#for what i hope are OBVIOUS reasons

[sharkbait-00h-ha-ha]

Wha. Why do people think there's ship tease between RJ and Heather??? AT WHAT POINT IN THE FILM WAS THERE SHIP TEASE???????

[funkylilblob]

Now as much as I love ratworth. If scudworth was any animal he would be a ferret.

[hinamie]

bunch of portraits

[foxylovey]

// minor spoilers for the suckening!! (also cw: blood)

Twins of flesh and bone

(Boneless and fleshless version under the cut!!)

[sneez]

“My lords, I bring you news—news of the existence of mankind!”

gwynplaine in the house of lords! please don't tag as body horror or anything similar [id in alt text]

[collieii]

one line in trimax that's always stuck with me is from chapter 65, right after wolfwood's death. when vash is sticking the punisher by his grave and he says "it was part of his life". that phrasing is so interesting to me. the neutrality of it is one thing that gets me, i think. it was part of his life. for better or worse, whatever it was, the punisher was wolfwood's.

It's pretty easy to think that the punisher might represent violence, the eye of michael, the role of assassin that was forced onto wolfwood, the loss of childhood. but it's not really presented that way, not overtly anyways. we never see wolfwood shun the punisher, he's not conflicted by his use of it. he never considers abandoning it for some other weapon. it's his weapon. he doesn't discard it when he eventually decides to take a more vash-like approach and actually let people live. he pretty easily accepts it as his own, a tool he can use. (to be fair, at least part of that is probably because the punisher is a very good gun.)

the punisher can still represent the harsher aspects of wolfwood's character, the violence he's committed, that he's capable of. that's an important part of his life! and the idea of it as representative of his violent adolescence, childhood that was stripped away, goes along with this - it's literally a cross to bear. but besides showing his past as a burden, i think of the punisher as being a cross of responsibility. when you have a gun you have power, agency - you have a responsibility to make a choice. that's what wolfwood tells vash in chapter 4.

the ability to take a life, the burden of it, is literally his cross to bear. that ability - and that responsibility - was given to him by the eom, literally in terms of the gun, and in terms of his skills. but the eye doesn't think twice about killing people. for them it's not really a choice, a responsibility, it's just a given. but wolfwood can't accept that. he's constantly considering the choices he makes.

so the punisher isn't only a symbol of the eye of michael, of the path that he was forced onto. it's also a way of expressing autonomy. the eye gave wolfwood the gun, but he decides how to use it and what it means. for much of the story wolfwood struggles to decide what to do, he's a very conflicted character. but eventually he resolves to use it against chapel, against knives, to help vash, and protect the orphanage. the gun gives him agency.

so the punisher was part of his life. it was the tool that he used to commit acts of violence, acts that he was forced into, but also the tool he used to break free.

it's heavy for vash, too. he's not exempt from that idea, the idea of responsibility. as wolfwood said much earlier in the story, vash has always been able to sidestep the question of "what do i choose?", because he's only ever given himself one option - everybody lives. and he's always succeeded. but as wolfwood says, "the day will come when you'll have to choose". one day, it's not going to work.

and of course the story progresses, the stakes ramp up, and vash learns more, goes through more, and is pushed to his limits. i think by this point, by wolfwood's death, and maybe because of it, vash has realized that he might have to make that difficult choice in the near future. that's one reason why he wants to "do him proud". he has a lot of reasons to say this of course - to not let wolfwood's sacrifice go to waste, for example. but if we're thinking of the cross as responsibility, then vash is saying he doesn't want to forget the lessons he learned because of wolfwood. wolfwood has always grappled with responsibility, with what the right thing to do is. and the right thing is often not easy. vash hopes that when the times comes for him to make a choice, he'll make a good one, one that does right by wolfwood's memory.

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[fandom-hoarder]

Out of respect for the discord, I'm gonna say this here, because I was watching the eclipse and killing my car during the discussion.

Fanon =/= Headcanon, and it's not the same as a singular fan's headcanon that isn't supported by canon

Fanon is essentially a reading, interpretation, or headcanon that spreads widely in a fandom and gets adopted as a popularly accepted "fandom canon." Such as Sheriff Stilinski's first name being John before the show named him something completely incorrect.

Headcanon is personal to each individual's preferred reading of the show, based on canon or not. A canon that exists in one person's head.

The reason fanon tends to have a pejorative tone in fandom is because some fans are prone to attacking others for not accepting a common fanon, or the readings of "subtext" that led to it, as canon. And they insist that the way THEY read canon is the ONLY possible reading of canon.

And, personally, I think it's important to distinguish my headcanon of bi!dean (and aro!dean) apart from the fanon (dare i say, qfanon) of the hellers' bi!dean. The particular distinguishment being that I understand that wasn't the intent of canon, and there was no hidden bi agenda that got snuffed.

Having some of the same bi!dean subtext notes isn't the problem. It's when someone insists that was the intent. It's the unironic "there is no heterosexual reason for this" of it all. I know we're all queer shipping around here and all, but that doesn't exclude a certain whiff of homophobia and gender binary shit to the insistence that straight guys can't do [thing].

Just because you read Dean's look at Dr Sexy as queer, doesn't mean that's what it was. TPTB have said this themselves. And just because [a character from the book the vibes of spn was based on] was intended as bi doesn't mean Dean was intended to be bi. You can read that subtext into your headcanon, but that doesn't make it canon overall. Not even if it becomes fanon.

So when someone insists that's what it WAS not what they HEADCANON it was, it starts to make those of us scarred by heller qfanon very wary.

That said. We need to stop conflating fanon and headcanon so we can each enjoy our individual readings and share in the love of the show.

[aw-shizz-here-we-go-again]

•|| Seally Cute ||• (Mermay 2024)

Prompt 3: Seally Cute

Featuring: Geno, Goth, and Reaper!

Ship(s): Afterdeath.

Summary: Playtime with the kiddo! <3

Warnings: Blood from a hunt

Credits: Leviathantale and the Mermay Bingo I'm using are both by @skumhuu!

Read tags for notes.

"Dad? Dad??? Daddy!"

Geno woke up to a small, high-pitched voice yelling in his ear. He let out a tired grunt, then rolled over on his side as his tail gently swatted the other person away.

He smiled as he heard them let out a playful squeak, and he was almost immediately bombarded by a small body barreling into him. He yawned, then blinked blearily at the mischievous attacker as he rubbed his eyesockets. "Oh? What's up, my little clamshell?"

The young selkie in front of Geno puffed out their cheeks, flipping their black-and-white seal tail back and forth as they responded. "Mama's out huntin', and 'm boreddd! I wanna do sumthin'! Sumthin' else then jus' sleepin'!"

"You could practice walking, you know." Geno suggested, raising a bonebrow up at the child. He sat up and stretched, slight popping his bones as he did so. "You still haven't even tried taking your seal skin off yet, Goth."

Goth grumbled something under his breath, glowering down at the iceberg they were both on. ". . ."

Geno tilted his head to the side, wrapping his arms around his kid and hugging him close. "What was that? Is there something wrong?"

"...'s scary." Goth muttered quietly, burying his face into his father's chest. "A-an' I did try. Couldn't do it though..."

"Oh, Gothy," Geno squeezed Goth a little tighter in his embrace, wrapping Goth's tail around his own as he kissed the top of Goth's head. "It's alright, we'll figure something else out then."

"Swimmin'?" Goth asked hopefully, gazing up at Geno with big shiny eyelights. There was no mistaking it, the kid really knew what he was doing when he chose to pull the puppy eyes on his dad.

Geno sighed, giving Goth a defeated look. He didn't even attempt to resist, knowing that he would cave quickly anyways. "Okay okay, let's go swimming."

"Yay!" Goth wiggled his way out of Geno's grip, then proceeded to nudge and tug Geno towards the edge of the iceberg where the water was. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!"

Geno chuckled, relenting as he playfully shoved Goth into the icy sea before hopping in to join his kid. "Rather eager, aren't we?"

"You never lemme go swimmin' without ya, so duh!" Goth pouted, swishing his tail as he drifted around Geno in a lazy circle. He then sped up, swimming around Geno in faster loops. "C'monnn! Let's play tag or something!"

"Oho, you want to challenge me?" Geno asked in amusement, raising a bonebrow as Goth nodded in response. "Well then, let the games begin..."

.

.

.

Reaper was returning back home from... doing whatever he was doing while he was out, most likely hunting due to the blood on his teeth, and he surfaced to get a breath of air just in time to see a certain small selkie fling themselves out of the water to do a flip.

What the heck?

Diving back under the water, Reaper sped up towards the main iceberg that he and his family called home. As he approached, he could see the love of his life- ahem, Geno, ahem -and their child swimming around in circles, seemingly sportively goading each other on.

As Reaper watched, Geno suddenly thrashed his tail as he shot up towards the surface of the water, erupting from the sea and doing a double flip before he came crashing back down.

The leviathan let out a small, quiet laugh at the smug look that Geno shot at Goth, and at the pouty look that Goth had returned back at Geno.

Then Reaper had an idea. A smirk crossed his face as he dove down, deeper and deeper below his family. Once he was down deep enough to not be noticed if he shifted, he activated his leviathan form as he circled around in the icy cold depths, staring up at the two selkies above him.

He then silently and slowly swam up behind Geno, his now massive size absolutely dwarfing his mate. He watched as Goth noticed him, and he saw how the child's eyelights grew as big as saucers as his presence registered in Goth's mind.

Reaper held a finger up to his mouth, gesturing for Goth to stay quiet. He drifted ever so slightly closer to Geno, who seemed mildly confused by Goth's reaction since he hadn't realized that Reaper was behind him yet.

"Hello, darling~"

Reaper purred out an amused giggle as Geno yelped in shock, and he backed up a little bit as the selkie whirled around to face him.

"You-! Seriously, Reaper?! Ugh..." Geno groaned and rubbed the bridge of his nosebone in annoyance, glaring at Reaper in half-hearted anger. "I swear, you are so immature."

"Oh, my dearly sweet beloved, I'm so wounded by your insults!" Reaper whined pitifully, shrinking down into his normal form before dramatically leaning against Geno while holding his hand up to his forehead.

Geno grumbled something under his breath and pushed Reaper off, then narrowed his eyesocket at Goth, who had started giggling. He then sighed in exasperation and threw up his hands. "Both of you! Both of you are so immature! But at least Goth has the excuse of actually being a child."

He swam back up to Reaper and poked the leviathan in the chest, swishing his tail in mild irritation. "But you don't have any excuse!"

"B-but... Geno-senpai, it's just my personality!" Reaper blinked innocently at Geno, intertwining his orca tail with Geno's seal tail.

Geno rolled his eyelight and groaned again, pulling his tail away from Reaper and gently swatting Reaper over the head. "Don't even get started with that! Enough is enough."

Reaper sighed in mock defeat, backing away from Geno to give his love some space. "Alright, alright, if you insist."

Geno hesitated, then swam back over to Reaper to give him a soft, brief kiss before letting go again. "Love you, starfish~"

Before Reaper could sputter out a flustered reply, they both suddenly heard snoring coming from behind them. A quick glance revealed that Goth had fallen asleep, and Geno let out an amused snort. "I suppose playing around tuckered him out. We should be getting back to our iceberg anyways."

"I- uh- uhm, yeah! Mhm!" Reaper replied quickly, still blushing from the kiss. He rapidly flicked his tail and scooped Goth up in his arms, carrying the child as he started swimming to the homeberg. "Let's go!"

Geno followed suit, letting himself be half dragged in the current that Reaper's tail made since he was tired.

.

.

.

"You know, you should really wash up. You still have blood all over your teeth." Geno said with a small yawn, tilting Reaper's head with his hands on Reaper's chin so that he could see the orca's face better.

"Aw, what? Too shy to clean it off for me~?" Reaper purred teasingly, then hesitated and averted his gaze in shame almost immediately afterwards. "...Oh, yeah, right-- nevermind. Uh, forget I said that. Sorry."

Geno winced slightly, shivering not from the cold of the iceberg but rather from the reminder. ". . ."

Reaper shrank in on himself a bit, tears suddenly pricking his eyesockets "I'm sorry, okay? I- I really just can't help it... I'm sorry..."

Geno was quiet for a long moment, then he pulled Reaper into a hug. "It'll... it'll be okay. Just... let's not tell Goth, okay? I'd rather not scare him..."

"Okay..." Reaper muttered back, nuzzling into Geno's embrace. By the True Leviathans, he felt awful, but it wouldn't be an easy fix.

After all, it was his nature.

______________________________________________________________

Start

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Masterlist

[eddievedders]

your turn, Swifties.

[bigboobyhalo]

does it ever drive you crazy that we had people basically saying “I hope this canonically aromantic character who has expressed a disdain for marriage gets forced into a marriage for the sake of my ship, wouldn’t that be funny and romantic?” about q!BBH when the happy pills proposal happened . lol .

[imaginariumgeographica]

Obviously i am obsessed with the scene on the dock at the end of TaT but it's just so good. They're so friggin fond of each other. "Gods forbid you should look like a fool, Costis." Costis comparing the two of them to their blorbos from their clay tablets. Obviously the "Idiot. Us." They're so happy to see each other and it makes me lose my beans

[wistfulwatcher]

I don't understand why Jackie's team-mates are envious(jealous) of her, .Jackie is just a normal girl, what is there to envy?

an age-old question about popularity, anon!

jackie being a normal girl is part of it, i'd imagine. from the outside jackie has everything that a teen girl is supposed to want or need: wealthy parents, trendy clothes, a long-term boyfriend (break ups notwithstanding), she's pretty, and athletic, popular (she would have won prom queen), gets decent grades (though good or great grades seems more likely since we know she's not the best athlete on the team), has a loyal best friend, and has a leadership role in her chosen club. from the outside, what isn't there to envy about jackie?

especially when you look at her teammates, most of whom have something "wrong" with them compared to the above list. natalie has abusive and neglectful parents and does drugs to cope with her trauma, while jackie barely seems to drink. misty is an outsider who can't connect with anyone, but jackie is popular and a leader and so good at it that she even makes misty feel welcome. shauna struggles to assert herself and go after what she wants, but jackie tells her what to wear and drink and who to date without a second thought. taissa and van are gay women in the 90s, who either weren't out pre-crash (implied) or at the very least weren't dating anyone, and so the ease with which jackie and jeff got together and broke up on repeat must have been so frustrating to watch. lottie falls into many of the same categories as jackie, but while jackie's parents fawn over everything she says and does, lottie eats her meals alone at home and her father "shows love" with jets that take her miles away from him.

we talk about jackie being doomed by the narrative, and she totally is. but she's not just doomed to death; she's doomed to be two-dimensional. yellowjackets is a story about the relationship between a girl and her trauma, and you can't have a relationship when you're dead. like nat says, she's the "lucky one" because she gets to become a symbol (of rules, or social mores, of normalcy and safety) for the rest, instead of struggling alongside them. and what need does a symbol have of complexity? my first paragraph makes a series of assumptions about jackie, any of which could be false. we get glimpses here and there of jackie having feelings and thoughts and concerns that don't align with the things that make her someone to envy, but we don't know. we won't ever know in a way that matters to jackie. anything we learn now will be used to tell us something about the girls who are still alive, because jackie's only real function is to be fodder for them.

[gayofthefae]

Here's the thing about season 3. Nothing was a secret. There was no lining or buildup. They cleared up the miscommunication in episode 4 and she stood by breaking up with him anyways.

From there, just like I say about Will's feelings being unreciprocated, the problem is unactionable, so there's no lesson and nothing for us to root for.

Mike wants to get back together with El. She knows that. Nothing happens.

The L bomb was dropped as a false sense of momentum, because there actually wasn't any because him not saying it wasn't the problem so it shouldn't be the solution. Usually you have pining. Think the full season breakup story they did the following season:

There was pining. There was investment from US. Because there was setup for confession. Because something was withheld to be revealed. "You know I really like you but you don't know I love you" does not count. Lucas didn't know Max wanted to get back together. They had been broken up long enough and Lucas was respectful enough that Max couldn't be sure either. That setup investment for the notes passing scene. That set up his NERVES in it. That set up me being excited when I saw their first kiss in her 4x04 happy memories sequence. And satisfied to have predicted the Snow Ball as her happiest memory. If Max had known he definitely wanted to get back together as soon as she was ready again and wasn't going to move on at all, there would be no stakes.

Mike wanted to be with El. Then she didn't want to be with him. She can't have the nerves of confessing to him she wants to get back together because she already knows he does. He can't have the nerves of confessing he wants to because he already has. And they didn't establish them as friends solidly or for long enough like they did by establishing that Lucas and Max had ALREADY broken up as opposed to a 6 day breakup arc to make it so that they became unsure of what they once knew to me true of getting back together. Severity of wording changed and El loves romantic tropes in movies so it had influence but really:

Mike had no information to add that El didn't already have. El had nothing stopping her giving Mike information as soon as she had it. There were no stakes. So I didn't care. Whatever happened, cute. That was my thought process. But I had no real investment anymore, unlike when they were building to confession or fighting to get back to each other, because I knew as soon as she wanted to get back together they just automatically would be. So if you, like you were meant to, believed that Mike loved El and knew that she knew that, that scene where she said it back was cute. But not satisfying.

There is nothing to be resolved. We're watching events take place sequentially. Because when there are no stakes, there's no real goal either. Mike invented one for himself because he was uncomfortable with the idea of how comfortable he was broken up.

Tldr: Mike and El's relationship had no secrets and therefore no stakes or opportunity for confession in season 3. El telling Mike she loved him was cute, but not a "confession". Because, just like Mike telling her he loves her in 4x09, if we (think we) know how the other person is feeling and will react, we can't at all invest in the feelings of nervousness or satisfaction that the confessor is feeling.

Season 3 and 4 uninvested us by feigning plots in which they gave us no new information. And bored us. If you know exactly how a scene will play out all but exact wording, you will space out because you can. A writer never wants you to be able to space out and miss nothing. (Until they don't want you to miss what's happening when they take it away)

[lunarharp]

day 3 - exchanging “love letters” and some greying hair

[glendover]

sorry but the note saying that the special is there to cause no harm and poke fun at the creator/characters/themes is such a slap in the face bc it’s not even addressing the harm it has already caused to the fans that have been made fun off already