#Talon goes blahblahblah

[ghostswillunderstand]

Love in the time of Plaguelings or, The Outpost Season 2 and its romance plots

A bit late the party and it isn't even a particularly popular party at that, but I just had to get some of my thoughts out into the internet-ether.

First and foremost, I recall seeing someone(probably on Tumblr) remarking that the show was "depressingly straight" or some such and it is hard not to agree.

Now I don't think everything needs to be as queer as queer can be(it certainly doesn’t hurt though) and it is not like one can't do straight-romance well(watch High Seas on Netflix to see one recent and great example), but with The Outpost the lack of queerness is compounded by the terrible straightness we are given.

Here is something I never thought I would say: For the majority of the first season I kind of liked the little love triangle we had between Talon, Garret, and Gwynn. It felt refreshing to me because all three were aware of it but none of them allowed it to ruin the growing friendship between them. Garret is in love with Gwynn but has the hots for Talon, Talon has the hots for Garret but is friends with Gwynn and is content to be friends w/ sexual tension with Garret. Gwynn is with Garret, is friends with Talon, and is aware of the aforementioned sexual tension between her love and her friend. It just isn't that big of a deal for the most part, at least until the end of the season where they ruin this pleasant dynamic.

I wrote the above to kind of highlight that the show can do a decent(not great but far from terrible) romance, so the junk we get in Season 2 isn't just my lust for a Gwynn+Talon pairing coloring my view of things.

Season 2 tries to give each of the two female leads new romantic partners and they are both disasters. I actually don't mind Tobin as a character unto himself but pairing him with Gwynn does real harm to her character. The show seems to think that because he stops drinking(for purely selfish reasons) that he is no longer the boorish dick that he was before, the guy who basically walked up to a Queen he was trying to convince to marry him and said "Wanna fuck?" and then, when shot down, immediately asked her handmaiden the same. And when you have Gwynn falling for this it immediately makes her look incredibly foolish. It seems clear they are aiming for a Han and Leia type of dynamic but we never had to watch Han being a gross piece of shit for multiple episodes and then get told to ignore all that because...? Seriously, Tobin's whole "I'll stop drinking and become a better man!" thing is just so poorly conceived.

If they had played this all out nice and slow with their relationship portrayed as the political maneuver it is and nothing more, letting a romance grow out of that at a deliberate pace, I could probably see it working. But as it is, the Tobin of the second half of the season is basically a different character than his initial portrayal, the only way to accept who he is in the second half is to ignore who he was in the first. It is madness. And then to add insult to injury, we now have to contend with a probable Tobin+Gwynn+Garret triangle which is about as much "Thanks, I hate it!" as you can get.

Zed, on the other hand, is just terrible outright. Terrible and boring. He and Talon don't even really get along which makes their pairing just head-scratching. I'm not sure calling it a romance is even fair all things considered, their entire dynamic is so plot-heavy(she is no longer the last of her people, he can teach her stuff, we got to find the key, blahblahblah) that it feels like there is absolutely nothing between them as people, the only thing the have going is the fact that they don't see eye to eye on anything. So when they first get to it I was completely taken by surprise and not in a good way. Nothing between them had been leading to this and yet here we suddenly were, fucking on the side of a road.

The show seems to have latched onto the 'opposites attract' concept but did it in the worst way imaginable, employed on the show it is less 'opposites attract' and more 'people who don't like each other, like each other' and it feels as awkward as that statement sounds.

Outside of the character dynamics, the big thing is chemistry. Jessica Green and Imogen Waterhouse have it in a way that their characters don't with the men they are saddled with. Whenever Talon and Gwynn are put together on screen there is a spark in the air, whether there is a light playfulness or heavy tension the scenes between them carry a weight that isn't there for anyone else(well at least in a romantic sense, Elinor and Gertie have a great antagonist thing going on and Garret and his father really sell their conflicted bond quite well).

The show has Gwynn and Tobin having dinner together, she brings him lunch, she ogles him from afar, and none of it registers as well as any single scene between the two ladies. Scenes that have no romance in mind in the text itself.

It eventually reaches a point where you start to notice that the show seems like it wants the two ladies to always be apart, that despite being the two most important characters they have relatively few scenes together. Talon is just kind of off doing her thing for long stretches, dealing with the whole Blackbloods and all that but she does it all fairly dispassionately, it is only when Gwynn is involved(and generally in danger) that she gets all heroic and passionate. Talon riding off to save Gwynn, her Pirates of the Caribbean-esque fanfare blaring, is like the pinnacle of romantic heroism, but she is confusedly not going to save her love but rather her 'friend'.

Just a friend doing everything the love interest should be doing.

But of course Tobin, who Talon had just slapped for being a useless drunkard, tags along and we get some completely hollow "My how you have changed, Tobin." even though he hasn't really. And having been injured in Gwynn's rescue, Tobin receives the 'wounded warrior gets bedside romantic moment' with Gwynn even though he didn't do much besides get shot with a bunch of arrows.

So we are left with two awesome ladies who are given romantic partners/relationships that seem to be anchored only by the fact that the guys are handsome(and they are). But that certainly isn't enough, especially on a show where everyone is attractive. The show couldn't even cast the nerd/clown role without getting a handsome fuck in there. And speaking of Janzo, his relationship with Naya is something I'm still not sure of honestly. It was simple and sweet, which goes a long way, but not exactly riveting to watch. And then you get to the big moment and I think it was brilliant...maybe?

And I would be foolish to not mention that the show thankfully kept the sexy train going even when casting actresses over the age of 50. I am eternally grateful that Glynis Barber at 63 has been on my screen as of late, she can get it any day of the week.

Oh my, Auntie Gertrusha.

Now my little rant has come to an end and I don't really have a way to wrap it up. It feels weird to write so many words about this for a show like The Outpost. It is a fun little show of modest means and modest aims, that maybe doesn't deserve to bear the weight of such scrutiny. Scrutiny of things that it appears to have no real interest in.

But I quite like The Outpost, I like this type of meat-and-potatoes fantasy that we don't really get anymore, and isn’t thinking too much about a show the ultimate sign of love?. With swords aplenty, evil to be thwarted, honest-to-god comic characters(I can't adequately explain just how much I loved Munt in Season 2), I feel The Outpost is worth that admiration but in the center of all this fun swords-and-demons-and-whatnot we do have these feckless romances just dragging my enjoyment down.

It just sucks that after all these years, seeing the television landscape grow as it has, we still only have Xena and Gabrielle. I don't expect them to be toppled off their mighty thrones but it saddens me that no one ever even tries, that one of the reasons they sit on said thrones is because there is no one to even challenge them.

But, hey, Munt on a donkey. It isn't all bad.

[runeslayer]

Talonflame is the new evolved form of Fletchling

Talonflame

I am fire bird yes hello please train me

scrawk

[runeslayer]

get over here right now

not sorry

[runeslayer]

Whenever I get upset about things I feel like the move sensitive big baby mankind has ever seen

WAH

[runeslayer]

Talon: gimme a league champ to draw a headshot of so I can do a quick warmup

Talon: my lineart is really shaky

Anivia: Gabe Newell

Talon: ....

Talon: gabe newell is not a league champion, anivia

[runeslayer]

Darius: I wish I was strong enough to 1v5.

Talon: You're Darius.

Talon: You are.

[runeslayer]

So for an art project that I wanna do, everyone should give me their favorite champion(s). 

Starttiiinnng...

Now?

[runeslayer]

According to the new League website

Talon is only friends with Katarina, and has Quinn for a rival (why, exactly...?)

And meanwhile Dr. Mundo is friends with himself

Some of these champion relations make absolutely no sense at all tho, you can't really do this without having lore to back it so I'm heavily confused

[runeslayer]

League of Legends Zelda AU where Ezreal is Link

Every time he opens up a chest and finds a map he makes a very disgruntled/angered face as he holds it up to the camera

[runeslayer]

Today, on "Anivia tries out Minecraft's portal gun mod"

this is an important lesson

[runeslayer]

I have been fully convinced that the League community is like a bunch of Francis's put together. 

"I hate this game." 

"I hate (insert champion here)"

"I hate our support/jungler."

"I hate this community."

"But you know what I don't hate?

My bot game K/D/A's."

[runeslayer]

[7:21:40 PM] Talon l Malz: >Malzahar

[7:21:41 PM] Talon l Malz: >Sadistic

[7:21:43 PM] Talon l Malz: you don't even know the half of it

[7:22:08 PM] Talon l Malz: remember that thing of Izaya stomping on the cell phone and laughing maniaclly

[7:22:11 PM] Talon l Malz: maniacally

[7:22:12 PM] Talon l Malz: whatever

[7:22:15 PM] Talon l Malz: that's Malzahar

[7:22:23 PM] Talon l Malz: just repalce the cell phone with your hopes and dreams and cares

[7:22:29 PM] Talon l Malz: as he sends them to the void

[runeslayer]

>People still thinking you need to do art to be a 'good' askblog

no you don't

no you don't

noooo you don't

[runeslayer]

idk if I'll even finish painting this, I just wanted to doodle an Orianna and got carried away aha

half human-half robot Orianna, that is

[runeslayer]

so just because I'm curious

Artists, how long does it take you to usually finish a picture from start to finish?

[runeslayer]

Darius one way or another

you're going to get long flowing locks of hair

and you're going to like it