#plot speculation

[salmonthestoryteller]

The 25 Lazarii Miracle

So, I haven’t written meta in a bit. But I finally got around to watching Good Omens Season 2. Of course I had to sob a bit first, before getting around to pondering over things. I know everyone is, understandably, hooked on the FF. But there’s already a lot of awesome meta out there about it, and I’m not even sure which theory to believe right now. More pondering required.

However, Metatron’s insistence that Aziraphale take the Archangel position really struck me. Because, yes, Aziraphale and Crowley joined together to try and stop Apocalypse 1.0. But, the truth is, they only played a small part in Armegedon’t. It was one of my favorite things about season one, actually. That it wasn’t “The Main Characters save the World.” They played a part, but so many other characters and random incidents were involved in how it turned out the way it did.

And while I can believe the bureaucracy of Heaven and Hell dismisses the human contribution, and lays all the blame on their doorstep, Metatron seems smarter than that. Evil AF, but smarter.

I agree that the 25 Lazarii miracle ties into why Metatron felt it necessary to get personally involved. But I actually don’t think it's the reason. I think it’s a Clue to the reason. As much as I love a good “Love Saves the World” trope - wasn't his love for his friends the very reason Adam was able to fight back against his destiny? - Crowley and Aziraphale have worked too much together for this to have never come up before. If swapping bodies didn’t set off an alarm, why did a miracle they were trying to make discreet create such a big signal? Something else is going on. Something has to have changed since the last time they used their powers together.

Why is Metatron insisting that Aziraphale take the position of Supreme Archangel? You’re asking the angel that helped stop Armageddon to help start the Apocalypse? Isn’t that rather like shooting yourself in the foot?

Unless it wasn’t up to Metatron. Because somebody else had already made Aziraphale Supreme Archangel.

Gabriel.

Okay, so, let me explain my reasoning. This isn’t going in chronological order, because I feel like I have to line the facts up a certain way to make the most sense.

Let’s start with what Uriel and Michael say while discussing Gabriel’s disappearance, and with the subtext being about how Michael wants to take over. We’re treated to this set of lines between them:

Uriel: Right now, as of this moment, Heaven does not have a Supreme Archangel.

Michael: There is always a Supreme Archangel.

If there is always a Supreme Archangel, who at the time is the Supreme Archangel? Because Gabriel does not seem to have his usual level of power anymore. When Crowley and Aziraphale push him to remember, it causes him pain. He even tells them:

Gabriel: I can’t remember those things. My, my head isn’t big enough. Not anymore.

If this is a simple case of removed memories, shouldn’t his powers be intact? While the punishment was demoting him to a low level angel, which I assume would come with a deduction in his power, the actual punishment was never enacted. Gabriel superseded it. We know when he removed his memories and where he put them, but what about his power?

Gabriel tells Beezlebub he was coming to her. So the stop at Azirahrale’s bookshop was clearly not meant to be a permanent stay. Gabriel even tells him why he came there.

Gabriel: That so long as I came here something terrible might not happen to me.

We could assume the terrible thing is being found by the other angels. But the rest of the conversation doesn’t quite align.

Aziraphale: Please tell me about The Something Terrible

Gabriel: I just know it’s incredibly awful and that’s why I had to come here and give you the thing.

Aziraphale can’t help him regain his memories. Even if Gabriel still had the matchbox, and the fly was still in it, giving it to Aziraphale wouldn't accomplish anything. Only Beezlebub can control the fly, and the fly itself spends the whole time following Gabriel around anyway - it's never once given to anyone else. Plus, regaining his memories isn't going to stop Something Terrible from happening. Heaven will still be after him, and the Second Coming will still be on the plate.

Once we get all the information, we learn that Gabriel’s and Beezlebub’s relationship all started by planning to avoid Apocalypse 2.0. His refusal is what led to his trial, and proposed punishment. So it’s understandable that the two things are intertwined in the bits of information we glean from Jim. Consider the exchange with Crowely after the rainstorm fiasco:

Gabriel: There will come a tempest, and darkness, and great storms. And the dead will leave their graves and walk the earth once more. And there will be great lamentations.

Crowley: Go On

Gabriel Every day it’s getting closer

The first set of lines is a quote about Judgement Day. The song lyric is a reference to his and Beezlebub’s romance - though in this eerie context could be attributed to both.

And let’s not forget Metatron’s words to Aziraphale:

Metatron: You’re a leader, you’re honest, you don’t just tell people what they want to hear. It’s why Gabriel came to you in the first place, I imagine.

But Gabriel wanted to stop the Apocalypse. And Metatron knows this. If Gabriel sought out Aziraphale in regards to the Second Coming, it was with the intention of preventing it. If his powers and position are handed off to one of the other Archangels, it will do nothing in regards to that goal. But giving them to the angel he knows will do anything to protect the world and stop the Second Coming? That would throw quite a wrench in Heaven’s plans.

But this theory isn’t based just on conversation. So let’s consider two specific times Aziraphale uses his powers, after Gabriel shows up.

The first instance is, of course, hiding Gabriel. Before they do the miracle, they say that by working together it should balance things out so it’s untraceable. To quote:

Aziraphale: If we each did half a miracle. I could hide him from your former people, and you could hide him from mine. It would barely move the dials.

Of course, that isn’t what happens. Instead we get the 25 Lazarii plume of miraculous activity. If Aziraphale had recently been given a power boost by receiving a large chunk of Gabriel’s powers without his knowledge, possibly when he opened The Box, he would have no idea how far he now needed to scale down his miracles.

And the spell they cast is powerful. It doesn’t just exist inside the bookshop. It exists outside of it. Shax and the other demons can’t see Gabriel is Gabriel, even when he steps outside. The Archangels not only fail to realize who he is while inside the bookshop, when they start to discuss the disconnect of Aziraphale having an assistant while in Heaven, the miracle prevents them from realizing something is wrong even there. That is far beyond the original intent.

And there is one other time where Aziraphale’s powers seem to be doing things above and beyond the original intent.

The Ball.

There are a handful of previous times our Ineffable Duo controlled people in small ways. Consider the bus at the end of Season One. Crowley says it will drive them to London, the driver just won't know why. There's also Sister Mary, and Aziraphale telling her she just dreamt about whatever she likes best. Crowley said at The Globe that they have both done blessings and temptations for the Arrangement. But what is happening at The Ball is so far beyond all of that. Aziraphale seems to be controlling a whole room full of people. What they think; how they talk. Nina even admits it’s affecting her very ability to feel the emotions she knows she is feeling:

Nina: I know I’m really upset, why don’t I feel upset?

Something she says to Aziraphale the moment she enters the bookshop, even though he couldn’t have known she was upset yet. So why would he have been using his powers on her at that moment? And let's not forget that he was sharing Madame Tracy’s body and still wasn't able to fully control her. But now he can control multiple people at once?

And there’s one final note on why his powers shouldn’t be working this way. While he informs that Archangels that he performed a miracle for Nina and Maggie to fall in love, he admits to Crowlety it isn’t possible:

Crowley: Great. Do a little miracle, wiggle your fingers about. Nina falls for Maggie, problem solved.

Aziraphale: Ah, miracles don’t work like that.

If making people fall in love isn’t even in Aziraphale’s usual wheelhouse, then how is anything happening at The Ball? Unless most of what’s happening isn’t being done consciously, but rather subconsciously, using powers he didn’t originally have. But that Gabriel may have had. Y'know, “Be Not Afraid” Gabriel?

I suppose it could be argued Gabriel is the one who is subconsciously using his powers, both during the 25 Lazarii miracle, and The Ball. He is present both times. But he has no concept of what they're doing when they cast the protection, and what's happening at The Ball is meant to be based off of Jane Austen’s novels - which Gabriel has never read.

And it still doesn't explain Gabriel’s claim that he has to give Aziraphale something to prevent Something Terrible.

Or Metatron’s bulldozing Aziraphale into taking the position of Supreme Archangel. The dude came prepared with counters for every objection Aziraphale makes. Down to having Muriel stick around to give the bookshop to. Something he tells them to do before even talking to Aziraphale. This was not someone who had any intention of accepting the answer No.

But if he was just afraid of Aziraphale and Crowley interfering with the Second Coming, if that's the reason, why not just erase them from the Book of Life like Michael suggested? Problem solved. He didn't step in to stop Aziraphale's original execution in Season One. So what's changed?

But, given Michael's insistence that there is always a Supreme Archangel, erasing the current said Supreme Archangel sounds like it could be a big issue for Heaven. After all, if that had always been an option, why bother to look for Gabriel at all? Why not just get rid of him the easy way? Nobody would think Heaven had an institutional problem if nobody remembered Gabriel period. But if they couldn't afford to lose Gabriel’s powers, that would explain why that wasn't an option. And if Gabriel had given them away to Aziraphale, that would explain why Metatron stepped in to prevent anything from happening to him.

Having a loose cannon running around with the powers of a Supreme Archangel? Doesn't sound like something that works well with The Great Plan Metatron and the Archangels are so determined to still follow.

But let's be real. If Metatron thinks being up in Heaven is going to prevent Aziraphale from being a loose cannon and running around to prevent Apocalypse 2.0, he really needs to reread the files from Apocalypse 1.0. Being forced up to Heaven didn't stop Aziraphale last time, there's no way it's stopping him this time.

[divi2012]

Stealing this from my friend @ans4jbs because it needs to be said:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Luisa Lange (@luisalange)

This was me and my friends prior to Young Royals S3. Oh how I wish we could go back in time 🥲💜

[missingpetrock]

oooh, that's neat! I kinda wonder if this season might lead to a small revival of the waning Steam Punk fandom.

Watching the Cloudward Ho trailer as the characters were revealed I had a moment of "oh cool a lot of them are like older characters, I guess they all decided they wanted to be characters in that space!" but then when I saw this I was like "oh??? Is their backstory they were all adventurers together except for murph and ally who are clearly the kids in this photo???"

[niceprophecies]

[taraxippos]

I think people tend to assume that any criticism of worldbuilding is ultimately a demand for a story to grind itself to a halt and give the reader 20 paragraphs of exposition, and like. Most of the time good-faith criticism of this nature is coming from a core aspect of the story not being grounded in the setting in a way that outright detracts from the story's quality. You fix it not by Explaining but by Showing it passively in the makeup of the world.

Like the last instance I saw this critique in was like 'you can't expect an author to stop and exposit the nuances of gender roles/Queerness in a fictional society' and it's like yeah I don't, and in fact this is actually one of the easiest things to show in the text without exposition. If a society has gender norms to begin with you'll see aspects of these norms baked into EVERYTHING. You'll see it in its stories, its religion, its taboos, its etiquette, its clothing, its family structures, its language, its insults, its labor, its leadership, etc. It will have massive impacts on how characters interact with one another and how they perceive themselves. It will help Shape your characters.

If you do this legwork to begin with for the core facets of your story, you will find very natural places for these concepts to be demonstrated without derailing the plot and with little to no exposition. THAT sort of thing is what's being asked of you.

[an-established-butt-dent]

"What have they done to you,

Old friend."

Trapped in the fade, Solas comes face to face with the remnant of his spirit.

The Dread Wolf was his wisdom, mirror to his pride. In the wake of the wrathful Evanuris, it too, has succumbed to their taint.

Or, where I'm making wild plot speculations surrounding Solas trapped in the fade. while turning my brainrot into art pieces and gifs. I'M PACING MY ENCLOSURE. Looking for crumbs and scrabs of Veilguard. Please Bioware I'm begging, feed me. 😭

[centaurianthropology]

What LeeBeeBee does for the Story of ‘Murderbot’

So we’ve finally met Blonde Lady in the series (her name is LeeBeeBee), and I think she’s filling a really interesting and important role plot-wise and worldbuilding-wise, and doing so in unexpected ways that are surprising even book-readers.  She’s wholly original to the show, so no one knows what precisely the writers have planned for her.

But I certainly have thoughts and predictions. 

I figured I’d break my thoughts on her up into two sections.  The first section is for all the folks who are show-only, and I’ll only be examining her role in S1E5, without any additional speculation pulling from book knowledge and what I think the writers are doing with her in the longer term.  The second part will speculate on the upcoming episode, and how I think it could play out.  No idea if I’m right about everything (or anything!), but it’s always fun to speculate!

FUNCTION IN S1E5 (SPOILERS FOR E1-5)

Let’s kick it off by talking about LeeBeeBee in isolation in this episode, what her function in this particular episode was, what she does for the plot, the larger world, and what she does for the storytelling format. 

Let’s start with her plot function, the most obvious part of her role in this episode.  She appears at the beginning as the sole survivor of DeltFall, makeup smeared and uniform dirty.  This immediately sets her apart from the PresAux gang.  She’s apparently the indentured cleaner that DeltFall rented for the hab along with the SecUnits, and this cleaner is wearing makeup despite having a physically laborious job in a field unit on a mostly-uninhabited planet. 

This small bit of visual storytelling sets DeltFall up as a very different society to PresAux.  PresAux deliberately only took one (cheap) SecUnit, which is understandable given their objections to using constructs as slave labor.  None of them wear makeup in the field, and they certainly don’t have a cleaner.

But DeltFall not only had multiple constructs, but also an indentured servant to do housekeeping, and there is either an expectation or a cultural norm that she be made up while she do her indentured job.  They feel, from this introduction, very Corporation Rim. 

LeeBeeBee herself acts as a personification of the Corporation Rim on a level we haven’t been able to dig into with the limited screentime of the Company Tech Bro sales reps.  From her first scene on the hopper, she feels like she’s from a completely different world to the empathetic and sweet Preservationers.  She almost immediately objectifies SecUnit in a way that is openly offputting to both the audience and clearly to the Preservation crew, who likely don’t say anything both out of shock and out of some belief that this woman has to have some sort of brain damage to say something like that.

But this level of objectification, I think, lies at the heart of the Corporation Rim.  It’s not that constructs are objects, but their workers are valued.  LeeBeeBee is an indentured servant.  She has no more free will than SecUnit.  She objectifies it because she sees herself as a step above a construct, and in the CR hierarchy, you’re likely encouraged to objectify anyone beneath you.  And that comes around to something equally uncomfortable when she finds out it’s got a hacked governor module and is a rogue.  She views it as a person now, but what does that mean? 

She objectifies herself for it. 

And doesn’t that make the worst sort of sense on a survival level for a person in her position?  She’s fully adapted to doing what she has to do to survive.  She views sex in an incredibly transactional and exploitative way.  When she thinks SecUnit is an object, she has the power and she immediately speculates about using it as a sex toy.  When she shifts into thinking of it as a person, she also knows how dangerous it is, and reverses their power dynamic, offering sex as a transactional way to protect herself. 

It’s awful, deliberately so.  But I think it’s a great and visceral way to get into the Corporation Rim mindset: constructs aren’t special; everyone who isn’t wealthy or powerful is an object.  You don’t get to be a person with fully autonomous choices until you’re one of the elite.  Until then, sex is just another way of trying to get a slight advantage in an endless rat race.

Having LeeBeeBee represent this deeply uncomfortable aspect of an end-stage capitalist hellscape like the CR also does something on a storytelling level.  This addition of an outsider character fully shifts the POV in the show.  Up until her introduction, the PresAux crew felt like the strange outsiders that MB was judging, but by introducing the worst possible representation of the CR, our alignment completely shifts.  We are not only on Preservation’s side, but we are insiders with them.  They now feel normal and lived in, and she feels like the outsider.  And this reflects the shift going on in Murderbot.  Even before it’s willing to acknowledge it, through the framing of LeeBeeBee we subconsciously know it has realigned itself with the PresAux crew. 

So that’s why I think she was an effective addition in this episode.  If you’re interested in some book spoilers and speculation for the next episode, jump below the cut.

FUNCTION IN S1E6 AND BEYOND (SPECULATION, SPOILERS FOR ‘ALL SYSTEMS RED’)

Are they gone?

Groovy.  Let’s get under the hood and talk about all the ways she’s working on multiple levels, not just embodying all the worst parts of the CR as I previously mentioned, but playing it up as a means of camoflage.  Because LeeBeeBee is almost certainly a GrayCris plant, precisely what SecUnit and Mensah were worried about, and the crew absolutely did take her in despite the danger because they are good people.  And they would do the right thing, even if Murderbot objected.

It’s so nice to get to see exactly how DeltFall might have been infiltrated, which we didn’t get to see in the book.  And so many of her lines read differently when you think of her as a plant.  Did DeltFall call PresAux ‘the Amateurs,’ or was that GrayCris?  Did DeltFall actually have an indentured servant, or is that GrayCris?

I think that a lot of what she’s saying is truthful, or is just a slight twist on the truth.  I do think she’s likely indentured.  I do think she views others and herself as objects to be used and exploited and discarded.  She’s suffering under one of the cruelest practices in the Corporation Rim, but she’s still fully bought into the CR propaganda and mindset.  Rather than defecting and embracing freedom the way Gurathin likely did, she’s almost certainly looking at getting years shaved off her indenture by acting as an infiltrator and assassin

That’s so perfectly horrid.  She would rather still be indentured but get in better with her bosses than accept real freedom.  It’s a cowardice I think we can all see in our world, that she would take the safe misery and be willing to hurt others to do it, rather than take a major risk and step outside the system.

She’s also dialing up her inherent objectification of others to a level that makes her deliberately off-putting, so the PresAux crew want to look away from her rather than examining her too closely.  If they just want to sort of ignore her, then they’re not going to dig too far into her actions.  If she runs off to communicate back to GrayCris regarding a rogue SecUnit they’re not going to follow her, and are going to be glad to get a break from her.

Her distraction tactics work particularly well against Murderbot, who she makes wildly uncomfortable to the point it’s very glad to get away from her, and is likely deliberately trying not to think of her.  If you watch who she’s targeting with this barrage of unpleasantness, she does it first as a blanket with the crew to gauge reaction, then targets it at SecUnit once she realizes that it’s not being controlled by the combat override, and that it’s fully rogue.  There’s no easy way for her to control it (as I suspect she was controlling the DeltFall SecUnits), so she had to improvise, because as far as she’s concerned, this independent SecUnit is the #1 threat to her plan to kill the PresAux crew.  She must have been so relieved when it went with Mensah to trigger the beacon, because she knew the beacon was rigged to explode, and she had a good chance of getting rid of both the biggest threat and the team leader, and she didn’t even have to do anything!

Which, to her mind, only leaves the rest of the PresAux team to deal with.  After SecUnit, she almost certainly considers Gurathin the next biggest threat, because she would certainly underestimate the Preservationers, but he’s ex-corporate, so she would respect the threat he posed.  So after Mensah and SecUnit are gone, she zeroes in on Gurathin.

I think she almost certainly has a dossier or some other large amount of personal and professional information about him from his days in the CR.  What did she do when she first talked to him after Mensah and Murderbot were gone?  She offered him a stimulant.  I’m now convinced that his therapy modules were—in addition to being for generalized trauma (why did you learn to be quiet, Gurathin??)—meant to treat a stimulant addiction he struggled with after using them to work whatever insane hours he was required to work when he was in the CR. 

I think this next episode is going to be Gurathin-heavy.  The writers are setting up deliberate contrasts between the die-hard-to-a-horrific-level Corpo LeeBeeBee and Defector-with-Trauma ex-Corpo Gurathin.  I wonder if he won’t try to sort of reach out to her in the next episode (was he indentured too?), convince her to defect too, only to have her turn it all around on him and use his backstory against him.  If he was indentured, did he break contract to run to Preservation?  Is there a bounty on him?  Is there a bounty on his AUGMENTS, body not needed in return?

I sort of have an image of the next episode playing out like a horror film, where we realize that LeeBeeBee is the exact infiltrator that took out DeltFall, that GrayCris SecUnits are incoming, MB and Mensah may already be dead, and the person who was responsible for the DeltFall massacre is inside the hab right now.

Especially if we don’t know what happened to MB and Mensah for the majority of the episode, instead focusing on the rest of the group.  Without the snarky voiceover, the terror of the situation could really get hammered home.  Again, this is fully speculation of how it might play out next episode, but my guess is that the big cliffhanger next episode is going to be LeeBeeBee attacking Gurathin.  Previews have shown him with a bandage on his leg, and holding a cane, which some people have pointed out looks like a blind walking cane.  That makes me wonder if she manages to not only disable him with a shot to the leg, but damage visual augments he might have, rendering him partially blind.

I think we’ve also been getting a lot of background work with Gurathin being terrified of rejection and abandonment throughout this season.  He and MB parallel one another in not wanting to share Mensah, because they both are afraid the other will manage to take her from them (completely ignoring that Mensah has two fucking hands, and more than enough love in her to love her family, and both of these idiots too).  If LeeBeeBee really wants to twist the knife in him, she’s going to tell him that if the others are going to survive, they have to abandon him.

And Pin-Lee, Arada, Bharadwaj, and Ratthi are almost certainly going to refuse.  Much like Mensah refused to abandon MB when it was damaged, they’re going to refuse to leave their friend behind.  Because they can disagree with him, they can think he’s wrong about SecUnit, but they still love him and won’t leave him.

This sets up E7 to be the big turning point between the nadir of act 2 (MB and Mensah may be dead, Gurathin is injured, and the others are in direct danger because they won’t leave him behind), and the start of act 3 (MB and Mensah return and save everyone!  They can all come together, defeat GrayCris and escape alive!). 

And all of this gets facilitated because of the introduction of LeeBeeBee, who acts as a face for GrayCris (and likely a way to give us information about them) and for the whole vicious corporate people-as-objects theme that consumes the Corporation Rim.  It’s so much easier to loath GrayCris when we can see the sorts of people it creates, and she is such a great example of that.

[goatdon]

in the least “I want to argue” way I find it realllyyy funny how people refuse to acknowledge that langdon was definitely santos on his first day of work.

there is no way you can tell me frank langdon, the guy who calls garcia edwina scissorhands, the guy who cherry picks his cases, the guy who said “dana can come back though can’t she?” after hearing she got punched in the face, the guy who guy who couldn’t sit still for a moment of silence despite probably having to do it on a regular basis, who isn’t that Great on his bedside manners, the guy who is extremely confident and maybe even cocky in his abilities…THAT guy wasn’t absolutely hated on his first day as an intern.

like let’s be honest. One of the main differences between santos and langdon is that langdon has seniority. he’s been there for like what 4 years? he knows the ed staff. they’ve accepted his assholery as apart of him and know when to humble/shame him. they’ve stopped gaf abt his sarcasm like ages ago because it’s just turned into banter now. they definitely do side eye him (especially for that Dana comment) and he is still regarded as somewhat of a jerk. but dude is great at what he does and has been there so long that it’s almost like it’s just a side effect of who he is lol.

they’re used to him now but trust on that first day? I just know they were annoyed asfk

he’s also extremely confident and does risky shit if it means he can save a patient. if you told me he did some risky procedure he had no business doing as an intern I would believe you.

But I guarantee you, give santos those 4 years and everyone would most likely regard her the same. a lot of people fail to understand that this is One day. Literally one day. She doesn’t know these people nor do they know her. She’s made a bad impression but I believe by the end of the rotations or something long the lines of that she’ll have made friends with Javadi, Whittaker and Mel. Or at least one of them lol. Under all the meanness and ambition santos is really empathetic and trying. they all just have to get to know each other and apologies should be in place but it’s not like any one of them hate each other. They’ll side eye her and call her a douche when she acts like one but that’s called friendship baby! oh and mark my words those nicknames will eventually turn from derogatory to affectionate trust (plz pitt writers)

[corseque]

I honestly just wanted one single plot step that I could not predict given the 10 year wait. More behind the cut, I talk about Emet too, and I'm comparing his writing favorably to Solas' writing and why it worked better for me personally, but I am just talking about the writing skill that went into the games and not the dudes themselves, I love them both dearly of course. idk this is a mess and I am not going to edit it for clarity

For me, the game was a series of me saying

"ok I knew that. cool."

"oh yeah, I knew that. I guess it's good that the larger fandom knows about that now."

"nice, but yeah I already knew that too"

"that was something we've been talking about a lot for years"

"this thing they are acting like is a huge enormous reveal that the characters could not possibly have deduced through simply thinking about it in depth over the 10 years... the fans easily figured out by thinking about it in depth 10 years ago. So you would think his girlfriend would be able to figure it out more easily than we did. Like, why couldn't the game have been like 'oh lavellan already figured that out a while ago' it would have cost them nothing"

"this is something I've been thinking about for years, and now that it's being revealed, the companions' reactions to it are very irritating and jarring and unnecessary and I really dislike the experience I'm having right now, in this, the hour of my greatest triumph"

"this thing that is happening on my screen right now is something that I wrote an essay about 2 years ago describing how it would be a letdown if it happened without the correct setup"

"this way that they're characterizing Solas makes him less likable and less interesting than I have been finding him for all these years, and I have had people tell me 'no, he's simpler than you think' for years but I guess I was wrong, he really is simpler than I thought, so that fucking sucks. I wish I could take that information out of my brain."

"this thing is a retcon of information I have been thinking about for 10 years, and so I don't know how to follow along with this new direction, and I'm not sure if I even want to because it's not particularly interesting anyway"

"aw that was sweet"

"why is it like, so very impossible to have an honest back-and-forth with my favorite character about the dilemma that was most interesting to me about the previous game"

and then, as soon as, like, the other fans had caught up to the Solas lore that was really obvious from the other games, the game was.... over without anything surprising happening, or introducing a new element or plot point or perspective, or a real true twist (or two, or three) for those of us who have thought about it too hard for too long. It was very simple and easy, much, much, much, much easier than I was imagining. It all felt sort of like that Nicholson quote:

The thing was, the whole story was so interesting to think about because in 10 years, I couldn't figure out a good solution to it!!!!! It's why I was never able to write post-game fanfic about it. So I was stoked to find out some reveal we never knew about, some new information, in maybe a SERIES of steps of new information, that made the situation more complicated but also something that could be navigated by everyone involved. I know it was asking for a lot, but they had TEN YEARS, and they seemingly had set up the things they did in DAI on purpose, so surely they had some idea of a complex and satisfying narrative that would reconcile everyone.

The reason why I was expecting this is because FFXIV did a very similar story arc, which was started AND concluded WITHIN those 10 years (so it took the FFXIV team far less time to deliver as well). And the conclusion to the story in FFXIV did what I was expecting Dragon Age to do. So I thought, "holy shit, if this is the FFXIV version of this plot, how much more complicated is DA4 going to be!?!?" The DA devs also PLAYED FFXIV so they were completely aware, several years ago, of a satisfying story ending that was pretty darn similar.

People are probably going to think "oh, well Chelsea was disappointed because she spent too much time building it up in her head" but that's exactly it - I actually speculated and thought about FFXIV's story IN DEPTH NONSTOP for a year+ before its ending came out, and the ending absolutely blew me away. FFXIV Endwalker managed to introduce information and new story elements that I was not able to figure out in the YEAR I spent speculating on the ending of FFXIV's story. It took a complicated situation and revealed several several more facets to it that I was not able to predict, but were very interesting and thematically compelling, and took us all to surprising and climactic places that we could not have predicted.

Endwalker ("end" is in the title on purpose) too, was written to be THE ULTIMATE SATISFYING ENDING for a very long-running story in the exactly way that Veilguard SHOULD HAVE for Dragon Age, so while this complexity is being explored, FFXIV also gave catharsis to many different plot threads that have been built up through the previous expansions, until finally it ends with a bang. The story is desperately good to me, I loved it, it gave me closure for Dragon Age long before Veilguard was even revealed, and going back and looking at its story has made this whole thing far less painful for me.

So, I actually did not have a picture in my mind for how things SHOULD go. I just had the thought "I hope it's complicated and there are points of view or facts that we haven't before been exposed to, and the situation is resolved respectfully for Solas, not making him look like a fucking idiot (lol, the only thing I asked for). I don't even care what happens to Solas and Lavellan, I just need the story to be complicated and interesting to think about. Please, god, don't let it be "solas is wrong and he just needs to be convinced" because that's like the simplest story you could tell with this setup"

(btw they managed to tell Emet-Selch's story without making him seem like he's being an idiot on purpose or can never get anything right, and in fact the more the story goes on, the more you think of him as smart and capable and cool, so it is possible to write.... I wasn't asking for the entire moon)

And I played it and... yeah. Most of the story beats were more simple than I wanted them to be, a lot of them didn't make sense in my heart given the writing from Inquisition. (This is another essay, but if Solas' thematic story arc was always about him needing to let go of regrets, why was his personal quest the way it was? After that quest, doesn't he end up regretting not doing more....? Why did he never really talk about regret during Inquisition? If he was so trapped by regret, why was he able to do so many actions? It doesn't mesh well to me. The whole regret thing was very quarter-baked to me, I don't even like thinking about it.) His story never seemed like one that was as simple as being about one man's regrets, but then, I guess, it was always just about one man's regrets.

Emet-Selch's personal storyline (and the way it interacts with and affects the larger story) is very similar but much more cohesive and satisfying to me. It would be difficult to explain why without the aforementioned 5-hour essay. Emet-Selch's story IS about grief and anguish on a world-shaping scale in a similar way that Solas' was apparently always about letting go of regret, but Emet's story was also very pointedly and beautifully about that one theme for the entirety of his story from every tiny detail, from beginning to end - meanwhile, it seemed to me that they tried to introduce 'regret' as the main thrust of Solas' story only in the short story with the Regret demon onward.

From Inquisition just by itself, the closest I personally could get to a story theme for Solas was his inability to trust others hurting him and the world, but his trusting others in DA4 wasn't really addressed to my satisfaction. He is never required to trust anyone before the ending, he never opens up or makes himself vulnerable at all. People find out information about him, he never really dynamically opens himself. So the personal story I thought he had was never addressed at all, while a new one about regret was introduced that never made a ton of sense to me. And I don't think this is just because of my expectations - my reaction to FFXIV proves that I am able to meet good writing where it goes in surprising directions, as long as it's interesting and thoughtful and clear.

And I think this might be part of what people felt was off about the ending - Solas is sort of uninvolved in the revelations that are about him, and doesn't do much to be part of his own ending. Part of what I loved about Solas in Inquisition is that he is not controlled by you in any way, and so he feels like his own person with a very strong sense of character.

Anyway, Emet-Selch, in a very comparable and arguably more extreme plot position, is very involved in the revelations about himself, he always feels like a very strong character who cannot be affected by the player, and the whole situation is handled with deft emotion and care and delicacy. The story is comparatively very uninterested in litigating Emet-Selch or putting him on trial - the story allows you to simply feel the way that you feel in an organic way, and Emet's story spends that energy instead actually exploring his thematic material about grief and legacy, and the larger story theme of existentialism instead, in a way that is very refreshing and interesting. I've seen a lot of western stories tie themselves in knots over "redemption" and frankly it's almost never been interesting at all. Who cares about any of that. lol

(Now, I guess this is a matter of preference, because some people really like being able to shape a character's story, but idk I rewatched the ending of FFXIV and even though there wasn't a choice with Emet, because it isn't a branching story, his story felt more satisfying to me, maybe because there isn't a patronizing choice to be made for him. He is who he is, and he fulfills a very beautiful narrative role and purpose that no other character could in the story.)

I don't know how this could have been improved to me and still allowed players to choose Solas' ending for him, but I can actually think of a few different methods, none of which involve Rook condescendingly and patronizingly lecturing Solas as if Solas had never thought about a single aspect of this horrible situation he's in before that very moment that Rook lectures him lmfao.

All this to say... idk I'm writing this and I am not going back to edit it so it's stream-of-consciousness. But yeah

I just wanted the story to be complicated on a few more levels than I could have predicted. I genuinely don't care what happened, but I thought of a few twists like the Veil coming down and yeah, I was expecting A Single Twist or reveal to happen. In a Dragon Age game.

I wanted Solas to seem cool and capable and noble and smart, and actually feel like he was as old and experienced as he is.

I wanted a clear theme I could sink my teeth into

Like notice I didn't even say anything about Solavellan. Like I never in 100 years thought they were getting a happy ending where they were both alive in bodies, and I like that we got that, but I would honestly trade it for a more complicated story. To me, if a story is sad you can always write fanfic, but if a story isn't COMPLICATED, that's a much more urgent issue.

These 3 things DA4 didn't give me in a way that satisfied me but FFXIV did. anyway idk the way my hyperfixations work, I completely switch to a new subject so talking about Dragon Age is actually hard for me right now.

[consultingfujoshi]

everyone else is giving their take on this so I feel as if I should too. I am angry about burt and irving now having two almost-kisses and them still finding a reason for them to never close that gap. like, yea it makes narrative sense that neither of those scenes contained a kiss, it's compelling even, if I view it objectively I actually love that because I care deeply about these characters and want them to be written realistically and with nuance.

but I am not gonna sit here and pretend that I'm fine with how this compares to the straight couples that have had so much more this season. if burt and irving's story existed in a bubble where markhelly and all the rest didn't serve as points of comparison I don't think I'd be half as upset at the way this ended. I'd be able to appreciate the impact of their being unable to kiss TWICE now in different universes because of forces outside of their control without looking across at every. single. other. couple. who are all straight. and going. why do they get that and we don't. why is it only the gay couple that have to be written "realistically" where they're still not ready to kiss. why can allowances and indulgences be made for dramatic effect for EVERYONE except them. I don't know if it's intentional homophobia, or queerbait, or if they're really just that squeamish about the idea of two old men kissing each other, but the double standard is there no matter the motivation behind it. and when you combine that with irving's innie being effectively killed off four episodes into the second season, and now his outie potentially written out of the show too, all I'm saying is it becomes hard to give them the benefit of the doubt.

we're all aware john turturro may not return for another season and that's why they felt the need to wrap up irving's two storylines somehow so they weren't left on a loose end should he decide not to come back, and I get that, and I'm glad there was some sense of finality to it, but then why not allow us just this one thing. just one moment of indulgence. because it might actually be our, and their, last chance. would it have killed them to just let them kiss this one time if there was a chance we'd never see them again, a chance they'd never see each other again. the truth is, no, it wouldn't have been hard at all. but they still made the decision to withhold that. because they can't allow us or them even the most basic kindness whilst handing the straight couples everything on a silver platter.

I'm not gonna get into the pacing issues of their relationship this season, how we jumped from them shyly asking each other out on another date to burt carrying out the hit on irving, how there feels like a missing scene in between those two events, because that relates to a wider problem with the structure of the show itself that is beyond the scope of this criticism. but i think it's telling that rather than giving us that extra time with them, they took a whole episode away from our main cast where even cobel got to kiss a one off male character that we will never hear from or see of again, and the supposed flagship romance of season 1 can't even get that. at what point am I allowed to call that thing in the corner that looks, acts, and talks like a duck a fucking duck?

if it sounds like I'm bitter, and jealous, it's because I am. because whether or not the double standard is intentional or not, it's still there. and I really did think a show that was able to present such special, compelling, meaningful queer characters would be a little more self aware about the message they're sending. and it fucking sucks that this has become just another show where I have to swallow my frustration and accept that they're not writing this for me. I and my fellow queer audience will never be the priority. even now we are still begging for scraps

[louferrignojrofficial]

this cannot be happening.

[landminepeople]

the “hell is empty and all the devils are here” shakespeare quote is a siren call that i don’t think tamsyn muir will be able to resist while writing alecto the ninth

[generalluxun]

You know, there's a lot of (appropriate) focus on Marinette in regards to the Big Secrets, but there is something on the *fallout* side that gets kind of overlooked.

First(briefly) I am fully in the 'It's marinette's responsibility as the protagonist/guardian/ladybug' to tell him. That out of the way...

When it does come out, if it all comes out. Adrien's going to lose his concept of family again.

Nathalie

Felix

Kagami

Marinette

Plagg

They all knew. They were all 'in' on it. His girlfriend. His foster mom. His cousin. His ex/situationship. His kwami.

There's no one he can effectively turn to that isn't already involved. Heck, even Luka is across the oceaan. His entire support system is going to collapse.

(Nino will be a bro but I don't think canon has established 'major emotional burdens' as Nino's forté)

I wonder what they will do. Odds are on a sweep-under-the-rug forgiveness speed run. If not though...

Will Adrien fall victim to Lila shenanigans?

Will he seek help from his one outside friend, Sublime?

Will he seek help from his oldest friend, Chloé?

Will he seek out new friends?

Will he isolate?

I am not saying all of these are good/equal options. I do think all are interesting to explore. Not only that, most of them give Marinette interesting situations to play off of.

The Lila-villain angle is obvious, but gives both Adrien and Marinette the least to work with.

Sublime, perfect Sublime, what a threat she could seem to Marinette, if Adrien were to turn to her. Even if both his and Sublime's intent was pure/platonic, Marinette would struggle I think.

Chloé! Isolated with no friends, only followers online. A sincere desire to be seen as helping, if only because she wants to reclaim lost friendship again. Utterly unequipped to help but trying her best in awful ways. It would let you see the roots of their childhood friendship and give Marinette soooo much to chew on. There's less of the 'steal your man' vibe that might come from Sublime, but *who* it is would add it's own flavor.

New friends would be fun, an entire friend group! Hey, the Quantic kids! They don't even need more screen time than an Aurore or a Mirielle, they just need to exist. They need to provide Adrien with a possibility of a life completely independent from Marinette and her friends. He gets to explore that and Marinette gets to grapple with that idea too. The fear of losing Adrien not *to any one person* but just to ... Another life.

Isolating is the least fun. It gives them both the least to work with. Unlesssss... He goes full time into Cat Noir persona. Adrien vanishes, and Cat Noir starts developing friendships hero-to-civilian with members of the cast. That puts lots of options on the table for who they might be with. Marinette has to grapple with both losing Adrien to ??? And with Cat Noir's new independence and connections.

[post-it-notes7]

Please tell me this will be a happy ending

dearest anon, only time will tell

[niceprophecies]

[whoelsewillihaveicecreamwith]

Khml being cancelled like the burning of alexandria