#Posting this while waiting for the next episode and in case people have some interesting comments on any of this...

[georg-prime]

I'm wondering if Billy thinks he only causes bad things around him and that he isn't even a real person (why he gets clearly upset when the witches deny his humanity), and so very similarly to Agatha plays the role of a "not so nice" person, with a purposefully ~scary~ goth appearance to cut from his, previous to the car accident, "good kid look" and what was till then Billy Kapla's personality, not contacting his loved ones, possibly having been arrested by real cops for some reason before getting to Agatha's etc.

I think he might even hate himself for 'replacing' the Kaplan' child. But I think he's wrong. There was never any other soul/mind/essence than his. He IS Billy Maximoff, created by Wanda with Tommy from pieces of the souls of their own future 13 yo reincarnations who were in Westview dormant like the other children at the time 🤟🙃

Anyway, things we know as fact in no specific order:

It was about 2010 inside Wanda's hex when she had to tear it down.

Billy Kaplan was born in the 'real world' around 2010 since it should be now 2026 in the MCU time and he is 16.

Sharon Davis was having a bad day even before Agatha enrolled her in her new makeshift coven.

The night before, late enough for someone to think it's a good time to do some breaking and entering she was driving (home? Away from home?). And she hit Billy while he was running away from Agatha, could have been anyone on Westview and it was 'Mrs Hart'?!

Wanda said Agatha will be safe while under her spell and that nobody will be able to bother her. So people who could harm her could only approach her after the spell was lifted.

Alice is played by a great actress, and is too cool and kind to be wasted as a character and be actually/permanently dead.

Agatha and Jen have known each other before Jen lost her powers.

A prophecy was told about the (a?) scarlet witch, so by someone who can see the future: the Scarlet Witch is not born, she is forged. She has no coven or need for incantation. Her power exceeds that of the Sorcerer Supreme. It is her destiny to destroy the world.

Agatha's magic is purple.

Wanda's spell on 'Agnes' spell has weakened as soon as she disappeared from this world.

The world is not destroyed (yet).

Incursions from other worlds have begin to happen since Spiderman No Way Home.

In the comics during the Secret Wars, different earths ultimately merged together to create a new one, destroying the previous ones in the process.

Billy Kaplan was in a car with his parents in 2023 driving towards Eastview away from Westview while something was happening to the hex, and they had a severe car accident hitting a tree in the woods between the two towns.

Wanda told the people of Westview freed from her control to run away before she reformed the hex when she realized it would erase her new family.

A powerless Agatha found her broch somewhere in the woods in 2026.

Lilia had a vision of her past with a black-hooded figure with a skeleton face. Lady Death and her skull face had a statue of her with her fellow cosmic entities in Eternity's temple (seen in Thor Love & Thunder).

In the comics Death is able to kill anyone she wants as long as they aren't more powerful than her.

Marketing for AaA included tarot cards where the characters appear very clearly as themselves (similar appearance in addition to their usual color scheme). The names of the cards are automatically called by Lilia when she realized who they are. J'en is The High Priestess, Agatha's card is Three of Swords, Alice's the Knight of Wands, their coven is the Three of Pentacles (where Billy appears too). The cards promoted left are the Tower (with two of the Salem Seven on it), and Death (who's holding the same knife 'Rio' has, and a black heart, which is also linked to Rio).

The Death tarot card doesn't signify actual death"but rather a profound transformation". Please take a look at this including the health AND romantic relationship readings:

Ralf Bohner was in witness protection, but also wore an ankle monitor, which was disconnected when the hex was created and that's why Jimmy was alerted. People who enter the witness protection program do so voluntarily and don't wear ankle monitors as far as I know, those should be put on people on probation and other criminal related situations. (He could be both?). Usually witness protection means new identity, so relocation somewhere safe with a new name (which is why I still don't understand why people where mad about that name it clearly wasn't his real name). There was a delete scene where he goes back to the basement with Monica and the twins to take the Darkhold, but they had to face a demon form Señor Scratchy. In an other one he cut the ankle monitor off in the confusion of the end events, escaping discreetly.

One of the few informations we have about him is that he has a mother.

Jen thinks that Agatha wouldn't recognize her own son if he showed up on her doorstep.

We see what we can assume to be an adult man from behind in AaA mid season trailer.

There are remors that Agatha's son is still alive and working for Mephisto.

In the comics he is also the leader of the Salem Seven.

The Daughters of Liberty are in the comics a group of women seeking justice and freedom since the 18th century, and we're taught magic since then by Agatha, who recruited princess Shuri in the 20th century, all working alongside members like Peggy and Sharon Carter, in this team recognized and even mandated by the US government some times.

Ralph seemed to only occupy a room in that house in Westview, suspiciously located near the piece of land the Vision aquiered. Agatha ended up living in the place out of all the neighboring houses where the government had put a mysterious secret witness.

There is a rumor that Jac Schaeffer might be running one of the MCU's next project, reason why she left Vision's Quest production. Possibly about dimensions jumping and or looking for Tommy, kind of like Kieren's run of The Young Avengers?

In the comics, Mephisto created a powerful being called Blackheart from the evil energies accumulated in a certain place in New York.

But because his new 'son' rebelled against him he banished him from 'Hell' to earth with diminished powers.

Blackheart is fascinated by humans and likes to focuse on those who walk the line between good and evil.

There is also an unrelated character who's hero alias was Greenwich Guardian, and turned out to be a villain who took the name Black Death...

In the comics Billy and Tommy's souls were at first pieces of Mephisto's, but became so different from existing as Wanda's and Vision's children that they made him explode when he tried to reabsorb them. That btw didn't happen on Earth, and when their souls went back there escaping from Mephisto's pocket dimension, they didn't got back to the year they were supposed to come from, but several years before. They reincarnated into two different families - not taking the body of pre-existing teens - and magically were born with the same face (how they realized they were somehow related).

Before that Wanda made them real not just from bits of Mephisto's soul, but also thanks to Agatha's energy/life force.

It's Agatha all along.

-

I'm wondering if Agatha even as Agnes didn't try to leave Westview immediately (as mind manipulation is her forte, and she still had all her powers Wanda never took them she just blocked her real personality and memories away), stumbling in the woods and losing her broch, then found a dying Billy in a crashed car with passed out parents and used all her powers on him to save his life in a reverse way she usually use her special ability.

[signor-signor]

This month, it will have been 10 years (one decade) since Craig McCracken made a pitch for Season 3 of Wander Over Yonder, several months before Disney turned it down. While we wait for Craig to finish up whatever he’s been working on since he left Netflix (specifically, Foster’s Funtime for Imaginary Friends), let’s ask ourselves:

How do we get SaveWOY and other related material back on track in an effort to convince Disney to give WOY proper closure?

In other words…

How do we renew interest in reviving WOY?

Thanks to a user on a SaveWOY Facebook group, we have the information to explain it all…

Remember that Securing Disney’s approval is just Step 1, but to truly make a Wander Over Yonder revival work, we need Craig McCracken and the original creative team on board. Without them, the show risks losing what made it special in the first place.

STEPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL WOY REVIVAL

STEP 1: CONVINCE DISNEY TO GREENLIGHT THE PROJECT

• Show Disney that WOY still has a passionate fanbase and potential for success.

• Push for Disney+ as the ideal home, where revivals like The Clone Wars and The Proud Family have thrived.

• Emphasize the unfinished story—Disney knows that fan outcry for closure (Gravity Falls, The Owl House) can influence decisions.

STEP 2: ENSURE CRAIG MCCRACKEN & KEY CREATORS ARE INVOLVED

• Craig McCracken’s Approval is Crucial. WOY is his vision—without him, it wouldn't be the same. His presence ensures consistency in tone, characters, and storytelling.

• Other Key Members Needed - Jack McBrayer (Wander): His voice defines Wander’s character—recasting him would be a mistake.

Andy Bean (Composer): His music shaped WOY’s energy and emotional moments.

Other Writers & Animators: The humor, heart, and art style need the original team’s touch.

STEP 3: CAMPAIGN FOR THEIR RETURN

• If Disney says yes to a revival, the next step is getting Craig and his team excited about returning.

• Make it clear to Disney that a WOY revival must have the original team to succeed.

BOTTOM LINE

Getting Disney’s approval is the first major hurdle, but without Craig McCracken and his team, a third season wouldn’t be the same. Fans need to push for WOY’s return with the original creative team intact to preserve its heart and magic!

But that’s not all.

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR GAINING MORE SUPPORT

1. Clarifying That WOY Wasn’t Meant to End at Season 2 - Some potential supporters might think WOY had a proper ending, so they don’t see the need for a revival.

The campaign needs to spread awareness that Craig McCracken had a full third season planned and that the final episode wasn’t a real conclusion.

2. Attracting Fans of Other Shows That Got Proper Closures - Fans of shows like Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, or The Owl House—all of which got finales—might not feel the urgency to fight for WOY unless they understand that it was left unfinished.

Making the case that WOY deserves the same closure as those shows can help gain their support.

3. Using Other Fan Revivals as Inspiration - Campaigns like Young Justice and The Clone Wars proved that strong fan demand can bring back shows, even years later.

Showing that WOY has unfinished business makes the case even stronger—this isn’t just nostalgia, it’s about completing the story.

WHAT FANS CAN DO NOW

• Emphasize the Cliffhanger: Social media campaigns should highlight that WOY never got its intended ending.

Posts, videos, and petitions should stress that Season 2 was not a real finale.

• Engage Fans of Other Shows: Get Gravity Falls, Owl House, and Amphibia fans interested by framing WOY as the next show that needs proper closure.

Many of those fans already fought for extended content and could help boost the movement.

• Create Buzz Around Craig’s Original Plan: More people need to know that a fully planned Season 3 existed, but Disney shut it down.

Spreading concept art, old interviews, and Craig’s vision for Lord Dominator’s arc could build more excitement.

BOTTOM LINE

The more people understand that WOY wasn’t actually completed, the easier it will be to get broader fan support. The campaign needs to educate people on the cliffhanger and show why a Season 3 or TV movie is necessary to give the series the ending it deserves!

I couldn’t have said it all better myself.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s8 episode 4 “roadrunners” thoughts

we! are! back!

i haven’t seen an episode in 5 days, so i’m feeling the excitement. and this one seems to be scully-centric! i cannot wait! it is called “roadrunners” and it seems that scully is going to find herself stranded somewhere… i have a feeling i will be SPOOKED!!

let us begin! i have no further thoughts beyond that scully loves to make cartoon references, so even if the episode called “roadrunners” didn’t have her face on the thumbnail, i would imagine she would feature heavily. and also, i am worried for her… girl, please be safe. i’m scared. 

okaaaay!!

(post-episode thoughts: this was a good episode- compelling plot, the pacing was excellent, and i have no major qualms with how the characters were handled like i usually do when i don’t enjoy an episode- but i didn’t like it because it was toooooo scary and nasty💀💀 i’m speeding through editing these notes so i can upload them right away and Not think about the spine worm any longer.

and while there were some very interesting things going on in the doggett and scully dynamic in this episode, especially with her not telling him about the case, and then their conversation at the end- analyze as you please- i need time to detox from those images. i trust you understand

🧼scrub scrub scrub it from my brain!!!!)

back to past me!

oh girl, i clicked play and it already seems creepy. we are in a utah desert. someone takes pills by the side of the road. puts on some headphones. goes to a payphone. 

he might be lost. oh no, he is hitchhiking. trying to flag down a bus. and it stops for him, luckily, even though he got mad and started yelling. he takes his stuff on the bus and yells at the driver, who says nothing. it seems none of the passengers say anything to him, either. this doesn’t bother hitchhiker man, who puts on his headphones and tries to sleep. 

the bus stops and almost everyone departs, including the woman sitting next to him. and he’s asking where they are going and getting ignored. but he follows along. 

they are all staring at this one guy who is using some sort of crutch-like mobility aid… and then the bus driver smashes him over the head with a rock?? hitchhiker fellow is GAGGED!!! are they SACRIFICING him?? OH MY GOD??? hitchhiker tried to run away, but they surround him, also holding rocks… 

GIRL. I AM SPOOKED!!! 

scully honey, please stay away from these people.

she is SERVING in that new intro headshot though, let me just make that clear. more intro imagery: creepy baby. eyeball. mulder falling. we’re getting familiar with these sights.

let’s goooo to spooky town!!!

BLEH, there is blood at the scene. SCULLY IS TAKING PICTURES! oh, scully with a camera… i want to know what she would take pictures of when not working. she is still in heels. still in a desert. we need to get her to stop with the heels in the desert thing.

she finds a rock covered in goop and scoops it into a bag. is she out here ALONE?? where is doggett? and she has no cell service!!!!

ah, roadrunner is the name of the bus line. she goes to the payphone and tries to make a call there, right beneath the sign for the bus.

she says good morning to doggett and he says “good afternoon”- time zones! she is out of town! a local coroner called and asked for help… and i guess she was who they came to? who knows. he didn't know where tf she was!

the body had some… anomalies. a 22 year old backpacker was last seen 6 months ago in perfect health, but his body shows signs of advanced osteoporosis, arthritis, and kyphosis of the vertebrae. and i don’t even KNOW what that last one means!! what did these townspeople do to him? anyway, the body had the spine of a 90 year old woman. yikes.

doggett seems a bit surprised she didn’t need him- she says they called over the weekend and she didn’t want to bother him- but he offers to do anything he can from the bureau. aww. can he get her a ride?

(author's note: hmm... so many ways you can interpret her "not wanting to bother him". i find myself wanting to read the script to understand what was written. that is the thing about TV- when you don't have the words the actors were given in front of you, there are so many ways you can interpret the acting choices!)

she actually wants some help! they have some files about a murder case… and she doesn’t remember the details like where or when it happened, but she remembers some glycoproteins at the crime scene. unidentified mucus. and since he recently went through all the files, maybe he could help…. her face is desperate. 

“well, i don’t have a great memory for mucus, but i’ll be happy to look”, says special agent john doggett, a deeply serious man.

he asks for any more info… but the scary bus goes by so she can’t hear him!! once he finds it, could he please fax it over to the local sheriff’s office? <- FAX! how truly vintage.

she watches the bus… it makes a turn. and then gets in her car. YAY, SHE HAS A CAR, I MEAN I REALLY HOPED SO, but i didn't see it while she was sleuthing… and goes to get some gas. the station seems empty… 

she calls out “hello?” and then honks the horn, which nearly made me jump, LMAO. everything looks so hot. i am thirsty just watching this. she has her map and her green button up under a brown jacket and the world against her.

as she looks at the map… a man approaches. she wants to know where the road goes and also what happened to his hand. EEK, he cut it with his saw. she is gonna investigate his hand while asking about the murder. 

AWW, she tells him to wash it out and put on some iodine “you sound like my mother” “yeah? well i also sound like a doctor” “medical doctor?” “yeah” <- aww… you can take the doctor into the desert and she is gonna find someone to heal up. 

she asks for some gas, and he says he doesn’t have any. she says she’ll be fine- she has a quarter tank- but he runs around the back to get something, which she thanks him for. aww, scully making polite small talk...

she still cannot figure out this map. it must be wrong, because she knows how to navigate stuff. 

he comes back with some gas and she says thank youuuu!!! and btw, where tf are we? he says we’re not really a town… just a few like-minded people trying to keep the modern world at bay. tf does THAT mean? is he evil? is he putting diesel in her car to make it break down?

maybe not, at least on the disesel front, because she takes off. while gas guy goes inside and finds the bus driver AND THE HITCHHIKER?? and declares that help is coming. the hitchhiker is writhing in bed. is he going to get her to come back somehow and heal him! but what are they even doing to him?!

nooo!!! her engine starts to sputter. so she walks back. “you put something in my tank that killed my engine” <- GET HIM! does she have all of her stuff though? or is she here with just her jacket!!

and she wants to see the gas can, so don’t even try to play dumb. she pours it into her hand… smells it… and declares it to be WATER! he pretends he didn’t know that. “it must have gotten rain in it” “oh, and it rains a lot here, does it?” <- LMAOOOO

she is soooo mad. all traces of earlier polite small talk scully have evaporated in the desert heat. he says he doesn’t have a phone. but there is one up the street. so she goes. opens the door. calls out hello. no response. 

oh, one of the guys from the bus is here, and his name is milsap. he is all in shadow. leads her to a room. the phone line is dead. but he says it’ll come back on. in ten minutes… two hours… who knows when. she’s welcome to wait here. he can even give her a room!

“what the hell is going on here? i get the distinct impression that somebody doesn’t want me to leave” but he denies everything… even that a bus came through. her eyes are so blue. she is weirded tf out. 

and she does not wanna walk those 20 miles. that hand on her abdomen… the deep sigh. i am doing a deep sigh of my own.

AWWW, she runs after someone else who hides from her :( there is a whole group of people in there ignoring her!!! WHAT IS GOING ON… she knocks on each door…. looks in the window…

while that creepy milsap guy stares at her. so. she accepts a room. cocks her gun. sits in bed with it in her hands. while people with lanterns approach!! so many people with lanterns!!! 

this is so CREEEEEPY. 

she falls asleep. someone wakes her up with a knock on the door, so she GRABS HER GUN AND HAS IT POINTED. WHEW!!!! do NOT mess with her- it will be the last thing you do. it’s milsap, and he calls her “doctor”, asking to speak with her. saying there is an emergency. 

she opens the door. carefully. he claims a man downstairs needs help. 

hitchhiker man is having a seizure, and she tells bus driver to stop holding him down. and she’s doing her doctory thing. huh, i guess if someone smells like acetone, that means they are hyperglycemic! who knew? she did, but i didn’t. they don’t know his name, which is suspicious… possibly he is epileptic and stopped taking meds.

BLEAUGH, his back is covered in blood. they claim they don’t know how that happened. they need to get him to a hospital NOW. 

and she presumes correctly that the phone is still “not working” and no one has a car. DOGGETT, CAN YOU SEND A GUY DOWN… 

milsap says they can send someone on foot to the state road. in the mean time, she asks for corn syrup. 

DOGGETT IS CALLING THE UTAH SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE AT!! and they don’t know where she is!!! he asks them to send a car out. she called him yesterday somewhere north of sugarville. he says thank you. and then calls someone else. asks for her call to be traced.

scully still has no cell service while the bus driver asks if she is doing this right. well, raising his blood sugar could help if that is what is wrong with him, but they DO NOT KNOW. and unless you can get some diazepam or phenobarbital…. 

he starts to cough!! he says he feels okay and that he just needs rest. and he asks scully to stay. “thank you for, uh, helping me” “well, i’m not sure if i’ve actually done anything. in fact, i don’t even know, uh… i don’t even know what is going on with you right now” <- LMAOOOO, i respect the honesty, it just sounds very funny from her

he doesn’t even remember his name or how he got here. or who these people are. and she tells him she thinks they stranded her here to tend to him. 

why would they do that? well, a guy was stoned to death nearby. perhaps upwards of a dozen people were involved based on the footprints… a group has to be tight-knit to murder together. a cult. like these people. “what are you, a detective?” <- well kinda!!

AUGH, SHE SQUEEZES HIS BACK WOUND with her BARE HANDS and he moans. and another bump comes up. and it is MOVING. while he writhes and writhes. OH SHE GOT HER PLIERS, I CANNOT LOOK AT THIS SHIT! LALALALALA… WHY IS IT MOVINGGGGG?? WHAT DID SHE PULL FROM HIM?? SHE IS LIKE STARING AT A CHUNK OF SOMETHING???

HELLLLLLLL NOOOOOO 😫😫😫😫😫

deep. breathing. NGDJSKDNSKS

nasty, nasty…. are they putting something in him that leeches out all his nutrients??

doggett is printing a missing persons poster… he wants to know if the local utah police are canvassing for scully!!! he is sending someone down there AND he will be arriving shortly himself!!! they need to look at this from the angle of the payphone she called from! only one call was placed other than hers, it was 4 days before she called, and it was a guy named hank… WHO IS THE HITCHHIKER ON THE MISSING POSTER!! he said he would be at his sister’s in 2 days and never showed.

scully is talking to a the guy we now know as hank. while the others praise god. and he asks what is wrong with him, telling the others to go. she slams the door in their faces. 

a parasite is in his back!! it lives in his spine!!! something she has never seen before!! and she doesn’t know how to get it out!! she tells him that he will die if they cannot get it treated and that she thinks they put it in him. they killed the last person in his position and she is scared they’ll kill him too. she wants to get them out of here. so she opens a window to go investigate. 

“you’re not gonna be gone long, right?” she pauses. asks if he knows how to use a gun. NOOO, DON’T LEAVE YOUR GUN!!! but this is exactly what she does. i’m not buying this guy isn’t somehow in on it. 

milsap and bus driver knock on the door right as she leaves… and he tells them she says he is dying, “we need another swap” <- what does THAT MEAN?? so his ass WAS in on it?? and now he has her gun!!! NOOOO

doggett is here in utah with the sheriff and some fellows from the FBI. he hands the sheriff a photo of a wound… sheriff says that it is from the murder victim. but doggett says it is from a 1991 texas john doe!! and it happened again in arizona, and then new mexico, and then nevada! all victims had their brains beaten out and their bodies dumped in remote areas!

scully had him find the first case… the mucus one! which she found at the crime scene! the more remote, the better for these murders….

scully is breaking and entering back in town. she has a little flashlight and finds a camper van!! but will there be a key?! nooo!!! someone approaches her!!! what will she do??

the dark, the flashlight… getting flashbacks to the early seasons

it’s hank! with the same mobility aid as the first victim we saw, hobbling toward her!! but he is followed by the others!!! she is surrounded!! they all have lanterns… and they grab her… and she screams that the FBI is searching for her. 

hank starts to say that her life will take a wonderful turn… that she will become a part of something greater than she is. “you’re going to be… so loved” “amen” they all chant

AND THEN THEY START BEAT HANK WITH ROCKS WHILE SHOUTING AMEN!!!! AND THEY PULL OUT THE WORM THING. 

AND THEY’RE BRINGING IT TOWARDS HER SO SHE YELLS THAT SHE IS PREGNANT, BUT GIRL, IDK IF THE WORM PEOPLE ARE GONNA CARE ABOUT THAT??? 

OH GOD… I NEED A BREATHER. 

if you could SEE my face right now… DOGGETT… WHERE ARE YOUUUUUUUUUU?

moral of the story: NEVER give a guy your gun 😭😭😭😭

they’re putting the worm thing in her BACK I THINK?? and she says she will kill all of them. but milsap says she will love us, protect us, teach us. that she’ll be one with him. “THAT THING IN MY SPINE IS A HIM?” <- lmao.

she is HOWLING and screaming, very convincingly for someone who has to act out the prompt "they're putting a worm in your back", which i imagine someone with less talent could fumble. lines like "that thing in my spine is a him?" do make you remember the inherent silliness of this TV show... but that is the only thing that feels silly right now. because this is very serious.

“that last man just wasn’t a suitable tabernacle”. milsap says they are taught not to be jealous, but they all are…. there is always the chance that her body won’t fail him. that he’ll be in her forever. 

car approaches. doggett, please light this place up. 

she screams for help, but they shut her up with a gag…..

and it is doggett!!! bus driver and milsap approach him. he shows them a missing poster of scully, who they deny seeing. 

she is bound up. knocks a lamp with her foot. starts a fire. they keep denying it to doggett’s face. he starts to leave…. gets in his car…. but someone stamps out the fire she started. 

where is he going….. he calls the sheriff. says he is getting a vibe. says to hurry. talked to a guy with a gun in his pocket, and that did not mean he was happy to see him. again. lmao. but only briefly.

she is screaming and groaning while the gas guy looks on… doggett comes in!!! knocks gas guy out!!! finds scully. who demands he get her the hell out of here.

he starts to carry her… she tells him to go to the camper van. gently sets her down. and he says he can certainly hotwire it.

she starts screaming, cut it out of me, cut it out of me now. but they're coming!!!!!! slamming their hands on the windows!!! while he’s trying to do it!!!!

they’re smashing the windows in!!! he gets the worm!!!!!! shoots that sucker!!! they’re all silent. 

he wraps up scully in his jacket and carries her back to his car. they say nothing. 

sirens approach. oh my god…..

so, a week later, she’s still in the hospital. packing up her things. bandage on her neck where he ripped the damn thing out. he knocks on the door. doggett asks if she is ready to go. grand jury convenes today, he says. the cult believe they worshiped christ and that thing was the second coming. 

she says she is sorry for leaving him out. “it was, you screwed up” “and i won’t do it again” “i appreciate it” 

she goes to grab her things... but he takes her bag before she can grab it. then follows him out.

oh my god…. 

the end.

well, that ending was pretty fascinating.

did she really not want to bother him and that is why she left him out of the case? was this about her confronting her vulnerability? the nasty facts of it? that you have to rely on a partner, even if it isn’t your soulmate?

or was she trying to keep him at arm’s length and do her own thing because she still doesn’t fully trust him? or do you think this was about reclaiming her autonomy and doing something on her own terms when so much is out of her control, and then it backfired?

god, her begging him to rip that thing out and then carrying her…. whew. WILDLY intense. again, she was selling it, which is a hard thing to do when you have to act like a parasite is in your spine. and i will admit that i barely looked as he got it out because i was gagging, but: noble agent doggett, ripping a worm out of his new partner's body, wrapping her up in his jacket, and carrying her bridal-style to safety... all performed silently... whew. there are LAYERS there, man.

do you think he went home for the week she was in the hospital? or do you think he stayed by her side? do you think he hated her a little bit for doing something so reckless? do you think he blamed himself? 

how tf do you treat a person for a parasitic life form? i would assume a course of antibiotics... but can you even do that when you’re pregnant? maybe the thing was only in there for like a few hours so it didn’t mess with her system or the baby or anything *that* much, but like, holy fuck. her medical history is absolutely crazy, and that is a notable addition.

they kept her there for a week, so i assume doggett knows her secret now… and also, the creepy townspeople knew, and she likely had to testify about what happened anyway, which he might have read... he probably had his suspicions after the first time they kept her in the hospital for so long… oh my god, is she ever gonna, like. NOT put herself right in the face of danger? but in her defense, she really didn't know- she just went up to look at a body. there shouldn't have been any harm in that!

SIGH. she really wanted to help that hank fellow… but he was in on it. i mean, or was he? once it was in him, it seems like it takes over your brain, makes you do things in service of it. makes you think you’re anointed or something. even though he knew they were going to smash his brain open, he didn’t seem bothered, just truly excited for her opportunity to be next. and you know scully is always going to want to protect the innocent. it is in her DNA.

fuck. well. i don’t like this one, LMAO. don’t get me wrong!! it was a fine episode, i don’t have broader critiques about it mangling characters or whatnot... that was just TOOOO much for me. another case of the show where spooky things happen actually being a little TOO spooky for yours truly. i’m not looking forward to editing these notes tomorrow and rewatching it by proxy, so i might try to speed through them just so i don’t have to dwell on it. 

NASTY. nasty. 

fascinating things going on in scully and doggett’s brains, though. i wonder if she thought going down to utah and doing something on the side would distract her and keep her busy- make her days feel more purposeful as she waits for a lead on mulder. maybe she wanted to slight doggett. maybe she wanted something to be just hers. maybe she didn’t think about it at all and felt all these things subconsciously. she didn’t even tell him when she left… maybe she didn’t think it would be that long. either way, she is definitely in a lot of distress, so it’s not like she is in her normal state of mind. and it seemed like an easy enough thing to do… it makes me sad.

and poor doggett, too. i don’t think understanding scully will ever come easy to him. but he seems like he really wants to. she might be shutting him out purposefully, or perhaps not, but she is shutting him out either way, even when it seems like they’re getting closer, it must sting for both of them that he has to be mulder’s replacement, which stirs up all kinds of emotions… but finding her like that, listening to her howl in pain, and then cutting that thing out of her back...

and there is something really sick and twisted about them carrying each other's bloody and broken bodies to safety, but being unable to talk about anything other than work. something verrrrrry twisted there. and frankly, i am eating it up.

fuck. her having to tell her secret to someone she didn’t want to because it was her only chance of saving her life… sooo evil. that should be what she gets to share with her loved ones, not people trying to STICK A SPINE WORM IN HER. nasty. nasty. and in the end, they didn't even care!!

and we STILL haven't seen her mother... maybe they talked off-camera... well, i would have liked to see that... or maybe it is just coming later?

i wonder if she’ll be roughly 20% more cautious now. i wonder if the recklessness is a form of denial of her circumstances. i wonder if skinner would yell at her if he found out she slipped out to utah without telling anyone. ooo, tag me if you write that. 

for now, i end my thoughts here, because i do not wish to dwell on spine worm any longer. it was a perfectly fine- nay, even a good episode! but: YUCKY.

[foolish-took]

Hellooooo my darling fellow citizens of tumblr, I have finally finished The Residence!! I have a lot of thoughts and need somewhere to put em so of course they’re getting put in my favorite blogging site <3 I’ll be going over various aspects of the show so feel free to skip around bc I have a feeling it’ll be a long one! That being said, spoilers for every episode under the cut, be advised you should definitely see the show before reading. Other than that, let’s get into it!!

First I want to get this out of the way before I forget. I was already on the verge of tears at the last episode, one bc I was ecstatic that the finale was a 90 minute extravaganza (I love when shows do that tbh) and two bc A.B. Wynter’s story honestly pulled at my heartstrings. He was a hard working man who loved his job and, as Detective Cupp had said, saw the White House and its residents and staff as a dysfunctional family that he was going to make work. But seeing at the end of episode eight “in memory of Andre Braugher”, learning that this beloved man was in the middle of filming as Wynter before he sadly passed? Yeah that genuinely broke my heart. He would’ve done beautifully, I just know it, and I’m sorry we couldn’t see him in this role. But that isn’t to say Giancarlo Esposito didn’t do amazingly as well, and I can’t imagine what it must have been like being asked to step in.

Bit of an awkward transition, not sure how exactly to move on, but I will now be talking about Detective Cordelia Cupp bc she has been a central part of my enjoyment for the show!! One thing about me is for a murder mystery to really scratch my brain, it’s gotta have a good detective. And these good detectives usually have a couple things in common. Clever, yes, a sprinkling perhaps of neurodivergence, a splash of queerness, funny if they can help it, and immaculate fashion sense (Shawn Spencer is excluded from this last bit bc he just dresses like some guy, unless it’s a parody episode where he really goes off). These are all general characteristics I look for in fictional detectives I am Not Normal™️ about. And Detective Cupp met every single qualification and passed with flying colors, bird pun intended. She is fascinating to me. To be fair, I did end up seeing a post that was like “I headcannon Cupp as autistic and asexual” which lead me to being interested in seeing the show, and after watching the entire thing I must say: I fully agree, she is autistic and asexual. Shoutout!

No but seriously, watching her process as she goes through the murder and the clues was awesome. The way her hobby as a birdist blends with her job as a detective in how she approaches and moves through a case, the use of a birding journal to get down the facts of the case and work it out in her head, it’s all so unique and brilliant. I thought the tactic of just staring and waiting while interviewing everyone was an incredibly refreshing move for a detective to have, because it’s always clever words or slight aggression that gets people to talk, and never simply waiting them out. People get nervous when they think they’re in trouble, doubly so of course when they actually know something, but if you try and force it out of them they can easily just continue to shut it down. But if you wait? If you make them think you know something? Unless they’re a hardened criminal, which none of the people in the show were, then you’ll break, and I ate that shit up every time. It was just genuinely amazing to have a detective who was no nonsense, and yet still made time to locate all the birds to be found at the White House. UGH I could genuinely wax poetic about her but I will move on!

Ok next I’ll discuss the supporting characters. Agent Park was an interesting partner to be honest! Even though he barely really spoke in the beginning, and he had very little faith in Cupp until the end, he kept it professional by never disrespecting or arguing with her in front of suspects, and genuinely did seem like he wanted to be helpful. I actually appreciated his character a lot lol. My favorite tho was definitely Chief Dokes. He was just delightful, he always gave Cupp his full support and I adore their relationship. We don’t know their backstory but you can see the strength in their respect and care for each other. Plus, that bit in episode seven where he goes “I dunno shit about Lilly” and then proceeds to talk for like ten minutes about very detailed stuff, yeah that cracked me up. And of course, I really liked A.B. Wynter as a character, despite not technically spending that much time with him. But just hearing about him and seeing how things played out, he seemed like a genuinely good man just trying his best at his job. All the other characters were fine, I didn’t really get that attached to anyone else somehow LOL.

So. I wanna talk about the mystery itself. When I watch murder mysteries like this, I let myself get really immersed, yet also I’m stable in my place as the viewer. I take in the clues as they’re shown, I observe the suspects, but I also don’t put in too much effort to solve the mystery itself. This is mostly bc of my weakness in enjoying a performance, aka the reveal. If I’m sitting here trying to guess and figure things out, I’m not really appreciating the show, nor will the reveal be as exciting, at least for me. I did have my suspicions though, and I always like to just keep those in the back of my head as they go. Most of the time I barely bother to solve the mystery and just am along for the ride. For this series I couldn’t help it though, and honestly I was suspicious of Lilly however-you-spell-her-last-name from more or less the start. Even when they kept pushing for Harry Horinger or whatever to be the one, I was like eh? He’s just an asshole and too worried about other shit to be worried about killing Wynter honestly. But Lilly was just weird and off from the start, from the way she constantly disrespected Wynter and the staff to also just simply opening her mouth and saying some bs lmao. I was suspicious of a couple other people, that reveal of the pastry chef with the knife and the maid with the candle stick really threw me for a loop. But I always had Lilly on my list, despite not really knowing how or why or any of that. Her attempts to frame the engineer and the maid? Really good, but I trusted the other too a hundred times more than I trusted her. But god, everything just came together so well. It was confusing, there were so many little details, so many different sides to stories and tons of lies and UGH, I just had a wonderful time with the mystery itself that I’m honestly excited to rewatch the show and see what else I can catch and connect myself.

Now I’m no expert or anything, but I would like to talk a little bit about the way this show was filmed and everything. I LOVED that the episode titles were all previous mystery stories, from an Alfred Hitchcock film to the famous fictional detective mentioned at the very beginning of the show!!! I loved little details like that oh my god!!! Call me easy to please idc. I also really liked how it seemed to be edited like it was meant to be released one episode at a time every week. I didn’t know of the show when it dropped so idk if this actually happened, but I enjoy the effort nonetheless!!! Like I really like this way this show was shot and edited, it’s dynamic it’s interesting, there’s nothing corny about it, unfortunately whenever we were at the night of the murder I’m room 301 where there were no lights I couldn’t see shit but that’s a problem with all shows these days so it’s fine. They played on my favorite trope (I think that’s what you call it?? Correct me if I’m wrong) where Person A says something and like it jump cuts to three different people straight up contradicting them. Honestly I think the whole interviewing process was my favorite. And the Hugh Jackman bit made me giggle, like they couldn’t get the man himself to be in the show but they sure as hell will say his name a billion times bc Australians!! He’s Australian! Speaking of which, this was the show that taught me that Kylie Monogue is Australian, I did not know that before. The more ya know!! I think I had more specific shots and scenes that I liked but I’ve already been rambling for too long and I don’t remember everything. Oh, final thing though, the music was great, reminded me a lot of the soundtrack for Knives Out which I adore so that just immersed me even further!

Ok and that’s all!! I think this show is going in my top five, top ten at least, and I really hope we get more of Cordelia Cupp! If you happened to read all this, you’re a trooper, let’s be best friends. If you read this at all thanks so much!! Tell me your thoughts let’s chat!!! That’s all for now <3

[hardworkandguts]

Weekly Catch-up #5

Nothing major, only thinking of figuring out some of the stuff in headers, like author (where I put the mangaka or adaptation director without any sort of consistency) and adding which studio it is primarily from. That's the problem of the backlog, Tumblr sucks when you have over 70 queued posts and I get lazy from thinking about editing all that.

(last week, next week)

What was on?

The Apothecary Diaries

(ep 2.18) While Maomao ia still on parts unknown, and Lady Gyokuyou is about to give birth, Jinshi almost accidentally uncovered the conspiracy in the rear palace, picking up a lead about the mysterious eunuch, and investigating the graves of the victims of the previous emperor, runs into Shenlu, and from there visits Consort Loulan and reflecting on the Addicted To Love thing she has going on with her maids, notices she has the moles of one of them, which he thoroughly memorises, and immediately goes from your friendly sparkly eunuch into "Ka Zuigetsu" mode and deeply terrorises her (and the other maids) into confessing she has indeed abandoned the palace. So, huh, is bug girl Consort Loulan? She looks like them, only with less makeup. Anyway, adding to his worries of his missing cat and having to think about Shenlu's terrified reaction to seeing the previous emperor in him, he also knows Lakan discovered Maomao is missing and is about to do something about that, but before had sent his adopted son to investigate and discovered a suspicious rise in the price of grain and metal, adding to the case of a greater conspiracy against the emperor and the bloodline. Good for Lakan, because those palace repairs look expensive.

Kowloon Generic Romance

(ep 6) Around the start, looking at Hebinuma and Gwen and thinking of the retro style and making a joke about them being cousins in the English dub (seconds later) wait nevermind. So, the second Kowloon was also destroyed, but some people can still see it by resonating with it in a way Generic Terra is involved? Over on bsky I've mentioned this illusion theory would be more interesting if we never saw them go up a bunch of stairs. Or is the opposite, everyone else thinks it was destroyed, but only some can still see it? Ahhh, anyway. I'm sure next week we'll be fed a few more hints of mystery that will make me sound like a total fool.

Witch Watch

(ep 6) First things first, is it me, or was the character design a bit off this time around? I usually get a few screencaps of Nico doing funny faces but this time there was very little of it. As for this episode, spring is in the air and everyone is or wants to be in love. Except Moi, for Nico's annoyance. It's a nice episode that build in their relationship, but really, the animation felt off.

Uchuujin MuuMuu

(ep 5) Well, can't complain about the weirdness factor on a episode where we see Akihiro casually eat a box of tomatoes over a few minutes, and he's completely useless with technology, making his choice to join the refurbishing club very strange, and Tenkubashi being abducted by aliens who have decided to get the knowledge they need the hard way. I still think this show kinda lacks an extra gear I don't think it has, also, still don't get the point of Akihiro's girlfriend, most interactions are of her getting jealous of Sakurako being next to him, then after 30 seconds she disappears until the next episode. Last time I'll complain about that, because it's a weird recurring bit. On today's lesson, troubleshooting an AC that shuts down, and how x-rays work.

Gundam Soldering Pump

(ep 5) it's the beach episode! Only instead of a beach it's the belly of the Red Gundam in a damp recess of a space colony, and if you're wondering if it's a bad idea: yes. Also the "war is hell, huh?" episode, which is a weird mix but if you have only 12, you have to make them count, same with newcomer kira-kira action, now from Nyaan, who had to get in the Eva as Machu was too busy giving the ol' Kamille treatment to some guards and was running late for the match, and later seemed oddly thrilled with all the killing. Something I haven't mentioned so far is Machu has quite a range of faces, all good. Also: saw this theory on who Annqi might be, and you know what, yes.

mono Weekend Animation

(ep 5) This is more of an observation rather than criticism, but it feels the initial premise of the show around the cinephoto club just went out of the window. After an episode where Kako convinces Haruno and the club to go for a wine tasting trip, now she gets her on a cured ham trip, and what makes it weirder in the context of what I've said above is looking up the location this episode takes place and noticing this went unmentioned. Once again, not a criticism, just an observation, as in, if you are looking for a hobby anime about photography, after the first episodes this is looking like it probably ain't it. Second story is a ghost story, and those are generally fun, and no exception. But here comes a problem...

Food For The Soul

(ep 5) uh, with the cinephoto club now being mostly about going to nice locations and eat the local delicacies, where does it leave the do nothing / food appreciation club? Well, you put Kurea and Shinon getting their driving licenses, and by now, you should know how that plays out with Shinon. Second half of the episode have them driving Kurea's mother work van for practice, and as Shinon gets into the freeway and overshoots the exit, they decide to go Tsukiji, where Kurea used to go to the local food market with her mother, and decide on a seafood barbecue for today's meal and to give Nana some memories together. It's a fun and chill episode, although I feel mono straying away from what I expected would be the hobby show with tourism highlights isn't helping either show to stand out.

Tis Time for "Torture", Princess

(ch 269) In a Hime-less episode for a change, we get to see Inki terrified about a big-budget sequel to her favourite movie, so she goes with Youki just in case it's bad.

Flying Witch

(ch 85) I really wish Flying Witch updated a bit more frequently, because I had a bit of a tough time remembering the characters beyond Mako. Chapters might just come once every three months, but generally they're pretty good, so I'm going to put that more on my shitty memory. Anyway, it's a nice story that begins as a visit to a Buddhist temple that ends as a youkai / ghost story in the typical supernatural iyashikei style it does so well.

Monochrome Days

(ch 19) as promised two weeks ago, it's the start of the serialisation arc, and after winning the contest, Hanaichi and Saori are not too sure if they have everything set to be fully satisfied with the project, particularly the plot, so they pass on the priority opportunity and aim even higher, which greatly impresses Hanako, and you can imagine where it goes from there. This continues to be an interesting view into the manga industry, and I'd be curious to hear how faithful it is.

In other news:

It's not exactly "news" (just realised I lost it on a draft and didn't wrote it back in) but the 9th volume of the English release of Can You Keep a Secret? / I Have a Crush at Work is out. Some weeks ago on the post about the adaptation I mentioned there's a lot that was not adapted and the finale matches the 8th volume, so if you want more Mitsuya and Tateishi, the manga is the place to go, and now you get to see where it picks up from the ending in 10 new chapters. I'll probably feature them on a What was on? still this month.

[tapwater118]

The Post-Split Rant, Part 2

a.k.a.: Grown Adult somehow whines about Baby Cartoon for even longer

Part 1

BFB Post-Split is my least favorite season, so I’m gonna keep whinging on about it. As a reminder to all who bother to read this, this is my opinion. It is fine if you disagree with me about something, and you probably will. This is a good thing! Disagreement invites discussion, as long as all involved are willing to discuss.

Ok let’s just get right into it.

BFB 22

THE LEAFY PLUSH IS NOW AVAILABLE!!!!! I don’t have really anything to say about the ad intro other than it’s become a vocal stim for me. Moving on.

erm taco got out and she was my favortie character so this js the wrost epistioe

Ok, but seriously.

Overall, this is a pretty fun episode! “Court case” doesn’t really sound like it would make for that good of a challenge, but they make it work! A lot of funny moments all around. Jet-flying class is a top tier bit.

That being said, I have two VERY BIG ISSUES with this episode that keep it out of my favorites list. The second one I want to save for later (after BFB 24), so let’s talk about that first one.

This episode, and the resulting elimination segment in the following episode, is the biggest middle finger to Bubble Post-Split ever pulls. She is killed off very early into the challenge, and is not recovered until the next episode. I believe this is directly responsible for her elimination. Leafy gets her moment with Firey (more on that later), Lollipop and Gelatin form their Newbie Alliance, and Teardrop has some cute moments with the typewriter. Every Have Cotter gets to do something intriguing or endearing this episode, except for Bubble. She is, quite literally, written out of the show. It’s not even like she did nothing because she’s a boring character; Bubble is a very interesting character! She was just killed off. (Honestly reminds me of how in season 1 they were pretty obviously trying to get people to vote Ice Cube out near the end, only this time they didn’t have to resort to a contestant vote to do so.)

Like I said, we’ll get to that second issue in a bit.

BFB 23

One last one-two combo on Bubble for really no reason or payoff here. Pretty much nobody remembers she even died last episode, and her elimination is by far one of the most anticlimactic in the entire series. No drum roll or anything, and she barely even gets to say bye. Spongy, the character everyone always seems to point to when people talk about characters being mistreated by the writers (rightfully so imo), had a more impactful elimination.

This episode is just bland. Challenge-wise it’s the exact opposite of BFB 22; the premise for the challenge is really interesting (A jailbreak! That’s exciting!), but they execute it in probably the most boring way possible. One team spends the whole time jumping on boxing gloves, and the other basically has a repeat of BFB 21. The Flower and Purple Face stinger is the best part of the episode.

Just wanted to mention Flower here because I’ll probably forget to do this later; she’s actually written pretty well, by Post-Split standards. I’ve seen people say she wasn’t done well by Post-Split, but I honestly don’t really see it. Post continues her character quite cleanly from Pre-Split; she wants to make friends and make amends for her past behavior, while also still being a bit rude and off-putting. Don’t really see where the issue is here. (As for why she’s like this versus her BFDI/A self, we’ll probably have to wait for IDFB to pick back up.)

BFB 24

Unless something really dumb happens in BFB 28-30 that I’m forgetting (haven’t got there on my rewatch yet), this is probably the worst episode in all of Post-Split, and maybe even the whole series. I know this is the worst episode because it was the only one during my rewatch where I checked how much time was left, saw I still had half the episode to go, and audibly groaned. Nothing happens the entire challenge except for people shitting around and talking, and the overall payoff for most of the contestants not doing the challenges is like one and a half kinda funny jokes. We barely get to see any of them getting the supplies for their parties, or setting them up, or even anything related to the parties until it comes time to judge. The intro/Cake at Stake are so much more engaging than the actual challenge portion. The best part is the Flower and Leafy team-up and even then barely anything happens. Definitely up there with the likes of BFDI 16, BFDIA 1, and BFB 5 for the “real stinker challenge segment” award.

Purple Face becomes a mainstay here, so I guess I’ll comment on him. He’s whatever. He has some good bits, but overall feels like he doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Kinda unnecessary for what Post-Split goes for (or at least tries to go for).

I’ll be completely honest and say I completely forgot about this Gelatin-Teardrop “arc” before this rewatch. It kinda comes out of nowhere too; their moments of “conflict” are not brought up as such (not even any subtle insinuation) until this point. But hey, maybe if they expand on it, Post-Split could really have something intere—aaaaaand it’s over. The same episode this “arc” is established, it gets entirely resolved. Glad that that conflict totally got fleshed out and developed to its full potential. Yup.

Ok, I said we would talk about it after BFB 24, so here we go. My second main reason for making this rant:

I do not like how Post-Split resolved Firey and Leafy’s arc

If you’re gonna disagree with me on anything in this rant, it’ll probably be this.

Let’s start with BFB 22.

First off, bozo, she DID try to talk with you, you just slammed the (soundproof) door in her face before she could get a point across. Ok time to talk about the actual writing.

As a whole, this whole scene comes off as extremely biased towards Firey. Yes, Leafy never apologized for stealing Dream Island, but Firey never apologized for both excluding her for an extremely petty reason and for ignoring her in the years since. This SHOULD have been a mutual make-up between the two. Both apologize for their misdeeds towards the other, and both promise to do better with each other moving forward.

Instead, we this one-sided argument wherein Firey is given much more pity than Leafy by the show. He isn’t even all that remorseful about how he’s treated Leafy, he’s more distraught over potentially being eliminated for stealing the diary. And Leafy, of course, offers to throw the challenge to make sure he isn’t up for elimination. Ok. Sure. Maybe that is in Leafy’s character, to help save Firey from elimination when he’s done something the viewers won’t like; she is the super nice one after all.

Anyway here’s a completely unrelated screenshot from BFB 15. Just putting this here for no particular reason.

Episode ends with them being friends again, and Firey’s only punishment for stealing the diary is to clean the railway. Yippee.

Fast forward to BFB 24: Lollipop snarks in Leafy’s direction, and Leafy tells Firey she’s upset about him not standing up for her, as well as all the time he spent ignoring her. And Firey apologizes! Great!

THIS SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN 2 MORE EPISODES TO GET TO!!! THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN BFB 22 WITH THE REST OF THE MAKE-UP SCENE (aside from the ferris wheel probably)!!!!! I can only imagine the crew realized how one-sided BFB 22 was to Firey, so they decide to shoehorn in this scene into BFB 24 to try and fix it. It doesn’t, and this moment feels so phoned in.

Overall, my main issue with how Post-Split handles this reconciliation is that it feels sloppy. It’s too biased towards one side, and they try and correct for that too little too late. It feels like rather than something they wanted to write, it was something they had to write, as they (correctly) predicted Firey didn’t have much more time in the game left, and if they didn’t do this now they wouldn’t get a chance to later.

Anyway, Firey gets eliminated so no more of this arc for a bit. Let’s move on.

BFB 25

Just want to mention it here, because this episode has a perfect example of it, but Four has definitely changed from Pre to Post-Split. Here Gelatin slaps Four, and instead of Four giving him a face full of zappies like Four most certainly would have in Pre-Split, Four just kinda insults him and then the episode moves on. I won’t really say whether this is a good or a bad change, but I will say I like Four much more in TPOT than in Post-Split.

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

Meme-slop aside, this is a very whatever episode. More just walking and talking, you know how I feel about these already. I do like both the detail of how Flower’s vomit-repelling sweater was what was causing the vomit-filled totem to run away from her, as well as the fact this detail goes pretty much unspoken. Certainly a nice change of pace from the amount of over-explaining characters tend to do (COUGH COUGH LOLLIPOP COUGH).

The best part of the episode happens near the very end. You know what part I’m talking about.

i need her

BFB 26

It’s the Profily episode! I guess I’ll touch on them a bit. They’re a pretty funny joke character! I can’t decide whether it’s funnier for them to have been there all along and nobody noticed, or for them to straight up be lying about everything. This is a good thing. Past that though, they’re just ok. Some good bits here and there, but after this episode they just become another face in BFDI’s minor character menagerie with nothing to really set them apart.

Nothing really to complain about here. Fun episode! Lots of silly things, and nothing stays still for too long. This and BFB 20 really show how good Post-Split could have been, I think. I do prefer 20 a good bit more, but I’d rank this one above 22.

Time to ditch the Pillary Ruins.

BFB 27

The thumbnail is the worst thing about this episode. Just look at it. Why is there just an ugly chartreuse slab on the side. Why are the characters arranged so haphazardly. What even is this composition. It barely even fits with the rest of the Post-Split thumbnails. I hate it.

What gets me is that there was a scrapped thumbnail that looked a lot better! No clue why they switched it.

I do like the desert as a setting more than the Pillary Ruins, which might be an uncommon opinion idk. The ruins always felt too cluttered to be good default backdrops, so going to something simpler is nice.

Yeah I don’t have much to say about this one, another “whatever talky bluh bluh” episode, but this does have some more funny moments than others like it so there’s that. The Flower and TD montage was silly, and it seems like they kinda set Leafy up for elimination solely because they didn’t want her in the top 3 again. Nothing really much else to say.

Actually, come to think of it, this is the last “regular” challenge before the final all-in-one challenge. Maybe escaping the oven was a callback to BFDI 22’s escaping the volcano? If so, BFDI 22 did it better.

This seems like a good time to stop for now. They’re about to bring back all of the eliminated contestants, so I’ll be touching on both Taco and Firey/Leafy again in the next and final part of this rant. We’ll also get to the third main reason I’m making this rant: BFB 30.

Part 3

[cyborgpuppyofficial]

so why do you like Scourge the Hedgehog? What got you interested in him?

Yo my first ask!!!! Thank you so much for asking me a question, and to anybody else, I'll always be happy to respond to questions you may have about me or my oc's. Anyways, this is gonna be kinda long. ^^'

Long Explanation: So I've always liked Scourge design wise, ever since I was pretty little. Maybe about seven was when I saw him for the first time? I used to mistake him for Manic, but eventually learned the difference. When I learnt he was an Evil Counterpart of Sonic, I was hooked on him. I've always been a fan of AU's, and the concept has been something I loved to write for a very long time. Since I was young, I didn't understand his character, and wrote him in a dumb way when I was younger. Usually as a generic bad boy antagonist in Sonic High School AU's and stuff...

Later on during 2019, I was bored and decided to read more of the Archie Comics. That's when I learnt his backstory, and I became HOOKED on his universe, and the other Anti Counterparts. I began doing research, and I ended up starting a Gacha Life Shorts Show called The Misadventures Of Moebius on Tik Tok. It's still currently going, and I genuinely have fun writing it. It's mostly just me expanding on Anti Mobius, since the Archie Comics came to an end, and we never got to see many things from the universe. Many of the early episodes are inaccurate to my thoughts on most of the characters nowadays, and how they act. But to be fair, it's my first ever series, and I was only about 12 when I began making it for the first time. And at that point, I didn't even finish reading Archie like a dummy. I basically wanted to make silly shorts with some goofy characters I liked.

AUGH SO CRINGE AUGHHH. TmT

I appreciate his cool design, and the many writing opportunities he holds. It's easy to see Scourge as all evil, and write him as a cool villain. This is because of his cocky and rebellious demeanor. But it's also just as easy to see him as a misunderstood and not all evil character, which is how I personally see him. I think the idea of him and his father would've been cool to see more of, since obviously Scourge's home life effected the way he turned out growing up. And that if he's with the right people, he could've been just like Sonic! Kind of like an inverse on what he says to Sonic during one of their battles. In other people's AU's he's still a bad guy, but in my own I redeemed him. The nuanced way that people can see his character is a reason why I love him so much!

Plus, I like how he isn't super crazy like other Archie Sonic Villain's. Sometimes he's just kind of a dickbag, and I always enjoy someone who can be threatening, but also silly. I don't love everything about his character of course, he has some things that I try to forget about with his writing. But that's basically the case for every single character I like from anything ever. XD

I love this little shit so much. XD

TLDR:I've liked the green goober for a while now, but only since 2019 have I been more public about my love for this dummy. I love the idea of his universe, I like the many paths writers can take his character, and I just think his personality is really fun.

If you're interested, bellow is a work in progress on my Headcannon/AU Scourge that I use in my TMOM Episodes and videos! I hope to draw him, and the other cannon cast more often. And maybe interacting with my Anti Counterparts I made, or original characters from his universe I've built up for five years now. But I'm starting out by just making him a ref page. My next post will hopefully be him, or my next video. ^w^

I'm making this design for a video! And also just for fun! I can't wait to share the final with ya'll! X3

[yujeong]

Hello everyone. I'm currently losing my mind.

BOC released a new teaser for the final episode of DFF, in order to promote their live event for it and it gave me so many thoughts. In case you haven't seen it, it's this one on Instagram (they've also posted it on Twitter).

It's so trippy and cool and it gave us a lot of good shots of all the characters and what haunts them in regards to Non, but I'll focus on Tee and White, because I have my biases and that's so valid of me.

(I'll assume everything in the trailer is symbolic, like in the first trailer they had released and do my analysis with that assumption in mind.)

Long post ahead:

After we get a brief montage of moments we've already seen in the show with some beautiful background music (it's this one, I love it), we see the brothers and then we start seeing everyone's fears. We see Fluke being scared of the police catching him, we see Top being scared of a haunting, bloody Non chasing him in the forest and then,

we see Tee.

Tee is holding Non's knife in his hands, looking arguably disgusted with it (with himself). The scene cuts to three consecutive visuals which you have to pause the teaser to see clearly. I tried my best here, apologies if the quality is bad.

Tee feels guilt for what happened to Non. I think everyone can understand this by now. He observes the knife in his hands drowning in this feeling, and it creates the image of himself pointing the knife directly onto Non's stomach, who's wearing the T-shirt he wore the day he got drugged and taken away to Tee's uncle. It's very intriguing to me how Non seems to either be trying to stop him or urging Tee to stab him. We'll find out soon enough what's the case.

But the real winner is the two images after that.

Because they involve White.

OK first things first, the shot is gorgeous. I love the colors and the framing and everything about it.

They're inside what seems to be a gaming room, which I'll assume is where they probably met, based on the Without Me MV BOC put out a few weeks ago.

(Notice how the color pallette is the same, too)

Tee is wearing his school uniform (stuck in the past, stuck to Non), while White is wearing the clothes from the cabin (in the present, away from Non but not really). They already are in two different timelines, which is also evident by their positions - Tee is a few steps behind White in the visual.

What caught my attention, besides everything else, was those shiny things on the floor. I can't see them very well, but in my opinion, they're condom wrappers. They go all the way back, symbolizing the duration of the relationship between Tee and White.

The interesting thing here, to me, is how they stop just before Tee's body, and then reappear after him, in front of White, with some of them dipped in blood.

A lot of people, me included, think NonWhite is a possibility, which makes this choice here very interesting. I'll grab onto it with two hands and wait to see what will be revealed tomorrow.

Speaking of Non, I think it's fair to assume the blood on the floor is Non's blood, which makes White staring directly into it become another version of Non, narrative wise. Both innocent boys entangled in Tee's life, both suffering because of Tee. My good friend @wretchedamaranth told me it reminded them of this painting of Narcissus by Caravaggio: White is looking at himself, as if the blood has become a mirror.

Which makes the next visual even more telling: blood separated by a thin line (it's almost blurred but it isn't, White becomes Non becomes White in Tee's eyes). On the right, the big amount is Non's, on the left, White's shadow is creeping into the shot.

It's White's blood. White is going to die.

We get zero things on White besides this. Absolutely none. Does this mean White is indeed a bystander in all of this? Should we take the words of Fuaiz here at face value?

(Source: DFF BTS Ep10)

Fuaiz could be talking about the scene we have seen, not what will come after. But he could just as well be talking in general about White as a character.

All I have to say is: Brace yourselves, fellow TeeWhite fans. We're in for a tragedy.

[vestaclinicpod]

Audio Drama Sunday - 5th May ✨

There’s something so so satisfying about HFTH being on ep 150, while TSV is on 40 and Travelling Light (TL, if you will) is on 20 . . . the brain is going brrrr.

Here’s what I listened to this week! Spoilers ahead!

👻 @tellnotalespod (S2E9) oh what a beautiful episode 😭I’d like to bestow the highest accolade on Flo’s VA: hearing her voice and immediately casting her in an unwritten audio drama that will likely never be made. I have a theory about why Frank can’t just clear out the warehouse . . . but I really don’t want it to be true. 

🌲 @hellofromthehallowoods (150) You can also find me in Camp ‘Hate That Noise’!! Awful. I love this nautical storyline so much. It’s one thing to be told that Buck is now a renowned detective and another to see him in action. Sad that someone had to die but . . . I can’t wait to see the case unfold!! I’ve been trying to wrap my head around Shelby leaving the entire week. Yes, it makes perfect sense from a survival point of view but I don’t think I could have done it. 

🦀 @thesiltverses (40) what a good ep!! I’ve been so compromised by Carpenter this season. She sounds so very exhausted, even when she’s not being stalked by her god of death. I’m very concerned about ‘Verity’ who left the minute they arrived… did she recognise them?? Chuck Harm and Val are one of the most unexpected combinations of the year but I’m here for it. It is VERY interesting that Val is now suffering post-miracle. Is this a ‘gods need to feed’ situation or something else entirely. Working with God-killers worked so well for the government last time, so it’ll no doubt be over for her in no time . . .

🧳 Travelling Light @monstrousproductions (20) I can’t tell you how delightful it is that this show comes out on Friday and is exactly the length of my average cycle home!! It’s such a soothing way to start the weekend! There were so many banging lines in this ep, I love a spooky friend!

🏛 @the-mistholme-museum (CONCLUSIVE) You heard it on Mistholme first! People from Yorkshire (me) have the best voices. Like honey, chocolate and coffee all at once - so people say. I can’t believe this is the penultimate episode 😭

🖥️ The Magnus Protocol (14) snake friends! How delightful!! I feel a little guilty at how entertaining Alice’s jealousy is. I feel so bad for her, but the office drama is too hard to resist. 

🍎 @notquitedeadpod (XXXVII) my heart!! 💔 I had to laugh at Neige’s disdain for Alfie’s more intimate recordings right before expounding on his own experiences . . . including with their shared boyfriend! It’s a little petty. I love it. And, god, can we talk about this last line? ‘And when you call, I will come back to you because you have begun to feel like home.’ HELLO? Christ.

🌞 Small Victories by @wgc-productions (2.1) How many cosmic interventions will it take for Marisol not to make cosmically bad choices? I don’t know! I’m keeping a close eye on Summer . . . 

🧋 @hinaypod (3-4) Honestly, kind of kudos to Laura because if I went through what she did I would simply never touch an antique again… I really love Donner and Murphy’s rapport and how they recognise and respect Mari’s skills! 

Hope everyone has a lovely week! 🥰

I'd also like to highlight that the creators of one of my fave shows, Moonbase Theta, Out (@monkeymanproductions) , are crowdfunding for their next one! Throw some 💸 at these lovely creatives!!

[tamamatango]

My Project Revealed: The Fabled Fanfiction Come to Fruition

Crossing an item off the bucket list before the dopamine gods give out on me. (Yes that’s the story link in case you want to just go there and skip the whole me not shutting up part)

Back in my most active period in the Keroro fandom, I tried and failed multiple times to write a fanfic; might’ve even talked about it here at some point. But for one reason or another, it just never panned out, and I ultimately fell out of it for a few years before I managed to publish anything. However, I got back into the practice with my next hyperfixation, so now that I’ve returned to frog hell again, I knew I had to do what teenage me could not.

I can’t say this is “the fanfic I always wanted to write,” because I ended up scrapping whatever I had started all those years ago. When this started to come together in my head, it initially seemed way too ambitious given the limited time I have and where my strengths and weaknesses lie as a writer…but I got possessed by the artsy demon or something and started to write it anyway. Whoops.

To Chase a Butterfly asks one simple question: What if Kururu actually failed to save Saburo at the end of episode 229? Okay that’s not really a simple question, considering it leads to a whole emotional and physical journey about grief and companionship and space-timey shenanigans. But basically, Kururu goes “bet” and attempts to bring him back to life. Naturally, the deuteragonist of such a story is…Dororo? Yes, at the central conflict of the story is Kururu’s friendship with Saburo, but it’s Dororo who serves as his confidant/partner in crime over the course of the story, and so I consider this to double as a KuruDoro fic as well—though I will make it clear now that it’s not conclusively romantic, so you can decide if that’s the direction they go in or if it stays platonic, and it works either way.

As of the latest update from. Uh. 15 minutes ago at the time of writing, the fic currently sits at about 60-65% completion and is divided into two parts. Part 1 (chapters 1–6) is the angst/drama-heavy half, which I uploaded in full as a batch drop. Part 2 (7+) is more action/adventure, sort of in the vein of what you’d expect from one of the Keroro movies, and I am updating it chapter-by-chapter, since it was getting too unsustainable to try to dump it all at once. AO3 has the most robust features, so that’s where it’s hosted for now, but I know people have very understandable problems with that site, so I’ll consider porting it elsewhere if that’s something anyone is interested in.

Well, that’s enough yammering from me. If you like the idea, please do check it out. Things are starting to heat up as the climax approaches, especially with the introduction of a surprise third major character who very longtime Kirb fans miiiight faintly recall. And if you’re already following it—it’s been up for a while now, just waited to discuss it here to temporarily save myself from potential embarrassment—thanks for your support, and I hope you look forward to the rest! Part 2 is very research/planning heavy and has been pretty challenging to write so far, but I intend to see this all the way through damn it. And yeah, this is what’s been pulling my focus away from the blog, but there will still be posts here whenever I feel like putting energy into an essay and/or next real info drop about the new anime (BNP gimme something soon please I’m parched).

[butterflydm]

wot rewatch (book spoilers edition): 2x6

First, it looks like tumblr refused to actually let my non-spoiler post be in the tags so here is the link: deeper dive 2x6: eyes without pity; hopefully this post will show up in the tags!

Not only is this one going to have spoilers for all the aired episodes plus any teasers (including the trailer for episode 7), it will also have book spoilers through book 14: A Memory of Light

"A few weeks ago I considered hitting Renna over the head with that pitcher, and I could not pour wash water for three days. Once I’d thought of it that way, I not only had to stop thinking about hitting her with it, I had to convince myself I would never, under any circumstances, hit her with it before I could touch it again. She knew what had happened, told me what I had to do, and would not let me wash anywhere except with that pitcher and bowl."

It is a little stunning how the show was able to take that paragraph and make this heartbreaking episode using it as the spine. And by changing it from a wash bowl into a water pitcher, they made it even more of a fundamental torture because Egwene is literally being dehydrated until she gives in to her abuser's demands.

Which, her mention of 'weeks ago' (Egwene is damane for roughly two or three months in the books) is making me wonder about the timeline in the show. Because we were visually shown the brutality of the 'training' process already, I wonder if the timeline is going to be shortened, or if we're going to get a timeskip of some kind next episode. Because Rand is definitely not interested in waiting around for weeks now that he knows Egwene is in captivity, even if he doesn't know the full extend of what's happened to her.

Also, double-checking the books, Egwene hits Renna in the stomach with the pitcher and doesn't hit her over the head like I had remembered; hitting her over the head was what she had thought about but never did. Maybe she'll get to brain her in the show.

2. Note: Renna may be wrong when she says that any pain a sul'dam feels, her damane feels twice-over even to the death, because in the last book when Min comes to rescue Mat and (ugh) Tuon, there is a damane attached to a dead sul'dam. And Min just... leaves her to die in a fire instead of saving her because book!Min kinda sucks but, yeah (she actually screams at the damane to help even though she should know it's impossible for her to help while she's still leashed). Though I wonder if Renna is actually correct but the implication is wrong -- which is that the damane does feel the full pain of the sul'dam's death (twice-over) but just doesn't necessarily die as a result of it.

3. The show is really really evoking book!Tuon in both the characters of Renna and Suroth in this episode, I have to say. Renna makes a point of saying she's a ~kinder softer~ sul'dam because she believes in cultivating a ~friendship~ with her damane and that's basically exactly how Tuon presents herself and her relationships with her ~well-behaved~ damane. And then later in the episode, we get Suroth's scene where she purposefully mocks and degrades Loial for her own amusement, evoking... well, Tuon in many moments tbh -- she laughs at Mat like this frequently in CoT & KoD, because she sees him as her own personal court jester -- but definitely the moment when Tuon steals Egeanin's name from her.

It's... it's an interesting thing because I also feel like the show has deliberately evoked book!Min in some of Lanfear's characterization changes, mostly when she was playing Selene -- pretending that she doesn't want a romantic relationship with Rand but desperately wanting one; pretending that she's not jealous about the other people he cares about but actually being incredibly jealous; trying to make herself his emotional anchor and the one person that he depends on; using their connection to get him to do things for her that he doesn't want to do (in Min's case, it's about using sex to get Rand to take her into dangerous situations, like the fake!DotNM meeting that ends up with Rand losing his hand while trying to protect Min). And taking characteristics that belonged to 'love interest' characters in the books and giving them to villains is... an interesting choice.

4. Is Lanfear questioning Rand near Shayol Ghul in TAR (that large blasted area) or is she just dramatic?

5. Turak's room of curiosities... I really wonder if we're going to sub in the Stone of Tear's storage room from TSR to Turak's room of curiosities and if there is a twisted stone doorway in there. That would give us a chance to do (some parts of) the beginning of TSR in 3x1 next season by having Mat, Rand, and Moiraine potentially all going into the doorway.

@markantonys was talking about how it was interesting that Min's romance viewing didn't come up in her scenes this season and speculated that the show is hedging its bets somewhat with regards to how much time they'll get to play out the storylines. And wondering that if that's the case for Rand's Situation, then it might end up being the case for Mat as well, and the show might hold back on the marriage prophecy (because if s4 or s5 ends up being the final season, they might not want to have to deal with squishing in Mat marrying some random slaver that we just met a handful of episodes ago). Definitely interesting to think about!

I personally love the idea that Avirandlayne could all get together without the viewers actually having heard about Min's viewing (besides the little hint of it we got in s1).

I do wonder sometimes if Jordan regretting sowing Mat's marriage prophecy in so early once the book series really started to stretch out, because it really handcuffed him to a very specific Mat plotline and some of the authorial choices that Jordan made to shackle Mat to that plotline were... very weird and involved characters behaving very strangely to their normal behavior (I have an entire post at the end of my WH reread where I go over how WTF some of Jordan's writing choices were to 'justify' Mat going on his road trip with Tuon).

6. I know that some people take issue with Alanna, Maksim, and Ihvon confronting Lan over potentially being a Darkfriend but... as Pevara says in A Crown of Swords, “You were very brave coming to me, Seaine. I’ve known Darkfriends to kill brothers, sisters, parents, to try hiding who they are and what they’ve done. I love you for it, but you were very brave indeed.”

Holding Lan above suspicion because of his background seems like it would have been foolish for Alanna & co to do, after having found that poem in his belongings. After he and Moiraine have been doing secretive journeys together for twenty years, very soon after Moiraine herself changed to be much colder and much more isolated from her fellow Sisters (especially since she and Siuan likely 'broke up' at that time).

I do think that book readers were potentially so distracted by wondering whether or not Alanna was going to get Lan's bond that they didn't necessarily realize that he was being covertly interrogated all of episode 4 by her and her two Warders, trying to figure out what Moiraine is doing and why she dumped Lan this way. I didn't look at the storyline like that on my first viewing because I was looking at it as a Lan plotline, but on my rewatch, it was actually very clear that Alanna, Maksim, and Ihvon were all trying to get information from Lan in various ways to try to figure out what's up with him and Moiraine. Alanna doesn't want Lan's bond; she wants his secrets.

7. More eye trauma for Mat in Rand's dream here. Both Nynaeve and Rand give Mat eye trauma foreshadowing in their visions, which does imply to me that the show wants to do the 'Finn plotline.

8. "You can travel too, see the world as it really is." hmm, I almost wonder if Rand is going to do what Egwene did in LoC, and use TAR to get to Falme quickly? (but then how do Moiraine, Lan, & Mat all come too? hmm. Might just be set up for a later season)

9. My constant emotional surprise when Randgwene keeps being a thing even though we haven't gotten to the part in the books where they break up For Real: my own personal toxic book reader trait, lol.

10. We once again have it kinda being hammered into Rand that going off entirely on his own and abandoning the people that he loves is a bad thing, actually. It's very very difficult to see the show ending in the same place that the books did, because "Rand off on his own and emotionally isolated" is definitely being shown as a negative.

(of course, it was mostly treated as a bad thing in the books too, until it's suddenly Rand's happy ending. but the show has the advantage of already knowing the journey they need to take to the ending, so I feel like they wouldn't be pressing this button so hard if they planned to end it the same way -- plus, this Rand doesn't even smoke pipes, which was really just Jordan, known pipe-smoker, stapling that trait onto every single male character in the series, no matter what their culture)

11. I really hope that the show is able to find some excuses to let more character reunions happen in the show than happened in the books because the idea of Mat and Rand splitting up in s4 for their respective narratives and then not seeing each other until they get one single scene in s8 is absolutely excruciating. My biggest disappointment with the Sanderson books...

...okay, no the biggest disappointment was Mat magically teleporting to Ebou Dar with zero explanation in the text of how it happened or why he changed his entire set of character motivations in between ToM & AMoL.

One of my disappointments was how... hollow the Mat & Rand reunion was. It happened on enemy territory, while Mat was still in full 'fawn over the slaver' mode and hadn't yet gotten his spine back, and it ends in this weird bro-out one-up competition that didn't really match their previous relationship in the books at all. So if the show could just... do all that differently... that would be great.

12. I wonder if Rafe & co noticed the same thing about Rand and Mat that I noticed in my last reread -- which is that their lives kinda drastically go downhill once the plot forces them to separate for the rest of the book series. Because we really see them being a source of comfort and support for each other here. Which is also very true in portions of the book series -- I think especially of moments like Mat quietly sitting with Rand after Rhuidean, which is literally exactly what Rand needs at that moment in time.

13. So, my current theory re: Mat and the dagger viewing is that he is going to essentially be the 'proof' for show-onlys that Min's viewings are unavoidable. Because Mat does not want to stab Rand and he even knows now that there's (essentially) a prophecy that he's going to do just that. And Mat stabbing Rand anyway, even though he actively does not want to and does his best to avoid it, would serve as a harsh lesson for the viewers and for Mat himself that prophecy cannot be avoided (my money is still on compulsion from Ishy, but we will see!).

Which is relevant to Mat's arc in a lot of ways. In the books, it was really frustrating how he thinks about how he'll run away from the DotNM if he finds out who she is but then once he's face to face with her, he basically rolls over and caves to fate pretty much instantly.

He didn't have to take Tuon with him when he escaped Ebou Dar. He didn't have to stay with the circus once he'd left the city; he literally could have just walked away from her and yet he inexplicably actively courts someone that he never, at any point, wants to marry (even after the final vows are said, Tuon's slave Karede notes how Mat looks miserably resigned to his awful fate), and fawns over her despite her being basically the lovechild of Suroth and Renna, in terms of characterization (Suroth's Mean Girl (TM) behavior towards Loial in this episode vividly reminded me of Tuon's Mean Girl (TM) behavior towards Egeanin; show!Suroth and book!Tuon both have the most fun in life when they have someone to mock and look down on and treat like shit).

If, in the show, he's already learned the hard way that some fates cannot be avoided, then we might get into a more interesting situation where Mat tries to find a way to make the prophecy come true in a way that still helps his friends, and tries to manipulate fate for the better. It's also a way to make the relationship somewhat more palatable for the viewers

Just... the whole way that Jordan played their relationship in CoT & KoD will eternally leave a bad taste in my mouth. Especially since WH set Mat up to challenge Tuon's beliefs. (though probably the worst part is running across that certain variety of 'Mat fans' who either don't notice or don't care that he threw away his morals in between WH & CoT and did a near-complete 180 turn on his attitude about slavery). It's just wild how much shit Jordan makes Mat swallow with a smile for the sake of this terrible prophecy marriage -- and other characters get covered in Tuon's shit too, because of Mat's choice to bring her along in the escape. Joline, Teslyn, and Edesina get tortured because of Mat's choice. Yeah. Pretty much any decision that Rafe & co make about this storyline is guaranteed to be better than the original version.

14. So Siuan coming here is basically the show's version of the scene from Fal Dara, given what we have of the set-up -- fourteen Aes Sedai making a traveling journey to a major city. But that is definitely worrisome news for Moiraine, given the differences in the show vs books.

15. I don't think that Alanna will bond Rand next week (it feels way too early for it) but I do think that the seeds of why she believes that he should be bound might be planted. It depends on if Rand gets publicly outed as a man who can channel & who believes that he's the Dragon Reborn. Because we do have those fires and potentially a riot going on in the Foregate in the next episode, based on the trailers. Rand may do something that 'proves' to Alanna that the White Tower needs to control him so that he doesn't destroy the world. Especially if he disappears from the city after the riot, with them having no idea where he disappeared to.

16. ...I am really looking forward to Egwene putting that damn collar around Renna's throat.

[coraniaid]

I realize I've posted quite a lot about The Wish today without really talking about the whole doomed alternate universe angle, but that's mainly because I just ... don't find that part of the episode very interesting?

As I've said before, Buffy's strength has never been its worldbuilding or its plotting, and this episode is no exception.  As an actual attempt to answer the question "what might Sunnydale be like if Buffy had never come to town?'' it's all a little underwhelming.  Where is Luke?  Where is Darla? Where is Jesse (and if he was never vamped in this universe, why not)?  Why does school end early (suggesting some sort of non-vampire authority trying to protect people), but forbid Cordelia from driving a car (thereby forcing her to walk home in the dark)? Why is there still school at all?  Why don't the humans just wait until it's light outside and leave town?  Did this reality have a 'real' Cordelia that our Cordelia physically replaced?  Why, if Cordelia's wish was only that Buffy never came to Sunnydale?  Why didn't her memories change too?  How and when exactly did the Master get free? Why did the Mayor let this happen?  Did Spike and Drusilla still come to town last year looking for a cure for Drusilla?  If so, why is Angel still alive?  Is there a particular reason why Willow, of all people, seems obsessed with torturing him in particular?  Did he fail to protect her when she was alive, or did he kill the vampire (Darla?) that sired her? Did Jenny still come to town to keep an eye on Angel? Where is she? Why does Giles insist on having White Hat meetings in the library at night instead of in his big, well-supplied, vampire-safe house?

These questions have no answer, and even typing them out like this feels like seriously missing the point (well, the last one is a question that we're not supposed to ask in the regular show either).  You could write fanfic trying to answer them (and I'm sure that people have), but they are far beyond the scope of this episode.

And ultimately we're just being told a shaggy dog story here: once Anyanka's power source is destroyed, we snap back to the moment of Cordelia making her wish and nobody has any idea what happened.  None of the characters can learn from or be changed by this episode's events. (Okay, yes, Anya will be changed the next time we see her, but she'll also be a mostly different character who just happens to share the same name.)

So we're left with metaphor, the show’s usual strength: what can the writers tell us about the characters through this story of a world where Buffy never came to Sunnydale? And the answer is ... not much, especially after the show goes for the shock twist of killing Cordelia off mid-episode. 

Buffy would be much more like Faith if she didn't have her friends?  OK, but this is not news.  That has been explicitly the point of Faith's character for a while, arguably since her first episode. Giles thinks a world where he's no longer a Watcher and the town he lives in is overrun by vampires who keep killing people he tries to protect would be bad?  Yeah, me too.  Obviously there's some striking visual symbolism in Willow and Xander killing Cordelia and then Xander killing Angel (and being killed by Buffy moments later), and in Oz helping to kill Willow, but it just doesn't really mean anything.  These versions of the characters don't know anything about their 'real' selves, so these moments don't mean much to them, and the versions of the characters we've been following will never know about any of this at all.

Don't get me wrong: The Wish is a solid, fun episode. I enjoyed watching it, I'll enjoy watching it again next time I rewatch the show, and I get that having an alternate universe episode where everyone is evil and bisexual is any case all but mandatory for genre television. It's fun to see Mark Metcalf chewing the scenery as the Master again, and it's not like I'm immune to the appeal of Alyson Hannigan as vamp!Willow.  But there's just nothing much to say about any of it, is there?  

Uh. It was sad when everybody died hating each other, but then magically they hadn't and they were friends again, and that was nice.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s4 episode 19 "synchrony" thoughts

very tired. brain empty. only mulder and scully in there

i am sat for the evening, reading the episode description. i'm curious as to if a “technology of the future” mentioned is still going to seem futuristic after 30 years have passed since it first hit TV…

(author's note: yes. we still don't have instant freeze potion. and the main takeaway from this episode is that we shouldn't have instant freeze potion)

i wasn't sure what to expect with this one, but i thought it was pretty interesting! it posed some philosophical questions i hadn't really considered in the real world re: time traveling. in the end though, it was left ambiguous as to what would really happen at the conclusion of the episode, like always, and i think there is enough going on in this universe that for my own sake and the sake of mulder and scully, i am going to assume that time travel was cancelled.

but i liked this episode- apart from the frequent needles! eugh...

we open at MIT, where a guy is running. it looks pretty late at night. 

two people are yelling about a guy named mcfarland while this older man watches. the kids are ignoring this guy telling them that the street is dangerous because they instead want to be loud and argue or whatever, idc. 

this kid in the red jacket (later revealed to be named lucas) seems like a massive douche, and when old man proclaims that he is going to die at exactly 11:46, i feel no deep sadness on the matter. this guy is trying to save your life and you’re gonna treat him like he’s trying to get money off of you??? and be mean to him????

omggg self righteous MIT kids…. yeah i’ll say it. shut tf up!

the campus security officer takes the old man away, but he tells jason not to let lucas cross the street, because he won’t see the bus coming… jason seems shocked that the old man knows his name.

see, if i were jason, i’d take this grouch of a kid and make him wait it out. maybe go to a restaurant or something. if there is one that doesn’t require crossing the street. no ma’am. i will NOT ignore a death prophecy.

lucas is shutting down jason, saying they have nothing to talk about. but the bus approaches!!!!

and sure enough, lucas drops his papers at the predicted time….. and thus concludes lucas.

the bus driver says it looks like jason pushed him in front of the bus! i didn’t see that. but okay. 

intro time woo woo woo woo woo wooooooo

(seriously, it didn’t look like jason pushed him?? am i tripping? i mean, i replayed the scene just to make sure. and it did not look like a pushing occurred)

scully is looking at the photos from the accident, and we learn that lucas was a post-doctoral fellow, which perhaps explains his intense arrogance. although i imagine that sort of thing only really happens if you were a douche BEFORE the phd. it just gets worse after it has been conferred.

OH the tea is: jason was his ACADEMIC ADVISOR!!!! and the bus driver said he pushed him!!!!

damn. can you imagine??? i’m imagining this happening to me. everyone would be shocked.

also, shocked that jason was not a fellow student because he looked to be of doctoral candidate age. but he is actually dr. jason nichols, academic advisor in addition to the other roles i'm sure he plays.

but that's not the point.

and jason wouldn’t tell the cops what they were arguing about!!! suspicious…

mulder sits next to scully on the edge of the desk and they watch jason’s alibi tape- i bet it was a pain to ship that around

(at this moment i got a text and paused to answer it and it froze on a frame of mulder looking at scully as she ponders the case and oh my gooooood. oh my gooood)

“well, he goes on to tell a pretty convincing narrative and to give a rather detailed description of the old man” “what was he wearing, a long black robe and carrying a scythe?” <- she is smirking at her own stupid joke and i love her soooo much

mulder has a pencil behind his ear…. yeah. i love him too. they’re a package deal <3

and a further plot twist: the campus security officer that picked the old man up ALSO died!!

i see that it is now boston autopsy time. and i just prepared myself a meal. okay. we must pause and eat before continuing.

mmm that was yummy.

RESUME!

there has been internal disagreement about if they should cut or saw the campus security guy's body? now what the hell does that mean 

he’s frozen!!! as if elsa got to him….

she says something was inserted in his ear, which was a thermometer. and he was found on campus.

well, boston is just like that. you don't get your dunkin one day and you freeze about it.

oooo, this officer would drink and drive on duty!!! this is not good. bad bad bad thing to do. but it was only 28 degrees last night! not cold enough for a guy to get drunk and freeze to death in such a dramatic fashion.

again. boston. it’s like that.

his body is getting colder somehow! that makes no sense.

i love when mulder asks for scully's medical opinion :) she thinks maybe he drank some chemicals!!

BLEAUGH mulder makes a joke about hoping he can keep the body frozen until thanksgiving... nasssssty 😭

this provides no answers on the jason situation. if anything, it only raises more questions. time to go ask him!!!!

jason seems to think that mulder is lying about the guy being frozen to death which is a presumptuous thing… what exactly would he gain from lying about that lmao

oh tea…. the reason the two of them were fighting that night was because lucas was going to say that jason’s research data was falsified!!! and they were competing for the same grant… for cryobiology!!!

OHHHH HE STUDIES FREEZING BODIES. this is not looking great for him.

(we also see jason's girlfriend very briefly which becomes important later. her name is lisa. i did not write it down in my original notes because i did not know she would become a major character in the episode)

scully calls while mulder is doing the questioning, and says she found jason’s thumbprint on the security guard’s uniform!!! oh man. again. not looking great for jason. but i don’t buy that the story is that straightforward.

scully is so pretty………….

cut to a hotel where a man named yonechi is trying to check in, but the receptionist is saying there is no reservation under that name!!! this is very unfortunate for dr. yonechi.

and who comes in but OLD MAN FROM BEFORE!!!!!!! he is giving yonechi a key and says he came on behalf of dr. jason nichols…..

who is this old man… and what does he want…? he looks sick!!!! 

yonechi invites old man in and he shuts the door to his hotel room…. omg something is gonna go down… 

he says he owes so much to yonechi. now what does that mean? did he use his research for something?

“you found a way to substitute water with a sugar- trehalose” (sobs in humanities) what does that MEAN???

HEY WHAT, OLD MAN PUT THAT NEEDLE AWAY. NOOOO NO AWAY. NOT INTO YONECHI. 

YONECHI IS FREEZING TO DEATH. 

(my original notes there were far less readable, just know that)

damn, that prop of frozen yonechi is crazy. scully is investigating and i’m contemplating how it was made!!!

she notices the injection mark… and mulder says he was at the hotel with a man in his 70’s when he arrived!!! the mythical old man that jason has spoken of proves to be real!

scully is showing mulder “a nuclear magnetic resident spectra” (YESSSS TALK THAT SCIENCE SCULLY 🔥 IDK WTF IT MEANS) 

yonechi was injected with… something. scully strongly suspects jason (AKA dr. nichols) did the killing, but mulder wants to talk to someone else….

the girlfriend, lisa!!! jason’s dating someone from his lab!!!??? that feels weird. is that unethical? is she his employee? hm.

scully shows her the nuclear magnetic resident spectra and she grows quiet. yeahhh they're onto youuuu!

“lisa, you can tell us now, or we can subpoena your testimony in court” <- DAMN scully said you will NOT be hiding evidence from me!

STOP SAYING SCIENCE WORDS I DON'T GET IT

okay, so the stuff that was shot in yonechi: it’s a rapid freezing agent. i get that. jason thinks that if you do it fast enough, you can unthaw whatever you freeze better. but he hasn’t been able to test it because it doesn’t exist yet!!! 

well. i think something changed.

oooooo look at the virtual chemical… so high tech… watch it rotate… yeah, baby that’s the stuff.

it would be impossible for him to engineer the non-existent chemical synthetically… BUT SOMEONE CLEARLY DID because they found it in that guy!!!

but!!!! lisa reveals that yonechi might not be dead!!! so they put him in a tub of slime and then try to revive him

scully announces that this will not work, because his body temperature was at 8 degrees, and the lowest body temperature a human ever survived was 70. i love that she knows that. it warms my heart. even if it doesn't warm dr. yonechi's.

blehhh, they put some stuff in his chest and then bring out the shocky machine…. and he starts to come back!!!! omg???

but he starts to fight the machine (what does that mean??), and his temperature gets WAYYYY too high, and he’s gasping and screaming and i feel myself growing faint….

(god that scene was NOT fun to watch. it was actually straight up horrible)

AND THEN HE CATCHES ON FIRE???????

wait, is this the episode where we get that one line…..

(sadly this was not the episode with the spontaneous combustion line i have seen in screenshots💔)

the only guess they have as to wtf made yonechi burn up is that whatever it was that was used to freeze him provoked an opposite reaction when they thawed him out

rip dr. yonechi :(

lisa goes to talk to jason…… what does he know!!!!!

old man is on the bus next to her. RUN GIRL. SPRINT. use your youth as an advantage. he’s going after her and i’m wondering how tf he knew that other guy was going to die?????

NO DON’T STOP TO LOOK AT TIE DYED SHIRTS. ahh she is seeing him follow her in the mirrors and not just merely shopping... very clever

lisa goes up a bunch of stairs, which is arguably the best move to escape an old man, but he is still pretty fast. 

she confronts him… and he says HE CAN KILL HER, TOO!!!

bro... i know grant money is hard to come by, but COME ON!! 

he busts out the freezy needle and says he came here to kill her… but he walks away. who tf is this guy??????

he bruised tf out of her arm when he grabbed her!!! rude!!!!

scully once again reminds lisa to STOP HIDING SHIT and she confesses to FALSIFYING THE DATA TO GET THE GRANT!!!! OHHH GIRL!!!!! this is not good. and jason is covering for her. 

and the people who could have figured that she did that out are now dead!!!

HOW BIG IS THIS FUCKING GRANT, BRO???

she swears that she doesn’t know the old guy and that jason wouldn’t either, but scully comes at her with “if he would lie for you, what makes you think he wouldn’t lie to you?” <- ohhh she ate her up there 

mulder does his thing where he says “scully?” and tilts his head a little, which means "we need to talk about this out of earshot of the person we're questioning" and i love it very much

ohhh, someone thinks they’ve spotted the old man!!!

(really hate that composite drawing of him they’re using as reference)

woahh, that shot descended from the ceiling as they arrived to his hotel room… it was really cool. but he is not here!!

“i’m not sure if ‘living’ is the word i’d use on this place” <- after that other line last episode i just KNOW she needs to be comfy and cozy, which i respect immensely. get scully a blanket right away. i need her in a mountain of pillows. STAT.

she finds yonechi’s flight written down in a notepad, and mulder finds a picture of yonechi, lisa, and jason!! they must have had an ice science groupchat or something

mulder seems to think this is a photo from the future??? and that if lucas hadn’t gotten hit by that bus, jason’s research being falsified would be exposed and he’d never get to work with dr. yonechi.

of course, this is baffling. and i have to rewatch the scene to get a better understanding on what he is saying

she has had enough of his shenanigans “and if your sister is your aunt and your mother married your uncle, you’d be your own grandpa” <- LMAO she said you NEED to start making sense!!

“okay, so this photo that was never taken, when was it never taken?” <- BAHAHA this has been added to my mental list of top scully one liners

he says it was taken at least 5 years in the future when the mystery substance was synthesized in the future…. and the old man came back from the future to fix the past!!

well. time travel isn’t something we have entertained on here before. so that’s new. not sure how i feel about it when there is already so much going on in this universe.

HE SAYS THE OLD MAN *IS* JASON?? and that is how he knew all of the things!!!

i guess it does make sense… if you think time travel could exist…

(she looks at him with great skepticism) “although common sense may rule out the possibility of time travel, the laws of quantum physics certainly do not. in case you forgot, that’s from your graduate thesis” <- she looks annoyed at this LMAOOOOOOOOOOO 

if someone quoted my thesis back to me in an argument we’d have to start kissing sloppy style right then and there.

so wait this complicates things. she did a graduate degree AND an MD?? bro, how many degrees was she collecting!!!!! how long did it take!!! HOW OLD IS SHE??? how can all of his have been accomplished??? 

you don’t write a thesis for an MD, and even if you did it wouldn’t be in physics… maybe she did like a 4+1 program? she was speedrunning grad school? can someone who knows what her degree history looks like PLEASE explain this to me.

ohhhh and she argues right back… “the limits of human endurance would prevent such a trip from ever happening” get his ass!!

(he can quote her thesis but not remember her birthday… what is with this man??)

he says to show the picture to lisa and ask where it was taken, which i suppose would answer that question as long as she doesn't frequently have people take her pictures, in which case it might be hard to recall

old man seems very sick as he stumbles back to his spartan hotel room…. perhaps time travel makes you ill? and that is the limit of human endurance she has described??

OAUGHHHHH HE IS INJECTING HIMSELF WITH SOMETHING OKAY HELLO. I DID NOT SEE THIS COMING.

it seems to make him feel better. it makes me feel worse. but i suppose that is irrelevant.

gag gag gag gag. so he keeps internally freezing himself to feel better?

lisa comes in and asks “jason?” <- OHHH SHE CLOCKED HIM!!!! he says she made it possible!!!!

is this how we explore the multiverse in this world??? never thought we'd see the day. i mean, i guess weirder plot points have gone on than there being an x files multiverse, but i thought we had enough to deal with just on this planet, what with the murderers and ghosts and ghouls and all that

jason says she’ll meet a guy in ten years that has discovered “tachyons” (which is a real word, i assume, because my autocorrect fixed it for me) which are particles that can go back in time!!! but only for a few seconds and only at a temperature of absolute 0. 

the temperature thing seems very specific.

and then she’ll realize…. 

and he came back to kill her but couldn’t do it!!!! her hand is in his hand...

OH HE LIED!!! HE GOT HER!!!!!!!!! lisa is now FROZEN!!

while that is deeply sad, i am kinda glad he prevented time travel from happening in this universe. that would be a little too much.

mulder arranged for (young) jason’s bail to go show him lisa at the lab, and he straight up says right there that the old man they’re looking for is him. which had to be hard to hear

jason is being a dick as mulder tries to explain what happened…. he proposes that maybe his compound would allow for time travel by making people very cold and allow them to survive the temperatures of a wormhole. sure. i don't know enough about wormholes to dispute that.

jason seems to sober up a bit when he realizes that what happened to lisa is his fault in a sort of cosmic way, and not even mulder can come up with a witty response to that 

ooooooh, jason had to use a fingerprint scanner thingy to get into the lab, and it said he was already there!! a showdown of the jasons!!!!

mulder says please get to scully NOW as they’re trying to revive lisa and blehhh more needles stop with needles no needles please i ask so politely. scully is watching this go down and ordering her to put lisa back in the slime tub now!!!

scully you are so pretty…….

mulder is off to track down old jason, and i wonder if showing his FBI badge would really get him into all sorts of places such as this one, or if anyone would wonder if he was lying. anyway, the research assistant says that no one has come in. 

breaking lisa news: THEY RESUSCITATED HER!!! but jason wasn’t there!!!!

oh it really is jason vs jason time… who will win? the younger, inexperienced, but more sprightly jason? or the older and wiser jason with the weapon of freezing???

in the computer, all the files about jason were erased!!!! he is really trying to destroy his own work. mulder is running running running…

but young jason has found old jason! who is frantically typing. 

older jason's explanation of a world with time travel does sound pretty fucked up. but then young jason is beating up older jason trying to get lisa back. mulder arrives to say lisa is actually okay, and older jason stabs younger jason!!!

while mulder is trying to break through, the two jasons…. CATCH ON FIRE!!!

damn. mulder probably did not like to see that. i still consider his fear of fire canon. because i like it. i think it’s interesting.

scully is explaining to lisa, who is on a stretcher, how they saved her

scully is so sweet trying to explain she doesn’t know what was going on….. and has to tell lisa that jason is dead, and she is very sorry, but she’ll see her in the hospital 

mulder arrives!! he says they won’t find the second corpse- i guess that makes sense. if you die, i guess your alternate timeline self has to go with it.

oh my goodness, he's quoting her thesis again: “although multidimensionality suggests infinite outcomes in an infinite number of universes, each universe can produce only one outcome”

HE MEMORIZED THAT SHIT???

“i was 23 when i wrote that” oh my GOD SHE REALLY WAS SPEEDRUNNING DEGREES HUH???

so she must have done either a 4+1 or graduated undergrad in 3 years, 2 years for a masters, and then (insert however many years it takes to get an MD here)

no wonder she is so smart... damn, i love her.

so what implications does her proclamation on each universe having but one solution have?? will his compound and time travel eventually be discovered as scully’s thesis seems to predict??

cut to lisa at the computer… and thus ends our tale.

NOW WHAT DOES THAT MEAN.

so do we get time travel or not???

i actually liked this episode!! not the needles. but it was a super interesting concept and proved why we should probably not have time travel. something i already believed and now find myself agreeing with even harder.

it's kinda rare that i like an episode based off of its content rather than just the mulder-scully time the situation creates, so i'll give credit where credit is due.

i like to see scully be a smartass so this was a good day for me. AND that he has so much of her thesis MEMORIZED??? word for word???!! that is AMAZING. it really is like that though- sometimes you can quote a person's thesis rewriting einstein, but you cannot remember their birthday.

and maybe it was implied before, but i'm so happy to learn that scully got her masters when she was 23, and THEN went on to med school. that is the sort of information a fan like me needs to know to properly analyze a character, and it is fascinating! so she probably graduated early- either in undergrad or high school. and she got her masters in physics, right?! or something along those lines??

we forget how fucking smart she is because the narrative is skewed in mulder's favor with the whole "werewolves are real in this world" thing, but goddamn. she is really a genius who can tell you exactly how someone is dying and fix it, OR administer the death herself via her sharpshooting skills, AND gets stuck dealing with the bestie babble alien nonsense while she tries to figure out how to rationalize all of the universe's inexplicable phenomena through the lens of a scientist. AND she paid attention in catechism.

is she not one of THE best characters of all time???

[alicepao13]

Hudson and Rex S06E14

Damn it, no Mankiewicz lol. Yeah, it was okay, had some funny moments too (Rex is a comedian). There’s a pattern lately where the promos immediately hook me up for the next episode, so even as I’m writing this, I’m already thinking of the next one.

Risotto, jeez, if I was a guy I’d hate Charlie Hudson for the impossible cooking standards he’s setting.

That guy messed up all the floorboards with his blood dripping all over! Good luck getting that out.

Rex being upset and whining as forensics is sweeping the house. Yeah, this sucks, buddy.

Joe did not seriously consider not giving Charlie this case. The man has investigated his own brother!

Well, that seemed like a cold night of shooting. I bet they all enjoyed that :P

“Looks like Rex and I are your problem again tonight”. Well, at least they’re letting us know he didn’t sleep at Joe's couch at the precinct. I’ve given up on seeing Sarah’s apartment and I’d like her to give up on the idea of pretending to live there too.

Are you telling me that packages are not getting scanned somewhere inside the precinct before getting delivered? Oh, boy.

I’ll say this again, if they don’t trust Rex to sniff out whether there’s bomb components inside a package, then there’s no reason to allow him to work in cases. 

That’s a lot of keys and I can't help thinking of what their prop master thought about all this.

“Better be safe, right Charlie?” lmao the passive aggressive comment from Joe. Leave him alone, he was right this time. Trust Rex.

Rex barked at the ransomware? Yeah, okay, lol

Getting from low-tech burglaries to high-tech heist. That’s an interesting transition.

Ah, stakeout. And they’re eating fries which was what I was also eating as I was watching this, on a very random note.

Pirating one season of Death Note? How can anyone only watch one season? Lock him up! Also, are we sure this kid is old enough to work at a bank?

Sarah with the beverage assist. I swear, some of these scenes seem like reshoots to add more Charah after complaints were made.

Well, that whole car almost hits Rex thing was anti-climactic. Obviously I didn’t want it to hit Rex, but make it a bit exciting. And it was the cutoff for the commercials too? I mean, I didn’t have to watch them but still.

Someone really loves cryptocurrencies in this show. The displayed price is off by, like, a lot since Bitcoin took off the last few months, which is understandable. Also, assuming that it’s in Canadian dollars, I estimate by the price (if they used the real one) that they shot and/or post-processed this episode near the end of November, as it didn’t really fluctuate around those levels again after that. And kudos for displaying an accurate BTC address.

“Well, that must have hurt”. I beg to differ. These boxes were very obviously empty.

Wait, so is this the end of the unwelcome guests in Charlie’s house? I’m not sure I like the new security system.

Ha! Sarah is still after the risotto. I totally get her.

lol Rex! Look at that evil smirk. He’s totally tripping the alarm for the heck of it. To be fair, when Rex is at home, there’s no need to put the alarm on but let Charlie make the risotto.

While it was an interesting case, it lost me a bit as we were going through the names of the people involved. Also, I did expect someone who came to bleed out inside Charlie’s house to have a more personal connection to him. I find it ridiculous that packages which are sent to the precinct aren’t scanned for explosives, I mean, that’s the first thing you do when a package arrives at a police station.

Promo: Charlie with a bomb strapped to his chest! What’s not to love? Oh, by the way, remember what I said about concussions and getting hit a second time on the head in a short while? This is actually the ghost of Charlie Hudson strapped to a bomb. Also, he has an earbud, which is presumably to communicate with whoever is doing this? Can we use to tell Sarah goodbye please? If this is parallel to the Castle episode, Charlie is going to say “I love you” to… Rex :P

One more piece of useless trivia, a bomb is how we lost one of Rex’s partners in the Italian version (and of course Rex had to watch because why not torture the poor dog, as it was canonically his third partner that was killed). But somehow I’m certain that Charlie will manage to pull through.

Only 2 episodes left! As always, I don't care much for a renewal until we're almost out of episodes.

[theimaginatrix27]

Coming Soon to AO3: the Sisko'Brien Salamanders AU!

I could not go another day without making this post. Because I intend to start posting this fic as soon as it's no longer November in Australia.

A few months ago, I was on my friend @kintatsujo's Discord server, telling her and my other friends on there, quite earnestly, that I believed I was incapable of writing Sci-fi, and was particularly nervous about writing for any Star Trek series, because the fandom was big and old and intimidating, and I was a Fantasy writer! I couldn't possibly get all the technical stuff right!

And then I started nattering on about my ideas for a Star Trek series that I'd had floating in my head for about thirteen years, and as I was doing so, I started looking stuff up on the wiki, made a couple posts, absolutely trawled the blog of someone who reblogged one of those posts, found a Deep Space 9-themed Discord server (and about a dozen new friends!), and started having plot tribbles populate my brain, all squealing excitedly at being allowed to run wild.

And one of those ideas was sparked by this post, which I found on that days-long blog trawl I mentioned, and which delighted me so much that I started imagining some of the scenes. And then imagining the fallout. And then having my own ideas about how it would all pan out, and I knew this story was a keeper.

The important points from the post that set my brain off, in case you don't wanna click through:

Benjamin Sisko wouldn't abandon his salamander babies if he ever went through a Threshold scenario (as in the episode of Star Trek: Voyager for the uninitiated).

Since this is a human-specific mutation, the other parent would have to be one of the other human cast

DS9's Threshold is clearly an O'Brien-must-suffer episode.

The very idea of this happening was hilarious to me, so in hindsight I shouldn't have been all that surprised the plot tribble moved in and started breeding like mad.

I let the idea stew throughout October, and have been writing for the AU all month. And I've written about 30k for it so far! Not all of it's for the main/initial fic laying a great deal of the groundwork/surrounding the events within the post (but with my own twists on some of the ideas because I was imagining the characters' reactions as I saw them and they flowed better than the comments in the post), but I do have six chapters almost ready to go, and will probably keep writing stuff after NaNo because I wanna tell this story! The rest of what I've written is for the pre/conquel I started when I decided we needed to explore Sisko and O'Brien's experiences while mutated (and that is going to be a fun fic!), and the sequel! Because once I established some stuff about the babies (like their names and personalities), they wanted to be doing things! And those things might have widespread impacts, but I will not go into details because that's for when the sequel fic goes up! Which it isn't until I finish posting the Main/original fic!

Milestone will be coming to AO3 on the 1st of December Australian time, and I wanted to let people know it was gonna happen. I'm so excited to start sharing this with the fandom!

@reginaldbroccoli @laurelhach @vermin-disciple @apolesen I am tagging you specifically to thank you for combining your efforts to create the post that made this story possible, and also to let you know someone is writing the thing. And I hope at least some of you will be interested in reading it and won't mind that I couldn't wait until next Threshold Day to begin posting said thing.

[lenteur]

random thoughts about strong girl nam soon, episode four

(read more because i always get carried away lol and this post might contain spoilers)

watching two episodes in a row. what happened to mal who couldn't get the motivation to watch even one episode for months?

Interesting how the mother pretends nam soon is six. She wants to pretend she never lost her and it's only the continuation of her childhood.

The chief of the diu team tasting the drug, even though he knew what effect it had on people. This makes no sense at all. He has experience in such cases and yet he still put it in his mouth. And what is that excuse? It's such a weak excuse. I think the writers wanted to k*ll him from the get go but didn't know how. This is weird.

The reunion with all her family members... we all shed some tears. She only remembers her dad because he was the last person she saw before being lost in mongolia.

Even super humans are humans. The mother feeling guilty for not protecting her daughter and feeling useless.

The bond she has with her mongolian parents is so strong. She still thinks about them and lets them know how she's doing.

I wonder if there will be a nam soon / hwang ja confrontation. I'd love that because the former thinks with her heart and emotions and the latter is manipulative and thinks with her brain to obtain what she desires. They're polar opposites.

The grandmother is so iconic. The way she makes me laugh every time. She's so funny. Her little song while dislocating the cow and breaking its bones by her bare hands is a feat of strength. And everyone is amazed, including me.

The ceo of doogo has an ambiguous aura to me because on one hand he seems haughty and looks like he has disdain for everyone other than him. But on the other hand, he doesn't have the charisma of a villain. He kind of looks almost transparent to me. Maybe because we haven't seen a lot of him in these four episodes?

honestly i've tried to understand what doogo's "official" activity was and i lack sleep so i'm not sure but they're kind of like a korean amaz*n? if i'm not mistaken (don't take my word for it though)

As expected the effect of the drugs are seen on the chief of the diu team. I really can't believe he went and put some of the drug in his mouth. Nonsense!

the bells ringing when nam soon said she'll protect hee sik. It's the little details that make this love story so cute

i think we all wanted to be nam soon at one moment in our lives. It feels so good to see her tell everyone what she thinks without hiding under excuses or anything like that.

It's the look of pure awe when kang hee sik sees nam soon's new look for me &lt;3

The way she wants to be where hee sik is because he will make her a better person <3 he's the only person that has been there for her ever since she landed in korea. he also proved her that he is a good person

i just can't with the grandma. She's just so funny! every time i see her i want to laugh. Wait that came out wrong. She's just so fun and i really enjoy every single moment she's had so far in the show

let's go love story between grandma and barista!!!

so far, nam soon is the worst undercover employee of all time.

i think hee sik has a role towards nam soon that he doesn't seem to be ready to handle. Seeing as nam soon is very oblivious to a lot of things, hee sik should have talked to her in more detail about the undercover mission. Because, at this rate, she'll get outed in no time.

what a relief that nam soon could get revenge on the airdnd scammer, even if she didn't get her money back

preview of the next episode seems really promising. Nam soon will confront both hwa ja and doogo's ceo.

A good episode

i'll give this one a 8/10