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I love the idea that the 15th Doctor is one of the incarnations totally willing to manipulate his friends and companions, but he does it THROUGH laughs and smiles and charm, so much so that he barely even registers that that’s what he’s doing. Upbeat darkness.

Of course, “silly Doctor hiding a manipulative streak” is hardly new, but there’s a specific difference between, say, 7 using silliness to trick enemies but manipulating Ace more overtly, and 15 trying to manipulate Belinda, his potential new companion, USING his charm. It’s a (relatively) new angle on the Doctor’s manipulative behavior. I’m not gonna say it’s NEVER been done before (thousands of stories across several mediums over 60 years, I’m sure it’s cropped up), but this is the most overt example of the Doc using this specific manipulation tactic to my mind.

Belinda, having been the victim of a (clumsy) attempt at manipulation by Alan in the past, recognizes it right away and calls the Doc out, and he still doesn’t let the smile drop until he recognizes he isn’t gonna charm his way out of the situation.

And he KNOWS she’s right. But it almost makes him mad that she recognizes it too. You can see it on his face. He wants to argue back. But he knows she’s right, so he doesn’t.

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Aliss Fenly, who we know initially lied about being 'clean' to get home, despite knowing the entity was behind her. Who shot her best friend before she could kill her, and let her body lie there for fifteen days untouched mere feet away. Who was the only person left in a facility that had had its security footage tampered with. Who had a suspiciously fresh wound that could have been caused by breaking a mirror with your bare hand. Who went in an airlock to escape with two troopers... and four life signs.

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the doctor stopping mid-run from one of the most dangerous things he has ever encountered because "I want to see it" is the most doctor thing ever

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"Oh Siuan's death was forshashadowed"

Yes, I saw. As soon as I saw she was black, lesbian started saying "In this life or the next" every episode, and wasn't shown to have strong ties outside of Moiraine, I knew that she was cooked from the get go. But like everyone else I still hoped. Shocking.

Thank you Rafe Judkins for acting like this couple and character were important in the interviews, baiting us into watching your show and most of all for your spark of originality when yet again you reproduced this disposable lesbian trope which you writers seem to love.

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this is the first time i have felt like a wot episode was bad. how did they fumble it like this what the fuck happened

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fire move from the doctor to kill a god on easter weekend, the most popular god-killing weekend of the calendar year. jesus died so mr ring-a-ding could die harder

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fascinating choice to play Amy’s theme when Belinda is talking about her parents. ah yes, the one companion whose parents famously fell into a hole in time for fifteen years. will this come back later down the line? who knows ✨

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Yeah, her:

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"When we were figuring out what we wanted to do with Elphaba’s hair, I had said to them, I want something that feels like Glinda would have given her a hairstyle to do." - Cynthia Erivo

Release the scene of Glinda styling Elphie's hair, c'mon we know y'all have one 😭

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What annoys me most about [MAJOR SPOILERS FOR WOT 3X08!]

Siuans final speech is how her declaration of love turned from a strong moment of standing up for queer love (and representing this on screen) to reinforcing queer trauma. Because at first it felt very powerful to see a lesbian declare her love so openly (especially in this genre). That made believe the show was taking its declared ideal of being a better representation of queer/ female characters very seriously. Where it all went wrong was what came out of this speech: A death just written to fuel her (white!) wife's plot and even worse a unnecessarily cruel death that seemed to be primarily caused by this declaration of love. As a queer person, this is the worst punch in the gut given our history. This is traumatising.

I believe this moment could have been so powerful if the declaration of love had ended in life and strength, overcoming all the old tropes of queer love ending tragically and women just dying for another character.

At least this is what I expect from what I've seen (and loved so much!!) about WoT so much before. It always felt like the safe space in fantasy I've been longing for so long, a show that finally shows new and better directions for queer and female characters (and, so far, it really has, which makes it just all more sad that they failed in this crucial moment)

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An initial list of things I despise about the big decision in 03x08. Major spoilers.

- Siuan’s entire arc is now one of failure. Without her role mentoring Egwene, she fails entirely in her mission and we just watch her be incompetent for three seasons. Her entire role is now incompetent girlfriend to Moiraine.

- Related to the above, she only becomes Amyrlin because of the Black Ajah?? Fuck that.

- Siuan saying “I would die to save her” like the stakes are each other and not the WORLD?! Moiraine would NOT die to save Siuan if it would be bad for the Dragon and Siuan was supposed to be like that too - that’s literally the whole foundation of their relationship.

- Siuan dying to motivate Moiraine also takes away from Moiraine! She should be able to find that motivation in herself!!

- The choice to kill Siuan in such a graphic way so that the last shot we see of her is dehumanizing and horrifying. If she *has* to die (which she doesn’t, she could be stilled and sent away somewhere until the very end of the show) does she not at least deserve a dignified death?

- The fact that her death happens amid three really hectic plot points so you don’t even get to sit with it.

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I MEAN IT - DO NOT CLICK BELOW THE CUT IF YOU HAVEN‘T SEEN 3x08 YET!

(Please be aware that this also contains spoilers for the entire book series!)

I want to step back from my raw shock and anger for a moment and look at the bigger picture. Because what happened to Siuan Sanche in The Wheel of Time TV adaptation is not just a pointless, premature, and unnecessarily gruesome character death done for shock value - it’s a case study in how harmful patterns in queer representation persist across television in 2025 to weaponize queer women’s stories under the guise of “stakes”, “emotion” or “drama.” It’s also about how even creators who should know better continue to replicate those patterns.

Let’s be clear: Siuan’s death wasn’t just tragic, it was narratively regressive. In a show that prides itself on representation and complexity, she was stripped not only of her characterization and future arcs (and with that, the arcs of other characters like Egwene), but was also publicly humiliated, stilled, and - just to top it all off - beheaded. Her death wasn’t heroic, glorified, or thoughtfully written. It wasn’t even romanticized or poetic. It was humiliating and off-putting, and it existed solely to shock the audience in wannabe Game of Thrones fashion and to provoke emotional development in another character: Moiraine.

This is fridging! A trope in which a (usually marginalized) character - often a woman - is killed off to provide emotional stakes or motivation for the protagonist. And to be clear: it’s not that characters (regardless of their background) can’t die, it’s how and why they die that matters. And in this case, Siuan’s death is not about her. It’s about what she can provoke in someone else, and about feeding a true shocker to the audience.

This would be frustrating on its own. But it becomes outright infuriating when you factor in another layer. I’ll leave you to do the research yourself, but let’s just say there’s an overlap between the Siuaraine writing team and the writing staff of The 100. And if you’re not familiar, let me break it down for you: The 100 had one of the most infamous storylines and public outcries in the history of queer television representation. In episode “Thirteen”, Lexa - a beloved queer character - was killed by a stray bullet immediately after consummating her relationship with her partner Clarke. Lexa’s death became a flashpoint in media history, and the episode triggered global fan backlash. It’s now shorthand for the “Bury Your Gays” trope in the streaming age. But it wasn’t just the loss of a character, it was a betrayal by the showrunner and the writers’ room. Fans had been promised meaningful, lasting queer representation, only to see it snatched away in an unnecessary and trope-laden way. The outcry led to global fan campaigns, interviews, fundraising, and the creation of The Lexa Pledge, where writers and showrunners promised to do better by their LGBTQIA+ characters.

So how is it that - nearly a decade later - the same creative figure is involved in a storyline that plays out almost identically? Just like Lexa, Siuan reconnects with her partner after a break only to be almost immediately taken away. Just like Lexa, she is a powerful woman in her own right (even though in Siuan’s case, the show repeatedly undermined her and painted her as incompetent or a failure), and just like Lexa, her death is staged not for her own arc but solely to spark transformation in another character.

This isn’t just painful - it’s a clear repetition of an already well-documented mistake. It suggests not a lack of awareness, but a lack of care. To make matters worse, Wheel of Time showrunner Rafe Judkins has repeatedly spoken in interviews about how meaningful Moiraine and Siuan’s relationship is to him. He described it as “one of the central pillars of the show”, called their love story “unlike anything else in fantasy”, and emphasized how rare it is to see older queer women portrayed with such depth and power. That makes this decision all the more cynical. You do not get to publicly celebrate your queer characters as groundbreaking representation and then destroy one of them in the most violent way possible for the sake of another’s growth or fast-tracked future plotlines. That’s not brave. That’s not representation. That’s betrayal.

MAJOR BOOK SPOILER! And before anyone brings up “book accuracy” - yes, Siuan dies in the novels. But her death is vastly different, and she dies much later, after a fully fledged post–White Tower arc. At the very least, she dies in battle and is not beheaded in a public coup (sorry, but they really crossed a line here!). The TV version took liberties to make her death more brutal, more sensationalized, and more emotionally manipulative. This isn’t about source material, it’s about adaptation choices and what those choices reveal about whose stories are allowed dignity….. SPOILER END!

And the message it sends for me - whether intentional or not - is this: queer women can be powerful, but they will be punished or even killed for it. They can find love, but not keep it. They can drive the narrative, but only until it’s convenient to kill them for drama or beelining the plot.

It didn’t have to be this way. The Wheel of Time is a fantasy series - literally a genre built on rebirth, healing, time loops, and metaphysical bonds. If you must, there are countless ways to remove a character from the narrative while still honoring their legacy. Stilling and beheading one of the only queer women of color who is also a major character was not necessary. Making her go like that was not necessary. They had every narrative tool available to give her meaning, agency, and dignity. They chose not to.

And in making that choice, the showrunners have aligned themselves not with progress, but with a long line of creators who pay lip service to queer representation while continuing to exploit it for emotional weight and use the queer community as promotion. This was a devastating misstep, made worse by the fact that those responsible should have known better!

We are beyond isolated mistakes. We are in an era where queer trauma has been commodified for dramatic weight over and over again, and yet, the responsible creatives continue to repackage it as prestige television.

We’ve seen this story before.

We begged you not to tell it again.

You said you wouldn’t… and told it anyway.

And this isn’t just about Siuan. It’s about every story like hers and every showrunner or writer who promises, “This time, it’ll be different,” while making sure it’s exactly the same.

No matter what comes next, even if we get an explanation or apology: no. What’s done is done, and I won’t accept your excuses. If the backlash gets bad enough and we suddenly get a “surprise, surprise” fakeout - that it was all a dream, or she gets balefired back to life or whatever deus ex machina solution you can muster - no. That’s cheap and even more insulting. If she turns out to be a Dreamer in Tel’aran’rhiod or a Hero of the Horn - again, no. That’s still robbing her of her plotline and flatlining her arc. So no matter what the show does or offers us, my trust has been broken irreparably. You don’t get to play us like that.

That being said, things are about to change around here. I’m deeply grateful for the love this community has shown me over the past five years. You made me a fan, a friend, a writer, an artist, an enthusiast. But those times are painfully coming to an end - at least in their current form.

I’ll try to stick to art and writing, not for the sake of the show, but for the sake of the fandom and the community I’ve found here. I can’t say how much time I’ll need to breathe more freely again, but I do believe we need to stick together. If you need someone to talk to, my DMs are always open. However, if you just want to argue with me or mess around - you’ll be blocked! This post is not an open invitation to debate why my opinion is “wrong” and why the show was right to kill off Siuan like that.

#SiuanDeservesBetter

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"so, we went and made one of the best seasons of telivision this year and then we got to the last episode and asked ourselves: 'what could we do to alienate the people who enjoy this show'?' and then we filmed that" - Rafe Judkins, probably

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Film producers shouldn’t cut corners and use AI to create films cheaply because the lead actress might get trapped in a computer simulation with the ghost of a closeted actress from the 1940s and end up having a tragic lesbian romance and then where would you be

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I love how Black Mirror is always like "Yeah let's create the most fucked up cyber doomsday we can think of... except for when it's about sapphics. These cuties get their (sort of) happy ending". And I highly respect that

black mirror sapphic episodes stay winning

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Morocco (1930) dir. Josef von Sternberg