#honestly was rewatching the scene both of them were falling and saw that symbol on the side of the building

[trigun-archive]

Omg, I just realized something that’s not gonna add much to the narrative or if anyone has noticed it.

Here we go.

So basically in episode 12, Vash did his girlboss move of flinging himself and Nai over the ledge.

And as they’re falling, I noticed something:

To me, this reminds of the Yin Yang symbol:

Then I remember that one post where someone mentioned where Vash in episode 12 wore the colors of ‘evil’ (black and purple).

Knives wore the colors of ‘good’ (white and blue).

They’re polar opposites of one another.

And that got me thinking more in depth with their relation with Yin Yang.

Obviously everyone is familiar with two sides of the same coin. It’s the same idea with Yin Yang, they’re polar opposites but they complement each other.

As part of the Naruto fandom (*groans*, I know I know). But hear me out, lots of symbolism that is related to Naruto and Sasuke is their relation to the sun and moon respectively.

Naruto is the sun. The Yang per say, because he is bright, aggressive and masculine. His respective color is orange.

While Sasuke is the moon. The Yin, because he is with the shadows, silent and feminine. His respective color is purple.

If you read the Naruto manga, then you would see how much Kishimoto bashes your head in with their respective symbolism, it’s in the cover art, the parallelism in the panels. It even showed up as their respective symbols on their hands after the ceremony for the final battle.

Back to TriStamp.

I believe they put Knives as Yang. He is aggressive and very in your face with his conquests of taking back the Plants. He is very muscular, and it’s shown through his tight bodysuit.

Then they would put Vash as Yin. He is way less aggressive with his morals than his previous counterparts. Obviously he still has them, but he is less forthcoming. His entire character design has changed, as everyone says with his non-binary haircut.

But in certain scenes, he still has those broad shoulders and managed to lift a fucking ion cannon enough to break his prosthetic arm. So, my babygirl is still fucking strong, hmph.

It’s even mentioned that the director of TriStamp has said Vash is both the female and male lead.

Same thing with Sasuke, some Studio Perriot staff has stated that he is the heroine of the story.

Obviously Naruto and Sasuke’s relationship heavily implies they’re in love with each other and soulmate coded to the max.

(Ha, get it? Trigun MAXimum??)

(. . ., I’ll see myself out).

But they did a different relationship of Yin Yang:

Twins.

Knives wanted desperately Vash to be the ‘perfect’ version that he envisioned. Taking away Vash’s bodily autonomy.

Vash just wanted to have ‘love and peace’ in the world. He didn’t want to fight Knvies, but he would defend his loved ones.

Until during episode 12, when he was ready to go in guns blazing to take down Knives.

With the color palette of black and purple against Knives’s white and blue.

Purple is the combination of red and blue. Vash’s red jacket and part of Knives’s color palette.

But also in the end, when Vash wanted to shoot that cube up in the sky.

He still wanted to save his brother, even though Knives was rejecting it by reaching to the absolute power of the cube and what it would bring him and Plant kind.

An Icarus-esque trope per say.

But yeah, anyways, this was just a jumble of thoughts I had to immediately write this down.

[vaguely-concerned]

The Mandalorian Chapter 11 reactions; the ‘the sea is a harsh mistress’ edition

- on first watch this wasn’t really one of my favorite episodes. I think it’s something to do with... one of the many things I love about the mandalorian is how it made the star wars universe feel HUGE. big and surprising and unknowable, there could be fucking anything out there man we don’t know. so having first bo katan show up and then ahsoka being set up right after (quite aside from who’s rumoured to play her, which is an entirely different can of wormy beans) in additon to opening the season on tatooine... eh. I’m not that into it, it feels like shrinking the world. we haven’t even gotten to see any other type of force user yet. it is only early/mid season tho so they’re probably going to pull some unexpected twists on us 

my opinion might change with rewatches too, that happens quite a bit with this show!

- 

🎶I’VE COME TO TALK WITH YOU AGAIN🎶

honestly I had kind of a hard day yesterday and watched this the next morning and kept pointing tiredly to the crest like ‘it me tho’ 

- I was unreasonably happy about seeing the calamari flan again hahaha he’s been keeping that shit in his pockets for a season and a half now (didn’t he pay with some at one other point too?)! also the sound effects for them are SO EXCELLENT, I keep thinking about how well this show does texture which is wild considering how it’s filmed 

- the warm pat din gave frog lady’s arm when he thanked her and said goodbye 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 I love the small ways he’s thawing 

-

my heart ached so much for him at this point, he just looks so small and tense and lost, like a kid who’s lost his parents in a supermarket

(he keeps his hand on the blaster the whole time too so he knows this is a bad scene but now they’re right out in the middle of the ocean already soooo) 

- din’s very very very dry sense of humour is so blessed. ‘a bowl of chowder for my friend’ faklhfsadkjlfhsadkjhfsd

the baby’s look when he poked the squid thing with his knife too -- yodito’s like ‘dad is a wizard??’ haha. some good baby & dad stuff in this one 

- oh din... side quest boy, side quest booooooyyy

- the shot when bo katan helped him out of the water is perfectly mirroring the scene of bb!din being pulled up to safety by the mandalorian in the flashback, which seems Very Intentional

I Extremely Do Not Trust Her in the larger scale tho. I think it’s important that din knows now that he was raised in a very specific offshoot of the mandalorians ant that there’s some Stuff he hasn’t been told, but I also think it’s crucial to remember that her pov is not unbiased either and she, in fact, already has an established tendency to selectively share information with him to manipulate him into fulfilling her goals. (which he realizes because he keeps saying ‘that is not my mission, my mission is the child’ and I could not love him more). hell, I’m not sure exactly how ‘the children of the watch’ were positioned within death watch, but she was fucking death watch too for the longest time! and she hardly left for particularly noble reasons, she just didn’t like maul! she already lost mandalore like twice, do we just have to trust that third time’s the charm or what! 

she lied to him about the scope of the mission to force him into a position to do what she wanted (fully knowing he’s responsible for a child!!) and she called that ‘the way’ just as easily as the thing about not letting his bravery be forgotten! big red warning lights, NO! I think the thing is that din is having to find his own ‘way’ of being mandalorian (/how does one be a person exactly help?? relatable content, and he’ll get there in the end I’m sure he’s so good), but her way is no less fucked up to me than the children of the watch from what we’ve seen so far. she’s good at killing imperials though which is of course a mark in her favour

(considering that the episode gives her the epithet ‘the heiress’... yeah that’s probably a hint that she’s loyal first and foremost to her entitlement, getting the position she considers hers by right of inheritance. guess we’ll see if the text agrees with her)  

- ‘mandalorians are stronger together’ yeah that’s probably why the cosmic balance makes sure they’re mostly engaged in being at each other’s throats lol 

- so I might be feeling kind of sketch about these guys but on the other hand... when that one lady saved the baby and then promptly took off her helmet to reveal she looks like t h i s ?

you better BELIEVE I was ready to fall down on one knee and propose right then and there holy shit

- ...wow if he didn’t have the jet pack din probably would have just sunk like a rock and drowned there huh 😨 that armour’s pretty heavy, turns out

- in happier news: din has become so good at reading what the child is expressing and responding/labeling the feeling for him! that’s so important to his development! ‘I know you’re hungry’ and both telling and showing him there’s a solution! still a bit of an issue that he thinks he can inform the baby of things like it’s a reasoned adult and have it understand, but we’re getting there we’re getting there lol

- that poor lady guiding them in for landing and sounding more and more worried fhkasjdlhfkjsdlahf (and he fucking TURNS OFF THE RADIO or whatever he’s using to talk to her through sdkfhaksdfhjs he takes a precious split second just to cut her off asfdjhaslkdfsdfhsda I love my salty dad) 

- when the fisherman asshole tells mando he knows where to find more of his people there’s the tinkling bell sound in the background music, I think it’s meant to convey almost childlike longing for belonging and connection, for finding someone who’ll know what to do? 

- when they took off their helmets and baby looked up at din like ‘???dad what the fuck? can you do that???’. (or like he just sensed his father taking a shitload of psychic damage all in one go)

- the way din didn’t start breathing again until they got the baby up from the water and he had him in his arms... the way he held him... sladfhasdklfhsjakdhfjsakldhfsakjldhfsjkadhfjaskdhfskajdhfjsdakhfslakhfskladhfsakljdhfjskadlhfkjsld

that whole scene was like a nightmare, so desperately unpleasant, in a way it mirrors the way the mandalorians have been hunted down and pummeled these last few generations, this must sort of be what it feels like to him subconsciously 

- din isn’t particularly inflexible as a person, after the initial kneejerk rejection he did listen to what they said and is carefully considering it (he did say ‘this is the way’ back at the end!)   

- the baby’s babbling when he wakes up and looks around in the beginning sounds half like ‘baba?’ and I almost had a heart attack

- loved how greasy and awful and dumb all the empire dudes were (and the comedy on board the ship too it was good for me) 

- the boob plates huh. shit they’ve shown with the armorer that they don’t have to do that in any way shape or form and they still brought the boob plates back :/ I guess it’s so they match up with the rebels/clone wars look, evoking that ~*era*~ and everything, but I don’t have to like it lol  

- I feel so validated in my theory that the razor crest is symbolic of din’s sense of self  (now with beautifully added commentary!) after this haha (and also so so scared now they might be ditching it for a new ship eventually). it’s in pieces, his world view is going to pieces and can’t be patched together the way it was before, from what he knows he’s about to deliver the baby to someone else who’ll understand/love/deserve him better (I do think that feeling is still in him) and he doesn’t even have the certainty of the code anymore to fill the void. oh buddy. 

the discomfort I felt when we got back into the cockpit -- into where it’s supposed to be familiar and safe! -- and saw all the ocean junk lying around, making it feel weird and changed and dirty (it probably smells like rotten seaweed in there now :( no likey)... I mean it was also very funny to see the pilot’s chair held together with a literal fishing net, but please favreau leave my dad’s car/ego alooooone 

- baby laughing his little bum off at din catching the small sea monster before it got him and then munching it......... the ‘there’s nothing in this world my dad can’t fix’ safe energy.......... I’m so scared we’re coming up on something din can’t fix 

- knitwear in star wars: I didn’t know I wanted it, but I am ELATED with having been given it

- moff gideon’s amazing evil voice... back in our ears, in our hearts, I gleefully hate him 

- at least din’s armour is clean again after that (awful) swim? one must appreciate some silver linings along the way I suppose

- din goes straight for the main pilot’s seat once they get the imperial out of it, so he must feel really secure that he’s probably the best man for the job; he is genuinely a good pilot! (and after this I am wondering even MORE who taught him. who raised you within the mandos din??)

- even while everything is new and scary and falling apart we can live safe in the knowledge that at least frog lady and frog husband had a good day and will have a good and happy frog life together with their frog children

couple goals tbh 

(I don’t necessarily know how it works for frog people but I uh. guess they got busy quickly huh hahaha good thing mando didn’t turn up again until later)

[twdmusicboxmystery]

10x17: Home Sweet Home - Details

Alright, let’s talk details!

***As always, spoilers abound below for 10x17. Don’t read until you’ve watched!***

As many  have already pointed out, Maggie and Judith talking about the stars and how “she” is looking up at those same stars is interesting. Sirius symbolism, and of course they’re talking about Michonne, but when they use the pronoun, it could be adapted to anyone. Beth, obviously. But even Rick or anyone else who is missing.

I did notice something of a “rule of threes” theme in this episode. Right at the beginning, when loading the wagon, Lydia counts, “one, two, three.” That wouldn’t be very noteworthy on its own, but later in the episode, exactly three of Maggie’s people fall to the snipers. So again, a bit of a theme.

Also, Lydia is wearing a bright pink shirt at the beginning when she counts to three. I noticed it mostly because the color is so bright and it might be the cleanest thing Lydia has ever worn, lol. Not sure what it points to. This is such a minor scene, it’s hard to draw any conclusions. But it caught my attention.

When they go to see the ruins of Hilltop, it’s interesting that the only thing really left standing is the water tower. Water = Beth, so we always make note of things like water towers. It almost feels like a “standing amidst the ruins” sort of thing.

As they walk to get Maggie’s people, we do hear some interesting dialogue. Cole says there’s shelter 10 miles to the East. Just having 10 (think roman numeral X) and East in the same sentence catches my ear. At one point, one of them says “if we’re lucky.” So, Luck Theory. And we see lots of shots of sunlight filtering through the trees. We’ve always seen that as a Beth symbol.

Okay, let’s talk a little more about the cut on Maggie’s arm. It’s a rather large cut across her left forearm, right? And I mentioned yesterday that it isn’t the same as Beth’s because it’s on the wrong arm. Although, it IS in the same place as Beth’s cast, just the opposite.

So, here’s why I noticed it at all. There are two other times when we saw a big cut like this. Since the Leah rumors broke, I’ve rewatched the episode Scars several times. In that episode, Judith gets a cut in the exact same place: her left forearm. It looks exactly like Maggie’s does in this episode. That can’t be a coincidence.

The only other time I remember seeing this exact cut was on Tyreese in 4b. Now, I don’t want to freak anyone out, but Ty’s cut definitely foreshadowed his death. When he was bitten in 5x09, the bite came in exact same place he was cut.

Now, I don’t at all think this suggests both Maggie and Judith getting bitten and dying. I’m sure the symbolism is more complex than that. I just don’t understand exactly how they’re using it, yet. 

What I can say for now is that all three of the episodes I’ve seen it in (and there may be more; these are just the ones that spring to mind) are Beth-heavy episodes, at least when it comes to symbolism. So there’s 5x09 (she’s actually in Ty’s death hallucination), this episode, where she’s mentioned twice after 6 years of silence, and then Scars. I still haven’t posted my Scars post, yet. I just have a lot of stuff to post right now, but I’ll get it posted eventually. Just trust me when I say that episode has TONS of Beth symbolism in it. So, we’ll just leave it at that for now.

Maggie and Daryl’s convo:

So, I’m getting a lot of messages about how people are disappointed that we didn’t get more of a reaction from Daryl when Maggie said Beth’s name. And I get it, but let me answer this two ways.

1.  It’s not all that surprising. We saw Daryl’s huge reaction to losing Beth in Coda, in Them, and then in pretty much every episode for the next 3+ seasons. Eight years have passed since he lost her, and, while of course her death still affects him and of course he’s not over it, it’s not unrealistic that he has his reaction to it more controlled now.

2. Having said that, I actually disagree that we didn’t get huge reactions here. They looked subtle onscreen, but again, they were never going to have him burst into tears in this scene. That wouldn’t have really worked for the scene, or been terribly realistic. So let me lay out what we did see.

First off, when Maggie first says Beth’s name (“Bethie”), we don’t see Daryl’s face, but we can kind of see the side of his head in the foreground. When she says the name—like, the INSTANT she says it—he sort of tosses his head. Almost like a nervous horse. There’s definitely a reaction there guys, even if we can’t see it directly.

But pay attention to him when it DOES show his face again a few seconds later. He keeps shifting his eyes to Maggie’s face and away. He does it at least half a dozen times over several seconds. Again, it strikes me as him being nervous about something. And you know it has to be the mention of Beth.

So why is he nervous? Is it merely the mention of her name that makes him nervous? Is he afraid he might get emotional, and is trying not to? Because we don’t have a window into Daryl’s thoughts, there’s no way to know for certain. But the reaction is there. You just have to watch closely for it.

And to confirm it even more, I watched him closely a minute or two later when she starts talking about Glenn and Negan. If anything, you’d think that would be the subject that would make him more uncomfortable. Both because he dealt with so much guilt over Glenn’s death, and because one might see Maggie returning to Negan as a free man would feel like something of a betrayal. I could see Daryl feeling guilt over that.

But when she starts talking about Glenn and Negan, his eyes don’t do the shifty thing. At all. He just watches her steadily with no hint of discomfort. It’s ONLY when she mentions Beth that his eyes shift.

And before I move on, I want to mention one more things you can all go look for. (Yes, I’m giving you permission to go watch that scene over and over again. :D) 

Just before Maggie says Beth’s name, she has a peculiar reaction, too. Now, she’s talking about Glenn and Beth sort of simultaneously, so it’s hard to say whether this reaction is for her talk of Glenn or Beth. What I mean is, it’s right before she says that after Bethie died, she and Glenn talked about going to the ocean. She feels the need to throw in that it would have only been for a little while, not forever. So maybe that’s what she was feeling discomfort over saying: that she and Glenn contemplated leaving the group for a time.

But if you watch, right before she says the line, “after Bethie died,” her eyes get wide and she shrugs as though she’s about to says something she doesn’t want to.

So it may be about Glenn, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s because she realized she had to mention Beth as part of her explanation, and she knew that would be triggering for Daryl. Go watch that again and tell me what you think.

I don’t think I have to go over the importance of the ocean symbolism, right? Beth = water, and we’ve seen tons of ocean/boat symbolism around her. She also mentions the waves and the sunrise here.

In the morning, Cory calls the containers they sleep in “rust coffins.” Kind of an interesting label, suggesting death. But of course the thing that came to mind is the coffin Daryl lay in at the funeral home.

Kelly checking the truck, as I talked about yesterday, brought a lot of callbacks to mind, including Bob, and the notebook is something we could link to Beth through her journal/notes, as well as to the note left as part of the wolf trap in 5x16. This truck was even a little reminiscent of the “How the Harvest Gets Home” trucks.

One thing I couldn’t help but notice was Daryl’s line about how he’s gone looking for Connie “so many times.” That doesn’t actually make much logical sense. From what they show us, this episode picks up directly after 10x16. It would be different if weeks had passed and this was there way of telling us that Daryl has been looking for Connie in the interim. But this is literally the next day. How could he have gone looking for her “so many times?” Sure, we saw him searching a little bit early in S10, but the Whisperer War always got in the way, and honestly, I don’t think we saw him search more than two or three times.

So my point is, this is kind of a discontinuity. But I think it’s purposely placed to emphasize how often Daryl looks for people and maybe be another way of reminding us both of Rick and of Beth.

Maggie says, “We don’t know that.” Pretty much exact Beth dialogue and it’s about whether any of her people survived the fire and might still be alive in the woods. That’s exactly what Beth said this line about in 4b after the prison. Just saying.

Another line that jumped out at me was Cory saying that The Reapers had followed them. He didn’t know how. He’d been so careful. But somehow, they did.

Now, maybe this guy was just an awesome tracker. But I feel like this line had meaning. Like maybe they truly shouldn’t have been able to track Maggie’s group, but somehow still found them. Kind of makes me wonder if we should be linking this group to the CRM or not.

There’s been some discussion about whether Kelly and Elijah might become love interests. I’d be okay with that. And I can see that the way they connected and became all simpatico in this episode might be leading to romance.

Now, here’s why that might be important from a TD perspective. Did you notice the pear he gave her at the end? 

I looked up pear symbolism. As with all things, different cultures treat it differently. But in Chinese symbolism (and there’s a lot of that in the show) it sometimes means ‘separation.’ So there’s a superstition that friends and lovers should not eat pears together or they may be separated.

So when I first looked this up, I wasn’t really thinking of Elijah. As Kelly is definitely a Beth proxy in many ways, and also based on symbolism we’ve seen around her in the past (S9/S10) that I wasn’t sure how to interpret, I was thinking that maybe at some point she’ll be kidnapped or taken and be separated from Maggie. On TTD, Lauren said Maggie and Kelly became surrogate sisters in this scene. So I thought that maybe, on top of all the Beth symbolism, maybe this is also pointing toward another (surrogate) sister separation on the horizon.

But then it occurred to me that Elijah gave her the pear, and that’s probably really important. If (and this is still a big if) they become love interests, her separation will probably be from him. I’m just saying we might have another Bethyl proxy in the making on our hands. ;D

I have to say that I thought the scene where Daryl grabbed Maya and put a knife to her neck before realizing she was one of Maggie’s people is one of my favorites. You heart has to go out to the poor woman. She’s been traumatized like 5x over at this point. But she was looking at Daryl like he was a serial killer. Every time I watch that scene, I laugh. It’s rough being Daryl.

So how about the title? Well, we’ve already established that Daryl said this back in Still, at the moonshine shack. And given that I think Hershel Jr.’s arc here was a small scale replay of Beth’s (missing, searched for, eventually found and brought back to Alexandria) it makes sense that they used this line here.

But I think you can go as simple or as complicated as you want to with this. Because we also had the “coming home” theme in this episode a LOT. And it’s fitting, of course, because this was Maggie’s homecoming (which you could also see as a type of Beth’s arc, of course). But if you apply the “coming home” theme to what Daryl said in Still, all that tells me is that Beth and Daryl are one another’s “home.” And if Daryl is ever going to find his real home again, it will have to be with Beth, wherever she is.

For the record, I think they’ll explore Daryl’s side of this theme a lot with Leah. He was lonely, and searching for a home, and maybe he’ll think he’s found one for a time with her, but she’s not his real home.

Okay, finally, the song played at the end, You Want it Darker, has TONS of biblical symbolism in it. Since this post is already long, I’ll wait until tomorrow to post it.

Anything you can think of that I missed?

[janiedean]

I have to tell you something but PLEASE, please, don't be mad. I love Brienne, and I loved her with Jamie, and I'm mad and sad that they didn't get to have their happy ending...but I don't think his ending was shit. Or OOC. First at all, book!Jamie is not TV!Jamie: his relationship with Cersei is different, not as sick or manipulative. He loves his siter and is loved by her in a more "helthier" way: in the show she told Tywing the truth about them, and it's huge considering the love for power1/?

He watched her lose their 3 children, he learned about her walk of shame to get back to Tommen, he witnessed Robert’s humiliations. I think he would have stayed with Brienne if she knew his sister was safe, but he couldn’t be happy if his siter died and he did nothing to save her. He needed to be that person, otherwise all his growth would be lost, and he would have dragged Brienne in his spiral, and he didn’t want to make her miserable. To me he is still an honorable man, bc when there was a chance to do something, he did it: he killed the king to save KL, he fought the dead army, but over and over he said that the Lannister army didn’t stand a chance against the dragons or the Dathraki, he was not a fool. His speech was not about NOT CARING, it was about knowing there was nothing he could have done. He did good, he was good, and till his last moment he tried to be honorable, he tried to be the person Brienne inspired him. P.s.: Still heartbroken that he died, but I think there is some poetic justice with Cercei crashed by the symbol of the power she tried lo long to hold.

anon, I appreciate that you’re being nice and I appreciate that you’re trying to find some sense in this entire thing, but… okay, I’ll go over it and please don’t take me as *me* being mad or whatever but I don’t think a few things were clear here so I’ll try to do it now:

jc in the show is not healthier. it might be different, but it’s not and the fact that it might have been less obvious doesn’t mean that they didn’t drag that toxic mess out for four seasons when it had no reasons to exist. now: I was down with looking at it until s4 because that was book canon and I can deal with book canon. I had to look at three more fucking seasons of that toxic abusive mess happening and I don’t know if it’s obvious or not, but if I have one thing, like one in the universe that I can’t deal with, that I hate and that makes me feel sick more than anything else it’s emotional/psychological manipulation. and show!jc has that in spades and I can’t. like, as it is right now I’m pretty damn sure I’d take reading explicit thramsay fic that ends horribly with annexed detailed fanart than even rewatching five seconds of a scene where those two are in the same frame and is2g if they had kissed at the end of 8x05 I’d have thrown up. please for the love of everything if you think it’s better than book canon your prerogative, but don’t come at me informing me of that because I can’t. especially not right now;

I honestly can’t give much of a damn about the stuff c. suffered when 80% of that is her damn fault and I’m especially talking about tommen who only did that because she gave zero shits about his opinion in anything but we’re supposed to think she’s a good mother or that she cares which makes me especially sick because people have decided that for her out of nowhere when we all know how much leeway they give catelyn for that and I’m honestly done with it, and maybe it’s not inconsistent that he’d care, but it’s inconsistent how they wrote it;

because I mean if they showed some half-regret over leaving brienne or she was mentioned or if the entire thing was addressed instead of spending four episodes building it up and then did in four minutes what it took six feet under an entire season to do with nate and brenda back in the day is bad writing, has no consistency, it also murdered tyrion as a character because I can’t believe that in the span of two episodes he goes from I’m happy that you’re happy to WELL I DON’T HATE MY SISTER SO MUCH JUST GO TO PENTOS when ah, wait, c. sent bronn to kill both of them?

also ‘who ever cared abotu the innocents’ or whatever the fuck that line was??? wow, that’s all this asshole has ever cared about in canon to the point of losing his reputation for it not counting c. or tyrion at least in the very beginning of the series when everyone thinks he’s an ass, and I have to buy that this episode was halfway decent writing?

also: even if I was okay with jaime’s ending - which I could have been if at least it amounted to something because that entire episode was a plot hole after plot hole (where’s widow’s wail? he waves WITH THE FAKE HAND??? WTF??, did he ring the bells so he actually helped destroy the city without knowing dany would lose her shit through jon connington’s ghost possessing her? if bran didn’t rat him out bc he had A ROLE TO PLAY what was the damned role since he hasn’t done anything until now that warranted it??? just the first four) and he didn’t even… help cersei or take her out like he literally was there to just give her some basic human comfort and rocks fall everyone dies, what’s the sense of it?? -, anon, this entire narrative leaves brienne horribly;

because sorry but in the best of chances she’s not pregnant and someone lies to her and tells her jaime went there to stop cersei and tried to be honorable (which given what they made him say about not caring for the innocents makes it bad writing but nvm) and she can think okay, I waited years for the right guy to trust/open myself to and then he left me like that but at least he did it for a good reason now will I ever trust anyone again, maybe, and I assure you that getting over such a thing is not too easy, but that would be the best option. mid-bad option: she still thinks he did it for the right reasons but she’s pregnant so hey, she has an illegitimate child from a man who left her like that to go into a senseless death making her believe she was wrong about him and breaking her heart and she has to play single mother in tarth without him or maybe she can hedge knight along with the kid or leave him with pod or smth but that doesn’t look good on jaime either. or worse, she’s pregnant and she finds out he went just to die with cersei and didn’t even mention her or anything to tyrion along the way so she did all of the above…. for a guy who at the end of it as the narration puts it just went back to die with c. and a kid he didn’t even know might be real or not when she could have given him what he always craved/wanted/needed and left her like that? like, anon, even if it was a good ending for jaime, there is no bloody way that brienne gets out of this mess of a season with a dignified ending unless they somehow manage to pull a miracle out of their arses and sorry but their writing has been so bad that I honestly doubt it, not even david milch showing up like the calvarly could salvage this crap of a finale, and for all characters tbqh, not just them;

on top of that, sorry but it passes the message that brienne, only rep. in this show for nonstandard attractive people who spends years thinking she’ll never find love and suddenly thinks she can be happy with the guy who also fulfilled her greatest dream and opens herself up to him putting her vulnerability on the line (and while I don’t really think the whole virginity thing is that much of an issue since she actually did manage to give it to the guy she wanted it does mean something in this context)…………. shouldn’t have done it because wow, left like that without a second thought and without being addressed in the next episode at all by at least tyrion who has spent the previous four episodes either admiring her or trying to get her and jaime together never mind jaime? wow, I mean, I surely signed up to see the character I always saw myself in getting this shit treatment by people who obviously didn’t understand either her or jaime at the bottom of it for as much as I still think 8x04 did it right until the end?

anon, I appreciate your optimism about that narrative, but this episode was so badly written that it managed to about destroy the narratives of characters that weren’t even in it (sansa and brienne, and let’s not even discuss sansa because lmao), to have every single person but davos and possibly jon but meh behave ooc given what half of their lines said if not their actions because even if we take jaime’s actions as your reading (legit) what they made him say was still atrocious and ooc and same for tyrion, let’s not even touch dany or sandor/arya or really anyone that wasn’t davos. I cannot, in all good conscience, find anything good about this mess because it was badly written. period. even if we decide that the plot and motivations were fine and we try to make them make sense the way you did, the execution was shit, the dialogue was shit, it looked like they weren’t even trying, it did a disservice to every single character that was in it except davos who was there for five seconds to smuggle stuff and I honestly, honestly, cannot even find the force of will to try to make sense of it.

this entire season has been a gigantic plot hole, it wasn’t coherent within its own narration see ep. 2 clashing with ep. 8, 90% of what happened post 8x02 was for shock value without giving a single fuck about making it look in character and making the characters behave nonsensically - and I don’t mean just jaime, I mean all of them to serve the undoubtedly wtf shocking ending they have in plan for us which if I guessed already I’ll hate with the force of a thousand suns, and I’m honestly done with trying to make sense of this thing because nothing makes sense anymore. I appreciate that y’all are trying but I give up. I can’t make sense of a narrative that goes like ‘we’re doing this because it’s cool and if it doesn’t add up with everything we did before who gives a fuck’, and I honestly can do without trying to find a silver lining in a show that has totally twisted the message of the books and turned into an angst fest for which everyone has to be miserable at all costs or it’s not good tv, and that’s the last I’m going to say about this specific matter because:

a) I’m tired, b) I want to finish my spitefics and ignore this mess ever happened and concentrate on doing something that makes me happy, c) if I just keep on thinking about how bad this was IN GENERAL I wish jaime was my #1 problem I just feel worse and I don’t need it, d) the fact that they did brienne this dirty and she wasn’t even in this episode is really leaving the worst sour taste in my mouth and it’s already bad enough that I have to hope her ending is only 80% crap and not 100% crap, I honestly can’t with discourse that tries to find any basic sense in how this episode was conceived and executed beyond my problems with jc, jaime’s writing and the fact that they managed to get wrong one of his three most basic character traits that has nothing to do with brienne or jb for that matter.

thanks for being polite and nice about this and I swear I’m not mad but I honestly can’t with this episode and I would appreciate if from this point on anyone could refrain from trying to make jc sound better than it is where I can see it/where I can’t blacklist it because it’s really not a good idea right now. thanks again and have a possibly nicer than than mine. ;)

[silverinia]

For that fic ask thingy... tell us about Lillies 😊😘

Hahaha, what all 15 questions? Okay, let’s do this 🙅🏻‍♀️

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

It must have been during one of my TGW rewatch sessions that I realized that after ep 1x13 they never mentioned Spellman and Diane being threatened by him again (I guess they were still experimenting with the characters and this storyline only served to show a more vulnerable side of her and to introduce us to her conflict of being pro gun control but still enjoying to carry at the same time). And the idea for the fic just popped into my head and wouldn’t let me go again, so yeah, here we are 😄

The most important thing to me was to do it in a respectful and realistic way, I never wanted to write about the topic of sexual assault for the assault itself, rather wanted to show those characters trying to wrap their lives and their relationship around it and moving on together, if that makes sense. That’s also why the bigger part of the fic takes place after the incident.

2: What scene did you first put down?

Well… I did start with the first chapter and took it from there, I find that this is the easiest way for me to write because I can build up the suspense more easily when I do it like this. The first scene that I pictured in my head before I even began the outline though was their fight in Chapter 11, that was the scene that wouldn’t let me go and eventually made me write it all.

3: What’s your favourite line of narration?

Hmm, I think it’s a tie between “Skin against skin, their embrace was the peak of intimacy in the purest and most innocent way.” in Chapter 38 and “And all those realizations, all those great things about this wonderful man who was standing there, waiting for her, waiting to agree to spend the rest of his life with her and the huge declaration of love he had just wordlessly told her with the way he was looking at her and the fact that she was finally able to hold that gaze, they shot hot tears into her eyes.” from the wedding chapter. That first one really reflected the deep level of trust between them, even though she wasn’t ready to sleep with him again, and I liked the contradiction in the term peak of intimacy. And the latter, I don’t know. It summed up their journey in this story, how he helped her overcome those insecurities, how he gained her trust over the course of this and, tbh, I also just really liked the image of her, walking down the aisle to him…

4: What’s your favourite line of dialogue?

Okay, there are certain parts of dialogue that I liked, but for stand-alone lines it would either be “You’re not a victim, Diane. You are a survivor.” (Chapter 28) or “Diane, you never needed anyone to save you. […] But I’m glad you let me help you save yourself. Because I love you.” (46, proposal chapter) (side note: this line was one I wrote towards on from a very early chapter. I thought about making it the last line for quite a while, thought about putting it in his vows but then settled on this), both said by Kurt because I needed him to believe in her strength at a time in which she couldn’t do that for herself. I like the empowerment of her independence in those lines. They really sum up how I wished to portray a woman who was forced to go through something like this. Like a survivor instead of a victim and as someone who didn’t need a knight in shining armour to save her from the pain. That was really important to me.

5: What part was the hardest to write?

God, so many 😂 The nightmares and their aftermath were very, VERY difficult though. Most of Kurt’s and Will’s dialogue with Diane in the greater part of this were incredibly difficult because I remember just sitting in front of the screen and thinking, What the hell are they supposed to say? I realized how intuitively you fall into the clichées of ‘How are you?’s or ‘If there’s anything I can do…’s and that sucks. Because it’s obvious that they’re not good. And it’s obvious that someone like Diane would never reach out for help if they don’t just give it to her without another word of questioning, as they end up doing. So, yeah. That was hard. But I wanted to do it right, so I guess it was at least worth it 😅 at least I hope so.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

One, that it was my first. I had almost 40 chapters of it written when I began to post it because this was all new territory for me, fanfiction, this particular fandom and their response to new writers, general perception of a difficult topic like rape… And then, of course, my own response to writing about it. I mean, as a writer, you really don’t just need to dive into those characters’ heads but also into your own to put at least a few emotions into it. I didn’t know if this was going to bring me down really bad, if I would cry during the process (fun fact: I did. Three times, I think) and if I could even go through with it and finish it at all. I also went through a lot of major life changes when I started to write this and I think that not only my writing changed a lot over the cause of it, but I as a person did, too. It’s very close to my heart. I associate certain chapters with the states that I was in when I wrote or edited them and that makes it pretty special 💕

7: Where did the title come from?

Okay, I really don’t know how to answer that. I’m really, really bad at coming up with titles. Actually, I think that this didn’t have a real title up until I started posting it because then I had to name it somehow. I’d referenced both the infamous white calla lilies and the smell of gunpowder a lot already at that point and I kinda just thought that they were sweet symbols for the two of them 🤷🏻‍♀️ I played around with several different titles and when this came out of nowhere, it felt right. It made sense because it was like a theme, threading through the story, and it sounded melodic and I honestly was just glad that I didn’t have to name it something too long and too ridiculous, like I did now with most of my other fics 😶

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of this?

Difficult question. I think that (sadly), most women have had to deal with sexual assault at some point in their lives. I saw my friends and family reacting to my stories in similar ways Kurt does in the fic.

On a lighter note, a guy I really loved inspired lots of the happier parts in it. And my best friend, my own, female Will Gardner, she’s in a lot of it, too 💕

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Only in my head. Regarding whether or not I would have Kurt shooting Spellman, if I would kill Spellman off at all, if they should get married in the end, if I would write about Diane handling a rape case when she’s better (found the middle ground on that one in the epilogue, but this could have been an entire storyline) and so on. But the version I uploaded is the only one I wrote, though I did consider writing a sequel for it until I decided that the two of them had suffered enough in this alternate universe, so I created a new one around my idea and Everything’s gonna be alright was born.

10: Why did you choose this paring for this particular story?

Okay, first of all, I’d say that I chose this story for the pairing and not the other way around, and yes, I think there’s a huge difference in that.

I wanted to unravel them. They’re such amazingly complex characters, both incredibly proud and I really wanted to make them vulnerable (as I’m typing this, I’m very aware of that this makes me sound like a freaking psychopath). And the no. 1 thing, apart from politics, that always drove Kurt and Diane to each other was the (sexual) attraction between them. And while it is of course another layer of the depth of their relationship, another level of their bond, I wanted to explore the characters in a state where that bond was no easy way out. Two people that tend to choose physical attraction over having to deal with their emotions, who choose make-up sex over talking through their problems (sans season 3 of TGF because they’re perfect now), I wanted to explore what would happen if they couldn’t do that anymore, put them in a situation in which they had to confront major issues in another, healthier way.

11: What do you like best about this fic?

Oh God.

I tried to make it emotionally deep and respectful regarding the heavy topic. I tried not to rob Diane of her independence, rather wanted her to find additional strength in Kurt instead of completely making her depend on him. I wanted her to work this out in realistic timing and I didn’t want to rush their way back to physical intimacy. I wanted him to react to her pain and her ways around it, find his own mechanisms to deal with those and to the pace she set with it in the right way. And I don’t know if I did all that, but I’d like to hope so.

And I really like Chapter 38, because I think it underlined a lot of that.

And I ended up really liking the title of the fic.

12: What do you like least about this fic?

Hah, definitely the first few chapters. I mean, the characterisation was alright I guess, but my writing was just awful. Like, I never love my writing but sometimes it’s exceptionally bad, as it was in those first few chapters. Sometimes I scroll through them and want to rewrite it all, but it’s part of the journey and that’s why I don’t do it.

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

I always listen to music when I write and the first thing that comes to mind here is Debussy’s Clair de Lune. And not just Clair de Lune, no, I mean the YouTube extended version that keeps on going for an hour. Over and over again. That’s why I referenced it in the proposal chapter, it really deserved to be mentioned at that point.

I also listened a lot to Lana del Rey and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds during Chapters, I dunno, ten to thirty, I guess, for the angsty mood (honourable mentions: Tomorrow never came, Young and Beautiful, Art Deco and Blue Jeans; Into my Arms, Henry Lee and Where the Wild Roses Grow (ironic, I know)) and the song Firefighter by Cigarettes after Sex.

And for the happier Chapters after that lots of Cigarettes after Sex and Beach House (literally cannot put what their music does to me into words. It’s art, almost magical, really) (honourable mentions: Apocalypse (please do yourselves a favour and listen to this song), Sweet and Sunsetz; Myth, Space Song and On the Sea (over and over again during the epilogue)), Florence and The Machine AND Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Lots of great music.

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from this fic?

Huh. Well, it might sound bitchy or self-absorbed, but I mostly just write what I want to write. I want to study characters that I love and I want to write in a way that might hopefully touch people on any level, whether it’s humour or angst, I kinda just like the idea of writing words that make people feel things.

But if anyone’s learned something regarding the subject and their views about it, I’m more than happy and thrilled about that, though I wouldn’t put the praise for that on myself but rather on the ones who learned, you know? ‘Cause it’s one thing to write, it’s another thing to learn from reading. That requires more effort on the readers part IMO. I just can’t say that it was my intention to write something that holds major life lessons or revelations, I really just wanted to write and reach people emotionally by doing that and to maybe give them something they would enjoy by doing something that I enjoy.

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

That love doesn’t solve all issues solely by itself and that it’s only enough if every involved party works to let love stay a beautiful thing instead of letting it grow to become something painful.

I learned a lot about sexual assault and how it’s handled in the social system when I did my research.

I already knew that if bad things happen to you, they still don’t need to define you if you don’t let them, but I learned that it’s not a bad thing if they shape you in some ways.

And I learned how much I missed writing until I did it again for this fic. And I learned that, oddly, my writing is able to touch some people. And even though I don’t want other people’s feedback to be my motivation when I write, I learned how wonderful it is to have strangers reaching out to you when they take joy from something you love to do.

—–

This is long, but yeah. Thanks for the questions, honey, this was very nice ❤ I feel all warm inside now, ew, feelings, ugh.

[clairen45]

Thank you so much for you bird meta, I used to compare Porgs to Ewoks, now I love 'em! I'd really love to have your insight on two matters I came upon rewatching Kylo scenes in TFA 1) did he know he was going to kill Han all along (and play his dad with the "will you help me?" speech?) or wasn't his mind made until the last second? 2) Did he sense Rey before he was told about her? Otherwise why ask for BB8 to be "unharmed" (metaphor for Rey?) and say "again" when feeling the pull to the light?

Dear Anon,

I am sorry it took me some time to answer your question… Thank you for the kind comments on the bird meta. I know Ewoks have their fans, but like you, it seems, I was never one of them. They were ok enough as a concept, and I see the point of having them to show a point about David and Goliath, guerilla warfare, and the fact that nature always wins in the end. I know they were also supposed to be cutesy and appeal to kids. I was a kid when the movie was originally relased and they never appealed to me. If anything they upset me. Plus, they are not so cutesy: they would have gladly eaten the whole crew had they had the chance. It’s not just Granola and Tree hugging, you guys, they are vicious hunters and carnivorous. As far as I am concerned they have four redeeming qualities:

they did a great makeover on Leia

I love their village (which also makes for the best Lego set honestly)

they introduced Warwick Davis to the world (I am a fan of Willow and I love that this actor is in every Star Wars movise since ROTJ. It’s like a Where’s Warwick game every time).

The Nub Yub song (which was outrageously deleted from the edited versions of the OT and turned into crappy Pan flute music)

And then there is the unspeakable: the Ewok movies they did afterwards. Brrrrr…. Talk about crappy spin offs! I know they want to forget about them, but they did, they did! So, no, for me, you can’t compare the Porgs and the Ewoks. I don’t think porgs are as intrusive as Ewoks were. And also, where porgs represent fertility and the resilience of life and love, Ewoks were evil cock-blockers. They were!!!! Items: trying to get Han’s attention away from Leia by cuddling with his leg, or jumping in in the middle of their kiss after the destruction of the Death Star. No, that’s not cute!

Now, back to your important questions. That is some heavy stuff!

1)Did he know he was going to kill Han, and was he playing cat and mouse with him? NO, to the N, to the O. I don’t believe it one minute. First, remember that he senses his father. He knows he is on Starkiller base. In one deleted scene, he even finds the MF. Is he tracking his father? Not really… He is more about looking for the girl. In the movie, we know he is aware his father is near him, because he turns his head in the direction of Han. Twice he pauses, when entering the structure, and then when passing by his father hidden behind a column. Does he go after him? No, far from it: he stomps away as far as he can… When his father calls him, he also pauses, not turning right away, as if debating…as if delaying as much as he can. He avoids the confrontation. I think he is probably scared of the outcome. By the way, love the symbolism of the bridge. It conveys the idea of a decision being suspended, not made, of a transition, of being caught in the middle. He hasn’t fully crossed the bridge yet, he is at the midpoint: it can go any place from there. Which to me is there to signify that the decision of killing his father has NOT been made. And I don’t think that he was toying with him either. He starts angry and aggressive, but, with the actual mask off, there falls also the psychological mask and the cool façade.

I believe everything about his pain and dilemma. This is a boy who has been requested to kill his father because he loved him too much and that it was seen as a weakness. He is not allowed any attachment. Take the important line: “[your son] was weak and foolish, like his father. So I destroyed him”. Killing his father is really more about killing himself, his feelings, his emotions, what Snoke views as abject sentimentalism. Han is the embodiment of sentimentalism. And we know that Kylo has not been able to suppress his emotions twice: when looking at Finn after the village massacre (which brought forth his feelings of guilt), and when meeting Rey (compassion, desire, curiosity). Meeting his father is the ultimate test in TFA, and a test where he miserably fails before and after the deed: he is unable to repress his emotions before and after killing his father. His face tells it all. And if it were not clear enough (apparently it wasn’t for a lot of people), Snoke was very vocal about the failure of the whole thing: ‘‘the deed split you to the bone”, “you have too much the heart of your father”. The whole line about “the seed lives” can also very much apply about Solo. Yes, Ben is the seed of the Jedi through his mother, but he is very much so the seed of his father. That’s actually the whole point of the “seed” reference. Han still lives through him, because he has not been able to kill his emotions, his feelings.

In th novelizations, especially the Junior one, they give us more clues about that. Both novelizations (adult and junior) insist on the fact that Ben has tears in his eyes during his conversation with his father. And in the adult version, we know this is no ploy: Kylo was not expecting to cry, the sensation seems unfamiliar and strange to him. In the adult version, though, Kylo seems more intent on looking after his father, trying to find his hiding place, “prepared for whatever might ensue”. Dark Kylo is still very much a topic. But in the Junior novelization, this is very different. Han is not sure whether his son saw him or not (which hints that maybe he did but chose to ignore), and then passes him by (instead of looking for him in the adult version). Emphasis is put on the sadness in Kylo’s eyes, which is actually the last vision Han has of his son, and his last vision before dying: a boy with sad eyes. Not cruel. Not victorious. The description of Kylo through Han’s eyes is also very reminiscent of someone who has been abused: “everything about him was narrow and stark, as if he had starved himself of nourrishment”. Kylo is like a member of a cult, or a sect, that has been brainwashed: such sects usually rely on sleep and food deprivation…

So, yes, this is a last second decision. As the light suddenly turning dark underlines. It’s like a cloud passing in front of the sun, something that curiously happened to Luke as well when debating about killing Kylo, two moments that are key in his arc, then. The fleeting moment when Luke hesitates but DOES NOT kill his nephew is what loses Ben, and turns him into Kylo, strong dark sider.. The fleeting moment when Kylo hesitates and KILLS Han is what weakens the dark sider. Interesting parallel.

2)Did he sense Rey before he was told about her? Otherwise why ask for BB8 to be “unharmed” (metaphor for Rey?) and say “again” when feeling the pull to the light?

I really hope we will eventually get the idea that he had visions of Rey before meeting her. It may have been distorted or partial. Or maybe it happened when he was a kid and he barely remembers. Rey’s Force vision was hinting at some prior knowledge, since we were supposed to get young Ben with Snoke (which they kept in the novelizations), and that in the movie Kylo’s figure is turning towards her twice. Of course, these could be visions of the future. And this is how we can tell that the visions are partial or distorted because there is no reason in the future for him to keep his mask. Of course, we know from Yoda, that the visions of the future are everchanging and Kylo, at the time, was intent on keeping his mask, so the future had not been altered yet… Anyways, there is someting eery about his reactions to “the girl”. Everyone caught up on that. And I think this eeriness is also a big part of what prompted the whole; she is his sister, his cousin, or what not… Because everybody got the idea that he had prior knowledge of her: “the girl I have heard so much about”. This is a weird line because honestly he has only heard talk about “a girl” twice in the movie: from Mitaka and from the stormtrooper saying that a girl was spotted in the forest… That’s not a lot of intel. It doesn’t come from Snoke either, because even if he starts talking about an awakening, he doesn’t mention a girl at all, and in TLJ he seems surprised that Rey is the opposite in the Force to Kylo. Kylo acknowledges Rey as the awakening when he sees her with the saber.. I doubt that they conducted an investigation on Jakku about the girl… It’s a possibility, but I doubt it. So it must be something else… Dreams, visions? Will we ever know? That’s the best possibility, though.

I like your idea of the parallel between Rey and BB8. Kylo does start looking for the droid, and yes, he wants it “unharmed”. To be honest,  there is no reason normally for the stormtroopers to be shooting at a droid, especially a rather innocuous BB unit (I know BB8 is bad ass, but still…). Shooting at the droid might damage the information it carries, so I understand he wants to minimize possible damages, but still, it is a weird way of thinking. And indeed the BB unit is off his mind as soon as he sees Rey. Admittedly because he knows she has seen the map, but before he retrieves this information from her head, it would have made more sense for him to be looking after the droid than the girl. Who would care about the girl? He does? He goes straight for her. And this substitution is weird enough that even Hux acknowledges it when Kylo is speaking to Snoke. This is unconventional. Of course, Kylo can rationalize by finding excuses such as “she has seen the map”, “she is strong with the Force” so potentially valuable, but the fact is that he strayed from the original mission.

As for the pull to the light, I am not suprised that he says “again”. I am sure that must have happened to him many times. It just becomes stronger because his coming to Jakku has triggered the dormant connection between him and Rey…

Thank you again for the questions! I hope I have covered them ok enough…

[once-upon-a-ouat]

OUAT Rewatch 1x20 “The Stranger”

OUAT’s writers are no strangers to exploring human nature, family dynamics and big stakes and in this episode we see how good they are at doing it.

I loved the way they showed the connection between Geppetto and Pinocchio. They were both ready to die for each other and the love between them established a solid foundation on which to build the rest of the episode. Once again the writers showed to what lengths parents are ready to go for their children. It’s both endearing and heartbreaking to see the darkness that settles into parents when it comes to protecting their children. I loved the work they did with Geppetto because you sympathize with him but you can also acknowledge the fault in his actions (he put everyone at risk so that he could save his son). It doesn’t make him any less likable though, only human, and you’re still rooting for him to be reunited with his son.

With that said, I think he let his despair blind him a little bit. He entrusted too big of a responsibility to a too young child. I know he believed in his son but I think he believed a little too much. Leaving a baby in the care of a seven-year-old was not the smartest move and we saw that it didn’t really work out. I think that scene didn’t really do the trick though. Pinocchio gave too easily into the temptation which might have made a little more sense if we had seen how the responsibility became too much for him. Additionally, his relationship with the other boy wasn’t established and the proposition he received came off as random. So on the one hand you have the promise he made to his father and the desire to see him again, and on the other there’s some random boy who offered him some cash and a companion in escaping a supposedly shitty foster home. I really don’t see the second option winning out here but it did and it was unbelievable.

We’re almost through with the first season and I still don’t hate Blue. Wow! I understand where she’s coming from better this time (I guess I’ve also grown as a person).

The mystery of August Booth was finally revealed. That beginning of the scene in Gold’s shop was painful to watch. God, I’m so glad there was some resolution (even as insufficient as it was). August and Gold’s scheming and banter were interesting to watch. It was cool to see August try to fix his mistake even though his motivation was selfish. I’m kind of pissed with Emma because she didn’t believe him. He had some proof but she just didn’t want to see the truth. I understand her though. All her life she’s doubted herself because nobody wanted her and suddenly she has to confront the idea that a whole town full of people desperately needs her and the responsibility for them falls on her shoulders. I’d freak out too. That scene was so emotional and heartbreaking.

On the other hand, I simply loved the scene between her and Henry in Granny’s. Henry was as adorable as ever and I loved how quick Emma was to respond to his call. But did they really just figure out that there was a story added? You know, that book didn’t stay locked in the Sheriff Station all the time. How is it that Henry’s only figuring that out now when it’s convenient? And there’s no way Regina didn’t know that they were meeting (but I doubt she paid much attention to that, seeing that she was preoccupied with keeping Mary Margaret and David apart. Only one of Henry’s mothers has her priorities straight and it is not Regina).

Gold was such a dick in this episode and I loved every second of it. It was cool to see him pestering someone else other than Regina for a change. I have a feeling he purposely called Marco to his shop just so that August could see him.

Regina was a delightful mix of evil, hurt and desperate in this episode. It was entertaining to watch her plan fall apart but there were also more genuine moments of her that make you sympathize with her. I’ve said more than a few times that I hate it when anyone (no matter who) uses Henry so I’m not that thrilled about Regina doing it either. But I loved that she used her own real-life problems to get David to stay (what the hell was going on with the roof of that house while they were walking towards it though?). I still don’t support it but it was interesting to see her exploit her own pain in order to get what she wanted. I loved how she played the ‘having found him’ card, but am I glad her plan failed. Honestly, if David had screwed up this time too, I wouldn’t have been able to look at him anymore. I actually really liked the way he handled the situation though. I can’t help but feel like Regina was actually a little hurt by his rejection.

Talking about hurt, it was painful to watch her interactions with Mary Margaret and Henry. I actually loved that Mary Margaret faced her and found it in herself to forgive her, but the “He’s with his mother” part was horrible. Forget for a moment that it was Regina on the receiving end of that line and imagine how that would’ve felt to any adoptive mother who loved her child and was scared of losing him. And her conversation with Henry wasn’t any better. I loved that he was so convinced that good would win and firmly refused to change classes but I still sympathized with Regina. Even though he was right, I couldn’t help but feel bad for her.

Favorite scene: August and Marco’s conversation in the end. I loved the fact that August finally found enough bravery in himself to face Marco (probably due to the fear that he would turn to wood before Emma broke the Curse and he wouldn’t have the chance to reconcile with his father). He was as honest as he could be and I loved that. That clock turned out to be an important detail and I loved it. It was as if time started moving for them both now that they found each other once again (although they didn’t really find each other) but it also meant that they don’t have much of it. I love the symbolism on that show.

Least favorite scene: The last one. I understand Emma’s desire to be with Henry but kidnapping him wasn’t the best idea. What did she plan on doing? Staying on the run and hiding from Regina? Because Regina would’ve gone after them the second she figured out Henry was missing. And when she found them, Emma would lose Henry forever. It was a rash decision (Emma had her reasons though) and it could’ve backfired in her face. Also, you can’t just kidnap a child (even if it is your own).

Favorite line: “Sometimes we have to lie to protect the people we love.” - Geppetto to Pinocchio

I don’t support this in general and I think that you shouldn’t lie if it isn’t absolutely necessary, but in the context that it was in it was a great line. We saw how much of his virtues Geppetto was ready to let go of if it would save his son and I loved it despite not agreeing with him completely.

Least favorite line: “Your debt to me can never be fulfilled.” - Geppetto to Jiminy

This was a little cruel and unnecessary, and would’ve probably landed better if we had seen more of their relationship. It’s just that... in Storybrooke Marco and Archie are good friends and I can’t believe that their relationship improved while they were under the Curse. Which means that they should’ve been even closer in the Enchanted Forest but we never saw that.

This episode has never been a favorite of mine but I have to admit that I enjoyed it a lot this time around. Geppetto and Pinocchio’s relationship simply melted my heart. It was good to see a parent being ready to do whatever it took to save his child (considering the last two episodes). August and Marco’s reunion in Storybrooke was bittersweet but I’m glad it happened. I’m a little sad that the mystery around August is gone though. Emma is being very frustrating with her refusal to believe in what is right in front of her eyes although her behavior is understandable. She was pushed beyond her limits here and the tension got the best of her. With only two episodes left and the events from this one, we’ve entered the final phase of the season – the climax of the story – and I can’t bloody wait to watch how that will play out.

[once-upon-a-ouat]

OUAT Rewatch 1x10 “7:15 A.M.”

Okay, I don’t usually do that, but for this episode I feel the uncontrollable need to review it scene-for-scene because I have something to say about every scene and they were all freaking awesome. That will eliminate the need to point out favorite and least favorite scene in this episode, but I’m keeping the favorite and least favorite lines. With that said, let’s dive right in.

The opening scene with August and Henry built up the suspense as to who August is and what he’s doing in Storybrooke and also served as a set-up for two more scenes throughout the episode. I also loved Regina’s worry as to who that might be. First, Emma came to town and started trouble, and now another person just showed up. You could practically see the cogwheels turning in her head.

The weather forecast we heard as background in the next scene informed us about the storm which played a major role later in the episode. Mary Margaret was very funny in her hurry to go out. I loved how quickly she came up with a lie to tell Emma. We know she’s not that type of person and yet, she lied to her closest friend because she herself knew that what she was doing wasn’t right and didn’t want Emma to know about it.

It was quickly revealed why Mary Margaret was in such a hurry. It’s really sad how desperate she was for even the smallest contact with David. And the fact that he was buying two coffees just made it even worse (there goes OUAT with the details once again). It would’ve been plenty horrible on its own, but seeing David walk up to his car, give one to Kathryn and kiss her cheek was just heartbreaking (and I also felt horrible for Kathryn because I know how this is going to end and that she’ll be hurt). Good thing Emma showed up as the voice of reason. I loved how she didn’t judge Mary Margaret, but also firmly and clearly told her that she had to put a stop to that. She’s understanding and supportive and yet, doesn’t let her friend fall even deeper.

Snow looked hella badass with that spear in that next scene. So she didn’t flee the kingdom? Or did she? I’m a little confused. The parallels between the two timelines were cool though. What I’m not a fan of is Snow’s desire to get rid of her feelings in both realms. I know loving someone when you know there’s no way for you to be together hurts, but that doesn’t mean that you have to erase them from your heart. For me that just doesn’t do a favor to their romance and the idea that it’s the greatest romance ever.

Snow and Rumple’s scene was awesome. I loved the way he used her hair to make the potion ‘personal’ because no two loves are exactly the same. That was such a great idea. I also loved how he said that love is the most powerful magic and then made that look horrifying. Given what we know about his personal experience with love, it just became even sadder. Also, now that we know what he used her hair for, this scene is just more brilliant.

Mary Margaret’s shock when she saw the pregnancy test was heartbreaking but I do have a problem with that scene. David’s words in the cabin and his actions on the whole imply that he and Kathryn don’t even have sex. Why did she think she was pregnant? I loved how Regina had only two lines but managed to make a bitch of herself. Also, I loved that she and Kathryn were shopping together. I think this can count as one of the genuine moments of their friendship and I loved it.

The dialogue between George and David was awesome. You can understand where both of them are coming from and sympathize with them both. I honestly couldn’t pick a side in that scene. The implication that George had loved before was very important to me because in many scenes later on in the show he comes off as heartless and it’s nice to have a reminder that that’s not true.

I love how they used the doves as transitions between scenes several times in this episode. The dove is a symbol of love and they used it to show that Snow and David’s love transcended realms and even the Curse. I think it was genius.

I loved how Snow wanted to help the dove so badly. Especially when she learned that it would be alone for the rest of its life if she didn’t get it to its flock. I feel like she was seeing herself in the dove a little bit and that was super weird, but I love how she was determined to help it. It’s just an animal but she did everything in her power to help it. I also loved how she rejected David’s offer to help her. She practically told him “I’m no damsel in distress”.

I loved the scene between Regina and Emma. It once again showed that the one thing that can make them work together is Henry. It was manipulative on Regina’s part though because August’s ‘interest’ in Henry was not the only reason why she wanted to know about him. She thought that she would use the Savior in order to learn about a potential danger to the Curse. It was brilliant.

I love how the dove landed on Snow’s hand while she was holding the vial with the ‘cure’. The joy on her face when she read the letter was so genuine and heartwarming. Damn that show!

Even faced with the very real danger of the storm and the obstacle of the road being closed, Mary Margaret still didn’t give up on her quest to help the dove. The transition between that scene and the next was just fucking awesome!

I love how Snow quickly figured out a way to sneak into George’s castle, but it doesn’t say anything good about the security of said castle. And just when she was about to reveal herself to David, the guard caught her. I really wanted to scream (but it was 2a.m. so that wasn’t an option).

It was adorable to see Snow so determined to break out of the cell and not wanting to give up. Meeting Grumpy was awesome (so he tried to get back with Nova then?). I just loved how this episode kept portraying love as the worst thing ever (sarcasm, if you couldn’t tell). Holy shit! I had completely forgotten about Stealthy. Damn! That’s one of the best twists on the show. I love how Grumpy decided to get Snow out of there too.

David showed up just in time and thank God. He saved Mary Margaret’s life. It kind of sent her not-a-damsel-in-distress attitude to hell though. Even that way, I’m not mad because she could’ve died or gotten seriously injured, seeing how she wanted to keep going even despite the storm.

Stealthy’s death was pretty heartbreaking (mostly because of Grumpy’s anguish but still) even though we didn’t know anything about him really. I loved how Snow was ready to sacrifice herself to save Grumpy even though they didn’t really know each other that well. That’s really admirable about Snow.

Mary Margaret’s little rant was heartbreaking but I really liked the fact that she decided to get all that out in the open. I also liked the fact that she didn’t let David kiss her but not the reason behind it. If she hadn’t seen that pregnancy test, she would’ve given in. Given her turmoil about David choosing Kathryn over her, it just felt like she didn’t have any self-respect.

I don’t really know what to make of the scene between Emma and August. They really built up the tension as to what’s inside the box and then just showed us. Granted, that didn’t make August any less mysterious. I loved how Emma was calculating if it would be better to let him buy her a drink and learn what’s in the box immediately or just leave it be.

Well, that storm turned out to be awfully convenient. Not only did it stop the flock from departing, but it also gave Mary Margaret and David a chance to talk about their feelings and possibly make some more mistakes. I loved how Mary Margaret pulled her hand out of David’s. Honestly, David’s indecisiveness pisses me off so much. If your feelings for Mary Margaret are so real, then just leave Kathryn and be with her. It’s not that difficult, goddammit!

The scene between George and Snow was intense. We once again saw that George was ready to do whatever it took in order to save his kingdom and I liked that. His plan was also very smart although I’m not really that certain if it would’ve worked out the way he imagined it would. I really loved the part with “He’s not my son”. You could see George’s disappointment because if it were actually James, he wouldn’t have betrayed him like that. In this episode, just like in 1x06, it’s easy to understand where George is coming from. You still don’t support his actions but you see the driving force behind them and that helps you empathize with him. That complexity was later lost and I’m really sad about that.

The scene between Snow and David was so awesome but also heartbreaking. I loved the fact that she let him hug her and hold her hands for as long as possible. She wanted to get as much as she could out of that encounter because she thought it would be the last one. I also loved how she couldn’t make herself say “I don’t love you”. She said it but in parts and she actually told him that she loved him (“Love you”). She quickly came up with a reason why she had come all the way to the palace too. And her face when David couldn’t see her anymore just killed me. And David also started crying. My heart! (That was my favorite scene if you couldn’t tell.)

Kathryn was so insanely adorable. You see how much she wants to make it work but also that David’s behavior hurts her. And yet, she didn’t want to be a bitch about it. She was trying to be understanding. And she wanted them to be a family and have kids but she knew that they weren’t ready and didn’t try to rush it. She wanted to get help and fix what wasn’t working. I just love her so much! And I’ll give credit to David for actually trying in this scene (although he threw it to the wind pretty quickly).

The scene between Snow and the dwarfs was very cute. I loved that after all the statements in this episode that love is horrible, we finally got another perspective. Because yes, it is, and it hurts us in the worst way possible, but that makes us who we are. Also, it was sweet of them to offer her a home and their support.

I loved the quiet scene between Mary Margaret and Emma. It showed that Mary Margaret was trying to be strong and that Emma was there for her and supported her. Their relationship was already so strong that they didn’t need words.

They never showed what made David go after Snow and it just came off as random and odd to me. Ruby’s face when David said “I will always find her” tho. She was like “I ship it”.

Seeing that Snow took the potion broke my heart all over again. And just when hope showed on the horizon. In Bulgaria we have a saying that states that no one can do to you what you’ll do to yourself and I think it fits the occasion. Sometimes we’re our own worst enemy. Grumpy’s face at the end of the scene ruined my life.

I guess they really can’t stay away from each other (Ruby’s face during that scene though). What I hated about that scene was that “She’s not pregnant” was the engine for their kiss. So, yeah, it’s okay to lie to her as long as she’s not pregnant. Way to go! I loved the fact that Regina saw them though (and her face). Even walls have ears... or eyes in this case.

Favorite line: “As wretched as it is, I need my pain. It makes me who I am.” - Grumpy to Snow

Least favorite line: “Come on! I helped you when no one else would.” - Snow to Red

That was just manipulative as fuck and I really didn’t appreciate it. I know Snow was desperate but that was just nasty. Just guilt-trip your best friend. That makes sense!

This episode was so amazing. I just don’t know what to say. Every scene did something for the story or the characters. Everything was on point. They managed to establish a clear difference between David’s two personalities. The acting was awesome. The episode was mind-blowing and I was hooked from beginning to end.

P.S. Sorry for the confusing format of this review. I myself see that this doesn’t really work so I’ll stick to my original format and try to avoid another review like this one at all costs. I just really had things I wanted to discuss from every scene and I’m sorry if it’s scattered or confusing.

[once-upon-a-ouat]

OUAT Rewatch 1x03 “Snow Falls”

I feel like this episode slowed down a bit because they wanted to give us a bit of Snow and David’s story. They mostly focused on making parallels between the Enchanted Forest and Storybrooke to show us that Snow and David’s love transcended even the Curse. David being in a coma was a parallel of Snow being under the sleeping curse and she woke him up by reading him their story and then saved him by performing a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on him. That was awesome because it was the physical action that saved him, but was it really? It blurred the lines between science and magic and more importantly True Love’s magic. I also loved how parts of the dialogue from the flashbacks leaked into their first meeting in Storybrooke.

In the flashbacks we saw how the whole I-will-find-you thing started. I, personally, think it was an awesome idea to make it start like a threat but then evolve into the promise of everlasting love that we know it to be. Snow once again proved that she is a badass by standing up for herself (when David called her a girl) and also managing to one-up him. We also saw some bitterness and cynicism that we did not expect from Snow White. She seemed to have lost faith in the existence of True Love (which we later see explained in 6x07 when she told the Blue Fairy she no longer believed in love) and Charming appears at just the right moment to restore her faith.

I love how she started calling him Charming and even when he told her his name was James, she kept using the nickname she gave him. It was as if she had a feeling James wasn’t his real name.

When you think about it, Regina actually played a big part in Snow and David’s first meeting. If she hadn’t sent Graham to kill Snow, Snow wouldn’t have run away and she wouldn’t have met David. Besides, Snow thought the carriage belonged to Regina and she robbed it in an attempt to gain enough money to run away from Regina for good. Plus, David blackmailed her to help him by threatening to turn her in to Regina.

In Storybrooke though it was Regina that kept them apart. I have to admit that this time her plan worked out pretty well. We once again saw how much power Regina has over everyone and everything in town. In this episode she also managed to keep her agenda hidden which is impressive considering how epically she failed in the previous episodes.

Kathryn was introduced and I actually really liked that because I love Kathryn and think she is an underappreciated character. And as long as she did her part, the writers cast her aside, which they have done with countless other characters. I know managing a big cast is difficult and you can’t really give every character the screen time that they deserve, and OUAT has one of the largest casts of characters, but I still think Kathryn deserved a bit more*. She was an awesome character. It looked like we knew exactly where her story would go the first time we saw her. She was obviously the spoiled rich bitch but then the writers surprised us by making her a layered character with a good heart and I really wish we had seen more of her.

What I loved about this episode was that the details really came together once again. David having the poster with Snow’s face on it almost got them killed later. Snow intended to use the fairy dust to get rid of Regina (which I think contradicted the fact that she wanted to run away because there’s no point in doing both; if she was planning to use it on Regina, she would have her kingdom back and there would be no point in running away so yeah... that didn’t really make sense) but then she used it to save David. And it was still used for ‘a special someone’ because she had already fallen for David at that time. The ring was one of the greatest details in this episode. It was the reason why David set out to find her in the first place and it was the engine of their interaction, which led to them falling in love. The fact that Mary Margaret had it in Storybrooke made me want to scream both from happiness and frustration. It’s the symbol of their love and a proof that they’re meant to be together but she doesn’t know it.

Speaking about love, the whole thing with Mary Margaret and Whale’s date was just so heartbreaking. She was searching for love while her True Love was literally under her nose the whole time. I also sensed some kind of tension between Mary Margaret and Ruby which is never present after that but it might just be me. Or the writers were still figuring out where they wanted to take the story.

Emma accepting Mary Margaret’s offer to crash into her place was awesome. Mother and daughter are finally together and also Snow was right that one day Emma would find her and David. It’s also sweet because Emma was reluctant at first but then she accepted, which leads to her slowly opening up to Mary Margaret in later episodes.

Emma’s way to handle Henry’s ‘delusion’ was actually pretty great. And I also loved her shock when Mary Margaret said it had worked.

We also got a hint at who Graham was in the Enchanted Forest. His tracking skills and Snow mentioning the Huntsman... smooth move, writers.

Favorite scene: The scene in which Regina explains to Emma how they found out Kathryn was David’s wife. I love it for two reasons. The first one is that Regina finally did something smart. It turned out that she had a plan in case David ever woke up and it was indeed a rather good one. Also she was calm and collected this time around and played her cards just right, praising Emma for bringing husband and wife together. That was a smart move. The dialogue in that scene was also great. All of Regina’s lines had hidden meaning. The second thing I love about the scene is that Emma questioned the situation in the first place. It showed once again that she’s smart and good at her job and also the writers used her to point out the things that didn’t make sense and then explained them instead of just brushing them off like they did so many times in the later seasons.

Least favorite scene: The scene in which Regina grabbed Henry’s arm. It was a little too rough for me and in my country it’s not unusual for parents to sometimes punish their kids physically if they have misbehaved so it says a lot that I found that gesture disturbing (I mean, I’m not supportive of using physical punishments on your kids but I’m used to the idea since it’s normal in my country). I think that was a bit overboard and I really didn’t appreciate the Evil Queen routine. Besides, the references to Cora’s methods of making Regina behave put me off a little bit.

Favorite line: “I will always find you” - David to Snow

Least favorite line:

Snow: She blames me for ruining her life.

David: Well, did you?

Snow: Yes.

This is only here because I needed a least favorite line and this one is just proven incorrect in 1x21 when we see that Snow didn’t know Daniel was dead so what else could she be referring to here?

This episode was a bit slower than the previous two but was also very enjoyable and I love how everything that happened throughout it came together in the end. It just gives me a sense of fulfillment to watch something so beautifully executed. I loved it.

*I accidentally pressed Caps Lock and the sentence looked like that - “I still think Kathryn deserved A BIT MORE” - and it looked like I was hella mad about it and honestly, I kinda am so... perfect timing, I guess.

P.S. I wanted to post this yesterday but I didn’t have internet connection and now I’m behind on my schedule and it’s only been three days (although this delay wasn’t really my fault). So today I will also be posting my review for 1x04 in order to catch up with my schedule.