#Hope s5 brings some justice for him

[go-to-two]

Some of it was how he wrote Antonio out but also killing Al. Losing both characters drastically changed the feel and balance of the show. I also think Eid was upset Jon came back to PD after Justice didn't work and so the choices he made in regard to how he wrote him out were personal.

As for the Burzek of it all, it is way more than Eid not putting them back together. If you watch season 4, it was clear Burzek was on their way to getting back together. And then Eid shows up and the very first episode he is in charge, he has Kim dating someone else. At the end of S5, Paddy went to him and asked for Burzek to be a thing again and what does Eid do - season 6 which was an attempt to kill Burzek for good while pushing Upstead. He could have used anyone else to date Hailey but no, he picks Adam. And it was after Paddy specifically asked him for Burzek. Eid said numerous times in interviews that Burzek was done and over. Upsteads didn't' mind S6 because the storyline was used to push their ship together but Burzek didn't get anything out of it except a very OOC Adam and Kim. He did everything possible to not make Adam the father of Kim's baby…including trying to bring Roman back. He did figure out how to get him back for the episode after Burzek lost their baby which was a dick move to the fans. He spent seasons 7-9 teasing Burzek and giving the fans hope only to wreck them at the end of an episode. He "broke" them up several times but never actually put them together first and constantly made sure the audience knew they weren't together. And then Paddy and Marina give what was probably the performance of their careers in 8x16 and it is used to get Upstead married while Burzek just got more trauma. The fact that Adam and Kim (and even Kevin) had nothing to do with the fallout from the Roy storyline is mind boggling. There were so many good storylines that could have come from all of it for all the characters and he didn't use a single one. It seemed clear that his goal was to get upstead married before he left. You could also tell Paddy and Marina were upset about their characters being ignored - it was disrespectful to them, the characters, and the fans.

Add in what he did to Al and Antonio, starting this awful centric format, removing the humor and family feel of the show (and making it really dark), and making Trudy almost nonexistent, there are a lot of reasons he is not liked by fans (and not just Burzeks). It would have been one thing if he was trying to build them back but he clearly used them for emotional storylines with no intention of ever making them a couple again. He constantly did 3 steps forward and 5 back with Burzek. So yeah...it feels like he had a vendetta against Burzek and Adam/Paddy specifically. And yes, Burzek had moments but that was because of Paddy and Marina, not Eid.

I also think some of the choices he made with Hailey's character are why she gets the hate she does...it all could have been prevented too if he had just taken a different approach to how he brought her in. But his ego got in the way. He came in acting like it was a brand new show and didn't care that there was an already established audience. He even told Paddy that the fans didn't matter (I don't think shows should cater to fans but saying they don't matter isn't right either).

Ok, I'm going to have to go point by point but if I'm being honest... a lot of this feels like it's about Kim and Adam not being together.

I've talked about the Antonio stuff. It wasn't good. I don't agree that is was vindictive and I know there was talk of trying to get him back for the beginning of season 7 and it didn't work, so it is what it is. I might be in the minority, but I understand the decision to kill Al from a storytelling perspective. I wish it had had a more lasting effect on Voight's character, but I do understand choices they made in that exit.

As for Burzek... I think we have very different definitions of what "on their way to getting back together" looked like in season 4. In seasons 1-3, they cheated together on Adam's (2nd or 3rd?) fiancée, got engaged before either were near ready, imploded, and then Adam spent a big chunk of season 4 away from Intelligence because he couldn't handle being in the unit at the same time as Kim. Sure, Paddy was filming a movie and Marina was going on maternity leave, but that's what they were working with at the time. They cared about each other, but Eid inherited a bit of a mess with them. Paddy could ask for anything he wanted, and no showrunner or writer is obligated to give it to him if it didn't make sense. Putting them back together without any development at that time would have made no sense.

You typed a lot about seasons 6-8 and again, it all feels like it boils down to Kim and Adam not being together. I personally think the term "OOC" is used too liberally. It's thrown around by all fandoms as a blanket deflection from a character's behavior we may not like, when it's really well within the scope of their character. They're flawed. I'm not saying you have to like the way Eid told the story but that goes back to my original point. There is little critique in there that doesn't come back to the idea that he didn't put the ship together.

There is a pattern that I've noticed in the Burzek fandom that fans believe Kim and Adam are "stronger than the showrunner" and somehow defeated Eid, and it's not how things work at all. No character has any story without the showrunner. The reason Kim was pregnant with Adam's baby is because Eid made that decision, even if other options were explored in the writing process. They found Makayla together because of Eid. They were still circling each other for years because he kept them in each other's orbits. He took them from where they were in season 5 to working towards co-parenting, all while giving them some of their best episodes along the way. If he wanted to end them for good, he could have. Easily. It's not fair or accurate to say that all the good moments were because of Paddy and Marina while the bad were Eid and the writers when that's simply not how writing a TV show works.

"And then Paddy and Marina give what was probably the performance of their careers in 8x16 and it is used to get Upstead married while Burzek just got more trauma." - that sentence doesn't sit right with me for a lot of reasons. First, Tracy also gave an incredible performance. I'm not going to minimize that just because her ship ended up getting married. In fact, they all did. Jason, too. Jesse and LaRoyce had a lesser presence, but they were so solid. To act like Burzek were the only ones to come out of that situation with trauma is erasing the whole other half of the storyline, which is what you are complaining they did to Kim. And I agree, Kim's role in the Roy situation should have been addressed sooner. Eid should have done it in 9A, Gwen should have done it in 9B instead of the Makayla kidnapping fallout. Kim and Adam's story was a mess in season 9, and that's at the hands of both showrunners.

I mentioned this in an ask the other day, but I don't think Eid was one who was interested in romance between canon couples at all- be it Burzek or Upstead. Was it vindictive towards Upstead when he put them together and immediately gave them nothing but angst? Probably not. Just like I don't think he was vindictive in giving Burzek angst, too. Again, there seems to be this notion that Kim and Adam were the only ones who went through shit. They all got it. It was his style, which is one of my biggest complaints against him, honestly.

Centrics aren't even my biggest gripe against him, because I saw up close how much productions had to scramble to put together Covid seasons. The centrics got bad in season 8, but I have a lot of grace for the hoops they had to jump through to get anything on screen during the pandemic. I'm more annoyed with why they're still happening now.

All that said, I don't think a viewer who has seen the whole show can objectively look at the quality of cases, involvement from each character, long-form story arcs that are actually cohesive, the development of the characters, and the dialogue and say we were worse off under Eid's leadership.

Okay, I've typed enough. I don't expect that you'll agree with everything here. It's totally fine if you don't agree with any of it, I'm just offering my perspective. I'm not saying someone has to love the way Eid ran the show but generally speaking (it's not every fan, I understand that) Burzek fans tend to villainize Eid while praising Gwen for "fixing the show". Meanwhile, she does everything they claim Eid did (centrics, dark tone, no continuity, baseless writing), only worse. That's why, to someone on the outside, it does seem like the core issue with Eid is that he didn't put the ship together.

#anon ask #yee doggies this got long #unless something really conversation-worthy comes of it #i'll probably let this topic lie after this #next tag to be safe #anti-burzek

[basingstokemercury]

All my DS9 fic ideas so far (now watch as I never end up writing any)

Guilt By Association (circa S3, replaces canon Second Skin)

Some healthy paranoia is a necessity for the spy who wants a long career, and Garak is always more than prepared to protect himself. What he isn't prepared for is his young friend becoming a target - but, however responsible he may feel, risking yourself because of emotional involvement is the height of foolishness... right?

Not Waving But Drowning (circa S4)

An errand of mercy, turned into a horrific ambush. One survivor, spared by chance and wracked by self-blame. The crew of DS9 are used to Bashir's calm support and emotional understanding, but his own burden is becoming too painful to hide.

Tree Of Knowledge (circa S6, the only time I ever intend on acknowledging The Twist)

Bashir thought he was one of the lucky ones. Genetic manipulation was banned for a reason, not least because it could destroy the minds and bodies of those experimented on. In his case, at least, the gamble had paid off. He had a normal life and abilities far beyond the average human. Then, after more than twenty years, symptoms began appearing. The damage to his nervous system had been there all along, too slow and cumulative to be detected. And the trouble with illegal procedures is that nobody quite knows how to treat their deadly side effects...

Heart's Mirror (circa S3, replaces canon Through The Looking Glass)

When the Intendant of Terok Nor abducts Bashir as a pawn in her convoluted scheme against the rebellion, Kira poses as her counterpart to rescue him. It's not that simple, of course, and two people trapped in a twisted universe realise their feelings for each other are the only thing that makes sense...

Drink From Me Only With Thine Eyes (circa S5, Kira/Bashir AU)

Kira decides to show some interest in her boyfriend's hobbies, and tags along for an adaptation of the classic novel Dracula. Not all the guests in the holoprogram are invited, though, and it quickly becomes clear that the couple chose a very bad time...

O, Villain That I Am (circa S5, diverges from canon By Inferno's Light)

Julian Bashir is dead. Murdered in a Dominion prison, half a galaxy away from nearly everyone who cares about him. And they didn't even know he was gone, taken in by a changeling for over a month. But then, that changeling does something unexpected. The month replacing a gentle, loving man affected him in ways he didn't realise were happening, and the news of that man's death brings repressed conflicts to the surface. He abandons his genocidal mission, and surrenders to the Federation. Of course, that's no comfort to the crew of DS9 - but just as he can't hope for their forgiveness, they can't put vengeance before justice.

Blood Makes Noise (timeline undetermined, might have to watch the TNG films first)

It finally happens. The Borg threat comes to DS9. Faced once again with losing everything to his old enemy, Sisko is determined to be the victor this time. But when an emotionally-driven preemptive strike results in the loss of a senior staff member, it seems the spectre of history may sabotage his second chance. Refusing to leave his officer to a fate worse than death and feeling helpless against his own past, Sisko must save not only the station, but his own mind in the process.

Through The Soul's Windows (circa s3, exploration of canon Distant Voices)

Bashir's birthday preparations were rudely interrupted when a robbery attempt turned deadly. He lay in a coma for hours, trapped inside his own personal hell as the rest of the crew could only pray for a miracle. But what was the rest of the crew doing during that time? What actions were taken? How did they react? It's time to find out.

#deep space nine #space station squad

[metabolizemotions]

S19 s6 & characters

(forgot about spoiler feature. edited to shorten)

I think in a way, the show had incorporated Andy as the protagonist better this season. The bunch at 23 was hard to root for. The disastrous 5b set a low bar, but I think it's improved considerably in s6, all things considered. We would never know what really happened bts and how much of what we were are results of the decisions were made by network execs. This season, at least they are building towards Andy’s captaincy at 19, and incorporating it into the storylines of the other main characters, in ways that address who they have been for 5 seasons. 

Many of the storylines were hard to watch as they unfold in terms of the discomfort level of the scenes and how well they were written and executed. The pacing of b/w and within episodes were a little off. Some episodes had too many loose ends that needed to be tied up, while some episodes were uneventful. Sometimes the scenes caused a tonal whiplash, and the editing made the episode itself even more jarring. It was a good season overall and there were some excellent scenes but imo I felt if some scenes were shuffled around, the season would flow more smoothly.  

The overarching storyline of mental health crisis was done well. Stefania's performance was always intuitive and conveyed so much w/o words. Danielle performed Maya’s spiral into a mental breakdown and her healing process brilliantly. Jack’s storyline was actually not bad, though I felt that it was carried by his scene partners. (I have nothing against Grey but his acting really didn’t move me…) I liked Vic’s storyline - the girls’ camp and her taking over Crisis One - a leadership position that focused on mental health. Barrett was great in expressing the gamut of emotions she experienced throughout the season, culminating in 617, when she finally broke down.

The mayoral race was ok as a tangential storyline. Dixon has been built up since s3 as the big bad, the SPD feud since s4 and Ross was introduced to fight the corruption within SFD and as Dixon's adversary since s5. Also what with the station being overcrowded with lieutenants and the boring clinic scenes. But it was not interesting. Seeing as S19 loves to create smoke w/o fire - Dean's lawsuit against PD, Pru's custody battle, Andy's SA lawsuit... the resolution seemed expected. I like not seeing Dixon again tho seeing justice served would have been more satisfying.

I hope Robel winning would mean a change next season. At least have good people in leadership positions and make the show more positive and aspirational instead of the constant depictions of trauma and the uphill battles against the Dixons. Give more screen time to show what a better world could look like, and show good people fighting the good fight having a happier life - at the least, having a life. 

I hope they flash out the storylines of the existing main characters instead of bringing on new characters and creating overarching themes and drama w/o satisfying resolutions (and glaring plot holes as plot devices).  Esp Carina's backstory, Maya's continued healing, Marina's domestic life, Vic's Crisis One leadership. I'm curious to see how the careers of Maya, Andy and Ross would evolve as leaders. Just want all the women to be badass at their jobs. Jack's found and bio family storyline with Marsha, Lila and Brooke could be interesting. (I don't mind him when he's not being weird and inappropriate or put into other people's relationships cos they don't know what to do with him.)

Some thoughts on the characters this season:

These characters are complicated, walking contradictions. I try to view it from each person’s perspective as much as I could - about a bunch of flawed humans with different traumas using coping mechanisms that have varying degrees of success or the lack thereof.  

It’s like everyone has been shrouded in their own fog, in their own versions of reality. 

I think ambition/ captaincy also somehow “unleashes the beast” and triggers the traumas. It is used to create drama and also bring out the underlying issues of the characters. Somehow, it seems to bring out their worst selves, the parts intricately linked to their sense of self-worth, their unresolved trauma and their unhealthy and ineffective coping mechanisms.  

Ben

Ben has always been struggling with juggling his passion and his supportive role in his family.  He was just realizing how he appeared to the others when he went rogue all those times. He was lecturing Carina about not following medical protocol, Maya about her projection of her personal issues on the Dixons, telling Travis n Vic to abide by HIPAA and later during the “mutiny”, he was the only one against it at first when he would usually be the one jumping in headfirst. Sometimes the irony was still lost on him as he thought Bailey was reckless in going undercover in the fake clinic while he always justified his breaking of rules cos he thought he was doing the right thing. I think it might be his mental health crisis arc after having to leave someone behind when he made it his mission to save lives after his friend’s accident. Is he re-evaluating what makes a hero?  

Travis

(In s3, a kid actually told him he should run for office cos he gave him an impassioned speech.) Travis being conflicted the whole time and dropping out and endorsing the other candidate is expected. He is an Asian American gay man who grew up in a Christian household with a homophobic dad who turned out to be gay. (Probably also in a tight knit and conservative Asian American church community.) His indecisiveness seems to stem from his conflicting sense of justice and inability to own up to his courage. And his lack of entitlement as seen from his minimizing the prejudice and abuse his community faced esp during Covid, in light of the murder of George Floyd. I think he needs to be pushed constantly out of his comfort zone for him to discover what he really wants and who he really is and also start to move on from Michael and seek happiness. He also confirmed that leadership positions did not suit him and he could not play the political game like Ross and Eli urge him to. 

409 was an excellent insight into Travis and Vic, and their friendship (and why this is my fav dynamic after Marina.) Travis calling Vic reckless, selfish, inconsiderate and lack of boundaries while Vic calling Travis judgmental, controlling and expecting people to behave a certain way. The irony of Travis finding it hard to move on while Vic wanting to move on quickly to avoid feeling the grief. But both cos they feel too much but cope differently. Yet they both fear the end when they are still in the thick of it.  

Vic

I think Vic was having a bit of an existential crisis regarding her work and she projected her own fears about her own relationship with Theo onto Maya and Carina. Their locker room talk was a foreshadowing of the other shoe dropping. Vic couldn’t believe how perfect Theo was… and the shoe dropped… we see the other side of him. She has always been using humor and gossip to distract herself from her own issues. She tended to stuff her feelings down, since she was a kid, her fears as a young black woman, and the grief of her losses - her grandmother, her drama teacher, Ripley, Dean... Until they explode - like her smashing tiles or snatching a baby during a Crisis One call.

I think this rough patch in her relationship would also be a part of her personal growth as this is her first relationship past the honeymoon phase. She has been trying to help Theo who has been supportive but was in a bad place mentally. It seemed that as the season progressed, she developed more empathy and became more in tune with the feelings of others. (In s4, she expressed interest in psychology when talking to Diane.) Going thru her psychology classes and being around Diane also equipped her with skills to help herself and others. She had shown her unique combination of skills in Crisis One work - her empathy, her quick thinking, her improvisation skills perhaps developed as a theater kid. But she would still need support as she dealt with her unresolved trauma and the emotional exhaustion from her work.        

Jack

Jack was abandoned and had and lost a foster family. He confused lust for love, like Andy said they both did. Each time he thought he fell in love and wanted to settle down, he was actually wanting to fill a void. The other party always knew he was not in love with them but in love with the idea of love and family. I think growing up, he learned to be needed as he took care of his foster siblings. He is kind, empathetic and helpful but he never learned boundaries and confused caring with interfering and often overstepped when it came to people in his life. Ironically, he lacked self efficacy and often succumbed to self pity and learned helplessness. He was never held accountable for his actions and never developed emotional maturity and better coping mechanisms.

His conversation with Travis seemed to show his self-awareness of the changes in himself - the loss of ambition and confidence. As I mentioned, it is interesting to see Brooke, a sort of nature/ nurture comparison to Jack. Similar DNA, dissimilar upbringing. Brooke seems more emotionally mature. He told Marsha that hanging out with Brooke made him miss his foster siblings more. I think it’s his lack of a constant in his life, of the time when he first had a family. So meeting Lila is very significant for him and seems like an anchor for him to grow and heal. (I don’t hate him, I just hate that the writers need to have him hijack the storylines of others and make him the hero and when he makes mistakes, he is somehow the victim when he tends to put the blame on others instead of owning up.)

Maya, Andy and Jack

Going back to the captaincy drama in s3 involving Maya, Andy and Jack (which is another long discussion but all three were at fault then, others too…) Having gone thru their mental health crisis recently, Maya and Jack are taking a step back in their ambition and focusing on their mental health and the relationships in their lives. Andy is back in the game, this time against different players.

Maya and Theo

To me, there seemed to be some // drawn b/w Maya and Theo. Theo as a POC and his burden of carrying his dad’s legacy. Maya as a queer woman in firefighting and her strict conditioning by her abusive dad. They both have a chip on their shoulders following their stints as captains. Maya was right about Theo projecting his experience on hers cos he would not understand the misogyny. Just like Maya wouldn’t understand the racial prejudice he must have faced. But their demotions were different in nature. Maya cared about her team and tried her best when she was captain. Just like Theo. Maya’s start was rocky and she didn’t really have the guidance of her superiors nor the team’s support, esp. Andy’s. Theo had both but he was stuck in his own head a lot with his unresolved trauma over Michael’s death and his doubt about his ability as a captain. 

Theo

When Beckett was captain, Theo was constantly insubordinate and challenging him. When Andy was trying to help, he saw it as her being insubordinate and the team’s actions as sabotage. To make up for his insecurities as an outsider and his imposter syndrome as captain, he overcompensated. In wanting to be the opposite of Beckett, he micromanaged and overcompensated to an extent that made him a bad captain in another way. 

I think as we are seeing the other side of Theo, Vic is too. He also has this side that is judgmental, self-righteous and lacks self-awareness and empathy. He has a tendency to jump to conclusions and stick to them vehemently. He defied a direct order, pulled a cowboy move and forgot about Vic - after his angry lecturing of Maya and Beckett. He accepted the captain’s position despite reiterating that he didn’t want it. But he did not give Vic credit for the fire investigation despite her substantial role in it. He could be condescending, sexist and dismissive, as evident at the barber shop. He complained that Vic wasn’t understanding and compassionate but was dismissive of her feelings and was defensive when she tried to understand. He shut her down and called her “Diane” as an insult and avoided her in fear that she would psychoanalyze him and he had to face his issues. 

I think he has been compartmentalizing the parts of his identity - his heritage, the way he behaved around his old neighbors and the way he presented himself to the wider world. Code-switching, as Vic pointed out. He seemed to want to keep his private persona “Theo” separate from his work persona “Ruiz”. But he was also micromanaging his relationship with Vic. He wanted to control their interactions and made everything about him. He interpreted her support of him as interfering and her support of Andy as betrayal. (I love Ripley and Dean but he kinda grew on me and I really want to root for him for Vic's sake, but it got harder and harder. Sometimes he was worse than Sullivan. The finale seemed to set up a redemption arc for him in s7.)

Andy

Andy’s support of Theo was as much about her being reciprocal as it was about her own growth. She has always been good with people - starting with dealing with Pruitt and being surrounded by a large family than the uncles at S19 as she was growing up. It doesn't seem like she has stepped out of Pruitt’s shadow entirely. Growing up with Pruitt, an overbearing dad w/o respect for boundaries, she is used to resisting and rebelling. She is still constantly challenging rules and her leaders. But she used to bring her personal affairs and emotions into work and could be rash and reckless. She was often jumping into situations without much consideration cos she was eager to save people. She did it when Sullivan was captain and during Maya’s initial captaincy. She pinned Rigo’s accident entirely on Maya but after Cooper’s accident, she told Theo not to immediately throw Beckett under the bus. In her marriage to Sullivan, she learnt to support others as well as learning to stand up for herself more, against his controlling and patronizing ways. After honing her skills at 23, she is increasingly able to keep her own emotions in check at work while handling all the big egos and personalities around her and rally people to take action. 

Andy, Theo, Beckett

But since her return to 19, she had been going about things her way - to make 19 the way it used to be to her. In a way that Maya fights hard not to be like Lane, Andy wants to be like Pruitt and continue his legacy. When Beckett and Theo were captains, she often challenged them and was insubordinate. Beckett was too careless, apathetic and slow to react and sloppy in execution. Theo was too careful to the extent of micromanaging, closed off and too afraid to take action. Andy and Theo seem to be two sides of the same coin, both being legacy kids with something to prove. They are both not fully confident in their leadership. While Andy is more flexible and open to other perspectives in her decision-making while Theo is the opposite. Andy often reacts before she thinks, which sometimes situations do call for and she has good intuition in fast-evolving situations. All their styles could put both the rescuers and the rescuees in danger. All three are not ideal captains in different ways. 

For the sake of comparison, in Maya’s later captaincy, she was level-headed, was open to her experienced team’s input to make more informed decisions and could see the bigger picture and did what was right and for the greater good. She cared for her team and the people she was helping, unlike Beckett. She was fast on her feet and intuitive like Andy. She was careful like Theo.   

I want Andy to be captain. I want her to have the chance to grow into it. She has earned it. (Also it has been her storyline since the very first episode and I wish the captaincy drama would finally be put to rest.) I think Andy not accepting the interim captain position could in part be her self-sabotage as women tended to do when they were not convinced they were fully qualified. While men often thought they were qualified when that was not the case. Like Sullivan, who had no qualms applying for battalion chief when he was still a lieutenant or to step forward for captaincy again despite his history. 

Ross

Ross is a complex character. As a chief who has a relationship with her subordinate, a parallel can be drawn with Ripley. As a WOC, parallels can be drawn with Herrera and Hughes. She is also where Bishop wants to be in future, a female chief. To me, she is a good chief. Not a great one yet. I think the intention is to make her meet 19, have them challenge her existing beliefs and grow into a great chief. She is still straddling her entrenched mindset as part of the problematic system and her growing desire to challenge the system. I love her whenever she went toe to toe with Dixon. But I’m less a fan when she let her personal life affect her work and became hypocritical, biased and self-serving. I think the last episodes attempted to show that she has changed, but imo I’m not totally convinced with the framing about her challenge of the system as a feminist act w/o also addressing the injustice Maya faced from the system, and from Ross herself.  

#station 19 #comments #Maya & Carina on other posts #sorry for the post bombing #posting them all at once cos they’re inter-related #the posts really got super damn long #just sorting out the many tots #simply my takes #sorry for any errors and repetition #most of these were in my drafts for a long time #have been hesitating posting them #just putting them out there #maybe start some discussions

[cinematicnomad]

I agree with your critiques on ST4. I'm so torn with my feelings on Steve rn because on the one hand, I want him to live and to have him around because he's my fave and I probs wouldn't watch the show without him, so it's at least nice to know there could be some great content for him to look forward to with S5!

On the other hand...the way he was written in Vol 2., with 90% of his screentime being Nancy pining was disappointing. I'm not even against Stancy (I actually see good potential with them), but the fact that Steve's relationships with Robin and (especially) Dustin were largely ignored so there could be more moments between him and Nancy kinda sucked. I'm seeing some people say that Steve wanting to get back with her is killing his character arc. I don't agree with that--and I don't think you can really claim 'character assassination' until you see how his character ends in the show--however, if reducing his motivations/focus mostly to Nancy is where they're going to continue to go in S5, then yes, I feel like they should have killed him this season. To your points, it would have raised the stakes and let people know that no one--not even a fan favorite--is safe, and it would have delivered a major emotional blow to several characters (and the audience) to lose Steve. They may still kill him off in S5, which I would be okay with IF done properly. That's my last hedge on the idea that they should have killed him off this season. I hope the Duffers would be smart enough not to do this but... had they treated Steve's death the way they treated Eddie's. I can't imagine how angry and disappointed I would be. They can kill Steve, but they need to do it in a way that does justice to the character and acknowledges the loss it would be for the other characters and the audience.

i think killing steve would have really risen the stakes and propelled the story into s5 with the confirmation that no one's safe, not even a fan favorite. but i'm not surprised they didn't do it, and the fact that he's still around means i'm still gonna end up watching s5 just to see what happens with him, so...i guess they know their audience if nothing else.

i kind of get what they were getting at with bringing back the steve/nancy of it all? i'm not like...Actively Against the ship, but i was never super into it bc it was clearly doomed from the start since jonathan was v clearly the end goal for her in s1. i don't think it's killing his character arc for him to want to get back with her—his arc had nothing to do with growing away from nancy or falling out of love with her. if anything, steve's character growth comes explicitly from him wanting to be BETTER for nancy (in s1 he went to the byers to apologize to jonathan without knowing nancy would be there bc he knew it was the right thing to do, and once he realized they were in danger he ran BACK into the house with his bat. in s2, he ends up in the role of the babysitter bc he was trying to go apologize to nancy for their fight and then decided that it was the right thing to do to help dustin, his girlfriends little brothers friend, etc etc).

i'm not surprised that steve still has feelings for nancy, and i'm not even surprised that nancy still has complicated, lingering attraction for steve, but i guess i AM surprised that they made it such a focus of s4? and i guess i'm surprised that they've tee'd it up to continue into s5, ESPECIALLY since there's apparently going to be a time jump so like...potentially steve is just going to be pining for nancy for years?? and that just seems. depressing, honestly. i want him to move on and find someone who puts him first and doesn't consider him second best or their back-up option. i just don't think we've ever really seen anything to make it seem like nancy values steve as himself—to me it always seems more as though she values how he makes her feel? how his interest in her reflects back on her? in s1 it seems clear that like, it was her first high school relationship and yes, she liked him, but also she liked that it was Steve The Popular Kid who liked HER and the power/confidence that gave her. and then in s4 it really does feel like she's struggling in her long distance relationship with jonathan, and steve is just. there. easy to boost her confidence. like yes, she appreciates how he's matured and grown, but also it feels much more like a comfort thing than a genuine affection, if that makes sense.

my main issue with the steve/nancy of s4 is basically what you said—it felt like a lot of the meat of steve's story in volume 2 became centered around his feelings for nancy. which i would kind of be okay with if not for the fact that??? dustin's out there experiencing serious trauma and we didn't get even a moment of steve acknowledging eddie's death or how that impacted dustin. i feel like the season ending would have been SO MUCH stronger if we'd gotten to see steve/nancy/robin find dustin with eddie's body and given the audience the chance to see how steve handled it, how he helped dustin, etc. it's frankly bizarre that nobody but dustin (and eddie's uncle) acknowledged his death.

#ask #anonymous #stranger things #spoilers #st spoilers #stranger things spoilers #kat has unpopular opinions #this got long #you sent this to me like a week ago and it's just been sitting in my inbox so sorry about that!

[thekimspoblog]

Things I want/expect from Season 5 of "YOU":

Awesome pop music. Look, at this point the writing on this show is just awful. I'm still watching because I care how this ends. The only thing which has consistently been good across the first four seasons was the soundtrack; the music took the cheesy plot threads and cringe dialogue, and turned it into something that was greater than the sum of its parts. The world of "YOU" has a very unique feel; it's sleek, it's fast-paced, it doesn't take itself too seriously. It's a never-ending tedious party where everyone in the room is a shallow douchebag, but the worst guest of all is the tormented poet lurking in the corner judging them.

Joe Goldberg is too rich to fail. Season 4 was (almost) a complete waste of time, but the plot at least ended on an interesting cliffhanger: Joe seems to have embraced his identity as a serial killer, and chooses to return to New York, now having fought his way into the 1% and ostensibly is above the law. I mean, go big or go home is what I say. Not only is having your villain own the NYPD a concept which is simultaneously absurd and tragically realistic, but taking the plot in this direction means the series can't end with the predictable "he goes to prison" conclusion. We've had four seasons of Joe deluding himself that he's just a good guy in bad circumstances, so at this point it would be refreshing to see this character as a mustache-twirling sadist. The only good moments in Season 4 came from the show admitting that it had exhausted the premise of "misogyny from the misogynist's perspective" and switching its focus to seeing Joe through the eyes of women who encounter him. So in my opinion, Season 5 needs to really lean into the evilness of this character, once and for all. The feeling of insurmountability for the victims who want to bring him to justice.

Rhys Montrose. The Fight Club twist was stupid. It was incredibly stupid! The entire point of a story like this is that Joe's dangerous nature can't be hand-waived as "insanity", and the Season 4 twist ruined it!!! But you did it! It's done! The least you can do is respect us enough to commit to the bit. Because as dumb as an idea it was to give Joe a quirky British imaginary friend to plan murders with... I gotta say Rhys does have a certain charisma about him. At least he's having fun with being evil and teases Joe for perpetually angsting. So yeah... hope he sticks around in S5. Like I said, if you're going to make Joe a cartoon villain, at least own it.

Kate's POV Episode. The episodes where we're given a reprieve from Joe Goldberg's droning internal monologue are probably some of the best episodes. Even though it has a male protagonist, the story is still very much about women and femininity, and so the show wouldn't even work if it didn't occasionally switch to a female perspective to give us a window into how these characters see the world. Beck ernestly was just a sweet and fragile everygirl. Love Quinn was equally as neurotic and spiteful as Joe, but at least her quips were actually funny. Marianne was determined and resilient, because for some reason stuff like this always seems to happen to women like her. These episodes are used sparingly; we're only ever given a taste of what the show would be like if one of these women were the main character, but we're always left with more questions than answers, and that's on purpose. There's supposed to be a sense of violence to how little we get to understand the female characters; Joe has a pattern of killing women and replacing their voice with his own, often literally. So with all that in mind... what's the deal with Kate? Because Kate's weird, right? Even by the standards of a love interest in this story, and that's saying something. In some ways she feels like a rehash of Love Quinn's character, except she's colder and meaner. She's the first woman who is so uninteresting, Joe isn't even stalking her wholeheartedly. She barely seems to have any feelings for him, and their marriage at the very end more seems like a finance-based alliance of convenience. What even are her motives?! Most importantly, she told Joe that she didn't care about his past before they got hitched, which if history is any indicator, is the equivalent of deciding to walk out into traffic blindfolded. Obviously Kate is going to die; the question is just when and how. Hopefully before that happens, she'll get her own episode of "I'm starting to think this guy is untrustworthy", just so we can get the faintest idea of what makes this lady tick. ... Or maybe Kate is also a hallucination! Why the fuck not!

Don Giovanni allusion. Don Giovani is an opera about a licentious, aristocratic man who manages to stymie every mortal attempt to bring him to justice for his crimes. After taunting a victim for her failure to stop him, a literal Deus ex Machina intervenes and a living statue shows up to drag Giovanni to hell. If you ask me, this is how Netflix's "YOU" should end! Joe going to prison would be too cliché, Joe getting shot in the face by an enemy would be too cliché. But the series has been doing backflips over the proverbial shark for a solid season and a half by now, so why the hell not end with a supernatural horror twist? It would actually be perfect: Joe has gotten so rich and so powerful, that none of his victims have any real hope of bringing him to justice. But so egregious are this man's sins, that the cosmic balance had to get directly involved to punish him. It would provide a cathartic ending while still keeping with the story's overarching theme of a fundamentally broken and unjust society. It's karma, but on such an absurdly literal scale, that the audience is reminded how unrealistic it is to hope God has ever and will ever do something to stop the bad guys.

#netflix you #joe goldberg #penn badgley #you season 4 #you season 5 #and by “allusion” i of course mean joe explicitly referencing the opera and spelling out the parallels to the audience #because who needs subtlety

[ivy-chan-kasumi]

Summer of Gotham: Week 6 --> Season 2

Edward Nygma's Evolution

Puzzles are my forte. Nobody beats me.

#summerofgotham #Edward Nygma #Gotham #Moodboard #Gifset #Edit #I spent 5 hours on this #But I think it's actually rlly cool #Maybe #Season 02 #The riddler #I rlly love Eddie on s1 #But damn #what a character development we had on s2 #Hope s5 brings some justice for him

[queeenpersephone]

Hi this is rlly random! But I saw u were accepting prompts on a03 and I can’t get this idea out of my head lmao. So like season 5 msr at a Halloween party or something and Scully as poison ivy or black widow? Cause somebody on Insta said Gillian would’ve been a perfect black widow in the 90s and I can’t get it out of my head lmao ty

sure, i can do a little drabble! scully can either be black widow or morticia addams - that's it. that's her range. bc mulder and scully whispering addams family lines to each other is everything.

mulder, holding scully's hands to his breast: to live without you, only that would be torture scully, going along with it as she always does: a day alone, only that would be death some poor rookie fbi agent, watching from a distance: isn't that against the rules skinner, breaking his sixth pencil that week: for mulder and scully? it's a tuesday.

(this is just going to be mulder losing his damn mind, fyi.)

tagging: @today-in-fic

trick or treat | msr | circa s5

-

It's really the least they can do.

Mulder, Scully, and their local police contact had been setting up their campsite - two of them on the lookout for escaped convicts who had been setting forest fires, one of them convinced the Michigan dogman was finally making an appearance - when said convicts had blown into the clearing, starving and desperate with a long knife. Detective McCarthy had stepped in front of Scully and gotten a knife embedded in his hand when he reached out to protect himself.

Scully, thanking him profusely while wrapping the wound after helping Mulder subdue the convicts, had somehow agreed to attend the precinct's annual Halloween party. A party, the detective had explained after extracting Scully's reluctant, guilty promise, where costumes are mandated.

Needless to say, Mulder is thrilled.

McCarthy had let them borrow costumes his wife and he had used in other years. Mulder had selected an all leather Elvis look, hoping to entice Scully into a compliment, or even better, a blush. Scully had snatched some items from the closet and torn out of there before he could see what she had chosen, so waiting at the door to the precinct, his anticipation is at an all time high. Could she be a witch? A fairy? McCarthy's wife is dolled up in a revealing Sandy costume, matching the John Travolta look of her husband. If the tight leather and cleavage dip of this costume is any indication, Scully must be...

Scully...

Scu-

For a moment, Mulder's brain stops working. His jaw relaxes and drops. He's praying that his knees hold up, because crashing to the ground at the heavenly sight of his gorgeous partner would probably be a bad look. Wouldn't it? Mulder honestly doesn't know.

Because Scully is decked out in a leather catsuit, unzipped to reveal just the tops of her breasts, and Mulder actually wonders whether falling at her feet and worshipping her might be appropriate behavior in this specific occasion.

He snaps out of it when he hears several low whistles and 'damns' behind him, lurching forward to be the first to reach the literal goddess that is his FBI partner. Who he has been in love with for years. Christ.

He's not going to survive this night.

“Scully,” he breathes, embarrassed by how he sounds like he can’t get enough air, “you look...” Gorgeous. Beautiful. Sexy. He flips through each descriptor and discards it; none of them do her justice. 

Instead of frowning at the way he’s obviously staring at the leather-outline of her body, Scully gives him a shy little grin. Her eyes, though, they have a spark of knowing danger that fit the character she’s portraying, and Mulder gulps. “Thank you, Mulder. Elvis is a good look on you.” 

“Are you sure we should stay?” He blurts out, and Scully’s grin widens. God, she sees right through him. Pull it together. Say something to even the playing field. “I didn’t bring a guitar,” he adds. 

Scully lifts her eyebrows. “Were you going to play for me, Mulder?” 

No, but I’d like to play with you, he doesn’t say. “No,” he says instead, “but I think I’m going to need it to beat away every hot-blooded male at this party.” He just barely stops himself from gesturing at her body; that would probably tumble over the edge of appropriate. 

Scully blushes, and Mulder tries not to watch the light redness spread across her exposed chest. “I’m the Black Widow,” she tells him once her fluster has faded. “I don’t need a man - even Elvis - to protect me.” 

Mulder remembers the comic character’s signature move, imagines Scully wrapping those delectable, strong thighs around someone’s neck to take them down. “Now that I’d like to see,” he says lowly.

“Maybe if someone attacks the precinct tonight, you’ll get lucky,” she flirts back, taking his arm and tugging him deeper into the party to greet their hosts. 

“Raining sleeping bags, attacking police precincts,” he murmurs to her back. “Those are the only ways to get lucky?” 

Scully doesn’t turn, doesn’t respond, but she squeezes his arm. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll give him an easier opening. 

Either that, or he’s going to need to defy physics or induce a crime. And looking at Scully in a leather catsuit, he thinks both of those things would be worth it. 

#msr #scully x mulder #the x files #my writing #msr fic #wrote this kinda hurriedly #but thanks for the prompt anon!! #anonymous #answered

[tarysande]

S6 Thoughts: A Tale of Two Brothers

But wait! There’s more. Thoughts on the overall arc of the series, Heaven and Hell edition:

In S1, Lucifer is “vacationing” on Earth but doesn’t plan to return to Hell. Amenadiel spends that season trying so hard to force Lucifer back to Hell, where he “belongs,” that he himself Falls. We’ve got this role reversal of an angel doing evil things to return the devil (doing ... good things, like solving crimes) to Hell. It’s all very “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” 

In S2, Lucifer still has no plans to return permanently to Hell, but he’s willing to face it to save Chloe. Of course, this then leads to him experiencing his own forced hell-loop. Amenadiel is also conflicted. Though he’s changed enough that he no longer wants to force Lucifer back to Hell, he’s still uncertain where that leaves either of them. In fact, even when Lucifer pleads with Amenadiel to return him to Hell, Amenadiel refuses. However, when Mum plants the idea of returning to Heaven as a family, Amenadiel clings to that. He’s looking for a purpose. Lucifer, on the other hand, is still very much aboard the Heaven nope train. Here, we also get the foreshadowing of celestial war, and Lucifer’s rejection of Mum’s plan because “In war, there are always casualties.” He would rather sacrifice one--Mum, Uriel--for the many. But it hurts him. If he belongs anywhere, he thinks, it’s Earth ... but, ultimately, that’s shortsighted because we know he doesn’t actually want to be on an Earth that doesn’t have the people he’s coming to care about on it.

S3 is, as we all know, a bit of a mess. But, hey, it’s actually thematically appropriate! Lucifer’s having an identity crisis (wings) that just keeps giving (or taking), and even though subconsciously (we later realize) he gave himself the wings because he was, in fact, making progress reconciling his past and present, his conscious is backsliding like (pun not intended) hell. Much as he wants Earth to be home, he’s got these non-stop reminders of both Heaven and Hell. It makes complete narrative sense that this season reaches the point where he can no longer hide from himself--or from Chloe. 

In this season, we also see Amenadiel really start to settle into the idea of staying on Earth, of embracing humanity. He’s shedding the aloofness he once had. He’s learning (we later realize) how to be the kind of God who sheds mysterious ways in favor of boots on the ground. I mean, he doesn’t realize this. But Dad ... well, he has a Plan. Lucifer begins the season with sudden wings. Amenadiel ends it with his wings’ very deliberate return. 

In many ways, this season is about Hell on Earth and torture at the hands of an entity far more intentionally and deliberately evil than the actual devil. This is why the catalyst of Cain is so important. He is all the things Lucifer has been accused of being, only he embraces it in ways we’ve seen Lucifer reject and recoil from again and again. This season is torture (lol). It’s Hell. It’s every ugly thing lies beget. And much as we love Lucifer, we’re given an extreme close-up of how his omission of truth is very nearly as devastating as Cain’s outright lies. Of course, this nearly results in Chloe’s death (in more ways than one; you can’t tell me that godforsaken marriage wouldn’t have been like dying), and the devil’s vengeance results in the removal of Lucifer’s choice about the where and when to reveal his true nature to Chloe. 

Which brings us to S4, aka The Season of Angst. For Lucifer (and Chloe), anyway. Not so much for Amenadiel, who is set on the path of fatherhood, of responsibility, of partnership and not just commands he expects to be followed. In case we’ve forgotten how much Amenadiel has changed, Remiel “mini-Amen” shows up to remind us. In Linda’s “When angels fall, they also rise” of it, Amenadiel is rising again. He’s not the same as he was, no, but ... we didn’t like old Amenadiel very much, did we? Like Lucifer, Amenadiel is on a journey of learning who he is, the good and the ugly, so he can choose the parts he wants to keep with both eyes open. 

Of course, while Amenadiel is rising, Lucifer is falling. In having to deal with Chloe’s reaction to his devil face, Lucifer is put in the uncomfortable position of either growing enough to face his own darkness and self-loathing or retreating, very literally, into who he used to be because it’s comfortable and less frightening than the prospect of change and the unknown. Until it isn’t, right? The more he becomes the devil Eve remembers, the more uncomfortable he becomes. And the more frightening he becomes. Not to Chloe, as he fears, but to himself--though it takes a while to recognize it. If nothing else, we have to hand this to Lucifer’s subconscious: when it wants him to PAY ATTENTION DUMMY, it’s pretty good at getting its point across. If S3 was Hell on Earth starring Cain as the devil, S4 is Hell on Earth starring, well, the devil as the devil with bonus demons. It’s Lucifer’s earthbound iteration of a guilt-induced hell-loop. And at the tragic end, he chooses to return to the place he swore he’d never return, losing everything good in the process, but doing it for selfless reasons. So, that’s new. And it’s why there was still a sliver of hope even when things looked impossibly dark.

S5 begins with Lucifer in Hell--farther from the things he cares about than he has ever been, but also closer to his true calling. Not that he realizes it; this is Lucifer we’re talking about. So, of course it makes sense that as the season goes on, he’ll end up confused by suddenly having everything he always thought he wanted within his grasp. The Lucifer who led a rebellion against his father because he thought he could do better than God? Of course that part of him wants to be handed the job now. No--he wants to earn it. And while some of his reasons are not great, others are. His heartbreak about the injustice and unfairness of life, well ... who hasn’t felt that way? Who hasn’t wanted the power to unilaterally make things better? But that’s not how free will works. That’s not how choice works. While Lucifer wrestles with the necessity of becoming God, Amenadiel recoils from what his S1 self would have seen as his right and his calling. S1 Amenadiel would have made a terrifying and inflexible and absolute and judgmental God. Perhaps even a God closer to our imaginings of Evil than Good.

S6 is about how sometimes personal growth means we grow out of old dreams and acquire new ones. Sometimes, it’s about reimagining those old dreams, rebuilding them with new information. For Amenadiel, that means recognizing that the person he is now is the best man for the Big Job. It means recognizing that Heaven can be (a place) on Earth if he wants it to be. It means he sets aside the pride of “If God wants something done, he sends ME” in favor of delegation and accepting help--and in doing so, helping others (his siblings) discover their callings too. He learns to lead by example, tempered with love and humility.

In Paradise Lost, Milton’s Lucifer famously declares that it is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. But our Lucifer ... his calling isn’t ruling in Heaven. That’s the old dream of a person who no longer exists. Ironically, Lucifer’s calling is to serve in Hell. Not to serve a distant, ineffable, unfathomable being’s mysterious ways, mind you, but to tangibly serve the humans he has come to love, and who have taught him so much about himself. Who have taught him about love and sacrifice and light and darkness and second chances and hope and faith. When Lucifer chooses to return to Hell, he does so with his eyes open, just as Chloe returns to the LAPD with her eyes open. It’s a lesson that revisits the first episode of the season: Truth and wonder don’t have to be at odds. They can go hand in hand. The mysteries at the heart of pain and suffering and trauma--those are the ones Lucifer wants to solve. Because solving them isn’t about trusting to a higher power (aka the justice system, which is flawed) or designing the perfect torture. It’s about quite literally helping others set themselves free. Finding release. It’s about being a guide, not a judge. And it’s about fulfilling not the temporary desire that merely scratches the itch, but offering the tools necessary to help others determine--choose--their path to the desire they may not even realize is buried beneath the layers of scar tissue within them. And what could be more wonderous than that? Especially when you have a partner who makes you better at your calling, even as you make them better at theirs.

In the end, Heaven and Hell are what we make of them. One person’s Heaven is another person’s Hell. Love is what matters. In all its many, many forms.

#lucifer on netflix #lucifer morningstar #amenadiel #lucifer meta #chloe decker #lucifer thoughts #lucifer spoilers #lucifer s6 #lucifer s6 spoilers #long text post

[copperpieceharlot]

Bud I’m sorry to swing into your inbox uninvited like this but my soul is having an OOTS renaissance thanks to your content in the tag and did you say Leverage AU

haha holy SHIT this got Long. but yes. i’ve been. Thinking. (also literally Never feel like you have to apologize for sending me messages. i was Hoping someone would ask me about this. now i have an Excuse to share EVERYTHING ive written abt it :3)

Obviously, Roy is the leader/brains of the outfit. He grew up having some Strong Opinions abt what’s Legal versus what’s Right due to tragic backstory involving the death of his little brother which was definitely SOMEONE’S fault for negligence but since there technically wasn’t any illegal behavior, there were no consequences for it. Also he’s still angry at his dad bc he thinks his dad is also partly culpable (and also also just a dick). He’s the Moral Backbone of the team (alongside Durkon, more on that later) in basically the same way Nate was in og Leverage. He’s actually not the best at figuring out what people want (that’s Haley and, shockingly, occasionally Elan), but once he has that info, he is the absolute best at figuring out the ideal plan of attack to use in any given case.

Haley is still a thief. I mean she maps to Parker almost PERFECTLY. Her dad was a thief & a conman, her mom wasn’t but knew about it and mostly accepted it, but she died tragically in a mugging gone wrong or smth, which made Ian crank the paranoia WAY up and taught Haley to do the same in the name of “safety”. Let’s keep the “Ian is in Trouble and Haley needs money, Fast” which is why she signs on to the first job in the first place. She’s less acrobatic than Parker, tending towards finding (or making) weak spots in security, but she can still make a tumble check when she needs to.

Elan is the grifter who is somehow an Idiot but also not???? It baffles everyone. When he’s playing a part for a con, he’s FLAWLESS, but then the rest of the time he’s just. No Thoughts Head Empty. He probably gets lured in initially because he’s decided to try his hand at being part of a full team, rather than the two-man cons he’s been running that invariably end w his partner conning him as well and stealing half of his take. Also he likes the idea of being Crime Friends. He’s that tweet where it’s like, Roy: “after the heist is over, we split up and never communicate again” / Elan: [about to unveil his Crime Buddies Forever Friendship Quilt Puppets]: “never?”

Vaarsuvius is the hacker/gadget person. They have a Vaguely Snobby Yet Unidentifiable accent, dyed(?) purple hair (nobody has ever seen their roots) and nobody knows who they “really” are or where they came from, but they’re good at what they do so everyone just accepts the mystery. They probably got suckered into the team by their initial employer (who I’ll get to Eventually, lol) framing it as a challenge to their intellect, like, “oh, I see, you’re not smart enough to make this team work for you...” to which they were like Fucking Watch Me and also melted his computer. Anyways. They are joined (digitally) by their Intrepid Friend And Co-Conspirator (his words, not theirs), a fellow hacker known only as Blackwing, or, on certain forums, Blackwing_Bird. (In the first season, V only occasionally references him when saying they’re “calling in extra help” or smth for a particularly complex hack job. He starts showing up a little more in s2 and eventually by the start of s4 is a regular & established presence, but only appears as actions in a computer interface or output.) Elan is convinced he’s an AI, Belkar doesn’t think he actually exists, Haley pretends she doesn’t think he exists, and Durkon and Roy try not to think about it too hard, as long as B and V still get the job done.

Belkar is the hitter. He is on the team bc their initial employer got him out of jail for it. He doesn’t have a tragic backstory, he just likes doing violent crimes. As the series progresses, he grows some empathy & stuff, but really only for people who actually deserve it. Assholes still get decked. It’s all very touching. (Also he has dwarfism caused by achondroplasia. It doesn’t actually bother him and is useful in fights bc his opponents frequently have no fucking clue how to approach him, but he likes Pretending to take offense at stupid things just to see how far he can go with it.)

Aaaand last but not least, Durkon is the least involved member of the team. He’s actually a career criminal and Roy’s mentor, and wasn’t a member of the initial team that [redacted, I’ll tell you later, PROMISE] put together for a couple of reasons, the main one being that he’s Officially retired in order to spend more time with his family, which consists of his mom, his friend (not girlfriend) Hilgya, baby Kudzu, and a truly stunning number of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Roy frequently calls or visits him for advice and he Occasionally shows up to help out on local jobs, but generally he avoids doing crime if he can (as part of a deal with Hilgya, who is also a career criminal; basically, they’ve both cut back on the crime in order to provide a more stable home environment for Kudzu. But sometimes, you gotta do a little crime, and in those cases, Sigdi enjoys spending time w her grandson.)

NOW. THE BIG REVEAL YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR. Who got the team together in the first place?!

The answer: Lord Shojo (or whatever Normal Person Name you want to assign him). Now this is where it gets tricky: he had them do a thing that they thought was good, THEN they thought it was BAD, but then when they confronted him he revealed that it Appearing to be bad was actually a test of character and would they consider working as basically internal investigators for him? But then he had a heart attack, so, rip. But THEN it turned out that he’d left them a bunch of money anyway and they were all feeling kind of Inspired so they formed the Order of the Stick, LLC (which, no, i am not coming up with a new name, actually, because I just don’t care. someone else can come up w a justification for that name, tho, i’m sure it’s possible). Also Miko was there and was unhappy abt their actions, and also their general existence.

Moving on. Villains!

Redcloak is the Sterling replacement, because that DEEPLY amuses me.

Xykon is a season-long main villain, probably one that Redcloak finds himself working for but then “teams up with” (read: blackmails) the Order to bring him down bc even Redcloak finds Xykon distasteful. That’s season 3, let’s say.

Tarquin is another season villain, say season 2. Nale probably shows up pretty early in s1, actually, as another recurring antagonist like Sterling but uh. Less good at it. Anyways the s2 final 3 eps deal with them (accidentally) discovering that Tarquin runs some Evil Empire Company, then trying to outplay him and take him down. Idk if Nale still dies in this version tbh.

Tsukiko is a one-off s1 villain who returns briefly in s4 alongside Miko, who has gone well and truly off the rails.

Season 1 finale has to do w Roy finally getting Vengeance for his little brother.

The vampire squad is the s4 finale villain who do smth terrible to Durkon and then get the Mother Of All Revenge served up to them by the Order.

I envision the show as being 5 seasons (like og Leverage) but I’m not going to sketch out s5 because I think it should be based off whatever happens in the current story arc, possibly involving some legacy of the OotSquiggle.

Other stuff!

The Order of the Squiggle is a legendary criminal team from the 60s who stole a BUNCH of famous shit & then proceeded to legendarily implode. This has no bearing on the plot I’ve sketched out, I just think it’s fun.

The Sapphire Guard members should probably be reworked as FBI. I don’t care about most of them but I do think that Lien and O-Chul could be like, FBI agents who Choose to look the other way while the Order does their very-much-not-legal-but-still-fair Justice Crime, and maybe even help them out on occasion.

So, the Final season-by-season outline, based on everything I’ve written so far:

s1 e1: getting the team together, doing a con for Shojo, then at the end he dies and the gang is like “dang what now?" and intend to split up except then they Don’t.

mid-s1: Nale shows up and tries to trick the Order, but then gets beat like a drum.

late s1: Tsukiko is an underling of the Villain Of The Week, winds up in police custody. But She’ll Be Back.

s1 finale: Roy’s Vengeance: The Vengeaning. also we meet Redcloak as an antagonist.

s2 e1: the truth abt Haley’s father comes out

early s2: The Two Live Crews Job but it’s the Order vs the Linear Guild and the Linear Guild ARE all bad guys.

mid-s2: Redcloak returns. ugh.

late s2: the sapphire guard FBI makes its first appearance, hello O-Chul and Lien.

s2 pre-finale: once again they’re in conflict w Nale over smth, he spends the whole episodes making Cryptic Remarks, they basically beat him (like a drum!) but then the stinger at the end is that Tarquin reveals himself and Elan is like “Dad?!”, roll credits.

s2 finale, part 1: Elan is hanging out w Tarquin bc he’s DEEP in Denial, the Rest of the team tries to take Tarquin down, but it doesn’t work.

s2 finale, part 2: Elan finally gets a clue and they manage to beat Tarquin. still haven’t decided if Nale dies or not, but I’m leaning towards yes. also they rescue Haley’s dad.

s3 e1: fuck dude idk.

early s3: Redcloak shows up, AGAIN, everyone groans. he has blackmail on them, he wants them to take Xykon down.

mid s3: The Rashomon Job but it’s about stealing the Talisman of Dorukan and it turns out that Nale was there too (“oh!” Elan says. “I was wondering why I looked so weird in all those mirrors! But it wasn’t my reflection, it was Nale’s!” “Sweetie, that wasn’t Nale’s reflection,” says Haley. “Huh,” says Elan, “so the mirrors were broken?”, cue eye rolling from everyone else.), and the Successful thief was Hilgya, who’d nabbed it from the owner before it even went on display.

s3 finale: they beat Xykon, actually factually, because he deserves to get his ass Thoroughly kicked, even if only in AU form. Lien and O-Chul are there, so are some other less helpful FBI people. There’s a bit where O-Chul Exact Wordses his way out of telling his superiors about the Order’s less legal activities without technically lying. King shit.

s4 e1: doesn’t really matter. maybe smth to do w some legacy of Tarquin’s company to set up the drama w Malack & Durkon later.

early s4: Durkon gets SENT TO PRISON. Malack approaches the Order abt this because sure they have Different Ethics but they’re still Friends. (Roy is surprised and a little hurt that he’s never heard of Malack, but he ignores that in favor of Let’s Get Whatever Fuckers Did This To Our Friend.)

immediately after that: Miko and Tsukiko return as a Team, preventing the Order from working on the Durkon situation

mid s4: Redcloak makes another unexpected & unwelcome appearance but he’s maybe a little less of a dick? the Order collaborates with Malack & his Crime Buddies (hello, Vector Legion) to pull one over on him tho, because “less of a dick” does not mean “a pleasant or decent person”, and also he was mean abt Durkon being in jail, so he totally deserved it. he still gets whatever he wanted tho, just takes a blow to his pride. also prevents the Order from helping Durkon. they’re having a LOT of setbacks wonder why that could be, not to make sure the season fills its whole length or anything, no sirree

s4 finale: something something taking down the organization, headed by Hel (yes that’s her real name), which framed Durkon for their Big Crime. Durkon goes free and Extra Firmly retires, For Good, He Swears, but says he “met someone new” who might be an asset.

s5 e1: minrah joins the team! and the episode is set in like, somewhere really snowy. that’s all i got.

the rest of s5: don’t know, don’t care, it’s open-ended until the comic finishes up.

#mine #ask #corvidcorgi #order of the stick #oots #leverage #leverage au #oots au #au #outline #haha this thing clocks in at 1.9k words because i am LITERALLY incapable of shutting up #hope u enjoy it bc i spent Way Too Much Mental Effort mapping out how the OotS plotlines might play out in a leverage setting #and then promptly ignored Most of that in favor of making it funnier & dumber & more villain-of-the-week #(bc lbr the comic is Good but it's got an overarching plot form that the Leverage story style does Not jive with) #i'm not tagging all these characters lol

[mrs-nate-humphrey]

you’ve talked a little bit about this wrt dan, but i’m curious: what are your favorite seasons/arcs for the main gg characters? (serena, blair, dan, nate, jenny, vanessa) cause everyone’s personalities tended to uh, shift a bit from season to season and storyline to storyline, and i’m wondering which eras of those characters were your favorite?

oh, so i sat on this question for a very long time, and spent a ton of time thinking over it. here we go! 

i loved the way serena was written in s1 and s2. she was so full of joy despite all the difficult things she’d endured, so bubbly and warm and... lively is ALWAYS the adjective that comes to mind for serena, despite how it’s a terrible pun. but yeah! she had an energy to her that was very childlike & genuine, and i loved that about her - despite the things she’d endured, she was so full of light (?? how do i describe this.) i know that serena’s arc gets notably more tragic s3 onwards, but i feel like the way she was written lost a bit of depth s3 onwards as well. she had a sharp wit, and a good sense of humour, she was playful and... most notably, she had this little giggle? that she literally NEVER does in the later seasons, which makes me sad?? she stopped laughing like a child at the age of, what, 19?? idk. in s1 & s2 serena had so many layers, and i feel like as the seasons went on they tried to, uh. keep only the surface layers? they didn’t really do justice to the character they started out with.

my answer for vanessa is actually the exact same, with slight modifications. vanessa’s energy in s1 and s2 was unparalleled. literally the best. i loved her and the way she was critical of everything and YET so ready to learn. compared to all these rich, privileged, white people... her presence was just SO good and so important to me, because the way she was so critical of the uber rich was something nobody else really was, and i think that perspective WAS valuable and should’ve remained, haha. idk what it was about s3, but i feel like they didn’t keep the crux of who vanessa was? it wasn’t a BAD vanessa season as much as an incomplete one. i felt they could’ve done so much more with a character like vanessa.... she’s so vibrant and full of life! and the way s3 was for her was very surface. and then in s4 they just demolished her character entirely. i’ve said it before, i’ll say it again: what jenny, juliet and vanessa did in 4x09 was TOTALLY out of character for vanessa. she would never, ever do that. and by the time s4 came around... someone else said this, i don’t remember who. but they said that vanessa was basically being used as a plot device more than as a character. notice how she’s always in the right place at the right time to overhear the right thing? it’s a travesty, because vanessa was just..... so significant to me. like her being there added so much value & even changed the tone of the show imo.

my blair feelings are very complicated. i think she’s fascinating, and i love leighton & her performance. i love book blair so much more than show blair, and idk why or how to explain it. i mentioned this in that post where i ranked the characters, but while watching blair in high school specifically i can’t EVER forget that she would probably hatecrime me, and even when she’s out of school she is still supremely racist at times. i actually liked blair best in s5 - and i know she was going thru ~tragic~ stuff (i think they dialled the tragedy too high actually, like, blair had TOO MUCH on her plate and from a storytelling point of view it was... ambitious, to say the least, to hope to bring all out of that out on tv) but like, keeping her tragedy aside. her capacity for kindness and care really shone thru while she was with dan, and i liked how the d/b relationship took her out of her comfort zone and her “but im a Waldorf!” bubble and let her, idk, be a person. i liked her in s4, too. i feel like blair is a really good, nuanced, fleshed out character as blair, and the way she clung to being a waldorf combined with her rich-white-girl privilege got kind of boring after a while because like. she’s not like louis? her character has so much depth. her character doesn’t need to be reduced to a title, because she’s SO much more than that.

i feel like i need to do a lot more rewatching when it comes to dan because i CANNOT be objective about him. he reminds me far too much of myself!!! down to his flaws and his mistakes and his issues –  i was a precocious little shit in high school at times in very similar ways to dan, i like to think i’ve grown out of that (& am perpetually making an effort TO grow out of falling into those patterns) & that’s what i want for dan, too. dan’s arc feels real to me, because a lot of it is my arc, too. feeling lonely, out of place & unaccepted in high school --> being a popular kid in college… that hits really close to home. s1 & s2 are important seasons to me because i’m extremely protective of awkward, trying-his-best high school dan (he can be awful at times, but he can be earnest and sincere, too!) i feel like s4 is actually the best dan season – took me a while to get here, but halfway thru my s2 rewatch that’s how i’m leaning. but dan’s arc was very interesting to me, and i wish they’d kept his heart. trying to retcon him as evil fell absolutely flat to me, like. who are you convincing! one of my friends and i were joking about how georgie blackmailed dan into pretending to be gossip girl (she obviously has dirt on him that nobody else does.) anyway. dan’s arc felt pretty true until the end of s4. i wasn’t a big fan of how he was written in s5, i felt like something had been taken away from his character, but i don’t know how to say it better. you’re right though, i have gone over this a lot! so i’m not going to break my head over it, ‘cause we’re already a thousand words in and i still have nate and jenny to go.

speaking of jenny, though: i think dan’s storylines REALLY needed more of a big brother arc. the way he was characterised, especially in s1, was very “i would kill a man for my baby sister” and i have NO idea where that went or why they got rid of it. (actually, i do have some idea. fucking chip wiskers apologism & elevation of chair over literally anything else. sigh)

okay, now speaking of jenny in terms of jenny. i liked her s1 arc, like, her trying to make friends with these people & trying to keep her morals and realising she can’t do both was interesting. i think that should’ve been that with her clashes with girls in constance, though. and afterwards, either nothing happens, or she transfers out of constance, etc. jenny’s s2 arc makes me sad – she was exploited and treated like dirt in so many ways :( the jenny/agnes was interesting in s2, though, and there’s no way to interpret it that ISN’T lesbian. i’ve always felt like jenny’s feelings for nate in s2 are very comphet. jenny’s s3 arc made me even sadder than her s2 arc- she was alienating all her friends one by one, making everyone hate her, and just…… spiralling. she really needed a better support system. her s4 arc made no sense. like. why did she come back in the city to fuck with serena like that? it didn’t feel right.

yeah, all that said… i feel like there are many super intriguing elements of jenny’s storylines and arcs, like, even within canon events if things had been executed differently, it could’ve been actually good/empowering. but the writers hated jenny. and this show was never a feminist show.

ah, so… nate. he started out as a flake in s1 & s2. that’s his whole thing. he doesn’t know who he wants to be / how to get what he wants / how to get where he wants. he takes people for granted. he isn’t dependable or reliable, he lets people down (most notably, blair & vanessa.) and he means well, sure! but his life is like amber and he’s trapped in it. he doesn’t follow his heart, he’s too busy trying to please the wrong people, etc etc. in s3 he’s suddenly so ready for commitment, which always breaks my heart because vanessa!!! but anyway. s3 has a shift in his character, possibly him getting dumped at prom and realising that high school is over and one thing that tethered him to his family (being a kid, being a high schooler, being a minor, whatever) –  one big thing that held him there is gone. so it makes sense that he starts trying to be his own person. i like s3 nate, and s4 nate. we see nate sort of gradually try and be a moral compass, and it’s interesting to me. when i write d/n fic something i really focus on is dan finding nate dependable, and i think that’s a value that builds in nate over time. nate of season 1 is not dependable, nope, no way. but nate of s4 seems like a decent friend to have. in s5 and s6 they more or less threw his entire arc to the wind and gave him so many shitty storylines (sage spence, wtf? nate would not do this. he’s been on the opposite end of this before, he would not carry the pattern forward, ffs.)

idk. this almost hit 1.7k, LMAO. i hope it made some amount of sense!

#anon #this is long enough to be a fanfic LMAOO #meta

[kittyprincessofcats]

She-Ra S5 E05 - Save the Cat

ARE YOU READY TO HEAR MY THOUGHTS ON THE BEST SHE-RA EPISODE EVER? SO AM I!

Sorry this took so long. I was pretty nervous to talk about this episode, to be honest, because I love it so much and was scared I’d forget something or wouldn’t do it justice. Don’t know if I still need to say this at this point (since it’s been so long), but there will be spoilers for the rest of the season in this post!

- First of all, and I’ve already talked about this in my review of Stranded, but I need to say it again: Just the premise that Adora is going back to save Catra from Horde Prime really makes their story come full circle: Back in the pilot, Adora left the Horde without Catra, and Catra has been accusing her of “leaving her behind” ever since. In Catra’s mind, Adora leaving the Horde meant that Adora didn’t care about her, and it’s been a huge source of grief and bitterness for her. And now, so many seasons later, even after Catra has hurt so many people, even after she’s asked Adora not to come for her, Adora is literally walking up to Horde Prime himself (way more dangerous than Hordak’s version of the Horde) and endangering her mission and the entire world because she doesn’t want to leave Catra behind again. Because Catra means that much to her. It’s such good storytelling! If Corridors was what started Catra’s redemption, then I think Save the Cat is what redeemed Adora in Catra’s eyes (or at least, what made her understand that Adora does care about her).

- I love how determined Adora looks in that beginning shot. That’s the look of a girl about to go save her gf!

- I thought it was a bit strange that the clones didn’t notice that Adora’s talking to the others on her way to Prime, but since Prime later reveals he knows her friends are there, they probably actually did notice and just didn’t say anything.

- I wish they’d kept that scene of Glimmer having a more elaborate flashback, but I get that they just didn’t have the time for it.

- I love how Entrapta just goes *heart eyes* at the many clones. And Bow asking if they’d believe they’re the inspectors 😂 - great way to bring back that gag.

- “You would never risk the safety of your Catra.” PRIME SHIPS IT. No, seriously though - Prime says he “sees all” (and we know he’s seen Catra’s thoughts) and he said “your” Catra. This, and some other lines in this episode, made me realize it would be canon. (Also, fun fact, because I watched some bits of this show in other languages for fun: As awful as the French dub is for changing that “Kyle had a crush on Rogelio” line to “Catra had a crush on Rogelio”, in this instant they did really well: In French, Prime goes a step further and says “your precious Catra” instead of just “your Catra”.)

- The way Prime touches his clones is so creepy.

- Entrapta asking Wrong Hordak (thinking he’s Hordak) if he recognizes her made me so emotional. I wasn’t even that into Entrapdak back in s2/s3, but the way their relationship was written in season 5 really made me ship it. It’s about the PINING, the LONGING, the TRAGEDY, the way his memories of her make him overcome two mindwipes... I’m here for it!

- I always wonder if it hurts Entrapta when someone grabs her by the hair. Since her hair is magical and all that.

- “We’re not keeping him.” “But we broke him! We’re responsible for him now.” Okay, I love Wrong Hordak. I love how Bow talks about ‘keeping’ him as if he was a pet. And I also like how Entrapta immediately realizes how useful having him around could be. Also, I love that they name him “Wrong Hordak” and seriously just keep calling him that. 😂

- “I don’t fight for the first ones. I fight for my home, for myself and for my friends.” I honestly really like that the show never showed us the first ones or Adora’s birth family. Not that it would necessarily be a bad thing, but I like the message that it doesn’t really matter where she came from - Etheria is her home and what she’s fighting for and that’s enough.

- “Of course, your Catra.” He said it again!

- “She hoped you would come for her, poor thing.” Oh, the angst is real, I love it! Just thinking about Catra (who’d told Adora to stay away) eventually getting so scared that she started to wish Adora would come for her after all... I love angsty stuff like this.

- Oh, that first look of Catra with the gelled back hair and green eyes is so properly creepy.

- When Wrong Hordak complained about the ship being designed “so that it may only be navigated by one who access to the hivemind” it reminded me of Entrapta’s castle that only she can navigate. I think some people have pointed out before that Entrapta and Horde Prime are foils to each other (especially when it comes to Hordak), so that’s a really nice parallel there.

- How did Glimmer manage to open that door when she’s running from the clones? I thought only the clones could open them? Is that a mistake, or is there some canon explanation?

- “What did you do to her?” Oh, I love it when Adora’s so worried about Catra. These two and how cute they are will be the death of me.

- Oh, Prime’s so creepy when he touches Catra... I love him as a villain, but I love to hate him, you know?

- “My place is with Horde Prime, Adora. I don’t want to leave.” Can we talk about the parallel between this line, and Catra insisting back in season 1 (in Promise, I think) that she doesn’t want to leave the Horde?

- “You broke my heart.” I mean, come on! That’s gay!

- Catra and Adora’s fight is so tragic because it’s the first time they’re fighting but both genuinely don’t want to hurt each other.

- “I’m not leaving without you.” Exactly what Catra wanted to hear from Adora back in The Sword Part 2 - You know what I said in the beginning of this post about their story coming full circle?

- “I don’t wanna hurt you!” “But you have already hurt me.” This is supreme lesbian drama, and it’s so good! (I’ve been waiting so long for a show to give a lesbian romance this kind of attention!)

- Adora’s terrified expression when Catra almost lets herself fall is so painful. And the way she hugs Catra afterwards... my heart.

- Catra and Horde Prime talking together is creepy in just the right way.

- “I always hated that guy in particular.” Hell yes, Glimmer!

- “She was afraid in the end. And she suffered. Perhaps I will make her my new vessel, though she would not last me long.” Oh, the angst hurts so good, I love it! (Why do I love seeing my faves suffer?) Also, this slicked back hairstyle on Catra looks kind of amazing.

- “Why did you come back? We both know I don’t matter.” “You matter to me.” 😭😭😭😭😭😭 Yes, tell her, Adora! Tell her you care! Don’t let her talk herself down like that!

- “Come on, Catra! You’ve never listened to anyone in your life. Are you really going to start now?” I love how this is what gets through to her. I could also just quote the entire dialogue from here because everything about it is pure perfection:

Catra: “You’re such an idiot.”

Adora: [smiling and crying] “Yeah. I know.”

Catra: [laughs]

Adora: “I’m going to take you home.”

Catra: “Promise?”

Adora: “I promise.”

Catra: “Adora...”

I mean, what do I even say to that? Catra affectionately calling Adora an idiot, the callback to Promise, how Adora doesn’t hesitate to say “I promise”, how Catra breaks free of Prime’s control... it’s all so perfect. 😭

- Adora just not hesitating to jump after Catra - that’s love, holy shit!

- God, Aimee’s voice acting when Adora cradles Catra... so good. (And that’s their childhood theme playing in the background.) Didn’t Aimee (or someone else?) say on Twitter that that was intentional since your most vulnerable moments make you feel like a child again, or something like that?

- Adora’s transformation into She-Ra gives me chills every single time. Best scene in the entire show, don’t @ me (or at least second best after the kiss). The way she cradles Catra’s lifeless body, Horde Prime’s taunting words, and then she opens those glowing eyes... amazing. And what makes it even better is that this is her first proper transformation after breaking the sword. We got a tease of it in Stranded, but this is when She-Ra really comes back, and it’s her love for Catra that enables her to transform. PERFECTION.

- “You miscalculated.” Yeah, you miscalculated how gay she is.

- Entrapta whistling Darla over like a dog is amazing. 😂

- Adora carrying Catra bridal style while that epic music plays... I’m living!

- Also, side-note: Adora’s new She-Ra look is SO MUCH BETTER than the old one! She also seems a lot stronger now - look at that fancy stuff she can do with the new sword! (I like the idea that the Sword of Protection was only holding her true power back.)

- That healing scene! Adora’s healed people before, but it’s never looked this gay. And Catra waking up and saying “Hey Adora” is just so fitting.

- That hug... I’m not crying, you’re crying. They’re finally together! And Catra’s clinging to Adora so tightly! 😭 Also, she’s purring! (When I first watched this ep with my sisters, one of them literally went “Finally!” at this moment - mood.)

- Hordak finding the LUVD-Crystal and saying Entrapta’s name also gives me chills. I also just realized that he thought Entrapta was dead until this moment - holy hell!

- One more thing I love about this episode is that their plan to save Catra actually worked. Because it’s a plan that seems so stupid and risky at first, and while you’re watching you kind of expect it to go completely wrong and expect Horde Prime to catch them... and then it seems like he does, only for Adora and her friends to turn things around and succeed. I love that.

- Another thing worth pointing out is the whole symbolism of Catra’s death and rebirth and how it marks the beginning of a new chapter in her life.

So yeah, this is the best She-Ra episode ever, I rest my case. Before I watched season 5, I expected it to be gay (I even estimated the chances of Catradora becoming canon at around 70%), but I didn’t expect it to be THIS gay. This episode went beyond my wildest dreams and expectations. Horde Prime saying “your Catra” twice, that whole “You broke my heart / Prime has set me free of that pain” talk, Adora being so scared for Catra during their fight and so determined to save her, the whole “I’m going to take you home / I promise” part, Adora jumping after Catra and cradling her in her arms, her love for Catra bringing back She-Ra, the bridal carry, the healing scene, the hug, and I could go on. Noelle said on twitter that there were two versions of this episode and the gay version is what we ended up getting - AND IT SHOWS.

This is when I knew for sure that Catradora was going to be canon. Before season 5, I gave it a chance of 70%. After those little hints in the first few episodes, I said 80%. But after Save the Cat, I was 100% sure. I basically already considered it canon after this. I kept wondering how it would happen, but the "if" wasn’t a question to me anymore - so I decided to just lean back and enjoy the ride through the rest of the season :)

[Previous episode]  [Next episode]

#spop #spop s5 #Catradora #Save the Cat #spop meta #Catra #Adora #Glimmer #Bow #Entrapta #Hordak #Entrapdak #Horde Prime #Wrong Hordak #long post #I finally wrote this up #Sorry for taking so long with these episode reviews

[bigskydreaming]

Hey, any comic recs to ensure that I get Dick Grayson character right? Other batfam included, if you're willing. I'm trying to make sure I don't write a character completely ooc, because that drives me up the WALL when I read that. However, since I dubbed you the #1 Dick Grayson person, I thought I'd ask you to make sure I do him justice rather than a smear campaign or something lol! Thanks! ALSO TELL ME YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THE TITANS SHOW! That's all xD

LOL thanks I appreciate it, but while I’m good for the rants, for actual comics recs I would go to the likes of @northoftheroad, @hood-ex, and @nightwingmyboi because they’re a lot better than I am at knowing where to find specific stuff and comprehensive reading lists! I tend to jump all over the place in terms of my go-to comics for Dick.....I’m always on about Robin: Year One but I’m like eh Nightwing: Year One is pretty trash tbh. I prefer pre-Flashpoint continuity overall but I did enjoy some of the early Nightwing Rebirth stuff and before that the pre-Forever Evil New 52 stuff had some good beats. But for the most part, my favorite Dick Grayson tends to be him as a member of teams like the Titans....he shines most in ensembles, I think, because his strengths ultimately are that like...he gets people, he knows how people work, and he knows how to get the most out of the people he’s with, how to make people gel and get in sync and become more than just the sum of their parts.

(Speaking of nightwingmyboi, haven’t seen them posting in awhile, anyone know what they’re up to? Hope everything’s okay!)

Which brings me to the problems with the Titans show. There’s a lot I like about it - Anna Diop and Ryan Potter in particular - and a lot I was never gonna like about it - I’m heavy on the Ugh why must Dick Grayson be a cop ever why is that a thing make it stop. And so while I don’t think Brenton Thwaites does like, a bad job with the role or anything, there was always kinda a ceiling on how attached to or invested in his take on the character I was ever gonna reach.

But Season 2. Oof. Let’s talk about Season 2, and how so many of the problems with it are identical to the problems that surround Dick in the comics, but also aren’t limited to just his character or DC and just as equally show up in all kinds of media. Like, I could have (and probably did) offer an identical rant about the role of Scott McCall in TW’s S5.

The problem is one I’ve kinda taken to calling in my head “The Ensemble Lone Wolf Effect.”

This is when writers have a character they nominally want to be part of an ensemble....but that they repeatedly go back to the well of “this character should however spend most of their time on their own, or are more natural on their own, or just wants to be on their own, or also sometimes they just deserve to be on their own cuz they suck for Reasons we decline to specify.”

But its that thing of wanting it both ways....believing a character honestly NEEDS to be a loner or off on their own for the sake of their story, but also still wanting to utilize them as part of an ensemble, not willing to actually MAKE them a solo character, and so it kinda creates this never-ending feedback loop wherein they pay lip service to the character being part of an ensemble, but that’s never really on display, which creates a lot of unnecessary conflict among characters that’s to NONE of their benefits.

(And honestly in the comics, you could apply this to pretty much all the Batfam at times...not just Dick. They do it with Bruce ALL the time, they’re doing it with Damian right now, did it with Tim with Red Robin, Jason most of the time he’s not with the Outlaws and Cass most of the time she’s not with Babs or Steph or the Outsiders. As well as Babs herself at times).

Basically what I’m talking about here is like....so much of the drama in S2....and specifically the parts that most every fan I saw had issues with....came about not organically, because it made sense for the characters to behave that way, but solely in order to launch a specific plot, that the writers clearly wanted for S2:

And that was Dick Grayson off on his own, at his lowest, facing his demons on a solo journey of self-discovery the writers clearly deemed necessary before he could find himself as Nightwing and rise to his most heroic self.

Now the thing is....this isn’t inherently a bad plot or a problem. The problem lies in how they went about it.

Because rather than looking at the overall story and saying okay, that’s what we want to do with Dick Grayson, that’s what we want for HIS story, now how do we get that and where do we take it from there, rather than looking at that as just a STARTING point, and engineering a plot that grows OUT of that.....

The writers just started out by viewing that as an ENDPOINT, and reverse engineered a way to get Dick TO that point first and foremost....at the expense of so many characters who then basically turned on him and held him solely responsible for the things many of them also had a hand in....purely to get him off on his own and isolated.

But that was never necessary!

Because Dick’s character contains multitudes when it comes to guilt and self-blame, everyone knows that. He never needed anyone else to blame him for what happened to Joey because he blamed himself. So the second they conceived of the plot “Slade wants revenge for something Dick at least blames himself for”.....they had all the ingredients needed for Dick to decide proactively that the best way to protect everyone was to put distance between him and them, that he should try and hunt down Slade on his own, solve this between just the two of them.

And that should have been the STARTING point, for that narrative journey of self-exploration, not that journey resulting as an ENDPOINT in and of itself from Dick being FORCED into a kind of isolation by the others all blaming him.

Because now see what ripple effects result:

Now, the other characters are just as able to focus on their own individual storylines as they were in the show, with the additional concern of wanting to ACTUALLY find Dick and figure out what’s going on with him or tell him they still want to help....without this in any way needing to distract them from their own storylines, practically speaking, or cut into Dick’s narrative alone-time, because as part of the equation you ALSO have Slade, who has his own wants and agendas, not to mention tactics. And Slade’s perfectly capable of and willing to work with others, or utilize the long game, or engage in a game of cat and mouse as a distraction...there are numerous ways that you could engineer a plot FROM these motivations that allows him to keep the rest of the Titans distracted and even targeted individually, without allowing them to group back up with Dick or Dick to even know that they’re in danger and that his attempts to avoid that backfired.

You want the characters isolated and divided? The PLOT can do that for you. You don’t need the characters to do that to themselves.

IMO, most if not all stories are meant to advance characters, first and foremost. Take Characters A-Z and leave them different from how you found them. Move them to a different position in their lives as much as anything else, from where they began. The goal is character DEVELOPMENT.

What this means, in my book, is that the plot should serve the characters, NOT the other way around. The plot should grow FROM the characters and what they would or would not do....the characters should never have to be forced to FIT INTO a plot.

That’s backwards.

There shouldn’t be any need to reverse engineer a certain starting point, characterwise.

Just like....start the plot, plotwise....and from the moment you first introduce a single plot element, prioritize how would the characters react and BUILD from there.

The only engineering you should need to do is how to get to an eventual END point....which is still all about the forward momentum, not backing your way into anything.

Its one thing to have an endgoal for your plot, a point in character or narrative development that you want characters to reach. But its all about perspective. About keeping that what you’re working towards rather than something that you like, have to reach before you can even really BEGIN.

Which is what Titans S2 did. The real GOAL of the season in terms of Dick’s storyline, was his solo journey of self-discovery. But there’s a million different ways they could have LAUNCHED that journey, without it having to be the forced and contrived outcome of events and character decisions that literally only existed to initiate a journey that never required a forced initiation.

And so all this narrative energy gets utterly wasted and expended on stuff that it just flat out doesn’t need to be spent on in the first place....instead of just putting that same energy to use building forward-facing storylines for ALL the characters, that don’t require contrived spats of disharmony when the goal of such moments isn’t even the disharmony but rather just that they’re kept apart, the end RESULT of the disharmony.

Imagine what S2 could have built if instead of wasting time, characterization and energy on getting to a point they could have simply started from if they’d simply looked at it that way and chosen to just....start. If they’d applied all that to building across the board, everyone’s story in service to their own character first and foremost, no tangled feedback loops making characters regress or cycle through the same behavior or narrative positionings over and over again in order to not get in each other’s way or cross paths at a time when the show didn’t want them to cross paths....because rather than make all these characters work at cross purposes, they’re all on the same page, they still want the same things....you’re simply engineering from their own natural characterizations and organic decisions and reactions, ways the PLOT can be utilized as a TOOL, to keep them moving forward in their own respective chapters, WITHOUT their characters having to be bent out of their natural shapes or forced into niches that don’t really suit them, just to keep them, PREVENT them, from more naturally or organically making a choice or action that would ‘get in the way’ of the plot.

Bottom line......the plot is supposed to be there to advance the characters, because the characters are what we come to stories for. The characters are who we invest in, relate to, ROOT for.

The characters aren’t there to advance the plot. We’re not here to yell yeah, I really hope the writers do whatever it takes with characters, no matter how backwards or unnatural it seems, just to get that sweet sweet and oh so specific ending we want that is in no way dependent on how invested or not we ACTUALLY are in the characters by the time it arrives, in order for it to actually be effective or not!

Lol. Y’know?

So yeah, that’s my biggest gripe with Titans so far. I’m still eager to see what happens between Kory and her sister, and although I’m not thrilled it seems to be becoming Batfam Straight Outta Gotham rather than like, Titans: The Show, I admit I am curious about what take they’ll go with for Babs. As I still pretty vividly recall that weird as hell Birds of Prey show the CW or UPN or WB or whatever it was at the time did for one season, where Babs was honestly not terribly adapted despite the show otherwise bearing like, zero in common with any existing DC property or character (do not even get me STARTED on their takes on Dinah and Helena, no, blehrrible, those were bad, those were like super bad)....anyway, I’m kinda curious even if it wouldn’t have been my choice for what direction the show should take. Not that I have a specific one in mind, just, yeah. And I also kinda would not hate if we got a new Roy Harper now, to replace the not!Roy of Arrow, because I don’t know him, no seriously, who is that, its not Roy Harper.

[wistfulcynic]

What was your favorite part of Moonlight and what were you thinking when you wrote this, my favorite part?

Henry Jones wasn’t quite the same person as Henry Mills or even Henry Swan. Henry Mills was a wide-eyed boy, clinging to hope and belief as his only weapons against the dark curse that surrounded him, Henry Swan was a normal New Yorker. Henry Jones, though, he was a pirate’s son, raised to the cusp of adulthood by a clever and dangerous man, taught by him the knack of survival and perseverance when all the power and all the odds were arrayed against him. Henry Jones was a risk taker with no patience for bullshit who would do whatever was necessary to save the people he loved, just like his dad. Henry Jones could infiltrate this school and this town and gather the intel they needed to break the curse. He grinned to himself. Henry Jones looked forward to the challenge.

Oh, this is a fantastic question and also very difficult because I love so much about Their Way By Moonlight. It was a labour of love from beginning to end. 

One of my favourite elements of it is Killian in the Land Without Magic. I just love the idea of him learning to adapt to it and finding some things he completely loves and others he finds ridiculous. I definitely am one of those who believes that he would catch on pretty quickly to most things--he’s smart and adaptable and he would read the instruction manuals. But I also think there are some things he would have no use for or see the point of. 

I also loved writing canon CS in a functional, committed relationship that didn’t include any of the elements of S5 or S6. In Moonlight they love each other deeply and support each other completely but they also argue and butt heads because they have different outlooks and strategies. I loved writing Emma insisting on going charging into Storybrooke when they discover the new curse, and Killian telling her she’s being rash and hasty but knowing he can’t stop her. So instead he just insists that she be as prepared as possible before she goes, and gives her the key that ends up breaking the memory curse on her. Then after that she actually starts listening to him and following his strategies, because she’s learned that he is usually right about some things and her gut instincts aren’t always the best guides for action. While he continues with his absolute faith in her and her abilities that gives her the confidence she needs. They are genuine partners who learn from each other and work together and trust the other absolutely and I just love that so much. 

The final thing I love is the backstory with Killian and Oisín and Neverland. I love their complicated relationship and how it balances respect and genuine affection with an almost complete lack of trust and a 100% necessary betrayal that hurts them both but that they can ultimately move past. I love how Oisín is honourable in his own way but also kind of a dick, and I love the idea of Neverland being a more complex and interesting place than what we saw in the show, because I honestly cannot get behind the idea that Killian spent 300 years sailing in circles around the same small island, occasionally coming ashore to stomp angstily through jungle and lose crewmen in the Echo Caves. So I gave him other things to do, and other potential allies besides Pan. 

As for the bit you quoted, it comes from something I’ve believed since I read it first in Anne of Green Gables--that names are incredibly important. Anne insisted on having her name spelled with an -e because she couldn’t make herself feel like an “Ann”. As someone with a common name, I related to that *hard*-- so much that I changed the spelling of my name when I was 16. It used to be Sarah, but Saira was who I discovered that I preferred to be, and she’s a very different person to who Sarah was. So when I was writing Henry and thinking about his various surnames it just seemed right that he would have a different image of himself with each one. And also I wanted to show the influence Killian had on him, how he had really become a true father figure to Henry--because the Captain Cobra was of course a huge element of this fic, and to properly do it justice it couldn’t be just from Killian’s side. Killian and Henry were left alone with only each other when they barely had a relationship but they forged one together, and grew to love each other because they chose to. The main reason for that was because Killian saw Henry as a person and not just as a kid, and treated him with respect while also setting the boundaries that kids need--not because he had any clue what kids need but because that’s how he ran his ship and handled his crew. He treated Henry as a crewmate without presuming anything about what their stepfather/stepson relationship should be, and as a result Henry came to respect him to the point where he wanted to emulate him and really took to heart the things Killian had to teach him. And that’s what we see demonstrated in his ideas about himself and his identity with Killian’s surname. 

SORRY FOR THE WALL OF TEXT. If you don't want WALLS OF TEXT don't ask me about Moonlight!! 

(though if for some reason you enjoy WALLS OF TEXT then by all means, bring on the Moonlight questions!!) 

-

fanfic writer Friday, chaps! Come and ask me anything! 

#fanfic friday #asked and answered #kmomof4 #profdanglaisstuff

[flying-elliska]

S5 Review pt 2 : the Bad

So in my last meta I listed a lot of reasons to like this season...but then why did it not (at least to me) all add up together ?  Looking back, I can think of so many clips that I thought were incredible. But looking back at the season in general, I just feel a big ‘meh’ and it’s sort of puzzling - why exactly ?  Here is where I thought the season could have been a lot better :

I loathe love triangles : I hate the trope in itself. Is S5 the worst example of it ever ? No, it served somewhat of a thematic purpose and the resolution was interesting. But I can’t help it, when I feel a love triangle coming on, I generally disconnect emotionally because I have been annoyed to hell and back by it before - one big offender being Skam France s4, in which the love triangle/quadrangle marked the beginning of the season going down in flames, with it overshadowing everything else and making the characters behave in completely obnoxious and puzzling ways. S5 isn’t quite as bad, it feels more respectful of the characters, but I find it weird that the writers chose a love triangle again on the heels of the reception of s4. 

The problem with this trope is not ‘oh we don’t want drama ever’ it’s just so bloody annoying, so trite and overused. It rests on centuries of sexist tropes : either a wishy washy girl in the middle who doesn’t know what’s good for her/her own heart ; or two girls competing for a man’s attentions. It often ends in the fandom villifying the women involved no matter the shape of the triangle, comparing them against each other, which definitely happened this time (Twitter was just so annoying this season), and this whole ‘team x’ thing gives me hives, as the assumption that this is what young women viewers care most about. 

Also it generally involves the characters showing that they have very little self respect, letting themselves be walked over, bad communication, implications about what the ‘better woman/man’ should be like, cheating, etc...it’s very rarely fun or interesting to watch because we’ve seen it a thousand times before in teenage soap operas. Again, the s5 ending avoided the total trainwreck but this is a show you watch in real time, and for weeks I was afraid it was going to be absolutely terrible, and it ruined a big part of my experience of the season. When they introduced Noée I started being scared, and when it became clear Arthur was developing feelings for her, I basically noped out emotionally. I started following it in a much more detached manner, I wasn’t looking forward to the clips anymore, I stopped writing meta so much. And it sucks. I wanted to love the season. But this was just not a ride I really wanted to be on. 

Alexia (and Noee) deserved better : I love Alexia and developing her character is one of the best things Skam France ever did. In OG, the character of Chris, if interesting, is just continually reduced to the ‘funny fat friend’ persona and it really sucks. So giving Alexia a real personality, making her bisexual, giving her more of a role in s3, making her a dancer and a singer was really cool. I’m bi myself and I spent most of my high school struggling with my weight and if I’d had a character like her, who radiates self-acceptance, it would have meant so much to me. I was really stoked for her to have more of a role in s5 - only to spend most of the season feeling really sad for her. It was just...not fun. I so wish she could have had her own season and her own story that didn’t revolve around a dude she was so supportive of and still ended up treating her like shit. 

Also, real talk : when is a curvy girl actually a love interest without it being shown as funny or not good enough ? Especially of the main character ? Almost never. Coline might have lost some weight, but she’s still written as a curvy girl this season and it’s an important part of the character. So for her to have this particular role this season - the girl that isn’t romanticized, that doesn’t get to have the cute and thrilling moments, that is just sort of there and patient and understanding as if she couldn’t get anything better, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Sure the end of the season did her more justice but god it took so long and in the meantime, it just felt...very ill considered and careless. 

In the same way, I wanted to love Noée, I thought she was amazing, but because of her role in the plot I just felt this instinctive defiance towards her character. It would have been so cool to have her in a friend role, or even a love interest outside of the triangle or I don’t know like...have someone else fall in love with her. Also, I just did not understand why she loved Arthur ? Like she just met the dude a few times, and he’s mostly been a total asshole to her, who makes very little efforts to communicate with her...I get she could get attracted to him but love ??? The moment where she tells him ‘I love you’ felt demeaning to her, like the moment in OG where Noora falls after running after William. It’s like, Arthur has just been an enormous asshole to her, and she pushes herself to do something she’s never been comfortable with in the first place ? Why ? This show romanticizes teenage boys being assholes and girls being desperate way too much. 

The Skam dilemma, love vs politics and “Let’s all just be nice.” : There is a reoccuring problem accross all Skams, starting with the OG : they bring up very political topics, usually in the beginning of the season, and then they...don’t really do anything with them. In the OG, Noora’s feminism is really just window-dressing and we see her bend over backwards to accomodate this super toxic asshole into her life. And we see Sana’s struggles as a Muslim in Norwegian society, but then love drama takes over, and it’s waved away with an insulting ‘everyone should just communicate more’ ending. Skamfr s4 made it even worse, by making the girl squad a lot more overtly racist, never having them make a big gesture for Imane, putting her in a position to apologize, and never showing that the girl squad had an idea of where they messed up or real growth. It was insanely frustrating, especially since the beginning of the season was so good at showing all the little micro-agressions. In the end it felt like all the racism was just there to motivate Imane’s breakdown for plot reasons and not to actually say something. S5 never stoops quite that low, but there was a bit of a similar dynamic at hand here. Instead of the boys actually have a real conversation after their fight, most of the denouement of the show was consecrated to talking about the love drama. It was, again, as if the focus of the show was on the wrong things, and it robs you of the catharsis you’re expecting. As if they used the love drama for a metaphor for the actual issues, have it do all the emotional heavy lifting, and in so doing bypass having to adress the actual problem. There is this weird ideas that the audience of the show - teenagers and young women, mostly, in the end care the most about the love stuff and that everything else has to take a backseat and...this feels neither a good message to send, nor realistic to me. I like it when shows about teenagers decenter love and show the real complexity of their characters’ lives without making them paragons of virtue or wokeness - Derry Girls is a brilliant example of that. Skam, and Skam France in particular, feel a bit immature still compared to those, punching below their weight for shows that pride themselves on their social impact. 

Hit with the idiot stick : Speaking of underwhelming resolutions - yes, the boy squad messing up with Arthur, I found relevant and realistic. But...did they really even adress it ? I was really hoping for the boys to have more of a conversation, for Arthur to open up to them about what he went through, about his father, to tell them that they should have asked him/listened to him more, etc...and I know ‘teenage boys’ or whatever but ...aren’t they trying to change those stereotypes too ? Like when Arthur went to see Basile, they must have had a conversation, why the fuck did we not see it ? That’s the emotional bond I cared most about ! And we just had a hug ...underwhelming tbh. Same Arthur talking with Lucas but then it was just about their love lives ? Or when they came to the hospital, again, it was just about the love drama ? God it really sucked out the oxygen out of the season. The resolutions of those things just being hugs or speeches or handholding at the end felt hollow, and a lot less powerful than they could have been. And again, there has to be a tolerance for messiness, but I found the boys so incredibly dumb at several points in the season. Especially them being like ‘oh cheating isn’t so bad’ after they found out that Arthur’s dad was cheating on his wife ? Like why the fuck did they take Patrick’s side ? What kind of lack of empathy ? It would feel a lot more coherent for teenage boys to be furious at the destruction of a friend’s family, not talk like cynical 50 yr olds who just divorced for the fifth time. It felt so unrealistic and stupid and just meant for Arthur to finally clue in to the idea that cheating and lying is bad maybe, himself first without external clues from characters that really should have known better by now. Especially Yann and Lucas advising Arthur to keep his mouth shut after what happened in s1 like...did whoever write this read the previous seasons of the show ? There were just too many times where the boy squad felt out of character and mandated to be idiots just for plot reasons, and it felt...very crudely drawn. Disappointing, because the beginning of the season was awesome. But again, Skam France failed in delivering real growth for their friend group. At times, it even felt like character regression. Them holding hands at the end of the season made me emo but damn it could have been so much more.

Also some plot twists - the car crash in particular, just felt dumb and unnecessary, seriously. 

A too distant main : In the end, like I said before, my main issue is that I didn’t feel as connected to Arthur as I wanted to. I mean, the cheating bit was just very unrelatable to me, after how they showed how supportive Alexia was and how she supposedly made him happy like...why. But maybe that’s just me. Regardless - in the first few episodes he felt distant in an interesting way, because it made sense for his character to be so walled off. But...I felt like his self discovery was way too blurred with the ‘oh I like Noee’ part to the point where it ended up being obscured. I would have loved more clips on his own, maybe something more about him questioning his path in life, whether he truly wants to do medecine. And like apparently he liked fine arts ? Then, why didn’t we see anything about that ? Did he paint the x-men painting ??? That feels so relevant, why the fuck didn’t we see that ? Also why didn’t we see him take those LSF classes with Camille and actually make an effort this time ? Having almost all of his realization moments tied to Noee was just...the manic pixie dream girl trope. That’s what it’s called, when you use a quirky female character as a device for the emotional development of the male one. It’s...not flattering tbh. And then that farm episode - it was funny but for a week I felt like I completely lost touch with Arthur’s POV ? I’m really not sure that was the right choice. All in all, there were just not enough introspective, small, intimate clips for it to really feel like Skam, and that’s a shame tbh. I recognize a lot of myself in Arthur, and Robin acted his heart out to make him relatable, but because of the writing, there were way too many times where I was reluctant and puzzled instead of in it. I saw several people saying it was too much tell and not enough show and I think that’s very on point. I feel like a lot of Arthur’s actual character development happened behind the scenes in moments where we didn’t see it.  

Yeah...I think as a conclusion most of my issues are tied back to the preponderance of the love triangle. The season wasn’t bad but god it could have been so excellent if they hadn’t gone that route, and this swerve from greatness is just sooooooo frustrating. I don’t think it’s enough to condemn the whole season but...

Next up : some things I’m just very ??? about and a general conclusion. 

Bonus bitching round, fandom edition : oh my god, I don’t get into this often but...the fandom was so bloody annoying this season. Starting with the people sending death threats over a tv show (like...what the fuck) or thinking them being nasty assholes is somehow for the greater good (???), from people that don’t want anyone to use even 1 analysis capacity (especially on Twitter) and go beyond praising everything on the show, or the people either villifying Alexia and Noee and indulging in that ‘team’ crap, to the people that shoot down every single detail of the show without discernment or accuse the creators of being ableist sexist garbage or maltreating their actors ... And then you have the other remake stans coming to pollute the tags talking about how we were all stupid for liking the show in the first place. Like...seriously, what is up with you people. I really loved the block button this season, damn. 

#skam france #skamfr s5 #my meta #arthur broussard #skam france meta

[neverdoingmuch]

okay! tma au time!

so i’m gonna start off by saying jgs is elias in this au. i dont care what you say about elias’ sexy voice or charisma or whatever, they’re both slimy and evil. also gertrude, so to speak, is wen chao. (bear with me pls)

most other people are assistants. i think? i mean lwj, wwx, jzx and a few others are?

(my brain says it would be funny to have lwj as sasha and su she as not!sasha but lwj deserves better than that)

i’m not really gonna follow the plot of tma bc rip

anyway!

the assistants are just kind of vibing in the archives when they discover that wrh, who’s like the chief of police and is an avatar of the slaughter, is actively killing people for the fears bc acab

does he have a deal with jgs and that’s why wen chao is the archivist? yeah probably. wen chao is the archivist bc daddy had connections. wrh put jgs in charge and sent wen chao to make sure everything was running how wrh wanted it to be

yeah, wrh wants to have control over all the fears or something idk

so wen chao is the archivist. but unlike gertrude who purposefully made things really messy and a nightmare he’s just really incompetent. wen zhuliu is the avatar of the distortion and theyre tight bc zhuliu owes wrh or whatever.

so the wrh stuff comes out and a bunch of people band together to try and bring justice to him and thus we have the sunshot campaign

maybe all the families have their own fears? the lans are the lonely and the nies are the hunt. jfm and yzy are avatars of the bad parenting idk. 

anyway, before they took any action, wwx had already started investigating bc wen chao is a lil bitch and very suspicious

while investigating wwx gets sucked into the archivist stuff and ends up being thrown into the tunnels under the institute with wen zhuliu who then proceeds to do distortion fuckery for three months

he finally escapes and kills wen zhuliu using the powers he’d begun to develop in the tunnels (it’s so strange that he stumbled across a tape recorder which he’d named chenqing and after that he kept finding statements,,, so strange)

he’s killed wen zhuliu so he goes off and kills wen chao and now he’s the archivist whoo

he joins up with the others and they go kill wrh, sweet it’s all dealt with but jgs starts spreading shit about how all the wens are terrible and must be killed (including wen qing’s family who are like paramedics who work ed with the police, so not cops but forced to work w/ them)

while jgs is touting that bs jgy is in the background slowly manipulating wwx into getting all the different marks (idk what they were called) from the different fears

he gets kidnapped by xue yang who is nikola and spends a month getting moisturised by him and told that wow he’s so impressive killing the other avatars,, im gonna follow in your footsteps (let’s say that avatars have a truce not to kill each other in this world. like they’re all equals and pretty much the same strength so there’s no real point in killing each other or trying to kill each other)

wwx escapes and im kinda annoyed we dont have enough bad guys for wwx to properly get his marks but whatever

he goes back to the archives and they come up with a plan to kill xue yang and they go off and do it

imma let you pick what happens here. does jzx die? do we let xxc and sl have the spotlight and this is where their story comes into play?

whatever happens, wwx goes into a coma for thirteen months and enter extremely hot avatar of the end who helps him wake up (mo xuanyu?? mo xuanyu.)

he goes back to the archives and lwj has been taken by the lonely while he was gone so he’s working with his uncle again (the lans are the lukases and i take no criticism)

side note: in this au wwx gets two phobias! (gee wwx! how come you get to have two phobias?)

so mr spider was definitely a thing and so were the dogs

while wwx was on the streets he found this book and he’d just started learning how to read so he decided to practise but then some other kid stole it from him and he ended up watching him get eaten by a giant spider also the dogs attacked him bc no rest for wwx

does wwx pretend not to be aware?? i’d say yes. if not bc of trauma then bc it’s super obvious and the look on lwj’s face when the jane prentiss equivalent attacks and wwx says wow those worms were a lil weird huh? is so funny to him

anyway lwj was in the know the whole time and he probably moved out of his family home and joined the archives so he could investigate jgs but then wwx dies and hes like aight yeah imma feel real lonely right now

so wwx comes back and jc, who had been the host of ghost hunt CW (cultivation world) and was attacked by an evil ghost, tries to kill him

after their fight and subsequent freedom from the slaughter and the eye (sans eye removing bc fuck that) jc moves in with jyl

im sorry that what the girlfriends isnt a thing here but i love the idea of a jyl who just isnt scared of anything because she’s seen death and just can’t get scared anymore

she still dates an archives employee though. it’s jzx, who is kinda like tim in this au i guess? did he die in that explosion? (i want to say no so jyl would be happy but if he dies and she’s mourning him and jc and wwx fought,, well now wwx is alone for bad decision times)

one day wen qing comes up and is like pls help my brother, he’s been taken by the buried so wwx runs off and finds breekon and hope (su she and jin zixun), kill jin zixun and steals the coffin

the rest of the wens are in hiding atm so he doesnt have to like monkey chain all the wens out of the coffin 

so wwx goes inside the coffin and rescues wen ning (bc jon and daisy’s relationship was super sweet)

they get out and immediately run away with wen qing and the rest of the wens

where do they go? wen qing’s cute cottage in scotland (or cultivation world equivalent)

so they’re living as farmers and wwx is getting sick bc he can’t get statements from here but he has to protect them bc the jins keep attacking (what are the jins working for?? idk. the vast? the dark? who knows, not me)

anyway lwj comes and is like you have to come back to gusu/the archives and wwx is like no! bc he has to protect the wens

so lwj is like fuck ive gotta move my timeline up and find a way to off jgs

jgy ends up doing it and lwj is like /: my revenge,,

everyone is happy! jgs is dead, wrh is dead! but then jgy starts stirring up rumours about wwx and lwj is honestly so tired of this shit

and bc people keep attacking the wens, wwx manages to collect the rest of the marks from the other fears

jgy sends his letter: dear wwx sorry for the deception yada yada yada

but wwx is aware of that shit and just kills himself before he can finish reading it

whoo apocalypse averted but lwj comes to help with the wens just in time for his burial so not whoo?

anyway we know wwx isn’t dead and he’s just vibing in another coma or something equivalent (why does he die twice in this au? bc idk how s5 will end but it’s a tragedy horror podcast and i want them to be happy so he gets to die twice)

anyway, the avatar of the web, mister manipulation and secrets extraordinaire nie huaisang is very pissed after jgy manipulated his brother into becoming an avatar of the slaughter and decides to just expose the dude

lxc kills him bc he deserves to kill jgy tbh,,, manipulative toad

nhs also restores wwx’s rep bc they were besties in uni and i refuse to accept anything else

he rocks up to the cottage/farm and is like hey guys i helped clear wwx’s name and wen qing is like hes fucking dead what help were you? and nhs is like ?? he’s not dead

so they unbury him and lwj wakes him up through the power of love and all that jazz

anyway, wwx manages to do *insert super cool thing here* and gets rid of all the fears and they get a happy ending bc i really want them to have a happy ending

do they stay living on the farm/cottage with the wens?? no but they buy a cottage nearby and happily live there together raising rabbits and growing idk pumpkins

#mdzs #modao zushi #wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian #this au was so longggggggg #what the fuck #like so long #im so sorry to anyone who had to read it #cql #the untamed #tma spoilers #i guess?? #like if you havent seen the show theres a few spoilers

[kiss-my-freckle]

Rewatch 8x6: The Wellstone Agency

This episode was gorgeous. 

Alina should've had breakfast with Red. They could've knocked that crossword out together. She seriously needs to be TeamRed. I like that they opened with the crossword puzzle. Three letter word for "It has benefits." JOB. Yeah.... a benefit to have Red cleaning your mess. Red offers her an omelet. Another egg reference. I'm waiting for the egg Krilov scrambled. She asked if he's giving her a case or a history lesson. Seriously... they've opened up her character for so much possibility with her background. She could totally play his girlfriend or his daughter. She doesn't have a Tom Keen in her life that could taint the education he provides. She lies about Cooper being in a meeting. She actually went to Red herself to tell him she thinks what he's doing with Liz is wrong. A bad case of "Girl has no idea. Girl speaks anyway." She doen't know Red is Liz's mother. Best she not think like everyone else... as if she knows what's best for Liz. Red has to pursue Liz because she's the one making it worse.

"Agent Park, next time you feel the urge to unburden yourself, you can rest assured... I've heard it all before. It's a luxury to stand on the moral high ground and critique those of us on the low ground. A lot of people do exactly that. Until they need my help." We saw how this turned out. Alina said she'll never ask for his help, but she did. Ressler said the same in S5. I wonder if they'll be pushing Ressler's in at some point. He didn't ask for Red's help in S5, Red simply offered it. Alina's storyline with this friend of hers feels similar to Ressler's with his brother. Borrowed money from the wrong people. Ressler turned to Liz, Alina turned to Red.  

Red knows very well who works for him. He knew Aram spoke sign language, and he knew Aram would be the one they sent undercover because he can speak more languages than they do. An agency that breaks the language barrier between criminals. Hilarious for Cooper to say sign language definitely doesn't count when it's exactly what Red needed. He needs to speak to the owner who's deaf, best put them on the blacklist. An FBI mole storyline for The Wellstone Agency to parallel the KGB mole that stole the Sikorsky Archive in 1990. The Sound of Silence. The deaf owner of Wellstone. Aram speaking sign language. It all reminds me of Lady Ambrosia and Newton Purcell... silence and screaming.

Marylouise Burke was a great choice for Glen's mother. I love how Dembe lets Red vent about Glen. It's hilarious. He just sits there and listens. They throw in a parallel for Liz, despite its context.

Red: “Huey is, in a word, the reason." Two words. "Which is why his failure to attend my memorial would be seen as a snub so great that I'm afraid it may send Mother into a heartbroken tailspin which she may never recover from."

Basically showing Red was referring to Agnes. 

Red: She might. Some day. But before then - I fear she may do something that she can never recover from.

They also throw Glen in parallel with Kate despite its context.

Dembe: It's his dying wish. Red: No, it's one of his dying wishes.

Red fulfills both dying wishes for Glen.

Nik: I can’t help you. Tom: Whoever is in here, this is the dying wish of a good woman, alright?

Red: I understand the temptation acting on a fine woman’s dying wish. But your quest has cost Nik Korpal his life, and persisting will put whomever you involve in harm’s way.

Liz: She killed herself so I could get the duffel bag. It was her dying wish. Feel free to honor it.

Kate's dying wish has yet to be fulfilled. Liz doesn't know Red's truth because she still doesn't know his identity. Liz is still trying to honor Tom's dying wish.

Red: You won’t miss a day more with her than is absolutely necessary. You have my word. Liz: And you have mine. That I’m gonna honor Tom’s dying wish. For me to know your truth. Before this is over, I’m going to find out what it is.

That's why this story isn't over.

Aram's conversation with Red's contact reminds me of S5. The pill reminds me of Earl King and The Djinn. The blacklister is a great storyline as they cross into the Russian language for Red's KGB background and the thumb drive. Cooper's scene with Alina about her friend's death feels a lot like his scene with Ressler over Audrey’s prior to him going after Mako Tanida. 

Another parallel despite its context. This one, to Red being Ilya.

Red: He told his mother he inspired you to record "Workin' for a Livin'" after a rousing game of beer pong in the back of a bar in Teaneck. Huey: And she believed him?

Ilya: What I can’t figure out is Dom. Why would he tell her all that? Red: In an attempt to help her move on. Ilya: And she believed him?

Aram is getting better out in the field... at thinking on his feet. No Turning Back by Claire Guerreso... great soundtrack for the scene. So dramatic. One of my favorite scenes of Aram... ever. Such a great performance.

"Evidently, Reddington was wearing a wire. One we'll tell the Justice Department that you were wearing." I think Red chose to wear the wire because he's not gonna let The Freelancer's release happen for another blacklister. He's done playing around. It basically removed Red as a CI, leaving the FBI to act as their accusers instead. It not only protects the FBI, it protects Red in the criminal world. His name will no longer come up should others want to face their accuser in court. He gives them a name, allows them to infiltrate, gets the proof they need, and makes it look like they got to these blacklisters on their own.

Cooper is playing a dangerous game with the thumb drive. Making sure Aram keeps it hidden from Red, yet claims to be working with Red at the same time. 

Cooper: As if I'm not already asking you to do too much, I need you to try and open this drive. Aram: Okay. Is this about a case? Cooper: I'm not sure. Which is why I need you to keep this between us. Nobody knows. Especially Reddington.

Aram: Mr. Reddington told you the name? Why? Cooper: Because we're on the same team. And because he knows we have to work together if we have any hope of bringing Keen home safely.

Skipping out on his halfsies, taking control as if Red works for him. 

Aram: Mr. Cooper, um - about, uh - this drive you wanted me to decrypt. Uh, I can't. I reached out to a friend at the NSA. Cooper: Do you trust him? Aram: I do. Cooper: Good. Because if he tells anyone about this, his life could be in jeopardy. Keep me posted. 

I believe this thumb drive will play out like the suitcase of bones, and it will most certainly put Liz’s life in jeopardy just as the suitcase put her in a coma. And I think it will be the NSA friend that makes a move rather than Cooper. I don't think he's gonna be anything like Jennifer's friend checking through Koehler's files. After Cooper said to keep it between them, Aram chose to reach out to his NSA friend. Big mistake. Totally different from the Fulcrum, which Aram handed directly back to Liz. He should've given the drive back to Cooper, but he didn't. That'll be his mistake.

Red: Her husband wasn't who he appeared to be. She was in jeopardy. I had to intervene. Cassandra: And... is she still in jeopardy? Red: I hope not.

I think the opposite of 3a could run through 8a. Ressler putting Liz in danger, Aram saving her life. Aram putting Liz in danger, Ressler saving her life. 

"He gets her hopes up, and I have to be the one to dash them. Glen at his finest." A great dialogue with double meaning. There’s also a parallel for Tom Keen and Ressler, despite its context. 

Huey: And I got to know 'cause I can't get my head around it. Why in the world is Raymond Reddington running errands for a DMV desk clerk?

Ressler: I'm just I'm trying to run my head around all this. So Reddington's not Reddington. 

Red: There is one thing that I can't seem to... wrap my head around. Tom. After all the lies, all the deception and humiliation, how you can just forgive and forget.

Rederina is my favorite parallel with Glen because it’s the part of the episode that I find most beautiful.

Death and rebirth.

Paula: Glenn... transitioned. Red: I don't know what that means.

Ilya: It is a mystery, right? So, we give them the answer. Katarina: What does that mean?

It’s complicated.

Huey: I - I didn't ask you what he did. I asked what made him special. Red: That's a bit more complicated. Huey: Ah, I'm sure it is. I'm sure it's incredibly complicated.

Red: It’s complicated.

Red: Oh, I think you’re very special. 

Weird and strange.

Huey: And weird and strange. But - I like weird and strange. You said I could ask for any favor... that's the favor. Red: You want me to tell you about how weird and strange Glen was.

Waters: Raymond Reddington. Wow. What a name. What a man. And people think I’m weird.

Liz: You have a picture of my mother in your weird, little apartment. Why?

Denner: You must have known how strange all of this was. Liz: Of course I did.

Huey: That'd be good. Uh, but the truth is, you can't do a bigger favor than revealing somebody's [heart and soul.] Red: No, I don't suppose you can. [Insert Dembe.]

I view Red's eulogy for Glen just as much a eulogy for Katarina Rostova - the person Red used to be. That's why I felt the Statue of Liberty was perfect. The glorious feet of two grande dames, Queen Rostova and Crowned Liberty. One of the saddest differences between Glen and Katarina - they can talk about Glen whenever - wherever they choose. Even saying the name Katarina Rostova has consequences, so her memory fades. Like Katarina, Glen was unafraid. I feel that's the biggest reason Red worries about his memories of Glen fading. Because Red's memories of his former self have, which gives reason for Glen's fearlessness to be the thing he'll miss the most.

Earl Fagen: Living a lie was worse than prison. The day I confessed was the day I went to jail. That was also the day I was set free.

I love the bag Red put Glen’s ashes in. It says "thank you" ... as if thanking Glen at the same time he's spreading his ashes. As they pan to the photo of Glen with his mother, I consider the mother-son parallel, still predicting Scottie and Halcyon being the next big bad because of Tom’s death. 

Scotcheroo... a great nickname for Red, I think. 

#Rederina