#I had to make this set to show it's not even subtext. it's textual. he wants Julian to shoot him from the second he shows up.

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

Elim Garak: fucking around vs finding out

[gillianthecat]

Thoughts after Love in the Air episode 5 (mostly critical, some extended musing):

Is there a plot to this? I couldn't really describe the plot if asked.

I think one of the problems I'm having with this is that so far Payu seems like a very static character. He's not given any arc, no character growth, no goal other than to win over Rain, which happened so early it doesn't make up a storyline of it's own. There are two (?) episodes to their section left, so that could change, but so far, he's just... static. All of the growth and change is happening to Rain. This isn't about "fairness," it's just that it makes a boring story for me when one of the main characters doesn't get to go anywhere. And it ends up meaning that Payu as a character lacks depth. We don't see him struggle in any way - he wants Rain, and then he has him. But Rain does all the work to get gotten.

This was the same problem I had with Kurosawa in Cherry Magic, which honestly kind of ruined that show from me. (Maybe someday I will write down the essay in my head about how much that show bothered me, despite all it's strengths.) And one of the things I loved about Blueming was that it initially seemed like Da-woon was going to be this sort of static "perfect" love interest, but the end flipped that entirely around. Obviously Love In the Air could also flip this in the last two episodes, but so far it hasn't laid any groundwork for that to happen. In Blueming, the roots of Da-woon's journey were there from the beginning, just held as subtext until they exploded into conflict.

Part of my problem getting into the show is I'm just not connecting with either lead. Most of the time they feel like little kids playing dress-up. (Oddly enough, their sex scenes/kissing are one of the few places they feel believable.) I suspect it's a problem with the directing, because it seems to be an across the board thing with all the actors. With the exception of Tonnam as Sig; I wasn't joking when I said it felt like he was out-acting everyone else. It's a tiny part, and a weird character, but he feels like he's inhabiting Sig, while everyone else feels like they're acting™. It's most egregious with Rain, he makes all these exaggerated facial expressions, which, fine, but they (to me!) feel disconnected from any real emotion or reaction. I know that this exaggeration is stylistic, for comedic effect, but I think in good comedy the exaggeration is rooted in real feelings, and here it just doesn't feel that way.

[I think a lot of the blame could be placed on the script -- it seems like it want to create all these moments for specific emotions and reactions, but it doesn't give real reasons for these reactions, so it seems like the characters are just making weird faces out of the blue. -in yellow because I have even less textual support at hand for this vague statement than I do the rest, but i'm leaving it here because it's still what my heart believes.]

As for Payu - I just cannot take him seriously as aggressive and dominant. He just looks like a little puppy barking. The actor has such a baby face, that looks even more baby when he's trying to be a dom. Interestingly, when he's being sweet and tender, his acting does work for me. I think it's because when his attention is on Rain, he's focused on reacting and connecting, and it comes across as real rather than acting™. That's probably also why both of the actors' acting in the sex scenes works better for me - there too they are focused on connection and reaction.

Honestly, I would love to see Payu's actor in more of a uke role, I suspect it may suit him better. I did really enjoy his singing! (I see that many of you didn't.) But I liked his voice a lot, and I actually mostly liked the way they set that scene up. (Although it does feel like Payu and Saifah live in a coffee shop - what even is their kitchen?!)

I see a lot of love for both actors here on Tumblr, so obviously this is not a universal response! Perhaps I'm just too old to find these baby-faced boys sexually attractive, not kinky enough to connect with either character, and don't have the right sense of humor to enjoy the comedic exaggerations.

Anyway, I thought I had more to say, but I can't remember it right now and I have to be somewhere soon. So I'm just going to post this with minimal editing and cross my fingers that it's reasonably coherent, there aren't too many typos, and I made no slanderously false statements.

[ladyluscinia]

Still rotating the woobification of Edward Teach a bit in my mind.

Putting this under a cut because I'm not actually trying to vague anybody specific, including OP of that post I responded to, but I do think this is very common in this fandom and liable to feel targeted toward a lot of people (especially as a wall of text).

Like, fundamentally, what happened on screen in 1x10 is Edward was hurting emotionally and he decided to try and murder 7 people about it and maim an 8th.

We can extensively break down what comprised "hurting emotionally," what other factors were in play, if edward shows signs of multiple personas or cptsd or mental illness, how vulnerable he was feeling, etc etc and some of the analysis can be really awesome, but he still tried to murder 7 people about it. If your conclusion starts trending toward how tragic it is for Edward that he did that, and how other people need to hurt him less as the way to "fix" it, then I think you are putting on major blinders toward Edward's culpability here... which is woobification.

The Izzy thing too. We can debate the severity of Izzy's actions and how affected Edward was by them, but they can be pretty damn severe and still objectively not warrant mutilation as punitive justice (or the really gross excuse of "he wanted it"). Because that's pretty universally a Bad Thing To Do. It was an outsized and extremely fucked up response, and if the writers were kinda fucked up and wanted you to excuse it anyway and think Edward was still a mostly good guy, then I don't see why they would pair it with trying to murder 7 other people. (Or not just make Izzy textually a lot worse. That's the kind of shit you put in text, not subtext.)

Edward is a very sympathetic protagonist, and he's in a very forgiving show where this is clearly not meant to be a Moral Event Horizon of any kind. He does have a lot of canon trauma and mental issues that make fans want to sympathize with and identify with him, but if focusing on how he chose to become the Kraken and hurt people seems too dismissive and insulting toward his emotional state and trauma, it's possible the issue is over-identification on their end, not the accusations of woobification on mine.

Now I'm thinking of someone who pointed out - and I cannot remember who or in what context for the life of me - they pointed out that if this is a reaction that is on the table for Edward, especially after he waits for several hours and puts thought into the decision, then Stede was in legit mortal danger if this was not blowing up before he got back. Whatever unaddressed baggage Edward is carrying around that leads to this level of violence doesn't just go away. It's a landmine, and someone was going to trip it eventually.

That, I think, is a major reason I'm so unconvinced by the idea Edward was on a track to healing at any point. Maybe, if Izzy had said nothing and his talent show had gone off without a hitch, he might have delayed the explosion, but any issues that lead to trying to murder 7 people after a few hours are going to crop up again. And soon. Stede was going to fuck up or get into a fight with him (or hell, just return from his abandonment and say the wrong thing in greeting) and someone was going to get really fucking hurt, and it wasn't going to be Edward.

The setup for S2 is also the setup for Edward's character arc, and for that to even be an arc Edward must be in need of character development. If he's already the guy that he'll be at the end of the show, and all this is just the result of outside harm that needs to be soothed away by his true love, then I reiterate from my previous post - that's Boring As Fuck. If you haven't identified a character flaw (or likely set of flaws) that is causing the Kraken turn and is in need of resolution, then maybe you ought to look for some. (And, no, "being traumatized" is not a responsible flaw. We don't treat trying to murder 7 people as a reasonable part of the slow process of healing.)

(I'm sighing dramatically a lot as I type this, if you want to retroactively add that to your mental read.)

I suppose, in conclusion, there's not much anyone can do about this trend, other than hope S2 is explicit about Edward's mindset in a way that steers people into more flaw-based analysis. And getting a canon resolution will let fans uninterested in rooting for morally dubious characters just jump to that point in canon and pretend none of the prior stuff happened (a slight improvement to pretending Edward isn't morally dubious right now because they like him).

But until then, there's going to keep being posts made openly about how Izzy is really the one responsible for Lucius being shoved overboard and the crew being marooned. And for every one of those, there will be dozens about how Edward was ready to heal and retire and the whole situation can be resolved with nothing but a love declaration from Stede, which makes Edward hurt less and therefore fixes everything.

And I'm going to keep being annoyed by them, I guess.

[elcorhamletlive]

Hey, I’m a Byler shipper but I don’t entirely disagree with your take. From my perspective, though, the problem is not that Will doesn’t want to let go of the past for the sake of it. There is a clear reason why he doesn’t want to (or rather, why he feels he’s not able to), which is that he never actually had a concrete way to elaborate his trauma (and to me that’s on the writers, because there’s a potential there which hasn’t been explored and that I hope it will). I think Will has to face what happened, whatever that means for him. And him admitting his feelings for Mike - whether they’re required or not - would be another step to mature. But if Mike does indeed like him back, they can only grow together, provided Mike faces his issues as well. They would work great.

We're in agreement about Will needing to face what happened to him, somehow. However, I don't know how aware the writers are of this (I know some people are speculating he will get Vecna'ed in vol. 2, but it's still up in the air). So far, it seems like they've sort of condensed Will's narrative to his sexuality/feelings for Mike, and so for me that storyline ends up being very symbolic of all the other ways in which he does not want to grow up and change.

I think facing these feelings would be the mature thing to do (I personally don't like the idea of him directly confessing to Mike, even though that seems likely at this point), but to me the point of change for Will would be moving on, either finding someone else or being willing to, which in itself would be a step forward for his character.

This is where we'll just naturally diverge, I suppose, because I don't think Mike and Will would work great, specifically because I don't think being with Mike would challenge this unhealthy pattern of clinging to the past Will has (on the contrary, like I said in the last post, it would validate it). I also don't think the way Mike has been written, so far, suggests that he returns Will's feelings*, and I think it would be poor writing to throw away his relationship with El. Mike of course has his own issues, but imo they all lead back to him dealing with his feelings for El, which is, again, imo, the defining trait of his character at this point.

(*I know the b*l*r readings of the show say otherwise, but even if those readings turn out to be right, to me, that's still insufficient set up. Subtext can't replace actual, textual development. If Mike does reciprocate Will's feelings, then the writers have deliberately written it in a way that does not make this come across to the majority of the audience, which I think is a bad way to handle any romance, let alone what would, again, according to the theories, be the main couple of the show.)

[castielcommunism]

the confession IS bad and the emotional whiplash is so severe. like. I had been absent from destiel fandom for Many Years and then I find out it's canon and my brain is like 🚨🚨🚨 and then I watch a clip and it's. so ugly (maybe contender for top five ugliest scenes in all of spn?????) and the text is actually so bad. I then warm up to it because brain worms and it Is after all a big victory for 15 year old me. I rewatch the show to catch up and it turns out cas said all that one episode after dean committed some of his most dislikable actions ever (against cas' CHILD nonetheless) and it's just... Why and How and Why again

It’s often really frustrating talking about the confession on here because you need to pre-empt the discussion with a bunch of caveats. Because like yes it is actually pretty monumental that we have explicit textual confirmation that Cas is gay after all these years, and that retroactively re-informs how you read a lot of his scenes with Dean leading up to it. It’s not just representation at the point of introduction, it also re-contextualises prior canon. Which is cool! That’s a lot better than ���Cas was gay all along but it wasn’t relevant to Harry’s journey” style of rep. I’m a post-Nov 5th casualty, so I wasn’t around for a lot of the homophobic fandom stuff. It’s obviously been a hostile environment for lgbt rep for a long time and having that finally be validated on screen is, in a vacuum, a win (although I think you should be deeply suspicious of anyone who claims that spn’s central flaw was homophobia). It has also led to some of the best posting I’ve seen in years, so for that reason alone I’m glad it happened.

But stepping away from that history of general hostility towards fans, the confession sucks ass lmfao. Even setting aside how ugly the blocking and lighting and make-up and editing and camera work is, the substance of the confession is poor. I made the point badly in this post, but real “rep” is not a singular pronouncement of queerness that has no lead up or follow through. What does the story gain by having Cas be in love with Dean? What are the consequences? How does this develop the characters? It happened in the third-to-last episode of the series finale, had 0 textual build-up (subtext that can be read as textually gay in light of the confession is a poor replacement for intentional build-up), and then it was never brought up again. The substance of Cas’ representation can be condensed into a single tweet, which is not so much a win for the homo community but rather a marketing strategy that, again, was baffling in its execution because it had no follow through. It is a hollow victory that serves as little else but a rhetorical tool to own anti-destiel people online (“never give an impassioned reply when a ‘Castiel supernatural has gay sex’ will suffice” as the saying goes). Which as a terminally online person that isn’t nothing, but aside from discourse and some great posts, what have we substantially gained in the realm of character development or representation?

Now the lack of build-up is a narrative staple of spn, so it’s not a sin that is unique to the confession. There’s also a lot of external factors that made it a lot worse than it likely would have been otherwise (COVID, writers room bullshit, actor drama, etc), so I don’t want to imply that the confession is bad on purpose or whatever. But like *speaking as a casgirl voice* speaking as a casgirl it does legitimately suck that the bulk of Cas’ confession was essentially an ode to Dean before he was killed off for mainpain AND THEN NEVER BROUGHT UP AGAIN. like that is insane lmao.

And again I know obviously if you’re confessing your secret love to a guy after years of hiding it, the topic of conversation is going to be about that guy. My issue is that it feeds into a broader problem, which is that all roads lead to Dean Winchester in the show. I want Cas to express his love on his own terms, from his own perspective, with his own complex mix of feelings on the subject. I’ve said this before but you don’t secretly love a man from afar for 12 years and not go a little bit insane. Resentment and bitterness and hopelessness and anger are normal, human responses to suppressing that amount of intense emotion for that length of time. Being in love with someone you’re convinced doesn’t love you back is a horrific position to be in. And instead of playing on the beautiful human tragedy of that, we get “ur the perfect most special guy ever I love you bye.” It’s not even that I want the confession to be Cas angrily yelling at Dean about how hard it’s been for him, but can we PLEASE get some of the energy we had in the alleyway scene where Cas shoves Dean around and screams about the sacrifices he’s made for him.

My other issue is that by s15, the narrative rot is so entrenched that I can’t really take it seriously, so even the narrative lead-up to the confession (such as it exists) is one that I’m not really interested in entertaining. the Jack stuff, Dean being the angriest most intolerable guy ever, the Chuck plot, the fact that Sam had been a non-entity in the show for so many seasons, everyone is miserable all the time, the racist shit they pulled with Billie at the last minute, etc. The confession exists in a sea of other stupid and ridiculous storytelling decisions.

I always feel like I’m making my point badly when I talk about this, and if you disagree with what I’ve said I don’t mind reframing what I’m talking about because we probably actually agree, I’m just expressing my point poorly. Like I feel like a lot of the discussion about “is the confession good” is a bunch of people who agree with each other yelling across the room at one another (or that’s been my experience, anyway). The crux of the argument I’m trying to make is that Cas is essentially treated like an accessory to Dean in his confession, much the same way that female love interests are in stock standard manly movies about manly men. The scene is about Dean more than it’s about Cas, especially in light of the fact that Cas is never seen on screen again and it is, AGAIN, never addressed by any of the characters. That sucks, I don’t like that, I don’t think it’s good representation no matter how much it’s a win for the hellers or whatever, and I don’t like it very much.

I have to concede that “the one thing I want is something I know I can’t have” is a certified banger though. If the confession had been that and some alleyway action I’d be a lot happier.

[unit-zero-two]

Queer Representation in 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

13 Sentinels was a game I picked up because the trailer looked neat. I had no clue what the gameplay was even like, I just felt adventurous. And I was rewarded with a fantastic game that constantly surprised me in the best possible ways. One of the ways I was surprised was in the actual textual existence of queer characters. Plural. And with a queer relationship developed and promoted prominently on screen between main characters.

Now, with the increase in queer media around the board, this alone isn’t worthy of praise. My enjoyment, and I suspect that of a lot of people, comes from the fact that there was no expectations or promises made, and yet the game still delivered. It was just there, causally, in a AAA game published by a decently well known studio. It’s a good example of what we’re asking for when asking for queer rep. It being allowed to casually exist and flavor games that aren’t just dedicated to telling these stories.

Like a lot of media if you go in expecting flawless queer representation suffusing every aspect of the game, you will be disappointed. This is a game with 15 main characters and most of the cast ends up in straight relationships. But not all of them. And past those relationships, there is still a queerness that is allowed to exist and be shown throughout this game that constantly impressed me.

I will work through the textual, on screen examples of queer representation one by one. There will be spoilers for this game in the post, so if that is something that you care about, please finish the game first before continuing. Due to the non-linear storytelling and gameplay nature of 13 Sentinels I can’t really set timestamps or anything. If you’re not done yet, but still curious to read, I personally feel like nothing I say here will ruin the experience for you. Through it’s strange nature, this is arguably a spoiler proof game and knowing what is to come can help you view the events in a different, but still enjoyable, light.

Textual Queer Representation in 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

The place for us to begin will be with one of the 13 playable characters, Takatoshi Hijiyama. Hijiyama is very much a young man defined by when he was raised in the story. 1945 Japan in the middle of WW2. He is nationalistic and proud of Japan, it’s culture and tries to stand for it’s values. While training to be a Sentinel pilot, he falls for the demure Kiriko Douji, daughter of the professor in charge of the project. His prologue begins with him following Kiriko and finding her operating a time travel system. Kiriko reveals three things: 1) she’s the real scientist behind the project, 2) her real name is Tsukasa Okino and 3) she is a he. Okino leaves 1945 and Hijiyama chases after him. What then follows is a very clear romance storyline as Hijiyama works though self-discovery of his sexuality, his internalized biases and some good old jealousy.

Throughout his story, Hijiyama shows attraction to Okino both dressed as a woman and as a man. It’s made clear that the clothes and gender presentation aren’t the main defining factor for his attraction to Okino. He also shows attraction to some of the girls, implying a sort of bisexuality. But in the end, Okino is the one he directs his attention and dedication. The pair even share a robot in the final battle.

Next we have Takatoshi Hijiyama...of 2188. Through a data log Hijiyama finds during his story he finds out that his self of 2188 was in a committed, queer relationship with Tsukasa Okino of 2188. The two openly express their love for each other in the logs, and Hijiyama 2188′s final words are to mourn the death of his lover. The game makes it very clear what their relationship is. And watching this is a turning point for Hijiyama and how he views Okino. Seeing the death of Okino 2188 shakes him, and hardens his resolve and love.

Tsukasa Okino is an interesting character for many reason. We see him first dressed as a woman. When asked about it, he comments “Let’s just say some binaries work for me, and others don’t.”. Throughout the story, Okino alternates between being dressed as a man and a woman. He’s a very practical person and expresses several times his thoughts on both forms of dress and the pros and cons he finds in wearing them. But he never says, “I’m actually a man/woman or I prefer to wear men’s/women’s clothing.” To him, both forms are equal and he switches between them as he feels like through the story. There is also a point in the epilogue where Okino reveals that he can hack into the simulation and change his gender if he wishes. He then offers to turn into a woman and to sleep with Hijiyama. This is a very confident offer made by someone secure in their identity and sexuality. Hijiyama is understandably flustered at the teasing.

Okino openly shows sexual attraction to Hijiyama, mostly presented as teasing jabs at him. As with 2188 Hijiyama, 2188 Okino is explicitly in a Queer relationship and openly affectionate in the data logs. For the most part, present day Okino is busy during the narrative trying to save everyone from the Kaiju, but still finds time to flirt with Hijiyama.

Hijiyama and Okino are the clearest in text examples, but there’s one other stand out example. Iori Fuyusaka. For the most part she spends her story being boy crazy and confused by strange dreams, but there are two interesting moments with her. The first is during the battle section. One of the scripted after battle sections plays and it’s Iori tripping and she scrapes her hand. Yuki Takamiya helps her up and puts a bandage on her hand. It is a very slow, very tender and very deliberate scene. After Yuki leaves, Iori blushes and comments, “Whoa, what the...why is my heart racing right now? Wait, does that mean...? But I didn’t think I was...I mean, what if...” This scene makes it very clear what Iori is feeling and what she is discovering about herself.

In another scene near the beginning of the game in Iori’s story, she’s looking for a cat. She comes across Juro and Shu talking to each other in secretive whispers and embarrassed blushes.

Shu: Just listen. This is a first for me too. You feel it, right?

Juro: ...

Shu: I want to pursue this with you. Please!

Juro: I dunno...it's just...

The edges of the background softens and the camera shifts to center them, soft music plays, and Iori blushes. While the scene itself is a pretty standard confused for gay joke, it’s interesting to see it from Iori’s point of view. When caught, she says:

"I, uh...umm...I think as long as you love each other...it's okay..."

Juro is embarrassed and corrects things. Shu just laughs and is amused by the idea of dating Juro.

Juro: Do you believe us [about our dreams]?

Iori: Well, actually...I'm more surprised to hear that's all it was. Cause, I thought...

She blushes and is interrupted by the bell ringing and class starting.

And in light of the scene with Yuki, it becomes interesting in reflection that her thoughts would go there so quickly. Whether she was conscious of it or not, Iori is very aware of the possibility of same sex attraction. Whether that’s clever foreshadowing or just a neat coincidence is mostly irrelevant.

Uh...that of course brings us to Yuki Takemiya. So...Yuki will get her own post. Because there’s a lot there. Most of which I would argue is heavy subtext. I love the character and her plotline, but it it would be stretching to say that she is textual queer representation. But there’s still a lot to talk about.

13 Sentinels is a game that deals in all variations of relationships; familiar, platonic and romantic, and it’s great that it included queer representation into the text like it did. Hijiyama and Okino gave us a romantic queer relationship, twice, and Iori gives us a Bi-Sexual character who while not in a relationship with a woman is still queer. And that’s always good representation.

[mollrat101]

Soooooo not to make everything about Ava and Deborah...except I totally do mean too and I am not sorry about it, but let’s talk about Marcus and Deborah’s conversation in episode 10. 

As with most scenes in this show, you can read it on both a textual and subtextual level. 

In the text, Deborah realizes that Marcus is about to leave and, desperate to not be left alone, tries to make amends. 

For the first time, Deb apologizes to Marcus. I do think Deb is genuine in that she feels bad for hurting Marcus’s feelings, but the conclusion she comes to isn’t born out of his best interests (not even waiting to hear what he wants for himself), but out a desperation to not be alone. She already lost Ava, she can’t bear to lose Marcus too. Deb has finally realized that she can’t take the few people in her life for granted and decides that she needs to be more present and more considerate of their feelings. It’s not a coincidence that earlier that day, Deborah (again, for the first time) asks DJ’s permission to talk about her and her life on stage. With Ava gone, Deb wants to make sure her relationships with her children don’t deteriorate further. 

Ava’s entrance into her life has had a huge impact on Deb’s relationship with her children, but we can see that without Ava actually present, it’s likely to slip back into unhealthy patterns. Without Ava there to disrupt it, Marcus and Deborah’s codependent relationship goes on. Proving that it isn’t only Deborah and Ava suffers when they aren’t together, Marcus suffers too from not being allowed to grow. 

In the subtext though, as with everything, this is also about Ava and Deborah. Deb feels tremendously guilty for how things ended with Ava. Again, I do think Deb genuinely does feel bad for hurting Marcus’s feelings, but this kind of outpour of remorse comes on the heels of her reckoning with how she hurt Ava. 

In the subtext, Deborah is talking to Ava. She worries that she took Ava for granted and that’s why she wanted to leave. While there were definitely hurtful and wrong things Ava said in their confrontation, Deb would have to admit Ava was correct in assuming that the reason she didn’t want to do the set was because she was scared. “No, you’re just scared to do the hard thing, so you’re jumping at the first possible chance to bail.“ This line really applies to both of them, but let’s just stick to Deb for now. While she said she wasn’t going to do the new set and only confirms her decision to go through with it after opening Ava’s gift, there’s a part of Deb that still wants to “take her business to the next level”. But she wants to do it with Ava which is what she does when she asks her later to come on tour with her. She only chooses not to do the set when she thinks Ava has lied to her again. 

As much as I believe Deborah loves Marcus, this speech really applies more to her future with Ava. Deb and Marcus are bound to go their separate ways professionally and while she’s not quite ready to let him go yet, deep down what she really wants is to start this new adventure with Ava by her side. 

You can also see the parallel by the reactions of Marcus versus Ava. 

Marcus clearly feels pressured into accepting it and, while touched, knows that choosing to stay is choosing his addiction to work and continuing his codependent relationship with Deborah. He loses Wilson as a result. 

Ava taking Deborah’s offer is seen as lifting her out of despair. She’s overwhelmed with happiness at her offer and her expression that Deb needs her. The bomb of the email threatens to ruin the potential future she and Deb are working towards. 

[norahastuff]

Why do I love Cas’ arc but am so profoundly frustrated with it at the same time? Well from my understanding, for Cas’ arc, there was a 3 pronged resolution that needed to happen - that the show had set up to happen:

1) Cas’ guilt over all the damage he’d inflicted on heaven 

It’s been a running theme for years that all the angels hated him and felt like he had destroyed heaven and had abandoned them, not to mention all the rumours that flew around about his relationship with Dean (that they perhaps knew each other in the biblical sense - that’s barely even subtext, it’s just what all the angels and demons assumed.) That’s not something Cas every wanted, to be hated by his own kind, but I think what truly shook him to his core was his conversation with Naomi in 13x19 (a phenomenal scene by the way, maybe my favourite of the entire season) where he discovered that there were just nine angels left in heaven. Cas was devastated, and from that moment on it was clear that whatever else happened, Cas would have to play some role in restoring heaven. 

Now technically he did get to do that. That’s something right? Yeah sure...a 10 year arc that’s always been one of the primary conflicts for Cas as a character, that’s driven so much of his story, affected his relationships with Sam and Dean in very significant ways, a conflict that was very clearly being set up to be resolved as part of Cas’ character arc in a very tangible way since 13x19, was wrapped up with a two word acknowledgement: 

“Cas helped.”

So yes, that part of his arc was addressed but it was so thoroughly unsatisfying and not given any sort of narrative weight, it almost feels insulting. Those two words are the only allusion to Cas having any kind of agency or being a real character that existed on this show for 12 years. He deserved more than those two words.

2) Cas understands the power of love

Oh boy this one. Well we all know about this one. Bobo did a phenomenal job with this. As did Meredith Glynn, it’s her and Bobo who have been setting this up since s14 at the latest (if we’re talking about when I think they started pushing for an explicitly textual love story) but in my estimation since s12. You can disagree with me if you like but I’m just going to yell “mixtape” at you and run away. Anyway I’ve rambled about this enough in the past so instead of writing another 600 words on it I’ll just link to the last time I did that. The main point is to look at how much Cas had changed over these 12 years. His run on the show may have ended like it started, saving Dean Winchester, but Cas most certainly did not end up the same being that he was when he started. All those years ago he saved Dean for duty, this time he did it for and with love. The power the simple act of loving another person could have? The power in allowing yourself to fully feel it? Nobody understood that better than Cas.

This was satisfying. This made sense.

3) Cas gets to hear that he’s loved

And then we get to part three. How long have they been setting up this particular plot point for? How far back do I have to go? Ok to be fair, let’s stick to the Dabb era. How about when Cas told the entire Winchester family that he loved them? When Dean gave him a mixtape that Cas sort of kind of maybe but not quite recognised the significance of? When The Empty told him it knew who he loved and how there was nothing for him there? When Dean lost all ability to function without him and Cas knew nothing about it? When Cas wonders why he was brought back and Dean tells him it was because “we needed you back” and Cas concludes that he was brought back to prepare for war...when the truth was that Cas was brought back purely because of love? He was brought back because of Dean’s love, because of Jack’s love, but that’s something Cas is never made aware of. How about when Michael in Dean’s body tells him that Dean doesn’t care about him and only tolerates him because he feels he owes him for saving him from hell? Or when Michael continues to twist the knife and talk about how all Cas has done since then is make mistake after mistake? Or when in a moment of anger Dean says the same thing? And I don’t think I’ll ever forget when Jack says he know Cas loves him and he wants to love him back but he can’t, and Cas responds with “You can’t yet.” Did none of that feel like it was setting something up? 

Cas’ arc wasn’t just to learn that he could love without expecting anything in return, it was also to learn that he was loved without being expected to do anything for that love. He was loved for him. He wasn’t just needed, he was wanted. 

Cas got to resolve 1/3 of the main story threads that were set up for him, 1.5 if I’m being generous about point #1, which is still a hell of a lot more than any of the other characters, but it’s a far cry from being in any way satisfying. There’s definitely a point to be made about how by not letting Cas hear/learn that he was loved and valued (explicitly romantic or not) they did a true disservice to Dean and who he was a character and how deeply we know, and have been repeatedly been hit over the head with, he feels for Cas, but that point has been made many times in the past few weeks so I’ll just leave it at that.

Anyway, I know I’ve been contradicting myself since the finale about how I feel about how Cas’ story ended, so I figured it was worth it just to put it all together in one post to kind of make sense of it all.

[amwritingmeta]

15x20: Oh fuck it’s actually really good. Dammit Dabb.

So I slept. And waking up the first thought in my head was... but there is this open ending with them all in Heaven and Cas not a stated angel even, just a helper to Jack...

And then I felt the need to watch the episode again. Because of how I’ve said, perhaps not for always, but often enough, that this show of ours was never about Destiel, was never about Dean and Cas’ love story, and beginning to hope that the ending would be focused on them... it wasn’t fair. Not really. And I remembered reading somewhere that a big chunk of the internet accepted Cas’ death as final, and seeing posts to that effect and thinking LUDICROUS and NO WAY and knowing all along that it could all be denial on my part.

And oh boy was it. 

I know there were plenty of us who kept that hope alive, and I’m thankful for you, but I made myself believe that he’d be back because I couldn’t imagine he’d die like that, or that the love story would end unreciprocated like that. And I guess, in a way, it still did, BUT... in another way, it really didn’t. 

It’s not enough. Subtext is not the representation I’ve always hoped for, but it wasn’t just erased either. And we got as much as we could get, because obviously Dean being textually bi and us getting an I Love You out of him was just never going to get green lit by the studio.

I’ve always believed the writers would’ve gone there if allowed. I think Cas’ love declaration underlines that they would’ve. But they weren’t given the opportunity, and I’ll lament it until the end of time, but it is what is.

What we did get, though, is quite beautiful. No, listen, IT IS.

There’s the emotional substitute Miracle Dog, getting so much LOVE from Dean, which I know most of us all went the big awwww at, no matter what we thought of the rest of the ep. 

There’s the healthy way Dean is dealing with the loss of Cas, and of Jack, knowing that pain will never go away, and accepting it. Accepting it because he’s feeling worthy of moving on without them. He’s no longer attaching his self-image to the perceived failure of protecting others. He’s letting them go, believing that they may meet somewhere further down the road.

But looking at the finale for what it is, rather than for what I wanted it to be (cardinal sin omfg my emotions really ran away with me and I wish I could’ve been more level headed and come on here with this positivity and calm) (but) (no dice) (anyway) it’s just beautiful how Cas is in the background, not waiting, not really, because he’s busy preparing Heaven and fixing his home in ways that will actually mean peace AND freedom when the brothers are done.

Something Cas would not have been able to do if he’d not fallen in love with Dean. If he’d not gone through his journey. I mean. Those implications are highly satisfying. 

Last night all I could think, ALL I could think, was that it’s not ENOUGH.

But it has to be. Because it’s not dismissive. It’s not erasing anything. It’s the same subtextual thread we’ve always been pulling on, and it’s there for us to continue to pull on, and that’s a goddamn gift.

I wish that 15x18 hadn’t been quite so in our face “kill your gays” buuuuuuuut that’s if you’re surface watching, yeah? Cas isn’t dead, for starters, and everyone was, obviously, brought back when Jack took Chuck’s power, so even if it wasn’t visually established that Stevie and Charlie are back and thriving, it’s narrative fact that they must be. What it is, more than anything else, is what I read it as to begin with: a love letter to the love story, where we get the subtext of couples loosing each other so strongly stated that there’s no way we’re not meant to understand that Dean losing Cas is within that exact same context.

We didn’t get textual Destiel, but we did get the love story textually confirmed through Cas’ declaration, and we did get it subtextually confirmed, not hinted, subtextually confirmed through all those other couples losing each other, that the love story EXISTS there, on that level, for us. 

Oh guys I feel so sad that I was so SAD yesterday. Why didn’t I just take a breath?? Guys, guys, guys, there’s such BEAUTY.

And Jensen.

Jensen in how he played that death scene. Jensen who kept it so even, so gentle, so... brotherly. These brothers have been through hell. Dean ending this way... it’s a travesty, but it also means he meant to go to the place where he doesn’t have to hope to see Cas again--because he will see Cas again.

And why didn’t Cas come right back to Dean once he was out of the Empty, why did he go off with Jack to fix Heaven?

I would say that it’s another underlining of Cas’ independence, and this his entire focus isn’t Dean, but, of course, I would assume the thought of Dean is ever present, and the rearranging of Heaven is as much about making sure Dean gets that freedom, as well as that peace, once he’s done as it is about Cas simply not being able to stand for souls being trapped in their memories anymore. Cas knows how to fix Heaven. I mean... that’s a fucking gorgeous and highly satisfying ending to his individual arc. And he’s with Jack!

Like. I mean. That implication that Cas is fixing Heaven with Dean at the back of his mind is quite head-exploding to me. And yeah, sure, that’s how I’m interpreting it, but all the ingredients for that delicious pie is left right there for us in this ending.

What about the legacy issue? What about found family? What about Dean finding happiness in death? What about Dean opening himself up to love?

Yeah, it’s not without issues, depending on how we interpret these things. Do I believe Dabb set out to write an offensive, horrifying, deeply problematic ending to this show and pretty much hand it over to the side of this fandom that has always been the... well, shall we say, less stabile? 

No. I kept saying yesterday that I just didn’t understand what happened, I didn’t understand why our writers room would choose THIS ending, I couldn’t fit the pieces together. That was on me, not on them. Get me?

Interpretation is deeply subjective. It’s personal. And it’s tainted. Always tainted, guys, and there’s no way around that. It’s not perfect and it’s not absolute and all the writers can hope for is that their core message will get across strongly enough to avoid misunderstanding.

I misunderstood the intention yesterday because my interpretation was tainted by what I wanted and felt I needed from this narrative.

For years I’ve refused to put expectation on the story because I know what that does to one’s perspective. It’s futile to engage with hopes and wishes on a deeper level because the show will never deliver exactly what you want. It’s delivered stuff in the ballpark enough times for me to dance alongside it, but to place so much expectation on this finale was just... oh man. Bad. 

I take full responsibility. :)

What about the legacy issue?

The legacy is that you live the best life you can and you end up in happiness, with the people you care about. You LIVE. Nothing about Dean’s death is prescribing dying to get what you want. We have it established that Dean is not suicidal in any way, that he’s mentally stabile and that he’s carrying on without Cas, even though he thinks about him. Not living would make the sacrifice pointless.

What about found family?

Found family was meant to be a part of this ending, but due to COVID (I’m assuming along with everyone) we didn’t get a collection of oldies and goodies at the Roadhouse. We got a father figure to signal the father/son thread that this finale was pulling on, a thread always tied so tightly around Dean and Sam and underlined for us in this episode. The codependency finally broken because they were ready to let each other go. Not forever, because that would’ve been tragic, but for now.

What about Dean finding happiness in death?

The implications of Dean having to die to be happy are quite dark, I know that, but he was never going to hang it up. Not entirely, right? He would never be able to rest on Earth. And he’s always afraid. So instead of spending a lifetime alone, growing into a crusty Bobby (who lost the love of his life too early too), Dean got to go to the place where his happiness actually is. He got to go where Cas is.

I mean, that’s my interpretation here, but rather than set both brothers up with a love life and families and all that, we got a Dean who’s lost the love of his life and is dealing with that loss as best as he can, but who is also ready to go when it’s his time. He wasn’t expecting it to be right then, that day, and he says as much, but he’s ready. As long as Sam is ready to let him go. And Sam isn’t, but he does, and Sam deals with that loss, and finds his way into life and living and loving and happiness in a way that Dean simply wouldn’t have been able to. Because he lost the love of his life.

And Dean waited for Sam to show because of course he would. Sam was the only thing missing: Cas, and Jack, and everyone else Dean has ever loved and cared about, were already in Heaven. For the show to go on, Sam had to return too.

Hope.

That hopeful ending that I, and so many, many of us, have always wanted. Sure, everyone’s DEAD, which, you know, bummer, but they are at peace, they are together, and they are done sacrificing, bleeding and dying. Isn’t that remarkable? Isn’t that the greatest reward? Love and happiness and togetherness. Forever!

And for this fandom, we got what we hoped we’d get, right? An ending open enough for us to keep returning to this narrative over and over and over.

Let me formally apologise for the despair of yesterday. For all of you still feeling it, I send you so much love. Know I understand, I honestly do, but I hope, perhaps, some of these words will offer a sliver of comfort.

So, this is first impression based on second watch of 15x20 positivity. Let me know if anything hits right or hits wrong and let’s talk. <3

[oatmealcrisp-freak]

Ok this is really hard to put into words but

I know that the history of queer coding villains and predators is long and prevalent but I feel like we’ve hit a new and even more insidious stage. Maybe it’s not that deep. I think that if you frame it carefully it could even be a good thing. But. This guy preys on literal children. His entire thing is breaking them mentally and physically. He is a grown man who gropes teenagers and grooms elementary school students.

So why is he the coolest character on the show?

His lines are fire. His moves are fire. His outfits and drama? Fire. Everyone else is a little more brought down to reality but Adam is Rule of Cool 100%. A big part of that is his “Hello Fellow Kids, looking at you my fellow LGBTQ+s!” dialogue. We’re still really thirsty for rep so it’s easy to latch onto anything that so much as acknowledges textually (not subtext, FULL text) that we exist. 

I don’t have a problem with that as part of his character. I think that, considering again that he’s a child predator, it honestly makes sense that he’d talk in a that’s ripped straight from the highschool GSA, a virtue signal sans virtue, the light dangling in front of an angler fish’s mouth.

Where I take a problem with it is

Why did the show REDEEM this fucko?

“Oh he grooms and gropes children because he had a horrible childhood” shut the fuck up, show. “Oh, the kids showed him the light and he’s better now!” shut the fuck up show. “ALL HE NEEDS IS FRIENDS so we gave him friends!” Among the demographic that he’s spent who knows how many years preying on?!

The show gives him zero consequences in every area of wrong doing. I take issue that he wins. Not only does someone else take the fall for his fraud but now he has access to the kids that he’s been manipulating and bad touching LITERALLY the entire show ?????? He’s FRIENDS with them now? THAT’S the finale? And the context clues say it’s a HAPPY ENDING?

Sk8. 

R u 4 real rn.

This man needs to be on a list where he can’t be within however many feet of schools, not given a happy ending where he’s directly within the sphere of influence of teens and preteens. That on top of the rule of cool that guides him? So the most dangerous dude on here gets a pass but also is written in a way to directly appeal to the LGBTQ+ demographic?

It’s insidious as fuck and it makes me seriously wonder what the hell was going on in that script writing room.

We see this again and again. Hisoka from HxH is another example. Preds on kids, rule of cool by spades, debatably queer-coded, lifted up by the narrative instead of punished by it. And I know there's more but I’m braindead af so they’re not top of mind right now. 

So. Anyways. I can’t watch SK8 anymore, or even finish it properly, because that honestly makes me kind of sick, and I think it’s really fucking dubious that this keeps happening in children’s media, just now it’s getting less heterosexual like it’s been before (IE basically every teen drama ever focusing on a student/teacher relationship). TF are we trying to set our kids up for? Can we stop?

[thefudge]

Regarding bad Succession takes: I feel like a lot of people reacted to Tom’s initial lines about Nero (everything from ”What do you know about Nero and Sporus” to “I’d castrate you and marry you in a heartbeat”) with either a) “I heard the word castration and I decided to just forget everything he said because what the fuck?? castration? gay marriage? roman emperors? just Tom being weird ig probably not important” or b) “awww he said he wanted to marry Greg <3 they’re in love :)” and then only after the finale went “hey that bit actually foreshadowed Tom’s arc for the rest of the season and his actions in the finale” which like. yeah??? when there’s that kind of overt reference to a story like that, it probably has some thematic importance, especially if a character is literally comparing themself to a known historical or literary figure

It’s obviously fun to ship characters or to sympathize with characters you might not like if they were real people, but I could see what that other ask was saying about people just… not really getting the very basic subtextual (or even textual) things the show is trying to say, both about its own story/characters and the real world, and this was a pretty glaring example of that that I saw

ohhh i see what you mean. i'm gonna be controversial and say that this sort of literacy blindness happens a lot with m/m ships, where the text/subtext is completely ignored for the sake of the ship, and i say this as someone who enjoys tom/greg. i don't know if i'd generalize this as people as a whole having bad succession takes, but the way a big m/m ship takes over fandom discourse is...annoying, to put it mildly

and in ppl's defense, i think that nero/sporus line IS supposed to be tricky, because yes, it is clearly foreshadowing and building up to something, but given tom's track record, you can't be sure anything will come of it, because he is a really neurotic guy who has few outlets, and weirding on greg is one of them. that's why ppl were pretty surprised in the finale when he turned around and did that to shiv, not because they all ignored the foreshadowing (although yeah, some did), but because they didn't think he had it in him. at least, that's my read on it. when you look back at his journey this season, it makes absolute sense he'd do that, but i think the way the writers set it up, it was just as plausible for him to fold as it was to attack.

[algernoninwonderland]

So, Guiltrip! I finally watched it, in French, and it was pretty neat!

The Good:

Rose herself. Rose’s personality can be summed up as “sunshine who takes no shit and could deadlift a horse if she put her mind to it” and that’s always fun to watch. Pigella looks like a magical girl and that design is actually interesting for once, instead of the usual full-body disaster. Her power is cool!

The class is fun and enjoyable and spending more time with all most of them is always a good thing. They behave like actual teenagers and retain their personalities

Adrien is empathetic in this one. Like, sincerely empathetic. I’m a bit torn about this, but I would be lying if I said part of me didn’t like seeing it.

Expressive lighting in scenes not set outdoors! I like it when the show remembers that it can make full use of its being a visual medium to convey meaning.

The storyboarding is solid, the shot composition and blocking are nice, Christophe Yoshida is really good at placing characters in the frame.

The "apple” gag was genuinely funny. Just some good visual comedy in general.

Juleka’s character animation is really good in this one. Like, really really good.

Guiltrip is hella gonzo. I quite like it. I got strong Fantastic Voyage vibes from this sentimonster.

Nino is a selfless friend/boyfriend.

The effects animation when Rose’s optimism blows the bubbles away! It was a great-looking moment!

If you love Sad Noir, you’ll love this. He makes the saddest faces here, he’s really sad.

YES! NO MORE REFLEKTA! FINALLY! Good riddance.

The Bad:

The structure and pacing is bizarre.

The rendering in “sunlit” scenes is, as often, not very good.

Nino is a selfless friend/boyfriend. He’s defined by the characters around him, he gets like 90% of his character traits from fanon. He’s just Adrien’s bro and Alya’s boyfriend, he’s nice, he likes movies and he says “dude”.

Bumping into each other as a romantic moment. We’ve had three seasons of that. I’m so tired.

The boiler room has always looked non-boiler-room-esque but man does it look non-boiler-room-esque.

Adrien is empathetic in this one. Like, sincerely empathetic. He’s too good at finding the right words and the proper attitude for someone who’s been sheltered for so long, it doesn’t really fit with how he behaved in many other episodes. I guess his writing is somewhat consistent in that he’s perfect therefore he behaves perfectly. Yawn.

Reflekta. Again. Boo. It doesn’t even stick with the difficulties Juleka is encountering.

Ha ha ha. Gratuitous Star Wars reference. Ugh. I crave the sweet embrace of death.

Some of the effects animation isn’t very good, like, the weird ooze splatter dissolves way too quickly. And that’s not gonzo.

“Fighting negative thoughts with positive thoughts” is a message you’d find in cartoons 20 years ago. “Don’t be sad, that’s not rad.” It’s a bit shallow and easy. Fortunately, Rose makes that bearable but still, that’s a little disappointing.

If you hate Sad Noir, you’ll hate this. I found his sadness really superficial, as is too often the case.

We go from this very touching moment between Rose and Juleka to "let’s punch the villains” with a slow action scene (which makes sense, they’re floating, but it doesn’t make it any less unexciting).

Wow, that lucky charm is really fucking stupid, huh?

Ha ha ha. Gratuitous Kaamelott reference. Ugh. I crave the sweet embrace of death.

I’m not a Kantian so the whole “good will” thing flies over my head.

Lila is doomed to be a background character for the rest of her existence on screen, isn't she?

The Ugly:

Nothing too egregious, really!

All in all, it was a good one! All episodes don't need to have super high stakes to be enjoyable! It could have been even better with a bigger focus on Juleka and Rose, and also by having Julerose be textual and not mostly relegated to subtext, but I can always dream.

[drivingsideways]

k-drama rec list

Prior to 2020 I’d maybe watched 2 k-dramas in my entire life, but this year I got sucked in, thanks to some great recs, and y’know, *gestures * everything.  

I think I’d held off watching kdramas because my impression of them was limited to romances that I didn’t enjoy at all. But this was the year I discovered the equivalent of “gen fic” kdrama- dramas that had wonderful ensemble casts, strong story lines that weren’t entirely romance focused and also a variety in terms of themes and styles. A big plus was that I found so many of these dramas had women leading the writers’ room, and seeing the effect of that in the story telling. (Notable exceptions: a certain “star” writer who should please stop inflicting her badly written, formulaic crap on the world, yes Kim Eun-Sook, I mean you, and whoever wrote that trashfire Flower of Evil)

So here I am with my own rec list! Caveat- these are mostly not the dramas released in 2020, I’m still playing catch up! :)

Under the cut for length

My Mister/ My Ahjussi  (2018, Written by Park Hae-Young, Directed by Kim Won-Seok, starring Lee Sun-kyun and Lee Ji-eun aka IU) 

This was definitely my absolute favourite of the shows I watched this year across western/ asian media. It’s a story about the thread that binds us all and the ineffability of human connection. It’s also a story that deconstructs ideas of masculinity and honour and shame in a non-western context, but with an extremely compassionate touch.  It’s a story that doesn’t shy away from showing the consequences of material and spiritual poverty; and how one can so easily feed into the other. It’s a love story that isn’t a romance, except that it’s a Romance. It’s about finding salvation in one another and in the kindness of strangers.  It’s about choosing life, and picking yourself up off the floor to take that one last step and then the next and then the next. The one quibble I have with the series is that it could have been better paced, it does get extremely slow after the half way mark. But god, do they land the ending. Both Lee Sun-kyun and IU turn in absolutely heartbreaking performances, and fair warning, be prepared to go through an entire box of tissues watching this series. 

Life  (2018,  written by Lee Soo-yeon  and directed by Hong Jong-chan, starring Lee Dong-wook, Cho Seung-woo, Won Jin-ah, Lee Kyu-hyung, Yoo Jae-myung and Moon So-ri.)

Medical dramas are very much not my thing, and I wouldn’t have taken a chance on it except that @michyeosseo said I should, and she was right! It’s a medical drama in the sense that it’s set in a hospital, but rather than a “case-fic” format, this is actually a sharp commentary on the corporatization of health care, and the business of mixing, well, money and what should be a fundamental human right. Writer Lee Soo-yeon was coming off the global success of Stranger/Secret Forest S1 when this aired, so I understand that expectations were probably sky-high, and people were disappointed when this show didn’t give them the adrenaline rush that they wanted. On the other hand, I thought that this outing was really much more nuanced in terms of the politics and also how the ending doesn’t allow you the luxury of easy-fixes. This show has a great ensemble cast, and while it took me a while to get used to Lee Dong-wook’s woodenness (i ended up calling him mr.cadaver after watching this and was surprised to learn that he’s very popular?), in the end I was quite sold on his version of angry angst-bucket elder-sibling Dr.Ye Jin-woo. His best scenes were with Lee Kyu-hyung who turns in a lovely, achy performance as the paraplegic Dr. Ye Seon-woo who just wants to live a normal life. The love story between the two brothers is actually the emotional backbone of the story, and I think they landed that perfectly. 

My one quibble with writer-nim is that she ended up writing in a forgettable and somewhat (for me at least) uncomfortable romance between the characters played by Won Jin-ah and Cho Seung-Woo. I think part of my uncomfortable-feeling was that I got the strong sense that the writer herself didn’t want to write this romance, it was as if she was being made to shoe-horn it in for Studio Reasons, and she basically grit her teeth and did the worst possible job of it.  I do wish we could have absolutely had the OT3 of my dreams: Moon So-ri/Cho Seung-woo/Yoo Jae-myung like, c’mon TV gods MAKE IT HAPPEN, just...look at them!!!! 

Anyway, that apart, I think this was a very engaging series, and by engaging, I also mean thirst-enabling, see below. 

 Stranger (aka Secret Forest  or Forest of Secrets) S1 & 2 : (2017-, Written by Lee Soo-yeon, directed by 

2017′s smash hit aired a much anticipated second season in 2020, and I managed to catch up just in time to watch that live, so that was thrilling :D . Writer Lee Soo-yeon  mixes up thriller/office comedy/political commentary in an ambitious series. I think S1 is more “exciting” than S2 in terms of the mystery and pacing,  but S2 is far more dense and interesting in terms of political commentary because it takes a long hard look at institutional corruption and in true writer-nim fashion doesn’t prescribe any easy solutions. Anyway, please enjoy public prosecutor Cho Seung-woo and police officer Bae Doona as partners/soulmates kicking ass and taking names in pursuit of Truth, Justice and just a goddamn peaceful meal, along with a stunningly competent ensemble cast. Also yes, Han Yeo Jin is a lesbian, sorry, I don’t make the rules. 

Search: WWW  (2019, Written by Kwon Do-Eun, directed by Jung Ji-hyun & Kwon Young-il, starring  Im Soo-jung, Lee Da-hee, Jeon Hye-jin)

GOD. Where do I start? +1000 for writer Kwon Do-Eun saying “fuck the patriarchy” in the most grandiose way possible, i.e. absolutely refusing to acknowledge that it exists. Yes, this is that power fantasy, and it’s also a fun, slice-of-life  tale about three women navigating their way through work, romance, national politics and everything in between. It’s true that I wasn’t entirely sold on the amount of time spent on the romance, and I really wish they’d actually had a textual wlw romance, though the subtext through the entire series is PRACTICALLY TEXT. But still, it maintains that veneer of plausible deniability and I think queer fans who are sick of that kind of treatment in media have a very valid grouse against the show. On the other hand, personally I felt that the queer-platonic vibe of the show is very wonderful and true to real life, and it was only reinforced by the ending. This is a show written by a woman for women (like me), and it shows. 

Hyena  (2020, Written by Kim Roo-Ri, directed by Jang Tae-yoo & Lee Chang Woo, starring  Kim Hye-soo and Ju Ji-hoon )

Those of you who’ve been watching hit zombie epic Kingdom are probably familiar with Ju Ji-hoon’s brand of sexiness already. I had not watched Kingdom and got hit in the face by Mr.Sexy McSexyPants’ turn as a brash, privileged-by-birth, up and coming lawyer who gets completely runover by the smoking hot and incredibly dangerous fellow lawyer/competitor from the other side of the tracks in the person of Kim Hye-Soo. When I say they set the room on fire, I mean it, ok. Every single scene between these two is an actual bonfire of sexual attraction and emotional hand grenades, and they’re both absolutely riveting to watch. “Flower of Evil” wishes they had what this show has- an actual grown up romance as opposed to a thirteen year old twilight fan’s idea of an adult romance. 

The “lawyer” shenanigans and the “cases” are hit or miss, and I think the occasional comedy fell flat for me. But that’s not why I mainlined like 6 episodes of this series overnight like a coke addict, and that’s not why you’re going to do it either. It’s so RARE, even in these enlightened days to find a female character like Jung Geum-ja: hard as nails, unapologetic about it, and not punished by the narrative for it. The best part for me is that she feels like a woman’s woman, not a man’s idea of what a Strong Female Character should be. Anyways, when I grow up I want to have what Kim Hye-soo has ok?

Other dramas that I watched this year, quickly rated:

The King: Eternal Monarch (3/10 and those 3 points are only for the combined goodness of second leads who deserved better- Jung Eun Chae, Woo Do Hwan and Kim Kyung Nam. Please head over to my AO3 and read my attempts to fix this garbage fire and rescue their characters from canon)

Flower of Evil (-10/100, dont @ me)

Tale of the Nine Tailed (5/10, I think it succeeds at what it set out to do, which is a light hearted, sweet fantasy-romance-melodrama, plus “second lead” Kim Beom will make you cry as the hot mess of a half human/ half fox spirit ALL TEARS character. I think if you’re into kdrama romances as a genre, this is probably a good bet?)

Signal  (7/10,  This was the first full kdrama I watched this year and would definitely recommend. It’s a police procedural with time travel shenanigans and has an engaging plot, good pacing, texture and compelling performances. My one disappointment with it was the way they wrote Kim Hye-soo’s character. As literally the only female character to survive in any way, she was given short shrift, and toward the end it really began to grate on me.)

Six Flying Dragons - (7/10, also would recommend if you’re interested in Korean historicals. It definitely already feels a bit dated in terms of styling and production values, and even scripting and acting choices. But it has a good balance of fantasy and history and political commentary. I was not a fan of Yoo In-Ah’s performance in this series, but it’s not anything that would make you want to nope out of the series. It’s GoT , if GoT was thoughtful about politics and characters and not the misogynist, racist trashfire that it became.)

My Country: The New Age - (3.5/10, and that’s 3 points to Jang Hyuk’s fan and 0.5.points to Woo Do Hwan’s heaving bosom. If you like your historical drama/fantasy with very pretty men, very gay subtext -seriously RIP to show makers who thought they could hetero it but didn’t account for Woo Do Hwan’s Tragic Face- lots of blood and tears and very nonsense plot, this is right up your alley. I probably would have enjoyed it more in other circumstances, I think? But this one just annoyed me too much at the time! 

I have a couple of more dramas to watch on my list, that’ll probably carry me over into 2021, so see ya on the other side! :D

[jamesbi-canonbarnes]

Going mad ok so I understand Bucky is not the white wolf in the comics and has nothing to do with the person who goes by that moniker in the comics. If I thought we were going to get the actual white wolf story from the comics in the mcu it might make me feel Bucky can’t be called white wolf, but the thing is they have already been calling him white wolf, which leads me to conclude already either 1) they will never introduce comics white wolf anyway, whether they keep it a shallow nickname or possibly let Bucky take more of the story of white wolf and subsume/replace that character (thinking about Arnie Roth hours) or 2) they will treat it as a mantle that can be shared and passed on like the cap mantle and others. I find option 1 much more likely as I don’t see room for the comics white wolf in the mcu. If either, I have no problem with them expanding Bucky’s identity as white wolf, as this is a completely different universe than the comics, and they have ALREADY NAMED HIM SO. (Not that we can’t judge the mcu for choices we think are bad, we can. But divergence alone is not my problem).

I think the thing certain tfatws viewers are hitting on is that the show seems like it’s setting him up to take on a new name. In the first ep he literally says “I’m no longer the winter soldier.” Just from that and the strong subtext surrounding it, in order for him to properly hit his development/arc he would *have* to either *himself* choose a new “alias” name or explicitly/verbally accept that name again as his in healing but he does NOT, he’s called only “Bucky” and “Sergeant Barnes” in the last episode, and throughout the show he calls himself and is called “white wolf” (in the context of healing-restitution-reconciliation/invoking peace and rehabilitation/acknowledging his own goals) plus being called Bucky/buck/James/barnes etc. in varied but mostly neutral or at least averaged out to be neutral context. He is only called Soldat/ws by zemo and by strangers in madripoor iirc, and certainly not in the context of healing. And while I believe he either does call himself the winter soldier or strongly implies that at least in ep 5, it is again not in a context of healing but of self hate and fear, showing how he sees himself and how he has NOT reclaimed the name. His last statement on the fact is to Yori, where he says “he was murdered by the winter soldier.. and that was me... I didn’t have a choice.” *was* and “I didn’t have a choice.” But now that he does have a choice, what is the choice???? Closing the chapter on that era??? Seems like (sunset, right?). But it never textually hits either of the conclusions earlier laid out (choosing to reclaim the name or choosing a new name). This makes it feel like his development is unfinished, and IMO it feels like it doesn’t really make sense to leave it unfinished if he was going to continue using that name because he would only have to say like one sentence to tie it up, whereas any other name would take more than that. So it only makes sense narratively to leave it unfinished if he still requires further development, like a second season or a movie worth, to figure out his name (we know his name is very important to him- “it’s Bucky” “my name is Bucky” “my name is James Bucky barnes” “you don’t get to call me that” etc.) he has his chosen (reclaimed) person name, now he needs to choose (and/or reclaim) his hero name. We just saw him realize that saving ppl is what he wants to do (“[free] to do what?”->”be of service” -> “thank you for saving us”) (he now NEEDS a hero name/hero identity) and on the other side we saw him retraumatized when he stepped back under the winter soldier name in ep 3. The show frames his completing his amends as putting his past behind him (literally getting rid of it in the form of leaving the book and not returning to therapy) but it does not answer the question of what’s in front of him (besides Sam). We have seen him subtextually reclaim his prosthetic arm(using it for good in the last two eps and finding joy from it) AND his “white wolf” nickname(verbal reinstatement from Ayo and a happy physical response from Bucky), but NOT the “winter soldier” name. Even the arm is not the same prosthetic he used as Soldat but one that is inextricably wakandan, and therefore is not enough for me to be a symbolic stand in for the name.

Yes I agree that him reclaiming the name in the comics is healing and meaningful and could be the same in the mcu if they actually put in the work to draw that explicitly (which IMO they have not, and I don’t trust that they will) but it is not the only way to heal and move on, the same can be done by choosing his own new name, his own moral grounding, his own chosen family. (Ayo’s “you chose us. Chose me.”) there is not one right way to heal.

The thing is, the show did not address the name, and the arc feels unclosed due to that. It is annoying that they have him say he is not the winter soldier at both beginning and end (and middle w zemo in ep 3) and yet the title calls him that throughout. If he had specifically reclaimed that name in the show I would be perfectly happy with that, but he did not. The fact that they changed Sam’s name but not bucky’s when their journeys of healing through choosing heroism and finding a new identity are purposely paralleled feels off. It feels off because of the way they framed the show, and not bc I personally have an independent desire for him to change his name. (Although I do think a lot about chosen names from the perspective of trans healing, and I think that’s something to consider here). White Wolf is the option presented, and I can certainly see why people are hitting on it based on the text of the show.

If he eventually takes the name “White wolf” as his hero name I do agree it should have more build up/development and for me personally to accept it I would require a much deeper connection with wakanda than Bucky now has. Possibly we will get it in cap 4, possibly there are not plans to give Bucky real further development, only to keep him on as a sidekick. I don’t personally see him “earning” that name as IMO it would require a major shift away from being cap’s sidekick and into his own separate (distinctly not America-centered) storyline which is what I don’t see happening. But at the same time, mcu has already demonstrated a willingness to give shallow development for its choices, and this could be another example of that being telegraphed. Or who knows, maybe the above points that make his arc feel unfinished are just due to sloppy writing. I won’t rule that out, but I will appreciate if comics readers stop trying to gatekeep mcu fans excited about the possibilities of a universe that is literally not the same universe! It’s an au! The creators can and will change whatever they want. While we can of course judge those changes, I’m much less comfortable judging viewers for reading possibilities presented by the canon text just because the possibility represents a change from the comics.

TLDR MCU-only fans are not stupid for reading what was given to them in the text of the show they’re analyzing and coming up with a desire to have Bucky choose the name White Wolf as an alias. The choice to incorporate comics in your reading of an mcu property is a *choice* that is value-neutral and not a necessary step for either consumption or commentary.

[prairiedust]

More Last Holiday Musings...

I want to poke at that interdimensional geoscope a little more, because upon reading it over again, I think I splashed it up a little fast and there are a couple of points I’d like to be clearer about. I meant to queue this up to post last night but also want it to be up before Gimme Shelter so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

This is more blue curtains lit crit with a dash of folklore and an honorable mention for post-structuralism. And we’re talking about Supernatural after all, so this is sort of... well, it’s about endings.

Last Holiday was not a typical “filler” or even a typical MOTW episode. It felt extremely insular, possibly more so than any other episode I can think at any other point in the series. As opposed to the usual crowd of “locals,” a spate of victims, and a couple of red herring suspects, the only other people in this ep besides the Winchesters (including Jack) and Mrs. Butters were the two vampires and Cuthbert Sinclair. There was no “case” as in a usual MOTW-- there was no Chuck Struggle, either, and the lack of mytharc was strange against the lack of “filler” schema. That lack of “MOTW investigation” marked this episode also as being about “curiosity”-- the Winchesters all-too-quickly took Mrs. Butters for granted-- Dean even dismissed her as a “Magic Roomba” and that seemed to settle the matter. Furthermore, the moment that Dean spotted Mrs. B in his room, the stage was set for Antics ™ when she held up his goofy Scooby boxers, and indeed a zaniness, an almost manic energy drove the action forward at a breakneck pace. [Spoiler alert, we do get “investigation” in the next episode, 15x15 Gimme Shelter, as stills and the preview show that Castiel and Jack will be teaming up together, in yet another shake-up of the usual “MOTW” template, almost like we can expect the other side of a coin when Sam and Dean switch places with Cas...] These features set Last Holiday apart as not so much “filler” as “between,” as in there was struggle before, and there will be struggle after, but for a while there was cake. (Contrast this to the usual “peril of the threshold” that usually shrouds liminality if you’d like.)

At the end of Last Holiday, however, we finally get to find out what that old blue telescope really is, and with that name we get confirmation that there are no more alternate universes-- Chuck has burned them all. Viewers are left to come to the conclusion that in retrospect the telescope-thing could have changed the course of season 13 completely. The reveal is played off as darkly funny, but it’s also kind of a gut-wrenching moment, too. All the heartbreak of the last two and a half years, reviewed now through the lens of “if only.” If only they’d known about Mrs. Butters from the time they found the bunker, “none of this would have happened”… they’d have had monster radar, they’d have had the geoscope, they would have had supernatural help of a completely different level.

The temptation to read Last Holiday as a Chuck-free episode is strong, but fraught-- the threat of Chuck’s involvement has been established by a pattern this season (well the pattern is woven throughout the whole series really but Dabb has deliberately structured these last three seasons with an exponentially increasing frequency.) I feel like we’ve been conditioned this season in particular to hold ourselves in a perpetual flinch, to be afraid of what we’ll learn “in retrospect.” That geoscope was really_good_subtext, and it is entirely possible, even encouraged, at this point in the plot to take information we’ve learned from the naming of the object, examine our own conditioned response to this episode, and apply both things to the structure of the season so far and make a prediction as to what might happen in the main plot. That’s what I mean about subtext getting loud. We’ve been given the green-light to make a prediction about The Struggle and march forward with it, and see if we will be correct by extrapolating the pattern, or if that expectation will be subverted (the twist is set up to run either way, so either outcome is satisfying.) It is Melville-esque architecture of the highest degree;I could write another thousand words just about that. So I have a prediction that I’m hanging on to, because of what we’ve learned from the geoscope, and what kinds of clues were hung up in Last Holiday, and I’m super excited to either have my hunch confirmed or be frightfully and delightedly surprised. I mean, where the fuck did Jeremy Adams even come from? He’s like our own Mrs. Butters, showing up in the last quarter to run a couple game-changing balls into the end zone, it’s bonkers. I mean, I know writing mysteries is hard and requires still AND cunning, but damn, son.

But anyway, back to the geoscope… 

I’m perplexed, from a very “lit crit” perspective, but this is where I’m at and why I referenced blue curtains-- if you shine too bright a light on subtext, does it evaporate-- like looking through an interdimensional geoscope and not seeing anything-- or is “subtext” sometimes not some ephemeral fever-dream that we as viewers conjure up through our experiential interlocution with the text but something a writer has steeped into the narrative as part of their craft? Or when you’re talking about an evolving iteration of writers, is it possible that one picks up a thread that another wove in for something else, repurposing or amplifying it? And, when perhaps is something deliberately instilled in the text in order to become “text” at just the right time? In Moby Dick, [spoiler alert lol] Quequeg’s coffin-- formerly one of many symbolic vehicles used to foreshadow the doom of the Pequod-- is repurposed as a life buoy and becomes the actual object that saves Ishmael’s life, transforming it from a portent of disaster to a symbol of salvation and then to one of Ishmael’s guilt for surviving Ahab’s madness-- the guilt that had been made text by the very opening line of the book, “Call me Ishmael.” In retrospect, the connotations of wandering, exile and salvation behind the name that the narrator gives himself become crystal clear. The problem that the post-structuralist model of “reading” as simultaneously “creating the text” has manufactured is that the idea that “subtext” can often be discounted as something dreamed up wholecloth by the reader, and thus inferior, imaginary, even delusional (and I use that last word knowing what a loaded term that is in the spn fandom, but this is not about a ship, even) where once it was considered to be a valid and measurable part of the text itself, like that dang coffin. It was the basement, the underpinnings, the catacombs below the opera house sure, but it helped to hold up the structure. And for some reason, putting subtext into a piece of media has become passe, or cringe? Anyway, not to be bitter on main but it didn’t used to be this way, at least not in the heady early days of postmodernism. So that green light? Critical hit against blue curtains. And while yes, some readings are going to be better supported than others, and the wild variety of checklists in this fandom mean that some conclusions have been drawn which can’t pan out, if you’re paying attention to the structure, the subtexts, the alchemical/psychoanalytical/postmodern themata, the ending will be very satisfying. 

So. What was once speculated to be a symbol for emotional lows or turning points (among other things) in the bunker was textually hit with a bright green light, then Dean got curious about it in text, and we were told-- in text-- that oh it’s just a fancy spyglass, and now that the other worlds are gone, it has no purpose…. that’s what I mean about the geoscope now being “pure”-- it wasn’t clear whether the telescope ever had any function, subtetxtual or not, and now that it’s certain what it’s “function” was, it’s now freed up as a “symbol”-- unless like in Moby Dick it’s new “purpose” is revealed later, but right now it’s caught in this liminal place of not-quite-clue and not-quite-metaphor... 

However, and I didn’t put this in my first post because I was trying to be fast and not a wet blanket, but I felt like finally naming the geoscope was an ending. 

This is literally Singer, Dabb, and Co tidying up the house before locking it behind them.

I think when Dean said he didn’t see anything through the “telescope thing,” that we’re to understand that maybe this was the last hurrah of the cute, zany, campy “subtext” or even “metatext” if you’d rather that so many of us have been parsing and which has gotten so weird and bright since season 12/13. I think I said in one of the folklore posts that writing about some of the things I write about feels like making daisy chains in the endzone during the big game. Which is fun, that’s how I personally got through having to be in AYSO soccer for four years, by looking for four leafed clovers and eating orange quarters. And we got a wood nymph in this episode, textually even, so I could easily check the “folklore” box on this one. But the sheer euphoria of Last Holiday and all the sparkles it brought into the story aren’t meant to last. When you look back on fifteen years of text, a lot of it is bleak, miserable stuff. That’s not to say that episodes like Yellow Fever and Hunteri Heroici and Fan Fiction et al shouldn’t be celebrated. But I think from here on out, things are going to be less “golly gee, three birthdays!” and more “There she blows! --there she blows! A hump like a snowhill!”

This episode was a gift in many ways, not just for the sense of glee it transmitted-- it also did so much work and there are things I want to yell about in the way language was hit, the red versus green lighting, the way the backwards holidays worked, the projector as a metaphor for Mrs. B projecting her regrets and fears onto Jack, the amount of food that was created and consumed, how that smoothie was also an echo of “fairy food” or an underworld pact if you squint-- but the stakes are so high now. We haven’t been shown the next valley-- there was no final scene of Chuck rubbing his hands together like the villain from a melodrama, for example-- but the last image we got was Jack blowing out a candle. After the candle is blown out, the cake is dismantled and consumed. Once the story is over, all the themes that are so hard to grapple in a text like a television show can be gathered up and analyzed. (IS that all, though? After all, Dean made his own cake later, which, like, echoes of the “oh two cakes” comic lol...)

Since I really never want to leave anything I toss out on this blog on a last note of doom and gloom, however, I do want to say that I too understand what that last image meant. It meant, as Sam said, make a wish. Think of the future, think of free will, and hope for something wonderful to happen. (or do like me and wonder what the hell Jack wished for with dread and anticipation ha ha ha.)

[pynkhues]

Hi ! I'm sorry if you have already talked about that, I'm just new to the fandom. I just finished s3 and I've felt so conflicted since Lucy's death.. There was a sort of lightness in the show despite of the crime element and obvs flirtation between Brio.. But now, everything seems so dark and Beth is trying to kill him. I feel like there's been a shift and that they'll never be able to come back from it.. What are your thoughts ?? Thank you and stay safe !!

Hi! Welcome to the fandom, anon! :-) 

Season three definitely has a darker feel overall, so I completely understand why you feel conflicted! I think you’re right too - the balance between the lighter elements of the show and the darker ones was really different in s3 compared to seasons 1 and 2, and it gave the season a very different energy. Interestingly though, I don’t actually think the content itself was all that much darker, but rather that shift was felt more in the way that that content was framed and paced.

After all, violence – and the threat of violence – has been a pretty integral part of the show since it began, and while I think there’s a bit to be said about how much of the violence of the show made its way from subtext to text – Eddie’s death happened off-screen, but Lucy’s didn’t, for instance – I also think that there have been moments of textual violence since the show began. Beth knocked Boomer out with a whiskey bottle after he’d tried to rape Annie in the very first episode after all, something that was echoed with Boomer’s completed rape of Mary Pat and her hitting him with her car in 2.03. In that sense, the violence might’ve escalated in some ways across the first two seasons – culminating with Beth shooting Rio in 2.13 – but it’s always been a part of the DNA of the show overall.

In that sense, I think what’s really changed isn’t so much the violence and threat of violence itself, but rather the way that the show frames that violence and the effect that has on the pacing, tone and character beats.

So hey! Let’s break that down a little.

Catch and Release

When it comes to scenes of intense drama or violence – played out or inferred – Good Girls is really a show that, at least for its first two seasons, relies on a pretty defined structure that I’d say goes something like this:

1.    Contextual joke that builds tension and/or sets mood.

2.    Act of violence or drama.

3.    Throwaway joke that breaks tension and/or resets mood.

As a structure, it’s generally pretty effective and is ultimately used to manage the tone of the episode. After all, for a show like Good Girls which is a dramedy, leaning too hard on the joke or too hard on the drama can create the off-balanced feeling we got in s3, but I’ll come back to that later.

This structure essentially presents the violence or drama of the scene as the meat of a burger, allowing the jokes to both complete the meal (delicious!) while also softening up the richness or intensity of the meat itself.

Generally speaking, I’d say Good Girls did this quite simply and effectively in s1, experimented and tested the elastic of it in s2, and more or less got rid of one crucial step in s3. It makes for an interesting exploration of narrative structure, I think, but that’s just because I find this sort of stuff interesting to explore, haha.

So what’s that actually look like in action?

Okay, let’s take 1.01 with the scene I described above.

1.    Contextual joke that builds tension or sets mood

I’d say in this case it was the entire scene at the end of the episode where Annie, Beth and Ruby are arguing about what to do about Rio.

2.    Act of Violence

Boomer attempts to rape Annie, Beth hits Boomer, Boomer falls into the coffee table.

3.    Throwaway joke that breaks tension and resets mood.

And again in 1.02.

1.    Contextual joke that builds tension or sets mood

Annie trying to sell Rio on the dolls.

2.    Act of Violence

Rio ordering Mick to kill Beth.

3.    Throwaway joke that breaks tension and resets mood.

Boomer popping out of the treehouse.

(please forgive my horrible screencaps, I took these after I’d written this post and it’s now late, hahah)

Annnnd again in 1.04

1:

2:

3:

By 1.09, they were already starting to leave wider gaps between the jokes and the tension – which makes sense as it was building towards the climax and they were wanting more drama than comedy – but importantly, this framing was still present. 

1: The girls joking about the van job

2: The tense climax of the van job

3: The joke about the result of the tense climax

And in 2.01, it kept those gaps big as a direct continuation.

1.    Contextual joke that builds tension

Beth putting the mug on the coaster as she scrubs blood off her floor.

2.    Rio shooting Dean in a flashback.

3.    Annie and Ruby bickering about Annie stealing a hospital meal (tone reset as a result of violent climax)

The series went on to test this further in s2 by adding extra beats to create more complex (and interesting, in my opinion!) variations. The clearest example of this is in 2.03 with the Boomer and Mary Pat sequence:

1.    Tension establishing joke: the girls in the hotel bickering about the price of the room.

2.    An act of inferred violence – Boomer rapes Mary Pat

3.    An act of textual violence that builds off both the joke and the inferred violence of the previous scene – Mary Pat runs over Boomer.

4.    A throwaway joke as a tension breaker – Mary Pat worried her kids have heard only to see them engrossed in their devices while the Power of Love plays in the background.

5.    Takes us straight into an even better tension breaker joke with Mary Pat telling the girls she chopped Boomer up.

(That is such. good. snowballing. tension. And I could talk about it forever. Like, seriously. It’s not a sequence we talk about a lot, but 2.03 is an excellent example of complex dramedy writing).

That said, it often still fell back on that classic structure too in satisfying ways. 2.07 being a perfect example.

1.    Contextual joke to establish tension

2.    Tension / act of violence

3.    Tension breaker.

Whiiiich brings us to 2.13.

King

Look, 2.13 doesn’t work for a lot of reasons, but in no small part, it doesn’t work because it doesn’t play with the above structure like the Mary Pat and Boomer arc did in 2.03, nor test the elasticity of it like 1.09 and 2.01 do, rather it completely abandons it altogether.

It doesn’t build tension effectively through that blend of drama and comedy that the show can do really well, nor does it break it afterwards for us with a lighter moment that commentates on that tension, rather it thrusts the violence and drama onto us in a way that wasn’t well established narratively, and – quite frankly – was badly written.

I could talk a lot more about why that narrative choice doesn’t work, but that’s not really what we’re here to talk about. What we’re here to talk about is:

A Change of Pace

Because the thing is, season 3 does actually return to it’s s1 and s2 structure, only with one, crucial change.

It abandons Step 3: the joke that resets the mood.

What this means is that we have the contextual joke which establishes the tension and the mood, and the tension, but then the tension’s never actually broken for us afterwards.

This is perhaps clearest in 3.05 with Lucy’s murder.

1. We have the establishing joke with the girls debating which Au Jus hostage photo to use.

2. We have the act of violence.

And then we have only aftermath.

Ruby crawls into bed with Stan, Annie with Ben, and Beth takes Au Jus home.

On it’s own, I think this is an effective break from structure. I think it underscores the power of this sequence overall and the importance of Lucy’s death as a narrative moment and the ‘innocence lost’ theme. 

Only it’s not on it’s own.

The season kept breaking structure. Over and over again.

It happens after Rio kills Turner in 3.01 (there’s a slightly lighter scene that caps that with Rio checking out of the hotel, so you could kind of argue that it was returning to the same structure, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark for me), it happens when Rio confronts Beth in 3.03 and when he takes her to the OBGYN, it happens when Max tries to confront Rio at the bar in 3.06, and it happens in most of the scenes with the hitman.

In fact, I’d argue that the only scenes that returned to the catch and release structure in s3 were the scene where Ruby stole the hockey jersey, the carwash scene which ended with Mick wanting to go to IHOP and, most effectively, in the Sweet P’s job in 3.10.

You’re talking a lot about sequence structure here, Sophie. 

Right! Sorry! Tangents, haha.

What I’m getting at is that I don’t think the content of the show itself is any different. Murder, crime, intimidation and violence has been central to the show’s DNA since 1.01, and a lot of this has been textual. Lucy’s death I think definitely feels different because she’s the first true innocent we’ve seen killed on this show, but y’know, Rio was threatening to murder random PTA moms way back in 1.07 when Beth’s secret shopper scheme proved – err, unvetted, and Dean was trying to organise hitmen in s2 too.

Structure is important. Structure is what sets up audience expectations and establishes the rhythm of a story as well as – most importantly for this discussion – the tone of one. Seasons 1 and 2 presented the dramatic and comedic elements of the show ultimately as a marriage. The comedy was used frequently to guide us as viewers in and out of tension, and ultimately, I think this is why season 3 felt so different. That three point sequence structure was unbraided, the comedy divorced from the drama, which stuttered the rhythm and ultimately affected the tone.

SO, in answering your question as to whether or not the show can come back from the darkness to find its balance again, yeah, I think it can!

I think the writers sort of wrote themselves into a big, ugly corner with 2.13 and spent a lot of s3 struggling to find a way back out of it. Like, I think on a narrative and a character level, they had to show Rio kill someone in s3 to re-establish him as a character with teeth, because if they hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been the source of tension and conflict that they rely on him to be. I think they committed themselves to darker elements of Beth’s character and to asking the question of what it is the girls are capable of, because that’s the sort of thing you commit yourself to when you throw a grenade into your own story like they did with 2.13.

And look, I don’t think they got themselves out of it perfectly by any stretch of the imagination – in particular sacrificing parts of the way they typically structured tension in violence as they tried to reset the board meant they ultimately also chose to sacrifice both rhythm and tone too – but I think they were rebuilding by the end of s3. I think the Sweet P’s job was this show at it’s tonal best, with that marriage of comedy and anticipation and both personal and criminal stakes really working together to build a great sequence (Beth and the Caesar Salad! Anticipation building with Ruby and Stan as Stan figures out what’s happening! A crime plot! Stan coming through in the end!)  

I think the note the show chose to end the season on with the promise of Boland Bubbles, Ruby and Stan reconnecting and the first glimpse of Phoebe infiltrating the girls does reset the board in a way that leaves a lot more room for lightness than the end of season 2 did, while still offering hooks of conflict and tension too. I also think it allows for a return to the sort of sequence structure that lets the show balance it’s tone in a way that 2.13 frankly didn’t.  

Of course, that’s ultimately if they decide to return to it, haha. I hope they do, and I think we were heading there, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see! :-)