We talk a lot about Rick saying he knew he was in love with his son's best friend, but we need to discuss Michonne's love for, and loyalty to this man since they met. He's always been the one for her.
oh for sure, she chose him from the beginning even if she wasn't fully aware of doing so. btw, if you haven't seen it already, i would recommend this post by @glamaphonic (which is basically required reading in my opinion) for the full trajectory of michonne's feelings for rick.
while I don't necessarily think she was in love with him since day one, you're absolutely right in that it was building from the moment they met. these are the things that stick out to me but let's be real it's not a comprehensive list because she loves him so much. she loves him so so much!
the way she pretty much instantly decided the prison was safe and that she wanted to stay there because of rick. not just by understanding why he was mistrustful of her, but by seeing how he had built a legitimate family from the way he reunited with carol and thanked daryl for taking care of judith. it took her five minutes to clock him as a legitimate leader and has supported him ever since. so much so that in 7x12 she tells him, completely honestly, that he should lead all of the communities. she genuinely admires him, and thinks there is no one better or more capable than him (of course, that's not true: she is lol i'm always so ticked by how surprised she is when he asks her to lead with him in 7x12).
when she sees rick having hallucinations, instead of treating him like a wild animal that you should only approach slowly and carefully (like everyone else did) she sees herself in him and goes out of her way to make him feel better. if anything it actually makes her trust and understand him more. and she gets him to crack a joke and smile!
the fact that not only was she not angry, but told him she completely understood that he had to consider giving her up to the governor, who she *knows* is a psychopath. that SHE of all people was the one to empathize with him for having to make that choice? that is truly bonkers when you think about it. a level of loyalty and understanding and care that makes very little sense considering how they still barely knew each other then. but it ~*~must have been something else then~*~
the way she bursts into tears of joy and looks to the sky in thanks after finding carl and rick after the prison. you know she would have been glad to find anyone when she started following that trail but you could tell that those two are who she wanted to find more than anyone else. and the fact that doing so seemed to restore her faith? shut up???
after she finds rick and carl she asks him "is this home? or just a stop along the way?" she was willing to stay put and build a home with just him and carl without bothering to look for anyone else. as @glamaphonic said, she claims them right then and there. (btw i noticed that a similar conversation happened with carol and tyresse in The Grove, and also with sasha and abraham in...some later episode idk which one, but they're in an office building. i just thought it was interesting! i wonder if the carol/tyreese instance was a nod to the comics?)
rick thinks that killing a man with his throat is the worst thing he's ever done. certainly carl saw it as monstrous (as it made him think he was a monster too, for being too similar to rick) even daryl backed away from it. only michonne saw it for the heroic act it was and it made her fall in love with him. and she made him feel better too. again, she sees a kindred spirit in him as someone willing to do anything, including things most people would not do, to protect his child.
she is always ready to back him up and fight with him, as well as for him. the only time she disagrees with him is when she knows there is a better option for them, and even then she's gentle and supportive while she convinces him there's a better way (directing the group to alexandria, "i'm still with you", the fight against n*gan, the end of towl 1x04, probably more that i'm forgetting). she considers him her equal in every way, and considering how self-reliant michonne is, that says everything.
okay but seriously the EASIEST way to piss michonne off is to talk shit about rick, talk shit to rick, put your hands on rick, or even just look at rick in a way she doesn't like. she just starts yelling and/ swinging, which is hilarious because she's normally so collected.
on the other hand the only thing that makes michonne lose her shit completely and genuinely panic is if rick is legitimately in danger (the end of 6x09, the bridge)
if she thinks he's dead, she straight up just. stops. mid battle. just drops her weapon and stops. i'm almost glad we never got flashbacks to the time immediately after the bridge because it might have been too devastating to watch.
she never rejects him. even when they're at odds, she's still goes out of her way to show him she still supports him (5x16, their kiss in 7x08).
rick straight up would not have survived losing carl if he hadn't had michonne. she is so loving and patient and gentle with him even through her own grief it's incredible. she loves him SO much (and i have to point out, rick is the same for her. as devastating as carl's death is, watching them work through it together was beautiful).
she is always trying to ease his burden and be a legitimate partner to him. there are countless examples of this but the big one for me is how she considers n*gan her responsibility after season 8. rick made the call but she backed him and kept backing him even though everyone was against them, even when they both had doubts. she completely meant it when she said she wanted for them to make all of their decisions together and for once he's not completely alone as a leader.
speaking of the n*gan thing. michonne stands in maggie's way until maggie asks her what she would have done if it had been rick who had been butchered in front of her, if she could have just let that go. definitely, the answer was no. just like rick couldn't have if it had been michonne.
(because she can't live without him anymore than he can live without her).
she was flipping over dead walkers for months after the bridge and did not move on for over 6 years because she could *feel* he was still alive despite all evidence to the contrary and also simply because there was no one else she wanted. it's him or no one. just as it's her or no one for him. you can actually see her flinch a little toward the end of her kiss with ezekiel.
wearing his clothes and wrapping them around herself like a hug when she really really missed him
talking to him long after he was gone
setting off to find him on foot over nothing more than a hint that he was alive
all of the ones who live. like, that would honestly need its own post but do we even need it? that show dialed this love story up to like a twenty. she spent an entire episode saving him from himself. almost died trying to find him in the first place. jumped his ass out of a helicopter. her faith in him and them saves the entire world.
truly, her response to his proposal/vows is spot on: "it could only ever have been you." it was always him, it was only ever going to be him. it's him, or it's no one.
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Hey GTC, I have always been such a fan of your Tumblr and your engagement with the fandom. However I must say that as of late, the questions you’re being asked most often are essentially variants of “Will X happen?” or “Will Y character do Z like in the book?” or even, “I’m noticing Theme A, will it continue in future chapters?”
A significant element of the fun that you’ve created for Lionheart readers is that we don’t know which elements and events of the JKR texts you’ll preserve untouched and which you’ll turn into the sixth and seventh year Lionheart storylines. I adore making my guesses to which parts of canon you’ll play with and which parts you’ll completely and utterly upend. Unfortunately, questions that ask about canon events in books 5-7 ruin so much of the fun.
Historically, you’ve used the Ask box to provide us with analyses of your own work and characterizations, but I feel as if recently you are often indulging questions about books 5, 6, and 7. I hate to say it, but I even feel that your answers veer into spoiler territory. I used to lurk your Tumblr incessantly, but since I’ve started to see this influx in predictive questions these past couple weeks, I’ve been avoiding the app.
It’s such a gift that we get to engage with your work on such a vibrant epistolary and interactive space as your Tumblr. I know that you can’t control what fans ask, but I humbly request that you please consider refusing to answer questions that ask you to ponder future events. Thank you for your tender care to everyone in the fandom. ❤️🔥🦁🧡
Hey, what's up, dude. I hear you. Sorry about that.
The problem is that the line between spoilers and not spoilers is totally subjective, and the line between "spoilers that are fine" and "spoilers that bother me" is also totally subjective. I don't know where you are on it, but we probably don't line up, and that's okay. I just don't know how I'd begin to sort out questions that one person considers "too much" from what someone else just thinks is fun analysis. My hard rules are as follows: I don't answer any questions about future ships, events, or arcs (and I get a lot). I haven't revealed anything that I would be unhappy to discover in a Tumblr askbox instead of a fic itself. True, I've dropped teaser/trailer stuff for 6 and 7, but to be honest, even looking over the stuff I've posted recently — I hate to say it, but I disagree with you. It isn't spoilers. Not to me, anyway.
But that's just me! There's no right or wrong answer here, it's just a coordination problem of how we can both cultivate social media experiences that make us happy. For instance: I like answering questions about my fic. It makes me happy to talk to people who want to know what happens. It encourages me and gets me excited to write about it, and I don't believe that any of the content on my Tumblr spoils what's going to happen. I don't really want to stop doing that, so I'm not going to. If that means you and other readers whose spoiler thresholds are below mine can't engage with my Tumblr, that's a natural consequence of us having different attitudes about media, and it was bound to happen. I'm sorry that that's the case, but it would bring me much more grief for you to injure your reading experience than it would for you to avoid my (largely irrelevant) e-journal full of random metatext. I love my fic, and I love my readers, you most certainly included; I do not, candidly speaking, love my Tumblr account. And for what it's worth, I absolutely do not think anything I've written on here is worth diminishing your experience of a story you enjoy. It wouldn't jive with my philosophy of literature and art.
So here's what I got: I'll continue tagging spoilers about past and current events as [#lionheart spoilers], and if a question makes reference to events not published, I'll use the tag [#prognosticating]. That way you can block the tag, and other readers can enjoy content that fits under their threshold of non-spoilerism. If our thresholds still don't line up, then I think the only solution may really be to block the [#lionheart spoilers] tag altogether. That's probably not the answer you're looking for, but it's the best I can do.
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losing my mind like. sorry i know i never shut up about dark pete burning the whole mafia world down to save vegas and macau but. i've seriously been losing my mind over it like
give me vegas and macau being late home after vegas went to pick macau up at school on his bike and not answering their phones and pete immediately knowing something is wrong. give me pete calling chay to ask if he saw them actually leave together and then, at chay's affirmative answer, calling arm all business-like: "i need a favor, but you can't tell anyone about it. if you won't help me just say so right away, i don't have time to waste." give me pete asking arm to hack into the security cameras on the way from macau's school to their home and watching all the footages until he spots a van cutting vegas' bike off and then taking vegas and macau away.
give me pete figuring out it's not a ransom situation but a personal vengeance. give me pete manipulating, bribing, maiming, and torturing people, promising them not to kill them if they give him the information he needs and then killing them anyway because whoever was behind this can't know pete is coming and dead men tell no tales. give me kinn and porsche eventually finding out what’s happening and asking pete why he didn’t go to them for help. give me pete answering, cold and detached, ‘frankly, i haven’t ruled out the involvement of the main family in this, yet. nor of the new minor one.’ give me porsche’s indignant ‘ai’pete!’ before trying to stop pete from leaving. give me pete pointing his gun at porsche because yes, porsche is his friend and pete loves him dearly, but that’s pete’s family they’re talking about and no one – NO ONE – is gonna tell pete how he has to go about saving it, if someone was stupid enough to think they could mess with vegas and macau now that they don’t hold the title of heirs of the minor family anymore, well then pete has to show them just how fucking wrong they are and bring them as an example for everyone else.
give me pete finally finding out who’s behind it and where they are keeping vegas and macau and getting ready to bring down an entire building full of people armed only with a gun and a knife. give me pete being smart about it, using stealth and smoke bombs to conceal his attacks, preferring the knife over a gun he would have to reload over and over again, putting into practice his experience as a boxer and all of chan’s teachings: circle around the target rather than move in a straight line; forgo the heart and target the abdominal aorta that sits unguarded at the top of the abdomen at the meeting of the ribs; if the opponent is guarding their vital targets well, strike at less vital areas to make the defender move and then go for the carotid in the neck, the brachial artery in the arm or the radial artery in the forearm, the femoral artery in the leg, the abdomen. give me pete finding macau locked alone in a room and macau not caring about the blood covering pete from head to toes and just hugging him tight because pete really came for them. give me pete handing the gun to macau because there’s no way he’s leaving macau behind and the two of them fighting their way to wherever they’re keeping vegas. give me vegas tied to a chair, half-high with whatever drug they injected in his system to keep him from fighting back, a constellation of cuts and bruises all over his body. give me vegas never seeing something so beautiful as pete, covered in blood and knife in hand, killing the dudes assigned to keep guard to vegas' room and then dropping on his knees in front of vegas to gently cup his face and put their foreheads together.
and the fucker who did this? give me pete dragging him in front of vegas and macau and not killing him right away, but slowly cutting him up and tearing him apart for every wound he can see on the two brothers: a tooth for macau’s split lip, an eye for the bruise blooming on vegas’ cheekbone, all of his fingers for vegas’ broken arm. and then, finally, give me pete bringing vegas and macau home and the three of them piling together in the same bed, holding each other all night, their little family of three that no one is allowed to touch.
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