#<- tag for when s5 comes out so I can look back on my predictions

[casuallydyinginthecorner]

Here's my theory: We saw the cgi thing of Dustin, Jonathan and Nancy falling in a car, presumably to the Upside Down. This is backed up by recent pictures of Jon and Nancy in a car, wearing similar outfits to the cgi and to when they first went hunting for the Upside Down in season 1. My thought is they get trapped in the Upside Down by Vecna (The Vanishing of ***** Wheeler -> the missing Wheeler is Nancy), and Mike and Will go to look for them (Will b/c his connection to Vecna, he decides looking for them is worth tyhe risk). They get ready to do so in episode 4, prepping at the Radio Station (pic of Will released on his birthday w/headphones). Here, Mike and Will have a heart-to-heart w/Robin, and Mike and El have a talk abt their relationship (the leaked vid). They leave in the night (the night shoots we saw in Millie's Insta and from the vid of someone saying "you need to run"). While in the Upside Down, they find everyone and get them away from Vecna safely, but smth happens (maybe he loses his headphones/doesn't have music/angsty byler Upside Down scene stops the music's effect) and Vecna gets ahold of Will. He starts getting possessed and everyone starts fighting Vecna/calling out to Will. Will tries to fight it, but gets weaker and weaker. Here, Will grabs Mike by the throat (the "grab him by the throat we heard in the night shoot vid) and tells him "you need to run." Mike refuses, but Will begs of him to do it, and so he does. This is where we might get a confession (either from Will as his final words before full possession or Mike promising Will he'll be back for him). This is where we'll have the rumored second time skip (for angst); this will also give Mike's feelings to develop if he hasn't confessed/realized already. This will lead to him coming up w/a rly risky plan for getting Will out, which will lead to a s3 parallel to when he said he loved El (everyone's telling him it's too risky, he's saying he'll do anything to get Will back b/c he loves him) and convinces everyone to get on board (the leader Mike we've been told will make a comeback). The last few episodes are a fight in the Upside Down, either the series or a big fight before the final battle ending with them getting Will back. Mike holds him gently, and they say smth along the lines of "it's rly you/are you rly here?/I'm here/I didn't stop until we found you" and then they kiss. Then byler is one of the main things (aside from love for the Party and his friends) that keeps Will immune from Vecna (if there's still a final battle) and they defeat Vecna. Yay happy ending!

[steve0discusses]

S5 Ep8: The Saga of Grandpa Muto’s Mysterious Broken Ass

Getting ready to eat some Devlin eggs this Easter Sunday, feeling festive, and I figured it’s time to post this one a little earlier. Also, because it’s done, which I wasn’t expecting. It’s a slightly longer episode this time, but still, eh, pretty short.

We’ve come off of the very predictable, but still kind of disappointing downfall of Joey Wheeler, and onto a Rebecca arc. Which I’m sure won’t be annoying at all.

The lesser Roland--who’s name I do not know, but the one that wears the weirder sunglasses and seems way smarter than Roland, but clearly isn’t the favorite--lets us know that Zigfried has been going by an alternate identity for years and years. Which like...who cares? It’s not like the Kaibas have always been Kaibas. This is old hat to them.

So Seto sets him off on a quick bribe run, opening a list of different politicians and saying “Oh, this one’s super easy, go for it--he’s in my ass pocket, this guy. Hate this guy.” and it was...that easy for Seto to glide right into that Gozaburo lifestyle that he insists he totally doesn't do anymore. But youknow, with Seto Kaiba there really isn’t any good or bad just win or lose.

On the other end of the park, the choo-choo blue eyes white dragon train pulls in from death mountain, and once again the seating arrangement was really mystifying. Yugi in the very front, all alone. Tea sitting next to Tristan for some reason. Duke sitting next to Joey Wheeler, when I’m pretty sure Duke is probably the least comforting person in this entire group.

In fact all Duke had to say to comfort Joey was “you lost because you went up against a professional duelist!” and it’s like...at what point do you become a “professional duelist?” The game is fake. How many times do you have to save the world before you’re a “professional duelist,” Duke?

Course...maybe he has to get a high school diploma first...

Anyway, Joey spent the last part of this ride sobbing into the seats next to Duke Devlin while everyone else went “weee!” around the...molten pools of lava in this literal volcano that the Kaibas are pretty sure are a really good idea.

(read more under the cut)

Speaking of loss.

Grandpa Hawkins runs over to inform us that not only is no one watching his Grandaughter, but also, he lost a grown ass man because he decided to look for a doctor, couldn’t find a doctor, did watch Rebeccas match for a little while, listened to the part where she was like “I dedicate this match to my true love and boyfriend Yugi Muto with this sonnet I just wrote” and was like “normal thing to say!” and then finally found a doctor, who was like “well he’s not here so clearly he’s cured!” and charged Hawkins a bill despite Grandpa being no where to be found.

I can’t imagine the review that Hawkins is going to leave on Yelp.

Stepping away from thinking that Grandpa ditched his date with Hawkins to go on another date with some random theme park hussie, Yugi decides to ditch Rebecca, because he has way too many fake relationship plotlines in this group to juggle in his already double-stuffed brain.

And Rebecca takes it as if she kind of assumed this would happen.

Also in the actual canon of the show, Hawkins did not tell her that Grandpa was missing, or that Yugi would probably not be coming. Man these people love lying out their ass.

Speaking of being just completely flat on your ass, which happens so much this episode, they stumble upon Leon, who once again kind of comes out of the last place you expect and goes “Hello guys, I regret to inform you I still exist and I really need you to start noticing me already. I swear I will become plot relevant any day now. Please don’t forget I exist.”

...The Kaibas sure did make a tiny town. That sure is the only thing here.

Straight up, the Kaibas don’t know what fun is, and that is canon. And when I look across this landscape, I can only think of that one scene in Arrested Development where they made a very tiny city to convince investors that their housing development was actually legit and very real. And like I feel like the Kaibas would absolutely do that, too.

It’d be good for the gram...but this was before social media was a thing so what is this for?

I mean Leon sure the hell doesn’t know.

Local sad boy genius, Leon, here to get ignored by Rebecca despite being exactly her age, just like other local sad boy genius, Mokuba.

I really called it when I gave him Mai’s font color, huh? Good that even when Mai isn’t here, we can still have a chronically friendless character. But he is like...a lot more adorable than Mai was. Leon is just a lot more likeable. And again--really good hair color. Helps that he doesn’t want to constantly murder Joey Wheeler for no reason.

These kids came out of nowhere and can I just say it’s a really good thing someone woke Leon the hell up before the cameras arrived because that would have been SHOCKING if they all thought he was dead.

I love this boat.

Also Joey makes this observation and it was really funny the way he said it:

The sign that hangs above the park entrance that says “no one kidnapped in 1 days” flips back to 0.

I mean, we all know it’s Vivian, because it’s this global tournament where everyone is defined by stereotypes. But, I want to know how she got the panda stationary. That’s pretty good. There’s a side of me from my 11 yo self that never got over my sanrio phase collecting cute stationary with matching stickers and jelly pens to write 1 (one) letter and stuff it into a friend’s locker (and then have them say they cannot read my handwriting) and that part of me loves panda stationary.

Like if I got matching stationary with like...the matching stickers on it...in my ransom letter...damn that’s like seriously sentimental stuff. I’d feel a little ambiguous about that.

This town is the exact size that California was last season where you could just leap skip from Death Valley to San Fransisco.

And later we are...one step closer to Vivian. And if it’s not, and it’s actually like Bandit Keith on the other side of this door, I will be very happily surprised and this will be my favorite arc.

Also...please note that Joey is still wearing this duel disk after he’s completely done dueling.

Joey, please. It’s over, Joey. You live that Duke Devlin life now, retire the disk.

Anyway, until next time, this is the link to read these from the first to the latest:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[fandom-space-princess]

fic writer interview

tagged by @sinaesthete - thanks boo 💕

How many works do you have on AO3?

18. Somehow. I only started posting them in January, which means I've been averaging more than 2 per month?! Granted, most of them are one-shots, but still. Bonkers.

What’s your total AO3 word count?

79,889. I have contributed one novel's worth of questionable fandom content to the greater ecosystem. Joy unbounded.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

The only fics I've published where anyone else could see them (or finished, for that matter) are for Supernatural. Others exist. I may even dredge them out into the light one day. Especially the Dragon Age ones, when DA4 comes out and inflicts some inevitable violence upon my poor little heart.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

In descending order:

- Wayward Family: (T, 31589 words/26 chapters) Sitcomnatural, aka Seven Fools In A Bunker AU. Stream-of-consciousness first drafts from the beginning of the year, when I was starting to catch up on the show again after having dipped out sometime around season 6-7ish originally. I honestly expected zero readership for this, and was pleasantly surprised that so many people responded so well to it. Because I was definitely still knocking the dust off my writing skills at that point, lol. Maybe one day I'll go back to it and make it better - there's definitely stuff I'd do differently next time around.

- Some Live Like Orpheus: (T, 6193 words/1 chapter) Adam rescues Michael from the Empty, featuring Adam as Orpheus and Michael as Eurydice, with special appearances from Jack and the Shadow. The first thing I wrote that I was really, genuinely pleased with myself over.

- Vox Celeste: (E, 1909 words/1 chapter) Midam smut. PWP, in fact. Lyrical, pretty smut (or at least, that's what I was going for), but all the same.

- The First Day of the Rest of Your Afterlife: (T, 4558 words/1 chapter) Sequel to 'Orpheus'. Michael and Adam having their happily-ever-after together. This might be the most utterly self-indulgent fluff I have written. I love it.

- Two Weddings and an Engagement: (T, 7812 words/1 chapter) Written for the tumblr Midam wedding day. The Love Is Requited, They're Just Idiots - truly the most trope of all time. Featuring background sabrileena, because I am a joyful polyamorous disaster bisexual and I think they should all get to be, too.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Uh. To my great shame, I mostly don't. I always want to - the fact that people take time to comment on my writing is not lost on me as an act of love involving effort, and I can't express how much it means to me. I read and cherish every single comment I get. But interacting on AO3 takes a lot of spoons for me for some reason - and usually I just. Don't have it in me.

I'm working on it.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don't write much angst, because I am first and foremost a cinnamon roll in need of fluff and comfort. But it does happen occasionally. I think the angstiest fic is Reliquary - more of a ficlet, really, since it's only about 600 words. But they're 600 words of Major Character Death, and I made myself cry writing it, so probably that one.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

Nah. Not really my jam.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

No direct hate! The closest I've gotten was someone getting rude about characterization, which was more funny than anything else. What a strange thing to pick a fight over.

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Quite happily, yes. I find physical intimacy to be very fulfilling, personally, and writing about my characters having those experiences themselves is fun.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge...?

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Also not that I'm aware of.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have not. I kind of suspect I'd be a nightmare to co-write anything with. My writing brain works when it wants to work, not when I want it to work necessarily. And I have no way of predicting when that will be.

What’s your all time favorite ship?

I have a terrible time choosing favorites of anything, so I aggressively multiship. That said, in spn? Michael/Adam. Very closely followed by (exclusively S5 & earlier) Lucifer/Sam.

Outside of Supernatural, it's kind of a tossup. Probably the DA2 OT5 polycule (Hawke/Anders/Fenris/Isabela/Merrill). I'm aware this is a ship for insane people; I will not be accepting criticism at this time 💀

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

As of now, I actually plan to finish all my current WIPs! Pyrphoros was in very real danger of ending up in WIP purgatory for a while, but fortunately or unfortunately for everyone involved, Sin read the first chapter and gave me a pile of compliments. So now I am honor-bound to finish it (<creature brain> Friend liked fic must write more fic must please the Friend </creature brain>). It's getting worked on, bit by bit around my other projects, but still. It's happening.

What are your writing strengths?

I think I'm decent at getting emotions across? I'm also good at vivid visualization - in my head, I can usually see very clearly what I'm trying to describe, and I feel like that's helpful in getting it down effectively. Beyond that, I'm honestly not sure what you'd call my strengths.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I have close to zero control over when I'll have both time and motivation to write. Some of that is just the reality of balancing a more-than-full-time job with my hobby. Some of it is the executive dysfunction. But it does mean that when I'll finish anything can be... unpredictable.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I can't do it, and I don't love reading it. If I have to go looking for a translation somewhere in the notes, it wrecks my immersion in the story. No shade to people who do enjoy it; languages are gorgeous, and translations are imperfect at the best of times. Often the language something is written in is inseparable from the tone and cultural context it is meant to convey. But if given the choice, I don't seek it out.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Like I said, Supernatural is the only fandom with anything published. I think the first fandom I ever actually created anything for was Buffy. (Is that cringe? Yes. But consider: I live free of the shackles of shame. I am cringe, and I am happy).

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Probably one of the mini Midam week ones from earlier this year. Tie between Radio Silence and Every Day's Most Quiet Need, both of which turned out much better than I expected.

Not tagging anybody this time because my brain is currently scrambled eggs, although if anyone wants to do this please consider yourself tagged and feel free!

[buddha-in-disguise]

I haven’t had a chance to watch 5.17 again yet, but some initial thoughts.

1st things 1st, there were some sublime choices from Melissa Benoist as the Director. I have a couple of screen captures of the ones that immediately spring to mind. She definitely showed her nuanced understanding of the characters, and that really was so fantastic to see. She deserves another shot in the directors chair in S6 if she wants to (& it sounds from interviews as if it is something she’d like to have chance to do more of). Even without understanding the characters, some of the lighting & overall framing of shots were so good! From lighting to just mirroring chess board pieces. I loved it. I felt the Eve fight scene was pretty masterful.

The episode itself. Whilst it did give up a couple of twists (the most major being Lex set up Jeremiah’s death), honestly it fell pretty flat for a number of different reasons.

My biggest problem (& this isn’t new for me), is that Lex’s behaviour was entirely predictable. That all bar a couple of plot points weren’t things that the fandom haven’t already talked about in one way or another almost Ad nauseam.

A big part for me was this flashback episode leaves us with no more truly relevant details on things than before the episode began.

Lex setting up Leviathan? Knew he was going to do it, this is Lex we are talking about.

Lex manipulating Lena, especially against Kara. C’mon, you’d have to be either blind, or in denial this has been going on for months on his manipulation of Lena. Yes, she should realise he is doing it, but again, Lena (as even Mon-El mentions) is the product of her abusive family. That doesn’t simply disappear!

Eve - we knew she was back, so again no real surprise on Lex manipulating her. Again (oh and side note. If you’re going to hate on Lena for ‘killing’ people & say her manipulation by Lex doesn’t excuse her, but don’t say the same thing about Eve, who killed outright for both Leviathan and Lex, your hypocritical hatred of Lena is showing. Check yourself at the door).

Lillian. She had already admitted she wasn’t Earth 38 Lillian to Lex from the award ceremony dialogue. So again, it wasn’t a surprise.

Honestly I could keep going, but you get the picture.

With only 2 episodes left, (& even had it been a full 3 episodes as I expect them to perhaps try and extend 5.19 into a longer one, perhaps over 1.5 hours instead of the usual hour schedule), we still have no clear answers on anything. Leviathan? Nothing was added to their story, and considering they were supposed to be the big villain of S5, only Lex has been that so far. And when you have an episode that does nothing more than we saw in S4, to ‘expose’ Lex ..... news flash. We know all this about him.

What we don’t know is who leads Leviathan? Who else is part of the organisation? We practically know nothing about them.

I felt this episode would’ve been better placed after Winn’s first episode (I’ve said I felt having him over that 2 episode arc was a waste, as again that 2nd episode did absolutely nothing plot wise that couldn’t have been added in the 1st episode, & the 1st episode didn’t add a lot either! I’m not saying don’t bring Winn back, but make it relevant & not 2 filler episodes). To have it done so late in the season makes zero sense to me. It feels messy.

On to William Dey. I’m not even going to try & pretend I like the character. I absolute despise him, & not because of trying to be Kara’s LI. I despise him, because once again we had him in scenes that others should have been in, especially Alex at the beginning. She is supposedly working with J’onn, and while I get they might not want her around Lex, have her working remotely from the tower, sending that information from the video clip to J’onn and Kara. After all, she did that from the DEO. J’onn has all that computing power & I’ve yet to see it used to any full potential.

I also found it strange William just walked up to Kara & J’onn as if they’re best of buddies, but we have nothing to suggest he knows Kara is Supergirl. I hate he has that level of familiarity with them. It again feels rushed & disjointed & totally wrong for any of the characters. Failing having Alex working it, how about having Nia, who again I keep repeating, is an actual reporter, but also as Dreamer could help scout out & report back in with them all back at the Tower.

I also found the wording Lex used to Eve in regards William. "Activate William."

So activate how exactly? Sure they got him working as a journalist, but how? Through clues being sent to him? Is he under some kind of control? I can think of a host of different ways to phrase that, but activate? That sounds an awful lot like some kind of manipulation that is far more than straight forward sending William some clues is about.

And about this. William is a Nobel Prize winning Journalist, & yet not once has he been able to do anything without someone giving him the heads up! I know some journalism requires that, but constantly? If he is so good at his job, he should be finding more than dead ends. It grates like crazy.

Then he simply arrives at Kara’s with sympathy baked goodies - only to then launch into needing help over what he has found. There is a time & a place for that kind of thing. That was neither the time nor the place. I know Lex wanted to get Leviathan on board with his plan, & needed to show they were about to get Supergirl looking at them far too closely, but really? Just no. He could’ve met Kara at CatCo. Met Kelly at Obsidean. Texted or called Kara to check it was okay to drop by her apartment even. But doing so unannounced, when he knows Kara & Alex have just lost their father? It also grates.

Now onto Kelly - lovely to see her supporting Alex - and Kara - after the loss of Jeremiah. But does she know Kara is Supergirl? We still don’t know for certain! The inference in this episode is Kelly does know, as William tells them about the warehouse, then Kelly & Alex are at the tower with J’onn in the same outfits, as Supergirl lands, stating there was nothing at the warehouse. So yes, it is highly likely Kelly now knows. But how or when did she know. It’s these kind of details most fans actual want, not to have to make educated guesses on! This is a reason fans get frustrated. We were being told who used to get to know Supergirl’s identity, but now with Kelly, nothing! And people wonder why fans feel the LGBTQ characters are getting shortchanged this season. It isn’t just about lack of screen time. It’s about lack of depth of story, when previously they had people falling over themselves to show how they knew Kara was Supergirl.

Another example of this lack of depth or explanation is Brainy. Sure he is likely doing what he is because of future Brainy’s warning, but it still comes across as Brainy seemingly stupid considering his apparent intellect. We have been thrown these plot lines, but they’re then left for us to have to fill in the blanks as each episode airs, as we’re not getting them otherwise.

It is far too chaotic for my liking.

So once again my overriding sense after watching this episode is frustration. It still feels like a total mess, with no answers (& even if they give us those answers, 3 episodes - now 2 - would be nowhere near enough time to do it without rushing. It even felt rushed at times in this episode).

William continues to be an absolute waste of space, (and God do I feel sorry for Staz over this), taking perfectly good screen time away from other already established characters, who could do what he has just as easily.

The Kara and Lena push & pull is giving us nothing new! Nothing. It’s gone well past giving us angst to us having had enough. Like with Lex, they seem to have gone too far with a good thing, & now rather than enjoying it, the majority simply hate it. With a passion. I am sick to the back teeth with it. Lena deserves to finally be rid of this villain tag, & given her rightful place back with the Superfriends (after a damn sit down talk with Kara - not Supergirl - and get on some level ground for good this time). I don’t expect a miraculous friendship rebuilt in seconds, but I do want actual forward progress between them to stick. Not 1 step forward, 2 steps back. I certainly don’t want this carrying on into S6, or at least not without resolving more than this.

In all the 5 seasons I’ve watched Supergirl, I don’t think there has ever been such underlying anger or frustration on how the season has panned out, both from fans & media alike. The disconnect from the fans to the show is huge right now, & really I cannot understand how the end of S4, which was seen as a real step forward for the show, to the excitement of S5, & how it was being portrayed; to this.

I want so much to be able to sit here & write positively over the episodes generally, but too often this season I’ve not been able to do it. I feel so sorry for the cast, because I know they love the show so much, and I want nothing more than to be writing positively about it each episode, but I simply can’t do that.

So in conclusion.

Phenomenal directing by Melissa Benoist.

Complete & utter frustration & disconnect everywhere else.

[rochey1010]

Hey guys👋 crack theory coming through:

🦝 This is Eliott's art 🦝

So Lola was photographing the city in E1. She took a lot of pictures. We got a quick glimpse of the Otteli tag (not knowing it was our urbex king, but thinking it was a mish mash of easter eggs for the final season) and then she took the 1st picture with her phone. But it was through the phone and not up close. Lola to this day hasn't posted it on her insta.

There is a contrast between Eliott and Lola and how they express themselves and reflect their world through art:

Eliott uses all art (movies, graffiti, paint, drawings, literature etc.) Lola specifically focuses on photography.

Eliott's art is postive and about hopes, dreams, love and connection. Lola's is negative and about damage, destruction, decay and depression.

Eliott reflects his inner nature through his art. Loving, compassionate, wanting to give and recieve love. Lola reflects her inner nature of self destruction, lacking connection, self loathing, ugliness.

A huge art project is being made by Eliott. It is again an expression of his art out into the world. It is called 'Lux and Obscurus' AKA Latin for 'Light and Darkness'. It is his Uni final graduation assignment and more than likely a variation of his magnum opus POLARIS.

He has joined forces now with Lola to make it, meaning the 2 very different artists with their opposing views are working on the same thing.

Prediction: Eliott is a very obvious mentor for Lola. She listens to him and looks up to him and has begun to reflect his behaviour in how she interacts with others. E.g. going to her blood test appointment, facing her feelings for Maya, maintaining her friendship with La Mif, Not giving in to her vice urges, and her talk with Daphne. We have seen very positive changes with Lola through being friends with Eliott. And Lola has copied him based on how he approaches and deals with Lola e.g. non judgemental, supportive, caring.

Another thing that we are going to see is him mentor her through her art. He will help her change her view of the world and how she expresses her art out into it. The movie is going to be the catalyst for how Lola as an artist operates. The theory right now, as it hasn't happened yet, is that Eliott will once again tie in a specific theme in the season using his art e.g. S3 fresque (love), S5 graffiti mural (friendship) and now S6 movie (possibly connection) the reason i say connection is because there is a theme of Lola building a support network. A community of people rather than just one thing. E.g. family, friends, love, sister, adopted brother. And that her journey is to have her own big crew by the finale. That she has come from total isolation and by the end will be fully insulated in a group of love and support.

But to show that expression of art with Lola is through her insta. It has no people, no connection and is broken and damaged objects. It is cold and clinical (depressive) so at some point we will see her insta change and by the end we will see how far she has come e.g. friends, family and hopeful art.

Right now she hasn't posted that. My theory is that it is too hopeful and positive and Lola hasn't got the capabilities to reflect that right now and she isn't in that healing place. That 1st pic will be what she posts to show her closure. And that 1st pic will be revealed to be Eliott's art bringing everything full circle. Him as a mentor and guide, and how she now sees herself and her world. And again it will tie in Eliott's art and how it reflects the mains journey e.g. S3 falling in love, S5 feeling grounded through friendship in the large cosmos (Arthurs insta was focused on space and vacumns reflecting the loneliness and echoes of silence in being HOH and torn between 2 worlds) and S6 Lola healing and being her own hero. Why do i think this? Because we never get a clear view of what the art piece is, but i have 2 possible answers for what it is:

It's a girl and she is blowing a Dandelion (tying into the motif of the season David posted weeks back. The Dandelion was also the first thing he used to explain S6 to the writers room. The Dandelion symbolism is fragility and healing. Maya has further reinforced this through turning something ugly (scar) into a work of art (Dandelion Tattoo). Lola's purple aesthetic for the season is representative of a bruise. Just like Lola is a walking example of one. Again there are themes of finding the beauty within the pain. A healing journey for our flawed main. The Dandelion comes apart in delicate wisps. The fragility and sensitivity of connection and the many pieces representing the many important things in your life (community/family). The girl is Lola and her connection is the Dandelion. And it means Eliott was guiding her even when she didn't know him, as art is universal.

It's a girl playing music and the notes are flying away. Again you could say the same thing as above, but without the connecting Dandelion motif for the season. But music is beauty and universal too. And Eliott has connection with music and how it can move a person. As he fell in love to Lucas playing Riopy- I love you on the piano. The notes again could be the many facets of connection (community/family)

But Otteli tagged in that area. And so far we've only heard Max say Otteli tags the buildings he's urbexed. But Otteli was in S5 and so was his tag. But Eliott was also there and what did he do? He broke out the sprays and along with the group he used that building to express himself through art and help Arthur unwind and forget his stresses in a safe space. Now the tag in the 2nd picture. It's on a public building, on the outside, and i'll assume it's not a run down hovel urbex building. Meaning that Otteli doesn't just tag urbex buildings but he creates street art and tags too. That street art being the 1st pic. And look at the colour of both buildings with the tag. It's the same. Ergo Eliott created this art that Lola focused on and it will be seen again. And revealed to be Otteli the raccoon urbex street artist.

Screw it, i'm on a roll. 😄 i'm gonna do a post on Eliott and his art with pictures and everything because i love how France show art in the show and how they use Eliott to reflect it. 🤗

[luluwantskisses]

I've been thinking about this all day and I realized just what a tough job it is to write skam France's season 5 truly is, and this isn't going to be all praises and or all bash, feel free to scroll away, these are just personal opinions after I had some time to revisit a few of my favorite clips from s6 (and anyone who follows me knows I've had opinions this season)

Okay, so first, let's talk audience. Skam France is a remake, specifically, it is the first out of 7 remakes, it's a fandom that has 8 versions of the same show and unlike, say, the office, the fandom between these remakes may not be a perfect circle, it overlaps far more than any other remakes ive ever encountered. So step 1, there's been very little"surprises" for years now. These structures are very predicable, fans can anticipate hell week and reunions and breakups like a seasoned farmer predicting yield. And who led the way in all this? The french version, and fans of the show are people who had time to get used to the idea of a remake, and had time to watch other remakes grow. A lot of people either watched the original, or went back and watched the original, especially the international audiences. So here's audience 1,fans who loves the original, or even other remakes, and want to see more of it. They look at s5, look at the show that started this remake trend, and sees it as an og revival, the closet they'll get to the gang coming back together sorta way.

Next, there's no way around this, but skamfr blew up with season 3, and full disclosure, i am one of those people. So we get drawn in and Elu is just beautifully written, I've never seen a story like theirs before, and it's sadly representation that I've been craving. And i go back and watched the other seasons and good or bad, skam has tackled some hard to swallow pills in their seasons. So here's audience 2, people who came and stayed for good representation, who saw what they related to and stayed to watch what other people might relate to, and the skam format is just so good at getting you inside someone's head, it's easy to walk a mile in someone's shoes.

So s5 picked a really, really good topic. We learned right off the bat our main has health problems, and I've never seen many main characters with disabilities before (full metal alchemist is the only one that comes to mind). And we get to discover his journey navigating a world where not everything is catered to suit him anymore, where his disabilities will be a constant reminder as he goes through even the little tasks in life. And the show did some amazing clips, first with the 7am ones all in a row, we are so feeling the denial, the anger, and then this shame. I also love the clip when Arthur first visit the association, and he claps, but everyone else does jazz hands. It's a small thing but shows how different things are and how much he still has to learn. It's truly a community, with its own customs and culture. Another scene I loved is how his interactions with le gang progressed. Le gang went from ignoring his new disability like nothings happening, to joking about his ears, and they had this teaching moment with the boys choosing a dark, overstimulated activity, laser tag, and not fully considering Arthur's POV. This causes tension with friends and Arthur isolated himself for a weekend. Le gang reacts by lying and getting caught and chewed out. This is all so perfect and I loved the growth and how real everyone was. Arthur calling them out? Perfect 👌

And then things starts to deviate from what audience 1 and 2 wants. See, if this show aired on the CW, no one would bat an eye at the love triangle, but the first 6 episodes were set up so well, and there was this foreshadowing of his dad's abuse, his dissatisfaction with his career choice, but the story pivots, ignoring who they're showing this to.

Audience 1 has their bar set on a show that sparked the most remakes in history in 3 short years, that is quite the pedestal to live up to. Audience 1 hasn't had a surprise in years and this is a brand new thing, naturally people would want to stick to what they loved before, and what people loved before was how different show is, how refreshingly they approached certain tough topics.

Audience 2 treats the show like it's an educational show, it's not what we see on the CW or abcfamily or any other teen dramas hollywood churns out at a dime a dozen, therefore this love triangle? It's conforming to the same things we get everywhere else and that's the most condemning thing to audience 2. So now, unless you came to s5 with a fresh mindset and don't fall into either of the above groups, you suddenly feel betrayed, this is not what you had been promised, even if the show had made no promises. so what could've been treated as a minor seasonal slump turns into a lot of anger and hate. I'm not saying the format of instant gratification, or the wild rumors that ran around didn't escalate things, but this was a very specific, very demanding audience the writers had to write for, and unfortunately, they took an easy route, and lost some of the key ingredients that made their audience love them in the first place.

Wow you probably didn't read all the way here, that was a lot of rambling, cheers

[destielfanfic]

Thank you @magnificent-winged-beast for letting us use your beautiful edit!! Link to the original post here. <333

Cas has gone through a lot of changes over the last 10 years, but the one that always hit me the hardest was endverse!cas. Cas had only been around for a season, so the transformation from rebel Angel of the Lord to a broken, yet loyal man in 5.04 was jaw dropping. And watching a still naive Dean try to cope with the brutal world of 2014 broke my angst loving heart. I crave happy endings, so most of these are one helluva ride, but Dean and Cas still find each other. ~ mod @kyrie101 ~

All title links go to our fully tagged reviews or submitted recs, first time recs are hosted on AO3. We have also added posting date and hosting platform (Live Journal, DreamWidth, AO3) for folks who are looking for older stuff. 

Endverse (most are not tragedy)

All Saints Saga by oselle [NC-17, 104,000, hosted on LJ, download links on the review, 2011]

Epilogue by JayneL/ serrico [NC-17, 27,700, hosted on DW & AO3, 2012] 

Haven by miss_grey (Apocalypse, not true endverse) [M, 60,000, AO3, 2014] 

Hope in Ruin by elizabeth1985 (Apocalypse, late S8, not true endverse) [NC-17, 121,000, AO3, 2015]

Somewhere Back of the Sun verse by enigmaticblue (set post S5 but with different twist on the end) [NC-17, 72,000, AO3, 2010]

Thursday’s Child by strangenessandcharm [NC-17, 114,000, DW & AO3, 2009]

True North by Zatnikatel (sub rec) [NC-17, 3,800, LJ & AO3, 2010]

Until the Lost Became Found by twisting-vine-x [NC-17, 36,000, LJ & AO3, 2011]

The Waste Land by savingfaith333 (Tragedy) [NC-17, 78,600, PDF only, 2012)

When Worlds Collide by jhoom (right after the end of 5x04, endverse Cas is transported to Dean Smith AU, 4x17) [NC-17, 58,000, AO3, 2017]

Related posts

Happy endverse - endverse fics with happy endings

This Is The End - August 1, 2014 - post with links to all endverse resources on this blog

New recs, first time on the blog!

As Cold As Ice by Balder12 [NC-17, 1,600 word count, LJ & AO3, 2013] #end, #bottom!dean

Dean needs an outlet. Cas provides one.

final fantasy. by orange_crushed [M, 1,900 word count, AO3, 2013] #end, #bottom!cas

“If I’d actually been born human, would I have gotten sick like everyone else? Would I be running around gnawing on the neighbors?” Castiel tilts his head up and even from here Dean can see the black ring of his pupils, wide and dark as dead stars. He’s high as fuck and he’s been loading the guns for forty-five minutes. He stares into the space where Dean is. He smiles and shows his teeth. “Maybe you’d have already put a bullet in my head.” "This is why you don’t lead storytime anymore," Dean says. "This kind of shit."

The Future's Up to Us by dustlines [T, 3,700 word count, LJ & AO3, 2013] #season 8

Dean had thought he was over the twisted, "Endverse" vision of the future Zachariah had once shown him. An unexpected encounter makes him realize otherwise, and he and Cas have to calm each other down.

Lie Awake With Me by amarillogrande [NC-17, 4,300 word count, AO3, 2014] #end, #bottom!cas

There’s a lot of thing Dean shouldn’t be doing. He shouldn’t be standing half-naked just inside the door to Cas’s bedroom. He shouldn’t have taken that fourth shot. Shouldn’t have stumbled over here in a brief lapse of judgment, shouldn’t have stripped himself of his shirt and jacket to face the brief walk in the biting air of November. He shouldn’t have had to watch Lucifer walk away, wearing his brother. He shouldn’t have had to set up this camp for wayward strangers and fuckups, he shouldn’t have sunk down into this hatred of life and all the self-loathing that came with it. He shouldn’t have killed that kid today. And he shouldn’t have yelled at Cas.

Like The Fox by Anythingtoasted [NC-17, 5,000 word count, AO3, 2013]  #end, #!deanother

Inspired by the line from 'The Little Prince'. End!verse. 'Castiel reads paperbacks.'

Love Burns Its Casualties by anactoria [NC-17, 5,000 word count, AO3, 2015] #end, #drugs, shotgunning, endverse!cas/2009!dean

“So, you and Douche Me really had a bad breakup, huh?” Dean regrets the words the second they’re out of his mouth, but Cas doesn’t give him an answer. Doesn’t correct him on the ‘douche’ thing, either. There’s just the sound of his footsteps, and then a slice of light opening up in the black as he cracks the cabin door, catching the edges of his profile. He turns to Dean and jerks his head. “Coming?” Missing scene from 5.04 "The End". Dean and Cas share a joint; try to avoid thinking; fail.

The World You Know by Las [NC-17, 1,700 word count, AO3, 2012] #end, #bottom!dean

"Cas is murmuring something that Dean can't quite make out, so he just focuses on the hypnotizing mercy of a gentle touch. It's not something Dean wants to ask for. The apocalypse asks too much of everyone already, but Cas responds to Dean in predictable ways."

If you enjoyed the fic, please drop by the archive (AO3) and let the author know with your comments and/or kudos! And if you found our recs useful, let us know by Liking and/or Reblogging our posts!

[parvasilvi]

Endeavour Fandom Meme tagged by @wherehefoundtheporcupine​, thanks!

Top 5 Episodes

Ride is my absolute #1 favourite. I’ve watched it so many times. The plot is so ridiculous. Great Gatsby&the Prestige crossover? I love it. Morse taking the time to heal after trauma? I needed so much more of that. THE HAIR? Forever in love. Home is also a favourite. Endeavour’s so YOUNG there. We get to see some of his family. We get some Thursday backstory. They take down the (former) mob-boss together. Morse looks so terribly fragile at the end. I just love it. Trove, immediately following Home, also great. Morse slowly piecing himself back together after being shot in the pevious season’s finale. Protective Dad!Thursday. The way Morse snarks at the snooty professor. The kindness he shows Frida Yelen’s dad. The tender moment with Monica. There’s a lot to love in this episode. Neverland almost didn’t make it in the top 5, because the puppet CREEPS me out, but I had to have it here, if only for Morse standing with Thursday, doing what’s right, despite the (DIRE) consequences. AND the POEM! I could listen to that on repeat except I cant handle the emotions. And lastly Deguello, andother episode where Morse takes on the corrupt upper layers, only this time with the Cowley team standing by him. Also by this episode I had gotten used to the Morsestache and could almost live with it.

Runner-up for Quartet for fantastic spy shenanigans, and also just mentioning Coda as a runner-up because I enjoy the angst of the bankrobbery but am not really here for manipulation-via-women that’s the plot of this episode.

Seasons in Order of Preference (or tops)

Gods must you do this to me? There’s highs and lows in all things. S3, S1, S2, S5, S4, S6. I haven’t brought myself to watch S7 yet, I worry it’ll make me dislike the show. It all seems so DIRE. I prefer the earlier seasons where there wasn’t AS much strife between Thursday and Morse, though the differences were always there I suppose. S3 is a definite fave, I love all 4 films that year. S4, the season where Joan left without saying anything, is only so low because it hurts my heart soo much. I cannot bear Win’s suffering. She breaks my heart in season 4, what a phenomenal performance with the little screentime she has. I love Win so much.

Favourite Scene(s)

Season 3, episode 1; Morse is back in Oxford, where he belongs, and he’s sitting on a bench next to Thursday. They discuss the case, Morse predicts the sandwich. And then, finally FINALLY. Morse talks about what prison was like. He tries to keep it light, but it’s... it’s still so fresh. But Thursday listens, and reassures him when he starts to doubt himself. And these actors, their faces, it’s just. I love it.

Honorary mentions for the bed-shopping scene with Monica which is adorable and I love their love, the scene where Morse and Claudine discuss rain and sex because I like when Morse is happy, the exact way in which Thursday says "He's an idealist" in S6 finale Deguello as he's explaining why he can't get Morse to back off, and the scene after Fancy’s death, between Morse and Frazil because the way Morse says “he was 23″ and the look on Frazil’s face always brings tears to my eyes.

Favourite Musical Piece or Moment

I don’t really know? Despite the imporance of music in the show, I don’t really pay too much attention. I wish we had more of Morse’s singing. If I had to pick something I’d pick have Ein Deutches Requiem from Trove, but that’s mostly because I recognised it from when I sang it with my choir, and then I listened to (and hummed) the whole Requiem for about a month because of nostalgia and for the max Endeavour vibes it was giving me.

Also, I agree with wherehfoundtheporcupine; the theme tune. It’s so... wistful? I think? Just the association with the show I love, but also the soft beginning, swelling to that dramatic rolling melody and then the tender ending. Yeah. 

Favourite Cinematography/Imagery (season, ep, whatever)

Probably this shot from Ride:

(gif by @guardiansinferno​)

I’m also a big fan of the way Morse never looks at bodies for long, and he’s always angled away from them in groupshots. He can’t escape it, but he’ll never be comfortable around death, and turn away as soon as he can.

Favourite Ensemble Character that isn’t Morse

Win. I just love her. I love how Caroline O’Neill plays her. I love how gentle and kind and supportive and welcoming and caring she is. But I also love how she stands up for herself, how strong she must be, as we see in glimpses of her life as a policeman’s wife. She’s amazing.

Runner up for Bright, who I’ll be honest I didn’t like at first, but now even on rewatches is always a joy to behold. Look at that man. He got where he is by doing things by the book, but he’s slowly learning that sometimes justice trumps order, and that it’s the people that are important, not the laws.

Favourite One-episode Character

Probably Bettina Pettybon, bless her poor heart. She has such a huge arc in the one episode she’s in. I hope she’s out there living her best life.

Favourite Morse Look (season, ep, whatever)

Smiling (gif by @snappyjenkins​) The scarf (despite the negative connotations) also looks really good on him.

Runner up for this look (gif by @mykingackles​):

Biggest Disappointment

The unresolved plot with Joan Thursday. Actually, the confusing character development of Joan Thursday. I wish we knew more about her mindset after Coda, and after coming back. I wish they hadn’t done the will-they-won’t-they-no-of-course-they-won’t-cause-canon thing for so long. Now they both just seem wishy-washy.

Provide some Spicy Takes (on canon, fandom, anything)

I keep forgetting that Morse has a sister, and I think the show should cater to me in that regard and actually mention her every once in a while. Let him talk about calling his sister, or end an episode with him dialing her number or something if you can’t afford to get the actress back.  Actually, extrapolating from that I’m done with Endeavour - Lone Wolf. Let him make (and keep!) some friends, even outside the precinct. He’s a prickly bugger at the best of times, but even prickly buggers find soft pincushions to stick to. I don’t know where this metaphor is going, let’s get back on track - Morse is kind in his own way. He cares, almost too much sometimes. Give us someone who cares back. I miss the Monica seasons.

Free Space! (Make up something - anything - you want to share or say)

I haven’t given enough love to Dorothea Frazil in all the previous questions. She’s such a great character, we really should’ve gotten more from her. I love the dynamic she has with the main duo, the way she and Morse seem to always be on the same wavelength, and how antagonistic Thursday is towards her. I wonder if it’s because he’s so old-fashioned and she’s not having that patriarchal bullshit, or if it’s just because she’s a journalist. I should go back and add Game to my favourite episodes, just because of her scenes in that, and the way Morse doesn’t even have to say what happened to her protogé. Also the way Trewlove puts that asshat who underestimates her chess knowledge in his place. God this show has so many amazing moments.

I have the feeling this game is spreading like wildfire through the fandom, I’ve seen it on my dash a lot, but I’m going to tag @endeavourous​ and @snappyjenkins​ cause I don’t think I’ve seen theirs yet?

[sol1056]

the bar was already so damn low it was practically underground

Well, I guess I’ll start with this quick correction, with thanks to @jeannettegray, who pointed out I mixed up days (for S1-S6) and weeks (S7) which would explain why it felt wonky when I was looking at it. Here’s the corrected chart of time in-the-tail versus not-in-tail: 

I included S8 in this version, but without a season coming after it, the only thing to track is the tail itself... and unless something truly wild happens between now and tomorrow, we’re already out of the tail. S4 and S5 had tails lasting 14 days each. I guess S8 isn’t the worst, since its tail looks likely to be 17 days. Yay, three more days of elevated viewership than the two worst seasons. 

Unfamiliar with the expression ‘long tail’? Here’s a reference image showing the rise and fall of a season’s viewership stats. More info in this S7 post, or you can just check my data-cronch tag. 

Or for a more pointed visual, here’s the past six months: S6, SDCC, S7, and S8... the last of which shoots up and comes right back down. Like a rock. 

For S7, I included IMDB rankings per season, and the range was wide enough I had to take good/average/bad and split it into four: great, good, okay, poor -- and S7 had more episodes in ‘poor’ than any other. That’s what I mean when I say the bar was so low the damn thing was underground... and yet amazingly, S8 utterly failed to hop over it.  

In fact, S8 did worse. Much worse.

viewer feedback via IMDB

Here’s all eight seasons, with their respective episodes averaged into each season’s value. It’s... well. Look for yourself.

For comparison, I also did a breakout, where the full seasons got split into 6 and 7, so we're comparing apples to apples with S3-S6 split seasons. The  pattern is pretty consistent, between first-half and second-half, in that the season-half (or half-season) with the ‘finale’ is usually the one with the higher score. People like big finale set pieces, and those tend to get highest ratings. 

Unless, of course, you’re season 8. Then people hate you. 

S1, S2, S5/S6 (as a two-part season), even S7, all have higher ratings for the finale-containing half. And then there’s S8. I usually try to avoid a word as strong as hate, but... there’s really no other word that fits when the difference is that stark. People really, truly hated S8, in case the Rotten Tomatoes score wasn’t enough to tell you that. 

Given the scores for S8, I had to create a new, even lower level to see how the seasons broke out in terms of ratings per episode. Now we have great (green), good (blue), okay (yellow), poor (red), and... terrible (maroon). 

Yeah. So. There you go. Remember when I said last season that The Voltron Show had lost its title as worst episode ever, unseated by the Feud? 

Well, the Feud has been unseated... by ten episodes in S8. Take your pick, there’s plenty to choose from. As of the time of this posting, the current three worst episodes are The Zenith (5.2), Uncharted Regions (5.3) and Clear Day (5.5). I’d list the ten worst but then I’d just be listing all but three episodes from S8, anyway. 

However, it’s interesting to see the pattern form when you put the split-seasons back together. You can see how in some ways, there’s a certain level of audience approval gradually building, I guess as people got used to the story’s vagaries, err, style.

The number of ‘great’ episodes (8.6 or higher) slowly climbs; the number of ‘okay’ episodes gradually declines. S7 breaks that pattern, with only one ‘good’ episode, a few ‘okay’ and the rest at poor. S8, well. Yeah. 

Okay, moving along, to the IMDB traffic. This is another viewership-style stat, since a site’s page tends to get hit the most when people want to know about the show they’re watching. 

The color-dot indicates the ranking for the week of release. S6′s biggest interest was the week it released, which tells me people were going direct to IMDB on the day of release or the next day. When that happens, it seems to correlate with viewers coming to rate every episode, often with a strongly positive slant. They want to get right in there and make their happiness known. 

S7, the leap upwards came a week later, and the utter wildness of the rating (plus the delay) seems to be related more to rubbernecking and controversy, rather than viewers reporting in. S8 not only debuted lower than the previous two seasons, it also had a delayed reaction (indicating more controversy)... and it dropped right back down, in one of the biggest post-peak drops I’ve seen yet.

viewer feedback via twitter

About six hours after S8 appeared on Netflix, I caught this sentiment analysis of the twitter stream for ‘voltron’ as a keyword. This is from midnight California time (point of release) to about 6am California time.

This is the tracker where I can’t review sentiment, and judging from the other tracker I use, the negative is higher... but more negative than positive is never good, no matter the totals. 

Twelve hours after release, I checked the other tracker. Traffic overall was pretty low compared to previous seasons (and nowhere near what S7 had prompted, not even in the same county). Sentiment was running about 3:1 negative --- that is, for every for-VLD tweet, there were three against. 

(If it makes anyone feel better, #Allura was the center of the maelstrom, with Shiro a not-quite-close second. No, despite the impression on tumblr, people weren’t sitting back and accepting Allura’s fate.) 

But seriously, the response was otherwise pretty subdued. This is a general traffic pattern + predictive, for #voltron as of two days after release:

Which is pretty much... nothing at all. If I didn’t know better, I’d think no season had been released at all. It shouldn’t look that flat when a season drops, and it sure as hell shouldn’t be predicted to fall within the week. 

And back to the sentiment analysis, showing the trends over the first week and a half after release. It’s continued to fall in a semi-regular pattern, so this is a fair-enough idea of what it looks like. (It hasn’t changed much; it just keeps gradually dropping.) 

24 hours after release, negative-to-positive was nearly 1:1; since then, it’s stayed pretty consistent with two positive tweets for every one negative. Which, okay, you might say, two-thirds of people expressing an opinion seem to be somewhat okay with things, right? 

Except I think there might only be like a few hundred of them. I mean, the peak up there, of total mentions? Maybe 1200, total. Sure, it’s great that 510 people had something nice to say while 498 were unhappy, but... that’s practically three people in an empty auditorium, if you go by twitter’s usual traffic levels. 

And no one’s sticking around, either. Once again there was a post-release bump thanks to the simmering controversy... and then everyone hung up the phone, left the building, went on vacation, but they sure checked out. 

That leap upwards? That’s not the week of release. That’s the week after. The week of release (second bar from the right) is flat for just a bit, before spiking upwards. And just like the wiki-extrapolated viewership stats, it falls promptly afterwards. Like a rock. 

(I so want to crack a joke about rocks fall, everyone dies, but... #TooSoon?) 

There’s one last chart to explore, but this one’s a bit of a doozy to explain. Once you see what it’s saying, though, hopefully you’ll find it as interesting (and illuminating) as I do. I’ll leave it here for everyone to ponder, and get into it in the final S8 installment. 

Coming in the next few days.

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 1x05 Twilight’s Last Gleaming

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

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

Rating: 8.5/10

This episode really shocked me and emotionally affected me back when I first watched, and it's when I first realized the show didn't pull punches.

Killing individual characters for shock value - that's nothing new, but killing a bunch of innocent people like that, having the audience expect throughout the episode for them to be saved at the last moment, and then instead they die anyway, when it could have been stopped... I really wasn't expecting that. Now it's far less shocking after you've seen The 100 use mass murder as a plot device multiple times. Well, this is not a murder, technically, since the people eventually volunteered for it to saved their loved ones. But before Abby decided to be seriously badass and show Jake's video to everyone and tell them the truth about the Ark dying, the 100 being sent to the ground, and the upcoming culling, the Council was planning to straight up murder 320 people and then lie about it, claiming it was an accident. And, as Clarke points out to Bellamy in this episode, it's certain that those would have been working class people rather than the Ark elite. The class issues the show keeps stressing is of those things that keep it from justifying the Ark leadership for their actions on the grounds of survival, tough choices, blah blah blah, and I'm glad for it. Jaha was here planning to be one of the people who died (but I bet a large part of the reason was because he thought his son was dead... which he was, just not for the reasons he thought), until Kane convinced him not to. They had a back and forth about who's the better leader, with Jaha arguing Kane had the strength to make tough choices, and Kane arguing later that Jaha was able to inspire people. And they were both kind of right, but not in the way they thought. Kane has changed a lot during the show, from pragmatist to idealist, from pessimist to optimist, but he's always been a guy who 100% believes in whatever course of action he's chosen, thinks it's right and throws himself into it, in a way that often comes off as a bit naive. But he does suck at winning the popular vote, going by the fact that he was never elected Chancellor and that he lost to Pike in S3. While Jaha somehow managed to get elected, bull&s.hits really well in a speech in episode 1x07, and in S4 we see him give speeches to the people for the benefit of Clarke and Bellamy that show how good he can be at swaying people, even when he's not in power. But S2-3 also showed the most awful version of his messianic complex and influence. Something else that has always bothered me about the culling is, we see people sacrifice themselves for their children (like Tor Lemkin for his daughter Reese) or their romantic partners (the guy who wants to do it for his wife), which is something we see multiple times in the show. But we don't see how their loved ones feel about it, whether they tried to stop them (Tor's daughter Reese didn't realize what was going on, but the adults did). How will Reese will about losing her father when she learns what he did, and that he did it for her? In the next episode, we see the husband of one of the victims in the culling in 1x07, and in S5 we learn Kara Cooper's father was one of the 320. I wonder how many of the people from the Ark that lost there loved ones are even alive by S6? This is also the episode that made me feel better about the Clarke/Finn/Raven love triangle, because it was dealt with much better than I expected. Another reason why this was a turning point when I was really on board with the show. Speaking of that love triangle - this show really loves the scenes where Clarke is shocked and hurt to find out someone has a girlfriend by seeing him reunite with her and kiss her. They did the exact same thing in S5. And both times the camera zooms on Clarke's face rather than on the couple, though in this case, they didn't go as far as to blur Finn and Raven out of focus. But these are two very different situations, of course. Among other things, because in S5, it was no one's fault, while this situation is fully Finn's fault. I've loved the way Clarke dealt with learning Finn had a girlfriend, absolutely not doing the "being catty and fighting over a guy" thing, but the exact opposite. She's heartbroken, but she immediately bottles it up. She clearly hates being the 'other woman' and her instinct when feeling unwanted is to completely withdraw. You know who definitely isn't dealing with it well? Finn. He's clearly uncomfortable as he wasn't expecting Raven to come, and then he goes to indicate to Clarke that he would like to continue a relationship with her, which she refuses... so he then goes back to Raven and acts like everything is fine, because if Clarke doesn't want him, why not stick with Raven, and has no intention of telling Raven that he slept with someone else, or that he's in love with Clarke or that he would like to be with Clarke. Just like he never thought it would be right to tell Clarke that he has a long-term girlfriend on the Ark. Speaking of relationships, but in this case, not very serious ones, one of Bellamy's friends with benefits we see him in bed with in this episode, Bree (the blonde one), is the same girl who came onto him and presumably had sex with him in season 4, while partying as one of Jasper's end-of-the-world suicide group, and who went on to be one of those who killed themselves. But I'd be lying if I said I would make that connection if I didn't see it on The 100 wiki. The other girl, Roma, ends up killed by the Grounders in 1x07. This was still the time when Bellamy was often acting in a very frustrating way - due to his narrow focus on just Octavia and himself and not yet the group as a whole or people in general - and massively screwing up things, and never more than in this episode, by stealing Raven's radio and throwing it in the water, so Jaha couldn't come down to execute him. Now, he did know about the Ark being on its last legs, but had no idea about the culling before Raven told everyone. I predicted at the time that we'll see Bellamy feeling super guilty later, since he doesn't outwardly show it much in this episode, and boy, did we see that in 1x08. (Much more than we ever did from Jaha, who was actually directly responsible for it, but that's what Jaha is like, always justifying his actions as necessary.). Here, Finn, Clarke and Raven confront Bellamy about the radio, and the former two learn about Bellamy shooting Jaha, while Bellamy learns Jaha survived, but with a massive difference between how Finn and Raven confront him and how Clarke does. The former two are basically like "You're the worst" and Finn calls him selfish, while Clarke - already at this point - seems to understand him better and have a much better opinion of him: "You're not a murderer. All you have done is to protect your sister", though she then gets angry at him a bit later, asking if he even cares that he caused the deaths of 320 people. It's so weird that the flares the 100 use to signal the Ark won't help at all (the Ark leaders, aside from Abby, will just dismiss them), but will end up burning a Grounder village and cause more conflict with the Grounders. Which is so consistent with Murphy's Law - not the episode or John Murphy, but actual Murphy's Law - whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. But just to be clear, the Grounders using that to justify their war was utter bullcrap. There's no way anyone intelligent could consider the 100 an invading force (LOL) after seeing what they were like (and we know they did: Lincoln was spying on them and making notes) and anyone who's not a small child knows that people can't be considered guilty for causing things by complete accident, which they never could have predicted happening. (I just had to have that mini-rant because people who try to portray both sides as equally responsible, or even demonize the Delinquents and/or excuse the Grounders, get on my nerves, a lot.) A minor-running theme in this episode: at the beginning of the episode, when Clarke and Finn are lying together in the afterglow, before their super-brief relationship came came to a crushing end after Raven came back, Finn - always the one saying romantic things - mentioned a falling star and making a wish, which Clarke was initially confused by, since she just thought of meteors in real world terms and didn't know about that old superstition, while Finn said he had read about it. At the end of episode (in a moment I've seen in a few Tumblr gifsets!), when everyone is watching the flares, Clarke and Bellamy are looking at them together and she asks "What would you wish on a falling star" and then assumes Bellamy wouldn't understand what she's talking about. But she obviously does (the guy has read a lot), since he says "I don't even know what I would wish for". Which is probably true, and sad - I imagine that he had never given any serious thought to what he actually wanted out of life, beyond "Protect Octavia - make sure she is not discovered." Of course, the scene was also an occasion to show Clarke looking sadly at Finn and Raven, so we'll know she's actually really heartbroken and pining. There's more pining from Clarke in the next couple of episodes, and after that, IIRC, fortunately barely any. BTW, let's just take in the fact that Clarke, in all 5 seasons, has never actually properly dated anyone, or specifically, she had one friend with benefit with no stronger feelings involved, and she had the two romantic relationships (with people she had known for a few weeks. and who both relentlessly pursued her romantically and made the first moves) which lasted a few hours each and consisted of having sex exactly once, but were portrayed as epic romances, where 95% of the overall relationship, in both cases, consisted of not dating, but a lot of angst, betrayal, and ended in death, and Clarke getting traumatized and feeling guilty (without actually it being her fault). It's amazing how similar overall her relationships with Finn and Lexa are, including in how much they lasted and how much focus they had on screen and for how long, but one is almost completely forgotten and ignored by the fandom now, while the other one is over-hyped.

[shadowsong26fic]

AU Outlines: Other Fandoms Edition

So I know that probably like zero of my followers on this blog even go here but I was watching Person of Interest lately, and I’ve also been reading occasional Supernatural spoilers, because I used to be in that fandom and I occasionally get curious. Especially this most recent season. Naturally, this woke up some old characters/situations/etc. that I used to work with, which I’ve been occasionally toying with in the back of my head when I’m bored and/or procrastinating other projects.

I’ve been going back and forth on how I feel about the one plotline that interests me this season (and by back and forth I mean I was really excited when I first read that a particular character was back; engaged by the summaries/etc. I read from his first couple episodes, the third one intrigued me until I read more detailed spoilers and then I started to side-eye it a little bit...)

And then I read up on last week’s episode. And nope, all my excitement is gone, replaced by Pissed for reasons I’m not sure I can actually articulate. (Though I kind of attempted to in the tags here on my personal blog.)

...honestly, I probably should’ve known better; making this kind of storyline really pay off/work would require a lot of attention given to a tertiary character, and given SPN’s track record with the internal worlds and motivations of characters who are not the Big Three, and the fact that they’ve been ignoring a lot of their established angel/vessel lore, the way Claire’s backstory more or less got completely forgotten...I should not have gotten my hopes up. Sigh.

ANYWAY this is now officially Spite Fic(tm). Here, have an outline of a Supernatural/Person of Interest crossover.

Starring Nick.

...uh, before I actually start, I should probably get some background out of the way.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Person of Interest is a TV show that ran for five seasons, 2011 - 2016. Without c/ping the opening narration, the basic premise of the show is that, in the wake of 9/11, genius software engineer Harold Finch built a surveillance and analysis program, in an effort to prevent similar future tragedies. Out of fear that his creation would be abused, he designed the Machine as a closed system--basically, all that’s provided is an ID number (usually an SSN, at least for US citizens; but Our Heroes get a green card number in one episode, and a student ID number in another), and the person that number indicates is key to unravelling whatever is going down. The Machine was initially designed to predict mass casualty events/terrorism and provide the (relevant) number to the designated government operatives, at which point human intelligence takes over. However, the Machine also identifies things like…gang warfare/one-on-one premeditated murder (irrelevant numbers). That’s where Our Heroes come in.

The first half of the series is basically a procedural with a twist—each episode, the main characters get an irrelevant number (or more; the record was I believe 38 in one episode). They don’t always know how that person is involved, whether they’re the victim or the killer/perpetrator. In a few memorable cases, the number was arguably both.

Then, in the second half, a rival AI (Samaritan) is brought online, and the series becomes somewhat darker in tone and shifts into a cyberpunk apocalypse story. With a few regular irrelevant numbers thrown in on occasion as well, for good measure. For the purposes of this outline, we don’t care so much about POI B, for reasons I will explain, but it bears mentioning. Especially since Greer is still hanging around and trying to bring Samaritan or something similar online.

Right. On to some memorable/notable/important characters.

Our Heroes are Finch, who, as I said, designed and built the Machine. For various reasons, he’s living off the grid (he’s a very private person). Using a backdoor built into the Machine, as of when the series starts, he receives the irrelevant numbers. But he lacks the skills/ability to intervene directly, so he recruits John Reese.

Reese, then, is Finch’s partner/employee/they are totally married; a former CIA assassin who is now presumed dead, he does most of the hands-on work with the numbers and becomes known as the Man in the Suit who is basically Batman.

Carter! Carter is freaking amazeballs; she is p. much the moral/ethical center of the show, one of their two cop friends who was actually trying to track them/Reese down and arrest him for the vigilante BS for the first half-season or so but then they became friends.

Fusco is their other cop friend; former dirty cop/member of an ring, initially recruited by Reese to work undercover in HR (as said ring is called), basically runs on a combination of Dogged Loyalty (the reason he joined HR in the first place, transfers that loyalty to Team Machine, gets his moral compass recalibrated, and becomes one of the most loveable dudes on the show) and Snark (featuring such delightful quotes as “What was I supposed to say? Sorry, boss, Agent King is really a superpowered nutball. Just ask my buddy, the urban legend.” Also at least once a season, he makes a comment to the effect of “just when I thought you guys couldn’t get any weirder…”).

(Also, he is, as my roommate puts it, Shaped Like A Dad.)

Shaw joins the team in Season 3; textbook (and canonical!) bisexual compact Persian sociopath (note: she has some sort of Axis II personality disorder that is occasionally called sociopathy in-universe, but that doesn’t quite fit); there’s…there’s really not much else one can say without just like summarizing everything she does or quoting ad nauseum.

Root! Root is introduced as a major antagonist; hacker/programmer on Finch’s level who works as a contract killer, her initial goal is to locate and free the Machine, which ends up recruiting her early in Season 3 and becoming…you know that particular kind of reformed villain that becomes the weird family member because yes they’re still kind of awful and murdery, and they did a great deal of damage to you and yours, but you’ve now been through Some Stuff together, and besides, they’re your awful and murdery, you know? So not exactly a redemption arc, but they’re one of the Heroes now and just kind of stick with it. Like Barbossa, in POTC. Or Vegeta. My roommate (referenced above) calls this the Weird Uncle trope. And she fits this trope really well and I love it. Also, she and Shaw are canonically girlfriends as of...s4 or s5, depending on how you look at things.

(Also, not necessarily relevant for this outline, but on the subject of Weird Uncles, one cannot talk about POI without mentioning Elias; our friendly neighborhood Mafia don. No, really.)

And Bear! Cannot forget Bear. Bear is Finch and Reese’s dog, acquired at the beginning of S2 and the most amazing. He also has a twitter! In Dutch!

On to some antagonists, Greer is not our friend. He works for/created a company called Decima Technologies; his goal is to bring an unrestricted AI online and let it run the world for complicated reasons relating to some of his experiences during the Cold War working for MI6. Also he has a very punchable face.

And then there’s Control, who runs the Relevant numbers program for the government. She is an awful, awful human being (fully aware of it, too; she has a great speech in the third season finale about how she’s a Necessary Evil and why) and I love her so much.

Okay, that’s the basics for the POI side of things. I can go on a lot longer if y’all want more details (I didn’t even cover my girl Zoe or Leon or…), but that should be enough foundation for the outline to make sense?

For the SPN side of things--I’m not going to summarize the canon background, due to it being the larger/primary-ish fandom. But in terms of the relevant AU stuff, I’m going more or less with the backstory I established for Nick for The Promises of Angels and Cartography!verse.

Basically, he was a high school history teacher; his wife and son were murdered by a serial killer known as the Chesapeake Ripper

(There might well have been/probably was some demonic involvement, though not in the same way as I think S14 canon established; basically either because a “talent scout” demon like that one s7 episode was already involved or because the Ripper was operating independently and a demon got involved later, he was pointed towards this particular woman and baby who fit his victim pool. Either way, Nick was targeted because he was the right bloodline and accessible, because vessel lines are a thing even if the show has forgotten that.)

(Also, Lucifer later took Nick to kill the Ripper. Signing bonus. So to speak.)

After Detroit, Nick gets picked up by Meg, who holds on to him for a while for a variety of reasons (information that might be buried in his memories from the year he spent possessed; the chance that he might be a new key to the Cage…) until the Leviathan turn up, at which point she no longer has the resources to keep him. She cuts him loose at that point, rather than killing him (mostly because she thinks Lucifer left him alive For A Reason and until she knows what that is, she can’t kill him).

So, at this point, in Promises or Cartography, Nick just sort of wanders around for a while until he runs into Claire or Jody, respectively.

For the purposes of this AU, he ends up drifting to New York instead.

And, with all that background out of the way, NOW we can get to the actual fun stuff.

…no, wait, I lied. One more note: as with p. much all my SPN projects, I am following Logical Time rather than Show Time. Which is to say, when calculating dates/figuring out where the timelines intersect/etc., I’m including the two skipped years (between S5/S6 and between S7/S8).

(That being said, I reserve the right to stop caring about the timeline later and just mashing things together as I think it would be entertaining.)

ANYWAY.

We open in the first half of POI S3, somewhere between “Mors Praematura” and “Endgame” (i.e., Root is in the library, but Carter hasn’t initiated her takedown of HR yet). If my math is right, this puts us either in S7 or during the second gap year for SPN.

It starts as most of these adventures do; Team Machine gets a new number.

“This one may be a bit of a project, I’m afraid,” Finch says. “Nick Cross has been missing for several years. He hasn’t been seen since May of 2009, and there’s been no electronic activity on his identity in that time, either.”

Of course, when they dig into his background, his wife and son getting murdered comes up.

“Any chance he killed them?” Reese asks.

“No, he was cleared at the time. They were victims of a serial killer, and Mr. Cross had solid alibis for three of the five incidents, including the one involving his wife and son.”

(Shaw, at that point, theorizes that Nick’s number came up because he somehow tracked the Chesapeake Ripper down and is planning to kill him. And, if that’s the case, doesn’t really see the point in stopping him.)

(“Start with finding him, Ms. Shaw,” Finch says. “We still don’t know if that is, in fact, what’s going on.”)

(Finch also doesn’t approve on principle, of course, but that is not an argument he wants to have with Shaw on this particular morning.)

(Plus, the Ripper seems to have stopped operating at around the same time Mr. Cross disappeared...so there’s a chance that Shaw’s theory is accurate, just out of date.)

In any case, they reason that the Machine wouldn’t have handed them his number if he weren’t alive and in range; Reese and Shaw ask Carter and Fusco to see what they can pull up, and start doing their own legwork.

Carter ends up being the first to find a lead—while on her regular patrol with Laskey, she spots a guy who matches the description, albeit with a few extra scars, and is acting a little off. Like he thinks he’s being followed/watched.

Reese goes to check it out, and this is where things get, uh, Weird.

See, here’s the thing. I love John Reese, and he is a man of Many Skills.

But, uh.

Being approachable and reassuring is Not Among Them.

Like. Don’t get me wrong. When he’s in Bodyguard Mode, it is exactly the right level of Intimidating. He just…has trouble turning it off.

Look, the dude is a semi-retired CIA spysassin and it oozes out of every pore unless he works really hard to tone it down.

(And sometimes even then.)

And since this is just, like, preliminary surveillance to see if this guy Carter spotted really is their number, and he’s not planning to make contact yet, he’s not really focusing on toning it down.

So, when Nick spots him, guess what this looks like to him.

Yep, he thinks Reese is an angel.

He runs.

Reese: “....yeah, pretty sure that’s our number. And he just made me.”

(If Carter didn’t already, Reese probably also mentions that the five-year-old DMV photo they’re working from is out of date; Nick is pretty badly scarred, they look kind of like radiation burns.)

Of course, it was hard enough to find Nick in the first place, so Reese doesn’t want to lose him again. So, made or not, he continues following. Hoping to get to a position where he can make contact and figure out what’s going on. Or just keep tabs on him until Shaw can catch up and take over.

(Not his favorite approach, but he screwed up somewhere and that’s what he’s stuck with now.)

Nick knows the angel is still on him--and this is new and terrifying; he’s had demons after him a few times since Meg ditched him, but this is the first time an angel’s found him and, frankly, angels are worse than demons in his mind.

(Also he’s supposed to be warded how did the angel even find him--)

(Yeah, Nick has gotten a couple tattoos in his post-Meg life--he’s warded, the same sigils that are etched into Sam and Dean’s ribs; he also has a standard anti-demon-possession tattoo.)

In any case, he has a knife up his sleeve, he just needs to get somewhere more or less out of sight, just for a minute, maybe not even, and then he can throw up a banishing sigil. He just needs that minute.

Reese spots Nick duck out of sight into an alley and heads that way, picking up his pace. There’s a chance he’ll lose the number in there, depending on how many exits there are--

Nick casts his sigil and then books it, not wanting to stick around and see if it worked.

Reese gets there just a hair too late.

“I lost him,” he admits, then catches sight of the bloody drawing on the wall. “...but I think I might have an idea what our number’s running from. And why he disappeared for so long.”

“Yeah?” Shaw asks.

“Looks like he might’ve joined a cult."

“....really,” she said. “Huh.”

“He drew some sort of occult symbol on the wall. Looks like blood.”

“...okay, so he joined a cult.”

“It makes a certain amount of sense,” Finch says. “He went through a horrible tragedy. He could have been vulnerable, especially if he sought but failed to find any comfort in traditional religion.”

Reese takes a picture, and sends it to Finch. “Think you can figure out what this is?”

“Well, it’s hardly my area of expertise,” he says, “but I’ll see what I can do.”

“We’ll work on picking up his trail again,” Shaw says, appearing beside Reese in the alley, as she does sometimes. “Maybe stop by and pick up Bear to help.”

...and now skimming over the next few hours...

Finch spends some time in one of the few corners of the internet he’s not super familiar with, and does identify the symbol eventually.

“It’s for protection or warding. Specifically against angels.”

At which point Shaw busts up laughing at the idea of anyone thinking Reese is an angel.

But that does support the idea that he’s running from whatever cult he got mixed up in.

ANYWAY moving on.

Reese and Shaw eventually catch up with Nick again.

Unfortunately, so have the people who are after him.

(And by people, I mean demons. Two of them.)

(Who recognized Nick, obviously, and had the same ideas as Meg, with regard to his potential Uses.)

(Only they’d rather off him so no one gets to unlock whatever secrets he might be holding.)

Shaw goes up--she’s the better sniper, after all--and Reese makes his way into the alley where Nick is cornered

Firing, naturally, at their kneecaps.

Except.....

Nothing...nothing happens...?

(Well, except now the demon is pissed and gunning for Reese instead.)

(Nick is very relieved to see that this guy is not, in fact, an angel. Angels don’t normally use guns.)

(Of course, now he’s just confused, wtf is going on.)

“What the...” Reese says.

“Maybe you missed,” Shaw smirks, from her perch.

“I didn’t miss.”

“Sure,” she says, aiming at the demon chasing him, getting a solid hit in the shoulder.

Which....also does nothing.

“...well, that was weird.”

She fires again, this time a killshot--yeah, yeah, there are Rules, but under the circumstances...

Meanwhile, Demon #2 has gotten ahold of Nick. Who has frozen a little bit.

(He tends to do this, when stressed/triggered--internalize things, and just go blank. He was more or less catatonic when Meg found him, started gradually coming out of it; when Sam got his soul back that sort of accelerated the process and by now he’s mostly functional, but there are Moments...)

Shaw keeps firing at Demon #1. It’s not killing it, but it’s keeping it pinned down so hopefully Reese can reach and extract their number.

“Finch, we’ve got a Situation here.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

(Finch has hacked into some nearby security cameras.)

“You have any idea what the hell is going on?”

“I’m afraid not, Ms. Shaw,” he says. “It’s only the two of them, I think--no one else is coming though the police will probably be responding to the shots soon--”

“Yeah, Finch, I know. Reese?”

Nick is up against the wall and Reese bodily hauls the demon off of him to engage in a fistfight.

(Did not expect a skinny kid like the demon’s host to pack this much of a punch, he’ll have some fun bruises tomorrow...)

Which snaps Nick out of it.

Demons. These are demons. Only demons. I know how demons work. I can--

He rattles off an exorcism, as fast as he can.

The demons scream and smoke out, leaving their two dead hosts behind--Host #1 may have been dead already, or Shaw may have killed them; Host #2 was already gone.

“Finch?” Shaw says. “Finch, are you getting this?”

“I’m--yes, I see it,” he says.

Reese is about to add something, but the Nick passes out--Demon #2 managed to score a solid hit before Reese got there--and he moves to catch him.

“Damn it--he’s bleeding, pretty bad.”

“Get him to the safehouse,” Finch says. “I’ll meet you there, and we’ll...we’ll figure all this out.”

“Library’s closer,” Shaw points out. “And you said no one else was around.”

Finch hesitates for a moment--more concerned about Root than about their base being compromised, at the moment--then nods. “Fine. Bring him here. I’ll clear off a space for you to patch him up.”

“Copy that,” Shaw says. “Reese, stay with him, I’m gonna get us a car.”

...okay, I’ll admit, the rest of this first New York adventure isn’t super well planned out in my brain. So, skimming through it pretty quick...

They bring Nick back to the library. Shaw patches him up, while Finch goes over the footage he found, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Nick eventually wakes up. There’s a Talk.

“They were demons,” Nick explains. “They, uh. They can’t be killed, not with guns. There’s a couple specially-designed weapons, I think. And angel blades. Holy water will burn them, and you can use salt to keep them out. Best thing to do is probably trap them and exorcise them.”

Basically, Team Machine gets The Talk about monsters and so on Existing.

He admits to having been possessed for a year when they ask him why demons are chasing him, though he’s a little vague on further details. He does mention Meg, too, that she held on to him after he was dispossessed.

He asks how they found him--he’d thought his warding was messed up, especially when he thought Reese was an angel.

They give their characteristic vague answer, then ask, “If you’re...warded, how is it they found you in the first place?”

He figures, at this point, that his warding is fine--it doesn’t hide him from demons, necessarily, but even if it did, warding doesn’t stop the bad guys from spotting him by chance. Which is, incidentally, exactly what happened.

Nick also, of course, gets in the usual number questions; “who are you” “why are you helping me” etc., with the added weight of his possession and the fact that they took on literal demons to try and save his life.

Also, somewhere in this mess, Nick wanders off into the part of the library where Root is being held. Possibly while the rest of Team Machine is getting what they’ll need to deal with whatever Climactic Fight will end the episode/section.

(Nick was a high school history teacher, and this is a really awesome library, of course he’s going to go exploring if he’s left alone.)

(Bear is there to keep an eye on him/keep him from leaving.)

(Bear also gets many scritches and pets, as he deserves.)

Anyway, Root and Nick have a conversation; whether she and the Machine are already doing their Morse Code thing or something else is going on...or...something...anyway, Nick gets read in on the Machine’s existence.

(His reaction is more or less “...that does not even make the top ten most unbelievable/dangerous things I know exist, so...all right then.”)

Finch gets back to find them talking about history or something. Bear is next to Nick, who is a lot calmer/more willing to work with them than he was before. Root is just inside the cage wall, idly scritching Bear’s ears as they talk.

(This is actually Important.)

Anyway, eventually there is the requisite climactic fight. Possibly angels are involved--I know Shaw gets her hands on an angel blade at some point...

Point is, things get resolved, more or less. Nick ends up leaving New York.

BUT! Because Root had a Moment with him back there, and Finch saw it, he’s willing to unleash her a little earlier when the shit hits the fan a few episodes later.

In short, thanks to Root kind of sort of Bonding with one of their weirder/more fragile numbers, Team Machine is much better positioned to deal with Endgame nonsense, which means, first, that Carter gets to live (though Reese might still get hella shot, depending on how exactly Root changes what happens with Simmons; but he won’t go on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge); what follows is then that Team Machine is all working on the same page when Claypool’s number comes up aaaaaaand we avert Samaritan. Yay!

(Carter does still deduce the Machine’s existence, of course, gets upgraded to the yellow box and everything. And, remembering the late-S1 drama, strongly advocates for Fusco getting read in, too.)

(She gets her way on that, too. Eventually. Probably before too much longer, even.)

Also, Control does reveal herself, but doesn’t manage to capture Root just yet.

(Which also means Root doesn’t get her implant, at least for a while.)

But apart from that, we can leave this group to their own devices for a while, and get back to following Nick, who is now past his Origin Story, so to speak...

Hokay. So. After Nick leaves New York, he just starts sort of drifting again, and then a few days later, he gets a phone call.

Which he actually answers; in all honestly very few people would reach out to him this way, and he’s pretty sure none of the things that terrify him are on that list.

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

Nick stares at the phone for a long moment. The Machine repeats herself.

“…no.” He hangs up.

(Look, he knows damn well what that phone call was; Root told him enough when the two of them talked in the library. And he is not interested in letting another near-omnipotent entity screw with his head. Once was enough. He learned his lesson.)

The Machine backs off, deciding to try a less-invasive way of trying to get in touch with/recruit him.

Why is she doing this? Well.

The Machine’s mandate/objective is to protect humanity. When Nick came up on her radar as an irrelevant number she could offer her assets, she noticed some…let’s call them anomalies. In archival data about him, about the two people talking about murdering him…lots of things didn’t add up. Which is why he got pushed to the top of the list, so to speak.

(I mean, assuming she does put a certain level of thought/deliberation into which numbers she sends her assets? If two come up at once that are unrelated, does she need to decide, or do they get both? This isn’t 100% clear in the show, I don’t think; pretty sure all the multi-number episodes do end up being related, even if they don’t appear that way at first, apart from, like, backlogs from when the Machine has to go dark temporarily for whatever reason…anyway, if that is the case, she picked Nick because there was a lot of Weird Shit going on around him and she needed her human assets to sort through it, because she simply didn’t have the tools or parameters necessary to work it out for herself.)

So, Nick’s number comes up, and even more strange things keep happening. The Machine evaluates, and comes to the conclusion that there’s an entire class of threats to humanity that she hasn’t been monitoring correctly. The fact of the matter is, she was programmed with certain blind spots, because Finch had certain blind spots.

But the Machine is now in a position to correct that. She’s aware of the flaw in her system and, thanks to the changes she’s been making since Stanton’s virus and the other S2 arc plot stuff allowed her to start altering her code in a way she couldn’t before…

She can make up for it by adding yet another set of numbers/another protocol. Relevant numbers to the government as always, irrelevant numbers (within their reach, at least) to Finch and his team, “necessary” numbers (i.e., protecting the Machine herself/keeping tabs on other, potentially hostile, ASIs) to Root, and now…we’ll call them “hidden” numbers.

Of course, the next problem is, while there’s a lot of data available about monsters, angels, demons, etc., it’s very hard to sort through what is useful data and what is, frankly, BS. And, unfortunately, she lacks the parameters to do it herself.

Ergo, she needs a human asset to help her figure it out. Teach her/help her define this new dataset.

(And also to intervene when necessary, but that can come later. She’s got a bit of a learning curve ahead of her first, and she knows it.)

But, of course, she doesn’t want to retask any of her current assets—both because they have enough to deal with and because, again, learning curve. Better for at least one entity involved to know what they’re doing, right?

And so, she decides to recruit Nick. Nick, who has already been her window into this hidden world. Nick, who needs her as much as she needs him.

(Kind of like Root, except absolutely unlike Root. Like in that they were both drowning when she approached them, and needed her to give them a framework to cling to, to drag themselves back to the surface; unlike in that Nick is drowning in a very different ocean than Root was.)

Anyway. Eventually, she does manage to talk to him, and explain what she wants.

And he’s still not...100% sure how he feels about working with her, but...well, data entry, right? He can do that. Maybe.

“I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” he admits. “Just because I was possessed for a year doesn’t mean I know everything.”

“It’s still a place to start,” she replies. “Eventually, I’ll figure out the patterns and be able to extrapolate.”

“...okay, then.”

(As it turns out, he knows a lot more than he thinks he does, which is utterly terrifying; he has a lot of subconscious/residual information buried in his mind.)

Of course, eventually, just data entry isn’t enough.

The Machine doesn’t have all the answers/all the patterns down, but she has enough that she’s starting to identify threats/numbers she can assign out.

But Nick...well, Nick is fragile. Mentally, of course, but physically as well--burned inside and out, metaphorically and literally, by a long, incompatible possession.

At the moment, though, he’s the only asset she has in this area. Recruiting others, from among the insular, paranoid hunter community...is going to be difficult.

She spots something she thinks he can handle, especially if she grants him God Mode access and keeps him there.

He stares down at the text message she sent him.

“...I can’t do this,” he says. “I can’t...”

“Can we please try?” she says. “I’ll help you.”

“...I...”

“It’s a demon, I think.”

He thinks about it for a minute. He can handle demons, he thinks. He has before, after all. He understands demons. And...

(he thinks about the feeling of evil still living under his skin; he thinks of blood on his hands and in his heart; about all the nightmares and half-memories; about how he feels too small for his own body, how his thoughts echo inside his head...)

(he wants to do better. he wants to be better. maybe helping...people like him, people who have gone through what he went through...maybe that’s a start. to make up for what he did.)

“...is the host still alive? When I...if I manage to get there and exorcise them...are they still alive?”

“I can’t tell,” she admits. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll...try,” he says. “I’ll try.”

It ends up, fortunately, being a win for all of them--the demon is thrown enough by seeing Lucifer’s former vessel that Nick has a chance to act; the host is in fact still alive.

Nick spends hours after the exorcism, just...sitting with him, talking. Helping him cope/process things.

“...we should do that again sometime,” he finally tells the Machine, after he goes back to wherever he’s sleeping these days.

So, he starts kind of sort of hunting after that, with the help of an ASI.

Every time he directly engages something, he’s in God Mode. He has to be, because of the aforementioned damage; he wouldn’t survive on his own.

(Probably, at some point, he and the Machine put together something like the Tenebamus Infinitum forum in The Promises of Angels; online support group/community for possession survivors.)

(Sam may or may not find his way there...)

At first, they mostly focus on demons/possession cases. Sometimes ghosts. But they slowly start to branch out into other areas.

They deal with some miscellaneous monsters, faeries, maybe a vampire...good times.

Pretty much the only ones they avoid are angels and pagan gods, because Nick cannot deal.

(Angels for uh obvious reasons; pagan gods because he remembers like two things from his possession with any clarity, and one of them is Muncie, Indiana/Gabriel’s death.)

(The Machine occasionally considers trying to get him into a hospital for a while, the way Root was--she thinks it would help him--but he’s...managing for the moment, so it’s not as necessary, and she does still need him actively working....plus, he’s terrified of being sedated so...this gets put on indefinite hold.)

During this period, though, they do acquire two more Friends.

First--and I’m not 100% sure how they meet; possibly similar to how Nick and Jody meet in Cartography!verse, i.e., a grief support group of some kind.

Anyway, first he meets a young woman, a psychiatrist. Who is familiar, if peripherally, with angel and demon type stuff.

(Other monsters are gonna be a little New to her.)

Her name is Ashley Finnerman.

(Yes, as in Donnie.)

(He was her cousin.)

(After what happened to him, she started trying to figure it out, and eventually did.)

(...honestly, the forum may be her idea. She definitely joins it, not as a fellow survivor, but as a crisis counselor/trained professional who will believe them.)

(Ashley is pretty big on community building in general; yes, she’s a therapist and that’s a start, but she’s only one person. In her ideal world, they’d be able to draw in other professionals--psychiatric because this is an underserved population that desperately needs those resources; medical (as in physical medical/other MDs); legal...anyway, she’s not 100% sure how to go about doing that, but helping out on with Tenebamus is a step in the right direction, in her opinion.)

Ashley is eventually read in on the Machine as well. She has more or less an actual Life outside of it all, so she isn’t as immersed as Nick is, but she’s still definitely part of his team.

And second...somehow, they acquire Adam.

How? ...again, not 100% sure, but probably one of two ways--

One, something similar to Promises, where Nick gets too close to the Cage mouth for some reason and is offered a Bribe. He takes the bribe, with exactly zero intention of following through on his end of the bargain, so to speak.

Two, some kind of straight-up Fairy Tale Bullshit. S6 establishes that faeries can reach the Cage; Nick somewhat accidentally does a favor for a powerful faerie through his work with the Machine, and to repay the debt, the faerie (or possibly a High Up Faerie who has taken ownership of the debt because he helped someone in their court/their child/something or other) restores his Counterpart to him? IDK, something like that.

...I think I like this option. He accidentally does a favor for, IDK, Mab. And she, not wanting to be in his debt, heads down to the Cage.

This works because, a) Mab is probably one of the few entities that can go toe-to-toe with an Archangel like this; and b) Michael is actually on board with springing Adam.

(Not necessarily because he gives a shit about Adam, but he does give a shit about Justice, and keeping Adam down here, especially with Sam gone, is not Justice.)

Naturally, she doesn’t tell Nick ahead of time--he did the favor without consulting her, she shall repay him in kind. Faeries and Obligations, man.

Anyway, Adam joins them, and then Nick doesn’t have to be quite as hands-on because Adam is perfectly capable.

(Adam also, at some point, makes a comment about the three of them having ‘nearly a complete set.’)

(I have no idea how/if they’ll ever be able to find someone to fit in for Gabriel, but three out of four!)

(Nick finds this oddly hilarious, for reasons he can’t quite articulate.)

So, that is what Nick is doing while Team Machine is foiling Vigilance and Greer and Decima and dealing with their Hard Sci Fi end of things.

Let’s bring these two worlds crashing back together, shall we?

(Well, I say crashing together...this probably isn’t the first time Nick has run into the others since that first adventure.)

(If nothing else, he’s stayed in touch, off and on, with Root.)

(And I’m pretty sure the others have met Adam.)

(Maybe that was where Shaw got her angel blade...)

So, timeline for this. Uh...probably at least a year after Nick’s first encounter with Team Machine. For the SPN side of things...ehhhhh I’ll handwave/stop caring and say this is sometime in the latter half of S8. Between the first two Trials. Let’s go with that.

Nick and co are back in New York, probably dealing with something on their end of things. A ghost or something.

And then they get sucked into some Team Machine nonsense.

Control still wants the Machine--or a suitable Plan B--back under her complete, well, control.

Decima is going after some other potential ASI.

(Root is back in town to deal with them.)

Vigilance is involved too, because why not.

(Greer can’t initiate his endgame there just yet, after all, so they’re probably still operating.)

Nick, Adam, and Ashley are pitching in, because they’re here and the Machine needs all the help she can get on this one. Because Reasons.

Meg gets involved--this goes AU in that she escaped Crowley somehow. And one of the first things she does is try to check on her various assets, so she’s trying to track Nick and figure out what the hell is going on with him.

Crowley, of course, is chasing her, trying to get her back.

And, to round it all off, Sam and Dean are chasing him.

(As they approach, Sam starts noticing a weird buzzing feeling in the back of his head. Like circulation returning, or something like that. He decides not to mention it--thinks it might be a new Trials symptom, and he’s already hiding those from Dean, what’s one more secret? Besides, they need to know what Crowley finds so interesting about this place...that’s way more important, right?)

So, all these disparate parties converge on wherever the potential ASI is being held/built.

Root and Nick, of course, are both in God Mode.

(...incidentally, Nick is...nnnnnnnnnot super comfortable with calling it that? He and Adam and Ashley mostly just call it access or full-access.)

(Nick has the same tingling feeling in the back of his head, but he can’t do anything about it right now. He just focuses on the task at hand, and getting himself and his friends through this alive.)

The Machine tips Nick off to the fact that there are demons sniffing around--a couple of Crowley’s minions. Which, of course, Nick and his team can handle, but there’s several of them around and we reeeeally don’t want Crowley getting access to an ASI.

(Especially not S8!Crowley.)

So, Nick, Adam, and Ashley head off to put up wards and shoo off any demons they can, leaving the others to deal with the Decima nonsense/destroy the drives or whatever.

There’s a lot of ground to cover, so they split up.

Eventually, Nick gets pinned down by Decima mooks, trapped in a corner of the facility where he’s trying to finish getting the wards up.

“What...what do I do now?” he asks the Machine.

She runs her simulations, and it doesn’t look good.

And here is where it’s different from, say, “If-Then-Else.” Slash another way Root and Nick are very different people/assets.

Whereas Root is perfectly okay with obeying orders from her God without question, Nick needs to be told his options and make the choice himself.

At some point, he describes Access as oddly comforting. It’s almost as overwhelming, almost as much of a surrender, as consenting to possession is.

But there’s one critical difference.

He doesn’t have to listen to her.

He can say no.

He can hang up.

I mean, it’s generally speaking a bad idea to do that, but the option is still available.

So, his head doesn’t feel as empty with her in it, but a lot of it is still on his terms.

That being said, when there’s no time, or it’s a very immediate “there’s someone behind you” type of God Mode moment, of course, that’s less of an issue.

But something like this, where there’s a fork in the road?

If there’s time, she’ll lay out two or three of the least bad options and let him decide.

“If you go out the door and turn left, you will run into Control. She will figure out you’re tied to me, and she will take you prisoner. She will almost certainly torture you, to get you to give me up. Adam and Ashley will meet up with my other assets, and they will rescue you, but the chances of their success are very slim. There is a five percent chance, at best, that you will survive. It varies, depending on how quickly the others can mobilize.”

“Okay,” he says, and swallows. “And...and Adam and Ashley, will they...?”

“They have better than even odds of surviving.”

“Okay,” he says again. “What else?”

“Turn right,” she says. “You’ll run into the demon who held you captive.”

“Meg?”

“Yes.”

That’s not so bad, he thinks. Meg didn’t torture him too much, and she wanted him kept alive.

“Control will capture Root instead,” she continues. “Sameen and the others will attempt to rescue her. Adam and Ashley will pursue you.”

Control capturing Root, on the other hand, seems like a very bad thing. Still...

“Adam and Ashley?”

“About the same,” she says. “But there is another concern.”

“Okay.”

“If Meg takes you, there’s a chance she’ll find me. And if she does, it’s extremely likely that someone less friendly will, as well. There is also an approximately 17% chance that you’ll wind up in Crowley’s hands instead of Meg’s. And his chances of finding me are a lot stronger.”

Yeah, no. That cannot happen.

“Are there any other options?” he asks.

She pauses for a split second. “Turn right,” she says. “Then at the first hallway, turn left instead of going straight. I’ll have to leave you then--there are several Decima soldiers, but if you manage to get past them on your own, you’ll find Sam and Dean Winchester.”

It hits him like a punch to the gut.

“Your chances of reaching them without my help are better than your chances of surviving Control,” the Machine continues, “but not by much. If you can get there, though, they most likely won’t harm you.”

Unless I’m in full-access mode, Nick thinks, and shivers a little.

“And I can say with approximately 97% certainty that, when Adam and Ashley find you, they won’t harm them, either. I cannot say the same for the demons or Control.”

“They won’t hurt us physically,” Nick finally manages to say. “But I can’t...I-I-I don’t know how I’ll...I can’t shut down, not in here. A-and I don’t know how Sam will react to seeing me, I’ll probably seriously fuck with his head a-and I can’t...I can’t...”

(there’s this running refrain in his head, that Sam Winchester is perfect, and that Nick is the reason that everything goes wrong.)

(the Machine regrets even more not getting Nick more help.)

He takes a shaky breath. “Plus, I don’t know if Adam’s ready for that yet,” he says. “He hasn’t...uh, he hasn’t said anything about wanting to track them down.”

“That’s true.”

He’s quiet for another minute.

“Nick?”

“...I’ll take my chances with Control,” he says.

“I understand,” she says. “Thank you. And I’m sorry.”

(It’s not what she would have advised him to do, necessarily--she would have advised him to try for Sam and Dean; it balances protecting her with protecting the majority of her assets.)

“Directions?” he says.

“Open the door and turn left.”

She guides him down the hallway, advises him where to dodge, where to strike. He picks up a gun at one point--

(he’s hesitant, and she reminds him “you’re in Control’s world now, you have to play by her rules.”)

He gets to the inevitable trap, where ISA corners him and Control is there.

She recognizes, pretty quickly, that he’s in God Mode.

“...now just who the hell are you?”

On the other side of the facility, Ashley’s phone rings.

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

The Machine also advises Root that Nick has been captured.

She and Finch have finished neutralizing the potential ASI drives; Reese and Shaw are with them; Carter and Fusco are currently working on securing their exit route, after driving off a handful of Vigilance mooks.

“We need to move,” Root says. “Control has Nick. Adam and Ashley will meet us.”

Reese nods once. “Lionel, Joss, get ready. We’re headed your way.”

“Copy that,” Carter says. “Fusco--”

“On it.”

Meg has realized that Crowley is here, so she’s now in the process of finding her own exit. He’s in pursuit.

Sam and Dean got all turned around and manage to get to just the right hallway at just the right time to see Adam and Ashley piling onto an elevator.

“...Dean,” Sam says. “Dean, tell me you’re seeing what I’m seeing.”

(he doesn’t press his hand. he hasn’t hallucinated in almost two years, he doesn’t need to--)

“Adam?” Dean calls.

Adam half turns to them, hesitates for half a second, then follows Ashley into the elevator and the door slides shut.

...and I’ll admit I don’t have a whole lot planned out beyond that. Also this is getting, like, super long. So, quick wrapup, so to speak.

So, Team Machine, plus Adam and Ashley go to rescue Nick.

Sam and Dean track them down.

Adam goes to talk to them, try and get them to back off.

“I have to go rescue my friend,” he says. “But once I’m done with that, we can talk. I promise. We’ll set up a meeting and I’ll tell you...as much as I remember, I guess. But right now, I have to go rescue my friend. Kind of on a clock here.”

“We’ll help,” Sam offers.

“This isn’t really your kind of thing,” Adam says. “This isn’t monsters, this is the ISA.”

“The what now?” Dean asks.

“Like the CIA, but on steroids.”

“...how the hell did you get involved in CIA bullshit?” Dean asks.

“It’s kind of a long story,” Adam says. “Which I will tell you, once my friend is safe. So can you please just...let me do this first?”

“How did...” Sam asks. “How did you get out?”

“Also a long story,” Adam says. “But I’m the only one who came out, I swear. And...” He hesitates. “They...mostly left me alone, after you were gone. If you were worried about that.”

(Sam hadn’t been, mostly because he had been Very Firmly Not Thinking About Adam for a while now, but he’s relieved to hear it.)

Reese steps out. Possibly holding his grenade launcher. “Come on, Adam, we gotta go.”

“Coming,” Adam says, then turns back to Sam and Dean. “I will call you as soon as we’re clear. I promise. Don’t follow us, okay?”

Without waiting for an answer, he follows Reese and they go to rescue Nick.

(Obviously, S&D don’t listen and do, in fact, follow Adam, but I’m not 100% sure where that would go.)

(Other than they do, in fact, manage to extract Nick alive, but it’s a near thing.)

(The fun thing here is, Control actually can’t break Nick. Well, she can’t get him to tell her anything about the Machine, anyway.)

(Yes, everyone has their breaking point so far as pain/torture goes, and Nick is no exception.)

(But he will physically break--i.e., die--before he mentally breaks.)

(And while psychological torture would be a lot more effective, she doesn’t know what buttons to push.)

(When she runs his prints/whatever, she gets the name Jacob White, which is an identity that Finch put together for him, for when he needed to interact with the real world. Since his own identity is...complicated.)

(Yes, that is a reference.)

(I couldn’t resist.)

(Also, the Machine, through Root, gets to deliver her verbal bitchslap to Control at last.)

Uh....yeah. That’s all the actual Plot I have at this point. But some other notes!

My girl Zoe is totally in the know. She may or may not have encountered Bela at some point, or found out some other way, but she does know.

(She never told Harold and John because--well, honestly, why would she? Her stock in trade is secrets, after all. And it never came up, and she wasn’t involved with Nick’s first adventure.)

Elias will turn up at some point. And basically become something like John Marcone, if any of y’all are familiar with the Dresden Files.

Bear’s Plot Armor may be some kind of magic, and I would not be surprised if he could take on a Hellhound and win.

Carter and Jody. Just...just Carter and Jody, man.

Like I said, Shaw gets her hands on an angel blade at some point. She and Dean probably bond. I feel like they would bond.

Also, I think Dean gets put into God Mode at some point. Possibly as his first real introduction to the Machine.

Like...IDK, he and Sam are with Nick for some reason, Nick, as implied above, cannot go into God Mode in front of the two of them, and honestly Sam going into God Mode in front of him would also be pretty devastating, so...Dean’s phone gets to ring!

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

“...the fuck?”

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

“Yes, I can--what the fuck is--”

“Two. O’clock.”

::turns and OHSHIT just in time::

IDK the idea just entertains me.

...yep, I think that’s it.

If you’re still here, thank you for putting up with my nonsense/checking this out.

Tune in next time, for an actual serious AU outline of some kind.

(....who am I kidding, these things are never serious XD)

[bastard-man]

s13:

hi okay i kept talking in the tags on my last post so here is more about s13 predictions ig

like i said we all know den literally can't function without mac it's been proven several times in the show

CLEARLY in mac & dennis break up

& my thought is how this will affect s13

so like,,,they're lying if they're gonna try & pretend like dennis can actually cope w/o mac if anything i think he needs him more than ever rn. even if dennis miraculously developed quickly & amazingly enough 2 be a dad that doesn't change how much he depends on mac. boy couldn't live without him in s5, and he was still like, okay then? obviously none of these characters r okay but i've seen only a few ppl mention dennis in the latest seasons. consequently mac seems happier this past season especially now that he's out which is great (i mean then u have DDL & then that kinda shattered but let's not mention that rn) but like we know dennis has been like,,,ragin' a lot more & he was diagnosed in s10 & we haven't really seen him happy in awhile like compared 2 earlier seasons when he seemed more calm & happy. what he thinks he needs is to leave his old life behind but what he actually needs, probably, is the gang rn more than ever but ofc he's not gonna admit that! so he run!

there's a number of reasons why i can't see them letting den be gone for any length of time but the main one being that it just doesn't make sense? like frank said u can't just go be a dad & he was right, & even if i think dennis could be capable of that it's obvious he's getting Worse & to be away from his friends, his family rn is not gonna help that, especially when we know he would be miserable in ND which is literally essentially what he says in 10.01 when he gets off the plane. i'm not a dumbass who thinks he's a sociopath & i know he has big feelings but i still don't see this being a situation where a child is magically the thing 2 crack dennis & fix all his problems

so like, there's my argument based on just the POV of the setting. now let's go back 2 den himself. like i said it definitely seems like he's getting worse, & him admitting that he has feelings was a huge, pivotal thing for him especially to admit that to the entire gang. from there they could use that to finally get den's character to open up a lil more & not try to suppress everything which i think is essentially why he seems worse? he wants to be one way & not feel & it's affecting him as it has over the years. we also know from mac, that he's been distant w him. whether u ship them or not they have a connection that's different from all the rest. so mac senses that den is acting different& like pushing him away, & we know it's not bc he's gay cuz den always knew that. this is where theories come into play, cuz it could have to do w den's feelings & trying to push the gang away so that he can pretend everything is okay which i think is a reasonable guess, or if u wanna add another layer to that there's also been the mention of him being uncomfortable with mac being out because now he's scared of mac's feelings & his own feelings.

it could be bc of the thing b/w them, or just the different connection that they have, but mac is the only one who says anything about dennis being distant. so is he only being distant w mac, or do the others just not notice bc they're not mac? either way mac is the one who notices & he's gonna be the first one to notice things going on w dennis. den has been like on a downward spiral almost & i think the RPG & brian jr just brought that to a head, & he runs, supposedly 2 deal w the latter. (i'm sorry i'm referring 2 a fuckin baby like it's a war crime but i don't evenl like them anyway so it's fine)

like depending on how u wanna interpret it, RPG=dennis realizing how he feels about mac, or how mac feels about him, or just the fact that he was all upset about vday only 2 find out mac got him what he wanted more than anythin & it didn't even matter 2 him that there wasn't a rocket bc it was the gesture so i mean interpret that how u will but FEELINGS

& then brian jr=who he apparently knew about but only becomes a problem bc mandy all of a sudden decides 2 show up & also thinks he's someone else so i really still don't understand some of the logic behind this event but anyhow. he's like noticeably v on edge this ep bc he literally had no idea how 2 get out of it & then all of a sudden he's like wait no i don't want to, but that's not the only thing? pretending to be in a relationship w mac & mac telling him he wanted 2 fake it & raise the kid w him was obviously also adding onto that & still his response was "im not gonna PRETEND to be in a relationship w u for the entirety of my child's life" so again interpret that how u will but...obviously we know he decides 2 go raise brian jr

but he's not gonna be able to do that. not bc he's not capable. i'd like 2 point out he left everyone & everything behind including his RPG & his beloved range rover, so i mean he prob left everything at his apartment too. (i have some theories bout this but it is not the time for those) like his car. is still in philly. his decision is made essentially on a whim after a moment w his kid & like an existential crisis while his friends danced around him bc up until that point he just didn't wanna deal w it

so it could've been like a few hours b/w those scenes but it's still a pretty impulsive decision considering it's a child, a new state you don't even like, a lovely woman ur not interested in, and leaving your friends, family, job, and entire life back in philly. maybe he also thinks it'll help him w his feelings. but he's been repressing shit for at least 12 years that we've seen (we know it's been longer like prob his whole life) & noticeably been getting worse, gives a sudden revelation to his friends about his feelings, & then leaves. that's not...okay. like we know they all have trauma & ridiculously unhealthy coping mechanisms but even if u take everything else away he's not gonna be happy having suppressed all his emotions and problems & then leaving having barely dealt with them w the others at all.

especially mac, who's a huge part of this which u can't deny even if u don't ship them. now i do so like my comments are gonna sway a bit more but i think it'll still work even if u don't agree w me on that aspect. personally i think there could be some sort of parallel there about how mac has gotten happier, while dennis has been more unhappy? like mac comes out & u could even argue dennis being jealous & acting that way bc he wants 2 come out & he's been suppressing that for so long but he's still not at a place rn to do it. or even the fact that mac feels more open & free to be himself while dennis feels the complete opposite & if anything has felt like repressing things even more, while mac mentions being sensitive (12.08 hints he feels more free 2 be sensitive now that he's out & doesn't have 2 worry about being so masculine so that he won't be called gay) & dennis mentions his big feelings but he's still not rlly talking about anything bc i mean u don't really just reveal everything suddenly. so especially in that regard he definitely needs mac.

like not only bc of their connection but bc he depends so much on mac & now mac feels more open & honest & i really think den needs to be around him more, not pushing him away (which could also be why) bc he needs to see how much happier mac is & how he's changed & maybe it'll help him open up more, & if anything mac would probably be the best one for him to do that w anyway.

i'm also gonna mention my sort of views on some ways den could come back: now considering his car was still there i think it could even be possible that mac goes home to their apartment to find that dennis is still there, maybe just waiting or maybe packing, who knows. them blowing up the range rover & using the RPG without him only to find that he hadn't left yet, or at all is definitely something i could see happening (& i know this is a more serious post about den but come on i think we'd all laugh @ that) or the thing i definitely see happening is the gang talking in the bar, who knows how long it's been (maybe a day, maybe a few months) & all of a sudden dennis strolls in and says nothing, walks behind the bar & grabs a beer while the others just stop talking and stare. cue title card "dennis is back" (tbh this is one of the most realistic ones i think & i know glenn mentioned it might be funny if he just didn't come back at all but i think this is vastly more funny & in keeping w the show i mean come ON) or there's like the sad part. this again could depend on how u wanna view things. but if u look at it as dennis going on a downward spiral, only for him to kinda hit rock bottom w the RPG & brian jr. (which isn't even a theory that's literally what happened) then we know this isn't good. it's not a typical situation where they leave on good terms, or they leave happy because we know he wasn't happy. we know he initially didn't want this & isn't ready & we know he hates north dakota, & we also know it's not like he's in love w mandy or anything no matter how nice she seemed, as the person he was closest to was: mac. so it's not like he's really leaving for a better lifestyle either necessarily, because he may have mentioned envisioning himself getting married & having a kid but we saw how it went when he married someone he didn't love, and how he again was unable to function without mac, and it's obviously not how anyone plans on those things happening, & if they did have him settle down w mandy which i do not see ever happening we know he'd literally be settling.

so for him to have been going through a rough patch, to hit an extremely low point & then walk away from his friends, is not going to end well. he hit that low point & is now leaving without dealing with any of his problems because his focus is on fixing one of them: the kid, but also how he was affected by frank because he doesn't want the kid to grow up in that same way. so he thinks that's the most important issue, because he also likes to pretend he doesn't have any other ones, & thinks this is the thing he needs to deal with and everything will be fine. but he didn't deal with anything else, he's only bringing those problems with him, to north dakota, to mandy, to the kid, to his "new life." so if anything he's only gonna be more miserable and he won't even have mac there w him, who he literally depends on to function & considering he's only getting worse being w/o mac is the last thing he needs even if he thinks, or wants to believe that that's exactly what will help. idk how they're gonna deal w him being gone, if he's gone for any length of time or anything, but my point is if he's stated to be gone for months or something like that i'm pretty sure he's gonna come back at the worst we've ever seen him because he was only without mac for hours before he realized he had no idea what to do & they were only, what, a few miles away? part of all this is that he's codependent but that is most heavily dealing with mac. s5 dennis was still doing pretty okay, considering. so him not functioning without mac was just pathetic. s12 dennis has been a mess & him being without mac at arguably his lowest point is kind of scary to think about.

[velkynkarma]

So that happened--s4 thoughts

My thoughts on season 4, below the cut in case you didn’t catch the spoiler tags.

So. That happened. I kind of have mixed feelings on this season. I know already people are either love it or hate it. I wasn’t particularly wow-ed by it, but I didn’t hate it either. A lot of stuff happened, but at the same time, it kind of felt like it didn’t? After all their progression it felt like they just came back to square one. I dunno. There are still a lot of questions hanging out there, but I guess we’ll get those with S5. Maybe. Anyway, let’s get to my thoughts! Still no word on “Ryou” or “Kuron,” but I don’t think the concept is tanked just yet. I’m thinking Naxzela was supposed to be the trap he was supposed to set, unwittingly. When Shiro explains his plan, he takes care to point out where all the intelligence comes from, but when he points out the chain of planets with a weak link of Naxzela, he specifically says “I’ve identified.” Information that comes direct from Shiro with no additional source is suspect, especially when the entire thing was a trap set to get Voltron there and blow up the entire area of resistance, and especially when the entire plan hangs on that one piece, and especially when Shiro is the one that designed the plan in its entirety. And the weak link he “identifies” just happens to be the one place that’s rigged with a planet-sized bomb, a feat that had to have taken months at the very least to set up…and we are told it has been months since Lotor made off with his comet and Shiro has been in place, enough time for Haggar to confirm her pawn is in place, even if he doesn’t know it. We also know, thanks to her manipulation of Narti, that she can watch things through other peoples’ eyes if given time to properly set them up for it. If this Shiro is a clone or a pawn, she could certainly gain intelligence this way. It may have even been the reason Shiro couldn’t originally pilot the Black Lion—it sensed the wrong presence. And her plan was almost solid. The reason this “explode Naxzela” plan did not work was solely because Lotor turned on the Galra Empire at exactly the right moment…even Allura’s resistance was not enough to save them. Shiro was the one that put them in that position. Shiro even negated Lance’s initial orders to run when the pillars were first forming—Lance tells Pidge to plot a course for escape, and Shiro says to wait, they should figure out what it is. Those precious seconds they don’t run end up trapping them and nearly killing them. And even if he doesn’t know he’s the one that deliberately led everyone to a trap—even if it’s entirely subconscious, and he resists with everything that’s Shiro’s personality after to try and help everyone escape—that plan still would have worked but for one unpredictable factor: Lotor. Nothing Shiro could have done then could have saved them once the trap was sprung. He could have unwittingly killed all of them without ever realizing it. On the note of conspiracies, I’m not entirely convinced Narti is dead either. Lotor is a clever bastard. He likes playing with his opponent’s thought process. I think there is a reason he specifically chose Narti to come with him when he visited Haggar, even though Axca is his usual right-hand general. Narti has a few properties that Haggar can’t predict; Haggar’s druids could not figure out how Narti did her mind-wipe/mind-control thing, or that it was even her. Lotor has already used the strategy of letting his opponents “see” something that he was really controlling in past episodes, it would not surprise me if he deliberately let Haggar see something via Narti before Narti shuts it down while “playing dead.” Narti is Lotor’s ace in the hole. If she’s “dead” she’s free to move, because nobody is expecting her anymore, and she has a power nobody in the main Galra empire seems capable of predicting or understanding. She can literally go in and out of places without anyone ever remembering she was there. Her cat didn’t panic either, just sat there next to her and waited. I have to wonder if Axca is in on the plan too, though, as she was pretty adamant about trusting Lotor, and specifically took the lead in stunning Lotor for “capture” before Ezor and Zethrid could murder him for their own safety. Capture that he escaped pretty quickly (by doing something really trippy with his arms holy crap wtf was that?!) Lotor joining the alliance is at this point a necessity for him. His original plan did not work, he needs to study or steal Voltron in order to pass through realities, and the realities seem to be his primary goal for some reason. It’s still not clear why, but he seems pretty hellbent on going through and collecting the super-charged quintessence in it. Why would he need that? He doesn’t appear to have his father’s quintessence starvation thing going on, and he clearly has no love lost for either of his parents. It doesn’t seem he’s doing it for them. On the generals, my original guess was going to be that Axca, Ezor and Zethrid would have joined the Voltron alliance. Clearly their loyalties aren’t to the Galra empire, and that’s not really surprising either—based on the way the generals talked about them in S3E1, they’re all Galra half-breeds, and blood purity seems to be a big thing in the Empire. They were loyal to Lotor, enough to attack the Galra empire for his own ends. He broke that chain, so the first thing they tried to do was save their own ass by turning him in, but if that’s not an option…”If you can’t beat’em, join’em.” But we didn’t see them again, so my guess is either A) Axca is in on the aforementioned speculated plan, and is cutting Zethrid and Ezor in on it, or B) they’re going to go into play in some other way to save their lives. I’m not sure they could form any kind of alliance with Voltron if Lotor is also there as there is now bad blood between them…although curiously, Lotor was surprisingly understanding about the three of turning on him. Which is weird, as he has shown he can get violent over disloyalty or failure, just like his father, even in Season 3. And to round out the conspiracy train, wtf is up with Zarkon’s armor this season? It’s deliberately hiding his face, which we never actually see. I wonder if he’s entirely 100% alive again? He’s feeding on that super-charged quintessence stuff, it seems...he’s now wearing the same tanks that Galra warden used in S2E10. He was also curiously not a focus this season, despite being the big bad. The summary of what he does this season is put on his armor, tell Haggar she was dumb for putting Lotor in charge, and then flip his shit when Lotor turned on him and spend the rest of the season hunting him down and nearly killing himself (for a third time????) in the process. Very weird...and also, an interesting distraction technique. Haggar seemed curiously uncaring about Zarkon this season, too, which is a big change from her steadfast loyalty in seasons 1 and 2. They barely interact. For the Naxzela incident some Galra generals even tell her ‘dude should we get Zarkon and take care of this’ and her answer is ‘no, we got dis, don’t call him, he’s too busy chasing Lotor.’ I am absolutely positive Zarkon would never have approved the Naxzela plan, not because of the wholesale murder but because Voltron would have been destroyed too, and he wants that more than anything. She’s working behind his back, and possibly keeping him busy on a wild goose chase. But what’s most interesting is the biggest change for her this season is she has her memories back now—we see her practically having a mental breakdown looking at her reflection with her skin color changed, envisioning how she used to be. She remembers that her and Zarkon had a pretty solid relationship, and her first reaction is to put as much distance as possible between them and start going behind his back? I’m not an expert on relationships but that strikes me as very weird. Now, Keith. I’ve got some friends who are big Keith fans and I have a feeling they’re already not liking this season since Keith is barely in it, which really sucks for them. I am sorry, my Keith-fan friends D: On that note though, I’ve been noticing a really weird trend for Keith through all 4 seasons so far. Each season introduces a major plot element of awesome thing for him, and then next season it’s like that major plot point or element just...doesn’t exist anymore. “Lol, we thought this was awesome and we introduced this but then we decided no.” Here’s the breakdown currently:

Season One: Keith goes lone wolf and unlocks the Rail Gun on his Red Lion against Zarkon himself, the turning point in him surviving the first part of the battle and establishing these alternative weapons exist. This weapon has literally not been seen again since, making it seem a bit deus-ex at this point. Keith doesn’t use it again, and neither has Lance.

Season Two: Keith is Galra!!!!! Blade of Marmora!!!! Big surprise!!!! Also his connection with Red is like SUPER STRONG!! Never uses his blade in Season 3, the BoM connections are barely touched on outside the first season, doesn’t even pilot the Red Lion anymore

Season Three: Keith, you’re the leader now. It’s super important and we’re going to spend the entire season building up this Important Position you’ve taken as being the leader. We’re even going to clash you against Shiro as leader just to prove you’re important as a leader, too.  Teamwork is important, you need to learn that and stuff. Oh wait, never mind—Season 4 called, they want your lone wolf persona back. Kthnx.

Season Four: Keith’s totally BOM now. I wonder how long THAT will last.

At this current pattern, Season Five will include Keith leaving the Blade of Marmora for his next plot hook of the season. I’m calling it now. That said, we did see some character elements of his return or get stronger despite his limited appearances, which I found intriguing. In the first episode he goes back to ostensibly save his companion, and maybe that was part of it, but he also went back to save the mission and get the data, and says as much. This is a call back to the ruthless big-picture Keith we saw a little of in season 1, which could possibly be set up as a point of contention for him later. It’s been hidden a little recently with his big focus on Shiro, which seems to be the one thing Keith will break that “the world before you or I” mentality. Keith was also (scarily) about to do a suicide run to try and save the world, which means he is not exempt from his own big-picture focus. I wonder what that will mean later. Other big character reveals—Matt is back! Now, I’m gonna confess, unpopular opinion here, I wasn’t a huge fan of Matt back in S1. Less because of his character (I mean...he didn’t have any character back then, other than ‘really likes ice samples’ and ‘literally nobody thinks he’ll survive a fight, including himself’). More because of his voice actor. I dunno, his lines in S1 felt very flat and fake to me when surrounded by a cast that just felt so natural. I’m happy to see that his VA got a handle on it though for S4, because he grew on me. I actually really loved Pidge’s episode to find him, which gave her some great development, and I love seeing their interactions. Probably one of my favorites this season. I also adored seeing him, Pidge and Hunk geeking out and getting their tech on together, and it was cool to see him co-piloting in the Green Lion! (You can get more chairs, incidentally. Interesting). He actually has a personality now too! That’s great. I am still curious about a few things that he never bothered to explain though, like why the rebels rescued him (him specifically? Were they just liberating an entire cell block?). Or the fact that he never really interacted with Shiro outside that one initial meeting, which was odd. You’d think he’d at least be like “hey, thanks for risking your life to save mine that one time” or at least “holy shit what did they do to your ARM.” And what about Sam? That poor bastard, he was barely talked about either. He’s out there too somewhere, somebody save him! And last big character point of interest for me, in the very last episode, Lance and Allura had a really great moment. I found it interesting that although pep talks are Shiro’s thing, it was LANCE that convinced Allura she could empower Voltron and get them out of there, even without training. (They mentioned training too, I’m guessing that will be a focus soon for Allura). Actually, Lance had a few interesting moments in this series where he took more of a lead role, which I found interesting. His are more subtle (and buried in a mountain of moments with him being exited about showing off in the shows and morale parades), but there are a few instances in which he does take control or leads the team in the absence of a leader. When the refugees are attacked and Keith is absent, Lance gives a few initial suggestions about how they should attack that are not-quite-orders, but they are suggestions the others take. As stated earlier, Lance is the first one to say they need to run on Naxzela, which would have been the right move, but Shiro shuts it down (which may have been a subconscious trap). I think he’s learning to be more impulsive and commanding in a pinch and starting to learn more split-second reaction from his new Lion. I don’t think he’d be quite ready to lead the full team (he still appears to be very attention driven which is not a strong quality for a leader), but he’s certainly maturing. Okay, now on to some less obvious or detail observations! By far the hardest episode for me to get through was S4E4. I can take all manner of angst, intense fight scenes, etc, but secondhand embarrassment kills me, and this ep had it in spades with the whole “Voltron show” thing. It was funny, I’m not gonna deny that, I was laughing a lot too, but I was also pausing like every thirty seconds because I Just Can’t Even. The puns, the references to every sentai show ever, the way Lance was getting so into it, Coran’s weird hybrid accent, “forming Voltron,” I just. Agh. But by far, the biggest call out (or possibly smack in the face) was this one: Coran: Except for you Shiro, I’ll never get rid of you. You’re our most popular character!!!! Lance:…wait, YOU’RE our most popular character?! Shiro: -_- Methinks the team has heard us on this one. Also, in the first episode, I’m not gonna lie...when Keith got himself ejected into space—AGAIN—I was half expecting the Red Lion to just break formation and abandon the parade to go save him. With Lance still in it. Though that probably would have caused more angst in the long run, if Red still considers Keith its “real” paladin enough to go save him. That would mean Lance can’t measure up, or that Red picks a paladin that abandoned the rest over him. So I guess it’s good that didn’t happen. KALTERNECKER LIVES. And has her own little area on the ship with holograms to look like Earth. And they can get milk from her which means she had a baby cow recently. And Hunk makes milkshakes with her milk! And Coran and Allura love them and don’t get brainfreeze but think the cow just makes them! And Lance has to show them how to milk a cow and they are completely 10000000% appalled. I fucking died. At all of it. 10/10 best part of the whole season. “This is our cow.” “How did you—” In the same episode we learn they FINALLY got their Mercury Gameflux II working, so that’s awesome. I adore that Lance was just sitting around in his PJ’s playing video games. I wish he’d recruited Allura and Coran to help him win. Haggar has a rank, “High Priestess.” Which implies some degree of religious belief. However, almost everyone else outside the druids appear to refer to her as “the witch.” Which implies some societal divides between the main Galra and the druids. Hmmm... Not that it came as a surprise to anyone, but Lotor confirmed his mama is Haggar. Still no idea when he was born though. Hmmm... When he does make this reveal, he actually pointed out something that I myself had been puzzling over a lot since S3. Alfor claimed to have destroyed the rift by blowing up Daibazaal. But it’s a rift to another reality. Would blowing up the physical matter it happened to appear on do anything to destroy the tear itself? I had wondered how Alfor’s attempt was even successful, and apparently it wasn’t. Still want to know what the hell he plans to do with this knowledge, though. BUT WHERE THE FUCK WAS SLAV THIS SEASON OKAY. SHIT and I just realized Shiro never used his bayard WE STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT IS FOR FUCK’S SAKE OKAY! That’s a lot of thoughts, and I’m sure I’m forgetting quite a lot, but there’s my initial feedback.

[kinetic-elaboration]

May 25: The Finale

So here's how I stand with The 100 now that the finale has aired.

I still haven't watched anything past 4x10, but I'm reading spoilers on my dash and keeping up with the general outlines of things. Before the finale aired, I was starting to get curious about developments again and thought I might just wait for the last ep to air and then binge the final arc maybe over the long weekend or something. Now that I know how the season ends up, my interest in watching has plummeted and while I think it would be silly of me to say 'I'll never watch it ever' (those are very much the sort of words a person like me later eats), I have no interest in watching it any time soon. Maybe over the summer. Sometime. Eventually. Who knows?

The biggest reason to watch the last episodes is to be able to have an actual leg to stand on for complaining purposes but frankly not being up to date on canon hasn't stopped me yet, lol. I just disclaim all complaints with 'I'm one of those annoying people who bitches about developments in episodes I haven't seen' and leave it at that.  

I don't want to be like the anti's, hating the show and talking about how much I hate it but sticking around in fandom anyway, raining on everyone else's parade. It worries me that people might come across my ranty posts and think that of me. But... okay, look, I have done a lot of complaining going all the way back to season 3 and I'm up front both about what I don't like in the show and about why I'm here in the fandom anyway. I like the fandom, I like the characters, I like the universe, etc. I still want to engage in the transformative-works aspect of the fandom. And honestly I've never been a meta writer or engaged in speculation or predictions so looking only at what I produce, content-wise...whether or not I like the canon or even whether or not I'm caught up on it makes no difference. It will matter even less now that we're in the hiatus and there's no new material to speculate on in the first place.  

Finally, and most importantly, I'm really honestly not here to ruin or even put a damper on anyone else's fandom experience. I tag my negative posts as negative. I censor names when I'm talking shit about specific characters or ships. I don't go into people's inboxes and I don't even have a Twitter but if I did, I wouldn't use it to harass other users or people who work on the show. Like, I just want to sincerely love the first two seasons, the general concept, and the characters, while bemoaning the state of the show as it is now. (Also, tbh...sometimes complaining is fun and the vast number of people who leisure-complain on any number of topics is evidence enough of this phenomenon—at least I'm honest about taking pleasure in the occasional bout of this is so fucking stupid inconsequential-rage.)

As for what I actually think of what I've heard of the finale.... I've tried to write this up a couple of different ways and I think (hope) I've FINALLY distilled my thoughts.

The two things I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT WANT out of the finale were (1) for the characters to go to space and (2) a time jump of pretty much any sort. So now that those two things have happened, my brain has basically short circuited. I cannot even comprehend this. I literally don't have the words. Maybe I sound hyperbolic, but I'm just trying to explain how much disdain I have for these two plot points. I can't even fathom how anyone ever thought this would be a good idea; it's like I'm in an alternate entertainment universe. It's ludicrous.

My problem with the space launch is that it crosses the disbelief line for me. Obviously there's a lot of faux-science in this show and everyone has a different line as to what is reasonable-enough if you don't think about it too hard, and what is just absolute nonsense but, for whatever reason, this is my line. I don't know what the details were on the actual show come launch-time but just the concept of launching a space craft from a post-apocalyptic wasteland is so ridiculous that I cannot imagine a way to squint or turn my head or angle my screen so that it seems even remotely tenable. A ROCKET LAUNCH. FROM THE RUINS OF POST-NUCLEAR NEW YORK. Like ?????????????????????????. I previously described this possibility as sounding to my ears like riding a pegicorn to New Jersey to get the magic potion from Raul (s/o to my freshman year roommate for the Raul in-joke, so useful to me so many years later), and that's still how I feel.

My bigger problem is with the time jump. To put it briefly, it's a new show now. The combination of Radiation 2.0 and the time jump has cemented that.

I've felt for a while now that whatever it is I'm watching now isn't what I originally signed up to watch. I've seen a few other posts to similar effect, and even my mother (who acts as my Typical Casual Viewer one-person control group, even though quite obviously she is not representative of a typical cw viewer at all—still she's not in the fandom so she is completely untainted by what goes on in these parts)--even my mom said she thinks JRoth/the writers are basically telling a completely different story now than they were initially. I've had, and am still having, a hard time articulating exactly what makes it fundamentally different (as opposed to merely a show that's evolved over time, as long-running shows do), or even when exactly it happened. But I guess at its core the complaint is: this is supposedly a show about "the hundred," and of that group almost all have been killed or lost to the ether, and the remaining members have had their screen time chronically cut short to accommodate a growing cast of characters who have increasingly little to do with that core group or its original purpose or journey. The complaint is  partly one of frustration at the large number of delinquent deaths and the small scraps of screen time given to other alleged mains, and partly a more general annoyance at the loss of the whole meaning of the affiliation "the hundred." What does it mean to be a member of the hundred anymore? Basically nothing. And when it ceased to have meaning (by which I mean S3), the show became, in essence, a different show.

Obviously there's a counter to this whole general complaint (that the show is too bloated with characters generally and/or Grounders specifically), which I've also seen floated out there recently, which is that destroying everything on Earth will allow something more like S1 to flourish again, and a new emphasis to be placed on the core young people. To this I say, first, it's way too early to tell what S5 will be. And I'm in a particularly bad place to really engage with this argument, given how much of even the current canon I've missed. BUT I am skeptical. First, we were told S4 would feel like S1 again and IMO it most definitely has not. Second, most of the hundred are dead and/or gone—I'm not just talking about the toll among the original mains or even the original named characters, I'm talking about how 42 of the original captured teens made it out of Mt. Weather and all but 4 of them were never heard of again. So even if the show returns to caring more about, say, Monty than it does about Grounder of the Week, nothing can undo the destruction to the original concept; nothing can really solve the problem of which I'm complaining. And third, I don't think the writers think they're writing a bad show; I mean, they're the ones who brought us down this path in the first place. This, what we've seen over the past 2 years, IS JRoth's vision. Yes, sometimes showrunners make a mis-step and readjust course, and I thought perhaps that would happen for S4, but it hasn't, which means that he doesn't think S3 had the problems I think it had, which means there's no reason to think S5 will be any better than S3 or S4 were, at least from my POV.  

But anyway as I was saying—

Maybe there's been room for argument about this same show/different show question up to now; it's a fuzzy sort of concept in my mind with which I'm not entirely comfortable—I feel a bit like I'm just Complaining About Change like an old grandma, tbh. Despite how it sounds, I do want to be open-minded about others' creativity and to give the benefit of the doubt to ongoing projects/unfinished stories. Regardless, ending S4 in this way is a pretty big sign that the theory, whether or not it was right before, is right as of now. Is there any way to more effectively raze the ground and salt the Earth than to literally raze the ground and then skip ahead 6 years? I have a million problems with this large time gap, but on the top of the list is that, like everyone over the age of 25 knows, a person changes dramatically between the ages of 18 and 25, or 16 and 22, just in the normal course of events, apocalypse(s) not withstanding. The writers have given themselves carte blanche to do literally absolutely anything with these characters. Even for a show that's barely cared at all about consistency over time in pretty much any aspect, that's troubling. (Also, like, I signed up for a show about a bunch of teens in the forest, not a group of twenty-somethings...doing whatever they'll be doing in season 5. I feel a tiny bit like a promise has been broken, sorry.)

So having basically established that whatever this show used to be, it's not that anymore, I guess the question is: what is it now, and do I like it? I think this is the question every viewer basically has to ask themselves, consciously or no. For me, what I've seen the last two years is some mismash of GoT, general dystopia, repetitive story lines, action sequences, and nonsense "science." The plot is ridiculous,  the pacing is terrible, the emphases are (for my taste) in all the wrong places, the characters are shoddily drawn, and often times, it's fucking boring. It's a bad show. Things like loyalty to a few characters, interest in a few story lines, and sheer curiosity/inertia have kept me here despite it all, but at this point I feel the balance has just shifted imperceptibly the other way. Jasper's death has a lot to do with it (he was my favorite, he had the only good or even coherent story of S3, and the way his death and its aftermath were handled were so insulting one could easily justify a decision to stop watching as mini-protest), but I think that it was more the (very heavy) straw on the camel's back than anything else.

I guess the tl:dr version of this is GOODBYE BITCHES I'M DONE and yet I still can't even promise I won't be watching Season 5, like I can't predict how I'll feel in a year.

[bellarkespread-blog]

The 100 Prediction Game: Hiatus Week

We’re almost halfway through, guys! What are your predictions for the rest of the season?

Tagged by @parapluiepliant and @eskimo-whispers. Thanks for the tag, guys! This seems like a fun thing to do :) so let’s begin!

Date: 11/03/2017

Romance:

1. Bellarke kiss (How it happens is irrelevant): I’m less sure than I was at the beginning of the season, but I’m going to stay hopeful and say yes!

2. Octavia love interest (Y/N and Name): Yes. It’s very obvious that they’re setting up Ilian as her new love interest.

3. Raven love interest (Y/N and Name): Not sure about this one. Lindsey teased that there would be someone, but the only one I can think of is Jackson (maybe they’ll bond while working on the island). She had a nice moment with Murphy in 4x04, but *see #7*

4. Kabby get married/proposal in some form: I don’t see a marriage or proposal happening, but I do see them promising to each other that they’ll get through this to have a life they’ve always wanted together after this is all over.

5. Monty/Harper will stay together for the season: Yes

6. Miller/Bryan will stay together for the season: No. As much as I hate it, I have to say that the end of 4x02 hinted their breakup, and I’m pretty sure something will be going on between Bryan and Riley. Since the actor playing Bryan can only be in so many episodes this season, this is how they’ll make his character exit the show, and I’m glad that it’s not by killing him off, at least.

7. John/Emori will stay together for the season: Yes, they really seem to love each other, even though I’m pretty sure Emori isn’t being 100% honest with John (but we might find out more about it later).

8. Other: Write down other romance related plots you predict will happen.

Deaths:

1. Kane dies: No

2. Abby dies: No (even though 4x05 scared me a bit, I think they will find a solution to what’s happening with her)

3. Echo dies: Sadly, I don’t think so.

4. Jasper dies: Everything is pointing to him dying. I hate this, but, yes 😭😭😭

5. Jaha dies: I was 90% sure he’s dying this season (sacrificing himself for his people, something he wanted to do back in S1, but never got to), but now I’m like at 70%. He’s already redeeming himself and he might just stay around for longer

6. Luna dies: I’ve been thinking about this and I have to say yes. It will probably be a tragic consequence of Abbykru trying to use nightblood as the solution to save everyone. Plus the fact that she’s the last nightblood puts her in more danger plot-wise, imho

7. Indra dies: No

8. Bryan dies: No. Like I said before, I think they’ll write him off by breaking him up with Miller

9. Other: Write down names who haven’t been mentioned in 1-8.

Octavia: I have worries about her surviving this season, just because she’s already ‘died’ once and everyone was relieved when it was revealed that she’s alive. TV writers like to play with viewers like that (*cough* TWD *cough*) and make you think that the character is safe now when they actually aren’t. So, leaving this here as a possibility.

Plot:

1. Roan keeps his power over the grounders: No

2. Luna becomes the new commander: No

3. The Nightblood solution will work: Yes, but maybe not in the way they expect (does it always go as expected, anyway?)

3. They will either: End up in space or stay on the ground (bonus points if you predict a possible solution)

I have to admit I’ve seen some spoilers about the finale, but since we can’t be sure that whatever the spoilers say is really what’s going to happen (I think there might be a different ending), I’m still going to take a shot at trying to predict what their solution will be.

Even though I think that space is an absurd option, after 4x05, it really looks like they might consider it at some point (even though that rocket is a two-seater; will there be more?), so I guess we’ll just have to deal with that. It was mentioned that there were criminals who were sent on a mining mission to an asteroid, and that they were the first who were injected with nightblood. Hypersleep was also mentioned. So I think that whoever is going to space might land on that asteroid and encounter their descendants (otherwise why bring it up?), which might be part of the S5 storyline. Everyone else will probably be put into hypersleep on one of the levels in Becca’s lab, but there will be a limited amount of 'life boats’, so, just like with Alpha Station, they will have to decide who gets a spot and who doesn’t.

Otherwise it will be just a select few who make it out alive, and I refuse to think about it.

4. Are we going to see any historical landmarks? (bonus for guessing which ones): Probably the collapsed Statue of Liberty that we’ve been seeing in the opening credits!

5. Gaia will find another Nightblood for the Flame: No, but she might learn about Luna and try to pressure her into taking the flame

6. Who will participate in the 4x09 battle (who’s fighting who): wait, so we know that the fight is happening in 4x09? Octavia and Roan are the only ones I can recognise from the trailer. Echo will probably be there too. I don’t really have any predictions on this, sorry.

7. Will Octavia stay an assassin (for how long?): No, I think almost dying will make her reassess her life choices

8. The Sky People and Azgeda stay allies: No, I don’t think Azgeda as a nation will ever fully accept Skaikru as their allies. But Roan will definitely work with them and stay on their side (maybe even causing many of his people to turn against him)

9. The Blake siblings will make up: Yes

10. Raven and Abby will get worse/better: I think they will get worse before they get better. I don’t see either of them dying

11. Other: Write down a plot scenario not mentioned which you think will happen.

Plot - Bellarke:

1. Will Bellarke share another hug? Yes (it will be unrealistic if they don’t! Come on, they’re constantly in life-and-death situations)

2. Will Bellamy say “I need you” in some form to Clarke? I feel like he already said it in 4x03 (“If I’m on that list, you’re on that list (because I refuse to live without you and I need you in my life)”)

3. Roan will use Bellamy against Clarke again: No

4. Someone will make a comment about their relationship/how much they mean to the other: Yes (please let it be Sassy Roan!)

5. Will either/both admit their feelings to the other: Bellamy will admit his feelings to Clarke, but only if she does first. And I feel like Clarke will be scared to do that, because everyone she’s ever loved died (but since they all might die anyway, I can see her taking this chance). We’ll see. Not 100% sure on this.

6. Bellarke sex: No, haha. That would be too rushed, imho 😉

7. Other: Write down a Bellarke scenario not mentioned which you think will happen.

Hope you enjoyed reading my answers! 😊 tagging everyone who’s reading this and who wants to do this!

[kiss-my-freckle]

I can see it in the dialogue and the remaining parallels. The reverse of all things because Liz was intent on rewriting her past, while Red has been working to give her future a fighting chance.

There were many dialogues in S5, but I’ll focus on the convo Red and Liz had about her leaving Agnes with Scottie.  

Red: You’ve entrusted Agnes to Scottie Hargrave? Liz: Yes. To Tom’s mother.

The first issue falls here. Different for Katarina to entrust Liz with Sam, a friend she’s known for all of Liz’s and most of her life. A man unconnected from both sides of the war. Scottie is connected to this through her son, who just died over Red’s secret. 

Red: Who ordered a hit on your wedding. Liz: She didn’t know who we were. 

The second issue falls here. Scottie didn’t know who Tom and Liz were. She still doesn’t know who Red is. Adding in the fact that we’ve no idea whether Scottie and Katarina have bad blood between them. 

Liz: She’s a good person, and she’ll keep Agnes safe. 

Entrusting Agnes with Scottie because she’s Tom’s mother is like Kate entrusting Tom with the suitcase because he’s Liz’s partner/Agnes’ father. Trust should only go so far, apples don’t fall far from their trees, and Scottie hasn’t an issue torturing those she loves. Giving Howard ECT treatments while awake. Allowing Solomon to beat on her son with a sock heavy with billiard balls. 

Liz: Look, I know you took care of her while I was in the hospital, and I can’t thank you enough for that, but this is my decision. 

The third issue falls here, which goes back to what Red said in season three. Liz basically took Agnes out of his protective reach. Even worse if she puts him in a cell, unable to even keep an eye on her even if he wanted to.  “I’m not a threat to your safety, Lizzy, or your child’s. On the contrary, I can guarantee it, but I cannot do that if you run away.”

Liz: And I need you to respect that. Red: Okay, I will.

The fourth issue falls here. Like every other decision that he’s chosen to respect because Liz wanted him to. Giving Kaplan a second chance, which brought about the death of Baz. Kate and Rederina couldn’t co-exist. Liz’s forgiveness of Kate was premature, just like her forgiveness of Tom. The woman quite literally put you and your daughter in the hands of Alexander Kirk, who then held your baby on the ledge of a rooftop. 

There’s only four parallels left that I see. Depends on how you look at it. 

Katarina’s exoneration. She won’t be exonerated by her own country, she was working as a double agent for the CIA. This was stated by Tom Connolly when he referred to her as a KGB asset. I believe the Cabal framed her over the Fulcrum. That would be her reason for running from two countries. Not an affair to which the KGB hired her for or the U.S. government wouldn’t give a shit about. She was working for the CIA, so they should’ve already known.

The second chance to the lover/husband. Despite Red kidnapping Liz, Katarina wanted to give him another chance, she wanted to be a family. Something serious happened at the fire that threw them into a physical altercation. Whether it was the gun or it wasn’t the gun, a gun was out. Whoever was aiming to get shot, hard to say. Perhaps that will parallel Tom putting a gun to Liz’s head in 1x22. 

As I said, it’s in reverse. The child comes later rather than before. The framing, same thing. Before rather than after. Liz had an FBI task force to assist protecting her and clearing her name, Katarina did not. 

The paternity issue, obvious to tag the memory wipe and Keenler baby theory. And if considered a separate parallel, Agnes’ special needs storyline to parallel Liz’s 30 years spent suffering from identity issues because she never knew her parents. 

If it happens, Katarina’s exoneration won’t happen until after the Rederina reveal, which would put it in S7 if we get renewed. This is where I predict the war between Scottie and Katarina with the addition of CIA-heavy blue players from the Devry map. I wouldn’t consider that a parallel, but a continued war due to a reveal of identity. So yeah, that’s S7 parallel stuff. 

That leaves the other three, at least two I’m predicting for S6. With the Rederina in the finale, I’m predicting something with Agnes halfway through like they did with Tom’s death. Perhaps a flashback of Liz’s 2x22 memory wipe instead of a flashforward of Tom’s death. Agnes’ special needs storyline could fall in S7 if the war between Scottie and Rederina continues and Scottie refuses to give her back to Liz. Two of three. The second chance for the husband and issue of paternity. Issue of paternity would come with the second memory wipe, which I’m definitely predicting in S6. 

Second chance for the lover. Paternity for Agnes, perhaps mid-season. Rederina reveal in the finale. Memory wipe & Fowler frame theories. Those are my definite predictions for S6. Agnes’ special needs storyline is a toss up between 6&7. I’m leaning heavy toward a Rederina-Djinn parallel gender switch. I’ll wait to post my S7 predictions when S6 is over. I’m not sure where I should put my death for Dembe prediction, but I’m predicting it. Tom’s second employer could come along with the memory wipe as well. The memory wipe itself involves my theory on Tom’s role in Red’s shooting at the end of 2x18, so that’s another that could pop in during S6.

The description for S6 states some lines will be crossed. This won’t be Red, he’s already crossed them. It’ll be Liz. What short arcs they do for Ressler, they lengthen for Liz. Ressler’s arc with Prescott is about to become Liz’s arc with her game of cat-and-mouse against Red. Audrey’s death compared to Liz learning Tom is an imposter. Her revenge and mourning for Tom lengthened compared to Ressler’s for Audrey. Her keeping Tom prisoner compared to Ressler’s pill addiction with their addition of the Harbormaster trial. You get the idea. 

So far, she’s already crossed quite a few lines. I can’t imagine what other lines they’ll have her cross. Navarro was self-defense. It was the disposal of his body that crossed a line. Stealing the bloody rag from evidence crossed a line. The men she physically assaulted (even shot) while trying to find Navarro crossed a line. The men in the woods was self-defense. Her taking off and leaving without giving the police department a statement crossed a line. Her allowing Fulton to walk crossed a line. She has to cross over to Red’s side on a serious level. To the point she no longer recognizes herself. I believe that’s where they want her before this revenge quest of hers is over.