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neil-gaiman · 18 days

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Hi Neil.

I know you are flooded with asks and this somehow became extremely long. Too long. “Why am I suddenly telling this poor man my life story?” too long. “I think I’d rather he work on the GO3 script than read this wild beast” too long. “He’s going to think you’re criminally dangerously insane” too long. If you never get to it, I’m good with never seeing a response from you. Maybe it’s better that way? Maybe an anon would have been nice here. But, it’s 2024, so I say “we ball.” It’s a privilege to be able to send this to you at all. You get a lot to this effect and I hope they give you good feels, so maybe what’s the harm, yeah? Because this is not an ask. This is a thank you letter.

First, thanks for reblogging my therapist post, I hope it amused you. I nearly sent you “How am i supposed to explain this to my therapist?!” But refrained. At that time.

So, therapy. What is therapy really? Well…

Things have been really rotten for as long as I can remember. Bad health, bad doctors, bad relationships, bad coping mechanisms, bad all kinds of things. (Yeah, bad is a weak and unhelpful word, my therapist reminds me, but we’re doing this.)

Well, things got even more really really rotten and BAD these last few years. Health declined further, coping mechanisms declined further and more intensely, packed up my life, applied for disability, moved back in with my parents across the country.

Then 4 years ago last week I watched my fiance die of a sudden heart attack. I was 29. Two years later my best friend died. Then last summer I sauntered vaguely into a cancer scare. Not long before an operation my cat who has been my companion through so much garbage died as well. I’m not entirely in the clear on the cancer scare front. All my attempts at going back to work, volunteering, going to grad school - they collapsed on me because I couldn’t get through this STUFF.

(Sometimes when I talk about this, when I tell people, I think “they are going to think you are a raging pathological liar.” Because I’m not sure I would believe someone if they told me all of this happened to them. In such a short time period. All before they were 35. And hell if that hasn’t been isolating. You know how it sounds? Lonely. And it is.)

I did the hypervigilant and sensation/experience chasing stage of PTSD. It got me in a lot of trouble in all kinds of ways. I had to do a lot of medical and psych advocating because things kept getting worse. That was exhausting. Then that peaked. I went into the thick of the “I feel absolutely nothing” stage for a long time. I didn’t feel fatigue or hunger or thirst. Not people, feelings, a reason. Not hope.

But of course, like seems be for a lot of us, I somehow found Good Omens at just the right time. I was a very “I’m so cool and intellectual I mostly consume non-fiction media” person for too long. Like, what? How is that even a real thing? And it wasn’t real. It was just part of this curated autism mask that I don’t think anyone really bought anyway.

I think I got to a point where I’d just had too much reality. I needed fantasy. I didn’t realize I always needed it. But I denied myself for too many odd and painful reasons. Maybe I thought it was an escape I didn’t deserve.

But as it turns out, it wasn’t an escape. I watched both seasons last fall, and then this light came on. I watched it again and again.

I came to tumblr because I needed more. I found this fandom. I stepped into this beautiful world of fanart and fanfiction and brain flexing meta writing and a sense of community and wonder that you and Terry created - that everyone involved in the show inflated - exploded in the right way - like fireworks if fireworks were some kind of autocatalytic reaction - a self perpetuating force.

It’s not a “saved my life” feeling. Not a “getting my life back” feeling. It’s been a “maybe it’s time for you to have the life you’ve always been denied - that you’ve denied yourself” feeling.

I’m creating. I’m not “great” yet. Not terribly “good” at all. Maybe “behind” as far as the “proper” timeline for starting. I know there isn’t one, not really, but boy does that society machine make ya feel like there is. And sure, I started and stopped a lot in the past. But the second it got hard I always gave up. I felt like if I didn’t get it “right” to begin with, then I just didn’t have it in me at all. But for once I’m really in it. I’m writing and trying to draw things that look less like fever dream five year old drawings. (Not that there’s anything wrong with those, is there? 🙃) I’m eating better. I’m sleeping better. I reach out to old friends more. I’ve made new friends who share this love of Good Omens.

My therapist has been floored by the change in me. After that first funny mini flop, he has been so encouraging about it. I saw him this week and I said “Maybe this is helping me get prepared to start living again. Maybe it’s a springboard.” And he honest to god said “But You ARE living. This is YOU LIVING. Why does it have to be a springboard? Why do you have to turn this into ‘work?’ Just let yourself have this for once in your life.”

But there were two more added elements that made it all work. And I can’t help but think this whole brainrot thing wouldn’t have happened without them. So many things just happened all at just the right time - a proper coincidence.

In all of the madness of the last few years I finally got the memo that I'm autistic. i figured I was for a while. But it finally sunk in for me and my docs and my people. So I’d been working on unpacking that. Grieving the life that could have been entirely different, shedding the mask. I let myself hyperfixate openly instead of hiding it and hating myself for “spiralling” or “obsessing” like others -!like ‘I’ always punished myself for before we knew that it was a trait and not a personality flaw.

Then over the last few months my therapist and I started trying this new exercise. One session he stopped me and said “in the last 20 minutes you have responded to what I’ve said with 9 ‘I knows.’” My response to that? “Ugh, I know.” So we started this “I know” swear jar type situation. Really, I’ve been afraid of not knowing. I couldn’t let myself “not know.” Because it meant I was “dumb.” I was just drowning for so long in guilt and self loathing for the “I knew better and screwed up anyway.” Or “I should’ve known better - I should know that by now.”

As it turns out, there’s a lot of things I don’t know. That I didn’t know. Things I will never know. And refusing to admit all of that kept me from learning a damn thing. Kept me from asking questions. Kept me from trying new things because it was scary to do something new - something unknown - and I "knew" how it would all turn out anyway. Kept me from connecting with people because it was painful or embarrassing when they knew things I didn’t and it seemed like I already should have. Kept me from getting better at making art, music, writing. Kept me from forgiving myself. Kept me from growing. And kept me from moving forward. Maybe not on. I don’t know if we ever “move on” from things. But we can move forward as we carry them. And as we do, the weight gets less. We’re able to carry it better. But only if we can admit that we don’t know how. Only if we don’t treat ourselves like this is something we do know or should know and we’re just failing because we’re less than. Not good enough. Not strong enough. Not deserving. We have to be able to say “I don’t know how to do this.” And then we can start looking for the answers. We can ask. We can learn.

I thought about the apple. Being able to tell the difference between good and evil. Aziraphale’s years and years of watching what he “knows” to be true be proven wrong. Crowley’s need to ask questions…

The simple and enormous gift of “Knowledge.” The “Knowledge” of the difference between Good and Evil. The “Knowledge” that can only be gained by realizing, accepting, admitting that there are things we don’t know. Asking the questions. Sometimes we get answers we don’t like. Sometimes the consequences of asking hurt us. And unless you want to stay in that painful place that painful knowledge got you, well, you’ve got to let yourself learn how to get out.

So all of this good? I never expected this. I never thought I deserved it. Joy and belonging and this sense that “Yeah, maybe things can get better. Maybe things can be good.” Because I said those things, not truly believing them, to the people I thought needed to hear it. But it couldn’t save them. It was hollow. The proof for us wasn’t really in our orbit or on our radar at the time. And now they’re gone.

People always say “it’s never too late.”

One of the people I lost said “it’s later than you think.”

I jokingly would respond “it’s already too late.”

It was for him in the end. For them. For some people I guess it really is. But maybe a lot of the “too late” people are there because they think “they know” that things will never be good for them. So they stop looking, they stop asking, stop finding. And eventually they just stop.

Then there came Crowley’s “It’s always too late.” The first time I heard it I thought “For sure, Crowley-cakes, I KNOW.”

But then…I just needed to rewatch the whole thing. And lines like that…familiar things…familiar themes…I was suddenly identifying with these characters. I suddenly saw myself. And the realization hit - I connected with something! Something new. And I FELT THAT. And that tiny little crack that made in the wall was just enough to start breaking it down. Yeah, when you start letting yourself feel after not feeling for so long, opening up to the good feelings means opening up to feelings and then the bad ones come out too. But when there IS good … it helps you balance. You can deal with the bad a little better because you’ve got the good thing to lean against when it gets too much. And now you’ve got feelings. You’ve got good and bad. You’ve got sticky foggy grey. You’ve got life.

Whew.

So, TLDR, thank you. From the bottom of my slowly healing heart, thank you.

And to sign off with some shits and giggles… I couldn’t find this in existence as a sticker so I had to custom order. Perhaps this will spread misery and panic among the humans of my city - or at least a malignant and creepy sense of unease.

Or maybe they’ll say “wtf” and go home and google it and they’ll fall into the Good Omens hole they never knew they needed too.

Thank you for this. I never quite know what to say to messages like this apart from I am really glad that it helps. (It becomes the weird extra piece that I worry about when writing season 3 -- hoping that it will be that thing again. Not just a story, but something that helps people feel and helps with healing and helps with love.)

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ineffable-suffering · 9 months

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Aziraphale, I love you. But you lied. And here's why.

Okay. I’m not gonna beat around the bush for too long. It’s time now for me to also throw my try at a personal Good Omens Season 2 Magnum Opus into the mix of already existing magnum op..i? Opusses? (Smited? Smote?)

If I’m honest, it isn’t fully my own magnum opus, as I read this meta not too long ago that made me go: „Oh! My God! That’s it!“ And I’m pretty sure a lot of other people have clocked this too by now. Of course I’m not saying it’s the objective truth but after having mulled it over for many endless nights and days, wading through the onslaught of coffee theories, body swap theories, The Metatron re-writing the Book of Life theories and many, many more, this is the one I think is most plausible and, if you look closely, most obvious.

And it goes as such: Aziraphale lied.

To all of us. All of them. And most of all, to Crowley. He lied to him. Well, he sort of did and also sort of didn’t. He certainly didn’t tell the truth. At least not all of it. I hear you ask: “OP, what the fuck are you talking about”. I answer you: Let’s start from the top and under the cut.

(Small note: this meta ended up being way too large for Tumblr, which is why I will redirect you to an external doc at the end of the post, where I have written it all down nicely and accurately. It's about 35 digital A4-pages long, just in case you want to save it for later.)

(Word count: 12.831 | Approximate reading time: 50 minutes)

Let’s start with a short recap of what happens before the Metatron crashes the bookshop party and everything goes to shit. The proper visuals for this are in my Tumblr post but I am absolutely convinced that right up until when the Metatron comes to take Aziraphale away and talk to him, the angel is fully ready to get into Crowley’s Bentley-chariot and finally ride off into the sunset (or Alpha Centauri-set or whatever). You can see it in his face and body language. You can see when the penny drops for him that a) Crowley loves him b) he loves Crowley and c) they can finally start their happily ever after. Aziraphale realizes this all throughout said Brielzebub reveal in the bookshop. And he’s such a lost cause once he does.

I mean, look at that. Look at it. This (very shitty recording, sorry, I'm not tech-savvy enough to avoid the Amazon Prime screen recording blocker) is the very second Aziraphale realizes hat Crowley loves him. When he hears him suggest Alpha bloody Centauri as a getaway for Gabriel and Beelzebub, as Crowley has done to Aziraphale for so, so many times now. He finally understands what Crowley was trying to tell him with that all those times.

Aziraphale realizes this all throughout the Brielzebub reveal in the bookshop. And he’s such a lost cause once he does.

Right when Crowley suggest Alpha Centauri as a nice getaway spot to the two, Aziraphale looks at him and he gets it. That Crowley has loved him, has been loving him for millennia. Truthfully, they've both known that for a long while now. But there's a difference between knowing, wanting, craving and actually being able to finally have something. And that's exactly what we see on Aziraphale's face here. This is it. This is where it all starts working out for Crowley and him. This is were they can start their eternity together.

So from that second on, Aziraphale only has eyes for Crowley. He keeps physically pawing at Crowley with complete heart eyes, as if to say „Look, look, that’s gonna be us too! Finally!" He’s actually so smitten that he doesn’t even hear what Crowley is saying when he asks Shax if he can have back his apartment now because he’s sick of living in his car. (Also, what way to drop that bomb right in this moment Crowley, lmao).

Once the Metatron comes in, the first thing Aziraphale says is that they don’t need to talk because „he’s made his position quite clear“. He doesn’t even want to talk to the Metatron, because in his mind, he’s already made the choice. Actually, he made the choice way before the bookshop showdown. For starters, I’m convinced that the Jane Austen Ball actually never was for Maggie and Nina but for Crowley and him (you can read more about that here). And apart from that, for this whole season we have seen Aziraphale trying to advance his relationship with Crowley romantically and domestically and move them to the literal next base (our car!). And after everything he just witnessed with Brielzebub, the final nail in the coffin of ethereal-infernal romance being possible, his choice is absolutely crystal clear: It’s Crowley. It’s always been Crowley and it always will be Crowley. And now it can be Crowley. They can be an us.

The whole of Season 2 is such a massive learning curve for Aziraphale’s character, with him remembering all those important pivotal points of his past, and this very moment is the peak, with him not only understanding that Crowley loves him (because he certainly knew for quite some centuries now) but accepting that love, letting himself have that love, being allowed to want that love and taking that love and starting their new and final chapter with it. Nevertheless, the plot clock ticks for them. The Metatron saunters into the bookshop, evil and stinky as Metatrons do, and urges Aziraphale to come with him with his whole Take The Coffee schtick, which I will get into later. And Aziraphale, immediately sensing there’s Something Up, does. Can’t really turn down someone as high-ranking as the the voice of God, after all. Even if you were currently already planning how you were going to elope with a certain red-haired serpent of Eden.

he next time we see Aziraphale on screen, it’s so painfully evident on his face that he is neither happy nor excited. Not even the slightest bit. We’d know if he was, thanks to Mr. Michael master-of-microexpressions Sheen. None of the usual “Aziraphale is happy”-signs are there. No blinding eye-smile, no giddy wriggling, not giggles and gasps. No, when the Metatron tells Aziraphale to „go tell your friend the good news“, his expression looks like this:

I’m gonna go out on an entire limb here and say: That does not look like someone who’s absolutely tickety-boo hyped to tell his demon soulmate that he just got the juiciest promotion and that they can both be angels and live happily ever after in ethereal eternity now.

This, folks, looks like someone who knows exactly that the news he has to break right now, are going to be tickety-shit awful and very upsetting to said demon soulmate. And already, from that very short snippet of conversation, we can tell that Aziraphale isn’t really given a choice by the Metatron. Because while the Metatron does tell him that he doesn’t have to „answer right away“, he immediately follows it up by: „Go ahead and tell your friend the good news!“ Very distinct and definitive choice of words here. It’s “good news” because it’s already been decided. Because it’s already a done deal. There is no “yes, no, maybe”. This is the only choice he’s giving to Aziraphale. Because it’s ‘Coffee or death’.

And he already gave him the coffee.

***

Tumblr won't let me continue this over a certain character limit and I am not even remotely done yet – so, I feel like this is a good moment to redirect you to the continuation of this insane meta before we're in too deep. You can do so right here!

I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions about this once you've fought your way through it. Hope you have a good time with it!

#good omens #good omens s2 #good omens season 2 #good omens meta #good omens analysis #neil gaiman #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands #good omens predictions #i lost my mind writing this #it must be nice to be able to be a casual enjoyer of media #who doesnt spend 5 days writing a 22 page document on an angle and why he lied to his demon boyfriend #my own meta

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matan4il · 1 year

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Buddie 613 meta

We now know that the man who risked himself to get Buck out of the line of fire during the shooting arc is Jeshan, which means ‘clear’ (if you’re interested, you can find more name meanings for 911 characters here). So let me just giggle for a second about the fact that 911 had once again reunited Buddie with a character who can be referred to as Captain Clear Me(h)ta. Coincidence? IDK. But I have to admit, it kinda made me reflect back and feel nostalgic. When I first started watching the show, I had no intention of writing meta for 911, but after going ballistic when 309 aired, I knew I would HAVE to use the s3 hiatus to write down all my thoughts about everything Buddie related so far. That’s what I did, I wrote and shared my baby, my first round of Buddie meta. That’s where it was supposed to end, but then people asked and encouraged me to write meta for the eps in 3b as they would air, too. I figured I could try, and that’s how my Buddie weekly meta posts were born. At the time, there was no one else writing proper weekly meta (I don’t mean a summary/review of the ep, or meta posts that stand on their own, but proper analysis on Buck, Eddie and those who matter to them, organized and serialized for each ep as it aired). And now, I’ve been writing them for almost 3.5 seasons. And I feel like they’ve inspired others to do the same. TBH, I can’t actually remember seeing weekly meta posts in other fandoms (maybe they exist and I just haven’t come across them, IDK). So I got all emotional, thinking about how these posts may be love notes to Buddie and the show, but most of all they’re a love letter to the wonderful people who have been supportive and encouraging, who’ve been reblogging the posts, who’ve been commenting on them and telling me that what I do makes a difference for them. Thank you so much, these posts wouldn’t exist without you. You have a much bigger impact on the fandom than you might have realized! So if Captain Mehta is indeed a nod to the meta, it’s a loving, appreciative nod that belongs to all of you. ~~

When Chim shows up to escort Hen to work, he ends up sitting down for a talk with Denny instead, and I really enjoyed this scene, it was lovely, but it also once again emphasized the difference between the firefam kids’ relationship with their parents’ colleagues and the r/s Buck and Chris have. Chim talks to Hen’s son when he happens to come across the kid, but he only sits down for a proper conversation because Denny implies Hen and Karen are up to something intimate, and Chim shouldn’t interrupt them just yet. Consider how different that is to how Buck intentionally looks to spend time with and dedicated to Chris! And then Chim is impressed by how smart Denny is. It’s cute, but it also reveals just how little they interact that this comes as a surprise to Chim. It’s so different to the intimate familiarity of a parent, which is what we know Buck has with Chris (and that Chris has with Buck, which can even be seen in the kid’s teasing, for example regarding the snoring in 414). ~~

You might have seen that, when the promo came out, I momentarily lost my sanity and posted this. I just couldn’t get over the fact that they actually had Eddie correct the chief on the duration of Buck’s death. It was such a spouse thing to do. It was a declaration about the anguish that each single second represented, when Eddie couldn’t breathe because Buck wasn’t. It was a confession of sorts, on how Eddie felt as he desperately NEEDED his husband to live (I’m not even joking when I ascribe him this title, Eddie said with his whole chest, “THAT IS MY IDIOT HUSBAND THAT I HAD TO WATCH DIE FOR THREE MINUTES AND SEVENTEEN SECONDS AND I WILL NEVER FORGET ANY OF THOSE SECONDS, NOR LET ANYONE ELSE DO THAT”). It was a glimpse into how time must have moved differently for him as each second etched itself forever into Eddie’s mind. And yes, it’s a clear parallel to 413, when we witness time slowing down for Eddie. And I mentioned in my post that in both scenarios, Buck is just out of his reach, so close, but simply not close enough. In one case, this forced Eddie to believe he must now accept his own death. In the other, he couldn’t accept the possibility that Buck would die, so he just fought harder, and if he couldn’t save Buck with one course of action, he tried another, Eddie just had to keep going, 'coz the idea of those three minutes and seventeen seconds turning into an eternity? Unacceptable. ~~

But notice in my unhinged post from that day, I used the word ‘counting.’ Eddie counted the seconds, and this is revealed to us at a poker game where Buck is counting the cards. I already noticed that when we saw the promo, but this connection was reinforced in the ep itself when Chief Williams vocalized what Buck was doing. The thing about counting is that it’s reserved for what matters, what’s crucial. Buck is counting the cards in order to win, and he wants to win because it matters to Eddie. Buck wasn’t the one who initiated the search for a poker game where he could use his newfound skills, Eddie was the one to take that initiative. And he could bring Buck along without telling him where they’re going (I would normally scream for a whole separate paragraph just about Eddie telling Buck to dress nice and there being no need for any further explanation or prompting, but we were so well fed, I’ll have to scream about it into my fist for just one sentence) 'coz Eddie was so sure his husband would go along with whatever crazy scheme he’d come up with. And he was right, even though Buck didn’t think it would end well, he still went along with what his husband wanted. Please let me reiterate: Buck’s counting cards because Eddie is so important to him, and Eddie was counting the seconds because Buck’s his vital sign. ~~

Another thing to keep in mind about the poker game is that the only other time we’ve seen Buck playing poker was in 312. In that ep, Eddie was off to meet Christopher’s school teachers (leading to his eventual lackluster r/s with Ana), so having a free evening, Buck spends it with Maddie, Chim and Josh (and is told he unequivocally sucks at Poker). Jokes were made about setting Josh and Buck up, and it was implied whatever Buck’s sexuality was, that was not the reason why Maddie abstained from making the match. What I find interesting is seeing how far our boys have come! In that ep, they were operating separately, and it led them down the wrong paths.

In this ep, Buck and Eddie were inseparable both as a couple (even sharing the winnings from Buck’s new talent, because what don’t these two share? And I was particularly chewing glass when Chief Williams asks Buck how he wanted HIS winnings, but instead of answering her, he looks at his husband. THEY ARE SO FREAKING MARRIED), and as a family unit with Chris (which is maybe a good moment to point out that all of the romantic couples were paired off in 613, and so were Buddie! Now, one could argue that Buck and Eddie were paired off because, well... who else is left for them to hang out with? But 312 is a reminder that when the show wants to, it can push the main cast and minor characters into the same orbit, so it still didn’t HAVE to pair Buck and Eddie off here. It chose to. On top of that, by showing them with Chris as well, 911 reminded us they’re far more bonded than just two best bros hanging out together ‘coz none of their other friends are single). In short, during 312, Buck lost and Eddie was about to be lost on a detour in his romantic journey. In 613, they ARE a family, they work as one throughout the ep, not just in parts of it, and they’re both winning. ~~

Something that gets to me is that when I first shared the BTS pic of Buddie at the poker game, it was clear that Eddie was just bursting with self confidence. He looked like he would be the star of that game. But when we got the promo, we discovered that it was actually going to be Buck who would shine that night. So what makes me slightly froth at the mouth is that all of that sexy confidence we picked up on in the photo? It was real. We weren’t wrong. It just wasn’t confidence that Eddie had in himself, it’s confidence he has in Buck. All of his swagger? Is a reflection of how much he believes and enjoys seeing his husband be a star. I am gonna need 3-6 working weeks at least to recover from knowing this. ~~

Speaking of things that destroyed me forever, everything about the Buckley-Diaz family in this ep falls into that category. I mean, not only did we once again have incredibly domestic scenes, we had one that was very reminiscent of the lasagna one in 601 (Eddie with Chris at the table, Buck fussing around them only to join in once he brings along something to be consumed), reinforcing that this is THEIR NORM, we also had Eddie and Chris being so cute and supportive when it comes to Buck’s new ability (Chris calls him a superhero, Eddie goes along with it, and when Buck’s upset he didn’t get a better superpower, naming some he would have liked to have, Eddie comforts him by saying those other options sound horrible).

And then to top it all off, we had Buck and Chris cooking together. Bobby’s been explicitly acknowledged as basically being Buck’s dad by both of them, and we know Bobby’s been teaching Buck how to cook. Now we get Buck doing the same with Chris, clearly marking them as father and son, especially since this is done with just the two of them, this special time that’s allocated just to their bond together. Eddie is not needed as a middleman. I know that this isn’t news, but every single time the show reinforces this truth, that Buck is Christopher’s other dad, that their bond is that deep, I gain 10 years, so I have to mention it. ~~

For 613, I made my weekly gifset about Buck and answers, but I’d actually like to elaborate on what you see there. In 602, at the happiness center call, we see Buck looking to Lev in search for his own answers on what his happiness looks like. When he still can’t find any, he turns to Hen, because she always has them. Along this season, that’s been his theme. He’s trying to figure out what he wants in order to be happy, which is connected to the couch theme we’ve all been screaming about since 601 (and especially after he fell asleep on Eddie’s in 612). In 613, Buck suddenly finds that he’s the guy with the answers and he likes it. But has he really got them? Buck says these words to Eddie and Chris, and in addition to that, while he utters them, he’s literally captured in the same frame together with Eddie. But it’s also essential that we heard why Chris can’t just be given the answers. It’s in order to learn, Eddie tells him. That’s exactly what Buck has to do, he has to find his answers in order to learn from the search process. He’s not just there yet, but the framing of the whole scene coupled with the ongoing couch theme is very loud. ~~

What gets me maybe most of all in a whole ep of REALLY GOOD BUDDIE CONTENT, is the way the whole thing wraps up. The storyline on Buck’s new abilities doesn’t end with any commentary on those or on his recovery process. His last scene in this ep is the one with Chris. It follows directly the one with Hen and Karen, a scene which reminds us that we’re never surprised at either woman spending solo time with and caring about Denny, even though neither is biologically related to him, because they ARE BOTH his parents. In the same way, it’s only natural that we see Buck spending alone time with Chris, without Eddie around. It is so meaningful that the last shot of Buck in this ep is not about his story line at all, and neither his abilities, nor having died for several minutes is the point. Instead, the last, and therefore most significant shot of Buck in this very Buddie domestic ep, is him smiling at their son. I feel like that says everything about his trajectory.

~~ (my weekly meta posts) (my Buddie gifs) (all of my content)

~~ My tag list will follow in the reblog, please let me know if you wanna be added/removed here.

~~ Thank you so much for reading and for any reblog, like, comment or supportive tag! Also, HUGE thank you to @whosoldherout. On top of real life stuff, she makes her own amazing gifs AND helps make these posts so much better. She’s the one with the real superpowers!

#buddie #911meta #buddie meta #911 meta #9-1-1 #evan buckley #eddie diaz #911 spoilers #evanbuckleyedit #eddiediazedit #christopher diaz #wm #911edit #buddie gifs #buddieedit #911onabc #911 on abc #911abc #911 abc

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nightcolorz · 6 months

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Armand surgical malpractice meta (spoilers for TVA)

It’s, at least from what I’ve seen, a pretty popularly agreed upon conception that Armand’s mutation of Claudia b4 her death as described in TVA didn’t actually happen..partly bcus it’s such a drastic and grotesque retcon from her death in interview with the vampire so lots of ppl don’t want to address it as canon, and partly bcus it’s so bizarre and seemingly unprompted in context that it just seems more plausible that Armand would make this up as some sort of twisted shock value rather then actually do it. I used to buy into this theory and never rlly thought about it beyond that, and today for the first time I thought about it deeply and realized. Damn I rlly disagree! I think that Armand 100% canonically chopped Claudia’s head off and sewed it onto an adult body. I believe it happened as told. And I have many reasons !

First and foremost I don’t think that Armand is actually capable of lying so deliberately in this context. Interpreting most tvc narrators as potentially lying to our faces and intentionally twisting events to suit a narrative and a purpose of dictating our perception of them is, I think, accurate and justified, and smth I love about this fandom. Everyone is not to be trusted 100%, especially Louis and Lestat, who are said and implied many times to have completely fabricated some events in the books for the sake of painting a picture. Tvc serve as this over arching plot about multiple conflicting characters manipulating events of their lives to suit a narrative that we as the audience can pick apart and discover the truth within. Very much “this bitch said WHAT about me?? that dumb cunt is always spreading lies smh, it actually happened LIKE THIS” (they r both not telling the full truth). Armand however is very much an outlier here, and it’s part of what makes TVA so unique as a chronicle. It’s a big part of his character throughout the series, in TVA and leading up to TVA, that Armand’s way of thinking is so dysfunctional and his memory is so flawed (bcus of all his trauma) (and neurodivergence) (imo) that he isn’t able to fully conceptualize the events of his life as chronological and meaningful in the way that one would need to do to be able to write a memoir.

He can’t describe events in broad strokes, or wrap his head around a vast emotional impact in a way that is explanatory or intentional. Think of that conversation he has with Daniel in queen of the damned, where he explains that he isn’t capable of telling Daniel what his life in the past “was like” because that’s a concept incomprehensible to him. He only knows what happened, not what it was like, not how it affected him or how it shaped his personhood, what it means etc. It’s a form of dissociation almost. The vampire armand is the first time in Armand’s vampiric life that he self reflects beyond acknowledging events and his emotions in that moment, it’s the first time he attempts to make connections and understand himself in a way that is narrative and structured and not fragmented bits of history and A names. Part of this requires further dissociation. I definitely get the impression that since Armand is being so vulnerable in a way he is so unused to, yet is so significant, he is unable to register while he’s talking that not only David, but millions of people including every vampire in the world, will know what he says. He’s just laying himself completely bare, he’s talking and talking and only once he finishes realizes oh. Oh. everyone’s going to read this huh. It’s so cathartic he doesn’t consider that in the moment. It’s the first time he’s ever been capable of reckoning with his life in a self reflective way, of looking at it and explaining it and reasoning with it, structuring it in order, not fragments, etc, seeing the cause and the impact and touching on an overall conclusion (tho he never entirely gets there). These baby steps are so difficult for him already, and considering this part of his character I really think it’s a stretch to say that Armand would be capable of the thought process in his book of pure venting to go “maybe I should twist the truth here or change this or add this or lie about this so people will think of me this way or so Lestat can see this, etc” TVA is unreliable, more so bcus of how mentally ill armand is and how little he understands his own life and emotions, but not deliberately like iwtv and tvl. Armand even says that the book was for Benji and Sybelle, but it’s so unfiltered and horrific and vent-like that this sounds ridiculous. He doesn’t even have his stated audience in mind while he’s telling his story, let alone his broader audience. The audience was a complete afterthought, a barely registered consequence. So why would he lie about Claudia? How would he be capable?

it’s another common piece of conversation around this part of TVA where we go, Armand discusses how he never would want to tell this to Louis bcus he knows how badly it would hurt him, so why did he describe it so graphically? Well, cause of all I mentioned. It seems pretty clear to me that armand is almost haunted by the affair with Claudia, and he has no way of lying about this, so his descriptions seemed very much to me like a desperate bit of venting. He has never told anyone how horrific it actually was and it’s always been in his mind, so he just lets it all out. Makes sense, but the broader question is, if Armand wasn’t lying…why did he do that at all?? This I think is so interesting.

To understand this I had to think a lot about Armand’s motivations for killing Claudia at all, which is well, simply, revenge against Lestat and claiming of Louis without barriers. If Claudia dies Lestat will be sad and Louis will be mine and mine alone 👍👍 etc. but Claudia’s mutation was not rooted in either of these motivations, which is part of why it’s so shocking. He didn’t do it to hurt Lestat, lestat never found out. It just seems so odd and unprompted. But once I thought more about why Armand hates Lestat, and why he wants to hurt him by killing Claudia, it started to fit into place. Armand’s hatred for Lestat is rooted very much in his twisted resemblance to Marius that he perceives as being very strong and basically mocking. When he first sees Lestat in tvl he’s repulsed by him instantly bcus he sees him as this parody of Marius, this beautiful blonde man in striking red robes who boldly and carelessly defies the laws of vampires established by the children of Satan as if they are meaningless to him, revels in the indulgent world of humans like he belongs there, shamelessly as armand devotes himself to miserable repression. It strikes a nerve for armand, feels very personally offensive to him, like the embodiment of the traits that got Marius’s destroyed r coming back to mock him in his face. And then as he gets to know Lestat more deeply he only hates him more, bcus Lestat is not only bold and careless, but he’s immature and stupid, and he knows nothing. Armand in his horribly traumatized mind set registers Lestat as “like Marius” and takes this to mean “maybe he can save me, maybe he will teach me and free me from this hell, guide me and give me the purpose I need to be given.” But Lestat does not do this, lmfao. He actually destroys any sense of purpose armand had, rips him from his safety net, and when Armand begs for guidance, asks to be allowed to travel alongside Lestat so he can learn to be a person again, Lestat denies him. The only purpose he bothers to give him is the scraps, symbolic of his perverse indulgence that Armand despises, and fucks off. Lestat is grotesquely reminiscent of Marius, in the worst ways. It’s like his presence alone opens Armand’s eyes to how badly Marius has ruined him. He was the sun, the purpose, the guiding light, and then it was ripped away, and there was nothing else without him. Just a void.

So Armand hates Lestat for this very personal mockery of his own plight, and this hatred spirals into unbridled rage when Lestat returns to him and expects Armand to give Lestat the assistance that he denied him. Not only this, but Lestat found Marius, found marius and was granted guidance and love that Marius refused to give Armand after his indoctrination into the children of Satan. And Marius told Lestat to never ever do what he did, never make an Armand, because Armand was a mistake, he was too young to be a vampire, and now he’s a mistake he will never forgive himself for. And with this immense privilege that Armand spent a huge chunk of his life yearning for, guidance from Marius when he was his most lost, Lestat decides to disregard it. He decides that since Marius said it was bad to turn a child as young as Armand, he’d turn a child even younger then Armand, just cuz. He is once again the embodiment of Marius’s sins, the grotesque parody. Marius turned a teenager, Lestat turns a five year old. It’s almost cruel in how mocking it is, almost intentional in how personal. So Claudia is this child, this deliberate mistake made by someone who knew her turning would be harmful to her but was selfish enough not to care, then went on to regret it when he has to reckon with the consequences. Seem familiar? Armand sure thought so. So I imagine that being alone with Claudia, looking this deeply sad reflection of his own agony in the eyes, knowing she is about to die for justice against a warped parody of his Maker, for the sake of punishment for her own existence, I imagine this struck a cord of insanity in Armand’s fucked up mind, caused him to loose his absolute shit for just long enough to go what if I can fix her, what if I can turn this narrative around, give her the remarkable ending I know deep down that she, I , will never be granted. What if I can give her a body that will reflect her mind? What if I can make this abomination into a miracle? No wonder he pulled out the surgical tools 😭 No wonder he was so horrified by his own actions when he came to his senses, no wonder he refused to share this, kept it to himself for so long, until he finally broke and confessed it all in a desperate moment when he was too caught up in the dam breaking to realize he’d be exposing this horrific action to the world.

Armand sees Claudia as a repulsive mistake that should’ve never existed made by Lestat to deliberately mock him up until the surgery, when then for only a moment lost to time ended in blood she is another child who had her life taken from her too soon by an egotistical blonde man who thought he could play god with someone’s life. “They were done for anyway, he was going to starve to death in a brothel, she was going to die as a street orphan, the blood would be a service to them, a chance they never had” But they both know that’s a lie they tell themselves to justify the act of taking a child and molding it into what they please for fun, for pleasure, for companionship, just to see what would happen. Armand sees this for a moment and wants to give her a chance, give them both a chance, wants to see her as an adult, as someone who could have a life. And then of course, we know how that turns out 😭

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theowritesfiction · 2 months

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Okay, so since I finished my good Dark Urge playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3, which was also a Minthara romance, I wanted to write a brief meta that literally nobody asked for, mostly just because I know most people have never had Minthara in their party.

I understand that considering everything that happens with the Druid Grove, it’s very easy to dismiss Minthara as a genocidal psychopath, but if you actually peel away the horrors she committed as the mind slave of the Absolute, you get a character that is definitely still very much evil, but becomes way more nuanced than at the first glance. It’s not often that we get ubiquitously evil characters who while remaining cruel and ruthless are still shown as capable of loyalty, devotion and love.

On loyalty: from the moment you save Minthara from fate worse than death at Moonrise, she is very quick to swear loyalty and commitment to your cause. And sure, you could say that she has selfish reasons for seeking the protection of the Astral Prism. But the same goes for all the tadpoled characters, so to me that’s not a compelling argument. In your chats with Minthara, she makes it very clear that the act of saving her life means a crazy amount to her, and it has earned you her complete trust and loyalty, something that she normally doesn’t extend to others. And, she never breaks your trust and loyalty, as you maybe might expect from an evil character.

On devotion: this crosses over into both loyalty and love, but at times Minthara’s devotion, especially when in romance, almost leans into codependency – although I shouldn’t do armchair psychology. Having played through most of the romances, I would also say that Minthara is definite the most committed partner. She even invokes some drow word that symbolizes soulmates or something. I don’t believe in the concept, but it shows how serious she is. She also is very against any kind of sleeping around once in a relationship, something that other characters are more permissive of. I was very happy to see that they didn’t lean into the trope of evil being associated with sexual promiscuity.

On love: throughout your journeys together, Minthara will often speak about how you should do what the Chosen tried and failed to do – control the Absolute yourselves, enslave the brain and use it to rule the world. She expresses this sentiment very strongly even when you’re about to make your final choice. And seeing how much power means to her, I started to hesitate and became worried that maybe she’d leave my character if I were to destroy the brain and relinquish the power. I was so happy that the writers didn’t take the obvious route there. I definitely got the feeling that Minthara wished I had chosen differently, but she didn’t even nag my character about it. She simply said that we don’t need the Absolute to carve our way to power.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on Minthara, writing a nuanced evil character, and way more than you ever wanted to know about that. 😊

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #minthara #minthara baenre #minthara meta

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queer-reader-07 · 7 months

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i feel like all the theories that exist for why aziraphale went to heaven that basically boil down to “he was out of character so here’s what the plot twist is” really cheapen the story and underestimate the depth of aziraphale’s character and his potential. and also underestimate neil’s talent as an author and writer.

neil doesn’t recycle plot twists. he doesn’t do cheap cop out plot twists. he doesn’t leave out loose threads. everything is so carefully thought out and intentional.

i would be genuinely so put off if he wrote a plot twist of “actually it’s not aziraphale it’s crowley” (body swap 2.0 can go die in a hole i hate it) or “omg woah aziraphale was drugged” (one of these days i will write a meta on why coffee theory can go die in a miles deep PIT OF DESPAIR because i hate it even more)

because neil is a better writer than that. neil can and will do better than that. you might think there’s loose ends hanging out but i don’t think there are.

i remember reading american gods and thinking to myself more than once “this scene feels kind of random why’d he include it?” only for it to be actually very important later on in the book. whatever you think is a loose thread right now is more likely something that connects to whatever neil’s got planned for s3.

and also. aziraphale is a more complex character than either of those theories allow him. i’m sorry but if you think that he needed to be DRUGGED to make the decision he did you have not been paying any attention. everything leading up to this point has shown us that aziraphale believes that heaven can be good if only someone (him) can change it. that smile we saw on his face at the very end of s2ep6? that was the smile of an angel who has plans. who knows he can’t go back now, and is ready to gut this place from the inside out.

and body swap 2.0 doesn’t even compute for me. because like 1) body swap happened it’s not gonna happen a second time. and 2) it logically and logistically makes absolutely no sense that at some point in those last few minutes they agreed to body swap and send crowley to heaven. that would completely defeat the entire point of the conflict that is the Final Fifteen, and it would just make it all the more confusing as to why crowley looks so angry at the end? because if it was body swap and that’s actually aziraphale, aziraphale wouldn’t look that mad?? and he’s not even around anyone else so he has no reason to pretend.

and like i get why on some level these theories are fun to play with. but i just can’t shake the feeling that all these theories are on some level rooted in people thinking aziraphale isn’t a complex character. aziraphale has so much nuance and depth to his character, why do you have to convince yourself he was drugged in order to make a nuanced decision?

#anti coffee theory #also anti body swap 2.0 #aziraphale apologist #good omens #aziraphale #good omens 2 #aziracrow #good omens meta #gomens meta #gomens 2 #the final fifteen #ineffable divorce

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i-heart-hxh · 11 months

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Reason for Hope: A Gon and Killua Meta

I’m surprised by how frequently I see people saying that they think Gon and Killua’s story arcs are over for good; that we likely won’t see them again in the series, or if we do it’ll only be brief and they won’t reunite.

After spending years obsessively analyzing Hunter x Hunter, I disagree with this viewpoint, and I wanted to lay out some reasons as to why I anticipate an eventual reunion and reconciliation between Gon and Killua. This will be long, but bear with me!

The Separation

So, after thousands of pages of development between Gon and Killua, many things unfinished and unresolved between the two, at a point where the audience is expecting a big, maybe tearful reconciliation between Gon and Killua, instead we get…a mere 5 pages devoted to their separation. Many of the words on these five pages aren’t even dialogue between them, but rather setting details about the World Tree.

What we get is complicated; they seem on good terms, but it’s also somewhat fraught–they must have had a conversation before this, when they initially reunited, but Togashi opts to skip that entirely and only show us the aftermath, what’s happening right as they’re about to go their separate ways.

Killua teases Gon about that painful line where Gon told Killua it wasn’t his business, and Gon quickly apologizes, but this is a very light conversation where Killua is clearly prodding Gon to make him feel bad. In the original Japanese version, Killua then says that Gon “already (もう/mou)” apologized, which implies they did talk enough for Gon to apologize in another conversation, but clearly this prior conversation also wasn’t in-depth enough for Killua to explain how Gon was healed and by whom. I also assume in this conversation that they discussed parting ways, as their parting doesn’t seem to be a shock or surprise to either of them.

Togashi is known for his anti-climaxes to arcs–often he’ll build an audience expectation up, only for things to go a completely different way than what it initially seemed he was building towards. It’s one of the things that makes his writing brilliant. It applies to this scene, in a way, in that he doesn’t give us the big, cathartic, emotional conversation we’re expecting at this point, and much is left unsaid between the two boys. However, I don’t think Togashi’s tendency for anti-climax means that this is it, the end, all we get is this parting with ambiguity and Gon and Killua’s arcs are over. There are a bunch of questions left unanswered here, even though they’re not stated outright. The central one is: Why, exactly, are they parting ways?

There are a bunch of reasons one can come up with, both emotional and practical: Killua may need a break from Gon after all of that (because he feels unwanted/rejected by Gon or he just needs to heal, or he may feel it’s unfair to Alluka/Nanika to split attention); he may feel he can’t be with Gon and also fully focus on protecting Alluka/Nanika; he may be concerned about Illumi pursuing them and the danger this may pose to Gon; he may simply feel he has no excuse to be with Gon any more now that Gon is about to fulfill his mission and Killua found something he wants and needs to do (going back to the promise they made under the stars previously); he may feel he’s already failed at protecting Gon (particularly after what Bisky said in Chimera Ant Arc) and what right does he still have to be with him? It’s possible Gon has reasons for them to part too–we’re not given reasons so we have no choice but to infer. It likely could be a combination of these reasons, too.

It’s hard to feel closure with a parting that we don’t even entirely know the reason for, and I do think eventually Togashi intends to give us more answers. He even indirectly makes us a promise, through Alluka.

I come back to this line over and over again, and I truly think this is Togashi reassuring the audience that this isn’t forever. I think that’s 100% what this line is here for.

There’s a lot of ambiguity in these few pages, between Killua teasing Gon in a way that feels pointed at times (the instance I discussed above, as well as the scene after Alluka says she’ll let Killua go, where Killua tells Gon he’s second place to Alluka), to the specific word (仲間/nakama, essentially teammate or comrade) Gon quoted from Kite being tied to Killua’s “friend vs teammate” concerns, and where we leave off is with a lot of tension and uncertainty even if overall they leave off on good terms.

It is made clear several times that neither of them fully want this parting to happen: Gon’s “I’d better go… Any longer and I’ll…” (Not be able to let you go, it implies.) Gon looks crushed. Killua agrees, also with a sad/resigned expression. Gon also says, “Wish you could go [meet Ging].” Both of their expressions change to sadness as soon as they turn away from each other. Neither wants to show the other how much this hurts. We get the sense that there’s a lot more they want and need to say to each other, things they’re saving for another time, once they’ve had some time apart to heal and grow on their own.

These are two of Togashi’s main characters, and the two he has spent the most time developing and portraying throughout the story. This parting is confusing, bittersweet, ambiguous, and unresolved. It’s dense and thought-provoking even in its brevity. It also doesn’t feel like a permanent endpoint.

Apologies

Ging tells Gon, “There are rules when you apologize to friends. You promise what you’ll do next time. And then you keep that promise!!”

Gon is talking about Kite when Ging says this, but even within the same conversation, Ging tries to tell Gon that what happened to Kite is not his fault. When Gon apologizes to Kite, Kite also asks “Apologize for what?”

I don’t think most of the audience blames Gon for what happened to Kite. The narrative makes it clear that Gon, Killua, and Kite were all simply outclassed by Pitou’s strength, they had been ambushed suddenly, and Gon and Killua fleeing was the only way they could survive. Gon didn’t even flee willingly, Killua made that decision for him.

So, why include this whole lesson on how to apologize to a friend, when neither the audience, nor Ging, nor Kite think Gon needs to apologize to Kite?

Isn’t there someone else Gon needs to apologize to–someone Gon did in fact hurt deeply with his actions?

As stated above, Gon likely did apologize to Killua, especially because he already brought up that he needed to in the conversation he had with Leorio in the car. Chances are, he did that as soon as they were reunited. But…also as stated above, there’s likely a deeper apology that Gon needs to give Killua; one where he fully understands what happened, and one where he can promise not to hurt Killua like that again.

I believe Togashi included this whole dialogue and conversation with Gon apologizing to Killua in mind, not Kite. We never saw this apology, and I believe it’s something that will happen when they see each other again.

Unfinished Plot Threads

While Gon and Killua’s original goals have been achieved, there are still a number of plot threads dangling for both characters. If the parting between them was supposed to be the end of the road for these characters, why bother building up so much unfinished business for both of them? Here are just some of the things in the story related to Gon and Killua that have not yet been addressed:

Gon meeting Gyro, which Togashi explicitly says is supposed to happen.

Gon fighting Hisoka again (assuming Hisoka survives the Black Whale).

What will happen with Gon’s nen? Will he remain nen-less forever or be able to restore it?

What will Gon do with his life now that he’s no longer hunting Ging? Hopefully not do homework on Whale Island forever!

Don Freecss and how he may or may not relate to Gon’s story.

Nanika came from the Dark Continent, something only brought up after Gon and Killua part. This gives Killua a direct link to the Dark Continent arc. How did Alluka come to be possessed by Nanika, an Ai creature from the Dark Continent? Will Alluka have this incredible power via Nanika forever (I suspect not)?

Illumi vowing to hunt Alluka/Nanika down, and also generally will Killua manage to cut ties with his family altogether, to have the kind of future he wants?

Kalluto, now with Illumi and the Phantom Troupe on the Black Whale, has mentioned wanting to bring his brother home, presumably/most likely Killua.

Gon’s mother or origin remains a mystery. While Gon himself didn’t want to know, that doesn’t mean the audience is satisfied by the non-answer.

While none of these guarantee a reunion between Gon and Killua, they certainly signal that Togashi is not done with these characters.

Killua’s Birthday

When Togashi gives his characters birthdays, he does it thoughtfully–imbuing them with both numerical and other symbolic meanings. Killua’s birthday is Tanabata, a Japanese holiday wherein two separated lovers are reunited every year. There’s an excellent piece of meta here that explores a lot of the parallels between Tanabata and Killua’s story and character trajectory, as there’s more to this than I can easily explore in this meta. Note how many similarities exist between the legend of Tanabata and Gon and Killua, particularly in the Zoldyck Family arc.

Gon and Killua have been separated once and brought back together again. With the legend of Tanabata, there are many meetings between the separated lovers, so the motif tends to lean towards them separating and then reuniting again, as they already did once in the Zoldyck Family arc. This leads me to believe that their parting is not forever.

Togashi Exhibition Promotion Video

As a lead-up to the Togashi Exhibition, a video showcasing Gon and Killua was released with newly recorded lines by their voice actresses from the 2011 anime, Megumi Han and Mariya Ise. The vast majority of the lines in this video are actually re-recorded major lines from the series summarizing the relationship between the two. But there are a few brand new lines. One of these is, essentially, “We’re so far away from each other right now, but I believe we’ll meet again someday!”

This video is a promotion for an exhibition devoted to his works, so Togashi himself must have approved this video. Why would this be one of the only brand new lines in the whole video if he has no intentions of reuniting them within the series? It would have been a simple matter not to mention any sort of reunion between them, but the fact that it was one of only a handful of truly new lines feels important and noteworthy.

Off-Screen

Just a small point, but one worth considering. At the end of the Yorknew City arc, Leorio and Kurapika go their separate ways as they fade out of the focus of the story for a while, only to be put in the same stage together once it’s their turn to be a point of focus again. (Never mind that they haven’t gotten much time together in this arc yet, but I’m sure they’re in the same place for a reason.)

One of the reasons Togashi may have chosen to separate Gon and Killua at the end of the Election Arc is that they, too, are out of focus for a while. This makes sense if you think about it–Togashi spends all this time developing the relationships between these two pairs of characters, having them remain together while the focus is not on them means the audience would miss out on developments and interactions between them. It’s easier to separate them and then reunite them again when it’s time for them to have the spotlight again.

The Little Detours

This is more abstract than the other points, but I think it’s just as important.

One of the most prominent themes of Hunter x Hunter is summed up in Ging’s words, “You should enjoy the little detours to the fullest. Because that's where you'll find the things more important than what you want.” This is what Gon learns when reaching his goal–that the most important things in life are not the achievements you make nor the way your journey ends, but the people you meet along the way, the enjoyment of the journey itself, all the places it takes you, continuing to seek more throughout life.

Gon meets Ging at the end of the Election Arc, his original goal, but is this truly the heart of Gon’s story? Killua finds something to do, as he told Gon he wanted to do, but is this truly the heart of Killua’s story? The heart of their stories is finding each other, the ways they changed and helped each other, the joy and solace and pain they found in each other. That’s ultimately what their stories are about–not simply achieving their goals. To say that their goals are achieved and their story is done now misses what Togashi is trying to say.

Hunter x Hunter is filled with characters whose life trajectories were changed by an encounter with one important person. Many of these characters also had their life trajectories changed by losing those people. Togashi can be a harsh storyteller at times, but I don’t believe he’s crafting a story in which his two main characters find each other and change each other so deeply, tragic circumstances and painful misunderstandings happen between them, much remains unsaid, and then they simply part, never be seen again in the story.

In my viewpoint, the only major obstacle standing in the way of an eventual reunion between Gon and Killua is Togashi’s health and how that affects his ability to tell what he has planned of the series. He has stated a commitment to finishing the series to the best of his ability, so it’s just a matter of what his body’s limitations will allow him to do.

At the very least, for all of the above reasons and more, I do think Togashi fully intends to give us a reunion between Gon and Killua in the future. I hope that in time, we will get to see him share the rest of what he has planned for these two characters.

#hunter x hunter #hxh #killugon #gonkillu #gon #killua #hxh meta #meta #long post #my posts #I've been working on this for so long!#it feels weird to finally post it but it's TIME #I hope this is reassuring to people who have been concerned about this #especially because I see people saying we won't see them again all the time both in western and eastern parts of the fandom #and I just really don't think that's togashi's intent #he wouldn't include all of this for no reason

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bazzybelle · 6 months

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Good Omens 2 and Wayward Son - A Fan's Commentary on Fandom Reactions

I’m going to start off by saying apologies for any obvious grammatical errors. I am writing purely from the heart here.

Also, apologies to my Sandman friends. If you haven’t read The Simon Snow Trilogy, this will go over your heads. However, I have been going back and forth on writing this meta since the release of Good Omens 2, and I just finished reading a spectacular meta on queer ships becoming canon by @avelera, which you can find here (read it, it’s brilliant). Anyway, I feel now’s a good time to let out all of my feelings when it comes to Good Omens 2 and how similar it was to reading Wayward Son.

Simon Snow friends, you all know that Wayward Son is my favourite book out of the trilogy. You also know that this can be considered a controversial take within the fandom. And I don’t mean that in a toxic way, this fandom is one of the more wholesome fandoms I’ve seen; But in the way of like… Wayward Son is itself a polarizing book.

I say this, knowing full well what went down when Wayward Son was released. Perhaps I had the advantage of not being completely embroiled within the Simon Snow fandom until after I’d finished reading the book, but I lived on the periphery. I followed Rainbow on Twitter (fuck you, I am not calling it X), I had saved some artwork on Pinterest (before I found out those were stolen, wherein I immediately unpinned them and deleted my fandom folders), and I was excited to get Wayward Son as soon as it came out. So much so that I asked my husband to go to the Indigo near his office and buy it because I wanted to read it right away.

Friends, I demolished that book within a DAY.

Then I read it again. And again. And again.

Then I wrote my first fanfiction in eight years.

This book changed me. But you all know that. I’ve talked about it often, and that’s not what this meta (Editorial? Opinion piece? Shouting into the void?) is about.

What I am going to talk about is the amount of pure vitriol this book got once it was released. There was SO MUCH complaining about the book. It was too short! There was no point to it! Why aren’t Simon and Baz having sexy vampire sex? Why aren’t they living together (never mind that this was briefly discussed at the end of Carry On, but go off I guess)?

And you know what’s even funnier? Within a couple of weeks (it might have even been days, I’m a little fuzzy on timelines) Rainbow announced the third book. We knew, right away, that Wayward Son was meant to be an in-between book! Rainbow, being a fandom person herself, has said time and time again that she had always considered Wayward Son as an in-between book, structured like The Empire Strikes Back within the Star Wars original trilogy. Like think of the in-between books of any series, they are ALWAYS the darkest ones. In order to fully appreciate the win in the end, you need to go through the tough shit.

What I loved about Wayward Son was it took that idea and spun it. It went all “ok, yeah we dealt with the win, now let’s deal with the aftermath. Only then can we have the makeouts and sexy times these guys deserved.” (and damn, did Any Way The Wind Blows deliver on that promise).

But I am getting away from myself again. Point is, it was always meant to be an in-between book. There was always meant to be a resolution at the end of the trilogy. But that sure as hell didn’t stop people from outright demanding Rainbow give them the happy ending NOW. Pestering her on Twitter, (not so much on Tumblr) demanding she do this, or do that, or “you better not kill Baz” (even though she has ALWAYS SAID SHE NEVER WOULD) or “they better not break up” (even though, narratively, it was heading in that direction). The closer the book got to release date, the more people complained about how awful Wayward Son was.

It was really disheartening to see.

Which is why I got really upset when the SAME THING happened after the release of Good Omens 2.

(For clarification purposes, because several of my friends have spoken to me about their own personal issues with Good Omens 2. And you are all super fucking valid. I am strictly referring to the amount of anger I saw online because although Aziraphale and Crowley kissed, they didn’t have an immediate happily ever after. I am also speaking of the anger expressed because the season wasn’t wrapped up in a neat little bow.)

Like with the release of Wayward Son, people seemed to have forgotten that season 2 of Good Omens was meant to be an inbetween season. Neil Gaiman has not been shy to talk about that. He has said over and over again that Season 2 was always meant to be a bridge between the Good Omens he and Terry Pratchett wrote together, and the sequel they had been planning.

What… did you all just forget about that? Do you not know how narrative writing works?

It’s like people refused to take a step back and breathe for a second and appreciate the season for what it was. A beautiful romantic story (because, IT WAS! Just like Neil said it would be), as well as a lead up into what will be the epic, dramatic conclusion. No, instead people started demanding the happy ending NOW, and getting angry when Neil wouldn’t budge and offer more information (even though he never has before) (funny how people just… forgot that).

It was Wayward Son all over again.

Yeah, I’m not going to lie, I was crushed with the way Good Omens 2 left off. Just like I was so confused when Wayward Son ended out of the blue. You know what I did about that? I wrote fic, I read the book again, and I happily anticipated the upcoming final part that would tie up all the loose ends.

Know what I’m doing to heal after Good Omens 2? I’m looking at gifs, rewatching episodes, laughing at memes and crack, and hoping to all the gods of story writing that Amazon approves of a third season, so that Neil Gaiman can be allowed to finish the story he and Terry Pratchett built together.

It’s become sad to watch this feral hunger from fans demanding immediate gratification, and getting upset when it isn’t the ending or gratification they were expecting. Wayward Son came out after years of Carry On fans having nothing else but the one book. Like I said, I wasn’t part of the fandom then, so I don’t know how fans from 2015 felt upon learning they’d get more Simon and Baz. Same with Good Omens. I only really got into the fandom a few months before season 2 came out. So I don’t know how OG fans felt waiting and waiting and waiting. So maybe I have that going for me as an advantage, that my hunger wasn’t growing more and more feral.

Then again, I’m now a part of The Sandman fandom, and we’re essentially waiting on Season 2 to start development. And while I’m hoping a few things are tweaked (like Dream and Hob’s relationship), I’d be more than fine if it stays the same as in the comics. And if they decide to go about that in an entirely different way, I’d be fine with that too. You know why? Because I’ve learned to trust the writers of the stories I love not to lead me astray.

And if I’m unhappy with something –because nothing is ever 100% perfect, and even my favourite stories end up coming short– there are always fanfictions to write, gifs to laugh at, and fandom friends to discuss plots and meta with.

I may have lost the point of this meta. I tend to do that, following a train of thought that doesn’t always make sense in the end.

Fandom friends, can we all just agree to take a breath and be thankful of the stories given to us? Can we learn to appreciate the entire picture, and not just a tiny section of it? And for the love of all that is holy, can we learn to be patient and to listen when our story tellers remind us to wait and see? To trust them when they assure us that our characters will have a happy ending, even if they need to traverse a little in the dark to get there?

I sure as hell am, and I hope you will too.

Gonna tag @carryonsimoncarryonbaz because she was instrumental in encouraging me to write this.

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monstersinthecosmos · 3 months

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I know you probably don’t want to dwell on the show and the negative but I absolutely hate what has happened on here and how hateful people are in the VC fandom it’s just very demoralizing and makes me want to retreat from anything besides the books completely. The discourse was spicy before the show but everything is just even more divisive now and it has sucked the fun out of it. Not really an ask more of a vent sorry

Hi there!

You’re correct that I don’t particularly find it fun to dwell on the negative stuff – as you said yourself, SOMETIMES THE DISCOURSE SUCKS THE FUN OUT OF IT. But I do understand how you feel and I want to say a couple things and I hope this helps you find a groove.

First of all, I did my best not to acknowledge it too much because I didn’t want to validate the folks who were being cunts to me lol, but please know that this fandom (at least on Tumblr) has ALWAYS been kinda fucking violent towards me LOL. I started VC tumbling back in 2016 and it’s ALWAYS been a fucking trash fire. It is hard out there for Marius stans lmfao.

Like, when I was first posting on Tumblr and acclimating to the Tumblr culture it was so much of like, me feeling brave enough to share meta only for someone to be RB’ing me to tell me I’m wrong, or me talking about how much I liked something about Marius only for someone to vague me, or it was me hosting the huge fandom Discord back in 2017 only for people to then come on tumblr and complain about how the Discord was way too Marius Friendly as if like, a drama-free space where we can discuss the books makes it a harbor for predators.

Of course I also had the gaggle of fucking morons who were constantly stalking me, catfishing their way into my servers to try to take screenshots and write call outs and cancel me, who would not stop preaching about how “all these big blogs” are “actually such terrible people” because “look at the things they ship” even when I’d never been unkind to them, even occasionally donated to their GFMs. These are folks who think they’re morally in the right for protecting the virtue of Armand’s poor teenage asshole and executed this justice by stalking and harassing an ACTUAL PERSON LOL. Like, listen. I’m sorry to burst ur bubble, but Armand doesn’t exist. He’s letters on a paper. I’m actually a real person and you’re up my fucking ass because I don’t’ even fucking know why, you’re jealous of my fucking Tumblr engagement or something? Which one of us is actually the creep here lol?? Is this a race to the bottom to be the valedictorian of clown school on the website for homeschooled clowns?

I’ve also had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of acephobic discourse, being told I don’t do enough to protect every individual in fandom from their own bullies as if it's my job to do that, being called ableist for how I wrote Daniel in my fics even though I was projecting and discussing my own personal experiences – I’ve also had a project collaborator have a tantrum and try to steal my work until I had to threaten with legal action, I’ve been put on block lists, I’ve had many people consume my fics in secret without actually leaving comments because I’m too toxic for them to communicate with in public.

BLAH BLAH BLAH.

This was all before AMC showed up LMFAO. It was not easy for me! It’s still not always easy!

And so yeah like, by nature of the fandom EXPLODING we are going to see more drama. More people is more drama. The nature of the discourse often hedges into real life issues that people are very opinionated and passionate about and there are conflicting needs inside the same space about how to hold conversations. Even just the other day I RB’d a joke about Anne Rice and OP got upset with me because they didn’t want actual fans interacting with it. Whoops! I didn’t know! I just thought it was funny. ;.;

Even in good faith and with the best of intentions we’re going to step on each other’s toes, and we’re gonna find people we don’t vibe with. And that’s normal and it’s fine.

What ISN’T normal is this inability to disengage that I think we see often in online space, and I don’t want to get into a whole side essay about all the reasons why I think that happens. But sometimes you gotta be the bigger person and take it on the chin.

Like, yeah, it sucks. It sucks the fun out of the room when you share a space with such bitter people who can’t be kind to each other. But like. THAT’S A THEM PROBLEM, YOU KNOW? And I think we gotta remember that sometimes people like that do it for the attention or the spike of dopamine when they can pick a fight and honestly like, you don’t need to waste YOUR OWN time on it, but you’re also doing that person a kindness if you don’t enable the bad behavior.

And it sucks that Tumblr’s mute tools are awful!!!!! It would make navigating so much easier to be able to curate the dash a little better and keep the bad actors out of your space. I sometimes just fuck off and don’t even come online for days if I know I’m not in a good headspace and won’t have the strength to just fucking ignore it, because sometimes drama catches my eye and I get nosy and go down the rabbit hole, too – having ADHD makes it really hard to avoid sometimes LOL – but like I try to be reasonable and love myself enough to avoid it when I can help it. I’m not willing to make my own problems everyone else’s problem, and I hope that some of these shit starters in fandom will get there, themselves.

So yeah it blows when the vibes are fucking atrocious, and it REALLY blows when it’s a fandom this small where you can’t avoid it. Even when it’s a vocal minority it really just kills the fucking mood.

BUT WHAT I WILL SAY.

Whenever I say shit like “write what you want to read” and we’re talking about fanfic, or even meta or even silly headcanon posts or jokes, that also means draw what you want to see, it also means make what you want to hold, apply it to any creation you can think of. Put the thing you want to see into the world. And it counts for fandom, too.

I don’t want to be part of a fandom that’s constantly infighting and attacking people, so I don’t fight and attack people. I don’t want to be called a predator for being a Marius fan and so I don’t engage in posts that say as much, not even to argue, because I don’t want my followers (who might also be Marius fans!) to have to see that on their dash. I want us to protect our peace and create a space we want to be in.

Like I have a policy that any time someone says I’m a freak or any time I see truly godawful word salad discourse, I go out of my way to post something kinky and offputting about Marius LMFAOOOO because I want to be surrounded by reasonable fun people who share my sensibility for fiction. AND SOMETIMES IT’S CRICKETS, AND SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO WORK HARD TO FIND YOUR PEOPLE. But at the end of the day I know I’m being my most sincere self and I’m trying to have a good time and just post fun things that I enjoy. And like, the book fandom is small as fuck and we’re all famished, but I think if more of us did that, we’d build a much more productive and tolerant space.

And for all the shit I’ve mentioned, all the drama and attacks and all the times people have harassed me or tried to make me feel small, you know what? I just got back from @apoptoses & @cup-of-lixx 's wedding and they met in VCblr! We spent all week with our VCblr friends! We all went to New Orleans together last Halloween !

When I used to work on ships it was like a fandom friend world tour! I had so many coffees in port with my vampire friends!

I’ve learned so much about writing from all the time I’ve spent here and the community of writer friends who supported me! There’s folks I met on VCblr that I talk to LITERALLY every day! They are such huge parts of my life and genuine life-long friends!!!!!!

Sometimes it seems like the ROI is garbage but like, so much of finding the joy is also learning to protect yourself from the negativity.

It IS out there. It DOES suck. And it’s lonely when you haven’t found your people yet. But fandom doesn’t have to be the 500 angry assholes arguing with each other about a fucking TV show, it can be your 3 besties in a private group chat having a great time.

Like I just drove @hekateinhell to the airport (met THROUGH TUMBLR!) and on the way back I was listening to an episode of Last Day and they were discussing the concept that “community is a life raft” and it hit me so hard man!!!!!!!!!!!

Find your people! Block the shit starters! Mute discourse buzzwords that you know are going to upset you!

Keep! Posting! What! You! Want! To! See!!

Fandom is self-generating, we can do this!

My inbox is always open and BELIEVE ME I have been motherfucking persona non grata in this place before and I know how rancid the vibe can be so please come talk any time it's grinding you down, I got you!!!!!!!!!!!!

#fandom lolitics #also some more thoughts in the tags lol but #this also means LEAVE COMMENTS #not just on fics but like on art on HC posts on whatever #talk to people!#support each other!!!

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mdhwrites · 10 months

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The Owl House Fans Don’t Know What Colonies Are

So this isn’t actually me firing shots at the show. This is about the meta commentary people like to use to elevate the show and it’s one of the most laughable to me. That it’s some grand, anti-colonial story because Belos is a colonizer and Luz stands up for indigenous people as one of them! I’ll get into the colony side of it but on a basic level, it needs to be pointed out that Belos is an American, not British. The closest he could be is one of those sent out to colonize for Britain but he was literally too young to have been a part of that decision when it happened if that were the case and those who colonized America... were treated as part of a colony to Britain. So literally he was a part of the oppressed or he’s post The War for Independence and America was never a colonial power, ESPECIALLY NOT BACK THEN.

Secondly... Just because Luz isn’t white doesn’t mean she can’t technically fall into the white savior trope. The point of that trope is just to talk about how much it sucks when an outsider comes in, makes everything better and fixes all the problems. Luz still ostensibly does that while not being a part of the culture or using the culture and its people in order to save them. Her glyphs are unknown to everyone except LITERALLY THE GROUND THEIR STANDING ON. So... Yeah, she’s not some inspirational story against colonizers. I think you’d have to write a VERY different sort of story for an isekai to be anti-colonial like that frankly. Oh, and we can’t forget that she’s literally blessed by a god because she has a viewpoint to their son that’s different from the rest of the Isles, the indigenous people, and is then empowered to go kill the ruler, who ostensibly the people approve of and chose to be there, regardless of the lies to why, because she does not believe in his methods or beliefs.

Which, you know, for either anti-colonial messaging or anti-Christian Fundamentalism is kind of yikes.

But neither of these matter because The Boiling Isles is NOT a colony. Not even close. The definition that the fans use to say it’s a colony, ruled by an outsider effectively, would have made RUSSIA a colony to Germany while Catherine the Great was ruling it purely because Catherine was a German. If that does not immediately make you cringe, you need to listen.

So as far as how they are ruled, what are the Isles? Well, I bring up Catherine not just because of the pointed joke. See, her husband also wasn’t Russian. He was a German as well but adopted by Elizabeth of Russia. When he became Tsar, everyone hated him and his policies, especially military policies, so much that they overthrew him and chose Catherine.

That’s effectively what the Isles is. They chose Belos as their ruler. Yes, they were deceived as to why he should rule them but they did choose it eventually. As far as we understand, he wasn’t a conqueror and he wasn’t even a part of a coup like Catherine was. Instead, after terrible deeds and the like, he united the Isles under his coven system, brought an end to an age and moved on with his life. His policies, besides magic, are even progressive in some ways because apparently children had no protection before Belos and then he added child endangerment laws. He ostensibly made the Isles a safer place with his guards who could respond to monster faster. The EC in fact, from the fact that they don’t do anything actually evil, especially compared to the populace, until almost S2′s finale with Labyrinth Runners (And I guess you could include Escaping Palisman but there’s extenuating circumstances there, much like how Eda is petrified for breaking the law. There’s more gray in theory to it.) That’s not how you run a colony... That’s just how you run your nation.

But of course that’s the case because the Boiling Isles literally CAN’T be a colony. See, colonies were made as a part of the concept of the Policy of Austerity. Each nation saw themselves as needing to be self sufficient, able to produce EVERYTHING required for civilization, without foreign aid. As such, colonies weren’t oppressed because of religious doctrine, that was propaganda, but out of necessity to that policy. After all, if your colonies have a real economy, they have less to give back to the mother land. You can’t tax them as much, you can’t regulate their trade as much, you can’t make sure their natural resources are going to you.

This is actually part of why the Puritans are the founders of America. They were annoying to the British so rather than dealing with them, they sent them to this weird, new world so as to bring back resources and get out of their hair. That’s also why Americans were treated maybe not quite as poorly as other colonies but we were still DEFINITELY a colony. We did not govern ourselves. Instead, Britain appointed our leaders and chose our policies. Otherwise, you know, we would have just gotten rid of the ludicrous tax on tea instead of throwing it into the harbor.

And if we want to talk more metaphorically about colonies... What culture did Belos push upon the Isles? Colonies would be made to adopt home cultures because that’s how the home country saw as the best way to rule and the best way to make the colony bend to the will of the homeland. If they act like British people, they will accept British rule more.

Except our one glimpse at the Isles is that they already look like they have the same fashion and architecture and commerce even as a Victorian era man. The architecture of the Isles literally doesn’t change between the past and the modern era, something the show actually does point out itself. Bonesborough as has a lot of the same buildings HUNDREDS of years later, there’s just more of them now.

Worse yet, the Titan is not Belos’ own religion. Ostensibly, it should be the Isles religion but they, reasonably, don’t know the Titan is alive. Belos theoretically doesn’t seem to either? Maybe? It’s inconsistent. But he establishes prisons instead of simply hanging those who do not conform in the present day. If they wanted to lean in on him bringing Puritan culture, there would have been a genuine purge of most of the Isles because of its rampant greed, self interest, art, stories, etc. that the Puritans were just very against because if it wasn’t about God, it died.

Again: The Puritans were so extreme, with such a stick up their ass, the BRITISH kicked them out of their country.

All of that would have hurt the fantasy though, wouldn’t it? It wouldn’t be some effectively idealic fantasy setting. Even the dangers Luz faces aren’t the worst and a real fantasy fan would be sad to see them be gone because then you don’t get that bit of menace that comes from a good fantasy world. More oppression, more change, more shifting to an anti-magic world like Belos theoretically should have been for (remember: He only asks that you join the Coven system. He barely cares what you do with the magic after that) then you lose that part of the isekai fantasy.

It’s actually part of why Belos being a human, his statement of “You think I want conquest” being that he just wants murder, actually makes the show less interesting. Evil emperors are a dime a dozen. Any isekai protagonist would expect to be pointed in their direction and shot off like a rocket. A genuinely complex ruler though who is having to deal with balancing humanity with his religion and his duties as emperor? That would have been a GREAT wake up call to Luz to stop assuming things based on tropes.

Belos would have had to be more of a part of the show and a character in his own right for that. Or for any of this really. We would have to see how Belos contrasts against a member of the Isles more and he really doesn’t. Serving in his own interest? Got plenty of villains like that in the Isles. Not caring about murder or enslavement for his methods? Yep, that’s pretty normal, including Odalia frankly. Lies to get what he wants? I mean, fucking LUZ does that!

But he is the bad guy because he’s the evil emperor and no amount of backstory or supposed meta narrative is going to fix that fundamental, thematic failing.

==========

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

#belos #the owl house criticism #TOH Critical

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waitmyturtles · 2 months

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Dead Friend Forever: I managed to catch up in time to watch the finale, and here are my immediate, uneducated, "holy shit" thoughts

First off: I acknowledge I am an utter interloper on this tag, having written exactly zero meta words about this mostly great show. Second: everything I know about slashers comes from my childhood memories of "Scream," and my recent conversations with the lovelies @lurkingshan and @neuroticbookworm. So I'm not an expert here. Thirdly! I was inspired in part by them to watch this, and also by the friendies who jumped into comments on my recent KinnPorsche liveblog watches for my Old GMMTV Challenge project. I've been waiting these past few weeks to finish Dead Friend Forever before putting pen to paper on my KP rewatch thoughts, because I thought Be On Cloud did something fabulously experimental with DFF as its second major serial drama.

Anyway: all of this is to say that now that DFF is over, in the near future, I'm gonna write a bunch on KP and a bit more on DFF -- but I want to offer just some quick wandering thoughts on DFF now.

I think like many of y'all, I found the tone of the last PheeJin moments to be discordant with the tenor of the rest of the finale episode. The way I'm calculating this, as I'm sure many of you are, is that I think there was a commentary on fate and Buddhist purgatory, particularly with New/Tan being able to hear from a thankful Non one more time before New's passing. New suffers, it seems to me, the least painful death, and I think that was in part Non’s doing.

In order to conclude the tone on PheeJin, I do wish that we would have seen a flashback back to PheeJin at the house. I guess we’d assume that Phee and Jin never regained their consciousness, that the antidote didn’t work, and that their cyclical fate would be returning back to the lakeshore, only to be haunted by Non again. While it seems to me that Tee, in whatever realm of fate they ended up in, got his appropriate ending — I don’t think that the PheeJin cyclical ending at the lakeshore assigned enough “blame” of fate to either of them, especially Jin. I know @lurkingshan notes that that’s a nod to the need to appease any hopes of surviving ships, and I agree with that assessment. But also — god, BLEH, they sucked, we were left with PheeJin?! JIN??? My boy White, my bubbala, he’s the good one that got really in-your-face off-ed? Wah. (But I do see and understand why White needed to die, to make Tee’s residual fate the utter living hell he deserves.)

Like I said: on a more macro note, I’m gonna have thoughts about DFF, Be On Cloud, and KP in the coming days, because I just like that BOC is dabbling with some experimental writing while allowing solid acting to really shine. (And I compare that to what’s happening at Idol Factory and the recent writing miss that was The Sign.) I wish the ending wasn’t as milquetoast as it was, but BOC still traffics in BLs, and I guess they felt they needed to throw the fans some kind of BL bone (huh huh).

But overall? I am REALLY GLAD I watched this, and it absolutely belongs on the OGMMTVC syllabus. This was incredibly new for the Thai BL genre, and I gotta give BOC — AND ESPECIALLY BARCODE AND TA, WOW — their flowers for taking Thai BL into this new direction. For the most part of this run, I had a great time with this show, as brutal as the content was.

#dead friend forever #dead friend forever meta #dead friend forever the series #dff the series #barcode tinnasit #ta nannakun #sammon

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seeingteacupsindragons · 2 months

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Normally, my meta is pretty focused on what happens in the story, and I bring things from reality to use when it’s useful. But I like pulling stories apart to talk about how the story works, and stories only exist with a thin tether to reality most of the time, and they have wildly different rules.

This one is a little different. This one is going to have a lot of outside information brought to bear to discuss Sherliam’s relationship, but they’re things I think are relevant: A Japanese word and its origins, how creating art and stories works, what being an artist is…and how that all impacts William and Sherlock, how they relate to each other as creations of artists and artists themselves.

Basically, stuff about how art is made and the context it lives in. I think that's more useful than comparing it to reality. It’ll be interesting, I promise! Just a little different than usual.

Let’s start here. I think you’ll see where I’m going with the Sherliam thing pretty quickly, but if not, don’t worry. I’m going to explain.

I saw this post on Bluesky during aro week, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since.

Basically, there’s a word in Chinese, that has actually carried over to Japanese (I’ll get to that in a minute) that means, basically, “person who truly understands your songs.” It’s based off this story of this musician would make instrumental music, as one does, and this person who understood immediately, without being told, what the song was about. And this relationship was so deeply important and meaningful that after the second person died, the first destroyed his instrument, because there seemed to be no point in continuing to create music without the person who got it.

Yes, I know, you’re all seeing the Sherliam parallels already, but give me a bit longer before we get there.

This word carried over to Japanese with a slightly different pronunciation (as happens), but the same kanji and the same meaning. My Japanese-English dictionary defines it solely as “an exceptionally close friend.” No other options are provided. So I looked it up in some Japanese dictionaries! They both started with the same origin story of the word, and then both came up with a handful of definitions: Dear friend, person who understands your heart, partner, comrade, eventually it got down to sweetheart, someone you can rely on. My favorite was “Peerless/unmatched friend.”

The word does seem to be fairly formal and archaic and mostly relegated to Literature™ and classic works. It’s not a word that’s canonically ever applied to Sherlock or William.

And yet. And yet.

I don’t know how common the word is in Japanese that they’d recognize or know it. Whether or not it actually influenced the story from background knowledge, intentionally or not. But knowing the concept now, and knowing the concept has existed in Japanese culture as…as an option does change how I think of some of the media I’ve seen before. The word notwithstanding, the concept exists.

As an artist myself, I deeply understand the need/desire/hope/longing/etc. for a person who just. Gets what you’re trying to do. The person who deeply understands what you’re doing and your intentions and the way you expressed yourself. Who understands you via your creations.

I am, as many of you know, looking for a new critique partner right now. I have one, but I need one or two others for Reasons. And one of them already turned up a dud because this person’s feedback had nothing to do with what I want the story to be or what I’m trying to write. It’s a lot of marketing advice. Advice on how to make the story more what they would want, or more like other books.

A good CP needs to see what the intention of the story is, so they can make that story stronger and help that story make that point to more people. They have to understand your art. Not to the degree of a 知音, but nonetheless.

Sherlock and William are, obviously, on the level of understanding each other this way. They just get each other, without explanation, and they both treasure that relationship dearly. So dearly that Sherlock, when faced with the prospect of losing the person who truly got him, would have rather died with him then survive without that connection.

Because what was the point of doing things, of making things, of being, without that person who got it. How to bear living once you’ve finally found that person?

And I think this kind of gets to what Louis was seeing in Sherlock and hoping he would do to validate William’s existence. Sherlock got William. He saw his intentions through his plans, and saw who he was and what his soul was even under all the masks and walls and machinations. He understood why William would want to die, and that he was actually trying to die intentionally almost immediately.

And because Sherlock actually understood William’s existence, he could actually validate William’s existence. The same way someone has to understand what my book’s story is trying to be to actually help it. The same way someone actually understanding what the fuck I was trying to write makes me feel…well, like writing and sharing it with people is actually worth it, because I can do this.

And, because Sherlock understood William’s intentions and plans, he made changes to the story William planned, because he saw the weaknesses from a distance, saw the intentions without drowning himself in what was already there the way William the Author did. Because he saw the intentions, but also the actual effects.

And William’s plan came out stronger and more effective and more beautiful for it all. Because Sherlock was there to see it, to understand it, and to help.

After all, Sherlock is an artist, too, even if we only see him with his violin on occasion. He knows what it’s like. And he knows William helped give him a stage to show off what Sherlock wanted to share with the world, too (forensics, etc.).

And I think it’s interesting, after all that, to remember that Yuukoku no Moriarty is created by not one artist, but two. Did they understand each other’s intentions the way William and Sherlock understand each other? Almost certainly not, especially given that we lost one of them from the series. But they had to work together, to understand each other’s intentions and art, in order to work together and create the story. To fill in where the other fell short, to give feedback and strengthen the story together.

We don’t know much at all about their working relationship or how the series came to be from the two of them. It’s really impossible to speculate if they felt in sync or they wished they were working with someone who Got Them better. But I think either way, Sherlock and William’s working together to create a story that was stronger, fuller, and better than either could have come up with alone is an interesting reflection of their story’s two creators anyway.

#Yuukoku no Moriarty #Moriarty the Patriot #Sherliam #writing #art #etc

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inevitably-ineffable-husbands · 10 months

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A Thought on AziraCrow from an A-Spec Perspective

On the Eve of Good Omens S2, I just wanted to put my two cents in about AziraCrow, before we see the outcome of S2, because it’s pretty clear from trailers and promotions that their relationship is a plot point in the season.

I started writing a ridiculously long post a week ago spurned on from this screenshot from Pride Magazine, and my being upset by the current discourse on Twitter about AziraCrow “being canon or not”, but decided to shorten it to just this little thought, because I feel like me writing a meta-style commentary (which I do have saved if you want a more long-form thought about it after the series airs) isn’t necessary right now.

And this is all despite Gaiman AND the cast AND crew basically confirming that it is in multiple interviews, discourse from people in the community that are supposed to understand the queer experience, completely disavowing its legitimacy unless “X” happens (where “x” usually is explicit confirmation of sex happening) so therefore it’s not valid (which is really bizarre).

But I digress.

This is just a bit of a thought that I think allos are COMPLETELY skimming over:

Crowley’s and Aziraphale’s relationship, as it currently stands now prior to S2, is representative of the beginnings of a (currently) queerplatonic asexual relationship, and as an ace who so desperately just wants to see a relationship that I can see myself in on screen, and lo and behold came Good Omens. I’m part of a demographic which I and a few of my real-life friends fall into and were so happy to see on-screen when we saw GO. A demographic that is ridiculously under-represented in media that it often is mistaken as “bromance” or “just besties”.

As it stands now, in act 1, it is the part before the romantic gestures and before the “I love you”’s, and the part before the moving in and committing your life to someone else. Very gentle and romantic, slow burn kind of stuff that I, as an ace, relate to so much.

This relationship looks like what my best friends went through for YEARS before finally tying the knot in their queerplatonic relationship because they couldn’t imagine their lives without each other anyway and they loved each other fiercely. This relationship looks like the kind of relationship that doesn’t turn me off as an asexual: to share the ridiculous amounts of love I have, and be loved in return, despite my complete disinterest in having sex. The “you go to fast for me Crowley” was SO FELT in my soul as someone who needs a lot of time to feel comfortable in any relationship I’m in (like, Aziraphale is SO me, it’s ridiculous really), and me trying to explain to people that I need a lot of time to feel comfortable in a relationship and that sex may never happen, and me knowing that I’ll probably be turned down because of it. Me not wanting to hurt someone in a world where sex is an expected endgame, so I just... tend to keep to myself. I’m just as happy with my books and my video games and doing things on my own, but I long for a life partner to love and to experience my life with. And while can’t speak for what other aces and aros may relate to about the relationship, I like to hope that they can also see themselves in AziraCrow as well.

And please don’t get me wrong: I WANT them together-together, in any or all ways that it means: committing to each other 100%, love confessions, declarations of forever, marriage, a cottage in Sussex, and yes, even sex if that’s who they are canonically... I do want that, because I want it for myself. I want to see a relationship blossom where sex isn’t the primary outcome of it, but more of an afterthought as a way to consummate their love and to FEEL loved by each other.

I think the beauty of Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship is that because they are essentially supernatural beings, we as people can put ourselves in their places, and use them as placeholders for us to project our relationships and experiences onto them and in turn feel seen.

AziraCrow gives me hope that I will find my Other Person someday, because there is unconditional love in the world for people like me, especially as I get older and more set in my ways. I only hope I find my own Crowley to make me feel loved.

I know my opinion isn’t popular about AziraCrow, but honestly, their relationship, and the way it’s progressing means SO much to me, as an asexual, anyway. I hope it’s important to others too. <3

#ineffable husbands #good omens #good omens meta #my meta #my thoughts #asexuality #not everything is about fucking #shitposting steph

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bluedalahorse · 5 months

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Hello @simonsapelsin! I’m ready to respond to the comment you left yesterday.

Within the parameters of canon—most likely no, but maybe? It would have to be backed up by a lot of plot and character developments in order for it to work.

This ended up being way too long, so more thoughts on sargust + thoughts on the potential created by AUs and canon divergences + thoughts on the idea of “healthy” relationships behind the cut…

So obviously season 2 ended in a really, really bad place for sargust. August refuses to embrace accountability and doubles down on his harmful behavior. Our last shot of Sara is her calling the police to report him, and in that moment she’s completely alone. They have that painful conversation about August buying Rousseau. That’s… that’s a lot for them to overcome, and season 3 doesn’t have enough episodes to get us there fully, unless the writing team are very, very clever and efficient.

There’s a popular fan interpretation of sargust that says that Sara and August both project identities onto one another and don’t see one another’s real selves. I understand and agree with that interpretation up to a point, but I don’t know if I necessarily agree with it 100%. In my mind they do see real things about one another (August sees Sara’s ambition and desire for independence, Sara sees August’s emotional vulnerability and need for help. And they do connect with one another in ways that others haven’t been able to connect with them. What August and Sara fail to predict about one another is the other’s choices. Sara assumed August would choose to be honest and August assumed Sara would choose to be queen. But I think the care they showed for one another earlier in the season was real, and the way they could hold space for one another was real. That’s really a meta I could write for another time, but a lot of it hinges on this line, which is not a line I am even remotely normal about:

(Note: I’ll probably write this meta eventually. The fact that these characters create a sort of home with one another! Also lol @ August looking like he is stoned out of his mind.)

So what would it look like for sargust to get a Second Chance Romance within the parameters of canon? I mean, first of all, they’d both have to mature independently for a while and work through a lot of the trauma they’re carrying.

For Sara, I want her to get away from home and have some distance from the place she grew up so she can put her childhood in perspective. Therapy would help. (I want that for Simon, too!) I’d also like to see Sara find some neurodivergent friends/community—I mean, we do tend to find one another and run in packs! And then some sort of career or life path that makes her happy. Maybe with horses, sure, but it’d also be interesting to see Sara keep horses as a beloved hobby while also finding a different career she’s passionate about.

For August, accountability and rehabilitation and understanding of the harm he did is incredibly important for his personal growth. Whether he faces that through the legal system or through some other process is something we have yet to see in the show. Then comes the long work of restitution and atonement, as well as the steps August needs to take to grapple with his various personal traumas. Like, please get this boy a place to process his grief over his father, treatment for his disordered eating, and rehab for his addiction to pills.

Now, Sara and August wouldn’t have to be 100% healed and self-actualized when they run across one another as adults—I don’t know if there’d be a story if they were, and this sort of stuff is lifelong work! But further along the paths above that I described—that could still be a good story.

Beyond growth and maturity, I think we’d have to see some sort of change in how August and Simon relate to one another, happening primarily on Simon’s terms because he was the one wronged, and that would need to be an important part of the story. This feels crucial. Now that Sara’s aware how much she hurt her brother, I don’t imagine she’d enter a relationship with August even if August is a super chill, okay person now. So I actually think a good Second Chance Romance story would have to heavily involve Simon in one way or another. But a fic where August and Simon interact more honestly with one another, and August has to face up to Simon’s personhood? That would definitely hold my attention. (I am kind of hoping they get more extended interaction in season 3, really. They have some sneaky but fascinating parallels as characters and I like watching the way Omar and Malte play off one another.)

Outside of canon… one thing I have considered is the potential to write a version of sargust in AUs that’s more tailored toward happy endings. Which doesn’t quite relate to your question but I do want to talk about it. As of now, AUs/Canon Divergence fics are a perfect place to make sargust actually work out. This fandom has a lot of imagination for AUs and canon divergences. And it’s no surprise—Young Royals is a rich, nuanced text that can be explored from many angles, so it only makes sense that we’d want to create a thousand alternate universe scenarios where canon could have gone differently. In my mind, if people can write “Erik lives” AUs, then “sargust is successful because August learns over time to be less shitty” AUs are also fair game.

The thing with writing an AU or canon divergence is that August’s complex brand of shittiness does not have to be inevitable or eternal. We’ve got creative freedom, baby! We can write any kind of arc for him that we want to and nudge him in all kinds of directions, and set him and Sara up for success! To me, part of the spirit of Young Royals is embracing the idea that everyone has choices, and that they are capable of growth that allows them to make better choices. I mean, sure, it’d be weird to find a version of August on page #1 of a fanfic who’s suddenly like, quoting bell hooks and pushing for an inclusive socialist utopia. I don’t know if I’d suspend my disbelief for that. But I also really struggle to suspend my disbelief for AU versions of August where he’s like… a straightforward flat villain solely out to cause trouble, which is something I have seen out there in the wild and clicked the “back” button over. I crave the nuance. The texture. The literary crunch of it all!

And I don’t think August has to be the center of a fic for that to happen, even. Like I think there’s ways to have him and Sara as a story’s Beta Couple or Gamma Couple and we’re rooting for them and you know what? It’s an AU where some of the characters are fae or 1980s punks or rival scholars of Cold War history so events are happening differently anyway. I’m sure there are ways to write August in character as his shitty self and have him eventually grow and change, without having August also ruin his chances with Sara because he does something that fucks Simon over so completely, you know?

Now, I know there’s fic writers out there who never under any circumstances want to write August’s character and can’t do so from a place of emotional safety. For some folks it is more comfortable to engage with him as a more straightforward villain. And that’s fair. Everyone should write what they feel comfortable writing! In this post, however, I’m thinking more about the people who want to include some kind of nuanced arc for August in their story, but also feel like no one will be interested in it, or like they’ll actually lose readers and engagement if they do write about him, even as a secondary character. Every once in a while I’ll see another fan allude to a really cool fic idea that involves August in some way or takes him in an interesting direction, and then they’ll be like, “oh, but why bother writing it, no one will read it anyway.” And… that makes me incredibly sad! Because I would happily read those fics. I know some other people who would happily read those fics! But I think we’ve normalized the idea that that’s just not how things are “done” in the Young Royals fandom. Which makes it very hard for people to take that risk. I think we’re missing out on some cool stories as a result, that could really be satisfying to read.

One final thought… I notice some fandoms use the word “healthy” when describing their OTPs/favorite pairings. I hope you’re okay with me unpacking that a bit? This is less a response to your comment in particular and more a response to fandom at large.

Honestly, “healthy” is a word that’s starting to feel pretty loaded for me, and can kind of rub me the wrong way. It seems that generally what people mean by it—when they apply it to a pairing—is that the pairing is good at communicating, respects one another’s boundaries, responds to one another’s needs, processes trauma, etc. And I do appreciate in a story when characters can do these things, to an extent.

But putting it under this umbrella label of “healthy” …well. Okay. “Healthy” is a word that society has added a moral dimension to, and it often gets weaponized against people with disabilities and mental illnesses and other chronic conditions. And health is not an indicator of personal worth. Holding people IRL to a standard of “healthy” kinda feels like you’re saying “it’s okay if you have these diagnoses, as long as you manage them in such a way that it seems like they don’t affect you or the people around you.” (And as someone who’s just recently begun managing a chronic condition, who’s struggling with how to tell my family members because of the way they’re going to moralize about my diet or my stress levels, and also struggling with the shit I’ve internalized over the years… well. I’m thinking about how we use the word “healthy” a lot.)

Bringing this back to the realm of fandoms (because, oof, TMI there blue!) holding a fictional character or pairing to the standard of “healthy” can kind of create some uncomfortable fandom dynamics—at least it can for me, personally. When I see fans take pride in the fact that they ship a “healthy” pairing, to the point where they frequently talk about how “healthy” their pairing is, it’s almost impossible for me not to read such comments as using a moralizing tone that implicitly puts others down for having “unhealthy” ships. Sometimes—generally I haven’t seen this as much in YR fandom—there are even people who will straight up write you off if they perceive your ship as “unhealthy” or “toxic.” And then suddenly all ships are either deemed healthy or unhealthy, and healthy ships are retroactively interpreted as doing everything right, while unhealthy ships can never do anything right, and there’s no hope for them. And that is… a bleak and boring landscape for shipping, if you ask me.

I want to read romances where writers are informed about how trauma can affect relationships and how one can learn to survive it, yes. But I feel iffy about the idea of a perfectly “healthy” romances for sargust or wilmon, seeing as they’re all characters with trauma and mental health struggles, and all of them have days that are Not So Good. They could all mature into adults who’ve learned from their past, but like, Wilhelm might still have panic attacks because anxiety is like that sometimes and it’s not a moral failing. August could go through rehab and be in a much better place and harm others less, and still might struggle with intense emotional disregulation or thoughts related to disordered eating, you know? I’d like reading trauma-informed stories where sargust can mature and heal. But they still might have bad days because that’s what being human is.

In addition, I also like tragic sargust where things just don’t work out between them and everything falls apart, because as I’ve said elsewhere on this blog, I’m a slut for tragedy.

So. Idk. I talk about all these things and all these possibilities in hopes that maybe someone in the fandom will get inspired by them. We’ll see if it does that! Ahaha. It’s worth a try.

ADDENDUM, since I didn’t talk about my own fic ideas here:

Heart and Homeland is an AU fic, and it’s tragic sargust for sure. And I’m proud of it, despite the part where their relationship is tragic! And I tried to work in little glimmers where you see how their relationship could have worked.

Now, my next fic idea, shared with @heliza24, is one set in a canon divergence universe where Sara goes to campus to look for Simon, on the night that Everything Is Fake But Wilhelm’s Love For Simon Is Real. As Sara walks around campus, trying to find her brother, she bumps into August, who is still high from the party and is just sort of… emotionally all over the place? In my head I think Sara and August actually trip over one another and he gets a skinned knee or something, so they have to break into some part of school late at night to get band-aids from a first aid kit, and they end up in a weird, late-night conversation and August actually ends up talking to Sara about his grief for Erik. Thus, he’s never at the window to film the video, and some weird door opens up in his brain about actually having someone he can open up to. He doesn’t change overnight, but his character—and everyone else’s characters—are butterfly effected in a totally different direction. That’s all I’m going to say for now! But gosh, I really hope I get the time and energy to write it.

#young royals #sara eriksson #august horn #sargust #this is a long post i am sorry #and also it veers into my thoughts about fandom stuff in general #but hopefully there are a few good ideas in there

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whinlatter · 10 months

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obviously ginny always holds a candle for harry and her feelings for him never really go away, but what do you think is the point when her feelings change from a childhood crush to realised actual adult feelings?

(I love this question so here I am, back on my bullshit with another Hinny meta not a single soul asked for)

“— how she didn’t think famous, good, great Harry Potter would ever like her…” “She thought you might take a bit more notice if I was a bit more — myself.””

There’s a huge gulf from the Ginny being talked about in that first quote and the Ginny speaking in the second. When and how Ginny gets from one to the other - both a new way of seeing herself, and holding a new, healthier set of feelings for Harry that he will return and deeply value - is tricky to parse out because of how much Ginny’s growth clearly happens off-stage (and is… criminally underwritten). But I do think it’s clear that that this shift does happen but I actually hadn't ever really thought about it properly before lol sooo I have been scratching my head over this one since you sent this ask.

The headline is: I basically think Ginny’s crush dies in the chamber. As early as Ginny’s second year, in PoA, she’s made a decision to cope with Harry’s inevitable presence in her life, and that’s to have her feelings be less about revering him, and more about making him feel supported and loved, both by her and by her family. She makes her feelings less about who she is relative to him, and much less about an immediate hope of reciprocation, and more about reinforcing in Harry a sense of his own worth and value as something that need not be a comment on her own. As they both grow up, and she gets to know him better, I think she starts to understand that they are fundamentally incredibly similar people. She learns that she has a unique understanding of him that other characters don’t, someone who she can help be better, and ultimately someone she knows how to love well and someone who knows how to be loved by him. And that in part is a testament to how much work she does - with the help of good guidance - to like herself and like what she brings to the table, both in seeing the parts of her that are similar to Harry and liking them, and in being confident that the parts of her that are different to Harry can be ways of understanding him and loving him in ways he really needs. Basically, when Ginny starts to see herself as somebody worthy of love and similar to Harry, not someone unworthy and defined by their inadequacy relative to Harry, that’s when the crush is gone and the real feelings emerge. I think that level of self growth starts to happen much earlier in canon for Ginny than it does for lots of her peer characters, especially Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

Full reasoning is below the cut, and I am using the word reasoning loosely, because there is absolutely no rhyme or reason why I have written as many words on this question as I have. Ask me a Ginny question and I will act up, apparently

The crush

What’s really significant about Ginny’s crush on Harry (and is imo quite overlooked) is that it’s defined by an incredibly low sense of self-worth and a terrible loneliness on little Ginny’s part. Riddle tells Harry how Ginny feels about herself, and tbh it’s absolutely fucking heartbreaking. Obviously, this version of Ginny’s sense of self is refracted through Riddle’s most uncharitable telling, but I think we should take it as containing at least an element of truth (because what makes Riddle such a master manipulator is his capacity to understand people’s fears and anxieties, and to play to them):

‘Little Ginny’s been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes — how her brothers tease her, how she had to come to school with secondhand robes and books, how —” Riddle’s eyes glinted “— how she didn’t think famous, good, great Harry Potter would ever like her…” ‘No one’s ever understood me like you, Tom… I’m so glad I’ve got this diary to confide in… It’s like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket…”

The Ginny we get a sense of in these lines is of someone who thinks very little of themselves, who is defined by friendlessness, and has so deep a sense of isolated inadequacy she very easily becomes dependent on someone who shows her the first bit of genuine interest and makes her feel worth listening to. Obviously, Ginny is very loved at this stage, by both her parents and her brothers, but she’s not really seen, and she clearly feels both alone and deeply insecure. Unlike Ron’s way of dealing with his own sense of inadequacy, which is expressed, at various stages, through jealousy and resentment, Ginny feels her inadequacy into a crush that isn’t just about how great Harry is, but how great Harry is compared to her, and how unworthy she is of his attention. She doesn’t seem to have close friends, she has no-one who sees her as an equal, no emotional support that meets her where she’s at, and she is deeply doubtful that she deserves more. (I don’t want to say Ginny/Snape parallels but uhhh well........ you know)

There are elements of the crush that will remain a constant in Ginny’s feelings towards Harry throughout the series. She'll remain extremely protective of him ("Leave him alone, he didn't want all that"), she'll continue to admire him a great deal, and obvs she … fancies him. But the crush and her later feelings for Harry are clearly pretty distinct. When we see glimpses of her crush in other scenes - at the Burrow, in Diagon Alley, in the Valentine’s incident - it’s an endearing but ultimately juvenile, all-consuming view of Harry, in that way that crushes often are when you’re very young, but also one that speaks to her inability to see Harry as a real person and, especially, a person who is not better than her. Her crush isn’t empowering, but humiliating. It's something over which she has no control, and experiences publicly and very bodily (the whole-body blush, the physical clumsiness of knocking everything over, hiding behind doors and watching him at the Burrow). When she writes and commissions the Valentine, she talks about his appearance and his legacy in such a telling way. ‘I wish he was mine, he’s really divine’ isn’t the line of a confident person shooting their shot - it’s hero worship from someone who very much does not think themselves worthy of worship, and therefore direct adoration upwards at the person they’ve put on a pedestal. Although she’s not exactly asking Harry out directly with the Valentine (it’s supposed to be anonymous, and it’s only outed as Ginny by Malfoy), she pitches herself to Harry as someone who is in awe of him and really fancies him, but gives no sign of a capacity for great mutual understanding, no demonstration of their (many) similarities, no sign of deep care and no kind of pitch for her self as someone great who deserves love, someone funny, clever, and attractive, the traits that will later define the Ginny Harry falls for.

Leaving the crush behind

I think the aftermath of the Chamber is really significant for Ginny’s changing feelings for Harry. Leaving aside the lingering trauma of possession and her near-death experience, it’s hard to overstate how absolutely fucking awful it would be to interact with Harry after that. It’s not just that Riddle reveals the depth of little Ginny’s clearly intense feelings for him to Harry - mortifying enough - it’s that Riddle told Harry that Ginny’s obsession with him meant she inadvertently fed Riddle information that would render Lily Potter’s sacrifice moot, cost Harry his life and bring Voldemort to some form of power again. Though of course what Ginny reveals to Riddle isn’t an active betrayal of the Pettigrew vein, there are few consequences of having a crush that would be worse than the person you have a crush on nearly being killed because of it. A very reasonable response would have been to avoid Harry forever, and try and put that whole episode, and her feelings for him, to bed.

But she… doesn’t do that. Of course, Harry’s in her life whether she likes it or not. But she doesn’t have to become who she does become to him by OotP, and it’s clear then that she actively makes a series of choices to turn her feelings for him into something that is useful and kind for Harry: something that helps him and improves him, rather than starting at a point of thinking he’s perfect. Her appearances in GoF and even PoA lay the groundwork for the approach to him that she’s mastered by OotP. In PoA - so in the aftermath of this experience where Harry is the person who serves as the biggest reminder of her ordeal, and also Riddle’s chief victim - other than her awkward hello in Diagon Alley, the only reminder of Ginny’s feelings for Harry come when she leaves him the get well card she makes for him in the hospital wing. Harry’s narration implies the get well soon card is an expression of Ginny’s crush: he describes her as “blushing furiously”. But both making and delivering the card takes a huge amount of courage, and it’s a fundamentally selfless gesture - it’s literally a wish for him to get better, to make him feel like someone cares about his welfare, and a sign she is already starting to try and channel her feelings for him into something kind and supportive.(Obviously he… hates that the card sings so, you know, swing and a miss on execution, but she’s trying). Other than that, she only pops up to briefly share a private laugh with Harry over Percy (the first one-on-one injection of humour to their relationship), and to console Ron and reprimand the twins when Scabbers ‘dies’, establishing her as someone who acts with love and kindness, even if not directed at Harry himself.

In GoF, Ginny comes closer to honing this approach. She blushes when she sees Harry again at the Burrow, but she also then talks with confidence and humour in front of him with relatively little effort. She really reaches a crossroads over the Yule Ball, where she sets herself on the path away from validation from Harry and towards a stronger sense of who she is and what she believes in. She doesn’t ask Harry to the Yule Ball, even though several other characters do ask him out. She doesn’t chance rejection, but nor does she risk mortifying him. When Ron suggests she go with Harry, she turns him down and honours her commitment to Neville, something she finds difficult but is her choosing who the person she wants to be: someone who does the right thing, the selfless thing, who doesn’t ask Harry to validate her, but also who won’t accept the idea of being an afterthought last-option invite for Harry Potter. Because we’ll later be told, by Hermione, that Ginny met Michael Corner at the Yule Ball, I think we’re supposed to take Christmas 1994 as the period where Ginny starts to actively turned a corner in her feelings for Harry. With Hermione’s help (and I think it is this Christmas where Hermione advises Ginny on this), Ginny resolves to seek out romantic companionship elsewhere, where she will be able to be herself - something that might attract Harry in the long-run, but that will have its own value, too. The time where Ginny's sense of her own worth was calibrated around how much better than her she thought Harry was is increasingly in the rear-view mirror.

After the crush

By the time we get to the summer of OotP, something really big has shifted in Ginny’s mind about how she is going to be around Harry and what he is to her. The depth of Ginny’s growth, self-improvement and self-knowledge is on full display here, and she’s clearly reached a relative peace with herself. She has a confidence she didn’t have before; she’s got clear skills and abilities that mark her out as talented and assured (including Quidditch, but also her sense of humour and magical abilities); she’s actually shown herself capable not just of controlling her bodily and emotional responses to Harry, and also become an incredibly sophisticated liar (lol); and, crucially, she’s no longer lonely but surrounded by friends and in a romantic relationship that seems to be stable and healthy enough for a fourteen year old relationship, a real fuck-you to Tom Riddle. From the very start of OotP (“I thought I’d heard your voice”, “We know, Harry”), she can see what she’s become towards Harry: a shrewd reader of him, empathetic, supportive, forgiving, someone rooting for him, wanting good things for him and for him to grow and mature in happy, healthy ways, unafraid to call him out or help him grow when he’s displaying destructive coping mechanisms, lashing out or craving the approval of unworthy peers, and, crucially, someone who has pushed any thought of reciprocation to the back of her mind.

She also really understands who Sirius is to Harry in such a deep and profound way. Over the prefects issue, she’s the one who instigates of the conversation that consoles him over the Prefects issue - she’s the one who draws Sirius in as someone whose example (as a person who clearly was not a Prefect) will be a comfort to him (as well as just like, giving him valuable bonding moment with his godfather and knowledge of his father at school):

“What about you, Sirius?” Ginny asked, thumping Hermione on the back. Sirius, who was right beside Harry, let out his usual barklike laugh. “No one would have made me a prefect, I spent too much time in detention with James. Lupin was the good boy, he got the badge.”

On the train, when Ron and Hermione go to the Prefects carriage and Harry feels suddenly bereft, it’s Ginny alone who stays with him and agrees to sit with him on the train, finding the carriage with Neville and Luna to sit with, even though she’s with Michael at this point. Does Ginny still hold a torch for him? Sure, but she’s still holding a torch in sixth year, and she’s happy to leave him on his own on the train then. She decides in this moment Harry’s need is great, and wants him to not feel alone on his first train ride without Ron. She also shows here that she’s matured and grown up a lot more than he is in some significant ways. She doesn’t share his acute embarrassment about Neville and Luna, and she sorts him out after the Stinksap debacle, helping his embarrassment in front of Cho. Obviously there’s the ‘lucky you’ scene (side note: I love Ginny’s at his side on the tube as soon as they leave St Mungo’s after the conversation about possession). The ‘lucky you’ scene does not scream ‘please love me I’m so in love with you’. It’s a sign of deep care for a person, but it’s the behaviour of a person who no longer gives much of a fuck about being thought well of - they want to be helpful, it’s a very selfless kind of love, but she’s sort of over expecting things of him.

The Easter egg scene is another case in point of someone who clearly has some level of deep feelings for someone else - as evidenced by their obvious close knowledge of that person developed through watching them closely and generously - but who has turned them into something directed and selflessly productive. We can see that Ginny’s approach has meant something to Harry even if he hasn’t really clocked it. That he gets upset over the Easter egg certainly speaks to how much distress he’s in, but it also speaks to a subconscious feeling of being in the presence of someone who allows him to let his guard down, even if he's baffled as to why his body has behaved like this. Fifteen year old Harry sits, despairing over his fifteen year old father’s failings, grappling with his doubts about his parents’ path to romantic love, consoled by the thought that “his mother had been decent” - when Ginny enters, reaching through fifteen year old Harry’s own failings (irascibility, self-isolation) and gets through to what he needs. Selflessly, she suggests he tries to talk to Cho. She demonstrates strong emotional intelligence towards him, she delivers him a path to getting what Harry really wants - a conversation with the one person he sees as family, about his dad. That Ginny is the person who makes possible Harry’s one conversation about James with Remus and Sirius is so significant (and why I’ll always be mad that JKR cut the plan to have Harry literally confess the James memory to Ginny in the library and then mention Ginny’s advice to Sirius and Remus. The cut “That’s what Ginny said” line that Harry was supposed to say to Sirius and Remus from the JKR OotP planning notes lives in my head not just rent free but claiming full squatters’ rights).

Even more significantly in OotP, Harry quietly shows her that, while there’s a lot to admire about him, and lots of empathise with, there’s also a lot to be disappointed with him in. I think this only cements Ginny’s sense that her approach is the right one, and avoids setting herself up for further disappointment. The truth is that Harry lets her down several points in OotP, not just in the ‘lucky you’ scene. On the train, he is at least a bit embarrassed by her - not as much as he is of Neville and Luna, but certainly doesn’t think of her as a “very cool person”. Harry spends the whole book screaming at everyone for information, feeling frustrated about being patronised and deemed too young, but does the same thing to Ginny four times: once, at Grimmauld Place, where he lets Molly remove her from the room and makes no case for her entitlement to knowledge, and then three separate times after he's had the vision of Sirius being tortured:

“Hi,” said Ginny uncertainly. “We recognised Harry’s voice — what are you yelling about?” “Never you mind,” said Harry roughly. Ginny raised her eyebrows. “There’s no need to take that tone with me,” she said coolly. “I was only wondering whether I could help.” “Well, you can’t,” said Harry shortly. “You’re being rather rude, you know,” said Luna serenely.

And then again a few pages later in the Forest:

“I’ve got a broom!” said Ginny. “Yeah, but you’re not coming,” said Ron angrily. “Excuse me, but I care what happens to Sirius as much as you do!” said Ginny, her jaw set so that her resemblance to Fred and George was suddenly striking. “You’re too —” Harry began. “I’m three years older than you were when you fought You-KnowWho over the Sorcerer’s Stone,” she said fiercely, “and it’s because of me Malfoy’s stuck back in Umbridge’s office with giant flying bogeys attacking him —” “Yeah, but —”

One more time for emphasis, Harry, there's not enough salt in that wound:

“Look, you three” — he pointed at Neville, Ginny, and Luna — “you’re not involved in this, you’re not — ”

I think this is in part why Ginny moves onto Dean so quickly at the end of the OotP year and doesn’t wait around to see if post-Cho Harry is interested in something. Obviously, she would see and respect the enormity of Harry’s grief. But she has just spent a year receiving confirmation that Harry doesn't see her as an equal and doesn't seem to intend to meet her emotional needs in any of the ways she has learned to meet his. She dumps Michael because she knows what she’s worth, and though she’s briefly single she fills Michael’s space with someone else who clearly admires and values her, something Harry has shown no sign he is capable of doing (yet). She leaves OotP having found a way of being around Harry that works for her, that offers him meaningful friendship and support, and that both sees him and sees through him. She’s not about to ask for more, out of respect for him but also out of self-preservation. (I think she is also beginning to grasp that if anything ever did happen with Harry, it would be temporary, in ways that colour her approach to it, too.)

All this is to say, by the time we get to HBP, Ginny has five years post-crush under her belt of overcoming the unhealthy and toxic aspects of her feelings for Harry, honing who she is to Harry and living with her feelings for him, and also just... becoming someone she herself likes and who she believes deserves love and respect. Her feelings aren’t gone, but she’s built a life that doesn't centre them, and she’s happy with who she is to Harry, and how she can make him feel loved without asking for romantic love in return. The trouble for her is that Harry’s about to have an absolute shocker and realise their significance to one another in ways that threaten the equilibrium she’s found. But that's the trouble when you have a massive sense-of-self glow-up Gin! Sometimes people clock them and go: wow wait. So sorry baby you did this to yourself!

#hinny #meta #what am i like #a nightmare #apparently!#i know it's annoying to say 'no-one talks about this' but no-one talks about how low ginny's self worth was at the start of CoS!#ron and percy: i'm the most insecure weasley #ginny age 11: hold my cup full of rooster blood #thank you anon! ❤️

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