#another reason to watch s1 i guess. and learn stuff. or just not write the idea lol

[s0dabeach]

i've barely thought in depth abt this so it very likely doesn't actually work but squid game au where gi-hun notices sae-byeok's injury sooner and tries to get help for it like in the scene in the show and sang-woo still goes to try to kill her like in the show but gi-hun manages to stop him and either he or both of them try to help her with her injury or the game staff do smth abt it (probably unlikely tho) and they do end up voting to leave (maybe they vote to leave while sae-byeok is still injured but because they decided to leave they treat her injury then or smth. i imagine they treated gi-hun's injuries after the final game before taking him home in the show but maybe i'm being too generous) and the 3 of them just have this thing going on that's kind of like found family but not (worse) but is mostly just them trying to cope with their experience in the games and sang-woo still having resentment to both of them for having them leave without the money and gi-hun kinda feeling that way toward sang-woo for trying to kill sae-byeok and prioritizing the money over their lives (among other things he did) but also they still care abt each other (and of course gi-hun and sae-byeok care about each other too (and maybe over time sae-byeok and sang-woo grow to tolerate and then care about each other too)) and idk where i'm going with this i just want the misery and resentment and something that's kinda like found family but more fucked up than that

[rottenbrainstuff]

IWTV s1 ep 5 + 6 - hmmm.

Vampire domestic violence - that was a tough one to watch. My initial reaction to episode five was fairly negative all around. But, the fight was superbly filmed, btw - by focusing on Claudia as she only hears noises, it made it very frightening.

Lestat was always arrogant and insufferable and often cruel, but this was something new that was very very ugly. Initially I didn't like it. I don't know though, I don't know.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Look, Lestat was always Anne Rice's special little blorbo and it kind of annoyed me. I don't think a character that kills people or even enjoys killing people is particularly shocking and uncomfortable in fiction these days. I don't want Lestat to be perfectly, prettily flawed in all the right, safe ways. In the end, I don't... necessarily hate the idea of giving him some actual bad traits that are actually not likeable.

And he was intriguing in the next ep. I know it's very much the guy who hits you then makes a big apology the next day about how it will never happen again... But I was genuinely intrigued by his sincerity, which I did think was genuine. The whole thing is so uncomfortable and I like that. The violence of episode 5 makes me uncomfortable. His sincerity in episode 6 makes me legitimately feel bad for him, and that ALSO makes me uncomfortable. It's very challenging. I don't think that's bad.

It was surprising to hear him talk about all of these backstory things, and to be honest about it. (I mean, vague and brief, but honest) I kept thinking about Lestat telling the awful story of Magnus, and then Claudia and her assault. Louis tore the pages out of her diary and told Daniel he didn't need to read it. Louis asks Claudia if she wants to talk about it, and she says no. Claudia's privacy is protected and she doesn't want to talk about it; Lestat has to talk about it, it’s part of the “new rules”. I don't really know what that all means, but somehow my brain is interested in this and I keep thinking about it.

Claudia: I don't like the inclusion of Bruce, for a lot of reasons. I don't see the point. I don't really understand the benefit of having something so awful happen to Claudia, I don't like that it introduces other random vampires running around so early (one of the things I liked in the book was their loneliness and wanting to meet other people like them, then the disappointment when they did finally find others after so long), I don't like that it's just this stupid random assault clumsily written in to make Claudia sad, give her some darkness, and make her want to go back to Louis. I dunno. Just didn't sit well with me. It still doesn’t.

I also don't really like Antoinette. I don't mind the mistress subplot, but I just think another random new character thrown in isn't needed, and she feels uninteresting and two dimensional, so far. I guess she'll have some things to do in the season 1 finale but... myeh. I feel like the writing is best when they're adapting things from the books - the stuff they just totally make up new feels underdeveloped. Or something.

I did like how they show Louis now seriously struggling with depression. He was just sad about everything all the time in the books and it was really his main personality trait (I didn't much enjoy book Louis). I like how in the show Louis is also still deeply affected by his sadness, but it feels more fleshed out. More sad. I wonder how Lestat must have felt watching this develop, watching Louis get worse and worse, and I wonder if he thought about Nicki at all, and if it made him afraid.

Claudia is amazing by the end of the episode, the chess match was a brilliant scene.

Louis is such an odd character right now. He is so incurious about vampirism - Claudia is always the one who wants to learn more. Louis for most of the season was shown still keeping up his business dealings and still struggling with the white bureaucrats. Really, becoming a vampire seems to have changed very little for him, besides just making everything more complicated, and sometimes I wonder why he even wanted to do this in the first place. I wonder if this is Louis trying to hold on to his humanity, not being willing to let go of that part of himself and become unmoored, not just yet.

My daughter just finished the season one finale so now I can finally talk a little bit about Armand with her. She's also asking questions that are ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS - why isn't Claudia around in the present day? Is Lestat gonna come back now and be the abusive ex that won't go away or what? etc etc etc. She feels like all the sad drama has been neatly wrapped up now, and wonders if season two is just going to be about the plot moving forward - oh hon! Season one was just the BACKSTORY for the drama! The real messed up stuff has BARELY BEGUN! It's been so fun watching her see all this narrative for the first time. Lmao!

That's all my thoughts for now. One more ep then I'm on to season two, and I'm excited for that. I'm absolutely fascinated by the clips I've seen of Daniel and Armand and everything to do with the first interview. I absolutely adore young Daniel. Wow! He’s so… what’s the opposite of jaded? Even though this is such a low time for him, he’s so unguarded, laughing, he seems so charmed by everything. What a contrast. I can’t wait to see more.

[addictedtostorytelling]

i’ve been rewatching csi from the beginning (because i’ve never been able to make it past season 9 without grissom) and i’m finally up to the end of season 7… i have like 3 episodes left and i’m SAD. this team dynamic is so special to me and i feel this slow crawl of devastation that i’m (again) witnessing the end of what has been for 7 seasons. soon sara won’t be her usually cute and passionate self (in love too) that we get see in season 7, and she’ll leave, and then warrick is going to die, and grissom will leave… and nothing will ever be the same on this show. i don’t know how to get over it. how did you do it? how do i move on? how do i mourn this team dynamic that i’ve loved for so long and get used to new variations of the team? god, i wish grissom came back for a proper full ep earlier than the freaking series finale and the new show. i’m just… not sure how to enjoy without them all 😭

hi, anon!

yours is a very heartfelt question, and, unfortunately, i am probably the wrong person to answer it, because i never really "got over" the changes to the show post-s7, either.

not gonna lie to you: i have only watched the s10-s15 era of the show once through in its entirety.

the s8 and s9 angst i can deal with in order to get to the happy gsr ending in episode 09x10 "one to go." however, i hate all later seasons of the show beyond that point with all the salt that is in me, not only because of the cast turnover but also because the writing and production values of the show changed so much as to make the series (and the remaining characters) unrecognizable.

most of the time, i just straight-up ignore the fact that those seasons exist, preferring to imagine my own canon-divergent au version of the show (starting from the end of s7) instead.

i really do not engage with them unless someone sends me an ask.

that so, i can't exactly tell you how to learn to accept the new team or get comfortable in that altered narrative landscape. i never did, on either count.

instead, my advice is this: keep in mind you're not obligated to finish watching csi if doing so isn't enjoyable to you. you fell in love with a particular group of characters, story universe, and cast dynamic, and if those things went away or ship of theseus'd themselves into a production that is fundamentally different from the one you fell in love with in every way save name, you don't have to stick around anymore.

remember: you're watching this show as a hobby, not a job.

the #1 rule of fandom is to follow your bliss, so if you're not naturally motivated to finish the series—and especially if the thought of doing so is actively causing you dread—then you don't have to force the issue.

give yourself permission to say, "for me, the series ends with episode 08x01 'dead doll' or episode 09x10 'one to go' (or wherever you want to draw your line in the sand)" and then walk away.

if you need closure, write your own au version of what happens after that point or else find some fanfic author whose vision aligns with your own. keep living blissfully in your s1-s7 happy place with the original team graveyard, where grissom is the boss and sara stays in vegas and warrick doesn't die and they all keep solving cases together until retirement.

and then don't sweat it.

you're not being a "bad fan" or letting anyone down, and there's still plenty of material in the early seasons for you to engage with.

now.

if you absolutely feel you must finish the show (for whatever reason), i guess one thing i might suggest is to engage with work from fans who genuinely enjoy the later seasons. i know there are some folks in this fandom who adore the new characters and team graveyard version 2.0. they write meta and fic and make gifsets about it, and they have a total blast doing so. hanging around their blogs might help you to find things to appreciate.

another thing you might do is give yourself permission to "cherry-pick." watch just to see what happens. if there's stuff you like, go ahead and incorporate it into your conception of the show. the rest, discard. as i said above, you're not obligated to enjoy the show in a certain way and especially not "across the board." so if you like the fact sara has mother-in-law drama but hate the fact she gets divorced? then keep the first thing and toss out the second. if canon makes a stupid-ass decision, you can elect to ignore it.

and regardless of whether you ultimately decide to finish out your watch-through or not, don't forget: the beginning of the story—i.e., those seven golden seasons you so love—will always be there, and you can return to them as often as you want. the beauty of a story is that it exists in perpetuity. grissom, catherine, warrick, nick, sara, and greg will all still be there waiting for you, and you can continue to enjoy their dynamics however you best prefer them.

good luck, anon! if you choose to continue your watch, i hope you enjoy yourself. if not, then i hope you have fun mentally setting up shop in the early seasons.

i certainly do!

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[cuddlytogas]

GOOD OMENS 2 SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT!! spewed out right after binging last night and then added to today. I'm mostly gonna ramble about structure rather than content, but the last few bits get quite spoilery

before that, though, one other thought: I DO hope the power of fandom now will mean that we'll get an influx of people listening to Cabin Pressure and JFSP and Double Acts and all that good stuff!!! John Finnemore is such an incredible writer and comedian, and I know the "following fandom brain into a rabbithole of someone's previous work" is a lot more common for actors than writers, but. one can dream!!!!!!! knowing Finnemore was a co-writer was what reassured me that the new season wasn't going to be an unnecessary sequel, he's so fucking good, and in conclusion ---

okay onto the s2 thoughts

obviously I'm, like. insane now. like I'm gonna shatter into a million pieces and also be sick. I have LOST my MIND. and it WAS good!!!

but also

I thought the pacing wasn't nearly as good as s1? obvs s1 had the ticking clock element, which is hard to recreate without just having another ticking clock, but especially some of the flashbacks tended to linger a smidge too long, and you could tell some of them were written by other writers - the "minisodes" thing I think didn't HELP. obviously I don't think this was a MAJOR problem, and I'll want a rewatch when i feel less Fully Insane to judge properly, but even ending aside, I feel like it didn't have quite the same structural/pacing qualities that made s1 so watchable

I thought the extension of the preexisting 1941 flashback felt... a bit hack-y? (it also went on too long tbh.) the reason those worked so well in s1 was because they were these little snippets, extending it (again, especially to the length that they did) was a little... hm. not, like, a cardinal sin, and it might just be a taste thing, but. again, the "minisodes written by other writers" thing didn't help.

and I'm REALLY sad it was released all at once!! with all the mystery elements, I would've loved a week to week format - even two episodes a week - to really digest all the clues, to sit and speculate and process each reveal/development! I just read that Neil Gaiman wanted that too, so it's extra hurtful. it would've been such a satisfying way to consume the show, but alas, Binge Culture must prevail, I guess :\

finally... I might be genuinely disappointed by the ending? I mean, the religious trauma is Strong With This One, and it'll depend on what they do with s3 (I'm not even going to humour the idea of no s3), but just... okay, real spoilers from here

it felt like Aziraphale really backslided?? like, wasn't the whole point of s1 the learning of "heaven and hell are both a bit shit and we're on our own side"? I understand why the final choice was compelling, both to him and the audience, but even across the season - and especially taking both seasons' flashbacks into account - he really sort of pinged back and forth between learning the lesson and going right back into denial about it, in a way that started to feel less like a character flaw and more like a cheat to keep the drama going. obvs his final choice was DEVASTATING, but also I couldn't stop thinking that Aziraphale... knows better??? not just "he should know better, how heartbreaking", but haven't we SEEN that he KNOWS BETTER?? it felt... inconsistent? again, as a writing choice rather than a character thing

like, I've slept on this thought now and calmed down a little about it, obviously I'm a bit biased by how also extremely painful that whole last scene was to watch, but - thing it, it's not even the decision itself that sits so formally wrong with me! the "I could fix things if I were in power" self-delusion is a very believable and narratively compelling (READ: HEARTBREAKING) move, as is him believing "if Crowley were an angel and I fixed everything then we could be safe and together and everything would be fine"!

but specifically the "but heaven are the good guys" - that gets me! like, after everything?? you really still believe that?? I thought it was obvious you learnt your lesson?? something something, "how can someone so smart be SO stupid?" - except we already did that bit in s1!! ahhh I dunno, it just rings a bit too much of the kind of undoing character development and recycling drama that I reeaaaally don't like :\

like, just. the pure disbelief in crowley's face - "tell me you said no" - like, yeah. and not just in a character sympathy way, but - come on, Aziraphale!! we've been through this so many times now!!!

again, this will also all rest on how it's handled in s3. and I have some faith! s2 actually bringing up crowley's "I was there when you tried to destroy Aziraphale, I saw your face when you told him to shut up and die" was revelatory, I loved that they actually made reference to it. and the writers are good! this isn't going to be a wwdits situation, I think we're safe in that. but s2 definitely had a few more plotty/pacing flaws, and that's just SUCH a huge betrayal - that whole ending was so massive - I have a lot of gay fear about how it'll all be resolved.

or, I dunno. maybe I'm just still too sad to think straight.

[sillayplinker]

TIGER & BUNNY 2 SPOILERS

Idk how to do the thing where it hides the text unless you click a button that says “show more” so this’ll do

[ if you are for some reason reading this I apologize for the onslaught of typos I have butter fingers and brain fog 🦭 and don’t reread what I say ]

Sitting with my thoughts and feelings and also looking at what everyone else has to say the season was a bummer and a very very obvious change from season 1. S1 was driving by the characters there actions led the story not the story leading them when they messed up It drove the plot forward. They were interconnected to the villain. The villain and the hero’s story’s were connected but now not really just ouroboros but even then Barnaby has no care for that word anymore I guess that’s how he acts at least he’s healed not or less and they had ample opportunity to give kotetsu more of a connection with the villain but that didn’t happen either..

also going with that the show is called Tiger & Bunny yet we don’t really see anything new about them on screen we’re just kinda told that they hang out and have gotten to know each other more not actually shown it. And WHEN are we ever going to get a understanding of kotetsus past?? What’s with that we are just meant to accept that we are only ever told he is / was afraid of his powers never get to see anything Barnaby never gets to learn all that much about kotetsus past when Ko knows just about everything about bani so we really could’ve had a kotetsu focused season with his powers and stuff leading up to the climax where he gets over thrown by the power or something like that ahhhh I love this show I really do and I wouldn’t have been able to have such interactions with people is the 2 season came out a bit after 1 (I was 5 when 1 came out lol) so it’s a very special situation but for the people who have waited 11 whole years for this and are just left more confused and more concerned than if this came out a couple years after the first even I’m worried will we ever get another season ? Idk no one knows last time they said yes and it wasn’t till 11 years later something came of that. That can’t happen again it’s just no possible I don’t think fans could stick it out that long again not with this seasons story it doesn’t hold as much promise as it’s first.

I will genuinely be nervous up until they announce if they’re gonna do a movie or anything after this the amount of things not tied up cant be just bad writing I don’t think the writers are THAT incompetent no way so I feel they want another season coming closely after this one I will be hopping and manafesting or whatever to have another that can really tell a good story this time.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh idk idk I still feel so strongly about this show nothing has ever made me care this much so that is exciting tho I don’t think a new season is meant to make you want to watch the one before it because you want to see better story telling lol anyway I need to shut up I keep repeating myself. So if this is where it really ends a very mediocre season one that would probably finally calm the fandom down to let it die if we get another season then this was pretty good you can tell the writers just weren’t doing the same good job as last time but it’s not horrible I still love it AND if we get another season that’s the same or worse writing with the same lack of character importance then it will just make everything sadder and not worth the wait .

[prince-toffee]

I don’t care if the character is good. I care if the character is interesting. I don’t know where the morality police came from, I don’t know why people try to justify actions of villains, I don’t know why all characters need to be good. I don’t care if they’re justified, or right. ‘Do I care when they’re on screen?’ is the right question. The character can be a pure saint, but what does it matter if they’re pure good if they’re boring to watch? I love villains, love, love, love villains, but if a villain is just... boring, then what the hell is the point of even showing them on screen?!

For me spop is a prime example of this. I’m sorry, I really am, but I don’t care about... anything in that show, except for Hordak, Entrapta, and maybe Shadow Weaver. The Princesses do nothing for me. This one’s the sassy one, this one’s the hippie one, this one’s the blue one, again. I don’t care. I’m sorry. We learn nothing about them! We have no flashbacks, no lore, nothing! Show me Mermista’s father. The Whispering Woods are apparently sentient, can Perfuma talk to it? Show me how Frosta’s parents died, and give her a consistent personality. In her bio it says Netossa doesn’t have a kingdom, why? Show us Spinerella’s kingdom. Show me Entrapta’s backstory, her parents, her childhood, explore her kingdom! I’m interested, show me more! Show me The First Ones, they’re evil or something right? That was the plot twist, right? I think? Why weren’t we shown a satisfying and fulfilling climax where Adora kicks their asses? Show me George’s past battling against the Horde. Angella is immortal according to her bio, maybe. Show me that!

This show is bone dry! No meat! This show somehow manages to be empty and slow and drag while also going at break neck speeds. The only character I can’t complain about, who is my favourite Princess is Glimmer. Glimmer is great, I love Glimmer. Not s1-3 Glimmer, s4 Glimmer. Compromised Glimmer. For three seasons Glimmer was just another Princess, Adora’s best friend. But after Angella dies, then it gets fascinating. Glimmer has the responsibilities of Queen thrust apon her, and all those lines spoken in season 3 are paid off, Glimmer slowly becomes her mother even though she doesn’t want to be, she doesn’t want to be a coward, she wants to be at the frontlines helping her friends. And that pressure forces her to consult Shadow Weaver and go down a darker path. Her rise to power paralleling Catra that season, and then her descent catalysed by desire for power paralleling Shadow Weaver who forges the same relationship with her as with Micah, it’s all great. Glimmer wants to, is responsible for, protecting her kingdom, the whole world and as the Horde grows in power she feels the need to use increasingly more drastic measures to protect everyone.

Glimmer isn’t at her best in this season, but she is the most interesting at this point. And then in s5 she likes Bow I guess. The Mara Razz stuff is also pretty interesting, but that was in s4 and by that point I was just turning off my brain. I kinda feel like s4 was a filler season.

And then, when I’m given so little, we get to Hordak. And he, I cannot stress this enough how much this means to me even though it is the bare minimum, he has a flashback, an artistic, stylised flashback! With a thematic colour palette. With a tease that will be paid off, of our endgame bad guy. A flashback that tells us about the character’s backstory, about the lore of the universe, about themes that are relevant to the whole meaning behind the character and to the conversation he and Entrapta are having in that moment. We see the world from his perspective, we don’t agree with him, but we understand him. And guess what? That scene wasn’t even originally meant to be apart of the episode! Because of course it wasn’t! Because spop is the definition of white bread!

Fuck! Shadow Weaver does it even better! She has an entire episode dedicated to her, and it’s all a flashback, it’s amazing, we see her younger, we see what makes her go down a darker path, we see a meaningful relationship between her and Micah, we see LORE, LORE, LORE, I LOVE LORE, it’s lore that makes no sense timeline-wise, and complicates everything even more without expanding or explaining anything, and not paying it off later, but at least it’s something. I love Shadow Weaver, from her design, which is perfection to her voice which is gorgeous to her actions and writing which is marvellous. I love this irredeemable pure evil disney stepmother because she’s interesting, she’s fascinating! She steals every scene she’s in! Shadow Weaver is the best character in this entire show. I can’t stress how amazing Weaver is, and we all slept on her. I swear she’s like the only competent character in this entire show. She’s refreshing.

And to show you that I’m not just an edgy loser that hates heroes because they’re dumb and villains rock, I’ll say this. Not even Horde Prime is as interesting as those two. He’s this universe conquering monster that is pure evil and that is right up my alley, I should love him.... but I don’t. He sucks. He’s nothing. I feel nothing. I’m not intrigued, not interested, not captured. You know why? Because he’s a reskinned Princess. He’s not important, he doesn’t matter, he’s a cardboard cut out. He alludes to somethings that may or may not have happened in the past, we never see any of it. He’s like a weird Catradora shipper for some reason? He’s this super powerful monster that destroyed planets, he conquered half the universe, he brainwashes half our main cast, and the planet, and yet... I feel nothing... because deep down you know... that this is the last season and the hero will win and there will be no lasting ramifications, and if there will be we won’t see it. Oh no he couldn’t trace them because the ship blah blah blah. Fuck you. Sucks. The heroes are untouchable, he’s not scary, he’s incompetent, oh so you can just mind control people? and you didn’t do that right away, why? He’s stupid. And yeah Hordak is stupid too, but Hordak has a backstory and a love interest and thematic meaning, unexplored, but it’s there. Prime has nothing. I don’t know who or what he is. He’s an after thought. And what contributes to me not giving a fuck is the fact that s5 as a whole is terrible and it rots my brain, and I turned off my brain as I skimmed that season, I blacked out.

Anyway back to Hordak and Weaver. It’s strange when we get to them, because Hordak, in particular, is so unimportant and is so separated from the rest of the show, it feels like he’s in a completely different show from the rest of the cast. Even Weaver is important, she’s directly connected to Adora and more importantly Catra. Hordak? Sure his actions matter to the plot, his backstory and his lore matter to the plot, but he himself doesn’t matter. Sure the portal is the catalyst for the s3 finale and it calls Prime, the clone trauma is important to Catra’s arc in s5, but Hordak the person, is unimportant, Hordak the individual doesn’t matter. He’s less then a side character. He’s so disconnected from the entire show. He feels like he’s in a completely different show. Which strangely enough was welcoming for me. It felt like I could just like Hordak and Entrapta in that small corner of the fanon over there, away from all the drama. Hordak, from his design to his personality to his existing backstory, was so different and stood out from amongst the crowd.

At first it was wow this guy looks cool I’ll proceed to theorise what he’s about, and then when we actually got a story behind him at first I was disappointed, but I quickly began digging into the potential of it and you couldn’t stop me. An exiled and shunned clone with a genetic disease who wishes to prove himself to an uncaring god, his mental state is so fascinating to pick apart, don’t tell this isn’t the most interesting thing in this show... I don’t know what the conclusion of this cluster fuck is.

i hate wrong hordak

[mnkiss]

A quick list of animes I watched and don’t want to forget:

Mushishi - pure, haunting beauty, 10/10 recommend especially when you want some clarity and calmness in your life. You’ll cry tho

K - the amount of tears I shed TwT I literally miss the characters. Weird af world and story, but somehow I got attached. There should be K: seven stories somewhere but I can’t find it... Also: this whole we’re a bunch of problematic people who become a family is a trope I’ll never get tired of

Tokyo Ghoul - S1 and S2 feel like one huge story and it’s just the beginning so buckle up... There are 2 OVAs (Jack and Pinto) that help with understanding Re: (S3) and then there is S4 which is apparently only the most important parts of the manga... I understand why so many people think that s4 is ridiculous, but the first 3 seasons are great. The manga is a must for the anime tho, bc the last season is a joke, so if you can, read the manga first. With that said, the censorship is terrible so if you can, watch it without the weird black and white patches that take up half the screen, because the animation, the fights, the colours are all extremely vibrant and alive, just like the characters. What being human means, why the police feel like they are doing god’s work when they kill innocents along with the psychos, what a family is, can we be selfish for others, and many more questions are discussed here, all while somebody gets gutted. S2 was much more like a filler than a normal season, but still, I cried, and the whole anime is awesome so watch it if you can. (If you get upset when humans are able to endure more than supernatural beings then it’s not your show, bc even though humans are supposed to be, you know, humans, they are still able to kill tens of ghouls with a fucking hole inside of them.)

Attack on Titan - got tired of waiting after s2... No mystery is worth more than a year of waiting lol

Black butler - I need to get around and watch the book of atlantis. Great story, Sebastian is everything and more, and the aesthetic is something I’ll never forget. The music fits perfectly, and the foods make me drool. It has the “big picture”, as well as small journeys where you can get to know your favourite characters which I appreciate. S2 was not something I enjoyed, but the book of circus was worth it as well as most ova’s.

Darker than black - THEY MUST CONTINUE IT BRING HEI BACK PLEASE PLEASE I CAN’T I JUST CAN’T - also s2′s opening makes me cry. Dolls and Contractors work together as a team, then alone, then again as a team... it was a wild ride. Awesome character development, great plot and world building. Sadly they cut their story and future at s2 for some reason... If I ever watch it again I watch Gaiden before Gemini tho - a lot less confusion and disappointment this way.

Bungou Stray Dogs - loving it with my whole heart can’t wait to watch it again because there is literally NO character I don’t love. It has pretty boys, crime, mystery, magical abilities and comedy alongside the surprisingly deep issues. The art style is otherworldly, everything is so PRETTY and CAPTURING ugh *-*. It also made me read lots of books again (especially Japanese literature which was new for me) ^^ (Who doesn’t ship Dazai and Chuuya... And Poe is a baby too)

Noragami - cute, very cute, I love it when the main character is powerful af yet has a silly, loving side. Also: you can learn a bit about gods and religion

Assassination Classroom - tears. all of them. tears. It’s not what I expected but still, the little assassins and the teacher’s relationship was perfect.

Another - i watched it for the dolls and the umbrella meme. Liked it? yes. Do I remember anything else tho? Not really

Parasyte - one of the first animes I’ve ever watched. Loved it. ^^ Migi was great, all the issues it brings up were thought provoking, and it has gore.

Hellsing - idk it had too many monologues and ideologies, didn’t finish it

Psycho-Pass - In short: cyberpunk future, systematic oppression, immigrants, killing with permission and other moral or societal issues, plus charismatic characters and gore. The watching order: S1, S2, Sinners of the system, S3, First inspector. Wonderful buildup, dynamic storytelling, great mystery elements, and of course the found family/teamwork will always be a favourite of mine. The writing is extra detailed, every character is 3D, their responses, beliefs and cultures are tied together perfectly, the chemistry between characters is relatable and although everybody seems to live by one goal only, it’s not as dull as one would think. It also has some great book recommendations, literature and philosophers play a big role, which is always a bonus. 10/10. I really hope we will get extra contents and S4 in the future.

Steins Gate - I can’t bring myself to watch the last 2 episodes of S1 lol. It starts slowly but it’s much better paced than I remembered. The anime heavily relies on the characters which are sadly very 2D: the haughty but loving, the cute but tragic, the clever weeb, the loving tsundere... and for some fucking reason every single girl loves the mad scientist who... doesn’t really show love or sometimes not even respect towards the others until the last half of the show, so I don’t particularly care about their fate, but I watch it bc I don’t want to leave it unfinished. Because people are so into it I thought maybe the story will be... flabbergasting, shocking or just a masterwork, but the whole time travelling thingy, all the rules, all the paralel worlds work very conveniently. There were some great twists that I loved, some that I saw coming and some that I didn’t, but the story itself isn’t the best and even the plottwists won’t help that.

Full metal alchemist - i watched many, many episodes. I liked it. But it lost me. Anyways, I looked up the story and it sounds interesting, lots of plot twists, great conspiracy theories etc. The main character was a bit... annoying. My main problem is that they were children cuz I can only get immersed in the adult characters’ stories...

Durarara!! - s1 was great I love gang and mystery stuff, BUT I stopped watching it bc I was only immersed in the adult characters’ stories...

The Ancient Magus' Bride - it’s a gory fairy tale, with two toxic but loveable characters who learn a lot, evolve a lot and become real companions. There is lots of touching, head pats and affection. <3 Seasond 2 is very much needed, I want to see more episodic journey elements like the cat kingdom episodes were, and perhaps cry just a little less. Pro tip: when you watched the first 12 eps you should watch the 3 episode ova and then the next 12 eps ;) Oh, and expect tears mostly from happiness

Devilman Crybaby - I was the crybaby. The ending is beautiful, the art style was great, it literally pulsed through my eyes sometimes. Awesome characters, weird storyline, sad ending.

Death Parade - another anime that made me cry :) Beautiful art style, immersive story, interesting take on the afterlife, moral issues. It had everything I needed,

Juni Taisen - It wasn’t the craziest or most cunning anime of all times, but I cared about the characters and I really wanted to know how it ends, so it was good i guess

Kekkai Sensen - i watched s1 and I didn’t care anymore...

BEASTARS - it was one hell of a ride. Interesting world, great conflict, highschoolers and gore... also I think there was a sudden rise in the numbers of furries while it aired. It’s art style however was too cgi-y, too smooth for me :/

Re: Zero - the main character is a little bitch i hated him but i stayed for the plot. I don’t really like love interests when one party is only loved because they look perfect... i really wish we got more seasons and explanations  s2 is on the horizon, but I doubt I’ll ever watch it

Updated it see in reblog

Also in conclusion, what do i need in an anime? 1) adults 2) superpowers 3) found family 4) a brooding, powerful af main character 5) action and mystery (plus gore) 6) chemistry between characters 7) side characters that matter 8) tissues

Any recs?

[discotreque]

Picard 1.10: Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2

I don't really do predictions or theories when I'm watching something. Partly because I prefer to go along for the ride while it's happening and wait to judge with the benefit of hindsight, but mainly because I'm very bad at it.

Anyway, let's discuss Episode 10 of Picard, in which a bunch of things happen that I would have sworn up and down were never going to happen, and a bunch of things I thought would for sure happen did not.

Spoilers for the season finale:

I think I feel about Picard S1 the same way I feel about Discovery so far: I like every single thing about it more than the writing. The casting is great, the actors are pretty much all superb, I'm horny as hell for the production design, the VFX are the best I've ever seen on television, I absolutely love Jeff Russo's music...

...and the scripts are, you know, fine. Mostly fine. Moments of excellence, no doubt, especially at the level of individual lines and scenes, but overall? New TV Trek has yet to pull off a complete season-story that really impressed me. (I have reasons for extremely high hopes re: Disco S3, but I will save them for another post.)

With all of that said: I didn't come here for the writing. I wanted to spend time with my old friend Jean-Luc Picard at the end of the 24th century, and I got it. The rest is gravy. Not, like, the awesome gravy my sister makes at Thanksgiving; decent B+ restaurant gravy. I'm still gonna dip my fries in it.

"To say you have no choice is a failure of imagination." The first great Picard line of the episode, but not the last.

Blah blah Romulan incest siblings blah blah blah. They couldn't have mentioned sooner that Narek was the family fuck-up or whatever? He would have been like 6% less boring.

Raffi and Rios constantly, lovingly dunking on each other is one of my favourite dynamics on this show.

Okay I was just joking last week about Saga's whole brain being in her eyeball but the fact that the damage to her eye fucked up her memories...

Why are they sitting outside the ship having a campfire? Isn't the ship basically fine? Why not hang out inside?

"The Thousand Days of Pain" is the name of my metal band.

Agnes using Saga's ripped-out eye to bypass the scanner had big Minority Report energy. Thank god she didn't have to chase it down a ramp while it rolled away from her.

"The way that children learn most things: by example."

RSVP Sutra, the only interestingly-written villain in this entire season. Tamlyn Tomita is super duper watchable as Commodore Oh/General Nedar (and looking fiiiine in that black uniform), but she has no personality or motivation beyond "grr, robots bad." Sutra lives in a society that's mostly twins, but her twin sister was fucking murdered. Obviously I don't agree with her actions, but I understood and cared about her motivations, which is more than I can say for any of the Romulans.

All those exterior shots of La Sirena wobbling through space with Picard at the helm were adorable.

We literally never see Narek again after the androids take him away. I hope they just threw him in a dumpster. Bye bitch.

Seven didn't do a ton of hand-to-hand combat on VOY, and she sure didn't fight like this. Jeri Ryan moves like she's heavy, like her bones are made of metal, like she's still full of dense Borg technology. She practically lumbers around, using her limbs like clubs; Peyton List bounces off her like she's hitting a solid steel wall. It's excellent choreography and so well executed by both women (and presumably their stunt doubles).

GET FUCKED, RIZZO. You were barely interesting enough to hate, but I did hate you.

"'The Picard Maneuver.' Wait, that's actually a thing, isn't it?" Ell oh ell.

Loved the way the Romulan ships' disruptors sizzled and crackled when they were powering up.

What was wrong with Planetary Sterilization Patterns 1 through 4?

That motherfucking fanfare when the Starfleet ships came in. Awwww yeah.

ACTING CAPTAIN WILL RIKER. Still kinda wish it had been Worf on the Entrepreneur, though, because I'm greedy: we already saw Riker!

I do have my problems with the writing, but I loved the way they resolved the three-way standoff between the Romulans, Starfleet, and the ch'khalagu: not with an epic space battle, but with diplomacy and self-sacrifice and trust in the essential goodness of each other. (Plus, I guess, the threat of an epic space battle.) It was so perfectly TNG in so many ways.

All the Riker stuff was so fan-servicey. Which I'm mostly fine with: I'm a fan, after all, and I like to be serviced from time to time. But it felt a little like one slice too many of chocolate cake.

I wish the tips of the tentacles had got cut off when the portal closed. That would have been cooler, right?

What can I say about watching Jean-Luc Picard die. He's been my captain for 30 years. I physically fucking felt it. And making an android copy of him, while awesome, did not really diminish the emotional impact.

On a lighter note, I need to know what Jeri and Santiago were actually drinking in that scene, because it straight-up looked like soap. Yuck.

I also really like the dynamic between Rios and Seven. They both act a little harder than they are, and I think they see through each other's acts, but there's enough mutual respect (and self-interest) there to let each other get away with it. And no romantic tension whatsoever. Delightful.

I want to hug all of them so much :(

The blank grey surface of everything in the simulation was very creepy.

Oh Data. Oh, Data. My heart was already aching and then...

Listen. Like a fucking idiot, I went and saw Nemesis on opening night. I don't even remember what I was expecting, but I do remember walking out of the theatre with my friend and agreeing never to speak of it again. Data died, but the movie was so shitty I could barely feel anything about it. This episode gave me the emotional closure I've been waiting for since December 13, 2002.

It's also, if you think about it, a pretty hilarious "fuck you" to Nemesis in general: "You guys did such a bad job of killing Data we had to bring him back to life just so we could kill him properly."

They've been slightly aging-up Patrick Stewart all season. I stopped noticing it after a while, so seeing him without it at the end was quite a shock.

"You... you haven't made me immortal?!" "Relax, man. Everyone was paying attention." Okay, Altan can stay.

Speaking of ol’ A.I., can't he just make another golem for himself? Was there something unique about the one they put Picard in?

I thought I recognized the voice of the woman singing "Blue Skies" on my first watch, but I couldn't place her. Turns out that was Isa Briones herself, which meant I cried even harder the second time through.

"And our little life is rounded with a sleep." Goodbye, Data.

Seven and Raffi???????

SEVEN AND RAFFI?????????????

And once again, Jeff Russo ends the season with a mash-up of the old theme and the new one. Give my man another Emmy! Give him two!

God damn. What a ride. Let me climb into my clown shoes for one last shitty prediction. I think next season is going to be what I wanted from this season: Picard and his motley crew of rogues bopping around the galaxy having roguish adventures. Fingers crossed!

And thanks for reading. Star Trek is always more fun with friends.

[jancys-blue-bayou]

Yeah so Stranger Things 3 was painfully bad

Yeah yeah big negative post about ST3 coming up. Just... holy shit, my expectations weren’t exactly high but jesus I didn’t think it’d be this bad. Wow. Mindboggling to think it was made by the same dudes who made season 1, it feels like a different show. Some of the worst writing I’ve seen in a long while, parts of season 3. This got very long because it was very bad so it’s under the cut. Starting with the few positives and then away we go...

Of course there were bright spots, I thought what we got of Jancy was generally good (just wish there had been more of it. Just like... more lines between them, a few moments could’ve gone on longer...like after the awesome hospital fight scene jesus just let them fucking desperately embrace and profess their love for each other, it was awesome how they relentlessly kept going at the monster to save the other but can we please just have a few more seconds for a comfort moment after?) I liked how they handled the fight btw, apart from the Oliver Twist comment yeah yeah heat of the moment but still felt OOC with that loa a blow. Nancy and Karen scene was nice and um... well Max and El bonding was nice. And um... Mr Clarke! And I kind of dig Murray.

My main issues with it:

- The product placement. Jesus Christ. Okay, ST has always been a show with noticeable product placement. But it’s gone from things like a Coke can prominently on display on a table in s1 (El crushing it with her mind) to literally having a straight up ad for Coca Cola in the middle of a tense scene. That’s the big offender that made me go wow you’re really doing this to yourselves huh, there are many others ofc (everything at the mall ofc, Slurpees being in hyperfocus for a bit, and a lengthy talk about Burger King. These smaller things one by one wasn’t the worst but all combined jesus it was too much, all added together and then bam the Coke commercial was wow... Congrats on the like 80 sponsorship deals and esp the new ST themed arcade hall by Coca Cola hope it was worth completely selling out for.

- Relatedly, the original fucking song. Holy christ talk about jumping the shark. That was the oddest, cringiest, weirdest shit I’ve seen in a long time. Gaten’s a great singer don’t get me wrong, but there’s a time and place for it and an original song stuffed into the middle of the tense climax of the season is not it Duffers. Just a blatant cash cow, hoping to bring in more money via the song.

- Robin. Sorry but holy cow what a Mary Sue. Hey here’s this super cool girl who’s cool™ and funny™ and super smart™ and NOT Nancy (like they seriously for real said in a scene, they actually for real had to pit Robin and Nancy against each other for no reason). And she conveniently has these specific skills needed for the plot (which she gets involved with for no real motivation other than having nothing better to do, lazy writing). Said skills were so over the top unrealistic it completely sucked me out of it. To start with, this random girl in small town Indiana in 1985 speaking French, Spanish and Italian um... does Hawkins High have the most amazing language department or what? Very un-american in that case... and okay then, her knowing those languages wouldn’t help jackshit with understanding Russian. Russian is a notoriously difficult language to learn and it is not related to the Romance languages at all, Robin knowing those languages and oh, having “a good ear” bc she’s in band (?!??! what?!) wouldn’t help her at all. Having the alphabets on the wall and listening to strange words in a foreign language she has no understanding of would never work. No way for her to understand what is she’s hearing, what letters are in the words just, nothing. It’s completely ridiculous. The good thing is she’s a lesbian, crushing Stobin that made me LOL. Btw, I don’t get what age they were writing her as? She’s still in school but later says she and Steve was in the same class, and she knows who Nancy is but Nancy, who is still in school, doesn’t know her even though presumably they’d be in the same year at little Hawkins High? Was it just sloppy writing or what?

- Too. Much. Plotting. What happened to “this season is about the characters” um there was just so much plot stuff and action sequences and barely any character driven moments at all. Those intimate moments that made s1 amazing. Generally regarding plots felt the Russian plot was messy and not well-written also what happened to the US government as the big bad? Unless they’re setting up a big Cold War thing for s4. And felt the zombie thing was wasted, could’ve been used differently like I’d have thought it’d be used like the MF spreading it’s influence over vaster areas and being harder to keep track of etc.

- Too little Will. Will’s whole thing with feeling left out etc was just dropped halfway through it felt very undercooked. His arc was just dropped wtf.

- NO BYERS FAMILY INTERACTIONS WTF. The sequence in the first episode when Jancy has overslept and Joyce wipes the lipstick off Jonathan was cute (but could’ve been even cuter I’d have preferred a short fluffy Jancy moment here just as they wake up before they realize they overslept, bc we didn’t get much pure fluff, and then it’d been awesome if Joyce would’ve just called Nancy into the house to mess with them). But like... that’s kind of it. For the Byers family. Talking to each other in the whole season. When they partnered Jancy with the kids many thought awesome we’ll get Byers bros talking and teaming up (and Nancy and Mike) but there was just nothing. Not even a family hug after the battle at the mall, just Joyce hugging Will, with all this tightknit little family has been through you telling me Jonathan wouldn’t join in?

- No Will and El bonding wtf? SUCH a wasted opportunity. They’ve built this unique awesome connection over s1 and s2 and now in s3 would finally be able to bond normally for real and... nothing.

- Turning Hopper back into an even bigger jerk than he was at the start of the show, neglecting all his character development. What was the point of the whole El and Hopper thing they devoted so much time to in s2 if Hopper’s back at it with the yelling and all now? And jeez his constant whining to Joyce about every man she interacts with holy christ that got annoying. Generally Hopper was such an annoying asshole this season I was so tired of him by the time he “died”.

- TOO MANY CHARACTERS. Jeez, I know I’m on about it all the time but jesus christ there is way way too many characters in this for 8 episodes which hurts the narrative and screentime for interesting characters is just... yeah.

- Speaking of screentime, did we really need that many identical generic fight scenes between Hopper and the Russian guy? Jesus Christ it’s so boring watching fight scenes like that, so repetitive (compare to the hospital fight scene which was dynamic and awesome). Also regarding screentime did we really need to devote so incredibly much of it to Steve and Robin being comedic relief while drugged? Yeah yeah mix light and dark and all that but jesus christ at that point in the narrative shit has hit the fan lean into the dark.

- Totally expected of course but still, the furthering of Steve Memeington. My god they actually had him literally call himself daddy... christ.

- The Billy and Karen/all the other middle age women remains gross and bad in a billion ways. Also completely pointless for the plot, they could’ve come up with any other way to get Billy to the factory. And what did it give Karen in development? Just the realization that yeah I’m tired of my husband but I’m not leaving my family and I’ll stick with him just ‘cause? Okay but did we need her almost sleeping with a kid a year older than her daughter for that? Icky. Also the editing of the scene where Billy hits her was so weird. Also that was weird as fuck.

- The ending. Okay christ my main gripe with this is because of a point above: No Byers family interaction at all! Joyce and Hopper talk briefly about her thinking about moving once or twice but she never talks about it with her kids... obviously she did in the timegap but we need to see that to build to the thing. Having no Byers interactions the whole season and then just oop we’re moving is so weird. I’m also not sure if Joyce’s motivation for moving (her bad memories of Hawkins) would be enough. For sure an argument for it, but an argument against is the one Hopper presents to her (and though he’s not around still there’s still a support system around them there, especially for her kids which she loves above all). Speaking of her loving her kids above all, she knows they love their friends/girlfriend/boyfriend to bits, have walked through fire with them and are each others support system as mentioned, would Joyce really just uproot them from that? There’s also some purely practical things that stuck out to me immediately: the timeskip for the epilogue makes it so they move when the schoolyear is already well under way and Jonathan has started senior year, feel bad for Jonathan there in a number of ways. Also, how the hell did Joyce manage to sell her house and what did it fetch? Her rundown house on the outskirts of a now infamous town with an incredibly bad rep? Even if the buyer bought it for the land the land doesn’t look special, just find it hard to believe she could get much for it. And where did they move? Where did she find a place? And work? Did she have something lined up or? I guess we’ll see.

- Oh and speaking of work, that was another thing that was just dropped, the mall killing downtown and the protests just fell out of the story. But, with what happened to the mall wouldn’t business come back to downtown (possibly reason for Joyce to want to stay if Melvald’s going out of business was another reason to move).

- Sorry but Mileven took way too much space.

- Again, no Jonathan and Will actual brothers bonding. But a whole lot of Steve and Dustin meme fanservice wank.

- Erica is just the sassy black girl trope non stop the whole season and nothing else and it’s so grating and... I was gonna say disappointing but I had no faith in the Duffers regarding this. Just because a bit character becomes a meme doesn’t mean they need to become a main. *cough* Steve *cough cough* Sorry.

- Last but not least, the woobiefication of Billy. Uggggghhhh. Disgusting. And having Max cry over him WTF?!?!?!?!?! staaaaaaahp.

[qqueenofhades]

I know you dont watch GoT anymore. And that Braime and Sansa are your favorites. But I know you've read the books and are obviously really interested in the story. And I was just wondering what your thoughts are on the whole Jon killing Dany thing? Is that something you can see happening in the books? And if it is do you think it'd be in the same context as the show did it?

Ahaha, welp. Just jumping right in there.

(Also, you never have to apologise for asking GOT/ASOIAF questions. I obviously have been a fan for 16 years and wrote fuckin’ TNR with its half-million-plus words, so I clearly do have Thoughts on the story/characters, especially with the bag of lukewarm cat vomit that was s8 of the show.)

I already answered this ask discussing how much I hated the Mad Queen Dany thing, both because a) it was horrifically badly handled and b) these mediocre misogynist douchegobblers have managed to outdo themselves in terms of the gross messages they’ve sent about women, after 8 seasons of that. (These are the same people who made Sansa say that she was grateful for her rapes and who claimed that Dany’s turn into madness was foreshadowed by her having a “chilly” reaction to the death of her abuser, Viserys, in s1, so…. make of that what you will.) I’m not saying that it was narratively impossible, especially since GRRM has been toying with the same thing in the books and has more than his own share of Male Author Syndrome. But at the start of 8x04, Dany is in Winterfell, perfectly sane, toasting Arya as hero of the battle. By the end of 8x06, she’s crazy, a war criminal, and dead, murdered by her boyfriend, because… well, something something plot reasons. Even if you didn’t like Dany or were rooting for her to go mad or whatever, that was wildly badly handled.

I personally think it would be pretty gross for GRRM to also go down the Mad Queen route, though at least if he does, we will have had Dany’s POV chapters beforehand and presumably something resembling a justification and a building narrative momentum toward it. But she also got stuck in Meereen for so long because by his own admission he didn’t know what to do with her there or how to get her out of the situation and moved onto Westeros, which remains, theoretically, her outstanding goal in the books. It would obviously not be outside the realm of possibility for this to happen, given GRRM’s focus on “grittiness” that the show took to max factor 5000. I would still find it reductive and trying to make a Clever Postmodern Point and etc if it happened in the books, because literally why invest us in a character this long, especially one who has tried so hard to overcome the circumstances of her past/to not be her father, and then just do exactly that? Obviously there would be elements of Shakespearean tragedy to it, and if done well it could be compelling, but I personally just have a different approach to fiction and what people want out of a story (especially one now as famous as GOT/ASOIAF and how universally betrayed everyone seems to feel by the ending). I’m not saying Dany’s ultimate ending needs to be sunshine and roses and getting what she wants, because often character arcs and resolutions become all the more powerful for being subverted and thwarted (think the “I said I wanted [x] but [y] was there instead” sort of endings). But whatever it is, it needs to be…. not that.

Also, Jon in both books and especially show has been the epitome of Mediocre White Man. I stopped watching in s4, but Kit Harington’s acting was so wooden and the writing for him was very much Standard Misunderstood Brooding Fantasy Hero that I could barely pay attention to his scenes. I find him somewhat more interesting in the books, though ADWD dragged for everyone and it was obvious GRRM was writing in circles. But everyone has noticed that especially in the show, Jon does absolutely bupkis. His ass is constantly saved by the women in his life, he makes an absolute hash of any power that he is given and doesn’t want it anyway, and his ultimate ending was…. going back to the Night’s Watch (as their idea of satisfying narrative storytelling is to literally put everyone back where they were in the very first episode, apparently). Never mind the fact that there’s no need for the Night’s Watch, but the point is, even the fact that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna’s son ended up being relevant for like half an episode. That has been one of the major plot points/secrets of the books (although not so much anymore) and it just…. fizzled out like a damp squib. Dany actually TRIED for multiple seasons to be a good ruler and to learn how to handle power and become a queen, so for her to have to be the one to die for Jon to once again do diddlysquat is… well, as I have said before, the misogyny leaps out. They ended up wasting so much potential and so many other things that were also foreshadowed (and far more convincingly than “wah wah she was gonna go evil!”). For this? So Jon can just go brood in the snow again? Cool.

Not to mention, I find it gross on principle that Dany’s boyfriend had to be the one to kill her, especially after rape/sexual violence/loss of agency was such a big part of her early-season storylines (and how horrifyingly and grossly that has been handled on the show overall). We’re obviously supposed to sympathize with Jon in this scenario and to feel that it is justified to “stop a tyrant” or whatever. Also, if the episode was going to be called “Queenslayer,” why the fuck wasn’t it Jaime fulfilling the valonqar prophecy, another thing they forgot about, and killing Cersei, at great personal grief/cost, to once more stop an insane monarch from burning down King’s Landing? But that, of course, would be actual character development/overall arc, and they preferred to also trash that by having Jaime “killed Aerys Targaryen literally to save half a million innocent people and lived with his reputation being destroyed ever after” Lannister unironically claim that he never cared about the lives of the innocent and only wanted Cersei. After she again tried to kill him and Tyrion like three days ago, not even to mention what they did to Brienne and with that whole arc, but I will have a ragestroke if I think about it too much. 

Basically, the ending wasn’t “bittersweet.” It was tragic, reductionist, ham-handed, hugely disappointing for everyone who put years of investment into these characters, and ended up in the amusing position of making Bran Stark the younger and more beautiful queen who comes to cast Cersei down. He became king because… reasons? Whatever? And he knows literally everything about everyone thanks to being the Three-Eyed Raven, so there’s no way that can go horribly wrong. He has basically done nothing except sit in a wheelchair and look creepy for several years now, his arc has never been remotely about being king, and Isaac Hempstead-Wright himself is apparently on record as saying he genuinely thought it was a joke script when he read it. This after both Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington broke down over learning what happened to their characters/Kit apparently realized it for the first time at the read-through and was horrified. Emilia already talked about wandering for five hours and having a crisis and calling her mom and asking to be talked off the ledge like….. fictional choices/characters completely aside, that’s a gross thing to do to your actors. I know they’re all proud of their work and they have apparently and understandably been defensive about the existence of the petition to rewrite s8, but they’ve all been pretty clear, while still being professional and supportive, that there is stuff that they’re just as much WTF about as we are.

Basically, as everyone keeps saying, the acting, cinematography, visual effects, music, etc was clearly up to as high a standard as ever, but was betrayed fundamentally and comprehensively by this god-awfully shit writing by a couple of hacks who clearly rushed the final season to get on to ruining working on Star Wars. They have also been on record about saying “you can’t do what the audience expects or it’ll get boring blah blah blah,” which is a profoundly flawed storytelling strategy if you’re paranoid and trying to outsmart your audience and do something that nobody has ever thought of because you’re an Intellectual Postmodern Commentator On Our Violent Society. If your audience can guess where a story is going, but are still surprised by major twists along the way that then make sense in hindsight, you’ve done your job. If you’re relying on grimdark and cramming in gimmicky plot twists and deus ex machinas and Shocking Moments rather than authentically developing your story, it’s going to bite you in the ass in a big way, as was just proven. 

Nobody expected a completely happy ending from GoT. But the fact that they went to such lengths, especially in s8, to build up characters/ships (Jonerys, Braime, Gendrya were all torched after major canon moments completely unexpected by fans, especially the latter two – why even include it unless to just be more Tragique, and Gendrya is the only one that has even a chance in the future since half of it didn’t end up idiotically dead) and then just wrecked all of it…. as I’ve said, good endings don’t need to be rainbows and unicorns and kittens. But if you’ve asked eight years of audience investment, there has to be something that makes it worth it and that doesn’t make everyone feel like they were duped and stupid to get involved in the first place. They have been beating the “it’s a hard world and bad things happen to the characters” drum for all they’re worth, but… it’s just bad. You can analyse and ask why the hell they did things and so forth, but it’s bad. At this rate, the show should have either ended after 8x03, or they should have taken the money HBO offered and done the proper 10 episodes and let Bryan Cogman write all of them. He was the only one who appeared to remotely give a shit about the characters, and since D&D wrote the last four episodes themselves, yeah, this disaster is on them.

Fortunately, I left the show years ago and have TNR and am used to ignoring their version of things. And I knew all along that they never really got the characters or the story. But I feel really bad for everyone who has had this thrown back in their face, and it seems like a communal disenchantment with this ending is going to enter the pop-culture consciousness on a possibly unprecedented level. So if GRRM does do the Mad Queen Dany killed by Jon in the books (though he has apparently called the show’s ending “traumatic”), I’ll probably still not like it. He has a chance to sell me it on/justify it to me narratively, which the show categorically failed to do. I don’t think I will, just because as I said, I don’t like anything about it, but yes.

Anyway. This is a long post already, and I probably have more to say still, but it’s pretty obvious I think it’s just really, really bad, and that’s about the essence of it.

[safflowerseason]

Second question! What do you think drew Dan and Amy to one another? What you do think defines their connection?

Hi Anon - apologies that this response took a while! It’s a big question and I wanted to think it over without simply copying @thebookofmaev​, who wrote her own wonderful response to the same question that everyone should read.

I wrote about what Amy finds so appealing about Dan in this post here (essentially, she gets to be herself around him), so I won’t bore everyone by repeating myself. 

As for Dan…I tend to the view he really had written her off as a person of “interest” to him after they dated. I’m sure he was attracted to her, thought she was funny and smart and charming in her way, and obviously useful. But for Dan, none of that is enough to capture his attention permanently. I guess what I’m saying is that however much Dan might have liked Amy personally, I don’t believe he thought Amy was that different from any other D.C. woman that he’d dated (except maybe more naive). (I also really doubt she was Selina’s chief of staff when they dated, otherwise Dan wouldn’t have dumped her after just three dates…which means that professionally, she’s not quite as distinctive yet from her peers.) 

My reasoning for this is that a part of their relationship arc in S1 (and early S2 as well) is Dan’s discovery that Amy can be as ruthless and cunning and ambitious as he is, and that discovery explicitly changes his opinion of her. His reaction in 1.04 to Amy’s bargain with O’Brien is very impressed and also very unsubtle: “You’ve gone up like ten levels in my estimation.” What initially draws Dan to Amy in a real way is the knowledge of what she’s truly capable of accomplishing and that her limits are just as flexible as is . That’s when he starts to actually respect her, to regard her as a real ally, a formidable strategist in her own right that he really needs. She’s no longer someone he sees as temporarily useful. He learns that she’s as smart as he is, is even better than him at certain things, and she’s willing to go as low as him when it’s needed. All this makes her more attractive to him. (I don’t mean that Dan thinks they’re the same. But he does recognize something in her that he sees in himself—a drive for power that he thought only he held—and that makes him sit up and pay more attention.) 

In S1, they still jockey a bit longer for influence with Selina, but by S2, Dan has stopped trying to win favor by cutting out Amy. He also spends the back half of S2 consistently telling her he might quit, which is his backhanded way of implying that she should leave with him. And when he learns that she really is thinking about leaving, he officially tells her they should jump ship together. 

Once Dan learns that Amy is actually worth his time and attention, I think that opens the door for all the other stuff he does like personally about her to resonate more, to become more important to him. Her intensity, her vulnerability, her blazing temper, her coolness under fire…Amy is an intoxicating paradox in her own way, and Dan loves that (plus, he’d be bored otherwise, and he gets to be the only guy who can figure her out.) And because he respects her more than anyone else, it’s a million times more satisfying to win an argument with her or to tease her and watch her transparently react to him. And Amy is beautiful and smart and witty…in all the ways, she’s very good for Dan’s ego. (In the Iannucci years, Anna Chlumsky’s undeniable physical beauty does not seem to be a part of Amy’s Washington identity in the same way that it is for Dan, but whatever, Amy looks like Anna Chlumsky and she is absolutely lovely. The less said about how Amy’s appearance is treated during the Mandel years, the better.) 

We talk a lot about how Amy gets to be herself around Dan, but in a way, I think it’s true for Dan as well. Amy sees right through him, so he doesn’t have to pretend to be a doting boyfriend or a sycophantic staffer or even a decent human being. He can be open in his disregard for everyone else in their office (and everyone else in D.C.), he can whine constantly, plot and scheme openly, he can be a sociopathic robot and Amy just takes it in stride because she understands him and doesn’t expect him to be anything else. So we have Amy and Dan getting to be their perfectly flawed selves around each other, and their relationship works because they are exactly what the other person needs, personally and professionally. It works right up until Nevada, where Amy learns at the exact worst moment that Dan is still willing to sacrifice her in the name of career advancement and Dan learns that there are still limits to how much of a shithead he can be around Amy for her to keep him in her life, which promptly makes him furious. (I have to stop myself here before I go into another long tangent about their fight in 5.03, I could write a novel about it, I love it so much and am profoundly grateful it comes early enough in the Mandel years that it fits with their dynamic in the early seasons.) 

In addition to their fiery physical and intellectual chemistry, I also think that Dan and Amy do share the general life compatibility that is crucial for a relationship to really function. They have similar values, namely that they hate everyone else, have very dark views of human nature, and want to gain power at almost any cost (these values just manifest themselves in different character traits). They’re both workaholics (this applies more to S1-S5 Dan than S6-S7 Dan) and obsessed with their jobs. Amy’s never going to be waiting around at home for Dan to come home from work, in other words, because Amy’s at work too. While Dan might be slightly less intense than Amy, there’s nothing to indicate that he’s not working as hard as she is. 

And in their off-hours, Dan and Amy want to do the same thing, which is talk about work outside of the office. It’s not like Amy wants to go to the movies and Dan wants to go for a hike (hahaha). They’d both just rather to go to bar and bitch about work while drinking tequila or order in food and yell at the tv. And while Dan is more openly attracted by the financial benefits of a high-powered political career (and the attendant status symbols, like a fancy car or a luxury apartment), it’s not as though Amy is so pure about politics that she’s opposed to permanent financial security. Her problem with lobbying wasn’t the money, after all. So they share an appreciation for that dimension of political life as well. 

A lot of words to say: I think what Amy and Dan find in each other is the ultimate partner. And I mourn for the pre-hiatus version of S7, where they would have figured out a way to make that partnership permanent, all the while pretending not to.

[miss-musings]

“THE BLACKLIST” & WHY PEOPLE HATE LIZ SO MUCH

I’ve discussed on here several times how much I’ve been annoyed with the way TPTB have written Liz’s character over the course of the show. But, I tried to keep my frustration and annoyance directed more so at the writers/showrunners and less on the character herself or the actress Megan Boone.

However, after watching 6x10 “The Cryptobanker,” I think I may have finally hit the point where I really started to hate Liz in and of herself. So, I started writing this post, which I’ve added to and edited over the past few weeks, but I still stand by my original point.

Now, I follow the Blacklist on Facebook, and almost every single time there’s a new post, the top-voted comments are always praising Spader/Red and hating on Liz. I’ve seen people say she’s annoying, that they didn’t like this S6 plotline with her and her sister, that they hoped the show kills her off for real soon, etc.

I always thought that most of the comments were somewhat valid but maybe a little overblown (especially the ones about wanting her off the show). But, it really made me wonder why so many people hate -- and I mean HATE -- Liz so much.

While I admit that her character is starting to really get on my nerves, I’m going to try to put my personal feelings aside and tackle this objectively. I want to really look at what reasons within the show, its writing, its format, etc., Liz receives so much more hate -- vastly more than any other character on this show. As I said, Red/Spader is always highly praised along with Dembe, and I rarely if ever see comments complaining about Samar, Aram, Cooper and Ressler. I would guestimate that 95 percent of complaints about any one character are directed at Liz.

A THEORETICAL POSSIBILITY

Now, I will theorize -- and keep in mind that this is only a theory -- that part of the reason for this hatred toward Liz has to do with some male fans being misogynistic/sexist and some female fans’ annoyance at what a crappy avatar Liz makes for. (I’m talking about straight viewers, FYI.)

With regard to male fans, I think they look at Liz -- who at times has been terse, mean-spirited and vindictive -- and see her as a giant bitch. After all, that was the whole idea that Liz herself sets up in the pilot. She is not who her male colleagues expect her to be. She doesn’t play into the traditional feminine role of simpering, smiling and content to sit on the sidelines and let the men sort things out. (And, I’m really generalizing here.) So, I think it’s a fair assumption that some male fans have the same sentiments about Liz that her colleagues canonically have too.

As for the female fans, I think Liz might come off as a poor avatar. When you’re plunged into a fictional universe, usually there’s a character who’s plunged into the story along with you, and you learn as they do, to the point where you start to project yourself onto them. Think Neo in “The Matrix” or Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker. It’s every person’s fantasy to discover some great power within, harness it to defeat the bad guy and win the heart of the beautiful woman/handsome man in the process.

Liz was clearly meant to be our avatar into this universe. We were brought into the world along with her, saw her learn about Red, begin the Task Force, and plunge into this world of the FBI and the Blacklist.

Now, I imagine that for older women, especially, the fantasy is to be the kind of gal that a guy like James Spader would absolutely devote himself to. And that’s exactly how Red treats Liz -- like a woman he would do anything for. However, unlike many viewers, Liz is ungrateful for Red’s devotion and continual sacrifices for her benefit. Instead of seeing him as a savior and white knight, she often sees him as a nuisance and a terror in her life. I personally think she’s often justified in that, but I’d guess that 80 percent of the current audience is watching it simply for Spader’s performance alone. So, when the favorite actor’s character is not appreciated and is continually hated on by his co-lead character, it makes for uncompelling television from a “I want to project myself onto this character” kind of way.

But, with the theoretical discussion out of the way, let’s examine some more concrete reasons as to why people hate Liz.

LIZ IS OFTEN WISHY-WASHY (ie, has little conviction) WHEN IT COMES TO HER FEELINGS AND DESIRES.

This is what I’ve often described as the “Liz loves Red, Liz hates Red, Liz forgives Red” song-and-dance routine. But, there’s much more to it than simply Liz’s relationship with Red.

Liz was first introduced to us as a woman who wanted to start a family, and yet she thought about giving up her baby for adoption and then later gave Agnes away to her mother-in-law so she could spend more time on her revenge plans. The entire pilot goes out of its way to show Liz struggling with the demands of being an FBI agent and a prospective parent, and drives home the whole “Mommy Liz” vibe with the admiral’s daughter.

Yet, when she finds out she’s pregnant, she hesitates and thinks about giving it up for adoption. Then, when she has Agnes, she agrees to Kaplan’s plan to fake her death so she and Tom and Agnes can be happy and safe away from his world. And, later when Agnes gets kidnapped, she frets and worries about her constantly.

But, the minute she wakes up after being in a coma, she’s totally cool with pawning Agnes off to someone she’s never really met. Cool.

I realize there are mitigating circumstances, but this is a woman who made all her loved ones -- Red, Cooper, Ressler, Samar, Aram, any family members she had left (except Tom) -- believe she was dead so she could live with her daughter in a safe location!!!

The idea that Liz wouldn’t just drop everything and give up the Task Force indefinitely to heal and spend time with her daughter after losing 10 months of time with her is absurd, IMO.

But, no, revenge is far more important.

It’s also really annoying that after finding out Tom had betrayed her, she was able to give him a second chance and continued to love him despite all sorts of stuff in Seasons 2-5, but the minute Red does anything, she wants to drop him like heavy airline luggage.

So, in case you forgot: in S1, she found out that Tom had been lying to her, manipulating her, and abusing her. So, after shooting him in the S1 finale, she chains him up on a boat for several months in an effort to make him useful to the Task Force. However, the minute that she hits the “hates Red” part of her “love Red, hate Red, forgive Red” cycle, she runs right back to Tom and very quickly forgives him. And, while her positive feelings for Tom continue from late S2b until his death in 5x08, her feelings about Red are all over the place, as mentioned.

Now, in her defense, her feelings about him seem to waver whenever a crucial piece of information about his involvement in her life is discovered. When Tom’s fake passports were traced back to Red in 1x06, she blamed him and said she didn’t want to work with him anymore. But, then the very next episode, when he offers to leave the Task Force completely, she doesn’t tell him to do so.

And, when Red admitted to killing Sam toward the end of S1, she was again ready to let him leave. But then at the end of the episode, she stops him.

In S2, when Liz believes that Red was only interested in her for the Fulcrum, and never really cared about her, she gives him the cold shoulder. And then when he admits that he did hire Tom to be in her life, her coldness toward him again grows.

While they’re on the run together in S3, their relationship is at its best, arguably. Until she finds out she’s pregnant and he tells her that the fight is not over, and she doesn’t want her child to be in Red’s world. (Which is understandable)

And on and on it goes through S4 and S5 and now S6. The minute Liz realizes  that he stole her father’s identity, she’s ready to burn him to the ground. But then only a few episodes later, she’s teary-eyed and regretting that she turned him into the authorities.

AS OPPOSED TO RED’S ... 

But, what really makes this all so annoying is the fact that while Liz’s feelings toward Red are cyclical, his feelings for her are constant, enduring, and never wavering. I mean, he’s basically Garth Brooks’ “Shameless” in human form. He is completely devoted to her, would give his life for hers without hesitation, and has loved her (in some form or another) far longer and far deeper than she has seemingly ever loved him.

If both of them liked each other, or if both of them disliked each other initially but then grew closer over time, the show would be much better. For instance, ABC’s Castle -- while it definitely has its flaws -- started off with the two leads liking each other from the start. Yeah, maybe they’re trying to get used to each because he’s a goofball and she’s kind of a hard ass, but it seems like by the end of the pilot, they both generally like each other as acquaintances.

Or NBC’s “The Enemy Within” -- which is eerily similar to TBL and I’ll have to do a whole post on their similarities some other time -- which starts off with the two leads being tenuous with each other. He hates her, and she is kind of neutral toward him, but the two of them need to cooperate to accomplish a shared goal.

This was never the case with Liz and Red on TBL. In the pilot, Liz is very wary of Red, as she should be. However, he -- according to Zamani -- is obsessed with her, and it’s clear that he cares about her far more than he should. To our knowledge, Red has never met adult Liz. He’s seen her from afar and kept tabs on her, of course, but this was the first time he’d met her (presumably) since The Night of the Fire. And from that meeting, his love has only grown, while hers -- as discussed -- has been all over the place.

THE TWO ARE NOT EQUAL

As I’ve said in previous posts, while the show wants Red and Liz to be partners, they are really so unequal on multiple levels. The same could be said of the two leads on “The Enemy Within, but their inadequacies tend balance each other out. She has all the know-how, but he has the freedom and jurisdiction to do things, and he is the one who ultimately makes the decision on what his team should tackle and how. She has some of the power in their dynamic, and he has some as well. Thus, their advantages tend to cancel each other out.

This is not the case with Red and Liz. All this time, Red has withheld crucial pieces of information from her, which he gives to her in piecemeal and only when she demands them. I won’t judge whether that’s the right or wrong thing to do, but it puts her at a disadvantage as far as their dynamic goes. And while Liz should be given some advantage of her own, she really doesn’t have one. Red has an immunity agreement and gets to do pretty much whatever he wants, unlike on “The Enemy Within” where the male FBI agent has some say over what privileges the female CI has because she’s still in custody.

I guess the one advantage that Liz has over Red is that he’s told her he will never lie to her. And she has confronted him and asked him direct questions before because she knows he *has* to tell her to truth if she does. But, that doesn’t stop him from stalling, changing the subject, or trying to do a verbal workaround.

And then, when the show was promoting S6, they made it seem like the power was finally in Liz’s hands -- she knows he’s an impostor and he doesn’t know that she knows.

But, while the show tried to give Liz a bit of an edge over Red, it ultimately fizzled out. She knows he’s an impostor, but she no longer has an interest in pursuing it. Which goes back to my previous point about her not having conviction. She wanted to destroy Red, and betrayed him to ensure that he wouldn’t get in the way of her and Jennifer’s quest to find out his true identity. But then, she drops it.

Again, I realize there was a lot going on -- Jennifer was kidnapped; Red was almost executed. And while I think the fact that, right now, she’s fine with not having all the answers is a sign a maturity, it’s also incredibly frustrating to see how she went from 0 to 100 in such a short span of time.

Anyway... moving on to my next major point:

LIZ DOESN’T FEEL LIKE A REAL PERSON

Relative to the screentime she’s received, Liz does not feel like a real person, but merely a plot device or a vehicle for Red’s schemes and/or the Task Force’s missions.

Very rarely do we get to see her on her own, doing her own things, outside of Red/the Task Force -- going to the store, doing chores at home, hanging out with her kid, etc. The only times we do are when it’s relevant to the overall plot. Like when she gets beat up in the parking lot in 3x11 or when she brings that Lady Ambrosia kid over to her house, tries to cook him something, and then the fire alarm goes off.

She seems solely to exist within Red’s/the Task Force’s orbit.

I feel like the fact that Liz doesn’t have any friends or family outside of the Task Force, Red and Tom (when he was alive), really speaks to how she seems to exist more as a character, not as a person within a fictional universe.

She doesn’t seem to have any hobbies, and outside of her mentioning the Wizard of Oz and a few other things, she doesn’t really seem to have any interests in anything.

By comparison, we have lots of scenes with Red and Dembe, doing puzzles, playing cards and board games. We know Red enjoys art and food/alcohol and traveling, and he has a penchant for some types of drugs -- his favorite being sex.

And even Aram enjoys Doctor Who, biking and cooking.

I’m not saying that Liz needs to start chatting with Ressler about Monday Night Football or playing pool at some local dive bar, but something! Just a line about how she Skyped with Agnes last night, or her talking to Samar or Aram about her trying to decide whether she should download Tinder and try to get back into the dating scene, or a scene of her running around a park but she’s disturbed by memories from her past. Just something. Something to make her feel like a real person, who does things outside of the Task Force.

Again, I always hate the fact that Liz was supposed to have all these friends in S1 (the house party at the end of 1x03 and the vow renewal later in S1), and yet, they seemed to have vanished. I hate the fact that Liz doesn’t have any support system outside of Red and the Task Force. The girl needs friends! Hobbies! Interests! Something!!!

LIZ TRIES TOO HARD TO PROVE HERSELF, GETS IN TROUBLE, AND OFTEN NEEDS TO BE RESCUED BY RED AND/OR THE TASK FORCE AS A RESULT

This gets into a personal pet peeve of mine where Liz reassures people that she can do things. In the most recent case, she told her sister that she was definitely capable of deceiving Red and keeping him from finding out that she knows.

But then within the episode or two, Red definitely knows that Liz is up to something because she has been acting weird around him. And, before she begs Dembe not to tell Red that she was the one who betrayed him, Red was pretty certain that she was the one who did. I would suggest that the minute he was arrested, he had a good suspicion it was her. Hence why he said that what he would do to his betrayer would depend on who they were. He was hedging his bets, in case it was Liz.

Liz and Jennifer kept going back and forth on trying to convince the other that they could pull off this “Find Red’s true identity” side-plot, but ultimately, Jennifer got kidnapped, Liz killed a dude, and ended up having to recruit Ressler and Red to help her find Jennifer and confront the people who took her.

This type of situation happens A LOT on the show. Liz will try to do her own thing (finding Red’s true identity, etc.) and it ultimately gets her into trouble. It seemed to happen more often in S1-3. One example I can think of was when she didn’t kill Tom, but instead captured and imprisoned him, and then he killed the Harbormaster and forced Liz to face charges for murder. Red and the Task Force and even Tom had to come to her rescue to make sure she didn’t face the consequences of her choices. Yes, Tom did kill the Harbormaster, but Liz was the one who had decided to chain him up on the boat in the first place. The murder is on him, but the imprisoning is on her.

Liz also killed the Attorney General, and Red and the Task Force (and Tom, once again) were ultimately responsible for saving her from the Director’s plot while she was trapped in The Box, bringing the Cabal’s actions to light, using the Director as the scapegoat for Hitchen and then getting Liz out of the murder charges by bringing in Karakurt. And then, later, Red was responsible for leveraging the President into pardoning her so that she could become an agent again.

Now, there have been a few occasions where Liz was kidnapped simply because she was an FBI agent, not because of her connection to Red or anything else. For instance, in 1x04 “The Stewmaker,” she’s kidnapped and almost killed because she had her own personal history with that Lorca guy.

But, again, too many times Liz is put in the “damsel in distress” position where either she’s in trouble or her life is threatened and others have to be the ones to save her, either by saving her life or by saving her from legal repercussions, etc.

In a way, this whole S6a has been the consequence of Liz’s actions, which she regretted and then was looking for any and all help to make sure Red wasn’t executed after she’d turned him in. Yes, Red was the one who insisted on the death penalty, but he never would’ve been in that situation if she hadn’t betrayed him. And ultimately, it was Cooper who came through and pressured the President into staying Red’s execution.

Going back to the “Red and Liz aren’t equals” thing, very rarely is Red the one who needs saving. And, even when he is, it isn’t always Liz who’s rescuing him. Again, Cooper was the one who saved Red from execution. Liz has saved him a few times that I can recall -- she stopped that guy from shooting him in 2x14 and she leveraged the Director into calling off the hit in 2x19.

But, again, Liz seems to be in trouble far more often than Red is, and she very rarely is able to save herself (with the solo-Liz episode being one of the few times she does). Meanwhile, Red is able to get out of jams on his own much more often, such as when he escapes Anslo in 1x10. And, he and the Task Force save her far more often than Liz and the Task Force save him. And, even then, sometimes Red saves her single-handedly (like in the S2 Super Bowl episode) while she usually has to work with others to save him.

Once again, I realize there are a lot of mitigating circumstances. Red has a vast criminal empire and more knowledge and resources than Liz does, most of the time. But, I do wish that 1) Liz wouldn’t be kidnapped or have her life/livelihood threatened so often and 2) that Red’s would be a tiny bit more frequently, so that *she* can save *him.*

It also doesn’t help that she was sidelined in S3b partly because she was a felon who was no longer able to be an agent on the Task Force and because both Liz the character and Megan Boone the actress were pregnant. And then she was sidelined again in S4a because of the whole felon thing / trying to get Agnes back.

TL;DR

I believe the reasons why people hate Liz  are similar to why people hate Sakura from the “Naruto” Universe (as YouTube channel SwagKage describes in this video):

Liz doesn’t get the character development she should relative to her screentime; and any development she does get seems to be cyclical and inconsistent. (ie, she acts however the writers need her to for the given arc/episode)

Liz often tries to do her own thing, despite warnings not to; and while she’s by no means useless to Red or the Task Force, she often has to be rescued (either directly or indirectly) far more than she does the rescuing.

Liz often acts demanding, ungrateful, and selfish -- or at least relative to how the audience might want her to act, especially with regard to Red. And, jumping off the second point, also has a bit of an ego and can be proud and willful, which as I theorized, might be a turn-off for some male viewers.

Also, the Lizzington shipper in me could point out the parallels between Sakura liking Sasuke (who was a giant dick to her) and hating Naruto (who was constantly helping her out) and Liz’s dynamics with Tom and Red, respectively, but I’ll leave you all to watch the video for yourself.

Overall, I think some of the reasons for hating Liz are valid, but as I said, I *try* not to direct my annoyance toward the character of Liz herself or Megan Boone, the actress, but rather the writers, who I feel need to take responsibility for what they’ve done and continue to do with this character.

Don’t take this to say that I hate the writers, but rather that I want them to do better. I want to see this show succeed and I want to see Megan have some amazing material to work with the same way that James seems to with Red.

I’ll say it again: I don’t hate this show; I merely want to offer up my criticisms and objective-ish insights into why I think people hate Liz so much. In that way, we fans can have a discussion and perhaps maybe the writers will take some of our points to heart.

For my next major TBL post, I’ll try to tackle the similarities between TBL and The Enemy Within. :D

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 1x04 Murphy’s Law

I’m a new fan of The 100, who first binged it last year, August to November. This is my first full rewatch of the show. I was planning to start it anyway and finish it before the season 6 premiere on April 30, and when I saw that Fox Serbia was airing a rerun (Monday to Friday, 40 min. after midnight, with repeats the next day), starting on 1st February, it was a great opportunity to start my rewatch in HDTV on my beautiful new TV. I decided to do write-ups and tag other fans on SpoilerTV website, as I did when I was first watching the show. But my posts turned into full blown essays. So, finally, after over a week, I’ve realized: Why don’t I post them on my Tumblr blog, too? I’ll copy my write-ups of the first 7 episodes, and then I’ll post my rewatch posts after I watch each episode. (The next one, 1x08, is on Monday’Tuesday.)

Spoilers below for all 5 seasons of the show. I go of on a tangents and make a lot of references to future events.

Rating: 7/10

The first 3 episodes took place over something like a day or two, This one happens a week later. Which is a way to avoid having to show Clarke's immediate reaction to Wells' death, and to have to spend a lot of screentime on her mourning, because most of it took place off-screen (we just see her at his grave, and later talking to Finn about him and how good he was to her while they were growing up). At least Finn got an entire episode, even though it lasted just about a day in-universe. This is something that TV shows like to do - have the characters mourn for an episode or a few scenes for a dead character and then never have them mention that person again. Well, at least they did have Wells' father see apparitions of his son multiple times and mention him several times, including when he was dying.

This episode instead isn't at all about Wells, but starts with the Delinquents learning that he wasn't killed by the Grounders and that it was instead one of them, using Murphy's knife. The title of this episode, Murphy's Law, aside from being a pun, also describes the chain of events not just in this episode, but the show in general: everything that can possibly go wrong, will go wrong. This a really good episode right until the last 5 minutes or so. The interactions between Clarke, Bellamy and Murphy are really interesting. Murphy is at this point at his peak obnoxiousness. He's basically acting in the textbook "How to make enemies and alienate people" way. In the first couple of episodes, he was only antagonistic towards Wells, but now he's using his position as Bellamy's sidekick to bully other Delinquents for no reason at all, to try to make himself feel bigger, out of his own envy and hate and resentment, and his inferiority complex. To use a Buffy reference, if Murphy was a high school Mean Girl, he wouldn't be "Queen C" Cordelia Chase, he would be one of the Cordettes - people who latch onto someone more powerful and popular (in this case, Bellamy) and then bully others through that newfound 'power'. The infamous scene where he urinates on another Delinquent happens when he's overseeing the work (the Delinquents are building a wall to have a defense against a possible Grounder attack, since they still have almost no weapons) after he's first mocked that guy for not working hard enough (implying 12 year old Charlotte would work harder), and then mocked him when he said he needed water, but then Bellamy told Murphy to go and get him water. And that's probably why Murphy then urinated on the guy, he couldn't take it when Bellamy took the guy's side, so to speak, and cut down his position of power (or what Murphy sees as such) by sending him to fetch water. Hey, look, here's Manny Jacinto as one of the boys bullied by Murphy. Of course I didn't notice him before, he appears for like a second. Even with knowing Murphy's later development, there's no two ways about it, he was a total dick at this point. Which makes the situation more ambiguous when he's blamed and almost lynched for something he didn't actually do - Wells' murder - though he had threatened to do it, and together with Clarke jumping to conclusions and accusing him of it, because Wells was murdered by Murphy's knife, and the fact that most Delinquents obviously really dislike Murphy at this point (no surprise) leads to that result. What happens to him is wrong, and someone should have apologized for it. But that doesn't excuse him at all for what he does next, trying to make people kill Charlotte instead, after she has confessed, and then, after realizing no one is supporting him, doing his best to kill her, including threatening Clarke's life at one point. I wouldn't think this needed to be pointed out, but I've seen some people in comments to YouTube reaction videos to this episode actually, in all seriousness, argue that he was right and that Charlotte should have been killed. WTF? What's wrong with people that they don't get the whole being 12 year old thing? I know that USA has the weird habit of putting minors on trial as adults, but even then, I'm pretty sure even US legal system doesn't go that far to execute 12 year olds. At which point did the writers and viewers decide that Clarke was "the Head" and Bellamy "the Heart" (which the show made explicit in the season 4 finale, and then overturned in season 5)? I've always felt that was a huge oversimplification and I'm generally not too fond of it. Season 1 Clarke was pretty impulsive in some situations, especially in this episode (it was her best friend who was murdered, after all), immediately deciding that Murphy is the killer and should be punished, while Bellamy argued that this would be a bad idea, because it would create unrest and make the Delinquents turn on each other, and that it was better for them to keep thinking it was the Grounders who did it. Which was maybe cynical, but pragmatic and rational. (BTW, I don't think Bellamy made a connection that Charlotte was the killer - he probably forgot about giving her Murphy's knife or thought someone else took it, but in any case, I don't think it would have occurred to him that she would do it.) Then Clarke actually confronts Murphy angrily in front of everyone, which causes the avalanche of disastrous events, as the boy that Murphy bullied earlier and a bunch of others immediately decide to hang Murphy and ask Bellamy to do it. 

Clarke had a lot of moral certainly at this point (which will be eroded slowly over the course of the show) but sometimes it was a bit too straightforward (she didn't stop to think how people will react - you could say, she didn't know her audience that well as Bellamy did), and here she realized that things weren't that simple - she wanted to get some kind of justice, but didn't want Murphy killed, and seeing what she had caused, she admits to Bellamy "I was wrong earlier, you were right". 

But where Bellamy goes really wrong in 1x04 is decide to "give people what they want" - in this case, a culprit they want and his death. It's one of his biggest mistakes in S1 and one that will come to bite him in the a.$s, especially at the end of the season when Murphy starts his revenge spree, which will be directed at the guys who first wanted to hang him, but most of all at Bellamy himself. And Bellamy will learn his lesson, an opposite one from Clarke, that you need to do the right thing and not just give the crowd what they want (in 1x12 he tells Clarke "Crowds make bad decisions, just ask Murphy").

The moment when Bellamy goes ballistic and starts acting on pure emotion - and tries to kill Murphy immediately - is later after Charlotte commits suicide, due largely to Murphy's pressure - because of course he would react like that to her death. Guess what, Finn acting decently (actually decently, not just on the surface) didn't last. We find out he was exploring woods by his own and found an old shelter, but he didn't tell anyone. Instead, he gives Clarke a pencil to impress her (right after she's told him about how Wells used to give her stuff when they were growing up, and that she didn't realize at the time that he was denying himself things to give them to her... hmmm). Later he reveals the shelter to Clarke when they need to hide Charlotte from Murphy and his gang. Clarke asks why he hasn't told anyone, and immediately thinks about how they could use things, but Finn tries to justify himself, saying that the food has all expired and there are no weapons, and besides, if he had told everyone, then they couldn't use the shelter now that they need it. So how does that work - he foresaw they would need to hide someone from the rest of the Delinquents?? Or he was just waiting for a chance to use that shelter to show it to Clarke and just Clarke, impress her and show her how good he is to her and how much she needs him? Am I being too harsh on Finn? He does some good things in this episode, like do his best to stop the crowd from hanging Murphy. But still... I never liked him much, my perspective on him is different now, after I have seen season 2 Finn with his "I killed all those people for you, Clarke!" thing, At the time I first watched this, I assumed that Finn was meant to be likable, but that the combination of bad writing and bad acting made him unlikable. I didn't know what it was about Finn that rubbed me the wrong way or that didn't resonate with me. But now I see more and more reasons to dislike him, and I think that his character is more consistent than I initially thought, but that he was never meant to be a really great guy, and that his romance with Clarke was just supposed to create drama and angst rather than be a great ship people would root for. (The whole thing with Raven really shows that.) Maybe I was too harsh on Thomas McDonell, though. He wasn't as good as some other cast members, but he's not that bad, now I have Tasya Teles' acting to compare it with. (I'm sure Tasya is a nice person, but she just can't act.) It's kind of funny that the climax of this episode is focused on Clarke and Bellamy being shocked at Charlotte's death in such a way that it seems like their child just died, and then arguing about leadership (it's already pretty clear that the two of them are those who decide on most things), as Finn just looks on. This may be the crucial moment where their co-leadership begins. Clarke argues "We don't decide who lives and who dies". It's so ironic that she will later during the show be expected and asked to decide just that, more than once. Meanwhile, on the Ark, we get to meet a couple of new characters - Kane's mother, a preacher, who'll be around for a couple of episodes, and Nigel, a woman at the Mecha station who runs a black market, and who, I think, won't ever appear again. But she gets Abby arrested by Kane, and also, through her, we get to learn more about Raven's backstory - that her mother was an alcoholic and that she used to prostitute herself to get stuff. Life on the Ark, especially those of lower classes, seems so freaking wonderful... The last few minutes of this episode initially annoyed me a lot, because it seemed like a return to the cheesy teen soapy bullcrap of the first couple of episodes. The love triangle was set up - Raven takes the pod by herself, since Abby can't go, and is arriving to Earth, while we get a confirmation that Finn is the boyfriend she wants to save - just as Finn and Clarke end up kissing and having sex for the first time. Now that I know and love how this triangle is eventually resolved, I don't hate this so much, but this scene is still really cheesy and feels like the classic TV insta-romance. And it's not just that, I also hated the scene where Octavia kisses Jasper, after praising his courage (for "standing up to a bully" -? I still have no idea what she was referring to, it's always confused me) and telling him that heroism gets rewarded. Ugh. And then Monty gives him a high-five. One of the things I hate the most in fictional romance is when romance/sex is portrayed as a reward that someone - usually a female - gives another person - usually a male, for performing heroic deeds. Gross. I'm so relieved, because of that, that the Jasper/Octavia ship went nowhere, even though I wasn't a big fan of how her romance with Lincoln was portrayed in S1, either.

[krytus]

I think I might start watching bf5 so can you tell me why I should watch it

bro you’re going to get a giant block of text because hot wheels battle force 5 is a series that is really near and dear to my heart.

ok first off the plot is kinda simple but it’s really fun: it’s a group of six teens that have to drive cars real fast and battle some aliens. the second season gets more complicated but its. fun.

the aliens are called the sark (robots led by a tyrant), and the vandals (tribal dictatorship). there’s never any doubt about them being evil—not only are they conquerors that have destroyed worlds, the vandals practice slavery (which is a minor spoiler) and the sark are led by zemerik who is. just a fucking asshole. however, the show plays with this tradition model of heroes vs villains a lot in s2: zemerik Because Of Reasons ends up on the heroes’s side. this does not mean they trust him. they have to help kallus (the leader of the vandals), too, but they know for a fact the second there isn’t a greater evil to unite against, they’re back to throwing fists. 

there’s another race of aliens called the sentients which are like. gods. they created the universe and all the battle zones—this is the place where our heroes fight/race the bad guys. also ps battlezones are some of the COOLEST concepts we get out of this show. they’re usually unique in design but there are reasons our heroes sometimes revisit them that makes narrative sense. battlezones are unlocked by battlekeys, and getting the battle key is pretty much the premise for every episode in s1, except for a couple near the end that build into the main conflict of s2. anyways, back the sentients. they’re dicks. i don’t trust them. they also have slaves but it’s like. lowkey slavery? it’s. yeah. also, they are 2 kinds of sentients: the blue ones and the red ones. the red ones you THINK are dicks but then u find out the blue ones. weren’t that nice either. so it’s. spicy. sentients also had like. a couple of civil wars.

anyways, let’s talk about our main heroes!

there’s vert wheeler

he’s kind of a dork and you can tell he’s probably like. 18. he’s the leader and he’s kinda arrogant but he always manages to keep his team together. he makes bad jokes sometimes and you can argue he’s a little op but honestly? as skilled as he is he clearly needs a team at his back. i stan him so hard. he drives the saber which is a car with a chainsaw on it. a chainsaw.

vert’s second is command is agura ibaden, this beautiful lady:

she made me into a lesbian. she doubts herself sometimes and gets a couple of episodes about learning to be in control and eventually she’s a great leader in her own right. she drives the tangler which is a beast of a vehicle and she’s good at planning and hitting the enemy in ways they don’t expect. i love her so much.

next up we have the cortez brothers, spinner and sherman.

they’re latino but it’s implied they’re mexican because spinner’s gamer name references a specific city in mexico. also, side note, bf5 was ridiculously popular in mexico. like. reruns every other hour. it was the life. but anyways, they’re the technical brains of the team. spinner is good with computers and sherman is an engineering genius. although they’re both the tech support, i love that they have different skills!! they love each other very much but they also get on each other’s nerves. in one episode they dare each other to eat increasingly gross things it’s hilarious and they’re peak sibling culture. also sherman is big and still the brains! there are however a couple food jokes about him which is :( but they’re not like. his entire characterization! he’s complex and i love him. they drive the buster which is. basically a tank. 

anyways, next up is zoom takazumi, resident ninja

alkjd actually he’s a mixed martial arts fighter! he’s the youngest and i would protect him with my LIFE. also i don’t have the episode on hand right this moment but he’s south asian! yay diversity. he gets flak for being the baby of the team but he really finds himself and he’s an awesome scout. also i love alessandro juliani, his VA so. stan him. he drives the chopper which is a bike that becomes a helicopter. i don’t make it sound very cool but it IS.

we also have stanford isaac rhodes 

he’s our moron representation. he’s vain, self obsessed, and thinks he should be in charge (the villains literally. know him as “the vain one” it’s hilarious). if the writing for this show were weaker, i’d hate him. however! he learns to not be such a dick. he becomes ride or die for his friends. as much as he thinks he should be in charge and clashes with agura, he learns to be better! i appreciate this dumbass white boy. he drives the reverb which has guns. a car. with sonic guns. this show goes ridiculously hard.

in s2 we get two more characters, tezz and aj. 

tezz volitov is like stanford, but ridiculously smart. he strands himself on an alien mood at the age of NINE, and spends the next 9 years alone. it’s kinda sad. it takes him a while, but he eventually learns how to be a good teammate and i love him so much. he’s also russian, i think, but he’s. probably not white? it’s complicated. this is an issue i got with the show but i’ll tack it onto them wanting to be diverse whilst being white people. tezz drives the splitwire which i. legit want. it’s so fucking COOL.

finally, we have aj who i dont have a gif for, i just realized. he’s white n blonde, tho so. just imagine that. he doesn’t have too big of a role in the series, but he’s vert’s friend so i trust him and also the times he does show up he doesn’t steal the spotlight or anything, which i respect. they knew he was a bland white guy and they committed to that.

but yeah the characters are really interesting. also, the animation? is god tier for a show from 2010 that had the graveyard time slot. there are so many little details and the SCORING IS TO DIE FOR, also the way they color skin tones? is something you rarely see in 3D cartoons. they understood that dark skin in different lighting doesn’t react the same as white skin. there is no moment in the show where you can’t see the difference in the skin tone of the characters. it’s amazing and i love it so much.

a couple of details from the animation bc i love it

but yeah! this show is very colorful and what i call “lovingly animated”

another great things about it are. the jokes. the way they write dialogue is literally. to die for:

“bro, what would you do without me?” “live to see my next birthday”

“who wants to help me destroy a pack of killer robots?”

“a great warrior has fallen. an ally, an enemy, but, mostly a dismal failure, and a loser”

“believe it or not, i’m too exhausted to humiliate you”

“you’re risking our lives based on artwork made of STICK FIGURES?”

“if a 50ft statue of one of us showed up in a battlezone, what would we do?” “i’d blog about it” “no one reads your blog”

“the brains of this operation?” “he’s the left hemisphere. i’m the right”

some of them have visual elements which i love in jokes!!

but yeah. this is long enough i guess.

to sum up:

diverse cast

great animation

great music

solid plot

solid writing

funny joaks

some AMAZING foreshadowing 

the webisodes are funny and cute

the theme song SLAPS

WORDBUILDING TO DIE FOR

there’s so much i’m leaving out because this show is SO MUCH AND SO GOOD but yeah. i made some gifs if you want to see the flavor of this show

there’s no romance like. at all. the focus is solely on the action and i love it

however, i am known for being a salty little bitch so issues™

could have used more women

there are a couple of jokes which are kinda cheesy

the diversity is the kind written by white people so take that as you will. also it’s a show that’s like. as good as white people can write. nothing super revolutionary.

it doesn’t entirely have. a solid ending. it has a tv movie that wraps it up but 1. it’s in spanish (yours truly wrote a translation) 2. it includes a cliffhanger which was. unnecessary. it’s more that they wanted to leave the door open for more but. didn’t make it. however! all the main conflicts get resolved so it’s not too a big issue

there’s probably more stuff but honestly? it’s a solid kids show. flaws n strengths. i love it

[daydreamingstories]

Life at the end of the world Pt.20

Summary: Your life as a zombie apocalypse survivor. It starts with the Reader settling into the camp at the quarry, before s1 and then follows the show events and storyline, more or less, but with the Reader in it.

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader

Warnings: Slow burn, violence, language.

Author’s note:  I’ve been itching to write a fic like this for a long while and I write it for fun, I don’t claim to be a writer so if you find you dislike this fic, please be kind and just stop reading. English’s not my first language so maybe there’re some mistakes, I apologize in advance. For the same reason, I can’t write character’s accents and things like that. At any rate, I hope you enjoy it. There’d be several parts to this.

Masterlist

A couple of days after Daryl and Michonne left, you were back at Woodbury.

Rick wanted to inspect the place from top to bottom and take back to the prison everything useful. You walked in with your weapons in hand, but the place was empty, the Governor hadn’t come back.

It wasn’t a surprise the armory was almost empty, but you found all kind of useful things, the place was a gold mine and you found so much stuff you needed several trips to carry it all back. There was enough food to feed your large population during a few weeks, along with seeds of crops you could grow.

There were lots of supplies ranging from super useful things like batteries to things you had never thought you’d see again, like a couple of walkmans and several different CDs.

You tried one of the walkmans, putting on the earphones and blinking in surprise when you heard the sound. You hadn’t listened to music, besides Beth singing, since you left home all that time ago. You didn’t think you would be able to relax enough to use it, though. You couldn’t hear the noise around you and that was dangerous, you didn’t believe you’d feel comfortable enough to listen to music through earphones not even inside the prison fences. Maybe inside your cell, though... It was a pity there weren’t any speakers, though, the music was a welcome distraction and you knew everyone in the prison would like it.

You took the walkmans and the CDs, surely someone would give them some use.

“You think Carl may like this?” Rick showed you an intricate looking construction set, with which you could make your own tiny coliseum replica.

Where the Woodbury people had managed to find something like that and why they’d decided to take it into the village, you didn’t know, truth be told the place was full of things like that, luxuries to your eyes.

“Maybe he’ll like to sharp the wooden pieces into tiny stakes.” You joked darkly but honestly, Carl wasn’t one to play anymore, just focused on being a tiny but skilled survivor, his gun always close, always ready in case any danger crept into the prison.

He refused to get along with the other kids and kept behaving like a little soldier, and Rick seemed unable to get through his son, who was almost always upset with him as he wasn’t allowed to go on runs anymore.

Rick let out a defeated sigh, his expression falling. You knew he worried sick about Carl, knew he wanted him to enjoy his last moments of childhood as much as he could, and you guessed he felt guilty for having pushed Carl to become the person he was now without even realize it.

“Maybe he’ll like it, though...” You offered, hating to see Rick’s sorrowful expression. “I say we take it anyway, hell if he doesn’t like it then it’s mine, if I can put it together I’ll have it on display in my room.”

Rick gave you a small, grateful smile, wrapping an arm around your shoulders as you went to check the next house.

In the end, after Carl disinterest, the toy went to Patrick, a boy a couple of years older than Carl. Like Carl, the apocalypse had robbed him of his childhood but he seemed to resent it more than the Grimes kid, he was more childish but very sweet, his eyes lighting up at the sight of the construction set.

You had also found other things, like sheets, towels and other household items that were very much welcome into the cold atmosphere of the prison, which was becoming not as cold anymore as the halls, corridors and cells became full with all kind of things. You were so many in there now, the place felt lived in and warm, and you found you liked it.

Several cellblocks were now full of people and the cells were being decorated with things you had brought back from Woodbury. Someone had the idea of using sheets as curtains for the doors of the cells, giving more privacy and shielding them from the sun.

Everyone had jobs, depending on their abilities, though most of you shifted between tasks, trying to learn about the ones you knew less. You usually alternated between watch duty and working at clearing the fences from walkers. They were more each day, pushing dangerously at the fences.

There were plans in the long term to create a sort of school for the few kids that now lived there, mostly to take care of the kids and teach them if only the most basic things. A couple of people volunteered to help with it as soon as the school were up and going, whenever that was, and you offered your services too if needed, though you weren’t used to teaching children that young and weren’t really keen on getting back to your teaching job.

That life seemed so long gone...

To your surprise, Carol volunteered too, seeming really interested in it, no matter how busy she already was all the time. She was always busy, coordinating lots of activities around the prison and in charge of cooking almost all the meals, helped by some Woodbury people. Sometimes she joined you when you were clearing walkers at the fences and you cherished those moments, when you had the chance to chat with her for a while as you worked. You felt a bit sad you didn’t get to talk as much with her as you used too, but in all honestly, you all were busy, trying to make this new life at the prison work.

Between Carol having little to no time and Daryl gone, you couldn’t help but feel lonely sometimes.

You missed Daryl, even more than you had thought you would. You had hoped that your feelings would ebb away while he wasn’t there, but you found yourself longing for him.

When about ten days passed without him and Michonne been back, you were so worried you felt you might just start crying. Where were they? Had they ran into trouble? Had they been attacked by the Governor? Maybe ran into a herd of walkers?

“Rick...shouldn’t we go looking for Daryl and Michonne?” You asked after finding Rick in the hall of your cellblock doing some inventory. “Shouldn’t they be back by now? Maybe something happened to them?”

Rick seemed a bit stressed lately but managed to give you a small, reassuring smile.

“They told me not to expect them for a while, they wanted to follow the Governor’s trail until they found him and it might take them several days, more than a week.” He explained, trying to reassure you. “They don’t want to lose time having to come back and then go again. But you know them, they’ll be fine.”

“Okay...” Still, you worried, didn’t think you couldn’t stop until they were back unharmed.

“Come on, help me with this.” He handed you the papers with a tired sigh. “I need to know how long this food is going to last us and when we’ll need to go on another run, besides I want to keep stored a quarter of our non-perishable food for times of need.”

“Don’t stress about it, we’re better than ever.” You assured him, patting his shoulder.

“Yeah...still, we have to be careful to make this work... A couple of the Woodbury people told me they might know a couple of places where we could go on a run, I’m going to check it with them later.”

“Good, we’re gonna be just fine.”

A couple of days after your conversation with Rick, you walked up the stairs of the watchtower, ready for your shift, and found Maggie standing there, hands on her hips, looking down at her sister talking lively with Zach, a boy around her age who had come from Woodbury.

You had seen them chatting here and there and you thought they were into each other, though neither of them had made a move yet. You couldn’t help your smile looking at them.

“What you think?” You elbowed Maggie gently.

“I think there’s definitely something going on and she’s lucky daddy hadn’t realized yet.”

“Come on! I think is sweet.” You laughed. “I think it’s good Beth has someone of her age and he doesn’t seem bad...”

“Yeah...yeah, I want her to be happy.” There was a fond smile on Maggie’s face now. “She deserves it, having friends and a boyfriend, dating and all that things she should have had...”

You wrapped an arm around Maggie’s waist and you leaned into each other, feeling a bit melancholic of all the things all of you had missed out thanks to the world ending. But you had met her and all your new family thanks to it.

“How’s married life treating you?”

“Great, it is just great!” She beamed at you. “We’ve been so busy lately, but we try to find time for each other and...I don’t know Y/N, I just love him more every day, he has become this amazing man, helping dad and Rick around and I’m so proud...”

Maggie had a dreamy smile on her face and you were truly happy for her.

“Yeah, I see how you manage to get the watchtower for you two almost every night.” You teased, winking at her.

“A girl needs her privacy.” She laughed, pushing you playfully with her shoulder.

Next day Rick asked you to go on a run with him, Carol, Sasha and another man from Woodbury whose name you still couldn’t remember, to check a place the man had located in a map.

You said yes right ahead, wanting to occupy your mind doing something useful and less monotonous than killing the walkers off the fence

The place was a cabin with a small garden, abandoned long ago, you didn’t have many hopes of finding anything there, which was unfortunate considering there weren’t any geeks around for now, it would have been such an easy run.

There wasn’t much outside the building so you all made your way inside the house after checking no walker came out when you knocked on the door.

The house seemed emptied of everything already, but a sound in which seemed to be the only bedroom of the cabin you all on guard. Carefully, you all followed Rick as he barged into the room, guns pointed in front of you.

You all froze in place when you saw a man holding a big stake in front of him, two blonde little girls hidden behind him. They had a wild, scared look in their faces and you all lowered your weapons, following Rick’s lead.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” He said calmly to the man, raising his hands. The man looked at you with distrust but began lowering the stake. “We mean you no harm.”

For a moment nobody moved or talked, but Rick seemed to make a decision.

“I promise we’re not going to hurt you or the girls. We have a group, a safe place. Would you like to come with us? I promise we’re not bad people.”

The man looked at you in disbelieve and as if he weren’t sure it wasn’t a trap. You couldn’t blame his suspicion, after all the evil you had seen in the world. But then he looked back at the little girls with worry in his eyes, seemed to take a decision and nodded.

“How many walkers have you killed?” Rick asked.

The man seemed surprised. “I don’t know, a few of them.”

“And how many people?”

“None, I wouldn’t...”

Rick raised his hand to make him stop talking, “Okay. You’re welcome to come with us if you want.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry about this,” the man waved the stake. “These days the living seem to be more dangerous than the dead.”

You all could relate to that.

The man had a small stash of canned food and scarce supplies which he helped you take back to the cars. You all tried to talk with him and the little girls, telling them who you were, trying to show them you weren’t dangerous, that you wanted to help, hoping they would stop looking scared and like expecting you to attack them at any moment.

Before you left, Rick spotted a tomato plant and cut it to see if Hershel could grow it in the farm.

“We’re going to be eating salads in no time, hope you like your vegetables.” You said to the little girls, who were watching how Rick worked on the plant with curiosity. They gave you a small smile and you were glad they seemed to be feeling better around you.

By the time you were in your cars, the family seemed a bit more relaxed.

“This is good, we can do this, help people now that we can.” You smiled to Rick from the passenger seat of his car.

“Yeah, yeah, I guess we can.” He gave you a small smile.

That was how you met Ryan and his daughters Lizzie and Mika, who had lost her mother a long time ago. The little girls seemed to be fond of Carol, who had been sweet and caring with them since you found them and soon they were friends with all the Woodbury kids.

Day by day, that prison felt more and more like a place worth living in, not only a refugee against the dangers of the world but a true and beloved home.

If only Daryl and Michonne were there...

Another week passed without any notice from them and worry sat heavy in your stomach every day, thoughts of them having run into trouble always in your mind. And you missed Daryl so much that it almost physically hurt, so you tried to busy yourself with work as much as possible.

You were clearing walkers off the fence in the backyard of the prison, angrily sinking a metal bar into the brain of the monsters, venting your frustration and worry into that task.

“Keep that up and you are going to end up with bigger arms than Tyreese.” Carol joked.

You jumped, startled, not having heard her approach, which just made her laugh quietly at you.

“Are you in a bad mood? “She asked, passing you a bottle of water.

“Just trying not to think.” You gulped down almost half the bottle in one go. “Aren’t you worried? Daryl and Michonne have been away for a while now...”

“They can take care of themselves.”

You rolled your eyes, tired of hearing everyone telling you the same. Sure, they were the best fighters but still, the world was dangerous and they could encounter a million threats.

You made to kept clearing walkers but Carol got a hold of the bar, stopping you.

“Why you don’t let that go for a bit...” You let her take the bar off you. “There’re barely any left, Karen will put down the rest and then we’ll burn the bodies...”

“Okay...” You grimaced a bit as you noticed for the first time how sore your arms were.

“You look disgusting.” Carol chuckled a bit, looking at the walker’s blood that had spattered over you while you worked.

She poured some water into a rag and began washing your face. You smiled softly, you’ve been missing her easy affection. “Thanks...”

“Now go and change into something clean, I want you to help me with the kids today.”

“Yes, boss.” You gave her a hug and let her go to look for Karen, who was working on another fence.

You had just finished changing into fresh clothes, having spent a bit sorting the laundry, when you heard a knock on the bars of your cell. Your eyes opened wide, a big grin on your face, when you saw Michonne lifting the curtain that covered the door, smiling at your happy face.

“You’re back!” You hug her as soon as she walked in. “You’re safe!”

“Told you we would.” She held you, chuckling softly.

“Daryl?”

“He’s fine.” She assured you, noticing the worry in your voice.” He’s talking with Rick, they need to catch up, but I wanted to see you.”

You longed to see Daryl and you wanted to run and find him, but were elated to see Michonne back too, and were happy she’d decided to come to see you right after talking with Rick.

“So, you know I told you I’d bring you something to decorate your room...” She began, and you nodded eagerly. “Well, I couldn’t really find anything...but I got you this.”

With a totally serious face, she handed you a stone the size of your hand in which she seemed to have drawn a cartoonish cat face with a black marker. The silliness of the situation made you burst out laughing.

“Thank you! It’s perfect!” You replied in all honesty.

The fact that Michonne had thought of you, had taken the time to make that, had intended to make you laugh, warmed your heart and filled it with happiness. You threw your arms around her neck and held her tight as she laughed too.

“What do you think?” You place the stone the on the tiny shelve of the wall so the cat face was looking at your bed as a feline guardian angel.

“Perfect.” She grinned at you.

“So...” You didn’t want to ruin the cheerful mood but you needed to know. “Did you find him, is he dead?”

Michonne’s smile fell.

“No...we followed his trail, we tracked him, but he just sort of disappeared at one point.” She explained, anger in her voice. “We kept trying but we just couldn’t find him anywhere...”

That were bad news, but at least he wasn’t close, he might very well be dead by now.

“He must be far from here by now or probably a walker ate him already.” You tried to comfort her but Michonne shook her head.

“I came back to resupply but I’m leaving at first light, I’m going to keep looking for him, I have to...”

“Michonne...”

“I have to, Y/N.”

You nodded, she was determined, you could see there was no way and none who could change her mind, it was important to her. That didn’t mean you didn’t feel sad about it and you worried again about her going out for who knew how long.

“Come on.” She threw an arm around your shoulders to walk you out of the cell. “Let’s find Daryl, I know you’re dying to see him.” You didn’t bother trying to deny it. “And I need to talk with Rick.”

You found both men talking in the backyard. When Rick noticed you two coming, he pated Daryl’s shoulder in goodbye and gestured to Michonne to follow him inside of one of the cellblocks.

“See you later!”

You said to Michonne as she rushed to meet Rick while Daryl walked towards you, and you had to stop yourself from running to him.

“I’m so glad you’re back.” You grinned, reaching out your arms to hug him, satisfied when he hugged you back, resting his forehead on your shoulder as he let out a weary sigh.

“I was worried, you were gone for so long, I thought something had happened...”

“I lost the Governor’s track...” He pulled away from you, sounding angry at himself. Knowing him as you did, you knew he was probably blaming himself. “I tried to look for him for a while but I couldn’t find him...”

“Michonne told me the track disappeared at one point...She’s going out to look for him again tomorrow...”

Daryl nodded and your heart sank at the thought of Daryl leaving again. It wasn’t that you wanted Michonne to go out alone, that was even more dangerous, but you had missed Daryl so much, you were so glad to see him back safe, you weren’t ready to say goodbye again.

“Are you going with her?” You sounded more vulnerable that you had intended to, but you couldn’t help it.

“No.”

You couldn’t help your smile, you were so glad he was staying.

“There’s no point. The trail is cold, I’ve lost him...”

“Hey...” You reached out your hand to squeeze his, hating he was berating himself for it. “It’s not your fault, you tried, okay? I’m sure he’s far away from here now, probably he’s already dead...”

Daryl shrugged unconvinced, you knew it would take more than that to make him stop blaming himself, but he laced his fingers with yours and gave you that shy and small half smile that made your heart flutter, while his blue eyes looked over you seriously.

You chewed on your lower lip, lost in thought for a moment as you stared at him. You were so relieved he was back, you never wanted to see him go again... and he was playing with your fingers, looking at you in a way that made you wonder if maybe...

It took all your courage but you decided to go for it. You had waited way too long and your mind and body were urging you to do it, your relief at him being back and safe mixing with your longing for him and with the feelings you had been harboring for him during months.

Slowly, giving him time to stop you, you leaned forward and stood on tiptoes to press a gentle, tentative kiss to his lips. When you felt him kissing you back, his lips brushing softly against yours, your heart began beating so fast you thought it might jump out of your chest and you were so happy you felt you were floating.

It lasted barely a second, though, then Daryl roughly pulled away from you.

You looked at him with questioning, shocked eyes but he just turned around and began walking away from you.

“Daryl! Daryl, wait, please!” You called after him, following him, but he ignored you, walking faster and making it clear he didn’t want to talk with you.

You were devastated, berating yourself for being that impulsive. It felt like your heart was shattering, a lump in your throat that you couldn’t swallow.

You were supposed to smother your stubborn feelings, not to act on them. Now you were sure you had managed to ruin your friendship with Daryl, scaring him away from you and losing him.

You dig your nails into your palms, broken-hearted, angry at yourself, trying not to cry as you watched him walk away without looking back at you.

N/A: So...she kissed him, even if it didn’t go that well. At first when I began writing this fic I thought about waiting for this moment more, making it happen later...but then I kept writing I said, nah, I want it now. I hope it wasn’t to soon for you...let me know. And I’m sorry (well, not really) it didn’t went well!

@momc95​@jodiereedus22​@osweetdevilo​@sapphire1727​@coffeebooksandfandom​  @the-destielr​@checkintoreality​@aislingsartistry​@daddys-little-princess67​@sesshomaru-lover​ @crossbowking​  @coltcas @feartheendlesssummer @izumi37 @gruffle1

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[lightsandlostbells]

Skam España, S1 episode 1 reaction

Aka how to troll the part of your audience that’s seen this story seven times.

Sorry this is late, but it took me longer to write this because there were a lot of changes, and that means more to talk about! Skam España surprised me at how much it diverged from the source material. It’s hitting the same beats, of course, but it felt much more like a remix of the original than a remake, if you follow me. 

Thanks to everyone who subs and uploads clips and other content for the non-Spanish audience! You are the best for taking the time to do that for the fandom.

Episode 1

Intro 

So this wasn’t in a clip, but it was included at the beginning of the full episode. We get the iconic intro speech, except this time it’s from Eva. And not Eva reading Jonas’ words, it seems, but Eva herself talking about teenagers presenting a happy appearance that masks their insecurities and loneliness. It’s very fitting for her character and taps into some areas that directly affect her, such as wanting to be liked but not knowing how, struggling with her studies, and not knowing who she is. I’m glad she got to give this speech. 

And actually, I think it’s important that she didn’t give this speech within a clip itself, to an audience of her boyfriend. It’s like she’s talking to us and only us, the audience, and no one in her life knows what she’s thinking or the full extent of her insecurities.

Clip 1 - And now for something completely different

Spanish Jonas (Jorge) doesn’t get his opening monologue but he does get the first words, though they’re very casual, about diving in the pool.

There’s some obvious framing here with Eva and Jorge sitting together on one side across from Lucas on his own, setting up their third wheel dynamic.

Jorge and Lucas tease Eva, like in the original, but it’s very much a good-natured thing, not something that makes her uncomfortable or feel bad. However, I do think you can read into the dialogue - Eva not knowing how to dive in head first is like her lacking confidence or not being able to take initiative.

We get a focus on Lucas’ uncomfortable face as loud smacking kissy sounds play. I’m always mixed on when the remakes focus a lot of the Isak’s discomfort with Eva/Jonas, because it seems to give too much away. A longing look is OK, maybe, but a moment that wouldn’t be noted from Eva’s POV seems too much. Still, that was a nice way to shoot it, and Lucas gets in some nice facial expressions. And at least there’s ambiguity as to why Lucas is not here for it. At this stage it doesn’t mean he likes Jorge; he could like Eva, or he could just feel bored with his friends making out or lonely that they’re paired off, without having romantic feelings for either of them.

Random detail but I love all the dirt and grass on Jorge’s pants when he gets up. 

This is a cute bit of dialogue between Eva and Jorge with him predicting her future. I don’t think this is the case but I would loooove if Spanish P-Chris was Jorge’s height and had curly hair, just for his prediction to happen, just not in the way Jorge means.

I would also love if the money and house on the beach ended up being references to the school trip.

Eva’s future dog being named Nymeria is a reference to Arya’s direwolf from Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire.

This closing image is VERY different. In the other versions of the opening clip Eva ends up alone, setting up her isolation and loneliness. In this one, we close on her and Jorge together, kissing and being intimate, after he’s told her that he’ll be there for her.

Actually, I want to talk about what all the changes in the opening could mean for the season. Hopefully the show takes these changes into account and goes somewhere with them, rather than developing relationships and clips differently but ending up in the same place just because, you know?

So here’s what’s different in the first clip:

Jorge doesn’t have any of that air of condescension that Jonas did, and he and Lucas banter with Eva in a friendly way without any serious insults. (I mean I guess she could be really bothered by them poking fun at her lack of diving ability but lmao, that’s not the same as poking fun at her grades or intelligence.)

We haven’t seen Ingrid or Sara yet and don’t get a hint as to the friction between Eva and them. We do learn that Eva worries about the first day of school but like … there could be literally any reason for that at this point. 

We didn’t hear anything about Jorge hanging out or going to Elias’ and there’s no clip later that night where he’s being shady about his whereabouts. 

Jorge is extremely kind and supportive, telling Eva that he’ll be with her if there are any problems. But we know that he won’t be able to fulfill this promise, so it’ll feel like an extra slap in the face when he disappoints.

Clip 2 - First day of school

Eva is alone this time… and a lot of people walking into the school are in pairs, including two girls swinging their hands together. Sure is a great reminder of how you lost your BFF.

We do get the Ingrid slow-mo death glare in this clip. “Jungle” by X Ambassadors and Jamie N Commons is a good song choice, on the nose, but Eva does feel like she’s heading into the jungle. High school as dangerous terrain is a common but well-deserved trope, like in Mean Girls with the wildlife comparisons played for humor.

Lol and Jorge notices Ingrid (Inés) and her pals, too, then goes back to kissing Eva.

So Lucas interrupts them making out, but he’s with some other boys! Are they setting up the boy squad this early? Is one of them supposed to be Elias? They seem like kind of a cute, doofy squad.

You can tell Eva feels increasingly left out as the boys are wrapped up in a discussion that doesn’t involve her, they’re talking more to Jorge than her and mostly not even looking at her when they tell the story. Although not gonna lie, the story the boys are telling seems kind of inoffensive, not isolating or uncomfortable in itself. I think it’s mostly that she doesn’t have a squad like this herself and has to hang around her boyfriend’s.

And Lucas goes over to her to talk and specifically asks her to the show on Friday, awwww. Unless you think he did it to stir up shit since Jorge forgot to tell her about the show.

Because Jorge forgot to tell her about it, Eva probably won’t be able to get a ticket. So it’s not that Eva invites him somewhere first (like in the original), it’s that he’s already got a thing and that she’s excluded from it. She says she’s cool with it but of course it’s just another small way she’s left out.

Eva ends up outside of the conversation, literally. The boys turn away from her and get engrossed in their own stuff. I was wondering how this was going to go because in the first clip, Jorge was so supportive and she and Lucas seemed tight, and it made a point of showing her together and not being alone. But lmao, teenage boys are maybe not great at living up to their promises.

There was another post about this, but there was a weird zoom on Eva at the end of this clip that felt like someone’s finger slipped on the camera or something. Felt like it needed another take. I hope it was a weird but intentional choice rather than sloppiness. 

Clip 3 - Mystery girl

Eva is sitting alone and SHIT, we see the Sana character walk by! Hajar Brown, her actress, is awesome. She features in her own Skam homage, please watch (this version has English subtitles). I’m really happy that she can be part of this project.

It seems that Spanish Sana (Amira) is wearing hijab for the first time, which was mentioned in the show synopsis. The other girl says Amira didn’t wear it last year. It’ll be interesting if we hear more from Amira herself on this development.

Also, did we ever hear people openly talking badly like this about Sana so early in the show? Because obviously we had Vilde running her mouth, and similarly ignorant comments from people like the biology teacher, but until S4 I don’t think we ever witnessed random students gossiping about her like this. I might just be blanking on some of the OG moments, but here we get to see Amira react directly to random hurtful comments.

And of course there’s Lara.

I was really thrown by this clip because it seems very soon to introduce the Noora. As we all know, she makes a more dramatic entrance later on. And yet they have this character wearing Noora’s signature red lipstick, in an extremely Noora-ish outfit, come in and sit next to Eva in a scene very similar to Noora and Eva in episode 3 of OG S1 (and most of the remakes). Except … this character says she’s Lara. From the press release, Skam España’s Noora is supposed to be called, well … Nora. I was so confused. I clearly heard her introduce herself as “Lara” but I figured I was just hearing wrong and somehow she said Nora?

Anyway, Skam Spain fucked with everyone’s expectations by introducing a Noora expy, with the same personal style, with a scene similar to one of Noora’s first, only not to make her the Noora … just to throw everyone off? Because honestly, I applaud them if this is the case. Keeping everyone on their toes.

My guess so far is that she might be Sara, or a Sara equivalent. She might befriend Inés and end up shunning Eva because she hears all about what a bad friend Eva is.

Anyway, Lara makes an impression right away for Eva, talking a lot about herself.  She’s certainly not shy, and she’s got an interest in theater and photography. She seems a bit humble-braggy, like her GPA is so good that she can do whatever she wants! She seems to have the confidence Eva lacks. If she’s unsure of herself, it’s because she wants too much.

And then Lucas comes in to talk about school elections, setting us up for the Vilde and the russ equivalent of this show. He doesn’t get her name right but he clearly means Viri. Viri is the only one running for president so better just hand off the position to the person who wants it.

Eva checks out Lara, like all Evas do with Nooras, but lmao, this ain’t Noora.

Clip 4 - Eva at home

Eva is doing homework when she gets the urge to check Instagram and ends up scrolling through Inés’ pics wistfully.

Eva’s mom says she’s going to the hospital so I assume she’s a doctor/nurse/medical professional? If she’s working shifts that conflict with Eva’s schedule, that makes sense as to how Eva could be left alone and have a distant relationship with her mom.

Eva gets a little smile on her face when she views Lara’s profile.

Did Eva actually hit the follow button for Lara or not? I couldn’t tell.

Tbh it’s pretty interesting to see the difference in the Evas’ rooms across remakes. For instance, Spanish Eva has pretty light and sparkles and the word LOVE suspended above her bed, whereas in the Dutch remake, Dutch Eva sleeps under the word FUCK.

So this is clearly taking on Eva’s friending Noora saga, but Lara ain’t Noora, so again, what’s going on? What if Lara’s IG reveals her as a huge weirdo and Eva realizes she doesn’t want to be friends with her?

Skam Spain is trolling everyone and I love it. 

Clip 5 - Hello Viri and ALEJANDROOOOOO

Eva is sitting alone in front of the windowsill and skimming through Instagram when Lara shows up! She’s happy to see Eva because she doesn’t know where her next class is. Eva is obviously overjoyed to see her and volunteers to show her where the classroom is. Eva is positively beaming at her. Like she’s in loooooove. But Eva barely gets a second of Lara’s attention before Elvira, aka Viri, aka Spanish Vilde runs up and introduces herself as the class president.

Lara’s outfit seems noticeably less Noora-ish this time around.

Lara shoots Eva a look when Viri is talking, and I don’t know what to make of it. Annoyed at Viri’s attitude? Annoyed that Viri interrupted her moment with Eva? Not annoyed, just trying to check out Eva? IDK, man.

Viri is super grateful that she’s been elected (even though everyone just voted for her because she wanted the job) and is eager to get activities rolling and to get people involved. Lara semi-cuts Viri off from her excited ramble.

We pull back on Viri and get a wide shot … I don’t really know why.

Viri says she’s new, so I guess she doesn’t know Cris that well, which is a big change. Vilde and Chris have always been friends, Chris is the one who’s been her friend all along, but Cris isn’t tagging along with Viri on her quest to recruit more people as in the other versions of this scene. I wonder how they met?

Viri calls Cris “the pretty one” and while I think Ina/original Chris is beautiful, Chris has never been framed as an attractive character in canon so I’m wondering what they’re going to do with this. Cris is also surrounded by people so she seems like a popular, well-liked person. It makes you wonder how she got roped into hanging with the weird girls in school.

Lara says she’s in if Eva is, and Eva agrees. WHAT ARE YOU DOING SKAM SPAIN. You got your Noora in my Lara??? Except Noora only agreed to go to the russ meeting when Sana did. For Lara, it’s Eva she needs to also go. On that note, Lara sure seems into Eva. And Eva agrees because she wants to spend time with Lara...

Viri’s mom is having a meeting, or “meeting,” so maybe they’re going with the same backstory for her as Vilde.

She cuts herself off as she notices William - Alejandro - through the window, and like, if they had named this character Alejandro but not played Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” at some point, I would have felt cheated. I feel like they could have timed or edited the scene better to make it funnier, but I did still appreciate the effort.

I saw people upset that this William looks like an embryo but I’m fine with it. I can completely get why he would be considered a cute boy on campus among these 16/17-year-olds.

Please note Viri’s facial expressions as she takes him in. It looks like she’s glitching. 

She’s so turned on by Alejandro that she’s grabbing Eva’s leg.

LOL at Alejandro looking straight at the camera just to smolder. Wow. I’m imagining that this is just a thing he does on purpose, walk around Blue Steeling into invisible cameras.

Is it just me or does he look a bit like Mikael from the original show? Just … floppier?

Clip 6 - Damn, Inés 

I think that’s Amira walking across the screen out of focus at the start.

Eva walks up to see Inés hanging out with some girls, the reluctance on her face. And then she sees Lara with them, and the despair crosses her face. Fuuuuuck, this budding friendship is over before it really started. (WAS I RIGHT? I knewwwww it! Lara is going to get turned off by hearing Inés tell her side of the story, and she won’t want to be Eva’s friend. Then the girl squad will step up.)

Getting mild Darlene from Mr. Robot vibes from Inés. Except less unkempt. 

Eva going up and talking to Inés in broad daylight, at school, totally sober? Brave, very brave.

We get a closeup of Inés’ face when Eva talks to her so it can sink in that whatever happened with them didn’t hurt only Eva - it’s Eva who seems to be at fault. It’s POV breakage that we maybe didn’t need consider the rest of the scene also establishes that Inés is really hurt by what Eva did, but it did help show Inés as more vulnerable.

Ouch. Inés is right to be pissed (as we know her reasons) but she’s ice cold to Eva, especially with making her repeat that Eva will never be around her again. That is really harsh, worse than any “your eye makeup makes you look like a slut” comments. 

Clip 7 - Interrupted by dancing dudes

Cris is seen leaving the school ahead of Eva and Jorge. I like that they’re planting the major characters around the school, casually showing them going about their lives. I mean maybe they were just filming other scenes that day and used all of the actors they had on set, lmao, but it feels realistic.

Jorge meets Eva and seems supportive, she’s not alone walking out of school this time. But she spies Inés again outside, there’s eye contact, and Eva is clearly upset over what happened earlier. Even Jorge notices.

She doesn’t want to open up to him, he keeps asking her to open up, and just when it seems like she might tell him, he gets a notification of his friends being goofballs and watches them on his phone.

Jorge promises to be all Eva’s tomorrow, and lol somehow I think it’s a promise made to be broken.

Clip 8 - Sad blue-tinted lonely Friday clip

Eva is hanging out in her kitchen heating up food in her not-leaving-the-house attire, alone, not doing anything on Friday night. She gets a text from Jorge and looks at all the fun her boyfriend and his friends are having at their concert.

She watches it fondly and sends him some texts back, then goes back to that solitary microwave life.

Viri sends a message asking if someone can host the end of the year trip meeting. Eva goes back to munching. But we know what she’s really hungry for ... is friendship. 😎

Clip 9 - Goddammit Jorge

Eva is on the sidelines watching Jorge play football. You know, not that you can’t support your significant other, but being a teenage girl and watching your boyfriend be active while you sit there watching is maybe not the most fun activity? Let’s be honest, would a lot of these teenage boys sit and watch their girlfriends play a game together, one that wasn’t like an “official” game for school or anything, and cheer them on while not participating themselves? Girls are expected to support their boyfriends’ activities in a way that frankly is not reciprocal.

Lucas comes up behind the bleachers, wearing sunglasses and doing this face that would probably be meme-worthy if it were more in focus. Like he actually does that peer over the top of the sunglasses look. And I was like, lmao, why is the fuck is he doing that, but then I realized he was probably checking out Jorge.

Jorge comes up to Eva all drenched with water and sweat so you know Lucas is taking advantage of his sunglasses to peep that manly sight.

It sure didn’t take long for Jorge to go back on his promise. Jorge makes a comment about wanting to go home and sleep, Eva says they were supposed to hang out today, he’s like “well I’m going to play video games with the boys, but you can come if you want.” Lmao this is uncharitable but I’m imagining he means “you can come and watch” not “you can come and participate.”  

She suggests they go out together and he’s like, nah, do that shit yourself. Wow, so supportive. And yet a realistic depiction of dating high school boys. He tells her she’ll make a bunch of friends soon and forget all about him, which is sweet, except if you think that later, in the tradition of past Jonases, he’s going to get all miffed about the school trip and be passive-aggressive to Eva about her activities and friends? Less sweet.

I just want to mention that Lucas is oh so casually lying there and soaking in all of this dialogue. Noticing that Jorge is ditching Eva. Not saying a word, but you know. Absorbing this information, in case it’s pertinent.

Jorge asks Lucas if Eva is a good catch, for reassurance, and he pauses before commenting on her hat. Well, he can’t exactly say he doesn’t know, can he?

Jorge and Eva kiss before Jorge gets called back to his game, and Lucas asks Eva what Jorge tastes like, L O L. She answers sweat. We see Eva, deflated now that Jorge has bailed (like “I came to watch you and put on this hat and now you don’t even want to hang out?”) while right beside her, Lucas has … a look. That sweat comment will fuel his fantasies, don’t lie. 

I mean I’m going to be honest, my attention was focused on Lucas instead of Eva at the end, since I was trying to see if he had a ~meaningful look.

Clip 10 - Class trip meeting

This is pretty easily inferred since Eva is desperate to be social but she volunteered her house off screen via text message.

Viri is super hyped about this meeting even though it’s apparently only going to be her, Eva, Cris, and Cris’ friend. She thinks more people will want to come to their meetings once their project gets off the ground. I think she is concerned about popularity, but not gonna lie, I’m getting less “social climber” vibes from her and more “type-A overachiever.” But I guess she could be both!

Ding dong! Who’s at the door? Why it’s Cris, and she brought Amira! Good God, the way the smile drops off Viri’s face when she sees a Muslim is in her presence. She greets Amira and all, but Viri looks like she’s been told her puppy got run over.

She backtracks from Mallorca, and when Amira asks why, Viri’s like, well it’s all beach. Holy shit, Viri, have you never seen Muslims on a beach? Cris is “just like wear a burkini,” Amira says she’ll get one, and even Cris seems to have a moment where she has to backtrack. It’s like she mentioned the burkini as a joke but didn’t take it seriously. Amira clearly is a bit exasperated by this turn of conversation. Like it’s othering to her, she has to hold these people’s hands. 

See I’m really curious about the nature of this trip, because when you say “school trip” I’m coming from my own experience, and I think of like a trip with adult chaperones, guided activities and tours, strict supervision. Partying and sex do happen, but it’s not a free-for-all where the students are running around on their own. What Viri is describing seems more like a casual beach trip? How much independence would the students have? Obviously this is a different culture than my own (and a lot of the strict chaperoning on US school trips comes from wanting to curb underage drinking, which wouldn’t be a problem here) and I’m not familiar with how Spanish schools operate these kinds of excursions, but I’m trying to figure out what are Viri’s plans for this trip.

@skammovistarplus explains some context behind the trip in this post.

Viri gets happy about her trip again and starts talking about it, and she very obviously looks back and forth from Cris to Eva as she talks about it, not making eye contact with Amira. The camera in this part of the scene is pulled back so we can see just how excluded and distant Amira is from this conversation, almost like we’re in her shoes.

Amira talks a lot of sense and says more people should get involved in trip planning. I mean, yeah, otherwise just plan a trip among yourselves and leave the school out of it? Seems easier. 

The doorbell rings again, Eva thinks it’s Lara, but when she opens the door it’s …. Nora! Also wearing red lipstick.

Amira gave Nora the address so they’re already acquainted. That’s a change, Nora joining the group because of Amira. Noora said she wanted to get to know Sana better, but Eva was also the one who got her acquainted with the other girls.

This clip cuts off right at Nora’s introduction, and I can’t help but laugh at the context? It’s kind of dramatic, though less in the full episode. Like if I knew nothing about this show, I’d be like … is this supposed to be some twin shenanigans??? Is one of them the good twin and the other the bad twin? Lara and Nora? But I guess this moment is for the existing Skam fans. It’s …. Nora! The one you thought was Nora was emphatically not Nora! Plot twist!

This was the least gay Noora introduction, though.

Clip 11 - More meeting

There was a post about the clips and problems with the length and timing and I completely agree that posting multiple shorter clips is not good. If they keep doing this, it will minimize emotional investment - we won’t be able to sink into a scene without them cutting it off at a certain point. I guess Viri and Amira have been arguing for like an hour which I’m sure was enjoyable to witness for the other girls.

Viri is getting cringy, like I thought she did an OK job of Tracy Flicking it up but she’s getting OTT in a theater kid kind of way. Stress will do that to you.

So I guess a Mr Wonderful notebook is just a brand of notebook with cheesy motivational sayings, and Viri talks like that earnestly, lmao.

Amira thinks they need cool girls to be at the meeting, like Inés. Eva is affected by this. Nora seems to notice.

Nora is from Madison, Wisconsin, holy shit. As a Midwesterner I am rolling on the floor.

I have been to Madison, Wisconsin. It’s a very nice city! I love Wisconsin! I recommend visiting the cheese castle! But it’s just funny that Nora the cool girl is from a place that’s as mundane as Wisconsin. Like there’s that storyline from Love Actually where the awkward guy thinks he can get laid in America just by having a British accent, so he books a ticket to America, to a “fantastic place” called Wisconsin. That’s the joke. It’s supposed to be funny because it’s Wisconsin.

Hajar Brown does a good job as Amira, I like her. She points out that they’re all losers who have nothing better to do on Saturday so they’re at this meeting. Viri says they’re not weird, they’re unique, and Cris asks what about twins, and Nora seems to laugh at herself. SEE WHAT I MEAN ABOUT HER AND LARA BEING TWINS… the secret will come out.

Why is Cris here, anyway? I get why the other four would be weirdos and hanging out together - Eva has been shunned, Viri is a racist Hermione, Amira is Muslim, and Nora is the new girl in town - but Cris seems, frankly, not a lot like original Chris and appeared to have some other friends in our first glimpse of her.  What’s her deal?

Nora asks why the cool girls would want to come to them and Amira’s like, well, you’re very pretty, Nora. Eva, you could be pretty if you wore some makeup. L M A O. I think Amira was saying that to fuck with Viri, since she gave her a considering look before moving on to Eva, and Viri looked offended, but lol, as if the four who are supposed to flirt aren’t all pretty, skinny, conventionally attractive girls. (I mean, I hate debates over which characters are the best looking, I just don’t give a shit, but if you ask me, Nora is not noticeably prettier than the other girls. Tbh I kinda didn’t like that they changed it to Nora from Eva since, if they follow the rest of the show, Noora was so singled out for being special and attractive among the girls anyway.) 

Viri is beside herself with rage at how this meeting turned out.

Lara never showed so presumably she heard all about Eva’s history from Inés. She also leaves the trip group chat later.

Clip 12 - Eva spies Jorge

Eva is guiding Nora to her bus an hour later. Nora questions whether there will be another meeting and Eva says she supposes not because they don’t have anything in common. Nora says nay, they’re the weirdos at school. It’s cute.

I was about to ask what was the point of this scene since, other than a moment between Eva and Nora, it’s not adding much, but then “Jungle” kicks in again, a bus goes by, and Eva sees Jorge on that bus. Looking like he is talking to a girl. Who may be Inés. Eva realizes she’s been duped! Dramaaaaaa!

That does appear to be the same shiny backpack that Inés had earlier in the episode.

General Comments:

Regardless of execution, in a lot of ways this is what I want from a Skam remake? If I can’t have brand new stories and characters, I’d like to see remixes of the scenes with new dialogue and focus. Very little of the dialogue was taken straight from Skam, iconic moments were left out, new plot elements were introduced. So it makes me want to keep watching to see what else they do.

Unless Skam Spain has a different contract than the other remakes, so far it’s ripping holes in the idea that the remakes were required to be exactly the same as the original.

They sure crammed three episodes into one. I will give them credit, though, it didn’t feel rushed for the most part. I think the girls’ meeting suffered the most since we basically had to meet a bunch of characters at once (only Viri had really been introduced), whereas in the original we’d gotten a solid scene with all of the girls by the time of the meeting and had an inkling as to their personalities. However, the Jorge stuff and Inés and the other elements felt fine, pacing-wise. I love S1′s beginning episodes and things like the cabin episode, but they can easily be condensed if needed.

There was controversy over Chris being skinny in this version, and just to go over that - this isn’t the first version of Skam that’s had a thinner Chris, Druck and Skam Austin had Chrises who weren’t fat, Skam NL does too. I think Skam España got the most flack for this because the Chrises in Druck and Skam Austin were WOC, and while race and body size are two different areas of representation, those characters were still members of an underrepresented group. Skam NL has a thinner white Chris, but it also has the first Noora who’s a WOC so the girl squad has additional diversity besides the Sana character. So I think it’s a combo of everyone being thin + everyone other than Amira being white that made Skam España get criticism in particular.

I do think it is disappointing that all the main girls appear to be thin, because overall I think the various Skams have done a decent job of showing girls with a variety of shapes - not just in terms of skinny or fat, but even the “thin” characters often have different body types than are often seen on TV. And I hope there are more POC in the cast later. That’s all I really want to say about it at the time. 

I mentioned this in my Skam NL recap, too, but I think so many characters are called Lucas because it’s a religious name that can be used for symbolism, like Isak.

I feel like some of the more technical aspects are off, like camerawork/editing, and the acting overall is mixed, but it does feel like a down-to-earth low-budget production that cast actual teenagers and that’s my jam, so I am very willing to cut it some slack in this regard.

Some highlights of social media: Lucas posting a shit-stirring #TBT post with him, Eva, and Inés, that’s pretty cold, dude. Eva and Lucas taking turns third wheeling in it group photos.

@skammovistarplus is writing some awesome posts detailing some of the cultural aspects in the clips, go check it out!

I’m not Spanish so if I misunderstand something, feel free to let me know!

Thank you for reading!