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gentlebeardsbarngrill · 2 months

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03/04/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; Cast&Crew;WJW; Con O'Neill; David Jenkins; Bumbles; Rhys Darby; A LeagueOfTheirOwn Watch Party; Wrecked WP Continues; NewarkNewark WP tomorrow; Fundraiser Statuses; SchadenFreude; Fan Spotlight; Podcasts; LoveNotes; DailyDarby/Tonight's Taika

== Cast & Crew Sightings ==

== Wee John Wonday ==

Today's Wee John Wonday featured our Pirate Queen Ruibo Qian! Please check the video out on Kristian's Instagram! Don't have time to watch? There are some highlights below the pic!

Some Highlights:

Anapela couldn't make it tonight sorry!

Ruibo is really into perfume like Kristian

Ruibo and Anapela really clicked on set!

Ruibo still has hope regarding s3!

“DO I wanna smell like a haystack with a cow dung hidden inside of it?” - Ruibo

Ruibo would be interested in polycule, Zheng may not be

Kristian has an announcement coming out tomorrow - 📚

Apparently the last episode, when they were all walking out in the colonial outfits, it was SUPER LONG and a lot of it was cut.

Qian means money = so Ruibo is literally the Money Bitch

== Con O'Neil ==

One of our wonderful crew-mates was out and about and ran into none other than THE Con O'Neill! Thank you so much for sharing this meet up with us @queerjolras!

Con also posted a picture of himself and his pup Cooper on IG today!

== David Jenkins ==

Our friend @cosmosart-s posted a lovely picture of David for the 2 year anniversary OFMD anniversary and David ran it on his IG Story! One thing I've noticed a few people mentioning was the "3" hearts. Not to clown/honk too hard, but just something to think about <3

== Rare Bumbles Sighting ==

Many of you know of Rhys and Rosie's cat Bumbles, but we don't get to see Bumbles too often! Rosie uploaded an adorable photo of one of the Darby Feline-Fam.

== Rhys Darby ==

Are you in Aotearoa? Stop in to seen see Rhys on Wed 3 Apr 2024, 8:00pm–10:00pm at the Wild Estate in Auckland!

New Cryptid Factor Episode!

89: #089 The 2nd First Issue!

Spotify / Podfriend / Apple Podcasts

== New Watch Parties ==

= Mar 3 - Mar 7 A League Of Their Own =

Join us this week starting Monday, March 4th for a multi-fandom watch party! Each day will have different games and polls! (Sorry this is a bit late, I didn't get it until today!)

Where: Amazon Prime

Time: Every day 1 PM EST / 10AM PT!

Day One, March 4th: Pilot episodes for both series with tweeting predictions for the rest of the seasons.

Day Two, March 5th: Bingos! Live tweet your reaction and share your filled out bingo cards!

Day Three, March 6th: Polls! Live tweet your reactions and share your thoughts on the shows so far!

Day Four, March 7th: Caption the screencaps from the shows: Wrong answers only!

Day Five, March 8th: Finale time! Share your predictions for the next seasons with the hashtags.

Watch Party Hashtags:

OurFlagMeansBaseball,

SaveOFMD

SaveALOTO to join the event!

== Watch Party Reminders! ==

Mar 4 - Mar 8: Wrecked Season 1

Wrecked is no longer on any streaming platform, and it is not available digitally on US sites. (Apparently, it is available on German Amazon?) There are sources being passed around. If access is an issue, DM @iamadequate1 on Twitter or Tumblr

Season 1 watch from March 4th to March 8th.

Season 2 watch from March 11th to March 15th.

Season 3 watch from March 18th to March 22nd.

Times will be 10pm GMT / 5pm EST / 4pm CST / 2pm PST. Watch two episodes per day. Episodes are 21-22 minutes each. Use the following Saturday for the tags/watch if interested but not able to make this time.

Hashtags:

#WreckedPirates

#SaveOFMD

#RhysDarbyFaction

= Mar 5: NewarkNewark with @adoptourcrew =

Please join @adoptourcrew for a @NewarkNewark watch party on March 5th at 10 pm GMT/ 2pm PS / 5pm EST!

== Fundraiser Statuses ==

= Underground Ads =

The Final Stage of the Save OFMD Crew fundraisor for the underground ads is still going! If you're so inclined, feel free to donate or share around! Ko-Fi Link

= In Soup Now =

Wow! Only 24 hours open, and already at 10%! Great job all!

== Schaden Freude ==

Thanks @iamadequate1 for catching the very sad times WBD Inc is experiencing on the NASDAQ

== How to Help ==

Another Ranker Poll! Feel free to hop in and bump OFMD up. You can rank shows up AND down so make sure to rank other shows as well. Ranker Link

== Fan Spotlight ==

Our lovely crew-mate @melvisik is back again, this time with our favorite Captain Rhys Darby as part of the Crew Cards <3

== Podcasts ==

@fandomthingpod on Twitter did an episode on the OFMD Renewal campaign and interviewed our esteemed crew-mate @lcwebsxoxo! They gave lots of kudos to the @saveofmdcrewmates and @adoptourcrew and the recaps got a shout out too! (Ty for the mention LC!) The Campaign To Save OurFlagMeansDeath

== Love Notes ==

Hello lovelies :) It was an action packed day for sure (as Mondays usually are). That being said I took some time to do some stuff today I've been meaning to, so I apologize for not taking more time on love notes!

Please know me and your crew-mates are thinking of you and hoping for all the best things for you in the upcoming days.

I know it's short but here are some reminders / love notes in other people's words for today/tomorrow. <3

Stay Strong Lovelies! Whatever you're up to, you're gonna make it through, I believe in you!

== Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika ==

Yeahhhhh no gifs tonight luvs, I am running late and I can't stop looking at these still pictures anyway, so here you are <3

Taika Src / Rhys courtesy of Prim on Discord!

#daily ofmd recap #daily ofmd recaps #ofmd daily recap #ofmd daily recaps #ofmd #our flag means death #david jenkins #rhys darby #ruibo qian #taika waititi #love notes #watch parties #fundraisers #kristian nairn #bumbles #con o'neill

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emblazons · 1 year

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Still thinking about how understanding what happened in the S3-S4 relational narratives requires you suspend the belief that the last two (soon to be 3) seasons of Stranger Things are designed to stand alone.

With S1 and S2, the seasons existed as standalone entities—S2 was a sequel yes, but it wasn't a direct narrative extension of the action that occurred in the season before. You could watch Season 2 with only a bit of context from the first season (one boy got kidnapped and taken by the monster into another dimension, the girl from the lab with the superpowers showed up and they worked together to save said boy, but then she disappeared and was presumed dead) and watch the second season with little issue.

Its not the same with Seasons 3-5. If anything...it helps when analyzing to imagine Seasons 3-5 as one "season" in the same way S1 and S2 exist as single entities; the Duffers have already confirmed its true for Seasons 4-5, but it gets a lot easier to follow arcs and action, particularly for the youngest characters, if you stop trying to find coherence in single-season stories and look at each season as three parts of a whole.

This is true across the board, but it's particularly true in the case of understanding Byler, both as individuals and a pairing (though the full buildup of their romantic arc will take us across all 5 seasons). Understanding why S3 feels like you just got dropped into nonsense with them specifically (after two seasons of Michael "I'm the only one who cares about Will" Wheeler and Will "I am central to the story even when I'm off screen" Byers) is because The Duffers took the risk of introducing a brand new set of conflicts to the youngest characters: namely, ongoing romantic relationships, personal identity crises and sexuality...only without resolving the conflict and action in the 8-9 episodes they usually do, which is why you feel frustrated by it.

Basically: Season Three was the season where we set up the relational problems that need to be fixed—we just have three entire seasons to work through them, which means its gonna look bad at the start and good as we work through the problem (over the course of a few seasons) to get to the solution.

forewarning: ferociously long post ahead (with headers for clarity)

Will’s Arc: A (Queer) Coming of Age

With Will, the problem re-introduced in S3 is that he feels different from his peers, and not just because he's gay; its because 1) he is in love with Mike in a way that is more genuine than we are being presented in the third season (that "sandbox" "puppy love" "break up and makeup" summer fling energy that S3 has) and 2) he is unwilling to step into the lie of "maturity" as its being presented in the story, aka giving up things like hanging out with his friends over focusing on relationships or giving up games (DnD in particular).

(sidebar: I wrote another analysis touching on the above here).

A lot of people I've met who watch the show casually say things like "it just seems like he's not able to grow up like his friends" and even "he's falling behind," but I think that's on the right track while missing the point: the reason Will is written as "refusing to grow up" is because he is the character that represents the rebellion of The Duffer's heart and interests, and both of the things that seem like they would be a bad because they make his character different in the narrative are actually surprisingly positive for his "three season" arc...if you understand what the ongoing themes of Stranger Things are.

With Will, the “problem” in the story exists because he is the one who represents being weird/the outcast/queer and not giving into the social pressure to “let go” of that—he loves another boy, is more emotional than his peers and loves nerdy things like his tabletop board game and refuses to deny that to himself, no matter how brutalizing that is for him and his feelings. In that way, he is the character who “represents” the sentiment of The Duffers themselves—he is a nerd, a child at heart, and he has no problem taking DnD and anything else into “adulthood,” (looking at you “yeah, yeah I really did” during the rain fight) the same way The Duffers have.

That said: as we move into season 4, Will is presented with an evolution of this conflict—he wants to continue to be honest with and about himself, his feelings, and his interests…but it comes in direct conflict with his understanding of his peers & Mike, whom he loves.

We see this conflict show up repeatedly in Will’s actions in S4, especially in regards to the painting, which is the physical representation of both his love of Mike and his embracing of his nerdiness. Will shows up to the airport with his painting in spite of not speaking to Mike because his heart is to be honest and true-to-self regardless of anyone else—you even see this as he takes the painting on the road when they plan on going back to Hawkins, after he makes up with Mike. The problem is though (and this plays into the whole “we want you to feel like you lost” sentiment The Duffers spoke about, as S4 is the “down” before the “up”resolution of the whole narrative) that Will he realizes that his desire to be honest is getting in the way of (his perception of) the happiness of the people he loves, so he decides to betray his character and break the first cardinal rule of The Party…to tell his first lie.

There are plenty of phenomenal analyses on other aspects of Will’s connection to Vecna/the UD and the love triangle dynamic at play across this app so I’ll leave that alone here (I do have many thoughts on why the above makes Henry Creel the perfect villain foil to Will specifically), but: for the sake of understanding Will’s relational narrative arc, it’s critical to understand that our “low” for him is the betrayal of his ongoing S3 character—and that him undermining his self-honesty, nerdiness and love for Mike are the things that The Duffers have set themselves up to resolve in S5.

The resolution for Will is to re-embrace his differences —to realize that lying to yourself and other people about who you are and what you love (both in terms of “nerdy” interests and his queerness) is not who he wants to be, no matter how hard it is to stand up for in the wake of adversity—along with embracing the power of real love, which is also an ongoing theme the Duffers have set up in their relationships beginning in Season 3.

Now…on to Michael.

Mike’s Arc: Finding Yourself & Embracing What Makes You Different

—anyone with a single toe in this fandom knows that Mike Wheeler is one of the most divisive characters in this story when it comes to deciding 1) what his motivations are and 2) what his desires will be, but (and bare with me on this)…I think that’s kind of the point of his story. Mike’s “three season” arc is about him moving through a confusion of identity into someone who can embrace himself while addressing the things he is most insecure about—namely; being seen, being useful, and (very, very likely) the fact that the person who makes him feel most secure, seen, useful and loved is another boy.

There are several context clues that give credence to the fact that the reason Mike feels so wishy-washy / lacking in depth is because his struggle is not knowing how to find his place in the world, though you have to go further back than S3 to find them. Let me explain.

From the literal pitch of the show, there has always been an undercurrent of self-doubt and insecurity in Mike; his desire to escape the weight of feeling insecure has been a driving factor in his actions since before he was even on the screen, and it is impossible to understand what motivates him without first understanding that.

With Mike, his actions across all seasons have been weighed down by his desire to escape his insecurities through action—and as he’s gotten older, what he’s used to escape those insecurities (to be someone like the paladin he plays in DnD) has evolved and shifted, ranging through everything from turning the world (no pun intended) upside down to find Will; being willing to sacrifice his life to save Dustin from bullies; using any weapon he could find to fight a baby demogorgon; and wanting to be a heroic knight who protects the perceived vulnerable girl once he starts dating Eleven.

The point is: Mike’s deepest core need is to assuage his insecurities by doing whatever he can to be a good person—and when he feels like can’t do anything or protect the people he loves…he spirals. That’s been true since the start of his character…and everyone from The Duffers to Finn Wolfhard himself has mentioned it.

Now. With that baseline established, let’s talk Season 3.

Ironically enough, a lot of people feel like Mike’s character has “fallen off” because he, by the sake of all appearances, has achieved all the things he is supposed to want—namely a girlfriend, which (at least in his mind) is the physical embodiment of successfully “addressing” his core fears.

Because Mike has all the external markings of a well-adjusted kid—he comes from a wealthy family, has a solid group of friends (who are also mostly now striving for social normalcy) and even a girlfriend—he seems to have addressed what many people even in real life believe is the end of most arcs & the fulfillment of the fantasy. For Mike, the appearance of his S3 life seems to have assuaged the fears at the root of several of his insecurities, including the desire to be needed, the desire to protect, the desire to be useful, and the desire for acceptance…all because now he’s saved El and has her at his side, and having a girlfriend means he has everything a good, well-adjusted guy is supposed to want.

Or…does it?

With how The Duffers set up the story (with S3 as the introduction of a new conflict for every major character), the answer they’re giving you based on how Mike interacts with other characters is no—having a girlfriend and acting “mature” doesn’t solve anything, especially if the core problem of you having an insecure identity while being dishonest with yourself isn’t addressed…and it’s the arc of Mike learning that “lesson” that we find ourselves dropped into moving into Season 3.

Beginning in S3, the war on Mike’s insecure self-concept comes at him on two fronts: on the one side, El, who started her journey needing Mike because of her background but now has no real need for any of the things he so desperately wants to provide as a means to validate himself, and on the other Will, whose deep familiarity and history with Mike combined with his confidence in his own identity presents Mike with a challenge of self-reflection that he doesn’t exactly feel ready for yet.

(sidebar: my post on how Mike's arc is intrinsically tied to a subversion of the "Born Sexy Yesterday" trope is a helpful expansion on things I talk about here).

We see this in how Mike gets frustrated with Max for giving El the space and language to not need him (undermining his role in her life as someone who she needs to protect/guide her); we see it in how he says cruel things when Will behaves in a way that challenges the actions Mike has taken to be “mature” (how he insults Will for not also wanting a girlfriend / still wanting to play the games that set them apart as nerds/different); and we see it in how Mike still goes out of his way to fix those relationships in the best way he can—because he knows on some level that what he’s doing in several moments isn’t in alignment with who he wants to be, even though they are both presenting him with radical internal challenges.

Ironically enough, Dustin does a great job of summarizing the two sides of Mike's internal conundrum in what he says to Steve about Robin—Mike, somewhat like Steve, is struggling between what is socially acceptable in a partner (or "cool") and what he actually wants and enjoys in one—and as El and Will evolve, so does Mike's internal conflict about how he perceives their places in his world.

Between El’s supernatural abilities and rapidly growing autonomy making him obsolete to her in all the areas that matter to Mike (see: the ability to protect, be useful, and be seen) and Will’s reminding him that at his core he is just as much of a nerd as Will is, Mike finds himself feeling more confused and insecure than ever…and that is the internal conflict we see him end S3 battling.

The evolution of Mike’s narrative arc past the introduction of this internal conflict doesn’t happen until is the Byers/Hopper move to Lenora though…when he is literally left alone to process what that intense summer brought to light for him—which is the note we're left on as we move into the next phase of Mike's evolution in S4.

In S4, the development of Mike figuring out what he wants and needs from his relationships + the kind of person he wants to be becomes a lot more external—we see him going through a series of code switches as he tries to manage the ever changing landscape of his self-perception, where has started journey toward self-acceptance but is still insecure about following through with it.

We see this in the way he has now joined The Hellfire Club and shows sincere signs of accepting his interests and "outcast" status, but still looks forlorn when Lucas says “I’m tired of being bullied / I thought you wanted things to be different too” (Lucas’ struggles with some aspects of performing normalcy the way Mike does S4).

We see it in the way he shows up to Lenora dressed in what he thinks he’s should be wearing rather than as himself / the way he continues performing his relationship with El throughout that first day (and how he says it was Will who "sabotaged" things by being that same kind of radical honest about his feelings we talked about before)...only for the events of the day to spur him into meaningful honesty with both El and Will (to varying degrees of success) mere hours later.

We even see it in the way Mike seemed to have been “turning over a new leaf” once he and El fought, to the point he was okay with them ending the “normalcy” performance of their romance…right up until Argyle’s paranoia while burying Unknown Hero Agent Man struck the fear of god back into him (aka making him worry he was letting El down by not protecting her—aka tapping into one of his core fears).

Basically: Mike is leaning into accepting the things that make him different in little ways, but is still struggling to step into that identity fully—aka he is still using perceived social acceptability as a shield, even though he no longer holds as tightly to being perceived as normal. (Even Finn himself often jokes about Mike “just trying to be normal,” which I think is a good, simple explanation of what’s happening—that said, if we take that reading and combine it with those “narrative goals” I mentioned The Duffers have earlier…Mike trying to be normal is an issue to be resolved, not an identity to be embraced. But…let’s move on).

By the time we get to the infamous van scene, we’ve watched Mike struggle through the two sides of his inner conflict for the entire season now, and felt him very gently succeed at switching into a more honest version of himself (who doesn’t need a girlfriend as a shield / can embrace his “otherness” in the same way Will does) right up until his inherent desires to be needed and useful come rearing up the second El is in danger.

It’s why we see him look pleased (but also marred with conflict) when Will looks confident, happy and radiant talking about “playing dnd and Nintendo for the rest of their lives…” and why him being honest in that scene is actually a huge moment for him, because rather than being vague about what has been plaguing him for two seasons now (trying to be “normal” just because he feels insecure) Mike is finally verbalizing the internal conundrum of his now two seasons of looking critically at his insecurities.

Now—I could spend all day digging into just that bit of narrative alone—the way Mike finally externalizing his insecurities to be processed with Will rather than acting on them and hurting people unintentionally is a giant leap for him, and how when Will says “you’re sacred of losing her” Mike’s nod is an acknowledgement that Will is right…but his face is saying there’s more to that fear than he’s acknowledging—

—but for the sake of this analysis of the narrative arcs, the van scene is most important because it’s when the S4 “it feels like you lost” moment begins for Mike…and that’s because it matches up directly with the “you feel like you lost” moment for Will: him lying about the painting.

When Will lies about the painting—saying that his feelings and the art that (as I said before) represents 1) his love of Mike, 2) his embracing of his nerdiness and 3) that radial self-honestly Mike so admires Will for—it throws a wrench into Mike’s internal revelations because Will is essentially saying that the relationship that Mike was slowly realizing he used to assuage his insecurities (his relationship with Eleven) is actually what lines up best with "who he wants to be," which throws Mike’s slow growth toward Will + honesty about what (and who) he wants to be into a tail spin.

From Will’s lie onward, Mike is thrown into moment after moment of conflicting emotions and dire circumstances as well—and given that Mike's deep terror of losing people comes up strongest when the people he loves are in danger, it’s only downhill for Mike’s growth toward self actualization from here. In that sense, (much Jonathan's S4 omissions of his truths/fears to Nancy leading to Nancy's regression into complacency / social conformity with Steve), its Will's lie that leads us directly into the “you feel like you lost” moment for Mike: him moving back into "conforming" territory and confessing his love to El in the SBP.

The monologue (at least in terms of the narrative arc The Duffers are writing) is Mike’s “losing” moment because it’s when he has enough self-revelation to realize that being with a girl as a shield for his insecurities is no longer what he wants...but the drive he has to be useful, protect and love any way he can (on top of Will’s urging + lie) leave him feeling like his only option is stepping into the person he was at the start of S3.

In this moment, we see Mike say exactly what someone who is "acting normal” about loving his girlfriend and wanting to save her would….even though romantic love with El (and the socially-acceptable romantic relationship he has with her) are not what he really wants, and what we will watch crumble moving into S5.

Essentially: Mike having a moment of dissonance of that magnitude after an entire season of looking toward Will was what set us up to see all those "external markings of normalcy" Mike has held onto and had started grating against for two seasons now fall apart, given what we know about those core messages/themes/child-at-heart values the Duffers hold and keep at the heart of their show.

As of the end of S4, we can already see how this "regression" into his old self is not going to hold—the fact that everything Mike did to save El is rooted 1) in a lie and 2) not in alignment with Mike evolving understanding of his core desires makes sure of that.

We even see the beginnings of this "low" being resolved in Mike's arc in how Mike & El are not speaking (even with the 'resolution' of their surface-level S4 conflict with Mike's love confession) and how Mike is glued to Will's side even before Vecna is mentioned–which is how we've been set up to see the resolution of Mike's arc in S5.

With all this in mind, it becomes a bit clearer that the resolution of Mike's arc is him moving through the confusion of identity we've watched him go through from S3 forward and into someone who can embrace who he is what he truly loves without fear of going against what is expected—aka finding the courage not to conform.

Mike as a character is a lesson in how doing what you think you're supposed to (aka what is "normal") is often at odds with who you are and what makes you the happiest—and the only way to self-actualize is to move past your insecurities and into someone who can be confident embracing what (and who) they really want...even when it means stepping out of line from what you’ve grown up believing would do the self-actualizing for you.

Final Thoughts

Both Mike and Will's relational arcs revolve around an embracing of what makes them different—in terms of their (highly likely) mutual queerness, yes, but also in terms of them making self-actualized peace with being nerdy "children at heart" in much the same way The Duffer Brothers themselves are.

If Will represents a person who struggles because they refuse to deny themselves their identity, Mike represents a person who struggles because they don’t understand their identity, and are walking around just trying to do whatever they can to get along (because they haven’t been presented with the inciting conflict that will move them into self-revelation & growth).

Both of these internal conflicts are narrative arcs that have been built into the coming of age stories of both halves of Byler—and though we are currently sitting at the "low" of both of their arcs as of the end of Season 4, the setup and though-line for them finding themselves (and real, honest love with each other) has been clearly set up for exploration in Season 5.

—if you managed to get through all of this, I commend you. And yes, there are a million other things to be explored between these two, but...I enjoy sorting through the thematic / "moral of the story" through-lines in all my media, so of course I was gonna do it for for Byler!

#byler #mike wheeler #will byers #THIS IS THE LONGEST THING EVER AND I'M STILL NOT 100% SURE ITS COHERENT BUT I'M TIRED OF SITTING ON IT LMAO #I will also probably be editing bits and pieces of it over the course of the next day for coherence so apologies if you find an error lol #but !!! this is the most cohesive way I could think to explain how their arcs work separately and individually #esp with the ' big messages' of the Duffers discussed /included #ANYWAY. HAPPY FRIDAY LOL #mike wheeler core #will byers core #my st commentary #stranger things #the me tag #the come back tag #duffer brothers

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inkstainedhandswithrings · 1 month

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TBB s3 ep9 Thoughts!!

I’ll start off by saying this season is my favourite so far. I’m having WAY too much fun with these lololol

Crosshair having a little domestic moment, helping out at Pabu <3

“Does it matter? We’re not handing her over.” Oh, mans is out for blood huh?

The fact that this episode is called “The Harbinger” and then Batcher immediately runs into a cave and gets scared…

This is when the Empire gets to Pabu, isn’t it…

VENTRESS!!!!

AAAAAAHHHHH

Okay so clearly Ventress wants her own little Padawan

But why was that fight sequence so sped up hahahahahah

It was almost comedic

Loved her and Cross fighting though

THE THEME SONG WHEN THEY GRABBED RHEIR WEAPONS

dare i say first time this season? about time

different colour sabres aaaaaa

that’s actually super cool because the colour of your sabre depends on how you connect to the force when you find your kyber crystal and if you wanna change them you have to meditate on them for SO LONG so like Ventress committed to neutrality (gotta read up on her story in legends again, but i know girl went through it)

“You’re being naive.” *slowly turns to him* “bitch say it again”

Love how all of them are standing on the shore watching Omega train

CROSSHAIR ALREADY HAVING HIS RIFLE OUT I AM SCREAMING HAHAHAHAHAH

Cross practically running down the stairs to help Omega into the ship

Also I am already 100% that Ventress and Cross are gonna have a thing

So Omega does have a high M-Count, she just can’t tap into her skills yet?

Interesting

Okay, all in all i really loved this episode! It was fun and relaxed but still somehow a bit plot driven. Here’s the thing though @phantom-of-the-501st correctly pointed out that we’re nearing not just the end of the season but the end of the show. And there are still SO MANY loose ends. Up until last weeks episode all the other eps were very plot driven, and it’s only the last two that felt like filler. I’m thinking the show runners are giving us a quick breather until just full on deep diving into the seasons end with one heart-wrenching episode after the other. That, or they’re going to put more filler episodes in and rush the actual plot, but I'm really hoping it's the first.

also, seriously, what are Rex and Echo cooking that prevents Echo to be in literally all the episodes? are we gonna get a really sad arc here soon? im having a feeling that says yes, echo is gonna give us more drama soon. can't wait 🫠

#still loved this one though #and the season as a whole as well #excited to see where this is gonna go!#tbb #star wars #star wars the bad batch #sw tbb #tbb spoilers #tbb s3 #tbb s3 spoilers #tbb crosshair #tbb Hunter #tbb wrecker #tbb Omega #the bad batch

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roominthecastle · 2 months

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so....... RA 301, "Lone Wolf"

high points:

• the two Greys (a middle manager and a trainee acc. to the end credits lmao) tackling human abduction logistics - "Well, you got the 'leave him inside the house' part right." LOL I'm currently in my UFO/UAP phase again, so this little moment (along w/ that hangar full of retrieved alien spacecrafts) was a treat. This whole abduction storyline continues to simultaneously creep me out and delight me to no end. It's an odd but good feeling, and I'm excited to see how it plays out. FINALLY they made me interested in Ben & Kate again -- already one major improvement over last season.

• Alan Tudyk. In a suit. Thank you.

• the interactions btw Sheriff Mike & Deputy Liv retain their golden status. I just love them.

Mike: Look, there goes a damn government drone watching us right now. Liv: I think that's just some mustard on the window. Mike: That's what they want you to think. You gotta trust no one, Deputy. Head on a swivel. You ain't never really safe until you learn to look behind yourself. Go ahead, watch your back. Go ahead. Do it.

• Kevin and her lil' kitty towel awww

• "I had to stop because of you. I will always have to stop because of you." !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is the stuff I'm here for. It reminded me of Hannibal: Tell me, Clarice. Would you ever say to me, "Stop? If you love me, you'd stop"?

The feelings, guys... the feelings I have are MANY and STRONG

but:

In general, Harry's characterization continues to frustrate me. We get a reminder how "going it alone" is hard-wired into his DNA. Even the two Greys are a brief counterpoint to this, presented as a team, supporting each other. But Harry still has to keep re-learning -- or more like re-realizing -- the basic tenet that confiding in Asta is the way to go, and we're already in S3. It just feels needlessly repetitive at this point. And hand-waving his behavior w/ "oh he just has the amorality of a child" is so... thin, such a basic cop-out. I know that emotional maturation is built on a long series of missteps, many repeated ones, but please let some stuff stick already so it can be built upon and keep things fresh. We have seen just how much development Harry's capable of in the character of Goliath. He is the best (a future) version of Harry and I'd really like to see him start moving in that direction now instead of coloring over the same lines ad nauseam.

That being said, the glorious clusterfck that is his relationship with Asta remains to be so fascinating. His alien core keeps crashing against his feelings for her and amidst all my frustration these moments somehow keep hitting the right sweeeet twisted spot for me????? I mean, apparently, he violated the Galactic Federation Charter 3 times already - for her. He def betrayed his own species - for her. First he was willing to save Earth - for her, now he would let the whole planet burn - for her. He then contemplates killing her to stop the fracture of his very being only to screech to a halt by her bed -- all of which is just...... WOW. He is so torn and confused yet so viscerally attached to her. He first calls her his kryptonite, then his Lois Lane. His core instinct is to protect her now and then try to fumble his way back to his mission, which is a complete 180 to how he behaved originally. So we def have development, I just wish they stopped trying to drown this precious nuance in a caricature. We have gold here, writers, let it shine.

#resident alien #resident alien spoilers #musings #harry x asta

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qqueenofhades · 6 months

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Okay but isn’t it like Warrior Nun or something that was canceled by netflix but then due to fan support was eventually brought back or renewed somehow?

I'm not sure, but there have been a lot of "uncancellations," because whether a show is popular has literally nothing to do with whether a streamer, especially Netflix, renews it. SAB was top of the most-watched list for months, had a vocal and dedicated fanbase calling for its renewal, and it was clear that people were interested both in it and in the potential Six of Crows spinoff. But Netflix gonna Netflix, and I don't for one moment believe that "the impact of the strike" had anything to do with it. That reeks of studio propaganda, frankly, to blame the writers/actors for going on strike at all and being the Big Meanies who are the reason (not Netflix's well-established pattern of doing exactly this) they won't get any more of their favorite show. After all, they're only giving up a TINY extra portion of their revenues, there's no actual budgetary reason they couldn't do it, and if it was just because it was popular (which has never saved non-Witcher Netflix shows in the past), they could have renewed it. Instead, this plays very much as a petty "fine, you forced us to do the deal with the writers/actors, but we can still axe boatloads of your favorite shows all at once to punish you, neener neener" power move.

As I said in my tags last night: they didn't HAVE to wait until after the strike to cancel it (and a few others). I realize that shouting at Netflix for dickish cancellation practices is like shouting at the sky for being blue or Republicans for being idiots, but still. SAB was always long odds to get a season 3 just because three seasons means Netflix has to start -- gasp! -- paying people for residuals and streaming, or at least that was the case under the old contract. So it had reached the dreaded Two Season Chopping Block, but if Netflix wanted to cancel it, as they were clearly planning to do, they could have just, you know. Done that. Instead, waiting this long and explicitly blaming "the impact of the strike" sounds, to me, like a great big bucket of passive-aggressive bullshit, and we know they're petty enough to do these kinds of things. So yeah.

Anyway, this means I am in fact going to do the Lost in Wonderland sequel fic sooner or later (Empire of Bones still has first dibs on my muse, I know people are waiting for an Unknown and Static Strange update as well, etc etc). It won't be a full retelling/treatment of s3, but the fact that I can now use other characters in addition to Fivan means that there will be a somewhat broader focus with more plot threads, and it will incorporate elements of what I would have liked to see in SAB s3. I.e. Mad Queen Alina, Crows Ice Court Rescuing Fivan Shenanigans, Mei Looking For Her Dads, Very Polite Shadow Monster David, and other fun things. So hey. Silver-ish lining, or something. Still, fuck you Netflix. Fuck you very much.

#anonymous #ask #shadow and bone #fivan

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skellymom · 3 months

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thoughts on the new bad batch trailer?

(i saw it had come out thru @techs-goggles9902 and couldnt be bothered to watch it for hours and now i have im so excited)

~ Jamie <3

youtube

Heeeyyyy, @fionajames <3

I just posted a spoiler...looks like someone is back w/their brothers...*cough* Mosshair *cough*

Please take my analysis with a grain of salt as Disney can post flashback scenes, scenes that might look to be part of a whole sequence but are two separate/several ones to throw us off. Plus these is plenty that they AREN'T probably including in the trailer. Should be interesting if there will be a second trailer for S3.

I don't see too much serious evidence that outwardly points to Tech. HOWEVER, I do see two "maybe" possibilities in the trailer and they are both wearing helmets:

Timestamp 1:03, The "X" Clone Trooper shown in the second half of the trailer. Now I have seen one trooper who unalived himself in the last season w/Senator Chuchi and Rex, so we know there are clones still actively working for the Empire. And, if you look REALLY close, Timestamp 0:36, there are more X Clone Troopers in the trailer scene right before the one w/Omega getting scanned. It's a shot from the top of the room showing what looks like 3 X Clone Troopers and a droid. Could one of them be Tech? Don't know.

Timestamp 1:14, The scene with the Imperial armored soldier in the cockpit of his ship lifting his left arm up. Did Tech steal a stormtroopers armor to save his brothers? Remember Tech's "hand signal" callback to S1? Is he signaling to The Batch? Or, also in Tech fashion, is he flailing because of an explosion as Tech sometimes does? Or, is it just a random stormtrooper and not Tech?

Looks like we get Fennec, Rex, Echo, Phee, Howzer, Cad Bane, Ventress, Palpatine, and Scorch.

The scenes in the trailer that REALLY has me scratching my head:

Timestamp 0:28 shows an Imperial Transport ship crashed and smoldering on a large hill. Is it the same ship from Timestamp 1:07? Faraway shot of several figures walking away: The one at the top of the hill looks like Omega. There is a figure either rolling down the hill: Wrecker? Although, silly me who works with dogs...it almost looks like a dog running down the hill. And a figure at the bottom that I at first thought was Crosshair...but then it kinda looks like Rex with the shadowy person walking next to them on the other side. It looks like Phee's hair. Or did this ship only carry Omega as seen in Timestamp 1:23? Did she meet someone on the planet to help her hide? Someone with a dog (I just remember the wonderful scene with the space puppy licking Omega's face and how happy her laugh sounded)?

Timestamp 0:33 is that Crosshair in the left hand side of the screen walking calmly in the opposite direction (that everyone else is running)? Is he settling a score? Is that Clone Trooper "X" (possibly Tech?).

What does the "il" uniform patches on each side of Omega's shoulders mean. I checked the Aurebesh language keys online. Doesn't match up with anything.

Who is CX-1??? Timestamp 1:15. Boba Fett????

Timestamp 1:21, who is the dude in the white and grey armor??? Wait...OH SHIT...is THAT WOLFFE???

I DON'T trust Emerie. She's creepy. Sorry. Not all the clones are tight with one another. I worry she's in secretly with Hemlock.

Are Fennec and Cad Bane working with The Batch? Or against them? Is Ventress teaming up with The Batch against Palpatine? Or is she truly fighting them at the end? Or is that just two separate scenes meant to look like they go together?

And, something that makes me sad: Both Hunter and Wrecker look older, more aged. They are still so handsome. However, with the stress of what they have gone through, plus their advanced aging...well, how long do they have left? The still of Echo doesn't look like he aged at all. Could it be that he isn't as accelerated due to what the Techno Union did to him? Or were The Batch genetically altered to be so specialized...but live even shorter lives than the Regs?

#star wars #the bad batch #tbb #bad batch #clone force 99 #the bad batch season 3 #thoughts and musings about season 3 #skellymom #ask

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gizkasparadise · 4 months

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2023 wrapped: kdrama edition!

taking a page from @dangermousie, here's a list of all the kdramas ive watched this year, in order from least liked to most liked! because i dont have a spotify wrap-up to share :'D

cdrama one here!

and i'll do a webtoon one too /o/

overall i didnt watch too many kdramas this year, and finished less. kind of a "meh" kdrama year for me overall (with 1-2 exceptions). with that in mind, full disclosure that i didnt love a ton of what i watched this year in kdramaland:

we barely knew ye: ones i dropped only a few eps in

sweet home 2. dropped after ep 2. direction it went in is v much not my thing, my fave surviving characters were either killed off or put on the bench, and im not that motivated to see what happens next. might jump back into the franchise if word-of-mouth on s3 is good, we'll see

moon in the day. first ep was actually great and i enjoyed it a lot!! but im not doing cancer storylines rn so that killed momentum. may try this one again later

king the land. watched the first ep. simply did not vibe.

death's game. ditto ^

black knight. i LOVE a good dystopian scifi. this was not that. i was really bored after the first ep and didnt bother with the rest

my dearest. i watched the first ep and liked it, but just wasnt in the mood/wasn't immediately hooked. i'm going to give this one another try when i hit the Angsty Sageuk craving again

dramas i watched at least half of

6. twinkling watermelon.

it's pretty wild to put what i believe is the current #1 show on mydramalist as my bottom pick for the year, especially since it's written by my favorite screenwriter, but here we are. this one is far from objectively the worst drama but it's here because it made me the most mad!! the female lead and second male leads were both off-putting and selfish to me, and the whole drama i was actively rooting for ryeoun's earnest and endearing male lead and shin eun soo's underwritten second female lead to escape and have mother/son adventures on their own away from the rest of everyone else

5. arthdal chronicles: sword of aramun.

sigh. i was a big believer/supporter of this season, even with all of the recasts. but despite a few moments of brilliance, it was overall a slog to watch and just kind of joyless. too much time spent on the ago tribe, too many nonsensical victories and deus ex machina coincidences, and the bag was very much fumbled with some of the characters (particularly saya, who was to me the most interesting character in s1 and you KNOW ljk could have rocked that ruthlessness). positive standouts were kim ok bin flawlessly scene-chewing as taealha and lee joon ki working what he was dealt

4. worst of evil.

adored this drama for the first 2/3rds! it was gritty, neo-noir that reminded me a lot of the old school hong kong crime films like infernal affairs. lots of style, great acting, messy and flawed characters. but the last arc/ending was a boring dud for me. still very much enjoyed the ride up to that point though!

3. perfect marriage revenge.

so! much!! fun!!! just. full commitment to making a show as gloriously makjang/soap operay as it could get and it was a blast watching because of it. made on pocket lint for a budget but it rocked what it had and a special shoutout to lee min young's absolutely fantastically camp evil stepmother. the excitement died down a little toward the end, but still a good time overall

2. the glory, part 2.

a satisfying ending to a really excellent first half. love that the female lead just got to execute revenge and there was no moral or sanctimonious hangups about it. enjoyed the way the ending was set up as "the adventure continues," and all in all this was a really solid and enjoyable dark drama! only thing that was kind of a bummer is that the time split between airing the first and second halves killed the momentum a little, but that's entirely netflix fuckery and not the fault of the show

moving

hands-down the best kdrama i watched this year, and possibly my favorite kdrama ever. i didnt plan to watch this one because im sick of superhero everything, but the cast got me wanting to at least try it and omg im glad i did. great acting from literally everyone, wild action scenes, and just beautiful characters and dynamics across every level. the family narratives are so, so good and the whole show is expertly grounded in the concept of planting seeds so your children can see flowers. please give this one a try if you're on the fence about it!

2023 kdramas that i plan to watch (but didnt get to yet!)

my lovely liar

a good day to be a dog

my perfect stranger

revenant

mask girl

bloodhounds

my demon

AWARDS

Favorite ship: juwon and jihee from moving absolutely destroyed me in the like 3 eps they were in, so they win this one. he's a gangster who gets the shit kicked out of him for a living and loves stories with happy endings. she's a weary but always brave sex worker (coded, but still) who decides to trust a lonely man crying in the street. i never thought a motion-sensor light could wreck me the way theirs did. "you have worth to me, and i have worth to you."

Favorite FL: song hye kyo's dong eun in the glory just barely edges out han hyo joo's mihyun in moving. song hye kyo needs to play, like, all the villains and anti-heroes ASAP because that's been the most fun ive had watching her. she took on a dark character and rocked it

Favorite ML: juwon from moving, definitely. to quote my older post:

Moving really said hi this is Juwon. he has scars from gunshots all down his arm. he opened a chicken restaurant. he’s a gangster. he loves pro wrestling because the good guys win. he tried to rip out his own galbladder to prove a point. he’s a proud girl dad. he is unkillable. he stands in the street and cries.

Favorite 2FL: lee min young's incredible, over the top, villainous camp queen lee jung hye from perfect marriage revenge was just so much fun to watch and she ate every single scene she was in. 10/10 would watch her throw lawn chairs in a ballgown all day

Favorite 2ML: i would die for bongseok from moving. precious sunshine child who deserves only the best

Best Cast: im a broken record, but moving. so many characters with such great depth given to them and this was truly an ensemble show A+++

Best WTF: yura eating her paternity results in perfect marriage revenge!!

#kdrama #gizka 2023 wrapped

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grace-williams-xo · 11 hours

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There is much discussion on the internet about how many seasons of Bridgerton we’ll get, and how it will be approached. I have a wild theory, if you wanna TLDR and skip the ramblings then scroll down to the bold.

While 8 seems far fetched, a lot of people are thinking 6 but I increasingly don’t even think that will happen (or if it does, it won’t happen well).

Jonny has said he’s committed to Bridgerton, and making whatever he projects he gets work around it, and that he/kanthony will be at all the siblings weddings. His commitment to the show and increasing career is well displayed in s3. He’s only in the first of the four eps (tbd for the second half, let’s hope more!) but he filmed Fellow Travellers at the same time (watch it if you haven’t) and Wicked also at a similar time. I think we can count on him/kanthony making at minimum 1–2 appearances per season, regardless of how long it lasts.

Arguably the other biggest star of the show rn is Nicola, so will be interesting to see what she does in Bridgerton s4. There’s a trend of the lead actor/s taking a back seat in the season following their spotlight, so wouldn’t be surprising if it happened also with Polin/Nicola and Luke Newton.

Now, the core of the issue is the remaining stories. (Preface, I haven’t read any of the books but I know most of the general plots). Consensus is that Benedict will be s4; and (or maybe but) all the s3 Benedict press is talking about him going through changes, evolution and inching toward the marriage mart. One could say this is set up for s4, but that doesn’t feel entirely right to me. The only plot that needs the set up is Polin because of the friends to lovers arc, and we got that in s2. (If there’s more benophie set up that makes sense that I’m not aware of, let me know!)

While I know Francesca is popular with book readers, and her character steps up in s3, we can agree that the next most popular sibling is Eloise. Eloise’s story is also the most hotly debated about how authentic the show should be to the books. I know many book readers want Eloise’s story to stay mostly as it is, and while the more I read about it the more I come around to it, I think that a problem is posed by the fact that Marina’s character is much more significant and invested in the series than the books (so I hear).

On the note of Gregory and Hyacinth, I also think that the viewers are too attached and invested to them as children to want to see them as serious romantic partners with anyone. This isn’t even touching on the fact s8 would be released in (crikey I just did the maths) probably 2030 or 2031 😭

In my head there are three possible options for the future of the show. (Four, three good options).

1. Six seasons: with Benedict, Eloise and Francesca all getting a season. (Approx 2025, 2027 and 2028 release) (I think this would be the best option if the got their act together and made/released the seasons faster, but as the actors get busier I don’t see that happening)

2. Five seasons: with Benedict and Eloise getting a season. (The best (realistic) option imo).

3. Four seasons: Benedict season four, no Eloise. (The worst option imo).

4. Four seasons: Benedict season three AND four, Eloise season four. This is kinda why I made this post. Stay with me, hear me out.

All the indications that Benedict is evolving and stepping into the marriage mart this season make me think that they could be doing a lot more set up/start of the story than necessary for a brother who isn’t the lead yet. Beneloise are such an iconic duo that I think them falling in love together would be so fun. If they followed the book, then Eloise’s love is kinda long distance anyway. If they did do something different with Eloise (contentious, ik, I’m in two minds) and made her queer and/or not get married then it could also work well.

I don’t think this is the best outcome, I just think it might be the best outcome if we only get four seasons. The actors are all increasingly busy, and many (Claudia and Nicola especially) are already playing characters far younger than their characters.

Please let me know your thoughts on this rambling, especially if you’ve read the books. Tell me what will or won’t work!

–GW xo

#bridgerton #bridgerton season 3 #bridgerton season 4 #nicola coughlan #claudia jessie #jonathan bailey #benedict bridgerton #kanthony #eloise bridgerton #polin #francesca bridgerton #gregory bridgerton #hyacinth bridgerton #bridgerton theory

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queermania · 9 months

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I have a real question that I promise I'm not trying to start shit. Just really wanna know your thoughts. Do you think Jensen wants them to make destiel canon or Dean queer?

ummmm.... maybe? my honest answer is that i don't know. i have a lot of different thoughts that add up to a certain conclusion but it ultimately means nothing because i don't know him and i have no idea what he's thinking about anything.

my general speculation (based on nothing but vibes and an unnecessarily large wealth of spn knowledge) is that if kripke had come to him some time during the first three seasons and said, "hey we wanna make dean [insert flavor of queer here]" jensen would've been like "cool, boss, just tell me what you need me to do."

(after s3, i think the only flavor of queer that was even remotely an option was bisexual so that's what i'm using from here on out. however, i do still believe in my heart that dean is gay, for the record <3)

i think if any of the show runners or writers tried to make dean explicitly bisexual (with or without the inclusion of destiel) during s4 through about s10, jensen would've done it because he's a professional, but i also think he would've pushed back on it at least a little, for a variety of reasons.

i think starting around s11 all the way to the finale, he would've been fully on board with explicitly canon destiel, if the writers made that call.

and then that brings us to now and what happens going forward, because that's the real question. i do still believe that if it's out of his control, he will do whatever the people in charge want him to do. but i don't think that particular decision is out of his control anymore. so?

so what i know is that in the past he's said that dean is straight and that destiel isn't a thing, canonically. and he's never said the opposite (outside of the whole "it's a story and it can be whatever you want it to be" type rhetoric).

however. i also know that he was fully on board with the confession and that he was trying to get the rights to supernatural before it was even over because he already knew he wasn't satisfied with the way it was going to end. that tells me that he's always fully planned on the confession being resolved in some way. there are, broadly speaking, only two ways to resolve it:

1. dean doesn't reciprocate.

2. dean does reciprocate.

the thing i'm stuck on is: what does the show even look like going forward if dean doesn't reciprocate? i can't imagine jensen thinks that would go over well. i am generally of the opinion that our part of the fandom vastly overestimates how much of the audience we actually make up, but i just don't believe that after all of this *gestures broadly at the last however many years* he could possibly think that's satisfying. because what happens? dean says "thanks but no thanks" and then... they just pretend like it never happened? dean gets a female love interest? cas stays in heaven as an angel with jack and dean goes back to earth and has a human life without the family he chose over his father? what is the point of it all?

like, i just don't see a way to go forward without dean reciprocating that doesn't feel empty and unsatisfying and depressing for everybody (apart from another relatively small faction of the audience who are going to be unhappy with literally anything that isn't just sam and dean and nobody else anyway).

not to mention, there's no way jensen's not aware of the cultural impact of destiel and the confession at this point.

also, jensen suffers from terminal dean-girlism. he wants that germophobe to be happy. all roads lead to a certain conclusion. but again, i don't actually know.

(also just to be clear i believe dean already is subtextually queer and destiel is reciprocated and nothing you say will change that for me because i watched the show. i have the receipts.)

#replies #anonymous #jackles

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transmutationisms · 1 year

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I apologize if there's something already on your blog about this and I didn't find it, but I was watching tailgate party and realized that Shiv had spent the entire episode pacing around one apartment complex 6000 steps over and that the Roys do this a lot.

My memory of the last few seasons is fuzzy (<- binged it before and now doesn't remember shit) but I feel like the Roys spend a lot of time in very large, usually open spaces, with wide walls and tall ceilings, and usually ones we've seen before or are expected to see again and that a lot of important scenes happen *outside* of these spaces. Important meaning either big moments or iconic ones or sometimes just transitonary. Kendall had his Next-Jesus moment out in the ocean, Tom started throwing water bottles in that cramped ass escape room or talked about his marriage out on the beach, the entirety of Kill List happens outside of ATN offices, Logan meets Mattson for the first time on a personal island, Roman went to a random one story office environment for a fucking business school and was never the same character (well. compared to S1 Roman) again, they have that reverse Jesus thing over cruises on a cruise ship, etc. I feel like plane scenes could both fit into this or break it depending on the season but at least for other scenes I feel like there's a pattern here.

Outdoor spaces or parts where they actually put their shoes outside onto sidewalk always feel semi important to me but it doesn't even have to be outdoors specifically. Like, even just the honeymoon suite was different enough from every other building we'd seen the show have, and that's when Shiv admitted to cheating!

Do you think there's something to this, or do you have your own thoughts? I'd be interested to hear more if only to appeal to my ego ;-). There's other things that could connect to this like the grey-white-brown-dark blue color palette damn near every scene is in vs. scenes with real color inside of them and Kendall's asking why Sophie was "on the street" being indicative of how he thinks she should be raised (based on how he was raised and also how he can recognize the manipulation and abusive inherent to his father's parenting but not the more subtle isolation and neglect) and the fact the Roys are literally running an actual rat race while trapped inside Waystair Rocyo 1/2 the time but I have to stay focused on one thing when I write shit down even if I'm connecting dots in my head or else this ask won't even be remotely legible.

[If you already wrote about this - sorry! I hope this makes sense. Either way, have a good night, and fingers crossed something fun happens at Logan's funeral. I still want Tom to fight someone. It won't happen but it'd be funny as hell lol]

yeah i haven't really written anything comprehensive on this, but i do think there are a few interesting points with regards to how the show uses the characters' environments. forgive me for bullet-pointing lol, maybe you can help string these things together into something more cohesive. but:

yes, the characters often spend most of an episode trapped in one location, even one building. in part i think this is a function of the presence of playwrights on the writing staff, and the way many episodes flirt with the three classical unities of tragedy writing (time / place / action). so, lots of episodes are 1 day only, or 2 or 3 max, and often a character will be mostly confined to one location during that span. in part this helps make each individual episode really tight internally, but it also contributes to that persistent sense that the characters are trapped (within their circumstances, company, family, etc)

indoor vs outdoor is an interesting thread. one thing that has always stood out to me is that the show has a tendency to use natural sunlight not as refreshing, enlightening, etc, but as blinding, overwhelming, and even dangerous. the sun almost kills logan in s3, there are those shots in 2x10 and 3x09 where everyone's squinting in the bright light, there's a similar effect in 'austerlitz', etc. this contributed to the overall sense of discomfort that the roys experience, despite all their material luxuries; it also contributes to the sense that nature and the natural world is an alien, external force that appears threatening—this sense also comes out in all of the animal metaphors they use, which emphasise the brutality they see in the animal kingdom and in nature generally

if we're talking places, i also must bring up the presence of bathrooms on the show. these are quotidian rooms, but also dangerous ones, in the sense that they exist to purge a civilised society of its filth, and the whole process tends to be marginalised and wilfuly ignored. so, i've always liked that succession has a lot of scenes set in bathrooms, and often characters are able to speak differently in the bathroom—sometimes more intimate (kendall and stewy, tom and logan in 3x05), or more direct (greg and logan in 2x08), or they're allowed to say things they couldn't elsewhere (roman and mencken). bathrooms are also sheltered personal spaces, where the characters can retreat and hide (kendall using them to do coke, shiv practicing a smile in 1x02, greg rehearsing his congressional testimony)

the waystar offices obviously have that very 21st-century glass-and-steel aesthetic that telegraphs new money, a certain neoliberal attempt at severance from systems of social and cultural meaning-making, etc. so, moving the characters to other locations is effective because, in contrast to the kind of soullessness of the waystar building, it makes the other places stand out and emphasises the meaning we can glean from the sets alone (like, the gut-punch of dodds's house in contrast to the sort of corporate default)

in regards to the idea of control and confinement within luxe spaces—yes, this is clearly something we see many of the environments convey (the ultimate expression of this being the anti-suicide wall that logan puts up to pen kendall in). this is really a discrete material expression of how waystar operates in a broader sense, constraining people whilst appearing to create more options and more freedom (also a basic characteristic of neoliberal modes of production, lol)

again i'm not sure i have a thesis statement here unifying all of these observations lol. but i do think the show does well at using its environments and settings to tell us a lot about the characters, the company, and the broader world they inhabit.

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hournites · 1 year

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I'm SO SAD about stargirl ending and I've only ever been a casual fan (big fanatic of hournite tho!) I love the show as a whole and want it to continue. do u think if all of us continue streaming it in the background, we could get the show picked up elsewhere? lol just wishful thinking, the denial is real!!

I know it all feels futile. The thing is, it’s not. The best bet of saving Stargirl is to have HBO Max reconsider declining the s4 pitch. When Johns/the other execs pitched Stargirl s4 to HBO Max way back in the Spring, likely April or May, nobody was watching Stargirl on the streaming platforms and there was virtually no promo that would incite new viewers. Naturally, they looked at our hiatus numbers and said no. But there are opportunities for that to change if we mobilize the fandom to get HBO Max’s attention. Yes, watch live and stream the show (especially on HBO Max but also Amazon Prime etc internationally wherever you get it) while we still have the last 3 episodes to air, but these next few things are the most important:

1. Watch the finale. Ask your family and friends to turn on their tv to tune in to the Stargirl s3 finale—Seriously. If we can hit a million viewers for the finale, it shows them that a lot of people were and are interested in the story. Ending with the highest ratings we can will look good

2. Watch Titan’s “Where is my Gar” — The Titans/Stargirl crossover is an important week to tune in to, it’ll show HBO Max that people care about Courtney — And use that week to stream Stargirl seasons 1-3. It will be expected that new fans who are interested in Courtney and will only be introduced to her in this crossover will check out Stargirl, thus bumping the # of viewers for the show and we should help add to those numbers by doing the same.

3. Get loud about the show on social media. A lot of people watch this show but our online presence is sleepy. While the fandom can try as much as we can to get James Gunn’s/HBO Max’s attention to save Stargirl, there is really only so much we can do. We’re not execs who can make these pitches. But if we really buckle down on our discontent about Stargirl being cancelled by talking about what we WOULD want for a season 4, we could hopefully rally enough attention to get some cast on board a save campaign again. It’s just not going to happen without efforts on both sides.

#stargirl #hn talks #save stargirl #ask #anon

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gentlebeardsbarngrill · 2 months

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03/11/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; Cast & Crew; Wee John Wondays; Rhys Darby; Con O'Neil; Taika Waititi; Wendy Anderson;Damien Gerard; London Billboards; London Billboard Survey; Watch Party Reminders; Queerties; Trends; Max Surveys; Fan Spotlight; Fundraisers; Articles ; LoveNotes; DailyDarby/TonightsTaika

Hey Lovelies. I'm not sure where the recaps are going to be going from here. I may calm thinks down a bit and just keep you updated on watch parties and fun sightings. With the news on s3 not being picked up, I'm feeling not quite sure of myself on where to go from here. Still thinking on it. Is there a particular thing about the recaps you like? Maybe I'll focus more on what people want to see most. Anyway, I'd love some feedback. Thanks Crew.

== Cast & Crew Sightings ==

= Wee John Wonday =

This one featured Con O'Neill and Gypsy Taylor.

Src: Kristian Nairn's Instagram

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kristian Nairn (@kristiannairn)

instagram

== Rhys Darby ==

Rhys has a new Cameo! This time from our lovely dear @/Baladria on twitter.

Check out the video on Cameo

In addition, Rhys posted a pic by @andyhollingworth1 on his instagram story.

= Con O Neill =

Warning, video may cause tears of joy and sadness. Con O'Neill is a gem of a human being. "You were all the home we ever needed"

I also missed his post from the other day, which was a dedication to his lovely mom.

== Taika Waititi ==

Rita was kind enough to give us some more Taika shots amongst her pile of Auckland pics! SRC: Rita Ora's Instagram

== Wendy Andersen ==

Our RedFlagCrew @wendywings on Twitter brought us some much needed Peanut action from the Oscars.

== Damien Gerard ==

Our lovely Father Teach has been making videos for us on Twitter! He's been sending a lot of love notes and keeping us up to date with his works. If you're interested please visit:

https://x.com/damientgerard/status/1766667952252977602?s=20

https://x.com/damientgerard/status/1766981901796147662?s=20

== First London Billboard Meet Up==

The first day of the London Billboards had a wonderful meetup of various UK fans! The billboard was visible from Leicaster Square and had a whole lot of foot traffic throughout the day!

Our lovely friend @queerly-autistic / QueerlyAutistic on Twitter made it to the billboard as well!

The UK Crew also got to see some Box Trucks!

Our dear friend @/whimmzee on twitter put these awesome signs together and the visiting crew signed them!

An exhausted OFMD Crew took one last picture after many hours of work! Thank you for getting out there and documenting the billboards: @MoviesWithMarty, @/whimmzee, and @queerly-autistic.

== Save OFMD Crew London Billboard Survey ==

"Although the March 18 & 19 dates for the billboard are locked in, we’re still able to change the design if desired. This is where you come in. Amazing donors, your generosity is responsible for this billboard, so it’s only fair you have a say in this decision. We’ve set up a survey of viable options: let us know which you’d most like to see! It’ll be open through Wednesday, March 13, 11:59 GMT. Thank you again for helping us make this happen! 🐙💜 “Billboard Survey Link” Tumblr Link to Post / Instagram / Reddit

== More London Billboard Meet Ups! ==

Tomorrow's the day folks! First set of Billboards are up tomorrow! SRC: Tumblr / Instagram

== New Save OFMD Crew Calendar ==

The next few days are focused on the LED Trucks outside the various networks locations as well as doing a rewatch party with @OurFlagRTL

= Watch Parties =

== Wrecked ==

There are sources being passed around. If access is an issue, DM @iamadequate1 on Twitter or Tumblr

Season 2 watch from March 11th to March 15th.

Season 3 watch from March 18th to March 22nd.

Hashtags:

#WreckedPirates

#SaveOFMD

#RhysDarbyFaction

== Deutsche Nachrichten / German News ==

Twitter-Watch-Along von Our Flag Means Death:

Streamt Staffel 2 ab dem 15. März.

Samstag, 9.3. 17:00 Folgen 1 bis 3,

Dienstag, 12.3. 20:00 Folgen 4 & 5,

Mittwoch, 13.3. 20:00 Folgen 6 & 7,

Donnerstag 14.3. 20:00 Folgen 8 & 9,

Freitag, 15.3. 17:30 Folge 10

Und anschließend bingen wir zusammen Staffel 2!

Schaut und tweetet mit!

Hashtag:

OurFlagRTL

== The Queerties! ==

We finally find out the results of the queerties votes tomorrow!

== Trends ==

== Max Surveys ==

Don't mind if I do! If you emailed max earlier this year after the cancellation, check your email, you may have one too. Feel free to tell them how much you hated that they cancelled OFMD. Remember these folks are not the ones making the actual decisions so be a Polite Menace and not a Complete Asshole :D Although, if you decide to go complete asshole route, just be sure to let them know its David Zaslav you're mad at, not the support folks.

== Fan Spotlight ==

Thank you to @melvisik for continuing to make these fun Cast cards for us!

I would love to get more fun stuff for fan spotlight, so if you'd like your artwork or creations featured please please please hit me up! I'd love to highlight your work!

== Fundraiser Status ==

I had a few folks ask me to keep them updated on the two big fundraisers going on right now so I'm just showing a comparison fo how much they're going up today :). As usual please don't feel obligated to spend money you don't have or can't spare! If you wouldn't mind sharing to help these charities out, it would be appreciated, but yet again, not required.

eSIMS and Sanitary Products for Gaza

03/10/24 - $5689 / 191 Supporters / 71 %

03/11/24 - $5814 / 194 Supporters / 72%

InSoupNow Status

Wow! That jumped up in less than a day! Thank you to everyone donating or sharing! It's working!

03/10/2024 - $925 / 39 supporters / 18%

03/11/2024 - $1183 / 47 supporters / 23%

== Articles ==

Exclusive Interview: stand-up comic Jes Tom on Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda Netflix comedy special – “I am your new queer best frenemy”

== Love Notes ==

Hey lovelies, I'm going to leave the love notes to Con and Rhys tonight. There's nothing I could say that they haven't said better. Rhys Cameo Con's video is up above in the Cast & Crew Section I will say I love you all, and I hope you're hanging in. Be kind to yourself today lovelies <3

== Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika ==

Tonight's theme? SNAAAAAAKES OOOOOHHHH ITS A SNEEEEEKKKK Daily Darby Gif Courtesy of @ofmd-ann Tonight's Taika Gif Courtesy of @tea-and-liminality!

72 notes · View notes

braintapes · 1 year

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The Hotel Podcast Season 3 Analysis: Part II - The Lobby Boy

(Time to blow out another candle.)

Welcome back! Part I was allll about the Manager's arc, covering episodes 3.1 - 3.4. We saw the Manager as she was repeatedly killed by a pale, gibbering creature, we watched the darkness consume her and the lobby, and we also witnessed the Hotel being built, in a way.

The Manager's been killed again by the gibbering creature. Now we see from the Lobby Boy's perspective. Well, we will see.

As I said in my previous post, S3 is simultaneously the old crew's origin, end, and a place/time/series of events they intermittently return to. This means that we're seeing the staff in a very specific, raw state of being. A different a lens to understand them through.

(Time to make a wish.)

This season functions as a collection of character studies showing us how the old crew responds to inevitability. The certainty of death. There is no release for these three, as there may be for the guests. There is only dying to wake up to die again.

The Manager's arc emphasized the certainty. The Lobby Boy's arc will showcase the cycle.

As always though, this is only my own personal read on the text/audio. Analyzing the art and stories I like in this way is a creative fun outlet for me, and my hope is that this can prompt more discussion for other people too. I love getting to see other people's perspectives and bring up stuff I hadn't considered!

Enough preamble though, let's get right to it. (Do get comfy though, because this is nearly 7 full word pages long)

(It's almost my birthday.)

To properly set the stage for the Lobby Boy's arc, I need to talk some more about the Manager first. Who is the Manager? What drives her?

I'm going to go by Season 2 here. I believe S2 is another, though different, look at these characters. There, we see them as raw as raw can get. They're a mixture of ingredients sitting in the pan waiting to be put into the oven. Whereas in S3 they are freshly baked and piping hot. And also still being baked. And speaking of food metaphors…

The idea of hunger and satiation continually shows up in the Manager's stories. Burger Baby is, uh, fairly obvious and speaks for itself, I think. Mrs Bones is interesting because again we see her thirst as this primal need inside the Manager, a desperate instinctual urge that drives her forward. This also happens in 5.1 Merp and Burble, where she. Well. She merps and she burbles.

In these altered states of consciousness, she has an animal-like nature. She is concerned only with satiating herself. But even when she gets what she's looking for, it's never enough. She can never truly be content.

This shows up in 3.2, when the laborers' deaths satiate the Manager. They even build her/the lobby as they perish one by one. But of course, of course, the fullness doesn't last. This is one of my absolute favorite aspects of the Manager's character. It makes her so distinct from the other two.

The Manager's response to the inevitability presented to her is to allow it in. She neither fights it, kicking and screaming, as the Owner would, nor does she run from it, as the Lobby Boy will. She accepts her circumstances and adapts to them. She takes to everything the easiest of the three.

So, she dies. So...she dies. So what? She's dead now, and will remain so for the rest of the season. What's done is done, until the Hotel wills it otherwise. They serve at the pleasure of the Hotel Herself, after all.

(Do you remember how to die? I'll remind you.)

The most distinct difference between the Lobby Boy and the Manager is that the latter seems to relish in her job. Not in the way the Owner does, as a title to preen and puff up over. She gets nothing out of lording her position over the other two. She does what she does because it's in her nature to do so, and it's a form of sustenance. Her job is her life is her nature. Literally hashtag ultimate girlboss, y'know?

The Lobby Boy, on the other hand, does NOT relish his duty. He is deeply intimate with death and dying and the horrors that lurk inside the Hotel in a way that the other two simply are not. He constructs nearly every awful thing in the Hotel and personally delivers the guests to those things.

As the gibbering creature continues to beat (and then starts to consume) the very dead Manager in 3.4, the Lobby Boy notes the "pulsing and bruised" walls of the Hotel. Something is deeply wrong here and he can feel it. The way he's seeing everything is not how he normally would. He says:

"It's not supposed to look like that, I think. Not to me. Maybe to the guests, but to me it only looks like...I knew underneath and behind and through everything was something awful and vast watching, but I could still look at the facade and know my place here."

The Lobby Boy has, off the top of my head, seen the Hotel in this way two other times. Well, one of this times was in a bonus episode and so doesn't really count, but it's one of my favorite bonus episodes so I'm going to talk about it a bit anyway. Feel free to skip that part.

First, in 4.12 X - X, during the big fight between the Owner and the Lobby Boy, the two go sailing and flying through the Hotel. They crash through lobbies and halls and rooms. The Lobby Boy SEES everything in the Hotel. He sees everything he has built and everything he hasn't yet. He sees the guests dying. He sees himself, burning. And he hates it. He decides to look away, to try to not remember.

In fact, the Lobby Boy's active avoidance of witnessing his own work is THE big reason the Owner hates the Lobby Boy and picks that fight with him in the first place.

In the bonus episode The Hotel, the Lobby Boy has a dream in which he is entirely alone. He examines the lobby before using his cool powers to rise up through the Hotel in such a way that he can see it all. He keeps going, pushing aside and shaping and conducting the Hotel's form until it reaches a crescendo of swirling color and shape and fervor...Then, of course, he remembers that he's not alone, not really. He's never alone in the Hotel.

Like I said, that lies in murky non-canon-ish waters so feel free to ignore it. I personally consider it an interesting supplemental to the other two examples. The point is, the Lobby Boy isn't an idiot. He's very well aware of what the Hotel is. What he is and what he does.

3.4 ends with this:

"In the Hotel there is only death. Only ever death. But still I run to the second floor, where the deaths don't matter so much. The floor with the guest rooms."

He sees the darkness consuming the lobby, the Manager, everything in the Hotel lobby. He knows what's happening. Still, he decides to run. He chooses to look away. To not think about it, if he can.

He runs to what he knows best: the guest rooms. The familiar forms the Hotel is supposed to take. The facade he can try to lose himself in, knowing all the while that it's a lie and he will face the horrible truth that envelopes and underpins it.

(Here comes another one, don't miss it or we'll have to start over.)

Now, it's time for 3.5 The Lobby Boy Dies.

“I step off the elevator and hold the door for the guest, but the elevator is empty.”

The Lobby Boy is alone as he walks down the endless hallways. The lights wink at him as he passes by. We'll see the Hotel Herself flicker her lights at the Lobby Boy other times, like in 4.10 Audrey Burns. It's one of her cheeky and fun ways of communicating with him! The Hotel is absolutely playing with him like a toy in this arc. I mean, that's true of every arc but this one especially feels so delightfully cheeky.

He refuses to look back behind him. He's seen the guests look back and it's never saved any of them. Then he spots a different kind of light – a candle by an empty guest room.

“I...the candle wants me to stare into the flame. It wants me to go inside the room. The door matches the key ring in my hand... Why-”

But the Lobby Boy knows what's happening here. He drops his keys and continues walking. He avoids looking at anything but straight ahead of him, down the hall. With each room, door, candle he avoids, another one shows up until every room is an empty guest room with a candle. For him.

He wants to refuse. He doesn't want to go in. Tells himself he won't, he CAN'T. But the Hotel pulsates in the background and he starts to imagine what it would be like if the walls caught fire...the fire spreading...Chasing him...He runs!

But why? Why avoid the flames and the burning and the smoke when he knows he can't, won't escape them? When he knows he'll end up dying anyway?

There's a few ways to look at this. One is that it's part of his nature – he doesn't want to face death, not necessarily in a human way but because it - like basically everything else - makes him squeamish and uncomfortable. If he runs, he doesn't have to face it. If he runs, he can pretend:

"The doors seem to turn towards me as I pass now. Stretching, almost reaching out. Presenting to me, showing me the sweetest lie: Safety. Safety from what is behind me. Safety from the end ahead."

“The flames behind, the fire ahead, I will pretend not to know what is beyond the door and know relief for a sickening, hopeful, instant.”

[Bolding mine]

The Lobby Boy is aligning himself with the guests here. He is a guest in this episode: he has a room he will go and die inside of. He knows the guests aren't saved by their pretending, but he does it anyway because the tiny glimmer of light inside the Lobby Boy is hope. Is wanting. In this case, it's wanting the comforting lie that he'll be okay, somehow.

Another part is that this is technically new to him, new and frightening. His nature is fearfulness, so of course he runs. He's still a fresh-out-of-the-oven Lobby Boy at this point! All of this that's happening doesn't gel with whatever knowledge was baked into him from the Hotel. He hasn't had a chance to acclimate yet!

He enters his room and sees, just before the door closes, himself stepping off the elevator in the hall. He stands in the dark for a long time until the candle appears again.

“I stare into the flame and I can hear the Hotel around me.”

He's transfixed until the candle falls over and the whole room goes up in flames, burning him to death. He doesn't accept it, he screams and tries to run and tries to open the door he knows will not open again. He dies just like one of the guests.

(You were there too.)

Since the previous Lobby Boy is dead, the Lobby Boy who we just saw step out of the elevator is our narrator for 3.6 The Lobby Boy Tries Not To Die.

“I step off the elevator and hold the door for the guest, but...there is no guest. I'm alone.”

Last episode, we saw the part of the Lobby Boy that identifies with the guests, the part of him that's just as trapped as they are. But there's plenty more layers and sides to the LB we've yet to peel.

The Lobby Boy lies to himself and attempts to convince himself that the guest he saw at the end of the hall definitely did not have his face. It for sure wasn't him. Totally. He slips back into his role, what he knows he should be doing. But everything's wrong, still. He continues down the hall and passes rooms full of smoke and burning and screaming.

Occasionally, his voice reverberates. Notably, it happens when the ceiling is full of soot. He says:

“I don't want to fall up into that void. I don't know if I'll hit the ceiling, or just fall forever. (forever, forever.)”

[Formatting taken directly from transcript]

In my last post, I talked about how the darkness – the Hotel – is inextricable from the Manager/the staff. The idea returns here with...Well, with the smoke and soot, obviously, but ALSO with these vocal effects. It's one of the Lobby Boy's things, sometimes if he's particularly worked up he'll get effects like this in his narration.

As it's applied here, it feels like something directly tying him to the Hotel. A part of him that is like it. These reverberations come back at the end of the season both with the Hotel Herself's narration and the staff's response to her. They are not separate entities, but a strange splintering and amalgamation of each other.

The Hotel's pulsing starts up in the background. The Lobby Boy continues walking but his steps become wet and squishy as the floors become coated in, um. Melted Lobby Boy soup leaking out from the room doors. It pools and congeals into a gory sticky mess that clings to him, hinders his running. The desk bell dings and something is chasing the Lobby Boy and screaming at him and his immediate instinct is to run away.

The slurry of himself enmeshed in the floor shows that the part of the Hotel that is the Lobby Boy is this second floor. The same way the Manager is the lobby and we saw her being built, the Lobby Boy is every endless hall, room, door, ceiling, floors. He is both the facade and the horrible truth at the end of it.

What he runs from is himself, literally, in this episode, but also from...himself. You know what I mean?

“I run faster. I want the soot black ceiling to take me. I want to sink into the cold bleeding carpet. I want grey walls and nothing else.”

(mood man I hate being yelled at too.)

They're both screaming now, his pursuer and himself. Just...screaming. I LOVE the distorted layered yells here. Something visceral and miserable about the sounds perfectly encapsulate the Lobby Boy, I feel.

He runs and every door turns into an elevator. He ends up, of course, back at that door. That room, with the smoke and the fire and the other burning Lobby Boy already inside of it. He looks back and sees himself clearly this time. He's terrified. He'd rather burn to death than be caught by himself. He closes the door “a little faster” before the other him can get inside.

And so the Lobby Boy Fails To Not Die.

(Did you see him? Was it too fast for you?)

We are roughly two Lobby Boys down as we head into 3.7 The Rooms Are Filled.

“I step off the elevator and hold the door for the guest. The guest steps out and into the hallway.”

So now there's two of them in the elevator. One must be the guest, if one of them is the Lobby Boy. But then...? They walk together and the other lets our viewpoint LB into the room.

Once again, this opening sequence involves the Lobby Boy following his standard routine. Bring the guest to the room. Ask if they need anything. Our narrator gives a quick rundown of the room but then the fire starts consuming everything again. Instead of running away from each other, the two Boys struggle pathetically over each other to get out. One of them escapes, the other remains trapped in the room.

He heads back to the elevator and goes to another floor.

“There are so many buttons twinkling dully at me. I like to stare at them on the way.”

Bringing up this quote just to say I'm putting a pin in it for later in this post. Bear with me, there WILL be a payoff to this. I just wanted to make special note of this line in particular.

The elevator doors open and the cycle continues, repeats. One Lobby Boy brings the other Lobby Boy to his room and he dies there as the Lobby Boy goes back to the elevator to do it again. Again. Again. Every time the Lobby Boy dies, a light in the elevator goes out. Slowly, they burn to darkness every hall in the Hotel.

He's not running the same way he was during the last few episodes. He's settling in. Getting acclimated. The way he gets through this is by not thinking about it. If he doesn't think, he can hold out the sliver of hope within him that he won't be the one to die. But he'll still die.

He sounds so utterly exhausted as he relives both the walk from the elevator to the room and the burning to death inside the room. So strained, bordering on anger almost.

“Why do I look so afraid, if I'm not the one who has to burn? But I am the one who has to burn. And the one who has to close the door. I'm the only one here.”

Okay to be honest you could just ignore every single thing I've written here and just look at these lines because this is the crux of it all.

The sound gets...weirder from here. The elevator door dings wrongly. The Lobby Boy doesn't hold the door open for the guest. We hear the Owner's scream for the first time in a while, though this comes immediately after the line saying, “The rooms are filled with my screams.”

Hmmmm...

But I can't talk about that yet. I need to talk about this:

“The halls are filled with smoke and mess. I don't know why The Manager only had to die once and I have to die so much. So much. Too much.”

[Bolding mine]

Does this line sound familiar? He sounds envious here, almost...resentful, in a way that reminds me very specifically of 2.2 Cracker Man:

“Why do they get to be in the house? Why do they get to be young and happy and beautiful? Why does it hurt to watch them live? I don’t know why but it does. Every smile stings.”

The Manager's S2 episodes showed us her primal instinct as one of her core traits. The Lobby Boy's S2 episodes show us his envy and rage. He's portrayed as a stalking figure in both Cracker Man and Frozen Figures, something that watches from the outside before going in for the kill. Yeah, technically the Owner and Manager do this too, but it feels personal for the Lobby Boy.

Why do THEY (the guests) get to live? Why do THEY get to pretend, to have the luxury of not knowing what's going to happen to them? Why did the Manager only have to die ONCE instead of being stuck in this endless cycle? (She didn't, she died at least like 4 times, but I suppose he doesn't know that). Why is he stuck here and they're not? WHY CAN'T HE D--

“There are so many buttons twinkling dully at me. I like to stare at them on the way.”

That envy and his feelings towards the guests are also why I think the Lobby Boy likes staring at twinkling lights. I mean, there doesn't have to be anything deeper to it. I do think it is just...a thing he likes and that's that. But if there WERE deeper meaning to it, I would say part of him wants what the guests have. He wouldn't know what, exactly, he wants. But he knows they're different. They have something else. Maybe something nicer. Maybe. He admires the shimmering light until it turns into a desperate flame that eventually burns to soot and ash.

His envy collapses and gives way to the rage tucked deep inside him in Cracker Man. Here in 3.7, he taps into that and chases down the other Lobby Boy. Once again, he becomes the pursuing monster. He is the rooms he built. He is the guests he brought to them. He is the horror that will kill them inside the rooms. The screaming effects layer beautifully again.

“Every room is getting filled. Endlessly. We put ourselves here because we did. Never a thought to why or where. He runs so I'm running. He burns so I'm burning. If I could catch him, if I could touch him, could we burn together?”

I have nothing to add to this, I just want to sit and appreciate these lines for a minute.

The chase continues. This Lobby Boy can see into the elevators lining the hallways. Behind the both of them, “the void spills out” and chases them. No matter what direction they go, he'll always end up back in that darkness. Whether he's inside the burning room or out in the hall. He still, still, holds onto that tiny sliver of false hope that maybe, just maybe, he can catch him this time.

But the Lobby Boy sees him and closes the door a little faster. And the Lobby Boy is brought to a void by a trillion lights.

(The guests were never meant to come this far.)

There's...a lot more I'd love to say. I could go on and on in endless circles about this arc. It would be fitting, but this is already so long and I still have the Owner and the Hotel Herself to talk about!

So for now, let's see what happens to the Lobby Boy in the cleverly titled 3.8 A V O I D.

The Lobby Boy doesn't actually...do much here, since this episode is meant to start us on the Owner's arc. LB sits in the void, afraid. As familiar gibbering/Powers That Be noises follow after him, he panics.

“The worst it can do is kill me. Again. And Again. Forever. WHY CAN'T I DIE?”

[Formatting taken direct from transcript]

One last time, there's the crux of the Lobby Boy's despair. Why is he trapped like this when he's so, SO afraid? Why? Why why? The hopeless wailing and thrashing shared by the guests in their last moments.

We proceed listen to the Lobby Boy having the worst time he's probably ever had when he whimpers and begs “No no no no please no.”

His question is answered by as he's brutally killed by the gibbering creature the Hotel.

(He seems to be dead now though.)

And then the Owner chimes in with the fucking funniest possible line, “Thank you. Dispatching that creature has been long overdue.”

Thanks king. So glad to see you on your hater streak <3

Anyway, that wraps things up for the Lobby Boy's arc. I've never seen a more literal version of the “Man Vs. Self” style of conflict as this, as he grapples and struggles and fights with himself across time.

We get to see the fearful core of his being on full display along with the reasons why he'd be so afraid compared to the other two. Neither the Manager or the Owner are as down in the dirt with the guests, so to speak, as the Lobby Boy is. He embodies the most important aspect of it, the rooms and the killing.

It seems the only way he can get himself to function in that endless cycle is by avoidance, turning himself away from it all. The Owner just doesn't get it. Even though they have so much in common...

Well, that'll be for next time to delve into. See you then friends. Thanks again for reading! :-)

#the hotel podcast #the lobby boys episodes are longer generally #and theres a lot of ground to cover here #i hope this is an enjoyable read nonetheless!#hotelpod analysis

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rainparadefromhell · 2 years

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My thoughts on season 3 of Never Have I Ever

SPOILERS AHEAD !

* author's note : it's long what can you do, i have an obsessive personality

• Things I disliked in no particular order

1. The pacing of this season.

The pacing of this season

The pacing-

I don't know what happened this season but it felt like someone pushed my head into a blender. Many things were so glossed over, I was actually baffled. People kept getting into relationships and breaking up like it was nothing and all sense of direction was lost. Everything felt like a fever dream. Ben and Aneesa break up. She cries one time, kisses Fabiola and now they are in a relationship only for that to not work out and Fabiola gets into another relationship (at this point i forgot Eve existed). No one reacts to anything, things just happen so there is no chance for the viewers to get attached to any new storylines/couples. Just borderline bad writing in terms of pacing.

2. What they've done to Aneesa's character

At the end of the show, the person I felt bad for the most was Aneesa. The writers just would not give her a chance. She wasn't a real character. She barely had any personality beyond being a plot device for multiple characters and getting into meaningless relationships every 5 minutes (the show does have a problem with doing this to all characters tbh). I wanted to know Aneesa better (I hoped for a pov episode) but all I've got was her getting left for another person in not one but TWO relationships? And they made her kinda not even care about it. It just wasn't realistic and I hated it.

3. Des.

Listen, I don't have anything against his character. Because his character doesn't exist. Des got, as well as all the new characters - Aneesa'd. His sole purpose was to give Devi an Indian boyfriend (which is fine). But he was just so.....unnecessary?? I'm sorry but while watching every scene him and Devi shared, I was begging for literally any other character to show up. Same with his two friends (extras) that had about two lines each. His and Devi's relationship, in my opinion would've been just fine as a fling not a real relationship. And it lasted SO. FUCKING. LONG. Why, just why were they wasting time (that could have been given to flesh out old characters) on something everyone and their mother KNEW wouldn't work out or have any meaningful addition to the show. Other things got sidelined, that's why I hated this storyline.

4. And save the worst for last. All of Devi's romantic relationships in s3

Oh God, here we go.

I understand that Devi is a teen girl that just wants to date boys, have fun, be in love. I really do. But as writers, it is the nhie showrunners' job to make this enjoyable for the viewers. And it worked, the past 2 seasons it really did. Team Paxton, team Ben, team Devi.... We've all had something to enjoy. So throwing in another boy - no, two actually (the guitar player she kissed isn't a big part of the show so I don't really care) made me so angry. They've disturbed a sort of a balance between silly/fun the show had with like 3 or 4 love interests all in your face at the same time so they all started to look kinda.... unimportant (except for Ben, but I am biased lol). It looked painfully unrealistic as well.

The show yet again suffered because of its format. you simply can't throw in a bunch of characters in a 30 minute, 10 episode long comedy show and just hope for the best. It felt messy, rushed and fleeting. Like there was no room to breathe, I felt so anxious watching the middle part of the show.

• Things I did like in no particular order

1. The adults' storylines

I found them much more tolerable and cohesive. I am a Nalini stan first and a human second. I just love her. I love watching Poorna be so brilliant in this role. I was thrilled they gave her a friend and quite sad that friend was taken away later on but oh well. Also, possibly my favorite moment in the show was this quote from Nalini : "You are never too much and always enough." This show was the first time I've truly seen my relationship with my own mother represented in a way that isn't black or white and just simple or complicated. For me this scene meant a lot - showing that no matter what may happen, Nalini will always love and support her daughter.

I also liked Kamala's storyline. Tbh I didn't like Prashant all that much. He felt like a more mature Paxton. I'm glad Kamala didn't rush into marriage, especially if it's something she does not want. I really liked the relationship between Kamala and Mr. Kulkarni, I just wish we saw more of them.

2. Trent and Eleanor ??

I totally predicted this!! I said they will be that odd couple that somehow works very well and I was right. They were really entertaining and I'm so glad we get to see more of them.

3. Trent and Paxton ??

I adored Paxton and Trent's friendship. You can tell they love each other in their weird ways. This totally made me like the characters more and I love love LOVE seeing healthy male friendships in media.

4. Paxton

And everybody gasped. (Hell, I gasped, too). Here it comes Paxton/Daxton stans....

I did really like Paxton this season. And he had his moments last season as well, I'll admit that. Is he my favorite character in the show? No. Do I still think he's kinda boring and overrated? Yes. But I did like him. My favorite Paxton moment this season was in the hospital with Ben (as well as his friendship with Ben as a whole). Not only was it very kind of him to stay with Ben and make him feel better, I also loved him admiting he doesn't really know who he is. How incredibly honest of him. I liked that he apologized to all the girls he hurt and that he was friends with Haley again. I also loved him telling Devi she can't love anyone until she loves herself (someone's been reading my posts 👀). He finally started to care about things (school) and even if his storyline is a simple one, it worked. I'm glad he grew as a person. For me, Paxton finally became a full-fledged character with a unique storyline. It took only 3 seasons but we got there.

5. Benjamin Gross

I could write novels about Ben Gross. I could write about him until my hands hurt and then some more. He is easily one of my, if not my favorite fictional character of all time. He is one of the few characters that, in my opinion, isn't written in an episodic way. Jaren Lewison has this great ability to carry all of Ben's emotions in his pocket and whip out what he needs in a scene with such ease. The character doesn't forget his lessons, he remembers his past feelings and what they taught him which makes him develop and make progress so naturally within the show. Ben Gross isn't just a douche at the beginning of season 1 and a nice guy at the end of season 3. You can see all of his flaws as well as how caring and emotionally intelligent he is at the same time throughout the entire show. I'm so happy he learned to relax and not care as much about grades.

This kinda falls under Ben, but just 3x06 being the best episode (with the finale) for me. I don't know what kind of crack Mindy Kaling puts in the Ben episodes but she gets is right every damn time. Those 4 words being "I'm proud of you" from his dad made me so emotional. I wouldn't want them to be anything or for anyone else. Also I fucking loved Ben being into drawing?? We need more of that.

6. Devi Vishwakumar

My girl. I really liked Devi this season. I loved how they showed she's still grieving. Maitreyi's performance in the scene when Paxton tells her she doesn't love herself yet was so heartbreakingly beautiful. She knew he was right. Also can we talk about the best version of Devi aka post time jump Devi??? I love that girl! You can really tell she matured quite a bit. She's not as hot headed anymore. The only "bad" thing she did was throwing that book or whatever it was in the trash and honestly...? I didn't see how that was such a big deal at all. And the other team kinda cheated, too. Who cares? They're not in a courtroom. I really hope that in season 4 we see her growing even more.

7. The whole gang

One thing I also liked was that everyone was friends with everyone this season. We saw the Paxton-Trent-Eleanor group, Paxton and Ben's friendship, Paxton and Fabiola, Ben-Devi-Fabiola and so on.... I reallllly liked the different dynamics.

8. Ben & Devi

And finally - this is what (some of) you have been waiting for. As you can see the pacing and new characters really messed with how much I loved (or rather didn't) this season. But honestly, now that I had time to think about it, the character development and just the finale really saved the whole season for me. And yes, this includes Ben and Devi. This season we've seen Ben and Devi be mostly, friends. They didn't share many moments until the last few episodes which did frustrate me but that is exactly what made all of them feel so special later on. It was important for them to not spend as much time together then slowly be close friends for the finale we got. I really wasn't expecting it. For all my criticisms about the writing not being the best in some aspects of the show, the writers did such a good job with their storyline and it's safe to say that s3 is my favorite when it comes to them.

Last season we've only seen hints of them pining for each other. This season they were much more honest and comfortable with each other. I cannot stop thinking about how perfectly their little romance was sprinkled over the seasons, with season one's introduction and teasing of their feelings, season two's big conflict and hurt and finally season three's rekindling of feelings and big realizations. None of their storyline felt like sudden big explosions (like with Paxton), just a natural evolution of caring for each other. A sign that it wasn't just a crush (quick and overwhelming) but a first love kind of a situation. Realistic, messy, beautiful, simple. There isn't a doubt in my mind that these two will end up together in some way at the end of season 4. Truly one of my favorite on screen couples all thanks to the brilliant and talented Jaren and Maitreyi.

Overall, I still think the show's best season is season 1. It was almost perfectly set up. However, in terms of characters and our main couple, I have to say season 3 feels the most open, vulnerable and grown up. The last episode felt super special and teased season 4 in which we will see the gang prepare for college. I have huge expectations for season 4 and I really think it could be one of the best ones (best one?), but who knows...

Maybe I'm just a sucker for closures.

Also, I can't believe the finale??? Like they were evil evil for that one, not letting us see what happens! On the other hand I can't be mad bc as a writer that is such a me thing to do. Like, I can totally see myself be that much of an asshole and sadist so I kinda get it. Idk what I will do until s4.

#never have i ever season 3 #never have i ever #nhie #nhie spoilers #never have i ever netflix #devi vishwakumar #nalini vishwakumar #kamala nandiwadal #ben gross #fabiola torres #eleanor wong #paxton hall yoshida #trent harrison #aneesa qureshi #des nhie #benvi #can't believe i've been with this show for almost 3 years #i criticize it a lot but it really is very special to me and i do love it a lot #will be so sad when it's all over

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