#well this may have started as meta but for me meta exists only as a vehicle for headcanons

[bleachbleachbleach]

[Bleach 129]

I am the kind of person who will latch onto one thing one character said one time and gnaw on it compulsively like it’s some kind of diction dog toy. These panels are fairly innocuous, relative to what comes immediately before and after them (that is, Matsumoto’s dream about her and Ichimaru’s origin story, followed by news of Hinamori’s jailbreak). But they’re also the first time we see Hitsugaya and Matsumoto really interact. 

In fact, we see Hitsugaya interact with Ichimaru (throwing out death threats) and Matsumoto interact with Hinamori (handing over contraband) before we get to see Hitsugaya and Matsumoto interacting with each other. We’re being introduced to them with these two other important people already in the mix.

What might we glean about Hitsugaya and Matsumoto, before we get to the Ichimaru bit? Across the board, Hitsugaya’s speech generally isn’t that formal, because he’s a boy in a shounen manga and he’s also the boss, so there’s less of a requirement, but I also think there’s an intimacy being shorthanded here. He could be less incredibly casual, pull a Byakuya and just use plain neutral language to address his subordinate, Matsumoto, but Hitsugaya also just did an entire ream of paperwork while she stress-napped in the office. He tells her, 構わん (kamawan, it doesn’t matter), using a shortened/masculine/superior’s form of 構わない (kamawanai). When describing Ichimaru and Hinamori’s altercation, he uses the phrase モメ方すりゃ(momekatasurya), the ending of which is a shortened/masculine/colloquial version of -すれば (sureba). Additionally, this phrase is made more casual/emphatic by using katakana instead of kanji [揉め becomes モメ]. We don’t know them yet, but we’re being asked to know them. We have about thirty seconds and two lines to do so: Syllables drop out and close the distance between them.

Despite this, Hitsugaya still seems to have a dim understanding of who Ichimaru might be to Matsumoto. His full line goes something like, 

Seeing your cohortmate and junior in conflict like that would probably be trying for you, too.

Hitsugaya refers to neither Ichimaru nor Hinamori by name. Instead, Ichimaru is "douki," or cohortmate, and Hinamori is "kouhai" (junior cohort). Which, knowing what we know about Ichimaru and Matsumoto’s whole deal, feels like a somewhat inadequate way to describe it. XDDD The whole sentence is couched in the epistemic mood; Hitsugaya seems a little unwilling to assert anything concrete. Maybe Hitsugaya is trying to split the difference and be sympathetic while also not making assumptions, hence "douki" instead of “friend,” or “past lover” or “your version of a Hinamori, maybe...?”

This is where I go full doggy toy, because also like, what if we take Hitsugaya at his word here and accept that this is not as convoluted as it sounds, because douki is actually a meaningful and relevant relation within the Gotei? 

The Viz translation is more natural than what I offered above (I mean, outside of the decision to refer to Ichimaru as "Gin" in the same breath as Hinamori is “Hinamori”―bold move, Captain Tôshirô!). "Your classmate Gin" still feels weird, though, because in an English-speaking context that kind of makes it sound like Hitsugaya’s throwing it back all the way to like, school classes at the Academy. But you can have Work Douki, as many large companies will welcome an incoming "class" of new employees who are entering the company at the same time. ...Of course, Matsumoto and Ichimaru did not actually… join the Gotei at the same time, either. Maybe they’re close enough, in the scheme of the thousands of years a shinigami might work for the Gotei. Though this would imply that Hitsugaya’s douki are RenjiKiraHinamori(Rukia), which I doubt is something he’d claim.

So I’m kind of taken by the idea that douki could have a looser literal meaning in the Gotei, and is one of the forms of relation that aims to capture a shinigami’s social affinities outside of one’s official seated rank.

Usually, the Gotei is all about rank, rank, rank. But we know there’s also Seireitei vs. Rukongai; there’s gender; there’s degree of nobility; there’s age. These things all matter―if they didn’t, we wouldn’t have a Shinigami Women’s Association; Hitsugaya’s life would probably be easier; the Kuchiki would pitch an absolute fit because of course degrees of nobility matter. Maybe having douki helps recapture the age/experience aspect of a shinigami’s understanding of self/relation, which might otherwise be wholly subsumed by rank.

If douki really is a meaningful aspect of shinigami life, Matsumoto could, say, have a social identity with the 10th, with the VCs, with the SWA, with her douki, and also with her miscellaneous friends. I like the idea that she would get to have all five of these things! 

(…All that’s missing is NON-WORK FRIENDS/LOVED ONES…)

I’ve been saying "cohortmate" as a translation for douki, but in my experience in the United States, the cohortmate relationship isn’t quite as compulsorily ride or die as douki are “supposed” to be. For example, there’s a 2004 article in The Japan Times that explains douki as a

"cross between sibling and comrade — the unwritten agreement is that all douki will stick together, whatever happens. / They work together, organize drinking parties, invite each other to their weddings, keep in touch and communicate for decades, often until retirement."

Given that it’s Ichimaru we’re talking about, though, it’s sad, because I don’t think any of those things are actually true of Ichimaru and  Matsumoto’s relationship in the Gotei, except perhaps in the unwritten whisper that it should have been. They should have cultivated this support, shared these memories, expressed this loyalty—they should be ride or die for each other. But they don’t have that—at least, not in any material way Matsumoto feels.

Because in the end, Matsumoto doesn’t know who Ichimaru is, either:

[Bleach 129]

Douki...? / Do you really― That Gin ― Ichimaru-taichou ―

More specifically, she says Ichimaru-taichou no koto (市丸隊長のこと), which softens the object of her thought. She’s talking about Ichimaru, but in the amorphous sense of the kind of person Ichimaru is, his essence, things he’s done, the general idea of him. The question comes out of Hinamori’s accusation about Ichimaru killing Aizen, but I don’t think Matsumoto’s really focused on the hard facts of a murder mystery. She’s asking after her captain’s read of who Ichimaru is. Which is a related but, I think, meaningfully different line of inquiry. 

After all, we don’t actually have a murder mystery to solve, because Aizen isn’t dead.

What we do have are a spiderweb of tested loyalties (between Ichimaru and Kira, Captain to VC; between Kira and Hinamori, as douki; between Kira and Matsumoto, as VCs; Hinamori and Hitsugaya, as childhood friends; Hinamori and Aizen, not as her Captain but ~"as a man"). But not, notably, between Matsumoto and Hitsugaya, even though Hitsugaya and Ichimaru end up very much at odds.

From the beginning, Hitsugaya summons this idea of "douki" into the room, and perhaps that word clarifies all the things Ichimaru is not. 

Maybe it’s then that Matsumoto knew this was going to be the last time she addressed those thoughts in the form of a question.

[Bleach 180]

#matsumoto rangiku #hitsugaya toushirou #ichimaru gin #bleach manga #bleach カラー #shinigamiology #bleach language #bleach meta #bleach headcanons #well this may have started as meta but for me meta exists only as a vehicle for headcanons #i certainly did not try to separate meta from headcanon #this is the full version (with--believe it or not--quite a bit of editing down for tl;dr) of the polynya-inspired GENERATIONS comment #that i added to the hiyori post from earlier this week #matsumoto era WHEN #no brain just bleach

[fangsandfeels]

I've seen the "Non-ascended Astarion ending is bad for him because you have to persuade him to reject the ritual" opinion...

..implying that he never really wanted not to ascend, it's you the player who selfishly forces him to give up on his goal. To prove their point, they state that you can get a good ending out of all other companion's quests without using Persuasion at all, except for Astarion.

And boy did I want to talk about this...

(In fact, everything I wanted to say has already been told in this amazing meta post, but I still gotta ramble)

First of all, Astarion was going through an intense PTSD. The game gave him a debuff to show how badly going back to the place of his torment was affecting him. Larian couldn't make it more obvious that he wasn't thinking clearly.

Second, there is one thing all abusers have in common: they destroy their victim's feelings of self-worth to the point, the victim no longer wants or knows how to ask for help or have relationships outside their abusive circle.

Who would want you like this? Look at yourself, you think you're better than me? You're nothing. Who would want to waste their time on you? You think somebody else would treat you better?

Since entering the Cazador's palace, Astarion is reliving his worst moments. Initially, he takes it in stride, hiding his discomfort underneath performative and emotional expressiveness. He talks about how he spent time in the bedrooms where he never did any sleeping, about the kennels where he was tortured, about the barracks where he was sent to when he "deserved neither carrot nor stick". Bad memories, but he shares them with Tav because he trusts them with his scars already. They might as well know the rest.

But after descending into the dungeon, Astarion starts spiraling into self-loathing at a break-neck speed. He used to think that all Cazador victims he ever brought to him were long gone, drained, and discarded. A horrible, undeserved death, yet the thought of them not having to suffer for too long was a small consolation, one of the threads holding his sanity together.

But then it turns out that they weren't dead. They were turned. Locked away deep underground, alone with their new selves, with the hunger and isolation. They did suffer. All these years, they suffered, buried in this tomb - because of him. Cazador may have turned them, but it was Astarion who brought them to him. And they remembered it. They recognized him. The monster who stole them from their home. The monster who ruined their life. Monster. Just like Cazador.

So, as if his PTSD wasn't enough, this revelation was another blow to his grip on himself, his perception of himself. His confident facade was shattering - and in his head, he was starting to think that Tav's idea of him, of who he is, was shattering as well. He tried to warn them before. He said he couldn't be what they saw in him. Whatever person they believed him to be had never existed - and Tav was finally coming to realize that as they walked through the gallery of his sins, looking his victims in the eyes and hearing out what they had to say. Of course, Tav hated him now. They had to. How could they not?

So, at the end, he is scared. Terrified. He bit off more than he could chew by walking into the manor and thinking he had only six fellow spawns to deal with. He saw their lives as a small price to pay because Cazador made sure to erase any solidarity between them. He made them torture each other and compete with each other. He twisted the very meaning of family bonds to his perverted liking, and he knew that by doing so, he would make sure every single one of them would get a whiplash from anyone trying to mention family in a positive connotation. Astarion takes no issue with getting rid of his "brothers" and "sisters" because he is fully aware that had the roles been reversed, they would have sacrificed him without a second thought. And he was certain that Tav would change their mind once they learned more about his brethren.

But the spawns in the dungeon...All the faces he remembered. All the lovers he lured. They did nothing wrong. They never hurt him. They never tortured him. Their only mistake was to trust him.

The revelation horrifies him. His first response is to be shocked, overwhelmed with emotion - and then he has to remind himself that sacrifices must be made. He feigns indifference. He tries to cover his internal conflict with gallows humor. But his flippant mask keeps slipping as he lapses from indifference to anger, to guilt, to begging Tav not to hate him as his greatest crimes glare back at him and claw at him, shouting out threats and seething with hatred.

He can't bear the thought of dealing with all the people whose lives he helped to destroy. He can't do anything for them. Just killing Cazador won't undo what he did to them. He will never be anything but a monster in their eyes. And this is what he deserves to be. He will always be reminded of what he is.

He has no choice but to do the Ritual.

He has no idea what will happen to him after he is done - he isn't a planner. He has never been. But at this point, he doesn't see his soul as something worthy of preserving - and by association, he extends that to other spawns. He knows it all too well because he remembers how it felt. He dissociates, projecting everything he hated about himself onto Cazador's victims, trying to rationalize why he should live and why they must die while he actively avoids the truth.

Completing the ritual is no longer about being free. Or protecting himself and his lover. It's about running away. Even when Astarion has Cazador at his mercy, he still thinks of running away. Getting lost forever. So nobody could ever hurt him.

A part of him even realizes that it means running away from Tav too. But Tav can leave, he naively thinks, not knowing the full consequences of the ritual. Tav will leave to find someone else, someone better, and he will start everything anew, a king of his castle.

So, of course, Tav has to reach out to him through that thick haze of fear, anger, and self-hatred. Persuasion isn't about strongarming someone into doing what you want. It's not subjugation or emotional blackmail. It's reasoning with someone. And that is exactly what Tav does - reasons with Astarion after watching him mentally struggle, after seeing his genuine shock and fear, after understanding that he isn't fully on board with the idea.

It's true, vampire spawns tend to gravitate toward power, especially if nothing is pulling them back. A vampire spawn is a feared and scorned creature - it no longer matters whether they were an unwilling victim, forcefully taken and turned. They are seen not as an individual but as the extension of their master - and the only natural transition for them is to get on the top of the food chain. The only way to make a name and become treated as something more.

Astarion saw power as the mean to safety and freedom, first and foremost. Ironically, he never planned beyond securing these two priorities. He never saw himself after accomplishing his goals, and it's kinda amazing how people can make conclusions about his hedonism because he misses petty vanities, wants to drink blood from a goblet, and sleep on silken sheets. The man who was held and tortured in the kennels, fed rats, and had to stitch and fix his only set of clothes over and over to keep it presentable, the man who has never felt happy for most of his conscious non-life is called hedonistic for wanting nice things. For still wanting to take care of himself for once.

He wasn't harboring any grand plans, conquests, or schemes. Even his idea of taking control of the Absolute was abstract and shapeless because he didn't care about getting control over the most influential people as much as he was afraid of breaking whatever protected him from Cazador's domination. He never really knew what to do with power aside from keeping Cazador and the likes of him at bay.

The way Astarion behaves in a relationship also speaks tons of how controlling he really is...or how he isn't controlling at all. When his romance with Tav transforms into something real, and he enters a new territory, Astarion is empowered to make decisions and think about what he wants instead of pleasuring others. It's clear that he and Tav don't have sex after they come clear about their feelings. Tav respects his comfort and boundaries, gives him all the time he needs, and lets him take the lead. Whether they will have sex again or not is entirely up to Astarion. Whatever he decides, it won't change Tav's feelings for him. He doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to do.

Astarion enjoys this new autonomy. He is playful, affectionate, outspoken...and afraid of messing everything up. If Tav mentions breaking up, Astarion thinks he is the problem. If there is another potential love interest showing they have eyes for Tav, Astarion encourages Tav to be with them because he believes they can give Tav everything he can't. When Tav says "I choose you," Astarion is taken aback, needing a moment to hide his genuine confusion at Tav actually wanting to be with him rather than Gale, Karlach, or Halsin.

For all his talks of control and dominating others, once Astarion finds himself with a lover who values his autonomy more than getting power at the cost of his dignity, who makes it safe for him to be honest, and who listens to him, he almost stops mentioning control. He merely lives in the moment, happy not to know, not to pretend, not to manipulate. Just to be.

What Astarion truly craves - not wants on a superficial level, not conditioned to want - is not to be a vampire lord. He wants the freedom to be anything. Anything he wants. Little does he know that true vampires rarely get to be anything they want, even if they gain the ability to walk in the sun -- we see it in his Ascended path as, instead of acting up on his supposed freedom to be anything, Astarion repeats Cazador's rules step by step. Just like Cazador did. Just like Verlioth did. He isn't anything he wants. He is the replica of his former master.

Astarion never had the luxury to explore who he wanted to be outside what Cazador made him. He only makes his first steps once he is free. We see glimpses of that deep-seated aspiration to be seen as a person. Treated like a person. Loved like a person. To be reflected in someone's eyes. He wants to know if there is someone beneath his usual mask, something his, not tainted by Cazador. Someone real. And at the same time, he dreads to know the answer. Because that part of him knows regret. Knows shame. Knows guilt. Confronting it posed the risk of realizing he didn't deserve love, kindness, or a future. What if real him truly doesn't amount to anything? What else for him to do?

So, he tells himself that he has no choice, and he expects Tav to affirm it -- not because he wants them to, but because he believes that Tav has seen enough to make the same conclusion. However, Tav objects, trying to be louder than all the inner demons hissing into his ears. Tav speaks to the Astarion, who asked them what they saw when they looked at him. The Astarion, who thanked them for standing by his side when he said "No" to Araj. The Astarion one who stood frozen in their hug before returning it tentatively. The Astarion who diligently, dedicatedly, caringly kept pulling himself together instead of letting himself unravel completely.

Tav reminds him that this Astarion, right here, right now, is worth fighting for. That he didn't survive all these years of torture, pain, humiliation, and dehumanization to give himself up now. He already has the power to avenge himself, avenge all Cazador's victims. He can end everything right here, right now - and this is the only power to free him. He has the power (and responsibility) of having a choice.

Tav empathizes with other spawns as victims not because they're more "innocent" than Astarion, but because associating with them doesn't brand Astarion as weak or broken. These spawns aren't horrible wretches, and neither is he. They don't deserve this, and neither did he.

The only one who deserves to die today is Cazador - the vampire, the monster, the pathetic piece of shit.

Astarion Ancunin deserves to live.

#bg3 astarion #astarion #astarion brainrot #astarion spoilers #they didn't have to make his arc hit so hard as it does #but I'm glad they did #i'm even glad that cazador isn't involved in the plot #fuck this guy

[orionsangel86]

I'm sorry but why do you ship them so hard? They just have 1 episode together.. I watched the sandman expecting destiel and it was literally almost nothing there. 1 episode. Idk how you guys got so much ship content out of that.

Ah nonny, I'm sorry but if you go into anything expecting Destiel you are gonna be dissappointed. Destiel is a behemouth of 12 years worth of gradually escalating gay subtext, queer coding, and romantic tropes. Destiel is the ship that people go into expecting that Tumblr exaggerated only to be blown away by how ridiculously gay it is even when it tries so hard not to be.

But remember, once upon a time people shipped Destiel after only a few moments of interaction. The first Destiel fic was written 30 minutes after Lazarus Rising aired...everything has its time.

When I joked that Dreamling was the "Destiel of Sandman fandom" I meant in terms of popularity compared to everything else about the show. The ships share some similar traits when compared on a grand scale - think ancient cosmic entity that has very strict rules slowly changes and starts to become more "human" thanks to their friendship with one dude who just so happens to be a hedonistic stubborn ass who refuses to die - but are otherwise very different.

But if you are wondering why people ship Dream and Hob so hard, well, this post goes some ways to explaining it.

But basically, look this may only be a half hour of television, but it doesn't equate in universe to half an hour of interaction. This half hour of television spans the course of 6 centuries for these two characters. There is a totally untapped potential hidden in the gaps between centuries to explore, and on top of that, the final meeting is left completely up to the imagination of the audience. Its a sandbox ship. Its a dozen fanfiction gaps laid on top of each other. It's at least 20 different prompts for fans to sink their teeth into. Its the potential. It's the what if.

Then on top of that, if you follow the comics, you know that the future Dream x Hob meetings also have a hell of a lot of potential to turn romantic. Dream going out of his way to hunt down a specific bottle of wine that doesn't exist on Earth anymore to gift it to Hob in his dreams, the very fact that he visits Hob in his dreams (hello common Destiel trope right there). They don't meet too many more times in the comics, but each time the tension is palpable. The meeting in the Kindly Ones is heartbreaking, because you can tell desperately how much they need each other at that moment, but they are both too distracted or consumed by grief and depression to truly reach out to one another. The comics never reveal why Dream sought Hob out at that point, but given everything happening to him at the time, its not hard to assume that Dream was seeking comfort from his friend - the only person he could really turn to for comfort at that point.

Then we have Hob's dream. One of the final stories in The Sandman original comic run. After everything else has happened, after the climax and all that takes place, after the smoke has cleared and you think everyone else has moved on and you are certain the ending is set in stone, you get to Hob's dream, and your mind is once again blown, and suddenly you have a thousand more questions. So many fans hopes and dreams rely on Hob's dream right now I can't even begin to express how important that particular comic issue is to me.

It's all about the potential. There is so much potential.

Plus the 30 minute scene we got was loaded full of subtext, romantic tropes, and queer coding. I dunno if you picked up on it, but I have an extremely long meta essay still in the works that goes through everything that 30 minute sequence gives us in terms of shipping fodder (I really need to finish that). Its not just the romantic tropes, the break up and make up, its the acting choices, the eye fucking, the freaking song choices in 1989 holy fuck could they be more on the nose.

Also, consider this thought experiment: Crowley and Aziraphale in Good Omens are a hugely popular ship, where their creator Neil Gaiman has confirmed that theirs is a love story. Whatever else you may believe about Crowley and Aziraphale, their story is a love story. Creator confirmed love story.

Now, Crowley and Aziraphale are the leads of Good Omens and interact throughout the entire 6 episode show. But consider the first half of episode 3. Imagine a version of Good Omens where Crowley and Aziraphale don't really interact outside of that 30 minute opening sequence. That the story was much more focused on the Them, the Horsemen, and the other characters. Imagine then seeing that 30 minute sequence which shows Crowley and Aziraphale slowly warming to each other and becoming friends over the centuries, shows them getting to know each other, do each other favours, come to each others defence, get into fights and break up with each other, only to make up later...

Would you still ship them? Even if that 30 minute sequence was all you got? I guarantee if I asked any Ineffable Husbands fan that question they would say yes. Because THAT 30 minute sequence is what solidifies the importance of their relationship and its what MAKES IT a love story.

Guess where Neil Gaiman got the idea for that 30 minute sequence in Good Omens from? Ah Neil, plagiarising his own work all these years later!

If Neil Gaiman thought that Men of Good Fortune would work well for a canonical love story in Good Omens, I wonder what he was thinking when he then adapted Men of Good Fortune for television?

THE POTENTIAL.

I ship Dreamling that hard because it has more potential than any other ship I have come across. It has 6 centuries and all the future of the Sandman show for me to explore, to tweak, to play with. Besides they just suit each other ya know? Like Dream is notoriously bad at relationships, but Hob is literally perfect for him. The more my mind dwells on how perfect Hob is for Dream the more I want to scream about it. Give the sad wet cat man a boyfriend who is literally his opposite in every way. Dream is a character looking for a reason to keep living, and Hob is a character who refuses to die. Dream is a pessimist, Hob is an optimist. Dream is afraid of change, Hob literally changes constantly with the times. Dream is desperate for love and someone to stay by his side, Hob just wants to love someone he doesn't have to eventually leave.

Let them meet in the middle.

#dreamling #destiel #the sandman #there is a destiel quote in there somewhere #they met in the middle #lol #sandman comic spoilers #dream of the endless #hob gadling #sandman meta #dreamling meta #asks

[raayllum]

Knowledge as a Burden / Subjective & Objective Truth :: A S5 Meta

Now, the concept of Knowledge being a burden is nothing new. It's quite literally baked into cultural consciousness (at least in the West; I don't know enough to speak for East cultural mythos) through both the story of Adam and Eve within the three Abrahamic religions, and its close sister story of Pandora's pithos (more commonly known as a box). We also see it in stories such as Bluebeard, in which a new wife is forbidden to inspect her husband's private chambers and deeply regrets her choice to do so, as well as phrases such as "the grass is always greener on the other side," "ignorance is a bliss," and "what you don't know can't hurt you" (all of which are debatable as phrases, of course).

However, it is one of the rare themes in TDP, I think, that wasn't really present in arc 1 and is introduced as an arc 2 (as compared to most that were already in arc 1, and have just been strengthened/matured) particularly as of S5, hence why I wanted to talk about it.

So let's talk about it (specifically Kpp'Ar, Akiyu, Viren, Rayla, Callum Ezran, Soren, and the Jailer, not at all in that order).

Thematic Origins

Like most things in terms of season four thematically, "Knowledge as a Burden" actually starts in Through The Moon, in a lot of ways. There's the other side of it as well - not knowing what happened to her family or Viren is causing Rayla to be increasingly irate and worried - but TTM closes out on Rayla at least being able to face the fact her family is gone. If that was the only big piece of information she'd learned by going through the portal, she probably wouldn't have left.

R: Right before you found me, he opened his eyes, and I knew... He may be caught between life and death somehow, but Viren is on this side of things. He's alive, Callum! C: I don't know, Rayla. I didn't understand half of what I saw in there. [...] I let you jump into the Nexus alone and I knew right away I'd made the biggest mistake of my life. I could have lost you.

However, she Knew - in her bones - that Viren was alive, and so she had to go after him. Even if it wasn't what she wanted (to leave or to hurt Callum) the knowledge itself felt like it was pressing down on her, that this was what she had to do. That she had no other choice.

That being said, TTM is at its core supplementary material. While it initiates the theme in this way (as does Callum's devotion), it may be worth turning to how S4 originates the theme and pursuit of Knowledge, which is not through Rayla directly, but is through Callum, instead.

(If you're interested in Amaya and Callum's parallels in 4x01 concerning partners and knowledge, you'll want to check out this meta here.)

In the beginning of S4, Callum is where Rayla used to be, left in limbo about the well-being and what's happened to his loved ones. And there is, of course, his frustration and quest to properly decipher the mirror, and anger at Soren, when he believes the man is keeping something from him.

This anchoring in Callum's plot line and curiosity indeed informs the true thematic basis of knowledge in Arc 2 in comparison in Arc 1. In the first three seasons, we always knew where we were going — to the Dragon Queen to notify her of Zym's safety/existence, with Viren's initial Aaravos plotline in S2 being a divergence from this level of certainty — but in arc 2, we're purposefully floundering a bit more. Because in a lot of ways

Arc 2 is About the Pursuit of Knowledge

This isn't particularly a surprise, given the seasons have the official title of "The Mystery of Aaravos," and mysteries involve clues that are in the inherent pursuit of trying to gain answers (i.e. knowledge), but it does mark a structural departure from Arc 1, as mentioned earlier, and informs S4-S5 (and most likely S6) more than we might've initially realized.

A perfect example is that, from 4x05 onwards, the main characters (including Claudia and co. until the of 4x09) up until approximately the end of 5x05 (a full 10 episodes) are simply travelling around trying to find the pieces to Aaravos' prison. To decipher its location, its material, and its very nature. But put a pin in it for later, cause I want to draw attention to another quest for knowledge that runs concurrently in season 5 in particular, AKA:

Knowledge as Power

I've talked before about Finnegrin's parallels to Aaravos, but thus far haven't touched too much on Callum's parallels to Finnegrin, even though they're uh

There, for sure. And of course, both Finnegrin and Callum (and Rayla, with her "We're going to need to know one thing: how do we kill a Startouch elf" + Finnegrin's "I just want one thing") have their own similar reasonings, ultimately, for wanting to kill their chosen targets: to maintain their own control and freedom.

(This isn't to say this is Callum's exclusive motivation regarding Aaravos — it isn't — but I do think we're meant to see the blatant parallels as well.)

Control, freedom, and power are all undeniably, understandably linked, then. But knowledge is the undercurrent (pun intended) of all of it. Finnegrin's awareness of his confines is what's driving him mad; Callum knowing that Aaravos can possess him and what the mirror entailed, things he lived in ignorant bliss of for 2+ years, are what worries him in S4. Knowledge and power are inextricably linked, as Viren's character makes particular apparent, which in the case of Kpp'Ar demonstrates a strong Knowledge of his student (with caveats) as well as Aaravos' assessment of Viren. If you have knowledge, you have power — and if you have power, you have agency and/or worth.

Which I think is the subtextual cue to Viren only having clarity ("This is nonsense!") once he casts down his crown (power) in the dream sequences, as well as his end of season "I finally see the truth" epiphany that also comes with relinquishing power and agency over his own life, while ironically exerting it more than ever. But more on Viren and all that later, so pin in it for now.

We also see this element of Knowledge as power come into play with other characters, most notably Claudia in her utilization of dark magic and the creativity she expresses with it, Callum's knowledge of spells, and even Ezran in S5:

However, knowledge in the 'traditional' sense in show isn't solely about magic or spells or prisons, or even overtly negative. There are far more positive sides as well (even if, like most things, it's a double edged sword). So let's talk about

Knowledge as Self Actualization

Have talked about self actualization in regards to Callum and Rayla's individual development in Arc 1 a few times in overlapping ways, so not going to repeat too much here (each of them examining themselves but also one another's worldview - of the cycle and magic/the war - in order to reach the people they were meant to be in many ways, etc), although I am going to touch on them later as per S4 and S5 again.

For a fresher example, I want to talk about Soren.

Dictionaries define self actualization as the process of becoming your fullest self — often times conflated with the best version of yourself — where you become more You than you ever were before. This is especially true for both Soren and Rayla in arc 1, where although they have dips and bends, they are both ultimately selfless protectors secure in the duties they've finally been able to fully choose (and to make up, to themselves, for prior failures). For Callum and Ezran, their self actualization is more transformative into someone entirely new — more confident, more assertive, more compassionate and with the power to express it — than restorative, but again: put a pin in Callum's arc for a bit, cause we're getting to it.

For now, let's talk about self actualization through recognition of yourself through the other (aka in this case, how Callum and Rayla view themselves through the other's eyes in S4 and S5) as well as love being both a subjective and objective truth (with some moon arcanum stuff for spice).

So objective truth is things that are undeniably real — magic exists in Xadia, Aaravos has been imprisoned. Subjective truth is whether Aaravos was imprisoned for a good reason, or that humans can't access primal magic; these can change depending on viewpoint or access to new/old information. For example, while Aaravos likely isn't lying about what he believes will happen ("The sun will rise and you will not") that doesn't make it objective reality; just because someone is telling their truth and perception of events does not make it unilaterally The truth.

But for a more interpersonal view...

In season four, just like Callum doesn't know if Rayla is alive, he doesn't know how to feel about her coming back. Rayla hopes that they can reconcile, but she also knows that her leaving hurt him — even if Callum won't admit it. She had her reasons for leaving and he has his reasons for being hurt, and although somewhat opposed, they can both exist. This follows what Lujanne and Ezran cite, i.e.:

Lujanne: Sometimes real trust is accepting even the dark parts we will never know. [..] Was it wrong? Or was it just differently true?

with notions of subjective truth, and Ezran's assertion of his truth that

But I think I left something out. I ignored something that was true. I denied something that is undeniable. We are angry! I am angry. I have been hurt. [...] But… It’s not that easy or simple. Because people are still hurting and they are still angry. We can’t ignore that, or pretend it will go away. Somehow, we have to hold it all in our hearts at the same time. We have to acknowledge the weight of the pain and loss, but open up our eyes and allow ourselves to hope and maybe forgive and love again.

Whether one has hope or not that the world can be different often times indicates whether they will be breaking the cycle or perpetuating it. We see these conflicting realities once again with Soren and his inability to get through to Claudia ("You're on the wrong side. I know because... I was too")

versus being able to successfully get through to Elmer:

When you can empathize and relate to others — which is a cornerstone of Amaya's growth as well across season three through to season five — you can lend understanding and self-actualization not only to yourself, but also to them: "You know who you sound like?" "Who?" "Me" much in the same way Soren is able to offer it to Elmer, and Elmer reasserts his own identity — his understanding and knowledge of himself, down to his name — accordingly in addition to becoming an ally.

Knowledge is also the foundation of consistency; how well we know someone is predicated on how well we can predict their behaviour and subsequently rely on them, not only in action but also in reaction and responses. There's few things more disconcerting than someone reacting poorly to something you thought they would take rather well. Moreover, if knowledge of ourselves can lead to self-actualization, then our knowledge of each other can also lead to mutual self-actualization. We see this first hand in Rayla and Callum's Arc 2 dynamic thus far, so let's talk about it:

Mutual Love as Self Actualization: Part 1 — Uncertainty to Certainty (S4)

As previously noted, Callum starts out S4 at both a loss with the mirror, and still coping with the uncertainty and stagnation of his loss of Rayla. When Ezran reaffirms that Callum still loves her, all Callum can helplessly rely that he doesn't "even know if she's alive." Things don't really improve once Rayla shows up, either, even if we see the persistent thread of not knowing vs knowing being knit throughout their arc with one another.

We see this knit through, lightly, in Janai's arc regarding her people and place as queen ("Elves and humans [moving too fast]? ... I don't know" "At least Karim would lead with some kind of certainty") as though uncertainty is nothing but doubt, rather than a journey involving doubt as well as the opportunity for growth just as much as any venture (as Callum and Rayla will soon find out).

After all, Callum soon finds a shred of comfort in said uncertainty, and offers it to Rayla accordingly in an attempt to comfort her:

Rayla: This is all my fault [that Soren is dead/missing]. I left him alone! I shouldn't have— Callum: Rayla. Don't. We can't know what happened for sure. I mean, this is the path to Rex Igneous, right? So maybe he couldn’t climb out of the pit, so he had to keep going. You know him. He’s brave. He’s gotta be down there looking for Rex.

And this is also built upon a foundation Ezran has set earlier with his friends. When he is trying to get Callum and Rayla to work together, he doesn't tell them to set everything aside, or even harkens back to their good old days. He asserts their identities and says, "Don't you remember who you are?" because to him — and evidently to Callum and Rayla, because it works — working together and helping each other has become a fundamental, core part of who they are as individuals. They are that interwoven with each other, and Rayla reflects that in 4x07 with, "Callum, you're the 'destiny is a book you write yourself' guy. No one can control you or make your choices for you" as well as what Callum offers up to her in 4x09 where we see the turning point in their prior uncertainty. Although they've both changed, they are fundamentally still the same people they were when they fell in love, and there is both comfort, sadness, and acceptance in that realization, where Callum says:

Which is the tipping point into season 5, and where they stay for the bulk of season five, so let's talk about that next stage.

Mutual Love as Self Actualization: Part 2 — Certainty and Discovery (S5)

Upon reconciling once Callum has said what we knew all along — "I'm so glad you come back" — Callum and Rayla return to the castle, and their searches for knowledge become arguably more explicitly stated by the text. Their first scene together in 5x01 establishes that Callum wants to know the Ocean arcanum ("I thought it would be about controlling the tides or fighting the currents" thereby exerting control, which he desperately wants over himself post-S4) as well as Aaravos, whereas Rayla is seeking answers about her family: "If I can figure out how he put you into the cursed coins, maybe I can find a way to get you out."

This is, of course, something we know she doesn't trust Callum with yet, not wanting to burden him with her problems especially before she's reached her own conclusion of what to do about it (to delay it for the good of the world) and we see that the certainty and forgiveness Callum found in 4x09 has more than carried over.

Opeli: Don't you want to know what she was up to? Why she did all this? Callum: If she didn't tell me, she has a good reason. I know this: the tides are true as the ocean is deep. [...] It means I trust her. Unconditionally. Let her go. Now.

This scene harkens back not only to the love poetry he quoted and then paraphrases ("To love is simply to know this") where loving and knowing someone is deemed synonyms, but also by his reassertion of Rayla's identity in the wake of her transgressions and her silence: "She's not the elf. She's Rayla" because Callum's love for (and trust in) her has always been rooted in the essence of who she is: "That's what makes her a hero. That's what makes her Rayla."

And we see Rayla's own knowledge of certainty challenged and reformed by Amaya in 5x04:

When I was growing up, my big sister Sarai was the smartest, strongest, bravest person I knew. When she died, I felt lost and weak without her. I hated feeling that way, so I learned to be strong alone. Stoic, strong, and lonely. [That does sound like me sometimes.] But the last two years have changed everything. Meeting Janai, falling in love, I am stronger than I ever was — because we are stronger together. And I realized that was the real truth of me and Sarai too. Love and trust grow a kind of strength that is much bigger than we each possess. To have that kind of strength, it is not enough to love someone. You have to trust them to share the burdens you carry.

And although very uncertain about opening up, Rayla still expresses certainty that she knows Callum could and can be there for her, if he wants to be — if he's ready to be.

Rayla: But I think — I know that I trust you to help me carry this. If you're okay with that?

This is, after all, with both Amaya's encouragement and Callum's reassurance that 1) "You can tell me when you're ready" and that 2) he does want to know from 5x01. Then, we see both their arcs in this way largely — or at least they would, in a perfect world — be resolved in many ways by their interaction later in 5x04:

But that's not where their season 5 arc ends, because 5x08 happens. To talk about that, though, we have to talk about a few other things, namely

Oedipus Rex

Bear with me, because I promise this relates. "Oedipus Rex" is a 5th century BCE Greek tragedy written by Sophocles, detailing the life of a man who's name is mostly (ironically) known for lending itself to Sigmund Freud's Oedipus complex theory. The play and myth itself, however, indicate very much the opposite. Prophesied to murder his father and marry his mother, both Oedipus and his parents are accordingly horrified by his apparent fate, and do everything they can to remove it as a possibility, including abandoning their baby to die on a mountainside, as well as Oedipus leaving the home of the family who saved and subsequently raised him, never realizing he was adopted.

He then goes on to discover the truth of the prophesy when a plague wracks his city that the seers say will not leave until the murderer of their king is found, and Oedipus unknowingly pushes until the point of revelation that it was himself, and that his wife for many years is actually his mother. Even when other characters, such as his mother turned wife, Jocasta, begin to suspect the truth and urge him to stop chasing down the mystery so they can have plausible deniability, Oedipus remains oblivious until the horrifying truth is staring him in the face. Jocasta hangs herself, and he gouges his eyes out and runs off into the woods to die.

The reason I bring this all up is because, in the Western literary canon at least, "Oedipus Rex" is considered the "ur-text," otherwise known as the text that all others are modelled after. Not necessarily in the incest or the tragedy, but the fact that most if not many Western stories (TDP included) are continually propelled towards the point of Revelation or epiphany, and that this revelation is inevitable, whether it is positive or negative.

While Viren and Harrow give an excellent display of a relationship that breaks down due to a lack of understanding and compassion, as well as self-doubt on both sides...

Harrow: Call it what it is. Dark magic [...] I've spent years going along with these creative solutions, and where has it gotten me? Viren: I don't understand. Harrow: I know you don't. Leave me. Viren: They will find you and they will kill you. Harrow: I know this. Viren: But know this: anyone of these men and women would gladly trade their lives to save yours.

Likewise, we see Viren through his dreams seek the form of acceptance ("I hope you know--" "I know") that Rayla has offered Callum, except from Harrow, as well as going further into what Viren has deeply wanted for most of his life and from Harrow in particular; to be listened to, to be valued. (How pure that is in practice is debatable given their dynamic outside of Viren's dreams, i.e. Harrow listening to you does not always mean agreeing with you, but I digress.)

Harrow: You are a brother. You're my family. Viren: I've always thought of you as my family, and you know, I would do anything for my family. However dangerous. However vile. Harrow: [Still hugging him] I know. Viren: It is everything to me, to know that I mean something to you, to know that I matter. It's all I ever wanted.

But what should be a scene of comfort and reassurance turns into a literal nightmare. Into entrapment. Into imprisonment.

Knowledge as a Burden / How Knowledge Can Imprison You

I've said before that Arc 2 is about the pursuit of knowledge, specifically because more than the mystery of Aaravos himself, the bulk of the main characters are trying to unravel the mystery of his prison. Season five, by virtue of offering more clues (the nature of the prison, its appearance, and its location) also reveals more of the layers in both the construction of the prison and the dispersion of the clues. Even the mighty Domina Profundis states, "I do not know where it is," but that "I do know what it is."

Previously, we've mostly talked about knowledge, especially within the text of the show, as a positive thing. It is the foundational rock of a strong relationship, it can lead to positive self actualization, and it helps the heroes keep Aaravos from being unleashed. When you do not have enough knowledge or perceived understanding of someone (Claudia assumes Soren could never understand her, and Viren and Harrow's relationship breakdown), your relationship accordingly deteriorates. When you share knowledge, and share experiences (Rayla to Callum about the coins, Soren to Elmer about abusive cycles), you can become stronger together.

But knowledge is not exclusively a good thing. It can also be harmful, or unwanted, or unwanted precisely because it's harmful. It can bind you to deals or bonds you don't really want, and once you know something, you cannot un-know it, whether about yourself or about others. And we see this most plainly in the story Archmage Akiyu shares about the prison.

Because Aaravos was a master manipulator, the Jailer knew all knowledge of the prison had to be protected... its location, its material, its very nature. She carefully divided information about the prison so that not even the Archdragons had the complete picture. Each knew only a piece. "The puzzle is the real prison," she told me with a proud smile. But I made a fatal mistake.

Akiyu didn't mean to look. She didn't mean to discover, to know. What should've been a noteworthy accomplishment of being trusted to keep the world safe, so it would be a better place for her and others to live in, nearly spelled her doom.

I begged her to let me live. I swore to keep the secret safe, but she said it was too important. "The archdragons will have to kill you," she told me, "to protect the puzzle, to secure the prison."

There's a few interesting things here. We can see, from the severity that Akiyu holds regarding her oath, that the Jailer was genuinely concerned about making sure the prison would hold Aaravos, in addition to the fact that Jailer would be condemning Akiyu to death without having to bloody her hands herself. But the intensity here does make sense; as she just said, "the prison is the real puzzle," and now that's been potentially compromised.

We even get a bit of bonus foreshadowing, as Callum turns to look at Rayla, indicating he hasn't forgotten what he asked her to do in 4x07, and that him gaining more knowledge about Aaravos (or the key?) may not necessarily be a Good thing.

Rayla: [About the cube] It's a toy. A piece from a children's game. I hope it was worth it to you, putting everyone's lives in danger (1x04).

If you have knowledge, you have the capacity to share knowledge, either for a common good with people you trust, or to potentially have it twisted out of you under duress, both of which could've posed a danger if Akiyu had trusted the wrong person...

or if someone (much the same way Ezran put it together) went after her to get information but with less favourable intentions...

And we see that Akiyu was likely aware of this as well:

So I proposed a pact. I made a solemn promise I would die before revealing the location of the prison to anyone. And she spared me.

She ends her history lesson by reaffirming a sentiment she already expressed earlier, citing, "I didn't want to kill you, but you left me no choice. I swore an oath, and I intend to keep it" and reaffirming it here with, "So you see, when you came looking for information about Aaravos, I had no choice. If I didn't deter you, I had to kill you." At best, Akiyu's acquisition of knowledge made her prepared to put blood on her hands (if it isn't there already from previous knowledge seekers) and provides her justification in doing so.

If she could just un-know something, her life and the information would've been much safer for everyone involved, and yet that wasn't really possible. Once you know something, you cannot un-know it. (What is done cannot be undone.) Although what happened was a genuine accident, and Akiyu wanted to live, she still understood the importance of what was transpiring and why the Jailer reluctantly wanted to remove her from the equation ("The archdragons will have to kill you" / "You have to kill me. I need you to promise") to be safe rather than sorry.

And then on the flipside we have Finnegrin, who is punished for 'genuine' crimes (we can assume based on his actions that his prior ones weren't much better, but we also don't totally know for sure), spared without begging for it, and is deeply resentful of the restrictions placed upon him.

So while to get out of her predicament, Akiyu is an Tidebound elf who holds onto knowledge, Finnegrin is a Tidebound elf who wants to get out of his predicament by gaining knowledge — by any means necessary. Because knowledge is power, knowledge is agency, and knowledge is imprisonment. Which means it's finally time to talk about:

Knowledge and the Ocean Arcanum

So if S4 is about beginning to navigate both in spite of and within uncertainty, S5 is about having the safety of that uncertainty stripped away, both in creating more of it, and in removing some of it. Namely, the Ocean arcanum:

Finnegrin: What did you think you could do, boy? I control everyone on this ship. Everyone.

Callum: [Internally] Do not ask how the ocean's blue... or why their time the tides do keep. To love is simply to know this. The tides are true as the Ocean is deep.

Now I've talked more about the specific symbolism embedded in the scene where Callum internally unlocks the Ocean arcanum — the closing of his hand mimicking what he must've done to crush the slug (as well as the importance of hands and consistent gestures throughout the episode), the sea and storm and darkness receding because the arcanum is, ultimately, enlightenment, etc.

And in some ways, Callum unlocking the Ocean arcanum should be outright enlightenment with all the positive connotations that comes with. It's him achieving the goal he wanted from his first scene this season ("I'm trying to get into a place where I can connect with the Ocean arcanum"), it has all the positive light and lack of storm associations, and it allows Callum to triumphantly break free from Finnegrin's blood ice grip, for lack of a better term.

Callum: But then, you already knew that, didn't you? Because it's the secret of the Ocean itself. The arcanum. Finnegrin: Impossible. Callum: You helped me figure it out. I thought it would be about controlling the tides, or fighting the currents. But it's the opposite. The Ocean arcanum is about accepting there are depths you can't see, parts of yourself you can't understand, and things you can't control. You know what I'm saying is true because you were born knowing it. No matter how much you try, you'll never control everything. And that terrifies you.

I'm afraid, Rayla. What if I'm on a path of darkness?

Callum does not frame him unlocking the Ocean arcanum, nor the arcana itself, as a victory. Not to say that either of those things are bad, but that they have layers, and complications, that largely were not present (at least at the time) with the Sky arcanum. While Callum learned in S4 the dark side of potential and how consequences can catch up to you, in many ways, S5 is about deepening that understanding to the fact that no matter how much power you have, you can still not control everything. There will always be moments you feel powerless. There will always be moments you are found desperate.

He chased the Ocean arcanum because he thought, if Sky granted him potential and freedom, then Ocean would grant him control, but the truth was more complicated than that. While it did grant him control (the ability to break free from Finnegrin's spell), it also granted him a rather hard truth he'd rather not know.

The first time he cites his poem about true tides and untold deaths, he is talking about his faith and trust in Rayla — the way he views her: "If she didn't tell me, she has a good reason. [...] I trust her. Unconditionally."

The second time he recites the poem, it is about himself. The untold depths are within himself, are parts he is still trying to understand in full because they are uncomfortable truths. In many ways, Callum unlocking the Ocean arcanum is his version of Ezran's 4x03 speech (see how we looped all the way back? 'Totally' intentional I swear), that multiple things can be, and sort of have to be, true in order to gain new ground, even if there's a part of you that wishes it could be simple.

I had a speech planned for today. It was about peace and love and hope. But I think I left something out. I ignored something that was true. I denied something that is undeniable.  [I'm not a dark mage. I will never help you. -> That's the dark magic you want. Just... just let her go.]

And just like his brother, Callum can no longer deny the truth.

Callum had to accept parts of himself that he was previously denying — where they could lead and what they could do, and how he could be manipulated/coerced/controlled — in order to access the Ocean arcanum. Love both makes him stronger, by his own assessment, and weaker, per Finnegrin's. Losing control made him realize what he'll do in order to have control again, even if it's temporary, even if it might not work, even if it might have disastrous consequences, because what he gains in the process — in this case, Rayla's life and safety - is worth it to him, even if all that knowledge is also scary to him and something he's going to continue to learn how to cope with.

Callum's knowledge of himself then becomes a burden, both a metaphorical and literal chain (undoing his chains so that he can free Rayla, while knowing he's chaining himself further to Aaravos in the process).

With this in mind, the ocean arcanum thereby embodies all the facets of Knowledge we've largely been looking at across S4 and S5 in particular. It is Love ("To love is simply to know this") and self actualization/discovery ("parts of yourself you can't understand"). It is power ("The secret of the Ocean itself - the arcanum" "Impossible!") and it is a burden ("there are depths you can't see" with his hands clasped like chains not for the first or last time this episode). It is freedom, yes, but the Knowledge Callum now holds is also imprisonment.

Conclusion

If you made it all this way, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed. While there were other elements this season (Viren's atonement and self actualization arc which begins and ends with him becoming aware of the Truth, or knowledge, of his actions, for example) I felt they were better suited to other core themes or motifs — a general theme of self actualization or the way TDP discusses truth and sight, for example, than being tethered directly to Knowledge in this way.

I expect we'll see this be continued further as the cast chases more knowledge about Aaravos and his past / power in future seasons, in addition to the potential knowledge he and other Startouch elves such as Leola passed down to humanity that had a variety of consequences.

For now, I will see you in the next meta.

—Dragons out

#tdp meta #tdp #tdp soren #tdp callum #the dragon prince #rayllum #varrow #s5 #arc 2 #s4 #analysis series #analysis #listen i got to talk about oedipus rex so i'm happy as a clam

[jakowskis]

torchwood fanfic resources

so i'm a chronic livejournal archaeologist, and fixating on 2000s media is particularly fun for me because it means i get to go digging on lj / dw / old fanfic forums. below you'll find some of the excavations from my torchwood fixation (give it up for month 6!) it's pretty much got every comm i've ever stumbled upon and found useful, or thought others would find useful. it's largely fanfic-oriented, though there's some more generalized comms, too. i hope you guys enjoy!

i was originally going to include a link to my reclist on this post as well, but it's still a wip, so i'll just post that separately in the future.

general disclaimer: most of the content here is from 2006-2013 or so. period-typical attitudes may pop up in places. i'm not sure if most modern tw fans have witnessed the original fandom at all, but i felt a need to say this anyway, because i've seen some icky stuff. i've warned for anything notable. gwen bashing in particular may unfortunately pop up in some of these comms, especially in the comments, so tread carefully.

if you're new to probing through old lj comms, remember to always have the wayback machine on hand, because you're going to run into a lot of purged accounts and seemingly lost fics, but sometimes you get lucky and something's been archived :)

as of the date i'm posting this, all of these comms are still accessible, but if you're from the future and some have been deleted, again, go ahead and give the wayback machine a try. additionally, livejournal has a system that includes 'cross-posting' in which, if authors choose to (and the majority of them do, to get their fics more visibility), fics get posted to multiple comms at once. so chances are, even if one comm gets deleted, the contents will survive through other comms. kind of like how reblogs continue to exist even when the original blog is deleted.

finally, ctrl + f is your best friend if you have a specific ship/character/trope you're invested in, especially in comms with less than ideal tagging systems. if a comm does have a substantial tagging system, you can find all of its tags by adding '/tags' the end of the urls i've provided.

ok... let's begin :-)

assorted livejournal communities

✎ torch-wood: this is essentially a torchwood subreddit. it started before the show even aired, and one of the highlights of it is episode reaction posts (easily accessible on the right side of the lj) that document how everyone immediately reacted to the eps, which is pretty damn cool, fandom-history wise. only thing i should mention is there's quite a lot of gwen and owen bashing in the comments of some of those reaction posts, so just be wary of that if you love those two like i do, 'cuz it's a bit of a bummer.

✎ torchwood-three: this comm is an extremely cool then-daily newsletter (that still updates sometimes?!) that compiled as much fan-content as it could find into cleanly organized lists. the posts made immediately after new episodes aired contain reactions, discussions, meta, theories, new fic, fanmixes, just about everything. very very cool to go back and see the way the fandom was thinking as the show was airing and as they were getting to know the characters. here's a direct link to all posts made in late 2006, during the airing of s1.

✎ torchwood-fic: exactly what it says on the tin. desktop layout is easy to navigate, tags are all there!

✎ torchwood-fic's profile page also features a list of affiliated accounts that's pretty handy. it's worth taking a peek at, in case i've excluded anything in this post that you might be interested in.

✎ twgenrefinders: handy dandy comm where people would ask for fics of a certain variety & be treated with reclists, or hyper-specific fics... pretty cool stuff, ive got several threads bookmarked to sort through the links later. ofc, please note that some of the things people asked for might be stinky. particularly i've seen a lot of ppl requesting gwen bashing fics :/

✎ twstoryfinder: cousin to the above comm; here, people would ask for a very specific fic they'd lost. it's kind of fun to find fics through because you get someone describing memorable scenes + hyping it up, so it's different than just a standard summary. this one still gets posted on, too, which is crazyyy.

✎ tw-unpaired: for gen fics! no romance allowed! there's some good character studies + friendship fics in there. stuff's tagged by character + authors are even tagged, in case you find one whose writing you particularly enjoy. this is v useful for when someone's main journal has been deleted.

✎ torchwood-decaf: a comm where janto is BANNED. nah i'm kidding, it's not anti-janto, it was just made because janto is so huge that it overshadows everything else. pretty smart, tbh; wading through the sheer mass of janto content can be tiresome.

✎ jack-in-cuffs: for dark tw fic, or uber smutty tw fic. as a fan of dark!fic, there's some goodies in here, but of course it's not everyone's cup of tea. most of the writers included warnings, but if you go a little further back, some people weren't as courteous; navigate with caution.

✎ jack-owen: for fic featuring our captain and his (second favorite) doctor. i know this pairing's kinda divisive nowadays, but i enjoy it a lot. the comm's got a dismal tagging system and, ngl, i don't truly like any of the fics there (i'm very intrigued by jack and owen's relationship but i've never found fic that really does them justice, and i still haven't figured out how to write them myself) - but i'll include it anyway.

✎ odetojoi: for fic featuring owen in the middle of a janto sandwich, for those of us who are allergic to women (/sarcasm). there's an oddly impressive supply of fics of the three of them, and a good chunk of them can be found in this comm. (everytime i see this comm i think of a certain abbreviation found in p/rnogr/phy... but i digress)

✎ halfwee-and-tea: for ianto x owen fic. haven't gone through this one much, truthfully. i hate when comms have no tagging systems agh.

✎ owenharper-fans: a comm for the saddest undeadest bisexualest doctor around. also features a few burn appreciation posts, which is nice to see pre-pac rim era. mostly just features a shit ton of owen fic, particularly owen x ianto fic. mostly sufficiently tagged. if you need me once i post this, btw, i will be balls deep in this comm.

✎ the pro-owen alliance: another owen-focused comm - i think this one was made directly in response to owen bashing. haven't combed through this one much but it's got a fair amount of fics.

✎ house-of-cooper: a gwen comm! made in response to gwen bashing. haven't gone through it, but i'm glad it exists.

✎ torchwoodcoffee: ianto comm! this one's hugeee. the majority of it's janto, but the pairings aren't tagged, which is really frustrating. about 6k fics on there, though! just untagged. fff.

✎ tw-femficfest: a comm for fic about any and all of the torchwood ladies. tagging's cleanly done & there's some handy fic round ups, too.

✎ tw-femslash: yuri!!! wahoo!!! a comm for f/f tw ships. there's quite a lot of fic on here, but unfortunately there's no tagging whatsoever. sigh.

✎ tw-classic: a comm for 'all things series one and two of torchwood'. was made after s3 and was popular around s4 out of nostalgia for the golden age <3 good amount of fic, discussions, etc.

✎ torchwood-house: this comm is, like, letterboxd, but for torchwood fanfic. basically a group of individuals who thought of themselves as having Good Taste would read Good Fic and then go in this comm and write a post about why they recommend it. it's well-made, easy to scroll through, and sells the fics v well, and it kinda gets you more excited to read them when you get to see someone hype them up with Fancy Words. it's like a little torchwood yaoi bookclub. we're eating quiche

✎ tw100: a drabble challenge; this thing's full of 100 word drabbles. ngl i hate drabbles but i'm throwing it in here anyway

✎ touchyerwood: i love kink memes... i love kink memes less when my favorite character/pairing is unpopular. the pac rim kink meme's been a blessing bc i'm a basic ass newmann - the torchwood kink meme? not so much. it's got a fair amount of shit, though, so maybe someone else will appreciate it. this one isn't the original, that one's been wiped off the internet, to my chagrin. keep in mind before digging that people in kink memes are horny & gross. that's your warning.

✎ reel-torchwood: for any and all movie aus... ok i have a bone to pick with this comm. i'm a big movie nerd, i love film, i've seen dozens of films i've thought would make good aus - i combed through this and there is not a SINGLE fic in there that piqued my interest. NOTHING. needless to say my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. i'm sure my experiences aren't universal though.

✎ torchwoodslash: ah, remember when we called it slash? gee whiz. i'm not big on this comm, it's not very user friendly + there's like no tags whatsoever so it's extremely hard to navigate. enter at your own risk & good luck, lol.

✎ rounds-of-kink: this isn't a torchwood-exclusive comm, but it's got a sizeable torchwood tag, which can be found here. pretty organized tagging system; makes me happy.

✎ tw-declassified: this comm was mainly used for running a 'torchwood bingo', which, i've been in other fandoms that do episode bingos and it's usually cute... this one confused me a little so i didn't bother peeking around too much, but still a cool little bit of fandom history.

✎ writerinadrawer: this was an annual torchwood writer's challenge that ran for four years... it's kinda hard to navigate but it does have some fic in it so i'm putting it here.

✎ dmarley-recs: a recs journal someone ran for compiling torchwood fic; it's got a l o t of recs on there, largely jack/ianto.

ok and straying from lj briefly for two other places to find fic...

✎ kink_bingo: this is a dreamwidth comm, and it's not torchwood-exclusive, so i've linked straight to the torchwood tag. this comm has a livejournal equivalent, but for some reason the tw tag is pretty barren on that one? not sure why. but on dw it's got a fair amount. the tagging system is rough, it tags fandom and kink but not pairing, which is irritating, and every post is hidden under a cut AND makes you go through a discretion barrier every single time (but probably only if you don't have an account? i'm not logged in) which makes navigation a pain. but i dunno, more smut, if you want it.

✎ whofic.com: this site is for doctor who fic, but it's got a very substantial amount of torchwood fic. i do not, however, like the formatting at all. i'm being overly nice; i HATE the formatting. it's very reminiscent of fanfic dot net but, like, worse. it reminds me of adultfanfiction dot org which was a NIGHTMARE to use. but! there is torchwood fic there so it's going in here.

aaaand there we go! that's all i have. i hope these prove handy! enjoy :D

#torchwood #torchwood posting #mine #txt

[getvalentined]

Content warnings on this post: Pregnancy and its associated biological weirdness, premature birth, seizures, fleeting mention of suicide, and my favorite character in the entire world getting shot. Discretion is advised.

So I've been trying to figure out a way to calculate roughly what point in Lucrecia's pregnancy her big seizure occurred, leading to Vincent confronting Hojo and getting shot. We know it was in 1977, and I've always assumed it was fairly late (because Sephiroth was probably born on Christmas, see link above for justification), but there's not actually much of anything in canon to confirm or refute this assumption.

Only, actually, it turns out that there is. It's so far off the path of things that are common knowledge that it's fallen off the edge of the continent, but it's there.

This is...very long, but please bear with me, because this is the best example of the timeline of this series being staggeringly internally consistent that I've ever seen.

Lucrecia's seizure was caused by Jenova, because it's super similar to the seizures Cloud has in Advent Children. This is weird, because while not stated in the games, there is a very specifically phrased blurb in the Crisis Core Complete Guide stating that Lucrecia was never personally exposed to Jenova cells while carrying Sephiroth:

[Description in alt text. Credit to jeange1231 and Shinra Archaeology on the bird app.]

Given that we don't have in-series canon that contradicts this, I have no issue with accepting it's canonicity. (This is what meta is for. Filling in gaps. Not contradicting the actual games.)

So the zygote/fetus that eventually became Sephiroth was treated in utero, with the assumption that it wouldn't spread to Lucrecia. I won't go into detail on the science here, but it makes sense that Gast and Co. made this assumption, given the existence of the placental barrier and the fact that Project S took place in the late 1970s, when we didn't understand these things as well as we do now. (We still do not understand them very well but that's neither here nor there.)

Cell migration between mother and child is a known phenomenon that isn't well understood, but occurs in a staggering number of pregnancies—it may occur in all pregnancies and simply not persist, but in humans it's been shown to persist for decades. (Basically everything I say about this is going to come from the paper linked above.) In humans it's known to occur no earlier than 10 weeks into a pregnancy. The paper doesn't seem to indicate the latest point it's known to occur in humans, which is interesting, but even if it only takes place for a very limited amount of time, that doesn't throw this off in the slightest.

According to the blurb above, Lucrecia canonically experienced cell migration, essentially being infected with Jenova by the unborn Sephiroth, but not in such a way that anyone caught it—or at least not until it was too late. If the cell migration itself was the event responsible for the seizure that pushed Vincent to confronting Hojo, that means that Sephiroth absolutely couldn't have been born in 1977, much less on Christmas. Vincent was shot no earlier than October 13th, and cell migration occurs around 10-12 weeks.

But the seizure didn't happen at 10-12 weeks. It couldn't have—Sephiroth's strain of Jenova is unique in that it responds to his will specifically. Without his will, it's not really active, which we see all throughout the Compilation. Cloud only wakes up at the end of Crisis Core around the time that Sephiroth starts calling for Reunion, and he's not cognizant until that call is loud enough to start drawing other Clones out of hiding; likewise, he appears to be in remission between Meteorfall and the events of Advent Children, at which point he starts having seizures of his own in response to Sephiroth gathering enough power to pull at his strings for the first time in years.

Fetal brain development kicks into high gear at the onset of the third trimester, roughly 28 weeks into a traditional 40 week pregnancy. (Interestingly, in mice, cell migration only seems to occur 2 weeks into a pregnancy, which is the equivalent of the onset of the third trimester because lab mice have a total gestational period of about 3 weeks.)

The third trimester is the point when Sephiroth began to have a will with which to pull at the unique strain of Jenova cells that had migrated from him to Lucrecia. With that in mind, we can say with a decent level of confidence that Lucrecia's seizure took place in the third trimester, around 26-28 weeks in.

And here's where it all comes together.

Assuming that Sephiroth was born on Christmas of 1977, at or close to full term (38-40 weeks), this would put his conception around the end of March. If he was conceived at the end of March, do you know when the third trimester starts?

The first or second week of October.

The earliest date that Vincent could have been shot is October 13th, 1977, because he was 27 years old at the time, and he was born in 1950. Hojo shot Vincent when he confronted him about Lucrecia's seizure.

I'd always had the headcanon that Sephiroth was premature, but taking actual human gestation into account—combined with the nature of Lucrecia's seizure and the confirmation that her strain of Jenova comes from Sephiroth specifically via cell migration—makes this line up so perfectly that I have to admit that this headcanon is directly refuted by actual canon. Sephiroth may have been a week or two early, but not enough to worry. He was a perfectly healthy baby, born at a perfectly acceptable term.

And he was born on Christmas, because he was conceived in late March, because Lucrecia's seizure happened around the onset of the third trimester, which occurred in early to mid-October, which is the earliest possible timeframe that Vincent could have been shot for confronting Hojo about it.

This is so internally consistent that the real world facts and features of human gestation line up without causing a single wave. I'm losing my fucking mind.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

#fandom ramble #final fantasy 7 #FF7 #final fantasy 7 remake #FF7R #crisis core #crisis core reunion #lucrecia crescent #vincent valentine #sephiroth #jenova project #project s #long post #not putting a cut on this #I'm too stoked #absolutely delighted #my mind is absolutely blown #the math works #the science works #it works perfectly #'the in-game timeline makes no sense' GET OUTTA HERE #I cited all my sources and everything! #that is not the only scientific paper I read on this btw #but it's the one with ALL the data I needed #instead of just bits and pieces #so it's the one that gets cited

[letteredlettered]

Can I just say thank you from the bottom of my heart for continuing to hold the line and calling it H/D even in 2024 when it seems like the battle is long lost

hahahaha yes I can never bring myself to say or write the word "drarry" except when discussing the word "drarry" on a meta level.

I put in the tags recently that back in my day, we called in H/D, and someone was like wow, you must've been in fandom a long time, because they were calling it drarry in 2003! They may have been! But not in my neck of the woods. In my neck of the woods was all initials and slashes, with only the rare smush name, until tumblr. People explained at the time that for some reason tumblr tags didn't respond well to slashes? So they started using smush names way more.

I really dislike them, though I'll admit to being fine with wangxian because it's canon, and also the names are allowed to be broken up that way? Like dracoharry is fine to me. Drarry is not. It reminds me of dairy and sounds ugly. But I honestly also hate the ones that are some clever combination of monikers, like gentlebeard. Still not as bad as stucky, but then again, nothing is.

But the true crime of them all is K/S. Wasn't this pairing called KirkSpock or KS or even kiss for literally decades? From whence came spirk? Like why do times have to be a-changin'? Why can't we just exist in a perfect stasis? Seriously though if you were going to smush you could have had Kock or Spork but you elected not to and that really is a tragedy of the 21st century that the 20th century never had to contend with. back in my day we had to slash uphill both ways

#smush names

[nonsensicalramblings79]

Dead Seagull: Do Not Eat – Albatrosses, Seagulls, and Guilt in Our Flag Means Death

(for future reference: written 10/6/2023, ~36-48 hours after the first 3 episodes of S2 were released)

Hi, all! I, like many of you scrolling the #ofmd meta tag, have a head filled with nothing but the Gay Pirates. This has been the case since 12am PST on 10/5/2023 and will remain the case for several months to come. On my 3rd watch-through of the first 3 episodes of season 2 of OFMD, I started paying closer attention to potential symbolism so that I could maybe predict how the rest of the series is going to play out and get a better idea of what’s going on in these little guys’ brains. This post is the introduction to a short series of long posts wherein I rant about symbolism that may or may not be in the show. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I haven’t written anything even close to a literary analysis since high school, and I generally don’t know wtf I’m talking about. I’m just having a lot of very normal thoughts about The Pirate Show and I need to put them somewhere; if anyone has more ideas relating to this please add to it!! And to the best of my knowledge, the thoughts I express here are my own – please let me know if there are other analyses that say similar things that I should link to.

TWs: animal death, blood, eating animals, starvation, emotional abuse, physical abuse, gunshot injuries, suicidal ideation, canon-typical mental health problems

MAJOR OFMD SPOILERS THROUGH S2E03!!!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What originally prompted this whole rabbit-hole exploration was the conversation that Ed has with Frenchie at the end of s2e01.

…

You know there's a bird that never touches ground?

It's born in the air. Never once lands. Spends its entire existence in the sky. …

As Frenchie astutely notes, this seems…kind of impossible. How could a bird be born in the air? I could see potentially never landing, but surely every bird has to come down at some point to lay eggs (or to hatch from them), right? So I did a quick Google search for birds that spend their whole lives in the air, and the first result that came up was the common swift, which apparently spends up to 10 months out of the year in the air, never once landing (or only landing very occasionally) during that time. They catch food in the air, sleep while drifting on air currents, mate in the sky, and only land to nest and lay their eggs.

So that seemed…promising? I guess? But not exactly what Ed was talking about. After all, these birds aren’t “born in the air,” and they certainly don’t spend their entire life without landing. And this still could be what Ed was talking about; it matches fairly closely, and it’s possible that whatever Ed heard was either mis-told, misheard, or intentionally exaggerated. But I think there’s a more elegant answer to what bird Ed is referencing here, and it has much more potential for analysis than the common swift: the albatross.

This is the second thing that I found while searching, and this piqued my interest much more than the last result, since - as many of you probably know, spending time reading tumblr metas – the albatross is an extremely pervasive metaphor in literature. It usually represents a psychological burden that one has taken on, most often as a result of having made a mistake that resulted in others getting hurt. I’ll go into more detail about the source of this symbol in a little bit, but the basic gist is that a dead albatross gets hung around one’s neck until whatever guilt they have is resolved – albatrosses are huge birds, so this represents an enormous weight.

Before I go on, I’ll add that, at first glance, the albatross actually seems to fit Ed’s description less well than the common swift does – albatrosses are known for being able to glide for a long, long time, but they do land…on the water. One of the first things that comes up when you search for “birds that never land” is that albatrosses spend years and years never landing on shore. There’s a similar problem here to the common swift in that no bird actually hatches from an egg while in the air like Ed is implying here. But I would argue that the albatross is indeed what Ed is talking about. Whether he misheard, someone misspoke, or a tale got distorted from it being verbally passed down, Ed is referencing the image of an albatross that spends its entire life above (or on) the sea, never once going to land.

And this fits. In the context of the conversation that Ed is having with Frenchie, Ed is lamenting the fact that he can only exist in one place, fulfilling one role – on the sea, performing the role of Blackbeard. He imagines the life of this fictional albatross as quite lonely, I think, never once leaving the place it has spent its entire life (again, this isn’t exactly how the birds behave, but I believe Ed views them this way based on how he’s interpreted whatever he heard about albatrosses). He’s resigning himself to never leaving his habitat, and quite literally never going back to shore.

“…We’re gonna sail…rob…raise hell forever…and ever…without end.”

Right. So, if I am to be believed, we’ve established that Ed is actually diegetically referencing albatrosses. So what?

Well, as another disclaimer, I’m not 100% sold on these ideas myself. Especially only having the first 3 episodes of S2 to go off of, there’s plenty of time for these ideas to be proven wrong in as few as – checks watch – 6 days. There are lots of different, potentially overlapping, potentially conflicting ways to interpret this information. I’m probably going to split this up into parts, for ease of access and reading. Because all this so far has just been the introduction :))

In one part, I’m going to talk about what is probably the most intentional reference: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the original poem that the albatross metaphor is pulled from. Beyond just the link to the “Impossible Birds” conversation, there are some other elements in OFMD that seem like pretty clear references to this poem. Based on references to this poem in popular culture, I suspect that parallels here would be non-diegetic – meant to be apparent to the audience, not to the in-universe characters. Link Here!

Next, I’m going to talk about another poem, simply titled “The Albatross” (French: L’albatros). This particular poem is maybe less likely to have inspired references in OFMD, but if there is an intentional link, this poem reflects a lot of how Ed sees himself and his life thus far. I’ll admit that I’m a bit biased toward this poem since I had to memorize it in French class in high school and it’s stuck with me – but it was also one of the first things on Wikipedia that was linked on the page of the metaphor of the Albatross. Parallels in this poem are what I would suspect to be diegetic – despite it being an anachronism, I think Ed has at some point read this poem, and he relates to the albatross/poet. [Link Here!]

Lastly, there are some loose ends that I’d like to pick up that may not tie into anything, but I feel like they’re worth mentioning, especially as they relate to the albatross metaphors and parallels. This section is going to talk more generally about birds and bird imagery in OFMD, and how these instances can support or refute my albatross theories. [Link will go here: haven't written yet :)]

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd meta #ofmd spoilers #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd s2 meta #ofmd season 2 spoilers #ofmd season 2 #ofmd season 2 meta #ofmd blackbeard #stede bonnet #albatross #the rime of the ancient mariner #literary analysis #media analysis #frenchie ofmd #izzy hands #lucius spriggs

[trainerbob23]

got any favorite ships? if not much of a shipping person i'd be really interested in knowing what other kinds of relationships and dynamics you're really into ^_^

Well, my favorite Kirby ships/friendships can go as follows

(Please note that I do not support proshipping and this is not a complete list of friendships and if you want to know more about who's friends .)

Kirby ships I like

Metadedede:

It shouldn't come as a surprise because I like both dedede's and Meta Knights dynamic and seeing the art based around the both of them makes me extremely happy,

Kirbfluff (platonic):

like oh my god, I seriously love the idea of fluff coming to dreamland and having such a good time with kirby and both of them seeing new heights like never before, it's such a crime that prince fluff only appeared in one game and that's it.

magoranza:

ok so this was introduced me to a good friend of mine back around 2022 on discord before I became completely active on the site, but seriously this idea is amazing to be honest of Magolor and taranza being together and just seeing the both of them feel so happy after the both taranza and Magolor had gone though (even sometimes it means little slip ups from here and there)

OC x canon:

alright let's get the elephant out of the room here. I love OC x canon and idc what anyone's tells me about it. Yeah it may be cringe, but I think that if you hc your original character is in love a pre existing character is good and it can even be a good idea for those who are starting out with shipping other characters and see where you can go from there.

Metasusie:

Ok it's a moreso of a ship I like to look at perspective and say "I think it's a cute ship". And i know it's a controversial ship, but I personally think that metasusie can be put into perspective how meta knight's and Susie's relationship have changed since the events of the original game, but many people have misinterpreted Susie as more malicious than she actually is and taken things like torture fics to be canon when there's really not that much info to go off of.

Friendships

The main four:

I really love the main four's (Kirby, bandee, King dedede and meta knight) dynamic so so much like it can be considered a found family if you will and I'm so grateful that the new Kirby games showoff this dynamic very well.

The animal friends: I'm surprised how the animal friends have not been in much Kirby games recently other than star ailies, to be frank the idea of them having a great time with Kirby and with them being different pets, Kirby like to play with them a whole lot

Gooey: gooey treats Kirby as a big brother in my hc and also who likes to think about a whole lot about popstar and the entire world around him as well.

Magolor: Magolor is extremely greatful to have Kirby as a best friend After what had happened thoughout the events of rtdl deluxe, He didn't want to ask for forgiveness at first, but he felt extremely guilty for what happened So he proves to Kirby that he can succeed and even change as a person. (even if Kirby has forgave Magolor)

Bandee: he is kirby's bestest of friends and would do anything for Kirby. After the events of super star ultra he would officially become Kirby's best friends and their relationship is so so important to me because both bandee and Kirby often are seen playing with each other or drinking apple juice or he is seen even humming the song to himself.

Marx: he may be a jester but he is good at tricks, in the manga where Marx and Kirby are friends (sorry can't remember the name) he felt extremely sad over the fact that Kirby didn't remember the playdate and even more they were/ still are best friends (well in my hc) (https://www.tumblr.com/kirby-manga-translated/725558045121363968/kirby-manpuku-pupupu-fantasy-volume-7-chapter)

Dark meta knight: I'd like to think after the events of amazing mirror and star aillies, he comes down to popstar more often to either draw with Adeline and to even improve as a person, even if it means being slightly annoyed at meta knight

Meta Knight: I personally think he is mostly Kirby's friend as well, and seeing how this was the first ever Kirby character I liked when I first played as him in smash bros. Him being shy when his mask breaks and in the anime I was inspired to make a fan-made episode script based around him losing his mask (which you guys should read by the way, https://www.tumblr.com/trainerbob23/689281680493723648/hey-everyone-i-just-wrote-a-kirby-right-back-at) this guy was the reason I even got it to this fan base in the first place and I'm really glad that happened

King dedede: originally rivals, but turned to friends and even great allies. I seriously don't know why the anime turned him into such a douchebag when in the games he has definitely changed for the better and I'm so proud of dedede for proving to himself that he can change as a person in his own character arc

I know this is not complete list of characters and that is fine. It will have taken me ages to do so. So if you guys want a complete list of all the Kirby characters. Let me know. I have so much to say about them

#long post #holy crap this was extremely long #I expect to get some kind of backlash #metasusie #magoranza #metadedede #kirbfluff #kirby #Meta Knight #king dedede #bandana dee #bandana waddle dee #susie haltmann #gooey #the animal friends #magolor #marx kirby #marx #dark meta knight #oc x canon

[amporella]

KYLE BROFLOVSKI, STAN MARSH, AND THE FEMININE/MASCULINE QUESTION

(Or; In defense of feminine Kyle and masculine Stan)

(OR or; how Matt and Trey's outdated views prove their intentions for their characters...

...part 1.)

Normally, I would kick off the part of an essay like this above the ‘read more’ with a short summary, but given the complexity of this topic, I don’t think I can summarize it in the way it deserves in just a paragraph. Instead, I’ll start with this: it’s been a little over a year since I was freed from Tumblr shadowban hell, and nearly as long since I made my first original post on South Park tumblr. Since then, I’ve developed a pretty obvious brand in support of feminine Kyle, but I’ve never actually posted a meta justifying it. As such, consider this not a response to any discourse related to it, or a way of undermining the valid opinions that are being and have been shared, but instead as a long-overdue explanation as to why I see Kyle the way that I see him, and why I believe that interpretation is equally valid and equally progressive.

Thanks to everyone who’s shared their time and thoughts with me over the past year, regardless of how long I’ve known you, and let’s get into it!

INTRODUCTION:

Okay, HERE’s the introduction! As I type this from top to bottom, I expect it to turn out fairly long, so bear with me here: we’re going to need some exposition to explain the way I plan on going about this. I’m going to try and be concise!

i. A Bit of Background

Feminine Kyle has been a controversial topic within the South Park fandom for well over a decade, cementing itself as arguably one of the oldest ‘fanon vs canon’ debates within the fandom. Supporters, a wide group consisting of some of the most notable artists and writers in the fandom, insist the evidence is there; naysayers argue that not only is it not there, but that the mere existence of feminine Kyle reinforces old yaoi tropes, homophobia within fandoms, and most recently, antisemitic stereotypes. 

For better or worse, such a portrayal has dwindled in popularity within recent years, with fanart and portrayals from the earlier fandom days becoming the subject of ridicule. Several other portrayals accompany feminine Kyle into forced obscurity - jock Stan and edgy Craig, to name a few - but only the former has drawn such politically charged discussion. Needless to say, there is plenty to discuss when examining its validity. I intend to try and cover all my bases, but first, some clarification:

This is not an unbiased analysis: this is a meta in staunch support of feminine Kyle. As such, not every single moment for or against such a portrayal will be mentioned here: I intend here to establish why feminine Kyle is a reasonable interpretation, not why the opposite may also be true. I also do not intend to prove that feminine Kyle is absolute fact, or the only valid interpretation; while I personally choose to base my portrayal off of what I’ve listed here, choosing to disregard it is also a perfectly fine conclusion. These characters are ten, after all; there is no objectively correct way to portray them!

Secondly; this is a Kyle-centric meta, but it’s also going to include a fair bit of Stan. Declaring Kyle feminine has no point if we have no character to contrast him against; femininity requires masculinity to mean anything, and vice versa. There has to be some point of reference. As a result, this meta will unintentionally make a declaration on Stan’s femininity as well; just like above, accept and reject it as you wish! ‘Correct’ characterization in the South Park fandom is understandably murky.

Speaking of characterization, we first need to discuss why a long-winded meta like this one is even necessary. Why can’t we decide whether Kyle’s feminine? Surely that should be pretty obvious, right?

ii. Why can’t we come to an agreement?

Well… not really. That’s the problem!

Nearly everybody in this little section of the South Park fandom (by which I mean the non-dudebro section) is progressive, which is a good thing. But that also makes femininity a really difficult concept to nail down. Here’s what Oxford Languages has to say about it:

Okay, straightforward enough. But what attributes are characteristic of women? That’s where we come across our problem; there really aren’t any. Many of the traits (at least personality wise) society used to consider characteristic of women are misogynistic stereotypes, or exist solely as a way to justify gender roles; as such, we can’t designate femininity based on personality traits, which is a great thing for society as a whole and a bad thing for the simplicity of my South Park meta.

Consider this example: being easily grossed out to the point of fear was, in the past, considered to be a trait typical of women. Consider all those boomer comics you’ve seen about women being afraid of mice. Surely then a reasonable conclusion would be that Kyle’s irrational disgust/fear of pee would be a feminine trait. But that conclusion actually isn’t reasonable, because we now know that isn’t necessarily a female-exclusive trait; as such, that interpretation is misogynistic and can be disregarded. Do you see what I mean? It’s really not that easy.

But I actually have a way to make that work. It is going to require some inception. Keep that in mind while we segue to another relevant question:

iii. What is effective characterization?

We talked about characterization a little bit above, but now we need to talk about it again: namely, how do you characterize a character? How many times will I say the word character in this essay?

This question doesn’t just apply to South Park: I mean this for all shows, but most specifically the long ones, and the ones with questionable track records in episode quality. We have all watched something and thought “he would not fucking say that”, even when the person who made him fucking say that was the creator themselves. How do we reconcile that with our vision of a character, especially when such a character assassination is often unintentional? Do we take everything the character does or says at face value by rating all of their behaviors as equal in the characterization scheme, or do we look deeper?

I think the answer needs to be the second one: we need to take characterization by intention, rather than what the character actually says. Generally, a creator will have an intention for their characters, whether that’s in personality, arc, or both. They typically have a plan for some aspects of the character, even in episodic shows like South Park, and they try not to diverge from that plan. For example, Kyle’s reaction will often differ as he is faced with differing events (as real life people do), but he reacts in a similar way, fueled by his consistent morals: he never responds in a Kyle way one episode and in a Cartman way in another. He always reacts like Kyle would, and rarely wavers from his fairly consistent characterization. It is clear that when planning Kyle’s responses to things, they do not start with a blank slate.

That’s the perspective we need to take on when viewing this; we need to look at these characters from the way Matt and Trey intended for them to be looked at, and we need to look at them with the perspective that Matt and Trey had. Segue over: let’s go back to the main point. Keep that in mind.

iv. How do we fix our dilemma?

You don’t really need to keep it in mind, because I’m going to say it again right here: we need to view the characters with the perspective Matt and Trey had. This applies to everything characterization related, including femininity. What makes Matt and Trey’s perception of femininity different from our own?

Well, that’s easy: they’re from a different generation, for one. They’re old white guys, for another. They naturally have different views on femininity than we do, because they have different (often shittier) views on women than we do! Matt and Trey have had some good takes, but their takes on women rarely fall into that category. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to deal with those takes for now if we want to draw a conclusion, because those are what we have to go by when deciding femininity. 

We’re putting on the Matt and Trey goggles for this meta. What do they think femininity is? How would they portray a feminine character? What would a feminine character look like in their eyes? When judging characterization by intention, which I plan on doing throughout this meta, we need to Become Old White Men. 

(That same reasoning is why I’ll essentially be using women and feminine people interchangeably throughout this essay; Matt and Trey tend to associate femininity exclusively with women or flamboyant gay men, and the way they portray them is often the same. Needless to say, those terms are not interchangeable in real life; I only use them as such here both because of the above reasoning and to try and shorten this behemoth of a meta.)

From Matt and Trey’s perspective, it would be much less ludicrous that women would be more easily grossed out; that is the common consensus among men of their generation, and they haven’t proved themselves to be more enlightened than the rest, so we’ll go with that common consensus. From their perspective, Kyle disliking pee would be a feminine trait; therefore, giving that trait to Kyle implies that, in that episode, Matt and Trey viewed him as feminine and intentionally portrayed him that way. This argument becomes stronger once the rest of his traits are considered, which we’ll do throughout this essay. From this point forward, I'll clarify that this is from Matt and Trey’s point of view less often for brevity; assume that unless I clarify it's from mine, it's from theirs. 

Understandably, there may be some issues with this, namely: doesn’t temporarily taking on this perspective and then proceeding to label Kyle as feminine based on stereotypes imply that you agree with those stereotypes? To which I say: no, not really. You can take the intention (femininity, in this case) and disregard the bad that comes along with it: you can essentially claim Kyle as a feminine character without acknowledging what may be flawed reasoning on behalf of the creator, and choose to draw your own conclusions based off of that. I’ll explain this in more detail at the end. 

So, that’s the introduction! But we still have one more thing we need to talk about before we can move onto the actual meat of the essay.

We need to talk about creek.

THE CREEK INTERLUDE.

Why do we need to talk about creek in a Kyle-centric meta, besides that I like talking about creek? The answer is that Matt and Trey’s views on creek answer a very reasonable question, that being: Why do we have reason to assume that Matt and Trey would intend for any of them to be feminine? Why do we have reason to believe the idea of femininity in relation to their male characters would even cross their mind?

Creek is our reason! 

i. The Masculine/Feminine Divide

Consider Matt and Trey’s audio commentary for Put It Down, starting at :52. "One person wanting, which is usually the woman... who flips out a bit more about things emotionally, and generally the man is a bit more, like... not responsive to emotion, and just wants to problem solve. And we have had experience with that…"

Through that commentary, Matt and Trey have already assigned ‘roles’ to Tweek and Craig within the context of the episode; namely, Tweek being the woman and Craig being the man based on their behavior throughout the episode. Obviously, the stereotypes they suggest above very often aren’t true, and a gay man in a relationship is in no way ‘the woman’ regardless of femininity, but they reference them nonetheless, and this helps our case for three reasons:

It confirms that Matt and Trey view some characters as more ‘woman-like’ than others, even just within the context of a single episode: ie, more feminine than others. It shows that they take femininity into account when viewing character behavior, and it is possible they have done so with other male child characters than Tweek.

Furthermore, it shows that the above behavior is intentional; they’ve intentionally made one character more ‘woman-like’ than the other. Matt and Trey admitting that they “have had experience with that” implies that they, on some level, based the episode off of their own experience: hence, Tweek was intended to play the role of ‘the woman’ from the beginning of the episode. It is therefore possible they intended this with other episodes.

The parallels between Stan/Craig and Kyle/Tweek, and on a larger scale, style and creek as relationships, are obvious. The fact that creek exists in the Matt and Trey collective brain as a masculine/feminine relationship implies that their platonic parallel, Stan and Kyle, has the potential to exist in the same way. 

I don’t personally think that Tweek is at all intended to be feminine throughout the series in the same way that Kyle is - Tweek’s meth-driven paranoia is a far cry from Kyle’s natural neuroticism (a trait which, while not inherently feminine, is obviously such within the eyes of Matt and Trey) - but within the context of that episode, the point stands. It also gives us something to look for: contrast. If Kyle is feminine, going by Matt and Trey’s way of portraying relationships, he must have a masculine counterpart. This part is easy. 

STAN MARSH, ALL AMERICAN BOY:

When looking for traditional masculinity within the main four, Stan is our guy. Despite possibly being the most sensitive out of the group, the remainder of Stan’s traits, behaviors, and interests line up exactly with the typical perspective of what masculinity looks like. His consistency with this makes Kyle’s deviation even more remarkable.

i. Personality

So far, we’ve mostly talked about masculinity and femininity in reference to personality, so it only makes sense to start there with Stan. First, let’s consider the trait that Matt and Trey explicitly mentioned they consider masculine:

“Not responsive to emotion, and just wants to problem solve.”

We don’t even need to look through the series for evidence of this one: South Park Studios themselves confirmed it on Stan’s SPandMe results, a quiz intended to connect quiz-takers with their respective South Park character. 

“You are an average all-American person, and despite your crazy surroundings, you remain levelheaded.” 

Remaining levelheaded in crazy surroundings essentially boils down to being not responsive to sudden, situation-driven emotion, especially in the context of Put It Down, where Craig is able to step back from Tweek’s emotion-driven response to a crazy situation and consider it in a levelheaded way. Stan often tends to perform the same duty for Kyle as Craig does for Tweek in that episode, serving the role of someone to vent to in stressful situations.

Now that we’ve checked Matt and Trey’s explicitly mentioned perception of masculinity off the list, let’s consider some other traditionally ‘masculine’ personality traits: regardless of whether they’ve been explicitly mentioned, it’s a fair assumption that they’ve considered a few other traits within the ‘masculinity’ vein. 

Quick to Threats: Stan has a tendency to be levelheaded, as mentioned above, but when angered he can jump straight to threats of violence; this serves as a contrast to Kyle, who tends to respond verbally instead. Consider this moment in Passion of the Jew: 

While Stan actually gives Cartman a fair amount of time to ‘take it back’ before he resorts to active threats of violence, he still does so much quicker than Kyle has ever done in the past; Kyle, by comparison, tends to insult normally. Stan, when pushed by Cartman, responds with threats within a few lines of dialogue: Kyle, when pushed by Cartman, has only legitimately snapped a few times over the course of 25 years of harassment. 

Another example would be in Cash For Gold, where Stan jumps to telling the jewelry salesman to kill himself without any prior conversation; unlike Kyle, who typically makes efforts to negotiate first, Stan resorts to threats.

Also consider Stan’s behavior in Stick of Truth, in which upon the character’s arrival into the Elf Kingdom, Stan is immediately ready to get into a fight to defend Kyle; as the character approaches Kyle, he threatens them by punching his fist. His method of protectiveness often boils down to violence on behalf of the people he cares about, and he takes personal affronts, or affronts to those people, extremely seriously. Kyle, on the other hand, is defensive rather than offensive in terms of protectiveness, and cares more about the wider populace instead of mostly the people directly relevant to his life; we’ll get into that more later.

This is a trait heavily associated with masculinity throughout history, and throughout media: masculine characters in shows, books, and movies are often the ones shown to pick fights rather than verbally negotiate. This trait is even shown through Craig, who’s already established as “the man”; throughout the first few seasons especially, he threatens other characters once aggravated instead of communicating. 

Leadership Ability: Obvious disclaimer is that this trait in particular is not exclusively male, or even largely male (just like every other trait I’ve mentioned), but the world continues even to this day to associate leadership qualities with traditionally masculine qualities, and I have reason to believe that Matt and Trey do the same thing. Let’s go through a few episodes in which Stan is staunchly placed as the leader for some examples:

Stan, as a character who is often the protagonist of the show as a whole, naturally falls into the leadership role within The Boys. In this way, he once again serves as a contrast to Craig, who is obviously the leader of his own game; the official wiki goes so far as to call them Craig and Those Guys. An example of this would be in South Park Is Gay, in which Stan approaches Craig first to try and one-up him, and another more subtle example would be in Good Times With Weapons, in which Stan’s leadership is demonstrated just by him being front and center in front of Craig’s door.

He also serves as the lead detective in Lil’ Crime Stoppers, and tends to be the leader of his respective sports team, being chosen as both quarterback and pitcher in football and baseball respectively. On a larger scale, Stan becomes Captain in Whale Whores, where he is revered for actually making things happen in comparison to the previous Captain. 

South-park-meta also has a great description of why Stan’s a leader which you can find here, which mentions a few things that I haven’t. 

Stan in a leadership role comes up over and over again, and while I normally wouldn’t consider this a strong enough piece of evidence to bring up on its own, Stan’s other masculine traits (which I’ll be getting to shortly, outside of the personality department) make me believe that it’s intentional. This is especially relevant when the leadership within the girls is also considered: while the groups of boys tend to have a very obvious leader, the girls fluctuate often between Wendy and Bebe, with Matt and Trey unable to even keep the leader of the Pleases and Sparkles Club consistent. The fact that the boys tend to have leaders and the girls don’t leads me to believe that Matt and Trey do see leadership as a masculine trait.

Superficiality & Ego: To be clear before we start this section, I do think that Stan is legitimately very sensitive. He is my sensitive little guy. But he does have a tendency to be superficial with some issues, often unable to grasp the bigger picture, especially when failing to grasp the issue tends to benefit him specifically. 

Consider his behavior in A Scause For Applause. Initially, Stan has no clue who the farmers are or what they stand for, and is labeled a hero simply because he likes his wristband and doesn’t intend on taking it off. However, as soon as he essentially becomes a celebrity, he pretends to be extremely passionate about the cause, despite the fact that it is all “bullcrap” to him. Stan is hugely empathetic, but only towards people that are close to him, or issues that are relevant to him (such as the whales, as he loves animals): he couldn’t care less about the farmers in Belarus, but relishes in the attention he’s getting because of it.

Another example of this would be in Butterballs, where Stan behaves in essentially the same way: he joins the anti-bullying campaign not because he is passionate about the issue, but because he’s being taunted and he wants to prove that he’s a leader, or, as Bucky Bailey says, a “big man”. His pride is extremely important to him, which is part of the reason why he steps up. As Stan starts to make the anti-bullying video increasingly about him, Kyle sees through him and points it out.

Once again, his ego drives him rather than genuine passion for the issue: his actual interest in it is superficial at best and serves only to fuel his ego. Both qualities are heavily associated with masculinity, and toxic masculinity in particular: as Stan gets pissed at Kyle in both episodes, that side of him and the anger accompanying it begins to show. We’ve now accepted those traits are generally bad, but they were often praised as a key part of manliness in the past: them continuing to be associated with masculinity in Matt and Trey’s mind would be very plausible.

ii. ‘Manly’ Interests

Stan’s one of the most fleshed out characters throughout the series in terms of interests, but he does have one that shows up more prominently than any other: sports! I’ve gone into exactly how frequently it pops up for him in my Jock Stan meta, so I won’t go into it now, but I highly suggest reading that if you’re interested. Furthermore, that’s also why I’m not going to be using basketball as a masculine justification for Kyle; from what I’ve found, it’s just not as relevant to his character.

Sports are widely considered to be an interest associated with men, and particularly, masculinity; while the gender split among people who are passionate about sports is much less divisive than the media would lead you to believe, few people associate anything other than women’s sports with women. Football in particular is typically considered a man’s sport, and has its heavy associations with toxic masculinity: the traits valued within football tend also to be the traits that our society values specifically within men, those traits typically boiling down to strength and competitiveness. As mentioned above, the desire to compete and show off (particularly with Craig, also considered to be the respective ‘leader’ of his group) is a trait much more heavily associated with Stan than Kyle; it leads me to believe those traits and his interest in football paired together are not a coincidence.

Another one of Stan’s larger interests are animals, which he consistently feels passionate about, but more specifically dogs. He’s shown to love Sparky dearly, with the first Stan-centric episode of the series having Stan’s crisis about Sparky as a main factor, and he even accompanies Stan in Stick of Truth for one of his attacks. I mention this because while a love of animals is often associated with women, or femininity, dogs specifically are consistently associated with men; when the term “man’s best friend” was coined, they were not considering ‘man’ as the wider mankind. Dogs are so heavily associated with masculinity that people naturally assume dogs that they meet are male, and that the large majority of dogs in fiction ARE male. The association between dogs and masculinity is actually a necessity for Big Gay Al’s Big Gay Boat Ride to work as an episode: Stan valuing “butchness” and wanting Sparky to behave in such a way acts as his main conflict throughout the episode.

While this last one is not quite as relevant to Stan’s overall character as the previous two, it’s frequently brought up as a “counter” to Stan’s sportiness, so I still find it relevant to bring up. Board games, which are certainly less associated with manliness than sports, are still an extremely male sport, particularly dominated by white males (with 93% of board game designers being white men); I am inclined to believe that Matt and Trey knew this, which was why Nichole, and the rest of the girls, stood out so much. They even address this within the episode, which has most of the boy gamers (excluding Stan, who is more open to girls joining the group) rejecting the girls who want to play. Even Stan’s least traditionally masculine interest is centered around manliness within the episode.

Is it coincidence that when Matt and Trey selected interests for their characters, they chose interests heavily associated with masculinity for Stan? Probably not. Again, these interests aren’t necessarily male-exclusive, nor do they even necessarily lean towards men in reality, but from the perspective of two older men like Matt and Trey, they ARE masculine traits. The fact that Stan is given those traits specifically while the other characters are not is heavily indicative of their intention; namely, to make Stan an obviously masculine character.

iii. Appearance

I swear we’re almost done with an insanely long Stan section in what’s supposed to be a Kyle meta. I may have to change the title.

The last thing we’re going to be looking at with Stan in regards to masculinity is appearance: how does he present himself? When he chooses roles in games, how traditionally masculine are they? Let’s start with his Stick of Truth role: Stan Marshwalker.

During Stick of Truth, Stan serves as Kyle’s devoted, protective knight: as I already mentioned above, he’s ready to pick a fight with the player just for looking at him. But even beyond his behavior, his appearance is undeniably masculine; knights were the ideal of manhood and masculinity for quite a long time, hence the trope of a knight saving a princess from a castle. Especially back when knights were a Thing, there was nothing more traditionally masculine than waving a huge sword around and fighting a dragon to defend someone’s honor. Stan doesn’t defend the honor of any princesses in Stick of Truth, but he does offer to duel Tolkien on what’s implied to be Kyle’s behalf, which could be easily interpreted as a parallel.

The knight motif comes up again in the episode Make Love, Not Warcraft, in which Stan’s selected character is this: a muscular, masculine presenting knight. I’m leaving this section a little short because I’m going to be bringing it up again when we get to Kyle , but keep Stan’s appearance here in mind. 

Stan’s next most relevant character is Toolshed, from Stick of Truth:

Stan’s TFBW costume, who is essentially a handyman, is less ingrained in society as traditionally masculine than a knight, but still is a heavily male dominated field: in the United States, 96% of handymen are men. While less symbolic than a knight, handymen can be considered masculine even considering only that trait; they are heavily associated with men, which is essentially the definition of masculinity from the Matt and Trey perspective.

Stan has a ton of alter egos throughout the series, but we’re already at 4k words so I’m going to keep this section as brief as I can. The only other real thing of note here is that Stan seems to associate ripping off his sleeves with strength, as he opts to go ripped sleeveless in both Good Times With Weapons and as Stan The Man in W.T.F. 

iv. Conclusion

What can we conclude from the above information, and how does it have any relevance at all to Kyle?

Firstly, we can conclude that Stan Marsh, in personality, interests, and appearances, was given traditionally masculine traits by Matt and Trey. Furthermore, we can conclude that due to Matt and Trey’s mention of masculinity and femininity within Tweek and Craig, this is not a coincidence; his masculinity was intentional. Finally, we can assume that Matt and Trey genuinely believe these traditionally masculine traits to be legitimately masculine: as in, it is unlikely they gave him these traits with any other intention than making it clear he was a masculine character.

Okay, so we’re done with Stan! Mostly. He’ll come up a little more later. But why did we need to spend this long talking about the character who isn’t even the main guy in this essay? I know I talked a little about it above, but surely I have more of a reason than that? Well, it’s because of what Matt and Trey said in the commentary for Kenny Dies, around the 42 minute mark.

“A couple weeks before this, the idea was that we were going to kill Kyle, remember, and we'd make it a big thing - we'll kill Kyle, and Butters will step in... it always seemed to us that Kyle and Stan were really similar... so let's kill off one of those two."

As of Season 6, Stan and Kyle were too similar. In order to justify keeping Kyle on the show, they needed to draw an actual distinction between the two of them. Before this point, Stan had already been established as South Park’s masculine, golden football boy since his very first episode, so what would be the most effective way of differentiating Kyle from Stan in a consistent way?

The answer would be to give Kyle feminine traits to contrast Stan’s masculine ones. It required leaning hard on some aspects of the character, but it obviously worked: Kyle is still here, widely loved, and often very different than the way he was before season 6. If we can prove that Stan was intentionally given masculine traits, we have even more of a reason to believe that Kyle may be given feminine traits to separate their personalities, and we’ve already proved that! Now we need to prove that Kyle was actually given those feminine traits, and we’ll start right now.

...by which I mean tomorrow, when I post the second half of this. Please hold your applause and/or complaints until then, because you really need the second half to tie the whole thing together and actually come to some concrete conclusions.

You can read part 2 here!

#south park #kyle broflovski #stan marsh #south park meta #meta #WOW putting all these images in sucked #this is the mostly stan part BUT kyle is relevant so i'm tagging him too #kyle's part and the conclusion coming out tmrw!! #as well as acknowledgements

[xoxoemynn]

hey marianne tell us about the wip you're most excited about in as much detail as you want

HOO BOY WOULD I LOVE TO. And I have yet to consolidate this into an elevator pitch so it'll definitely be long. It started off as an Old Hollywood/Broadway AU and now has spiraled into what I'd say most simply is a dimension travel AU that's also a bit of a meta commentary on OFMD's cancellation.

I'll put it under a cut because this DID actually get annoyingly long.

OKAY SO. We have 1990s Ed. He's a legendary Broadway performer known mostly as a dancer but he's been getting a bit sick of it, but also doesn't know what he'd want to do next since he's still relatively young. He keeps putting it off until he injures his knee in a show and can no longer dance, and now he's forced to actually figure out what he's going to do next.

While he's depressed and recovering, he passes the time watching old black and white musicals. He discovers the dance team of Stede Bonnet and Mary Allamby (loosely inspired by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who were baby's first hyperfixation as a pre-teen, making this a VERY exciting project for me personally) and is immediately in awe of Stede, although surprised he's never heard of him before.

Through some hand-waving, Ed eventually realizes he's able to talk to Stede through the TV, and then later that he's actually able to enter the TV itself and exist in Stede's world. Except it's not just the 1930s. Stede's literally been living in a kind of grayscale purgatory that looks like his film sets. He has no concept of the passage of time, or even exactly what happened that caused him to be stuck there, and he's the only real person existing there, until Ed shows up.

Naturally they quickly fall in love, but they have a bit of a star-crossed lovers thing going on because they can't FULLY be together, and they also have different wants in life. For Ed, he LOVES being in this black and white world. He's in love with Stede, his knee doesn't bother him there, he gets to explore these really cool art deco film sets, he doesn't have to think about what he's going to do with his life. He gets to just be happy. For him, being in a black and white world cut off from everyone else but Stede is a small and worthy sacrifice for all that.

But Stede's been trapped there for 60 years with no sign of escape, and he misses being in the real world. He loves having Ed there and loves Ed, but he also wonders what else is out there. He misses being out in the real world and seeing everything in color and experiencing life off a Hollywood film set that was specifically designed to be entirely escapist for filmgoers looking to get away from their problems during the Great Depression.

So the bulk of the story is about Ed and Stede navigating their relationship and how they can really be together, as well as uncovering what happened to Stede in the first place that caused him to be trapped. It's got big themes of authenticity, acceptance, the temptation of avoidance, and being comfortable in the unknown. Influences that have wormed their way in include The Giver, Pleasantville, The Red Shoes, Barbie (lol), The Haunting of Hill House, Zaslav being a fuckhead, and an experimental art film called The Afterlight. It's taken me a LONG time to plan it because the world-building was really complex and there were a ton of little nuances to sort out, but I'm finally in a good place to really start writing it. I'm very excited because there are at least two REALLY sad scenes in it that I am 😈 about. But DEFINITELY a happy ending with a huge thread of hope running throughout, and is ultimately about creating a life for yourself where you can be your most authentic self, as terrifying as that may be.

THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME AN EXCUSE TO RAMBLE I LOVE YOU. 💕

#ask #fakestgeekboy #I have been ITCHING to find a way to blend my current pirate hyperfixation with my OG old Hollywood hyperfixation #and naturally I couldn't make it easy #but I am VERY excited about it

[daz4i]

yknow what i have nothing to do and need to distract myself from *gestures vaguely* and i mentioned it a few times in the last few days so i may as well talk abt that one theory i like

first of all let me say. it's not my own original theory lol i can't remember where i saw it first but it's p common so it'd be a bit hard to trace who was the first to bring it up

second. i know it contradicts some themes or at least some messages bsd is going for. which is why i don't think it's too likely (on the other hand some elements in the story can def allow a plot point of that sort to happen without being contradictory asdfhg matter of perspective ig)

ANYWAY the actual theory:

dazai knows he's in a story and aware that he is a character

backup for that theory:

honestly not much. a minor fourth wall break for laughs (the "wow~" scene. you know the one) isn't really proof, but if it was true it'd add some depth to that scene i think!

the main thing i think is cool abt this theory is how it recontextualizes a lot of things about him;

the thing that made me think abt making this post is that collection of dazai saying "you can't kill me" at various points of the story. most of them have context for each scene (atsushi can't kill him bc nlh will nullify the tiger, fyodor can't kill him bc he has the power of friendship, etc), but the fact the same line repeats multiple times makes it stand out to me

so consider this: dazai is confident that he won't die because he knows he can't die before the story is over, bc that's what the narrative decided. that's why none of his suicide attempts ever work (tho you already know my opinion on why that is, in the context of the story itself). he keeps trying tho bc man. it's tiring to be aware

that being said! well. we know he's been suicidal from a very young age. he sees no meaning in the act of living. and, being a character in a story, knowing that your life is all fake, can certainly make one's life feel meaningless, huh.

and ofc, alienation from those around him, since he seems to be the only one aware of the story. he is quite literally separate from the human experience bc of this

also some more angst :) i do firmly believe dazai feels a lot of guilt, more for meta reasons than him really showing it. guilt is a very big repeating element in no longer human and its protag yozo, whom i think dazai is obviously very inspired by. soooooo now consider this :) guilt over odasaku's death. in the context of the story, there is no reason for him to feel that, more or less. maybe nothing beyond "if only i called ango out earlier" "if only i got there in time and got him help", he didn't actually cause oda's death, not more than mori did for example, and he did the best he could too.

buuuuuuut what if he's a character in a story. he doesn't know if the story is about him yet, but given how other people around him don't seem to notice they're characters, it must be, right? the narrative depends on him. and, in that narrative, odasaku ends up dying. if he didn't exist, odasaku could live (really interesting to think abt that in the context of beast, too)

actually since i brought it up. beastzai definitely seems to know he's a character. he knows his existence doesn't mean much, i mean his whole universe is just an offshoot of the main one, literally an au of canon. that's even more meaninglessness on top of canonzai's meaninglessness, and he experienced both of them at once. no wonder he ended up killing himself damn 😩 (sorry this is a joke. ik he killed himself for some noble reason. but also i bet this made it easier)

an awareness of this level can explain some things like how dazai knows things are gonna play out in certain ways - he knows he's in a story, so he knows the narrative has to end in some satisfying way. the main characters have to win, so the doa have to lose. fyodor can't kill him. and we're back to the start

problem with this theory:

that thing i mentioned abt themes and messages in bsd. a lot of the story seems to tell us dazai is HUMAN. having him aware of everything on a meta level, imo, may cheapen that message, bc that quite literally makes him More than others in the universe.

then again the story (and asagiri in interviews lol) also seems to show again and again that he is exceptional and knows best so eh. like i said, matter of perspective

how i think it might work:

no longer human lmao

yknow how it was said The Book was created by an ability (and that's probably why it caused a singularity when beastzai touched it). well. what if the whole narrative we're following, in a way, in the universe of bsd, can count as an ability too. like a combination of The Book and poe's ability, kinda. (i've seen some theories in the past abt how asagiri is gonna be the final boss of bsd lol and that he would indeed have an ability that's just. *gestures at everything* this)

sooooo while nlh can't take him out of the story physically, it nullifies his ignorance to the situation. in a way, he's out of the story because he sort of watches it from an angle others can't

ok i officially ran out of brain power. i might add more in a reblog at some other point but for now these are the only thoughts i have. if you subscribe to that theory as well, or even just thing it's cool, i would love to hear some of your ideas - what other parts of dazai and his story do you think this changes? what does it mean about his relationships with other characters? please share if you have any thoughts on the matter!!! :)

#also as usual if you disagree that's fine just be nice about it hehe #dan rambles #maybe in that future addition i will brainstorm what that means abt his relationships etc. #but feel free to do it for me :P i'm too sleepy to think now

[figmentof]

i’m gonna share a little story, my close ofmd friends know about this but i think it’s due time that i tell it because i’m tired. so tired of the racism this fandom has exhibited towards me and others

back in late march, around a week before episodes 9+10 aired, i joined a server called “our flag means brainrot”. you might’ve heard of it as it is the biggest ofmd server on discord and still remains so to this day with approximately 2100-ish members. everything was fine and dandy for a couple weeks, i even made several friends-- and then the mod team asked for new mods as the server was growing at a break neck speed and it was getting harder and harder for them to wrangle. naturally, i applied as i had experience running discord servers and i figured it would be best if they had a poc on the team that also lived in asia (the mods and admins were all white save for one other mod who was also asian). i did things that mods do and let people have fun and hosted a couple game nights and movie nights. as the days went by however, the number of izzy apologists (not enjoyers, apologists) started to grow, and of course, the racism started running rampant

increasing amounts of fic where ed was described as being “twice stede’s (or triple izzy’s) size” or would engage in rough behavior with stede and that “stede (izzy) was often terrified of him” was starting to gain traction on ao3, several fans (poc and white) were expressing their concerns about the way ed was being written and how unbelievably racist it all is yet those fics still get disturbing amounts of clicks and kudos. our indigenous main character was being written as a savage brute when canon has vehemently dispelled that trope, but racists would come to these fics defense with “it’s just fiction” or “well canon has them being wholesome so we can do whatever in fic! it’s not canon anyway!”. most of these defenders were indeed, izzy stans. i expressed this to the mod team and asked that we need to step in to give warnings to these fans as they are being racist. i was told that people are allowed to write what they want, and if people don’t like it they simply don’t have to read it

i had also asked the mod team to make a PSA about whitewashing/greywashing ed in art, and that as mods we should notify artists to fix the art they post if ed is too pale or grey. they ignored me and claimed it can’t be helped that artists have their own art style

that was only the first few incidents where the white mod team allowed racism to slide, and told me, a poc, that i should make racists feel welcome and let them have a safe space

back in early may, several ed/izzy shippers had asked for a channel that was aptly named #nsfw-dark and it consisted of, you guessed it, dead dove do not eat metas and discussions where ed (and only ed) was brutally, revoltingly, violent towards poor defenseless izzy. it got so bad to the point that several poc members (and white fans alike) had expressed to the mod team that the depiction of ed by these fans were disturbingly problematic, and it didn’t help that often times their discussions would branch out into other channels. if you’ve ever been in a discord server, you’d know how easy it is to accidentally start talking about something in the wrong channel. the mods stepped in and those fans reigned themselves in a little. but eventually the existence of that channel became too much that even the merely curious spectators/lurkers broke their silence and spoke up because underage content was allowed within that channel

finally the mod team decided to remove the channel only because they were getting so many tickets about the channel being inappropriate that it got too overwhelming, which caused an uproar amongst the contributors/enjoyers of that channel. i had suggested that the subject matter simply wasn’t suited for this server and that they could easily open up their own server so they can act and chat however they please with no one to stop them. several people expressed how this server shouldn’t make them feel excluded (using the kink belongs at pride argument of all arguments) and that my suggestion of them getting their own server made them feel judged and unwelcome, and that i was effectively kinkshaming and policing them. the next day i was removed as mod without warning. no discussion within the mod chat, nothing, just removed because i expressed that an overwhelming amount of people stated that their boundaries were crossed. a couple weeks later, people in the server who made me and other poc uncomfortable were added to the mod team

so that was the treatment i recieved as a poc who tried their best to make fandom a safer space for my fellow poc. white people talked over me and ignored me and sided with racists

#OFMD #Our Flag Means Death #fandom racism #this is several several months old #but i feel like after receiving the amount of harassment i got (many of which i didn't bother to post i just blocked/deleted) #i need to tell this story

[c0d33]

Richard Lore

WARNING! This post contains spoilers for Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye!

If you have not yet completed this DLC (Or Outer Wilds for that fact), I would suggest not reading past the read more. What I talk about in here will spoil some of the largest parts of the DLC, and they're too good to not experience for yourself first.

Y'all gone? Alright, now let's get into this mess of a character.

Richard the Owlk

(Art by @luckylazulii!)

Part 1: Origins

Richard's origins are probably not a conventional way for OCs to be made. Richard was spawned entirely as a joke from several VRChat sessions I had with some friends. In them, we would usually start in the Outer Wilds avatar world, and one of the avatars was a customizable Owlk! Naturally, I tried to make the silliest looking one possible, so I gave them no antlers (But I prefer just calling them bald). While I used this avatar, I jokingly called them Richard. Not only did this name stick for the character itself, but it also somehow got attached to me. So if you're wondering why I had that random name listed as one of the ones you can call me, that's why.

Part 2: The Lore

This is where it somehow gets sillier. I never intended for Richard to be a serious character, so naturally I just started making up whatever lore I wanted for him. So, here's what the initial lore was:

He's bald (As mentioned earlier)

He's a certified Fortnite gamer

He sleeps in doorways (The one on the top end of the stairs in the Party House in the Shrouded Woodlands is the main one he sleeps in)

He eats children

As you can see, not the most serious OC. But again, I hardly intended for them to be serious. It wasn't until they had been around for a while and I started getting art of them that more lore started developing. So, here's the Serious Lore™:

Richard was spawned through a bug in the simulation's code. Despite the Owlk's best attempts to fix the bug, he was never patched out and remained in the simulation indefinitely.

He didn't act like other Owlks. He would often be looming in the distance, watching. Waiting.

He wasn't very... friendly, so to say. Various reports were made and many stories were told about the various things he had done, but there were never any other witnesses for any one story.

By the time the events of the main game are taking place, there are no other Owlks left in the simulation except for Richard (And the Prisoner, but due to their current situation, Richard couldn't feasibly get rid of them).

And so far, that's the lore. There are some other meta things I could think of that would explain how they would work in the context of the game, but that doesn't necessarily apply to their lore.

Part 3: Personality

I've given a lot of thought about Richard's personality and how it would work with both sides of his lore, and I think I've worked something out.

Richard experiences what I would best describe as very extreme mood swings, due to how messy the bug that allowed him to exist was.

One is the very silly, very goofy Fornite-playing doorway-sleeping Owlk that most people (Aside from the other Owlks) know and love.

The other side is the side that the Owlks experienced, with the general creepiness and violent nature.

My best comparison would be to some kind of mental illness, but I'm very cautious and nervous about saying that since A.) I don't know nearly enough about mental illnesses to name any one that it could be similar to, B.) I don't want to offend anyone who may have the mental illness that I specifically name, and C.) I don't want this to vilify mental illness in any way, shape, or form.

I'm very aware of how bad mental illness representation in media can be, and the last thing I want would be to add to that pile of misrepresentation. I would greatly appreciate any feedback or advice about this, since I'm very worried about portraying something the wrong way.

Part 4: Conclusion

Well, that's the Richard lore! Thank you very much for reading!

Richard is still very much a character that's under development, as I'm still attempting to work out exactly how they act and behave. Any thoughts or comments are appreciated, and feel free to send me asks about them, be it questions or feedback!

(Entirely unrelated to Richard, but after writing this I'm realizing just how starved for lore my other two OCs are. Maybe I should get some for them too.)

#outer wilds #outer wild spoilers #echoes of the eye #echoes of the eye spoilers #oc #original character

[esther-dot]

It seems like jonsa wasn’t a thing till season 6 happened and they hugged each other? Idk I’m wondering what some saw in that hug that others didn’t that made people start shipping them romantically? That scene was emotional for me but that’s because I saw two siblings that have been through so much and are what’s left of their family reunite. Of course since then there has been a lot of metas written from both show and book to support it. But it was after the fact. What was it about that one scene lol

Well, season six premiered in 2016, but three years prior, in 2013 there was a beautiful meta speculating that Jon and Sansa would reunite first of all the Starks (link) and marry for political reasons, so, the hug may have been the introduction to the idea for some, but the interest in/theory of romantic Jonsa preexisted it.

In addition to spec, there are Jonsa fics on AO3 dating back to 2011 (I see some that are now dated before that but those may have been backdated, not sure), I know I've reblogged artwork and meta from before the reunion, here’s a post about the ship from 2011, so, the moment anyone thought “this reunion is being filmed some kinda way”, or, “this soup scene is a little flirty”, or “why are they breathing this way in their scenes and …is Jon…panting? WTF”, or “why did they mutually cloak each other?”, or “why are the promising trust and protection?”, or “why are they cosplaying as NedCat?” they could check and find meta and fics that predicted some or several of those elements before the show did it. Some of the fics and spec even predicted Sansa in Witnerfell and Jon at the Wall, so there was a lot of foresight on the part of the og shippers!

I suppose what I’m getting at is that even when people point to the hug, there’s a context for why it so easily  snowballed. We can pinpoint that as the moment, but my tendency is to think that all the surrounding things made a foundation for it. I mean, even genre tropes played a role here. I’ve had people tell me they expected it from the first book because of the princess/secret prince idea. And, in-verse, it has connections to other ideas like a Targ prince and Stark maiden, Targcest, and the Jaime/Jon foils + the Cersei/Sansa foils situation. I mean, hundreds of thousands of words have been written about this stuff since the reunion, sure, but a lot of the elements that make it so compelling were written by book fans first, they just never carried it to an endpoint where these things could all be gathered into a single development that allowed Martin to write a shade of grey into his discussion of incest via a storyline that also addresses Jon's longing for Winterfell/children and Sansa's desire for love. If one is willing to take a step back from the preconception of what Jonsa is, why it exists as a ship, it's very easy to see it as a clever culmination of many, many threads into a heart-wrenching, possibly hopeful, development. So, I’d argue that even if those ideas were only present in someone’s subconscious, it’s why someone might watch that hug (or the mutual cloaking/chemistry of the actors/lighting and blocking etc) and have a holy shit moment.

As for the hug itself, I don’t interpret it as romantic either in the sense that, I don’t think that is at all what the characters were feeling. However, when one thinks about how it was filmed, the breathlessness of the acting and how they let that scene stretch out and take it’s time...few other moments compare. Every aspect of it worked to tell the audience how important it was, and of course, as a Stark fan, finally having two Starks reunite after near misses, well, we had spent years building up to a meaningful Stark moment. Jon and Sansa’s relief and joy was ours. And not only did we have all that catharsis and a scene that was...treated with solemnity in a show that was losing it’s depth, storywise, it was one of the few writing choices after the halfway point that carried through the last three seasons. It set a trajectory for Jon and Sansa individually, that reunion and relationship changed everything for them. However one interprets it, their bond became the most important relationship in the last three seasons, and was of the utmost importance in the finale, despite everything becoming pretty nonsensical. In hindsight, it wasn’t accidentally meaningful, incidentally a highpoint of the series, it was essential, essential to them, essential to the story, essential to the endgame.

So, not only do you have in-universe ideas that make this meaningful, not only was there speculation that called it and presents it as the beginning of a romance, not only did they film it in a far more reverential way than they filmed any other relationship (even more so than the epic romance of the series), it also was a necessary stepping stone to the endgame. Even mishandled as it ultimately was, the weight of what it meant spans the entire series, and audiences felt that. It was a turning point for Jon, for Sansa, for the North, for the fight against the Others (even more so than Jon meeting Dany because s7-s8 were so horribly written), so not only is it compelling for lovers of themes, for lovers of the overarching narrative, for lovers of the characters who simply needed their favs to smile again, the failure of the last two seasons made it even more of a high point in our minds of what GoT was and should have been, who these characters are and what they want. And you see how this leads us right back to those desires Jon and Sansa have: Winterfell and family. Again, I did not watch s6 and think it had to be interpreted romantically, but after s7 when I got online and read spec, rewatched their scenes and compared them to how Kit acted Jon with Ygritte and with Dany, I changed my mind. Jon and Sansa, their desires and fears, were never as vivid and compelling as they were in their shared scenes, every conversation developed the complexity of their emotions for each other, and all of that was established in the way they presented that first hug—disbelief, longing, relief, joy.

Also, when someone can predict what happens, I think it’s worthwhile to consider the idea that maybe there’s something to learn from their interpretation of themes, and the fact that a Jonsa reunion was long predicted, matters so much for character development as well as plot progression...well, it means something! Anyway, I can’t argue that the hug itself was romantic, but I do think, especially in comparison to how they handled every other relationship, meeting or reunion in s7-8, that D&D were doing something there, and I personally can’t be convinced they meant for the Jon and Sansa dynamic to be read as strictly familial.

#dot chat #<- tag to filter #jonsa

[rey-jake-therapist]

Hob Gadling's wives and girlfriends, the forgotten women of The Sandman

DISCLAIMER: the following posts contains major spoilers for Season of Mists, World's Ends, The Kindly Ones and The Wake.

A couple of weeks I told @writing-for-life my next meta would be about the women who shared Hob's life. There's not much to work on in the comics for most of them, but the fact remains that they exist and that Hob probably loved them all. And his second wife in particular, Margaret/Peggy aka Jim, had a story dedicated to her journey, in World's Ends.

Hob's canon romances always interested me because these women were all mortals, while he was not. We know he had at least one kid who died, and he saw almost all his lovers/wives die while knowing he would never follow them in the grave unless he wanted it. We didn't see it happen with Gwen, but it will, eventually.

It makes me wonder: how does he do it? How does he manage to be completely invested in a relationship knowing that the people he loves will all grow old and die, while he will stay the same and live forever? I would have loved it if the comics had him discussing that, and I still hope in the show he will. We never saw what his last conversation with Hob was, after all... I like to think that Dream stayed a bit longer than usual with Hob, and that they opened up about their respective lives and experiences with love. Audrey is still alive and probably in Hob's life at this point, it would be nice if she showed up, met Dreams and asked him embarrassing questions... but I digress haha

Before I continue I'd like to confess that not being a shipper, I don't read Dreamling fics - I rarely read fics revolving a ship in general... I prefer Morpheus x oc or non romantic fics -, so any comment I can make about the fandom is based on what I see on social media, and not on fanfic contents. I'm sure that Hob's wives and girlfriends are often evoked and maybe sometimes, even more developed there than they are in canon.

Hob's first wife: Eleanor

Eleanor's just a portrait, we don't know much about her except that Hob probably cared about her since in the show he still calls her "my Eleanor" long after she died.

She exists only to show that Hob's situation stabilized after he started making money. Also, their son's death and hers may have been the first time that it hit Hob in the head that while he could live forever, he couldn't prevent his loved ones from dying. The loss of his family affected him very much and yet, he still wanted to live. I'll probably write a meta later about how his situation purposely mirrors Morpheus', about how they both lost everything they loved at some point but reacted in a completely different manner.

Hob's second wife: Peggy/Jim

We meet Margaret/Peggy/Jim in World's End. She pretends to be a man hence why she calls herself Jim, as she did during all the trip during which she met Hob Gadling. It's quite obvious that she did it for safety issues, as she would have probably not been allowed to travel on a boat let alone work on one if she had revealed as girl without a chaperon, and she clearly enjoyed the freedom and advantages she got as passing for a man. It's good to emphasize how brave she was to do that, as if her secret had gone out it could have put her in great danger.

Hob was the only one who saw through her, but he protected her secret. He also confirmed her doubts that he was much older than he seemed, a secret she protected as well. It seems she never believed he was immortal though - see the part about Audrey - .They bonded over having secrets they could possibly not reveal to anyone else, so it's a really sweet love story.

Later, in The Kindly Ones, we learn that Peggy died in his arms, during the Blitz. If they had kids, he doesn't say, but it's obvious he loved her very much and was deeply affected by her death, as he says on Audrey's grave, in The Kindly Ones, that Audrey's the first woman he was with since Peggy died.

Now I know that certain fans want Peggy to be trans or non-binary because she disguises as a man and asks to be called Jim. It's generally not as much because they care about her character or representation,than because it would make Hob canonically queer. Now I have no problem with anyone's headcanons: there are no right or wrong headcanon, no stupid or offensive ones - as long as they're not hateful, homophobic, racist, transphobic etc. - and whatever makes people feel represented and happy is fine by me. That said, I personally believe it's a bit simplistic to reduce a woman's refusal to follow societal norms to her being a man or non-binary, but again, whatever floats your boat guys.

I personally think that Peggy/Jim was written as a strong young woman who wanted to travel and see the world, knew she couldn't do that if she was seen as a woman, so she disguised as a man, took a man's name and enjoyed the role because let's be honest: the life for white men during this period was wayyyyyy funnier and easier than for women. What do you mean, it still is? I don't understand, are you saying institutional patriarchy is still very much a thing? *pretends to be shocked*.

You can find many stories like Peggy/Jim's in modern literature, and of course, in real life!

As for Hob, he knew Peggy was a woman quite early, and when he talks about her on Audrey's grave he says "Peg' ", not "Jim", which tells me he kept seeing her as a woman. But again, that's my headcanon and I won't argue about that, I just feel like Peggy/Jim deserves better than being discussed solely regarding Hob's sexuality. Her story is one of my favorite in the comics :)

Talking about the particular subject of Hob's sexuality is immortal and even though the comics doesn't mention any male boyfriend, he seems open minded and hedonistic enough to have at least tried... I always headcanoned Hob Gadling as pansexual, because it doesn't make sense to me that a man who lived for hundred of years would be straight, simply.

I really hope that the show will give us Peggy/Jim's story on screen, she highly deserves it. I love this character, I just wish it would be clearer in the comics that she's the future Mrs Gadling... I learned through social media that the Peg' he mentioned on Audrey's grave was the Peggy he met in World's Ends. It's very confusing, the way it's written.

Hob Gadling's girlfriends

We of course don't know every girlfriend that Hob had, in the comics we're just introduced to two: Audrey, and Gwen. We learn a couple of other names in The Kindly Ones though: Lisabet and Anne.

Audrey

Audrey's another woman who's never part of the conversations, yet the panel dedicated to Hob's reaction to her death is the first panel that made Hob sympathetic to me. But whenever this panel is discussed, everything that's related to Audrey is ignored so the focus is entirely on Hob's concern for Morpheus. Before I read the comics, I had no idea that Hob had just buried his lover, and begged Morpheus to resurrect her because the pain of losing her was too hard to handle.

A bit like for Margaret/Peggy/Jim, it's not clear at all that in Season of Mists, the woman we see with Hob in bed is Audrey, the woman whose grave he visits in The Kindly Ones.

It's really in The Kindly Ones that we can see how much he cared for Audrey, as he cared for all the lovers he had before but died. The reaction he has, he admits it himself, responds to a question we probably all asked: does he ever get used to it? Become insensitive, with time?

The answer's no:

I always wondered why Morpheus visited him at this moment: was it because he felt his pain and wanted to be here for him? Or was it because he wanted to say one last goodbye and it happened to coincide with the moment Hob was drowning in his grief? Was it because he himself needed a friend, more than ever?

Anyway he certainly didn't expect Hob's request. For the first time that we know of, Hob asked Dream to use his supernatural powers. Hob, the immortal who saw all the people he knew die, not only wasn't used to it but asked Dream basically the same thing as Orpheus asked him: help him to get his lover back. It must have been very painful for Dream, but poor Hob couldn't know that. I doubt he even knew that Dream had once been married and had a son.

So yeah, afterwards he runs after Morpheus and tries to make him confide in him, he even feels his friend's death is imminent and he shows a deep concern, but that's not all that this panel is about. I think it's about saying that no matter how old you are, how many lives you lived, how many people you loved and loved you.... The death of a loved one is always painful.

2. Gwen

Gwen is Hob's last girlfriend that we know of. She's also, in his own admission, the first Black woman he dates. Considering that Hob used to be an enthusiastic slave trader who needed an ethereal entity to tell him that slavery was wrong to think that he should find another way to become rich, I find this information.... interesting. After 600 years, it was about time... did he refuse to date Black women because of guilt for what he did? Or because he remained racist for a long time and didn't think Black women were worth his attention?

I feel very protective of Gwen, first because I dislike how she was written as a moral caution for Hob, as she absolves him for his sins but without knowing the extent of his sins - she has no idea he's immortal and was a slave trader - . When she appears in the show - and I really hope she will! - , I hope she'll be written in a way that she doesn't exist solely for Hob to express his guilt while being too coward to tell her the truth about what he did.

I was going to say something very personal about me, but I'm not sure the comparison I want to make would work, so I prefer keeping it for me, finally. If anyone's interested in knowing me better they can join me in private though :)

The second reason why I'm very protective of her is that as Audrey, on social media she's generally treated as non existent by the fandom - who focuses entirely on Hob's grief regarding Morpheus' death - . I recently saw a wish regarding Gwen that made my blood boil and almost made me hit the 'deactivate' button, but I'm not here to start a war, let alone to point fingers. I just really wish some people paid more attention to what they wrote, because some stuff I've read these last days came off as very insensitive.

And I'll conclude with one last panel featuring the gorgeous Gwen:

Also tagging @violetoftheendless and @tickldpnk8 , in case you're interested in discussing this subject :)

#sandman women #hob gadling #hob gadling's lovers #hob and women #the sandman #season of mists #the kindly ones #the wake #sandman comics #sandman spoilers #the sandman meta #fandom misoginy #fandom racism #fandom critical