It’s the discarded sword, forgotten because there’s no longer any fight.
It’s the wound, dark and fatal, clearly visible on Arthur’s side.
It’s Merlin’s leg, pressing tightly against Arthur’s.
It’s his left hand, clinging to him desperately.
It’s his right arm wrapped protectively around him, his right hand cupping his head tenderly, his fingers tangled in his hair.
It’s the way Merlin is holding Arthur, as if trying to merge with him and become one.
Or maybe it’s just the way this image alone tells a story, or at least the end of it. The way you can tell it was a good one, epic and tragic and filled with love and loss and all those things that make a story worth telling.
Yeah, that must be it...
Love and devastation and everything in between, all condensed into this very moment and captured forever in a single frame of a TV show.
i still find it so interesting how jackie is (was?) largely defined by her niceness, her friendliness. she's not the strongest, or the smartest, but she can bring people together. so when she is mean to the other girls, you notice it. she's mean to taissa when she feels like her position as leader is undermined; she knows that taissa is just as much of their leader as she is and it scares her. she's mean to shauna when she finds out about jeff; understandable considering what a huge betrayal it is (at least on the surface). but the girl she is by far the meanest to is nat.
and there is no good reason why anyone should be mean to nat. she is kind of treated as a punching bag, and taissa especially resents her because she doesn't like the idea of nat threatening the team's performance with her day-drinking or whatever. but nat is by far the kindest, sweetest, most compassionate, genuine member of the team. even as an adult you can see that she might be jaded and grieving and ruthless, but she's still at her core a good person. young natalie especially though is someone with a very strong moral center and uses those guiding principles of kindness to define who she is.
she's more mature, capable, and sure of herself than the rest of the group, because before ever landing in that forest, she's had a much harder life than the rest of them. we see that van probably doesn't have the best home life, but the rest of them are living comfortably. even if they don't have great relationships with their parents, they still live in middle to upper class households. nat grew up in a trailer park with a father who horribly abused her and her mother (until the day she witnessed him accidentally shoot his own face off). these circumstances made nat more resilient, braver, and more empathetic than the other girls.
and i think jackie recognizes that, whether or not it's a conscious recognition. she knows that nat is everything she herself is not. nat is confident in herself whereas jackie is terribly insecure and relies on external validation to uphold her own identity. where nat comes from poverty, jackie grew up in a huge house. where nat is comfortable having sex with boys, jackie is too repressed to have sex with her longterm boyfriend because she's terrified of having to confront the fact that she won't actually like it. natalie expresses herself through alt/grunge fashion, music, and culture, whereas jackie is as preppy as it is physically possible to be. natalie is jackie's perfect opposite: a poor outcast who is nevertheless comfortable enough in her own (hetero)sexuality to present in a (gender) non-conforming way and not care what others think of her to jackie's rich popular prom queen soccer captain who is debilitatingly insecure and sexually repressed, conforming perfectly to society's expectations of her to the point that she'd rather die than explore the possibility that she might like girls.
jackie has negative interest in travis, but she breaks him and nat up and steals him from her anyway. and the thing is, nat doesn't even care. she forgives jackie. when lottie locks jackie in the closet (ha), nat is the one who comes to her rescue. when travis apologizes to nat for sleeping with jackie, she says it doesn't matter to her. jackie is horrible to nat, but nat is genuinely mature enough that it doesn't even bother her. jackie wears her insecurities on her sleeve, and nat sees right through her. she doesn't put up with jackie's bullshit, but she's also gracious enough to not gang up on jackie with the rest of the girls, even though she's the only one who actually has any right to be mad at her. nat is generally apart from the rest of the team, not only because she's an outcast, but because she's simply above their petty dramas.
jackie doesn't have a good reason to be mean to her. she's the kindest, sweetest girl on the team. but jackie is mean when she feels threatened, and nat's existence threatens her very identity.
[ID: 13 gifs from season 3, episode 1 “the search, part 1” from the tv series “star trek: deep space nine”, the gifs show benjamin sisko and jadzia dax in the wardroom. jadzia is seated while sisko is standing in front of a monitor.
1st gif: “you know, after jennifer died, i never thought i would see you this passionate about something again.” jadzia tells sisko.
2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th gif: the camera shifts to sisko, who has his arms are crossed in front of him and takes a couple of steps forward, the camera moves with him, “two months ago, i would have agreed with you.” he takes a seat, and the camera focuses on him. “then i went back to earth and i spent all those weeks debriefing at starfleet headquarters. and i… i used to get a thrill just walking into that building. i'd look around at the admirals and think, "one day, that's going to be me." "one day, i'm the one that's going to be making the big decisions."” sisko is slightly smiling at the end.
7th gif: jadzia laughs as she recalls, “curzon always thought that was very funny.”
8th, 9th gif: the camera cuts to sisko, “did he?” then back to jadzia as she explains, “what i mean is he could never see a set of admiral stars on your collar. he thought that just making the decisions would never satisfy you. you had to implement them – “
10th gif: a shift to show sisko listening to jadzia, “see the results, face the consequences.”
11th gif: “curzon always thought you were the kind of man who had to be in the thick of things -- not behind some desk at headquarters.”
12th gif: “he was a smart old man, wasn't he?” sisko gets up and returns to the monitor.
13th gif: “he'd like to think so.” jadzia confirms. /end ID]
THEY EDIT FINE THINGS WELL: OFMD KISS AND KNIVES SCENES (S1 E9 & S2 E3) COMPARISON
Marveling at the OFMD editors who did so much more than just reuse Schumann’s Kinderszenen, Op. 15: VII. And Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes No. 5 from the season 1, episode 9 kiss scene in the season 2, episode 3 knife pulling scene.
Unedited audio from both episodes plays simultaneously in this comparison video. Take a look and a listen at what happens, with Gnossiennes No. 5 from 0:15 to 0:52. The music is playing twice, but you only hear it once because it matches perfectly. The way the verbalizations and dialogue work together are the kill-me-now gut punch taste-of-orange frosting on the best cake ever.
[Dual of the Fates, Bagpipes Edition, begins to play aggressively in the background]
Between wanting to teach his brothers that he is not just a stick in the mud that drains the fun out of everything, and also wanting to do things well within the standards of GAR regulations because he's not an idiot, Dogma did some research.
As it turns out, the bagpipes were actually instruments used during wartime as an incentive to battle, motivation for the troops, and intimidation of the enemy. It's also the perfect instrument to annoy the ever loving crap out of a very specific group of brothers who keep talking behind your back and teasing you.
As it stands, neither the Clone Army nor the Droid Army was prepared for Dogma's level of commitment to being (rightfully) petty.
man, not to brag about my own show or anything, but while there are always things I would change about anything I make (and definitely PLENTY of things I could have done better as a writer/the showrunner of this show) Evan really fucking nailed the score for The AM Archives. it's just.....very fucking good.
Imagine being 9 years old and asking your dad about the things you're interested in doing when you grow up and he's like "No ❤️! But you can get married, have babies, and then maybe your sons can do those things ☺️🫶 "
I started this one before the trope ones and spent months fighting with my art style to try and draw Boxy. Still unsure of how I feel about what I settled on for this but hopefully I'll get better in the future.
When writing professionally, every writer should have at least one competent editor who isn't afraid to give honest critical feedback and talk them out of the truly mind-blowingly bad ideas they've mistakenly convinced themselves are "brilliant plot twists."
I was watching a clip of the nutcracker on youtube and someone complained about the ballerina dancing as clara because "an adult playing a 12 year old is creepy" and guys. I think we need to shut down takes. No more takes until we figure out what's going on.