[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post
the thing I keep coming back to about TAZ Balance, I think, is that there's heroes — lots of them, even — but there's not really a hero, not a singular one. when our characters try to save the world all on their own, and oh, do they try, their arcs — while eventually culminating in happy endings, for the most part — are, at the time, cast as tragedies. lone heroes, in TAZ Balance, are invariably tragic heroes.
Lucretia can't gather all the Grand Relics and defeat the Hunger on her own. Barry can't find Lup, much less sway Lucretia from her plan, on his own. Lup, crushed by guilt, sets off to neutralize her greatest mistake without even facing her family as she leaves, and that decision sets the story into motion in the first place. their intent to spare their family, to shoulder the burden alone so no one else will have to, fixes little and leaves them isolated. lonely. trapped.
even Magnus, rustic Folk Hero of Raven's Roost, fails to avenge the community that took him in. he sets off on a solitary mission to do so, never opening up about his pain to even his closest friends, but he never sees Kalen again. yet, maybe not too late, he learns, or rather, remembers — the strength to protect and avenge others comes from the strength to ask for help. the last thing helping anyone is trying to do this alone.
Lucretia assembles the Bureau, and as soon as she sees a way, brings Tres Horny Boys back under her wing. Barry, the very same day that Lucretia recruits them, sees the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet surface, and realizes it's time to put his trust in his family again — he shows himself to them soon after, and even with him putting up a facade, that's progress. and Lup, with endless time to reflect, is possibly the first of all of them to see where she went wrong. she won't be making that mistake again.
there's not a singular hero of the story, because taking on the burden of saving everyone is no task meant for one person. there's "our heroes," Tres Horny Boys, and there's the secondary, "secret," but no less important heroes who complete the ranks of the IPRE, but none can defeat the Hunger — nor reunite their family, nor vanquish an old foe — without leaning on each other, and on the new bonds they forged on this cycle. leaning on Johann, Kravitz, Team Sweet Flips, and the whole ensemble; every single connection that convinced them not to flee but to fight.
accepting that none of them can, that none of them should, be the hero alone — that's what averts the tragic end. the Hunger, terrible as it is, is wholly united, sharing and amplifying each other's despair. the only way to victory is to rely on each other, to care for each other, to learn how to be cared for, and to let your loved ones grant you hope.
French TV journalist having a hard time trying to get woman in the street to comment on Macron's latest speech yesterday
Protesters organised casserolades (aka banging on pots and pans) in front of city halls across the country at 8pm, when Macron was speaking, to symbolically drown out his voice. Later that evening, Macron was filmed singing a song with some 'random people' in a street in Paris, trying to show he can go out and meet people and have fun because protesters don't exist. The people he was singing with (members of a choir, some of whom are 'alt-right-leaning') were using a folk song app created by far-right activists that was criticised a few months ago for hosting a Spanish fascist anthem & Third Reich military marches.
The government's response was that the President "couldn't know the background of the people he met that night." Maybe if he wants to avoid being associated with the far-right (that's a big if, I know), Macron should keep in mind that with the kinds of strategies and positioning his government has adopted lately, people in the street who welcome him with open arms and are proud to be filmed with him have a higher than average likelihood of supporting fascism.
the batfamily would NOT be on social media at all realistically, but of course tim loooooves photography, so i think he'd be a super dedicated scrapbook-mom type instead. (to compensate for the incredible instagram posts he WOULD make)
like, he's got books for each of his friends, one for each family member, and multiple for pictures of parts of the family and all of them together (although rare). he even has separate books for people in-costume and out-of-costume.
every christmas + birthday he recieves a loooooot of scrapbooking materials, he has draws of washi tape and stickers in his room.
he definitely tries his best to match the themes of the pages to the people in them too, and not one book has the same feel to it. he always writes very sincere little captions under the pictures as well. if he wasn't so attached to the books, he'd give them as gifts.
I just think that there are many reasons why one can go back and forth on whether Ygraine's spirit is really Ygraine in s2e8, but judging her and/or the situation one way or another over the fact that she is for once someone who tells Arthur the goddamn truth really just ain't it. Like. of course he would be furious! maybe because - and hear me out here - the truth is something to be furious about! Everyone constantly fucking lies and lies and lies to Arthur, to spare him, to stop him from being angry, for one million supposed reasons of knowing better, so maybe yes a sign of actual love is to not put yourself into the line-up and be honest, for once in his goddamn life
What's stopping the possibility of a ceasefire is pretty simple. Hamas is holding 239 Israeli civilians hostage including children and the elderly. What's happening in Palestine is a travesty and horrendous. But Israel can't initiate a ceasefire from the position they're in, so we need to be agitating for Hamas to release the hostages and call for a ceasefire instead.
NO GENOCIDE IS JUSTIFIABLE
HOW DOES THE KILLING OF INNOCENT PEOPLE ON THIS EXTREME LEVEL FORCE HAMAS TO RETURN HOSTAGES??
ISRAEL'S BOMBARDMENT AND INDISCRIMINATE SHOOTING IN GAZA THREATEN EVERYONE THERE INCLUDING DOCTORS JOURNALISTS CHILDREN ENTIRE FAMILIES AND THE HOSTAGES
EVERYONE IS TARGETED
YOU HAVE HOSPITALS BOMBED HOW ANY OF THIS IS JUSTIFIED
Thoughts on prince Riko’s “perfect court” before anyone escaped Evermore ( @thefoxesraven pls remind me if it was you with the branding vs tagging idea on that insta live)
@snazzy-jas-z-is-a-fan-of came up with SO MUCH of the possible politics and family ties of this au, it was incredible to watch and I think I finally understand enough to post about it 😂 there’s a balance of power between the two branches of Evermore royalty, which balance is shifting slowly to the Moriyamas and by the end of the story belongs solely to them with Ichirou as king. I’ll try to explain it in a different post if there’s interest
(And lest we go a day without Abram angst: he does in fact get his brand and more, when he’s taken back to Evermore and Riko takes the chance to reclaim his property ‘like he should have done to begin with’.)
Apart from show canon, at which point did u think it was too late for lena's immediate forgiveness to kara's identity reveal
oh boy. anon, here is where i come clean about my shoddy recollection of canon’s chronology. i’ve done so many fragmented rewatches and skipping back and forth—there’s a reason i rarely dabble with canon-adjacent stuff! and that even when i do, i create worlds where Lena figures it out herself!
second road bump to answering this question is that i have a LOT of feelings about how things played out on the show, and most of them are incongruent with the tone of sgcw. i understand their narrative reasons for keeping the secret from Lena for so long! but the execution is so, so terrible! ignoring large swathes of canon and replacing them with my own is the only way i’m able to enjoy at least the last tiny handful of seasons!
here is where i spend an hour procrastinating from my WIPs, while not successfully answering your question at all:
to be perfectly clear: i adore most parts of canon Kara. and i think i may be hard on her in ways i wouldn't be if i didn’t relate to her so much. i think her backstory is extremely compelling and i admire her ability to hold on to her kindness and hope and joy even after losing everything that was important to her, even when she’s tired and lonely and mad.
BUT. a healthy Lena—one who we were made to believe was finally freeing herself from Lex and Lillian, rising above the coping mechanisms she’d developed as an unwanted and emotionally neglected child? i don’t think that Lena would (should?) have forgiven canon Kara at all.
after the rift, canon Kara flitted between telling Lena she’d lied to her ‘to protect you’ to ‘one person who sees me only as Kara’ to ‘your last name’ to ‘didn’t want to lose you’ until she literally told Lena she was on her own, and she’d treat her like any other villain until Lena repented, even rejecting her apology at first, as if Kara’s own decisions had played no part in Lena’s downward spiral at all.
the Kara Lena would have forgiven is the much more cohesive and coherent Kara brought to us by our talented fix-it writers: a Kara who is willing to let herself be vulnerable and to second-guess her motivations, one who is able to put together a proper apology and actually listen to Lena's own.
but, okay, lets table all of that. this is me trying really, really hard to entertain canon:
Kara and Lena’s friendship became painfully lopsided by season 3. i think that was, if i recall correctly, when the super-friends decided to trust Lena enough to regularly ask her for assistance—but not enough to let her be part of their in-group; it’s where they left Lena in the dark about the fact that her best friend had come close to plunging to her death right in front of Lena's eyes, and was actively still fighting for her life; where they tricked Lena into having an extremely personal conversation with J’onn, while he was wearing Kara’s features, only to make belly-laughing fun of her about it later.
and even then, honestly, it might already have been too late. what about the aftermath of Jack’s death? was that season 2? Jack was Lena’s ex-everything, someone who genuinely loved her, who saw her through the fallout of Lex’s arrest. he was one of her last remaining friends, and Lena pressed the button to let him die in order to save Supergirl’s life. how would Lena knowing that Kara went through that with her, knowing Lena had chosen to save the life of her favorite person in addition to National City’s hero, have changed the way she felt about that horrible situation? that’s where that extremely wonderful heart-to-heart on the L-Corp couch happened, right? Kara swore she’d always be Lena’s friend—while keeping silent about the fact that she was there when Jack drew his last breath, that she had witnessed their final moments.
so—i really can’t tell you anon, i’m so sorry. the 100th episode already fabricated reasons why Kara couldn’t possibly come clean to Lena back when she made the conscious decision to be her friend (and not in a ‘keep your enemies close’ kind of way!), and i’m beginning to think that was the only moment Kara could have told Lena that would have kept her conscience completely clear. Kara should have made it part of her decision—either she was going to be Lena’s friend and give her the same trust Lena was giving her, or she would keep things professional, and keep her identity a secret from her.
Kara tried to do both, and if i really think about it, i don’t believe that was ever fair.
tough pill i have to swallow is realizing that “getting better” doesn’t mean “getting to do more things,” getting better for me means taking better initiative in protecting myself. and THAT means making sure i do LESS things
Hey guys I didnt mean to disappear the way I did this month, but especially in the more recent weeks. I've been in an UNBEARABLE amount of pain with migraines almost every day for over a week and I may very well have a sinus infection (': Like I WAS diagnosed with chronic sinusitis last year iirc but this is unbearable. My throat hurts, my teeth hurt, my face hurts, I can't breathe out my nose. I feel miserable tbh.
Another reason for absence and being so slow on work is because I came really close to calling the cops on my mother in the middle of a fight not too long ago. I'm certain it would've gotten physical if Popo hadn't walked through the front door when he did. Thankfully things DIDN'T get physical, but I'm still very shaken up about it. I'm in no danger, but I'm getting around to making an official post for my [GoFundMe] that's been successfully published now. That was the last straw I just cannot handle how my cats and I are treated. It's seriously affected my workflow for far too long.
Anyway I could really use some positivity and distraction. I missed this place and I missed you guys, home life has just been.. a lot. And I'm exhausted.