Starlit1daydream - StarlitDaydream

Reblog to let your followers know that despite your current obsession your previous obsessions still exist and are simply lying dormant until they awaken and strike again

so fucking true

Look, as much as I love June having all these really nice and emotional coming out moments, I think she should be allowed to use her gender for comedy. She goes on HRT for like 5 months without telling anyone and shows up at the next hangout with her friends looking like a totally different person. She gaslights them into thinking that she was always a girl. Everyone starts panicking because this seems like peak timeline fuckery. Shit goes to the Earth-C equivalent of DEFCON 2 before she reveals the gag to everyone. The effects of her coming out are catastrophic. There are no survivors.

okay in a hypothetical hornetsstuck au what would make more sense to differentiate brian/hoody and masky/tim?

HORNETSSTUCK GOD TIERS (MAYBE FINALISED PROBABLY NOT)

Jay Merrick: Seer of Void

Alex Kralie: Prince of Light

Timothy Wright: Heir of Heart

Brian Thomas: Witch of Mind

Jessica Locke: Muse of Breath

The Operator: Lord of Void(?)

THIS MAY CHANGE. ALEX AND JAY ARE THE ONLY ONES I AM 100% SURE ON

trying to articulate my thoughts here

generally speaking with heathers i try and think of ways to merge the movie and musical characterizations to get a bigger picture of the character

the problem is, duke has THE most drastic difference between the two

in the movie she's a timid bookworm and a genuine friend to veronica who gets manipulated by jd into taking chandler's crown

in the musical she's just a douchebag from day one and always 'the meanest heather' with no real personality beyond how much she's a cunt

generally speaking when trying to write for duke in a way that

A - makes her an interesting charactre in her own right

B - rings true with her canonical characterisation

there's a few ways you can go about it

you can have her primary conflict BE about her lack of substance and personality, there's some interesting ways to tie that into her bulimia (something the fandom grossly underrepresents with her)

you can incorporate the more intellectual aspect of her personality that shines through in the movie, which is what i tend to do because it provides something in common with veronica

and there's a lot to be said about her being a direct contrast to veronica's more idealistic worldview that people are capable of change - duke is the best way to provide that antithesis. write her as directly challenging veronica's compulsion to 'fix' people that we see with j.d.

and with the idea that duke is somewhat of a closet nerd from what we see in the movie combined with how little she actually seems to enjoy the party scenes in the musical until she gets a chance to bully martha

duke's mother paid for implants according to 'beautiful' and that's about all we hear - she's repeatedly trampled and stepped on by heather chandler when she tries to have an opinion and she seems used to this

the picture that forms in my head is of somebody who tried against all odds to prioritise academia when everybody else in her like told her to just sit there and look pretty

and in the end she just collapsed in the face of that pressure and submitted to that toxic, misogynistic culture and all of the unrealistic beauty standards that came with it. that's where so much of her body image issue comes from

we have her flattened to the point where she lacks any substance to herself and just mirrors heather chandler in an attempt to fit in and roll with the popular crowd. she's willingly stripping herself of any agency and surrendering to that hollow, vapid popularity

and once she gets the chance to take the spotlight and is blackmailed into usurping power by j.d. she goes completely out of control because it's been so LONG since she's felt like she's had any agency. she lashes out, continues the cycle of abuse that's been lumped onto her even if the victims of it (martha, veronica, ESPECIALLY mac) didn't do shit to her. "heather, why do you have to be such a mega-bitch?" says veronica. "because i can", replies duke.

is this a very different read from duke's fandom interpretations? probably. most people seem to narrow her down to just 'the asshole heather' or 'guys she's not actually the asshole heather! (provides no elaboration as to what other role she can fill in the narrative)

this is gratuitously long and probably directly contradicts a lot of what's said or implied in canon but at the end of the day if it results in good storytelling in any hypothetical fanfiction i could write down then i'd be willing to hear it out

tl;dr heather duke's body image issues and implied academic interest from the movies need to be focused on more in the fanbase, the musical kind of fucked up her character and people's perception of her and she's the logical direct antithesis to veronica.

its hard to explain but the way i characterize heather duke is just gifted kid burnout on steroids