Glad you liked the submission, as I have more on the Aware of Abuse AU!

I think it would be really interesting to reflect on how this situation would be kind of a drawn out grapple for Marinette. This is in no way salt and I think if it was written she'd both warrant having hear grievances hear, but also could definitely come off as a bit antagonistic, or at least wary.

(Exactly how hostile she defaulted to with Chloe tended to oscillate episode to episode so ya know how it be)

Marinette would have the easiest time getting close with Kagami. She has no history like with Chloe & no baggage, IE friendship with Chloe, like Adrien. Tomoe is not someone Marinette admires and its much easier to see abuse in the physicals side. While she'd struggle to see it more in the verbal or negligence side; or otherwise be able to rationalize the negative behaviors such as over protectiveness.

Meanwhile Adrien would be tied a lot closer to Chloe going into school as she'd be being less overtly antagonistic or vain. Plus, they'd have a much stronger "We need each other to keep from falling back into old patterns and to survive" mentality.

Plus Adrien would be a bit more overtly snarky and less respectful to authority or stuff like Gabriel's fashion shows. He still is very nice and super wants to be liked by everyone all the time, but it'd be a lot easier for her to see the negatives in his behavior.

Chloe meanwhile would probably rankle and outright frustrate her the most. Not just because she'd still be hard to get along with in general, or because she still is not against ignoring rules or disrespecting authority figures. But because...

No clue what your religious views may or may not be, but have you heard those talks of "Catholic guilt" and the idea of needing to suffer, do penance, ETC before one can be redeemed?

Marinette wouldn't strictly think or want that, but there would be a part of her that would sort of... Well resent that Chloe is seemingly just choosing to change and not even necessarily enough.

That is to say, Chloe might still rudely reject Sabrina's cookies out of hand but then instantly walk it back and have some.

But more in that she's suffered no defeat, she's not been taken from her previous luxurious circumstances, she hasn't seemingly lost anything and even more she'd not even be overtly contrite.

That is to say, Chloe wouldn't be doing stuff akin to the Lady Luck AU (Nothing against it, great fic!) where she'd frequently reflect on how much of a 'fuck up' she was. Or or say stuff like, "I know I was a bitch but I am trying to be better". Or feel guilt in the "I can't even be mad they assume the worst of me cos I probably would have done X."

She's just choosing to be different and on some level its deeply unsatisfying and even frustrating.

(Where is the arc, the climax, the catharsis!?)

Especially if some people roll with it or let her get away with it when she starts falling into old habits.

Marinette doesn't want Chloe to suffer or beg forgiveness or hate herself she doesn't. She just doesn't understand why now? Why at all? Why because of her friend? Why because of how she was treated and not how she treated others?

Why couldn't she care enough about hurting Marinette to change!?

That I think would be the lynch-pin and one that is, from Marinette's perspective, as well as others in and out of universe entirely sympathetic, she was hurt after all.

But in that same vain Chloe's an abused child lashing out due to trauma and taught such terrible lessons she sometimes couldn't process that she wasn't doing 'right'.

Marinette's been hurt, and that would need to be properly addressed. But it wouldn't need to happen in a self recriminating manner necessarily.

Not that I don't love those, self hating characters rife with issues are fun to explore. It is just that I think it'd be interesting to explore both, changing as a person, and a "Bad" victim getting help before they actually even start processing over much how others might warrant reoperations.

Does that make sense?

The story "restorative Justice" sort of dips into this from a different middle ground angle and most stuff by Generalluxun often have elements of it too.

Oh yeah no it's.

Marinette doesn't understand why Chloé is Like That™ in the first place, so she can't fathom her wanting to change.

From Mari's perspective, Chloé's life is pretty perfect. She's beautiful, she's rich. She can do whatever she wants whenever she wants and always gets her way through money or influence. She's always bragging about how she's so much better than everyone. Clearly her parents must adore her because they spoil her with gifts and never tell her 'no'. Any 'hardships' are just minor inconveniences that Chloé brought upon herself by being mean.

So why would Chloé choose to change? If it's not broke, don't fix it. Chloé's life is Perfect™, why would she do something to make it different?

It's not that she wants Chloé to suffer, or thinks that she /should/ suffer. She just doesn't understand why someone with a Perfect Life™ would change without going through some kind of suffering that forces introspection.

don't think or talk about gojo for one (1) day challenge (FAILED)

Okay. My thoughts on the Our Flag Means Death finale. Obviously I'm not very happy with the ending, though I'm also not as upset as some people are. I would say I'm discontent. Unsatisfied. Too aware of how it could have been improved, and a bit bitter that we didn't get a better version, but I also don't hate what we did get.

I know a lot of meta has attributed the problems to a shorter season, and absolutely I would have loved to get 10 episodes instead. I would have loved 22 episodes! Why don't we do that anymore? But I don't think the 8 episode length was the ultimate problem. A) The showrunner and writers knew they had only 8 episodes, so they needed to choose a story that fit into that length, but even more importantly, B) my problem is not that they had too much story for too little time, but actually that they had plenty of time and chose to fill it with too little story.

As I've sat with it over the last few days and thought more about the season's arc, it feels to me like we got eight episodes of filler. Filler episodes can be great! Filler episodes can have some of the funniest lines, the greatest scenes, the most intriguing ideas. But filler episodes do not progress character arcs or major themes, and that's exactly the problem this season had.

The only characters who got arcs this season are Izzy, and to a lesser and more rushed extent, Lucius. Which sure is a choice.

Ed and Stede and their relationship did not meaningfully change from S1. (Okay, yes, they had sex, they said I Love You – but these are external changes, not internal. They don't represent character growth. Stede realized he loved Ed and was telling everyone back in 1x10. Ed clearly would have slept with him in S1 if they'd had a little more time.) Ed and Stede in 2x08 are not different from who they are in 2x01. If Ed had asked Stede to be innkeepers in 2x01, does anyone think Stede wouldn't have immediately agreed? One of the big moments in 2x08 is Ed reading a letter that Stede wrote in 2x01! Stede's exact words from the very beginning of the season! What better way to underline that none of the subsequent seven episodes had important growth or changes?

Another one of 2x08's big shippy moments is Ed and Stede running to each other across a beach – deliberately paralleling the dream Stede had in 2x01. What are we supposed to take from this parallel? My original thought was that we're supposed to see how different the real version is from the dream, but there's honestly not many differences. Neither one has a beard, now? The dream mocked how Stede knew they needed to have a conversation about their relationship that he wanted to avoid, but they don't have a conversation in the "real" version either. They exchange about two sentences (which includes Ed's I Love You, yes, which is a big deal but still isn't a conversation) and then they charge right back into the fight, without discussing anything like Ed abruptly dumping Stede to go be a fisherman, Stede killing Ned Low when Ed asked him not to, their differences of opinion on being pirates, if having sex was a mistake or if that's only a thing Ed said because he was panicking, etc etc. They have just as many issues to address as they did in the dream, but just like the dream they act like everything is magically okay without talking about it!

So I think we're meant to take the beach-run parallels as "here's what Stede's been wanting, and after waiting for so long he finally gets it". Which is fine, a very sweet take-away for a finale. But it underlines what I'm saying is the problem of the season: Stede has just been waiting for eight episodes for his dream to come true. Not changing. Not growing. Not doing anything to bring the dream about, other than trying to get himself and Ed into the same physical location. Just... waiting.

This is an extra surprising development, because the show was really good at giving Ed and Stede character arcs in S1! Ed and Stede in 1x10 are significantly different than they were in their first introductions. Also, just to preempt some criticism, by 'progressing' I do not mean 'wrap up literally every loose end and make a firm final ending' – S1's finale is an excellent example of both moving the characters forward and leaving a ton of room for future stories. I wasn't expecting for 2x08 to show us a Stede and Ed who were perfectly on the same page and would never again have a problem. I was expecting them to be somewhat different than they were in 2x01, and I just don't see that.

Instead of arcs, we got little pieces of single-episode growth here and there that never added up to an overall whole. The season brought up a ton of potential arcs for Ed – violence, piracy, guilt, suicide, daddy issues, self-loathing, apologies, redemption, his tendency to idealize escaping into a different life – but didn't do anything with any of these options. Stede had nothing resembling a season arc at all.

Stede works to improve as a captain! Stede kills someone and has regrets! Stede confronts Ed's dark side! <- All potential arcs, but none of which lasted for more than an episode or had consequences. We don't even know what the ending means for Stede: does he want to be an innkeeper because he failed as a pirate in 2x07? Because piracy was always just a displaced search for love, and now that he has love, he doesn't need piracy? What does the crew of the Revenge leaving mean to him? Stede's understanding of their new arrangement literally happens off-screen and we're left to fumble at guesses for its significance to him as an individual.

Ed and Stede's last big conversation in the season is their break-up fight in 2x07, which is a shocking way to send off your main couple in a rom-com. Yes, there's the I Love You on the beach (again: two sentences) and the brief 'let's try to be innkeepers' conversation at the very end, but that's it for them in 2x08, except for their inclusion in some brief large group conversations about their fighting skills and the plan for escaping the British. How can you end your rom-com with the main couple exchanging only a paragraph's worth of dialogue in the finale? None of the stuff was brought up in the fishing fight in 2x07 is ever addressed at all!

Again, I don't think this is solely a matter of time crunch. Instead of using the eight episodes to progress the two main characters, we got a bunch of filler episodes that used the time in amusing side tangents instead of forward progress. I don't think that's the inevitable result of having to work with eight episodes.

Look, I can come up with a better Ed/Stede relationship arc without needing more episodes, and despite only thinking about this for a couple days and not having an entire writing room to work with:

(Note: this only addresses the Ed/Stede relationship. It doesn't fix Stede completely lacking an independent character arc and Ed having about ten thousand of them, none of which went anywhere.)

In 2x05 to 2x07, I would make Ed's motivations in their relationship very clearly that he's pushing Stede away so he doesn't get hurt again. Basically play up Ed's comment about "I was all in" in 2x04, and make him determined not to get 'all in' this time around. This aligns the "let's take it slow" conversation in 2x05, the "sex was a mistake" in 2x06, and Ed running away to be a fisherman in 2x07 into a single arc. He wants Stede, but he's afraid of what that wanting will do to him. He's trying to find a way to have a relationship without making himself vulnerable. He keeps pushing off commitment and openness.

Then, in 2x08, I'd make it more explicit that Ed thinks/fears Stede is dead when he sees the pirate ships burning. I think it's subtext in the episode as-is, but give him a line or two to make it really clear. Ed and Stede still see each other on the beach, have their dramatic run to each other, and Ed says, "I love you". Now this moment is Ed acknowledging his love, exactly what he's been avoiding for the last three episodes.

Near the end of the episode, Ed and Stede have a conversation where Ed says something like, "I didn't want to get hurt again, I was afraid of the risk of falling in love and you leaving again, but thinking you were dead made me realize that never loving you would be worse" (but better written, ha, this is a tumblr post that's already too long). (Also possibly you could tie in Izzy's death here to underline both Ed and Stede not wanting to lose another person they care about, if we must have that plot point for some reason.) We actually get to see Ed asking Stede to come be innkeepers with him, paralleling asking him to run away to China (and paralleling NOT asking Stede to a fisherman), Stede voices some of his worries (paralleling him keeping them inside in 1x09, but also giving him a chance to explain what piracy and love mean to him and why he'd give up one for the other), but ultimately they agree that they at least want to try.

This both puts them into a much clearer place for a happy ending, has clear growth from S1 and the beginning of this season, but also leaves open a ton of room for S3, because welp, it turns out trying to have a relationship entails all sorts of problems! Especially with these two. It also would make me feel like they'd at least addressed some of the issues between them.

Right now I feel like S3 will have to spend at least the first few episodes running through exactly the same "don't talk – break up – get back together dramatically" arc that Stede and Ed have already done twice but have never discussed and never learned from. I liked it, but I don't need to see it yet again. That will – ironically – feel like yet more wasted time, more episodes that are just churning through beats without moving the characters forward. I wanted them to have new, different fights in S3, but now I don't even feel like they've made enough progress to have a fresh set of problems.

Seeing how there only 10 episodes left do you think Rachel will rush the ending?

The way I see she needs to somehow resign Apollo reign, reawaken the God's, have Persophone defeat Kronos, have Persophone create Elysian, stop the entered winner/killing of nymphs and humans, hell we don't even know what is Leto end goal and what is her whole role in this series other than manipulating Apollo to be king. We don't even know what exactly she did with Zeus (but knowing Rachel she made Leto the other woman despite the fact she was another respectable goddess)

Imo I think Rachel is officially done done with her series and know her viewers are fed up with her constant milking of the series. You can even see it in some of her work where you know she just gave up (unless it's her self insert scenes)

On a side note another thing I should point out is the anti climax of Leuce and Thetis. Besides the fact she made Leuce another other woman the way she made Leuce expression during Persophone home Invasion made it look like she wasn't going to back down. Only for her to make be forgotten 3/4 of the final arc and is never mention again. Persophone didnt even ask Hades how does he even know Leuce. So unless Rachel has plans for her again that was the last time we saw her making that whole plot unless.

While Thetis plot.........

I'll be honest she just got a slap on a wrist and Rachel just insert Achilles as a way to bait her audience/trying to make a cultural reference. Tbh I thought Thetis would have a bigger story like fast-forward she believes she gotten everything she wanted and is now Queen only for the Trojan war occur and she only lost her status bur her son. Thus making the scene a poetic justic/tragedy.

I'll finish this off since I don't want to run my mouth about this series so here's my 2 cent. Rachel is putting to many Greek mythologies in her series that a) she has forgotten about characters b) everyone is now expecting her to have this series be all wrapped up in a nice bow when it actually be worse c) and because she has so many subplots they are left unresolved or unsatisfied

Oh, Persephone created Elysium already. It was literally just this LMAO

Okay in all honesty I don't know if that was actually meant to be Elysium, but I remember seeing people comment on the S2 finale when she was bee-burping at Kronos that she was creating Elysium at the same time as fighting Kronos and I just... yeah okay? But they literally haven't even name-dropped it since the trial. This is what I mean when I criticize Rachel's writing for depending WAY too much on reader headcanon, because not only will she just roll with whatever her fans theorize, she'll do so without actually writing it into the comic so unless you're in the FB groups and Discord, you're probably not gonna pick up on every little decision Rachel made because she's making them with half a thought and a quarter of the effort needed to express it. It means people can say whatever and she'll just take credit for it like "yeah! that was Elysium! totally! you get it! okay moving on-"

As for the Leuce thing, Hades deadass met Leuce when Zeus offered her up as a bride, which Zeus explained to Persephone during the S2 finale arc-

-but again it suffers from a lot of the same issues of Rachel not expanding on her ideas and just resolving them with some other random plot convenience. Why would Leuce be so obsessed with getting with Hades that she'd make up fake text messages? Rachel just really didn't want Hades to be interacting with other women in the 10 years that Persephone was gone, so she had to make Leuce delusional for it to work ?? Why would she go so far as to tell Hades about the text messages if they weren't real the whole time?

-but then of course before Hades can respond to this, Persephone interrupts, meaning the plotline can be put on the backburner until Rachel comes up with a solution to it-

-and then we got to see Persephone 'resolve' the issue by harassing Leuce in her home, and it was only until after THEN that Rachel finally went "no it's fine that Persephone vandalized her home, the text messages weren't real!!! see??? Leuce is just a delusional nimwit! She deserves it!"

And yeah the Thetis and Achilles thing is yet another 'plotline' that Rachel only introduced to try and legitimize her comic as a Greek myth retelling. Just about every myth she tries to portray is done vaguely and without any thought for the world they're inhabiting, it's all just lip service.

At the end of the day, a lot of the writing in LO is 1.) trying to make up for the lack of plot development in the first two seasons (hence why we're now getting sudden lore dumping about how the seasons work) and 2.) trying to make up for its lack of Greek myth set pieces because Rachel has now been openly called out for being arrogant in her 'knowledge' of Greek myth and it has people analyzing just how little Greek there is in this Greek myth "retelling". It's especially apparent in the second season when the whole thing is just self-insert fantasies about Hades and Persephone living together until the plot finally has to get moving again. Every now and then Rachel remembers that this is supposed to be a retelling, so she'll throw in some random Greek myth reference like the Colchian dragon or Aphrodite marrying Hephaestus or Thetis and Achilles.

It's very evident that Rachel never learned how to write a longform story or planned to make LO as long as it is and the story has suffered all the more for it. And it sucks because that's not the story I got onboard with back in 2019-2020, but that's where we are. Ironically, as much as I criticize LO for not having enough Greek myth influence in it, I do think the story would have been far better off if it just stayed as a cheesy office romance fluff fic. It's clearly what Rachel wanted to write but either she or WT (or both) got ahead of themselves and took on more than what LO - and Rachel - were equipped to follow through on.

Worm and other media that won't just let you shoot the Joker, part 1:

Worm comments on the structure of stories, especially superhero stories, in some interesting ways. There's a lot of stuff that happen in superhero comics for no real reason than that it needs to happen for the story to be interesting; a huge amount of Worm's worldbuilding is devoted to taking these things and making the fact that they have to happen an explicit in-setting constraint. For instance, superhero stories tend to have more powerful heroes face off against much more powerful villains than their less-powerful allies, to the point where it seems like super-powerful threats are coming to earth every few weeks just because it wouldn't be interesting to read that comic otherwise. It gets weirder when you compare what villains end up visiting the cities of uber-powerful heroes vs the cities of less powerful heroes: Gotham mostly just has to deal with serial killers while Metropolis is a magnet for evil gods. Worm plays with this by having the Endbringers exist only because the big hero needed something to fight in-text: it changes "powerful heroes need powerful villains or else it wouldn't be interesting" from a Doylist justification to a Watsonian one. Then there's the fact that so much of the horrible conflict in Earth Bet is explicitly caused by Gods making sure the powers they grant people lead to increased conflict, the fact that one of the most powerful characters does what she does because the plot path to victory says she needs to, etc.

But the big one is Jack Slash, and how he's only able to get away with his bullshit because he has plot armor as a secondary power. As WB says here, "Jack's a reconstruction of the Joker type character in the sense that you can't have such a character take such a high profile position in the setting, without having there be a cheat." The Joker and similar characters are only able to keep being relevant threats in their stories because the narrative bends to let them win and stops them from being killed. Jack Slash is only able to keep being a relevant threat because his power makes the universe bend to let him win in the same way. Not only does this make for an interesting obstacle (its almost like they're fighting an authorial mandate!), but it skewers the use of similar character's plot armor and how unrealistic and unsatisfying it makes their stories.

But wait, what does it mean for a story to be "unrealistic" in the context of superpowers? Is being unrealistic in those contexts actually a problem? For that matter, what does it mean for a narrative to bend to let someone win? Its not like there's an objective way fighting the Joker would go, which the author is deviating from by letting him survive.

[Stuff under readbelow contains spoilers fo, the movie Funny Games and the book Anybody Home?]

Maybe we could say that if characters like the Joker were real, and put in the situations they are in their stories, they would end up being killed really quickly. But is that a reasonable way to judge stories? A narrative where such a character is killed unceremoniously to satisfy a need for realism isn't any less an expression of the author's deliberate choices than a story where the character keeps showing back up to satisfy a desire for fan-favorite characters. And while Jack Slash's arcs help show why deviating from "realistic consequences" in the service of keeping a character alive can make a story exhausting and screw with an audiences' appreciation of stakes, it doesn't make a strong case against the concept of villains having plot armor in general. A story isn't necessarily worse just for being constructed to keep the villains alive—all stories are constructed, and sometimes being constructed that way makes for the best story.

That becomes more clear when you take the premise of Jack Slash as "killer who wins because the mechanics of the universe says so" and make clear just how much "the mechanics of the universe" really just means "the story". Which is how you get Peter and Paul from Funny Games.

I'd highly recommend watching Funny Games (though for the love of god check content warnings), as well as Patricia Taxxon's review of it that I'm cribbing a lot from here. But to summarize, Funny Games is a movie written and directed by Michael Haneke about a family's lakeside vacation being interrupted by the appearance of two murderous young men, who capture them in their own house and slowly torture and kill them off. At least, that's what it seems to be about initially. It marketed itself as a somewhat standard entry in the genres of torture porn and home invasion thrillers, and played itself straight as one for the majority of its runtime. But then one of the two villains of the pair, "Paul," starts talking to the audience.

It starts small: after crippling the family's father and revealing that he killed their dog, Paul has the wife look for its corpse outside. While giving her hints, he slowly turns back towards the camera and smirks, before turning back. In isolation, maybe it could be interpreted as Paul smirking at Peter, seeming to look out at the audience only because of clumsy blocking. But then it happens again. Paul tells the family, who are completely at their mercy at this point, that they're gonna bet that they'll all be dead within twelve hours. When the family refuses to take the bet, asking how they could hope to win it when he can clearly off them all whenever they wish, Paul turns towards the audience and asks "what do you think? Do you think they stand a chance? Well you're on their side aren't you. Who you betting on, eh?" The audience is being acknowledged; their role as someone invested in the story is being examined by the ones introducing the stakes.

But the biggest moment comes near the end, when the mother grabs the shotgun she's being threatened with and blasts Peter. Paul startles, grins, and then hurredly grabs a tv remote and presses rewind. The movie itself suddenly rewinds to right before the mother grabs the gun, and plays again with Paul grabbing the shotgun right before the mother reaches for it.

Its a truly incredible moment, in that its the perfect way to forcibly take away the audience's suspension of disbelief. It forces the audience to acknowledge that they're viewing a story, not something happening to a real family. After their moment of catharsis against the villains, Paul makes the confront the fact that the movie will end however the creators want it to, and if they want the villains to win they'll will regardless of how little sense it makes. Fuck you, we can go from being set in the normal world with normal rules to the villains traveling back in time with a tv remote, because a story does whatever its creators want. Haneke just decided to make that obvious in the most jarring way imaginable.

But maybe the best way to illustrate Funny Games effectiveness at this type of artful unveiling is comparing it to its less-effective imitators. I've recently finished Anybody Home?, a recently-published book by Michael J. Seidlinger. It has the conceit of being narrated by an unnamed mass-murderer, guiding a new killer in their first home invasion. I started reading it before I watched Funny Games, and even afterwards took a while to realize the unnamed narrator wasn’t just a pastiche of a Paul-like character but was actually supposed to be read as Paul himself. Seidlinger was having his book be a sort of unofficial sequel to Funny Games, narrated by its star. Once I realized, a lot of the books details suddenly clicked. The big one was the constant references to “the camera" and the idea of murder being a performance for an audience, one that needed to be fresh and original to make “the cults” enjoy it. Take these passages from page 77:

If it happened, it would perturb. It would create suspicion. It wouldn’t end up ruining the performance, and yet, it could have derailed our casing. The camera can have all it wants; either way, it’ll make it look better than it really was. It’ll strip away the cues and other planned orchestrations and it’ll show the action—the actuality of each scene, each suggestion…

This is a spectacle, above all. The craft pertains to keeping and maintaining a captive audience; behind the camera, you’ll never know how it happened—the trickery that made the impossible possible, the insanity so close to home. It is spectacle.

Through online activity, the son made it clear that something is happening at home, yet we cannot be certain if he has noticed the camera.

These all point to the idea that the murders are being viewed by an audience rather than just by intruders, that this is a performance for said audience's benefit more than anything else. But notably, it also reinforces the idea of these characters having an existence outside of the camera: the camera shows the action and "strips away" the cues behind it, the victims have a life outside the camera such that they could plausibly sense that the camera is now here. The victims are sometimes described as playing into their role, but always metaphorically; always as if normal people start acting like characters when put in certain circumstances. Whereas Funny Games posits that characters will behave however the author wants them to, denying the claim that stories are realistic simulations of hypothetical scenarios.

The whole thing is predicated on the idea that there needs to be a guide, that the villain of a home invader movie is really in danger of something going wrong. Paul/The narrator keeps giving directions on what needs to be double checked, what needs to X, and its completely against the spirit of the role Paul served in Funny Games. If something goes wrong for the villain they should just be able to rewind and do it over, because the story was written for them to succeed. Anybody Home? throws out Funny Games theme of the story being on rails, of the winner being whoever the author wants it to be and the events following whatever the author wanted rather than what would "really" happen. It throws out the whole idea that it’s all just a story, by supporting the idea that the characters have lives not captured by the camera—or more relevantly, not captured on-page.

Because Seidlinger using the language of film in a book leads to different things going on with the fourth wall. The way Funny Games and Anybody Home? make the camera explicit are just different, and the former does it much more interestingly than the latter. Seildinger’s characters aren’t looking back at the reader, the fourth wall is never actually breached. Funny Games has Paul look into the camera to address the audience, making clear how it’s a story being set up for the audience's benefit. Anybody Home? invokes the idea of a camera tracking everything home invaders do in general, having it be a third-party force that’s itself an unseen character contained within the story, observing the intruder's crime rather than the reader. Why is it still a camera, if we're in a book rather than a movie? A character in a book talking about a camera watching them does not convey any of the same meaning as a character in a movie suddenly looking into a camera and smirking at the audience!

By the end, you realize that this is caused in part by the book's bizarro take on how horror movies exist in this world. It reveals that in its setting, all horror movies are adaptations of real home invasions, which get recorded by unseen mysterious forces. Killers enter a home and enact violence, are filmed by some supernatural camera, the footage gets leaked to the public, and then the killers sell the rights to the work to studios. The events of SAW really happened, but the movie was just an adaptation. Funny Games really happened, but the Paul in the movies was just an actor playing the Paul narrating this book. The killer's victims eventually realize that they're "victims," but not in the sense that they realize their characters in a story, only in a sense that they realize they got sucked into their world's magical realism bullshit.

Ultimately, while the book does the same trick of being all about how horror stories are “for” us, it gets rid of all the tricks that made it work for Funny Games. It even strips it's in-universe version of what made it special; Funny Games is just another adaptation of a real home invasion. All the meta stuff that makes it interesting in its genre are just gestured at as aesthetics.

So what makes Jack Slash in Worm succeed where the killers in Anybody Home? fail? Both are constructed to be entertaining for a 3rd party who stand-in for but aren't actually the audience; the entities in Worm, the cults in Anybody Home?. But Jack Slash doesn't mix his metaphors. Worm may turn various real-life factors affecting a work into in-story mechanisms of the world in the same way Anybody Home? does. But it doesn't also base itself off a text that takes in-story mechanisms and breaks them to force the audience to see the various real-life factors affecting the work. In effect, WB pulls off a trick Seidlinger tries and fails because WB wasn't taking another metatexual story and stripping it of what made it interesting.

Though that introduces the question: can such meta-moves be mixed? Can you have a text where story conceits become explicit plot mechanics the characters are aware of, while also having characters really look at the camera and tell the audience that its all just a story? Can you actually sell it and make it something interesting?

There is one story that tries this. I don't know if it pulls it off, but it certainly makes a lot of interesting moves that create a fascinating whole. It even comments on the Joker in the same way Worm does, having a character who seemingly cant die because the roll they play in the story is too impor—

Ah fuck.

Continued in part 2.

Do you think about the whole Rick Prime thing? Did it kinda feel anticlimactic???

Yeeahhhhhh, but... I think that's the point!

At first, I was a little bit disappointed with how they handled the arc. I really thought Prime was going to be the Big Bad! Having the whole climax of C-137's arc with Prime as a mid-season episode felt oddly... dismissive? It was like it wasn't even a major event.

After sitting on this for a bit, I think I actually love how they've handled it. I think this is the first time I've really seen the show take something that perfectly fills a 'Television Run' format (i.e. big events at the ends of the seasons for cliffhangers, and so on) and subvert those expectations into something more like 'Real Life.' In my opinion, a lot of the show is shown as how characters involved view the events, especially in terms of tonality. That's why so much of the show fits these media formulas-- Rick views his life as a show.

I often refer to the majority of the show as 'Rick's Director's Cut' because we get events skewed from his warped perception of his own actions. (You can even think of 'Morty's Mindblowers' as Rick literally editing footage into a better story.) Of course, we see why he's sympathetic. As the viewer, we understand why he's doing what he's doing, even if we don't agree with it. He views himself as the 'sitcom dad'-- comically fucked up and abusive, but secretly caring. Rick believes that he's got just enough heart for his actions to be excusable, forgetting that the people he hides his intentions from aren't getting the 'full picture' like the viewer is. From Morty's perspective, Rick does these things for no reason-- unless you count not liking, caring about, or valuing Morty. Of course, we know that's not the case, but Morty doesn't. His family doesn't.

The Prime arc is fascinating to me because of the contrast between how Rick viewed it versus how it happened from the perspective of the viewer. Rick went into the Prime arc thinking it would be a massive, badass epic where the underdog comes out on top and the audience is satisfied with the conclusion. As the audience, this is probably the first time we haven't really been able to click with that, you know? It was unsatisfying, even for Rick, and now he's sort of saddled with, 'Oh, shit. This is real life. What comes next?'

Sure, they're little guys on our television screens. To them, though... that's real life. Real life is messy. Real life is unsatisfying. Real life is disappointing, the editing is sloppy, arcs aren't linear, and dysfunction and substance abuse aren't silly character traits.

The whole point is: What happens now?

In real life, what happens after your abusive parent passes away or you finally get revenge on the person who tore your life apart? In real life, what happens after you beat the shit out of the guy who assaulted you? Or after your dad apologizes for walking out on you?

There's actually a Malcolm in the Middle scene reminiscent of this concept. Francis was blamed by Lois from the time he was born for ruining their relationship. Throughout the entire series, his arcs deal with their broken relationship. When she finally apologizes, the pinnacle of his hopes and dreams-- the only thing keeping him alive, it doesn't help. It doesn't fix the years of psychological abuse he suffered, or the fact that he's as broken as he is because of her failure as a parent.

Another great example is in Adventure Time, when Finn thinks he's ripped Martin's arm off for causing him to lose his own. The revenge doesn't help. (Sorry, not digging for a link to the scene lmao.)

Those things aren't satisfying on their own. The fantasies and daydreams we barter through aren't feasible cures. That's real life. What happens afterward is what you do next. That can be a tough pill to swallow. There's no quick 'fix-all' for everything that's fucked you up. What helps? Hard work. Dedication. Time. Therapy. Grief. Acceptance.

Rick never really worked through the grieving process, you know?

There was Denial and Anger:

And where he got stuck... Bargaining:

After Prime's death? Depression:

Four decades later, we're finally on the cusp of Acceptance.

That's what that look into the hole was. That's what putting up Morty's picture was. That's what choosing to walk away was.

Acceptance.

In conclusion of my long-winded rant, I liked the Prime arc. Fits nicely into the season after the finality of 'Fear No Mort.'

Well done, writers.

Thanks for asking! <3

sonic prime s3 rewrite:

im going to try to fix a bunch of things i was unsatisfied with from the end of the story.

such as the whole “work together” lesson that sonic learned somewhere in the last 6 episodes really vaguely. also im going to fix sonic and shadow’s vague friendship arc. i might also take a crack at fixing knuckles the dread’s conclusion bc he was the most interesting variant lets be honest and he was nearly forgotten. maybe in another post. this is future me talking i spent hours writing this.

im also going to make the “we’re back home” ending WAY longer and actually have there be an emotional resolution for the #notgay “brothers”

and the most egregious sin (imo) of season 3 was the fact that all the worlds just. stayed. and that was it. huh????????

THIS WILL BE LONG AND MIGHT BE ASS IN YOUR OPINION LOL ITS CHILL. IM NOT A SEASONED DAY 1 FAN WHOSE READ EVERY COMIC AND PLAYED EVERY GAME AND KNOWS THESE CHARACTERS BETTER THAN THE WRITERS OR ANYTHING IM JUST HAVING FUN AND SHARING WHAT I THINK WOULD HAVE MADE MORE SENSE

THE SHARDS:

ok first, we have to go back in time a little bit. i think each shard should have been the heart of its respective world instead of just the random place it happened to be sitting in. the shards create the world around them, and whoever holds the shard of a world basically controls reality for that world. the shards are always originally centered on the palm tree of their world (the chaos council found their tree and stole the shard, this is why the tree is so important to the resistance, they need to return it to restore balance. NO ONE IS MEANT TO WEILD THE SHARDS, IT ONLY BRINGS CHAOS. THIS IS A CENTRAL THEME.) when a shard is removed from its world, the world begins to slowly collapse on itself. the more shards are taken the more the WHOLE shatterverse starts to become unstable. THIS is why the shatterverse begins to decay, not just because there was “too many portals” or whatever.

THE MOST IMPORTANT PART: when the paradox prism is fully recreated and brought back to its place in ghost hill, green hill will be restored and the shatterverse will cease to exist. it was created by the shards being split, bringing them back together brings the world back together into one.

sonic does not realize this at first. he finds out the shards are in different worlds and starts trying to find them all to put them back together, saying he needs to recreate his world, not thinking about the logical consequence for the shatter spaces. nine hears this and thinks he could create his OWN world wherever he wants using the power of the prism. he is wrong. (find out why later)

SHADOW:

for the most part, shadow is in the right about everything. his only issue is that like sonic, he doesn’t want to work together. sonic is too impulsive, but shadow is too stubborn. they learn to overcome this together throughout the series. while shadow is stuck speaking to sonic from the void, they are constantly disagreeing on what to do. shadow is being too bossy and demanding that his plans be followed to the letter, and sonic is making split second changes and forgetting to tell him. this at some point nearly ends in a MASSIVE disaster and they both realize they need to get it together. wasting time fighting is part of what caused this mess in the first place- shadow is also slightly at fault here. we do a flashback to the day of the incident and they agree to try to cooperate. it’s a little rocky, but by the end they’re fighting side by side in perfect sync, recognizing each other as valued friends.

NINE:

nine for most of the series can stay the same. an important plot point for me is his insistence that he is NOT tails. however, instead of this being something sonic has to learn is true, it’s something nine has to learn is false. when nine goes to ghost hill and sees the old tails, he’s unnerved by this hollow shell of a version of himself. while he is alone putting the shards back together on the mountain, he realizes that just like the shards are unstable fragments of the paradox prism, the shatter spaces are unstable fragments of green hill. he is a fragment of tails. this sets off a minor identity crisis on top of the realization that he is not supposed to exist. none of the shatter spaces are supposed to exist. that’s why they’re all so out of wack. no place is flooded and ruled by pirates, the boscage maze is a suffocating jungle, new yoke is a dystopian nightmare, and the grim is a lifeless wasteland. they all exist in a fragile state of balance and are already falling apart. they were already on shaky ground but have been on a direct path to destruction since sonic showed up. he still has hope in his ability to make the grim into his own world, but deep down he’s refusing to let himself realize the truth: even with the power of all 5 prism shards the world will continue to decay until they are reunited. nine takes the shards and leaves.

SONIC:

dear god. sonic. where do i even begin.

first of all, i would prefer to see him being a little less chatty and scatterbrained. i think a little of it would still make sense considering the story he’s living through, but in general he needs to be a little more tethered to his old unshakable self until it comes to the really important decisive moments. sonic isn’t an emotionless character, but he just seemed extra…. smushy..? idk this isn’t something i can articulate well ehe XP

i LOVED the parallels and flashbacks from seasons 1 and 2. where did they go??? i go crazy for a good parallel, so i say they keep happening in season 3. obviously. like of all the times to mirror the beginning, it’s the final fight???

i want to have the final battle directly and clearly parallel the fight from episode 1. this way, there can be a Moment where sonic stops to look back at his experiences and make the choice to do things the right way this time. to fix the problem he created he needs to fix his personal problem that created the problem. i want a very obvious scene where he finally finished connecting all the dots lets this lesson sink into his head.

speaking of which, let’s get back to present time and talk about the final fight.

FINAL BATTLE:

nine has all 5 shards kept far apart and protected, but still close enough for him to draw on their power. the world is decaying rapidly and he has to constantly use the shards to ward off the imminent destruction.

sidenote: at some point when nine is trying to pick off sonic, he sends the birds to search the empty space in the shatterverse. one finds shadow’s chaos emerald in the void and brings it out. shadow gets it back from the bird or whatever later. it was so weird that the void stopped being relevant and they just never got the green emerald back.

heading into the final fight, sonic is sad about nine’s betrayal, but he only gives him one chance to give up. when he and shadow confront nine, sonic tells him that the shatterverse is falling apart and no one has a home left to return to anymore. nine hesitates for a moment, he knows there is a chance that even with his enemies gone he won’t be able to stop the decay, but he refuses to give up. sonic knows what is at stake here and he takes it seriously. he doesn’t want to fight nine but he has no choice, besides, nine is hurting his friends, and that’s not acceptable.

sonic still isn’t sure what to do about the moral dilemma of wiping out the shatterverse to bring back his world. after all, wouldn’t that make him no better than nine? but right now there is an immediate threat: nine accelerating the decay of the universe by holding all the shards in one shatter space.

during the final fight (which i would also make WAYYYYY shorter) i would have him try to go for nine himself, thinking that he knows nine best, and is the most well equipped to defeat him. everyone else is on shaky ground with each other as alliances between the different groups, especially with the eggmans, haven’t been solidified. because of this lack of teamwork everyone struggles to fight off the robots nine creates.

sonic stops. he’s seen this play out before, and the stakes weren’t nearly as high. he is the throughline of the whole group so HE has to bring everyone together (“theres only one hedgehog they’ll follow into battle”). He gets everyone to understand that right now they’re on the same page, so they all formulate a plan together to keep the robots away and get the shards back one by one. sonic and shadow fight nine in person while everyone else collects the shards and brings them each to sonic and shadow, who use the power of the shards to help defeat nine. but when they remove nine’s power source, the world starts decaying really fast again. nine panics, takes the shards back and starts trying to fight off the decay, but it’s too much to fight anymore. he falls to his knees in defeat, he knows his goals were always unreachable. at first he lashes out at sonic, but then he stops and just cries.

he tells sonic how he just wanted a place to call home, even though he knew it wouldn’t be possible. sonic says that maybe it’s still possible to restore the shards to their worlds and stop the decay, shadow interjects that they need to bring back green hill, but nine says there’s no point in trying to bring back the shatter spaces. they’re beyond repair, and they were never meant to be in the first place (the others hearing this are shocked and uneasy hearing this). he was wrong to try to destroy everyone’s worlds to make one just for himself, at least sonic was trying to bring back his friends. but sonic comforts him and reassures his feelings and also apologizes for asking him to stop existing. but nine says that’s actually what he needs to do now. the only option left is to restore green hill. they’ll pour all the energy stores they have left into the kraken to get sonic and shadow back to the decaying ghost hill.

sonic tries to object, asking if nine is sure he’s ok with disappearing. nine says he won’t really stop existing, he and all his friends were always with him and always will be back in green hill. nine thanks sonic for always being his friend. here is the big brother hug moment. nonetheless, they all say goodbye (for now), and shadow and sonic head out of the grim.

RESTORING GREEN HILL:

blah blah there’s some debris and maybe they *almost don’t make it* but in the end they just barely get to the gateway in time.

sidenote: instead of shadow needing to go through weird side cracks to get through the gates, he is able to because of the instability of the prism energy not keeping him out the way it did before

shadow is almost blocked at the gateway. he’s pushing through, but the world is falling apart. sonic grabs the shards from him and tosses them into ghost hill so he can pull shadow through. shadow exclaims something about the shards and sonic says he won’t leave him behind. shadow is touched <3 (they’re holding each other desperately this whole scene and when they fall through, this is me making up for cutting the princess carry im so sorry i had to).

they get to the mountain, return the shards, and a huge blast of energy knocks them back. sonic opens his eyes and cue the regular sequence from the final episode. i liked this bit, it was such a relief to see the world put back together lol. after they fight eggman, sonic brings everyone in for a big group hug like he tried to in new yoke and says he has to go find shadow.

sonic asks shadow if he still remembers everything, and he does. sonic breathes a sigh of relief and jokes that he was worried all that friendship building effort had gone to waste, shadow gives him a (very) small laugh. he tells sonic that he may have started this by being himself, but he also fixed it by being himself. sonic whizzes around him asking if that was a compliment, and shadow says it’s just good to be back home. sonic says “it wouldn’t be the same without you. it wouldn’t be the same without ME either” to which shadow rolls his eyes and tries to hide a smile. sonic uses shadow’s shoulder as an arm rest as the two look out at the sunset. sonic says they make a pretty good team when they fight WITH each other. there’s a pause before shadow responds, “yeah.”

the next day goes on like it did in the real episode except shadow is there, and when the gang remarks on sonic’s odd demeanor they also comment on his suddenly improved relationship with shadow. the show ends like it did before with sonic about to explain but interrupted by eggman. life is back to normal, happily ever after the end.

OK THATS IT!!!! i hope whatever few people had the endurance and determination to read all of this enjoyed it, ive been writing it out for hours omgggg i could never write fanfiction i would die LMAO. i had such a clear vision of what i thought this season was going to be that i figured it wouldn’t take too much effort for me to write it all out. like i said before it’s definitely not perfect and i refuse to re read this for errors for 24 hours but i hope you enjoyed ok bye :3

A few minor tweaks that would have made Twilight a more cohesive story:

Don't kill Victoria in Eclipse; her gift is evasion, if anyone could escape, it's her! Actually, don't kill Laurent either. He dies off screen, it wouldn't really change anything. He can get his original happy ending with Irina.

Make the "Riley" Mike Newton, or Eric Yorkie, or Tyler Crowley. Someone Bella knew, someone local. In the book we don't meet Riley until his death scene so why should we care about him? The horror and tragedy of one of Bella's schoolmates being used and corrupted by Victoria would be much more narratively satisfying, and would give the human kids like, a purpose in the story other than existing to love or be jealous of Bella.

Tempted to do something similar with Bree, but it might be overkill to have two kids from Forks end up in the Seattle newborn army. So EITHER make 'the Riley' someone Bella knew, or 'the Bree' but maybe not both.

If we must stick with the basic Breaking Dawn outline, then Victoria living to the end of the story keeps the flow of the original antagonist. If the "Riley" survives he can be the one to report Renesmee's existence to the Volturi (as he did in Forever Dawn), if not, Victoria can get someone else to do it.

Name drop more of the Breaking Dawn visiting vampires earlier in the series. The only ones we had really heard about before were Peter & Charlotte and the Denali 'cousins.' I don't know about anyone else, but my impression from the first three books were that these were like, the only people willing to put up with the weirdo Cullens. Them suddenly having loads of friends willing to risk their lives for them felt like it came out of nowhere. It was fun to meet Peter & Charlotte and the Denali because we had heard of them before; everyone else felt like they came out of nowhere. Maybe when Bella is getting a tour of the house there can be gifts from other vampires ("is that . . . is that an Ancient Egyptian canopic jar?" "Oh, yes, a gift from Carlisle's friend Amun), or name them specifically in Eclipse when they are trying to find people to help them after the Denali refuse.

Have a few more vamps (other than Garrett) go vegetarian in the end. There's this whole big speech about about how special this diet makes them and then like . . . no follow up at all. Whatever you think of the premise of vegetarian vampires, it's just unsatisfying that it doesn't really go anywhere. The only convert is Garrett, who does it for Kate, not actually because he was inspired by the Cullens or whatever.

Okay this one isn't minor but: JACOB! FIGHT! THE IMPRINT! That seemed to be what his character was set up for. He's the one to champion falling in love the normal way. He's the one who resents choices being taken away from him. Him fighting an imprint and winning seems like a much more natural arc for him than becoming supernaturally obsessed with a half-vampire baby. The shifters and vampires reluctantly working together in Eclipse to protect Forks/La Push was much more interesting than them being forced to because of Jacob's imprint.

Mike ‘rejecting but accepting’ Will cannot co-exist with Will getting a happy ending

Even when I try to genuinely picture a scenario in which we get an ‘I accept you’ ending to Byler (it’s not happening this is just a thought exercise lol) I just…can’t? It's impossible to do without sounding like someone who's never read or written a story in their life:

Mike says 'You'll always be my best friend but I'm straight and I love my girlfriend sorry' and then what? They just never talk about it again? Ignore the elephant in the room every time they're together? Mike can't do anything to help Will with this, other than distance himself to make it easier but it's practically confirmed they will be a team next season so that's not happening. Will is not a robot, he won't just stop loving Mike because Mike says he's straight. Will already believes Mike is straight and in love with El, and yet his feelings are strong as ever. They won't just disappear, it would take time and active effort.

So if this 'rejection' happens early in the season (giving Will actual time to feasibly move on), if his arc was really to 'get over Mike', is he just going to hang around the rest of the season feeling sad but trying to forget about it? So it's just another season of Will being in unnecessary emotional turmoil...and then one day he just kind of does forget about it and the storyline fizzles out? What even is that. Like try and picture how this would actually play out on screen, it's ridiculous to even consider.

The only solid place Will's acceptance story could go after confessing to Mike is coming out to his family (and hopefully the party) which we obviously all want for him and I hope they get a really beautiful scene, but the problem is the audience knows everyone will love Will no matter what (he might not know, but we do and we are the target audience here) so there's no stakes. The only real stakes in Will's coming out from a storytelling perspective is how Mike will react (it’s the only uncertain variable), and if we get this very early on in the season (giving Will time for a believable 'moving on' arc) his storyline would be incredibly anti-climactic, it would have peaked and have nowhere else to go. It's not like he's going to date someone else.

And if we don't get the 'rejection' early on, Will won't have time to feasibly get over it (especially since we already established that being rejected and moving on would not be an automatic process for someone as unconditionally in love as Will is with Mike), and he would inevitably end the season unhappy. But we know that's not happening so...

And no him getting over it during the time-skip is still not logical or good storytelling, it would be a cop-out and an unsatisfying plot device. Like Will confesses and is rejected by the boy he loves then it’s the next episode and he just doesn’t care anymore and the whole storyline is dropped? If it was an early season time-skip, then he’d have no real personal arc for the rest of (majority of) the season. If it was a mid-late season time skip, we’d still have him either pining or trying to move on (which is a painful and hard process for anyone) for the whole pre-skip, depending on when exactly the rejection occurs.

It's not that Bylers think Will couldn’t ever be happy without Mike but it's that the narrative as it's set up is not going to accomodate that whilst also adhering to basic storytelling principles (and without the writers letting a gay character constantly suffer with no pay off). He will either end up with Mike, spend the season hurting/pining/struggling again but by the end it just sort of fades into nothing (‘moving on’), OR they will drag his unrequited love to the final episodes guaranteeing his unhappy ending. Anything else would be nonsensical and unrealistic aka him just being fine and happy and completely over it right after he's rejected. Or them completely forgetting about the build up of this storyline with the excuse of a time jump, cutting short his personal arc and leaving the character with nowhere to go. These are literally the only options for the end of Will's story, and the only one that is happy and is objectively the better-written story is Byler.

I like that sir pentious is the first to ascend to heaven. I think that was actually a really clever bait and switch from the [perceived] plotting of the previous episodes, because a lot of people were lead to believe it'd be angel, the characters are more focused on Angel's path to redemption, particularly in the latter half of the series— understandably so, he has been at the hotel longer than pentious.

But the entire time, pentious does have a clear redemption arc, starting when he arrives and up to his sacrifice, it is short, and in the moment you likely dont recognize it, but he begins as a spy, and begins his redemption arc with his genuine apology to Charlie, he also shows growth in the trust episode, and a surprising amount of affection and compassion for his egg bois.

Also from a writing standpoint, Angel logistically couodnt be redeemed by the end of the first season, he's 1. A staple main cast member and 2. His arc doesn't *officially* start until episode 4. It would be deeply unsatisfying for him to be redeemed and heaven bound when his arc doesn't start until halfway through the first season and doesn't cover the full depth of his character.

So, adding sir pentious— a fairly morally innocent character from the get go, being based off classic villian of the week archetypes— into the hotel early on and ending his arc with his selfless sacrifice to comolete his redemption was a very smart move. Especially considering the time constraints the team was working with [8 episode limit]

Yea, I’m convinced that the Miraculous season finale was unsatisfying on purpose.

The “happy ending” scene at the end had this surrealist lighting and slightly off-putting music in the background. It gives off major false utopia vibes. It actually makes me feel relieved, because there were two things I was worried about for this finale but the way they wrote it resolves those issues a bit.

First, I was worried that they were going to try to wrap up everything perfectly within the span of this two episode special. There was no way they were going to be able to give all the different plot points and character arcs the closure they needed within that time frame. by leaving us with an open ending, It gives itself room to properly develop and deal with the fallout from this mess slowly over time.

And then, arguably the bigger issue, was Miraculous’ future after season 5. I kept thinking to myself, what are they going to have to do to keep Miraculous interesting after this? Sure we’ve got Lila, or Cerise, or whatever her name is, but everything we’ve been following this series for since the beginning was about to be resolved. Monarch gone. The Agreste arc over. Adrienette canon. What is Miraculous’ sense of identity after this? Do they hit the reset button and retell the story Disney sequel style? Do they force a breakup between Adrienette to keep the romance plot alive? What’s the point of this still VERY fresh reveal of senti-Adrien if Gabriel and his influence is nothing but a distant memory?

But because of the way things went down, none of those things we thought would be resolved actually are. Monarch fucking won. He got what he wanted, and now everyone is living in a world of his image. He’s remembered as a goddamn hero, which is fucking infuriating! And Adrien doesn’t know! Doesn’t know that his dad was a supervillain and terrorist, doesn’t know that he’s a sentimonster, doesn’t fully accept that he’s been abused. And Marinette is keeping all that from him! Probably because she doesn’t want to inflict unnecessary pain on him, but when he finds out he’s going to be an absolute MESS.

Which means the Agreste plot, the family drama, the relationship antics that we’ve been following for all these years will continue as a throughline in the show. It means that there are natural reasons to continue existing conflicts and keep the show running without it feeling contrived. Because none of this is ok, and it’s going to take a lot of time to resolve. A lot of pain, a lot of drama, and a lot of conflict. I wouldn’t be surprised if Adrien and Marinette have major relationship problems over the secrets that she’s keeping from him. The Ladynoir angst from season 4 is back at full force. And you KNOW Cerise is going to zero in on that shit like a moth to a flame. Before this I was fearing a ultra-contrived break up to keep the audience invested in their story, but now I would be totally satisfied with a temporary break up as Marinette’s secrets become too much to keep hidden.

So yea, I was angry at the season 5 finale. The Gabriel statue made me gag. And I REALLY wanted to see Adrien stick it to his father. But then again, he did in his own way. He pulled one over his father by tricking him into muting his mics, which gave him a chance to strategize with Plagg. He’s the one who decided to play the long game and wait patiently while Plagg found a new holder to defeat Monarch with -- as opposed to rushing in with brute force, which shows significant character growth for him, by the way. I’m proud of him. And I can’t wait to see where his arc goes from here as he continues to explore his own agency and his relationships with people around him.

As for Marinette, I was very satisfied with her face-off against Monarch/Gabriel. The moment he realized his archnemesis was her was priceless. And that piano? God. That was glorious. She was a total badass. And she demonstrated her growth, too. She acted with a lot more maturity than we’ve seen at other points in her story by putting aside her personal vendetta towards Gabriel and Monarch to focus on creating a peaceful solution -- even if it did come back to bite her in the ass hard.

So the manipulator won. Fitting, because I feel kind of manipulated too. I would’ve never guessed in a million years that Gabriel would actually be able to make his wish in the permanent timeline, or that Miraculous would go down such an unsettling and unsatisfying route (at least in the short term). I’ve gotta respect them for that. All these years we thought we knew how this conflict was going to resolve -- all those dramatic reveals in the Agreste basement, the final battle between Adrien and his piece of shit dad, Adrien breaking out of his control in one decisive and cathartic swoop. Instead, we got something much more sinister, something much more insidious. Whatever is lurking around the corner is bound to have MAJOR repercussions going forward.

So I’m content to wait and see what happens next. There’s no point in complaining about how a story went when it isn’t even resolved yet. Was it perfect? Nope. Will it be done perfectly in the future? Also no. And that’s ok. Because it never will be perfect, and what we saw here made sense. It was impactful. It creates new opportunities for the characters and their story arcs that didn’t exist before this finale. We are in a new era of Miraculous, and I will be waiting on the edge of my seat to find out what the hell this beautifully unpredictable series is going to evolve into next.

Yes actually look at that man, he's so killable but he just won't die because it's funner to prolong his suffering (I don't want him to die because I love him)

I dont want dazai to die bc then that will be the only thing this fandom will talk about. Dazai death angst is soooooooo cliche and has already been done by Asagiri himself wayyy too many times

But honsetly killing off Dazai would just be really shitty storytelling. Especially considering the overaching themes in BSD, its simply a unsatisfying conclusion to Dazai's arc if he dies before the end of the story, or even before what you'd consider old age.

Dazai's arc just like the other characters, but spelled out a little more obviously. The suicidal man chooses to live despite his desires, chooses to be good despite his past, chooses to survive despite the odds.

Anyways,

since hes open to feedback im considering talking to james roach about giving jade the justice she deserves after her narrative shafting in act 6 and one-dimensional ooc-ness (and also being a plot device deprived of agency) in the epilogues. if i do im probably going to link to this post……

so james if i sent this to you and you’re reading this, hi! :)

you say, “i want you to know if youre having problems with the story you can come to me with it and i will hear you out”. first of all you are such a good dude and have such a good open honest approach to the fans. i need to get that out there, because i know you’re just as much a fan of these characters and world are we are. secondly, i don’t know what your plans for homestuck beyond canon are, but dave and jade’s poor handling is a problem in both homestuck canon (act 6, even act 5 fucking them over with “tell, don’t show”; see the latter half of section 1 of the post at > Dave: Deploy cloning apparatus. and section 2) and post-canon that has yet to be addressed.

i understand the nuances of making things flow in a story; things that have already been established can’t be simply retconned. i wrote this post knowing that in mind and hopefully working around that into believably timed and justified/needed arcs gives it more potential

jade is a character i care about so much, and many fans also. her dynamic with dave was one of my favorites but the resolution to their separation…is not even really a resolution. it’s hard to talk about one without the other since theyve always been narratively intertwined. or at least jade has

remember how they musically collaborated more than the other kids? (crystalanthemums is their surprisingly tender song dont forget. i saw that the weird troll grub versions of objects make a comeback in the upd8; make music a relevant part of homestuck in-universe again too </3) dave sending her sbahj furry poster in the mail? the first ones to use a collaborative fraymotif in the comic? kringlefucker and conksuck boot? literally collaborating on creating the right seed for the new universe? and then dave died in jade’s arms and they were separated for 3 years and then that never gets touched on because of the retcon and all the other endgame shit going on (and lets be real grimbark jade from before the retcon wasn’t a satisfying reunion either). we get like, a brief exchange of dialogue at the very very end that made you want to see MORE of them after the battle but it. doesnt happen.

and then in the epilogues jade gets warped into this oddly hypersexual ooc one-dimensional character meant to narratively get in the way of davekat and it’s so awkward and uncomfortable for them. and even THEN in meat timeline gets her agency revoked by the narrative with alt calliope. and in candy dave realizes he’s gay (i thought he was explicitly bi? didnt he call jane hot multiple times both pre-and post-retcon, and once call roxy a “choice babe” in pajamas before he knew it was his ectomom?? if you’re actually gay and in denial why would you have these subconscious freudian blunders). and being married to jade gnaws at him because of it which is. unsatisfying i guess and isn’t consistent with dave’s established sexuality…and then he dies leaving his probably concerned wife and becomes a robot. even if the “point” is that the epilogues are metanarrative commentary about storytelling and candy represents the kind of fanfic that goes off the rails with fanservice it doesn’t feel good when i still care about these characters and their established canons. and a lot of people are in the same camp as me regarding this. it’s still an uncomfortable resolution for their relationship

i really want to see jade’s arc overcoming being used as a puppet by the narrative and the space aspect. just some things to think about / consider that have been running through my head: she’s a witch, right? isn’t what she’s supposed to do is actively bend the rules of her aspect? feferi bended the rules of life by asking the horrorterrors to create dream bubbles so the deceased could still sort of “live” which had a massive narrative impact. who exactly determines that being spacebound means you are fated to be passive and alone? the author? alt calliope? how do we know alt calliope can be trusted or if she’s just projecting her experiences as the most passive class possible onto jade, who ironically has an active manipulation class but is forced to be passive for some reason? normal calliope wasn’t right about everything classpect-related either.

ultimately these things are up to you. you’re still the director of course. but i’m speaking to you, as equally caring of these characters as you and everyone on the team, as a hypothetical suggestion or just something to consider for a jade arc: i think it would do such good to jade and the comic as a whole to see her speak to the manager and recognize the power she has and take back the reigns over her own life and dignity. jade is MAD that she had her own possibilities for socialization and agency taken away from her. and with floralmarsupial, my beloved mutual floral who i went to homestuck high together with, i KNOW the potential they possess to write a compelling arc for jade harley. i think everyone knows too lol floral is THE compelling deep jade harley fanwork big name fan. i dont know what we got to lose. with you guys in charge now, and with the last we see of jade in hs^2 (now hs:bc) fighting callie’s influence and advocating for her own agency, really the only way to go from here for jade is up. (assuming she doesn’t permadie of peanut but i doubt that’s going to happen since she’s one of the original kids and it wouldn’t be satisfying storytelling. and it’s homestuck)

this statement so ripe with potential to me ^ and we’re left on a cliffhanger with jade going in this direction

i want jade and dave to be close friends who care about each other a lot and do silly stuff together again. this isn’t even a call to make davejade canon; it doesnt have to be romantic—i dont want a davekat davejade war to break out, you know? i know you’re trying to balance fan demands. but i just loved their dynamic a lot and i MISS it so much, homestuck act 6 didnt give us this and i wish their reunion had more that went into it. we’re past that point though

i want jade and dave to have a talk that’s like old times. something that isn’t awkward as hell or about sexual relations or drama or whos fucking who. just something for the two of them. something that grounds them in what made homestuck so compelling in the first place: character and friendships and these kind of interactions

i want to see them collaborate again. an idea i have is maybe they start a band or something since they’re both musically talented and also live together so they can make stuff together in person now. you’re a music guy you get it. tangle buddies. jam buddies

and maybe something more serious that concerns just the two of them. post-retcon dave never talked to jade about his thoughts when they fought bec noir right? knowing that jade would inevitably kill him with bullets through bec, but he couldnt warn her because he knows she wouldn’t go through with it, creating a doomed timeline? so jade thought all that time she killed him by accident…..what about all that guilt she must harbor? the first person she had in-person contact with since she was probably four years old, her best friend online, and accidentally killed him within just a few hours of meeting him? and never got to talk about it with him, let alone anyone, after three years? hello?? :(

these are the final lines of the last pesterlog between jade and dave before their 3-year separation (and basically all of act 6)

so uh…..this exchange really openly invites some kind of talk to take place even if it’s long overdue. among other things maybe. they need to hug or something. jade’s touch starvation is real, but not everything needs to be sexualized about touch. she’s lonely and starved of affection but i feel like it would be more meaningful if it wasn’t sexualized. just really basic platonic primal cloth mother needs. just like..both being human beings and having basic needs like this that jade’s been deprived of. who’s the person she would feel most comfortable going to? who does she have the richest history with throughout the webcomic? dave, right? her online best friend since childhood that always cared a lot about her? they have stuff to talk about

i feel like that would address the issue people had with jade’s out of left-field promiscuity in the epilogues and even leftovers of it in hs^2. not only do i think primal platonic touch starvation would be a more meaningful and evocative type of interaction to give them at some point, it wouldn’t rock the boat or create any ship drama (davekat has long since sailed and most people seem to be on board with it) and it would probably be really positive representation of these sorts of things which not only throws a bone to aroace people but just depicting this sort of thing normalizes the fact that two people can be close and not necessarily in an official relationship.

this is a good transition point to this post also which is basically an extension to this one. it’s exactly the issues i had. it’s on the nature of what they had going and how much they mean to each other but how the storytelling held them back when it was unnecessary

this breaks my heart. mr. roach and hs:bc writing team please i miss my favorite blorbo duo being happy in each other’s company. they were such good friends but circumstances pulled them apart. i miss when they created music together and talked about their interests and exchanged quips. i am such a well of ideas for stuff like this. show us how much they mean to each other again

if youre still reading this james thanks for hearing me out. if you wanna pass on to the writing team to look at and get their feedback on this i’d be so so thankful

“and to think that after all this he still chose to save her, like always, probably knowing he had little to no chance, just because he cares for her, her life and who she is beyond this moment, really meant a lot for them. i really, really was mad that this would be the last time they would truly ever be together in a way that to me mattered” — vintagegamebro

sub xiao lingerie plssss everything u do with him is magic

Sub! Xiao x GN Dom! Reader 

Warnings: not sfw, fingering, obviously lingerie, praise kink, nipple play, edging, cockwarming, very slight degradation (like a single name calling), anal sex (cock stand for both dick and strap as usual)

A/N: this is not “Xiao is a mewling mess from the get go”, though we get there, trust me, but there’s a tsundere character development arc first. I planned it as a quick lighthearted thing and it kinda got away from me. Modern AU? sort of??? Just to have texting.

Wordcount: 2,3k

You have to leave for a few days for the first time since you started dating Xiao, and you know already that it’s very hard for him to form connections, but when he does, the attachment is incredibly intense and important for someone as lonely and self-hating as he is. He’s predisposed to feel abandoned even if he’d never admit and he rationally knows it’s not true.

So you decide to make him a cute surprise gift, as both a distraction and a token of affection. At first, he doesn’t take it well AT ALL.

“What is this? Some sort of a joke? If so, I find your mortal sense of humor lacking once again.”

“I just think it would look cute on you, baby <3”

You know already that arguing with him or answering with sarcasm is both tiring and unproductive. He is perpetually looped in a cat’s paradox, just as cats, god’s perfect killing machines, adapted to be house pets and want to curl on human laps and be scratched behind the ears, Xiao, a stoic yaksha general, is trapped in a touch-starved body with an easy blush and a sensitive cock. It’s just that unlike cats, he has to go through twelve steps of denial and grief before accepting it.

“Cute? That is the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard. How disrespectful of you to suggest to an adeptus to wear this, let alone a yaksha like myself, a weapon drenched in tainted blood for a millenium.”

“I *KNOW* it will look cute on you, little bird. Send pics when you try it on!”

He doesn’t deign to answer because there’s no dignified way to type out “Hmpf.” The absolute gall of your suggestion does not even warrant a reply. He spends the entire day quietly fuming about how OBVIOUSLY it would NOT look cute on him. In the evening, he unpacks it just to spite you so you can’t return it. And also just to see for himself how absolutely STUPID this idea is.

And it is stupid! The lingerie is so ridiculous and uncomfortable. The white high thighs that are so idiotically hard to put on and leave an unreasonable gap of flesh between the flimsy panties, which are sitting low on hip bones, barely covering even soft cock, not to mention… And the transparent little top, clinging so obnoxiously that the peaks of the nipples are visible. And the tiny lacy choker is so useless, so extraneous, such an obvious waste!

Of course, he doesn’t tell you that he tried it on and he doesn’t take pics. He spends the night, tossing and turning under the covers, intrusive images of you looking at him dressed like that, hungrily, calling him pretty, sliding hands down his legs, almost rolling the tight stockings down, squeezing his crotch under a thin, silky layer of underwear while your lips are roaming over his arched neck, your finger hooked under his choker…

He doesn’t touch himself because he refuses to admit images like this could arouse him, so the next morning he’s restless, high strung, horny and unsatisfied after what was basically edging himself for the entire night, and so his judgment starts becoming cloudy, searching for the “acceptable” ways to fall to the temptation. The part of him that wants this, wants you to want him like this and praise him for looking like this, is getting more and more insistent, but he still can’t admit it to himself, and so he subconsciously commits a sleight of hand. SURELY, you wouldn’t actually think this looks good on him, and so if you see it, you’d realize what a foolish mistake you’ve made and the question would be closed forever, so he wouldn’t need to feel conflicted anymore. And so obviously, the solution is to send you a pic, but, you know. Not the great looking one (though it’s not like something like this could even theoretically look great on him, of course), and making sure it’s visible that he doesn’t care and is, in fact, disdainful of the idea, and is only doing this so you can regret even suggesting it.

So he spends quite a lot of time and effort on taking the most bored and low investment-looking selfies possible, sends a couple of them to you with “And this rubbish is what you find attractive?” comment, immediately regrets it, throws the phone down on the bed and is on the verge of trying to delete the pics, when you reply, ecstatic, telling him that yes, of course he looks incredibly hot like that. He answers “Then you have a bad taste,” throws the phone down again, blushing violently and already with a hard-on. 

When you send encouraging praises, telling him to greet you like that when you come back, he refuses vehemently, but the sweet warmth pools deep in his belly and he can’t meet his own eyes in the mirror for the rest of the night. He’s used to thinking of himself as a weapon, built for battle first and foremost, with strength and mastery in a fight as his only valuable traits, and even your attraction to him he sees as a fortunate, but weird quirk of your character, an unusual preference. But the lingerie makes him feel pretty in a way that has nothing to do with strength, the idea of being seen as straightforwardly beautiful is so tempting, but clashes with his perception of self so radically that he cannot reconcile this easily.

He might have resisted the corruption for hundreds of years, but it only takes a couple of lonely nights for desire to break his resolve. So when you finally arrive and walk into the bedroom, he’s in lingerie, kneeling on the bed, looking away both from you and the reflection in the wall mirror on the side. 

You drop your bags on the floor, walk up to him and kiss him, push him down on the bed, while he’s blushing and still refusing to meet your eyes. You catch his chin and force him to turn his head.

“Look at me, my pretty little bird.”

He does, his golden eyes unfocused and half-lidded over, and can’t look away anymore, as you ravish him from neck to stomach, cover him with kisses, on the exposed skin and through the silky fabric, while he’s squirming under you and watching, transfixed, feeling sweetly weak and precious like he didn’t know he could. You hold his gaze when you draw your lips from his prominent hipbones down, lick at the strip of skin over the band of panties while he takes the rugged breaths, and when you finally kiss his bulge through the thin lace, he shudders, melts under your touch and whines needily, even though his words are protesting.

“No, wait, I’m close…”

You move up to kiss him and give him a slight respite, but your hand slides down, moving the fabric of underwear away to lightly tease his hole, and he comes just from that, moaning against your mouth and arching with a shudder, his legs closing over your hand. You chuckle, keep massaging his pulsing entrance.

“You came just from that, huh? You really did miss me then.”

He blushes brightly and doesn’t look you in the eye, still tight and nervous like a virgin when you slide your fingers in, it’s like the first time no matter how often you fuck him until he’s screaming.

“Don’t worry, I won’t punish you for coming without permission. You’ve been so good, I can’t blame you for being excited to look so pretty for me.”

It shouldn’t be physically possible for him to blush even brighter, but he manages.

“I wasn’t… I’m not.”

There was always something endearing about the ridiculousness of his denials while he’s sprawled under you, being fingered, toes scraping at the bedsheets, but with time it turns exasperating. It’s easier for him to avoid confronting his own desires if he pretends this is just for you, so he hides in the passivity of submission, allowing you to do what you want to him so that he doesn’t have to admit how badly he wants it too.

“Oh, you’re not?” you ask with deceiving softness, turning him over and sliding into him with your cock\strap. “Not even a little bit?” your tone turns teasing as he groans in desire, but you don’t fuck him, instead, you pull him up to settle in your lap, his back against your chest, your cock buried deep inside him. His hips buckle against yours, but you grip his thigh to still him with one hand and catch his chin and force him to look in the mirror with the other.

“Oh no, dear, you’re not getting it until you admit you want it,” you whisper into his ear, meeting his agitated golden eyes in the mirror. “Until you admit you like looking like this too..”

He bites his lip, glancing over his own reflection, he looks ravished and debauched, bright blush, lingerie pieces sitting askew, thighs in lacy stockings trembling open, cock getting hard again, it’s outline visible under the panties, still damp from him coming just now.

“Does it feel good, baby?” you ask quietly, trailing sloppy hot kisses down his neck. His eyes are lidding over, long black eyelashes trembling and he answers, a barely audible “Yes…”

“Good boy,” you kiss him in encouragement. ”See, it isn’t hard to tell the truth, is it?” you slide your hand under the flimsy layer of his top, thumb at his nipples. He grunts, his head rolling helplessly back to your shoulder, his legs spreading even wider open. You play with the sensitive pink buds until he’s squirming in your lap, arching against you so that your dick inside him is bulging slightly through his stomach and the swollen head of his own pretty cock is peeking from under his little panties and leaking on the lace. “And don’t you want more?”

“Yes…” he lets out with a shudder, both being horrified at what he sees in the mirror and not being able to look away, torn between the life-long belief this isn’t for him and an undeniable, sharp pleasure, a humiliating, shameful weakness that feels so good, so sweetly intoxicating.

“How could you even try to pretend, when you’re undone before I even touched your pretty cock?” you chuckle and press your palm against his crotch. He whines, clenching around your cock, ruts helplessly against your hand, losing the last shreds of control.

“Fuck, baby, you’re so fucking hot like this. I’ll fuck you so good and hard right now, just ask.”

He arches in your lap, presses his head against yours, his mouth half-open, his hot and rugged breaths on your lips while his heart is racing in his chest.

“Please,” he whispers, low, choked, feverish like gasping for air while drowning. “Please, I can’t take it anymore, please…”

You kiss him, then throw him down on the bed and ram into him. He screams and keeps screaming while you fuck him, hard and fast, gripping his hips covered in lace, telling him how good he looks until his screams turn into shuddering, breathless whines. You grip black hair at the back of his head and pull him up again, force him to look up. He lost control and composure completely at this point, red eyeliner running at the corners of half-lidded glittering eyes, ruffled green-black hair, mouth falling slack open and trying to catch air.

“You love this, don’t you?” you slide your free hand down his arched body, ride up the transparent top, run fingers over the bulge in his belly and down to the open, shaking thighs, and this time he doesn’t hesitate to answer, too far gone to care. 

“Yes!”

“You like being a pretty slut for me?” You kiss him and grope his throbbing cock as he’s bucking his hips against you, trying desperately to fuck himself.

“Yes!”

“Then come for me, baby, like a good little whore.”

He comes writhing in your arms, his hand gripping at your wrist where you hold his hip, and you fuck him through it, whispering praises and kissing the back of his neck. When he calms down and you slide out, move to take now ruined pieces of the lingerie of him, he at first tries to protest and do everything himself, as usual, but when you insist, gives up surprisingly easily, lets you slide it off him and then gently wipe him with a warm damp cloth, while he’s laying on the pillows, blushing and limp-limbed. He feels raw and tender all over, but in a good way, and when you pull the covers over him, their touch feels somehow overwhelming in their softness against his naked skin.

He curls against you in the nest of tangled blankets, warm and tired, feeling at the same time extremely vulnerable and hidden from the whole world.

“Sorry for ruining the lingerie,” he says quietly and you laugh.

“Oh, it’s nothing, it was absolutely worth it, baby.”

“Was it?” you can feel his cheek heating up when he blushes, but his voice is  anxious.“I’m far from suitable for such things, so…”

“Hush. You are the prettiest thing I’ve laid my eyes on, you’ve looked stunning in this, and I cannot wait to get you ten new sets.”

“Hmfp. Then you are truly delusional,” he says fondly and rubs his cheek against your shoulder. That night, Xiao lays there quietly in a circle of your arms, and despite being exhausted, resists falling asleep for as long as he can, basking in a feeling of, for once instead of an expendable weapon, being cherished and protected himself.

"Grimm" is a five-part story from Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight from 2002 and I kind of absolutely lost my mind over it because there was just so much validating everything I've always thought about these two. The premise is typical comics shenanigans, there's a Mother Grimm who is stealing street kids and abused children away to this fantastical underground carnival to let them live a whimsical life, where they're loved and cared for--which Dick falls into because he's clashing with Bruce, who is freaking out because he's worried that he's turning Dick into a mirror version of himself. The story is woven through with Alfred gently trying to push (which I've been losing my shit about here and here because this is exactly what I read comics for) both Bruce and Dick into acknowledging that they're becoming father and son--but it's clear that both of them are terrified of stepping into those roles, Bruce because he doesn't know how to raise a kid and he's afraid he's hurting more than helping, Dick because he's not sure Bruce even wants him around as Robin, much less as Dick Grayson, but you watch the way Alfred barely has to nudge them and you see them both start to lean into the idea before they get scared again and jump back into saying they're partners and friends instead. And it's so validating because it's the good stuff--Dick running away because he feels like Bruce doesn't want him, Bruce coming home to tell him that he's going to find Dick a new family because he's scared he's molding this kid into himself but he can't because Dick's already run off, but when Dick says he's going to stay with Mother Grimm, Bruce looks gut-punched like he can't actually believe Dick would leave. Meanwhile, Bruce tries to leave, but Mother Grimm secretly doses him with psychotropic drugs which send him into hallucinations about how he's dragging Dick into this violent world of his, and how he's setting him up for death, that because Bruce didn't die with his parents, now he's trying to get this kid--this kid who mirrors him in so many ways--killed instead. And it's all just so much terror at the thought of letting someone else in after their losses--Bruce because he's scared of losing more people, Dick scared because he's not sure he's wanted, and it'll take years yet for them to actually put anything into words, so instead they settle for "partners" and it might feel unsatisfying and half-assed, except honestly Dick Grayson and Alfred Pennyworth were working miracles here. There's plenty of room for other interpretations, including soft dad!Bruce who eagerly embraces the idea (and it's not too far off from this, this Bruce very clearly does want that, he's just scared and so he keeps chickening out), but this is where I live, this is why Dick Grayson is so fundamentally important to Bruce Wayne's story, that neither character is complete without the other. Bruce Wayne is a character who lost his entire world on that night he was eight years old and didn't know how to grow beyond it for so long, and how do you make a character arc like that satisfying? How do you take a character that is defined by a child's loss of his parents, that shapes everything of who he came to be, and make a satisfying conclusion?

You do it by making him a father to a child who needs him. A child who mirrors him, where they could bring out the worst in each other--and sometimes they do tend to slide into those fears getting the better of them--but instead Bruce struggles his way to being someone who openly admits that he's fallible, he makes mistakes, but he loves his kid and he is a father, that he needs to step up. I've been reading a lot of Bruce & Damian comics lately and it's been striking me how different Bruce is--he's still emotionally constipated, but he understands that he has to get in there, set boundaries, set rules, and make sure the kid knows that he's proud of them. Has to be the adult that looks past the scared kid's bravado and harsh words, to see the vulnerability underneath.

Bruce could never have done any of what he's doing with Damian currently without THIS RIGHT HERE. Without the yearning for something he doesn't know how to put into words (even when Alfred basically spells it out for him), without Dick Grayson bringing light and love into his life, without Dick being such a bright and loving child who was still scared that he wasn't wanted, so Bruce has to open up and learn to start actually saying what he means.

You don't get Bruce & Damian (or Bruce & Jason or Bruce & Tim) without Bruce & Dick first. You don't get any of that without Bruce's relationship with Dick making him put his fears into words and learning to trust his heart to this kid, step by step.

Bruce and Dick's relationship being rocky in the early days isn't a mark against how much Bruce loved that kid, but instead a sign of just how miraculous it was that Dick Grayson got him this far in the first place. Dick Grayson had to be the first, because you don't get to current day Bruce Wayne with any of his other kids without him. (Overall, this was a fairly silly comic that was very much of its era, but I thought it was a great read because it really nailed how hard it was for them to even begin to approach the idea of Bruce being a dad, he couldn't even say it at the end of all this, despite that he literally pulled the most dad move of all time by waiting in the dark for his kid to sneak back in and basically tell him he was grounded. GOD THEY ARE SO EMOTIONALLY CONSTIPATED AND IT'S SO DELICIOUSLY FUN.)

Thinking about why Separation arc works so well again.

There's already a very good post about how it makes you think it'll have Reigen fail at keeping up the business on his own, and apologize to Mob to get him back because he can't do it without him. Only to have him actually be perfectly capable of running the business by himself without even touching real spirits. But why didn't they do that?

It wouldn't have actually meant anything. Reigen apologizing to Mob wouldn't have meant shit, because it would just come off as using him. Mob going back to him wouldn't be satisfying or a relief. It'd just feel like he was going back to an unhealthy environment. No character development, no actual satisfying resolution.

What they do instead works so much better, and I've been thinking about why. Because I think about this show way too much, let me live.

Reigen was perfectly fine money wise before Mob showed up. Money problems aren't even implied to be a reason why he wants to leave spirits n such. It's all just being unsatisfied. He's restless and unfulfilled, and nothing really catches his interest. And then actual company shows up, and gets him talking to people, and gives him something worthwhile to do.

Most of Reigens worst moments have nothing to do with money. His controlling tendencies come out when he feels left behind or like someone is a better person than him. His toxic traits are so painfully human. He lashes out when he feels like his place in someone's life is in danger, he's not honest because he feels like nobody can love him as he is, and he doesn't try to change because he feels like he's inherently bad and cannot get better. Because of this, he doesn't stop and recognize he's hurting people. He thinks of him being a bad person as Inherent, not actions he can stop doing.

This is why it's so so SO important that there be a moment in the arc where he stops and looks back at how he treats people. He needs to realize that him being Bad isn't determined by just being bad by existing, but by what he says and does. Mob didn't leave because Reigen is inherently bad. Mob left because Reigen treated him badly.

If the Reigen and Mob conflict had been resolved with Reigen apologizing because he needed him for his business, it would've come off like Reigen didn't care about Mob. But because it became clear that Reigen didn't need Mob for his business, it tells the audience that Reigen really fucking cares about Mob AND why Reigen had actually acted the way he did:

Because he was a sad bastard who's scared of being alone.

And also, if they had Reigen just take on a spirit alone, the audience wouldn't have had nearly as much reason to be sympathetic towards him. It would've just felt like Reigen was being an idiot. But because of how they set up Reigen's downfall, we're so much more sympathetic to him. He works hard and gets what he thinks he wants, only to be set up by a guy who he saved the life of. It makes us feel extremely bad for him and like his ridicule is completely undeserved.

It also tells us something about him. Reigen has had so much experience where doing the right thing is punished. Reigen feels like it's too late to be good. Reigen falls into thinking he cannot be good, so he needs to buckle in and keep going. Because it shows Reigen being punished for being good as well as being punished for being bad, it makes what Reigen did feel so much more human. You're more inclined to sympathize with him, because it's not just about money. It's about the fact he was an asshole to his only friend because he felt like if he had other friends, he'd like them more and leave him. And seeing him face negative consequences for Doing The Right Thing as well as the wrong thing makes you understand why he just...doesn't try. If that makes sense lmao.

The way they constructed the arc makes us sympathize with Reigen while he's acting like an absolute asshole, while also setting up Reigen stopping and asking himself "why DID I do this, why DID I choose this path, why DO I treat people like this" perfectly.

Tldr, it's a really good arc.