#i hope Max’s love of dogs will be interpreted into the finale somehow

[wolfpackdenmother]

I’m curious about how this season will end tbqh?

Every season so far has begun and ended on a similar motif:

Season 1 we had Max desperate to leave camp as he didn’t give a shit about anyone around him, least of all David, and then ended with his attempt at giving a shit.

Season 2 began with Max’s voice and opinion being ignored and written off by David (insisting Daniel was a cult leader bent on killing them) and ended with the exact same thing happening (Max insisting his parents weren’t coming to parents day) but now David realizes he needs to listen to Max.

Season 3 began with the camp nearly going bankrupt and Max scheming to save the camp and ended exactly the same way; scheming to save the camp and managing to do so but with help from David and admitting he actually likes Camp Campbell.

This season started off with Max and David realizing just how much they’ve begun to become like one another with hints of Campbell making (shitty) attempts to be a good person. I’m excited to see how this will translate into the season finale!

[superman86to99]

Adventures of Superman #505 (October 1993)

REIGN OF THE SUPERMAN! The Reign is over, and Superman does what we’d all do after being dead for several weeks and coming back to life: no, not visiting your parents, making out with Lois Lane.

Or more than making out, since the next page starts with a caption that says “Later...” and lets us know that they both had to take a shower. (NOTE: Check Don Sparrow’s section below for artist Tom Grummett’s definitive take on what happened in that scene.)

Their post-resurrection bliss comes to a stop when they remember a little detail: Clark Kent is still presumed dead. How are they gonna explain his return without making the extremely smart residents of Metropolis suspect that Superman and the guy who looks like Superman but with glasses are actually the same person? Superman’s mind immediately goes into “wacky bullshit excuse” mode and he starts spitballing ideas, like claiming Clark lost his memory, or was carried by underwater currents, or was abducted by aliens. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that last one would work, since there have been THREE major alien invasions in the past few years, but Lois thinks no one would be dumb enough to fall for that sort of thing. Really, Lois? No one?

At this point, Superman picks up some supervillain activity with his super hearing, so he gets dressed and goes there (though it would have been pretty intimidating for the criminals if she’d shown up in that shower rug). A bank uptown has been taken over by Loophole, a S.T.A.R. Labs accountant who stole a gizmo that allows him to phase through walls. When Superman shows up to arrest him and his henchmen (are they all villainous accountants?), Loophole literally puts his first through Superman’s chest, instantly killing him. RIP Superman, again.

Nah, Supes just swats Loophole away and breaks the gizmo, causing him to get his crotch area stuck inside a vault door. Now he has to change his supervillain name to “DickVault”.

(I freaking love Maggie Sawyer, btw.)

After that, Superman goes to one of the areas trashed by his fight with Doomsday and helps clean up the junk that’s still laying around there. It’s then that he finally reunites with his best friend and most valued ally: Bibbo Bibbowski. (Jimmy Olsen’s there, too, unfortunately.)

Bibbo also introduces Superman to the dog he named in honor of his home planet, Krypto -- and it’s Krypto who provides the most significant moment in this issue. The little mutt starts barking at some debris from a destroyed building, leading Superman to examine it with his X-Ray vision and find some kids underneath.

Turns out the kids had been trapped there since the Doomsday fight, leading some random passerby (fine, Jimmy) to wonder if Clark could be stuck in a similar situation. Superman and Lois look at each other... giving Superman an idea and providing the premise for next week’s issue.

Character-Watch:

First appearance of Loophole (real name Deke Dickinson, C.P.A.), who would become a running joke in Karl Kesel’s Superman and Superboy comics. While his phasing powers are tech based, he also has the metahuman ability to somehow convince attractive women to be his girlfriends/henchwomen despite being a balding little dweeb. In this issue he’s dating a blonde named Sheila (who wears a mask, so maybe she’s actually hideous), but I’m pretty sure he had other girlfriends in future issues.

Plotline-Watch:

As I said... holy shit, five years ago: no one draws Supes coming back to Lois after an extended absence like Tom Grummett. This scene is almost a remake of the one from that issue when Superman comes back from his time traveling jaunt. There’s also a callback to Man of Steel #25, when Lois hears a tap on her window and thinks it’s Superman, but it’s just some dumb bird. This time she gets it the other way around:

Don Sparrow says: “There’s a cute visual callback to the last time Superman returned after a long absence on page 18, when Superman is reunited with Jimmy. It’s a near identical pose to Action #643, where Superman returned from exile in space (and in that moment, infected Jimmy with Eradicator-based space sickness, womp womp).” I think he’s instinctively throwing Jimmy up in the air, hoping the cold of space will kill him. Unfortunately, both murder attempts were unsuccessful.

As seen above, Maggie Sawyer wasn’t too convinced that “Fabio” here was Superman at first. That changes when he calls her “Captain” even though she was recently promoted to Inspector, and she’s like “only a dead man wouldn’t know all the precise ranks for the local authorities!”

The surviving non-Supermen are seen arriving at S.T.A.R. Labs for medical care after the Engine City showdown. Don again: “There are some mild continuity issues stemming from Superman #82, which perhaps wasn’t completely finished being drawn while Tom Grummett worked on this one, as Steel’s costume is almost entirely intact, when we last saw it a week ago, it was in tatters. Ditto the Eradicator, who was a wizened husk, and now is apparently a scorched Ivan Drago.” Let’s assume Supergirl worked her clothes-shifting magic on Steel’s armor and the Eradicator’s, uh, hair.

There’s a short scene where Superboy is visited by his reporter pal Tana Moon, who tells him she quit WGBS and is leaving Metropolis. Awww. Goodbye, Tana. Or should I say... aloha?

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor Jr. has a scene with Dr. Happersen where he says he intends to control or destroy anyone who wears the “S” symbol. Basically, if he can’t date them, they should be dead. He also instructs Happersen to help Cadmus’ Director Westfield get in contact with disgraced genetician Dabney Donovan. Get ready for a whole lot of clone-related shenanigans in the near future.

And now, more Don Sparrow-related shenanigans after the jump!

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow​):

This issue is another favourite of mine, but I suppose all these issues around the Death and Return are faves when I really think about it.  My copy of this issue had the holographic fireworks cover, and it’s a good one.  I like that Superman and the Daily Planet are in natural colour, rather than holograms.  The cover credit goes Karl Kesel, Tom Grummett and Doug Hazlewood, so I’m not sure what the breakdown was (or if that’s just a handwritten cover credit, just in case?

The story opens with one of my favourite sequences ever, with Lois waking up on her couch, having fallen asleep following the events in Coast City.  I love the detail as she opens the curtain, we see her engagement ring, indicating she knows her real fiancée has returned.  This sequence is followed up by two pages of splashes of the passionate reunion of the best couple in comics.  All beautifully rendered as they float, locked in a passionate, sunrise kiss.  Just lovely (so lovely that I am willing to overlook a small colouring error, as Lois has black hair instead of reddish brown for one panel).  [Max: I can confirm that they fixed that in the collections.]

What follows is a very cute scene, and one of some debate among Superman fans.  There’s no overt evidence of what happened, all we get is a cryptic caption reading “later…”.   Again, I give credit for the subtlety of the writers, as they depict this scene in a way that can be read either way:  maybe Clark and Lois made love, and the “later” we are seeing is afterglow, or maybe Lois had a shower since she just woke up after sleeping in her clothes. Then, after calling his parents while Lois showered, Clark had a shower himself.  I feel like today’s writers wouldn’t feel the need to be so subtle, and might lose the sweetness of this scene.  

In previous posts, I’ve talked about my friendship with artist Tom Grummett, and how as a boy, I would wear him out with all my dumb fanboy questions.  Once I got older, and our relationship became a little more collegial (just a little closer to collegial, since I in no way consider myself anywhere near his level of skill or success) I would really try not to geek out too much when we would visit.  But the one question I had to ask was about this scene, and what their intention, or interpretation of it was, as I was always curious.  Once I had explained to him which issue it was (the guy has drawn hundreds, so they might not all spring to mind immediately!) he admitted that his assumption was indeed that they had sex.  So there you have it!  [Max: Hot damn! Another Superman ‘86 to ‘99 exclusive, folks!]

However you wish to read this scene, the choreography, and facial expressions as they horse around is really sweet and fun, and such a nice, light tone compared to the do-or-die pace the books had been for the last two years or so.   Their easy joking, and back and forth banter really do a great job of showing them as a real couple.

It’s a very nice pose on Supergirl as she lifts off, simultaneously spurning Superboy’s romantic complaints.

I quite like the design on Loophole, and his gang.  Loophole himself kinda harkens back to the silver age villains of the Flash as Loophole has a unique hairline, is an older man, with a pretty average build, which was rare for villains in the 90s. His gimmick is pretty cool, too, though we immediately see its vulnerability.

The tearful reunion of the now-sober Bibbo and Superman is also a great moment—if anyone rose to the challenge of living up to Superman’s example in his absence, it was Bibbo.  I discuss the scene in more detail in the observations later, but the image of Superman whipping away the debris on page 20 is a great visual, with the dust clouds creating great motion and urgency.

On the whole, a great first issue for the return to the never-ending battle, even if it brings us closer to Grummett’s last issue on this title (for a while).

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

Could Superman referring to the Death and Return storyline as a dream, while stepping out of the shower be a reference to Dallas, and their famous about-face after an unpopular season, where Bobby Ewing emerged from the shower, alive and well, dismissing a yearlong storyline as a dream?

A coy semi-reference to perhaps my favourite line in the first Reeve Superman film on page 8, where Supergirl says “Easy steel, we’ve got you, then later adding, “ok, you got me”.  

A little more issue-to-issue dissonance with Superboy reversing himself from the end of Superman #82, where he said clearly that Kal-El was Superman, with Superboy pointing out that legally, he’s Superman and not Kal. [Max: I think he’s talking strictly in the legal sense, since he helps Superman deal with the legal problem on the next issue and all.]

For all the times that Superman has used his heat vision on guns (as he does on page 11), we’ve never seen rounds get burned off, firing on their own because of the heat.  There might be an idea there.    

An odd sorta-cameo by Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon, who Superman apparently defeats in the waterfront district. An eagle-eyed reader asked Larsen about it in issue #6 of Dragon’s own book, and he nixed any proper crossover rumours, saying it was just a shout-out from Larsen’s buddy Karl Kesel.  Eventually they’d meet in Superman/Savage Dragon: Chicago, a so-so crossover in 2002.

A slightly bawdy joke from one of the Loophole gang, on page 14, as the moll of Deke Dickson calls Loophole a “weiner”.  

GODWATCH: A stirring moment when Superman detects the faintest of life-signs, thanks to would-be super-pup, Krypto, and responds “God willing” when someone asks if anyone is alive in that wreckage.  The love and concern in Superman’s eyes when he says he’d “rather die” himself than let little ones perish is a tear-jerker moment for sure.  Bonus points for the cuteness of Superman heaping praise on Krypto, with the line “if that dog could fly, I’d put a cape on him…”

Question:  Does Jimmy know? He comes up with the solution to the Clark problem very conveniently.  Maybe he’s smarter than we (and by we, I mean Max) give him credit for? [Max: It was all Krypto! Okay, I’ll concede that maybe Jimmy is as smart as a dog.]

[thewickedwitchofwindenburg]

The Hallmark Legacy

So here it is, the first ever 10 generation legacy I’ve written. It’s still a work in progress and as I play through it I may change things, but I’m ready to share.

Just a little introduction and context: 

I’m a sucker for a happy ending and the Hallmark Channel. If you’ve ever watched more than one Hallmark movie in a row (which I do, often) you start to notice certain tropes and plots repeated. It’s always amazed me how you can take the same basic plot and add a new twist to get a whole new movie. So I’ve written a legacy based on some of my favorites and hope to see some amazing stories come out of it.

I tried to make this part gameplay and part story, I don’t know how well I’ve succeeded. But if you’re interested, check it out under the cut.

Set-Up:

Create a family (or use one you already had made up).You can choose to play through founder`s childhood & teen years or start them out as a young adult.

Move family into which ever world feels most small town to you.  Lot should have room for your farm. Feel free to use cheats to build/decorate/buy your farm.

Gen One- Living the Simple Life

You've lived in the same small town your whole life.  You dated the same Sim all through high school, but right when you were about to propose,  they told you of their plans to go to college in the big city. Without you. You stayed on the family farm and have focused on keeping it going.  Years later,  your high school sweetheart comes back into your life and changes everything. You both discover you still have feelings for each other. Now you're both faced with hard decisions. 

About the founder:

Aspiration: Freelance Botanist

Required trait: loves outdoors

Career: Gardening or just stay at home and earn off your farm

Goals and storytelling points:

Max gardening skill

Get together with (and eventually marry) a sim in the business career

Choose a conflict that brought sim back into your life

Choose between living on the farm or moving to the city. Find some compromises to make your relationship work.

Complete aspiration

Gen Two- The Wedding Planner

You've always found your parents` story so romantic. You started thinking about weddings as a child and what do you know it's led to a great career.  Until the day you fell in love with one of your clients. Sometimes fate happens at the worst time.

About the heir:

Aspiration: Successful lineage

Required trait: Romantic

Career: this one is up for interpretation. Could be running a wedding themed retail store or a social media career revolving around weddings.  However you want to depict the wedding planner career.

Goals and storytelling points:

Throw 5 gold medal events (one should be your wedding)

Go on at least 3 dates,  with 3 different Sims

Meet someone at “work”

Breakup a wedding

Have 2+ children

Complete aspiration

Gen Three- Meddling Family

Your parents are sickeningly in love,  and they want all their kids to be happy like they are.  So they keep setting you up on dates.  You decided a long time ago that you would find your own partner.  But this one might not be so bad.

About the heir:

Aspiration: Soulmate

Required trait: family oriented

Career: Detective or Doctor

Goals and storytelling points:

Meet potential partners through parents (specifically the Gen 2 heir)

Go on 5 dates but don't medal in 4 of them

Max friendship bar with chosen partner

Complete aspiration

Have at least 2 kids (multiples would be a bonus)

Gen Four- In Love with My Sibling`s Partner

You've always been shy and a little awkward. Your sibling is incredibly  charismatic and you might be a bit jealous. But what you really envy is their partner. You've always been in love with them,  but your sibling had guts where you did not.  And now you've got to live with it, right?

About the heir :

Aspiration: Nerd Brain

Required trait: loner

Career: Tech Guru

Goals and storytelling points:

Have a romantic relationship bar with one sim that a sibling also has a romantic relationship with (theirs should be higher at first)

Have only 2 friends (that are not family)

Get to the top of your career

Max your friendship bar with the chosen partner before “stealing” them from your sibling

Gen 5- Hidden Writer

Your family is full of amazing love stories and you've always wanted to write a love story of your own. Somehow your research about relationships  landed you in the middle of the perfect relationship.  But none of it is real.

About the heir:

Aspiration: Writer

Required trait: creative

Career: writer or write books from home and live off of royalties

Goals and storytelling points:

Meet partner at a park or bar or other public lot

Lie about your career to partner (for as long as possible)

Max writing skill

Complete aspiration

Have the truth come out and try to make it work

Gen 6- Love On Vacation (requires jungle adventure or outdoor retreat)

Your parents are going on a second honeymoon and dragging the whole family along.  You meet the most amazing sim while there,  but they're from the area and how can it work when you leave?

About the heir:

Aspiration: Choose one that goes with the vacation world you choose

Required trait: outgoing

Career: painter

Goals and storytelling points:

Go on vacation with your family to Granite Falls or Selvadora

Meet a sim while there and Max the romantic relationship bar

Complete aspiration

Find some way to make the relationship work after your sim returns from vacation

Gen 7- Rival Chefs

You've always been interested in foods around the world. You travel and learn about foods to become the best chef.  It seems every time you turn around you keep running into your rival. Could the tension  between you be something other than professional rivalry?

About the heir:

Aspiration: Master Chef

Required trait: foodie

Career: culinary

Goals and storytelling points:

Max cooking skill

Max gourmet cooking skill (bonus)

Complete aspiration

Reach the top in your career

Marry a sim also in culinary career

Live in at least 3 different worlds

Gen 8- Puppies (or kitties) being us together

You decided young that you wanted to be a vet. Now you run your own clinic. You relate better to the animals than Sims, so you haven't dated much. One of your clients asks you out, what can go wrong?

About the heir:

Aspiration: friend of the animals

Required trait: loves dogs OR  loves cats

Career: own a vet clinic

Goals and storytelling points:

Meet future spouse at work

Adopt 2 dogs and/or cats

Complete aspiration

Have 2+ children (it should be a full house)

Have a Max star vet clinic

Gen 9- The Bad Bet

Two Sims made a bet that one of them couldn't get a certain sweetheart to fall in love with them.  You've heard this story before,  right? Well,  it wasn't supposed to turn out like this.

About the heir:

Aspiration: Friend of the World

Required trait: cheerful

Career: entertainer

Goals and storytelling points:

Have a best friend

Make the bad bet

Subject should have the loner trait

(Bonus give them a drab to fab makeover)

Complete aspiration

Max career

Fall in love with subject of bet

Get married

Gen 10- Hidden Royalty

Your family line has come full circle. You just inherited (or returned to or rebought) the old family farm. But it's too much for just you, so you take on a roommate for a while to help out.  They left out one important detail of who they are though.

About the heir:

Aspiration: Mansion Baron or Renaissance Sim

Required trait: materialistic

Career: pick any one you want

Goals and storytelling points:

Move a roommate in with you

Find out that they're royalty of some sort

Complete aspiration

Have a Royal Wedding (big, flashy and gold medal)

They ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after (aka end of the legacy!)

If you want to do this legacy but don't have packs required for some of the gens or you want to keep going after you hit 10, come chat with me! I had ideas for a couple other storylines that didn't make the final cut.

If you decide to take this on, tag me so I can follow it!

Edit (3/2/19): I actually had someone ask for a Substitute Generation~So here is one additional Gen with official rules, I guess.

Gen Substitute- So Opposite It hurts

You’ve always been pretty set in your ways. Knowing who you are as a person isn’t a bad thing. When your new neighbor moves in, you constantly butt heads. They’re quiet and serious, you’re loud and outspoken. But somehow, you fall in love.

About the heir:

Aspiration: Chief of Mischief

Required trait: outgoing

Career: Entertainer

Goals and storytelling points:

Live next door to a Sim with the Nerd Brain or Musical Genius aspiration

Perform 10 Mischief interactions with the neighbor

“Fighting” turns to flirtations

Complete aspiration

Marry Sim next door

(Bonus: Complete spouses aspiration)

[televinita]

Zoo 3.12

Preview: Sam can go DIAF with Abigail, Interrupting Dariela is the worst and the writers need to stop using her to squee-block me, Mitch/Jamie is my everything and I need Jackson to come back into the fold with them, and how the hell did I come up with so many words for an episode that was mostly plot advancement and only had like five standout scenes.

Mitch/Jamie 1. Looks like at least part of my headcanon last week about Mitch letting Jamie out can't be jossed! I'm so glad we got this scene in a sneak peek, because I replayed Jackson's indignation and Mitch's cheerfully dismissive response to it about 80 times. 2. Would it be irresponsible of me to assume that they spent last night together? Because part of me is still wondering if they've even touched in the wake of everything, but I would really like to believe they drowned their sorrows in each other. I don’t know how to reconcile the easy banter of the next number or the fact that they don’t touch in this episode. 3. I love the glee Mitch takes in pestering Jamie about her apparent fear of babies, all geared up to tease her mercilessly -- this must be the most fun he's had in days -- and how fast the truth wipes the smug smirk off his face. It's beautiful and terrible and I hope it socked him right in the gut to see the extent of the damage his words did. If he didn't introduce the thought into her head, he sure cemented whatever doubts she already had. 3.5. And kudos to Kristen Connolly for being able to sell those lines with a straight face, because on paper it looks hella dramatic to be like "I'm so awful that I will physically curse a baby if I touch it" 4. I am little embarrassed that my headcanon gets shot down when Mitch not only doesn't take back the darkness line, he doubles down to include himself in it -- but I also really, really like him admitting he would have killed Abigail himself?  "I've been thinking" is a fic prompt and I would love a little character study of Mitch coming to this realization, but either way, I’m intrigued by Dark!Mitch. I want the antidote in hand, I need to be able to believe they will eventually run away and find the light at the end of tunnel, but right now I could be very into a Dark & Twisty OTP of Pain and Feelings. 5. "She kept me away from everything and everyone I ever cared about. Everyone I love." Said with bold and unflinching eye contact and I am 6% frustrated that this is about the third time he's confessed his feelings and Jamie is still batting a hundred on insufficient reactions to them, but 94% overjoyed that the L word is out there to more than just some thugs in a bar. Sometimes there are more exciting ways to hear it than the standard 3-word way. (not that I would turn that down) 6. Now I just need to know who is responsible for Interrupting Dariela arriving on TWO SEPARATE OCCASIONS instead of extending either "darkness" convo scene literally ten or twelve more seconds for some kind of proper resolution before a scene change. Tell me he wasn’t about to reach for her hand in the first one. (Also. It takes a magnifying glass and freeze framing, but I'm pretty sure in the split second before they get interrupted the second time, it looks like their hands were or about to be in contact and are drawing apart as the shot goes wide?) A Series Of Live Viewing Reactions To Clem's Baby Daddy 1. Awwww @ Sam hoping (in vain) that Mitch will accept him as a real member of the family. 2. WHAT THE SHIT, SAM. I TRIED TO BE NICE TO YOU. 3. All right, abort that whole plan from last week about letting him be HOH, Sam can fuck off and die and I hope Mitch takes such full ownership of the baby* that he takes to introducing him to people as "my kid, once removed." I'm not Jackson and I don't care who was raised by a madwoman. If Abe's voice + everyone's love for Clementine didn't convince you you're on the wrong team, you are beyond help and I’ll put you down.

*I don't think I can fully convey to you the amount I love Mike Baxter's relationship with Boyd on Last Man Standing, mostly because I'm not sure how many people know this show exists. 4. ...ABIGAIL R U SERIOUS. (Guys, I'm sorry if I previously claimed to be off the sympathy-for-the-devil train; those were lies but I am sure as hell off it now with her baby-snatching reveal and subsequent taunting. That's not even emotional torture porn, that is just cruelty for its own sake.) 5. Welp, I think you know what this means, Mitch and Jackson bonding over shooting straight from raising a baby to parenting a 20-year-old Y/Y?? 6. But seriously, I am so upset at not even considering this theory before today. He's the right age! He's a conveniently random orphan! This show is all, "People love twists!" I kept assuming the father of the Miracle Baby had to be someone super significant! The biggest kicker of all is that I've assumed from the get-go that Jackson's late wife was black (which I hope is not somehow racist to assume?), and Sam is right there looking plausibly biracial as heck, and somehow not once did those two threads of thought ever cross. Come On Guys, Be Bros When I made this tongue-in-cheek request last year re: Mitch and Jackson, I could not in my wildest dreams have imagined them to one day share a grandchild, so while I honestly don't care how Jackson's being-a-daddy issues will play out, I care VERY MUCH what it means that he and Mitch are now on the same family tree, starting with how he now has an ironclad excuse to bond with Clementine and never be out of her life again. (I guess he can bond with his actual kid too. if he must.)

But that short chat on the upper level, just listening to them talk about their respective families is like catnip to my ears. I don't know how I'm supposed to read Mitch's expression after Jackson walks off in his "you worry about your family, let me worry about mine" huff, so I've elected to interpret it as "You're my family too, dumbass." (hush and let me have my dream) (Also I would kind of like to know why Jackson is still as willing to talk rationally with Mitch as he is given that Mitch is on Team Jamie, or as Jackson prefers to call it, She Devil Incarnate. I mean, it boils down to Jackson being a sexist jerk, but I still want to have All The Thinky Thoughts about how Mitch functions as a go between.) Beta Ship 2.0 MY SHIP RADAR IS BACK ON AND FULLY FUNCTIONING. I don't want to scare it away by being too excited about it. Just know that my heart burst into bloom when they got their reunion hug*, crescendoed for the kiss, and by the time they were fawning over the baby together it was pretty well at a tea kettle pitch. *Abe and Dariela take over as the center of the frame immediately, but am I looking at it or listening to them at all? No. I'm trying to shove them out of the way and peering at the edge of the screen where my new faves are nearly out of the frame, persistently tracking Jackson's hands on Tessa as they examine her cut and cup the back of her head and asdlkasjdfasd time to go dig up the 3x01 Time Capsule O' Sweetness. Various and Sundry -I enjoyed the writers finally acknowledging how awfully prone to hacking / general failure this plane is. -This was going to be its own category, but it's late, so suffice to say that Mitch + Not Being A Mess Of Emotions About His Dead Father was very nicely dovetailed with concern for Clem and a cute debate about baby names, and I'm just happy they addressed it all, if still annoyed that the impact of Max's death on Jamie was not. -Jackson takes up Mitch's vacated seat next to Clementine when the plane starts falling and has his hand bracing the baby's head and yes hello I am dying. -Clem is so excited to offer her baby to Jamie for holding, even eager to reassure her "you won't hurt him," and yes hello I am dying again. -"I know I'm right. Want to be more specific?" = thank u for this small slice of "sass that totally happens in the Normal World AU of Domesticity" (also, the pushing up his glasses bit here? ridiculously cute)

-"I don't need you to tell me what needs to be done [about Abigail]." OK Jackson, but like...you kinda do.   

-I told you before I had 18 heart attacks watching this episode live, so I don't think it's unreasonable to mention dying again re: the part where Jamie has the baby foisted upon her before she can protest, and Baby immediately stops crying*... Wait, no, this is the opposite of dying. This moment is Life.

-*nice insufficient reaction to noticing her finally holding the baby, Mitch. Who is directing this episode, because they are Bad at it. -I literally could not be more neutral about Logan's face or potential longevity. I am a 0 on the PH scale of feelings. -Everything about Jackson's final face off with Abigail and her stupid endless villain gloating was the wooorst. -I am a little concerned that reaching the barrier is supposed to qualify as our traditional episode 12 "get off now if you want this series to have a happy ending" exit, both because it's not that satisfying and because there is way too much left unresolved. I can only hope this means that we'll get it near the end of the real finale, with only a tiny twist at the end to set up a hypothetical season 4 that can be easily pinched off and forgotten if need be. Up Next: I'm not sure if I can watch the finale live. I have to have all my work done 6 hours earlier than usual, and then I'm taking off to go dog-sit all day, and if I watch it live I am gonna be useless from the time it starts airing until I drop from emotional exhaustion around 3 AM. If I can get enough work done by 9 PM, I probably will, but I also kind of want to savor it in case this is the last new one I ever get.