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#personally idk how i feel about the narrative making her a mother in the end. i could say it has come problematic implications about women's
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just finished s6 of elementary (finished s5 on sunday. lol) and i’m trying to get my friends to watch it also so unfortunately i can’t drown them in my spoilery rantings so instead everything is going in the tags here so uh. abandon all hope ye who enter these tags, spoilers abound
#im gonna pad these tags a bit actually#so the spoilers go behind a 'read more' or whatever#youre welcome <3#have i mentioned you should watch this show#anyways we're probably safe now su#HOOOOOOOOOLY SHIIIIIIT#that is not at ALL where i expected that to go#gregson was really warming up to me this season. he had never really stood out as a characted before but i think he really shown in s5&6#but man. that finale. honestly idk if i can forgive his character for that. i know he was just trying to protect his daughter but she had to#take responsibility for killing michael because it was not fair for joan to take the fall for that even unintentionally. im definitely gonna#miss him tho. and marcus too. i mean i knew his presence was coming to an end anyways with the marshalls but this finale has really dissolve#d the core cast here. now its jsut sherlock and joan. back in london too; thats quite the move#and in the last season. i guess the total shift is setting and cast didnt do well with ratings? or maybe it was always going to end at 221b#idk. but i think my favorite part of this season was sherlock completely devoting himself to the idea of joan getting a kid#personally idk how i feel about the narrative making her a mother in the end. i could say it has come problematic implications about women's#roles but honestly within the context on the narrative? i dont think thats entirely true. anyways i jsut thought it was super cure how much#sherlock just wanted joan to be happy and fulfilled. 'i would make adjustments for you watson always.' 'we're two people who love each other#they way he develops through her. the way he learns how to love and be loved. the way he becomes kinder and he lets down his walls to laugh#with her and smile with her. the way that they understand each other in ways nobody else ever has. it makes me som emotinal#HE NAMED A BEE AFTER HER#im never going to get over that#anyways 'uncle detective' is maybe the cutest thing ever. he cleaned up his murder dollhouse for a kid she didnt even have yet :)#ok i think im done. for now. its 1am and i have class at 8:30 so uh i guess  i'll just die about it but oh well. i was gonna watch one more#and then i realized the one after that one was the season finale so you see how i did what i had to#anyways. good night#:')#will tags this far in even get registered? oh well#elementary#cbs elementary#please someone talk to me about them
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mykinkyyandere · 1 year
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I See You (Chapter 2)
AO3
Previous Chapter
Pairings: Yandere/Dark! Sully Family X f!Reader
Summary: You know that after the Sully brothers found you, your life will never be the same again. A part of you want to forget about your past and start a new life with this obsessed family, but your past is not very happy about it. No matter where you run, your past hunts you down, and you are not sure if your new protective family can protect you from it.
Warnings: Only this chapter's pairings and warnings, yandere, obsession, possession, kidnapped reader, intense jealousy, being overprotective, brother fight, mild blood, butt slapping as punishment, emotionally hurt Lo'ak, small sized/shaped reader, major (18/21) teen reader/Neteyam/Lo'ak, sorry if i missed anything
A/N: I've changed my narrative to 3rd person. (omniscient narrator? idk exactly the correct English word) I've wanted to see through the reader's mind at first but I've changed my mind. I want to be able show what is going through the minds of the characters. I'll go like this till the end of the series.
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Neteyam's highly nervous body relaxed. You could hear his relieved breathing. He closed his eyes and threw his head back a little. He would hide you until he made his mother change her mind. He would find something, anything. But there was no way he would ever let her to hurt you. He didn't think about why he felt that way. What he knew was that he wanted to protect you. Why would hurting you be a solution? It didn't matter how he felt about you or what he thought. For one thing, it was wrong for her to consider an obviously defenseless creature like you as a threat. It was definitely not personal, he told himself.
Lo'ak looked at you pensively from afar.
A new sister.
A human sister.
At last! Spider had a human sister too!
Although he was happy about this, his mother worried him. She never wanted Spider and she saw him as a potential trouble. She had every right to be worried though, but you... She liked you. Yeah, his mother indeed liked a human. Maybe you could have warmed up the coldness between her and Spider, who knew.
But she wasn't the only one who liked you.
Neteyam.
His golden brother Neteyam.
He was about to take you just like he took everything Lo'ak had, wasn't he? And the worst was that their father always blamed him first. Even now. He called his name! By making a clear implication that Lo'ak might harmed you. How convinced he was that Neteyam was the one who was protecting you.
It disgusted him.
He wanted to come to you, take your tiny hand and pull you away from his brother. But after giving his father a brief look, he changed his mind. He let the flowers in his hand slip through his fingers.
You could tell that things weren't so great between him and his dad.
"Follow your mother. We're gonna talk a little here." Jake said.
"Yes, sir." They agreed unwillingly.
Yes sir? Why did they say 'yes sir' to their father? You frowned in confusion and looked at him. Did the Na'vi call their father 'sir'? It didn't sound warm at all. Very, very cold. You hated it.
"What's with the face?" He said amusedly, approacing you. You couldn't notice that your face had turned sour, almost challenging.
You looked at him, feeling like you were stretching your head to the sky, and you couldn't help but be horrified by his huge height. There was a softness in his eyes that contrasted with his hard lines. It spread to his lips. He put his hands up in an attempt to reassure you. "Someone's moody, huh?"
You kept frowning and his smile grew even more.
For a while he communicated only from where he was. He knew that if he approached you, you would instantly try to run. He asked your name, where you came from, your family, every question you could think of, but you didn't answer. He even doubted for a moment whether you understood him or not. But no, you did understood him. You just didn't say a single word. Were you mute? He didn't want to ask that. Not now.
When he took a step slowly, you turned around and jumped forward with all your strength. You knew that he would catch you. But maybe if you veered to the right or left, he would have missed you. What a naive thought it was.
He grabbed you by the arms as soon as you turned your back. He lifted you into the air. Oh, it was really high and you were like a toy in his hands. You kicked the air and whimpered. You wanted to scream, but your breath sticked in your throat. "If you want to get on the ground, promise to behave."
No, you didn't like it.
You wanted to touch the ground, but you didn't want to listen to him. Still, it seemed that you had no choice. You nodded and he gently put you down. He took a step back to give you some room. "That's it, calm down. I just wanna talk before we go."
He put you down only for you to try to run away again.
"Oh, come on!" he hissed.
He grabbed you again and threw you over his shoulder this time. When he slapped your butt, you gasped in surprise. "You're going to cost us a lot of trouble, aren't you?"
Did he just-, did he-
Oh, he did. He did slapped your butt.
You hit him on the back to get him to put you down, you tried to throw kicks, but it was useless. There was nothing you could do but watch the beautiful forest while he took you to his home with big steps. He didn't talk to you. It was a quite trip. But you took this silence as a threat.
What were they going to do to you?
You didn't want to find out, and you clung to his hair with a fear that filled you. And he was confused because it hadn't occurred to him that you could do that. You pulled his hair hard and tried to hurt him as much as possible. You even held his braid, but he definitely didn't like it.
"HSSS!"
You thought he was going to pull you down when he grabbed you by the waist, so you pulled your hands away. Another stupid decision. He put you down, and got on top of you. Of course, he didn't put his weight on you. He grabbed your tiny wrists and pulled you towards his chest. He tied them up from behind. Then he held your upper arms firmly, leaned into your ear. "Be a good girl." he said a little harshly.
He looked at your tiny body trapped in his giant one. You were little. You were a rebel girl who defied him despite her tiny body. Your heart was strong, you didn't listen, you didn't give up hope. "You remind me of my younger self. But not exactly."
He stood up and took you in his arms instead of throwing you on his shoulder. "You also remind me of my younger son Lo'ak. But not exactly."
Silence again. He just walked and didn't speak.
You didn't make a scene. You didn't have a chance to escape anyway. Actually, there never was, but you kept trying.
You didn't know if the time passed quickly or if he was fast, but you got to their home. It was much more beautiful than the part of the forest where you got lost. And there was a family that welcomed you.
"Kiri, look! She's so tinyyy." Tuk jumped where she was and shook her sister's arm. How small the people were! This has always amused her. Your age was probably as old as her brothers', but despite this, your body was the size of a child Na'vi.
"Yeah, she is." Kiri murmured. She couldn't take her eyes off you. She was always in an interaction with Eywa that no one could understand. Your presence ignited this interaction, gave a strange feeling that evoked both heaviness and lightness in her heart. She could feel Eywa 'spinning' around you. The reason for this, unfortunately, was unclear to her.
"You are late." Neytiri said.
"We had some little disagreements." He looked at you. "I guess she didn't like me."
He smiled when you frowned at his last imply.
"So you scared her." Neytiri came closer to took you from Jake's arms. When she realized that your hands were tied behind your back, she put her hand to her mouth and gasped. "Oh, Jake! What did you do?"
She immediately put you down and untied your wrists, and then took you in her arms. "I can't believe you did this. Why?" There was disappointment in her voice, but she was harsh.
"You can't imagine how fierce she is. She's a real troublema-"
"No! It can't be your way."
"No-" Jake gave a deep breath and wanted to explain himself but then gave up. "I'll explain to you later."
Neytiri look at you. How big she was compared to you. She rocked you in her arms, same as she were holding her own child. There was no sign of the woman who considered you a threat a few hours ago. She smiled as she held you carefully.
She smiled.
And she smiled very beautifully.
You didn't realize that a Na'vi could be so beautiful. Obviously, she thought the same thing about you. You were very beautiful, too. She realized this, thanks to Eywa.
"How do you feel, my child?" She raised her head a little, making her voice clear and strong.
You didn't expect her question. You just looked at her and blinked.
"Are you afraid?"
You thought about lying when she looked directly into your soul. Her eyes were really sharp and it scared you so much that you couldn't even hide your true feelings. You nodded slowly.
Neytiri softened her expression. She didn't want you to feel the fear. You were Eywa's gift. "You no longer have any reason to be afraid, my child. You are family now."
She said some things that you didn't understand. She seemed like praying, she closed her eyes and whispered. Others were listening.
"Jake." She opened her eyes when she finished. She put you on the ground and left you with their children. Jake followed her and patted your head when he passed. His hand was much bigger than your head and you thought it would crush you.
Being alone with four Na'vi teen didn't make you feel any better. Your form, which stood ready to run away at any moment, did not help them either. Tuk ran in front of you and grabbed you by the arms. "Don't go, please."
"No, Tuk. Don't do it. She's already so scared." Neteyam saved you from his little sister and pressed you to himself. You hugged his legs like you did before and looked at Tuk.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I forgot that your heart is also tiny."
You didn't want the visibly upset child to feel even worse. You left Neteyam's legs and gently held Tuk's hand. You were a little hesitant about it, but she was just a kid. You felt like you had to be nice to her. When her smile instantly appeared on her face, you smiled a little too. There was something about this girl that cheered you up. You couldn't be angry with her or afraid of her. At least for now, everything seemed to be fine.
"Hey, c'mon, let me take you somewhere you'll be comfortable." Lo'ak couldn't hide the irritation in his voice. Neteyam always had to came forward, right? He always knew the right thing, he was always the leader. Lo'ak had no problem with him being responsible, but he hated the way Neteyam pulled you towards him.
Lo'ak didn't care about his brother or Tuk. He came to you quickly and opened his arms, leaning. "Come here."
"No." Neteyam stretched his arm straight towards Lo'ak's chest and threw a light blow at him, knocking him back. Away from you. "Stay where you are."
Lo'ak's eyes flashed with anger. When he hissed, he pushed his brother and knocked him to the ground. "Why are you the only one who is untouchable?"
"Lo'ak stop!" Kiri shouted and tried to pull him back.
And Tuk scared, he ran to his brother on the ground and checked if he was okay. Yes, he was okay. Neteyam was extremely okay actually. His patience overflowed, he stood up and angrily walked over to Lo'ak. Kiri put her hands on the chests of both of them and pleaded wearily. "Now is not the time!"
Neteyam leaned over Lo'ak's face and hissed. "You're acting like a child."
Lo'ak took a long look at his brother and pushed Kiri to the side.
"Wait, calm down." Although Kiri objected, Lo'ak waved his hand that he was fine and pushed her away softly. He needed to be alone. If he left for a while, he could talk to you.
After he looked at your worried face, he turned around and walked away. There was a place where he liked to spend time alone. Yes, he decided to go there. Maybe one day he would take you there too. A lot of fun together-
"C'mon, put your legs around my waist. Let's get you out of here." Neteyam said.
Oh, no.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
What a selfish, two-faced...
Lo'ak's mind, which had barely calmed down, was filled with anger again. But this time with intense jealousy and betrayal. He turned back and grabbed his brother by the shoulder, who leaned down and opened his arms to you. He punched him hard in the face and nearly caused him to fall.
You screamed at what happened and jumped backwards. While Kiri was running to separate the two, Tuk hugged you. You didn't know if she hugged because she was scared.
"What's wrong with you?" Kiri screamed and held Neteyam's face but he pushed her away gently. He touched his bleeding nose and shook his head. "Okay, that's it."
He pushed Lo'ak hard, but he jumped to the other side of his brother before he lost his balance too much. When he wanted to throw another punch, Neteyam grabbed his hand and pushed him hard to the ground.
He pressed his arm against his brother's chest and held him steady. "No, you're not acting. You are still a child."
"What the hell is happening here? Lo'ak?" Jake said.
Neytiri went towards to Tuk and you. She hugged you both. How vulnerable you looked hugged each other. "Oh, my babies."
Neteyam got up on top of Lo'ak and grabbed him by the arm to help his brother, but Lo'ak refused him in anger and got up on his own. They both stood facing their father with their heads down. "What the hell was that about?"
Neteyam, who spoke almost all the time, remained silent. He couldn't say it was because of you. He couldn't take the blame too.
"What did you do to your brother's nose?" he raised his voice.
"Jake." Neytiri called out, pointing at you. She shook her head, meaning not now.
"Alright... We're not done yet." Jake said by looking into Lo'ak's eyes and left.
Neytiri followed Jake, taking you and Tuk. Kiri watched her brothers for a while. They stood quietly and looked everywhere besides themselves. She opened her mouth several times to say something, but gave up.
Soon Kiri left them alone. They weren't sure how long their long silence lasted. But Lo'ak couldn't bear to be alone with him anymore. "Sometimes I hate you."
Not seeing Neteyam's hurt expression, he quickly walked away and left his brother alone.
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Tags: @eywas-heir @mashiromochi @jimfiqs @lik0 @givemeaestheticdreams @miwsolovely @gorgeourrific-nerd @soushswag @the-wanderer-2022 @innersuitcasehairdoscissors @orrinwrld @yunagames03 @lovekeeho @dumbpuppi @neteyam4life @abcdefghijk2m6opqrstuv @carolinemacher @cutiebeanuwu @midnightliacr @hobiolli @jubilia @tinyballoonpolice @fluffydragon14 @lovekeeho @blaaathings @user707sthings @tayvintrasj @datsavageavenger @jjkclub @thomsina @secretfirebirdsblog @newjeansbonnie @inluvwithneteyam @happytimek @flaming-vulpix @theblueinhiseyes @zoetrope1997 @minkyungseokie @khaleesi56 @hania11 @im-in-a-pansexual-panik @certifiedpussyeater @theyoungeagle
A/N: Some tags don't work, idk why. I'm sorry if you didn't get notified. Also I'm sorry if I missed someone.
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straycalamities · 8 months
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Your post made me curious about Julien.... Would love to hear about him and Andrews relationship
hmm...the conundrum with that is i would like to show it one day so how much to tell...
the thing abt this is julian has ALWAYS been written in andrews life. one of the constants of his story no matter how much he changes. (he used to be named Matty) but ive uh...been a chicken to properly show it because uh its HEAVY.
so hm...i've gone over andrew's family life before so it's not meh to go over it again i think...
that's also mostly stayed the same.
readmore bc...ya boys gonna get long-winded
so andrew has a very strict mother with very high expectations of her children, but especially him. his father is more lax and easy-going, pretty carefree tbh, but bc of this its to a fault where he also just..doesnt want to confront his wife. so things kinda..go out of control in the household as far as...his mom's weird like..competition thing between andrew and his sister
so andrew has a twin sister Alana (anyone remember Jackie? yea) and she's pretty naturally good at whatever she puts her mind to. not that she doesnt bust her ass, but things just? come to her. it's just how it is. and she's very much a daddy's girl which pushes andrew into the role of momma's boy. so then it becomes andrew's dad and alana vs andrew's mom and andrew. except. it's pretty much only andrew's mom pushing this narrative, but she's a very convincing person and is the kinda person to naturally command a room
alana is also a naturally curious person so she likes to pick up hobbies and things and practice them until she's over it or good at it or both. and thus..andrew gets pushed into these things too, to not be outdone
the thing about andrew, though, is that he's got a more particular way that he needs to engage with things to actually pick things up and learn them. first of all, he's a very kinetic learner so just reading or hearing a lecture about it doesn't do anything for him. and unfortunately he doesn't have anyone in his life early on (teachers nor family) who understand this about him. they just think there's something wrong with him or off about him or that he's lazy/doesn't care.
but andrew cares. oh he cares. way too much. and he works. so hard. to try to match with the expectations weighing on him, but it just! doesn't happen! no matter how hard he tries! he can't absorb what he's reading! he can't process what he's hearing! when he DOES get the chance to just get his hands on things and figure things out, he shines
and alana tries to help because despite it all, she cares a lot about him. she tries to show him things or tell him what helped her, but it's just..different. the things that work for her, dont't work for him. and she also can't be with him a lot because she has a lot going on. she has big aspirations and she has lots of friends (more things he struggles with) how did they end up so different u_u
so andrew's daily life is very very stressful. he feels like he's always under watch, under scrutiny, every little thing is being judged, weighed, and measured. and that just makes everything much harder for him. he eventually learns over-time to perform great under pressure but that's because the pressure in his adult-life is nothing like the pressure of his childhood lmao
(and if this is a universe where he's got the necromancy thing goin on, there's THAT whole can of worms too. bc of how looked down on and oo scary necromancy is)
so its like..andrew does have his aspirations, his dreams. he wants to be an astronaut! :) and he maintains some semblance of that goal his whole life. he just likes space! he thinks its neat and would rather just spend all day learning about space than anything he's supposed to be learning. not that it's easier, but he's more motivated lmao
he's a C or low B student (idk how to translate american schooling marks into anything else sorry..american moment) and so he's not doing...too bad, but definitely not enough to his teachers or his parents. and he's "inconsistent" bc go figure sometimes lessons are more to his learning capabilities and he excels so oh no now ppl have Proof He Can Do It why cant he do it All The Time. fantastic.
being so focused on making everyone proud or proving everyone wrong in other cases (yes andrew does operate on a level of spite) has andrew finding little time for himself. especially bc his moms the type to not like uhh idle activities. everythings gotta have a Point of Growth. literally the only reprieve is that his mom works away from home a lot, but she'll definitely call or video-call often to make up for that fact. and andrew's The One she has her eye on. he's Her responsibility to better
(the thing about his mom is god she's a strict hard-ass but she does love him uh...so i'm not trying to make it all Ooo Evil Heartless Mother Time. nah she cares but boy is she awful at showing it. and that's not an excuse but..yaknow. it is how it is. her whole thing abt being such a tyrant is that she's worried about him and wants him to do better and Be better and so she's gonna force it down his throat til it takes ...rip)
ofc his family all has their bonding pleasant moments its not all hell all the time and like i said his dad and sister are more uh..better at showing they care but still not..amazing. the whole household like i said before in another post is more reserved than like..ji-hoon's for example who freely give hugs and stuff
anyways so alll of this uh..stuff is to explain: Andrew Doesn't Have Friends LMAO his entire elementary school experience is spent not having time for friends and eventually just not knowing how to Make them bc he had no practice or experience doing so. and the other kids don't think much about him because he doesn't make time for them? they've got other ppl to hang out with. and when a kid does make an attempt he fucks it up somehow or his mom scares them off with the Restrictions for how andrew is allowed to interact with other kids (if andrew wouldnt tell them tho they wouldnt have to know..smh)
by the time he's transitioning to middle school is when he meets julian. julian ALSO does not have friends (gee wonder why (youll see why)) and julian sees andrew not having friends either and thinks well! time to have this loner be MY friend. and julian is a pretty charismatic person when he wants to be. he knows how to small talk and keep conversations going and all that. i say this like a tween julian already has evil intentions but tbh..nah it DOES honestly start off innocent enough. julian has a lot going on at home too and wants someone to be his friend. simple as that. andrew doesnt already have a group, so..easy choice there. should be
the stuff that usually scares ppl away doesnt work on julian because he's a very anti-rules disobedient sort at this point already anyways. he just sees it as a challenge really so even if andrew makes things awkward by parroting his moms rules on how he can interact with other kids based on her paranoias about the typical Child and what they could teach Her Precious Baby it doesnt phase him. he gonna do it anyway
they do have interests in common, turns out! they like some of the same music. some of the same shows/movies. and things like that. the rest of it Becomes shared interests bc julians the type to go "hey i like this. now you will too" and for the most part? their shared tastes go a long way and andrew DOES end up liking most things julian introduces him to
at first julian does kinda..have no choice but to follow the Hard Rules that andrews got for hanging out so..they pretty much only see each other at school, they start picking up writing letters for each other to read only when they get home so they can write a reply and they get kinda lengthy as more topics get added lol
but eventually julian starts convincing andrew to like..shake things up a bit. asks where he lives. turns up at his window. just to chaaat ofc. theyre not gonna get in trouble psh.. its just talking. then it becomes andrew calling julian at home even tho he's not allowed to be on the phone, but if he does it at night then nobody can catch him (or if his moms away bc tbh does his dad rly care..? but andrew assumes he does)
and so julian and andrew get steadily closer and closer that way and andrew is. ecstatic. his first friend! and a really close one! they're best friends! and for julians credit, he's still just thinking "yay i have a friend. someone that makes life suck less :) even if he's a dweeb who i need to teach to live life"
and okay well anything further about them needs content warnings: very unhealthy, toxic relationship talk. manipulation
so unfortunately. julian has a very uhh extreme view on his life. he likes to exaggerate everything (usually for the worst) and jus tlike in general. not just describing it, he actually feels like his life is the worst life anyone could ever have. his parents split up when he was young and now he's being raised by his grandma who is also strict but in a way where its like..shes strict on him but lives kinda like..whatever, herself. shes very do as i say not as i do but julian hangs onto the Example she's putting off and hates her guts for having the Audacity to try to make him do different when she cant even do it herself. he also has an uncle who has his fingers in a lot of very shady pots and so julian is keen to things he rly shouldnt be at a young age
so with all that, he has a tendency to kinda lash out at the world around him. thats sorta his...uh version of coping. and with so many ppl putting him at arms length mostly because of THIS part of his behavior especially, he's only got one person at his side. loyal. always there for him.
unfortunately thats andrew
and it starts small like..playful insults. nothing rly anything at first it could just be the way he shows affection. but then the insults hit parts that sting deeper and deeper. and get more and more personal. and julian starts making almost memes? of some of andrews faults, weaknesses, and insecurities as if that's just one of their Inside Jokes they have, yknow, as best pals. so andrew feels like oh well i have to like this bc its Special and its just for me. i should appreciate that he's doing this. nobody else has this. and he's not being Mean he's just being playful
and unfortunately the more andrew lets him get away with it, the worse julian gets about it. the thing is that nobody's taught andrew self-worth yet. he's been too busy trying to be what other people want him to be. so here he is, also being what julian wants him to be: a punching bag. but he doesnt realize thats what it is. he just thinks julian wants andrew to be the type to be "playfully rude" with but, again, im saying julian goes way past that
and as julian gets older, the more he reserves what used to be how he was with everyone, being him, being genuine in all the worst and best ways, with only andrew. so everyone else gets this very like..agreeable neutral kinda personality out of julian. so then andrew also sees THAT and thinks wow..i really am special
and as years go by and they go from middle school to high school and social situations change around them, andrew feels even more lucky he's gotten somebody special to him and that he's special to because by highschool it feels like everyones already got their cliques and their partners-in-crime and he'd feel like a mega loser without julian. and julians shown him and taught him so many cool things that give him things to actually talk about with other ppl when they Engage with him?
but yeah throughout highschool julian teaches andrew more and more rulebreaking habits. they even set up ways to make money at school w stuff like..selling test answers or snacks or stuff when they can get away with it. or skipping classes or other things. vandalizing things. pranking ppl (harmless :) ofc..but maybe only physically so)
so we return to julian's uncle. liek i said he's a shady dude. well. he starts involving an older julian in his shady shit. so now julian and andrew are peddling fkn weed and prescription drugs around their school and neighborhood. eventually they're hotwiring vehicles to steal. (kinda uhh tragically this is actually where andrew figures out he's pretty good at cars and likes them a lot and even if he's having a constant crisis about Being Awful, he's also uhhh more motivated to learn how to do a new thing and Be Good At It. bc that's the thing isnt it? he's finally Good At Something) and stealing other things too
and i kinda quickened the pace here but its like..well it does escalate pretty quickly because at some point julian has andrew wrapped around his little finger and tho there are the times one or both of them get caught and andrew gets in trouble, has a crisis, and swears off doing anything like that ever again!! julian just has to warm andrew up to it again. because by highschool julian also has the upper hand in that he's become andrew's gay awakening. so now andrew has a huge crush on him and especially wants to impress him and keep him around and notice him and find him cool and worthwhile
and at first julian is sorta confused?? but diversity win! the manipulative toxic asshole best friend is also into boys! but giving andrew everything he wants wouldnt be very fun would it? he has something to dangle over his head. and he's gotten to the point where this is high risk shit. andrew could very much change his mind about everything about them and leave julian and the longer time goes on, the more paranoid julian becomes of this very thing happening. so he holds onto whatever leashes he can get twisted around andrew
he'll entertain his attraction but never clarifies anything. never gives him like..bold affection. never makes it clear how he feels or if he's even completely fine with it? which adds pressure onto andrew that he's just making all this up. or he's being the weirdo, pushing something on julian who might be straight or something
outside of julian tho, andrew's family is noticing his behavior bc i mean..also hes obviously getting caught doing some of this stuff. and his grades are even worse. and sometimes they get calls abt him missing school? and they try to intervene bc like..andrews got One friend. its gotta be this guy. so they try to ground andrew, ban julian, all kinds of stuff but they're slippery and they've got all sorts of workarounds. and ultimately, they still go to the same school. and..sadly. this, at first, just makes andrew desperate to keep julian all the more bc now he's beome this like..symbol of freedom and having Fun and living life to the fullest and anything related to home starts being associated with prison, suffocation, snuffing out his personality and everything he's learned about himself and like..even if he doesnt rly has Friends outside of julian (he's convinced julian is the only friend he rly wants/needs) he's still seen as cool! the Bad Boy, the Hookup for cool shit (snacks, drugs etc) he's a hit sometimes with the Le Popular Kids ooo... and he might even get invited to get-togethers with julian (julian is actually the introvert to andrews extravert but he Humors ppl for the image and he likes the way andrew always looks at him like a lost puppy when he's trying to figure out what to say in convos with other ppl)
but overtime, julians just gotten too comfortable with being too rough with andrews mentality and his emotions. bc he's never stopped his absolute drilling into andrews squishy parts in order to make himself feel better. or somehow blaming andrew for everything, even julians own shortcomings. and playing hot n cold with andrews emotions and etc. like there's just a lot he does that keeps andrew eternally unsure of where he's standing with julian or if he's doing things Correct or in a way that makes julian Happy. and as andrew gets older and starts Understanding things, he starts Understanding that hey...there's actually a lot about this that he doesnt like. he starts trying to...ask julian to lighten up. to consider his feelings on things. that he wants to do..things he wants to do? why do they always do things julian wants to do. why do they always get into what julian likes but never what andrew likes.
julian is...surprised and he does not Like this change. doesnt like that andrew is trying to cause problems? in their relationship? like why make this a thing? when its nothing? it was fine before? but the thing about letting andrew meet ppl, gain reasons for ppl to wanna talk to him and know him is that he gets to know how other ppl are and how they feel abt him. and though he hasnt made any other Friends, he's just learning how..Normal ppl are. and how julian with him is Not Normal. and its in a bad way bc andrew feels bad! he feels sick to his stomach sometimes. and nobody gets to him like julian does! and he thought before it was the crush but now he's starting to realize...he doesnt actually feel that way about julian anymore because he's just gotten so...Cruel
well now when andrew gets grounded/banned from julian, he doesn't fight it. he doesn't find the loopholes anymore. he lets things go and just kinda...tries to see how he feels? and he finds he...feels better. there's ways he feels worse, but there's a lot more ways he feels like he can breathe. like he's a person. and he likes it so...he starts to just ween himself off julian. and julian starts to act up more bc he doesnt have his usual ways to Cope and gets in trouble more, being at school Less and that just causes more distance
and julian is finally living with what he was most terrified of. and andrew is willingly? throwing him away? and he cant have that. he's at his wits end and panicking
new content warning: whew boy suicide mention/suicide-baiting
and thats all i rly have to say aint it
he holds the fact over his head that if andrew actually does officially cut ties with him, julian will kill himself. that he has no reason to live if he doesn't have andrew. that andrew is his everything and the light of his life, his joy, all that. and he cant't just? leave him like this?
and at first andrews like wait no this is awful dont do that..im sorry and like..tentatively keeps his ties to julian, tries to continue things the wya they were! just uh..different! bc if julian wants andrew to stay then..compromises have to happen okay? and julian says he agrees but catch things getting worse again and andrew in the same boat he was before
distancing
julian freaking out in a panic at 2am on a phone call describing what he's about to do til andrew apologizes again
rinse
repeat
but andrew eventually is just...tired. man. he's getting closer to graduating. he really does NOT need this. it's taking such a heavy toll on him bc rly! nothing else terrible in his life ever really went away, this is just an addition. it's not that his mom saw him acting out and thought oh...this is bc im too hard on him, nah, she stays hard. she gets Harder. his moms stern and affectionless and doesnt understand his plights, his sisters always so busy with her life, and his dad is out of touch. and mostly: andrew doesnt want to bother anyone with his problems. its his own fault, after all. its his mess. and he also is terrified of what anyone would think of even..half the things he'd have to admit to get them to understand. or even a fourth tbh
so one day he just..has had enough. julian threatens to tell his parents what he's done, what he's really like even if it brings julian down too. julian plans to be dead anyways after so what does it matter
and andrew just tells him to do it and hangs up
he feels sick to his stomach for days, but also is too fed up to call and apologize or take it back. he flip-flops on both so much he ends up doing nothing at all
and this is where julian is officially out of his life. i call it Schrodinger's Julian at this point bc did he? or didnt he? well what is the truth is he just does not show up again. so andrew is free but..he literally does not know at what cost. and the guilt eats him up alive for the rest of his life as well as all the damage literally going from like 12-13 to 18 with what this shit did to him
(cw: suicide stuff over)
this is where some of the stories diverge? umm..he either goes immediately to college or waits. with the college timeline Also diverging to oh he makes it somehow or oh he has to drop out
my default tho is that he does try, but he has to drop out. and makes an absolute mess of himself while he's trying. college parties and nightlife and everything else. sex drugs and rock n roll pretty much. everything he knows about connecting to other people is completely Fucked and so he thinks he's making connections but it's not real. and nothing feels like it did with julian but that should be a good thing? or should it. he misses the old julian and he misses the good parts and he feels like he'll never have that with someone again or that maybe...if he did...they'd do the same thing. maybe its dangerous to be that close to anyone. but oh he wants it. so bad.
and we'll continue with my usual story but uh (cw: drugs/drug-use)
we have to delve a bit into the fact he becomes an addict. because he very much does. with all the escapism he does in college because he's just trucking along without processing a drop of this? no therapy? not even someone to vent to or hold onto? nah man. shits rough. and he loses himself in many kinds of drugs but heroin is his Drug of Choice and also loses himself in other people but in shallow ways. he becomes a party animal but in the worst way and that becomes his "college" is just this whole social scene that he's not even engaging with in a meaningful way bc he's too terrified of earnest closeness with another human being
meanwhile his grades tank and he just...stops going. needless to say he becomes very much a disaster of a human being at the end of this. the thing is tho..its all self-internalized. he doesnt take it out on other ppl or even want to make it other ppls problems. he tries to just come off as this rly fun guy whos up for literally anything. and like yeah ppl who hang w him enough can definitely See Somethings Up but he's literally just like oh its nothing! its fine im fine! bc no if he opens up about anything everyones gonna hate and abandon him
and unfortunately this gets back to his mom and she uh...cuts him off. completely. if he wont get cleaned up. if he wont just...BE better jst DONT be this trainwreck of a son or else. dont associate with her. thinking maybe itd be a shock enough he'd just Get Better? (lmao) but lmao no. and he rly spirals bad after that but luckily his dad and his sister still sneak contact with him, doing what they can? with someone who doesnt wanna make anything anyone elses' problem and insists he's fine everythings. Fine.
what Does finally have him like?? find hope again? and cling to it and start to eventually put his life back on its feet again depends on the story im writing but something eventually always does and he always has the same Sponsor to help him :'3 darius...(his old roommate from when he was a teacher at thornville..remember that guy? yea rewrote him into here in a different way) and idk..things do look up for andrew! it's just...a very much uphill battle and that's kinda usually where i place him in like Current Events in whatever sceneario/story im thinking of is after he's gotten on his feet (shakily but he's there) and he's usually a mechanic (sometimes moonlights as a necromancer for hire as well) and he's Working himself up to trying college again but hes taking his time. and he's got some sort of support circle (darius, ji-hoon, and sometimes others)
ji-hoon he actually meets as one of his roommates in college and it takes a lot of Effort from ji-hoon but he sees andrew struggling and kinda nags his way into his life to help and is usually one of the reasons andrew gets inspired to get better bc ji-hoon is literally everything julian wasnt but like in a good way. he cares, unconditionally about ppl in general but especially andrew because idk they just Click right. and like i said in another post, ji-hoon's family basically adopts andrew as well and they're so affectionate and loving and give lots of affirmations and stuff and andrew probably cries bc he's never felt that much love tbh and then feels like shit abt it bc crying is dumb, but then everyone else cries too (happy tears) and its like oh
idk this is where i start having lot sof tangential thoughts so ill leave it here but uh! yeah! so that's the story of julian and andrew! and the damage it did! and yes! this is true in every iteration of andrew ive ever written! (the julian and childhood family stuff part, not necessarily all the rest that comes after, a lot of that's new)
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mod2amaryllis · 1 year
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just gonna sliiide into your inbox to be like. got any complicated relationship with motherhood recs?? cause I'm👀
👁️👁️ b i s c i a.
the first rec is always for all time The Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin
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talk about books that changed my brain chemistry and boosted my writing, especially the fifth season, which pulls a narrative trick with its 3 main character perspectives that still has me reeling and makes me resent the fact that not every protagonist is an exhausted middle aged mother who's haunted by choices and horrors of her own making!!
The Devourers by Indra Das
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a take on werewolves that's at times genuinely sickening to read, esp for my body-horror-scawy ass. lot of upsetting themes fyi, like. all the themes. are upsetting. but i was left feeling like I'd just gotten the world's most dire hug. also trans allegory out the wazoo.
i feel like this one is really obligatory like yeah no shit Beloved by Toni Morrison but still: Beloved by Toni Morrison
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I've never felt smart enough for this book but i think about it constantly, not just because the contents are so traumatic but the way it's written..... even now i feel like such a dunce trying to say anything about it but it's like. it broke rules in my brain about how books are supposed to be structured and understood. there's a chapter that ends in a stream of thought that's borderline incomprehensible and it's in my head forever.
ok little different now and largely positive mushy gushy mom stuff, but a lot of Brandi Carlile's songs, especially The Mother:
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and her whole In These Silent Days album. particularly it's celebrating lesbian motherhood. Mama Werewolf is awesome and introduces that complication that makes me ravenous, but my favorite is her love song to her wife, You And Me On The Rock
there's a song exploder podcast episode about it. she talks about how it's an homage to her good friend Joni Mitchell, how it's about this very feminine love she shares with her wife and daughter (and now also her son) and how she spent some of her youth grappling with that femininity.
speaking of song exploder!!!!!! the episode for Song For Our Daughter by Laura Marling
Laura Marling and her partner don't have children. this song is a hypothetical about the trauma of being a girl and having your boundaries crossed when you're young. but what absolutely destroys me is that there's a string section, which was written by a violinist to whom she gave creative liberty, and in his strings he says, "i wrote this to be the character of The Daughter, so she's here in the song soaring over everything" and it just. hearing the context and then listening to the song........i show this episode to anyone who's stuck in a car with me 25 minutes.
on the subject of music, of course there's Florence + The Machine's 2022 album Dance Fever, particularly King
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like hell yeah let's get primal with it
and ok this is gonna clock my grew up as a theatre kid ass but still, to this day, Next To Normal.
listening to this show as a teenager who was just starting to hate my (wonderful awesome love her) mom was like......hoooooo. it blew open the my-parents-are-human empathy. idc about like whether or not this musical lives up to the insane hype it got in the late 2000s it just meant a lot to me personally.
also there's movies i guess! but if you're not already on the Everything Everywhere All At Once train idk what we're doing
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then my oldest mom-centric media of all, so old that I'm not even sure how well it holds up to my current person sensibilities, Fruits Basket
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the way her death is the inciting incident for everything that happens after, and how she's a ghost that haunts the rest of the story, at times a protective spirit and at other times a traumatic poltergeist, is like. i thought i was a 13yo reading a magical high school romance what's happening to me.
then of course the current rec, Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
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Lockwood is a poet and this is her memoir about growing up with a Catholic priest for a dad, something that in itself seems contradictory. it's phenomenal. i can't believe someone exists who's this good at writing. her relationship with her mother is hilariously, tenderly depicted and it's questioning and resentful and loving and there's a chapter about them called the cum queens of the hyatt palace and it's the funniest thing I've ever read
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oops too many words
motherhood in media borders on fixation for me lol i don't always seek it out but when it's there I'm like AAAAAAAAH, AAAAAAAH AAAAAAAAAAAAH AAAAAH IS ANYONE ELSE SEEING THIS GRAAAAAHHHH!!!!
........oh and undertale. how could i forget Undertale.
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brookheimer · 1 year
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what do you think would be the best way for the pregnancy to be handled? pure personal opinion
hmmm i'm honestly not sure, especially given that this season is rumored to just take place over a span of ten days, each episode spanning a day. but i'm gonna go unpopular opinion here and say i would be pretty fucking disappointed if it's just, like, an immediate abortion??? like idk what tv yall are watching but i feel like abortion plotlines are a fucking dime a dozen these days and maybe like one in every ten is anything approaching 'empowering,' even though all ten are framed that way. i think abortion vs pregnancy is often framed as a, like, sophie's choice for women -- do you choose to be a person or do you choose to be a woman? -- and it honestly just reinforces the exact same dichotomies they're claiming to break in my opinion. not every abortion narrative but, like... too many of them. so i'm wary lol
rest under the cut cuz it got soooooo fucking long!!
it's the same as with Strong Female Characters: it's not actually a well-written, empowering female character if her 'strength' is dependent on her complete and total rejection of her identity as a woman and every trait associated with it. we've created these, like, anti-feminine career women girlboss warriors whatever as a balm to the terrible hyperfeminized mother-before-all-else classic caricature of womanhood, but tbh, both narratives are equally harmful -- they're not only both still reinforcing the same dichotomy of, like, family/love/emotion/empathy/interdependence etc vs self/respect/rationality/intelligence/independence, but even reinforcing the valuing of the latter (the 'masculine' traits) over the former! by defining strong female characters as those who reject femininity, you're literally just reinforcing the idea that 'femininity' and 'feminine traits' are bad, weak, etc -- the only 'empowering' thing is that hey! women who act like men can be respected! except not really and they'll always be viewed as a woman anyways!
kind of got off topic but, like, that's often what abortion plotlines come down to in my experience -- housewife or career woman? man or woman? and i'm just fucking sick of it, man. like, it's one thing, obviously, for the world of a show and the characters inhabiting it to enforce these views and be judgmental etc etc etc, but it's so frequently driving the writing and narrative itself. i think that abortion plotlines can be good, but honestly? usually only when the character in question genuinely has no desire whatsoever to have kids, like diane in bojack horseman. because if a character is unsure, what typically happens is they'll get bullied into a specific outcome, and it's then framed as 'empowering' and about 'the right to choose.' if a career-driven woman maybe wants to have a baby but gets an abortion because she knows it'll ruin her career, that's not empowering! that's so fucking sad! why are we calling that empowering! that's just as tragic as having a kid because you fear the ostracization you'll receive if you abort! so. i don't know. i think abortion plotlines are really hard to do well because they always just end up oversimplifying everything and turning it into proof of how Strong the woman who got the abortion is -- like, sometimes strength is not getting the abortion. it's not like being a mother actually makes you weaker or lesser. so why do so many of the shows who claim to criticize that notion end up perpetuating it?
i think there's a lot of really fucking interesting stuff that could be done with shiv's pregnancy, and honestly? most of it isn't even fucking related to what happens with her pregnancy. it's just using that as a vehicle to explore layers of her character that we haven't been able to before, largely because she's been so vehemently obsessed with obscuring them. i've been wanting to delve deeper into shiv's relationship with her gender, with caroline, with gerri, with notions of femininity, etc etc etc for YEARS and this is the perfect fucking opportunity. i want to know what shiv actually wants. who she actually is, beneath the 'hypermasculine' veneer she's had to adopt to even be allowed in the room, let alone respected. like does she actually want children, does she actually want a family? has she only been against it out of fear for her career? or is it genuinely something she desires? how much of her relationship with gender is rooted in spite? who is she outside of that spite, and how far will she go to achieve it? will she have a kid to prove to caroline (but really to herself because caroline doesn't actually give a fuck she's gallivanting in europe with peter munion) that she can be a good mother? what does she even think motherhood should look like? does shiv want to be seen as a woman? does she want to be seen as a man who happens to be in a woman's body? does she want to be seen as a man? like, there are so many fucking interesting avenues to explore, and i mean, she's not gonna fucking have the kid in ten days. i hope they actually make the most of the opportunity this could present -- with the exception of, like, one scene, we've only ever gotten to know shiv through her relationships with the men around her. we literally know nothing about what she is outside of roy masculinity. is there anything outside roy masculinity? does she even want there to be? honestly, i've been a little frustrated in past seasons with how surface level a lot of the shiv stuff has been -- the others get so much internal depth, whereas shiv's characterization has largely been reactionary. like, she's usually just reacting to things people (read: men) have done to her. we know so fucking little about her life before the show! she has the potential to be like kim wexler level if they dig into her more and part of that is digging into her relationship with her gender because, like it or not, she fucking IS THE GIRL. like, that's her defining fucking feature: being The Girl. so let's dissect that!!
i know this was such a long rambling, like, non-answer lol but basically i guess i don't actually care what the outcome is of the pregnancy arc so long as it's handled with care -- so long as it's used as a means to explore the shiv we already know, rather than creating a new problem to understand instead. i think an abortion plotline is the riskiest because they're so frequently done poorly, i have no idea how a miscarriage would go but i do think there are interesting ways it could be done, and i can't imagine shiv actually being a mom but i think there's a lot to unpack with shiv even just considering motherhood. idk what the end outcome will be, but as long as the pregnancy plotline is used to expand upon shiv rather than punish her for her femininity or make some grand moral claim about The Correct Way To Be A Strong Woman, i think i won't be too upset. and i have faith that it'll be decent, honestly. this show -- both the writers and snook herself -- cares too much about shiv to do her that dirty. ....i hope.
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96percentdone · 7 months
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Your ace attorney opinions are so valid and I wish they did aa5 and aa6 more justice? The characters are interesting and fun but when they play 52 pickup with each individual storyline it really shoots the collective narrative in the foot. From a gameplay standpoint, the stuff introduced in aa5 and 6 are fun and rly cool ways to expand upon the universe, and the Wright lie detection agency is fun, but it feels like. Idk. Like they didn’t trust their writers OR their fan base with their story. Idk if that makes sense? (I have similar beef with aitsf and aini though so,,,)
Yeah I honestly hold more contempt for AA5 and 6 than I do any other art I've experienced. Defenders of these games will posit the detractors are so fixated on AJ's plot they cannot see the merits of DD and SoJ, but I don't care about Kristoph's psyche locks, the untouched sibling reveal, or Apollo's 70000 backstories nearly as much as they suggest. Those things are annoying, but they are minor symptoms of the real issue: bad writing across the board. Most if not all culprits have store-bought motives that are thinly elucidated, if they're even elucidated at all, which impacts the writing of every case. If the cause of the suffering is a caricature, the victims end up similarly toothless. They are equally generic. AA has always struggled to write witnesses and culprits consistently well--there's a reason people talk about ace attorney middle cases like that for instance--but it's compounded by the frequency that it happens especially for the main characters.
The returning main cast are hollowed out versions of themselves. Trucy is just a quirky magician girl which they walk back a little in Spirit of Justice by giving her a focus case, and then she's back to being Quirky. Phoenix Wright is a generic mentor figure with goofy internal dialogue sometimes. Klavier is a rockstar prosecutor!!! That's it!!!! Miles Edgeworth is BACK, and because they worked on the investigations games you can kind of see why he's this big good figure, but Pearl and Maya are seemingly around just to be around cause they have nothing going on emotionally. Apollo is a stock dweeb except when he's stock Edgy as a result of one of his new poorly written backstories involving poorly written new characters who might not even be characters (looking at you, Clay Terran).
And the new main characters suffer just as much. Let's take Dual Destinies as a case study. Blackquill was convicted and imprisoned for a murder he did not do, something that changed him and shows in his scenes, in order to protect Athena, whose upbeat personality is only preserved because she is so traumatized by the events and her complicated relationship with her mother and hearing she cannot acknowledge it consciously. These are compelling emotional beats, it makes for well-rounded characters, but what's the payoff? Why did they suffer this way? Because some hired goon with no name and no face had a job at GYAXA to execute. In a better game, you could use Phantom's emptiness as commentary about how often the things that ruin your life don't have good explanations, but I will not be lending credit to that notion for this game, because void man is the origin point for "The Dark Age of the Law," which now also happened because it did, and it was a shallow idea from the jump.
"The Dark Age of the Law" is an simplified cartoon explanation for distrust in the legal system. Instead of people being flawed whether through selfishness (MvK, Kristoph) or trauma (Miles, Justine) lending itself to corruption, exploitation and injustice in systems meant to protect, leading to a myriad of reasons the public would be skeptical that the law serves them, they just feel that way because one lawyer got disbarred for evidence forging and one prosecutor was convicted for murder. Spirit of Justice largely takes place in a made up country with a tyrannical government that kills defense attorneys for assuring fair trials for guilty clients! Why does this happen? Idk, because Ga'ran sucks, and she has ultimate power and creates all the laws. The root of all evil in Khura'in is one woman who is a factory set trope surrounded by generic citizens, diluted returning leads, and new characters who must be dragged down by the garbage that surrounds them in order to take part in it.
You brought up AI. Since you're anonymous, I'm guessing you're one of the countless people who takes issue with Nirvana Initiative on the grounds it's a bad followup to AITSF, to which I first have to ask.... Are you new to my blog? This is a AINI defender account lmao. I think it's better than AITSF, fight me. I'm writing a whole essay about it; I'll win. That said, I get the comparison because it's one I've made before, even if I don't quite stand by it anymore. I'm not going to explain my AINI opinions here, wait for the essay if you're curious, but I think I can get at that difference to me just by using Ace Attorney alone.
My favorite Ace Attorney game is Investigations 2, a sequel to a spin-off that has two of the writers for the mainline games I hate. It's a game about legacy and family. Whether they were admirable and just like Gregory Edgeworth, or duplicitous abusers like Blaise Debeste, the cast of this game wrestles with who they are, how their parent (or parental figure) shaped them, and who they should be in the face that now. Maybe they have to learn what that person is actually like and separate from them, or maybe they find a new family among their friends to fill that absence, or maybe they make peace with that loss and accepting who they are now is someone worth being. Maybe they deny that memory as their own or significant until the end to preserve what they want to believe. It's also a game about systemic failure, and all the things that have to be done to make the law an institute that actually protects people. Specific bad actors may be out of the picture now, but there is still more work to be done.
And the funny thing is? I2 does all of this without actually talking all that much about the rest of the series. Most of the characters are new, even to Investigations, and the ones that return don't bring up most of the shit that happened like a week ago. Miles references the events of Turnabout Goodbyes, and "That Man", and Gregory Edgeworth is a key figure in this game, to the point where you play as him, and yet all of that is only alluded just enough to understand the magnitude of his image and his loss. The heart of AA has always been in its characters, who are zany and fun, but they face real tragedy and real abuses, at the hands of one another which are then reflected in the world of law because the justice system is created and run by people; in I2 it beats so strongly.
Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice may have the skin of Ace Attorney and the bones to prop them up, but underneath that familiar exterior, they're empty. They lack the the muscles and veins and blood to bring them to life, because the character writing and thematic conceits are shallow. The reason AA5 and 6 fail as followups is not because they don't engage with prior entries enough, but because they are poorly written on their own terms. They say nothing at all; they have removed their own heart.
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seavoice · 2 years
Text
i’m so disappointed in the lack of thought/interrogation we got about dreams and tbqh sweetmetal lore in greywaren ESPECIALLY after the build up in mister impossible. take it with a grain of salt, because i haven’t re-read yet, and maybe my views will change. if anything is explained and i missed it, or you have a differering view feel free to share cause i’d love talking about it! but:
1) what does it actually mean to dream people with, in some cases, almost pre-coded characteristics/wishes/functions? both bryde and aurora are killed by the narrative and disappear from it almost dreamlike
2) how do you move going forward with the dreams and ley lines being linked when so much of this series was about separating dreams from dreamers. sweetmetal as a solution? which imo in many ways worked well as a metaphor for medication up until mi, but there are some addendums to sweetmetal lore that make it murky for me in greywaren
3) i love the metaphor of excising parts of yourself to lead a more tolerable life/a future you wish to have like jordan and hennessy but that ends up being so much more about the dreamer than the dream...like how much of jordan is jordan, instead of hennessy without jay (tbf, a slightly different situation than the other examples we have but still the lack of acknowledgment of the other girls’ who died...what does that say about the concept?)
4) matthew doesn’t get any page time to delve on what happens in the car with declan pulling the sweetmetal off of him like an on/off switch? if not a confrontation, at least some internal thoughts on it? that is such a horrible and helpless situation that doesn’t even get revisited past the first third of the book! i love the matthew and bryde parts but i did want more. dream lore
5) there’s a lot of ronan thinking about how fair or not it was that he dreamt matthew and bryde except he worries exclusively about the “life is dependant on mine” part for matthew (fair enough though, seeing as he has spent a longer time not thinking about the implications of dreaming him with compulsively lovable characteristics seeing as he didn’t know) and only bryde gets the monologue about pre-coded characteristics of being miserable and “wired” in a way for despair...but what does dreaming of light mean (or matter!) when you are dreaming a person? and while matthew is a special case of being a baby when he was dreamt, what about aurora? whoever dreamt her doesn’t matter, what is her existence, being dreamt to be happy and soft and love in a way that is understandable and be a perfect mother?
6) moderators...not even going to touch on this without a reread. idk what was happening there. i thought i did but now i realise no idea.
7) as much as i found the concept of draining sweetmetals and the hoarding situation interesting, i think it’s a metaphor being stretched in too many directions at this point and some of them contradict! art just drains? the making of it? the exclusivity? i need to reread this more carefully though, i feel like greywaren confused me a bit with the sweetmetal lore.
8) i guess a lot of this (aurora, bryde) could be taken as the narration trying to just duly give us the facts with zero justification or indictment or anything, but it tends so much towards absolution and how dreaming light into a person is someway different from dreaming bitterness that i’m still on the fence about it. doesn’t help that we don’t think about aurora again.
9) we didn’t get any prolonged arc of dreams getting in on the action when mister impossible had soooo much of jordan and matthew and they seemed posed for a big third act! they seemed really on the margins of the story here. even bryde tbh!
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forkaround · 1 year
Text
BL Awards: Catch Me Sobbing Category
Sad things are just as important as the not-sad things and thus...
Scene that has me sobbing for whatever reason.
(BL Awards: At the end of an amazing year of absolute chaos in the world of BL. I come to you with my favorite moments of the year divided into categories that would not make it into any respectable Award show. But this is Tumblr. You know what you signed up for.)
Parpai reading from Sky's journal (Love in the Air)
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I don't want to discuss the ethics of this and mileage varies for every other person. But this had me sobbing to the point my mother yelled at me for crying over fictional characters. It's how both of them are hurting. It's about Sky not wanting to open up. It's about Pai being confused and hanging over Sky's words. Pai doesn't know what happened, to Sky in the past and to Sky now and he can't accept that Sky would say all those things. Fort and Peat were acting. Truly in their Oscars bag. I remember holding my breath as if I was underwater throughout this scene. Uff.
Sky not crying and Pai crying in his stead (Love in the Air)
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(I can't find a gif for the specific line.)
Who knew that not crying was worse than crying? This scene knocked me off the face of the earth. They are both reeling and the emotional intelligence Prapai shows here, god, another writer, another actor could have made this so much worse than it was. But in Mame and FortPeat's hands this was beautiful. It's gentle, it's mature, it's taking care of Sky before Pai can go around smacking people/taking revenge. But that was not the goal of this story. Revenge tel lene gaya. (revenge goes to buy oil. kinda like revenge go to hell.) This is about grace, this is about healing. I have never seen a narrative like this dealt with such gentleness and keeping the characters 'not-broken'. idk how to explain this. Gun gets everything that is coming to him but in this moment it's not about him. It's about SKY.
GAP: Mon being confused by Sam and crying
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Something less intense. I feel for both our girlies. Sam is constantly going hot and cold and that is so taxing for everyone around her especially Mon, who has loved her since she was a kid. tbf Sam doesn't know this. And Sam is herself so tragic. Never expressing who she is and what she wants leaving for those around her to interpret her intentions. As much as I feel for her though, I can't see her as a decent boss.
Triage: Tin goes into a coma and Tol is reading to him
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I did not expect this to hurt me as much as it did. I can't quantify even now why I love this show so much. But after the POV switch something about this show just fit. I was going to be so mad if they ended up unhappy. I was barely starting to get comfortable with BLs and their happy endings. And then this hit. It didn't end unhappy but I sure thought it would. (Also the clock tower kiss is just something else)
The Eclipse: Every AkkAyan scene towards the end
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There are so many gifs/scenes where this boy is crying. First must have had quite the month crying over and over each episode. He is so stuck in his circumstances, in his own head about what's right and wrong. Brittle things. And you see that with how he is caught in between Chadok and Ayan.
ChadokDika story
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Dika didn't deserve it. That's it. (tbf Chadok didn't deserve it either.)
(There's many different ways to kill the one you love / slowest way is never loving them enough)
180 Degrees Longitude Passes Between Us
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Literally everyone is hurting on this show and hurting everyone else. And it all just HURTS. I can't fully put a bad guy/good guy label on any of them. It's so complexly human. So simply human. So beautifully human and so pathetically human. Seeing my own family in this show didn't help. Mol can't move on from her past. Inn can't see the future. Waan can't live in the present. Them always being on a different wavelength keeps hurting and I think some part of them recognizes this. The ending doesn't help. It's realistic. It's hard. And it hurts. This show is just:
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The surety that no matter how much it hurts it would end happy help enjoy the angst so much better. I didn't have to worry someone might end up dead or they might not end up together. (there are exceptions to this, as you can see)
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a-mel-tomelts · 2 years
Text
IN THE CASE OF FUTABA SAKURA.
My change of the narrative for personal satisfaction and preferable writing and plot. I tried to make it as close to the character we all know and love and I hope I didn't disappoint!
No dumb: "Change of heart cured depression" thing.
The scene when she enters Leblanc on the anniversary of her mother's death(? Or was it b-day? I don't even remember.) — Horrendous.
My version: instead of coming, Futaba CALLS SOJIRO and asks him to come, she feels better but hungry, bringing Ren along.
She says that she became scared to be taken away from Sojiro which is why she contacted Ren from an anonymous number and asked him about the prosecutor lady's situation. Through chatting both became somewhat acquaintances. Ren was supportive of Futaba these past months and she felt more comfortable with him.
Bc, did we explain to Sojiro how we know Futaba? Or did he accept it Sae told us and decided to ignore it?
But that's not the point.
The biggest problem was Futaba's attitude after awakening. So...
She is still herself but she is a bit better because she has no guilt for her mother's death. She is still dead, yeah. But at least it is less heavy when Futaba knows it's not her fault and now she has a better purpose as well as more people supporting her. (With time, of course)
So, they talk in her room.
2: On days of Thieves getting to know Futaba better, Ann AND Makoto are the pair. Makoto talks about how she adored her father that died tragically. While Ann, explains her behaviour before because of Shiho's suicide attempt and how nobody could help her. And Ann adores Shiho because only she understood her.
And you know what?? Futaba as well had a parent she respected and loved as well as a friend who she had lost contact with. Literally her Confidant! Why we don't discuss trauma? It's okay and healthy to talk about it (of course there are boundaries about it but IMO Futaba needs to know there are people who support and understand her)
With Ryuji and Yusuke, Futaba feels better about embracing her geeky nature. We have the most outgoing and friendly boy who loves games and unhealthy food as much as Futaba and they both hate coffee. They are bound to become bros.
And Yusuke is eccentric. We know how it goes for them in the original. I love their companionship. Dunno about shipping but they are helluva cute and the same can be said in dancing games.
So yeah, girls for emotional parts and boys for the bro support.
Both these things I bet are alien to this isolated girl but very much needed.
Feel free to add your own opinion or experience. These points above are taken from my experience with GAD and how having friends that accept me and are similar to me helped me to pull through school.
Of course, Futaba's situation is more severe but I think after the change of heart she felt lighter from self-guilt and the feeling of being unwanted — these are the main reasons for her distortion after all.
Idk how to write about the loss of a parent/close people. So, I would prefer to ignore this topic. It's bad but I can't write it. Personally, I am numb to that experience but Futaba is emotional about her dead mom.
3: Beach with Futaba. While the animated cutscene was cute the game sequence itself was lacklustre. So um... Futaba content where???  She is at the end for nickname picking but uhhhh. For what reason we are here? We have Hawaii in less than a few weeks. Why couldn't we do smth simpler and more emotionally impactful? Without getting used to ordinary places, people are getting anxious somewhere new. So, going to a beach seemed very out of blue.
Why couldn't we get a Leblanc party where Ren AND Sojiro wear masks so Futaba could feel more accepted about her masks from a few days ago? Sojiro could be someone from his childhood, so Ren and Futaba could go "Huh?"; "What a boomer". It's cute and fun and we see Sojiro's reaction to socializing Futaba
Futaba instead of wearing her uncomfortably big mask could wear Feathermen along with Ren! And it would be okay! And then other Thieves would join with THEIR cosplays!!
And it all would end with a small fireworks stick (i forgot their name) bc welp, the summer festival was ruined, but AT LEAST, this time we are together and here's a picture of us taken by Ren! Who then, sends it to "busy" Akechi!
....who, they don't know but, he is watching them from afar while his guilt doesn't let him move forward from his sins. He almost forgets that he doesn't have his Feathemen mask. Would Futaba share with him if she knew what had he done?
It doesn't matter, either way, he doesn't plan to meet her. Preferably, ever.
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atopvisenyashill · 2 months
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What is your opinion on the Alicent, Dyana, and Aegon scenes in the show?
I think they were good but needed more build up like the entire back half of the season needed more build up.
I thought the actress who played Dyana was phenomenal, the way she’s shaking more than sobbing was really well done. Similarly, the way Alicent switches from offering comfort she wishes had been given to her to threatening Dyanna to protect Aegon in like .2 seconds is Insane, i felt that switch on a physical level in my gut. I think all of Alicent/Aegon’s scenes are well done and this one is no exception - the way they’re having two wildly different conversations because she doesn’t understand how he can’t understand that he’s raped someone and the horror that’s he’s inflicted on Dyana but he can’t understand why she’s so mad that he’s just trying to find a minute of relief in a life he hates. The repeated theme here of Alicent barging in on Aegon naked and “vulnerable” to further emphasize how violated he feels by her, but meanwhile they are talking about him violating someone else and he’s making himself the victim of it!! And then having Helaena walk in on the ending of this conversation - the way Alicent is really grappling, likely for the first time, with the fact that she trapped her own daughter in a marriage as sexually and emotionally abusive as the one she was trapped in by her own father (because before this, I think she just refused to confront it, in that “thinking around a subject” way that some of the characters do) but the person who may be hurting her daughter is in fact her own son.
but the thing i dislike is that if you notice, i spend a lot more time talking about alicent’s feelings than aegon or helaena or dyana. it’s because the back half completely fumbles making any of the new characters fleshed out characters. alicent has depth, and even if i’m critical of how they adapted her character, the character herself is full of layers, if sometimes inconsistently written. aegon is barely written. helaena is even more nonexistent than he is. and i feel, in the original show as well as the main series, we would have gotten to know more about dyana outside of being raped.
in my view, the whole show is building to this moment here, at least on the greens side - from aemma referring to herself and rhaenyra as “royal wombs” to alicent wearing her dead mother’s dresses when she’s pimped out to viserys by her own father, to the entire confrontation between alicent & rhaenyra about sleeping with daemon/criston, all of this was leading up to alicent being confronted with the idea that her son would victimize another woman the way she herself has been victimized, and his own sister to boot. and, idk, i just feel like, with all that the reek storyline is theon’s, or the riverlands storyline is about jaime, there’s a level of respect that george gives characters like pia, kya, weasel, etc who are technically just here to show us how awful the peasant class and especially women are treated by the nobility, because even though they pretty much only suffer on page, i guess i just feel like george sees them as people who had a life before it was violently derailed and condal & hess just see dyana as a vessel for their story. i think helaena suffers from this and honestly so does aegon; the depth that exists is because of the actors and not a purposeful thing done by the writers. and it’s because george makes room in his narrative to just give it room to breathe while condal & hess are going a mile a minute here.
i think dyana should be on the level of focus as like a shae or jeyne poole too, because this is a pivotal moment here for two of the central characters. and not to keep whinging on but i think aegon should be on the level of importance as daemon & viserys, aka as high as dany, tyrion, and the starklings but he’s like, kevan lannister. he certainly has a character but we do not get his pov except at the very end bc he is an important character in this story but this story is not about him. helaena is like. idk maybe bronn level, when she should be at minimum brienne & twins level. and tbh idk how you fix the way all the characters who aren’t in the og cast feeling underwritten without just straight up having two seasons before viserys dies instead of one. which was the main issue the main show had, that they weren’t giving the books the room to BREATHE & grow even though that’s the whole thing about asoiaf is how much it grows in scope. and instead of just giving it over to condal bc he clearly still had the drive and passion and those two dumbasses just wanted to leave to do a star war, the back half feels rushed in a way that the front half does not. i keep wondering if this was hbo interfering bc condal hess & miguel don’t even have the excuse of “i’ve been writing on this series that i only kinda like for years and i want to leave” that the idiots have & i think it’s clear that even if sometimes condal & hess have some annoying ideas about the themes and plot, they’ve always had the PASSION for the project to keep it going!!
i feel like i’m bitching too much in this post because again, i think the writing and acting in that scene is amazing, and i also think the people who bitch a lil Tew Much about aegon being a rapist in canon are just like, the same as the people who get upset about the choking scene in that they wanted f&b adapted but they wanted THEIR TEAM to be the unambiguous good guys when this is a story in canon and in the adaption that is much deeper than that. there’s this undercurrent literally from ty’s introduction that aegon has these impulses that are really dangerous and vile (similar to my boy joffrey!!) that people overlook or enable until he reaches this point where he is both a victim and a monster. and in the books, this seems clear to me as well, from the rumors about him being familiar with maids, to the entire existence of gaemon palehair implying that even if he wasn’t literally AT the baby murder pits, he was IN THE AREA often enough that a woman he bedded and got a child on could absolutely get her son snatched up and taken to the baby murder pits which doesn’t speak very highly of aegon!!, the fact that he calls rhaenyra a whore after one (1) bad interaction, the fact that he celebrated aemond making the fatal mistake of murdering luke, like even before the dance takes off, he’s exhibiting worrying behavior that is being covered up. i do think book aegon is probably more similar to robert than joffrey, but i like the change of making him more wet and pathetic as that other anon put it lmao. kinda similar to the larys thing, that we already have a robert. we already have a viserys. we don’t need aegon to be like them too. in a book you can do stuff like that but in a much shorter form tv show, you gotta switch it up a lil bit and i think giving him like an ~aesthetic change was a great idea. he fits with the changes in alicent so welllll, and he still says interesting things about aemond & helaena. it’s just like, clearly all in tom and mine’s heads ya know. but if no one else got me, tom & olivia’s insane acting got me!! ALSO JUSTICE FOR TY TENNANT HE DESERVED MORE THAN TWO EPISODES!!!!!
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wolvesandvisions · 11 months
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So would Bramblebitchstar still make Squirrelflight his deputy and would Shrewrunner just always telling him to fuck off because of how awful Bramblestar treats her? Idk why but I’ve seen Shrew as the type of sweet malewife that would go apeshit on Bramble with how poorly he treats her, especially in Squirrelflight’s Hope. If not I wanna know more about what you think would happen :0
In my AU the idea is Bramblestar develops well separate Squirrelflight! Yes he still makes her deputy for the same reasons, still doubts her judgement for the same reasons, and sometimes he can be an asshole - but because the dynamic of a romantic relationship is gone he can’t hold that power dynamic and guilt over her head.
He’s no longer a husband that needs/wants his wife to listen to him and feels betrayed by the kit/family thing, he’s just a domineering and occasionally annoying boss. He’s still an incompetent leader somewhat but that makes it so in the end Squirrelflight’s input actually serves him. He also has less incentive to feel like she’s undermining his authority or purposefully embarrassing him because they are both just doing their jobs.
Shrewrunner in my AU tries to avoid being a thorn in either of their sides, but he does comfort Squirrelflight in the average ways, defends her when her judgement comes into question, and is a good warrior/senior warrior.
I personally feel no joy punishing Bramblestar narratively more than I already do (which is essentially Squirrelflight struggles to trust him after he makes an attempt on Firestar’s life and the romance deteriorates) . I think by that point all the abusive behavior we grow to hate about Bramblestar just becomes character flaws, things that can exist away from the romantic relationship implications, and he gets to just be a grumpy boss that occasionally causes problems but doesn’t spiral Squirrelflight into depressions about her own status as a warrior, mother, and wife.
Thank you for your question I love answering these!
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millenari · 3 months
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tugger
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1. Canon I outright reject
The moment in the bway revival where, right after Jenny's song, Munk goes 'who will [the jellicle choice] be?' and then Tugger busts in echoing him as his song starts, framing his interruption as him.... being excited to be the Jellicle Choice? Throwing his hat in the ring?
I can see they put that line there to strengthen the plot and remind the audience what's going on narratively here, but Tugger's number is the one song you shouldn't do that for. The original version of that transition where Tugger is plain old interrupting the ball is one of the strongest transitions in the musical & didn't need to be improved, and if they really wanted to interject the 'who will it be' reminder of what the point of all of this is, it shouldn't have come before his song. Tugger is interrupting because Tugger loves being a nuisance, causing trouble, and putting the spotlight on him. You don't need the additional motive of 'he wants to be the Jellicle Choice' for him to interrupt the narrative/ball.
Plus why would he want to be the Jelly Choice? He clearly loves his life.
Idk, maybe they just meant for Tugger's repetition to be Tugger mocking Munk (admittedly the actors tend to sound goofy there) but they could have had Munk say anything there, and Tugger deliberately echoes the 'who will it be' part. I just dislike that bit, Tugger shouldn't give a shit about whether he's the Jellicle Choice-- he's not performing bc he wants to win, he's performing bc he wants to brag.
2. A canon or headcanon hill I will die on
Tugger and Munk being brothers. I just can't see them not as brothers at this point.
3. Obscure headcanon
Hmmmmm....... Tugger's mother gave him up at pretty much the exact age where he could survive without her, and immediately dumped him on Deuteronomy's metaphorical doorstep, at probably around the human equivalent of 3yrs. (This is partially bc Deut and her were on Not Great terms, partially bc Tugger was a little nightmare, and partially bc she just wasn't really suited for motherhood)
Deuteronomy managed to survive about half an hour taking care of Tugger after that, with his bad back and Tugger's hyperactivity, and promptly took Baby Tug to the Junkyard and dumped him onto younger Mac and Munk.
Macavity then shoved baby Tugger onto Munk the second Deuteronomy's back was turned, and after that teenaged Munk was Tugger's primary caretaker. & believe it or not but Tugger did not get out of this series of events emotionally unscathed, and ended up with a particular distaste for relying on other people, figures in his life with authority over him, and also both his mother and Macavity.
4. Favorite line
The way John Partridge says 'phenomenal cat' for sure.
5. Best personality trait
Tugger is actually a very good read of people; sometimes it can be hard for him to truly conceive what it's like to be another cat (one with greater self-esteem issues for example) but he is very good at sussing out how cats feel and what to say or do to to change how they feel. This makes him a very good hypeman, an excellent troll, and 1000% Macavity's blood.
But that being said, he is quite the charmer and a pretty good leader of men cats when he puts his mind to it. He always knows what to say to cheer you up. It's just a matter of whether he cares enough to actually want to cheer you up. Which brings me to:
6. Worst personality trait
He can be pretty seriously blasé and sometimes uncaring about what's going on around him. That bit I mentioned about him having difficulty understanding what it's like to be other people often leaves him unsympathetic to their struggles (Oh you're stressed, Munk? Maybe you should stop caring about other people's problems. Caring about other people's problems is a fundamental part of who you are as a person? Sounds fake, just take a fucking vacation and stop complaining.)
And even in situations where he logically knows a cat can't help the way they are, he can still be bullheaded about it-- his and Misto's friendship has lasted their whole lives, but even as grown adults he still thinks he can shake some confidence into the little bastard if he just kind of... tries hard enough.
7. Age/height/weight headcanon
Tugger is one of the tallest cats in the Junkyard area, but he's technically far from the 'biggest' because he's a skinny beanpole. He's admittedly stronger than he looks, but he's also not a fighter. In my human aus he's around 6'1-3ish
8. Unpopular opinion about them
I don't know if I have any unpopular Tugger opinions. I'm pretty normie about him.
Actually Edu del Prado from the Madrid 2004 production is one of the best Tuggers out there. That opinion is unpopular bc most people haven't even watched Madrid 2004. There.
9. Scene that first made me love (or hate) the character
He's pretty equally lovable in all three of his big numbers., so I don't think there's one I could point at and go 'here's where I fell in the hole!'
10. Best moment on screen (or in the book)
I love every moment Tugger is on stage, so I kind of had to think of this one as 'which Tugger moment would be most likely to catch my attention if I were distracted while watching Cats' and that would probably be when he comes in for Deuteronomy's song. It's his most serious moment, and how he interacts with Munk there is always so charming and wholesome. I also love the two singing together, and how it's a moment that seems to mean a lot to Munk.
11. Faceclaim for the role
Mostly just. John Partridge. Except with a bit more of a ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) resting face perhaps. My human au design for him is a darker skinned guy with dark hair that has blonde highlights, super tall and thin, naturally curly hair that he styles, plus eyeshadow and the works.
12. Crack headcanon
This is Cats, all headcanons are crack headcanons.
13. Dumbest thing they’ve ever done
Of course Tugger has done plenty of stupid things in his life, but when he was younger he initially found his human family when he happened upon a random human girl playing guitar at a park; he thought her music was cool, so he basically just let her take him home with her. It worked out for him, but knowing what people do to kittens sometimes, that could've ended very, very badly for him.
14. Most heroic moment
Admittedly I don't have one for this. As much as Tugger cares about the tribe and all, he's not the first guy to jump into danger when a threat presents itself, and tends to contribute by focusing on dealing with the aftermath of a crisis rather than the crisis itself.
15. Worst thing they’ve ever done
Tugger's not a bad guy so I don't have a great answer for this-- but one asshole thing he's been doing since he was a kid is when he and Alonzo are alone he'll just say a bunch of terrible things to Alonzo, egg him into attacking Tugger, and then crying 'he hurt me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' for everyone to hear in the aftermath, thus getting Alonzo in trouble. He thinks it's funny that it's so easy to rile Alonzo up.
16. Deepest darkest secret they won’t even admit to themselves
I don't have a good one for this either. While I think Tugger is a confident dude, he does wonder sometimes about how lovable he really is, in a personal way. Obviously he has a lot of fans, but those closest to him-- his family members in particular-- tend to decry him as difficult, and have historically shuffled him around. He thinks he's a lovable guy, but he wonders sometimes how true that is, given how those who know him best tend to react to him. This isn't something that keeps him awake every night, but he wonders sometimes.
17. Quotes, songs, poems, etc. that I associate with them
Wild Child by The Struts
Scratch your number right onto my chest / Hit me up and you can call for sex Keep in mind, I like to be impressed / I'll only have you in your Sunday best It's been a while since we've been flirting / But one thing's for certain You should take your time to think me through / 'Cause every rumor that you've heard is true
Bop and a half right there.
18. What they’d go to see a therapist about
In my human/celeb/soulmate au that I've been writing, Tugger does actually go to therapy when he's initially diagnosed with ADHD! It's mostly just learning to contend with his neurodivergency and such, but every once in a while he'll say something during his appointments and his therapist will be like 'elaborate on that' and he'll be like 'no :)' and then they move on from the conversation without delving into all the other reasons he should probably be in therapy.
19. Vices/bad habits
In my aforementioned human/celeb/soulmate au he's a smoker and Misto fucking hates it.
20. Scars
Most of my Tuggers don't have any notable scars, but I have this one fic where he has lightning-scars from where Misto accidentally blasted him as a kid during a dangerous situation-- they aren't visible under the fur, but you can feel them if you know what you're looking for.
21. Drink of choice (not just alcoholic)
He's a whiskey neat kind of guy in human aus.
22. Best physical feature
Tugger would say all of his features are his best feature, a lot of cats might say it's his big lush mane. In human aus Misto is partial to his brown eyes and his curly hair.
23. If they were a scented candle, what would they smell like?
Are leather scented candles a thing? Maybe coffee too, though that might just be my love for the smell of coffee talking.
24. Most annoying habit
UHHH not counting the things he does deliberately to annoy people, he has this thing he does when people bother him where he'll just stop dead in the middle of a conversation and start pretending he can't see or hear them. He does this all the time when Munk tries to nag him.
25. 3 things they’d want to take with them if they were dropped off in the middle of nowhere
This question is too open ended for me. Is this a survival situation or are they just dropped in a field somewhere for a few hours and then picked up?
26. What they would do if stuck in an elevator with [insert character of your choice from the same fandom]
Either fuck or argue, depending on the character. There might be a chilly silence with a select few, like Bustopher perhaps.
27. Their guilty pleasure
Tugger doesn't do 'guilty' pleasure.
28. How they feel about [insert character of your choice from the same fandom]
He likes that Misto guy.
Nah but as I mentioned earlier Tugger has a lot of problems with figures of authority or the caretakers in his life, he has for a long time. And Misto came to join the Junkyard at a time when Tugger was the youngest kitten in the Yard, and little Misto pretty much immediately had a lot of difficulty adjusting to living in a new space. This was kind of the first person injected into Tugger's life where, in their relationship, he wasn't the littler one who needed to be taken care of, and he got a real kick out of showing Misto what the Junkyard is like and explaining stuff to him and such.
So Misto managed to kind of worm under Tugger's skin in a way a lot of cats never manage to do, because even as adults Tugger still carts around this (not entirely accurate lmao) idea that he's The Guy Who Takes Care of Misto, so it's easier for him to be vulnerable with Misto than anyone else.
29. Eating habits
In human aus he tends to have quite the sweet tooth, and also due to wildly fast metabolism he can eat for forever and not gain a pound. In cat aus, he just kind of... eats cat stuff.
30. Sleeping habits
In cat aus he sleeps the same as everyone else, but in human aus he has mild insomnia, and often wakes up in the middle of the night for an hour or so and has to stare at the ceiling for a bit before he can fall back asleep. It's wildly inconvenient, especially when he's exhausted.
31. If the had a tumblr what would it look like?
Horny stuff for sure. Probably music stuff, like posts about famous musicians of the past and such. Definitely one of those guys who reblogs fifty things, is inactive for a month, then reblogs another fifty things.
32. Something guaranteed to make them smile/laugh
Misto boning up a magic trick. The boning up itself is funny, but the huffy way Misto reacts to messing it up is a million times more hilarious.
33. Something guaranteed to make them cry
Deuteronomy's death, though he sure as fuck wouldn't let anyone see him cry.
34. How they react when they are feeling X emotion (sad, angry, excited, scared, etc.—can specify as many as you like)
Tugger is very good at keeping his composure when angry; when he's sad or annoyed his one really notable tell is that he doesn't eat as much. If he's frightened he'll hole himself up somewhere, probably somewhere up high. And if he's excited everyone within a fifty mile radius will be hearing about it.
35. Their idea of a perfect day
Not getting hassled by anyone, plenty of snackies, attention from fans, lounging time with his buddies, & perhaps a Misto performance to end the night.
36. Their favorite season
Spring and winter pretty equally-- he doesn't get cold easy so the snow and wind aren't really bad for him, and he likes watching the world transform around him in both seasons-- getting covered with snow in the winter and then getting covered with greenery in the spring.
37. What they really think about themselves
Tugger's confidence is genuinely not a performance, he really does think he's hot shit. He has his moments of insecurity and uncertainty, all people do, but he really does like himself and how he looks.
38. Favorite holiday
Human Tugger is a Christmas bitch.
39. Favorite game
Like board game? Video game? Card game? Human Tugger doesn't usually play video games and a lot of card games last too long for him to remain invested in them. Probably games like Cards Against Humanity would be his drug of choice.
40. Favorite book
He probably doesn't have a specific favorite book. Human!Tugger doesn't love reading due to undiagnosed ADHD and mild dyslexia that makes it hard for him to focus on the lines and words; he has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about how other people act like reading is so fun and easy when it's very obviously not, at least for him. After he gets diagnosed and finds some reading aids that work for him, he tends to read fantasy/adventure type stuff, usually shorter stories without series attached to them.
Misto reads poetry aloud to him sometimes; he likes ee cummings, especially 'I Like My Body When It Is With Your'.
41. If they could have lunch with anyone in the world (living or dead, from any fictional universe or the real world), who would it be?
I feel like he would pick someone like Darth Vader for the lulz and then get strangled.
42. 3 comfort items
The cats don't have many possessions so human au: his vinyl collection, his stuffed lion from when he was a kid, and his favorite leather jacket that Deut gave him.
43. 3 favorite foods and 3 they despise
Human au again: Tugger is actually not that picky as long as he gets to choose what he wants to eat, but he's not really a seafood nor a salad lover. He is very passionate about waffles as far as breakfast choices go, and likes milkshakes and most fast food.
44. Their happiest memory
I find these happiest memory questions so hard-- I don't think I even have a 'happiest memory'-- I have a bunch of happy memories, but I don't know which one I'd label as 'happiest'.
UHHHH in most human aus the whole Deuteronomy clan goes on these sort of hiking trips where they go out into an area like Arizona, real dry and desert-y, go on an adventure out into the wilderness, and race dirt bikes. They might own some land out there, or maybe there's some sort of resort they stay at, idk. But even though dirtbikes aren't his thing, Tugger loves these yearly trips and is genuinely bummed when they don't happen for whatever reason.
45. Their favorite celebrity
Himself first. In human aus he loves Prince and Jagger a lot.
46. The person they most admire
UHHH there isn't anyone I'd say Tugger wants to be like; he likes himself as he is. But he does love his dad and admits he could never do the stuff Deut does, and he also thinks Misto is the smartest guy alive with absolutely sick powers.
47. Their dream job
Famous singer.
48. Scariest moment of their life
In my human/celeb/soulmate au I mentioned a couple times, Tugger tells Misto about this one time that Deut got sick during Grammy season, and Tugger had to chose between staying with him in the hospital or actually attending the grammys. He makes it sound very casual when he tells Misto about it, but he ended up going to the grammys and spent the whole thing terrified he would leave and find a text or call telling him his father had died while he was receiving a stupid little award. Deut came out the other end fine, but Tugger was a jaded in the aftermath of that.
49. Favorite toy as a child
I'm ahead of myself! I mentioned earlier he had a stuffed lion as a kid. In cat aus, as a kitten he slept in Munk's den rather than the kittens' den with the other little ones, and thus had a ton of his own toys stored there that he didn't have to share with other kittens.
50. A memory they’ve blocked out
When Macavity initially betrayed the tribe and left (explosively and violently), baby Tugger was present and witnessed quite a bit of it. He was plenty old enough at the time to remember it, but whenever asked about the occasion he expresses uncertainty of if he was even around at the exact time Macavity left. He genuinely just doesn't remember any of it. All of the older cats who were also present for the event never press when he says this; they think he's probably better off not remembering.
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maddy-ferguson · 10 months
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controversial take apparently for the byler tag, but it sounds like people dont want mike and will to have another fight because they subconsciously know it will once again portray mike as an asshole so they're vouching for a 'tame' byler narrative as if the whole painting lie doesn't depend on it being revealed and it contributing to a fight between them both as it's been foreshadowed. like idk but this is our narrative since s3.
and it's crazy because mike would literally have a right to be upset like he was made to confess to a girl he didn't want to confess to!!! will always has reasons to get mad at mike (no shade) but this time he's actually given mike a very good reason to be mad and it's like you said do i think the painting is gonna be the catalyst for them getting together yes do i think it's gonna be the catalyst for them fighting again yes! when has their relationship ever evolved with no fighting. they'll fight they'll make up it's fine.
about the mike needs to be seen as nice thing: yes i agree and i think it also applies to el not reacting negatively or just having no reaction at all to her own breakup with mike and to finding out that he's gay because people often envision it as a breakup/coming out scene. i understand that people don't want el feeling bad and resenting mike and will forever because then everyone in the audience would hate byler and it would also be nonsensical for them to not be on good terms by the end of the show but the exact opposite is maybe just as unsatisfactory to me. they want el to be mike's ex-girlfriend best friend mother sister and therapist and to tell him it's okay to be gay when she's...his 14-year-old ex-girlfriend whose perception of the world was built around their relationship. why would you expect her to be coach him through their breakup when she's the character who's the worst at regulating her own emotions? how is she gonna help him? how is it fair to expect that of her? as much as people like to go on and on about mike abhorring lies, he's not the one whose whole thing is friends don't lie, that's el. now obviously she lied to him in s4 the season of all lies but i just don't see her being the bigger person and not having feelings about her own boyfriend having lied to her about loving her no matter how checked out of the relationship you think she might be. she's 14! she's half of the relationship! expecting her to tell him it's okay to be gay is so strange when she doesn't even know why he would've had to hide it. she was crying about him not loving her less than a week ago!
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cowboybuckleys · 11 months
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i didnt like hearing mack call kim “mom” so soon in 9x15. i think it would have made more sense if she called adam “dad” before she called kim “mom” because she already had a mom she was close to before and she never had a dad.
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idk if these are from the same person or i’ve blogged something that ppl are just now seeing and ppl are genuinely curious about my opinion on a super similar topic.. but the messages came in nearly back to back, so i’m gonna answer both here :)
i’m probably the only one who feels this way, but i disagree that Adam should’ve gotten dad first or that it was too soon for Kim to be called mom because she remembers her mom and didn’t really have a dad. fwiw, my family is dealing with a similar issue with my niece trying to understand how to address her step dad now that he’s adopted her and my nephew. everyone in this fucking family seems to have an opinion without asking the kids what they want and it's honestly fucking dumb but that's a whole other story lol. i would say to Mack what i said to her— a new parent in your life doesn’t cancel out the love or memories you have of the parent who has passed away, but you can also call multiple people mom and dad at the same time. hell, if all your parents are alive, you can call as many people mom or dad if that’s how you see them. if anything, having extra people to love and care for you and make you feel safe and happy is what the parent you’ve lost would have wanted. it's what any parent wants. and there’s no timeline or goalpost on when you should start calling someone mom or dad. and anyone who tries to force you to say something one way or the other is gonna get to have a not so fun conversation with me about respecting your decision and your boundaries on the subject matter.
and well, yeah that last part doesn’t apply here obviously cos it’s all opinion in fandom and that’s totally fine and valid lol, but i would gladly say that to anyone who is wrestling with something similar in their own life. the argument of ‘well she had a mom but didn’t have a dad, so—' doesn’t hold up for me. it's not a statement i love hearing when talking about blended families cos there's no common qualifiers for how or why someone decides those things and lumping all situations like that under one umbrella is not my favorite thing that fandoms do.. it's actually one of my biggest frustrations with how blended families are talked about in a lot of fandoms.. but my headcanon that they all celebrated BOTH of Mack’s moms for mother’s day is accurate until the show explicitly tells me otherwise because i can't fathom that Kim would be mad about that.
i do think, narratively, where they had Mack call Adam dad was pretty fucking perfect. for a show that gets relationships wrong A LOT, this one was always a safe spot for me. i knew that Mack would look at Adam as her dad and i had hoped we’d eventually get burzek on good terms again, but to hear her say it like for her it was never and has never been in question felt like the right choice. it was not a throw away line, it was very much meant to mean something doing it in that moment in that way. because it sure as shit was in question for all the adults in the room and i think that it needed to be addressed. i don’t necessarily think it needed to be said sooner because it was always just a matter of when Mack would say it. thank god that poor kid didn’t have to parent trap those two idiots tho lol.
my only real expectation for that moment was that it had to be during this season. for all the build up, for all the arguments, for all the pushing each other away, that moment had to be before the season ended. and it had to be Mack's doing. i would like to hear Kim say something like "you're her dad", sure, but for me it was always about when Mack would say it.
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lycanthrology · 2 years
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@thebourneultimatum OK for some reason, Tumblr won’t let me edit the original ask so I’m doing it like this instead. I got deleted while answering this ask yesterday so maybe it’s connected. Maybe staff really hates Jason Bourne. Or they’re messing with me on Crow’s birthday 😔
Jason Bourne Crow Armitage similarities because we are being so normal on tumblr dot com
Warning for discussion of abuse
Let’s start with @vonkarma2 ‘s revolutionary checklist:
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Jason and Crow’s narrative arcs both focus on identity and personhood. They both have their identities destroyed and rebuilt to fit a manipulative organisation’s ideals. Jason feels a big disorientation and struggles to piece together the events of his life and what things make up his ‘real’ identity. Crow ‘willingly’ gave up his old identity and is very aware of his decision at all times.
Crow is actually a rank and not a name. His first name is Lewis, but he’s become so tied to his role as a Knight of the Order of Crows that he almost entirely sheds his old name. Other people began calling him Crow in day to day conversation then over time he accepted it for himself. He’s become so tied up in what he is that he’s forgotten who he is. He’s so detached from the world that Lewis came from that he’s a completely different person in almost every way.
There’s also a lot of conflicting feelings for him wrt his name because while Lewis is his birth name, it reminds him of his mother and that’s very upsetting because he loved her dearly and feels like he betrayed her (<- this is more complicated than that. i won’t talk about it here), and the only people who use it for him in modern day are abusive. But Crow as a name isn’t a ‘real’ name. It was given to him because people couldn’t be bothered to call him anything else. It’s like Soldier or Captain or Officer. Very formal, no personalisation. He isn’t anything outside of the rank.
Also, it’s an animal name. He’s the only character (besides Hollyhock and Baize <- it’s different with her I won’t talk about it here) that doesn’t have a ‘person name’. In the text, he’s consistently likened to different animals. Specifically domestic or prey animals. I know Jason gets related to a dog in the films and I think he has a similar situation where his relationship to different names and identities get complicated and each moniker ends up kind of like their own compartmentalised person.
It’s almost the same situation as this post you made:
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+ some animal metaphors i found quickly
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So I’ve still only seen the first film. I’m sorry. So tell me if I’m getting this wrong. Jason is dehumanised and treated like a living weapon by Treadstone. They use him for their own gain, while fearing what he’s truly capable of. They have lethal contingency measures in place, in case he turns on them, or deserts. Treadstone created everything that Jason Bourne is, then realised they’d done too good of a job. It’s all very Crow.
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Idk how much you know about him so sorry if I’m covering old ground here but Crow was raised in an environment that places humanity on an impossibly high pedestal. There’s a whole political history about this that I won’t go into here. Crow is a werewolf. But the differences between the two species are so slight, it’s almost negligible, aside from the obvious. Crow’s job is to kill other werewolves to ‘protect’ humans. Again there’s political and social history around this that I won’t go into. There’s guidlines and procedure. Think like K from BR2049 being a replicant that kills other replicants, so is ostracised from both humans and replicants. That’s Crow’s situation. He can’t find comfort from either humans or werewolves, because both groups despise and fear him. He’s a very isolated, lonely man which made him vulnerable to manipulation.
An irl of mine said that it’s as if he never fully woke from the Dream and everyone around can tell there’s parts of him that got left behind and that unnerves them like uncanny valley style. They can automatically tell something isn’t quite right. I wanted to hit her with a tire iron
From a young age, Crow was groomed to believe that he was specifically chosen by a werewolf deity because of his heritage. One of his ancestors was leader of a prestigious cavalry rank called the Order of Crows in the fifteenth century, so Crow is excited to follow in his footsteps. He’s led to believe its his prophesied destiny to take up his great-great-whatever-grandfather’s mantle. It isn’t. He’s being actively manipulated by a man called Harry Dashwood. Dashwood uses Crow as a political pawn to get ahead and become sworn in as the Prime Gardener <- the highest political/theocratic rank a werewolf can hold. He has his own agenda that Crow isn’t privy to.
Over time, Crow recognises that he’s being kept in the dark and wants to find a way out somehow, but there’s no real way he can leave without putting himself in serious danger. A lot of people want him dead (and rightfully so most of the time. he is a serial killer) and he’d never be safe without the Sanctum’s protection. Like with Jason and the CIA, the Sanctum itself would become overtly hostile towards him and organise their own ways of recapturing or killing him if he went rogue
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When Crow becomes uncomfortable or feels threatened, he talks in metaphor to distance himself from the real situation. He gets stressed and falls back into different scripts or parrots things he’s been told in the past. He says what he thinks people want to hear rather than what he actually wants to. Crow’s go-to exclamation is ‘Equipoise’s mercy’ and the only other character that says that is Dashwood.
This got very muddled at the end. I could say a lot, lot more but I think it would be completely illegible. Whatever. Does any of this make sense? I just wanted to post and get it over with.
To conclude:
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elvendorx · 2 years
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Hi 👋🏼
So I saw your post about Harry’s patronus the other day and it got me thinking.
It reminded me how odd it always seemed to me that we’re told Harry’s deepest nature is like his mothers yet for most of the series he’s constantly being compared back to James. (They even share a patronus which the shape of is suppose to be a reflection of who you are.) It’s always how he does xyz like James, he’s as good as James at this or that, or the “ no I think your like James...”, we get the singular “less like James than I thought…” to make a distinction (but you could argue that James also wouldn’t want to put Sirius at risk. I firmly believe Sirius getting hurt is a line James won’t cross. Cause you know✨soulmate things✨). 
Like we get that he has Lily’s eyes, and that she was an “uncommonly kind witch” which pared with the deepest nature remark could be used to imply Harry is incredibly kind but I wouldn’t go as far as to call him uncommonly kind. In SWM we see more from her. Like her temper, desire to stand up for people which we could say Harry shares (James also shares a want to fight for what’s right but that a bit more complex with him) and she also fights backs a smile. Like it always bugged that we’re told this about his deepest nature yet the narrative never really backs it up I guess? Like we never hear about their similarities again outside of the green eyes. I get that Sirius and Remus are primarily James’ friends but they knew Lily. Sirius at least had a close relationship with ( her letter to him) the teachers at Hogwarts knew her, but we get a few lines about their deepest natures, their green eyes, a bit from Sluggy, and that’s like it? Which is just so strange to me. Like what? The whole idea of his deepest nature being like Lily’s hold no real weight narratively to me because nobody creates it. We’re told it and are just suppose to accept this and move on like it really means something when we’re never really give any reason as to what it means or why we should really care I guess? It bugs me how he’s suppose to be like his mother but hear about her so little in conjunction to her son.
I will mention that in Celtic mythology the stag is the “king of the forest and protector of all its creatures” (idk if jkr used that as inspo) and with James’ animagus form and patronus taking the shape of a stag it implies the stag is a real reflection of who he is as a person. Them having the same patronus puts Harry in line again with his father again opposed to his mother. It’s just something that has never made sense to me. It’s like we’re being told two different things at once. It’s like we’re supposed to believe one thing while being told/shown another.
It’s all very strange to me. I apologize if this makes zero sense. It ended up wayyy longer than I intended but I’m a big fan of your blog and you write so well about HP (especially my love j/s) that I felt compelled to share this since I never have before. I don’t really have anyone to share it with so again I apologize if this is just a bit too out of left field and an incoherent mess. It’s just some thoughts. Feel free to ignore it. ❤️💛
Hey! First of all, no way am I ignoring this, it’s such a thoughtful and insightful message, thank you, and I have to reply (even if it’s taken me a while) <3 I completely agree, there are sooo many contradictions when it comes to Lily and James and Harry and the patronus. This is the issue I have with Harry’s Patronus as well - it’s so unnecessarily gendered even though it’s inconsistent with 1. what we’re told about Harry’s character in this instance and 2. the precedence established by Snape’s Patronus, Tonks’ patronus etc. But it’s just bad writing and I’m more than happy to call JKR out for that lmao. I think within the narrative we’re probably supposed to see aspects of both James and Lily in Harry by the end of the series, but Lily can feel like such a stock figure that it’s not completely clear, and there’s still a sway towards James because we hear from his friends about him, as you say, and James’ best friend plays a significant role in Harry’s life, etc, whereas the closest we see of Lily’s friends in Harry’s life is Snape being his teacher and hating him lol. 
It’s actually really sad that Sirius and Remus don’t mention Lily because we’re supposed to believe from the letter that Sirius and Lily had enough of a standalone friendship to communicate with each other. Probably it would be explained as there was just too much going on with the second war so Lily never came up, it was painful for Sirius maybe, but I do just think JKR hadn’t thought that far ahead and came up with the letter post-OotP. Harry also doesn’t seem to think much about Lily until he witnesses Snape’s memory. He hears her scream in PoA and he sees her come out of Voldemort’s wand in GoF but Lily is very much Mother and James is fleshed out more with Quidditch, the Animagus thing, Sirius, Remus. JKR does that with female characters, makes them mothers and only mothers, whether they had more defining attributes before that or not (there’s nothing wrong with being a mother but the older/non-mothers are outliers in the series which is something I find personally uncomfortable). 
And I think a lot of the blank space around Lily can be put down to how bad JKR is at writing women and female friendships. I can only really think of Hermione and Ginny as a positive one, and I feel like the tone around Cho/Marietta and Parvarti/Lavender is supposed to make them come across as a bit silly (I haven’t read the full series for a while so that’s just an impression I remember from…years and years ago). BUT also James is shoved at Harry from when he starts Hogwarts, Petunia wasn’t someone Harry could talk to about Lily and so perhaps he detached from her a bit or she just took a back seat because information about her was less accessible (but we also don’t really see Harry try). I don’t know if I believe that was deliberate for the Snape/Lily friendship reveal or not.
I totally agree that Harry doesn’t read as especially kind either - maybe merciful, re: Wormtail and Snape, like Lily sacrificing herself for him and that maybe is supposed to signal their shared innate goodness as I feel like Lily’s sacrifice is one of the things that is routinely repeated about her through the series. Lily’s temper is also one of the consistent things we see in both SWM and The Prince’s Tale, but I love that connection of James and Lily’s quickness to fight, especially as we know from the prophecy that they defied Dumbledore thrice.
I actually think it’s in James and Lily’s similarities that Lily’s attributes get lost and they get emphasised as James’ traits or attributed to James when they fit with what we know about Lily much more neatly. One thing that sticks out to me  is Slughorn calling Lily “cheeky”, and I like to think that Harry’s comments like “You don’t need to call me ‘sir’, Professor” are more of a Lily than a James thing, or at least a Lily as well as a James thing. Harry’s comments can be very dry and sarcastic and we don’t get much sarcasm from James, he’s very on the nose and goofy in his humour. You also mentioned Lily’s temper, and I think we see that in Harry in OotP and we also see his cutting remarks when he’s hurt or angry - “You might even have a scar now, if you’re lucky. . . . That’s what you want, isn’t it?” to Ron vs Lily’s “I’d wash your pants if I were you, Snivelly”/“You didn’t think it was such a freak’s school when you wrote to the headmaster and begged him to take you”, although I doubt that’s what Dumbledore meant lol. Maybe also the dissimilarities between James and Harry indicate which elements of Harry’s nature come from Lily.
Dumbledore saying that Harry’s “deepest nature” is most like Lily’s is in response to Snape saying that “he is his father over again”. But Harry is never shown to be popular or arrogant or spoiled or cruel in the ways that James is - which are the ways that Snape means and I think it’s important to recognise that Snape talking about Harry being like James and the ways that the reader sees that Harry is actually like James are quite different. There’s also quite a distinction between the point that Snape talks about (Harry = arrogant bully) vs the point that Dumbledore is talking about (Harry’s deepest, innermost parts of his soul are like Lily) - so maybe his “deepest nature” isn’t actually the Harry we see often but the Harry that we see in those critical moments. I also think it's probably a tactic on Dumbledore’s part to get Snape to see Harry objectively  and he knows that suggesting Snape will recognise parts of Lily in Harry is likely to get him to at least try to find those attributes.
Harry discovering that James wasn’t perfect, and was more like Dudley/Draco, is an important moment for him, especially when it comes shortly before Sirius’ death. It’s this moment of him coming to terms with the realisation that he has to be responsible for his own character, make his own choices rather than trying to emulate his parents, that he can’t rely on their reputation because their reputation isn’t universally positive (in James’ case). And while even then we don’t get much more of Lily, or a deeper interest in Lily which I think could have been very interesting, I think that the qualities we see Harry taking on from OotP onwards are probably those that liken his deeper nature to Lily’s. Harry doesn’t correlate distinctly or completely with what we see of either Lily or James in the series, but that’s not a lot. In fact in HBP Harry seems to seek alternate parental figures in Dumbledore and the Prince in the absence of Sirius and maybe the slight disillusionment from James (I don’t think this is all-encompassing by any means but I think it would be especially difficult for Harry to confront in the aftermath of Sirius’ death when James and Sirius are so closely aligned).
I love the stuff about the stag, and it makes me a bit :( because James clearly does make himself this protective presence in his friends’ lives but he’s also 21 himself so I struggle to see him as this full-blown patriarch (even though that’s his role in the series), much like it’s hard to see Lily as this homely Molly-Weasley-to-be because she’s also only 21! Interestingly the name ‘James’ means supplanter/substitute and we know that JKR does pay attention to names somewhat and it seems that in a lot of cases James is like substitute/second family for his friends/Lily. But I think probably calling him James rather than a wizard name was just to show that he had a normal, comfortable upbringing.
And before I can find another point to witter on about, I’ll finish by mentioning the great point that casquecest replied to the original post with, that Harry’s Patronus changed after he adjusted his view of James to be more realistic. I like this idea of Harry coming into himself more post-war and his Patronus changing to reflect that, maybe he doesn’t feel like he has to be a leader or protector anymore.
Ty again for this thoughtful message! <3
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