#still mad that he was relegated to another background character | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

phykios · 3 years

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this one is dedicated to mi amor mari @perseannabeth, who is a beautiful bird and a wonderful friend and i am v v vvvvv grateful to have crossed the airwaves with her :”)

Today Was A Fairytale [read on ao3] T, modern royalty, fun at disneyland!

She stares at him.

He stares back. “What?”

“Really?”

“What?”

“You really think this is going to be enough?” Annabeth points at her head, the blue Yankees cap squishing her curls.

“Of course! It’s the Clark Kent effect.” As if to underline his point, Percy slips on his fake hipster glasses, except that stupid grin of his is too bright not to draw attention.

“That’s not a real thing.”

“Sure it is. Studies show that glasses are actually good enough to alter your appearance if someone doesn’t know you well.”

“Then why didn’t you bring a pair of glasses for me?”

“Because your hair is definitely the prettiest thing about you,” he says, automatically tugging an unruly curl which peeks out from under the brim, a gesture so practiced she almost doesn’t register it--until he blinks, dropping his hand, blushing lightly. “I mean--the most noticeable thing. You know. A hat should be fine.”

He looks away. Heat rises to her face, too. Because it’s so hot out, obviously.

“Anyway,” he mumbles, “um. No--no one’s going to give you a second look if your hair is hidden.”

Chewing her lip, Annabeth can’t help but worry. Percy’s face is extremely well-known, possibly more than hers, and they’ve both spent the better part of three weeks with their faces plastered all over the media on their diplomatic trip. This is probably a really, really bad idea. Then, a thought occurs to her. “How about,” she says, perking up, “you give me your glasses, and I’ll give you mine.” From her backpack, she fishes out a pair of sunglasses, big and nondescript. He’ll practically be wearing a superhero mask with these.

Percy smiles again, and Annabeth thinks she might fly. “Perfect.”

Which is how Her Royal Highness Anna Elisabeth Ingrid Irene of Sweden and His Serene Highness Perseus Alexandros Ioannis of Thera play hooky from their day of boring meetings, insufferable dignitaries, and stuffy security guards, to go see the eighth wonder of the world: Disneyland Resort in California.

And how Annabeth eats her words as they make it past the security gate unchecked. “Eh?” He beams, nudging her with his elbow. “Eh?”

Rolling her eyes, she shoves him back. “Shut up.”

***

[description: a tiktok video which depicts a line at Disneyland. the op, a black girl with braids, covers her mouth and looking into the camera, turning the camera to focus on the two people behind her. one is a tall boy with black hair and sunglasses, and the other is a blonde girl with a yankees hat and glasses. both are white. video text reads: “p sure the people behind me are prince percy and princess annabeth??? um?????”. background audio is a dubstep remix of the fight theme from undertale. end ID]

***

Maybe it’s a little weird, on account of her being actual royalty and all, but Annabeth has always been interested in princesses, both as a matter of historical record (history is awesome) and in the general sense. Like millions of other people, she, too, was raised on Disney movies and tales of princesses and true love, and she was just as captivated as the rest of them. She and Percy used to watch the Disney catalogue whenever their families held state visits for each other, staying up into the small hours of the morning, sharing some popcorn and singing along.

Luckily for Annabeth, her favorite princess is holding a meet and greet at the Royal Hall.

“Excuse me,” Percy says, approaching Princess Ariel. Well, her cast member, anyway. “Could I get a photo for my friend?”

“Of course!” she trills, her blue eyes sparkling. “It would be my pleasure.” Holding her hand out, perfectly poised and graceful in a way that would impress even Annabeth’s stodgy etiquette instructor, she smiles, warm and welcoming, pivoting to bring Annabeth in for one of those weird, semi-awkward half-hugs. “What’s your name?”

“Anna,” says Annabeth. Hey, it’s not untrue. She’s a little leery of using any of her names, but Anna is common enough. Annabeth? Not so much. Even with her glasses and hat disguise, a little paranoia is justified, she thinks.

“It’s so wonderful to meet you, Anna,” she says, cheerful, with all the grace and charm of someone who doesn’t spend hours saying the same thing over and over again to excitable, temperamental children. What a trooper, she thinks.

“Don’t you recognize a fellow princess when you see one, your highness?” Percy says, grinning that stupid, smarmy grin of his.

Annabeth glares. Oh, he thinks he’s so damn clever.

“Oh, of course,” says Ariel, smoothly. “How could I have thought otherwise? Your highness.” And she curtsies to Annabeth, a short dip, her hand placed delicately against her chest. “Perhaps I can introduce you to my friend Anna, princess of Arendelle?”

Still smirking, Percy takes some more pictures, trapping Annabeth into smiling for the camera. She can’t be glaring daggers in her pictures, nor can there be video evidence of her kicking him--no matter how much she wants to.

And she definitely doesn’t miss the way Ariel not-so-subtly checks Percy out, eyeing him up and down.

“You fucking asshole,” she hisses as they leave the photo area, swatting him lightly, and he giggles.

“Sorry, sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

“Ugh, I hate you so much.”

It’s hard to stay mad at him, though she definitely tries as they enter back out into the park proper, giving him just the barest hint of a cold shoulder.

“Aw, come on,” Percy says. “I was just teasing.”

“You shouldn’t go around tempting fate like that,” Annabeth says. “Do you want to cause another international incident?”

Percy winces, no doubt remembering the Gateway Arch incident of 2008.

“If someone recognizes us, we don’t have Zoe or any of her team to protect us,” Annabeth goes on. “Not that I think anyone here would try to hurt us, but…” But it’s a little nerve-wracking, being on her own like this. She hasn’t been alone like this for a really long time.

Wincing, Percy rubs the back of his head. “I guess I forgot you’re a little higher profile than me. Sorry.”

She doesn’t like to think about it, but it’s true. Percy, by his nature as the younger son of a largely defunct royal house, doesn’t have quite the same number of… issues… that someone like Annabeth might have.

Deflating, she uncrosses her arms. “It’s okay.”

“I should have asked you first.”

“It’s really okay,” she says. “No harm no foul.”

“Do you want to get out of here?” he asks, entirely serious. “I can call someone up.”

She knows just how long they’ve planned this, how many favors he’s called in and policies he’s sidestepped. Backing out now would just be a waste of a day. She shakes her head. “It’s fine,” she says. “I’m just… feeling a little exposed, I guess. But, I don’t want to ruin all our plans. Let’s keep going.” She grabs his hand, squeezing a little.

“...Okay,” Percy says. “But say the word, and we’ll call it a day. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good.” Like he doesn’t have any other expression today, he smiles at her again.

It hits her, suddenly. He’s so much taller than she remembers. Once upon a time she used to be taller than him; now, he’s basically a whole head above her.

It’s annoying. But also… not.

Spying something over her shoulder, his eyes light up, and he practically gasps. “Cinderella!” he points with his free hand, like a five-year old. “Come on!” And he takes off to one of the park corners, dragging Annabeth along with him.

He has to wait in line behind a pair of twin girls, six or seven years old by the looks of it, in identical Cinderella dresses for a photo, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, and when it’s finally his turn, he nearly trips over himself to go up and ask for a photo.

Cinderella agrees, and now Annabeth is relegated to the job of cameraperson. Percy slides in next to the princess, his hand on her waist, but, ever the respectful gentleman, loosely held, so the cast member can slide out of his grasp without any difficulty at all.

Taking a few shots, it does look kind of strange to have Cinderella’s beautiful, shining face, and Percy’s enormous sunglasses blocking his. “Take off your glasses?” she says, lowering her phone for a second.

Dutifully, Percy slips them off, smiling again for the camera.

Cinderella’s smile doesn’t falter, a credit to her professionalism, but Annabeth can see her eyes widen, just a touch.

Annabeth snaps off a few more photos, “Got ‘em!” and Percy once again gushes over the princess, thanking her for her time. Grabbing Annabeth’s hand again, he practically skips off, leading them in the direction of a nearby candy shop.

***

me: IM SHAKING GUESS WHO I JUST TOOK A PICTURE WITH????

sis: prince percy?

me: HOW TF DID YOU KNOW

sis: its on twitter already

***

They’re walking along, Annabeth slurping up a Dole whip, when she suddenly stops in her tracks, outside of one of the many, many gift shops. “Wait up a second.”

“Hm?” Percy says, around the giant lollipop in his mouth.

“I want to get some Mickey ears.”

Very quickly they get lost in the sea of Disney merchandise, walking the labyrinth of Star Wars and Marvel and Pixar goods. There’s a surprising amount of black for the so-called happiest place on Earth, but things do brighten up when Annabeth finally turns a corner and finds the enormous selection of Mickey ears. It’s a wash of sparkles, flowers, bows, and occasionally characters, for children and adults alike. Annabeth eyes a pair designed like Baby Yoda, eyes wide and ears adorably huge, before she fingers a pair of white Mickey ears that have a bridal veil attached to them, contemplating its counterpart, the black ears for the groom, each ear emblazoned with a sparkling silver “Happily Ever After.”

She looks around. Where did Percy wander off to, anyway?

Well, wherever he is, hopefully he hasn’t gotten mobbed by a horde of excitable fangirls. Given that she can’t hear any screaming--well, any unusual, non-Disneyland-relevant screaming--that’s probably a good sign.

Running her fingers over the ear selections, she finally picks out a pair of silver sequined earrings with a shiny gold bow, a tiny, rhinestone Cinderella’s castle placed delicately in the middle.

Yeah. This one.

Percy finds her as she is paying for her ears, a pair of his own already on his head, red balloons inside of plastic circles. The sunglasses, she notes with a tinge of nervousness, are tucked in his shirt, and not on his face, protecting his identity. “Oh, check mine out--they light up!” he says, giddy, pressing the button on the side, not that she can tell in the brightly lit shop.

“That’s not why I was looking.”

Walking out of the store, ears firmly in her possession, she looks around again. Percy’s face is out there for the world to see, and no one is giving them a hard time.

And her hat is really sweaty.

Ah, fuck it.

She removes the Yankees cap, shaking out her sweaty curls, sliding the ears on in its place.

And the glasses, for good measure.

“Cinderella?” Percy asks.

“I thought you’d approve.”

Outside the shop, next to a corn dog cart, Percy pulls her aside, out of the way of a whole classroom’s worth of children, holding up a plastic plag. “So, confession.”

“Percy…” He didn’t. “We said no gifts!” They had agreed to it that morning!

“Well, see,” he says, fumbling around in the bag, pulling out a black t-shirt. “I saw this, and I thought--I thought you might like it.”

He unfolds it, and Annabeth frowns at the shirt design.

It’s… a drawing of a man in a purple mask against a solid black background, glaring at the viewer. Circling him, in distressed, white-grey military font, are the words “BARON ZEMO,” and the logo for the show he must star in, Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. She doesn’t really watch superhero shows, though, and she’s pretty sure Percy doesn’t, either. Maybe he’s started this one and he really likes it? “Thanks,” she says, confusion coloring her voice despite her best efforts.

But he doesn’t look too disappointed. “I was looking through their pride merch, and they didn’t have any stuff with the ace flag, which totally sucks, but then I thought that maybe you might like something a little more subtle? So, yeah.” He shakes it. “Ace pride!”

Oh. Oh, this boy.

She remembers, so vividly, visiting his father’s summer home on Kalymnos, a few years ago, the summer she turned nineteen, waking up to a banging in the kitchen, noisy pots and pans making a real racket. Granted, it had been one in the afternoon, and Annabeth probably should have been awake sooner, but she had stumbled out of the guest room into the kitchen, rubbing sleep out of her eyes, to the sight of Percy wrestling with the standmixer, making bright, neon purple frosting. The night before, sometime around three or four AM, that weird, liminal hour where the shadow of night just starts to recede, the sky a sweet, soft, dusky blue, she had come out as demisexual to her best friend, saying the words aloud for the first time ever. Loopy from lack of sleep, the moment had passed without much fanfare.

But Percy, dark-circled and still yawning, had woken up early to make her a chocolate cake. By the time she had woken up, he had baked the cake, chilled it, and made two out of the three frosting colors, a beautiful, moist, dark chocolate cake which ended up being frosted with a marbled mix of purple, black, and white, all folding into each other into a kind of colorless, grey sugar.

Here, now, in Disneyland, she throws herself at him, wrapping his arms around his neck. His arms automatically come up to circle her, hugging her tight.

She had been worried it had been some kind of defense mechanism. A young girl with an alarmingly high profile, Annabeth had been the subject of intense scrutiny with regards to any romantic entanglements, with critics, tabloid reporters, and fans alike attempting to invent gossip-worthy relationships with every boy she ever talked to--most usually Percy. They did grow up in the public eye together, attending all kinds of events and functions together over the last fifteen or so years. And they did tweet at each other. Like, a lot. They even had their own portmanteau hashtag. But no relationship ever materialized.

She thought maybe she was just being stubborn, unwilling to play the media game. But it hadn’t been stubbornness. It wasn’t about shyness or inexperience. It was real, and it was her.

And Percy hadn’t even blinked.

“I love it,” she murmurs. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” he says, swaying her from side to side, just a little. “It was my pleasure.”

***

What’s happening: #percabeth (Entertainment • trending)

@kndrck__ STREAM CHROMATICA: um @TheraUS @SwedenRoyals i think i found your sick royals? #percabeth #disneyland

@wasabiviking: omg werent they supposed to be at some hospital opening today #percabeth

@ChampionSno brando he/him: LMAOOO NOT #PERCABETH PLAYING HOOKY LIKE IT’S ROMAN HOLIDAY

***

“Holy shit,” Percy moans, his mouth full of food. “Oh my God. Dear God in Heaven.”

Annabeth kicks his ankle under the table. “Don’t be rude.”

He swallows, eyes fluttering. “Oh my God, Annabeth. Holy shit. This is the best damn sandwich I’ve ever had in my entire life.”

“A monte cristo?”

“A deep-fried monte cristo! In sweet batter!” Taking another bite, he moans again, just this side of indecent. “Oh my God I love Americans. They are absolute culinary geniuses.”

“Better than Bistrot Chez Rémy?” They had both been to Disneyland Paris, separately, sadly, and Percy had recommended the restaurant to her with great enthusiasm for her upcoming trip. As usual, he was spot on with his food recs.

He nods, eyes closed in rapture. “By a mile.”

“You’ll have to learn to make your own when we get back home, then.”

He jolts, straightening up, cheeks full of food. Roughly, he swallows. “You’re right! I need to take notes.” And he takes out his phone, hurriedly typing down whatever scent and flavor notes he must be able to discern. “This is definitely challah…”

Plucking another piece of chicken with her fork out of her jambalaya, Annabeth lets her attention wander a little, content to watch the passengers on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride as they float on beside them, down in the artificially constructed bayou river.

Truth be told, she’s kind of tired. They’ve been walking around all day, and even with the brief reprieve of rides, her shoes really aren’t the kind that deal well with huge amounts of walking. She can already tell that she’s going to crash, and crash hard, whenever they get back to their hotel. You know, if their security detail doesn’t eviscerate them first.

When Percy had first presented his idea to her, she had agreed without hesitation. They had had a long, dense schedule of public appearances planned for their excursions to the states, and the days had begun to seriously wear them out. Together, they had worked out the kinks, coming up with contingencies, negotiating things to do, all over Discord so no one else would get wind of what they were doing. Prior to this trip, she hadn’t seen him in… probably almost a year. She knows his father had been keeping him close to home for whatever reason, and Annabeth had had a handful of official functions to deal with. Their paths just never managed to cross, up until now.

She hadn’t realized how much she had missed him.

It’s lonely, growing up in the public eye. It’s cliche, but it’s true. And while Annabeth is afforded a metric ton of various intersecting privileges, she thinks she’d probably give it up in a heartbeat. It kind of sucks being a living, breathing tourist attraction.

Growing up, she had her cousin Magnus, and a handful of other assorted children to play with, but she would never say that she had a best friend, or even a good friend, until she’d met Percy. Her mother and his father, famous for their mutual dislike, had put aside their differences to host some kind of charitable dinner for the disgustingly wealthy, and had trotted out their respective children in all their finery. Annabeth, being all of twelve years old, hadn’t really grasped the gravity of the event, and had gotten into an itty bitty little food fight with the then-unknown Prince Perseus, the result of an extramarital affair whom his father had so graciously decided to acknowledge and adopt.

After that night, they became fast friends, and she decided that, if she ever left the royal life, she’d make sure to take Percy with her. He’s one of the few things that makes her life bearable.

She thinks about it, sometimes. Renouncing her title. It wouldn’t exactly be hard. There was Magnus, just in line behind her. And it’s not like her family held any executive power anyway. They’re just fancy, historically interesting celebrities.

Would Percy give up his, she wonders?

“Hey.”

“Hm?”

He looks at her oddly over their dessert, two vanilla-bourbon creme brulees. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Just tired. Long day.”

“You want to call it a night?”

She frowns. “What’s left?”

“Well, we did Space Mountain, Rise of the Resistance, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, a few others,” he counts off his fingers, “saw the princesses, got Mickey ears, ate at Blue Bayou… I guess all that’s left is walking around the pier, if you want.”

“Sounds like you two had a full day.”

As one, they almost leap out of their seats, Annabeth choking on her spit. “Jesus, Zoe,” Percy pants, his hand over his chest. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Oh?” says Zoe Nightshade, the head of their security detail, who had just apparently materialized out of thin air. “Funny. I could say the same about you, sir.”

Coughing, Annabeth eventually manages to get her air back. “Hey, Zoe,” she wheezes. “How was your day?”

“Eventful. Let me tell you about it in the car.”

Annabeth glances at Percy, who’s looking a little bit like a deer in headlights. Honestly, she’s surprised they even made it this far without one of their own tracking them down. Still, it looks like their game is up.

...Or is it?

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a large tour group, approaching on the horizon.

“Sure,” Annabeth says, getting up. Luckily, they’ve already paid, so they can just head out; they don’t need to wait for another big group of people to cross their paths. “Will you let us go to the bathroom, first?”

Zoe squints. She’s always been able to see through Annabeth’s bullshit. But Annabeth has her best, Percy-patented baby seal eyes on, perfectly innocent. Surely, Zoe wouldn’t deny them a physical need such as relieving themselves?

After a moment, she nods. “Make it quick, if you please.”

“Of course,” Annabeth says, looking over at Percy, hoping he gets the message. He stands up, slow and stiff, eyes darting between the two of them. “We’ll be right back.”

They wander through tables and chairs towards the bathroom, her eyes always on the tour group as it just starts to pass by. Reaching out, Annabeth grabs Percy’s hand, and with a turn that would make her track coach proud, sprints out of the restaurant, using the throng of people as cover.

She thinks she hears Zoe yelling behind them, but maybe it’s just her own laughter. “Come on!” she shrieks, breathless, as Percy’s long legs keep pace with her. “To California Adventure!”

***

darthbingus said: the monarchy are fucking parasites but percabeth is pretty cute i guess :/

ladyofsandwiches reblogged and said: it’s obviously a publicity thing lmao, also prince Percy is gay???

eowynning reblogged and said: he’s dating rachel dare, right? he can’t be gay

ladyofsandwiches reblogged and said: That was a publicity thing too obvs, and Annabeth hasn’t ever been linked to a guy. The king of thera is hardline greek orthodox, there’s no way he’d let his son come out publicly. They’re both gay and pretending to date because homophobia

lardoftheprks reblogged and said: people can be bi and ace and pan and all sorts of things you know

batgirlcock reblogged and said: can you animals leave them alone fr

***

Zoe only spots them after the ferris wheel starts moving. Sprinting over to them, they’re still a full forty feet off the ground by the time she reaches the operator. “Sorry!” she yells down to her, hands cupping her mouth. “We’ll be down in ten minutes!”

“Ananbeth!” he chokes, giggles still escaping him.

“What?” she laughs.

“We’re in enough trouble as it is!”

“Exactly,” she says, settling back on the ride. “You’ll probably be grounded for life.”

“Me?” he squawks, playfully offended. “What about you?”

She scoffs. “Please. I’ll just pin it all on you.”

Leaning back, he pouts, arms crossed. “Wow. I plan this amazing day, violate a few embassorial rules, and probably put both of our countries on a massive red alert, and this is the thanks I get?”

“I helped plan it, too.” But he does have a point. “Thank you,” she says. “I had a lot of fun today.”

He turns his head to her, a grin stretching across his face. “Me too.”

His voice is so soft, so fond. They share a look, a moment, no words between them, only the silence of a true, deep companionship. They don’t need to say anything else, because they already know what the other would say.

As one, they break away, looking back out into the California evening.

They don’t talk much as the ferris wheel climbs higher and higher. Honestly, Annabeth is kind of impressed with how well he’s handling himself--she knows heights are a bit of a weakness of his. He grabs the edges of their gondola every once in a while as it drops a few feet, knuckles white and face a little green, but he manages to keep his dinner down, even as the ferris wheel grinds to a halt, Percy and Annabeth at the top of the world. The swing back and forth a little, hot faces against the cool evening breeze.

And they stay there.

And stay there.

And… stay there.

Annabeth checks her watch. How long have they been up here?

Percy taps his feet, a little too frantic just to be ADHD.

Finally, there’s a burst of noise from below them, garbled and static. “Uh, yes, excuse me--” the voice says, amplified through a megaphone. “Yeah, um, it appears we are having some… uh, technical difficulties with the Pixar Pal-A-Round. Please remain calm, as we have our best technicians on it, and we are working on evacuating the ride in a calm and efficient manner.” Then the voice cuts out.

Annabeth glances towards Percy. He has his hands in his lap, fists clenching and unclenching, over and over again. “Uh… you okay?”

“Hm? Oh, sure,” Percy says, “just fine. Peachy keen.” He squeezes his eyes shut, slowly blowing out his breath through his mouth.

“Hey.” She reaches over, and takes one of his hands in hers, lacing their fingers together. After a long day of holding hands, somehow it still manages to surprise her, how well they fit together, how her skin tingles as she rubs her thumb against his finger. “It’s gonna be fine. We’re gonna be just fine. They’re going to get us off this ride, and then we’ll fly home and be grounded for life.”

“I thought,” he wheezes, “you’d blame it all on me?”

“As if you could come up with a plan as genius as hiding from our guard in It's A Small World.”

He nods, shakily. “Right. All you. Definitely not my idea. Everyone knows I’d have looped back to Pirates of the Caribbean.”

“Definitely.” She squeezes his hand, scooting a little closer. “Just breathe with me a little, okay?”

They breathe together, slowly and evenly. At some point, Percy takes her hand in both of his, running his thumbs over her palm, tracing her lifelines like a map. His hands are big, and warm, and it seems to calm him down a little, so she doesn’t mind all that much.

Twilight darkens, stars twinkling against the grey, dusky sky, and still they are holding hands. Eventually, Percy relaxes, slumping against his seat.

“You good?”

He nods. He still doesn’t let go. “Yeah. Just…” he sighs, stretching his arms up, taking Annabeth’s hand with him. “Not super looking forward to the dressing down I’m going to get.”

She winces. Annabeth’s dad is a little more flexible than Percy’s when it comes to breaches of protocol. The king of Thera is somewhat famous for his paranoia. “I hope it was worth it.”

He whips his head to her, eyes wide. “Of course it was worth it!” he says, as though the opposite were even fathomable. “You kidding? This was the best day of my life.”

“Better than your sixteenth?” His father had officially acknowledged him that day. Annabeth had spotted him in a deserted hallway with his mother, the two of them fighting off a few happy tears. She knows just how special that day was for him.

“Not even close.” Squeezing her hand, he smiles again, that smile she knows almost better than her own by now. That smile she grew up with, a quiet oasis in a whirlwind of ancient tradition and modern media coverage. That smile is safety, familiarity. That smile was there to greet her when her mother chose to leave her family, when her uncle died without heirs, thrusting the position of heiress on her, whenever she had a rotten day or a bad grade or a lonely night, just on the other end of a phone, or down the hall, or in the kitchen.

Whatever happens, she knows, Percy will be her best friend. Her anchor.

Her…

She swallows. “Thank you,” she says again. “I needed this.” A day without an agenda. A day just for them.

His eyes are dark, and soft, like the water beneath them. One hundred and fifty feet in the air in a broken ferris wheel, there’s nowhere safer she can be. “Me too.”

So she’s not really surprised at herself when she says, “I’d really like to kiss you now.”

Eyes widening, just a hair, he opens his mouth, momentarily speechless. “You--are you sure?”

She nods, maybe a little too enthusiastically.

“Cool. Uh, me too.”

“Cool.”

Neither of them move.

“So, do--do you want to--”

Annabeth leans in, her other hand cupping his cheek, and kisses him.

His lips are soft. His mouth tastes like vanilla and bourbon. They are trapped in a metal box, one hundred and fifty feet off the ground, about to get the punishment of their lives when they get down, and it is absolutely, utterly perfect.

And when Annabeth pulls back, there are fireworks.

Quite literally.

Percy’s face glows with pink and green and purple, and a little fire in his eyes that’s all him. The pops of the fireworks, loud and brassy, and muted, completely overshadowed by the pounding of her heart in her chest.

They rest their heads against each other, breathing each other’s air, quiet and intimate, the calm before the storm that is surely coming. But that’s fine. Let it come, she thinks. She’ll be safe with Percy.

When the park technicians eventually get the ferris wheel moving again, Percy and Annabeth disembark from the gondola like nothing’s even gone wrong, waving to the crowd of people, fans, and reporters alike, who have swarmed the pier, phones and cameras held aloft in a constellation of light, before being quickly hurried away by Zoe and her crew, ushered to the end of the pier where Annabeth’s embassy’s car is waiting.

Percy doesn’t let go of her hand once.

***

KALYMNOS, GREECE--Prince Percy has arrived on the island for his family’s annual summer retreat, bringing his girlfriend, Princess Annabeth of Sweden, with him for the fifth year in a row, and the third as his official partner. Lifelong friends, the couple were most recently seen at Disneyland Tokyo, continuing something of a tradition for the two royals where they visit Disneyland parks across the globe. Our sources inside the castle are hinting that the family is planning something big this year. Could we see a proposal by the end of summer? Be sure to subscribe for more updates!

#pjo fic #percabeth #percabeth fic #my fic #au #perseannabeth #the rivalry ends here #will i ever stop writing modern royalty aus? no 💖#also look mari i even used a taylor swift song

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darkpinkyreturns · 3 years

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I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about this, so here’s a post about my theories and headcanons on Dark Pinky’s telepathy! I’ll talk about where it came from, how it works, and why I think it’s vitally important to his character. Under a cut because this is pretty long.

We know the normal Pinky already has some types of superpowers. There's his telekinesis in "Fly", and his implied limb regeneration in "TV or Not TV". The telekinesis even makes a second appearance in Animaniacs #19.

Personally, I headcanon these powers aren't something he just naturally has, but a result of lab experiments. It's believable enough as a project Acme would undertake. I mean, why not try and give a mouse psychic powers? And that's where the telepathy comes in. Before I talk about Dark Pinky's appearances, there's actually another comic that's relevant here: Animaniacs #45.

If you haven't read it, the plot is that Brain's, well, brain, is expelled from his body and he and Pinky need to find a way to get it back in. Despite his disembodied brain not having any way to speak, they still manage to communicate throughout via telepathy.

It even works at a distance!

Additionally, at one point Pinky has to speak on Brain's behalf, implying that perhaps he's the only one who can communicate with him like this.

I believe that this isn't a power Brain somehow gained after being disembodied. It's all Pinky. This experience, being unable to speak with Brain via voice and needing another way to know what he's thinking, is what awakened his ability to read minds. Neither he nor Brain questions this in the story because they're rather distracted by the bizarre situation they're in, but I believe it's another manifestation of the superhuman (or supermouse?) abilities he's been granted by being experimented on.

My theory is that this story, by unlocking Pinky's telepathy, is the beginning of the Dark Pinky timeline. In the normal timeline, this never happened, that power stayed undeveloped, and he remained the kind, carefree Pinky. He had no idea at the time, but this silly adventure is the beginning of his descent into villainy.

This part is all headcanon, but here is how I think things went after that. Not long after this story, Pinky started hearing other people's thoughts from time to time, both from Brain and anyone else he was near. This time it wasn't anyone intentionally trying to communicate with him, and he picked up all sorts of things. The ability became more and more intense until his head was crowded by other people's thoughts and feelings 24/7 and, not used to this, he hadn't developed any way to control it and had no idea how to turn it off.

Pinky was now stuck in unending sensory overload, and it started taking his toll on him. Too much exposure to the feelings of others made his formerly strong sense of empathy become numb with overuse and he had to stop caring about anyone to endure it. He was perpetually exhausted and becoming more bitter every day.

In terms of his relationship with Brain, it just wasn't the same anymore. They could no longer do their classic "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" routine because Pinky was pondering what he was pondering, involuntarily, all the time. He now also had a front row seat to all the fallacies in Brain's thinking, all his internalized issues, and the way he constantly made the same mistakes over and over again. Pinky's affection started waning as Brain became boring and annoying to him.

Eventually, Pinky couldn't take the now-agonizing nightly routine anymore and took control of all the plans, relegating Brain to a sidekick he only used for his technical knowledge. With him in charge, they succeeded very quickly and Pinky now ruled the world. Once in power, he reshaped society into a comic book theme because if there's one think about him that didn't change, it's that he still loved comic books.

And yes, here we are at Dark Pinky. At the point we see him, he has gained control of his powers somewhat and as long as he keeps a level head, can push the thoughts of others into the background unless he chooses to focus on them.

And now I have one last thing to talk about: the scene where he reads the normal Pinky's mind.

I don't think this has to be a "Pinky is an idiot so his mind is a madness-inducing void" joke. I have a far more interesting theory. Notice how he gets the idea of making Dark Pinky read his mind right after having a tender moment with Brain. What he intentionally broadcast into Dark Pinky's mind wasn't nothing. It was his love for Brain, which he knew would devastate Dark Pinky, especially after he'd just killed his own Brain. It worked and took him out of commission easily, because he absolutely cannot handle experiencing that love again, for the first time in who knows how many years.

For further evidence towards this, just look at what he says the next time we see him.

He says it himself! Reading Pinky's mind made him desperate to meet Brain again. That incident revived his love for him and his erratic antics in #25 are just him coping with that very poorly.

I hope this was interesting! I’ve got even more thoughts about Dark Pinky because this evil little mouse lives in my brain at this point but I think this is enough for today.

#pinky and the brain #dark pinky #i'm worried this is kind of fake-deep and i'm reading too much into things #but oh well!#i had fun writing it #let me know if you have any questions #my posts

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breathingwysteria · 3 years

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Hyperbole & A Half; Illustrated Novels as Gateways to More Traditional Comics

Hyperbole and a Half, autobiographical webcomic blog, turned illustrated novel; One! Hundred! Demons!, autobiographical comic compilation of personal “demons;” both detail the funny, heartwarming, and often ugly parts of the human experience as they unfold for each author as an individual. Both are told in short story form, with an intra-homodiagetic narrator (the author serves as both narrator and active character), accompanied by illustrated panels that invoke a sense of physical and emotional movement that the reader can easily conceptualize. With so many major similarities, why does each work receive such different classifications? What makes a comic a comic and not an illustrated novel? How do these seemingly disparate definitions affect the way we read them? Can illustrated novels be considered gateway materials to comics? I think so. Before we jump into that exact why, let’s look at the defining characteristics of comics.

Text, images, and some semblance of sequential flow in time and space are the most major markers of comics, utilized throughout history, found in ancient work like Egyptian tomb paintings all the way up to modern comics and manga. Speech bubbles erupt from the mouths of static character images, narration is often delineated by straight-lined boxes and a change in tone, real movement through space and time happens in the empty “gutters” between panels. Although illustrated novels and comics are constructed differently, they are still processed in the brain in fundamentally the same way. Children’s literacy researcher, Evelyn Arizpe, notes that when reading illustrated stories, regardless of form (comics or traditional storybooks), “the eye moves between one part of the picture and another, piecing together the image like a puzzle.” If picture books and comics are processed in the brain in the same way, why are they considered different mediums? Linguist and cognitive scientist, Neil Cohn, applies his academic specialties to comics, attributing the difference to things like panel placement and what he calls “navigational structure,” the direction our eyes track when piecing images in a comic together to create a sense of coherence when reading.

Traditional storybooks, unlike comics, typically utilize one image per page to convey everything from character relationships to arrested motion; comics achieve a more fluid and nuanced version of this by using panels as snapshots or windows into character worlds. Where then does the illustrated novel fall between these two states, and where does Hyperbole and a Half land? Illustrated novels rely more heavily on the text narrative of the story and the readers imagination, associated images usually only serve to enhance the story world or solidify ideas and images that would otherwise be difficult to conceptualize or to emphasize an exciting or emotional moment in the narrative. Hyperbole and a Half leans more heavily toward the multiple-panel style of comics to help amplify the narrative. Perhaps this stems from the novel’s genesis as a blog-turned-book. In 2009, Hyperbole and a Half author, Allie Brosh began a blog of the same name, where she chronicled events from her personal life, like the adoption of one of her two dogs; illustrated pet peeves, like the internet usage of “alot,” a misspelling of “a lot,” personified as a shaggy, fang-toothed monster; or her fear of spiders, captured by an image of an oval with spindly appendages replete with strapped-on knives, guns, and a swastika tattooed above the eyes. Brosh’s book maintains the same familiar tone, regularly interspersing images meticulously drawn by the author herself. Her use of illustrated images that convey character motion, emotional state, and even dialogue exchanges are reminiscent of both regular comics and contemporary memes.

In Brosh’s chapter titled “Motivation,” she chronicles her own struggle with self-starting and follow-through. She illustrates a frequent conversation she has between the “her” who knows she must complete a task, and the “her” who continues to procrastinate for no conceivable reason. Instead of floating thought bubbles, she makes this conversation concrete by utilizing a kind of split screen effect,where both versions of herself take up space within the same panel, as does their dialogue.

Most of Brosh’s panels behave in the same way, providing the reader with concrete examples of often abstract concepts, like internal monologue and discussions with oneself.

One! Hundred! Demons!author, Lynda Barry, achieves this same concept by forcefully changing the reader’s perspective. As she reveals the story of her struggle with impostor syndrome as an author and her childhood tendency to let her imagination run away with the descriptions in the Classified section of the newspaper, the reader follows her through her childhood musings and is dropped into the middle of one of her fantastical plots.

Only when Barry transitions back to a narrative focused on her own more present-tense position as a narrator do we as readers get dragged back into the present-past-tense of her childhood self.

Brosh maintains a slightly smoother sense of temporal immediacy by clumping her panels in “Motivation” together, as one “Motivation Game.” Readers are taken along the same journey, into and back out of, the author’s imagination and altered psychological state, but Barry’s follows tactics familiar to comic readers, while Brosh blurs those lines a bit for readers unused to comics.

This difference in delivery of the protagonist’s inner-world carries over into the way dialogue is associated with each character as well. In the above examples, from One! Hundred! Demons!, Barry uses the classic speech bubbles historically associated with comics; Brosh, on the other hand, utilizes both classic speech bubbles as well as free-floating text that the reader infers to be audible speech through context clues.

In the chapter “The Helper Dog is an Asshole,” Brosh retells the story of her and her partner’s adoption of a second issue-riddled shelter dog. She uses both dialogue vehicles on one page, in succession, the traditional speech bubbles allow each character in the top panel to convey separate thoughts, while the speech in the middle panel is only spoken by Brosh’s caricature of herself, as she is the only character “facing” the audience.

Brosh utilizes a similarly comic-style tactic when expressing active motion or a change in mental or emotional state. In “The God of Cake,” she recounts a childhood obsession with conquering her mothers demands that she not decimate her grandfather’s homemade birthday cake with her youthful inability to control her own sugar intake. She masterfully illustrates this rapid descent into the kind of one-track-minded madness only children ever master with a four-page sequence of successively blurry panels.

No, that’s not a mistake of my scanner, it’s printed that way in the book; while a little difficult to read, I think it conveys an emotional whirlwind with an immediacy that helps the reader understand just how much untamed tenacity is bubbling beneath the surface for this child character through the remainder of this chapter.

Another tactic that Brosh employs, that seems like a holdover from her work’s origin as an online blog, is her use of a colored filter over a panel to illustrate distress or another intense emotion. In the same chapter retelling her story of the “helper dog,” Brosh lists the myriad and often confounding behavior issues the new dog frequently displays, like her visceral and adverse reaction to other dogs. Brosh posits that the new dog must simply be unable to comprehend or abide by the fundamental existence of other dogs in the world. To depict the abrupt and unpredictable change in this dog’s mental state, Brosh uses a red tinted filter, along with grumpy-looking smiley faces and hand-written text over her base illustration of her new dog lunging toward another dog in the distance, teeth bared.

You can almost hear the Kill Bill sirens going off in the background.

While Brosh’s artistic approach is reminiscent of internet memes, it also resembles the cartoon-y illustrated style of altered mental states in comics. In One! Hundred! Demons!, Barry juxtaposes alternating bright contrasting colors with radiating squiggly lines in a few of her panels to symbolize the acid trip she and her truncated crush are having on their roam through China Town and Skid Row.

Instead of giving the audience a sense of almost seeing through the perspective of her dog’s psyche, like Brosh does, Barry’s interpretation of her own childhood experience makes the reader feel a little like a sober friend along for the ride, understanding what’s happening, but not able to reach quite the same level of empathy.

Although comics are typically regarded as a reading material relegated to childhood hobbies, books that fall between the borders of comics and illustrated novels, like Hyperbole and a Half, prove their usefulness as a narrative medium, and for readers afraid of being seen reading a full-blown comic—or have never even attempted it, can consider them the shallow end of the comics pool, a lighter commitment than the image-heavy ocean of traditional comics.

Brosh, Allie. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened. Gallery Books, 2019.

ISBN: 978-1-4767-6459-7

#this is for a class assignment #I will not be keeping track of discourse or suggestions

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muchymozzarella · 4 years

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I’m not trying to start drama or an argument, merely trying to get into the conversation... couldn’t you argue that it doesn’t matter how many Asian people are working behind the scenes on a project, if you don’t see them on screen? The majority of people who watch the film will not do the research into who worked on it, so it could be said that it doesn’t matter whether they are Asian or not? Whereas if a show has visible Asian characters, it’s plainly clear that there is representation.

I totally get what you’re saying, but what I think a lot of people don’t understand is that representation is an issue that has more than one answer, and a whole lot of problems that people don’t take into account.

But to simplify, we have to look at it in two ways:

Asians behind the scenes

Asians in front / represented

Each of these have their benefits and flaws. I would argue that one is better than the other, but neither is necessarily BAD because they are both forms of Asian representation. It’s just that they both come with their own baggage.

Having both is ideal, but it’s often not the case.

Asians behind the scenes

Pros

-Asians have creative power

-Asians can bring their own cultural ideas to the fore even if the subject matter isn’t necessarily focused on Asian characters - thereby having Asian people feel like they are being spoken to by someone who shared their experiences and their culture

-Asians getting paid and getting their names on shows, which ensures these same Asians positions and jobs in other shows moving forward

-Asians, who have established themselves on a show ostensibly watched by everyone, will have their overtly Asian titles be taken on later down the line

-Asians could be in a position to hire other Asians

-Non Asians, especially white people, being exposed to Asian worldviews and having a better understanding of at least some part of a culture they otherwise would not have had much exposure to, depending on their background

Cons

-Asians aren’t represented onscreen / the show itself isn’t Asian rep, so Asians do not feel represented visually and non Asians will not be exposed to Asian characters and have that normalised, or learn about Asian culture from said media

-Asians are relegated to writing stories that they themselves don’t necessarily know about or experience [not always a con if, for example, it’s a fantasy or sci-fi or non real world setting, but can be if an Asian is expected to write an everyday White Experience]

Asians in front / represented

Pros:

-Asian kids get to see themselves represented in media, and non-Asians get to learn about and connect to Asian heroes onscreen

-Asian media is seen as lucrative and more Asian shows are made

-Hiring more Asian actors [?] [see: Avatar The Last Airbender for exceptions to this]

Cons:

-Strong possibility of literary Yellowface - look up CB Cebulski

-Asians are getting passed over for jobs because someone decided white people could do a better job portraying / writing about Asian characters - ASIANS AREN’T GETTING JOBS OR GETTING PAID AND WHITE PEOPLE PROFIT OFF ASIAN REP

-Stereotypes without cultural background / Fetishism / Asian Aesthetique

-Misrepresentation of Asians as a if white writer is not respectful

-People behind the scenes do not get to actually talk to Asians if the only ones in a creative field are non Asians

-If other POC are present in the writing room, they are asked to make decisions on Asian characters they are not always fit to answer

-Mulan 2020 [lol]

I clearly personally prefer Asians behind the scenes, but it’s not because seeing Asians onscreen isn’t important. It is. It really is.

But when you have a foot in the door of a North American industry like I do, especially in a group that looks after the interests of BIPOC film and tv workers in a white dominated field, you start to see the issues with white people taking over writers rooms, taking over showrunning, taking over directing.

SOMETHING WHITE PEOPLE ARE OFTEN NOT WILLING TO HEAR IS THAT THEY HAVE AN INHERENT BIAS IN FAVOUR OF OTHER WHITE PEOPLE, AND THIS IS COMPOUNDED BY THE EXCUSE THAT “WE ONLY HIRE QUALIFIED PEOPLE” BUT BECAUSE THEY CHOOSE NOT TO HIRE BIPOC, BIPOC CANNOT EARN SAID QUALIFICATION.

So the idea of hiring a white guy to write about Asians is not inherently bad, but when you put it up against a system already heavily skewed against Asians, it’s just another job a struggling Asian creative got passed over, another writer or artist who has every qualification going for them ignored because someone decided this white guy they like is the better pick.

And sure, maybe he is. Maybe he’s just better at storytelling, better at writing, more passionate about the project.

But maybe that excuse has been used so much that we see more white people than Asian people credited on the MULAN MOVIE and you start to think that maybe 80% of the time, it’s just a convenient excuse to lock out Asian creatives and not the truth.

It may not always be racism, but it’s more often racism than people are led to believe.

And idk, maybe it’s just me, but I like having a job and seeing other Asians and other BIPOC have jobs. And if I’ve done enough years on this nice white show then these nice white producers will eventually decide to take on my Very Filipino Show Idea. Or maybe I’ll find funding from other BIPOC and do it anyway, but in the very least people will see that I worked years on this Cool White Show and decide they liked it enough to give my Very Asian Show a try.

But also - even if the entire behind the scenes crew is white, I can’t be mad at a show, whether live action or animated, if the cast is fully or mostly Asian. That’s still getting Asians jobs.

tl;dr It’s not inherently bad for white people to write Asian media [see: Avatar] but as an Asian creative in the North American TV and Film industry I prefer to see Asians Get Paid

And if you wanna see what happens when Asians get represented but not paid, just look at Bon Appetit

#asian representation #anon #lovely anon #replies #representation #racism

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randomnameless · 4 years

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Science projects

Thinking about Hanneman and the “war assets” mention in a certain route -

Was Hanneman mirroring Tellius’ Izuka?

I was rereading FE10′s script (and a part of FE9 too) - in Tellius, experimentations on subhumans and on humans - on living beings - are depicted as vile and even if it had been a minor (?) plot point in FE9, FE10 adresses it with a beautiful end, i.e. Tibarn destroying Izuka with extreme prejudice.

Izuka tries to sell the “war assets” argument to Miccy in RD’s part 1 but she is having none of his bullshit.

This is a line that Miccy, even if it is for the sake of Daein, will no cross.

Would part 3 Miccy have crossed it though? I don’t know, and I’m happy she didn’t have to make that choice.

What happened in Gritnea tower haunted Ranulf so bad that he vows to murder Izuka, and Tibarn, in his very tolerant approach towards anyone who hurts Laguz, delivers the execution.

Gritnea tower is never relegated to a footnote, I will not say it was a major plot point, but it was still a point adressed. Maybe because it related to the general issue of “racism” Tellius tried to adress, if those subhumans aren’t like us, then we can safely experiment on them. And we can also create super “human” soldiers because we can’t give three fucks about anyone really, let them be beorcs or laguz.

Experimenting on beorcs or laguz is vile, is treated as so and is rewarded with Tibarn using Tear against Izuka.

Then, in 3H, the human experimentation angle is completely abandoned after Part 1 save for Hanneman’s comment which is, uh, somehow, sounding as if he supports it...

Everyone hated Remire, because villagers were suffering and going crazy. When we fight in the old chapel, students are being transformed into monsters, Jeralt is horrified.

In CF’s chapter 17, Dimitri is horrified at his men’s sacrifice even if, contrary to the Remire guys and the students, the king’s soldiers seemed willing.

When Solon, leader of Agartha’s R&D’s department, is killed, it’s only with extreme prejudice because he tried to ban Billy to another space, it is not, and has nothing do to with, Tibarn Tearing Izuka because dude experimenting on people without their consent to turn them into feral beasts is horrible?

Demonic Beasts are never adressed for what they are. I haven’t played the DLC, but aren’t they basically treated as a joke for Hapi’s quirk (lol her sighs attract them)? Do anyone lament on the fate of those poor randoms who were turned into beasts? EDITED Hapi attracts weird worms and birdies

Nope (save for Dimitri when Beast-Dedue dies, i think he calls him a fool with all of the implications inherent to this pair).

Fuck, we have two characters who were experimented upon and it was apparently a traumatic experience for the both of them, but one of those people is using Demonic beasts as “war assets” and the other is just, idk, irrelevant. The two people who could have adressed this due to their backgrounds aren’t doing a thing, the games wants to you doubt the church when Miklan turns into a beast but when Random n° 45 and Random n° 89 do, no one bats an eye, no one regrets having to kill demonic beasts because of what they were before*.

(IIRC Flayn feels bad for killing a blue one in the Sothis paralogue, but blues ones aren’t shown to be made from unwilling randoms - we don’t even know what the blue beasts are).

Also, since I’m discussing about scientific projects, Rhea’s nonsensical fight in SS’ finale also involves people transforming against their wills : Rhea herself and also all of those randoms who received her blood and pieces of her crest (of the fuck is that possible?? She gave them pieces of her litteral heart? She didn’t die when she cut her crest stone to separate some fragments???).

This isn’t adressed in the game because it’s the final map and Rhea has a crapton of things to answer for but everything has to be tied to the block of wood you’ve been playing as. Also, is it most likely Rhea herself never thought that if she were to go berserk the people who drank her blood would also grow berserk.

Can Rhea’s state in SS’ finale be attributed to degeneration (but Macuil and Indech aren’t degenerating because, uh, reasons) or, and the more i think about it, the more it’d make sense, some kind of Feral One Transformation?

In RD’s script, turning into a Feral One has several symptoms, like being unable to control your transformation, “growling” as you’re starting to lose your mind and, uh, having mad eyes. Rhea growls, can’t control her transformation and growls even more turning into a twisted version of herself Seteth, her older bro, never saw.

To compare, degenerating!Duma could still talk (gibberish but still talk and give power to douchebags), just like FE3!Medeus (even if it’s the usual “Naga you’ve ruined everything yet again!”) and if Mila was degenerating she was still able to keep her humanoid form.

So, safe bet with all the cards (3 out of a game that should contain at least 42) is that Rhea wasn’t degenerating, but succumbing to a drug akin to what Muarim, Rajaion, Renning and all of the Tellius peeps who crossed Izuka’s road were fed.

* “Before” could both mean “random human” used as a host, or “remnants of the Nabatean” whose crest stone is used. I had a fascinating discussion with @damoselcastel about demonic beasts, is the crest trying to take over the host to rebuild a new body for the nabatean, or is it something else altogether? Could the dead Nabateans be resurrected if we implanted their crests in compatible hosts? Because, for some reason, when random wolves, birds and worms eat/are in contact with a crest stone, they don’t turn into demonic beasts. The only ones who do are humans.

Does that mean that Nabateans are “biologically” closer to humans than to the gigantic fauna of this world? They’re still not “human” enough for some...

#FE16 #FE9 #FE10 #Science projects are bad in the series #Izuka is a douche #Solon looks like a him a bit #but no one tells him to eat shit because of his experiments :'(#not even the ones who were experimented on :'(#Now if the Feral!Rhea theory has to stand who and when was she given the drug? Why would the Agarthans want to drug their dragon?#to see how she'd react and to unleash her on Fodlan? look it'd be funny they saw that beast as their savior now it's going to end them #they had enough blood samples to create more demonic beasts?#or they used her to craft Aymr which would react to Edel's crest?#But then why is she drugged in SS and not in VW? Same reason why Nemesis doesn't wake up in SS #fire emblem three houses #musings #nabateans are the sub humans of FE16

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phosphorescent-naidheachd · 4 years

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I saw TROS earlier today and, well, it was definitely a Star Wars sequel movie, for better and for worse. I can see why some people on my dash hated this movie and why some of them loved it. I can also see why some of them threw their hands into the air over it and shrugged. (FYI, I’m in the third category.) More scattered and spoiler-laden thoughts below the cut:

--“Never underestimate a droid.” This line would have been so much more meaningful if the spy had turned out to be a First Order droid rather than Hux. A droid that had broken free of its programming, just like Finn (and later Jannah and the other unnamed former stormtroopers). But as always, the Droid Revolution that we deserve is probably never going to be a thing, at least not onscreen where it counts.

--Just like TFA, the copy-and-pasting from the Original Trilogy was painfully obvious, but what was forgivable in the first film of a new trilogy is less so in said trilogy’s concluding film.

--Trần Loan/Rose deserved more screentime and prominence. And did we really have to turn Poe into a former spice runner? Really? *sighs heavily*

--Zorii Bliss felt sort of shoehorned in? I didn’t hate her, but it felt like TPTB only introduced her to give Poe another person to flirt with. And I say this as someone who was not expecting PoeFinn or any other LGBTQIAP+ relationship between named characters to be made canon in this movie at all. Hopefully fans will give her more depth in fic!

--Jannah was really interesting and I would have loved to see more of her. Once again, hopefully fans will take her character and deepen/explore it in fic.

--LANDO!

--Finn was all but explicitly confirmed as Force sensitive, and it’s What He Deserves.

--I mean, Finn also deserved his own storyline and a stronger conclusion to his character arc in this film, especially considering he was promoted as one of the leads of the sequel trilogy. But while I’m irked that he was relegated to a side character, I can’t say I didn’t see this coming, especially after TLJ.

--Likewise, I knew Reyl0 was going to be a thing after TLJ. I found their relationship less grating than Anida1a in the prequels, but it still didn’t do much of anything for me in this film. Do I understand from an objective POV why some people enjoy it so much? Yep. It’s the grand, tortured, Byronic Romance™, where it isn’t really about whether the characters have anything in common or even like each other, it’s about their near-mystical connection and their inability (and lack of true desire) to be rid of it; it’s about the lengths to which they will go for each other/themselves; it’s about the powerful man who is emotionally vulnerable and eager to serve his True Love at the expense of all else. It’s also the whole enemies-to-lovers trope, and so on. I understand the appeal of this mashup intellectually, it’s just not my cup of tea here. YMMV and all that, and that’s as it should be.

--Palpatine back from death is as ridiculous here as it was in the old EU, but I can roll with it. I think the movie made the right decision not to explain all the nitty-gritty details of how he cheated death or manipulated the whole Snoke deal... ultimately, it doesn’t really matter, y’know? Ditto to Rey Palpatine lol.

--Leia’s death felt pretty narratively cheap to me, but I understand that there was only so much TPTB could do with the footage they already had of Carrie Fisher in costume. Still, poor Leia. She drew a deeply shitty hand in life, didn’t she?

--That said, it was nice to see Leia training as a Jedi in flashbacks, however briefly. (Is it just me, or did her saber hilt vaguely resemble Obi-Wan’s?) Does it make a lot less sense that she would then send Ben away to Luke if she’s had Jedi training? Yes. Can I created headcanons to explain this? Also yes. And do I really care about this particular inconsistency when there are far worse ones out there and this one makes dudebro sections of the fandom spitting mad? NOPE.

--I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not inherently against the redemption of Kylo/Ben. But, as I had suspected/feared, they “redeemed” him at the narrative expense of other characters I personally find more interesting... and they still didn’t manage to make said redemption feel narratively earned to me. Is there undoubtedly ancillary material in SW books and comics that give more background behind Kylo/Ben’s turn to the Dark Side and eventual turn back to the Light? Yes. Do I want to read it? Not really, no. Also, unless something happens onscreen in the SW universe, it doesn’t really count as true canon. So it’s disappointing that the movie shoved other characters and plots to the side to make room for Kylo/Ben’s redemption arc and then didn’t even do a good job with it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

--Also, of course TPTB had Kylo/Ben die saving someone rather than narratively deal with what it means to work towards redemption after having done lots of terrible things, and having to recover from having been manipulated/groomed by Sidious. Not surprised in the slightest.

--I would have preferred a Stormtrooper Rebellion storyline, but I’m not going to blast TROS or the sequel trilogy for being what it is rather than what I wanted it to be. I will, however, blast it for its sloppy execution of its existing storylines. Which leads to my next point...

--Even though TROS was long, it still felt rushed and, like the first two movies in this trilogy, it felt largely disconnected from the other sequel trilogy films. The Star Wars Story Group really should have planned this trilogy out better. If TPTB were going to go with two different directors/writers, they should have made sure said directors/writers were on the same page rather than seemingly fighting each other’s visions of what the overarching story should be at every step.

--I’m willing to handwave a lot of stuff that happens in TROS, mainly because I’m long past expecting coherence from this franchise... or pretty much any major franchise, tbh. (For instance: Thousands of people show up to aid the Resistance when Lando calls them but not when Leia did in TLJ? OK. Force Ghost Luke shows up to catch Rey’s lightsaber but not to help her against Palpatine? Sure.) These issues don’t really make or break the series for me, so I can work with them with a minimum of grumbling. Which isn’t quite the same thing as letting TPTB off the hook for their laziness and inconsistencies.

--Honestly, I hate to say it, but it would have made for a stronger story if Chewie had died aboard the ship when Rey and Kylo/Ben were fighting over it; that would have driven home the consequences of Rey’s lack of control and lessened the artificiality of the stakes in this movie. But I get that this is ultimately a family film, so it’s more of a minor quibble than anything else.

--It’s kind of weird that Rey’s hair is back in the three buns again for the entirety of TROS after she wore her hair differently for almost all of TLJ. But that’s a fairly minor quibble too, and one of the sort I can easily create a headcanon to explain. Actually, come to think of it, I wonder if they didn’t do this at least partially to be able to recycle some of the unused TFA clips with Leia and Rey?

--Frankly, I’m not sure why Rey suddenly cared so much about what Luke thought, considering A. he was a huge jerk to her for most of TLJ, and B. she seemed to have broken with following his advice towards the end of TLJ. And since she didn’t have a great relationship with Luke, it seems weird that she’d take his last name. Shouldn’t she have gone with Organa or even Solo, if she’s naming herself after a mentor? But whatever, I get that it’s about the symbolism more than the character or logic. And I can create headcanons to explain all of this.

--It’s a little weird that there wasn’t any more resolution to Kylo/Ben’s storyline and Rey’s feelings about it after his death. But with Leia dead, I guess there isn’t anyone left who’d especially care if Kylo/Ben turned back to the Light aside from Rey herself. Still, there should have been something more. Especially since Ben didn’t show up as a Force Ghost alongside Luke and Leia on Tatooine.

--While I’m at it, I wish we could have had a minute’s conversation with Rey telling Finn about her heritage, if only because I think he would have understood. But I wish we could have learned more about Finn’s heritage (which didn’t need to be a known SW lineage, btw) too, so...

--For that matter, I wish we could have had Finn get a chance to tell Rey about his being Force Sensitive, which might have made her feel slightly less alone. I wish we could have seen Finn figure out what being Force Sensitive meant to him. And so on.

--Not sure where people are getting the idea that Lando & Jannah were flirting, because I didn’t read their interaction that way at all.

--General Poe and General Finn were great, but also sort of felt unearned after the events of TLJ.

--The abilities that come from being part of a Dyad are overpowered and a little silly, but hey, they’re also following a long-established SW tradition of overpowered silliness, so... *shrugs*

--Confused as to why Rey suddenly killed Kylo/Ben when she did?? I mean, if it was because she was angry Leia had just died, wouldn’t that be acting from the Dark Side and shouldn’t that have, idk, narrative consequences for her?

--I don’t see why some people loved or hated Rey’s ending so much. It’s pretty open, IMO, just like the endings for all of the surviving characters. Who says Rey is going to stay on Tatooine or be alone there, after all? For all we know, she just stopped there for a few days to bury the lightsabers, grieve for Kylo/Ben, and meditate. For all we know, Finn or one of her other friends from the Resistance is going to drop in any moment now. Heck, for all we know, one of her friends is hanging out inside the Falcon where we can’t see them, giving her a little space. (Was her friendship with Finn and Poe depicted pretty shallowly in this movie? Yeah. But so was her relationship with Kylo/Ben tbh, even with the Dyad Force bond thingamajig.) Rey has a whole world of choices available to her. Does it suck that we didn’t get to see that onscreen? Yeah. Does it mean she’s doomed to be eternally lonely as a hermit on a desert planet? Not in the slightest.

--Someone really needs to tell the writers of these big franchises that using ring structure is pointless if there isn’t meaning behind it. There’s nothing inherently significant about repeating events or revisiting locations.

--Overall, I felt pretty meh about TROS. I didn’t love it or hate it. As with any movie in a series, there’s good stuff to be mined from it, and bad stuff to be handwaved away or given headcanon explanations. But mostly, I just can’t dredge up the energy to care very much. And I’m not in the mood for TROS fix-it fanfiction so much as I am TROS crack fics.

--I haven’t talked about everything that worked or didn’t work for me in TROS here, but if you have any questions, I’m always happy to answer them to the best of my abilities!

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mittensmorgul · 5 years

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Look, I know you've covered this already but I just want to reiterate how AWESOME it is that several lines and scenes of s14 were deliberately drawing our attention to the in‐betweens, to the fact that these guys have lives outside of what we seen and that they have significant moments in those off screen lives. I just fricking *love* that.

Hi hi! I know you sent this like a week ago, but I really wanted to have time to sit down and detail all the moments in s14 where they’ve used this device before replying– both for the sake of completeness in demonstrating just how critical they’ve made these “in between” spaces to the overall narrative, as well as for my own general reference purposes. :P

I’ll start by saying that the show has done this on some level from the start. I mean, the entire series begins with a cold open in 1983 before jumping 22 years into the future to begin in the “present day” of October, 2005. We begin our introduction to the story of Supernatural immediately aware that there’s already a metric fuckton of backstory we’re due to have filled in, and we’re primed to begin looking for more pieces to flesh out that history from the moment the first scene airs.

*clenches fist* STORYTELLING

I’m currently in mid-late s7 in my eternal rewatch, and even s7 uses this device MULTIPLE times. I mean, s6 does this, as well, immediately informing us that a year has passed since the events of 5.22, and gradually filling in the missing events from that gap, using Sam’s soullessness and then post-re-ensoulening amnesia about his soulless time, him “scratching the wall” and beginning to piece his own memories together, as one entry point into this “filling in the blanks of the past for full understanding of the present” storytelling device. The other major expression of this device in s6 is Castiel’s story throughout the season, which doesn’t truly begin to fill in all the blanks and answer all the questions until episode TWENTY.

(I am not defending this storytelling choice, because in s6 it served as a metaphorical “punishment,” which is still so skeevy I struggle to watch the season as a whole… in Gamble Era, characters are “punished” for remembering their past– Sam for his guilt over what he did while soulless, and eventually Cas for his hubris in believing he could devour the souls of purgatory without consequences… and again, what I get from Gamble Era overall is an unkindness to all the characters… this Erasure of Identity. For years now, I’ve read this exchange from 6.09 as a bit of an indictment of the story of that era by Ben Edlund:

SAM: So you’re saying having a soul equals suffering.DEAN: Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.SAM: Like, the million times you almost called Lisa. So you’re saying suffering is a good thing.DEAN: I’m saying it’s the only game in town.

but back to the point)

S7 employed this technique in really in-your-face obvious ways, showing us time skips with little montages that cover several weeks in a matter of less than a minute, during which we’re shown the tone of the events of the “missing time” and are being told directly how to fill in those blanks:

7.01 shows this montage through Dean repairing Baby while receiving occasional updates on Sam’s recovery and Cas’s Godstiel rampage.

7.03 gives us a montage of Dean’s healing leg while he’s relegated to the sofa in the cabin watching tv… weeks elapse like this before the action picks up again.

7.10 uses flashbacks as Bobby lays dying to directly show us a fuller snapshot of who he is as a character, and why he’s been so important to Sam and Dean as their adoptive father figure

7.11 uses another “weeks pass” montage to show us Sam and Dean’s grief and their respective ways of handling Bobby’s loss

7.17 uses another flashback montage as Castiel literally rebuilds his identity from these moments… can’t really be more anvilicious than this about the import of filling in the narrative gaps…

But over the years, this has evolved in the narrative from these blatantly obvious tells to something we’re being low-level reminded of in nearly every episode through a constant implicit assumption that these characters have lives outside of what we see on The Magic Rectangle for 42 minutes a week. The show’s gone from literally subtitling these scenes and telling us exactly what we’re seeing to requiring our assumption that all we need to learn how to fill in the blanks is to assume these are actually real people who casually reference things we never knew before from their own lives and assume we know all the characters well enough by now to correctly fill in the blanks they so casually point out to us, or even expand on vast swaths of otherwise “missing time” from what we actively see of their lives from an otherwise minor comment made in passing…

Gosh, ain’t it nice when writers assume their audience is actually intelligent, considerate, engaged, and caring like this? Honestly in this day and age of GOTCHA! oneupsmanship, of authors attempting to demonstrate their intellectual superiority over their audience, it’s rather refreshing.

One more thing before we jump right into s14. Dabb and Company have been “educating” us on how to read these subtextual instructions for years now. We had the Mixtape Revelation in 12.19 that idiotically devolved into fandom arguments over what a mixtape itself was intended to symbolize, with people arguing that the thing itself had no inherent romantic implications (which… wow… but people be dumb sometimes…). I’d argue that regardless of what anyone has convinced themselves the gift meant symbolically (or didn’t mean symbolically for people with their heads shoved so far up their butts they actually made that argument in a public forum with a straight face and actually got mad about folks who actually know better…), what it meant NARRATIVELY was that the original gifting of the tape was something that had happened in the past, that we-the-audience previously had no knowledge of this particular interaction between Dean and Cas, and were being SPECIFICALLY TOLD that even though WE DID NOT SEE IT HAPPEN ON SCREEN, it absolutely, definitely, CANONICALLY ACTUALLY HAPPENED regardless of that fact.

Not only did that unseen exchange canonically happen, it was discussed by Dean and Cas in a casual fashion, as if it was simply one moment in a past filled with moments just like it. In a season where the episodes leading up to this one were filled with comments about Dean and Cas calling each other regularly (conversations that we never see, yet are informed casually happen constantly offscreen), and Dean’s increasing distress over NOT being able to reach Cas for several episodes, it’s impossible NOT to draw the conclusion that this lack of communication is HIGHLY IRREGULAR and therefore SOMETHING WE SHOULD ALL BE CONCERNED ABOUT. We didn’t need to *see* all of this to apply this fact far more broadly to the entire narrative, and understand there were massive gaps between what they could show us in 42 minutes a week versus what the baseline background life is for all of these characters in those between-times.

They doubled down on this in s13, specifically in 13.06, both with the “Dean and Cas regularly watch movies together” comments AND in the casual knowledge Cas shares with Jack about Dean’s sleeping and coffee drinking habits. It’s not just these isolated facts that we’re supposed to take away from these sorts of exchanges, but what they mean in the larger context of their off-camera interactions and relationship as a whole.

So that said, let’s move on to s14, where this has honestly evolved to the next level. The rest of this is going under a cut for now, because the totality of this post is something like 7700 words...

14.01, Stranger in a Strange Land:

The season begins with a montage of Dinkle’s actions over a period of weeks, talking to different people and asking what they want. We don’t see every one of these conversations, but we can extrapolate out from the ones we DO see and infer how all of those experiences guide his subsequent actions (as well as Dean’s subsequent emotional and psychological state later down the road).

But we’re shown one more of those conversations INDIRECTLY, from an offhand comment of another character, where we’re both reminded of Dinkle’s little conversations, AND reminded that they don’t constitute the sum total of those conversations. There is much we haven’t seen (and will NOT see, because this scene renders any additional on-screen time to cover the tone and content of those conversations superfluous and redundant), and yet we still understand the importance and gravity of Dinkle’s entire occupation during those missing weeks:

Kip:You see, recently, I had a revelation. You know, somebody asked me what it was that I wanted. And I realized that after 600 years as a demon walking the planet, destroying, drinking, defiling – you know, the Three D’s – I didn’t know. So, I sat back, and I gave it a good think, and I realized exactly what I wanted.Castiel: And what is it?Kip: Everything.

We also see this from the other side of the narrative– through the progression of events occurring at the Bunker in Dean’s absence. Sam’s despair is conveyed not only in dialogue in his conversation with Mary, it’s conveyed through just how poorly he’s looking after his own wellbeing, not shaving (visual confirmation of his mindset informing us of what his life’s been like over the previous weeks), not eating or sleeping (we’re told, and believe because of how he’s presenting himself, but also emotionally informs us of how he’s been affected by his ordeal), while simultaneously having stepped up to lead the army of AU Hunters– i.e. people from a world where war against Michael has been their lives for more than a decade, and are literally bringing that experience to THIS world, metaphorically going back to the start of their own battle to a world where Michael is only BEGINNING to enact that war on this world, who now have the experience of having survived that war and the knowledge gained while having fought against it, but also a chance to stop it before it can be allowed to start again. Or that is the hope, you know?

We’re also seeing Jack struggle with guilt, with adapting to life without the magical powers he’d been born with, and being forced to confront what is truly important to him, and what his own humanity means to him.

We’re subtly being reminded of VAST quantities of canon upon which the current character developments are resting.

14.02, Gods and Monsters:

There’s a lot of “backtracing” through character arcs in this one, which I’m gonna boil down to the general themes:

Jack seeking out his familial history, seeking out Kelly Kline’s parents to make a personal connection to his mother’s past in order to better understand himself now

Cas relating parts of his own past to Jack (falling and becoming human, not mourning the past he can’t change but finding strength in himself regardless of his current circumstance, and to have patience while his circumstance will change in future) (aside to remind folks that this setup at the beginning of the season is entirely about subverting his words through his own actions throughout the season… with 14.14 being the massive turning point again for both Jack and Cas)

Nick’s setup of beginning to fill in the blanks from his own life after a decade of having lost everything to his possession by Lucifer. He’s got a lot of catching up to do, and a heck of a lot of blanks to fill.

the absolute knowledge that the show is 100% aware of how they’ve trained us to look at the narrative this deeply, using character mirrors, foreshadowing, parallels, etc., and that they’re keen to use this power against us. And it’s up to us to understand the difference between “things being presented to us for the purposes of subversion” and “things being presented to us to fill in narrative blanks.” Like the entirety of Dinkle’s conversations with both Dean and Lydia the vampire. Heck I’m already down to bullet points and I’m gonna need to extrapolate on this one… *sighs*

Let’s start simple, with a couple of quotes:

Michael: Why do you think I dumped your brothers and sisters in plain sight? Why do you think I let you escape?Lydia: You let me escape?Michael: Rule number 1 – you can’t have a trap without bait. That brings us to rule number 2, which says once the trap has been sprung, you don’t need the bait anymore.

and

Dean: Get… out!Michael: I don’t think so.Dean: You can’t!Michael: Oh, but I can. Because, see… I own you. So hang on and enjoy the ride.

Because the first defines and contextualizes the second… Do I really need to elaborate? No? Oh good, then we can move on!

14.03, The Scar:

Again, using the trope of amnesia and memory recovery to illustrate the emotional and psychological impact of “missing time,” if not the entirety of the content of that missing gap. In addition, to Dean recovering his memories and demonstrating his reaction to his own lost time, the two respective cases of the week (Darth Kaia, learning how she came to this universe, and everything she’s endured at Dinkle’s hands also informing further the information we learned in 14.01, and in the bunker Jack and Cas helping heal Lora of a witch’s curse that was literally stealing time from her in the form of her own life energy).

I love demonstrating how “filling narrative gaps from the past” is not only built into the inherent structure of the narrative like this, it’s also the entire purpose of all the character development we’re witnessing, as well as setting the foundation of the entire story going forward.

We had that in spades from Jody, putting in plain words what we all saw happening in 13.10:

Jody: They have a right to know but I can’t. I promised Claire human cases are mine, but anything “monstery” I’d loop her in: this. God. Claire’s been doing so good. I mean anything connected to Kaia, she’s a powder keg. First loves strikes quick, and then to lose it like that. Wow, you two are having a time of it.

Confirming the subtext of Claire and Kaia’s relationship, while simultaneously informing us of what Jody, Claire, et al’s lives have been like since then, filling in a huge narrative gap with just a few innocuous comments. But there’s one more example from within the span of this episode:

Sam: Okay, look, I’m just saying… you said you let Michael in, then, bang you’re back in a blink. But for me? You were gone for weeks. I didn’t know if you were alive. I just need you to talk to me, to slow down so I can catch up.

Sam, defining the narrative gap and begging for information to fill it with. And then at the end of the episode, he gets an answer, but it’s nothing like what he expected or hoped for:

Dean: And it wasn’t a blink, being possessed. I make it sound like that, but it wasn’t. I don’t remember most of what Michael did with me because I was underwater, drowning, and that I remember. I felt every second of it – clawing, fighting for air. I thought I could make it out, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. And now he’s gone and he’s out there putting an army of monsters together and he’s hurting people. And its all on me, man. I said yes. It’s my fault.

And it’s still not really an answer.

14.04, Mint Condition:

Narrative gap reshuffle yahtzee. I’m just gonna give a few links to meta already written for this one, because it’s about the journey, and being informed enough to pay attention to all the sights along the roadside as we go:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179792849870/when-in-doubt-sing-mittensmorgul-i

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/181790806615/questions-and-their-empty-spaces

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179742780230/mittens-help-dean-says-he-loves-hatchet-man

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179734411135/i-love-there-wasnt-any-acknowledgement-about-dean

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179724128520/stuarts-my-best-friend-we-watch-movies-and-eat

(gotta throw in at least one destiel reference…)

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179700702490/hey-mittens-just-wondering-if-you-could-help-me

And because this reading list is already getting long, I just want to use this post to point out how the use of narrative mirrors informs our understanding of those one-off characters through our established understanding of the main characters, enabling those mirror characters to serve their function in the story. Davy was not subtle with pointing that out in this episode, and it’s an essential tool in understanding the bigger picture of the narrative. But it’s also a device in filling narrative gaps by recognizing and applying the subtextual lessons being demonstrated:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/179695858820/a-few-observations-on-the-mirror-characters

So this isn’t just about individual lines at this point, but an entire narrative shift that the writers spent the entire first half of s14 laying out for us through these sorts of storytelling lessons hidden just under the surface of the story itself. Brilliant.

Basically, if you’re NOT making these connections and using your brain to flesh out the entire world pointed at in the narrative gaps, you don’t really have a hope of understanding the bigger story.

14.05, Nightmare Logic:

Aah, the superpowered djinn, 3D walking metaphor for filling in gaps from the past to find wholeness in the present. Also, one of Michael’s “monster traps” he laid out in order to lure in and kill unwary hunters, which he believed (and the monsters themselves believed) made them more powerful, but in reality became the vehicle through which the Winchesters were eventually able to gain the upper hand… they survived the encounter and walked away with new knowledge about both themselves AND Michael’s bigger plans that had been evading them before this episode.

Information fills narrative gaps.

The djinn itself has been “enhanced” from djinn we’ve seen in the past, able to create its illusions in reality rather than only within its victims own minds. What was imaginary becomes tangible. Subtext becomes text.

We also get AU!Bobby’s backstory, which demonstrates that this alternate version of Bobby is really nothing like our original version, and the sum of his life experiences have made him who he is.

We also get another “zombie” reference, which the more I think back on this entire season (and Jack’s long obsession with zombies in general) is an interesting metaphor for this sort of viewing, not engaging with the deeper text and instead shuffling across it without looking deeper. Because pretty much every time someone suggested the monster could be a zombie, it’s definitively shown to be something much more complex once they begin to dig for answers.

(we also have Dean discussing his past, his relationship with his father, and talking about how setting that baggage aside and living in the present, and for the future, is something he’s worked long and hard to achieve for himself. And we’ve seen some of that journey for him, but this was a huge step for him, which will become profoundly more evident in 14.10 and 14.13)

14.06, Optimism:

Oh, we wanted zombie references? Well, alrighty, have some zombie references! Via the entirely self-deluded MotW character, masquerading as a person with a sad backstory of being “unlucky in love” while all the while she’s a necromancer who murdered and resurrected her boyfriend as a mindless zombie she enacts a brutal game with for her own personal pleasure: luring in suitors and letting her zombie boyfriend kill and eat them. Worst honey trap ever.

Speaking of honey, the other MotW is a fly dude who couldn’t find love among his species and exiled himself to live alone among a pile of rotting corpses of his victims. I mean… ew.

But back to our necromancer, who is a lonely librarian, who is surrounded by stories and laments that people in her town aren’t interested in stories. All the while she’s not engaging with her own reality, and has decided that her own version of the story is an accurate reflection of reality (while the rest of us shake our heads in horror because whoa no hon…)

We also learn AU!Charlie’s backstory, with the constant reminders that what Sam keeps mistaking on the surface level for “his Charlie” IS NOT HER. Man, I feel that feel, AU!Charlie.

Jack: What's 'courting?'Dean: It's what you do before you start dating.Jack: Oh, and that's the thing you do before the sex.Wanda: Sometimes you just have the sex.

Yes, Wanda. Sometimes you skip all the courting, all the emotional and interpersonal stuff, and just go right to the sex. But then you tend to just walk away after without any sort of deeper connection having been made. One night stands are fine, but they’re very different things from deep interpersonal relationships.

You can absolutely engage with Supernatural like a one night stand. The story’s fun on the surface, but ultimately the courting is what provides the deep payoff.

14.07, Unhuman Nature:

We get back to the twisted story of Nick, and his quest to understand himself. He’s filling in more of those horrific gaps in his history and getting closer to the Worst Possible Conclusions about himself. He ENJOYED being Lucifer’s vessel, and wants that feeling of power back, even if it wasn’t HIS power, just being the vehicle for that power is enough for him, more important to him than even discovering the truth about himself. At the bottom of himself, he’s just an empty douchebag-shaped vessel for pure evil.

What a fucking delight >.>

Nurse: Uh-huh. Family medical history? Let's start with the father.Dean: He's dead.Nurse: Cause of death?Castiel: He was stabbed through the heart, and he exploded.Dean: Okay, you know what? We don't have time for this. All right, he's sick. His name is Jack Kline. His father exploded. There, you've got all the basics. Now what does he need to do to see a doctor?

Well that simplified the whole “filling in the backstory through the narrative negative spaces” thing in this episode, didn’t it?

Jack: Since I've been alive, everyone assumed that I would be this special 'person' who goes on forever. Only now it looks like forever might be a couple of weeks, so--Dean: We don't know that.Jack: What I do know is I'm done being special. Before my life is over, I want to live it. I just want a chance to get a tan or see a hockey game... get a parking ticket... get bored... and when it's all over -- die.

I mean, isn’t that what all of TFW kind of wants? They want to not be “special.” They want the universe to stop picking on them specifically. They want to just live their lives until they’re done.

Jack: You once told me you and your father did the exact same thing. It was your happiest memory of him.Dean: I didn't say that.Jack: It was how you said it. I could tell. I guess my point is that if I don't make it... The stuff I'd miss -- it wouldn't be things like Tahiti. Or the Taj Mahal. I'd miss more time with you. I'm getting that life isn't all these big, amazing moments. It's time together that matters. Like this.Dean: Well, who'd have thought hanging out with me would make you sentimental?

Dude. Dean. Everyone thought this. You are the king of “family is the most important thing in the universe without which I am nothing.” Talk about Jack filling in that particular blank for you.

14.08, Byzantium:

Aka that one where we discover something important to Jack in his own Heaven-- and it’s literally a missing scene from 13.06 and their road trip to Dodge City where they stop for burgers. UNPROBLEMATIC FAMILY BONDING IS JACK’S HEAVEN. And it also fills in a past narrative gap, specifically from an episode that was structured around filling in narrative gaps. WE’RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, PEOPLE.

We also have the return of Lily Sunder, now grown old since she’d completed her revenge quest against Ishim and the other angels who’d wronged her (including Cas, who literally killed Ishim FOR her). Talk about filling in a lifetime worth of gaps, and her literal near-lack of a soul she “fills in” through one final sacrifice made of love, which earns her redemption and entrance to Heaven.

I mean… those narrative gaps are looking pretty important here right about now.

Also, what’s that other big gap I haven’t mentioned yet? Oh, right! A villain literally known as “The Empty.” I’m sure that’s not meta relevant to the importance of the narrative empty spaces at all...

14.09, The Spear.

Sequel to The Scar (since the spear is what left Dean with the scar in the first place, so we’re back on our Dinkle nonsense again). There’s a lot of blank-filling going on in this episode.

Remember Garth? Well, as he’s reintroduced in this episode it appears as if he’s gone over to the Dark Side, but of course we learn he’s actually there as a deep cover agent for the Winchesters. This tells us they’ve been keeping in close touch with Garth all this time, despite us not having seen him on screen in ages. (FIVE YEARS!)

Remember Ketch? Well, he’s also doing deep cover agency stuff for the Winchesters, but with a level of incompetence that reminds us all that he’s still not one of the good guys, no matter how hard he’s trying, he’s still… falling a bit short. But at least they’re still keeping contact with him. And BOTH of these characters appearing after a while offscreen reminds us that TFW truly aren’t alone in the world, and they DO have this network of people (at varying degrees of competence still ranging from typical bumbling civvie to TFW themselves).

This entire episode was also a massive reference to Die Hard. Just… it was Die Hard: Supernatural. And we know Dean has referenced this movie endlessly. But the funniest thing: Die Hard isn’t actually referenced ONE SINGLE TIME in text in this episode. Nobody points out the similarities between the situation at the Hitomi Plaza at Christmas with Die Hard. Narrative negative space ftw.

And then we have the reveal that Michael had somehow left a “secret back door” open into Dean, and was able to just jump right back into him when it was convenient to do so. I.e., when he was losing the fight to Dean. He had a cheat code at the ready, because his possession of Dean had been operating on cheat code rules since the start in 13.23. His entire possession of Dean was a violation of the “standard rules of angel possession.” Consent of the vessel being primary. Even BAD consent has been enough in the past-- tricking the vessel into saying yes, backing them into a corner. I mean, remember s5 and the horrors Zachariah was willing to go to in order to secure Dean’s yes? Not even manipulation here with this version of Michael. Even if the face of Dean’s abject rejection of his possession, he refused to vacate the premises. Which is an interesting narrative blank to fill in, yes? Angels may have these rules, but for some reason-- is it Michael’s supreme power? Is it the fact Dean is his “destined vessel?” is it a factor of this Michael being from an alternate universe that might operate on different rules? Is it a factor of Dean’s own lack of conviction in his demand that Michael get out? Whatever it is… it is interesting.

We also catch up with Darth Kaia, who after months of balking at the notion, hands over her spear to Dean with the promise that he’ll return it after he kills Michael. It would solve her ongoing problems with the monsters Michael had been relentlessly sending after her. But he also promises to help her find her way back to her own universe. And now we don’t even know if any of that is possible… (aside to say that I’m now crying over the loss of Wayward again, and I feel this lack of resolution here is a damn pointed statement on that from Bobo.)

14.10, Nihilism.

Nihilism being a descriptor of Michael’s basic personality, in this case.

The most long-term relevant narrative negative spaces in this episode are Sam and Cas venturing into Dean’s mind, and literally using what they know about Dean to find where Michael had locked him away. They literally rely on their knowledge of who he is as a person as a map to find him, and then as a codex to actually get through to him and break him out of the illusion Michael had trapped him in. And then they all turn around and weaponize all of that to lock Michael away in Dean’s mind fridge.

Metaphors, anyone?

Meanwhile, Michael literally insists he’s telling everyone the truth about how Dean really feels about them, but it’s all… ALL OF IT… a manipulation and a lie.

(aside to admit that at this point I have been working on this post on and off for the last 12 hours, can barely remember what the point of it even was, and regret everything. I think we were supposed to be discussing Narrative References To Stuff That Happens On Screen, but at this point, that is so deeply intertwined with the narrative structure as a whole that I’m having trouble separating out textual references to offscreen stuff from the actual content of the story as a whole… yes this is already approaching 5k words at this point, and no I don’t care anymore :P)

14.11, Damaged Goods.

Dean is given information (that we have not yet seen) by Billie (again, offscreen) about “the only way to save the universe.”

Disclaimer to note that we STILL haven’t seen exactly what Billie showed Dean in her magical destiny book… which fact in itself can be open to myriad interpretations, because canon itself has shifted from this point in the canonical timeline to what we have actually witnessed unfold, which fundamentally differs between what Billie told Dean and what actually transpired on screen.

This… is major.

Also, Nick, and the effective end of his story… or is it? He’s finally got his personal backstory filled in, and turns out he was just a dick all along! Surprise! Because his “truth” never actually mattered to him. It was all a lie he told himself from the very first moment he was ever introduced on screen back in 5.01. He was never a good person who’d been used by Lucifer and manipulated into doing terrible things. He was always just a bad person who’d been looking for an excuse to do terrible things. Lucifer was just his excuse.

Dean fills in some horrific bits of their childhood for Mary through the metaphor of Winchester Surprise. Apparently delicious to Dean, but yikes… stuff like that’s really not healthy…

14.12, Prophet and Loss:

So, Donatello might not be as brain dead as previously believed! Let’s fill in that backstory, through a broken prophet who can’t be fully realized because Donatello’s technically not dead, so the new guy is getting a distorted message because Donatello’s interrupting the signal.

Dean asked Sam not to tell Cas about his Drama Coffin plan, but of course Sam had immediately told Cas about his drama coffin plan anyway…

CAS: Sam. Maybe if I spoke with Dean…SAM: It wouldn’t matter. Believe me, I-I I’ve never seen him like this. He won’t listen to me. H-He just – No. If we don’t find some way… Dean’s gone.

But then just a little while later, when Dean talks to Cas and learns that Cas knows his entire dumbass plan:

DEAN: Really?SAM: Dean, it’s Cas. I had to tell him.

Well, some time in the previous few hours, when Sam hasn’t been trapped in the car with Dean (which we know he has been canonically), Sam’s first priority was calling Cas to tell him about Dean’s plan. Like… duh…

14.13, Lebanon:

I love this episode on every possible level. It drops us at the climax of a hunt and just trusts us to understand what’s going on. Someone has been murdered for their collection of supernatural artifacts, and it’s been traced to this shop, where the owner trades in dangerous artifacts… all of that happened offscreen, yet we understand the context if not the specific case itself. Beautiful.

Then we have the cursed pearl that apparently grants a wish. Dean uses it to theoretically wish that Michael was out of his head. In monkey’s paw fashion, instead of just granting the wish through the simplest means, the wish actually attempts to rewrite history (this is the sort of thing that differentiates a “cursed object” from a “magical cure”) in order to remove the root infiltration of Michael into Dean’s life… by literally bringing John Winchester into the present time from 2003, removing him from the entire timeline to this point and changing EVERYTHING.

Talk about filling a narrative negative space. Cas doesn’t know them, Dean never went to Hell. Hell, Dean never even went to collect Sam from Stanford. NOTHING from the entire history of the series as we know it actually happened AT ALL.

At least we got to see Zachariah get stabbed again. Sam deserved a turn, you know? :’)

But we also have the other half of the episode-- the case in Lebanon, and seeing the Winchesters through the eyes of the locals. Talk about a HUGE reminder of the things that happen offscreen. They go to the post office, the local shops, and have a weird reputation around town, despite most of the townsfolk accepting their brand of weirdness. It’s… weirdly refreshing, seeing how they’ve gone from “hunters of urban legends” in s1 to “actual urban legends themselves” in s14. The power of storytelling at its finest.

In this case, so many personal blanks were filled in for Mary, Sam, and Dean just by being able to share a single family dinner with John in the aftermath of everything else. In the end, Sam and Dean CHOSE their own lives, and smashed the pearl with John’s blessing, putting everything back the way it was. The most powerful line in this entire episode, to me:

John: Dean. I, uh -- I never meant for this.Dean: Dad, we pulled you here.John: No, son. My fight. It was supposed to end with me, with Yellow Eyes. But now you -- you are a grown man, and I am incredibly proud of you. I guess that I had hoped, eventually, you would... get yourself a normal life, a peaceful life, a family.Dean: I have a family.

HE HAS A FAMILY. :’)

It might not be what John ever imagined for him. Or even what Mary wanted for him when she rejected the hunting life the first time around. But it’s the family Dean earned for himself. The one he CHOSE for himself. And he wouldn’t trade it for anything-- not even for the family he was born into, or a white picket fence he used to think he should have.

And then after this… everything changes… again…

14.14, Ouroboros:

Right. That one where everything changed. Where everything from Billie’s Books of Certain Prophecy to Jack’s soul to Dean’s certainty about… pretty much everything… went up in a swirling whirlpool of burning grace.

Yes, the episode where they burned the spiral narrative structure and were clearly beginning the inevitable run toward endgame. I mean it had been hinted at as a possibility before this, and 14.13 was certainly a product of the inevitability of endgame, but this episode sealed the deal.

They could’ve technically still gotten away with 14.13 as a one-off product of “very special 300th episode” and still continued down the narrative spiral that they’ve been circling for years now, but in retrospect from beyond the rest of s14, this was the official burn point.

So the story shifts radically in very fundamental ways from this point on, and reference to the past become… different. But what happens offscreen in the context of these episodes going forward takes on so much more weight as a result. We’re now “living in the present” with these characters.

We have Sam’s relationship with Rowena, which has clearly developed to the point of casual intimacy. Rowena confronts Sam in ways we’ve never seen before, demonstrating a confidence in their interactions DESPITE Billie’s assertion that Sam will be the one to “kill” her. That has strangely given her a sense of… comfort… with Sam, that’s demonstrated in the fact that they work together through this entire case-- paired off much the way Dean and Cas are.

Again, like in 14.06 and 14.13, we’re dropped into the middle of their case, and only informed that they’ve been tracing this monster through numerous other towns in this episode, requiring us to extrapolate out their entire hunt from discovering there might be a case, to the point where they’ve even brought Rowena onboard to help give them an advantage of a monster that had repeatedly eluded them.

The monster itself has an advantage in that it can literally see the future and escape before they catch him, until they discover the huge gaping hole in what it can actually see-- Cas and Jack are literally invisible to it. He can’t see THEM coming, specifically. The importance of actually reading what we DON’T see. Because if the monster hadn’t been so confident in what it COULD see, he would’ve understood that he was missing a critical piece of information-- the door literally shut itself in his vision of the future and he didn’t bother to stop and question WHY. And it was his downfall.

The narrative is telling us that missing this key gap-filling information is effectively our downfall as viewers.

14.15, Peace of Mind:

Hooray, we’re back to simple “missing scene” levels of text to latch on to, and I don’t have to swim through the whole of the narrative structure to make a comment. Wheeee! (sorry it’s been like 14 hours since I started writing this reply and I’ve achieved Peak Mental Exhaustion for it) :P

Let’s reflect on how all of the characters managed to delude themselves in this episode, and simultaneously approach their own personal concerns without actually talking to each other directly… and then instead focus on this exchange:

Dean: Oh. Hey! How was Arkansas?Sam: Arkansas was, uh It was weird.Dean: Heard you wore a cardigan.Castiel: Yeah, I told him about the cardigan.Sam: Great. Thanks.Dean: And the wife. He said you were, uh, really happy.

Yep. Proof again of offscreen communication happening, in a way I can yell and point at without having to write paragraphs to explain and defend. :P Aah, just like the simpler days of our past… which hey, is also a narrative theme of this episode! Nostalgia!

14.16, Don’t Go In The Woods:

Or, that one where we discuss why we don’t share everything with the general public, while Jack… behaves poorly with the general public, and then hides that fact from Sam and Dean. Also, we have this confirmation of offscreen conversation:

SAM: You got it. I'll grab Cas.DEAN: Mm. He actually left.SAM: What?DEAN: Early this morning.SAM: Why?DEAN: I don't know. Something about being cooped up in the bunker for a few weeks. We all need to stretch our legs. I get it.

Dean… had a whole conversation with Cas… and didn’t even mention it until Sam specifically asked about Cas. Stuff happened offscreen… big important stuff… and we’re only getting a peek at it now. Not only that-- because this will be VITAL to remember two episodes down the road-- they have been cooped up in the bunker “for a few weeks.” In 14.15 ONE EPISODE EARLIER, Dean complained to Sam that he’d been driving them literally from case to case without a break:

Sam: (Sam was in the map room flashing back to Maggie and the other hunters dying. He looked sad as he went to the kitchen) Found us a case. Arkansas.Dean: We've just done three back-to-back Hunts. I need some rest. At least a night. We both do.Sam: Yeah, well I'm leaving in ten.Dean: Like I said, not good.Castiel: Maybe I should go with him. And you can stay with Jack.

So the events of 14.16 are clearly after a hiatus of several weeks. Again, things have happened offscreen, and we’re only learning about them in the absolute most casual statement-in-passing sorts of ways, but these tiny references are pretty earth-shattering.

14.17, Game Night:

The timeline isn’t concrete, but I’ve written in several places that I believe 14.16, and 14.17 flow one into the other, just based on these subtextual sorts of cues-- Dean’s statement in 14.16 that Cas had been feeling cooped up after several weeks in the bunker, the fact that Cas had only LEFT the bunker at the beginning of 14.16 and we only see him reach his destination of talking with Anael now in 14.17 (and how long do we REALLY think it took him to find her and convince her to meet with him? Especially when the events of 14.17 take place over about 36 hours before bleeding directly into 14.18…). So this timeline that I’ve understood presupposes the gap of “several weeks” of being cooped up in the bunker to have elapsed between 14.15 and 14.16 as suddenly resolved itself into all of them willing to spend time in the bunker as a family… except for Cas, who’s on an as-yet unspecified mission.

This episode reinforces those missing scenes, through showing us the very different mission Cas is on, finally addressing the seriousness of Jack’s condition, but also paralleled through Mary’s growing suspicions of Jack that she’ll be unable to ignore by the end of the episode…

Jack even addresses this “but in that scene you didn’t see play out, this important thing happened!” IN TEXT, TO MARY:

Mary: If Sam and Dean saw what you did, they would be as worried as I am.Jack: Are you gonna tell them?Mary: You need help, we'll help you. We're your family.Jack: You can't.Mary: We care about you, Jack.

And now the things that happen offscreen have been lampshaded as being CRITICAL to understanding the whole of the story. And the divide between the two can be fatal...

14.18, Absence.

Literally, the title itself is telling us to be aware of what’s missing.

But we finally get the payoff on the “missing information” about those several weeks spent cooped up in the bunker-- Sam was literally not there. It was Dean and Cas, alone with Jack.

Sam: You know, after Maggie and the other hunters died... I just left. Just dumped Jack on Cas and left.

That happened in 14.14. The other hunters dying. But we KNOW that Sam had not left on his own at that time. He’d dragged Dean and Cas and Jack on three consecutive hunts in the aftermath of that to avoid going back to the bunker, in the run up to 14.15. THIS was the payoff of that “cooped up for weeks” comment in 14.16… because SAM hadn’t been cooped up with them. He’d dumped Jack on everyone and run off on his own after 14.15…

But this episode doesn’t stop there. It takes each character individually and pushes them through memories of the past, of Mary specifically, but those memories do so much narrative heavy lifting I can’t even begin to yell about them here. I’ll just link a post:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184195342200/you-know-when-deans-turns-around-after-that

Wait, I found that post while looking for the one I’d set to to find, but it’s in my Narrative Negative Space tag, so yay? Bonus. This is the one I’d meant to find:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184144189665/drsilverfish-mittensmorgul-mittensmorgul

There. My best thing from s14. And I’ll leave this episode at that.

Oh, and with the reminder that if Dean and Cas had truly still been at odds over Mary’s death, then Dean would not have brought Cas to Mary’s funeral pyre. Period.

14.19, Jack in the Box.

Aka that one we’d all figured out what the big plot thing was just by the on-the-nose nature of the title, months before it aired.

At least the drama coffin got blowed up good?

14.20, Moriah:

The most meta meta to have ever meta’d. There’s not much happening offscreen in this one aside from the entire setup and premise of the episode as a whole. Again, we’re dropped into a hunt and expected to understand the setup, the legwork that’s already been done. We learn that Dean has been in touch with Cas, but they’re investigating different avenues. We see Chuck FINALLY answer Cas’s prayer for help from 14.17, but Chuck’s idea of “help” isn’t helpful in the least.

We understand the fundamental nature of the extent of the personal little lies Sam and Dean tell each other (Thanks for that one, Jack!), and therefore are being asked to reassess which comments from their past were the full, honest truth, and which were the comfortable performance they put on to maintain their own projected self-identities.

And whoa.

It’s now 3 am, and I’ve been working on this post on and off for the last 16 hours. And I am tired, and officially out of mental steam to keep thinking about it. So I’m gonna post it. All 7700 words of it. I hope this helps... :P

#emiliaoagi #spn s14 #revenge of the subtext #the scheherazade of supernatural #the story became the story

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secretlystephaniebrown · 7 years

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Why Rebirth’s Stephanie Brown isn’t the Same as Preboot Stephanie Brown

Hi I’ve got opinions about how the reboot has been handling my girl.

I’ve been enjoying Detective Comics for the most part, but I’ve been frustrated with Stephanie Brown’s role in them for a while. And I think I’ve finally put my finger on it.

Special thanks to @renaroo for all her help finding panels and issue numbers!

Below the cut is 2k of screaming and panels.

Stephanie Brown in the preboot era was a kid with a bad past. Her mom was a drug addict, her dad was abusive and a villain. She lived in poverty for at least chunks of her original run as Spoiler. She dated older guys, one of whom got her pregnant and ran away, and has been implied to be a sexual abuse survivor.

And as Spoiler, her life wasn’t necessarily better. She dated Tim, and they had a pretty decent relationship, but Tim didn’t tell her his secret identity, on orders from Batman. For reasons. (Bruce later told her his identity without Tim’s permission, which… doesn’t really make things better.) From day one, she was an outcast from the family; she regularly got locked out of the Batcave, wasn’t informed about major developments in the family, and Bruce denies her training and resources. She even suspects that this is because of her family life.

(Robin (1993-2009) #100.)

@renaroo and I have talked about this, and a part of Bruce’s reaction to Steph during this time period was clearly based off Bruce’s recent trauma because of Jason’s death. Steph, Cass, and Tim’s relationships with Bruce in the preboot were all tied to that event. Tim stepped up as Robin, providing Bruce with the balance and support that he knew he needed, so Bruce couldn’t really send Tim away. Cass had no secret identity, no life to return to. Bruce looked at her and saw his own morals concentrated, a dedication to the cause that he thought makes Cass an ideal protégé and possible successor down the line. (Not that it ever happened of course because of course it didn’t.) Besides that, Cass was a better fighter than he was, and had been looking after herself for years. Firing her wasn’t very effective, although he certainly tried in the later parts of Cass’s initial Batgirl run.

But Steph?

Steph was none of those things. Bruce didn’t need her, she wasn’t trained and capable like Cass. Instead, everything that Bruce saw when he looked at her probably remindd him of Jason. A mother lost to drug abuse, a father entrenched in crime and violence, a kid from the less great parts of the city. The parallels were right there to Bruce. But Bruce was too late to save Steph from this life, unlike Jason. Instead, Steph had decided to save herself. But he looked at her, and he saw a kid with no training and no experience. And he’d just lost a partner from a background very similar to hers.

He told her to go home. He never really stopped, not until she became Batgirl. (Although they had some amazing bonding moments as well, which I’ll probably make another post about later)

As a result Steph was an outcast for the majority of her run as Spoiler. She got brief flashes of integration and family; she teams up with Cass, works with other heroes like Black Canary, Huntress, and Oracle. She worked with Tim and Bruce as well. But just as often, Bruce did things like forbid Cass to patrol with Steph and the aforementioned locking her out of the Batcave and not telling her that the family was undergoing a MAJOR crisis at the time.)

(Batman: Bruce Wayne: Murderer? Robin (1993-2009) #98 - Yes Bruce was in prison at the time, but you’d have thought that SOMEONE would have thought to tell her he was unavailable.)

The end result of this should happen when she becomes Robin. Steph becoming Robin should have been cathartic; a culmination of Steph’s hard work paying off and Bruce recognizing her place in the family. And it was for a while!!

(Detective Comics (1937-2011) #796. Making me nostalgic for what could have been. Steph with anger issues and a complicated but growing relationship with Bruce? Amazing.)

Instead, it was a cheap stunt by DC. Steph got fired, Steph screwed up by starting a gang war, Steph died. (And then came back in an outrageously OOC manner, but that’s another story.)

We got some of the catharsis of her becoming part of the family in Steph’s run as Batgirl, but it was undermined by a lot of things. To make her Batgirl, Miller began what Tynion and the Nu52 (and later Rebirth) continues to do.

They take away what makes Steph interesting.

Steph’s anger issues were integral to her early character. She canonically went to visit her father in prison to fight him. Her anger was not once touched upon in Miller’s Batgirl. Her status as a teenage mom was similarly erased. Her trauma at the hands of Black Mask was only hinted at once, after Steph was shot in the head, when she saw him in a flashback.

(Batgirl (2009-2011) #6. Don’t worry, this will never come up again.)

And her friendship with Cass, a relationship I would say was defining and important to Steph, was washed away, with Cass not even appearing in Steph’s history of the Bat Family. Steph still had to fight for her acceptance in the family; Babs didn’t want her to be Batgirl, her first ever meeting with Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne was a disaster, and she struggled to find her place. There was still catharsis there; she built a team and support network for herself, and it was wonderful, despite my issues with that run.

Miller also started moving Steph away from her roots with her mom; Crystal in Miller’s run was clean and she and Steph seem to have achieved financial stability. But in the preboot, both of those worked, since we’d seen how far they’ve come. Arthur’s abuse wasn’t directly stated, but his attack on her specifically through Black Mercy mad it pretty clear that there were still elements of abuse present, even if the events Steph had referred to in previous stories weren’t shown.

But Tynion doesn’t have that history to build off, because the Nu52 annihilated Steph’s entire history.

Steph in Batman Eternal is from a perfectly happy middle class background, with her parents already split up and with joint custody. Her dad isn’t abusive (in fact, him being a supervillain appears to be a complete surprise to her), her mom isn’t an addict. She’s never been a teenage mom, and although she starts a relationship with Tim off page, she knows his secret identity from the beginning.

(Batman Eternal #3)

And Bruce accepts her into the fold right away in Detective Comics. As a fan of Steph, the catharsis is there on a meta level; Stephanie Brown is accepted enough by the company to allow her to be in the comic which they named themselves after! What a change from the days when Steph was brutally killed off and then banned from appearing in any medium! But in universe? That catharsis doesn’t exist.

So suddenly, Tynion is faced with a character with many of Steph’s traits; the name, the upbeat attitude, the costume, with none of her history or markings.

(Sidenote: Steph’s anger isn’t completely non-existant in the Nu52/Rebirth era: Selina notes that Steph is angry during Steph’s appearance in Catwoman #42.)

(Catwoman (2011-2016) #42. Thank you for this moment, it’s a balm to my soul.)

Steph’s inclusion by Bruce in this initial team he sets up is a fascinating choice. He’s integrating her into the family from the very beginning of her character arc. This could have been a chance to let Steph grow in new directions; she could have grown closer to Cass and Harper, have Bruce and Kate as mentor figures, and explored her relationship with Tim in new and exciting ways. She could have met Duke and Jason and bonded with them over their similarities.

But instead, Steph and Cass barely interact, Harper’s relegated to cameos and sage advice, and Steph’s character is instead defined solely by her relationship with Tim. She has a few nice moments with Bruce, like the hug I’ve been waiting for ever since I got into comics.

(Detective Comics (2016-) #940. THAT HUG)

But overwhelmingly I’ve been left wanting more, and not in the good way. It’s not satisfying. Steph has some great moments in ‘Tec and even some great lines, just like during her run as Batgirl. But there’s a kind of hollowness there for me, lacking the heart and soul of Stephanie Brown.

Tynion also makes some strange changes with Steph; she loses her snark and attitude that even Miller managed to maintain.

(Robin (1993-2009) #56. Just hanging around, you know.)

(Detective Comics (1937-2011) #796. Poor Bruce has to hang around with snarky teens.)

She’s lacking her relationship with gravity.

(Batgirl (2000-2006) #20.)

She also no longer loves being a hero and doing good, instead having her arc being dedicated to… saying that superheroes shouldn’t exist… while still functioning as a vigilante… (I really don’t like this kind of arc in comics, not going to lie, so I’m predisposed to not be happy here. But I still think this is a RADICAL departure from Steph’s prior characterization.)

(Robin (1993-2009) #100. Here we see Tim planning on retiring, and knowing that Steph is hardly about to stop being a hero.)

It all culminates, of course, in Steph’s departure from the team after Tim’s death. She calls out Batman for his actions, raises some valid points about how he’s not really parenting Cass (which… Tynion continues to ignore, because what, letting Bruce adopt Cass and teaching her to read? Nah, she’s too busy learning Shakespeare and hanging out with Clayface.) And after that moment of awesome she… leaves.

(Detective Comics (2016-) #947)

She becomes the outcast again. But this time it’s her fault.

And it’s so frustrating to me, this idea that Steph’s isolation is her own fault in Rebirth. That Bruce offered Steph a place and a team, but that she rejected it, is so aggravating. Steph’s isolation is supposed to be Bruce Wayne’s mistake which she pays for throughout her superhero career. Steph wants this place with the family, fights for it tooth and nail in the preboot. Now, if Steph had gone through the preboot arc, fighting for this, trying to earn it, and then turning away from it out of frustration with Bruce? I’d have been willing to listen, and might have even been excited for it.

(Detective Comics (2016-) #957. This is just such a departure from preboot Steph that it boggles my mind.)

But this is a Stephanie Brown who has not been a hero for long. This is Stephanie Brown, who is about the age preboot Steph was when she became Robin, new and inexperienced (meanwhile Tim is exactly where he was in his own timeline when Steph was Batgirl, a frustrating process that’s also familiar.) Steph is younger than she was in preboot and less competent. So are Barbara Gordon and Cass. The Batboys have gotten to grow up and improve. The Batgirls were forced backwards in both age and ability, and yet were older when they started their superhero careers, making them inherently less experienced then their male counterparts.

Part of it is, of course, DC’s refusal to let the Batgirls move forward in the status quo. Babs can’t become Oracle again, Cass can’t become Batgirl, and Steph can’t be Robin or Batgirl. The Batgirls (and Harper) are all now around the same age, and their relationships have been completely and utterly decimated by the retcons and reboots. Steph and Cass aren’t best friends, Babs isn’t a mentor to either Steph or Cass. Steph’s relationship with Bruce is no longer the complicated beast that it was pre-Flashpoint, she still hasn’t met Damian and established their bond, and her first interaction with Dick was an aggravatingly airheaded “kiss me sexy Batman”.

(Batman and Robin Eternal #2. Just. Why.)

And her relationship with Tim is lacking some of the most interesting elements; the drama of Steph’s history and Bruce’s disapproval. But despite its blandness, it continues to be the front and center of Steph’s arc. It’s what drives her away from the others and causes her to isolate herself. Steph functions as a manic-pixie figure to Tim, encouraging him to live his dream, while still being the goofy and funny partner he needs, with her primary motivation being his death.

Her goofiness and mourning are both clearly about to pay off in a manner which I am terrified about. In Detective Comics, Anarchy clones Steph’s phone. A phone which, it was shown in the previous issue, to contain information which could compromise Tim (and by extension everyone’s secret identities).

(Detective Comics (2016-) #963. Oh look and Tim even told her it would be a bad idea! Haha, how funny!)

(Detective Comics (2016-) #964)

We could be about to witness War Games, reboot version.

But this time, there will be no one to blame but Stephanie Brown. She chose to isolate herself, she was sloppy with her phone’s security, and she was fooled by Anarchy.

If Tynion does what I’m scared he’s going to do, we’re looking at some next level bullshit.

I live in fear.

#Stephanie Brown #DC #Detective Comics #Steph Reads Comics #DC Rebirth #Steph vs The Bat Fam #Steph Writes Steph (Brown) Meta

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multiverseforger · 3 years

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Jean-Paul Valley, a university graduate student of computer science in Gotham City, is unaware that he is the latest in a line of assassin-enforcers for "The Sacred Order of Saint Dumas", a sinister religious secret society. For most of his life, he has been brainwashed with The System, a deep level of psychological conditioning.[6]

Valley only learned of his new status upon the death of his father, who was also his predecessor, at which time his conditioning was activated and he was called upon to take up the mantle of Azrael.[7] When he was sent by the Order to kill weapons dealer Carlton LeHah, a rogue member of the Order who turned against the others and killed Valley's father, he crossed paths with Batman, who had been investigating the death. He worked with Alfred Pennyworth to find LeHah after he had captured Bruce Wayne, using the Batman costume to kill the other Order members. Valley worked with Alfred, demonstrating a detective's intuition in tracking LeHah's movements and later risking himself to rescue Bruce despite his traditional mission of vengeance. In doing so, he was shown the error of his ways and decided to fight alongside Batman against the criminals of Gotham, rejecting his "birthright" and seeking Batman's help in breaking his conditioning to forge his own destiny.

His name is not revealed to Alfred and Bruce until the end of the story, at which point he claims it also was his father's name (a later storyline in his solo series stated his father's name to be Ludovic Valley, however).[8]

Valley is given a job as a security guard at WayneTech headquarters, and also becomes an apprentice crimefighter alongside Batman and Robin, learning basic detective work.

Valley plays a pivotal role in the Knightfall story arc (1993–1994), in which he stands in as Batman after Bruce Wayne is defeated and paralyzed at the hands of Bane. He decides that Bruce's tactics as Batman are obsolete and believes that he must fight criminals on their terms which makes him far more brutal and merciless, often even showing little regard for innocent bystanders. Against Bruce Wayne's orders, Valley fights and defeats Bane, wearing enhanced battle-armor he designed and built under the influence of the System after he was narrowly defeated by Bane in their first confrontation.[9] His performance as Batman is influenced by his Azrael conditioning. He grows increasingly violent and delusional, allowing the mass murderer Abattoir to fall to his death, thereby also allowing one of Abattoir's still-living hostages to die.[10] Valley also has control problems with Tim Drake's partnership, emphasized when Valley almost strangles him to death and bans him from the Batcave. He seals off the Batcave from Wayne Manor and the Drake property, and eschews working with Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham police. Valley also suffers from continuous hallucinations of both his father and St. Dumas who tell him that he is the real Batman and that he must avenge his father's death (having convinced himself that Lehah was just the man who instigated his father's death while one of the man's former henchmen actually pulled the trigger).

Initially, Wayne is impressed enough with Valley's results to let him remain as Batman, but when Drake tells Wayne of Abattoir's death, he resolves to reclaim the Batman mantle. With his back repaired thanks to the sacrifice of psychic healer Doctor Shondra Kinsolving, and his fighting instincts rehabilitated after lessons with Lady Shiva, Wayne goes after Valley to reclaim his identity. After a prolonged battle that stretches from a Gotham penthouse to a major bridge before culminating in a final showdown in the Batcave, Bruce tricks Valley into removing his armor, excluding his helmet (with night-vision lenses engaged), and exposes him to bright sunlight - the shock snaps Valley out of his delusional state. Acknowledging Bruce Wayne as the true Batman, Valley apologizes and asks for his forgiveness, which Bruce accepts, recognizing his own role in Valley's descent into madness during his time as Batman, but tells Valley to leave Wayne Manor immediately.[8]

Valley lives among the homeless population of Gotham for several weeks, befriending an alcoholic former psychiatrist named Brian Bryan.

Valley is then sought out by Bruce Wayne, who feels responsible for his mental breakdown after attaining and losing the mantle of Batman. Bruce grants him a small fortune in money, information on the Order of St. Dumas' whereabouts, and resources to explore his origins. Along with Bryan, he discovers the evil conspiracies within the order of St. Dumas, and they help a nun named Sister Lilhy escape. With the help of Ra's al Ghul, Valley discovers that he is a genetically engineered test tube baby, and his genes have been spliced with those of animals.

He returns to Gotham for several crossover events, including Underworld Unleashed, Contagion, Legacy, and Cataclysm. He also discovers that his father's killer, Carlton LeHah, is still alive. Valley attempts to regain Batman's trust after the events of the KnightsEnd arc. Batman, who feels responsible for Valley, especially after realizing that he gave him very little training and support, decides to give Azrael missions to carry out as a test to prove himself. The first of these missions is to defeat a resurfaced Bane, but it is not until Azrael saves the lives of a group of U.S. Senators (one of which tries to plead to Congress for the funds to rebuild Gotham City after its devastating earthquake) that Batman begins to fully trust him again. Prior to those events, Batman sent Azrael after Nicholas Scratch, who was planning to kill another Senator who also wanted federal money to save Gotham City. While pursuing Scratch, Azrael was framed for the Senator's murder after he was strangled to death moments before Azrael arrived to save him.

After being framed, Azrael is given a new costume designed by Batman and uses it for a time, especially during the No Man's Land story arc. Azrael helps Batman maintain a chaotic Gotham City, often with the assistance of the new Batgirl, and protects Leslie Thompkins' medical clinic inside of No Man's Land. After foiling Scratch's plan of framing him for murder, Azrael returns to his original costume and battles hallucinations that represent both his father and St. Dumas himself. Toward the end of the series, Azrael is plagued by supernatural occurrences in the form of possible miracles.

Azrael is seemingly killed in the series' final issue, shot with two specially-coated bullets while battling Scratch and LeHah. Scratch is arrested, and LeHah falls into the river with Azrael. However, Azrael's body is never recovered,[8] and his death went unconfirmed for several years. In Booster Gold (vol. 2) #10, a note can be seen written on time traveler Rip Hunter's chalk board reading "Jean-Paul Valley Lives!" In the following issue, another note says, "Azrael comes and goes." Azrael appears in Blackest Night #4 as an undead member of the Black Lantern Corps; although at first it had not been confirmed whether it was Jean-Paul Valley or another Azrael (such as Ludovic Valley, who died in Gotham City). The index section of the Blackest Night tabloid later indicated that it was in fact Jean-Paul.[11]

Jean-Paul Valley makes a cameo at Batman's funeral service in Neil Gaiman's 2009 story Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? He is seen stepping up to deliver his own version of Batman's death as a background event, however his story is unseen and he has no lines. The story is metaphysical in nature, not affecting the overall status of the canon or Azrael's fate.

The New 52Edit

In September 2011, The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity. In this new timeline, Jean-Paul Valley reappeared as Azrael in an arc of Batman & Robin: Eternal. His design was updated, with his main weapon being his sword rather than gauntlets (although he was later shown to still possess the gauntlet blades). His character, however, was essentially the same, working as an enforcer for the Order of St. Dumas. In the comic, he defeated Bane and eventually turned on his handler and the Order to assist Red Hood and Tim Drake. This marked the first proper appearance of a living Jean-Paul Valley in the DCU in over a dozen years, with previous appearances relegated to either minimal cameos or the aforementioned Black Lantern revival of the character.[12]

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eydaman · 7 years

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Team SSSN

Ok tbh I don't really care about team sssn, wether or not thats because we never see them is another topic, but even I can admit it getting ridculous. Like, I like Sun, I really fucking do, but this guy is never with his team. And he's the LEADER of it!!

In volume 1 when he's by himself, okay that's fine whatever. In volume 2, when they introduced Neptune I thought they would introduce the whole Team, but nope they didn't. But still I didn't care. When in Volume 3 Scarlet and Sage appear for one fight, and then relegated to background I was kinda disappointed. But it was still okay. In volume 4, kinda mad when Sun just waved away the fact that he's never with his Team, but again whatever.

So, if you read all that you're probably wondering, "If you're okay with it during RWBY, why are you so mad?" The reason I'm mad is because RWBY fucking Chibi. Yes, the show made mainly for comedy, made me angry about the lack of screen time of Sage and Scarlet. I was okay for it in season one, because in truth the show didn't really even show Sun and Neptune so it was fine then (Hell it didn't feature Penny). But then season 2 rolled around, you know the season all about introducing brand new characters (Ozpin, Qrow, Taiyang, the teachers, Winter, the fucking ghost grimm) so surely I thought Sage and Scarlet would appear. Especially since, Sun and Neptune were in basically every fucking episode. Let me remind you that Sage and Scarlet have appeared in RWBY, and that they are the other half of the team of Sun and Neptune. But no, after 22 episodes of rwby chibi, (the season that had the fucking Grimm be side characters in) Sage and Scarlet did not appear in it. Which again is so strange considering the fact that they are the second HALF OF SUN'S TEAM!!! Like the fact that we know basically nothing about them 4 volumes in and have not seen them in chibi is ridiculous. Like, what was the point in having Sun be a leader if he's never on his team.

But the real reason I made this was because of the episode 22 of rwby chibi battle of the bands. Why so specific, well because the thumbnail for that is Sun, Neptune, Ren, and Jaune doing a boy band pose. And why does that make me mad? Because team SSSN design, are all based off FUCKING BOY BANDS MEMBERS!!! All of them, all of team SSSN designs are based on Kpops members. And yet the episode about bands, the episode where the design of the whole team would be perfect, feature only half of team SSSN with the other half lost and forgotten.

TLDR: Just fucking show me the entirety of team SSSN interacting as a whole team.

#rwby #rwde #sun wukong #neptune vasilias #sage #scarlet

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dragoplateau · 7 years

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issues with steven universe

since I’ve received quite a few messages asking what I think about Steven Universe now or whether or not I think it’s still worth watching, I decided to air out the things that have disappointed me or struck me as (varying degrees of) problematic about the series.

re-bubbling Bismuth was a disastrous decision on every level, undermining the series’s narrative, thematic, and sociopolitical integrity. as it is, several others have detailed just how the crew’s choices to 1) villainize Bismuth for inventing the Breaking Point to use against Homeworld, 2) have her react to Rose’s and Steven’s refusals to use it with killing violence, and 3) imprison her for it were disgustingly antiblack and part-and-parcel of that myopic neoliberal “don’t fight hate with hate” ideology...so I will acknowledge that without going over it again. what I will say is that:

Rose was the revolutionary leader of an armed insurrection; clearly she wasn’t opposed to violent methods or the possibility of killing other gems. her decision to bubble Bismuth (and keep her bubbled) becomes especially and hypocritically cruel in light of her later decision to kill Pink Diamond in order to liberate Earth. even though Steven recently “called out” (or at least signaled that he’s aware of) Rose’s cruel hypocrisy toward Bismuth in “Storm in the Room,” his failure to to free Bismuth again after learning about Rose’s actions speaks volumes. likewise, the fact that Pearl and Garnet knew that Rose shattered Pink Diamond, yet did not think to challenge Steven’s decision to re-bubble Bismuth for her methods was also a huge oversight.

and no. before you say that Steven, Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl decided to re-bubble Bismuth because she tried to kill Steven in The Forge, let me remind you that “attempting to kill Steven” is not an automatic marker that the character in question is irredeemable: Lapis nearly drowned Steven and Connie; Peridot tried to crush Steven in “Marble Madness” and later tried to kill all four of the Crystal Gems in “Friend Ship.” Peridot was bubbled for all of a few hours before Steven freed her, and the gems accepted that easily enough.

in any case, violent methods were never the breaking point between Bismuth and Rose. here is the most irreconcilable difference between Bismuth and Rose as I understand it: Bismuth always intended to take the rebellion back to Homeworld and liberate gemkind from the diamonds’ oppressive rule; Rose, on the other hand, was content to remain on Earth after the rebellion, leaving the diamonds in control of Homeworld and the empire.

Bismuth embodied so many possibilities for the show: fundamental shakeup of the Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl...and Steven!!! (and sometimes Peridot, Lapis, and Connie!) format of the show by becoming a main cast member and crystal gem; ethical tension to liberate all gems; new character development pair-partner with Garnet and Pearl; interpersonal tension with Lapis, who Bismuth was responsible for poofing during the rebellion; an alternative, more critical perspective on Rose Quartz...

...but her potential has been squandered, to put it lightly. and those decisions haven’t sat right with me ever since.

it’s also not that Bismuth marks the first time that the show unintentionally perpetuated antiblackness or racism. the series’s treatment of Sugilite, Garnet’s relegation to the strong black woman trope when dealing with people like Andy, or the very, very unfortunate decision to have Pearl work out her issues with self-worth by teaching Connie, a brown girl, that she isn’t worth anything compared to Steven all come to mind. of course, it was the series’s willingness to offset these moments by depicting Garnet as being emotional and needing support and relationships of her own and having Pearl called out in the very same episode that made those moments more palatable than the usual, run-of-the-mill antiblackness/racism on most other forms of media.

Bismuth, however, has yet to be addressed. so, in combination with all those other moments, it’s left a very sour taste in my mouth.

failing to create a credible mid-stage adversary for the Crystal Gems to face.

post-“Jail Break,” Peridot filled this role (badly...but, as I understood it, that was part of the appeal--Peridot’s incompetence and relative benignity as an antagonist were the foundation for her redemption arc. keep in mind that the narrative threat during Week of Sardonyx was always the conflict that Pearl caused by deceiving and using Garnet in “Cry for Help,” never Peridot. during the reconciliation scene in “Friend Ship,” the tension stemmed from whether Pearl could finally understand and acknowledge how she had disrespected and hurt Garnet...not the trap Peridot was using to try and destroy them.)

the specters of Yellow Diamond and the cluster rose during Peridot’s redemption arc, but they have both remained specters for the most part. aside from speaking authoritatively to Peridot, Yellow Diamond has remained in the background.

then Malachite ostensibly returned to fill this role...but was quickly dispatched the very same episode by Alexandrite. the cluster was never an antagonist as much as a horrible, anguished victim of Homeworld’s brutality that needed to be helped.

after “Super Watermelon Island,” Jasper and the rubies filled this role...but badly. and while, again, part of that was the appeal/novelty of meeting so many rubies, the same can’t be said for Jasper (more on that in the next section).

the problem, I think, has to do with the crewniverse’s attachment to the Beach City setting and “status quo” of being able to rely on the slice-of-life formula whenever they like. because if they really brought Yellow Diamond to the fore as the main antagonist, then Homeworld comes with her--and if that happens, then there’s no way that the Crystal Gems won’t be overwhelmed, even with Lapis and Peridot supporting them.

remember, one hand-ship and one quartz soldier soundly defeated and overwhelmed the Crystal Gems in “The Return.” in the event of a full-scale invasion, the series couldn’t reasonably continue in the vein it has since its premiere.

if the conflict with Homeworld is going to be treated with the gravitas it deserves (by the crewniverse’s own making: they’ve built up Homeworld and the diamonds as this overwhelming, superior force time and time again), then Steven Universe will probably have to shift and mimic the structure of a series like Avatar: The Last Airbender, wherein the vastly outnumbered Crystal Gems are forced to stay on the move, traveling from place-to-place, picking their battles, gathering and helping allies where they can, and dealing with an Earth occupied by Homeworld.

which, honestly? would be a really welcome change at this point.

making post-“Super Watermelon Island” Jasper so unthreatening.

I don’t know about you all, but I was horrified the first time I watched “The Return.”

Jasper pretty much overwhelmed Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and Steven on her own. her and Peridot’s ship effortlessly resisted Rose’s laser light cannons.

but the real fear I felt when Jasper effortlessly forced Garnet apart and headbutted Steven in “The Return” seems silly in retrospect now that Stevonnie and Smoky Quartz--very young or newborn gem fusions that cannot hold a candle to Garnet’s wisdom and experience--have defeated Jasper so easily.

whereas Jasper caught Garnet by surprise with the gem destabilizer during “The Return,” Garnet was prepared to fight Jasper in “Jail Break”...and still took something of a beating. Garnet’s victory in “Jail Break” was more a product of her experience and cleverness than brute strength, a category in which Jasper is superior to most living gems--and some gem fusions!--we’ve met.

to give an indication: Jasper, as a quartz, is the closest indicator we have to Rose’s strength. as in, Jasper and Rose were probably roughly as powerful as one another and would have been evenly matched had they ever fought.

Stevonnie, with Steven’s increasingly confident control over his gem powers and Connie’s swordfighting skills and Rose’s sword, kind of approaches the vicinity of Rose’s prowess--in fact, the entire sequence with Amethyst, the memory of Rose, and Stevonnie in “Crack the Whip” demonstrates as much. Amethyst remembers Rose’s words to her immediately before Jasper poofs her, and reforms quickly to save them. but when she does, Amethyst looks on in awe and shock at Stevonnie, wielding Rose’s sword and standing alongside Lion with their back turned to Amethyst, facing down a winded Jasper as their hair billows rather dramatically in the breeze and a piano theme plays...all of which, I think, invokes Rose.

all of which is to say: I think Stevonnie could, someday, either match or even defeat Jasper. but that’s the thing--someday. the crewniverse didn’t really “earn” Stevonnie’s victory over Jasper, especially since the battle was so one-sided in Stevonnie’s favor.

because, yes, while Stevonnie is now approaching Rose’s skills, they do not match her, Garnet’s, or Pearl’s level of experience. it’s crucial to keep in mind that Rose, Garnet, Pearl, and Jasper are all war veterans; while Steven and Connie had been training hard with Pearl prior to “Crack the Whip,” they don’t have the wisdom or experience that Garnet relied on to outsmart Jasper in “Jail Break.”

all of this to say is that this and other decisions reduced Jasper to an unthreatening, almost pathetic antagonist: Lapis effortlessly water-punches back into the ocean; Stevonnie effortlessly forces her to retreat; Smoky Quartz forms for the first time and defeats Jasper and Jasper’s fusion with the corrupted gem easily. I recognize that Jasper was arguably fighting both these opponents and herself (due to her self-hatred), but...still. come on. watching her get handed defeat after defeat has just been plain disrespectful to Jasper herself, Garnet, and “The Return/Jail Break.”

all I’m saying is that Jasper deserves better, as an antagonist.

glossing over Lapis’s trauma recovery, mostly by shunting it onto offscreen Camp Pining Hearts-watching and meep morp-making with Peridot.

Lapis and Peridot’s friendship can be heartwarming, but its quick development seems jarring when it’s Steven with whom Lapis had her most significant, trusting, and supportive relationship. it’s great that Lapis and Peridot are close and that Peridot has been so supportive of Lapis, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable that 1) the series earn the creation of this friendship over a long(er), significant period of time, and 2) it not be used to replace the work we need to see done with their other relationships.

it’s great to see Lapis happy, and it’s great to hear that she’s finally starting to love Earth...but--and I think this is a persistent issue of the series--it’s unsatisfying to devote just one (1) or maximum three (3), maybe four (4) episodes focusing on a character’s issues, then having them declare that they’ve resolved that issue after ten or twelve episodes that don’t focus on them. this is the kind of writing that Lapis’s trauma recovery has been subjected to, and that Amethyst’s identity crisis has been subjected to, albeit to a different extent (more on this later).

it’s not like the crewniverse can’t pull off this kind of writing. in fact, they’re at their best with that kind of writing when it has to do with Pearl: Pearl’s relationship with Rose, Pearl’s relationship with Amethyst, Pearl’s relationship with Greg, Pearl’s relationship with Garnet, Pearl’s self-worth, and so on. several episodes have been dedicated to working out Pearl’s issues and relationships, and many of them still haven’t been wholly resolved! but that’s why it’s so rewarding to see her express interest in Mystery Girl, or hand Amethyst a tea bag after serving Greg some tea, or grow in confidence.

not every episode needs to end with a happy resolution, especially when it’s forced. in fact, some long-standing issues--like Lapis’s trauma, Pearl’s grief, or Amethyst’s backstory--feel disrespected if they’re resolved in the space of a single episode. but even if an episode does end with a hard-fought happy moment of growth for the characters, that doesn’t absolve the writers of writing those characters with consistency and attention to detail with respect to where they’ve been.

Pearl has long benefited from this kind of writing, and I think it’s high time that Lapis, Amethyst, and Garnet start receiving similar consideration.

(honestly, this is why a lot of us complain about episodes focusing on side characters like Ronaldo, Lars, or the other Beach City characters. it’s not that those episodes aren’t nice or worthy of being made, but that they are seen as taking up space that should be devoted to the main or main supporting characters. it shouldn’t have to be either-or, however....)

ignoring Garnet as her own character.

that Garnet might be reduced to “Ruby and Sapphire making out” has been a persistent concern of many of her fans since “Jail Break” revealed that she is a gem fusion.

while Garnet is Ruby and Sapphire, she is also her own being. therefore, it’s not unreasonable to expect that Garnet should receive more character development and character-focused writing that focus on her and her relationships, apart from Ruby and Sapphire.

unfortunately, those Garnet-focused episodes have been in short supply of late. the last Garnet-focused episode I can remember is either “Friend Ship” or “Log Date 7 15 2,” the former of which she shared with Pearl as part of Week of Sardonyx and the latter of which she shared with Peridot.

since “Hit the Diamond,” all Garnet-focused episodes have featured Ruby and Sapphire in some way--and featured them in such a way that Ruby and Sapphire have been focused on more significantly than Garnet herself.

now, I’m not saying that Ruby and Sapphire shouldn’t appear in the series at all--I love them and their relationship, so I’m always happy to see them make appearances apart from Garnet. however, what upsets me is that Ruby and Sapphire have largely replaced Garnet as a character in her own right. and that’s not okay.

ignoring Amethyst.

Amethyst’s backstory thematizes heavy, complex, and nuanced elements that resemble the experiences of children who are the products of wartime imperialism and sexual assault. as an Earthborn Kindergarten gem raised by the Crystal Gems, Amethyst grew up believing that Homeworld was wrong for colonizing the planet and creating gems like her at the expense of the Earth’s vitality--which has led her to believe that she herself may be wrong. “On the Run” touched on these facets of Amethyst’s character beautifully.

however, since “On the Run,” “Maximum Capacity,” and “Reformed,” relatively little attention has been paid to Amethyst...which was why it was such a relief to watch “Crack the Whip,” “Steven vs. Amethyst,” “Beta,” and “Earthlings”--an honest-to-goodness Amethyst arc as the main narrative focus of the series!

I generally have positive feelings about this arc of Amethyst’s. I guess I only want to express my caution about having “resolved” her issues with the formation of Smoky Quartz. I think that, if/when Jasper is healed and returns, Amethyst has been set up to continue her arc with Jasper...but I don’t think we should have to wait until Steven finds a way to cure gem corruption to see time and care get devoted to Amethyst again. because she deserves it.

Andy DeMayo, "Gem Harvest,” and the uncritical toleration and rehabilitation of the “racist, homophobic, xenophobic uncle” at the expense of poc/queer/immigrant-coded family members and characters like the gems, who continuously take his derogatory speech without batting an eyelash--particularly in the political situation we’re in now in the U.S..

enough said.

look. I still love Steven Universe, and I still keep up with it. that said, I’ve been keeping up with it much less enthusiastically ever since I watched “Bismuth,” and I think it would be a disservice not to point out or critique the things the series has mishandled or is not doing enough of.

#su woes #steven universe #some other issues that haven't made the cut:#steven's inconsistent writing wrt his destiny and selective lack of empathy (like with the humans in the zoo)#and the handling of greg and pearl's conflict...specifically in resolving it so that pearl takes all the blame and greg and rose take none.#rape mention

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