#i think the fact that s2 exists and we get to see life carried on for glenn and he could still find ways to live on helps a lot tbh

[toonbly]

lies down in the dirt. honestly the more i think abt glenns arc the more i start to really REALLY like and appreciate it. freddies a goddamn genius

[chloe-caulfield94]

Do you think they will have another LIS with Max and Chloe? If they do, I hope they continue with the "Save Bae" ending. Do you have any ideas for an "After The Storm" game? Thanks for all the likes on my Pricefieldizcanon page btw!

I don't think we will get another Life is Strange with Max and Chloe as main characters. But I do think that they will continue the trend started in S2 and Wavelenghts, where the player is asked at the very beginning what they chose in S1 and depending on your answer there will be cameos/mentions of Max and Chloe.

I think it's likely that non-game LiS content (comic books, novels) will continue to follow the "save Chloe" ending, no matter if it's content specifically about them (like the comics) or about other characters (Steph's Story, which mentions them at one point).

It's no wonder that they chose to follow the "save Chloe" ending in the non-game content so far. It simply creates much better opportunities for storytelling than the aftermath of Chloe's murder.

Such opportunitiues include: Max once again finding herself in a situation where she has to use her powers or to let someone die (this was already explored in the LiS comics, with Max's rescue of Tristan). Chloe finally realizing that she does in fact deserve to live, deserves love and deserves a fresh start (this was also explored in the comics). Chloe being reconciled with David and David finally becoming the father figure he promised Chloe to become in BtS (this was briefly touched upon in S2, but it deserves a story of its own). Steph, Mikey and other survivors of the Storm grieving their loved ones (this was explored in Wavelengths and Steph's Story). We could even imagine a confrontation between Max and Steph, if Steph were to ever find out about the events of Storm week (I highly recommend great short fanfic by AO3 user Shisumo about Max telling Steph why she has no right to judge her for choosing Chloe: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37099903 . I also wrote a short fanfic which touches upon a Max/Steph meeting, but I imagined it in a less confrontational manner: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50505817 ).

None of those storytelling opportunites exist after Chloe is murdered. Bay Max would never use her power again, not even to save someone's life. Bay Max would just watch Tristan being murdered, just like she did with Chloe. Chloe would never receive the love and care she so desperately needed, let alone accept that she deserved it. Nobody would be reconciled. Steph and Mikey would go about their lives, not aware that Bay Max is carrying on her shoulders the grief and sorrow of an entire town, like a modern day sin-eater.

Death is final. It solves all problems, but in the least satisfying way possible. It cuts all loose threads short. It's a sudden stop to any and all stories. I don't see an opportunity for any meaningful stories following Chloe's murder. Unless it would be some morbid story about Bay Max stumbling through life, crushed with remorse. Regretting every day that she took her love and friendship back, erased it so that it never happened. That she nipped something beautiful in the bud. Hating herself and finally learning to hate Chloe for making her feel that way.

I am very fond of the LiS comics. So even if we never get another story with Max and Chloe as main characters, I am content with the comics as the "canon" conclusion to their story.

As for my personal idea for a post-Storm game: I would love to see the "other Max/nightmare Max" return as an antagonist. Some time after the Storm, Max would start having visions, similar to her nightmare in E5, where her evil twin would try to once again drive a wedge between Max and Chloe by spewing lies and hate. Max would then be sucked into multiple alternate timelines (like in the first issue of the comics). But they would all be very dark timelines, where "other Max" chose wrong, chose to hurt people. Max would have to work to undo the wrong choices made by her evil twin. Of course, in the end Max would right all the wrongs, rebuke her evil twin and find a way back to her own timeline.

The character of "other Max" could be played in two ways - either as a manifestation of Max's internal struggle or as an entirely separate person - a version of Max who instead of love, friendship, courage and trust chose fear, doubt, resentment and guilt.

I love the confrontation between our Max and "other Max" in E5. It represents a struggle with a dark part of her own mind. And if she tears the butterfly photograph, Max achieves a victory over her own fears and doubts, which is the greatest victory one could possibly achieve.

So I would love to see that struggle of Max against her inner demon (or a version of herself shaped by wrong choices) turned into an entire game.

[sharkneto]

Very iffy on the whole "Five being the founder" thing.. I mean. It's not very surprising that the guy who's power is to time travel is somehow involved in the creation of the time travel committee, but I don't like the Commission (or, I didn't like how they were portrayed in s2) and I kinda would have preferred if they just. Left how it came to be ambiguous and up to interpretation-- But, the idea that they used (are going to use?) Five as some battery for their briefcases, or they study his power to find a way to mimic it, or whatever. That is very interesting to me.

Not sure if that's the way the show is going, but I mean. Five and Lila were able to power up a broken briefcase using Five's power + electrocution so...? There sure is Something there, possibly. And it could be a vague parallel to how the Commission experimented on Five in the comics, assuming that they haven't already done that to show Five. So.. I dunno. It has the potential to be neat. But really that is the only way it will be interesting to me, lmao.

I don't like the idea of Five being the founder of the Commission either. It just continues to validate and redeem the Commission after they were a spectacularly evil villain in S1 - I've ranted before about how the Commission changed from S1 to S2 and the portrayal of Herb and Dot as protagonists rather than antagonists (as they should be) HERE. Five the past two season has been doing everything in his power to stop and get away from the Commission (They want the world to end! They left him to rot in the apocalypse for four decades until he was broken enough to be useful to them!). The Commission is not a good organization and their mission is bullshit and self-serving. And suddenly, Five is the one who founds it??? He's the one who thinks this is a good idea, after he's spent his entire life trying to change the timeline, suddenly he wants an organization that specifically does not allow for change??? Sure, he just lived through an insane paradox that ate the universe and that is what the Commission was hypothetically there to stop from happening (doesn't their jumping around in time changing things make it riskier for a paradox, not less?), but the Commission could do nothing about it anyway and Five ends up in a paradox-proof box by himself in an iron lung??? In what universe does Five go "oh yeah, that's my good ending, I like that". The dude has been obsessively trying to get back to his family for half a century. I refuse to look at this plot point, it does not exist to me.

That said, the only way I even consider "Five is the Founder" is the idea - that is not supported at all by what they set up - is that Five is just a fucked up briefcase battery. They call him the "Founder" because they're mean and have a good sense of irony. That I can get behind because the Commission is that fucked up. They would. He's in his weird paradox box, strapped into that machine because that keeps him contained in case they need more briefcases. Plug him in, zap-zap, new briefcase for time crimes! Great system.

Idk, man. We'll see if they do anything with that if we get a S4 (I hope they don't address it and just drop it like a hot potato), but it just seems so out-of-character for Five to be the genuine founder of the Commission. Only things I liked that came out of that whole journey were fantastic Five and Lila times and the fact Five just carried his fucking skin around instead of finding something to copy the tattoo down onto like a normal person.

[steveharrington]

Okay in fairness I do feel like some of the later deaths had better character execution (heh) if that makes any sense. Like I’m super ambivalent to Chrissy as a character but I feel like we got a lot more development for her than Barb. Which might not be an accident bc of how heavy season one is with the character tropes, Barb starts and stays relatively one note bc she doesn’t get a chance to develop/need to do anything else but exist as Nancy’s friend

I will say barb’s death has always kind of rubbed me wrong because the narrative focus on Will makes things kind of uneven like it seems like no one cares about her (except Nancy) in comparison to how much people care about will. Which is obviously necessary for the narrative but then I get to the fact that she died in the upside down even though she was there for a shorter amount of time and I would assume have a better shot as a healthy almost-adult compared to a scrawny child. But it’s also necessary for the horror movie vibes and quite a bit less distressing than will’s death would have been for a lot of the reasons I mentioned

I’m not trying to say the other deaths which were extremely telegraphed were executed better (I still think it’s the best character death*). Stranger things is just really bad at killing off characters

(*honorable mention to Billy bc I love that he died even if I don’t care for how they went about doing it)

see for me it doesn’t particularly bother me that barb didn’t get tons of development beforehand because like ….. she was there for such a short period of time yk? so if we had spent like a good chunk of the first two episodes like delving into who barb is as a person, it would’ve felt weird and not given us as much time with the plot exposition and getting to know our characters who actually live (ooo that sounded brutal sorry barb) and in typical slasher fashion, some people who die for the sake of raising the stakes and establishing danger just aren’t going to get much of a personality before they’re killed.

as for will getting more attention than barb in terms of being missing, i think it’s kinda only natural considering the ties he has to so many of the main characters. he’s joyce’s son, jonathan’s brother, mike lucas and dustin’s best friend. it makes sense that there’s more urgency and attention placed on him because we spend more time with these characters in combination than we do with nancy, who was the only one who really had ties to barb. it is a little weird that hopper doesn’t seem very motivated to find her, i will grant you that. like damn “police chief” we got a missing girl could you like pretend to care pls

it would’ve been nice to maybe explore how will survived for a week in an environment that got barb killed immediately. i guess we’re supposed to extrapolate from the demogorgon being directly behind her at steve’s place that she just….immediately was killed? whereas will had a weapon and some distance idk that’s the best theory i can come up with.

when i say barb’s death is well executed, i mainly mean that it had an obvious impact on nancy. her relationship with barb carried through to the next season, she grieved, it caused conflict between her and steve, and the justice she wanted to get for barb was literally her main plotline in s2 (and jonathan’s!) whereas with other deaths like bob, fred, EDDIE!!!!!, etc the characters they were close to barely react. there’s some sprinkled in mourning for bob, dustin gives his fake ass speech about eddie, fred literally gets nothing from nancy at all, but barb’s death was realistic in the way it affected nancy. i think st’s main problem right now is that the stakes feel so incredibly low. like yeah someone could die but they’ll probably just come back to life, and if they don’t ….. oh well ? our characters won’t be that broken up about it ?? s1 and 2 just did a great job depicting grief and how the absence of a loved one is all consuming and not something that can just be brushed off. s4 is extremely lacking in that area

[faytalepsy]

Imagine the characters from fate but as the wheel of time characters: farah as moiraine, saul as lan, bloom as the dragon reborn, who else? 😁

It's been some time since I watched the show and I read parts of the books so this is based on the first season of the TV show and some meagre book knowledge and can't be seen as an in-depth analysis. Also it's probably very surface-level and based on vibes!

Okay Farah as Moiraine and Saul as Lan YESSS

the dynamic reminded me of Silrah so so much with the difference that in Wheel of Time it's entirely platonic (though a part of me will always ship them because badass magic lady and her trusted guard who will give his life to protect her is like a drug to me)

Anyway I do see Luna as Liandrin and not just because they are both portrayed by the same actress but also because the dynamic between Liandrin and Moiraine reminds me a bit of Luna and Farah as well as the sizzling tension that birthed Lunrah is also existent!

Then we have Bloom who, I agree has the Dragon Reborn vibes because of the Dragon Flame and Chosen One thing!

Aisha actually reminds me of Nynaeve in terms of her being very self-righteous and a sticker to(although her own) rules. She also often criticizes characters for being stubborn and acting without thinking while showing these exact characteristics herself sometimes.

The other option would be Terra= Nynaeve which works nearly as well. They both are badass in their own right, now much about healing and nature. They are kind but if someone crossed them then you better watch out.

Riven would be Mat in my mind because at first glance he seems very irresponsible but actually cares deeply. He has little respect for nobles/ people with a higher rank. They both carry a certain roguish air and are known to enjoy drinking! At the start of the series, both of them shrink from responsibility but step up more and more as the story progresses.

From here on it gets a bit murkier...

Ben and Loial kind of fit in my mind because they are both smart and have similar vibes. especially in that scene when Ben starts to explain Nettle Amalgam or however it is spelt to Farah and Saul.

Elayne might be Stella because they are both royalty and very powerful!

From Min I kind of get Musa vibes but it doesn't make much sense. It's probably based on the fact that they both have "special powers" even compared to the others. Musa is an Empath while Min can see the future. Moreover, Min learns to fight with knives and Musa wants to train to be a Specialist in S2.

For Siuan I don't really have another option but Rosalind or Luna. I decided to go with Rosalind on a whim because Siuan is a powerful leader as well. They both want to protect the world from evil (Burned Ones, Blood Witches, Trollocs) and act in secret on their own plans.

Sebastian I put with Loghain. They both gathered a following and want revenge in some kind of ancient feud. Both wield a power that is not meant for them/ stolen.

I'm left with Perrin and....Sky?? Doesn't make too much sense but they are both strong fighters with a gentle heart?? maybe...? and they are struggling with the past

Egwene also has some Aisha vibes mixed with a bit of Terra maybe. I feel like none of these really fit so....

And that's all the characters I remember enough to assign them someone!

[herinsectreflection]

The hilarious part about Faith and how incredibly gay she comes across is that it's all a natural side-effect of her intended narrative role. According to Whedon she wasn't intentionally written to be a queer or even queer-coded character, but the way she is written and her metaphorical function necessarily meant she came across as queer-coded. I'll explain what I mean:

1) As Buffy's shadow, Faith is meant to be symbolic of Buffy's repressed desires, and specifically her frustrated sexuality. Buffy is dealing with imposed chastity throughout S3, first with her trauma over Angel getting in the way of a relationship with Scott, and then the curse preventing her from being physical with Angel. It's the centre point of Enemies, its touched on in Amends, and is one of the reasons they break up. There's a reason the season climaxes with Angel and Buffy in a passionate embrace, making orgasm faces as he 'penetrates' her. It's a whole season of sexual frustration for Buffy.

Faith needs to be constantly reminding Buffy of the thing she can't have - sex. She needs to talk about sex to Buffy - and she does, extensively. Faith is written as a very sexual person in general, but it's specifically and disproportionately aimed towards Buffy, because that's her narrative role. So you end up with this character who is constantly going around like "hey Buffy do you like sex? you should think about sex now. sex. when I'm on screen the main thing on your mind should be sex and having it". Which begs the question - why does Faith want Buffy to have sex? Symbolically, it's because she represents part of Buffy, and Buffy wants to have sex. But on a pure character level... what is the explanation? What is motivating Faith to constantly talk about sex to Buffy? A few instances you can write off as her making Buffy uncomfortable for jokes, but not all of them. How it comes across is that Faith has some sexual interest in Buffy, and is probing for her feelings.

2) Faith is a Seductress. That's not a comment about her character, that's her function in the story. She is the version of Buffy who goes down a darker path, and is trying to seduce her into doing the same thing. Part of Buffy's arc in S3 is resisting this temptation, and the symbol of what she is resisting is Faith. So Faith must be an enticing, seductive figure. To quote Passion of the Nerd's review, if Faith is there to to tempt Buffy into a moral dark side, it only makes sense that she is, well, tempting. The seduction is happening on many levels.

Faith is more or less filling the Femme Fatale archetype: the seductive, sexual figure who leads the Hero off their path. It's a trope you see all the time in male-led stories, going back to goddamn The Odyssey. Buffy as a character was invented as a simple gender-swap of an old horror trope, and part of the appeal of the show is that she gets to fill the role of The Hero as a woman. So what happens when you gender-swap The Hero and don't gender-swap the Femme Fatale? You get a gay story, that's what.

3) The Faith arc of S3 is a recreation of the Angel arc of S2. It is structured in the exact same way, with the two having a push-and-pull in the early parts of the season, a setback in their relationship in episode 7, getting closest again mid-season before a night of passion that ends in sudden tragedy. Angel/Faith then turn to the dark side, become the Big Bad, and show that they are beyond saving in episode 17. The season ends with Buffy having to fight and the kill them in order to save others. This is all an intentional recycling, as part of the show building up the Trolley Problem and the idea of Buffy being a killer, repeatedly escalating it to get us to The Gift. What this means is that Faith steps into the role that Buffy's love interest played in the previous season. This is the story that we have just had told to us as a tragic love story. We see it again, and guess what? It's still a tragic love story. Only now Faith is in the role of the love interest.

4) Part of the conflict surrounding Buffy and Faith is Buffy's fear of being "Single White Female'd". She fears Faith might steal her loved ones, and Faith does threaten that. She gets along with her mother, her friends... but most of all, her love interests. Buffy's fear of being replaced manifests as Faith trying to literally seduce away anyone romantically linked to Buffy. Angel, Scott Hope, Xander, later Riley, Spike, Robin Wood... Faith is comprehensively and exclusively attracted to men that Buffy dated. I'm honestly surprised she didn't find Owen and Parker from somewhere for a night in the sack. Again, this makes perfect heterosexual sense from a symbolic point it view - she threatens to take Buffy's place in the narrative, so she takes her place in relationships - but on a character level it becomes ambiguous. Is she actively trying to replace Buffy? Or is she trying to stop Buffy dating anyone for another reason? The simple fact is, there is exactly one common denominator with all of Faith's romantic entanglements: Buffy.

It's a canonical aspect of Faith's character that she is jealous of Buffy. We see that made explicit in Enemies - she's jealous of everything Buffy has: her family, her comfortable home life, her friends, her narrative standing, and of course her loving partners. So of course Faith displays jealousy whenever Buffy is involved with a guy. It's a necessary part of building Faith as this figure of Want and Envy. But how it plays out on screen isn't that Faith is jealous of Buffy because she wants these other guys - of course not, because we see her look jealously through the window at Buffy and Riley in This Year's Girl and Riley obviously means nothing to her. Rather, it very much appears that she is jealous of these other guys, because she wants Buffy.

There's also the added bonuses that come from the show playing with so many metaphors, that sometimes they cross in interesting ways. One of Faith's main purposes is to celebrate being a Slayer, and to encourage the same in Buffy. She wants Buffy to accept and embrace being a Slayer. Here, Slayerhood is standing in for independence and hedonism and making your own rules, all the things that Faith is encouraging. But one of the many other metaphors used is the 'coming out' metaphor. "Have your tried not being a slayer?" "It's because you didn't have a strong father figure isn't it." "I've tried to march in the Slayer Pride parade." It's a note that's hit really hard specifically around the time in the show that Faith is introduced. So if you carry this metaphor on, then Faith becomes an out-and-proud lesbianSlayer, trying to convince Buffy to accept and embrace her sexuality.

And it has a recursive effect too. All this stuff contributes towards Faith feeling like a very queer character. And Faith, of course, is Buffy's shadow self, meant to represent her unconscious desires. So when the symbol of your unconscious desires is so lesbian-coded, then the implication becomes that one of your unconscious desires is lesbian desire. Faith's existence as a part of Buffy implies the existence of Buffy's bisexuality. Which contributes to the relationship feeling ever more queer, which makes Faith even gayer.

I find this absolutely hilarious, because the queer subtext was never intended. Joss Whedon apparently was annoyed that people read this into their relationship, and the commentary from the other writers that does address it tends to point to Dushku's performance. And yeah, she is definitely leaning into that in her portrayal. But the main reasons that so many people have this reading all come from the writing. It's all stuff that is integral to the point of her character. Every metaphor and function in the narrative, every symbolic purpose she has, none of it was meant to be gay and yet it all leads directly to Faith appearing to be totally and completely gay. The queerness is accidental and unavoidable. And I just find that really fucking funny.

[allisoooon]

Do you think one of the reasons Klaus made no effort to improve his relationship with Ben is because of his guilt thinking he kept him from moving on, and hoping that at some point, Ben would just give up on Klaus and finally cross over into the afterlife? Before going sober, Ben wasn't around as much, but after the time jump, they are literally on top of each other 24/7 and Ben is a constant reminder of his "mistake" as a kid. Klaus certainly seems to push Ben away as much as he can in S2.

This is where I feel like the biggest waste of Klaus was in s2. We find out about this guilt he's been carrying at the last possible second and have no information on it apart from the fact that it exists. That being said, I don't think this is some kind of "hurt him to save him" thing. I don't think that's something any of the Hargreeves siblings, save for Luther in s1, buy into. That was their dad's attitude. If you've decided you have the right to hurt someone, that's fucked up.

When someone goes through something traumatic as a child or adolescent, part of them tends to get frozen at that age. This is also something Shobert Reehan talked about in regard to the drugs--when you start, your development is interrupted. Klaus doesn't make an effort to improve his relationship with Ben for a few reasons. First of all, he didn't know he was about to lose him and was therefore on a deadline. Second of all, he's basically still a child. Children aren't great at conflict management. Finally, he wasn't the only problem in the relationship, and having been in codependent relationships myself, he probably saw Ben as most of the problem. As someone who was the codependent in those relationships, I strongly suspect Ben didn't see himself as needing to apologize for anything. He's accustomed to being the adult in the relationship, so his judgment is by default sounder than Klaus', so Klaus should do as he says--only, Ben also has no idea what he's doing, it's not his life, and his advice is unsolicited. It's all complicated as hell.

Also for Ben not being around much in s1, I'd put that down to the Law of Conservation of Detail. Justin Min wasn't a series regular and even his participation was kept on the DL until the series was released, since they wanted Ben's presence to be a surprise for fans. I'm sure Ben was around more than we saw.

[memryse]

hello tumblr i present my canon-compliant "DSMP But... Everybody Discovered Large-Scale Organised Religion" mianite au which took a few hours to write up oops. basically here is a list of which god everybody would follow and why, based on canon events (i have therefore left out a couple of the members who don't really do lore or be on the server much because i definitely don't know about them enough to be accurate!)

dream: mianite. obsessed with control, you get it. went too far though and developed his own obsession with controlling the server so he is now godless and in jail

tommy: dianite. tommy is a favourite of dianite's - he's idealistic with a penchant for chaos, and like i said in my other post dianite probably sees himself in tommy a little. they're both misunderstood as Bad People

tubbo: ianite -> dianite, he converts post-doomsday. grew up as a follower of ianite and trying to follow her path put added pressure on him during his presidency. embraces being a dianitee with the start of the nuke program, but he keeps all his ianitee family heirlooms. ianite still holds a soft spot for him because of his family and occasionally gives him minor blessings. that being said she's of course a little disappointed he chose to change gods, but respects his decision

ranboo: no god, but enderwalk ranboo is an acolyte of ianite; awakeboo eventually converts to ianite when he reads awakeboo's note and decides to become more active in conflict resolution. he realises ianite actually aligns with his newfound ideals, and is of course more in touch with his ender side. however prior to this he wasn't really very keen on worshipping any gods, seeing as all he saw from them was wars waged in their names.

wilbur: also an atheist. probably prayed to dianite during pogtopia ("dream, i want to be your vassal" type beat) but other than that he's the type to criticise organised religion and be an independent leader, no need for gods. wilbur and ranboo narrative foils my beloveds!!!

techno: ianite. the thing about c!techno is he has one goal and he will stick to that no matter what - it's not total order, but it's not chaos either because there is motivation and reasoning behind it. also, a core tenet of ianitee ideology is not involving yourself in conflict until somebody personally wrongs you. much like butcher army era techno where he retreats to a peaceful (more godly, in this case) life until he's hunted down, at which point he Fucks Shit Up. in general techno holds grudges and takes even slight betrayals very seriously.

phil: ianite. i can see antarctic duo as former warriors of ianite! idk i don't have much to say phil is just.. a chill old warrior. probably jaded and tired of fighting wars for his goddess, but he still prays to her. specifically he prayed every night that wilbur could finally find balance in the afterlife. :)

niki: also ianite. definitely. niki values her own beliefs and morals, she's her own independent self. maybe she was a mianitee pre-nov 16th, but not since then. this makes the syndicate pretty much just a secret squad of ianitees (+ ranboo who everyone kind of just assumes is an ianitee given that, yknow, enderman). this is extra fun with the syndicate table being an end portal

sam: mianite 10000000%. he puts his commitment to duty above all else. not really much more to say he is just fully committed to keeping the server safe by carrying out mianite's will and imprisoning dream.

foolish: he's a god himself, so he doesn't follow any of the main three. however in the past he did work with mianite, enforcing his control over the land. from what we know about his totem of death period it wasn't like.. wanton destruction, it was him seeking control through violence, so i'm not inclined to say he worked with dianite back then.

george: man just wants to sleep and farm wheat, he's mianite. ez.

sapnap: also mianite. dream team as mianite's strongest and most revered knights!!!!!!

puffy: she's a pirate lady i don't know what to tell you other than she was part of capsize's crew. ianitee pirate ladies i care you. plus i feel like puffy centres mostly on people and not allying herself with specific nations or causes, she believes in balance above all.

eret: i view the greater dsmp as a mianitee nation, so as king of it they obviously have to follow mianite. eret has always strove to be a good king and help their nation prosper. plus, who knows what went on in the past with foolish. former mianite warriors eternal duo? i think so! (i think it would be cool if a literal reincarnation of herobrine was a mianitee purely because it fucks with everybody's expectations)

quackity: dianite. not just because he's chaos incarnate at times but like his entire current arc is so reminiscent of the fact that s2 dianite was literally a businessman. rip ghost dianite you would've loved c!quackity

fundy: oh boy here's a complex one. fundy switches gods frequently - look how much he craves acceptance from authority figures, from a substitute parental figure. i think right now his prophetic dreams could be interpreted as him being chosen by a certain god who sees potential in him, but i can't say who bc we don't really know too much about them or even why he's suddenly having them. that being said his chaotic scamming foxboy side definitely embodies dianite and he should have stuck with dianite the entire time but nah he needs Validation

jack manifold: follows dianite, but dianite isn't really pleased with him trying to kill tommy so often (seeing as he likes tommy). this is why he has such comically bad luck. his god is continually fucking with him.

karl: ianite, specifically chosen by her to become the historian of the server. the purple theme.. the duty to write down history as it truly happened (as opposed to censoring history like a certain mianite did). the existence of both the in between and the other side. karl Is balance. thank you. (also this makes karlnapity's marriage one mianitee, one ianitee and one dianitee. diversity win!)

schlatt: mianite (derogatory)

the eggpire is pretty much just the darkness isn't it. mianite was the blueprint actually.

bbh: dianite at first, judging by the badlands' ideology. corrupted by the darkness though.

antfrost: also dianite, but probably really lowkey about it and only ever prayed when the badlands needed his blessings. again, corrupted now

hannah: mianite - her connection to nature is by extension also a connection to mianite, the god of the overworld. plus she cared about maintaining harmony on the server and went to lengths to ensure it like the whole "killing her own dogs to protect them" thing. currently on her corrupted girlboss arc though

punz: dianite, he likes money and killing people idk what more you expect from me. even after joining the eggpire this has not changed at all. he'll work for other gods' followers for the right price but he's not changing his core beliefs

ponk: i don't know very much about him i'm ngl, especially not pre-eggpire. prior to his corruption though i do kinda like the idea of a mianitee doctor doing fucked up little experiments idk he just has mianitee vibes to me in the same way tucker was a mianitee.

skeppy: he and bbh are obviously both dianite together prior to the egg. it simply would not be right of me to put him anywhere else.

purpled: ianite. the colour purple... the tendency to stay so far out of conflict that he doesn't even log onto the server... mans was born to be an ianitee actually

[bedlamsbard]

Putting aside aesthetics and characterization (inasmuch as I can), I have been trying to logic out why Mando Ahsoka feels so different from Rebels Ahsoka (to me, personally; I know many other people feel fine about it), especially in terms of having a character who’s known in Rebels for her “I am no Jedi” line going to a character who is specifically introduced as “The Jedi” in The Mandalorian.  (And who is identified as “Ahsoka Tano, Jedi Knight” on merch -- merch is merch, it’s essentially meaningless, but it’s still a choice that was made somewhere along the line.)

“Shroud of Darkness,” Rebels 2.17

“Twilight of the Apprentice,” Rebels 2.21

This is strictly Doylist and not Watsonian; I don’t care what went on in the character’s life in between Rebels and Mando; I’m trying to guess what was happening in the writers room.

I was noodling through this on Twitter, in case it looks familiar.

My first thought was Dave taking a cut scene from Rebels as canon going into Mando, something he shared on Twitter back in the lead-up to S4.  Looking at this again I’m not sure this was a cut scene or a scene that he wrote that never made it into the actual script. (Certainly I can’t see how it would have fit into the episode.)

Here Bendu specifically identifies Ahsoka as “former Jedi Knight.”  This is also obviously not canon, because Twitter posts aren’t canon, Dave.  (Though that doesn’t mean that he might have taken it as part of his working backstory for the character anyway.)

I was then thinking about TCW and the unused TCW arcs as they existed in 2016 when this aired (with the rough guess that Rebels S2 was probably written in 2014).  There are three Ahsoka arcs that were written and existed in 2016 in some form (”scripts and some artwork” is what Pablo Hidalgo says, and some pre-viz and recordings from the original Walkabout arc that were shown at a couple Celebrations), but which hadn’t made it into S6 (which came out in 2014): Ahsoka’s Walkabout (in its original form with Nix Okami instead of the Martez sisters), the Siege of Mandalore, and an arc which would have taken place between those two, “Return to the Jedi.”  We know about these because of a panel from Star Wars Celebration Europe in 2016 called Ahsoka’s Untold Tales -- I was actually at this panel, but I haven’t thought about it in a while.  Here’s the SW.com liveblog of it; here’s the video.

I remember hearing somewhere that the TCW team had nine seasons or so written, but can’t find the source for that number now.  When S7 was made, there were obviously a lot of compromises made that we’ll never really know about, minus a tell-all memoir or documentary, which probably isn’t coming any time soon.  Knowing that this Return to the Jedi arc existed, I wondered if at one point Dave had tried to get all three Ahsoka arcs into S7 before having to give one up for the Bad Batch arc (especially as we now know there’s going to be a Bad Batch TV show); it’s also entirely possible that at one point in the production process there was the possibility of a full 22 episode season floated, which would have made three Ahsoka arcs in one season less unbalanced.

I went to go look up what the Return to the Jedi arc actually was, since 2016 was a long time ago and I haven’t really thought about this panel since.  My guess is that it had been intended for one Ahsoka arc per remaining season (7, 8, 9).  Pablo Hidalgo says that after the Walkabout arc, Ahsoka would have stayed on Coruscant as “an under-city vigilante of some degree, helping people who can’t help themselves,” and Dave points out that he talked about this with George Lucas, as well.  The Return of the Jedi arc would have involved Ahsoka finding out about a nefarious plot targeting Yoda and working with the Jedi to figure out what’s what with that -- this revealed that below the Jedi Temple was an ancient Sith shrine. (Some details of this were revealed at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim in 2015.)

Ahsoka would have been protecting the holocron vault from Darth Sidious, putting her lightsaber blade through the door while Palps shoots Force lightning up the blade.

“The whole purpose of that particular arc would have been to bring Ahsoka back. She’s not a Jedi, she doesn’t change her decision, but she gets involved in Jedi business again.”

The next Ahsoka arc and the final arc of the series would have been the Siege of Mandalore arc, which “reunites Ahsoka with the clone troopers, with Anakin.”  My guess is that the end of the Return to the Jedi arc would have involved Ahsoka making the decision to go to Mandalore because the Jedi themselves couldn’t get involved in that conflict at the time (especially the emphasis in the panel that Pablo and Dave put on Ahsoka as being “a responsible person” who couldn’t ignore that the war was still going on, and because Ahsoka knew Satine).  (It would be interesting to know when if this arc would have fallen before or after the Darth Maul - Son of Dathomir comics, which are based off another unmade TCW arc.)  This would probably have put as much as a season between this arc and the final arc -- given TCW’s funky timeline that doesn’t mean much, but in terms of audience expectation it helps.

(also, damn, the context of the beginning of Siege of Mandalore in the original concept vs. how it actually happens in S7 is very different -- like, on the surface identical but the emotions involved are totally different.)

Before going into the next part of the panel (post-war), Pablo Hidalgo adds “We consider it to have happened and that’s how we inform the writing in Rebels, because that’s the history that these characters carry in their heads.”

So going into Rebels, the writing team was working with the background that Ahsoka had not only left the Jedi Order once, in “The Wrong Jedi,” but had reinforced her decision not to go back to the Jedi by not returning to the Order during the Return to the Jedi arc.  That explains why in Rebels she’s so adamant about not being a Jedi or being in the Order; it’s a decision that she has made not once, but twice.

Fast forward four years to 2020, where we have the Siege of Mandalore arc in S7.

It’s heavily implied that Ahsoka was planning to go back to the Order after the end of the war, and in fact Yoda treats her as such.

Now, there’s no way to know if this exchange was in the original Siege of Mandalore scripts short of those being released at some point (which is possible but seems unlikely when the character is still in play), but because of the way S7 plays out there is no way to put the Return to the Jedi arc back into the story, which means all the emotional context and Ahsoka doubling down on not returning to the Order is thrown out of the window.  That’s a fair chunk of backstory to take into the Rebels writers room.

(It should also be noted that presumably E.K. Johnston wrote the Ahsoka novel with the assumption that that arc was still part of Ahsoka’s working canon, though she may not have seen scripts for it; I feel like I read somewhere that she had seen scripts for the original version of the Siege of Mandalore, which changed quite a lot between original concept and the eventual 2020 version, as is evident from the novel vs the show.)

Going into The Mandalorian, then, Dave Filoni is not only working without a writers room (as Mando has only had two writers, Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau), but working with an entirely different continuity than what the Rebels writers room was working with.

Trying to backtrack when various scripts were written is an exercise in futility to some extent; I usually guess anywhere from a year to two years out from when the shows air.  (I seem to remember that around this time in 2016 it came out that Katee Sackhoff was doing something for Disney, which ended up being the recording for Bo-Katan in Rebels S4, which wouldn’t air for another year, but don’t quote me on these dates.)  Dave ends the panel by saying that “After the season 2 finale for Rebels I was very adamant that that was it for Ahsoka...in Rebels...but after this reaction it might just be possible...it might be possible to see her again. She might have something to do. Maybe.”  (For those trying to run dates in their heads: the con was in July 2016, the season 2 finale aired in March 2016, WBW aired in February 2018.)  My guess is that they hadn’t recorded for that part of S4 yet (and S4 is so weirdly paced that I have questions about how it was made), but that the initial scripts for S4 had already been written at this point.

Looking back at the Star Wars Celebration Chicago 2019 TCW panel where Ashley Eckstein talks about getting the news about TCW S7 from Dee Bradley Baker (rather than from Dave Filoni, and hoo boy is this uncomfortable to watch knowing that the script for “The Jedi” had almost certainly been written and Dave may have already made the decision not to talk to Ashley about it), there’s still not like...a clear way to tell when that happened.  Except that Dee talks about “wine tasting with the Rebels,” which likely puts it back when Rebels S4 was either still actively airing (2017-2018) or before it had wrapped filming (2017).  (I actually vaguely remember seeing pictures from this wine tasting but I can’t remember whose twitter it was on and going to look feels creepy.)  Probably the scripts weren’t fully revised at that point but they may have been -- still, this was certainly after S2 and could potentially be before S4 had been fully finalized.  We got the TCW renewal announcement in 2019, but the animation wasn’t fully completed yet so didn’t get more than that teaser trailer.  This is only important insofar as it involves which set of backstory was being used for WBW Ahsoka, an episode that Dave Filoni wrote and co-directed.  (Honestly? I think Mando Ahsoka matches okay with WBW Ahsoka but is a little off Rebels S2 Ahsoka, but that’s off my memory of WBW, an episode I refuse to rewatch.)  Certainly with the epilogue he knew he was setting up for something else.

ETA: I FORGOT AN IMPORTANT PART OF THIS TIMELINE AND THAT’S THE RISE OF SKYWALKER because I try not to think about TROS, frankly, but as we may remember Ahsoka is included in the “be with me” scene in the final confrontation.  This always struck me as weird given the “I am no Jedi” thing from Rebels, but she’s the most well-known female Force-user so I had just mentally written it off as easy shorthand and JJ Abrams being lazy about it. HOWEVER, presumably JJ talked to Dave about which prequel era Jedi to include (there’s a note in one of the previous SWC liveblogs about Rian Johnson being in the Rebels writers room at some point).  TROS came out in December 2019, I can’t recall exactly when they did the voiceovers for that scene (if anyone has ever mentioned it), but it was probably fairly late in the process since I believe that there were still edits being made up until fairly soon before the premiere.  (I have a completely different theory that the Lego Star Wars Holiday Special from this year was written off an earlier version of TROS.)  If Dave had already moved towards making Ahsoka more inclined towards the Jedi, with a full-on return to calling herself one regardless of the existence of the Order (as Mando implies), then her inclusion here makes a LOT more sense than it did a year ago.

Anyway this is all very conspiracy theorist, but it does explain something that was puzzling me: Rebels S2 Ahsoka and Mando Ahsoka (as well as TCW S7 Ahsoka and potentially Rebels S4 Ahsoka) were written off slightly different backstories which differed in one very key thing: how committed Ahsoka was to no longer being a Jedi.

Now, this sort of thing happens all the time in anything with an ongoing continuity; obviously TCW makes major changes to how viewers might read or write Obi-Wan and Anakin/Vader in RotS or the OT.  I was just trying to narrow it down in this particular case because until I started thinking about it I had assumed that it was all being written off the same assumed backstory. And many people read Ahsoka differently in Mando than I did or found her perfectly in character, this was for me to track references down about something that was bothering me in hopes of an explanation that would satisfy me.

[itsclydebitches]

Hello again! Im the tinfoil hat anon with the long ass asks and I finally had the time to read your response. Thank you, it makes my day reading your answers. I honestly just enjoyed them over a cup of coffee like a good book.

Now, the gun pointing scene I mentioned was in fact the one from the droid fight facility like the other anon suggested. But I really liked that you covered the boat scene too, I haven’t thought of it much myself and now I definitely have!

I also would like to mention I love your “candy bar” choice analogy and I 100% agree Hunter’s “invitation” to join back wasn’t welcoming in the slightest. It is very likely just an obligation as you said. Sort of “you gave us a chance, we owe you a chance too”.

And the problem with it is now I am struggling to figure out how the batch members might change their attitude toward Crosshair going forward, especially Hunter. As of right now Crosshair’s best relationship is not with his brothers but with Omega(as surprising as this is). And I think he does realize now she cared about him the most out of all of them during the short time they interacted(both 1st and last episodes). Even between themselves(not counting Omega) I find most of the bad batch members to be cold and distant to each other. They feel less like a family than Rebels for example. And they aren’t even a “found family”(a trope everyone loves) but an actual one! And I get that they’re soldiers and supposed to be tough, I don’t expect them to share all “the feels”. I just can’t put my finger on it but something feels off. I agree with your previous post, the show doesn’t do a very good job showing or even telling they love each other.

Will Hunter and co only start caring about their brother again only after he leaves the empire?(assuming he does at some point). What about Disney’s prevailing theme and message that “family always love and care for each other no matter what”? I guess it’s “family always love and care for each other but only if you’re good guys making right choices”. There is no room for mistakes or wrong decisions. In the last episode everyone form the batch seemed to have given up on Crosshair(besides Omega). For now their attitude seems to be just “you’re not our enemy” and that’s that.

I realize Crosshair is a “bad guy” and consciously made his choice(and we know it’s the wrong one) but to me it felt like he thought he didn’t even had a choice or rather became so lost and confused he actually thought he chose the empire as “the lesser evil”(as in the less shitty choice out of all the other bad ones). We as audience have the benefit to know exactly how atrocious the empire really is but maybe Crosshair still doesn’t realize that.

So what exactly must Crosshair do to get back “in their good graces” as you say? Start saving “the good guys”? Save the bad batch multiple times? There is a popular opinion on how Crosshair can redeem himself. That he eventually heroically sacrifices himself to save them. I personally REALLY hope it’s NOT what’s going to happen but I heard so many people speculating his story is set up to be redemption=death. I know you mentioned you don’t want “Vader style redemption” either. Personally I think it would be a waste of a character who has a lot of potential. And I just think that the batch kind of don’t really deserve his sacrifice(maybe save for Omega) after how they never tried to save him themselves and how they treated him overall. Maybe he will risk his life to save Omega at some point and that will “prove” to Hunter he cares? Although he has already shown he cares by saving her(even if in Crosshair’s own words it’s just so they’re “even”). And the thing is, he doesn’t need to prove that he loves them, he already did that in episode 15 and made it clear he does care. He actually went to extreme by shooting his squad to prove his loyalty. What were the moments the batch demonstrated they care about him? Hunter saying “you never were our enemy” and taking his unconscious body to safety? To me Hunter “not leaving him behind” during bombardment felt more like guilt about the last time it happened and an obligation to Crosshair for helping them with droids, rather than them showing care. And I kinda of think if that was any random civilian(or anyone other than an enemy or a threat) they would carry them out too just because that’s what good guys do and not because it’s their brother. You also mentioned that minutes later Hunter snaps at him with “if you want to stay here and die, that’s your choice” which I agree can be interpreted in different ways. And I think it’s one more point to it being an obligation that in Hunter’s eyes is fulfilled now. He corrected his mistake of leaving a brother behind and saved him this time, now his guilt won’t burden him any longer.

Anyway, I can’t wait for season 2 and I appreciate you and all the anons sharing the tinfoil hat, interacting and speculating together. Those discussions have been a lot of fun!

TLDR: How do your think the relationship between the brothers will mend or evolve in the next season? Do you think S2 will improve in portraying the batch more as a family rather than a group of mercs doing missions together? What are your thoughts on the popular idea of Crosshair’s redemption by ultimate sacrifice? As in, how likely do you think this scenario is?

Anon, that is just wonderfully hilarious to me. Ah yes, the sunrise, a good cup o' joe, and the overly long character analysis of a snarky, fictional sniper. Exactly what everyone needs in the morning! 😆

You know, TBB is far from the first show I've watched where there's an obvious, emotional conclusion the creator wants the audience to come to—the squad all love each other Very Much—yet that conclusion isn't always well supported by the text. It creates this horribly awkward situation where you're going, "Yes, I'm fully aware of what the show wanted to do, but this reading, arguably, did not end up in the story itself. So what are we talking about here? The intention, or the execution?" It's like Schrödinger's Bad Batch where the group is simultaneously Very Loving and Very Distant depending on how much meta-aspects are influencing your reading: those authorial intentions, understanding of how found family tropes should work, fluff focused fics/fan art that color our understanding of the characters, etc. And, of course, whether someone saw TCW before they watched TBB. I personally wouldn't go quite so far as to say they're "cold" towards one another—with Crosshair as an exception now—but there wasn't the level of bonding among the squad that I expected of a show called The Bad Batch. Especially compared to their arc in TCW. The other night I re-watched the season seven premiere and was struck not just by how much more the squad interacted with each other back then, but how those interactions added depth to their characters too. For example, Crosshair is the mean one, right? He's the one picking fights with the Regs? Well yeah... but it's also Wrecker. While they're trying to decide what to do with Cody injured, Jesse calls out Crosshair on his attitude—"You can't talk to Captain Rex like that!"—and Wrecker's immediate response is, "Says who?" and he hefts Jesse into the air. And then he just holds him there, clearly using his superior strength to do as he pleases, until Hunter (sounding pretty angry) tells him to put Jesse down. If Wrecker had put him into a more classically understood bullying position, like pinning him to the ground, it would probably read as less funny—less "Haha strong clone lifts Jesse up in the air!" and more "Oh shit, strong clone can do whatever the hell he wants to the Regs and few are able to stop him." It's such a quick moment, but it tells us a ton about Wrecker. That he's going to stick up for his brothers, no matter the context (Crosshair deserves to be called out). That he will gleefully assist Crosshair in bothering the Regs (something that is reinforced when he later throws the trays in the mess hall, after Hunter has already deescalated the situation). That he's likely been hurt by awful treatment from the Regs too. That he'll only listen to Hunter when it comes to backing off. Little of this work—that interplay among the squad that shows us new sides to them other than basic things like "Wrecker is the nice, happy brother"—exists in TBB.

Or, at least, little exists after Omega becomes an official member of the squad.

Because, as said previously, she becomes the focus. I don't mean that as a total criticism. As established, I love Omega. But if we're talking about why the squad can feel so distant from each other, I think she's the root cause, simply because the story became all about her relationships with the Batch, rather than the Batch's relationships with each other. Having dived headfirst into reading and writing fic, it occurred to me just how many of the bonding moments we love, the sort of stuff we'll see repeated in fics because we understand that this is where the story's emotional center is, are given to Omega in canon:

Someone is hurt and in need of comfort. Omega's emotional state is the focus + moments like her being worried over Hunter getting shot.

Someone needs to learn a new skill. Echo teaches Omega how to use her bow.

Someone reveals a skill they never knew they had before. Omega is a strategic genius and plays her last game with Hunter.

Someone is in serious danger and in need of rescue. Omega rescues the group from the slavers + is the most vocal about rescuing Hunter. (Which, again, is a pretty sharp contrast to the whole Crosshair situation.) Omega, in turn, needs rescuing from things like the decommission conveyor belt.

Similarly, someone is kidnapped and in need of rescue. Omega is kidnapped twice by bounty hunters and the Batch goes after her.

Someone saves another's life. Omega saves Crosshair from drowning.

Someone does something super sweet for another. Wrecker gives Omega her room. Omega gives Wrecker Lula.

A cute tradition is established between characters. Wrecker has his popcorn-esque candy sharing with Omega.

Someone hurts someone else and has to ask forgiveness. Wrecker is upset about nearly shooting Omega and they have that sweet moment together.

Note that most of these examples could have occurred between other Batch members, but didn't. Someone could have created a space for Echo on the ship too. Wrecker also could have apologized to Tech for choking him, etc. It's not that those moments shouldn't happen with Omega, just that there should be more of a balance across the whole season, especially for a show supposedly focused on the original squad. Additionally, it's not that cute bonding moments between the rest of the Batch don't exist. I love Hunter selling Echo off as a droid. I love Wrecker and Tech bickering while fixing the ship. I love the tug-of-war to save Wrecker from the sea monster. Yes, we do have moments... it's just that comparatively it feels pretty skewed in Omega's direction.

So, as a VERY long-winded way of answering your question, I think we need to fix the above in order to tackle Crosshair's redemption in season two. Now that we've had a full season focused on Omega, we need to strike a better balance among the rest of the squad moving forward. We need to re-established the "obvious" conclusion that the rest of the Batch loves Crosshair and that's done (in part) by establishing their love for one another too. To my mind, both goals go hand-in-hand, especially since you can develop their relationship with Crosshair and their relationships with each other simultaneously. Imagine if instead of just having Wrecker somewhat comically admit that he misses Crosshair (like he's dead and they can't go get him??), he and Tech had a serious conversation about why they can't get him back yet, despite very much wanting to. Imagine if Echo, the one who was rescued against all odds, got to scream at Hunter to go get Crosshair like Omega screamed at them to go back for Hunter. Imagine if we'd gotten more than a tiny arc in TCW to establish the Batch's dynamic with each other, providing a foundation for how they would each react to Crosshair's absence. Instead, what little we've got in TBB about Crosshair's relationship with his brothers is filtered through Omega: Omega's embarrassment that she knocked over Crosshair's case, Omega treating Crosshair's comm link like a toy, Omega's quest to save Hunter that just happened to involve Crosshair along the way.

Obviously, at this point we can't fix how the first season did things, but I think we can start patching over these issues in season two. It would be jarring—we'd still be 100% correct to ask where this "Brothers love you, support you, and will endlessly fight for you" theme was for Crosshair's entire time under the Empire's thumb... but I'd take an about-face into something better than not getting any improvement at all. It is frustrating though, especially for a show that I otherwise really, really enjoyed. For me, the issue isn't so much that the show made a mistake (since no show is perfect), but that the mistake is attached to such a foundational part of the franchise. Not just in terms of "SW is about hope and forgiveness" but the specific relationship most clones have with each other: a willingness to go above and beyond for their brothers. The focus on Omega aside, it's hard to believe in the family dynamic when one member of the family was so quickly and easily dismissed. I couldn't get invested in Hunter's rescue as much as I should have because rather than going, "Yes!! Save your brother!!!" my brain just kept going, "Lol where was this energy for Crosshair?" It messes with your reading of the whole story, so in order to fix that mistake going forward, we need to start seeing the bonds that only sometimes exist in season one. Show the guys expressing love for one another more consistently (in whatever way that might be—as you say, soldiers don't have to be all touchy-feely. Give us more moments like Wrecker supporting his brothers' bad habits) and then extend that to Crosshair. Which brother is going to demand that they fight for him? Which brother is going to acknowledge that they never tried to save him? Which brother is going to question this iffy statement about the chip? In order to buy into the family theme, Omega can't be the only one doing that emotional work.

Ideally, I wouldn't want Crosshair to go out of his way to prove that he's a good guy now. I mean, I obviously want him to stop helping the Empire and such, duh lol, but I'm personally not looking for a bunch of Extra Good Things directed at the Batch as a requirement for forgiveness. Simply because that would reinforce the idea that they're 100% Crosshair's victims, Crosshair is 100% the bad guy, and he's the only one who needs to do any work to fix this situation. Crosshair needs to stop doing bad things (working for Empire). But the Batch needs to start doing good things too (reaching out to him). Especially since Crosshair made a good play already, only to be met with glares and distrust. He saved Omega! And AZI! And none of them cared. So am I (is Crosshair) supposed to believe that saving one of their lives again will result in a different reaction? That doesn't make much sense. And no, his own life wasn't at risk when he did that, but does every antagonist need to die/nearly die to prove they're worth fighting for? As you say, he's already shown that he loves them, far more than they've shown the reverse. Every time Crosshair hurt them (attacking) it was while he was under the chip's influence. In contrast, the group has no "I was being controlled" excuse for when they hurt him (abandonment). Season two needs to acknowledge the Batch's responsibility in all this—and acknowledge that they're all victims of the Empire—in order to figure out an appropriate arc for Crosshair's redemption.

Right now, the issue is not Crosshair loving his brothers, the issue is how Crosshair chooses to express that love: trying to keep them safe and giving them a purpose in life by joining the organization that's clearly going to dominate the galaxy. The only way to fix that, now that his offer has been rejected, is for him to realize that a life on the run from the Empire, together, is a better option for everyone. And the only way for that to happen is for the Batch to seriously offer him a place with them again. They need to make the first move here. They need to fight for him. And yeah, I totally get that a lot of people don't like that because it's not "fair." He's the bad guy. He's with the fascist allegory. He's killed people and has therefore lost any right to compassion and effort from the good guys... but if that's the case, then we just have to accept that (within the story-world, not from a writing perspective) Crosshair is unlikely to ever come back from this. When people reach that kind of low, they rarely pull themselves out on their own. They need other people to help them do that. Help them a lot. But with the exception of Omega's reminder—which Crosshair can't believe due to how everyone else has treated him—they leave him alone and seem to expect him to fix himself first, then he gets their support. It needs to be the other way around. Support is what would allow him to become a good guy again, not "Well, you'll get our love when you're good again, not before." That's unlikely to occur and, as discussed, it doesn't take into account things like this bad guy life being forced on Crosshair at the start. If the story really wanted this to be a matter of ideological differences... then make it about ideological differences. Let Crosshair leave of his own free will, right at the start. Don't enslave him for half the season, have him realize he was abandoned, imply all that brainwashing, give him no realistic way out, and then punish him for not doing the right thing. This isn't a situation where someone went bad for the hell of it—the story isn't asking us to feel compassion for, say, the Admiral—it's a situation where Crosshair was controlled and now can't see a way out. That context allows for the Batch, the good guys, to fight for him without the audience thinking the show is just excusing that behavior. They should have been fighting from the start, but since they didn't, I hope we at least start seeing that in season two.

Ultimately though... I don't really expect all of the above. The more balanced dynamics and having the Batch fight for Crosshair rather than Crosshair going it alone... I wouldn't want to bet any money on us getting it, just because these are things that should have been established in season one and would have been more easy to pull off in season one. (If the Batch wouldn't fight for Crosshair while he was literally under the Empire's control, why would they fight now when he's supposedly acting of his own free will? It's backwards in terms of the emotional effort involved.) But again, it could happen! I'd be very pleased if it did happen, despite the jarring change. I don't want to make it sound like I think they're going to write off Crosshair entirely. Far from it, I think there are too many details like his sad looks for that, to say nothing of Omega's compassion. But the execution of getting him on Team Good Guys again might be preeeetty bumpy. I expect it to revolve around Crosshair's sins and Crosshair's redemption, even if what I would like is balancing that with Crosshair's loss of agency, the Batch's mistakes, and their own redemption towards him.

Honestly though, I just hope that whatever happens happens soon. It's a personal preference, absolutely, but after a season of Crosshair as the antagonist, I'm ready for him to be back with the group, making the Empire (and bounty hunters) the primary enemy. Whether his return happens through a mutual acknowledgement of mistakes, or through Crosshair being depicted as the only one in the wrong who has to do something big to be forgiven... just get him back with the squad lol. Because if the writing isn't going to delve into that nuance, then the longer he remains unforgiven, the longer some of us have to watch a series while going, "Wait, wait, wait, I really don't agree with how you're painting this picture."

[hopetofantasy]

Culture, parallels & meta - S3 E1

Previous season Prologue: Vlogs (1) - Vlogs (2)

°

Zaterdag 21:43

The time lapse already showing us a string of places that will be important later, like the dark alley, the Meir with Noor’s workplace, the university neighborhood, the Scheldt river where the boys hang out, ...

Perfect parallel: 

The second season starts Zoë’s POV with a (washing machine) door, whilst the third opens with a door to a party that Robbe attends.

Robbe glances back at Noor passing through the shot this episode, an action he repeats when he spots Sander in the second episode. - A very subtle hint to where his love life may lead.

The first one starts with two unknown LGBT+ girls kissing at a party, the last episode shows two known LGBT+ boys (Sobbe) kissing at their own party.

The aerial shot through the floor to introduce us to Robbe’s POV here and the aerial shot through the roof to say goodbye to him in the last episode.

Moyo saying “No one would do you” to Aaron in this episode, Aaron realizing “No one here wants to do me!” in the last.

Where’s Wally? Noor greeting Marie, accompanied by Jana and Britt. Max dancing with Keisha in the crowd.

How ‘meta’ of you: Newsflash, yes you are!

Nod to the OG: 

The deliberate messy POV: following everyone that we know already and then slowly settling on the Isak version in a tub.

Robbe saying Noor looks like ‘Natalie Portman’, which is what people said to the OG Emma when they flirted with her. Everyone, except Isak, that is.

Oop, there it is, the homophobia / heteronormativity: Moyo keeps pressuring Robbe into explaining what type of girl he likes. The boys laugh it off when he answers that ‘he doesn’t have a type’.

Lost in translation: Moyo mocks Noor’s Dutch accent, making his ‘g’ and ‘st’ sound harsher, while also adding ‘hoor’ at the end - a typical word used by the Dutch to emphasize a point.

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: Jens is playing with the weed bag. Keisha is one of the girls that Moyo mentions as Jens’ ex-girlfriend or ex-fling. Not only did Noor nót flush the toilet, but she didn’t used any toilet paper either!

°

Zaterdag 22:44

C is for culture: 

Noor rescuing Robbe on her scooter - In Belgium, you’re allowed to drive a moped or scooter once you’ve reached the age of 16. Nothing is needed if the vehicle doesn’t go above 25 km/h. If it stays between the range of 25-45 km/h and max. 50 cc, you need to pass a theoretical exam, 4 hours of driver’s ed and a practical exam to get the license. Anything other than that, has a whole new set of restrictions, types of driver’s licenses and minimum ages.  Noor and Robbe are, however, still breaking the law. As long as you’re not 18, you’re not allowed to have an extra passenger with you. Especially if they’re not wearing a helmet. (Plus they ignored a red light. Those rebels!)

“You do know that you always have to have it with you?” - The Belgian law states that everyone above age twelve, has to get an ID to identify themselves. Some might have had a Kids-ID already - for travel purposes - but that’s not mandatory. However, once you're fifteen years old, you’re obligated to carry your ID with you at all times.

Perfect parallel:

Luca being all jealous whilst staring at Noor and Robbe making out in S3, her glaring at Maud and Robbe every chance she got in the last season.

Robbe and Noor having fun on the scooter while screaming and Robbe filming their adventure in this episode. Robbe and Sander doing a similar thing, but on their bikes in a later episode.

Wink to other remakes: Robbe sporting a brown jacket. (Eliott, anyone?)

Surprise bitch, guess who: It’s Willem Chanterie, the on-set costume designer and social media production assistant!

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: Noor has a ‘Fuck Trump’ sticker on her helmet. Robbe says “Hey, it’s red” in a very clear Antwerp accent. 

°

Zaterdag 23:11

Hello from the outside: The garbage truck they sprayed, still drove around the city regularly. The art piece itself is named ‘#Genoeg mama' (= ‘#Enough mommy’). It blames the consumer society as toxic, making young people its victim.

Oopsie: Inside the graffiti den, Noor suddenly sports a tote bag with supplies, even though we never saw her wearing that in the previous shots.

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: Noor has black combat boots. The photographer is obviously Sander, in case you have missed that subtle clue.

°

Zondag 13:41

Lost in translation/Oop, there it is, the homophobia / heteronormativity: 

“Check die pekie’s”. The word ‘pekie’ is actually Amsterdam slang for ‘beautiful girl, girlfriend’. In recent years, more and more Dutch slang are making their way into the Flemish dialect, because of the Dutch rap songs gaining popularity with the youngsters.

“Vamos, flikkers”. The word ‘flikkers’ can mean ‘wussie’ as well as a derogatory term for ‘homosexual’. Again establishing the fact that the boys use a lot of homophobic or toxic words for each other.

Robbe’s clumsiness meter: +1, him tossing the bag behind Jens instead of into his hands.

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: There is a football right next to the skateboards.

°

Maandag 16:04

C is for culture: “The whole art school was talking about it” - 

Secondary school is divided in four sections: general, technical, art and vocational. Which section you choose can have effect on further education. In one of these sections, you pick what you want to study from your first to last year (‘directions’). That means that you have some courses purely focused on the direction and others that are obligated for everyone, regardless.

Art high schoolers can choose to go to work or study a specialization afterwards. Their coursework isn’t solely art based, there are general required courses too. That’s why some foreigners - including the Dutch - come to Belgium, since they’ll get a more rounded and higher level of art education than in their countries. ‘de!KUNSTHUMANIORA’ is the high school in Antwerp Noor goes to and is known for having students with unique styles.

Perfect parallel: 

Noor waiting outside the school for Robbe and him reacting somewhat confused here, Sander doing the same and having an instantly happy Robbe in a later episode.

Robbe having no problem kissing a girl ‘as a straight guy’ in front of the gates in this episode and scared for what might happen if he kissed a boy ‘as a gay guy’ later on. 

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: The insta caption underneath the art work says ‘An inspirational message on a Sunday! Just discovered this in Antwerp city today. Artist unknown... Can you remember when you last called on your mother?’ (That last sentence, oooofff, the symbolism!)

°

Dinsdag 14:57

C is for culture: 

“Yes, mini enterprises are so chill.” - Mini enterprises are often used as a tool for Economics in the fifth/sixth year. The goal of these is to ‘learn whilst doing it’. Like the name specifies, mini enterprises are actual miniature companies set up by a group of students. During the school year, they’ll try to work together on commercializing a product. All aspects of entrepreneurship are at play here: writing a business plan, holding meetings, doing bookkeeping, marketing the product, produce and sell it, ... If the enterprise idea is good or well executed, it might even win a national prize by the company making this education formula.

“What if he contacts child protection services” - Actually, those services doesn’t really exist in Belgium. There are, however, other youth organizations for these types of things, like JAC - Youth Advice Centre, CLB - Centre for Student Guidance and the Centre for Mental Healthcare.

Perfect parallel: The boys hyping Aaron up to walk over to Amber and talk to her - yet he fails in this episode, them doing the same and he succeeds (after some fails) in the last episode. 

Oop, there it is, the homophobia / heteronormativity: Jens saying “Damn, seems like someone is on his fucking period”, after Robbe snaps at him due to the difficult telephone call with his dad.

Lost in translation: Jens saying “Mijn kop staat er niet naar” (= “My head’s not standing there”) can actually mean different things: I’m not in the mood, it’s not the right time, I don't want to do it, my head’s all over the place, ... It depends on the context, on which interpretation would suit the situation the best. 

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: The girls are all fawning all over Britt’s cellphone, so there is a good chance that they’re discussing (pictures of) her boyfriend, Sander. Also, Jana’s braces are gone! 

°

Donderdag 17:13

Perfect parallel: Robbe stating that he can’t talk to his dad or he’ll fight and Zoë getting that, as she said a similar thing to an understanding Senne about her parents in S2. 

How ‘meta’ of you: Ah, yes, fandom ship names in SKAM. We applaud!

Oopsie: If you look really hard, you see that the body type and hair of Robbe’s dad, doesn’t correspond with the version waiting at the restaurant later on.

Wink to other remakes: This shot reminding you of a certain S3 trailer?  👀

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: The numerous references to Zoënne’s relationship in their room (relationship pics, Senne’s guitar). The paper Milan gifts to Robbe is the written permission by his parent to live with them, as is obligated by law.

°

Vrijdag 20:04

Perfect parallel: 

Senne pulling Zoë up after a kiss here, just like with their first kiss in S2.

Robbe pushing Milan away after thinking he wanted to kiss him at the party in S2, them hugging it out in after talking about it in S3.

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: Zoë and Milan making some healthy party snacks like cauliflower and cocktail sauce, cheese with tomatoes and salami squares. She pulls back the bottle of gin that Milan wants to steal. Senne also bought paprika and tortilla chips from Colruyt (a discount store).

°

Vrijdag 20:54

C is for culture: “Noor, Robbe’s girlfriend” - (Teen) dating culture is different in Belgium. Usually, if you have kissed, hung out, texted or just said/did something to show your mutual interest, you’d pretty much consider yourself in a relationship. It can go from 0 to 100 very quick. Unless there is, of course, an agreement that what you’re doing is no such thing. Also, nobody really ask you to be their gf/bf. It just implied or stated to their family or friends. 

Perfect parallel: 

A reluctant Robbe pushing himself to do stuff to Noor (playful dancing, kissing, riling her up) as far as putting his hands on her bra here. A totally different, excited Robbe not even thinking twice about doing these things to Sander, even licking his nipple during their reunion.

Noor pushing Robbe on the bed and climbing over him, whilst Robbe looks all sad in this episode. Him pushing Sander on the bed and being happy as Sander crawls over him during their reunion.

Oop, there it is, the homophobia / heteronormativity: Robbe tries to convince himself into liking heterosexual sex with Noor and fake laughs with his friends about having it.

Where’s Wally? Keisha laughing with Amber and later dancing with Marie.

Blink-and-y’ll-miss-it: Jens is talking to Senne. The decorations behind Milan saying ‘Welkom Robbe’ (= ‘Welcome Robbe’). Noor has a beautiful tattoo of a pin-up girl covered with butterflies on her lower arm.

[insomniacowl]

Neon Genesis Evangelion analysis chapter 12: Eva Unit-03 Secret of Class 2-A

A piece of Shamshel core fragment

 While Shinji and friends were fighting off the angels invading Japan, Evangelion Unit – 03 and Unit – 04 were under construction in Nerv’s American base. The two new units were different from Unit – 02 in two ways. First was the choice of the color, but more importantly, the equipment of the S2 engine. Unit – 03 was meant to be the first model to be built to use the S2 engine. 

Just to refresh, the S2 engine is just a name that humans are using to call the fruit of life that the angels carry in their core. Then it raises the question, “How was it possible for Nerv to have built it in the first place?”

We are told that the S2 engine planted into unit – 04 was made by restoring the shard of Shamshel’s core we see in the early part of episode 5. Yet the implementation fails and Unit – 04, along with the whole of Nevada base disappears in what can be called the “Mini second impact”.

 The moment of destruction

 Due to this unforeseen (?) accident, America immediately transports Unit – 03 to Nerv headquarters in japan. The headquarters is then granted the authorization to conduct an activation test on the unit and they choose Suzuhara Touji as their candidate.

 We shall not delve into the fate of Unit – 03 as I believe there is not much to be said of it as of yet (We will get to the dummy plug later chapters). But let’s talk about the core of unit – 03. As we have seen in the past few chapters, each soul contains the soul of the pilots’ mothers. Therefore, we can make an educated guess that Touji’s mother is inside Unit – 03’s core. 

Then we come to the question of, why are all the pilots in class 2-A of the third Tokyo private academy? One thing that all of these students have in common is that they have been identified as potential Eva pilots by the Marduk institution. In other words, even if it wasn’t Touji, the pilot of Unit – 03 would have been chosen from Class 2-A, and it was Touji who met the required criteria for the selection.

Kaji the Great detective

 Let us quickly cover what the Marduk institution is. On the surface, it is an association created to choose the appropriate candidates to pilot the Evas. But we learn in episode 15 through Kaji that it is made out of 108 non-existent paper companies, showing that such an institution does not exist. In other words, it is just a cover for Nerv to avoid potential problems that arise in their process of choosing the pilots. 

 It suggests that the process of choosing Eva pilots is highly inappropriate at the least and it will cause a social outcry if the method was to be made public knowledge.

Type that worries, and the type that demands

With this in mind, we can ask the question, why did Marduk institution brought all of these children together in this class? To understand this, we need to understand the criteria for becoming an Eva pilot. To move the Evas, the pilot needs to have ridden it on their own accord. But this is not enough to explain the special trait of the students of school 2-A.

 For example, in episode 18, we see Kensuke pleading Misato that he wants to pilot the Eva. Yet even when he showed such desire to do so, he was not considered as a pilot. Rather, it was Touji that was chosen to be the Pilot of Unit – 03. Of course, there is a substantial difference between ‘want to pilot’, and a ‘have to pilot’ (remember that Touji was offered to have his sister in a better hospital if he were to become a pilot), there is definitely a more important reason to why Touji was chosen over anyone else.

 Let us also consider that if they are in the same class at school, then they are all fourteen years old. We could try and the hypothesis that age might be a requirement in the criteria of piloting the Eva. While it may not be needed for them to be exactly fourteen years old, it is around this age that teenagers undergo puberty. 

 Perhaps it is the confusion regarding self-identity during this stage of development that makes it easier for them to share their emotions with the unknown entity that resides inside Eva’s cores.

Our problematic trio

 To add to that point, teenagers are not too childish, but neither do they tend to have the necessary social skills like adults. Think about it for a moment. Neither Shinji, Rei, nor Asuka can be said to have been sociable. It is too apparent in Rei that we can gloss over, Shinji too showed much difficulty in forming close bonds with his peers, and Asuka had a bright and positive demeanor, yet she was plagued with a distorted sense of pride. This kind of mental state likely serves as a positive reinforcement in their desire to pilot the Evas. Returning to Kensuke that we touched on, he can be considered as one of the more social ones among the students of Class 2-A. So was Hikari.

 To such children, they did not need to rely on Eva; rely on ‘a different self’ for a sense of identity

Kensuke is out of consideration due to his sociable nature

Hikari is also out due to her being too normal 

Due to such difference in the key trait (required to pilot the Evas) among the children of class 2-A, we could say that this is also not the only criterion that Marduk institution used to choose these students. If so, my argument to what this criterion is can be answered by considering the Shinji and Asuka's common trait; having their mothers’ souls trapped inside of Eva’s core.  

My argument is that the most important criteria to be selected as the pilot of Evas is not in any of their inherent abilities, but if there is a suitable soul that coincides with the potential pilot. In the settings document of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s story, it explicitly mentions that ‘Inside of Each Eva’s core, it carries the soul of the pilot’s mother.’ (except for Unit – 00 and the mass-produced units. I will talk about them in the following chapters). Therefore, it is likely to be a fact that the minimum required for the activation of Evas is the existence of a corresponding soul of the mother of the pilot in the core, and from here on out, I will talk with this being taken as common knowledge.

This is another point that supports this theory. It can be easy to overlook as just a coincidence, but all of the students we get to know in class 2-A do not have a mother. For Kensuke, we only hear of his father. Hikari lives without her parents, just her sisters. Even Touji only has his younger sister, Father, and his grandparents. All this points to the fact that All of the students in class 2-A do not have their mothers at this point, and we can make an educated guess that they have been sacrificed in creating the spare cores. And their children have been collected using the Marduk institution and are classified under the name of ‘reserve Eva pilot’.

It is a frightening thought, but if we take a moment to think about it, it helps us answer other questions. Why would these children, whose families are not too well off living in the danger zone of Tokyo – 3? We can only make an educated guess as there are no clues to what has allowed this to happen. But I present to you a scenario of what could have happened. The mothers of the students of class 2-A signed up for the contact experiment in exchange for financial rewards during the period of war and famine. The contact experiment is the one that we know both Yui and Kyoko took part in and they have likely met a similar fate. The results of the experiment their families were told would have been ‘Death from unforeseen circumstances’ and the families would have been compensated financially and with the right to live in Tokyo – 03.

 It is a terrible thing to imagine, but this is the best I could think of to answer the questions of, why are all the students of class 2-A selected by the Marduk institution, how can the ‘right soul’ be ready when the pilot has reached the age of 14, and have a specific one exist inside the core of Unit – 03. Such questions cannot be answered if the pilots were selected at random, and this scenario can answer many questions that we have asked in this chapter.

Ritsuko: Among the pilot candidate…

Gendou: You choose the fourth one?

Ritsuko: Yes, there is one that we can prepare the core for

Gendou: I will leave it to you

 To add some final points, in episode 17, Ritsuko tells Gendou that “there is a child that the core can be prepared in a short notice”. This implied to us that the core and the children exist as a pair and the right combination is required for the piloting of the Eva. In other words, somewhere in Nerv headquarters, there exist as many spare cores (With a soul inside each of them) as there are students in class 2-A.

 All that is needed is for Ritsuko to choose the appropriate one and plant it into Unit – 03. 

Touji is handsome when seen up close

What puts the nail in our coffin is presented to us in the PSP version of the game ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion 2’ there during the fight with Leliel, if we were to select Touji, he meets his mother, just as Shinji did in the TVA.

The kind-hearted brother going to meet his sister (Sister complex)

 Ending off, let me address the point that is bound to arise, the argument that the soul inside the Unit – 03’s core being that of his sister.

 This claim, at least within my ability to search, first appeared in Kitamura Masahiro’s “Complete Evangelion explained”. He argues that Ritsuko’s line about being able to "prepare" a core immediately as referring to using Touji’s sister who is injured and in hospital. Indeed, we are not shown the state Touji’s sister during the series, therefore I can see why he makes an assumption that Touji’s sister is either in a vegetative state or has gone crazy as Kyoko did. 

 I argue that this is a gross misinterpretation made from ignoring the role Marduk institute plays in the pilot selection process, thus it is losing legitimacy as it does not take into consideration all of the relevant pieces of the puzzle. 

Furthermore, he supports his argument by referring to the tone of Ritsuko’s voice as she says that line as being depressed. But I would like to point that even if it wasn’t Touji’s sister, Ritsuko who knew the truth of the cores would not have said that line in any other way.

 Even without child abuse, Nerv is already a horrible place.

[gasp-iwrotesomething]

Four Minutes Too Late (SFW)

Summary: MC had four minutes to bring him back; what she thought to be enough time. She was horrifically wrong. Now, after returning home numb from her failure, MC’s heart chips at the last note he left for her... and she wishes she could sock him one last time. 

Word Count: 1,928

Genre: Angst (SFW)

Warning(s): MAJOR SPOILERS FOR CAL S2, EPS 10-12, mentions of death, a bunch of angst

A/N: Here’s an alternate version of the finale of Cal North’s season 2 where the resurrection fails and MC reads the note he wrote to her. The idea of this is right up my alley for severe angst so enjoy this heartbreaking fic as much as you can.

Also inspired by the this post by @official-alex-cyprin.

MC couldn’t keep still.

Despite the numbness infecting her body, MC’s legs continued to carry around the room as she paces restlessly. How could she rest? Cal was dead. He was gone and he would never come back. MC had repeated that a thousand times over in her head at this point but somehow, after stating this in the space and comfort of her room, it still rattles her from the inside out. First with her heart shuddering and crying with the truth at hand, then the tears that prick her eyes goading her to actually cry. I failed. I failed him. And he had to suffer the consequences. She shuts her eyes against the intense waves of guilt and frustration and sadness that all lap at her, tugging and knotting her heartstrings sordidly. As morbid as it sounded, it was true; no one could convince her otherwise. Cal had sought her out specifically--asked for her assistance and utter trust--and relied on her to do her part. Bring him back to life. But she didn’t. MC tried with every ounce of her being to focus on breathing life back into him, conduct CPR until his chest moved, stab the adrenaline shot into his heart until she could feel the dull thump of it against her fingertips... But nothing happened. Thirty seconds passed--nothing. Then a minute--nothing--then two, then three, then four until Wrath had to pull her away--drag her back into reality and relay the message that it was too late. Cal was gone.

MC collapses backwards onto her bed as more guilt swamps her. What about Avi? The little boy had no idea what Cal had been planning and now that the plan failed, how in the hell would the troupe be able to break the news to him? He was so small and pure and spared from the hard travesties of life; with Cal there to raise and monitor him, Avi never had to experience loss or true grief. And now he had to face all of those inevitable feelings with the loss of his legal guardian--the person who he saw everyday and who he loved most of all. Avi would experience grief from the person who had gone through hell and back to assure that Avi never went through the past he had lived through. That shred of happiness was gone; stolen right from under his feet like it was nothing--like Cal was nothing. That, more than any other revelation MC experienced, is what tears her heart into ribbons. She couldn’t wash her mind clean of the last moments of Cal’s life--the look of regret and longing. The feeling that there was something that should’ve been said--something that should’ve been shared between the two of them. It was almost a physical thing wedged between them, thickening the air and wrapping around them like a blanket of urgency. MC recalled how she wondered if they’d ever break that silence between the two of them; wondered if this was the last fragment of regret she’d have to tote for the rest of her life if she failed.

And she did, and now the blanket was hopeless around her shoulders.

MC heaved a quavering sigh. How was she supposed to live with that? Live with the fact that she never got to tell him how she felt? That she never gave him the chance to speak his heart? Was that even a possible thing to do? The answer is turbid, unable to be fruitful to her aching chest, and she palms the tears gathering in her brown eyes. Was Cal’s death really her fault? Of course it was--she had been in charge of resuscitating him after all. And that wasn’t even the most morbid cluster of the guilt buzzing within her rib cage. MC had seen him take his last breath, felt the last essence of life leave his body; she had seen the blue of his eyes dull as they closed for the final time. She watched him sip the venom and she felt his heart slow and then stop against her hand. MC had felt his blood on her fingers, felt the lively warmth of it as Cal stilled and passed on to wherever he was destined to go. She had been the last thing Cal saw right before he died. The thought sickens her. Though it should be beneficial to her consolation process, it just made her want to bend the rules of reality and rewind time. I shouldn’t have been the last person Cal saw: it should’ve been Avi. It should’ve been Avi, for god’s sake!

Cal loved Avi more than anything and to pass without seeing him again--for the last time? MC couldn’t even fathom the prospect of it, her pulse twittering in her chest painfully. But Avi watching Cal die wasn’t something that should’ve happened; he’s a kid, he doesn’t deserve to have that mental image ingrained in his head for the rest of his life. MC retracts her wishes almost as fast as she forms them. Cal wanted Avi to live a life devoid of the sinister life of being a demon hunter--he wanted him to grow up a way that Cal didn’t get to. Avi seeing Cal dead didn’t align with Cal’s moral compass or even his goals for Avi. The least MC and the troupe could do was carry on his intentions and raise Avi just the way he did; to be a kid without a care in the world. MC presses the heel of her hand against her closed eyes. If only I had enough time... I could’ve prevented this whole fiasco. I could’ve saved Cal and he could be with Avi right now, happy and safe. We could break the wall between him and I and spread our feelings out on the table--be truthful with one another. MC descends into a spiral of ‘what if’s’, picturing a life--a reality--where Cal and her could be together. Where everyone was happy--where no grief or loss or Cal-lessness existed. 

Then she bolts upward as she remembers the note Cal had left for her.

MC’s heart races and trips and stumbles in her chest. For an earth-shattering moment, MC isn’t weakened by her everlasting grief; there’s just anticipation and giddiness, a storm of butterflies whisking around her belly. The note! How could I have forgotten about the note?! She mentally slaps herself for her idiocy and then rummages through her pocket, producing the envelope with the tiny, pleading writing scrawled on the outside. He had been so adamant that I don’t open this if it does work... what did he want me to see? The curiosity fluttering through her heart becomes more belligerent as her fingernail shimmies under the flap of the envelope, sliding to the left and summoning a gentle ripping sound to fill the air. It’s most tense during the long and surprisingly robust sound; as if mirroring the rhapsody of patter her heart sings. The flap flutters loose, gifting MC with access to the contents within. A note with a yellow tinge peeks at her from over the ‘v’ of the envelope. There it is. The note Cal wants me to read now that he’s... MC’s internal monologue fades off as the knot in her throat tightens--how was she supposed to read the note and not break down? Just thinking about the deceased gunslinger has her heart aching like it did when he had passed--more specifically, when the four minutes passed on. 

She slips the note from its bed of ivory white paper and carefully unfolds it, her heart beating so fast as if it was about to break free from her chest. She had no idea what would be inside--what Cal would’ve wrote--and what exactly would it change? Unless it was some voodoo spell that could resurrect Cal if she recited aloud, MC doubted that the contents would do anything to heal the tear that still scathed her. The paper unfurls in her hands, inviting her eyes in, giving passage to the few words that were scrawled in big yet careful letters.

I want to kiss you.

MC doesn’t move. In fact, she stills, her brown eyes traveling over every curve and line like it would all disperse into something else--something she didn’t even know. The realization thwacks her once it comes and as soon as it does, MC’s mind whirls with the implications--the possibilities. Cal wanted to... kiss me? A roll of warm emotions uncurl within her--like a long elegant carpet stitched in the classic style of a quilt--and her hand instinctively rises to her chest. So he had feelings for her too. All along, Cal had-! MC wanted to punch something, preferably the gunslinger himself, for leaving her with a dream that would never be. A dream that died along with him that night. With a shaking sigh, MC laughs--first lightly, then louder, hoping that letting it out would alleviate the pain that crowded her rib cage. It doesn’t, to say the least; all it does is heighten the urge to cry to the point where she’s laughing and vigorously scrubbing the tears gathering in her tear ducts. Now she looked like some kind of lunatic from a generic horror film--laughing and crying like she’d never known what a normal emotion felt like. Of course Cal would leave me hanging like this; why did I expect any sort of relief? But there was relief--relief that the connection between them wasn’t just a thread visible to only MC (and the rest of the troupe), but was also tangible to Cal as well. Maybe she should’ve been content with that; able to melt into a sense of giddiness that they both had feelings for one another. That there was an understatement between them of more. Maybe that was enough. But it’s not enough--god, why can’t it be enough? She was selfish to not be happy with the last thing Cal left for her--that was her first instinct--but how could she? She had been shown a future that she’d never get but had always wanted. 

MC slumps. She didn’t know how to feel about this anymore. Should she cry out of joy or cry out of misery--out of grief? MC didn’t even know if there was a right answer to that. For a moment, MC stares at the note, unable to do anything else. Then, tentatively, MC raises the piece of paper up to her lips. She kissed the note gingerly as if it were Cal's mouth, her heart full yet so empty. In her mind, she wonders how the kiss would be between the two of them. How Cal reacted, how he tasted, how his breath smelled, how soft his lips were, how warm her chest would grow... The curse of his absence settles into her fantasies and her heart ripped apart again--torn. She’d never be able to kiss him--never, no matter how much she wished otherwise. All MC could do was hope that wherever Cal was right now, above or below, that he felt the kiss.

Heard her heart's mournful orchestra and knew that it played for him alone.

Knew that she felt the same as he did for her.

That Cal knew that she wanted to kiss him too.

And that she would if she could--a thousand times over until his mouth never knew what it felt like to be unkissed.

“I’m sorry,” She murmurs softly, that hope that he’d hear it a flower flourishing in the ecosystem of her heart.

“I’m so, so, sorry, Cal.”

~FIN~

[multimetaverse]

HSMTMTS 1x10 Review

Act 2 was a great finale that capped off a great season though somewhat marred by Disney censorship. Let’s dig in!

Finally Ricky and Nini have found their way back to each other. Sweet callback to Ricky lighting Nini up with his phone as Nini does the same. Breaking Free was great though I had to keep pausing during the EJ to Ricky transition because it was so cringey. Ricky and Nini really do have the best chemistry on the show and it shines through this ep. Joshua did a great job improvising Ricky’’s confession to Nini as did Olivia reacting to it. Tim mentioned in an interview that originally Ricky was supposed to tell Nini that he thinks he kinda you knows in a callback to the premiere but on set he realized that it was too cheesy and decided to let Joshua come up with a confession based on memories of his and Olivia’s real life friendship. That was certainly the steamiest kiss we’ve yet seen on Disney + but it was well earned

 It speaks well of Tim that he recognized that his own writing wasn’t good enough and that he trusted his actors to take charge. It also goes to show how much of a difference it makes having the showrunner actually on set in Salt Lake, whether that was Tim or Disney’s decision. It’s a sharp contrast with Andi Mack where Terri the showrunner was based in LA and only rarely visited set while Michelle Manning was the producer in charge in Salt Lake, a split which I think hurt the show in some ways

That rainbow heart sign from the Mathew-Smith family was lovely. It’s great to see Seb’s family of Utah farmers being so supportive. This also confirms that Seb is out to his family, and since Miss Jenn seemed to greet Carlos’ father near the beginning of the ep it’s likely that Carlos is also out to his family

A historic first for Disney with a Seblos cheek kiss. Though of course while it’s progress it still isn’t equality. It’s not so much the Rini kisses that really drives home the inequality since they’re the main couple and were always going to kiss in the finale but rather it’s the Redlyn kiss. It’s not like Redlyn has gotten any real development nor did their story line really need a kiss so early. They got to kiss simply because they’re straight. That being said, it does once more show that the limits are looser on Disney +, we never would have gotten even a Tyrus cheek kiss on Disney Channel

Unfortunately Disney for the second ep this season released promotional photos of Seblos scenes that were cut from the episode itself. It’s not queerbaiting in the traditional sense but it is baiting the audience as they know that a lot of people are very invested in Seblos and seeing that rep on screen and Disney is willing to use that to draw in viewers while cutting the actual on screen rep down. What’s worse is that if it wasn’t for Disney itself letting us know that these scenes existed we’d never know that Seblos scenes were being cut. And of course, it’s a waste of time and money for the show to film these scenes only for them to be cut. A big complaint with Seblos this season has been their lack of development but that seems to be less on the writers who are in fact giving them more scenes then on Disney which is cutting them down to the bare minimum

It’s all shameless triangulation on Disney’s part, trying to be progressive but not so progressive as to alienate conservatives. It’s not like any homophobes are still watching the show after Seblos got together. So far it seems like the Disney censorship on HSMTMTS is coming mainly in post production like it was in Andi Mack S2 with the cut bash mitzvah scene and the edited look back which is awful but is still better than the much heavier censorship we saw in Andi Mack S3 that was coming in pre-production when things like Cyrus being able to talk about his feelings for TJ and vice versa were just never being written. Hopefully Seb being a main character in S2 means that the censorship lessens at least a bit or at the very least stays in the post production stage

In an interview done early on in the season, Tim talked about sometimes taking giant leaps and some times taking small steps in terms of the representation on the show and know we have a much better sense of what that means in practice. There was the giant leap of Seblos getting together at Homecoming and the small step of them kissing on the cheek. Afaik Tim hasn’t addressed the Seblos cheek kiss which is probably for the best and if he does I hope he has the good grace to not lie to the audience about his ability to have gotten an actual Seblos kiss approved. I do think we’ll eventually see a Seblos kiss though I think the earliest that could happen would be the S2 finale

Very telling that Ashlyn assumes EJ is behind Ricky’s exit and not a good look on EJ’s part to not tell Miss Jenn at least that Ricky left. . Good for him though for playing to lose and giving up the role of Troy to help Nini and Ricky. Confirmation that he paid for Gina’s ticket and we got our first Hell Yeah on the show. I don’t like it but it does seem like that scene was set up for Portwell in S2; at the very least it seems like Gina may have started to feel something for EJ

Pour one out for those poor audience members having to sit through that trainwreck of a second act. You know you’re really in trouble when you have to send your choreographer out there as an understudy

I loved Big Red’s little xylophone during the intermission 

Nice to see Nini and Gina end on a friendly, supportive note. Hopefully that continues next season

Kudos to Olivia and Matt for really selling the high school theatre actors barely keeping it together on stage aspect of the performance. Nini and EJ have so little chemistry that it’s almost hard to remember that they were dating for several months

Mr Darbus’ office set looked great. Nice touch to have Miss Jenn mouthing the lyrics to Wondering off stage

Lynne really sucks. Can’t say I’d miss her if we don’t see her in S2

Will be interesting to see how Miss Jenn and Mr. Mazzara save their jobs

Realistically I don’t think Nini’s performance was strong enough to earn a spot at YAC; someone like Gina or Seb would have been a much more credible choice imo. Nice touch to have the Dean leave through one door and Ricky the other

Now that the season is done it’s hard to see any traces of whatever more mature direction former showrunner Oliver Goldstick wanted to go in. The whole season seems very coherent and consistent in terms of tone. We did learn from Tim and Olivia that her song All I Want was a re-shoot so maybe it was a replacement for a song or scene that was pushing the envelope more than Tim and Disney wanted

One thing that may or may not be connected is that EJ’s panic attacks from the original character breakdown made no appearance this season and who knows if we’ll ever seen EJ having panic attacks or suffering from anxiety. Disney seemingly had no trouble showing Jonah’s panic attacks on Andi Mack which is doubtless where HSMTMTS took the idea from but it’s also true that Jonah’s anxiety story line was abandoned halfway through S3 and though it’s likely just the result of bad writing it can’t be ruled out that Disney got cold feet over focusing on mental health in both Andi Mack and HSMTMTS

Looking Ahead:

One benefit of this review being so late is that we now know the spring muscial! Beauty and the Beast which seems to suggest that all future musicals will be Disney owned properties

Tim also confirmed that they will still be incorporating songs from HSM 2 and 3 into the show which will certainly help pad out the 16 extra songs they’ll be doing in S2. Having 12 eps will be a big help to the show; 10 eps just wasn’t enough to properly deal with all the characters and plots

HSMTMTS really turned out to be a delight and while I think S2 will be as well there are definitely potential issues ahead that will need to be deftly dealt with. Nini either going away to YAC and then coming back to SLC or just not going to YAC is probably going to be wrapped up in an unsatisfying manner. In all honesty this kind of plot would have worked much better if it had been saved for Nini’s senior year

Whatever plan Ashlyn is cooking up to keep Gina in SLC is also probably going to be poorly done as there’s no reason Gina’s mother would willingly leave her daughter in another state

EJ is either leaving the show after he graduates or they’re going to have to contrive some way to keep him around East High in future seasons

Seb now being a main will be interesting, if nothing else to see what Disney’s limits are. Tim has hinted at their being drama for Seblos in S2 and I hope that it serves to develop them and is not just a means to keep them apart so there can be two gay mains but no gay relationship. As an aside Tim revealed that Joe originally auditioned for EJ which is wild; it’s funny that both Joshua Rush and Joe Serafini auditioned for EJ when neither of them had any realistic chance of being cast

I have no strong feelings on the cast list for Beauty and the Beast though I do think it’s likely that either Kourtney or Gina end up playing Belle as I think having a black girl play Belle is just the type of subversion that would appeal to Tim. Miss Jenn did say that she wanted Kourtney to come speak to her over break and while Gina is a bigger character I’m not sure if Sofia’s singing is quite good enough to carry the lead in the musical while I think Dara’s definitely is 

I’d say it’s very likely EJ ends up either as the beast or as Gaston since he’s in what should be his last semester. And if Gina also gets a big role it would make it easier to play with Portwell in S2. If EJ is the beast I could see Seb getting Gaston in another subversion of expectations. Regardless I think with Seb now being a main and with Joe having one of the strongest voices in the cast that he’ll play an important role

Until next season Wildcats

[nomattertheoceans]

The 100?

Thank you Nonnie!!! :) 

Top 5 favourite characters:

Echo / Emori / Raven / Murphy / Octavia

Other characters you like:

A lot, actually! Off the top of my head, Lexa, Clarke (although not in the way most people like her, I enjoy her as an anti-hero lmao), Bellamy, Monty, Jasper, Lincoln, Indra!

Least favourite characters:

Aside from the obvious villains obviously, I’m gonna say Kane and Abby. I never really cared for their stories, I’ve hated Abby since season 1 and Kane since s5 there’s just something about them being absolutely awful leaders and blaming kids for their failures that I can’t get behind.

Otps:

Basically lmao.

No but seriously, I think their love story is just great on so many levels, they’re the only love story I really care about in the show.

Other couples I really like are: Bellamy and Echo, Octavia and Lincoln, Octavia and Niylah, Octavia and Diyoza, Murphy and Emori and Raven, Echo and Raven, Jasper and Maya, Monty and Harper

Notps:

..... Bellarke lmao.

I enjoy the dynamic between Bellamy and Clarke, but I never saw it as romantic, and that’s how I enjoyed it. I love their ennemies to reluctant allies dynamic, I love the fact that their relationship is dysfunctional I love the parallels between Clarke and Octavia. But I don’t enjoy it at all as a romantic dynamic.

Favourite friendships:

Monty and Jasper, Octavia and Jasper, Raven and Murphy

Favourite family:

This is almost only found family because this show has a ton of found family dnamics that I love!! The Blake siblings, Spacekru, Octavia Diyoza and Hope, Raven and Finn.

Favourite episodes:

Murphy’s Law, Blood Must have Blood part 1 and part 2, Thirteen, The Chosen, Pramfayia, Red Queen, The Garden

Favourite season/book/movie:

Season 2. It has my favorite version of Lexa, it has Bellamy and Echo meeting, it has the most interesting antagonists (in my opinion haha). Season 4 is a close second though!

Favourite quotes:

“You believe that to defeat an ennemy who will stop at nothing, you must stop at nothing. How is that any different than Blood must have Blood?” - Luna in s3, because I think this quote shows very well the central conflict of the show, one that was established by Finn in s1: We have to try not to repeat history, and yet everytime, they do repeat it. I disagree with Luna in that instance because the threat that was ALI wasn’t like any other, but I agree with her sentiment.

“In peace, may you leave this shore. In love, may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels. Until our final journey to the Ground. May we meet again.” LISTEN. If there’s is one thing of the world building I absolutely adore, it’s the Traveler’s Blessing. It’s a beautiful prayer, and it gives me all the right emotions when I think about it. I was disappointed with what the show was making of it in seasons 2 and 3, with characters saying it all around, but then there are two instances that really get to me: Octavia and Bellamy saying it over the dead radio at the end of s4, and Monty / Bellamy and Clarke saying it at the end of season 5.

Best musical moment:

I loved the way the music carried the scene right after Lexa’s death, how it melts from Lexa’s death and Titus saying his ritual words, to Becca reaching earth, back to Lexa and the Flame coming out of her.

Moment that made you fangirl/boy the hardest:

Oh boy there are a LOT Off the top of my head: when Monty refuses to leave Jasper alone when he gives his blood to Maya, when Murphy says “Touch me again and I’ll end you... in a non-criminal way”, when Becho was confirmed in s5, When Clarke managed to align the satellite dish in Pramfyia, when Octavia confronted Skaikru in The Chosen,.... I can’t think of others right now but there are a lot lmao You can check out my favorite scenes series if you want, I’m working on it slowly!

When it really disappointed you:

A lot of times, honestly... I’m gonna say, all of season 6. I hated it. It had so much potential, with characters having to deal with the aftermath of season 5, Monty and Harper dying, Jordan existing, Wonkru.... Instead we got a whole mess that didn’t do much for any character and I was really disappointed.

Saddest moment:

Lincoln’s death. I knew it was coming because I knew the actor was leaving the show, but I was so NOT READY for it omg it’s the scene I still cry everytime I watch it because it’s so sad and heartwrenching....

Most well done character death:

Okay so I think The 100 is really bad at having well done character deaths, so I’m gonna say my less well-done one lmaoooo

Lexa’s. Her death was so stupid. I wasn’t in the fandom at the time so I wasn’t aware of the awful queerbaiting that was going on, so without talking about BTS and marketing ploys, I do believe that her death was heavily predicted by the show. However, it was a stupid death and Lexa was too awesome a character to die by a stray bullet. She deserved a proper send-off, she deserved to die in an epic battle, or fighting for what she believed in,..... not a bullet. 

Favourite guest star:

I know Shawn Mendes (Mendez? I don’t know lmao i don’t know him) was a guest star but I don’t know any other guest star so I guess that’s my answer lmao

Favourite cast member:

I don’t follow the cast, so I don’t have a favorite xD

Character you wish was still alive:

Jasper and Finn both deserve to still be alive, because the show treated their mental struggles like shit and I’m very bitter about that!

One thing you hope really happens:

Honestly, I don’t know? We have four episodes left of the entire show and I have no idea where it’s headed lmao I guess I hope both Emori and Murphy survive to see the end and have a long and happy life <3

Most shocking twist:

Okay I actually have three so I’ll you my top three:

1- The revelation of the Mountain Men. I was absolutely NOT expecting this to happen and I was gasping and going “nooooooooo way!!!” at my computer because it was so out of nowhere!! I loved it lmao

2- Murphy discovers that ALI destroyed the world: the ending of s2. That scene is so chilling, Murphy watching the video of Chris crying and killing himself, cut with scenes of Jaha getting to the mansion and the wholse scene with ALI herself... that whole scene was really cool and unexpected!

3- Clarke and Jaha steal the bunker during the conclave. I was so SHOOK by this moment, it was such a bold move and I loved it!

When did you start watching/reading?:

Early January, 2015. I was back at my appartment waiting for the semester to start, my roommates weren’t back from the holidays yet, and I was bored. So I started the show, and I binged all of season 1 and half of season 2 in 24 hours xD I caught up at Spacewalker, and then had to wait two weeks for the next episode to air and it was agony!!!!

Best animal/creature:

HELIOS THE BEST HORSE THERE IS

Favourite location:

The Second Dawn Bunker. Yeah I know it’s strange coming from me because I absolutely hate so many things about the bunker xD But it was such a cool location!! With the rotunda/arena, the farm, the huge corridors,.....

Trope you wish they would stop using:

“It’s the end of the world, whatever shall we do???” I’m just tired you guys. Nuclear apocalypses and other bombings should not be that common lmao

One thing this show/book/film does better than others:

I love the fact that it has so many different and well developped female characters.It shouldn’t be rare, but it still is, and this show really stands out to me for that reason. I’m not saying it’s the peak of feminism or anything because lmao IT’S NOT. But the women of the show have agency, freedom, they’re all distinct from one another and not just tropes and cliches. I really like it.

Funniest moments:

Nothing comes to mind right now? I feel like an idiot lmao I have so many moments that make me laugh and I can’t think of a single one right now x)

Couple you would like to see:

I would love to have canon Murphy x Emori x Raven!!

Actor/Actress you want to join the cast:

Nobody haha sorry

Favourite outfit:

Blodreina’s cape thingy!

Favourite item:

Raven’s necklace!!! I’m actually hoping to make myself one someday, it’s my favorite thing ^^

Do you own anything related to this show/book/film?:

Nothing!

What house/team/group/friendship group/family/race etc would you be in?:

I wish I could be spacekru haha they’re the best found family of the whole show and we deserved a flashback episode for them <3

Most boring plotline:

the entirety of season 6 xDDDDD

No but seriously, I’m gona say Illian’s plot. Honestly I never got into it at all, I didn’t care enough about him, or his family.

Most laughably bad moment:

I mean, the pilot is pretty cringe-worthy xD

Best flashback/flashfoward if any:

the flashbacks of the Dark Year.

Most layered character:

Octavia

Most one dimensional character:

Jordan lmao I was so disappointed with his story in s6.....

Scariest moment:

OMG in season 2 when Bellamy, Octavia and the guards go into the old parking garage and CAROL OF THE BELLS START PLAYING THAT WAS SO FUCKING CREEPY

Grossest moment:

Ewwww the whole worm thing happening in s5, AND the weird trees growing inside people in s6 xD

Best looking male:

S5 Murphy, hands down. Also s7 Murphy cause he spends half his time shirtless lmao

Best looking female:

Emori! She’s so pretty.

Who you’re crushing on (if any):

I mean everybody is gorgeous but I don’t have a particular fixation haha

Favourite cast moment:

I don’t watch interviews or BTS stuff so I don’t know much, but Richard Harmon wearing hie sister’s costume and wig was really funny ^^

Favourite transportation:

Becca’s rocket

Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise):

It’s very obvious symbolism, but I love the last shot of Blood must have blood part 1, with Clarke standing alone in front of the door of Mount Weather.

Also, Octavia forcing the clans into submission in Red Queen, the mini conclave in fron of the doors of the vafeteria. The shots in that scene were really good!

Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you:

Lmaooooooo do you have ten hours? Because that’s how long I can ramblr about the inconsistencies and plotholtes of this show x) Off the top of my head:

- Why does everybody on the Ark speak Enlighs?

- If Becca knew Nightblood could let you live on Earth then why didn’t she distribute it among the space stations?

- Why did Cadogan build the bunker in the middle of the city when he had a prefectly good FOREST??

- If Lexa is the first Commander to unite the clans then what was the role of the Commander before her?

- Why didn’t the Ark send one adult with the 100 (Pyke) to protect and help them?

- How come the Eligius IV prisoners don’t die when they come back to Earth in s5 since they have no nightblood and didn’t adapt through evolution?

- How is it that Spacekru survived with algea alone but Wonkru had to have this huge variety of plants?? WHAT’S THE MAGIC ALGEA MONTY???

- Why did Mount Weather crash the Exodus ship?

- If the ressources on the Ark are so scarce then why would they float people with clothes on them?

- How come Raven could visit Finn in prison but Bellamy couldn’t visit Octavia?? If Octavia was in solitary, why?

...... Okay i’m gonna stop for now lmao but I could write an entire memoir on the inconsistencies of this show lmao

Best promo:

That one:

At what point did you fall in love with this show/book: 

I’m thinking Murphy’s Law? The first few episodes were a little too teenage-drama for me but this episode shifted my opinion enough to get me to keep watching ^^

[possiblyimbiassed]

The Man in the Barrel

Some excellent observations from @ebaeschnbliah with an addition from @raggedyblue (X) made me reflect a little over the topic of Nelson in BBC Dracula, and the idea of having someone enclosed in a barrel. In Blood Vessel, when they are searching the ship Demeter for hidden murder victims and murderers, Dracula finds the young deckhand Piotr about to open a big barrel on deck, and tells him the following anecdote - apparently to distract Piotr - about Nelson after the Battle of Trafalgar (1805): 

COUNT DRACULA: Admiral Nelson was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar. Died of his wounds, they say. And they wanted to get him back to England with all speed. National hero. The British are very keen on that sort of thing. But Spain is quite a way, and it was hot, so what do you think they did? They put the old admiral into a barrel of rum to preserve him. 

PIOTR: No!

COUNT DRACULA: True. Trouble is, they didn’t tell the crew. So when they got home to England, they found out that those thirsty sailors had been helping themselves to a drop or two all they way back to Portsmouth.

(Continued under the cut)

Then Dracula digs his hand into the barrel and pretends there’s a monster in there that grabs his arm. He does this apparently to joke with Piotr, but then he scares him away by being creepy.

I can’t help thinking that this reference must have some metaphorical meanings, so I took to read some more about Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson (X). 

First of all, the anecdote seemed rather exaggerated to me. Looking it up, Dracula’s version appears very much like a tall tale. According to Wikipedia, Nelson’s body was actually transported ”in a cask of brandy mixed with campher and myrrh, which was then lashed to Victory’s main mast and placed under guard”. Not a barrel, thus, and not rum. If the cask was placed under guard, I very much doubt that any crew member would dare to even approach it, not to mention drink from its content. But there’s apparently a grain of truth in the story; Nelson’s body was preserved in alcohol onboard.

Nelson is one of the most famous British national heroes; a high-ranked naval officer who sacrificed his life for his country in battle and brought Britain to a glorious victory over Napoleon. 

By the way; Thatcher, another (in)famous British leader, is in BBC Sherlock rather compared to Napoleon, since The Six Thatchers is a direct reference to ACD’s The Six Napoleons. And Napoleon, as pointed out in @raggedyblue’s addition (X) has resemblances with Jim Moriarty - the ”Napoleon of crime”. In my opinion Moriarty in BBC Sherlock (among other symbolisms, and maybe this is the case also in ACD canon) represents homophobia.

Anyway, Nelson fought many battles and lost an eye and an arm in them, so the pirate references are actually there too. Dracula even puts emphasis on this:

As Dracula also points out, Nelson is a national hero for the British people.

Going by Wikipedia, Nelson was very popular already when he was alive. He’s described as a skilled strategic war leader who cared about his troops, and the Battle of Trafalgar did lead to a great victory for his country. But he also appears as a rather controversial human being (X); his behaviour is described as self-centered and ”vain” (X), he actively supported slavery (X), and he definitely cheated on his wife (X). He also seems to stubbornly have not listened to some advice from his fellow naval officers at the Trafalgar battle (X), which otherwise might have saved his life. One piece of advice was that he should “remove the decorations on his coat, so that he would not be so easily identified by enemy sharpshooters”, but Nelson refused, and was shot.

Another interesting thing about the Battle of Trafalgar is the marine signal flags that Nelson used on the HMS Victory to transmit the following famous message to the part of the British fleet present on site:

"England expects that every man will do his duty" (X)

Flag combinations represent the three last letters of the message. Picture by J.M.W. Turner, (X). HMS Victory still exists, by the way, and is the world’s oldest naval ship still in commission! (X)

I have tried to explore the meaning of signal flags in TFP, BBC Sherlock, in this meta, including the interesting discussion that followed (X).

A statue of Admiral Nelson (X), on a 52 m high column, stands in the center of Trafalgar Square in London, guarded by four sculpted lions that weigh 7 tons each. The square is a large meeting point in London, which is often venue for different kinds of political demonstrations. I mentioned it in this post about the punk rock musician Tom Robinson (X), who was most famous in the seventies for his fight for LGBTQ rights. There’s this photo of Tom and his band at a protest against the prosecution of the magazine Gay News, London 1978 on Trafalgar Square, where Tom in my opinion looks a great deal like Sherlock, coat and all (X). 

Trafalgar square also figures several times in BBC Sherlock - once per series in fact. In TBB (S1) Sherlock and John cross Trafalgar Square, talking about codes and ciphers: 

In TRF (S2) there’s a scene where the police car carrying Sherlock and John to the court passes Trafalgar Square, while John is telling Sherlock what he ought to remember once they arrive. We see Nelson’s statue reflected in the car window:

And then there’s one moment in TEH (S3), when John and Sherlock are discussing older underground stations via Skype with the nerdy train enthusiast Howard Shilcott. One of the stations mentioned is Trafalgar Square.

Trafalgar Square and the Strand. Hmm...

Last but not least, in TLD (S4) Sherlock and Faith/Eurus pass Trafalgar square on their little night stroll through the streets of London:

Anyway, enough about Trafalgar Square; back to Nelson and his (supposed) barrel. A man being held in a barrel also makes me think of the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic (404-323 BC), who used to live in a huge clay wine jar (X). According to Wikipedia Diogenes “made it his life's goal to challenge established customs and values” and also “considered his avoidance of earthly pleasures a contrast to and commentary on contemporary Athenian behaviors. This attitude was grounded in a disdain for what he regarded as the folly, pretence, vanity, self-deception, and artificiality of human conduct.” Quite the opposite of Nelson, I’d say. :) But doesn’t it sound a little bit like Sherlock’s opinion about marriage and weddings in his best man speech in TSoT? ;)

In art Diogenes is often depicted surrounded by dogs (X):

(X) Diogenes believed human beings live artificially and hypocritically and would do well to study the dog. He also carried around a lamp “looking for an honest man”.

There’s also a dirty joke about ‘being in the barrel’, as described by Urban Dictionary (X). (I suggest you look it up for yourselves if you’re interested, though, because I’m not gonna reproduce it here ;))) )

So, in summary: Nelson is a national hero known for having sacrificed his life for his country. But he’s also pirate-like, he takes foolish risks and seems to care little about his own survival. He’s an old ‘war lord’ (like Dracula), and Napoleon (= Moriarty - or Thatcher in BBC Sherlock) is his adversary. He dies in battle in a war against Napoleon, but after his ‘fall’, he gets preserved in alcohol, and (like Dracula) the legend about him lives on for eternity. He’s ‘Un-Dead’ and preserved for ever, but doesn’t seem ‘real’ any more. But there’s also another side of him, where he is a controversial figure; vain (’posh’?) and extravagant. In BBC Dracula we hear a tall tale about his fate, where he ends up inclosed in a barrel. Going with the Diogenes analogy, the barrel and an ascetic living could also be self-inflicted. And the dogs are a strong theme in his life. ;) @raggedyblue​ mentioned ‘Reichenbach vibes’ here (X), and I can only agree. :)

@ebaeschnbliah​ @gosherlocked​ @sherlockshadow​ @shylockgnomes