#people like to talk about power dynamics of this ship and often make it look like it favours Hank
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Hankcon (not established, but the forming one), but Hank, who is no longer suicidal slowly starts to realise just by how much Connor is stronger than him and Connor who keeps presenting friendly and at times intentionally goofy around Hank while being internally overwhelmed by all the new emotions building up inside him with each passing day, fighting with two urges, in which one is to comprehend himself as an artificial but alive being and other - to hide and mask out all the artificial aspects of his being from Hank to keep the illusion of him being just *enough* of a human to think of like one. But the illusion is slowly slipping away no matter how much effort is put to postpone in, the world around them keeps reminding them of their differences in the most brutal ways impossible to ignore, when each new case about androids raises a bunch of new questions for Hank to ask and for Connor to figure out the kind of answers that would read between the lines as "I'm not like this" or "It's not how it looks like" and the ones that are sometimes just ignored completely to avoid this furrowed concerned expression on Hank's face that Connor made his mission to never provoke, not by his own presence at least.
#hankcon#dbh#dbh connor#dbh hank#people like to talk about power dynamics of this ship and often make it look like it favours Hank#when it is so far from the thuth (at least the one in canon)#yeah Hank can pin him down to the wall with both of his hands#but connor can do the same with only one hand without much of trouble#not to mention that Hank is able to move him at all just because Connor lets him to#and it becomes way to obvious when he doesn't and it screams about the fact that all those previous times Connor willingly made it look#like Hank have enough power to affect him physically#just to keep the illusion of him not being a threat#there's a power disbalance in this ship indeed#but it isn't in Hank's favour#but uh it looks like I'm only talking about physical strength in here but I mean other aspects as well
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Stranger Things: The First Shadow
(My spoiler-filled review and thoughts)
“Nerds, do you copy?”
Buckle up, because this is a long one! I've tried to remember as much as I can from when I saw the play on Dec 5th.
Disclaimer: This is in no way a complete recollection of things that happened. They really packed a LOT into it. This is just what I can personally recall, helped along by other reviews and recollections I’ve found online that sparked my memory.
If you don't want to be spoiled, don't read any further!
Act 1.
After an epic intro scene, where soldiers on a ship at sea get dragged off by demogorgons (more on this later), we’re shown the Stranger Things intro exactly as though we’re watching an episode.
Chapter One: The Girl from Nowhere.
Hawkins, 1959.
It opens with a young Bob Newby on air, talking on his radio show (the founder of Hawkins AV club! <3). We learn that he actually has an adopted sister, Patty Newby. She’s black, so she feels like an outsider (bear in mind it’s the 1950s/60s, so… yeah.) Principle Newby, their father and only remaining parent, is also very religious.
He’s also the pastor (?) at the local church, and often makes Patty go to the church with him. She admits to Bob that she only likes to go to listen in on people’s confessions (some of which are really juicy). She also enjoys the choir there (?) as she likes to sing.
Principal Newby doesn’t like that Bob and Patty read comic books. There’s talk about how some things are discouraged or outright forbidden because they involve sex (gasp!) and morally ambiguous behaviour. Patty in particular is looked down on by her father for acting rebellious. He disapproves of her answering him back.
Instead of praying to God, Patty prays to Wonder Woman.
One of the first sections in the show’s programme is dedicated to the impact of comic books and science fiction on kids in the 1950s:
[This has always been the way with fiction. Whether you are talking about adventure, fantasy or sci-fi, stories set in faraway places reflect the anxieties of the here and now. Just as the children in Stranger Things turn to a fantasy game to help them make imaginative sense of a dangerous world, so we escape to alien landscapes to think about ourselves. As South Africa novelist Lauren Beukes once said, “By imagining the unimaginable, it’s possible to make reality more bearable.”]
[As Patty in Stranger Things: The First Shadow is aware, however, whether male or female, superheroes were almost exclusively white. Unless you happened to get hold of a copy of All-Negro Comics, published in 1947 by Black journalist Orrin Cromwell Evans, Black children would not see themselves represented in popular culture.]
[... in this age of technological advance and political uncertainty, [comic books] provided the thrills, the escapism and the imaginative fuel that audiences, young and old, needed more than ever.”] - Mark Fisher
Next, we’re introduced to Joyce. She’s Joyce Maldonado at this point. She’s half undressed and trying to find her clothes, obviously fooling around with Lonnie Byers, who is already talking down to her in a very casual way, telling her she’ll never amount to anything and that she’ll never leave Hawkins like she dreams of. It was another example of only physical attraction existing between two characters - there’s little to no emotional compatibility there. I sort of had the vibe that the scene was effectively introducing Joyce and Lonnie’s unequal power dynamics as they are in the show moving forwards. Lonnie sits with his legs encasing Joyce as they both sit on a mattress, and she’s visibly vulnerable in her bra, listening to him say these casually demeaning things to her.
Joyce wants to direct the school play, although she’s pretending to Principal Newby that they’re doing Oklahoma. Oklahoma will serve as a smokescreen for the real play she wants to direct: The Dark of the Moon. This has its own page in the programme too:
[From the depths of Scottish folklore to the Broadway stage, the journey of The Dark of the Moon is as shrouded in mystery and intrigue as the contents of the piece itself. Over the course of several hundred years, the story evolved from humble beginnings (The Ballad of Barbara Allen) into something rather darker and more brooding than its simpler folktale roots.]
[In its original versions, it seems to have been an innocent, if tragic, ballad about a young man who dies of unrequited love, only for the grief-stricken object of his affection to follow him to the grave. There, they become a rose and a briar respectively, destined to be intertwined for all eternity.] - The Creel House front door, anyone?
[In 1939, it had somehow become part of the Appalachian mountain lore of the north-eastern USA… [sometimes] with a central theme of divorce rather than death. But perhaps its oddest reincarnation is as a regular feature in the annual school play catalogue across the United States… retitled The Dark of the Moon, the play recasts Barbara Allen as a young maiden desired by a witch boy whose request to be made human is granted on the condition that she is faithful to him for a year. When that condition is tested to destruction, tragedy naturally (or unnaturally) ensues. The play is rich with allegory, including themes as knotty as religious fanaticism, demonic possession and mob psychology, and with its plot of star-crossed lovers meeting across the divide between this world and a mystical parallel one, it’s a kind of Gothic Romeo and Juliet.]
-Michael Davies
In the next few scenes we’re introduced to a whole host of characters as they come into the high school, and eventually gather around for the casting of Joyce’s play:
Ted Wheeler, school jock, Mr Popular. Very much a ‘peaked in high school’ vibe. 🙈
Karen Childress, Ted’s popular cheerleader girlfriend. Ted and Karen are depicted as two teens who can barely keep their hands off each other. They constantly make out. It’s suggested that Karen is only dating him because he’s popular and um… well-endowed.
Walter Henderson (who must be Dustin’s dad) is a total dick. He’s openly racist towards Patty at one point, earning him glares and snappy remarks from both of the Sinclairs who are present at the time. Patty has a horrible nickname at school, “mystery meat”, because of her unknown origins. But it’s clear with Walter's comments that her race also plays a factor in her general ostracisation.
Claudia Yount (Dustin’s Mom). She has a cat called Prancer, and is dating Walter. I thought it was very fan-servicey to include Dustin’s parents at all, because we know canonically that Dustin and his mom only moved to Hawkins when he was 4th Grade. So I guess Claudia and Walter moved away, had Dustin elsewhere, then Claudia came back to Hawkins again with Dustin after Walter had left/divorced her??
Sue and Charles Sinclair. Again, it was a cute Easter Egg to include them, but all the parents of the OG boys being there felt very fan-servicey - especially with them all already being coupled up in high school. It felt too unrealistic and a bit jarring. I’m choosing to take this as they were literally intended as cute little Easter Eggs, and as prime opportunity for comedic relief (e.g. seeing Ted Wheeler as a total player, in total opposition to the Ted we know).
Alan Munson. He’s a little strange and quirky, a lot like Eddie. He has a rock and roll vibe, and sticks out his tongue and does devil horns with his fingers, lol. The others don’t seem to know what to make of him, but there’s no animosity or anything. He’s really funny in all his scenes.
And of course, Jim Hopper Junior. To me, Young Hopper was like… a weird mixture of old Hopper from the show, and Steve! The actor did a great job, but yeah, it was giving Steve more than Hopper in some places (to me, at least). I don't know if this was intentional.
Hopper has some dad issues - his father is the chief of police, and they don’t get on. There’s a whole scene later on in the show where they even have a physical fight in the police station (although this isn’t depicted super seriously, and is actually part of a larger comedic section that involves some of the other cops in the station getting involved for laughs. At the end, Hopper and his dad sort of come to an agreement.) It’s kind of slapstick. They’re all falling over each other, and there’s even a part where one male cop falls against another face forward onto a desk, and it’s pretty suggestive (one is sort of mounted behind the other). Idk if this was supposed to be a standard ‘gay joke’ just for lols, or if it was more that the cops had an unexpected ‘moment’ together (they take a while to part from each other, and then they avoid each other’s eyes, so… idk). Just something I noticed happening off to the side.
Anyway, back to Act 1. We’re taken away from Hawkins High to outside the Creel house, and introduced to the Creels moving into Hawkins, just like they appear in the show’s flashbacks. They’ve moved from Nevada, and the reason they’ve moved is because something had happened with Henry, and this is meant to be a new start - it’s left ambiguous as to what exactly happened, but there’s mention of a kid that had been ‘left in a wheelchair’.
At first, Virginia Creel seems somewhat loving towards her son, hugging and kissing him and trying to act ‘normal’, but she’s clearly unsettled by him. Henry is unpredictable, and almost seems to switch between different personalities: one that’s familiar, shy but friendly, and one that quickly rages and turns violent.
Whilst it’s not explained WHY yet, we clearly see that Henry is somehow ALREADY under the influence of the Mind Flayer - and that he has powers.
Virginia becomes more and more openly terrified of Henry as the play goes on. Meanwhile, Victor Creel is generally absent the whole time as he’s dealing with his own ‘demons’ (severe PTSD from the war). People in Hawkins think he’s odd and weird. Remember that nobody understands PTSD at this point in time.
Again, we get a spread in the programme about this: “These are the tranquilized fifties… the legacy of trauma in post-war America”:
[It is very likely that Corporal Victor Creel, 9th Airforce, missed the birth of his son Henry in 1945… Getting their bodies back to the US would be a huge undertaking… getting their minds home would be another problem, and one which no-one had thought to predict.]
[Victor Creel is a familiar figure to us now: shellshocked, prone to outbursts, turning to alcohol to numb his trauma… what to do with the man who has seen atrocities - who is in himself a living testament to the fact that they exist, that they happen - who, in Victor’s case, may even have committed them himself? The answer was to bury him. Though shellshock was first given its name in the aftermath of the First World War… there was no widespread study of PTSD until after the Vietnam War, even though more than double the amount of American soldiers showed symptoms of PTSD during WW2 than WW1… Those suffering on the front were sedated and told they were exhausted… once they made it home, they were told not to talk about it: that they were lucky to be alive.]
[One response in particular would have been familiar to the Creels - the child who becomes aloof from their father, and who disengages from the emotional life of the family… Much like Jim Hopper and his father, there was often immense love between these children and their fathers, but they had no way to talk about the pain they were feeling.]
-Beth Kelly
Henry is clearly lonely and feels misunderstood when he first moves to Hawkins. It’s like he’s aware that there’s a darker side of him that’s dangerous, but he can’t fully explain why he does certain things (e.g whatever he did to the kid left in a wheelchair). There’s a scene where he sees the smoke of the Mindflayer swirling around him in the void, and he yells, "What are you??"
He’s the new kid at Hawkins High. People at school think he’s strange. They’re not necessarily cruel to him, but they’re not really sure how to take him either. Joyce is pleasant to him. But the only person he really connects with is Patty Newby - who we know is also a bit of an outsider at the school because of her peculiar origins and skin colour.
It’s clear there is an instant connection between Henry and Patty. Henry in particular is obviously crushing on Patty, and acts awkward around her. They bond over their love of comic books, and decide to be friends.
Anyway - back to Joyce’s play. So the reason she wants to direct the play in the first place is to impress some visitors from a university, so she can achieve a scholarship to study theatre outside of Hawkins.
It involves “witches, satanism, religious allegory”. Lots of things that Principal Newby would definitely disapprove of (hence why she pretends that they’re doing Oklahoma).
Joyce talks about the overarching message: “That’s what it’s all about in the end, isn’t it? Whether love can conquer fear.” (paraphrased). I think that was perhaps a really meta moment, and applies to THIS play and even Stranger Things as a whole.
Also there was something like, “they’re witches, not lesbians!”/ “They were witches as well as lesbians”… “Does it matter?” (again, paraphrasing, I can’t recall the actual lines, and I think this was either said at this point by Joyce and someone else, or a conversation that happened earlier between Bob and Patty when they were talking about a comic or story they had read. I’m sorry, I can’t remember!) But I thought it could be a reference to the Fear Street trilogy, maybe. I was on the lookout for any kind of LGBTQ+ imagery or dialogue, and yet my brain still managed to forget details by the end of it all (Act 1 needed to be 20 minutes longer, seriously. They went through so much dialogue so quickly, it was difficult to keep up. I feel like I need to see the whole thing again to properly take it all in).
Maybe I was tripping, or maybe I misheard, but I thought there was also a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it line about “the ending is happy and gay”. I wish my brain would have held onto those lines, but it happened so quickly. Something like, “the ending will be happy and gay”… “isn’t that what everyone wants?”
Now, I’m certain they meant ‘gay’ as in ‘happy’ in the context, but I couldn’t help but side-eye that moment a little because it’s an outdated term in today’s language. It was, I believe, a quick exchange between Joyce and… I want to say Bob? Or possibly Walter? I honestly cannot remember.
I'm begging people not to run away with this because it’s also totally possible that it was said in a derivative sense, like, “this story is dark, gothic and tragic... not happy and gay”, you know? "That's what everyone wants, right?" "Maybe, but this ends in tragedy."
I really hope someone, ANYONE else caught these lines, and can give me their own two cents on it. (Curse my shit memory and also just how FAST those lines were coming at us during those scenes in Act 1… like guys, please slow down so I can actually take in what you’re saying!)
Anyway. Joyce is having trouble casting the main leads, John and Barbara Allen, as the two are lovers and will need to kiss, and nobody seems to have the right chemistry or is taking it seriously enough.
At one point, Karen (acting as the female lead) confidently and passionately kisses Bob (acting the male lead), who’s awkward and flustered afterwards (this is done for the audience lols).
After hearing her beautiful singing voice (encouraged by Henry), Joyce decides to cast Patty as her female lead. Meanwhile Henry has unwittingly found himself in this room along with everyone, and accidentally gets involved in the casting process. Joyce sees that Patty and Henry have chemistry together, so she decides to cast Henry as her male lead too.
Henry and Patty grow closer. Henry tells Patty that he’s bad, and she should stay away from him. She doesn’t listen, and says just because someone has done some bad things, it doesn’t make them a bad person.
At one point they sit side by side by the confessional at church. Henry admits to her that he has powers. He tells Patty that he can hear what people are thinking - all the time. It drives him crazy (and says people are always ‘pretending’ to be normal. The vibe is very much in tune with his speech in Season 4 about how everyone is just in a silly little play, all playing pretend with each other, all trapped in these notions of living their lives in a way that society thinks is acceptable or desirable).
As an example later on in a separate scene, he points to Karen and Ted and tells Patty, “she thinks he’s an idiot, and he’s scared of her.” He points to more characters in this scene and says more about them (like Claudia and Walter, Sue and Charles, maybe even Joyce and Hopper?) but unfortunately I can only remember Ted and Karen’s.
Patty convinces Henry that his powers are not evil, and that he should be able to control them and use them for good. Henry then creates a "vision" for Patty, where she can freely sing with people listening, and everyone around her joins in and appreciates her talent (I think she sings "Dream a Little Dream of Me"? Unless this happens later on. There’s definitely a moment where she sings a bit of that song. Henry associates it with Patty.)
In this vision, even Patty's father is supportive of her and her singing, and it’s quite a funny moment how she imagines him dressed in a saucy red cape, dancing in a way that he *definitely* wouldn’t approve of in real life.
So it seems Henry is actually able to show people their dreams as well as their nightmares. It suggests his powers are his own at this point (at least to an extent), and not necessarily always controlled by the Mind Flayer.
Victor sees Henry talking to Patty at school, and mentions this to Virginia. He describes it as “harmless, just Puppy Love”, a first crush.
Virginia is still worried, and tells Henry to stay away from Patty (for her protection). Henry gets angry. We keep hearing his voice change when he changes, like a deep, monstrous voice. It’s creepy, like it’s not really him in those moments - it’s like the Mindflayer using Henry’s body, speaking through him.
While in the attic (his new favourite spot), Henry keeps becoming influenced by the Mind Flayer. He travels to the void frequently, from where he proceeds to start killing animals - the first of which is Dustin’s mom’s cat. It’s just like the Vecna attacks in Season 4, snapping their bones and blinding them.
Henry seems to be aware that he’s the one responsible for these killings, and he keeps on going back to the attic, and the void, to keep doing it - but it’s unclear just how aware or remorseful he is about all this, or whether it’s 100% possessed!Henry during those moments. It certainly seems like it’s the Mindflayer making him want to do those things. When he first approaches Prancer, he’s friendly, calm and softly-spoken. The attack happens very suddenly and afterwards, I think Henry sort of ‘comes to’ and cries out in distress/remorse?
Either way, Henry is definitely under the Mind Flayer's control at that point, and you can see the Mind Flayer smoke flying around in the void next to him.
After Claudia’s cat turns up dead, Hopper is immediately on the case, wanting to find the culprit. He starts questioning people, and ends up approaching Henry at school.
I want to clear Hopper’s name in something here! I saw someone say that, in the play, it’s stated that Hopper says he hates cats. Whilst this *is* something Hopper tells Henry at this point, it was clear to me that Hopper was only playing mind games in the way an investigator will try to get a suspected criminal to confess: ‘The truth is, I hate cats. So I actually just want to shake the hand of the person who did it - they’re a hero in my book!’ He’s totally bluffing, and it’s just meant to show that he’s already thinking and working like a detective. Regardless, the tactic doesn’t work, and Henry brushes him off. Hopper remains none the wiser.
When more animals start being killed in the same way, Hopper is the one who figures out that they’re all pets of Hawkins High School students who are taking part in Joyce’s play. He goes to her to request her help, and she and Bob both end up going out to look for clues with him (complete with torches, this gave major Season 1 vibes).
Joyce and Hopper’s relationship is mostly antagonistic, but it’s clear they like each other and they flirt a bit. Meanwhile Bob admires Joyce from afar, wanting only to impress her and to find the courage to tell her how he really feels. There's some love triangle imagery throughout with where they stand. (Note: Bob does eventually admit to Joyce how he feels at the end, but she casually rebuffs him. I'm so glad they eventually ended up together because Bob was just too pure.)
Henry continues to be haunted by images of a monster reflected back at him in a mirror. I think we’re meant to take that as a representation of Mind Flayer!possessed Henry. He’s clearly afraid of himself, and what he’s capable of.
The Mind Flayer appears to him as Patty, and taunts him by saying cruel things, like saying that he will end up killing her. In the vision, Patty starts pulling off her own hair until we see her brain. We hear a deep monstrous voice taunting Henry, saying he “will kill many, many more” - that they have seen it happen, and it is his destiny. (Time travel hints? The Mind Flayer can apparently see into his future, unless this was just an empty taunt that unfortunately came true, or a self-fulfilling prophecy).
[Evidently, there’s something deeply disturbing at the heart of the human psyche about the possibility of uncovering the horrific within itself. When that horror is externalised… it creates a symbolic representation of our own nightmares, perhaps allowing us to tackle them more objectively and overcome those dark, disturbing impulses within us all.]
[By investing fictional creations with the qualities we most fear - the horrifying, animalistic sides of our nature - we can, perhaps, face them more objectively and convince ourselves that we do, ultimately, have control over them… and ourselves.]
[... Perhaps the monster we fear most is the one we see reflected in the mirror. As Professor Mulrooney puts it: “The monsters in these tales are not necessarily the people we would call the monsters - Frankenstein’s creature or Dracula. The scariest part of these books is the humans.”]
-Michael Davies
The real Patty then interrupts the vision, and asks Henry if he can help her find her mother using his powers. He’s wary of doing so, but agrees to help her. He says she will have to come with him to his attic.
Once inside, Patty tells him that it’s cold in there. Henry says he likes it cold.
When Henry enters the void, he successfully locates Patty’s mom. She’s a singer, a show girl, working on a stage in Vegas. Patty asks him what she looks like. Henry says she looks like Patty. That she’s beautiful.
Suddenly, he loses control, and is once again visited by the Mind Flayer. Patty’s mom morphs into a terrifying figure who chases Henry through the void… and eventually catches him.
We see the Mindflayer going into Henry inside the void, very similar to Will in Season 2 on the school field. (This happens either at this moment, or in a flashback at another point of the play. But it’s at some point!!) I think this was showing us that whoever Henry was, he’s fast disappearing into the darkness of the Mind Flayer, and vice versa - it’s like a fusion.
Meanwhile, Mr Newby learns that Patty and Henry have been hanging out together a lot. He’s greatly displeased by this, and decides to go to the Creel House to fetch Patty and put an end to the budding romance. Romeo and Juliet vibes be vibing hard.
Downstairs, he speaks to Victor Creel, who is having a PTSD related episode and acting strangely. He says his wife believes the house is haunted by an ancient demon, and with everything that’s happened (and by how the lights keep flashing), he’s beginning to believe her. He feels like his demons have followed him from the war.
Mr Newby then overhears the commotion from upstairs, and goes up to investigate. In the attic, Henry is holding Patty’s hand very tightly. He’s twitching and yelling as he fights against the Mind Flayer’s possession, and this frightens Patty. When her father walks in, he demands that Patty lets go of Henry’s hand. She tries, but he’s holding on too tightly. “I can’t!” Patty cries out.
Mr Newby is then attacked by Henry, controlled by the Mind Flayer. His body starts to rise up. Patty encourages Henry to fight back by telling him that she believes he is good, and that she loves him.
“Say it back!” she pleads to him. “Say it back!”
Henry responds and says he loves her too. Because of the love exchange, he manages to momentarily break out of the Mind Flayer’s control: Mr Newby drops to the floor, alive but badly injured.
Joyce, Hopper and Bob were downstairs at this point, having followed radio anomalies to the Creel House (which they did via a machine that Bob built for them). They freak out and run away, and all come to the conclusion that creepy, crazy Victor Creel is the one responsible for Mr Newby’s injuries, as well as the string of violent animal deaths.
[Joyce has some basis for believing Victor capable of violent crime, based as this may be in her own father’s war experience… When Joyce opens her copy of the DSM, first published in 1952, she will find no entry for PTSD… Instead, the symptoms she might recognise from her father were incorporated into depression or schizophrenia, rather than their own diagnosis. Short of a name for what they were suffering, traumatised veterans were left to find their own way through nightmares - through violence, alcohol or isolation.]
-Beth Kelly (from the Stranger Things: The First Shadow programme)
After the commotion, Henry removes his blindfold. Patty's father has broken through the attic floor, and he’s seriously injured. Patty is very afraid and upset.
After a brief time skip (to the next day or two I think), we learn that Patty is staying away from Henry, who is worried that he’s ruined everything. The Mind Flayer starts to creep back in. We see a possessed Henry back in the attic, and Virginia comes up to him and says that she wants to help him, but she doesn’t know how. She reminds him that he needs to stay away from people to protect them. She talks about Patty, telling Henry that he shouldn’t see her anymore.
Possessed!Henry smirks and asks her if she’s jealous. There’s something insidious and disturbing in the way he asks it. Virginia recoils from her son and her “everything-is-going-to-be-okay” facade crumbles. We see she’s absolutely terrified of who Henry has become.
Henry creates a vision, so that it appears as though his pet spiders escape from their jars, and they run all over Virginia as she screams. She flees from the attic as Henry’s dark taunts follow her.
Henry’s sister Alice comes to the mouth of the attic.
"Where is Henry?" She asks.
Henry: "He’s right here."
Alice: "You’re not him."
At this point, it was like the Mindflayer had almost completely merged with Henry. The lines had become more and more blurred as the play went on, and now it’s becoming hard to separate them - the ‘real’ Henry is finding it hard to come through and fight the possession. The Mind Flayer is winning.
This really reminded me of Will and his own possession with the Mindflayer in Season 2. How they described it like a virus taking over, and how Will could have continued ‘disappearing’ until there was no more Will left.
After the incident with Mr Newby, and her terror with Henry in the attic, Virginia has finally had enough. She willingly hands her son over to an “interested party” who describes himself as a doctor (who we know is Dr Brenner). He vows to take Henry to Hawkins Lab, where he’ll be safe, and contained.
When he wakes up in the hospital, Mr Newby reveals to Patty that he actually stole her as a baby (?) in an effort to revive his relationship with his wife by having another child to care for - but it didn’t work, and his wife left him. He feels guilty about it, and wants to confess this to her after he almost died.
He tells her that he was attacked by a monster who made him relive his worst nightmares, and that “the boy”, Henry, actually fought back and saved him from death. He then draws the Mind Flayer on a piece of paper, hands it to his daughter, and tells her that this is what he saw.
After learning that Henry actually saved her father, Patty returns to his house to search for him, but it’s too late - Dr. Brenner has already taken him to the lab. However, she is able to communicate by calling out to him.
Henry contacts Patty through the void, where she is able to both speak and see him, despite him being at the lab. She tells him that she knows he is still a good person, and that he should return home.
———
Act 2.
On screen:
Chapter Two: Captain Midnight
So here’s the thing - the play paints us a totally different picture than Season 4 did in regards to Henry/Vecna.
Henry was not inherently evil, like S4 suggested to many people - he was actually just a regular boy until ‘an incident’ occurred when he was younger, which is what gave him powers and started his possession in the first place. The end of S4 makes us think that El sent Henry to the Upside Down, which is where he meets the shadow monster and morphs it into the Mind Flayer with his powers.
But that wasn’t Henry’s first time there, nor was it the first time he saw the Mind Flayer. That was all just a REUNION.
It’s revealed that Henry actually disappeared into another dimension (Dimension X/ Upside Down) for a period of 12 hours when he was just a kid. He got lost near some caves in the Nevada desert, and when he returned, he had "completely changed in personality".
He came back odd, ‘not normal’, and couldn’t socialise well. He also returned with dangerous powers, which he violently inflicts on animals. The Mind Flayer had clearly started possessing him from that early point, way before he even came to Hawkins.
Let’s go back to the very beginning of the play - to the soldiers on the ship. It was Brenner’s father and his crew that were aboard this ship, the USS Eldridge, which had accidentally travelled into Dimension X/The Upside Down as a result of electromagnetic activity.
This is based on The Philadelphia Experiment, or Project Rainbow, said to have taken place in the Second World War. The programme had a double spread on this:
[Allegedly, wartime experiments caused the supernatural disappearance of a US naval ship… Project Rainbow was based on Einstein’s research into unified field theory through which [he] hoped to create a single theoretical framework to encompass all fundamental forces, including electromagnetism and gravity.]
[Carl Allen claimed to have witnessed a strange event in October 1943 involving the naval destroyer escort USS Eldridge and scientists who were working on highly confidential technology which would make ships invisible to the enemy by using powerful electromagnetic fields to ‘bend’ light around them. According to Allen, they succeeded in doing just that. In fact, Allen said the ship was also briefly teleported 275 miles away to Norfolk, Virginia, before reappearing in Philadelphia. …It’s been suggested that the Eldridge’s official logs could have been deliberately altered… with the whole of Project Rainbow moving beyond top secret clarification.]
-Catherine Jones
Brenner’s father is the only survivor of this terrifying event. After returning from Dimension X and taken to a hospital, injured and dying, we learn that his blood type is now “unique” from any other human being. He won't survive a blood transfusion.
His ravings about Dimension X before his death haunted and inspired Brenner for the rest of his life. Brenner started an experiment focused on finding and travelling back to Dimension X; his ultimate goal was to "create a gate" to reach it again.
Brenner enacted these experiments in the Nevada desert, where one day, one of his agents ran away with some of Brenner’s equipment near some desert caves. The agent was never found, but a Captain Midnight spyglass was - which was the exact spot where Henry went missing in Dimension X as a little boy for 12 hours. Brenner therefore began searching for the mysterious Captain Midnight comic-book fan who went to Dimension X and returned, watching him and keeping an eye on him. This is what led him to Hawkins: following Henry.
Brenner tells us that Henry’s powers emerged after he visited Dimension X, and just like his father, his blood type is “unique”. He collects several samples from him. He also tells Henry that his powers become stronger each time he kills, and that’s why he gets so much satisfaction out of it. Brenner also tells Henry that he would get even stronger if he kills human beings, rather than animals.
During one scene, Brenner uses special equipment to see into and hear Henry's mind. He pushes Henry to the limit so he can hear and catch a glimpse of Dimension X. We hear noises similar to the Mind Flayer in Season 2 when Will goes into the Upside Down on Halloween night. The shape of the Mind Flayer appears on the screen (or was it the head of a Demogorgon? It was definitely something Upside-Downy), while Henry convulses. After this incident, Henry asks Brenner, “Can you take me back there?"
Brenner also introduces the idea of anger to fuel Henry's power. On several instances he riles Henry up to get him angry, insulting him - and the result is always violence. He succeeds in getting Henry to kill a mouse/rat, which explodes into a bloody mess inside its cage, and then tries to convince him to kill a criminal who has been transferred to the lab with an agreement to be killed (he has a date with the electric chair later that week regardless).
Henry refuses. He’s been speaking to Patty in the void, who has convinced him that he’s good and that he should return home. Brenner is frustrated with this, and becomes sure that Henry has someone that is "holding him back". He vows to find and remove this obstacle. But after Henry leaves the lab, Brenner tells his agents to let him go. He cannot force Henry to kill. “It has to be his choice."
Brenner is shown to have significant influence over Virginia. He’s been providing her with medication/tranquilisers, and tells her that her son desperately needs his help. He encourages Virginia to tell him who the person Henry is attached to. She does. Brenner promises her that he will take Henry back into the lab and that he won’t leave again.
After Henry returns home, he reads his family's minds and learns that they are all afraid of him and unhappy with his return. He goes into his mother's memories and learns of the last interaction she had with Brenner, including that she wonders if he “may never have been good”, and whether "this was who he was the whole time." He knows that she was willing to give him up to Brenner forever.
This is when the Creel murders happen, just like they’re shown in Season 4. Virginia Creel and Alice Creel are both murdered at the dinner table - and we know Victor is going to be blamed for it.
Is this Henry’s own mind now, turned to darkness and hate, or is it the Mind Flayer intent on eliminating all of Henry’s attachments? A monster who’s made a monster. I think it’s all left open to interpretation on purpose.
After the death of his mother and sister, Henry goes straight to Hawkins High to find Patty, hoping to reach her before Brenner does. While at the school, he runs into Joyce, who voices to him her suspicions surrounding the animal killings, and what happened to Mr Newby at the Creel House.
At first, Henry thinks Joyce has worked it out, and that she knows it was him all along. “I wish you hadn’t done that…” he says, stepping closer. But Joyce clarifies just in time that she believes Henry’s father is the one who is dangerous, and that she believes he’s responsible for the terrible things that've happened in Hawkins recently. Maybe this is what gives Henry the idea to frame his father. Either way, he leaves Joyce alive.
Both Brenner and Henry find Patty on the stage rafters, up on a high catwalk, ready to perform her part in the play. She’s initially wearing a set of wings as a prop, which are attached to the rafter to be lowered. Henry unties her from these wings, pleading with her to run away with him. An argument ensues with Brenner, where he attempts to convince Henry that Patty is his weakness, and that he needs to kill her to let her go. Patty tells Henry not to listen to him.
During this argument, Henry loses control once more, and the Mind Flayer takes over. This results in Patty slow-motion falling from the rafters as the shape of the Mind Flayer overwhelms the stage. She hits the floor on her back, presumed dead.
(The stage effects for this particular scene were absolutely incredible, by the way.)
Henry is later seen back at the lab. He’s fully subdued, confined to a straitjacket, mouth gagged, and sat in a wheelchair. Brenner says the implant (Soteria) is in, about to take effect.
If we believe what Season 4 showed us, the play skipped the part where Henry appeared dead alongside his mother and sister (just before Victor is then blamed and incarcerated at Pennhurst Asylum). So assuming that Brenner played a part in covering up Henry’s involvement in the Creel murders, Henry is presumed dead by the town at this point too. Unfortunately the play doesn’t address this, as instead we see Henry run immediately from the dinner table murder scene, straight to Hawkins High to find Patty. It’s a big inconsistency which I guess they want us to explain away with Henry being an “unreliable narrator” in the show. I guess he gave Nancy the abridged version of what happened!
Anyway, it appears that Henry later finds Patty in the void, despite Brenner telling him that he killed her. It seems she has successfully left Hawkins and found her mother in Las Vegas, just as she always dreamed of doing. She uses a walking stick, but otherwise appears alive and well.
We hear and see static as Henry watches the scene unfold, and Patty glances over her shoulder, like she senses him. But then she turns her back and walks into the distance with her mother.
An alternative take that I heard from someone, was that perhaps Patty is truthfully still seriously injured and is actually in a coma (similar to Max). They thought that maybe the final scene of Patty with her mother was actually just something that Henry was creating for her in her mind, as a sort of last semblance of goodness and love. I don’t think that’s what was intended, but it was an interesting take that I wanted to include!
As the show nears its end, we’re presented with a series of newspaper articles relaying the tragic Creel Murders in Hawkins (possibly the same ones that Nancy and Robin find in Season 4). The Creel family all dead, Victor is blamed and sent to the asylum. The empty Creel House remains, a reminder of the horrors. It then shifts back to Hawkins lab, who are now recruiting pregnant women for experimentation.
Brenner introduces a pregnant woman to Henry (who is still bound to a chair and fully subdued) and explains to him that the "blood transfusion" finally worked on a subject. He points to the woman's belly and remarks, “One, meet Two!"
“You are as much a father to them as I am,” Brenner says at one point. Then, “Come… meet your brothers and sisters.” Even though we know Henry is not in any way related to the lab kids, they definitely played into the father/guardian/creator metaphor in the play. If not family by blood, then by circumstance.
We see photos of the babies created in the lab, with their numbers underneath. We can recognise Eight as young Kali. Eventually we get to Ten, at which point the stage focuses on a now older Henry, wearing his recognisable Season 4 orderly outfit. He kneels beside a child with buzzed hair.
"Hello, Eleven. Come with me.” He takes her by the hand, and they walk into the distance together.
———
Some final thoughts:
Because of the incident with Patty during Joyce's play, we can infer that's why she is unsuccessful in her goal to impress the university, and remains stuck in Hawkins - just like Lonnie said she would.
Lonnie is awful, and I’m in two minds about how he’s handled in the play. They did a good job to show he’s always been a douchebag, and unlike what I’ve seen some people say, I actually think it was horribly believable that Joyce (who they establish likes 'bad boys') ends up going back to him and having kids with him. We know from Season 1 that there’s emotional abuse with Joyce and Lonnie, and to me, it makes horrible, horrible sense that it all ends up the way it does. I’m just not sure how I feel about Lonnie being used as any kind of comedic effect in the play (he makes a brief reappearance at the police station, where he’s been lying drunkenly handcuffed on some chairs the whole time during a scene... “It wasn’t me! I didn’t do it!" he says, or something to that effect). I feel like using him in that way diminishes how truly awful he is as a character. Maybe I’m just being too sensitive, but I’d much rather they had kept all the laughs and jokes for the other characters, and treated Lonnie completely seriously the whole way through. I don’t want to see him in any way ‘likeable’ or ‘relatable’ or ‘funny’, you know? Not even for cheap audience laughs. This is a guy who called his own kid son a f*g. Let's treat that with the gravity and solemnity it deserves, please.
Louis McCartney and Ella Karuna Williams as Henry Creel and Patty were great, and Isabella Pappas as Joyce was amazing. Dr Brenner was nicely emulated by Patrick Vaill (I personally think he was one of the most believable characters from stage to show). The best performance of all though was Christopher Buckley as Bob. Like, damn, give that kid all the awards! He was so believable as a young Bob, I actually forgot it wasn’t somehow a young Sean Astin on stage. *chef’s kiss*
As previously mentioned, all the parents of the kids are present in the play (and already coupled up). None of these characters are particularly fleshed out, and I think they’re mainly just there as fun ‘Easter Eggs’ to connect it with the show. E.g having Claudia own another cat that gets killed, seeing Ted Wheeler ironically as some kind of jock god who gets all the ladies (and cheats on Karen with, by the way!), Joyce holding an axe prop near the end mid-rant (“Why am I holding this??”) and Hopper making a remark about breaking his own foot (which he does in Season 4).
They definitely seemed to be going back on the whole ‘it was Henry/Vecna the whole time’ thing from Season 4: the Mind Flayer has been pulling the strings from way before El sent Henry to Dimension X/Upside Down. We even see the Mind Flayer in the shape of a giant eldritch spider during the play, way before Henry appears to ‘shape’ it in Season 4. However, I think it’s also possible that Henry DID actually manage to take control of the Mind Flayer the second time he arrived in Dimension X (as we see at the end of S4). At that point, he’s killed all the lab kids and staff at Hawkins Lab, so he will be much more powerful now compared to the Henry from the play. By now he’s completely embraced the Mind Flayer’s philosophy, and is acting in its stead entirely on his own volition. Honestly? I think they’re going to leave it ambiguous on purpose. I think that’s why the play is technically canon, but totally not necessary before seeing Season 5. I think Henry and the Mindflayer are 'one' (lol) at this point - I think that’s what Vecna technically is. He’s like an amalgamation of this terrifying eldritch being that we can never begin to understand, but at the same time also something that is still deeply, deeply human.
The Henry side of him seems to be lost, but in a way Brenner was right - his feelings for Patty, whether ‘Puppy Love’ or real - was his one redeeming weakness in his early teen years. Judging from the play, I think it’s possible we might see a tragic sort of redemption moment in S5 (which I personally have mixed feelings about). But I do believe the play is supposed to be entirely separate, and that it’s possible Patty will continue not to be mentioned or relevant in the show (I hope I’m wrong). I just can’t help but be cautious in assuming the Mind Flayer is still the one in control after what they set up at the end of Season 4 (especially with Will saying, “it’s weird to know who it was this whole time” re: his own kidnapping and possession). I think Henry has become his darkest self as Vecna.
Speaking of Will… there were noticeably a LOT of parallels with him in Henry. Henry wears pretty much exactly Will’s outfit from Season 4, yellow tones with beige and brown. Meanwhile Patty wears a blue cardigan and a blue dress - at least in Act 1. I’m not hugely into the blue-and-yellow thing in a serious way, but even I noticed there were blue and yellow motifs for Henry and Patty. She wears a bright yellow top with her blue cardigan at one point too. I think there was definitely a mixture of both Will and El in Henry’s character.
Meanwhile Patty had noticeable similarities to Mike. She’s rebellious, outspoken, loves comic books, and worships superheroes.
Seeing the play hasn’t impacted my beliefs or hopes for Byler in any way. I think there are potentially good things to be taken from the writing, and potentially bad things too. My current confidence has neither been raised nor lowered, but what I will say is that it’s undeniable that the Henry x Patty relationship mirrors both Mileven and Byler, but especially Mileven. Hentty is obviously a star-crossed tragedy, deliberately set up like Romeo and Juliet, which we know is NEVER a good thing. I do find it interesting that their love confessions were an exchange, unlike Mike’s monologue. Patty is the one ‘present’, whilst Henry is the one trapped in the void with his eyes closed/blindfold on. It’s a high stakes moment. Patty tells Henry in desperation that she loves him, but she follows this up by pleading with him to say it back. I didn’t see anyone else talking about this, but it really stood out to me.
The play’s themes and messages still reflected what I believe the show to be about: rejecting forced conformity (it dealt with people’s ideas about what it means to be “normal” to fit in, about sex not being taboo, harmful black and white morality, and the damage that can occur from enforcing religious dogma)... and of course, like Joyce said, that love will ultimately conquer fear.
Over and out!
[This kind of introspection throws up unsettling and complex ideas about the nature of human morality. What does it mean to be human? Who gets to decide who is “other”? How do we treat those who are different from us? These are huge issues, and far too esoteric for most of us to deal with in abstract. So the way we choose to explore them is in stories.]
- Michael Davies
#stranger things: the first shadow#the first shadow#st: tfs#tfs#tfs spoilers#spoiler#spoilers#stranger things#byler#< target audience#personal
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The Top/Bottom Thing
Okay, I need to vent about something. Because it really annoys me. You do not need to agree with me, but this is my blog, so I can vent about it all I want.
I hate how a lot of fandom stuff clearly assigns queer ships the "top/bottom" dynamic. I hate it so much. Because for the most part, it just tends to enforce heteronormative standards. Especially when we see who gets to be the top and who gets to be the bottom. Because, spoileralert, most of the time this is completely and utterly based on who is the more feminine and the more masculine between the characters.
Let's put a pin in that, because I want to talk about something else first.
*clears throat* You folks are aware that a lot of queer people switch positions, right? Sure, there are some that prefer one thing over the other, but in general a lot of queer relationships do not have "the top" and "the bottom". This is true for both gay and lesbian relationships. (And while we are on it: Some gay men do not like anal sex. I know, shocking, right?)
The reason this is so popular with fan related stuff (and also non-fandom female oriented mlm original fiction), really is that it kinda enforces heteronormative relationship dynamics.
A lot of queer people in same-sex relationships - especially of the millennia and older generations - know the question of: "But who in your relationship is the man and who is the woman?" Because straight people cannot imagine a relationship in which the partners are eye to eye.
In earlier queer anime/manga fandom we still had the idea of uke and seme. In which the uke was the girl in every way imaginable. It often looked something like this:
You had the big, masculine seme, and the soft, feminine, petit uke. In some manga it went so far, that the uke was even drawn like a girl. They tended to be like girls - just without breasts. It was also one of the main reasons for a lot of gay men in Japan very much despising yaoi, keeping very much with their own gay manga genre, bara.
Now, admittedly by now this has mellowed out a lot in yaoi manga. Newer yaois tend to have way less physical difference between the uke and the seme. While often we still have the scenario that the seme is more powerful and influencial, at least the uke is no longer "a girl".
Still, this dynamic then also got duplicated on fanfictions at the time. Basically fandom usually decided (especially with anime fandoms) that within a gay ship one was the uke and one was the seme. So in the fanfictions that followed, any canon characterisation would be ignored in favor of making the seme toxic masculine and the uke a little damsel in distress, who would cry a lot.
Now, most of fandom has grown out of this phase (thank God), and uke and seme has mostly been replaced by the idea of top and bottom, which usually tends to be way less extreme in the depiction. But... the general issue is still there, right?
Because... people still kinda subconsciously enforce the idea of a heteronormative relationship with queer ships.
For those who usually do not engage with this, quickly let me explain: The idea of Top and Bottom is about, who is the "giving" and who is the "receiving" part within a relationship. The bottom is the one, who gets penetrated, the top is the one who penetrates, to overly simplify this. But also generally it also kinda means, that the "top" tends in most stories be the one who holds the control or more control within the sexual scene. This is especially a big thing with male on male smut, where a lot of stories male it clear that one of the two characters in anal sex is the one who gets fucked, with the other one doing the fucking.
And most of the time this is very much based on who of the ship is the more outwardly masculine and who is more feminine. And yes, this even holds true for sapphic ships. Let me talk about some of my own ships, so you can see what I mean, alright?
Alucard/Trevor (Castlevania) is probably the least strong on this one. While a lot of fanwork has Alucard as the "bottom" - you know, the long haired, rather androgynous twink - his femininity clearly is a bit cancelled out by being half-vampire. So there is in fact a lot of stuff where he gets to be "the top". But still, there is a definitive tendency to have him as the bottom.
Hector/Isaac (Castlevania) is one, where I literally have never once seen a fic with Hector topping. Admittedly, I can understand it with them in so far, that Hector is not only feminine, but also clearly shown to be submissive within the show. So both things kinda go into one another. But, you know... While I have him be the submissive one and passive one more often, I do make a point of switching it around a bit. (And it should be noted: I have not found a single fic outside of my own, that even adress the fact that Isaac might actually not want to do anal sex, because the Qur'an is very clear on the topic of it being a taboo.)
Mizrak/Olrox (Castlevania: Nocturne) to me is probably the most offensive one in regards of Castlevania gay ships. Because while still fairly new, I only so far have seen Olrox as the bottom. Because of course the more feminine one, with a very masculine partner, has to be the bottom. *eye roll* Which in their case does so clearly just not even have any other possible explanation rather than "the masculine and the feminine". I doubly hate this, because this does play into a lot of racist ideas about indigenous men, but I will not go into that now. Just... why?
Joe/Cherry Blossom (SK8) is another one, were one partner is very masculine and one is very feminine in their appearance. And of course... this translates to like 90% of the fandom having Joe top and Cherry bottom. *sighs* I can't even...
Viktor/Jayce (Arcane) are a bit different, as neither of them is very feminine. Buuuut of course Jayce is still the more masculine between the two of them, so... yeah, you know it.
And again, this is even true for sapphic ships. I had people being very upset at me writing CaitVi a little kinky with a submissive Vi and a dominant Caitlyn. Because again, Caitlyn is more feminine, Vi more musculine. So oft course people want the relationship dynamic to reflect this...
And that... is exactly my point.
See, when I brought this up in fandom spaces, the answers I got were like: "Well, I just think that is their sexual preference." But of course not a single person could answer me, why that was. Why they think the more feminine (within a western understanding of this, mind you) would be the one who would prefer bottoming.
And that is without - again - going into the fact that not all gay people will have or enjoy anal sex and frankly, I find it unimaginative, how in so much gay fiction, anal sex gets depicted as the end-all-be-all.
I mean, I will openly admit that, yes, this does not only hold true for women writing gay fiction. Because there is a lot of historical baggage in this regard within the gay community itself. Because, yes, this was something explicitly forbidden by a lot of religion. Because, yes, this also is the one way (well, with the exception of 69) for gay man to have sex that can be pleasurable for both at the same time. And because, yes, there is a whole lot of just stuff of it being condemned and... It is a whole big thing.
But I just... I would just wish for it to be depicted with a bit more nuance. And for it to stop enforcing heteronormative genderroles. Because... god damn it. I am so sick of all of that.
#vent#rant#rant post#fanfiction#queer fiction#smut#mlm#gay#gay fiction#top bottom#heteronormativity#lgbtq#fandom#yaoi manga
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Hi! 😅 What is your least favorite stereotype or generalization about Killugon/Leopika that you see often in the Hunter x Hunter fandom? It doesn’t have to be the most common ones, you can say some that you just personally don’t agree with!
Hello! I've seen other peoples' answers floating around, it's interesting to read different takes on this topic!
I want to preface this by saying I think one of the great things about fandom is that everyone is able to explore their own ideas freely and create the kind of content they want to see in the world, so while I have my own personal tastes I don't want to discourage anyone from creating what makes them happy, even if it's not my thing.
I'm quite picky about characterization personally, though I don't think my tastes/opinions are too unpopular.
With KilluGon especially, a lot of what bothers me boils down to making their relationship/dynamic way more uneven than it is in canon. One of the things I value about their relationship is that they're the same age, similarly value and care about each other, they have around the same strength/level of talent, etc. It's so special that they managed to find someone who matches them so well, someone they can truly consider an equal.
So, I find it off-putting when people drastically change the balance between them so one is much bigger/stronger/older looking or acting/has more power in the relationship/etc. (or vice versa of course). It just doesn't feel like their dynamic any more at that point. Of course they have different personalities so they'll have different ways of interacting with each other, and I'm also not talking about normal height variation (though I personally prefer them to end up around the same height, give or take a few inches on either side), but when there's a strong focus on some form of inequality between them in the dynamic, it's very unappealing to me. A lot of times this comes from trying to force them into stereotypes they don't fit.
I've talked about this extensively in meta form, but the common belief that Killua's feelings are much stronger and heavier than Gon's really bothers me, too. While I agree that Killua clearly seems to have a better understanding of his feelings and what they mean (I think he's ahead of Gon in this because of his introspective personality/higher awareness on the topic), that doesn't mean Gon's feelings towards Killua have less weight or meaning.
His mental health deteriorating in Chimera Ant Arc and him lashing out that one time doesn't erase all of the tons of kindness and affection he gave Killua prior to that, and it's clear that Killua is incredibly special to Gon. He even states that out loud multiple times to Killua! The ways they show it are different, but in my eyes they adore each other equally, and I do see that extending into a romantic sense as well--even if Gon still has to "catch up" in terms of understanding the nature of his feelings.
I also think some people don't know how to portray Gon in contrast to Killua, and he can come off as bland and generic instead of his amazing complicated self, or he gets treated like he's not intelligent in his own right.
Also, I totally get why people make this kind of thing (because I love tragedies in other stories), but I personally can't deal with endings where Gon and Killua don't ultimately get to be happy together. They've just been through so much already, they clearly want to be together, plz don't separate them ultimately... 😭 I know people gotta explore the angst, and to be fair I definitely like the angst in the context of what they've been through/what they might still have to go through to be back together again, but I just can't deal with unhappy endings for them. I also don't like seeing them in relationships with or even romantically interested in anyone else even temporarily, but that's just me being extra picky, LOL.
I don't engage with LeoPika works to quite the same degree even though I like the ship, but I get irritated when people try to push heteronormativity on them too much because of Kurapika's appearance. People acting like it's just a regular ol het ship or putting Kurapika in effeminate roles his personality doesn't fit at all are confusing to me.
I hope that's helpful! I'm sure I have plenty more pet peeves saved up from all the years I've spent in the fandom, but those are the major fandom trends I don't care for.
#hxh#hunter x hunter#killugon#gonkillu#leopika#gon#killua#kurapika#leorio#asks#anonymous#my posts#long post
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gen question but isnt dedegoon or dedesuka or whatevr a proship? ive seen some ppl calling it a proship cuz its abusive but your bio says proship dni so idk if its ok to ship or what (sorry im new to this)
hiya! thank you for your ask! it isnt and heres why
first of all i am /Not/ proship. i am not anti-anti or whatever either. what drives me to ship them is the fact theyre friends who like to be in each other's company. i like their sweet moments together. they bond over scamming an innocent population and bullying children. they're partners in crime. theyre besties who talk shit about others as a hobby.
i also don't think theyre already dating. i look at their relationship and im like. you guys have some kind of weird crush on each other and you're also selfish assholes. they're in the world's worst situationship.
"but dedede whacks escargoon a lot!" not only does escargoon get physical towards him too (the dynamic starts shifting in the dentist episode) but his "punishments" are often for a reason. escargoon is often very mean to dedede. in almost every episode he calls him hopeless or stupid or ugly or anything like that. and that gets him a whack. if i were dedede i'd do that too! it'd piss me off! having my lackey who i pay and who i consider my best friend insult me so overtly over and over LOL. but does escargoon ever try and stop him his evil doing? hell no! the guy helps him and gives him advice and ideas! he is NOT a good guy either. he loves being mean! he literally says it!
of course escargoon cares a loy about him. pretty sure everyone is aware. i don't even need to compile all the times he runs after him or worries about his well being. one time he "left" after he realised he'd have to do all the waddle dee's chores and didn't want to do his job. guess who's shown tearing up when seeing what poor state dedede is in after being left all on his own. he's always protecting him and defending him (sometimes backhandedly) from other people. he holds dedede dear. it's obvious he does. he's an old man, he's not being manipulated into liking dedede. he genuinely cares about the guy.
there are episodes where they bicker a lot but end up getting along, episodes where they're the best of friends and episodes focused on their resentment against one another. the show kind of yoyos with their relationship. it's not really anything to take seriously. if you get offended from their interactions you'd get a heart attack from watching looney tunes. the back and forth of their dynamic is part of the fun!
I *highly* recommend watching the original version of the show as the dub often replaces sweet lines they share with jokes that don't really hit the mark. it's a shame. (however i will give the dub some credit on occasion)
Actually, i have a [post] that compiles a lot of sweet screenshots of them together. it doesnt include the times where they hold on to each other in the cannons or in the whispy woods episode or when esxargoon said "isnt this strange? can't you feel we're striving apart?" and dedede says "what! that's ridiculous!" in a lighthearted voice. or when escargoon makes a joke about a late night drive being romantic and dedede just? laughs in agreement? there's a scene where they call each other stupid in the most friendly way ever. i actually have a handy twitter of fun scenes where escargoon gets away with some things (doesn't include when escargoon yells at him in the fireworks episode or orders him in episode 69), like saying *he's* actually the one in power because dedede isn't competent enough to reign. or dedede understanding escargoon's concerns of him becoming dumber than he is already.
they're just villains who are attached to each other and are a team no matter what.
escargoon protects dedede a lot, and he cares about him more than what his job entails, but people tend to forget he's got a special place in dedede's heart too.
dedede keeps an album of pictures they took together. he never threatens to fire him and, as far as i know, never even cuts his salary and is the only one in the castle to even have a bonus. he shares the food he keeps from the waddle dees with him in episode 93. he clarifies he doesnt want knuckle joe's monsters to attack either of them. he's fine spending large amounts of money on him. twice? he never calls him ugly somehow. he even thanks him for having put up with him for so long and serving him well when the world is about to end. and then he clings unto him because he's scared of dying alone. his way of showing affection is not the "im crying because i think you're in danger" type of way that escargoon shows a lot but it's there.
Of course i don't think they're perfect gay rep. that's literally so stupid. you think im gonna look at two dumbasses who are bitter towards one another from what, a parodic, satirical children's anime from the early 2000s, and go "hmm yes this is what every queer couple should aspire to be this is peak lgbt rep"
If we're gonna talk about them how about we talk about some issues this show has that no one ever addresses. the colorism of the uv episode that is not put into question, not even by tiff, the moral compass. the rising sun imagery that is very much intentional as dedede is a caricature. the fatphobia? the fact kirby calls kawasaki and nagoya homos??? straight up???
people often blame episode 88, and yeah, it's not my favorite episode either. everyone's weird in that episode, not just dedede! yabui is far from empathetic, even the ebrums are disrespectful, and escargoon taunts dedede into chasing him for laughs and teases him about his old age. even at the end he teases him. i think it's one of those episodes that you just have to blame on the writers kinda like 89 (for example this one has got the right message but the execution is painful to watch. poor tiff.)
now, if 88 had changed their relationship it'd be a different matter. there are some sweet moments they share outside of their general "partners in crime" dynamic past episode 88 in my post actually! my favorite is the one where dedede has his arm around escargoon who's curled up like a cat while they're sleeping and the waddle dees are tucking them in from episode 91. it makes me so happy.
i could probably talk so, so much more about them. they're a huge comfort to me. however i don't trust just anyone with them. i am very much aware some people like them for the wrong reasons. but if you have a brain you can see where i'm coming from.
the show makes fun of them because they're evil, self-centered cowards. not because they're "gay" or anything like that. i saw someone call them queerbait one time and i had to log off for a minute.
anyway, to answer your question, people who do not recognize their genuine attachment to one another are bound to have a twisted view of them. i don't like dedegoon because they're "toxic" or awful to each other. but because they're each other's best friends. that's all. it's fine if you don't ship them, too. i just hope i can prove to people that they do matter to each other and that they're friends :)
#ask#yes i made sure to include other images than the ones already in my comp im doing a great job in dedegoon#there are so many things i didnt include there#everytime i think of them i remember something new#i also want to point out that i rewatch the show regularly. im on my... uh.. 7th proper rewatch? with my boyfriend#so. if anyone accuses me of fandomifying this show they chose the wrong person#also they say aishiteru 3 times atp idk what to tell you
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Why Namor x Shuri doesn’t work from a storytelling standpoint
Before I went and watched Wakanda Forever for the first time last Christmas, I saw so many people talking about how Shuri and Namor should’ve been a romantic couple. So I walked into the movie and for the first half, I could kinda see why some people could come to that conclusion. And then the second half happened and I was genuinely wondering if we saw the same movie. 💀 And while I didn’t (and still don’t) ship them, personally, and was (and still am) very confused as to why some people did (and still do), I wasn’t really bothered by it. Initially. But the more I think about it, the ship makes even less sense when you think about from a story writing perspective.
I will (begrudgingly) give Namor x Shuri shippers one point, Namor and Shuri do have good chemistry. Letitia Wright and Tenoch Huerta do play off each other well. But I would argue that it takes just as much chemistry to play enemies/rivals/antagonistic relationships as it does to play romantic/platonic/positive relationships. Any two characters on screen (on on paper or on stage or any other narrative art form) must have chemistry. Compelling character dynamics are important to tell a good story. Imma call it negative and positive chemistry.
Positive chemistry
Let’s look at Shuri as an example cause she has no canon love interest in the comics or in the movies, so most of this is fan theory.
Shuri and Peter Parker would likely have good chemistry because
- they’re both intelligent so will likely have the same interests
- they’re around the same age so they would likely be able to relate to each other
- they have the same dry sense of humor
- they have the same goal of wanting to defeat the bad guys -eg- Thanos
Whether platonic or romantic, they would make sense as a pairing.
Another pairing post WF we can look at is Riri and Shuri, and they work because
- they’re also both very smart but are often undermined because of their ages
- they have shared trauma and as a result are fiercely protective of one another
- they also have a similar sense of humor
- they both have the same goal of wanting to defeat the Talokanil and especially Namor (He does try to kill both of them. Several times. 💀)
- they literally finish each other’s sentences
Once again, platonic, romantic or even sisterly, it makes sense.
What makes both these pairings work to a degree is the idea of them being equal in some regard. Whether equal in intellect, or age, or race, or any other metric, they clearly both see each other as equal, even with Shuri being “the Crown Princess of an international superpower” and Peter and Riri being “average” civilians. They more or less agree on a common enemy and how to deal with said enemy, with morals and values that more or less align. (Within the context of the world they inhabit.)
Negative chemistry
But Namor and Shuri have what I would call negative chemistry. They do have some things in common which can be where their chemistry stems from, such as
- they are both rulers of powerful kingdoms who love their people and will do anything to protect them
- they both experience great personal loss and therefore are motivated by grief
- the surface world poses a great threat to them and may be exploited for their resources
- they admire each other’s kingdoms (the physical spaces that their people inhabit)
However even with these similarities we see that there are some glaring differences.
- Namor does not view Shuri as an equal, despite their similarities. His line of “you are queen now” showed that he was never willing to conduct to business with Ramonda, likely because she was the only person on the surface world who bested him when she lured him out of Talokan to facilitate Shuri and Riri’s rescue mission. He was simply looking for an excuse to get her out of the picture. Also, Namor’s love only goes as far as his people. Shuri’s love of people goes far beyond Wakanda’s boarders.
- He is reckless with his grief. He is correct in hating the surface world, and in particular white people for the pain they caused his people. But wanting to wage war with the whole world is extreme. Shuri on the other hand, has a better handle on how she externalizes her grief. She recognizes that even though she is angry at T’Challa’s death, the rest of the world doesn’t deserve to feel the extent of her wrath. Even when Namor does kill her mother, she rightfully directs her anger at him. She doesn’t become antagonistic with anyone else or try to take vengeance from anyone else. Sure, she has some outbursts at Nakia and M’baku, but she never really alienates them.
- Namor and the Talokanil, immediately resort to violence and war when they feel a threat from the surface world. But since no one knows they exist, this threat is hypothetical for now. (We know it’s going to happen when they do find out, given the track record of some countries in the world, but not yet.) A direct contrast to Ramonda and Shuri, who in the face of real eminent threats, resorted to peace and showed their aggressors mercy.
- Namor, despite wanting Wakanda’s help with his mission, ultimately doesn’t view Wakanda with anymore sympathy than he does the rest of the world. He has made it clear that he hates the surface world and everyone in it, which includes the Wakandans. I mean, “no love” is literally his name. Wanting to destroy the whole world, funny enough, including other Mayan descendants who were enslaved or colonized, is no different from wanting to wage war on his so called ally, killing half of them and then killing their queen. He never liked or respected them as people. That was not going to change with Shuri.
It’s also another reason why he killed Ramonda with no hesitation despite knowing what he knew about Shuri. It would be easy to forgive him if he had never met Shuri. Then Ramonda would simply remain as the nameless, faceless monarch of a powerful country. But the fact that Shuri opened up to him about the grief she was already carrying, only to inflict more pain, makes his crimes way more egregious. He knew Shuri on a somewhat personal level and still chose to kill the queen. Knowing she was her mother. It goes back to the point of him never seeing Shuri as human or recognizing her feelings as valid. All he wanted to do was push her to the extremes of grief so she would become reckless like he was. It’s clear that Namor doesn’t see Shuri as an equal. Which means that any positive development that would happen between the two would take a long time to properly write.
I’m sure someone out there has come up with better terms than “positive and negative chemistry” in a screenwriting book somewhere, but I was just thinking about different character dynamics and how they work. Many compelling relationships have that element of chemistry. For example, in the first Black Panther, T’Challa and Shuri bounce well off of each other. Positive chemistry. It’s also why Killmonger makes the perfect antagonist to T’Challa. Negative chemistry. It’s all chemistry that translates differently. Batman and Joker. Superman and Lex Luthor. Thanos and the Avengers. Team Dynamics within the Avengers. Thor and Loki. The Guardians of the Galaxy. And so many more. It’s all different types of chemistry. So yes, Namor and Shuri are arguably both great characters with complex motivations, and together, do have stellar chemistry, but is it chemistry that produces romance? I don’t think so.
In conclusion, yes, ship who you want (even when it makes no sense), these are fictional characters (who represent real world dynamics), it’s just for fun (how?), etc. but looking at it from the perspective of a storyteller, the character dynamics would not make it work. If you write a story with two such characters and they end up in love, it wouldn’t make sense.
(These are just the 3 am thoughts of a sleep deprived college student 😀)
#black panther#wakanda forever#shuri black panther#riri williams#namor#i need to go to sleep#I have so many assignments and yet I wrote this mini essay#💀
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So one of my fav fic author, just wrote a non-power AU of GoYuu (gojo/yuji) & SukuFushi (sukuna/ fushiguro) and...... I don't know what to feel. Like, have you know someone who ship them (it's the first for me) ? The fic's not underage, yuji's and megumi's age had been aged up by the author, but still the age gap, the dynamics, right? Can you think the reasons to ship them? Well, creativity really knows no bound.....😂😶
Oooh I have actually come across both of these ships very often on ao3. The ItaJun tag has a bunch of them on top hehe. I actually used to ship Sukuna and Megumi a little back when the anime was first airing(not anymore though).
For Gojo/Yuuji
I think the first episode scene where their faces are super duper close probably kickstarted it
(Gojo: tf is personal space??? what's thaaaat???)
GoYuu has a very popular ship dynamic I've observed in many fandoms; Student x Teacher. There's always a kind of jaded, aloof and distant teacher-figure who's shipped with the cheery, open-minded and sunny student-figure. I've heard that dynamic is really popular in East Asian fandom spaces(it appears a lot in danmei novels I've read). GoYuu was apparently the most popular ship in Japan (it beat out SatoSugu). Gojo argued to keep Yuuji alive and gave him time, so that's probably a point of appeal too. Gojo usually has no serious reactions to anything, he could have easily killed Yuuji and been done with it but he wanted him to live(Megumi did but eh, technicalities). What made this distant and carefree person take interest in the well-being of this stranger? Why would he risk the world for this one boy? That's probably the start of it. And then in the development, it's probably about how Yuuji can break down Gojo's walls and make him be more honest in his emotions.
2. Sukuna/Megumi:
I used to ship it because I thought Sukuna was interested in Megumi as a person, assumed he'd be someone who can give him a good fight or wanted him as an ally.
Also this probably, look at that aesthetic appeal:
(Damn Mappa had a thing for these, ItaJun also had this. Why???? Fuel fujo-bait??? I thank them for the ItaJun version)
Right before this Sukuna's all giggling laughing asking Megumi to give him more(to fight against, but like, SukuFushi enjoyers probably enjoy taking that to mean something different). I think we all assumed he was interested in Megumi's evolution as a sorcerer. He takes joy in fighting and if anyone can catch his interest, it'd be someone who's struggling to get stronger and sees him as a rival.
It seems like he doesn't give a shit about anyone but Megumi. Like that one time he verbatiom said "Aside from him, I truly don't care". Also in Shibuya arc he heals Megumi and fights Mahoraga and everyone though it's because he cares about him(I was a fool).
On Megumi's end, okay idk what the current SukuFushi shippers expect but I personally wanted Megumi to kill Sukuna even when I was shipping them. Enemies to lovers except one of them is permanently in the enemies phase. As far as I've seen, there's always this non-con element to it? Like Megumi is extremely reluctant, Sukuna is unrelenting in pursuing him, and Megumi goes through a bit of a corruption arc and Sukuna.....well he isn't redeemed but he tones down because Megumi asks. A Beauty & The Beast situation.
I was talking about it to my bff and she was (rightfully) roasting me like we were joking around.
Me: "Sukuna wants him for his body.....but like literally he wants to be inside him."
My friend: "You mean possess him???"
Me: "That's the word yes!"
The age-gap thing for SukuFushi feels more okay because I grew up on a bunch of fantasy shojo manga where a high school girl fell for an ancient spirit with a minimum age of 100. This isn't even an animanga thing, it's there in western media too(....Twilight). A lot of people just don't see the point of mulling over age gaps when the differences are centuries, even if the other half is a minor.
As for GoYuu, well I guess it's fiction, they're just lines on a page at the end of the day and it's less about the legalities of the gap and more about the dynamics it brings to the table that people can find interest in. The power difference, the difference in ways they view the world, the younger one is always more innocent, etc.
I personally don't find these to be my interests 99% of the time but I get why others would enjoy it (my few exceptions are Scum Villain and ErHa but if I start trying to explain THOSE messes we'd all lose it).
I guess people would be confused why I'm still hung up on ItaJun too huh? XDXD But as you said, fanon and creativity has no limits and people do as they like and enjoy.
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As someone who has had some fic really take off that I thought were pretty so-so and some do pretty low numbers that I thought were among my best, it really often has more to do with the particular fandom, ship and tropes than overall writing quality. A lot of the fics I've seen take off were ones that just scratched a particular itch no one else was scratching for a relatively popular ship. The less-popular ones are often for relatively rare ships and, especially, dynamics (I have a big thing for femslash involving older women especially villainous older women, and boy, talk about a thing that fandom has zero interest in. This isn't even a "complaining about people not liking femslash" thing; the femslash shippers, at least in my current fandoms, don't like it either! I've had people who are primarily femslash comment stuff like "I usually stay away from M/E-rated fics involving this character but this was really good" lol). I wrote those knowing they wouldn't do numbers, but because I really wanted to write them, and the people who like that stuff really liked it, which is all that matters to me.
Like, is writing quality a factor to some degree in fic popularity? Sure. If someone has SPAG errors everywhere or people are super OOC or whatever, then their fic probably won't be that popular no matter how many fan-favorite tropes it checks off. Similarly, if you look at the most-kudosed fics in a popular fandom, they might not be the *best* written fics in the fandom but they will usually still be in like the top 20th percentile for "writing quality" (which is highly subjective so it would be hard to do percentiles for that, but ykwim).
To use a kind of weird analogy - let me explain, I swear it makes sense - I think it's kind of like the eternal question of if "how attractive you are" matters in terms of how often women get catcalled. I think the people who say it doesn't matter, it's purely about men having power over you, are both wrong and right. If you're too far out of the standards of heteronormative/cisnormative/white-normative (or whatever race for a particular country) conventional-attractiveness for women, you won't get catcalled all that much; for instance, I've been fat most of my adult life, and I rarely ever got catcalled until I lost a lot of weight, and then it became the more constant worry that I'd heard other women talk about, but could never relate to before. That said, the particular times I've been catcalled or had strange men be the creepiest to me in public, it was rarely ever related to me looking particularly stunning that day; in fact, oftentimes I looked like shit. (This was true even during the rare times I got catcalled when I was fat.) It absolutely was more about being in a vulnerable situation. Attractiveness does matter in terms of if you're seeing as catcall-worthy in the first place, but once you're above a certain minimum threshold of what is considered conventionally-attractive in women (just being very clear about this, because I don't think I was unattractive by my own personal standards when I was fat, I lost the weight for other reasons; and as a queer woman, I often find women attractive who are of a similar weight to where I was in the past), it ceases to matter: you'll get cat-called more or less, or worse or more mildly, depending primarily on other stuff.
The same is true with writing quality in fanfic, I think. It's a factor in terms of setting a baseline. But once you're above that baseline, it's way more up to other things. You could write the most gorgeous prose and do a super insightful character study or the sexiest smut or whatever and have it ignored because it's not what people are looking for in the tags. You could phone it in (assuming you're still a pretty good writer, so your phoned-in is still above that minimum quality threshold) and if you hit all the right notes for that fandom/that ship (and you're picking a fandom and ship with a lot of readers in the first place), you'll soak in the views and kudos and bookmarks.
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I think there are plenty of people horny for f/f who like that exact thing, but they may not be hanging around a lot of parts of fandom because they just assume (often rightly) that they won't find anything they like there. They may not even be reading a lot of f/f fiction because life has not trained them to look for it.
but they will usually still be in like the top 20th percentile for "writing quality" (which is highly subjective so it would be hard to do percentiles for that, but ykwim).
I feel like the top 5 most kudosed are often something viral and meme-driven or really nasty porn that's godawful in every other way but is super hot if you like that trope. But yes, after the first few fics, a lot of top kudosed things are at least okay on a technical level.
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That other anon who was concerned about their lack of popularity was explicit that they're writing original work.
I think the situation there is even worse than for fic because there's no such thing as picking an already-popular ship. You can pick dynamics that you perceive to be popular, but growing an original work audience is always fairly complex and has much more to do with marketing skills than writing skills once you, again, pass that minimum threshold of writing competence.
For some kinds of original writing, particularly fetish porn, you can trade on the familiarity of stock figures (The Nerd, The Jock, etc.), but the farther you get from stuff with easy keywords, the harder that is.
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As someone who is long-time fan of Mlp EG and who has just finished watching TFP, your fic is true delight. I read it 5 times at least and it is still awesome. You perfectly matched girls with their autobots partners just as well as you did with decepticons as their evil counterpart. For example Twilight/Shockwave - both have high inteligence, but while one uses it for greater good and to help the others, the other abuses it to gain power and hurt the others; Fluttershy/Soundwave - even thought they are both animal lovers and quiet types, FS is just very shy girl while SW is calculating sadist; Rainbow/Starscream - Apart from being queer icons (If you can look at these two without the word gay constantly entering your mind, congrats, you´re legit cishet) they´re actually pretty similliar in function and personallity wise. They´re both eccentric, aroggant showoffs and are also fastest on their team. But it´s their differences that are making them great foils. RD is impaitent hothead, who jumps straight into action without the second thought, while SC is great schemer, who has his plans planed out. RD is literally element of loyalty, while SC is mostly loyal to himself and etc. I can´t wait to see all their interactions in the future. If you´re interested in some writting advice, there is one minor thing that can be fixed : your description of characters feelings and thought. You start explaining how and why they feel that way instead of giving readers benefit of the doubt. The best term I can think of is that you are describing a picture. Like you want us to see, hear and understand everything at once. It creates unnecessary sentences or whole paragraphs without which some emotional moments would have sounded better. For example if paragraph in Ch.2 with sentence "She was too stuborn." it would have sounded so much better. Or sentences like "She was too precious." are also kind of waste of space since they don´t tell anything new.It´s not worst type of description,but it can create a feeling that you don´t trust youre readers to read from emotions characters alone. Many new writers and comic artists are often doing this. It can be solved 2 ways : by improving their writing or start drawing comics. I´m sorry if I confussed you in some way. I tried my best to explain it, but english is not my primary language. If you don´t mind, I would recommend fics from @whatwooshkai to see what I am talking about ( it´s mostly TF shipping stuff, but man, the writting is so good that I can´t stop reading even if I wanted to). Overall great story and art, just writting needs a little improvment.
I want to finish this already long post with few questions:
1.What is group dynamic with eachother? I mean in and outside of their decided pairings. I can see Sideswipe and Rainbow´s relationship as chaos siblings and that Rainbow is definitely driving Ratchet insane, but what about the others? I´m courious to know.
2.Did you already started writting the next book? If not, do you have planned when you will start?
3.Do you consider draw this as a full time comic or at least draw some parts of it? Or drawing some strips of your incorrect quotes?It´s just that you´re artstyle is so pretty and redesigns of the autobots and girls are great. It´s shame to see so little of them.
4. Did you thought about getting your comics dubbed on youtube?
5. Do you draw ideas from the asks from your followers on Tambrlane or you take commissions only? Like if they had a idea for a comic/sketch and they post it to you, would you draw it? If not, could they draw it with your redesignes?
6. What gave you idea for this crossover? My best guess is that comic from Hasbro.
Holy- I never thought I would get such a long ask.
*rolls up sleeves and rubs hands*
Okay, let’s do this!
First, I want to thank you so much for the kind words, the fact that there are people who got really interested in my fic makes my heart flutter. <3
And I really love it when readers point out small details that I haven’t thought about that much while writing! Thank you a lot for the advice and recommendations, I really appreciate it! I will keep that in mind!
Now, to answer your questions:
1. You are absolutely correct about Sideswipe and Rainbow’s relationship, in my opinion, they will be the best chaos siblings (I am 100% sure that most of the members will go insane because of their pranks) I could write more detailed headcanons for them and the others too.
2. The next book is nearly finished, I will make sure to post it at the beginning of January.
3. I will drop more art soon, promise! Sorry for the lack of content, I’ve been pretty busy for the past few months. But now I’m finally free and I will certainly start drawing again! I also have several ideas in mind for some parts of the next book.
4. I don’t mind my comics being dubbed as long as I’m credited and they’ve asked for permission.
5. Again, if I’m credited and asked for permission, there will be no problem for other artists to draw my redesigns. I don’t usually take requests and it really depends on my free time and motivation, but if I really like the idea that has been suggested, I would (probably) draw it.
6. Good guess! But actually no. I was really into this crossover way before Hasbro decided to make a comic of it. I’ve been into a lot of fandoms and reading crossover fanfics basically became like a hobby to me. I got a lot of inspiration after I accidentally stumbled upon some pretty good written Tf/Mlp fics, but it took me a lot of time to finally get enough courage and start writing my own. I’m more than thankful for the support and love that I was given through the years! It really motivated me to keep on going!
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ngl ur last post abt mike and sol kinda makes me ship them
I wouldn't say I ship them, but I think they have the potential for a very interesting dynamic that I'm looking forward to being expanded upon in later chapters. I suppose this is as good a chance as any to summarize what I've gleaned from both games so far- I think y'all know by now just how much I like talking about Mikey.
Fair warning, there will be spoilers up ahead, for both the third season of the OG game and the first season of Nightbringer. I'll remain as vague as I can while still getting the point across, but they're rather large spoilers.
Solomon and Michael's Relationship
(The Impromptu Essay)
In Nightbringer, it seems like Michael has a similar relationship to Solomon that Nightbringer does- in terms of being a high-status being much more powerful than Solomon himself, who grants Solomon certain favors and protections and watching over him in a way.
For one, he gave Solomon the Ring of Wisdom, which as essentially the twin to the Ring of Light is likely very important to Michael. A few lines of dialogue in the OG game also imply that Michael cleaning up after Solomon's messes is a rather regular occurrence.
Speaking of those lines of dialogue... I think one of the most telling scenes about their relationship was the brief, one-sided conversation Michael had with MC in the OG game, after fixing a little (big) magic fiasco related to Solomon's cooking. Now, disclaimer, this scene is technically ambiguous, but "???" on a blinding light background seems pretty safe to assume as Michael considering the other times we've had this.
"He's a truly decent human with a good head on his shoulders, but sometimes he can be more troublesome than the demons."
The first thing Michael (or, who we can assume to be Michael) says here is essentially defending Solomon's character. This is clearly someone he knows personally, and to some degree trusts if he's willing to give him benefit of the doubt like this. That said, he's clearly exasperated. A real "god damnit, Solomon" moment.
"He acts as though he understands his own power, but he doesn't. Which is why his strange fascination with cooking of all things causes me no end of..."
This is the line I was talking about, that implied that Michael cleaning up after Solomon is a semi-regular occurrence. It definitely seems like this isn't the first time Michael has dealt with something like this from Solomon. And if it's affecting him personally like this, it's clearly something he feels some level of responsibility over.
Solomon and his antics clearly aren't insignificant to him. And from the looks of things, they haven't been for a long time- just a little while prior to this scene, a pre-fall Lucifer states that Michael has taken an interest in "a human sorcerer", implying this dynamic between the two of them started before Lucifer fell.
All in all... Solomon is someone that Michael on some level respects and trusts, but also a royal pain in the ass to look after. Which was the basis of that original post.
Now, with the groundwork of their canon relationship and the cold hard evidence out of the way, this is where I'm going to start getting into speculative (and semicoherent rambling) territory.
I think Michael and Solomon create an interesting mix of personalities. While Michael appears to be "the responsible one" of the relationship, he's constantly cleaning up after Solomon after all, I wouldn't exactly say he's a responsible person in his own right. At the end of the first season of Nightbringer, we see he has a tendency to deflect any conversation he doesn't like and literally run away from his problems. We also see throughout Nightbringer that Michael likes playing some major mind games to get what he wants, often with clear disregard for other people. He seems to be most comfortable playing 4d chess with people from a distance to avoid having to confront his feelings directly. He's manipulative and mischievous in order to cover up deep-seated feelings of loneliness- something Solomon can very much relate to.
I feel like Solomon would be one of the few who has the patience for Michael's mind games. Solomon isn't above these kinds of games himself, after all- it takes one to know one. Puzzles are something that fascinate Solomon, and let's face it he needs the intellectual stimulation. He's just as bored and lonely as Michael is. Enough that he just might toy with him right back.
Solomon is also quick-witted and observant enough to be able to tell when Michael is trying to deflect things or pull a fast one, and call him out on it- which, honestly, might be for Michael's own good at this point. Somebody needs to tell this man no, and somehow I don't think any of the angels underneath him are going to do it. Speaking of which...
Solomon also seems to have a unique take on authority when compared to basically any other character. While most characters- angels especially, including former angels like Lucifer- view things very hierarchically, Solomon doesn't seem to see things this way. He has no problem sassing Nightbringer and calling him out on things, despite Nightbringer having a clear position of power over him and it essentially being biting the hand that feeds you. Solomon could very well be the one person with the nerve to treat Michael as an equal. Which creates a very interesting dynamic.
All in all, I'm very excited to see where Solomon and Michael's relationship goes. I mean, I'm excited to see more of Michael at all, but I think these two especially are a real point of interest.
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something I like about your spider torch drawing a lot is Johnny and Peter are the same size. idk something about how gay media would make one of them more bigger to show that they are more dominant. Johnny and Peter are the opposite of that, you just focus on the relationship
i'd be reluctant to call what you're talking about "gay media" because, like, i think a lot of the time when i see those sorts of imposed power imbalances in gay ships it's not actually really done by gay authors or artists - it's kind of a fujo thing.
size differences are cool and i love them too (makes for so much fun in a visual medium - i love playing with wade and peter's size difference.) i guess the problem does come from people making it a stereotype - i kind i hate seeing power imbalances in romantic relationships, especially if it's not something that's examined. if it's just a given that one has to be "dominant" and one has to be "submissive" and it's not something that's discussed or subverted in any way in a predator/prey sort of a way it's really weird to me. makes me feel all sorts of uncomfortable. humans don't work like that. or shouldn't work like that. healthy relationships do not work like that.
i think i do like that spideytorch very often escapes that gross fujo dynamic because they are the same age and they are a similar build and they are both kind of matched on terms of power (maybe. does fire beat spiders in a scissors-beats-rock sort of a way?), so it always looks like two normal, consenting adults who are on equal footing, and neither of them get grossly babified or anything. (love to see it!)
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What’s Beyond Evil about? What about it do you love?
Hello, thanks for the questions! I'm always happy to promo Beyond Evil and gush about why it's 16 of some of the best episodes of television I've ever watched 😊 Assuming this ask is for recommendation purposes, I'll try to keep my explanation mostly spoiler free.
Plot-wise, Beyond Evil is about a 20 year old serial murder case that took place in the fictional small town of Manyang. Lee Dong-sik, local dilf nutjob, was accused of doing the crimes, including killing is own twin sister. He has since become a police inspector in Manyang (returning home 18 years after the murder accusations because an investigation went wrong while he was stationed in Seoul.) Han Joo-won, the son of the Deputy Commsioner of the Korean police force and previously an inspector himself in Foreign Affairs division, comes to Manyang specifically to catch Dong-sik, who he believes to be the killer based on other crimes he was investigating at Foreign Affairs. They are quickly assigned as partners, much to both of their displeasure. (Dong-sik doesn't like Joo-won's snooty, rich city kid attitude and Joo-won wanted to surveil Dong-sik discreetly for his private investigation). What can be described as a cat-and-mouse game between them ensues when a new murder occurs with the same MO as the cases from 20 years ago, exacerbating Joo-won's determination to catch Dong-sik at all costs. But wait, the preppy little hot-shot from Seoul has some secrets of his own and motivations for being in Manyang that aren't purely moralistic or justified ... Most of the show involves them trying to solve the crimes and importantly, the consequences that occur when the answers are revealed.
What I like about Beyond Evil ... well I could probably talk about it all day but I'll try to condense it down into a few bullet points:
The characters - they are all fleshed out, flawed, realistic, and compelling, even the "bad guys". Friendships of all genders and ages are included. The idea of family and what makes people family by blood or choice gets discussed in almost every episode. The people who are portrayed as lifelong friends do genuinely seem like they love and care for one another in an organic way. I don't think there's a character in this show that I don't love for one reason or another even if it is just loving to hate them.
It's a "cop" show that is kind of ACAB tbh. The police are portrayed in a unflattering light unlike most American dramas. The rules surrounding how and when missing persons can be looked for and how the investigations into the various female victims are conducted based either negative or positive societal reactions to the victims are criticized at every turn. In the end, you're left with a lot of questions about how the justice system could be improved but the realization that any kind of change won't be simple or easy
Segueing off the prior point, the victims and their families are the main focus. There's no understand or sensationalizing the killer and the criminals. Trauma, and the lingering affects of a family member being killed, is a major theme that often gets excluded in mainstream crime dramas.
My main pairing. When it comes to Joo-won and Dong-sik, the writers really revolutionized the older jaded cop vs. the younger hot-shot rookie trope. Their relationship is so fascinating and unique. It could be a recipe for disaster or a very mutually advantageous partnership, depending on the situation lol The push-pull between them never fails to satisfy. I love examining power dynamics in my pairings and this one has it in spades. Shipping aside though, the evolution of their relationship and the way Shin Ha-kyun and Yeo Jin-goo portray the characters and how their chemistry ignites onscreen is, in my opinion, a major selling point for the show.
The themes - justice, injustice, atonement, redemption, despair, healing, what it means to be vulnerable and give someone else the power to destroy you or restore you, food as a love language ... Above all, this show is about love
While I feel I've only scratched the surface of explaining why I love this show and would recommend it to everyone, I'll stop here so I don't give away too much. If you do happen to watch the show based on this answer, I hope you enjoy it as much as me!! Thanks again and have a lovely day 🥰
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What do you think Ben and Holly’s dynamic and personalities look like?
My opinion:
Ben is usually calm, laid-back and chill and often the only brain cell left in dangerous situations. He is a good observer (in the woodpecker episode when he taught the chicks to fly by mimicking the flying poses despite not knowing how to do it himself), pretty handy and good at fixing things (like all the elves do) and a bit ambitious and a good animal tamer (I’m not sure is it the right term to use, but the successfully ride Speedy the Snail (one of the hardest to be tamed.) and forgives quickly (the elf games). But he can be a teaser (in the elf joke episode, with no ill intent), lose his temper quickly and occasionally dismiss fairies' abilities (such as magic and flying, but he learned from it and never did it as often). And talking about the “Ben’s birthday party” episode, he just asked Holly about his birthday card and either she remembered his birthday (I know the writers used that for plot purposes (reminding Holly to make Ben’s birthday card to get the episode going) but I feel that’s a bit insensitive from Ben’s side, so I would make it his flaw. And he's a bit of a power illusionist (in Superheroes when he cosplayed into Elfman, but his friends just called him Elfboy which is very humourous though)
Holly is outgoing, girly and sometimes pretty aloof. She has a kind personality and is naturally curious about everything (especially elf culture, like she always asks Ben what he’s learning at school or go to his school to experience herself). If she loved someone (familiarly, platonically or possibly romantically), she would be attached to them very much (eg: Nanny Plum, King Thistle, Ben, etc). And in my opinion, she’s one of the smartest fairies in the series (she nearly guessed Barnaby’s fairy disguise (she asked him “Have we ever met you before?” - simple to us the audience but considering how dumb the fairies are, this deserve applause). She compliments other people a lot (especially Ben). However, she is often overconfident of her own abilities (eg: her magical skills and the possibility of it going wrong), sometimes looking down on elven customs (but like Ben she fixed that quickly and may be one of the few fairies in BAHLK treat elves with respect (the other are the fairy kids and Mrs Fig)). She can be cruel with her magic when she’s angry (the elf joke day episode), and has a really scary death glare (the wand factory to Strawberry and to the Wise Wand 3000 in the new wand episodes).
I think both of them are optimistic, love adventure and cared deeply and concern for each other when one of them is in trouble, and treat each other as equals despite of class and race divisions (also deserve another applause)
Regarding to romantic shipping (when they are teens/ adults), they would fit into the “Childhood friends to lovers”, “Interspecies romance” and “Forbidden love” tropes ( considering the class and race difference, segregation and we never see a hybrid or a proper elf and fairy romance in the series )
=> Dynamic: (In the series) Very platonic and sibling-like (Ben and Holly treat each other like siblings that they never had since Ben is an only child and Daisy and Poppy are fucking hell spawns)
@columba1234
#ben and holly's little kingdom#bahlk#holly thistle#ben elf#bahlk analysis#spend an hour of sleep to type this#benolly#ben and holly
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Nessian Rant part 3
First I wanna say the looneys in this fandom make it so unbearable to be here and just have fun. I used to post whatever I wanted without a second thought but now everything has to sit in the drafts for 3 days while I stress over how people might react.
Fuck that.
I'm gonna scream about what I wanna scream about and if you take it personally that's your problem. These are just characters, clock in to reality and stop acting like they raised you.
Now...
I always see my Nessian mutuals talk about acowar Cassian and trilogy Cassian as a whole being so great but...
To be clear I don't mean Cassian as a standalone character, he's literally amazing alone but in Nessian? Be serious
He's also amazing with every other woman he comes into contact with except Nesta... 🤦🏻♀️ can't believe yall stan this ship, stand up rn please 😭 lolol jk. This is just a rant, ship literally whatever the fuck you want, luv u 🫶🏼
I said in a recent answer that the key to enjoying SJM's books is abiding by the Sarah Says rule.
Listen to what Sarah Says even if you read with your own eyes that in canon that "character A got shot by character B", if Sarah Says "well actually B doesn't have fingers so he couldn't pull the trigger and A actually shot himself from 3 feet away being both the victim and the gunman" then that's that.
I'm gonna refer to the facts on paper as canon and what Sarah Says as the narrative and what fans think as fanon.
The thing with a lot of (anti Feysand pro Nessian) fans is they can break the Sarah Says rule only when they want to.
They see past the narrative and fanon to look at the canon and say "I don't like that/ I don't think that's healthy/ that guy sucks/ they both suck"
But then will say acomaf and acowar Nessian was great. What was sooooo great about it? I'm not gonna act like they don't have good moments but they definitely aren't as good as fanon or the narrative makes them out to be.
Let's look at their first meeting
Narrative/ Sarah Says/ Feyre's Mind: Cassian is looking at Nesta and Nesta is ignoring Cassian. There's a little back and forth. Nesta tries to ignore him, he doesn't like that. Do you feel some tension? I feel some tension
Fanon: Cassian was the only one brave enough to call Nesta on her BS and dish it back to her/ he got under her skin/ finally someone tells her off etc you know what I'm referring to
Canon: Feyre and Elain frequently challenge Nesta and she more often than not gives in to them. The IC are in the house because Feyre wants to be there and Elain said to hear them out. In that same scene, Feyre essentially tells Nesta she's living her best life and to fuck off. And power to her. That's just their dynamic.
But Cassian? Cassian is a stranger. He's in her house. He's asking for her help. His HL is asking for her help. So why was he antagonising her?
The narrative and fanon loves to act like Cassian is at best an equal and at worst below Nesta in some way and he's just stepping up to meet her energy but ???
Nesta didn't want them in her home. She worried that just working with them would put herself and others in danger. She didn't want to become Fae. She didn't want to share her story to garner sympathy for the NC. She didn't want to kill or use swords.
But all of those things happened anyway??
She's always the one backed into a corner and then treated like she was on equal ground just cause she's still got her pride? That single sin of not breaking is always punished again and again.
Do you see how you've bought into what Sarah Says?
Hybern and the Cauldron?
Cassian was twitching trying to reach for her, this was the moment we knew for sure they were gonna be mates omg
And Nesta? She was right. Everything she feared would happen did but even worse? She and Elain have been kidnapped and she doesn't know why they're being dunked like chicken wings but the fucking pot tried to kill her. She's the one who fell for an eternity and fought her way back to life.
No offense but not the greatest moment to base your romance on since you have to swivel the camera away from a woman in a traumatizing situation to point at a man and say look how seeing her hurt hurts him 🤕
And acowar??? The supposed golden era of Nessian?? Babe, that's just spray paint
It's Nesta who stands up for Cassian at the HL Meeting. You know what she also does? Recount her trauma to strangers, she isn't feeling well, she stands up for innocent humans and fae, she commands a room full of the most powerful men on the Continent.
It's Nesta who calls for Cassian, saves his life, and covers her body with his. These are Nessian moments yes but they are Nesta's actions. It was her who made Nessian shine.
Cassian? He promised her forever and then ignored her? Pulled away, got embarrassed or something who the fuck cares.
But this is your man - look at the canon - this is your man??
And you said yes.
That's why you got ACOFAS. That's why you got your 500 year old man telling a shell shocked, dying woman that he didn't know why her sisters loved her. That's why you got a leader of legions raging like a 14 year old league player. A whole r/AITA villain
And that's why he embarrassed y'all in ACOSF. That's why you got EIGHT HUNDRED PAGES AND NOT A SINGLE I LOVE YOU because you already accepted less than the bare minimum
Because you failed to apply the rule equally for both ships.
Cassian is also in a power imbalanced relationship with Nesta, he's also 500 years older than her so why suddenly have issue with him having control over her and using it to break her and reshape her how he wants?
Again. You can ship what you want. You can indulge in fanon all you want. I support that. Just hope you know that that's what you're doing.
Mutuals don't hate me 😭
#anti nessian#acotar rant#anti acomaf#anti acowar#anti sjm#nesta archeron#cassian#nesta deserves better#pro nesta#sjm critical
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not really appreciating or understanding still the whole purity culture accusation for pointing out that people are well in their right to find a unhealthy power dynamic ship between Aaravos and a 19 yr old more uncomfortable than Aaravos and a middle aged guy well into adulthood - this isn't purity culture, this is, like, a really normal perspective and perfectly fine for the fanbase of primarily young people (if not children) to have, I don't understand what's worth getting upset about, is this just rehashed proship discourse or what
and I don't think you're really in the mindset to be having this discussion, considering I've said your main point of contention - that it is understandable and ofc absolutely allowed for the age gap to be what people find off putting about Claudia and Aaravos - over and over again:
like to be clear whatever makes you uncomfortable makes you uncomfortable, nothing wrong with that, block tags/people and curate your experience all you want
and I'm gonna be honest with you, on tumblr? TDP is an extremely adult heavy fandom. To the point that when I first joined the fandom back in 2018, I was one of the youngest, and still am, even in my early 20s now. And tumblr is a 17+ age site anyway, so young children shouldn't even be on here (and if they are, they had to sign a button saying they were older, and it's on them and their parents to figure out how to curate their online experience, soo).
So let me reiterate:
People are allowed to be squicked out by Claudia and Aaravos' age gap. But to act like there's a moral slant to it - Viren/Aaravos being better/fine/less morally problematic - is a facet of purity culture and culturally Christian attitudes towards sex. The issue isn't the discomfort, that's something that's often very personal and subjective, the issue is the moralization of that discomfort. Which, as a queer person, is very very similar to how discomfort and morality are utilized and weaponized against queer people and 'taboo' literature in general. Which again, as someone with a degree in English who also teaches the humanities for a living, is something I'm acutely familiar with.
"We have to be careful about what we portray in art because impressionable people may get confused between art and reality" is not a new take. It's the backbone of Plato's The Republic. It's what essays were written in opposition of in the 1600s. It's what 19th century British grammarians were concerned with when codifying 'proper' English down into the first real dictionaries. It's the same mindset curbing portrayals of LGBTQ+ people in media today, because when you moralize certain things, you put up emotional barriers than get in the way of actually dismantling the thing you're talking about in the first place. It's all the same shit. It's all the same moralized thought crime. And to say you should never question WHY something is uncomfortable is a surefire way to never question any bias you may or may not have - because biases aren't always bad, but they should absolutely always be examined so you can see where it's coming from. Yours and others personal discomfort is not a Standard, the same way what I'm personally comfortable with or discomforted by is not a Standard, but I'm not acting like mine is, and you are
'Rehashed proship discourse' is what helped cultivate the environment that led to a massive wave of harassment of the aro and ace communities online from 2013ish to 2017ish (which I saw first hand). It's also what led to me, a 16 year old, being harassed by grown adults and called a pedophile somewhat regularly for what cartoon characters I wanted to kiss, because I had the same opinions on not moralizing what people do in fandom as I did at thirteen, and as I do now.
If you look at any ship or dynamic with a large age gap and write it off solely because of the age gap, you're not engaging in critical thinking. It's a "you don't need to know why this thing is bad, you just need to know it has a label of Bad". It's as simple as that, and that's precisely the problem.
If you want to do more reading and to expand your horizons on the subjects I'm talking about (literary analysis, societal purity culture, upacking biases, etc.) I suggest this tag on my main blog, and feel free to come back and discuss. If not, have a good day, but I don't feel like continuing this conversation any further, simply because unsurprisingly, it seems that critical thinking is something you are struggling to apply, and I don't think we're going to get very far without it.
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Arc-V Day 6 and 7
I'm a bit behind. Please @arcvmonth, spare me. Don't turn me into a card.
Anyway, for Understudy Spotlight I wanna briefly talk about Roger. I say briefly, because I'll save most of my thoughts for the Villains Prompt. For now, I gotta say, he's my vote for most underrated Yugioh bad guy. I LOVE villains who think they're hot shit, but turn out to be nothing but smug snakes. Plus, his voice actor NAILS his breakdowns. I was surprised to see so many people disliked him (probably Shōnen fans who can't accept a villain that isn't super-duper powerful). Finally, I love me some Disney Villain Deaths.
Anyway, Day 7: Of Amores, Per the Prophecy
Oh boy, does Arc-V have some banger ships. Some of my faves:
Fruitshipping:
Main-guy with Main-girl ships in most Shōnen anime tend to hit with the force of a wet fart, with Yugioh being no different. This is because they fall under the trap of making the girl be the only one who constantly thinks of protagonist-kun, whereas the MC is usually only thinking about fighting, eating, and their male rival who they're totally-not-gay-with.
Therefore, it's wild that these two idiots enamored the Arc-V so much as they, and it was via the use of a very simple trick: have both parties be clearly interested in one another. Seriously, Arc-V turns into an epic, interdimensional romantic drama from Season 2, and it's so strange for a franchise like Yugioh (even if it already happened in GX). Yuya spends as much time thinking about Yuzu as she does about him, and that's so refreshing.
One thing I love about this ship is how much they emphasize that the distance between them doesn't diminish their bond. In fact, it's the opposite, when they're separated that their feelings are most in display. Yuzu's duel with Chojiro is one such example: despite not being allowed near one another, Yuzu still had her feelings reach him.
Them being enemies in their past lives but lovers in this one also adds an extra element of brainrot for me.
Appleshipping and Fallenangelshipping:
I wanna re-emphasize this: we NEED more F/M ships where the guy is completely, stupidly in love with the girl. This applies more to appleshipping admittedly; seeing Yugo explode with joy from seeing Rin will never stop melting my heart. Male characters in anime are often shy of showing physical affection toward their love interests, but not Banana-boy. Plus, imagining how they grew up in poverty is interesting.
Serenadeshipping:
OMG THIS SHIP IS SO GOOD. LIKE I KNOW I HAVE MASSIVE YURI BIAS BECAUSE LOVE LIVE FAN BUT STILL. Ok so you obviously got badass and serious Serena with ray-of-sunshine Yuzu, so the dynamic is fun from the get-go. But we also have the fact that Yuzu became one of, if not the, first friends Serena's ever had. Plus there's the "changing clothes" scene and I'm sure you could do some gay awakening shit.
Also Yuzu is so happy upon seeing Serena late in the series. Just look at her!
And then when Serena betrays them she's so sad. DAMN IT ARC-V, THIS IS FROM THE FREAKING CAPTAIN SOLO EPISODE, WHY IS MY HEART IN PIECES?!
(Extra angst when you consider this is the last time they spoke before getting thrown into Arc-V)
Finally, I imagine she'd be happy to forever be with Yuzu at the end of the series
Lustershipping:
similar dynamic as Serenade, but with a rival-to-lovers tint. It's just cute, mmkay? Aesthetically, this is one of my favorites, Masumi's design is great
Genesishipping:
Sometimes, ships are more interesting for what they don't tell you than for what they do. The showrunners left the nature of Zarc and Ray's relationship ambiguous, which means there's a lot of possible avenues to take it. Enemies to Lovers? Sure, go ahead. Enemies that become lovers because of their new incarnations' unique souls? Works too.
Plus Zarcray fans make some Fire content.
Honorable Mentions: Guiltshipping, Candyshipping, Emblemshipping, Braceletshipping,
#arc v#arcvmonth#arcvmonth2023#yugioh shipping#fruitshipping#serenadeshipping#lustershipping#genesishipping#yugioh arc v
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