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#i know you wouldn't know it now but believe it or not superheroes are generally really Not My Thing

mono-dot-jpeg · 1 year

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child! reader w/blade, yanqing, natasha, & gepard

summary; thoughts being thunk about cute scenarios with child! reader

genre/extra tags; fluff, blade is probably ooc, don't give blade a child, yanqing being a big brother, yanqing and reader gang up on jingyuan, natasha my beloved, gepard big brother arc, but gepard is an awkward big brother, whoops my hand slipped now there's angst (natasha's part), blade wants to punt a kid (/hj)

[gender neutral! reader] [child 7-9! reader] [platonic]

[warnings; implied for reader to be heavily sick often (natasha)]

a/n; *smacks my head* this baby holds loads of child!reader ideas, thanks to their family being the way their family is. good ol' trauma. you didn't pick any characters in particular other than just non-express crew characters. hope you enjoy

it's a fucking miracle that you're even standing next to this man. kafka just had to give you to him. luckily, blade is less violent than he looks. and luckily for you, you hold no fear.

"you look ugly like that." you point at him, your tiny finger inching a little too close to his eye. "why do you look like that?" kafka stifles a laugh as she watches from afar.

"i can't believe i want to punt a child." he mutters. "i don't know, why do you look like that?" he retaliates.

"look like what? ms. kafka says i'm cute!" your hand goes limp to rest on your lap.

"you are anything but cute, you devil spawn."

you gasped, "ms. kafka! blade is being mean!" you get up to run to the woman, who is laughing silently. "he called me a devil spawn... whatever that means!"

"it means you're tiny. and stupid." blade says, watching as you hide behind kafka's leg.

"no, you're stupid!" you stick your tongue out at him.

"you little sh-"

"curse jar!"

"yannie!" you cheered loudly.

"y/n!" he cheers back. you run to him as he picks you up. "do you want to walk around today?" you nodded. "let's go get some allowance from the general first!"

"jing!" you and yanqing arrive at the general's office.

"if it isn't our little cloud knight." jingyuan watches as the young blonde puts you down to go run at him. "i could only wonder what you are doing here with yanqing."

"i wan' to explore with yanqing!" you climb up jingyuan's legs as he watches with a fond gaze.

"is that so?"

you nodded, "but me 'n yan need help." jingyuan looks at you confused before turning to look at yanqing.

"we need some money, general..." jingyuan raises an eyebrow, glancing at you who shows him puppy eyes. and then yanqing tries to play off his ask with an innocent grin.

jingyuan can't help but sigh, "for a lieutenant and a little cloud knight, you two sure are sly." he smiles gently.

"you think we can annoy serval?" an impish grin starts to grow on your face.

"we really shouldn't do that." gepard chides you. you groan.

"but i'm so bored! she's got cool ga- gad-gets."

"gadgets."

"yeah! i wanna see them! i wanna watch serval work!"

"she's probably busy, y/n." you huffed as you struggled in gepard's arms, "stop it!"

"what can we do then?" you pouted. "what do you wanna do?"

awkward silence...

"my idea is better! let's go see big sis!" you tug on his clothes as if it would anything to make him move faster.

"how about we make something for serval? wouldn't that be fun?"

"hm? making something like a gad-gets?"

"gadget. yeah, maybe something like that. or we can draw something for her, and she can put it up somewhere."

"yeah, let's do that!" you cheered, walking alongside gepard and putting your hand in his.

it's no doubt that your parents would leave you in the care of the nicer-est nurse in town (your words, not hers). even if you were a not so amazing state, you can't help but still be happy.

"i think you're a superhero, ms. natasha. i wanna make a story about you!" you've always been a creative soul, it was one of the few things you can do with being bedridden for days on end. writing was a favorite. but you really liked making comics.

"i'm just doing my job, dear. i think you should make a story about yourself." natasha speaks with fondness as she distracts you from getting a shot. "you're just as strong as a hero." her voice is bittersweet but you don't notice it.

"how about i make a story about us? we can be the best-est heroes in the world!" you beamed at your own genius suggestion. "i can be your sidekick!"

"i would love to see that story someday." she smiles. "i know it will be amazing as always." she places a band aid where your shot was taken. her thumb brushes over it once, then again. "i'll even put it up by your bed. framed and everything."

she just hopes you live to see another day.

#hsr x reader #honkai star rail #hsr natasha #hsr gepard #hsr blade #hsr yanqing #honkai x reader #honkai star rail x reader #honkai star rail blade #honkai star rail blade x reader #blade x reader #yanqing x reader #natasha x reader #honkai blade x reader #honkai yanqing x reader #honkai natasha x reader

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cal-writes · 10 days

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some superpower/superhero au musings. that ideas been floating around my brain for a while. dont know where its going you know how my plot bunnies are but enjoy this sampler

"Have you figured it out yet, Surgeon?" Robin smiles serenly. She sits on the stairs, knees knocking together, her elbows resting on them and her chin propped up on both her palms.

He scowls at her, eyes narrowed. Law knows what she means but he won't admit it because it would reveal himself to be knowable. "What do you mean?" He juts out his chin.

She doesn't buy his feigned obliviousness but she humors him. "Zoro's abilities. You have been trying to discern their nature, have you not?"

He exhales through his nose and looks off to the side.

"He would tell you if you asked." Robin continues and Law glances at her from the corner of his eyes.

"I know." He says. Zoro has said as much. But Law isn't going to ask, at least not yet. It's a matter of personal pride and spite. Law doesn't owe people favors, they owe him favors. He demands answers, he doesn't ask for them. (Bepo would be telling him how unhealthy that is right about now if he were here.)

Robin considers him, head leaning to the side. She hums. Out of all the Strawhats, Robin is the person Law would consider his equal in temperament which is to say, out of all of them he is the most cautious around her. From what redacted history of hers that he has managed to unearth, he knows they've had a similar development. She is calculating. Always listening, even without sprouting ears everywhere. He needs to consider his words carefully.

"You are a curious man." She tells him, chuckling good-naturedly.

Law looks at her from above. "In more ways than one." His lips pull into a sharp smirk.

"Indeed." Robin says easily. "Have you made headway in your discoveries?"

Law squints at her, trying to gauge her angle. She might be simply curious - which Law believes to be the least likely. It could be a test, trying to see if he lives up to his reputation - possible, thought Robin seems largely desinterested in people she doesn't consider to be a threat (an insulting prospect in its own right, that Law is no longer considered dangerous to her, but he did work hard to earn their trust so he supposes it is to be expected). Maybe it's caution - there is a reason Zoro's abilities aren't public. Many people with abilities don't bother hiding the intricacies if they even can. But Zoro does. Whether that is for his own safety or someone else's is yet to be determined.

"Some, I'd say." Law admits, trying to sound casual. Whatever Zoro's talents are they are subtle. He can rule out a healing factor definitively - even if it weren't a passive ability but one Zoro had to use consciously, Chopper is too concerned for him every time he is injured for there to be an easy fix. He has considered some form of super strength but ultimately ruled it out. Zoro was strong, occasionally supernaturally so but it was inconsistent. Law's leading theory on that front was some sort of adrenaline manipulation that would grant Zoro the ability of hysterical strength on command. He has yet to confirm that theory. The easiest would be to ask for blood samples but even with everything, Law knows they aren't quite there yet.

Other possibilies are some sort of enhancement, be that in reflexes or speed or general aptitute. Zoro is - as his alias suggests - a demon with a weapon and almost impossible to beat one on one. He is fast but Law wouldn't say unhumanly so. A common public theory is that - as his name suggests - Zoro was either posssessed by or possessing someone and the otherworldly entity of whichever nature granted him his abilities.

Law had dismissed that one easily. Possession would indicate different personalities and quirks but Zoro's body language and fighting style are consistent - even when using something other than a sword. If he was possessed it was permanent.

He had considered the possibility that Zoro was normal. Well, as normal as any of them. Many of his talents could be chalked up to rigerous training and experience. Perhaps he had started young, had the natural talent and dedication to keep up to speed with other super powered individuals. From knowing the man, Law can entertain the idea. But there are too many things that trip him up. Too many things that don't make sense if Zoro truly had no other abilities.

Law has been staying with the Strawhats for a few weeks now and there are some things he has taken note off. Pieces of the puzzle he is sorting into piles before he knows where they connect.

Zoro trains, a lot. Both with weapons and without to the point that Law is quite sure that whatever ability he has is unrelated to his weapons. He's just as dangerous with his swords as he would be with Nami's staff. It's not a surprise. Zoro takes a lot of pride in his body and his prowress.

More confusing are Zoro's other eccentricities.

Zoro doesn't touch things. Law is almost mad it took him so long to take note of it. Obviously there are times when Zoro does. Out in the battlefield, doorknobs, light switches. Technically, literally, he does touch things. But at home, in the space he feels safe, Zoro goes out of his way to avoid touching things. Law would believe him to be a germophobe of some sort if he hadn't seen the man lick blood of his sword. So, no. It's probably not about germs. He just doesn't touch things in a casual way. He doesn't read books or magazines, doesn't use a phone, at most he will make himself tea or pour himself a glass of something to drink. He doesn't cook, nor does he do the dishes. For all Zoro and Sanji bicker constantly, Sanji always prepares his meals, even small snacks and doesn't nag him for not cleaning up after himself.

It might be a trauma response. Maybe he is sensitive to textures for unrelated reasons. Law can't quite define what to make of it yet.

Another thing is that none of Zoro's clothes are store bought. It seems innocuous but once Law noticed it, he could not let go of it. The Strawhats were vigilanties so money could be tight on occasion but he knows they aren't above stealing if they need or want to. None of the others seem to have a similar clothing style. Nami in particular wears fancy brands and designer clothing constantly. So it's not a matter of supply. Zoro isn't so vain he would be particular about it either. Law has seen him wear all number of things, especially if a battle dragged on long enough to destroy his wardrobe. He isn't opposed to wearing regular manufactured clothes. He just doesn't if he has the choice not to.

Perhaps it ties into the texture thing. Law will have to pay close attention to it.

Robin is still looking at him, unpreturbed by his long pause. "If you need a hint, do let me know," He scowls and it makes her chuckle. "It's quite entertaining." She says.

"Glad to be of service." He grits out.

"I am just wondering why go through the trouble. It must be thrilling to you to try and unravel the mystery." Robin tells him and Law's breath stalls in his throat. Something in her tone makes him feel warm.

He swallows hard. "Hardly a mystery. An annoyance, more like." He says, dismissively. Robin makes an inquiring sound. "I need to know what you all are capable of to make plans. Keeping it a secret needlessly complicates things."

"But it's not a secret." Robin says, bemused and Law feels himself bristle.

"It's not exactly common knowledge either." He throws back.

Robin hums again. "I suppose not but if you are expecting a grand reveal, I am afraid you will be disappointed."

"Zoro already said it's not what I'd expect." Law says. Zoro technically said 'it's not a big deal' which hadn't been helpful at all. If it wasn't a big deal, why make a thing out of it?

"That is apt. I remember being quite surprised when I was told." She says and now Law knows she's teasing him. This whole conversation is pointless.

He huffs. "I'll find out, won't I?"

Robin smiles. "Will you?"

#op #superhero au #superpower au #idk how to call it

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lericekrispie · 2 years

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// pd spoilers s2 ep 20

I said this on twitter but I wanted to say it more eloquently on here, I think the prime defenders get special treatment not because WATCH think they are going to be the next best thing, but bc they are the current biggest threat to becoming supervillains and they are trying to step in before that happens.

William Wisp-

we know that the boys are good people, but looking at their powers and how they received their powers in just how they sound on paper, it makes sense as to why WATCH would be... watching these kids.

William wisp is an abomination. He is supposed to be dead, he is very much so barely even half alive, and we have no clue how he got his powers, nevertheless being a Deadwood resident. I would be surprised if Deadwood wasn't on the radar of superhero's or some type of authority for strange things happening there. I would also like to point out that the wisps were in Ashe's demon book??? If you were WATCH and you got handed a case about a kid who came back to life and now had demon powers you probably wouldn't put him with all the other kids, yeah? But you can't leave him alone, he's got powers, he's dangerous, and you might need to call an exorcist. Also, does the prime force know about Mallard Conway? If so, it would also explain why prime force would swoop in instead of letting William potentially be influenced by that man.

Virion Sol-

We know that WATCH is familiar with dimensions, at least from WATCH HQ. That shouldn't be that unfamiliar. However, Vync killed a man. Straight up. It's alluded to for self defense or no other choice/ that's how he was raised, kill or be killed, but still. With the power of all the greats inside of him and a murder on his hands but overall not evil intentions what is the prime force supposed to do? They have to look after him, but can they really put him with the training academy (that has also been alluded to) when he's so unstable? No.

Dakota Cole-

Dakota isn't even supposed to have super-powers. From the rolled, we know that super-powers are supposed to be not uncommon but mostly harmless, things people can do but don't always use, like a talent like being double jointed or have sensitive hearing but like with powers. But Dakota didn't even have that. A theory (that could be debunked with coming episodes) is that the surgery he went through wasn't legal, wasn't sanctioned, and nobody has been able to re-create. If not, then why haven't more people been receiving super powers after accident like Dakotas? It would make sense that even if Dakota has pretty generic (albeit powerful and useful) powers, but if the Prime Force didn't know how he got these powers, who gave him these powers, it wouldn't be a far stretch to thing that the giver of these powers had ill intentions, in the likes of creating a super soldier. I think the mystery behind it can have huge implications as to why Dakota isn't at a super school, a place I feel he would thrive, but with the prime defenders.

These three teens are unhinged, on paper have scary powers from unreliable sources, and are young and impressionable. It would be irresponsible to let them go unWATCHed, but also I believe the formation of the prime defenders was for them, because of them. Because they needed extra eyes, more hands on, a little bit more control to make sure they weren't what WATCH feared, a paranormal demon, a psycho from a different dimension with insane power, and a super soldier.

This also brings up Tide.

Why is Tide watching these kids? Sure, he's supposed to be a mentor and those around him as well as himself see Tide as a clone to carry out his duty, but Tide is powerful. We see this time and time again. He could be out heroing. But to have these kids be in an environment where they could be watched but not only trained and led in the right direction, by the embodiment of a good on the surface level caricatures of a hero, with no life, no backstory, nothing to actually do? It makes Tide seem like the perfect person to assign to these kids, instead of a hero or a person who cannot keep up with them/ not powerful enough to, cannot keep a constant eye on them, who has a life outside of the Prime Defenders.

(Reminder that William and Dakota had family and a place they were living they left to go live with Tide and Vync, something they sacrificed to be apart of the Prime Defenders.)

At this point I feel a little insane, but I feel as if this theory isn't a far reach to say that the Prime Defenders weren't supposed to exist, but was a program set in place specifically to control our three protagonists.

TLDR: the prime defenders aren't getting special treatment because people have high hopes in them but because they're afraid of what will happen if they don't intervein or treat this situation seriously like a ticking time bomb.

#jrwiblr #jrwi vyncent #jrwi podcast #jrwi theory #jrwi pd #prime defenders #jrwi show #jrwi william #jrwi dakota #but that's just a theory #a prime defenders theory #i feel insane #dnd campaign #dnd thoughts #someone sedate me

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norsecoyote · 6 months

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I do not as a rule read a lot of fanfic. This is partly because I don't get much time to read, period, and partly because I still have a bit of a cringe reaction to the whole concept, but also because I will get turned off a story quickly if the author gets something wrong either about a character (which I gather is common) or about the broader themes or point of the original story.

This is by way of saying that, now that I've thoroughly outed myself as an unironic fan of French children's animated superhero show Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir, I want to do what I believe is the next required step on tumblr.com: complain about something the fandom gets wrong.

Fair warning: this is not a meta-post about fandom or fanfic generally, this is 100% me, a nominal adult, bitching about People Being Wrong About Miraculous On The Internet. You stand at the Cringe Event Horizon; read on at your own risk.

So: the central interpersonal tension that powers the show is the "love rectangle" between the leads, where Marinette loves Adrien and Chat Noir loves Ladybug but neither knows the other's secret identity. The obvious solution is absurdly simple: reveal their identities and collapse the quantum superposition of crushes.

A ton of fanfic about the show does exactly that: contrive some scenario where they accidentally discover who each other are, they kiss, they live happily ever after (plus or minus one maniacally obsessed supervillain). And I get why, I think -- the show absolutely looks like it's going to keep this will they/won't they tension going forever, since it's one of its two central narrative motors, and a whole ton of early episodes play with one of the two trying to get closer to the other, failing, and returning exactly to the status quo. Given that, it makes sense why fans would want to just write the goddamn resolution already; it isn't until S3 that the two start making any real progress towards being together.

But. The problem, on many levels, is that the show's writers are smarter than that. Like on the very basic one, the show makes clear from very early on that the old master who gave the heroes their powers explicitly forbade them from revealing their identities, because doing so would let Hawk Moth find and defeat them. And this isn't like an arbitrary concern: Hawk Moth's whole deal is corrupting random people and getting them to work for him, so if he ever happened to even accidentally akumatize someone who knows their identities, that's more or less the whole ballgame. If you're writing a story where Ladybug and Chat Noir learn who each other are but they haven't defeated Hawk Moth yet -- and there are a bunch of these -- you have missed something rather crucial about why they couldn't just do that already.

(The first half of S5 -- which to be fair only came out a year ago -- does a very clever thing where it systematically explores basically every possible workaround to this issue, considering every new power or possibility opened up by events from across the previous four seasons, and methodically rejects each one by showing how it wouldn't solve the actual central problem. I bring this up not to throw shade on any fanfic authors, most of whom were writing before S5 released, but to credit (again) the show's writers for the depth of their understanding of what makes the show tick.)

More fundamentally -- and this is an insight very much stolen from that CJ the X video -- on a character growth/emotional level, Marinette and Adrian aren't ready to be in a relationship yet. Like, sure, they will be perfect for each other, but (at least for most of the series to date) they aren't yet. Marinette starts out with an extremely adolescent crush on a literal fashion model, and Adrien at first is clearly much more in love with his unexpected new freedom as Chat Noir than anything specific about his new partner. They are, to put as blunt a point on it as the show itself repeatedly does, kids.

And, critically, the show understands that they both need to learn to accept themselves first. From an adult perspective it's just duh that you can't have a mature romantic relationship without a solid sense of self (and self-confidence), but that's not remotely obvious to kids at the age of the show's target audience and it's genuinely refreshing to see it acknowledge and reflect that obstacle. One of the few active benefits of the show's extremely episodic pacing is that the writers have time to show both protagonists' slow but genuine character growth, Marinette building up her confidence in her own abilities and decisions and Adrien forging an identity separate from his father's business asset, until when they finally start building something real together in the fifth season it feels genuinely earned.

This emotional arc, in other words, is baked into the show's structure from the very beginning. Fanfic that tries to shortcut this process has, again, fundamentally failed to understand the characters it's nominally telling a story about. Like, I get wanting to experience the emotional high of seeing your favorite characters get their happy ending, but -- the fact that they can't just get that is kind of central to their entire characterization! Are you even writing about the same characters at that point?

#miraculous ladybug #chat noir #children's media #fanfic #stupid petty bullshit #there is plenty of actually good stuff out there of course #but man it's frustrating when an otherwise good story ends with this shit #like it's an afterthought #anyway I'm done posting about this kids show now #we started watching Avatar with her yesterday and she immediately declared herself to be a firebender/waterbender combo #so that's off to a great start

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darthvashtique93 · 7 months

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Love

Tim leaned against a pillar as he stared out at his jovial teammates. They had just successfully eradicated the entire HIVE and put The General (aka Ulysses Hadrian Armstrong) behind bars at Blackgate Penitentiary. Because this was a huge win for the Titans and Red Robin, Tim gave Garfield and Bart the 'okay' to throw a party at the tower. He now regretted that decision. The place looked like a frat house on crack. Titans and ex-Titans from around the globe came to celebrate. The place was packed with at least 200 superheroes aged 15-25. As the underaged heroes entering the party were discouraged from drinking via telepaths, sorcerers, etc., underage drinking would not be a problem. Victor hooking himself up to the Tower's sound system, on the other hand, was a major problem Tim had not foreseen. Music now blasted from every single wall, room, and corner of the tower. There were no places for Tim to hide. "Tim!" Tim looked up to see Cassie running to him. She had a drink in one hand, and Connor in the other. "Tim, what's wrong?" Cassie asked with a pout. "You promised Connor and me that you would relax and have fun. You said you would take a break from thinking," she said as Connor nodded in agreement. "Go dance with someone!" she shouted over the music.

"Who?" Tim questioned.

"Anyone!" Cassie shouted. "There's a plethora of females here wishing you would dance with them."

"And some males," Connor added. Tim just smiled at his two close friends. "There's Stephanie," Connor pointed out. "You could dance with her."

"I'm not going to dance with my ex," Tim stated, giving his friend a look that screamed 'You are an imbecile.'

"Why would you even suggest that?" Cassie asked her fiancée.

Connor shrugged. "I was trying to be helpful."

Tim looked around the packed common room. Everyone was accounted for. Well, almost everyone. "Have you seen Raven?" Tim asked the two.

"Oooh, Raven," Cassie teased. Tim rolled his eyes. "I have no clue where your favorite heroine is. Probably far away from this noise. Oh look, a pinata!" Cassie shouted, her attention elsewhere. She dashed back into the crowd, heading straight towards the pinata. "I'm gonna go make sure she doesn't hurt anyone," Connor said. Tim nodded as Connor followed his girlfriend into the crowd. Tim began to think. Hmm, if I were Raven, where would I be? She wouldn't stay in the tower with all the noise, but she wouldn't leave the island just in case someone needed her. Tim smiled. He knew where she was. Tim turned and walked out of the room, trying to avoid even more dancing along with amorous couples in the hall. This party had been a really bad idea.

Tim finally found her at the beach on the other side of the island. She was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest, so close to the ocean. Every time a wave broke on the sand, the water come up to her toes. Tim looked her over. She glowed in the moonlight and looked absolutely lovely. Her hair, once violet, was now a midnight blue color. It fell straight and silky past her shoulder blades, almost reaching her waist. She wore a simple outfit. Short shorts and purple, sheer, short-sleeved shirt with a black strapped bandeau. Tim released a breath he had been holding. She is so beautiful. "Hey," he greeted upon approaching her.

Raven blinked up at him. If Tim didn't know any better, he would have thought her startled. "Hey," she replied before quickly looking around, "you found my hiding place."

"I did," Tim sat next to her. "Leaving the tower was not an easy task," Tim told her. "Whose idea was it to throw this massive party?"

"Um…I believe it was yours."

"No, I wanted a party with just us. San Fran Titans only."

"You put Garfield and Bart in charge," Raven deadpanned. "I warned you."

"You did," Tim said with a chuckle. "A part of me knew it was going to get crazy. I just didn't expect…that," he pointed to the glowing tower.

"Surely, you've been to some crazy parties of your own, Mr. I-graduated-college-at-18," Raven said playfully.

"I will have you know that I never attended a single college party."

"Didn't you show up at one of Jason's – "

"We will not speak of that night."

"I never ever thought I'd see the day when Tim Drake-Wayne was high."

Tim's head fell in his hands in embarrassment. "I wish I could forget."

"It was entertaining. Garfield took videos." Tim let out a woeful moan. "He said he will release them at just the right moment," Raven laughed. Tim groaned. "I'm thinking…wedding," she added, "at least he didn't send them to the entire superhero community."

"Yes. It could have been worse."

"How did Bruce react?"

"He didn't know what to think. He wasn't even disappointed. He was downright shocked."

"What's it like being high?" Raven asked. "I never had the chance to ask you."

"I think it's different for everyone because it felt like I was floating on a cloud that was about to burst, plunging me to my death."

"Oh."

"I never want experience that feeling again. I like feeling all of my extremities and having some semblance of control over what comes out of my mouth."

"We should hope Jason doesn't show up here. There are at least 25 underaged heroes in there."

"I asked Bruce to keep him busy. He has Jason attending a benefit with him. I believe Rose is there, too."

"I have heard from Dick, Kori, and Barbara that those things are extremely dry and boring," Raven said. "I have never been to one, but it does not seem exciting."

"I'm gonna have to take you to one."

"Pass," Raven immediately said.

The two friends sat in a comfortable silence before Tim said, "You've been really distant lately." Raven turned her head to Tim. "Ever since the Oz incident," Raven shifted uncomfortable at the mention of Oz. "But it's only with me. No one else."

"Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you were presumably 'dead' for two years," Raven bit out sharply. She immediately flinched afterward. "Sorry," she said.

"It's okay," Tim answered, "I asked. I am really sorry you guys had to go through that."

"It wasn't your choice or your fault. I know that. I just…I had just made peace with the fact that you were dead. And then you weren't." Tim studied her. He didn't understand at all. "I don't mean to be distant," Raven said. "I just…" her voice trailed off as she drew in the sand with her finger. "I guess I'm afraid."

"Of what?" Tim asked.

Raven didn't answer. Instead, she asked, "How long do you think this party will last?"

"Well, the party started at 9. It is now," Tim pulled his phone out of his shorts' pocket. "It is now 1 in the morning. I'd say we have about 4 hours left."

Raven threw herself back onto the sand. "Great," she huffed. Her head rested on her hands as her eyes closed.

Tim's eyes traced her body and immediately fell to the belly button ring. That's… new. Tim gulped before laying beside her. He really needed to get his hormones under control. He was just happy Raven had learned how to completely block out other's emotions. "So," Tim cleared his throat. He really wanted to get back to the question Raven had so artfully avoided, but he didn't know how. He decided on a tactic. "Did you have stars like this on Azarath?" he asked. Really? He mentally rolled his eyes. That wasn't the question he wanted to ask, but…

"We had stars," Raven answered, "but not like this. The night wasn't nearly as dark as it is here. We didn't have streetlights because there was no need. Azarath had two moons. The moons were always full. We would watch the moons rise the way you watch a sunrise. Once a month, when the moons reached their peak, different colors would flash through the sky. We were able to see the different galaxies. Ooh, and every other month, there was a meteor shower."

Tim could sense her excitement as she talked about her life on Azarath. Have I never asked her about Azarath? Sometimes Tim forgot Raven wasn't from Earth. "That seems awesome," Tim said when he realized she had stopped talking.

Raven turned to him. The joy in her eyes accentuated her beauty even more. "It was amazing," she breathed. "I wish I could show you," she said sadly.

"I would have loved to have seen it," Tim told her softly. He slowly reached his hand up and removed an errant strand of inky black hair.

"You would have tried to map out the galaxies. Then you would have named them," Raven smiled breathlessly.

"Probably," Tim laughed. They both stared into each other's eyes. Tim moved closer to her; his thumb gently stroked her lower lip.

Raven abruptly lifted herself up on her elbows, surprising Tim. "I can show you," she said, sitting all the way up.

Tim followed her. "How?" he asked, genuinely curious.

Raven crossed her legs and motioned for Tim to do the same. They sat across from each other. "Do you trust me?" she asked.

"You have to ask?" Tim said with a smile.

"Tim," Raven said seriously. "I'm about to enter your mind."

Tim looked deep into Raven's eyes, all playfulness leaving his face. "I trust you more than anyone I know," and he was shocked at how true that was.

Raven nodded. "Close your eyes and relax," she said as her eyes glowed white, and she placed a hand on each side of Tim's face. She began chanting. "Open your eyes," Tim heard a soft voice breathe in his mind. He obeyed. A jolt of fear shot through him. "Stay calm," Raven's voice echoed softly. Tim turned to see an older version of Raven dressed in white robes, with glowing white eyes, looking down at him with a smile. "You're in one my memories," her voice echoed. Tim immediately slowed his breathing, taking a moment to look at his surroundings. Judging from the way they were dressed, this was Azarath. "Raven, look," the older woman beside him said, "it's starting." Tim looked up at the dark sky to see two moons and the most beautiful colors sparkling in the night sky. Galaxies. The sky then lit up with flying objects. Tim easily recognized the meteor shower. He felt a swell of happiness and peace rush through him.

A minute later, Tim and Raven were back in their respective bodies on a beach in San Francisco. "Raven," he breathed.

She immediately knelt next to him and placed a hand on his chest. His heart was racing. "Calm down, Tim," she breathed softly as her healing powers slowly seeped into him, slowing his heart back to its regular pace.

"It was so beautiful," Tim said, covering the hand on his chest with his own. "But I didn't feel like me. I felt…different." He turned to look at the empath.

Raven's eyes lowered to the ground. "You were seeing through my eyes," Raven said.

"It was a memory," Tim breathed. "I was happy. You were happy and at peace."

"That is the last memory I have of my mother," Raven said, subtly trying to dislodge the hand trapped against Tim's chest. "Eight hours later, Trigon attacked." A solo tear ran down her cheek. She quickly wiped it away.

"Thank you for sharing it with me," Tim said in awe of what she had just done. It was no little thing, Raven showing a part of herself to him. She didn't let anyone, anyone into her head. Ever. In that moment, it hit him. I hope I'm right, he thought. "Raven," he scooted closer to her. She shifted onto her knees, staring intently at him. "I'd like to ask you a question." Raven nodded. "Earlier you said you were afraid. Why?" Tim could see her begin to disappear behind her wall. "No, don't," he sat up. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Disappear."

"I don't know – "

"You're afraid of me…or for me?" Raven looked away. "Why?" Tim asked, searching her face. "I'm not going anywhere."

"But you did," Raven replied. "You died. Tim, you were dead for two years."

"Raven," he reached for her hands.

"What happens next time you die, for real?"

"Raven…"

"I…" Raven opened her mouth to respond; her lower lip trembled. Tim reached a hand up and caressed her cheek. Raven leaned into his hand. "Tim," Raven's voice trembled as she tried to pull away from him, but he wouldn't let her.

Tim placed his hand behind her head and gently pulled her forward. Kissing her lower lip first, he connected their mouths, fused their lips together. He swallowed her gasp of surprise as he placed an arm around her waist and pulled her close, chest-to-chest. He massaged her lips with his own, drinking in her soft sounds and moans. He felt Raven slowly, tentatively placing her fingers in his hair. Tim gently pushed her, coaxing her onto her back. He broke the kiss to breathe her name. "I don't know how long I've been wanting to do that," he said, rubbing their noses together.

Raven was breathless. She stared up at Tim with her large eyes. "I've wanted to do that for four years," Raven breathed out, her fingers tangled in Tim's hair.

"Really?" Tim asked as he softly drew designs on her stomach with his finger.

Raven bit one side of her lower lip, drawing his eye. "Tim," she whispered, "I um…" she paused, nervously. The feeling of his fingers on her stomach; the one stroking her hair – she couldn't concentrate. "I think…no," she paused, "I know that I- "

Tim placed his mouth over Raven's again, pressing his lips hard against hers. He lifted his head and breathed out, "I know. And I'm so sorry it took me so long to see how much you do. I love you, too." The amount of happiness and joy flooding her eyes nearly brought tears to Tim's eyes. He slowly brushed his lips against hers before slowly molding his lips to her, pressing his body against hers, slipping his tongue in and out of her mouth, sucking on her lower lip, basking in her breathless, soft moans. He needed to slow down. He didn't want to get so carried away he scared her away for good, but damn! He could kiss her forever. Just as he started kissing down her neck, drunken laughs interrupted him. He stopped and took in Raven's appearance. Her lips were swollen; she was blushing and breathless. They turned to see who had interrupted them. Two members of Titans international were about to have sex on the beach…and not the beverage. Raven and Tim started laughing quietly. "I think your secret hideout has been compromised," Tim laughed. "They stole my idea though."

"Tim," Raven gasped, blushing as she gently slapped Tim's arm.

"What?" he asked, gazing at her mischievously. "I'm just being honest."

"Well, can we go?" Raven asked as the passionate couple's moans and groans grew louder. "I don't want to hear all that."

"Sure," Tim said, rolling off her. He quickly jumped to his feet before helping Raven stand up. He then grabbed her around the waist and pulled her up against his body until not a single millimeter of space was left between them. He kissed her once again so passionately; if he hadn't been holding her, Raven would have swooned. By the time he pulled away, Raven had her arms wrapped around his neck, and she was out of breath. Raven had the feeling that as long as she was with Tim, she would probably always be out of breath.

The world stopped as Tim gazed into Raven's eyes. "Thank you for trusting me," he kissed her forehead. "Thank you for befriending me," he kissed her nose. "And thank you for loving me," he gently kissed her mouth. Raven nodded before snuggling closer to Tim as they began to walk back to the loud, Titan Tower turned frat house.

"I don't want to go back there," Raven whispered.

"I have a place," Tim blushed. He placed his forehead against Raven's, mentally sending him an image. Raven's eyes glowed black. The next instant, they were landing on a bed. "Perfect," Tim said before kissing her again. "I love you," he whispered.

"I love you, too," Raven whispered back. Tim smiled beautiful before he eagerly began kissing her again, much to Raven's amusement. But Tim couldn't help himself. He felt so free. The future he once worried about, didn't seem so bleak anymore now that he knew Raven would be right there by his side.

#robrae #timrae #timrae fanfiction #tim drake x rachel roth #tim drake x raven #redrobin x raven #redrobinxraven #red robin x raven

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avisisisis · 1 year

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To be fair to YJ, they did reneg on the idea that the speedforce didn’t exist on earth 16 because I think they realized the implications of not having it (aka making earth 16 not connected to the dc universe among other petty flash things) but they did say that people in that universe don’t know about it yet and that’s why I tend to think an easy out would be in the trauma of the event Wally misremembers how he got his powers and doesn’t remember the lightning storm outside and even his strict agnostic magic isn’t real mindset (that is def no where close to his clap if you believe mindset in the comics, and is more Barry’s mindset) is a way of protecting his own preconceived notions and mind from whatever he saw when he first entered the speedforce which may have been his own first “death” or maybe alternate versions of himself.

One of the things that @babyflash has talked about is Wally as a kid/teen experiencing weird speedforce shit mostly alone like getting stuck in happy death day time loops via thawne/Savitar among other things.

The pain of being some semi sentient demension time monster’s specialist little boy I guess: a Wally west story

Ohh I could talk about Wally not being /human/ all day. I can imagine everyone being weirded out by him not because they know he's not human but because of the little things

Just imagine — and yeah this is Danny Phantom body horror level, maybe even more — how horrifying it would be to not know that there's an eldritch being among humans but to know that you're it. I don't know, I just think people should talk about the potential this has more

I want the characters to notice thay “Hey! This is not normal!” and just not care. I want them to realize that Wally's everything has always been kinda off but writing it off as superhero stuff

I want the little things to be shown more in media. Like how speedsters somehow always know when someone enters the room even if they currently can't hear/see for X reasons. Or like how they seem to be constantly vibrating, or how they generate lightning when they get too excited

I want someone to look at their friends and realize that they're not aging. At all. Even though Flash is supposed to be one of the most ‘normal’ ones of the league in terms of humanity, he's still not aging, and that's honestly really scary if you think about it

It'd be cool if someone realized that no, speedsters aren't impatient, it's just that everything goes so slow for them and hey, you wouldn't be able to sit still either if 5 minutes was 5 hours to you. Because speedsters tend to overthink everything. You'll walk up to them and ask them a question and they've already thought of 100 different ways the conversation could end

I think it'd be very cool if someone, idk, wrote a fanfic about the league (JLU) somehow losing their powers and Wally panicking because oh no he can't think anymore. Everything's suddenly going so fast and he's gotten used to acting slower for everyone around him so now that he doesn't have to do that he's so slow to react. He's way more anxious than usual because now he has no time and there's nothing he can do about it because he has no powers

Speedsters tend to enter Flash Time whenever they're feeling down so that people don't notice. Now that he can't, the team notices how much more quiet and sad and scared he looks, and it's honestly terrifying because he's the happy, funny one! If he's not laughing, then the matter is way too serious for them

The last time he didn't smile in battle was when he almost died fighting the Brainiac/Luthor thing

I also think it'd be cool for them to have like, little twitches or ticks (is that what they're called?) sometimes that are usually unseen because of their powers, but if they lose them...

Idk. This has sm potential and ppl need to talk more about it

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rappaccini · 6 days

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it's been a year or so since arachnophobia was drafted so i guess i'll do a retrospective

warning: this is a salty, sappy ramble

so to get it out of the way: atsv is a massive achievement in animation, and one of the best superhero movies ever made. it pretty much guaranteed that miles morales is going to be an a-list hero forever, told an ambitious and well-executed story, and-- look, everyone's talked about how great it is. it's a movie that'll define a generation. it's an instant classic. it changed the perception of what's expected for cg animation. college classes will be taught about its animation, score, and storytelling. its legacy speaks for itself and i don't need to praise it anymore than it already has been. i do agree with most of that praise.

it was also a terrible working environment for its animators. none of that artistry is worth hurting your employees, and if you have to hurt people to make 'good' art, then maybe you suck at it. it probably wouldn't have gotten so bad if the writers had a coherent plan from the start, stuck to it and actually gave a shit about the artists who they keep flaunting on their social media and dragged out for the oscars campaign to insist that Atsv Is Real Art. oh so now you want to recognize the artists? when they might get you a trophy? okay. we'll see how bad the btsv work environment gets now that you got away with it and have even more pressure to deliver an even better final product for an even bigger audience on what's sure to be an inhumane deadline given that the initial release date was two months ago.

(who wants to bet there'll be an ai art controversy given that sony just publicly admitted they want to use it to make their movies now. sure lord and miller said they won't but can we really believe anything they say?)

it's also not a perfect movie. which, sidebar: there is no such thing as a perfect movie because perfect movies are impossible to make. there is always something that can be improved. and critiquing something you love is a good thing because it's always good to challenge things to be better.

a few criticisms off the top of my head:

the spider-society allegory is underbaked; more on that soon.

the two days in which the plot takes place mean it's fast-paced, but the emotional beats of the romance don't make sense when you realize how little miles and gwen actually know each other.

the romance itself is efficiently delivered. every moment is carefully crafted to advance it, the pop songs and score used under the scenes are beautiful, the cinematography is gorgeous, the actors and animators worked their ass off to give miles and gwen chemistry. but the relationship is still hypocritical when you actually hold it up to the themes of the story. more on that later. it's like a perfectly-organized essay that answers the wrong prompt. a+ for effort, but what the fuck do you think this is about?

and then you read a little deeper and realize all their main points were plagiarized from other students' papers. shit analogy i know, but that's how it feels when you realize all of miles and gwen's big romantic moments were ripped off of other relationships they have with other people.

and then you realize that they spend so much time arguing for one specific point, and accidentally present a countersolution to the one they're offering that's even better. yes, this is about 'gwen should be able to fall in love with spider-man and it should end well' being the argument, with miles presented as the guy who can do it... as hobie emerges as the spider-man who gwen has the deepest bond with, trusts the most, and who's actually taken action to support and empower her for months (as opposed to miles, who she barely knows, doesn't listen to her or make her feel safe enough to tell the truth to, and whose support of her consists of saving her from falling twice, making her laugh a few times and getting her a plate of food at a cookout once). and as hobie is presented as a genuinely sincere person with good motives, instead of the shallow bad boy rival he's introduced as. like... guys? you accidentally wrote a story about how hobie is the better boyfriend and ended it on "but we're still going with miles, for some reason!". how did you not catch that.

the story would've been stronger if miles HAD been recruited to the society. give him actual time to reconnect with gwen, peter and peni. let him befriend margo, pav and hobie for more than five minutes each. let him slowly discover that the society's bad instead of instantly finding out, and make the price of his inclusion the total compromise of his values. especially since his relationship with gwen is so heavily focused on. more on that later.

and especially since the spider-society narrative isn't intersectional enough. it's about race, but fails to discuss how gender, sexual orientation and class would also factor in to who's accepted by society: yes, miles is black. but he's also straight, male, from a middle-class background with an upwardly-mobile-looking future-- there are a lot of ways for a boy like that to advance within the system, especially when you consider--

-- that miles and miguel are already foils. wish they'd spent more time together to highlight that. especially since they're introducing miles's flaws in atsv to set up the reveal of prowler miles/ the 'you should've been a villain' twist. massive missed opportunity to not sit them in a room together and let them talk, or give them a mentor relationship before it devolves in them ripping each other apart.

... honestly? a lot of miles's metanarrative feels like it was ripped off of hobie. right down to the 'you're supposed to be the prowler' twist, and being the one spider-man who's supposedly good for gwen. i love the 42-miles-is-the-prowler twist. but i can't help but go hmmm at all that, especially since hobie's in the movie and is acknowledged to have a revolutionary motivation and a special connection to gwen that are both treated as secondary to miles's. what's going on here. why are we taking hobie's metanarrative away from him and dangling it right in front of him.

like. to be perfectly honest? it'd make more sense if miles were on track to become another miguel than a prowler. he's the nonwhite spider-man who's the controversial heir to peter parker's legacy, who's fixated on finding his way into the multiverse to get a girl whose name starts with the letter g back. who will only be tolerated if he obsesses over collecting canon events like pokemon cards, and wants to be liked and accepted by the general public so badly that he might sacrifice being representative of his own community to get it. and miles almost drank the kool-aid before he found out about his dad's death event. shouldn't we focus more on that?

the decision to focus so much on shouting "take that" at the racist fans who don't want miles to be spider-man, while avoiding saying that racism is the source of that hatred and attributing it to fanboys checking off canon event boxes... was a choice.

and also not necessary, when this movie could've ignored those fans and just been about spending even more time with miles.

making the brownest depiction of miguel o'hara yet the face of that hatred and describing him as 'animalistic'... was a choice. and frankly, a cowardly one that offsets the blame for the miles backlash onto other poc projecting their internalized trauma onto him instead of what it is, which is racism coming from mostly white people.

it's also dishonest to imply, through making miguel found the society after atsv, that the fandom toxicity started with itsv miles. with respect to miles, he's not that special. that shit's been here since 1960. it would've made far more sense if the society were as old as spider-man's canon itself-- and if miguel were its latest custodian instead of its founder. institutionalized oppression wasn't created by one guy after all. the metaphor would've been stronger if it acknowledged that the people who created those systems are long gone, and everyone is both complicit in and being harmed by them.

including miles. which is probably why we're going the 'miles is excluded' route: to avoid implicating him in pulling on some of the society's levers of power. you know, like the ones that are hurting gwen.

weird as hell that the spider-society's canon doesn't acknowledge that it isn't largely based on peter parker. hello? he's half the population of hq. why are we not talking about that? why does peter b not react to this?

peter b parker was character assassinated. to artificially inflate the miles-gwen connection into something deeper than it ever was.

after itsv set miles and ganke up as best friends, ganke did nothing and miles cold-shoulders him the whole time. okay.

pav and his world are great, but they could've been anybody. so they should've been swapped out with a female spider-person so gwen has literally one female friend she's nice to and miles has one female friend he isn't trying to make out with. someone like anya or cindy.

there are like five different beginnings and endings to this thing.

and coming from a gwen fan: gwen is the worst thing about atsv, the same way she's the worst thing about itsv. respect to the people who see gwen as a co-protagonist, but no, she isn't. atsv is not ~gwen's movie~. she did not ~steal the movie from miles~ (if anything, hobie did. good for him). and this isn't a white savior story (yet. if gwen gets btsv's big hero moment of saving miles's dad and world from the spot and is rewarded with a romance with him, then it becomes one, but we're not there just yet). just because she has a pov and more screentime doesn't mean she's on miles's level. she'd have to have a primary plotline that doesn't revolve around supporting miles for that to happen, not just a subplot about her conflict with her dad that's resolved so she can go get her actual resolution where she earns the respect of... the parents of a boy she hung out with for two days over two years and promises them that she'll take care of their son and help him support them.

[like. honestly. all they had to do was show gwen consciously choose to put on her sweater instead of his hoodie-- and therefore confirm to his parents that she's his friend, not his girlfriend. if it were a friendship story instead of a romance, that scene would mean gwen's choosing to stand up for miles and do right by him to redeem herself for the sake of being a good ally, and not so she can show her future boyfriend's family how loyal she is.]

indulge me this rant:

that's the problem. it's not that spider-gwen is a bad character, or a bad fit for the spiderverse movies. she's an amazing character, and perfectly suited to a story about exploring different spider-man universes and questioning the canon they're held up against. atsv in particular more than justifies her presence because of that fuck canon message because there's no better female character to put in these movies to deliver that message than spider-gwen.

and it's not that gwen 'has no place in a story about miles' -- when she's the bellwether for if he's actually learned his lesson in the end. if miles really understands the importance of breaking canon, and wants to be different and make things better for everyone, he'll encourage everyone to break their canon, even if it means he won't get what he wants from them anymore. if gwen breaks hers, he won't date or end up with her. if miles knows that and still supports her, then he's a fully actualized hero.

the problem isn't gwen. it's gwiles. it's that the writers care more about making gwen miles's girlfriend than about making gwen her own person or following through with their own themes about representation, inclusivity and breaking the boundaries society imposes on you. the problem is that gwen was literally only put in itsv to kiss miles at the end and they simply cut the kiss.

and now gwen's only getting a pov in atsv and btsv so she can kiss him at the end of the trilogy. her perspective is only being tolerated because she'll be miles's girlfriend in the end... which ultimately means it's still all about him. her backstory is here to make her sympathetic to him and show how compatible she is with him, and to give her loneliness issues he can fix and a need to belong somewhere so she can regard his world (... and moving into it when they end up together-- there are so many hints through the subtext that ~gwen doesn't belong in her own world, but she could belong in his~-- and you know he's not moving to e65) as a positive. her action scenes are to show how useful she'll be to him (because that mary jane backlash from the raimi movies is somehow still going). her plotline's about how he's so special that he can inspire a gwen stacy to end up with a spider-man and live. the spiderverse movies inverting the gwiles narrative to make it about gwen defying canon to be with him isn't a good change. yeah we sure ~Did Things Different This Time~ but what's the point of doing things differently if you're going to do it worse.

and it is worse. how exactly is it an improvement to take a story about a queer girl refusing to give into a system designed to kill her or take her agency away by forcing her into a romance with a straight boy who'll always have power over her (same difference tbh), and... straighten her up* to make her okay with being that straight boy's supportive secondary girlfriend? it's not. it's fucking not.

(*yes, gwen is trans-coded. but coding isn't explicit representation; everyone who doesn't want gwen to be trans can say she isn't and be technically correct. and they still stripped her of all her sapphic qualities. odds are making gwen trans-coded was just a way to say 'look, we didn't straightwash her! ((but if you don't want her to be queer, hey, we don't either. just don't bring it up and you're good))' while still making sure she's all about miles. and even then, this trans-coded girl's story is still probably going to boil down to 'if this straight boy loves me and his family accepts me as his girlfriend, i get to live and be happy.' what the fuck. gwen could've been the landmark representation for an entire generation of queer girls with a story that uplifts them and tells them they have a right to exist without compromising themselves, the same way that miles is that for black and brown kids... and now that may never happen-- in the movies, in the comics, anywhere-- because miles needs a white marketable girlfriend more, i guess.)

it's stunning, insulting, dishonest, deeply sexist, more than a little homophobic and somehow not surprising that they're twisting her metanarrative into 'what if i can get a boyfriend and live!' instead of 'what if i don't need that boyfriend at all and am better off without him,' and painting miles as the shining hero who'll make things better for gwen instead of the guy who's currently most responsible for putting her in that position. most of all how gwen accepts canon as a given and needs miles to teach her that she's a person, and only breaks canon For Him. are you fucking kidding me. like please unpack if it were miles needing gwen and peter to explain to him how he doesn't need to follow a stereotypical narrative, and then he only breaks canon to help them, the white people, to show them how supportive of them he is and how sorry he is for not showing up for them more even when it would have hurt him, and the narrative only rewards him when he does something in their interest. you see it now, right?

my thoughts on that haven't changed.

if anything they've gotten worse because that depiction isn't going to stay in the spiderverse movies. no, i can't "just ignore the movies" because their depiction of gwen is already spreading. now with gwen's comics being derailed to make her more like spiderverse gwen and an entire generation of kids' perception of spider-gwen now being "she's miles's girlfriend! isn't their love story great?", and all the discussion of gwen's character now revolving around miles -- if you like and defend her, it's because you want her to end up with miles; if you hate and deride her, it's because you don't want her to end up with miles-- its not a stretch at all to say that miles morales is the worst thing that has ever happened to spider-gwen.

gwen stacy had peter and the bridge, spider-gwen has miles and the earth-8 babies. exactly fifty years after that first fridging, and ten years after spider-gwen's creation fixed that problem... we're right back to square one with spider-gwen being Spider-Man's Girlfriend all over again. the only difference is, now it's miles instead of peter, and somehow that makes it even more dangerous-- because at least peter had such an established relationship with mj that we all knew meant if gwen got girlfriended it wouldn't last, but miles doesn't have that yet which means gwen might actually stick to him. good luck tiana.

and it's much more insulting. they really found a way to make sure miles's story always centers a white person, and gwen's always centers a straight guy and they're framing it like it's this mindblowing, special thing that no one's ever done before, when a hero-gets-the-girl plot is the most predictable thing they could've done and both of their characters have already gone on to do so much better apart. really. we're doing this shit again. okay.

yes, btsv might not go through with getting them together. yes, all the pieces they need to reframe gwen's interest in miles as her projecting her need to belong onto him are there. yes, they could end the movie as friends who got over their fixations on each other and are better for it. but i have no faith in that given how hard they went with gwiles in atsv, and how they clearly love that they did it. i hope they don't! i have no faith that they won't!

and now that the synergy's kicking in and lord and miller are in charge of the sony spider-tv shows and will probably keep doing gwen dirty there too if they get the chance and another spiderverse movie using their version of gwen confirmed to still be in development, the damage they've done to spider-gwen might be irreversible. gwiles will probably be a thorn in her side for decades, when it could've just been one awkward mistake eight years ago that we moved on from, and miles can't have an actual friendship with gwen because every time they're together they're going to be pressured to kiss. the spiderverse movies could've done something genuinely new and introduced gwen and miles's relationship to the general public as a platonic friendship where miles supports gwen in resisting that girlfriend role instead of trying to reel her into it like he does in the comics. instead, they tripled down on reinforcing a shitty canon while acting like they're reinventing it. now they've pretty much guaranteed that miles is and will remain primarily responsible for gwen losing her autonomy and having to conceal her queerness. and because of the way marvel's internal hierarchy works, gwen will never be able to confront him. she might not even be able to avoid him at this point.

my one silver lining is that spider-gwen is now a well-known enough figure in mainstream culture that she'll never disappear, more people have discovered her comics, and an entire generation of kids now know who she is-- and plenty of them eagerly see her as queer and sapphic, even in spite of the movie's heavy preference for gwiles. hopefully, more of those kids will read gwen's comics someday. hopefully when they do, they'll find gwen as her own person in her own world with her own stories, and won't have to find out that she used to have those things before being miles's girlfriend took it all away from her. hopefully, the spiderverse trilogy will turn out in hindsight to be the last dying gasp of the straight gwen camp before her queerness takes center stage and she never has to date miles or peter again. hopefully she'll leave that shit behind for good in a few years instead of a few decades or never at all. and if not, hopefully when those kids take control of her character, they'll do better by her.

but there's just no guarantee that their takeaway will be that gwen's her own person, given that the movies are working overtime to tell you otherwise, and a lot of them don't care to look up gwen's original story, or see the gwilesified version as better. and if they do... who knows what damage will need to be undone by the time they get some level of creative input into her. god forbid that gwen end up having gwilesbabies that need to be retconned, if they ever can be.

anyway. watching atsv was a dissonant experience. everything else about the movie is mostly phenomenal, but as a gwen fan, i'm here for her first. so seeing gwen's world fully realized... and then fully realizing that gwen's narrative has been twisted to make her all about miles... was something. scene after scene of gwen's personality being finally complex and comics-accurate, but her motivations being entirely off. having romantic feelings for her peter parker? she would not do that. being passionately in love with miles? she would not do that. telling him 'oh i wish we could end up together if only canon would allow it'? she would not do that. letting gayatri singh, an alternate version of herself, remain in danger because canon says so? she would not do that. only interfering with canon for miles? she would not do that. needing a boy she hung out with for two afternoons to tell her she should define her own narrative, and deciding to do it but only to protect him and give him what he wants and be his love interest? she. would. not. do. that.

i left the movie theater very disappointed, very aware that marvel's synergy would mean the sv movies would have that effect on comics-gwen, and pretty much immediately started outlining this fic on the drive back. it started as a one-shot au where miguel accidentally sends gwen to comics-65 instead of sv-65 and she talks to her comics self, then it morphed into a story where gwen fully snaps and becomes a supervillain, and that led to dusting off a bunch of half-finished spider-gwen fics i had lying around: sv-gwen finding her headstone in a 1610 graveyard during itsv, gwen-8 hating her life, gwen-617 forming her council, among others. in a sense i guess i've been writing this thing for years, and then brought it all together at the last second.

and then it took off from there. i reread every spider-gwen appearance, every gwen stacy appearance, the refrigerator monologues, and then some. rewatched all the amazing spider-man and sv movies, and all the cartoons where gwen features. took a shitload of notes. and then four weeks later the outline was complete and the first chapter was ready to go.

in general, the aim of the fic was to reimagine atsv as a story where gwen's a true co-protagonist by giving her a storyline that can be read mostly in parallel with miles's, in which she explores her own canon, all the bad implications and missed opportunities, why the fandom and the writers keep insisting that she has to replay it again and again, and what the effect of that would have on gwen and her relationships. say everything canon can't, and give her the happiest possible ending that canon won't ever give her.

to do that we had to expand the spider-society metaphor by directly implicating the movie's own canon. no, atsv, you're not the exception, you're literally doing the exact same shit you're claiming to be different from. can you really meaningfully subvert or break canon when your story itself is canon-- and is so canon that all the other canon starts imitating it?

and we have to make the metaphor intersectional. the society's a great introduction to allegorical sci fi. the movies did a great job applying the spider-society metaphor not only to spider-man canon (and comics/storytelling) as a whole, but to greater society... but only from the perspective of race. and that's a problem because the second they made gwen the deuteragonist, they expanded the metaphor. the spider-society can't just be racist-- it has to be sexist and homophobic too, because society and storytelling/comics/the spider-man canon are those things too. and the story has to challenge those systems and end in taking them down, not in gwen saying "i will actually totally submit to them with a smile on my face. this is what i needed all along!"

therefore, we have to acknowledge that in the same way that miles and gwen are black and white in a racist system that harms miles, makes gwen complicit in that harm and challenges him to rebel against it and her to sacrifice her comfort to support him and his community and put his needs over her wants--... they're also a straight boy and queer girl in a homophobic, misogynistic system that harms gwen, makes miles complicit in that harm and challenges gwen to break out of it and miles to sacrifice his comfort to support her and her community, and put her needs over his wants. atsv completely failed to acknowledge the latter... because it wants to continue that cycle, with the only change being that miles benefits from it now.

(like. can we please unpack that the spiderverse movies are full of sociological theming relating miles's journey as a character to his experience as an afrolatino boy... and then conveniently ignores the sociological undercurrent behind a black boy who feels isolated from his community and tremendous pressure to succeed in a white world viewing a hypothetical relationship with a white girl he puts on a pedestal and sees more as a concept than as an actual person as a quick and easy way to get himself that validation. or a queer girl who's been violently rejected by her community for her queerness, and was homeless for months while being bombarded with messages that she's supposed to be a straight guy's girlfriend and her life is meant to revolve around him even if it kills her, suddenly fixating on getting a straight boy to claim her as his girlfriend in order to be accepted somewhere, even when she literally tells him it will only hurt her. they laid it all out in atsv, and yet every scene between miles and gwen hinges on '~but them wanting to be together is the Real Subverison and aspirational somehow~.' because the movies don't want to acknowledge that their favorite ship will fuck up their trilogy's central themes by turning a celebration of difference and deviation from the status quo into an assimilation narrative if miles and gwen end up together. )

which, indulge me this rant: means the core theme of the spiderverse movies is probably going to shape out to be hypocritical (the spiderverse is for everyone! as long as you're a straight boy!) and miles as a hero will immediately have his morals compromised in the end, because the first thing our great champion of inclusivity will do after he breaks his harmful canon is smile at another marginalized person he claims to love and encourage her to remain in hers so he can kiss her whenever he wants. the fundamental problem with this ship hasn't changed in the adaptation from the comics to the movies. because the problem is inherent to the ship itself and you can't fix it without violating the core of who these characters are as individuals and what their stories are about. as bluntly as i can put it: if gwen and miles get together, miles instantly becomes miguel, someone who thinks he's superior to canon, breaks it when it suits him and forces everyone else to conform when doing so means he gets what he wants. and he becomes the villain of her story because he is now the primary reason why it's being taken from her. the only way for him to break that cycle is to voluntarily refuse to participate in it and choose not to be in a romance with her at all.

that was one of the big goals of this fic: deconstruct the societal forces screwing gwen over, how miles is unintentionally complicit in reinforcing them, how that would destroy their relationship, how both of them can be better than this, what it would take to fix things, and what it'd look like when it's better. examine those things in depth, and then reconstruct the story in a way that actually fixes the problem.

and, where appropriate, use atsv as a model: show gwen being initially enamored with the society until she realizes what canon's going to do to her, discuss what prejudices are preventing her from being a fully actualized character and how her own friends are reinforcing them, give her a moment where she says 'fuck it' and interferes with canon in mumbattan, give her a confrontation at hq with miguel over her anomalousness and her useless mentor over how they failed to protect her, give her an ally in hobie brown refusing to go along with how the rest of the society and his own friends treat her, give her a demonized alternate self in a supposedly broken world to empathize with, give her a societal structure to break down at the end of the story, and utilize the spot as an existential threat to the worlds in which she and other gwen stacys have their own stories. and unpack gwen and miles as narrative foils, but you know, actual foils dealing with the same problem in opposite ways, and not just ~ooh, we have so much in common, like being teen superheroes from new york with the default traumatic experience and powers for spider-people and similar gpas, artistic hobbies and cop dads, we're so star-crossed.~ if gwen really were the co-protagonist of atsv, that's what her arc would be.

my thought process was, 'if the spiderverse movies really are going to redefine gwen's story to make it about getting a boyfriend again, and everyone in the fandom either has no idea that gwen's story was ever something different or genuinely thinks that shit's better, there needs to be a rebuttal. and it needs to be so good that people have to give it a chance based on the quality alone.' so the fic had to do everything. it had to be about gwen stacy, spider-gwen, female characters in spider-man and comics and fiction in general, girls and queer girls and queer white girls, how the roles girls are given in fiction mirror the ones they're allowed in real life, how canon and fate are arbitrary and written by people who don't want the status quo to change, how fanon can reinforce and subvert the status quo, a coming of age story, a love story, a self-love story, a feminist story, a spider-man story that knows it's a spider-man story, deconstructs the meaning of a spider-man story, examines it, and then reconstructs it. it had to do everything. i have like ten posts of painstaking notes on this blog and i still don't think i've annotated half of it.

i think i pulled it off. not to swing my dick or anything, but i'm genuinely so pleased with how it all came together. so many happy accidents, so many tie-ins to so many canons, and so many different levels, and it's not perfect, but boy does it work.

however. i would do some things differently in retrospect. i will discuss them in excruciating detail.

this is a tiny thing but i might've named some of the chapters differently. originally chapter 1 borrowed from spiderman 79 by veruca salt, but i already used it for another fic and didn't want to repeat myself. the idea was to use songs from female rock bands for each chapter, starting with spiderman 79 and ending with athena to reflect gwen's growth through the story and bookend it with spider references (from a song about being in an abusive relationship with spider-man to one about being the spider herself), but i had a rule about double-dipping that i kept breaking so i just picked the one band i think the sv-mary janes would sound like and stuck to them. tbh it still bugs me that i didn't pull it off and i should have kept trying to figure it out. anyway listen to spiderman 79. it rips.

i tried a greek chorus/second person angle, with the narration acknowledging the presence of "you,"-- eventually revealed to be the audience-- and the narrator being a spider-gwen herself. there was a whole twist at the end of chapter one where gwen was in the graveyard with her 1610 self, and the narration lets you know it knows you're watching and that you're complicit in what's happening to her and that shit was cool. it got too messy when miles showed up because it became easy to confuse him with you. make of that what you will. so you-the-reader got third partied into being the spider-society extras, who excessively monitor gwen and comment on her actions. gwen can still be annoyed with you, but there's enough distance so you don't feel like you're being directly implicated. even though you are. idk. i kinda wish i kept it.

this fic was written over the summer of 2023. even over the course of one year the conversation about gwen's character has massively changed. if i were writing it now, knowing that we're one conversation away from gwen confirming her bisexuality, and that her world, her queerness and her age are being stripped from her to force her into spiderverse synergy? that would have absolutely changed things. specifically i'd have been so much cuntier in my author's notes. instead of saying ~don't worry i like him but i simply think they aren't a good match~ after chapter 2, i'd have been straight-up calling miles the villain of gwen's story.

also, that joke about gwen and em jay never getting around to their toxic hookup would've been replaced by them being exes. in a world where gwen isn't constantly being dragged away from home, they would've worked out their feelings.

initially the gwen-a conversation was with gwen 65 as she is in the comics; very multiverse-focused. however the idea of meeting a gwen65 who never dealt with multiverse baggage was too great. this is what we're missing because of sv synergy and editorial cowardice: gwen, in her own world, living her life. however this also means we can't confront the situation that gwen a is being forced to compromise herself and leave everything she loves, to be like gwen b. and to have gwen b disown that concept and flip off the synergy more definitively. if i were writing it now i'd add some indication that gwen-65-no-subletter is out there somewhere and they just can't talk to her or something. best of both worlds. damn!

the fic does go into sv-gwen's trans identity, how it informs her perception of gender, her need to comphet her way to being accepted, and how she stops trying to assimilate into straightness by the end. but i think i could've done more to discuss how the society feels about it. i should've added some note somewhere about how the society recognizes her as a girl, but not a trans girl. no one's allowed to bring it up, including her; same way that gwen's trans-coded but can't say it out loud during the movie: plausible deniability so people who don't want her to be trans don't have to think of her as such. i'm gonna explain it as "the bar's so deep in hell that gwen's just happy that they're calling her by the right name and helping her transition. she hasn't thought through why all these grown men who are attracted to her don't want to acknowledge that she's amab because if she does, she'll realize what they want to do to her and lose it.'' if i write the hobie fic i think that'll come up there. he would definitely have put it together.

speaking of hobie, yes the fic's interpretation of him is as a queer person. his particular kind of queerness is unlabeled and based in an understanding of gender and sexuality from the '70s and therefore disconnected from gwen's 2020s headspace. it's mentioned in the margofic but there wasn't a point where gwen herself brings it up here. should've found one. damn.

likewise with hobie and gwen's relationship-- it's somewhere between a qpr and relationship anarchy. since gwen's in denial about it and doesn't have the language to describe what it is, that's never mentioned. bet i could've slipped that in somehow though. damn.

i still have mixed feelings about gwen 617's depiction. she had to be that way because the council had to be started by sv-gwen to justify her being the protagonist, but 617's too important. i still feel like i could've done her better. damn.

i have more mixed feelings about miguel being the leader of the spider-society now. if i were writing it now i'd just ignore the movie saying miguel founded the society, and reinterpret it as an institution that's as old as the concept of spider-man, where miguel is just the latest custodian. that would've drawn more attention to him being as much a victim to canon as he is an enforcer of it. and i'd have miguel be following the lead of a peter parker mentor, the same way miles is, but that relationship would be the reverse of miles and beter's: cold and full of constant put-downs and do-it-like-me's. too late to change that. damn!

there's one more aspect to peter's culpability in the death of gwen stacy that was left out of his convo with gwen. peter telling her 'by the way i put on my mask and stalked her to london, so she came back to nyc because she figured there was no point in hiding from spider-man in england if he just followed her there' (he did all that! it's canon!) kind of undoes og gwen's agency in returning. which she would have, because the writers wouldn't have ever let her go. also fic-gwen would never have forgiven him if he told her that. didn't gel with the themes.

given the later realization of the possibility of time passing differently between dimensions (and earth-65 having an unusually fucked timeline because of society meddling,) i would have used that. something like gwen realizing miles will eclipse her and keep advancing while she stays the same, and the inherent imbalance there. atsv's peter pan analogy in reverse: gwen is a girl who's being prevented from growing up so she's always young and available for the boy who wants her, unable to access the time to process that she doesn't want him, and always disadvantaged whenever they fall out because she can't process her thoughts or feelings as fast as he does. it even ties in to comics-gwen having her age reduced over and over to keep her a teen and lessen the age gap between her and miles. damn!

later realizations that gwen's world was retconned to take place in the 90s/early 00s would've absolutely changed her perception of 65a, which is in the mid 2010s. that's a fun change! would've loved to differentiate 65 a and b that way! or play up how the time unique to spider-gwen was scrapped to make her derivative of peter's, acknowledge the retcon with gwen returning from miles's dimension and being like 'why is it 2001 now' and use that to discuss how the society's deliberately fucking with earth-65's reality to force gwen out of it for good so they can girlfriendify her, the same way canon currently is. the sinister implications of the society deliberately making gwen's world more hostile for her for years to wear her down emotionally so she'll be eager to move into miles's marginally less transphobic dimension would've been insane. damn!

these changes aren't worth going back and editing the fic for, but it would be different if i were writing it today.

........ but i DID make some changes after it finished. i'll own up to them here:

in general: jess's world didn't have a subnumber when i wrote the fic so i had to rely on the wiki. when it was confirmed to be 332, i went back and changed it.

chapter 2: tbh i was so sure i'd get fried by the fandom for writing a fic where gwen dumps miles that i pulled a few of the spiciest lines from chapter 2. snuck one section back in bc enough time passed that it felt safe. that's the one where she asks him if he was lying when he said he wanted to be her friend. (he did! he immediately started treating her like his fake girlfriend from canada! that sucks! let's unpack it!)

the spiciest line still isn't there by the way.

chapter 3: after gwen being closeted bi was basically confirmed in smash 4 i snuck in a bit in chapter 3 about gwen having a moment of bi realization over gayatri. and pav's reaction. it WAS gay, as several ppl pointed out. and i can't help but sprinkle in more salt about canon gwen being unallowed to be anything but straight because she Has To Fuck A Spider-Man.

chapter 4: letting gwen say she hates spider-man and that meeting miles and peter is the worst thing that's ever happened to her. because she probably should, and it is because look at where meeting them led. if gwen had never met miles or peter, she'd be home, and able to mature and be queer in peace. they are why she can't have any of those things.

overall explaining why making gwen have miles's babies is evil.

-> in chapter 3 we add a bit to her mention of her transition to discuss her intentionally not wanting kids. and the society having opinions about that.

-> in chapter 4, gwen puts together why that's game over for her character: it means she can never be her own person again and will always tied to the guy who impregnated her, seen as an accessory to him-- and even to her own children. if gwen dates miles, she can dump him. if she marries him she can divorce him. but if she has his kids, she will always have to return to him and will be demonized every second she isn't picking up after their spider-brats.

-> and in chapter 7 we meet a gwen who's stuck in that web and get her perspective on the matter: it sucks.

chapter 5: clarifying the sexualization situation. the reason why spider-gwen is treated Like That by the society in the fic is reflective of how she's treated by canon and fandom. as bluntly as i can put it: all the men want to fuck her (even when she's underage.), and if they personally can't do it they'll use whichever self-insert they relate to most as a proxy-- miles being the latest one. that is the status quo spider-gwen specifically can't escape. so the in-universe application of this phenomenon is that the society's grooming gwen. all this time they've been slowly isolating her, wearing her down emotionally, and pressuring her into submitting to an inevitably-sexual relationship with someone they've preselected for her. the hiccup in this situation is that gwen unexpectedly refused their candidate and started rebelling. gwen has slowly but surely put it together over the course of the fic, earth-8 just clarified it for her, which is why she's such an emotional wreck. the confrontation with miguel made her finally ready to tell it to herself bluntly and now that she's all out of fucks to give, not afraid of death, and in a safe place to unpack it all, she does.

chapter 6: added gwen a cracking a gwen m = gwenom joke. didn't think of it when i wrote the fic. then realized given the alternate spider-person variations, peter b. and miles g., follow the naming convention of [firstname +middle initial] the most prominent gwen variant we'll probably get in btsv is a gwen m. and a perfect pun on gwen m, is making her a gwenom. (didn't switch a to m elsewhere because at this point it'd be too exhaustive to go line by line. plus, fic-gwen has such a deadname-related kneejerk hatred of her middle name that she wouldn't fuck with it)

chapter 7: further clarifying the gwiles-8 situation as a sham of a relationship where gwen and miles pretend to be perfect in public but in reality are much colder; and both did something unforgiveable to each other and neither is willing to admit to being the victim or having victimized each other. in gwen's case, she initiated a sexual relationship with a teenage boy even though she was 20, which is gross. and years later he turned the tables and basically babytrapped her. and they've been living in the epilogue of gone girl ever since. not sorry! i hate this world and what its creation has done to gwen! and i'm so interested in the implications of gwiles if it were ever acknowledged that they'd be terrible for each other!

chapter 7: mentioned earlier, but i'll repeat it for the sake of thoroughness: gwen-8 having miles's kids doesn't guarantee her survival. the second those kids are old enough to get their own titles, she's irrelevant and will probably be fridged, assuming she isn't already. and gwen-8 knows and hates this.

so those were the big changes. overall i'm very pleased with how the fic spun out. idk whatever was in the water last summer that made me write something this dense and layered in two months, but i hope the city pumps that shit back in!

i'm surprised it got the response it did. spiderverse fandom has its highlights, especially in regard to the artists there and the incredible creativity they're capable of. this is another one of those fandom creativity incubators. in ten years a whole cohort of animators, visual artists and comics artists are going to come into their own, and this fandom and the relationships they made here will have been the starting point for many of them. and i am very excited to see what they do.

but. this fandom is also a nexus between the worst comic bros (the ones who don't even read the damn comics they're cyberbullying people over) and the most annoying puriteens (the ones who think hobie's 30 because they can't read context clues). some of you are smart! some of you are very dumb! some of you are nice people! some of you are assholes! some of you get it! some of you are straight-up bigots! some of you are trying so hard to be forward-thinking that you've horseshoed yourselves into being accidental bigots! some of you are gwiles shippers, and not all of you suck but whenever someone's being an dumbass or an asshole in this fandom, it's always one of you! i made the right choice staying in my own little corner and i was 100% sure that given how toxic the fandom is and how defensive certain members are over their headcanons, they wouldn't take kindly to me taking a weedwhacker to the movie they love and to their fandom's perception of it.

like. i am VERY aware that we jump the shark in every chapter. in 2, gwen gets a glimpse of Planet Ghostflower, hates it and intentionally dumps miles in the meanest way possible, in 3, she kinda steals the fandom cinnamon roll's girlfriend, and thinks about killing him. in 4, she tells the schlubby dad character she hates him, disowns her girlboss mentor, and miguel's one bad decision away from trying to make out with her. in 5, the love interest who's going to last is the one nobody wants and they were fucking on the down low the whole time. in 6, fandom sweetheart peter 65 was an incel school shooter allegory and gwen-65 was never into him and manslaughtered him. and in 7 gwen and miles don't get together, mutually agree a relationship between them would be terrible, and Planet Ghostflower Gwen says that her relationship with miles is a pr stunt that went too far and that she doesn't love their perfect little gwilesbabies.

that's... a lot. and i get that.

by and large the people who read the fic seem to have liked it so... whew. met a few nice people as well, and the fic convinced some people to try gwen's comics, which is really the best thing i could have hoped for.

as for the margofic, i have less to say because i didn't plan to write it until it happened, it's not dealing with fifty years of canon, most of the structure was already defined by the gwenfic, and i didn't get any hate from it. i'm glad it exists, and margo as a character is treated terribly by the fandom, and fuck those people. the flowerbyte fandom seem like nice people, i simply do not usually go there. and from a writing perspective it was nice to get into her side of the events and the 'why do diverse legacy characters matter' debate. i will die on the margo-is-an-mj hill.

and finally, there are two more fics technically planned for this accidental series-- one for miles and one for hobie. i have very long outlines for them that keep getting longer. but

1) i don't have the time to write them

2) i'd rather wait and see how miles-42 is characterized and how the spot fight goes down before going in on those

3) i'm intimidated by how dumb the discourse is around both of these characters and idk if i want to have people coming after me for what's gonna be in these.

a fic about how if miles genuinely joined the society he would've tripled down on the exceptionalism mindset he bought into at the end of itsv, become complicit in reinforcing gwen's canon and started turning into a mini miguel before margo yanks him back from the abyss, or how hobie's relationship with gwen pulls him out of a passively suicidal mindset, helps him find a balance between his personal life and his politics, and how his narrative is multiversally linked to gwen's and miles's in very different, very fascinating ways.... nah those would've been too much i think. with respect, i don't think the fandom's smart enough to understand that miles has flaws, or that hobie isn't miles's yes man.

especially when both of those fics involve showing the offscreen fight between miles and hobie that was over gwen on the surface and subtextually about how miles is realizing he can't use her to hide from his insecurities anymore and lashing out at the easiest target he can reach as a final effort to avoid them that absolutely blows up in his face. it's a great scene! no way am i posting that! i don't want to invite demons into my life or my inbox!

so yeah uh. that will be all i think. maybe i'll write the milesfic and hobiefic someday, maybe i won't.

4) maybe i'd rather slowly dip out of sv fandom because there are better uses for my time than staying around and waiting for a movie i have a bad feeling about, that will certainly be visually stunning but is probably going to bother me a lot from a narrative perspective and have a lot of skeevy labor practices behind the scenes. especially since lord and miller have proven with atsv that they're willing to write an entire movie to respond to fan hot takes they don't like, i'm fully anticipating them spending all of gwen's scenes agonizing over How Perfect A Girlfriend She Is For Miles in response to the misogyny the fans threw at her for not being cartoonishly devoted to him.

indulge me this rant: does gwen need to apologize to miles and work to earn his forgiveness? yes! should miles get to be angry at her? yes! but he should also be angry at peni, who also helped chase him down! and he should be even angrier at peter b, the adult who knew miles better than gwen ever did, who wasn't being coerced by miguel the whole time, who was taking selfies with his baby while chasing miles down. and idk man but watching fucking spider-gwen crawl after the spider-man they're forcing her into a romance with, begging him to forgive her for not being supportive enough when her own death's hanging over her head? gwen interacting with an alternate self and likely being encouraged to Defy Fate by Getting A Boyfriend in a reversal of the council of spider-women plot point from her comics designed to make it all about dating miles when the entire point of the original plot was to save her from that? gwen probably being 'rewarded' in the end for being miles's loyal little helper with a kiss? gwen either finding the will to live or literally being saved from death because she ~loves miles that much~? a reference to earth 8?

i simply don't want to see that shit and i have no desire to spend years in a fandom where i'm anticipating something that'll make me angry and sad. whenever i've been in that situation before-- especially when it comes to a female character being handled by a bunch of straight guys who only see her as the male character's accessory-- it was always the smart move to bow out early and observe from a safe distance.

so maybe i will. i want to give it a chance. i don't doubt that it'll be beautiful and groundbreaking and slick and wonderfully scored and that it'll mostly do right by miles... but i'm here for gwen first. and because i'm here for gwen first, my gut's telling me to get in the lifeboat now before the iceberg hits and i'm going to listen to it. hopefully i'll be in such a different place by the time btsv comes out that i can completely ignore it if it goes that route. if i don't ever write those fics, hey, leaving off on giving gwen and mj their own fics is kind of nice.

and that goes for most spider-gwen stuff. we're at this frustrating crossroads now for her character where we've never been closer to gwen coming out of the closet and it's never been clearer that all her creatives know she's queer and want her to get there... and yet the general audience is demanding her and miles, and she's been dragged out of her world by editorial for movie synergy to be set on a bench for miles to kiss for the third or fourth time, and that'll only happen again when btsv releases. i have no interest in seeing that, and i'm not touching any of her comics until she's out of the closet and/or back in 65; or any piece of media with spider-gwen where she's shipped with miles, period. at this point it's a coin toss as to what'll happen to her, and i don't like that uncertainty. so depending on how shit goes, i may never get back to gwen.

so in a sense, this fic was also meant as a way to mentally barricade myself against btsv screwing gwen over and her canon possibly never recovering from gwilesification. and... i'm still mad about it. i'll never not be mad about it. but i feel like i've gotten my thoughts together on the situation, turned them into something positive, and let a few other like-minded people in her fandom know they're not alone in being unhappy about this. if the worst case scenario hits and gwen goes full earth 8, then i at least left on a high note. the problem's been acknowledged, diagnosed, and a solution's been laid out. now the ball's in the fandom and canon-makers' court to do something with it. i hope that happens a lot sooner than i'm assuming. i'll always root for that last dying gasp of straight gwen to happen, and to happen very soon. and god knows i'm already clowning myself hoping insomniac pulls a fast one and makes gwen cindy's love interest in spider-man 3.

if you actually made it to the end of this note.... thanks for indulging me.

oh, also sometimes when i'm Really Done with a fic i lock it because people have scraped my shit to repost on wattpad and that sucks, so if arachnophobia and something more vanish, they're not gone, you just have to log in.

#arachnophobia fic #spiderverse salt

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dp-clarkjkent · 1 month

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Ok, so, quick question, I know you're not a superhero (I bet Bruce is thankful for at least ONE normal boyfriend lol), but you know superheroes and you're a reporter. Onto my question.

Do the Green Lanterns like. Get payed by whatever entity runs the Corps?

Because they really should be. They can't exactly hold down a nine to five, because they are in space like all the time. Lantering is a full time job! Oh, wait, do they have a union? Because they should have a union. They deserve a union. Everyone deserves a union.

Like I know they are heroes and do it to help people, not to get rich but THEY DESERVE TO BE PROPERLY COMPENSATED, DAMMIT. So do the rest of the league, really, but they seem pretty firm on the whole having a dayjob thing for the most part, as far as I know. And I get wanting to be as independent from billionaires and/ or the government as possible. But it shouldn't be Earth paying them anyway, it should be the Corps.

Anyway, the Green Lanterns should unionise. The Justice League too, actually.

#pay our heroes

Erm, I'mma be honest with you, pal... I have no idea.

Now that you mention it, all the Green Lanterns I've ever seen and/or met didn't exactly live a civilian life besides their own. Like, there are heroes that you think "surely they need a job to sustain themselves and have a place to live etc", but some you just kind of assume they live in a different system, you know?

Take Kal as an example. He lives in his fortress whenever he isn't helping people, right? And he doesn't need food because he's not human and all.

Maybe Green Lanterns also get a fortress of their own — probably in space, that'd explain why they're always flying in and out of Earth — and they feed on something else other than Earth food you'd need money to obtain. Maybe they have their own Lantern currency, who knows. Maybe their powers include not feeling hunger or sleepiness. Or maybe they live in Green houses on a Green planet somewhere and eat Green cereal and sleep on Green beds.

My point is, I think that if Lanterns truly believed they should be getting paid or paid more, there wouldn't be as many as there currently are. Same sorta applies to heroes in general. It's like wanting to be a lifeguard but not wanting to get wet.

#clark kent rp #dc rp blog #metropolis rp #dcu rp #green lantern #((omg this was brainy))

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fandoomrants · 2 years

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Ok, so many hopes and predictions for season 4 of tua. Many people (can't say I'm not one of them) wishing for Reginald to die, some prediciting they're all gonna die. Everyone basically wondering if they'll be once again facing some apocalypse.

And, thinking about it, another end of the world would seem sorta logical, right? Now, the question is, what is going to happen if that's the case again.

I personally hope they all (not Reginald, tho) get out of it alive, with or without powers.

I believe they'll get their powers back somehow, but maybe it won't be so bad if in the end they after all lose them forever? Especially if this time it's some conscious decision they make to get rid of them?

Bear with me for a second here. What if the season ends with either another apocalypse where they all die (please, please no)

Them letting go of their powers and somehow saving the world doing so? Because, if you think about it, they are literally causing it every time because they do something with their powers. So, maybe them losing them is going to give them a chance of a normal life.

AND

That might be good for them??

Luther and Sloane (if they find her, I personally believe she's not gone forever) having a normal life, travelling the world together. Or, for Luther, in general, not being ashamed how people are going to react to his body and him being half a monkey and having to hide his body at all times, just having a normal life that he's in control of. Basically doing what he wants to do, not what his father says.

Diego and Lila having their family and living in peace with their child (let them have one!) , not having the shadow of their upbringing looming over them and threatening them all the time, making them question their ability of creating a normal family.

Allison... Idk, I think she was better and happier in season 2 when she was just trying to lead a normal life with Ray without using her powers. I personally think she's relying on her powers too much but would live better without them. I don't really know what's gonna happen with both Ray and Claire as they're from other timelines and don't make sense in the same one, but I hope she finds some peace.

Klaus!!! Klaus might need some getting used to not being immortal, even though he found out that pretty recently, he is still leading a pretty risky life so he basically never understood how many times he has died. BUT he doesn't like the ghosts! Losing his powers would mean he could have the chance to get clean, start a normal life!! He wouldn't have to get drunk or high in order to escape the ghosts constantly bothering him! I think that's gonna work for him well! He's smart, he's really smart, he'll find a good path for himself. I think it'll be great for him to get rid of his powers!

FIVE CAN FINALLY RETIRE, Y'ALL! Especially if somehow he gets to get his body back (I love the 58-year-old in a 13-year-old body but I believe he would hate to remain like this forever).

Ben... Idk, Brelly!Ben also wasn't a big fan of the Horror, now we have Sparrow!Ben who doesn't seem to mind it, but maybe when there are no Umbrella or Sparrow Academies anymore, he'll just wanna lead a normal life. It's confirmed it was Sparrow!Ben on that train, and he looked so peaceful and happy there. Maybe he'll like to have a normal life without being a superhero or having to prove himself in front of everyone.

And Viktor. Viktor... Really spent most of his life without powers. And, I believe he was actually doing pretty well. He had an apartment, a job. He was actually living better than some of his siblings. So, maybe if he ended on good terms with his siblings this time, and didn't feel like an outcast (AND GOT TO PLAY HIS VIOLIN, OMG, PLEASE. Let the boy get his violin and show his talent properly this time), he would actually live well without powers.

Anywayy, I got a bit carried away! I actually started this post wanting to say that, whatever happens, whoever gets to live or die, we'd better not end up with a dead Ben once again..

#tua #the umbrella academy #ending predictions #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #ben hargreeves #viktor hargreeves #lila pitts #sloane hargreeves

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strangeswift · 2 years

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So I was doing some thinking (bad idea I know)

I tried to put myself into a GA heteronormative mindset. If I believed Mike was straight (first watch through of s1-3 I did tbh) would I still dislike Mi/even? More importantly, would I still be of the opinion that their relationship is beyond repair and they would both be better off broken up?

Now I'm not claiming to be unbiased here, but I really tried to take Mike's queerness and Byler completely out of the equation. And the conclusion I came to is that I still wouldn't like Mi/even, and I still would think they'd be better off broken up.

Obviously. But let's break down all the reasons why.

Reasons I wouldn't personally ship Mi/even:

In season three, it feels like it is moving way too fast, both for their ages and for the fact that El is developmentally stunted from growing up in the lab. Seasons one and two felt like a puppy love first crush, and nothing about their relationship in those seasons felt uncomfortable to me. But in season three, between the frequent kissing and the indirect love confessions from Mike, it all felt too fast in a way that did make me slightly uncomfortable.

The juxtaposition of Mi/even with Lumax. We see Lucas and Max, who are the same age, having a much more realistic and comfortable relationship. This makes the codependency and general uncomfortableness of Mike and El more noticeable.

The fact that Mike was neglecting his friendships in favor of hanging out with El. Mike and El leave rather than helping Dustin set up cerebro when Dustin just got back from camp and wants to spend time with his friends. Dustin vocalizes the fact that this upsets him by calling it, "Bullshit." Mike also obviously neglects his friendship with Will. Even taking Will's romantic feelings completely out of the equation as well, watching Will season three paints Mike and his relationship with El in a bad light, especially if you take Mike's queerness out of the equation. Watching Will destroy Castle Byers is devastating even if he was only feeling betrayed by a friend and not by someone he has feelings for. Feeling sympathy for Will makes the audience upset with Mike and by extension further dislike his relationship with El which is the cause of all of the conflict in the first place. (Again, if we ignore Mike's queerness as a factor in the conflict.) Midleven even negatively affects Mike's relationship with Max! Yes they weren't especially close, but all of their conflict season three has to do with Mike and El's relationship, so if Mike and El weren't dating perhaps Max and Mike would have gotten along more.

Their turbulent relationship in season three. Through a GA lense, I feel that the purpose of their relationship issues and breakup was for some light hearted drama and comedy, and also to give El and Max an opportunity to bond which they otherwise wouldn't have gotten. And it accomplished those things well in my opinion, but it made me start to dislike their relationship further. Because I had already started to become uncomfortable with it, and then they are having issues on top of that.

The fact that El didn't feel comfortable telling Mike about the issues she was having combined with the fact that Mike couldn't say I love you in his letters. If season three hadn't left me with a bad taste in my mouth regarding their relationship I would be able to move past these issues if they were properly resolved, but as it stands, I cannot.

Their fight. Mike gaslit her for one, and called her a Superhero when that was clearly the last thing she needed to hear, both of these things demonstrating that he is not especially sensitive to her feelings. Furthermore, even as she was standing there devastated, he still couldn't give her what she needed, he still couldn't say that he loved her. The only explanation for that in my mind at that point is that he doesn't love her. And while they are only 15 and not being able to say "I love you" quite yet doesn't have to be the end of a relationship 1) It is clear that El wants and expects it, and 2) Mike had two indirect love confessions in season three, so backtracking on that feels weird. It feels like it means something more than "He's just not ready" because he already said it, so how can he "not be ready"? That wouldn't make sense narratively in my opinion.

The "From El" letter. It felt final, it felt like a breakup. Not a silly breakup like in season three, and not El purely being emotional. It felt like a decision she made, a decision she thought through.

"Like it was a fight we can't come back from." This sounds very final as well. Once Mike says that out loud, in my mind, they are done. If they weren't supposed to be over at this point, they shouldn't have had him say that. Nail in the coffin moment for me, given everything else thus far.

I intentionally left out anything that isn't glaringly obvious to the GA, and I left out things that I personally missed on first watch through.

For example, I am not mentioning El not talking to Mike in the cabin at the end of season four because the GA probably feels that she was just upset about Max, and possibly not talking to anyone after visiting Max in the hospital, not just Mike. (I have no interest in arguing about this, let's just say that in my opinion, this moment isn't as cut and dry as many Bylers like to claim.)

Now, of these reasons, there are a few that would convince me that not only is it a ship that I (GA version of me) personally don't like, but furthermore that El and Mike would objectively be better off broken up:

El's upbringing in the lab and the fact that she has not had an opportunity to be single and figure out the nuanced differences between romantic feelings.

Mike's inability to say I love you, the fight, and El's letter.

I'm conclusion, in the hypothetical world where Mike is straight, Mi/even still needs to break up. The fact that I was able to make such an extensive list while taking Mike's queerness and Will's feelings completely out of the equation says a lot.

Now add back in Mike's queercoding and Will's feelings for Mike which were make incredibly obvious in Season 4?

Mi/even bones methinks.

#byler #<- you get it #maybe this is obvious but i wanted to put my thoughts down and i figured i would post 🤷‍♀️#abby rambles #anti mileven

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sharonisthebettercarter · 3 months

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the way cuntlander sees shit is strength in power and the use of fear as a control. I'm sure he's aware that certain actions are wrong- there's possible subtle implications that he admits that much when he acknowledges what vought did to him and doing to ryan is wrong; but in his mind what he's doing is ensuring his future as a "superhero" that is not to be trifled with with an heir to follow his example.

That being said, he definitely keeps getting worse; and in my mind that is due to the infuriated desperation to have control over shit. Every time he does something, it's questioned; he doesn't care if what he's doing is wrong, he just hates that others don't respect him. So if he can't get obedience with respect then he'll do it with fear and become increasingly more desperate and dangerous with each rebellion.

because that's what was used on him, it's literally all he's ever known so as they say, monkey see is monkey do.

there's implication that homelander is *not* self aware enough to recognize that what he does is wrong, he's literally not aware of this if his repeated mantra of 'i'm the homelander and i can do whatever the fuck i want' is any indication. he is aware that his actions may hurt/disturb/cause harm to others. but his belief is that he is above all that/a god/so he knows best and therefore--it's okay when he does it (whatever 'it' may be)

i.e. he is under the impression that they should accept and rejoice his actions, whatever they may be, when he does them.

also, he's not doing to ryan exactly what vought did to him, so i'm not sure what you're trying to say there anon. he can recognize that he despises what vought did to him and that he wouldn't want that for his son, but with vought making him believe he's a frickin' god able to do anything, all it does is give him a nasty case of exceptionalism.

and even then, he hardly cares what humans do with each other or what he does to them because they're mostly just animals to him, it's when they mess with *his kind* that it becomes a problem.

he's being influenced and pushed by situations and certain people (namely butcher now) around him. but if you had zero control over your own life and everything you had to do was decided by other people, wouldn't you be desperate and frustrated, vying for some semblance of control too?

honestly, at that point with everything that's happened? i mean homelander's reactions are just predictably common sense. it *makes sense* that he's gonna lose his shit, people keep *poking the bear* after how many years a this shit?? plus the nothing but enabling him further even when he fucks up? are you kidding??

he doesn't *know* that anything *he* specifically could do is wrong (he's the homelander, he can do whatever, how could it be wrong if he does it plus nobody could stop him/he deserves that right in his mind) and if goes way way WAY beyond simply hating that other people 'don't respect' him.

it comes back to the agency thing. he never had it, nor was he ever treated as a human being, nor was he ever truly loved, so of course that's gonna leave him in a lonely and frustrated place.

remember, his worst reactions are generally to people calling him a 'monster', above all else (he legit blanks out and goes full berserker in diabolical, having flashbacks, so i can only assume the scientists called him this a lot when he lost control but def didn't deserve it as a kid) so it's not as simple as 'oh he hates it', the perception people have of him is directly linked to his trauma and even causes visceral if not volatile reactions he def never learned to control. and it comes back to what he told starlight.

"i'd prefer to be loved, i would... but if you take that away from me, well... being feared is a-one okey-doke by me..."

he has been nothing but dehumanized, neglected, hated, and feared his whole life from the second he was created. fear, indoctrination, grooming and manipulation were also used as a means to control him. and still to this day, he hasn't been made consciously aware that none of this was 'normal' or justifiable, or that it shouldn't have ever happened to him.

"i don't want your fucking apology"

"too little, too late."

there's a part of him that can recognize it wasn't 'normal', but in the way that it doesn't meet the 'status quo' standard he was probably legit taught to long for. not so much in the way that, 'you have super powers yes, but you're still a person and deserve to be treated like one'

his mantra is a reminder. but not so much for us. we see him say it when he 's alone trying to reinforce the mentality. he's literally trying to convince himself that he *is* what vought 'made' him. the *god*. the *homelander*.

his reactions keep getting worse over time because people keep doing the same shit to him over and over, so he keeps pushing back the only way he was taught, and with him getting stronger/more unstable, well...

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

i believe that one was from albert einstein but that is essentially what's been happening here.

boi's gonna blow his top and... well~...

i look forward to it~<3

and the inevitable carnage that will bring<3<3<3

#homelander #trauma #the boys #abuse #insanity #i look forward to it #and so the cycle continues #those that fail to learn from history #are doomed to repeat it #bring on the death and destruction #i need it #<3<3<3 #delicious

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mikewheelerloveselhopper · 2 years

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I can't believe after all that. After everything that Mike and Eleven have been through way back from the very first season all the way until now. Even after Mike gave El that beautiful heartfelt monologue confessing how much he loves her there are still people saying that he only loves her platonically. Like are you serious? Those people have to be joking right? There is absolutely nothing about their relationship that comes across as platonic. Literally not one thing. Also hasn't the theory that he loves her platonically already been debunked way back in season 1 when it was Mike who turned his and El's connection into romance in the first place? He could have kept it platonic if he really wanted to but he didn't because he knew that what he felt for her wasn't platonic. Literally when El asks Mike in season 1 "Will you be like my brother?" He could have said yes but instead he responds with a "What?! No..NO" like he's absolutely appalled by the mere idea of them being platonic. She then asks him "Why no?" and he responds "Because it's different." Why do you think he said it's "different"? It's different because what he feels for her is romantic and NOT platonic. He then proceeds to try and explain to her how he likes her romantically and not platonically like a brother or friend. He fails at trying to explain this with words so instead he just kisses her right on the lips (a very non platonic thing to do). And it was in that moment that their relationship became romantic and it's been that way ever since. He didn't have to do any of this but he does and I just don't understand why some people think he would do all of that if his feelings for her were just platonic feelings. And also here we are 3 years later and they're still going strong in their romantic relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend. That's a long time to be romantically involved with someone that you only view as strictly platonically. Mike isn't dumb he knows very well what his feelings for Eleven are and always has from the get go. As for why he loves her it could be for countless reasons. Her purity, her innocence, her gentleness the fact that she's so incredibly kind, loving, compassionate, brave, protective, how she never judged him and always understood him (i.e. the Mike I understand scene from season 1 or the They wouldn't understand. Eleven would. She would? Yeah she always did scene from season 2) or maybe it's because of her unwavering loyalty or the fact that she's unbelievably selfless or maybe just her incredibly huge heart in general?? There are literally countless reasons as to why Mike would love her. And it is those reasons why she's his superhero. Not because of her superpowers but because of the person she is. Just because he doesn't tell her out loud every single attribute that he loves about her doesn't mean it's because there are none. He literally tells her that he loves her for exactly who she is. That should be enough. Some people just need to stop being so dense and read between the lines.

#stranger things #stranger things 4 #st4 #michael wheeler #mike wheeler #jane hopper #el hopper #mileven

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allycat75 · 6 months

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So I hear ASP may be getting some traction, Boston Dumb Fuck.

JUST DON'T! And hear me out. This one is going to be long and harsh, but it needs to be said.

(I don't give a fuck if he ever reads what I write, but this one is bigger than him so if any of you trolls who work for him want to pass this on, feel free).

There are many reasons why ASP needs to die a quiet death:

It was a half baked idea to begin with- it was noble to try to create a site for the "young people" where they could find information quickly and easily about issues of the day. But it was myopic to limit it to elected officials, who all have their own agenda. It needed to expand to possibly cabinet members or advocacy groups. You can never truly be fair and balanced, but as we have seen lately, those we elect are not always intellectual arbiters.

Your reputation is in the shitter- so to the general public, either you married a racist antisemite (don't worry, if you continue to push this site, it will come out) or if you admit to the PR you are now a known liar and hypocrite, not what you want to represent based on the goals and aspirations of the site. And have you seen your IG numbers lately. Oy! I haven't seen that much crimison since The Red Wedding. And these are probably your Dick-pic Protection Squad fans, who used to support all of your flights of fancy. What you have left are most likely bots, clout chasers and people who forgot they were following you. Besides, ASP was the old, Captain America Chris Evans. He is long gone. He self immolated and burned everything to the ground. I know there were circumstances we aren't privy to that made you choose this path, but like it or not, this was your decision and there are consequences. As a few wise men from England said "you can't always get what you want (but you get what you need)".

Our democracy is teetering on the ragged edge- the last thing we need is to try to boil down complex issues young voters are going to be taking to the polls into 2 minute chunks. I know our brains have been tik tok-ified, but that works for explaining how to make slime, or dissecting how a PR stunt between a Portuguese Nazi and a privileged former superhero could go massively wrong, but it is not the right tool to discuss the complex issues and high stakes that are riding on this election. At best it will be ineffectual, like bringing Highlights for Children to the book club where they are discussing War and Peace. At worst it gives an insidious platform to those who wish to undermine our political systems. You are running out of decent Republicans who can represent their position, if they have a clear position at all.

I have noticed you tend to dig your heels in when things start to change and you may not be ready for it. I saw this when you were dating Jenny and you started to listen more, but I think you stopped because you didn't like what you were hearing. I bet there were voices telling you Ghosted was going off track and was going to be a festering turd of a movie, but instead of pivoting, you plowed ahead, full speed. I won't even get into the nightmare mess you are in right now, but see bullet 2 above to be reminded.

I sense you have not had much struggle in your life. Everything has come fairly easily and I can see why. You are very charming and endearing, who wouldn't want to give you everything. But lessons were never learned. Now, hopefully you are learning them and they will stick.

To continue this project now would be pure ego, and don't you talk all the time about the egoic mind, or some shit. I don't know, I never understood it, always thought it was mental masterbation. But you seemed to believe it. You don't want to be the guy hanging out in the high school parking lot, years after graduation. We already know that isn't a good look for you.

#ai in human form #liars suck!#do better #you are the company you keep #i don't like hypocrites

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charmixpower · 2 years

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What would you change about Believix design wise?I think I remember someone said to make it superhero themed

Jdjejd

Hey, hi, hello

That was me 💗

Which was base on this part of s4

I wrote some realistic ideas of a redesign in this post

But the general idea would just be to mix the normal street wear Believix designs with something like this!

Tecna would properly do the full bodysuit and face mask bc duh, while Stella would be more wonder woman

I feel like Believix is bad in concept? Like the whole thing is just having people believe in magic, which makes them stronger against the people who can absorb Enchantix level spells because reasons

Hmmm Believix being a transformation that increases physical strength so they can just fucking punch the Wizards would be a fun away to get around the absorption problem, fit the super hero theme, and not condesne Enchantix

Obviously the Believix wings would stay and they'd still be fairy like, just with some comics book inspired changes to their outfit...

Musa but her outfit is slightly inspired by Harleen because I'm very normal about both of these fictional characters and do not have a Harley Quinn Funko pop. THE PIGTAILS—

I don't think that would look too odd on the girls? And it would match the earth thing? It would take some of the tropes of super hero costume and make them 🧚‍♀️✨ fairy ✨🧚‍♀️, and super hero costume already kinda look like a less sparkly magic Winx so I don't think it would be a huge stretch

I just???

Tecna brings up becoming superheros to the earth people to increase their Believix powers, and starts talking all about comic books and I thought it would be fun to incorporate that! Especially because once you notice that Aisha/Musa and Stella/Bloom's outfits share most of the same elements it slowly will drive you crazy... Or is that just me?

Musa is already rocking the superman pants!!! Fnnsndnsdn, it's perfect/j

The only ones this design wouldn't vibe with as well is Flora and Bloom

Bloom I can't see liking comic books all that much (she's a die hard classic fantasy nerd) so her outfit would be very similar to the one she has now, and Flora's general vibes don't match up with super heros all that well so she probably wouldn't bother leaning into the idea all that much

Plus it's an excuse to give Stella something like her shorts back bc I miss them

Here's some doodles I made while waiting on food

I drew these before having to run out the house, and ran out of space on the page. That's why they look shitty

Aisha's Believix top is literally already perfect. Just like pull it down to be a jump suit, maybe with a skirt like her Lovix

Just imagine it's a full shirt like in this doodle I made before I remembered her Lovix, and cursed myself as I realized in the middle of outlining

God I have no clue for Flora....

Ummm maybe Posion Ivy meets supergirl?????

Don't even ask about Roxy I do not know, not even a little bit

All I have is boy wonder robin bc I think it would be funny

Musa, Tecna, and Aisha are gonna have more masc transformers with outfits that are more practical; while Stella, Bloom, and Flora are going to have more femme transformations that say practicality whomst

These are all ideas off the top of my head

If you cannot tell I'm not super into comic books, so gjsjdje trying my best

The important part is that Tecna should be visiblely having fun with the outfits—

#believix #rus chatters #winx redesign #rus has ideas

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cindymoonhere · 1 year

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When Is A Hero's Work Done?

Written by Cindy Moon

When is a hero's work done? I'm willing to bet most heroes would say, "Never."

And if I'm being honest, that sounds incredibly exhausting.

It's no secret that our earth has been opened to threats beyond what most of us thought possible. Add in multiple timelines and multiverse theory, and you've got a recipe for global disaster at any second.

So, of course, it's a great thing that we have superheroes. They protect the planet and its people, and most of them do it without needing recognition or praise.

But when does it become too much?

When do our protectors get to rest or, at the very least, experience life outside of being a hero?

The tragic truth is that most of them don't.

I believe that the number one reason for this is guilt. It has been said that if you have the power to stop bad things from happening, and you don't, then those bad things have now happened because of you. Unfortunately, most heroes take this to heart, and they end up working tirelessly, often neglecting their own happiness and stability for the sake of others.

The second reason, in my opinion, is that most heroes wouldn't know what to do if they weren't protecting the world. I sometimes find myself wondering about that.

What does Superman do in his spare time?

Does Captain America have any hobbies?

A majority of heroes have been heroes for a long time, and when you give your all to a cause like saving the world on multiple occasions, it can be easy to lose oneself as an individual.

Don't our protectors deserve a day off? Don't they deserve time away from the darkness of the world? Don't they deserve peace, even just for a few hours?

Don't they deserve to be the person underneath the supersuit, too?

I personally don't know where we'd be without superheroes, but I can't imagine it'd be a great place. They sacrifice plenty so that the rest of us can go on with our mundane lives; they've more than earned a little grace from the general population.

And, while we're at, let's leave a snack out for our local vigilantes, too. They do just as much as the heroes we know and love.

#work: articles

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