#them both believing they’re fundamentally unlovable
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the end of 8x02, morse and thursday having that chat on a bench, is so much because what thursday says about human nature and “you are what you are, whether you like it or not” seems kind of out of place within the context of their conversation about the girls in the blue films, how they’re somebody’s daughter and how they do and should matter. but then again, morse and thursday have conversations like these all the time. they don’t have regular heart-to-hearts - they run on subtext and tough love and small acts of service, but they don’t say what they mean exactly, and hardly ever at the right time.
it’s morse who can’t accept that he is what he is. he’s drinking more after violetta, but it isn’t about violetta at all. morse has always struggled with his own compassion, his sensitivity, and the feeling that he doesn’t quite fit in. and, as a result of not fitting in, morse believes himself to be barred from all those things that make everyone else happy. it’s self-sabotage, but it’s also the result of his upbringing, his experiences, and having this high-stress job where he is exposed to the worst of humanity on a regular basis. i remember him feeling so deeply for the people he encountered over the course of his investigations. and now he can sit on that bench and say he doesn’t care about girls like lynn parry (he’s lying). that people make bad choices and have to suffer the consequences (self-flagellation-by-proxy). and that it isn’t his job to feel for the victims, only to bring them justice. by saying “you are what you are” thursday is subtly calling his bluff. morse doesn’t need to shut down his compassion by drinking - he needs to find a way to cope with being morse.
which reminds me of s1 and thursday’s advice that he find something worth defending. morse says “music,” but what he really mean by that is beauty. in earlier seasons, even in the way the episodes were shot and the prevalence of music and his love of opera especially, there was so much more beauty to be found in morse’s world. he sought it, he found it in the subtlest of places, and it’s what carried him through even as he carried the painful baggage of his past - his mother, his father, his stepmother, his failed relationships with susan and joan, the feeling of never getting the good he deserves. but by s8, the presence of those things is all but gone. even when we see him listening to music now (rarely), it’s more in the background, either when he’s sloshed or running late or in a terrible mood - it is no longer something worth defending because morse, at this point, has lost all faith that anything is.
and yet, if we’re going by thursday’s view that you are who you are, whether you like it or not, underneath all that bitterness and disappointment and put-on nihilism is our same old endeavour morse - the romantic who loves poetry and wants to believe in the ideals of truth and beauty, who still holds them as holy. and in the end, that is morse’s tragedy - we love him. thursday chose him. he has friends who genuinely care about his happiness, but he sees none of it. the world he has created for himself in s8 is so narrow by design - the working and the drinking and the being short with everyone, both as a release valve and a means of keeping them at a distance, thereby confirming his own idea of being fundamentally unlovable... all of it is to keep from getting hurt again, without realizing that what he’s doing is hurting himself. or perhaps not caring that he is hurting himself.
up until now, it was sad seeing morse and knowing where life ends up taking him. catching glimpses of the deep-rooted sadness in a man who tries his best but never lets anyone in. there is something about this series specifically, though, and in the one that came before, that feels so bleak because he is often unrecognizable from the morse we met in the pilot. neither is he fully inspector morse. he’s in a miserable in-between, and i’m curious to see how - as the final series - s9 will choose to tie it all together.
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4,6 and 16 Lyra Fairbanks
IV. DO THEY HAVE UNDERLYING MOTIVATIONS?
not particularly. she has secret, hidden, or misleading motivations in the case of targets (i.e. they believe she is a frightened vulnerable single woman they can take advantage of; she wants to see if they try to take advantage so she knows whether or not she should murder or rob them. she appears to want to collaborate with the sheriff's department because she's been gathering intel on and has had personal brushes with the project; she actually wants to collaborate with the sheriff's department so they have an inside woman on the ground if nancy can't be reached or intervene remotely). if she isn't intentionally misdirecting someone by witholding information, though, the answer is no. what you see is what you get. most people simply don't see it until it's too late.
VI. DO THEY HAVE ANY TATTOOS? WHAT ARE THEY, AND WHY DID THEY GET THEM?
she most certainly does! visible in these commissions by anna @/minilev and nika @/delicateweapon (and here and here by me for acquisition progression shots).
she first got the lilies & vines in full sleeves up both her arms when she was seventeen, a year after she had run away from home and had been formally disinherited by her parents (rebirth, but also a nod to purity with underlying toxicity, as well as how she had been used, a sort of reclamation of her innocence — ironic, perhaps, since she had been hitchhiking across the county living off of what she could swipe and con from sleazy men she encountered, but to her, this is using her prowess for good, as opposed to her father’s means and ends & the corrupt capitalist elite she left behind).
she got the roses & thorns on her right shoulder & neck (beautiful, associated with desire & passion, will make you bleed) around the same time, being essentially an extension of the same piece and fairly self-explanatory in their thematic relevance (the duality of how she sees herself & how she is seen).
the serpent and carnations she acquired around her nineteenth birthday, not long after her first kill (in the parking lot of the strip club where she had been working as a dancer for ease of hunting). beyond the conspicuous serpent in the garden imagery — the seen vs the unseen and the physical vs the intangible — they’re there as a mark of defiance, a balance to the duplicity that she only perpetuates through omission and redirection. she’s shown you what she is. she wears it on her skin. it is not her fault that you failed to pay attention.
she has john’s initials on the left pulse point of her neck in place of a wedding band. this, along with the project cross on her left hand, are her only tattoo acquisitions after joining the project. (the enormous wrath on her tits is technically a scar).
XVI. HOW DO OTHER CHARACTERS IN THE STORY VIEW THEM?
this wildly varies both by person and point in the story. the earliest characters in her story, her parents, are also divided. lawrence adores her, loves her as an extension of himself, and a remarkably useful & pretty tool. isabela is terrified of her from the first, convinced there is something deeply wrong and potentially otherwordly in her. neither of them are technically incorrect. neither of them know her at all.
that is, essentially, the recurring theme of her life; lyra is almost universally liked or desired, but not known and therefore fundamentally unloved. this both does not bother her and bothers her immensely; it is expected, and justified, she feels, but she also very desperately wants to be seen and loved — she is simply unwilling to inflict herself on anyone in that capacity until she finds her like in the seeds & the project, where she is loved, respected, and invaluable. to the civilians, she’s an outsider who rolled into town shortly before the documentary crew led by alex arrived & vanished (though they’re unaware of her part in their demise, instead believing she was in some way associated with them as someone investigating the project in a freelance capacity). they quickly come to believe that john has developed a fixation on her that led to her particularly brutal scarring, and she neither corrects them nor supplies false information; they operate on this assumption until her presence at his side at the gathering at lamb of god church. a few of them (kim, tracey, jess) feel that something is Off About Her, but largely attribute it to her affected way of speaking, her ostentatious manner of dress, and her status as a relatively recent newcomer instead of anything more nefarious.
she is kim’s lifelong thorn in her side. they spend the entirety of far cry new dawn passive aggressively rearranging the furniture in the ranch after lyra & her surviving chosen roll up and occupy it during the conflict with the highwaymen.
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Let’s talk about Roy’s abandonment issues!
So this is a thing I come back to over and over again when I’m writing Roy, and for me it’s a super crucial aspect of his character, and one of his biggest stumbling blocks in relationships.
Roy is a Good Little Extrovert, right? He’s charming and flirty and very very good at faking being okay, so it’s easy to miss the ways in which he falls into his own unhealthy patterns. (Especially because he tends to fall into them with people who have a vested interest in believing him when he lies and says he’s okay.)
You can trace Roy’s abandonment issues pretty clearly and consistently through his canon from “Snowbirds Don’t Fly” on, but there are three moments in particular that for me, really inform how he reacts to feeling abandoned, and why: the detox flashback in the Arsenal miniseries, his breakup with Donna in Titans ‘99, and his breakup with Jason in RH/A.
So! Arsenal #1!
This is the only time Roy ever says the inside thoughts out loud, and naturally it’s when he’s at his lowest possible point. (We do not speak of Cry for Justice or Rise of Arsenal in this space.) And yes, he’s a teenager, and yes, he’s detoxing, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true, and that doesn’t mean the feelings will ever fully go away. There’s a part of Roy that will always believe that he is fundamentally unlovable and deserves to be left. That no one will ever stay, because no one ever has. (It probably doesn’t help that not only did both of his fathers die, they did so by charging in to meet death head-first - Ollie specifically after Roy asked him not to.)
“No one’s ever gonna stay when I need them. I’m just so scared if I try again I’ll...” Oh baby boy. Sweetheart. It’s gonna be okay.
Even in the present day, his feelings of being abandoned by Ollie - not just during “Snowbirds,” but by Ollie’s death - are palpable, and yet they’re still only speakable under his breath, half-joking:
So we’ve got a boy who is charismatic and needy, who loves love and sex and intimacy, and who is fundamentally convinced that no one will ever stay with him and incapable of expressing that out loud. I wonder if that will have a deleterious effect on his romantic relationships?
...Let’s talk about Donna.
I think we can pretty safely say that Roy and Donna were each other’s first loves - or at least, neither of them had canon love interests prior to their relationship in the 60s and 70s. They were extremely chaste and fairly casual in the 60s; by the late 70s, you can definitely read them as sexually involved, even if it’s played coy for the benefit of the Comics Code. Somewhere between the end of Teen Titans Volume 1 and The New Teen Titans they broke up, presumably amicably based on their later interactions, and Donna almost immediately married the horrifying Terry Long while Roy went about making babies with supervillains.
By the time Titans ‘99 rolls around, Donna has gotten divorced, dated and dumped Kyle Rayner, lost her ex and her son to a car crash, and mostly processed her grieving. She was also just coming off of a plotline where a villain erased her from reality and she was reconstituted from Wally’s memories for Reasons. Which is why Roy making a dumb sex joke sends her into a tailspin:
They start dating again, but Donna is upfront fairly early on about her reasons for doing so:
In other words, because Roy is a Bad Boy (you know, one tattoo and an earring, two whole love interests over the course of 58 years of canon, an absolute rapscallion), Donna is basically using him to feel less like a Good Girl. Which, hey, at least she’s honest about it! But maybe this isn’t a good reason to date someone??? Maybe???
And Roy takes a brief, inscrutable pause (is that “...” because he’s hurt? angry? processing? WE JUST DON’T KNOW), says “Understood,” and CONTINUES THE RELATIONSHIP ON THOSE TERMS. A good and healthy choice that absolutely will not backfire, ever!
Some time later, the Fab Five are stranded on an island in a storm, and tensions are running high (partially, but not entirely, because a villain is playing with their minds and bringing out their resentments and insecurities). Once again, Donna is brutally honest:
She doesn’t want Lian getting too attached to her, because obviously she and Roy are going to break up - anything else is just laughable. Roy’s amazing, she loves him, the chemistry is great, but of course they don’t have a future. That’s not what Roy’s for.
And Roy just...walks away. Roy has a quick temper and will cheerfully fight about anything - except this. He can’t bring himself to pretend it’s okay or that he’s not angry or hurt, but he is also incapable of arguing that he deserves to be considered as a long-term possibility, so he just...leaves.
They never talk about it. The subsequent issue has all of the Titans hashing out their arguments, but this one? They don’t touch it. They pretend it didn’t happen.
Another ten issues go by (with abundant Cheshire-related drama). Donna is nearly erased from existence again, and in the aftermath, she decides that the Roy experiment is over:
That second to last panel just kills me. It’s like the ellipsis in the scene with Kyle, the walking away in the jungle, the muttered confession Dinah isn’t supposed to hear. All the hurt and the anger and the sadness go into one tiny, inscrutable beat, and the casual, devil-may-care mask is back on. Roy isn’t sad!!! He loves dating around!!! LOOK AT HOW AGGRESSIVELY NOT-SAD HE IS!!!
EVERYTHING IS FINE AND ROY HARPER HAS NEVER HAD A FEELING IN HIS LIFE!!! WHO WANTS CAKE?
I don’t mean for this to be a dunking-on-Donna party, because I love her, and again: she has been explicit with Roy, over and over and over again, about her goal here. The only thing that really pisses me off is her continued reference to Lian getting hurt, as if only Lian is capable of it - as if Roy genuinely doesn’t possess feelings to hurt.
And yet that’s not entirely on Donna, because Roy performs “I don’t have feelings to hurt” so consistently and so well. I think it’s partially that the Titans tend to fall back into their teenage roles when they’re around each other, but Roy was a carefree horndog when he first joined the team, and dangit, that’s the role he’s going to continue to play. (And Donna is far from the only member of the Fab Five to occasionally treat Roy like he has no feelings and is incapable of love, only boners.)
So yeah, it’s very easy to be angry with Donna here, but remember: Donna was honest with Roy throughout, but Roy wasn’t honest with Donna or himself, not for a minute. And why? It’s right up there in Arsenal #1. He’s scared to try. He’s scared to let himself believe that someone might stay. Easier to pretend to everyone, himself included, that he doesn’t care than to leave himself vulnerable like that.
In conclusion: this relationship is a MESS and I cannot look away, it is delicious to me.
After this, Roy actually does get other love interests, and it’s worth noting that with the exception of Cheshire - who he walked away from because she was, you know, a supervillain - he has never once been the one to end things. Donna breaks up with him. Grace and Helena are strictly casual. Kendra...well, that’s a mutual split, but sparked by her saying another man’s name in bed. Kori breaks up with him. And every single time, not a word of protest from Roy. Never a single argument in his defense.
And then there’s Jason. Or more specifically, there’s the way Jason walks away at the end of Red Hood/Arsenal. You know the page I’m talking about:
Now, this is a different continuity with some very different characterization for Roy, and Scott Lobdell is a fucking hack, but holy shit is this the Roy I used to know. Being dumped, again. Just taking it, again. Turning away to keep from showing how he feels, but this time he can’t bring himself to put on the big happy “Hey, it’s okay, I deserve this!” smile. Not yet. (But does he come charging back in to fight Batman the second Jason needs him? Of course he does.)
Anyway. I feel like we’re all very familiar with Jason’s fears and traumas and intimacy issues, but I made this post in part as a reminder that just because Roy is charismatic and extroverted and very, very good at pretending doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his own insecurities, and doesn’t mean that he doesn’t repeatedly play out unhealthy scripts. So if you’re wondering why I’m obsessed with writing Roy willfully insisting that thing are casual when they’re obviously not, or being incapable of believing that someone (Jason) is in love with him when they patently are...this is why. I’d tell him to go to therapy, but we all know how that turned out.
(Seriously, though, Roy. Go to therapy.)
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open invitation to talk about qinterwatcher? should've been our canon ot3 if tui wasn't a coward /hj
*crashing through the door* FUCK YEAH QINTERWATCHER HOURS, I'VE BREACHED CONTAINMENT BABEYYY
I used to think of Qinterwatcher as a bit of a cop-out (fandom has this weird tendency to create polyam ships not for the chemistry of the characters but just to avoid actually committing to a ship, with the added level of esp. when it's two male chars/one female char because they've heard or came to the conclusion that "ignoring female characters for mlm ships is bad" but still really ship the two men so just chuck her in there to feel better about it), but I kept thinking about it and I feel like the dynamic is incomplete without Moon???
Qinter was my first big ship in wings of fire, and I love it dearly and think it stands well on its own two feet tbh. Sometimes though I feel like Qinter works better in fanon that it does drawing strictly off canon??? Like Qibli and Winter have this sort of uncomfortable vibe sometimes of both of them hitting the other a little too close to home/both of them hurting the other person without realizing it. Moon feels like a needed middle ground of that, she sort of softens both of them in necessary ways that mean they can actually function as a unit and in return they take care of her too
Also like idk Moon deserves to get two boyfriends too !! like I talk shit abt her but like I think her and Qibli's dynamic is really sweet, and I think her and Winter, if Winter sorted out his shit, could have a really good dynamic as well. They were written to be in a love triangle, the writing for Moon/Qibli and Moon/Winter is already there. Like they hype her up so intensely and care abt her so much, they don't work with her individually but as a unit they work great.
Anyway I just think they work together so nicely !!! A little layered cake of dragons who love each other !!!! I just feel like their dynamic is two of them ganging up on the other to destroy them, either with love or with cruel mischief. I just think each combination of this ship works well and together they become one unstoppable unit. It's 3 dragons who have needed love piling it onto each other in spades because they don't want them to feel unloved ever again man ;0;
And like canonically they all admire the others so much,,,, I can't describe it any other way other than that scene in Howl's moving castle where they're in the flowers and Sophie describes herself as plain/ugly and without hesitation he's like "-But Sophie, you're beautiful," or w/e, like that specific brand of bewilderment, not trying to appease her or disagree with her but being completely taken aback that she even thinks that because it's so fundamentally wrong to him, like the reaction of someone being told gravity isn't real or the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. Like Sophie being beautiful is one of the core rules of reality. That's the Qinterwatcher dynamic babey !!!! Each of them has such a strange perception of themselves that is so entirely at odds with how the others perceive them, and they're just constantly cycling out who's Howl and who's Sophie.
But they also bring each other down to earth too !! None of them are like- scared of the others, if that makes sense?? Like part of what bugs me abt Cleril is the weird power dynamics at play- Clay is scared that if he does something wrong, Peril will do something dangerous (Winterwatcher also treads this line too tbh, again they'd have to sort this out for this ship to work, including in the context of Qinterwatcher). But like- Qibli has never been afraid to tell Winter his true feelings/thoughts, and vice versa. The same goes for Moon/Qibli too for that matter, heck, that's the whole resolution of darkness of dragons is Moon going "lol are you serious, no you're not a bad person you idiot" while Qibli looks guilty. And I think Moon does call out Winter when it's needed, like she's not some innocent wilting flower, she will defend herself and Winter needs that reminder that his actions have consequences and he's not actually that cool or better than anyone else. They check each other so well, and again that's why they need the others! Qibli and Moon together are able to tell off Winter, Qibli and Winter understand Moon/her problems, and Winter/Moon both stop Qibli from spiraling into himself. A necessary balancing act !!!
I just also can't stop picturing them sharing their interests with each other too like none of these dragons are neurotypical I'm sorry you'd better believe Winter and Qibli are there with Moon in the library reading a million weird old scrolls and having a competition on who can find the funniest, or Qibli and Moon bringing Winter food for his scavengers and providing what information they know.
#qinterwatcher#be careful what invitations you give me I can and will use them lmao#wings of fire#wof#qibli#qibli wof#winter wof#moonwatcher#moonwatcher wof
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These are all dark fics, READ THE TAGS before reading the fics. It is your responsibility to check whether what you are about to read is something that you can stomach. While most of these fics are based around trauma, recovery etc many feature triggering scenes or flashbacks as well as darker themes. Please be safe and don’t read them if they can be triggering for you! Proceed with caution! Most of them are Hydra Trash, but still not just the ugly bits as I like there to be a plot. Hiding them below the cut:
between scylla and charybdis | 21590 words
Sam Wilson has been witness to a lot of things he wishes he could unsee. Civilian families shot dead in their cars because of miscommunications at checkpoints. Riley’s body spiralling to the ground in a smoke-plumed plummet. His own face in his bathroom mirror after waking up hung-over as hell at two in the afternoon, the day after the anniversary of Riley’s death, year after year after year.
And now, in an abandoned bunker on the outskirts of Boston, a seemingly unremarkable manila folder at the bottom of a filing cabinet.
Berceuse | 10730 words
There are strange, new things Bucky needs from Steve.
Dreamers Often Lie | 11040 words
As far as Bucky remembers, sex is something that is painful and terrifying if you wake up while it's happening. As the Asset, sleeping through sex was a rare treat. When Steve lets Bucky know he's interested in a sexual relationship, what Steve doesn't know is that they have fundamentally different ideas of what that entails.
despite the threatening sky and the shuddering earth (they remained) | 71532 words
“They really didn’t want the mask to come off.” Hill thumbed through the scans, and pulled out a film that she then handed over to Sam, face mostly expressionless but for the flat line of her pursed lips.
Sam accepted the film and held it up to the light, angling so both he and Steve could see it, squinting at the outline of the Winter Soldier’s skull, and the blips of unnatural white that showed up, God, in his brain, not to mention about half his teeth, plus the mask, with its thin protrusions—
“Those are pins,” Steve realized. He looked over at Hill. “The mask—it’s nailed to his face.”
Hill’s face was as unmoved as ever. “Like I said. They really didn’t want it coming off.”
Fire And Water For Your Love | 77084 words
When the Avengers investigate an abandoned HYDRA base on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D., they unexpectedly encounter a dark-haired man with a torn metal arm, who leads them to an even more shocking discovery deeper inside the base. The Avengers must reconcile what they have found with the lies S.H.I.E.L.D. has been telling for decades.
Give An Inch | 5070 words
The Captain has a warm smile and clear, open eyes. The Soldier knows these are tricks. He's fallen for them before and he won't do it again.
Humans As Gods | 4818 words
"HYDRA's scientists had been delighted to find their serum-reversal procedure had worked. Their jubilation was dampened by the discovery that Steve's smaller self might no longer be Captain America-sized but was still 100% Steve Rogers, and Steve Rogers was now mad enough to spit nails. A minor oversight in the design of the containment area meant that smaller-Steve had simply wriggled out of the now ridiculously-oversized restraints like an angry ferret escaping a paper bag, and punched the nearest technician in the nuts.
Chaos ensued."
HYDRA scientists successfully de-serum Captain America, only to discover that they are utterly unprepared for Steve Rogers. Meanwhile, the Winter Soldier follows his instructions to the letter. This works out just great.
The Only One That Needs To Know | 6571 words
Bucky can't control his body. He can only control what secrets he keeps.
I Was Wearing My Blue Coat | 11503 words
Following exposure of his past as the Winter Soldier, anonymous postings of explicit video footage, 63 charges of murder and the wrath of the Internet, James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes finally steps into the limelight and tells his story to Zenat Patel of the New York Times.
Compliance Will Be Rewarded | 4767 words
Someone told him once: "Compliance will be rewarded," and he remembers pressing his head against a man’s leg in open supplication. He remembers hands in his hair, and a gentle grip on the back of his neck. He remembers a man telling him "so good, so good for me aren't you?" And he remembers nodding his head in a desperate attempt to be exactly as good as he was supposed to be.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Bucky Barnes is physically free from Hydra, but the hold on his mind lingers still. All he wants is to go home, and he'll do anything he can to get there.
To Burn Your Kingdom Down | 12370 words
The Avengers go after a Hydra splinter cell with a nasty habit of brutalizing their prisoners. Steve has some ugly history with them, and when a rescue mission gone wrong leaves him and Sam in enemy hands, the situation gets uglier still.
Worth The Wound | 7709 words
The asset knows that maintenance is better than punishment. But with Steve, maintenance becomes more pleasant, soft and gentle and everything he could dream of. It was only natural that he decided to prolong that maintenance a little longer.
The Spaces In-Between | 6971 words | Part 1 of What We Tried So Hard To Hide Away
"Memories are like buckets of water: they weigh on the heart and the brain until the body fails. You're blessed to stay forgetful and young, Soldier."
Sometimes blessings feel like curses.
Illuminate The Scene | 7086 words | Part 2 of What We Tried So Hard To Hide Away
The doctors had wanted to keep the Soldier. Shock him and freeze him until he was fixed, or tear him to scrap if he couldn’t be repaired so that he wouldn’t be an entirely wasted investment. Steve is the only thing stopping them.
When the Soldier can't trust his own body, how can he trust anything?
All These Riots Of Broken Sound | 83790 words | Part 1 of Forever Is A Close And Honest Friend
When Steve and the team return to Avengers tower to find Bucky gone, they must venture into B.A.R.F. to figure out what triggered him to leave and hunt those who wronged him. Trapped in a simulation of Bucky's worst memories with rogue HYDRA agents waiting to strike, 100 years of secrets, lies, pain and love drive the team to their limit and push Steve towards a realisation that is a century in the making.
I Was Lost But Left A Trace | 3585 words | Part 2 of Forever Is A Close And Honest Friend
Disorientated, the Asset reached up to wipe at the moisture on its cheeks and was shocked to find it clear, instead of the crimson it has been expecting. It didn’t understand why this misidentification had caused uproarious laughter from the technicians.
“It is not blood,” the Asset told him, “but it is still a malfunction.”
This sobered the technician a little, and he nodded tightly.
“Yes. It is. But we will fix you.”
I’ll Always Be Blamed For The Sun Going Down | 9907 words | Part 3 of Forever Is A Close And Honest Friend
He knows he’s in the right place. He has heard the guys at the docks laugh and joke about the queers who come out after dark, looking to earn a little extra cash. He has seen the johns, when he’s been out late enough, skulking in the shadows like predators hunting for their next meal, looking for something in particular. Sometimes they look at him.
A small, rusty pen knife that his father had picked up in Europe during the Great War sits heavy in the breast pocket of his jacket.
Just in case.
Book Of The Moon | 16019 words | Part 4 of Forever Is A Close And Honest Friend
In 1929, Bucky Barnes falls in love for the first time and resigns himself to never telling a soul, let alone Steve, the object of his affections. In 1943, half a world away from the man he can never have and fighting for his life and his sanity, something new begins to bloom.
Habeas Corpus | 18054 words
An unexpected incident in the field leaves Steve Rogers facing the infiltration of a Hydra base and retrieval of important intelligence, all while pretending to be the Winter Soldier. Unfortunately, there are important aspects of the Soldier's past that Bucky hasn't disclosed, and Steve has no idea what he's really walking into.
Bullies | 14979 words
Written for the MCU trash meme prompt:
I wanna see Steve being messed with by his secretly-HYDRA coworker buddies. I want them generally fucking with him, "accidentally" doing terrible things to him or getting Steve into awful situations, telling jokes that aren't really jokes, gaslighting, performing sexual-assault hazing under the guise that "that's what people do now," pressuring him into other sex shit, anything, just fuck Steve up.
Steve isn't failing to fully catch on because he's dumb or oblivious: it's just that he is Steve, so he wants to believe the best of everybody, and he doesn't want to believe that he could be working for/with bullies and that (as Natasha says) he essentially died for nothing.
Not Unwanted, Not Unloved | 50320 words
They'd resigned themselves to never becoming parents - until Bucky gets pregnant and drops off the grid without even a whisper to his mate about his condition.
Steve will still raze the earth to find him, but that doesn't mean he likes what he finds.
The Tones That Tremble Down Your Spine | 13889 words
Tony tells him they’re planning a party for Steve’s birthday. He knows how parties are supposed to go.
Lacuna | 62875 words
The Winter Soldier doesn't remember Steve Rogers, but he needs Rogers' help.
OR: The one where Bucky doesn't remember Steve, but falls in love with him anyway.
Not A Perfect Soldier | 93354 words
In a world where HYDRA was wiped out in the '40s, Steve is found by the Army rather than SHIELD. General Thaddeus Ross wants a perfectly obedient super-soldier at his command, and to that end, he sets out to break Steve to his will. As Steve struggles to come to terms with all he has lost, his life in captivity is only made bearable by the presence of another prisoner-- another super-soldier known only as "Soldat".
Then the Avengers strike a deal with Ross to "borrow" him for missions, and Steve is faced with a team who dislikes him, an organization he doesn't trust, and the question of what he's willing to do to escape Ross's clutches.
For Want Of Him | 103174 words
It's the twenty-first century, and Steve Rogers has never been more alone. Everything he knew, everyone he loved, is now gone, and a dark, bitter loneliness claws at him, raking bleeding gashes into his heart.
And then there's Brock Rumlow.
Rumlow is like salt in his wounds; vicious, and cruel. But his dark brown hair and teasing smirk reminds Steve of someone long dead, and his New York accent sounds like home...He's a soldier like him...he understands. And Steve makes the fatal mistake of trusting him.
The Same Measure | 4943 words
The Winter Soldier was never allowed to stop unless an injury was too grievous.
To Be Unmade | 5114 words | Part 1 of Alexander Pierce Should Have Died Slower
For the asset, things only ever get worse. The external scars fade quickly enough. The internal ones dig deeper and deeper.
But the internal scars are called love, and doesn't that make them worth the hurt?
Do Not Put In The Icebox | 7143 words | Part 2 of Alexander Pierce Should Have Died Slower
When the asset malfunctions on a mission, Rumlow and Rollins learn more than they ever wanted to know about Pierce's hobbies.
And then everyone has pancakes.
The Knowing Makes It Worse | 4130 words | Part 3 of Alexander Pierce Should Have Died Slower
No is a bad word and invites punishment.
Or, Alexander Pierce is a very bad man who delights in manipulating and degrading the asset.
Love Is For Children | 5303 words | Part 4 of Alexander Pierce Should Have Died Slower
Bucky understands how the game works. He can't understand why it makes Steve cry.
But Natasha and the other Avengers are there to help.
I Just Wanted To Be Sure Of You | 4461 words | Part 5 of Alexander Pierce Should Have Died Slower
Bucky has Bucky Bear; it's only fair for Natasha to have something of her own.
Visiting a toy store wasn't strictly necessary, but if Tony wants to throw money around, no one's going to complain.
“Till The End Of The Line | 6069 words | Part 6 of Alexander Pierce Should Have Died Slower
It's hard to take a friendship right back up when so much has changed over seventy years.
Particularly when HYDRA's conditioning resurfaces.
*if you feel that any of these fics shouldn’t be in this list please just send me a message! :) I have read them all but over the past 1+ years so some of them I might not remember all the details of :)
#HTP#hydra trash party#dark fics#recovery fics#but with A LOT of trigger warnings#puppy peter fic recs#don't like don't read#hydra angst#bucky angst#bucky whump#MIND THE TAGS!!!
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What smeyer accidentally taught us about cults (and herself):
part 2 of this meta! If you have not already read this post by @fuckmeyer and this post by @witchyangela please do! They tie into this half of the meta.
In the last couple of paragraphs in part 1, I mentioned that I believe smeyer was writing from her own experience in describing Bella’s hollow relationship with the Cullens. I would be willing to forgive that if, at the time she wrote Twilight, smeyer was simply too inexperienced to write believable relationship dynamics. However, the friendship she captured between Jacob and Bella during New Moon felt organic- we know she can do better. Furthermore, nothing fundamentally changed about the Ed/Bella relationship between Twilight and Midnight Sun despite smeyer’s fifteen years of additional writing experience and feedback. Smeyer has also made no claims or changes to canon that indicate any recognition of the half-hearted nature of Edward and Bella’s relationship or the Cullen’s familial ties. She believes that she has written a love story.
In the progression from Twilight to Breaking Dawn, I think we can see smeyer’s own personal journey with her relationship to LDS. In New Moon, Bella comes dangerously close to recognizing the nature of her relationship with the Cullens and, by extension, smeyer comes dangerously close to criticising mormonism. I don’t think smeyer meant to draw such an obvious parallel but it’s difficult to ignore. Bella never feels like she is good enough to be in the company of the Cullens until she is one while she feels immediately at home in Emily’s kitchen, welcomed as she is by Jake and the pack. Bella- and by extension smeyer- never makes the connection that we as readers do between Edward’s callousness and Jacob’s warmth. Sure, she brings them up both plenty. But Edward’s coldness is routinely linked to his perfection- it is never stated that he himself is a cold hearted, cruel, unloving person. Despite mounds of textual evidence that Edward is cold-hearted, that he doesn’t really love Bella, that he is a predator by nature, smeyer does not want to risk casting him as the “wrong choice” for Bella. They’re soulmates! She said so! This also ties in to the infamous assassination of Jacob’s character during Eclipse.
One of the primary differences between cults and other social groups is the inability to question authority and teachings of cult leaders. This is true in LDS as well as in the Cullen family. I believe we see smeyer challenging LDS throughout New Moon and Eclipse by using Bella’s choice between Jacob and Edward. Edward, as a Cullen, represents LDS while Jacob represents “freedom” (freedom here in quotes because I cannot think of a more suitable word choice). In New Moon, as @fuckmeyer points out in the linked post above, Bella’s choice is framed as life (Jacob) or death (Edward). By the end of Eclipse, the choice has been reframed as life or eternal life- eternal life for those that follow Carlisle Cullen’s teachings. *I forgot to include this in part 1 but @witchyangela mentions it in the linked post: one of the factors that puts the Cullens into “cult territory” is isolation- the Cullens rarely interact with other vampires until BD and Edward regularly paints other vampires in a negative light. Vampirism is close to perfection in smeyer’s world but the Cullens are truly Made Perfect by the teachings of Carlisle.*
Smeyer made this thematic shift in Bella’s choice in part because she was conflicted about her own choice. As I said, she was dangerously close to the revelation that the love the Cullens showered on Bella could not hold a candle to the love and family Bella found with the pack- and that would mean recognizing that the “community” within LDS was flawed as well. It was ultimately a revelation that smeyer could not afford to make. While she likely could afford the lawyers you apparently need to leave LDS, there are greater tolls in leaving a cult than the mere financial cost. We see Bella make a similar choice in Eclipse, once the theme has shifted to “life vs eternal life.” For Bella, giving up on her dreams of vampirism, on finally being fully accepted into the Cullen clan, would be akin to smeyer giving up the keys to heaven. Neither could afford to lose the surety that comes with the promise of eternal perfection and bliss.
Now, I fully believe that this was all subconscious on smeyer’s part. I believe that she was really pushing herself to expand the series to include New Moon and Eclipse and that she needed to pull inspiration from deep inside of herself to write these novels. But I also believe that the themes are there. Everyone who has read the saga critically has noticed the eeriness of the Cullens and the inconsistency in their characterizations- sometimes they are the perfect predator, sometimes they are the perfect family. I’m all for complex characters but the Cullen’s simply do not read that way. Bella is never truly afraid of them- only other vampires. When they are criticized in-text, it is by characters that smeyer wants us to dislike, like Leah. Seth Clearwater is sunshine boy because he loves the Cullens too! We’re supposed to love them. But they often come across as, like I mentioned in part 1, eery pantomimes of humanity rather than the real deal. We don’t really know them so we can’t truly love them. And when we watch Bella insist that she knows them, that they are good, that they love her, it’s frankly unsettling.
We see smeyer’s failure to confront LDS again in Breaking Dawn. The saga built to a massive confrontation, promised a battle, a shift, a change, something. And in the end, the two sides meets and... walk away from one another. No deaths, no battle of ideologies. The Cullens stay together, no one questions Carlisle, no one punishes the vampires, suddenly there are dozens of non-Cullen vampires around but there is no great clash there either. The ending feels unsatisfying because the rules were changed on us- the conflict is not between life and death anymore. We have suddenly returned to the conflict of Twilight, Bella wants to be accepted into the Cullen’s world. In Breaking Dawn, she is. Had the series remained a duo, this would have been satisfying enough. We wanted Bella to be accepted somewhere and then she was- happy ending! But in writing New Moon, smeyer had to pull from elsewhere and the themes did change and her beliefs were being challenged.
New Moon still feels like the most comprehensive book in the saga. The relationships feel real, Bella feels more real. We’re adding layers to Twilight- maybe the Cullens aren’t perfect? How could they do this to Bella? Are we finally seeing the downsides to vampirism? This is all thrown away. I do recognize that a large part of this is because smeyer is not a great writer, she was attached to her planned ending and by g-d she was going to get there. I also recognize that the similarity between the Cullens and LDS, Carlisle and Joseph Smith, the little hints of herself that smeyer scattered throughout the series, are all too manyfold to ignore. Smeyer was building to a satisfying confrontation. She wanted to show us the downsides of vampirism with Bree Tanner, with the New Moon storyline, with the Eclipse backstories. New Moon and Eclipse quite literally feel as if she is telling us “all that glitters isn’t gold” (pun intended). But Bella chooses eternity, uncritically, unflinchingly. And smeyer, who was building to a conflict with her own beliefs, ultimately cannot sacrifice to sever those ties. She chooses mormonism.
#twilight meta#the twilight saga#twilight renaissance#bella swan#smeyer#the cullens#cults tw#long post#if this reads a little hectic its bc my brain isn't working as well today lol#but i wanted to finish before i forgot what i was talking about#the tagged posts are critical reading!#also as a follow up check out witchyangelas post about renesmee as the second coming of christ#its v good i will reblog it for easy access#other metas by witchyangela fuckmeyer and therealvinelle are also tangentially related to this#if you want more Content#my post
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I can't stop reflecting on why I'm so intensely drawn to Jonmartin, why even images of them simply holding hands makes my heart hurt with yearning.
I think its a combination of:
I strongly identify with and project on both Jon and Martin
It's fundamentally a story about two people who both believe they're unlovable, but are able to find each other after so much strife. That someone can fall in love with you not despite your faults, but because of little kindnesses shown to each other over time. That you can overcome past differences, depression, heartache, and misperceptions, to be together, happy and in love. And it doesn't matter how long it took, or if you had trouble even realizing you were in love or that someone loved you.
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I was just thinking about Yuki’s speech with Kisa about how “it’s only when someone loves you first that you start believing in the good things about yourself, which will help you learn to love yourself”... because... I think that really sums up Yuki and Machi’s relationship well. I think there is a lot more depth to their relationship than just “Machi doesn’t see him as a prince like every girl does!” She recognizes that he’s lonely, because she is too. She recognizes that he has a lot of insecurities and self hatred, because she also does. They both think they’re boring, unlovable, and that no one would notice if they disappear because they’re existence matters so little to those around them. But as they bond, they both realize simultaneously that their existence does matter, and it’s through their relationship that they not only learn to love each other but also learn to love themselves. And I think what sets each other apart from the other characters in their circle, is that Yuki and Machi can truly, on a fundamental level, understand each other’s pain. Even if their circumstances aren’t identical, they’ve both experienced very similar feelings of shame and self hatred. And they can understand and communicate with each other without words and know how to make the other person feel safe and comfortable in subtle ways without going into a ted talk on their respective traumas (Yuki breaking the chalk for Machi, Machi breaking the door down with the chair for Yuki), which I think is so important to them. They both help each other learn to cope with their trauma in the healthiest way possible while wholly accepting the other person without judgement. And even little things like them giving each other stupid gifts “because it reminded me of you”, subtle things that shows the other person that they’re on their mind matters so much for characters like Yuki and Machi, who grew up never being someone’s first thought or priority.
I honestly can’t wait to see Yuki and Machi develop because while they aren’t as dramatic as the other ships, they’re still... just so romantic, and I love them both really dearly.
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I finished Normal People like I said I would. The thing I think people need to understand is that the reason Marianne and Connell break up all the time is because, well, there’s two problems I see here.
#1: Marianne fundamentally believes that she does not deserve to be loved. Every time Connell pulls away from her, it just reaffirms her belief that she is unlovable. That she does not deserve to be loved. When really it’s more about Connell and his own issues.
Which leads me to point #2: Connell would rather choke on his own vomit, than ever admit emotional vulnerability. That’s the fundamental reason why they keep breaking up. Connell doesn’t want to come off as weak . I.e. why he didn’t want to ask Marianne if he could move in with her, when he was struggling to pay the rent. So instead he just kind of broke up with her. In turn, Marianne doesn’t really fight back that hard because she doesn’t know how to advocate for how she feels. Because for her entire life her feelings have been silenced by her abusive family, and other negative experiences that she’s had. Sometimes I think she doesn’t even really understand how she feels, because she’s just so used to burying everything. Connell is the same way. He’s so used to burying everything, that it takes him a long time to actually understand in words how he feels. Because of that they both can’t communicate their feelings. So they break up all the time.
Marianne goes on to date broken horrible men, who treat her terribly because fundamentally that’s what she thinks she deserves. Similarly, Connell goes on to have empty relationships with women. It’s only towards the end that they start making amends to their inability to communicate, and that’s why they start to actually form a real relationship. They’re actually completely together for the first time. 
A lot of people were upset towards the end saying that she should’ve gone with him etc. Because they feel that when you’re in a relationship with someone you make decisions that keep you together. I agree with that to a point, but the reason why I think it was better that they split it because they’ve never really been a part. Yes, there were plenty of times where they weren’t romantically involved with one another, but they were always part of each other’s lives in someway. It would be one thing if they both knew what they wanted. Then they could build a relationship off of having strong individual identities, but still wanting to be together.
However, they don’t have strong individual identities. They’re still trying to figure everything out. I think if Marianne wanted to go with him to New York they would just fall back into old patterns. Because you also have to remember that they were both struggling with mental health issues as well. It’s worth noting that they need to address that. You see Connell finally confronting that throughout the series and going to therapy. With Marianne you don’t see that as much, but I’m sure she’ll get there. So like I said we’re talking about two people that really struggle with their mental health as well. I’m not saying that you can’t build a relationship when you both have mental health issues. I’m just saying that sometimes it’s better to be able to address that separately. So you don’t end up in a toxic relationship where you feel like you can’t exists without the other person. Due to the fact that you’re just constantly trauma bonding with the other person. So you become dependent on them in a negative way. 
If they stand any chance at all of building a healthy relationship I think they need to figure out who they are separately. So that they can come back together and be a stronger couple. If the pattern of the show has proved anything to the viewers, it’s that they always end up back together.  I think if they were to stay together as they are now their relationship wouldn’t last. They would keep breaking up and getting back together. They need to break their cycle.
I think Marianne recognized that. So she did a very selfless and good thing by encouraging him to go without her. I think individual growth is what their relationship needs to be successful. You can’t just define yourself by the other person in a relationship. You need to have a strong sense of your own identity as well. Or your relationship will collapse under the weight of you not being stable within yourself.  I liked the ending. I think the show addressed a lot of important points. For example, anxiety and mental illness in men. The trauma of emotional abuse. Insecurities and how hard it is to grow up in today’s society. How that plays into the relationships we form with other people. Overall, I think the show is really good and I recommend watching it. I’m going to put the book it is based on on my reading list. 
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This is gonna seem like an odd position for me to take for a hot second, because I’m not shy about the fact that Malex is one of my OTPs for this show. Bear with me.
Because what I want to talk about here is how very not good for each other Michael and Alex are. Or were. But I also want to talk about the progress we’re seeing from both of them on that front so stick around, it ain’t all bad.
CW for mention of child abuse, trauma response, and classism. And I will be discussing dialog from various season 2 episodes, so spoiler alert.
I want to start off with this: I am in no way trying to say that Michael and Alex don’t love each other, or that they don’t deserve to be happy and together, or that one of them has been treating the other badly out of malice. What I’m trying to say is that they both have issues that need to be resolved before they ever come close to a romantic relationship again because what they had before was not healthy.
Let’s start with Michael because his issue is a little simpler.
The crux of Michael’s problem lies in his own self-worth. AKA, he doesn’t have any. We know, of course, that this springs from his abandonment issues and his abuse in the foster system as a child, but what it’s lead to in his adult life and his relationship with Alex is an inability to say “no”. Which is a Big Problem.
Michael doesn’t think he’s loveable. Fundamentally and foundationally, he does not believe that someone would love him as he is. Which means with Alex, from his point of view, he’s taking what he can get when he can get it. Because Alex doesn’t love him. Alex thinks he’s a waste. Alex doesn’t want people to know they’re involved. (FROM MICHAEL’S PERSPECTIVE.) And for ten years, Michael found those to be acceptable terms. (In case anyone was wondering, that’s hella fucked up. Not romantic.)
What we see in 2x01 is Michael finally, finally, standing up for himself.
“I don’t think we’re good for each other, Alex. And I want to be good for somebody, so no! I’m saying ‘no’.”
He stands firm in 2x02 (I like Maria), and the fact that he brings up his romantic relationship with another person when Alex was merely offering to work with him tells us exactly how hard this is for him. He loves Alex and “probably always will” and the only way Michael has ever known how to love is through self sacrifice. Because he thought that was the only thing he had to give. (”To make up for it. For the fact that it’s me.” seems an appropriate quote to drop here.)
Saying “no” is the first step towards a healthy relationship, of any kind, with Alex. And shout out to @worstoftimesbestofcrimes for dropping this on me in a chat: “By saying no to Alex it becomes a choice he can make. And when it becomes a choice then it becomes something he can say yes to.“ The point being that Michael now has that choice. He’s recognizing he has a say in the matter and that’s so important.
Now for Alex, and this is where it gets tricky.
Because Alex also believes he’s fundamentally unloveable, which is also a result of his abuse, but that’s not where the crux of the problem is with Alex. The problem from Alex’s side is that he swallowed Michael’s bullshit hook, line, and sinker.
To be fair, the only person who never actually bought what Michael was selling was Max, and that’s partially because Max had almost all the backstory necessary to understand his actions, but I’m not blaming Alex for not having the full story. I’m simply saying his perception of Michael was warped.
We see in the pilot, “You’re wasting your life, Guerin”. And in 2x03, “Is ‘The Library’ a new dive bar or something?” Michael feeds it, by the way. Again back to the pilot when he taunts Alex with what he’s been doing in his trailer. (Casual sex, weed, covert plans to overthrow the government.) Alex thinks that Michael is a typical barfly who peaked in highschool and hasn’t made any effort to better himself since.
By Alex’s own admission, he and Michael never knew each other well. And the time they did have to get to know each other as teens was colored by that being the summer Michael’s life got turned upside down. Which Alex did not, and could not, know about. So while Alex does know a part of Michael that most other people don’t, he ultimately sees what he’s been lead to see when it comes to Michael.
And yes, @jumbled-nonsense, some of this comes down to classism. The Manes family is apparently pretty well off, given that Jesse was financing Project Shepherd with family money and Alex has a house (in this economy!) with a pretty sweet music set up as a 28 year old. Michael is...not. Alex falls into the stereotype trap a little, and he sees what he wants to see and doesn’t look any further.
But some of it does come down to Alex’s own issues stemming from his abuse. As Maria points out in 2x05 it’s reasonable that Alex found it, and may still find it, uncomfortable to be around Michael who deals with his anger issues by getting into fights. The problem is, Alex loves Michael and he can’t seem to stop, so he may have found it easier to walk away again and again (like he’s supposed to, like he should have done on day one) if he buries his head in the sand.
For Alex, it’s easier to accept that fact that Michael doesn’t love him back if Michael’s the type of person that Alex isn’t supposed to love in the first place.
But in 2x04 we see Alex finally acknowledging that he’s been wrong.
“First I find out Michael Guerin hangs out in libraries, and now you’ve made friends with a Long. I can’t put you in a box.”
Alex has realized a lot of what he believed about Michael outside of the bedroom was a misconception. It helps, now, that he has the full story and can understand more about how and why Michael made the choices he did ten years ago. But the point is he’s taken a step back and is reevaluating everything he thought he knew about Michael Guerin. And that’s a good thing.
What I’m saying is, we’ve seen really healthy progress from both Michael and Alex in relation to each other. And I mean that as people, not necessarily in a romantic sense. Would I be over the fucking moon if this lead to them getting back together in the future? Hell yes. But what’s actually important overall is that both of them have shown personal growth, because neither one of them was in a healthy place to start with. And no matter what happens with these characters, I’m glad they got the chance to change.
#roswell new mexico#rnm#michael guerin#alex manes#malex#my roswell meta#roswell season 2#tw child abuse#tw abuse#tw trauma#tw classism#list#a riley special
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Oh! Top 5 Kimetsu no Yaiba characters?
I only have four characters I’d truly call faves from Kimetsu no Yaiba, but let’s go!
1. Doma - “Human emotions are nothing to me, like mere dreams…”
Every time someone claims that Doma is the only demon without a tragic backstory I want to fight them. Apparently most people think that children who grow up in cults aren’t traumatized at all and grow into rational and well-adjusted adults.
Doma is a character who shows no signs of empathy. However, he was a character who was never taught or shown any signs of empathy before. By the time he was an indpendenent adult he gave up on understanding it. Doma despises the cult, but it’s telling that he always stays there because it’s truly all he knows. He laughs at the people who come to the cult to distract themselves from the misfortunes of their life, but Doma too stays with the cult as a distraction for how empty and small his own life is.
Doma really was too mature for a child, but also too immature as well. He was forced to grow up too fast because neither of his parents actively wanted to parent him. People act like he’s a born sociopath for being observant enough as a kid to notice that the all the adults who entered into his life were only there to use him. Kids are sharper than you expect, but also duller as well. Doma never realized that life was any different outside of his environment. He stayed in that childish mindset forever, and egocentric little kid who only saw himself first and foremost. That’s not the thinking of a sociopath, it’s the thinking of a child, children can’t imagine viewpoints other than their own because they haven’t developed empathy yet.
There’s this assumption that people are either born good empathic people, or they’re not, but empathy is a quality that’s developed and learned. It was almost natural Doma became a demon by the end because not a single person in his life treated him as a human. Yet, despite reveling in being a monster Doma is still desperately searching for some meaning in his life too. He wants to have friends. He wants to feel the same way that other people. Even if it’s just a hollow imitation on his part, that was something in his lifetime but never got even up until the end. Doma’s this tragedy of empathy, because all he ever wanted was to feel the same way that everyone else did, to have the same connections they did, but because he was so isolated he only destroyed every small chance he did have at learning to empathize with another person.
2. Shinobu -“Yes I’m angry, Tanjiro. I’ve always been angry.”
I think Shinobu is interesting because she’s a bad person. I wish people would stop trying to paint her as a wholly good person who was loved by everyone around her. Shinobu’s character introduction is going out of her way to unnecessarily torture a demon for fun, and her attitude implies she has done this before. Torture is a universally bad thing, even if you’re doing it to a bad person.
I’m not trying to moralize Shinobu. I think she’s much more interesting this way, as a fundamentally flawed person. A cracked vase that can never truly be full. Yes, Shinobu is loved by a lot of people, but she’s also fundamentally unable to receive that love. She’s stopped living a long time ago, part of her stopped when her aprents died, and she gave up when her sister died. If Kimetsu no Yaiba were a more morally complicated story, Shinobu existing for the sole purpose of revenge would not be treated as a good thing. It’s an empty way of living, and the only thing Shinobu can do to keep living is to cling to all of the ugly and negative emotions inside of her.
The most interesting version of Shinobu is just rotten at her core, because she’s let the rot sink in and fester, because she doesn’t want to let go of her anger towards demons. It’s rare female characters are allowed to be filled with such ugly emotions, or allowed to express them in terrible ways. Shinobu plays games at being a healer, at being a person capable of nurturing like her older sister, but it’s just an empty imitation that falls flat. Shinobu at least in regards to herself doesn’t want to heal, she doesn’t want to get better, she wants to stay wounded forever so she can keep taking out her pain on the demons around her.
I like to think that when she summoned up a hallucination of her sister in her final moments to encourage herself, that was entirely a fabrication on her part. Shinobu wanted to imagine her sister who once told her to just quit the Demon Corps and find a way to live and be happy was just as angry as she was. Shinobu’s delusion of Kanae is a sister that validates her and tells her that she has to be angry, that she has to stand up and fight again, that there’s strength in this. And that’s exactly it, Shinobu at her very core wants to be strong. She hates being powerless and weak. I think Shinobu is at her best when her anger isn’t righteous. She doesn’t want to protect others - she wants to feel strong.
3. Iguro Obanai - “I want to defeat Muzan and die. I hope that will cleanse my corrupted blood. If we reincarnate as humans in a world without demons I will definitely tell you that I love you.”
I like how Iguro is nasty, and unpleasant, and also mean to the main character for really petty reasons. Shinobu’s trauma is easier for a lot of people to swallow because she doesn’t show it, she just puts on a mask of being nice and people buy into that mask. Iguro even though he wears a physical mask over his mouth is less good at hiding his disfigurement.
Iguro’s very traumatized and he acts that way. He’s anti-social. He’s withdrawn. He doesn’t get along well with others. He’s prone to violent outbursts. The scars left with Iguro are so deep they’re permanent. And I believe it’s because down to his core, Iguro believes himself to be a bad and selfish person for surviving while half of his family died, and thinking only of himself with his escape.
It’s not really his cursed blood that Iguro wants to escape from, but rather his trauma. He can’t find a way to live with his truama or accept himself so he seeks some escape with it by suicidally charging into battle. And that’s another thing that speaks to the permanency of his scars. Iguro is deeply in love with one person, but he can’t admit, or accept that love because he views the current iteration of himself as so unlovable.
He can neither give or receive love, and yet there’s some small part of Iguro that wants to heal. He wants to feel okay again. I think there is a part of Iguro that is very selfish. The way he acts towards Mitsuri isn’t really romantic, his protectiveness and jealousy are signs of entitlement. However, the thing is traumatized people do end up feeling entitled to happiness. Iguro’s so terrified of losing Mitsuri because she’s the one good thing in his life, and because of that he’s unable to love her in a healthy way.
Even if Iguro’s given up on himself and decided that he’s poison, unlike Shinobu I see that there’s some part of Iguro that genuinely wants to heal. He wants to feel like a good person, he wants to find someway to continue living, its just he thinks it’s impossible for him to. Iguro’s desire to die and be reborn is so compelling that I actually want to see him live and be forced to deal with the prospect of his slow healing rather than getting his wish to be redeemed by death.
4. Sanemi Shinazugawa - “My Nemi is the kindest…”
Tanjiro as a character is kind in a way that’s easy to digest. When he’s angry it’s always righteous anger. His kindness never becomes a difficult. Tanjiro never does anything that’s difficult to swallow. That’s okay, but it’s also not that deep.
Sanemi’s kindness and his anger are both a part of him. His cruelty does not detract from how kind he is, his kindness doesn’t excuse his cruelty. Sanemi is driven to act cruel, to be merciless, to be vicious not because he doesn’t care about people but he cares too much and the loss of almost everyone he’s loved in his life disfigures him permanently.
Sanemi is a little kid who hunted demons all on his own for years by letting them fight him until he bled. He always fights by intentionally harming himself, hence why he shows his scars at all time and makes no attempt to hide them. Sanemi as a person is damaged to his core, but he still retains that kindness because it’s a part of who he is.
Sanemi is angry because he’s kind. He’s violent because he’s kind. He’s so afraid of losing others again, the only way he knows how to be with them is to protect others from afar. Sanemi thinks he can abuse his brother, but as long as he protects him from demons from a distance it will all be okay in the end.
What I like about Sanemi’s narrative is that it wasn’t. His actions ended up hurting his brother far more than helping him, the more distance he put between them, the more Genya threw himself into harm to get his brother to acknowledge him. At the end everything Sanemi did to protect him amounted to nothing, and Sanemi is the one protected and comforted by his brother when he should have been the one taking care of him. I think the author rushed to the tragic ending rather than letting the characters developed to get there, but still there’s an interesting choice that Sanemi is the one to survive and not Genya. Sanemi who has always wanted to just go off and die somewhere eaten by a demon while his brother gets to live happily. Now Sanemi’s never going to fix things with that brother, and nothing he can do will make up for what he did to Genya. However, he still has to find a way to keep living for himself. Watching broken people trying to find a way to keep on living is the primary reason why I read fiction in the first place.
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FENISHA LAVELLE is a 105 year old cis female vampire. people say they have a striking resemblance to camila mendes. they work as a dancer at delirium nightclub and are part of the conclave ( vampire capo ). people say they’re really ambitious, dauntless, & vehement, but unfortunately also calculating, guileful, & impetuous. why are they in invictus? well, they crave power.
henlo it me again! i hope u guys aren’t sick of me yet bc here’s my final ( for now, at least ) bb! say hello to my boss-ass bish gal fen! she’s sassy, classy and a lil badassy. she’s a rather feisty, fiery, ball of rage and anger who cba with ur bullshit tbh n she’ll tell u this too if u piss her off enough! she’s lowkey cutthroat and always out for number one, aka: herself. but, i mean, she does have some redeeming qualities and her hair is bomb af so that makes up for it all really, doesn’t it? basically that meme: ‘ she’s beauty, she’s grace, she’ll punch you in the face. ’
fundamentals.
name. fenisha isolde lavelle.
age. 105, but appears around 23.
d.o.b. january 27th.
gender. cisgender female.
pronouns. she / her.
orientation. bisexual.
affiliation. the conclave.
rank. vampire capo.
job. dancer at delirium nightclub.
connections.
adoptive mother. monica lavelle. †
adoptive father. edward lavelle. †
adoptive siblings. lola, erik, & alec lavelle. †
significant other. n/a.
child/ren. n/a.
pet/s. n/a.
proficiencies.
spoken languages. english, & spanish.
negative traits. capricious, ornery, impulsive, guileful, & caustic.
positive traits. ardent, whimsical, intrepid, graceful, & poised.
strengths. great analyst, abstract thinker, imaginative, original, enthusiastic, open-minded, objective, honest, & straightforward.
weaknesses. very private, withdrawn, insensitive, absent-minded, condescending, loathes rules and guidelines, & second guesses herself.
appearance.
eye colour. brown.
hair colour. dark brown.
height. five feet, two inches.
weight. 54 kg.
miscellaneous.
zodiac. aquarius.
element. water.
house. ravenclaw.
meyers briggs type. intp-t.
alignment. chaotic neutral.
enneagram. type three.
temperament. choleric.
intelligence type. intra-personal.
the basics.
FENISHA ISOLDE LAVELLE — one hundred and five, vampire, dancer at delirium nightclub, + vampire capo for the conclave !
possible triggers : child abandonment, foster system, adoption, cancer, death, huntington’s disease, substance abuse, alcohol, violence, gore, blood, murder.
tl;dr. ok so for this gal, let's all give a big, warm welcome to sadness ( no, i was in no way at all inspired by salem from sabrina for that line ) bc boy oh boy, her life has been constant grief and pain, tbh. strap in for the bumpy ride, i'll give u cookies for compensation. OK SO, fenisha was abandoned as a baby, never did—and still doesn't—know her biological parents and she doesn't want to either, tbh. she bounced around from foster home to foster home until she was adopted by the lavelle family when she was eight. it was great! they were lovely people who made her feel at home. she loved them, they loved her back. in time, the older she grew, she began to resent the fact that her real parents weren't in the picture; believing she was always gonna be unloved and unwanted even tho the lavelle family did everything they could to make her feel the opposite. anywho, she fell in with the wrong crowd until she was sent off to an all-girls boarding school where she learned how to mellow herself a tad. but, here comes sadness again! at sixteen, her youngest adoptive sister passed away from cancer which made fenisha withdraw before, finally, acting out again. pressing the self-destruct button is this gal's speciality. did the pain stop? NOPE bc a year later her adoptive father passed away from huntington's disease. this time, she tried to bury her sadness, repress it and move on. for the most part, it worked. but still, she found herself gravitating towards her vices—things and people she knew were no good for her. drink, drugs, people, you name it. quickly, she realised that these things were no longer any good at keeping her dark side at bay: she needed something more, something deeper. thus, she began going down the road of petty crimes—stealing cars, smashing windows, theft, setting fires both metaphorically and literally. due to this lifestyle, she wound up entangled with some real shady folk who did ... even shadier things. most specifically, she started dating a real jackass who was violent and truthfully, a horrible person, really. fast forward a year or so and things took a swift nosedive when her lowlife boyfriend’s hands were round her throat and not in the kinky way. while she’d clawed at him and tried to fight him off, she struggled against his weight and strength until, eventually, all she could recall was waking up with a searing headache: the lights and noises just too much to handle. it wasn’t until she’d lost control to overwhelming bloodlust that she realised the truth: her boyfriend had turned her into a vampire. naturally, at first, she was horrified and it took her a hella long time to adjust but once she had, she kind of relished in her new life. once she got a grip on her nature, she joined the conclave and climbed the ranks where she now rests as a capo. all in all, she kind of digs who she is and what she is: after everything she's been through, she loves herself. it's been a long and winding road but fenisha finally believes that she's settled in her life now even if she is an overachiever who invests way more time in her job than she should. oop. tho she still refuses to let people in, her abandonment issues terrifying her to the degree that she feels that anybody she'd ever let into her life would eventually leave her in the end. *insert sad face emoji here.*
random extras.
nicknames: fen, nish, nisha ... spawn of satan >:-)
she loves art in every form: paintings, sculptures, music, dance, people, etc. she loves the freedom that expressing herself through these mediums gives her.
she’s ... experimental. she’s experimented with just about everything: hairstyles, clothing, drink, drugs, people ...
can be hella calculating and vindictive so do not cross her.
quite power hungry tbh.
she does have a shot at redemption but she doesn’t want it lmao.
she’s already been to hell so why bother trying to right her wrongs?
and boy, are her wrongs a century long list shkjsh.
high key is not above killing people who don’t do things her way.
doesn’t believe she’s capable of loving anyone.
she’s lowkey a perfectionist to the point of being ruthless, also cutthroat and egotistical.
if ya ain’t of use to her, then what the heck is ur purpose???
she can be ... aggressive sometimes and most definitely has anger issues.
dry sense of humour one million percent.she can drink any man under the table.
smol but fierce.
absolutely adores animals.
much prefers them to humans.
she’s quite adventurous and loves to feel the adrenaline in her body.
a bit meddlesome and a troublemaker.
always up for a good time.
outspoken and quick-witted with a sharp tongue.
is a tad theatrical.
really, she does what she wants to, when she wants to, without seeking the approval of others.
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Hastur’s Brutal Honesty (A Good Omens Meta?)
So Like, This is me just drafting my bigger idea that Hastur as the perfect literary mirror to Aziraphale...but the closer I look at him, the more...honest??? he seems. Which, considering how Crowley chooses to lie, leads me to an interesting conclusion about the role of dis/honesty in the series. Namely, how his words (when compared to Aziraphale, Crowley, Heaven and Hell) intersects with loyalty, cruelty, and kindness.
>Plan on hearing more about Hastur and Aziraphale in the future...but in the meantime, some observations<
First, as I discuss in Part 3 of my Lying/Honesty series: I identify instances where Angel’s lie (with Aziraphale being a good example of a poor liar) but also I made a passing comment that there is an inexplicable honest streak among the demons.
It got me thinking about WHY? Especially because their honesty doesn’t make them any less cruel or abusive. So I go to thinking...(a dangerous pastime, I know)
Yes, the demons are more aware of other’s ability to deceive them, like Beelzebub’s jab at Michael that “it’s not that we don’t trust you, but we don’t trust you” and further, TESTING the water before subjecting “Crowley” to it. But...do we see them honestly, lie? And, is that indicative of something bigger?
I will note, they clearly say they don’t trust each other:
>GIF of Ligur asking Hastur if he trusts Crowley. Hastur replies “no”<
But do their actions match their words? I would argue not.
Case in point: Hastur.
I find Hastur’s behavior particularly interesting because I’ve recently re-watched the series and noticed, the closest he gets to a lie is when he knocks on Crowley’s door and Ligur say’s they just want to talk to him. However, this feels more like a threat, with ironic intent, rather than a flat lie.
He is also particularly gullible, similar to the naiveite we see Aziraphale exhibit. Yes, he’s clearly more malicious than Aziraphae (as we see him burn down the church, threaten Crowley, and kill another demon without remorse) but we also see him willingly ask questions, and easily believe Crowley’s deceptions.
For example, we see him openly and honestly communicate with Ligur while they’re sulking, waiting for Crowley to show up. Sure, he’s wrong about what “Caio” means, but is it a lie? It seems more like his arrogance of Italian, transliterating it to an English word than an actual lie.
Even when he’s greeting Warlock’s family, we don’t see him lie. He’s simply too preoccupied with the coming of his master to care about what anyone else thinks. I’m also hesitant to classify “threats” with “lies” because while they may not come to fruition, he certainly intends for them to be true. The closest lie I can think about is when he’s disguised himself to capture Crowley. He doesn’t even lie when he’s reading out Crowley’s crimes to the audience.
Instead, we actually see that he’s actually surprised by Crowley’s lies. As much as he claims not to trust other Demons, when he’s actively pursuing Crowley and Ligur is killed, for a split second, Hastur looks like he believes Crowley’s lie that “the Dark Council” is testing him.
This scene seems to highlight the fundamental difference between Crowley and Hastur: honesty vs. cruelty.
Hastur is unspeakably cruel, where Crowley is kind and Hastur is oddly honest where Crowley freely lies. They are foils for sure (stay tuned for that meta sometime soon) and I think this nuance matters.
Like, in this scene Hastur also genuinely believes, however briefly, that Crowley is calling the Dark Council. This is AFTER Crowley lied about the anti-christ, lied (by omission) that he befriended an Angel, just wrote Ligur (Hastur’s bestie) out of reality, and lied about putting holy water into the water mister.
By all accounts, there is no reason Hastur should trust Crowley at this moment, but he still does. The above Gif doesn’t do justice to the tone of voice that Hastur gives when he asks if Crowley is calling the dark council. It’s almost downright hopeful. It doesn’t occur to him until Crowley says “so long sucka” that Crowley’s lied to him.
Sure, Crowley is the most convincing liar in the series, and his performance is top-notch, but at this point, Hastur still demonstrates trust. I think both because it doesn’t dawn on him that he’d be the recipient of an unkind lie AND because Crowley still hasn’t shown the unbriddled cruelty Hastur himself would demonstrate. Crowley’s only acted out of self-defense. It’s not until Hastur has time to fully process the loss of Ligur (in answering-machine land) he realizes Crowley’s no longer on his side.
In reality, Crowley never was. Crowley has ever only been loyal to Aziraphale, and Hastur has only been loyal to Hell.
And I think the motivating reason is the brutal cruelty Hastur, and other demons, display. Ligur and Hastur both waste no time shoving a poor Eric into the Hellhound’s pit and kill 2 more Eric’s at the “traditional” end of the world cite. They do these acts of cruelty without a second thought. Hastur laughs with glee as nuns are screaming for their lives and the satanic church is burned.
It truly mirrors the way Heaven/God is fine killing everyone except for Noah and his family. There is no remorse.
The only time we see the sliver of cruelty in Crowley is in the above scene. When Ligur is destroyed, Anthony “you can’t kill the kids” Crowley is directly responsible. But, this is self-defense and Ligur is clearly a vehicle for abuse. And, it is clearly framed differently from how Hastur’s several acts of cruelty are.
For the show he puts on, Crowley is not cruel, not even to his enemies. Crowley does not relish killing, opting to give Nazis a choice to leave while still not condoning their behavior. Unlike Hastur who is downright gleeful that the nuns who have helped him are running for his life, Crowley adds no emphasis to killing. He is not nice, but he is not unkind nor does things out of purely malicious intent.
Meanwhile, Hastur goes above and beyond to be cruel. When he kills the demon at trial (his 4th!! demon murder!!) he still is not lying but he’s certainly not being kind. This tells me that honesty is not intrinsically “kind” nor is it intrinsically “bad” in the series. Rather, it is but one weapon in the arsenal choice.
If I bring my train of thought to the ineffable husbands, it gives so much more meaning to Crowley’s active choice NOT to lie to Aziraphale. I’ve said it before, that this show is dependent on choice. He chooses the kinder of the two options. Crowley could lie, he has the imagination for it, and he wields it against their adversaries (Hell) well. However, he doesn’t. he only ever points out what Aziraphale is unable or sometimes unwilling to acknowledge as truth.
Hastur. meanwhile, he chooses to be cruel beyond belief and chooses to be honest. He does not make the same grand show to lie to his enemies. For him, the truth behind his threats and his impulse to act in the moment are greater tools for harm.
Aziraphale, thinks he’s choosing the kinder option to lie to Crowley at the Bandstand. He certainly is saying “true” words, but neither believe it at this point, and both are harmed by it. We also know he thinks lying can be unkind, but he uses it primarily as a defensive tool, not an offensive one. It is not until he realizes how much abuse he’s internalized that he realizes who deserves his kind honesty: Crowley.
This also brings greater emphasis to the way honesty and dishonesty can be manipulated. Crowley and Aziraphale lie self-defense. Neither relish lying, but will because the kind of honesty they are being fed by their respective sides is cruel, and nothing like the unspoken, unnamed truth between the two of them.
Hell is unkind, unloving, and unspeakably cruel. Heaven is cold, unfeeling, and cruel. Crowley is the victim of clear and specific abuse at the hands of hell and does not need to feel sorry for lying to his abuser. Aziraphale has been belittled and gaslighted by Heaven and both lie for protection.
However, Hastur is honest only as a means to be cruel. When Crowley chooses, to be honest, it is explicitly to be kind and to be loving.
So I bring myself back to my initial observation. Why do Demons have an honest streak? I think it is because for them (and for Heaven) lying and honesty is neither good nor bad. Instead, they add “weight to the moral argument” they’re making. They are much more concerned with outcome (which is always an offensive mechanism) than the means. It just so happens Demons bully and intimidate for what they want without especially needing to lie.
TLDR: Yes, Hastur chooses to be honest, but the outcome is still cruelty. Yes, Crowley chooses to lie, but the outcome is protection. Lying is not intrinsically bad, honesty is not intrinsically good. Demons cant still be super abusive even if they don’t lie about it.
Thanks for coming to my tedtalk
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BEN THINKS THAT EVERYONE THAT LOVES HIM WILL END UP HURT AND THAT’S WHY IT WAS OK UNTIL CALLUM SAID IT OUT LOUD BECAUSE HE KNEW OF COURSE HE KNEW HE LOVES HIM TOO IF HE DIDN’T HE LITERALLY WOULDN’T BE DOING ANY OF THIS BECAUSE HE WOULDN’T CARE IF CALLUM GOT HURT BUT HE CARES HE CARES SO FUCKING MUCH AND THAT’S WHY HE DID THIS BECAUSE HE THINKS BY DOING THIS HE’S PROTECTING CALLUM ESPECIALLY WITH EVERYTHING HE HAS GOING ON WITH PHIL AT THE MOMENT LIKE HE LITERALLY SAYS IT MULTIPLE TIMES HE PRACTICALLY BEGS CALLUM TO STOP AND NOT PUSH IT ANY FURTHER BECAUSE BEN ALREADY KNEW THAT IF THEY WENT BEYOND THE POINT OF NO RETURN THEN HE WAS GOING TO BE FORCED INTO DOING THIS TO SAVE CALLUM AND KEEP HIM GOOD BUT THE KICKER IS THEY WERE ALREADY PAST THE POINT OF NO RETURN AND NOW THEY’RE BOTH JUST HURTING AND HEARTBROKEN BECAUSE WHAT? BEN HAS BEEN CONDITIONED TO BELIEVE THAT HE IS SO FUNDAMENTALLY UNLOVABLE THAT IF HE SHOWS WHO HE REALLY TRULY IS DEEP DOWN INCLUDING ALL OF THE BAD AND CRUEL AND NASTY PARTS THAT THEY WILL LEAVE HIM IT DIDN’T MATTER THAT CALLUM WAS SAYING IT DIDN’T MATTER TO HIM OR THAT HE WOULD LOVE HIM ANYWAY AND THAT NO MATTER WHERE BEN WENT CALLUM WOULD FOLLOW THOSE ARE JUST WORDS THEY DON’T MEAN ANYTHING TO BEN PEOPLE SAY THINGS TO EACH OTHER THEY DON’T MEAN ALL THE TIME BUT WHAT PETRIFIES HIM SO MUCH IS THAT HE KNOWS CALLUM AND HE KNOWS HE’S ALWAYS SINCERE AND HE KNOWS THAT HE MEANS IT NOW BUT CALLUM DOESN’T KNOW BEN HE DOESN’T KNOW HOW CRUEL AND EVIL HE CAN BE AND BEN KNOWS WHEN CALLUM FINDS OUT IT WILL BLOW UP IN HIS FACE ANYWAY SO IT’S BETTER TO DO IT NOW AND RIP THE PLASTER OFF THAN TO SLOWLY DRAG OUT THE PAIN AND SUFFERING FOR BOTH OF THEM IN THIS ESSAY I WILL-
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since i am on the cusp of watching the last four episodes of merlin (again, disclaimer: these are episodes i have never seen, and for which i still remain unspoiled, so please help me continue to stay spoiler-free for the next couple of days), i wanted to try to set down a record of where my thoughts are now, because you can only be in a place where you haven’t finished something once - “once a thing is known, it can’t be unknown,” etc - i’ll never be able to come back to this mindset, so i’d like to be able to remember what i was thinking before i knew how it ended. if nothing else, this will mean that i can come back here and laugh at my wildly off-base suspicions.
this is relevant to absolutely nobody, since everybody else finished this show eight years ago; so under the cut it goes!
so.
right now i have a feeling that merlin is going to end...badly. i’ve never been outright spoiled for what happens at the end of this show, but various little hints of feelings i’ve picked up from people just indicate that...it’s not a good time. it would be nice to be wrong! but that is just the sense i have gotten.
with that in mind, my current thinking is as follows:
arthur: i think arthur’s doomed. i used to think it was going to be merlin, but that was last year, and i’ve recalibrated and rewatched since then, and honestly, ‘the disir’ gives me a real bad feeling. you can’t just ignore all these people being like “THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE! IT WILL NOT COME AGAIN!” i’m not sure if he’s doomed now, or if they’re gonna have him survive the immediate crisis and then fast-forward to the future so we can watch him die and get shipped off to avalon later, but either way, i think arthur’s in trouble.
(and, quite frankly, i don’t think merlin’s going to get his good ending, either. i’m afraid he’s going to end up dead or living as a hermit or trapped in dragoon’s ancient body or something stupid like that.)
(i would LOVE to be wrong, fyi. i have absolutely no reason to have these suspicions other than the vague sense from others that the ending of this show made people bitterly unhappy.)
i don’t know how there is a way for them to do this that doesn’t feel like a huge waste or something that doesn’t make sense. the messaging on this show has always been that the time of albion hasn’t actually happened yet, that arthur is going to unite the land and be the greatest king of all time. the message has never been that he’s already done it. like - it’s never been presented as “the three years between S4 and S5 were what we consider to be the once and future king’s glorious reign.” so it just feels...like it would be very weird to remove arthur without that promise ever being fulfilled. i’m not sure how they can manage that without pulling the rug out from under their audience in an unpleasant/dishonest way.
i also don’t see how this kind of ending would work without breaking the show’s promise to merlin - that one day he will be known for who and what he is, that he and arthur are destined for greatness, that the appearance of a white dragon “BODES WELL” for them and the world they are trying to build.
mordred: i have no idea what’s going to happen with mordred. i stand by what i said before, that i like him and don’t care if that means i get burned. i don’t know if they’re planning on having him either a) be revealed as a traitor with his own agenda (one not necessary aligned with morgana’s) or b) be sincerely trying to be a good knight but doing a 180 and turning on arthur due to...idk, frustration about not being accepted, old grudge-holding from that confrontation with merlin when he was a kid, new grudge-holding from merlin constantly trying to get him killed, etc.
i have always been concerned that merlin’s behavior is going to drive mordred to do something evil, thus accidentally bringing about the events he’s trying to prevent, so that still looms large in my mind.
morgana: ????? whatever plan she has is going to blow up in her face, it seems, given the substance of merlin’s vision in 5.01 (not that she appears to have a plan at all, this season - she’s been all about the wacky schemes, lately; she has no allies and no army, as far as we know. (that will change, though, i’m sure, once we get to That Dread Place, though how, i don’t know.) “the legends speak of an alliance between mordred and morgana” - so maybe mordred ends up sort of helping her after all, and turning on her in the end (though he’s already done that, it seems, so i really don’t know how that makes sense).
if it were up to me, i’d want morgana to be released, at the end of everything. not redeemed, exactly - i don’t think she would cozy up in camelot with everybody and let things go back to normal, but i think she could be more than what she is. i think it would be an appropriate arc, actually, for us to see her losing her allies and her armies, for her to see people drifting away from her methods, like when annis refuses to help her any further in 4.05. morgana started off as the voice of moral authority on this show, but she’s descended far enough now that she’s driving people away from her cause.
but i still think she deserves a chance. i think she’s the kind of person who has the capacity to come back from the brink. i would like to see further exploration of the conflict she obviously feels when mordred appeals to her humanity in 5.09. i would like to see the conflict she must feel about hurting people she used to love, and i would like to see conflict from them in her direction, as well. i don’t believe it would be simple for arthur to ever consider killing his sister. i don’t think gwen would just give up on morgana without a fight. i do think merlin, for his part, has hardened his heart against her, and that seems appropriate, given their history, but i also think that merlin’s primary motivator in this world is love.
i think he could learn. i think he would realize, after some difficulty, that he owes it to her to try to reach her, somehow.
gwen: it’s hard for me to say what i expect for gwen, because honestly, she hasn’t had much of an arc this season, and therefore we don’t have much to work with. i’m not sure if TPTB just stopped knowing what to do with her once she became queen, or what, but if i had been putting down my expectations for her in season 5 as a whole, i would have expected to see gwen kind of like - struggling a bit with her huge change in circumstance (from servant to queen, i mean, that’s massive; there would be so many things she’d have to adjust to, and then dealing with other people as well, not all of whom would be thrilled by her upward mobility - eg nobles who are threatened by the idea that common folk feel like they can aspire to the second highest office in the land, or other servants who used to be her friends and would never wish her ill but are now maybe nervous around her - but none of that happened, so i honestly don’t know what the plan is for her. i would have liked to see gwen showing up a bit more for merlin, i suppose...they were so close, before, and if anyone would have noticed that something was bothering merlin, gwen would have - but there’s just this gap between them now.
gwaine, too. gwaine and merlin were tight. and now they’re sort of…i mean, gwaine is there, and he on his end is still invested in merlin, but there’s a weird distancing happening between them. merlin is too preoccupied with the all-consuming ‘make sure arthur doesn’t die’ to put much of himself into his other relationships.
to be clear, i’m not actually criticizing that as a writing decision. i do think it’s something merlin would do. i think it absolutely makes sense for merlin to be shutting down all the “extra” parts of his life, one after another, until the only thing left is the Mission. his “destiny.” he can only focus on that one thing. he only thinks his life is worth something if he can succeed at this one thing.
it makes me very sad, but i do think it’s something that would happen to him. it strikes me as an appropriate step for his character arc. because merlin in S5 is kind of disintegrating, and even in S4 he was starting to pull away from other people. but i would expect this problem to be addressed as season 5 progressed, and i fully do not expect that to happen now.
i’m honestly not sure the show actually sees it as a problem at all. i’m not sure...i can never tell if this show understands that merlin feels like all of his relationships are shams, that he feels that everyone who “loves” him would hate him if they knew who he actually was, not just arthur. he thinks people only care about him because he lies. he thinks his true self is fundamentally unlovable, in this particular world. he doesn’t remember what genuine friendship feels like anymore - it’s been such a long time since he experienced it.
i think that’s a problem. i expected it to be one of the problems we would address in S5. but i’m not sure we’re actually going there.
gaius: i was REAL concerned about gaius when we started S5. i was sure he was a goner. he’d already survived way longer than i expected him to and i was so pleased about that fact; i loved it; i loved how merlin said “camelot needs BOTH of us” and refused to ever leave him behind.
i’m still kind of um...worried about him, i guess. i’m not sure where he would fit in a post-finale world. though that really depends on where the finale leaves us.
the dragons: don’t even ask me. are we ever going to get clarification on how kilgharrah allowed aithusa to get swept up by morgana and then trapped in a pit for two years? nah? okay then.
i would really, really like merlin to be able to help aithusa. it doesn’t matter if aithusa is “with” morgana; merlin is still a dragonlord. he would still feel responsible. he would still care. you can tell how upset he is when he sees aithusa in 5.02. i hope we can get something to this effect - who knows, maybe he and morgana can connect on this one thing.
wider concerns: the magical community. i’ve been waiting for merlin to take a stand for them for a long time, but again, i don’t think we’re going there. i wish we were, but merlin thinks the only way he can help them is by helping arthur, because someone somewhere once told him arthur was the one who could put everything right.
(and again, that’s something that makes me sad. why does this community have to wait for their oppressor to slowly, maybe come around? the fact that we, the audience, are fond of arthur doesn’t make it okay for anyone to tell a group of oppressed people to sit around and wait their turn. they deserve to be free now. merlin deserves to be free now. these people have every right to declare themselves free people, unbowed and unshackled - morgana is right about that much, at least.)
wider concerns: the political situation. is anyone ever going to actually explain what albion looks like? the show keeps saying “the five kingdoms” when there are DEMONSTRABLY more than five monarchs introduced across various seasons - are there just five extra-prominent kingdoms, like medieval superpowers? or what? this wasn’t really a big deal before and you could kind of handwave it away, but if arthur’s supposed to be uniting these places, it becomes a little more relevant.
and of course, merlin:
i don’t want to write too much about my many many fears for merlin himself here. i’ve written about them enough elsewhere, and, as gaius says, “i’m not sure my heart can take it.”
suffice to say, my biggest fear is that merlin won’t get his good ending.
for years, people have been telling merlin (and us, by extension!) that one day, someday, if he struggles enough, if he suffers enough, if he is very, very patient, and very, very strong, he will finally be known and loved for who he is.
i am afraid that these people were either mistaken or lying.
people shouldn’t have to earn their happiness in the first place, but by god, if they did, merlin has done enough. he has been hiding in the shadows all his life, doing nothing but help people and sacrifice himself for others’ sakes, even as he believes that all the people he cares about would hate the person he is inside.
he deserves a spot in the sun.
#getting ready#we're watching 5.10 tonight#been kind of staring at the clock dreading the passage of minutes#until we sit down to start the episode#but it's happening#can't put it off any longer#time to rip off this band-aid#O____O#the once and future slowburn#meta#(sort of)
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niche question ik but how many parallels do you think can be drawn between edgar + edmund and zuko + azula?
NICHE QUESTION?????? NICHE QUESTION???????? HAVE YOU MET ME???????????????????????????????????
so anyway.
i wish i had an archive to refer to because i am absolutely positive i have talked to/yelled at chell about this before. at the time i said something along the lines of zuko is edgar who was cast aside by his father and azula is edmund who was favored by her father. i’m also willing to entertain the notion of iroh filling the gloucester role. but let’s set all of that aside for a minute, and just talk about them.
the blue spirit is known as “the scourge of the fire nation.” he uses violence (the fire nation’s primary value) to his ends, but without fire (the currency of violence), and this is significant because he has fire, but notably cannot use it in this disguise. the blue spirit is precise and controlled in a way that zuko normally is not. zuko is all frayed edges and trying to block up a dam with a bandaid. but with the blue spirit, zuko uses the fire nation’s foremost mode of operation against them. his performance is his control.
lear refers to edgar as “the thing itself.” old tom is, indeed, the personification of the lear universe. but, what differentiates his madness from lear’s or gloucester’s is that it is feigned. if the fire nation runs on violence, the heath runs on madness. he is utilizing that madness for his own gain, making performance out of chaos & entropy (the ruling forces of their universe). all life is performance, and meaning is what we make of it; edgar knows this, thus he weaponizes lunacy to maintain control.
when i flippantly refer to zuko as a theatre kid, i mean it in a much truer sense than in his flamboyance, or even his critiques of love amongst the dragons. he learned at a young age that to survive, one must wear a mask. the blue spirit is to zuko what old tom is to edgar; it is his disguise that is “the thing itself.”
azula may be “legitimate,” but she is not firstborn, she is not a son. legitimacy is an arbitrary construct, differing in every world order. that is the point. edmund notes that their world is flawed. it is “the plague of custom” and “the curiosity of nations.” their laws are not legitimate. (fine word, legitimate.) if azula wants to take power, she knows she must rely on her skill and her cunning. her “dimensions are as well compact, [her] mind as generous, and [her] shape as true.” but she does not want to usurp her father; her father agrees with her. he, too, was not crown prince. he killed his father to overcome “the plague of custom.�� no, it is zuko who is the blind one: “a brother noble, whose nature is so far from doing harms, that he suspects none.”
we all remember that moment in “the storm” wherein we see azula, here no older than eleven, cheering on the blinding of her brother. much like gloucester, he is deemed a traitor for actions motivated only by good intentions, but unlike gloucester, a) there is no first servant, no noble actor who speaks out or intervenes, only an arena of onlookers who can not only stand the sight of this horrific act, but even revel in it, and b) he only loses one eye: there is still room for redemption.
“azula always lies,” zuko knows. edgar does not. he seems to think that he and edmund have a good rapport. he also loves his father despite his flaws. edgar can acknowledge that gloucester is wrong about many fundamental principles in regards to the true world order, and still enjoy spending time with him. the second that zuko understands that ozai is fundamentally wrong about the world, he loathes him (as he, obviously, should). this is where the parallels begin to diverge. but the themes remain the same.
“just you and me, brother: the showdown that was always meant to be,” azula says, and of course, the tragedy of this scene is that she believes it. edmund resents edgar, surely, but he can still recognize that the problem is gloucester, that the problem is custom, and their father’s belief in it. azula has yet to see this. edgar overpowers edmund. zuko overpowers azula. azula’s downfall is that of feeling unlovable––that no one in her life truly sees her or loves her––and this shatters her.
as edmund lays dying, he says, “yet edmund was beloved,” citing the love triangle between sisters. I find this line very telling, for it illustrates that for edmund, this was not a rampage against custom or any of his supposed principles (those are which he states are not actually wrong, by the way); edmund just wanted to find love, anywhere he could get it.
edgar had love, and he never knew what it was like to live without it. similarly, zuko had ursa and iroh, who managed to support him just enough that he was eventually able to escape from under ozai’s abuse. at the point we find azula in at the end of the narrative, she will not die as edmund is willing to, for she knows she was not beloved. she cannot rest easy yet.
zuko is too trusting. zuko’s fundamental worldview is a gentle one, based in kindness and extending a hand––but the world won’t allow it. “I will preserve myself: and am bethought / to take the basest and most poorest shape / that ever penury, in contempt of man, / brought near to beast.” old tom is a defense mechanism, and the only one edgar thinks to take. i’ve often joked that edgar could have just… left, but of course, had edgar truly done so, edgar would not be edgar. had zuko been truly happy as a refugee in ba sing se, zuko would not be zuko.
azula is too cynical. she sees the world as a game of chess, in which ozai is the king (functionally useless but also the most important piece in the game) and herself as the queen (the most powerful and useful player). she sees a world order with a hierarchy, and with cogs in a machine. the best episode of person of interest (4x11) involves harold telling the machine the following:
You asked me to teach you chess and I’ve done that. It’s a useful mental exercise. And through the years, many thinkers have been fascinated by it. But I don’t enjoy playing. Do you know why not? Because it was a game that was born during a brutal age, when life counted for little. And everyone believed that some people were worth more than others. Kings and pawns. I don’t think that anyone is worth more than anyone else. […] Chess is just a game. Real people aren’t pieces. And you can’t assign more value to some of them than to others. […] People are not a thing that you can sacrifice. The lesson is that anyone who looks on the world as if it was a game of chess deserves to lose.
additionally, everyone remembers the scene in which azula says the following to long feng:
Azula: It’s because they haven’t made up their minds. They’re waiting to see how this is going to end.
Long Feng: What are you talking about?
Azula: I can see your whole history in your eyes. You were born with nothing, so you’ve had to struggle, and connive, and claw your way to power. But true power, the divine right to rule, is something you’re born with. The fact is, they don’t know which one of us is going to be sitting on that throne, and which one is going to be bowing down. But I know, and you know. Well?
Long Feng: You’ve beaten me at my own game.
Azula: Don’t flatter yourself. You were never even a player.
it’s an epic scene, and an epic line, but the fact of the matter is, she’s wrong. there is no “divine right to rule.” her worldview is one of imperialism, and as harold tells the machine, such a worldview, wherein some lives are worth more than others, is untenable.
edgar kills edmund because king lear is a play of worldviews battling it out both on a physical and psychological plane (if there is any difference, anyway). those who survive are kent, albany, and edgar, who value integrity and decency. edmund is not wrong to call custom a plague or nature his goddess. but he navigates this worldview all wrong. edgar and edmund both know that looking to heavens is “the excellent foppery of the world.” they know that there is nothing behind the curtain––that there is no curtain, even. but edmund chooses to take a path of manipulation and violence, and this is what he gets wrong about the world. his worldview is thus untenable, and edgar must destroy it.
“my father compounded with my mother under the dragon’s tail; and my nativity was under ursa major; so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous.” without the irony inherently imbued in this statement when edmund says it, it is a deeply apt way to describe the worldview on which the fire siblings were raised. zuko accepted ursa’s love, but azula was too busy seeking ozai’s approval. zuko was too trusting. azula was too cynical. but even then, they both knew one thing above all: the secret to survival is in performance.
#forgive the fact that i dont cite all my claims about edgar but pleas trust that i know this play by heart#lol#also yes person of interest doth fucketh but i am scant to admit that#anon#asks#analysis#zuko#azula#azula&zuko#synthesis#anon thank u for asking this question i love u so much for making me write this#and even if no one gives a shit i refuse to put this under a readmore bc its my favorite thing ive ever done for l4s and yes that includes#townie.mp4 etc etc
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