#luanna801

What made you ship it?

Victwardian dark femme4femme sapphic romance- what's not to ship?

I think what kept me shipping it is more interesting. Because Edith and Lucille have a lot of similarities: both determined, highly intelligent, deeply sensitive to their own feelings and the feelings of those around them, observant, and impulsive. In many ways, Edith is Lucille if Lucille's life had been better. there were also some interesting things Jessica Chastain said about Lucille, that she's more attracted to women than men and that she starts off wanting to protect Edith, genuinely, because Edith reminds her of a butterfly and she loves butterflies (she also kills butterflies, so. fascinating analogy there).

and Edith is so prone to stubbornness and bad decisions that if anyone were going to look at everything Lucille is and has done and say "fuck it, I'm going to love you anyway," it would be her

What are your favorite things about the ship?

I feel like the banter is Excellent with these two. Gothic Heroine/Gothic Villainess is one of my favorite dynamics. I love how their aesthetics contrast but also complement each other. And I feel like both of them would see things in each other that they weren't used to seeing. Lucille sees Edith's sharp edges in a way nobody ever has, but also the naivete that she so firmly believes she doesn't possess. Edith sees what's soft and bright and worth loving about Lucille when almost no-one else would if they knew the whole truth.

they make each other better (which is to say, somewhat worse, but probably more functional in Lucille's case)

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

So I read Marlowe's Edward II at the start of January 2025 and when I got this ask, my mind went blank and I was like "oh, this is a brilliant excuse to read the other edition of the play I somehow ended up with".

I liked it a lot! The language is beautiful 🤌I've wanted to read it for a long time - ever since this quote appeared on my dash, actually.

This might sound a little weird but I was a bit surprised* because the way a certain Edward II historian talks about it as if it's the source for all of the worst takes on Edward II and Isabella of France and it's like... you can see it's using early versions of some tropes like Edward's neglect of Isabella is driving her into Mortimer's arms and rebellion or the hot poker but it's like... so? Marlowe isn't used using them in the same way terrible modern historians or modern historical fiction is. They don't feel stale or overused because Marlowe isn't working the gears behind the curtains to go "despise Edward! pity Isabella!", he's an author who can make us feel for both.

Also as a certified sicko, I adore this:

And as it won’t be OSHA compliant, I’ll have to put it under a readmore:

(russingon ask game)

I answered 7 here!

5. "Lies came between them": what are your thoughts on the relationship between Fingon and Maedhros during the fraught period of the Unrest of the Noldor?

Ooooh I have not quite pinned down a coherent vision for this era yet, although it fascinates me. I think they were romantically together long before the release of Melkor, and the start of the Unrest, and its increase in the tension between Fëanor and Fingolfin, started to slowly fray at them - but slowly! The deterioration took years, and it was slow and unhappy and punctuated by several vicious arguments, each of them trying to be his father's proxy and not doing it very well. Going to also toss in a fic rec here for @zealouswerewolfcollector's A Tale That Wasn't Right, which captures the mounting unease of this time period so so well.

I’m actually so glad you asked about this because I have lots of headcanons. I have probably spent more time thinking about the Odair family than is normal/healthy to because I think it’s so interesting.

The first thing that really strikes me about Finnick’s family/parents is that Mags is referred to as “half of his family” which I always interpreted as Annie being the other half. Mags is seemingly his primary maternal figure and is also referred to as practically having raised him. Because of this I imagine Finnick probably had a strained relationship with his parents.

But on the other hand Finnick clearly cared about his family enough to protect their safety when they’re threatened by Snow. While it’s possible Mags was the only one he was worried about protecting she was a victor as well and likely couldn’t be hurt by Snow the same way other family could. And he wasn’t with Annie at that point in time. So presumably he did everything he did to protect his parents and any other family or friends he had. (I probably thought about all this more than Suzanne even intended but shh)

I also just think that the type of parents that raise a career is so interesting to me. Presumably a child isn’t going to come up with the idea to train for the games themselves, at least in the majority of cases. So Finnick’s parents probably pressured/encouraged him to train for the Games. I imagine that family and community are super important to Finnick and his parents raised him with the idea that if he could win the hunger games it would bring honor to their family and to their district.

I imagine that they love him but they’ve also put so much of their hopes and dreams and resources into training Finnick that at times they view him more as a tribute/future victor than a son.

I headcanon Finnick’s father as captain of a fishing crew which means he’s closer with his mother because she stays home with him for his childhood while his father could be away for days, weeks, or even months at a time. When Finnick gets old enough he starts working on the ship which strains/complicates the relationship even more because they have both father/son and captain/employee relationship.

I also imagine that after the games Finnick’s parents have a hard time understanding his trauma. This is what they always dreamed of and trained for and now they have wealth and a new home and the prize for their district. So they struggle to understand Finnick’s guilt and depression and complicated emotions.

Finnick likely also distances himself from his parents after Snow’s threats. I imagine that he feels that the closer people are to him the more likely they are to get hurt. So he lets distance grow between him and his parents to protect both them and himself.

i've resigned myself to the fact that we'll never have the Real Beatles Story, partly because obviously they want to protect their image, and partly because their memory recall abilities are embarrassingly bad and/or downright selective

of course, everything about get back needs to be taken with some degree of salt. especially when james paul mccartney, king of Cultivating His Image is able to have special private viewings of the documentary during the editing process. that being said, i do think it was decently reflective of how they truly were. they let people in because they didn't have much to hide. sure, their behaviour was probably somewhat tailored, but the flowerpot conversation (which was extremely...demure?) tells me that the portrayal of them was pretty accurate

I get what you're saying, even though I don't entirely agree.

The story works as it is for HP, but I feel it doesn't work for FB. It's not about WHO, in the sense of Albus learning the truth, but about Albus coming face to face with the possibility of the question being answered.

IF we get flashbacks (personally I always thought and still think we're meant to get them in the last chapter of the story), WE will know the truth. It can be that it's not even distinguishable who hit her. It can be that one of them did, but it's still accidental so it's not intentional murder. It could even be that Ariana lost control to the extent that her obscurus destroyed her.

But ultimately it's not about the blame. It's about the fear of further guilt. In SoD Albus says it doesn't ultimately matter if it was his spell, but when he mentions the possibility his voice cracks. In DH he mentions that he delayed meeting Gellert because he feared of learning this very thing: that his own spell killed his sister. Albus considers murder a fructure of one's soul, and even the idea of having been directly the cause of Ariana's death consumes him.

Since it's mentioned that this is the main thing that kept him back until 1945 (even post the troth's destruction), going after Gellert and facing this become one and the same and the reemerging of the question seems inevitable to me, based on the way I personally perceive storytelling.

Sorry, Harv. Looks like we almost made Bingo.

Expect a more coherent version of this if @about-faces and I ever get that book off the ground: I truly believe Harvey has the potential to be the single richest character among Arkham's most wanted, if not the richest in Gotham period. I'm not as emotionally invested in the nitty-gritty of his backstory as some fans, but I'd have to be the worst kind of liar to say "Eye of the Beholder" doesn't pull miracles that somehow make a son-of-a-boozehound narrative look genuinely fresh and interesting even in 2022. More than just daddy-hit-me-so-now-I'm-bad, it's a bloodcurdling feast of Implication on how no rules are really better than the people who set them; on how the powerless and vulnerable can get fucked in the most horrific way by even the (seemingly) clearest lines and stipulations. And what does that say of Harvey himself, who at his most (quote-unquote?) heroic went to work for the Justice System, which inflicts that on thousands-if-not-millions of poor and marginalized people every day?

... that said, I'm also grateful that "ACAB (Yes, Prosecutors Are C!)" isn't (yet?) the prevailing fandom take on Harvey. A guy who was just Always a Cop and Always Doing Bad Things for Cop Reasons doesn't really a riveting recurring foe make. If Batman himself doesn't feel at least a little bad putting his boot to Harvey's face(s) every time, then what's the point?

(For the record, my golden take on Harvey probably exists genuinely nowhere in canon: an information broker a la the Penguin who knows full well he has no real powerset beyond owning some guns, and usually takes every pain to make sure things don't come to blows with any of the mask-and-cape crowd. The tension in any given interaction with him would come from figuring out which of his personalities - which are equally charming and polite in most circumstances - gave you a specific piece of info. For extra "fun", neither of them has a truly, predictably conventional view of right and wrong. Did "good" Harvey tell you that hoping you'd get arrested, because he doesn't think you've got enough skills to be a costumed hero? Did "bad" Harvey tell you that to get back at a genuinely horrible guy... who stole his parking spot last week?)

Also, just on a purely superficial level? I think that he's got, hands-down, the most timeless design and gimmick out of all the rogues. You need zero cultural context for the juxtaposition of "Aww, such a lovely face! + DEAR LORD THOSE SCARS" to hit at 90mph, and only a little more to grasp the Rome-ancient concept behind a coin-flip.