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lloydskywalkers · 4 years

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any port in a storm

Pixal and Lloyd and the evolving nature of friendship, as highlighted by the regular burning down of your city.

(desperately trying to break through writer’s block and classes again, this was supposed to be under 2k and it is...very much not hdfjkgh but! i’ve been meaning to write for Pixal and Lloyd for a while so here are a whole bunch of feelings about the two of them and s8)

Pixal meets — truly meets — Lloyd Garmadon shortly after his brother’s been blown to pieces.

She says truly, because if you ask her, Pixal will tell you she met Lloyd Garmadon at exactly 8:48 in the evening outside his father’s monastery, moments before a horde of nindroids led there by Pixal herself descended upon them.

But Lloyd argues that since they said about two words total to each other, it doesn’t really count as meeting, and by the time Pixal’s spending the better part of her day with him running high and low around Ninjago City, she’s learned that it’s easier not to press the point.

Lloyd can be stubborn, like that.

She’d first learned that when she’d met him, just after they’d lost Zane. That loss hadn’t lasted long, especially for Pixal, but the immediate aftermath of it had been devastating. She’d watched with blank eyes as the team had fractured, splitting at the seams as they all fled their separate ways, too heartsore and dizzy with grief to do much otherwise.

All of them had fled, save Lloyd. She hadn’t paid him much attention before that point, the surprisingly small bearer of the Golden Power. Of course, he wasn’t the bearer of that power anymore, but his eyes alone had shown the experience of it. There’d been a brief, lost look that had crossed his face as the others had mentioned leaving, before it had been swept under a mask of stubborn, determined blankness. He wouldn’t be leaving. Someone had to stay behind and watch out for things, he’d claimed, even as the loss had bled through his voice.

Pixal hadn’t quite grasped the concept of empathy at that point, but she’d felt something dangerously close to it.

At any rate, the only interaction they’d had alone was brief. In fact, the only one Pixal can truly remember — and her memory never fails — is the quick exchange they’d had in the hospital lobby directly after the battle. The hospital was for Mr. Borg, and for the ninja’s minor injuries.

There was nothing any hospital on earth could do for Zane.

Pixal had found herself next to Lloyd in the waiting room, trying to distract herself from those thoughts while Lloyd stared at the stark white tiling with dull eyes.

“They never mentioned what your power was,” she’d asked him, almost absently. Collecting data, processing information — anything she could do to distract from the crushing grief.

“Oh.” Lloyd had blinked, startling back into awareness. He’d suddenly looked painfully young. “It’s, ah, I guess it’s just green, now.”

It had been Pixal’s turn to blink. “Green.”

“Yeah.” Lloyd had bit his lip, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly, two habits he’ll never quite lose. “I mean — it’s more than that, but it’s like — energy, I guess, is the best way to put it?”

“Interesting,” Pixal had remarked.

“Yeah.”

They’d stared at each other in silence after that, before they’d both been called off to other errands — and then they were having Zane’s funeral and then Pixal was making realizations she never got to tell anyone, and that had been that in her early introductions to Lloyd Garmadon. Quiet, awkward, and possessing an incredible power he hardly even knew the name of.

Looking back, Pixal figures her introduction hadn’t gone much better.

They’d continued as passing acquaintances as time went on, separated by danger and the confines of Zane’s head, and Pixal had figured that’s all they’d ever be. But then their Sensei goes missing and, despite Pixal’s increasing disappearances on Zane as she rebuilds her own body, she’s been given the role of watching out for Ninjago city along with Lloyd.

She quickly learns that quiet is not a term fit for Lloyd Garmadon when you’re trapped alone with him.

************

“How is there not a single station playing actual music?” Lloyd seethes, flicking through the channels almost manically. “It’s two am, who’s gonna be listening to your stupid commercial for toothpaste now, are you kidding me?”

“Statistically speaking, this is the prime time for long-distance driving near Ninjago City,” Pixal supplies, her voice a hint scratchy where it comes through the his car’s radio speakers. “Or, if you factor in the construction in the east district, there could still be traffic from late-night bars.”

Lloyd groans, thunking his head against the steering wheel as another ad screeches through the small space. “Wonderful.”

“Your vocal tones suggest you find it otherwise.”

“Dont trust ‘em, my vocal tones are traitors.” As if to solidify his point, Lloyd’s voice cracks in the middle of his sentence, shooting up an octave higher. Lloyd goes bright red, and thunks his head against the steering wheel again.

Taking pity on him, Pixal aims for reassurance. “It is normal for your voice to break, Lloyd. It shouldn’t last too long.” She pauses, momentarily scanning through another article. “On second thought, this one suggests it could also take two to three years for your voice to stabilize.”

Lloyd gives a strangled moan. “End me.”

“Unfortunately, that would defeat the purpose of why I’m here in the first place.”

Lloyd tilts his head, cracking an eye open as he glances at the camera feed he knows she’s watching him from. “Unfortunately, huh,” he muses. “So you’re saying if Zane hadn’t made you promise to look out for me, you would end me?”

“That — no, that is not — of course I wouldn’t end you,” Pixal backtracks. An odd feeling flickers through her, almost as if she’s lost her place, floundering.

Or embarrassed might be more accurate, she thinks wryly. She briefly considers projecting a a glaring face at Lloyd from the monitor. This is his fault. She rarely stuttered before Lloyd started teasing her at all hours of the morning.

“I mean, you wouldn’t be the first,” Lloyd continues, conversationally. “And if we’re being honest, I’d definitely rather you be the one to off me, instead of like, random bad guy number eighty-five—”

“I know you think you are funny,” Pixal cuts over him. “But casually planning for your death is something Kai listed I was not to let you do. Also, it is not nearly as funny as you think it is.”

“Ouch,” Lloyd mutters, though he looks chastised. “Never mind, you just took me out in one sentence.”

Chastised might be the wrong term.

Pixal studies him through the monitor, then sighs. “I am, however, honored you think highly enough of me to offer the right to murder you,” she gives in.

She’s rewarded as Lloyd breaks into a bright grin.

He still looks painfully young these days, but it’s less obvious. His voice is pitching lower and he wears his hair different, and he’s gained a whip-like tendency to quip at people, as Pixal’s experienced firsthand. Kai calls it sass in grumbling but fond tones, and Nya calls it snark somewhere between the fourth book series she’s sent for Pixal to try.

The ninja have been kind like that, sharing the interests they have in an attempt to make her feel…well, more human, she supposes. Less confined to a voice in a computer. Of course, Pixal isn’t confined to a voice in a computer anymore, but they don’t know that yet. She’ll tell them someday soon, she promises herself. Any day now.

In the meantime, it’s easy enough to keep up with Lloyd by lurking in his car radio, as he spends half his time in there anyways.

************

“You’d think we’d have found their hideout by now,” Lloyd notes, as they wait in a darkened alleyway again. It gives them an excellent view of the major highways, so if the rumored biker gang does show up, they won’t miss it.

If they show up being the key point.

“Whoever their leader is, they certainly know how to keep a low profile,” Pixal answers, closing out another dead end police report in frustration.

“It’s weird,” Lloyd says, propping the notebook he’s sketching in on his knee as he squints at the paper. “Normally the boss types aren’t this quiet. They like to show off, y’know? Make a big scene, dramatic speeches and all.”

“Are you referring to the villains, or yourselves?”

“Touché,” Lloyd snorts. “But still, you gotta admit it’s weird they haven’t even made any demands. What’s their end game here, elaborate advertising for motorcycle design?”

“I would hope not,” Pixal says. “Their color coordination is lacking.”

Lloyd fights back a smile, his pencil scratching as he shifts his notebook again. “I don’t know, I kinda like the punk look.”

“I noticed that, when you tried to redecorate the car.”

“Hey, skulls are cool.”

“They are also conspicuous, especially when they come in acid green colors.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Lloyd sighs, making a face as he scrubs the eraser across the paper. Pixal tries to tilt the camera further, to see what he’s drawing tonight, but the angle he’s holding it at remains just out of sight.

She could probably guess what he’s drawing, if she tried. The notebook is one they’ve been steadily working their way through on these late-night patrols, the pages filled with little hangman games and Lloyd’s sketches of animals and his teammates. He’s drawn her a few times from memory, and she’s been tempted to ask him to draw her in the new Samurai X armor more than once.

Soon, she tells herself.

“What are you drawing?” she finally asks, curiosity getting the better of her.

Lloyd’s cheeks tinge pink, and he quickly plasters the notebook to his chest, hiding it entirely from view. “Nothing.”

Pixal waits, letting the silence fill with her judgement. “Lloyd, I have seen your drawings before.”

He doesn’t reply, and Pixal tries again. “It gets boring, being stuck with the car monitors for eyes.”

“I know you can hack other cameras,” Lloyd mutters, but he sighs, relenting as he turns the notebook over. Pixal’s eyes rake over the detailed sketch — it’s a comical little thing of her and Lloyd, jammed together on a tiny lifeboat in the middle of a darkening ocean. She can spot the smudges where he’s redrawn her head several times, and the numerous attempts he’s made at his own hair. Pixal studies Lloyd’s portrayal of himself, which is noticeably lacking in facial features. While Lloyd draws the others plenty, it’s a rare occasion that he draws himself, and she can’t help but be curious.

“I thought you were drawing the others again,” she admits.

“They’re on the ship,” Lloyd says, absently. “I’ll draw them when they remember to pull us back in.”

There’s nothing bitter in his tone to suggest it has any bearing on their actual lives, but the lost expressions Lloyd ends up giving their tiny caricatures feel familiar nonetheless.

“Zane has assured me they will be back as soon as they can,” Pixal speaks ups quietly.

Lloyd finally looks up fully, and flashes the monitor a smile. “I know,” he says. “So we better have this thing busted by the time they do, or they’ll never let us run a city on our own again.”

“If only we were truly running the city,” Pixal grumbles. “I could do a better job in two days than the current leaders could do in a year.”

“I’d vote for you,” Lloyd says, sincerely.

It’s a sweet gesture, but Pixal is unable to resist. “You don’t know how to vote.”

“Yes I do, it’s not hard!”

“Really? Then why are you not currently registered in the Ninjago voting system?”

Lloyd makes a strangled noise. “That’s a thing?”

She’s unable to keep the smugness from her voice. “I make my point.” Lloyd scowls, and scribbles a mustache on his drawing of her in revenge.

Pixal thinks it looks nice nonetheless.

************

She can’t really hold it against Lloyd for talking as much as he does, considering she does the same. It gets dull, sitting on patrol for hours on end, and there are only so many hours of light reading they can do before the silence begins to drive them both insane.

Pixal finds herself talking about more useless things with Lloyd than she has in her existence, pointless conversations in circles with each other. She also finds she doesn’t entirely mind. She’s become quite good at quipping back and forth with him, at least. It’s different than the kind of talk she has with Zane, lacking in the depth of feeling with the love they share. Her exchanges with Lloyd are lighter, though that’s not to say they’re less sincere.

For example, Zane hasn’t tried to teach her how to redesign a gi in poor lighting in the early hours of the morning because he’s bored out of his mind, that’s for sure.

“I’m teaching you how to sew,” Lloyd corrects, wincing as he accidentally stabs himself with the needle. “And I’m not redesigning the whole thing, I’m just adding some designs to spice it up.”

“I did not know you were allowed to wear colors other than green,” Pixal comments.

Lloyd pauses, squinting at the monitor. “You’re teasing me,” he finally says. “You’re making fun of how much green this gi has in it.”

“I would never,” Pixal replies, her tone flat and even. “The intricacies of your human humor evade me—”

“Human humor, nice—”

“—unlike the unusually bright shade of green you’ve chosen will fail to evade any eyes of your enemies.”

“I knew you were making fun of me!” Lloyd accuses, then flinches as he stabs his finger again trying to point at her. “And bright colors are our thing. Being subtle is, uh…not. Usually.”

Pixal is losing the battle to laugh at his expression by the minute. “I am shocked.”

Lloyd glares at the monitor, shifting his sewing to rest on his knees as he slouches in the car seat. “How’d you even get so good at sarcasm, anyways,” he mutters. “Zane still doesn’t get it half the time.”

“Perhaps it is part of my glowing personality,” Pixal says. Lloyd gives a huff of laughter, relenting.

“Fair enough,” he says, shifting in his seat again. “Fine, you win. The green is probably too bright, but that’s not the point. I’m gonna show you how to do a backstitch."

Pixal falls quiet, letting Lloyd gesture with the needle as he explains. There are a hundred, a thousand tutorials she could pull up online, digitized knowledge instantly learned on all the countless types of stitches she could use, sorted and categorized in neat columns of use and effectiveness. All of them more detailed, more easily understood than Lloyd’s absent rambling and unsteady hands as he struggles with the end of a knot.

Not one of them will care whether or not Pixal learns the odd way Zane likes to loop his stitches, or will quietly add which stitches knit skin back together quickest.

So Pixal ignores her programming, and does her best to follow Lloyd’s rambling instructions, watching as his scarred fingers tug another thread of dull gold through the green mess of fabric, the city quiet around them.

“You never did tell me where you learned how to sew,” Pixal says, as Lloyd starts up a new thread of black on the other side of the gi. “Was that something the others taught you in training?”

“They’d have to know how to be able to teach it,” Lloyd snickers. “And, uh, no. I taught myself to back at Darkley’s.”

“Oh,” Pixal falters. She’s heard about Darkley’s, both from Zane and the legal reports she’s read online. Neither gave a positive impression of the place. Her mind is suddenly filled with images of a younger Lloyd trying to give himself stitches, and her heart twists.

Lloyd starts, seemingly having picked up on her train of thought. “I mean, I did it for fun, mostly. I like sewing,” he explains. “It’s useful. You can pull things back together, and fix ‘em.”

Pixal is quiet, but she hopes Lloyd takes her silence as agreement with his motive. She likes to think he knows her well enough for that, by now.

************

Pixal finds, somewhere during their fourth month alone, that she’s glad the team elected to stick her and Lloyd together. Not because she doesn’t want to be with Zane — there’s never a moment she doesn’t miss him, and with every day that passes her resolve to keep her secret from him grows weaker, as the longing for actual connection grows stronger.

But there are conversations she can have with Lloyd that she can never have with Zane, and the dangerous thing about spending time with Lloyd, Pixal finds, is that they’re more similar than she’s realized.

“Sometimes I think I’m jealous,” Lloyd whispers to her one night. It’s one of the bad ones, the ones where their enemies struck too sudden to stop, and the mission ends in the hospital. “I think I’m jealous of Zane, and I hate myself for it.”

Pixal is quiet, trying to pick apart the tone of his voice in the words he’s just spoken, and factors in the victims they’ve just left behind at the hospital. She finds herself no closer to an answer.

“Is it the metal skin part?” she finally asks, though she knows that’s wrong. “The, what was it, technical immortality?”

“No,” Lloyd shakes his head. “I’m not afraid of dying,” he says emphatically, his fingers fluttering at over the steering wheel, tapping incessantly with unspent energy. “I don’t want to, but that’s — it’s not what I’m scared of. I’m more scared of how I go out.”

He swallows, and his fingers move to dance over the woven bracelet on his wrist instead, twisting at the tiny beads and tracing senseless designs in constant, steady movement. It’s a motion he does often, and it had puzzled Pixal at first. She’d decided to write it off as an odd tick, a way to spend excess energy.

Now, she recognizes the desperate kind of reassurance that movement gives. She understands too well the need to remind yourself that you can move — that your body will obey you and you alone.

Pixal thinks back to the other factors in tonight’s accident, of the way the drugged man’s eyes had cleared when they’d finally turned him over to the police, the way he’d sworn he’d never do such a thing in his right mind. She thinks of the way the first victim had thrown themselves over their companion.

That victim hadn’t made it to the hospital.

“Ah,” Pixal says, quietly.

She’s silent again, and she thinks back to when she’d met him, the very first time. She recalls the way her programming had rebelled against her in favor of the Overlord, corrupting her body and forcing it against her, twisting everything she was and wanted to be into something different.

She thinks back again, to the searing-hot anger, the terror, the despair as she was torn apart, piece by piece like a machine, burning out at the whims of another. Her end purposeless, her demise belonging to someone else, just like every other part of her.

She thinks of the last glimpse she’d caught of Zane, bright and beautiful as a supernova. Burning with the terrible brilliance of his own, determined choice. Terrible, because the death of something always is. Beautiful, because it was his own. Zane died, not a machine, not a weapon, not a tool of anyone or anything, but as himself. Zane died to save the ones he loves. Pixal could’ve died for spare parts.

Never again, she promises herself. If she goes out, she goes out on her own terms. This time, they choose the end of their own destiny themselves.

In hindsight, it’s the kind of promise they’re both too young to make, but neither of them have ever seen themselves as such, and promises like that are easy.

“Love can be terrible, sometimes,” Lloyd murmurs. Pixal watches him scrub at the blood on his uniform, and thinks how ironically well-timed it is that he finished the stitching on his new gi this morning. “Sometimes I forget how ugly it can be.”

************

The end of their nighttime stakeouts begins with a break-in at Mr. Borg’s tower. Lloyd argues that she should get to call it her father’s tower, if she wants, but the ninja aren’t the only ones Pixal’s hiding herself from.

And then Lloyd gets very tense at the thought of fathers very fast, and they never finish the conversation.

They stay at the edge of the bridge long after the parachute, emblazoned with the unmistakable visage of Lloyd’s father, disappears from sight. Pixal wonders if it’s burned into Lloyd’s eyes, like the way she’s read black spots linger in humans’ vision after they’ve looked at something too bright. The way Lloyd stares at the river, his shoulders tense and his teeth worrying at his lip, she thinks she might be right.

They’re waiting on the report from the commissioner —they’re waiting for anything, anyone who can offer them any explanation of what’s going on. Pixal’s reminded of how much she loathes this kind of waiting.

“It could be—” Lloyd begins, then breaks off, his voice wavering. He swallows, and Pixal can see the way his fists clench tightly from the cameras they’ve put in his car. There’s a fierce part of her that longs to reveal herself, to meet his eyes herself and offer some semblance of comfort. But there’s a time and place for things, and Pixal isn’t ready.

“It could be anything,” Lloyd finally continues, his voice small. “It could — it doesn’t mean anything. It could mean nothing, right?”

Pixal is silent, her mind racing. She’s run the calculations over and over in her head already, scouring the internet for anything related to the bikers. She’s been foolish, she realizes — they both have. Letting the gang go unnamed for so long, thinking nothing of it. Now, with the name flashing vibrant across Pixal’s vision, a part of her wants to let them go nameless just a bit longer.

Before she can answer, Lloyds phone goes off with a sharp ping, just as Pixal’s sensors alert her to the message from the commissioner. Lloyd snatches for his phone like it’s on fire, and Pixal’s already scanning the message frantically, as if she can salvage this if she’s fast enough, save Lloyd from this one pain.

Lloyd’s gotten much better at reading quickly though, these days.

She can pinpoint the moment he reaches the last paragraph, because his breath hitches. There’s a long, pressing pause of silence, Lloyd’s hands trembling as they clutch weakly at his phone. Then it’s punctured by a reedy, wheezing gasp, and Pixal’s suddenly wishing she’d revealed herself after all.

Instead, all she has is her voice as Lloyd crumples, crouching over in visible distress. Pixal’s mind races, recalling everything Zane’s ever told her about his team, the way their panic manifests in different shades. Lloyd’s is quiet but desperate, rapid breathes that stutter as his eyes slide more and more into a frightening kind of blankness.

“Lloyd, please, listen to my voice,” she begs, trying to reach him in the only way she can. “Please, you have to breathe—”

“He’s gone,” Lloyd rasps, unhearing of her words. “He’s s’posed to be gone, it’s supposed to be over, I’m supposed to be done—”

Pixal fights back the sense of overwhelming helplessness. She knows loss. She knows how to finish his sentence. He’s supposed to be done grieving, done mourning, done clinging to false scraps of hope that his father isn’t lost forever only to be met with heartbreak.

And now, to be met with the possibility of something so much worse.

“We’ll stop them,” she tells him, unflinching. “We won’t let it happen.”

Lloyd’s eyes are a vivid green where they stare at her through the monitor, almost ghostly in the misting light reflecting from the river.

He’s silent, but Pixal is, too.

Pixal remembers the way her head had spun when she’d first picked up the traces of Zane in the system, how the world had rushed then steadied, flooding with color as she’d realized he might not be lost after all. She remembers the surging, overwhelming flood of joy, that someone she’d thought she lost might live after all. She remembers being so happy, at even the smallest chance to get him back, because the voice was Zane’s, without a doubt.

She watches the color seep from Lloyd’s expression as his shoulders shudder, the words from the commissioner’s message almost echoing through the air. Watches the terror as the both of them fill the silence.

Will we?

The radio scratches, as if echoing Pixal’s anxiety. Love can be terrible, sometimes. She’s underestimated how it also be so cruel.

************

She’s also, apparently, underestimated how the universe on the whole could be so cruel.

She should’ve revealed herself to them from day one. That way, when Harumi’s corrupted programming suddenly ravages through her like an electric shock, she could be reassured they’d at least be familiar with the person they were fighting.

Instead, she doesn’t even get to scream. Pixal’s only able to force out a desperate, broken warning before she’s lost again, drowning in her own body as she’s forced under. Furious panic grips her as she screams without lungs, bashing herself against the overwhelming helplessness that’s taken over her.

Not again, not again, not again—

Her limbs creak and jolt against her will, lashing out at the people she cares most about, and Pixal can’t even rage back in her own voice. She’s sworn, she’s promised herself she’d never let anyone do this to her again — she’s sworn she’d die before she let someone reach into her head and snatch control away, and yet here she is, frozen as her body’s used to target her friends.

If she could cry, she might.

There’s not much more to say than that. She breaks free, her body her own once again, but by then it’s too late.

************

If Pixal had the same gift of foresight that Zane did, maybe she would have seen it coming. Maybe she’d have remembered how similar her and Lloyd are, and that this kind of pained desperation always yields impulsiveness and mistakes.

She doesn’t, though. She barely even manages to do what she’s trying to, which is convincing Lloyd to join the others while they celebrate their victory. Their off-key singing is something he normally wouldn’t hesitate to join in on, she thinks, and she hates Harumi a little more.

Maybe she’ll try his mother next. The expression on Lloyd’s face screams unapproachable, and remains fixedly sullen.

Almost to her surprise, he meets her eyes as she draws near— it’s odd, being able to meet his back — and his own eyes are dark, from despair over Harumi or despair over his father, Pixal isn’t sure. She’s thinking it might be both, when his eyebrows crease, and a flicker of concern cuts through them instead.

“You good?”

It takes her a moment to realize why he’s asking, but the answer is obvious. Her head tilts downward, and she watches as her fingers curl and uncurl. Her movements, her choices. She lets out an even breath.

“As I can be,” she replies. Lloyd nods, and his eyes are understanding. His lips twist in a scowl.

“She shouldn’t have done that to you. That was a low blow.”

Pixal’s mouth curves into a humorless smile. “That it was. She’s rather good at those, isn’t she.”

Lloyd’s eyes shadow again, and he looks away, crossing his arms. “This isn’t supposed to be about me,” he mutters.

“Yes, it is,” Pixal counters. “It is why I came over here, in the first place. She hurt—”

“All of us, and who’s fault is that,” Lloyd snaps, his arms crossing tighter.

“I would hope you know it’s hers,” she says, holding firm.

Lloyd looks away again, biting his lip, and Pixal shifts anxiously, rolling her wrists. The sensation of control sliding away still haunts her, worse than it had the first time. She should be better than this, she tells herself hotly. She’s lived without a body long enough that losing it so briefly shouldn’t effect her this much.

Curse her programming, she thinks, tapping agitatedly at the banister. She knew she should have reinforce it sooner.

“Hey, um.” Lloyd is looking at her again, hesitant. He twists at his bracelet, and his eyes lose a fraction of that darkness. “Kai made this for me, after Morro,” he says. “I kept shredding the sleeves of my uniform, so he told me to mess with this instead, when I needed to remember that…that I was in control.”

He shrugs, hesitant. “We could make you one too, if you wanted. It helps, having something.”

Pixal lets out a steady breath, despite not actually needing to. The action is grounding, she’s found. “I would like that.”

Lloyd gives her a ghost of a smile in return. “Soon as this is over, then.”

There’s a heavy weight to his words, and Pixal’s eyes narrow.

“Lloyd,” she says. He looks at her, his eyes dark. “Don’t do anything foolish.”

He’s quiet, not meeting her eyes, and this is where Pixal should stop him. This is when she should see the end of the road they’ve been on since they started this, and force him to turn before it’s too late.

“I know what I’m doing.”

She doesn’t.

************

Lloyd is battered and bleeding by the time they drag him onto the ship, a gruesome portrait of cruelty. Pixal is frozen as she watches him writhe in Kai’s hold, his screams cracked and wet as he thrashes erratically like a broken thing.

Nya is already barking orders before they’ve even gotten Lloyd fully on the ship, and Zane is running scans with a horrified, wavering focus. Pixal follows Cole as he carries Lloyd to the medbay with a blank numbness, the rush of wind streaming past the Bounty sails thunderously loud in her ears.

This isn’t Lloyd, she thinks, staring at his crumpled form. Lloyd isn’t this battered, broken shell of a person. Lloyd isn’t hazy eyes that fail to recognize them and frantic murmuring through bloody lips. Lloyd is bright-eyed and gentle and would rather die before he screams the way he does when Cole moves him to the table.

Lloyd is her friend, and this is where that promise they made has led them. She knows why Lloyd set out for the prison, hot on the collapse of his own star. She also knows he wouldn’t have chosen to burn out like this.

Cole calls out for Zane, his voice ringing in panic as Lloyd screeches in pain again. Pixal thinks of quiet words in the safety of his car, and she feels sick. This is the ugliness of love, the terrible, hideous side of it.

And Lloyd would hate it, if he could see himself, if he were any semblance of lucid. He’d hate to know just how much better he was at breaking himself than Morro ever was.

Zane is gentle as he pushes past her, but Pixal can feel the tremble in his hands. He’s every bit as rattled as she is, if not more so — Zane’s heart is larger and softer than hers has ever been, and he cares about each and every one of them with a painful intensity. It’s a cruel thing, to have to pull those same people back together with your own hands.

Kai’s eyes are streaming as he clutches at Lloyd’s wrists, pinning him in place. Zane’s hands waver again over one of the jagged wounds near Lloyd’s ribcage, the green of his uniform already dyed dark in blood, soaking over the careful stitches Pixal watched him put in himself.

Pixal finally finds her footing, reminding herself of the solid wood beneath her feet. She recalls the steady, smooth stitch Lloyd’s scarred fingers traced out for her.

“Here.” She takes the needle from Zane’s hands, squeezing his briefly before letting go. “I can do it.”

She sets the needle against Lloyd’s skin and wonders what kind of stitch it’d take to pull your heart back together.

************

Pixal cannot cry. It’s one of the features Mr. Borg spent hours debating, weighing the pros and cons of giving her the ability before he was truly sure how rust-proof she was. He’d never gotten the chance to, as the Overlord had interrupted him, then Pixal had lost any body to give the ability to cry to, which had eliminated the need entirely.

She cannot cry, but she can hurt, and the rain that streams through her hair, dripping down her forehead spotting raindrops on her cheeks, could be tears if she pretended.

She doesn’t, though, because tears are a waste of water and overall useless in the grand scheme of things. She doubts they’d have helped her fare any better in the battle with Colossi, either.

Tears won’t bring anyone back.

Lloyd cries anyways. She can’t see him, but she can hear it in his voice, the way it wavers and breaks over the radio, nasally tones pronounced.

He’s barely able to gasp a few coordinates to her before he cuts the radio off abruptly. Pixal’s spent enough time with him to envision his scarred fingers snapping it off with a particular desperation, green sparking from his hands in distress.

She reminds herself those sparks are gone, now, bled away into nothing like the vivid green of Lloyd’s eyes had. The thought makes her sadder than she’d expected. She had a joke, about his eyes, she had wanted to make. Now that she has a body, and her own set of glowing green eyes, she’d — there was something he would’ve laughed at, she thought —

It doesn’t matter, now. Neither of them are likely to laugh anytime soon.

The coordinates blink brightly in her vision, and she’s almost surprised she managed to key them in. She’s running on autopilot, she supposes. It could be ironic — she’s been so desperate for control, it’s been so important that she’s the one feeling. Now, she’d give anything not to feel at all.

She lets out a shaky breath, dispelling the mist in her vision left from the rain. She leans forward, just over the edge of the building she’s crouched on, and her loose hair falls forward, silvery and synthetic and horribly tangled. Irritated, she reaches for another hair tie, and her hands falter around her wrist.

Lloyd had promised her a bracelet there. But he’d promised Kai would make the bracelet, hadn’t he, and Kai couldn’t make the bracelet if he was dead, could he.

Pixal blinks, her breath hitching. She’s been so numb to the pain of Zane’s loss, it hasn’t yet occurred to her that she’s losing Kai, too. And Jay, and Cole, and—

She sucks in the same shuddery kind of breath she’s seen Lloyd do, and carefully fists her hand in the area of her uniform above her chest. Her fingers dig in tightly, clutching in a hopeless attempt to feel some sort of comfort she knows she’ll never find.

But perhaps, for these few seconds, she can pretend the action is holding her together.

************

“It was inevitable,” Pixal tells Lloyd blankly, as he rasps out his third apology in the dark cover of their small hideout. “That one of us would fall, eventually. It had nothing to do with you.”

Lloyd swallows thickly. “It could’ve — it should’ve been—”

He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t need to. Pixal’s hand shoots out, clamping tightly around his wrist, and there’s a beat of gratitude that she doesn’t need to rely on her voice alone anymore.

“Don’t.” Her voice is strung tighter than the tension in their shoulders. “You cannot change anything. You can’t, Lloyd, and you should not wish to — to change it that way.”

Lloyd jerks his hand free, wiping miserably at his eyes. He sets it back down within her reach, though, and if Pixal were any different, she’d take it.

But Pixal isn’t that different from Lloyd at all in the end, and neither of them reach for the other’s hand, no matter how desperately they crave the contact. Fear is more familiar, and it’s easier to give into it than it is the clawing need for comfort in your chest, after all.

“Still,” Lloyd finally whispers. “Still.”

Pixal swallows. She doesn’t disagree. If one of them had to fall, she knows she gladly would have taken it upon herself. She knows the others care for her, certainly, but she also knows her place in the grand scheme of things. They were six before she came along, and even now she’s kept far too many secrets to be fully counted among them.

She listens to Lloyd’s quiet, cracked voice, and she wonders if he’s thinking that they were five before he came along, younger than Pixal got to know him as.

Now they’re three, hollow and heartbroken. Though counting herself as one whole feels like cheating, right now.

Pixal squeezes her eyes shut, and wonders what it’s like to cry. Perhaps it helps, though Lloyd doesn’t look any less miserable.

************

“I was thinking,” Lloyd tells her, during one of the precious few quiet moments they have while trying to overthrow Garmadon and Harumi. Pixal’s turning the tiny tea flower he’d given her over in her hands, a part of her mind already marking articles about flower-pressing, another part wondering if it’s already too late to save the blossom. “About that promise we made, before all this.”

Pixal finally tucks the flower into the pocket of her uniform, pressed close to her chest. If anything, it can be a reminder of the lives that are safe — the life that’s coming back to her, if she has to drag him back from another realm herself. “And?”

Lloyd’s hands twist together. “Maybe we should focus more on staying alive.”

Pixal coughs out a laugh, breathless and startled. Lloyd wrinkles his nose at her, but his eyes are amused, even with their light lost. “I mean, the emphasis would be on keeping everyone else alive, but it’s kinda hard to do that if we’re dead, so…yeah. Priorities.”

“Staying alive should always be a priority,” Pixal corrects him, but she tugs the edge of his armor out of place with a smile.

“Why didn’t you teach me how to graffiti?” she nods at the designs on the green leather. “Or was this another Darkley’s tradition.”

“This is a refined art, called whatever I had on me that showed up on dark green,” Lloyd grumbles, fixing his armor. “I’ll teach it to you when we get out of this.”

“Another reason why staying alive would be a more productive focus,” Pixal points out. “I’ve heard teaching is easier when you’re alive.”

“And I’ve heard you’re a real riot,” Lloyd mutters. “It’s a promise, okay? I promise to teach you how to do cool armor design if you promise not to disappear into another realm on me.”

Pixal nods, adjusting her own armor tighter as screams ring out from a street nearby. “A promise, then.”

She keeps both the promise and the flower, the tiny blossom dried and faded by the time she’s escaped from the prison, heart racing with leftover adrenaline as Zane sweeps her into his arms. She clutches back every bit as tight, listening to his breathless laughter as cheers rise from the streets behind them, the smoke drifting across the early morning sky above them pale against the lightening blue. Pixal buries her face in his shoulder and breathes, tucking the moment away in her heart where it won’t fade. There’s a future stretching out before her, and she’s got the limbs to walk her path on her own, but all she wants right now is the steady ground beneath her feet and the bright laughter of what she’s managed to keep.

Lloyd meets them shortly after, his own promise kept as he tears his gaze from his father, handing him off to the authorities before sprinting for the others. Pixal barely snags a moment alone with him, and even then no one’s particularly keen on letting him out of their sights.

He meets her eyes as they pick their way through the wrecked streets, the city more alive around them than it’s been in weeks. In the dark of the early morning, Pixal’s eyes glow a bright green, reflecting oddly in the windows they pass. It’s always been her preferred color, in contrast to Zane’s bright blue. Lloyd glances at her, his own eerily green eyes glowing back. He bites his lip, but it’s to hold back real laughter this time.

“My eyes were green first,” she tells him.

“Sue me,” he shoots back, before Kai’s throwing an arm over his shoulders again, tucking Lloyd neatly in between him and Nya. Pixal smothers a laugh at the look on his face, and tightens her own arm further where it’s linked firmly in Zane’s.

It’s going to be an easy promise to keep, she thinks.

#lego ninjago #ninjago #lloyd garmadon #ninjago lloyd #pixal #there was a point to this but it got lost in pix and lloyd do arts and crafts #either way i'd die for both these characters #ninjago where is the pixal love i miss her #my fic

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whencallstheheart · 3 years

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Something I’ve noticed in interviews with the actors or from statements from the show runners is that they like to compare this negative fan response of the S8 finale, to the negative fan responses when Jack was killed off or when Lori left. They frame it in a way that says “well the show will survive bc it did after those two devastating changes - same way with after E picks L, fans will find a way back”. Yet, for the life of me I can’t remember back to when Jack died or when Lori left where the showrunners/writers ever got THIS aggressive with fans. I mean BB has only barely stopped short of saying Nathan fans are delusional (agreeing with Lucas fans really). And now, WCTH’s official PR page has begun to bait Nathan fans on FB with (now-deleted posts that read) “Nathan was not shy about pursuing Elizabeth this past season. #TeamNathan, were you worried when she canceled their dinner at the end of the first episode?”...

While I wasn’t really on social media religiously following along with the internet segment of WCTH when Jack left or when Lori left (which personally I moved on from quite well), I don’t at all remember hearing that the writers/show-runners were being incredibly dissing towards fans (I can only remember a few official statements put out - but nothing rude) ... this is just feels a million times worse to me, their response (not just from BB but from all of WCTH and Hallmark). The last couple days I’ve told myself “let’s just move on, not look at anything WCTH related for a few weeks, mute it all, be done with the show”... but MAN I cannot escape the mere turmoil the show-runners are creating surrounding the show. BUT since you’ve been here since the beginning really and have experienced many, if not all, of the off-seasons and the two scandals (Jack being killed off and Lori being fired) on social media, do you believe that this situation has been worse or is becoming increasingly worse on social media? Btw, Thanks for all your hard work responding, making polls, making gifs! I appreciate it all - this is one of the only safe WCTH spaces I’ve found consistently to vent - plus you actually approach things with logic which seems lacking these days! 💓

Exactly. What had to happen with Dan and Lori were completely different situations. The HAD to kill off Jack. They HAD to edit out Lori. They didn't have a choice in the matter so it was easier for them to convince the audience to stick it out with them. Season 8 was totally different. They consciously made the choice to not give the fans a good story to justify the outcome. The outcome would've been more accepted had they actually written to the ending. Clearly they didn't do that. They claim they did but when you have this many people upset about it, obviously that wasn't the case. Hearties tend to be very forgiving of poor writing and will blindly love everything the show does so for it to have gotten this much backlash no one should be denying or doubting that something went wrong somewhere.

I think it's definitely worse in general. TPTP don't know when to shut up. Their egos have gotten SO BIG, especially Brian's. He's worshipped as Papa Heartie. That's gone to his head. He's always been an asshole. He can't take any criticism (that's usually very valid and not presented in a rude manner towards him) and is consistently disrespectful to fans. It's really disgusting what's happened. TPTB stupidly didn't expect the backlash to be this bad and they don't know what to do about it. Insulting the fans definitely isn't the correct plan of attack if they're trying to win them back. It baffles me, honestly. The gaslighting really, really bothers me too. We know what we watched. Don't try to tell us otherwise and make us question ourselves. That's fucked up.

There's this attitude towards the fans that's like "if you don't like what we did screw you" but also "PLEASE KEEP WATCHING we promise you'll like season 9!!!" What? And all the "facts" that don't add up with what others have said. The audience can't trust these people and that's really sad and disappointing. We're getting this from the Hallmark Channel?? Where are the Hope Valley values that Papa Heartie loves to preach about? He sure as hell doesn't practice them. It's all so strange and exhausting and upsetting. It didn't have to come to this and I feel so bad for the fans.

Thank you and you're welcome. I've always wanted to make this a space where we can have actual conversations and not be forced into being positive about everything. The fandom has been through a lot. It'll be interesting to see what the long term outcome will be. It's hard to know where to go from here. Hopefully people will still appreciate the blog moving forward but we'll just have to see.

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angelfishofthelord · 3 years

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Between you fix it fics that have the Winchesters be there for Cas and your post about things Cas has said that should have gotten a response from somebody, I just feel so bad for Cas. Cas gets ragged on (both in the show and fandom) for not asking for help but is it any wonder why?

Dearest anon thank you for bringing this up! I never understood why Cas got criticized in both the fandom and the show for "not asking for help"; or when people say that it's a habit of his. Well no actually every time he didn't ask for help he had a definite reason that he would have (and often tried to) explain but no one was listening!

For example in s6 his first instinct was to go to Dean for help with the Raphael problem. And then he decided to spare him the sacrifice that saving the world would inevitably cost him again. But also in 6x20 and 6x22 he repeatedly tries to explain why he's doing the whole poppin-Purgatory-open scheme and no one is willing to even try to understand him, not even a reluctant "okay lets say you're right" kind of conversation.

Ditto for s8 and the angel tablet situation. Cas says "I thought I was doing the right thing" which should have been followed up with "okay why did you think that" (not whatever Dean snapped back at him with). Also Cas did ask Dean (and receive) help with the closing heaven trials and yet for some reason I still see a lot of fics where Dean is super pissed at Cas for "going off on his own again and not listening to him" -- no Dean knew exactly what Cas was doing and yes he did sort of ditch helping Cas to go to Sam but that's very in-character.

In s11 and s12 with Lucifer and Kelly respectively we see Cas doing the "I'm going to make the hard choice to spare the Winchesters the pain of having to do it". This feeds into the whole "Cas considers himself the boys guardian and has to throw himself over grenades to keep them safe" self-worth issue but I'm not gonna get into that here.

And yeah like you said I've made posts about everything Cas has suffered alone or all the times he said things that were as good as asking for help and never received any. And essentially it comes down to the fact that he's not actually considered part of the Winchester family; Sam and Dean put each other first and Cas isn't valued at the same level that they are to each other. I think of Dean "don't you dare think that there is anything past or present that I would put in front of you" and Sam "it's the only thing I've ever known that was true" and it actually destroys me to think that Cas never had someone in his corner like that.

#sorry this answer got so long #you activated the bitter Cas stan in me there's no holding me back #thank for bringing this up I always love to talk about Cas whether it's to rant about or appreciate him or both #spn thoughts #anon #my spn thoughts #cas deserved better

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zalrb · 2 years

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You got a Friends ask, so now my disordered brain is forcing me to vent my UOs about Friends, but you don't even have to respond if you don't want to! The first is that literally every fan and critic seems to think S4-S8 are the show's best seasons but in my UO the first two seasons were the best. Everyone was relatably flawed but more likeable to me overall, the first two seasons give us the best Joey/Chandler friendship scenes, the writers gave Phoebe layers and a couple of storylines about finding her father (while in mid to later seasons they had NO idea what to do with her and made her meaner for no reason). And as one of like ten people who ships Ross/Rachel, the first two seasons are definitely their best imo. My second UO is that Rachel is always praised as the character with the "best growth", but...why?! Listen, I'm kind of a Rachel apologist and enjoy her a lot, but even I have to admit that she can be incredibly selfish, self-centered and shallow---and in my UO those traits were just as bad in later seasons, if not worse. She was also warmer, more animated and kinder in the beginning seasons than the later ones. So to me she grew professionally, but definitely not personally. In fact, all the Friends except maybe Chandler kind of regressed. Third UO: I like Chandler but think he's a bit overrated by the fandom. Fourth and final UO: I think Ross (due mostly to David Schwimmer) is the funniest character and, as you have said many times, not any more egregiously flawed than the other five :) Thank you!!!

The first is that literally every fan and critic seems to think S4-S8 are the show's best seasons but in my UO the first two seasons were the best. Everyone was relatably flawed but more likeable to me overall, the first two seasons give us the best Joey/Chandler friendship scenes, the writers gave Phoebe layers and a couple of storylines about finding her father (while in mid to later seasons they had NO idea what to do with her and made her meaner for no reason).

I did not know this and I agree with you that the first two seasons are the best seasons ... relatably flawed, I mean, maybe not so much for me, but more realistic characters with more realistic problems, for sure. Joey, Phoebe and Rachel trying to explain to Monica, Chandler and Ross that they have less money than them is a storyline I can get on board with more than Monica thinking the maid they hired is stealing from them for some slapstick shenangians. Everyone becomes caricatures of themselves later on in the seasons to the point that I'm meant to believe that Joey ate fake fruit and didn't know it.

I didn't particularly like Being The Ricardos but I enjoyed the way they talked about writing scenes in the movie

and that's what later seasons Friends is to me.

And as one of like ten people who ships Ross/Rachel, the first two seasons are definitely their best imo.

I do like Ross and Rachel in the first few seasons, I wouldn’t say I’m a shipper but I think we’ve gotten to the point of criticism of television/ships that people refuse to admit when two people are compelling together and Ross and Rachel were compelling. We’re not getting stuff like this

now.

My second UO is that Rachel is always praised as the character with the "best growth", but...why?! Listen, I'm kind of a Rachel apologist and enjoy her a lot, but even I have to admit that she can be incredibly selfish, self-centered and shallow---and in my UO those traits were just as bad in later seasons, if not worse. She was also warmer, more animated and kinder in the beginning seasons than the later ones. So to me she grew professionally, but definitely not personally. In fact, all the Friends except maybe Chandler kind of regressed.

Well I just spoke about how I thought the characters became caricatures of themselves in later seasons so that’s covered. And yeah, I agree that Rachel grew professionally but I never felt like she grew as a person either: telling all the women that Tag is gay, going to Ross’ wedding to break it up, not breaking it up but then getting angry because Ross was like, so Emily doesn’t want me to see you anymore, the whole thunder scenario. I don’t know, I’m always team #theyareallshitty

Third UO: I like Chandler but think he's a bit overrated by the fandom. Fourth and final UO: I think Ross (due mostly to David Schwimmer) is the funniest character and, as you have said many times, not any more egregiously flawed than the other five :)

The older I got, the less I cared for Chandler’s humour and I actually do believe David and Courtney had the best comedic timing on the show and that Ross’ jokes are smarter than Chandler’s, I do like seasons 1-3 Chandler’s humour more than 4-8.

And yes, as I have mentioned many times, Ross is not shittier than the other.

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svgurl410 · 3 years

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Hi, what is your opinion about Chloe Sullivan? it seems that some fans. especially Clark/Chloe shippers wanted Chloe to “become” Lois. That's insane!!!!

Thanks for the ask! As far as Chloe goes, my opinion on her has changed over the years. I had to put this under a cut because I got rambly- get ready for the essay you didn't ask for. Where I stand now is that I actually don't hate her but I also don't like her. I am just critical of her and her behavior.

I didn't watch Smallville when it first aired but I got into it during the first few seasons, and at first, I never had strong feelings on her one way or the other because I was mostly invested in Clark & Lex. And of course, Lois immediately after she appeared. I did start liking her in s5, because she had some sort of balance (fans refuse to acknowledge that she legit did nothing journalism wise in s6 and Grant was right to call out her lack of investment in s7) and used to really love her back in the day. I was very invested in the Chloe-Lois familial relationship and ended up shipping Chlollie a lot too. I am still not that heated about them ending up together, whatever my feelings are on her. It was rushed and Ollie's pining in s10 was annoying, but I preferred Ollie and Tess as friends and they didn't do a good enough job of getting me invested in SV Dinah unfortunately. And I liked her friendship with Clark, even if reflecting back, it wasn't all that healthy. I got caught up in the narrative though and I really wanted him to have a friend, since he was so lonely otherwise, and I wasn't a fan of Lana at all.

When I got getting active in fandom in early s6, I was actually surprised at how popular that ship was because as someone who read fic but was outside of it, just a viewer, it just never had an appeal. Mostly because even after the kiss in the s5 finale, I never thought it'd go anywhere and the feelings always felt unbalanced and stronger on her side. I did read fic for them because I read fic for anyone when I liked both characters involved but it wasn't my fave.

I think I got tired of her behavior around mid s8, though even when I liked her I was surprised at how annoying she could be in the early seasons when I rewatched. Her acting like she knew what was best for everyone and the way they dumbed down Clark a little to prop her up before that was frustrating and how she handled Davis/Doomsday was ridiculous. Also her demanding that she gets to use the Fortress to go back in time to save Jimmy and legit guilted him over it when she was there when Clark did the same thing and knew he lost his dad and probably was aware of how bad he felt over it? Awful. Her fans used to try to claim Clark was a bad friend who didn't deserve her, which was funny considering that if Clark hadn't been so forgiving, they wouldn't have been friends by that point in the first place. She literally hacked into his adoption records and worked with Lionel because he dared get together with the girl he actually liked. Plus some of her actions were grey and if she had been anyone else, she would have been on some sort of villain path. She put cameras in his house. You know who else did that? Lex. Honestly the only thing Clark did that was really questionable was erase her memory of his secret and that should've had more reaching consequences than it did- it would be one thing if he did it after s4 but after her life was tied up to his secret in many ways, I'm actually surprised she was able to be so happy go lucky and Oliver just brushed it off, since it would've affected her work with the League. Alas, not worth dwelling over, I guess.

Also the theory was batshit. Journalism and that one throwaway line which was clearly intended to show that Lois Lane did exist in the universe really spawned some nonsense. Especially after they cast Lois. Everyone said that it wasn't happening (even Gough had interviews in the early seasons where they talked about bringing Lois in so it was literally never in the plan) and they clung on to their theory and actually acted betrayed when it didn't happen. Just really gross behavior, especially how they treated Lois and more importantly, Erica Durance.

I don't care if they have their faves and ship what you want- not my problem- but the theory existing will always piss me off and those theorists especially definitely acted like the characters = actors, and propped up AM as a feminist icon while bashing ED, and her looks, and insisting that the rest of the cast definitely hated her, etc. It was really gross behavior. Considering what happened with AM, and who she turned out to be, it didn't age well either.

Anyway, she had plenty of good moments but also really bad ones and it's a shame that AM's actions also colored my perception of this character, but if she had been held responsible for some of them rather than being made out to be the hero of the show, even over Clark at times, I think I would look back on it more kindly.

I hope that answered your question!

#answered asks #anonymous

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butterfly-winx · 4 years

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Seen a lot of talk about relationships in people’s rewrites, and I wanted to share my headcanons for the “butterfly fic” AU! (I’m currently going on an S6+ timeline, so the story starts off with all canon couples and then... crumbles from there)

Bloom x Sky: The two of them got together for real at the end of S2 in this timeline, after the identity shrouding/theft both of them pulled made their start rocky. They both understand why the other did it, but it doesn’t make it any better or easier to bear after months of insecurity, thinking they would be dumped eventually when the truth came out. S3 though S4 they are well off, but then the whammy hits when Sky loses his memories during the oil rig rescue mission. He still knows Bloom and that he loves her, but even after a year he doesn’t feel like he can recover the version of his self that he has been before. Bloom tries to assure him as best as she can, showing him that she can learn how to love the “new” him as well. Their lives end up on hugely different trajectories that lead to their relationship slowly crumbling over the S8 timeline, during which Bloom is going crazy worries about her sanity and reliability (👀). Bloom also slowly finds herself developing feelings for Stella after the other confesses. In the end Bloom and Sky go their separate ways amicably.

Stella x Brandon: So, Stella confesses to Bloom, then how does SxB work out? Well, both Stella and Brandon are home of sexuals in a mutually beneficial fake relationship. They did date of course back in the S1-2 time, fully conforming to what society expected of people of their standing. Stella believed as long as she could find a guy ok enough to settle with, everything would be fine. She could be happy. Brandon on the other hand was a bit more aware of his crush on Sky, but he though if he hid behind a relationship with a conventionally feminine and attractive girl he could squash all rumours and budding feelings. Internalised homophobia is a bitch that did a number on both of them. Though this is not to say there are no real emotions between them. Stella loves Brandon deeply, they consider each other their respective closest friend. In that vein, Stella would do anything to make life as stable and comfortable for Brandon - after his childhood had been less so - including marrying him to make him a prince. Since Solaria supports polyamory, this comes at no additional strain for her. His presence in the meantime wards off other suitors and creeps, for which she is very thankful, as it gives her space to figure out her feelings about Bloom. And oooh does she have many. She eventually confesses during the S8 timeline, but has to wait quite a while for a positive response, after which Stella and Brandon both come clean about the nature of their relationship to the rest of the world. In the end, Stella is lucky enough to celebrate not one, but two fun weddings.

Brandon: He gets his own column, because his story goes on separate from Stella’s. While the engagement to Stella is still on the table in the S6 timeline, Brandon struggles both with his crumbling team of Specialists and his feelings about the new recruit. Alright, he did not recruit Roy to the team because he thought he was cute. Brandon thinking that and low-key flirting with him came after they settled on the addition to their team. But BxR doesn’t have a long future after Roy believes Brandon cheated on Stella by sleeping with him. Plus his tension with Layla eventually lead to Roy leaving the team mid S7. Long after that, Brandon gets over his crush for Sky, just when Sky is in the middle of a life crisis and Brandon tries his best not to get sucked in too deep again, but that hurts Sky and irreparably damages the close friendship they had before.

Flora x Helia: Ah yes, unproblematic faves. Don’t change what isn’t broken. (Their S5 trouble isn’t about Flora being jealous about a literal teenager, but rather about her shock of him being so willing to close off and leave behind people from different stages of his life.) The two of them would be set for marriage if such a custom existed on Lynphea, but they definitely plan on raising a family on planet once that is an option again.

Timmy x Techna: Equally low drama zone. They felt a bit pushed together when they first got acquainted as their friends started to date each other. Techna was having their gender identity crisis for the majority of S2 so a relationship was furthest away from their mind. They softly flirted in S3 as they grew closer, which as we know ended in Timmy losing his marbles when Techna got sucked into the Omega portal. He confessed right as the rescue mission was still happening and the two of them have been going strong since then. In S5 they even move together, which Musa joins in S6 (they had a two bedroom flat, just in case they needed the extra space from each other, when/if things weren’t working out, but they were using only the one bedroom anyway, so Musa was welcome there) Surprising everyone who knew them, Timmy and Techan were actually the first ones to get married. After Timmy’s family was becoming more and more hostile, denouncing him for his choice of career, Techna thought it was the most logical thing to get married and grant Timmy much better social security. The two of them plus Musa living together were falling into a tooth-rottingly cute domesticity, until life got unexpectedly difficult.

Musa x Riven: The drama central couple that never should have gotten together. In retrospect everything was super clear to Musa: they had gotten together after Riven had rescued her from Shadowhaunt, playing the hero he had always wanted to be - this streak for glory being the thing that ruined their relationship down the road. Riven’s insecurity got the best of him during S5 and he couldn’t stop comparing himself to Sky, feeling helpless even beside Musa herself. She of course was incredibly offended her boyfriend only wanted her as long as she was waifish and he could swoop in for the rescue, so as soon as Domino was restored the two of them broke up, Riven going his own way, away from the Specialist team itself. Reflecting over the mistakes of her relationship cause Musa to realise she was forcing herself to like a lot of things about Riven, and maybe she was actually also interested in women as well. Layla welcomes her to the wlw world and suggests Musa put herself out there. However Musa doesn’t find love anytime soon (not like there weren’t options out there, like Galatea would go on a date with her in a heartbeat if Musa only asked) And then after moving together with Techna and Timmy, the three of them fall asleep on the same couch one too many times for Musa to start thinking there might be something there, a bit more than just friendship.. and then of course she ruins it, cause....

Riven x Darcy: He enters the story again in the S8 timeline, and disappears quickly again after Flora gives him the worst advice of her life (that she thought he looked genuinely happy with Darcy, hoping he wouldn’t force the thing with Musa). So he goes looking for Darcy, unintentionally setting off the whole plot for this arc, because Darcy is not where she should be prison and she is not there on her own accord. Darcy and Riven continue to have a thing on and off (seeing as she is a wanted criminal and shit) and that drives Musa up the wall. She may or may not still have feelings for Riven. Upset, she looks for an outlet with her quarantine mate, and that ladies and gents, is bad decision central

Stormy x Musa: Bad decision central. A drunken one night stand, let’s not talk about it anymore.

Layla x Nex: A sweet one sided crush that goes nowhere. Nex tries, but Layla is nowhere near ready to date again when he steps into her life in S7. He takes the rejection with dignity and the two of them try to remain friends, as best as they can, when Nex suddenly becomes the biggest critic of Layla’s chosen relationship in S8 (he means well of course, and once again, despite the Riven-vibes he gives off, he knows when to shut up).

Layla x Orion: A girl can only handle so much flirting on galactic starsailers before she starts noticing a kind of chemistry she tried to suppress from budding for years after a huge personal loss. Are LxO a match made in heaven? Probably not, but they offer interesting perspectives to each other and are both happy with a casual relationship at that point. Things get tense about a year in when Layla pitches that she does want something more permanent and Orion’s first instinct is to nope out of there. But despite themself, Orion has to realise they really like Layla way too much just to let her go because of their attachment issues. The actual relationship between them is a bit on hold until after everything in the Universe is sorted, but in the meantime Orion becomes the biggest supporter of Layla going her own way and exploring independence away from what people expect of her. Deciding that being a nymph and protecting the whole Universe is way more important to her than following the path the circumstances of her birth set out for her, Layla eventually settles with her partner sailing the winds of the cosmos.

Daphne x ?: Immortal Queen. Needs no one in life except maybe her right-hand woman to lean on 👀

Some one-sided crushes that went nowhere, but were sweet anyway:

Musa x Layla: not a secret that Musa had a thing for Layla when she transferred to Alfea in S2

Sky x Riven: Due to his amnesia, Sky idiotically forgot he was already out as bi and had a whole crisis, as he developed a tiny crush on Riven of all people

Icy x Tritannus: Gets an honourable mention here because it wasn’t true love, but obsession with power on both sides

Musa x Stella: Not as pronounced as Musa’s other crushes, but on the down low she always softly admired Stella and it turns out what she felt wasn’t envy like internalised societal expectations made her believe

Diaspro x Sky: Once again, a bit more obsessive than loving. Diaspro saw Sky like a lifeline and she hyperfocused on being able to call a husband her own. After her betrayal and prison time she mellows out, gets pardoned and gets a kind of “stupid, but loving” bf who would kiss the floor she walks on.

#winx club #winx ships #winx bloom #winx stella #winx layla #winx flora #winx musa #winx techna #worldbuilding #butterfly fic #everybody makes horrible decisions in this au #why am I like this?#me at characters: suffer puppet!#just kidding most of them get a happy ending

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esther-dot · 5 years

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Dany is a villain (and it isn’t sexist to say so)

This is in response to your post @tatticstudio55 The original by @thewokedragon was getting unwieldy with all of our reblogs so I’m beginning a new one. You don’t have to respond or if you want you can make your own and just tag me, I don’t know the Tumblr etiquette, but a lot of us use our phones and that baby was just way too long for comfortable scrolling.

So, just to clarify, zero part of me feels the need to rain on other people’s parades. I only reblogged initially because it was in the Jonsa tag, and I felt like a Jonsa should explain our POV. I don’t like Jonerys, but if you like it, that’s fine. I’ll studiously avoid it, you can revel in it, and we can both be happy. I only got involved because the charge of sexism was being leveled at people I like and respect and it was being thrown in my face each time I looked in the Jonsa tag. I think it’s easy to be very free with calling people sexist, and I reblogged OP a second time trying to talk about that idea a bit.

Regardless, this is entertainment, we should only do this if it is fun, and because of how s8 went down, it was fun for no one. I feel awful for Bran fans, Dany fans, Jaime fans, Sansa fans, Jon fans etc etc. These characters all deserved better writing. There is very little you could say in criticism of D&D that I would object to, but, that does not mean that Dany’s villain arc is due to sexism or was a result of writing to help the male characters. In fact, my response was trying to point out that rather than any of it benefiting Jon, it was all in service of the desire to make Dany breaking bad a surprise. There is sexist writing in ASOIAF, there is sexist writing in GoT, there is sexism in the fandoms for both, but it doesn’t follow that the decision for a female character to break back is motivated by sexism.

I think it's very important that women embrace a wide variety of representations of women in media, not just nice ones, not just the ones who represent us as an individual. In GoT alone I like Sansa, Arya, Brienne, Missandei, Yara, Cat, Cersei, Olenna, Dany etc etc. But that doesn’t mean I agree with them or think they’re always right. I sympathize with them, I enjoy them, but I can still say they’re wrong. I can still say, here’s the line you crossed and when you crossed it. We should definitely criticize sexism in entertainment, but just because we don’t like how a female character is portrayed or a female character’s fate, doesn’t mean it is sexist. Criticism is one thing, objecting to a character's nature because she's a woman seems like we're getting awfully close to reverting to when a woman in media could only be one thing.

The initial post was making an assertion that our theories were sexist because they ignored who Dany was in order to focus on a male character. And I argued that because we understood who she was and where she was going, we understood the foreshadowing from the books and saw it being implementing (badly, but it was there) in the show, we knew where her story was going and come s8, we were right. As badly written as it was, the reality is that many Dany fans missed the fact that her thirst for power drowned out her desire for family, peace, and home. Now, there was disingenuous writing along the way, but I actually think most of it was in an effort to keep you thinking Dany was a hero when she wasn’t, not making her worse than she is. They hinted that Bran and Sansa might be villainous, they made Jon a traitorous idiot, all in service of the surprise. Dany wasn’t the only character that suffered in s8, and the one that suffered the most was Jon because he didn’t even have an arc. It wasn’t sexism that caused this mess, it was sacrificing a good story and good characters for a stupid rug pull. That was my point.

If you like Dany, and understand her differently than me, fine. I don’t go into the Dany or Jonerys tag because I don’t want to see justifications for her actions, and I don’t feel the need to tell you what to do, to tell you what to think, or to tell you what I think of your theories. Not only do I not read that stuff, I don’t post in your tags. It’s a tv show, and we don’t need to argue about it. But, here we are. So, my view is that heroes don't have to be perfect, but motivations and goals matter, and I don't think we were ever intended to accept Dany's quest as innately good, and as her cause requires the deaths of more and more people, I think we were supposed to wake up and realize this isn't right, instead of rationalizing it all as the necessary price for the greater good. And yes, I understand that your stance is they misrepresented her in the show, but I think it's because they loved her, they wanted her to win, she (+dragons) were financially very important to the show, so, instead of giving us the story that we should have gotten, they were nicer to her than they should have been.

Dany is coming to conquer Westeros with WMDs. Her ambition is in direct conflict with what the Starks want. Their father fought to overthrow the Targaryens, their brother fought for Northern independence. Dany has been established as their enemy before they’ve ever met. In their story, Dany was/is/will be a villain. This is why the “the villain is the hero of the other side” is such an amazing idea. You can create characters who win the audience’s sympathy and affection and allow their experiences the shape them and give them motivations and then when they meet, instead of seamlessly folding together to suit the audience’s desires for them to do so (an idea Martin has criticized), there is conflict, struggle, victory, and defeat. It’s a great idea to force your audiences to have conflicting loyalties and sympathies so even in victory there is suffering and even in defeat there is success. I love that idea. Dany is a villain in the Stark story, the Starks (whether it be Sansa or more exclusively Jon in the books) will be a villain in her story. We got a shitty, shitty version of this in the show, but that is the story.

Dany comes to Westeros claiming she is the rightful heir to the 7K because its her birthright. Well, Dany’s absolute belief in hereditary claim only extends to herself because in s8 she doesn’t care about Jon’s claim, only her own. And we knew she would view him as a threat and not honor his claim because Dany doesn’t actually believe in the birthright stuff. It’s a self-serving excuse to conquer a continent. How do I know? Because her brother was the rightful heir (as far as she knew), and she decided he wasn’t a dragon, wasn’t fit to rule. Do I care her brother died? No, he was disgusting and deserved it, but that doesn’t change the fact that Dany didn’t consider herself obligated to honor hereditary claim when it was a threat to her, but she sure expected everyone else to accept it even if she was a threat to them. If you step outside of the POV trap, Dany’s hypocrisy is evident from the beginning of the story. The shit she pulled in s8 is embedded in her character from s1 because this is who she is.

If you take a step outside of her POV, and look at things objectively, you realize, we were being played from the beginning. Dany wasn’t deliciously evil from day one, she’s not Ramsay, but she has been taking steps toward darkness since the day we met her. We’re the frog in the water who doesn't know it’s getting hotter until we’re cooked. Think about Drogo. We sympathize with Dany’s decision to kill him because it’s presented as a mercy killing, but this is from her perspective. I’m not sure that it was necessary to kill him at all. We think it is because we’re accepting Dany’s version of events, but we can easily view this in a less favorable light. Everything she’s done can be reinterpreted this way. The best example of this is Mirri Maz Duur. In Dany’s version, she’s a villain, but flip the script and think about it from the other perspective. She didn’t do anything wrong. Her people were attacked by Dany’s people, she was raped, and yet, she tried to help Drogo, she warned Dany about the magic, she told Dany not to come into the tent, then she was burned alive. In her story, she’s a victim of Dany. In her story, Dany is the villain.

So, I don’t buy this idea that everyone is going darker and somehow that lessens the significance of Dany going darker. Dany has always been self-serving. I’m not saying devoid of good intentions, but just because she convinces herself of her good motivations doesn’t mean I need to ignore the other side of what she is doing. The distinction between her and someone like Jon is that Jon denies himself the things he wants (Ygritte, Winterfell etc) keeps sacrificing what he wants to hold onto his morals, to adhere to standards and ideals, to serve a greater good. Dany justifies her actions and convinces herself that they are good, that she is right. She is her own standard which is convenient because that means she’s never wrong. in the show, Jon kept working harder and harder to preserve life, whereas Dany was walking in the opposite direction, justifying more and more violence and death in order to get what she wants.

And Martin writes psychologically/emotionally compelling characters, he isn’t gonna flip a switch and fundamentally alter characters. We can track the progression and struggle for each. What Dany was in s8 has been foreshadowed, and it is what Martin is gradually walking Dany towards, and it is totally within character for her if you realize that what she is has always been there, it’s just not called out because we’re being manipulated by forced perspective. As much as I sympathize with and pity Dany, even hoped that she is other than what she is, Dany has two selves and they're irreconcilable. Dany chose to be mother of dragons. She can’t also be mother of people. She’s going to sacrifice half of herself on the altar of getting what she wants.

Personally, I would have preferred Dany accidentally setting off Wildfire in KL and that being the main cause of civilian causalities. They wanted to make the point that she was a tyrant and went about it in the most overbearing way possible, and I wish they had made it more intimate. Let Dany conquer the city, but not burn the entire thing to hell. And then bring out the citizens and tell them to bow and have one person refuse in an echo of the scene after the loot train attack. She burns that one person. Jon watches. She can then say, “summon the Lords and Ladies of Westeros to kneel. Bring me Sansa.” And then, Jon killing her is less about Dany being a cartoon villain who wants to burn the world, and it simply comes down to Jon choosing his family/Sansa over Dany. I actually hope the whole thing will be much more morally grey in the books. I didn’t like 8x05 or the finale, and I don’t need Jon Snow to remain pure. I am totally happy with Jon as an anti-hero. The point isn’t that we have wholly evil on one side and wholly good on the other, but I’m not interested in making false equivalencies either.

But yes, Dark Dany/Dany blowing up KL predate the essays, and I’ve rarely seen anyone use them as the foundation of the argument in regards to Dany, they’re just referenced because Martin said they were good. And no, the people you’re referencing wouldn’t be getting hate because they’re still arguing that Dany is somehow a hero even if she’s involved in roasting hundreds of thousands of people. Which, if that’s how you want to envision things, go ahead, but to me, I see this as part of her progression, not an oopsie. Therefore, I don’t read their stuff anymore, I never engaged with them. I do some stuff on Quora, but mostly stick to Tumblr where I can curate my experience to Sansa fans/Jonsa people because I’m not here to try to convince people they’re wrong, but I’m also not here to be offended and appalled. I don’t even go into the GoT, ASOIAF, Sansa, Daenerys, or Jon tags because I just don’t need to be creeped out and disturbed every day. While we can sympathize with Dany because of the shit she’s been through, I’m not gonna turn my brain into mashed potatoes in order to defend her actions as right when I have a moral compass that says they aren’t.

I had someone post angry comments on a fic saying what’s wrong with Jonsas is that we’ve been saying Dany is Darth Vader all along when she was really Anakin until 8x05 and maybe that’s the problem. I see her as struggling with the darkness a lot longer than that and by the time she gets to Westeros, she’s going to have moved from “villain origin story” to having been swallowed by her darker self. And I don’t mean marching around like the fantasy version of Hitler, Martin is too good of a writer to strip her of humanity, but it’s our job as savvy readers not to let her humanity trick us into justifying everything she does. If we had been with Cersei every step of the way, witnessed her neglect, witnessed her heartbreak, witnessed her abuse, then it would be tempting to be led by our sympathy to justify her actions, but even if I like her, what she does is still wrong, she is still a villain. Even only meeting her as an adult, and having her framed as a villain, I still liked her, but I wanted her to die because that’s how this story goes. Evil will be defeated, even if evil doesn’t call itself evil, even if evil has suffered, even if evil has a human face. Even if evil is sometimes right, even if it has done good things. Even if it isn’t unadulterated but broken, defeated goodness. Even if we love it.

As for what D&D say, I disregard their interviews and the scripts except to gripe about it because it just makes no sense. What they say doesn’t correlate to what we saw on our screens which contradicts what’s in the scripts and all the actors have a different take, and I think there are a lot of reasons for this, but in the end, it’s entirely unhelpful to listen to them because like their writing, they’re disingenuous. They ran two or three versions of characters and didn’t firmly settle on one in s8. I don’t know if in the books Dany goes mad or if she becomes ruthless because you’re right, the show failed to convey a coherent narrative.

They certainly wanted us to think that she realized the people would never love her, that they would choose Jon given the chance, that’s the parentage reveal/her jealousy in 8x04/her face as you hear the people calling to Cersei in 8x05. The people view her as a monster, so she becomes the monster because they’ll never love her. I agree that they should have included a shot of the people reacting to her/her reacting to their perception of her to visually communicate this idea. Knowing what D&D say they were saying is entirely different than them showing us. I felt like they definitely left room to view this as a “Mad Queen” turn rather than ruthless conqueror, and I really hope Dany’s endgame isn’t madness. I’d hate that. I think D&D left things to Martin to reveal, whether as a favor, because he hasn’t decided, or due to incompetence I couldn’t tell.

So really, I do agree that Dany was kinda a metaphor instead of herself in the finale. They wanted to moralize to the audience using her as a lesson, and it was painful. But, we have a fundamental disagreement about what/who Dany is. They opted to reduce Dany to a “tyrants are bad” moral when I think the tragedy is that Dany didn’t have to be, but she chose and kept choosing a path that led her there. I think “the lesson” is that monsters aren’t born monsters, they’re self-made. The opposite is true too, heroes aren’t born heroes, they become them. Sansa is the counterpoint to Dany in the show and the animosity directed at her by many Dany fans is why I view their claims of sexism with a lot of incredulity. We got a female hero. She didn’t lead armies or give inspiring speeches or ride dragons, but she was there. Just because the female character people wanted to believe in fell doesn’t mean that was due to her gender. It was due to her mistakes, just as the fact that Sansa ended the series sitting on a throne was due to her decisions.

As for crucifying the masters in the show, I thought that was the writers’ way of acknowledging Dany’s violence and failure to implement justice while still leaving room for the audience to view her as a hero, whereas if they had shown her worse acts, like, ordering the slaughter of every male of a socioeconomic class, the jig would have been up. If that played on our screens, the audience would no longer have seen Dany as a hero, because while it's easy to ignore the reality of what is happening when it's not images (after all, a tokar is what slavers wear so it’s easy to rationalize that decision when we only have words to contend with), if we had to watch Dany overseeing the death of the teenage boys wearing them, we wouldn't have been able to deny what she was. Because while she believes her cause is right and good, what is her quest to the life of a child?

There is a reason there will be no Targaryen restoration. There is a reason Daenerys Targaryen will fall. It isn’t because she’s a woman. It’s because of what she has chosen to be. There's a reason that the Starks are the heroes. There is a reason that in the end it is the Starks who rule Westeros. It isn't their gender or their blood but their values. They do not want power, they fight to protect. They accept power as a duty, a burden. The Starks value life. The reason that many of us thought Dany was a villain is that she and Jon were running to opposite extremes on this issue. Jon was less and less able to take life, even when it was his own murderers, and Dany justified taking life more easily. There is a reason that the Stark men, Ned, Robb, Jon, are shown beheading people as their mores demand. There’s a reason Sansa cries as Littlefinger dies. Those scenes aren’t to make us immune to violence, they’re to show that while their laws, customs, justice demand death at times, taking a life weighs on them. They carry each death with them, in contrast to where Dany is heading, which is signified in the books by the fact that she can no longer remember a dead little girl's name.

The show didn’t change things to make Dany harsher or more badass than she is, they changed things so that you could deny what she is. They conveniently left out the fact that she isn’t an abolitionist, that she permitted and then profited off of slavery. I understand that she says the right thing, but who cares about words when we can look at her actions? Dany spews a lot of nice rhetoric, and Dany believes it, she believes in her own goodness, but I don't. She's a hypocrite time and again. And, it's fine that she makes mistakes, that's what makes these characters feel so real, they're layered, they have flaws, but I thought she reached a turning point that she wasn’t coming back from much earlier in the show than her fans did, and I think that’s where we left her in the books. Think about her mantra. She isn’t going to look back. I think she has embraced her darker side, where she will give into her urges, and she will justify it, do worse, and justify that. I don’t think the show made her worse than she is, I think they hid the worst of what she was so they could have a surprise ending that wasn’t a surprise if you didn’t find ways to excuse her every action on the way there.

Even though that’s what I think, let’s say you guys are right though. Maybe the books will be kinder to Dany. Maybe book Dany is a hero, maybe she’ll have a grand romance with Jon before she dies a hero's death saving humanity. But if our heroes run around leaving the corpses of countless children in their wake as the cost of their ambition, I'm not sure that we should want them to be successful. I'm not sure that we should want them to survive.

If our heroes aren’t thrust into war but pursue it, choose to wage it because they want power, if they choose to paint their road to victory with the blood of innocents, well, with heroes like those, who needs villains?

#anti daenerys #anti daenerys targaryen #anti burning people alive #sexism in dany's arc #female villains #got thoughts #anti d&d #dany is a villain #and we can love her anyway #but let's not deny her agency by acting like her choices don't matter #we had Cat and Brienne and Missandei and Gilly #Got ladies don't need to call themselves Queen to be great characters #heroes can be flawed but if they're burning people alive #maybe they're no longer a hero #(looking at you Stannis)#like the characters but condemn their actions #Heroes and Villains #q

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pain-somnia · 4 years

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(1)so, i've been re-reading AOY for like, the third time, and i just wanted to tell u how much i appreciate the way you write all of the characters. i feel like you approach them with empathy, or at least an understanding of some sort. like, you don't ignore their flaws or their virtues, you don't get viciously against or in favor of any of them. and even if your fic is focused on Hyde&Jackie and their relationship, u give depth to almost all of the characters,

(2) none of them could be replaced with a cardboard cutout, u know? and the dynamics in the group are fantastic, everyone matters to everyone in one way or another (although there are different degrees of closeness, of course). a long time ago i had started reading the eric/buddy fic u mentioned, and while it was well written and intriguing, i couldn't get past the first few chapters bc i can't handle fics that are too biased (not to say that it was bad, it just wasn't my thing).

(3) plenty of other t7s fanfics are biased too (to a certain extent), which is fine and completely normal, but idk, i just love that u seem to care for everyone at least a little bit. it's one of the things that makes AOY so compelling to me. i'm looking forward to what's next, especially bc i wanna know how Hyde&Jackie are gonna deal with their new-but-not-really relationship,

(4)and i NEED more Buddy&Fez, and Jackie&Donna. i also i have a good guess as to the ship you're gonna introduce, so i'm excited to see how you're gonna tackle them 👀. anyway, i didn't mean for this message to get so long lmao. hope you're doing well 💕.

First, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING MY WORK I’m in awe that you re-read it that much (I’m always in awe when ppl re-read my work)

I’m blushing so hard from your compliments. When I first came up with the idea to do this time travel fic I did mostly focus on Jackie and Hyde but then I started to think about the other characters and how Jackie isn’t entirely selfish and she is a compassionate person, so why shouldn’t relationships with other characters be mentioned or highlighted in some way?

(gonna try and put everything under the cut so I don’t clog up the dash but if it doesn’t work I’m so sorry)

Besides the fact that the show was about the group of friends, a huge bit of inspiration for giving more attention to the other characters especially having them do activities with each other especially outside of the basement actually came from my own years as a teen and into my early 20s. The zenmasters fandom is still really new to me unlike the sasusaku fandom so many don’t know about how I got really sick and lost the closeness I used to have with my irl friends due to my illnesses and inability to do all of the things I used to do with them. This is my way of capturing my love for my old friends in a way.

My home used to have the same feeling as Eric’s basement (every time my family moved my house was still THE house) and I was one of like three friends that were licensed (even up to our mid 20s) and I was the only one everyone fully trusted to drive. So in a way I was the Eric of our friend group especially when you add in my mom’s train of thought when it came to my friends and I which was that she would rather us eat everything in her fridge in kitchen and have her go broke feeding us than for us to be out doing stupid shit. It didn’t stop us from doing stupid shit but that was our life lol

we used to trespass into places (abandoned houses, abandoned asylum, parks and fields and lakes when they were closed at night), I had an ex that stole a golf cart from a security guard cuz it was there and the keys were in the ignition and we all fucking scattered when the guy showed up, we would fuck around at my house or another friend’s house and drinking and weed (and acid and shrooms) were usually involved (I was the mom friend so I always took care of everyone and was designated driver), we went to concerts even if we had to drive to other states and also went to Warped Tour almost every year until I got sick af. We would find the perfect places to watch meteor showers and hold bonfires at a friend’s house (although we did start a bonfire in a soccer field we had no business being in at that time at night).

And we would drive around for hours with no destination. We typically told our parents we were going bowling when we did and we never fucking went bowling lol

There’s so much that we did

This is all the energy of my personal experience being a teenager with access to a minivan and then my own car that really made me think about the T7S gang and even though I want to focus so much on Jackie and Hyde and their romance, I feel like I would be doing such a disservice to the friendships in the show by not having them be actual friends in the story.

I’ve had a friend abandoned by her mother and she moved in with a bf and we all helped her (I had to teach her how to cook rice in a pot cuz her bf didn’t have a rice cooker and my mom made sure she knew she could come live with us if she got fed up with her bf’s family) and my family has opened their home to my friend and her family when they were in between homes. I’ve had to help friends through bad trips. We’ve all had our hearts broken. Some of us have dealt with being queer and learning about our own identities and the struggle with finding out who we really are. I found out my father wasn’t my biological father when I was 20 lol

And we all had each other during those moments. Just like how the T7S gang had each other. So I felt personally invested in making sure to elaborate on moments where they were hanging out and being friends to each other.

And I know. God that fic. Whenever I re-ead that fic I actually skip a lot and my last re-read of it made me feel like I couldn’t read it again just because it is way too biased. Like it completely absolves a certain character of everything and I kind of lost it when Brooke had to apologize to him in the fic....I feel like, you should definitely be able to criticize things that you love and that it doesn’t take away any love to recognize the bad with the good.

Like right now I have to show some bias against Kelso for the part of the story but I keep editing it so it’s not complete hate against him. It’s just for this part of the story he is well just being him which is unfortunately ugly and it has to be ugly until he can grow. But I feel guilty about it lol don’t hate me too much for what he has to go through first

Jackie and Donna. I have such a weak spot for them in my fic mostly because for the longest time I didn’t really have many girl friends. I was always too much of a boy, too weird, too ugly for the other girls so I didn’t have someone I was truly super close with until I was in like 8th grade. And there’s this sisterhood with Jackie and Donna that I wish they did better. Like ignoring s8 completely, there just could have been more. But the sweet moments we got were amazing. I just feel like the writers knew fuck all how to make the girls proper friends without feeling like they were losing the characters and how they were.

i will probably be introducing that ship in chapter 8. I’m just struggling wrapping up the last bit of chapter 7 aka the January 31st part. I’ve just been staring at page 56 and wondering if I’m doing it right.

#asks #zenmasters #t7s #that 70s show

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missjackil · 4 years

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Hey you wrote a thing in group chat about why you think Sam should have looked for Dean when he was in Purgatory and I think you made the most valid points I've heard! So if you aren't worried about hate from Samgirls, would you mind explaining your reasoning here?

Im not particularly “scared” or worried about Tumblr hate. Some people are overly sensitive and think anything negative is hate. I love Sam as if he was a real-life person, my bff that Im also in love with, that I see on a regular basis, but I don’t think he’s perfect nor that his character has never fucked up.

Let it be known first off that I think the “not looking for Dean” thing was a bad call in Carver’s part, even though I get where he was coming from, that he felt like the relationship between the brothers had lost a lot of what we fell in love with in the beginning, and needed to be rebuilt, and he felt like he needed to tear it down to the studs and build it back up, stronger and more solid.

I think Carver did achieve that, I mean we had Kripke making Dean support Sam’s choice to throw himself into Hell, and Gamble having Dean tell Cas “Bottom of the 9th, Id rather have you... cursed or not” there just wasn't much codependent “love” left till the end of S8 when we had Dean stopping Sam from killing himself to save the world and assuring him he would never put anything in front of him. I am grateful for that, but having Sam not looking for Dean was just stupid. However it IS canon and we’re stuck with it, so instead of trying to make excuses for Sam or coming up with meta theories, I'm just gonna say why I think Dean had the right to be pissed.

I will throw in a cut here so if anyone wants to read further they can, but if you cant take Sam getting criticized a little then scroll on past.

So the first common argument is that Sam thought Dean was dead, and in Heaven and Sam didn’t want to take him out of his peace again. I don’t buy that because Sam was in Heaven with Dean, and knew Dean didn't like it there because nothing was real. It was just memories, and surely, Dean wouldn't be at peace if Sam wasn't there too and he could only see him in his memories.

Another common argument is that Sam was depressed and suicidal. Yes Sam was depressed, but neither Winchester is “suicidal” in the way one would be to just drive off a cliff or eat a bullet. Sam and Dean may be more than willing to die at times, but never without doing some good on the way out. Save each other or save the world, otherwise, they carry on.

They had promised each other not to look for each other. But really they didn't. We know that Sam made Dean promise not to go looking for ways to get him out of Hell, and Dean promised, yet, he tried anyway. That's what the Winchesters do, they try to save the other by any means necessary. So for Dean to expect that Sam would look for him, is logical, and to find out he didn’t had to hurt like Hell. Not only did Sam not look for him, but was now telling Dean he enjoyed the good things in life, while thinking his beloved brother, who sold his soul for him, was dead *epic cringe*

One huge elephant in the room that no one talks about. Sam had no way of knowing if Dean was dead or not, there was no blood nor a body. Anyone, even real-life people, needs at least that to begin to accept their loved one is dead and move on.

Imagine hypothetically, you go missing and your car is found on the side of the road completely totaled, but there was no blood nor your body. Would your family just assume you’re dead and move on? Hell no, people would start searching for you. Those who love you the most, won't rest until you’re found.

Now imagine you somehow ended up miles deep in the woods, with no way to contact anyone, so you push and drag your broken self through the woods for weeks, months, or hell, let's say a year, till you FINALLY make it home, and you find out the person you love most in the whole world, had just assumed you were dead because the car was smashed, never made an attempt to find you and was telling you they were living a good life without you. I’m actually surprised Dean ever spoke to Sam again tbh.

I’m fine with the fact that Sam stopped hunting, I would have too, and Kevin wasn’t his responsibility anyway, and the kid hated them so, not his problem, but Sam definitely should have made an attempt to at least find out if Dean was dead before going on his “fix it” tour. (fix the Impala, then the dog, then stuff around the motel, then bitch face Ameila whom he never should have given the time of day to) Buy a talking board at least, Winchesters don't even have mental meltdowns until they know the other is dead. Before that, they hold it together and break the world trying to find out.

So all in all, I say it was a very bad story choice, and bad writing, but since we’re stuck with it, I say Dean had every right to be hurt and pissed and Sam owed him an apology at the very least.

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ganymedesclock · 5 years

Note

So you said in an earlier post that you’d been thinking of a hypothetical Sendak reform arc. Could you elaborate on that?

So this is one thing that’s actually sort of still a theory.

Simply: I think Sendak and Lotor are half-siblings, with Lotor the elder of the two. We’re told pretty clearly Zarkon had no other partners before Honerva; Alfor remarks that he’s astonished at the idea that Zarkon would ever marry, and the way Zarkon acts around Honerva initially would seem to make it pretty clear that he’s not exactly done this romantic song and dance before.

However, Sendak is significantly implicated with the royal family both in the main universe and in the “happy family” universe we see in late s8.

In the main universe, while it’s subtle, s4e3 has some very meaning-laden exchange between Lotor and Zarkon about how Zarkon never personally trained Lotor. Lotor is basically saying he only fails because he was not taught, which we know on Lotor’s side he’s setting up to be rejected by Zarkon- so he’s asking for something he’s confident Zarkon will never give him.

This is noteworthy because we only hear that Zarkon personally trained one person: Sendak. We in fact literally see Zarkon training Sendak in the “happy family” universe- and if you look at what that version of Sendak is wearing?

It’s the exact same red armor with gold accents that Zarkon and only Zarkon wears. Not explicitly confirmed to be lordly armor, but, that’s still very significant that we see Sendak bedecked in Zarkon’s colors.

In the main universe, of course, that’s not the case, however, also in the main universe, when Haggar chooses someone to back instead of Lotor for the throne, she goes to Sendak. Furthermore, when Pidge and Allura question hologram Sendak on the Atlas, Sendak asserts that he comes from an “unquestionably galra lineage” but does not clarify who his parents are.

There’s also the fact that when Sendak does arrive to the Kral Zera, he’s dismissed specifically for having vanished when Zarkon needs him. This is significant first because it implies that while Zarkon cut Sendak preferential treatment in the form of personal training, that’s not reinforced by the imperial hierarchy. Somehow, Sendak caught Zarkon’s eye in a way that Zarkon was implicitly involved with Sendak’s education, possibly even from a very young age (s1e9, Sendak implies that he sees himself as having no identity outside of serving Zarkon which are the words of an indoctrinated person), but without Sendak having really climbed the ranks or received positive acknowledgement from any of the imperial brass.

However, Janka, who is stated to be more cautious and calculating of the potential contenders, definitely seems to think Sendak’s trouble- to the point that when he smugly dismissed Gnov a second ago, once Sendak turns up he’s proposing alliances, and then, when Sendak has him cornered, Janka tries to barter with him.

The other significant side of why Sendak is dismissed at the Kral Zera is that it mirrors something Throk said about Lotor in s3e1- where the first criticism Throk voices of Lotor is “Why is he not at his father’s bedside?” It implies that within the empire there’s a cultural attitude that children should serve their father, and if they don’t, that’s dishonorable or untrustworthy of them.

And Zarkon is considered beautiful enough his likeness is put on posters, so while Honerva’s disoriented and beset with amnesia (or, in the happy family universe, died) it’s quite possible that Zarkon took another consort, and that consort might have produced Sendak.

But if Zarkon never acknowledges Sendak as his heir, or favors him with the title of prince, that’s going to create an interesting issue. It would explain why Zarkon would spend so much time training Sendak, and why Janka would consider him a threat, but Ranveig would dismiss him.

Also during the Kral Zera- Sendak and Lotor talk rather personally to each other. The implication is some history there, and, moreover…

The happy family universe seems to tell us something else. That Zarkon and Honerva seem to have set Lotor and Sendak against each other.

While Lotor and Sendak don’t seem super close in the “Happy Family” universe, it still stands that this idealized depiction of the galra royal family has both of them. Presumably, in that universe, Sendak would be acknowledged as the younger prince because Zarkon would have likely remarried in the wake of Honerva’s death.

And during the Kral Zera, Lotor seems specifically trying to warn Sendak. There’s a lot less of the scorn he addresses Zarkon with when he accuses Zarkon of being Honerva’s puppet in s5e2; rather, there seems to be this undercurrent of “don’t you see what she’s doing to you?”

So that creates this interesting thread, if that theory’s true (and since canon’s done and both Lotor and Sendak are dead, I figure you can basically choose to take it just on the grounds that it makes things a lot more interesting if it is true) It would imply Sendak’s the Azula to Lotor’s Zuko. Two abused children whose paths diverged a long time ago.

But I was aware a big reason I started to feel really bad for Sendak is, on top of all of the implications he was heavily indoctrinated and that, again, in s1e9 he earnestly brags about not having any purpose in life outside of the empire, talking up how being surgically taken apart and cybernetically augmented made him ‘better’ in his own eyes- his ultimate death is basically hollow. It’s bereft of even the spite that led him to first attack Earth- it’s just an empty repetition of the values he was raised with.

Sendak is ultimately a deconstruction of the Red Paladin role, as much as Zarkon- an abusive tyrant- is a deconstruction of the Black Paladin role. Sendak’s loyalty is manipulated. It’s exploited. While he is clearly an adult with a lot of autonomy, he’s an adult that grew from heavily indoctrinated roots. As he says himself, he basically can’t imagine a life outside of the empire, outside of his role, outside of being what he is.

And the way Lotor talks to him at the Kral Zera really makes me think that you could have built something very interesting in Lotor who wasn’t derailed away from the heroes at the end of s6… trying to reach Sendak. Trying to actually help him. Because frankly, it’s possible they grew up together- it’s possible they were even friends at some point. They could have been friends even as late as the colony, and Ven’Tar, with the rift only really happening in full with Lotor’s exile. Because we see at that point Lotor had no real intention of breaking with the empire, he wanted to make it better and he wanted Zarkon’s approval.

There’s still a lot Sendak would need to answer for, and, ultimately, it would have to be Sendak finding a reason to want to change, but, so much of his unwavering faith in the empire seems to be born entirely out of isolation and indoctrination. He’s never had any other path, and, especially if he was considered illegitimate as an heir, he’d start to resent Lotor for being formally acknowledged as a prince when not only is Lotor in exile and resenting Zarkon, but, bigoted voices within the empire would be quick to insist Sendak, as a pure galra, would be “worthier” than his Altean half-brother.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Sendak #Lotor #season 8 #readmore #sepublic

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incarnateirony · 6 years

Text

Once again people citing ratings on all sides of the fence without a damn clue what they’re looking at.

And once again, me here to bash my head off my desk about it.

I’ve already talked ratings to death. In fact, it’s pretty much what I’m grounded to in the fandom really. One look at my #ratings tag and it’s most of my personal content generation. And a lot of the people currently quoting ratings have used my material when it’s convenient to them to believe (and of course those on the other side that have never made a damn lick of sense about ratings to begin with), but we’re here. Again.

Keep in mind. I didn’t necessarily feel thrilled by the premiere either. This is not even in defense of the premiere, it’s just exhaustion with seeing people mis-cite ratings. AGAIN. Bitch about the premiere all you want but the ratings card is definitely not the way to be going with this, fam.

So let’s have a realistic talk about what the hell is going on in ratings right now.

Anybody see this? Anybody notice anything weird going on? Anybody notice how almost every channel is red? Actually in basic year-to-year they’re ALL red and in true year-to-year, which is a scaled adjustment attempting to compensate for media decline, a few that hung in at their current threshold are counted up.

Notice every network is crushingly down? Notice... I mean, is this really, really hard to notice? If you’re colorblind and don’t see the red/green, then make use of the +/-es going on and look at the columns.

Everyone’s. Ratings. Are. Crushed.

I’ve talked about this in Ratings for Dummies. I’ve talked about the sources and causes of this in “this obvious comparison,” and showed tangible information to match Nielsen’s digital growth metric and then some. I’ve shown sourced scales of our ratings curves in the past. I’ve even shown when antis have tried to use the adjustment curves to their benefit in the past before denying they exist. But apparently, I need to talk about this again, because even some people who follow me are experiencing collective amnesia about this information.

Now - did the episode do *as well as* our last few premieres? Well, no. Surprise! That HAPPENS sometimes. And I mean, we can stare at that chart and realize why, or we can complain about the episode itself. And you don’t have to like the episode. *I’m* not a huge fan of the episode. That doesn’t mean tagging @Dabb waaaaaaa ratings is gonna get you anywhere when you’re way the hell off the mark.

As per TVbythenumbers, we held a 2-Share, same as we’ve been holding for ages. Like, we dipped into a 2-share in S3 before we bounced back S4 for a while, then back to it by 2011. Guys.

So let’s talk that curve again.

Premiere/finale (and season average) values in gradient curve, all under the same formula, by year (source S1-13) (source S14 premiere):

62 / 39 (48)

45 / 32 (37)

36 / 36 (36)

57 / 43 (44)

50 / 46 (43)

51 / 31 (39)

34 / 30 (31)

38 / 47 (44)

64 / 58 (53)

65 / 42 (48)

62 / 48 (49)

65 / 49 (49)

66 / 47 (50)

54 / NA (NA)

Below what we're used to since S9? Yup. Bad? LMAO it's still a megahit CW standard y'all. Calm down. Miss me with the drama.

It's a stronger premiere than S2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8. Weaker than the first-ever episode, S4, then S9-13. The TLDR is "it still did good." As good as I'd like? Nope. Still good. Also source on the translation of the numbers, you'll notice CW has its own slot. We're still well in the Hit zone, above solid, and not Marginal like people are acting as-per-convenience.

"Stronger than origin era TV or S7 crash, weaker than we're spoiled to most premieres being, but still above running season averages." Which, unsurprisingly, is the feel of the episode itself. Congrats, you found a premiere that wasn't a super-duper-ultra-uber hit on a day ratings were down YeartoYear more than 60% on some networks.

Renewal spec is currently at 99% from this performance lmao the drama. CW just renewed a show that had a 0.15 season rating as average for them.

Also miss me with proof of bad S8, which was ALSO in recovery from a terribad season and rose to a 47 finale before leading strong into S9. If anything it’s a show on why not to necessarily go into a pandemic about Not The Highest Rated Premiere Evarrrr.

So again, where the hell has everyone gone?

IDK. Roku. Amazon. Hulu. Firestick. The CW app. The CW site. Other SVOD platforms. As, in my above links, we’re in the top digitally called shows in the world and the digital market is more than 3.4 times the size of standard TV all on its own even without it being an exceptional “top in the world” performer.

People don’t NEED classic TV anymore. You’re the late adapters if you still watch on it. This isn’t hard to understand.

Was anybody the stubborn folks that kept their rabbit ears wiggling around while everybody got cable for years around you until in 2008-9 the government kicked your ass into buying a converter box or getting fucking cable? Because that’s what’s happening again, only at this point, it’s Roku and other platforms as these conversions, with everything going digital.

So no.

It wasn’t the best episode in the world.

It wasn’t the best premiere in the world.

But if you think tagging CW or Dabb or anybody about “we lost X amount of demo/viewers” is going to get you anywhere, you need to take a step back.

Feel free to be critical of the episode. *I’m* critical of the episode. But if you’re trying to break out ratings to do it, you’re playing the wrong card, mate. Because congratulations on finding a SPN premiere that wasn’t a super-duper-ultra-mega-hit by CW standard. That’s all it is. It’s just a high-end hit. And if you’d like to negotiate with them to convince them that being a hit is bad, you’re gonna have a bad time.

After this, it’s all crackpot spec. Waaaa not enough Dean, ratings are down. Waaa Cas was tied to a chair, ratings were down. No, ratings were down because ratings were down for everyone, but if we’re all going to start throwing crack spec, maybe I can waaa ratings were down because dudebros realized how cripplingly gay SPN has gotten and went to watch Thursday Night Football Instead But The Show Is Still A Hit.

See how easy that is to do? Huzzah!

(No, I’m not actually saying that’s what it is, before anybody goes off.)

#supernatural #ratings

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unofferable-fic · 5 years

Text

Submission from literalapologyblog + some thoughts re: GOT/Marvel/writing

“(too long for askbox, so sending as submission)

Hey, I left a dickish comment on a post you made (via defunct blog, “beewinged”), and I’m sorry. I just literally created a whole new account and painstakingly tracked down your url again to say that, because it was bugging me that much.

I was really into fandom and tumblr for a few years, and pulled out of it completely when one particular fandom went sour with drama and hatefulness. Hate directed at showrunners, between fans– a lot of it using the guise of progressive language.

I removed myself from fandom and social media entirely and pretty successfully, because I hate communicating with people in soundbites and hate how communities like tumblr (for all their upsides) make it easy for users to “curate” a personality and set of opinions with the click of a button.

And it took all of a few days scrolling the Endgame tag for me to go right back to a place of casual, de-personalizing interactions (two comments, the other one being, “this take bums me out”– but still two comments too many).

I saw about fifty posts that compared Endgame to GoT S8; yours wasn’t that unusual. Tags on tumblr, by design, highly concentrate extreme emotion and stimulus. Social media doesn’t care what it’s doing to compassionate discourse. Rationally, I know this! – but seeing post after post talking about writers and creatives, human people with families, as if they had committed war crimes– seeing “fuck the Russos”, “these writers are basically the same people as these writers”, treating “the Russos” like some kind of malicious entity or, worse, seeing anti-colonialist director of color Taika Waititi referred to as “a bag of racid dicks” (in the name of protecting the integrity of a made-up person) made it all too easy for me to perceive individual posts as a part of a vicious hivemind obsessed with its fandom reality-bubble.

I think there are some good criticisms of Endgame. I also felt and still feel that the writing in Endgame (flawed but thematically consistent, focuses on Tony’s arc to the exclusion of others, because his– for better or for worse– is the strongest) doesn’t bear comparison with the hasty and thoughtless writing of GoT’s last few episodes.

That opinion is not what I expressed in my comment on your post. I wasn’t starting a conversation in good faith (something I’ve tried very hard to hold myself to, in real life and when I do make posts online). I essentially expressed, “*you*, a part of a hivemind, are mad because the thing you wanted didn’t happened, and *you* are fronting like that’s ‘bad writing’”.

That’s a very personal accusation, and a really incendiary and unfair thing to say to someone on the basis of one post, ever if it reflects a generalized feeling I have about online fandom. I let my momentary irritation get the better of me, and focused it on you. It wasn’t the most unkind thing I’ve ever said, but that doesn’t rankle any less.

So: I’m sure you do have strong feelings about stories and opinions about storytelling, and I’m sure they are worth listening to, that you have people in your life who enjoy hearing your thoughts, and that the best and most complex of your thoughts can’t be gleaned from just scrolling through your tumblr.

You might have a thicker skin than I do, and maybe didn’t give my comment a second thought– but I’m sorry if, for even a second, it made you feel dismissed or hurt or misunderstood. You could be any number of people who, in “real” life, I’d never speak to so dismissively. I hope you continue to write, enjoy and engage with stories.”

First off, I want to apologise for taking a few days to post this. I saw this in my submission box and wanted to thoroughly think over it before I replied. I’ve since seen that the blog has been deactivated, but I wanted to post this in the hopes you might stumble across my response, because I do appreciate you going to the effort to find me again… It’s a serious effort! And rarely do people apologise for ‘dickish’ comments haha

First off, I understand anyone who wishes to take time away from fandoms, especially when things get toxic and experiences get ruined by it. For me personally, I have a tendency to just avoid those blogs/tags. There was certain things I don’t go near, and certain posts that I might read, internally disagree with, and move on. I’ve spent a lot less time on Twitter and Instagram lately, and I’m feeling better for it too.

In short, do I think that there are rightful comparisons to make between the writers at Marvel and GOT? Yes. Do I think that makes it okay for us to talk excessive smack about the Russos/TW? No. While my criticisms for the Russos and TW run deep, I never condone death threats or unnecessary insults. On one post in particular, I’ve ‘gone off’ on some comment the Russos made regarding fan reactions to Loki’s death. Nothing other than calling them ‘fucking eejits’, but cursing is used more casually here in Ireland, so maybe that’s why I use it as such. But yeah, other than that, I don’t agree with the notion of wishing death or serious harm on these people, and I think most people would agree with that. Criticise them all day, if it’s valid, but anything else is a bit… excessive. I certainly do think that there are far more valid criticisms floating about instead of death threats, but the harsh stuff is always going to jump out the most.

I agree with a lot of what you say - while there are definitely valid criticisms to be made about Endgame, it’s not an awful or bad film, and there are definitely more examples of poor and lazy writing in the last season of GOT. As someone who was in love with that show for a good five seasons, it was sad to see it go the way it did. I did, however, jump ship after some very telling and dramatic writing choices they made in season five. By my logic at the time, “if they will do x now, they’ll most definitely do y and z later”, and it’s never fun when that realisation comes to fruition. That being said, I still strongly believe that Marvel dropped the ball with some of my favourite characters in Endgame (Loki, Steve, Tony, Bucky, Thor). I think they did great by some characters, and terrible by others. But that’s probably a discussion for another post - most of my feelings have been far better explained in posts by other blogs!

“I essentially expressed, “*you*, a part of a hivemind, are mad because the thing you wanted didn’t happened, and *you* are fronting like that’s ‘bad writing’”.” If I’m being honest, this is absolutely nothing new to me haha. As a Loki fan and someone quite critical of the last season of GOT, I’m well used to people telling me “you’re just mad because your fave died!” and “you just don’t like it because it’s not the ending you wanted!” I think any Loki fan can attest to that too. It sucks, but if someone replies to me in that way, I don’t even bother continuing the conversation. You’ve already reached a wall before the conversation can start. I recently had a chat with a friend who I falsely assumed would cut me off in a similar manner, and it was amazingly refreshing to have my opinion heard and not automatically shut off because I’m a “Loki fangirl”. For me, Endgame just proved that my favourite character’s ending in IW was badly written, badly executed, pointless other than being motivation for Thor, and just overall illogical and out of character. Much like most Dany fans don’t mind her character becoming a mad queen, I don’t mind if Loki dies. My issue is how we get there and how badly executed it was in terms of writing. The actors themselves obviously put their hearts into what I would consider a weak story point. It seemed careless, much like Dany’s characterisation... “How do we get there exactly? Ah, who cares, just do it and get it over with. People will watch it and we’ll make money anyway.”. Can you imagine if they had screwed up Iron Man’s arc in the same manner? The backlash would’ve been insane!

I do of course apologise if I’ve ever some across as someone who just shits on Marvel, because that’s not who I am. I grew up being a massive Spider Man fan as a kid, and these heroes and films will always have a place in my heart, but I’m still going to critique something even if I love it. If anything, I think it’s even more important to acknowledge flaws in your favourite things. I’m certainly not right in ever instance, and I don’t think I know everything there is to know about writing!

My main hope from all of this is just that future writers learn from these mistakes and become better writers because of it.

I genuinely appreciate the fact you went to the trouble to find my blog again apologise, because it’s something that I see rarely. I hadn’t paid much attention to your original comment, but your apology is valued and appreciated. It’s honestly something I don’t usually receive amidst a sea of “yOu’rE JUst mAD bEcAUse yOuR faVE DieD!!”

Likewise I hope that you continue to express your own thoughts and opinions on writing in an articulate manner, and hopefully you see less of those posts that proper do your head in! Thank you for explaining your point of view to me, and thick skin or not, apologies and calm conversations always go a long way.

#more of this please #this is the discourse I live for #me answering shit #me saying shit #submission #ask #ask me anything #literalapologyblog #got #game of thrones #marvel #MCU #endgame spoilers #avengers endgame #game of thrones spoilers #loki #writing #apology

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