#qots reaction post

[calliopecalling]

QOTS Rewatch - 3x11 - Diez de Copas

This episide is NOTHING BUT PAIN. It's one of the most painful episodes of the entire series to me. I did not enjoy rewatching it 😂 Even though I know it all turns out okay it's like--this episode is where it really starts to tank for Teresa. I mean I guess 3x10 really was where it started to tank and this is the one where the tanking accelerates and really shows how bad it's going to be. I don't like it. I don't like watching her suffer, or James suffer; I don't like seeing her past coming back to haunt her in a way that it is so damaging to herself and her happiness. It's just so painful and not the pain of 2x11 or 2x12 either, where it's so hard watching her walk away from James and then watching James walk away from her but you can still admire her strength. In this episode though, it's almost like her strength is exactly what gets in her own way and it's not something to admire, but more to pity, or even (if you're a less generous person towards her than I am, lol) to resent. Like maybe if she were a little softer, she wouldn't have isolated herself away from James so devastatingly. But... that's not who she is. Not at this point in her trajectory.

Soooo because it's so painful, I'm genuinely going to try to keep this shorter than usual. I've said most of what I want to say about it in gifset tags already and I'll just rehash a few of them here in one place. I don't even want to go through my usual bullet list of basic series of events in the episode because IT HURTS OKAY.

So here's the first thing I want to say about the terrible pain.

I BLAME KELLY ANNE AND POTE.

Seriously. Kelly Anne may be a pitiable creature and surely she's not "strong" in the way Teresa is strong but for her to sit there, James having outed her as the mole, and try to insist to Teresa that her feelings for James were blinding her? Fuuuuuuuck no ma'am. She was definitely put in a terrible position by Devon so I could've forgiven her for falling for his bullshit, even though it almost got Teresa killed. But I can't forgive her for sitting there trying to blame James, and Teresa's feelings for James. (If she hadn't lied so egregiously to Teresa there, I think Teresa might've actually spared her, too.) It's just a whole other layer of appalling. As Teresa says to her: "I trusted you. I don't trust anyone." 😭 First horrible thing about this episode then: it makes Teresa--the one who has already admitted to not being able to trust people--even less likely to trust anyone.

And Pote. FUCKING POTE. Pote is just not smart. He is muscle. He does not deserve to be involved in any strategizing or for Teresa to seek his counsel in any serious matters. I feel like it should've been fairly easy for him (but it obviously wasn't) to use his rational brain, the one that Teresa doesn't have access to because she's in trauma response mode, to be like hmm, let's see, there are numerous people around who might have access to Teresa. Yes, James is one. So is Kelly Anne. So is Charger. So is Lil T. Taza. Etc. Not that I want to go around pointing fingers at innocents, but Pote needed to use his rational brain to be like, hmmm, James is Mr. Loyalty himself, so does it really make sense for him to be the mole? Or at least, does it make any more sense for it to be him than any of the others?

I mean: the surface answer here is yes, it does make more sense for it to be James. I think their assumption is that the mole would have to be someone in the inner circle and would have to be someone really smart and really skilled at deception. Obviously James meets two of those three qualities, and if he were the mole, he would've clearly been really skilled at deception, too. But as I said in my tags on this gifset, rationally, it just doesn't add up for James to be the mole. James has consistently displayed that loyalty is his number one value. Above all else, he has integrity with respect to his sense of duty and honor to the person he serves. This is why (as I interpret what the source material has to say about the original tracker issue) he ultimately used the tracker on Teresa in season 2--because he worked for Camila, and Camila ordered him to track Teresa down. As soon as he did, he resigned, because he couldn't any longer reconcile working for a woman whose enemy was the woman he'd accidentally fallen in love with. And then he showed up to work with Teresa and everything he's ever said on the matter just reinforces how important loyalty is to him. (It also makes me remember his comment to Guero in 2x06, "you have no idea what loyalty is.")

So for Teresa and Pote to suspect him of being the mole, they are going wildly out of character in their interpretation of James, lol. For Teresa, it's an emotional hot button issue. She sees the tracker in Bolivia and all her alarm bells go off. I can't blame her for that. But I think she did start to back off it, I think she did realize she was wrong (like in the car scene with Pote, waiting for James to show up to their trap) and yet Pote dug in his heels. Pote who had allll the same information Teresa did and yet who couldn't possibly fathom anyone other than James would be capable of betraying Teresa. Pote who sneered at Teresa for sleeping with James as he blames her for being blind to what she was letting into her bed. Fuck off, Pote. And the worst part is he never apologizes. Not to Teresa, not to James. Not even slightly. Not even a sign of remorse to Teresa! For digging in his heels and insisting it must have been James and thereby throwing a major wrench in Jeresa's personal relationship.

To Teresa's credit, though, she at least apologizes, to James. I'll talk more in the 3x12 meta and gifset reblog tags about her feelings and why she can't just open all the way up to James at this point, but I feel like at the end of 3x11 she feels so heavy with what she's put him through that she honestly just believes him that he wants space. I can't imagine really that James wouldn't have forgiven her pretty fast--after all, he knows what her trauma is (at least a lot of it, if not all of it) and he knows she has trust issues, partly due to all the trauma and partly due to her relationship history (*cough Guero cough*). He must understand that getting almost killed because of a mole would be enough to severely unnerve anyone and force them to look at the people they actually do trust the most and see them differently. And he loves her so much I don't think he could possibly hold a grudge (in fact I suspect he already knows he's going to have to go with Devon at this point). But yeah... for the moment, at least, he needs space. He's hurt, and understandably so. And she is not only feeling remorse for having doubted him, but is obviously also grieving Kelly Anne (and assuming he just killed her on top of everything else). So there'll be more angst and pain next episode with all of her trying in various ways to get him to stay while still holding back a little.

Just gonna end this with a gif of that kiss, because that kiss is such a sweet, gentle, achingly tender moment if you strip away all the context. Please get back to this ASAP guys. Even though I know you won't 😭😭😭

Ok I thought I was done but I just want to say one more thing. James told her on the balcony at the end of the episode that she should've come to him first. I actually disagree with him here. I don't really understand how she was supposed to "talk to James first" if he was a candidate for being the mole… because if he WAS the mole, it would've made everything since his return to Malta a lie, and thus talking to him first would've been stupid. She was in no way trying to be duplicitous with him. She felt genuinely afraid. But at the same time there was the part of her that knew it couldn't be him, and this part of her also didn't want him to know that she suspected him, because she knew how badly it would hurt him. She was just all twisted up in knots. And their relationship is so new--and she told him she couldn't trust people--I mean how much clearer could she be? Did he deserve her trust? ABSOLUTELY. But is it understandable that she thought, yikes if he's the mole, we need to be super careful? Yes. I mean, James is a dangerous, dangerous person.

What do I think Teresa should have done? Honestly... I don't really know. I really don't. I have been thinking about it all week and I still don't. If he were the mole, then telling him she knew there was a mole and suspected him--the communication he was asking for--could have been extremely dangerous. The whole thing about a mole is that it destabilizes any kind of trust because a mole is by its sheer existence unpredictable, dangerous, untrustworthy. And James would've understood that. So I guess what he's upset about is that there was even any question at all in her mind that it might've been him. Yeah, that's super painful for a man who is deeply in love with her and has been showing her that in all the ways he can find ever since he found her in Malta. And given what we know of James and loyalty, I think they should have been way more certain than they were (they being Pote and Teresa) that he had nothing to do with it. But 100% certainty? Man. I just don't think that would've been smart, either, not for someone with so many potential enemies out there.

Okay that really wraps it up. I thought this was going to be short, but it is actually impossible for me to keep things short, so my sincere apologies.

#queen of the south #qots #qots s3 #3x11 #2021 rewatch #txt post #qots reaction post #qots meta #the other big thing in this episode is Camila going down #Loya confesses that he was playing her and tries to get her to become a witness for the DEA #literally the way trust plays out for them is opposite and parallel #Camila puts too much trust in both men who surround her this season and ends up getting played by both of them #(meanwhile she herself is manipulative and calculating and untrustworthy) #and Teresa doesn't put enough trust in James #which ends up hurting her in a different but ultimately equally damaging way #anyway Camila's story finally gets interesting to me again next episode #because it intersects again with Teresa's yayyy

[crownedghostprince]

I already did a post on Watcher's newest update but I finally watched the rest of the video (I had to stop halfway to digest the info) and this sums up my reaction pretty well. I may have cried a little at the 'goodbye if you can't follow us' part.

(Image by qot-archive they had it as a gif but I only do images <3)

#watcher #i'm so upset by this #I will never emotionally recover from this news #pls say sike #apology video when?? #jkjk #brb writing myself some comfort fics to cope T-T

[mymostimaginaryfriend]

QoTS 5x01 Reaction Post

Don’t let the curls fool you, Queenpin is here.

And she’s scary….hot...scary hot.  No but really, the coke using (!), the double dealing with Russians (!!) the “you know what to do” when KG asked what would happen if it turned out James had betrayed them (!!!).  I knew we were in for it when Teresa shot her past self in the opener but dang.

I feel like this episode was better than most if not all the episodes in S4?  There are a ton of conflicts right away but THEY ALL MAKE SENSE.  Teresa had multiple scenes with women characters!  And while we’re missing THE most needed conversation, this episode had so many great scenes where characters were allowed the breathing room to talk to each other.  Kelly Anne and James, Teresa and Boaz, KG and James, Boaz and the Judge.  There are so many wonderfully talented actors on this show and these sort of scenes let them really shine.

Boaz especially hit it out of the park.  I looove that I have no clue where his story is going.  All I know is the Judge better keep Marcel’s name out of his mouth.

James being back was the icing on the great episode cake. I know a lot of ppl weren’t pleased w/ what James dealt with this episode but I freaking loved it.  It was such a love letter to the character on his return, because no matter what was thrown at him, he came back with classic James badassery.  It was almost a James Valdez greatest hits collection:

What he was willing to sacrifice and tolerate for Teresa. His love for Teresa shining through everything he did or said. 

When he looks right at her and says “you’d be safe”....LORDT.  He knows her so well. There was almost zero Jeresa screentime but their impact was felt throughout. I cannot wait for them to have a moment alone.  

Yet another classic ‘just get on with it already’ James reaction to having a gun pointed at his head.

Responding to KG’s emotional outbursts with gasp, rational thoughts ( LOL at KG demanding  “says who” to James explanations about the snipers den and James being like: “says the decorated war veteran SNIPER???”).  

When he subtly brought up Bilal (and ahem, how he risked his life to break him out of a Mexican prison) I was like even on pain killers James is just on a whole other level than anyone else.

Speaking of, Kelly Anne telling him thanks for not murdering me but next time you better follow Teresa’s orders and James being like, how much morphine am I on right now?!

His little moment after Chicho’s use of critical thinking where he’s like, who’s this dude, he can stay lol.

Remaining the only person on the show that can actually shoot who he’s aiming at lmao.

Loved him hitting the guy with the door like Teresa did in 4x05 last season.

His ability to work with ANYONE even antagonistic allies- prev. Boaz, Devon, now a hostile KG - and still get the job done.

Even when he has a bullet wound.  Even when he has to do it all himself.

He’s working at half capacity and still manages to save Teresa’s life from thousands of miles away.  I mean...theresnoonelikeyoucovey.gif

Seriously he was so competent this episode I half expected him to pop out of nowhere  when Pote was asking who has access to a clean $200 million and be like “lemme write you a check.”

Speaking of Pote I guess all it took for him to pass the “don’t trust James” baton was James saving the love of his life lol.  It was nice to have Pote in his corner at long last.

Questions:  Did we know Teresa knew Devon was CIA? Or was that another S4 cut scene they forgot about lol.  (Ah S4, memories).   Do we think the buyer trying to outbid her is someone we know?? Is Oksana really double-crossing Teresa?

Anyways, I loved it. I’m all in.  Cannot wait for next week.  What did y’all think?

#queen of the south #qots #qots spoilers #qots season 5 #qots lb #my reaction posts #the one s4 tradition that can stay lol

[la-ermitana]

He’s leaving with me so we can settle our unfinished business. 

El Juicio [3x05]

#queen of the south #qots #qotsedit #qotsgifs #jeresa #james valdez #teresa mendoza #teresa x james #3x05 #peter gadiot #alice braga #mis #my posts. #this hurts my heart #the heartbreak in their reactions each time an answer is given #made in 2020 #HOF70

[teresa-moyocoyotzin]

short recap of my thoughts on 5x09

okay so i was gonna rewatch the whole episode and do a blow-by-blow reaction post but i’m not sure i’ll have time and i kinda wanna focus on watching my fave scenes from the show before tonight. also, everyone else’s reaction posts p. much sum up my thoughts lol 

nonetheless, i just wanted to give my main takeaways on the episode a week later, in case anyone cares where i’m at going into the finale! gonna go over the things i liked first, anyone who wants to just remain positive and not see any salty takes might wanna just stick to reading the first part b/c i definitely rant a bit at the end lmao. we’re still having a fun time tho 😂

THINGS I LOVED

- i mean... i think we know LOL

- obviously. i loved james and teresa’s i love you scenes, and kisses, and OOF THAT SEX SCENE. if someone had told me we were gonna get that scene back in like 2017??? i probably would have started literally floating. i totally respect that people had very specific ideas of what they wanted out of those scenes and could have different feelings about it but NOT ME BABES I AM ECSTATIC!!! i did go into the episode with a ~feeling~ that we were gonna get at least one ILY in the episode, and i just had a feeling it would be james, or at least that he would say it first. i’ve already explained in my meta about the scenes why i think it makes sense that he said it first and why i love it that he did, so i won’t go into that here. but i went in having really no expectations for it other than that it was gonna happen! i was debating about whether it would happen really casually while they’re talking, or in like a big action scene, or really dramatic or what, and what i would prefer, and i came to the conclusion that i would love it no matter what lol, but i was really into the idea of james just. fucking. saying it. while they’re just talking about something really casually. so therefore i was pretty happy with it when we got sort of a mix! they’re talking about teresa’s insane death trap of a plan so there’s that drama of “i don’t want to lose you esp. not before saying ILY” kinda thing, but it’s also just. so simple and sure! and then teresa’s i love you is like the perfect scene for me where one character is super focused on something else (in this case, trying to protect the woman he loves! agh!) and the other is just like.. i love you!!!! SO GOOD

- let’s see, what the hell else happened in this ep?

- oh okay i really liked james and teresa’s vibes this episode, they were so focused on each other and had this very ride-or-die feeling about them like they knew that each of their plans was increasingly stupid and desperate and might not even get them where they wanna go, but they were IN IT TOGETHER no matter what 😭i wish we had gotten a callback to that line but at this point, i’m p. sure they Know they’re in it together, and we do too. so it’s okay. i love that teresa still asks his input and considers his opinions even if she does her own thing anyways haha 

- oh on that note, i LOVED the moment where their plans to kill Kostya aren’t working and Teresa says something like “If I can meet with him in person, I can kill him myself” and James just has this LOOK that just is the epitome of the “I am in love with a women who is DESIGNED TO STRESS ME OUT” meme lol, it made me giggle, v classic QOTS moment 

- oh and of course, I LOVED that scene with devon and james at the end!!!!!!!! i was also confused about how james was showing all his emotions in that scene esp. since he tries to be stoic about his feelings for Teresa around Devon, but now that i’ve read a few people’s thoughts about, it i’m fully on board w the theory that james and teresa already knew this was coming, b/c they’re smart, and b/c james knows devon wouldn’t have let him walk away to save Teresa at the beginning of the season without motivation (like having him in place to kill her when she’s no longer useful to the CIA) and THEREFORE james was sort of “overacting” to make it believable to devon (and the audience lol) that he didn’t know this was coming, didn’t want to do it, but felt like he had to, rather than the fact that they were already plotting a fake death. that makes a lot of sense to me and makes me really love all the layers to that scene. it does give me a little bit of hope that the finale ~teresa’s not really dead~ reveal will be at least a little well executed and not just shoved in at the very end. we shall see though! 

- alright i think that’s what i loved about the episode, if u don’t wanna hear me bitching about the little things then u should probably stop here!! just have to get out some of my saltiness lol 

THINGS I WAS ANNOYED ABOUT

- i’m just gonna get it out of the way, yes, i too was supremely annoyed at the amount of KA and Pote take suburbia; it was all 1000% predictable down to the raccoon and the cookies, and the point could have been accomplished in exactly 1 scene, maybe 2, certainly not like 10 or however many we got. whatever. ugh. 

- okay. OKAY. chicho. we need to talk about chicho. i for one, am not mad that he called pote, my boy was stressed. I AM HOWEVER, mad at the writers for making pote come back after saying he trusted chicho to take care of teresa now. like. it totally devalued THE WHOLE THING!! imo, pote shoulda stayed his ass at home where we had to watch him settle all episode, and chicho should have gotten THE HERO MOMENT HE DESERVED (esp. cuz he’s on first name basis w teresa now??) which ALSO WOULD HAVE MADE THE SCENE WHERE TERESA GIVES CHICHO THE DISTILLERY AND THE BAR SO! MUCH! MORE! MEANINGFUL!!!!! or just made it make sense at all? like .... i’m just so confused by that whole plotline like what was the point? chicho does nothing but call pote and gets T’s whole legacy in NOLA? 

- and don’t even get me started on how it makes ZERO sense that pote would have had to charge in at the last minute to save teresa when JAMES THE SNIPER W AMAZING AIM WHO IS LITERALLY. IN LOVE WITH HER. is standing outside like. ur telling me james and chicho (who again, is supposed to be her #2 after james now) just stood there like “oh hey pote yeah you go ahead we’ll wait here good luck” like WHAT also.. how did pote get past all the guards that made james stay outside? are we meant to believe pote is that sneaky? y’all. it just. doesn’t make sense. this whole plot situation maddens me more than anythings tbh UGH JUST MAKE IT MAKE SENSE 

- oksana’s daughter..... what’s her name again? idk b/c we only MET HER THIS WEEK....okay this amuses me but i’m also annoyed b/c like. there were so many other women who could have taken that spot in the opening sequence... Lil T, Castel, hell even Isabela??? Like idk how they could have done it but they put so much effort into her plot in the first seasons that i really thought she was gonna end up w/ Teresa in the end.. idk that would have been kind cool, Camila’s two “daughters” eventually working their way out of the life together..again idk how they could have realistically done it but i really do wish it had been someone we met before. if it had to be someone new this season, they could have introduced her earlier instead of one of the seemingly dozens of random guys we knew for 1 episode before they died... like.. give her some depth please. is she even gonna be in the finale? honestly she better be after making us listen to pote welcome her into the family... like the family u were supposed to leave so u could have an actual baby pote? the family that’s literally dispersing as we speak? also.. since when did pote love oksana so much anyways? also...... just.. if teresa’s gonna have some sort of daughter figure or whatever she’s supposed to be, wouldn’t it make sense to have her be the one to give the big welcome to the family speech? idk y’all..... i’m amused but also baffled at the sheer lack of planning behind this. did no one realize they needed someone for the opening scene until like. halfway thru the season? did they plan to have it be castel but they couldn’t get her for filming (hence all the weird castel plots?) INQUIRING MINDS WOULD LIKE TO KNOW. it’s whatever tho lol 

- i just hope that what’s-her-name gets a lil bit of plot in the finale esp. since otherwise it might just be pote running around being pissy (i don’t actually think that haha but i am a lil nervous that teresa won’t come back until the last few mins and i’ll have to spend all episode looking at boaz and devon and pote and KA.. i haven’t looked at any spoilers tho so i’m still hopeful! i will probably make a post about my hopes going into the finale a lil later, both realistic and unrealistic :) 

#ik it's all been said before but i just had to get my feelings out before i could move on to the finale #the finale!!! wow.. crazy shit y'all #qots #queen of the south #jeresa #qots 5x09

[ablindingsupernova]

QotS 5.08

So I actually wrote a lot of this on Friday and I’m only now getting around to finishing it and posting...

I’m gonna apologize in advance as this post will echo quite a bit of other people’s reactions to this episode. Hazards of waiting so long to post I guess. And this is a long one...

- Kote:  As much as I've enjoyed Pote and Kelly Anne in the past, they have gotten way too much screen time. And to be honest, I don't really care about their story. I'd like to see them both survive, but at this point, they're pretty far down the list of arcs that I want to see resolved before the finale. If the point of Kelly Anne’s pregnancy and Kote’s impending parenthood signals a new/different life, new beginnings, etc. and serves as a parallel to Teresa’s journey, then we should’ve had more balanced storytelling. I haven’t seen enough of the impact their changing circumstances is having on Teresa besides very surface reactions. And since this is HER story, we should’ve gotten more. And if that’s not what the Kote arc is supposed to be, then I feel like Teresa’s character evolution was sacrificed to elevate a storyline that no one is really invested in. 

- Boaz:  My dude was dropping truth bombs all over the place. But for someone who claims to be neither crazy nor stupid, not covering the waterfront of their meet location in anticipation of Teresa's arrival was pretty dumb. Boaz knew that she had security up the wazoo - former Mossad, no less - why wasn't he expecting her to try something?

- Jeresa: As we've had way too much of Kote, we've had way too little of Jeresa. Which is a weakness in the narrative, as their relationship is a pivotal one in Teresa's journey. We know how James feels about some of the choices she's made and all we've seen is one brief conversation lasting less than 30 seconds. And as for the reveal about Castel being a CIA asset- I'm not surprised by Teresa's dawning realization of "You were protecting me". When James explained his reasons for working for Devon in 5.01, he framed it as solely an issue of his unfinished business with Devon. James had to make things right, or Devon would keep coming which would, by extension put Teresa at risk. But now she understands that James' sacrifice wasn't JUST about that. Now she gets that James was protecting her and her business, entirely separate from his issues with Devon. And as much as I love these moments between them, it isn’t enough. And this isn’t just because of shipping- James remembers her as she was, the one who wanted to do things differently. He sought her out because she made him believe that it was possible. And his absence meant that he didn’t experience her slow slide towards full queenpin. So he’s as much of a reflection of her former life as the visions of her old self that have begun appearing. 

- Devon: I loved Devon's return. As much as I feel like I should hate Devon for what he's doing to Teresa, he has a point. Teresa is a criminal and he has been doing her a favor by looking the other way. Sure, his reasons for doing so are selfish, but Teresa has still been able to operate without interference from the CIA and taking out another criminal seems fair in exchange. BUT, why did he wait? If Kostya is that much of a threat and Teresa Devon’s only shot at flushing him out, then why didn’t he act sooner? He had to know what was happening, had to know that Boaz was going after her, and Teresa was almost killed. TWICE. Biding his time until Teresa sought his help was extremely risky and frankly, stupid. He could’ve rolled up before that and made it clear that he was cutting her off and the only way to get out alive would be to kill Kostya. 

And of course I loved the way he looked at James after he made that comment about her family. He has to know how James feels about Teresa and after the debacle at the winery, he has a pretty good idea of how Teresa feels about James.

- Oksana: Teresa saw herself in Oksana, in what she was trying to do for herself in this business. And that business killed her. I was sorry to see her go, but I have less of an attachment to her than I do King George.

- Teresa: I feel like she’s reacting to ongoing threats rather than considering what her actions have done and who she has become. And with only two episodes left, I think it’s going to be more of the former and slim to none of the latter. 

I hope there’s more to that teaser in the promo in the next episode but I’m also managing my expectations. There was actually quite a bit more to this write-up but I decided to wait until the end and consider the season as a whole. And since this is already A LOT, I figured I’d also spare any followers even more of my blather. lol

#queen of the south #qots #my thoughts

[mesillusionssousecstasy]

QotS 5x07 : Reaction

So mostly everything that I have written on a past post happened. 

Unexpected : Marcel getting out of jail and quitting the business. Unbelievable : Taza being killed off screen.  To be expected : Teresa being too big for the Colombians. I was also asking myself where are they.  Ridiculous : Teresa staying calm after taking so much coke and that no one knows that Teresa is doing coke too. And people thinking that Teresa and James will kiss (even a love scene), that will only happen in the 5 minutes of the end in Heaven hahah. Liked : Teresa and James ridding together again.

What can we expect from episode 8 : - Pote killing Angel of course. - Teresa and Cie saving Kelly Anne and Teresa putting her life on the line for that. Will Kelly Anne miscarriage or not, I don’t know but logically she should. - Of course, no kissing between Teresa and James. - Boaz will not dye in this episode either (only in episode 10). - Devon will come at the end of the episode saying that Kostya will need to die. That’s it for the moment, see you next week.

#qots #qots spoilers #qots season 5 #queen of the south #queen of the south season 5 #qots 5x07 #queen of the south spoilers #queen of the south 5x07 #teresa and james #teresa mendoza #reaction #tv show

[folie-lex]

@nikascott

I binged QOTS in like few days recently & haven't been there where all the episodes analyze/discussions happened & I wonder what was the general outcome/reaction of the James storyline in S3 & how the season ended for him. I've been in many fandoms & I'm not the panicking type and while I'm pretty confident his story hasn't ended there's also this 1% that has that fear for his future or lack of it. What’s ur take on this?

That’s kinda the general vibe I’ve been getting from the fandom at large: if people are a bit worried it’s mostly because of prior TV experiences, not by QotS itself. As for James’ fate I’ve mostly seen sadness and heartbreak expressed as the prevailing sentiments, but I think exactly because of how the whole thing played out there has also been a healthy amount of appreciation towards the narrative decision the writers made.

Me personally, as I mentioned in my S3 finale post, I kinda loved where it left James. As a conclusion to his character arc in S3 (and I’d even argue from the begging of the show) and just his whole behaviour it so true to his character, I can’t find any faults narratively. Not to mention that looking back it became clear the show was bulding up to that sarcifice all season. It just all made sense, and from a story that’s really all I personally need.

Gerenally I’m pretty optimistic James will very much be around in S4 (and full time) and that there's some good stories and character arc and develpments ahead.

The show has a history of setting a couple of character aside off doing their own thing. There are a lot of theories going around about how “James will be recruited by the CIA now” but I don’t think that’s how it will play out at all. Devon has a very low appreciation of James right now, and his whole deal in S3 was to get him off the chess board and away from Teresa. My best bet is James will be incarcerated, and we’ll see him in captivity for most of the first half of the season (which is why he’s not in NOLA right now. From a sceduling POV it will probably be easier to block shoot everything of him in prison)...

Either way, that’s my theory. But regardless of how it plays out I’m still otpimistic. Mostly I have confidence in the writers on the show. They are generally very in tune with the fandom, the story, and their characters and they’ve been very respectul about keeping their storytelling consistent. (PS - I started writing this in the message box but it was getting too long and blabby...)

#qots #queen of the south #meta #qots S3 #qots S4 #james valdez

[youleftme-clarke]

🎈Happy Birthday to Me 🎈

So, I'm not a big gift person. I'm not a fan of quantifying love in dollar signs. But this year is different. My birthday is different this time around. Because in a world gone so commercial, I've somehow managed to wind up with the greatest birthday present a girl can ask for.

This list is far from inclusive, and only the tip of the iceberg so please don't hate me if I miss you!

And also, tune in tonight around 11pm est to witness my drunk ass doing drunk asks. The last time I got smashed and went on Tumblr, I ended up screaming about there being avocados in my guacamole, so tonight is sure to be an adventure. Who knows, maybe I’ll put out a few drunk drabbles if I’m in the mood...

🎁 @octannibal-blake Liz! My anonymous hyena! My angst hoe! My love! You have become such a constant in my life in such a short amount of time and I don't know where I'd be without you. You're one of the kindest people I know. You're caring and understanding and I am so thankful to have gotten to know you. I love our Tuesday night screaming and our angsty writing. I love how you're always there for me, through thick and thin. I love how your inappropriate sense of humor is on par with mine. Basically, I love you, and I'm so thankful we're friends.

🎁 @the-most-beautiful-broom Lindsay you beautiful New Yorker! Have I mentioned lately how much your beautiful face lights up my dash on tuesdays? Because you're my dream aesthetic that I'll never be able to manage. You're a hero to tall women everywhere, standing tall and proud in a way I'm envious of. You're a kick ass woman in a male-dominated industry and that basically makes you my idol. And that’s not even touching on your absolutely incredible writing. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, from just being a friend to reading and editing my writing to co-running a blog with me. I love you so! We need to finish that fluffy as hell Jeresa wedding fic soon!! I still don’t know if I love you or hate you for absolutely ruining all hopes I’ve ever had of finding a man good enough for my standards after introducing me to James Valdez... One thing is for sure, I now know I’ll only ever date a guy in aviators. 

🎁 @asroarke my very own southern belle <3 your very specific brand of humor is something I never knew that I needed in my life until it was there and I realized I’d be lost without it. Your love for Shawn Macallan Mendes never ceases to amaze me. I don’t love that we’re going through the same sort of situation right now, but I do love that I have you by my side through it to talk to and to understand. I’d be lost if I didn’t have you to turn to when my world gets dark, so thank you for being just the way you are, even though you think that you’ll be able to out-positivity me one day. Your writing is so incredible it made me terrified to talk to you for ages, but I’m thankful for the realization that we’re all only human (for the most part)

🎁 @raven-reyes-of-sunshine you beautiful ray of sunshine! You are loving and positive and such a bright spot in this world that’s going to shit. I love your writing, your never ending supply of laughs, and all your screaming in the group chat about Jeresa and Bellarke and life in general. Thank you so much for being you <3

🎁 @failing-at-being-an-angel my first real Tumblr friend! I’d be so lost without you! Here’s to a year (and almost a half) of insane long distance friendship. Thank you for all the love you have for me, for your wild stories and understanding heart. You are so much more than you could ever imagine, and the world is a better place because you’re in it. I’m blessed to have gotten to know you over all this time, and to be able to call you one of the best parts of my life. You’re definitely not failing at being an angel. You’re the best one there is.

🎁 @sat-star-one Nat Nat Natalie! My little American bicon! I still remember the time you ran away from your own party to FaceTime me and everyone starting going crazy at my accent. I love the texts you send me about your day, just out of the blue. I read every single one, even though sometimes i’m too busy to answer. You make me laugh, and I’m so glad we started talking over the fic that makes everyone message me. I hope everything goes okay with your dad. I tink about you lots.

🎁 @pillowprincesslexa Kim... I don’t even have words for you. You’re the shittiest person I’ve ever known when it comes to answering messages, but damn girl, you make my whole day worth it when we do talk. You’re brilliant and funny and thirsty as all hell, and that’s what makes every friendship worth it. My Bellarke ass stalks your Alycia blog daily because your posts give me life. I get such a laugh out of you and your anons and please don’t ever change. 

🎁 @galaxyblake Sonia! You absolutely wild Columbian bi! I’ve missed you on my dash these last few weeks, and I hope you’re doing well! I’ve loved getting to know you this year. You’re beautiful inside and out, and I hope you know that! I hope we get to see you again soon <3

🎁 @atlasbellamy MEG! Thank you so much for being you! I loved all your reaction videos that you posted, and all your screaming about Bellarke! I owe you so much for discord and for our little group of delinquents. Your writing is incredible, your talent out of this world, and I can’t wait until you’re famous enough for me to be able to tell people that I knew you back in your fandom days <3 never give up on your dreams, babe!

🎁 @grumpybell okay so we’re not really mutuals (I don’t know, maybe, but we’ve hardly talked) but you’re on the list because you’ve always been such an inspiration for me! You’re talented and funny and you’ve always been such goals for me one this website, so I’m thankful that you’re starting Bellarke After Dark back up so maybe we’ll have the chance to become closer <3

🎁 @op-stand My Canadian sweetheart <3 I’ve loved getting to know you and screaming and shouting about James together. You’re sweet and soft and such a great friend! I hope all the Bellarke and Jeresa this summer brings us closer together!

🎁 @freckldbellamy Kayleigh! Your smile is one of the greatest thing on this green planet! You are too sweet and I’m thrilled to call you friend. I know that you’ll be there for me if I need you. You’re so positive and just such a ray of light in both fandom and in life, and I’m thankful that Lindsay and QOTS brought us together!

🎁 @killsandthrills Hollywood! Your selfies and snaps really make it look like you’re out there living your best life, and that’s what I live for. I’m glad you reached out and joined our little James fandom of 6. It’s been a thrill to watch this show by your side. Never stop smiling. 

🎁 @perhalta Jules! I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone so ready to just serve tea, no matter how scalding. Your sweet smile lights up your whole face and my whole day. Don’t change. Keep being so unapologetically bi as fuck. You’re a gift, and I love you <3

🎁 @nerdybellamy Ezri! If you weren’t so far away on the second best Canadian coast, we’d be such good irl friends! You were one of the first in my fandom fam, and one of the people that really transformed my Tumblr experience from just passively blogging to actively participating in fandom, and I love you for it.

🎁 @blueshirtbell Isla! My British babe! I love your writing and your fangirling about VirtueMoir! Your writing never ceases to blow me away, and I’ve loved getting to know you even more over discord. Your accent is marvellous, your translation of Jordan’s posts truly magnificent, and your entire personality just an overall blessing. I love you my darling!

🎁 @scottmcgivemeacall  FRIEND! I’ve started living for the sound of my chat going off at 10:01 every Tuesday! I love how you come to me every week to lose our minds about t100. I’ve had such a good time watching you slowly spiral as Jeresa took over your soul, and I can’t wait for my messages on Thursday to start going off at 10:01, too!

🎁 @diyozaa MJ! You are just a positive, wonderful, ray of sunshine in this fandom! I love how much you stan Charmaine Diyoza. Let’s be real. She’s the badass criminal we deserve after 4 seasons of disgusting antagonists. Your edits are wonderful, and I’m definitely crying over you making icons with my face this morning! Thank you for being so unapologetically you!

🎁 @dylanobrienisbatman I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT YOU’RE FUCKING GORGEOUS BECAUSE OMG YOU’RE A BABE. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, your smut is just... HOLY SHIT. I can’t believe that I was the one who inspired that? wowowowowwww. I don’t remember why we started talking, but damn am I glad we did! <3 <3 

🎁 @bellamybb KATH! I’m so glad that we’re back in touch after nearly a year apart! You’ve changed my life in so many ways and I’ll never be able to thank you <3 You’re a blessing and I might not even be here if it wasn’t for you, so you’ll always be one of the most important people in the world.

🎁 @thelittlefanpire Sara! You’re so uplifting and encouraging and I love that you’ve recently become such a more active part of this fandom recently. Seeing you on discord makes me smile, because I know that whatever the conversation, it’ll be good. Thanks for being you, supermom and all!

🎁 @queenstephaniaa STEPH! Your QOTS freakouts have me living! I’m so lucky that this incredible show brought me to you. You’re such a blessing and it’s been an honour getting to know you. Please don’t ever change! 

🎁 @verbam i don’t know if you post your name online so I won’t say it, but YOU! The day you posted about looking for blogs that weren’t actively anti-O was the highlight of my year because it was basically “omg! this is it! This is my chance to talk to my biggest writing idol!” You’re the reason I got into fanfic, and the reason I haven’t stopped posting since. You give me the courage to post the wildest smut, and I die whenever you update your fics. You’re such a talented, amazing writer, and I’ve recently gotten to know that you’re also an amazing friend, so thank you for reaching out, and thank you for everything that you’ve inspired me to become! I owe you a good portion of my tumblr fame!

#youleftme clarke #my friendssss #all these gorgeous wonderful humans deserve a follow #i'm so lucky to have them #happy birthday to me #you're all my presents

[jerepars]

Ape Dos Mil Extended Chapter Notes

4 / 9 Point Me Toward the Morning

Hyperlinks appear in blue (underlined on mobile and the dashboard). The story is posted here. Direct link to this chapter is here.

First things first, James already hated New Orleans. It wasn’t the potholes that put the tires of the car at risk of puncture with every few feet he drove. It wasn’t the alligators hanging out with their mouths open in low marshes on the side of the road. It wasn’t even the tacky jester crowns or beaded necklaces in the displays of all the tourist shops, the in-your-face reminder of Mardi Gras even though February was months away. No, it was a matter of principle. James had been in New Orleans for all of five minutes, hadn’t even had the chance to pick up a bag of beignets to indulge in yet, and had already been shot. So yeah, he had something against New Orleans.

This first paragraph is a call back to the first paragraph of the first chapter.

There were mere moments between when Devon told James there was chatter of a team carrying a map with an ‘X’ drawn on the name of Teresa’s new city and when James tried to contact Teresa and Pote. Neither answered. James hadn’t been surprised since he’d made himself a ghost in the last year. A few months back he’d heard Teresa had her business up and running in New Orleans; he’d spoken to The Charger—who like Lil’ T had been given a bag of money and told to go home to his family—after Charger got a phone call from Pote, reaching out and trying to get a message to James.

A key part of the song “Division St.” by Thursday goes:

I drew an X on your city's name. Lights out. Black out. Blow out the candle again. Spin the room around. Fall down. Pass out. Get up. I can’t keep repeating.

The whole song is what I could hear to be the background music if this whole part happened, if we followed James from when he gets shot to when he shows up to tell Teresa there are people coming for her.

Beyond the song reference, I had to make a decision about timeline for the sake of the story. The lack of a solid timeline for QOTS is absolutely maddening, I tell ya. In 4x01, Pote tells Teresa no one has heard from James...and I think in this episode there’s also implication it’s been about six months since they left Phoenix? Maybe? In 4x13, right before James show up, Pote says they’ve doubled their business in the last 3 months. So does that mean it’s been 3 months between 4x01 and 4x13? And when exactly did he try and reach out to James? In 5x01 (and 5x03), it’s said James has been gone for a year. So. Like. I have no idea. I went with “a few months back,” which hopefully is somewhere between 3-4 months ago? 

The show also never addressed what happened to Charger after his last appearance in 3x12. Since he played a bigger role in the first and third chapter of this story than he ever did in canon, I thought it would be nice to drop a line about where he landed. Back home with his girlfriend and Jack Russell Terrier, of course.

It hurt when he showed up to relay the information that her life was in danger and he’d risked his own to let her know, and even more when she found out the real reason he left a year ago was so she wouldn’t be affected by the score he had to settle with Devon. Teresa felt guilty for all the time spent not thinking about James, for trying to forget what he meant to her, when he’d been thinking about her all along. And it was obvious the kind of love that burned in her chest couldn’t be so easily dismissed based on the reaction she had when she saw him bleeding through his shirt. She was in charge. She had things to do. But she couldn’t bring herself to leave him until he went in for surgery, and couldn’t bring herself to stop worrying while the operation was happening.

The chapter title comes from “Point Me Toward The Morning” by The Matches. The line in this paragraph about Teresa not being able to dismiss the love that burns in her chest is thanks to the chorus:

We know, we know that we are more than this. More than we know, there's a reason we exist. We know, we know, we know. We won't be this easily dismissed.

I’m definitely reaching, but this is a soulmates AU. They are soulmates. Their reason for existing isn’t just the drug business, and it isn’t just to help one another navigate through all the crime they’re involved in.

Also, the lyric from the song relevant to the title is: Someone point me toward the morning, no more is it a sure thing. In the first half of the chapter, James’ survival isn’t a sure thing. And really, in the line of work these characters are in, nothing is a sure thing. Every day, there’s no guarantee they’re going to make it to see the next morning. (The pessimistic point of view is that this applies to everyone, really, not just those who put themselves in high risk situations.)

“Oh. Right. So like a soldier, not a nurse. I’ve never seen anyone else do it that way, I—” Teresa stopped speaking abruptly and put her hand over her heart when she felt it. There was a pang, a searing pain in her chest that throbbed before it faded, and then nothing. It knocked the wind out of her anyway, so she didn’t know if it was from her heart or her lungs.

Teresa had gotten used to the burning feeling in her chest when she was around James, or when she thought about him. She’d willed it to go away before—when they first met and when she thought of him after Phoenix—and failed. So for the burning to leave, to feel it fade to nothing in the middle of a conversation with James had to mean something.

It couldn’t be that she didn’t love him anymore. That would be more convenient. That would be better. Because if she didn’t love him, she wouldn’t be so conflicted over whether she wanted him to stay or go. She wanted him to be safe, wanted him to have the life outside the business he deserved, even if it meant leaving her behind. But she also wanted him to stick around.

So it was different. It was something bigger beyond love.

I established back in the first chapter that this is a weird soulmates AU, with the thing that got James to realize Teresa is his soulmate being the way she made the bed, because it was the same way he made the bed. He thought there’d never come a time when Teresa would see him doing the same thing--so how was she ever going to find out? But of course I had to follow through! Of course I thought the gunshot wound he showed up with in 4x13 meant Teresa would walk in on him making the bed in the safe house. 

Through the first three chapters, it’s been constantly reinforced that Teresa has this burning feeling in her chest, and she knows it’s because of James, and in the previous chapter she identifies it as love. As a bonus, I wanted this moment, after she sees James make his hospital corner to be the moment that the burning feeling stops because the universe has done its job, has finally made her realize who her soulmate is. Now, whether or not the feeling is going away for good remains to be seen. :)

#je repars notes

[calliopecalling]

QOTS Rewatch - 3x13 - El Mundo

First things first: I actually think this is an incredibly strong episode with great emotional range from a wide cast of characters, tying up the first three seasons' worth of story pretty neatly and introducing new elements to carry into the next season (whether those elements were used well--or at all--in that season is a subject for another day). Cortez got his comeuppance (and watching George go at him with a chainsaw was truly super). Camila got hers, Teresa-style, meaning no violence involved (Teresa's exasperated 'you're crazy!' was also super). James got to save the day and pass the buck to Javier. Teresa finally got to take over Phoenix and then set off for sights unknown. Basically a satisfying episode.

Except... it also breaks my heart 😭😭😭😭😭😭

Do I even really need to recap the events of the episode? I've spent over a week reblogging gifsets and I think I pretty much captured it all lol. James and Javier head off to Mexico, following the tracker on Camila to find and capture Cortez. Teresa, back in Phoenix, meets Castel, who warns her that Cortez plans to strike against her. As a result, she figures out there's something wrong with Cortez's latest shipment and narrowly survives a bomb intended to kill her. All of this leads to Cortez going doooown sucka. Then Castel delivers Camila to Teresa, Teresa banishes her, and now she's in control of Phoenix, yay! All her enemies are finally out of the picture! Pecas, Mayo, Cortez, Camila! So what does she do.... but decide to go expand, make some new enemies somewhere else.

And the thing is I get it because... the other big thing that happens obviously is James leaves her and she's gutted. She can't stay in Phoenix after this. It's his house. And ambition has always been her response to having her heart broken. It's her survival strategy. Right? She gets her first toe-hold in the business in the aftermath of Guero's first "death," and she claws her way up to being an asset to Camila so that she doesn't have to be a sex slave. Then Brenda's death is the catalyst for her staying in the business and partnering with Camila. Camila's betrayal of her is the catalyst for her deciding to fight for her right to be in the business herself. Guero's real death leads her to buckle down and fight back against her enemies, whom she'd hoped to peacefully coexist with. And now James leaving her... I think this is the catalyst for her deciding to focus on growing her business.

Or at least, the catalyst for her deciding to do it so quickly and drastically. She's had expanding in mind for a long time: it was back in 3x05 that she said, "now that we have a team, we can expand, get big enough where no one can hurt us." But I think this is a little bit different. That was before everything came crashing down around her. That was back when she still thought she could just sell on the dark web and no one would need to bother her because she wasn't threatening their street corners. That was when she still thought she could show everyone that this business could be operated like a legitimate business!

So when James leaves at the end of this episode and she takes off for sights unseen (aka New Orleans which... lol is not "a long flight" from Phoenix, but anyway...), the context is totally different. By now, she knows it's not really possible to do things all that differently. She's played a defensive game this season, sure--she hasn't instigated any of the drama that came at her--but she had to play the game. She had to kill her enemies (Camila being the notable exception, but I'll maybe get to that in my season 3 retrospective), she had to experience death and violence herself (Guero, obviously, but also the reporter in 3x04, and Bilal, and her own several near-death experiences). So if James had stayed, I kind of think she might not have rushed off to expand anywhere else. I think she might have genuinely just... hunkered down for a little while. Rested. Let things be. But... it's his house she's in, and he's gone. She can't stay. She has to compartmentalize. She has to do something with the restlessness that results from trying to keep her broken heart taped together. So off she goes, to try to keep busy and distract herself from the devastation she will surely feel if she slows down.

In other words: James's departure is directly related, I believe, to her queenpin arc. He's another in a line of devastating losses.

And speaking of James, on this rewatch it really sank in for me how much his leaving her--and not just the fact of his leaving but the way he left--was truly to save her. The way he saw that couple in the fight with Cortez, the woman who refused to leave the side of her dying lover even though it meant her own inevitable death? That was no accident. In 3x12, you could see James struggling with the knowledge that he had to leave with Devon but couldn't tell Teresa that. You could see the internal battle play out. This rewatch I really have come to believe that he wanted desperately to tell her, and he might have, even. But seeing that woman die for her lover, without hesitation, without fear--he saw Teresa. Any hope he had that he might tell Teresa that he wasn't leaving her, he was going with Devon, died with those two lovers in Cortez's hideout. He realized, as Devon put it so inelegantly, that he would have inevitably "dragged her down" if he had told her. She wouldn't have let him go. She would have fought with him to her death. And he's right.

Something about that makes it so much more devastating to me than on previous watches where I've largely just accepted that he was doing the ultimate sacrifice for her. Somehow it hits differently when I realize that it's not just him being self-sacrificing. He's doing it because she would too. If he didn't, she would. He's sacrificing himself for her so that he doesn't have to watch her sacrifice herself for him. It's like. ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATING. Because it's not only the biggest statement of love you could imagine, it's the biggest statement of validation. Of forgiveness. He sees who she really is, not the version of her that mistrusted him. He leaves knowing she would die for him. And she thinks he leaves because she let him down.

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

It's just brilliant. It's so brilliant. I wish Peter hadn't up and left because season 4 could have really explored this (I mean, it should've explored this better anyway, even without James around). It could've explored more explicitly how on the one hand, James is off sacrificing himself for the version of her that would die for him, the version of her that strives to do things with integrity and trust and respect, and meanwhile, she buries that part of herself more and more because she no longer believes in it herself. Because she thinks her failure to live up to that part of herself has let down the person she loves most and needs most.

Anyway. So, off she goes. Looking staggeringly beautiful, as she does, but also wistful. Pained, almost. Queenpin gives her El Mundo--the tarot card--and looks out the window with peaceful anticipation, but Teresa? She looks heavy-hearted. And we know she has every reason to be. 🥺

#queen of the south #qots #qots s3 #3x13 #2021 rewatch #txt post #qots reaction post #qots meta #oh! I also wanted to talk about Taza really quick #because this is our last time seeing him #I really really wish they'd actually been able to bring him back for season 5 #because he was a fave of mine #and this show has a terrible track record of killing off BIPOC characters without due respect imo #anyway I appreciated that not only does she open the episode offering to double his percentage from their original agreement #but she does it so that he can get out of the business in 5 years #maybe I'm misunderstanding this? but I interpret that as meant to be a favor for him #she knows his tribe doesn't want to be in the business #they want to be legit #so this is her way of offering him that path #which I just love #so much #and I shed literal tears when I watched that part and realized that he won't get out in 5 years #because he'll die before then #and we won't even get to see him off 😢 #LITERAL TEARS #RIP Taza

[mymostimaginaryfriend]

QoTS 5x02 Reaction Post

My brain has basically been Jeresa airhorns since the episode aired lmao but I’m going to try to add some Thoughts to my liveblog from last night.  Here goes:

First of all thank you to @gild-and-fire​ for making this tag meme for me that is ALREADY coming in handy.

Iiiiiiiinteresting that the moment James’ name is cleared the Ice Queenpin of last week thawed quite a bit, right?  Sure the trademark cool under pressure business dealings were there for Teresa (including a bit of ruthlessness) but in very calculated, ultimately successful way rather than terrifying.

James is back like what? 48 hours and already throwing up speed bumps for the descent of Teresa’s soul.  It’s gonna be a tough job, but if anyone can do it....

How to say I love you without saying I love you: Some guys bring you flowers, some bring you a personal army.

This episode was a Jeresa Callback All U Can Eat Buffet

There were SO many from the greatest hits: Take Care of Yourself, You too / “Smart” / You Deserve That / I Want You to Stay etc.  to even visual cues from past Jeresa scenes - the talk outside about going to NYC / 2x04, the lunge into the kiss from 3x09.  And of course the cigarette scene that @medievalraven​ goes over in her great meta.  It was an episode tailor made for parallel gifsets. 

I’m kinda shocked they didn’t add a driving together scene for old times sake.  Still holding out hope for a S5 Jeresa adventure episode too.

These two, as ever, are so so soft and so so stupid lmao.  But even with the interruptions of their private scenes, they packed SO much in. And I loved how you could both tell they’d learned from their past miscommunications.

They were a little rusty at first - doing that thing they do approaching it from an angle instead of head on - T: “You didn’t have to come back.”  J: “Yeah I did.”   T: “Are you staying?” J: “Do you want me to stay?” But right out of the gate James is like this is what I feel, I need you to verbalize what you want from me. Which by end of the episode Teresa does.

But then he says “these Russians are animals” and you can practically SEE Teresa visualizing his death in her head so she’s like "you should go”.

LOL at James playing the emotional game of chicken with THE master of the game Teresa Mendoza.  Him being like “Okay I’ll pack...this is me walking to the bed slowly...packing...to leave...this is me leaving....and I’m going to wander around the house...slowly... in case anyone needs anything...just in case...do a shot with Pote...get to know Chicho...oh hey, I’m already packed let’s go to NYC” lol.

“I’m a quick healer” If only, my friend.

The laugh!!! the smiles!! the heart eyes!! the “people who you love” meaningful eye contact!!

The KISS - THE LUNGE - THE WAY JAMES CUPS HER HEAD WITH HIS HAND AND THEY TILT THEIR FOREHEADS TOGETHER - THE WAY JAMES TOUCHES HIS LIP AFTER LIKE WE’RE IN GODDAMNED PRIDE AND PREJUDICE!

The smoking scene.  Poor James was probably thinking of a victory celebration a la 3x09 like “will my stitches hold for that?? Lets find out” and then

Teresa comes out with a CLEAR “I want you to stay”!!!! growth.gif

Only to  drop the (albeit heart eyes included) hammer of “You and me can’t happen.”

I love how James didn’t technically agree.

Can’t wait to see if Teresa caves physically or emotionally first....

Just gonna leave these lines here: “I thought we could be like normal people” / “Get lost for awhile, get these hands clean” / “[change] is the only way to survive in this life” / “we can’t happen...maybe in some other life but not this one.”  Mmmhmmmmmm.  

Non Jeresa stuff:

I really like Oscar the Dominican so far.

Teresa’s “We can double our business or go to war. These are my terms.” CLASSIC Teresa smarts with Queenpin power...I loved it.

The judge: “You’ll be the next Mexican I set on fire”. He can’t just die now, his death better top Cortez’s death by chainsaw b/c this had me ready to drive to NOLA and do it myself.

I loved the expression on James face when Oksana said “[Kostya] wasn’t sure you’d save my life.” LOL like saving other ppl’s lives is kinda what Teresa does, if only I could get Teresa to save her own.

Is the Oksana stuff legit?? It felt really convenient that the “sleeper cell” was dead before Teresa could talk to them.  Were they really rogue or did Oksana just kill off everyone who knew otherwise?  We’ll see. Kostya agreed to her new terms for now.

I loved that of all the many conflicts introduced in the first ep (James, NYC Russians/Dominican rivalry, waterfront $$, the kill team, etc) so many had some sort of resolution or solid movement FORWARD in this episode.  That’s something I really missed from the earlier seasons: mini conflicts that had a 2-3 episode arc instead of *cough* dragging out all season (s4).

Speaking of which, Boaz’s sixth sense of when things are going too well for Teresa remains unparalleled lol.  But I can’t wait to see what JT does next. He’s killing it. Maybe literally...

And now.....the baby news.

At first I was too happy to get an extended James and Pote conversation to care but is anyone else kinda irked that it was POTE who shared the Tony story? I get it story wise w/ his own Tony redemption opportunity on the horizon with KA’s pregnancy they wanted to get that “this world is not for a child they make you weak and vulnerable” ominous foreshadowing in there but oof.  I wish it had been a Teresa/James convo first. 

A baby can be a catalyst for a lot of things (as if Teresa isn’t already feeling the pressure to get legit fast) but what I’m wondering is this:  If it comes down to protecting pregnant Kelly Anne or Teresa, in the heat of the moment, who will Pote choose? He violently reacted to the incarcerated teen boys and that was before he knew KA’s news.   

I’m glad James stayed.  Teresa needs someone who is focused on HER safety alone and as evidenced many times this episode, she definitely will need it.

CANNOT WAIT TO HAVE MARCEL BACK NEXT WEEK!

#queen of the south #qots #qots spoilers #qots lb #my reaction posts #qots season 5

[calliopecalling]

QOTS Rewatch: Season 4, Episodes 1-7

As you can see… I didn’t do individual episode recaps for this season, largely because there are only a handful of gifsets for each episode and writing a whole-ass meta every day or two is too much, even for me 😂 However, there is a lot of ground to cover. What I’ve realized anew on this rewatch is that, wow, this season has so much plot. Like I almost wonder whether Peter backed out after the bulk of the season had already been sketched out and so they had to fill in his absence with a bunch of random extra characters and story lines that wouldn’t disrupt the main arc of the season…? I mean, who knows. That’s pure speculation. But it really feels like there are some stories that you could just cut right out on the dotted line and leave the rest of the story intact, lol. In any case, while this season definitely feels a lot more rushed and a bit sloppier (hello, major timeline issues 😒) there are still things to appreciate and characters and plot elements I really do find strong. More of My Thoughts™️ behind the cut.

First I just want to address the elephant in the room which is the absence of James and how the writers dealt with it. Like pretty much everyone else I wish it had been handled better. I watched this season live and after the first episode, the silence around his absence felt too noticeable. For the most part I still enjoyed the season--maybe because Teresa's my main girl, so I still got my eye candy all season--but I definitely was like... okay so they're just going to basically act like James no longer exists? On this rewatch, though, I'm finding more and more of her missing him obvious in her acting choices. My sense is that when the season was written, they didn't really know if Peter would return for season 5 so they were just trying to put a pause on the whole story line in any explicit way. But also, I guess it really feels in-character to me that, six months in and James still a total ghost, Teresa decide to just box him up and put him in the far corner of the attic. She decides to get the message and move on already. Which means never mentioning him again.

I mean: could there have been some kind of conversation between like Teresa and King George where she opened up a little? Sure, though I kind of imagine that would've happened off-screen in the gap between the end of season 3 and beginning of season 4. Would it have been a stronger season if they'd figured out how to weave it in? I'm not sure, though it would've been gratifying as a James and Jeresa fan to have him acknowledged. I think part of what made it frustrating was just the waiting each episode and being like ok what is happening?? Do they really think they can just leave that relationship dangling and we'll forget about it? I guess my point is: it was definitely a bummer that Peter decided not to do the season, and James and his relationship with Teresa left a big gap in the show, especially because it was in her relationship with him that we saw a lot of her humanity. But, her character would've needed to go on this darker journey this season anyway. And with the writers having no idea what Peter was going to do, I genuinely have had a hard time figuring out where I would've handled specifically the James relationship differently.

HOWEVER. I do think there are things they could've done differently, even without James, to improve the continuity of this season with the earlier ones. Rewriting canon to have Teresa present at Tony's birth is a HUGE "no" to me and that's the number one thing I would change. Second, with all the antagonists from the first three seasons having been bested by the end of season 3 (Epifanio, Cortez, Camila being the ones with multi-season arcs), it would have been wise to carry over more of the story elements from those seasons so that it didn't feel quite so much like literally everything was starting over. I've said before: Castel needed to become a main character. Devon could've been written in on some level (though without knowing what was going to happen with Peter/James, I can kinda understand steering clear of that). Keep Taza around even for minor plot developments. SOMETHING. And while I understand the expense of filming in multiple locations with multiple sets, I think that having some episodes take place back in Phoenix or even Mexico would have provided a helpful bridge. (There are a few Boaz scenes that do take place in Mexico but they're few and far between.) Any of these things would've helped this season feel less like a brand new show that's totally written all the prior characters out of existence.

AAAAAaaaaanyway, so much for the big picture what-I-think-the-writers-could've-done issues. Now I'll try to just stick to the show we actually have, lol. I'm not going to do an episode-by-episode breakdown here. Instead, I'm going to talk about each of the key story lines in turn and what its significance is in terms of Teresa's character journey.

El Gordo

When the season begins, Teresa is just about to open her bar and it seems she's taken the last six months to set up her routes into New Orleans. I THINK she's still just selling on the dark web at this point (well, and presumably in the local market in Phoenix too?) because she has no interest in selling her product in New Orleans. Instead, she wants to use New Orleans, and its port access, as her distribution hub. So where does El Gordo come in? Well, she wants to expand her business so that she can buy the waterfront property and go legit, and he sells product from his hub in Miami up the east coast. So if she can convince him to sell her product, she'll have a huge new market at the snap of her fingers.

The other thing that's in it for her is that right now, El Gordo is buying from independent farmers in Colombia. And those are cutting into Castel's market dominance. Castel showed up at the beginning of the first episode, worried that Teresa was buying from other suppliers behind her back. If Teresa can get El Gordo to buy from her, then she can prove to Castel that she's got nothing to worry about.

El Gordo is a great character in my opinion. What I like about this story line is that it connects to Castel, which means it connects back to earlier seasons, and also he's believable somehow. He's delightfully eccentric and scary but without feeling contrived. Business-wise, wanting to work with him makes sense, especially because of his relationships up the east coast (which pay off in 4x05 when he connects her to Oksana). He serves a clear plot purpose but doesn't feel like he only exists for plot. I like the unpredictable energy between him and Teresa. Basically, so far so good with respect to new characters and stories.

Javier and Boaz

Javier this season to me feels a little forced and I wish there was more Boaz somehow to play off him because it's kind of hard to understand his character without feeling like his back story is clear. He's Boaz's younger cousin, which explains some of his tension between wanting to follow Teresa's way but also having a hard time setting clear limits with Boaz (and still getting into trouble with him too). But then there's also Emilia, who we first meet in 4x06, and whose role doesn't feel totally natural to Javier's characterization in my opinion. It's also a little unclear to me exactly how Javier and Boaz play into Teresa's bigger story this season. Are we meant to understand how Javier is less reliable than James and so Teresa is more alone? Are we meant to see, via Boaz and Emilia, how his loyalties are never 100% solid? Obviously his major arc is that he gets into this trouble with Boaz at the beginning, killing the Judge's nephew which of course will come back to haunt Teresa in a major way later (and by this point in the rewatch, 4x07, Rene's death is only just surfacing). But something about this whole story feels a bit hasty and contrived to me and so this is one that doesn't totally work in my opinion.

The Judge

Speaking of the Judge, he's another big player this season. He steps into the gap created by the demise of Camila and Cortez last season and he's definitely a slimy opponent. I said in a gifset reblog that I do appreciate the way the show tries to show a more politicized antagonist than it has in the past. But, we get TOO much Judge side story in my opinion. All the stuff with his son feels like screentime that could've been spent on Teresa in more character-developing ways. Or.... on Castel or Boaz or Taza... (I'll never shut up about how those characters should've been used more this season.)

The Judge's role with respect to Teresa and her character arc, though, is to show how no matter how much she tries to play nice, she can't avoid getting caught up in the drama of people far more evil than she is. By the end of 4x07, they still have a tentative peace, but it's at the cost of $3 million/month in hush money, and he's fanned the flames between her and Dumas, too. Way more trouble than he's worth and I wish she'd just take care of him.

Marcel Dumas

I've already ranted in my gifset reblogs about Marcel. So, let me clarify here that he is one of my favorite new characters this season and I love the spark he and Teresa have on-screen. Alimi Ballard is fire. I am also glad the show didn't kill him off (the writers have said they'd planned to until they saw the chemistry between Alimi and Alice) and glad that--especially given the setting in NOLA--we get a major Black character. However.... he really makes it hard for me not to bear a permanent grudge in this first half of the season. By the end of 4x07, he and Teresa have finally struck a truce, but, as I explained in my tags on this gifset, I really don't think Teresa was the only one who owed an apology and in fact so much about Marcel and how he treated her early on really set me off.

His role with respect to her character development though is great. It really highlights how, even when she's cornered time and time again into doing things in a way she doesn't want to, she still tries to hold herself to higher standards. At the same time, the costs of her business are adding up, and she has to harden, become colder. In her relationship with Marcel, we see her transformation unfold and she definitely has a more queenpin-like energy, even when finally making peace with him.

Pote, Kelly Anne, and Tony

Alright I'll just say it: I don't really care for this side plot. I think its role is to try to be the place where Teresa's softer side can show up (especially with Tony) and where that growing divide between the life she wants and the life she has is highlighted. Without James, there needs to be some other place to show this. My problems here are (1) this story ends up making Pote's role as her bodyguard a lot murkier and I've realized on this rewatch that really... he doesn't do anything for her. He doesn't help her or save her or anything! The role of his character as someone willing to take a bullet for her really is kind of neutered. Instead, he's agonizing over how to show up for Tony. I'm guessing the idea here is to humanize Pote, complete his redemption arc, make us root for him, too, in advance of the final season. But in my opinion it ends up actually separating him too much from Teresa. Especially because unfortunately the actor that plays Tony really doesn't sell him for me. I don't find him believable. I also just... CANNOT forgive the timeline issues with Tony being almost 16 years old and Teresa was at his birth.

I know that I do like Kelly Anne's story in the latter half of the season, and as I've said, Teresa with pretty much any female character is great, so I'll have more to say about her later. And in general, the role of her family vs. her business will become a lot sharper in the back half of the season, too. It's just, in this first half, it feels like it drags.

King George and Birdie

I'll keep this short and sweet; Birdie was essentially just a plot device for the war with Marcel but I did think her scenes with Teresa were generally sweet and I loved the moment she shared with King George, not least because, as I think I said in a gifset reblog, George is one of the few threads connecting this season to previous seasons, and I love that his grief about Bilal and the trauma from s3 is still so palable, and Birdie helps him with that. Sorry, that was an extremely long sentence, I'll never do that again. Anyway, I said early on that I was meh about Birdie, but I changed my mind. She was a great character and I wish the writers had done more with her than just plot service.

Eddie

ALRIGHT Y'ALL. Want my Eddie take-down?

Look.

Eddie serves a very clear plot purpose. He's there to show Teresa that it's no use: she is no longer the person she used to be; nor can she pretend she's "normal"; nor can she pretend to care about someone she doesn't give two fucks about. He's an obvious rebound. For six months she held out hope that James would reappear, but she finally had to bury that hope six feet under and her job is stressful, I can't blame her for wanting some action. It's not like she meets a lot of eligible guys in her line of work.... so Eddie might've genuinely been what her options were. And I even didn't mind their first kiss: it was cute, huddled up at the piano like that. It felt kinda tentative on her part, like she was clearly a bit nervous (like the OPPOSITE of how she was with James--she was so steady and sure with him 😭 brb gotta watch 3x05) and a bit girlish, more like how she was with Guero in all her flashbacks, but it didn't seem unwanted, and it was slow and sweet and he wasn't pushy or annoying.

But the good stuff pretty much ends there lmao. First of all the man cannot spit out a full sentence without some godawful cliche to save his life. Literally everything he says makes me roll my eyes all the way back into my head. He's got this whole "I'm so profound" attitude that is just suuuuuuuch a man thing and it is so unattractive. He asks her limited questions and never with any sincerity, though to be sure she always kind of nervously brushes them away. She's not looking for him to be a safe place for her to bare her soul or anything, so I can't blame him solely, but it's painful to watch him treat her like an empty vessel that he can just pour himself into. Ew, sorry, I didn't intend for that to sound so euphemistically sexual, but it really does seem like he thinks of her as this blank slate that he just gets to write on or something. Like she has no past before him. He's just not curious.

On this rewatch I feel so sure that the writers did this intentionally. I know that back when the season was airing, Dailyn was on Twitter trying to drum up excitement for Eddie, but I just am going to ignore that and think maybe she was trying to just support the actor who, god help him, was probably doing his best with the trash lines he was given, but I really can't believe that the writers didn't know they were making him this cringe.

My belief--and my evidence is that the writers this season in general are not all that subtle (other examples abound though I'm blanking off the top of my head)--is that the whole point was to show she just couldn't get into him, the whole point was for him to just be a dumb cringey rebound so that no one would actually ship them accidentally and mess with Jeresa lol. YES I KNOW that's my shipper lens, but like this season's show runners wrote entire episodes of seasons 2 and 3, including some of the best Jeresa ones, and they KNEW what gold they had. The Eddie story sets Teresa up for feeling like romance is completely incompatible with this business but also sets her/us up for the OMG YES FINALLY when James finally comes back.

Because listen. Let's take episode 4x04 as an example. The episode opens with her waking up in his bed naked after having presumably hooked up the night before. She startles awake and then kinda looks around uncomfortably. She kiiiinda smiles? But it looks more like a grimace? And looks away and buries her head in the pillow a little. Call me crazy but girl looks kinda disappointed to me. She was blowing off steam but... wrong person kinda vibes. Anyway, she gets up while he's still sleeping and starts getting dressed like she's about to bounce before he wakes up. Then he wakes up and needles her until she agrees to go to brunch with him. She cleeeearly seems uncomfortable but she's like alright. I'll give this a go. Meanwhile he calls her distillery a "tequila factory" -- even after she corrects him. WINCE. Yes, she winces too, I swear to god she does.

Then at brunch he's all "I'm starting to like you" to which she responds with a forced smile and an "I'm starting to like your city." BURNNNN.

I MEAN. This is intentional, guys. Call me crazy but I think we're meant to find him awful. Maybe not THIS awful? Like I readily admit that my intense shipping of Jeresa makes my hatred of him a bit extra. But c'mon. The guy is a total tool. The same writers who were responsible for James's character development in season 3 cannot possibly have actually believed that Eddie was an interesting person or a serious love interest for Teresa.

Nope. He was not. He was so out of touch with her that when he brought her with him to Nashville, it was alllll about him, all about showing off how hot and deep he was, and he couldn't even be bothered to pry at all into Teresa's cover story about how she "slipped in the bathroom" at his show. Noooo, he could only manage to be offended that she'd missed his special song for her, and then think that her breaking up with him was because he'd confessed to her that he'd accidentally killed his friend. GOD EDDIE GET A LIFE.

When I watched this season live, I remember being just extremely puzzled by Eddie. I wasn't even perturbed by her moving on because she so clearly hadn't actually moved on, Eddie was so clearly a glorified sex toy (which, you go girl). I was just like wow Teresa you can do so much better than that. But she wasn't even trying to do better, and that's kind of the point. I feel like the whole point was that her heart wasn't actually in it. I can't even muster up being offended by the plot line, even though Eddie is so detestable, because it's just so obviously a placeholder for her. A very final nail in the coffin of whatever idea she had that she could go back to the person she'd been with Guero. A piece of candy on the arm of a smarmy guy who only cared about his own romancing. So in some ways, the Eddie story to me actually parts the seas for James to be the only possible real deal for her. It just... takes way too long for him to come back. (PETER, I'M LOOKING AT YOU.)

Just had to end this with a James gif. Sorry Eddie. James I hope you are off pining somewhere extra hard because your girl is going through a helluva lot of bullshit and a helluva lot of heartache and thinks she basically has no shot at love ever again 😭

Thanks for reading this far, see y'all again in like, a week (😂😂😂 sorry this is going so fast, there just are only like 3 gifsets per episode this season lmao) for the rest of the season breakdown.

#queen of the south #qots #qots s4 #2021 rewatch #txt post #qots reaction post #qots meta #listen I really tried to find a good Birdie gif for this but tumblr's gif insert functionality is really weird and I couldn't #get one to show up #anyway god this is so fucking long #I'm impossible #sorry #I do try

[calliopecalling]

QOTS Rewatch - 5x04 - La Situacion

This episode isn't quite as hard for me to rewatch as 5x03 is, something about the scale of Teresa's moral failings isn't quite as severe as last episode, but it feels somehow out of place in the rest of the season and it's taken me a year to really figure out how to make sense of Teresa's character journey such that this episode actually makes sense to me. When you read my original debrief after watching live you can see I was clearly like ... wtf was that? What is going on with Teresa and what are they doing with her character? I've made sense of a lot of it now (and kind of processed it ad nauseam in my gifset reblog tags) but this is still in my opinion perhaps the weakest episode of the season.

I don't have a WHOLE lot to add to that original debrief, honestly. I think I captured it all pretty well and I'm still not entirely sure what the queenpin takeaway was. I know I keep saying that it would've made more sense for her journey to just be towards this chillier, stonier, inaccessible white queen rather than going down this snappy, brittle path. It is really hard to see her like this and it feels very out of character for someone who through all the trauma she's been through has always maintained an outer calm. Obviously the trauma has really kept piling on and she has a lot more to lose now than she did five seasons ago (and more people relying on her) so that's how I explain it to myself--her irritability and stress and all that. But it still feels jarring and uncomfortable. And since they never truly address it or have her apologize for it, it feels like a loose end.

I mean look: James was super irritable and gruff and snappy with her, too (I'm thinking about late season 2 especially), and I wish he'd apologized to her for it because she truly didn't deserve it. She wasn't doing anything to him back then that he wasn't doing to her here, which was stepping slightly out of line to challenge him. But James got his full redemption arc. James got all of season 3 to prove to her (and to us) that he loved her. More than anything. And that he'd literally die for her. He never apologized to her for his behavior towards her in late season 2 but it wasn't all that necessary story-wise because it was so obvious that he'd changed. She'd changed him. And he knew that and felt it deeply.

But there wasn't time in this short season for the full reverse arc to take place so we have to fill in a lot of those gaps on our own and assume it's meant to be understood this way. It all does happen eventually, in 5x07 on, and the more I've watched this season the more I do see it that way. It just doesn't really have a lot of time to truly settle that she's had this realization and it's changed her. I mean in some ways Teresa doesn't have to go through a full character transformation because she always was this person of integrity and heart. She's just here on the brink of losing it and then she luckily springs back from the edge.

A few other miscellaneous thoughts that I'm too disorganized to try to capture in a cogent way:

I do appreciate that this season humanizes Teresa to James. That he has to take her off the pedestal he's put her on and see her in all her flawed glory. How weird does it make me that I almost want to write a fic about some big retirement processing sessions where their trust issues flare up bc of the ways they've both treated each other unfairly in the past? Lol. Is that a fic genre?

Can we talk about the FBI plot for just a second and how they introduced it and wrapped it up within the span of a single episode? Whew, whiplash. They could've played that out a little bit longer as she continued expanding.

Speaking of the FBI, I realized on this rewatch that Lucien was way more deeply to blame in so much of the BS this episode than is really clear when you're just watching casually. He's the one that tipped off the FBI to her in the first place. It continues to piss me off how the havoc other people wreak becomes HER problem that SHE has to fix and somehow held accountable for.

And just in general: WHY are women held to SUCH FREAKING DOUBLE STANDARDS AT ALL TIMES???????

Just saying.

#qots s5 #5x04 #2021 rewatch #txt post #qots reaction post #qots meta #the highlight of this episode for me is that jeresa phone call where she sighs in relief and gratitude #¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[calliopecalling]

QOTS Rewatch - 5x10 - El Final

It's the end 😭😭😭😭😭 I can't believe it. Well, I still have my season 5 retrospective to do and then my FULL SERIES rankings hahaha so I'm not quite done yet, but this is the last episode. I can't believe it. I started this whole thing basically a year ago: I posted the first of my episode recaps on September 20, 2021. Now that I've rewatched the whole thing start to finish with so much attention to all the details along the way, I have a whole new appreciation for the show and our beloved characters.

I'm not going to do a whole big recap post for the finale; I did one back after it aired! But my few updated thoughts are below the cut :)

My feelings about it are pretty much the same now as they were back then. It is my least favorite episode of the season; we have known since season 4 when they tried to do a Pote-centric episode when Teresa was in the hospital that that format really doesn't work, it lags, Pote is too flat of a character and lacks vitality on screen. I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to do that again, for the finale no less.

But apparently there WERE sizable segments of the viewership who thought it was a huge unpredictable plot twist, and there ARE a lot of diehard Pote fans out there... so I guess the writers were catering to them. In some way that does satisfy me to know that. Like, as long as the ending landed as intended for some unknown segment of the audience, then that's fine. It's not how I would've ended it, and to give Teresa like 4 minutes of screentime in the finale of HER FREAKING SHOW is suuuuuuuch a weird choice to me. But complaining about that will get me nowhere so instead I'll put this to rest with this:

I FREAKING LOVE THAT TERESA GETS HER HAPPILY EVER AFTER. AND I FREAKING LOVE THAT SHE GETS IT WITH JAMES.

I don't care about Kote's happily ever after, I just don't, not one bit, but it literally feels bold for a show like this (an action/crime/drama show) to decide to end happily. I'm soooo here for it. And the fact that it ended like this means I get to relive it for the rest of my life lol. And I kid you not I will sometimes be going about my day and then I'm like "I wonder what Teresa's doing right now?" and I GET TO IMAGINE THAT BECAUSE SHE SURVIVED.

I just want to end this with the other things I appreciate about this episode:

the James Competence Showcase, including him sneakily evading Devon's hit man, getting shot, and still making it back to Texas in time to rescue Kelly Anne

how good James's hair looked while doing all of the above

the fact that Pote got to botch everything and get himself arrested so we got in our last laugh (I know he killed Boaz, whatever, idc)

Teresa leaving the waterfront property and all the money to build it out to Dumas 😭😭😭😭

and Dumas and Chicho walking off into the sunset together 😭😭😭😭 (I know, as business partners, but still)

Teresa's escape wig (who knew she could pull off blonde)

I love that Pote missed the first four years of his daughter's life bc it means hopefully she got seared into her the positive male role model of James rather than the sexist antiquated bs of Pote

TERESA WALKING OUT THE DOOR OF THAT BEACH HOUSE AND RIGHT INTO JAMES'S ADORABLE HUG AND FOREHEAD KISS

THAT LITTLE 'YOU OK?' 'YEAH' AND KISS AT THE TABLE FOLLOWED BY JAMES'S ABSURDLY SUGGESTIVE SMILE GHKGHKDFGJFHFGSSSSK

QUEENPIN SAYING GOODBYE

God I love it

and then the final shot, the hand holding, snuggled up together on the steps, smiling off into the sunset and their future...

I just. It still makes me so happy. All of it. Even getting to snark about Pote. And so even though 4/5ths of the episode annoys the shit out of me, in the end, it doesn't matter. My beloved Teresa got the life she deserves with the love of her life and that makes everything else worth it.

#qots s5 #5x10 #2021 rewatch #txt post #qots reaction post #qots meta #the fact that James was not originally written as endgame for Teresa but that the writers saw what they had and decided to run with it #makes me forgive them every other transgression #(well... almost every) #(I don't think I can forgive them for the Tony timeline problem in season 4 that one is just way too stupid) #because they saw they had gold and they decided to seize it rather than be all post-modern depressing and shit #good job folks #forever OTP

[calliopecalling]

QOTS Rewatch - 5x03 - No Te Pierdas La Cabeza

This remains the hardest episode for me to rewatch this season (there are others, like 3x10, that I still find harder) EVEN though I know the outcome and EVEN though I've come to terms with some aspects of it. Here are my original thoughts on it when I watched it live. I still agree with a lot of it, specifically how they didn't need to do this whole out of character thing just to show her going dark when they had PLENTY to work with otherwise. I also really dislike the racial dynamics of it, because it's using Teresa offering up a black man to go to prison in this really ugly way without ever showing that she understands the significance of that, and yet we're supposed to root for her at the end? I don't know, that whole aspect of it never got satisfactorily wrapped up, there was no actual redemption for it, which to me shows that the writers were being careless of it, which is just, not great. Just shows the blind spots in the writer's room, much like how season 4 just totally forgot about female characters and season 5 had so many stupid sexist jokes that somehow Pote gets away with??? ANYWAY.

But there is one thing I've been kind of mulling over about this episode (beyond what I've written about already in the tags of reblogs and in my original recap of this episode).

And that is that if you think back to season 2, they also did something with James's character that they never fully explained and that felt totally out of character, leaving fans to debate what the heck the writers were actually trying to do and what our takeaway was supposed to be about his character. And they never really did fully explain it, either, to the very end! That was the tracker situation, obviously. And fans have had to come up with (in my opinion) barely canon compliant theories to justify the tracker that are all vaguely unsatisfying in some way, while it's obviously also incredibly unsatisfying to just... accept that James was fine with having Teresa possibly die at Camila's hands because of information he gave up about her. And yet I find it somehow easier to try to grapple with that, than try to explain it away with dubious theories that aren't really ever satisfyingly support by the source material.

So... I guess what I'm saying is, what if this is kind of intentional (albeit frustrating) on the part of the writers? To have both these characters do these things that feel so out of character that it confounds us? To have their moral failings be profound enough that we wonder, how could you do that and still live with yourself?

I guess I'm okay with that as a story, even though in both James's case and Teresa's I think they should've resolved it better. They should've had James apologize to Teresa for giving up her location to Camila, he should've acknowledged that he did that and that it tortured him but that he didn't know what else to do, he felt he didn't have a choice. They should've had her say, that really sucked for me, but I understand, and I forgive you.

Just like for this episode, they had Teresa do this really shitty thing to Marcel, this thing that James witnessed and then grappled with all season. If they were trying to do this story right, they should've had her go to Marcel in 5x07 and instead of try to throw money at him, had her tell him: Marcel, I'm sorry, I felt I had no choice, but I was wrong. And have James more explicitly grappling with how to support her to finding her moral core again because he'd been through that journey himself and knew how she had been a part of it for him and wanted to do the same for her. Am I making sense?

THEN I think the parallel James/Teresa character journeys would have really been clear, and even compelling! Instead in both cases fans were kind of left to scratch our heads and try to figure out what on earth they were thinking and how maybe we were misunderstanding something, maybe it wasn't as bad as it looks.

I'm still kind of struggling with how to articulate this so I might come back to this later with more thoughts. But in thinking about this episode I was just like: man it reminds me of all the BUT JAMES WOULD NEVER outcry at the end of season 2, and how I really had to try to wrap my mind around, well, what if he did though? How can I make that acceptable within my understanding of his character journey, and not just acceptable, but a part of his character journey that I love? And I really did. So what if the same thing is true here--that understanding how deeply stuck Teresa felt to be driven to make a decision that was so out of left field for her could actually make me love her more and root for her more? because to be that flawed is to be deeply beautiful and human?

I'm getting there, I'm getting there.

#qots s5 #5x03 #txt post #qots reaction post #qots meta #and aside from all that there's a lot to love in this episode #James's impassioned speech to Marcel and Kelly Anne's terrified monologue at the end #still though #can't say I'm not glad to be moving on