#I basically lost all hope when I saw how the writers and cast members talked about the show after I finished watching the first 3 seasons | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

balillee · 3 years

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my unpopular dsmp opinions, some of which genuinely should be popular

c!dream has crossed the moral event horizon and is irredeemable. once you cross that threshold, you're no longer a 'morally grey' character.

pre-recorded, heavily produced lore killed the lore. it was cool, sure, but you completely misunderstand the magic that the smp had when people watched it initially. the story is improv and that's how we like it. we can tell the cc's have lost interest in it, you can admit that to us, we'll understand, just stop lying to me.

c!dream's pov isn't necessary to understand his character or his motivations. if you've watched literally any c!primeboys stream he's basically spelled it out for you.

i don't understand how fans can dislike l'manberg or have claimed to be against it since the beginning. i honestly don't get it. what's so bad about wanting your own spot where you make your own rules and skirt accountability that has been used to technically oppress you before - and, before someone who never saw the earlier streams tries to disagree with this, the og l'manberg crew were imprisoned for shit that everyone else on the server was practically encouraged to do. also, what do you have against fun and happiness?

i think some of you forget that 'hybrids' aren't a thing, discounting c!ranboo. there's no piglin hybrids, c!techno is just a pig. there's no avian hybrids, c!phil is just a man with wings. there's no creeper hybrids, c!sam is just a creeper who's indecently exposed from the hips down. canonically there's no hybrids, and therefore no hybrid discrimination. people ran with that concept too much.

the loss and the fanon rewriting of the early lore up until pogtopia has ruined fandom perception of c!dream and the og l'manberg boys. c!tommy is more morally white than you think he is, and c!dream has always been a villain - he massacres and he kills and he destroys and he schemes and he always has broken his own rules. no wonder the boys wanted their own space after how they were treated.

i think ranboo oftentimes forgets his own lore. he brings stuff up that c!ranboo may have done, such as exploding the community house to frame c!tommy, holding onto Cat, and it goes absolutely nowhere. we've gotten all of these developments in his story but they have never been expanded on, and we're nowhere closer to figuring out his relationship to c!dream and what his other side is and honestly i see no hope that we'll be any closer to knowing even by the end of the year.

your characters don't all have to be morally grey for the story itself to be morally grey. this is fiction - some people can be nothing but evil and others can be nothing but good. being purely good or evil doesn't mean that you're one dimensional, either.

c!dream apologists have ruined c!dream for me. he's not a good person. how about you let me enjoy a villain for who he actually is, rather for than your percieved woobified ragdoll you pass off as c!dream.

the story was better when there was a central writer. it was brilliant back when wilbur wrote it to be that the environment drives the characters and the story, and it was really good in early s2 up until techno's execution day when it was more character driven. since then, the amount of autonomy people have over their characters without any central 'director', as it were, has been a detriment to the story overall. there needs to still be one overarching figure or director or writer.

not everyone is a main character. just because they have a pov, doesn't mean they're a main character. some characters have such little impact on the overall plot and describing everyone as a main character oversaturates the story and makes some characters seem more important than they are.

the egg lore had so much potential up until it didn't. all that built up threat that we were expecting and we still don't even know what the egg wants really other than just controlling people. does it hatch?

genuinely, if there's no major plot developments by the end of the year (and let's be honest, it's a very big possibility at this point), a few of the more prominent members of the server should do a podcast style stream talking about where the story would have gone, because at least then we would have gotten somewhat closer to a conclusion.

c!techno is a villain and an asshole and a bad person. he stops caring for people once their interests don't align with his or if they look at him funny. he makes meta-jokes about his own tyrannical and oppressive nature. stop taking that away from him. he's a bad person. cc!techno does a fabulous job portraying that in a comedic manner and the balancing of him being a deeply flawed person with deeply flawed morals and ideas with his comedically-portrayed stubbornness and lack of willingness to hear out opposing viewpoints is incredible. i want to like characters who are arseholes for the sake of being arseholes, and who refuse to take into account the hurt they've caused either out of self-righteousness or because they don't care, so let me. he's the anti-peacemaker, LET ME HIM ENJOY HIM FOR THAT!!!!

i think tommy and wilbur's way of doing lore is my favourite. relies heavily on improv, voice acting, sprite acting and facial expressions. really shows off the acting props and they pull off the emotional moments well for the insanity of the creative medium.

i'm not a fan of fan-music. i find songs about media i'm into difficult to listen to. coincidentally i'm also not a fan of shit like slam poetry or live music/musicals/pantomimes.

the death of l'manberg killed people's motivation to go on the server casually. i've talked about it more in depth before, but destroying what was a central, driving environment for the story killed momentum and motivation. imagine in an episode of she-ra, the princess alliance just nuke the freight zone and all of the members of the horde just have to deal with it. that would be shit.

until season 3 has some momentum, i'm counting the end of the smp as january 20th. that had a conclusion. season 3 has... whores, technoblade and tommyinnit. that's about it.

i wasn't a fan of the development of c!tubbo joining las nevadas. i preferred snowchester and the walled city conflict. give c!tubbo some backbone and some badassery. also tubbo where's the fucking nuke bro if you're shelving that plotline just tell us on like an alt stream what the plan was i beg

add like 2 or 3 new people to the server so that michael mcchill has someone to talk to and so that there's something always happening on the server. it gives the og's more motivation to return if things are happening in and out of canon and it'll help with momentum, and who knows? maybe they can write their own story/stories.

i really think that c!sam is an underrated character. he's multilayered, extremely interesting, and the dichotomy of his loyalty to his job and how far down the rabbithole that's taken him versus the genuine love he has for his friends that drives him to do what he does out of wanting to do right by them is brilliant. i don't talk about c!sam enough.

STOP HAVING FUCKING VILLAIN ARCS!!! I'M FUCKIN SICK OF IT!!!! i want to see more characters who see everyone else being absolute selfish, abhorrent cunts and go 'if nobody else is going to be a good person, i fucking will'. GIVE ME SOME MORAL WHITENESS!!! IT'S INTERESTING AND MORALLY GOOD CHARACTERS ARE FUN!!!

let tommyinnit build cobblestone towers. everyone bullied him too much for how ugly they were and the one he built outside of the prison looked genuinely really nice. it gives the boy something to do.

i'm a fan of the revive book and the canon lives system. don't ask me why, but i think it might just be the morbidity of it. it adds to c!dream's god complex persona, and i think the fragility of death itself is a really fun concept. not enough fan cc's have made connections with that and c!mumza, and it could make for cool fanfic.

ranboo your house is fucking ugly. it's an eyesore

c!niki, and to some extent now c!jack and c!fundy, are boring me and ruining my mood. i think c!jack is the closest to being an actually interesting sympathetic villain, mainly because nobody else seems to realise that c!niki is a villain. not a good one imo, but she's a villain. c!jack just has the problem of starting a new project over and over and over and over again and because of the slow in momentum for the primary cast, there hasn't been a lot of recent development for him.

not really a dream smp opinion, but if philza went full geordie accent, i would love it. i want him to, in canon, say shit like 'me n ye' instead of 'me and you' and use geordie dialect. i want him to be physically unintelligible because it's funny.

i don't really know what's up with c!foolish but i think he's a dumbass. he had a while to think about c!q's proposal and then changed his mind about joining the guy to admitted to letting him die just because. moron

i wish there was more c!eret lore. i wish he was an actual king with an actual kingdom and actual subjects and royal advisors. c!eret is far too fucking cool to be the king of nothing and nobody. fatten up the kingdom and the castle with people who work with c!eret, and don't just make it tyrannical and dictator-y to prove the point of the server's 'anarchists'. make it a healthy working environment, please - if you want moral greyness, have 'anarchists' who claim to care about the welfare of the server oppose a kingdom of happy people under a fair and just ruler because their ideologies clash.

the server needs more characters who oppose anarchy in more peaceful ways, or passively wish for systems to be a part of. i think a chaos vs order conflict ending only in mutual understanding where everyone understands that they should just leave each other alone would slot nicely into the story that's been created so far.

you need to have watched all of the previous arcs to understand the story. i've seen people argue that they don't need to know about earlier lore to understand the prison, but that's the equivalent of only watching the final season of pretty little liars and expecting to understand the context of what's going on.

some characters aren't that morally grey. some characters, take c!tommy for example, are definitely on the whiter side for the morality scale, he's just an asshole. he's abrasive and rude and a dickhead but he also doesn't agree with terrorism, he's patriotic, he strives for a better world, he's apologetic, but he's also a fucking BITCH.

you can add onto this if you want, but not if you're a c!dream apologist. nobody likes your opinions

#dream smp #dsmp #esclaposhitpost

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awesomerextyphoon · 4 years

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Charred Briar Roses - 4

Meet the Family

Paring: Orc!Bucky x Black!Reader, Orc!Steve x Black!OFC, Orc!Sam x Black!OFC

Rating: 18+/Explicit

Word Count: 3,500

Summary: The girls get to meet the family.

Warnings: Smut and Mentions of Death

A/N: I’m sorry that this took so long to publish. I had a major writer’s block. Also, the smut is not as good as I wanted so bear with me. Enjoy!

Back to Masterlist

It took five days to reach the group to reach the Orc Settlement. Most of the journey consisted of Fumnanya giggling at Sam’s (not so great, but whatever) jokes while sneaking in a kiss or two, Ghada acting like she’s above the romance then getting caught making out with Steve (she seriously likes it), and you giving Bucky the cold shoulder. You saw the regret in his eyes, but you were too stubborn to give him a chance.

The Orc Settlement was located in the lowlands of the Anchoria Steppes not far from the Tsurchack Forest with its center nestled between a segmented river and a good sized lake to its right. It consisted of a few hundred dwellings that seemed to be a nice cross between a yurt and a longhouse (**think Viking Longhouse**) built with reusable timber, metal, and stone. A couple of the dwellings near the edges were sectioned off into what looked to be farms of six to ten families. There were training areas and market places interspersed throughout the settlement. In the middle, there was a large arena like structure near the center next to what had to be the Elder’s Residence with more town like structures around them. Surrounding the whole settlement was a wall of stone, packed earth, and iron about 12ft high with sensors (probably a force field) sticking on top of it every five feet or so.

It looked beautiful, so different from your former home of extreme decadence.

“Welcome to our home. I know it’s not as-” Steve started.

“It’s beautiful!” Ghada exclaimed while turning her head to smile at him, “We don’t care where you live. We’re just glad you agreed to take us with you.” Steve responded with a low hum and gave her a kiss.

It would’ve been more, but Bucky cleared his throat, “We need to report to the elders as soon as possible.” It was followed by, “And not have you suck your match’s face.” Thankfully neither of the two lovebirds heard him.

Some of the children in front of the gates ran up to the group with bright eyes and smiles wondering if they brought back sweets and toys.

Steve smiled and responded with a ‘You’ll see’ and motioned to the elder’s residence.

Once you passed the front gates, you and your sisters were greeted with reactions ranging from awe to outright contempt. You wondered if they knew of your identities, but Bucky assured you that it was because his people are a bit weary of outsiders. He decided not to tell you about how some of Sophronius’ forces had the almost the exact same hair color and types of clothes, but that was for another time. Right now, he needed to get the elders to let you three stay.

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When they reached the Elder’s Residence – a large longhouse consisting of wood, stone, metal and sturdy fabrics at the top – you stopped yourself from taking another step passed the threshold. What if they didn’t accept you? What if the elders or other members ratted you out to Sophronius? Or will they just have you exiled once they get the riches you and your sisters brought?

Bucky sensed your trepidation and put an enormous hand on your right shoulder, “It’s okay. You’ve got this.” With that your group entered the building.

The elders sat on a raised rectangular dais in the middle of the room with two guards on either end. There was a chandelier and torches all around the main room. Various statues and artifacts of elders passed are placed/hung around the room.

It was intimidating to say the least.

“Welcome back, warriors! Were you successful in your mission?” One of the elders, Argusa, inquired in Orcish.

“We ran into an old woman who directed us to the lost capital of the Nephrashim.” Steve explained.

“That is nothing but myth, Rogers! If you found nothing than just say so. Honestly, one would think that the halflings would be better at excuses than this.” One of the guards, Figrel, scoffed. He later raised his hands in surrender when Bucky moved in to pummel him.

“Enough, Figrel! Please continue Steve.” Cladista, another elder, gently urged.

“We found the capital to be deserted...except for the princesses. They were at the palace. They agreed to come back with us and we were able to procure valuable medical supplies, building materials, and treasure that we might use for trade.” Steve reported as the elders fixed their gazes onto you and your sisters.

The staring went on for three minutes. No one made a sound as the elders were casting their initial judgement upon you.

With a loud sigh, Argusa spoke in Common Tongue, “We will hear their case. Tell us, why should we let you stay with us?”

Ghada took a cautious step forward, “My sisters and I can offer our services. Fumnanya is a skilled medic and scholar, Y/N is an amazing inventor and metalworker, and I am trained in trade deals and negotiations. Furthermore, all three of us are pretty well versed in combat and culinary arts.” She appealed while searching for any sign of approval from the elders.

“We can attest to their skills if it’s of any consequence.” Sam piped up when it got eerily quit again.

“Interesting. What do you think, Zadia? You’ve been awfully quiet.” Argusa inquired as she turned to the last elder.

“Hmm. They can stay with Bucky’s sisters and stepmother for now. We shall see about their services another time. Enjoy your stay, girls.” Zadia decided while motioning the group to leave.

The short excursion to Bucky’s family’s place was nice. More people warmed up to you (and by that I mean no one gave the three of you blatant glares of contempt), some even walked up and asked questions about you.

It was nice, but all that didn’t matter if Bucky’s family didn’t like you.

You kept telling yourself that you didn’t care what they thought of you, but you knew that was a lie. It angered you that you cared so much. He was the one that said no! Then why did it hurt so much?

Bucky’s sisters and stepmother lived on a farm near the outskirts of the settlement. It comprised of one large dwelling with four smaller ones surrounding it in a circular fashion. Outside of the dwelling circle were smaller cabins and huts for storing food, livestock, hunting tools and combat weapons, and stables for their dire wolves and eagle horses.

It was nice getting to know Bucky’s family. He had three younger sisters – Rebecca (Becca/Becky), Isolde, and Melisende (Meli) – along with Aspasia, his stepmother, a brother-in-law and three nieces and one nephew. They joked and laughed with you three about embarrassing hijinks the guys performed during their youth. You shared some of the your stories about Nephrashim and your former lives. They quickly accepted the three of you as family.

Furthermore, it was nice not having to worry about princess duties and royal decorum. All of you helped around the farm doing several chores for the first time; you didn’t have any hiccups besides Fumnanya freaking out over one of the eagle horses, but Sam handled it.

The only thing that could be better is the treatment you got from the rest of the settlement. Most of the inhabitants either scowled or just pretended that you three didn’t exist. Becca explained that it was because almost none of them had seen clothes and features (hair/eyes) like yours before, but you knew better. It was because they knew you were from Nephrashim. Bucky’s family never breathed a word about it outside the farm’s borders and you doubted the elders would say anything.

Well, you hoped that it would get better. And it did.

An outbreak of Sxtatzia (a cross between Smallpox and Influenza but for orcs) swept through the settlement. Most of the inhabitants who were infected got better except for Zadia.

Just about everyone had lost hope when Sam and Bucky marched in with Fumnanya and Meli in tow (Fumnanya had been teaching Meli some basic medical procedures and best practices). Fumnanya was able to work her magic after Sam threat-, ahem, insisted the guards let her look at the elder. It took the team four hours to create a viable and effective cure.

The day after Zadia was shown to be steadily getting better, the elders put the former princesses to work. Ghada assisted the traders in negotiations, trade deals and some body language/social cues that surprisingly holds up. Fumnanya taught the medics the different practices, poultices, and minor surgical procedures she knew. You taught the metal artisans what you knew about engineering and metalworking techniques.

The warriors couldn’t be happier with this new development. Well, maybe they missed having the three of you near them most of the time, especially Bucky.

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It had been three weeks and you still hadn’t talked to him besides an occasional sentence and he was getting pissed. Everyone else tip-toed around the subject of you two and it didn’t help that Steve and Sam were getting closer with their matches. Bucky had to go on hunting trips on his own if only to have a respite from the non-stop lovey-dovey chatter about their matches.

He finally got his chance when he was walking (lurking) around the blacksmiths/artisan section where you had your workshop set up. You were giving a welding demonstration when a little shit, Figrel’s younger brother, attempted to grab your ass.

Bucky strode right into the workshop, punched the little shit, threw you over his shoulder, and went on his merry way back to his dwelling on his family’s farm.

“What the fuck was that?!” you shouted as he plopped you onto a nest of cushions.

“I can’t let you go back there. All those eyes leering at you.”

“What do you care? You were the one who said no at the baths!” You countered as you stood up to take your leave.

You didn’t even make it past him because he growled in frustration and spun you around to face him.

He inwardly smirked at your whimpering, loving the way your lower lip quivered.

“Because you’re MINE!” Bucky bellowed.

You gazed up at him with coy smile, “Prove it,” and he smashed his lips against yours and pushed you onto his bed.

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Bucky may have had plenty of sexual partners, but he never kissed anyone...until you. Now he could see what all the fuss was about.

He pried open your mouth with his tongue and groaned when you accepted him while wrapping your arms around his thick neck. He loved the way your tongue danced with his and ended with your graceful but fierce submission.

Once he finally broke for air, Bucky moved to your jaw and neck gently nipping your skin with his tusks. He peppered you with kisses causing small moans to escape your desperate lips.

“Bucky please!” You pleaded as he sent waves of heat to your core.

Bucky stopped his touches, looked you right in the eye, and responded with, “Not yet,” and continued undoing you.

He ripped off your vest and worker blouse and hummed at the sight of your chest. Seeing you now, panting with a ‘giddy fucked’ face, looking at him with half-lidded eyes, made almost all the blood in his face go straight to his cock.

He dove into your chest, licking and gently sucking your breasts while you grabbed his soft dark brown (almost black) hair moaning his name. He worked your breasts so well that you came for the first time in your life within minutes.

“Bet you’ve never had one of your human boys do this to you, woman?” Bucky remarked with a smirk as he ripped off the rest of your clothing like it was tissue paper.

You could only gasp out a ‘No’ before Bucky sprinkled your midsection and hips with sloppy, desperate kisses (he used a lot of tongue) which again caused you moan. You wondered how much more you could take.

The Fae’s training never prepared you for this!

When he finally got to your thighs, Bucky hummed as he took in the sweet smell of your arousal. He faintly kissed and nipped at your inner thighs causing you to cry out in euphoria and impatience. He ignored your cries and gave your slit one long, slow lick.

You hissed at the sensation both from how amazing it felt and frustration from both Bucky and yourself for denying it from happening sooner.

Bucky’s enormous tongue attacked you pussy alternating between your clit and your folds. He soon added a thick finger to the mix causing to edge again and again until you beseeched him to let you come.

“You’re MINE princess! SAY IT!!”

You whimpered at his demand and Bucky stopped moving altogether.

“SAY IT!!”

You mewled, “I’m yours! I’m your bitch!”, you answered remembering what Becca said male Orcs loved to hear their women say.

Bucky chuckled and got up to remove his clothes and decided to make a show of it.

You were sober enough to gaze lustfully at his sleek, muscular, ruggedly handsome frame. You heard the women in the settlement gossip about how they thought the likes of Bucky is wasted on a ‘stupid trollop’ like you.

Checkmate bitches!

He removed his loincloth, his last bit of clothing, to reveal a behemoth of a cock.

You almost gulped at the size. You and your sisters have heard about cocks from gossiping maids and servants before the curse. Those ones sounded like they were a good size, but Bucky’s was on a much higher level.

Bucky, the lovable but cocky bastard, smirked, “Never seen one this big, huh?”

You bit your lip and looked down in shame, “I haven’t seen one at all.”

“And it’ll be the last one you’ll see, sweetheart.”

You let out an uncharacteristic giggle as Bucky parted your legs and lined his cock at your entrance.

He went in slowly as to not hurt you, but you still hissed at the size of him. You’ve never felt so full in your life.

“You’re doing so well for me,” Bucky grunted, “So tight!”

He filled you to the hilt and stayed there for a few minutes while he helped you get your breathing under control.

He started with slow strokes, savoring the way your pussy squeezed him, like you were made for him. He tried to keep it slow out of respect since it was for first time, but you felt so good so he picked up his pace.

The earlier feeling of discomfort at his size soon faded into euphoria. You never dreamt of pleasure like this. Now you understood what your and Bucky’s sisters were going on about. You mewled when Bucky hit your G-Post just right.

It wasn’t long before your first orgasm hit you like a tsunami and you convulsed around him a wave after wave of carnality washed over you. Soon Bucky came with a roar, shooting long thick ropes of his cum into you to the point of creating a bulge in your midsection and you passed out.

When you awoke, you felt a strong arm wrapped around you and a hand gently stroking your hair and back.

“I know you’re awake, sweetheart.”

You open your eyes and looked up to see love (actual love, not lust) and understanding etched in Bucky’’s features. You never knew you needed it, for someone to actually see you for yourself, not what you could give them.

He exhaled, “I’m sorry for the baths. It’s just that I didn’t want to have sex and then you’d leave me. I know it selfish, but-”

You stopped him with a soft kiss on the lips, “Why would I leave you? You actually see me for myself and not for my former station or as an annoyance. Okay, minus your sisters, stepmother, nieces and nephew because they are awesome.”

Bucky chuckled as his some of his long hair fell in front of his face, “I’ll be sure to tell them that, but not Becca. She has a big ego as it is.”

You giggled in response,”That’s fair,” you bit your lip and shot Bucky a coy look, “Do you want to go again?”

You didn’t need to ask him twice.

You two were at it for the rest of the day. The sounds of your lovemaking evident to the rest of the farm’s inhabitants.

“Finally!” Becca exclaimed as she and Ghada were sewing new clothes for the orclings.

Isolde chose that moment to walk into the common room, “Yes! I get my room back!”

The princesses and their matches were in bliss. Everything was right with the world...until it wasn’t.

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It was two months after you and Bucky officially got together. The whole settlement had gotten into an easy rhythm of things when one of scout’s warning horns went off.

“It’s the Horde!”

Everyone who was not fighting was running to the shelters. Bucky had asked you to stay with Becca’s children and mother. You wanted to get angry, but you knew it was because he wanted someone he trusted and loved to have his stepmother’s back. So you grabbed Waning Swan and ran to the shelters.

The battle lasted until morning and the settlement won, but at a price. Casualties came in at 80 dead and 200 wounded. The scariest thing wasn’t the gore or the corpses, it was the words, “He Knows”, scorched into the ground in front of the arena, or the Assembly Place.

Later that day, everyone who was able crowded into Assembly. Everyone’s eyes were boring into you. Fumnanya kept her head to Sam’s chest, but it wasn’t working.

“I knew those harlots were trouble the moment they strode into our settlement!” A woman who lost her mate to the battle shouted. A chorus of shouts of agreement followed.

Ghada was getting nervous as evident by her squeezing both yours and Steve’s hand. Luckily someone stood up for the group.

“I understand that you’ve suffered, Brida. I lost a son to the Horde, but we can’t blame it all on them. Sophronius has been after us for years. Be reasonable.” Agi stated while the guys gave him a nod of appreciation.

“Fuck that! You’re only saying that because you were they’re mates instructor and your nephew married one those mongrel bitches!” Baldo, another older warrior, exclaimed.

Big mistake.

It would take ten years to ascertain what really happened in the five minutes that followed. Baldo was thrown out of the Assembly, Brida was nursing a broken jaw, Becca had a wound on her left forearm from a sword, and Bucky had to be kept from attacking an idiot by Sam, Steve, Agi, and five other orcs. Everyone else was in an uproar and honestly, a full on fight was going to break out.

“SILENCE!” Argusa roared.

“We need to rebuild. Callisa, can we get a status report by the end of the day?”

Callisa was about to answer when someone demanded that they should do something about the Horde.

Steve gave everyone in your group a knowing and somewhat crestfallen look, “We’ll go to the Resistance and see if they can help.”

It took some minutes before Argusa gave the group an answer. The settlement tried to stay away from Sophronius and the war, but one could say their chickens have come home to roost.

“Alright then, you three take the girls and go first thing tomorrow.” Argusa decided.

“It’s not fair! You just got ‘ere, Auntie! Ingunn cried as she hugged Ghada. All of the orclings were crying and it was breaking your and your sister’s hearts. They’ve made such an impact in your lives that it hurt to leave them now.

“I’m sorry, love, but we have to leave. We’ll be back before you know it.” Ghada reassured her, but you had a feeling it would be a while before your group would return.

With one final hug and a pat, you said your goodbyes to the orclings. Meli, Isolde, Aspasia, Becca, and her mate, Gernot were waiting for you all at the gate.

“I know you’re sad about leaving us, but we will meet again my dears.” Aspasia uttered as she gave each of you a hug.

“Take care and keep these knuckleheads in line.” Becca joked while she gave Bucky a playful punch to the shoulder.

So with a heavy heart, you left the place that felt more like home in many ways than the place you were born.

The group headed southwest to the coordinates a trader said that he saw some Resistance Members. You were crossing a valley when an unscented flash landmine went off and everything went blinding white then black.

Next thing you knew, your group was in chains surrounded by a group protected by shadow...except for five individuals wearing necklaces and a medallion that belonged to…

“Mother!”

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papermoonloveslucy · 3 years

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LIZ HAS THE FLIMJABS

December 30, 1950

“Liz Has the Flimjabs” (aka “A Severe Case of Flimjabs”) is episode #112 of the radio series MY FAVORITE HUSBAND broadcast on December 30, 1950.

This was the 14th episode of the third season of MY FAVORITE HUSBAND. There were 31 new episodes, with the season ending on March 31, 1951.

Synopsis ~ Liz wants a mink coat from George, so she pretends to be sick in order to get his sympathy - and the coat! George is on to her tactics, and decides to give her the scare of her life - literally!

Note: This program served as the basis for the “I Love Lucy” episode “Lucy Fakes Illness” (ILL S1;E16) filmed on December 18, 1951 and first aired on January 28, 1952. The role of the Doctor was taken by Hal March, who was actually playing an actor friend of Ricky’s named Hal March pretending to be a doctor. On television, Lucy also adopts a psychological illness in addition to her physical ailments. There was no mention of Christmas or New Years on the television show.

“My Favorite Husband” was based on the novels Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, the Record of a Happy Marriage (1940) and Outside Eden (1945) by Isabel Scott Rorick, which had previously been adapted into the film Are Husbands Necessary? (1942). “My Favorite Husband” was first broadcast as a one-time special on July 5, 1948. Lucille Ball and Lee Bowman played the characters of Liz and George Cugat, and a positive response to this broadcast convinced CBS to launch “My Favorite Husband” as a series. Bowman was not available Richard Denning was cast as George. On January 7, 1949, confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat prompted a name change to Cooper. On this same episode Jell-O became its sponsor. A total of 124 episodes of the program aired from July 23, 1948 through March 31, 1951. After about ten episodes had been written, writers Fox and Davenport departed and three new writers took over – Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and head writer/producer Jess Oppenheimer. In March 1949 Gale Gordon took over the existing role of George’s boss, Rudolph Atterbury, and Bea Benaderet was added as his wife, Iris. CBS brought “My Favorite Husband” to television in 1953, starring Joan Caulfield and Barry Nelson as Liz and George Cooper. The television version ran two-and-a-half seasons, from September 1953 through December 1955, running concurrently with “I Love Lucy.” It was produced live at CBS Television City for most of its run, until switching to film for a truncated third season filmed (ironically) at Desilu and recasting Liz Cooper with Vanessa Brown.

MAIN CAST

Lucille Ball (Liz Cooper) was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. She began her screen career in 1933 and was known in Hollywood as ‘Queen of the B’s’ due to her many appearances in ‘B’ movies. With Richard Denning, she starred in a radio program titled “My Favorite Husband” which eventually led to the creation of “I Love Lucy,” a television situation comedy in which she co-starred with her real-life husband, Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz. The program was phenomenally successful, allowing the couple to purchase what was once RKO Studios, re-naming it Desilu. When the show ended in 1960 (in an hour-long format known as “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) so did Lucy and Desi’s marriage. In 1962, hoping to keep Desilu financially solvent, Lucy returned to the sitcom format with “The Lucy Show,” which lasted six seasons. She followed that with a similar sitcom “Here’s Lucy” co-starring with her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr., as well as Gale Gordon, who had joined the cast of “The Lucy Show” during season two. Before her death in 1989, Lucy made one more attempt at a sitcom with “Life With Lucy,” also with Gordon.

Richard Denning (George Cooper) was born Louis Albert Heindrich Denninger Jr., in Poughkeepsie, New York. When he was 18 months old, his family moved to Los Angeles. Plans called for him to take over his father’s garment manufacturing business, but he developed an interest in acting. Denning enlisted in the US Navy during World War II. He is best known for his roles in various science fiction and horror films of the 1950s. Although he teamed with Lucille Ball on radio in “My Favorite Husband,” the two never acted together on screen. While “I Love Lucy” was on the air, he was seen on another CBS TV series, “Mr. & Mrs. North.” From 1968 to 1980 he played the Governor on “Hawaii 5-0″, his final role. He died in 1998 at age 84.

Bea Benadaret (Iris Atterbury) was considered the front-runner to be cast as Ethel Mertz but when “I Love Lucy” was ready to start production she was already playing a similar role on TV’s “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” so Vivian Vance was cast instead. On “I Love Lucy” she was cast as Lucy Ricardo’s spinster neighbor, Miss Lewis, in “Lucy Plays Cupid” (ILL S1;E15) in early 1952. Later, she was a success in her own show, “Petticoat Junction” as Shady Rest Hotel proprietress Kate Bradley. She starred in the series until her death in 1968.

Ruth Perrott (Katie, the Maid) was also later seen on “I Love Lucy.” She first played Mrs. Pomerantz, a member of the surprise investigating committee for the Society Matrons League in “Pioneer Women” (ILL S1;E25), as one of the member of the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League in “Lucy and Ethel Buy the Same Dress” (ILL S3;E3), and also played a nurse when “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” (ILL S2;E16). She died in 1996 at the age of 96.

Bob LeMond (Announcer) also served as the announcer for the pilot episode of “I Love Lucy”. When the long-lost pilot was finally discovered in 1990, a few moments of the opening narration were damaged and lost, so LeMond – fifty years later – recreated the narration for the CBS special and subsequent DVD release.

Gale Gordon (Rudolph Atterbury) does not appear in this episode.

GUEST CAST

Frank Nelson (Dr. Stevenson) was born on May 6, 1911 (three months before Lucille Ball) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He started working as a radio announcer at the age of 15. He later appeared on such popular radio shows as “The Great Gildersleeve,” “Burns and Allen,” and “Fibber McGee & Molly”. Aside from Lucille Ball, Nelson is perhaps most associated with Jack Benny and was a fifteen-year regular on his radio and television programs. His trademark was playing clerks and other working stiffs, suddenly turning to Benny with a drawn out “Yeeeeeeeeees?” Nelson appeared in 11 episodes of “I Love Lucy”, including three as quiz master Freddy Fillmore, and two as Ralph Ramsey, plus appearance on “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” - making him the only actor to play two different recurring roles on “I Love Lucy.” Nelson returned to the role of the frazzled Train Conductor for an episode of “The Lucy Show” in 1963. This marks his final appearance on a Lucille Ball sitcom.

The doctor’s surname may be a reference to noted costume designer Edward Stevenson, who designed gowns for Lucille Ball in more than a dozen RKO films and would eventually become costume designer of “I Love Lucy” after the departure of Elois Jenssen in 1955.

EPISODE

ANNOUNCER: “And now, let’s look in on the Coopers. It’s evening, and Liz and George are sitting in the living room admiring their Christmas tree."

George wonders if it is time to take the Christmas tree down but Liz doesn’t want to. They agree to put away their presents instead and start to talk about the gifts they didn’t give or get.

Liz nearly bought George a set of matching golf clubs. George says he nearly bought her a mink jacket. He says he saw it in the window at Millers, but realized he couldn’t afford it. Liz sadly reminds him that she has never had a fur coat and wonders if they could afford it if they all their Christmas gifts to the store. George says it still wouldn’t be enough, but Liz wants to wear something special to the Atterbury’s New Year’s Eve party.

Next morning, in the kitchen, Katie the Maid asks Liz why she is so sad. Liz tells her about her mink jacket dreams. Liz solicits Katie’s opinion on how she can’t best get George to get her a mink jacket in time for the party. Liz decides to play sick since George always gets her what she wants when she’s ill.

After dinner, Liz and George contemplate what to do. Liz suggests going to the movies to see Harvey starring Jimmy Stewart, which is playing at the Strand.

Harvey is a comedy about a man whose best friend is a six-foot tall imaginary rabbit. It premiered just ten days earlier before this broadcast and starred James Stewart. The film won an Oscar for Josephine Hull. The screenplay was based on the 1944 Broadway play of the same name by Mary Chase which won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Before Liz can tell George the second feature, she starts to writhe in pain! Amid moans and groans, Liz details the pain for George. She says she used to have these attacks as a child. When she says the only thing that sometimes helps is little gifts to make her happy, George gets suspicious. He quickly leaves the room to make a phone call, which Liz thinks is to buy her a mink jacket, but he has actually called the doctor!

End of Part One

Bob LeMond presents a live Jell-O commercial, giving a basic recipe for preparation of all delicious six flavors!

ANNOUNCER: “As we look in on the Coopers once again, Liz is pretending to be sick and George, who is worried about her, has called the doctor.”

The doorbell rings and George admits Dr. Stevenson (Frank Nelson). Before seeing Liz, George tips him off that Liz may have a rare disease and that the only cure is a mink coat! George asks him to give her a good scare and the Doctor agrees to play along.

Entering the bedroom, Liz immediately tells the Doctor she feels much better. But after a quick exam, the Doctor diagnoses Liz with a rare tropical disease from the West Indies called the ‘Flimjabs’. The only cure is to operate and remove her ‘torkle’ but warns her that she will never be able to ‘yammle’ again. The Doctor explains that ‘yammling’ is an involuntary peristalsis of the transverse clavis.

GEORGE: “Doctor, do you have to remove the whole torkle?” DOCTOR: “Maybe we’ll be lucky and can save half of it. After all, half a torkle is better than none.” LIZ: “Well, I should say so! I’d hate to think of never yammeling again!”

The Doctor says that they must now wait 24 hours and see if she turns green.

DOCTOR: “If you turn green, three hours later (snaps his fingers) gone.” LIZ: (snaps) “Gone?” DOCTOR: (snaps) “Gone.”

For the television script, the ‘Flimjabs’ was renamed the 'Gobloots’ - a rare tropical disease that carried into America on the hind legs of the 'boo-shoo bird.’ It can necessitate a person having to undergo a 'zorchectomy’ – total or partial removal of the 'zorch’. Even if doctors are able to save half a person’s 'zorch,’ the patient will never be able to 'trummle’ again. 'Trummling’ is a mysterious involuntary internal process. Finally, if you turn green while suffering from the 'gobloots’ you will be dead in 30 minutes!

Iris Atterbury drops by to see Liz on her way to the Bridge Club meeting. Liz tells her that she has been diagnosed with the Flimjabs.

IRIS: “Oh, how exciting! This will make Betty Ricky’s gallstones look sick! She’ll be absolutely green.” LIZ: “She's not the only one. That’s one of the danger signs. I may turn green.” IRIS: “With a green face and red hair, you’ll be out of this world.” LIZ: “Yes, that’s what I’m afraid of.”

Iris is overcome with emotion at the thought of losing Liz. She doesn’t want to leave, but the ice cream for the Bridge Club meeting is in the car and it’s melting!

That night, Doctor Stevenson returns to check on Liz. Answering the door, George confesses that he’s put a green light bulb in Liz’s bedroom light. As soon as George turns on the lights, Liz shrieks seeing her green hands! Her face and hair have turned green, too! Liz thinks the men have Flimjabs too, because they are also green, but then the truth sets in.

LIZ: “Oh, no! This is the end! I’m looking at the world through green colored eyeballs!”

Liz dramatically declares that she’s dying. George accuses her of being over-dramatic.

LIZ: “I’m sorry, George. But I don’t die every day and it’s new to me.”

Before her imminent demise, Liz confesses to all the car accidents she’s had and hidden by having the car fixed without telling him.

LIZ: “In fact, the only thing left of the original car you bought is the ashtray in the back seat!”

Then Liz bravely confesses to pretending to be sick to get him to buy her a mink coat. George also needs to make a confession: it was all a trick. There is no such thing as ‘Flimjabs’ and the light is from a green light bulb!

The phone rings and it is Iris, tearfully calling from the Bridge Club meeting. The girls have just had a memorial ceremony for Liz by turning her chair to the wall and smashing her teacup in the fireplace. Before Liz can tell Iris that it was a joke, she learns that they all chipped in and bought her a goodbye present: a mink coat! Liz hangs up in tears. George is confused.

GEORGE: “Isn’t that what you wanted?” LIZ: “Yeah, but I have to die to get it!”

END OF EPISODE

In the live Jell-O commercial, Lucille Ball and Bob LeMond play a couple of nomads lost in the desert. Lucy uses her ‘Isabella Clump’ voice as ‘Smith’. Bob is looking for his camp, near a big dune.

LUCY / ‘SMITH’: “A dune? What’s a dune?” BOB: “What’s a dune????” LUCY / ‘SMITH’: “I dunno. What’s a-dune with you?”

Smith sees a mirage - a big bowl of Jell-O! After describing the six delicious flavors, Bob suggests they go home.

BOB: “Go home? We’re lost in the desert!” LUCY / ‘SMITH’: “Why don’t we each take one of those cars.” BOB: “What cars?” LUCY / ‘SMITH’: “The ones over there. That’s a two-car mirage!”

The same date this episode was broadcast, columnist Sid Shalit in the New York Daily News reported that a television situation comedy was being prepared starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in the mold of “My Favorite Husband”. Clearly, the radio series was winding down. This was the final episode of 1950 with only 16 episodes left.

Meanwhile, in addition to radio and television, Ball was on the nation’s movie screens in two 1950 films: The Fuller Brush Girl and Fancy Pants.

#My Favorite Husband #Liz has the Flimjabs #I Love Lucy #Lucy Fakes Illness #Lucille Ball #Richard Denning #Bea Benadaret #Ruth Perrott #Bob Lemond #Radio #CBS #Jello #1950 #Harvey #Jimmy Stewart #Frank Nelson #Fuller Brush Girl #Fancy Pants

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blooddrop-palace · 4 years

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Project Updates - What to Look Forward To

<3 Hello all! I've realized (humbly) that I have a small following of very nice people that seem quite interested in what I've written so far, and after seeing some mutuals post update-status posts, I thought I should share what's going on with my projects, also. (Thanks for the encouragement, @queenmuzz!)

Updated Dec-10-20

Sons of Fortune

Probably somehow my main focus now, though I am steadily working on other works. Currently working on the “In Between” special short before I start on Chapter 12.

I would also like to talk a little bit about my plans for this story: if anyone has paid attention to this story's tags, yes, I am touching up on the plots of most of the games. In fact, all of them, and the anime. (I already dealt with DMC4. No, I will not tear apart Fortuna lol.) Not all relevant tags are in, yet, because small spoilers. It looks like it's going to be a long while before I even get to the Temen-ni-gru, though. (There is a reason why that event is getting pushed back.) I want to have fun with the family fluff that is the twins each learning how to parent, first.

Hell Froze Over, and We Shall Reignite It

The drama of it all! Dante and Vergil are finally back from Hell, and Nero doesn’t even know his mother is now standing right in front of him. Meanwhile, even I’m anticipating seen how Snow and Dante is going to handle the obvious things currently unsaid... and I have a feeling a small measure of stupidity is still going to be involved.

Current chapter progress: Outline complete.

It's going to feel so interesting, shifting from "Fortune" back to Reignite. I get to write Sera and Vergil falling in love all over again, with a different set of circumstances. Whoa.

And, and... Nero meeting Sera... odd that I'm saying this as the writer, but I have a "I hope he likes his mom" feeling going on.

Also, no doubt Dante's brain is going to 404 when he sees Snow.

Nico prepares popcorn.

This is Not an Office Rom-Com

I have... about 8 new skits planned out. Nothing more written just yet.

That’s all I’m saying about this for now. =P

Hierarchy of Kings

Purely indulgent M/M romance of Vergil and an OC, existing all thanks to

@wordborne

Working on chapter 2.

I know I said 3 chapters only. I might have lied depending on how much I want to write. It's supposed to be just... awkward fluff of a listless part-devil who somewhat-recently lost his mate, got in a bit of a tiff with his brother, and now his children are trying to set him up with the prospective-king-of-hell, Vergil.

I think about this one a lot but I haven't written anything new for it yet, only because "Fortune" is taking over my life right now, haha.

Through the Lens of the Beholder

Okay, so...This story has no real plot. As a result, my drive for it is purely down to "if I think of a badass or cool photograph to describe." There is a TINY bit of plot. Only a little. And I don't know when I'll update. But this is why I'm trying not to START new projects. Four is a lot already! But because this one is supposed to be simpler than the other two, I will most likely finish this one before the others, so I can open a new project.

---------------

Speaking of new projects... Here are things ideas bouncing through my head:

- I still have a prompt from @maybeishouldwait sitting in my inbox. I WILL have it done one day, when I find the perfect way to write it.

A whole, entirely royally late set of Dadgil week fics. Yep. I want to write them. They just won’t be on time.

Written in Ink

A plot-less post-DMC5 story.

I say plot-less. There is a plot. The plot is:

Dante: Damn it, Verge, are you trying to turn my office into a zoo??

In which Vergil compulsively starts contracting strong demons he's defeated, left and right, because he's discovered "the joy of pets." The demons all take on a dark animistic form and things get wild.

A Persona and DMC fusion/AU

I have no title for this yet, and I absolutely cannot start this one until I have finished one of my other big projects. This one will take a lot of big planning, because I am making a new plot, using the mechanics of Persona, with DMC characters and setup.

What I want to write, is a teenage Nero as the protagonist, trying to solve a mystery... probably starting with the sudden disappearance of his mother. (Most likely Sera.) And he meets a lot of "new" people, and even finds new family... and yes, he will find his dad. (I'm thinking he'll know about Vergil, though. At least in name and a photo? Isn't that an interesting difference?)

For those of you not familiar with Persona, the major theme I really want to play with is that of the protagonist growing as a person (and in power) by befriending different people that helps them grow as a person. Each party member and important NPC is represented by a Tarot Card, signifying the type of journey the protagonist (The Fool) "embarks" with that character. There is growth in both the protagonist and that characters.

Again, this is ambitious to try and pull off... but it's in the back of my head. I'll focus on it once I've cleared some other stuff.

Sugar Sweet

A somewhat short-chapter series reader fic... of a surgeon/doctor!reader (barely 30 and good at what you do) who often saves the lives of shady people (e.g. mafia) because you care about saving lives, not the politics. But you do make good money out of it. (Hey, you gotta be at least a bit morally ambiguous if you're going to deal with devils.)

You meet one mess of a young mercenary named Dante, who is totally not human and deals with things like having bullets healed into his back, and he can't reach them to cut them out.

Dante doesn't care about bills for his office, or a lot of the debts in his life. You don't know where his money is going, or if he even makes much money at all (for the kind of specialty work he does? Money's going somewhere, but that's none of your business.)

You won't pay Dante's bills, or his debts, but he will accept pizza and ice cream. And new parts for his jukebox. And maybe a motorcycle. Or a new coat. Or a new car...

And you might complain to him about your dumb patients. Or just listen to him talk about his job. Or you two watch a movie together.

And this just continues. For years.

Tokusatsu DMC fusion/AU

So. First thing's first: I'm a big fan of Sentai/Tokusatsu. What is that, you might ask? It's a Japanese genre, and if you're familiar with Power Rangers, that's derived from Sentai.

Basically: Masked heroes with transformation gadgets, sometimes with motorcycles, fighting against evil. ("Magical girls" but strictly the opposite, a lot more physical combat involved, may involve upgrade gadgets, and not strictly limited to male heroes though mostly a male cast. Also not strictly for male-only audience. Girls like the eye-candy, too. :eyes-emoji:)

Why am I thinking about this?

Because I have found out that: Vergil's VA, Dan Southworth, was the Quantum Ranger (WHICH WAS RED). Nero's VA, Johnny Yong Bosch, was a Black Ranger and a Green Ranger.

...And Dante's VA, Reuben Langdon, had a role in a Japanese Toku show as "B-Fighter Yanma" forever ago???? (HE WAS BLUE!!)

What am I going to do with this info? I'll let you know later. But my Sentai/Toku-loving little heart is about to burst with hyperfixation overlap.

If I ever write this out, expect it to be just as cheesy as an actual Kamen Rider show. Or, at the very least, expect some art. I love Kamen Rider stuff!

Family Fantasy MMO

Snow introduces Dante, Vergil, Nero, and Kyrie to Final Fantasy 14 (because that’s the MMO I play) for family bonding. Yep. Mainly for silly indulgence.

Stardew Valley Visit

Post DMC5, Vergil and Dante accidentally end up going on a vacation when they try to leave Hell. No pairing with the farmer, but instead just a relaxing and somewhat introspective moment of the boys being stuck with most of their power temporarily sealed, learning how to take care of a farm, and maybe do a bit of healing by interacting with the townsfolk while they try to find out where their swords went and how to get home.

Re-Colourize

Otherwise what I would call the “re-colour of Nero and Snow” AU.

What if Vergil was found by Kassy’s family and raised among them? What if Dante ended up briefly in Fortuna and then convinced Sera to run away from the island?

What if we have a Nero who, though brash, is outwardly more soft and open-hearted, and has red-orange and gold colours instead? What if we have a Snow who is named Chiyuki, who wields her katana more like Vergil does, and has a more ice-queen aura about her, and has a teal and blue colouring about her?

This is my excuse to switch up the pairings, but also write Vergil being taught to fight more like an assassin.

Raised by the Blade

Imagine: Yamato, cracked, broken, and separated from her Master... desperately searching for a way to get back to him, and ended up washed up on the shores of Fortuna. Humanoid, but clearly not if anyone saw the cracked, broken, and no-normal look of “shattered” in her torso, that she would have to keep covered.

Made from the power of Sparda, she is pale with white hair... and she finds herself drawn to the orphanage...

Where she finds the toddler that is Nero.

Devil Hunters’ Podcast

Nico “accidentally” finds entertainment in recording the Sparda Family arguments as they talk about hunting; after all, they all share one braincell.

Ascended Monochrome

A white angel remains by the side of Nelo Angelo. Mundus was not pleased by the behavior of his second creation, from the human woman that he had picked up with the treacherous Son of Sparda. But he later discovered that by using her, he could keep Nelo Angelo complacent. Eventually, underestimating love will be his downfall.

Fall to Royalty

A story of where Vergil wins against Mundus the first time, and takes the throne of Hell. But what is he to do next? Eventually, ruling Hell seemed meaningless when there was no one by his side, so he goes to seek out the Lady Knight that he had vowed to never think of or go back to unless he had obtained the power he sought.

Doppelganger Woes

So, I heard Capcom retconned Gilver to be some sort of imitation created by Mundus. I’m all for this! And I’m going to DO something with this.

Side-Project: DMC Tarot List

I started on this maybe months ago; and I have a tentative list oh what characters go with what card and a few detailed descriptions. I think I should confer with

@harlot-of-oblivion

at some point about this, and anyone else interested in, well, Tarot stuff.

#devil may cry #fanfiction #Project Update

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kcwcommentary · 5 years

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VLD8x06 – “Genesis”

8x06 – “Genesis”

I’ve watched this whole series, so I know I’ve seen this episode before, but going into this rewatch, I totally didn’t remember what this episode is about. Like, at all. The title “Genesis” makes no sense. I guess it’s being used to mean a beginning, but nothing is beginning in this episode. Honerva has been well into her plan for a while now. Nothing that Honerva accomplishes in this episode marks a beginning of anything. We are in the middle of things, not at the beginning of anything. The title just does not work.

This is an absolute mess of an episode. Once the story got well into the events at Oriande, I finally remembered that this is when Honerva gets Sincline. But what’s so confusing is that Sincline acts as if it is still being controlled by Lotor. Sincline refuses to shoot Allura, as if it’s still piloted by Lotor. Merla (or some miscellaneous female Colony Altean; I couldn’t tell for sure if it was Merla) interprets Sincline as being Lotor. Sincline stabs the mecha piloted by the male Colony Altean, like its being piloted by Lotor. Honerva speaks as if Sincline is being piloted by Lotor. Everything in this episode suggests Lotor is alive inside the Sincline. But this show eventually shows Lotor’s melted corpse inside. So, he can’t be alive and acting in this episode. This is a fundamental inconsistency in the writing.

No wonder many members of the audience feel this season was re-edited super late in the production of the season. I think I still would need to have someone who worked on the show provide an explanation for why such a change would have happened in order to think it did happen. I think the easiest explanation is that the executive producers, the story editor, and the writers just completely lost control of their storytelling and they didn’t care to regain control. I think because the series was ending. and they stopped caring about working on this show, they just totally half-assed everything. They didn’t care if the story made sense. They were just filling out time and completing their contractual obligation.

If they did make this season and episodes like this one and think that they were being coherent in their storytelling, then they have severe preceptive and interpretive problems. This episode is a storytelling disaster.

Staff meeting: We know now Honerva has been to certain places. Pidge says, “The wormhole signatures we discovered on Olkarion: they were a map to where the Robeasts were headed. They must’ve been waiting this entire time!” I don’t understand this conclusion Pidge is making. What is it that she thinks indicates Honerva’s forces actively waiting for something? And what is that supposed something Pidge thinks they were waiting for? Veronica reports that Honerva’s mechas are on planets, but not yet attacking them, instead just sitting there surrounded by a particle barrier. Now, with that report, a report given after Pidge’s comment, it would make sense to subsequently comment about them waiting for something. It’s like Pidge’s reaction is out of order with the knowledge that would prompt her reaction.

Meanwhile, on Oriande in front of the pyramid, Honerva gives a speech. I still think that Honerva’s voice sounds strange. She’s so emotionless, like she’s totally bored with what all is going on. “For eons our people have suffered, cast out from our home,” she says, but it has the same emotional energy as someone talking about needing to go to the store to buy toilet paper. “We have sacrificed much; you have sacrificed much,” she says. I guess the Colony Alteans don’t know that Honerva/Haggar was a participant in committing genocide, right? Who’s this “we” she’s talking about: She hasn’t sacrificed a damned thing. She’s been the one violently taking things from others. This series expects me to sympathize with her, but she’s a total hypocrite.

“Lotor gave more than any of us, and today, his ultimate wish will be fulfilled,” Honerva says. What wish is she referencing? Because his wish, expressed multiple times by him throughout the show, was to find a death-less source of quintessence so that he could try to change Galra culture to be less violent, so that he could show them a different way of achievement. I haven’t heard Honerva say anything that sounds like anything Lotor revealed about his motivations and goals. Honerva says, “The Galra will pay for what they have done to the Alteans. The end for anyone that dares oppose us is near.” Lotor had serious problems with the Galra, but it wasn’t until right before he died that he became totally anti-Galra, so that’s hardly his long-pursued goal. Even this season in 8x02 “Shadows” showed how much Lotor was invested in trying to show the Galra that there was a better way for the Galra to do things. It’s like Honerva, like the show’s executive producers and writers, is ignoring what Lotor himself explained again and again what his goals were.

The mechas on the various planets start acting, draining the planets of quintessence. Keith suggests splitting everyone up, one Lion per mecha to try to slow them down, which given their combined difficulty taking on one mecha at the end of season seven, I don’t know how Keith thinks that would work. Shiro suggests they use their whole force, Voltron and Atlas combined, and go from mecha to mecha. Allura stands up and says, “No, we must attack Oriande directly.” She goes on to describe what she thinks Honerva is doing. Honerva can create wormholes. She says that the Olkari cubes can “mimic and intensify energy at a distance.” Has that really been established about the cubes? Because I just remember them basically parrying any attack the Lions/Voltron tried until Pidge zapped the cubes with her plant cannon. (Why does she not try her plant cannon on the cubes when they get to the white hole?) Allura points out that the mechas effectively do the same work as the komar did. “Honerva is going to concentrate energy from across the universe to Oriande. She’s making a komar magnitudes larger than anything we’ve ever seen. Something that can drain the quintessence from an entire galaxy.” Everyone has big shocked looks on their faces, Coran quietly says, “That monster,” and I’m left just not feeling any emotion in this threat. It’s too generic, too cliché, too I’m-going-to-destroy-the-world-bwa-ha-ha! The threat just feels flat, and a huge part of why is because this story is not connected to the personal stories of any of the main characters. The only character who’s connected to this story is Honerva herself, and I do not care about her.

Keith says that Voltron will go to Oriande. Shiro says the Atlas will go too. Do any of them remember how they couldn’t actually get to Oriande and only Allura and Lotor were able to go? Is their plan to just get to the white hole and sit there, wait, and hope Honerva and her forces come out? Keith says to tell Matt that he and the Rebels have to handle evacuating planets. Why just the Rebels instead of the entire Voltron Coalition? I get why Shiro says that their immediate Voltron/Atlas strike force cannot wait for reinforcements from the Coalition before going to Oriande, but wouldn’t this still be an all-hands-on-deck moment? Shouldn’t the entire Coalition be responding, and thus helping with evacuations, not just the Rebels? I’ve never really felt this show depicted the Coalition acting as a large force well at all.

The Atlas wormholes the Rebels to wherever they’re going. Allura gives a voice over about how bad Honerva is. As speech like this should energize me, get me excited for the coming battle scenes, but the show has failed to set up what’s coming, so I’m not emotionally connected to what’s happening. The closest Allura’s speech got to having this conflict be relevant to the main characters is Allura feeling like Honerva’s manipulation of the Colony Alteans is an attack on Allura’s people. Aside from them being Alteans though, I don’t know how Allura is emotionally attached to them. Romelle and Luca are the only two she’s ever encountered, and as far as I can remember, Romelle is the only one Allura has ever talked to, and she’s never really talked to her about the Colony beyond listening to Romelle’s exposition about it in 6x04 “The Colony.” Allura has never gone to the Colony, Keith having told her it was too difficult to get to when she suggested going in 8x04 “Battle Scars.” We know the Colony is empty because Kolivan said a team he sent reported it so in 7x05 “The Ruins” (so it wasn’t too difficult to get to, despite Keith saying no to Allura’s wanting to go there). This show really hasn’t had Allura actively trying to find out what happened at the Colony and find the Colony Alteans, so, aside from them being the same species, I don’t know where Allura’s feeling connected to the Colony Alteans comes from.

The episode does a bit of reestablishing the idea of Honerva as a foil for Allura, juxtaposing them both using the two-handed pedestal device used to make wormholes, Allura on the Atlas, Honerva at the pyramid. The mechas start blasting their gathered quintessence from their planets through space to Honerva (so these quintessence blasts have to be moving really, really faster than light).

The Atlas arrives at the white hole. There’s some kind of interference that is causing some miscellaneous problem. Slav freaks out over socks. I liked Slav when he was introduced in 2x10 “Escape from Beta Traz,” but the timing/tonality of having him right now really feels distracting from what’s supposed to be a big, dramatic plotline.

The Atlas gets as close as it can to the white hole and can’t go any further. They see the Olkari cubes hanging out closer to the white hole. Veronica says she’s “picking something up. It’s coming from the white hole,” and Allura instantly thinks that it’s the guardian, the White Lion. So, (the clone of) Shiro never told Allura that he saw Honerva come to Oriande and kill the White Lion in 6x01 “Omega Shield” then?

The Atlas transforms to “clear a path” for Voltron. Voltron goes to launch from the Atlas, and Keith says, “I’m deferring command to Allura.” Rereading this commentary to edit and revise after finishing the episode, I don’t remember Allura giving any commands whatsoever, so I have no idea why Keith’s line even exists. Honerva’s mechas shoot the Atlas, which doesn’t seem to even feel being hit, and tries to counter by punching the mechas. Serious, punching?

Voltron forms and heads toward the white hole. Is it that they’re able to go in now because the White Lion isn’t there? They really could use a line where they put that fully together because otherwise they should think that they wouldn’t be able to get Voltron in the white hole since Voltron wasn’t allowed in when they tried back in 5x06 “White Lion.”

Beams of purple energy from the mechas destroying those planets come in, hit the Olkari cubes, and a purple ring forms from cube to cube around the white pillar (for lack of a better word) that comes off the white hole. The cubes and the ring bend the energy so that it travels down through the white pillar into the white hole. Voltron nearly gets hit by that energy.

“We got to move!” Keith says, and the show has Voltron once again use it’s formerly-special but now common solution: Voltron forms its large wings and blasts off.

The purple energy hits the pyramid, Honerva screams and her eyes turn yellow, the pyramid starts to glow. And suddenly, the White Lion is in a purple-red ball of energy. What? Seriously, what is going on? So, Honerva did not kill the White Lion in “Omega Shield?” She went to Oriande, she entered the white hole, she walked into the pyramid, she fought and seemed to destroy the stone statues, Shiro saw the White Lion jump toward him mouth first, so that had to have been from Honerva fighting the White Lion, then Honerva walked out of the pyramid surrounded by floating bits of energy, clearly successful at what she had done.

So, is it that the EPs, the story editor, and the writer for this episode didn’t remember the show already had Honerva fight the White Lion in “Omega Shield,” or is it that what Honerva did in “Omega Shield” was so badly written and depicted that they just didn’t properly show us what it was she was doing in that episode? We know from Allura’s time facing the White Lion that it only gave her knowledge of Altean alchemy because she was going to let it kill her. We know that Honerva is not the type of person who would do what Allura did in that moment. At the end of “Omega Shield” we are shown Honerva coming out of the pyramid successful. The bits of floating light around her in that moment was a visual signifier that she had acquired power, so she had to have killed the White Lion then in order to take that knowledge from him. So why is the White Lion now still alive? Are we really supposed to believe that Honerva has been merely imprisoning the White Lion in a bubble for over three years (and for 25 episodes)?

My guess, the show’s creative team totally forgot they already had Honerva face the White Lion. There’s been so many big events in the show, the character assassination of Lotor, the reveal of the clone, the mostly meaningless first half of season seven, the invasion and occupation of Earth, and the new season wasting time, and finally getting around to what Honerva is trying to do, that I can so easily imagine they forgot “Omega Shield.” They certainly never explained why the clone could actually see what Honerva was doing at Oriande. That’s one of my biggest frustrations with this show: that so many things happen, like the clone’s visions of Honerva at Oriande, like the whole reason Honerva had a ton of Shiro clones created in the first place, that things happen, they’re not explained, and then they’re forgotten by the show’s writers.

Actually, let me qualify this for the particular issue of the demise of the White Lion: the show’s writer, singular. “Omega Shield” was written by Mitch Iverson. This episode “Genesis” was written by Mitch Iverson. So, it’s not like one writer wrote one episode and another writer, writing this one, just didn’t pay attention to what someone else wrote for the show. Both episodes were written by the same person. So, he should have been able to remember what he had written previously.

“The Guardian: She’s draining its quintessence,” Allura says. Yeah, she already did that years ago though. Honerva screams some more. Allura cries out, “No!” as it happens. It’s supposed to be a moment that has significant emotion to it, it’s supposed to feel like a loss, but it doesn’t, and a lot of the reason why is because this has already happened 25 episodes ago. When Honerva walked out of the pyramid in “Omega Shield” she was surrounded by those little lights floating upward, which is the same imagery used here in this episode for Honerva’s mechas taking the quintessence from their respective planets. So, in “Omega Shield,” Honerva came out of her confrontation with the White Lion having gained quintessence, so if she hadn’t absorbed the White Lion’s quintessence then, what quintessence was it that she had floating around her when she came out of the pyramid?

Also, what is the logic behind what’s happening right now. Mechas have taken quintessence from four planets, beamed it to the cubes around Oriande, Honerva is using that quintessence to attack the White Lion. Allura says that Honerva is taking the White Lion’s quintessence. So, Honerva is using quintessence to take quintessence? Also, what happened to the conclusion that what Honerva was doing was creating a structure that she could use to drain an entire galaxy of its quintessence? What she’s doing has nothing to do with draining galaxies of quintessence.

Just seven minutes ago, Allura said this: “Honerva is going to concentrate energy from across the universe to Oriande. She’s making a komar magnitudes larger than anything we’ve ever seen. Something that can drain the quintessence from an entire galaxy.” But now, it’s not about draining galaxies but about draining the White Lion. I don’t even know how a professional writer could ever write this inconsistently. And where is the show’s quality control? Where were the story editor and the executive producers?

More mechas at the pyramid attack Voltron, Merla (I think) yelling, “Defend our goddess!” I really don’t like these Alteans. If this show was going to have villainous Alteans, why couldn’t have been the Altean Empire from the alternate reality in 3x04 “Hole in the Sky” because they actually seemed like they could be interesting. Merla and the Colony Alteans seem unintentionally funny rather than threatening because of how ludicrously over-the-top and undeveloped they are as characters.

The Atlas keeps trying to punch these much smaller, thus quicker, mechas, and I don’t know why. Did I miss something that said the Atlas loses use of its cannons when in mecha-mode? One mecha does the semi-holographic size increase projection of itself that we saw these mechas able to do in 7x13 “Lions’ Pride Part 2” and stabs the Atlas in the back.

Shiro orders, “Scramble the MFEs. We need their precise striking ability.” These people have access to science fiction weaponry, so that means their weapons should be better than what weapons we have in the real world today. That means, that the Atlas’s own targeting systems should be more than enough for precision attacks. Just because the MFEs are on fighter craft that are smaller and more maneuverable than the Atlas has nothing to do with a weapons system’s precision. The targeting system of the weapons system alone would be responsible for the weapon’s precision. The Atlas has not been shown using literally any weapons in this fight. All the Atlas has done is swing its fists and hit nothing. This is just an absolutely contrived way to get the MFEs into the story and to have Shiro and/or the Atlas look incompetent. This is really just to have the episode spinning its wheels, to look like the story is progressing while it’s actually not advancing whatsoever.

Also, in the hangar, why are there people floating as if there’s no gravity yet the MFE fighter craft are sitting on the floor like there is gravity?

Shiro tells the MFEs to attack the opening in the mechas’ chest, but these mechas haven’t drained any quintessence to be able to power their chest hole cannon, what makes Shiro think they’re going to do so that he can order the MFEs to target that spot? Shiro says, “Give them heavy covering fire so they can get in close.” But the Atlas then fires no weapons. The MFEs fly a significant distance to one of the mechas who’s just wildly firing its blaster all over the place at no targets whatsoever. Seriously, it’s shooting at chunks of rock in a completely different direction from where the Atlas is. So, if Shiro’s right in this statement (though not in the current animation) that the Atlas has weapons it can fire right now, why hasn’t it been firing any weapons?

Cut to Zethrid, Ezor, and the Olkari sitting in the brig. Did anyone really want to see them again? I didn’t even want to see them again last episode, and now we get to have even more with these side characters. The Olkari says, “I think we’re in the middle of a battle.” I think the writer thought this line made the Olkari sound fun and clever, when it makes him seem slow since the battle has been going on for a long time already, now is not when he’d be noticing it. Zethrid says, “We need to get out of here!” Why? Ezor says, “No,” and sounds really weird doing it.

So, they break out of prison. Veronica reports, “Zethrid and the Olkari have escaped their cells. It looks like they’re on their way to the bridge.” How do they know where the bridge is and how to get to it? This is the first time they’ve been on the Atlas, and I’m pretty sure that it’s not standard procedure to give prisoners a tour of key, secure locations like the bridge of the ship.

“We don’t have time for this!” Shiro shouts. Shiro’s comment sums up a lot of my opinion about scenes and episodes this season.

Apparently, there are no security personnel outside the bridge. Everyone pulls a gun and points it at the door after Shiro does so and says to “prepare for a breech.” Shiro holds his gun in his left hand. Last episode, Shiro held his gun in his right, prosthetic hand. Are you telling me that Shiro is equally skilled with a gun in both hands? More likely is that the animators just never got on the same page about how Shiro, with his overly large new hand, would use a gun. Also, because of the ludicrous design of his new prosthetic, in the shot of him pointing his gun at the door, it looks like he doesn’t have a right arm.

Zethrid opens the door and says, “We’re here to help.” If she knew the Atlas’s layout well enough to get from the brig to the bridge and knew its systems well enough to break out of the cell and into the bridge, then she could have used the Atlas’s internal communication system to contact the bridge and offer this help long before she got here. This is absolutely contrived writing in order to fake the audience into thinking Zethrid’s here to attack. But surprise! everyone – you are surprised by this plot twist, aren’t you? – she’s not here to be a villain now.

So, Zethrid came all the way here because she thinks her Olkari technology pirate can help with the Atlas. I know the show last episode had Pidge refer to this Olkari as “a genius,” but seriously? Zethrid this whole time was just totally assuming the Olkari could help.

This is such a freaking waste of time.

Shiro, who realistically would not have agreed to this, lets the Olkari mess with the Atlas’s systems. The Olkari says, “Excellent job fusing Earth technology with Altean magic.” How does this Olkari know anything about either Earth technology or Altean magic. He has never been to Earth nor has he been in position to study Altean magic. There is absolutely zero reason for his character to have said that line. He touches Shiro’s console and the greenish white circuit board lines throughout the ship start glowing. How? I know that the Olkari did the hand-touch-glow thing with their own technology, but that was their technology. This is technology that this guy has never seen before. Is the show trying to say that this Olkari is capable of producing Altean magic himself?

The MFEs are flying around being shot at. I thought they were supposed to be in play because they were capable of more precise weapons fire than the Atlas, but they’re not using any weapons whatsoever. If the MFEs don’t have access to the target they were sent to shoot, and they’re not shooting anything else, then why are they even in combat right now? What narrative purpose are they serving other than wasting screen-time? Maybe sacrifice this meaningless part of the episode to explain the clone’s visions in “Omega Shield” instead? Do something that actually has a purpose.

Rizavi gets hit. It’s supposed to be a big, dramatic moment: One of Honerva’s mechas comes swooping in at Rizavi, the animation goes into slow-motion, the music gets dramatic, her fighter is on fire, we’re supposed to think that she’s going to die. No one in the audience is attached to her character, so of course the show’s not going to kill her. This show pretty much only kills named characters that people actually like. The Atlas swings its fist and doesn’t hit the mecha. Why does the Atlas keep trying to punch the mechas? It hasn’t yet worked even once. Shiro had ordered the Atlas to fire weapons in support of the MFEs against the mechas earlier, and no weapons fire has happened.

I often have found myself wondering while watching this show and writing these commentaries if the writing team and the animation team communicated whatsoever. Did the writers just leave the action up to the animators to figure out, like did they just write in their scripts something like, [Put some ship fighting stuff here,] and that’s it? Did the animators not bother to read the scripts before storyboarding it all out? Too many episodes have left me feeling that there were two very separated teams working on this show.

Out of nowhere, somehow, there are now eleven Atlases. This is whatever the Olkari did. This show is literally just pulling things out of nowhere without any care about this not making any sense. They don’t care how absolutely absurd this is. Shiro says for Kinkade to get Rizavi back to the Atlas safely – uh, to which Atlas? How does Kinkade know which is the real Atlas? Are these new Atlases just an illusion? Or are they physical? Can they fight? Or are they just there to distract? Does Shiro even know what they can do? He certainly hasn’t reported this information to the MFEs, and knowing what your side is capable of during a conflict is hugely important for the unit to function, so I don’t see how this helps.

Shiro tells James and Leifsdottir to “use this opportunity to hone in on the Robeast’s crystal.” I thought they were supposed to be shooting the big hole in the mecha’s chest when they fire their big chest hole cannon. That’s what Shiro told them to do earlier. Now, they’re supposed to be going for some crystal in the mechas? Has the show even demonstrated that the mechas have a crystal in them? I know that the Garrison recovered parts of the mecha that attacked Earth, but I don’t remember there being any crystal shown to be part of the system. This show has frequently had crystals be a power source for technology, but the Garrison (and thus Shiro) learned that these mechas are powered by a living Altean pilot. So what crystal is Shiro talking about here?

Now, after having not used it in this battle before, one of Honerva’s mechas uses its chest hole cannon. But, as has been established previously in this series, it’s supposed to only be able to use this cannon after it has absorbed some quintessence from somewhere. This mecha firing right now has not absorbed any quintessence, so this cannon should not be functioning. It blasts two Atlases, so I guess they are just illusions. How the Atlas can project these illusions is just Olkari magic, I guess. Because who cares about actually having technology behave like technology ever on this show, everything is magic. Now, the mechas are using their chest hole cannon as just a regular, quick firing cannon instead of the big blaster it’s been in the past.

Also, the whole point of the MFEs being brought into this is that they were supposed to be able to be more precise than the Atlas. Of course, again, the Atlas has yet to shoot a single weapon in this fight. But given that the show has been trying to set up this idea that the Atlas is just too slow, and that’s why the MFEs, being smaller and more maneuverable than the Atlas, would be able to be more precise, the show doesn’t allow the MFEs themselves to know when to fire. Their weapons systems, which would be able to target way, way, way more precisely than a human eye could target, are not allowed to know when to fire. No, knowing when to fire is given to Shiro, who’s much further away from the mechas than the MFEs are. Everything having to do with Atlas weapons targeting and firing has been given to Iverson previously in this series. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that Shiro should be giving the MFEs a countdown to fire.

Also, why have they been sitting around waiting to fire until the chest hole closes? Why didn’t they fire before then? Wasn’t the point that they had to wait until the hole was open to be able to access the true target within? They make their shots and the mecha explodes. It does not feel like a success whatsoever because all of this feels so contrived. Everyone on the Atlas starts cheering, but why? They’re not done. There’s still another mecha, the fight’s not over.

Back to Oriande. Voltron and some mechas are fighting. They seem to draw some quintessence out of Voltron.

Honerva has several large geometric circles, one on the ground, and a couple in the air above it. She’s still at her wormhole-like interface that’s part of the pyramid. There’s quintessence wind blowing all around. Honerva’s appearance shifts quickly between Honerva’s and Haggar’s, including their clothes changing back and forth. Never during her shapeshifting before has clothing ever changed. Maybe this is supposed to be quintessence shapeshifting and not Altean species shapeshifting? Is it supposed to be alternate reality versions of Honerva, and they’re all, like this Honerva, at the same time tearing through realities? The three geometric circles collapse down onto the ground, and there’s an explosion.

The mechas conveniently stop attacking Voltron so that the Paladins can look at what Honerva’s done. Lance looks down at her and suddenly Lance sees a field of purple grass and several people in it. They look Altean.

Pidge says, “According to my readings, we’re seeing into other realities.” That is some seriously sensitive, amazing sensors on the Lions that Pidge can so instantaneously determine that they’re seeing other realities. It’s so contrived. Pidge continues, “There must be some kind of rip in the fabric of time. The essence of realities is leaking out. Honerva is tearing apart timelines. She could cause irreparable damage to reality itself!” This is a whole huge pile of conclusions that the show is having Pidge jump to. The specifics of what Pidge says makes nearly no sense whatsoever. I know that during the Voltron-Lotor fight, that they kept calling it a “quintessence field” and not a rift between realities, but the process of getting into the quintessence field was explicitly through his having an Altean alchemically infused ship built out of a trans-reality comet. The first time we ever saw the trans-reality comet, it was tearing a hole from this reality through the rift between realities and into a new reality. The Paladins going through the rift in 3x04 “Hole in the Sky” never had any time-based effects on anyone. Time relativity was an effect applied to going into the rift only at the beginning of season seven.

Maybe! that’s why the post-Lotor time jump has a huge plot hole in it. Maybe the decision to have there be a time relativity issue was only written into the story at the beginning of season seven and wasn’t part of the story at the end of season six. There being no time skip written into the battle with Lotor during season six’s finale would explain why Coran, Krolia, Romelle, and the Shiro-clone being outside of the rift where they should not have been affected by the time passing that we were told happened to because the Paladins were inside the rift. Time to write season seven came along, and they only then decided to do the three years passing while the Paladins were inside the rift, and they just hoped no one would remember that Coran, Krolia, Romelle, and the Shiro-clone were outside the rift and wouldn’t have been affected. If the decision for the time skip happened after they had already produced season six, then they wouldn’t have been able to have written the specifics of the events of the end of season six to allow for Coran and crew to be affected too.

So now, somehow, Honerva is shredding timelines because she’s looking into other realities. But again, the Paladins have literally gone to another reality and came back and never had anything happen to any timelines. That’s because a timeline is not the same thing as an alternate reality. Any particular timeline would only exist within its respective reality.

I don’t know why I’m trying to make sense of absolutely senseless writing like this.

The Blue Lion alerts Allura to its bayard slot, and Allura somehow knows that Blue not only wants her to use her bayard, but that Blue wants Hunk to use his bayard too. Has there ever been an instance where a Lion communicated with their Paladin about what another Lion wanted before? This time, Allura and Hunk combine to make a bunch of missiles on the sides of Voltron’s legs, which look like they destroy the mechas that Voltron was fighting.

Voltron tries to get near Honerva but is repelled. Honerva screams. I’m really not impressed by Honerva right now. Pidge’s reality-could-end proclamation is so over-the-top that it doesn’t feel threatening.

Outside the white hole, there are still several Atlases doing nothing while the mecha shoots miscellaneously at who knows what. The white pillar coming up out of the white hole starts blasting beams of light out of it, causing the illusory Atlases to disappear. Well, those illusions did literally nothing whatsoever. The Atlas is knocked into its ship form in a glowing blast of light. Since its transforming into mecha form is shown to have significant internal structural changes that are part of the process, I hope the crew is okay as it super quickly and spontaneously reverts to ship mode. The MFEs seem to be drifting without power, as is Honerva’s mecha.

There is no gravity on the Atlas. The show ignores how near-zero gravity works and has Sam, while floating in the middle of the room, change his direction and float in the other direction without having to grab hold of anything and push to make that change. This is not how physics works. Sam sits down in a chair, which you can’t do without gravity.

Slav says they were hit by “time spillage” which is “a rip in the fabric of this reality.” That makes literally no sense whatsoever. He says something something quintessence something power crystal. I don’t know what he’s saying. The writers don’t know what he’s saying, and they wrote it. The executive producers don’t care what he’s saying. When it’s this clear that the show itself doesn’t really care what’s happening, I can’t blame the audience for not caring. And guess what, I don’t care. Slav continues to rant about socks. Slav’s eccentricities while in a tense moment have totally worked before, but it does not work in this episode. It’s just distracting.

Cut to the mecha on one of the planets off in the universe collapsing. Matt and the Rebels have somehow evacuated an entire planet. I’ve complained about this show making planetary population look like a single village or single city before. I guess that’s still what they’re going with. A population of a planet able to be evacuated by a handful of ships in a couple of hours at most. That doesn’t feel even slightly realistic. I don’t even know why the show bothers to go back to Matt and the planet.

Back at Oriande, Honerva finally collapses from her screaming. There’s a big ball of light and suddenly the Sincline is there in front of her. So, her “tearing apart timelines” – mistaking timelines and alternate realities as being the same thing when they’re not – was her looking for her proclaimed perfect alternate reality, right? And she simultaneously pulled Sincline out of the rift between realities. So, what she did here was two goals. Neither of those goals was draining an entire galaxy of quintessence like the beginning of the episode said it was. “This was Honerva’s plan all along,” Keith says. Thanks for that absolutely pointless dialog. We would have no idea that what Honerva has done had been her plan unless someone, now after the plan has been accomplished, said it.

It very much feels like Honerva is again violating her son by doing this. He hated her so much because she abused him so much for so long. I very much imagine Lotor would totally rather remain in the rift rotting than to be brought back and used by Honerva now. Like I said, this totally feels like a disgusting violation.

Keith orders Voltron to attack Sincline. I honestly got enough of Voltron v. Sincline already in this show. I don’t know why they thought bringing Sincline back would be interesting. Sincline is so fundamentally tied to Lotor, and this show did everything it could to destroy Lotor’s character all for an offensive plot twist. The EPs and writers just couldn’t let Lotor rest in peace.

Surprise, Voltron’s leg missiles did literally nothing. The Colony Alteans’ mechas are still functioning fine. Somehow these Colony Alteans know what Sincline looks like and that Lotor piloted the Sincline. They see Sincline and are instantly, “Lotor!” and “Lotor has returned!”

Merla pulls up a zoomed-in footage of Sincline beating up Voltron. She looks shocked. This is Merla, right? Or is it some miscellaneous, unidentified Colony Altean? I honestly cannot tell. Why is this surprising her? She’s been a zealot wanting to destroy Voltron for a while now, she shouldn’t be unnerved by seeing this.

Sincline knocks Voltron into separate Lions, which hit the ground, powerless.

Merla says, “Something’s not right.” What? Why is she suddenly having a totally change in her personality? She wanted to destroy Voltron. Now that Sincline is trying to destroy Voltron, suddenly she’s bothered by the idea? This makes no sense. This show is really really bad at managing and maintaining characters’ motivations and goals.

Allura can’t get the Blue Lion to do anything, she sees Honerva outside of her window, so she decides to leave Blue and attack Honerva. Sincline sees Allura outside of Blue, aims a wrist cannon at her, zooms in on her, clearly showing it’s Allura. Lance regains consciousness and Red is working again, and he moves to counter Sincline. The Colony Alteans see Red, but only the male Altean goes after Red. Merla doesn’t. The Altean intercepts Red. Sincline stops aiming at Allura. Sincline turns to look at the male Altean in the mecha, the male Altean mecha pilot says, “Lotor?” and then Sincline stabs the mecha through with Sincline’s tail.

So then, this is actually supposed to be Lotor piloting the Sincline? Lotor is never shown in this season other than as a flashback, as a hallucination, and as a melted corpse. This very clearly seems like the episode means for Lotor to be alive right now. Sincline actively resisted firing on Allura. Sincline actively attacked the Altean in the mecha. This cannot be Honerva controlling Sincline remotely. So then, what’s up with Lotor?

It makes so much sense that so many viewers think this season was mostly made and then hastily re-edited super late into the production. This is a fundamentally huge inconsistency that is never explained.

So, Sincline destroyed the mecha when the mecha protected Sincline from the Red Lion, but then Sincline creates a sword with which to attack the Red Lion. Why is this happening? What character motivation is going on with Sincline’s actions? Who is the character actually doing the acting? How could these extremely fundamental elements to storytelling be something the executive producers, story editor, and episode writer all collectively omitted in this scene and in this episode?

Honerva weakly reaches up toward Sincline and says, “Still,” so Sincline was acting on its own, not under her control. Until now. By showing her now exerting some control over Sincline, the show is very specifically saying she was not in control of it before now.

Allura comes jumping in, turning her bayard into a spear to try to stab Honerva. Honerva either goes to teleport or just turn everything black or something. Then Allura stands amid blackness everywhere. Honerva tells Allura, “This is just the beginning. Join me and our people. Together, we will go back to Altea.” Allura fully and clearly states that Honerva is to blame for Altea’s destruction. Honerva completely ignores what Allura says. Honerva says, “Think of your father. I knew Alfor well.” We’ve seen enough of Honerva’s interaction with Alfor to know she was not interested in knowing him personally. They were not friends. “This is what he would have wanted.” I guess Honerva’s just supposed to be trying (really poorly trying) to manipulate Allura?

I do really, really like Allura’s line: “You cannot keep me here forever, and the moment you release your hold, I will end you.” Yeah, that line is clearly the best thing in this episode.

Honerva then says, “Then you will end your friends as well. I am the only thing keeping my son at bay.” So, this episode was written for Lotor to be alive in it? Then what happened that he’s alive now but isn’t for the rest of the season?

Honerva and Allura return to Allura diving at Honerva with her spear. Allura gets tears in her eyes and decides to not kill Honerva. Honerva makes a hand gesture and Sincline leaves the Red Lion alone. She then makes Sincline kneel to her.

I had thought that it felt like a violation for Honerva to pull Sincline out of the rift solely because of how much Lotor hated her. He would want absolutely nothing to do with her. But now that she’s using her magic to control Sincline, to, per her own words, control Lotor, it is an even bigger violation. She continues to abuse him. And the show has the audacity to say that Lotor was fully unredeemable and evil, but that Honerva is not at fault for her gross actions and should be forgiven. She is violating her son. That is not something you forgive someone for doing. Her actions are thoroughly disgusting and immoral. And it’s disgusting that the executive producers and writers tell us by the end of series that Honerva is absolved of responsibility for her actions.

The Atlas powers back up. Shiro orders the MFEs onboard.

On Oriande, the pyramid structure begins to break free of the rock and ascend into the sky. Allura gets back into Blue and starts trying to talk the Paladins into consciousness. The Lions fly away from Oriande. Pidge says, “The white hole is closing. If we don’t get out, we’ll be trapped here forever.” Now, a white hole is only a possibility in theoretical astrophysics, but the term white hole has a very distinct definition, whether they truly exist somewhere in this universe or not. Pidge’s description of it closing and the being trapped in it is not accurate. A white hole, like a black hole, is not a hole. It cannot close. By definition, a white hole explicitly allows for light and matter to escape it.

Veronica says, “The white hole’s energy is collapsing into a gravity surge. There’s no way we’ll hit escape velocity.” This doesn’t make any sense. A “gravity surge” sounds like an oxymoron. Gravity pulls inward, a surge connotes an outward push. The need for “escape velocity” suggest they’ll be pulled inescapably inward, but a white hole, by definition allows light and matter to escape. Coran says they need a wormhole to escape.

The Lions emerge from the white hole. Shiro orders Coran to make a wormhole. I guess the Atlas, like the Castle of Lions eventually did when the show violated its own premises and moved Allura in to the Blue Lion, can create wormholes without Allura there to provide the power to do so. The Atlas and the Lions enter the wormhole. And then exit into a quiet, peaceful area of space.

Allura says, “We failed. And every reality will pay the price.” That’s a big dramatic statement, but she has no real reason to think that right now. Yes, Honerva seems to be at least having an affect on alternate realities while doing what she was doing at Oriande, but she would seem to have accomplished her goal. That goal would seem to be getting Sincline. There is no reason for Allura to think that Honerva is going to mess with alternate realities yet.

Yeah, this episode is an absolute mess, and I’m exhausted.

#voltron legendary defender #voltron #vld #voltron criticism #vld criticism #voltron critical #vld critical #vld season 8 #vld 8x06 #commentary

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astudyinsarcasm9 · 5 years

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Avengers: Endgame (2019) - Review - Spoilers Ahead

Later edit: I saw the movie again and Thanos says he destroyed the stones using the stones. First things first: Imma put a ”keep reading” below just in case someone stumbles upon this review and hasn’t seen the movie yet.

I was gonna wait until I saw it a second time, as I did with Infinity War, but because I am sick with a cold and low on money I am just gonna gather all my opinions and feelings about the movie and just get it over with.

Off the bat I have to say that I have been looking forward to this movie for a year (everyone has been), and while the constant news about it started to become quite annoying the hype was still there. So, naturally I went to see it as soon as it premiered in my country.

If i were to compare this to Infinity War, which, again, most people do, I’d say that Infinity War is more consistent when it comes to its plot and the rules it establishes or has established before in other MCU movies. BUT Endgame just feels like it has more stakes, that it is not as predictable as the first one. I mean, come on, we all knew part of our heroes were gonna be dusted and we knew they were gonna come back because it happens in the comics as well. Obviously they wouldn’t have killed a big character in IW because they needed them for Endgame. As such we were left with the OG Avengers plus a couple of other supporting cast members. I feel as if even though Endgame was, in part predictable, its stakes were higher. We knew they’d find a way to reverse the snap we just didn’t know how. We speculated it would be time travel months ago but again we weren’t sure how that’d go.

And while I appreciate that they tried to establish some rules prior to the time travel I feel that as soon as it was convenient they threw them out the window, more or less. More on that later.

What I liked about this movie?

I confess: I wanted the movie to start with this scene above. No music, no nothing just this scene that we also saw in the trailer. It just conveys so well how Infinity War ended, how our heroes feel. It’s tragic, no shred of hope. And yeah the trailers spoiled it because they also showed Tony back on Earth ( which I hated) it still would’ve been nice to start with this but I admit the scene with Clint and his family was heartbreaking but not surprising.

Ok so what did I like in Endgame?

Cap’s determination to move forward, his willingness to help others do so and adapt to the new world post snap. it really shows the core qualities of Cap and why Steve is truly worthy to be Cap.

I really liked Ant Man, Paul Rudd is just a delight to watch. I loved all of his reactions and I feel like he mirrored the audience pretty well. I mean he is a hero in his own right yet he is still an outsider reacting to everything around him and to the other more well known characters.

The way the movie brought many things full-circle, it was like an ongoing thing. Staring with Thor killing Thanos and saying that this time he aimed for the head to Tony ending 11 years of MCU with the same line that he started it.

Black Widow - she is not really one of my favourites. There’s nothing wrong with her it’s just I couldn’t invest in her as a character, but that’s a me problem not a problem with the character as is. But in this movie Black Widow was amazing and not because of the sacrifice she made but because she endured and basically took on Nick Fury’s mantle, so to speak, and tried to guide everyone and be that shinning light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Also, her friendship with Clint is amazing and I love that throughout all of the MCU the writers did not feel compelled to make them have a romantic relationship. There are other types of relationships in this world and I am glad Marvel understands that and showed us how beautiful her and Clint’s relationship is and how she supports him and loves him and vice versa.

Everything with Rocket is amazing because he is amazing.

I liked how they used time travel to give a nod to a lot of Marvel Movies, kinda paying homage to what was before while at the same time showing where we are now and how far our characters have evolved since this whole MCU started. It was beautifully done. And yes Tony talking to his father was nothing out of the ordinary, in terms of dialogue, the moment was heartfelt and it really caught me off guard. Steve seeing Peggy was a nice touch too even though we know it was there to kind of explain the ending but more on that later.

Clint being badass. He is one of my favourite MCU characters.

The fact that Thor had a panic attack and pretty much got depressed after the events of Infinity War. I know many consider his character development that he got during Ragnarok was ruined, but I think what happened to him was a normal response. Think about it: Thor was the closest to killing Thanos, and because he aimed for the chest Thanos snapped his fingers. It was a matter of seconds. Thanos even teases him about it in IW. ANYONE in Thor’s shoes would feel like crap, like a failure because to him it feels like the faith of everyone who got dusted was in his hands and he was sloppy and missed and so because of him half of everyone on the planet disappeared. It didn’t matter that it was a team effort to try to bring Thanos down. The fact that in the last seconds before the snap it was just Thor and Thanos looking at each other with the latter teasing the former about not aiming right was enough for Thor to send him into depression. We could still see that it is the same Thor from Ragnarok but Thor lost so much and bottled up so many emotions that it was only natural that he’đ either have a full outburst of anger, wich he did in Infinity War or go into depression, which he also did in Endgame. So, yeah, in my opinion Thor was written pretty good. Ok, the fat jokes were kinda on the nose, but it did give us one of the best jokes in the movie when Tony called him Lebowski.

The final battle was freaking amazing even though I wanted Doctor Strange to have more screen time, but I guess he had his time in IW. Yet the moment he raised his finger and looked at Tony to let him know that was the one chance where they win was heartbreaking and utterly beautiful. Like this is it no screwing up. Now or never.

CAPTAIN AMERICA WIELDING FREAKING MJOLNIR!

What I didn’t like or had doubts about:

When Thanos mentioned that he destroyed the Infinity stones he said that they were basically atoms at the point when the Avengers came to fight him about it on the farm planet. If I remember correctly 2 or 3 days passed between the snap and them going on the farm planet after Thanos so I really wanted the avengers to try and have Scott go into the quantum realm to have him reassemble the stones at an atom level. It would have been harder, sure, but it was an option. wasn’t it?I guess it could have taken longer.

I think it was already established in prior movies that the Gauntlet was the only item that could hold the infinity stones and harness their power. To me it was a bit off how Tony was able to make his own gauntlet, just because. It would have been a little bit better if they used the original gauntlet. It was still cool to see yet it took me out of the moment for a split second.

Steve’s ending. Thematically I don’t think it works. Now, don’t get me wrong I want Steve to be happy but we’ve spend so many movies establishing that Steve was, at least, partially ok with the fact that he couldn’t go back to his own time. Sure he hold on to Peggy and what she meant to him but he accepted that he had a duty, that he couldn’t live a normal life even if he wanted to and in Endgame he even was the one to urge people to move on in the post snap world. Steve is a selfless, kind person and he couldn’t and wouldn’t sit on the sidelines while others suffer. It’s just not him. He also kinda fucked up the timeline. As far as I understood (feel free to correct me on this) because he returned the stones to their original locations the timeline stayed the same, it didn’t branch like the Ancient One said it would if even one stone would be removed. So, that means that the Peggy he went back to is the Peggy from the main timeline but we were told they can’t change the past so how can he go back and be with her if it is the main timeline while also doing what he did post coming out of the ice? It boggles my mind. But putting that aside, it’s just not Steve. His whole ark was moving on. And sure when he went to the 70s with Tony he saw Peggy and maybe thought to himself that there was a chance to be with her BUT our Steve, present Steve is not the same with the one who just came out of the ice 70 years ago. Yes he’d long for and miss her and want to go back but ultimately he wouldn’t because he moved on. He had a reunion with Peggy when she was old and it was bittersweet but he had closure, in a sense.

The fact that he passed on his shield to Falcon. I know that is what happens in the comics but here we are talking about the MCU and in the MCU it does not make sense. Falcon had no ark in these movies (if I am not mistaken), and he does not have any powers of his own. He is just a guy with wings. in the comics he has powers so it makes sense to take on the mantle of Cap. In the MCU giving him the shield doesn’t mean added powers as well. Having a black captain america is an amazing concept and i’m 100% for it just not Falcon.

I found it hilarious yet awful how Banner first said that time travel is not his area of expertise only to have him later on explaining time travel to everyone. Like, you could have made Tony do it after he came back and cracked time travel. I get Banner could know some stuff but if you establish he doesn’t know then he doesn’t know.

While the CGi on Hulk was great for me it looked like uncanny valley for some reason. I know Professor Hulk is a thing in the comics but it looked so awkward and weird and it showed how the writers had no idea what to do with him like that. Banner shined when he was in his astral projection form while talking with the Ancient One but looked awkward for the rest of the movie.

Captain Marvel - yeah she had the cool cool scene at the end which I loved but I dislike her character a lot.

The plot point with Nebula being the means Thanos finds out about time travelling.

The joke at the end with Thor and Star Lord dragged on for so long and it really wasn’t funny. Except the Asgardians of the Galaxy part, that was hilarious.

Questions I had:

How did Steve return the soul stone?

If past Gamora came to the future and assuming it was the same timeline why couldn’t they go and grab Black Widow? Sure it would cheapen her sacrifice and I don’t want that to happen but it is a question that you have to wonder about.

Nebula kills her past self…and nothing happens? I mean I know Hulk said your past becomes your future and all that but it doesn’t make sense however you look at it. Except if that Nebula was from a different branch, a different reality.

If past Thanos came into the future and got killed there does that mean that the snap does not happen, assuming it is the same timeline? and if it’s not then does that mean there’s a timeline out there where the snap outright didn’t happen?

How did Thanos destroy the Infinity stones in the first place? He is the most powerful being in the MCU so far but you gotta wonder how did he accomplish such a thing.

The movie was incredibly enjoyable, it didn’t feel like 3 hours at all. It was darker than Infinity War but less solid than the former. At least in my opinion. It is truly emotional to see all of the MCU movies leading up to these 2 which are by all means masterpieces of the genre. I mean sure they have flaws but we’ve got to admit they did raise the bar a lot. Many of the MCU movies did. Some titles were bland, sure but most were not.

I’d give this movie a 9,5 out 10 which is almost perfect in my book. It was a perfect conclusion, all the time travel shenanigans and plot holes aside.

#endgame #avengers #avengers endgame #infinity war #spoilers #tony stark #steve rogers #iron man #thanos #captain america #black widow #doctor strange

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queertazsecretsanta · 5 years

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A gift for @one-true-houselight, created by @lucretiastan!

Title: In the Mean Time

Summary: Lup helps Lucretia learn how to take a breather.

When Lup and Lucretia first met, everything was so much different. They were both finalists for the seven IPRE positions, two of the hundreds who had applied and two of the dozens that had been considered. It was a huge break for Lucretia, while she was generally respected for her exceptional work writing biographies for people of this plane of existence, being able to make records for the IPRE would take her resume to the absolute next level and would be the experience of a lifetime.

Lucretia was familiar with Lup and her twin brother, if only in passing. She knew all of the finalists at this point to the point where she was vaguely familiar with their work and could match a name to a face. She wanted to know who she might potentially be working with in the near future.

About a dozen of them sat in a room together, waiting to be taken back for the next stage of individual interviews. Most of them sat in silence working on some project or another, a few talked in hushed voices. Taako and Lup sat in the corner whispering to each other and laughing. Lup, especially, had a loud laugh - when she laughed she did so with reckless abandon, not caring that everybody else in the room was quiet. Her laugh rang out and she wheezed in-between breaths, her face went slightly red and she would have a smile on her face for a long while after the laughing stopped. Other people gave the two of them looks of annoyance but Lucretia snuck looks of wonder, butterflies tumbling in her stomach.

She tried to focus on her current writing project in front of her. She was editing a piece she had been commissioned to write about a wildfire that had just about wiped out a small town a couple day’s ride by wagon away. It had to be done by the end of the week and would sent out to be published in multiple papers, but for some reason she just couldn’t figure out how to give this article the same polish as her others, she couldn’t figure out what was missing.

As she tried rewriting a sentence multiple times, she didn’t even notice that the twins had been unusually quiet until she saw a shadow cast over her work. Upon looking up Lup was standing right in front of her, a mischievous grin on her face as she sat down in the chair next to Lucretia.

"Lucretia, right?” She said, resting her head on her hand. “I’m Lup.”

She nodded. “Nice to meet you.” Lucretia’s eyes flicked back to her work, and then back up to Lup. She was sure she was just on the cusp of finally figuring out how to word that one part, but then Lup was sitting in front of her…

"You’re here cause you’re a writer, right?” Lup asked. “What do you write?”

Lucretia tried to discreetly wipe her sweaty palms on her pants. She was never able to easily navigate conversations and already felt anxiety over what was to come, plus Lup was like…attractive. That certainly wasn’t going to help her case.

“Oh, um, all sorts of things. Biographies, detailed accounts of events, I just kind of specialize in…preserving history?”

Lucretia couldn’t tell if it was wishful thinking or not, but it seemed like Lup had gotten closer to her as she talked, to the point where they were barely sitting a couple of inches away from each other. She had to remind herself to breathe.

“Interesting, very interesting. You know what I’m here for?” Lup asked, a glimmer in her eyes.

Lucretia swallowed. “No,” She lied.

Lup sat backwards a bit and held out her hand, igniting a decent sized fire in her hand. Lucretia could feel the warmth radiating off of it, her eyes transfixed on it. “Evocation’s my jam. Well, that and cooking. You’ll have to try me and my bro’s stuff sometime.”

Lucretia nodded. “Yes, I’d um, I’d enjoy that. I’m sure you’re very good.”

As soon as Lucretia finished speaking, the door opened and Lup was called to start her interview. She killed the flame and patted Lucretia on the back with her other hand, making her jump slightly.

“See you around, Luc. Best of luck when your time comes.” And with a wink, she was gone.

Lucretia turned and watched Lup walk out of the room with a smile on her lips, putting her hand on Taako’s as she walked past him.

Lucretia thought about it for days afterwards. Had she been flirting? It was always so hard to tell if women were flirting or not. It could have easily just been her being nice, wanting to make sure poor wallflower Lucretia felt included. Maybe Lucretia would never even see her again, there was no way of knowing. One or both of them could have been disqualified and there would be no reason for them to keep in touch if they weren’t going to be working together.

Luckily for both of them, it would be only a short while until they both got the news that they were official members of the IPRE and would begin their three month journey in two weeks time. When Lucretia received the message she screamed in pure amazement and rushed to tell her few loved ones the news. This was big, it was really really big. It meant so much for her future, if working with the IPRE didn’t become a life-long career she would have no problem impressing other employers with her newest accomplishment. Not to mention how exciting it was, all the things she was going to see! And Lup….

It was probably the best day of her life to date. The next couple of weeks were spent packing, preparing her many journals, talking to the other six, and getting debriefed on the more intricate details of the mission. Parts were overwhelming, especially all the talking, but she knew she could handle it.

Her last day on her home planet for what she believed would only be a few months, they all went to a shitty dive bar. Was it really her scene? Well, no, but it gave her a fantastic opportunity to sit back and observe. She wrote with both hands simultaneously with little additional effort, being careful to make sure not a word was smudged. It was a warm-up for what would come tomorrow. She took notes on Magnus’s rash decision to get into fights, she took notes on the way Taako and Lup distracted the people they hustled to involve some foul play, she took note of the way the atmosphere shifted and changed as the music swelled over people’s voices and people moved about. She absolutely was in her element.

It seemed too good to be true, even at the time. She chose to ignore that though. She wanted this to be something good.

That all was crushed when the hunger came. How do you handle something like that? What are you supposed to do after watching everything you’ve ever known or loved be consumed? What were they supposed to do from there?

None of them knew, so they went about the mission as if nothing had gone wrong. Lucretia journaled like her life depended on it, didn’t allow herself a moment to stop and think. She became her work. She was a journalist first, living person second. If she didn’t allow herself to think about all that she lost, she could pretend that any day now she’d be returning to it.

She was distant from most of the crew members. Most of her time spent talking to them was strictly business related. She would sit with Lup in the living quarters after a long day and ask her to break down some of the animal’s language for her so that way she could record it as accurately as possible. While Lucretia never fluent in it herself, she knew the basics well enough to grunt a “hello” or a quick “yes/no”.

Lucretia didn’t let herself think about the way Lup looked with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, sitting back in a tank top and shorts. The two of them were coworkers, and Lucretia had chosen to throw herself into her work and disregard everything else. It was for the best.

When the hunger came again, it terrified them all just as much as it did the first time. And dying? Actually dying? It was horrible. There is nothing like the feeling of slowly losing your consciousness and fading away, knowing there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Every part of your body wants to live so bad, Lucretia wants to live so bad, but she can’t. She dies.

And then she finds herself sitting on the deck of the Starblaster, uncapped pen in hand. Her hair is short again, shorter than it’s been in an entire year. And sitting around her is her crew, and they’re all alive, they’re all okay.

It takes them a while to adjust to being reset, to being in a brand new world all over again. It takes them even longer to adjust to doing this every year, if you can say they ever truly became acclimated.

It was years before Lucretia realized she couldn’t be all work all the time. She was killing herself with it. The people around her weren’t her coworkers anymore; they were family, and she refused to let herself spend time with them.

Taking breaks from writing was hard. She felt like she was doing the world they currently lived on a major disservice, like she was saying they weren’t worthy of her dedication. It took a long time to talk herself out of that mindset. The others helped. Lup would bully her until she put down the pen and spent some time with her without distractions.

On cycle 12, Lucretia found herself unable to sleep one night. It had been a particularly rough year. They had lost Taako, Magnus, and Barry was injured pretty bad. The plane was an unforgiving one and the time to rest had been few and far between. She walked into the living area, hoping a change of scenery would help to calm her anxious nerves.

It seemed like Lup had the same idea. She was sitting on one of the couches, idly paging through a book on spells Lucretia knew she already knew. Lup looked up.

“Oh, hey,” She said, her voice unusually gentle. Lup was always full of energy and fire, but she had a nearly calm demeanor in the middle of the night. “You can’t sleep either?”

Lucretia shook her head.

“Come on over,” She said, moving to the side and patting the couch to invite Lucretia to sit.

Lucretia did. She sat down with her back against the couch and her feet planted firmly on the ground, making sure to leave a reasonable distance between her and Lup as to not make her feel uncomfortable. The two of them sat for silence for a few moments as Lup paged through her book and Lucretia sat still, unsure what to do.

“Hey, Luc?” Lup said, her eyes leaving the pages of her book. “Can I ask you a question?”

Lucretia felt her heart speed up in her chest. Thump, thump, thump. “Yes, of course.”

“Do you not like me?”

Lucretia felt her heart break into two that instant. “What…oh, no, of course I like you…as a friend, of course, as my family, you’re an incredible person! What gave you that impression? I’m so sorry.”

Lup waved a hand. “Don’t apologize. You’re just always so stiff around me, like you’re waiting for me to pounce on you or something. I know I can be a lot, I’ve always been…a lot, but I don’t want you to think that too. I don’t want you to think that I’m too much.”

“Lup you could never…you’re so beautiful, do you know that?” Lucretia shut her mouth and felt a wave of regret wash over her. She didn’t mean to say anything like that, she didn’t want Lup to know and to think of her differently or to think of her as strange. She didn’t want to ruin the friendship they had, but she had to go and run her mouth.

Lup blushed slightly. “Thank you. I can say the same for you.”

Lucretia’s heart rate picked up even faster. “I didn’t mean it like that! I just meant it like in a uh, I don’t know, you’re a special person? You’re so passionate and strong and I’ve never met anybody quite like you and I could never think you’re too much, you know?”

Lup smiled, her lips forming small dimples on her cheeks. “I appreciate that. It’d be okay if you did mean it like that, though.”

Lucretia’s own smile fell. Her anxiety kicked into overdrive, each breath was forced and calculated. “O-oh? What do you mean?”

Lup shrugged, laying down further and crossing her arms over her stomach. She just barely wasn’t touching Lucretia. “I don’t mean to sound vain, but I see the way you look at me. Nothing to be ashamed about. I am, after all, quite stunning.”

Lucretia didn’t dare move. Her entire body was tense, her fists clenched tight, her toes curled. She didn’t mean for this conversation to go this way. She didn’t mean to get into any of this, ever.

Lup started to sit up. “Shhhh, you’re okay.” She began to gently rub Lucretia’s back, going slowly to make sure it was okay. She instinctively relaxed ever so slightly. “See? You always get so tense around me. It’s okay.”

“What are you trying to say?” Lucretia needed to know. She needed to know if Lup was trying to let her down easy or if this was something more, she needed to know if the impossible was happening or if it was time to go and lock herself in her room to cry for the rest of the night.

“I’m just trying to say that you’re quite stunning yourself.”

Lucretia could hardly breathe. “You’re saying you like me?”

“Of course I like you.”

“No, you like me like-”

“I know what you meant, Luc. Of course I like you.”

“Oh.”

Lucretia forced herself to look over at Lup. She still had her arm resting on Lucretia’s back, and she smiled warmly. She was still there. She didn’t hate Lucretia now. She didn’t hate her at all.

All of the emotions Lucretia had bottled up for years finally burst and she found herself doubled over laughing, tears forming in her eyes.

“I thought for sure you’d hate me!” She said in-between breaths.

Lup was laughing now, too. “I could never hate you!”

In their fit of laughter, the two had found themselves practically draped over each other. Even once the laughter died off, neither made a move to separate. They simply looked at each other with open admiration, huge smiles on both of their faces.

Lucretia looked at her lips, then her eyes, then her lips again.

She mustered up all of her courage. “Can I…?”

Lup nodded. Lucretia leaned in and placed her lips on Lup’s. She could hardly contain her smile as she did it, it was something beyond her wildest dreams. She couldn’t believe it. Lup liked her. Lup liked her.

#one-true-houselight #lucretiastan #queercandlenights #taz #the adventure zone #lupcretia #fic #submission

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xiiishadesofgrey · 5 years

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Kingdom Hearts III: A Long Time Coming

As we’re about a month after the release of KH3, I wanted to get out my thoughts on the game (there are spoilers below). I might be talking into the void, but hey, that’s what fandom’s all about. Anyway, let’s rock.

First things first: I loved the game. I’m biased, because I’ve been in love with this series ever since I saw the first trailer on tv all those years ago. I have some criticisms, but please never take those to mean that I don’t love this game because I do.

Story

My main issue with the plot of KH3 is that I think pacing was a weak point in this one. Now, I’m used to playing through mostly irrelevant Disney worlds the whole time and then getting a plot dump at the end. I know how this series works; that’s not my issue. The problem is that there are a lot of characters who would pop in to do something pivotal, and then make an equally swift exit without any real closure. Demyx and Vexen come to mind, but even the non-benched OrgXIII members didn’t do much besides serve in the boss rush and make their goodbyes (while the other fighters politely waited before continuing to rough you up). We knew there was going to be a huge cast of characters, but for the ones that served to move the plot forward, in a lot of cases I was left feeling like I didn’t have an answer for why the roles had to be filled by them in particular. (Connections to KHUX were blurry at best, though that’s more of an issue with series planning than with this game on its own. I’m okay with using Luxu as a cliffhanger, though, since that’s more of an intentional setup.) Motivations weren’t explored and many of the characters ended up just where they were before: lost, floating in the void.

I was also a little put out with the game’s treatment of the main heroes. Riku and Mickey spend 5/6 of the game throwing themselves against a wall, staunchly refusing Sora’s help. Meanwhile Sora (aka the player) is supposed to just wander around until the Power of Waking comes to him all deus ex machina style? That’s not a plan, and it makes for a meandering plot. And when you finally do get to the Realm of Darkness, lo and behold, the power was in him all along, meaning that we’ve all wasted a lot of time in what we’re supposed to believe is a pretty urgent situation. If I’m considering this within the framework of the KH universe, it means we should probably never take direction from Yen Sid again. If I look at if from a real world perspective, it’s a rather poor excuse for the player to visit the obligatory worlds while the main plot gets compressed to a cutscene movie at the end of the game. Either way, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

And finally, I was truly disappointed with KH3′s treatment of Kairi. I try to be understanding. I get it, she’s not the main character. But here’s the thing: the writers set Kairi up to be in a position of agency, if not power. She has a keyblade, she has the benefit of legitimate training in no less than a genuine hyperbolic time chamber (more than Sora has ever had the benefit of, mind you), and she has a history of being eager to pull her weight as a Guardian of Light. Plus, she’s a Princess of Heart. You’d think this would lead to her being able to contribute to the fight in more ways than just believing in Sora enough to keep him from keeling over when he loses his cool (another thing I took a bit of issue with, but I won’t digress here). But no, Kairi is demoted very solidly to damsel in distress when the plot finally sees fit to release her and Lea from their bubble. To be blunt, I call bullshit. I think she deserved better as a character, and I think if they weren’t going to do anything with her having a keyblade, they shouldn’t have wasted all that time making it happen. In the last fight, she and Lea were more liabilities than anything. I think they both deserved better than that.

End(?)

Obviously, the end of the game contains a culmination of the complaints I’ve mentioned. I’m overjoyed that my favorite characters get their lives back, but a lot of that takes place without direct player contribution (for example, Roxas showing up by himself, having melded with a replica body offscreen, or Namine being a footnote in the closing scenes). I acknowledge that the player character doesn’t need to (and shouldn’t) be the sole instigator of action in a game, but for some of these instances, having these points basically narrated to me felt like things were coming together because they had to for the plot to resolve, and not because our own actions had led to an optimal outcome. I didn’t feel like we had earned all of the pieces falling into place the way they did.

I mentioned unclear motivations before. All I will say about Xehanort is that I don’t quite see the connection between the story they’ve been selling us for him literally this entire time and the story he painted for his motivations at the very end. I don’t feel one way or the other about them trying to redeem him, but I don’t feel that that was a well-established path to try to take with the character they’d built. It’s important to give evidence throughout if that’s the final claim you’re going to stand on, and nothing in any previous game has ever hinted at the “noble reset” MO.

And then, there’s Sora. My precious sunshine child. They damseled Kairi so hard that Sora died got lost in an alternate universe. I had two problems with this: 1) it just made me sad, and 2) it was like...completely unaddressed. I get it, you’re leading into the next saga, and that’s admittedly an excellent hook. But like, I feel like a plot point as pivotal as the main character functionally disappearing warrants some sort of ... visible reaction from his friends and comrades??? To have that emotional fallout completely unaddressed makes me feel like the story wasn’t complete. And not to make a somewhat unrelated gripe, but I feel like if they had space to make us watch the entire Let It Go song, they had space to let the audience know that Sora’s disappearance actually had some effect on the people he’d saved.

Experience

So, given all that grumbling, what did I feel about the overall experience of the game? I actually thought it was very positive. The gameplay - both exploration and combat - was very smooth and exciting. The worlds we visited were well-executed and fun (though San Fransokyo felt deceptively small, somehow). The graphics were awesome. (I’d been concerned that the new engine would lose some of the Kingdom Hearts feel, but I think they really nailed it.) Yoko Shimomura triumphed as always with a stellar soundtrack. (I found myself humming along to the Arendelle and Corona themes for hours.) The plot, obviously, was great despite my issues with the execution in this particular chapter. I think that most of the problems that I mentioned earlier with pacing and details stem from there being what I consider to be too many plotlines to handle in one ~40 hour game. I wouldn’t want another side game of course, but I think that the telling of the story might have benefited from the Dark Seeker saga continuing into a KH4. The plot is sprawling, as we all know, and it just needed a little more space to resolve everything cleanly.

(Side note: I missed my FF friends, but I understand why they weren’t present. Like I said, there was too much going on as it is.)

Aside from that, I personally got to spend a lot more time with my brother than I have ... probably since KH2 came out, to be honest. We promised to only play together, and we took turns with the controller just like we had to do in the good ol’ days when we were kids. And we’ve always played the main games together, so this was a really nice throwback. Closing this chapter of the story was impactful for us as individuals, but sharing the experience was just as great. After several years of being pretty closed off, I feel like this reminded me how to be a kinder sister. So, I thank the KH franchise from the bottom of my heart for that.

All things said, I really enjoyed the hell out of playing this game. At the end of the day, I think that’s all you can ask of a game, really. This one did much more than that, though. It largely followed through on my hopes for the characters, and definitely fulfilled my technical expectations. Most importantly, it felt like it came through on my immense emotional investment in the series. I cried (a lot), like I knew I would. Heck, I might even play it again sometime. lol ...Maybe not right away, since I still have to heal emotionally. But yeah. Thank you for the ride, KH. I won’t make this sound like a goodbye because you still owe me some closure. But thanks.

Here’s to the next half a lifetime. :)

#kingdom hearts #KH #kingdom hearts 3 #KH3 #Source: me

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everyfandomeverywhereallatonce · 6 years

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Arrow season 7 Wishlist

Okay so since season 6 was the first time I really got into the fandom, I decided to do this wishlist.

These are all things I want to happen (although a lot of them probably won’t). These are in no particular order.

1. I want Felicity’s company to actually go somewhere. I don’t care what it’s called just as long as it’s not put on the back burner. It wouldn’t be that hard to incorporate it into the story (they did it with Queen Consolidated and even Palmer Tech). I just want to see more of Felicity’s life outside of Oliver Queen.

2. Stop dumbing down Felicity to prop up Curtis. The reason why the Curtis and Felicity relationship worked in season 4 is because Curtis was hardware and Felicity was software. But then they went and basically gave Curtis all the same skills as Felicity. And, it seems like, there have been several scenes this season where they made it seem like Felicity is totally incapable of doing things without Curtis’ help. As a woman, it’s honestly so insulting to see this character being reduced to make a male character look better.

3. Bring season 1 Oliver back. I’m not talking about the killer. I mean, Oliver isn’t stupid and he’s a perfectly capable fighter. Stop making him seem like he literally can’t function without a whole team. In the past couple seasons, they’ve made him so stupid for plot and I’m tired of it.

4. Enough of this plot-over-characterization bullshit. Season 6 was probably the worst season of the series because of this. I want more character-driven plots in season 7.

5. I think it’s time to slim down the cast. Rene and Curtis were fine when they were first introduced, but they’re both like totally irrelevant now. And with Roy coming back, you can only have so many members of Team Arrow before things get crowded. I would be totally fine if Team Arrow was just Oliver John, Felicity, and Dinah (and Roy I guess although I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about him coming back considering how his storyline wrapped up this season).

6. Get rid of B*ack S*ren. This goes along with point five, but I decided to make it a separate point because I have a lot to say. The reason they got rid of L*urel L*nce was because they had run out of things to do with her. The character had run her course, so they had to cut her loose. Then, they brought in BS to pander to the smallest (but loudest) part of the fandom. At first, I was willing to give BS a chance because she was a villain so at least that was something different, but now it looks like they’re going full circle with this redemption arc. But if they redeem BS and make her a hero then they’re right back where they started with LL (and LL didn’t work, that’s why they killed her off). If they really want to redeem her, fine, but then they need to send her back to Earth Two or something. They either need to keep BS as a villain, or get rid of her for good.

7. Now here’s where I really get crazy: Olicity baby. I get the people who say they want Felicity’s company to be established first, but I think it would be great to see her building her company and raising a baby at the same time. I think it would also make for a great character-driven story of Felicity trying to do it all (but not failing miserably because she wouldn’t). And I think it would be a great parallel to season 2/3 of Oliver trying to reconcile all the different parts of himself (except Felicity’s arc wouldn’t be as dark because she’s not as self-loathing as Oliver).

8. No more tell-not-show storytelling. Arrow has gotten into this really bad habit of telling and not showing storylines. For example, in seasons 3, 4, and 5, we were told a lot that Felicity, Laurel, and Thea were all best friends but we never saw it. We got a few moments here and there, but most of those moments were on the implication that we were just supposed to already know that they were friends.

9. More female friendships. The kinda goes along with point number 8. There has been a serious lack of female friendships in Arrow. The female characters stories have pretty much always revolved around the male characters and it’s getting really annoying. I want to see more Ladies Supporting Ladies.

10. This one I’m pretty sure will never actually happen, but I’m putting it on this list anyway because it’s still a wish. I want Felicity and Alena to be sisters (them sharing a dad with different moms). It would allow Felicity to have a relationship outside of Team Arrow. It would be great fodder for character-driven stories of seeing their relationship grow and develop. I think it could also provide an opportunity for Felicity to finally forgive her father. If they did it right, they could do it as Felicity letting go of her insecurities in order to finally let go of the pain he caused her when he left instead of her forgiving him to prop him up and make him look better.

Normally, I don’t like to speculate because I think it always ends in disappointment, but I thought, just this once I’ll share my thoughts. I’m hoping that, now that the show will be primarily run by a woman, that the female characters will finally have a chance to define themselves outside of the male characters. And just based on the episodes Beth has written in the past, it really feels like she’s in favor of character-driven stories and developing the plot around character growth. She also doesn’t really do action sequences just for the sake of having action sequences, but uses them to actually further the plot. And I know that, based on her Twitter, she loves Ladies Supporting Ladies. Unfortunately, she’s not gonna be able to fix everything from the clusterfuck that was season 6, but I hope she’ll at least try. I don’t think this show is a lost cause and I’m hoping that having a lot of new writers and a new showrunner will be for the best.

#arrow #arrow season 7 #oliver queen #felicity smoak #olicity #anti curtis holt #anti rene ramirez #anti black siren #anti laurel lance #beth schwartz #fandomlife-universe

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shiningstraykitten · 6 years

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park jihoon scenario: passion

Requested?: Can i request a scenario for Wanna One Jihoon please? The plot is what if he was a boxer who lose his will to fight because of the injury that make him all cold and gloomy, while she was a reporter who just sneaking around looking somwthing spicy till she uselessly fallen in love with how sad his face staring at the boxing glove, she try to cheer him up but he kept pushing her away after that is up to you hehehe thank you, hope my plot doesnt confuse you

Member(s): Park Jihoon (Wanna One)

Format?: Bulletpoint scenario (+female reader)

note: because it was specified in the ask, (y/n) is a girl

third person pronouns will be used here

the story begins with a boy named park jihoon

for a long time, he never knew what he would grow up to do

people around him would have ideas and at least a little certainty about their futures, which made his teachers and people around him almost worried about him

it wasn't until his first year in university that he started to take up boxing, at least as a hobby

one day, jihoon’s childhood best friend daniel asked him to try boxing classes at a nearby gym with him

at first, jihoon was hesitant, but after a bit of convincing from daniel and a promise that if he didn't like it, he didn't have to go again

jihoon, being a softie for daniel, agreed

and it was then, learning how to fight and pull himself towards victory, that he truly found his calling

and after more lessons, he took up boxing on his own time, with daniel as a sparring partner

boxing became his passion, what he never had when he was younger

so jihoon went pro later in his university years

and he loved the high after every victory, and strived to do better and accepted defeat with open arms

jihoon couldn't be happier

until one match against a known champion

by then, jihoon was starting to make a name for himself

so he was considered a formidable opponent to many

the match started off fine enough, with jihoon getting control of the fight for quite a while

but he could never foresee getting a hard hit on his arm, severely injuring it to the point that he could not continue the match, and it landed him in the hospital

according to his manager and his doctor, he wouldn't be able to box for the foreseeable future until his arm heals up

it may never be the same again

anyone who ever knew jihoon could tell that the familiar fire in his eyes has been extinguished; he looks cold, empty

his passion, his drive to continue, has been stolen from him before his very eyes

this is when we learn of an intern at a news publisher: (y/n) (l/n)

from when she first learned how to write, she wanted to go into journalism

she desired to be able to give the news that she finds important, to be able to let people know what's going on in the world

her dream finally began at an internship at seoul weekly, a major magazine

she couldn't wait to bring her ideas to the table, to write her own sections

but for a while, she was basically an unpaid assistant, getting things for the higher ups

it almost unmotivated her; she believed that her dream of her story on the screen was too far beyond her

until one day, she had a meeting with one of the editors

he had read her notes she made from previous meetings and he believed that she could write a story

well, one he found as ‘relevant’ and 'entertaining’

so basically, a juicy story

(y/n) knew that that was a big responsibility; she would be representing the whole magazine

she accepted, understanding that this could be the key to unlocking her dream

so (y/n) observed people around her, looking far and wide for a story

it was harder than she thought; she submitted about three ideas already and all of them got turned down

until she passed by a familiar gym

a very close friend of hers frequented this place, and meeting him there made her very much acquainted with it

so she was looking in, looking for her friend, when she locked eyes with a very familiar face

she saw him practicing fighting at the gym, and back then, she saw the fire he had, the passion for his sport

she regretted not being able to meet him back then, his passion helped rekindle hers

but when she revisited, something was definitely off

not only was he sporting a large cast, evidently a large injury

but the way he looked at his gloves, at the ring

it was a profound longing, like he was searching for a lost puzzle piece, or trying to bring back a lost part of him

(y/n) was captivated then and there

she wanted to know exactly who the boxer at the gym was, what his story was

(y/n) was on a mission: learn more about that boy

at first, she spent an excessive amount of time searching up recent pro boxers online

she guessed he went pro, because the last time she saw him, he was ridiculously good

she learned his name was park jihoon, and that he was rising from a rookie to a known champ, but recently had a major injury

at first, (y/n) thought that all of that was enough

but after pitching it, she was told that she needed to dig in deeper to have a true story

(y/n) really didn't know what else to do

so she asked some of the senior writers on the team about it, and was told to get closer to him to get more key info

(y/n)’s conscience screamed that it was a bad idea, but the seniors wouldn't let up

they told her that if she couldn't investigate a serious matter, how could she bring anything to the table?

so she decided to only pry a little; to not let it get the best of her, and to get jihoon”s consent to make an article about him

(y/n) first met jihoon through a newer friend of hers, ong seungwoo

he had been recently visiting the gym because his stepbrother, kang daniel (who he recently reunited with) worked there

so when she decided to come with seungwoo one day, jihoon was there sitting next to the ring, watching someone else training

after talking with seungwoo and meeting daniel, they noticed (y/n) looking over at the boy under the ring

she was told it was jihoon, and she learned that he’s daniel’s longtime best friend

and that he really needed cheering up, because of the injury

so (y/n) made it her goal to get closer to him and put a smile on his face

but it was easier said than done

at first, she thought that he was just very grumpy, because he was not willing to let her take one step towards him

but that made her more determined to break his shell

she would get him stuff, try her best to have conversation

it was to the point that she realized she was really falling for jihoon, and not his story

and it was then that she started to see a new side of him

he would start to smile ever so often, to have full conversation with her

she discovered he was a boy with a new grasp of a passion, someone who tried his best to make it happen

he was a boy with dreams that were crushed right in front of him

and (y/n) didn't know what to do

so she tried her best to light up his life, so he could find hope

(it was then that she asked daniel, the closest to jihoon, “how do you bring light to someone who lost all hope?”)

(little did she know, this statement was why daniel came to trust her)

later, (y/n) came across her preliminary notes, and it dawned on her that she originally intended on a story

but now? she couldn't write one if she tried

so she deleted every trace of her original work, and went to the writers

of course, they gawked at her

she just threw away a major chance to write for a popular platform

but she wouldn't relent, jihoon was way too important to her, she didn't want him to believe that she didn't care about him

she cared so so much

but the writers were determined to get something out of her, to remind her that this was what she had to do to advance

so they fabricated new drafts, and slipped them into her bag while she was doing some errands

(y/n), unaware of this, picked up her bag and made her way to the café she was supposed to meet jihoon at

jihoon had been looking like he'd been feeling better lately, so she was very much looking forward to seeing him again

and unbeknownst to her, jihoon had been longing to be with (y/n) for more time, as she became one of the most important parts of his life

so jihoon invited her out to go get a coffee and then go to a movie

(y/n) came a little earlier than jihoon, so she, either out of habit or of a feeling of uneasiness, looked through her bag to make sure she had her things and her money

but she came across a folder

she left all her other notes from meetings at home or submitted them to her editor

she opened it to find notes about a boxer, and it dawned on her that it was about park jihoon

and it made her furious

she did mention to another intern that she was meeting jihoon that day

she threw that story away so that she wouldn't hurt jihoon, but her seniors planted new evidence

did they expect her to not notice? so that jihoon would find out the wrong way?

when she was about to throw them out, jihoon arrived, looking around for a table

because even when (y/n)'s unhappy, jihoon is a priority, she still waved him to the table, greeting him

but he could tell something was off, she seemed stressed

so he asked about it when the two got their drinks

and (y/n), being tired of hiding things from people she loved, spilled everything

her initial interest, her feelings for him, the article, the writers, the drafts in front of him

at the beginning of her spiel, she could see jihoon was worried that (y/n) was admitting to not caring about him

but by the end, the relief, the knowledge that (y/n) put him before her potential career at seoul weekly was almost palpable

and (y/n) firmly believed that jihoon looking happy was absolutely and utterly ethereal

and she was also in for a surprise when jihoon told her that he was realising that she helped him get out of his miserable state when he got hurt, and that he would never regret getting closer to her

so the two of them left the café with a clear conscience and full hearts

jihoon’s friend thanked (y/n) for what she done for jihoon later, and jihoon and (y/n) decided that they'd really suit being together in a relationship

and jihoon helped (y/n) find a new platform that would appreciate her writing, and production 101 became (y/n)'s second home

her first home is jihoon, no matter how much he gets flustered hearing that

and currently, they are waiting on the doctor's opinion for when jihoon can return to boxing

all in all, the two found their passions and found each other as well

thanks for requesting, I really enjoyed writing this!!!

#wanna one #wanna one scenarios #kpop #kpop scenarios #jihoon #park jihoon #jihoon wanna one #female reader

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itspatsy · 6 years

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Part of me thinks JJS2 didn't want to acknowledge they'd majorly dropped the ball on race in S1, so in S2 they amped up the "Jessica is a part of a minority group" aspect, had a black woman say "you people," to turn the narrative even further away from Jessica's own white privilege, and destroyed Trish, who was a viable target because she wasn't a traumatized white woman like Jessica - she was a RICH white woman. And they were desperate to avoid their fuck-ups so they made Patsy a patsy.

okay, so this turned into a long, generally incoherent rant that starts with “this show absolutely fails at dealing with race” and ends with “wtf were they even trying to do with trish’s story,” and it should probably be separate posts or better yet just not posted at all, but it’s all generally related to this ask, so whatever. it’s a mess, i have a lot of confusing thoughts, ignore me.

rather than acknowledging the mistakes of s1 regarding race and trying to course correct, the show definitely seemed like it decided to double down. before the season started, as it was becoming clear they were going to do this “prejudice against powered people” thing, i was really weary about how they would handle it, and apparently my instinct was right.

to start with, it felt kind of pulled out of nowhere. realistically, sure, people would be weary of powered individuals, but it hasn’t really been fully built into the fabric of the mcu or the netflix mcu as a realized form of bigotry. it was also really only a thematic element in the first half of the season, and they made no effort to really explore it and its implications before they tossed it out and changed gears. it was just there to be used as a device for conflict and drama.

and it’s such a ridiculous thing when you only have one powered person in the show that’s experiencing that bigotry and she’s a skinny white heterosexual cis woman? like, the most direct parallel for this wasn’t misogyny or homophobia, but racism, and they didn’t try to tell multiple perspectives about it. having a black woman say “you people” at jessica was the most tone deaf bullshit, like, i could not fucking believe it (and then they later killed her off in the most disposable way, which is a whole other issue, and something this show has done repeatedly). they had oscar, a moc that had been in prison (of course), start out the same way, seemingly expressing bigotry and getting “righteously” called out for it by jessica. then there was pryce, another moc, aggressively going after jessica, trying to steal her business, calling her an animal because of her anger and powers, and he “never takes no for an answer” and jessica gets to be like “how rape-y of you” in what was supposed to be a moment of #femaleempowerment. but it just feels like white lady empowerment at the expense of poc.

but hey, gotta pile on to show how very oppressed jessica is in every aspect of her life, right? which, yes, she has absolutely been oppressed and violated and traumatized, and that is so important and real and should never be diminished, but the show didn’t attempt to contend with the ways she’s also privileged and the ways she’s been able to use it to her advantage and having her acknowledge it (including the fact that having powers, being able to protect herself, is an incredible privilege instead of only the awful burden it’s been portrayed as and she’s always interpreted it as). i probably wouldn’t have even said they’d need to explicitly deal with this under other circumstances, if they were focused on telling a different story, but they’re the ones that decided to make analogies to racist prejudice and have poc express it towards a white woman, so they put the expectation on themselves to tell a nuanced story about oppression and privilege and intersectionality, and they didn’t do that at all. they clearly weren’t actually interested in talking about prejudice in a serious, meaningful way.

but here’s the even bigger issue: the show tries to present itself as being feminist, but it can’t be feminist when there are no women of color in main roles or even supporting roles. it makes no effort to tell the stories and perspectives and experiences of woc, and that is an absolute failure. it’s inexcusable that they made no effort to fix this. it absolutely doesn’t help that the woc that are actually present in small roles keep getting killed off unceremoniously. i had some hopes when i saw that they had females directors that actually included some woc, but i don’t think they have any in the writing room, and that matters SO MUCH. it makes such a difference, and they could’ve probably avoided so many of these missteps if they just had other voices represented in the creative process. i just saw a headline with melissa rosenberg where she says, “oh yeah, i totally agree with the criticism we don’t have enough women of color,” okay, except this is not a new criticism, people were saying the same thing after s1, so if she agrees with it and cares about it, why didn’t she do anything about it while they were making s2?

the show has sort of attempted with men of color, in that they actually exist in the cast, but it doesn’t handle them well at all, some of which i mentioned before. then you’ve got malcolm. the only lead character of color in s2. he was set up to be the moral center of the show, but there was no real follow through. he was ultimately treated like an afterthought in most situations. he just? disappeared? constantly? when shit went down? i lost count of the number of times i was like, “umm, where the fuck did malcolm go? is he all right?” and the characters around him were pretty consistently awful to him. jessica almost always treated him like shit. his relationship with trish was a train wreck they both kind of contributed to, but trish turned on him pretty epically, and the emotional fallout for him wasn’t really dealt with. and the writers told his “proxy addiction” story in the laziest, grossest way possible (sex? really? that’s all they could think up? and then to use it as excuse to have him treat women like they’re disposable and faceless?). they just clearly have no respect for him.

it’s such a mess, and s2 was probably worse than s1 in this regard, and there’s no reason it needed to be. this isn’t an impossible thing. when people tell you, “hey, you fucked up. this is how,” you don’t double down or pretend it didn’t happen, you listen and you do better. this should be a show for everyone, not just white women.

turning to trish, since you mentioned her: i’ve mostly tried to avoid post-s2 reviews, but one of the few i read described her character arc as a critique of the white savior mindset. i highly doubt that’s what the show had in mind. as we established above, careful thoughtful commentary about race is not this show’s strong suit, and writing a critique of the white savior mold wouldn’t even occur to them. i could kind of see where the reviewer was coming from, there were some flavors of white savior-ism in trish’s behavior, but they had to pretend she had never experienced an ounce of hardship in order to make it fit. this was basically the conclusion: “trish is rich and has a family and could never under poor traumatized orphaned jessica’s life.” nevermind that money doesn’t stop you from being abused and traumatized, that a family member was her primary abuser, and that living in poverty and wanting money was the motivation for her abuser to sell her out. this take also ignores the thing driving trish the most. it wasn’t “i want to help people, and they should listen to me because i know best” or even “i want to be special, i want to matter.” it was “nobody touches me anymore unless i want them to.” she was tired of being the victim, of never feeling safe. that’s why she wanted powers. it was muddied by the writing, but it really is as straight-forward as that.

i think trish being rich has likely had some influence in the audience diminishing how she was violated and abused in most every kind of way (physically, emotionally, sexually, financially), but i definitely don’t think the show went after her for being a rich famous white lady as a cover for its various racial fuck-ups. i don’t think the show even really tried to contend with or acknowledge her rich white privilege anymore than it tried to contend with jessica’s privilege. if anything, it tried to do the opposite by showing her to be belittled and demeaned and disrespected by everyone around her, similar to how they were upping the ante on jessica’s oppression by having her face bigotry about her powers. granted, it’s clear the audience had an easier time relating to jessica (probably partly due to the money and fame aspect again; also partly because the narrative backed her up more: for instance, the dynamic of having trish envy the privilege of jessica’s power, but the show seeming to say “oh, gosh, trish just doesn’t understand it’s not a privilege at all, it’s a terrible burden” even though that’s kind of ridiculous, as i mentioned earlier). the execution was shitty, but they were definitely still trying to show that trish’s life was not good and people treated her like she was nothing and worthless in a way that paralleled jessica’s treatment.

tbh, rather than punishing trish for being rich or whatever, i sometimes got the vibe they were actually punishing her for daring to have ambition, but that probably wasn’t on purpose, just an unfortunate implication of the way they treated her in general. at first, i’d assumed they were trying to tell a story about addiction and the ways it can destroy your life, and they just sucked at handling it with any kind of thoughtfulness, but now i think that’s being too generous. they didn’t even really try to grapple with the reality of her addiction and mental illness, so much as use it as an excuse to make her more unstable and put her in a position where she’d keep escalating things.

i read an interview before the season dropped where melissa rosenberg talked about female anger (or, as the reality of the show is, white female anger), and anger definitely was a theme for all the female characters. if you recognize trish’s main motivator as mentioned above (protecting herself from further abuses), you can see where it fits into this theme, and that it wasn’t just senseless anger and was driven by vulnerabilities and never feeling safe. so, i don’t know, i guess trish’s story was maybe intended to be about an abused woman finally being so goddamn fed up with victimhood and disrespect and belittlement that she decided to take what she needed instead of quietly waiting for other people to acknowledge her humanity and treat her accordingly. that she finally said “fuck it” and tried to find her own power and become her own hero. except, if that was the story, the way it was executed was, wow… exceptionally awful and not remotely clear and not at all done in a positive way. a storyline like that could’ve had the potential to be powerful and affirming and perhaps empowering (once again, for white women at least), but that’s not the story they ended up telling.

like, i honestly don’t get what i’m supposed to take away from it. they seemingly gave her what she was after, but they spent the entirety of the season shitting on her and had her destroy everything good in her life to get what she believed she needed, which was really just to feel safe. what’s the point here exactly? you do you boo and fuck everybody else because it’ll pay off? don’t have dreams and ambitions for yourself because they’ll make you heartless and selfish and you’ll hurt other people? the desire for power always corrupts even when you’ve been a victim and just want the power to protect yourself? trauma doesn’t go away and can make you do terrible self-destructive shit that you think is helping you but actually isn’t? drug addicts are awful, amirite? what. are. they. trying. to. say?

#anonymous #replies #my thoughts about s2 are a constantly shapeshifting shadow monster #and it's hard to settle into any specific feelings that aren't just 'honestly fuck the writers in general and m rosenberg in particular'

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junker-town · 4 years

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‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ of sports: Misfit teams that thrived when put together

We’re looking for “The Guardians of the Galaxy” of sports.

The Guardians of the Galaxy were relative unknowns as characters when they were introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe back in 2014. The success of the franchise inside of the bigger picture of the rest of Marvel’s Infinity Saga gave birth to one of the most beloved casts and set of characters despite skepticism of how things might work when they were introduced to us.

All week at SB Nation, we have been taking a look at the MCU and the impact it has had on the world at large and some of the things that have bled over into all of sports. Here, a panel of our writers are going to take a look at some of the teams that mirror the ragtag collection of characters thriving once they found each other.

The 2003-04 Detroit Pistons

Perhaps it is just the Detroit in me (spoiler alert: it absolutely is), but there is no better representation of throwing a bunch of pieces together and crossing your fingers that it works than this group.

Ben Wallace was the heart and soul of the team, but had bounced around the league for a few years and was undrafted. Chauncey Billups was the No. 3 overall pick in 1997, but was on four different teams before landing in Detroit in 2002. Rip Hamilton was part of a trade that sent Jerry Stackhouse, an All-Star scorer, out of Detroit. Tayshaun Prince was a star at Kentucky, but had a hard time cracking the rotation early in his Pistons career. The final piece was Rasheed Wallace, who was a fiery personality despite having all of the talent in the world.

The Pistons were a formidable team in the East before adding the latter Wallace to the mix, but he was the final piece to a puzzle that saw them make a run through the playoffs and then cast the final blow in the Kobe Bryant/Shaquille O’Neal Los Angeles Lakers dynasty. The Pistons rode an elite defense and contributions from all every direction to take down the Lakers in the 2004 NBA Finals, winning the series 4-1. They came a Game 7 short of going back-to-back, losing to the San Antonio Spurs in 2005. The 2006 Pistons would finish with a regular season record of 64-18, but lost in six games to Dwayne Wade and Shaq’s Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals. That would be the last time the Pistons’ starting five shared the court together, as Ben Wallace would leave for the Chicago Bulls ahead of the 2006-07 season.

— Anthony Broome

The 2013 Red Sox

The 2013 Red Sox really had no business being as good as they were. Boston was coming off a very not nice record of 69-93 and finished last in the division during the absolutely disastrous one-year experiment with Bobby Valentine as manager in 2012. With new manager John Farrell at the helm, the Red Sox had some really great pieces to work with — namely superstars in David Ortiz, Shane Victorino, Jacoby Ellsbury, Jon Lester, and Dustin Pedroia — but had some questions marks coming off an utterly horrific season.

The Red Sox pretty much cruised to an AL East pennant, but the season was a real rollercoaster. The squad donned a “Boston Strong” patch after the Boston Marathon bombings, and Big Papi’s emotional “THIS IS OUR F*CKING CITY” speech served as a rallying point for the team and city.

At one point in September, Mike Napoli (basically Drax, if we’re being honest), Mike Carp, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia all hit grand slams over the span of a week. Not home runs, grand slams.

Oh and don’t forget the beards. Just about every member of the team grew distinct beards, and it became such a thing that the team adopted “fear the beard” as the official slogan heading into the postseason.

Every time it looked like they were out of a fight, they’d come through in the clutch.

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The Red Sox would go on to beat Tampa Bay, Detroit, and St. Louis en route to their third World Series title in 10 seasons. With huge contributions from guys like Napoli, Carp, Saltalamacchia, Jonny Gomes, David Ross, Brandon Workman, and Will Middlebrooks, how can it be anything other than a rag tag success?

— Caroline Darney

The Rock & Sock Connection

Look, I get it, some of you are probably foaming at the mouth because I dared to mention a WWE tag team, but there’s very little that better typifies a “misfit team” than when The Rock and Mankind teamed up and became tag team champions in 1999.

The pairing was perfect. You had The Rock, stalwart babyface (good guy) teaming up with the misunderstood Mankind to form a classic Odd Couple amidst the WWE’s “Attitude Era.” Not only were they two of the best, most-popular wrestlers in the world at the time, but they had natural charisma and chemistry together.

Wrestling fans knew the team wouldn’t last. These were two of the top singles competitors in the company working as a tag team, but it lifted both of them. It allowed The Rock to be his classic, smack-talking self, and Mankind to almost be the straight man — which was a hilarious departure for someone whose character was largely comedic.

The duo were dynamite in the ring, and electricity off it. Nobody can forget the classic “Mr. Rocko” promo, in which Mankind gifted The Rock with his own, personalized sock puppet, that looked like it was air brushed on a seaside boardwalk. Everything that was good about WWE at the time was typified by The Rock & Sock Connection, and they are my pick for the greatest misfit team of all time.

— James Dator

The 2005-06 Phoenix Suns

From Bright Side of the Sun:

Some how, some way, this group of misfits still won 54 games and finished 1st in the Pacific Division. They would match up against Kobe (who had 35.4 ppg that year...the 9th best scoring season in NBA history) and the Lakers in the First Round of the 2006 Playoffs.

The Suns would go down 3-1 to Los Angeles, and it felt like all hope was lost. Yet, in true superhero fashion, they battled back to win the series in seven games. This was in large part to another Guardians-esque misfit, Tim Thomas (we’ll allow him to be Yondu in this scenario)

— John Voita, Bright Side of the Sun

Team North America

Team North America is, was, and always will be my favorite hockey team. They played together for only six games total, but the mark they made on hockey is one that will not be forgotten. This team was the brainchild of NHL General Manager Gary Bettman leading into the 2016 World Cup of Hockey and included 23 players under the age of 23 from the United States and Canada.

This means that current stars like Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid, and Jack Eichel were all playing on the same team. It was the first official look at the Toronto Maple Leafs 2016 first overall pick Auston Matthews whom many had not been able to watch while he was playing in Switzerland.

Team North America was everything traditional hockey analysts hate — they had the confidence of youth without having earned their time, they played a run-and-gun offensively aggressive style, and they were endlessly cool. Also, the logo is awesome. This was a snapshot of what the NHL was about to become, a transition from the second dead puck era into a future of fast, skilled hockey.

Photo by Brian Babineau/World Cup of Hockey via Getty Images

Alas, this team wasn’t as successful as they were legendary. They won two of their three pre-tournament games but when it came time to the actual World Cup of Hockey, the did not advance past the first round with a record of 2-1, losing to the only team that mattered in the tie breaker to advance. The finished the tournament in fifth place but will forever be first in the heart of everyone who watched these young bucks usher in the new age of hockey.

— Steph Driver

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randosmstuff · 7 years

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An unpopular opinion...

So, I finally mustered up the courage to watch Still Star-Crossed finale. I have to say that it was a much, much better put together episode. The background song for the Rosvolio kiss was on point (FINALLY). If I am not mistaken, the song they used for the Rosvolio kiss is a variation of the instrumental song from Baz Lhurmann’s Romeo and Juliet (1996); I might be wrong, though.

Now, let’s get to the point of this post.

Well, I decided to be completely honest with all of you. I want you to know that I am looking at the “Still Star-crossed Project” not as a fan of the show – which I am – but I am trying to look at it with critical eyes. No bias or whatsoever.

I have to warn you. This is going to be a long post and a lot of what’s in here is most definitely going to “upset” a lot of people. But, please, don’t be mad at me just yet. Try to put your feelings towards the project aside and just read what I have to say and then, if you still think I am wrong, just say it so.

With that being said…

I completely understand why Still Star-crossed was canceled. Actually, in my opinion, it shouldn’t even have been aired in the first place. I say this because there were so many mistakes, TOO MANY, actually.

The writing was all over the place, the editing, the transition between scenes, the music, the understanding of the characters, the network, the time slot it was given…

So basically everything?

No, not everything. Definitely, not everything.

The cast is amazing.

The changes they made with some of the characters were really good and intriguing. Princess Isabella, Lord Montague, Lady Helena, Tessa Montague, Lord Capulet… I would love to see their stories unravel.

I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying so I’ll try to elaborate a bit more.

This kind of story is not supposed to go on for seasons and seasons. It requires a beginning and an end. It was meant to be a limited series all along.

I’m not sure if it was the writing that sunk the project or if it was the overall misunderstanding of the project in and of itself.

I think that they were trying to make a political statement… not really political, maybe a social statement or a race statement or an equality statement? I don’t know…

It seems to me that they were trying to create something so bold and ambitious that they somehow forgot what the story was really about and how this kind of story really appeals to the audience.

I don’t think Still Star-Crossed sunk because of the color blind casting or lack of promotion (I believe the lack of promotion was an effect, actually, not a cause). Still Star-Crossed didn’t work because it failed to connect with the audience. And when I say “audience” I don’t mean “us”.

Everything that was cut, everything that was left unsaid and unexplained…

I know, they felt like they didn’t have to. But unfortunately we still live in a world where we need to explain why some family members are from one race and some are from another. This caused confusion in so many viewers (racists or not), just overall confusion. People wanted a simple and clean explanation. Nothing a flashback scene couldn’t handle.

Another issue that I noticed is that even though the narrative tried to imply it otherwise, the characters were emotionally distant. Again, not the actors fault. They did an amazing job with what they were given. There was only so much they could do… I am blaming the writers and the directors for this. Like I said before, they didn’t quite understand the characters.

Another mistake: they changed Shakespeare. You can play with Shakespeare but you can not change it. Changing Romeo and Juliet’s story was a bad call. Specially because it was supposed to be a sequel. Never mentioning, not even once, that Romeo was in love with Rosaline first? How come? This very fact should be a catalyst between Rosaline and Benvolio and yet it was erased completely. With what puporse? I don’t know. Hide from Verona that Romeo and Juliet were in love? Not even her parents seemed to know those two married in secret. Or did I miss something? (Maybe I did).

Now, a very, very delicate matter…The unbalanced relationship between the leads.

Benvolio and Rosaline were not equals, they did not bring out the best and the worst in each other, at least, not how they were supposed to.

They portraited Benvolio as a lost soul, a lone and misundertood character and I actually liked what they were trying to do with him but they also made him weak. He was supposed to be the hero of the story. The martyr. He was supposed to be strong and witted, like Rosaline implied herself but it was rather talked about than shown. She was always the one supplying all the answers. So many things came from Benvolio - bookBenvolio - that they shifted and had them come from Rosaline instead.

Rosaline was super super strong and independent (the political, social, race, equality thing I mentioned before?). I was really annoyed at the fact that Rosaline always semeed so sure of herself. How she almost never faltered. I still can’t get over the fact that she seemed more annoyed than surprised or shaken by Escalus when she first tried to talk to him about Benvolio’s innocence and he played it out like she was doing it because Benvolio was her fiancé when he knew the truth. That was supposed to be a key moment. She was supposed to see him in a different light. It was supposed to be a grave moment but they played it out like a mockery (the music helped with the mockery tone as well). And Rosaline never really shown vulnerability. Even when she delivered that emotional speech about her parents’ death, she was more proud and angry than actually vulnerable. And that is where Benvolio was supposed to come in.

Benvolio was supposed to make her vulnerable. He was supposed to make her falter. He was supposed to tear down her walls without asking permission. He was supposed to make her question herself. What he made her feel was supposed to be so strong and unexpected that even Livia would slip her mind. Her feelings for him was supposed to be so strong that she would rather die with him than let him be killed. And we didn’t get to see that. Not really.

The balcony scene was good, it was great but I was expecting something breathtaking. They should have made him climb the balcony… Invade her personal space. In my opinion that scene was supposed to be powerful, emotional and sensual. What I mean is… The balcony scene is the scene were Benvolio was supposed to break her and at the same time expose himself completely (which he did) but we needed (or I needed) a physical proximity, faces inches apart, uneven breath takes, hands accidentally touching… Because that was supposed to be when they would feel the attraction awake something inside them for the first time. They were supposed to see each other as man and woman, not as Capulet and Montague. There’s a line from the book that explains it so well. “Had Romeo’s eyes ever yearned as Benvolio’s did now?” Remember, in the book, Benvolio was cupping her face (physical proximity, anyone?).

Anyway, I could go on and on about every scene between our leads, but I wouldn’t dare to go deep about the other characters because I didn’t quite grasp them or actually care for them? Paris, for example. Why he was so twisted? Was it because of his father? Was he being manipulated? And Lady Capulet? They made her so confused that I didn’t know if she was evil or just grieving. Lord Montague interested me the most. I think there was more to him and they failed to show us. And Tessa Montague? That woman wanted power. I can’t shake the feeling she had somehting to do with the attack. Wouldn’t that be great? But they needed to show more of her. And Princess Isabella? What about our weak Prince?

And the music? The sound effects are there to help us feel, to help us connect with the story. To help with the dynamic. But that was not what happened.

The pace of story? It was all over the place. It was rushed and not dynamic at all. I understand they had to cut a lot of scenes but a fast paced story doesn’t always mean a dynamic one.

And what about the promos? The very first promo we saw made us believe the epic love story was between our beautiful brown leads. Benvolio was barely in the promos. They were misleading the audience and it backfired. I can’t stop thinking of a promo with a few Romeo and Juliet lines and images of Rosvolio. “My only love sprung from my only hate” “You only hate for my name” “And you hate me for mine”. Can you imagine the appeal it would have had?

So many details they missed. I know… The project was too ambitious. It got out of hand. It became too expansive. They should have planned better, then. They should have fixed the mistakes and not ignored them, knowing that in doing it so, the show would be doomed.

I should stop here. There’s so much more I want to say.

Please, don’t get me wrong. I still love the show. I love it, not because we have a black female lead in a period drama or because the cast was so diverse. Those were a plus, the icing on the cake. I love the show because of the story. The potential was, is enormous. And I am mad because they mistreated it.

My intention with this post was to show they could have made different choices. They should have targeted the right demographic. The direction of the show could have been different but for that the story needed to be more important than whatever message they were trying to pull through. And maybe, even still achieve both.

In other words, it was not the story itself, it was not the diverse cast, it was poor and careless execution.

I’m sorry, if you don’t agree with me. I still believe in the show. I still want more. Rosvolio is still my OTP. The chemistry between Lashana and Wade is too much to be wasted. And I know for a fact they can save the show and profit from it. They only need to make the right choices and changes.

I truly hope TPTB will give Still Star-Crossed another chance.

*By the way, I’m black. Just so you know…

#still star crossed #shondaland #shonda rhimes #abc network #shakespeare #romeo and juliet #period romance #tv show #rosvolio

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