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celaenaeiln · 2 months

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who do you think each bats' favourite sibling is canonically? i haven't seen much about this outside of super fanon stuff so i'm curious

Let's start with the easiest one!

Tim - Dick

Tim's favorite sibling but also favorite person ever is unquestionably, undoubtedly Dick. This boy adores his big brother. He's full-on obsessed with him.

His thoughts on Dick are just a compilation of praises about him and his inner dialogue simply consists of a series of hero worship.

Robin (1993) Issue #32

Red Robin Issue #23

Sometimes I ponder about Dick and Tim's relationship because I feel like what Tim wants from Dick isn't just a brother, I feel like he wants him to be a parent which is part of the reason why Tim and Damian don't get along.

Because the truth is, before Damian came along, Tim was Dick's robin first. And Tim loved it.

(This post was on hold for months because I needed that exact panel where Tim says to Dick "It's obvious he wants us to be the new batman and Robin." BuT i CaNt FiNd It. I literally give up, if anyone know what panel I'm referring to people reblog it with the panel and I'll upload it with the post)

Dick was Tim's Robin and everything he did he wanted to live up to him

Batman/Catwoman: The Gotham War: Scorched Earth

Look at what he says about Dick:

Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying

Even before Dick and Tim met again, Tim started working out just so he could be like his idol. Tim literally says to Dick "My grades are okay but I studied because I wanted to just like you."

You know what they say about idols and pedestals and never meeting your heroes? The opposite is true for Tim about Dick. After meeting Dick for the second time, his idol worship grew so much it shattered every ceiling in existence.

Tim loves him so so much. People sometimes misunderstand and think that Tim hated Dick when he fired him from Robin but it wasn't hate that Tim felt. It was jealousy. Jealousy over Dick choosing Damian over him.

Tim even solely used the Red Robin persona for the mere reason that he didn't want to dirty Dick's Robin by stigmatizing it with his less ethical actions.

Damian - Dick

Obviously. The only reason I said Tim was the easiest is because Tim's inner and outer thoughts about Dick can be complied to create volumes of fanbooks of flowing poetry about him. Damian on the other hand is more of a tsundere, but there's still only one person who he loves aside from his father and even more than.

Robin War Issue #1

If there were any doubts, I don't think this panel could be any clearer about who Damian's favorite is.

Stephanie - Cass

Batgirl (2000) Issue #38

Cass - Stephanie

Batgirls (2016) Issue #14

Damn.

Steph and Cass are each other's favorites

Detective Comics (1937) Issue #945

Duke - noone? everyone?

Like actually I can't pick out one person Duke likes the best. You're either on his wavelength or he's snarking you off it. He's the type of guy where everyone likes him and he's chilling by himself, doing whatever he wants.

Jason - Dick

Out of the batkids who did deal with Jason during his worst phase, Dick is unilaterally his favorite. Sometimes when I think about Jason's relationship with Bruce, I'm reminded of how much Jason and Bruce are alike sometimes because Jason's view on Dick is almost identical to Bruce's view on Dick and they even have similar reactions. We all know that Bruce hero-worships Dick. Time and time again, Bruce emphasizes, stresses, and talks about how amazing Dick is and how he's so much better than him, and constantly places Dick on a pedestal. The issue comes when Dick doesn't want to do what Bruce wants him to do because he believes that Dick is an extension of himself, his better half, and he's furious when Dick doesn't follow or accept what he's doing because Dick should know what Bruce is trying to do because he's supposed to be better than him, how dare he stop him, etc.

Jason acts in similar ways to Dick. There's a whole issue where Jason gets fear gassed and one of his biggest fears is Dick. More specifically, it's about how amazing Dick is and never living up to him because in Jason's eyes, Dick is absolutely perfect. There is no one better than him because he is the peak of everything. He places Dick on the highest pedestal there is and he kind of safeguards Dick there in his heart. He used to get really angry because he believes Dick is the best but also refuses to let Dick be anything other than the best. The best way I have to explain them is Jason holding Dick prisoner as a result of his hero worship.

Once Jason is slightly calmer, his relationship dynamics with everyone became really clear, as well as what he thinks of them and it's shown how the way he treats Dick is just different.

Task Force Z Issue #8

Grayson Issue #12

"You don't do that to your--you don't do that to another Robin!"

He was going to say brother 🥺🥺

In this scene, it's pretty obvious that Jason loves Dick a lot but he's obviously not going to be all fuzzy feelings about it because he likes to be edgy. Jason's a little confusing in general for people to understand because they expect him to be nice and open but Jason's not nice, he's just nicer to the people he likes. Once we start understanding that, he becomes clearer.

And to Dick -

Nightwing (2016) Issue #15

-He's exceptionally nicer.

DC's Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun Issue #1

Another example of why Jason loves Dick the most is because in the comics, Jason doesn't work with anyone in the family unless he has to unless it's Dick because he chooses to work with Dick by choice.

Dick - Tim or Damian

Dick adores Tim so freaking much. He loves him so, so much.

Nightwing (1996) Issue #139

Catch me crying behind my sunglasses at Dick kissing Tim's head lovingly 😭

Robin (1993) Issue #12

I just love these soft touch moments Dick has with Tim. It's so incredibly sweet.

He was Tim's mentor

The New Titans (1988) Issue #65

and a really good one too.

He loves him-

Detective Comics (1937) Issue #696

-so much.

(I'd add more panels but I ran out of image space :'0)

I genuinely cannot say who he loves more at all. I can't even pick. I really do think he loves them evenly because when I think about leaning one side, more evidence comes to mind for the other side like a pair of counter weights.

Damian...I don't really need to say any words because the pictures speak for themselves

Batman (2016) Issue #34

Grayson Issue #12

aldskjdhkdjfhldfah;dh. Look at what he gave his son! A souvenir from the first time his dad met his mom because Dick knows how much Damian loves his parents <333!! There's nothing I can even say more.

Here's my previous post on Dick and Damian's relationship.

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onceuponapuffin · 25 days

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Ineffable Bureaucracy and Ineffable Husbands

So, especially in the early days after the release of S2, I saw and heard a lot of people comparing these two as if they were the same. There were fan comics and fanart and fanfiction that included dialogue that was something along the lines of "why are they so healthy after only a few years and we aren't?" or "why do THEY get a happy ending and we don't?" And I mean, I haven't seen any of that in a while so maybe people have come to this conclusion on their own, but just in case, I wanted to point out

That they are fundamentally different. They are not the same.

And the reason why comes down to this conversation from 2x3:

So, hold this conversation in your brain while we go through this.

First of all, we have our Ineffable Bureaucracy, Gabriel and Beelzebub.

So these are the ones who, figuratively speaking, were born in a castle.

Gabriel was the Supreme Archangel for however many millenia, and Beelzebub was the Grand Duke of Hell for the same, roughly speaking. They are equals in positions of power.

So, when they fall in love, you have two supernatural authorities who have lived their existences believing that they can reasonably expect to have and keep whatever they want. After all, that's exactly what their lives have been (with the one exception being Beelzebub's Fall) - they want something, they get it, they keep it, and no one tells them no.

The biggest risk is to Gabriel. If Heaven were to find out, he would Fall. I can imagine Beelzebub being a bit concerned, but "Oh no," Gabriel probably figured "I Fall to Hell, and straight into your arms!" And I could see Beelzebub with a little smirk saying "I'd look after you, babe," in response.

The only time Gabriel actually worries is when he finds out that there's another punishment that he didn't realize was a possibility.

Falling to Hell is one thing, but having his memories erased is an actual threat, and possibly the first time he's ever been told no. This is when we see him panic, and leave Heaven in a mess, storing his memories away to keep them safe from the Metatron. We find out later that he was on his way to Hell anyway and just forgot halfway there and got lost.

And so, we have two beings who were always told they were Good Enough, who approached each other knowing they were able to have whatever they wanted, and were therefore able to communicate and fall in love in a healthy way. They didn't need to tip toe or hide, because they had no reason to believe anyone would ever tell them no until someone did. Their risk, because of their positions of authority, wasn't nearly as great as Aziraphale and Crowley's risk.

So now we come to our Precious Ineffable Husbands

Crowley and Aziraphale start off in much lower positions on the Celestial Food Chain. We know that they have to be very careful about their relationship to avoid the repercussions. They can't mention The Arrangement out loud, they can't put their feelings for each other into words. It has been made clear to them that they are always being watched, and anything they have can be taken away from them on a whim.

So how can they communicate safely when they've spent millenia living on eggshells and tightropes? Of course they won't, and of course it's going to be much harder for them to believe they can once they finally are safe. I definitely believe that they will get there (for my own wellbeing I have to believe that their love is stronger than anything), but they will need to fight tooth and nail in a way that Gabriel and Beelzebub didn't. All because they aren't figures of authority.

It might honestly be another good argument for Crowley taking the Grand Duke of Hell job (even though I reeeeaaaally don't want him to). It would put them in the same position as Gabriel and Beelzebub, and might give them the footing to actually escape the system (even though I think it's more likely that they're going to dismantle and/or repair the system in s3, but that's my own opinion).

These two pairs aren't mirrors of each other. Rather, they illustrate the problems with inequity that Crowley was pointing out in Edinburgh. And if S2 showed us that, I'm hoping S3 will show us possible solutions for it.

#good omens #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #good omens 2 #good omens fandom #aziraphale x crowley #aziracrow lasts forever #gabriel #archangel gabriel #beelzebub #ineffable bureaucracy #good omens meta #good omens 2 meta #good omens analysis #ineffable fandom #this show is my roman empire #good omens thoughts

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kalims · 1 year

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sugar

flushed — when you fluster them and how they act.

do you want a 'kiss' — not an actual kiss, the chocolate.

falling (asleep) — you fall asleep on their shoulder.

w/ malleus draconia

commissioned by paru !

flushed — when you fluster them and how they act.

typically if it was anyone else, they'd have a really hard time to gauge out a reaction from malleus when the most they'll get is probably a barely evident crease, or raise in his brows.

in this case tis our very lovely mc who malleus is very much already on the ground from how fast he fell. you could do just about anything, give him a rock or something, and he’ll thank you eternally and keep it in a room above the most eccentric gifts he's ever gotten.

(god forbid if sebek ever enters, and sees some random rock on a pedestal meanwhile his gifts for the master is just.. there on some table like malleus didn't even think twice to leave it there then worship that rock!)

^ well thankfully, out of respect. sebek believes that someone like him simply is not privileged enough to enter the room of his esteemed master.

anything remotely affectionate from you would definitely send malleus to cloud nine for the whole day, he's practically emitting comical hearts every second you're together. they're trailing after him as he's following you around.

so you have a variety of choices! a heartfelt compliment, a hug, maybe even a kiss. whatever you choose will only feed on the overflowing glass that's called; 'malleus' love for mc'. trust me if you think he's like 67% in love with you, you're WRONG.

it's actually 101% and it's still increasing I swear 😭

well the glass I was talking about is probably overflowing right now, and it's also probably going to start drowning everyone.

as in… everyone's just stuck to witness malleus' insanely endearing reactions to your shenanigans. should they be scared that malleus would probably do it in a heartbeat if you asked to take over the world??

yeah they should tbh.

in this case, I believe a close hug then a whisper in his ears would really make that arrow hit straight to his heart. you can't just whisper 'doritos' though! /j but you shall instead proclaim your love for him instead with a single 'I love you'.

it's funny to see his face completely freeze. you can practically hear his brain absolutely blowing up. there's a wobbly grin stretching across his face, the tip of his ears turn a shade of pink.

he looks… shy, but oddly pleased.

hellour congratulations malleus will not stop till you're both bound for life 💀 trust me he won't take anyone else if it isn't you anymore. he loves you THAT much.

malleus is not aware of the feeling blooming in his chest, it's foreign. he could even describe it as addictive. he's clueless really, but what he's sure of is that he wonders if you'd feel that too if he did the same to you.

oh well.. you've exposed him to such a euphoric feeling. it's only natural for him to return the favor.

so honestly just expect him to be the rizzlord for the rest of your existence, he's rizzing you up every chance he can get. and the fact that most of it is just him not trying at all, and just being himself.

which is also funny cause when he does try to 'charm' you it ends up in fail.

like who let him bring you the 'rewards of his hunt' as a courting offering.

and when he tries to recite a letter he wrote for you, it's very endearing, and flattering but he's been talking for quite a long time now and you're concerned.

do you want a 'kiss' — not an actual kiss, the chocolate.

*malleus holding a big ass bowl* yes pls

^ but that's if he knows it's chocolate, and still wants the legit kiss. in a way that's the amount he'd want if it was the real deal.

not that he does know! cause malleus isn't exactly educated in the chocolate culture. as horrifying as it sounds, i doubt he snacks on chocolate in his free time.

I guess he didn't have much time to be a child :(.

he's tasted it before though! but knowing specific brands doesn't really cross his mind. for malleus chocolate is just chocolate.

so he definitely doesn't know that there's a brand of chocolate called kisses.

so when you ask him if he wants a kiss he's like: yes. IMMEDIATELY.

ok maybe not immediately but he gives you this certain look, and when he registers your silence at his face he realizes that you're being serious.

malleus rn: well I mean ur offering so

WHEN DID HE EVEN FINISH EATING A MINT CANDY.

jokes aside it's almost sad to think how he'll react when it's in fact, not a kiss.

when you pull out some kind of thing wrapped around in some kind of foil and place it inside malleus' palm he's just confused. where are his kisses?? why are you giving him this thing??

malleus spots the 'kisses' label on it and blanks.

oh.. so that's what you meant.

okay he's happy to receive anything from you but that's foul play!

but he really likes you so he won't comment on it 😞 you didn't even elaborate so it's partially his fault for jumping into conclusions.

no one can explain, not even you when there's a visible aura radiating off malleus. something gloomy, and he won't tell you even if you point out that you've noticed him constantly glancing at your face.

well your lips but you also don't know that.

falling (asleep) — you fall asleep on their shoulder.

would refuse to move at all.

first of all, he's honored that you trust him this much to lower your guard, and fall asleep on him. malleus is aware, sorta. he doesn't stop talking but instead slows down his words.

he doesn't want to wake you up, does he?

so he just settles on rambling in hopes that even in your dreams, his voice would reach you. you'd dream of him day, and night.

but when he's done malleus makes very little movement, hyper aware that you've fallen asleep on him. so when he finally assumes a position most comfortable for you, (plus one where he wouldn't crane his neck too much to peer at you) and he just stares.

he's done this plenty of times when you were awake so he doesn't know why he's doing it now. maybe it's because he sees you awake every time, and when you were, he could see the slightest bit of exhaustion present in your eyes.

this way he can be at peace knowing you are.

he recalls your certain features, he'd love to just gaze into your eyes right now and see himself in it but the fact that he can feel all your weight on him is better than anything he's ever felt before.

cold, rainy days in nrc are just a blessing from grace.

but you now just discover that rain here is a lot stronger than your local pour back at home. to make everything worse, you had no idea it was gonna rain this hard, and if you did you wouldn't have taken the time to visit the city on a sunday.

now you're stuck waiting under a cover outside a shop. your patience honestly starting to run thin. from your legs sincerely, you're immensely thankful for the random bench under it cause you're sure they would have been quaking from the amount of time you spent waiting.

but you do like the weather, cold weather is rare to see when the sunny days reign over many.

you should have brought a jacket or something.

"child of man?"

you blink when malleus tilts his head at you, a thin smile playing upon his lips. his shoulders seem to ease up at the sight of you. your eyes fly above him, weirdly enough it's like there's some invisible force protecting malleus from the weather so he's completely dry.

albeit weakly, you still make an effort to give him a half hearted wave.

of which he notes.

malleus makes his way over to you, and your beloved bench you had started acquainting yourself with. "may I?" he gestures beside you, and you take that as an initiative to move over.

he takes a seat next to you right after.

"how are you faring?" his eyes crinkle, he stares deeply into you.

you chuckle. "well I'm stuck here for a while I guess. I already miss my bed,"

the man beside you raises his brow before lightly raising his shoulder, leaning towards you a little for emphasis but you're sure that's just another excuse to take up more of your space.

you get what he's implying in a second. "oh no, no," you shake your head. that would be… embarrassing.

but your yawn betrays you, and malleus easily coaxes you into using his shoulder. with or without your will, you can't even remember what happened until you blearily open your eyes, and realize the rain has passed by.

when you wake up you feel like you've had the best sleep in your life. but you're sure you would have frozen to death by now.

your hands feel the fabric between your fingers, previously taken over your shoulders. ah.

… as well as a pair of eyes staining into your existence.

wc. 1.5k

#ㅤ◜◡◝ . . signed !#malleus draconia x reader #malleus draconia #twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #twst #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland headcanons #twisted wonderland scenarios #twisted wonderland imagines #x gn reader

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jesncin · 4 months

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A Failure of Asian Lois Lane: Pt 2: My Adventures with Superman, an honest discussion

If I had to pinpoint the fundamental problem with My Adventures with Superman's depiction of Asian Lois Lane it's in their attempt to subvert the classic two person love triangle: Lois loves Superman but is indifferent to Clark Kent. In MAWS, Lois insta-crushes on Clark Kent and hates Superman. In the show's attempt to make sense of this dynamic, Lois' Asian identity becomes at odds with a story meant to touch on xenophobia and immigrant themes.

Let's have an honest discussion about a show that made fandom cheer as an Asian character removed the one thing that made her most visibly Asian.

Disclaimer: While I am of East Asian descent, I am not Korean. I'll be discussing general Asian diasporic experiences but the specifics of Korean culture are outside of my knowledge (as usual I can't and don't speak for every Asian person ever, I am 1 opinion). Secondly, I'll be pulling from my personal experiences every now and then particularly pertaining to being a butch Asian person watching this show. It'll be a mix of formal analysis and personal anecdotes. Thirdly, this isn't an exhaustive analysis of MAWS Lois' character. We'll be sticking to what I consider is relevant to themes of Asian identity and immigration. Lastly once more, I do not believe the MAWS crew had malicious intent in any (of what I consider) poor writing decisions. We're here to analyze and challenge these writing decisions.

Please read Pt 1 of Asian Lois analysis that covers the comics, as it provides the groundwork for the ideas expanded on in this essay.

We need to talk about Lois' design. In the follow up to MAWS' release, people have been speculating on Lois' ethnicity. CBR writes that the show has "some fans believing that she's at least part Asian" and other articles have the show crew confirm Lois Korean heritage via her hanbok outfit in episode 4. The existence of these articles, my own anecdotal experience of streaming MAWS with Asian friends, and comments I receive from people asserting Lois' Asian identity was never explored in the show ("you'd only know she was Asian if you searched up articles about it"), tells me we have a case of an ambiguously designed Asian woman. Tangentially many people had no idea Livewire, the white haired and blue eyed woman, was meant to be South Asian.

There's a lot to be said about art styles that don't properly stylize ethnic features, but for the purposes of our analysis that means the writing has to deliver the heavy lifting where the design fails. This is the opposite case of American Alien: a comic that relied on the art to portray Asian Lois.

Let's start at episode 3. In it, Lois finally manages to conduct a private interview with the elusive Superman. When she asks where Superman comes from, how his powers work, etc- Superman comes up empty. In this version, Superman can't talk to his Kryptonian father (Jor-El)'s hologram because of a language barrier, so he knows very little about his alien heritage. He leaves Lois, assuring her he's here to help the people of Metropolis. When Clark Kent congratulates her for interviewing Superman, Lois rebuffs him. "Oh, he's [Superman's] a liar." smirking as she says it. This is the start of the Lois Hates Superman For Being a Liar arc.

I'd like you to consider the optics of an Asian American woman interviewing an alien immigrant who honestly told her he doesn't know where he comes from and is still figuring out who he is, only for her to think he's lying. Because she didn't get the answers she wanted. I can't help but think about my own experiences, where I was asked "but where do you really come from?" or "okay but what's your real name?" I think of my Asian American peers who would honestly say they're from Texas or Atlanta and get a vindictive "you're lying" as a response. People want to hear you're from China. They want their biases confirmed. I think about how I honestly can't tell you where my elders hailed from, because of cultural genocide and language barriers. This scene makes me uncomfortable, but let's press on.

Episode 4 is where Lois is most visibly Korean. In this episode the trio of Lois, Clark, and Jimmy are tasked with interviewing rich techbro Prof. Ivo of Amazo tech at an investor event. It's a prom episode. Lois wears a "hanbok inspired gala outfit" designed by Dou Hong and Jane Bak in a deliberate move to showcase Lois' Korean heritage. Bak comments "I remember feeling strongly about wanting to inject some aspect of her Korean heritage without disrupting her characteristic as a spunky and resourceful intern/reporter." while the wording poorly implies that Korean heritage is at odds with Lois' spunky personality- I do want to challenge a couple of the decisions that went into this design.

I want to acknowledge as an Asian butch that there are many ways to sport traditional garments and it's okay to mix and match to figure out what reclaiming culture (and your comfort) mean to you. However we're talking about the opportunity to showcase culture in an episode of a fictional animated show. I also encourage cultural gender expression that thinks outside of western white people's idea of gender (in both fiction and real life).

Whenever artists try to do a non-conforming spin on a cultural outfit, I always have to ask: "what standard of masculinity are we basing this on?" It's clear that MAWS is pushing for a "tomboy" Lois, and this gala outfit is an extension of that. But what's the standards of masculinity in a Korean lens? Men wear hanbok too, so why can't Lois imitate how Korean men wear hanbok, by traditionally accompanying her look with baji (baggy and loose pants)? This design notably has tight pants that hug the form, instead. I know the hanbok look has been modernized in and out of Korea in many ways, but in a show where you have the opportunity to showcase cultural non-conformity, I feel more thought should be put into the outfit outside of a potentially western lens- or the idea that cultural heritage of any sort "disrupts" a character's personality.

Now that we've discussed the design of the outfit, let's look into the narrative role it plays in episode 4. While we can celebrate cultural representation in media, I consider it important to ask "what is this media's relationship with the cultures it represents?" and the answer for Lois' hanbok in this episode is: nothing! It's an aesthetic acknowledgement of culture. "Hanbok" or "Korea" are not terms explicitly mentioned in the show. When Prof Ivo offers beautiful women as compensation for Clark to keep quiet about his company's corruption, Ivo looks over to Lois- who spills food on her clothes, and remarks that she's unclassy. She's not judged for wearing othering cultural clothes- which would have tied nicely into Clark choosing to be silent on issues of Ivo displacing a neighborhood, making Clark realize his complacency actively hurts marginalized people. Despite wearing cultural outfits being a political statement in America, nobody reacts to it. It's clear what the actual goal of this scene is: Clark looks cool for defending his "tomboy" crush.

In a scene blatantly made for fanservice, Lois offers to sew up Clark's ripped tuxedo by undressing her hanbok so she can reach her little sewing kit. Lois never wears her hanbok again afterwards. This scene haunts me. It's a scene that tells you that fanservice is more important than cultural representation. It's a scene meant to set up that Clark gives his tuxedo to Lois later on for warmth. Lois removing her hanbok is meant for not one, but two fanservice scenes.

Lois talks to Clark at the stairwell. She opens up about her estranged relationship with her father, how her mom has passed away, and how she's been an intern at the Daily Planet for a year with no sign of being hired. This makes the narrative decision for Lois to lose her hanbok far more tragic. Lois being a diasporic child with so few familial ties to her culture would mean garments like her hanbok would hold a lot of sentimental value! It's hard enough finding a cultural outfit that fits with your butchess (many of my cultural outfits are hand made to fit my form and gender expression), and yet Lois unceremoniously loses her hanbok. You would think in Lois opening up about being distant from her parents that Clark would be able to culturally relate with the distance he has with his Kryptonian parents. But the narrative opportunity to link their immigrant experiences is not taken, because the show simply doesn't recognize the parallel between the two.

Instead MAWS pushes for the Lois Thinks Superman is A Liar thing again. A far less narratively substantial and fundamentally flawed arc. This episode starts with Lois calling Superman a liar and has Lois ranting about him "dodging her questions" (remember, he was honest with her about not knowing his heritage) thereby rendering her interview unpublishable. She resorts to conspiracy tabloids giddily provided by Jimmy for information. She rather cruelly says "nobody normal believes in aliens". We are uncomfortably seeing the build up of Lois being allegorically xenophobic towards alien immigrants- a Lois on a quest to out an alien before he's ready. This is their justification for flipping the love triangle. Lois loves cuteboy Clark from work, and hates Superman for not confirming her biases that would help her publish an interview that would promote her at work. What a love story.

To wrap this episode up: Prof Ivo ends up challenging Superman to a fight so he can flex his Parasite suit to investors, only for it to backfire, destroy his reputation, and greatly damage the Amazo building (remember this it'll come back later). The episode ends with Lois discovering Superman is Clark Kent. Anecdotally, I was so frustrated with the treatment of Lois' hanbok in this episode, that I went online to search if anyone else felt similarly. All I was met with was fandom thirsting over the stairwell scene where Clark and Lois were undressing. Consider the optics of an Asian character who removed the most visible signifier of her heritage (the outfit far more culturally specific where her character design was racially ambiguous) and how people cheered because that meant they could see her in her undergarments. They can happily thirst over the body they desired now that the othering cultural garment was out of the way. It's just clothes after all. Diversity clothes. This show continues to be very uncomfortable, and a little too real.

In episode 5 Lois is passive aggressive to Clark and Superman, trying to get Clark to admit he's Superman and vice versa. She eventually confronts Clark by jumping off the roof of the Daily Planet, causing Clark to fly down and save her. She proclaims she doesn't want to be friends with him anymore for "lying" to her. This episode caused a huge ruckus online as people were divisive over Lois' actions. Some defended Lois, saying that "women should be messy" and "it's not Lois Lane if she doesn't do something crazy for journalism!". Ignoring that opinion's very flandarized view of Lois' character for a second, let's thoroughly discuss how this relates to themes of immigration and Asian identity.

By this episode, Lois had known Clark for 5 days. In that time she's entitled and angry to the point of friend-breaking-up with him because he wouldn't disclose his marginalized identity to her within less than a week. "A secret is another type of lie!" Lois says, regardless of her lying on sight to both Jimmy and Clark upon meeting them at work, and continued to lie in episode 3 (after promising not to in ep 1) about her intentions to interview Superman. Only Lois gets to lie in this relationship. The hypocrisy of her character is never recognized. Clark calls out Lois for having previously admitted to him that she wanted to dox Superman and "publish all his secrets. MY secrets!". Keep in mind that when Clark brings up Superman feeling uncomfortable about his secrets being published by Lois in episode 3, Lois' response was "yeah, but HE doesn't know that's my plan!". She explicitly admits that she would publish private information about Superman without his permission. But when she's confronted by Clark in episode 5 about that, her response is "I would never do that to you, I didn't know it was you until after the gala. How could you think that?" It's only through conflict of interest that Lois spares Superman of being doxed. He's supposed to magically know this. Extremely cool of Asian American Lois to be entitled to an alien immigrant's identity within four business days.

Episode 6 wraps up the Lois Hates Superman For Being A Liar arc, so let's quickly summarize what happens. Lois and Clark set aside their fight to find Jimmy in an abandoned scientific facility (he's being cared for by Mallah and the Brain). Jimmy admits (very smugly) to having known Clark was Superman all along because he kept breaking stuff. As the trio are chased by killer robots, they emotionally confront Clark for not trusting them with his alien secret- despite neither Lois or Jimmy creating a safe environment for Clark to come out to either of them (Jimmy outed Superman as an alien on his video channel). The moral of the story is Clark should have trusted his friends anyway, because lying is bad. Not once does the narrative hold Jimmy or Lois accountable.

We have Black Jimmy Olsen and Asian American Lois Lane being entitled to their white passing friend Clark Kent's marginalized alien identity. A joke is made at Jimmy's expense that he doesn't understand bigotry, and Lois clearly doesn't understand why an immigrant wouldn't be forthcoming about his identity to his hostile friends at work. This is how that arc ends.

I'd like to quickly compare this Lois Hates Superman For Being A Liar arc to my favorite scene in Superman Smashes the Klan. In this story, Superman debuts as a strongman superhero instead of an alien, suppressing his more othering powers to pass as human. He jumps instead of flying. Roberta, the Chinese American girl targeted by the Klan, calls Superman out for not using his full abilities to save people who could've gotten hurt. Yet, as she's calling him out, Roberta understands Superman's fear of not wanting to be othered. She sees the way her father dresses up to pass as an accomplished scientist, how he tells her mom to speak in English, how her brother makes racist jokes at their family's expense to fit in. She's not mad at Superman, she's mad at the world that would be scared of Superman if he flew.

"I wish it were okay for you to fly!" Roberta yells. This is a beautifully empathetic scene that shows a marginalized person frustrated at a systemic problem, instead of blaming the marginalized for being marginalized. It's the empathy and perspective we're missing from MAWS.

Episode 7 is a metatextual episode where MAWS addresses how their Lois isn't like the other Loises you've seen before. Lois and Jimmy are brought on to a team of alternate dimension Loises to find interdimensional troublemaker Mxy. In seeing the other more accomplished Loises in the multiverses, Lois ends up feeling inadequate about her self worth...in connection to being Superman's girlfriend, of course. Because Superman only loves Lois Lane after she wins a couple of Pulitzers, right?

I'm open to a version of Lois Lane that isn't as accomplished as she's historically known to be. I can like a Lois that's young and idealistic, like in Girl Taking Over. It's hard not to compare this episode to 2022's Everything Everywhere All At Once, another multiverse story about an Asian American woman who is the "greatest failure" version of all the parallel iterations of herself. But while that movie talks in depth about themes of generational trauma, expectations, and self potential within Asian immigrant families, MAWS uses the multiverse to say that while their Lois is less accomplished, she's still a good girlfriend to Superman! Why should I bother giving grace to a different take on Lois only to get such a superficial story out of it. This is metatextual-ly frustrating.

Why is it, the minute we get an adaptation of an Asian Lois in something as prominent as an animated show, we get "the worst Lois in the multiverse"? Lois is historically depicted as excelling in her field. She's an award winning journalist, jaded and mean from having to work her way to the top. She owns her sexuality, she's the experienced city girl. Instead of taking the opportunity to inform Lois' jadedness and excellence with her Asian American identity like in Girl Taking Over, instead we have an Asian Lois that's simply incompetent at her job. Why are we now adapting historically accomplished women into adorkable quirky screw ups? She went from being sexually confident to being insecure over sending a text to Clark. Is it more relateable to see an Asian woman that way? Is it too intimidating to see a butch Asian woman who excels at her job? Who's romantically confident? This is what MAWS would rather do than humanize her excellence or her failures.

Are you tired of an ambiguously designed Asian American woman reporter being xenophobic to Superman in MAWS? Well too bad because episode 8 introduces us to Vicki Vale, voiced by Andromeda Dunker (an Asian actress), with explicit notes in leaked concept art to design this character as "Indian American or Asian American" (as if those are mutually exclusive...) inspired off of real Asian reporter Connie Chung. Vicki wants to write a hit piece on Superman and interviews Prof Ivo's assistant, Alex, for a negative biased opinion on Superman (to Lois and Jimmy's dismay).

This episode is where it's abundantly clear the writers don't know how to talk about xenophobia. They'll make nods to xenophobic rhetoric, but they don't know what the rhetoric means. In response to Alex's derisive opinion on Superman destroying Amazo tower thereby bankrupting the company and putting "thousands out of work", Vicki responds "Superman wiped out good American jobs". This is a misplaced nod to Replacement Theory: the fear white people have over people of color, but particularly immigrants, coming to "their" country to "steal" jobs they're entitled to, ultimately becoming demographically replaced by non-white cultures and people. This rhetoric is also commonly applied to Jewish people.

The problem is, that's not what Superman did in the show. Amazo tech was going to go bankrupt because of Prof Ivo's poor business decisions. Prof Ivo made the mistake of antagonizing Superman and ruining his own image. Superman damaging the building came from his fight with Prof Ivo, not a deliberate attempt to get hired (if anything don't the building repair people have new jobs now?). No one's job is tangibly being taken by Superman. None of this is called out by Lois or Jimmy, who know the full story and were even the ones to attack Alex for helping Prof Ivo (let's be real the writers forgot this happened). In fact, Lois and Jimmy don't react to Vicki's Replacement Theory remark at all! It's like they don't even recognize she said something with racist implications!

Jimmy and Lois meet up with Superman who learns the people of Metropolis are becoming scared of him (from causing some recent property damage in an attempt to hunt a criminal down) and writing mean comments on social media. A user writes "he should go back to where he came from." This is a transparently xenophobic comment. It doesn't work in the context of the show because of a huge plot hole: Superman never publicly came out as an alien to Metropolis. No verified newspaper has explicitly made this fact known. The only source that mentions this is Jimmy's conspiracy channel, which the citizens of Metropolis are apparently treating as fact- therefore (if we're to believe this is how people knew) this means Jimmy absolutely outed Superman as an alien without Clark's consent.

So how does Asian American Lois respond to seeing her alien boyfriend go through xenophobia? She says "Take a break from being Superman and just try being normal." To be fair, the narrative does portray Lois saying the word "normal" as charged (only here at least, not in episode 4), and when she tells Superman to "take a break" it's because he had been overworking himself after suddenly unlocking the ability to hear when someone's in trouble. But was this really the response Asian American Lois thought to say? To her boyfriend going through such explicit xenophobia? At this point it's abundantly clear that racism doesn't exist in the world of MAWS. Being "normal" is to be human. And to be marginalized- or as the show likes to call it "different" is only reserved for white passing alien man Clark (along with gorilla and robot that was once a white man). Any hope of an immigrant parallel between Asian American Lois and Superman should be fully discarded at this point.

After the events of the previous episode where Superman is kidnapped by Task Force X, in episode 9 Lois regrets being allegorically xenophobic to Clark. At least I think that's what's happening. I often describe MAWS as a show that's extremely squeamish with getting political- and I believe the vagueness of Lois' Dark Night of the Soul moment reflects that. "I said awful things to Clark. I doubted him when he needed us most. I was wrong and now he's gone..." Lois says as she cries to Jimmy. Is this dialogue implying she shouldn't have told a sleep deprived Superman to take a break? What did she doubt about him? This dialogue is purposefully vague about Lois being xenophobic. They've universalized Clark's immigrant identity to such a point that they can't keep their argument consistent. Was Lois in the wrong for telling her overworked superhero boyfriend to take a break? Or was she being xenophobic for telling him to lay low for a while? Or is she regretful for hating Superman for Being A Liar? How is that possible when the narrative sided with her and Jimmy in episode 6? It's woefully non-committal. Regardless, the intent of this scene is to pay off in the climax of the episode.

In the end Superman has a showdown with Prof Ivo Parasite, who has grown into a large godzilla-esque kaiju creature. In typical MAWS fashion, the show is more interested in a surface level nod to Asian media instead of engaging with the specific themes of nature and post-war trauma kaijus and godzilla serve in Japanese culture. I digress. Using Jimmy's massive social media platform, Lois delivers a hope speech that instantly heals Metropolis of its xenophobia towards Superman.

Lois says to the people of Metropolis.: "People have told you to fear Superman because he's different from us. But we humans are capable of causing hurt and pain too. [...] Because we want to punish those who don't look or act like us." I mean this in the most polite way possible, but who on Earth thought this line was a good idea for Asian American Lois Lane to deliver when talking about white passing man Superman?? Why did the writers feel the need to specify Superman not looking like us. I simply don't understand how nobody considered the terrible optics of this.

After Superman defeats Parasite, episode 10 is about Clark, Lois, and Jimmy celebrating Thanksgiving at the Kents' house. At the Daily Planet, the trio of interns are promoted to finally being reporters. It only took Clark and Jimmy a few weeks while it took Lois a whole year! Now feels like a good time to remind you that Lois as a character was historically frustrated at sexism in the industry and despised how men were treated better than her (including Clark Kent). Well in MAWS episode 4, Lois has no idea why she isn't getting picked up to be a reporter. According to the narrative, and Perry White's dialogue ("you're terrible interns, so the only thing to do was to make you reporters")- she simply didn't break enough rules yet! Thank goodness she had the help of two men to show her how it's done! This is a pretty clear case of character regression. Keep in mind that in American Alien, at the very least that Asian Lois still underwent sexism, and I gave it the grace that the story could eventually expand to talking about both sexism and racism if it were to continue. But in MAWS? I don't think even sexism exists, let alone racism. Somehow Thanksgiving does, though.

Half the final episode is spent on Thanksgiving shenanigans where everyone's trying to be polite but they dislike Lois' stoic dad (Sam Lane)- who Clark recognizes as the Asian American xenophobic man who tortured him in Task Force X's government bunkers. A parallel is pulled between Sam and Jor-El, two fathers with different ideals when it comes to protecting their kids. There's a huge missed opportunity to have Lois and Sam speak in Korean with each other, to create a parallel in the language barrier between Clark and Jor-El. Maybe Lois isn't as fluent in Korean as Sam is depending on how culturally connected she is. Oh, but the existence of non-English human languages would imply some sort of minority, who would be marginalized, and we can't have anyone outside of aliens and a gorilla be marginalized in MAWS. Non-English languages in America are political, after all. Oh, but they also got a Filipino actor to voice Sam. Generously Lois could be Filipino-Korean but if we're being truly honest it's clear the MAWS crew think Asians are interchangeable.

Let's talk about Sam. In terms of optics, it's already not great that the main villains who represent the face of America's secret government xenophobia are Amanda Waller and Sam Lane- a Black woman and an Asian man. What's doubly notable is that of the antagonistic villains, Sam and Vicki are the most xenophobic. When Sam tortures Superman, he shouts "When is the invasion? How many of your kind will come through this time?" without a hint of irony. Reminder that historically, Asian immigrants were (and still are) considered invaders in America. They are the perpetual foreigner. MAWS loves making nods to Superman being an immigrant allegory, and yet they can't fathom the human beings that allegory is inspired by.

It's not impossible to portray people of color or even Asian American characters specifically being xenophobic. In Superman Smashes the Klan, Dr. Lee is initially antagonistic towards Superman but we understand why. We see him trying desperately to assimilate into whiteness, to the point he rejects assistance from his Black neighbors who help put out a fire in their backyard (that the Klan started as a threat). We understand why he's a character who would turn on fellow people of color, or fellow immigrants, in order to fit in. For MAWS, if we had a flashback scene where Sam was serving in the military and fought against Asian soldiers, showcasing his loyalty to America over his own people- that would narratively explain why an Asian American character would be xenophobic. Writing bigotry from within marginalized communities requires specificity. Otherwise, you've just got a diverse villain. In the end, Lois defends her immigrant alien boyfriend from her xenophobic Asian American dad.

Whenever I bring up how MAWS fails its characters of color but especially Asian Lois, I'm met with people telling me that "hopefully they'll make Lois more Asian in S2" or "they'll just retcon the bad writing in S1" and I hope this thorough analysis on the treatment of Lois' Asian American identity can help enlighten why I personally think that's impossible. The entire concept is flawed from the very beginning. The story MAWS wants to tell is at odds with Lois' Asian identity. In trying to justify an Asian Lois that loves Clark but hates Superman, they never considered what it means to hate Superman. To hate the alien immigrant. The alien other. What it means for an Asian American character to do all that. MAWS is a show that wants to have its cake and eat it too, they want a diverse world without racism or sexism but still want to reap the clout of lightly portraying Superman as "different".

They'll make the most surface level nods to Lois' Korean heritage- but remove all of the cultural context from them. They can't be bothered to acknowledge the inherit political identity being a person of color means in America, they're too busy doing that with Clark. I'm told "MAWS didn't have the time to go over Lois' Asian identity, it's a 10-episode series that focuses on Clark's alienation", and to that I say the potential of an immigrant love story and time frame was there, they simply chose to go another direction.

When I bring up things like Superman Smashes the Klan, Girl Taking Over, and Everything Everywhere All At Once, it's not to say MAWS should have used those stories as reference when crafting their allegory. All of those specific media were released while MAWS was deep in production already. Girl Taking Over was released the same year MAWS premiered. What I am saying is that we, as the audience, should have higher standards. Because better media portraying Asian American characters already exist. Better media portraying Asian characters relating to Superman mythos already exists. What we're doing when we celebrate the breadcrumbs of representation that is MAWS, is allowing mediocrity to exist uncritically.

Shows like Wednesday are known in the discourse for their portrayal of Black characters as being functionally white, yet that kind of scrutiny doesn't seem known for MAWS. The diverse reimagining of Lois and Jimmy is so poorly handled in MAWS that it would honestly make more sense if Jimmy and Lois were white here. The joke made at Jimmy's expense that he doesn't understand bigotry would be actually funny if it was calling out his white privilege. If, for whatever reason, the writers are compelled to write a xenophobic Lois that unlearns her bigotry and falls for Superman, I'd rather she be white for that kind of story. I wouldn't personally root for that kind of couple, but at least it'd make sense. It's a common joke among DCAU fans of color that we like to headcanon Lex Luthor as Black, or Lois Lane and Terry Mcginnis as Asian. It's a cruel irony that the one time we finally have a canonized Asian Lois in an animated show, she honestly feels and acts whiter than actual white Lois ever was.

I mentioned in Pt 1 of my essay that Asian Lois and Superman has the potential to be a definitive love story. One that considers both their backgrounds as immigrants, othered in different ways by American society. The story of a jaded but accomplished Asian city girl who finds hope to be herself again in an alien immigrant superhero. One where she gets the courage to wear traditional clothes again, to practice languages she once suppressed. The story of Superman, an alien immigrant, finding hope in someone with a painfully similar experience.

As of writing, we have yet to see this dynamic in any canon DC media. A second season of MAWS will not give us that story.

#ramblings #media criticism #jesncin talks maws #lois lane #warning LONG LONG POST #this is a 30 minute read for reference. read it in chunks if u like but this is a big lad fellas #as always please be kind!#jesncin dc meta

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lazyjellyfish300 · 2 months

Text

Traitor💔

Miguel O'Hara x Spider-Woman Reader

Synopsis: A blurb detailing your heartbreak from Miguel inspired by some breakup songs. Word count 1.5k ish. Meant to be a one shot. (JK, I MADE AN EPILOGUE)

A/N: had this idea after @prettyinpink350 commented that The Woman He Didn't Choose part 1 reminded them of All Too Well-10 minute version by Taylor Swift. I imagine getting your heart broken by him would SUCK. The man has such a tragic backstory, it would take a long long time to get him to be comfortable with getting hurt again and vulnerable, possibly hurting whoever he's dating or seeing in the process if their expectations don't align. I think that ATSV and the comic version of him are different however, it's possible some of the personality traits would stay consistent and so as a result he might struggle with infidelity. I think he's had his fair share of experiences.

BUT I do still write sweet, fluffy soft Miguel, though. Because I do believe he has a soft side that exists and it's unfair imo to write him off as completely incapable of being a good partner because I believe he can. I imagine it'll be a tough road but he would eventually get there. He's a complex man and I love him anyway. 🫶🏽 Working on DD part 9 and the woman he didn't choose I promise, I've been dead lately in terms of motivation.

TW: MINORS DNI, ANGST, CHEATING (I DON'T CONDONE THIS), HEARTBREAK, BREAKUP, MIGUEL IS MORE COLD IN THIS, SMUT ( IT'S BRIEF, P IN V, DEGRADATION, SPANKING), age gap(reader is 26, Miguel is like 34-35), no happy ending

The songs that inspired this(all rights to rightful owners, some of the lyrics were tweaked slightly):

----

It was her. It was always going to be her.

🎶I was just the villain built to come between you two.

I'm just the other point of view. 🎶

It's the movie where the guy gets the girl in the end. She's the one that got away but then comes back into his life, lighting up his world, making him realize his new girlfriend would never come close.

That all too familiar shift in the way he acted when she moved back into the city. When you noticed how he started looking at you with a gaze that was clearly being stolen by someone else. You decided to ask him about it and he dismissed you with a shake of his head, calling you paranoid.

🎶Brown guilty eyes and little white lies

Yeah, I played dumb but I always knew🎶

Now he brings her around, almost as though to shut you down on purpose. Showing her off like a brand new trophy.

If any of the sweet nothings he told you were true, there's simply no damn way that he could have fallen in love again so quickly...

🎶Ain't it funny....🎶

----

But months later

🎶You call me up again just to break me like a promise.🎶

The 1 am call you know you shouldn't answer but you do anyway.

"She's not here.......Please, I need you."

And there you go, jumping in the shower for a quick rinse and brushing your teeth, speeding towards his apartment like a dumb ass.

------

"Fuck......FUCK! God baby...so fucking tight.....I missed this pussy, fuck...."

A shower of sharp spanks land on your ass, one after another, after another as Miguel thrusts his cock into you from behind.

"Yes.....harder, baby.....HARDER!"

"Yeah?....You would fucking like that, wouldn't you....Needy little slut....mmmm you like it when I fuck you like this, huh? Can't get enough can you? "Had to come crawling back for more of this cock?"

Every word stings harder than the slaps he's giving you but it's a sick, twisted, erotic feeling. You actually love it. The fact that he's still craving your pussy even though he's supposedly with his dream woman. The fact that you're still on his mind as soon as she leaves.

The fact that you're in his bed right now, not her. Even if only just for tonight.

"Fuck....yes.....baby.....can't get enough of you....mmmmm fuck I missed you so much....."

"Say that again."

"Missed you so much Miggy...."

"¿Cuánto?..." (how much)

"So fucking much....I crave you all the time....."

Miguel lets out a loud groan and you practically scream as he pounds you without mercy into his mattress he shared with the other woman.

Shortly after, you're laying all fucked out, panting as you close your eyes, decelerating from the heavenly orgasm he pulled out of you, only for it to shrivel up when you feel your clothes land in a pile next to your head.

"She'll be back any minute....you gotta hurry."

"What?" You sit up, confused.

Miguel's too busy taking a shower, trying to rid himself of your scent. The damning evidence of someone else in his bed while she was gone.

You immediately regret ever coming over.

You're about to rip him a new one but your spider senses tingle. You can feel her ascending the staircase. You throw on your leggings and hoodie and swing away into the night without saying goodbye.

-----

You let him have it on the phone later.

"I wish you thought through all of this before you strung me along and made me fall in love with you..."

Miguel stands outside his apartment, he had to sneak down to take your call as soon as he was sure she was asleep. He tenses his jaw. He feels guilty but there's not much he can do about it now.

"She's older...more mature. I need to be with someone who's able to understand and live with my responsibilities. I shouldn't have given us a chance, but I did because I needed to move on from her.... I can't help that I've known her since we were kids. She gets me."

🎶So casually cruel in the name of being honest. 🎶

"Oh and I don't? I don't Miguel? So all those times I stayed up with you, crying, holding you and promising you I wasn't going anywhere, those didn't happen? Or the fact that I saw you lose it completely multiple times and still called you the next day? The fact that I was willing to let go all the times you let me down because I knew it wasn't your fault and the fate of the multiverse comes before everything else? I literally loved you at your worst, but that didn't matter?"

Silence.

"Look, I just think that maybe if we had been closer in age, we would've been fine."

🎶And that sentence made you want to die. 🎶

"That's not fucking fair, Miguel! I'm 26, not a baby! And we spoke CANDIDLY about this when we got together. I NEVER had, not even a HINT that this would be a problem for you, and now you drop it on me right as you tear my heart out?! And it's not even something I can change!"

You pause, more sobs erupting deep from within your soul.

"I'm sorry, that the stars didn't align and the timing wasn't perfect and my dad didn't fuck my mom around the same time as yours so I could've been born at a better time. I'm sorry that I tried so fucking hard to be the chill girlfriend who lets you do whatever even though I'm not. I'm sorry that I kept my fucking mouth shut when I knew damn well you were talking to her when we were together just so I could keep you around. I'm sorry that I'm not her..."

The line is painfully silent.

🎶The idea you had of me, who was she?🎶

"So who's this version of me in your head you envisioned, huh Miguel? The perfect me that would've made you stay. Do I even know her? She's me, but she's not. She's not needy like I am. She's perfect. Has the perfect body, perfect hair, doesn't ever look bad for you. She's intelligent and has all the maturity you claim I don't. She reflects back on you perfectly every little thing you just LOVE about yourself because let's face it, that's the only person you really ever gave a fuck about."

Loud beeps assault your eardrum and you scoff in disbelief. He hung up, and who knows how long you were just talking to a wall. You hurtle your phone at the ground, letting the screen crack as your knees buckle beneath you and hide your face in your hands in despair.

🎶When she's sleeping in the bed we made, don't you dare forget about the way you betrayed me.

Cause I know that you'll never feel sorry, for the way I hurt, yeah. 🎶

----

Trying to forget him as the weeks passed by ,albeit agonizingly slow. You find yourself weeping in the HQ bathroom, some girl asking you what happened:

🎶You. That's what happened, you. 🎶

A few weeks later, a package with all of your clothes arrived at the post office for you so he didn't have to see you face to face. It even contained all of the pictures you took together and the letters you wrote him. He didn't keep a single one.

You sat in the parking lot for a few minutes as you clutched the Disneyland tickets to your heart, sobbing. The cruel, cruel irony of remembering how you were in the happiest place on earth with him, the place that planted those dreams of happily ever after in that little girl's head, only for her to be crying over a man that stomped it into the ground years later.

Remembering how you walked back, arm in arm to your hotel room together as you leaned into his chest, giggling when you finally got him to admit the park wasn't as dreadful as he thought it would be, despite the ridiculous price tag. He only wanted to make you happy.

🎶I remember it all too well. 🎶

Your lip trembles when you find the Mickey Ears you bought for him lying in the box. "Miguel" cross-stitched in curly gold writing on the back.

Your red scarf from that first week together hung in the corner of his closet until your scent wore off. He would eventually have the gall to offer it to her one December night when she was shivering, saying that it was his mother's.

----

Your tears make your vision blurry as you drive down the dark, rain soaked streets of Nueva York.

You know his street is coming.

When you do finally pass it, you use all your strength to keep your gaze straight ahead, the faded letters on his street sign disappear rapidly behind you as you take a deep breath, and head on home.

----

Epilogue

#miguel o'hara #miguel atsv #spotify #miguel ohara #miguel x reader #miguel o'hara x reader #atsv miguel #miguel o'hara smut #across the spiderverse #miguel o hara angst #miguel o'hara angst #miguel o'hara imagine #miguel o hara x y/n #miguel o'hara x fem!reader #miguel ohara x fem!reader #Spotify

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genericpuff · 3 months

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Why is the art so unappealing in lore Olympus now Persephone looks like a highlighter and maybe it’s just me but the proportions like the fingers in arms are soul over the place I don’t think they used to be this bad. Am I just looking at it with nostalgia or am I crazy ?

Honestly, nostalgia does play a huge part in it, even to this day there are times I look back on old S1 panels and go-

Actually here's a great example that literally just happened yesterday in the ULO Discord that nearly had me on the floor LOL This is from Episode 70:

Like I didn't even believe that that was real until I was told what episode it was from and I was just. Astounded and flabbergasted. The over-shading of the blanket that just makes it look like a really bad edit. Insane.

And yeah, there are a lot of old panels that hit different now that the rose-colored glasses have been removed, crushed, and thrown into the trash compactor.

I think that's why it makes it all the more amusing when people come into my inbox and ask me "wait, why did you like LO to begin with?? It's always been ugly as shit, I think you're just romanticizing it" because like... there's something to be said about art and subjectivity, even if something is ugly to one person doesn't mean it isn't beautiful to someone else. It's why I try not to be too mean towards the fans of this comic for still enjoying it, because while I definitely have strong opinions about how "LO has gotten worse" and what kind of following Rachel has cultivated (cough cough), there are also just as equally valid arguments that LO has never begin good to begin with that I can't necessarily disagree with now that I'm looking back on it with a more critical eye.

That said, there's tons of media that I enjoy that is objectively awful. Like y'all, you don't need to take my opinions about a dumb pink x blue fantasy romance comic seriously, I like Starfox Adventures-

Like yeah it's a badly made rushed piece of shit that was developed right on the ass end of Rare's glory days and was really an original IP (Dinosaur Planet) that got Frankenstein'd into a Starfox game so it could "sell better" for Nintendo, but I don't give a fuck, I love Starfox Adventures and some day I wanna be in the top 10 speedrunner leaderboards for it, which I know doesn't mean much because no one is speedrunning Starfox, but I do and no one can take that away from me dammit-

Anyways. Lore Olympus has, in many regards, always had "bad art". But "bad art" can and should still be enjoyed by those who find joy in it.

And in LO's case, the world it existed in when it launched was a lot smaller than it is now - more specifically, the world of Webtoons. We can look back and see how 'bad' LO looks and reads now because there are genuinely way better comics surrounding it. It was unique and refreshing and experimental back then... now it's just "that stupid blue and pink comic for horny teenagers".

In most cases I would consider that "cringing in hindsight" feeling a good thing because normally it means something has grown and that it seeming "bad" in hindsight would mean that it's outgrown itself and moved onto bigger things. But LO has the more unique problem of "its current stuff is shit and it's making us want the old stuff more, even if the old stuff wasn't good either". In that regard, LO is closer to being like Harry Potter. Remember when The Cursed Child came out at the height of Rowling being exposed for being a TERF and even people who liked Harry Potter didn't like The Cursed Child because it was just objectively worse overall (with or without Rowling's bullshit attached)? It made a lot of people go back and re-read / rewatch Harry Potter with a more objective lens and go "wait a minute guys, I think we only adored these books so much because we were 12 when we read them". Often times it's the good memories we have surrounding certain things that make us have the opinion about them that we do.

Of course, LO is definitely not as politically weaponized as Harry Potter is, so that's where that comparison ends. But my point is that LO is definitely in a situation where it's been riding off the same privileges it had back in 2018 - having an 'experimental' art style while also utilizing tropes and characters that were VERY popular at the time (remember that 2017-18 was when Tumblr was at its height of H x P "Hades was a chill accountant guy who wore socks and sandals and didn't cheat on his wife like Zeus did" fantasizing) - and thinks that those same tricks and tropes will still work today.

Because of this, the art in LO really, really hasn't aged well, even the stuff that we look back on fondly. But I think it's the panels that we specifically think of when remembering "old LO" - the ones that stuck in our memories the most - that are the ones that make us miss or just not care about the panels that don't look good (the panels that make people question why we ever liked it to begin with).

We liked it because of how it made us feel to look at panels like these-

Those genuinely wonderful panels that we think back on the most don't exist separately from the bad panels, they exist in spite of them. Even if we can look back on panels like these and pick out problems in the lineart or the proportions or the color travelling outside of the lines, that can't and shouldn't change how those panels made us feel at some point or another. And that's why when people ask me "why were you even into LO in the first place" I don't have any one answer, because I can't fully explain how something made me feel to justify why it's good to someone who can see from the outside - without rose-colored glasses - that it evidently isn't. It's very much a "you had to be there" type of thing.

Unfortunately, nowadays even the 'best' LO panels in S3 still don't come close to what the S1 panels accomplished - because for many of us, the rose-colored glasses are gone, we can't appreciate the good among the bad because we know now how bad it truly is and so the good just feels like wasted attempts at trying to recreate something it can no longer be. It "came back wrong" so to speak.

LO came back just regular. But our journey to resurrecting it changed us to such a degree that even its closest intimacies are now foreign to us. Sorry dude.

This is still probably one of my favorite panels out of the entirety of S3 for being as close to "old LO" as I've seen since S2, and even it feels like a mistake, an accident, how could a panel like this exist in S3 when so much of it is a dumpster fire? It's like a flower growing in the ruins of an apocalyptic wasteland.

But wasn't that always the case? Isn't that 'always' what LO has been, since the very beginning? A poorly cobbled together mess of writing and panels that, every now and then, manages to leave an impression that makes you feel something? Did we ever truly know LO? Or have we just been relying entirely on an idea of it that we've built up in our heads that when it does do exactly what it's evidently always done (even if not made apparent until looking back on it in hindsight) we think it "came back wrong"?

#anyways sorry that was a way deeper response than it oughta have been #welcome to the AMA roulette game of “ask puff a simple question which they may or may not respond to with an introspective essay"#lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus #antiloreolympus #ask me anything #ama #anon ama #anon ask me anything

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xjulixred45x · 29 days

Note

Can I please get HCs for Young Gojo and Geto with a boiling isles witch reader. Wherein both of them are utterly slacked jawed when they see her in action for the first. The context is Yaga was the one who enrolled them and acts like their guardian in the human world

This is kinda strange (? But okay! Whatever i love The Owl House so-

SatoSugu x Boiling islands! Reader

Genre: Headcanons

Reader: female

Warnings: some spoilers from Both series(JJK Hidden Inventory mostly) but nothing too relevant. Reader is a Witch. Fluff. Mainly comical.

OK! Taking what you said as a reference, I imagine that (reader) is a Clawthrone, and that is precisely why she had access to a door that led to the human world.

(although this may only be an option because it is canon that there are not only witches on the boiling islands, but on other islands, so it will be more ambiguous from now on)

but in general (reader) she was something like a reject from magical society (probably for not wanting to join a coven, like a boss) and that's why she started using the door constantly.

because 1- she could get human products that helped her survive and 2- if they chased her for too long she would simply go to the human world for a while.

Fortunately her magical abilities were not affected by the new world, yes, she was weakened, but she was still strong.

Besides, it's pretty cool to be "interesting" in an unknown world when in the world where you're known you're a juvenile delinquent or...a nobody...

Although in general I think that (reader) would end up staying for an indefinite period of time in the human world living as a vagabond precisely because they wanted to force her into a coven.

So now she's in the human world trying to adapt.

In general (reader) only used her magic if a quick escape was necessary or, even if she knew it wasn't the best idea, when there was a human-related emergency.

Let's say that (reader) realized that there was something strange with the country she was in...something familiar but at the same time VERY dangerous...

That's how Yaga found her.

He had followed several reports about a mysterious woman who used "magic" to prevent incidents, heal injuries, even fly on a kind of stick (Palisman).

At first Yaga thought it was simply an unidentified or unlicensed sorcerer, but she realized very soon that (reader) really didn't exist anywhere, no matter where she looked, there was nothing about her.

Besides, the way she used her "magic"...was definitely not sorcery. He had to know what it was.

It would probably take Yaga a little while to get (reader) to trust him, he probably lost her the first few times he caught her, but the more they interacted the more (reader) gave in.

and eventually decided to learn "sorcery" from those of the human kingdom.

(Let's say that Yaga was scared when she saw the living conditions she had (reader), even if she told her that it was fine like this and that it was only temporary, that only made her grab her pointy ears and give her a lecture about hygiene😅)

Yaga tries to learn as much as she can about (reader's) magic before sending her to the academy, to see what things can adapt to her fighting style and what can't.

there is a lot of trial and error😅

But is it worth it.

(reader) still uses mainly the fighting techniques of a person from the Boiling Islands (a witch) but now she also knows the basics of sorcery, so she will be able to easily pass the entry topics.

Now, when she knows the group she was assigned to, I'm not going to lie...

They laughed in his face.

Although well, she doesn't blame them, if she hadn't had the door and had visited the human world several times before, she wouldn't believe any of this either, but she definitely got quite angry with that reaction.

to the point where he did a spell in which he made plants grow on their heads... and maybe some abobinables...

It wasn't until Yaga arrived that things calmed down and were better explained.

Gojo was the first to laugh.

although also the first to get confused.

yeah, right, like those things happen-- and before he knew it his seat was being lifted by some kind of...purple golem??

OKEY WTF

Geto doesn't want to laugh. oh really.

but you can't really ask him to take this seriously.

although he is definitely surprised when out of nowhere he gets trapped in a vine that appeared OUT OF NOWHERE in the living room.

When Yaga explains the situation, that (reader) is not lying and that she really comes from another realm, they demand to see the portal. There has to be proof...

and when they take a look at the world of the boiling islands...Bonesburg (they had to pinch each other to know that this was real and not a collective hallucination)..well, they definitely believe him now.

Although definitely when they return to class they feel a little bad for having laughed at her in her face, so they try to ask her things about her.

It definitely doesn't work at first, but little by little you can see that (the reader) is losing her bitterness.

Both Geto and Gojo try to help (reader) adapt to a "more normal" school environment where doors don't bite you and your locker doesn't eat your books.

Speaking of which, they are quite curious about the "cultural differences" between worlds.

Gojo definitely wants to get on a flying boat. or see the giant skeleton that the boiling islands are on (although Geto questions how hygienic that is).

Imagine the reactions of both when they find out that the Giraffes are from the Boiling Islands but that they were banished by the ancestors of the witches 🤣

or that opossums are considered myths and not real! (reader) definitely goes crazy when she sees a real one.

Geto LOVES (reader's) Palisman, plus he seems to gravitate toward the natural one when he's feeling sad :')

Geto definitely wants to know how (reader's) magic works on a technical level (I don't think he can use glyphs, but maybe adapt some of the reader's moves into his fighting style).

Gojo wants to learn to do poses solely and exclusively for PRANKS, fortunately Geto avoids this.

Geto is more interested in the culture of the islands, more than anything when they both learn about the "coven system" of this "Emperor Belos" and why (the reader) did not want one despite it being dictated by law.

Let's say they understand it.

Geto strongly suspects that more than a security measure, it is more a way to limit power, which he can tell with certainty from (the reader's) level of strength even when weakened.

Speaking of which, they both have a difficult time with (female reader) at first.

whether due to illusions, unwindings, roots, etc.

All this without mentioning fireballs or snow coming in all directions or large constructions that look like something out of Fullmetal Alchemist.

the three of them flying! Geto in the rainbow dragons, (reader) with his Palisman and Gojo with his infinity.

If things end well (with Geto not turning evil, Amanai still alive, etc.) they are like a chaotic trio.

I highly doubt that island magic can be taught in the human world without glyphs, but it can definitely be taught as I mentioned before, by adapting movements.

Geto still has a great friendship with (reader)'s Palisman! and it makes him happy to know that the little friend will easily live longer than him :,)

Gojo is somewhat jealous of the Palisman, it seems like they compete for the attention of their partners and Satoru definitely LEGITIMATELY says that the Palisman blames him for things (sometimes yes, sometimes not).

Although I think they would both protect the palisman with their lives.

They are affectionate couples, and I think that together they manage to empathize better with (reader).

especially if you are homesick.

so they could take a vacation getaway to the boiling islands!

and it's actually pretty fun.

Gojo doesn't stand out in the slightest for once in his life and it's a little strange at first, but he gets it after 15 minutes on the busiest street.

Geto and Gojo now understand (reader's) strange tastes in food. Do you have anything to eat here that doesn't have eyes?...or guts?

They go to places of historical importance to understand a little about the culture of the islands, they avoid scammers, they go to eat somewhere that has food that Suguru and Satoru can digest, they avoid more scammers, they see the emperor's palace from afar, etc. .

(aunaue definitely seeing the place gave them BAD YIKES)

BOTH ALMOST DIE FROM BOILING RAIN, or when Gojo wanted to dive into the water without knowing it was also hot😭

IMAGINE GIVING THEM A PALISMAAAAAAAAN

They would both appreciate it FOR LIFE.

In general, these types of experiences help them to better understand each other mutually. and it also happens the other way around.

They have gone several times to the Thousand Red Doors with (reader), who, being (reader) wanted to go through ALL

They saw the old Buddhist temples, the trails, some mountains.

Although the cherry trees are definitely the best, especially when the three of them are alone and (the reader) uses magic to make the trees even brighter and more beautiful.

definitely a beautiful view...

In general, they appreciate the literally otherworldly beauty of their partner, they really love how unique she is and they wouldn't really change anything about her.

Shares, reglogs and comments are very welcome!

Thanks for the Request ❤️

I don't like writing for SatoSugu THAT much, but this was fun🥰

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cass-rambles · 3 months

Text

honestly I'm probably overthinking this, but I think it's an interesting detail that in the Unmortricken episode during the whole "trap Saw box" shit we've got this shot of Evil Morty sort of disappointed/dismayed RIGHT as we've got our Morty Prime telling Rick to "take the shot".

Like he's got the sort of annoyed, sort of cast down look for a few seconds (because right after we have the "We both hate Rick Prime more than each other either way" thing) and I'm reading way too much into this, but it makes me think that he does give a shit about Morty, despite his Very Constant Denial.

I mean taking all aspects of the episode under consideration, we've got several scenes where it is heavily underlined that Evil Morty does not care about Rick C-137 nor Morty, even being blunt about it and telling everyone to fuck off or it won't end well.

It's not that I don't believe he wants to be left alone, he very pointedly does, Buttttt I think E!Morty does hold some form of "softness" or positive emotions towards Morty.

Looking at their characteristics in the episode, I know most of the other fans have noticed that our "main" Morty's character seemed to have regressed for the ep to more of s1/s2 behavior, making him look more "whiney" and weak in comparison to Evil Morty. I think it's to point out that if we Had our Morty's normal behavior from even previous episodes of season 7, we'd be able to see how SIMILAR both of them are now.

(I mean c'mon, I get you rushed his character a little, but to fuck it right back to season 1/2 during a significant mid season finale? You've gotta have a bigger reason for it.)

In either case, it's likely that we have an episode of Morty sub-consciously trying his hardest not to act like Evil Morty (That's why we got the development regression for an episode) as Evil Morty seemingly just acts like himself, merely underlining that he does not care.

"This didn't make us friends" okay??? Then why even wait for Prime Morty at all to join Rick in his beat down w Rick Prime? Don't get me wrong, Evil Morty won't suddenly develop attachment to him out of thin air, but imo he sees all the potential Prime Morty has yet is currently wasting it.

It's sort of a little nod to how insane it is of a parallel that Ricks can't fucking stand one another or themselves, immediately trying to one up the other or kill, as to how Mortys can co-exist peacefully and work together without any unhealthy character implements. (Fun fact: If you're into mortycest in one of the comics two Mortys sleep w each other. So we've got established selfcest in canon too if you're imagining and rolling Evil Morty's and Morty's relationship into a more romantic ball court.)

Another little detail I noticed, we have a moment where Rick shoots at Evil Morty again for funsies and I gotta say, the expressions are feeding into my overanalyzing brain . LIKE??? AM I SEEING THIS WRONG?

These two have GOT to have something cooking between them PLEASE.

#rick and morty #morty smith #evil morty #thoughts #im overanalyzing this but whatevr

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norris-lando · 8 months

Text

where did my baby go?

Charles Leclerc x reader

based on the song Coney Island by Taylor Swift

warnings: angst, breakup, fighting, character death author’s note: I’m actually really happy with how this turned out and I kinda love the twist at the end. So, I hope you all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this! word count: 4.1k

You and Charles had been together for four years. And sometimes you couldn't believe the half of it. The way you treated each other left people to wonder why on Earth you even stayed together when it seemed so painful for you. It was like you couldn't breathe. Like everything was always just the wrong shade of grey. Nothing ever working out the way you had expected it to. All the while you just couldn't stay away from each other. It was pathetic.

Break my soul in two looking for you

But you're right here

If I can't relate to you anymore

Then who am I related to?

A touch here, a sigh there, something always got on one of your nerves just enough to start a fight. It didn't matter where you were or who you were with, when the ball started to roll, there was no stopping it. Spiteful words were being exchanged, causing the poor people around you to be horrified when they heard the way you spoke to each other.

Nevertheless, you couldn't imagine your life without Charles. It didn't matter you couldn't understand anything about him anymore, like he had become a total stranger to you in a blink of an eye, in a matter of seconds. Still, it was always his eyes you searched for in a crowded a room. It was Charles who was your first thought each morning when you woke up and each night you let yourself be pulled to sleep. If you couldn't be with him, who would you even be? It was like you had lost your own identity and now you didn't exist without him.

When you first started dating in 2019, you were happy. You could picture your life with Charles from start to finish. You were in it for the long haul, you both were. Neither of you expected it to end any time soon, hell if ever. You found each other and simultaneously the two of you decided that, this was it. This is where the search ends. This is the end game. You were blissfully unaware of how far from the truth you really were.

And if this is the long haul

How'd we get here so soon?

Did I close my fist around something delicate?

Did I shatter you?

It didn't take long before you had your first fight. It was over something small, comical even. It was something you would laugh over later that same evening. Oh, how silly we were to be fighting about something like that, you would recall later as you thought it over. Maybe you should have seen the signs then? Or maybe they weren't there yet? Maybe it really was just something small. Something every couple would go through, only to grow stronger from it as a result. Maybe you were supposed to grow stronger from it, too, but just didn't know how to.

Later on in your relationship Charles would let his mind slip back to that fight again and again. Going it over in his head, wondering if there was anything he could have done or should have done differently. Would his actions had steered the ship in a different direction? Maybe avoiding a head on collision after all. Or maybe there was nothing to be done. He cursed under his breath each time he went over that first fight. He blamed himself for a lot of it. Honestly, he blamed himself for the most part. Maybe, he often wondered, you were just so delicate and he suffocated you. He would have to come to terms with the fact that he would most likely never find the answers to his burning questions. No matter how hard he searched.

You couldn't bring yourself to move from your seat. It was cold outside and you had far too few clothes on your back to stand the ruthless winds. Still, something forced you to stay. You looked around the park for nothing in particular. A part of you was hoping you'd see something that would jolt you awake from this dream-like state that had trapped you in. Mind spinning but still managing to focus on one thing and one thing only, you couldn't help but wonder what had happened to you and Charles. It was like a carousel in your mind that you were forced to stay on. Like a broken record, it never stopped spinning. Only playing the same painful memories from your past relationship over and over again.

And I'm sitting on a bench in Coney Island

Wondering, "Where did my baby go?"

The fast times, the bright lights, the merry-go

Sorry for not making you my centerfold

Over and over

'I'm sorry,' you said to no one in particular as you stayed frozen in the same spot.

There was a sickness in your stomach and tears forced their way to the corner of your eyes. A child was running with a big smile plastered on his face right in front of you and you couldn't help but wonder what it would have been like if you and Charles had worked out. If you would have been able to work through your differences and maybe start a family of your own. What your life would be like if it was your child sprinting in front of you.

But that wasn't in the cards for you. Not with Charles anyway. Maybe not with anyone ever.

Charles had dnf'd in the race and he was, rightfully so, angry. At himself, at the competition, at everything that stood in his way as he walked through the Ferrari motorhome, stomping his feet like a little child. You followed steadily, trying to keep up with him while trying to find words of encouragement. You knew there was nothing you could do or say to make him feel better but you had to try. It was a mistake but you came to learn that too late yet again.

Lost again with no surprises

Disappointments close your eyes

And it gets colder and colder

When the sun goes down

He slammed the door to his driver's room just before you could sneak in after him. The sound of the door hitting the frame at such a high speed made you jump. You knew what Charles was like when he was angry but it still always took you by surprise. A part of you had still not really gotten used to his behaviour when he was like this.

The anger felt always unnecessary to you. Like it was a little too much. It was like a cloud that swallowed him whole and held him tightly in place before it had had enough and it washed over him.

You tried to knock on the door, barely making a sound as your fist came in contact with the material. There was no answer. No ‘come in’, no ‘leave me alone’, nothing. Just silence as you were left to stand there as you mustered up the courage to walk in to the room. If someone had seen you, standing there alone, they probably would have found the sight sad.

The door opened with a creak and you peaked your head in. Charles was on the bed, sat down with his head in his hands. You couldn't see his face, leaving you unable to read his expression.

A sort of fear crept down your spine. You had been in a similar situation with Charles before so you knew full well how this could, would end. But you still held high hopes that you wouldn't go down that path again. You didn't want yet another weekend to end in shouting match between the two of you. For once, you wanted to end your weekend on a happy note. You wanted to be able to walk out of the paddock as a happy couple, your bodies intertwined together. Not so that one after the other, you held your heads down as you avoided the cameras, embarrassed that the situation had yet again turned to that.

But it was too much to ask. The sight of you in his driver’s room was enough for Charles to tip over the metaphorical cliff he was standing on. And as he fell, he took you down with him.

Sometimes Charles spent his nights going over everything that ever happened between the two of you. He went over the moments, step by step, reflecting where'd been at in his own life at the time. He'd reflect his own feelings now, when it was too late. When he could almost picture you so clearly as if you were right there in front of him, happy and moving on. Sometimes he thought it was all real and it was your way of getting revenge on him.

It was during those nights, when his memories were his worst nightmare, that he turned to his unhealthy habits. Maybe he would have one drink too much. Maybe he would speed just a little too fast on the empty highway. Whatever it was, it was his best attempt trying to stop the pounding in his head get louder and louder. Maybe, sometimes he thought, it was his way of trying to escape the empty void you had left behind when you walked out on him that night.

The question pounds my head

What's a lifetime of achievement

If I pushed you to the edge

But you were too polite to leave me?

During those nights he realised no matter what he achieved in life, it would all amount to nothing if it meant losing you. It just wouldn't be the same if he didn't have you by his side to celebrate. And it was during those nights when he first started to wonder, if he was just stupid. Maybe there had been warning signs. Maybe you had, in a way, tried to show him when enough was enough. Maybe you were too polite and couldn't dare to leave him in the hopes you could actually change him for the better.

But Charles also thought about how maybe it wasn't your job to save him. Maybe you shouldn't have tried to change him but instead, maybe you should have tried to accept him as who he was. Maybe. But he also knew you never meant to hurt him, not intentionally. So whatever it was that you did or tried to do, or said or tried to say, it was all to help Charles. To guide him, of sorts. If only he had realised it sooner.

You couldn't help but miss him after all. No matter how bad he made you feel half the time, no matter how toxic you two were to each other, you missed him. You missed him and his stupid laugh and his stupid smile and his stupid dimples and his stupid face. You missed the man he was when he was with you and you missed who you were when you were with him. Through the good and the bad.

Do you miss the rogue

Who coaxed you into paradise and left you there?

Will you forgive my soul

When you're too wise to trust me and too old to care?

When you broke up for the first time, you stayed away from his world. You left it all to him. Even though it meant you couldn't see your friends, the friends you had made through Charles. It broke you and you hated it but it felt like the only chance. If you wanted to get over him, you had to cut all ties to him and everything that reminded you of him. Because it was so easy for you to fall back into that toxic cycle of breaking up and getting back together. You had been there too many times already and the two of you grew tired of it. Each cycle lasting a shorter period than the last, even though each time you promised each other this time you would be better. This time you wouldn't hurt each other. But just like each year the first fall of snow comes around, the same way you and Charles fell back into your old habits, again and again.

And yet again, even though you had vowed to yourself that this time you were through, you somehow found yourself back together. Your breakup ending up to last only a few weeks. Long enough for the two of you two think you’d made it through the hardest part of moving on but not long enough for the two of you to not miss each other.

At some point after you had gotten back together it all just started to feel like the beginning of a bad joke. Bad habits, right, you'd chuckle to yourself when it happened, though you knew all too well it was a toxic cycle that didn’t do any good to either of you.

It wasn't hard for anyone to miss why you would always fall back into the same endless cycle. You and Charles together, had it worked out, were like one of those cheesy romance novels. Where no matter the hardship, the two main characters that were destined to be together, would find a way to work. Had your relationship worked out, you would have been the love story of your century.

'Cause we were like the mall before the internet

It was the one place to be

The mischief, the gift-wrapped suburban dreams

Sorry for not winning you an arcade ring

Over and over

But life had other plans for you two as tragic as it was. And because of those plans, more often than not the two of you were somewhere around the globe far away from each other staring up at the sky in the hopes that answers would pour down.

Would it be better to just breakup? For good this time. Is it right to keep missing one another? Would it be for the better to just stay apart? No matter how hard it might feel.

Does he miss me like I miss him?

Does she still love me like I love her?

Lost again with no surprises

Disappointments close your eyes

And it gets colder and colder

When the sun goes down

Charles hated to admit it but he spent days upon days going over everything that happened during the years you were together. He thought about were it all went wrong. He tried to find the reasoning behind it, tried to justify his actions.

There were times when Charles felt completely and utterly lost without you. You had been there for him for so long and suddenly you were just gone. The world felt cold without you keeping him warm. Anger turned to fury, sadness to despair. Even happiness was filled with melancholy.

In those moments he was filled with the feeling of not being himself. Yet again he came to the realisation that his life was not complete without you. Just like so many times before.

You had those moments too. A painful sting in your chest as you cried yourself to sleep. Why would life be so cruel? Why would anyone ever have to go through something like this? Why couldn’t you have just stayed home that night? Would you have worked it out or was this something that would have been inevitable no matter what?

Were you waiting at our old spot

In the tree line, by the gold clock?

Did I leave you hanging every single day?

Charles’ mind always going back to the time when you two were supposed to go out for the first time in what felt like an eternity. The two of you had been busy with work and life and had somehow you just let each other just slip by. Always finding reasons why it was so hard to make time for each other, even for one night.

Not tonight, though.

You had planned the perfect evening at a restaurant near your home. The same restaurant you had gone to on your first date. Charles had made the reservations for the two of you and you both had cleared your calendars for the evening, promising each other that this time you’d finally make time.

But something had stopped Charles that night. Some invisible force had put a pin in his plans. And now, in his mind, Charles could see you standing there. He could picture you in a beautiful dress that complimented your skin color, giving you a sort of glow. He could see you lift your head up in even intervals to stare at the clock. He could imagine how you hoped each time as you saw the hands of time that it was wrong. That for some reason the time that was being displayed wouldn’t be correct. There was a twist in his chest when thought about you being disappointed by him yet again.

It brought him so much sorrow when he realised, years later, just how much disappointment he had put you through by not showing up. And for a moment he wished he could have gone back in time and change everything. If he could have, he would have treated you better through every step of the way.

Maybe it had been your way of getting petty revenge on Charles’ for all the times he had ditched you. But had it really been necessarily the best way to do it? The thought of you not going to his birthday party still haunted you as the conversation between you and Charles played in your head.

Were you standing in the hallway with a big cake?

Happy birthday

Did I paint your bluest skies the darkest gray?

A universe away

“You promised me you’d be there.” Charles tried his best to sound tough, not wanting to show you how he really felt. But no matter hard he tried, you could hear the disappointment in his voice. Like a little child had been betrayed by their mother. Not really being able to comprehend why or how someone could such a thing.

What could you have said in that moment? ‘I’m sorry?’ Maybe. But in that moment the last thing you wanted to do was apologize. So you did what you had learned from Charles. You steered the conversation in a direction that would make him at fault.

After that it didn’t take long for you two to be in a screaming match. Both of you saying words you would know you’d later regret but not caring in that moment. Your night ending the same way they ended usually. With slamming of doors, one of you sleeping on the couch after you swore to each other that this was the last time. That morning come, one of you would be out the door for good.

And when I got into the accident

The sight that flashed before me was your face

But when I walked up to the podium

I think that I forgot to say your name

Neither of you could pinpoint the exact moment when it all fell apart. Sometimes it felt like it was a number of things combined, other times it felt like it was one specific moment.

Maybe it was the time Charles had ditched you at one of the many parties you attended during your time together. Maybe it was when you chose to ignore him when he really needed you after a bad day, when the only thing that would cheered him up would have been a hug from you.

To you, however, it was most boiled down to the 'podium incident' as you had began to call it.

Charles had won his home race in Monaco. And as he was up there on the podium celebrating, you were stood among the sea of people. Your eyes were fixated on Charles the whole time while he barely glanced at you. In that moment you felt like a plague — something that had to be avoided at all cost in order not to be swallowed by it.

There were so many people around you and it felt hard to hold it all together. To not break down.

That night as you went back home with Charles you were filled with an overwhelming feeling of emptiness. You looked around your shared apartment and felt as if you were just a guest there. Like nothing belonged to you. Like you weren't even supposed to be there.

So you took off. The Monaco night feeling chill on your skin.

You didn't know where you were going or what you were going to do or if you were going to go back. You just knew you had to get out.

You drove and drove and drove until your eyelids felt too heavy to keep open. You figured that you'd close them for just a second. Just a teeny tiny moment and then you'd continue and find a real place to sleep in.

But something jolted you awake. There was a smell of smoke and everything was spinning. Flashes of Charles went around your mind. Flashes of memories playing on repeat as you tried to make out which one was which, all of them just being slammed together, not making any sense. You were confused, not sure where you were or what had happened. It was getting cold. So cold you were shivering relentlessly. And then it hit you.

Charles held your hand tightly as he wiped his tears away with his free hand. He felt guilty. Torn. Like it was just a really bad dream. He was certain that soon he'd wake up in a pool of his own sweat next to you. He didn’t want to believe that what was in front of him was real. Your broken and bruised body lay still on the hospital bed. But he knew better and the truth was like a slap across his face when your friends rushed into the room.

“Charles,” Carlos called out and tried his best to keep his composure. He didn’t want to cry but the sight of your lifeless body was too much for him to bear.

Lando was the next one to peak his head through the door way. An audible gasp left his lips when see what had happened. He couldn’t come in, not yet. So he turned on his heels and stayed behind.

Carlos sobbed out apologies to Charles as if it would bring you back. Lando fell down on the floor outside the room. Pierre and Daniel were silent and frozen. No one knew what to say or do.

“This is my fault.” The room fell silent at Charles’ words. Carlos was looking at his friend, trying to decipher how this could be his fault. He couldn’t find a reason. He couldn’t find words to make Charles feel better. He knew you and Charles had had a lot of troubles during your relationship but he still couldn’t connect the dots. Not until Charles poured his heart out and told him how you had gotten into a fight, yet again. How you had left in the middle of the night, yet again. How you hadn’t returned home this time. How you would never return home this time around.

Carlos began to understand Charles in a way then. He understood why he felt like it was his fault but he knew it was just the shock and sadness talking. He tried his best to console Charles but found the task almost impossible. Carlos figured the best thing he could do right was just stay there with him for as long as he wanted. To be there for him in case Charles needed him. The room fell quiet as no one said a word. Only occasional sniffles echoing around. It was a sad day for everyone involved, one that would take them all months to process completely.

But for Charles it was different. It was more intense and way harder than to anyone else. Your death had a left hole in him and he was certain nothing would ever be able to fill it completely. In his mind, Charles was certain there would always a spot in his heart that would be tainted by the loss of you. Because after all the rough times you went through, the constant fighting and living on edge, fearing what could be said or done without causing a scene, Charles knew that the love you shared was always real. And there was nothing that could ever take it away from him.

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