#and it's the most beautiful heartbreaking arc for someone who's survived so much abuse to choose themself first and foremost

[fanfictionsrookie]

...FUCK

Fuck don’t do this to me.

So Cinder lived in an orphanage for about ten years of her life. Since the beginning she was forced to constantly work under harsh conditions while the other children were free to play and hurt her. So this already gave rise to Cinder’s temper and tendency to lash out when provoked by people of lesser power than those keeping her captive.

And when someone does come around...

A woman who can give her a life she only dreamed of?

Well it turns to be just that, a dream, a fairy tale.

For this woman didn’t want another daughter to begin with. She wanted a servant, The woman does not even consider Cinder as a person who needs something as little as food. Cinder has to go out and ask for these things, and when it is given, it is simply enough to scrape by.

It is at this moment that Cinder realises that her life here, will be no better than the life she lived at the orphanage. It might very well be worse.

But even no, with no options but to do as she is told, Cinder is intrinsically defiant. She is looking for an escape.

Just like her fans, Cinder is forced to live off of crumbs. I’m sorry guys.

But seriously, this just hammers in the fact that Cinder has been taking care of herself, surviving since the beginning. She wouldn’t even dare risk asking for food, which will never be enough, and still get punished for it.

And there he is guys, Cinder’s prince.

Fuck this breaks by heart.

So Cinder has already unlocked her semblance. I’ve said it before, but to me, Cinder’s semblance is the subconscious manifestation or need for emotional warmth that she never got to experience as a child.

And what she got instead was torture. Like this is literal torture. And I can imagine like, just being adopted, Cinder is given this wonderful gift, a new home, a beautiful necklace. Only for it to turn into a cruel means of controlling her.

And this is giving me horrible deja vu.

Fuck me. Rule of three.

This scenes clearly cements the lasting effects of mental and physical abuse, especially when someone never escapes her abusive environment. Cinder presently knows what Salem is doing to her. But it’s something she doesn’t want to face, because of a desperate need to be free.

Just this reaction. This instant reaction of fear and always being on guard.

Cinder’s arc has multiple facets. The realisation that power does not guarantee victory, that hurting others does not heal your own pain, and as we’ll later see, that in doing so, you’ll forever be forced to go on the run. That one should peruse constructive methods in achieving one’s goals.

And what Cinder has always wanted is freedom.

I guessed her to be about 12 in the first snippet in the previous episode, but good grief this is heartbreaking.

Even more so when you realise that through everything, Cinder did look for a positive way out. She wanted to be a huntress. Just stop and think for a minute how different her life could have been. This is what she wanted. Freedom to live her own life, free from anguish.

And by the gods did she work hard for that dream. It’s not just seven years of training and waiting. But seven years of continuous torture.

And the effects of that is showing, slowly but surely the bottled up hatred is showing and she is trying so hard to bottle it up.

Then it happens. Cinder is so close. She has grown up into a beautiful young woman and she is on the verge of fulfilling her dream. Getting a taste of freedom. But, a dream once again.

Then it happens. Cinder is so close. She has grown up into a beautiful young woman and she is on the verge of fulfilling her dream. Getting a taste of freedom. But, a dream once again.

And to what a cruel reality Cinder has woken up to.

Now I would just like to point out fifteen minutes. Not just the fifteen minutes in which Cinder killed her ‘Mother’ and ‘Stepsisters’ but fifteen minutes in which Cinder most likely desperately tried to convince them otherwise and hold onto her goals which is is in her grasp.

Of course, what happens when Cinder is pushed into a corner with no way left to go? She attacks.

Another detail, but again, think how this ‘shock collar’ had Cinder on her knees in the beginning. Not only has she gotten used to it, but she still has the will to fight back.

Now, I very well know that who one becomes is because of who they are and their decisions, but up until this point, Cinder is right, what she is, is what they pushed her to become. What they deluded her into thinking, that the only way to freedom...

...Is to get rid of those who have power over you.

Fuck guys, I wanna cry.

Cinder knows what she did was wrong, she knows it. But she is still holding onto the possibility that everything will be alright now that her abusers are gone.

But then one obstacle turns into another. And at this stage, there is no turning back. At this moment, Cinder will do anything to make sure she isn’t locked into another cage yet again.

Let it be knows that Cinder has always been a crafty fighter. that was has always been her strongest, when she was at her weakest.

Cinder just killed a Huntsman.

The first person to ever care for her. The first person to show her any kindness. Because she was afraid that he’d turn out like all the other’s. And yet, he showed her that kindness up until the very end.

And here’s where is starts, burying her guilt, shutting out her emotions because Cinder finally got the freedom she wanted.

She is free. Her shackles are unbound. But all she can do is run.

Now, I wonder, if volume 1-3 had the same budget, or if CRWBY knew for certain that this was the direction they’d be going, would they have shown these scars on her neck? And are they still there?

Here we are. Back to the present and our view on Cinder is forever changed.

I can only assume that Cinder’s response, the fear of realising where she is after her failure, is because of the effects of her memory. That she hasn’t had the time to slip on that façade of hers. That underneath, Cinder is still a scared little girl.

Despite everything Cinder still has someone, one person who still cares for her and her feelings towards losing Mercury as an ally couldn’t have been clearer. Cinder wants people around her, to care for her. But she has yet to realise that, that means caring for them too.

But what would she know about that? The only prominent ‘caretakers’ in her life has been her ‘Stepmother’ and Salem. And that’s what Cinder is, or is trying to become, even if she doesn’t realise it.

And despite everything...

...Cinder is back where she started. Caught in the cycle of abuse.

Nothing has changed. Cinder swapped one abuser of another. One pair of chains for another.

And she is so close to realising it.

But Salem knows Cinder, she knows how to manipulate and make Cinder think that she is any different from her abuser. And Cinder believes it, or at least she wants to. Cinder wants freedom so bad that she would justify Salem’s abuse as such.

Now this shot.

To me this symbolizes Salem forcing/ manipulating Cinder to trust her. That isn’t Cinder’s hand. Those are the chains that binds Cinder to her. But Cinder still seems them as gifts, and I can only hope that’s she’ll tear it apart.

Another, Cinder’s third possible face off with Penny. Now, how will this go?

Considering Cinder’s recollection of what she learnt from Rhodes, and the Hound backing her up, I would want to belive Cinder will succeed, but CRWBY loves proving me wrong. If Cinder succeeds, then it could act as a further reinforcement that more power is not what she needs. Of course this means Pietro dying to most likely giving his last remaing Aura to Penny, but I very much doubt Penny will lose this fight. But at the same time, this episode feels like a shift in Cinder’s direction, and I’m not even sure to where.

Salem has reaffirmed Cinder’s trust in her, or so it seems, because right now they couldn’t feel further apart. Because of this shift I feel like Cinder would win, but not in the way she expected, perhaps not even by using Salem’s teachings,. But by her own cunning. This could mean blackmail. Cinder’s fear of failure could outweigh her need for the Winter Maiden’s powers, so she somehow tricks Penny, assuming she regains consciousness, into giving her the staff.

 ...

In short, I don’t know what is in store for Cinder.

To me, Cinder would break away from Salem the moment she realises what Salem is doing to her. But that means accepting that she isn’t free. And that is something Cinder is so terrified of that she won’t even consider it. The only way to get Cinder to realise this, is to take away the remaining person at her side, Emerald. Cinder needs to fear something else, more than she fears feeling powerless. But she also needs to realise what true freedom is like.

As for what that looks like for Cinder... I don’t know.

...

But CRWBY has done a fantastic job this episode.

We’ve waited for years and to me, it’s everything I expected, wanted, hoped for and more. This episode truly feels like a new chapter in Cinder’s story.

She might have gone from one abuser, one cage to the second, but we will be waiting for the third time.

For when she finally breaks free.

[rainbowsky]

The Wolf Reviewed

Spoiler-free section

My life is divided into two eras: ‘before seeing GG as Ji Chong’ and ‘after seeing GG as Ji Chong’. I will never be the same.

GG is magical in this series, and Ji Chong is among my absolute favorite characters of all time (I am actually in love with this character, which is heartbreaking given the fact that he’s fictional). The show also has many interesting characters and some exciting storylines, and in spite of some of its flaws this series is quite good. Highly recommended.

Of course there’s a lot more to it than that, but I can’t give a full review without spoilers. Here’s the rest for those who have already seen the series.

Spoilers under the cut

OK, where to start?

The Characters

There were so many great characters in this story and overall I found the performances of all of them well-acted and exciting to watch. I especially loved Ji Chong and Yao Ji. Both were complex, mysterious characters who stole the show every time they were onscreen.

Ji Chong was incredible. Everything about him was over-the-top amazing. I can imagine that GG must have identified a lot with Ji Chong because he has a similarly gallant, charismatic and kind personality. Seeing GG perform a character like this was mind-blowing because of the harmony between them in spite of their physical differences.

I could go on and on about how much I love Ji Chong as a character but if you’ve seen the series you already know how great he is. I truly fell in love with that man. He was everything I love in a person, and in such a beautiful package. I loved his nimble mischievousness, his rebelliousness, his fierce independence, his devotion to those he loves, and above all, his integrity.  With one exception that I’ll get into later, everything he did in that series was consistent with the image I had of him and it made my heart melt.

And it was pretty insane to see GG go from the thin, twinkish, bubbly and somewhat diminutive Wei Wuxian to the rugged, masculine, mature and level-headed Ji Chong. Not only because of the personality differences between the two characters, but also because of the physical differences. They look like two entirely different people. Ji Chong looks so tall and imposing in the series!

It’s impressive to see GG’s acting ability shine through in these roles. He has such a gift for acting, and for drawing viewers into the hearts of the characters he plays.

Yao Ji was another character that really impressed me. She had so much intensity and complexity, and her character arc was so strong. She was also just incredibly well styled and she looked breathtaking in every single frame she appeared in. The various headpieces and hairstyles she wore were stunning, and her sidekick Zi Shen was an aesthetic marvel.

I also really loved Ma Jing. Despite the fact that she was often used for comedic effect, her character was quite nuanced and multidimensional. I loved her loyalty and strength, and the depth of the love she had for Ma Zhai Xing really shone through in every scene she was in.

The entire Night Fury group was also amazing. I loved them as a team and as individuals, and the trajectories their characters went through were interesting and engaging. I was really invested in what became of them. When Wen Yan died I was gutted, and I was grateful that Hai Die and Mo Xiao had such a satisfying conclusion to their story.

I also adored Butler Shi. What a great character. He reminded me of one or two guys I know hehe. He had such a warm, endearing quality about him.

I’m realizing that I could sit here and name almost every character in this series. Despite some of the problems that I have with it, I’m reminded that the characters are exceptionally well-realized in this series.

The Story

Overall I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the story. It was exciting and engaging, and there were some very interesting side conflicts and intrigues. There was an overall sense of adventure and plenty of action, some really emotional moments and even comic relief.

When you think about it, almost every character had something deeper going on outside of the main plot, and those side/back stories were really interesting and varied. There was complexity to the characters and their motives and experiences without it overcomplicating the plot.

The romances were not my cup of tea. I’ll get into that later on. But despite being the thread that ran through the entire story, they really didn’t feel central to it and it was easy to simply enjoy the show while putting aside the annoyances I had with the romances (I did this primarily by consciously choosing to take the story at face value, and choosing to believe that Ma Zhai Xing really was through with Prince Bo).

The show did a great job of getting me engaged and keeping me interested, giving me a story that was complex without being confusing, emotional without being too sappy (with some exceptions). The action, fight scenes, battles, etc. were exciting without feeling fake and cliche. There were some well-choreographed scenes.

I really can’t complain about much. I mean, there were times when I was watching this series that I thought I hated it, but in retrospect I can see that I really loved it in spite of some of the flaws, which I’ll discuss in a moment.

The Soundtrack

The soundtrack was quite good, even if it felt repetitive when I was bingeing the show. So many songs have stuck with me since I finished the series. I especially like Backflow by Jolin Tsai (second-last song on the playlist I linked). Of course I would have loved a song or two with GG, but the soundtrack we got was memorable.

What I hated

I really struggled with some aspects of this series.

I found Bao Na mostly unwatchable. She was incredibly annoying. As a character she had all the traits I dislike. Whiny, stalker, demanding, emotionally immature, jealous... I really couldn’t stand that character for a lot of the series.

It’s true that she started to redeem herself a bit through the course of the series but she never really evolved into someone I wanted to see more of. I definitely had some moments where I liked her and sympathized with her, but mostly she grated on my nerves.

I also hated Prince Bo through most of the series, and found it insulting that I was expected to view him as the protagonist and cheer for him to win the princess’s heart. I felt that the ‘love-hate’ thing between Prince Bo and Ma Zhai Xing was overplayed to a point where I lost all sympathy with Prince Bo and desperately wanted him to die a horrible death through much of the series.

His behavior didn’t reflect someone who was in love but wanted to protect her. Much of his behavior was excessive and gratuitous, much worse than was necessary to achieve its stated goal. He was incredibly emotionally and psychologically abusive toward Ma Zhai Xing to a degree that was often really hard to watch. Especially his near-rape of her.

This is a man that I didn’t want to see redeemed. This is a man I wanted to see burned alive. No one who truly loved Ma Zhai Xing would be even remotely capable of the actions Prince Bo took.

I will admit that he did begin to redeem himself in my eyes a bit later in the series, but not to where I could ever see him with Ma Zhai Xing. I don’t think that’s the sort of treatment one can ever redeem in a relationship. He might be able to redeem himself, but not the relationship. There are some lines, once crossed between people, that one can never come back from.

I actually felt that Yao Ji was a much better match for Prince Bo than the princess was. They were true equals with similarly difficult pasts, and similarly dark deeds to redeem themselves from. They were in so many ways perfect for each other.

Ji Chong and Ma Zhai Xing were a better match because they were more natural equals in terms of personality, values and life paths. There were tremendous parallels between the two of them. Although I ended up feeling she didn’t deserve him.

So for me, it was really difficult to get invested in the love stories I was presented with. Ultimately I found them all very unsatisfying. The people I wanted to see together were treated as unsuitable for each other in ways that were completely unbelievable, and the people I was expected to want to see together had unconvincing chemistry and incompatibilities that I couldn’t overlook.

Seeing Ma Zhai Xing die in the end was an OUTRAGE. Especially when I read about the director’s rationale for that decision.

“Her thought process on killing off “Zhai Xing” was that “King Bo” had done so much for her that it was time for her to do something for him. “Her character had matured the most in the series. Dying for Wolf Boy is the best ending for this identity of hers. To me, this perfect ending is even more in line with her character’s growth.””

I found that shocking. I couldn’t disagree more with this sentiment. She wasted so much of herself and her life for Prince Bo. He treated her like crap, and he didn’t ever truly do anything to redeem himself from that behavior. He should have been the one to die.

In my opinion, REAL character growth for Ma Zhai Xing would have been to see her overcome the fixation with Wolf Boy and with Prince Bo and just move on with her life.

I will say this, though: By the time Ma Zhai Xing died in the show, her character had already been so utterly and thoroughly decimated beyond all recognition via the Prince Bo housewife trajectory that there was no point in her surviving.

The absolute worst moment for me, though, was Ji Chong ending up with Bao Na. Talk about adding insult to injury. This is the one thing that Ji Chong did as a character that ran against my understanding of him as a character.

You could have done anything at all to Ji Chong, including killing him or turning him into a villain, and it would have been less of an insult to me than putting him with Bao Na.

I do try to interpret his invitation for them to travel together in a non-romantic way (despite the fact that in the world of the show there’s no way that a princess is going to go traveling with a prince without her reputation being ruined unless they are a couple). But when I tell myself that he took her traveling to get her away from court and give her some life experience - as friends only - then it becomes less of a bitter pill to swallow. I could see him doing that for her, and I could see them developing a strong friendship through their travels.

I just can’t see them as remotely romantically compatible. Not on any level.

I found it completely unconvincing that the most emotionally mature, honorable person in the entire series who had the healthiest boundaries and a lot of worldly experience and intelligence, would have any interest whatsoever in someone as emotionally immature, childish and inexperienced (and with no boundaries whatsoever) as Bao Na.

I would have preferred it if they’d framed that whole thing as him being a sort of big brother/mentor figure to her.

I felt like I saw chemistry and compatibility between Bao Na and Fourth Prince Chu You Ze, and I would have loved to see them end up together. They were much more at an equal footing. I was expecting that to be the outcome and it would have been a sweet one. They would have made a cute couple.

Final thoughts

The romances in this story seemed fixated on unhealthy, often misogynistic power imbalances and they were really, really hard to watch. Not just in terms of Prince Bo and Ma Zhai Xing but also the ugly Ji Chong and Princess Bao Na hookup they tried to get me to swallow at the end. I hate that kind of ‘love’ story. I prefer seeing actual equals find each other in the great wide world.

However, pretty much everything else about the series was excellent. Ji Chong owns my heart and I only wish I could see more of him. GG completely blew me away and far exceeded all of my expectations.

Overall, I really love this series and will definitely be rewatching it.

[sandraoledan]

An Opinion Piece on Vis A Vis: A Bittersweet Goodbye

The start of a new decade marked the end of our beloved series, Vis A Vis. I can feel the 'post-series depression' already; in other words, that empty feeling at the pit of your stomach once a show has ended. In fact, I feel as if it has tripled for this series specifically, because of the three different time periods explored in the five seasons and the consequently different reactions I had to each period. Let me expound.

Seasons 1-2: What won me over initially

What really won my heart over with this show was Macarena's evolution during her time in prison. Initially, she was innocent, naïve, and defenseless, often finding herself at the mercy of Cruz del Sur's many villains; such as drug-trafficking Anabel, closeted pedophile Sandoval, and of course, the ever-scheming Zulema. A common theme was her constant need to be saved or protected; this was evident in almost all of her relationships - with her parents, her brother, and love interests Rizos & Fabio. We later find out that one of the reasons why she decided to be with Rizos was because she felt alone and afraid. Her feeble attempts at survival were frustrating; you wanted her to be stronger; you wanted her to push back against her bullies and win. You wanted to see a protagonist with confidence.

Because it took her the entirety of the first season to do this, her eventual dominion of Cruz del Sur in Season 2 was intensely satisfying. She became a better survivor: through boxing, she found a cathartic outlet and used her newfound physical prowess to overcome Annabel's thugs when they came to permanently deafen her with a wire in the bathroom. She became secure - or at least, so we thought - in her evolving identity, embracing her bisexuality as she fell more in love with Rizos. She bought Bambi from Anabel to put an end to the latter's remorseless abuse, and offered love and affection to Rizos upon discovering her rape by Valbuena; for the first time, we see Macarena as the protector instead of the protected. But this show wouldn't be emotionally complex if her character's development was so perfectly absolute: she was still reliant on Fabio, confusing her desperation to escape prison with feelings for him. Her shock at his deception, however in good faith, coupled with the news of her mother's death, witnessing the cold-blooded murder of her father, and becoming a murderer herself, triggered a spiral into darkness. It was a beautifully tragic display of the destruction of her initially strong moral compass. She turned to drugs, ended her relationship with Rizos in the most heartbreaking way, and isolated herself from the other inmates. This change in Maca was something I was excited to see play out in seasons 3 and 4; I wanted to see her redemption arc. However, due to conflicts in schedule, the actress that players her, Maggie Civantos, was only able to play Maca for a mere five episodes across the two new seasons. While the actress cannot be blamed for this, her departure led to a string of creative decisions that, in my opinion, slightly compromised the quality of Seasons 3-4.

Season 3: A decline in quality...

The first criticism stems from the time jump from Cruz del Sur to Cruz del North; there were many cliffhangers left unaddressed. Specifically, they were reactions we didn't get to see, such as Sole finding out her husband, Fernando, was murdered; the inmates finding out that Saray got pregnant, and of course, more importantly, the change in Maca after she decides (at the end of Season 2) to go back to prison instead of running away as a fugitive. The absence of these scenes automatically undermined our emotional investment in the show and created a misalignment between the reaction of the viewers and the non-reaction of the characters actually living out the story. Additionally, many key characters were so dependent on the development of Maca's story, that Civantos' departure from the show necessitated an abrupt end to their storylines (i.e. her brother Roman & prison guard and love interest Fabio), which felt contrived. Even more forced was the relationship between Rizos & Inspector Nerea: similar to Roman & Fabio, Rizos' character was so dependent on Maca that it seems like the writers felt pressured to "recreate" their romance with someone new. Not only did this spectacularly fail, as her short-lived relationship with Nerea felt rushed, disingenuous and random, but it also cheapened Rizos in the sense that she became one-dimensional, only capable of pursuing relationships recklessly and nothing more. This was confirmed implicitly by the writers, as throughout the two seasons, they struggled to give Rizos anything meaningful to do and gave her the most dissatisfactory ending of all the inmates in the finale. I found this extremely disappointing because I enjoyed her character's story arc in the first two seasons. In the same vein, enter Mercedes, who replaced Maca as one of the protagonists in Season 3. Her story and eventual demise was fruitless: she was not charismatic and did not form relationships with any of the inmates, the latter point I think being a crucial mistake on the part of the writers. So while they believed they upped the ante by giving her a brutal death, honestly, I don't think anyone cared much. We simply wanted Maca back.

Season 4: ...Redeemed by our favourite villains

While Season 3 was a far cry from the quality of the first two seasons, arguably Season 4 managed to redeem them. First and foremost, was the character development of our favourite villains, Saray and Zulema. While Zulema was the perfect villain in the first two seasons, I worried that her relentless need to escape prison made her predictable. By introducing her secret daughter, Fatima, and her estranged mother, this changed Zulema's dynamic entirely: whereas we once saw a cold and calculating criminal who would do anything and kill anyone to break free, we now saw a woman jaded by the injustices and traumas of her past. We could relate to her that much more. Watching Zulema fall to her knees, begging Sandoval to stop the rape of her daughter, was one of the most powerful scenes of the entire series, because a compromising Zulema seemed so unfathomable before. The chilling murder of Fatima was matched by an inflamed Zulema, and her passion as a mother finally eclipsing her need to escape was a well-developed, well-executed arc. We have a similar situation with Saray; with the birth of her daughter, instead of her sporadic episodes of violence, she channeled her passions into her newborn. The scene where she had to say goodbye to Estrella, as well as that scene where she showed her to Zulema as a way to make amends, were so tender, and beautifully contrasted with her previous tendencies to rage at the smallest things. This was of course helped by the gentle refrain of the soundtrack playing whenever Saray and Estrella were on screen together (as a side note, the scoring of this series was consistently excellent;  the melancholic melodies foreshadowed the inevitable tragedies of the characters onscreen. Other standout examples include the melodies played during Maca and Rizos' intimate scenes, and Fatima's theme.) Additionally, the fact that it was Saray who had the courage and heart to mercy kill Sole, just emphasized the growth of her empathy and the change in her character.

One cannot mention Season 4 without bringing up the tear-jerking reunion between Rizos and Maca. Watching them stare at each other in disbelief after not seeing each other for eight months was an incredibly emotional scene. Even Civantos admitted during an interview that that scene was "the most beautiful scene in her entire career". Seeing their chemistry made me lament even more the absence of Civantos throughout the two seasons, as I would have loved to see that familiar push and pull in their relationship playing out under the different circumstances of Season 4, and particularly, a more hardened and jaded Maca. Nevertheless, this reunion scene was arguably the best that the writers could've given us as closure between the two, so I applaud them for this.

Ultimately, there were a number of dissatisfactory decisions made in Seasons 3-4, but they were still very entertaining seasons. It is important to note that the episodes were more or less twenty minutes shorter than the episodes from the first two seasons, so I can understand the limitations that placed creatively on the writers and directors on top of having to work around Civantos' departure.

Vis A Vis: El Oasis - A grave injustice

So what made Vis A Vis successful? The evolutions and relationships of the characters, both protagonist and secondary. How every character existed purposefully, with a backstory we could empathize with. The constant battle between morality and survival. El Oasis, unfortunately, failed to capitalize on its predecessor's strengths, bringing nothing new to the lives of our favourite characters. The storytelling was convoluted and often times confusing; at best, the episodes evoked feelings of dissatisfaction within the viewers. Ultimately, most fans will dismiss this spin-off as a consequence of being exposed to the deserts of El Oasis for too long: a mere hallucination.

My first criticism concerns how little actually happened over the course of the eight episodes. My reaction after every episode was the same: I'd process the story unfolding, then get shocked when the (approximately) 45 minutes would already be over. So much time would pass, and yet there was so little exposition. Each episode would leave the previous episode's questions mostly unanswered, and gave rise to even more questions. I realized quickly this was due to the unnecessary increase in supporting characters, with close to no development of backstory. For instance: how did Zulema know Ama? Ama's confrontation with Maca was so brief, and she ended up killing herself. As one of the villains, it made the build-up of her character pointless. What was the point of Flaca? She spent most of her screen time bleeding out only to be killed. You could argue it was to show that high-stakes heists inevitably have risks and collateral damage. Well, sure, but I don't think people cared much for her character because they gave us nothing to care about. Who was she to Maca but someone who occasionally chimed in on Maca's contributions to their therapy sessions? What was the point of the school bus full of kids visiting El Oasis if they were all just going to be let go so easily by Ramala's henchmen? You could argue it was to reveal Goya's past with bullying, when she intervened and beat up Eric's bullies; or it could be because Vivi needed to meet someone that felt isolated like her, to give her character more dimension. Either way, both reasons feel contrived. If something cannot be justified naturally, then it feels forced. Cepo, Goya and Triana were all interesting supporting characters, so it felt like such a waste that their characters weren't given anything interesting to do.

What also elicited questions was the very disjointed narrative: there was a constant jumping of timelines mixed in with flashbacks, so nobody ever really knew when anything was happening. Doing that without properly developing the events actually occuring at that present time had the dual effect of leaving the audience confused and made us feel emotionally detached from the plot and the characters. Most significantly: how did Maca and Zulema go from taking cute polaroids together and Zulema calling Maca her home, to them wanting to turn on each other? Instead of expounding on important plot points like these, the audience was given fillers with non-essential characters. What is the point of making a spin-off dedicated to the relationship between Zulema and Maca if their story was going to remain underdeveloped? Additionally, a fan online calculated that they only got 30 minutes out of over 360 potential minutes screen time together; that is only 8%. It is no surprise the fans were extremely disappointed.

Moreover, underdevelopment came in the form of stasis, or a state of inactivity. A majority of the season saw the protagonists waiting around the hotel, which was honestly boring. For instance, we saw a number of episodes where Goya and Triana were essentially just watchdogs over Kati, and nothing more. This was worsened by the use of dialogue. In earlier seasons of Vis A Vis, dialogue was one of the main drivers of the plot; in El Oasis, not unlike the supporting character fillers, not much what said, and when things were said, they didn't add much to the story (save for a few exceptions). It made the actors' acting seem flat, which is unfair to the actors as we saw their moments of brilliance in the earlier seasons. Additionally, a stylistic choice that pervaded El Oasis was the drawn out moments of every scene; for instance, when Zulema looked over Ama's dead body in the desert - that was given a whole five minutes of screentime. All these points hammer home the idea that while things were happening, they were 1) things that did not do much to drive a compelling plot and 2) were things the audience did not care about. It is clear the writers were trying to be different from the original series, and also tried to do too much. As the saying goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Arguably, they failed on both accounts.

Finally, the finale itself warrants its own paragraph of criticism. The most glaring flaw was the way Zulema's death was executed. In the promotional videos leading up to this finale, we hear Zulema say to Maca: "igual en la vida, igual en la muerte" i.e. equal in life, and equal in death. This was an idea initially introduced by Altagracia in Season 3. Thus, Zulema dying while Maca got to live was not consistent with what they were teasing in their marketing materials. Still, one could argue that Zulema had to die because she had terminal cancer anyway, and this would be her epic redemption arc. To which I would I concede that yes, this finale could have been satisfactory and logical even with Zulema's death. However, the manner of her death was inconsistent with her character. Throughout the series, we are made to associate Zulema with a scorpion; as a "bad bug that never dies." Zulema had an intrinsic need to survive, no matter the cost. So even if she ended up dying, there was no way that Zulema wouldn't have plotted to at least attempt to survive, whether that be a scheme involving a fake death or even in her actual death scene itself where we saw her putting her guns down in submission to Ramala's henchmen. In the same vein, it did not make sense that, upon realizing Zulema was sacrificing herself for Maca and her unborn baby, that Maca replied with a simple "Gracias" and ran away. There should have been one of two options: a scuffle with Zulema, wherein she refuses to leave her there alone to die. Or two, a scene where she is speaking to her son about Zulema's legacy. The absence of these key scenes disrespects and almost overtly disregards the very complicated and rich relationship the two had together, as if all they had been through meant nothing.

Overall, the spin-off unfortunately did not do justice to the story, the characters (both lead and supporting), the actors and the fans, the latter insisting on alternate endings to get closure on a story we have been following for five years. It is true that when many shows end, it is not possible to please everyone. However, I believe that the majority of the negative reviews of this spin-off could have been avoided.

In conclusion...

Ultimately, the hollowness in my chest is bittersweet: on one hand, it is telling of how emotionally invested I became in the show and its moments of brilliance, and on the other, it speaks to the disappointment I felt with the spin-off, because I had such high expectations. Regardless of the ending, however, this show will stay with me forever. I have loved experiencing romances, struggles and adversities with these characters. I have enjoyed watching the evolution of our protagonists, whether it be through redemption or a gradual descent into darkness. This is a show I will recommend to anyone, over and over. #MareaAmarilla

[searchingwardrobes]

The Early Leaf’s a Flower: 5/11

Still separated, Emma and Killian learn that fate gives . . . and fate takes away. Yes, Emma and Killian are still separated in this chapter, but you begin to see how their lives are following similar paths. We still need tissues, I'm afraid. The angst is still strong!

Thanks as always to the mods of the @captainswanbigbang​ for organizing the CSRT and my betas: @shippingtheswann​, @optomisticgirl​, and @distant-rose​.

Summary: She saw eyes that were the blue of the forget me not peering at her through the cracked door of the wardrobe. He saw hair as gold as the buttercups. Why does the wardrobe keep bringing them back to one another, if fate keeps tearing them apart? Or maybe fate has her reasons …

Rating: M for eventual sexy times, violence, canonical character death, and attempted rape

Trigger warnings: vague references to child abuse (physical and sexual), violence, and positive Millian

Words: Around 2,300 in this chapter

** Complete and updated every Monday** Also on A03

Emma: Age 18

Emma can finally have the family she’s always craved. Every sharp and overwhelming pain from her womb reminds her of that fact. Pain that rolls through her, unceasing. She grasps the railing on the bed as best she can with her left wrist handcuffed to the bed. Her left ankle is shackled too, and everytime she writhes with the excruciating pain, it rubs her skin raw.

The doctor hadn’t been phased by the handcuffs, however. He’d even argued with her guards to take them off, but it was an argument he’d lost. He’s a bright spot amidst the pain, humiliation, and heartbreak of this day. He is surprisingly kind and gentle and reminds Emma of a grandfather who sneaks his grandchildren peppermints when their parents aren’t looking. That’s what they show in holiday commercials, anyways. The ones that made Emma long for a family of her own for so many lonely years. Yet fate is cruel, the timing never right, and this is a chance at a family she can’t accept.

The contraction subsides, but she knows that the reprieve will be far too brief. Whimpering, she gives the nurse a pleading look.

“Can’t I have an epidural?”

“I’m sorry, Emma, you didn’t get here soon enough. It’s time to push.”

Emma’s heartbeat triples, and spots swim before her eyes. She thought there would be something for the pain. No one told her anything about what childbirth would be like. She read no books, she had no mother to talk to. She looks up at the ceiling as panic overwhelms her. The doctor puts a reassuring hand to her knee.

“You can do this Emma,” he tells her, “just take a deep breath as I count to three, then bear down. One . . . two . . Three!”

Emma does as he says, and the pain is so great it feels like she might split in two. At the same time, the waves of the contractions demand that she push. Sweat beads on her temple and her legs tremble. She collapses against the hospital bed, exhausted.

“The baby’s crowning, Emma! I’m going to count again, and you push. One . . . two . . . THREE!”

Emma pushes again, and she sees stars as a ring of fire seems to bloom between her legs. A strangled sob escapes her lips. Surely she can’t survive this; it’s too much. The lights in the room flicker, and she hears a lightbulb pop, but honestly everything could crumble around her and she wouldn’t care. She just wants this torture to end.

“The heads out, Emma,” the doctor says, his voice still calm and encouraging, “so the worst is over. Push for me again, okay? Ready?”

“I can’t,” Emma chokes out. Her body is trembling all over.

“Yes, you can,” the doctor says firmly. “Look at me, Emma. You can do this.”

She nods, her lips trembling. She wishes she had someone to hold her hand, but she’s all alone. Instead, she grasps the railings of the bed and when the doctor counts to three again, she pushes with all she has. A baby’s cry splits the air, and she collapses against the pillows behind her.

“It’s a boy, Emma!” the doctor cries joyfully.

Emma turns her head, tears pooling at the corners of her eyes. She’s afraid if she looks at him -

“Do you want to hold him?” the doctor asks.

Emma grips the railing of the bed tighter and shakes her head, tears slipping down her face. She hears the nurse whisper something to the doctor.

“You know, Emma,” the doctor says gently, “you can still change your mind.”

Still refusing to look at the crying bundle in his arms, Emma shakes her head as her tears come faster. “I can’t,” she chokes, “I can’t be a mother.” How would she even know how?

The doctor comes closer to the bed. “Some mothers at least like to say goodbye. It’s up to you. I just want you to know your rights.”

Emma’s breath catches then. She’s terrified, but what if she regrets this moment later? What if she thinks back and wishes she had told him why? He’s just a newborn baby, but maybe somewhere deep inside, he’ll understand. She turns her tear stained face to the baby in the doctor’s arms.

“Maybe I’ll just hold him for a few minutes.”

The doctor nods and gently lays the baby in the crook of Emma’s handcuffed arm. He’s covered in blood and afterbirth, but he’s still so beautiful, that Emma smiles. She reaches down to trace his cheek, and the tiny baby reaches up to grasp one of her fingers. She gasps in surprise to see what’s on the inside of his wrist: the same birthmark she bears on hers. She leans down and presses a kiss against it, then she whispers so only the baby can hear.

“I love you, you hear me? This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but I still have time to serve. I want you to go to a family, not into foster care.” Emma presses her eyes closed as tears stream down her face. “I love you so, so much, please know that. I’m trying to do the right thing - the best thing for you.”

Tears have completely blurred her vision when she gives the baby back, and as they wheel the hospital bassinet out of the room, her entire sore and weary body shakes with the violence of her sobs.

Killian: Age 18

Captain Hook turns eighteen quietly, telling no one of the significance of the day, not even Milah. He would have long ago forgotten when his birthday is if not for Liam, and now that his brother is gone, he sees no reason to celebrate.

“I’m eighteen now,” he whispers against Milah’s shoulder blade one night a week later.

She turns in his arms, but he can’t see her face in the darkness of the cabin. “You’re a man now,” she tells him, tracing his jaw.

It’s all she says, tucking herself beneath his chin and going quiet. He thinks of Pan, the only boy who never grows up. Killian’s hand traces Milah’s spine gently, and he feels a tiny bit better when she sighs softly.

Mason is another year older as well, and his legs are long beneath the cuffs of his trousers. Hook finds the naval uniform that once belonged to Jim Hawkins, former cabin boy of the Jewel of the Realm and current loyal member of Hook’s crew. Mason has to roll the pants up and tie them with a bit of rope, but they fit him well enough. Seeing the uniform takes Killian back to that fateful day when he was sixteen. How would things have been different if Jim Hawkins hadn’t broken his leg? Would Liam still be alive?

He shrugs off such thoughts as he stands at the helm three weeks after becoming a man and ruffles Mason’s hair. Milah smiles at her little brother fondly, and Killian wonders if he can ever get the softness from her that Mason elicits.

“Why are you so melancholy lately?” she asks him as he leaves the wheel to Starkey and stands at the prow scanning the horizon with his spyglass.

“What do you mean?”

She leans against the railing and peruses him slowly. “I don’t know. Ever since you turned eighteen -”

“That has nothing to do with it,” he interrupts in a scoffing tone.

Milah rubs her hand up and down his arm. “Is it what the fairies told us?”

He arches a brow and says dryly, “What do I care about pixie dust?”

Milah shrugs, “Well, Tinker Bell did say that it’s tied to the island somehow.”

“Good riddance,” he grumbles.

“Killian Jones,” she snaps, shoving him in the shoulder, “I’m trying to talk to you!”

“And I’m telling you there’s nothing to talk about!” he shouts back.

Most girls would have cried or at least gotten teary eyed, but Milah isn’t most girls. “Tiger Lily was right. You’re a jackass.”

“Wait,” he apologizes, grasping her around the waist before she can storm off. She pretends to fight him, but the sparkle in her eyes betrays her. He brushes a kiss to her lips, “I just have a lot on my mind, okay?”

“Me too,” she whispers as she fiddles with the hair at the nape of his neck. “The young boy Tiger Lily said Pan is looking for . . . do you think it could be Mason?”

“Don’t worry about that love, you know that I - wait a minute,” Killian sets Milah away from him suddenly, scanning the fog that shrouds Neverland once again. He swallows nervously when he sees the dinghy cutting slowly through the mist.

“What is it?” Milah asks.

“Get Mason,” he says sharply, “hide below deck.”

“I’ll hide him,” she replies, “but I’ll return to fight by your side.”

Hook’s eyes flash as he uses his steel appendage to pull her gently closer. “No, Milah. You’ve never come face to face with the lost boys.”

“I’ve fought grown men!” she argues.

“These aren’t mere boys. And don’t ask me how, but I know Pan is with them. Please,” he impolores, “promise me you’ll stay below.”

She nods, her chin dropping to her chest.

“Go,” he tells her, shoving her gently, and she races across the deck, grabbing Mason as she goes. Hook strides towards the port side as Curly calls out from the crows nest that a boat is approaching. Lost boys are soon scrambling up the side of the ship like ants, and Pan swoops through the sky, crowing. Hook refuses to glance upward, standing with his arms clasped behind his back as Pan’s new right hand, Felix, scrambles over the railing.

Felix swings his club in an arc and then rests it against his shoulder. “Hook.”

“Felix.”

“We know you’re hiding -”

“A lost boy?” Hook arches a brow. “We aren’t hiding that at all, lad. Look around you. My entire crew are former lost boys.”

“There’s one I want in particular,” Pan says as he lands just behind Killian, “a young one.”

“They’re all young,” Killian snaps.

Peter gets right in Captain Hook’s face. “Just give me the little one, and I’ll leave your crew alone.”

“Never!” a voice shouts, and Killian winces at the sound. He turns to see Milah standing there, her hair wild, her eyes blazing, and a cutlass in her hand.

“A girl!” exclaims one of Pan’s crew, and when Killian glances at the lad he watches as the teenager’s gaze sweeps hungrily over Milah’s form.

“Milah,” Killian says to her in a warning tone, but Milah simply advances to fight at his side as she always does. He grumbles, “bloody stubborn woman,” under his breath as he pulls his own sword from its scabbard.

“You’re going to fight for a child?” Pan snaps.

Killian shrugs. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

He lunges forward, but Peter blocks the sword with his dagger. With a shout, pirates and lost boys fall upon one another with their weapons and the clash of steel rings through the air along with the zing of arrows. Pan, as usual, drives Hook mad by taking to the air and swooping just out of reach of his sword time and again until the boy’s arms begin to pinwheel wildly and he grasps for the rigging before falling to the deck. It surprises Killian and he misses the window of opportunity to take Pan down. Peter maneuvers Hook across the deck, until the pirate finds himself fighting both Pan and Felix. He spins, his coat swinging around him, parrying the strikes of both boys, until suddenly he’s only facing Felix and Pan has transported himself with his magic right behind -

“Milah!” Killian cries. “Look out!”

She spins around, but she isn’t prepared for Peter Pan to strike out with his hand, not his sword. It plunges into her chest, and Milah chokes out a strangled breath.

“No!” Killian screams. He pushes Felix aside, his sword and hook slicing with unrestrained rage through one lost boy after another in his haste to get to Milah. He gets to her side just as she falls, and he catches her in his arms, his sword clattering to the ground. Above them, Pan begins to squeeze, and Milah gasps in pain. Her hand comes up, trembling, to touch Killian’s cheek.

“I love you,” she whispers as her heart turns to dust in Peter’s hand.

“I told you,” Pan sneers, letting the remains of Milah’s heart flutter to the deck, “girls are nothing but trouble.”

“Milah!” a small voice cries out, and everyone on deck, even the lost boys, have fallen silent as a tearful Mason flings himself over his sister’s still body.

Rage swells in Killian’s heart, and he lunges with a feral cry at Peter Pan, hook aloft. The demon boy shoots into the sky, crowing and laughing as the sharp steel misses him by a hair.

“Pan!” Felix calls out, and Killian turns, his heart lurching in fear to see Mason’s skinny arm clutched in Felix’s hand. “He doesn’t have the mark.”

“What?” Pan’s face contorts in rage as he swoops in towards Mason, but before he can get there, Hook intercepts and scoops the little boy up into his arms. He slashes out with his hook, and Peter howls as the tip slices across his leg. The boy who never grows up tumbles bleeding from the sky, landing in the dinghy with a thud. The lost boys scramble over the railing after their leader in fear.

Killian leans over the side of the Jolly Roger, Mason clinging to his neck, sobbing. “I had my revenge against the crown,” Hook shouts at the retreating boat, “I will have it against you as well, Pan, I swear it!”

Peter Pan stands in the middle of the small boat and shouts back, “Try living long enough, old man!”

Tagging:   @snowbellewells​​​  @kmomof4​​ @whimsicallyenchantedrose​​ @teamhook​​ @bethacaciakay​​ @let-it-raines​​ @welllpthisishappening​​ @wellhellotragic​​ @winterbaby89​​ @xhookswenchx​​ @courtorderedcake​​ @branlovestowrite​​ @hollyethecurious​​ @vvbooklady1256​​ @profdanglaisstuff​​ @carpedzem​​ @ekr032-blog-blog​​ @jennjenn615​​ @tiganasummertree​​ @lfh1226-linda​​ @ultraluckycatnd​​ @spartanguard​​ @shireness-says​​ @scientificapricot​​ @stahlop​​ @resident-of-storybrooke​​ @superchocovian​​ @sherlockianwhovian​​ @snidgetsafan​​ @ohmakemeahercules​​ @thislassishooked​​ @ilovemesomekillianjones​​ @nikkiemms​​@delirious-latenight-laughs​

[kegareki]

What are your top three stories from each list?

i could’ve answered this a lot quicker if i didn’t write summaries for the stories in 2 of these lists LOL the bolded two are the ones i 100% recommend

from the “engaging reads” list:

in “the earth is online”, strange black towers appear all over the world. for six months, they do nothing; as people research their origins and possible effects, they become strange parts of the landscape. conspiracy theories abound. what do the towers mean? how did they get here? what will they do?

then, on november 15, 2017, an announcement comes from the black towers. “the earth is online. in three days, all players are asked to eliminate any player. this is including, but not limited to, games.”

at the end of those three days, 400 million people are left on earth.

the black tower provides them three rules. one: the black tower will explain everything. two: the game time is between 6:00am and 6:00pm. and three: all players, please strive to attack the tower.

this is a survival/adventure/mystery, and it’s done so well. i cannot recommend it enough. the worldbuilding is incredible, and the characters actually fit into the world and are shaped by it. the characters--from the main characters to recurring characters to side characters--are all individual and distinct; i forgot names sometimes but i’d always remember who they were through their words and actions.

there is romance involved, but it doesn’t take precedence over the story being told, and the attraction and progression of their relationship from wary strangers to people that they understand and trust without question is believable.

(trigger warnings: depictions of violence and cruelty, as well as (the aftermath of) cannibalism and monsters eating humans. there’s a lot of death and murder.)

"don’t pick up boyfriends from the trash bin” follows the typical chinese transmigration system BL pattern of “at the time of death, the main character is offered a second chance by a mysterious system, on the condition that the main character completes a series of trials”.

the main character, chi xiaochi, transmigrates to a certain number of worlds of varying difficulties into the body of someone who has been wronged in some way, and the completion of his trial depends upon the “regret level” of that person’s partner. when the “regret level” reaches 100, he moves on to the next world.

in-story, it’s mentioned by his system that most players increase the partner’s “regret level” by becoming a tragic figure and allowing themselves to be abused and then die. chi xiaochi is unique in that he thinks mainly of the original owner of the body that he has transmigrated into: how can he seek justice for the ways in which they have been hurt? how can he put them into a better position? how can he give them a future?

from what i’ve read so far, there’s a level of care for the original owners of the body that just... isn’t present in a lot of other transmigration stories, and the direction that this takes the worldbuilding looks promising

(trigger warnings: implied/referenced rape and abuse of varying natures. the first arc involves emotional abuse and isolation tactics employed by the partner. the second arc involves implied/referenced rape and physical abuse.)

“i play the role of (villain/heroine) in a japanese-style otome game” takes a long look at the isekai genre and follows the typical pattern of “the heroine is a beautiful and naive young lady with a special gift rare in its occurrence and power; everyone is attracted to her as a result” until it doesn’t. what does it mean to have a special gift if that gift will inevitably cause someone to try to kill you? what does it mean to have a special gift if that gift is, by its nature, something coveted by an entire species, and your non-human classmates want to eat you?

what does it mean to have a special gift if you can’t save your best friend with it?

i haven’t read this in a while so my memory’s rusty, but i remember being really taken aback at the direction it went in. gathering a reverse harem isn’t for love; it’s to figure out a way to save the “villain”, chako. the “heroine”, yui, keeps going back in time and keeps doing things differently and keeps approaching different people in hopes of controlling the increasing variables involved in chako’s death

(trigger warnings: a lot of death and manipulation of characters’ feelings.)

from the “feel-good” list:

“ghostly masked prince xiao: pampering and spoiling the little adorable consort” involves a 20-year-old college student of the modern age transmigrating into the 9-year-old body of chu qingyan in ancient china. through circumstances that are meant to harm both her and the 19-year-old male lead, they become engaged. the male lead, xiao xu, is the first prince, but his mother--despite being empress--had not been beloved and therefore neither is he. he’s very much a tragic hero: although filial and of upright character, although his actions have always been for the betterment of the empire, he has never been loved by his family and has always been viewed as a tool.

all of his previous fiancees have been murdered before their wedding. chu qingyan is a child, and he doesn’t want her to die. he gives her opportunities to leave and orders his subordinates to aid her in her escape--but, unexpectedly, she stays, and thus begins one of the fluffiest stories that i have ever read. xiao xu doesn’t know how to take care of a child and asks his military generals how to treat children. as you can imagine, their response is “dote upon them!”

xiao chu is earnestly doing his best to treat chu qingyan right, and in her own way, chu qingyan is doing the same for him--especially as the story progresses and she discovers more and more about his past and the ways in which he has been treated by people that were supposed to love him.

i’m sensitive to age gaps in relationships and i don’t know how i’ll feel about, like, actual romance between the two of them, but right now it’s just. a teenager is given a child and is experiencing a “loving family” for the first time in his life. is experiencing what it is to look at a child who depends on you and know that you would do absolutely anything for them. and it’s so sweet and heartbreaking

in “reborn little girl won’t give up”, the titular character is reborn into a world that involves magic and monsters. she is born to a noble family that maintains the barriers that surround their kingdom in order to keep the monsters out. her mother dies during childbirth, and for the first while of her life, her father and her older brother cannot stand to see her as a consequence; but once they begin interacting with her, they can’t not love her.

things go well until they don’t.

the main character is kidnapped to the boundary of the barrier, and moments before she can be saved, her mount--a dragon who has come to see this child as one of its own--flees to the frontier outside of the barrier. if not for a group of hunters that come across her, she would have died.

now her goal is to find her way back to her family--while also making new family along the way.

“death progress bar” follows shi jin, who transmigrates at the time of his death into the body of a character with the same name, from a novel that he had read. the novel’s shi jin has five older brothers who had tormented him and eventually led to his death; the transmigrated shi jin enters this world soon after the death of the novel shi jin’s father, and discovers that he has a “death progress bar.” as his system explains, when the number reaches 999, he will be taken over ‘by the story’ and be led to his death.

the bad news: the progress bar is only a few points away from 999.

one of the ways in which to lower the progress bar is to get as far from his brothers as possible, so he gets away from them--only to stumble across a new person and a new progress bar: the system’s “darling,” lian jun, whose death factors seem completely different from his own. lian jun is also the head of an underground organization whose protection greatly decreases shi jin’s death progress bar.

new goal: find a way for both of them to survive.

the romance is slow and sweet, and--very uncommonly--the male lead is compelling in his own right, separate from his relationship with the main character. i find him likeable as a person, not just as a romantic prospect.

this is a feel-good without being necessarily fluffy or sweet. reading it just makes me happy.

(honorable mention to “there will always be protagonists with delusions of starting a harem”, which is written by the same person who wrote “death progress bar”. it’s another transmigration system story where the main character has to go to a certain number of worlds and complete a task; in this case, the task is to “prevent the protagonist’s harem,” because the harem will somehow result in the end of the world. the main character and the male lead fall in love during their first world together, and at the end of the task when the system asks if he would like to move on to the next world, the main character chooses to stay within the current world. it is only after the male lead’s death that he continues on to the next world… and, there, he discovers that his partner has reincarnated, as well. in every world, they find each other.

in order to aid with the prevention of the harem, there are progress bars for every harem member that are “the likelihood of falling in love with the protagonist.” they begin at 100, and the goal is to get them to 0, thus breaking their flag and ensuring they will not become part of the protagonist’s harem. the main character’s thoughts on these characters and the dropping of their progress bars are frequently funny.)

for the “guilty pleasure” list, i’m not going to write summaries because these are. very guilty pleasures.

“nurturing the hero to avoid death”

“if i happened to tame my brother well”

“our binding love: my gentle tyrant”

[truthbeetoldmedia]

Wynonna Earp 3x03 "Colder Weather" Review

Hello friends, my TV shows have been trying to kill me with sadness this last week or so (if any of you dear readers also watch The 100, you know what I’m talking about). Episode 3x02 of Wynonna Earp left us all reeling with the shocking and VERY unexpected death of our beloved Deputy Marshal Xavier Dolls.

We were not prepared, but I dare say the showrunner and writers were; this episode, aptly named “Colder Weather”, is a beautiful bleeding love letter to a character that sadly we didn’t know well enough before his demise, but we still loved without measure. I wish all TV shows that killed off beloved or lead characters were this good at finding ways to explore our characters as they navigate a very fresh wound while also giving the newly passed on character closure and a final bow.

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" - Matthew 5:4

We open to a close up of Wynonna's eye with a giant tear sliding down her lashes, swigging a bottle of whiskey drunkenly in the snowy woods, yelling at a demon to literally come out and fight her...grief is not going well in Purgatory for our hero(es). Of course, a concerned Waverly and Nicole are nearby with guns, letting Wynonna purge her pain the only way she seems to know how.

A demon does show up to fight, but not the one she wants, not Bulshar. She exchanges some barbs with the revenant before dispatching him, but Wynonna is far too numb to even enjoy his demise. This is the cold open to a somber episode.

Next thing you know, Waverly and Nicole are picking out Dolls’ casket. We actually get a light moment here with Nicole telling Waves of her desire at death, to be eaten by the birds of the air and then “dispatched” over the land she loves vs being buried. Someone needs to give Nicole the 411 on what is and ISN’T bittersweet romantic topics.

Wynonna, unable to even accept that Dolls is truly gone forever, removes herself from the house for some nice healthy target practice whilst imagining Bulshar’s head in the place of the tin cans, I would assume.

This leads to one of my favorite moments of the episode: Wynonna and Doc having a heart to heart in the cold, gloomy snow. This moment isn’t a shipping moment (although I do LOVE these two together in any form), it’s just Wynonna taking a moment to be vulnerable, to bury her face into the shoulder of a friend. “I’ve been through all of this before, with Daddy, and Shorty and WIlla” and I’m sure in a way she and Doc were also thinking about Baby Alice; even though she is very alive it must still feel like a death to them. Doc just offers her deep love and comfort with no strings attached, telling her Dolls died a hero saving them all, just trying to squeeze all the pain out of her and himself, his last words to Dolls still haunting him.

They talk about what Dolls would want; Doc tells the story of how back in his day a man that “died with his boots on” got buried in a special location (Boot Hill, HA! super original name) and was buried with a bottle of the finest whiskey money could buy (which he then confessed he would steal). Wynonna gives us a detail we didn’t know before: Dolls was from Arizona! But she states that they were his chosen family and he would want to be buried and mourned by them.

"When the tears come streaming down your face, when you lose something you can’t replace" - Coldplay

Speaking of mourning, I love how this episode gives each character a “grief arc” and all their reactions just feel so, so real.

Wynonna is still denying she won’t talk to him again, saying things like “He’s not cutting him up, no way!” when she finds out Jeremy is doing the autopsy on Dolls’ body. Her rage at Bulshar, her inability to accept what she knows is TRUE and very much real. It’s truly heartbreaking and Melanie Scrofano destroys your heart with palpable grief in every scene; every season she just sets the performance bar higher.

Waverly reminds me of myself in grief or sadness, she must do all the things! Pick the casket! Go to Dolls’ place for his funeral clothes! Make 15 different types of sandwiches! Take care of Wynonna! It also makes her think about her own mortality, and how finite her young life is. She is even more bubbly than usual and it’s even bothering her because she keeps giggling. (Fact: I am like this, the more uncomfortable or upset I am the more I fight to be the opposite.)

Doc is the opposite, sullen, angry (mostly at himself), his last words to Dolls’ haunting him. He lashes out in a way that feels all too real when Waverly accuses him of having “no feelings”; he, without flinching, sends his entire glass of whiskey shattering against the wall, saying, “Is that feeling enough for you?!” Wynonna, Waverly and Nicole look shocked, and Waverly looks a little scared; no doubt it triggered old memories of her dad's explosive and abusive ways. You can tell as Doc exits the Earp home he feels terrible about it; he is not in a place to deal with it yet (thankfully he and Waverly do get to talk later), but in the moment the tension is thick.

Nicole, as it turns out, had a very strong and “professional” friendship with Dolls — she even had a key to his apartment! Which they use to find him funeral clothes, and they also find a letter to Wynonna he left amongst his things. Nicole fills Waverly in on how he was tracking down old files on the cult of Bulshar massacre she survived as a kid for her! They both checked in on each other because they were both “officers in the line of duty.” They just got each other. Dolls confided in her; “He had a traumatic past, so he thought he could help me with mine” she tells a rather taken aback Waverly, who is still processing that her normal girlfriend is not as normal as she thought. Nicole breaks down, “but I couldn’t save Dolls, he was trying to help me and now he’s dead,” her grief mingled with guilt much like Doc’s.

The moment is interrupted by a shadow outside of Dolls window, which is three floors up. It’s vampire Kate, who steals Waverly’s bag and is gone in a flash. What is her exact motive? It remains to be unseen. Waverly had of course put the letter from Dolls in her bag.

Jeremy may have the shortest end of the grief stick as he knew Dolls was going to die — but Dolls had made him swear not to tell anyone, leaving him with a huge burden. The drugs killed Dolls but a grief-stricken Wynonna sees Jeremy as the thing to blame in the moment. “I will never forgive you for this” she whispers through hot tears. Jeremy retorts, “I get it, it’s easier to blame me than the dead dragon.” His angry reply hits Wynonna in the face like ice water, and she informs Jeremy to pack up his stuff and get out of Purgatory.

Everyone is just so raw and sad and angry; it gives such realness to these fictional people that you feel all the barbs and tears.

Lastly, the griever no one was expecting or asked for is Dolls’ former Black Badge colleague Ramon Quinn — who shows up in Shorty's bar looking for a drink and info on Dolls, startling an irate Doc who’s just discovered the bar has been broken into and trashed, but all that seems to be missing is the “banana liqueur.” (Revenants actually stole all of Dolls’ drugs Jeremy had made and stored in the fridge, but we will get to that.)

Quinn fills her in on some backstory: he and Dolls were part of the same Black Badge squad and Quinn explains that Dolls’ squad would place coded messages in ads in magazines to signal to each other so they could attend each other’s funerals without Black Badge knowing.

He also fills Wynonna in on some of Dolls’ past, most of it sad — making me feel even worse about him losing his life so young. Quinn wears the dog tags of all his fallen Black Badge squad who are all dead besides him, as a result of the experiments, because the injections always fail eventually. Quinn didn’t have the right blood type to be experimented on, so instead he was the one tasked with having to catch escapees from the Black Badge facility, a place Dolls escaped seven times. (I have issues with the idea of writing this particular storyline, where a white officer of sorts chased and captured a black man being held against his will over and over again, even though he was also technically a prisoner of sorts, but I digress.)

"They can have a terrible power over you...the power of grief, and loss, and of regret." - Babylon 5, Episode 3x11

All of the character moments and plot threads of this episode seem to lead up to the wake Waverly has planned at Shorty’s — the very thing Wynonna seems hellbent on avoiding. She instead gets drunk with Quinn, which probably didn’t pan out the way she was hoping. He asks her “who had Dolls’ back?”, insinuating that she and the gang dropped the ball. He also sets off her internal alarm when he says he doesn’t think Black Badge is really gone and they might come for Dolls’ body, since all the other “BB experiments” were buried in unmarked graves to prevent theft of their bodies. Something he wants Wynonna to think about. She of course goes to the morgue to check on Dolls’ body, where ever faithful Sheriff Nedley sits guarding it. Even he gets a small moment of reflection on Dolls some of the losses he has also recently experienced.

Wynonna heads back to Shorty’s to honor her friend, where she finds everyone is toasting Dolls and eating Waverly’s many sandwiches. Doc finally approaches Waverly to apologize for his behaviour and confides in her his last words to Dolls and his fear of going back to hell one day. She is of course ready and willing to forgive him, but she needs him to help her get her purse and Wynonna’s letter back from Kate, the mention of her name painting Doc’s face with annoyance. But he will do anything for the Earp girls, so they sneak out of the wake to confront Kate.

Nicole finds Jeremy hanging out in the cellar of the bar; he feels like his presence would not be welcome. They finally discover that all of Dolls’ drugs are missing! (I told ya I’d get back to this.) And just like any perfectly timed TV show, the revenants — jacked up on Dolls’ drugs — come barreling in, crashing Dolls’ wake. Wynonna, Nicole, Ramon, and Jeremy fight them all with all the rage you would expect. Wynonna calls Doc’s phone for backup only to have Waverly answer; they are still on a mission to save the letter from vampire Kate.

Waverly finally asks Doc the question we’ve all been wanting to know: “Who is she?”

Doc is to the point and honest: “She’s my wife.” Dun dun dun! I am sure if you’re like me you already had your sneaking suspicions, but Waverlys response is pure GOLD. “Does anyone around here NOT have a secret wife?” Only time will tell, Waves. Kate seems to just be jealous and wanting attention from Doc, usings the Earp sisters to lure him. She sure does seem to know what makes Doc tick.

Waverly confronting her with all her riled up feelings is priceless; she goes to flip Kate’s tarot table “Jesus in the temple style”, but when that doesn’t work she threatens to get a stake. Do not get on this little bb’s bad side, guys!

Kate seems to think Doc is so loyal because “the fiery little Earp reminds you of Wyatt” to which he gives the best side eye while responding “Waverly ain’t even an Earp” and exits smoothly like the southern gentleman he is. Kate picks up her fallen tarot cards and must see “something” spooky, stating, “She’s SOMETHING alright.” I think we all know that we are gonna find that out this season, and I hope it happens soon.

Back at the bar Nicole busts out some tough love for Wynonna after trying to cut her off from drinking. Wynonna’s response of “a man I l….someone I love is dead” may have made my heart crack right down the middle.

“You’re not the only one who lost him. You don’t get the monopoly on the grief we all feel.” That line drives home the theme of this whole episode. They all hurt and the pain is different for each of them, but you can’t tell someone your pain is more important than theirs.

Wynonna is on her way to apologize to Jeremy when she discovers Quinn torturing him for Dolls drugs. He wants to use them and storm Black Badge and get revenge. Here is when he confesses to being a “good soldier” to Black Badge and bringing Dolls and the other squad members back to captivity when they escaped. “Even when he begged me not to.” This realization bookends Dolls life with a tragic start and a tragic end — but he did have a hopeful middle, filled with people that loved him and he whom he loved back.

Of course Wynonna talks him down and asks him to do some digging see if Black Badge is still really out there. She also gives Quinn Dolls’ dog tags that she had been holding onto.

"He was footprints in the snow. Not all loves are meant to last, some are meant to grace you briefly." - Jacqueline Simon Gunn

The burial is a bittersweet and moving scene in the snowy shadows of the Earp homestead. (They decided to cremate him so “his body could never be used as currency again.” What a profound statement, if you think about it.)

Each of our heroes get to say their goodbyes, Waverly kissing the stylish scarf Dolls seemed to be fond of (I will miss style icon Dolls!) and lays it to rest with his ashes.

Nicole adds his badge, and salutes her fallen brother in arms. Doc adds a bottle of his finest whiskey and kneels, making the sign of the cross — a moving gesture since his last words to Dolls were those of condemnation.

Jeremy adds Dolls’ beloved “X” coffee mug.

Wynonna doesn’t add anything of Dolls’ but instead removes her keepsake necklace from Greece, the first thing Dolls found in the woods in Episode 1x01. His comment that “we might be looking for a Greek goddess” is now a nice bit of foreshadowing, since the word on the key is Greek for Athena, fittingly the goddess of wisdom and war. He returned the necklace to her as well, so she is essentially leaving a piece of her with him which just makes me tear up all over again.

The Earp sisters chat around a bonfire, Waverly finally delivering the envelope Dolls left to Wynonna. Its contents: a group picture of the gang looking happy around a dinner table, taken by Dolls (she whispers “I remember this day!’); “Keep going, keep fighting,” a reminder of the words he spoke to her that day giving her a sense of hope, and maybe even peace; and a single snapshot taken of her, unaware. A final way for him to say “I always look out for you, Wynonna.” A silent way of saying I love you, without expectations. His final sacrifice was for her and their friends and he wouldn’t have it any other way.   

The final scene of the episode was a bit odd to me, Doc going back to confront Kate (Contessa, as he calls her). She tells him Wyatt never stopped looking for him. And that for years she believed him dead and when she heard he had “risen”, she came looking for him. Her hard work of trying to get him involved with her again pays off as the last scene is of them kissing.

I get the feeling that it will be a short lived happy reunion for this marriage, as I do not trust her motives of coming to Purgatory just to get back with Doc, but we shall see!

Final thoughts:

I loved the mournful acoustic version of the theme song they used for the episode

Will Quinn be back as a recurring character? I kinda hope not, but I guess as long as they don’t try and replace Dolls with him I’m okay with seeing him again

What the heck is Waverly, guys? I’m concerned

I think Kate (Contessa) is an interesting character but I don’t trust her motives with Doc

Jeremy’s mustache still needs to go

The way Doc says “banana liqueur” had me rolling

Doc hogtying Quinn with a strand of  Christmas lights is some high quality resourcefulness

Thank you all for going through this emotional roller coaster of an episode with me, until next time Earpers!

Wynonna Earp airs Fridays at 9/8c on Syfy.

Gina’s episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

[femslashrevolution]

Why I Love Strangeness, Smut & Fic with Lots of Feelings

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

TW: non-graphic references to kink, taboo fantasies, abuse, and eating disorders.

I’ve started this piece about a dozen times, trying to figure out what it wants to be. As a writer, words are important to me, but as a human I want the content to say something true, to be provocative and unflinching. I want the things I write to be a sledgehammer that breaks down the walls of shame that isolate us. Shame wants to stop us from connecting, because if we do, we’ll find out we’re actually not broken or twisted or strange, or that we are but it’s okay. We’ll compare notes and realize none of us have any reason to hide who we are, because we��re all perfectly flawed. 

I write femslash to make connections. I’ve made friends, real friends, in the comments section on AO3. I help other writers, and I have other writers who help me. They’re art midwives; like a baby, sometimes a fic needs a little assistance to be born. Little international virtual villages pop up around characters or ships and we bond with each other over shared fandom. We are different ages, races, nationalities and orientations, but there are parts of us that are the same. 

It goes deeper, to the things that scare us, turn us on or make us blush. I’ve compared notes and realized that society’s “sick and wrong” is often someone’s vibrant fantasy. When I write something that feels “too weird,” either because it’s dark or kinky or too emotionally naked, I force myself to post it. I always expect the comments to say “you’re a sicko” or “how can you write about this?” but usually they’re “I thought I was the only one who was into this” and “This is the fic I’ve been searching for.” We connect over the things that isolate us, that whisper “You’re strange.” 

Maybe we are strange, but we are also the same. Isolate us, make us feel bad about who we are or what we want, and we’re powerless. When we find each other, we learn to stop apologizing for our strangeness and we become unstoppable.

I write graphic sex that’s filthy but full of feelings. I write little heartwarming drabbles about romantic misunderstandings or murderers who find kittens in the trash. I write fills for the weirdest kinkmeme prompts I can find, for pairings that make me think, “That can’t work.” I make it my mission to find a way. I kill off beloved characters, I break their hearts, I build them up, I toss them into bed together, I dissect the worst moments of their lives, I put them in sexual situations that push them too far, I make them lash out at each other, I turn them upside down and shake them until the confessions of love fall out.  

There is not always a happy ending. There doesn’t need to always be a happy ending. My best friend says she reads fic to escape the terrible state of the world. She wants a distraction, and that’s valid, but it’s not the purpose fic serves for me.

I read (and write) to feel things. Grief, rage, discomfort, joy, anxiety, arousal, heartbreak, hope. I process my life by chucking the pieces of it into a cement mixer and flipping the switch until it’s something I can build on. My triumphs and tragedies join up with the things that delight me and the ones that confuse me and the ones that scare me, and then it’s all ground down and shaken up until it’s something solid. 

I wrote the kitten!fic soon after my beloved tortie compatriot died. I used to joke she was so evil she’d live forever, but I guess even cats made of razor blades eventually need a rest. I decided to funnel my grief into something worthwhile by writing something heartrending and sad. Once I started it, the fic wrote itself into something gentle and bursting with hope. 

I wrote a dark fic in the usually-light Ghostbusters fandom; a lot of readers didn’t like it, but there were a few who connected with it in powerful ways. I often write the shades of grey, the complicated parts, the “won’t tie up neatly at the end of our hour-long episode” stories. 

I wrote an intimate fic about taboo fantasies, in which one partner had to admit to the other that she had a rape fantasy. The partner didn’t consider herself kinky, but she listened, didn’t judge and was willing to talk about helping the woman she loved explore that desire. That fic exists because in six years I was never completely honest with my ex-partner about my own fantasies, because I knew she wouldn’t have been that caring and supportive. 

I wrote a story about a lesbian whose bisexual girlfriend wanted to watch interact sexually with a man. She agreed and it was a disaster. The story struck a nerve, because a lot of queer women have had sex with men that felt “wrong” like that. I’d intended it to be a one-shot about the ways we disregard our own safety for the people we care about, but the readers’ reactions were so powerful, it prompted me to write more chapters. It grew into something much bigger about trauma, friendship and understanding.

I wrote a fill for the Ghostbusters kinkmeme prompt “anorexic Holtzmann,” because the mere idea of writing it scared me. I explored her childhood, the difficulty of being much younger than her academic peers, the way she discovered her sexuality, and the people who shaped her along the way.  I dug deep into my feelings of otherness and my lifelong complicated relationship with food and body image. Someone commented that she’d been looking for an ED fic in the Ghostbusters fandom, because she struggles and reading about it helps. “As a smart, chubby girl with an eating disorder, well done and thank you,” she wrote. It resonated with her, because we share something that makes us feel different.

I’ve written more than thirty fics centered around How to Get Away With Murder’s Bonnie Winterbottom. I’ve paired her with half a dozen different characters. Some of the Bonnies I write are fragile and sad; others are voraciously sexual, unapologetic queer dynamos. I love writing characters standing up for themselves and fighting for what they want, and Bonnie? Canon Bonnie? She wants, so desperately it sometimes makes me uncomfortable.

Before I discovered HTGAWM, I’d taken a two year hiatus from writing fic. I’d never been prolific in the first place. But there was something about Bonnie, and her complicated, imbalanced, maybe-not-sexual-but-still-intensely-passionate relationship with her boss Annalise that cut through me. It made me want to write again, made me NEED to write again. 

In Bonnie and Annalise, I saw a dynamic I’d never before seen represented on television, one that I’d lived myself. As more of Bonnie’s tragic backstory unfolded, our stories didn’t align so perfectly, but the moment she knelt weeping at her magnetic, brilliant boss’s feet still lives inside me. It resonates. I saw my past reflected in Bonnie’s devotion, her barely-concealed feelings, her tragically low self-esteem. I saw the truth of one of my own complicated relationships in the way Annalise manipulated her. I watched her give Bonnie exactly enough affection to keep her hopelessly entangled, and just enough praise to make her work until she dropped, and it made my guts ache.

And yet, I knew Annalise Keating wasn’t a monster, because I’d loved a woman who had walls like that. I knew what could happen once the lights were out. I’d seen the teflon shield come down, exposing the sort of wraith that lives inside powerful, beautiful, charismatic women who have learned to be those things to survive. The kind of woman who needs to drink most of a bottle of wine before she can let herself be vulnerable, and who wants nothing more than a moment to be soft. 

Femslash is a small corner of the wider fic world. The HTGAWM femslash community is very small. This year I discovered the Ghostbusters fandom, which offered me another character who reflected parts of myself I never thought I’d see on screen. It was bigger, more active, and the kudos and comments were addictive, but I keep coming back to Bonnie. In my stories, she faces the things I’m scared of and she says the things I wish I’d said. Life tears her apart; she collapses, but then she rises again and rebuilds herself from the ground up. And she’s so very strange. Like I am. Like we are. 

I write fanfic because I’m strange, and by putting my own strangeness on a page, I connect with other people who are like me. I write the stories I need to read, because I know there are other people out there who need to read them too. I write the kinks that shouldn’t turn me on and the confrontations that hurt my heart and the sweeping strangeness because it scares me, but it also starts a conversation. 

Hey. I understand that. I’m the same way. You’re not the only one. And we’re both okay.  

—

About the author

I’m Audrey, I’m an artist in my thirties, I live in Los Angeles and I write smutty literature. On some level, every story I tell is a love story. I like writing deep, complicated feelings into filthy smut, filthy smut into angst fic, angsty arcs into love stories, and profound epic love into fic about kittens. I’m drawn to characters who are broken but persist. My ask box is open and I am always up for a conversation about femslash, “extreme” fic, writing sex, kittens, and any character played by Liza Weil. We are all strange and weird is wonderful.

Tumblr: audreyimpossible.tumblr.com

AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/users/AudreyV/works

[unfamiliarties-a]

canon divergencies in characters.

i'll try and keep these as short as i can, but basically if you want to know where any timelines or portrayals differ from general canon then here's a master list for everyone. i'll update this for any muses i add or remove from here. any additional questions then just drop me a line. there will be spoilers for various fandoms. if any muses i have don't appear on this list then either there's no canon divergency to consider or i'm still in the process of deciding these things, again, feel free to just ask about it.

general.

tracy mcconnell. this one is kind of obvious but basically my tracy did not die at the end of the series and by extention ted did not wind up with robin after this, regardless of how much time had passed. ted and tracy both ended up together, had two beautiful kids penny and luke, and tracy was there for her daughter's wedding.

luke skywalker. i'm fine with everything that happened in the last jedi. i know a lot of other people weren't, but i'm cool with it. i didn't want luke to die particularly, but i'm okay with the fact that he did. i'm happy to write things with luke as a force ghost or luke if he had survived the finale fight.

elena gilbert. this is less a divergence of elena herself but more the general direction of the show that i didn't really enjoy. so with that everything after season three is considered to be divergent from the show. my particular peeves were plec's lack of care about elena's career goals from this point (aka the doctor thing) and her absence from the show after season six (aka why would you get rid of the main character of your show you dumb fucks). i'm fine with elena waking up as a vampire at the end of season three and the reveal of her and damon meeting before she met stefan.

loki laufeyson. no real canon divergency here. loki's death was heartbreaking and i definitely didn't want it to happen but i'm okay that it did and how well it was done. i will say here though that i do believe that loki was under some partial influence from the scepter during the attack on new york, but i'm not condoning anything either. that's just my five cents on the matter.

jess mariano. ooh, boy okay. so .. the kyle's bedroom thing. i wanna make it clear that jess, or my jess, or just how i saw things personally, was not going to rape rory. yes he was pushy and his behaviour that night was all around shitty and i do not excuse it for a moment, but he never would have gone all the way forcing her. and the first thing he did after the fight was apologise to her when he saw her next. that's just the tea for me. everything with a year in the life was cool with me i just wish there had been more scenes of him haha.

tony stark. the 'zuccini' comment just did not happen. k. thanks. bye.

natasha romanoff. i have my own bio for nat which you can read here. it's really the best guide for what i consider to be natasha's story, which is basically my own accumulation of natasha's appearances and history in the films and comics, so it would be nice also if no one stole what i wrote. also just a smol thing that the natasha and bruce trash romance did not happen here.

extended.

damon salvatore. similar to above that i have little to complain about with damon himself but with what way the show went after season three. i do think that damon's motivations and relationships with particular characters weren't put across properly to the audience, so i'll be here to clear up those instances. i'm okay with the damon and caroline thing, i don't ship them or i don't agree with what he did but i won't label it as rape. i'm not a survivor myself so i'm not telling anyone how to feel about it, to me i just think that caroline did want to sleep with him in the beginning but not after he attacked her and they didn't sleep together after that fact. the compulsion applied to damon getting her to help with with things in the town and feeding on her, but i don't think he compelled her for sex, so i treat it in that context. however i won't be explicitly writing this side of their relationship and my damon did apologize to her. i'm happy to keep the enzo and damon backstory but not them running off to kill people etc. the sibyl stuff however did not happen, nor the stuff with lily etc.

peter parker. i've seen a lot of the discussions about peter being transgender, i'm not against it in anyway, i actually think its kind of neat. i'm lgbt myself so its awesome to see some representation like that and i fully support all the trans peter's out there. personally for me however, i see peter as still figuring things out in all aspects of his life, including who he is as himself and being a friendly neighbourhood spiderman. so i'm not against exploring a trans peter in the near future, or atleast figuring that out, but for now i just think peter is too all over the place to put a label on himself either way, so he won't refer to himself as trans or otherwise, or who he's interested in sexually or romantically. it's all just one big figuring things out schtick, so be patient with him.

rory gilmore. okay so i liked the reunion series aka a year in the life but i didn't personally think that rory's arc was the best so i'm going to negate it entirely and do my own thing with it, whatever that will be. my biggest peeves really was her attitude to certain job prospects and her falling back into a crappy relationship with logan - which i never really cared for in the original series anyway. i can acknowledge that rory and logan were a thing back then, it actually lends to rory's conclusion at the end of that season but i won't write shippy things for them going forward, and i'm not even that keen in writing past shippy stuff for them. i'm a hardcore rory and jess shipper, so while she didn't wait around for him either, i'm totally down for them getting together. 

sam winchester. the whole becky rosen debacle did not happen. this includes them meeting, the love potion and the mess that was their 'marriage’. it just did not happen. becky rosen does not exist here. sam did not kill emma. if dean were to have a daughter then sam would not just kill her, monster or not, he would try to help first and probably to a fault, like he did with jack. there was never a romantic attachment with ruby. they were work partners of circumstance, they both used each other and slept together and ruby did manipulate him. sam has all his memories of the cage, due to the immense torture he went under during that time, a good portion of his 'memory’ is down to sensation, sight, sound, feeling, ect. from this its hard for him to say whether or not he was sexually abused / raped by lucifer in the cage. he was most definitely tortured and he retains the feelings of being violated in every way imaginable, but he doesn’t have a solid picture in his head of what exactly happened or atleast the whole of what happened.

dean winchester. though the show isn’t explicit with dean’s sexuality, my dean is considered to be a closeted bisexual. he has an interest in men and at times doesn’t hide it well and is very in denial about it. he’s never gotten a chance to even experiment it or entertain the idea due to the kind of life he lives, i.e. being a hunter. he will be very concerned about getting into a relationship or even a romantic entanglement with another guy, but it’s not to say its something he doesn’t want with the right person. dean was a demon for a lot longer than the show portrayed, we’re talking months and not weeks. dean loved being a demon, not looking back on it now, it makes him feel unclean whenever he thinks about it, but as a demon dean was as dangerous as they come and it took several botched attempts to bring him down by sam and castiel before they were eventually able to catch him.

john winchester. sam and dean were never beaten by john or harmed physically by him, who never would have raised a hand to his kids over anything. he wasn’t a perfect dad, he was a man grieving his wife and he made mistakes, he made his boys grow up too soon bc he couldn’t stand the idea of them not being ready someone or something tried to hurt them. no john winchester hate will be accepted here. john did tell dean to kill sam if he went evil. not because he didn’t believe in sam or hated him for anything. they had both made their peace with each other before john died. john just didn’t want his son to be corrupted or become something he wasn’t, he didn’t want azazael’s plan for sam to ever come to fruition. he wanted sam safe and himself always.

mary winchester. sleeping with ketch did not happen. bc good god, no. she was grieving her husband, john was the one. she would not jump into bed with a shit like ketch. that is all. mary did abandon the boys for the british men of letters. she was dealing with coming back to life, being a mother to two grown boys, grieving a dead husband and now living in a time and place completely different to her own time. she was adjusting to her new situation and granted she did not deal with that very well. i won’t make excuses for her in that respect but she didn’t do it out of spite or dislike for her sons.