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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 1 year

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you might have been asked this question before but ive been curious for a while about what would have happened when gertrude was there when jon originally gave his statement? would anything change ?

Honestly she probably would have killed him.

Like, it feels mean to say? It would have been more out of mercy than anything.

If Jon had come to her with only a Leitner, she would have taken care of the Leitner and sent him home. She doesn't normally intervene on behalf of the Statement givers, but they also aren't usually eight, and it isn't unheard of for Gertrude to intervene for the random unlucky souls who cross her path. She intervened on behalf of Jack Barnabas, and she told the monster pig dude how to handle his problem. It's selective when she intervenes, but I think if it's just a little boy scared by a book, she would help.

The thing about Gertrude is that I don’t I think she is or ever has been heartless; I just think she’s brutally practical.

One of the most interesting tidbits about her is that she looked for Eric Delano for months after he went missing, but wasn’t close enough to know that he had quit ages before he actually died. She avenged Sarah’s death by seeking out someone she had never, ever let herself meet before that moment, but she did this right after sacrificing Michael without hesitation. She seemed genuinely fond of Gerry, but she still bound him to a book.

I think that, at the end of the day, it wouldn’t be that she wouldn’t want to save Jon. It would just be that she would realize that she couldn’t.

If he had just arrived with a Guest for Mr. Spider, I think Jon would have walked away remembering her fondly as the brusk but ultimately nice old lady who had her assistant make him a cup of tea and taught him how to burn a Leitner. But he didn’t just come because of A Guest for Mr. Spider. He came because of Tommy Bradstaff.

Gertrude’s shown to be more wary of the Web than pretty much any other entity. She got tricked by them way back when she defeated her first ritual, and I don’t think she forgets. I also don’t think she would have thought it was ever a good idea to voluntarily set herself in a competition with the Mother of Puppets. Jon's eight and scared and she'd want to help him, but she also would have immediately recognized that saving him comes with a very high price tag and a very low chance of success.

I do think Gertrude would have at least tried to think of a way to save him. I just think she would have ultimately come to the conclusion that there wasn’t one.

And it’s just practicality, right? That’s the big difference between her and Jon in nhthcth. It doesn’t matter how badly she wishes she could help; she’ll accept when she can’t. But when she can, she usually racks up a very big win. Jon will wildly intervene without even considering his chances. Like, there's a reason why the Eye led him to Danny Stoker that night--it's not conscious the way humans are or the spiders are, but even pavlov's dogs learned association, and the Eye seems to be capable of that kind of low-level consciousness. When Jon finds Eric Delano's statement in canon, it's because he listened to the tapes the Eye didn't want him to hear. That implies the Eye is at least partially able to make connections based on its own impulses and desires.

Jon's its special little boy who has been resolutely fucking starving himself for almost two decades. He went and joined the eldritch version of AA with Daisy in an attempt not to feed the Eye other than when absolutely strictly necessary, and the Eye's never been happy with his starvation diet. But the one sure-fire way to get Jon to forget his sense and start ripping statements out of avatars is to shove some poor schmuck being eaten in his line of sight.

It’s pretty directly stated in nhthcth that danny isn’t the first victim of another entity he’s tried to snatch, even if he’s never gotten as involved with a pair of victims as the stoker brothers. And honestly—he almost didn’t get super involved with them either. Like, when he was trying to duck out after the initial fight at the theatre, long term involvement would have only made it worse for them. Most of the time, the absolute best chances come from "hope that they've forgotten you existed and won't come back for round two. if that fails maybe just hop continents and it will be too inconvenient for them to track you down again. buy guns." There's a pretty high mortality rate with people who hang around him, and he's not exactly expecting these random male model brothers to manage this world long-term.

If Jon’s hadn’t straight up passed out, he would have called Daisy to come pick him up and bitched to her about fucked up clowns being a problem now. He’d feel vaguely mad at himself when nikola skinned both Danny and Tim, because it’d be just another case of him trying to help and just increasing the body count, which is what happens most of the time.

I think Mike described him like someone who kept putting half dead birds in boxes and feeling disappointed when he opened the lid and saw they’d croaked. It's not unheard of for the people he helps to make it, but it's also not exactly often either. And that’s not even really to say he’s any less powerful or capable than gertrude was—honestly, between him and Daisy? They’re sort of a powerhouse duo. Like, people are afraid of hunters. At one point Dekker says that he was going up against something that would require a hunter to kill, and that while he knew a few, he would never actually risk consulting one. Amateur lobotomy it is. And Daisy is the sort of hunter that can kill other hunters. Jon’s this absolute muppet of a human being rolling up to soul-rending horror like “this is Daisy :) she is my best friend :)” and then they turn around and the Avatar of Fucking Them Up is standing there breathing too heavy and blatantly fucking insane. It’s like if kermit the frog kept bringing the fucking terminator to social events.

And Jon isn’t exactly a slouch either. Like, he’s keeping himself as weak as he can, and he’s still strolling into other entities' domains, feeding on them, and just... walking away again. These are people who are extremely used to being the human equivalent of a great white shark, more powerful and deadly than anyone else in any room they're in, but they've got this extremely distressed looking twink curb stomping them when he has reached the absolute breaking point of his Victorian Fatigue. this man keeps coming into their homes and one-shotting them after weakening himself to the point of being on death's door. jon on his own makes other avatars twitchy, but the Jon and Daisy Buddy Cop is honestly kind of one that the other avatars are somewhat actively afraid of.

Like, they'll dunk on Jon (where daisy can't see), because he's jon and he's ridiculous and pathetic at all times, but people are secretly pretty careful to toe the line of shit jon will put up with. Mike will be smarmy with Jon because he knows Jon will let him get away with it, but he also knows that if he fucks around too hard jon will put him through a psychic paper shredder and daisy will bury his corpse in the woods. It's not a secret that Daisy and Jon are strolling around feeding on and blatantly fucking murdering things like them, but none of these self-serving assholes have managed to handle a pretty active threat to their longevity. that's more because they can't than because they won't.

And still, Gertrude is pretty universally regarded as a force of nature, but Jon's still getting told that a seven percent success rate is a bit generous.

Gertrude is Gertrude Robinson, and she's the baddest bitch around, and that has a huge bit to do with her success rate. But it would be a mistake to say that the number of battles she picked didn't have something to do with why she's more successful. Like--Gertrude's going for quantity over sentiment. She'll save the world, but the individual people in it? Those aren't the fights she has ever prioritized, at the end of the day.

Almost all of the statements Jon in canon recorded were from her tenure, and Jon's follow ups usually concluded with "and then they horribly died." Gertrude was casually eating a fucking sandwich in her office and watching while Jane Prentiss decided that she couldn't be saved and went off to cram her forearm in a spooky wasp nest. She didn't help Jane. She didn't explain what was happening. She didn't try to intervene. She ate her sandwich, and she let Jane leave, and I think that at least in part she would have agreed with Jane's assessment. There wasn't any saving her, and that's a judgment that always precludes Gertrude's help.

Gertrude wins as often as she does because she picks her battles carefully. She delivers maximum damage to maximum effect, and she doesn't spin her wheels on things she knows are a waste of resources. She came right on the heels of an archivist who died because he burned through his resources and his luck, and her tenure has been marked by her being smart enough to be cautious.

I think Jon would have given her his statement. I think she would have been nice to him. I think she would have allowed herself to feel sorry for him, and sorry that he was so young, and sorry that it was too late.

I think that she would have considered what the web could have planned for him, and she would have considered how painful a fate was waiting for him if he met the End the Spider probably had planned for him. And I think she would have decided it would be crueler to let him meet it.

Gertrude in nhthcth specifically has always had a weird, twisted mercy when it came to Jon. She never manipulated him, is the thing. Elias made sure that what he did to Jon had long past the point of no return by the time Gertrude ever caught wind of his existence. As far as she was ever concerned, Jon was beyond saving from the day they met, which meant there was no point in trying. She was never going to offer him the mercy of trying to help him.

But she could have played him and she didn't. And I think that's about the most merciful action that Gertrude Robinson would have been capable of.

She knows about Agnes, okay? better than anyone. she's been bodily hauling the world as they know it through a decade of apocalypse attempts. She took one look at Jon and realized that elias had made him to wear the watcher's crown, but also that she couldn't kill him without completely alienating her resources to stop much sooner apocalypses.

But she sort of knew from the day they met that she may have to one day kill him, if only to stop him from wearing the crown. It wasn't set in stone, but it was a very significant possibility.

In chapter 24, Jon reached out to gertrude for absolutely any comfort possible, and she actually could have given it to him. She could have strung him along with false hope, or just given him a shoulder to cry on. Someone other than elias to love.

And she would have done that knowing that she was actively planning how to kill him when the time came. And she's definitely not above that kind of manipulation. Jon's extremely vulnerable when he comes to her, and he already thinks of her as a source of hope. Stringing him along and being his only source of comfort and support would give her an enormous advantage over him that she normally wouldn't ignore. But if he did die by her hands one day, as she knows he probably will, he'd finally go to his end after a very painful life being murdered by the only person that he thought loved him after he lost Gerry. Gertrude sort of uncharacteristically gave up that advantage to spare him from that final betrayal. She'd never sacrifice the world for him, she could have loved him like her own son and she would still kill him without hesitation, and she won't lie to herself about that fact either. It's a weird, twisted act of mercy to have it be turning the cold shoulder to a little boy begging for help, but in her mind, it was the most merciful option open to her.

And I kind of like the idea of Jonathan Sims in nhthcth always demanding the most painful acts of mercy of Gertrude that she's ever contemplated. Because the thing is, if she had been the one to take his Statement that day, she's almost definitely would have decided that Jon couldn't be saved. Not when the thing after him was the Web. And once she decides that, she has two options: let him meet the End waiting outside of those doors, or handle it herself.

And the thing is, her MO is to go for the former. It's not like she's mercy killing everyone who shows up and tells her of the fate worse than death that's most likely to befall them--hell, to take the risk of mercy killing is borderline out of character to her. If it were anyone else, she wouldn't have done it.

But Jon was eight. He was begging her for help that she couldn't give. And the Web has never been merciful. Either it was lying about wanting him for itself and he was going to be killed in the most slow, horrifying way possible, or it wasn't and he wasn't even going to get the mercy of death. Like, if a horrible, tragic fate is inevitable for him, Gertrude has to at least contemplate if there's an option that's more merciful than the rest.

Even giving him a less painful death is dangerous for Gertrude, but I think that's more of a price she'd be willing to contemplate. Like, killing another entity's victim is another way of snatching a meal from them. She had to at least entertain the risk that the Web would have some kind of retribution for it. But she would also entertain the fact that Jon's only sitting in the Archives because the Web let him get that far, that it wanted him to give its Statement to her, and ultimately decide that the risk is one she's willing to shoulder.

I think she would have made sure it didn't hurt. I think she would have made it quick, and made sure he didn't know it was happening. but I don't think she would have ever saved Jon the way he wanted to be saved.

If I’m being extremely generous (and self indulgent) and trying to come up with a world where she would go on a crusade to save him, and probably assuming some kind of off screen character arc that’s completely made her change her entire approach to life, I think she’d bring him to Agnes Montague.

If Jon could ever have a chance way back when he was eight, I think it would have been Agnes. Agnes is the direct opposite of the Web. She's the demigod messiah of the entity of Fucking Up All Your Life Plans. In canon, she's the one that Gertrude went to when she did need to go after the Web. If she had decided to try for him and needed to come up with an option to save him, she'd go to Agnes.

That being said, getting to that decision is just still really unlikely. For all of the above reasons and because of the difficulties Agnes poses. Even if they're in like, lesbian soul love, they've never met in person, and she doesn't really know if Agnes will help. It may attract the Lightless Flame's attention, and Jon may just end up burnt to death instead of filled with spiders. A lot of ways it could go wrong and give Jon a worse fate. It's the sort of Hail Mary play Gertrude never really did.

That line is in the summary because I thought it said everything about what the reader needed to know for Jon in nhthcth. (Also, I just thought it sounded nice.)

Jon in nhthcth is sort of defined by the fact that he has never gotten past who he was in the moment that James Wright locked him in Gertrude's office. It's one of the two cornerstones of everything he became.

The other cornerstone, of course, is Gerry.

Jon has spent his entire life trying to figure out a way that he could have been anything but what he is. It's been a decade and change, but he's never, ever been able to let go of what happened to him. And that feels at least a little off.

Maybe it's the idea that time heals all wounds, maybe it's the idea that Stockholm Syndrome should have kicked in eventually, maybe it's the evil god eating parts of his personality, maybe it's the idea that it's probably exhausting to eternally be struggling against a fate that you met when you were fucking eight. Even if he never becomes okay with what happened to him, he probably should have at least accepted it and moved on to some measure. Like, this has been his reality for almost his entire life. No matter how terrible it was, people usually adapt and acclimate to what happens to him.

One of the core traits of Jon in nhthcth was always supposed to be that Jon just didn't for some reason.

Like, Jon has not even passed the threshold of accepting what happened to him. It's all these years later, and he's desperately replaying what happened and trying to come up with the version that has him going home at the end. Even if you don't accept your current situation, you probably should have stopped trying to figure out what you could have done differently when you were eight, no matter how terrible what happened is.

At the end of the day, even with all he knows, Jon just has never understood why he couldn't have been saved.

He knows there's no Light Side at the end of the day. This isn't some big battle of Good Against Evil--it's just a series of Bad inconveniencing Other Bad because what Other Bad wants is not in the interest of what Bad wants. There's no ancient secret order battling the dark--there's just a lot of people stopping each other from ending the world because they want to be the ones to do it, and also like, Gertrude Robinson and her good-time buddy That One Random Priest. If you're looking for someone to save you in the TMA world, there just isn't really anyone.

And that's part of why Jon goes in after Danny Stoker. It's part of why he keeps undertaking the world's most half-assed rescue attempts. Trying to save Danny when his entire life has indicated that's impossible and probably going to make things worse is a deeply irrational thing to do. He probably should have learned when to walk away by now.

But a part of him is still eight, and a part of him has spent his entire life going over the worst thing that ever happened to him and trying to figure out the way to make it different.

It takes a specific sort of person to keep undertaking herculean efforts in a desperate, wild attempt to save people that he knows are as good as dead. And I think that sort of person once was someone who was as good as dead. He saves Danny Stoker because a part of him is still desperately trying to find the person who could have done the same for him.

In the end, he became the thing he once needed most in the world, which was a chance. I don't think he's realized that fact. And I don't know if he'd find it comforting if he did.

The other thing about that sentence is that it's completely and utterly pointless.

Like. It's been eighteen fucking years. At a certain point, you have to decide it doesn't matter anymore, and clinging to the question of whether someone could have saved you just doesn't help anything. But one of the other core traits of Jon in nhthcth was that he was someone who just simply did not care if what he was doing was practical or had any chances of succeeding.

He's designed to be so stubborn in it that it's almost ridiculous, and more than a little comical but it's honestly borderline sad to me. Here Jon is, making it his life's fucking mission to hold the title of World's Shittiest Employee. He is going to make his hostage situation inconvenient for everyone. He's not doing fucking paperwork; he's only here because elias kidnapped him. He can't get away, but he's going to be the absolute most unmanageable nightmare alive.

It does absolutely nothing to help him.

He doesn't think anyone in the Institute is ever going to help him. He doesn't think he's going to force Elias's hand into letting him go by racking up the most HR complaints in Institute history. It doesn't actually help him in any way to do the vast majority of what he does--it actively hurts him, actually. There's no one in the Institute who wants to help him, because they see him as a nuisance. When he causes Elias too much trouble, Elias punishes him for it. It'd be better from a consequentialist perspective to have settled into some kind of facade of normalcy, but he hasn't. Because playing along, going along with the facade as an Institute employee--he'd have to at least implicitly admit that what happened to him isn't relevant anymore. Sure, Elias kidnapped him and fed him to an ancient, primordial hunger from the dawn of civilization, but by god, he has his monthly staff meeting to get to, and that's too important to make a fuss about the first thing.

It's kind of sad, because while the Institute didn't know the entire picture, nineteen-year old Martin almost immediately said "wow, that blatantly unstable child sure does act like he's being severely abused." Elias had to feed him a story about an entirely different abuser to dodge the world's most needed CPS visit, and Martin still almost turned around and reported Elias literally the same afternoon. Yeah, Elias had a story for the institute to explain jon's Everything, but they really didn't have to buy it.

Like, willful ignorance absolutely played a role in it. Part of it was Elias was their boss and nobody wanted to be the one to accuse him of child abuse. It was easier to accept his lies at face value and not stick their neck out for him. Part of it was just that Jon's never been a very likable victim for them. He wasn't some tearful damsel they could swoop in and save--he smoked too much and was angry and loud about it. And once they made that initial decision to ignore their misgivings, the chances of anyone breaking that pattern got extremely low. No one wants to admit to themselves that they ignored a little kid in an extremely abusive household just because his abuser was their boss and they didn't like the kid all that much. Martin kind of hit Jon like a grenade when he first joined up and actually gave a shit if he was okay.

Of course, this all means that Jon's spent the past decade or so being told by everyone who could see him hurting that his upset at the soul-crushing pain he was in was inconvenient to them and it's rude of him to be so loud about it, could he do that somewhere else, because it really doesn't matter. and he's still there saying "it does matter. it matters to me."

Just--doing pointless things because if he doesn't then they stop mattering and they have to matter somehow defines so much of what he does.

When he was a little boy, Gerry told him that the clothes you wore were meant to be things that make you feel like you, that were who you were or wanted to be, and Jon decided that the parts of him that he loved were made up of other people. It's been fourteen years since he told him that, and out of all the people he's tried to make himself with, Daisy is the only one he still has in his life. He wears the secondhand clothes of people who he lost without anyone else caring to preserve a self that people are actively trying to kill. The fact that he feels more like him when he wears Gerry's coat only matters to the extent that he lets it. He makes pointless interventions on behalf of people he knows he probably can't save, because if he doesn't, then he fact that they needed help to begin with didn't matter. It only mattered whether they could have been saved; needing to be saved doesn't factor in.

I basically wanted him to be the opposite of Basira. Basira was the world's most polite hostage in Season 3. Martin had to actually ask her if she was aware she was in a hostage situation. Her entire thing was that there was no point in getting upset at something you couldn't change--you either got on as best you could or you found a way to change it anyway. That's the exact opposite to nhthcth Jon's approach to life--the Web even pokes fun at him for it in chapter 9. A spider's prey thrashes itself to death trying to get out of its web. Jon's just--flailing like a fly struggling against a web. Gertrude always conserved her resources and energy for where it would matter most, but he exhausts himself on things he knows wouldn't succeed. It doesn't make any practical sense, but there's something viscerally human about it still.

And the last thing that sentence tells you about Jon is that he is someone who has to believe in the lightning strike.

The thing is? Jon knows about pretty much everything this post discussed. No one really knew Gertrude, but if there was someone who did, it was him. He's been hanging around her since he was a little kid. It's been stated that she personally tried to teach him to some degree, though, and we've seen that she's stated to his face that she would not have tried to save him if she had been the one to take his statement. She never really represented a chance at things having gone differently to begin with.

But he still thinks of her specifically when he tries to find the version of himself that isn't this. Because even if she was never really a chance, she was still the biggest chance he had.

Jon was eight. He knew jack all when this started, and he was going up against the most dangerous entity there was. He was never going to come up with a place to go to that wasn't the Magnus Institute, and he was never going to outsmart the Web on his own. Gertrude Robinson was the only one who he ever had a snowball's chance of crossing paths with who wasn't like, actively evil.

There's basically nil chance of her having had some kind of midlife crisis right before he showed up and deciding that this is the one she must save and damn the consequences. There's an even smaller chance of her actually pulling it off and saving him from the Web. But that was the biggest chance he had, and he can't help but cling to it.

Sometimes, you have to beat the odds. Sometimes, lightning strikes.

If you believe in the idea of the multiverse, and that everything that can happen will happen, there is a Jon out there in some far-off universe who walked into the Magnus Institute and met Gertrude Robinson instead of James Wright. There is a Gertrude Robinson who, against all odds, decided that Jon was worth the costs of saving him, who fought tooth and nail to save him and won. It's a fairytale he tells himself, but the idea of someone kind enough to put him in a car so they could drive all about, go on adventures, and find places with rain was also a fairytale he once heard, and it still happened. Gerry was his lightning strike.

And that's really the crux of it. In order for Jon to have loved Gerry the way he did, he had to be someone who would bank everything on odds that were a lot smaller than being struck by lightning. Jon needs to be the type of person who will believe in chances that barely exist, because if he doesn't, he could have never made he decisions he had to make to stay by Gerry's side.

Gerry Keay was not Gertrude Robinson, and he definitely was not anywhere near her caliber when he was the little boy who tried to take Jon and run. They live in a world that tears into your soul, that Marks you in a way that cannot be removed and that never, ever lets you go. It's monsters eating other monsters, and they were both very small and very damned from the get-out. The chances of Jon Sims and Gerry Keay saving each other were always so much smaller than the chances of Gertrude Robinson saving him, and he knew it. If he couldn't believe that there was at least a chance that Gertrude would have saved him, then he couldn't believe that he and Gerry ever had a chance of finding their way home.

We still don't know where Gerry is in 2013, why he isn't there, but we know that Daisy saw him with Jon in 2011, kicking each other under the table for making ill-timed jokes to a monster who wanted to kill them. They first ran in 1999. That's twelve years of betting everything on odds south of a lightning strike. It takes specific kinds of people to do that. It takes people who will take the worst odds possible because they're the only ones they have.

There's no power of love or friendship or hope in that universe, but I think Jon and Gerry wanted to believe that they could love each other to the point of survival. They were looking at a world where, in the whole span of human history, love had not made a lick of difference to the things they faced, and they were asking to be the exception. Wondering if Gertrude Robinson would have saved him... it's hardly the most improbable thing Jon's ever let himself believe.

#nhthcth #tma #the magnus archives #jon sims #gertrude robinson #gerry keay #the continuing adventures of me answering asks after my adhd meds have worn off #babygirl i will answer questions no one even asked #me answering asks when unmedicated is just me reaching the end and realizing i went off on every tangent known to man #i will forge bold new paths into terrains no one ever fucking asked about #i already typed it it's too late now here have my info dump #i want you all to know that there's a half answered ask in my drafts and i found a way to have tangents about death note the iconic anime #and plato's republic the classic of greek philosophical thought #did the ask have absolutely anything to do with either of those things #no #i'm like this in real life too you could not plot a conversation with me on a map

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redfirerai · 2 years

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It’s only been 5 episodes and the iwtv fandom is already a shithole.

First off, the fifth episode SHOULD have had a trigger warning; I agree on that fact. This is not to say that the writers poorly wrote this episode/ made Lestate OOC because, after having watched the episode, I honestly don’t find it surprising that show Lestat would do something like this. It makes sense; he only loved Claudia because Claudia is both loveable and an extension of Louis. Lestat has shown an incredibly large capacity for violence and cruelty. He is not a good person. He is not a hero and he only cares about being Louis’ top priority. But some of you are acting like it wasn’t jarring to watch. As much as I love Hannibal, this is an extremely different situation from the finale of season 2. Louis and Lestat were in a relationship. They were functionally MARRIED. They were never perfect, but this was never even hinted as happening. He’s not had any previous slips with harming Louis or Claudia so people have every right to be shocked.

Second of all, some of you people are acting like Louis and Lestat are equally abusive towards each other, and that is 100% false and reeks of racism. Every moment that Louis rejected or hurt Lestat was always in reaction to Lestat. He was recently human and his current disposition as a fledgling comes with all of his humanly attachments. He cares about his family. His brother died which permanently destroyed his relationship with his mother. His sister became alienated. He was being targeted from every angle for being a black, gay man who dared to move up the social ladder. It’s like half of you blanked out for most of episode two/three until you heard the words “this is why you’ll always be alone,” leave Louis’ mouth. At the very moment he needed humanity and support from the one person he was risking everything for, he was met with complete apathy to his struggles. Not only does Lestat completely misunderstand Louis’ core—the very foundation and set of rules that form his values—he want Louis in a way that is not possible. Louis is a monogamous man that craves family structure—louis is fundamentally a different creature. And that’s okay. That is the story and I’m fully on board to be entranced by its beauty and suffering. But getting mad on behalf of Lestat? Justifying literally any of his actions towards Louis is fucking insane. If he wasn’t conventionally attractive or white, this wouldn’t even be a topic of conversation. You can like him—I absolutely love TV show Lestat for being this unhinged, devoted, and brutal. But don’t fucking twist the canonical story of the TV show to justify the Lestat you head-cannoned in your brain. People do this; this is very real behaviour. Love-bombing and isolating is part of toxic relationships. Many abusers seem like perfectly loving people until things don’t go their way. Seeing only the sacrifices Lestat made for Louis is ignoring the time, context, and attachments Louis had to his human life. I am not saying Louis is an angel, but he definitely is not the abuser in the relationship

Lastly, Claudia’s implied SA is completely unnecessary to the story and her journey as a character. There was no need to do this to her; she could have arrived at the world being a cruel place without this.

On a side note, I don’t have qualms with her character writing but I do see what people are saying about how she didn’t need to see Louis being half beat to death to want to k*ll Lestat. That is probably the only criticism I agree with when it comes to the writing of that scene. I would have loved to see her and Lestat be at eachother’s throats because that was already implied. And Louis, as a father, is justified in choosing Claudia over Lestat, especially when there’s enough abuse already. Again, I don’t think the scene at the end of season 5 was bad/OOC per se, but I don’t think it was completely necessary.

#interview with the vampire #iwtv series #iwtv tv #rant post #the vampire lestat #louis pointe du lac #lestat de lioncourt #claudia

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ao3feed-brucewayne · 21 days

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Far Far From Home

by aiki_sweetie Peter was a decently normal person, right? I mean besides the fact that he's a superhero that works with the Avengers. In his defense, that is pretty normal where he lives. How many people have powers and don’t become a hero or villain? So someone could also argue that the situation he is in now is also perfectly normal. It's perfectly normal to wake up in an alleyway in his suit, Karen completely offline, covered in blood. That he's pretty sure isn't his. The only thing that's a bit confusing, is that he was just with Doctor Strange, asking him to make everyone forget he is Spider-Man. ----- Superheroes [2,682,196 Results] Thank you. [Batman] [Superman] [Wonder Woman] [Flash] [Green Lantern] [Green Arrow] … No, thank you. WHO THE ACTUAL HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE? … Calm, Calm Peter, Calm. Peter took a deep breath in and out. So, I’m probably not in my universe, that's fun. Does that mean I need to create a whole new identity? … …Fuck… Words: 2112, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Peter Parker, Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne, Barbara Gordon, Jim Gordon, Kate Kane (DCU), Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Alfred Pennyworth, Duke Thomas, Rogues Gallery (Batman) Additional Tags: Why do I make the rules, I have issues, Canon Died a Brutal yet Necessary Death, DC stands for Disregard Canon, Man older brothers are so cool, I wish they existed, Author Had No Plan And It Caused Problems, Cobblepot Coffee, spiderman - Freeform, Batfamily, Captain Cold is Kinda, Bruce Wayne has Adoption Issues, Is it Incest if they are Both Foster Kids?, Once Again I have ISSUES, No Smut cause they are CHILDREN, Author Blames Kwite, Foster Family is Shit, but its gotham, We Stand the Flash Rogue Gallery Here, No Beta we die like Tony Woodward, How Do I Tag, Homophobia, Marcus is a jerk via https://ift.tt/VEBZYcz

#IFTTT #bruce wayne #batman #the dark knight #the caped crusader #gotham #dcu #dc #ao3 #ao3feed

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valleyfthdolls · 1 year

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hii tell me about ur fnaf AUs !! (u wanted someone to ask teehee)

Omg hiii *attempts to twirl my hair but it's just at that length where all that happens is it gets tangled bc I need to get it cut*

(I'm excited I'm getting my hair cut & dyed on Friday ignore me)

So I have my main AU which is on the blog @thechristmaskidsau, but there are a few others that have been rotating around in my head for a WHILE that I need to get out

I have been sitting on this one since 20 fucking 20. Basically, the rebirth AU is a freak-ass Help Wanted AU, and I'm salty that it doesn't sound creative anymore because of everyone's stupid theories. This is probably up there as one of my weirdest AUs. Basically, the AU follows Vanessa, who, hey, for once is actually Vanny, like they finally seem to have given up and basically admitted is like 99% canon. I find them more fun to write when I put someone else under the suit, but that's besides the point.

Vanessa is a 21 year old girl who can't really remember most of her life. She's chalked it up to amnesia or maybe trauma that her therapist is trying to help her uncover, but when she meets an odd digital entity in a game she's been hired to beta test that begins referring to her by a false name and infests her head like she's just a computer, she's pushed to uncover the actual truth: She hasn't had any life before her 21st year. She is a robot created by this new entity to mimic the existence of Michael Afton, and make her his successor the way Michael's father had intended for him to be. The realization breaks her, her AI is slowly taken over, but then she meets a little girl named Bella, locked away in a production facility. The entity, who she's given the spiteful nickname of Glitchtrap, tells her that Bella is a failsafe, someone he knows will do whatever he asks, unless her AI is damaged, because the girl she's modeled after desperately wanted to be perfect and compliant. The girl looks like she's been tortured, and Glitchtrap tells Vanessa that she is dying- Vanessa is killing her. The dread, shock, and fear of hearing that seems to push her too far. She can't take it anymore. She can't take any of this. She has to help Bella, and she has to find the boy who's supposed to be a mimic of her brother, and get him where Glitchtrap can- where she can never hurt him. Where she can protect him. Where she can save them both.

This one I came up with last week: the Smile AU is basically just an excuse to be FNAF about everything.

Charlotte Emily died with an eerily unfitting smile. Her horror, her pain and trauma, it seemed to unleash something inside of her that escaped when she died. This is Shadow Freddy, malignant and sadistic, and he feeds off the pain of children, taking as many forms as necessary to make them fearful, lonely and hopeless so he can finish them off. He basically forces them to succumb to their trauma, cutting them off from anyone who might support or help them. It's similar to the main theme of Smile itself, but with more emphasis on the trauma thing. The main story starts after Charlie's death, as well as Elizabeth's- Shadow Freddy manifests at the scene of Elizabeth's death due to her horrible situation, and Cassidy's intense fear watching his sister die. By appearing physically, taking the form of a large and brutally disfigured replica of Cassidy's stuffed Fredbear toy, he takes this as his chance to begin haunting Cassidy in his dreams, getting closer every night, worsening his fear and making him a perfect target. Michael's refusal to believe anything he says about Elizabeth or Shadow Freddy or his nightmares ultimately causes Cassidy to succumb to Shadow Freddy, and Michael witnesses the immediate result. Cassidy, in a panic, frantically scratches through his scalp, screaming and jittering like something is climbing in through the scratch in his head, and as soon as he stops, Michael sees the shift. He begins to smile, strained and tight-lipped with dead eyes, then whispers to Michael, "this is all your fault."

In the fallout, Cassidy is bleeding out on the floor, Michael cradling his head trying to keep him alive, the paramedics arrive in a frenzy, Cassidy is taken away from him, and for a moment, the smile seems to fall. The next time Michael sees it, he knows. Cassidy was telling the truth. And if he lets that thing get to him, he's going to die too.

Charlie appears to him in his dreams that night, but she's not smiling. She's an emotional wreck, a vulnerable and messy and broken state he never saw her in. She's darkened, her eyes unnaturally light, and her shadow seems to cast rabbit ears behind her.

Shadow Bonnie in this AU is the spirits of the children, their pain and agony after Shadow Freddy fed off them, leaving them wrecked husks of souls, and while trying to face down his seemingly inevitable demise at the hands of the thing his father's one horrible act unleashed, he has to try to side with another monster just like it in the hope of saving Elizabeth and Cassidy.

#long post #fnaf #fnaf au #hairbackc0llarup

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someoneimsure · 2 years

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I really, really like the idea of Jason Todd being a killer.

Not a mass murderer, Jesus, but a killer.

Like deep down he really is cold blooded. If someone dies, he won’t give too much of a shit (everyone dies and he’s over it) and in some cases he’ll even laugh. Dying kind of made him treat death kind of lightly, like he knows what’s on the other side and ain’t afraid of it no more, which doesn’t help with his reckless streak but also makes him even more protective of the little kids just because it’s a fundamentally shit experience and nobody deserves that before they hit 18.

But he doesn’t go around killing just anybody who happens to have stubbed their toe on crime because he’s not stupid. He knows if any one of the vigilantes killed someone the police would be after them before Nightwing could complete a quadruple backflip because James Gordon be like that and no matter what Batman says Jason Todd don’t trust them bullies, so killing has to be a last option if he wants to actually save all the city kids one day. Other vigis are kind of necessary for that end goal.

But The Joker? That mofo would be six feet under. Every. Single. Time.

And Jason would 100% come up with some plan to make the City think it was their idea so that they would pay for it. He’s great with plans, after all, and Jason is that level of a dick when it comes to corrupt authority figures. A sort of “You didn’t even try to kill this mofo while I was gone, so now that someone with balls offers to do it for you, you can just pay them warehouses full of money for your little fuck up.”

I imagine this is the way that he re-meets Batman that first time before Batman has figured out who he is or decided he must be Taken Down. “I’m on a mission for the government, let me pass” is not the best way to greet the man who got you off the streets and doesn’t like murder at all and won’t stand for you doing such a heinous misdeed, even if you might have ultimately good intentions.

Jason Todd also may not really care too much about collateral damage but he’s also a professional and knows how to reign it in.

So, Jason would 100% kill the Joker with a crowbar because that bastard took away everything he ever had. And no, Bruce, you do not get to resuscitate him. Jason’s great at hiding bodies, and he would burn that fucker’s body so bad that the only way to ID him was by his stupid teeth and even then he’d chop him up and ship him around the world so no one would be able to find the ashes and throw them into the Lazarus Pit--and then he’d blow up every Lazarus Pit he can find for good measure.

Of course he would also mess with everyone’s heads, especially Batman’s, just for the lols and possibly because he does actually still blame Batman for not killing the Joker when he had a chance but he’s not going to do what that guy from Under the Red Hood comic did and try to get Batman to kill the Joker and/or stop Jason from doing it.

And then, after the job is done, he donates all his money to the Narrows kids who he ended up befriending while he was still a street urchin oh-so-long-ago so that they can finally go to college, something the Joker took from him, which ultimately makes it impossible for anyone to track him down ever because that money traded hands several times too fast. Plus, he really does need to start showing his good side more often because I’m starting to think canon Jason is a caricature of his original self and has completely forgotten what he’s actually supposed to be fighting for at this point.

Okay so, TL;DR, I really, really like mercenary Jason Todd who donates all his hard earn money straight to the orphans because he don’t trust a charity. But only for as long as he goes full brutal as fuck anti-hero immediately afterwards and doesn’t become a mass murderer.

But a universe where Red Hood and The Joker breath the same air simultaneous would literally explode. It simply Does Not Compute for me that canon would have both Jason Todd and The Joker on the same planet without one or the other being dead, so I can’t take any story which has a hint of both being in the universe at all seriously.

I am just now realizing that a burned up Joker corpse with a creep yellow-toothed grin will actually be giving me nightmares for the next six months. Thanks, me for being a fucked up person.

#i said too much so its under a read more #basically i really like a cold blooded Jason Todd who uses his skills to earn money for starving orphans #and who laughs at danger and has funny ideas about how death works #Jason Todd never saw no afterlife just limbo #headcanons #Jason Todd #Red Hood #The Joker #Batman #Under the Red Hood #Under the Hood #Anti-Hero Jason Todd #my post #ideas #rants

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coruscantiscribbler · 10 months

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I know that your writing experience is quite broad, so you seem the best candidate for this question.

Welcome back to my virtual Asker’s Studio™️ with my very real 🐈‍⬛

More than any other author I read (which I admit is quite a limited spectrum of individuals) you seem to pay close attention to canon, adherence to plot, and consistency in general. If logic deems it, and the story arc demands it…the character dies.

My question to you is: have you ever had a serious battle over killing off a character? Has there been a case in which you defied logic and allowed the individual to live? On the flip side, have you ever killed a character off and experienced pushback from your readers? Finally, have you ever regretted killing off a character and actually wanted a re-do?

I will offer that one of the last solo fics that I wrote dealt with the death of a beloved character. The resulting melancholy led to an existential crisis and the worst case of writer’s block.

As you know, while I have not had the opportunity lately to invest in comments, I DO love your fic, We Regret.

I'm pretty brutal about my characters, and since I have a pretty detailed outline before I start to write I know in advance who lives and who dies, and I almost never deviate from that. The outline shows me what will and will not work so I'm pretty confident about my choices.

But it is a struggle and, in fact, I'm facing it right now. I'm closing in on the end of a novel and I had planned to kill the main character who I have written now for four books. And I really don't want to, particularly because I know what it will do to his husband. And I think there is a way to not kill him that will still be satisfying, But....

If I get to the end of this and it just feels wrong then I'm going to have to suck it up and let the character die. And since one of the big themes of this book is "We are all made of star stuff", I rather sense that the poor fellow is going to have to make the ultimate sacrifice.

I really expected to get pushback in one novel when I killed the boyfriend, but oddly it didn't happen and I'm not sure why. Maybe because there was another man (vampire) in the mix who loved her. I've had people say it made them sad, but that's okay, I want the story to evoke emotions in the readers. They sure as hell evoke emotions in me. To wit --

I have never actively regretted killing a character because of that outline thing I know it's necessary. But in the moment it is extremely painful to do what must be done. I've actually sat at my desk and wept after I finish writing one of those death scenes.

In some ways it's easier to kill a hero than to kill a villain who has been redeemed. You feel regret that they never got to find some peace and solace after their change of heart.

#writing #killing characters

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melis-writes · 1 year

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K,L and Z ☺

Thank you for the ask, lovely!! 😍💞

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?

The "tragic" ending of Moth to Flame (Part I) for sure... 🥴🥴 That had some INSANE reviews filled with tears. My friends reading that chapter were literally sobbing. To give Michael his happily ever after as much as he can get with Victoria only to watch her die because of him in the same way he lost Apollonia, with Victoria pregnant and with two children was honestly pretty evil of me to write. 👁️👄👁️

L: How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

I always write one sloppy rough draft with a bunch of ideas slathered into it before I polish it up to beauty, if that counts as revision! Just the one time is good enough for me. 😅🤞🏻 I then comb over it and give it a quick skim, then a detailed edit for grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc!

Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate?

Oh absolutely, with Victoria's death and Michael's death in some AUs... insane. 👁️👁️ Sonny's death too, when it comes to Victonny. A lot of heartache was directed towards that one Victonny AU I wrote where Victoria and Sonny died next to each other in graves. Dark asf. 👀 To be honest, I can't tolerate Sonny's death. I actually hate him getting hurt or dying off in any form. It's not something I enjoy writing even if it's necessary for the sake of the plot! 😭 The way he canonically died in the film was so brutal, cruel and graphic that I just... 💔💔💔 Nope, just no!

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demoreelrewound · 1 year

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Karl Copenhagen

Do not fear death.

Canon traits: stern, emotionally distant, loyal, steadfast, deeply jaded, laconic, pragmatic and single-minded approach to problems, ruthless streak, little care for the lives of animals, invasive of personal space and privacy, encouraging in a tough-love way

Canon backstory:

Karl lived in the German Democratic Republic (DDR) with a family including a wife and child. A soldier in the Navy, he later became an agent of the Stasi, implied to have been an interrogator or involved with the censorship of written communication. In 1991 his family was crushed to death when a piece of the Berlin Wall fell on them. At some point before or during employment at Demo Reel, he and Quinn drunkenly broke into and stole equipment from Planet Hollywood.

My ideas:

One of the two mains I am willing to tweak the established backstory of, I don't recall if it's confirmed what role he played in the Stasi but I have decided it isn't as a chief interrogator -- too many people would remember his face, both victims and colleagues, for him to possibly get away. More likely to have been an investigator -- a brutal and ruthless man all too willing to sell people out for not being careful enough, even if they had a connection.

Regarding his childhood, he was brought up on a meat-producing farm with mother Charlotte, father Viktor, and younger twin sisters Anna and Nora. He is an eldest child through and through. Much of it was spent studying, following his parents in tending to the animals, and watching over his sisters. At this point, his surname was not Copenhagen, but Bauer (peasant/farmer) - the former was his mother's maiden name that he took with him to the States.

The family was one that took every measure to blend in and stay under the radar, with other relatives having been caught out and disappeared by authorities. Some were democratic activists, others on Charlotte's side were trying to preserve religious heritage for new generations - Charlotte and Viktor vowed to not leave their children to fend for themselves or lead them to a "pointless" death, so only told them necessary information about it all.

The Navy was a logical route for him even without his teachers ushering him that way - he had an eye for mechanisms and processes, combined with a very strong stomach and ease with blood. They picked him up straight out of school and he coped with the first major separation by writing regularly to them. (He still recalls bits of their replies, one from each sister.)

He met his wife Frieda once he was in the Stasi - she was a clerk in the main office who also introduced him to cinema and its techniques. They had a child, Hans, a few years into the marriage - a sweet, happy child who needed great big glasses.

That same year, a fire broke out at the family farm, killing his parents and severely injuring Anna, who died in the hospital. Nora had been at a meeting at the time, being accepted into the household immediately after. The farm was rebuilt and taken over by an associate of the family.

At the time of the Wall falling, he was assigned to disposing of evidence, though when he heard of a human crush (aka stampede) near where Nora, Frieda and Hans were out on errands, he broke the rules for the first time in his life and damn near sprinted to their location - too late. Somehow Hans' teddy bear ended up in the rubble of the Berlin Wall. He couldn't bear picking it up, instead just walking across with the crowd of others doing the same.

Cooking is one of his few hobbies in life; he prides himself on making use of what he had and selecting the cheapest high quality goods. (Being high-ish ranking in the Stasi helped with this as better Party members got better resources.)

Camera work was something he had to learn in the States - he knows how cameras work and what different shot names are but not so much how to use them for effect. For that he relies on Quinn's expertise and Donnie's direction.

#{reel rewound}#reel rewound: karl copenhagen #torture mention #fire cw #blood cw #child death cw #(the teddy bear is referencing ep. 4 when he punches Donnie for showing him it - him and his big round glasses showing him a toy..!)#(maybe he won't outright punch this time but do something with a similar effect)#eye contact

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scandalsavagefanfic · 2 years

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In your reaction to Nick Robles' Robins #2 pin-up cover you listed Jason having an autopsy scar as a sign that he cares about the character. I'm a relatively new fan of the him, so I wanted to ask why?

I haven't yet seen it in any comics and it doesn't make much sense to me. Both why he would still have the scar after both the Reality-Punch and the Lazarus Pit and why he would have had an autopsy (with a Y-incision no less) in the first place.

It seems to be something Robles consistently includes in his Jay pin-ups (and I'll admit it looks pretty hot in them), but is it actually rooted in canon?

I'm sorry, this is such an old ask though by far not the oldest in my inbox lol.

You're absolutely right that there's no canon precedent for the autopsy scar.

I feel like Jason almost certainly had an autopsy. He officially died from asphyxiation from smoke inhalation. I know nothing about how and when they do autopsies but I feel like they need one to know that. Not to mention that to anyone who wasn't Batman or Joker, it appeared that Jason died alone, under very mysterious circumstances. His body was entirely broken in many ways that are inconsistent with an explosion, which he was also obviously in... I feel like doing an autopsy would have been a given to discover how this child who was so badly injured really died. Like I feel like it would have been a legal necessity. He didn't die in a hospital where things would have been documented.

The Reality-Punch obviously didn't entirely heal him. Employees of the hospital he ended up in after dragging himself out of his grave noted as much and Talia threw him in the Pit to heal his mind. Not to mention, how the Lazarus Pit works is so inconsistent throughout comics that it's basically a deus ex machina for whatever level of healing you need that sometimes comes with a side effect of madness and sometimes not. Some people headcanon that since scars are already healed wounds, the Pit wouldn't erase them, so if Jason had an autopsy, it would have had time to heal after he returned and before Talia put him in the Pit which wouldn't have necessarily washed it away.

So that's the canon.

The reason I said an autopsy scar indicates that he cares about the character is because its inclusion means that the person has considered how death might affect Jason after his resurrection, something DC does, at best, as an afterthought, if at all. And there are plenty of sections of fandom (and writers at DC) who think that being brutally murdered is something Jason should just shrug off. Partly because they consider death in comics meaningless unless it's their fav and aren't willing to consider the context of Jason's death, both in-universe and in comics history.

Of course, the inclusion of the autopsy scar isn't necessary to prove you care about the character. I personally don't headcanon he has one (I prefer the headcanon that the Pit washed away all of Jason's scars including the ones from being Robin that he was so very proud of and that the thin white line at his throat from Bruce's batarang in UtRH is one of his first new ones). But it can be a good shorthand for "I've thought about how this surreal trauma has affected this character and how meaningful that moment is for his development" which is more than a lot of people do, even at DC.

#Jason Todd #Nick Robles #pretty art #canon vs fanon #great question anon #sorry for the very late response

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spockandawe · 3 years

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Well, this is interesting! So, in that post yesterday, there was one line that really baffled me, a thing about people brushing off a character as an asshole “because he shows literally zero growth.” I kind of set that aside because it was such a weird non-sequitur, and guessed that it was just someone’s sentences not quite keeping up with their train of thought, which has happened to me many times. Apparently I was wrong! I already spent long enough on that one post, I’m tired of talking about that, but this is new and interesting.

Okay. I kind of wanted to see if I could talk about this purely in terms of abstracts and not characters, but I don’t think it’ll work. It would be frustrating to write and confusing to read. It’s about Jiang Cheng. Right up front: This isn’t about whether or not he’s an abuser. Frankly, I don’t think it’s relevant. This also isn’t about telling people they should like him. I don't care whether anyone else likes him or not. But I do like him, and I am always fascinated by dissecting the reasons that people disagree with me. And the process of Telling Stories is my oldest hyperfixation I remember, which will become relevant in a minute.

I thought I had a good grasp on this one, you know? Jiang Cheng makes it pretty obvious why people would dislike Jiang Cheng. But then the posts I keep stumbling over were making weird points, culminating in that “literally zero growth” line.

So! What happened is that someone wrote up a post about how Jiang Cheng’s character arc isn’t an arc, it’s stagnation. It’s a pretty interesting read, and I broadly agree with the larger point! The points where I would quibble are like... the idea that it’s absolute stagnation, as opposed to very subtle shifts that still make a material difference. But still, cool! The post was also offered up as a reason why OP was uninterested in writing any more Jiang Cheng meta, which I totally get. I’m not tired of him yet, but I definitely understand why someone who isn’t a fan of his would get tired about writing about a character with a very static arc. Okay!

Now, internet forensics are hard. I desperately wish I had more information about this evolution, because I find this stuff fascinating, but I have no good way to find things said in untagged posts, reblogs, or private/external venues. But as far as I can tell, that “literally zero growth” wasn’t just a slip of the tongue, it’s become fashionable for people to say that Jiang Cheng is an abusive asshole (that it’s fucked up to like) because he doesn’t have a character arc.

Asshole? Yes. Abusive? This post still isn’t about that. This is about it being fucked up to like this character because he did bad things and had a static character arc.

At first, that point of view was still deeply confusing to me. But I think I figured out the idea at the core of it, and now I’m only baffled. I’m not super interested in confirming this directly, because the people making the most noise about this have not inspired confidence in their ability to hold a civil conversation and I’m a socially anxious binch, but I think the idea is: ‘This character did Bad Things, and then did not improve himself.’

Which is alarmingly adjacent to that old favorite standard of ‘This piece of fiction is glorifying Bad Thing.’ I haven’t seen anyone accusing mxtx of something something jiang cheng, only the people who read/watched/heard the story and became invested in the Jiang Cheng character, but things kind of add up, you know?

Like I said, I don’t want to arbitrate anyone’s right to like/dislike Jiang Cheng. That’s such a fucking waste of time. But this is fascinating to me, because it’s like..... so obviously new and sudden, with such a clear originating point. I can’t speak to the Chinese fans, obviously, but exiledrebels started translating in... what, 2017? And only now, in 2021, do people start putting forth Jiang Cheng’s flat character arc as a “reason” that he’s bad? I’m not going to argue if he pings you in the abuse place, I’m not a dick. I’m not going to argue if you just dislike his vibes. I’m just over here on my blog and in the tag enjoying myself, feel free to detour around me. But oh my god, it’s so silly to try to tell other people that they shouldn’t like him because he has a static character arc.

I want to talk about stories. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to say, because it’s impossible to make broad, sweeping statements, because there are stories about change, there are stories about lack of change, there are all kinds of media that can be used to tell stories, and standards for how stories are told and what they emphasize vary across cultures and over time. But I think that what I can say is that telling a story requires... compromise. It requires streamlining. Trying to capture all the detail of life would slow down most stories to an unbearable degree. Consider organically telling someone ‘I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich’ versus the computer science exercise of having students describe, step by step, how to make one (spread peanut butter? but you never said you opened the lid)

Hell, I’ve got an example in mdzs itself. The largely-faceless masses of the common people. If someone asks you to think about it critically like, yes, obviously these are people, living their own lives, with their own desires, sometimes suffering and dying in the wake of the novel plot. But does the story give weight to those deaths? Or does it just gloss by? Yes, it references their suffering occasionally, but it is not the focus, and it would slow the story unbearably to give equal weight to each dead person mentioned.

Does Wei Wuxian’s massacre get given the same slow, careful consideration as Su She’s, or Jin Guangyao’s? No, because taking the time to weigh our protagonist with ‘well, this one was a mother, and her youngest son had just started walking, but now he’s going to grow up without remembering her face. that one only became an adult a few months ago, he still hasn’t been on many night-hunts yet, but he finds it so rewarding to protect the common people. oh, and this one had just gotten engaged, but don’t worry, his fiancee won’t mourn him, because she died here as well.’ And continuing on that way to some large number under 3000? No! Unless your goal is to make the reader feel bad for cheering for a morally grey hero, that would be a bad authorial decision! The book doesn’t ignore the issue, it comes up, Wei Wuxian gets called out about all the deaths he’s responsible for, but that’s not the same as them being given equal emotional weight to one (1) secondary character, and I don’t love this new thing where people are pretending that’s equivalent.

When Wei Wuxian brutally kills every person at the Wen supervisory office, are you like ‘holy shit... so many grieving families D:’ or are you somewhere between vindicated satisfaction and an ‘ooh, yikes’ wince? Odds are good you’re somewhere in the satisfaction/wince camp, because that’s what the story sets you up to feel, because the story has to emphasize its priorities (priorities vary, but ‘plot’ and ‘protagonist’ are common ones, especially for a casual novel read like this)

Now, characters. If you want to write a story with a sweeping, epic scale, or if you want to tightly constrain the number of people your story is about, I guess it’s possible to give everyone involved a meaningful character arc. Now.... is it always necessary? Is it always possible? Does it always make sense? No, of course not. If you want to do that, you have to devote real estate to it, and depending on the story you want to tell, it could very possibly be a distraction from your main point, like the idea of mxtx tenderly eulogizing every single character who dies even incidentally. Lan Qiren doesn’t get a loving examination of his feelings re: his nephews and wei wuxian and political turnover in the cultivation world because it’s not relevant, and also, because his position is pretty static until right near the end of the story. Lan Xichen is arguably one of the most static characters within the book, he seems like the same nice young between Gusu and the present, right up until... just before the end of the story.

You may see where I’m heading with this.

Like, just imagine trying to demand that every important character needs to go through a major life change before the end of your book or else it didn’t count. This just in, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg go through multiple novels without experiencing radical shifts in who they are, stop liking them immediately. I do get that the idea is that Jiang Cheng was a ~bad person~ who didn’t change, but asdgfsd I thought we were over the handwringing over people being allowed to like ““bad”” fictional characters. The man isn’t even a canonical serial killer, he’s not my most problematic fave even within this novel.

And here is where it’s a little more relevant that I would quibble with that original post about Jiang Cheng’s arc. He’s consistently a mean girl, but he goes from stressed, sharp-edged teenager, to grief-stricken, almost-destroyed teen, to grim, cold young adult (and then detours into grim, cold, and grief-stricken until grief dulls with time). He does become an attentive uncle tho. He..... doesn’t experience a radical change in his sense of self, which... it’s...... not all that strange for an adult. And bam, then he DOES experience a radical change, but the needs of the plot dictate that it’s right near the end. And he’s not the focus of the story, baby, wangxian is. He has the last few lines of the story, which nicely communicate his changes to me, but also asdfafas we’re out of story. He was never the main character, it’s not surprising we don’t linger! The extras aren’t beholden to the needs of plot, but they’re also about whatever mxtx wanted to write, and I guess she didn’t feel like writing about Jiang Cheng ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But also. Taking a step backward. Stable characters can fill a perfectly logical place in a story. Like, look at Leia Organa. I’m not saying she has no arc, but I am saying that she’s a solid point of reference as Luke is becoming a jedi and Han is adjusting his perspective. I wouldn’t call her stagnant, the vibes are wrong, but she also isn’t miserable in her sadness swamp, the way Jiang Cheng is.

Or, hell, look at tgcf. The stagnant, frozen nature of the big bad is a central feature of the story. The bwx of now is the bwx of 800 years ago is the bwx of 1500+ years ago. This is not the place for a meta on how that was bad for those around him and for him himself, but I have Thoughts about how being defeated at the end is both a thing that hurts him and relieves him. Mei Nianqing is a sympathetic character who’s also pretty darn static. Does Ling Wen have a character arc, or do we just learn more about who she already is and what her priorities always were? I’m going to cut myself off here, but a character’s delta between the beginning of a story and the end of a story is a reasonable way to judge how interesting writing character meta is, and is a very silly metric to judge their worth, and even if I guessed at what the basic logic is, for this character, I am still baffled that it’s being put forth as a real talking point.

(also, has it jumped ship to any other characters yet? have people started applying it in other fandoms as well? please let me know if this is the case, I am wildly curious)

(no, but really, if anyone is arguing that bwx is gross specifically because he had centuries to self-reflect and didn’t fix himself, i am desperate to know)

And finally. The thing I thought was most self-evident. Did I post about this sometime recently? If a non-central character experiences a life-altering paradigm shift right near the end of the story (without it being lingered over, because non-central character), oh my god. As a fic writer? IT’S FREE REAL ESTATE. This is the most fertile possible ground. If I want to write post-canon canon-compliant material, adsgasfasd that’s where I’m going to be looking. Okay, yeah, the main couple is happy, that’s good. Who isn’t happy, and what can I do about that? Happy families are all alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, etc.

It’s not everyone’s favorite playground, but come on, these are not uncommon feelings. And frankly, it’s starting to feel a little disingenuous when people act like fan authors pick out the most blameless angel from the cast and lavish good things upon them. I’m not the only one who goes looking for a good dumpster fire and says I Live Here Now. If I write post-canon tgcf fic, it’s very likely to focus on beef and/or leaf. I have written more than one au focusing on tianlang-jun.

And, hilariously. If the problem with Jiang Cheng. Is that he is a toxic man fictional character who failed to grow on his own, and is either unsafe or unhealthy to be around. If the problem is that he did not experience a character arc. If these people would be totally fine with other people liking him, if he improved himself as a person. And then, if authors want to put in the (free! time-consuming!) work of writing that character development themselves. You would think that they would be lauded for putting the character through healthier sorts of personal growth than he experienced in canon. Instead, I am still here writing this because first, I was bothered by these authors being named as “freaks” who are obsessed with their ‘uwu precious tsundere baby’ with a “love language of violence,” and then I was graciously informed that people hate Jiang Cheng because he experiences no character growth.

#jiang cheng #mdzs #the untamed #disk horse #long post/#abuse/#only tangentially #but better safe than sorry i hope

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myhiraeth · 3 years

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JASON TODD. / DOSSIER

TAGS. /

iisms || headcanons || aesthetics || visage || wishlist

GENERAL. / all verses

name: Jason Todd dob: aug 16 (leo) orientation: bisexual / biromantic traits: + outgoing, generous, brave, selfless, sarcastic – temperamental, angry, assuming, accusing, snarky physical features: numerous scars from Arkham torture and beating. NO autopsy scar. NO ‘j’ brand. occupation: vigilante notable connections: Bruce Wayne (adopted father, estranged), Catherine Todd (biological mother, estranged), Dick Grayson (brother, estranged), Tim Drake (brother, former adversary, estranged but less so), Barbara Gordon (sister-figure, adversary, notso estranged), Cassandra Cain (sister), Stephanie Brown (sister), Damian Wayne (brother, adversary, friend, its complicated), Duke Thomas (getting to know him but brother), Roy Harper (friend, teammate), Starfire (teammate)

BACKGROUND:

My major difference from other Jason Todd blogs is my severe love for the Arkham Knight storyline and I’ve incorporated it into my mainverse bio. For anyone that wants the FULL full breakdown, see [ here ]

For everyone else, here’s a sparknotes of MY version of Jason as it is a mixture of several of his backgrounds / lores:

Jason was a streetrat on the streets of Gotham with dad in prison and mom addicted. He was caught stealing tires off the Batmobile and taken in by the Batman.

Jason was trained by Bats but sent to the Titans (hbo) to learn some control alongside Dick. Jason was kidnapped, injured, and thrown off a skyscraper by enemy Deathstroke and afterward his mental health declined as PTSD took hold the rest of the Titans turned on him. He returned to Bruce not long after. (bruce did NOT leave in my verses, Jason returned to Bats and returned to training)

*non comic compliant* Jason hunted the Joker down and against Batman’s orders went to confront him, resulting in him being beaten into submission with the infamous crowbar. Jason awoke trapped and bound in the basement of Arkham Asylum, where he'd spend the next 6 months being tortured, abused, broken down and brainwashed into The Arkham Knight.

Joker sends a video to Batman of Jason being beaten to death with the crowbar rather than shot and its Crane / Scarecrow that resurrects the boy in the Lazarus Pit to continue what Joker started. Once risen, Jason's mind is as broken as his body was, and with Crane now in charge, soon The Arkham Knight is all that's left.

From there the events of Arkham Knight happen as canon.

RP typically picks up post-arkham. Jason took over the crime syndicate of Gotham as Red Hood, not stopping it per se but keeping it manageable, allowing low level baddies to do their business as long as their customers are of age & they keep the violence among each other. To go after children, to allow innocent death in your crossfire, will bring a very angry Red Hood to your doorstep, & you likely won't live to tell the tale.

Now he's living day by day as a vigilante, keeping tabs on "his" city and occasionally teaming up when he feels like it. He's often at odds with Batman and the batfam but always available to have their backs if necessary. He'll claim to not care about anyone or anything anymore, but trifle with his brothers and sisters at your own risk.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. Joker is not dead in any verse I play. Not in AK, not in Titans. Jason's resentment and drive for revenge is driven majorly by the fact that Joker brutally killed him and still Bruce refused to kill the clown for it. In my opinion, it's a huge thing for his character and I'm not compromising on it.

2. Because I'm mixing lores so the timelines get messy, my Jason died&resurrected at 19 years old:

Adopted by Bruce: 12/13 years old

Robin w/ Bruce: 13-17

Robin w/ Titans: 17-18

"Not" Robin, captured, tortured, killed: 18-19

Arkham Knight: 19-22

Red Hood: 22+

BIO. / mainverse (default) genre: angst, generally TW: violence, gore, killing, torture mentions, PTSD playable age: 22+ (generally ~25)

Picks up in the timeline where Jason has become Red Hood post-Arkham-Knight.

Most open of the verses, available for a wide array of plotting as Jason's just flitting around doing whatever he wants to better Gotham

Default age will likely be around 25ish but will adjust to appropriate age-difference when playing with batfam members.

Jason has mostly come to terms with what happened to him in Arkham, but still has severe PTSD and certain things will still trigger him, usually to violent ends.

love/hate relationship with his family

best friend: roy harper

BIO. / titansverse (by request) genre: titans hbo TW: mentions of suicidal thoughts playable age: 17

default to Titans-team-era Jason.

this verse takes place while Jason is in the Titans in San Francisco.

available for pre and post-Deathstroke capture

Post-capture Jason does have PTSD from being captured & the fall. This shows itself in disassociation, bodily hyper-vigilance ("muscle armoring"), irritability, flashbacks, insomnia, nightmares, suicidal idealization and an actual attempt after he feels the team has turned on him.

BIO. / #arkhamknightreigns (by request)

genre: Arkham Knight game genre: canon divergent playable age: 22+ TW: killing

open to plotting, not as "easy" to plot as the mainverse or titans as it relies on completely alternate happenings to the universe.– playable age: 22+

alternate universe where Jason succeeds at killing Batman. He proceeds to kill Scarecrow live on air and "save" Gotham, becoming the new hero of the city. Arkham Knight takes over Gotham and establishes a military-style takeover where *he's* in charge and all crime is only what he allows to exist.

He takes control of Crane's henchmen, as well as Roman's after his death, and Arkham Knight's police state is born.– It's a funny loophole space for the Justice League where no one can really prove whether AK or Scarecrow killed Batman and while Gotham is in a martial law / police state situation, AK is technically keeping crime down and innocent bystanders are more scared but physically safer than they had been previously.

#jason todd. / bio #jason todd. / verse. / mainverse #jason todd. / verse. / titansverse #jason todd. / arkhamknightreigns

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hen-of-letters · 3 years

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Series 15 gives all of the characters you could ever care about their worst possible endings, but presents these endings as somehow good or satisfying or acceptable. Here's a list.

The short version: they're Chuck's endings, and Chuck is a bad writer.

None of the characters can escape the fate set out for them or break the cycle of trauma begun by Chuck. The show itself doesn't even realise how truly awful these endings are - it dresses up a tragedy in pie gags and pretty colours and calls it a happy ending. And in order to inflict these worst possible endings on its characters, the narrative has to be twisted and contorted in the most absurd of ways.

So, onto the list:

Adam: Forgotten and left to languish in the pit, he's finally freed, only to suffer an anticlimactic offscreen death and be forgotten again. Michael, his only companion for so long, is also killed off. In the finale, blood family seems to be all that matters - and yet he isn't mentioned.

Alternate Kaia: She helps rescue Kaia from the Bad Place, but chooses to remain there to face certain destruction rather than return to earth with Kaia, Dean and Sam. This world is so hostile to her that death is preferable. Her horrible, pointless death stands as a powerful statement about the real harm caused by exclusion, but the text doesn't seem to acknowledge the full horror of this. Her death isn't remarked upon; it seems to suggest that both Kaia and her double are returned to their rightful places. It's just one example of the show creating awful endings without seeming to understand how awful they truly are. (I rant a lot more about Alternate Kaia here.)

Amara: After being betrayed and locked away for millennia, we see Amara's initial impulse for revenge and destruction transform into an admiration for creation. She becomes an advocate for humanity and the world. And yet she ends up being betrayed (by both the Winchesters and Chuck) and locked away again. She's absorbed by Chuck in a way that doesn't fit within the logic of the show. Chuck and Amara are equals - it doesn't make any sense that Chuck could overpower her. Wouldn't they become a blend of the two of them? And, since their separation caused the Big Bang, wouldn't their unity end the world? Anyway, having the cosmic feminine be voiceless and invisible is the worst way for Amara's story to end. Having Jack speak for her, saying that they are 'in harmony' tries to make this an acceptable fate for her, but only makes it worse.

Benny: Another offscreen death, and this one feels particularly spiteful. It really seems like he was killed just to be a conversation-starter for Cas and Dean. However, if his fate can be sealed by a line of dialogue, then it only proves that confirmation of the fates of Eileen, AU Charlie and the other hunters could have been given in the same way. Just one line could have done it - "I just spoke to Eileen, everyone's back." Instead, at the end of 15.19 we're in the absurd position of having Sam and Dean toast the people they've lost without them even bothering to check who that may or not be.

Billie: The bizarre thing about Billie being revealed as a villain at the end of Season 15 was that she was supposed to be acting in self-interest - that she wanted to be the new God. It made no sense. What would make sense to me, though, would be if Chuck was controlling her (as Lucifer bound Death in Season 5). Season 15 has strong echoes of Season 4 - and Billie took on both the role of Ruby (feeding Jack hearts rather than demon blood, but nevertheless making him into a weapon, with the price being the loss of his sense of self and ultimately his life) and Heaven (persuading Dean that it had to be this way, and telling him to go along with the plan). We only have the Shadow's word for Billie's motivation, and we know she wasn't responsible for the deaths of the AU hunters, so in the end her status is ambiguous - she really seems to be a victim of Chuck's bad writing. She's erased from the narrative along with Castiel, when really she should have been freed from Chuck's control and fighting on the side of nature and free will alongside the Winchesters. Supernatural also concludes with nobody in the role of Death, which is a crazy loose thread left dangling.

Castiel: His confession was a thing of beauty, perfectly summing up the truth of both his and Dean's characters. Both of them are made of and motivated by love. And yet after speaking his truth, he is silenced. He never gets to hear that he is loved in return (when the previous twelve seasons have made it abundantly clear to the audience that Dean loves Cas just as much as Cas loves Dean). His capacity for love made him the only thing that Chuck could not control; as an agent of free will, he should have had a central role in Chuck's defeat.

In 15x13, when Cas is in the Empty to see Ruby, the Shadow says: "funny thing about [Death's] plan, though... she didn't say anything about needing you. Baby, you can't just traipse in and out of here. It upsets the order of things." To me, this sounded so much like 4x22's "you're not in this story" that I saw it as a pretty clear indication that Cas would play an important part in Chuck's defeat. Because Team Free Will wouldn't follow the plan, would they? They would find another way, wouldn't they? Wouldn't they?

However, after the confession, he's never seen on screen again. He's barely mentioned. Eventually we're told he "helped" Jack, so he ends up where he started: as a servant of heaven. He deserved to complete his fall, to become human, to live as well as speak his truth. Making him a silent, unseen instrument of heaven undoes his entire arc. Erasing him from the narrative requires the extraordinary warping of that narrative: nothing about his death suggests that it should be accepted as a permanent 'sacrifice', when we know that there is a spell that can return angels from the Empty (and, thanks to the handprint, we have his blood for it) and that Lucifer was brought back by Chuck in 15x19. And the idea that Sam, Jack and Dean wouldn't try everything in their power to bring him back is utterly ludicrous.

Cas' confession scene to so closely mirrors 4x01's barn scene that the narrative is crying out for the parallel to be completed by Dean rescuing Cas from the Empty just as Cas rescued Dean from hell. However, we're never given that narrative closure - just like we are never given the reunions demanded by the scenes of Sam losing Eileen and Charlie losing Stevie.

Chuck: Okay, so he might not make your list of characters you could ever care about, but my point about his ending is that while it's fitting, for it to really work we also needed Cas to become human, too. For Chuck, being human is a punishment, but for Cas it would be a reward. We really needed this balance, otherwise all we have is humanity as the worst thing that could happen to you, which is not exactly a great parting message for the show. (Also, how precisely is it possible to make him human?) Not only is being human the worst fate possible, but, specifically, so is growing old and being forgotten. Again, this is a punishment for Chuck, but it would have been a reward for Dean: growing old when the story (and his own self-loathing) constantly told him that he would die young; and being forgotten, not in a negative sense, but in terms of not being a character in a story any more: remembered fondly by his friends but no longer a legend, just a man living an insignificant little life exactly the way he chooses.

Dean: Where do I even start. Let's be clear: ending the story with his death (by any means and in any scenario) was always going to be the absolute worst possible ending for him and for the show.

In 15x19 we have the glorious moment when Chuck calls him the ultimate killer, and Dean (heeding Cas' words from 15x18) says "that's not who I am". Now, I mean no disrespect to Dean here (because he is, canonically, a genius) but I don't think that he was in any way necessary to the Michael double-cross plot that eventually saw the defeat of Chuck. Honestly, if he had died in 15x18, then 15x19 could still have played out in exactly the same way. It's as if he wasn't saved so that he could save the world - he was saved so that he could have this moment of self-realisation. He was saved so that he could stand up to Chuck (God, and the author, and parallelled with John) and tell him that he's not the person that he tried to force him to be.

And yet by the next episode, this revelation is entirely forgotten. He doesn't get to continue his self-actualisation by speaking his truth to Cas. Instead, 15x20 presents Dean as almost a caricature of himself. Dean loves pie. Dean loves his brother. Dean loves his car. All of his complexity (present right from Season 1) is stripped away.

Finally free to write his own story, he ends up giving Chuck the ending he always wanted: one dead Winchester - killed, you could argue, by his brother (Sam fails to call for help and instead tells Dean to "go".) Told by Cas that he's not "Daddy's blunt instrument" and accepting that he's not "the ultimate killer", Dean goes right back to killing (even threatening torture) and following his father's words (in the form of the journal).

For Dean to die exactly as the story has always told him, and as he's always told himself in his worst moments of self loathing, is brutal and tragic. What makes it truly appalling is the way in which both Dean and Sam accept his death and say it's "okay". For Dean to say "always keep fighting" at the very moment when he gives up and when Sam gives up on him is bitterly ironic. (Interestingly, when Cas said "you have to keep fighting" in his 12x12 death speech, exhorting Sam and Dean to save themselves and leave him behind, Sam replied with "we are fighting. We're fighting for you, Cas" and Dean followed with "and like you said, you're family. And we don't leave family behind".)

Dean has always been the symbol of humanity in Supernatural: he stood for earth against the forces of heaven and hell. He'd rather live with pain and guilt than exist as a "Stepford bitch in paradise", and yet that's exactly what he becomes, driving mindlessly through Jack's new heaven where everyone is "happy". Dean previously dismissed heaven's happiness as "Memorex", and after Mary's death he was the only one not consoled by the confirmation that she was in heaven and happy. Having Dean being content in heaven is utterly out of character. He's always fought for free will, and in heaven - where there's no agency, where he's cut off from the world - this is the one thing that he does not have.

Eileen: An interesting, complex, kickass character, Eileen deserved so much better than being erased from the storyline. A Men of Letters legacy, I imagine her working with Sam to share the knowledge contained within the bunker whilst also dismantling the patriarchy, elitism and colonialism of its past. Her disappearance from the narrative makes absolutely no sense - 15x09, 15x17 and 15x18 confirm just how significant she is to Sam, and yet we never see them reunited or see Sam mourning her death. The audience's love for Eileen is totally disregarded, too - she's ripped away from us with no further explanation.

Emma: Okay, so she wasn't actually in season 15, but that's sort of my point. I have a lot to say about Emma, but here I'll just say that her significance has grown massively since Season 7. The narrative has shifted from Team Free Will being sons to being fathers. Even if she wasn't brought back, just a mention of her would have been significant. (I can't stop thinking about the massive potential of a conversation about Emma between Dean and Jack.) She didn't deserve to be forgotten.

Season 15 was Supernatural's last opportunity to bring back characters from the past - such as Meg, original Charlie, Crowley, and Bela Talbot - and give them better endings. Sadly this opportunity was wasted.

Garth: He actually seems to get his happy ending, on several levels. He finds a family; he finds happiness; he's acknowledged as a hero by the Winchesters, who had previously mocked him. Dean's words to him about embracing happiness are powerful. Garth lives as his full, authentic self - monstrosity now included. It's that monstrosity that's the issue here, though - as werewolves, Garth, Bess and little Sam and Castiel are doomed to go to purgatory when they die. Mia Vallens said to Jack that "it doesn't matter what you are - it matters what you do", but in this case the opposite is true. It's hideously unfair, but again the show never acknowledges this. It would have been simple to change in a line or two - just a quick mention about how purgatory has been fixed, so that only truly monstrous beasts like the leviathan are kept trapped there - but the injustice remains.

Jack: From his birth, his destiny was either to be the monstrous destroyer or the divine saviour of the world, which is precisely why he should have side-stepped it and found another way. He deserved to live without the weight of the world on his shoulders. Instead, he was forced to take on the power of God - and since when has someone suddenly taking on a huge amount of power ever ended well for Team Free Will? Then, he repeats the exact same pattern set up by Chuck. First, he abandons his creation by walking away and disappearing off to, in the words of Bobby, "wherever he went". Like Chuck, he ignores earthly suffering: if he's now omniscient and omnipotent, is he in fact complicit in Dean's death? Secondly, he's controlling: he remodels Heaven as he sees fit, making it a place where everyone's together and everyone's happy, with its inhabitants given absolutely no choice in the matter. There's also no reason why Jack had to vanish from the story - Chuck was capable of spending time on Earth.

The mechanics of the bomb plot also irks me no end. We're told by Death that the bomb will kill Jack. However, their plan fails, and Jack survives the blast. In 15x19, Dean tells Chuck that all the work done to turn Jack into a "cosmic bomb" has turned him instead into a "power vacuum." It makes it seem like a side-effect, and also that "sucking up bits of power" has been charging him up to the point where he's "unstoppable". He's able to both absorb and appropriate Chuck's power. However, in 15x17 Adam and Serafina explain that the bomb will create a "metaphysical supernova" that will make Jack into "a living black hole for divine energy" - which suggests that, actually, the bomb worked as intended.

But if the plan worked, why is Jack still alive? Billie made it clear that Jack wouldn't survive. And "nothing can escape" a black hole - so how is Jack able to use Chuck's powers to bring back Earth's population? Besides which, didn't 15x17 reveal that Chuck himself had "orchestrated" the entire thing? Which makes the theory that Chuck possessed Jack really the only outcome that makes sense. (Particularly as Serafina talks about Jack making his "vessel" strong. Jack is a nephil, not an angel - he has a body, not a vessel. Also, the bomb is made by fusing his soul with his grace - so, the two things that make up Jack, his humanity and his divinity, are annihilated.) Deliberately making Chuck win, however (with no tease at the end that this might be the case), makes no sense either. My head hurts.

Kevin: As if he hadn't been treated badly enough by the story already, we find that Kevin hasn't been in Heaven since we last saw him, but rather hell. He ends up as an untethered ghost, presumably just wandering about for all eternity. His fate comes courtesy of a bizarre new rule that souls from hell can't go to heaven - when previously both Bobby and John have done exactly that. Again, just one line telling us that he's now in heaven could have changed his ending.

Michael: Bringing back Adam and Michael was a brilliant move, and this version of Michael was utterly compelling - struggling with his faith in his father after being abandoned, torn between his loyalty to Heaven and his relationship with Adam. I thought that his handing over of the spell was very similar to Cas' "just so you understand … why I can't help" moment, and it seemed the precursor to Michael becoming an advocate for humanity, even a member of Team Free Will. However, instead Michael was doomed to play out his father's narrative: killing his brother and repeating the cycle of sibling conflict and trauma that Chuck began when he betrayed Amara. (And we'll credit Chuck's bad writing with the fact that the battle between Michael and Lucifer that was once predicted to wipe out millions and scorch the globe can now happen in the bunker without so much as a chair being knocked over - and without wires as well.)

Rowena: She seems to be relishing her reign as Queen of Hell, but the way she's so casually condemned is jarring. Surely her previous good deeds and her final act of self sacrifice would be enough to tip the scales in a heavenly direction? (It worked for Lily Sunder - another woman who vowed never to be powerless again.) They could easily have said it was Chuck's fault that she had to remain in hell - but instead it just seems like a foregone conclusion. She deserved better.

Sam: If we're supposed to believe that having a "normal" life is Sam's idea of writing his own story, why doesn't he do it as soon as Chuck is defeated? Instead, his suburban "apple pie" life only happens after Dean dies, which makes it seem more of a grief arc than a happy ending. (Just as he escaped into a self-professed "fantasy" life with Amelia after Dean's death, or when he succumbed to the comfort of a fake married life in Charming Acres after the trauma of losing all the AU hunters).

The idea that he'd keep hunting for Dean doesn't ring true - Dean had been the one openly craving retirement and domesticity for several seasons. After all, the idea of Dean as a hunter and Sam as the brother who wants to be normal is Chuck's story. Dean wasn't the "ultimate killer" that Chuck wanted him to be, and Sam too had been forging his own identity as a leader, a Man of Letters, and a powerful witch. He'd also found love - and with Eileen, he could be his full, authentic self. The idea that he would leave her is absurd, as is the idea that he would abandon his entire extended found family, who seem to have no part in his new life. When Dean returned from purgatory, he was furious that Sam had failed to help Kevin. Would Sam really do the exact same thing again - walk away from Jody and the girls when they are mourning both Cas and Dean and need his support? Would he just abandon Rowena's entire witchy collection and leave the huge store of knowledge in the Bunker locked up in the dark?

The Shadow: again, dubious on a list of characters you care about, but hey - all they ever really wanted was to go back to sleep, and can't we all relate to that? Anyway, they made the list for being one of the most frustrating open endings of the show. What did it mean for the Empty to be "loud"? Who is the Shadow, anyway? Just how did this cosmic entity fit in with the mythology of Chuck and Amara? It's maddening that the Shadow and the Empty were made central to several seasons only to be suddenly dropped.

The Wayward Sisters: my beloveds. Such a brilliant cast of characters and such wasted potential. They're an important part of the Winchesters' family and Team Free Will, but, in the end, they're forgotten. Claire may have gotten her happy ending with the return of Kaia, but this happens off screen. We never see her reaction to the deaths of Castiel or Dean.

The final few episodes seem to be about stripping away all of the characters except Sam and Dean, so they are completely alone by 15x20. Phrases such as "just us" and "just you and me" and "it's always been you and me" seem to suggest that this is a good thing, but previously the idea of them being isolated and alone has seemed like the worst case scenario (for example in Season 8, when Sam and Dean are forced to give up Amelia and Benny, respectively, or in Chuck's vision of a future in which the brothers lose Eileen and Cas along with Jody and the girls, give up hope, and end up as vampires, killed by their remaining friends).

Anyway, the whole idea of just Sam and Dean going wherever the road takes them is Chuck's story. It's on the cover of his books. By making Chuck the villain, Season 15 itself makes it impossible for a return to this idea to be a satisfying conclusion to the story.

In fact, Supernatural was never about just Sam and Dean. It was always about family. Season 1 was about Sam, Dean and John. Bobby introduced the phrase "family don't end with blood" in Season 3 and Dean coined the phrase "Team Free Will" in Season 4. It's an ethos that has spread into the fandom, too. Didn't the SPN Family deserve a finale that celebrated that idea, of banding together, of caring about the whole world, of love being the ultimate expression of free will?

You can't help but pick up on a theme: characters that were forgotten are forgotten again. Characters who were locked away are locked away again. The same narratives and the same traumas play out again and again. No-one escapes their miserable, predestined fate. It's Chuck's ending. And it's Chuck's spiteful ending.

It's the ending that kills off its beloved characters, and also destroys their whole world. The bunker is left in darkness. Time has moved forward by so much in order to accommodate Sam's natural death that we can't even imagine the ongoing stories of other characters like Garth or the Sioux Falls family (ironic, given the episode's title).

It's the kind of ending you get when a show is cancelled and the writer decides to kill off their characters and wreck their world so that there's no possibility of another network or another writer taking over their story. (And yet outside of the show, there's no evidence to suggest this - you would think that the ending had been designed to make a reboot impossible, but it has already been talked about.)

If we were not going to get a sense of the world continuing, then we could have been given a more radical and satisfying ending. We could have had Death collect on their promise to one day reap God. We could have had a world freed from the supernatural entirely: heaven, hell and purgatory obliterated, and Team Free Will finding peace in life on earth.

Because Chuck has been the author and the narrator the entire time, it makes no sense for the story to continue past the point of his defeat. (It makes even less sense for that story to revert back to Chuck's ideal narrative.) So, really we should have been given a more open ending: Team Free Will triumphant over Chuck and their future left open, the author dead and the characters' stories entrusted to the audience.

Instead, in the end, it's a bizarre mix of needlessly closed-down endings (killing off Cas, Sam and Dean, and vanishing Jack) and frustrating open ones (the loud Empty, there being no Death, Kevin wandering, the ambiguous fate of Eileen, Adam, Donna and the AU hunters).

And the final two episodes are also objectively bad. The double-cross plot in 15x19 is lame when the resolution of the Chuck storyline should have been profound. (It invites comparisons with the Season 11 finale, which was excellent.) 15x20 feels weirdly empty and flat. Dean's death is unrealistic; it echoes Sam's death in Season 2 and Dean's in Season 9 (which, if you think about it, would only be possible if Chuck was still writing it), but lacks the emotional punch of either. Dean's "I'm proud of us," in his Season 9 death scene is so much more powerful than his "I'm proud of you" in the finale. And let's not even mention that wig.

In conclusion: every single character deserved better. The actors deserved better. The audience deserved better. Because the ending we were given was not the ending that the season, or the entire series, had been building towards.

The ending tries to destroy every good thing that Supernatural has ever given us - vibrant characters, the fight for free will, the value of found family, the power of love - but it fails. Ultimately the characters and themes are too powerful to be contained by that terrible, flimsy ending. So now I've gotten all of that off my chest, I'm going right back to finale denialism.

#so I've been compiling this list for quite a while and now seems as good a time as any to get it off my chest #it's also the checklist for the fix-it I'm writing so really I should go and work on that #supernatural #spn #spn 15x20 #spn 15.20 #tw dean's death

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