#//decided to do a meta breaking promo

[allxgene]

COME ONE! COME ALL TO THE GREATEST SHOW!!

Independent Genshin side blog multi featuring the illustrious Hydro Archon Furina!!! …and a few others!

Follow like and adore your praise onto me and only me I’m the star!

Follow is from @anemxvisions

[rowanthestrange]

You know how I kept saying, before I got Chibs, that if it were me, I’d take that original promo - where Thirteen zips about like no other time travel we’ve ever seen from the show, making the fam’s lives just quietly better without them knowing she was there - that I would make that the bookend to the series and kill you all.

He could do that.

…Because the meta constant from first episode to this last one, has been the damage of empire, mass domination, and control.

We are not rebuilding the conditions that made wild Time broken. The Doctor might want to because she’s a hypocrite, knows her life and lifestyle and wants that control; but we can’t, we know what empire means to all this, what it’s done. Time is a wolf not a chained dog - we’re watching Bad Wolf now, that reminder right in front of us at the end of an episode to linger in our minds. He called Time ‘wild’, twice, there are a million other words you would use, not the one which immediately associates itself with ‘free’ and being alive.

Chibs is playing on the Web Of Time in the artwork - the Web whose lines were ‘handpicked by Rassilon’ to be how the universe works and will always work, deterministic as Fate with everything having its place forever unless someone high-up gets permission to change it. We are not restoring Gallifrey to its Glorious Shining Throne™, the most empiriest empire to ever empire.

So what if we decide…fluid change is what it ‘looks like’ now?

We stop the damage, but don’t re-enslave it.

And for us as a viewer, even writer, it changes nothing. The idea of fixed points was obviously possible to break if you tried, we saw it with Ten, it was just clearly ‘not a good idea’ and it would remain so, the repercussions perhaps more easily visible from that moment, that’s all. And in the background, time just shifts in small ways as things are done and undone, and we don’t always know why, but here’s the thing, we never did anyway unless we were nitpicking.

New sounds scary, but here’s the thing it’s not even new. Have you asked yourself why Dan didn’t reference other aliens? Of course you haven’t. Because you haven’t asked that question since Thirteen’s first series when it seemed a little weird that the Fam didn’t know about aliens either, even the ones after ‘crack in time’ weirdness, but shrugged your shoulders and accepted that’s the world you were in.

It’s not a practical story-telling change, it is a philosophical change that only matters to the deeply knowledgeable. Doctor Who has never been a show for the nitpicking ‘gotcha, this is wrong’ crowd, it’s one where we have two canons for Mary Shelley and they’re both somehow correct and anyone on this side of the fandom knows that you never fight about it because it’s all canon, now have a biscuit.

It doesn’t affect how we’ll write time travel or see it (except maybe an opportunity for some more varied and interesting graphics), it just changes the internal power structures of the world.

Is the Doctor still a Time Lord? She doesn’t think so at the moment. But you leave Time free? Don’t return it to empiric control again? Then who else won’t really be Time Lords any more either…

Have you picked up a Doctor Who notebook recently? Gone through some of the merchandise? Thirteen has a tagline you know. A little thing that crops up everywhere. It’s not ‘Allons-y’, it’s not ‘Geronimo’.

It’s ‘the future is not written’.

[piracytheorist]

Fanfic Self Promo: KnightRook

I decided to make a few self-promo posts on my older fics, starting with the ones centered on KnightRook! All are short one shots or drabbles, but they’re worth a little promo after all this time. They’re in a list of older ones first.

~

Missing Knight | T, 2.4k words, written 16 Oct 2017 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: Speculative fic about Detective Rogers meeting the girl who, unbeknownst to him, is his own daughter.

I wrote this a little after 7x02 aired, before we knew anything more about Killian’s daughter. I was completely off with it, but I’m still quite happy with it.

~

A Young Tempest | G, 1.3k words, written 20 Oct 2017 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: Killian Jones raises his daughter and learns things along with her. 

Another speculative fic about Killian’s history with his daughter. Once again, completely off, but it’s one of my favourite stuff I’ve written.

~

A Song for Goodnight | G, 1.8k words, written 28 Nov 2017 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: Alice Jones I sings a lullaby to her son. A long time later, Killian Jones sings the same lullaby to his daughter. Warnings: Canon character death in the past.

I have feels about Killian singing his mother’s lullaby to his daughter. Some of these made it into this fic.

~

Untitled ficlet of Killian thinking about the white elephant he gave Ella | Tumblr link

~

A Family by Choice | G, 3.3k words, written 04 Feb 2018 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: The curse is broken, everyone’s memories are back, and Roni with Weaver find a way to remove the poison from Rogers’ heart. But it’s not easy nor perfectly safe, and it might just as well pull that family apart again rather than bring it back together. 

This one is a little sad, as usual with me. But again, lots of feels.

~

The First Rain | G, 590 words, written 25 Mar 2018 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: Alice is finally free and gets to explore how being under the rain feels.

This one includes only Alice, but it’s got a lot of focus on KnightRook. (If you thought you’d find happy stuff on my fic, you thought wrong. KnightRook was brimming with angst and I milked the hecc out of it)

~

Mother’s Day | G, 650 words, written 14 May 2018 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: Modern AU. Alice makes something for her papa for Mother's Day.

I felt that Killian deserved a little more love and appreciation for raising such a kind human as Alice all on his own. Father’s day doesn’t get as much appreciation as Mother’s day, especially considering it’s usually after school starts summer break. So I felt that in a modern setting, Alice would choose to celebrate her father and their love for each other on Mother's Day at some point.

~

Poor Old Man | G, 530 words, written 12 Mar 2018 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: While in the tower, Killian realizes he's growing old. But not alone. 

There’s a sea shanty with the same name, but only the title has a reference to the story. I just thought that it would be interesting to see Killian, who’d spent his centuries in Neverland not expecting to survive his revenge mission, realize that he’s not only actually growing old, but that he’s also got someone to love and love him back as he does.

~

Sad drabble of “What if Killian hadn’t managed to save Alice from being pulled into her worst nightmare in the finale?” Like, really sad. | Tumblr link

~

Sad Old Hook drabble in direct response to the fic above, because he did end up old and alone. Be sad with me, people. | Tumblr link

~

Marks | T, 1k words, written 15 June 2018 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: Little Alice wonders why she doesn’t have any marks on her back, like her papa does. Warnings: Mentions of past physical abuse of a teenager

If you know me, you know I headcanon Killian having multiple scars on his body, many particularly from the time he was a indentured servant as a kid/teen. Being the only one who Alice sees in her first years, she thinks that she’ll grow to have such marks on her body. This is a bit of a melancholic take on Killian trying to explain it to her.

~

Untitled ficlet about Old Hook “fusing” with OG Hook, becoming one with him. | Tumblr link

~

A New Experience | G, 1.3 words, written 19 July 2018 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: Killian makes a re-imagining of a storm in the tower for Alice. 

Humans have more senses than vision. In this story, Killian does his best to create an experience for Alice by invoking her other senses. (Also nerding out for my music knowledge by adding an ocean drum)

~

Sad drabble about how Killian seeing his daughter pull away out of fear of hurting him sometimes hurts worse than the curse in his heart. | Tumblr link

~

Under the Weather | G, 2.2 words, written 12 Nov 2018 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: Young Alice gets very ill and Killian tries to help her. 

Don’t let my habit for angst worry you, this has a happy ending. The medicine techniques are probably inaccurate, but I wanted to focus on a scenario of Killian trying to heal Alice with the very very limited sources he has.

~

Remembering Alice | G, 424 words, written 04 Dec 2018 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: After Lucy's birth, Killian can't help feeling sad as he remembers how his daughter is forced to live away from him. 

It is what it is. A short angsty thing. Only Killian appears here, but the focus is on KnightRook.

~

A Merry Little Christmas | G, 1.6 words, written 24 Dec 2018 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: This year, Rogers and Tilly won’t spend Christmas Day on their own. 

I don’t participate on Secret Santa and similar events, cause they stress me out over producing a specific kind of content at a specific time. However, all the love people gave to that year's KnightRook Secret Santa inspired me to write a kinda independent contribution, which came out as this. It may not be Christmas yet but the warm, fuzzy feelings are the same!

~

Untitled ficlet about re-awakened Killian thinking how his true self conflicted with Rogers’ memories and original goals. | Tumblr link

I barely remember writing this one, lol. I think, it may have started as a meta post, then it took a fanfic route on its own. Fics be doing that. I’ll probably post it on AO3 at some point, too.

~

Outward-Bound | T, 2.5 words, written 20 Mar 2019 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: Old, dishevelled, broken-hearted Hook is drowning his sorrows in alcohol, when he happens upon a familiar face, someone he never imagined he’d see again. Warnings: Depiction of alcoholism

Oh, this be sad! Again, only Killian appears, but the KnightRook feels are prominent.

~

Sad (shocking, I know) drabble about Killian being taken away in the ambulance in 7x20 | Tumblr link

~

The Dreams That Won’t Come True | G, 2.1k words, written 14 Sep 2019 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: Killian and Alice find a way to be together through their dreams... but it doesn't end up being what they expected. 

That made me sad. Almost made me cry when I first wrote it, and I’m very hard to cry.

~

Bonus Fics!

Untitled ficlet with Robyn and Killian; three moments between them | Tumblr link

~

Accepting Happiness | G, 1k words, written 26 Nov 2018 | AO3 link | Tumblr link Summary: A little after reuniting with Alice, Killian takes a moment to try and let everything sink in. Hooked Queen, open to your interpretation.

Some introspective thoughts on how Killian and Regina would feel, right after the climactic ending of the finale, the one set before the final scene. Only Killian and Regina appear, but KnightRook is in focus.

[commandtower]

More decklist updates

Hey again folks, I’m back with another round of decklist updates for you to check out. This time, I’ve updated my lists for Yeva, Nature’s Herald, Erebos, God of the Dead, and Experiment Kraj. Each of them is now up to date with the current physical version, including changes up to Adventures in the Forgotten Realms.

If you’d like more details about the changes, you can read about them below.

The main name of the game with this round of updates was improving the speed and consistency of these lists. These three decks are among my longest-lived Commander decks and are often the most difficult for me to effectively change just because they’ve become so tightly packed with powerful cards over their lifetimes, but I really wanted to improve some of the card selection in them.

Yeva’s deck received a pretty sweeping overhaul, obtaining a number of new tools for its arsenal. Not the least among them was an Allosaurus Shepherd, replacing Gaea’s Herald as my cheap counter option due to its improved utility, reduced cost and the removal of the symmetrical aspect. It’s kind of a shame, because the Herald has one of my all time favorite pieces of art in the game, but the Shepherd is just an all-around better card. Other changes include the addition of a Kogla, the Titan Ape, a powerful piece of removal that plays very well with Yeva’s addition of flash, and a Vivien, Monsters’ Advocate, which I’ve talked about previously as one of the best cards for Green decks to come out of this past year. The suite of ramp spells was also tweaked in this list, swapping Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach for Three Visits and Nature’s Lore. Since Yeva costs four mana to play, swapping the three mana ramp spells for two cost alternatives allows for smoother play into a Commander drop without a loss of tempo. I also swapped out the Snow-Covered Forests for regular options as the deck no longer makes use of snow mana after this recent change up, and I don’t really feel like getting blown out by a Break the Ice. Lastly, I recently came into possession of a few copies of The Great Henge thanks to lucky pulls from promo packs at my local store, so I added one to this list. It’s just an all-around great card for any deck that runs Green, and this list definitely loves to draw cards as it casts creatures.

Kraj has always had a bit of trouble with turn consistency, and so the biggest thing I wanted to improve with the changes to this list was the turn-by-turn progression, smoothing out ramp options and card draw a little nicer. A previous upgrade removed the spell-based ramp in the list in favor of more mana dorks for Kraj to copy, but I’ve opted to re-add a Cultivate to the list just for a bit of assistance in case of emergency. Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy was an easy include here and adds a lot of options for the list, offering a boost to mana production as well as the ability to dig for options. Branching Evolution and Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider join the list as additional static counter buffers, allowing for faster and more explosive buildup, and The Ozolith helps to reduce some of the blowback that comes from losing creatures to removal. Kraj’s spellbook was enhanced a bit by a visit to Strixhaven, picking up some excellent modal pieces in Decisive Denial and Quandrix Command that improve the list’s available options in various situations. This list also gets a Great Henge, and it’s honestly probably even better here than it is in my mono-Green list as Kraj directly benefits from the Henge’s counter distribution. I think the cards I've added here will help a lot with the deck’s overall progression, and the games I’ve played with this version have already felt much smoother and more involved.

Erebos has mostly been upgraded to allow for increased speed. He’s seen the inclusion of a number of new, slimmer-cost options compared to his previous cards that help to get him into the game faster, and a fair amount of new mana ramp options through additions of cards like Forsworn Paladin for some improved early-to-mid game progression. Feed the Swarm came in thanks to its unique capacity as a targeted enchantment removal in mono-Black, and Baleful Mastery replaced another piece of targeted removal thanks to its cost reduction option. Dauthi Voidwalker and Opposition Agent were added as lean-costed cards that can severely hamper other decks’ gameplans, which is true to what this deck was always trying to do. Rankle, Master of Pranks was introduced to the deck due to the versatile suite of options available to him, offering a customizable selection of abilities that can change to fit a number of situations. I’ve also chosen to add Boseiju, Who Shelters All to protect some of my win conditions like Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate. I decided to leave the snow lands in this list as it still makes use of them through cards like Extraplanar Lens and Dead of Winter, although that may change if I start seeing more copies of Break the Ice in my local meta.

Overall, I think these changes will help to keep these decklists viable as Commander continues to evolve as a format. Even though these are some of my longest-maintained decks, they’re also some of my favorites, so I’m happy to see new options that help to keep them updated.

If you’d like to take a look at all of the lists I’ve posted to the blog, past and present, you can check out the archive of my deck posts by using the Decklists tab in my blog’s sidebar. If you missed the previous list of updates I made to some of my other active decks, it’s available here. I have a number of new lists I’ve been working on over the past while that I’m prepping to share as well, so if these lists were to your liking, please stay tuned for more content like this to come. Thanks!

[quixocalypse]

Personal Status Update

Hey, it’s been a few weeks! I realize that I kind of slipped out of certain SU fandom circles I was hanging out in around the time that the finale SU Future promo came out, and haven’t been working on @sufaeu at all, - so I just wanted to write a little about why that is, and confirm that I’m still around. Just keeping my distance for a bit.

One of the big things is that concretely finding out how soon SU was ending was actually kind of a bigger emotional blow than I expected. I completely withdrew from fandom stuff for a while after that promo, because honestly, even thinking about SU Future was making me sad, just because its something I have loved dearly since its early days. I’ve never actually been with a fandom that meant so much to me from start to finish before. Usually, my interest has trailed off before the end, or I’ve come in when it was already over.

Another thing was that SU fandom discussion had become/still is very leak focused - half of the meta posts I was seeing go around before March were about leaks, and sometimes wouldn’t be properly labeled, as if assuming everyone already knew about them. I’ve been steadfastly refusing to view leaks and have really wanted to experience SU’s end on my own terms, so it made the most sense to avoid fandom discussions until it’s all over.

A related factor is that a LOT of people are as emotional about this series as I am, which means that fandom has also been generating a lot of anxiety and worry. While I am utterly sympathetic to people fretting about how it will all wind up, I really couldn’t handle having my own anxiety stoked by other people, so I decided to severely moderate my fandom participation until the series was over. Large amounts of speculation wasn’t doing my brain any good. 

So far, I’m very glad I made this decision - I’m happy to have avoided leaks, and to be experiencing the end without a lot of outside influence. I figure that stuff can wait until after we’ve seen it all play out. Having watched the episodes so far (up to Growing Pains at the time of writing) I am actually super pleased with the direction the series is going, and am super excited to see where it ends up. Even if I’m also sad to think about all the stuff that probably won’t be covered in more detail due to lack of time. (Where are you, Centi?!)

Still rooting for corruption theory (lol) but we’ll see. 

Once the series is concluded I’m hoping to come back, and have plans to write a follow up to my fanfiction Divided - a thing that is very tied up in Steven’s trauma, so I definitely want to see where SUF goes before I do. I want to come back to @sufaeu as well. Just taking a break for the time being, to let the end of canon properly sink in. 

I never really announced I was taking a break anywhere because it seemed presumptuous to think people would care, according to my own anxieties. But, I did want to say something at some point.

[serahne-is-here]

Rant incoming - Veronica Mars Season 4

Now that we know the show is probably never coming back - and as sad as I am to think that, thank god - I just wanted to talk about the way fans are being treated by some people who enjoyed the season, and by Rob Thomas himself.

I mostly want to tacle the elephant in the room : the idea the the only reason fans are upset is because Logan is dead. And thus that the fans who are upset are only ‘shallow Logan fangirls’ who didn’t even watch the show for the right thing anyway. In order to try and counter that, we had plenty of meta written from upset’s fans perspective, explaining everything they disliked about season 4, to try to prove that Logan’s death isn’t the main reasons fans are mad.

Here is my two cents on that : Logan’s death is exactly why fans are mad. But not for the reasons pro-seasons 4 folks think.

I’ve been a fan of she show since it aired, on french TV, the episodes in the complete wrong order, because of course it was. I was eleven I think, and I was at that stage where I loved badass ladies on TV shows. There was Buffy, who kicked and kissed vampires, there was Charmed, who kicked and kissed demons, and there was Veronica.

I didn’t like Veronica as much, at first. It was a bit too real, and full of stuff I didn’t fully understand, but I liked Veronica as a character, I liked her relationship with her dad, with her friends. I liked that Veronica seemed more ‘normal’ and grounded in reality. The show stuck with me, despite its short-run, more than Buffy or Charmed did.

I came back to it a few years later, in high-school, and I absolutely fell for it again. I loved the characters, Neptune’s atmosphere, I loved Veronica and Logan together of course - they were one of my first true OTPs, the kind you read fanfictions for and that you cry about in the middle of the night. I was so sad that the TV show has been cancelled. I understood why, of course. At that time, I wished I was American, and that I could have been one more viewers to help the ratings, I was stupid, but I loved the show so much.

And then, the movie. I learnt about it late, once it was completely funded already, but I was absolutely delighted. I watched all these videos on youtube, I watched the cast tell me how amazing the fans were, and how much they loved them, and how special we were. There was this stupid ‘Who is the best love interest ?’ stuff used for promotion that I thought was a bit stupid, but I didn’t care.

I was high on love.

And how god, was this movie a love confession. I didn’t care that Jason looked a bit sick, I didn’t care that Kristen clearly hadn’t recovered fully from her pregnancy - actually, I liked seeing them as adults. I loved seeing Mac, Weevil, Wallace, even Dick, I loved that everyone was so happy to be back. Was the movie perfect ? Heck no. But you could feel RT’s intentions behing : to give us something that would make us happy.

And happy it made us. And proud. Because the fans made this happen. They brough back Veronica Mars by love, and the Veronica Mars’ cast returned this love at the fullest.

And then, season 4.

Listen to me, season 4 wasn’t great. The mystery was very messy, the ‘new’ cast mostly uninteresting or underexploited. Veronica wasn’t really herself, Logan subdued. There was some racist-ish, misogynist-ish stuff lying around, that I didn’t really care for.

But listen. I have loved this show for fifteen years. The show loved me back, I knew it, because everyone involved with it told us so for years. So, by love, we were able to close our eyes. There had always been some unfortunate stuff in earlier seasons : the whole ‘this feminist faked being raped’ business, Dick being framed as sympathetic, class and race issues being handled very clumsily... but I think we all could see, at least, the good intentions behind it. We could tell ‘well, at least Rob Thomes is trying’ ( note that this is a weaker argument in 2019 than in 2003, I won’t lie ). We were not about to trash this show that we have loved for fifteen years for some plotholes, and mischaracterization either. It’s fine, we’ll write fanfics to fix it, we told ourselves.

And then, the ending.

Logan is a fan-favorite. He has been a fan-favorite since season 1, we love Logan, and we love Veronica and Logan together, and we followed his entire journey, from being a ‘psychotic jackass’ to being the kindest, bravest, purest soul on earth. We love Logan, and everyone knew it. Veronica was the brain of the show, and Logan was its heart. He made us cry, he made us laugh, we made us fall in love with him so much that it hurt. And when you see the promo around the movie and the crow-funding, and even the one around season 4, it’s clear that everyone knew that.

How.

How can I still believe that Veronica Mars loves me, when they, willingly, understanding fully what they were doing, killed - with no ceremony - the character they knew we loved more than anything. It was the end of the season. I was still smiling from the wedding, and I guess I was thinking to myself ‘well, the mystery was underwhelming, but at least we got some LoVe to make everything better’. Despite all the flaws of the season, I still thought Rob Thomas loved me, see. That the season wasn’t that great, sure, but that he still had tried to make me happy, and that this wedding was the proof of that : yes it was rushed, and Veronica’s characterization wasn’t satisfying, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed.

By love. By LoVe.

And then the fucking punch in the face. It’s like realizing that the friend you had for all these years didn’t care about you at all, despite them telling you how much they valued you, and how much they owed you. That was someone I thought was on my side, who decided to spit on fifteen years of relationship for... for what ?

I don’t even know.

This is what hurts the most. Not Logan’s death, not really. Just the way RT’s decided to destroy everything we built together during these years. The Marshmallows carried this show with their bare hands for years, until the movie, the peak of our love story. And after everything is done, and that people are hurt and angry, and sad, the only reply we get is ‘you weren’t the fans I wanted from the beginning’, as if we weren’t good enough to be fans of this show, as if we were shallow and silly, and not focused on what is really important.

Sorry to break it to you, Rob Thomas, but ‘noir’ fans didn’t save your show. We did. The best relationship in Veronica Mars was never between Veronica and Keith, or Veronica and Logan, it was between the show and the fans.

And it seems like you blew it.

[adventure-hearts]

20th Anniversary = 20 questions (Day 14 / 21)

FEB 14: FAVOURITE SHIP / OTP

All right. I know what is expected of me. Time to give one for the team.

*cracks knuckles*

It’s a strange time to be a Sora/Yamato fan. Just when everyone had kind of grown out of the shipping wars and when most have accepted that the Epilogue outcome was going nowhere, we got new canon that ended up challenging many people’s expectations and not paying too much attention to the ship. The Result: some of the people who are more invested in the canon portrayal of Sorato are the ones that were left more disappointed. 

But this isn’t going to be a discussion of the “Highschool is Complicated!” approach that tri. (and so far, Kizuna’s promo) have taken. No, fam, this is a good old-fashioned analysis about why this ship freaking works.

*

I’ve been uninspired lately, and it’s been a while since I wrote a proper, long Sora/Yamato analysis. Consider this post a sequel to my very first meta, one of the very first things I wrote when I started AH. You can also check the sorato / soraxyamato tags to read few smaller pieces I’ve written since. 

I think it’s time to move on from the whole “here’s 97699 hints and foreshadowing you missed in the original series”. By now, everyone knows the appeal of the couple is based on their parallel journeys, the symbolism of the crests, the perfect balance that it gives to the triangle, their similar yet compatible personalities... I don’t feel the need to keep justifying it or trying to convert people. 

For the Kizuna Countdown, I’m going to write a few words about Yamato and Sora’s mutual understanding and uncanny empathy for each other, focusing in particular on the portrayal of their relationship in tri., and even more specifically about their scene in Chapter 6, which, is to my mind, one of the best canon Sora/Yamato scenes we ever got in canon. I’ve actually written briefly about it before, but I’m just going to analyze it again, because it’s such a perfect moment of shipping bliss. 

It is my contention that tri. didn’t give us much, but the little it did give was spot on.

The scene takes place early in Chapter 6, after Taichi’s disappearance. Yamato has assumed the role of the leader and is making sure the group moves forward and keeps fighting, in spite of what happened. However, although he is acting calm and pragmatic and determined, other feelings lurk inside. For a split second, Yamato drops his mask and looks back at the mountain where Taichi went missing, and his true feelings emerge to the surface.

Everyone else seems oblivious to this moment of vulnerability. Except for Sora. Yamato tries to hide it, embarrassed that she caught him, but eventually relents. This shit doesn’t work with her. While everyone moves on, Yamato and Sora stay back to have a one-on-one.

At this point, I have to address the elephant in the room, which is that tri. makes zero acknowledgment of the current relationship status of these two, or even about whatever happened between them during 02. 

Is this a scene between boyfriend and girlfriend? (tri. surely peppered the episodes with enough material not to completely erase this interpretation — arriving together all time, etc.). And if they’re not together, do they have a romantic history? Did the 02 fling go nowhere? Are they exes? Who broke up with whom? (lbr, Sora did.) Are there lingering feelings between them? (This, I will argue, is obvious — from Yamato’s side, at least)

The fact is we don’t know the answers to any of these pertinent questions. It’s let to the viewers to imagine the background of the relationship according to their own interpretations. It’s a bad writing decision, obviously. But I believe that, despite of this uncertainty, this scene still works wonderfully to establish and develop why Sora/Yamato makes so much sense.

Back to the scene. Sora doesn’t even need to ask Yamato what’s up. She immediately knows what is going to his head. In fact, she is the one who verbalizes what he doesn’t dare to. Yamato is surprised that she read through him so well.

Then Sora decides to do the most “unhealthily-Sora-thing” she can do. She tells Yamato he can go find Taichi, if he wants to, and that everyone else will be fine. It’s obviously not true. Sora is putting Yamato’s emotional needs first, ignoring her own.  She knows that the whole “let’s save our tears for later and fight on” is something he’s doing for the sake of others, not necessarily what his heart wants him to do.

But Yamato doesn’t even think twice. He immediately reaffirms his choice. He’s not leaving the group at this crucial time, when he has a job to do. It’s the right thing to do, it’s what Taichi would want. Yet, he is conflicted. Part of him is pulling in the opposite direction, as his natural instinct (his Crest, remember?) is pulling him towards his friend. The fact that Yamato is making a decision with his head rather than with his feelings is a huge sign of growth for him. But it’s a tough choice, and he’s not immune to the inner conflict and the responsibility of stepping into Taichi’s shoes, as later scenes in the episode will show.

Sora is reaction to this is just The Best. She doesn’t judge. She gets it. After all — and every tri. scene is always echoing what came before, always sending us back to moments in the previous series — this has happened before. Once, it was Sora who made a different choice. She was the one who left to find Taichi, and the group suffered (as did she, who had to be alone with her grief). At another point, Yamato also left the group — not to find others, but to find himself.  Then, Sora was the one who provided reassurance and who understood why he needed to go. This is to show that, if anyone understands the urge to leave, it’s Sora. She’s giving Yamato permission to make a different choice, taking the pressure off his shoulders. So that when he decides to stay, it’s much more powerful.  

Sora then decides to open up. She’s very cautious about it, but she ends up admit she’s struggling with all the loss they’ve been experiencing lately. Yamato admits he feels the same.

This a pretty vulnerable moment for Sora. As previously established, she’s one of the characters who represses her emotions the most, preferring to focus on others instead of herself. In such a moment of crisis, of course she’s doing her best to hide her fears. She’s far from an optimist, but her job is to keep morale up, to reassure others. So, for her to expose her own doubts to someone else is also a big step.

I’d just like to point out that the framing of this scene is really interesting. Next time you’re watching it, notice where the characters stand at the beginning and at the end. 

When Sora starts talking about her feelings to Yamato, their backs are turned to each other. She’s looking at the mountain behind them, he’s staring at the goggles in his hand. Taichi is on both of their minds, as their pain about his disappearance rise to the surface. This is a point when each of them is kind of lonely in their own grief.

But when Sora asks if Taichi is dead, Yamato turns around immediately, focusing on her. She doesn’t want to believe he’s dead, but she doesn’t want to fool herself either. You can feel her despair at the moment, so carefully controlled until now.

Then Sora turns to him, tears in his eyes. A pretty vulnerable moment for both, when every pretense is dropped.  They are facing each other, now. 

And Yamato just… gives her the most affectionate smile ever.

Smiling! When she’s crying! I can hear some people sharpening their pitchforks as we speak. Our Yamato would never respond so callously to her pain! Just go and hug her, you big dork!

But think for a second.  

Yamato gets that she isn’t asking him a question, not really. She’s just telling him how she feels. Yamato gets that trusts him enough to drop the mask that everything is okay. He gets that doesn’t necessarily expect him to lie or to comfort her… she just needed him to listen.

Flashback to Chapter 4:  Sora’s complaint was that she wasn’t listened to, that her feelings weren’t being taken into consideration, that no-one seemed to care. The conflict back then was caused because Yamato and Taichi couldn’t see through her silence, and also because that she would refuse to talk about what was bothering her, and expected others to guess.

But now Yamato has grown, Sora has grown. They got to a place where they feel totally at ease admitting their deepest, darkest feelings to each other. They know the other will listen and empathize.

They’ve reached a moment of pure mutual understanding. Yamato totally gets Sora, is flattered that she trusted him, and he is full of tenderness for her. That’s why he’s smiling.

Yamato just asks if she’s okay and she thanks him, for listening. 

By the end of the scene, they are facing each other, a lot closer, looking at each other with adoring eyes affection and trust. 

That’s what Piyomon sees when she and finds them together. Piyomon goes into Protective Mother Hen mode and decides to interrupt this lovely moment. To ad insult to injury, he Yamato aghast at the accusation that he would break into “a cheesy love song.” (Would he? HAS HE?)

To sum up, I find this small scene to be a perfect example of why Sora/Yamato is so compelling to me, and why I think tri. (in spite of its issues) was such a wonderful addition to the history of this couple.

The trust and love between them (whether romantic or not) are palpable. Look at Yamato’s smile (and all the looks he gives her during tri.) The boy freaking adores her. Sora is more guarded, but actions speak louder than words. Lots of people complain Yamato and Sora “came out of nowhere” and “have no relationship outside of Taichi”. I redirect you to this scene. There’s history and depth between these two.

The scene also shows that their personalities are different enough to cause friction, but similar enough so that, when they are open and honest enough, they can understand each other’s thoughts and feelings easily and completely, without much need for words. This is important, since both Sora and Yamato aren’t good at expressing their feelings in a healthy and open way, although they are so empathetic and passionate. Yamato and Sora have never been a case of “opposites attract”. Similar personalities can cause their own set of issues, but they can still make for a compelling and fulfilling kind of relationship.

It also explains why gravitate towards one another and why they have what it takes to make each other happy in the future. Yes, they are probably the two people who are more invested in Taichi’s fate and the ones who are more concerned in keeping the group together under these specific circumstances. But who else would see though Yamato’s tough resolve and allow him to confess his inner conflict freely? Who else would let Sora vent out without jumping in with words of empty comfort? (The Digimon partners don’t count!) They give each other exactly what they need, in this specific moment and (one can only imagine) in other similar hard times. They make each other feel safe, understood and, ultimately, loved.  Not a bad place to start.

*Dido’s White Flag plays in the distance*

[kylo-im-ren]

The Rise of the Fallen One & Reylo (excerpt)

Rey is not alone in the Dark!Rey scene.

This was first pointed out to me through this tweet from brehaorganas. Then @sillyrabbit36 did a lovely job of recoloring the footage to show it in greater detail in this post.

I went ahead and made some GIFs for visual aid.

In this shot (BOW DOWN TO YOUR QUEEN) it looks like there could be movement, or a figure before the screen pans over to Dark!Rey. That could also very well just be the way that the light and shadows move in the view of the camera.  The real evidence is in the following shot. The money shot.

(My ability to breathe? I don’t know her.)

I zoomed in for a better look, and I tried my best to brighten it without ruining the quality too much (fuzzy image below= proof I’m not a professional lol).

I’ve labled what I think it is that we are seeing. To me, in the bottom right it looks like dark/black clothing, maybe a cloak, or cape. Or maybe just dark pants. In the top right it looks like either a hand in dark, long sleeves, or a chin in a high turtleneck.  I’m leaning more towards it being a hand.

Now, let’s look at the movement of this mystery figure. It appears that whomever (or whatever) is there is backing away from Rey. And if we go with the hand theory, it looks like they are backing away with their hands up defensively. Below I’ve created an extremeley detailed and intricate artist rendition of what I believe happens here. I warn you, the artistic talent I posess has brought some to tears.

(As I was writing the final draft of this bit i came across this post by the amazing, ever talented @gwendy85 . The position of Ben and Rey in her art is so close to what I’m picturing! And a million times better than my stick people lol. Just wanted to give some quick promo to her. If you haven’t already, you guys should really check out her art and meta posts, you won’t be disappointed😊💜.)

So, who is this? Well, there are a few options. Let’s play one of my favorite games: The Process of Elimination.

Option 1: Palpatine Just the simple fact that the figure seems to be backing away from her tells me that it isn’t the Sheev man. If Rey does go dark, and this is real, and not a vision, I’m 99.9% sure that Palps will have something to do with it. So why would he be backing away from her? If anything, he’d be the one encouraging her. 

Option 2: Finn (my sweet boy) This is a more logical option, however, John is reported saying that he wasn’t there when Daisy wore her Dark!Rey fit. He said he was supposed to be there, but that was just for a visit, meaning his character was not invoved in the shooting of those scenes (I looked for the link for like 20 minutes and decided I’d rather get this out and edit the post later when I eventually find it.) Plus, the hand (or chin) doesn’t look like it’s been blessed with that melanin (teehee), so I’m thinking it’s pretty safe to assume not Finn. And without Finn being there, I don’t think any other resistance squad memeber would make sense. So I’m striking out Poe, Rose, or Jannah as options.

Option 3: Rey  Let me explain.This would fall in line with the theory that Dark!Rey is a vision that Rey has. (I go into further details about how this could go, and the pontential parallel between it and Lukes vision quest on Dagobah in the full meta.) This could be the moment where she is forced to literally face her inner demons. If this were the case though, the costume choice that makes the most sense, canonically and visually, would be for normal Rey to be in her normal clothes. Her pure white, flowing robes are a stark contrast to the dark figure we see backing away. 

“Maybe that’s just the shadows, it’s a dark room.”

That’s true. But if we go with the turtleneck or long sleeve idea, those are complete opposites to Rey’s v-neck and short sleeves. This makes me think that the mystery person is not Rey.

Option 4: An innocent It could be an innocent that she kills in her dark rage/possesion. Making this a scene to show how far gone she is. I highly HIGHLY doubt this option though.

Taking all of those out leaves me to believe that it can only be one person. One particular dark froce weilding, sad-boi, love-struck prince.

Option 5: Ben The clothes, if i’m picturing them correctly, match up perfectly with Ben’s attire at all times. Dark cloak/cape, maybe a black turtleneck (like we’ve seen in TFA), long dark sleeves. And, if this is Benny boy, what really intrigues me is that he is gloveless. The implications of that alone...

Sorry, I spaced out. I was fangirling.

ANnNywAy, let’s assume it is him. Now the question is:

Vision or Reality?

(I dive deeper into all of these theories in the full meta. I still can’t choose a side!)

While I still haven’t chosen a side (lol) at this point in time, I think I’ve narrowed my choices down to the Dark!Rey is real train or the Ben Vision Train.

If Dark!Rey is real, I feel that this could definitely be the moment where Ben goes to save her from Palpatine, and from herself. There have been several posts describing how this event could unfold.  If Dark!Rey is real, this could serve as a major catalyst for Bendemption. This tweet points out an amazing comparrison to this moment of Vader having a vision of Dark!Padme.

The most terrifying thing is seeing someone you love fall down the same dark path that you did, and having to watch them be consumed by it.

I think this feeling and reaction would be representitive of both real and vision Ben. If it’s real though, it could lead to a fight. The fight, however, would be completely onesided. He would refuse to strike her, talking to her the whole time, reasuring her of the people in her life that care for her, and that he cares for her. Telling her that she’s not alone anymore. She doesn’t have to do this, He knows this isn’t her. Pleading with her to come back to the light. To herself. To him.  He’d say he knows that there is still good in her, and that he believes in her. He tells her to use their bond to escape Palpatine’s control, or the firm hold of the Dark.

All of this sounding familiar? 

(I was so happy to see my fellow TFA Reylos were thinking the exact same thing I was with this.I love y’all. We all deserve a stiff drink and a foot rub 😭😂)

Now, if it’s a vision, I feel that the scene will be much shorter. I also believe that, again, if it is just a vision, It will be a reflection of what is already happening inside of Rey. She could actually go dark for awhile after this, just maybe not to the extent that we see in this scene. I don’t think that it is the same vision he saw in TLJ (although I definitely think that he saw something like this), I think this would be a new vision.

Something that caught my eye about the initial cut to Rey was the motion of the camera. 

The way that it swoops over to focus on her resembles someone whipping their head around in surprise.

You know what that reminds me of?

Rey even stumbles back after this. 

If vision is the way, I have a feeling it will be like the one Rey had in Maz’s castle in TFA when she touched the legacy saber. I actually think that this would be such a cool call back, and would be another amazing example of how these two characters mirror eachother. This vision could be brought on when he touches an object as well, or it could be in the form of a dream. Or it could be a vision brought on by Palpatine to tempt Ben. Or to scare him. Or-

Summary, there are so many ways that this can go. We have truly entered my favorite time over these past 4 years, The Hour of Speculation. And it’s the final hour! Everything wraps up after this...

 As much as that breaks my heart, I am so excited for the next few months. I can’t wait to ride this out with all of you, and to hear what amazing theories you freakin oracles come up with during the wait. Old and new Reylos, I LOVE YOU!

And may the force be with you always.💙❤️💜

And please share your own thoughts, I’d love to hear what you guys think!

@sushigirlali @jedisassafras @southsidestory @sanctuarytrin It’s not my full thoughts (not even close🤦🏽‍♀️😂), or a ficlet, but I promise all of those are coming soon! Hope you like my quick ramble, much love💙☺️

[nerdylittleshit]

Thoughts about Spn 15x03

SPOILERS AHEAD! BEWARE!

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo… This episode man. I’m having emotions. Several of them. I love me some angst and well this episode delivered. Though I think that the promo for this week’s episode kinda spoiled the big character death at the end, so I really thought they might go another way. This episode focused on big character moments, with the Ghostapocalypse functioning as a vehicle for those moments. We do say goodbye to quite a few characters (though some just temporarily), so next week we will shift from an ensemble cast back to Sam & Dean, and what looks like a classic monster-of-the-week-episode, though given it is the last season there might be more to it. We will see. Until then, let’s have a closer look at this week’s episode.

Ketch me if you can

Let’s start with Ketch, who… well dies. And unfortunately next to Rowena’s big sacrifice you almost forget his death. Which felt a bit underwhelming to be honest. First of you don’t expect a hunter/former Men of Letter/ assassin to be killed by a demon. Why was there no protection in the hospital? No devil’s trap, nothing? And of course ketch died in the way we would not have expected of him: sacrificing himself to protect Sam and Dean. Which of course should show us how far he has come, how much he has changed, in particular by the Winchesters. And yet it kinda felt cheap, not only because we saw similar death scenes before or it felt too easy for Ardat to kill Ketch, but because Ketch’s death scene has to live up to Rowena’s and naturally he loses against that competition.

If anything Ketch’s death was yet another reminder that this is the last season, so the show tries to wrap up as many story and character arcs as they can, though I hope we will see other endings than characters who sacrifice themselves. You just can’t let them all die. And as mentioned Ketch’s death follows a pattern, we have seen characters like him and deaths like his before. Characters who start out as antagonists, become better through the Winchesters and end up giving their life for them: Meg, Crowley, and now Ketch and Rowena.

Like I said it kinda felt cheap, using the same trope over and over again, though perhaps this is yet another meta level. We have Dean pointing out that the Ghostapocalypse feels sort of sloppy and not like the ending they deserve. There were many complains among fans that this particular storyline did not feel scary or threatening, and that is perhaps the point. Chuck was improvising and turns out he is not as good as a writer as he thinks he is. So perhaps especially in this season whenever a storyline feels constructed or a trope overused this might be intentional. The strongest moments this season where the character moments: because their choices, their feelings, that is what is real. That is what matters.

Lilith Bo-Peep

Speaking of constructed storylines: there just happens to be a magical object that can get all the souls back to hell, you just haven’t heard about it because of reasons. Again the constructed story is a framework for various character moments: Cas and Belphegor’s conversation in hell, Belphegor’s betrayal, Cas who is forced to kill “Jack”, and how Dean used all of this to let out his anger at Cas (more of this later).

What I find interesting about Belphegor is that he used to work as a torturer in hell and he still tortures people, namely Cas, though less obvious. He has an excellent intuition for what would hurt someone the most. He has watched Sam, Dean and Cas only for a few days and yet he figured out their dynamic, knows that something is wrong between them. Of course when Cas tells Belphegor that Sam and Dean only use him and don’t actually care about him he just voices his own greatest fear, and Belphegor knows that and uses it against him.

For a moment it looks like Belphegor might become the new Big Bad (no thanks), so Cas did the only right thing at that moment and kills him, which of course was yet another torture, as Belphegor was still wearing Jack’s body. Cas already blames himself for Jack’s death and now he had to symbolically kill him again. And of course Cas couldn’t have known that this action would lead to Rowena’s sacrifice, so Dean blaming him for that is yet another thing.

Rowena the Brave

I have grown quite fond of Rowena over the years, especially since they moved her story away from Crowley and focused more on her. I’m not sure yet how to feel about her death to be honest. It was a great death scene (with phenomenal acting from both Ruth and Jared), it was a worthy end to her story, and yet I do not like in general killing of female characters, especially powerful, layered and complex female characters. And obviously this death beats her previous deaths because it had happened in her own terms, it was her own choice and she died a hero. I do believe she already had this plan B of hers in the back of her mind, knowing that something could go wrong with plan A. that is why she choose Sam as her assistant, knowing that when worse comes to worse she needed him to kill her.

And what is so interesting is her reasoning for her death. She claims that she does not care about Sam and Dean or the world, at least not enough to give her own life. But she believes in magic and in prophecies. Which actually is the opposite of Team Free Will, of believing in choice and rewriting your destiny. And the thing is, Rowena doesn’t have to die. If the Ghostapocalypse would have happened she probably would have survived, given her resurrection sachet. This is not a situation where she would have died either way, so she chose the one where she at least would save the others. But to her it is clear that everything that is happening is destined to be: the world about to end, her spell that needs the ultimate sacrifice and Sam with her. And of course it had to be Sam; killing herself would not have worked (or so she assumes), for her final death it had to be Sam killing her. And I always thought she took some comfort from knowing it would be Sam who kills her; Sam who would not be unnecessarily cruel. In the end she chose her death and the circumstances of it; Sam only killed her because she asked him to do it.

Rowena’s death mirrors both Crowley’s and Sam’s death, the two men she was closest to. Her final words are almost the same as Crowley’s and she lets herself fall into the open gates of hell the way Sam did in 5x22. Each of them (Rowena, Crowley, Sam) died to save the world, to protect the ones they love. So is this the end of Rowena? I saw some speculation floating around that she could become the new Queen of Hell, which I would approve. And is Sam now getting more into magic? Rowena already claims he is the most magical talented among them. We will see.

Break me up before you go-go

Let’s talk about that final scene between Cas and Dean, shall we? *rubshands* As I already said obviously Cas is not to blame for Rowena’s death. He couldn’t have known that his action would lead to her sacrificing herself. He did the best he could in the situation with Belphegor. So Dean blaming him for Rowena’s death is just an excuse. Dean is angry, at himself, the world, Chuck, and also Cas. But Cas is currently the only one he can throw at his anger. Dean decides for Cas that he is the one who will escort Belphegor to hell, and as Belphegor notices neither Sam or Dean seem to care too much about Cas, giving the risk of the mission.

Everything that happens hits all of Cas’s buttons, all his insecurities at once. He is afraid Sam and Dean don’t care about him and only want him around because he is useful. His powers are fading, which has actually nothing to do with Dean’s behaviour towards him, but to Cas it reads different. He fears he has no place in their family, telling Dean that at least Sam and Dean have each other. With Jack dead, with Chuck seemingly gone, he thinks he no longer has a reason to stay around. All of Dean’s behaviour made it obvious that he does not care about Cas, at least in Cas’s eyes. And on top of that Dean called him ‘wrong’. Cas has always been accused to be wrong, mostly from his angelic family. Too much heart, too close to the humans in his charge. Now his human family has dismissed him as well.

Ironically one of Dean’s greatest fear comes true as well: everyone he loves will leave him eventually. Though of course he is responsible for Cas leaving them. What is interesting about the Dean-Cas-Break-Up-scene is that it is happening at such an early point of the season. All their issues have been addressed and communicated. Dean knows now that Cas is afraid he does not care about him, that he only wants him around when he is useful, that he has no place in their family. It is up to Dean to prove him wrong. All of this need to happen in order for them to overcome their problems, to get to a healthier place in their relationship. Looking forward to it.

Until next week my lovelies <3

[verobatto]

Keeping my promise

War decision/Heart decision

Castiel meta and Destiel meta

14x19 "Jack in the box" meta/spoiler alert

Good night my friends, I'm here writing for you the first meta about the last episode. It was a very intense episode, and was full of things for review.

First of all, I want to talk with you again about Castiel's loyalty, this time, loyalty to the promise he made to Kelly Kline.

Let's start...

Intensifying the Destiel break up

From the beginning of the episode, Castiel repeated Jack could be saved, with love and guidance, he could be fulfill his destiny.

Castiel's word/promise is before anything else. He will give his life to protect Jack. So here is the intensification of the break up we saw in 14x18 between Dean and Castiel.

Dean is blind by his pain, and his lost. He can handle it this time. He is in avoidance... But he cries alone in the woods... (This was perhaps what we had seen in previous episodes, in which we had clues for Dean being alone in some point in this season).

But he isn't just alone physically in the woods. He is alone taking his decisions. He is thinking and taking the war decision... Mirroring Jack at the beginning of the season.

Gif credit @deanwinchesters

So Jack understood what Dean would want... And we saw in the promo Dean keeping his words too...

And Jack... With his innocent logical way to understand things now, accepting it. Because he knows Dean and how Dean would act... Dean is his role model.

But this is against Castiel's promise.

At the beginning of the episode, Castiel confronted AUBobby, he had exactly the same idea as will show Dean more later. They have to stop Jack at any cost. But Castiel draw the limit line there by saying WE HAVE TO FIND HIM AND HELP HIM.

His promise is against the war decision. HE IS DOING THE HEART DECISION.

I'm waiting for you...

Even so, at the beginning of the episode, we saw how Castiel's eyes were always on Dean. He knew Dean was suffering and not handle it well. He knows each facial expressions of the hunter, and the pain and sadness was all over Cas's face.

But he is silently waiting, as Sam asked him with just a gesture when they were burning Mary's body. He knows he has to wait for Dean.

Gif credit @shirtlesssammy

...But Jack comes first.

When Castiel saw the two brothers had locked Jack in the Mal'ak box, he saw with pain, Dean had just made the same thing Dumah did with the boy. Manipulation. And he was mad. We don't know how that conversation could end, because it was interrupted by Jack getting out the box.

Castiel looked at Sam first, he couldn't understand how Sam was agreed with that painful plan, and saw Sam was in pain too. So... This was Dean's decision. A war decision. Very hard to take. The only way it could work.

Castiel is doing all the alternative path to save Jack. Beacuse he believes in him, and he made a promise to Kelly. A promise he will keep wherever it takes.

To conclude

Seeing the things how had been presented, we could say the foreshadow of the "lovers separation" beacuse in Castiel's heart "is something else before Dean" could be his promise to Kelly.

Castiel's loyalty is unbreakable, and he is doing his own path, separated from the WINCHESTERS, to solve Jack's problems and help him. He is trying to contact Chuck, he investigated and found out Dumah was acting like a crazy fanatic religious, manipulating Jack. And he decided to kill her, because she was a corrupted angel serving to herself, and not to Heaven or God.

So because he had the keys on this season, I hope he can save the day in the next episode by contacting god, stopping the sacrifice in the Moriah mountain.

TFW are in separated pages now, and CAS and Dean intensified the break with a new discussion.

We just need to sit and wait for the last episode, I'm very hopeful for Chuck's apparition. (Please some wings to my angel??).

C-u later in the second part of this meta!

😘💕💕

Tagging @metafest @gneisscastiel @mrsaquaman187 @magnificent-winged-beast @emblue-sparks @agusvedder @weirddorkylittlediana @michyribeiro @castiellover20 @whyjm @koshisekisen @legendary-destiel @a-bit-of-influence @thatwitchydestielfan @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover @lykanyouko @evvvissticante @cheerstofandomfamily @drsilverfish @savannadarkbaby @angelneedshunter @trickster-archangel @dea-stiel @mybonsai1976 @hippyatheart80 @anarchiana

Buenos Aires April 18th 2019 11:06 PM

[signoraviolettavalery]

strategist-scientia replied to your post “I know Carina is bringing Malex into the light and I am infinitely...”

Kinda scared now tbh because Carina said "Yes" when someone suggested that Michael is probably reminded of Jesse Manes's hand in causing the deaths of his people whenever he looks at Alex. ������

I hope it’s ok that I use your response as the jumping-off point for some meta, because I’ve been wanting to write this since i saw Carina’s tweets, and the inevitable Malex panicking that ensued. There’s a couple tweets about Michael’s headspace that she made that I want to get into, as I consider where Michael’s character will go next season and what that might mean for Malex. 

Now, my immediate response to this is: Yes?? Good?? Carina is saying Michael is going to have a character arc next season, and this is a good thing. Characters need arcs, and frankly, I’ve been frustrated that most of his “arc” this season has just been taking care of other people. Equally frankly, I’m glad that this will be the arc, because Michael is completely traumatized right now. He not only lost his family right after finding them, but he’s witnessed the genocide of his race. I’m glad the show is going to deal with that instead of sweep it under the rug. That’s what Michael s a character deserves. And I know it sucks to put queer characters through trauma and misery and suffering, because it seems like that’s the only thing they ever get to experience in narratives. But in a well-written story, you can’t shield your characters from the world and have nothing bad ever happen to them. There need to be low points in order for there to be development, as long as there are high points. 

The other tweet that people have been worrying about is this one, about how Michael will react to Alex and how their relationship will changed, based on the fact that Alex’s family is responsible for literally all of the suffering of Michael’s: 

This is where people start worrying that Malex will crash and burn, or that Michael will blame Alex for what happened even though it’s not actually Alex’s fault. 

So, first of all, I’m going to point out the obvious: it doesn’t sound like English is this person’s first language (which isn’t a dig at them, but just the observation that there may be a language/communication barrier here). Carina’s “yes” is vague af, and twitter is a really shitty medium to sort-of-but-not-really hint at character motivations and what’s coming. 

Moving on from that, my  thoughts are that Michael isn’t going to outright blame Alex - after all, Alex didn’t do anything. In fact, Alex has literally shut down project Shepard and blackmailed his father to protect Michael, and if Michael knows about project shepard he knows this. Logically, he understands this. But I do think that Michael will pull away from Alex - just as he’ll pull away from Max, Isobel, Maria, and even Liz. He’s going to need space, and he might get self-destructive in all his relationships, not just the one with Alex, because he’s going to blame himself for what happened. It’ll be difficult to watch, but I think that Alex, who himself has extensive experience sabotaging his own relationship as a result of fear and trauma, will understand where he’s coming from and try to help. 

I do also think Michael will have a hard time with Alex specifically. Again, it’s not that he’ll blame Alex, because he clearly didn’t blame Alex for his hand, if his desire to rekindle a relationship ten years later is any indication. But Alex will be a living, breathing reminder of the Manes legacy, which has taken literally everything from Michael, starting with his hand and ending with his family. It’s going to get complicated, because just last episode, Michael was telling Max that he believes that there’s no place for him here (on Earth) - something that Jesse made him believe, and something of which his hand serves as a reminder. And now he has even more proof, painful, heartrending, visceral proof, that there is no place for him on this planet, in the sense that humanity as a whole does not accept him for what he is. And the Manes legacy is largely responsible for this. 

But. The irony is that while the Manes family has destroyed his family, his life, his home, and his hope, Alex has been all of those things for him. Alex offered him a home when he had none. Alex told him “you’re my family.” Alex, as Michael said in 1x11, made him believe there’s is a place for him here on earth. Home can be a person, and Alex has been his. 

And I think Michael will realize that. If Liz can get over the fact that Max covered up her sister’s murder and was responsible for her family suffering hate crimes for ten years, then Michael can get over Alex having a legacy that he has completely and utterly rejected. But it will take time, because trauma isn’t rational, and because Alex did enlist in the military and become a “Manes man” before he ultimately chose Michael. So Michael will have to reconcile those two things - what Alex’s family took from him, and the fact that Alex himself gave back all those things to him. Honestly, I think it’s going to be the culmination of the arc that they’ve been planting the seeds of this season - that home can be a person. Michael Vlamis also hinted that Micheal probably won’t be deciding whether to leave the planet this season, so perhaps this will be a decision he’ll have to make next season. Alex will give him the spaceship piece and set him free, understanding that Michael has never felt like he belongs on Earth and that now he feels like he belongs even less, and that his family is responsible for it. And Michael will have to realize that despite Alex’s legacy, which he has outright rejected, Alex is his home. 

It’ll be a long journey, but I honestly think it’ll be fine in the end. Think of it this way: ships, just like characters, need arcs. I know we all say we’d happily watch an entire season of them just cuddling in bed, but come on. None of us actually would. We’d like an actual story. That’s why we tuned in. We want to see characters facing challenges and overcoming them. And yes, just like with queer characters, we don’t want queer pairings to just keep suffering endlessly. But we do want them to have actual, meaningful storylines. And what Carina is hinting at above sounds like an actual storyline. It’s Michael working through legitimate trauma instead of sweeping it under the rug, and Alex learning to live with the legacy of his family. If done well, this is a good storyline. The alternative is either no storyline, or contrived relationship drama, and no one wants that. Remember when, on The Vampire Diaries, Damon and Elena finally got together and the writers had to come up with a dozen reasons to break them up (the sire bond, Katherine possessing Elena, Damon temporarily dying and Elena erasing her memories of him and about a dozen other “plots’)? We really, really don’t want that. We want an actual arc. 

Of course, how much you believe Carina and the writers will do justice to this arc depends on how much you trust them to actually meaningfully write it, and that’s up to each viewer to decide on their own. Based on my own personal experience, I think it’ll be fine, because whatever the various flaws of season 1 of Roswell (and they definitely exist), the emotional beats have rung true to me. I understand why characters behave the way they do, their fears, their traumas, and their progress (with some exceptions). So, I think we’ll be fine. 

Part of the reason I’m so confident is because every other time we panicked because of a tweet, a promo, or a promo photo, we turned out to be pretty wrong to panic. Let’s recap: 

1x09 This is the OG throwback episode, and when Shiri leaked that photo of Michael and Maria naked in the desert, we panicked. We thought Michael and Maria would have a full-blown romance and Michael would leave behind Alex and forget about him, or that Maria would sleep with Michael while knowing about Alex, or any number of worst-case scenarios. 

What actually happened: Alex ended things, with finality. Previously, he’d walked away - and we’re led to believe he’s done this multiple times, which means that he’s also come back multiple times, because to walk away again, he had to come back first. But now, for the first time ever in ten years, probably, he said “we’re definitely over.” The love of Michael’s life broke his fucking heart by making him believe they could never have a future together, and Michael’s response was literal suicidal ideation. That line about “I’m just wishing a meteor would strike me down and end my suffering”? That’s suicidal ideation, y’all. 

So yeah, he hooked up with Maria because he needed comfort and a connection with someone - but one that he was 100% certain wouldn’t get romantically complicated and messy. He picked Maria because he had a connection with her but thought there wasn’t a chance in the world that she’d catch feelings. 

And then Alex came back to him and he took him back and bared his fucking soul and revealed every single one of his deepest secrets. 

1x11 This was the UFO emporium re-opening episode, and everybody panicked that Michael and Maria would talk and kiss and/or hook up in the place of Malex’s first kiss. Come on, guys. Like, I get panic, but this was a bit much. 

What happened instead: Michael misses Maria, who was pretty much his only friend, and tries to get back onto the same page they were (flirty banter that meant nothing), but which is pretty hard to do once you’ve slept together. Michael believes he and Alex are completely over, and....he skips the Emporium reopening (probably because it’s too painful). Then, Maria, the person he pretty much considers his only friend, gets roofied and possessed by an alien serial killer. So yeah, he’s concerned, and he watches over her, because Michael Guerin is, at heart, a protector who takes care of people, and frankly, if he wasn’t worried about Maria, I’d like him slightly less as a person. Maria drunkenly indicates potential feelings for him, which he shows absolutely no indication of actually reciprocating (he looks concerned and frustrated at best). 

1x12 We all thought Malex was going to break up in this episode, despite the fact that they were already broken up and Michael thought they were “over.” We knew there was a tear-inducing Malex moment and we listened to Tyler’s song and I saw no end of posts going around saying Malex was going to break up. 

What happened instead: Alex confessed his love for Michael, called Michael family, stayed by him in the face of literal certain death, and physically and emotionally supported him during a moment of devastating heartbreak. 

So yes, I get the worry. I especially get the worry because apparently The Magicians fucked over their queer viewers just last night. Believe me, I understand, and I’m not a person to have faith easily. I’ve been through Supernatural fandom and the great Destiel queerbait that was season 8. I’ve been through Sherlock fandom and The Johnlock Conspiracy of seasons 3/4. I am intimately familiar with the nonsense shows pull on queer viewers, and I understand the context in which queer viewers are wary of trusting and investing emotionally. I’m a queer viewer as well, and I get it. I really do. But my personal experience of Roswell has been one of the fandom panicking (because we’ve been burned so many times), followed by us getting literal fanfiction on our screens, with actual love confessions and words like “cosmic” and all the tropes. So in this particular case, I choose to trust, because thus far, I think the show has done well by Malex for the most part, and because so far, almost all of our worries have turned out to be for nothing. And I’m also excited for Malex to have meaningful storylines and things to work through. 

That’s my two cents. Thanks for letting me ramble. Feel free to reblog if you think we could stand to spread some positivity. 

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

so, I saw many people who think that the ending in Billie's book is suicide? But I kinda felt like, there was no ending. The only other option is for Dean to not die, to keep Michael locked up forever. What do you think is the ending?

Eh, the billion dollar question. Which, thanks for sending because I’ve just been so overwhelmed with feels that I have simply given up on making something coherent out of it.

Let me make a little detour first and say how the show is making explicit some things that we were saying but have been made textual now - cosmic consequences doesn’t mean something neat and clearly visible as the direct consequence of a particular action. It’s a ripple effect, a butterfly effect. Playing with the castle of cards that the universe is... you end up rewriting fate. That’s what Billie keeps saying. To the people who accuse the show of belittling Billie because she warns the Winchesters that Terrible Things(TM) are coming if they do certain things, but then they do the things and Terrible Things(TM) don’t happen - this is the answer. There are no “obvious” Terrible Things(TM) coming, it’s the fabric of fate being changed in ways that Billie can see, but that the other characters - and us - can’t unless Billie tells them (and us).

In an episode where Michael discusses about God being a writer, of course (in a classic Dabb era move, I mean) eventually we come to see where the story is really being written. Just like Anubis said that God doesn’t decide whether a person goes to hell or heaven, but the person themselves decides with their actions -- so the story of the world is not being written by God. There was a script, but it was revealed that following it was a choice (that Team Free Will rejected). There are, obviously, guidelines. But it’s fundamentally choices made by people that write the story. Billie had already shown us that there are many, many possible ways a person’s story can go, and now we learn explicitly that a person’s entire array of fate possibilities can be even rewritten, if that person messes up with the order of the cosmos enough.

Michael, the dark Dean double, says that God can be killed, and that he’ll destroy his “draft worlds” because he can. This is basically the dark equivalent of what Dean does - Dean, who metaphorically destroys God’s scripts, who metaphorically “kill gods”. Dean “Free Will” Winchester can destroy the stories who have been written so far, he can kill God, he can shape his own destiny and the destiny of the cosmos. Of course, right now things are probably going to take a difficult turn because this is Supernatural, but the point is that Dean does what Michael claims for himself - he “destroys worlds-stories” and “kills God” in this sense.

Now, I don’t know what the book Billie shows Dean says, and I’m not particularly interested in making speculations about it because we just don’t know, but what really interests me is Billie’s behavior in this episode.

She breaks the rules. She intervenes, she sends Sam, Cas, Jack and the Michael+Dean package to the bunker so Cas and Sam can enter Dean’s mind, return Dean to the control room of his body, and stuff Michael away for the time being. 

Sam said that one of your reapers really came through with the assist. I’m thinking that was probably you.Don’t tell anyone.You broke the rules.I took a calculated risk.

She is interested in the world not being destroyed, and she is making an investment in Dean in the perspective of Dean possibly choosing that one path that doesn’t end with Michael destroying the world. Of course, she is not going to force Dean to choose, she is not going to arrange things in a way that Dean cannot but go in that direction. She is leaving him the fundamental choice. That’s up to you. But breaking the hands-off rule, letting Dean read out of a book from her office - that’s a big move. I’m supposing that Death revealing about the books back about Sam and Rowena wasn’t exactly orthodox already, but now she has handed a book to Dean, which I’m sure is just as unorthodox and the various other adventures Dean has had with Death.

*sound of the millions of Death Dean/Reaper Dean meta-spec written along the course of the show crying of emotion in the distance*

(Consider also Michael basically saying he plans to kill God - the original Death said he was going to reap God, and Michael is a mirror for Dean in this narrative; and now Billie basically puts Dean in a narrative position where he’s framed as Death, because reading those books, holding those books, is what Death does: Dean is consistently shown across the show as on equal footing with reapers and Death, and literally (s6) or metaphorically in their shoes.)

Billie is taking a big “calculated risk” in putting this much... responsibility? trust? in Dean, and I might add that she’s acknowledging Dean not really as an equal - obviously they’re not the same thing - but on an equal footing of sorts when it comes to this situation.

But no, I really don’t know what the book might say.

What are the alternatives to Michael running loose? Either keeping him locked up forever (a), or destroying him (b).

The former is... impossible, or just not really worth investing on. Even if Dean arranged some kind of send-me-to-outer-space-to-be-a-lock-forever situation - oh, wait, that has never worked. The Cage God built is not a very solid solution - Lucifer got out twice, Michael is still there but another Michael showed up, so, really, the purpose of it is basically bypassed. Basically, you lock one Michael up, another one takes his place on the cosmic chessboard, you know? I feel confident in saying locking up Michael doesn’t work.

In fact, locking up your problems doesn’t work. It’s not a coincidence that in this episode Michael mentions God: locking up things is God’s specialty. And it doesn’t work. The Cage is like Swiss cheese. Amara, the ultimate problem he locked up to get rid of, also escaped and almost killed God if it weren’t for Dean’s intervention. In this episode, there are several attempts to lock things up that don’t work in a way or another: in the hotel, they need to be teleported away because the door wasn’t going to hold; the shapeshifter pretending to be a hunter doesn’t lock the bunker... rule of three, the third locking up, Michael’s, succeeds for the time being, but we can’t expect it to last forever.

Unless Dean manages to find a way to mute Michael, to lock him up to well he doesn’t make any noise, literally and figuratively. But... well, no. For the simple extradiegetic reason that we can’t have Dean get to the end the show with Michael just locked inside and that’s it. In-story, it just doesn’t seem like a sustainable solution. And knowing that Dean has a neutralized archangel inside of him in a fridge? Not exactly the prettiest scenario.

Also, it’s probably early to really make statements about this, but all of this Michael, Michael vs God, Dean vs Michael situation is all a mirror for Dean’s dynamic with John, and we know something huge regarding Dean and John is coming, so... whatever the solution to the Michael problem is going to be, it’s going to be a mirror to whatever the resolution of Dean’s John-related trauma is going to be like. Stuffing the problem inside of you forever is not a solution to trauma, and it can’t be a solution to Michael.

And now we get to (b). And we have two possibilities: Dean manages to find a way to destroy Michael that allows him to live, or Dean destroys himself and Michael. But what does it mean to destroy an angel...? Well, we know what happens to dead angels. Is whatever the book says related to the Empty and the Shadow that rules it? That’s a possibility, and also a way the Michael/Dean storyline could merge with the Empty/Cas storyline, but I’m putting the carriage before the horses.

I really don’t like using the CW promo for the next episode to speculate on, because CW promos are notoriously not a reliable tool for speculation, and the Onwards trailer doesn’t seem to give anything away in this regard, so I’m not going to speculate on what Dean “acting strange” might be specifically an indicator of. (He’s planning to die soon? He’s attempting some kind of strategy like when he was trying to control the Mark of Cain? We just don’t know yet.)

This post has gotten long enough, so I’m ending it on with a note on Jensen’s acting. First of all: give this man all the prizes. He’s superb in every episode, but this episode allowed him to showcase his talents beautifully, both as Michael and as Dean.

In the final scene, Jensen initially plays Dean as half-heartedly trying to put on a façade of confidence in front of Billie - I think he’s purposely played it as Dean not really trying, because he does know there’s no point to it (I think he’s doing it more for himself than for Billie, if you get what I mean). The subtle horror when Billie says that ‘all the books’ end with Michael getting control, the wariness when she mentions an exception, the frown when he basically asks her silently if he can/should open it, the shock/surprise -- I think then Dean’s expression reveals a sort of mixture of disorientation and understanding at the same time. He understands what what is written means - Billie doesn’t feel the need to explain more, after all - and that understanding leaves him lost and vulnerable. That’s eventually what Jensen plays - that almost childlike quality what Jensen gives Dean when he’s unguarded in his helplessness. It’s the way Jensen played Dean overwhelmed by the horror of losing his own sense of identity when he lost his memory under the witch’s spell...

Interestingly, he gives a quick glance to the book and he looks up at Billie wide-eyed and slack-mouthed, asking what he’s supposed to do with that knowledge - a sign that he’s understood the gist of what’s in the book - then he reads more and he seems to find some additional detail that further gets him shaken.

But then again, we just don’t know what’s in that book, so we just have to wait and see.

In the meanwhile I’m expecting the fandom to provide crack suggestions :3

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Planet With 6 - 8 | Cells at Work! 6 - 8 | Phantom in the Twilight 6 - 8 | BnHA 57 - 58 | Angolmois 6 - 7

Planet With 6

“Are you a monster?” - Who’s the real monster in this show, though?

A Clog Punch is even more hilarious than a standard Giga Cat Hammer, haha.

The bad guy died! What the heck’s going to happen from here???

Cells at Work! 6

Smol RBC-senpai is so cute! Not as much as smol RBC herself, but…yeah. I wonder if smol WBC is around as well…?

This story’s a lil’ hackneyed, but nothing that doesn’t twang the heartstrings a little…

I love how the sensei WBC still has blood on his arm as he walks away.

The banter between the NK and the Killer T cells really gets to me. It’s so good!

Angolmois 6

Dang, I liked Yajirou. Now he’s dead…

Where did Teruhi get the cloth for Yajirou’s (I presume) head…?

I find it interesting how he (Onitakemaru) dragged the old man merchant with him and yet went to the extent of plundering the treasure without the intent of keeping it. It’s like he did the plundering as a show of strength…

I’ve realised that even though Planet With’s been getting better and better, this show’s starting to sink. Sure, the staff on this show are giving me everything I asked for, but the shine of a new anime is starting to wear off…That montage just proved why it sunk – it’s more willing to go for a quality drop in the middle of the plot.

It was way too dark in the scene that revealed Teruhi’s face being up against Kuchii’s. It took me a bit to realise that was happening…

The water in that river looks a bit odd.

“Akimado firefly” gets me zero relevant Google results.

Now that I think of it, Nagamine’s kinda hot, LOL.

Come to think of it, I still haven’t got a bead on whether Teruhi has the hots for Kuchii or not. If it’s the former, then this show would be quite disappointing. Plus, are these invaders all Mongols from China, Mongols from Mongolia (duh) or Mongols from Europe? They did have gunpowder, which is from China, but they also said the Mongolians had invaded Europe at this point…

Phantom in the Twilight 6

*sees ep 7 title* - “Awakening of the Century”? Not on my watch, no. Probably not.

Why are they only progressing the plot now? Not that I didn’t like the Roland story, but…c’mon, if your friend is in danger, you shouldn’t derail from that. Right?

Notably, the group is called “midnight sun” (katakana), but the episode is called mayonaka no taiyou (kanji/hiragana).

Karandi mentioned how she loved how faithful this show was to the past folklore of supernatural creatures and now they’re using that to the show’s advantage…huh.

Oh, hey. Next episode preview gave spoilers…that’s just like a next-ep preview, actually.

BnHA 57

Noticeably, Yoarashi is pretty obvious with his giant whirlwind…

Haha, Deku is quoting All Might verbatim from the video!

Welp, there wasn’t much to say this episode…

Cells at Work! 7

This cancer cell looks like Ken Kaneki (Tokyo Ghoul)…interesting choice.

They decided to deviate from the serious plot for the platelets. I give it 10 out of 10!...Nah, just kidding.

*Killer T helps NK get up* - I can see why Negative Primes ships NK and Killer T Cells together now…

I forgot what the cryptic-speaking green-covered cell (not a dendrite, but the other guy) was called…I think he might’ve been a B cell, but that’s all I remember. Sorry.

I can’t believe I’m feeling sympathetic for a cancer cell…

Planet With 7

I like how even Ginko still has secrets up her sleeve right now.

Hmm…it seems the hypnosis didn’t work because Nozo-san is wearing glasses.

Benika and Yousuke seem to have been hypnotised, this isn’t like them!!!

Phantom in the Twilight 7

I find it interesting Vlad chose to use Chinse martial arts. Either Toryu taught him, he learnt how to do them from Rijan or he learnt from Chinese people over many, many years. I think the second option is the most probable.

Why can’t the underlings see Kabocha-kun (Kabocha-kun = the jack o’ lantern)?

Toryu does the Naruto run. He’s not even a ninja!

The OS kind of looks like Windows, but with the taskbar being a colour of a Mac…plus the top bar of a Mac.

The green lines of text that appear on the screen are just gibberish, by the way. They’re not code…

*Chris punches Luke to get him out of the way of the falling debris* - I laughed a lot harder than I should have at that…because that shows they’re concerned for each other…in a very roundabout sort of way.

Oh no, Kabocha-kun!

What?! Van Helsing’s hair wiggles of its own accord! It’s basically alive!

Eyy! Extra info! That’s what I watch these after-episode segments for!

“You’re giving away the second half of the season!” – Hmm…

*after the next-ep segment is completely over* - Hmm…so Ton has her hair change colour and lose her memories. The Price of Power = The Price of Loss. Hmm indeed.

Angolmois 7

Ho-Holy mackerel! My knowledge of Touken Ranbu swords is coming in handy! Imanotsurugi is the lil’ grey-haired shota (tantou) who dresses like a tengu. That means this Kurou man is more simply known as Minamoto no Yoshitsune!

Seriously, this emperor looks like an alien! An alien, I tell you!

At first I didn’t recognise the guys with the facial marking were Toibarai, but then I saw Nagamine and I was like, “Oh. Okay then.” Come to think of it, these Mongolians look like the Earth guys from Avatar…

I find it interesting the Toibarai – or at the very least, Nagamine – are literate. You’d think in a time like 1274 there’d be a lot more illiteracy…or maybe I’m just thinking about Western civilisation…

“The abalones are a tougher opponent.” – I like these ladies already. Not only because that’s such a funny line, but because tough lady fisherwomen with tans is probably more representation than an entire genre of ecchi anime can do for women.

Apparently a porgy is a type of fish…hmm. It sounds silly.

Come to think of it, Jinzaburou was right once bfore when everyone else stood against him and that was when he got thrown out of Sou Sukekuni’s meeting…which doesn’t spell good things for Kanatanoki, y’know.

Cells at Work! 8

Man, I had to memorise the circulation path years ago! Too bad I don’t remember how it goes anymore…

I like how the blood cell mascot is actually shaped like an RBC.

I only just noticed, but female RBCs in this show have booty shorts and male ones have pants. Why can’t it ever be the other way around…?

Hmm…the tricuspid valve is shown as a torii gate. Interesting choice.

*platelets try to put up posters while talking to WBC* - Excellent usage of platelets. 10/10!

I was wondering what the cell’s seal said…close inspection reveals it just says “cell” on it. I guess I should’ve figured that out without having to zoom in on the image, eh?

“…you spineless candy-ass!” – That’s a hilarious insult! Who the heck thought of it and what’s the Japanese equivalent of it???

BnHA 58

A special…? This is almost as bad as a recap episode if it’s all recycled…

…uh, wow. That All Might was more meta than I was expecting.

Oh, I get it now. Movie promo episode. So that’s what this is.  

For some reason, I find Toshinori going “Dave” hilarious. I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe it’s because he looks American.

“Save the World With Love!” brings to mind Boueibu, y’know? Good times…

*All Might comes in through the back door, flexing* - Muscle muscle, hustle hustle!

Oh my gosh, they went Detective Conan on us!

Suicide out of grief for what he’d (All Might had) done, maybe?

Oh yeah. Midoriya overlooked why the three potential culprits were separated and left  in different parts of the store. Update: Nope, right thinking, wrong lead.

Planet With 8

Notably, 10 = to in some cases, hence Torai being 10.

Souya’s gone all Shinji Ikari on us! Not that I mind, but…Shinji is a polarising character for a reason, y’know!

Why does this story, with a potential final confrontation on the moon, remind me of Busou Renkin so much?

Phantom in the Twilight 8

“Why Shinyao specifically?” is the question I’m asking here. Why did Shinyao need to be kidnapped?

Has Ton even gone to school yet? Or rather, is it summer break in London and we were never told that?

“She entered forbidden territory.” – Says a worker at Café Forbidden!

I’ve never heard “stole a march on me” before…apparently it means “to gain an advantage over someone else”.

He uses a cat pickup line! He’s a werewolf! That’s…hilarious!

I’m still wondering if Shinyao has Stockholm syndrome to any degree…

The line about the abyss is Niestche (sp???). I’ve seen it quoted enough times to know.

Did they ever mention the fact Ton’s hair went back to normal? Or was all that hair-tossing meant to imply it was back to normal without saying anything? You’re trying so hard, show, but you’re not quite hitting the mark…

[goprandall]

DC MASTERPOST >3

It’s no secret the DC universe is something of a DCpointment. There’s no cohesion in sotrylines, films are released at odd and illogical times and I decided to rewatch and give proper reviews.

MAN OF STEEL 2013 7/10

This film is something of an outlier on the DCEU, because it is not terrible.

The strengths of this film are defiantly the first act, I feel it was a clear and concise way to create backstory without the stereotypes of following him through childhood into adulthood, they did a great job of creating krypton and establishing an antagonist with a clear motive. I liked the jump straight into adult with flashbacks when confronted with items from his past, it allowed us to understand his past without saturating his journey all at once. Arguably the first arc of this film is completed here with Clark/kal discovering who he is and why he is here. The second arc of General Zod trying to bring back his people is still very well done, providing us more relevant backstory and shows logical actions from both sides of the fight nearing the end of the film. The biggest weakness of the film in my opinion is that it is 20 minutes too long. When superman destroys Zods ship killing the artificial children of krypton, I feel this arc was complete, although the after fight solely fought between SM and Zod does show us the struggle superman goes through becoming the last kryptonite in exaistance, this does not outweigh the pointless mass destruction this causes, on top of a already destroyed city. In my cut this would be disregarded.

Final thoughts of the film; my favourite part was the shot of ‘ALERT’ that slowly turns to ‘Toner empty’, a good transition and piece of direction. I’m giving this film 7/10, in my classification would make it a good Netflix film, one I’d be happy to watch but not pay money to solely see. It was a hard choice to not make it a 6 however, I rank wonder women as a 7, and this is more than equally as good, the only things preventing me from giving it a higher rank is it’s rewatchability. Personally I rarely would due to its lack of joy and humour, and overall darkness, not just in plot but also in cinematography and colour grading.

BATMAN V SUPERMAN 2016 6/10

Batman v superman had all the the ingredients to be the summer blockbuster, but as predicted it followed every DC film and tanked.

Their are some aspects of this film that are genuinely good, giving it a 6, one of those things is the first act of the film where we are introduced to Batman, although I didn’t personally feel the need for another origin story, the way this scene is directed especially with the earl sequence is fantastic, adding depth and differing from older versions of the same story. The other good thing about this film is the Batman fight scene, it is so well articulated and choreographed, i struggle to see how it fits within the wider film which is strangely badly directed, edited and in-cohesive.

Continuing from this idea, I feel the dream sequences are one of the leading problems for the in-cohesion of the film, the issue with these sequences is, if they are not well done it stops the audience trusting more daring scenes, ultimately taking you out of the story. Next, I feel another reason this doesn’t live up to its hype is, again, DCs continuous frenzy of oversaturating it’s film with characters. Here I argue Wonder women is not needed in the end fight, the fight could just have easily gone on sitbout her, or, if they had released wonder women before this film so we felt more engrossed in the character it wouldn’t been fine. However her and all the other justice league promo clips, should not have been in the film in the context they were as they’re a corporate shoehorn, promoting further projects. The other character I feel is unneeded is ‘Doomsday’, he’s quickly thrown in at the end of the film, and honesty an antigunist shown to us at the end of the film will never give the depth and fear of a hero fight, as a villain shown throughout the movie.

To me, Batman V Superman is a movie. Not a film, crafted and worked on to create a narrative for the audience, but a summer movie to get the kids out the house. The idea of having two meta humans as important as Batman and superman battling each other should boggle the mind, as the first avengers did for me or civil war for a closer comparison. But the difference with the MCU spectaculars is, they earned their right to blow people’s minds, DC is playing catch up and trying to get praise and awe without the hard work.

SUICIDE SQUAD 2016 3/10

Wow. This review has been hard to create and will most likely feature ideas from other reviews via podcasts and YouTube due to the fact this movie boggled my head in the sheer awfullness that ensued.

As always, I begin with the strengths of the film. In this instance it’s slight. I loved the aesthetics of the branding for the film, the colours, the neon animations, I loved it all. The mini descriptions in the film were funny and added to the VeRy little personalities of the characters. It is important to point out this clearly wasn’t present in the first edits of the film, but due to good feedback of later trailers that were released they were added, which is why this element of humour is the only of its kind that lands in the film.

Next I normally look into the storyline and the character arcs of the film, arguably my second favourite aspect to look for in a film. In suicide squad there is none, and there aren’t any. That sounds harsh, but the reality is there is no cohesive storyline, it follows no one character individually and the film darts back and fourth between every character, no matter the timeframe. Dean Dobbs (from adventures with dean and Bertie’s podcast) best describes this as ‘like playing a video game where someone is skipping every cutscene’ and this is absolutly true, especially when looking at the relationship of the joker and Harley Quinn. This film is so badly edited, As jack Howard describes, this film contains no scenes, it is obvious the whole film was rehashed and re-edited after the release of BVS (which crashed at the box office) and the final trailer was released, which was very different from the first few as it showed humour and action, and it is evident they cut out almost everything apart from these things. I would best describe it as many GoPrandall videos I have scrapped as I tend to forget to film opening sequencers and filler clips to show the progression of the story told apart from the action, and this is exactly how I felt about the editing of this film, they did the best with what they got but it wasn’t enough.

Although there was a lack of character arcs, this film had an ABUNDANT amount of characters to fill its shoes. This film crams as many famous faces in as many characters

As it can, because for some reason DC refuses to create stand alone films due to the catch up to the MCU that’s going on. We’ll start with the joker, or more exactly the 10 minuets of joker we got. Many scenes with the joker were so heavily edited, and deleted, it is hard to judge Jared Letos performance, because he didn’t have chance to give one. But, as a side note the hand on the mouth laugh is one of the WORST cinema moments I’ve experienced only closely beaten by ‘were bad guys it’s what we do’. Yuck. But we’ll finally look at the ‘suicide squad’, although looking at them it’s hard to identify why they are in this squad. We’ll start with reason no one on the team seems to have a reason to be there, aprt from deadshot, who had his daughters arc to think about. All the others just seem to around and don’t want to die and get out of prison. VERY good motives DC, you’ve outdone yourself this time. Next we can look at the abilities of this so called ‘meta human’ squad and how under utilised they really are, which could show why this film failed so badly. Firstly deadshot- ‘never misses a bullet- amazing at trick shots.’ Who in the film performs close quarter headshots, the same as the Seal team next to him, and in the film performs 1 trick shot. 1. That was in establishing scene right at the beginning, but he isn’t the only victim, we can look at Boomerang, my favourite character by far, with one the coolest abilities, who throws a total of:5 boomerangs and catches: 2. Let’s be honest Harely is there as the jokers Love Interest and to keep him in the film. We can also look at el deablo, the man that can shoot fire but refuses until he’s bullied for a whole minute. The worlds worst archaeologist who starts the entire battle, after BREAKING AN ANTIQUE immediatly after finding it (bravo) who if wasn’t attempted to be weaponised, would’ve skipped this whole mess. Slipknot, a man who could climb any wall or anything, who immediatly dies after climbing a wall, but don’t worry because they don’t even want you to worry about this due to the fact they don’t even intro him before he magically appears on the squad, hoping the audience will react ‘oh he’s going to be important!!! What a mystery man!!’. This is almost as bad as Katana, who adds nothing the story apart from a short intro and when she cries to her dead husband, at which point I began to cut my toenails, something I gave more of a shit about.

But, it is obvious I’m a teenage marvel fanboy just shitting on DC,and I hate when people complain without offering another viewpoint, therefore, to fix this, I would dedicate this film to the viewpoint of deadshot, giving him the character arc of changing with the goal of seeing his daughter- eliminate the extra characters- slipknot/katana and either dedicate more time to the joker and harley sub plot or eliminate entirely, NOT BOTH. With this, better editing around these eliminated plot points could make a more coherent story with more empathetic story arcs. I have a full idea for a plot but this is too long as it is.

WONDER WOMEN 2017 7/10

Wonder women is a refreshing instalment into the DCEU, showing they seem to e learning, but are still falling behind on some of the most basic hurdles.

Firstly, as always we’ll start off with the strengths of his film, firstly it is vividly important to recognise that this is the first major Superhero film to be directed, and sustain a heavy female cast. It does so fantastically and leaves me more excited for the next instalment now knowing female directors and stars now have evidence for an accomplished superhero movie, which arguably has outdone the past 2 major films. With this we see a brilliantly refreshing opening act with a subtle and bright, vibrant origin story.

However, this film slowly returns to madness throughout the film when major plot holes appear, and the film making quality slowly deteriorates. Firstly, the iggest plot hole that has been so easily overlooked is the WW1 aspect. Given a World War Two film, having the Germans be the sole enemy is obvious and logical, however WW1 is not as simple as this and the use of Germans as the enemies is vaguely lazy. Also, as DC loves to do, it adds in extra characters and neglects to give them logical and coherent backstory and arcs. We only need to look at the ‘best marksman in the war’ who doesn’t fire a single shot, and continues not too all the way to the end of the film, showing no growth. The final plot hole is what draws it into the wider EU. The entirety of this film is showing Diana that the human race is bad and should be left alone, although when she defeats arias, this is meant to break this curse and peace seems to be restored. But, in BVS she claims to have stopped helping mankind because of their evils, neglecting Stalin, WW2 and the Vietnam war to name a few, but making a reappearance for- lex Luther. Wow.

Although in almost most of its entirety this was a pleasant watch, my personal issue stopped this at the third act when the final fight begins. To me the film returns to DCs favourite colour scheme of dark and clouded, and uses quite frankly some of the worst CGI I’ve seen recently, making me wonder why they didn’t at least try to incorporate real elements, such as Marvel, but this is still the best DC film after man of steel and I’m excited to see more female led and directed films come to screen.

JUSTICE LEAUGE 2016 5/10

This will be the shortest of the DC reviews, this is the film I’ve seen least of the lot and I feel I’ll need at least another viewing to get a full understanding. To premise this I fully understand Zack Snyder had personal issues leading him to leave and Joss take over, and this is in no way mocking him.

But I’ll dive in, maybe the fact I’m struggling to write this review tells me a lot about the movie. Wonder women was one of the only saving graces of this move, she was well understood and I feel her likeness as a character was well transferred from WW to JL. Contrary to this, I’m struggling to write about cyborg and flash, we were given next to no backstorys, although the flash’s was hinted at at least twice that I recall and what we were given were quite chaotic. Batman was a major letdown for me, coming down from BVS where he was a certified badass taking on superman, he turns into a wimp and hides for a majority of the film, quite evidently showing Ben affleck Clearly does not want to be there. I feel the overall plot of the film was almost underatsnvle, but had the taken the time to set up this storyline in previous films it would’ve been much better, this movie lacked the right to have all these characters on screen together. The characters had adequate screen time each, but contrary to its biggest rival ‘the avengers’ this really wasn’t that special, most of the characters had the same abilities, barring the flash, and the way the avengers films have shown all the characters working together simultaneously in cinematic mastery, you can see hints of Joss attempting this, but with a bad set up it’s an impossible task.

I conclude, not going into the issue with the CGi because I don’t have that much time.

[littlehollyleaf]

reddit(.)com/r/Gotham/comments/8f8eca/spoilers_insider_info - So, Jeremiah is going to get a dissociative identity disorder.

Have u seen the spoilers? Apparently ecco is really going to be harleen quinzel, not just a proto harley

I don’t know if you guys are the same anon, but if not, you’re messaging me about the same thing so I’m putting you together - hope you don’t mind!

You know, as an aside - this is an amount of spoilers I would usually be kinda ticked off about knowing in advance. Like, when I first got into fandom I was committed to being 100% SPOILER FREE and HATED any kind of advanced info, even from promos and stuff..... Then when I got more into the meta/speculation side of things, keeping up with official spoilers became a sort of necessary evil, because it was/is simply impossible to join in speculative discussion WITHOUT knowing those kind of spoilers. However, in general I do usually still try to stick to avoiding unofficial, unsourced spoilers, since you can never be sure how reliable they are. 

Gotham has been a big departure for me in this regard, since a LOT of spoilers come from unofficial sources, like fans who have seen advanced showings or have captured BTS footage and so on. And now people posting bits of future scripts they’ve got somehow or this break down of future scripts on reddit.

The odd BTS fan video was mostly fine, and I was happy to get excited about those. But once bits of future script started getting posted and handed around and discussed, that was taking things a bit too far for me tbh.

So yeah. True but boring story.

HOWEVER, considering my emotional investment in the show has... lessened of late. At this point I’m probably more GRATEFUL for the head’s up than anything. So ta for the link! (you’re not even the first person to send me one anon, I got some in chat as well :p)

Re: the spoilers themselves -

Ngl, it all sounds... fine/fun/okay to me. Jeremiah having a personality disorder is, ofc, something of a re-hash of Eddie’s plot. But, and I’ve talked about this before, since Riddler and Joker have always had a bit of an overlap as characters, with some stories even mocking them for being considered similar villains (only with Eddie being less popular/infamous :p), I think them sharing some psychological issues and character traits actually WORKS? So I’m pretty chill with that (also sounds like Jeremiah’s identity issues are gonna be SO MUCH EASIER TO UNDERSTAND than Eddie’s, which is a RELIEF to my poor little brain....).

Re: Harley - I’ve always been down to have a Gotham version of Harley. I liked Ecco, so I’m cool with it being her. My one thing - overlapping/paralleling Joker and Riddler as characters is cool and all but.... WHY give Harley a name traditionally associated with Riddler henchwomen, WHY?? That’s taking the overlap between Joker and Riddler a little far maybe? Mostly because I’m now a bit ??? about Gotham Riddler’s future in regards to henchwomen - because if Jeremiah/Joker already HAD a henchwoman/sidekick called Ecco then... does it make sense for Eddie/Riddler to go on and have his own Echo along with Query? Him finding a girl with the same name seems incredulous (though knowing Gotham, the show and the city, not implausible I suppose). And if he doesn’t, why would he call one of his girls the same name?

.........hmmmmm, unless it’s him trying to COPY Jeremiah/Joker a little? Perhaps because he sees Joker is clearly becoming more popular, so he decides he needs to steal some of his ‘act’? Oooooh.... actually, maybe I could get behind that..... Eddie grabbing a random girl to mimic Joker’s, making her an Echo of Joker’s Ecco... but then Eddie has to outdo Joker ofc, so while Joker has just the one female sidekick, Eddie gets TWO. Okay okay, I’ve successfully talked myself around to this, never mind :P

Everything else listed in the link sounds just fine. Esp. happy to hear I was right about Ozzie and Butch/Grundy.

So.... yus, assuming the info is legit, I’m good with it *shrug*

[gutterballgt]

I feel like we all need to watch 2004′s Stepford Wives again and marvel at how much more relevant it becomes with each passing year. I mean, it is a comical, existentially terrifying meta on toxic masculinity and how mediocre a man can be and still be considered the hero of a story, worthy of the heroine’s devotion.

Loooooong post. I got a lot to say on this subject.

It starts out with a few clips from a new season of TV shows, each with a feminist thrust about empowering women while men stew about being left in the dust without them actually doing anything to warrant keeping up. In the last of these promos, a married couple are separated on a tropical island and housed with professional prostitutes to see if they can be tempted away from their marriage vows.

The man, surprisingly, turns down his hot prostitute to stay “in Omaha with my Barbara”. It’s supposed to be this sweet moment of love and loyalty. Of sacrifice, because his wife is so homely while the prostitute was gorgeous and seemed devoted to his pleasure. Awwww.

The woman, who has been bombarded by multiple hot people who want her and who has only ever been with her husband, says she does love him, then jilts him for all the people responsible for what could only be a sexual awakening for her. We’re supposed to see her as a disloyal slut, turning her back on her sensitive, caring husband to have hot, dirty sex with the entire cast of a porno and a ridiculously built Hawaiian dude. How dare she, right? The Jezebel!

Then, we go back to the main studio where the heroine, Joanna, is clearly selling the new season with verve and all the confidence of a woman who knows she’s hit a hot button, and the jilted husband from the promo shows up and, instead of continuing the “sensitive, loyal man with a broken heart” shtick, he pulls out a gun, proposes a show called “let’s kill all the women!”, and tries to shoot Joanna.

We find out later that he’s already shot his wife and several of her new lovers.

I’m sorry, but we see that entirely too much in real life when women say no, when women try to leave, when women try to move on. Men become violent, even murderous, and wreak devastation on FAR more than the so-called source of their “broken heart”. At this late date, it’s too true-to-life to be as funny as it used to be.

There are too many so-called sensitive guys who feel entitled to a woman and think she has no say in the matter.

And that action -- that sudden, shocking violence by a jilted, shamed man -- is at the heart of literally everything else that happens in the movie. It’s the toxic masculinity we’re finally at least battling in public these days. The “if I can’t have you, no one can, and I’ll kill anyone who says otherwise and tries to help you” attitude.

Enter Walter, Joanna’s long-suffering husband. When she’s fired -- BECAUSE SHE WAS SHOT AT BY A VIOLENT JILTED MAN, not because she was bad at her job, her career and sanity sacrificed to some random asshole’s incoherent rage -- he quits his (lesser) job at the same company in a grand gesture of solidarity. Of course, they’re both ludicrously loaded (he states later that she’s always made 6 figures more than he could ever dream of, so it’s more like she’s loaded and he’s married to her), so it’s a largely empty gesture that costs him nothing. But it’s presented as oh, so romantic.

They proceed to move away after a short stint in a mental health facility for Joanna, who was understandably traumatized by her entire career and sense of place being yanked out from under her in addition to being shot, and again, Walter is portrayed as the supportive, caring husband, where Joanna is self-absorbed (ie., RECOVERING FROM TRAUMA) and snide to all their new neighbors (who are kind but empty behind their plastic smiles and kinda weird her out and are politely disdainful of her).

Everything about the set-up puts Joanna in the wrong to the point that she, herself, decides she’s a bad woman, a terrible mother and wife, and that she should literally change her entire self to be more like these false-smiled, plastic bimbos who are so objectified by their “drooling nerd” husbands. She even tries to recruit her friends -- Bobbie and Roger, the only two people she can connect with because they’re just as free-thinking and independent as Joanna has always been and were big names in their industries, just like her -- to buy into the Stepford way of life, though it goes so far against their grain that they can’t help but laugh about their attempts to fit in.

And Walter is thrilled. Here, he finally has the doting, stay-at-home wife and mother he always pictured for himself. He describes Stepford to the other men as “it’s like the way life is meant to be”. And, in a man’s mind, it sure is: he’s living the no-work life on his wife’s money, and he’s finally convinced her to be subservient to him. Why wouldn’t he be happy?

Isn’t that what every man wants?

So, with the dream in his hands, why wouldn’t he be insecure when Joanna starts to point out all the craziness around them, all the inconsistencies? Why wouldn’t he realize that she ISN’T really subservient to him? Not really? That she’s only doing so of her own volition and he has no real way to keep her acting that way if she chooses to take the kids and leave, as she’s threatened to when he refuses to listen to her?

This... is when his own toxic masculinity starts to grow.

Because he could have stopped the whole show when Roger was turned into a Stepford husband. He clearly knew what had happened, but he defended the whole thing 100%, arguing with Joanna about stereotyping Roger as a flaming gay instead of letting him be gay his own way, telling her that people change and she was being hysterical and selfish to find fault with Roger’s newfound “happiness”.

And he didn’t lift a finger to stop Bobbie’s transformation, even knowing she and Joanna had become best friends who were clinging to each other even harder with Roger’s sudden off-putting falseness. Even then, he was already planning Joanna’s transformation, as exemplified by the remote control she found in her house.

He’d already bought in. He was already willing to trade Joanna’s humanity for empty-eyed smiles, for sex with a subservient robot who could only praise him even if she felt nothing, for a tidy house and plenty of baked goods (which, may I remind you, Joanna was already doing while she tried so hard to be what he wanted her to be).

Then, when Joanna finally figures out the whole story -- because OF COURSE she did all the hard work to figure out who these poor women really were and what had been done to them -- and confronts him about it, what does he do? Ignore her entirely and start listing his grievances against her with his man friends cheering him on. And all his grievances are simply that she’s better at everything than him.

And she is. She’s a remarkably intelligent, talented, driven woman who had great success until a man tried to kill her and ruined her career, making her doubt herself.

She IS better than him. And that’s what he can’t stand.

That’s what none of them can stand.

And instead of feeling lucky that he got her, that she chose him even despite his obvious mediocrity, he’s furious and petulant and whines, “No! I got to hold your purse!” All the assholes chime in with “yeah, we’re the girl! and we don’t like it!”, etc., with no sense of irony that they’re demanding their wives “be the girl” because that would be okay somehow. Because women are supposed to wait on them hand and foot, raise the children out of sight and out of mind, keep the house spotless, present their perfect bodies for fucking whenever it’s wanted, and be silent and supportive whenever they’re NOT wanted.

So, it comes down to Walter’s big “hero” moment, where Joanna makes a passionate plea to save her humanity and he, at the last moment (and, more notably, out of sight of the other men), decides he can’t do that to her. Can’t turn her into an automated sex toy.

And we’re supposed to cheer.

For this minimal, absolute-least-he-could-do gesture. He just... didn’t erase his wife’s individuality when he had the chance, because he couldn’t look her in the eye and effectively kill her.

So heroic. Such a fucking sacrifice.

In reality, Joanna did all the fucking work, and all while having to convince the man she loved, who supposedly loved her, that she’s a goddamn human being that shouldn’t be turned into a goddamn robot just because he felt insecure about being a mediocre nobody.

She’s the one who had to pretend to be a perfect, subservient robot for who knows how long to fool the whole town until they could get back into the transformation facility to free all the other women. She’s the one who distracted Mike so Walter could get away and sneak into the facility.

He doesn’t even have, like, mad hacking skills. He’s allowed into the secret lab because he’s a man. And even then, he just pushes buttons randomly on the first screen he sees until the file corrupts itself and the programming breaks down. He doesn’t even know he hasn’t KILLED the first woman before he’s slapping at all the screens without rhyme or reason until all the programs stop.

And Joanna, bless her heart, gives him the credit for it. “No, that’s a man,” she says admiringly.

And then she proceeds to save Walter (again, because she’s already saved him from himself) by knocking Mike’s head off and exposing him for the robot he is, revealing the twist that Claire, Mike’s wife, was the actual neurosurgeon mastermind behind the entire plot.

And, lo and behold, her insanity sprung from her husband, the real Mike, cheating on her. From her catching them in the act and being so stressed out from overwork and trying to live up to expectations that she snapped and killed them both.

Of course, the whole plot is undone now -- thanks to Joanna -- and all the men get their house arrest in Stepford, forced to live the roles they forced on their wives (without the loss of their will, of course, so it’s not anywhere near a comparable sentence)... except Walter.

Because he’s supposed to be the hero.

I just....

Don’t get me wrong. I love the movie. It’s entertaining, and it does a masterful job of slipping in the little micro-aggressions that women deal with daily -- my favorite little stiletto through the ribs is when New Roger calls on Joanna at the assembly, but instead of calling her by her name, Joanna Eberhart, he calls her “Mrs. Walter Kresby”, completely erasing her from the address; it’s funny but also infuriating because it’s, again, too true to life -- and it’s just so well done. Stepford looks like a dream and feels like a nightmare, and it is masterful moviemaking.

But it still pisses me off because, for all its feminist edge, for all its warnings about the dangers of toxic masculinity, it still treats Walter as the hero and makes Joanna grateful to him, his doting wife who’s so proud of him.

Walter.

Who, during that last interview, is very distinctly not carrying her purse.