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norgestan · 3 years

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crisana, norandro, jorgeva and amira x dani

ha, anon just wanted all the canon couples. fair enough!

CRISANA:

see, skam s3 is my favorite season of all time, but it has never been because of the love story. isak's story hits in a lot of sensitive places for me, and isak was also the first main character i encountered that was my age. i have a really special connection to him for that reason. on the other hand... i enjoy evak for what it is, but i never saw a future for their relationship after the season ended. in a lot of ways, isak's season ended just as their relationship started, a trope that i've never liked because how am i supposed to think that they will last? how am i supposed to know how they will work as a couple? it's just, ugh.

i had similar thoughts about crisana when i watched s2, except that the love confession scene and cris as a character made it even harder to get into the couple. moreover, the way people brush other characters' roles and presence on other seasons because they're so caught up on cris and joana is like... blegh. like it makes me forget that they're actually a well-written couple at times. because imo, og they never did anything really interesting with evak once they got together. but eskam........ oh, dear eskam.

there's something so beautiful about thinking of all the girls, the teenagers that will grow up watching a relationship like theirs on popular media. their entire subplot (??? can i even call it that) in s4 is proof of how GREAT of a relationship they turned out to be. like, i just wanna SCREAM thinking about it because, how is it possible that eskam saw evak and said "we're gonna make this SO good and we'll take our time and then tie it up in an incredibly satisfying and emotional way" and then did exactly that!!!!!! the way they respect each other, communicate, genuinely try to get to each other without dumb miscommunication. the way they understand each other and lift each other up! the way joana knew how to recognize cris' intelligence when everyone was telling her she's dumb, the way cris knows how to make joana feel worth it and show her affection in such a selfless, loving way. their last scene on joana's pov in s4 was the first time i cried during that season, just because it was all wrapped up so beautifully. because eskam understood that although the appeal of their relationship comes from the soulmate status of every evak couple, they had to also put in serious work to make it all work and they also managed to get that across with grounded drama, and also a hopeful message for people struggling with mental disorders. like AAAAAAAAAAAAA god what a great couple they are. maybe i'm too much of an eskam bootlicker but they're genuinely the best evak there is. i'll die on this hill. i'm so happy young wlw get to watch them as a guideline of what they should expect of a relationship.

NORANDRO: already done :)

JORGEVA:

i mean... it's eskam's fault, without a doubt. i love what eskam did with them in s1: the change of pacing, the way they created jorge, the little story changes to make it more nuanced, i think come together in a pretty satisfying way to show a teenage romance with no real support to last for more than a while. i don’t think eskam fully got the gist of what jonas was supposed to be, but it’s for the better if we think of the message in season 1. for that reason, jorge is like the one jonas who i really wouldn’t mind coming back to his eva. so why don’t i like them?

the answer is simply that i don’t enjoy their trope and i don’t think eskam made a real case of eva and jorge getting back together. they work well as friends, sure, and it’s clear as day that jorge still has feelings for eva, sure. but like, what tells me that they’re just ready to go all in again? eva goes through a really great arc and i would definitely agree she’s in a good place to be in a relationship again, but we know NOTHING about jorge’s journey. he’s just, silently pining on eva and that’s it. i do think it’s sweet and the hints of their lost romance throughout the show are wholesome, but there’s just nothing more to it. jorge and eva work AMAZINGLY as friends! i don’t see why they should push a romantic endgame for them. in my head, eva kissing jorge at that party was just a mesh of the excitement of a new era, the nostalgia of ending highschool, the high of being on this place with someone she really cares about, stuff like that, but it just ends there, and it’s great that way. nothing about eva’s character really led to her aching to be in a relationship again, and for me it feels right to end things with her being single and surrounded by great friends.

MAYBE if eskam had devoted some time showing us their progress and romantic potential instead of trying to convince us that kasim was a real, compelling character. maybe. lol.

DAMIRA:

(god, i don’t know how long this will be LOL)

i have. so many thought about this fucking pairing. let’s see what we can do LOL. the thing about damira is that i don’t think it’s a pairing that eskam had in mind when they laid out the first two seasons. the little hints of a friendship/childhood crush that happened during cris’ season really got the fandom and they quickly became the most popular non-canon ship in the show, so that’s where i think eskam said “okay, let’s run with this”. but it’s just...... meh. like i can tell that relationships like crisana were carefully crafted (well implemented in nora’s season, greatly wrapped up in amira’s season) but i cannot say the same for dani and amira. it’s almost like virihugo, where they just started giving each other Eyes on the middle of season 3, out of NOWHERE. it just feels forced to me and so i never really felt anything for the couple in question... like, for starters, i think nora and miquel were WAY more shippable than those two, strictly talking about their setup.

if you ever saw any of my posts during s4 then you should know how i actually feel about how they developed their romance (check my anti damira tag for more?) and i don’t wanna go through all those specific points again... but damira is not only an infuriating romance, but also a bad pairing in a narrative setting. like, damira clearly exists to answer amira’s questions about how would the future of a romance with a white guy would be, right? does she get an answer? no she fucking doesn’t, their final clip is like “after all these weeks, we still have no idea so we’re gonna cut things short, go back to our initial dynamic, and wait to see if amira any of us change our minds <3″. so like, even in that sense damira is a HUGE waste of time, and just like everything that happens to amira during her season it has no lasting impacts on her character or her settings.

and personally, i love couples where they’re both equal, and communicate at last, and both make great efforts to change so the relationship can flourish. this is why i offer so much praise to norandro and crisana, where in the first couple both character go through tremendous character growth and work through their problems individually before getting together, and in the second couple they show them clashing and fighting just to display their resolutions and show how willing they are to actually talk to each other and keep their relationship stable. dani and amira, on the other hand.... blegh. eskam wants me to think dani is a knight in shining armor for liking amira but that’s all he ever does. he doesn’t defend her in front of his friends, he doesn’t make efforts to get to know her and her world, he doesn’t communicate his real feelings to her, and the one time he did he humiliated her in public. like, idk, like, even MIQUEL explicitly defended nora when his roommates berated her for not drinking alcohol LOL.

at the end of the day the problem with damira is that it completely misses the point of yousana and its target audience. making yousef a white guy is not necessarily a bad choice if you implement it well (which eskam didn’t do btw), but you have to take into account that sana’s season exists to make a primarily white christian-raised audience relate and stand up for the muslim characters in the show. when the lazier partner of the main couple who makes zero efforts to work on the relationship happens to be white, it just means people will be sympathetic of him, and nor amira - and that’s exactly what happened in the show. people either thought amira was being too harsh by laying conditions for dani before they even began dating and making sure he respected her boundaries, or just wanted all the drama to go away soon so amira could kiss dani by the end of the season. so like, yeah. terrible stuff.

i would’ve liked damira’s impact on the season and amira’s journey a lot more if it had been about a one sided childhood crush from amira’s part. i thought their friendship was charming up to s3, and i simply hate that dani is literally in no way an older brother figure for the girl squad, since it’s a dynamic that’s lacking in the show and it would be a nice way to make dani be some sort of non-creepy eskild for the girl squad (but noooo, his only interactions w the gs are hooking up with eva and dating amira. smh). it would’ve been fun to have amira intimately dealing with those feelings just to learn a lesson by the end of it, at the time that she also falls for her muslim love interest - which is actually the isak/jonas/even dynamic when you think about it, also something that eskam didn’t really do with cris’ season. but also, all of this would mean that eskam had to do the good writing thing for s4, which they kinda forgot to do throughout the entirety of the season so, yeah.

#answered #skam españa #crisana #jorgeva #damira #i don't think this warrants the a/nti tag but let me know if you think otherwise!

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skamamoroma · 4 years

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Skam Italia S4: The Hide and Seek Scene

I was asked to write about my favourite scenes from Skam Italia s4 and this one specifically first which is a risk because, so far, I haven’t been able to watch it without crying, to the point where I am 100% sure the music is emotionally coded or I have eventually gone mad.

Anyway, this post was inevitable because if you know me, you know I adore Marti and Nico so much and have written long posts all those months ago that, I guess, this had to be done! And it’s long but it’s me, it was never going to be short! (I type fast)

Before I go through the song... at this point in the season, it’s kind of heartbreaking watching Nico sit there and look at Marti with so much longing and emotion. You can tell he misses him desperately. And Marti? Ah my favourite idiot. We KNOW how upset he is. I think at this point, he is telling himself he’s fine and that he’s drawing a line and he hasn’t got anything left to say to Nico… mainly out of sheer stubbornness. Nico’s lies and the way he tried to hide things clearly hurt and frightened him, triggering worries of loss and being left behind, of not being good enough, of Nico’s past changing what they have, of Nico’s past actions with Maddalena being something that could happen again. Neither of them are NOT understandable. I look at them both and I see the foundation they built back when they first got together and how that can only have strengthened immeasurably because of how long they’ve been together… I am reminded that the look in Nico’s eyes spells out what he told Marti on that balcony - “i’m thinking about the fact that I’m in love with you and I’ve never felt this way before”. Marti isn’t a stop gap or a second best because he couldn’t have Luai… Marti is hugely important to him. Nico adores him and not only that, adores him FOR who Marti is. I think it’s that basis that didn’t once make me feel anxious when episode 7 arrived. I feel I know these characters and their hearts. We know Marti’s so well and know that when he loves you, you’re his family. We know he considers Nico to be that… he left his father and step family behind, reconciling his past anger and walked away towards those he considers his family: his mamma, Gio/Luchino/Elia and Nico… he chose them and he specifically walked towards Nico with so much honesty to tell him he was by his side. The idea that ANY of that could be disrupted and that Nico perhaps isn’t who he thought he was… “somebody that I used to know” - not only an amazing song choice for Nico/Luai but also for Marti/Nico. Marti’s face screamed “I don’t know all of you” when he realised Nico’s past had been hidden from him. Marti’s fear of losing Nico caused him to cut and run and he effectively broke his own heart… but at the same time, Nico didn’t help himself. By trying to do the right thing, he made it worse and I think the bottom line is that eventually Marti felt left behind, felt that Nico’s extended secrecy and lies were a reflection of their relationship…

But he didn’t have all of the facts and his own fear and freak out meant he wasn’t seeing clearly. We know Nico loves Marti with his whole heart not only because he told us but because of that comfort they give off as a couple… it’s just a FACT.

And this is where this clip makes me weepy. Because we know Nico’s past now. We know 3 pretty important things

Nico always felt spoken for and lost in his relationship with Maddalena. He wasn’t trusted, was spoken over, was belitted at times and felt he lost his voice. He was subject to all of that but put up with it. She wasn’t a bad person… their relationship just wasn’t healthy. His extended Last Man metaphor was his own way to ‘escape’ and be with Marti, someone who made him feel safe and listened to and cared for. Marti is his safe space.

Luai wasn’t just a mistaken kiss. He meant something. He may not have meant what Marti means or even close to it but that doesn’t matter. He was SOMETHING and if Nico’s eyes and smile in the piano video are any clue, Nico was so fond of him. That became dark and upsetting and ultimately damaging for both of them and poor Luai. Poor poor soul. Poor Nico for having that so cruelly removed from him, perhaps wondering if he was to blame or if he’d stayed away all would have been fine. It makes sense now why Nico was so unwilling for Marti to see the real him, to give in to what he felt with Marti because, ultimately, Nico internalises. His worries must have been overwhelming. He must have feared that history would repeat or that somehow HE was the one who was toxic… which we know is so untrue.

By meeting Marti, Nico suddenly has this whole group of lovely, fun, ridiculous, warm and inclusive friends who show so much love and support. It is SO TELLING that Nico is still there at Silvia’s birthday party. Nico is NOT simply Marti’s boyfriend. He is a part of their group and they care about him so much too.

Knowing those 3 things is why the song that Ludo chose will FOREVER make me cry the second I hear the words. How he found a song SO perfect for Nico’s story is astounding to me. Every lyric works and I think the only way to talk about this scene is to track it with the lyrics… I suggest listening to it as you read (if you’ve even got this far because IT IS JUST SO PRETTY).

This scene is, if nothing else, a moment to honour Nico as a character and his relationship with Marti and I swear I’ll never be over it.

I lived my life alone before you

We see Nico alone with his eyes closed. The idea that we KNOW Nico felt alone before he met Marti. He told him he felt alone in his head, in a crowd and alone with people he loved. Marti changed that.

And with those that I’d never succeeded to love

Maddalena. Luai. Neither of them worked out. The first being unhealthy and damaging and the second being a tentative step into a hopeful romance which resulted in trauma.

But we know Nico is someone with a huge heart. He still wants to love and be loved in return… but he feared it so much because of his mental illness but also, we now understand, because of what happened to Luai

And I grew so accustomed to that kind of solitude

We saw he had. He told us that when he and Marti were in his bed. He lives his life feeling alone… so much so that the thought of being the Last Man frightened him so much.

I fought you, I did not know how to give it up

Well, even writing that made me cry. We WATCHED him fight his feelings for Marti. His own worries and fears making his route to falling for Marti full of bumps in the road. He felt unworthy and frightened… and yet he still couldn’t give Marti up. Time and time again he fought his way back to Marti - Halloween, Bracciano, by his plan for the apocalypse, on the balcony when Marti came out of the twinkle lights and then finally accepting to live life minute by minute despite his fear.

Before you, had I ever known love or had I only known misuse of the power another had over me? The power another had over me.

Oh. This line. This is the one that gets me. Full on tears. The fact that Nico, as a lovely kind gentle creative beautiful soul knew more pain than most his age by the time he met Marti. Not only did it come from parents and a girlfriend who failed to listen to him, who always decided his feelings for him, his battle with his mental illness causing him to feel shame and as if he couldn’t be loved and listened to as Nico and not a product of his mind. As Stefano Benni and La Giraffa helped him find strength that he could know real feelings despite his brain being poorly, he kept trying and fighting.

He watched a boy he liked, Luai, subject to significant mistreatment and trauma and no doubt partially blamed himself… never received closure for that and was left with clear scars from it

“Had i ever known love or had I only known misuse” - those words are so emotional for me. Had he? I don’t know if he had. It makes what he found with Marti so fundamental and meaningful. How safe Marti must have made him feel. No WONDER he tried to hard to cling on.

I crossed the country and I carried no key, couldn’t I look up at the stars from anywhere? And sometimes I did, I felt ancient but I still sought peace and it never came to me

I heard this and immediately thought of his mental health and also his path through his struggles. That idea of ENDURING and going through so much… never being able to see the stars or a way out. That overwhelming shame. That feeling of being weary and exhausted. The fact that he DID always keep going, always seeking peace and comfort and contentment but “it never came”….

They often spoke as thought I had been set free, but I travelled only in service of my dreams. I stood before them all, I was a sleepwalker

AH. Oh god this song. Every line, man. The idea that Nico has had people who have told him how to behave or have caused him to question his own mind… the fact he must have been told time and time again that he’s getting better or that he’s being monitored… but he chose to keep going if anything, for his passions. We KNOW he is a renaissance guy, a creative quirky soul. He plays piano and draws and sculpts and is a lover of film and the arts as a whole. All of that makes him deeply passionate and he uses it to help him, often to cope. But the idea of being a sleepwalker… the idea that he walked through life half asleep a lot of the time because of his past experiences even in the face of those who told him they cared.

Couldn’t hold my misery down, not even for you.

Nico can’t change who he is. He was never able to and nor should he. But he felt he wasn’t good enough for Marti. Meeting Marti made him want to change… but ultimately he realised that meeting Marti meant the opposite. He didn’t need to, he was loved as he is.

But I long for you now even when you just leave the room

OH my. Tears again. We have just watched him stare at Marti across the room with so much love in his eyes, so much longing for his best friend, his love. Not having Marti must hurt and hurt badly.

And of all of the roads and cities that I passed through, of all of the eyes I have searched inside, the one sense of permanence that I came to feel was mine, only beneath your gaze

FUCK ME. Haha. That last line. Marti is his person. Of all of the things he has experienced, the people he has encountered and tried to love or tried to make connections with, none of them worked out and never once did he feelable to be himself entirely… until Marti. Beneath Marti’s gaze, he could feel that sense of permanence… he could see and be himself.

I can’t even tell you how stunned I am at this song and how truly PERFECT it is for Nico… but that this last line… the fact the song tracks Nico through the house alone and ends with him finding Marti makes me want to weep into a cushion!

The fact he’s helped by those who also love him. They orchestrated this because Nico means something to them and so does Marti. They want them to be happy and he’s helped to find his way back to Marti by true friends.

The thing that CANNOT be ignored is that this whole thing happens because of Gio. Of COURSE it does. He spends this season trying to keep peace: with the girls, Nico/Marti and with Marti/la rosa squad. His heart is enormous and he just likes people to get along. My dude, how I love him.

As for the way the clip unfolds and the specifics, I love that it is the boys only who point Nico in the right direction. It had to be them. Gio being the one to lock the door. Gio’s smiles as he does it. It is SO reminiscent of the fact Gio left the cabin in Bracciano for them. He’s always there for Marti but that also means he’s there for Nico too and he won’t allow them to be unhappy.

I can’t handle how small Nico look, how cuddly in his sweater with his tumbly curls. He’s just the most endearing. The warmth of the lighting and of the house is a classic Skam Italia thing and is, as ever, like a comfort blanket.

The fact that Marti is under the bed makes me laugh with Nico having to bend down to see him… not to mention the “bastardi”. Oh my sweet idiot boy. He was never going to be able to get away with his self destruction and stubbornness forever and his boys won’t let him. I love that it’s so Marti. The whole exchange is so in character… Marti’s “I can jump out of the window” is his ever sarcastic self at play and I adore him for it and so does Nico because in the face of everything, Nico laughs. There’s just this overwhelming send of comfort and sweetness, I can’t explain it.

The fact that Nico asks “can I come closer?”. The softness of his voice, the way he ASKS and doesn’t just do it, the way he KNOWS he must go to Marti and that Marti’s stubbornness is fierce but also that he fell in love with Martino Rametta… he needs to spell things out for Marti and let him know what he wants.

What is also REALLY sweet is that it’s kind of Gio AND Elia who stand at the front of the door with Elia looking to Gio and celebrating their little trick. Their unspoken words and communications throughout Nico and Marti’s story was fundamental and we see it again. The characterisation is just so unbelievably consistent and meaningful. Their little high five at the end is adorable.

The fact they’re all outside, all hopeful and full of love for both boys is so heartwarming. I can’t!

I also LOVE the way Filo is there cuddled into Gio’s arm. THE SWEETNESS. Everyone must love cuddles from Gio. But Filo being a part of it is just PERFECT as he’s fundamental to them both too.

Then the ending being so so so sweet with Sana being so filled with love for her friends and for Marti and Nico that she uses that to spur her on to make a big decisions of her own. How I adore and cherish this scene so very very much.

I think their story in s4 carries on so well with so many ideas from s2, not just filling in the gaps about Nico’s past. It adds SO much to s2 and things we see, heard and experienced with both Nico and Marti.

The thing that most surprises me is that we are effectively handling an Evak couple “breaking up” in this season. Yes, it wasn’t a proper break up but still, in Evak terms that could be catastrophic. It isn’t and it wasn’t and I hold Ludo entirely responsible for the fan’s ability to understand and appreciate why he chose to test them. He didn’t allow them to become background mannequins, didn’t allow them to be unrealistically perfect, didn’t villainise either of them and made them both understandable. This would have, in other circumstances, caused a total fandom meltdown but all I’ve seen are insightful posts about why YES it hurt to see them upset and going through a rough time but NO it didn’t ruin them and, if anything, made them feel more real and more connected and determined to be better. The way Ludo loves Marti and Nico is all over this season despite it being Sana’s and, for me, it never takes away from her story. All anyone wanted from the inclusion of Nico’s past was that he was gifted some focus to honour his experiences and Ludo tried in so many ways to give him that and… well, this scene, to me, is a gift for Nico as a character.

If you got this far then GOD BLESS YOU but it is a testament to Ludo that I can always write damn essays on his work. I am so grateful to him for finding a moment in Sana’s season to do this and for it to mean SO MUCH despite it being so simple.

#skam italia #skam italia spoilers #nicotino #thoughts etc #hide and seek #si s4 #i was proper teary writing this

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hopevalley · 3 years

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I've actually enjoyed watching new episodes of the show for the first time in a LONG time! I thought Lucas being frustrated w/ Elizabeth was contrived and misplaced. Was his mom like "me & your father are separated btw i told elizabeth before you?" The bit felt off. But hey, these past three episodes have been fun & much-better written than anything last season. How much of this season's improvement over recent prior ones do you think is due to the season having a new showrunner?

As to Lucas and Elizabeth, I feel this is an issue with shows in general of this runtime and episode length. I like to compare WCtH with Road to Avonlea because both shows had short seasons and 40ish minute long episodes, were family shows, and featured ensemble casts. Avonlea had a similar issue with pacing in the occasional episode. I know I like to nitpick WCtH a lot about its writing, and I never shy from honest critique, but I really do think the hiccup with Lucas and Elizabeth in Ep3 was just a product of needing a few more minutes of screentime—preferably the start of Helen telling Lucas about the situation with his father, since it did feel like him knowing everything came out of almost nowhere. We knew Helen would have to talk to him, but we never really saw her resolve to do so, and I think we earned the emotional payoff of the truth coming out. (As an aside, Helen should have apologized for telling Lucas that Elizabeth knew as well as putting her in a position where she had to keep a secret from someone she cared about. Elizabeth being put in a bad position was awful enough, but then she went and told Lucas that Elizabeth was aware the whole time? Yiiiikesssss...)

I’m pretty confident that Helen told Lucas something like: “I have to tell you something important... Your father...left me...a few weeks ago. I need to apologize for keeping it from you but I didn’t know how to bring it up...” and then probably responded to something Lucas said with a comment about how she’d talked to Elizabeth about it, or Elizabeth suggested she be honest about the situation because Lucas would find out eventually and it would be better if it came directly from her. I could definitely see Helen accidentally being too honest in a situation where she’s nervous about admitting the truth to her own son. She’s probably extremely embarrassed and ashamed, and the episode doesn’t really go into how Helen feels about it. They just jump into talk about love and how it needs to be nurtured and nobody ever asks Helen if she actually loved/loves her husband, let alone if he was a good man/husband to her.

Not getting a scene where Helen confesses the truth weakens the entire plotline. I’m hoping they’ll just keep improving on this specific aspect of the show, and consider getting rid of unnecessary scenes or entire unnecessary storylines in favor of stronger, more complete stories.

I know their hesitation is based on the idea that not everyone cares about (for example) Lucas, so focusing really hard on Lucas’s relationship with his mother might feel Bad, but the entire “chair” plotline with Rosemary and Lee was unnecessary, as were the longer Florence and Ned scenes. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoyed them! But if they cut those out, or mostly cut them, then there would have been enough screentime for a full scene showing Helen telling Lucas about the truth.

And Chris McNally is clearly an actor who can handle an emotional scene like that, so it would have turned out well, and been well-received by the fans...even the ones who aren’t rooting for Lucas. Because what people who watch this show want to see is...depth, I think. So many relationships feel tacked on or fake. I’ve seen improvement this season, but they could definitely do more to bolster the “community” feel of the show.

As to the quality of the season so far...

@trash-god and I were chatting earlier this week about how wild it is that we’re both, like, actively looking forward to the next episode regularly. Sure, it’s still pretty early in the season, but we’re 25% of the way through. If the writing stays this consistently decent I think we’ll have the best season in a long time on our hands!

It’s funny because if you lurk on the WCTH subreddit, you’ll see most of the fans there are bored of this season, but I disagree with them in a bit way; this season is DEFINITELY better-written and smoother. As to where to place the credit, I think it’s worth considering the last few seasons and what the writers/writing teams have struggled with.

Season 4: They knew something was going to happen with their lead man so they tried introducing other things and in many ways had success. There were some REALLY GOOD scenes in S4, but there were also scenes or arcs that had a lot of potential that just fell flat. For example, they had that plot where Frank and Abigail got annoyed with each other over the fact that he’s kind of still living (mentally) as a carefree bachelor, and even though it wasn’t as thorough as it should have been, it was a pretty good and realistic storyline. But then later in the season, they introduced Carson, and Frank is suspicious of him for almost no reason (or at least, no solid reason), and then actively is...like a BAD PERSON for NO REASON. Two completely different plots, one was good and felt natural, and the other was awful and cringey. We also have the AJ plotline in S4. It started out super good because it was one of those plots that was genuinely built up to over the course of several episodes. We find out the accountant that was going to testify has withdrawn their statement, then we find out they’ve disappeared and we have a name. Bill discusses it with Abigail and Frank both, multiple times. He thinks it’s a payoff and he’s determined to prove it so he starts poking around. Eventually he gets a lead and follows it, and it’s revealed that AJ is a woman. Bill is annoying. AJ is a liar. I think conceptually this is one of the more interesting plots they’ve cobbled together, but in execution it was lacking toward the end of the story. Bill spent two episodes fighting AJ’s attitude and in the end he just lets her go with a smile? That isn’t like Bill at all. There’s a scene or two missing to make that reaction make sense. They don’t interact enough to give us the idea that Bill *understands* her, let alone would be okay with her literally breaking out of his jail ON HIS WATCH.

Season 5: They had to write Jack out of the story and had to rush a wedding in to “appease” the fans. They also had to write Shane, Philip, Frank, and Dottie off the show in this season (Dottie because the actress deals with a chronic illness and can no longer do acting work—I want to say she has Lyme’s). So they cobble this like, awkward storyline to write Frank out that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. They put this dramatic story together for Philip (when him just moving away would have been better/more interesting), and they try to bring AJ back for another 2-part episode, which sounded fun until we actually had to watch the episodes. It was at this point that I thought, “The people writing this show...think they’re writing a movie script.” It’s not that I think AJ isn’t pushy or emotionally blunt, but it definitely came across in those episodes that they wrote her that way specifically because the plot wouldn’t work out if she wasn’t. She does unreasonable things. For some reason Bill still has feelings even though she’s done nothing to earn them. (And vice-versa; he’s just so mean to her...why would she be interested?) Everyone was like :O when the AJ episodes weren’t very well-received. But like, I didn’t want AJ to come back for a huge dramatic rattlesnake bite scene. I wanted her back to see her emotional struggle with facing prison. I wanted to really see where they’d go with her seeing Henry Gowen. She says she wants to start over in Hope Valley after prison, but like...WHY? The only people who are nice to her are Dottie and Abigail! And then after this super dramatic poorly written set of scenes that pretty much ensured AJ would never be seen on the show again (because her presence was actively mocked by a lot of fans) they actually kill off Jack and try to have a deeply emotional and thoughtful episode.

The worst part is that...the post-death episode was good. The actors were great. Then you look back at the dramatic rattlesnake stuff and you’re just like, “What went wrong here?”

Season 6: They decided they were going to introduce a love triangle, so they start doing that, but then Abigail’s character AS WELL AS CODY’S CHARACTER has to be cut from the show, so they edit those out. I still think doing this was the right thing—Abigail as a character was literally UNBEARABLE throughout most of S5—but I also can’t deny that it probably brought the cohesiveness and overall quality of the season down by a bit, particularly with Abigail acting as a buffer between Nathan/Lucas and Elizabeth. I have no way of knowing if they edited other characters into those roles (it’s possible Bill became a buffer between Nathan and Elizabeth, for example), but the editing still gave us some scenes that just didn’t...quite work, like the one where Elizabeth comforts Henry, or when Lee becomes Bill’s confidant regarding the position of judge being offered to him.

Season 7: In their attempt to make Lucas seem “mysterious” they accidentally made him come off almost creepy. More than once. They had some good ideas in this season, but the writing felt a bit choppy and isolated from episode to episode. Of course Nathan’s father was innocent. Of course it was resolved in five minutes. You could see they were trying REALLY hard for cohesiveness at certain points (Elizabeth tried talking to Henry about his attitude; Jesse mentioned Frank; Dottie was mentioned), but each episode felt very isolated from the others, almost as if most of them were written completely separately from the rest.

And you’ll notice in S4, 5, and 6, we kind of have a similar problem, where some plots feel like they were written or inserted into the story independent of the other plotlines. Frank breaking into Carson’s room at the saloon to snoop through his stuff was one of the worst things in the season (literally cringey—and not in that “character is doing something in character that is hard to watch” way, but rather, “this character would literally never do that” way). The AJ storyline in S5 felt like the person who wrote it watched AJ & Bill’s interactions in S4 and absorbed ONLY the fact that they bickered a bit (and then didn’t know how to write that dynamic in a pleasing way). Writing Abigail out of the show was for the best, but it forced cracks in the plotlines that weren’t necessarily filled, as well as gave us interactions that didn’t feel quite right.

And I think S7 was trying to get on the right track, but wrote episodes in a very disjointed, haphazard kind of manner. There were good things about it, yes, but there were also some very...bad things.

And overall the problem almost universally was that it felt like some of the episodes/interactions were written as if they were part of a movie, as part of a one time deal, instead of something that would need to be carried forward. If you go back and look over some plotlines you can start to see where the writers...didn’t know how to write fanfiction. S5 AJ is not the same character as S4 AJ. She doesn’t feel the same. She’s not written with S4 AJ in mind. She’s not a natural version of the character that exists a year later in the storyline...and then she was given a storyline that they had to force the character to fit, instead of tailoring a storyline to match the character. And they continued this trend...over...and over...and over...and over.

And now, finally, it feels that they may actually have a head writer who knows how to write television, who knows that in order to write a successful television series, you have to go back and watch the early episodes. You have to see how the characters have evolved. You have to consider how they’ve gotten to where they are, and where they will LOGICALLY go from here based on things that happen to or around them.

I don’t want to state this as Fact too early, but I definitely think it’s a factor. We’ll see how the rest of the season plays out, but I hope the quality continues to be as good as it is.

#when calls the heart #answered mail #season 8 shenanigans #season 8 spoilers #analysis and meta discussion #long post #anonymously asked

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jerepars · 3 years

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Throwing Copper Extended Chapter Notes

1 / 5 Reinventing Your Exit

Hyperlinks appear in blue (underlined on mobile). The story is posted here.

Teresa could see the stress James carried in his jaw and the dark circles under his eyes. She recognized it because she’d seen it in herself before, the restlessness and slight delirium, when she wasn’t sleeping.

The first sentence is an ode to the opening lyrics of Remo Drive’s “I’m My Own Doctor”: I’ve been self-diagnosing all of my problems, carrying all my stress in my jaw.

David Lee Autry was one of many aliases James had over the last few years but one he maintained with close attention because the so-called Autry had a credit card in his name. James hadn’t exactly had time to pack a bag when he broke out of a CIA facility to warn Teresa about impending doom. He showed up in New Orleans in a stolen car, the clothes on his back, contents of his pockets, and a bullet lodged in his chest.

David Lee Autry is the name written on James’ fake passport in 2x03 (around 20:54 in the episode); Pete from the militia group reads it.

James felt a lump in this throat. Whether it was because there was something very domestic about letting someone else do his laundry or because he worried the warning he’d come with wasn’t enough to protect Teresa every time she walked out the door, he wasn’t sure. But he swallowed his feelings down and didn’t put up an argument to her laundry suggestion. He appreciated the clothing George had lent him, but oversized tracksuits and brightly patterned button-down shirts were far from James’ aesthetic. And he absolutely refused to put on King George-branded attire, aerodynamic or not, so he’d been going commando while waiting for David Lee Autry’s online order to show up at Teresa’s PO Box.

When Teresa and James meet King George for the first time in 2x01, we get the lovely scene where he yells for someone to get Teresa a King George bikini (1:12) and later points to the speedo he’s wearing, saying “aerodynamic as shit, will make you feel alive, I trust” (1:18). And, like, who am I to not bring up aerodynamic speedos and going commando?

The doctor had come back and after patching him up, again, prescribed bed rest for the patient who seemed to be doing everything to keep aggravating his body rather than help it get better. Teresa had been furious, asking if he had a death wish after all, so he’d spent the last two days bored out of his mind in bed from inactivity, barely sleeping and reading Faulkner. Or maybe he’d barely slept because he was reading Faulkner. Either way, James knew it best to tread lightly where Teresa was concerned.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t sit in a chair at a desk though. Anything would be an improvement over laying on his back and waiting for his thoughts to float up to the ceiling.

So, listen, since they’re in Louisiana, and given their close proximity to matters of death and dying, if James is going to be reading anything at all, it just feels fitting that he’d be reading Southern literature, specifically William Faulkner. As I Lay Dying is an obvious choice, but personally I think he’d be reading The Sound and the Fury. Not that it matters.

The last sentence in the second paragraph is a reference to “Dreamspace” by Glacier Veins, and the line that goes I’m on my back so I float up to the ceiling to feel different.

Teresa had cried herself to sleep that night thinking about everything that could have gone wrong, if he hadn’t made it in time, or if he had but if it had been too late for him. It wasn’t just anyone—it was James, and he would’ve spent his last dying breath to tell her to chase safety if that was what it took.

Never did I think I’d manage to make a nod to and with my one last gasping breath I’d apologize for bleeding on your shirt from “You’re So Last Summer” by Taking Back Sunday. To be here, in 2020, as an adult, and finding a way to make that reference is...strange yet somehow satisfying at the same time. Also, the chapter title is in reference to a song off the Underoath album They’re Only Chasing Safety, and it looks like I found a way to work that in as well. I don’t know why my musical inspiration for this version of Jeresa seems to come from music that peaked in the early 2000s?

There was a time when James had been her mentor to the underworld, always keeping her from sinking to the bottom, even when he’d been the one who had to make the tough calls and take the brutal actions. She didn’t think he’d ever be able to rid himself of that balancing act, of showing her the ropes but strongly advising her to untether herself from the line completely, to walk away. Teresa could still hear his voice in the back of her mind, from the night after the party at the Birdman’s when he told her in a matter-of-fact fashion why he’d sent her in: your job was to learn. Since then, and especially in his absence, it seemed there’d been only tough lessons to learn and bitter pills to swallow.

I have so much appreciation for the early dynamic between James and Teresa. The car scene in 1x05 outside the warehouse is a highlight because when Teresa gets out, all indignant, she thinks she has the last word (0:15), and James comes right back at her (0:21) to tell her how it is. He’s kind of smug about it. I love it.

And I know that there’s trouble all the time. But it’s interesting that when they get away from this dynamic (especially in S4 where it doesn’t exist, because James isn’t there), it seems that’s where the real trouble comes in.

The balance that they create is delicate.

They were so far removed from the time he’d said I’ve got a plan for a future and it doesn’t include getting killed by crossfire meant for you. But he’d chosen crossfire—sought it out, really—that was what his future devolved into. And like he’d said back then, she was trouble. More and more, Teresa had begun to wonder if there was anything the James she’d first met in Dallas wasn’t right about.

I know this scene in 1x04 is often reblogged and quoted. After watching it several times, my only question is if it’s just the lighting of the scene or did they forget to apply James’ tattoos on set that day? I can’t watch it or see gifs of it now without that bothering me.

It only took Teresa a day to get the cat to venture inside and it only took George a few minutes to declare its name: Peach. God damn, we got ourselves a grumpy cat on our hands, George had exclaimed as she sunk her claws into his flesh before escaping from his embrace like a magic trick, she’s got the same personality as Giant Peach over here. She’s little Peach.

So I guess I rolled with that bts picture of Peter from Alice’s story and wrote the cat into the story. I bet this cat makes zero appearance in S5 and at no point do any of them ever have a pet but I did it anyway. The first thought when I saw it was “Peach and Giant Peach”. Would James be a cat guy? I think he would.

George suspected there was much more to the exchange than the parting words voiced out loud, noticing there was a sense of thanks in her eyes, too. The looks Teresa and James gave each other exuded the tension between them and always made it feel at least ten degrees hotter than it actually was in any room. They had their own way of communicating that only made sense to them, that no one else was privy to. There were better odds throwing copper down a wishing well than trying to decode their language of silence.

The story title comes from “Throwing Copper” by Touché Amoré. Like throwing copper in a well. You’ll never know if wishes work only time can tell.

This is not really the part that made me decide to name the story after the song, but I was still happy to find a place for it in the narration.

“Think you might need to reinvent your exit strategy, Giant Peach,” George said with a frown, nearly in disbelief with himself over what he was about to reveal to James.

“Reinvent?”

“Reinvent. Rethink. As in don’t make one. Methinks the last thing Little Principessa needs right now is more people leaving.” George spoke without his usual puns, so James didn’t have to question if he was being serious.

As mentioned earlier, the chapter title is from a song off of They’re Only Chasing Safety, “Reinventing Your Exit”. I think this might be the biggest Underoath song there ever was? Just listening to this makes me feel 14 again. This was such a gateway to other music that I ended up loving.

Teresa’s evolving thirst for vengeance, to even the score, was foreign to James. It was part of Teresa that scared James a bit. Before he left Phoenix, he’d seen tiny red flashes of her anger, questionable decisions so far removed from when she’d stood within shooting distance on a train car and said we can do a different way, where none of us has to die. Her vision had seemed clear then; she wanted to move product without the same bloodshed as Camila. When James worked for Teresa, he’d never wanted her to lose herself in the business, and never thought she should stay in the business—those were things she’d said she never wanted, too. But being at the top in the business, like she was, it changed people. It was inevitable. It pulled them down into the fire until there was nothing left but scorched earth.

I get the sense that we are never ever getting this kind of James in canon, who is not totally cool with the part of Teresa that she shuts off in order to be queen. I think we probably get another yes man. And for canon, for the sake of Teresa being the queen, I get it. That’s fine. But, in any fic, I always find myself trying to humanize characters and not just leave them as archetypes. The reason this story got so long, the reason there was no way I was going to get through it in 2500 words or less (lol, who am I kidding, I can’t write anything of that length), is because I realized this is the James I want to explore. I want to see him push back at Teresa and not just let go, not just get shut down. Because Teresa is far from perfect and she doesn’t always make the right decisions (tbh, I think she makes a lot of dumb decisions). It’s a delicate balance between the two of them that gives the best outcome.

James’ thoughts in this first chapter are the setup for the exploration of the Jeresa dynamic in the next two chapters.

James used to see a blinding light when he looked right into Teresa’s eyes, a moral compass of sorts, always willing him to choose the humanity he’d buried so deep. But now it was light mixed with dark, integrated too well to be separated. Now looking into her eyes was like staring at a flickering light, not sure if it was going to illuminate the cave or burn out.

Here is the part of “Throwing Copper” that resonated with me for this whole thing: Like staring at a flickering light, you don't know when It'll burn out, or how much time you have left to let it light up your life.

So relevant.

I don’t want to lose you. Maybe that had been a proclamation of love in her own way, and maybe that was the last honest thing Teresa had ever said to James, after she’d realized she’d been wrong to doubt him. Those words had gripped him and followed him. He’d found solace and comfort in them even after he left, because he’d wanted nothing more than to stay, but he left to protect her because of what Devon had hanging over his head.

One of the lines in Tegan and Sara’s “This is Everything” is baby, this is the last honest look I’ll ever give. But by the end of the song it turns into baby, this is the last honest love I’ll ever give.

Teresa and James so obviously love each other but they never say that out loud, right? I feel like that moment in 3x12 when she says “I don’t want to lose you” (around 23:05 of the episode) is the closest we’ve gotten thus far. There’s a silent moment before she says it, and a silent moment after, before James answers and I swear all of it is so telling. The silence. The way they look at each other. The body language. Everything. They know.

#je repars notes

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smallblueandloud · 4 years

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hi essbie!! you seem super awesome❤️❤️ if you would like to talk to me about the west wing i would love that! i’m watching for the first time now and i’m in LOVE with it- tell me all your thoughts! otps, favorite episodes, arcs, characters... anything!

oh my god, this is my FAVORITE ASK THAT I HAVE EVER RECEIVED EVER. i’m so happy to talk about the west wing because the fandom that’s still alive today seems to be TINY (although high-spirited!!). thank you for asking!! i will endeavor to talk a lot.... which isn’t hard for me, lol.

(psst, before we begin, can i recommend you check out @donnajosh, who posts gorgeous new gifsets of tww pretty regularly [and also has gifs tagged by episode so you can find the right post to reblog when you’re liveblogging, shh], @etraytin, who’s written some AMAZING multichaps that have gotten me through this very stressful week, and @cassiesinsanity, who’s just plain genuinely amazing?? okay. now that that’s out of the way.)

i tried to figure out from your blog where you are in the show, but i can’t find anything more detailed than “probably has finished in the shadow of two gunmen”, so i’m just gonna keep things anti-spoilers. there are some really, really cool plot developments in tww, and i don’t recommend you spoil yourself for things on purpose! but also like. i DEFINITELY spoil things for myself all the time. so what the hell, don’t listen to me lol.

(i tried to put this under a cut, but tumblr glitched. sorry, peeps who don’t care about the west wing. also, WATCH THE WEST WING.)

my ALL TIME, dearest headcanon is adhd josh. i just. i love my boy so much. i love my impulsive, ridiculously-sensitive-to-perceived-rejection, loud, hyperfixated boy so much. i don’t know everything about adhd, but from what i know josh is TEXTBOOK. or at least he’s a lot like me! and i’m reasonably sure i have adhd. so. i’m REALLY, REALLY into that headcanon and everything about it. (i actually wrote a fic in which i wrote him the way i see his adhd presenting, because i love him so much. hmm, i should write a fic about josh being adhd. what kind of stims would josh like??)

i love and adore josh/donna, like many many other people. i like zoey/charlie, just because i think they make each other happy and both of them deserve that. i... like cj/danny? sorta? i think they’re adorable, and they have some REALLY good moments (no spoilers but. oh my god. danny really out here chugging his respect women juice and i love him for it). but also i am EXTREMELY ATTACHED to cj/toby and more specifically cj/toby/andy.

HEAR ME OUT. cj has EXTREME wlw energy and cj and toby have A LOT of married energy but then toby and andy... love each other so much, it’s so clear, in literally everything they do, i don’t know if you’ve gotten to the end of s5 yet but i cry. so like?? obviously, because i am who i am, polyamory is the answer! basically the rundown is: andy and toby are a typical couple except that they fight a lot. cj is kinda in the middle. if gay marriage had been legal / socially acceptable in the 80s (because god knows this ot3 has been thinking about optics since they graduated college), cj and andy would’ve gotten married and toby would’ve come and gone depending on who he’d pissed off recently, and everything would’ve been perfect. instead, andy and toby got married and it didn’t work because they really just couldn’t function as a unit, especially since their getting married meant that cj isolated herself a bit more. definitely cj and toby have a couple of SCREAMING arguments about the whole relationship. idk.

but just like. imagine with me, if you will, cj and toby... not dating, while working in the white house, but being exes. friendly exes. friendly exes who are still in love with each other and know it. please imagine that and then think about “i love you desperately / i know” and “you wanna make out with me right now, don’t you? / well, when don’t i?” and “we had it good there for a while / yeah, we did” and then join me in the pit of sadness.

(sidenote i have a sense8 au for the west wing and the second story is just me being emotional about their cluster for 5k. i have another story vaguely planned that i’ll probably never write about the development of the ot3 and about their cluster and how it functions. but don’t read that story until you finish... the first half of s7? or thereabouts? actually probably you should finish the show before you read the sense8 au in general if you’re avoiding spoilers.)

(when i say “i’ll probably never write”, i mean “until the next time i get obsessed with the west wing”. which will probably be years from now. oh, well, we can all hope the muse actually does something efficient for once.)

so yeah. those are my ships. i know a lot of people shipped josh/sam, but i don’t really see it? sam always seemed Way Too Straight for that to work lol, although i DO like the idea of sam pining tragically for josh for years just like donna does. (can you tell i read such a winter’s day a few days ago? it’s amazing. i haven’t left a review yet because i have not been a human being recently, but go read it!! it’s awesome!!)

also, i love the idea of bartlet/abbey/leo, although i can’t really visualize it lol. but there’s some amazing fic for them out there. maybe one day my stupid brain will realize the angst potential and actually let me write something for them, hopefully within the sense8 au. (sam also has a cluster! and i would love to write about them! .....but my brain doesn’t do what i tell it to. ever.)

my favorite arc.... i don’t know. i really loved the early seasons, which were a little more episodic, but ALSO i actually really liked the tone after aaron sorkin left after s4? it takes some getting used to, but it’s WAY more emotional, and i am ALL HERE FOR THAT. i definitely have a least favoite arc, or at least a least-favorite way-that-they-handled-a-storyline (spoiler alert: i hated how they handled the end of bartlet’s presidency in the white house. like. SHE’S ALL ALONE IN THERE- anyways. trying not to give detailed spoilers!)

favorite episodes: hmm. i love the thanksgiving episodes. i loved any episode with the ainsley-and-sam dynamic. noel is a phenomenal episode. 26 could make anyone weep. the flashbacks are the best. the fucking- the fucking what’s next motif.

honestly, probably i’d have to say my favorite episode is either 4x20 (evidence of things not seen, for “stupidly noble cluster” reasons and cj/toby reasons and bartlet & charlie reasons. also i feel like there’s some good josh/donna there too but i can’t remember exactly?) or 7x21 (institutional memory, because i’m pretty sure the writers reached into my id and pulled out EXACTLY what i needed from them to be okay with the show ending. jesus CHRIST i have never felt so satisfied after an episode. literally everything i ever could have wanted happened in that episode. i’m STILL reeling. it’s a perfect episode.)

my favorite characters are... literally everyone? i know that’s cheating but i love them all SO MUCH (except mandy and amy, of course). josh is my favorite, always and forever, but i love cj more than words and sometimes i can’t breathe for love of toby. leo and bartlet and charlie and sam and donna- here i was thinking i was gonna resent will forever but i LOVE will. ainsley is an amazing woman. abbey is such a good character, god, talk about a flawed woman who’s allowed to be a good person.

AND THEN THEY MADE ME ROOT FOR A REPUBLICAN. again, i doubt you’ve gotten to s7, but the republican nominee in the last election... jesus christ. i love that man so much. arguably, i’m very biased, but also how D A R E they expect me to root against him. how DARE.

(i swear this will make more sense once you meet him. i just love the actor a lot, okay?)

anyways. this got ridiculously long. i would LOVE to talk about the west wing with you, feel free to reblog this with your own thoughts or tag me in your own post or message me or something. i would love to hear your reactions!! it’s such a good show, and such a smart show, and every character is so mcfreaking good at what they do and i adore it. enjoy the ride because there’s nothing as perfect and as quality as the west wing. if you’ll please excuse me, i’m going to go cry about 7x21 again.

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sol1056 · 6 years

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another round of asks: keith

This feels like one of those things where you type ‘keith is’ into google and see what comes up.

Keith is a self-insert

Keith is on his way to becoming (a) god

Keith is destined to be emperor

Keith is friends with Lance > Keith is friends with Shiro

Keith is over Shiro [ + kills Sendak]

Behind the cut.

Keith is a self-insert

I have no proof for this but I think that a majority of VLD’s writing staff are secretly making Keith their self-insert character.

It’s an amusing idea, but it’s very hard to do that when it’s a collaborative exercise like writing for television. Ostensibly collaborative, that is, ‘cause hell if I know at this point whether anyone has say beyond the EPs, but more on that in another post.

I’ve never heard of anyone in the deciding-level staff (the EPs or the writers) say that Keith is their favorite. JDS is clear that his personal favorite is Lance, and LM’s been known for being pro-Pidge since the beginning. Early on (like S1), Hedrick’s on record saying that it mapped nicely, since he felt the most affinity for Hunk in some ways, but that’s not what I’d call a preference in the same way as I’ve seen JDS and LM speak of their favorites.

More likely Keith is not a self-insert so much as a kind of every-hero. It’s really quite remarkable --- given how much the EPs are so blunt about their dislike for Shiro --- how the story events, put together, could be seen as split almost evenly between them. To the point we had nearly two seasons where they were never in the same room together, never exchanged any words, nothing. Like matter and anti-matter.

To put it bluntly: by S7, Shiro pays the price, and Keith gets the rewards. We didn’t get to this point overnight; in S1/S2, it was split a bit more evenly, and the rest of the team had some share in the prices and the rewards, too. But that concept of an ensemble cast got tossed out the window to lie dead on the highway tarmac, somewhere around S4.

The thing is, a character needs a conflict, needs an obstacle, because failing (and suffering the consequences) and trying again (and growing from it) is the only route to character development. And that’s been almost criminally denied to Hunk, Lance, and Pidge (and since S3, Allura). Their paths have been continually softened, if not truncated outright.

I was noodling around last night, and this quote jumped out at me: ‘Dos Santos says they did think Pidge deserved a happy ending. “We wanted Pidge to have the true reunion she deserved...”’ They did the same for Lance and Hunk, whose families also survived. But what about Allura? Is her happy ending just Getting A Nice Boyfriend? Where’s Shiro’s or Keith’s happy ending?

The result is that the story’s necessary conflict and tension --- because it must be there, or we’re all just watching paint dry --- gets shifted to Keith and Shiro. And with the bulk of that conflict landing on Shiro to suffer all consequences while Keith gets all the hero moments... it’s no surprise Keith might feel like a self-insert, since that treatment usually correlates.

But I think it’s less self-insert, and more that with Shiro taking on all the EPs’ dislike, there’s not much left for Keith to do.

Keith is on his way to becoming (a) god

At this rate, Keith will turn into god by the end of the show (like madoka, space dandy, and oban star racers), with all the stuff that gets handed to him, it doesn’t seem far-fetched anymore.

Okay, that’s out of left-field, but... it might actually improve the story if he turned out to be a long-lost twin of Haruhi Suzumiya (though I would totally dig if it were Haruhara Haruko instead, but only if the Atlas turns into a giant iron).

With the way Keith's quintessence sensing came to the forefront several times this season, I still wonder (and fear, a little) about the possibility of him being part Altean. Even if there is a slim out with learning the druids were Galra, the focus on Alteans still has me worried that the last season will overlook Allura and Romelle in favor of having Keith develop druid powers and learn his connection to the Alteans.

Thing is, we’re so far along in the story that I don’t expect any of the odd abilities to ever be explained --- anymore than we ever got an explanation as to why quintessence reveals a skin tone Keith’s never demonstrated since, at least not to the same striking degree. And truth is, I don’t think the EPs know. I have a strong suspicion there was a lot of groundwork laid in the first two seasons that have since been abandoned. So I don’t expect it to fit together, in the end, and would not be surprised if everything’s hand-waved.

So who knows.

Keith is destined to be emperor

People are speculating on Galra emperor Keith (partly because he’s apparently magic now). Would explain why this season pushed Keith as leader... even though he never wanted to be a leader. And the leadership arc wasn’t really natural to his character. Also, whatever happened to democracies?

Emperor? Because magic? I mean, wouldn’t that make Allura a better candidate? I know, it’s so easy to forget she exists, now, but she did have a line or two this season. (Okay okay I kid, she had maybe a half-dozen.)

I really don’t know. When I put on my writer’s hat, Keith’s entire arc really doesn’t make much sense. He spent way too much time in S2 and S3 protesting and fighting ever being a leader, and I have no idea how he got from that point to S7′s sudden undiscussed and unquestioned acceptance of the role. If there was development there, I would’ve liked to have seen it.

Because without that, it’s still hard to look at the character onscreen and see it as the same person. Maybe they are setting up Keith to be emperor. I have no idea how that logic even works. Of course, seems like logic left the building about four seasons back but go off I guess.

That reminds me of the teaser version that used to be all over the place --- and now I only see on the Google results --- that closes with “to conquer the Galra Empire.” That’s a rather specific word, compared to, say, “overthrow” or “defeat” or “end.” Conquering is what you do when your plan is to take over, after all. Maybe the idea of Emperor Keith isn’t that out-there. Hell if I know.

As for democracies... well, the EPs have never mentioned influences that’d make me think genre political savvy (ie Gundam, Code Geass, Gasaraki, etc). Probably easier to have monarchs: one Puigian leader for the entire planet.

Earth does get to be the exception there... with a social structure that appears to rest entirely in the quasi-military hands of the Garrison. Was there even a single civilian present, as the obligatory elected spokesperson for the people? Pretty sure there wasn’t. (This is not unique to VLD; we have the same discussion on a regular basis in the SFF community about the bizarre prevalence of monarchial systems in American-written SFF.)

Keith is friends with Lance > Keith is friends with Shiro

There were scenes which would be v sweet for Keith and Lance if they weren't explicitly there to prove how useless Shiro is, and many to show how useless KEITH thinks Shiro is, and that’s why Keith took [Shiro’s] place. [Before S7] ... Keith wouldn't step on Shiro like that, take Black and his place in the team and his healing away from him. But S7? Behold the new Shiro and Keith dynamic. Keith choosing Lance to lead while Shiro’s right there? Roger that team leader SHIRO’S RIGHT THERE! +Sendak thing?

@sassafrassrex did a meta on the Sendak-Shiro fight that’s a must-read, so I won’t repeat that here. As for the rest... I mentioned above that Keith felt very unlike himself this season, and his dynamic with Shiro --- or complete lack thereof --- was a big part of it.

After all this time, we’re overdue for seeing a solid friendship between all the paladins, and that includes Keith and Lance. Most of what I saw felt... well, uneven would be the best word. S1/S2 at its best, between them, was more of a good-natured teasing. S7 felt harsher, to me, as though it was Keith’s turn to be the asshole.

More than that, though, is that it almost feels like the writers can’t figure out how Keith could cherish Shiro and yet have other friends --- so instead they chose to highlight Lance to the near-exclusion of Shiro. And that’s no better for Lance, either, because again he’s just a substitute.

Frankly, I’m tired of Lance always ending up with someone else’s leftovers.

Keith is over Shiro

They really had Keith kill a version of his most important person in the world (who he thought was Shiro) so he can rise as BP, then toss Shiro aside as broken, even choosing Lance as right hand over him. *And* to pick the one who abandoned him twice -- and at the end were [framed as a] “family" with Kolivan -- over Shiro who never gave up on him. Krolia even got an I-love-you *and* got called Mom for leaving. What fucked-up messages, lemme tell you, as someone who relates to Keith.

Put like that, it is pretty brutal. Not sure how else to read how completely Shiro is excluded from the narrative for the first 3/4s of the season, down to being literally frozen out --- and it’s most striking of all considering this is Keith we’re talking about. The one even the EPs describe as being so devoted to Shiro that he’d never dream --- let alone be capable of --- walking away (though the co-dependent note in that description skeeves me out some)... and then S7 starts and after the first episode, the two barely exchange any words.

This was the one person Shiro was always vulnerable with, and Shiro was the one person Keith relaxed around. While yes, the team is way way overdue for doing that with each other beyond their original dynamics (and what I wouldn’t give for some real friendship-bonding between Allura and Keith, damn it), the complete absence made the season feel hollow.

Just as Lance’s and Hunk’s friendship provided heart in the early seasons, so did Shiro’s and Keith’s. The absence of that, in S7, was nearly palpable. And it did make Keith look like someone who’d taken a long hard look at his best friend and decided Shiro was no longer worth it. This is the character who’d go back for a colleague even when the clock is ticking, who didn’t want to see Thace sacrifice himself, or see Regris killed, and went to the ends of the universe for Shiro? What wouldn’t he do for a friend? Unless, of course, that friend was killed, cloned, and brought back broken.

It comes down to two possible explanations: one is that the writers genuinely don’t know how to balance Keith’s devotion to Shiro while also letting Keith connect to the rest of the team. I’m having trouble believing they’d be that clueless about how friendships work, though.

The other possibility is that we didn’t quite get the entire story when JDS said there’d been two versions of S6. I think what we’re seeing is the original script and storyboards for S7, leftover from when the EPs pitched a version where Shiro died at the end of S2 and never returned.

The reason might’ve gone like this: we need N hours to sit down and write S7 with Shiro as Black Paladin (as they would for any other season). But if we just re-use the original storyboards with Keith as Black Paladin, we’ll save X dollars. Just edit a little to add Shiro, plus we’ll have the cash freed up to do [some set piece] so it’s really cool.

JDS pitched the Atlas as the awesome and amazing consolation prize for Shiro, according to recent interviews. He might’ve argued the cost-cutting step would also let them expand Shiro’s role in the finale.

My guess for the reason why Keith was the one to kill Sendak (besides the writers hating shiro and Keith needing to resolve every plotline himself now) is that Shiro killed Zarkon, the first major villain, so maybe that was one of their reasons to give that kill to Keith.

I was pondering that until I got to thinking about why the execs would reverse course and allow the EPs to shelve Shiro. I think that’s the reason Keith kills Sendak: it remained from the original storyline, where Keith took revenge on the person who’d tortured Keith’s best friend. Which in Shiro’s absence would’ve been powerful. In Shiro’s presence it’s... demoralizing.

Bottom line: execs love cost reductions above all else. (Newsflash: DW is a business.) Given how the execs have consistently been described as pro-Shiro, cost is the only thing I can see convincing them otherwise. Especially if the series has already hit budget overruns from rewrites and redoes in previous seasons --- and if they’ve done this before to save money, by pasting Kuron where Keith would’ve been for most of S3-S6.

That would explain why Keith doesn’t seem to even notice Shiro for most of S7. Because when the script was written, Shiro wasn’t there.

note: it might also explain the EPs’ hints at a spoiler, but I’ll leave that wild speculation to @ptw30 to explain.

#vld #voltron #characterization #analysis #come for the sugar stay for the salt #season 7 #vld spoilers

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jewishsuperfam · 5 years

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Clois for the ship thing and Supergirl for the character thing

clois:

When I started shipping them: god…….i think like. 2012? i wish i could say that i shipped them when i was a kid but smallville was my only exposure to them as a child and i was SO devoted to clana and chlark as a kid, that by the time lois rolled around in s4 i was so stubbornly Not A Fan. but when i rewatched it in my senior year of high school i fell absolutely in love with them and have been a fan of them across all adaptations ever since

My thoughts: they love each other!!! so much!!!! theyre such a good team and partnership and they’re both the #1 fan in each other’s fanclub and i Love Them

What makes me happy about them: everything!!! like have you SEEN them???? but especially the way she snarks at him and he looks at her like she hung the moon and stars in the sky

What makes me sad about them: god……every time they’re separated bc of Plot Things, and also like. as much as i love the dual-identity love triangle thing, the whole “lois doesn’t know clark is superman and it causes some Angst” part always kills me

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: u mean besides the fact that the majority of clois fic is badly written or for MoS, which i am not a fan of? um. probably when people make lois TOO mean, or when they try and make clark dominant. (clark is Not dominant, u guys, idk what to tell u if u think otherwise)

Things I look for in fanfic: their banter + rapport, combined with them being genuinely loving and supportive.

My wishlist: idk what this means??? is it a wishlist for fic or for canon??? idk. more kissing and generally just being affectionate tho, pls

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: i mean…….they’re soulmates, i always want them to end up together. (and also this question depends on which continuity bc like. i have a different answer for smallville than i do for the comics ‘verse) but. it’s also kIND of similar bc i have two ot3s for them–clark/lois/tess (for smallville) and clark/lois/diana (comics ‘verse) so like. if they weren’t going to be together the only other ships i have are clark/tess and lois/tess and clark/diana and lois/diana lmao

My happily ever after for them: they live a long happy life and raise the family they always wanted and are able to both be successful in their journalism AND superheroism without having to leave each other for extended periods of time

supergirl:

How I feel about this character: MY GIRL!!!! i love her So Much, you don’t understand, she’s been my Fave since i was like 8 years old. i would Die for her.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: god that’s SO MANY PEOPLE. ok. let’s see if i can get all of them (and im counting both dctv characters and comics characters): lena luthor (dctv), cat grant (dctv), lucy lane (dctv), sara lance (dctv), kate kane (dctv), diana prince, stephanie brown, cassie sandsmark, lois lane (but only in the bombshells ‘verse)…..god i know there are more than that bc there ARE comics dudes i ship her with but i cant think of any rn so that’s all im listing

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: alex danvers (in the universes where alex is her sister), and clark!!

My unpopular opinion about this character: this is specifically abt the sg tv show, and i’m not caught up and havent interacted with the fandom in a while, but: kara is 100% allowed to still be grieving krypton!! and just because she blamed herself for “not leaving any room for alex’s problems” in canon when alex came out to her, doesn’t mean that she ACTUALLY did anything wrong!! she was a KID whose ENTIRE FAMILY, PLANET, AND CULTURE had just been utterly wiped out. she cannot be blamed for literally any of her behavior in the aftermath of that. (or, tldr; she has done nothing wrong, ever, in her life, and i stand by this)

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: please, dc…….let her be canon!bi…………….u know u want to……………………u keep giving her such sapphic “friendships”……………………………..

Favorite friendship for this character: uhhh all of them????? idk how im supposed to pick

My crossover ship: hmmmmmm. i could be down for like. kara/nico or kara/karolina or kara/nico/karolina. and kara/carol danvers could be fun, too

#dcu #acebender #clois

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likelovelikesuicide · 7 years

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Shadowhunters - Hiatus week rant

Shadowhunters is on hiatus this week because ‘merica... so I give you another rant because I prefer to dwell on this show week after week over dealing with real life...

I would like to start by saying that my opinions, as presented, are in no way a reflection on the writers, actors, or anyone else affiliated with the show. I am here solely for the characters, the stories and while I understand that real people control what happens behind the scenes, I know that no single person is to blame for any of the issues I’m pointing out here and also, I reject reality. Life has a fucked up plot on it’s own, so whatever...

1. Let’s begin with the elephant in the room, the scene that caused the most issue since s2 began - Magnus and Alec in 2.07 - Let me begin by saying that I actually like and enjoy the “first time” scene in the context of their relationship and I think the consent issue was a misunderstanding on the part of the audience. In this scene, Alec goes to his boyfriend, hopeful and intent on moving forward within their relationship by spending a night together (& doing some lovin’) … Magnus, rightfully given his past, expresses his concerns with moving too fast because he has serious feelings for Alec and he doesn't just want sex from this. Alec, being the straight forward guy that he is, tells Magnus that he has nothing to worry about because he, Alec, wants this too. This meaning them, being together. He's not saying he wants sex. He's saying he wants to be with Magnus. - this. Us. - The scene fits their story and so much of the dialogue is context within their overall arc. _ However, the issue with the scene is in how it was framed in the episode. Earlier on we see Magnus and Alec stop a kiss because Jace is making noise with a girl somewhere in their home. Then we see an extended scene of Jace with the girl, being naked, intimate, and frankly vulgar on screen. Especially when Alec enters the room and the random topless girl comes onto him in his boyfriend’s home where Jace is a guest. It made Jace look cheap and disrespectful, and it sets the mood for a “first time" scene that was sent off screen without so much as a raised shirt. From the writer's perspective, I think they wanted to show a contrast of lust vs. love but it didn't work at all and from the LGBT perspective, what was shown made it look like they’re trying to keep us behind closed doors. And fuck that. ---This was also demonstrated in 2.13 when Alec and Magnus’ make-up kiss is panned off screen to show Maia lick Jace’s abs for no reason whatsoever and it needs to stop. Either stop showing it or show it for everyone. They aren't filming Malec in the same way they film the other couples. And they know it. Cut the crap.

there’s more but I’ll but it under a read more to safe your dash

2. Timeline. Tone. Episode themes. These things are needed to maintain a story, and right now they are truly all over the place - I mean, has it been a month since S2 started? Six months? A week? A year? We don't know. (season 1 was a month fight me on this) The impossible timelines make watching the episodes jarring in a way that is not entertaining, it’s uncomfortable. (Ref. Glee s4/s5. All of LOST, teen wolf, etc.) Overall this is an issue of pacing in scenes between the various pairings...Raphael and Izzy got a 5 minute scene of them cooking and sharing blood that could have been done in a forth of that time, plus several scenes that actually should be talked about regarding the consent issue… Magnus and Alec got the build up… ish… now they get a minute here, a kiss there. Their time together is implied, referenced... their love established through time spent together off screen - Izzy and Sebastian got full scenes of them just talking for the sake of talking and cementing his creep factor… Clary and Simon have multiple, full scenes in a single episodes to display their feelings, support each other and be together publicly as well as separate scenes and stories going on throughout their doomed relationship.… Jace and Simon spent an entire episode messing with each other in a bar for shits and giggles… Maia and Jace banter, Maia and Simon flirt, Izzy and Simon do mean things together while being really nice about it, Raphael and Simon bicker and try to hurt each other like school children on a playdate… Luke and Simon share war stories… (Honestly what I’m getting from this is everyone wants time with Simon, including the writers… which I get… poor Simon...and okay you got my point, there is no balance. I’ll stop now)

3. Alright look, I didn’t read the books and I’m never going to, but I think in some ways the show is written around the idea that you have read the books - thus you know who random people are (Jace’s seelie bitch, Lydia, Imogene, Ragnor, Catirina, etc.) But like, they don’t follow the books, at all. I mean I started the first book and before I returned it to the library because god, no - I read far enough to know that Dot is like, an old lady or something. And the books start when Clary is 16... My point being, they use the story, the world, the ideas without following the books and that’s fine, except like, I don’t know nor do I care who the Herondale’s are so why give Jace this big reunion with grandma (crazy bitch) Imogene scene when there was NO context for it. Also, if I had read the books, as in the case of Harry Potter or Twilight (ya i read it, i loved it. Fight me, New Moon is a great book) I would want to see the books on screen as they were in print because that’s all anyone ever wants when they find out a series they read and liked is being made into a movie or tv show. They want the book, the characters, the scenes, the world translated to screen as they imagined it…. So I get it. sorry book stan’s. Also, is Aldertree always a total douche?

4. So… The show started with Clary and she is presented as a strong female protagonist - physically she is equal to the most elite in her race without proper training, she has special abilities specific to her, but she is headstrong to a fault. She is flighty and rarely listens to advice or reason, therefore she is easily led into traps that harm not only her, but the people around her (didn’t Magnus call Jocelyn out for something like this) … I won’t deny that Clary cares for other people... however, she is an 18 (?) year old and pretty much everyone is blinded by their emotions at that age, her faults are relatable. What I need for Clary is her to remember who she was. She grew up a mundane, she lost her mother... Twice. She wanted to be an artist, she was happy and looking forward to her future. When the show started she was a girl with a plan for her life and okay, maybe art school won’t work… but why can’t she make a name for herself in the institute? In Idris? Why is her story so focused on the men around her? Simon? Jace? Sebastian? This series of love triangles don't interest me at all… How about Clary testifying against her father, Valentine, at a Clave trail and burying his ass? How about Clary supporting Izzy as she rebuilds her strength and realizing first that something's up with this Sebastian dude? How about Clary getting back into her art and learning to control her new skill through her mundane ability? How about Clary understanding that Alec has earned and deserves to be Head of the Institute and refusing to undercut his authority because she respects him?

5. How about Jace doing the same… because Alec is his parabati and that still means something… actually how about Jace takes a nap for an episode cause I don't see another way he's going to keep himself out of trouble and/or keep it in his pants.

6. The continued implications of incest have been unnecessary from the start... I get that it's a theme in the books and that's on the original writer... but in the show it doesn't follow that no one thought to run a DNA test on Clary and Jace in s1? Really? No One? Izzy? … and in a warrior/soldier society like the Shadowhunters, regular blood tests would be mandatory anyway… (which also would have eliminated the whole yin fen issue for Izzy, just saying) But now, of course we have Sebastian, and I know enough about the story to know that he is the real Jonathan Morgenstern and I hope Clary figures that out on the show before any actual implied incest occurs because that shit will cause the show the be cancelled and condemned. Straight up.

7. Okay, going back to 2a for a moment, can we talk about the whole thing where Valentine captured an Angel?? Like a real Angel? Like a straight up ANGEL? Shouldn’t that be a big deal? Or at least A moment of concern for the Clave? Doesn’t anyone else want to know HOW HE CAPTURED AN ANGEL??? - sure the mortal cup is out there (*cough* Sebastian has it *Cough*) But if no one has so much as seen an Angel in living memory, isn’t it kind of like a hugely dangerous wtf thing that Valentine can capture one??? (I’m sorry this story was so swept under the rug and like, I actually want to KNOW)

8. I think we can all agree that the lighting department is run by vampires and maybe Simon should take over that job on the Malec scenes in particular because LET THERE BE LIGHT PEOPLE

9. Editing seems to be an issue overall - with pacing or scenes cutting abruptly off and I’m sorry but there was a moment in 2.13 where I could have sworn I was watching Criminal Minds and look Shadowhunters air’s on an american family channel at 7pm on Mondays (without parental warnings)… let's leave the gore and raunchy hook ups to the 10pm shows, please. There are children present… also, small additions or subtractions make a world of difference - imagine for a moment that instead of Alec entering Magnus’ loft in 2.13 after the fight and saying “you were right, you never have to prove yourself to me… I love you” - Alec had instead said something like “you were right, you should never have to prove yourself to my bosses. I’m sorry. I love you.” and given back the envelope with the hair in it??? How much more meaningful would that have been. Especially given that Alec was now Head of the Institute - it would show he trusts his boyfriend. It would set up his alliance with the downworld, thus introducing the plot for the next episode… it would have shown Alec’s respect for his partner over what the Clave expects of those they call downworlders… sorry I’m done.

10. What is the overall plot to season 2??? Is it all focused around the war with Valentine? Season 1 was obviously meant to follow Clary as she searched for her mother and shit went down around her… however, season 2 has branched out from that, allowing several other key characters more focus and next week we will hit the final stretch. 6 weeks to build up to another inevitable cliff hanger because they already have a third season and this is when you do that shit. But what will it be? As I said, I didn't read the books, so I only have vague references to the possibilities... but I hope we'll all be able to enjoy the remainder of the summer season before counting down the days till season 3.

#Shadowhunters #shadowhunters 2b #Shadowhunters 2a #Magnus Bane #Alec Lightwood #Malec #clary fairchild #jace herondale #Simon Lewis #clace #climon #sh spoilers #rant #by di

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obsessivelollipoplalala · 7 years

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3, 4, 9, 10, 16 (if it's not too much!) 🌻

3. Which was the hardest to write, in terms of plot?

My stories tend to be rather light on the plot (lol), but probably mt ATLA alternate universe, Consuming Flames. I’d written the AU just because a friend asked me to, but I found it really hard to put those characters into that world. I was relieved when it was over, to be honest, and am not super proud of it.

4. Which has the most “you” in it, however you’d define that?

Hmmm…probably Repentance or Facing the Inevitable. I say Repentance because I basically poured the majority of my early post-s4 feelings into that story. I was still pretty sad about everything when I started writing, and I wrote the first part (the main part of the story) fairly quickly, like everything just came out. That story helped me process a lot of things, especially the morgue scene. As for Facing the Inevitable, that’s kind of the closest glimpse you get of how I’d write the show? I based that story on s4 setlock pictures and went from there. I’m not saying it’d make good TV lol, but there’s pretty much what I wanted from s4. I felt really close to Sherlock, John, and the baby by the end of the story, too, and was sad to leave the little family unit I’d created. I still kinda miss my little family; things were less complicated in my story :P

9. Favorite character to write?

I got to be honest: Lestrade. I think he’s such an underrated character, and really enjoyed writing A Push in the Right Direction as a result. He just cares about Sherlock and John so much, you know? You can tell there’s genuine friendship there, and I wish s4 had more of him in it! (But, out of our two protagonists, I’d say I love writing Sherlock more than John, but I’m writing in John’s POV in my WIP and I did it in Repentance, and I’m starting to like writing him again, too).

10. Favorite line or lines of dialogue that you’ve written

Oh god, I don’t even remember half of the stuff I’ve written XD

I like this from chapter 1 of Before You Know It, because it changes the dynamic of the scene in canon very quickly:

“You left me,” John said, voice trembling. “You left me for two years. How–how could you do that?”

Sherlock’s eyebrows furrowed. “John…I know you’re very angry with me, but let me say one thing, one thing.” He paused. “Are you really going to keep that?” Sherlock gestured to his own penciled moustache with a fake smile and weak laugh.

Something about reliving this made John feel like someone was crushing his heart. “Why is this just a joke to you?” he asked seriously.

Sherlock’s face fell, and he blinked dumbly.

John licked his lips, cursing internally when he felt the corners of his eyes start to sting. “Do you really have nothing to say?” His throat was too tight, and his voice was beginning to crack.

And I reeeallly loved writing full-blown villain Mary in Facing the Inevitable:

Her lips curled into a condescending smirk, “Do you enjoy finally getting what you wanted?”

It took immense effort for Sherlock to keep himself completely still. “Do you enjoy getting a rise out of me?” he retorted, voice dripping with acid. “Do you enjoy using petty tactics in an attempt to upset me?”

“Do you enjoy his cock up your arse?”

Sherlock was so knocked off guard that he could not prevent his jaw from dropping, feeling like he had been punched in the gut.

She stared at him with a sweet smile and eyes brimming with loathing.

“We didn’t,” he choked out, and his voice died in his throat. It was none of her business! No one ever talked that way to him. Why the hell did she even want to know that?

Her lips curled up even more, eyes unblinking. “Oh, not yet? Looking forward to it, are you?”

It felt like tiny pins were stabbing his stomach. He couldn’t believe his ears. He had been monstrously uncomfortable when the Woman brought up sex around him, but this was much worse. Much, much worse. He wanted to know why she was doing this, but his throat refused to work. Since the beginning, she loved to mock him, but this was off the charts.

She smirked enough to show teeth. “Not the Virgin anymore, are you?”

16. 3 favorite comments ever received on fanfic.

I genuinely can’t answer this question because I’ve gotten hundreds of lovely, sweet comments on my fics over the past three years. In general, I love comments that tell me they love my characterizations, that they think I handled a specific scene or plot device well, or that they really think my writing is great or, as I’ve gotten before, “brilliant.” :) It all means a lot to me

Ask me questions about my fics from this post!

#anonymous #thank you for asking!#my fic

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loudest-subtext-in-tv · 7 years

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EMP Theory from HLV to TLD

Here’s my big write-up on what I think is going on if EMP theory (extended mind palace theory) is correct. I’m not totally sold on it, but I’m even less sold on every other theory I’ve heard, so I’m going to just make the most solid case I can.

Feel free to raise objections, ask questions, contribute additional evidence, or point me toward metas you’ve already written on points I bring up. Please note that I really suck at keeping up with responses and such, though, so anyone who reads this should also trawl the notes.

Note about the BFI screening:

Note that I think the early screenings of TFP are fake versions made to protect their secret reveals and to play upon the alternate endings of the movie Clue, so please do not dismiss this theory because of “spoilers” you may have heard.

If EMP theory is real it is integral to the Johnlock reveal, so they would not reveal it in a screening. Same goes for things like Mary being alive, Moriarty possibly being alive, Rosie never having been born; those are all contingent on EMP theory. Any fake version of TFP would have to keep Mary and Moriarty dead, Rosie alive, etc.

I saw the Russian screener and it only makes me feel that EMP theory is more likely.

There was nothing in the version of TFP that was screened that explains any of the weirdness in T6T or TLD via any other competing theory. So you either have to believe that they’ll never explain it at all, or they’re going to reveal some explanation only when it officially airs on Sunday -- in which case you may as well consider EMP theory.

If they’re not doing EMP theory, I feel they would have had to have filmed a lot more extra footage to explain things via a different theory, but who knows. The Russian screener contained a lot of scenes that would be great prior to an EMP reveal.

Table of Contents

Background on EMP Theory

Why Our Dads Would Totally Do EMP Even If You Wouldn’t

Why EMP Would Not Suck or Be Cheap or Whatever

My Take on EMP Theory

1. Background on EMP Theory

EMP theory is the idea that starting around the time Sherlock gets shot in HLV and all the way through at least the beginning of TFP (we’ll have to see), the scenes are actually in Sherlock’s mind while he’s in the hospital.

Please note that theory does NOT originate with me as I wasn’t really aware it existed until well after I deleted in February 2016, I’m just way up its ass since T6T aired and watching S4 thus far has felt like a fucking LSD trip. The origins of the theory are explained here in the EMP theory masterlist compiled by @monikakrasnorada. Quote:

The term “EMP” was coined early in January 2016 in a discussion just after the airing of The Abominable Bride between @the-7-percent-solution, @gosherlocked and myself. This discussion entailed trying to understand / decipher which “present day” scenes in TAB were real which then snowballed into the possibility that perhaps more of His Last Vow might have taken place in mind palace as well. So, a theory was born!

Other contributors on that page are @isitandwonder, @ebaeschnbliah, and @tjlcisthenewsexy. Additional people whose metas or comments got my attention after T6T aired and made me reconsider EMP theory are @impatient14 and @doomsteady.

I’ll reference specific metas as I go, but please let me know if I make an argument and don’t reference someone who worked on that argument already; there’s tens of thousands of people in the community, and it seems like most of the hundred blogs I follow have been hitting the post limit daily since T6T aired so my dash is overloaded, and I have been utterly unable to keep up with my mentions and asks. Given that the basic idea behind the theory is pretty simple to grasp, I’m sure I’m going to run into the same ideas others have via convergent theorizing. Also, this has been brain-frying to write, what with juggling images and links, so I may have omitted some people on accident; just correct me. I’m not trying to take credit for anyone’s ideas and I’m totally happy to link to anything others have written before this.

There are several ideas about when EMP kicks in, but I’ve settled on the one that seems most damning to me. But before we get to that, let’s get a few things out of the way first.

2. Why Our Dads Would Totally Do EMP Even If You Wouldn’t

Well, the fact that they did The Abominable Bride is pretty good evidence.

But honestly, if you haven’t already, stop and read this meta I wrote about the parallels between Sherlock and the movie What Dreams May Come, which is about the protagonist dying, his spouse killing herself in her grief, and the protagonist going to hell to save his spouse. I’m going to argue that what’s going on in S4 is that Sherlock begins sensing from within his coma that if he dies John will kill himself, so Sherlock must return to consciousness.

There are TONS of very specific things borrowed from What Dreams May Come discussed in that meta, including:

the promo imagery of water and the hole in 221b’s wall

the entire concept of John’s therapist telling him that writing a blog will make him feel better when it’s really just being with Sherlock that makes him feel better

the protagonist remembers a dog being put down while he’s dying, and his old dog licks his face when he’s in heaven

the protagonist jumps off a waterfall to get to his spouse

the protagonist can sort of hear his anguished spouse while he’s dead and she’s alive; it bleeds through into his world

the protagonist is creating everything around him in his own mind

the idea of characters masquerading as other characters and saying things those characters would say

the idea that suicidal people punish themselves in their own mind

the protagonist has to understand that he’s more than just a brain

dying forces the protagonist to get over his fears

going through hell involves confronting terrible memories

time is weird and dreamlike when you’re dead

Seriously, READ. IT.

Past that, have you ever seen Doctor Who? While it doesn’t mean they are doing EMP, Doctor Who is the biggest reason why “they wouldn’t do it” is simply wrong: Our dads grew up with crazy shit and write crazy shit on the regular. There are episodes of Doctor Who with all sorts of fake shit, including one that’s really similar to the movie Inception, a movie about dreams within dreams. People scream and complain about Doctor Who ALL THE TIME, believe me, there’s always people saying everything they do is dumb and cheap, but our dads don’t give a fuck. Remember, they just write the sort of thing they want to read/watch.

And what kind of stuff do they like to read and watch? Just like What Dreams May Come, this comes via @skulls-and-tea:

Tom’s Midnight Garden. It’s about slipping in and out of the Victorian era. Moffat says, “I love that book, and I’ve been remaking it ever since.” But we could argue he already did this with TAB and Doctor Who, sure.

Other notable influences on our dads that don’t necessarily have to point to EMP theory specifically (again, thanks to @skulls-and-tea): Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, H.G. Wells, Agatha Christie does a lot of unreliable narrator stuff, etc.

But the point is they’re VERY into these weird types of stories, so just because you aren’t, that’s no reason to think they wouldn’t do it. Also, a lot of people really like EMP theory and also grew up with weird stories like this -- like me, for example -- so remember that just like anyone else with particular tastes, our dads know other people with similar tastes exist, they wish more stories catered to their tastes, and it’s feasible they would want to write those stories.

Remember: If they cared very much about alienating people they wouldn’t make a gay Sherlock Holmes adaptation. And their Doctor Who stuff already does stuff similar to EMP.

I also went into a lot of depth about our dads’ twisting of genre conventions, and how it’s necessary in the mystery genre to stay ahead of the reader/viewer, in this meta. When you’ve had a century-long genre convention arms race to keep fooling audiences, you have to do crazier and crazier shit to keep from being too simple. S4 has really proved that so far. And the biggest fucking rug pull in the world would be telling mystery viewers that they missed the point in the story where everything went all fake.

Come on, that’d be fucking hilarious. Do you know how much trouble I had writing M-theory after the point where Mary shot Sherlock? SO MUCH TROUBLE. Everything just stops making sense at that point. And if EMP theory is real there ARE clues there in HLV, so I couldn’t say it wasn’t fair. It would be so funny. Soooo fucking funny. I and so many other people will have spent so much time trying to rationalize things that simply don’t make sense. I would never feel more honored to get jerked around by the author-god in my life.

If ANYONE IN THE WORLD would have the gall to pull “it was all a dream” on such a high profile show, IT IS OUR FATHERS. That is EXACTLY the sort of shit where they’d be like, “You know how you could do this bullshit right...? If the fake scenes actually advanced character development and ended up being important to the plot.”

3. Why EMP Would Not Suck or Be Cheap or Whatever

My biggest reservation about EMP was that it would be unsatisfying, so when I glanced at it in early December I didn’t really dig very deeply. But now that I have, I don’t feel that way at all. I think it would be really cool and fulfilling!

Sherlock didn’t get played by Mary, he just got played by his own mind choosing over and over to be a good, selfless person!

John was never so indifferent to Sherlock! He’s been at his bedside the whole time! He never just forgave Mary for shooting him! When Mary supposedly died and John said, “don’t you dare, you took a vow, you swore it” he may have actually said it to Sherlock when Sherlock appeared to be dying in the hospital. John never beat the shit out of Sherlock in TLD, it was just Sherlock’s brain punishing himself!

Mycroft wasn’t so weirdly idle about Sherlock being shot! Mycroft didn’t hold back tons of info about Mary just to reveal it later like it wasn’t so important a secret anyway! He didn’t act so amused by Sherlock’s investigation and seem so pleased with himself for giving Sherlock mere crumbs!

It could all be setting up the casuals to feel that everything is off and doesn’t make sense, so when the rug is pulled and it turns out John actually raised hell about Sherlock getting shot and Mycroft wasn’t useless, they’ll be like “THANK GOD YES THIS MAKES WAY MORE SENSE.” And they’ll totally want Sherlock to end up with John because they’ll have just seen Sherlock mentally torture himself trying to make sure John is happy. That beautifully aligns with the BBC LGB report’s goal of showing homophobes that queer love is compatible with their values.

Furthermore, character development still happened! Most “it was just a dream” stories suck because they’re just a big unplanned reset button, but this wouldn’t be. It would only retcon stuff like Mary being a saint and Sherlock being an idiot and John being an asshole. Y’all would miss that stuff and grumble about it being fake? Really? I mean I’ll accept it if it doesn’t get retconned, sure, but come on. Sherlock’s the character who’s been growing all these episodes and he’ll get to keep that growth. The plot will require that growth going forward.

And unlike most “it was just a dream stories,” it lays a lot of important foundation for what happens going forward: Sherlock has been going deep into his own head, confronting a bunch of fears and repressed memories, and sorting himself out to be a better person for John. We just had whole episodes of how much Sherlock’s stupid little heart and brain will twist themselves in knots to do right by John. We just got shloads of evidence that Sherlock is NOT a sociopath, and is in fact ungodly levels of selfless when it comes to John. They showed us that Sherlock is willing to lose John and just be massively depressed if that’s what’s best for John. Come on.

Plus, not necessarily every bit of plot was fake. We know from TAB that the different levels of mind palace can bleed together, so Sherlock may be overhearing things said in his hospital room and incorporating them.

Some people feel like we’d have been in Sherlock’s mind for too many episodes, but look at it this way: TAB wasn’t supposed to happen at all, it was just an extra episode they gave us because they like us, and it was actually full of clues that help us figure out T6T and TLD are fake. It also reassured us of the arc the story is taking with the waterfall scene. It was fun and still relevant to the game, and I don’t have it in me to complain about something so amazing. Y’all are gonna complain we got several episodes just for us, episodes they knew only we could untangle?

Furthermore, I personally would love to know we’ve been in Sherlock’s head this whole time because it tells us so much more about Sherlock’s character than we’d ever get to see otherwise. His mind and emotional issues are complicated enough that I would expect it to take a multiple episode journey to sort it out.

Finally, just from what I’ve observed about alternate theories for what’s going on in T6T and TLD, it seems like most of y’all want the most important parts of T6T and TLD to be fake anyway. Most people don’t like Mary being good, John blaming Sherlock for Mary’s death, John beating the shit out of Sherlock, John cheating with some rando instead of texting Sherlock, etc. Y’all were willing to throw that stuff under the bus for something like alibi theory or drugs theory or an unreliable narrator, but suddenly the little details are sacred and it would be cheap if those were fake too?

Come on. Give EMP a chance.

4. My Take on EMP Theory

His Last Vow

There are a few ideas about when EMP begins. For example, when Sherlock gets shot, or when the ambulance comes to get him at 221b, or even just after he gets on the plane. However, there’s one scene that stands out to me as the most likely entry point.

Just after Mary threatens Sherlock in the hospital, we get the scene with Janine. She notes at the end of the scene that she’ll give Sherlock’s love to John and Mary, which implies that Sherlock has not yet been conscious when John is in the room. And that makes sense, because we didn’t get any scene where John asks who shot him and Sherlock tries to hide the fact that it was Mary or anything. When John and everyone are trying to find Sherlock, John even wonders aloud why Sherlock would protect his shooter, as if that question is a new development.

All evidence suggests that Sherlock did not get to have a conscious off-camera visit with John in the hospital; John just hears Sherlock say, “Mary,” when Sherlock is barely conscious.

In other words, it appears that Janine is the first person Sherlock is awake to talk to.

Janine (who I suggest is working for Moriarty, or is his sister, in M-theory) added something to Sherlock’s IV when he was unconscious; she admits she “fiddled with the taps” and that it must be a “dream” for Sherlock to have drugs hooked up to him.

Sherlock turns the “morphine” back up during her visit, but turns it down to a trickle -- not off entirely -- when Janine leaves. Sherlock got a decent dose of whatever was in the IV while Janine was there.

Sherlock then has his “Mary Watson” mind palace sequence. We’re lead to believe he comes out of it and flees the hospital, but our big clue that he’s actually going deeper into his mind palace is that his heart monitor suddenly runs backwards after running forwards the whole scene with Janine (credit to @yan-yae for the find and @doomsteady for the gifs, both at the link).

That is a REALLY weird thing for them to have done. Surely they were able to take enough footage of Benedict doing whatever they needed; lying in a bed looking pensive for five seconds is well within his acting range. So why did they reverse it?

Here’s what happens when you reverse it back, so it’s going forward properly:

He goes deeper into his mind palace. Dude is on drugs and in his mind palace. We’ll see further evidence of this scenario having taken place in T6T and TLD.

Furthermore, check out this weird bit of an interview @skulls-and-tea found. Our dads almost never interject to provide extra information to an interviewer, but they wanted to make very clear that Sherlock’s mind palace alone does not create elaborate scenarios, just his mind on drugs does that:

INTERVIEWER: You could go back to Victorian London; you could have more things set in [Sherlock’s] Mind Palace where he’s going back–

GATISS: [interrupting] Well remember – it’s not just his Mind Palace [in TAB].

Mycroft says it explicitly – ‘It’s a memory technique.’

In both occasions where we’ve gone into it – in ‘His Last Vow’ he’s been shot, and he’s obviously doped to the eyeballs.

And in ‘The Abominable Bride’, he’s all – he’s high.

So it’s much – it’s a particular thing.

We could do it [go back to the Victorian setting] of course, but he’d have to… take a seven-percent solution. Or more.

They could have easily just gone along with the interview and said sure, maybe they’ll do something like TAB again one day, whatever. Instead, Gatiss gave the impression that mind palace drug mechanics are particular and important.

Back to Sherlock’s mind palace deduction about Mary being a liar.

In M-theory, I said that Sherlock’s epiphany about Mary may have been that she could be working for Moriarty: saying “Mary Watson” aloud makes him think of “marry Watson,” a command rather than a name, and the gunshot sequence at the end reminds him that Moriarty had left a sniper on John. He also imagines Mary doing the head tilt that Moriarty is known for.

If that’s how Sherlock interpreted things, it would certainly explain why he recently had Moriarty in his mind telling him that “John Watson is definitely in danger.” The whole reason that Sherlock came back to life was to save John, remember? If this sequence isn’t about a potential Moriarty connection or at least Mary being a threat, it’s weird for Sherlock to act as if he has any new startling information about Mary after this deduction; it’s weird that the sequence was necessary at all.

Mary is very ominous in his mind palace, so why does he roll over for her so fast once he leaves the hospital?

One reason why EMP theory makes more sense to me than any alternative is that it’s absolutely nuts that a non-drugged Sherlock wouldn’t immediately suspect that Mary was one of Moriarty’s snipers. We know from TEH and HLV that Sherlock has been trying to figure out who put John in the bonfire, and that he must be concerned that he didn’t take out all of Moriarty’s network given that John was kidnapped the day after Sherlock came back to life. Sherlock’s thought processes seem to make sense up until this deduction, but then they get clouded.

Also note that it makes sense that Moriarty would want to drug Sherlock and fuck with his mind, just in general. We may have gotten some foreshadowing toward the end of THoB, when Sherlock sees Moriarty’s face in association with the fear gas:

Anyway, things get strange after this scene because Sherlock is imagining it all. He’s been drugged so he can’t actually go after Mary. Instead, he’s stuck trying to figure out what may be going on with Mary, and his brain has to make it up. Remember, we’ll see in The Abominable Bride that Sherlock is capable of making up multiple characters with multiple motivations that change as he considers them. We see Sherlock imagine full scenes among characters in TAB when Sherlock isn’t even present for the scenes. We see Sherlock make up entirely new people he’s never met before.

There’s no way to tell a drugged mind palace episode from a real episode except that drugged mind palace episodes wouldn’t make total sense, just like TAB.

Without actual evidence about Mary’s past, emotions start clouding Sherlock’s judgment because there’s several things Sherlock doesn’t want to believe:

That Mary, his friend, could want to kill him.

That Mary could have so thoroughly fooled him.

That Sherlock wasn’t thorough enough in taking out Moriarty’s network, and his negligence left John in danger.

That Moriarty would be insane enough to have some kind of posthumous revenge.

That Moriarty could still be alive.

That someone could marry John and not really love and appreciate him etc.

It’s also possible that Moriarty has agents like Janine or Mary whispering weird shit to him in his drugged state to influence his thoughts; we’ll see some evidence of this idea, and the idea of the real world bleeding through to Sherlock’s mind palace, later.

So Sherlock imagines that all the following are possible for someone who’s just fled a hospital room after nearly dying of a shot to the heart:

escaping through a window several floors up

contacting Anderson with his real location, because everyone would be looking for him, including Mary

moving John’s chair back into its usual position in 221b

acquiring a bottle of Claire de la Lune and putting it in 221b

getting a spare cell phone for Wiggins to hand to Mary

getting Wiggins in position

setting up a projector with Mary’s picture on it

getting to Leinster Gardens

getting John to Leinster Gardens and in position

That’s a lot to swallow if it’s real.

When Sherlock puts up the projection of Mary on the outside of Leinster Gardens, he says, “I never could resist a touch of drama.” He’s going to say this in two more scenes later, one that we know is fake and one that we’re not sure about. (Credit to @1895 for the gif, at the link.) What reason is there for the repetition, why link the scenes that way? EMP theory says it’s because they’re all fake.

Sherlock dictates aloud a backstory for Mary based on what little he does know about her. He imagines the name Mary Morstan came from a stillborn because Jennifer Wilson, whose body he found at Lauriston Gardens on his first case with John, had a stillborn daughter and a pink coat similar to one of Mary’s coats, and the location names are similar. Sherlock’s mind obsessing over the first case with John is going to be a recurring theme.

But Sherlock can’t infer nearly enough about Mary to be sure that she’s working for Moriarty, so his brain tries to reassure him she’s not that bad:

Mary’s an excellent shot, yet Sherlock lived, so she must have meant to not kill him.

If Mary didn’t mean to kill him, she must have been buying time somehow.

For Mary to go to those lengths, it must be because she just loves John so much and wants to keep him forever and ever. It’s not exactly difficult for Sherlock to imagine someone loving John so much they’d kill for him; he imagines himself killing CAM for John at Appledore later.

If Mary loves John that much, she’s not a danger to John.

Once Sherlock’s brain decides that must be the case, he decides he has to do right by John: he wants John to have a chance at life with Mary if that’s what John really wants, which is John’s decision; and even if they break up Sherlock still has to save Mary to save John’s unborn child. So he tells them they’re going to have to talk it out.

Time starts jumping around here because it’s all in Sherlock’s head: he’s trying to construct a narrative of how he could save Mary at the same time he’s trying to figure out what Mary’s true past could possibly be.

If that seems nuts, remember that you already accept this degree of detail and time slips are possible in Sherlock’s mind: we have it confirmed in The Abominable Bride that when Sherlock is drugged up, his mind palace is crazy realistic. It’s not full of wish fulfillment and total nonsense or anything like a typical person’s might be, rather, it’s full of his fears, like John and Mycroft giving him shit.

Think about it. Why did we never get a moving scene of John at Sherlock’s bedside, or Mycroft visiting the hospital at all? Sherlock is stuck in his own mind, where he only partially understands how important he is to them.

When the Watsons have their domestic in 221b, Sherlock’s mind doesn’t have the information to expose Mary’s real backstory. So what does his mind do? It tells him that information is all on a memory stick he can’t read. That’s why we never see any scene of Sherlock reading the memory stick, even though realistically he would. It’s also why he imagines John forgiving Mary without having read the memory stick; that way they don’t discuss it and Sherlock’s brain doesn’t have to fill in information it doesn’t have. Then, since it makes no sense for John “Trust Issues” Watson to not have read the stick, Sherlock decides it must just take John months to forgive Mary.

It’s all dream logic, where you rationalize how things could be happening after the fact.

Why does Sherlock imagine John forgives Mary? Sherlock says it himself in the domestic in 221b scene: John “chose” Mary because she, just like Sherlock, is what John likes. My read of The Empty Hearse and The Sign of Three is that Sherlock is confused over why John won’t pick him over Mary, and Sherlock answers his confusion in that scene: John finally found a female version of Sherlock.

Sherlock also decides that Mary actually likes him; he claims it’s “sentiment” that made Mary “save [his] life.” But how do we know Sherlock’s memory here is inaccurate?

Here’s what CAM says in the actual shooting scene:

But how does Sherlock remember it?

Sherlock also imagines that Mary called the ambulance, when the original footage seems to indicate that it was actually CAM; Sherlock was dealing with dying at the time, so of course he doesn’t know any better. [The link is from @reminderofwhereicanfindher, but I have actually seen several metas point these things out over the years. If you want yours credited, just tell me.]

Sherlock knows that Mary must have been threatening CAM over blackmail material about her past, and decides the next step is to go retrieve it: maybe there’s things in her past that would sway John back to choosing him, but if not, he still needs to save John’s pregnant wife. So he imagines making a deal with Magnussen... in a totally weird, dreamlike setting:

Sure, Sherlock does weird shit; plenty of these scenes could be real, but if they’re fake, they’re good tricks because Sherlock is such a drama queen we just buy it.

But he chooses to leave for a more dignified setting and doesn’t change his clothes? He supposedly set up the whole Leinster Gardens scene earlier but half-asses his meeting with CAM? Furthermore, if CAM really came to threaten him in the hospital like the deleted scene suggests, why didn’t he just get CAM to come to the hospital?

Furthermore, why does Sherlock never seem to go to Mycroft -- even and especially because it’s later supposedly revealed that Mary has been working for Mycroft? Well, Mycroft knows everything and that’s how Sherlock generally perceives him, but the Mycroft in Sherlock’s mind can’t fill in information that Sherlock doesn’t know, so he doesn’t go to Mycroft yet. It’s the memory stick all over again.

So Sherlock goes on to imagine this elaborate plot to visit Appledore. The first sign that it’s all fake is that this time around, unlike at 221b earlier, CAM’s goons don’t check John and Sherlock for weapons.

Once Sherlock is at Appledore, Sherlock's mind hits a wall yet again: he’s expecting CAM to reveal Mary’s past, except Sherlock’s mind still can’t fill in that information. So what does it do instead? He imagines that if CAM doesn’t have physical records of his blackmail materials, or electronic records, that leaves only one thing: a mind palace, just like Sherlock’s.

Of course, we allegedly saw CAM’s “mind palace” at the end of The Empty Hearse and the beginning of His Last Vow. But was that a mind palace? We see CAM looking at real video footage of Sherlock pulling John from the fire in TEH; that had to actually exist in order to get back to CAM, and he even shows them the video when they visit. In other words, CAM does have vaults. And of course he does, because when CAM visited 221b he had physical copies of the letters Lady Smallwood’s husband wrote. If CAM wanted to print a story about Lady Smallwood’s husband, he would probably want that picture of Helen Catherine Driscoll he was looking at, and so on. Surely CAM has to sometimes trade proof of things in order to get what he wants from people. He keeps hard copies of things somewhere.

But Sherlock’s mind writes him into a corner where it must be a mind palace, so he imagines killing CAM to save John and Mary both, securing John’s domestic future. Sherlock can’t ever resist a touch of the dramatic, after all.

Sherlock imagines Mycroft making his case to his colleagues, and imagines Mycroft mentioning “The Other One,” a sibling whose memory Sherlock has repressed because something bad happened to them and part of Sherlock’s mind connects that to his own life taking a doomed twist. Mycroft being the one to drudge up these memories of The Other One will come up again later.

Side theory: Euros is just Sherlock

It doesn’t really matter, but with EMP theory it’s actually possible that Sherlock has splintered memories of himself into the idea of a secret sibling that his subconscious keeps trying to make him remember via his projection of Mycroft. Remember, we don’t get ANY mention of “the other one” until Sherlock is already trapped in his own mind. This seems way more likely to me than Sherlock having a sister who’s nuts.

Consider: Something bad happened and Sherlock went nuts -- and felt that Mycroft did not display enough concern for him after it, apparently -- then Sherlock buried it all. I get the vibe from Sherlock blaming himself unfairly for Mary’s death that maybe Sherlock blames himself for Redbeard’s death or something.

We get crazy Euros stuff later, but we know that Sherlock has a memory of being terrified in a padded cell to draw upon for his death mind palace. So either both Sherlock and Euros ended up terrified in a padded cell, or something fucky is going on.

It seems possible that Euros is a part of Sherlock’s psyche that Sherlock needs to integrate; otherwise she’s kind of a ridiculous character, even for this show. I mean, Mycroft doesn’t want Sherlock to remember Euros... yet he spent years terrifying Sherlock with stories of Euros’s name -- “the East Wind is coming to get you?” That’s a nonsense strategy, to say the least.

But Sherlock locking up his worst memory by labeling it with a concept that scares him away? That seems more likely to me.

Plus, remember in TEH that Mycroft says they both thought Sherlock was stupid until they met other children. Maybe Mycroft’s just politely omitting the crazy sister that Sherlock is too traumatized to remember, or maybe Sherlock’s psyche got fractured prior to being institutionalized at some point in his life. Maybe part of being stuck in his own brain for several episodes is about integrating the sentiment-driven part of himself that got damaged by something traumatic.

Guess we’ll see.

Back to HLV:

Sherlock imagines saying goodbye to John. He imagines John not seeming to care as much as we’d expect. ‘Cause it’s fake.

Sherlock doesn’t tell John how he feels on the tarmac, which through the lens of EMP theory as I see it is because Sherlock’s not yet emotionally developed enough to do so. Remember, Sherlock’s arc is about going from being a great man to a good one. The ensuing episodes are about having Sherlock work out his shit so he’s truly ready for a relationship, and isn’t just the same guy from The Empty Hearse who falls back on humor when he can’t make himself say the things he wants to say. He’ll be realizing that he’s willing to make any sacrifice for love.

On the plane, Sherlock broods over the time he and John met by reading John’s blog (which we can bet Sherlock pretty much has memorized). But as he flies away, something still doesn’t feel right to Sherlock. He and John still don’t know anything about Mary’s past. Something feels very off.

Sherlock feels very weird, like he’s drugged.

Something feels very Moriarty. Wasn’t he worried about Moriarty earlier?

Sherlock’s mind decides that Moriarty must be back. But that’s not possible... is it?

The Abominable Bride

Sherlock is still in the hospital being drugged, but imagines that he’s in Victorian London and meeting John there instead -- because the part of his brain that knows all the gay history referenced in TAB is feeling pretty closeted.

When he later realizes he’s not really in Victorian London, his brain justifies the drugged feeling by deciding he must have purposely taken a bunch of drugs.

I said this earlier but I’ll repeat it anyway:

Note that the first scenes of TAB are about John only, so we know that just because Sherlock isn’t in a scene, it doesn’t mean he’s not imagining it. We see full scenes without Sherlock continually this episode.

Also note that here we get the A Study in Scarlet (Arthur Conan Doyle) version of their meeting. This is important to remember, because the backlit skull in T6T is covered with the text of it.

TAB is where loads of continuity errors start to kick in.

First things first, we’ve got what @skulls-and-tea called “tie hell:” Mycroft’s tie changes from HLV to TAB (credit to Skully for the close-ups):

Okay okay, maybe there was a fuck-up with the wardrobe. Kind of unlikely for this show, given how carefully they do manage everything, but no one’s perfect, right?

But @skulls-and-tea also realized that six months before TAB aired, Mark said this when asked about a fandom theory that existed beforehand that there’s some kind of code to the ties they use:

“There’s nothing, there’s no tie code. No tie code. Sorry! I wish we’d been that clever, but we haven’t.”

Of course they would lie if there was a tie code, so that’s not what’s meaningful here. What’s meaningful is that they already knew the fandom was looking for codes in the ties, thought it was a clever idea they wished they’d used, then fucked up Mycroft’s tie in TAB even though that would make us think something was amiss. TAB was conceived after TJLC was in full force; they’d written the episode for us, the people who pick the show apart more than anyone. Why would they be so careless with the tie?

They weren’t careless: they want us to think something is amiss.

Furthermore, the plane interior in TAB isn’t the same as it was in HLV, and @gosherlocked wrote up a fantastic overview of tweets from set director Arwel Jones and director Douglas Mackinnon explicitly confirming that the differences are intentional because maybe the plane is in Sherlock’s imagination.

Even without that confirmation, there’s good reason to think the “real life” scenes of TAB are all fake... except for a small part of the one real life scene that is revealed to be fake. Which is hilarious, come on.

First of all, Sherlock looks surprised to see the pilot, as his brain had made her into Lady Carmichael. Presumably he’d seen her earlier and incorporated it. But wait a minute... if he’d seen her earlier, would he be quite so surprised to see her now?

We assume that he just didn’t really consciously see her earlier, that he’s drugged up and that’s why he looks startled. But what if Sherlock made her up entirely -- what if he stole her from his Victorian mind palace for his “real life” mind palace first?

And isn’t it kind of weird that in a scene we supposedly know to be fake, Sherlock imagines he’s in the hospital? With John and Mycroft there, just like we’d expected to see in HLV?

We also get this possible nod to EMP -- though it works without EMP too, just like the episode, which is why I think it’s genius:

Then the grave-digging scene that follows is proof that “real life” scenes may look entirely convincing without being real at all. Again, you already accept that if we were seeing a lie, we wouldn’t necessarily think anything was amiss until the rug is pulled! Unless, you know, the things going on in the scene felt ridiculous, like the the grave-digging one.

Given that we see Sherlock incorporate things from the “real life” level into his Victorian mind palace during this episode -- such as modern John bleeding through into Victorian Watson -- there’s no solid reason to believe that the few bits of people looking over him in a hospital bed aren’t real, even if the grave-digging bits are imagined. Dude is drugged out of his mind.

But there’s also some important stuff we’ve got to cover even in the obviously imaginary parts of TAB. Some of it reinforces that the parts of HLV we covered are fake, and some of it reinforces that S4 is wholly fake.

Early on in TAB, Sherlock’s mind realizes that everything is really weird. It’s clear from Sherlock’s real life observations that John isn’t actually that into Mary, no matter what reconciliation Sherlock imagined. Sherlock’s fears made him think that John chose Mary because she ticks the same boxes that Sherlock does and John simply prefers her, but Sherlock’s mind just can’t seem to uphold that fiction when he goes through the evidence: in TAB, Sherlock’s brain repeatedly recognizes that John would rather go off on cases with him than hang out with Mary. In the beginning Sherlock tells himself that John is only hanging out with him because John likes the fame and attention that writing about Sherlock attracts, but once Sherlock winds up at the waterfall, it’s just too unrealistic that John wouldn’t be there with him, so this particular simulation of what would happen with him and John ends on that key truth.

All of TAB is a battle between Sherlock’s logic and fears. It’s all Sherlock trying to run simulations so he can figure out what’s going on with the people he knows. It's made very clear from TAB that that’s how Sherlock’s brain works, which makes it easier to see how the same battle is going on in HLV, T6T and TLD.

For example, things just feel off about Mary, despite everything Sherlock told himself in HLV. She’s still shrouded in mystery, and it bothers him. The whole episode is about casting light on that mystery:

It’s hard to imagine what purpose TAB serves if not to drive home that Sherlock doesn’t totally trust Mary and is still ruminating over her past, and that he sees a connection between Mary and Moriarty. The arc of TAB doesn’t seem to mesh with HLV, and won’t seem to mesh with S4 prior to TFP, because the poor bastard is just stuck in his head running simulations. We’ll see why this one doesn’t stick when we get to the end of TAB.

From the start, Sherlock’s brain tells him that he’s going to have to go deep into himself.

This is a clue that his mind has levels, some deeper than others. We’ll see that as TAB progresses. This is also a concept from the movie Inception that I mentioned earlier.

Also note Sherlock’s use of this phrase:

Sherlock will say this again in T6T, part of his mind echoing the conflict of TAB: what is going on with Mary? He also said this in TGG when Moriarty started his game with him, which links Mary and Moriarty in Sherlock’s mind.

Sherlock says they’re ready to begin and has Lestrade come on stage to set things up. Sherlock imagines a case about a terrible bride shooting people, obviously evocative of Mary. He has her wear lipstick like Irene Adler and sing “Do not forget me.” What did the opening recap remind us?

He even keeps a picture of Irene, and imagines a whole cult of underestimated women who tricked everyone. Sherlock’s mind knows he’s being tricked by a woman and should not forget it, but he can’t quite settle on Mary despite all the evidence. Why?

Well, Sherlock knows it would be all too easy for him to want John’s wife to be awful and out of the picture. Sherlock establishes that John isn’t enthusiastic about Mary, then later imagines John grilling him on his sexuality in the greenhouse. Sherlock agitatedly insists that sentiment would cloud his mind, and soon after imagines Moriarty taunting him about how he doesn’t actually care what’s going on and is just obsessing over John and sex. The idea horrifies Sherlock: he doesn’t want to think the worst of Mary just because of his feelings for John. Even if it seems realistic that John could be into him, he has to be objective.

So his brain tries to tell him that Mary must be working for Mycroft, not Moriarty. That... sort of makes sense, right? Mary was going after CAM partly for Mycroft and Lady Smallwood because she works for them. She’s not evil, she just needed a bit of excitement in her life because John ignores her. Plus she’s pregnant with John’s child, so Sherlock has to help her no matter how much it hurts him emotionally.

It may be worth noting, however, that Mary is not pregnant in Sherlock’s Victorian mind palace. Maybe buried deep, in the episode where Sherlock seems to almost have Mary’s number, Sherlock knows the baby isn’t real and he and John can just elope.

Sherlock’s subconscious mind also knows that Moriarty must be behind all this. His mind reminds him that Moriaty’s body was never recovered. He imagines a scenario similar to what I describe in M-theory where the sound of the gun going off comes from another gun wielded by an accomplice, and blood is splashed to fake the suicide. He goes nuts trying to dig up an ancient corpse just to see if the real body is there, but can’t get any answers because it’s all in his mind and he simply doesn’t know -- the same reason he can’t get solid answers about Mary’s past, only a trickle of snippets that don’t quite make sense. He imagines Moriarty is the head of the cult of underestimated women, wearing the bride’s dress and all.

It all just freaks Sherlock out too much to accept that Mary could be working for Moriarty, that Moriarty could still be alive. Minutes ago Sherlock had said he could never resist a touch of the dramatic (credit again to @1895 for the gif), which links this fake scene to the scene I mentioned outside Leinster Gardens in HLV:

And then his mind has Moriarty mock him for being dramatic and making unrealistic shit up. The problem, Sherlock decides, is that Moriarty is a virus in his brain. Moriarty can’t be alive, Sherlock is just a scared drama queen and it’s ruining his ability to think clearly.

And John is clearly going to be Sherlock’s in the end! Sherlock has realized over the course of the episode that John is just following his lead because he’s concerned about what Mary will do. Moriarty is totally dead, and whatever is going on, he and John together will be victorious.

John kicks Moriarty off the waterfall, except... wait... Moriarty seems happy about it? Like that’s exactly what he wants to happen? (credit to @skulls-and-tea)

Sherlock throws off his detective hat, rejects fear, and embraces love by... jumping deeper, into water.

(Credit to @skulls-and-tea for this too because apparently Skully screamed at me about it six months ago and I forgot because I wasn’t seriously considering anything weird was going on, then I thought I noticed it myself when I went to write this LOL.)

Remember, curly dad keeps saying that Sherlock makes mistakes when he lets in sentiment. And this is a big, big mistake; Sherlock should have stayed paranoid. Moriarty did just say Sherlock would be the first man to ever be buried in his mind palace. And Sherlock just went even deeper than he was in this scene.

Son of a bitch! That’s not how you get out of your mind palace, Sherlock!

And how do we know he’s still stuck there? We see Sherlock talking to John and Mary about how Moriarty is totally dead and he totally knows what he’s going to do next, then they drive off the tarmac...

Except... then we get the epilogue. It has to happen somewhere, at some time in Sherlock’s brain. And it apparently happened after the tarmac scene we just saw, where Sherlock’s supposed to have sobered up?

Sherlock’s still in his brain.

Aaaand shit, apparently you can hit size limits for posts because partway through adding the T6T images it greyed out the option to post or even save this as a draft. Please hang tight and I’ll get more posted hopefully today, HOPEFULLY before TFP airs tomorrow at the latest.

Tagging those who asked to be tagged: @tea-and-gingernuts @theheartandthebrain @softmolly @sherlockprettydamngayholmes @shrlk @alex4555

#tjlc #meta #my meta #emp theory #PART 1

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carolrance · 7 years

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I saw this thing. I’m answering this thing... even though nobody asked.

So, I saw someone answering this and thought it was sorta cool but I don’t think people will respond anymore so I’m just doing it myself. Self love, ya know.

Talk about the first ship you ever had. Uhhh… I can’t remember which came first Mulder & Scully or Usagi/Mamoru. (The latter being really icky to me now that I’m older, lol.) I think it was Mulder/Scully… I was in primary school for both of these so it’s confusing cos that was a really long time ago.

Talk about three of the most important ships throughout your life. Mulder/Scully (The X Files). I honestly don’t really feel like “talking” about them cos I don’t think it’s very interesting. Also, I have no idea where to begin. Naomi/Emily (Skins) – I fucking can’t stand them now, to be completely honest. I actually sorta hate Emily. By they (and Skins in general) did have a rather huge impact on my life. Now, I feel like I should put Dany/Doreah but really I think more importantly in terms of my life, it would be Marissa/Alex from The O.C. Does that sound stupid? Maybe. But that pairing (as shitty as they treated Alex and the whole relationship by the end) had a fairly huge influence on me. I think it was my first femslash ship that I was totally open about. (I totally shipped Jo/Rachel (and Jo/Rachel/Paul) from S Club 7 (DON’T EVEN!) but back then I didn’t even think it was serious…even though I had a whole website about it, lmao.)

What’s your current OTP? Oh my… Dany/Doreah forever & Marg/Sansa (ASOIAF/GoT). Michelle/Naomi (Skins). Carol/Helen (Episodes). Amanda Rollins/Olivia Benson (SVU). (With a bit of Rollins/Lindsay on the side. SVU/Chicago PD). Niska/Astrid (Humans). … So… Like… A lot? A lot of old OTPs are still OTPs now? Bo/Lauren (Lost Girl). Meg/Veronica (Veronica Mars). Katniss/Johanna (THG). Lou/Tess (Lip Service). Quinn/Rachel (Unreal). Jessica Jones/Trish Walker (Jessica Jones). Virginia Johnson/Lillian DePaul (Masters of Sex)………I think even my few het ships I’m still not totally over (Chase/Cameron, Mulder/Scully, Martin/Sam, etc) but I mean, I don’t really care either.

What’s your current NOTP? Any of the above characters paired with men. Simple. I have a lot of nOTPs tbh. Most canon ships are NOTPs lmao. Although… I guess Patsy/Delia is a current NOTP of mine. Don’t shoot! I just don’t care for them. They are boring to me.

Do you have any poly ships? I was sorta into Marissa/Alex/Ryan (The O.C.). I started a fic about them. And the aforementioned Jo/Paul/Rachel.

How do you feel about love triangles? Lazy. The thing is, they’re a real thing. I’ve been a bunch and they’re just uncomfortable. No matter what, somebody gets hurt. I just feel like in TV/films they’re SO LAZY. An easy way to create drama for drama’s sake. And one faction of fandom is always upset. And usually they’re really shoddily designed so it’s like one girl, 2 boring ass boys fighting for her WHO WILL SHE CHOOSE?! BLAH……. Boring. “The triangle’s not a friendly shape, okay? It’s pointy. It’s got edges. Triangles hurt people, man.”

How do you feel about RPF? Nope. I’m a bit of a hypocrite cos I spent a great deal of time in my childhood sorta straddling the very thin line here with the whole S Club 7 thing. And, I’ll admit, I did enjoy this April Pearson/Lily Loveless fic once.

Have you ever shipped yourself with a character? No. Usually my favs feel a little too relatable which is why I’m attached to them, not cos I wanna bone them. Also, way too much drama. I mean, fictional characters are almost always exaggerated people.

Do you have many ships that never got together at all? All? LMAO. Okay, let’s see… Sam/Martin did, briefly (Fuck Without A Trace tbh. What a horrid little show.) Chase/Cameron were together and that ended badly as well. Carol/Helen, also ended horribly (so far). Mulder/Scully… that’s difficult. They’re difficult. Marissa/Alex, ended horribly. Naomi/Emily, technically… hmmm. Well, as of S4 they were back together but I didn’t buy it and I pretty much loathed Emily by that point so fuck em. That ended badly too. It ended horribly if you count S7–which I don’t cos I never watched it. If I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen. Bo/Lauren. Okay, this may be the only bright light in all my ships, lmao. They were together and then not, then together, then not, then END GAME. So, I guess the ones that never got together??? Basically just look above at my OTPs and see all the ones I didn’t mention here ending horribly lol.

Do you ship any characters that have never met? ONLY THE BEST ONE: MICHELLE/NAOMI.

Talk about your favorite first kiss. Like in canon onscreen? Or in my head? Big diff. Chase & Cameron maybe. I loved that episode. Mulder & Scully’s first (onscreen) kiss was a bit weird. I don’t remember Sam/Martin tbh. Hmm… Marissa/Alex was hella stilted and awkward prolly cos it was on FOX and like Mischa Barton is a terrible actress. Bo/Lauren’s first kiss was pretty good. Yeah, I really liked that one. Mostly cos it didn’t fade to black immediately (ahem, Carol/Helen) and it wasn’t set to ‘I Kissed A Girl’ (Naomi/Emily)… Okay, in fairness that was only the American version. The one I saw had Lily Allen playing instead… But still. I loved that episode but it wasn’t the best first kiss I’ve ever seen.

Have you ever been disappointed when your ship finally got together? Yes, when they get together only to end even shittier. Which is basically all of them except Bo/Lauren.

Has a ship ever broken your heart? All of them. Canon and otherwise. My heart breaks on a regular basis.

How do you feel about will they/won’t they? Ugh. Useless. Generally, it’s queerbaiting when it’s my femslash OTPs. When it’s het, I’m just like, “As if these two lonely, outrageously attractive co-workers wouldn’t have banged already. Like, give me a break and just do it already. Who believes this shit?”

Have you ever “shipped at first sight”? Lemme think… Probably? I can’t actually recall any specifics however. Not Mulder/Scully, I know that. The first time I saw them, it was New Year’s Eve and I spent the entire show huddled on the sofa in my friend’s basement with her and her cousins, shaking and screaming, lmao. The X-Files really isn’t great TV for easily scared children with big imaginations, lbr.

Talk about a ship you initially disliked. One that I like now that I disliked previously? Erm. None. I don’t flipflop on ships, lbr. It goes like this: I am oblivious/indifferent to ship, depending. I see ship. I ship ship. I love ship. And it’s only then that this can diverge. Either I stay in love forever, or I end up positively hating the show/pairing and I stop shipping it, or it just kinda dies out over time. Normally it’s the first or second, rarely the third.

Talk about a pairing you’ve stopped shipping romantically. And now just ship them only as friends? Or stopped shipping them and dislike them now and don’t want to have anything to do with them? The latter is clearly Sam/Martin. I just hated how the characters were written and the show was fucking awful after S3. The former… Ah, the former. I think this really has to be Naomi/Emily. I am 1457% Naomi/Michelle, no alternatives accepted. Naomily is toxic imo. Like so incredibly nope. I am -100000% Naomily. I stopped shipping them mid-S4, probably during Katie’s episode. I was just like, “Nope, this is pretty gross and not healthy and what the fuck?!” I gave up completely at the finale when it was so fucking stupid. I think by then I’d already had my Michelle/Naomi dream… Anyway. Like, I literally cannot handle Naomi/Emily anymore. At most, I can deal with them as friends. But even then, sometimes I wonder if writing them that way in my fics is pandering in some sense. It’s not intentional pandering to Naomily stans… but, now I look back and wonder? They’re just so awful together romantically. I shudder.

Talk about a moment which made you question an entire ship. Hmmm…. Carol/Helen in Griffith Park in 4x09 when she makes Carol give back her bra. That whole episode was really nasty and really awful and not funny at all. I really dislike the writing there. It was just… Helen was just disgusting really and it made me really uncomfortable about shipping it. I have other examples but it only asked for one.

Have you ever shipped something despite yourself? She-Ra and He-Man. I had no idea they were brother and sister when I was little but I thought they were cute together. Oops. It wasn’t until a few years back when I mentioned them at a party and everyone was like, “Errr, you do know they were twins, yeah?” NO. I DID NOT.

Talk about a ship you feel alone in shipping. Carol/Helen. I feel like the few people that shipped it with me on tumblr here were really turned off by their breakup. And also, it’s been on hiatus forever. Also, I suppose Claire Dearing/Zara Young from Jurassic World, lmao.

Is there a ship you just don’t get, but have nothing against? Most het ones? Like, just… why would you be with that puffy wonderbread boy when you could be with this other hot lady and have 10003x times more chemistry and interestingness? (Like I mean, I’m totally talking about Erin Lindsay and that gay dude she’s fucking, when it would be so much better if she was with Rollins, lmao. You go watch the crossovers episodes and tell me I’m imagining that.) Other het ships, I have definite things against the men.

Which of your ships have the best chemistry? OH GOD. Now, ermmmm…. this depends almost exclusively on my own headcanon/bias so obvs others aren’t likely to agree. Cos, well, Michelle/Naomi have hella chemistry LMAO. Like just look at this photo. Clearly. Okay, seriously… Bo/Lauren. Like hands down, undoubtedly.

Which of your ships deserve better writing? Every single one of them. Especially Dany/Doreah lmao.

Do you mostly ship canon pairings? Clearly not.

Have you ever shipped a pairing before you even started watching the show/movie simply because of gifs and graphics or similar? Skins. Lost Girl. Actually, hmm. I saw gifs of LG but I guess it wasn’t until I saw Zoie Palmer at a film premiere I went to that I was like, “WHO IS THAT?!” And then I realised I had to start watching that programme.

Have you noticed a pattern in your shipping? Is there a romantic dynamic you’re more drawn to? Blonde/Brunette. Like, it’s really obvious. But not 100%. Otherwise, I don’t really see any substantial patterns.

Is there a ship you’ve shipped for most of your life? Mulder/Scully.

Does shipping come easily to you? Neither here nor there. If it clicks, it clicks.

Do you need to ship something to really enjoy a movie/book/tv show/comic? Most of the time. But then sometimes shipping gets in the way of my enjoyment cos it becomes all about the pairing.

Name a couple of fandoms in which you have no ships. Fortitude? Honestly… I don’t even know. I watch a bunch of TV I have no particular interest in shipping anybody. Oh! Here’s one NASHVILLE. I honestly do not care who’s with whom. It’s irrelevant.

Talk about one of your favorite headcanons for a ship you love. Dany/Doreah – Doreah is alive. That’s it. That’s the headcanon. (And bonus, Dany takes Doreah to Lys and burns down the pleasure house Doreah was sold to as a child.) I have to add that most of my fav headcanons revolve around one half of my OTP still being alive. Which is both sad and really telling. (Like… Doreah, Margaery, Naomi, Meg, Marissa, Lillian… Ouch.)

Share five must-read fics. I’m trying really hard not to rec my own shit cos I just love my headcanons too much. Okay, here: They Will Crown You, They Will Take Your Legs by (Netgirl_y2k); tie your handlebars to the stars (and throw away the map) by (majesdane); my heart is gold and my hands are cold by (quinnking); If you’re gonna shoot me down, do it gently by (aphrodite_mine); I Can’t Get Out Of Love (a love i had a grip on; now it’s gripping me) by (doreah) hahahahahahahahaaaa i will do whatever i want when i want to force this pairing on everyone

Name your favorite fanartist(s). IDK??????????

Share your favorite fanmix for your OTP. Dany/Doreah: actually… oops. my fav fanmix for them is on my ipod and nowhere else lmao. it’s really good hahahah. anyway… um. so i’ll choose one that’s not mine: i’ll send a storm (most of mine are either doreah-specific or based on my fic which is a lot of headcanon and this one has excellent musical choices. that first track is killer.) Meg/Veronica: song of solomon (your poetry in motion) Chase/Cameron: i’m all second chances Michelle/Naomi: can’t get out of love Bo/Lauren: it’s killing me, it’s killing you, a page from the book of my fantasy

Recommend 1-5 shipper blogs. Pass. I don’t even know any…

Do you create fanmixes/gif sets/fanart/fic/fanvids and so on for you ships? Used to. Obvs.

Do you have a favorite trope and/or AU for your OTP? Half of it not being dead.

Do you like and use ship names? I generally stay away from them unless I to find stuff/want people to find my stuff on tumblr. I find them cloying.

Is there a fictional relationship you’d really want for yourself? Hell no. Real life is difficult enough.

If you could change one thing about your OTP, what would that be? They would all be alive. Sensing a pattern? Also, being canon would be nice.

#i did this and i don't know why #naomi x michelle #dany x doreah #marissa x alex #meg x veronica #bo x lauren #carol x helen #mulder x scully #michelle x Naomi

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