#Which would make sense BUT I don't think the showrunners are interested in pursuing that

[is-that-sand-in-my-waffles]

*chants quietly while reading theories about the Ahsoka show*: "no matter what happens with canon!Thrawn, you'll always have fanon!Thrawn. No matter what happens with canon!Thrawn, you'll always have fanon!Thrawn. No matter what happens with canon!Thrawn, you'll always have fanon!Thrawn - "

[olderthannetfic]

A recent anon made me want to read a bit more about queerbaiting and I ended up on James Woodall’s video Dr. Who Was Queerbaiting (https://youtu.be/Olpn9YsyMeM), have you seen it?

I found it interesting, especially for his sources and the reasoning for why the definition of queerbaiting should be expanded from the original marketing technique one. My first reaction is that it’s better to make up a new words, like queercatching, than to endlessly expand the meaning of an old one, potentially into uselessness. And well, once you expand the meaning into “not good enough to satisfy expectations” or say “it’s not queerbaiting because it feels more authentic to queer communities” the questions “Whose expectations? All communities? What about conflicting needs? Should we decide by hand raising?” come to mind. Obviously the answer is always that we need more and more varied representation but it does seem like a definition that would leave space for a lot of infighting (and leave us in need of a different word to convey the original meaning). I’d like to hear a few different thoughts on this from you and other readers though!

--

I haven't watched it.

Broadly, the rallying cry I want to see is: Media by people like us, for people like us.

Define "us" as you see fit. What you want to get behind is going to be very personal, and it won't be the same for all of "The Queer Community".

For me, it's people who like BL—as opposed to other m/m media—and who are willing to admit that what they like is BL and welcome other fans of BL.

I have a visceral horror of being asked to identify too closely with a female body or female role despite being reasonably comfortable as a woman. I dislike being told which character to identify with, regardless of their body or identity. I lack the self insert gene, like to a claw my skin off, get it away from me level.

I dislike things that are trying to be too tightly #ownvoices. "Queer Media" in a broad sense is irrelevant to me as a fan, though I care about it for broader political reasons. I want a media that actively promotes and pursues a disconnect between viewer's body and character's body, between viewer's identity and character's identity. Drag queens are interesting even if not aimed at me. Drag kings are great. BL is great. Cringey, unrealistic f/f by dudes is sometimes great for me too. The closest I'll go to #ownvoices is bisexual media for bisexual people.

The biggest mainstream media is not by people like me or for people like me if it's from the US or UK, and that includes mainstream-ish queer media.

The closest we get is cis gay dudes making art about cis gay dudes who live in their same city and work a similar job, yadda yadda. Or slightly mainstream stuff by poisonous trolls who cry about how much they need to gatekeep and how their BL is not BL. There's a constant assumption, even for the BLy shit by AFABs, that a narrow definition of #ownvoices is the objective and a 1:1 correspondence between everything about the character on screen and the viewer is desirable and most moral and politically best. No amount of nitpicking over terminology is going to change that.

I can consume indie books or head over to Asia where commercial BL industries exist. Those are my options right now.

The entire concept of queerbaiting is stupid as fuck because it imagines that other people are paying attention to us in contexts where they just aren't.

I don't think we should expand the meaning. I think we should approach media differently.

Nothing will change until:

1. People like you/me/whomever the desired queer voice is control media.

I don't mean "are in the writer's room": I mean are the showrunner. I don't mean "are the director" of a big movie that answers to a thousand producers: I mean are the studio head.

Power is what's needed, not begging for scraps!

Or 2.

We as consumers stop going "Sempai will notice me any day now!" about big shit and start spending 100% of our leisure entertainment time on indie things. Not as an also-ran that we fit in around HP and SPN and DW or whatever: as the entirety of the media empires we care about.

And no, that won't solve the problem of horrible people who turn out to abuse their partners still being good at art or whatever. Consuming indie media doesn't make it less problematic. It does offer the opportunity for me to consume media that is aimed at me.

--

I really don't care whether James picks yes or no in that video. The entire question is pointless.

[addictedtostorytelling]

Hi! I love your meta and how beautifully you write about GSR, I would like to know what you think about this, do you think Grissom and Sara would have been good parents? Why do you think the show didn’t allowed them to have a geek baby?

hi, anon!

thank you for your kind words!

i have got a big, ol' meta that covers my thoughts on potential gsr parenthood here, if you're interested.

i also have another big, ol' meta that specifically covers my thoughts on how they would have reacted to experiencing an unplanned pregnancy during their "secret dating" phase in s5-s6 here, if you're interested in that one, as well.

the tl;dr version is that while i think grissom and sara would be kickass parents were that particular life choice one they ever decided to make together, i also don't think they would necessarily ever be likely to make that particular life choice together, just given their respective characters and backgrounds.

grissom is—prior to his retirement—highly career-driven, meaning he might not want to put his focus on parenthood rather than work. he likewise has some pretty sizeable hang-ups regarding his own capacity to nurture and be unselfish, his age, his social deficits, etc., all of which might cause him to question his potential fitness as a father.

there's a line from another show i love from a character facing down the prospect of first-time fatherhood that i can absolutely see grissom saying (in so many words): "if, for nine months, you're hearing how this is gonna change your life, and ‘you've never loved anything like this’ and ‘my god, the love!’ and ‘nothing is gonna be important anymore’—it just never felt to me like i was someone who had the capacity for those feelings. plus, you know, i-i like what's important to me. i want it to stay important. i wanna be able to do it well."

meanwhile, sara has her own considerable hang-ups regarding how she was raised, her family and personal history of mental illness, her social deficits, etc. that might cause her to feel similarly unequipped for motherhood. she is also in her twenties and thirties—i.e., prime childbearing years—very career-minded, like grissom, so she might not be inclined to step away (even temporarily) to have a kid.

maybe if grissom and sara were to experience an unplanned pregnancy at some point, they would (under very specific circumstances) consider the possibility of having a child. ditto for maybe a one-in-a-million type scenario where they encountered a kid in the system who needed fostering or adopting.

however, i think nine times out of ten, they'd opt not to have a kid—and especially not if "nature never came to bear" or if one was never put directly into their paths.

that said, since i personally find the idea of them as parents very intriguing—the issue is one that pushes a lot of fun character buttons for both of them, butting up against their hopes and fears and senses of self in some very complicated and interesting ways—i have written a big, ol' geek!baby fic, where they find themselves dealing with an unplanned pregnancy in an au version of s8.

i call it the happy accidentsverse, and if you're interested, you can read that fic series here.

as for the issue of why the show never pursued a "grissom and sara have a kid" storyline in canon, i think there are probably multiple reasons why they didn't.

more discussion after the "keep reading," if you're interested.

__

to my mind, probably the biggest reason why we never saw a "grissom and sara have a kid" storyline in canon is that, particularly in the earlier seasons of the show, the showrunners tried not to focus too much on the characters' home lives.

though they would show the occasional "off the clock" scene here or there or every once in a while toss in some kind of love interest- or family-centric story beat, anthony zuiker and co. wanted the majority of the show's focus to be on the job—on the cases the csis investigated, the goings-on at the lab and in the field, the team's interactions with each other as colleagues, the team's interactions with other law enforcement professionals and people they met in connection to their cases, in the politics of the department, etc.

they were much stricter about this policy even than other procedurals of the time.

that's why we saw so little of grissom and sara's romantic relationship actually play out on screen—because tptb never intended to offer us anything more than just a small window into their personal lives outside of their careers.

and while of course grissom and sara having a kid (whether through sara getting pregnant or them deciding to foster and/or adopt) would definitely affect their working lives and could allow for some interesting storylines centered around the lab and in the field—for example, how might sara deal with the physical and emotional requirements of her incredibly demanding job while pregnant?, how might grissom and sara have to change their workaholic habits if they were to try to become foster or adoptive parents?, how might having a kid in the mix affect both grissom and sara's willingness to face the dangers inherent in their profession?, would becoming parents change the way they responded to certain cases?, etc.—that kind of storyline, just by its nature, would also probably require the show to spend more time at home with grissom and sara than the showrunners and writers ever really intended to.

narratively speaking, catherine having a school-aged kid to start out the show is one thing, while grissom and sara having a newborn or a brand new foster kid and becoming first-time parents would be something else entirely.

in catherine's case, her being a mom to an older kid from the get-go is a much more lowkey deal, not only because a kid at that age can mostly exist in an off-screen capacity except for in episodes where her presence is plot-relevant but also because it's an already-established fact.

catherine is a mother—and an experienced mother, at that—from the very first time we meet her; it's part of both her personal and professional identities from day #1. the baseline is there. there are no questions about it. no big blanks to fill in. she's already made the life-changing decisions. she's already entrenched in that role.

the same would not be true if grissom and sara were to have a kid.

because they were "first timers" (and especially because they had seemingly never aspired to parenthood previously), the show would have to answer questions with them—depict grissom and sara making the huge, life-altering decisions; reckoning with big emotions; figuring stuff out; working through their fears and hang-ups; adjusting to a monumental change in their lives; drawing together in new ways; changing and developing as characters and as a couple; establishing new patterns; etc.

the groundwork would need to be laid where the audience could see it being laid in real time, you know?

and laying that groundwork would require showing lots of private conversations between grissom and sara, trips to the ob's office or talks with the social worker, painting the nursery or putting up a swing set, making childcare arrangements, changing their lifestyle, etc.

my sense is that tptb never really wanted to go there.

that much focus on grissom and sara's home life would have been too distracting—too much of a serialized personal storyline that required attention in every episode, regardless of the "case of the day"—for their tastes.

now.

in theory, the "keep the focus on the job, not the home" rule is one tptb could have considered breaking, had they really wanted to.

after all, it was just a production choice, not actually any kind of hard and fast rule, so if they'd decided they wanted to go the "grissom and sara have a kid" route, they could have done so.

there's always the old flannery o'connor maxim: "it's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. you can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much."

however, another reason why i think they never chose to go the geek!baby route, beyond the "it goes against our sense of what our show is actually about" thing, is that, frankly, within the universe of the show itself, the timing for grissom and sara was never right.

grissom and sara don't even get together as a committed couple until s5/s6, so, barring a major deviation from what is now canon, they likely could not have had a child at any point prior to 2005/2006, just to start out with.

then their relationship remains a secret until the end of s7/beginning of s8, meaning that between 2006-2007, they're definitely not looking to have a kid and probably would be pretty averse to having one even were they to experience an unplanned pregnancy, just given the potential fallout where their jobs are concerned.

they would have to "come out" as a couple, and one or both of them might end up getting fired over it.

fast forward, and between s8 and s9, sara experiences a mental health crisis that eventually culminates with her moving away from vegas for the better part of two years from 2008 to 2009 while grissom remains behind—and by the time she's stable and moves back to vegas circa 2009/2010, grissom is then living abroad, and they're only seeing each other once a month via transatlantic commute.

back in the day, when sara first turned up in s10, i know there was some internet scuttlebutt that maybe at some point it would be revealed that in-between the events of episode 09x10 "one to go" (when last we'd seen them) and episode 10x01 "family affair" (when sara returns to vegas to "temp"), grissom and sara had had a "secret honeymoon baby."

however, such a revelation was never made—timeline-wise, it would have been a tight fit anyhow, as, within the universe of the show, episode 09x10 "one to go" takes place in january '09 and episode 10x01 "family affair" takes place in september '09—and neither did grissom and sara ever have a kid at any subsequent point.

with sara living in the states and grissom not, the likelihood that they would ever decide to expand their family steadily diminished as s10, s11, and s12 rolled on, both because they were getting older and because their marriage eventually ended up on the rocks.

cue the whole divorce debacle of s13, a few solid years of misery and loneliness in the interim, and by the time grissom and sara get back together/remarried in 2015, sara is forty-four years old and probably peri- or even full-on menopausal, and she and grissom are living a nomadic seafaring lifestyle, so the likelihood of them either having a biological child or fostering/adopting is incredibly low.

again, there was some speculation among fans—based on previous comments from showrunner anthony zuiker regarding his ideas for grissom and sara's post-"immortality" life at sea—that when the reboot rolled around, we would eventually get a "in the six years since we last saw them, grissom and sara have had a kid" reveal.

no dice, though.

s1 of csi: vegas ran its course with no secret boat babies anywhere.

all of the above being the case, there just weren't even that many points during the show's run when it would have made logistical sense for grissom and sara to have children together.

they were always either in a state of having to keep their relationship a secret for the sake of their careers or else of living apart from each other, and by the time they finally got all their shit together and were living in the same place on a full-time basis, sara was nearing the end of her prime childbearing years and they were living the kind of lifestyle where fostering/adoption would be next to impossible.

narratively-speaking, parenthood just was never in the cards for them.

of course, it's worth stating, the writers could have maybe swung a geek!baby storyline in the later seasons had they wanted to if they had just made the choice to move grissom back to vegas along with sara between s10 and s15. he wouldn't even have had to appear on-screen. sara would have just needed to reference him occasionally in dialogue and be shown to take phone calls from him at times, a "i'm meeting grissom for our first ultrasound appointment" here, a "he's been at home painting the nursery all morning. he put little ladybugs up the walls" there. they could have done a whole pregnancy storyline that way, and it would have given sara something to do during seasons when she is otherwise criminally underutilized. then maybe if they were lucky, they could have gotten billy to come back for a guest spot when it came time for the baby to be born. but, alas, such a storyline would have required them to imply depth, which is something they had no idea how to do.

—which brings us to the last big reason why i think the showrunners never had grissom and sara have children:

because, ultimately, they just never felt it was right for the characters.

as stated above, both grissom and sara have plenty of reasons, both individually and as a couple, based on their backgrounds and predilections and development, why they might never choose to pursue parenthood.

while there are certain very particular scenarios were i can imagine they might set those reasons aside, overcome their hang-ups and fears, and decide to "go for it" re: having kids, i also think it would take a lot of narrative work to get them there—that thread would be something the writers would have had to really develop, requiring more than a few "acts of god" and major plot interventions to make the idea seem feasible.

they could have done it if they really wanted to.

but in the end, i think they didn't feel any compelling need.

grissom and sara have been an unconventional couple from the get-go, and their development has been circuitous and unstraightforward. there have been many setbacks for them along the way and strange turns. they've definitely not done everything "by the book."

for them to have a somewhat "untraditional" happy ending—at least by primetime, network early 00s flagship couple tv standards—makes a good amount of sense.

they're not the "white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a dog" norman rockwell family, and i think tptb are very okay with that outcome.

they like the image of this middle-aged couple that found immense fulfillment in each other and in their shared work (whether as csis or conservationists) and never felt the need to look outside of those things in order to be happy.

that's not to say they might not have written things differently had some of the production realities of the show been different along the way—like, say jorja fox had never left the show during s8 and grissom and sara had been able to get married in vegas as planned while both still working at the lab or that billy had come back to the show with jorja between s10 and s15; maybe in those cases, they might have eventually decided to go for the geek!baby storyline after all—however, all things as they were, i think they were generally pretty comfortable with how things ended up in regards to grissom and sara remaining childless.

they had explored the notion of "csis as parents" as much as they cared to with catherine, warrick, and russell.

they didn't want to go there with grissom and sara.

and who knows? maybe there were other outside factors that influenced their decision to that end, like actor preferences or the difficulty of including infant actors in a complicated production such as theirs, etc.

suffice it to say, i think the showrunners' decision to keep grissom and sara childless was probably a multifaceted one.

the good news is, regardless of how things turned out in canon, we as fans can always play around with the geek!baby concept as much as we want to and in as many different permutations as we like.

i certainly have a lot of fun in my accidentsverse, imagining grissom and sara facing both the challenges and rewards of parenthood, and i know a lot of other fan authors who have their own takes on that idea, as well.

anyway.

rambling now.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

[kepnerandavery]

ppl seam to forget that Frannie was the one who wanted a baby she literally said it to Micheal when they're walking around after he comes back from India.

Also this is not related to anything but can people please stop spamming the Michael Stirling tag with Stuff about Michaela... like tag properly guys please... Especially since they all hate Michael so much how about they just stop talking about him altogether and simply talk about Michaela! make a tag for her and stick to it. It's also very much a way to keep discourse away from both sides!

Let us book readers have the Michael Stirling we enjoy and love and let us talk about him in the Michael Stirling tags.

And you all who love the changes and are excited for Michaela have her and talk about her in the Michaela Stirling tag.

This way if anyone wished to not see the other they can simply block the tag and save everyone a lot of drama and trouble.

You are so right anon! People act like Fran was a naive teenager that was so easily swayed by everything. She had more conviction and common sense than they give her credit for. And the same people make Michael out to be some predator that brainwashed Fran when she was the one who initiated their first kiss and gave him the green light to finally pursue his feelings for her after YEARS of respecting her marriage to John, her grief, privacy, and boundaries. This was a man who was desperately in love with her, wanted to marry her, and give her children which she deeply yearned for. He didn't do anything that she didn't want or was unaware of. And he wouldn't have even dreamed of those things if she wasn't clearly interested in him.

And you said exactly what I've been thinking about the back and forth arguments in the tag. This new instant Michaela fandom needs to conduct their celebrations in their own space and leave us alone to process our shock and grieve in peace. The Michael Stirling/franchael tag is now the book fan's space.

They can easily create a new ship name and leave us be. They keep trying to make everyone forget Michael and get on board with this change as if we are signing petitions to have this new character removed. Idk if others are, but I certainly am not going to those lengths to make the showrunner include Michael in the show when it's clear that they used him for a half arsed woke agenda. It's kinda clear this was the bare minimum the writers did for representation. If they truly cared about representation, they would have created an original female character to end up with Fran so that the people who asked to see that representation could enjoy that without all this drama.

It's so crystal clear that the creators of this show don't give a damn about its fans. So I'm quite relieved that Michael will not be in this show cause I've been kinda hoping that he wouldn't anyway because he will be ruined by these writers if he were. Now we can keep the untainted/idealistic book version of him forever cause some adaptations can't do justice to fictional men anyway.

[horizon-verizon]

Who do you find more interesting as a villain in the greens ? ( Aegon, Alicent, Aemond, Larys?)

Sorry for leaving this question for so long, I had to take a mini break to do this question justice.

Answer to the Actual Question

Probably Larys, just because there is more to be discovered and think about with him and his motivation in joining the greens. We don't know anything about his life at Harrenhal or with his life with Lyonel, Harwin and his sisters or his relationship with his mother before she died. Seeing how he was willing to join the greens, he had to have had something against one of the blacks, Viserys, or all of them, or he favored one/a few of the greens for some idea of them. Or he thought that by banking on them and their greed that he would become a more powerful, fuller version of himself? Maybe he felt that the blacks would offer him nothing, and if so, why?

I feel like under the greens, he would have had a better chance at accumulating power since Harwin, being the oldest and the heir, was in his way and was already Rhaenyra's lover/bio dad of her kids, therefore forever in her favor, even if he lived and she still pursued Daemon. (And yes, I think Larys would have known that they were not Laenor's. One doesn't have to be smart to know that.) It could be as simple as that. Or it could be that PLUS bad blood, a bad perception, etc.

With Alicent, it's easier see what the backbone of her motives is: power and Andal/patriarchal hegemony where she builds her power and sense of validity/superiority from. Because we saw it with Cersei. What makes her different from Cersei is that Alicent is actively attempting to depose a living female royal and many in the fandom believe that she is more licensed to, because Alicent pushes forward the patriarchal/traditionally Catholic values they themselves adhere to, fulfilling their fascist, eugenist, anti-Targ fantasies. Some fans of Cersei are the same, but Cersei had less because she herself engaged in the incest the Targs practiced (sibling) and very much wanted to marry Rhaegar, so she is also an anathema to those same demi-anti-Targ, ableist, Tywin/Stannis-loving, misogynist tradcaths.

Aemond and Aegon the Elder, again, not that complex after putting in some more thought about Alicent's influence on them and the lack of real love and care in their lives, those things being replaced with patriarchal entitlement. All three are interesting in that they all show the overlapping and repetitions of abuse for what they are (even if some fans are damn blind to it).

Which is such a shame that the HotD writers didn't bother with developing a backstory for the Strongs or giving Rhaenyra her Strong ladies in waiting. There is such a lack and negligence of depth in this show that comes from it's showrunners/writer's misunderstanding of the original themes and narrative patterns.

Mini-Rant (not towards anon)

No matter what GRRM says -- or what people think he means -- about not wanting to or intending to not repeat himself in his storylines within the ASoIaF world, the enduring fact is that writers have topics and ideas about those things in mind and create stories out of those specific ideas and conclusions. We can't deny that Cersei and Alicent, and even Rhaenyra or Dany, all have similarities in how they try to gain or maintain power in their patriarchal world, or think about their places in those societies. They go to different results, but the same need to validate themselves and make themselves matter within that context always informs their decisions or are the foundations of how they perceive themselves and the world. Therefore, it behooves the reader to understand how there ARE patterns and that those patterns matter to understand the overarching treatment of love, duty, compassion, and ambition in ASoIaF. It is not "woke" to study the feminist storylines present or acknowledge how classism and religion shapes how Catelyn and Sansa Stark, how Catelyn repeats the Andal misogyny and classist thinking to her daughters (post by ariamariastark1).

Rather it is acknowledging what is already supported in the actual text with how Alicent does with Aegon II and Aemond AND Cersei does it with Joffrey, which is how these boys all get to be so unapologetically entitled and sexually, verbally, and otherwise physically abusive to both relatives and non relatives.l and intimate partners.

Why are the boys different from the girls in how they express misogyny? Because the girls are not given the same privileges the boys are and will never be authorities like those boys, so the boys grow up to be monsters and the girls grow up to support those monsters for selfish ambition or whatever feeling of superiority is left to them, or what they rationalize.

If you cannot see this is what GRRM is doing, you need a lesson in reading comprehension. Several of them in fact.

[my-mt-heart]

Theories regarding Caryl in 11C is the last part of the ask, I think...? (If I've left any questions out, remind me and I'll circle back. I don't know if I've covered all your questions, MT, but I'm going to assume you'll ask if there's something else. :P)

I've mentioned this to MT already, but I think, with the time jump, we could be looking at bookends to a relationship. During production, it's not uncommon to have to roll with unexpected events and with all the backstage drama regarding the spinoff, this would be something that Angela Kang could push through and still give viewers something. Personally, I wouldn't go for that option because I think ending their personal relationship is a sadder sendoff than keeping things nebulous, but I also don't know what she's looking at in terms of logistics.

When AK introduced Carol's ring, it felt like she's going to backdate a more formal commitment between Caryl and in the context of the obstacles she's had to face in trying to run this season, it would make sense to play it that way. No, the viewer wouldn't get the start of their romantic involvement on screen, but there also wouldn't be Gimple telling her that Daryl is a man's man and TWD isn't a romance. Studio interference is annoying and if you have to start MacGyver-ing your narrative around someone's incompetence, it's frustrating on a whole other level.

Another way things could go, if AK married Caryl off, is that she could treat this separation like Daryl is going on a business trip. The spinoff sounds like a limited series: Daryl goes off to retrieve Rick and AMC's plan is most likely to give Rick a new show. (Thus the urgency in shooting this summer.) There's no way with the change in concept that Andy Lincoln's presence in GA was unrelated to the upcoming spinoff. Our heroes know Rick's alive, but Carol probably has more important things to do on the home front than rescuing him (again) from whatever scrape he got himself into this time.

I agree with what MT said previously, that Caryl don't need a marriage to be together because they're free spirits. But, as a displaced showrunner, AK has limited possibilities to make sure that the new management can't unravel the established bond between characters. Marrying Carol and Daryl in a low-key way is something she could sneak in to give Gimple a parting gift that he can't easily do away with. Carol is too important to AMC to kill off, so Gimple can't have her killed off-screen in the spinoff to let Daryl pursue other interests in France. That would be bad optics in terms of multiple -isms and I don't think AMC would approve of Daryl as a cheater either.

Regardless, we all know Gimple is way more interested in a Rick & Negan combo than he is in Daryl, so that could be the silver lining for Caryl.

I think that was the last of the questions for now. Definitely acknowledge that these are just your theories and we should take them as such. It's still great to get an industry perspective when the rest of us are running around like headless chickens. Here are my thoughts...

Option 1: The thing is, Caryl fans have always dealt with naysayers, many of them loud and rude and ageist, so just getting confirmation that they are romantic could be validating. But I agree with you, watching the relationship end without all the beauty and happiness in between would be absolutely devastating. And also doesn't feel true to their dynamic which is supposed to be everlasting. They're each other's person. They're soulmates, life partners, ride or die, etc. If they finally get together after many years of slowly coming together, there shouldn't be a bookend. I really hope this is not the route taken if there's even a chance they get together at all, and what gives me hope is the fact that more than likely (if NR is to be believed), Daryl leaving will be mission-oriented. I don't think he's leaving by himself because he wants a fresh start (as we were led to believe all this time he was going to do with Carol). I suppose there's the possibility of higher powers trying to keep Daryl single for his spinoff for all the branding reasons you listed before, but let's cross our fingers that AK has found a way around that as you go on to mention.

Option 2: I figured there had to be some type of significance to that ring since, and maybe you can back me up here, wardrobe choices are carefully thought out. There's no way it would escape the costume department's or Angela's or Melissa's notice that putting a ring on THAT finger with no other jewelry has very specific connotations. Unless they just wanted to fuck with us, my thought was that it was symbolic of her emotional commitment to Daryl while being presented with the opportunity to get back with Ezekiel aka Daryl's foil (red stone vs blue stone). A literal offscreen marriage would be both mind-blowing and upsetting because again, we've been waiting for canon forever and we want to see it happen in real time, including all of the emotional build up. But if it's true that AK was forced to get sneaky, I would accept this very VERY begrudgingly. For the validation at least.

Option 3: The ending that perfectly honors Caryl's shared emotional journey is riding off into the sunset to explore the world and just be free and I will die on that hill. I will never get over the fact that it was almost so until "someone" said nah, forget what these characters deserve. Let's keep them in perpetual fighting mode, let's cover up our mistakes with the Rick arc, and let's add running zombies to keep our male viewership in tact. As a result of this fuckery, I'm convinced nothing will fully satisfy me or make sense. However, if I was making the best out of a shitty situation, marrying Caryl off before Daryl heads off on a search and rescue mission would be the best way to go. I'd be comforted knowing that Daryl and Carol finally took that leap with each other we've been waiting for. Plus, it is binding in the sense I wouldn't have to worry about any other potential love interest in the spinoff. My only concern (it's my concern no matter what unfortunately) is why Carol stays behind. Because as I mentioned before I don't buy her comfortably falling into a Pamela Milton or nanny role when her arc has been building up to her freeing herself from having to constantly take care of others. I don't buy her and Daryl suddenly wanting different things for their future. I buy that she would be tired of fighting, but I also think she would still want to go with Daryl. So maybe she does insist on going with, but Daryl tells her to stay because he wants her to preserve the peace they've obtained. Or maybe because he wants their next adventure together to be the one they talked about ( New Mexico). It would suck that they'd be sacrificing time together again and that Daryl would be forced back into lone hero mode, but...sigh.

[skamofcolor]

I don't completely hate, but have never been a fan of the Noora/William season on OG Skam. Is Skam Netherlands any good? Do they fix all the weird slightly abusive issues with William in Netherlands? I kinda wanna watch because I like the actress for Netherlands!Noora.

**Spoiler warning and mentions of sexual assault in this answer**

I would highly suggest watching both seasons of Skamnl if you haven’t already, but only if you’re okay watching things with sexual assault in them (if you’ve watched OG season 2 you already know about this storyline, and I would say NL makes it more explicit. They did add trigger warnings to those videos though after fans reached out to ask them to, in case you still want to watch but need to skip those clips). Both Suus de Nies (Isa / Dutch!Eva) and Zoë Love Smith (Liv / Dutch!Noora) are radiant mains and superb actresses, plus the supporting casts are so fun and bring a lot of emotionality to their roles. I think NL works because of it’s strong foundation (talking about the NL showrunners, not necessarily OG) and a dynamic cast.

In regards to Noah (Dutch!William) and Liv (aka, Noliv) in particular… (take this with a grain of salt because NL’s S2 isn’t over yet so we don’t know how well this analysis or opinion will hold up, particularly around Noah’s reaction to Morris (Dutch!Niko) assaulting Liv…)

I am an avid anti-William and anti-Noorhelm person, precisely because William reminded me of my abuser and I didn’t seen anything romantic about their storyline. One of the hard things about answering this question is that (and this is true of all the “Williams,”) is that they’re based on such an abusive creep that each remake would have to had changed the characterization and storyline from S1 to really make me enjoy the remake counterpart. I don’t think any remake has done this, to be frank; the baseline is so horrible, imo, that doing so might have actually been impossible. But that being said, I think Nl, Druck, and España changed enough aspects of their William so that they A) don’t remind me of my abuser and B) are actually a bit fun to watch. At this point I’m not a Noliv, Winterberg, or Norandro shipper but they’re tolerable enough for me that I’m not anti- like I am with Noorhelm and the others (at least when it comes to S2).

imo there are a few things that make NL S2 so much better than the OG, and a lot of it has to do with the framing of the story as more about Liv and her growth rather than like… William manipulating Noora and Noora… realizing William wasn’t all that bad? idk. Noliv is central, don’t get me wrong, but it almost feels like a secondary point, just one of many things going on in Liv’s life, as opposed to being the only thing that matters (as it often felt for me during Noora’s season, even with all the other stuff going on for her). For all intents and purposes, Noora’s season always felt like it was about William’s feelings and reactions, not about Noora’s - even her being sexually assaulted was framed as more about how William would react, and then, how he did react. It always felt like Noora was (I’m not talking about her sexual assault here) was a passive player in her own season, constantly gaslit and doing things because of William. Liv seems to have more agency in her own story - she does things because she wants to, even if she doesn’t want to admit it to herself yet.

So with this framing in mind, I think that there are a few major things that I would say make Noliv better than Noorhelm:

1) The acting. Sorry, it has to be said. I’m not sure who directed Josefine (Noora) to look constantly frightened and/or annoyed or who directed Thomas (William) to look like a serial killer but that really didn’t help. I’m not sure what people are talking about when they say Noorhelm has chemistry just because the two actors looks so flat and uncomfortable all the time in every scene, imo. It’s sad because generally Josefine lights up the screen and is great at microexpressions but she looks genuinely frightened or flat in most of the Noorhelm scene that are supposed to be “romantic.” Thomas either looks creepy or bored. In contrast, Zoë and Monk (Noah) I think bring really nuanced emotions to Noliv. Monk portrays someone who seems 50% serious, 50% laughing at everything in any given situation, and I think he brings something fun to Noah. Even in Noah’s creep moments (like when he keeps showing up at Liv’s place unannounced) Monk is so… charming in that role that it’s easy to forgot that this is like… something an actual stalker does and it’s not cute. Similarly, Zoë makes Liv look at Noah with a genuine fondness as their relationship grows, like “I can’t believe I actually like this dork.” Zoë portrays a host of emotions that make sense in the scenes, and is great at showing hints of emotions that Liv feels but doesn’t want to show.

2) Liv’s agency. So again, I always felt like in OG S2, things were happening to Noora or that she was pressured into things as opposed to her choosing to do things. I think NL made a few dialogue and timeline changes to make it seem like Liv had more choice than Noora did, imo. For example, when Liv asks Noah to stop contacting Engel, he says “sure, if you go on a date with me,” but it seems like a joke? And then… suddenly Liv and Noah are on a date AFSGRG it didn’t have the blackmailing/build up that the OG Noorhelm date had, imo. Or how Noah’s mom dies during the season (actually, during the first Noliv “date”/meeting/whatever), and the show doesn’t try to frame him as being!an asshole from that trauma? As opposed to William, who was an asshole because of the trauma of his sister being killed… offscreen…  years ago. But anyway in doing this, it’s Liv who decides to go to Noah’s house and stay over to comfort him, rather than Noora going to a party “for Vilde” and then staying over. There are a few other things but I always got the feeling (which is why it read like abusive) that William was always controlling and one step ahead of Noora. Liv and Noah seem like they’re much more even footing, oftentimes with Liv controlling the narrative.

3) Noah’s characterization. Look, I’m the first one to say being a ~sensitive artist~ doesn’t mean you can’t be a raging misogynist, and I think that’s true for Noah. A lot of his actions in S1 were rooted in misogyny and he never really made up for that. But at least Noah has a personality. And it’s not just being an artist hipster, I actually find him funny and occasionally thoughtful and he’s charming enough for Ralph to like him. I also think he’s more intuitive then William was, just in terms of how he responds to Liv’s reactions to him. It’s baseline empathy but he leaves when she asks him to, he seems to take her fears about their relationship seriously (instead of just rolling his eyes and telling her to get over it), he often waits for her to make the first move. It’s like… from the beginning we know he’s interested in Liv but a lot of the framing is that he’s not actively pursuing her or cross her boundaries - it’s her who comes to him, imo. I actually see redeemable qualities in Noah (again: with the caveat that the season isn’t over yet). I find him fun to watch and I actually smiled at a lot of the interactions between him and Liv. I even thought his reasoning for beating up that guy made sense (the OG bus fight parallel), and I was sympathetic to both his and Liv’s feelings about it. I also think it helps that none of the characters (and, dare I say the show itself) take Noah very seriously? LMAO I always felt like William was supposed to be like, this Unattainable God (ugh) but Noah is just… funny? Like during one of his slow-mos in S1 someone shoots a literal canon of glitter as he walks by! Or how the girl squad keeps calling him “wack painter kid” LOL. This again, has a lot to do with Monk’s humor coming through, but Noah isn’t overblown the way William was, imo. There’s no idol-worship happening behind the scenes…

So with all of this together I think they did manage to make Noliv better because it doesn’t feel abusive the way that Noorhelm does. In the beginning of S2 Noah is still creepy and the show seems to be framing it as cutesy which is my biggest issue with the ship (plus the Engel (Dutch!Vilde) and Noah S1 backstory). But so far, I think they’ve managed to make it something that’s at least a bit enjoyable for me and not downright hard to watch. This is just my opinion, though, if other abusive survivors feel differently they’re also entitled to their opinions! But if the sexual assault storyline won’t bother or trigger you, I would say give S2 a try. NL also isn’t geoblocked and the skamdutch team adds English subtitles right on the Youtube clips! So def watch it on their channel if you try it out.

- mod Jennifer

**NOTE: formatting should be fixed, ok to reblog now**

[feathersandblue]

I don't think you're being fair to Madi. You're only looking for ways to make Silver look better than he is. He betrayed Flint and Madi because he couldn't stand the thought of losing her, it's not as if he really cared about anyone else. Silver did a fucked-up thing, he betrayed the woman he claimed to love and he sent her away so she couldn't stop him. And then he treated her as if she was the one who needed to "understand" what he did, like, that's some form of gaslighting right there. ---1

No. HE betrayed her, and he needs to understand what that betrayal cost her. Not only her but every enslaved person in the Americas. Silver had no right to do what he did. I hate that the showrunners didn’t address that. She should have kicked him out. He has no right to be on her island. Silver betrayed her, and I really hope she leaves him and he spends the rest of his life being miserable. —2

Nonnie, I think you’re a little too used in seeing things only in black and white. You’re accusing me of wanting to make Silver look better than he is, but the only thing I get from your aks is that you mean, I have to see him like you do. 

I’ve written plenty about Silver, his motives, his reasons, yet you’re addressing none of my arguments and basically just repeating “what he did was wrong, he had no right” like a Hail Mary of Black Sails interpretation.

Look, you dont have to agree with me, but if you send me an ask, I’d appreciate it if you took the time to come up with something that goes beyond a reiteration of “Silver is a horrible human being.”

A couple of other things. 

1. When you say, “Silver had no right to do what he did” - then I wonder what that means, exactly, because we’re clearly not talking about any kinds of “rights” granted by law here. We’re talking about your idea of what Silver should or shouldn’t be allowed to do, what kind of power he should or shouldn’t wield, and it means that you feel that his agency should come with stipulations that you, personally, impose on it, based on your own sense of morality but also on what you, personally, find especially offensive. 

This is an interesting approach, and it’s pretty easy to see how, when applied to other examples, it’s becoming a mostly arbitrary judgment of certain characters and their actions. 

Did Anne have the right to kill her crew for Max’ sake? 

Did Flint have the right to kill Gates? 

Did Flint have the right to sink that merchant vessel in 3.02? 

Did Miranda have the right to ask for a pardon without telling Flint?

Did Vane have the right to take the fort from Hornigold? 

Did Madi have the right to ask Silver to dispose of Billy?

Basically, when people say, “this person didn’t have the right to do that thing”, they are usually very particular and subjective in their judgement. 

2. “Gaslighting” is not what Silver is doing with Madi in the scene. He’s telling her what he did, and he voices the hope that she will be able to understand and forgive him. He declares his own determination to wait, for as long as it takes. That’s not gaslighting. He’s not making her doubt her own perception. He’s not lying to her (or at least not in a way that he isn’t also lying to himself). Justifying yourself to someone, and describing your actions in a way that is meant to make other people understand them and relate to you is not the same thing as trying to deceive them. “Gaslighting” has become one of these terms people tend to throw around without knowing what they mean. But in this case, it’s really not appropriate.

3. Concerning the fact that “he betrayed Flint and Madi because he couldn’t stand the thought of losing her, it’s not as if he really cared about anyone else”, that’s an oversimplification.

Yes, it was the prospect of losing Madi that was the catalyst for Silver’s decision to side with Jack and Max. And, yes, his motivation was that he couldn’t bear to lose her, and that he wanted her safe more than he wanted her to have that war she desired. But, and here’s where the text is on my side, that is not all there is to it.

 I’ve written extensively about how Flint is motivated by rage and desperation to wage this war. But it doesn’t change the fact that he has good arguments on his side for why this war is necessary, and that he sees a fundamental, systemic form of injustice and wants to fix it. Flint’s actions are both selfish and altruistic, in that he wants a better world for everyone involved, but the reasons why he pursues this goal in such an extreme and uncompromising fashion have nothing to do with altruism and everything to do with his rage and grief. 

Silver, on the other hand, is a survivor, someone who lacks that inherent ambition to change the world for the better. He gets drawn into this war for a variety of reasons, and he follows Flint’s example for the better part of season four without ever believing in his goals. For that reason, it’s much more difficult for him to determine whether it is really the right path. He’s deeply conflicted, and that innner struggle becomes more pronounced as he sees the price that other people have to pay for Flint’s war. Silver is not sure that it’s a good thing. But it’s only the experience of almost losing Madi that propels him into action,the thing that finally tips the scales. However, the underlying understanding of the war as a wasteful and horrible thing is not rooted in that - rather, it’s a a part of the way in which Silver understands the world. It’s fundamentally different from the way Flint and Madi see it. The show has made it very clear that while Flint and Madi are shaped by their history - their personal experiences - the same is true for Silver, even though his past is not revealed in detail. This fundamental difference in personality - in the way these characters view the world and their own place in it - is not something that can be the subject of moral judgment.

The conflict between Silver and Flint is not one between selfishness on Silver’s part and altruism on Flint’s, because both of them have selfish and altruistic motives. The conflict between them is as old as humanity itself - what is the price of a war, and is that price worth paying? 

For as long as humanity exists, this question has not been answered, and I expect it never will be. People who have gone through a war, who have experienced its horrors first hand, are often among those who try their hardest to prevent another one. For example, the current era of peace in Europe, brokered after WWII, was the result of an agreement that the two world wars had been so horrible that war was no longer an option. 

And yet, inevitably, there are always people who, faced with the reality of a corrupt and crumbling system of government that presumably withstands all their attempts to reform it from within, think that a revolution is necessary. Of course, these people start out with the best of intentions, but the result is often an ecalation of violence that turns countries into warzones and wastelands.

Black Sails is a show about pirates and outcasts, and we are meant to sympathize with their struggles. It would hardly make sense otherwise. And so, understandably, it spends less time showing the aftermath of a battles than the battle itself and its victories. For example, we see the battle on maroon island, and we see Flint, Silver, and Madi victorious - we don’t the women and children mourning their husbands and fathers, parents mourning their chilren, we don’t see the wounded dying in agony, we don’t see the corpses being thrown into a mass burial site. 

In season four alone, Nassau is raided twice - once when the pirates retake it from the governor, the second time when the Spanish raid the island. The Spanish invasion is shown in greater detail - the rapes, the plundering, the killing - and because it was Rogers who ordered it, who is clearly painted as a villain, we are quick to blame him for it. But in truth, the Spanish raid was only another turn of the downward spiral which several parties contributed to. 

For a US American TV show, Black Sails is actually rather good at describing the historical dialectics of revolution, counter-revolution, war, peace, action and reaction, that we can see everywhere in history - and it’s very good at showing two conflicting view points which are irreconcilable, and which are also universal to the human condition - everywhere, at any time where people disagree on how to best fight systemic injustice. In the Black Sails finale, one of these view points is vocalized by Silver, who has just gone through a personal awakening of sorts - almost losing Madi, realizing, through an encounter with the cook on board of the Lion how far he, himself, has come in turning into Flint. The importance of that scene can not be overstated - really, for Silver, it’s like coming full circle, realizing that from a person who was trying to protect himself from acts of violence, he has turned into a person who routinely engages in them; from someone who wants to escape a war to someone who brings it about. It’s the moment where Silver realizes that he has become the very thing that turns other people’s life into a fucking nightmare. The other viewpoint is vocalized by Flint, who believes that changing the world for the better requires to bring civilization down, that the only way to make progess is through a violent revolution.

There is no middle ground between those positions, in that moment, there is no way to overcome that fundamental divide. 

No matter where you, personally, stand on this issue, I think that denying the significance of this conflict between Flint and Silver, and the fact that there are valid arguments made on both side -  treating the whole thing as it if was nothing more than Silver being a selfish asshole - means doing a massive disservice to a show that has given us these wonderful, layered characters, and an excellently written storyline that includes many universal and highly difficult, complex topics, and doesn’t shy away from leaving this conflict unresolved, which is something very rare.