#everyone has issues here and i ned to write another post on them all very soon

[queerfandomtrifecta]

How Izzy’s Death Could’ve Made Basic Storytelling Sense

Just to be clear, Izzy is my favorite and I wanted him to live more than anything. This isn’t about that, and that is NOT why I hated his death. Had it served the narrative in a way that made even the most basic storytelling sense, while I’d admittedly have been devastated in a different way (i.e. the character whose queerness was relegated to the subtext in s1 and as soon as it’s textual and his whole arc is that he’s killed, but that’s a whole separate post…), but at least there would’ve been a correctly crafted arc from a surface level narrative standpoint that ended in the death of my favorite character. But that’s not what this is about. It’s is about how the show could’ve actually made the death actually make sense and work effectively. (Also, if you want my unasked for thoughts on how most of the existing plot of s2 (minus 7-8) could’ve easily been adjusted to fix the narrative as a whole and keep Izzy alive, I wrote this)

But. For those in the fandom insisting that Izzy HAD to die, including DJenks who has said as such in interviews (for reasons I do not understand), from an objective developmental editor standpoint, this is what I think needed to change to make Izzy’s death serve the narrative, character arcs and dynamics, pacing, structure, and thematic elements correctly.

It’s about 2K words just so you know what you’re gonna get into. Spoilers under the cut.

Issue 1. Izzy’s relationship with the crew and how they truly became his family this season totally vanished during his death scene. The same crew who he protected from Ed during the later, worse parts of the Kraken phase. The crew who banded together to save his life by hiding him from/lying to Ed about it, and amputating his leg to save him. The crew he saved by crawling up those stairs during the storm, hobbling out into the rain with one leg and shooting Ed before he could shoot a cannon ball through the mast and kill them all. The crew who called him “our dick”. The crew that then banded together with Stede’s half of the crew to him the leg and the new unicorn (aka the figurehead of the ship). That crew didn’t cry a SINGLE tear when he died. What?? Fang sobbed most of episode one and really lost it when Izzy got shot. Where was that when he died?? Izzy’s last speech to Ricky had something along the lines of: piracy is about belonging/family. We are Good. (Forgive me, I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist). Izzy truly did find his family in the crew outside of Ed. That was absolutely fantastic, especially in the first four episodes and episode six. It VANISHED when he was dying and dead.

The fix: To make the death impactful, effective, or even to make it make sense on a very basic acting and writing level, the crew should’ve been utterly DEVASTATED. At least heartbreaking music and like 30 seconds of everyone breaking down and holding each other. At least some of them crying and holding each other in the background when he was dying. Come on.

Issue 2. Thematically speaking, is piracy Good or Bad? Again, Izzy tells Ricky that they (the pirates/his crew) are capital G Good. Yet Ed has spent a lot of time maintaining piracy is capital B Bad. He tells the urchins as such. Here’s some money that I never had, now you don’t have to be pirates. Don’t be pirates. He doesn’t want Stede to kill Ned Low in cold blood. Ed just doesn’t want to be a pirate. Even at the end AFTER Izzy dies telling Ed he’s with his family (implied that this is the crew) and they love Ed, Ed LEAVES THAT FAMILY AND LEAVES PIRACY IMMEDIATELY. We’re left with him and Stede watching the family Izzy swore was Good and loved Ed sail away because Ed thinks piracy is Bad. Which is it?? The death served nothing in convincing Ed he could be happy with his found family on the sea as Ed, not Blackbeard, so the dying words were pointless. The thematic elements are all over the place (for the whole season but that’s another post) and that needs changing to make the death scene make sense.

The fix: Izzy should’ve told him he sees he doesn’t want to pirate anymore, he’s glad he’s found love with Stede because Izzy isn’t going to make it, go run your fokkin’ inn, you twat (affectionate).

Issue 3. Izzy died of bad planning and bad luck. Why didn’t they take the gun from Ricky? Between Spanish Jackie, Izzy, and Jim, SOMEONE would’ve thought about it. If not those three, someone else would’ve, but come one. One if not all of those three would’ve known better. Yeah, Izzy happened to be standing in front of Ed and he got shot instead of him, but you’ve gotta be REALLY looking for that to even be aware it’s what happened. It wasn’t even on purpose unless Ed strategically placed himself behind Izzy (which I doubt was the intent). Izzy didn’t position himself protectively/take the bullet for anyone on purpose. It was just happenstance and you only notice it if you’re rewatching and hyper-analyzing everything (which a lot of us, me included, in the fandom do, but casual watchers don’t. It’s totally unclear as far as the surface level narrative goes) Any sort of “heroism” is not acknowledged, it’s barely even noticeable in the shot. If that was the intent, it HAD to be clearer and acknowledged by the characters so the audience would realize the stakes and repercussions of clear choices. As it is, I don’t think it was intentional. If Izzy HAS to die, it should truly have rounded out his arc in a way that CLEARLY changed the course of the scene, leaving him to protect people he’d put in danger at the end of s1. It didn’t. It just read as terrible planning to the point of it being out of character for more than one character, and bad luck.

The fix: Izzy should’ve saved someone. I personally don’t like the idea of it being Ed. I’s have rather he save Stede (Not really, but it’s better than Ed I guess) But really Izzy should’ve died saving the crew. The crew makes the most sense to me, narratively speaking. He’s their figurehead, he’s protected the Kraken Crew for months and they should’ve been fiercely loyal to him, he blames himself for what Ed did to them (more on this later) so it makes sense for him to fiercely protect his crew. His family. Who should’ve been devastated that it happened because Izzy is the one character of the main three who’s managed to earn that status this season.

Issue 4. The death did not serve to move the plot along. There are literally zero things that would’ve been different for the end of the episode, save Izzy being alive and on the Revenge in his rightful role he earned with his crew as the captain, if he’d have lived. Ed and Stede aren’t partnering with Zheng to go after the guy who killed him in the next season. Nope. They got the offer but nah. They’re running an Inn. Which Izzy would’ve supported based on literally everything we’ve seen from him in episodes 5-8. The crew who Izzy protected fiercely and who viewed him as their leader? Not one tear during his death or the the funeral. Happily sailing away to do presumably more Muppet Treasure Island hijinks. No character development happened. No plot development happened. The season could’ve ended literally the EXACT SAME WAY with Izzy alive aboard the Revenge!!! No stakes were changed at all. No one was impacted enough for it to seem like it was even going to be a plot obstacle next season. It just happened, Izzy’s toxic situationship who maimed him multiple times over the course of months to the point of his leg needing to be amputated was sad for one (1) scene, then we moved on and did not seem sad at all at the funeral. What.

The fix: The plot should’ve been driven by the death. Ed and Stede (but especially Ed), and DEFINITELY the crew should’ve been sailing off plotting to avenge the death and defend piracy against Ricky and the British, especially with Zheng who lost her whole fleet. Ricky and the British are clearly (or so I hope, nothing’s clear here anymore tbh) the primary antagonist for the theoretical third season. No one should be running an whim-based inn for fun or sailing off happily into the sunset after the death of the most major character aside from Ed and Stede, who beyond proved himself a major part of something every character (his family) should’ve cared about this season. If he HAD to die, that death should have furthered the plot. But instead, it seems everyone shrugged it off with tears exclusively from Ed.

Issue 5. Izzy got shot in the left side. The side in which canonically NO ONE DOES FROM BEING INJURED ON IN THE OFMD UNIVERSE.

The fix: Yeah I know this is just too nit-picky but it was also just SO sloppy. Like just shoot him on the other side if he has to die, because this was a very memorable plot point more than once in s1. Like, come on y’all.

Disclaimer: Issues/fixes 1-5 would all need to happen together to truly fix it and make the death serve the narrative correctly. Issue/fix 6 is a totally separate route, which I personally hate, but at least the narrative would’ve made sense this way.

Issue 6. The idea that Izzy had to die so that Ed could be free of Blackbeard makes no sense at this point in the story. Ed already threw away his leathers and gave away his treasure to symbolically get rid of Blackbeard, and Izzy very sweetly encouraged him to follow the feeling that throwing out the leathers gave him. Izzy told Stede that he and Ed were good for each other. They balance each other out. Izzy is on good terms with both of them and their relationship, so Izzy “having to die” so Ed could flourish as Ed genuinely makes no sense and came totally out of left field.

The fix for 6: This one stands alone and is my absolute least favorite option, but if it HAD to happen without the 1-5 fixes, here’s how it could’ve made sense. If THIS is truly the way it was going to end, Izzy needed to be continuously antagonistic or avoidant to at least Ed and actually be shown holding Ed back from happiness until that last second. He wasn’t. He was so much better. Izzy clearly does blame himself (that’s for a separate post because I have lots of thoughts there) but to be fair they were both abusive in that relationship, for years it seems. Although I think by the beginning of s2, the power dynamic has clearly flipped and it was Ed who was doing most of it and Izzy was exhausted and knowingly “reaping what he’d sewed” (I don’t Blame Izzy for his abuse but I think this was his mindset) so the crew wouldn’t get the brunt of it.

If he seriously HAD to die because the writers just had to have it that way, those are the changes I think would’ve made the narrative work/make sense, served all the character arcs and dynamics correctly, and actually driven the plot as fictional deaths are supposed to, compelling things into a third season. Seriously, this season finale was a mess of baffling choices the most series finale season finale I’ve ever seen.

Anyway. There’s my unsolicited two-cents. Now back to hoping Izzy’s in the gravy basket waiting to be sea witch necromancied back by seagull Buttons in season 3. I love this show and I hate hating what I hate hating about it because it’s my absolute favorite and I can’t stand it because it’s fantastic and the worst thing I’ve ever seen. (Also, Izzy should’ve lived).

#ofmd spoilers #izzy hands #ofmd #ofmd season 2 #ofmd season 2 spoilers #ofmd meta #izzy my beloved #izzy deserved better #we deserved better #eyyyy djenks if you need a dev editor for s3 just hmu #david jenkins #ed teach #stede fucking bonnet #stede bonnet

[swearyshera]

So we are at the end of the road on something that has always been about the journey, not the destination.  I’ve taken my time to gather some thoughts.  This blog has meant a lot to many people, not the least of which is me.  I’ve had a hard time these last few years – I think it’s been hard times for everyone, in one way or another.  Personally, I seem to remember discovering this blog not too long before I had a breakdown and handled it very poorly, making bad decisions that cost me a lot of friends, or at least people whom I thought were my friends up until a breaking point.  (Your blog was unrelated to this).  When I came out of hospitalization I had a few things to rely upon – a video therapy group was one, certain family members and, well, as silly as it sounds, hitting up tumblr for my daily dose of Sweary She-Ra to make me laugh. And then in mid-January, 2023, one of the people who was closest to me in my entire life died suddenly of technically unknown cause but considering his health issues, probably a heart-issue. It was sudden and devastating.  We shared She-Ra and the Princesses of Power together because he was kind of curious about it and I was a nostalgia-fan of the ‘80s series.  We both became massive fans of Entrapta.  In fact, my nephew / best friend got me into the fandom in the first place because he had a silly idea for a fanfic about Entrapta wrecking havoc in the Fright Zone just post first-season and had little confidence in his fanfic writing, but decided to pass along said idea to me, an inveterate fic-writer for many fandoms.  I was put through the wringer this year – it’s the first time I’ve been in partial charge of a memorial service.  I am feeling better now than I did at the beginning of this year because I’ve found the strength to keep doing things that he and I liked to do together and time helps.  And again, in all of this, I had a silly little comic where a sparkly purple princess calls people “twattingler,” others make liberal use of the word that originally meant Fornication Under Consent of the King, one character swears all the time but apologizes for it, one character is contractually obligated to use Ned Flanders style cursing and there’s a fourth wall breaker and an incompetent boss with indecipherable accent and Marxist unicorns and all the rest.  No matter what was happening with my emotions I could just… take a little break and look at the funny fancomic.  Sweary She-Ra for me has been like a warm mug of tea on a cold day or a bowl of baked macaroni and cheese with a butter-cracker crust made out of the old 1960-70 something Betty Crocker cookbook.  It’s been Internet comfort food that has been sorely needed at times.  So thank you.  I just want to thank you for this funny little fan project.  I don’t think you have any idea how much it has meant to your audience.  @freedfromthegalactichivemind

And I don't know if the audience has any idea how much it has meant to me!

When I started this, things were pretty shit, weren't they? Here in the UK we'd just come out of the second Covid Lockdown, with the third expected to happen imminently; the weather was miserable, we'd barely seen our friends in months, the world in general just sucked. And I'd love to say that I felt a calling to break through that with some humour, but no... it was nothing like that. This is what happened...

And so it all went from there.

I almost just went for random scenes as I thought of them, rather than starting from the beginning. But I thought "Eh, fuck it, let's see how far I get", and the rest is history.

Even as the storylines got more complex (bear in mind, I started purely with the intention to do the original script with a few swear words peppered in), I always wanted to keep things upbeat. The painful moments are those 'this is the good stuff, hurt me more' moments rather than actually horrifying things - I know there's been a couple of exceptions, but in general it's held true.

But I've always been driven by one thing - the world isn't very funny right now; it's stressful, sometimes downright terrifying. And if I can alleviate that for ten, twenty seconds per day and make that tiny bit of difference to someone, then I consider that a job done. I'm not out here claiming to have the cure for depression, or some kind of plan to save the world, but I (hopefully) can make a few people smile in the midst of all the shit that's happening, even if it's just for a moment.

So much has changed in the last three years, but this blog has been such a central part of my world, it'll be weird when it's over (maybe that's why I don't want to stop there!). But if this coming Friday really is the last chapter in this part of my life, I'll still be happy that it happened. And if you've ever smiled or laughed at the blog, I'm happy that happened as well.

#sweary she-ra origin story

[themculibrary]

Pride Month Masterlist 3

part one, part two

5 Times Peter Parker Almost Came Out to the Avengers (ao3) - Babereflective T, 12k

Summary: (And the One Time He Did)

Peter Parker had a secret. No matter how badly he wanted to share it, he couldn’t, he knew he couldn’t. Deep down he knew it wasn’t a big deal, but it was. It was a huge deal, and sometimes he thought he would never tell anyone how he really felt. You see, Peter Parker was a bi disaster. He told himself that he wasn’t the type of boy to stare at cute strangers too long or smile at the thought of a school yard crush, but oh boy he was. But nobody could know that. Well, nobody except Ned and MJ.

another love letter you'll never read (ao3) - eurydicees steve/bucky G, 6k

Summary: For Pride Month 2019, The Met has put together a collection celebrating the LBGTQ+ community in the first half of the 20th century.

AKA Bucky writes Steve letters he never sends, and somehow they turn up in a museum a hundred years later. Also everything post-Winter Soldier never happened because I say so.

Clue Her In (ao3) - MCUsic_to_my_ears G, 1k

Summary: Peter's friend MJ is coming over to the cabin for the first time and he and Tony want to keep Morgan from misgendering them.

Days of Sunshine (ao3) - norsellie (flamewarrior) peggy/angie E, 9k

Summary: After Peggy leaves New York for Los Angeles, Angie and she lose touch. But a chance meeting on a DC street brings them back into each other's lives — and brings questions about both her present and her future for Peggy.

Girls Like Girls (ao3) - Mx_Night steve/bucky, carol/maria G, 2k

Summary: Captain Marvel has been seen sporting a new rainbow suit. The rest of the team discovers something that surprises no one except Steve. They have a heart to heart and somehow Carol gets to play matchmaker for the oblivious super-soldier. Everyone decides to come to her with their questions regarding sexuality and she decides that she likes helping these confused idiots figure out who they are.

i’ve got you, always (ao3) - cautionaryjanis harley/peter T, 9k

Summary: When Peter’s class is granted a field trip to Stark Industries, he thinks he might just die of embarrassment. However, the Avengers and Peter’s boyfriend, Harley, know there’s a different Peter in there somewhere, and so they prepare in accordance. Shenanigans ensue.

or, the overused field trip trope, but where the Avengers are all aware of Peter’s anxiety issues and know to give him time before he decides he’s comfortable

June (ao3) - peterparkr G, 6k

Summary: Peter's struggling to come out and Tony's the complete embodiment of 'he's a little confused, but he's got the spirit'.

local lesbian finds out gay marriage is legal (ao3) - cynthiagay carol/maria T, 303

Summary: After Peter tells her that gay marriage is legal in the US, Carol has a very important question to ask.

Pride (ao3) - lockedlocke steve/bucky E, 7k

Summary: So here he was, at Pride despite the fact that he’d rather be at home. It’s hot, boiling and his feet hurt a bit from standing all day. Converse might be nice shoes, but Jesus they were terrible for his knees.

He had lost Natasha a little while ago, and had given up on finding her. He just wants to sit down for a moment. As soon as he spots an empty bean bag by one of the workshops he sinks down in it and opens his Coke bottle. He’s exactly one sip down his drink when someone slides down beside him on the ground.

“Can I draw on your cast?” A blond man asks with a toothy grin. There’s a light sunburn on his shoulders and Bucky can see the faint hint of freckles on it.

Pride (ao3) - haku23 steve/bucky G, 3k

Summary: Steve and Bucky go to a Pride parade.

Pride (ao3) - Fighting4Fandoms carol/maria G, 1k

Summary: A night in front of the fire, with the two people she loves more than anything else in the world. Carol Danvers was a lucky woman

Save A Kiss (ao3) - grimeysociety darcy/wanda, steve/bucky E, 2k

Summary: Darcy's crush on Wanda is out of control, and denying her feelings isn't going to work anymore, especially during Pride.

This is Me (ao3) - happyaspie ned/peter G, 3k

Summary: Tony likes to tease Peter about getting a girlfriend and Peter very much doesn’t want one. Because he’s already dating someone. Ned. He’s dating Ned and he doesn’t know how to tell the man that he’s got it all wrong. But after having a mini-crisis right in the middle of his boyfriend's bedroom it was decided that he should just bite the bullet and tell his mentor that he’s gay.

Or:

A coming out fic starring our favorite neighborhood Spider-boy and his extremely supportive superhero mentor/father figure.

Times Have Changed (ao3) - Wolfcry22 steve/bucky G, 6k

Summary: Times may have changed and adjusting to it can be hard.

Tired of Running (ao3) - heeroluva steve/bucky T, 1k

Summary: Bucky reluctantly attends Pride with Steve and has a realization.

We'll Haunt This Place (The Two of Us) (ao3) - ElloPoppet clint/steve E, 25k

Summary: Huh. Captain America showing up at his farm unannounced in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon with a suitcase. Somehow, not the strangest thing to ever happen to Clint. Not even the strangest way he had been woken from a nap, honestly.

What May Doesn't Know (ao3) - MCUsic_to_my_ears ned/peter G, 1k

Summary: Peter is confused as to what his feelings toward Ned mean. A couple on the street help him figure it out.

you’ve got your passion, you’ve got your pride (ao3) - steviepie steve/bucky, joaquín/sam E, 20k

Summary: They’d stuck it out together even after they both got shipped out of Brooklyn and off to the war, where somehow being gay was just as taboo even off of American soil. Bucky supposed it had made sense in a way. It’s hard not to care about stateside law when your lover is Captain America.

Not that Steve is Captain America anymore, though he is still Bucky Barnes’ lover- and as of two months ago, legally he’s even more. Because while they are back in Brooklyn again, it’s been a long time since the war, and while this isn’t where Bucky thought they’d end up by a longshot, he can’t help but thank his lucky stars that they no longer have to worry about being caught.

(alternatively: steve and bucky get some of those stupid corporate pride packages.)

#themculibrary #mcu #marvel #pride #pride masterlist #masterlists

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

Let's Call It Funny

Prompt: Hi! If you know about those gen z peter parker posts, could your write something based on that? With Steve Getting It (tm) because fatalistic nihilism in humor tended to show up during the world wars and we’re seeing a reflection of that now? Sorry- I just think it’d make great options for steve and peter bonding, and dad!tony but actual emotions (gasp!) You can totally ignore this if you want!

Don't ever apologize for giving me such a great ask

Read on Ao3 Part 2

Warnings: uhhh gen z humor

Pairings: none! all found family in this bitch

Word Count: 2529

Here’s the thing about humor. It’s not necessarily that one generation is any funnier than another, it’s just that high school kids are perpetually the funniest people alive. Something about being in a pressure cooker of an environment with a bunch of other people whose bodies are changing in new unpredictable ways whilst having very little say in how their lives go creates humor. Gasp of shock, right?

So basically what Peter’s trying to say is that he’s fucking hilarious.

Come on, not only does he have the default high schooler stuff, he’s also gay, which gives him an instant bonus. He’s trans, which opens up a whole new subset of humor for him to explore. He’s neurodivergent as fuck, and we all know that makes people funny as hell. And if that weren’t enough, he’s severely traumatized and he’s Spider-Man.

Peter Parker is funny as hell.

What is truly devastating—and really, it’s their loss—is that so few people seem to appreciate it.

Ned gets it. Ned’s not someone Peter would expect to not get it, just because hey, it’s Ned. They’ve met each other in the hallways and been like ‘hey! You’re still alive! Congrats on having a body!’ Only for the other one to go ‘hey! You’re alive too! I wish I had an intangible form!’

Because bodies are stupid and evolution really fucked us over but at least we’re not horses.

A solid 50% of their interactions are just quoting John Mulaney and Bo Burnham bits back and forth at each other. Peter’s never gonna forget the day they both had detention and had to watch that stupid Cap PSA—it’s propaganda, you Nazi fuckwits—and something reminded them of the ‘horse loose in a hospital’ bit and they just did it. Full out. Stood up and did the actions and everything. The rest of the room was either trying to do it with them—and failing, because they didn’t have nearly enough practice—or looking so confused. The security guard—Paul, he’s great—just looked at them blearily after they finished and went:

“I mean, you kids are right, but you’re not supposed to talk in detention.”

Well, excuse them for trying to make it more entertaining for everyone.

MJ gets it. If Peter’s being honest, he learned most of his humor from her. She is the master and it is an honor to study in her wake. He’s definitely hijacked the asking whether or not anything’s actually meaningful existentialism jokes and they’ve wormed their way into his day-to-day repertoire.

“Why are you late, Mr. Parker?”

“Time is a social construct, Mrs. B, none of us are ever late or early except in the subjective spacetime paths. The limits of our sensory perception make it so we can’t tell if anything is real, let alone whether or not they conform to some arbitrary definition of ‘time.’”

“…just sit down, Peter.”

See? It works.

Aunt May gets…worried.

Sure, they’ve actually talked about when Peter needs help and wants to reach out and when he’s just making jokes off the cuff because hey, humor’s a great coping mechanism or it’s just a joke and not that serious. Peter loves his Aunt May, so so so much, and the last thing he wants to do is really worry her. And she’s gotten pretty good at figuring out when he’s just joking and when he’s spiraling.

Sometimes, though…

“Peter,” Aunt May calls from the kitchen, “did you remember to stop by the store on your way home?”

Peter freezes halfway through the door.

“Peter?”

He swallows. “…no.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am too stressed and consumed by the swirling pit of blackness deep in my soul to remember my head is connected to my body, let alone remember to go to the store.”

Silence.

“…Aunt May?”

“Do you want to drop off your stuff and then go to the store?”

“…yeah, please.”

“Love you, Pete.”

“Love you!”

“Try to remember that you’ve got arms so you can pick stuff up.”

“Got it!”

See? It’s fine.

The Avengers don’t get it. Like, at all.

Natasha and Clint like, sorta get it? They make the same jokes all the time when they think Peter can’t hear them, which—come on, you guys are super spies, surely you know people are gonna hear you when they’re gonna hear you. Natasha will make a crack about something, Clint will laugh and shove her shoulder. It’s their dynamic, we get it. But when Peter does it…

“Hey, Baby Spider?”

Peter sticks his head up from the ceiling. “Yeah?”

“Where’re you crawling off to?”

“I’m gonna go hide in the garage.”

Natasha blinks up at him. “Why?”

“Because if I get crushed by the airlock doors then I won’t have to do my paper tomorrow.”

Silence. Natasha’s mask is too good for Peter to actually see what’s going on with her, let alone from this angle, but silence isn’t good.

“Nat—oof!”

Something blurs out of the vent nearby and tackles him down onto the couch.

“Clint!”

“Nope,” Clint mutters, wrapping Peter up in a hug as Natasha comes to join them. “You’re staying with us now, Pete.”

“Guys, I’m fine.”

“Peter,” Natasha says softly, “don’t joke about that, you’ll make us worry.”

“I don’t wanna do that,” Peter mumbles, “but it’s fine.”

“Coping mechanism, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s got too many brain cells to do that,” Clint says, ruffling Peter’s hair.

“Stark has a lot of brain cells, you see what good that does him?”

“Hmm. Guess you’re gonna have to stay awhile, Pete.”

There are worse fates. Definitely.

Thor just kind of gets confused by it. He acts like Peter isn’t going to be absolutely fine because there’s no need to do anything like that. No, Peter, you don’t have to put the bleach in first into your cereal, there’s plenty of milk left over. No, Peter, you don’t have to throw yourself off the roof because your laptop is freezing, Stark has so many just lying around. No, Peter, you don’t have to pack a rucksack and run away to the Alps and live like a recluse, come here and get a hug.

Peter suspects Thor’s playing dumb on purpose. The man is smart as hell, there’s no way all of this is flying over his head. And honestly, it warms his heart a little bit when he sees Thor’s sincere, concerned look when he thinks Peter’s not looking.

Banner and Rhodey just kinda shake their heads and move on. They’re used to it. They live and work with some of the most dramatic fucking people in the goddamn universe, they’re used to a little bit of extra humor. Occasionally one of them will give him a look that says he’s pushing his luck, but that’s not often. Less often now ‘cause he knows what he can get away with. He’s also seen them hiding smiles behind their hands or poorly disguised coughs. They’re not as slick as they think they are.

Tony.

Tony is the fucking worst.

Peter can’t get away with so much as sighing too hard before Iron Dad™ is swooping in all soft words and concerned touches. Jesus. You’d think he’d get it, he uses humor as a coping mechanism too, goddamnit, why is he so worried about Peter?

Okay, fine, he knows why.

MJ’s over at the Tower, having another one of her ‘sketch people in crisis’ appointments with Natasha. Peter is coming off of a 32-hour caffeine rush and is violently wishing for death. Tony is in the kitchen doing…something.

“Hey, do you think bleach would make a good smoothie?”

Tony wheels around to see MJ pulling a glass out of the cupboard.

“Kid—“

“Sounds like a filling breakfast,” Peter groans, “can you make me one too?”

“…I’m legitimately concerned,” comes Tony’s mutter.

MJ ignores him. “Who’s the bitch on your forehead?”

Peter rubs absentmindedly at the massive knot on his head, courtesy of a wall that rudely decided to move at the last second while Peter was attempting to walk through a doorway. “He’s called DJ Braindeath and he’s my only friend in the world.”

“Peter—“

“Oh did you meet him at the furry convention?"

“Technically it’d be a buggie convention.”

“What the hell are you two talking about?”

“The pantry doesn’t have good coffee, I’m going to Starbucks.” MJ grabs her bag. “You want anything?”

“A will to live?”

“Peter, what the fuck—“

“Oof, I’ve only got like…20 bucks.”

Peter lets his head drop back to the counter. “Then just leave me here to die.”

“Can I have champagne at your funeral?”

“I’ll be dead, I won’t fucking care.”

“God, I wish that were me.”

Then MJ’s gone and Peter gets treated to a 20-minute conversation with a very concerned Tony Stark that he doesn’t remember most of because hey caffeine crashes aren’t fun.

He definitely does it on purpose sometimes just to wind Tony up. Like there’s this one incident with an interview he does as Spider-Man and he gets asked what he thinks about Tony Stark’s newest intern, Peter Parker.

“That boy’s an embarrassment, just…complete failure. Can’t speak without stuttering through every other word and self-esteem issues all over the place. Also looks like he got dressed in the dark.”

The reporter had awkwardly moved on to another question. The interview aired later that day while Peter was at the Tower. Tony sat next to him on the couch about halfway through.

“You look good, Pete.”

Peter had mumbled halfheartedly, only to hear the reporter ask the same question.

“See, that’s the problem with having a secret identity, you don’t…” Tony trailed off as he heard the answer.

Peter snorted as Spider-Man finished talking. “Say that to my face, you bitch, get a real job. At least I don’t look like someone vomited silly string all over my spandex.”

“Are you okay?”

See? Fun.

The only one he’s made a conscious effort to not be this funny around is Steve.

Because, okay, here’s the thing. Steve’s disappointed look has no effect on him anymore. He’s immune, motherfuckers, he’s had detention too many times for it to still work. Here’s the other thing: Steve doesn’t actually use that tone of voice that often. It’s this meticulously crafted image he plays up in interviews because it catches all the bad guys so off guard when Captain America is suddenly swearing a blue streak at them and telling them to go fuck themselves in, honestly, quite creative ways. The sincere Steve Rogers disappointment and concern still very much works. Also doesn’t help that Steve does caring so fucking well, like…who gave him the right to say a few things and hold Peter like he’s something precious and do the quick one-two punch of saying a super sincere compliment and following it up with ‘I love you.’ Who did that? It’s rude. Stop it.

And yeah, Steve’s the resident Mom at the Ready. It’s a risk to even sit on your bed looking sad ‘cause here he comes, wearing something snuggly and saying ‘hey’ in that stupid, stupid compassionate voice. So Peter knows he’s just gonna end up crying from too much soft if Steve actually gets concerned. Which won’t be fair because he’s gonna try and explain that he’s fine and it’s just his sense of humor while crying. Yeah, like that’s gonna be believable.

So he’s trying not to but damnit it’s hard.

Then he walks into the kitchen one day to see Steve struggling with the toaster.

It’s one of Tony’s new prototypes—which means that anyone struggling with it is so fair—and from the looks of it, it’s managed to not only burn the bread to a crisp, but also mangle the slices beyond recognizable shape.

Peter’s not paying that much attention. He’s on his phone, heading towards his spot in the corner with the beanbag chairs and definitely doesn’t recognize Steve as he goes.

He only plops down and hears someone declare, in a completely deadpan voice: “There is no point to existing at all.”

“Oh, mood.”

He doesn’t think much of it. He doesn’t even know who said that, that’s how hyper-focused he is right now. He hears the others come in and feels Clint plonk down next to him.

“Hey, Pete.”

“Sah, dude.”

“Just vibing. Did I do it right?”

“Yeah, man you’re going great.”

“You teach Thor ‘yeet’ yet?”

“We’re getting there.”

“Steve,” he hears Tony call from the kitchen, “what the fuck did you do?”

“Language.”

“Don’t fucking talk to me about language when you’re making toast that looks like a goddamn welder’s table, what is that?”

“Your prototype’s work, I imagine.”

“How did you even—“

Clint chuckles next to him as the two of them start fondly bickering. Peter’s too busy speedrunning the five stages of grief in his head.

Did…did Steve say the thing about there being no point to existence at all?

No…no way.

He must be imagining things.

Then, of course, there’s a chime on his phone.

Ned: Did u do the bio hw?

There was bio homework?

Ned: yeah, due at noon

“I now know why God abandoned this timeline and when will death come to take me?”

The room goes silent.

Shit.

“Peter,” Clint says, “it’s gonna be fine, you can do bio homework in your sleep—“

“Are you okay?” Ah, that’s Thor.

“Kid—“

And Nat, and Tony’s probably rushing over here as he speaks.

Then there’s another voice.

“We can only pray the reaper arrives early for his appointment with us, kid.”

Peter’s head snaps up.

Steve.

Steve fucking Rogers raises a coffee cup at him in salute and takes a sip. He makes a face.

“…that was definitely salt,” he mutters, before shrugging and downing the whole thing.

…what?

Peter’s still staring at him until he catches his gaze and winks.

Oh, fuck yes.

“Steven Grant Rogers,” Tony says, hands on his hips, “explain.”

Steve just gives him a look. “I grew up in the Great Depression, Tony, and I was in the army. You don’t think I have a fatalistic sense of humor?”

“Plus the fact that most of my generation is resorting to types of humor found when death and stress are so ever-present that you have to joke about it says something,” Peter adds, “doesn’t it?”

Steve raises his cup again. “See? He gets it.”

And just like that, the bond between Peter Parker and Steve Rogers was written, formed, and sealed in salt and existentialist depression.

“There’s two of you,” Tony mumbles, “oh my god, there’s two of you.”

“Oh, you just wait ’til Buck and Sam get back.”

Peter can’t fucking wait.

#marvel #mcu #avengers #spider man #peter parker #fic #dragonbabbles

[hello-nichya-here]

Ok, so what in your opinion is the WORST mistake that the showrunners for Game of Thrones made in terms of content, either it's addition or redaction?

WARNING: Looooooong post ahead

Themes are for eighth-grade book reports

This absurd quote by one of the showrunners explains why exactly the show fell appart. They wanted to make a story... without themes. Anyone with a minimally functioning brain will tell that this is impossible because every story, even the simplest and least complicated story there ever, has a theme. Even a nihilistic story has a theme "Nothing matters". Every. Story. Has. A. Theme.

But Game Of Thrones didn't, at least not after the writers ran out of books to adapt and did their own thing. Everything every character did was no longer to build a narrative, but to essentially act as click-bait. The focus was to make people keep watching, not on making any content that was worth watching.

The first four seasons had it's problems, just like the books had it's problems, but Martin's writting was so brilliant that it managed to stay good even while being handled by absolute clowns. The moment season four ended was the moment the show stopped being an adaptation and became it's own thing - and like I explained before, said thing wasn't a story.

Shock

Both the show and the books had MANY shocking, heart-breaking and downright horrifying scenes: Daenerys being raped by Drogo; Bran being pushed out the window after accidentally seeing the queen fucking her brother; the whole deal with Craster and his daughters; the Dotrakhi destroying Mirri's village and her revenge against them and Daenerys; Ned's death; Melisandre giving birth to a shadow baby that killed Renly; The Red Wedding; Jeoffrey's death; Tyrion killing his father; Theon being tortured by Ramsay...

The difference is there were REASONS behind the shocking scenes Martin created. Even when you look at things like rape and torture scenes and threats of rape/torture - Martin used those scenes to remind us that the world he created is an EXTREMELY dangerous and downright vile place, and that the characters are never truly safe, and that there are WAY worse things than just being killed.

Dumb & Dumber on the other hand, gaves us scenes like an evil, former man of the night's watch evily making an evil speech to his fellow evil men, evily drinking whine from a human skull while nameless women were being raped in the background - but little does he know that Jon Snow, the hero, is about to wreck his shit. It takes something that could realistically happen (and that did happen in the books) and takes it up to eleven because the writers think shock is the same as quality and that the audience is SO STUPID that they need to practically make the actor jump out of the TV, grab us by the shoulders and scream "I'M EVIL! I'M THE BIG BAD! ROOT FOR THE HERO TO KILL ME!"

Pretty much every bad guy became a parody of Jeoffrey, ironically enough because the writers took Jeoffrey too seriously. He was a cruel, sadistic character, who had WAY too much power - but he was also a spoiled baby whose reply to Tyrion bitch-slapping him wasn't a threat, but "I'M TELLING MOM!" Jeoffrey worked because he was only allowed to do his thing whenever smarter, more competent characters like Tyrion and Tywin where not around, meaning his actions, while inhumane, never reached the point of no longer being believable.

The horrible things that happened to the characters no longer felt "right". For instance, Sansa had just been taken to the Eerie by Little Finger, who has a weird complex in which he sees her both as the daughter he never had with Catelyn AND as a replacement for Catelyn, and she was starting to truly be a player instead of a pawn... and then the writers realized "Oh shit, we should have not cut the Jeyne Pool/Fake Arya' plot, that was important" and forced it on Sansa, making Little Finger hand her on a silver plater to Ramsay and turning her into a victim AGAIN, this time to a man that dramatically fights his enemies without a shirt own, practically saying "come at me bro"

Compare this to Ned's beheading, or Catelyn and Rob being betrayed and killed by the Freys. These moments were shocking and downright depressing - but they were earned. The writting was on the wall for anyone to see: Ned was at the mercy of Jeoffrey, and the Starks had given the Freys, who are notoriously disloyal, a reason to resent them. These twists felt completely natural, were the only logical way for the situation the characters were in to play out, AND they had consequences to plot instead of just making the audience gasp and then being forgotten about.

Plot armor

It's kind of ironic and almost tragic that the show that became famous for killing characters later became the worst type of high-stakes series, putting the characters in situations they could NOT survive, not even if a goddamn miracle happened, and having them live anyway. What's even worse is that it happened repeatedly. If I had to see Jon Snow almost die and then survive anyway one more fucking time I was going to lose my mind.

There's no bigger proof that there were just no consequences for the "main" characters anymore than watching the second, third, and fourth episodes of season either. The first sets up that this battle against the night king and his army of undead is likely going to kill the majority of them, if they're lucky... and then in the third we see the plot armor in all of it's "glory", and then in the forth we find out that the Dotrakhi, who had ALL been killed, actually still have half the numbers they had the night before, somehow. Even red-shirts weren't dying anymore.

DORNE

This disaster needed it's own session because HOLY SHIT, it's a miracle/tragedy that everyone didn't go "Fuck it, I'm never watching another episode of this stupid show."

The Dorne plot in the books isn't perfect, but what the show did to it was so fucking bad that I'm pretty sure the writers didn't even read the Dorne chapters in the books, they just looked at a wiki, wrote down the names of a few characters and then did their own shitty thing.

In the books, Doran Martel is a clever, dangerous man, who pretends to be harmless so people will understimate him and step right into his trap. In the show, Doran Martel... died. That's it. I can't remember anything else that happened to him. Add him to the list of "Brilliant characters that became stupid due to shitty writing", I'm sure Tyrion, Varys and Little Finger will love making him company.

The sand-snakes, one of the main driving force of that plot, were all distinct characters in the books, with their personalities, goals, methods and motivations - basically they were created by a writer who knew what he is was doing. In the show they were all the same "character" who could be perfectly described by that horrible, cringy, PAINFUL line one of them (I can't even remember which) said to Bron "You want a good girl, but you need the bad pussy" (Seriously, if that actress ever kills the show-runners as revenge for having to say that, she'll be 100% justifyed in doing so)

And we cannot forget the driving force behind that unwatchable shit show: Ellaria Sand. In the books, the death of Oberyn made her believe that revenge only leads to more blood-shed. In the show, his death enraged to the point of wanting to avenge him and his family, and she did this... by killing his family. If that doesn't explain how insane and stupid this plot-line was, I don't know what will.

Hype = Character assassination

Many shows are based around the conflict between the bad guys and the good guys. Game Of Thrones is not one of these shows. Or at least it wasn't. As they ran out of ideas, the writers started mutilating every single character until they could be label as "Good" or "Bad", regardless of what felt right to the story and to the point that there was nothing left of said characters. Stannis's actor, Stephen Dillane, straight up said that the only thing he got from being on the show was money and that his character's motivations and decisions were nonsense - ironically enough, that kind of brutal honesty means that the writers had THE perfect actor play Stannis, and wasted his fucking time.

Here's a list of the characters that fell victims to this horrible fate: Catelyn Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, Jon Snow, Melisandre, Stannis, Jorah, Daenerys (bonus points for being mutilated into being both a generic, shitty "hero" and a generic, shitty "villain") Greyworm, Rhaegar Targaryen, Lyanna Stark...

Pretty much the only character who became more complex in the show than she was in the books was Cersei. While her book self was never just a "Generic Evil Queen", the show version of her was far more sympathetic, which made the stories she was part of interesting. Too bad the writers ran out of ideas of what to do with her after season six and just left her by the window drinking whine until Dany showed up to kill her. Which brings us to...

Why is this happening?

Cersei was seen as a threat in the last two seasons based on nothing but the things she HAD done. Her story just ended the very second season six did, but since she was still alive despite being one of the bad guys she had to die... I guess. She (and by extention Jaime) joined the list of characters that had nothing to do, but were still around: Davos, Theon, Yara, Melisandre, Bron, Sam, Gendry, Bran (the last one being SO unnecessary that he was cut from season five and no one noticed)

To combat that issue, the writers gave characters "motivations" that made no sense. For exemple: Sandor Clegane. His only reason to be in the show was so he could kill his brother. The problem was that Gregor was already dead. He was a walking corpse. There was nothing left of the abusive brother Sandor once knew, meaning he had no reason to fight him, and that, to keep Sandor around, the writers should have come up something new (like the redemption that book fans have been waiting for, and that has a lot of backing evidence). You might as well have had HIM be the one to randomly fly out of nowhere and kill the night king despite having no connection to him.

And since we're talking about the night king... Arya was the one to kill him. Why? Because the writers ruined Jaime's redemption arc, meaning that the only fitting ending for him was to die with Cersei, and so Arya could not kill Cersei despite wanting to, having the ability to do, AND having heard a prophecy that said she'd "Shutting brown eyes, blue eyes, and green eyes forever", the last one being the only one she had not done AND applying to Cersei. But Dumb & Dumber admitted they had no plan for this, so now that they were at the last season, they needed to do something with it, and they retconned it to mean Arya would kill the night king...

But Arya killing him meant Jon had nothing to do, so Dany had to go mad so he could kill her. To "hint" at that, they ignored all the not at all subtle foreshadowing the previous season had of Dany and Jon having a kid, and they even showed her getting jealous that he was technically the true heir... even though that made no sense since they were going to rule together anyway, and even after Dany went full "Mad Queen" she ASKED HIM TO RULE WITH HER. But anyways, he kills her and becomes king...

Except he doesn't actually become king and him being a secret Targaryen has no effect in the plot, because Bran needed to become king so there'd be a reason for him to be alive, because his magical powers turned into a plot-device. A plot-device that wasn't used at any goddamn point. Seriously, the only thing as bad as Bran becoming king was Euron's existence - dude was THE most useless villain ever AND the worst Jeoffrey parody.

A darker story (literally)

I could not end this rant without bitching about this. What is the point of spending an ungodly amount of money on sets, costumes, make-up, special effects... and then using such poor lighting that no one can see what the fucking is going on?

Anyway, this disaster of a series was so absurd it should be used as an exemple of what NOT to do.

#asks #long post #got #game of thrones #asoiaf #a song of ice and fire #rape #violence #death

[gascon-en-exil]

A Game of Thrones 10th Anniversary Season Ranking: Part 2

Link to Part 1

Time for the bottom half of the list. The four seasons here will surprise no one, but the order might.

#5 Season 6

You can tell what I most what to talk about here...but there's an order to these things.

S6 actually has a bunch of great ideas, but they drown beneath the most slapdash plotting and character work the show has seen yet in order to set the stage for the narrower conflicts of the last two seasons. It's notorious for bringing back characters who haven't been seen in a season or longer only to kill them off (Balon Greyjoy, Osha, Hodor, the Blackfish, Rickon, Walder Frey) or awkwardly graft them back into the main plot (Sandor Clegane, Bran). There are plot threads that ought to be compelling but are too rushed in execution, like the siege of Riverrun, Littlefinger's hand in the Battle of the Bastards, or Daenerys's time back among the Dothraki and then finally getting the hell out of Meereen. Arya hits on the only interesting part of her two-season sojourn in Braavos - a stage play, of all things - only for it to stumble at the end with a disappointing offscreen death and some incomprehensible philosophy ahead of the start of her murder tour of Westeros. There's also so much cutting off the branches, enough to be conspicuous; the final shot of Daenerys leading an armada of about half the remaining cast she assembled partially offscreen says that better than anything else. Well, not anything....

Highlight: Without exaggeration, the opening of S6E10 is easily my favorite sequence in all of GoT. The staging, the music, the mounting suspense even as it becomes increasingly obvious what's about to happen, the twisted religious references particularly in Cersei's mock confession to Unella, Tommen throwing himself out a window because he can't deal with the reality of how terrible his mother is, how Cersei gives absolutely no fucks whatsoever about murdering hundreds of people at once in a calculated act of vengeance largely prompted by her own poorly thought out actions - I love it all. It's the single most masterfully-executed act of villainy in the whole show - Daenerys torching King's Landing probably has a higher body count, but the presentation there is all muddled - and if I had any doubts about Cersei being my favorite multi-season major character they were silenced in this moment. The explosion of the Sept doesn't sit perfectly with me, because I liked the Tyrells and because of what I said about deaths like theirs and Renly's in the previous post under S2, but I think that unease only cements the strength of this sequence. It's an overused phrase in fandom these days, but GoT at its best is all about moral greyness that gives its audience room for multilayered reactions. Cersei nuking the Sept and making herself the sole power in King's Landing, which in a sense is just a more overt example of the kind of character/plot consolidation elsewhere represented by Daenerys's armada, is one of those events that's impossible to approach from a single angle if you care about any of the characters involved. And hey, it's not in the books (yet, presumably), so unlike Ned's death or the Red Wedding the GoT showrunners can take the credit for realizing this one.

Favorite death: Even leaving aside the Sept and related deaths there's a lot of good ones to choose from in S6. Ramsey is cathartic but too gory for me, Osha's was a clever callback but a little delayed, it's hard to pin down specific deaths when Daenerys incinerates the khals, and Arya only gets half credit for Walder Frey and his sons when she saves the rest of the house for the opening of S7. I'm thinking Hodor, not so much because I enjoy his character or the manner of his death but because it's a clever bit of playing with language (that must have been hell to render in other languages for dubbing) wrapped up in some entertainingly murky consent issues and some closed time loop weirdness. It's all very...extra? Is that the word for it?

Least favorite death: Offscreen deaths continue to be mostly letdowns, in this case Blackfish and the Waif. Way to botch the ending of Arya's already near-pointless Braavos arc, guys. Speaking of Arya, this spot goes to Lady Crane, whom the Waif somehow kills with a stool or something. It's a dumb way to send off an entertaining minor character.

#6 Season 8

I swear that I'm not putting S8 this high solely because of Jonmund kind of sort of happening. I've never been very interested in either of them and the sex would be far too bear-on-otter to suit my pornographic preferences, but even so the choice to close out the series with them is hilarious.

I really don't need to elaborate on why S8 is down here; everyone who's ever watched the show has done as much in the nearly two years since it wrapped up. I do however need to explain why I've ranked not one but two seasons below it. My biggest argument here is that I don't believe it's fair to critique S8 for problems it inherited from earlier seasons. A non-comprehensive list:

Mad Queen Daenerys: unevenly built up beginning from S1 and continuing in some form through every following season

The questionable racial optics of Dany's army: also seeded as early as S1 and solidified by S3 with the Slaver's Bay arc

Cersei only succeeding because she makes stupid decisions and then lucks out until she doesn't: apparent from S1, directly lampshaded by Tywin in S3, fully on display with the Faith Militant arc of S5-6

Jaime not getting a redemption arc or falling in love with Brienne: evident with his repeated returns to Cersei throughout the show as one of the most consistent elements of his character, particularly in S4 and during the siege of Riverrun in S6

Tyrion grabbing the idiot ball/becoming a flat audience surrogate mouthpiece: started in S5 around the time the showrunners ran out of book material for him and wanted to make him more of a PoV character and his arc less of a downward spiral, although I've seen arguments that changes from the books involving his Tysha story and Shae set him on this trajectory even earlier

The hardening of Sansa's character: began in earnest in S4 and never let up from there

The strange ordering of antagonists: set down by S7's equally strange plot structure - the Night King had to come first with that setup

CleganeBowl and the dumber twists: from what I've heard the whole thing of writing around fans on the internet guessing plot twists started pretty much when the book content ended, so S5-6 maybe?

Yes, there's plenty to criticize about S8 on its own merits...but just as much that was merely the writers doing what they could at that point with deeply flawed material.

Highlight: This may sound cheesy, but the better parts of S8 are almost all the cinematic ones, whether that's E2 being a bottle episode with tons of poignant character send-offs before the big battle, a handful of deaths with actual satisfying weight like Jorah's and Theon's, and an epilogue that incorporates both closure for individuals and the broader uncertainty of messy socio-political systems that GoT has always been known for before working its way back to the Starks at the very end for some tidy bookending. Even imperfect moments like the Lannister twins' death and the resolution of Sansa's character felt weighty and appropriate based on what had come before.

Favorite death: Forget about the audio commentary attempting to flatten Cersei's character; Cersei and Jaime Lannister have an excellent end. Cersei especially, as the scenes of her stumbling her way down into the catacombs as the Red Keep crashes down around her really show off how her world is abruptly falling apart and how she retreats into her own self-interest at the end in spite of her demise being at least partially of her own doing. There's some stupid moments associated with these scenes, like Jaime dueling Euron to the death and CleganeBowl, but I can excuse those when the twins end up dying exactly where you'd expect them to: in each other's arms, in a ruined monument to their family's grand ambitions that, like Casterly Rock itself, was taken from another family.

Least favorite death: Quite a few dumb ones in S8 have become forever infamous. Missandei sticks out, and for me Varys too just as much because of how the writing pushes him to do the dumbest thing he could possibly do purely for the sake of killing him off ten minutes into the penultimate episode. But no one belongs here more than Daenerys Targaryen, killed at the height of a rushed and uncertain villain reveal by a man who takes advantage of their romantic history (who is also her family, because Targaryens) to stab her in a moment of vulnerability - pretty much only because another man tells him that Daenerys is the final boss. Narratively speaking that might be the case, but even so this is the end result of multiple seasons of middling-to-bad buildup. Not even Drogon burning the symbolism can salvage that. Also Fire Emblem: Three Houses did this scene and did it better.

#7 Season 5

...Yeah, we're going to have to go there.

Sansa's rape is not a plot point that personally touches me much. It's terribly framed in the moment and the followup in later seasons is inconsistent at best, but it's not a kind of trauma I can relate to. On the other hand, in the very same episode Loras is tried and imprisoned for homosexuality, and Margery faces the same punishment for lying for her brother. That hits much closer to home, not just for the homophobia but also for the culture war undertones of the not!French Tyrells persecuted by a not!Anglo fanatic who later reveals himself to be the in-universe equivalent of a Protestant. The trial is just one part of Cersei's shortsighted scheming, just as Sansa being married off to Ramsey is part of Littlefinger's, and both of them get their comeuppance in the end...but it's unsettling all the same. I especially hate what the Faith Militant arc does to King's Landing in S5, swiftly converting it from my favorite setting in GoT to a tense theocratic nightmare that only remains interesting to me because Cersei is consistently awesome. What's more, pretty much everything about S5 that isn't viscerally uncomfortable is dragged out and dull instead: the Dorne arc, Daenerys's second season in Meereen, Arya in Braavos, Stannis and co. at Castle Black. The most any of these storylines can hope for is some kind of bombastic finale, and while several of them deliver it's not enough to make up for what comes before, or how disappointing everything here builds from S4. S4 has Oberyn, S5 has the Sand Snakes - I think that sums up the contrast well.

Highlight: S5 does get stronger near the end. As much as his character annoys me I did like the High Sparrow revealing his pseudo-Protestant bent to Cersei just before he imprisons her, and there's a cathartic rawness to Cersei's walk of atonement where you can both feel her pain and humiliation and understand that she's getting exactly what she deserves (and this is what leads into the climax of S6, so it deserves points just for that). The swiftness of Stannis's fall renders his death and that of his family a bit hollow, but it's brutal and final and fittingly ignominious for a character with such grand ambitions but so little relevance to the larger story. The fighting pits of Meereen sequence is cinematic if nothing else, and even the resolution to the Dorne arc salvages the whole thing a tiny bit by playing into the retributive cycles of vengeance idea (and Myrcella knows about the twincest and doesn't care, aww - no idea why that stuck with me, but it's cute all the same). Oh, and Hardhome...it's alright. Not great, not crap, but alright.

Favorite death: I don't know why, but Theon tossing Myranda to her death is always funny to me. Maybe because it's so unexpected?

Least favorite death: Arya's execution of Meryn Trant is meant to be another one of the season's big finale moments, but the scene is graphic and goes on forever and I can't help but be grossed out. This is different from, say, Shireen's death, which is supposed to be painful to witness.

#8 Season 7

I can't tell if S7's low ranking is as self-explanatory as S8's or not. At least one recent retrospective on GoT's ruined legacy I've come across outright asserts that S7 is judged less harshly in light of how bad S8 was. If it were not immediately obvious by where I've placed each of them, I don't share that opinion.

Because S7 is just a mess, and the drop-off in quality is so much more painful here than it is anywhere else in the series except maybe from S4 to S5 (and that's more about S4 being as good as it is). The pacing ramps up to uncomfortable levels to match the shortened seasons, the structure pivots awkwardly halfway through from Daenerys vs. Cersei to Jon/Dany caring about ice zombies, said pivot relies largely on characters (mostly Tyrion) making a series of catastrophically stupid tactical decisions, and very few of the smaller set pieces land with any real impact as the show's focus narrows to its endgame conflict. As with S6 there are still some good ideas, but they're botched in execution. The conflict between Sansa and Arya matches their characters, but the leadup to that conflict ending with Littlefinger's execution is missing some key steps. Daenerys's diverse armada pitted against Cersei weaponizing the xenophobia of the people of King's Landing could have been interesting, but there's little room to explore that when Cersei keeps winning only because Tyrion has such a firm grip on the idiot ball and when Euron gets so much screentime he barely warrants. Speaking of Tyrion's idiot ball, does anyone like the heist film-esque ice zombie retrieval plotline? Its stupidity is matched only by its utter futility, because Cersei isn't trustworthy and nobody seems to ever get that.

And how could I forget Sam's shit montage? Sums up S7 perfectly, really. To think that that is part of the only extended length of time the show ever spends in the Reach....

Highlight: A handful of character moments save this season from being irredeemable garbage. As you can guess from my screencap choice, Olenna's final scene is one of them, even if Highgarden itself is given insultingly short shrift. S7 also manages what I thought was previously impossible in that it makes me care somewhat about Ellaria Sand, courtesy of the awful death Cersei plans for her and her remaining daughter. The other Sand Snakes are killed with their own weapons, which shows off Euron's demented creativity if nothing else. I like the entertainingly twisted choice to cut the Jon/Dany sex scene with the reveal that they're related. And, uh...the Jonmund ship tease kind of makes the zombie retrieval team bearable? I'm really grasping at straws here.

Favorite death: It's more about her final dialogue with Jaime than her actual death, but again I'm going to have to highlight Olenna Tyrell here for lack of better options. She drops the bombshell about Joffrey that the audience figured out almost as soon as it happened but still, makes it plain what I've been saying about how Jaime's arc has never really been about redemption, and is just about the only person to ever call Cersei out for that whole mass murder thing. There's a reason "I want her to know it was me" became a meme format.

Least favorite death: There aren't any glaringly bad deaths in S7, just mediocre or unremarkable ones. I still think the decision to have Arya finish off House Frey in the season's opening rather than along with their father at the end of S6 was a strange one that doesn't add much of dramatic value.

#Game of Thrones #GoT

[hopevalley]

I've actually enjoyed watching new episodes of the show for the first time in a LONG time! I thought Lucas being frustrated w/ Elizabeth was contrived and misplaced. Was his mom like "me & your father are separated btw i told elizabeth before you?" The bit felt off. But hey, these past three episodes have been fun & much-better written than anything last season. How much of this season's improvement over recent prior ones do you think is due to the season having a new showrunner?

As to Lucas and Elizabeth, I feel this is an issue with shows in general of this runtime and episode length. I like to compare WCtH with Road to Avonlea because both shows had short seasons and 40ish minute long episodes, were family shows, and featured ensemble casts. Avonlea had a similar issue with pacing in the occasional episode. I know I like to nitpick WCtH a lot about its writing, and I never shy from honest critique, but I really do think the hiccup with Lucas and Elizabeth in Ep3 was just a product of needing a few more minutes of screentime—preferably the start of Helen telling Lucas about the situation with his father, since it did feel like him knowing everything came out of almost nowhere. We knew Helen would have to talk to him, but we never really saw her resolve to do so, and I think we earned the emotional payoff of the truth coming out. (As an aside, Helen should have apologized for telling Lucas that Elizabeth knew as well as putting her in a position where she had to keep a secret from someone she cared about. Elizabeth being put in a bad position was awful enough, but then she went and told Lucas that Elizabeth was aware the whole time? Yiiiikesssss...)

I’m pretty confident that Helen told Lucas something like: “I have to tell you something important... Your father...left me...a few weeks ago. I need to apologize for keeping it from you but I didn’t know how to bring it up...” and then probably responded to something Lucas said with a comment about how she’d talked to Elizabeth about it, or Elizabeth suggested she be honest about the situation because Lucas would find out eventually and it would be better if it came directly from her. I could definitely see Helen accidentally being too honest in a situation where she’s nervous about admitting the truth to her own son. She’s probably extremely embarrassed and ashamed, and the episode doesn’t really go into how Helen feels about it. They just jump into talk about love and how it needs to be nurtured and nobody ever asks Helen if she actually loved/loves her husband, let alone if he was a good man/husband to her. 

Not getting a scene where Helen confesses the truth weakens the entire plotline. I’m hoping they’ll just keep improving on this specific aspect of the show, and consider getting rid of unnecessary scenes or entire unnecessary storylines in favor of stronger, more complete stories.

I know their hesitation is based on the idea that not everyone cares about (for example) Lucas, so focusing really hard on Lucas’s relationship with his mother might feel Bad, but the entire “chair” plotline with Rosemary and Lee was unnecessary, as were the longer Florence and Ned scenes. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoyed them! But if they cut those out, or mostly cut them, then there would have been enough screentime for a full scene showing Helen telling Lucas about the truth.

And Chris McNally is clearly an actor who can handle an emotional scene like that, so it would have turned out well, and been well-received by the fans...even the ones who aren’t rooting for Lucas. Because what people who watch this show want to see is...depth, I think. So many relationships feel tacked on or fake. I’ve seen improvement this season, but they could definitely do more to bolster the “community” feel of the show.

--

As to the quality of the season so far...

@trash-god​ and I were chatting earlier this week about how wild it is that we’re both, like, actively looking forward to the next episode regularly. Sure, it’s still pretty early in the season, but we’re 25% of the way through. If the writing stays this consistently decent I think we’ll have the best season in a long time on our hands!

It’s funny because if you lurk on the WCTH subreddit, you’ll see most of the fans there are bored of this season, but I disagree with them in a bit way; this season is DEFINITELY better-written and smoother. As to where to place the credit, I think it’s worth considering the last few seasons and what the writers/writing teams have struggled with.

Season 4: They knew something was going to happen with their lead man so they tried introducing other things and in many ways had success. There were some REALLY GOOD scenes in S4, but there were also scenes or arcs that had a lot of potential that just fell flat. For example, they had that plot where Frank and Abigail got annoyed with each other over the fact that he’s kind of still living (mentally) as a carefree bachelor, and even though it wasn’t as thorough as it should have been, it was a pretty good and realistic storyline. But then later in the season, they introduced Carson, and Frank is suspicious of him for almost no reason (or at least, no solid reason), and then actively is...like a BAD PERSON for NO REASON. Two completely different plots, one was good and felt natural, and the other was awful and cringey. We also have the AJ plotline in S4. It started out super good because it was one of those plots that was genuinely built up to over the course of several episodes. We find out the accountant that was going to testify has withdrawn their statement, then we find out they’ve disappeared and we have a name. Bill discusses it with Abigail and Frank both, multiple times. He thinks it’s a payoff and he’s determined to prove it so he starts poking around. Eventually he gets a lead and follows it, and it’s revealed that AJ is a woman. Bill is annoying. AJ is a liar. I think conceptually this is one of the more interesting plots they’ve cobbled together, but in execution it was lacking toward the end of the story. Bill spent two episodes fighting AJ’s attitude and in the end he just lets her go with a smile? That isn’t like Bill at all. There’s a scene or two missing to make that reaction make sense. They don’t interact enough to give us the idea that Bill *understands* her, let alone would be okay with her literally breaking out of his jail ON HIS WATCH.

Season 5: They had to write Jack out of the story and had to rush a wedding in to “appease” the fans. They also had to write Shane, Philip, Frank, and Dottie off the show in this season (Dottie because the actress deals with a chronic illness and can no longer do acting work—I want to say she has Lyme’s). So they cobble this like, awkward storyline to write Frank out that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. They put this dramatic story together for Philip (when him just moving away would have been better/more interesting), and they try to bring AJ back for another 2-part episode, which sounded fun until we actually had to watch the episodes. It was at this point that I thought, “The people writing this show...think they’re writing a movie script.” It’s not that I think AJ isn’t pushy or emotionally blunt, but it definitely came across in those episodes that they wrote her that way specifically because the plot wouldn’t work out if she wasn’t. She does unreasonable things. For some reason Bill still has feelings even though she’s done nothing to earn them. (And vice-versa; he’s just so mean to her...why would she be interested?) Everyone was like :O when the AJ episodes weren’t very well-received. But like, I didn’t want AJ to come back for a huge dramatic rattlesnake bite scene. I wanted her back to see her emotional struggle with facing prison. I wanted to really see where they’d go with her seeing Henry Gowen. She says she wants to start over in Hope Valley after prison, but like...WHY? The only people who are nice to her are Dottie and Abigail! And then after this super dramatic poorly written set of scenes that pretty much ensured AJ would never be seen on the show again (because her presence was actively mocked by a lot of fans) they actually kill off Jack and try to have a deeply emotional and thoughtful episode.

The worst part is that...the post-death episode was good. The actors were great. Then you look back at the dramatic rattlesnake stuff and you’re just like, “What went wrong here?”

Season 6: They decided they were going to introduce a love triangle, so they start doing that, but then Abigail’s character AS WELL AS CODY’S CHARACTER has to be cut from the show, so they edit those out. I still think doing this was the right thing—Abigail as a character was literally UNBEARABLE throughout most of S5—but I also can’t deny that it probably brought the cohesiveness and overall quality of the season down by a bit, particularly with Abigail acting as a buffer between Nathan/Lucas and Elizabeth. I have no way of knowing if they edited other characters into those roles (it’s possible Bill became a buffer between Nathan and Elizabeth, for example), but the editing still gave us some scenes that just didn’t...quite work, like the one where Elizabeth comforts Henry, or when Lee becomes Bill’s confidant regarding the position of judge being offered to him.

Season 7: In their attempt to make Lucas seem “mysterious” they accidentally made him come off almost creepy. More than once. They had some good ideas in this season, but the writing felt a bit choppy and isolated from episode to episode. Of course Nathan’s father was innocent. Of course it was resolved in five minutes. You could see they were trying REALLY hard for cohesiveness at certain points (Elizabeth tried talking to Henry about his attitude; Jesse mentioned Frank; Dottie was mentioned), but each episode felt very isolated from the others, almost as if most of them were written completely separately from the rest.

And you’ll notice in S4, 5, and 6, we kind of have a similar problem, where some plots feel like they were written or inserted into the story independent of the other plotlines. Frank breaking into Carson’s room at the saloon to snoop through his stuff was one of the worst things in the season (literally cringey—and not in that “character is doing something in character that is hard to watch” way, but rather, “this character would literally never do that” way). The AJ storyline in S5 felt like the person who wrote it watched AJ & Bill’s interactions in S4 and absorbed ONLY the fact that they bickered a bit (and then didn’t know how to write that dynamic in a pleasing way). Writing Abigail out of the show was for the best, but it forced cracks in the plotlines that weren’t necessarily filled, as well as gave us interactions that didn’t feel quite right.

And I think S7 was trying to get on the right track, but wrote episodes in a very disjointed, haphazard kind of manner. There were good things about it, yes, but there were also some very...bad things. 

And overall the problem almost universally was that it felt like some of the episodes/interactions were written as if they were part of a movie, as part of a one time deal, instead of something that would need to be carried forward. If you go back and look over some plotlines you can start to see where the writers...didn’t know how to write fanfiction. S5 AJ is not the same character as S4 AJ. She doesn’t feel the same. She’s not written with S4 AJ in mind. She’s not a natural version of the character that exists a year later in the storyline...and then she was given a storyline that they had to force the character to fit, instead of tailoring a storyline to match the character. And they continued this trend...over...and over...and over...and over.

And now, finally, it feels that they may actually have a head writer who knows how to write television, who knows that in order to write a successful television series, you have to go back and watch the early episodes. You have to see how the characters have evolved. You have to consider how they’ve gotten to where they are, and where they will LOGICALLY go from here based on things that happen to or around them.

I don’t want to state this as Fact too early, but I definitely think it’s a factor. We’ll see how the rest of the season plays out, but I hope the quality continues to be as good as it is.

#when calls the heart #answered mail #season 8 shenanigans #season 8 spoilers #analysis and meta discussion #long post #anonymously asked

[basketballandtextbooks]

Bat how do you feel after watching the special

There are multiple levels to my thoughts.

On a satire level, they bungled a lot of the information. They were trying to take an “all sides are stupid stance” on an issue where people are dying daily and there are actual medical reasons for one stance to be factually incorrect so taking an “all sides” stance is... fucking tone deaf. To be fair to them, I enjoyed the amount of meta that informed their episode about knowing that their episode was doing more harm than good and using Randy as a tool for that particular satire was a smart and effective mood. That said, it was a mixed message that promoted a lot of misinformation. While the meta parts were funny, lamp-shading how poor your satire is doesn’t actually make your satire good. It just means you’re lamp-shading the issue. It was disappointing because I had hoped for better as they frequently write good satire. Stan’s character journey was the only cohesive one throughout the episode and while it was a good one, there was so much of the episode that was tone deaf to the severity of this issue. While I think it’s valid to bring levity to the issue and I was hoping they would, they missed the mark by a long-shot. That said, they usually don’t do well with medical issues. The last time they bungled their satire this badly was the vaccination episode. And they infamously bungle literally every trans-related episode. There were aspects of the episode that were poignant, well thought out, and well executed, but the majority was an under-researched in-cohesive mess. Which to some extent I think that’s what they were aiming for because they view the pandemic as an in-cohesive mess. The issue is that one of the reasons that pandemic is such a pervasive issue (especially in the states) is the mass spread of misinformation so when they spread misinformation to criticize the spread of misinformation... it’s just stupid.

However on a character level I very much enjoyed the episode. It was yet another Randy focused episode and as I’ve expressed on a few occasions I just don’t find him funny. Oh no, he jizzed on the weed, that’s sooooo surprising. Honestly Randy is a very one-note character. He does something horrifying, people are horrified, he faces no consequences, rinse, repeat. That all established, I think it’s important character information that he cheated on Sharon twice in China with no guilt whatsoever. He only wanted to hide his crime because “my wife is a bitch”. Also considering he cheated with non-human entities, I think this is strong proof of Rowelie’s viability so take that as you will Rowelie shippers. Also the fact that people grow Randy mustache’s if they ingest his cum and Sharon had a mustache at the end... I sort of hate that Randy took that as proof that she smoked his weed. Now, even if she had smoked it his behavior still is completely and disgustingly inexcusable but also... everyone in South Park is openly smoking so she could have very easily gotten second hand Randy-stache. Or just given her husband a blow job. Also it’s interesting information that within universe Randy’s cum has mutagenic properties. Again for the Rowelie shippers: you could use this as an excuse as to how Towelie turns into a human, Randy’s cum mutated him. Also I think it’s likely that microwaving his balls could be what caused his radioactive jizz. Or one of the times he was experimented on by aliens. Or both. Altogether Randy was a repulsive bastard within the episode who I find boring at best BUT the amount of meta information that he introduced will be very useful to inform my theories. (Also again, the fact that he so easily and guilelessly cheats on Sharon tells me that he that he has done it a multitude of times. My theory is that after he gave Gerald a handy in the hot-tub and was forgiven he just never stopped, basically assuming the permission to do it once was broad permission to do it forever) (oh and second note: this is the second time within canon that Randy has poisoned people’s weed so uh... that’s fucked up)

Freaked out a lot about Jimbo dying, I’m really scared they’ll kill Jimbo but also since they already killed Ned I wonder if the two of them can be happy in the afterlife together because no one can convince me that Jimbo and Ned aren’t canon. Also Randy’s blatant racism and lack of empathy for Jimbo’s illness was really yikes. I dunno guys, I’ve always had a soft spot for Jimbo. He’s a stupid stereotypical red-neck but he had a sort of charm to him and I thought he was funny. I miss when him and Ned were regulars on the show.

CARTMAN DANCING AND SINGING WAS ACTUALLY THE CUTEST THING EVER ON THIS FUCKING EARTH, FIGHT ME I LOVE THIS STUPID SELFISH LITTLE CRETIN also it’s yet another episode to add to the list of “times Cartman shows he can grow into a better person” and list of “times Cartman seems to show a special soft spot for Stan”. Cartman does tend to listen more frequently when Stan asks and less frequently for literally anyone else. So the Stanman was strong in this one. Also really enjoyed the Stutters. While yes, Stan was completely using Butters as a tool to project his own feelings of unease I think it really says something that he chose Butters for that role. I think to some extent he felt that Butters might be feeling the same mortality-panic he was feeling (whether it was true or not) and that kinship he felt with Butters led him to feel that Butters was also feeling the way he did. He was panicked and he thought out of all his friends that Butters was the one who might share his feelings. I enjoy that sort of subtle connection between them and it’s been a consistent thread within the show that Butters and Stan just treat each other a little different than they do literally everyone else. It’s worth thinking about.

I think Stan was also at his limit because he was already suffering from isolation issues due to Tegridy Farms from before the pandemic. He’s always been a social boy and this brought him to the brink of what he could handle.

THEY SHOT TOKEN AND I SWEAR TO GOD YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW LOUD I WAS SCREAMING AT THE TV I THINK I PISSED OFF MY NEIGHBORS i fucking knew it was coming too. The fucking SECOND they shoved those fucking corrupt ass cops in the same room as Token.... I fucking feared for his life. They’ve killed off fairly major background characters before and killing Token would be... topical. I will make it my mission to personally destroy every fucking cop in South Park (Barbrady gets a pass... BARELY). I hate them all. I’ve hated them all for a long time but they murdered several children (including Kenny, the bastards) and they SHOT MY BOY TOKEN I WILL RIP OFF THEIR FUCKING ARMS SEE HOW WELL YOU CAN SHOOT THEN YOU TRASH BASTARDS

Nothing big Kenny happened this episode, insert sad fanboy noises

There were some strong Kyman moments. Cartman went to Kyle’s house for help at the beginning of the episode, obsessed over whether or not he’d be in the same room as Kyle, tried to vomit on Kyle, AND THEN KYLE FUCKING JUMPED HIM AND BEAT HIS ASS DOWN, FUCK ALL OF YOU WHO INCORRECTLY THINK DIFFERENT KYLE IS A FUCKING DOMINANT TOP, HE DOESN’T TAKE IT, HE GIVES IT

Adding that to my long list of “episodes where Kyle shows he isn’t a pushover, is very violent, and can easily kick Cartman’s bitch ass” because every so once in awhile I have to break out that list when someone insists upon how submissive Kyle is. Bitttttttccchhhhhh, you haven’t watched the show if you think that. My favorite kid doesn’t take your shit

Very interested in Red’s new canon last name (McArthur) but I’m also unsure about it because in the scene’s where it’s shown I couldn’t quite tell if it was actually Red or Powder. She kept being shown from odd angles and her hair looked a little shorter than normal. That said, I’m happy if it is her because I’ve been wanting a canon last name for Red for a long-ass time. Even presuming you go by the cousin’s headcanon for Craig and Red, there’s no guarantee they would have the same last name.

Let’s see, I think I had some other thoughts but those were the main points

OH PAUSE THE SCREEN WHEN THE PARENTS ARE ON ZOOM it’s really cute/funny what the usernames are. For example Annie’s mom is totally just using Annie’s account so she’s probably not very tech savvy. There’s actually a lot of minor character detail that you can infer from those screen-names.

Yeah those are my major thoughts: Randy is trash, nothing new, Cartman was ADORABLE and also lots of good meta for him (I have some hcs that one of the reasons he adored the social distancing so much isn’t because he hates human contact because we know from previous seasons that he’s a bit of a lonely boy, but he likes the social distancing explicitly because it gives him an excuse to reject other people before they can reject him), good stutters moments, good kyman moments, good stanman moments, there were some style moments if you squint? Kyle was one of the people Stan consulted about his feelings of unease but since it wasn’t just Kyle that he consulted it didn’t really feel like that was a special personal part of their relationship, moreso that he wanted Kyle to kiss his booboo and make it better. Although further proof that Kyle is the dom in that relationship. Kyle was agitated over the situation but overall rational, Stan was flipping the fuck out. Stan came to him submissive, scared, and asking for Kyle to make him feel better. Kyle remained calm and logical. I swear to god if I read one more cutesy-innocent Kyle post I might flip a table. Literally Kyle’s canonical self is RIGHT THERE

OH YEAH MY BUTTERS THOUGHTS there’s nothing really new here but it continues the trend of Butters being a self centered prick. (I love him but he is) Instead of even trying to understand the number of people dying or the gravity of the situation, he’s just upset and throwing tantrums because he doesn’t get to play at Build a Bear. And it’s made explicit in the writing that unlike Stan he isn’t struggling with the nebulous fear of death (probably brought on by his uncle getting sick). Butters is just bitter that he doesn’t get to have special things. Also Stan was the only one who tried even a little to save Butters from getting taken by the guards. No one else tried to stop or warn Butters. So again, very cute Stutters moment where Stan is overtly worried for Butters’ well-being even when he’s throwing a bratty tantrum. (I don’t know how anyone perceives Butters as an altruistic person, he’s a selfish twat. he’s a lovable selfish twat, like Cartman, but he’s still a selfish twat. and none of his shitty behavior in this episode was even remotely related to Cartman so you can’t connect it to him. Butters, on his own and without anyone else’s influence, does and acts like a shit-head). There is the excuse that he’s only ten but literally everyone in that cafeteria is only ten. But Butters is the only one kicking other people’s food because he didn’t get his special prize.

This all sounds like I hate Butters. I love Butters, warts and all, I just get really annoyed when fandom ignores his warts because his warts are PART OF THE REASON I LOVE BUTTERS. Also it’s like... blatantly and observably canon that he’s selfish.

I’m going to happily ruminate on Stan feeling a strong pang of protectiveness towards Butters though. That was quite illuminating.

#official ooc tag #official ask tag #timmytimmytomcats

[coconutknightshade]

Hii, I hope this is okay.. I get bullied a lot at school and I was wondering if you could write a fic where Flash is bullying Peter and they get into a fight and Tony gets called to the school? If not that's okay!

I can’t believe I posted this on Ao3 and forgot to post it from my drafts. Forgive me, my salt. (@blondsak - Literally cannot say forgive me these days without finishing it off completely so cheers for that my dude)

A/N:

Okay, not to be a fandom mom here, but as someone who went through it growing up, I can empathize. Which means I can also empathize with how overwhelming it can be. 

Because of this, I want to provide a bit of information about the 24/7 Crisis Text Line. Reaching out to this helpline is completely free (outside of your standard texting fees) and connects you to a trained volunteer/crisis counselor. It's very easy, and aims to be a stress free experience. If it helps, what's going to happen is - After your initial text, there will be a few automated messages before you're connected with a Crisis Counselor. This may take a few minutes, but you will be connected.

This Crisis Text Line isn't limited to any specific subject, and is prepared to assist with issues ranging from bullying to depression to the current pandemic. If you aren't comfortable texting, their site also provides additional resources and helpful information pertaining to several issues.

USA & Canada: Text HOME to 741741 UK: Text HOME to 85258 Ireland: Text HOME to 086 1800 280

/Mom-ing Over. On to the fic! 

***

Shove Off Word Count:  2,960

It's when Peter's face - chin then nose - collides with the floor that, in a haze of sleep, he thinks to himself, "something is very wrong."

Peter Parker does not simply fall out of bed.

With a grunt, he pushes himself from the floor just enough to roll onto his back. The ceiling is… Blurry? That can't be right. Their apartment building is older. The kind of old that means it was built when popcorn ceilings, for God only knows what reason, was stylish. But the thing is, Peter can barely make them out. Even scarier, everything is silent. He can't make out the sound of May rustling around in the other room- Hell, by the distinct absence of her heartbeat, Peter doesn't even know if she's home.

Everything is so quiet, and after nearly a year with enhanced everything, the sudden silence is deafening.

Peter wholeheartedly panics.

He lurches forward into a sitting position, subconsciously pressing his hands all across his chest and abdomen as if to make sure there is no physical harm, all the while glancing around for his phone. The clock reads 7:26, and a high pitch distressed sound leaves him.

"Fuck. May!"

---

It's when he steps into the classroom and sees everyone's eyes on him that he realizes it's going to be a shit day. He's late. Really late. And it's not entirely because he overslept. No. He's truly late because he and May spent twenty minutes trying to track down his old glasses… And another ten minutes fretting over his sudden loss of abilities.

"Hey Peter, I don't know if you've realized, but you're wearing glasses."

Peter groans as he slides into the seat next to Ned, pushing the aforementioned glasses further up his nose and flipping to the appropriate page in the textbook. When he glances up, Ned is staring at him expectantly.

"Yeah, fam, I know." There's no way Ned is going to leave it at that - not that Peter can blame him - and so continues with a pained sigh. "I don't have answers, Ned. I don't even know where to begin. I woke up this way, and I'm pretty sure it has something to do with whatever was in that dude's syringe the other night. Like, a virus or something."

"Holy shit." Ned drops a sympathetic hand to Peter's shoulder. "Do you think it's permanent?"

"I sure as shit hope not. I'm hoping Doctor Strange can take care of it. I just, ya know, need to get in touch with him on the D-L. I feel like I'm moving through the day behind a foggy glass window. It's like my senses are dialed down to almost nothing. I hate it."

"Oh no," Ned's voice is monotone, dry. "You're a pleb like the rest of us now."

Peter playfully rolls his eyes and elbows his best friend. "You know that's not what I meant."

"What did Mr. Stark say?"

Peter side-eyes Ned, already looking contrite.

"What did…? Ned, I can't tell him. I'm an Avenger -"

"No, you aren't."

"Don't get technical, Ned. It wounds me." This time Ned rolls his eyes with a grin. "Anyway. I can't tell Mr. Stark. It's embarrassing, ya know? Spider-Man isn't supposed to have asthma."

"Listen, Peter. You can't not tell Mr. Stark. He's Iron Man. You spend, like, every other weekend with him and sometimes you get to work as like, the B-Team. He'll want to know. Besides, we don't even know if it's permanent."

"Ned, this sucks." He drops his head into his hands.

---

It's when he's walking down the hallway, books held tight against his chest that things get really interesting. Yes, he's had nearly two asthma attacks since History, and for the first time in nearly two years, he's had zero appetite at lunch. But-

He and Ned are talking about how long he can reasonably wait before he absolutely has to tell Mr. Stark when someone bumps into him. Well, not so much bumps into him as shoves their shoulder against his as they pass, harsh enough that he loses his balance. His textbooks spill onto the floor, and he has to close his eyes to keep it together. Fucking Flash Thompson.

"Watch where you're going, Penis." Peter wants to wipe that smirk off his arrogant face. "Or are those glasses just some pathetic attempt at aesthetics?"

"Shove off, Flash. Bullying me won't suddenly make mommy love you."

Something in Flash's eyes spark, and it's as he's closing in on the three, maybe four feet between them, that Peter thinks, shit. He stumbles backwards as Flash firmly places his hands on Peter's chest and shoves. He's furious, and Peter swallows thickly. "You want to try that again, Parker?"

The threat of things turning physical looms just out of reach, and Peter automatically takes a step back. Self-control. As much as the thought of knocking Flash on his ass fills him with unadulterated glee, he can't do it. He knows he can't - That he has to be the bigger person. With his abilities -

Peter sucks in a breath, eyes scanning the crowd for his best friend. Ned, always on the same wavelength, is already wide-eyed and nodding somewhat emphatically. It's the adrenaline of the moment, an opportunity afforded to him that likely won't come around again. While Flash is usually all talk, the two of them have tied up on numerous occasions. From those scuffles, it's only ever Peter who walks away hurt. Because, yeah.

But it's different this time - This time Peter doesn't have an unfair advantage. No, this time he has an opportunity to push back. And, maybe, he can put a stop to it once and for all. It's with that in mind that Peter raises his chin and says, "You heard me."

Flash is still invading his personal bubble when he says, "At least I have a mommy."

This time it's Peter who shoves Flash away from him. "This again? You've got a real hard-on about me being an orphan. Or maybe… you just have a real hard-on for me. Is that it?"

"Fuck off, Parker. You wish! I've got better taste in partners than someone as sad and pathetic as you. A liar- News flash: Jerking off to Tony Stark doesn't make you his personal in-"

Peter's fist connects with Flash's nose, resulting in what has to be the most satisfying crunch he's ever heard in his life. He steps back and shakes his hand, shakes out the pain. It's positively electrifying, but he barely has time to let the euphoria sink in before he's being slammed up against the locker, Flash's hands fisted in his shirt. The blow has his glasses slipping off his face, but he can still see the blood dripping from Flash's nose and the fury in his eyes. He pulls Peter away from the locker and then shoves him back against it, looking satisfied when Peter's head connects with the hard metal.

"You're dead."

Peter doesn't respond, just grips Flash's wrists tightly and headbutts him without thought. It's enough to force Flash into releasing his hold before stumbling back with a surprised yelp, hand flying up to where their heads connected. Peter's ears are ringing, a headache already blossoming from both the headbutt and where it had been slammed into the locker.

"Oh, yeah? I'm shaking," he says through his teeth, crossing the distance between the two.

It's not long before they're rolling around on the ground, wailing on each other in a long-overdue brawl. When finally Peter is being pulled off the ground by Coach, he's got a split lip, a bloody nose, and what promises to be a very spectacular shiner. But God, does he feel good.

---

It's when Peter's sitting in the office with toilet paper up his left nostril and an icepack pressed to his face that the pain really begins to set it. His everything hurts: face, head, ribs. And for once, unless his spidey powers somehow miraculously return overnight, he's going to wear the injuries as a badge of honor. After a few years of letting Flash push him around - sometimes literally - knowing if he fought back, he'd hurt the kid, he finally had the chance to do something about it.

May is going to be pissed.

Except, it's not May that steps into the front office radiating anger, and when Peter spots Tony Stark, he pales, blood running cold. Forget May being pissed…

Peter Parker is fucked.

"Mr. Stark," his voice cracks. Tony won't even look at him, jaw set as he approaches the front desk.

"I'm here for Peter Parker." Tony's voice is as icy as Peter's skin suddenly feels. The receptionist, Sherry, stands frozen in place, mouth opening and closing in surprise. She must sense the tension rolling off him in waves, for she recovers quickly, clearing her throat and looking down at what Peter knows are the suspension forms in front of her.

"Peter was in an altercation with another student, both of whom were left… Well, looking like that." She nods in Peter's direction and finally Tony turns towards him, eyes sharp as he appraises the damage. Peter wilts, pointedly avoiding his mentor's gaze. "Per school policy, they'll face suspension. The length of which is at Principal Morita's discretion. He's currently with Mr. Thompson and his father."

Tony takes the forms handed to him and hesitates for a brief second. "Do you have somewhere private that I can speak with Peter?"

Maybe, if he's lucky, Peter will have a heart attack before Sherry answers. Unfortunately, no such luck. She nods and gestures towards a small conference room attached to the main office. Tony turns towards Peter, narrows his eyes, and jerks his head ever so slightly towards the door. God, Peter wants the floor to open and swallow him whole. Gingerly he crosses the office and into the conference room, not turning towards Tony until the door is shut.

The man is downright angry and, while Peter gets it, he also doesn't? Like, sure. Peter is a superhero. He's supposed to be above all of this, but he's also a teenager. They aren't out there in the streets, there are no Avenger - or even Spider-Man - level threats. So really, Tony hadn't even needed to show up. It's not like the man can be embarrassed by him. Not when he so easily could have circumvented any connection between the two of them by simply sending Happy in his place, or really any other possibility that didn't include his physical presence. It's not like anyone believed the legitimacy of Peter's internship anyway. Though, this definitely isn't his preferred route for validation.

Yeah, Peter thinks, a little self righteously. He's a teenager. And currently, he's a teenager without superpowers, and once Tony realizes that he'll cool off. It's not like the ferry instance- No lives were put at stake. He just needed to explain…

"You've got ten seconds, Kid."

"Listen, I know what you're thinking, but-"

"Ohh," Tony drags out, unimpressed, "I highly doubt that."

"No, I'm serious. But the thing is-"

"There is no thing, Peter! What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking-"

"No, Pete, wrong answer. You weren't thinking. If you had been thinking-"

"I thought I had ten seconds!" Peter interrupts angrily, tired of being interrupted himself. Tony's nostrils flare, but he stands straighter and crosses his arms over his chest expectantly.

"I am sick and tired of Flash Thompson walking around this school like he owns the place! He's a bully, Mr. Stark, and-"

"Spider-Man stands up against bullies. I get it Peter, but at school-"

"Ten seconds," Peter interrupts again, anger only deepening. He knows where Tony is going. He's Spider-Man, but at school, he's just Peter Parker- He has to be just Peter Parker. He can't walk around plain as day flexing his abilities and fighting ignorant bullies who don't know when to keep their mouth shut- Not when fighting back risks injuring them disproportionately.

"Your ten seconds are over, the adult is speaking now. I cannot believe-"

"I lost my abilities," Peter whisper-shouts through his teeth. He's not being heard. "I woke up without them, and it sucks, Mr. Stark. Real bad. But I'm not going to pass on the chance to stick up for myself and my friends. I'm done letting Flash Thompson bully me. I'm done letting him shove me around, and I'm done going home with bruises - no matter how temporary - just because I can't de-"

"Hold it," he cuts him off with a finger. The Finger, Peter has dubbed it. The zip it one. Peter holds his breath, waiting for Tony's reaction to this new information. He knows it's irrational, but can't entirely shake the feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach when his brain provides him with - When Tony realizes Spider-Man is gone, that you're just a kid without any abilities, it's all over. Without Spider-Man, you're just a bright kid from Queens.

That's the thing with insecurity - Knowing is one thing, but feeling is a whole other matter, usually acting without the brain as a pilot. Therefore, after a half-second preparing for his Doom and Gloom Worst Case Scenario, Peter is caught off guard when Tony merely continues with, "More bruises? Meaning, other fights?"

Peter frowns, confused that that's what Tony's chosen to focus on. He stumbles over his words when he says, "Well, no. I don't fight back- That would be wrong. But since ya know, like I said, I don't have my abilities, I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to do something about it."

Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. "Peter, why didn't you tell me that you were being bullied? We could have done something about it." Again, Tony not immediately acknowledging what Peter feels is the bigger issue here catches him further off guard, and he once again stumbles over his words.

"Because... I didn't think it was relevant?" His brows are furrowed, taking in Tony's agitated expression that doesn't seem to relate at all to the fact that he's lost his abilities. How is this not the more pressing issue? What's Tony's beef here?

"Didn't think it was- How is it not relevant, Kid? I ask you how school is going every time I see you, and you don't tell me you're being bullied? What gives?"

"I don't know? I didn't think you'd-" He cuts off, staring at his feet, feeling utterly stupid now for what he was about to say.

"You didn't think I would care." The hurt in his voice is subtle, but it's there. Peter's head shoots up, eyes wide.

"No! No, it's not that at all, Mr. Stark! It's just, you have so much going on right now, and you're taking care of so many things, ya know? And it makes sense that Spider-Man would fall in line with that, but you just have so much on your plate-"

"You didn't think I would have time for both Spider-Man and Peter Parker." It's a statement, not a question. Peter's gut sinks at the way Tony's voice is now thick with hurt. "Christ, Kid. Do you think I only care about Spider-Man? That I only prioritize Spider-Man?"

Peter purses his lips, eyes narrowing pensively as he searches for an answer that will dig him out of a hole he's unintentionally buried himself in without even knowing how deep of a hole it actually is.

"No?"

Tony drops down heavily into one of the chairs near the conference table. "Listen, Peter. I don't care about Spider-Man. I mean, I do, obviously. But you are my priority. If you decide to give it all up tomorrow, I'll still be here. Nothing would change - I'll still want you over, I'll still want to know how you're doing. And I will definitely want to know if you're being bullied."

"So, you're not mad that I got into a fight because it wouldn't have been a fair fight, you're-"

"I'm pissed because you were in a fight at all, Pete. I realize the irony here, but violence doesn't solve everything. Especially cases like this. I wish you would have talked to me. Or anyone. Even Happy would have been an option."

They sit in silence for a moment, Tony rubbing his forehead and Peter wringing his hands together.

"Mr. Stark?"

Tony sighs, raising his head. He looks exhausted now, and Peter winces, knowing just how deeply wrong he was.

"Yeah, Kid?"

"I'm being bullied," he begins quietly, hesitant almost as he meets Tony's gaze. "By this kid at school. He's been an ass to me for years, but it's gotten worse lately. Sometimes it gets a little physical, but not always. Usually, I'm able to shrug it off- Just Flash being Flash. But it's become harder. Especially when he targets Ned."

Tony eyes him with consideration, corners of his mouth twitching into what could have become a borderline amused, soft grin. He nods, almost as if he's come to some sort of decision, and pulls himself to his feet. "I'll take care of it, Pete."

At that, Peter can't help the slow spread of his own smile, expression now lightened into one of relief. It quickly falls though when Tony stretches an arm out towards him.

"C'mon, kid. Time to face the music." Peter groans as he steps towards Tony, who wraps an arm around his shoulders and guides him to the door. It dawns on him that after all of this, he'll still have to face May.

"And, about the other thing?" he whispers as they cross the threshold back into the office.

Tony stops, turns so that he's facing Peter head-on, hands still gripping his shoulders, when he says, "That one, we'll take care of together."

#irondad #irondad & spiderson #ironfamily #coconut writes #shove off #tony stark #peter parker

[kiki5283]

Safehouse

Pairing:  Bucky Barnes x Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 5789

Summary:  Post-Apocalypse Zombie AU. Reader and Bucky are part of the same group of survivors, but their relationship is contentious at best.  When they are sent on a supply run together, shit hits the fan and they are forced to seek shelter in a tiny safehouse in the woods.  Do they really dislike each other or is it another kind of tension that has them at each others’ throats?

Prompt: “Don’t underestimate me” / Locked in a Room Theme

A/N:  This is my submission for the HBC’s “Time to Fall” Challenge.  It’s also my first attempt at writing fanfic, so any feedback would be seriously appreciated.  Please be gentle, I’m a virgin.

It was mid-November, dark gray skies rolling endlessly over the tall trees and the brisk sting of the autumn wind presaging a harsh winter that threatened to break any day.  Y/N tilted her face up and inhaled, seeking the crisp scent of the season that she remembered from what felt like a lifetime ago, before the world went to shit.  For a second, she caught it - clean, cold, pure - until the omnipresent fetid scent of death and rot hit the back of her throat and she swallowed a gag.  Pushing ahead down the back road, she stepped on a pile of brown leaves with a satisfying crunch and was immediately met with an irritated huff on her right.

“Could you be any louder, Y/L/N?”

She flashed narrowed eyes toward the raspy voice and was met with an equally piercing glare from the pair of blue eyes currently scowling in her direction.  Grumpy bastard.

“Definitely, Barnes.  I can be quite loud if that’s what you’re into.”

Y/N shot Bucky a wicked smirk and winked salaciously.  He let out an irritated grunt and shook his head, but she could see his cheeks flush pink before he turned away.  For someone who acted like such a hardass all the time, Bucky was sure easy to embarrass and Y/N loved to get under his skin.  Maybe as payback for him being a standoffish prick or maybe because he looked adorable when he was flustered, but Y/N didn’t want to think too hard about the second option. When she had joined up with Bucky and his group four months ago, she had wanted to get to know him, hoped they could be friends. He had made it pretty clear from the outset that friendship was not in the cards.

Y/N had been holed up alone for several months in a small-town veterinary clinic when Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson had stumbled up to the front door looking for medical supplies.  Sam was near bleeding out from a stab wound to his thigh, courtesy of one of the murderous bandits that now stalked the countryside looking to kill anyone with food or supplies.  Y/N had pulled a rifle on them, ready to defend her makeshift safehouse, but something about the desperate earnestness in Steve’s face as he pleaded for help for his friend gave her pause.

It had been a long time since she had witnessed true camaraderie or even genuine care between people.  Life had become cheap and human interaction was characterized by selfishness and desperation - trust and goodwill were obsolete. That was what led Y/N to seek solitude in the first place.  But she sensed that the two men could be trusted, so she lowered her gun, took a chance, and let them inside.

In her other life, before 90% of the population turned into cannibalistic reanimated corpses, Y/N was a trauma nurse and her training had proved invaluable in the world in which she now found herself.  She cleaned and sutured Sam’s wound and, in exchange for saving his life, the men offered her a place to live at the fortified compound they called home.  Despite her innate cynicism,something inside Y/N trusted the two soldiers, so she packed up her stash of supplies and medications and set off to meet the group of survivors who would become like family to her.  

She’d hit it off right away with Tony, the engineering genius and his teenage proteges Peter, MJ, and sweet Ned.  Clint and Tasha, both former detectives, were slow to warm up, but once they were certain Y/N could be trusted, quickly became her closest friends within the group.  Steve and Sam treated Y/N like their long-lost sister from the moment she came to their rescue back at the clinic and they couldn’t wait to introduce her to Bucky, Steve’s childhood best friend and the third member of the group’s military contingent.  Bucky acted as a scout and would often leave for days at a time to track the hordes of dead that roamed the area or to gain intel on the movements of the local bandit gangs.  

Y/N had been at the compound for a week and was busy setting up a medical ward in a corner of the large common room when she was startled by a gruff inquiry.

“Who the fuck are you?”

She turned around, half irritated and half amused, then very nearly gasped at the sight of the tall, broad man leaning on the med cabinet.  Long dark hair, thick stubble covering a chiseled jawline, plump pink lips slightly parted, and luminous slate-blue irises surveying her skeptically.  His eyes widened for a fraction of a second as their gazes locked before the suspicious expression settled back over his features.  God damn, he is gorgeous.

“You must be Bucky. I’m Y/N Y/L/N.” She attempted to disarm him with a shy smile.

“Barnes, Y/N is our new medic.  She saved Wilson’s life, play nice with her,” Tony called from his workspace across the room.

Glancing back at Bucky, Y/N felt pinned by his penetrating stare as he looked her up and down. Suddenly, her heart was pounding in her throat and she felt heat creeping up her neck.

“What did you with the books that were here?” Y/N shifted uncomfortably.

“I put them on your bunk. Steve said you wouldn’t mind if I set up over here,” Bucky scoffed at that, looking down and away.

“Don’t touch my stuff, Y/L/N,”  He turned on his heel and stalked away.

“Charming, isn’t he? Don’t take it personally, Y/N, Iceman has a stick up his ass.  Maybe you can surgically remove it for us?” She let out a chuckle and smiled gratefully at Tony.  

That interaction had set the tone for Y/N and Bucky’s relationship - when he wasn’t avoiding her, he was being actively rude.  So, Y/N responded by busting his balls at every opportunity she could get, which was why they were less than thrilled to be partnered on the current supply run.

“No, no fucking way am I taking her with me on this, Steve.  It’s not happening,” Steve shook his head at his friend’s obstinacy.  He couldn’t understand Bucky’s issue with Y/N.   She was smart, resourceful, funny, and filled a crucial role with her medical training. She fit in seamlessly with the group and everyone else loved her.

“Buck, we are almost out of drugs and medical supplies.  Y/N is the only one who knows what we need.  This will be a quick run - you two will be back in a day or two,” Y/N gritted her teeth as she watched the two friends argue.  She was getting progressively angrier as they continued to talk about her like she wasn’t standing right there.

“She’s a liability, Steve.  She’ll get us both killed,” Bucky was nearly shouting.

At this point, Y/N was seething. She pulled her KA-BAR out of the holster strapped around her thigh and whipped it at Bucky.  It flew past his cheek, just nicking the top of his left ear and then lodged deeply in the wall behind him.

Steve and Bucky stared at her with eyes wide and mouths agape.  That shut him up.

“Don’t underestimate me, Barnes.  I’m leaving in 10, with or without you.”

SNAP!!

The loud noise from her left broke Y/N out of her disgruntled reverie and she froze as she felt an iron grip on her shoulder, holding her firmly in place. She didn’t dare breathe, but did venture a glance at Bucky who was staring intently into the copse of evergreens from where the noise had come.  

Then a low whine echoed from the trees. Y/N gripped her machete tighter and stepped free from the grip of Bucky’s metal prosthetic.

“Y/N,” he rasped and she shot him a warning look, holding her finger to her lips.  She crept forward, and she felt Bucky’s heat close behind her, although his movements were silent as always.  She used her blade to part the branches, revealing a young Siberian Husky with matted fur and a bloody paw hiding beneath the boughs of the fir.

“It’s okay. Don’t be scared,” she cooed, holding her hand out for the dog to scent.  The puppy’s tail flopped up and down and Y/N felt the warmth of a tongue tentatively reach out to touch her hand.

“That’s right.  We’re friends,” she could see a jagged shard of glass protruding from the animal’s front paw and she quickly shucked her pack off and reached inside to search through the meager supplies they had gathered from the burned out pharmacy that afternoon.  Y/N looked up to see Bucky staring at her with an inscrutable expression.

“I need your help.  I have to remove the glass.  Can you hold her and keep her calm?” Bucky nodded, dropped to his knees, and began stroking the dog and holding her firmly in his arms.  Y/N couldn’t stifle the smile that rose unbidden to her lips at the sight of the surly soldier murmuring soothing words in the injured animal’s ear.

She removed a pair of forceps, some antiseptic wash, and a roll of gauze from the pack.  She met Bucky’s eyes and they both gave a small nod.  He whispered reassuring words as Y/N gently lifted the Husky’s paw and used the forceps to ease the shard free.  The puppy let out a whimper, so Bucky held her tighter and pressed a gentle kiss to her head.  Y/N was shocked by the change in the soldier’s demeanor and felt her heart flutter a bit at his gentleness.  She quickly disinfected and dressed the wound.

It was getting dark and she was loathe to leave the injured dog alone in the woods.

She looked up and met Bucky’s eyes with a worried expression.

“There’s a cabin nearby.  We can take her there for the night,”  He picked up the puppy and began to walk north through the woods.  Y/N picked up her machete and followed as silently as she could.

When they arrived at the small hunting cabin, Bucky carefully placed the puppy in Y/N’s arms and walked the perimeter of the structure, making sure it was secure.  When he was satisfied, he dug inside his pack and produced a key to the padlock hanging from the door.  Clearly, this was one of the safehouses he used for his scouting missions.  Stepping inside, Y/N saw it was a single room with an old kitchen table, two chairs, a small bed, and, thankfully, a fireplace.  The temperature was dropping rapidly as the sun went down.  Bucky turned on a camping lantern sitting on the bedside table and pulled one of the blankets off the bed.  He folded it and set it next to the fireplace, looking up at Y/N.

“For the puppy.”  She nodded and knelt down, laying the dog on the fluffy quilt and stroking her head.

“Good girl. You’re safe here, princess.” Bucky cleared his throat and Y/N looked up to see him holding out a can of corned beef hash.

“She’s starving - give her this.  I need to go chop some wood.  I’ll be back soon.”  Y/N nodded and set about feeding the dog, who all but inhaled the meat as Y/N sat nearby watching with a bemused smile on her face.  She licked Y/N’s hand gratefully, yawned, lowered her head, and before long, began snoring softly.  Y/N leaned back against the hearth, wondering about Bucky’s uncharacteristically civil behavior and the soft side that the sweet puppy had brought out in him.

Bucky gripped a rusty hatchet in his right hand and clutched an empty potato sack in his left, padding toward the clearing to the east of the cabin where he had stored some logs during his last scouting trip.  The sun had now completely set and it felt close to freezing, if the throbbing ache in his left shoulder was anything to go by.  His thoughts drifted back to his companions waiting for him in the cabin and - against his will - his lips curled into a bashful grin.  

He had been so irritated when Steve had insisted that he and Y/N go on this supply run together.  Ever since she had arrived at the compound, he had resolutely tried to avoid her.  Being in her presence made him….anxious.  He hated the way his heart sped up and his stomach knotted when he looked at her. It almost made him feel like throwing up.  And she seemed to adore messing with him, to the delight of their friends, which infuriated him.  

But watching her treat the injured puppy so tenderly today had melted his frosty heart a bit.  It reminded him of what he didn’t like to think about - all the times he had seen her be sweet and caring in a way that made his chest ache uncomfortably.  He was afraid of what it meant.  There was no room in this hellscape for soft feelings or inevitably painful attachments.    

A biting wind whipped through the forest, sending a violent shiver down Bucky’s spine.  He picked up his pace - it was probably nearly as cold in the cabin as outside and he needed to get back to the girls with the firewood.   As he approached the meadow, he heard the familiar, disgusting gurgling sound that only meant one thing - the fucking dead were out.

“God damn zombies,” he swore under his breath.  

In the light of the moon he could see two of them, stumbling like drunks through the forest, hissing and spitting and snapping their rotting teeth.  He crept up behind the one closest to him, holding his breath to avoid the stench of their decaying bodies.  This one was smaller, female, had maybe been a teenager before she turned - he’d pick her off first then take out the bigger one.  Bucky‘s hatchet cleaved the zombie’s skull, splitting it like an overripe melon. A bit of brain matter splattered his face and he spit reflexively to keep from swallowing any of the rancid slime.

He pushed her body aside and charged toward the other figure that had turned and was now lumbering at him, arms raised and milky, dead eyes flashing grotesquely in the moonlight.  As Bucky’s arm swung back in preparation to attack, he felt the blade of the old weapon go flying behind him, leaving him armed only with the wooden handle.  He struck the dead man in the temple with the blunt instrument which promptly broke in half, but successfully stunned it for a split second.  He groaned in frustration, dropping the busted handle and punching the creature dead in the face with his metal fist.  There was a sick squelching crunch as he caved its face in.  He struck the pulpy, decayed mess again and again, bits of bone and tissue splattering his face and torso.  

Bucky’s chest was heaving and his heart was racing by the time he was able to stop himself.  He looked down at the utterly destroyed corpse at his feet. His stomach turned as the putrid smell hit him and he began to gag.  The only sound he could hear was his own blood thrumming in his ears as he struggled to regain his composure.  He didn’t notice the footsteps behind him, only snapping back to reality when he heard the sound of a gun cocking and felt the hard metal barrel press against the back of his head.

As the little Husky slept, Y/N was preparing a peace offering for Bucky.  She rifled through her pack, removing the best of the canned goods she had scavenged that day - a bottle of Dr. Pepper, a can of SPAM and some pumpkin pie filling that she hoped might coax out one of his rare smiles.  

The first time she had seen Bucky smile was at some stupid joke Sam had been telling the group at dinner one night.  His normally serious expression completely changed - his sparkly eyes crinkled, his nose scrunched up adorably, and his lips widened into a huge grin, revealing a row of perfect white teeth.  His face was so transformed by his smile that she couldn’t look away - it was like the sun coming out after a storm. She didn’t realize she was staring until he noticed and promptly resumed his usual grumpy cat expression.  She couldn’t help but feel a pang in her heart at that and had quickly excused herself from the table, feigning sleepiness.

Y/N sighed at the memory and hoped that things between them might be different moving forward.  She would try her best not to tease him about anything when he got back. She glanced out the window and checked her watch - she had expected him to be back by now. Next to the fireplace, the puppy suddenly raised her head and her ears perked up in alarm.  Y/N opened the front door and listened; faintly, she heard the sounds of a struggle.  Maybe it was just Bucky chopping wood, but something in her gut felt wrong.  Y/N grabbed her machete and headed out into the forest in the direction of the noises.

“Turn around slow. Hands on your head.  Don’t try anything or it’ll be your brains all over the ground next.” the voice drawled.

Bucky complied, calculating his next move.  Turning around, he came face to face with a large, heavy-jowled man.  He was paunchy, but looked strong and he had the advantage of a weapon, though Bucky knew if he caught him off guard, he could take him down.  He studied Bucky for a moment with beady eyes then leered, flashing a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth. Bandit scum.

“That your girl back at the cabin?” Bucky’s heart stopped for a minute. Y/N.

“She’s a cute little thing. I seen her back there making you dinner. So sweet. You shouldn’t leave a nice piece of ass alone in the woods like that where anyone could find her and have their way with her.” Bucky felt panic rising in his chest and he clenched his jaw to push it back down. He needed to keep calm if he was going to get out of this and get back to Y/N.

“If you laid a fucking hand on her, I swear…” Bucky growled

“Oh I haven’t, not yet. But I do intend to. I bet she screams real nice. Just had to get rid of you first.” he chuckled maliciously.

A hundred possible scenarios flashed through Bucky’s mind - desperate thoughts and realizations.  He didn’t care if he died fighting as long as he took the bandit down with him.  Anything to ensure that no harm came to Y/N.  He steeled himself and prepared to make his move.  I’m sorry, Y/N - I’m the one who might get us both killed.  I’m sorry for everything.

“Now get on your knees, pretty boy - don’t make this harder on yourself.” The bandit snarled, stepping forward and aiming at Bucky’s head.  

The soldier was about to spring forward, when his captor let out a grunt and Bucky watched as his predatory expression morphed into one of horrified surprise.  Bucky followed the bandit’s gaze down to the long blade sticking out of his barrel chest.  As the life drained from his eyes, the big man fell forward, revealing a pale and shocked looking Y/N.

For a moment, Bucky just stared at the woman in front of him in awe until he noticed she was shaking uncontrollably. Then he darted forward and gathered her into his arms, squeezing her tight to his chest.

“Doll...doll...are you alright? You - you saved me. Please honey, don’t cry. It’s okay, it’s okay Y/N. We’re safe now. We’re safe.  Let’s get you inside.”

He picked her up and cradled her in his arms, feeling her body shudder as she sobbed against him.  He all but ran toward the cabin, relief washing over him when he finally shut the door behind them.  The puppy yipped as he walked in the door, her tail wagging rapidly as she limped over to the bed where Bucky was setting Y/N down gently.  She tilted her head at the weeping woman then looked to Bucky as if in concern before curling up under the bed frame at his feet.

Bucky knew that Y/N had killed her share of the undead like all survivors, but based on her reaction, he could tell that this was the first time she had caused the death of someone living.  His heart broke for her - Y/N was a healer and thanks to his carelessness, she was forced to stab a man to defend Bucky.

He reached out and stroked her hair and wiped the tears from her cheeks, but they continued to flow as she stared down at the mattress. Her skin felt like ice, so Bucky pulled the blankets up around her.

“Lay down sweetheart, you’re freezing.  Let me warm you up.”  Without firewood, all he had to offer Y/N was body heat.  There was no way in Hell he was leaving her alone again.  With the two of them in the small bed and the extra blankets, they’d be safe from hypothermia for the night.  He removed his jacket and his sweater, both of which were covered in blood and gore, leaving him in just a soft white t-shirt.

Y/N moved over to the far side of the mattress to make room for Bucky and he laid down and opened his arms hesitantly, unsure how she might react to the invitation.  She sniffled once, looked up at him, and to his surprise, pressed herself tightly against his chest, tucking her head under his chin.  He wrapped his arms around her tightly, unable to deny the deep contentment he felt from holding her close.

He didn’t try to fight the fluttering in his belly or the pounding of his heart now.  He couldn’t even remember why he had tried to keep her at a distance in the first place.  She was kind and brave and beautiful.  He had been such an asshole to her and she had always responded with good-natured ribbing and sass.  He knew that she needed someone right now and he was the only one available, but he hoped things might be different after today. He needed to make her see that he was sorry for the way he had acted and that he cared for her very much.

She continued to cry as Bucky held her and rubbed her back, whispering comforting words and placing gentle kisses on the crown of her head.  Eventually she pulled her head back and met Bucky’s eyes.

“Bucky, I - I murdered him -”

“No! No,sweetheart. He was a bad man. He was going to hurt you - he was about to shoot me.  You didn’t want to do that, you had to. Listen to me, Y/N, you protected me. You saved us.  You were so brave. I know it was awful, but I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there. Thank you darlin,” Y/N smiled tightly up at him, eyes still shining with tears.

She looked like she was about to say something else, but then she closed her eyes and nestled back into Bucky’s chest.

“Night, Buck,” He smiled at the nickname.

“Goodnight, Doll. Get some sleep, I’ve got you,” Bucky sat in the dark, listening to her soft breaths and the puppy’s tranquil snores until he finally drifted off sometime after midnight.

Y/N began to stir before the sun was up, enveloped in an unfamiliar sensation of warmth and security.  The horrors of the night before seemed far away as she nestled deeper into the pillow and the embrace of the strong arms wrapped around her from behind..

Oh. Bucky.

She remembered how tightly he had held her as she shivered and wept, offering calming words and pressing feather-light kisses into her hair.  His actions had been so far removed from the grouchy, sullen behavior she was used to, Y/N had to wonder if she had imagined it in some kind of trauma-induced dissociation.  Her gut twisted at the thought and she realized how desperately she wanted it all to be real.  

She pulled his arms more firmly around her around her, relishing the warm press of his body along her back.  She felt safe for the first time since the world ended.  Bucky hummed contentedly in his sleep, wrapping his leg around hers and pressing even closer.  Y/N’s breath caught in her throat when she felt something long and hard and...big nestle between her cheeks.  

OH. Bucky.

His hips canted forward and he began to grind softly against her.  Y/N remained stock-still as her brain stopped working and heat began to pool between her legs.  It felt...so...good.  Y/N hadn’t been with anyone in so long, well before the outbreak.  Now the simple sensation of him rubbing against her had her paralyzed and nearly panting. Shit.

She carefully extricated herself from Bucky’s tangled limbs, hoping to avoid an awkward situation.  He was asleep after all - he didn’t know what he was doing - and she was enjoying the feel of him way too much.  She needed to collect herself, so she crept towards the door, clicking her tongue softly to signal the puppy to follow her outside.

While the little dog relieved herself, Y/N went about collecting fallen branches and twigs for a fire.  There was still a chill in the air and she hoped to make Bucky a hot breakfast - they hadn’t eaten anything but a cold can of baked beans in the last 24 hours.  She sang softly to herself as she roamed further into the woods, her arms now nearly full of firewood.  As she bent down to grab one last handful of kindling, she was surprised to hear the Husky growl ahead of her.  The puppy was standing at the edge of the woods, looking out into the clearing. A chill ran up Y/N’s spine as she realized she had wandered directly toward the place where she had found the man holding Bucky at gunpoint last night.

She stepped forward, bracing herself for the sight of the bandit’s corpse, machete sticking grotesquely out of his torso.  What she saw was a million times worse.

Seeping through the trees on the other side of the clearing, was a sea of undead.  Staggering forward blindly, moans and gurgles getting louder with each passing second, the horde began to swarm the meadow.  Y/N was frozen in fear until she heard a whimper at her feet and that spurred her into action.  She dropped the firewood, scooped the still-injured pup into her arms, and bolted for the cabin.

Bucky woke with a smile stretched across his face, heart light despite the trauma of the night before.  He reached out to pull Y/N closer, then quickly realized he was alone in the bed.  Alone with a raging case of morning wood.  Shit. Way to go, she probably thinks you’re a fucking creep.

He sat up and looked around the empty cabin, panic setting in.  Then he realized the puppy was gone too - Y/N probably took her outside. She wouldn’t just leave.  He sat up and rubbed his eyes.  His gaze fell on the table - SPAM, Dr. Pepper, and - a nostalgic favorite - pumpkin pie filling.  In the current circumstances, this qualified as a 5-star meal.  She really was making me dinner.

He didn’t even try to suppress the shit eating grin elicited by that thought.  Bucky stood, intending to head outside to gather some wood so he could cook breakfast for them, when the door flew open with a loud bang.  Y/N rushed inside with their puppy in her arms, a look of pure panic on her face.  She immediately set the dog down and turned to bolt the door.  Bucky could see her chest heaving.

“Doll, what’s going on?” She turned and ran into his arms, clutching at him desperately.

“Bu-Bucky.  In the clearing. A horde coming this way,” she sputtered, eyes wide with dread.

“It’s okay, Y/N.  I fortified this cabin myself - we are in the safest place possible besides the compound.  Let me just reinforce the windows.  Sit down, sweetheart.  Let me take care of this,” He looked deep in her eyes.

“We’re safe, don’t worry darlin.”

Y/N all but collapsed on the bed, gathering the puppy to her chest and watching Bucky fit steel panels around the window panes.  She exhaled in relief, trusting his promise of safety.

“Babydoll, are you hungry? Let me feed you.”

Y/N looked up at Bucky, tears of gratitude threatening to spill, and nodded.

“Okay sweetheart, I gotchu.”

Bucky had pulled his chair around the table so he sat right next to Y/N, his hand on her knee. They had polished off the SPAM and he was now offering her pumpkin pie by the spoonful.  She looked up at him, blushing sweetly.

“Buck, you don’t need to feed-”

“I want to,” She felt his eyes all over her.  Looking down, she smiled to herself.  Okay, then.

“Alright Barnes, you wanna taste?” she smirked and his eyes widened when he realized what she was asking.

“Yes,” he breathed before capturing her lips between his.  She tasted like cinnamon and ginger and he immediately felt his blood rush between his thighs.

Y/N moaned softly and turned her head to kiss along his jawline and down his throat, biting and sucking until she heard him whimper her name.

“Y/N...I want you..so, so much.  Ca - can I take you to bed, sweetheart?...Please?”

She gazed up at his blue eyes full of sincerity and raw desire, shuddering with her own need.

“Yes,” And then he graced her with that sunshine smile and Y/N forgot about the horde, the bandits, the entire world outside the cabin.  There was no one but her and Bucky.

He pressed her into the mattress, unbuttoning her shirt and looking at her reverently.

“So beautiful..” he whispered, more to himself than to her.  Then he stripped off his t-shirt and it was Y/N’s turn to marvel at the beauty of the man before her - all rippling muscle and shining metal.  She couldn’t look away - he was perfect.

“Oh, Bucky...you are...so...gorgeous,” She bit her lip and traced her fingers down his chest, mesmerized.

He blushed deeply, closing his eyes.  Bucky wasn’t used to being seen in this way and he almost felt choked up at the reverence with which she was looking at him.  He kissed her deeply, tasting her again and thrilling as her tongue wrapped around his.  His nerves were sparking and he was sure Y/N could hear the way his heart was pounding.  And he wanted her to hear.  

He locked eyes with her and stroked his hands down to the waistband of her jeans.

“Can I taste you?” She stared right into his soul and nodded slowly.  His heart soared.

In seconds, her pants were on the floor and his hands were wrapped around her hips, pulling her close.  He inhaled deeply, savoring her scent, before burying his face between her thighs.  Y/N keened and shook - she was overwhelmed by him.  Fuck, he’s so good at this.

Within minutes, the sensations became almost more than she could bear.  Her legs were trembling and when he slid two fingers inside her, she came with a cry and he gratefully lapped it up, moaning praises into her skin.

“Bucky, I need you inside me, please,” she begged.

“I got you, love, I want to make you feel so good,”  He climbed up her body and ran his tongue along her neck, feeling her shake beneath him.  Bucky grasped Y/N’s hands in his and pinned them above her head as he glided inside her.  They both gasped as he stretched and filled her.  

“You okay, baby girl? You’re so tight,”  Y/n responded by rolling her hips and Bucky nearly blacked out at the sensation.

“Fuck me, Bucky.  Feels so good,”

He pressed his forehead to hers and started to move. Y/N whimpered in his ear as rocked against her over and over.  Before long, they were both moaning and pleading with each other. Y/n was overcome, physically and emotionally - nothing existed for her outside of Bucky and his passionate devotion.  He bit down on her neck and sucked and she came with a cry, pulsing around him.  Y/N pulled his hair, causing him to growl and then follow her over the edge, repeating her name over and over like a mantra.

For several minutes, they just laid together, breathing hard and savoring the heady sensation of their bodies intertwined.

“Doll?” She looked up into those magnetic blue eyes, feeling lost and found at the same time.

“Yeah, Buck?”

“I’m in love with you,”  She was speechless - her answer stuck in her throat and tears of happiness stung her eyes.

He held her tight and looked her beautiful face up and down, like he was memorizing it.

“Bucky, I-”

BANG! BANG! BANG!

“Buck? Y/N? You guys in there?” Steve called.

“Horde’s gone , lovebirds. Your ride’s here”

“Sam! Don’t embarrass them! We’ll be in the car, come on out when you’re ready”

“We’re the ones who should be embarrassed, Rogers.  I didn’t need to hear that.  Can’t say I’m surprised though..”

Bucky buried his face in Y/N’s shoulder as they both laughed

“Guess we don’t have to worry about breaking the news to the team then” she giggled.

“Guess not, Doll.  C’mon, let’s go home,”

They dressed quickly, grabbed their packs, and Bucky picked up their puppy who had been napping by the fireplace.

“Sorry for the show, pretty girl.” Y/n smirked, ruffling the Husky’s ears.

They locked up the safehouse and slid in the backseat of Sam’s SUV. The two soldiers turned around, eyebrows raised at the sight of Y/N and Bucky, sandwiched together, heads touching, looking adoringly at the dog sprawled across their laps.

“And who is this?” Sam asked.

“This is Princess, our sweet baby,” Y/N looked at Bucky, twinkling eyes full of affection.

“Yup,” he beamed, wrapping his arm around his girls and hardly believing his luck.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #hbc time to fall challenge #zombie au

[jaimetheexplorer]

PROBABILITY DISTORTION - Or why Jaime Lannister is less likely to die than you think (part 3)

Once the narrative arcs and foreshadowing analysis pokes enough holes in the “inevitable death” prediction, the arguments to support it usually tend to turn to non-text-based points such as writing style and tropes. Most of these arguments generally revolve around the idea that GRRM is evil and kills characters off to traumatize his readers, and that Jaime’s story is a redemption arc and therefore will end in a redemptive death like all redemption arcs do. These arguments, however, do not really hold much water once you take into account that GRRM actually isn’t the sadist people like to think he is (including sometimes George himself, because it makes for good PR), and that one thing this series prides itself on is trope and expectations subversion.  

GRRM is a realist, not a sadist

“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”

Of all the quotes that have come out of the show, this, right here, is the one I have come to hate the most. Not only because it is often irritatingly used as an empty argument against anything that suggests a non-tragic ending for a character (especially one like Jaime), but it’s thrown around as if it’s the most representative of ASOIAF/GoT ever. In part, I get why. It’s catchy, and the series has broken a lot of boundaries by actually killing people off, putting them through terrible ordeals, maiming and traumatising some for life. It gained its notoriety for killing off the perceived main character of the story at very beginning, and for the shocking bloodbath of “good guys” that was the Red Wedding. But I feel there’s a tendency, amongst fans and journalists alike, to exaggerate how gloomy and sadistic the story/GRRM really is, relative to the context it is set in (medieval war time).

GRRM often explained the reason why he kills characters off as fundamentally being down to two reasons: wanting to depict war realistically and annoyance at stories where the heroes are untouchable and survive, unscathed, any situation (which ties into the topic of trope subversion, too - more on this later).

“You can’t write about war and violence without having death. If you want to be honest it should affect your main characters. We’ve all read this story a million times when a bunch of heroes set out on adventure and [...] the only ones who die are extras. That’s such a cheat. It doesn’t happen that way.” (GRRM)

GRRM is a realist, not a sadist. And I would argue he’s not as bloodthirsty as people perceive him to be, when it comes to main characters. If you think about it, only *two* POV characters have been killed off so far: Ned and Cat. Jon, the other main POV to be killed off in the books, we know will be resurrected thanks to the show. And just as GRRM inserts POVs for a reason (when he needs that new perspective, or when a character’s story needs to be told), there’s a similar reason in his killing too. It usually comes when the characters have fulfilled their purpose in the story, or if their death is a plot point for someone else’s. In Ned and Cat’s case, they die after falling into Littlefinger’s scheme that pits Lannisters against the Starks, kicking off the War of the Five Kings. Ned’s purpose was to discover the true paternity of Robert’s children and Cat dies after tasking Brienne to bring Jaime to King’s Landing in return for her daughters (which sets off a massive domino effect of plotlines). They also both needed to die in order to break down centralized parenthood in the Stark family so that the Stark children could go their separate ways and have their own stories and development.

While POV and non-POV deaths alike can be shocking and/or heartbreaking, they aren’t thrown in there just to fill some death or shock quota for no other rhyme nor reason. This is not The Walking Dead. And “realism” also means a ton of other options that have nothing to do with death. It’s not just an issue of “death vs. survival”, to post another excerpt from the quote above:

“They go into battle and their best friend dies or they get horribly wounded. They lose their leg or death comes at them unexpectedly.”

Having a loved one die, or horrible injuries are also part of realism for GRRM, not just death. Does that “lose their leg” sound familiar? Thought so. So saying that Jaime (or any character) will most likely get killed anyway because GRRM is a sadist is not only a weak argument, but a big misrepresentation of  GRRM’s writing style. Jaime, who has already added his contribution to the “realism” jar by losing his hand, might die if and when he has fulfilled his purpose in the story, but not because “GRRM is a jerk”. 

Subversions

Perhaps a stronger case for Jaime’s survival odds is the fact that, if there is one thing this series loves to do, it’s subverting tropes and expectations, and, alongside Ned’s death and the Red Wedding, Jaime is perhaps one of the most famous examples of how this story does character trope subversion so well. 

Right out of the gate, it wants us to hate him, because he’s arrogant, ruthless and incestuous, he betrayed and murdered the King he was sworn to protect and he pushed a child out of a window. From book/season 3 onwards, that initial perception is slowly challenged and eventually subverted, especially throughout his journey with Brienne and with the revelation of why he killed the Mad King, but also in how he takes risks to protect Tyrion and Sansa from his own family. In the show this is particularly fun, because once you go back to earlier seasons, you notice several subtle moments of writing and acting where the seeds of these revelations were already being planted. While I understand he is not everyone’s cup of tea and some hate him just as much as day one, I think that we can all agree at least that this is what the story is aiming to do, even if not all readers/viewers embrace it. And that’s the most important thing when making a point about authorial intent.

I already mentioned when discussing narrative arcs, that the difference between the classic redemptive character trope and Jaime is that, in Jaime’s case, the story is exploring the process of redemption, rather than seeing redemption as the last minute goal, and how that makes a classic redemptive death less likely. But there is another difference with the traditional trope that makes Jaime not only subvert expectations but, partly, also subvert the redemption trope itself. And that is that many (not all, but many) of the things we are initially supposed to hate Jaime for, actually turn to be misconceptions or prejudices from other characters’ perspective (a huge point of having a POV structure). While Jaime undoubtedly goes through a transformation through the story, for many things it is our initial perception of Jaime is meant to change, not Jaime, the character (again, POV structure!). Looking at Jaime as the trope of the “bad man who is turned good by the good woman” (i.e. Brienne) is a complete misread of the character. Brienne exists to reawaken what Jaime used to be like in his past/can potentially still be, not to transform him into something else (it is Beauty and the Beast they are based on, after all - the beast used to be a prince, and gets turned back into that prince). Therefore applying the outcome of the traditional tropes to Jaime (i.e. a redemptive death) makes little sense when Jaime is meant to be a subversion of that trope to begin with, if not even a different type of character altogether.

Another trope worth considering is the “all the bad guys will die” trope.

Not only this view fails to acknowledge that most characters and families in this series (and its extended universe - see the Targaryen as portrayed in Dunk & Egg) aren’t 100% “good” or 100% “bad”, they sit on a spectrum, but even if you wanted to see a specific character or family as “evil”, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will die or go extinct. We can go back to his quotes about why he kills off characters to see how “bad guys will die” is also a trope he might be interested in subverting.

“It’s really irritating when you open a book, and 10 pages into it you know that the hero you met on page one or two is gonna come through unscathed, because he’s the hero. This is completely unreal, and I don’t like it.” (GRRM)

This quote above can be looked at in reverse too:  just as it is annoying to open a book and know 10 pages in that the hero will survive (and GRRM subverted that trope with Ned), it is annoying to know 10 pages in that the villain will die (and Ned’s villain counterpart in book one is Jaime), or that the family that is perceived as the “evil family” (i.e. the Lannisters) will go extinct in the end (let alone if it’s with the exception of the “good” Lannister, Tyrion, playing right into the trope of both “good vs bad” guys and “good vs bad families”, since the only Lannister allowed to survive is the “good” one).

So even if one doesn’t want to buy into Jaime’s redemption and trope subversion, and wants to hold onto the book/season one interpretation that he’s an awful human being, if the author(s) intend for Jaime to be a subversion of the redemption death trope, or to subvert the “all bad guys must die” trope (or both), then his odds of death or survival are not really influenced by whether the audience agrees with that or not.

GRRM is both a gardener AND an architect

As I wrap up my 3-parter, one final aspect of GRRM’s style is important to note, because it ties it all together.

GRRM says he is a “gardener”, who likes to plant seeds and see how they grow. So one might argue that there is no guarantee that just because he set off in book one to make Jaime the subversion of the villain who must die (through redemption), he will never decide at some point that, actually, a death will be a fitting and satisfying conclusion.

However, it is important to remember that when he talks about being a gardener he means it in the sense that he finds knowing the *details* of how a story will develop to be a turn off for his inspiration and motivation, not that he does not plan anything ahead and has no idea where the story is going.

“For me, writing a book is like a long journey, and like any trip, I know the point where I start the journey and the point I wanna get to. I also know a little bit of the route, such as the main cities in which I wanna stop by, and even a few monuments I would like to visit. What I do not know is where I will eat the first night or which songs will be on the radio. I discover all that details while I am writing the book and that’s the reason why I go so slowly: because sometimes I have to go back to change certain things.” (GRRM)

While he creates the story as he goes along, he does work with the broad strokes of the endgame and the final fates of the main characters in mind:

"I know the broad strokes, and I've known the broad strokes since 1991. I know who's going to be on the Iron Throne. I know who's gonna win some of the battles, I know the major characters, who's gonna die and how they're gonna die, and who's gonna get married and all that. The major characters. Of course along the way I made up a lot of minor characters, you know, I, uhm...Did I know in 1991 how Bronn, what was gonna happen to Bronn? No, I didn't even know there'd be a guy named Bronn. [...] So a lot of the minor characters I'm still discovering along the way. But the mains-"

[question if he knows Arya's and Jon's fates]

"Tyrion, Arya, Jon, Sansa, you know, all of the Stark kids, and the major Lannisters, yeah." (GRRM)

Furthermore, he absolutely loves to drop cues, hints and foreshadowing to future events and plot twists, something that would be completely impossible for him to do if he were writing with no clear ending and direction in sight. So he sets out to make sure his story adds up and makes sense, even if it means having to give up the surprise factor, either because someone already figured it out (e.g. R+L=J):

“The fans use to come up with theories; lots of them are just speculative but some of them are in the right way. [...] They say: “Oh God, the butler did it!”, to use an example of a mystery novel. Then, you think: “I have to change the ending! The maiden would be the criminal!” To my mind that way is a disaster because [...] the books are full of clues that point to the butler doing it and help you to figure up the butler did it, but if you change the ending to point the maiden, the clues make no sense anymore; they are wrong or are lies, and I am not a liar.” (GRRM)

or because the show surpassed the books:

Though he used to worry about it getting to the end before him, he's not even about that life anymore.

“I said, to hell with that. Worrying about it isn’t going to change it one way or another. I still sit down at the typewriter, and I have to write the next scene and the next sentence … I’m just going to tell my story, and they’re telling their story and adapting my books, and we shall see.” (GRRM)

Jaime’s fate, as a “main Lannister”, is therefore already clear in GRRM’s mind and he has been seeding and foreshadowing and working towards it, even if *how* he will get there is anybody’s guess (and the show and books have already substantially diverged in that sense). It will likely not change on a whim, invalidating everything that has been written all along.

So, as we reach the end of part 3 and take all the stuff I’ve discussed in this 3-parter in consideration, I think it’s safe to conclude that: given Jaime’s arc and related foreshadowing, knowing that GRRM develops his stories sloooowly, carefully and purposefully, always with a goal in sight, going back to change things if they don’t fit or contradict, relying heavily on the concept of butterfly effect across arcs and characters, and with a penchant for trope subversion sprinkled on top, you can see why I feel that the odds of Jaime’s death in the fandom and general audience are HIGHLY overinflated, and mostly due to selectively attending to one or two pieces of evidence, without considering how they fit in the overall picture. While this is still no guarantee he’ll definitely survive, I’d argue that a likelihood of survival follows from the material (and general writing style) more than death.

Now, if you’ve made it this far without falling asleep, congratulations! I’ve addressed pretty much everything I wanted to address to estimate Jaime’s survival odds from a relatively non-speculative angle, using the current material and quotes available, rather than theorizing too much about what I think are likely future developments for his story. I tend to dislike when people use events that have not yet happened and may never happen (looking at you, valonqarists), to make a case for their arguments, so I refrained from doing it as I don’t really think it’s helpful or even necessary to make my case. BUT, if you’re interested in taking a wild leap into theory-land and how that may further affect his survival odds, I’ll be posting a more speculative part 4 hopefully soon (which will be heavily Jaime/Brienne friendly - you’ve been warned).

#jaime lannister #jaime lannister meta #game of thrones meta #asoiaf meta #asoiaf #game of thrones #my meta #essay

[tomakeitbeautifultolive]

Saw your N+A=D meta on the internet and posts about it, first time hearing about it but i love it already! I am more of a R+A=D or R+L=D tbh, but i am sold on this one too!

OoOoOoohh, anon! Well, first - fucking thank you! Everyone ‘round here hates this theory with a burning passion lmfao. And I'll point you to mine and @ktwrites’ website here, where you can find a much more in-depth look at the theory.

But allow me to sway you away from Rhaegar and towards Ned.

First of all - Jon and Dany’s ages:

“No, Jon was not born ‘more than 1 year’ before Dany… probably closer to eight or nine months or thereabouts.”

This would make it physically impossible for Lyanna to have given birth to her, and likely Rhaegar. Of course, you could disregard the man, himself - but we’re going to go ahead and believe the author, here.

Now, curiously… exactly 8-9 months before Dany is born, we can place Ned at Starfall.

And, really, the crux of this theory is that someone who knew Dany’s parents from birth and watched them grow - does not compare her looks to either one, but instead, to Ashara, with whom she shares a rare eye color with. Daenerys has violet eyes. Rhaegar? Indigo.

Further, Dany’s mysterious memories involving lemon trees tie her childhood to Dorne, if we’re to take the context clues that Dorne is where lemons come from:

“Lemons. And where would we get lemons? Does this look like Dorne to you, you freckled fool?”

So, if you can accept then, that Ashara is Dany’s mother, and that Dany is 8-9 months younger than then you have to rule out Rhaegar. He was already dead.

Keep in mind that while Ashara had dark hair, the Daynes also possess more classically Valyrian looks. Gerold and Ned Dayne have pale blonde/silver hair and purple or blue/purple eyes. Also remember that unlike Robert Baratheon, Ned’s seed is not strong. All of his children look Tully, save for Arya.

There is no hint of any relationship whatsoever between Rhaegar and Ashara. Even Ned has thoughts that seem to confirm he was not the type to mess around:

“For the first time in years, he found himself remembering Rhaegar Targaryen. He wondered if Rhaegar had frequented brothels; somehow he thought not.”

Considering that Lyanna took to him so quickly, it’s safe to say he was rather different from her intended betrothed, Robert Baratheon. We have quotes to tell us that Rhaegar loved both of his wives.

And we have many, many quotes that suggest Ned and Ashara not only had physical encounters, but that they were in love. Rumors exist from Dorne to King’s Landing to the North of their affair. Catelyn mentioning Ashara Dayne to Ned made him more furious than she had ever seen him before. Why? She would’ve been the perfect scapegoat for Jon’s mother! And if she’s just a red herring for Jon’s mother, why do we get a mention of Ashara all the way over in Essos, well after most readers have already figured out who Jon’s real mother is?

There is simply no proof of Ashara having been with any man other than Ned, and several quotes from several different people popping up in several different storylines about Ned and Ashara. Yet no one believes it. Why?

I really, truly, deeply do understand this repulsion to any theory suggesting Daenerys might not be Targaryen… because I used to have it, too. But I have my own repulsion.

If Jon was rumored to be born of rape, but actually born of love - why shouldn’t Dany be?

And also:

If Jon has a secret identity and past, why does no one care about Dany’s mysterious lemon tree memories that don’t add up?

These two are mirrors of one another, are they not?

Ice and Fire. The Dragon and the Wolf.

Right now we’ve got Fire and Fire and two Dragons.

Also bear in mind that Jon seems so much like a Stark. And while he does have Stark blood, he’s a Targaryen. If he’s a Stark, then his 'siblings’ are fucking Tullys. I don’t make the rules!

Yet Dany seems so blatantly Targaryen, doesn’t she? I mean, it’s undeniable! She hatched dragons! She’s fireproof! The blood of the dragon!

And yet - no Targaryen for over a hundred years have managed to hatch one. Also, if Targaryens had to use magical rituals and blood sacrifice to hatch dragons, we’d have heard about it somewhere, right?

Jon, also a Targaryen, burns his hand in book/season 1. Aerion Targaryen drank wildfire and certainly did not live. Aegon V and Duncan Targaryen perished in flames.

Dany’s 'dragony’ temper is not unlike the 'wolf’s blood’ that possessed Brandon and Lyanna Stark.

“But it’s cruel to take Rhaella away from her!”

If Rhaella, with a very long history of fertility issues, is not actually her mother, then no, it’s not cruel. She’d also have a band of living siblings. True family.

Further, Daenerys skinchanged a horse! (And possibly, even Ghost, upon opening her third eye, the same way Bran could touch Ghost upon opening his).

“A daring she had never known filled Daenerys then, and she gave the filly her head.”

If the fallen direwolf represents Ned Stark - why then, does it have six pups?

Jon is not his child.

Why, when Jon proclaims Ghost must’ve wandered off, does Ned bother to correct him?

“He must have crawled away from the others,” Jon said.

“Or been driven away,” their father said, looking at the sixth pup. His fur was white, where the rest of the litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man who had died that morning.

It’s a white wolf. A bastard wolf. Jon is not actually a bastard! Ghost is a wolf that everyone already associates with Daenerys in some way. Jon even comments that Val (who looks an awful lot like Daenerys) looks as though she and Ghost belong together. Meanwhile, Daenerys possesses a black dragon… one that curiously got stabbed in ADWD… just like another black dragon up at the Wall.

In this theory, Dany and Jon both live because they switched lives. Robert would’ve killed Dany for looking suspiciously Targaryen, and Viserys would’ve killed Jon for being male.

Everyone complains that Ned is boring. Too honorable. If GRRM loves to write the human heart in conflict with itself, what could be better than giving up your own bastard because you made a promise to raise your sister’s child?

“He would do whatever was right,” he said … ringingly, to make up for his hesitation. “No matter what.”

“Then Lord Eddard is a man in ten thousand. Most of us are not so strong.”

Was Ned truly a man in ten thousand? Or might he have inadvertently dishonored the woman he loved for duty’s sake - squaring off with her brother at the Tower of Joy?

What is a better story, here: Two Targaryens coming together to claim their throne? Or a bastard girl with no claim to anything conquering the damned world because she believes in herself?

You tell me.

Cripples, bastards, and broken things.

But who’s the bastard?

Anyway, for anyone who bothered to read my nonsense and is interested at all, I’ll plug our website again. Thanks for the ask, anon!

#answered #dayne heiress #n+a=d #remove aerys from daenerys and you get ned! #lmfao @ my queue popping out dany and ghost fanart just as I post this

[thundersnowstorm]

Anonymous asked: I loved your RobbxRhaenys fic! How do you think the pairing would work if Rhaegar had won? Is he a ward like Theon, is she a bastard? Do they hate each other?

(posted as a regular text post bc tumblr fucked up and i lost the original ask)

ahh nonny thank you so much!!

i actually have a whole rhaegar wins au planned out in my head (maybe i’ll write some of it at some point, first i gotta finish the crownless fic follow-up oneshot). but here’s a general run down of how robb x rhaenys might play out in this world.

under the cut since this turned out wayy longer than expected

basic premise: rhaegar kills robert at the trident and wins the war. meanwhile in king’s landing, jaime still kills aerys when his madness gets too much, or when he reveals the caches of wildfire. tywin stays carefully neutral throughout the war. upon returning to the city, rhaegar is crowned king. lyanna still dies in childbirth.

rhaenys and aegon are legitimate. show canon and i do not get along lmao. jon, the semi-acknowledged bastard of the king, is taken to winterfell to be raised because elia is not risking another blackfyre rebellion, and ned wants lyanna’s kid to be raised in her home. rhaegar is just guilt-striken enough over lyanna’s death to allow it. 

jon visits king’s landing on occasion as he gets older. he and rhaegar have a weird relationship (there’s a lot of angst there, a lot of unresolved issues). jon and aegon do get along though, which everyone is secretly relieved about. it takes rhaenys longer to warm up to jon. she remembers the rebellion, she remembers how hurt her mother was when rhaegar dropped everything for lyanna. rhaenys has never quite forgiven rhaegar. eventually, with encouragement from aegon, she strikes up a tentative friendship with jon.

with lyanna, brandon and rickard dead, house stark has suffered enough and rhaegar lets them go without asking them for much more. however, robb is asked (ordered) to visit king’s landing when he gets older. everyone has suddenly realized that house stark is a much bigger power than previously thought, and it’s a good idea for the iron throne to stay on good terms with the future warden of the north.

(by contrast, jon arryn is sent to the wall at the end of the rebellion. he didn’t have the advantage of being related to the new king’s dead lover to save him. the vale is passed down to harry hardying with one of the lords acting as regent. in the stormlands, stannis bends the knee and becomes lord. he marries cersei and it is the single most entertaining marriage in westeros.)

still, despite all the work queen elia and jon connington and the rest of the small council put into repairing relations with the north, they remain very frosty. ned certainly never forgives rhaegar. he’s not about to go to war again, but he’s also never going to step foot in king’s landing again. robb grows up with a distinctly antagonistic view of the iron throne, and the belief that it’s better for the north to keep to itself and stay out of politics of the realm. still, his childhood is more or less the same as it was in canon.

rhaenys is a force to be reckoned with at court. she grew up at her mother’s elbow, learning the nuts and bolts of ruling, how everything happens behind the scenes. oberyn taught her how to fight with a dagger (same as in crownless), as well as a few tricks to suss out people’s secrets. when she visits dorne, she watches doran, compares his style of ruling to her mother’s, to her father’s. if westeros had absolute primogeniture, rhaenys would make a formidable queen. as it is, she is aegon’s number one pick for hand for when he eventually takes the throne, scandal be damned.

her circle of friends is certainly an interesting mix. myrcella baratheon (a bit older and an actual baratheon this time) and margaery tyrell are conventional ladies in waiting, but they’re also both vying for aegon’s hand. meanwhile the sand snakes are the terror of the court and oberyn thinks it’s hilarious. rhaenys thinks tyene should stop pretending to poison mace tyrell. when arianne visits - well, things can get interesting. no one can quite tell if tyrion lannister and princess rhaenys hate each other or not, but their debates are certainly fun to watch. 

(hmm, maybe theon also ends up in king’s landing. robert trusted ned to watch over him in winterfell but rhaegar and ned have a very different relationship. idk where i’m going with this train of thought, but it would certainly add a new dynamic to rhaenys’s little court.)

rhaenys is not betrothed. it’s unusual, and people have started to comment on it. she is one and twenty and the most eligible woman in the land. there’s quite a bit of interest for her hand, but elia has decided that rhaenys will have a say in her marriage, and rhaegar oscillates between not caring much about the matter and toying with the idea of marrying her to aegon, in the old tradition. rhaenys has told him that if he even tries to marry them, she will elope with the first man she can find and wouldn’t that be quite the scandal? so rhaenys remains unmarried.

(the biggest difference in rhaenys here from rhaenys in the crownless fic is that here, rhaenys knows power. not only was she born into power but she has grown into it as well. she will do her duty to her family and the realm, but she will not sacrifice her own happiness unless there is no other choice. as practical as she is, marriage alliances are off the table.)

this is a lot of setup to get to robb and rhaenys making out but bear with me lol.

robb goes to king’s landing shortly after turning eighteen upon request (summons) from the throne, accompanied by catelyn, sansa, and arya. it’s skirting on rude for ned not to come, but rhaegar lets it slide. he’s lyanna’s brother, and there’s a lot that rhaegar feels guilty about concerning lyanna. anyway, it’s robb’s second time in king’s landing, but the first time he’d been fourteen and rhaenys had hardly noticed him. now though, there’s a bit of “oh shit he’s hot now” before robb makes it clear he’s only here out of obligation. then rhaenys decides that there’s no reason for the two of them to interact and that is that.

(or is it, asks the author in a leading tone.)

so really, there’s no reason for robb and rhaenys to speak to each other. rhaenys is busy with a discrepancy in taxes coming from the vale, and robb is busy trying to avoid southroners at all costs. but circumstances bring them together somehow. maybe there’s a conspiracy afoot, and they have to work together to stop it. maybe rhaenys is forced to show robb around the keep. or maybe rhaenys finds the quiet of the godswood peaceful and robb keeps coming across her there.

“this isn’t a real godswood. not without a proper weirwood heart tree, like the ones in the north.” “mayhaps you can show me a proper godswood someday, my lord.”

really, they have nothing in common, there’s nothing they should have to talk about, but rhaenys finds robb’s frank honesty refreshing after all the double talk at court, and robb thinks she’s probably the cleverest woman he knows. somewhere along the line they become each other’s refuge from all the politics and mistrust of king’s landing.

there’s a feast one day, celebrating some important occasion or whatnot. and there’s dancing and mead, and rhaenys can’t remember the last time she had this much fun. she and robb slip away into the gardens to cool off in the night air and well. rhaenys will blame it on a few too many cups of dornish red but robb’s lips fit perfectly against hers and he tastes like cinammon.

robb panics. this is the princess he is kissing, daughter of the king who brought so much pain upon his family. gods this is jon’s sister, and robb’s father always told him to behave honorably towards women and the thoughts he’s having are certainly not honorable. so robb runs.

rhaenys is furious. well, really she’s embarrassed but anger is easier. for the next week or so she is a nightmare to be around. not that she’d admit to anyone that she’s in a bad mood. meanwhile, robb is moping and hiding from everyone and probably spending most of his time sparring.

jon, who isn’t blind and is absolutely done with them, practically forces robb to talk to rhaenys. he doesn’t care what happened, he just wants the two of them to get over themselves and stop being so insufferable. also rhaenys made one of the goldcloaks cry and no one quite knows how that happened.

so they talk. and robb apologizes for kissing her, which rhaenys is quick to tell him is absolutely ridiculous, she’s the one who initiated it and besides, it was just a kiss.

well, that one kiss turns into quite a few more.

there aren’t really words for what they are to each other. if she were anyone else, robb would probably ask for her hand, but she’s the princess of the realm, not some petty lord’s daughter. and rhaenys doesn’t want to think about putting a label on them, because that would mean thinking about how the two of them fit in the future. and since they aren’t betrothed and king’s landing isn’t dorne, no one can know about their…. whatever.

then rhaegar starts bringing up the subject of rhaenys’s betrothal again. aegon isn’t on the table, since he and margaery tyrell are all but promised to each other at last, but perhaps willas tyrell would do, or maybe harry hardyng in the vale. lady paramount is a perfectly acceptable role for the sister to the future king.

(robb isn’t mentioned as an option. he might be of the right status, but relations between ned and rhaegar are still quite frosty, and the realm still doesn’t quite see the north as equal to the southern kingdoms.)

rhaenys knows, intellectually, that she must marry someday. and really, willas tyrell and harry hardyng are just suggestions. she could always look for a second son for a husband, so she could stay in king’s landing. but she doesn’t want to marry a stranger, and she doesn’t want to leave the city, and the only person she can think of is her cousin quentyn, and arianne would kill her if she married quent.

robb learns about the discussions for rhaenys’s hand from rumors floating around the court. and really, he shouldn’t care who rhaenys marries, it’s not like they’re anything more than good friends who kiss sometimes. or at least, that’s what he tries to tell himself.

he’s not very good at convincing himself.

“marry me,” robb blurts out. rhaenys stops dead in her tracks. “what?”

rhaenys says no. winterfell is about as far as it gets from king’s landing, and she does not wish to be sent away to a frozen wasteland where she knows close to nobody. there is so much she can do at court, so much change she could help affect, and she cannot do that in the north.  

she explains this all to robb and he shrugs. “we could stay in the south.”

rhaenys is not often surprised. this makes it twice today that she has been struck speechless.

robb does not like court, as she is quick to remind him.

“no, but i like you.”

they talk late into the night. the sun is starting to peek out behind the treeline when rhaenys says yes.

(the issue was not that she did not wish to marry robb. quite the opposite. but if she is to be a part of the politics of realm, she cannot do so effectively in winterfell all the time. so they talk, and debate, and eventually a plan is drawn up for where they will reside.)

of course, this is all dependent on rhaegar and ned accepting. robb’s time in king’s landing is drawing to a close, and so he returns to winterfell to ask for his father’s permission. rhaenys goes to talk to rhaegar and elia.

rhaegar is surprised, to say the least. elia, who has been quietly watching her daughter’s flirtation-turned-courtship for the past months, is not. in the end, the discussion is rather short. robb stark is heir to one of the great houses, and the iron throne desperately needs better relations with the north. there’s little to oppose.

ned, on the other hand, is more reluctant to bind the starks to the royal family so officially. he loves his nephew dearly, but he cannot forget the circumstances under which jon was born. but robb seems to care for this southron princess, and catelyn is right, they cannot try to stay out of southron politics forever.

robb and rhaenys are married in the godswood at riverrun, halfway between their families’ castles. for the wedding of a royal princess and the heir to the north, it’s a surprisingly lowkey affair. but robb hardly notices much other than rhaenys, resplendent in dornish silks, and rhaenys for once lets herself forget about the politics and the future, and just lets robb lead her around in a sloppy rendition of the bear and the maiden fair.

(robb is not a great dancer, but he is definitely an enthusiastic one. rhaenys thinks it’s charming.)

it isn’t easy all the time. splitting time between winterfell and king’s landing means endless amounts of travelling, and they aren’t always in the same kingdom together. there are fights, and long nights working, and sometimes the politics at court get to be too much for both of them, but for all their differences, robb and rhaenys love each other. and maybe that’s all that’s needed.

god this got long, and this is really only a sketch of what that scenario would look like. maybe i’ll write a proper fic for this universe sometime, we’ll see.

thanks again anon!

#rhaenys targaryen #robb stark #asoiaf au #asks #anonymous #asoiaf #sara writes stuff #asoiafrare #robb x rhaenys #my headcanons

[thelawyerthatwaspromised]

Tinfoil - Jon's Two Huge Lies

This is tinfoil and it’s not really something I can prove but I have a little bit of a wild theory that pushes political!Jon farther but, I think, makes a lot of stuff make sense.

Quick summary: I don’t think Jon went to Dragonstone with a plan to manipulate Daenerys. I don’t think he and Sansa worked out anything nefarious. I do think Jon believes that it’s a dangerous decision but something he must do. In his eyes, the only way to save the realm is getting Dany and her dragons up North.

The first encounter was terrible for Jon. 

Davos additionally looks unhappy. He gives his own “c’mon...we’re here at YOUR invitation...stop treating us like this” but still, it goes awful.

Imagine Jon makes it to this point and learns that not only is Dany here to conquer, she’s also volatile.

He warns her against using her dragons. I’m sure antis still like to argue this point - but Jon doesn’t tell her anything affirmative when she DEMANDS his advice, he tells her not to use her huge weapons on people. He wants them to breathe fire on wights - not on the living. Argue that if you want but...

He’s not pleased with her and her look confirms this. 

So...why did I bother quickly re-capping up to this point? Because this is the scene where I believe Jon realized that he’s going to have to bend the knee but that he’s really uninterested in following through with helping Dany take King’s Landing.

Boy, not only am I saying that Jon is manipulating Dany’s personal feelings, but now I’m taking it a step farther and saying he’s actively lying to her about his political intentions? That’s a bridge too far. This is Jon Snow we’re talking about...the man incapable of lying.

“I don’t have a king...”

Let’s  get over it. Jon Snow lies. Maybe you think he’s not lying here, but his impeccable truth-telling record does not exist.

Anyway, why do I think Jon Snow is lying to Daenerys?

Fairly simple premise: Jon Snow wants Dany’s help in the North and he doesn’t want to fight another war in King’s Landing. But he can’t do both. If he refuses to pledge his people to fight for Dany - she won’t help defeat the NK, dooming everyone to extinction. 

If you were in a position like that, what might you do? If it were me, I’d maybe check to see if I could get the more immediate issue resolved and leave the second half of the equation for later. 

So Jon bent the knee.

But it’s not quite as simple as that. Jon’s timing had to be right (if he pledged to her immediately, she’d immediately call his banners and demand he march south to finish Cersei quickly). Each time Jon tried to reason with Dany about marching North and forgetting her campaign against Cersei, Dany was reluctant about it. Jon realized that he could not make her forget about Cersei.

He was there to get Dany as an ally. He was ready to leave when he received word that Bran and Arya had returned to Winterfell. Again, he was ready to leave. He had given up on the idea that he could convince Dany to help. Then Tyrion came up with the wight hunt. It was stupid writing, but this was the mechanic that gave Jon reason to believe he could truly get Dany’s attention focused towards the Wall and not on the Iron Throne.

Jon decides to go on the wight hunt. 

The premise of the wight hunt is that it’s an avenue to get a truce with Cersei. Something Jon has never expressed any interest in before this point. Has Jon changed his mind on the conflict? I’m not sure...the last time he talked about anything that had to do with the Dany v. Cersei throw down, Dany had just won a major victory and she surmised that Jon didn’t know how he felt about that to which Jon said...

This doesn’t appear to be someone who is enthusiastic about the prospect of fighting a war for Dany.

But did Jon say anything on the wight hunt that indicates he’s super pumped about serving a new Queen?

At this very point, Jon still has no interest in bending the knee, he reiterates that he serves the North, and he tell Tormund that it’s both Dany AND Cersei that he needs to convince to help them. 

Circle that with a red marker. Right on your computer monitor. It’ll be fine.

The wight hunt goes about as well as expected. People needlessly die. The NK gets a dragon. Poor Thoros dies a pretty unmemorable death. Benjen dies getting Jon back to the Wall. Over what? 

A truce with Cersei.

A truce with Cersei that is already going to be betrayed before it ever happens. 

A truce with Cersei that is already going to be betrayed before it ever happens in a war that Jon doesn’t care about.

Step into Jon’s shoes for a moment. You’ve told people how many times that you don’t consider the war important in the south. You think Dany ought to go North without a truce with Cersei. Why would Jon agree to go on the wight hunt if he just thinks Dany could go North without a truce?

Because it’s about getting Dany to go North - and Jon is convinced that he can’t get Dany to go North unless he can get her to shake her focus off of Cersei. 

“Fine, I’ll do this if that’s what it takes to get you to forget about Cersei for a few seconds” I imagine Jon thinking to himself.

Again, it’s important to remember that the wight hunt wasn’t about actually fighting the Night King but about getting only a truce for a whole separate political conflict that Jon otherwise has no intention of involving himself.

Not only that, but the truce wasn’t even about “uniting” the realm. They never asked Cersei to come along. They never asked her to band together with them to fight a common enemy. They asked her to hit the pause button so Dany didn’t lose territory in the south. 

If you disagree with this, find me a quote ANYWHERE that indicates that Jon or Dany believe that Cersei will attack them from the rear at any point if they don’t get the truce. I’ll wait.

Ok, I’m done waiting.

Jon is injured horribly. He’s unconscious on the boat. He’s lost his uncle Benjen. He’s been plunged into freezing water. And Dany is looming over him.

Jon should be comforted in this moment. He almost died. He lost his uncle, whom he loved dearly. They got the damn wight. Instead, Jon is apologizing and babysitting Dany’s feelings. There’s no reciprocation of comfort and sympathy. 

But that’s beside the point of this post. The important part of this scene for Jon is the recognition of Dany’s emotional state. She’s vulnerable. She’s lost her third favorite dragon, after all. 

In her anger and with tears in her eyes, she finally says what Jon has wanted to hear, “we’ll destroy Night King and his army...and we’ll do it together.” 

Wa-bam! That’s the timing. That’s the moment. Because he’s still convinced that....

“But she jurrrrrrrst prerrrrmised him she’d fight with himmmmmmm....this proofs that John haz got know raison to think Dany won’t keep her porpoises!” ~ some anti just thought this

Jon immediately seizes this moment to bend the knee.  

My theory is that Jon picked this moment for this exact set of reasons: 1) He believes he needs her dragons and army to have a chance to beat the NK 2) he believes she won’t actually fight with him unless he bends the knee 3) he needed her to commit to the fight first because his mission is still his number one priority and the most tinfoil-y part; 4) this order of events gives Jon the best chance to use Dany’s resources and avoid sacrificing northerners in a southern war.

Why am I fairly sure of this tinfoil? A number of reasons. The knee bending scene on the boat falls into place when put into this context. Most specifically - THIS portion of the scene makes the most sense if we’re operating under the assumption that Jon is essentially lying his ass off about being willing to fight with Dany in the south:

The more I’ve thought it, the less likely I would believe that Jon is agonizing as much as he is at the end of the scene for something like “I feel bad for manipulating this woman” - I fully believe he’s agonizing over first feeling like he may have betrayed Ned’s memory (I’ll get to this in a bit) and that he’s lying his ass off. To be clear, I fully acknowledge this makes Jon’s actions in S7 even more extreme than “Jon manipulates Dany’s feelings to get her to go North” and puts it into “Jon manipulates her feelings AND lies about a pretty huge material fact.”

As things move on, I think it falls even more into place. If you were Jon and you had zero clue why Dany is so tunnel-visiony about the Iron Throne and being in King’s Landing, you might imagine him saying something like:

Like, ok, small town boy Jon has never seen a big city! How dim and inexperienced! Maybe Jon earnestly just thought this to himself - or maybe he still has absolutely no idea why Dany wants this so badly. Something prompted this thought. Jon expressing mild dismay that he has to even step foot in King’s Landing for this would seem pretty well connected to the idea that he just went on a ridiculously stupid mission just so they could go to this city- and get the truce for the war he doesn’t care about.

Then Jon is faced with the Cersei question - after things seem to have been going well.

Poor Jon really doesn’t wanna lie. 

So he doesn’t...sort of.

(antis getting angry because they think Jon telling the truth to Cersei is proof that he’s not lying so this is all stupid)

But hold on a second. 

I’ve already argued that Jon doesn’t care about the war in the south.

He doesn’t care about whether Dany or Cersei sit on the Iron Throne.

He certainly has shown he’s willing to do anything to try to save the North....

....except....supposedly...lying to Cersei? That’s where we think Jon Snow draws the line? He’ll risk his life for a truce only to torpedo that same truce at the first opportunity? Really?

I’ve already written about how Jon’s POV is obscured in S7 and the method to cover that up was to have other characters saying they know exactly what Jon Snow is thinking.

As you can see, this decision by Jon was revealed as a complete surprise to everyone at the Dragonpit which means that the decision was meant to confuse the audience. Varys, Davos, Tyrion, even Missandei are completely shocked about this turn of events. All Jon had to do was say “ok, on my honor as the honorable son of the honorably honorable Ned Stark, I pledge to be honorable and stay honorable by sitting out the war when we beat the NK.”

That’s it. That’s all.

Was Jon just stupid for not doing so? NO. Listen, if Jon was just stupid - there’s no reason to root for him and the entire message of the show about the good guy being wise enough to avoid being killed by the bad guy is utterly meaningless. Jon will not deserve to rule anything if he just flat couldn’t lie to Cersei.

What’s the alternative? Oddly enough - that he DID lie to Cersei.

Because if Jon tells the truth, that he wants to stay in the North, he gives Dany total reason to doubt his intentions. This entire trip, Jon has been the Northern fool. He’s been Ned Stark’s honorably honorable son. It’s been a well-crafted image. 

And yet - in that moment in the Dragonpit Jon had to lie - because he ALREADY LIED and the only way to truly make sure that his first lie didn’t get out was by lying a second time. So what was the first lie?

And again you remember how happy Jon was to assert his love for Dany and give her the Stark ancestral home that he doesn’t even feel comfortable enough to take the Lord’s chambers?

Remember how Jon looked when he told Dany the first time he pledged to her? It ends with him staring up at the ceiling clearly feeling uncomfortable.

How does he look the second time?

Jon doesn’t intend on following Dany. He didn’t tell anyone he had “pledged” to her because he didn’t want to be put in the position of affirming that stance. But Cersei went ahead and cornered him. If Jon went back on what he told her in her moment of vulnerability, Jon very easily could lose her confidence. 

Just to remind the class, what does Jon think he needs for Dany to fight with him?

This might get repetitive with the gifs but it’s to show how this entire theory of Jon’s character is layered at multiple times with a unifying theme that explains entirely how Jon behaved in S7.

What little extra bit of tinfoil do I have as well?

Jon suggests that “I did this, I should go talk to Cersei.”

Oh that noble fool. What a foolish fool. This dumb fool, who CAN’T be smart.

Look, even Tyrion gives him quizzical looks. Because Jon Snow is just so dumb.

I think Jon fully intended to talk to Cersei and tell her that his pledge to Dany is a ruse. Yes, I think that’s what happened. I don’t think it’s a plot point that can be proven or disproven - but everything about what I’ve said above led me to this.

Jon just refused to say that he wouldn’t fight and try to kill Cersei after the war in the North - and I’m also supposed to believe that he then really thought he could go reason with her? No, no. I think there’s a much more plausible explanation.

Jon really really wanted to tell Cersei the truth.

That his pledge to Dany meant nothing. That he desperately needs her to beat the Night King. That all of this is foolish and petty and a waste of time. 

Why would he tell Cersei the truth? Because it’s COMPLETELY in both of their interest for Dany to come North and for Cersei to agree to a truce. I am totally confident that this scenario could have convinced Cersei. 

Let me go over it. Assume I’m right. Assume Jon wants to bring Dany North and he also has no intention of honoring his pledge. You can see how this could work out splendidly.

Jon gets what he wants in Dany coming North and an understanding with Cersei that he will not follow through with his pledge. This would totally appeal to Cersei and be a huge incentive for her to cooperate. We know Cersei was fine with the truce. She wanted it, actually.  She said so before the summit. A pause button was fine. She tried to get extra benefits by getting Jon to also promise he’d stay out of the conflict. But to be clear - Jon’s lie/non-lie meant nothing because Cersei wanted the truce and she also intends on breaking the truce. 

But in this scenario - she’s getting exactly what she wants and Jon gets exactly what he wants. If Cersei spills the beans, Dany is re-focused on killing her Westerosi enemies, Dany won’t allow Cersei the breathing room she wanted, and she risks a quick resolution by the burning of the city. 

So Cersei would almost definitely keep quiet....and why might Jon ever try to talk Cersei into a truce if he doesn’t care about the war, wanted Dany to come North, and generally hates Cersei and the Lannisters? 

Because: (back to my earlier conclusion) Jon realized he absolutely cannot get Dany to come North if she’s still at “war” with Cersei. She won’t make that sacrifice. He needs Dany North. The ONLY way to get that to happen is by getting a truce with Cersei - but in the moment when Cersei cornered him, she unknowingly forced him into a decision that put the truce at risk. In this situation, it absolutely makes sense that Jon would lie during the summit then want to go talk to Cersei and tell her the truth.

Because Jon just lied. And it almost killed any chance of getting Dany up North.

The thing Jon says next is so fascinating under this scope:

“But when enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything. Then there are no more answers, only better and better lies. And lies won’t help us in this fight.”

“And lies won’t help us in this fight.”

Look - maybe Jon’s life motto has always been “tell the truth...always” but this is on the heels of Jon TRYING to tell the truth to Dany over and over and over again over the course of the season and being refuse each time.

Maybe Jon Snow lied on that boat. Really for the first time with Dany, he lied. And he felt shitty about it. And then because of that ONE LIE - he was forced to lie again in public to support his first lie. 

“Only better and better lies.”

Do you see how this could totally fit the dialogue? He’s speaking from experience! But he can’t just say “I did lie! Ok! I don’t give a shit about going ever again after this!”

Jon already lied once and it put him in a position to have to lie again and the second lie DIDN’T HELP HIM GET DANY NORTH. It was a completely unintended consequence for Jon. And his deep shame for lying the first time was only magnified when he was forced to lie again and torpedo the summit.

And he’s suffering for it. He hates this. He needed to be smarter than Robb and Ned, so he was. And now he’s wrapped up in this game. And he hates the game.

This completely echoes Stannis’ moral dilemma in his pursuit of the crown.

Do you ever wonder why Jon looks so freaking depressed especially in these last couple episodes? Because he hates this....but it’s what must be done.  

This boy is dying to speak his mind but he can’t. He just can’t. Everything he’s done since arriving at Dragonstone is building to getting Dany to come North.

He’s done EVERYTHING he can.

And it his shame is that he failed to get Dany to forget about Cersei - in large part because he LIED HIS WAY INTO THAT HAPPENING.

What does this do to the way you watch the Theon scene? DAAAAMMMMNNNN.

“You risked everything to tell an enemy the truth.”

Wow. He risked everything to tell an enemy a LIE.

Jon pauses for a beat to consider his words. Like there’s something he wants to say. That he’s wanted to say for quite awhile...yet he can’t.

“We went down there to make peace.” - then why did you torpedo that truce? Was peace with Cersei the reason you told her that you were NOT going to make peace with her after the war?

“...and it seems to me, we need to be honest with each other if we’re going to fight beside each other.”

Jon’s bent the knee. He’s supposedly fallen in love with Dany. He’s secured the truce. Why does he think everything is so tenuous? His “truth” would have just put that all at risk. Everyone on team!Dany wanted Jon to lie because he ruined their chance at peace. He should be proud that it worked out anyway.

Flip his damn lines. He’s living a lie. A lie he hates.

“...always the right step.”

“It’s not. It may seem that way from the outside but...I promise you, it’s not true.”

I mean....damn. Jon’s mini confession. He is not always taking the right step. He lied to Dany. He lied again when cornered to support the first lie. It almost ruined everything. He got himself murdered by his own brothers. He went south to Dragonstone and now he’s suffering the consequences.

Someone hug Jon Snow.

Now to add one last layer. It was shown that Sansa was playing Littlefinger in this scene. She was also already confronted with the plot of a forced-scroll pledging support for a false monarch.

She JUST HAD THIS SITUATION BEFORE. She did what she had to do to survive. Arya even SAYS:

Which Sansa knows doesn’t mean she wrote the scroll believing Joffrey to be King and Robb to be a traitor. We as an audience know this. And yet Sansa is supposedly upset that Jon bent the knee like this. 

While never saying anything negative to Littlefinger about Jon after Jon had left, suddenly Sansa is so angry. 

“He’s bent the knee.” 

“He’s never listened to me.”

“This is what he always does.”

What if. Sansa knows. At least somewhat.

Sansa sees this for what it is. Jon’s been forced to write to her supporting Dany. It even says Cersei is coming along. Big red flag for Sansa. She also knows what LF wants. She knows that he wants her to feel vulnerable and isolated. She knows he’s tried to wedge her and Jon already. So imagine she uses that.

Littlefinger takes the bait. “Great! She feels betrayed by Jon. She’s scared of Arya. I will push her to seize the crown and to kill Arya.”

THEN SANSA DECIDES THIS IS THE MOMENT TO KILL LITTLEFINGER.

He showed his true cards. His last mistake was falling for Sansa’s play that she was feeling betrayed by Jon because of his scroll when she JUST HAD THE SAME SITUATION HERSELF.

My tinfoil conclusion:

Honorably honorable Jon Snow lied to Dany on the boat. Then he had to lie again at the Dragonpit - he already hated lying but then the second lie almost ruined everything he worked towards. He wanted to talk to Cersei personally. To tell her the truth: that he never wanted to bend the knee and that she needs to agree to the truce and he’ll give her what she wanted in return: staying neutral. He couldn’t do it any other way because he needed Dany to believe that he’d bent the knee and would fight for her. Sansa recognized at the very least that Jon was under pressure. He wrote the weirdest scroll ever. She also recognized that Littlefinger would be more of a threat than ever. Either he would convince the northern lords to uncrown Jon, or he would find out that Jon’s loyalty to Dany is a facade and would scheme against Jon through Dany. Sansa allowed LF to be comfortable in thinking she was upset with Jon. He floated the idea of usurping Jon’s crown and having Arya killed. That’s all she needed to decide that the time had come for Littlefinger to face justice.

I don’t believe it either, Littlefinger.

You have no idea how right you might be.

“A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . . mother of dragons, slayer of lies . . .” ~Dany IV, ACOK

#political jon theory #political jon meta #political jon #jonsa #jon x sansa #anti targaryen restoration #anti j0nerys

[rantingnbanting]

It’s finally time

Spider-Man: Far From Home Movie Review

Hee hee i had a shit ton of this done already and then my dumbass accidentally closed the tab so yeah :’)

For some reason, this took me so long to want to write. I saw the movie this afternoon, and it’s almost midnight as I’m writing this. Granted, I am on vacation and was a little busy, but I just needed time to process this movie. The movie seemed really dense to me, and I just had to scroll through tumblr looking at other posts to finally get the nerve to write this.

So, the moment you’ve all been waiting for...

***SPOILER WARNING. MAJOR PLOT POINTS AND THE ENDING OF THIS WILL BE DISCUSSED SO IF YOU DO NOT WANT SPOILERS DO NOT CONTINUE***

Just as an FYI, I saw this with my sister, a fan of the MCU, and my dad, a diehard DC fan but just saw this for shits and giggles. And I will be referencing endgame a lot during this too.

- Did I like it?

Yeah!!!! I loved the humor in it, and the plot was well written. Mysterio is an awesome character in this, though he is a villain.

- What didn’t I like?

(I’ll go into more detail later) The cgi in this, the lack of some of the topics introduced in endgame, the casts’ age, and some of the Peter X MJ scenes (I said some! I do love Peter and MJ together!)

- Pacing?

Honestly? Pretty good for a marvel movie. Marvel usually has some issues with pacing *cough cough endgame cough cough*, but I was thoroughly impressed with this one. Everything seemed well drawn out, and I was never left feeling that a certain scene was too long/short. Kudos because that I am very picky with pacing lol

- Humor

This movie is probably one the funniest movies in the MCU, and it was one of the most memorable aspects of the movie. The morning announcements made my sister and myself wheeze and I had tears rolling down my face as I cackled. Ned and Betty were the truest presentation of Highschool romance I have ever seen. Starting on a whim, being attached to the hip for a few weeks (maybe even a few months), and then breaking up. I honestly loved them together. I’m happy they didn’t go down the “sad and neglected best friend” route with Ned because he deserves so much better. “I’m strong and sticky” made my stomach hurt because I was laughing so hard. PETER BITCH-SLAPPING FLASH WHEN HE WOULDNT GIVE BACK THE GLASSES. AHDHDBDJDHDJ

- plot?

I thought the plot was really clever. Like I said earlier, anyone could see mysterio’s real side from a mile away, but the way they went about the conflict and the climax of the story was very interesting as well. The only thing is that when they were first explaining the secret plan and thinking everyone, I got a little lost. I did finally realize how the bots produce an illusion, but I kind of had to figure that on my own. I was confused how things were being broken and destroyed by the creatures, but the team said that nothing was actually getting broken because it’s all just an illusion. Idk there were some plot holes, but they got mostly filled, so I’m not worried about it lmao.

- Favorite character?

While I do love Ned with every fiber of my being, he just didn’t have the same spark that he did in homecoming. Maybe that’ll change as I see the movie again, but my favorite character in this movie was definitely Mysterio. Jake Gyllenhaal is a phenomenal actor, and I don’t think anyone could have pulled off Mysterio like he did. As I assume most of the internet knows, Mysterio is an actual villain in the Spider-Man comics, and he has powers that create illusions, and I thought that this was a really cool way to portray Mysterio with making him a person. Even without knowing that Mysterio is a villain in the comics, it wasn’t that difficult to predict that he would reveal that he’s a villain. Thinking back, there was a part during the the fight with the fire monster in Prague when something broke off of the Ferris wheel, and I thought to myself “damn, it was almost like the Ferris wasn’t really there” And the illusion scene was by far the coolest scene in the entire movie. It gave me strong Doctor Strange vibes (I wonder why I like I so much lmao) and it showed how vulnerable Peter is. But Mysterio has the aura that just made you love to hate him, and I love characters like that.

- Soundtrack?

It was awesome. Mysterio’s theme is definitely the best. I actually listened to the soundtrack before I saw the movie, and it was cool to hear some of the familiar tunes. It would fucking awesome to hear an ensemble perform the Far From home suite live.

- Peter and MJ

Okay, I understand what they were trying to do with their relationship: display a typical, awkward high school relationship. Ngl, they kind of overdid the awkwardness. Not every relationship is both people constantly stuttering and muttering when they’re next to each other. And that fuckin kiss. It made me so uncomfortable. Me and my sister literally looked at each other and said, “That was the most awkward thing I have ever seen in my entire life” after the kiss. I like that the writers were trying to break from the stereotypical high school relationship, but I do think they overdid the awkwardness a bit.

- WHERE THE HELL WAS MORGAN STARK

HOW DARE YOU RIP A FATHER FROM A BOY AND GIRL AND NOT HAVE THEM INTERACT AT ALL. This is probably one of my biggest critiques because this movie makes it look like they introduced Morgan just to take her away. Same with Harley! Imagine how awesome peter and Harley could be together.

- CGI

Okay, I blame my dad for this. He was the one who introduced me to CGI (Computer-generated imagery) and how to spot it. In marvel movies, CGI is not uncommon, especially in the fight scenes. And I honestly did not give endgame enough credit when it came to CGI hulk. He looked absolutely phenomenal, but I have to say that a good amount of the CGI in this movie was rough. I always say, if you can tell it’s CGI, then it’s bad CGI. It’s really hard to explain, but if something looks like it belongs in a video game rather than in a live action movie, then the CGI is pretty rough. It takes experience to learn how to point it out. Mysterio didn’t look bad the entire time, but some shots of him floating (like the rooftop scene) just looked so fake. And the swinging scene at the end was absolutely horrendous. It looked like MJ was swinging with the peter from the ps4 videogame. The background imagery and the elemental monsters looked real for the most part, and they looked great and real. Just some character mods were really wonky.

- Cast

Okay, I’m going to just say it. What the fuck was that cast? To me, everyone looked so much older than the first one. Like I get it that some of them were “blipped” and aged, but holy shit Ned and peter looked so much older than in the first movie. And, holy shit, Peter is ripped in this movie. I know Tom mentioned in an interview that he was more buff in this movie compared to homecoming, but he was so much more, for lack of better phrasing, wide.

I mean, come on

If the next movie is set in high school again, I honestly have no idea what they will do because, right now, Tom is 23 and Zendaya is 22. And yes I get it that it’s not that old, but if the next one is going to wait 2 years at least for the next Spider-Man movie, they’ll be less like high school students and more like adults.

And while I would have been extremely pissed if they changed the cast, I’m just kind of peeved on how mature the cast looked.

- Ending?

The first ending was what everyone wanted. I could have left the theater then and would have been perfectly fine. But I had to watch the end credits scenes. And then my world crumpled. Hearing Mysterio reveal Peter was so surreal. Almost too surreal... but that’s for another post ;). It provides for a great cliffhanger, but it makes me wonder how they’re going to continue the MCU from here. Obviously, they’re going to do the Black Widow Movie and Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 (hopefully) but what next? Is there going to be another “avengers” movie? If so, what about Peter? Bc he’s in quite the pickle rn. And the pair credits scene just confused me ngl. So, Fury and Hill were never actually there? It does make sense why fury didn’t catch onto some things, but it does allow for some interesting conversations. This plus BARF equals who knows what for the future because this stuff is practically the reality stone. No one knows what’s real or not. And that’s scary. Also, does the multiverse exist? I know Beck and his crew made some stuff up for the purpose of tricking Fury and Peter, but the avengers still used the quantum realm to time travel, and who knows what types of alternate universes that created.

What does the future hold? No one knows

But it does allow for interesting theories ;)

Side note: I really noticed the resemblance in these in ffh

Hey marvel please introduce Deadpool played by Ryan Reynolds into the MCU thansk ily

#mcu #spiderman: far from home #ffh #ffh spoilers #ffh review #bruh this took me so long to write #its literslly been 2 hours #im exhausted #its 1:30 and my fuckin cousins are running around #i just want to them some zquil in their next meals #because this is every night #bless their parents #oh #right #hee hee #but tbh i probably wont go to sleep for another 2 hours lmao #its okay #sleep is for the weak right lads #i know i seem really harsh in my critiques #but i really do love this movie #im just cursed with extreme candor online

[lmfmp2021]

Developing And Improving My Origami Packaging

Now that I have critically reflected on my origami packaging at this point in time, I will now be making all these changes that I previously said about and picked up on. To start, I have firstly focused on the back on the design, to which I had added in a barcode and the weight too. I didn't mention this in my previous post as I only just remembered that I needed to add this on for it to become a real product. I did this by simply coping and pasting them from the previous jar labels. I decided to place these in either of the bottom corners as I thought that they wouldn't interfere with the flaps when they fold in. When looking at the back section, I have also changed the orange circle so that its no longer transparent. I have turned the opacity back up to 100%, to which I think this looks a lot more tidier as there wasn't really any need for it to match the jars this closely.  

Additionally, the other thing I forgot to mention in the previous post is that the flaps covered up my little icon saying that there's no palm oil in them. This was simply because I forgot that it was there as it was completely covered up. Although, I thought that if I place it on the top left corner flap then this would clearly show this way. 

Next, I decided to change the text at the front so that it would actually show the whole phrase this time. While doing this, I chose to slightly adjust the phrase so that it said something different. Instead of it saying ‘A selection of chocolate spreads’, it now says ‘A variety of chocolate spreads’. There was tow reasons for this, one being that this new version as slightly shorter meaning I could fit it on better, but also as I think it just sounds a little better and less predicable. By this I mean that I feel like the word ‘selection’ is used quite a lot of foods, so I wanted a slightly different word that mean the same thing. 

Another thing I have chosen to change is the logo, so I have placed in the multicoloured logo as I feel that this just works so much better for many reasons. I then changed the circle around this logo, to the dark brown colour as I feel this gives a strong contrast this way. The reason I was able to use this colour was because I got rid of the rectangle that was going through the logo and circle. This was because this didn't show at all once it was put together so it made no sense to keep it, apart from to match the jars, but the concepts between the two packaging's, doesn't have to be this unified. As well as this, I also got rid of the same rectangle on the back too again for the exact same reason. 

After doing all of this, I then remembered that I had to decrease the size of the front and back circles so that they actually fit in, without the flaps covering them. This process was very simple as I just had to hold down ‘shift’ and ‘alt’ for it to size down in the centre. 

The other thing I have changed since the last screenshot is I have decided to make the repeat pattern cover the whole of the sides. So instead of it just being on the sides, this way it can show on the flaps as well. I think this small adjustment will make a massive difference as it was slightly annoying before on the position that the pattern stopped. This way, it wont happen this time. 

Here, it is now showing where I have thought of a way in which I can make the base of the packaging work, with the orange colour. I mentioned in my previous post that I feel if I use the orange colour in with the dark brown, it will work, although I wasn't too sure on how I wasn't going to resent the orange shade. However, I have thought of using my them of circles to my advance as drawing a circle to fit the whole base but still have the brown showing in places. So this is what I did, where I then felt to have the type written inside this shape. To do this, I needed to copy and paste the circle and then use the ‘type tool’ and click on the shape once it changes to a circle instead of a square. I could then write out my description. Now looking at this, I think this works so much better as it actually has some interest to draw yo in now. At the same time, it has also been kept quite simple. The only other thing I have been able to change is the fonts, to which I separated the two paragraphs by using ‘ Helvetica light oblique’ for the top section and just ‘Helvetica light’ on the second paragraph. From doing this, it has just helped to show a difference, without being too dramatic.  

Below is showing the final result from making all these adjustments to my design. From looking at this, I think its been massively improved as everything just looks neater and more in place. 

Now moving onto the interior of the design, I realised that I didn't reflect much on the this part, although just from printing it out, I already found one issue. This was that the printer cut off part of my design. This then lead to many problems, one being that the measurements of the packaging is now not 21cm x 21cm. But the worse problem is the fact that it hasn't cut the sides off equally, mainly that one side from the centre is one measurement the other is completely different. This is a problem that I don't think I can fix. Although, when I actually put the packaging together before, it wasn't too bad. I could see that the base of one side wasn't in the centre like it should be. 

Another thing I have changed since last time, is the composition. So instead of having the question at the bottom I decided it would make much more sense having it at the top, which I know that I didn't want to do at first as this is quite boring. But when you think about it, everyone will read from top to bottom meaning that they will read ‘no palm’ first, then the information and lastly the title. Whereas the title is what you ned to read first. 

As well as this, I edited the logo so that it matches with the exterior now. I have changed the circle so that its showing the quarters with each colour being different. 

The last adjustment I made was to get rid of the text saying ‘unfold to reveal more’ as like I said before, this seemed very tacky to me. I have then replaced this with an orange circle that is going around the logo. I have drawn the circle so that its fits the base again, as this will then match the other side, where the type is and this same colour theme. 

As a result, I have now finally come to a point where I’m very happy with this design, layout and colours. So now, this means I will need to print out my final design onto some more thicker paper as this will then give the final product a more luxury feel. After that I think I will add the same green coloured ribbon that I found when creating my initial origami packaging. This is because green will match with the colour from my repeat pattern and should hopefully compliment with the other colours too. The other colour I could use is white as this would then match with the lids of the jars inside, although to me this shade is a little boring. 

#development