layer. The cake that keeps on giving!

Now, there is a possibility that this wasn't intended as foreshadowing, but given how many music and poetry references there are in the game, I'm really hard pressed to believe that the inclusion of Clair de Lune wasn't intentional.

(Heck, look up the other classical song that is referenced in the game Nocturnes, Op. 55, Frederic Chopin, and Jane Stirling. You may see some similarities in situation between Chopin and Stirling, and V and Hanako. Two diseased dying virtuosos and their two wealthy financial sponsors crutching them along.)

We as players can encounter Clair de Lune piano twice in the game. First at the end of the quest I Fought the Law and then a second time at the beginning of Dream On. Both instances, in the Peralez's apartment on a self-playing piano. The melody drifting disembodied through the air...

At first listen, the fact that this song is playing, may not have even registered. (It certainly didn't for me the first several times I played.) Just a classical song being listened to by a couple of rich people for atmosphere. Dig a little deeper, you may have noticed the moon motif based on the title of the song. There's a lot of moon and space motifs in this game too. But the true meaning of this song requires you to know a little bit of music history.

Clair de Lune is the third movement of a piano suite called Suite bergamasque that was composed by Claude Debussy. That third movement got its inspiration and name from a poem written by Paul Verlaine.

Clair de Lune is a fucking poem.

A poem about a masquerade dance underneath the moonlight where all the dancers are living a fantasy life. Very much in the same way that we find out in the conclusion of Dream On that Jefferson and Elizabeth Peralez are living their own fantasy life...

Foreshadowing.

Clair de Lune by Paul Verlaine Your soul is like a landscape fantasy, Where masks and Bergamasks, in charming wise, Strum lutes and dance, just a bit sad to be Hidden beneath their fanciful disguise. Singing in minor mode of life’s largesse And all-victorious love, they yet seem quite Reluctant to believe their happiness, And their song mingles with the pale moonlight, The calm, pale moonlight, whose sad beauty, beaming, Sets the birds softly dreaming in the trees, And makes the marbled fountains, gushing, streaming – Slender jet-fountains – sob their ecstasies.

And remember...

Nothing comes before Night City.

#ask away!#irrigone #cyberpunk 2077 #meta analysis #clair de lune piano #nothing comes before night city #and yes this little nugget is in my fic lol #i didn't tag it as an ode to my tinfoil for no reason

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wawawawawawawawawawawawawa · 3 months

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I love all of your analysis on both Izaya and ASPD, it really makes me think. I really feel like Izaya would do good in the disabled community, after all, wouldn’t he have so much fun pissing off politicians and working for disabled rights?

And the fact that he treats everyone equally is going to be so much more appreciated among people who have never been treated equally.

I just want a post Ketsu story where he realizes that he has ASPD and actually works through the symptoms, enough that it isn’t controlling his life anymore. All the while making life better for himself and every other disabled person in Japan.

EVERYONE ELSE SHUT UP. YOU. KEEP TALKING

no but youre actually so correct. izaya loves humans and loves fucking with people- so why not redirect those urges into something more productive? he's still fucking with people, still pushing people to their limits

and wouldnt it be FUNNY if it came out that he was doing this? like, there's no proof, but there are rumors that izaya drove X corrupt polititian to suicide or Y insurance company CEO to resign, and NOBODY CARES like they just. look the other way. kinda like the guy with the thingamajig that assasinated shinzo abe- that guy DID get arrested, but he did what he did because abe had ties to the life church, aka the moonies, a christian cult. but then the govt looked into it and then money stopped getting funneled to the moonies. like people went "yeah that guy had a point" abt it all

AND ON THE TOPIC OF ASPD- what if izaya does aspd related activism on the side? wouldnt it be cool to see him get into a formal debate with another professional who studies aspd but has a... less favorable view on it? wouldnt it be sick to see izaya corner them more and more, ask them what EXACTLY makes people like him different from everyone else? what exactly does the field of psychiatry seek to gain by villifying these people, who have what they have because of trauma, who could be helped if people tried- ACTUALLY tried, instead of the focus being on fixing them, like their disorder needs to be completely eradicated first and foremost before they're allowed to be treared as a person, before any of the other problems could hope to be addressed? what is there to gain from the system being as it is now?

i want to see izaya orihara have a formal debate in a college setting and make the other guy cry. i think izaya deserves this as a little treat

#orihara izaya #durarara #izaya orihara #shizaya brain: shizuo seeing that izaya is still alive thru his activist work spreading around #and actually starting to really like this new side of izaya #likening it to himself learning how to control his strength #also @ the anon who wanted more aspd: HOPEFULLY THIS WILL HOLD U OVER TILL I THINK OF A PROPER META FOR U 💞#keeping his distance but watching his talks and debates on his dinky little laptop when he comes home from work #wasks #yeagh im putting this in the tags. ill dance with danger all night long

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