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mc-critical · 4 years ago

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I was curious since you were just talking about Suleyman sisters. Which one is your favourite and what would you change in their storylines? (Me: I would Sah being in love with Ibrahim and her and Hürrem being enemies, because I truly someone from the imperial family liked Hürrem)

I honestly love all of them. Even though they all share a similar purpose in the narrative on the outset (that is, being antagonists to Hürrem), they have distinct motivations and personalities that always succeed to make them so interesting to analyze.

Despite of that, I have to say that my favourite is Hatice. She's the one who felt most fleshed out, with the widest arrays of personality and relationships and I sympathize with her in nearly every level. While I know that S03 Hatice could turn people off and I could understand why in theory (good flanderization is still flanderization after all and her "Heel Face Turn" could feel underwhelming after Hü's huge E63 victory and it lowkey makes for kind of a soft reset of the show's status-quo, but not only I haven't seen this actually being used in arguments against her, but this is solely a writing problem that didn't even originate from her and wasn't totally fixed until the end.), I felt this was the most logical step in her arc and her development made complete sense, no matter how flanderizing it was and how tragic it ended up being. [poor Hatice :(] I have analyzed her character and why I love her so much as well in more detail here.

The one thing I would change is, again, her spending more time with Osman and Huricihan. The need of having kids was set up as a very important part of her character from the beggining and Osman and Huricihan's birth could've felt as a new wave of hope after the devastating child losses. It felt like they were the start of an entirely new chapter of her life where she could enjoy the company of her kids the way she so wanted to, but the birth of Huricihan and Osman ended up being only the finale of Hatice's worries over her children, a satisfying end to these arcs of hers where she could finally find happiness at last and with this it was over. It wasn't built on at all and this whole angle of Hatice's character was seemingly dropped just like that. While I get that her storyline was very densely packed and they may not have had time, they could've given us a few scenes at the very least, especially in S03B where they would play part in empowering even more Hatice's tragic arc, being a reminder of Ibrahim. Not to mention that Huricihan would've been a much better character if that set-up existed.

I adore Şah Sultan, as well and I actually enjoy her dynamic with Hatice even more than her dynamic with Hürrem, because it tells us much more about who she is. It was so enjoyable to watch these two sisters confront each other on not so few instances, while still loving each other. I love how Şah's ambition contrasts so well with her genuine care for the people she loves (like Hatice and Esmahan) and how her pragmatism could actually get in the way of that care, while we could still see that the two coexist in her regardless. It makes her motivation so interesting to figure out in a way we haven't seen before or after with any other character. Her love for Ibrahim.. while yes, I get that it may seem a little weird, putting so much stuff in their past into another context that could draw the line between "this makes sense" and "how exactly did that happen?", it explains why Şah may have this deep seated resentment to Hatice, it is a nicely used plot-device to drive conflict between them (the conflict set-up in their past that is outside of their clash of ideals and philosophies in the present and near future) and her and Lütfi later. It makes her more interesting, too, because it shows her ability to let go of her feelings when she sees is necessary. Her approach is also very interesting and unique (at least at first) and while I find most of her scenes with Hürrem generic, she was a formidable and effective antagonist. I also find interesting that in rewatch, you do see that out of her and Hatice, it's Şah who is more elitist, interestingly enough. (because while Hatice mostly pulls rank out of ignorance or when she's challanged outright, Şah pulls rank not only in confrontation, but in casual conversations with people around her, as well - E87 is a perfect example of this. She also views the dynasty as something even more valuable that shouldn't ever be touched - her not wanting to fight Mihrimah in the end, even though I'm sure she could've outsmarted her if she truly wanted to, she wanted the most out of anyone in S03B for the dynasty members to have each other's backs and support each other no matter what and she was as ready as Hatice to stand behind what the dynasty represents, but not on a more personal level like Hatice, rather on standing behind its laws and traditions, like Ayşe Hafsa.)

What I would change with her, is that intrigue of hers that succeeded to have Hürrem be exiled for the third time. There's nothing wrong with the intrigue neither writing-wise, nor with Şah's character in it, and I kinda appreciate Hürrem's overspending there as a parallel to Mahidevran's overspending in S02, showing that they're not so different after all in a bunch of cases. But otherwise, the whole thing felt like pointless filler that only repeats some aspect of previous storylines. Yet another harem riot, though not as large in scale, and that almost contrived exile, which served nothing in the end (except for showing how Hürrem has gained a decent network of political allies, but that was shown before the exile, too). I would probably make it a far more complex, but still to the point intrigue, the outcome of which sure wouldn't be another exile for an episode. This also wouldn't have been the ending culmination of Şah's careful plans against Hürrem, either. (Ayaz Pasha's death afterwards was relatively quickly planned in comparison! Like.. c'mon..)

Fatma is my least favourite sister of the sisters, but she certainly has her moments. I love her debut and I love how fun loving she is, I sorta wish we saw even more of that. I actually don't recall a moment where Fatma ever pulled rank on someone in the way Hatice in E26 did and Şah so casually does and if there truly isn't any moment like that, then I love her even more for it. What is even more interesting is how her motivation is a promise made to Mustafa (even though this whole motivation is kinda strange writing-wise, since she's an entirely new character and the devotion to Mustafa could look like something the writers only came up with in the heat of the moment for S04A's bad use of flashbacks and to make yet another antagonist for Hürrem... Fatma could've been next to Mustafa when he was a child in Manisa and she liked him as a child, who knows? That coupled with Mahidevran probably reminding him of Fatma's existence, as well.) and how far she's going to go to fulfill it, even after his death. It all showed a side of hers that is willing to put the dynasty members in intrigue (the way she put Selim and Bayezid against one another and even when she played that game on Mihrimah), an interesting contrast with the other sisters, who would do anything but, at least not so consciously. (I'm referring to Şah's very first scheme against Hürrem, in E85-6) I love how she scolded Mihrimah in E121 and I love how they showed her sorrow for Mustafa's death. (that little scene where she said: "I failed.." was so touching, honestly... It shows how devoted she was to it all) Her relationship with Kara Ahmet is also pretty great.

What I would change with her, is her part in the menopause plot. The episode itself is such a weird and tonal mess, but Fatma there was at her worst and I don't agree with her making fun of Hürrem like this. I get the purpose of the episode and scene, but it still sits wrong with me and since that was our first episode with Fatma, it rendered her a little petty for me when I was first watching. I wouldn't have had Fatma tell it out loud for everyone to hear, I would've probably made her show Hürrem she knew in a confrontation similar to Hürrem and Mahidevran's (hey, a part of their formula could work for once!) between both of them during the entertainment. I would have also given her a little more balanced screentime. In some episodes it was very fine, but in others, it felt like she was more shoved into the background.

About Hürrem having at least one dynasty member to like Hürrem - I agree, it would be a breath of fresh air, to say the least, there should've been this kind of variety. If there is one I would make a friend of Hürrem's (at the most part), that would be Beyhan.

I would have given her more screentime, especially in S01-2, she could be there to advice and support her sisters even more and for them to calm down from the games and intrigues. She wouldn't play such a big role in the story, aside from an arc or two that would be different from working against Hürrem. Her and Hürrem would be usually on good terms, since her emotional maturity would let her understand at least a bit of her side of the story and wouldn't be so quick to accuse her. (as she wasn't when she learned of how Hatice learned about Nigar and Ibrahim) Beyhan can't be fully on board with her, of course, because moments where Hürrem tramples on Hatice's happiness directly or indirectly could put them at odds, but I feel Beyhan's personality and shtick would be the best suited for a friendship with Hürrem of sorts. Since she still wouldn't be part of the throne war, Hürrem would have no reasons to act against her personally, either. (now, S03B could be a problem, but then we could... have her return to her castle permanetly?) It would've been epic if Şah had only her dynamic with Hatice in the story, but I don't think that alone would be enough for the writers, because they sure were searching for someone to replace Ibrahim as a more prominent antagonist until S04's switch of focus and enrichment of storylines.

#magnificent century #muhteşem yüzyıl #muhtesem yuzyil #hatice sultan #sah sultan #beyhan sultan #fatma sultan #ask #librarian-witchling

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sparksflamesembersashes · 4 years ago

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Random musings on 10.18 Find Me

Other Carylers have spoken about the episode and their interpretations of it and what it means for Caryl and their future and I've been sharing those and don't have that much to add to what’s already been discussed. Others have written well thought out and detailed analyses and interpretations and said it way better than I ever could. Most of them have been writing about Caryl forever and I started less than a year ago. I do want to speak to some technical stuff and a few other things, since I never do know when to shut up. Spoilers for 10.18 below the cut.

Brief talk on techie stuff... Wow, the cinematography in the plus six are really taking it up a notch. 10.18 has some of the most gorgeous images in the history of the show. The colors, the framing, and Caryl; separated by a stretch of water that's a literal stand-in for the divide between them, in an episode stuffed with signs and symbols and parallels. "Find Me" has some of the most visually breathtaking shots in the history of TWD... and do you know why? Because the plus six were filmed on digital cameras, for the first time in the history of a show that has always been shot on 16 millimeter film. Turns out, the digital process not only has fewer "touch points" (thanks for nothing, COVID) but it's also cheaper, faster, and easier on the environment.

TWD almost switched to digital for Season 2, and while AK claims now that they can still give it that classic TWD look, in a 2019 interview posted on comicbook.com, she said they were committed to shooting on film to preserve it's look and feel (confirming that film and digital are noticeably not created equal, an opinion/truth they are apparently backing off of, now). If the new episodes look different, its because they are. I am torn between which style I prefer. The grainy, Kodak-y type images of TWD as shot on film are increasingly rare on any screen, simultaneously nostalgic and beautiful and born of toxicity. The gallons of chemicals used in developing standard film are not environmentally friendly and probably need to go the way of the dinosaur.

Digital is wonderful in its own ways, so minute in its details, and can easily capture images and light conditions otherwise incredibly difficult to duplicate on actual film... But digital doesn't look the same, it doesn't feel the same, in the way that CD's and vinyl records don't sound the same. Purists curl their lip at the new and improved version of the medium, but the truth is,most people don't notice the differences.

TWD has always used the sun and the moon to their best visual advantage and both the celestial backdrops show up in "Find Me." The sun filtering through the trees onto Daryl or in his general direction has made repeat appearances in S10. Is this a metaphor for his finally finding his enlightenment? (Or is it nothing deeper than AMC uses the light to make everything look as cool as possible?)

10.18 shows us more of Daryl's soul (in a single episode) than we've seen before. His character goes through all sorts of colors, screaming in the rainstorm, grimacing as puppy Dog licks his face, meeting and spending time with this strange, lonely, gruff, almost mirror reflection of himself, someone who is grieving and angry and alone. Fighting with Carol! A real fight, but an honest and not altogether unhealthy one. You gotta work through to acceptance and let go of the past before you can look forward to a future, and these two have enough trauma issues between them to fill a psychiatric journal. They’ve a long, arduous road ahead of them, but they WILL reach their destination. Together.

Daryl throwing the fish at Leah's door and Leah throwing the fish at Daryl are my favorite moments in the episode. I laughed out loud. I did not get the impression that they only encountered each other once every several months, I took it that the time jumps measured the progression of their relationship, i.e. that it took that long for them to warm up to each other. When Daryl did go to stay at Leah's, it was literally out of necessity, as he was getting frost bitten in the woods and probably would have lost at least a digit or two had he remained in his camp.

For the first time, I didn't really enjoy the Caryl banter? (Please don't hurt me.) There was a sadness, a tension, and a sense of loss there I just couldn't shake. Carol was trying to run away from the horrors of the Whisperer's aftermath, and Daryl knew it, and he was annoyed by it. Carol's attempts at lightheartedness seemed forced. I feel like Daryl is a man with a whole lot on his mind at this point, and that Carol is a woman who is habitually trying not to think about the real stuff if she can avoid it. She jokes and banters but she's almost too cheerful... or maybe it just seems that way because Daryl's so grim. Not grim as in we're-all-facing-our-end-of-days-doom grim, but not in a laughing mood where Carol's concerned. He thinks she's running again, and seeing Leah's cabin reminds him that Leah probably ran from him, too. He lost both his brothers, Rick and Merle. Daryl has abandonment issues and an overdeveloped sense of responsibility going back as far as we know. He loses people and can't find them again, no matter how much he searches.

Revisiting Leah's cabin, the devastation of Alexandria, and everything that's been building up over, about, and because of Carol has pressurized within Daryl till he finally takes a shot, and who can blame him? But he also shows his development and maturity by trying to express his disappointment with controlled words of frustration (compared to camp- or barn-rage Daryl in S2), telling Carol exactly what it is she does that's widening the chasm between them.

Carol to Daryl early in the episode "I don't want to lose you because you can't figure out when to stop," and Daryl to Carol "That's on you. 'Cause you don't know when to stop.") Daryl doesn't know when to stop searching for his lost brother and blaming himself for things, Carol didn't know when to stop her revenge-fueled pursuit of Alpha. Daryl also tells Carol "That's all that matters. You being right." (after she says she was right to go after and destroy Alpha to avenge her son.) At the end of the ep., Carol says it again: "I was right" (this time about their luck having run out), then she goes to fix the door.

So now Caryl know and have established what gets each other's goat. That could be a good thing, but tptb will undoubtedly attempt to convince us its a bad thing,, ya think? Neither of the characters knowing when to stop and their mutual annoyance over the fact could be something the show runners milk for a while.

Î wanted to know whether Daryl went back to the cabin after leaving his note, to see whether Leah had returned to it, or not. I want to know what Carol did with the note. Did she take it with her, or did she put it back? They never showed us. Daryl seemed anxious and tense about her finding it, and I did not miss the symbolism of Carol being the woman who eventually finds the note Daryl left behind years ago: "I belong with you. Find me." I mean, how perfect is that?

Contrary to spoilery bullshit stinking up the Twittersphere, Carol did not seem exactly “upset” at finding the note, though clearly she was sad. She knew exactly what the note was, so Daryl must’ve told her about it, that he left it. Maybe he didn't tell her exactly what it said or everything about Leah, but my impression was that she realized what it was and where they were, and it was all yesterday's news to her. Seeing the note seemed to make her sad for Daryl because she knows Daryl can't handle losing people, and that he punishes himself for failing to help or save people by pushing everybody away and isolating.

Leah didn't so much choose to be there in the cabin as she ran for her life from a dangerous situation and the cabin was just the place where she and her bitten son ended up.

So many yawning gaps in the Leah storyline. How often did they see each other? Did Daryl move in with her toward the end of their relationship? I felt like he did after the time she found him freezing in the woods, but that he'd leave for days to go look for Rick, or hunt, or who tf knows. Maybe he'd leave to see or meet Carol. Carol knew about Leah, but when? Before, or after it was happening? Why is that important? I just want to know when he told her. Really hoping they didn’t leave things purposely vague so they can fill in the gaps to screw with us later.

Timing is everything. Like, how much time passed between Leah telling Daryl to choose, and the time Carol told Daryl she couldn't keep visiting? Or did he leave Leah's cabin and return to it that same day? Which would imply Leah abandoned Daryl practically the instant he walked out the door following her ultimatum. It seems like Daryl was gone a while, it was dark when Leah told him to choose, and daylight in the scene with Carol at his camp and when he was walking in the woods. It could have been days. That makes a difference. Leah was obviously not Daryl's first choice, no matter that he ran back to her in the end.

The fact that Carol knew about Daryl's relationship with Leah is a crafty move on the show runner's part because we can't really be pissed at Daryl if Carol knew about it the whole time and was cool with it.... but we all know now that Daryl didn't tell her everything.

No one is talking about how Leah obviously abandoned Dog, she left him shut in the damn cabin for who knows how long after she left. And she DID leave. The cabin looked abandoned when Daryl left the note. He obviously went searching for her with Dog, but for how long?

Not to say there was nothing between them, but I never felt for an instant that Leah had Daryl's heart, or that he ever offered it up to her in the first place, but I am also 100% sure that’s because I’m ride-or-die for Caryl and can’t bear to entertain the thought. No matter what else they were, Daryl and Leah are isolated, damaged, traumatized people who wanted someone to hold on to. Someone to try and forget with. It's not like there were a lot of other people around to choose from.

So did Leah just leave Dog behind because the memories associated with him were too painful? (i.e. he was born on the day Leah's son died) Or did she feel that Daryl needed the companionship and gambled that Daryl would drop by soon and take him in? It really bothers me that she just split and left the dog locked in the cabin like that.

Grateful they didn't show us anything extra of Daryl seeming to genuinely give a shit, tbh. (Throwing a fish at someone's door, having sex with them, sleeping in their bed or eating their cooking doesn't necessarily constitute giving a shit in this world, just saying.) That was both refreshing (cuz u know, Caryl is endgame), and kind of tragic. I felt like Daryl was rather emotionally detached the entire time, but that Leah was maybe falling in love with him. Not in a good way, but in a possessive, demanding, all-or-nothing type of way.

How very very clever of AMC to leave us with all these ambiguities. So much room for interpretation, so many gaps to never be filled in. Bastards. On the bright side, all these holes in the story and missing material provide endless new opportunities for fanfic writers like me who can't break free of the bonds of canon. So, yay, I guess?

I am sad to give up the virgin Daryl trope, I was beginning to think that one was ours in canon to keep, but you know, it is what it is. It was a good, long run while it lasted, and I'm grateful we got to write inexperienced Daryl fics while we could still entertain the fantasy that Daryl was actually inexperienced. So, R.I.P. virgin Daryl. I'm not as upset about his getting laid as I thought I'd be (although it was incredibly underhanded, AMC, to pull this shit so very late in the game, there better be a good reason for it).

All the Leah thing means to me right now is that our man has probably picked up some skills during his time with her, and Carol's gonna be the ultimate beneficiary. Plus, Daryl's evolved over the years from throwing a fish at a woman's door to delivering her dinner on a tray with a flower, so...progress was made, even if he didn't start out with the woman we wish he had. (News Flash: The love of his life was unavailable and actually married to another man at the time, so there's that.)

There are a staggering number of Caryllels in this episode. Someone once said here that Kang loves her symbolism and they weren't wrong. No matter what's to come, we can be confident about where this road ends. At this point in TWD, to not eventually give us Caryl canon would be the absolute greatest trolling of a fandom in the history of trolling fandoms, and besides, we're getting a spin-off.

Another thing, the fact that Rick and Leah both basically disappeared on him shines a bright light on Daryl's determination to stick to Carol like glue in 10A and B. He was terrified that she was going to disappear on him, too.

What happened to the Caryl fandom following the spoilers wasn't worth it. How many times have we freaked out over spoilers? You think we'd learn. And you KNOW we are valued because AMC went so very far out of their way to provide the vaguest-ever depiction of a sexual encounter for Daryl. Remember the Eugene spying scene with Abe and Rosita, guys? Shane and Lori screwing on the ground in the woods? They could really have tortured us, and they chose to be kind.

I'm looking forward to "Diverged." Honestly, I could give a shit about most of the other characters, but they'll have to make do for us over the next couple of weeks. Just about the time 10.18's been dissected and interpreted to death, Caryl will reappear on our screens and mess with our hearts and minds some more. I can't wait.

Thank you for coming to my rant, and Caryl on!

#caryl rant #caryl spoilers

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mego42 · 5 years ago

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207 Discussion Q’s

shout out and thank you to @pynkhues for putting these together even though she wasn’t gonna be here this week

1. What was your favourite scene of the episode? Tell us why!

obvs the dubby but underrated fav is Ruby and Jane in the closet, idk exactly why but I am starved for the families interacting with each other content (screw the timeline, the most unrealistic aspect of this show is that they aren’t constantly in and out of each other’s houses with ben and sara continually being called on to babysit) so this little snippet makes me levitate

2. Was there any scene that missed the mark for you? And if so, how?

the annie and noah scenes for sure. I mostly feel betrayed bc I really liked them the first time I watched (i have a lot of built in affection for sam huntington let me live) and now I’m like BEGONE FOUL BETRAYER and feel pre-emptive fatigue over annie’s taste in men and how that’s not going to get better any time soon

3. I know time does not exist in the Good Girls universe (or in reality anymore), but let’s start with a timeline question! The implication of the opening montage is that a bit of time has past since Beth strongarmed the partnership with Rio at the end of 2.06. How long do you think it’s been? And more importantly, what do you think these early days of their partnership looked like?

I tend to lean towards at least 2 months, maybe more based on:

the number of shoeboxes and how many times Beth’s shown making a closet deposit

how lived in their annoyance over Beth’s dividing her time and Rio pushing back feels

the implication (at least how i read it) that Rio’s annoyance stems from having to track Beth down which presumably implies they’d grumbled their way into a semi-functional working relationship prior (supported by their ease with each other in 208) and if the montage has only been a month, that would be a maximum of 4 meetings and I don’t particularly think that’s enough time for them to get over being extremely prickly with each other

the fact that Beth goes to Rio for help when Jane’s missing (again, to me implies a longer period of time to get over some of their antagonism than a max of 4 meets)

I imagine their initial partnership went something like Beth being a smug brat about forcing her way in, Rio being deliberately unhelpful and trying to force her to admit she’s in over her head (while still keeping enough of an eye on things that his money isn’t jeopardized), Beth stubbornly refusing to and finding ways to rise to the occasion, Rio being grudgingly impressed, Beth being annoyed with herself for how pleased she is over that. Lather, rinse, repeat until they’ve worn a cantankerous but bizarrely comfortable groove into each other.

meanwhile, Mick, Annie and Ruby are absolutely disgusted by everything happening in front of their eyes.

4. The first scene between Ruby and Turner in this episode is a really dynamic one! It’s pretty clear that Ruby’s afraid of Turner, but what do you think Turner thinks of Ruby?

I think he sees a big cartoon canister labeled "Beth Boland Bait"

5. Taking the kids to the drop was a pretty big mistake! What do you think Beth should’ve done in this instance? Do you think saying no again to Rio was an option?

CALLED BEN OR SARA FOR A BABYSITTING ASSIST. For fucks’ sake.

And yeah, I think she could’ve said no to Rio but he would’ve kept her cut of that drop and, even worse, would’ve been able to hold the fact that she didn’t deliver that one time over her head forever more.

6. The krav maga teacher offers some sage advice telling Dean to not order the hit and instead just divorce his wife, haha. Do you think that he thought the baby hitmen would come through for Dean? Or do you think he was deliberately setting Dean up to get robbed?

I choose to believe the krav maga teacher knew exactly what kind of an idiot Dean was and set him up because the dude clearly had at least two brain cells to rub together and anyone with two brain cells to rub together would never get tangled up in a murder plot with Dean standing on the street corner telling random bystanders in detail how he wants to kill the guy that fucked his wife what do you mean established means and motive Boland.

7. During Ben and Annie’s tense conversation, Ben tells Annie that she’s hard to keep track of - she’s parent mom, cool mom, sketchy mom. In a lot of ways, this feels like a parallel to Ruby talking to Beth in the last episode and calling her ‘drug Beth, gun Beth, human trafficking Beth’. What do you make of this? And how do you think it relates to the show’s themes?

I defer to @foxmagpie’s answer because I like it a lot.

8. The scene with the girls in the house! Tell me all your thoughts please!!!

I love this scene a lot

Beth’s channeling Rio in general but also specifically in 201 you will never ever change my mind

Sometimes I lie awake at night wishing Rio had seen it

Prayer circle that he sees a version of it in s4

Can you imagine the nightmare level of boner he would get? The sheer narcissism!!

Ruby’s obvious wish for new friends is The Most Valid

I really love the main drug den guy, I love Blake Shields’s energy, it makes the scene crackle, and I wish they’d bring him back purely bc he’s gr9

9. Annie meets Noah in this episode! What do you think of their introduction to one another? And how would you rate Noah on the scale of ‘Garbage Annie Love Interests’?

at least he’s not her therapist I guess

10. Beth has two pivotal and emotionally revealing fights this episode - one with Dean and the other with Rio. How do these fights compare? And what do you think they tell us about her respective relationship with them?

UUUNNNNNFFFFFFFF

I L O V E how hard the show goes on Dean’s obsession with Beth and Rio as the primary source of his angst

the fact that he’s trying to rope Stan into murder while looking for Jane who isn’t even MISSING but Dean had NO IDEA bc instead of giving a shit he went straight to HOW CAN THIS BE THAT GUY’S FAULT

I love how clearly they delineate that it isn’t about Beth but specifically about someone else ~*~taking~*~ Beth from him and how emasculated that makes him feel (something something something the storyline opens with the krav maga guy choking him out and then telling him to divorce her and Dean being like I reject your rational and logical solution bc it doesn’t punish the man who touched my property, idk i have a half baked thought there but i can’t pull it out of my brain)

and then it’s all underscored how little Dean’s worried about Beth and her safety by him bringing her work up specifically as a gotcha (which, unless I’m forgetting something, is p much the only context Dean ever brings it up in besides maybe the sit down fight but that’s again, about Beth acting out vs genuine concern)

Meanwhile, this is contrasted with:

Beth flipping tf out at the mere suggestion Rio would ever hurt her children, showing how deeply and instinctively she trusts him in regards to her children aka what’s been established as her Most Important Priority over and over (in the same breath that she rips into Dean for losing Jane in the first place)

which is doubled down on her immediately going to Rio for help

and he is FURIOUS at her, but the thing he leans hard on isn’t how she could have jeopardized the business deal (aka his money, what’s been established as his Most Important Priority over and over) but how she jeopardized herself and how badly she can fuck up if she doesn’t take this seriously

putting himself in a vulnerable position (presumably burning a connect, letting on that Beth means something to him beyond business) to look out for Beth’s emotional well-being

And then, just to drive it home a little further, @sothischickshe pointed out the Beth and Rio fight over Beth’s self preservation is directly paralleled with Stan freaking out at Ruby over the IA stuff because he’s worried about her and I had to go and stare at a blank wall for a few minutes to calm down.

anyway, draw your own conclusions.

11. Ruby takes Jane being missing as an opportunity to try and find evidence on Beth for Turner and, in the process, finds Jane too. How do you think this scene captures Ruby’s moral dilemma? And do you think it’s a satisfying turning point in the Ruby-Turner arc?

I struggle a lot with the Turner and Ruby plot specifically because I HATE that Turner’s ruthlessly leaning on Ruby as the weak link but I’m also ferociously attracted to him so I’m less bothered by it than I feel like I should be so mostly I just try not to think about any of it.

Idk, I see it in some ways as a continuation of Ruby’s fight with Beth and Annie in s1 where Annie said she isn’t blood. They put Ruby on the outside but when push comes to shove, Ruby still puts the two of them above her own family. As far as I’m concerned, Annie still owes Ruby a massive apology for that. Beth I let off the hook a little because by the end of the season she’s ready to turn herself in to make it all go away for all of them (I think, unless I’m misremembering, which is entirely possible bc I don’t think I’ve ever rewatched all of 213)

12. RIO GETS BETH THE DUBBY!! That’s it, that’s the question. Please discuss.

I think a lot about how the gesture is so baldly honest neither one of them can face it either at all (Rio) or without taking a shot first (Beth) which, now that I’ve typed it out, is also an interesting flip of their general MO bc under normal circumstances I’d put Rio down as the one that, of the two of them, is more willing to face stuff whereas Beth’s the one that hides from it.

#gg rewatch #gg 2x07 #gg related #shut up meg

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the-face-in-the-mirror · 6 years ago

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Stranger Things 4 Theory/Prediction: The Clocks Symbolize Memories

Well shit, here we go again.

So obviously everybody has been going off about the recently released Season 4 announcement, with that crazy heckin’ video with the Upside Down, and the clock, and the light in the distance, and all that good stuff. And naturally, people have been making theories, so I decided to make one of my own, using evidence and clues from the announcement trailer, and evidence from previous theories (about the current three seasons) made by other theorists in the fandom.

So, obviously, the most prominent theory in the Fandom at this point (concerning Season 4) is that there’s going to be a time travel element. And I can see how some people would think that, especially with the clock in the trailer, the Twitter account posting the tweet with the clock, Back To The Future in Season 3, and Hopper’s speech mentioning that he wishes he could “turn back the clock.” However, I myself don’t see how this could make any sense, and time travel would inevitably serve to only make the show more unnecessarily complicated and filled with holes, as time travel is not an easy thing to get right and can be portrayed poorly without very careful planning.

My theory, on the other hand, is that Season 4, and all the clues about clocks and turning back the clock, has nothing to do with time travel, but rather Will’s plotline and his relationship with Mike.

Hear me out:

First, let’s examine this still from the announcement trailer.

Obviously this isn’t the best quality, but there are a few key things that we can single out: the clock, the Welcome To Hawkins sign, Will’s bike (in the iconic position that everyone has known since Season 1), and what appears to be a newspaper strewn across it. There’s also the light in the distance which could either be Hopper’s cabin, or Hopper himself, but I’ll refrain from talking about that since that’s not what this theory is about.

So the clock is obvious, and it’s been hinted that we are directly supposed to focus on the clock and that clocks and time have something significant to do with this season, primarily due to this tweet:

Now let’s talk about this tweet.

Again, there’s the clock - this clock coupled with the other clock shows that they’re important somehow, which is obvious by this point. But there’s one thing from this tweet that I never see anyone talking about, and that’s what is placed right next to the clock: an upside-down smiley face.

The announcement trailer takes place in the Upside Down, where we already know time to be somewhat skewed. Mr. Clarke even said himself in Season 1 that the Gate can affect magnetic fields (the magnets and compasses), the environment (the dying crops), gravity, and even time itself. This is very subtly touched on in Season 2 when Will sees the Mind Flayer at his house for the first time, where the clock on the wall is shown to be ticking rapidly - much faster than it should be.

This could possibly be in relation to what has been happening with Hopper and his time in the Upside Down, but again, that’s not what this theory is about.

Now, this is all well in good, but I think it means something else aside from that. And sure, Time Travel theory is slightly plausible, but, personally, I don’t think that’s what these clues are hinting towards at all - or at least not in the traditional sense. So here’s my theory: the clock and all the hints of turning it back have nothing to do with literal time travel, but rather a way of “turning back the clock” that is far more intimate and relevant to Stranger Things itself - memory.

Ever since Season 2, and even in elements of Season 1, memory has played a big part in fighting against the Mind Flayer. While he was in the Upside Down, Will sung Should I Stay Or Should I Go to himself for comfort, clinging to the memory of listening to it with Jonathan to keep himself sane. When Will was possessed by the Mind Flayer it was the memories of his childhood from Joyce, Jonathan, and Mike that allowed him to continue fighting the Mind Flayer as much as he did. The same method is applicable to Billy, who is able to break free of the Mind Flayer’s control when he is reminded of his happiest memory with his mother. Not to mention that El is able to actively look into peoples’ memories, as she does with both Billy and her own mother.

Memory plays an important part in this show, and it especially plays a key role with Will and his relationship with Mike, and how it’s going to develop in Season 4.

Let’s start with my first point: memories being important to Will’s storyline.

Warning: Mentions of abuse and sexual assault ahead.

For the purpose of this theory, I’m going off of @kaypeace21‘s theory that the Mind Flayer represents Will's dad, and that a grand majority of the events on the show represent the past sexual abuse that Will can’t remember due to dissociative amnesia. You can read more about that here and here. Kaypeace does an amazing job on it and goes super in-depth into details I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise, so I would definitely suggest reading it if you haven’t.

Throughout season 2 Will constantly references what he says are “like old memories, in the back of [his] head,” and that his Now Memories from the Mind Flayer are “like when you have a dream” and “you can’t remember it unless you think really hard.” This is quite common with survivors of sexual assault, especially if the abuse occurred when they were children. I don’t think I even need to point out the r*pe parallels of Will getting possessed at this stage, so we’ll move on. The point is that Will’s memories of his abuse are there, he just can’t remember them properly - he’s “forgotten” them, in a sense; stored them so deep in the back of his psyche that he can’t bring them back up - and they’re represented with the Mind Flayer who abstractly plays out scenarios that parallel abuse; abuse that Will has gone through in the past.

So in terms of memory, here’s what I theorize is going to happen:

El - likely with her powers returned - is going to end up looking into Will’s memories, just as she did with Terry and Billy, and he’s going to end up remembering everything he repressed.

This definitely isn’t a pleasant idea, not in the slightest, especially with how that will affect Will in the long run; however, recovering repressed memories through clinical hypnotism is an actual method used by therapists for treating people with dissociative disorders. It definitely isn’t the best method of therapy, and is even known to be controversial due to the possibility of creating false memories, but, at times, it still helps people with dissociative disorders to come to terms with what happened in their past and begin to heal from it. Hypnotism is even slightly related to the show with the concept of MKUltra, even if we never directly see it. You can read more about Dissociative Amnesia and treatments for it here.

And why do I think this will happen? Because of another thing I haven’t yet seen people talking about in their posts concerning the announcement teaser: Will’s bike.

Will crashing his bike in Season 1 marks a moment where everything changes - where he’s dragged into the Upside Down, representing his own trauma as a whole along with El’s. And when his bike is found, that changes everything for both his family and his friends - to realize that something happened to him, that he didn’t just skip school or run away. The (what seems to be) newspaper strewn across it is representative of Will’s life changing as well; suddenly everyone in Hawkins knows who he is. He’s the boy who died in the quarry, and then the boy who came back to life, and people are paying attention to him (both good and bad) whether he likes it or not. He’s the most interesting thing that has ever happened in Hawkins, a mystery, a spectacle, and it’s clear that he hates it. Hawkins has never been welcoming to him, and with the Upside Down and everyone looking at him like he’s even “more of a freak” due to his disappearance, Hawkins is the last place he wants to be welcomed back to.

Will’s bike being in the Upside Down in the trailer shows us that, as hard as he is trying to recover and move on, he’s still stuck in that moment. He’s still between the View-Master slides, both in the Upside Down and not, and as much as he’s trying to move on he can’t, not until he’s finally able to face his abuser (the Mind Flayer/his dad).

This leads to my second point:

How memories are important in Mike and Will’s relationship.

Of everyone that shares memories in the shed in Season 2, Mike’s memory of when he first met Will is the one that really gets through to him, allowing him to break free of the Mind Flayer’s control just enough to send a message. From the camera angles, the lighting, and the acting of it alone, it’s obvious that it’s a very intimate moment between the two of them,

where Mike is at his most vulnerable

to bring Will back -

he’s sharing the most personal memory he has, the one that means the most to him.

And that is significant.

That scene gives us insight into how long Mike and Will have been friends, an indication of

how deep their story goes

, how close they were with each other. It’s not a memory that includes Dustin, or Lucas, or even any of their family members - it’s just them. The scene itself reflects that. They’re close, and they always have been.

And it isnt just that scene either; there are many instances, from Mike going through Will’s drawings after they pull the fake body out of the quarry to a photo - a tangible memory - of the Party (with emphasis on Mike and Will) being what makes Mike realize that El could be the key to finding Will.

Their memories are important to them - their past and their story are important to them; and, therefore, they’re important to the show. Crucial to the show.

Now fast-forward to Season 3, where Mike has done almost a complete 180 and focuses all of his time on El due to his perception that that’s what he has to do - he has a girlfriend now, he’s grown up (in his own eyes), and that’s all that matters. Mike’s main theme in the season is “we’re not kids anymore,” which he says to Will in the carport - Will, who wants to go back to their younger days; Will, who wants to relive a little bit of what he lost due to his trauma; Will, who wants to turn back that clock, who misses playing board games every night, who doesn’t want things to change.

Hopper, in his speech, wishes he could go back to a simpler time where he and El were closer than they are in Season 3 - when they spent more time together, weren’t distant from each other, talked to each other. And that’s what Will wants, too, throughout the entirety of the third season. He wants to go back to a simpler time where he wasn’t distant from everyone, and didn’t have to worry about the Upside Down or the Mind Flayer, or his friends - Mike - leaving him because they’re getting girlfriends and growing up and he’s stuck by himself - the lonely little gay kid in love with his best friend.

And it’s Mike’s words, and Will looking at the picture - the memory - of them from Halloween when Mike promised that he and Will would “go crazy together,” that finally send Will past his breaking point, causing him to rip the picture directly in half, symbolizing the rift between him and Mike.

With all this damage done, Mike and Will are a tattered reflection of what they used to be - what we were told about in Season 1 and what we saw in Season 2 - and Season 3 never truly takes the time to amend it. The end of the season shows that they’re clearly on good terms again (what with Will’s flirting and Mike’s fond smile towards him), but that’s not good enough. Not after that catastrophic fight that led to the destruction of Castle Byers and a clear rift in their friendship - that’s not something you can resolve offscreen.

Therefore, I believe that Season 4 will see the proper reparation of Mike and Will’s relationship.

Finally, they’ll talk. They’ll talk about everything - growing distant from each other, barely talking to each other, and the feelings that both of them, Mike especially, have been trying to ignore for years. They can fix the picture, fix the tear between them; the picture will never be exactly the same, but it’ll still be there, and Mike will retell the memory of when he first met Will, paralleling the scene in the shed, but without the Mind Flayer, and without the impending doom. And through this, they can turn back the clock, go back, in a way, to how things once were. They can recreate a time when they were closer, when it was just the two them sitting on the swings, and they can bring back what was so special about their relationship to begin with.

And with the two of them back together and stronger than ever before, Will can finally fully accept himself as he is, for his past and his present, and face the Mind Flayer (his father) once and for all.

This was a really long theory, and one that took me a bit to fully put together myself, but after a lot of research and rereading of multiple theories from Kaypeace, I think I’ve got something pretty solid here. It’s a lot, especially considering that I’m going off of a singular tweet and a 30-second announcement trailer, and there are a couple things that might be a reach, but I think it still has some weight to it.

Obviously it’s way too early to tell if any of this could be true, so we’ll have to wait for more content, but after all of the theories I’ve read from some of you guys I have no doubt that it’s entirely plausible for some of this theory to be true. Now let’s just hope the Duffers don’t screw us over (which they might, but I will choose to believe they still have half a braincell between them), and pray that we’re on to something. Which, inevitably, we are.

#Stranger Things #Stranger Things Theory #Stranger Things 4 #Stranger Things 4 Theory #st4 #Byler #Byler Theory #Byler Is Endgame #Long Post #Allie Has Thoughts #Allie Has Coherent Thoughts #Look you guys I actually put my braincells together to come up with a thing!#And a thing that even makes sense!#This took me three days to write I'm not gonna lie #You cannot imagine what I went through trying to write and post this it was a fucking mess #Here is the fruit of my struggles!

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eagles-translated · 5 years ago

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I’ve been getting a few asks about the storylines in season 2 and I haven’t had the time to respond to them all yet, so I’m making this post and answering all of them at the same time. Thanks to @elliephunk80 for giving me this idea! 💛🌞

Contains spoilers up till episode 7 of season 2.

I’ll be dividing this couples-wise, since most of my questions seem to be based around the relationships in the new season! They are:

Felicia & Jack Elias & Klara Ludde & Amie Elias & Amie (saving the best for last ofc)

Felicia & Jack

Starting off with Felicia and Jack, which I’m honestly not too crazy about. I definitely like the addition of Jack as a character, but I’m not entirely sure this relationship is a good fit.

In my honest opinion I feel like these two are sort of an odd couple and it hasn’t been addressed by anybody except Elias, who brought up the topic of Jack being Felicia’s old babysitter and how it reminded him of a “sleazy porno”. I wouldn’t go that far, but from what we know there’s a pretty big age gap considering Felicia still isn’t 18 yet and Jack seems to be in his mid-20s.

And I also just don’t see them having that much in common besides them having known each other in the past and both being good-looking people. It just seems sort of strange, and I don’t get what they see in each other for them to be a real couple. It started out as just a hook-up when Felicia was both drunk and high, and it seems to still be more focused on appearances rather than them actually being in love.

I’m also sort of fearful for Felicia. We know she’s in a really vulnerable state right now - still not being over Ludde, having lost her best friend, her parents divorcing, and being back on drugs.

I still don’t know if Jack really is cheating on Felicia with Olivia (the girl that texted him) but I would say he is. Jack is incredibly confident and charming, which makes him able to easily lie and manipulate people. We know he’s not an entirely good person since he’s already lied to Elias about now knowing that Mats would bring him back to Eagles. I wouldn’t be surprised if he really did hook up with Olivia and ended up being a really good liar.

The fact is that not only did he deny it but he then shamed Felicia for blaming him and causing a scene, ultimately shifting the focus in the argument to her and making Felicia feel bad that she even confronted him in the first place. Jack says that maybe they shouldn’t even be together, which causes Felicia to backtrack and apologize. It’s actually pretty impressive how Jack was able to spin that around to blame Felicia and make her apologize. But it’s not a healthy relationship - there’s this toxicity, the age gap, and I just have a bad feeling all around about how it will end. I really don’t want Felicia to spiral even further down.

As for the fight in the season 2 trailer, that could very well be Jack and Elias! Elias is incredibly protective of his sister and if Jack did indeed cheat on her and it came out that would be a pretty plausible reason for them fighting.

This is a very blurry and low quality picture, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was them. In fact, I can’t see who else it would be. At the time of the trailer releasing I was unsure of who it could be since we hadn’t yet seen Jack in any scenes and how he would fit into the story, but now I’m like 90% sure it’s him.

Elias & Klara

Moving onto Elias and Klara, the unexpected couple of the season. They actually have pretty good chemistry in my opinion, even if they’re not really my preferred pairing.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but we have to consider how much time has passed since that incident. It’s been three months since Klara posted that video and it’s been, what, almost five since she filmed it? I know Felicia is still incredibly hurt but the fact is that three months is actually a pretty long time when you actually think about it. You can’t stay mad at someone forever for something they did, and Elias said himself that he doesn’t blame Klara for what she did. She wasn’t the one who cheated on her boyfriend/betrayed her best friend, and it’s pretty clear that Klara holds some regret to the way she posted the video.

Might be getting sidetracked here, but I’m actually not mad at Ludde and Amie anymore either. They’ve apologized and apologized for three months straight (maybe Ludde more than Amie, but still) and there’s just not that much you can do when the person you hurt doesn’t even want to listen or talk to you. Eventually, you just kind of move on. I honestly feel like Felicia was really annoying when she threw food at Amie and told her to be quiet. Like, yes, we get that they both hurt her but the way Felicia acted and the fact that she couldn’t just be the bigger person bothered me and made me sympathize with her less.

Back to the question - I feel like Elias and Klara make a lot of sense and Klara seems to be becoming a better person when she’s with him. She’s not a complete monster. She’s just a teenage girl with a complicated living situation and probably some jealousy issues. Don’t get me wrong, I hated her back in season 1 for being so nasty, but she’s honestly improving as a person.

I agree. I kind of miss Sara but I like that she doesn’t really hang out with Klara as much anymore. I actually wish that Klara would’ve become more ostracized from her school friends to emphasize how alone she is, but she seems to still be pretty popular so that was kind of disappointing. I thought the fall-out of her posting the video would be worse, but I guess not.

Anyway, I like that they’re taking a disliked character and making her into a better person. Feels like it’s been done a few times before, but I still appreciate them doing it. I hated s1 Klara for being so one-dimensional, but s2 Klara is well on her way to being a pretty good and nuanced character.

First off, I appreciate you too! 💛 But I think I actually disagree a little on the whole Klara thing - yeah, she didn’t really “pay” for what she did, but she’s still aware that what she did was wrong and could’ve been done a whole lot better than posting a video for everybody to see.

If Elias likes her and they’re happy together, I don’t see why they wouldn’t work! I don’t want them to be endgame, but so far I’ve liked seeing them together because they have really good chemistry and they seem to understand each other.

Ludde & Amie

Ludde and Amie have kind of grown closer this season, not only because they worked on the demo together but also because they both hurt Felicia. I think they’re both feeling really lonely but they’ve bonded as friends. Notice that I said friends and not as a couple, which I’ll explain down below.

So as we know, Amie kissed Ludde in episode 6 when he was in the hospital after having been injured during the hockey game against Karlskrona. She immediately seemed to regret having done that and ran out without an explanation, leaving Ludde alone and confused.

I honestly don’t think Amie has any romantic feelings towards Ludde. I think she might mistake her feelings for a crush or something, when in reality she’s just lonely and appreciates Ludde always being there for her and giving her compliments on her musical ability. Ludde was complimenting Amie at the hospital, saying she was amazing, and I think Amie was just really touched by that and maybe wanted to thank him somehow, and ended up kissing him. And then she freaked out and left because oh my god did she really just kiss Ludde. It was an uncomfortable and awkward situation and that’s probably why she ran out.

However, I really believe that if she had just stayed to explain and apologize, Ludde would understand and they could’ve just laughed it off. But this is a drama show so of course that wouldn’t happen!

Do I think the writers are making them into a couple? No, definitely not. They know that season 1 was sort of predictable and cliché, so they’re making season 2 as different as possible by including these unexpected pairings such as Klara & Elias and Amie & Ludde. But Amie and Ludde won’t ever be a couple, because Ludde is still very much hung up on Felicia. I don’t see them as a couple either - yes, they have music in common, but they work way better as friends than in a relationship.

I think the kiss was written to 1) be unexpected and throw us off, 2) ensure the viewers that Ludde is still in love with Felicia despite spending so much time with Amie, and 3) to show that Amie is feeling really lonely after having lost her best friend.

I feel like Amie is getting just as much screentime as she did in season 1, though! She’s got a storyline with Ludde and she’s definitely still a main character. Personally I’m really enjoying the way they’ve divided the time this season.

In the first season, Felicia got way too much screentime and I know they did that to show how many things she went through, but because of the short 20-minute episodes that didn’t leave enough time for everybody else. This time around, it seems more fair and like we’re getting more variety in the storylines. With this change, Elias has also gotten more screentime which I love (because he’s my favorite character, duh) and I feel like if Amie got more screentime than she’s already getting, it would sort of disrupt the whole “balance”.

It’s always difficult to make sure that the characters are all getting enough time to develop their storylines so I can understand your frustration. It’s especially difficult with so few episodes.

Unrelated topic, but an example of this would be Mats and Petra. They’ve both had a few scenes in season 2 but at this point, when we’re seven episodes in and they haven’t been in a single scene together, it sort of feels like the writers forgot about their past relationship. It seemed like the writers were going somewhere with them in S01E07 - Road trip, but maybe that was just to parallel Elias and Amie’s relationship? Bringing us to the next and final subject -

Elias & Amie

Man, these two are SO incredibly popular despite having only shared a few scenes in season 1. And don’t be scared if you think the writers forgot about them, because if you saw the Q&A with Stefan H. Lindén who is both the creator and one of the producers of the show he had some really interesting things to say about them.

He emphasized that the writers know how much the fans want to see them together and that they did have plans for Amie and Elias in the future, just that it might take some time because of how the character dynamics are right now after the fall-out of the Halloween incident (and the fact that Elias is currently in a relationship with Klara).

This is totally a valid opinion too! They’re two vastly different characters and while that’s probably the reason they’re such a popular pairing, it could also be a little off-putting to some people since they don’t really seem to have anything in common. In fact, Amie has a lot more in common with Ludde, but I’d actually argue that her chemistry is better with Elias.

I think we should wait until we get more scenes of them interacting though, however long that may be.

All in all, I just wanted to express how excited I was to see the scene in the hospital and how excited Elias was to see Amie (and even complimenting her hair aaaa). He expressed that Amie and Ludde did mess up, but he doesn’t seem upset or mad at Amie at all which was a relief. He just got so adorable around her and I’m really impatient to see them together haha but I have total faith in the writers!

To finish this off, there’s still 3 episodes left so anything could happen. It’s really exciting to see what will happen with Amie in Stockholm and with Ludde having turned himself in to the police, and I absolutely can’t wait for the next episode!

#eagles svt #svt eagles #hope this was interesting to you guys!#if you're one of the people who have sent in an ask about the new season then you might be included in this post so make sure to read it :)

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elixir448 · 5 years ago

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Good Girls 3x03 Thoughts

Right. Well. I’ve kind of been stalling with writing this post just because the fandom is so divided over this episode. This is just my opinion obviously.

Overall, I enjoyed the episode. While I certainly didn’t love certain plot devices that were utilised, I can’t say I necessarily hated them either, which is...interesting.

Opening Scene

Oh my god. OH MY GOD. What an amazing scene. Christina and Manny are FIRE and they killed it!! I have never ever seen two actors with this much on-screen chemistry and I am basically 100% sure that I never will again, which is amazing but also sucks haha.

Rio is just his pettiest, best little shit self in this scene haha. The way he starts just casually asking about her kids and about Jane being the super star forward of the team. I NEED MORE JANE AND MARCUS AS BESTIES RIGHT NOW.

The way Beth just stares at him with those big, blue eyes and then glances away and around them at times. Her terrified, shocked silence. Gosh, Christina managed to convey so much despite only saying two words in the entire scene; she said everything with her face and eyes, her posture and the way her shoulders were set so that she was leaning slightly away from Rio.

The fact that Rio kept the freaking bullets she shot him with, the way he spend a few seconds sorting through them in his hands and knows which one is which, the way he kissed the first bullet. You cannot tell me that he hasn’t had those bullets with him sometimes, that he didn’t take them out in his hotel room and think about Beth, what they were and what she had done to him. Jesus. That’s literally all I can think about now. You know what I need now that the writers brought back the bullets in such an amazing way? THE PEARLS!

Gosh, the way Rio said Don’t. Do. That. The fear was very real in that moment and it felt so jarring; I was kind of thrown back to the scene in 1x08, where Rio grabs Beth by the back of her neck and touches her for the first time. This is the first time he has touched her since his ‘resurrection’ and it’s suddenness was kind of similar to 1x08.

Throughout this entire scene, you can just tell that Rio’s thought about this moment so many times, that he’s thought about how he wants to make her suffer, go through some mental anguish for what she did. He couldn’t just shoot her as she got out of her car, in an impersonal manner, or get somebody else to do it. It definitely would have been easier and more successful. But they have history now and it’s too personal and I love that we can feel that in this scene.

“And then you gotta wait for it and, trust me, that’s, that’s just way worse”. Oh my gosh, Rio’s face, his almost manic laughter and smile, the way it turns into a grimace. The shaky cam. THE SHAKY CAM. I have no clue who was responsible for it but the shaky camera only served to emphasise Rio’s turmoil, his fury and his disgust.

But then as soon as all that turmoil and emotion become obvious, he doubles down and adopts a faux gentle manner again, with his voice becoming soft and placating, his arm around the back of his chair and stroking her hair so gently away from her face. I love that we were all thinking about how face and hair touches wouldn’t be back for a while. But nope. Rio’s out here destroying us all.

And then he stands up and says let’s get this over with and we get a shot of Beth’s face as she looks down, with Rio just standing on the periphery of the screen, hovering around her. I am in love with that shot. To me, it’s so representative of what Rio has been to Beth since they met and started orbiting around one another, never quite able to drift awat from one another. His presence just hangs around her and, even when he isn’t in a scene, Rio casts a very long shadow over Beth’s life and he’s a constant presence, even in her solo scenes. I feel like that is something this season has really doubled down on, whether it’s Beth thinking about what she’s done, interacting with Marcus and Rhea, looking at pictures of fathers and sons, standing and airing her thoughts about death to customers, making light of Rio’s death with the girls and Dean, emulating him and trying to think like him, teaching Annie lessons about being taken advantage of by criminals just like he taught her. Gosh, I think we’d be hard-pressed to find a Beth scene where Rio’s presence isn’t looming over her and I LOVE IT, especially since they’ve had so few on-screen moments together so far.

You can see the split second where Beth decides to lie about being pregnant. Like I said, I don’t love that this is being utilised as a plot device but at the same time I’m not as averse to it as I thought I would be during hiatus. I think part of the reason is that, like I said in the 3x02 thoughts post, Beth can be ruthlessly pragmatic and this is a highly duplicitous, terrible thing to lie about but, in such a desperate situation, it feels very Beth. God, she’s a mess.

I geuinely believe that Rio might have actually killed her had she not lied about being pregnant and Beth knew that. So I get it. I think now that Rio’s being forced to spend more time around Beth, it’s going to make it so much harder to kill her. Like Manny said in his interview “they hate each other but they want to be with each other”. Rio’s probably spent ages nurturing the hatred, fury and betrayal he feels. But once he’s forced to be around her again, I think it’s just going to remind him of all the ways he was attracted to her and genuinely liked her, of their messy history but history nonetheless, of all the ways she looked at him. It’s going to be so painful!!!!

Also, does anybody know what music is playing in the bar? I literally cannot find it anywhere! It’s not on Tunefind or on the season 3 Spotify playlist.

Beth and Dean

Ewwwwwwwwww. Hahahahaha. Omg. The writers did that. They cut away from Rio’s face to Beth and Dean having sex. I just about died.

This episode was such an interesting one for Beth and Dean’s relationship and really served to emphasise that Dean cannot read Beth anymore. She clearly was not enjoying the sex, was doing it with a specific purpose in mind and he just did not care because he was enjoying it too much. It makes me wonder if Dean was used to this emotional and ‘physical’ distance with Beth when they were having sex before Jane was born. The parallel of Beth grabbing Dean’s neck to her grabbing Rio’s neck in 2x04 was so good, especially when you just look at her face in this scene. I went back to watch the bathroom scene in 2x04 haha. I had to cleanse my mind.

Beth is clearly trying her best to be into it, with all the toys and acrobatics she’s having to use to even feign interest. The way that she can’t say that she loves Dean, the slow movement of the camera backwards as Dean walks away, serving to emphasise the distance between them.

I know a lot of people hated that Dean had so much screen time in this episode and, while I think the show could benefit from a little less, I actually kind of loved the scene where he’s out for a run and is working out. It was super funny with the way the scene cut between his blissful, sexed out face working out to Beth frantically checking if there’s any chance she could be pregnant. He’s clearly living his best life and Beth’s trying to further her own agenda. She’s been using him. Like a warm body. A sperm bank.

I saw someone point out the parallel between Dean lying about cancer, paying a doctor to help him, and Beth lying about being pregnant, with a doctor ultimately helping her. And it really is such an interesting parallel because we view both actions so differently. I for one think that what Beth is doing in this episode is horrible but I feel like the fundamental thing that separates her actions from Dean’s is that Beth is literally fighting to preserve her life. Dean just wanted back into the house, to hold onto the idyllic life he had carved out with his stepford wife at home and his chick on the side at work. Does that absolve Beth of her actions? Absolutely not. Does it separate her from Dean, even a little bit? Yes. Are they basically as bad as each other? Yes, but in very different ways.

I am hopeful that the fake pregnancy storyline will end within the next few episodes and that Beth either admits that she isn’t pregnant or Rio finds out himself. But by that point, there’s something else, work-related, that forces Rio, or encourages him, to let her live and to work together again. Gosh, my dream scenario would be Beth screaming at Rio “We both know I’m not pregnant!” but then he doesn’t kill her because there’s a reason why it would be best to keep her alive, like the counterfeit cash or something else crime-related. I do genuinely believe that this storyline won’t continue throughout the entire season, especially since Beth quite clearly says that her lie will only by her 3, maybe 4, months. And look, I know the timeline on the show is a mess. I’ve decided to ignore the inconsistencies because I honestly just don’t care too much and I’d rather not get stressed and frustrated over it.

I loved the argument between Beth and Dean. It was so real and so well done. Beth’s hesitant justification, that getting pregnant “not the worst thing”. In this particular scene, Beth’s actions are the reason for the argument but, as the audience, none of us sympahtise with Dean either. These are two people, who have both done terrible things to each other and to other people, having an arguement about what they want. Dean’s actions are the reason they can’t afford to have any more kids but it’s not like Beth wants anymore either, which has been made clear by her arc over the past two seasons.

In this scene, Dean tells the truth, he doesn’t want anymore kids and Beth continues to lie. Even with this very ‘real’ arguement, she can’t have a discussion with Dean and she hasn’t ever been able to; she becomes defensive and attacks the choices Dean made during their marriage. It’s interesting because while Dean has been Beth’s problem for a while, he’s not really the problem in this scene. Beth lying to Rio is the real problem. Regardless, Dean brushes off Beth’s comment with a “here we go”, just like he did when Beth called him out for cheating in 2x06, to which we responded with “oh, come on”. I’m not gonna lie. Despite knowing that what Beth is doing is so wrong, it felt pretty good to see Dean taken down a notch, where he realises that Beth really just does not care for him as a partner (sexually or emotionally) anymore, just like that scene where she brutally says that she just likes having sex with Rio to emasculate Dean.

The emotional and mental distance between Beth and Dean is further emphasised by Dean feeling that their relationship felt like them again, even though all that had changed was them having sex again. Almost like that’s all he values in a relationship.

I’m kind of confused by everyone saying that the writers are trying to fix their marriage when it seem really clear that Beth and Dean’s relationship has basically been torn at the seams, with the only stitch being the kids now.

Dean and Gayle

Not gonna pretend. I’m not really feeling this storyline. I don’t hate it but I don’t love it either. I’m kind of just indifferent towards it.

In this episode, we see Dean be tempted by Gayle’s offer but ultimately reject it, stating that he wants to focus on his marriage. Gayle, of course, knows that Dean is married but doesn’t care, which says... a lot.

Dean dyes his hair in this episode and it looks ridiculous. I 100% prefer Matthew Lillard with grey streaks haha. That being said, it’s not actually completely clear to me why he dyes his hair and I think that was also purposeful:

1. Is it because of his new-found confidence and bliss, living his best middle-aged male life now that he and Beth are having sex again?

2. Is it because he feels confident following Gayle’s offer and is looking forward to something “different” (which is how he describes sex with other women in 2x05)?

I think it’s interesting that the show is tackling bullying in the workplace. I don’t necessaily love that Dean is the victim, as I find it hard to sympathise with his character and I also feel like I don’t want to see him put in a position of vulnerability if that makes sense because I don’t want to feel bad for his character, who had sex with women at Boland Motors who were inherently vulnerable due to their positions as employee. I get what the writers are trying to do, placing him in the same position that others were in at his workplace, but there are just too many barriers stopping me from wanting to feel bad for him. That being said, I think this is an important topic to discuss in the real world because workplace bullying, sexual harassment and blackmail are such big issues. And anybody can be the perpetrator.

Stan and Krystal

I am pretty sure that Krystal is one of my favourite side characters on this show, which is saying a lot since I basically love all of the side characters, like JT, Tyler, Mary Pat, Lucy. Say what you want about the show and its flaws but the introduction of side characters is not one of them.

I don’t know how many times I’ve said this (pretty sure I keep saying it) but I really want Stan and Krystal to be besties.

Annie’s Therapy

I feel like this particular storyline is still finding it’s feet but I’m excited to see where it goes. In this episode, Annie mainly had to contend with the relationship that she with Beth, who is not just her older sister but has also been her caregiver for most of their lives. It also deals with something that has clearly been a sticking point for Annie for a while now, which is the fact that Beth kind of runs their 3-woman show and ‘calls the shots’. It’s interesting because Annie has had a couple of good ideas over the past 2 seasons but the reality is that Beth is the one who has crossed all the lines that Annie and Ruby haven’t. It’s Beth who gets high on this life and can’t live without it anymore. And it’s Beth who ultimately feels the most responsible for the messes that the three girls get into. She was willing to go to prison in the season 2 finale because she felt responsible for what happened over the past 2 seasons. In my mind, this is what separates Beth from Annie and Ruby.

In this episode, Annie and Beth basically have a quasi power struggle, for example when Beth tells the mover that he can leave but Annie tells him not to. Ruby’s face as she sits between Beth and Annie on the bench and listens to them argue was hilarious!

I love how confused Ruby is by Annie questioning Beth. It’s not just because Ruby has Beth’s back, it’s because it logically makes sense for Beth to deal with the mover, since she was the one who hired him. I’ve seen a lot of stuff floating around on Tumblr, about how other characters are being used to prop up Beth and, while I respect that opinion, I emphatically disagree. I feel like this season has made it so clear that Beth has not been absolved of any of her actions. Not even a little bit. This feels very purposeful on the writers’ part and I’ve written a little more about this in the section below about Rhea and The Clinic (+ Beth and Rio).

Ultimately, Annie comes to feel bad about the fact that she was giving Beth a ‘hard time’, recognising that Beth is under a lot of pressure. Like I said before, I’ve seen some posts about how other characters’ arcs are being sacrificed in order to justify Beth’s thoughts and feelings and that’s a fair enough opinion. I just don’t see it myself. Annie loves Beth and, yes, she gets frustrated with Beth controlling the show and making mistakes that affect all of them but ultimatly they’re sisters. So yes, Annie can call Beth out for all of her mistakes but she’ll also always have her back and empathise with her. As for the broader metaphor being used by Annie’s therapist, I really just think that Annie needed to fully realise that Beth’s actions are not, and have never been, selfish when it comes to her and Ruby. It’s always been from a place of love and maybe it is misguided and too protective sometimes but it’s out of love nonetheless.

I love, love, love the “Auntie Beth” scene, where Annie clarifies took care of her growing up.

The Mover (The Girls’ ‘Employee’ / ‘Partner’)

I love this character. I think he’s such a fun addition and I’m so curious to see what happens with him. Of course, we got the shot of him gagged and beaten up in the season 3 trailer and I’m fairly certain we will get that scene in the next episode or in episode 5. Perhaps it’s Rio and his guys who hold him hostage and beat him up and Beth is taken to him? The spoilers during hiatus revealed that Rio is going to shoot somebody in a van, in front of the girls. With how much this guy talked about his van and how loud his van looks, the fact that Stan and Ruby are saving up to get the van, all the times it was mentioned in this episode, I can’t help but wonder if Rio kills the mover in his van? Before this episode, I thought it would be Boomer but now I’m wondering if Rio actually kills the mover. I’ll be sad to him go if that’s the case.

Rhea and The Clinic (+ Beth and Rio)

As mentioned above, Beth has not been absolved of any of her actions in this season and I think this has been a purposeful move on the writers’ part:

The introduction of Rhea and Marcus means we get to know some very real characters who have been hurt by the absence of Rio in their lives, in other words they have been hurt by Beth’s actions. In the season 2 finale, she ‘murdered’ a father.

• The very purposeful scene where Beth stares at Marcus running away and at a picture of a father with his son. She can’t escape her own thoughts and guilt. There are reminders everywhere, even when she isn’t around Rio’s son.

• The moral dilemma presented by Rhea’s cheque, which Beth agonises over for a whole night and endeavours to pay back as soon as possible. Beth knows she’s a bad person who’s doing bad things

• Beth clearly states in this episode all the reasons why her approaching Rhea was wrong. She literally lists them all out, that it was selfish, creepy and messed up. It’s literally what we, the audience, have been thinking ever since the news during hiatus that Beth would be friends with Rhea in the new season.

• Beth’s pregnancy lie in this episode has also placed Rhea in a terrible position, placing her at the centre of a lie created to fool the father of her child.

Like I said, I don’t love the fake pregnancy storyline but I can appreciate Beth and Rio in an OBGYN clinic. He was so smiley with that pregnant lady who literally just did not clock how scared and uncomfortable Beth was and how insincere Rio was being. He was such a little shit in this entire segment and so gleeful while smiling at Beth, probably feeling 100% confident that she’s not pregnant. Airing out his and Beth’s dirty laundry with the doctor, regarding the date she conceived. Please, please, please do not let that be the last reference to the bedroom scene in 2x09. I need all the references and a flashback scene please and thank you.

It was genuinely so funny to see him look so intently at the ultrasound scan, like wtf she’s preggers?! Lol. But then that look he gave Beth, just before she very slightly smiled at him, where he looks at her with about 10,000 emotions on his face. Gosh, that shot brought me crashing all the way back down. Manny is a brilliant actor. I don’t even know what was on his face, a bunch of emotions that are practically unreadable yet on one of the most open facial expressions we’ve seen from Rio so far. You’re pregnant? You weren’t lying? You are lying? You fucked that husband of yours? What did you do? Why did you shoot me? I hate you but is it enough? I can’t kill you now? Right, I’m going to stop now.

The throwback to season 1 Rio, always on his phone and acting indifferent towards Beth and the girls was great

Also, Beth had me shook in this episode. She’s unbelievably gorgeous.

And to the person who pointed out the fractured artwork between Beth and Rio. You genius. What awesome symbolism and set design!

The Ending

Oh my gosh. I loved this ending. It was an awesome, fun cliffhanger. I cannot believe his real name is Mick (I’m really hoping to learn that his gang name is Demon in this season). From Carlos Aviles’ posts, it looks like we’ll be seeing a fair amount of him this season; at least, I’m hopeful we’ll see him more. We’ve already got a sneak peak centred around him being super polite and practically besties with Beth’s neighbour haha.

I’m super excited and optimistic for 3x04. I’ll l be watching it in basically 24 hours, as I have to be up early for uni and work and stuff and won’t be able to watch until I get home. Cheers to all the spoilers that I will try to avoid but give into eventually!

#nbc good girls

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stagefoureddiediaz · 3 years ago

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Costume Meta 6x05

Sorry its taken me so long to get this posted - things went crazy at work so I ended up working a lot of extra hours which meant less time for writing meta 😭

I found this week really interesting (I need more words for interesting as I use it far too much!!) from an overall theming perspective - the narrative was much more overarching for each character rather than being about individual costumes - with a few exceptions - which I will go into as we get to the relevant costumes! This was probably to do with the structure of the episode and because of this I’m going to to meta in a slightly different way to normal and look at each characters overall look for the episode rather than costume by costume explanations!

One of the things i want to talk about in more general terms is the fact that we now have a new costume designer at the helm - Kenni Wallace - who took over from Alayna Bell-Price at the start of this season. This is the first season where ABP hasn’t been involved in the wardrobe department in any capacity and Kenni has both picked up on the theming and styles that ABP brought to the show as well as bringing elements of his own and adding them into the mix. I have been watching to see how he was going to do things, and I’m really interested and excited to see how things develop over the course of the season. Things I’ve already noticed him doing is playing into overall colour theming more as well as making more use of things like graphic tees etc to get across information - to help with foreshadowing. Its worth my pointing out as a reminder that he will be in the know about all the plot lines for the whole season and will very definitely be playing into that knowledge.

Chimney

Chimney was alternating between plain and check in 6x05, with a fair few connections into Bucks storyline for 6a. We had him in a similar shade of blue to Buck in 6x04 - when Maddie was looking for a nanny - and what was telling was that thematically the two scenes had something similar going on - the idea of saying yes to everything - Magda the nanny (sorry household manager) is the one doing everything regardless of if its actually good for herself or for the Buckley-Han’s. Magda is essentially a cautionary tale for Buck in this instance - saying yes to everything - doing everything without consideration for what others want and need - being an over zealous people pleaser - actually leads to more problems than it solves and ultimately leads to being fired and leaves those involved with trust issues and feeling unhappy. Chimney being in check at the party - when Buck is also in check - only further connects the two storylines - we have Chimney who is conflicted about losing Hen as a partner and Buck questioning if the firefam will lose touch once Hen leaves - sharing similar concerns while at the same moment Maddie is terminating the contract with their Nanny.

The choice to have Chimney in a similar check shirt to Connor isn’t lost on me - because while Chimney doesn’t play on peoples heart strings in the way Connor did in that scene, Hen can sense the loss Chimney is already feeling at the prospect of not having her as a partner anymore - and that plays into her flashbacks in that scene - and it will play a part in her reaching the conclusion that she belongs with the family she helped to build. That is where the connection is to that scene with Connor, and my expectation is that we’ll see how Chimneys support ofHens decision despite his sadness over it will ultimately be contrasted with Connors reaction when Buck is no longer willing or able to be a sperm donor for him - because parallels don’t always have to be complimentary - they can highlight the goodness of one compared with the meanness of another.

Maddie

Maddie starting in a lilac jacket with a very loud heart tee (which I will come back to when I get to Hen because it s connected!). Lilac is a very empathetic colour, as well as being both helpful and welcoming. this jacket is a set up for Maddie’s story this episode - especially the empathy we see her display towards Noah - she might have worn a wire when getting Noah to confess, but it was clear from her body language that she didn’t feel comfortable doing it, and she felt for him when he was arrested - we even had her saying how she could have helped him if he’d come to her about his problems. the welcoming aspect is obvious - she welcomes Magda into her home and life - that neither scenario works out well for the others involved, Maddie learns more about herself and her inner strength.

Stripe theory comes into play with Maddie’s two hoodies and actually the use of the two matching hoodies was a great move. Horizontal stripes meaning changes in direction and we see this play out here - Maddie hiding in the bathtub when feeling overwhelmed by the change in direction her life is taking - with a nanny taking over her home life as well as things being off kilter at work (her two homes being invaded in different ways if you will). Then the same hoodie in a different colour-way representing how she has taken back control of both homes - within the same storyline - a subtle but fun connection showing how just because your life has taken a direction you aren’t happy with doesn’t mean you cant correct course or change it again.

Jee-Yun

@maddiechimneyandbabyjee you asked about Jee’s clothes for this episode and I am here to oblige! the first top is a sage green with a lamb(?) in a black suit chasing butterflies. (its really hard to get a good still of it - she moves her arms too quickly to be able to freeze at the right moment!) Its an interesting choice for a couple of reasons - firstly - the character being in black - with pink coloured socks or boot tops - when we later have Maddie in the same colour ways and then there is the butterflies - a symbol of hope, change and bravery. The fact that the lamb is reaching for them - the suggestion that the change is out of reach in that moment - its foreshadowing Maddies arc with Noah in the fact that Maddie has to be brave in order to gain the truth from him (by wearing a wire) which instigates change and probably also gave her the courage to remove Magda from their lives.

the yellow top with lilac spots and lilac trousers ends the Maddie storyline through colour - it ties everything together and communicates (the yellow) Maddie’s empathy over Jee not getting her park picnic and her ability to make that right - its a really fun way of showing how good a parent Maddie is, because the colours Jee is wearing actually match up to the stripes on the tee Buck is wearing when she teaches him to ride a bike in Buck begins (slightly brighter but still lilac and yellow) and this is the first moment we actively see her doing something parental for Jee and providing something for her that she missed out on - play - in the same way Maddie teaching Buck to ride a bike was the first time we saw Maddie parenting Buck and doing something that allowed him to play.

Bobby

bobby continues his blending into the background by wearing black and dark colours! I was an odd choice for him this week - because of the Hoover storyline so it would have made sense to have him wearing blue or even some browns, but what I think wa t he reasoning behind him being in blacks was that actually this weeks storyline was more about Maddie and Hen - setting up Hen for next weeks episode (as well as Karen) and that is why we only see him in colour for the party scene. It’s the same story for Buck being in Black as well.

The maroon/ burgundy button up shirt was a choice! I wrote an ask reply about the use of Bobby in this colour, which you can read here which lists all the times we’ve seen Bobby in this colour. The conclusion I’ve drawn about what it means when we see Bobby in this colour and especially in a button up shirt, is more to do with concern about one of his family - so if we look at hte times he’s worn maroon button up shirts - meeting Beatrice, Buck coming to dinner, the bomb delivery that puts his family at risk and now Hen passing her medical school test - they are all events when Bobby is especially concerned about one or more of his family - the little laugh he gives when Eddie says ‘We won’t hold it against you when you ghost us’ is indicative of his underlying concern.

Athena

After the bright colours we saw her in in earlier episodes, (as well as the neutrals) we’ve changed tack. The white is perfectly in character for Athena - we she her in it a lot, but the dusty bronze and pink tops from this episode are far more muted. The bronze is supportive and loyal - which is appropriate for the scene - Athena being supportive towards Bobby and Hoover, despite her being allergic. The dusty pink colour is playful and compassionate as well as loving, reflective of Athenas love for Hen, and the playful conversation that takes place about the rehoming of Hoover - something which also highlights her compassionate side.

May

Our one scene with May has her back in stripes - bright orange, red and burgundy ones with black edges - the vest has a hand painted/drawn vibe to it and I really like this as a concept - the suggestion that May is drawing her own new path. But what is also interesting is that, although its not the same costume, it has very similar vibes to Mays vest from 1x02 when May was bunking off school to avoid bullies - just before she overdosed. the fact that they keep referring to her roommates in both of the scenes we’ve seen her in this season, as well as the use of stripes in both scenes is definitely suggestive that we’re going to get a storyline related to her roommates at some point (possibly in 6b), and I wouldn’t be surprised if they want to explore Mays experiences with bullying further - especially now she’s older and has also dealt with Claudette.

Karen

Karen’s overall look for this episode was green - and lots of floral/ foliage print/patterns. The play on growth and renewal as foreshadowing sits perfectly in parallel and companion with Hens outfits. Both Hen and Karen are wearing multiple patterns at the same time - this use of multiple patterns - especially for Hen points to the confusion and craziness of their lives - both currently and in a foreshadowing sense for the upcoming episode.

I do want to pick up on these fabulous pyjamas though. There is a mini theme playing out for HenRen - astrology - and we’ve actually seen it playing out over multiple seasons for them full moon being an important HenRen episode in season 1, Hen being the main one dealing with the psychic woman in 1x10 as well as others instances throughout the seasons. Hen always seems to have important lines or story arcs in the ‘halloween’ episodes - we get to see her superstitious side, the side that doesn’t want to risk angering the gods or fate etc.

We’ve had the Aries jumper from last week (see my 6x04 costume meta for more!) and these pyjamas this week - astrology is all about predicting the future - we read our horoscope to see what tomorrow has in store so having Hen and Karens happiness interrupted by Hoover and his trial of destruction in this episode is some very fun foreshadowing for 6x06 - HenRens happiness at the end of this episode is about to blow up in tomorrow. We also know that Hen is definitely involved in the mystic shop in 6x07 (Cursed) - another halloween type episode and with it coming after tomorrow it will be interesting to see how it plays out - but Hen feeling like her life is cursed in the aftermath and having some sort of encounter at a mystic shop can only be good!

Hen

A lot of red going on for Hen this week - its in every outfit she wears - and this is interesting considering they’ve just changed the title of warning signs to red flag. the outfits this week for Hen are literally her own red flags - signalling to the audience that Hens path through the episode is not the right one. Red, as well as the colour of romance, passion and love, is also a colour of courage, caution and competitiveness and ambition. its very often used to signal danger and it is the most common association with the colour after love.

Much like the use of zodiac and astrology theming, this cardigan Hen wears to her congratulations party, deserves special mention because of the patch on the left breast - the moment I saw it my eyes lit up - because it looks like a heart. It sits in the right position, and the colour choice as well as its shape from a distance all scream heart. The meaning of it is clear - we might be at a party celebrating Hens success, but the fact the conversation is about the potential splitting up of the firefam and the fact we get to see some Hen flashbacks - all point to where Hens heart truly lies - and also plays into the idea of Hen being the heart of the 118.

you can see from the image below that its a logo (the designer is Rhude) and that its styled like a coat of arms, but it also looks a bit like a grenade. This is another example of costumes being used to help with foreshadowing and playing on the double meaning of some things - Hen is about to have a grenade thrown into her life - an explosion (like the thing grenades create!) that results in the the very real possibility of her losing her heart - Karen - and that will have consequences for her future. The contrast with the bright pink heart we see on Maddie’s t-shirt is important - it in many ways connected back to the two heart drawings we saw in season 5 - one anatomically correct and one cartoony. While the second heart imagery (Hens) isn’t strictly anatomically correct, it is closer to the shape of an anatomically correct heart - and both this one and the one Chris drew are connected to school work - completing assignments, while the two cartoon ones are connected to the idea of misunderstanding - In Maddie’s case, its the misunderstanding the nature of their chosen childcare provider, despite undertaking extensive research and references - rather than getting to know the nanny before hiring her - the idea that references don’t provide a full picture of the nature of a person.

Eddie

Eddie’s costumes this episode were super fascinating - so many different choices which tell so much of Eddies story. Seeing Eddie back in a henley - with the top button open - something we haven’t really seen since season 4 (there are two exceptions - the white semi transparent henley worn for the dinner/kitchen scene in 5x11 and the grey henley worn in 5x06 - when he goes home to hug Chris) is a choice which highlights both how far he’s come, but also that he is also the same person in essentials. The other thing with Eddies tops this episode is the gradual lightening of grey - we start of with the darker grey, before moving into the lighter grey tee under the green jacket before the much lighter grey tee at the end when they go to help Marisol out with the repairs to her house.

I already spoke in another post about how this green jacket is similar to a couple of others we’ve seen Eddie in - you can read it here. But the other thing I wanted to draw your attention to is Eddies watch. The watch was continuously present on Eddies wrist in last nights episode - and it was very pointedly directed in both Hen and Karens direction, as well as Bucks as you can see from the images below. @yramesoruniverse sent me an ask about the watch and its focus, so I hope this answers your ask 😎

focused on Hen

Focused on Karen

Again - Karen - not so much as directed at her in this scene, but Eddies watch hand does come into contact with Karens hand when the toy is being handed over

Then we have two moments where its very clearly directed at Buck - even when he goes to drink fro his glass his arm is intentionally angled so that the watch face is Buck oriented and not Bobby oriented.

we never see it directed at anyone else. The fact that this watch is potentially a physical representation of Christopher and the St. Christopher medal, as well as Buck and the will - the tying together of Buck, Eddie and Christopher legally, as well as the fact that the show has put a lot of effort into showing us and building the connection between Eddie and time. We end up with a watch doing a bit of storytelling for us - in this episode the fact that the watch itself focus’s on the one queer couple (who have the strongest relationship) and then later on Buck is very telling. It’s both showing us a connection between the HenRen relationship and Buddie, and foreshadowing the time crunch both HenRen and Buck will be facing in the next few episodes. We’ve been seeing parallels between HenRen and Buddie all season - more strongly than ever before and to the point where we’ve seen less paralleling between Buddie and Bathena or Madney - something we’ve seen in previous seasons. The fact that the show is now using time to focus the parallel on HenRen and Buddie is important and it isn’t about time running out for either couple, its more about the time is coming where decisions will need to be made which will determine the future of each couple. For HenRen we know it’s going to play out, both in ‘Tomorrow’ and in subsequent episodes as they deal with whatever fallout comes from Karen’s lab blowing up while for Buck we know it’s going to centre around the sperm donor storyline and the fact we have the watch connection in this episode is heavily suggestive that Eddie will be weighing in on that storyline before too long.

Buck

We don’t get much time with Buck out of uniform, but the fact that we continue to see him in dark - black - colours speaks volumes for where he is mentally. it also matches up with Bobby and his wearing of a lot of black this week - placing them into parallel with each other. For me that russet top in 6x04 marked the turning point for Buck. If that conversation with Conor hadn’t taken place - if Conor hadn’t played on Bucks insecurities we’d be seeing a Buck in a very different place and in very different colours. As it is, we’re seeing a buck internally spiralling and seeing that visually being represented through the clothing choices.

I wrote a post here all about Bucks black and white check jacket, and I stand by what I said about the specifics of it and its direct connection to the sperm donor storyline. I was also happy to see it paired with the white trainers - Bucks journey is his search for love and family

The final thing to look at is the final Buck and Eddie scene - Eddie in his squirtle shades and the two of the min complementing t-shirts. Like I said before Eddies grey is lighter and this is the only scene we see Buck in a blue grey colour rather than black. It’s interesting the only time we see Buck and Eddie together in this episode (without other firefam members present) we see them in their lightest colours of the episode - showing that when they’re together they’re in a better place than if they’re apart. This I think we’ll see come into sharper focus in the coming episodes as Bucks spiral continues to play out.

I hope you enjoyed reading and thank you as always for your likes, comments and reblogs - I love reading your thoughts etc in the tags - they make my day!

As always tagged people below

@mistmarauder @theladyyavilee @loveyourownsmiilee @leothil @girldadbuddie @kitkatpancakestack @bucksintheroom @lemotmo @trashendence @elishareads @clipboardsandstethoscopes @comfortbuddie @fiona-fififi @name-code-black-widow @prettyboyandthekid @callanee @calyssmarviss @alwaysme @pbandjeremiah @batgrldes @piningpettyeddie @bi-moonlight @spotsandsocks @projectabc @livingwherethesidewalkends @idontshitpostbuttheolympicpark @diazboysbuckley @sweettsubaki @jordxnhennessy @shortsighted-owl @sherlocking-out-loud @ekstasisandangst-main @favouritealias @hearteyesdiaz @gossamerglob @ktinastrikesback @adamrparrrish @princesschez75 @bucksbuddie @oneawkwardcookie @leatherat @moniquekatie @wanderingwomanwondering @trickster-archangel @outrunningthedark @asharadaine @ajunerose @wolfybuckley @neon-d0rk @boohooweewoobuckaroo @talespinner230

#kym costume meta #911 costume meta #911 costumes #kym costume thoughts #kym colour theory #911 on fox #911 #911 fox #911fox #911 spoilers #hen wilson #Karen wilson #maddie buckley #chimney han #jee yun buckley han #bobby nash #Athena grant #evan 'buck' buckley #Eddie Diaz

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unluckyxse7en-moving · 5 years ago

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Can I ask a question? I have been wondering stuff about myself and in the panel where it says "before 'me' disappeared." it stuck out to me. I've never had a good grip on who I am and figured I had to build it. Idk hat that is. Nor do I expect you to answer that. My question is, could you explain it more?

Yes, absolutely, you’re totally welcome to ask! and idk how well I can explain it but I’ll do my best based on my current personal understanding and experience! obligatory disclaimer, many systems have unique experiences and it’s not always consistent or cut and dry from system to system, but if something about this does hit home I encourage you to look into researching it more as you feel comfortable! Also a heads up, I’m going to probably overexplain terms and concepts since I’m not sure what you do know, plus if someone else reading this isn’t familiar I figure that may help them too, so bear with me! ^^ (this got incredibly long and incredibly personal, I hope that’s ok! We’ve found hearing about personal experiences from others always helped give us a way to compare our experience better in ways that medical definitions don’t help with, so we got detailed in hopes it’ll be helpful to someone. heads up, there’s some references to feelings of unreality.)

Gonna try to put this under a cut since it got so long, let’s hope tumblr cooperates!

So admittedly, I was intrigued when you sent this line in, because while I’ve reread this comic a couple times before posting it, I didn’t remember writing a line exactly like that. As it turns out, the writing was meant to say “when ‘He’ disappeared” but it’s really oddly unclear whether it’s an H or an M at first glance compared to the rest of the script? If I’m honest I actually prefer your interpretation better, especially because the ambiguity lends more to the comic’s meaning in retrospect. I’m not gonna say something like ‘oh one of my alters must’ve done that on purpose’ because back then our handwriting was just an inconsistent mess in general and the most involvement we could probably credit to the alters was just one person tried to write that H in their handwriting when someone else was supposed to be writing it. But I thought that was an interesting case of serendipity so I couldn’t help pointing it out lmao

That said, I think your reading actually makes just as much sense in the context of the comic, and is a phenomenon I think I can readily explain that I have had a little experience with. Currently, my system setup is a little bit like an archeological dig. The alters that have surfaced the most, who have been the ones in charge of actions/words/emotional responses/etc, aka ‘fronted’, are all the ones who have formed in more recent years. The ones from years past are further back, and harder to access because we’ve developed a protective setup where the newer alters act as barricades to keep the older ones from being more exposed to trauma, or anything else they can’t handle. At its core, that’s what the function of a system is - to develop other alters who can handle situations more vulnerable parts can’t - but not all systems are built with an onion-layer setup like mine either, so just keep that in mind.

That said, since I’m built with an onion-layer setup, that means most of my system experience is based upon those older alters being shielded and walled up. When you add enough layers, we can’t dig them out again and for us that’s where most of our ‘disappearance’ comes in that we know of. There’s another phenomenon that could cause the ‘disappearance’ effect but we’ll touch on that in a moment. In our case, we just eventually feel so distanced from who “I” was supposed to be, whoever that is. Very few of the ones who have been out in recent months are from older times. We’ve had a small handful who are from our high school years (we’re 25 now), and maybe caught a glimpse of alters older than that once or twice. We very rarely remember much of the time from that far back, and what we do remember feels incredibly detached. Almost more like we saw it in a first person pov movie rather than actually been there. We’ve gone through name changes a couple times by now, and I highly suspect that those name changes are further reflective of our archeological layers and who we decided to try to model our collective behavior around, to try to seem like one whole person.

“Erika” was a girl who behaved one way. “Erin” was someone who behaved another way. and “Cleo” has been our current blueprint for who we’re supposed to be on the outside when being incognito. And what’s interesting is that you mentioned feeling like you had to ‘build’ yourself, because while it’s not so precise or in our control, we’ve approached it much the same way. For each name change it was like different models. out with the old model and in with the new, now introducing Cleo v2.0, with these personality patches and old bugs fixed. Around the time we changed to Erin, we had firmly decided we wanted to put our ‘old self’ behind us and improve ourselves. We had come out of toxic experiences eyes open, and we were terrified of reflecting that internalized toxicity outward. So we took ourselves to the metaphorical workshop, and spent many many years scrutinizing who ‘Erika’ was under a microscope for our faults, our flaws, what made us work that way, so that we could iron out the kinks when introducing ‘Erin’. As we took ‘Erin’ for test runs in college, we would find different flaws and faults that needed fixing, so once we’d accumulated a comprehensive list of those we took Erin in for workshopping and shortly after we dropped out of college, out came Cleo. Our entire life experience from the outside has been a long-running fixer-upper project, and for a while we were proud of ourselves to see the long strides in improvements we’d made upon “myself”, for being so quick to see our flaws and find ways to manage them.

But what was really happening under the hood was, we weren’t actually changing as an individual, cohesive person. We were adapting and forming new alters, or at the very least reassigning them based on who handled what better - so if we had become sick of our short temper, we swapped that alter out so that what normally caused them to respond, would instead elicit someone less volatile and slower to anger. If one of us froze up at the sight of blood, they would be swapped out of the front for someone who had no problems with it. This is why we ended up onion-layering ultimately, to lower the risk of the other alters being in front at poorly timed moments.

So tl;dr for us, a lot of our ‘Disappearance’ of our selves was us trading them out or hiding them away, and most likely encouraging a state of alter dormancy - when alters become inactive for long periods of time. (for some of us we describe it like sleeping - I think it tires us out on a physical level if one alter is active too long, it probably works certain parts of the brain more depending on the alter, but that’s all speculation.)

Backtracking a little - there is another experience that would cause a more definite and permanent ‘Disappearance’ effect. We haven’t experienced it since coming out as a system to ourselves. But we’re pretty sure we experienced it once, or twice, way back when. It’s formally known as Fusion. Fusion is what happens when two or more alters end up “physically” (for lack of a better word) merging together. They cannot separate, and they become an entirely different alter. The new alter often has some elements of their components in terms of personality traits and memories, but also isn’t a complete merging of everything. Memories and emotional attachments can often get lost in the process. This is where the other Disappearance can occur.

We know it happened to us at least once. Somewhere around middle or high school, for no apparent reason, we had developed an acute awareness and fear of Amnesia, and the identity death that would inevitably come with it. We were always scared, what if we hit our head and lost our memory? What would we remember, if anything? Would we get it back? Media always dramatizes amnesia, where amnesiac characters have some twinge, some spark, where they get drawn to things super important to them from before the memory loss. Would that happen to us? What if it didn’t? What if we never remembered the things that mattered so dearly to us? Would we even be the same person anymore?

If you compare that to the concept of fusion, it’s almost uncomfortably spot on. But we had no idea about systems or fusion back then. Which can only mean we had experienced a fusion, and somehow that caused a disturbance in the system that led to that latent fear to hang over our heads, along with the constant feelings of unreality and dreaming that followed us all through high school.

But somewhere along the line, just as suddenly as that fear developed, it just. Dissipated. It’s still a terrifying concept for us. But we no longer obsess over it like we did back then. We also suspect that’s probably related to another fusion of sorts. We have no clue who they were, or who they are now though.

So to tie it all back in, in the comic the ‘Me/He’ disappearing would be parallel to an alter going dormant, or possibly fusing. The characters the protagonist and Tormenter are built around were originally part of a storyline of two separate identities that ended up ‘fusing’ to form a different whole, and while I can’t say the comic is faithful to the scientific or actual experience in a system, since I didn’t know about it at the time, I’m pretty sure it was based on what I had picked up on in my subconscious, so that’s the implications there, inaccurate representation though they may be. I have heard from a few sources that fusion is often the result of a necessary function, to help protect or help an alter that can no longer function or cope the way they have been by creating a new alter that can cope better, so with this understanding, and the direction of the comic, it makes a sort of sense.

These are my thoughts in regards to your question about ‘disappearance’ in the context of the comic based on my personal experiences, I hope it helped! Feel free to ask more or send in followup questions or statements, hopefully now that I’ve given a lot of context I won’t be quite so long-winded haha

#long post #personal #blablablah #osdd #actuallyosdd #actuallyplural #did #anon #versus #gonna make that my tag for the comic and q's related to it!#ask and ye shall receive #ps - sorry i took so long to respond! I've been off all day trying to pack for something fjdgndj

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anorakofavalon · 6 years ago

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The Beauty and the Geek: Why Brutasha Makes Sense

(AKA: An Open Letter of [Constructive] Criticism for Joss Whedon)

I wrote an essay in which I parse through my feelings on probably the most controversial pairing of the MCU. I settled on the relationship making sense, thematically, even though the execution was terrible. Sorry if it's a little long, but I'd love to have a discussion about this with any of you willing to take the time to read it.

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Joss Whedon is great at his job. He’s flawed, like anyone else, but he’s a fantastic writer. I hardly need to remind you of his portfolio, after all. As a matter of fact, his portfolio is so very nearly spotless that his writing flaws come across, at least notably, in only one movie. Avengers: Age of Ultron. You might point out Justice League, but I’m discounting it because while there were flaws there, they weren’t all his, and not all of them were present in unison.

In Ultron, Whedon was pushed to his writerly limits. Understandable, considering that he was burdened with not only following up on the masterpiece that was The Avengers, but he had to do so while taking into account the events of the movies that took place between then and Ultron and where that left the characters. Not only that, he also had to setup the rest of the franchise and introduce a multitude of new characters. Doing any one of those three things is difficult, but doing all of them at the same time while also offering a coherent and enjoyable movie to fans is a monumental task. He did what he could.

One particular weakness of the movie, as pointed out by a large number of people after its release, was the relationship between Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff. Recently, people have warmed up to and adapted to it. But the damage is done. It left the impression on just about everyone that it was rushed and clumsily handled. I agree that it was clumsily handled, but I don’t think that it was necessarily rushed.

I’d like to make an argument for the relationship, and in doing so, maybe offer a critique to Mr. Whedon that might be helpful. My argument is the following: Bruce and Natasha’s relationship in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is thematically sound. It’s a natural step forward in both of their respective arcs, and I believe that Mr. Whedon made an excellent, and conscious, storytelling decision when creating the pairing. (He might even have had it in mind since The Avengers.)

But before I go any further on analyzing why I believe this, I think it’s important to dispel a few common and relatively superficial complaints about the couple. Firstly, some people prefer Natasha to have been with Clint, Steve, or even Bucky. I understand the general sentiment there, but I have contentions against any of these people because they don’t make sense in the context of the MCU. Clint is out of the picture because he has a family, and they are simply best friends, practically siblings to each other. Bucky and Natasha have very little screen time together in which they aren’t fighting by the time Age of Ultron happens. Steve is the most sensical of these options. But Steve and Natasha aren’t compatible people, at least not in the sense of a romantic relationship. Why? Because A.) She explicitly prefers more passive, “dorky” men, B.) Steve is still not over Peggy Carter, C.) Putting them together would be, aside from blindingly obvious, harmful to their wonderful friendship because D.) Steve and Natasha have, up to Ultron, had a very strictly professional relationship. They’re friends.

The other big complaint is simply that Bruce Banner seems to be too old for her. This is a, frankly, ridiculous complaint. Mark Ruffalo is one hot dude, and Black Widow is a fully grown woman perfectly capable of having emotions for whoever she damn well pleases. Somewhat older or not.

And speaking of those emotions, people have been quick to point out that they seemingly developed out of nowhere. I disagree, to a certain degree. The seeds of this have been rooted from the very beginning of The Avengers. Their first interaction was tense and interesting. Subtle things were present. Hints of flirtation (granted, at the time she was trying to manipulate and recruit him into helping SHIELD) were present, and there’s a few visual cues. Particularly when Banner says “I don’t always get what I want” while touching a crib. I recommend re-watching it.

And of course, there’s the entirety of Ultron, where they throw quick glances, outright flirt, and seem to have developed a close relationship via “the lullaby”. But the leap from Avengers to Ultron is quite wide, considering that a few things have happened, and besides, wasn’t she deathly afraid of the Hulk during Avengers? The answer to that is yes. And that’s why it was so jarring for practically everyone, including those of us who have embraced the ‘ship. Presumably, all of their bonding happened during Natasha’s stay in Avengers Tower between Winter Soldier and Ultron. The problem? We didn’t see that. We just saw that she could calm down the Hulk all of a sudden and had a good relationship with Banner.

I won’t defend the execution of this. It could have been smoother, without a doubt, but given the duress that Whedon was under with managing the storylines of literally every other character, I can forgive him. But what I can’t forgive him for is the execution of a few other things concerning the two. Namely, how he handled their conversation in the Barton household and the Ultron kidnapping.

The Barton Household conversation could have been positively wonderful. It was a little off-putting instead. I don’t think it’s a bad conversation mind you, it shows that Black Widow is willing to open up to Bruce Banner in a way she doesn’t usually do with others, and it really serves to humanize her further. The premise is this: Bruce Banner isn’t willing to be with her because he believes that he’s a monster and that he can’t give her a normal life (read: children). Natasha counters with the fact that in her view, she’s a monster because the Red Room made her one. And she can’t have children. The issue is clear: these are two separate, parallel, lines of conversation happening at once, and they get muddled, and viewers got confused accordingly. The way the dialogue was framed had disastrous consequences. Rather than achieving its goal the scene left us with the impression that she thought she was a monster because she couldn’t have children when really what she meant was that she was a monster because the Red Room dehumanized her and turned her into a weapon, and in the process, sterilized her.

While awkward, a lot of people later understood what was meant and the outrage died down. But it didn’t help that later in the movie, Widow was used as a literal damsel in distress when she was captured by Ultron for very little reason. Now, I’m a firm believer that strong female characters should be allowed to have love interests. Love isn’t a weakness. But this moment makes Black Widow seem like merely a love interest. She was helpless and a man had to rescue her. And it was, you guessed it, her love interest. This whole concept was a mistake. It could have been any other Avenger. Because if there’s one thing Black Widow is not -- it’s helpless. (And as a side note, that scene at the Avengers party where he fell on her chest? Ridiculous. Whedon pulled the same trick in Justice League and it was equally un-funny. It harmed his cause more than it helped. Comedy could have made the transition into the relationship less jarring for fans but he approached it in the single worst way possible. Also, the ass shots. What the hell Whedon? Like, I get it, but c'mon man. If you're gonna do it, at least be egalitarian and give us some Hulk booty too. Taika did it.)

All of these things combined gave people a less than spectacular impression of the couple at first, since it consumed both of their respective storylines for the entire movie, but I warmed up to it and so did others. Because despite the execution, I think it makes perfect sense thematically.

It begins in The Avengers. We’re going to briefly revisit the scene I mentioned earlier, where Natasha is recruiting Bruce. At this point we know a few things about them: Banner is relatively in control of the Hulk, but he doesn’t want to “Hulk out”, He is not afraid of Natasha, and finally, Natasha is very much afraid of him. At first she acts unfazed, but when he slams his hand on the table to test her there is genuine fear in her eyes and she pulls a gun faster than he can blink. He smiles away the tension, assuring her he was just testing her. But the power dynamic became clear. At first, Natasha believed she could manipulate him like she did Tony, but with Banner that wasn’t the case. He saw right through her. This remains a constant theme. He could read her like a book.

She’s weary of Bruce for the rest of the film, but it culminates when she faces the Hulk. Mr. Whedon lets the camera linger on her after her near death experience. Natasha Romanoff is shaken. This was incredibly humanizing for her because the Hulk is a force that she is truly powerless to do anything about, which must be an unfamiliar feeling for the world’s greatest assassin. Regardless, when Fury calls her to take down Barton, she walks it off. That encounter grew her character. A character that has remained fairly mysterious thus far except for one single moment, a truly wonderful scene where she manipulates the ultimate deceiver: Loki.

Loki thinks he’s got a read on her, likely because she was being very honest when she told Loki “I’ve got red on my ledger, and I’d like to have it clean.” Loki already knows, playing on her apparently emotional side by saying “Your ledger is dripping red, it’s gushing and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything?”

It’s all a trick, of course, because she pretends to let it affect her. But Black Widow knows how to compartmentalize emotions, and she handled the situation wonderfully. But I don’t doubt that what Loki said was true -- to a degree. That is Black Widow’s chief insecurity: that she is a monster, and she can never be a hero like the other Avengers because of her past.

A few scenes later, after the Hulk Out, Banner wakes up in a warehouse, where an old man is looking over him. The very first thing that he asked was “Did I hurt anyone?”. And that there is his chief insecurity: that he is a monster because he is a danger to everyone around him.

So you have two characters who both have terrible pasts that were forced on them by circumstances entirely out of their control. Both admire each other professionally as well as people. Let’s not forget that Natasha’s first interaction with Banner was of him living in an impoverished country in order to help people. Both are looking to become better than who they are, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Natasha was affected by this. Hulk has caused just as much harm as she has, but Banner is making up for it by healing others. She might feel she can’t do that because her skillset has always been to harm others. That’s why I think she’s one of the most compassionate of the Avengers, and always comforting her friends. Be it Steve at Peggy’s funeral, or Clint in Endgame when she’s the only family he has left. It makes total sense that Bruce and Natasha would turn to each other as friends and confidants. I don’t think anyone else in the group could understand their shared and unique type of trauma. And as Natasha said, “all [her] friends are fighters”. But Bruce is not. In her eyes, he’s a perfectly normal, mild-mannered gentleman. She’s not afraid of him or Hulk by the time Age of Ultron rolls around, but boy is he afraid of himself.

And they both want normality. So they propose running away. A bit on the dramatic side, but I can see why Whedon chose to use this idea. It makes the ending of the film more poignant, when she chooses to have Banner Hulk Out (and I suspect Banner understands why), thus sacrificing their fantasy of normality. Because they’re Avengers. The mission comes first. Still, it was far too melodramatic for my taste and out of character for both of them. Particularly Natasha. And again, it makes it seem like Natasha was Banner's love interest when it really ought to be the other way around, from a storytelling perspective and also because of the nature of the characters. That was a lapse in judgement from Whedon that weakened the presentation of their potential relationship.

I don’t think the relationship will remain completely intact by the time Endgame finishes, but I do think they’ll acknowledge it and give them a proper send off. It might not last, but their relationship helped them grow as characters. It allowed Banner to realize that he isn’t really a monster. That he is useful in his own right. And it helped Natasha get peace of mind. She isn’t a monster either, she’s a hero. And for better or worse, that means she has to do heroic things. Even sacrificing normalcy.

And plus, it's just adorable man.

#brutasha #brucenat #hulkwidow #bruce x natasha #hulk #black widow #bruce banner #natasha romanoff

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msbeccieboo · 6 years ago

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Arrow 7x19 Brain Dump

I didn’t really dig this episode to be honest (see what I did there?! Such lolz 😂). It wasn’t that it was bad, it was just misplaced within the season, and maybe also it just seemed to fall a bit flat after last week? Meh…perfectly watchable though, and I love one John Thomas Diggle, so it was great to see him take centre(ish) stage again!

John Diggle

Oh Diggle…I love Diggle…I miss Diggle…yay to all the Diggle! We finally got to meet another relative of John’s after 34627 years, and it was no other that Winston from Ghostbusters! Dig and Oliver approach General Roy Stewart, who turns out to be Dig’s estranged stepfather, for intel on a flash drive from the Ninth Circle. That he was Dig’s stepdad is news to both Oliver and Felicity, which I think was a real shame; in all these years spent together he’d never mentioned his parents?

Anyway, plot happens, and Dig and the General are kidnapped by Dante, which gave the men an opportunity to work together and to demonstrate the love and the respect they have for each other, which was just lovely! Never in my life did I imagine I’d see Duncan MacLeod electrocuting Winston from Ghostbusters 😂!

The backstory with Dig and his stepfather was actually really poignant. Where Dig had believed the General to be at fault for his father’s death, then promptly swooping into his mother’s and their lives, he actually had been protecting Dig’s father’s legacy for all these years. The General hid the fact that Bio-Papa Dig actually died due to his own negligence, also causing the death of two other Marines, but had allowed Dig and Andy to believe the worst about himself, keeping their father’s memory a brave and heroic one. This is what being a parent is, and Dig is finally able to see him for the good man, and strong father-figure he really was for all these years. The general tells Dig “Every child deserves to believe that his father is a hero, and believing it, you became one.” This is the legacy he has left for John. I did get a bit choked up at this, especially John’s line “If I’m a hero, it’s all because of you, Sir”...my John Diggle heart 😭😭!!

Continued under the cut

David is such a wonderful actor, and if this episode did anything at all, it was showcase this. He gave an interview saying that the story with his Stepfather continues from here…so will we see Winston again? I hope so! Or this may just mean the continued theme of non-blood family i.e. Dig’s eventual adoption of Connor.

There were some sweet moments between Oliver and Dig, with Dig opening up about his step-father and real father. Oliver was there for him, as both a sympathetic ear, and to give some advice. It’s nice to be reminded, and shown, that Oliver and Dig will always have each others’ backs (Dig’s personality transplant in 7a notwithstanding).

However…where was my Delicity??? There was ample opportunity, just wasted…Felicity was right there, she discovered the truth about Dig’s father! Delicity for the taking!! But no 😡 Where was Dyla??? For fucks sake, we have a Diggle-centric episode and Lyla doesn’t’ even get a look-in? Barely a name drop? Or JJ (in the present)?? COME ON PEOPLE!!

My main gripe with the episode was, we could and should have had this storyline for Dig at any other point in this season, or at any point with in the entire series. Imagine this going off in S4 when Dig was also dealing with learning of Andy’s true past as well, or S5 when he was dealing with his guilt over Andy’s death and coming out of the Army again! The story wasn’t fitting for the final run of episodes of the last full season of the show, and also squeezing in end-of-season plot points to Dig’s hard-earned solo storyline was a disservice to his character; he deserved a true standalone episode with no distractions. Also, where the hell was the spartan logo in the credits??? RUDE!

Felicity

Although not as explicitly as last week, Felicity was still a focal point in this episode, hurtling her story towards the end of the season, for Emily’s final episodes 😭😭. I loved seeing badass Felicity (since always😉), pulling a gun on the random Irish Ninth Circle dude! She was so brave, if not a bit reckless, but this is the hero Felicity Smoak has grown into over the past 7 years, and I love her all the more for it! Alena brandishing a keyboard was a hilarious bonus!

Perhaps Felicity’s most heroic act in the episode is destroying her ‘legacy’, Archer (who she refers to as ‘her’…so adorable!!), in order to stop the Ninth Circle from using it to target anyone else. She has a bit of a eureka!moment, when she realises just how dangerous her creation could be in the wrong hands, despite her best intentions for creating it.

Source: smoakmonster

I loved her drawing a parallel between herself and her father (although unfairly, I believe), knowing that in the future she literally pretends to the whole world that she becomes The Calculator, again in the pursuit of saving the city. In the face of this, she says she still wants to leave something behind that is from Felicity Smoak, not Overwatch. My love for this character knows no bounds!

So by the end of the episode we realise that Archer won’t be the basis for Smoak Tech. Seeing Felicity talking Smoak Tech business with Alena was awesome, and I can’t wait to find out what she creates to launch her company, as we know how successful it becomes in the future! I also loved seeing Alena’s faith and encouragement of Felicity.

Source: arrowdaily

Ah Alena…I knew this was too good to be true! Despite her clear love and faith in Felicity, it looks like Alena is not ready to give up on Archer, and will likely rebuild (albeit with good intentions, I still believe). But it looks like Alena will be the one responsible for the Archer program ultimately ending up back in the hands of the bad guys, be it the Ninth Circle, or ultimately Galaxy One. Felicity is undeterred by losing Archer, and knows she has more to give, to create in this world, as she simply says about her legacy “I guess I’ll just have to build a new one” 😍😍

Bonus:

All of Felicity’s helmet-talk in this episode made me giggle! (I’m immature, ok!!)

“John’s helmet just came back online”, and “Madame Helmet” in the flash forwards 😂😂😂

Olicity

The Olicity moments were definitely far more subtle in this episode, as they arguably should be in a Diggle centric episode, but I still would have liked mooooore...I’m a greedy Olicity whore, sue me 😂😂

We got some little hand holding moments, which will just never not make me swoon 😍

Along with the Felicity-patented chest rub 😍

Source: lucyyh 💗

Finishing each other’s sentences 😍

Source: 1-crazy-dreamer 💗

Then just Olicity being a badass vigilante team, saving John, and hacking/breaking into classified government sites 😍

Source: smoakmonster

I would have liked to see more of Oliver’s reaction to Felicity and Alena’s attack; he showed such restraint when checking she’s ok!!

Flash Forwards

I am a big fan of the flash forwards, and I loved them in this episode!! Still missing my boy William though…please come back soon!! The plot was pushed forwards, we got some nice character backstory for Connor, and some quality SmoaknHawke moments. Nice to see the writers can still do some things concisely and effectively!

We opened with Felicity working on the Galaxy One Helmet that Laurel gave to Mia last episode. I adore that despite the many changes to Felicity in the future, she still exclaims “frack”!! In order to get data from the helmet, Mia and Connor need to go in search of a power module. This leads them to the Deathstroke Gang (!!!), where their leader, JJ, is referenced!! JJ DIGGLE GUYS!!!! I can’t believe he ended up one of the bad guys…baby Sara would never!!

Connor opens up to Mia about JJ being his adoptive brother, and former best friend 😭, though they have lost touch ever since JJ went dark after becoming overwhelmed with the expectations he felt pushed on him by Dig and Lyla….whaaaaat???! I can’t wait to meet future Dyla and JJ! I’m so into this family drama already haha!! I loved seeing this talk, and mutual understanding between Mia and Connor, I ship them so hard already! I also liked seeing the softer side of Mia again, she definitely has a gooey centre like her parents…just buried deep 😂

As they are chased out by JJ’s goons we get an epic almost-kiss that had me squealing KISS HER!!!!!

At the end of the episode, Felicity finally discovers that the helmet is one of many that are all interconnected and running the weaponised version of Archer. As they come to realise the implications of this we see the army of Galaxy One soldiers lining up, super chilling! I love where this story is heading, and look forward to seeing these parts of the episode every week!

Oliver/Emiko/Ninth Circle

While Oliver’s love and faith in his family is generally one of his most endearing qualities, Oliver….honey….give it up, Emiko is EVIL. I am so utterly bored of Emiko now. She is a waste of screen time, an unnecessary distraction for Oliver and a drain on my patience 😡

Oliver tells Emiko that Dante killed her mother, that he misled her, that he doesn’t care about her, but that Oliver still does. Oh Oliver 😭😭

By the end of the episode Emiko decides to kill Dante (bye then!), and continue her path as head of the Ninth Circle, now that they are in possession of the experimental bioweapon. So that’s another villain offed this season. Beth and Steven said pre/early S7 in interviews that there wouldn’t necessarily be a big bad this year, which I guess is what they’re going for by killing every attempt at one. Emiko certainly isn’t big bad material herself. The writers seem to be using this season to wrap up Felicity’s story, launch the flash forwards, and set up season 8 (and possibly the crossover?). But in trying to do all of this they are sacrificing this season’s storylines, which is annoying me slightly. At this point in the season we normally have an idea of the trajectory of the final few episodes, but it’s still not really clear. Given that this is the final season for Arrow as we know it, this is super frustrating.

Hmm, for a bit of a meh episode, this still got long…oops!

Thank you to all the wonderful gif makers, as always. You guys rock!! 💗💗

#Arrow #Arrow 7x19 #Arrow season 7 #Olicity #John Diggle #beccie's brain

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elixir448 · 5 years ago

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All the wishes I’ve made during the countdown.

Hialriously, I made the same wish twice, which I’ve pointed out. I started wishing for stuff about halfway through the countdown. Gosh, hiatus was rough. I’m planning on crossing stuff out if they ever happen. Lol, as if. Here’s to a fab season everyone!

0 days – Can we all just be cool please?

1 day – Beth, Annie, Ruby and Rio all together at some point this season. Like in the same scene. I think this is one of the main reasons I miss the drops in season 1.

2 days – More Judith and Beth scenes (totally inspired by what Christina dropped in her interview) where they have thinly veiled yet profound conversations about how much men suck.

3 days – Getaway car scene. I don’t care if it’s the girls or Beth and Rio speeding away from a scene. Or Beth speeding away along. I just think it would be cool.

4 days – Rio playing Turner. I think we all have a feeling that Rio’s going to use Turner to clear the board and it would make a lot of sense.

5 days – Beth not being able to hold a gun. Until the moment where she can.

6 days – Beth and Rio openly yelling at each other, like in 2x07, and getting all in their feels for each other.

7 days – More flashbacks to Beth, Ruby and Annie’s lives. Doesn’t even need to be to when they were kids. I would love to see a flashback to Annie finding out she was pregnancy or Beth going through post-partum depression.

8 days – Beth touching Rio’s tattoo(s). I don’t think this will ever happen but I can dream. Like can you imagine her touching or kissing his neck? Or any of his other tattoos WHEN they have sex again?

9 days – Can I get Beth recklessly driving her car? We saw that chaotic energy in 1x01 but then she just point blank refuses to get tickets haha.

10 days - Beth and Rio in each other’s cars. We had it in 1x05, 2x02 and 2x12 but I want it again! And look, I’m not saying that they need to have sex in each other’s cars. I mean, I wouldn’t say no...it would be nice. It definitely doesn’t need to happen though.

11 days - I seriously doubt this will happen but Beth and Agent Turner having a drink together. I don’t care that they’re antagonists, I feel like they genuinely get such a kick out of each other. I want to see this even if it’s just Beth drinking and Agent Turner crashing her alone time and then he orders a drink too. Give me all the snarky banter!

12 days - Beth and Rio panting against each other’s mouths again. Rio furrowing his brow. Can you believe that they were so overcome that this is what they did in 2x09?

13 days - Protect Stan and Ruby. Manny saying that he’s super excited for Stan’s storyline has stressed me the hell out. Please just let the Hills be okay! I want Stan to have an awesome storyline but I’m not sure I’m ready to see my bbs in pain.

14 days (REPEATED WISH) - Rio pushing Beth’s hair out of her face (haha, he’s not even pushing it away, he just wants to touch her). You know what would kill me? If he reaches towards her and starts to push her hair away and catches himself. And then gets annoyed with her and with himself.

15 days - I really, really, really want there to be a moment where Beth and Rio team up against a common enemy. And we know that’s going to happen in some way from what Manny has said about them being forced to worked together this season. What I mean is, I want there to be a scene where they come together (and it’s not quite forced) and turn on someone and then that person realises they’ve fucked it.

16 days - I kind of wonder what would happen if one of the kids started to clock on to the shady stuff their parents are involved with. Sara had that last year and Sadie kind of had it when she called Annie out for always lying. I kind of wonder if Sadie will question how Annie gets the money to pay for her hormone blocker medication? I guess I want a scene where Sadie realises that something’s not right.

17 days - A scene between Rio and Dean. Oooooffft. Imagine how loaded it would be. Rio resisted spilling the beans in front of Dean at the end of 2x04 because Beth asked him not to. There’s nothing much stopping him now, aside from the fact that he potentially regards Dean as inconsequential and he may want to keep certain aspects of his relationship with Beth to himself. Hmmmm…i’m not really sure. Regardless, I want a scene!

18 days - Oh god. A significant moment where Beth sees the scars on Rio’s chest, from the gunshot wounds she inflicted. I don’t know if this will happen but I can picture it as either:

1. A taunt from Rio to Beth. Him wanting to see the guilt on her face, to drag up the trauma she’s been trying to suppress, to show her that there’s no way she can run away from what she did because he himself is a constant reminder and that he carries the scars that represent what she is capable of, something she spent a huge chunk of their relationship denying.

2. A fragile moment of tenderness, guilt and longing. Omg. Give me Beth kissing Rio’s scars.

19 days - Beth and Rio eating together. Not Rio eating and Beth refusing to eat or them drinking together, although I need more of both of those things too. Both of them eating at the same time in one another’s company. Even if they are angrily eating together haha. I’ll take it.

20 days - (again, inspired by the shooting in the hotel, specifically in the bathroom) Repeat bathroom sex. That’s it. This show loves it’s parallels so give it to me!!!!

21 days - Beth and Rio pushing each other out of harm’s way. Oh my god. There isn’t much I wouldn’t do to make that happen. Imagine they’re being shot at and they start scrambling to push the other person behind some cover.

22 days – (totally inspired by the new info about shooting for 3x09 taking place at the Millenium Biltmore hotel) Beth and Rio somewhere fancy or semi-fancy. Even if it’s just work related, which it definitely would be lol. And then it’ll probably all go to shit.

23 days - I am sooooo excited for the show to dip its toes into “the adult world”. I feel like that sounds patronising but I absolutely don’t mean for it to sound that way. The show deals with a lot of adult concepts, such as misogyny, disillusionment, boredom with the life you’re living etc. And it’s amazing in that it does so in such a dynamic, fun way that doesn’t detract from how serious the issues are but just highlights that a lot of us have these problems but just kind of continue to bumble along living our lives.

What I mean by “the adult world” is related to the strip club that has been theorised to be Stan’s place of employment in season 3. I didn’t really think we would see something like this in GG and it makes me happy that doors seem to be opening into parts of the world we haven’t seen before in the show. I dunno, I just really want to see how it’s included in the wider storyline. Like, will the girls wash cash through it? Haha, I kind of just want to see all 3 of the girls in the strip club and how they act in there.

24 days - Will we ever find out what happened to Beth and Annie’s parents? I really want to know! Are they alive, dead, divorced, together?

25 days - Beth playing piano. I seriously doubt it will ever happen other than in fanfic but I want to see it. And Beth singing. So basically, Beth playing piano and singing.

26 days - A really heartfelt scene where Beth looks at Marcus and thinks of Rio. Maybe sees some of Rio’s traits in him and she just looks and OMG THE PAIN.

Seriously though, who thinks:

(1) Marcus is going to recognise Beth and she will explain to Rhea that she met Rio and Marcus in the park.

(2) The writers ignore the fact that Marcus should recognise Beth and Rhea thinks that this is literally Beth’s first time meeting Marcus.

27 days - Ruby and Annie realising who Rhea is and what Beth is doing. Even though it looks like a great storyline and I’m excited to see it unfold, it’s super unhealthy and deceitful behaviour. I wonder if Rhea will ever find out who Beth really is?

28 days - You know what? Screw it! I want to wake up to the trailer. Bye.

29 days - Ruby and Annie becoming aware of the nature of Beth and Rio’s relationship. Pretty sure I’ve done a wish like this before (wanting Annie and Ruby to call Beth out for feeling relieved that Rio is alive). But I’d really like to see them realise that Beth and Rio’s relationship was far more complex than just sex and eye fucking.

30 days - Beth feeling sad about Rio. Sitting on the couch thinking about him. Lying in bed thinking about him. Going to the park and thinking about him. Standing in front of the fridge and thinking about him. Looking at the picnic bench and thinking about him.

31 days - Rio’s boys knowing what’s up between him and Beth. I loooove it whenever people realise or know what’s going on between the two of them and are either confused, horrified or amused by it.

32 days - Can we meet another crime boss or kingpin? I wonder if that would make the season too crowded since there already seem to be quite a few new characters and a lot going on because of the fallout from season 2. I just really want to meet someone else who is actually dangerous to the girls. I think Rio can be dangerous to the girls, especially now, but he and Beth have a lot of history and that affects how he interacts with her.

33 days - More Gretchen! She was under utilised in season 2. I’m not sure why but maybe they filmed scenes and decided to cut them out after. With everything going on with Rio and Jimmy, it only makes sense that she’ll be in the picture.

34 days - Flashback to Rio teaching Beth how to use a gun. “Just like we practiced.”

35 days - Sadie with Dakota. Annie with Dakota. Nancy with Dakota. Beth with Dakota. Greg with Dakota. I want a baby on the show other than Mary Pat’s!!

36 days - I really, really want a moment where Beth and Rio are standing or sitting next to each other. We had it in 2x03 in the park but they were sitting on different benches haha. We also had it when they were sitting in eachothers’ cars. And again in 2x08 with the picnic bench scene (I could ugly cry just thinking about it). They are so often depicted standing opposite one another (even in 2x04 and 2x09), positioned as though they are semi-antagonists sometimes and as equals at others.

I just want something where either:

1. They are standing next to one another against a common enemy. Like, on the same side. I can picture them joining forces, even if it’s just temporarily, against a common enemy. Maybe even permanently if it’s at the end of the season? (Or season 4?)

2. They are sitting next to one another watching something in front of them. Maybe they’re sitting talking about business and then it shifts into something quiet and content, like watching Jane and Marcus play in the park. And then just turning to look at each other with something on their faces.

37 days - At some point in the season, Rio pushing Beth’s hair off of her face (bahaha, he’s never actually pushing her hair off her face, he just wants to touch her). Maybe it’ll be towards the end of the season when their has been some kind of resolution or tentative healing between them. Or maybe it’ll be because he can’t quite help himself. Or maybe he’ll be in the middle of doing it before he even realises.

38 days - Backstory for how Rhea and Rio met and got together. How much she knows about his life and why they split up. Maybe some info about his family and his real name (I do actually like Christopher now).

39 days - Annie, Ruby and Rio scenes. We were robbed I tell you!!!! I would have killed to see more of them in 2x10 and I’m holding out hope for season 3. It’ll be so interesting, as neither Annie or Ruby shot Rio. And I think they’re going to be really curious as to why Beth and Rio are still undoubtedly going to be orbiting around one another. I just need some scenes where Annie and Ruby are scared but then it shifts into them hesitating to ask him questions and then just borderline interrogating him.

40 days - A major Beth and Dean confrontation. Like, something that absolutely drags all of his wrongdoings out and lays them on the table. If he tries to make excuses, I want her to call him out and absolutely wreck him. If he tries to flip it around and blame her, I hope she completely obliterates him. Fuck that guy.

41 days - Sadie and Sara in scenes together. And like basically parenting the other kids. These two have such strong presences on screen, I need them in a scene together. You know they would kill it. Also, Beth and Ruby are besties and Annie is Beth’s sister but we never really see their kids interact with one another.

42 days - Beth in a dress at least 4 times OR those t-shirts that she wears when she’s in the house chilling (I specifically remember the grey one in 2x07 and the pink one in 2x10). And Rio seeing her all of those times. More up and down looks regardless of what she’s wearing. Can you imagine though? Given the weight of their history, it almost being a habit, can’t quite help himself, doesn’t actually care because he likes looking and it sets her off kilter.

43 days - Dean moving out at some point and a divorce. I mean, all that stuff costs money but please don’t drag it out. At the very least, I need this to happen before the end of season 3. Like, if this doesn’t happen, the chat that Beth and Dean had with the kids in season 2 would have meant nothing.

44 days - An indication at some point that Beth is relieved that Rio’s alive, rather than just scared. Like maybe she says it to him towards the end of the season or Annie or Ruby call her out for looking at him a certain way or for her conflicted feelings, given that he’s probably going to be spending this season terrorising them.

45 days - More Nancy and Annie scenes. Maybe with Annie helping out with Dakota or giving advice. And then Nancy helping Annie navigate stuff with Sadie.

46 days- Beth doing something to protect or help Rio, maybe even save his life. Not because she wants anything in return but because she doesn’t want to see him hurt or in trouble anymore. I low-key think that towards the end of the season she might do something to help him and, as a result, it’s pretty clear that what’s going on between them is more than how fucked up their relationship is inevitably going to be throughout most of the season. Haha, I’m probs wrong though.

47 days- Beth and Rio have angry sex. On a table. Or anywhere really.

48 days - Can Dean just get what’s coming? I’m sorry but it wasn’t enough that he was shot, especially with all the shit he did in season 2. And please bring up the cancer lie. I just need retribution. Anything. PLEASE.

49 days - Actual mental health consequences for Beth after being kidnapped and shooting Rio. There’s no way anyone could walk away from that unscathed, especially since she cared about him. The show’s touched on issues like binge eating and post-partum depression and I’m curious to see if and how they can incorporate anxiety disorders, like PTSD. I need at least one scene where Beth experiences a physiological fight or flight reaction or wakes up from a nightmare or has a flashback or hypervigilance. Just something to acknowledge that it’s normal to walk away from trauma and not be okay afterwards.

50 days - No more paying people off unless it actually makes sense or will work.

51 days – (POTENTIAL SPOILER) An extremely satisfying scene where Boomer dies. From the spoilers, it looks like Rio’s gonna be shooting someone in front of the girls. Please God, let it be Boomer. It would be amazing if he shot Boomer and Annie just had a total non-reaction or wasn’t frightened.

52 days - Please god, Rio interacting with Beth’s kids again and Beth interacting with Marcus. I especially need to see him interacting with Jane since it looks like Marcus is her bestie.

53 days - More scenes with Beth and Turner. For me at least, their scenes were some of my favourites in season 2. The way that Turner’s always chasing after Beth, trying to pin her for something and how she’s always getting away and sassing him. And, oh my god, I really want their reunion in season 3 to be good.

54 days - More context for Rio’s actions. Now that Rio is presumably going to be working with Turner, I feel like we need more scenes of Rio, out with Beth and the girls, for plot progression. It’s fun theorising on Tumblr and reading explanations in fic but I need the show to help him make sense. The show is about the girls and should always be but I need some things to make more sense.

55 days - With Beth becoming her own boss, I really want some doors to open into the dark underbelly of Detroit. I want to meet new characters who are criminals and who the girls have to be really weary of when they’re navigating their new business.

56 days - I really wanna see Annie, Ruby and Beth interact more with each other’s kids but, more than that, I want to see Stan with Sadie and with Beth’s kids because talk about wholesome.

57 days - The return of Beth’s pearls. I don’t even care what the context is at this point but I would die if we had either:

1. Rio using the pearls as a way of fucking with Beth when she thinks he’s still dead / using them to announce that he’s not dead

2. A Rio POV scene where we see him take out the pearls from wherever he keeps them and like touch or hold them and then the show cuts to a scene with Beth (this will never happen in a million years but I can dream)

58 days - A scene where Turner tells Rio about Beth’s lie in 1x05. I kind of picture a scene where Turner is being snarky about it but also failing to hide his curiosity as to whether or not anything ever happened between them. The other scenario I picture this happening in is Turner slowly realising over a few episodes that Rio and Beth had more than just a “work” relationship and he tells the story just to see Rio’s reaction.

#nbc good girls #wishes for season 3 #gg season 3 #beth x rio

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neuxue · 6 years ago

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Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 44

Balefire: the solution to every problem! (Except those it causes)

Chapter 44: Scents Unknown

Huh, with a title like that I’d have expected a Perrin chapter, but we’re back with Rand. This is the Book of Rand and Egwene, it would seem. Which is fitting, given where we are in the story—this is the beginning of the end, and the Dragon and Amyrlin are taking their places, two of the greatest forces on the side of the Light. Of course those storylines parallel each other. In their own particular ways.

Oh wait we’re actually with Nynaeve, but Nynaeve is with Rand so it’s almost the same thing except she feels things like a functional person.

“Tarwin’s Gap,” Rand said, shaking his head. “No. The more I think about it, the more I realise that we don’t want to fight there. Lan is doing me a favour. If I can coordinate an assault alongside his own, I can gain great advantage. But I don’t want to distract my armies with the Gap. It would be a waste of resources.”

He named you friend…

At the same time, this makes sense from a strategic point of view, if we accept that Rand is in fact heading straight for Shayol Ghul. Which comes with its own massive host of strategic…complications…but sure. Fine. I guess we’re doing this.

Does that mean next book is going to be mainly catching up all the other timelines? We’ve touched on a few of them this book but it’s mostly been focused on Rand and Egwene, so it does seem like there’s a fair bit of catching up to do before we’re ready to actually start in on Tarmon Gai’don.

He seemed so emotionless, but she had seen the beast get free and roar at her. It was coiled inside him, and if he didn’t let his emotions out soon, they would devour him from the inside.

Emotions are like dogs: you need to let them out at least twice a day so they can do their business and not wreck the house.

Not that I would know, given that I have neither emotions nor dogs.

(��But Lia,’ you say, ‘you had an emotion just last chapter, on this very blog.’ Lies and slander).

Each day brought Lan one step closer to a fight he couldn’t win.

Are you sure about that? If there’s one character I’d bet on in that situation, against those odds, it would be Lan Mandragoran. In part because he doesn’t look at it as a fight to be won. It’s a fight he has to fight, but he has always expected it to claim his life; he’s not holding anything back, and he’s not looking for a way out, and he has nothing left to lose.

If Lan was going to fight an impossible battle, then she longed to be at his side. But she stayed. Light take Rand al’Thor, she stayed. What good would it do to help Lan, only to let the world fall into Shadow because of a stubborn sheepherder’s stubborn…stubbornness!

Ah Nynaeve. It’s a quiet sacrifice, but not a small one for her. She has almost the opposite problem to Rand: she cares so deeply about so many people. But she can’t just go where she wishes she could; she knows she can’t go to Lan any more than Rand can. It’s a strategic decision on her part as well, even as it hurts her to have to make it. But she’s right; helping Lan does nothing if the Dragon Reborn fails. And so they come to the same conclusion but from entirely different directions.

This, also, avoids the thing I hate most in fictional romance: when it gets in the way and causes problems by making characters do absurdly stupid things In The Name Of Love. I have many issues with the WoT romances, but on the whole that at least is not one of them. Characters are mostly able to put aside their pants feelings when needed, and I appreciate that. Instead, we mostly see the more…plot-positive sides of those relationships, in how they provide support or an anchor or a source of comfort and strength for those involved.

Well, except for Gawyn. But he’s not in this chapter (yet, anyway) so I don’t have to talk about him.

Don’t worry, Nynaeve; Lan is at least not alone. You did well. If Malkier is to die, it will die thoroughly and finally.

“We cannot let the enemy dictate our battlefield. The last thing we want to do is fight where they want us to, or where they expect us to.” He turned his eyes northward. “Yes, let them gather. They seek me, and I shall not deliver myself. Why fight at Tarwin’s Gap? It makes the best sense to jump most of our armies right to Shayol Ghul.”

Um.

Sorry, run that by me again? You can’t let your enemy dictate the battlefield, and you can’t fight where they expect you to, so you’re going to drop yourself right into the epicentre of the Shadow’s power? That makes sense…how, exactly?

Nynaeve’s still trying to convince him to move on Tarwin’s Gap instead, but it all touches too closely on strategy, and that’s…not going to work. It’s too easy for him to dismiss her arguments, to look at Lan’s possible death and a Trolloc invasion as just part of what must be done, as pieces on the gameboard that he can use. It’s too easy for him to retreat into emotionless analysis of the battlefield. You’re going to need to find a different angle of attack, though I’m still not sure what. But something that can appeal to who he was, to the few things he still cares about, as much as he cares about anything. To something he can’t actually let go, no matter how much he’s convinced himself otherwise.

“Rand,” Nynaeve said, her anger fading to horror. “Lan will die!”

“Then who am I to deny him that?” Rand said. “We all deserve the chance to find peace.”

Oh.

I…the worst part is, Lan would not even disagree. He has been functionally suicidal for…his entire adult life, at least, if not longer. His whole life has been wrapped up in his death, in the death of Malkier, in this war he knows he cannot win and has been bound away from by various means but to which he always, always returns in his thoughts. There is no peace for him until he can meet that destiny. He and Rand share that now, more than ever, but that doesn’t make them right.

(You fell off a roof knowing it would mean imprisonment rather than let go when he looked you in the eye and told you to, Rand. But now…now he understands that desire to just fall. To stop fighting and let gravity and destiny take you where they may, and to know the relief of finally letting it all end…)

He actually believed that! Or he was convincing himself to believe it, at least.

Some of both, really. In part it’s just that he can’t let himself hope, so he has resigned himself to death because that way he can let everything else go; if there’s nothing to save it doesn’t matter what he does. But some of it is just that he’s so tired and in so much pain and has been trying to do far too much for far too long, and just desperately wants it to be over. Prophecied hero jobs should at least come with some serious mental healthcare, is what I’m saying here.

“My duty is to kill the Dark One,” Rand said, as if to himself. “I kill him, then I die. That is all.”

Yeah that…still sounds like a terrible idea in approximately every way I can think of. What of balance? What of choice? What of the Pattern, because surely destroying the Dark One in this Age would break the cycle of the Ages past and to come. This is not the sort of series where killing a god is going to end well.

But it suits his current mindset perfectly. A focus so narrow that this looks like victory, a desperation for an ending, a loss of any sense of why, a willingness to let everything else be destroyed in the service of this one purpose. Ending the cycle forever rather than facing this battle again and again (because like his supposed enemy, he now just wants it all to be over). Destroying the Dark One, just as the Dark One plans to destroy the Pattern. It seems like at some point those come down to more or less the same thing. (A world without entropy is just stasis).

Is it really his own conviction? Or is it born of his strange link with Moridin? A path to an absolute ending, rather than one that preserves the endless cycle of time…’When you are victorious, it only leads to another battle. When he is victorious, all things will end’. Is it true reversed? When all things end, is the Dark One victorious? Even if that ending is brought about with his own destruction?

This should have been a place where farmers didn’t need to turn good lumber into quarterstaffs, nor watch strangers with eyes that expected attack.

But the storm is coming, and they must go north. There isn’t anywhere that can hope to remain truly untouched by what is to come, but that doesn’t stop Nynaeve from hating the thought. They need people like her, just as they need those who can accept that price in the name of victory. It’s a balance, of sorts. Someone has to care, and at least try to preserve what can be preserved, and spare pain where possible, and keep in mind that these are the people and the lives they are fighting for, so what good does it do if all of that is lost? Change is one thing, collateral damage is one thing, sacrifice is one thing. But to be willing to write off everything for a scorched-earth victory that leaves nothing behind to rebuild from is…beyond that. Because who does that victory serve, in the end? Except perhaps the one who wants the destruction of everything, that it can be remade in the image of chaos.

The Dragon is one with the land but the Dragon cares nothing for himself, is using himself up and just waiting to die and so why would he treat the land any differently, but to drag it behind him into this same all-consuming battle, with no hope of survival and nothing to save, to claim victory at the cost of everything?

(Self-care is realising that your wellbeing is literally linked to that of the entire world? Man, this hero business sucks).

Nynaeve is still not pleased with Cadsuane’s secrecy regarding her plan for Rand—she could learn something from Egwene, there—but is still trying to work out where Perrin might be.

Wait, she went back to the Two Rivers? That’s…the first time since EotW, and given how much that once meant to her, and how much it has shaped who she is, I’m kind of surprised we don’t get more than a throwaway line implying a visit. That seems like an important thing, for her. Even if it is just to realise how far she has come from Wisdom of Emond’s Field (and how much of that she still carries with her).

Wow, asking Rand? A character asking another character for information? I’m shocked.

Though to be perfectly honest it didn’t even really occur to me that that might be an easy way to find out. I suppose that says something about these characters and transparency.

Of course, it’s too much to hope that Rand would actually tell her.

“I am worried about him, Rand al’Thor,” she said. “He has a peaceful, unassuming nature—and always did let his friends push him around too much.”

There. Let Rand think about that.

“Unassuming,” Rand said musingly. “Yes, I suppose he is still that. But peaceful? Perrin is no longer too…peaceful.”

Wow okay yeah this is fine. That didn’t hurt unexpectedly or anything.

The way he says it so calmly, like it’s little more than discussing the weather, like the changes in his friend don’t affect him at all. He, who once tried to drive both Perrin and Mat and the rest away to avoid hurting them, and then tried to tell himself he wouldn’t use them, and then smiled like a boy when Perrin found him again in Lord of Chaos despite everything else that was happening and just wanted to talk of home. But now…nothing. No worry, no resignation, not even something like amusement or puzzlement or even self-hating satisfaction. Perrin has a beard now and also is no longer peaceful. Those two things carry approximately equal weight.

The Aiel learned, and adapted, quickly. Surprising, really.

Not at all surprising if you’ve been through the glass columns of Rhuidean. Their entire history is one of change, of adaptation, of becoming at every step something new, something further from what they once were, yet holding all the while to some core of identity to keep from being lost.

(‘Lia, you really cannot deny you have emotions when it comes to Rhuidean at least.’ JUST WATCH ME).

This particular crossroads hadn’t been important in years. If Verin or one of the other Brown sisters had been here, they’d likely have been able to explain exactly why.

TOO SOON.

Yes, go talk to Narishma. We haven’t seen nearly enough of him, given how promising his introduction was.

Also, where is Logain these days? I don’t think we’ve seen him since…Semirhage? Why is he not with this group?

“I was a cobbler’s son, Nynaeve Sedai. I know not the ways of lords and ladies.” He hesitated. “Besides, I’m not a Borderlander anymore.” The implication was clear. He would protect Rand, no matter what other allegiances tugged at him. A very Warder-like way of thought.

A Warder-like way of thought, maybe, but if so it’s one with a distinctly Lan-shaped exception.

Also, at least we’re finally dealing with that whole Borderlander situation. Even Narishma doesn’t get what could possibly have brought them here.

“A Borderlander’s place is guarding the Border,” Narishma said. “I was a cobbler’s son, and yet I was trained with the sword, spear, bow, axe and sling. Even before joining the Asha’man, I could best four of five trained southern soldiers in a duel. We live to defend. And yet they left. Now, of all times.”

SAME, NARISHMA. SAME. Seriously, how much of this current clusterfuck could have been avoided if the Borderland rulers—or at least their armies—had stayed put on the Blight like they’ve been doing for the past several centuries? They’d better have a good reason for this but I cannot for the life of me work out what it might be.

So the Borderlanders were told to bring no more than two hundred and instead they sent…one. Everything about this situation is just bizarre.

Hurin!

On second thought, delete that tone of excitement. Rand is not who he was when Hurin knew him and this seems unlikely to go well.

“Why, Lord Rand!” Hurin called, voice uneven. “It is you! Well, you’ve certainly come up in the world, I must say. Good to—”

Oh man wow that one line brings back such a strong memory of…everything about Rand in TGH. Rand when he was still young and uncertain and trying to find his way, Rand when all he wanted was to protect his friends, and counted Hurin as one of those simply because he was there and looked to Rand for help. Rand who tried to tell Hurin he was no lord, and when Hurin didn’t believe it, did his best to act the way he thought a good lord should. Rand when he joined the hunt because he just wanted to help Mat. Rand, afraid of his power but willing to use it for the sake of those he loved and cared for. Rand when he told Ingtar that to abandon Egwene would be to damn himself. Rand when he offered Ingtar redemption and then calmly defied Ishamael and—

It feels like a different character entirely, and this small reunion is such an effective way of forcing that contrast, by evoking the memory of who and what Rand was then and having to place that alongside who and what he is now.

Hurin still calls him ‘Lord Rand’. At one time, Rand was shocked at the title. Now…how long has it been since he’s been called anything but ‘Lord Dragon’? Now, ‘Lord Rand’ sounds almost informal, almost like an odd sort of endearment. Like an appeal to the person he was.

I think part of what makes this work is how…innocent Hurin’s greeting is. As if he doesn’t know everything that has changed since he last saw Rand—which he probably doesn’t. And so he comes into this scene with the assumption that Rand is the same as he was, which forces the reader to, just for a moment, share that perspective, or at least be jarred out of the present by it.

He cut off as he was raised from the ground.

Well that didn’t last long.

Though I can’t blame Rand for asking him a question only he would know the answer to, to verify his identity. And for treating him with uncertainty until then. After the disaster with Semirhage masquerading as Tuon, that’s only common sense really.

But once that’s been established…well, it would be far too much to expect of Rand, as he is now, to be friendly. To share a moment of simple reunion. Or, apparently, to even treat Hurin with anything resembling civility.

Nynaeve felt a stab of pity for the man. He was absolutely devoted to Rand.

Once, that would have meant something.

Poor Hurin. He was so good, and he didn’t ask for any of this, hasn’t done anything to deserve this, and now the man he came to idolise simply because that man was a good person to him is…well. Not.

And while someone like Nynaeve, who has been with Rand for some of the intervening time, at least has the context to understand what has changed and why, Hurin has none of that. He can’t know why Rand has suddenly become…this, or why his Lord Rand is so cold to him or any of it.

Anyway, it’s all incredibly effective use of basically an NPC to evoke a sense of…pain and loss and an even clearer, almost shocking moment of understanding just how much has changed, and what that means. Well done.

“Now that…that’s strange. Never smelled that before.”

“What?” Rand asked.

Probably just the Eau d’Indifference you’ve taken to wearing lately…

“I don’t know,” Hurin said. “The air…it smells like a lot of death, a lot of violence, only not. It’s darker. More terrible.”

A halo of darkness, a scent of violence and darkness, a ta’veren effect that twists things to the darker side of chance, a warp in the air around him…it’s been perceived and described a number of different ways at this point, but it is undeniably there. This aura of death and violence around him, this darkness, this… ‘death and betrayal. It is HIM.’ I think it’s quite likely this is, at least in large part, an effect of his touching the True Power.

Rand is not distracted by this revelation that he smells like death and violence—why would a hero be bothered about that, after all?—so we just get straight to business. Hurin’s here as a messenger to set up the real meeting, but oh wait nope Rand’s not quite done being disturbing.

“I no longer feel anger, Hurin,” Rand said. “It serves me no useful function.”

That’s…fine and normal.

Oh. They want to meet in Far Madding. Somehow I don’t think that suggestion is going to go over too well, for, oh, about a thousand different reasons.

“Well, last time you were in Far Madding, there was—”

Pain? Pain is the word you’re looking for, Hurin. Lots and lots of pain.

(Also a desire to help Lan, which he seems to have misplaced somewhere along the way, so maybe a trip to Far Madding’s Lost and Found could be of use, actually…)

“You’ll have to come inside the protection of the Guardian, you see, and—” Rand waved a curt hand, cutting off Hurin. A gateway opened immediately.

I have such a very bad feeling about this. He doesn’t even respond. Because that’s right, he doesn’t feel anger anymore. Why waste words arguing when he could be moving? But there’s no way in hell he’s about to walk into Far Madding, so…what exactly is he doing? And that’s where said bad feeling comes in.

(And when I say ‘bad feeling’ I mean…uh…feeling that this could go very badly but in a way that I am anticipating with something that is far closer to excitement than dread because as I’ve said, I like this Rand. Don’t judge me).

Rand stopped Tai’daishar, looking across the open meadow toward the ancient city of Far Madding.

Ah, yes, because Rand looking out on population centres has worked out so well in the recent past. This could go very, very wrong.

“They will know we’ve come,” Rand said softly, eyes narrowed. “They’ll have been waiting for it. They expect me to ride into their box.”

“Box?” Nynaeve asked hesitantly.

I get the feeling Nynaeve is also remembering watching Rand look out on a different city from afar. She’s clearly on edge here, afraid to say the wrong thing but also afraid of what Rand might be thinking, of what Rand could do.

“They want me where they can control me, but they don’t understand. Nobody controls me. Not anymore. I’ve had enough of boxes and prisons, of chains and ropes. Never again will I put myself into the power of another.”

Oh how Moridin would laugh, to look upon where the Fisher piece stands, and which side it currently serves. You can’t just…step out of your context like this, Rand. He sees it as being free, never realising that he is just binding himself more tightly and to all the wrong things, trapping himself, letting himself be manipulated into doing exactly what his enemy wants him to do and all the while believing it his choice. He’s trying to force control; a long time ago, he realised the futility of that, recognised that by accepting his fate and his role he could find some modicum of control. He told Mat, then, to stop running. But now…this is just another form of denial. He tells himself he accepts who he is and what he must do, but still he finds ways to fight it.

It doesn’t help that he has been imprisoned and caged too many times; how could he trust? How could he willingly walk into another’s power, when so many times before it has brought him pain? And yet he has to, somehow.

Is that what this is about? Is that, somehow, what the Borderlanders are trying to force, or test?

Still staring at the city, he reached to its place on his saddle and removed the statuette of a man holding aloft a globe.

No. Oh, no.

“Perhaps they need to be taught,” Rand said. “Given encouragement to do their duty and obey me.”

No no no.

(Yes? Maybe? I am a terrible person).

“Rand…” Nynaeve tried to think. She couldn’t let this happen again!

Oh, Nynaeve. How utterly terrifying it must be to watch this with that horrifying sense of déjà vu, and with the knowledge that if he decides to do it again there is absolutely nothing she can do to stop him. Because she’s seen him do it, she’s seen what he is now willing and able to do, she knows how far this could go and knows how close they are to that edge again, knows there is nothing truly holding him back. And yet she has to stop him, because this cannot be allowed to happen, this cannot happen again, and there is no one else here who stands a chance of talking him down.

The access key began to glow faintly. “They want to capture me,” he said softly. “Hold me. Beat me. They did it once in Far Madding already. They—”

“Rand!” Nynaeve said sharply.

He stopped, looking at her, seeing her as if for the first time.

“These are not slaves with their minds already burned away by Graendal. That is an entire city full of innocent people!”

It’s like watching him cross a line and believing it to truly be the last one, and then realising that no, he could still fall even further. Natrin’s Barrow was an atrocity but it could, just, fall under the category of ‘collateral damage’. This…these aren’t slaves to Compulsion, and they’re not even his enemy. These are his own allies, his own people, and here he stands calmly considering their destruction. Because while there apparently are still some lines he has yet to cross, he doesn’t see it that way, and so there’s nothing holding him back. And so this seems like a perfectly reasonable option—quick, effective, certain to make his point.

To see this through Nynaeve’s eyes, watching almost in slow motion as Rand stares at the city (again) and the access key begins to glow (again) and Rand is cold and unreachable (again) and she is desperate.

And somehow, because she is Nynaeve and because, perhaps, she has always felt so deeply and always worn her heart on her sleeve and never been able to make herself not care, because Rand knows this and has entrusted to her the duty of caring where he cannot…something in that manages to reach him. At least enough to get his attention.

She is his conscience, in a way. One last, tenuous check. Because she does still see those lines he has not yet crossed, those lines he is approaching all too quickly, those lines he no longer sees because in his mind he has already crossed the last and is now just in freefall.

What a position to be in, for her.

“I wouldn’t harm the people of the city,” Rand said, voice emotionless.

You say that like it’s obvious but at this current point, it really is anything but, Rand. And it’s not because he has any…aversion to it. It just wouldn’t serve his purpose.

(I have such a weakness for that in a character—that wholly amoral pragmatism that looks like moral limits purely because there are things that don’t make tactical or strategic senseThings that seem to be off the table because ‘even I would never do such a thing’ but really are just off the table in this particular situation because they bring no advantage).

(But it’s not how Rand should be).

“That army deserves the demonstration, not the city. A rain of fire upon them, perhaps. Or lightning to strike and bite.”

This from the man who despaired at having to strike some of his own at the gates of Cairhien, to keep the Shaido from reaching the gate. This from the man who all but wept, sitting in the rain and mud, after Callandor caused him to kill his own army and the Seanchan indiscriminately. This from the man who begged Lews Therin, when he was controlling the weaves, to take a few seconds from fighting Trollocs to put out the fires that were killing his soldiers. Hell, this from a man who didn’t even try violence to put down a rebellion. And now he speaks so calmly of what these allies of his ‘deserve’. As a ‘demonstration’.

“They have done nothing other than ask you to meet with them!” Nynaeve said.

She could not get through to him about Lan, not when strategy and Lan’s own choices were against her, but here…this is different and she knows it, and she desperately needs Rand to know it, and to understand. Or at least to listen to her, and to…trust that she understands something even if he doesn’t. He trusts her to feel for him, to dream on his behalf, to care on his behalf. And so he needs to trust her to do that now, trust her to act as a check on his power. To listen to her and hold back, not because he sees any reason to but because she does and he trusts her to feel the things he cannot, and therefore to know that this is something he should not do. It’s an odd sort of dynamic, but it could just work. Maybe.

Most of what she has going on her behalf here, I think, is that she’s not trying for persuasion or ‘reasoned arguments’ or manipulation of any sort. She’s literally just…begging him. She is desperate, and more empathetic than most could tolerate, and it’s just a raw, naked plea born of that desperation and empathy. Not just for those people, but for Rand himself; even if he refuses to acknowledge what this would do to him, she doesn’t.

That ter��angreal sat like a viper in his hand. Once, it had cleansed the Source.

Wow, that was…an unexpectedly impactful line. Okay. Uh. That came out of nowhere. Damn.

“Rand,” she said softly. “If you do this, there will be no turning back.”

“There’s already no turning back for me, Nynaeve,” he said, his eyes intense.

(Okay, fine, I admit it, I have emotions. Maybe one or two. At most four.)

A few things here. The first is the way Nynaeve’s words imply that it’s a simple fact that there is still a way back, as far as she sees it. She doesn’t even bother to make that point, because it doesn’t need to be made; she takes it as a given. Even after what he has done, he has not yet gone too far. There’s a certain…grace, almost, in how she gives him that implication without even thinking about it, without being asked for it. She does not for a moment think he is beyond forgiveness.

Yet.

And then, combined with Rand’s response, it makes the point I was dancing around earlier: she can still see gradations where all he sees is darkness; she can see lines he has not yet crossed, where all he sees is that last one behind him. She fears for him, because he is approaching the truly unforgivable, while he believes he already is.

The ‘freedom’ he has found is the belief that nothing matters now—that there is nothing left for him to hold on to, that he is already beyond forgiveness or redemption, that he can’t make it worse because he’s already crossed over the last line where those gradations matter, so there’s no point holding back because nothing makes a difference.

Except that morality is relative and Nynaeve does not see those lines the same way Rand does, and so Nynaeve is watching him move closer and closer to the edge of the cliff and is trying desperately to keep him from falling, while in Rand’s own view, he already has.

And so the fact that he believes himself past that point is itself what would enable him to truly cross it; it’s a terrifyingly sharp contrast in just two lines of these viewpoints, and of what it really means that Rand sees himself as beyond the point of turning back. That, almost more than what he’s actually done, is the truly frightening part, and I think this is where Nynaeve really sees that.

“My feet started on this path the moment Tam found me crying on that mountain.”

It’s the issue of agency versus destiny again; Rand is now in a place where not only does he think he’s crosssed all the lines and therefore is free to act as he may because he’s damned anyway, but he’s also in this weird place where, for all that he does consider himself damned by his actions, he almost absolves himself of all responsibility for them.

Or, no, that’s not quite it. He just…absolves himself of all agency and all self at all. He has the freedom to do anything he chooses, anything he deems necessary…and he also has no choice at all, no self he is allowed to claim. It’s a paradox and it makes my brain hurt but it also makes perfect sense, from where he’s standing. It’s like he looked at ‘shoulder all the responsibility’ and ‘take no responsibility’ and ‘find the freedom to act as you will’ and ‘chain yourself to destiny’ and somehow managed to find that one central place in the venn diagram of all those circles where it just maximises pain.

Also…the moment Tam found him crying on the mountain. Could that be what ‘stand on his grave and weep’ is about? I suppose it’s possible but that would feel a little…cheap, somehow, given that we’re only getting that line of the (Seanchan versions of the) prophecies now, and there’s so much else pointing at Dragonmount, but…maybe. Or maybe I was right earlier and this is a form of foreshadowing, which would be fitting.

“You don’t have to kill anyone today. Please.”

He turned to look back at the city. Slowly, mercifully, the access key stopped glowing.

A much more accurate use of ‘mercy’, all things considered.

She’s just…all she has is her desperation and the last threads of a connection to him and she’s pulling him back from the edge of a cliff he can’t even let himself see, and the fact that she manages it, that she manages somehow to reach him, is remarkable. She’s not trying to manipulate, here. She’s not even shouting at him or angry at him or scolding him. It’s just stripped-down desperate pleading, and from Nynaeve, the one he trusts to carry his dreams and his caring and to some extent his conscience, it reaches him.

Maybe because she so easily offered him the forgiveness he no longer lets himself seek. Without even saying as much—just by saying that this would make it impossible, thereby implying that as things stand, it is possible. He may not believe her, but perhaps that was enough to reach some part of him, still. Enough to make him go along with her, to let her hold on to that dream a little longer (to let himself, even if he cannot admit it?)

Anyway, the result is that Rand is now using his words rather than his balefire, to dictate his own terms. Terms that amount to ‘go to the Blight like you’re supposed to or else your great-great-great grandchildren will call you cowards’, but still.

Hurin stayed behind. He still looked shaken. His reunion with ‘Lord Rand’ had obviously been far from what he expected.

Poor Hurin. He did absolutely nothing to deserve this (except be Rand’s friend, once. And now he pays the price for that, as Rand always feared his friends would pay the price for his existence and friendship).

So much for that. We still don’t’ know why the Borderlanders are here, and here they still are, and it’s another negotiation or treaty or whatever you want to call it that he’s just…walking away from.

As Nynaeve climbed off of Moonlight and handed the reins to a ruddy-faced stable worker, Rand walked past her. “Look for a statue,” he said.

“What?” she asked with surprise.

He glanced back at her, stopping. “You asked where Perrin was. He’s camped with an army beneath the shade of an enormous fallen statue shaped like a sword stabbing the earth.”

‘Just look for the giant beacon of symbolism and you’ll find him’.

It’s so…surprising, though. And yet it’s very, very Rand. To unexpectedly offer her this, something she asked for a while ago but now feels out of context, freely, because that’s how his sense of honour works.

It reminds me of that scene between him and Egwene in LoC when just about everything else goes straight to hell but then he answers her questions about Travelling, honestly and directly and with no other motive but that she asked and he knows the answer.

Add to that the fact that he didn’t tell Nynaeve this the first time she asked, and it’s as if he’s thanking her, in the only way he really can at this point, for holding him back. He can’t let himself feel, but he has delegated that to her and she’s doing it and this much, he can give her. Maybe it will help.

Mostly though, this just gets to me because it feels so like how Rand used to be, even for just a moment. Trusting. Helpful. She asked him a question and then all kinds of other things happened but he made a point of remembering it and giving her the answer. There are remnants, still, of who he was and they show up at these odd points and it’s…lovely and so very sad.

Ah. She sees it too.

“Why tell me?” she asked, walking alongside him across the yard of packed earth. She hadn’t expected him to give up the information—he had gotten into the habit of holding onto whatever he knew, even if that knowledge was meaningless.

“Because,” he said, striding toward the keep, voice growing almost too soft to hear. “I…have a debt to you for caring when I cannot.”

I’M FINE.

I could have saved myself some words by just turning the page, because Rand straight-up says what I was thinking, but me being pleased with myself is being crowded out by ‘dream on my behalf’ and ‘I have a debt to you for caring when I cannot’ and Rand still having that strange sense of honour and recognising exactly what he’s doing even if he can’t stop it and yet listening to Nynaeve and knowing how deep his debt to her runs because she does care, and it matters to him that she does, and he knows what he’s lost and what he’s become and I am completely okay with all of this. Totally fine. Entirely unaffected.

It hurts.

But in the best way.

There was a wet scent to the air, the smell of new rain, and she could feel that she’d missed a sprinkle. Not enough to clear the air or muddy the ground, but enough to leave wetted sections of stone in shaded corners.

I see what you did there. The Land is one with the Dragon, after all, and Nynaeve’s weather sense has long since moved into the realm of the symbolic.

I really like this particular example, though. Soft and barely enough to make a noticeable change, not enough to ‘clear the air’, but it’s something. Rand telling her where Perrin is, after he’s destroyed one fortress with balefire and nearly destroyed a city and still thinks he is beyond redemption and therefore beyond limits, is…a small step, and perhaps not even a step, but it’s something.

Also, for all that in my head Rand is linked with the wind because that’s what we start every book with, and it is itself linked to the notion of beginnings and endings and something pervasive and all-reaching, we do see Rand linked to rain as well at significant moments. Bringing rain to the Waste as he declared himself, and water to the fountains of Rhuidean before he leaves. Letting the rain fall on him as he recognises his failure outside of Ebou Dar. ‘I am the storm’. But here it’s not a storm, nothing dramatic, just a barely-noticeable fall of new rain.

Time to report to Cadsuane.

Cadsuane herself was speaking quietly to Min, whom she had all but appropriated in recent days. Min herself didn’t seem to mind, perhaps because it wasn’t easy to spend time with Rand these days. Nynaeve felt a stab of sympathy for the girl. Nynaeve only had to deal with Rand as a friend; all of this would be much harsher on the one who shared his heart.

And that Min of all people has reached that point, that even she who has stayed by Rand’s side through just about everything in the last several books is finding it painful to be near him, is telling.

Yet it’s Nynaeve who Rand relies on to care when he cannot. His friend, not his lover. It’s a different sort of bond, and a different sort of anchor, but in this case no less…strong, or valuable. Or maybe that’s just me projecting.

Cadsuane manages the sort of dismissive compliments only she can, and still doesn’t want to talk about her plans. Maybe she and Egwene should have a chat about the values of transparency.

“You’d hold this knowledge back, even if it means the lives of those you hold dear?”

Really, Cadsuane, one could ask you the same thing. But secrecy and evasion are hard habits to break.

“Did he take it well?” Nynaeve repeated flatly. “That depends. Does pulling out that blasted ter’angreal and threatening to rain down fire on the army strike you as ‘Taking it well’?”

Min paled. Cadsuane raised an eyebrow.

“I stopped him,” Nynaeve said. “But just barely. I don’t know. It…it might be getting to late to do anything to change him.”

And what it must cost her to admit that. Nynaeve, who will do anything and everything to protect those she loves, but how can she protect him from himself? And what can she do when it is the world that needs protecting from him? But it’s not in her nature to just give up, and to do so with Rand would mean ceasing to protect him, ceasing to try to Heal him, and she cares too much to do that, but what else can she do? She’s caught in a place where no matter what she tries, there will be pain for someone.

Meanwhile Corele puts way too much stock in prophecies. You’re missing a crucial piece, Corele: for prophecies and visions to work, the world has to exist.

“If Rand loses, there is no Pattern.”

As readers, we know that there is a Fourth Age, at least, from some of the epigraphs. But the point here is something I talked about recently—it’s not so much about whether Light will win against Shadow; it’s not about whether the world will survive or perish, but instead is about what it will take to get there, what it will cost, how they can possibly bring about that success from this point and what it will demand of them. How much farther they can fall and still have a chance of survival. What kind of survival that will be.

To the characters themselves, there is no guarantee. But I think this serves a secondary purpose as a sign to the reader that even if there seems to be evidence that everything will be okay—for a given value of ‘okay’—there is still so much at stake here, and it’s not a simple path. It’s not going to be easy, and it may not come without a price, and it’s not a simple guarantee.

It’s a focus not on the ‘what will happen’ but on the ‘how’, and it’s a reminder that whatever you think you know about how this ends, it is not so simple.

As far as Nynaeve is concerned, that adds up to needing to tell Cadsuane what she knows of Perrin’s location, even if she’s annoyed at Cadsuane’s secrecy. This is not the time to hold anything back. And yes, that could easily be said of Cadsuane as well, but the point is more that someone has to take the first step. Nynaeve can’t afford a power struggle with Cadsaune over information right now, not with the entire world at stake.

“In answer to your question earlier, child, Perrin actually isn’t important to our plans.”

“He isn’t?” Nynaeve asked. “But—”

Cadsuane raised a finger. “There are people with him who are vital. One in particular.”

TAM?

I’m not sure if that’s in capslock out of excitement or total dread but…let’s just go with both.

Because given Rand’s entire…*waves hands at everything*…it seems all but impossible for this to go well, which means it could go so, so badly, but on the other hand, TAM. AND RAND. IT’S BEEN TWELVE BOOKS.

I HAVE BEEN WANTING THIS REUNION FOR LITERAL YEARS.

But like this?

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#few problems cannot be solved with duct tape or a sharp object #but in those cases arson is a good backup #Wheel of Time #neuxue liveblogs WoT #The Gathering Storm

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