#[ WELP THE SCENE IN REIGN MADE ME SAD ]

[liarwolfe-blog]

“---- Say that you love me. Say it to me once because I know you do.” It’s broken as it comes out of his mouth, eyes wet with agony. A pause and then---- “Say it. Say the rest, I need to hear it.” What a fool he was to love a girl he can never have.

@insomnianprincess

[edettethegreat]

Review of Romeo X Juliet (the anime adaption of Romeo and Juliet, VERY loosely based off of the original play)

Well I think it’s gonna be kinda long, so I’m gonna put a cut right here.

OK.

What it got right/ what was in there that was in the actual play:

Romeo and Juliet are from two opposing families (Montague and Capulet). They fall in love with each other. There are some other characters who also exist.  

What was in there that was NOT in the actual play:

Literally everything and anything else. This is not an exaggeration in the least bit. Juliet grows wings at some point. And maybe turns into an actual tree.

So. What’s Romeo X Juliet about?

The basic Premise:

Montague (not the whole family- just Romeo’s father) is the main antagonist. He kills out the entire Capulet family when Juliet is a child, but somehow Juliet is rescued. Juliet spends the next like 13-14 year of her life pretending to be a boy by the name of Odin to hide from Montague, and also does vigilante work, because life isn’t so good under Montague’s rule. Oh yeah, Montague’s like. The king or something. 

There are also characters from other Shakespeare plays there. And Shakespeare himself is a character. 

The Characters:

Characters who aren’t from Romeo and Juliet (but are from other Shakespeare plays):

Shakespeare himself- he’s literally just Shakespeare himself. Just chilling, watching the whole plot go down. 

Emilia- an actress in Shakespeare’s acting troupe

Regan- a servant girl working for Shakespeare’s mother’S family.

Cordelia- I think she’s like. A servant to the Capulet family? Who got away with Juliet when Montague killed them off? Anyway she’s Plot relevant. She marries Benvolio.

Ophelia- oh boy. Where do I even start. OK you know what? I’ll get to this when I get up to Escalus. Just. Scroll to where I talk about Escalus.

Petruchio- he’s pretty irrelevant- he only exists for one episode, and then he dies a tragic death

Hermione- the girl Romeo’s engaged to. 

Characters that are actually from Romeo and Juliet: 

(In the order of easiest to explain to hardest to explain)

Juliet- Ok. She’s the main character. She does vigilante work until she can’t anymore. 

Romeo- literally just Romeo. Exactly what you’d expect from Romeo. He doesn’t do anything mind blowing. I mean, he does try to kill Montague, but everyone tries to kill Montague because he’s basically a dictator.

Lady Montague- I think she went off to become a nun or something, because she didn’t like that her husband was basically a dictator who goes around murdering people. She’s nice. I liked her.

Benvolio- not the brightest guy. Really. He and his family gets exiled because his father disagreed with something Montague said. Ends up marrying Cordelia.

Mercutio- one of the antagonists, but literally the worst one. He decides to betray Romeo and join Team Antagonists because I think he wanted power or something? It wasn’t entirely clear. He then betrays his father to Montague, and Montague kills his father. Then Montague tells him that he’s totally better than Romeo and he could totally replace him as Montague’s son. So you’re probably thinking “hey that sounds a lot like that one part of Edmund’s arc”- BUT IT’S NOT- Mercutio is about 0% dedicated to any of this and is a huge coward. Then he tries to kill Romeo. That doesn’t work out. Then he kills Montague and goes mad. I don’t know why he does any of this. I don’t think he himself knows why he does any of this. Also he’s *really* annoying. (Literally just go watch it- you’ll see- he’s *so* annoying.)

Montague- OK SO. This fellow here has actually a tragic backstory that motivates his evilness. Listen to this wild ride of of a story: So. Capulet (not Juliet’s father- her grandfather or great grandfather or someone else related but not her father) had a affair with some lower class lady, and MONTAGUE WAS THE RESULT. YES. THAT’S RIGHT. I HAVE ANOTHER TRAGIC SAD LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE BASTARD TO ADD TO MY COLLECTION. Anyway. Montague just wanted to kill out the whole Capulet family as revenge. Sounds fair enough. So he gets adopted or something by the Montague family, kills out the people ahead of his until he’s the heir (I think?), and then goes on a killing spree with the Capulet family. Then he becomes. Like. An evil dictator. That lowers his coolness by a large percentage. He was pretty neat before, but I’m not so pro-evil dictators. 

Tybalt- HOLD ON. IF YOU THOUGHT MONTAGUE’S STORY WAS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY BUT GREAT NONETHELESS, THEN BEHOLD THE STORY HERE.  Ok so. He’s introduced when he suddenly appears out of nowhere being super mysterious. Juliet was doing some vigilante work, and it looked like she was about to get caught, and he swoops in and saves the day. And Juliet’s all like “who on earth are you?” And he basically says “the name’s Tybalt- I’m loyal to the Capulet family- that’s all you gotta know”. (He might also tell her that he’s her cousin- idk). Anyway. He spends most of the time being mysterious and kinda emo, and hating Montague. Until his tragic backstory is revealed. BASICALLY. You know how I mentioned Montague was climbing the rankings in the Montague family? So at that time, the Montagues and Capulets weren’t really enemies or anything. So they hung out. And while climbing the ranks, he ended up courting a Capulet- Juliet’s mom’s sister. THAT’S RIGHT. TYBALT IS THE SON OF MONTAGUE AND A CAPULET. ANOTHER BOTH LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE BASTARD. I HAD NO IDEA THERE WOULD BE ONE, LET ALONE TWO. YOU ALL KNOW THAT’S MY FAVORITE TYPE OF CHARACTER. 

Me, when the Montague and Tybalt reveals happened:

And onto the absolute craziest change made to any character ever-

Escalus- He’s. He’s a tree. A physical tree. I’m not even kidding. I wish I was. He’s a physical magical tree, that magically sustains the world. Ophelia (remeber I said I’ll explain her when I explain Escalus?) is the magical guardian of this magical tree. The tree is sustained by the women of the Capulet family occasionally sacrificing themselves to merge with the tree or something? Towards the end of the show the world starts literally collapsing around everyone, and Ophelia is like “hey Juliet the only way to save the world is for you to sacrifice yourself and come merge with the tree. If not the everyone will literally die.”

And Juliet’s like “yeah sounds fair”. But Romeo’s like “NO! I love you! You will not merge with a tree!” 

And Ophelia’s like “um. Literally everyone will die if she doesn’t.” And Romeo’s like “But at least we’ll die together!!”. So Ophelia and Romeo fight each other and they both kill each other. Then Juliet’s like “welp since romeo’s already dead, i may as well die too.” And (I think??) merges with the tree? Also she grows wings. Anyway. That’s that. That’s the show. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

OTHER THINGS- Mainly about Tybalt because I love him (more specifically- I love emo vigilante Tybalt, but the play version of angry rich boy Tybalt)

-When Romeo finds out that Tybalt is kinda his brother, he’s like “oh cool! You’re my brother now!” And Tybalt is like “huh. Yeah, I guess you’re right”- and from there onward they are 100% committed to being brothers. 

-There’s this one scene where Tybalt, Romeo, and Juliet all simultaneously decide “yup Im gonna go kill Motague. I have the biggest right to kill him. He’s for me to kill”. So Tybalt gets there first and is like “PLOT TWIST I’M YOUR SON!” And draws his sword. Then Romeo enters and is like “YOUR REIGN OF TYRANNY IS OVER!” And draws his sword. And then Juliet comes in and is like “I AM JULIET OF THE HOUSE OF CAPULET!”. And then Juliet decides not to kill him, because Mercy (TM). And then Mercutio comes in and stabs him, because (here’s a bit of the plot I forgot to mention) Montague sent him to hold off the rebellion (The Capulet’s team+ most of the citizens), and Mercutio epically failed. So he was like “the citizens will kill me if I go to them. And Montague will kill me if I go to him. Welp. I guess I have to kill him.” Then Mercutio goes mad. Because why not.

-Benvolio and Mercutio have literally nothing to do with each other. I don’t think they ever even speak. What 

-everyone rides around on these dragons with wings called Dragon Steeds.

-Also instead of it taking place in Verona, it takes place in Neo-Verona. A floating city miles above ground. 

-I think that’s it

[olivertryst]

Hey Karamel Friends

Welp, it took me a while to watch the finale after reading all of the spoilers and learning that our couple did not have the kind of ending (or rather beginning) that we had hoped for. So I went in with some pretty low expectations, and because of that was able to enjoy certain aspects of the finale because I knew what was and wasn’t coming, even though I agree with many of the opinions I have read here about the Karamel Conclusion.

So overall, I felt like this finale was trying to do too much, and therefore, shortchanged a lot of plot lines and characters. I think much of this could have been solved by taking a little longer to wrap up some of those plot points and distributing some of the more emotional beats over two episodes or so. It was partly a pacing problem. The one thing I think they did give it’s due was Winn’s departure, and I am happy for that because Jeremy Jordan and his portrayal of Winn have been amazing and one of my favorite parts of this show. I also thought that Reign/Sam’s storyline wrapped up reasonably well (although her mother was a bit of a weird twist), I like where Alex’s arc is going, and Lena is heading towards ambiguous morality and I enjoy that.

Regarding Kara’s arc- I do like that she decided that Earth was her home and not Argo, and decided to come back and protect it and live her life with her friends and family. The overarching question of “can I have it all,” though... are they still trying to answer that or did they just drop it? Did we see Reporter!Kara as an important part of Kara’s identity this year? And we will get to this in a bit... but did the show decide that having a fulfilling romantic relationship was just not important to Kara, or that no, she can’t have it because duty supercedes love for both her and Mon-El? Maybe because she is a powerful and independent woman she “don’t need no man?” Maybe she doesn’t “need” one but that doesn’t mean she can’t choose to have a relationship with one, especially one who has grown into a handsome, affectionate man that she admires (and in my opinion, we the story being told consistently, would still be in love with.”

Oh, and did I miss the part where she was struggling with the ethics of killing all season to the point that it should be a major character decision by the finale? It was touched on, what, once? Because that topic was not built up enough to have the weight it needed and then it was so weird the way that they built in those moralizing self-correcting consequences “Look Kara, you made the bad choice to kill the villain so all of your friends are dead. Want to conveniently find a time-traveling ring and try again?” It’s like one of those bad religious choose-your-own-adventure books my parents gave me in high school. (Should you hold his hand? Or resist the urge? Turn to page 43 to find out how holding his hand leads down a slippery slope that ends with you pregnant with diseases and emotionally damaged forever.)

Aaaannnyway, We needed more time to see her wrestling with these questions and exploring her options. Was she torn about losing her mother again? Was she sad that Mon-El couldn’t stay? Did she consider going to the future? Or having her mother stay on Earth? Did she grieve losing Winn and his friendship? The episode was moving so fast that it took the focus off our main character and her struggling through these questions and decisions that are central to her character and journey. She seemed totally detached and unbothered by what she gave up for her life in this time, on this planet. Not that it wasn’t the right choice for her, but it was a weighty one, with costs, and those should have been felt by her and by us. I don’t know if it was the way it was written, acted, directed, or edited, but it did not feel like a complete story was told in terms of Kara’s identity struggle which I feel has been her central question for two seasons. I guess it is yet another example of plot over character and the result is storytelling that doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Soooooo Karamel. I actually really loved that goodbye scene on Mon-El’s end. What he said and how he said it, I feel we’re absolutely consistent with his arc this season regarding his feelings for Kara. He seemed to communicate his love for her and his regret that his duty would be taking him away from a life with her. I know y’all are pissed, but please gif that someone? I thought it was lovely.

Unfortunately, it was like he was talking to a brick wall. Don’t tell me that after the season opening with Kara in a deep depression after traumatically losing Mon-El, the dreams and the “wake-up” scene, and then finding and losing him AGAIN after she discovers he was married and had been gone a lot longer than him, that she just ceased having feelings for him off-screen during the duration of the season? Because that makes no sense to me but it seems like what they were going for. I wanted her to express the same kind of intensity of feelings and regret to him that he did to her, and had she done so, I could have seen it as a tragically beautiful star-crossed-lovers story. Two soulmates being ripped apart over space and time once again, this time to protect the people in their time on Earth. But was I got from Kara was... indifference? If she magically got over him this season, I didn’t see enough evidence of it to make it believable. Again, I don’t know if it was the writing, acting, directing, editing, or a combination but it was decidedly NOT satisfying. I agree with many of you that they must have expected Chris to stay with the way that the writing was leading up to a big romantic reunion and then it was tossed aside like it meant nothing, but I think even under the circumstances, they could have done a lot better to portray an angsty and tragic ending (or pause, hopefully) instead of what we got. The separation was not given the weight it deserved. Maybe someone was pissed that Chris decided to go but I’M pissed if they decided to let politics or personal issues get in the way of good storytelling. It could have been handled better, even with a last minute plot twist, but someone didn’t “get” what the relationship meant to canon Kara or the audience.

As a viewer of television I do come to expect that what gets set up in the canon text will have a logical and satisfying conclusion and payoff. I feel like I spent an entire season “waiting for the good stuff” that never came. And the breadcrumbs were there saying that payoff was intended, and I trusted that the story would lead where the signs were pointing. It’s utterly frustrating and disappointing that they didn’t and that the storyline was tossed aside so carelessly. Ugh.

Oh, and the way that this has emboldened the trolls to be absolute jerks to Karamel fans is disgusting. Stay on that block button and stay safe out there.

Will I continue watching this show? Possibly, but with much less emotional investment as the writers have lost my trust as a viewer with this finale and therefore my enthusiasm for Supergirl. Unfortunately, I can say that about several CW shows this season. I don’t know what happened, but it’s frustrating to see when I have come to love these shows’ characters and their stories so much and I don’t feel that they are being told consistently or well.

Anyway, I’m sorry it went down this way, Fam, it sucks. Maybe someday we’ll get our happy ending for our space puppies. Meet me back here if that happens and we will pop some club soda and down a pint of Karamel Sutra. Until then, fanfic and memories. ✌🏻❤️💙💔