we cannot fight them all

Joe Brainard, Pansies, 1968. 

i think it's uncomfortable, but often necessary to recognize when we're watching a show or a film or reading a book or playing a video game with different expectations or desires than the story ever promised to fulfill. simply, you can't draw blood from a stone, you know? and I think this idea, however simple, is often very easy to forget when you're in fandom because fanworks are innately transformative. in fandom, we draw blood from stones all the time. we re-imagine characters, relationships, universes in whichever way we deem fit so that we can experience wish fulfillment. but as the fourth wall between fandom and the creatives behind media becomes thinner and thinner, the boundary between what is the job of storytellers (to tell a story), what is the job of the audience (to receive the story or opt out), and what is the job of fandom (to connect with one another over shared imaginative and transformative reception of the story being told) is getting muddied to detrimental effect. coupled with the rise of hyper-individualism and the increasing commodification of fanworks into traditionally published forms, this is where we get a real wave of entitlement from fandom -- this sense that the storyteller owes something to us by virtue of our fannish devotion and that perceived failure to meet our desires is worthy of a host of outrage and abuses. i think this is where paratext comes in and why the notion of what is or isn't canon feels perhaps more debatable now than ever before. i think it's born from a blend of hyper-individualism effecting how we think and behave as audience members, the increasing sense of entitlement that is borne out of such individualist thinking, the vanishing of the fourth wall between fandom and the mainstream as well as the creators of media that fandom enjoys, and a growing inability to accept the story you're being told on its own terms (and go happily and exclusively to fandom to remedy the urge for something more). because, really, what paratext offers is a sense of legitimacy -- usually when it conveniently upholds what you privately wanted in the first place. if the show you love isn't giving you enough to substantiate your ship, you can get your fix through an actor's interviews, their exposure to fanfiction and fan art, and their perceived approval of the ship. their opinion, by virtue of their literal proximity to the show, legitimizes your own. if the movie you love doesn't do enough with a character you find interesting, a scrapped plan for what the character might've done or a deleted scene might do the same. etc etc.

To our dismay, the artist and author Marjane Satrapi has passed away.

As she wrote, ordinary Americans and Iranians have more in common with each other than we do with either of our governments, which have far too much in common with each other.

This piece has been rotting in my art folder for months now and I finally figured out how I Wanted to color/render Dinraal.

—Deborah Vance, opening The Diva

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During the time when Deborah has decided she isn’t going to go through cancer treatment, she constructs what she considers her final legacy in two parts:

Performing a free show for 30k people in Central Park, uncensored and on her own terms, before which she acknowledges the support and care from others that allowed her to get to that moment

Co-creating a new Vegas institution (publicly crediting Marcus for the transformative role he’s played in her life), then christening it with explicit instruction that people should use the space to be the people they truly are (right before the mayor christens it with blood lol)

Alongside all the artifice, all the glitz and glamour, the wigs and cosmetic surgery, the obsession with public image, this is a Deborah who’s grown comfortable with having needed people. She’s also grown comfortable with the way people have needed her, and that pair of realizations feels like a big part of why she needs to imagine people having a good time at The Diva after she’s gone, honoring her wishes to shamelessly live as themselves while they’re within the walls of the casino.

But alongside all that, there’s still her own private battle with shame and fear, the stuff she only lets Ava see. The agony around being seen as crazy, the dread of going through experiences that will make her body hurt and maybe even change the way her brain works. But she’s finally achieved some perfect things, a perfect show against all odds in a city that isn’t home, and a place in the city that is home that’ll be a lively homage to her memory long after she’s gone. It completely makes sense to me that she’d choose to die at that moment, convinced she’s going out on top. She won’t be around to see anything that might tarnish those perfect things down the line.

And then Paris happens. I was so, so, so moved that her relationship with Ava and her relationship to comedy are so deeply engrained, so indistinguishable, that her very human and very lovely and sad desire to have this sweet vacation with Ava means they spend the entire time making each other laugh. Because that’s what time with Ava means. With the exceptions of the desperate, beautiful fights about the decision to seek euthanasia, they’re just performing comedy for each other, their little comedy club of two, and it’s not really a performance at all—it’s just living through the filter of being funny for someone you love, and finding someone you love funny, and that being the most important thing.

Maybe even more important than dignity. More important than public legacy.

It’s so brave of Deborah—and so merciful of the universe—that she realizes that she can’t even conceptualize her own death without writing jokes about it, and that means a chosen, timed, planned-for death isn’t something she can go through with right now. She had every right to want that. But in the end, the time in Paris vanquishes a lot of those last shreds of shame and fear, even if there could be more around the bend as she goes through this medical journey. She will be able to handle it because she will be able to write about what she’s going through in collaboration with her creative partner. She has NEVER been able to fully count on that before, not without understandable wariness that she might be horribly disappointed, but Ava’s decision to be with her when she dies makes it possible for Deborah to want Ava to be with her while she goes through something messy and painful in the hopes of having more life.

Even with the pain of medical treatments ahead, even while facing (hopefully, if/when the reboot gets picked up!) the logistical stress of balancing life in two cities, even with the inevitable difficulties that will arise while crafting this next comedy hour, Deborah and Ava are already in their happy ending, and there is more to come.

Check out the Ted Lasso March 2026 Comment-a-Thon Rewards fic collection!

We've got:

Rebecca taking the (literal, mechanical) bull by the horns, to Ted's great delight (by @5chatzi)

Bex and Rebecca making amends! (by @night-catches-us)

Ted thinking Rebecca's the greatest thing he's ever seen even when a bird poops on her (by @toomanygh0sts)

An epic T/R and friends trip to America for the World Cup! (by @swetergrl86)

Rebecca confronting some internalized messaging about her body and desires—and getting laid in the process (by @night-catches-us)

Rebecca/Roy hooking up—for their HEALTH! (by me, @chainofclovers)

Ted's amnesia causing him to forget about the love square, but only for a little while (also by me)

And T/R taking a super chill approach to their nuptials (by @instamatical)

see also the scene in season 2 with amaya, the PCOS patient, where whitaker suggests an unhelpful and misogynistic/misogynoir-ist plan of care that he probably learned in med school and from dr. robby that prioritizes temporarily alleviating pain and freeing up a bed, debates with mckay over it, and eventually listens to the patient's self-advocacy only through the interlocutor of mckay (with mckay herself have been checked for bias in the past by collins!)

putting that alongside other examples of whitaker being a character who values decency towards other people (volunteering for the street team, teaching the med students about the moment of silence, honoring the work of nurses, helping amy on her farm) and you get an interesting picture of a person who has been raised to be Midwest Nice but after leaving his rural upbringing is forced to confront the fact that the culture of Midwest Nice fundamentally excludes large sections of the population who are more in need of decency and empathy than anyone whitaker grew up with in his 95.7% white hometown