#i was pulling stuff from text and everything to point out canon characterization and what you could do w/it

[mango-dolphin]

TO THE ANON WHO SENT ME AN ASK ABOUT TRANS MEURSAULT: I WROTE 20 PARAGRAPHS AND THEN TUMBLR ATE. MY POST. EVEN THOUGH IT TOLD ME THE DRAFT SAVED.

I AM IN HELL

[kotoneshiomiofficial]

it sucks that i am committed to writing kotone as close to her canon characterization as possible, something that is tricky but doable for the others, because she really does not have many consistent characterization moments. they're either player determinant or from pq2, which have their unique issues

if you go by just p3p, assuming all social links were maxed and only aigis was romanced (the others are player determinant and ultimately, you end up with aigis anyway so im assuming platonic relations all around), you have to go by social link dialogue options and very little else. luckily, s. links have objectively correct answers and thus contain things that canonically kotone would and would not say. this at least gives us a little bit; she's kind, a good listener, and willing to show her fierce side if the needs arises (see saori's social link). but everything else?

now what we have left are the choices during s. links or story events that have NO consequences. this is where things go off the rails: depending on what you choose, you can end up with wildly different versions of the same character. for example, at multiple points, you have the choice between attempting to use violent force to solve a problem or trying to get others to help/resolve it peacefully. we see this is yukari's social link where kotone can try to straight up fight three dudes harrassing yukari, and in saori's where she can try to punch a girl who slapped saori over something that wasnt her fault.

depending on what the player chooses, we get two very different results: either someone who can and does fight well, but chooses to talk out her problems, or someone who seems almost eager to start a fight. its important to note that no one else in this entire cast except maybe akihiko displays this much willingness to throw hands. and again the problem with determinant choices: what do the choices you didn't select mean? was it something kotone was thinking about but didn't do or an abstract method of building your own protagonist? we don't know.

i mentioned pq2 earlier, and my main issue with it is despite kotone being a fully written character, we dont get any more information you couldn't get from p3p or just by looking at her. yes, she's pretty and social and bubbly and fun but she's a little sad too! and now shes back to being fun. yes, you can put together that she's pushing her own emotions down to not burden the group (as it her role in p3p to help others shoulder their burdens) but we really don't see any of it past that one scene. meanwhile in p3p, especially with ryoji near the end of the game, she can say some fairly haunting stuff. like when she's asked what lovers talk about, all she can think of a depressing or (and this is the really worrying one) pointless things. what does that mean? what is kotone's definition of a pointless thing to talk about? it could well be she deems her own emotions as "pointless" because beyond these perhaps unintentionally revealing lines, she never ever talks about how she feels. like ever.

this makes it really important to me to have a very strong interpretation of kotone in order to accurately write her (i dont mean to insult anyone, but i am not a fan of works where her personality is not pulled from the text. i once read a fic where for no reason whatsoever she was portrayed as very immature and described as "childish" and it really did not make any sense to me). so here's my take:

i think kotone is a girl who has a very carefully crafted persona of cheerful indifference; not so much "i don't care", more so "i don't mind". she's clearly okay talking with people, but has no motivation to become close until she connects with SEES (whether because of the wild card ability urging her to do so, or if you're like me and writing an alternate timeline, a golden opportunity to make friends for once.) she is genuinely kind, friendly, and a good listener, that is not a mask; rather its the non-existence of negative emotion she seems to display, using her inherent selflessness to keep everyone at arms length, to make sure things are "about her" as little as possible. she shoulders the burdens of others to avoid talking about or dealing with what burdens her.

however, that negative emotion still absolutely exists: we know she was bounced from one foster home to another, signifying neglect or worse from the parents and/or because kotone was (or perceived as) doing something wrong. this rough childhood shows us the cracks in the mask, as she can be standoffish, depressed, angry, or outright violent towards those who wrong her or the ones she loves. she doesn't want to talk to and gives a nosy girl who just wants akihiko's secrets so she can date him attitude, she's more than happy to tell maiko's parents exactly what she thinks of them, makes at least one actively suicidal comment ("i wish i was dead..." when talking to junpei and yukari), and even attempts to kill takaya after defeating him in battle. the only reason she doesn't is because aigis asks her not to.

in short, her cheerful and energetic exterior is just armor to cover up her severe depression, anger issues, and an unwillingness to open up to others (whether because she doesn't want to be vulnerable, because she doesn't trust others with how she feels, or both).

anyway. this was just a very long-winded ramble. feel free to toss in what you think in the tags, comments, whatever. i honestly love talking about characters like this and am happy to discuss

[doedipus]

1, 4, and 8 but all have them have to be about works/franchises/settings you haven't previously responded with a headcanon on!

1. States an obvious conclusion or implication that the text unaccountably fails to follow up on 

kosuzu forbidden scrollery will probably become a youkai at some point in the near future. the ending flat out says she’s gonna keep messing with youma books and hanging out with aya/mamizou/other random youkai, which had been the main factors pushing her in that direction up to that point anyway. and like, she’s always really looked up to aya and mamizou, so it wouldn’t be surprising if she aspired to become a youkai like them

also there’s this bit at the end of the fortune teller arc:

like she’s gonna turn into a youkai eventually, it’s just a matter of time and hopefully leaving the village first so reimu doesn’t violently murder her

4. Makes a character or situation more relatable to me 

the general case of claiming random shy boys and charismatic women as transfem applies, but I’m gonna go with trans!shinji ikari specifically. like it’s not a huuuge stretch to reinterpret them as a trans girl just as a token of being a shy boy who’s uncomfortable with the expectation to fulfill masculine roles... although I think it’s probably obvious from methods of bioterrorism that over time I’ve kind of moved towards rei being a more interesting avatar for talking about gender and stuff

also trans!shinji is way more appealing than a lot of his canon characterization, which leans into incel territory sometimes and tacitly excuses a lot of toji/kensuke’s bullshit

8. Less an elaboration upon the text and more a critical response to the text 

this is gonna be a weird pull, but keita umetani, the protagonist of “wolves don’t lie,” one of ryoko kui’s short stories, goes on to form a functional support structure to help deal with his lycanthropy and lets him become independent from his mom. also his mom lays off the activism a bit

a lot of the way lycanthropy is presented in the story feels like an allegory for either adhd or autism or some other type of neurodivergence, and it seems obvious to draw a parallel between the work keita’s mom does and the archetype of “autism parents” who kind of center the issue on themselves and aren’t very considerate of (or actively hostile towards) their kids. I might be wildly overinterpreting here since it’s not really something I have personal experience with though, so if someone else has an opinion on that reading, I’d be interested to hear.

also just, keita deserves some privacy, and his mom doing speaking gigs and publishing books about her experience raising him denies him that. he’s totally in the right to want her to give him space. 

it’s nice that they reach a mutual understanding at the end of the story, but I think keita cedes way too much to her. I think the best thing for him would be to get some distance from her and find other people he can lean on who are a bit more considerate. 

tangentially related, but there’s a lot of kui’s stories seem to gesture towards neurodivergence thematically, and it sort of makes me wonder what sort of relationship she has with the topic. like this story and the one about the guy comparing reading social cues to a rhythm game he’s bad at stand out especially, and then there’s everything about laius thorden...

also all her male protagonists should transition, just throwing that out there. they always come off pretty eggy :P

[softshelltaakos]

alright, folks! if you know me you know that i 1) received the taz graphic novel for the holidays and 2) have hated the taz graphic novel since before it came out, and that 3) actually reading it in no way improved my opinion.

let’s review.

disclaimer: i love the mcelroys. i truly do. taz has gotten me through some very difficult stuff and i have a tattoo. all this to say i’m not doing this because i hate them or because i like hating things — on the contrary, i’m doing this because i care a lot about the podcast and analyzing things is what i do for fun and also because, like, it has issues that i want to talk about!

there are spoilers for the graphic novel and the whole of the podcast under the cut.

this is part 1, in which i’m talking about the actual storytelling and writing; for character design thoughts, you’re gonna have to stay tuned because i’ve been working on this for three and a half hours and i have shit to do. so!

let’s start off with the things i actually liked. there are a few!

the main characters get little intro cards, which i think are pretty cute. this isn’t all of them, but here’s a sampling (forgive my messy collaging):

[ID: four panels.

the first introduces magnus burnsides, a barrel-chested white guy with auburn hair and a fluffy beard and sideburns. he’s saying “trust me, if the law hassles us, i’m the guy you want at the front of the wagon. but look, if you want to drive so bad, i might let you spell me the next time the dwarf has to stop for a pee break.” there is a scroll with his name listed, as well as his race (human), class (fighter), and proficiencies: battle, carpentry, and “everything else... apparently”

the second introduces taako, a skinny mint-colored elf wizard. he’s blonde with pronounced lower lashes and a big pointy nose. he’s saying “hell, no! i’ve got stuff to do. i’ve read the books. adventurers are supposed to, like, forage for food and shit. bor-r-r-ring! no, thank you. not for taako.” the proficiencies on his title card are spell-casting, transmutation, and gastronomy

the third introduces merle highchurch, a brown dwarf with white hair pulled back into a bun and a big poofy beard. he’s saying “i’m studying my cantrips!” and his title card proficiencies are “healing... supposedly,” “religion stuff,” and bleeding

the fourth panel introduces griffin mcelroy, a white human man with brown hair and glasses wearing a collared shirt. he’s saying “guys! it’s me: griffin! your dm!” his title card shows his race as “actual human” and his class as “dungeon master,” while his proficiencies are podcasting, karaoke, and “weaving a rich tapestry of drama.”]

then there are a few cute references to other mcelroy stuff:

[ID: two side-by-side images. the first is a photo of justin mcelroy wearing a bib with “shrimpin’ ain’t easy” written on it in crayon. the second is a close-up of a similar bib on a goblin -- though the text is distorted, it’s the same phrase.]

[ID: magnus thoughtfully says “unless...” and the other boys echo him in traditional mcelroy fashion.]

barry also wears underwear that read “meloincloths” around the waistband, which i didn’t take a picture of because it was small and also i didn’t really want to take a picture of barry bluejeans’s underoos. but that’s cute!

as it mentions in magnus’s titlecard, there’s a running joke about him being proficient in everything. that gets some play in the podcast but it comes up a lot more here and i think it works pretty well and establishes early on that magnus is cocky and headstrong and all that. it’s actually introduced in the very first panel of the comic, where he mentions his vehicle proficiency, and then it comes up several more times.

there are some moments that shift out-of-character dialogue to in-character dialogue, and i think it works sometimes. notably, it occasionally happens with griffin’s dialogue, which i think is a good way to include his voice without constantly breaking the fourth wall. it’s done some, obviously, but it’s not to the point that it’s intrusive.

[ID: a panel featuring taako approaching the other boys, who are playing cards while they wait for him to scout the next room out. magnus asks, “would you say it is spooky... or beautiful?” and merle cuts in “or spookily beautiful?” followed by magnus finishing up with “or beautifully spooky?”

taako responds “if you were a gerblin you would actually find it a pretty chill den to, like, hang out in.”]

i also like the introduction of the voidfish static. i think it’s appropriately dramatic and does a pretty good job of emulating how it’s presented in the podcast.

[ID: a panel featuring killian, an orc woman with a crossbow. the lighting is dark gray-blue-green and she’s shouting something unintelligible marked by a cluster of consonants and a shaky, brush-strokey speech bubble distinct from the other speech bubbles stylistically.]

the scene where taako grabs the umbra staff is also appropriately dramatic, as is merle trying to talk down gundren/bogard from the gauntlet’s thrall, but those are full page images and very large, so i’m not including them.

then there’s this panel of lucretia, which slays me:

[ID: a closeup of madame director lucretia, a black woman dressed in blue with white hair, though her eyes are out of frame. she’s holding a white oak staff in her hands. she’s stopped mid-sentence and there’s a little jaggedy line near her head indicating surprise.]

this is lucretia turning around and seeing the boys for the first time since she dropped them off at their respective “homes.” she’s caught off-guard and i think this is a beautiful way of noting that without giving too much away, and this is a good moment of foreshadowing that she knows much, much more about them than she’s letting on. she catches herself quickly and gets back into the swing of things, but i think this is a very lucretia panel, and it’s probably my favorite panel in the book.

now it’s time for the negative.

first off, a nitpick: there are moments where the characterization feels very off -- at one point magnus is said to have been the kid who “always reminded the teacher that they had forgotten to hand out homework,” which... does not really match what we know of young magnus. at all. travis describes him as “a good but kind of rebellious kid, like he was probably kind of a little bit of a turd [...] who was kinda sarcastic” (ep. 60, the stolen century part one) which feels super incongruent with the homework thing.

my issues with characterization come into focus most strongly with taako. while a lot of moments get his voice down pretty well, there’s a major issue in his presentation, which is that from the very beginning, he’s bragging about his tv show.

[ID: several panels in which merle and taako are talking. the first is a wide shot with taako’s voiceover saying: “--and then the lights come up, and there i am, standing under a magnificent banner that reads:”

the second is taako posing under a spotlight, speaking in large, fanciful script: “sizzle it up with taako”

panel three is merle asking disinterestedly “so it’s a show... about cooking?” and taako replying emphatically “it’s about life!”

in panel four he adds “...told through the perspective of fine dining.”

another panel collaged in features a cookbook with taako’s face on it labeled “perfection: cook the taako way” and taako excitedly saying “i know that smell!! that’s my recipe for haunch a la taako!! it was in my very first cookbook!]

now, we all know that by the end of the show “taako -- you know, from tv?” has become a catchphrase of his, and i understand the desire to retcon that kind of thing into his personality from the start. it seems like a natural way to add character early on when in the podcast, the boys are still pretty underdeveloped at this point.

here’s the issue. neither tv nor the title “sizzle it up” are mentioned at any point during here there be gerblins. in the eleventh hour (e48, part 8 of that arc) we’re told that we’re six years out from the mass poisoning in glamour springs. while the maxfun donor bonus episodes, like the liveshows, play it a little bit fast and loose with canon, and this episode was the 2015 bonus episode (e48 didn’t come out until september 2016,) that’s the only real explicit sizzle it up development we have until the eleventh hour. i’ve transcribed some of the bonus episode below, as transcripts for it are not available via @.tazscripts.

justin: taako-- i’m sitting in a corner by myself with my hat sorta pulled down low so people don’t recognize me. and i’m just trying to eat my meal but i keep changing the items that i’m trying to eat into different substances, so every few minutes you hear from my corner of the tavern:

taako: damn it!

clint: i hate asparagus!

griffin: i turned this sandwich into wood!

[...]

justin: mainly, i’m just trying to be nondescript. 

[...]

justin: the whole time i’m talking to [the tavern owner] i’m like, keeping my face down so he doesn’t recognize me.

griffin: why would anyone recognize you?

clint: why?

justin: well, taako, uh, used to host a cooking show. it was a very, very, very popular cooking show. uh, and--

griffin: what was it called?

justin: what?

griffin: the show.

justin: sizzle it up with taako.

this episode is when the boys take the job with gundren off of craig’s list, so the time gap between this and episode 1 is negligible at best. there is a moment where the other boys recognize taako and he doesn’t lie about his identity, but:

taako: (begrudgingly) yeah, i’m taako, i’m disgraced, you might have heard about the [poisoning] thing.

so... he’s clearly not putting himself on display the way he does later in the podcast. in episode 40 (lunar interlude III: rest and relaxation) which came out in may of 2016, we get the first reference to the poisoning itself:

taako: one time i transmogrified something that, uh… i transmogrified it into something you really shouldn’t eat, ever? for life, to live, i mean? And, uh, a lot of people ate that. and that went... so sideways. um... i-- i just decided i would never again cook for people i cared about, because i couldn’t risk, um, y’know, something happening to them. until i get this under control, i guess.

so we know that even at that point this is still something that troubles taako greatly. one might even say... he’s traumatized! and doesn’t talk about it! he does not go into detail about sizzle it up with anyone over the entire course of the podcast except for june while she is literally possessed by the chalice and forcing him to relive it. So. kind of a weird character take.

to skip ahead a little bit, most of the moonbase stuff is fine, but there’s one omission that feels very weird to me.

[ID: three panels. the left is a shot of the elevator hallway leading to the voidfish’s chambers. thb follow killian towards the elevators; johann is walking away from them. he’s a black human man with natural hair dressed in a silly bard outfit with a violin strapped to his back. he’s carrying a ton of scrolls.]

these three panels are the only time we see johann in the book. in the podcast it’s johann that escorts them to the voidfish’s chambers and inoculates them. it makes sense that this has been changed to lucretia in the gn; it gives her a much stronger entrance and cuts down on scene changes. but it also cuts out a lot of establishing things about johann that are all extremely important and set up not only his character arc but several core plot points.

it’s during that scene that we hear that johann’s greatest fear is being forgotten, and that that’s exactly what will happen to him and all of the other bureau employees when they die. it’s during that scene that we learn the basic mechanics of the voidfish and the mission of the bureau. it makes sense that some of that is going to be handled at the beginning of the next book (presumably) and i’m glad that lucretia is introduced here, but the gn adjusts it so that killian takes the boys into the elevator. that’s johann in the podcast, and it easily could have been johann here. it would’ve been a good chance to establish at least johann’s fears, which would be a weird and creepy setup for the voidfish mechanics when they do get revealed.

it’s just odd to me that johann, who is the reason for the song half of story and song, gets the short shrift here.

i’m gonna wrap up with one last thing. i wanna talk about arms outstretched.

griffin: and you’re both getting pulled into the rift now, and-- but with a 20, taako, you fight against the pull and both of you are flying backwards towards the center of the room, back towards the catwalk. and merle, you’re standing in front of the two liches, one in the form of magnus and one not. lydia just is there in her spectral form. and you’re standing next to a taako who’s gone completely catatonic.

[...]

griffin: okay, then, m—magnus and taako, you two are flying back towards the center of the room. the pull of this rift is still trying to suck you in. and out of nowhere, just merle turns around—turns his back to the two liches—and just outstretches his arms and as he does, you see, like, spectral versions of his soul-wood arm sort of reach out and grab you and he’s also pulling you back in too, now. and he rips both of you towards himself.

i don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this is one of the most emotionally charged moments in the show, and it’s that because it’s a moment where we see, crystal-clear, real character development and growth.

magnus, who rushes in, who has never wanted anything as much as he wants to be reunited with julia, actively resists the pull of death to help his friends.

taako, who’s good out here, who is so selfish that an entire town died because of his ego, risks his life to help his friends.

merle, who can barely feel his holy connection, who barely ever even heals, breaks planar bounds to help his friends.

we’ve been with these characters for 56 episodes. we’ve seen their worst regrets, we know their tragic backstories, we understand why they’ve been the jackasses they’ve been, and now we see them moving past that to work as a unit. one might even say as a family!

arms outstretched is a moment that has been earned over the course of those 56 episodes.

enter the graphic novel.

[ID: a full page. flames are everywhere and panels are intentionally chaotic. dialogue reads:

merle: maybe now would be good?

magnus: i’m a hero, not an idiot.

taako: actually, you’re both idiots!

he outstretches his arm from his position safe in a well.

taako: come on!

merle and magnus reach for taako’s hands. there is a closeup on their arms: merle and magnus each hold one of taako’s with one hand. then there’s a panel showing an explosion.]

this is obviously intended as a way to foreshadow arms outstretched. and typically i’m not against foreshadowing! i think one of the benefits of the graphic novel is that it’s an opportunity to insert foreshadowing in cool ways that were not necessarily possible given the in-progress nature of the podcast -- like i said earlier, that lucretia panel is a really great example of it. you can’t foreshadow arms outstretched in episode one because you have no idea it’s going to happen.

but here’s the thing. you also can’t foreshadow arms outstretched in episode one because it hasn’t been earned. these characters are not those characters yet. they don’t know each other. taako actively shuts down the title of “friend” earlier in the book. they’re not even coworkers yet. and you could make an argument that in the face of death, taako would try to save them, but... would he? really? he’s a pragmatist, and that’s putting it nicely. during the stolen century the only person he tries to get to safety at the risk of his own neck is lup, and, uh... neither of these guys are lup. hell, he doesn’t even know about lup right now, and we see in the podcast that not remembering her leaves him colder and more self-centered. he knows people are dust, but he doesn’t know there are people that aren’t. i truly don’t buy it.

the nature of adaptation is that things are going to change, and that’s fine; but this is such a major shift that it left me really jarred and unhappy with the writing. in the podcast itself, we get this:

killian: c’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon!

clint: decision made.

justin: yeah, i follow her.

travis: i follow her.

clint: me too.

griffin: the three of you dive into the well.

it makes sense that the gn adjusts this slightly so that magnus and merle try to pull some heroics and save everyone; i don’t have a problem with that. that’s a good adaptation of character that hadn’t exactly been seen yet, but comes to be a core enough part of the characters that it makes sense to insert it earlier. but even then, they could’ve gotten to the well without taako’s help. it’s just such a weird rewrite, and i really think it weakens the impact of arms outstretched itself.

i’ve been meaning to get my thoughts on this out for nearly a month at this point so if you’ve stuck with me this whole time, wow! thanks! i appreciate it! i’m not a professional, and obviously the mcelroys signed off on this, so i don’t really have space to say “oh, taako would never do this” or “oh, magnus was never like that” on a canonical level -- i know travis says something along those lines in one of the ttazzes. but as i said at the very beginning: this story means so, so much to me, and it’s really deeply frustrating to see an adaptation that handles things so... weirdly.

[themostrandomfandom]

Hi! How would you personally rank the seasons of glee from your favourite to your least favourite & why?

Hey, @sitandsingtoyou!

Since I watch Glee almost exclusively for the Brittana, it’s probably no surprise that their narrative treatment is the single biggest factor that determines how I feel about any given season. 

If Brittana have a prominent, well-wrought arc from season premiere to season finale, then chances are I’ll like said season no matter what shenanigans are going on with other characters or storylines. 

The same is also true in reverse. 

That said, for the purpose of answering this ask, I also considered factors like the overall storytelling (beyond the Brittana of it all), the music, the presence of any standout episodes, general cohesion, etc., when making my rankings.

The final list appears after the cut.

WARNING: Here be strong feelings about Glee and more than a little bit of negativity about its writing and production. Note that the views expressed in this post are the author’s personal opinions based on her preferences, and they may very much differ from your own.

___________

In order from favorite to least favorite:

S6: As I discussed in this post, in addition to providing our girls with the happy ending they always deserved, S6 offers much of the best-written, most fully-developed, adorable, emotional, poignant, and narratively-satisfying Brittana we get throughout the series. We’re talking fanfic quality stuff, and not just in bits and pieces here and there but basically across the board in every episode in which Brittany and Santana feature. While there are a few things I’d change, on a whole, I can’t think of a more enjoyable canonical culmination to Brittana’s journey. As for the non-Brittana stuff, while there are, admittedly, some really low lows—many of the middling episodes of the season are an affront to screenwriting—there are also some suprisingly pleasant turns. Don’t tell anybody, but I actually love most of the New New New Directions and find the storylines that focus on them (as opposed to the adults of Lima and alumni advisers) kind of delightful. While the series finale itself somewhat underwhelms me, the flashback sequence at the end of episode 6x11 totally makes me cry. A lot of this season is about getting back to what made Glee fun and likeable in the beginning: good tunes, camp gags, and stories about a ragtag group of underdogs overcoming adversity through love and music. In general, I feel like S6 does a nice job tying up the loose ends for glee club members old and new and fulfilling the main thesis of the show (“Something is special because you are a part of it”).

S2: Brittana’s S2 storyline is one long, amazing roller coaster ride of emotion. It’s hard to describe exactly what it felt like watching it all play out for the first time as the episodes were originally airing; I hate to use the word “special” because it sounds so quaint, but it’s kind of the only term that really fits. Because the “Sex is not dating” line in episode 1x13 was initially treated like a one-and-done deal, going into S2, no one in the fandom really expected to see a fully developed Brittana romantic storyline—and yet that’s exactly what the Back Six gave us, and each successive Locker scene brought elation, heartache, fear, hope, and continued anticipation. Nothing beats S2 Brittana angst, and especially not the Hurt Locker, which is far and away the ship’s pièce de résistance. Then beyond the Brittana, the rest of the season is generally high quality, at least as far as Glee goes. There’s some nice tongue-in-cheek comedy, iconic scenes, and heartfelt character development, plus episode 2x19 is one of the show’s musical high points overall. As always with Glee, some pitchy moments sneak their ways in and a few episodes beg to be forgotten, but for the most part S2 is Glee in its stride, and it’s held up well over time.

S1: Since Brittana are not yet main characters, they don’t have a main text S1 storyline, per se. Still, when you fill in the gaps, there’s a lot going on with them on a subtextual level, enough so that rewatching S1 knowing what will eventually happen in later seasons will provide a strenuous cardio workout for any serious Brittana shipper. There’s plenty of excellent Heya improv to go around, and the classic “Brittana on the back row” can’t be beat. Plus, Brittana’s mini-arc with Finn between episodes 1x14 and 1x15 is heartbreaking. Still, the reason why I rank this season so highly has less to do with Brittana in particular than it does with overall quality: Simply put, I think that Glee had a better idea of what it was about during the first thirteen episodes of S1 than it did throughout much of the rest of the series. While later on the show would struggle to balance comedy and drama, realism and camp, trying and failing to be all things to all people, in the beginning, it was just an earnest, theatrical little show about nerdy choir kids trying to find their places in the world, and it didn’t take itself too seriously. Though many of the S1 storylines were schlocky—hello, fake Schuester pregnancy!—there were more than enough heartfelt performances and excellent character moments to balance them out. For instance, for as much as I generally dislike Finn, the “I’ll Stand by You” scene in episode 1x10 is so well done on every level. Whatever Glee became in its later seasons, in S1 it was at its core still good. It hadn’t forgotten what it was all about yet.

S3: Now we’re getting to the bottom of the barrel. I rank S3 fourth on my list not because I really enjoy it all that much but because it’s less terrible than S5 and S4, at least imo. The season’s biggest issue is that it’s all over the place in terms of quality. Sugar was a blessing, but Rory not so much. Likewise, on the Brittana side of things, there are some really high highs—our girls officially start dating! they share their first on screen kiss! they have a fabulous time at their senior prom together!—but there is also the giant bugbear that is Santana’s “coming out” arc, which is awful on so many levels. The writing and characterization for Brittany and Santana vacillates wildly throughout the season. In some episodes, like 3x04 and 3x13, it’s really great. In others, like 3x16, it’s utterly headache-inducing. And it’s not just our girls who suffer from spotty writing throughout the season; Quinn’s storyline is a complete mess, and Sue is an unbelievable Yosemite Sam caricature of herself whose exploits are so exaggerated that they make it virtually impossible to suspend one’s disbelief enough to enjoy her scenes. While the Troubletones are a musical highlight for the whole series—and the “Rumour Has It/Someone Like You” mashup is the best musical performance in all of Glee, hands down—a good soundtrack doesn’t make up for some of the season’s more glaring deficiences, and especially not the way Santana’s storyline was treated both inside and outside the universe of the show. Though there are a handful of S3 episodes I will rewatch for my own personal enjoyment, there are many that I’d prefer not to recall. S3 was the first season of Glee to bring in new regular writing staff beyond RIB, and with all its inconsistencies and the disuniform quality of the episodes, unfortunately, the inexperience really shows.

S5: With the exception of episodes 5x12 and 5x13, I hate almost everything about S5—and, yes, that includes the majority of Santana’s NYC episodes. I get that Heather Morris was largely off the show during this season, so it’s not that I blame TPTB for pairing Santana with Dani or making her Hummelberry’s sidekick. It’s just that it breaks my heart watching Santana repeatedly throw herself against a brick wall as she tries over and over again to win Kurt and Rachel’s friendship and trust, always to no avail (see here and here). In theory, Hummelpezberry could have been a really fun brot3—god knows that myriad fanfic authors have been able to pull it off to great effect—but in canon it never really worked, largely because the writers were reluctant to stop using Santana as a convenient heavy whenever they needed to generate synthetic conflict in an episode, even though she had long since ceased to function as an antagonist in terms of her narrative arc. While there were plenty of zingers and jaunty musical numbers in the Loft, I could never really enjoy them because the happy times never lasted. Santana was made to feel like an outcast in her own home, and for someone who loves that character as much as I do, it hurt to see her feeling so lonely and ostracized. Once she ran off into the sunset with Brittany, things took a turn for the better. Still, there were really only a handful of bright spots overall. Anyone who’s read TKTD knows that my second favorite ship on Glee is Samcedes, and I did truly enjoy the cute little romcom that was their 5B storyline. I also loved the Sancedes and later Brittanacedes friendship moments on the tail end of the season. But in general, everything felt strained and disjointed, and my ultimate sense is that the tragic early loss of Cory Monteith proved an insurmountable hurdle for the season’s creativity and writing direction on a whole.

S4: I liked the production of Grease, but otherwise this season was one long fail from start to finish, and there is not a single episode out of the twenty-two that I at all care to revisit. Though I’ve been able to rationalize and justify and meta my way through the Brittana arc, doing so is just more intellectual and emotional trouble than it’s worth. Throughout S4, the depiction of every established character including our girls seems OOC, some to an incredibly noticeable degree. Sam Evans, whom I loved in S2 and S3, absolutely gets trashed, going from a goofy, lovable dork to idiot Finn Hudson Version 2.0. Episode 4x04 represents one of the worst and most misguided writing decisions I’ve ever seen made on a primetime TV show. That a group of professional screenwriters would sit down and say, “Let’s break up three of our flagship couples not for any good or compelling narrative reason but simply because we want to ‘spice things up’ and see how our heavily-invested, emotionally vulnerable, primarily teenaged and young adult audience reacts!” boggles the mind, as does the fact that they were then surprised when their viewership numbers dropped off dramatically thereafter. I do want to say that I liked Marley Rose, Unique Adams, and Kitty Wilde, though I otherwise found the New New Directions kind of meh. Overall, this season is the one that seems to stray the farthest from Glee’s original premises and spirit. There isn’t much that’s fun, triumphant, or satisfying. There’s just a lot of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, cultural insensitivity, bad writing, and miserable story arcs in scads.

Thanks for the question!                                  

[landofquartzandmelody]

ok i finished hiveswap act 1 lmao. i actually liked most of it a lot i think? and there’s a lot to talk about and there’s also a few things which were like.. Incredibly annoying. my overall impression was good tho! i’m going to dump my thoughts under a readmore though so no one accidentally gets spoiled

obvious warning for that !!

the setting is actually incredibly detailed and i occupied myself for a long time clicking on everything in the background? the art was really pretty and the actual gameplay itself was really smooth and not glitchy at all.

the video cutscenes didn’t play for me at all lmao. I had a few tabs of text-only websites open, and join.me, and that was it. i couldn’t easily lower the settings to make it run smoother either? which was really annoying, and i don’t see why the cutscenes were sooo much harder for my computer to get through than the actual gameplay.

the only other glitch i had was a framing glitch in jude’s treehouse i think

i liked most of the puzzles a lot and it all seemed very organic and fun. using items on other items was pretty cool, and i only got stuck like once or twice.

i really did not like the snake game mainly because i had to swap to using my keyboard for that and that alone lmao.

the monster fights were REALLY fun, i thought. they had a really classic homestuck feel.

it was kind of hard to walk up and down the stairs, actually. there wasn’t enough room to click where you needed to go and that was a bit irritating

i really really really loved the harleyclaire mansion!! everything about the first part of the game was REALLY good!!!

there’s so much to get into with jake and joey and jude and anna claire that it’s nuts tbh. but i really liked everything about that. imo it dealt with parental issues in a lot more depth than hs ever did, and surprisingly nuanced parental issues is definitely an hs thing. but joey’s problems with jake are a lot more fleshed out and realistic.

definitely one of the themes is that the adults in joey’s life have never been there for her. her mom isn’t there because she’s dead, roxy isn’t ‘there’ because she’s irresponsible and is already developing drinking problems, and jake isn’t there because he’s always been somewhere else. so there’s something interesting when xefros talks about parents there

i think i was expecting jake to be a decent father so i was definitely really sad when it became obvious that he was kind of.. not? and it’s evident that he’s really screwed joey up, but i think that it’s also very in line with how canon portrays jake. like his biggest flaw was being unwilling to put in the emotional work and commitment that his friends needed.

sometimes he was definitely scared of those, so i can easily conceive of jake taking the easy way out and heading out to trawl the pacific for a meteor baby.

the line about how ‘having a second thing which is sort of like the first thing but somewhere else is exactly the same as having the first thing’

it’s interesting that jade and joey both do the same thing by projecting on their dead guardians. jade’s thinking is a lot more magical than joey’s, but it really shines a light on how everything we assumed about grandpa harley was through the eyes of a girl who never really got to know him.

and like he died well before he could disappoint her, so.

it was REALLY really sad but i don’t think i actually have a problem with it.

part of the reason i don’t have a problem with it is bc it made joey claire’s characterization SO much more compelling

because she’s very angry at her father for doing the things he did, and is openly disparaging about him, and even chooses to use her mother’s last name instead of his? but she’s not angry or hard or bitter

i love my hard trauma girls but it’s really nice that joey just gets kinder and better in the face of a childhood full of neglect- without being pushed to forgive or minimize the damage that was done to her

the detail about joey absolutely refusing to use guns because she doesn’t want to be like her dad, and choosing to love animals and heal them was so good. and how that’s framed as an act of rebellion?

like the idea that kindness can be radical but that =/= forgiveness.

we didn’t see a lot of jude but i loved everything about him so much

like it was pretty subtle so i don’t know if y’all would consider it ‘canon’ but the bit where joey says that ‘when things got bad with my brother, our babysitter took him to see a doctor, and he was better for a while’ seems like it’s saying joey is being treated for a mental illness of some sort?

which seems completely in line with his character! he almost falls into the trap where it’s like ‘we all called this person crazy for seeing all these conspiracies but he was right all along’ but he doesn’t and that’s nice. it’s very subtle and pretty respectful imo. (also, fox mulder)

he and joey are the cutest siblings in the entire universe, and he was so sweet to her. he seems very earnest about wanting to protect her and caring about her.

the part where his birds left him made me SOOOO SAD. it was so sad. i felt so bad for him. I named dammek’s catdeer Frohike to pay my respects even though frohike was the worst gunman.

i’m really worried about him tho. i hope he’ll be okay without joey around

joey claire is such an obvious lesbian

honestly i know a lot of people were nervous because it seemed like it was setting her up to have a relationship with xefros but i absolutely don’t think that’s the case, just because she’s definitely gay.

every time she looked at a picture of a girl in the harleyclaire mansion she had one gay thought or another, and her entire room was plastered completely in images of pretty girls. not ONE guy.

there was also a lot of dialogue which implied she felt guilty or ashamed of how she felt when looking at girls, or like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to, or if people would judge her for having pretty pictures of girls on her walls.

also her password being the name of a boy she has certainly never met or talked to, and who we never saw an image of (despite said guy being an actor? i think) or heard mentioned before

the scene where xefros mentions he is a boy who likes boys and joey is like ‘oh. huh’ seems to me like it’s very obviously from the pov of a lesbian who had absolutely no idea what a lesbian is, or that she is allowed to be one. 

i think joey is definitely going to realize she is gay at some point in the future acts

i didn’t expect to like or care about xefros as much as i did?

he was obnoxious at first but basically as soon as we figured out what was up with dammek and that xefros thought he’d been speaking to dammek he became 100% less annoying and i started liking him a lot lmao.

he and joey had a really sweet friendship, actually.

homestuck breezed over a lot of the more horrible things about troll civilization, but hiveswap did a very good job of making it patently obvious how horrible troll civilization is for xefros and other lowbloods, and i think it has a redeeming effect on the Other Stuff.

i like that they made it obvious what’s happening is horrible and needs to like, stop or whatever, and don’t like... condemn the revolutionaries.

his situation isn’t really played for laughs or mocked.

that being said a lot of the writing for dammek was really really annoying and dumb.

people like dammek definitely exist and i think hiveswap does a faaairly decent of not conflating dammek being a shithead with the rest of the movement? the joke about personal property was very very annoying lmao but the movement itself is portrayed as legitimate and necessary. it’s a dumb reactionary type of joke but it doesn’t ruin the game for me

i do think he’s going to Learn To Be A Better Person while he’s hanging out with jude. i don’t think he’s going to get a vriska type arc at all but i do think he’ll learn the error of his ways.

i wish that we’d gotten to see a bit more of his personal motivation for being so intense about revolution.

i ALSO wish they hadn’t used like actual symbols of movements in the bg that was really annoying and crass imo. and if they had to, i wish xefros had had an anarchist flag or whatever.

abuse / neglect are big themes in hs so i’m not really surprised at all that they came back? they definitely shouldn’t have advertised dammek and xefros as being cute moirails though because it’s kind of scummy to do a bait and switch like that.

i don’t think the game’s going to be hetero though. xefros and joey would be incredibly ugly and i doubt it’ll happen

i also think homestuck the original thing is actually pretty on the nose about class stuff, even if it does feel the need to like couch that in Fake Alien Racism? at the very least i’d be surprised if hiveswap tried to pull the You’re The Same As Your Oppressors thing

i’m still annoyed that there was so much promo art of xefros and dammek being cute together when the actual game condemned every interaction they had. i think that it would have been possible to say the same things as they wanted to while also not making dammek a crazy leftist stereotype and grounding him in reality like a real person.

to be fair, we are going to get a sequel game with him, so he’ll probably be fleshed out a LOT better then.

trizza is somehow so much more evil than expected? how evil she is feels a lot more real than like, the condesce, tbh. she feels like a real person

i’m SUPER curious about cridea now and i can’t wait to see what she’ll be like

[annieoftheshitposts]

this post used to be a link to the old canons page but i’m turning it into a text dump of the revised one for people on mobile [or who have bad wifi/computers that the fancy schmancy script on the canons page wouldn’t play well with.] theres a lot sorry not sorry. here we go.

Canon Info

 Much more is said about Annie in external sources than the game itself, here's copypastes of all I know of and go by.

From the 3rd DLC Character Voting page:

As popular figures in nationwide folktales, a children’s television adaptation of Annie and Sagan’s adventures was inevitable. The show’s success lies in its pair of live action hosts, who are as convincing as their cartoon counterparts. Though what the public learns about the real Annie might surprise them. Annie is a seasoned fighter who has been around for a long time, acquiring many skills and powers along the way. Her sword is forged from a meteorite and can channel the power of the stars in its sweeping cleaves. Her right eye bonds her to her Remote Parasite and partner, Sagan, who grants her powers of a galactic motif. While some of her abilities carry more of a sparkly magical girl motif, Annie tries to execute them with the same sternness.

From "The canon info thread" on Skullheart Encore forums:

-Annie is several-century-old. Her immortality was gained when her parents wished on the Skull Heart so that Annie would never have to experience the hardship of adulthood, thereby making her forever a child. -She has had many different weapons and abilities throughout her life. - Sagan, her remote parasite. keeps her right eye in his mouth. - She’s physically not able to swear due to her condition - She is familiar with Double due to her experience fighting Skullgirls - Annie has encountered a lot of Skullgirls and has killed a lot, but not the same a lot. She’s seen the cycle multiple times and seen how they become stronger each time and is looking for the underlying source now. - The Annie of the Stars show is very similar to the Super Mario Bros. Super Show with live action segments with cartoons and PSAs and commercials in between. - Sagan can talk. Somehow. - Annie hides her immortality by getting a new hairstyle every few years. The show tells the audience that they have simply changed the actress. Eliza also pulls a similar trick

and finally some other misc. scraps that weren't covered above:

-annie has some kind of "super" or "powered up" form, in which she seems to fuse with sagan. it can be seen on her

move concept sheet, in the end of robo-fortune's story mode, and as a very tiny feature on one of robo-fortune's merch posters, but to my knowlege it's never really been talked about.

-she's been depicted with an "incognito outfit", presumably for going out in public and not being recognized by fans.

-sagan is named after renowned astrophysicist carl sagan. this isnt really relevant to anything but it's not on the wiki so i figured i'd share :b

-and this random pic of annie in the past with a different look, plus gun and minus eyepatch, apparently official art from the "digital art compendium". i haven't seen the source for this one myself though, and count this one more as speculative canon since that ingame image up there with her eye uncovered doesn't show a scar or any kind of damage from this.

-another canon fact about annie is she is strong and brave and i love her.

Headcanon (Annie)

this is pretty disorganized bc i come up with and revise random shit on a fairly regular basis, but the very least it should be all here and up-to-date. [though on this text post version i may forget to keep it updated oops.

she can still only normally see from the one eye in her head [and likewise probably has terrible depth perception lmao], but she can “project” her vision into the one sagan has if need be, during which time both he and her main eye are blind.

even though sagan’s vision is his own and she doesn’t actively “see” through that eye most of the time, the stuff he sees still becomes part of her memory and she can recall it if need be, though it’s far less tangible and kind of a surreal experience trying to do so.

the space where her other eye was is now just...space. like empty starry void stuff. yes, TECHNICALLY, you could put stuff in it but why would you. sagan can feel when something interacts with it and it’s really just weird and uncomfortable for both of them.as sagan is the source of their powers, the strength of her abilities is slightly dependent on her distance from him. something like long sustained flight is really only capable if they’re touching, but she still has ample firepower and ability to zip around for a pretty good range otherwise.

Not interested in anime

absolutely hates being called her full name; hasn't gone by anything other than "Annie" for longer than anyone that should be alive today should know.

part of her curse of eternal youth is remembering everything up until the point it kicked in and she stopped aging [i.e. when she was Actually a kid] exactly as well as if she hadn’t aged.

from that point however, a lot of it is hazy as shit aside from more recent times [as you’d expect from someone who’s been around hundreds of years]. this one's gonna be angsty as shit when i address it and you can thank @sandstriker for that. fucker.

also hates being restrained. by the concept sheet and beo's story, her fighting style is very kinetic and relies heavily on mobility; take that away and you get one very uncomfortable and very angry starchild. [this one's 'cause of y'all with the handcuffs asks. this is part of why she's so agitated rn.]

what's in the pouch? whatever is alternatively convenient. is it snacks? is it a quick incognito disguise? is it her whole entire sword? who knows. i think it might be infinite hammerspace in there.

i haven't put much though into this side of her story yet, but i've decided part of the mythos of the "annie of the stars" character as a figure of legend is that she literally lives, among the stars.

if there's enough folktales about her to base an entire show off of, i'm willing to bet she used to be less elusive when she was just about fighting skullgirls before dedicating herself to the whole "looking for the underlying source" thing.

Headcanon (Sagan)

tl;dr: as far as things go here, he's essentially a cat and/or younger sibling.

Sagan's canon information and characterization is basically nonexistant, so i got to do pretty much whatever i wanted with him lmao.

simply put, he's a little gremlin of a partner, but he is genuinely good-natured and a happy-go-luckly little dude. mischevious, loves to get up to Shenanigans, go off and hide/disappear to fuck knows where for several hours, climb and sit on tall things[or failing that, annie's head], etc. @sawkinator has described him, regrettably accurately, as "the Token Disney Animal Sidekick". he has a lot of mannerisms like an animal, but is still very much a being of at least average human intelligence. he's also surprisingly indestructible. far from invincible of course, but in canon he's been shown to be quite stretchy and...possibly have minor shapeshifting capabilities?? he's pretty much immune to being squashed and feels very little [if any] pain from most things. really, as far as i can tell he's pretty much a weird sentient plushie. like, if it's not going to damage a plushie, it's not going to hurt him; examples being: getting knocked back really hard or falling a long way? not a problem. fire? problem.

Sagan tends to be somewhat nonverbal and generally only uses a few words or short phrase at a time when he does speak, which sounds something like the voice clip below. that being how it is, he can be kind of inscrutable and more than a bit jarring to most people--though at this point annie's been with him more than long enough to be completely desensitized to it and doesnt quite get why anyone would be perturbed. fortunately, with that familiarity also comes understanding, and she can easily "translate" and articulate more from his expressions. this understanding is a two-way street, and on its other side is sagan's sensitivity to her moods. annie's not particularly...communicative of her emotions, but sagan can always tell when she's having an off day or something's bothering her, and is far better than anyone at helping her feel better. all things said and quirky antics aside, he and annie are exceptionally close and fiercely protective of eachother the moment it comes to it. they don't make a big deal of showing it outwardly, but they know they've always got eachother's backs.

he's taken quite a liking to beowulf as well, and beo defintiely shamelessly enables sagan's shenanigans.

as i see it, annie may be the passion and power of their operation, but sagan is the heart and soul. beowulf is like....comic releif and emotional support. not entirely necessary, but certainly welcomed to have around. yeah. listen im a big sap i just want them all to be good friends ok. i love them.

also sagan does like and watch a lot of anime.

Blog Canon

miscellaneous happenings that either have continued relevance/significance, or y'all just won't let die. there's not a overarching plot to this thing at all, but geez we’ve kinda gathered some history here huh?

taught sagan to say fuck [and other swears, in her stead]. he used to have to do it on command but he's gotten really good at filling in for her.has a

stoat fursona that beo helped her make. she thinks it's neat/cute but has no real attachment to it.

attempted to sue the crystal gems for ripping off her entire shtick [it didn't go well]

beowulf also taught her how to dab.

@sparkeletran is a nuisance and must be stopped

the 70$ pile of high school musical merch. sagan and beo both wear the t-shirts sometimes. she hates it. don't let her attitude fool you though this is actually the best and most important ongoing joke in this whole damn thing.

the first handcuffs stint. they’re gone now but they had a good ~30-post run, and she did take to learning lockpicking because of it.

this.

hey. guess fucking what lads. handcuffs ROUND TWO 'cause y'all just don't fuckin' quit. the first mini story arc sorta thing, in which she visits the cirque des cartes and has an aggravting encounter with taliesin. [currently ongoing][hopefully soon ending]

[[redacted for ""spoilers""]] due to said encounter with taliesin

sparkeletran is a nuisance,

"the official annie of the stars instagram is just cat memes but with sagan" it's canon but i haven't decided whether it's something she would have had already or a recent thing. [either way, hasn't been touched on yet due to the arc taking so long]

badart annie is sorta like her own thing at this point but nothing that happens with her is canon; she p much just shows up for exceptionally dumb posts. we did give her noclip though which is terrifying. on that note i may as well include the things that are Not canon but y'all won't let me forget

beo's animated belt thing. look. it doesnt talk.

spray-on boots.

the lawnmower weapon

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh homestuck

[pellucidthings]

Turnadette Fic Recs Part 1: Season 2

@gabolange and I talk about fic in this fandom a lot--many words, all the time--and are regularly reccing (or at this point, re-reccing, since we’ve both read everything at least once) things to each other. We thought it might be fun to post about some of our favorites. This post looks at season 2 fics, and then pop over to gabolange’s post on married Turner fics.

I love the Turners at nearly all points in the series, but I will always have a super soft spot for season 2. Slow burn falling in love! We want to be together but can’t even talk about it because she’s a nun! Talk about one of my pretty much bulletproof ship buttons…

So while I do enjoy the established relationship stuff, my favorite fic tends to do interesting things with our happy couple before they’re a happy couple (or at least before they’re a happy married couple). I could live in season 2 permutations forever: so many gaps to fill in, so many AU possibilities! Here are a few of the existing stories that do some of this stuff really well, divided into some genre categories:

Pre-Misty Road, Canon-Compliant

This is the stuff for which I most want all the fic. True story, I watched s2 for the first time on Netflix, completely unspoiled, and between the PBS/Netflix cuts and my attention being on other characters, I pretty much entirely missed any lead up to 2.05. And I remember texting gabolange all, “WTF, the doctor just kissed Sister Bernadette’s hand what is going on????” It felt so out of the blue! Like, they had one conversation about cigarettes and suddenly they’re in love? I fell for them anyway from that point forward (because my buttons), and then when I rewatched the BBC version while paying closer attention to them specifically, I saw it wasn’t quite so out of the blue. But I still always want more fic that unpacks all of that.

Sister Bernadette in the sanatorium is a bit of a genre, and there have been several really lovely stories exploring her journey and decision to leave the order. My favorite of these is The Open Window, by This Unruly Heart. Alternating Sister Julienne and Sister Bernadette perspectives, the Sister Bernadette struggle feels beautifully authentic (the faith stuff is really hard to get right, I think; a lot of people, including the writers on the show itself, either gloss over it, perhaps because it’s outside their experience, or alternately portray it in the kind of legalistic terms that doesn’t feel true to Anglican tradition or to these particular characters--this story gets it right). I also love that Sister Julienne’s surprise is genuine, which feels very in character (I don’t think she had any idea ahead of time), and the image of the letters bursting out of the box is excellent.

Fannish good manners say you don’t rec yourself, but it’s also true that we write the stories we want to read. And I had noticed, in my months of reading all the stories, that a) there’s very little s2 stuff from Patrick’s perspective, about his journey, and b) there’s very little that takes on what I think are inevitable missing scenes in between the ones we see, especially leading up to 2.06. So Good-Morrow to Our Waking Souls by pellucid (me!) tries to take that on. And because reccing yourself is weird, I will let gabolange jump in here and say why she thought it was successful:

gabolange here!  (Proper disclaimer: I betaed this story and still think it has too many commas.) This story is successful for me on several levels. The first is the slow evolution of Patrick noticing Sister Bernadette--both in moments we saw and moments that are new to us. The build to his realization that he loves her, and then to the moment when he figures out that this isn’t one-sided, is developed in a way that feels absolutely genuine for the character. The second is that the missing moments really work and illuminate the characters beautifully. Timothy and Sister Bernadette bonding over bad science jokes? Of course. But more than that, these quiet moments between Patrick and Sister Bernadette that allow their relationship to grow while still conforming to all its limitations--she’s a nun and they’re definitely not supposed to be in love with each other--are just so well realized you wonder why we didn’t see them on screen. And finally, this story isn’t about Patrick’s faith, except it is: there are these wonderful threads about his belief (or not) in God, his relationship with the church, the way he sees Sister Bernadette in relation to those contexts, and those things are so rarely explored and so rarely explored as well. So, you know. Thumbs up.

Post-Misty Road, Canon Compliant (at least at time of writing)

Of course Patrick and Shelagh become rather more fun to the shippers once they manage to get themselves sorted in a truly excellent romantic scene. And there are also a lot of lovely stories set between the end of 2.08 and their wedding. (An aside: a lot of people have done the what happens immediately post-misty road thing, and with the exception of an AU rendition--see below--there’s no one version that entirely works for me, much as I enjoy parts of many of them, so I’m not reccing any of those at the moment. Maybe one of those things I’ll have to write for myself one of these days…)

Probably the most-recced story in this fandom is Timothy Turner and the Entertainment Badge, by Kathryn Wemyss.To be honest, I don’t love this story as much as many people do, though I do love it a whole lot. But there are a few too many tangents with original characters for my taste, which makes the pacing uneven. I put it on the list, though, because it’s still very good, because I think it’s important, and because there are good reasons why fandom loves it so much. This is one of the small handful of stories in this fandom that really illustrates what fic can do when it’s done well: it opens up doors that the show never could or should, it digs deep into our characters’ histories and into their present (at the time of writing), and it’s just flat-out well done. It also shows Patrick and Shelagh as grown ups who are trying to figure out this major life change as people no longer young, with histories and baggage, that they need to--and do!--talk through. I particularly like the contrast between their adulthood and Timothy’s childhood here. Not all important stories in this fandom need to look like this, but this fandom needs more important stories--more stories that are doing something no one here has done yet, and doing it well enough that everyone sits up and notices.

The show lets the relationship between Shelagh and Patrick unfold very privately, which also says something about their characters. This was a quiet, beautiful, rather secret thing for a long time. Timothy and Sister Julienne are brought in to see pieces, but for the most part, no one has any idea this is happening until suddenly, omg, Sister Bernadette left the order to marry Dr. Turner! What that looked like to their friends and community is a fascinating dynamic, and writergal85/@superfluousbananas does a great job exploring it in Found. Lovely views of their very new relationship from various perspectives. Fred is my favorite!

Alternate Universe

My favorite story in this fandom, it turns out, is a modern AU. It’s not my favorite story because it’s a modern AU, though it does that well (which is a difficult thing to pull off: in general, people either err on the side of hewing too closely to canon, so it feels artificial and repetitive, or they stray too far, so the characters no longer feel like themselves). Modern Love by ithinkyourewonderful changes just enough that the story feels authentically set in the 2010s, but not so much that these aren’t completely, 100% our characters. And it’s the characterization that makes me adore it and reread it every couple of weeks. This is as close as we’ve yet come to the season 2 story of my dreams: both of them on this journey, falling in love, and trying to figure out what on earth to do with that. The world is richly developed, and there are so many lovely moments between Patrick and Shelagh, both new imaginings of what we saw on screen and new moments altogether. This is also the post-misty road story that does everything I want it to do, even if it’s all necessarily AU. Highly recommended! (Though as a caveat, the formatting is awful, and the first time I opened it I almost didn’t read it because of that. But worth wading through the big blocks of text, I promise!)

And finally, the season 2 sneaking around AU that is my favorite new thing in this fandom, The Best of What Might Be series by @gabolange. A disclaimer: she basically wrote these for me, and I betaed them. Disclaimers aside, though, I think it’s important that stories like these exist in fandom and are well done, as these are. Would these characters have actually started having sex while she was still a nun? Probably not. But the point of fanfic is that we get to ask but what if they did?????? How does that change things? What do these characters--and even if the decision itself feels a bit out of character, once you handwave that, these are totally our characters--do when they stumble into this thing they really shouldn’t be doing but can’t quite quit? Maybe this sort of story isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s an absolute fandom staple--every fandom has its versions of this story, or should--and we’re incredibly lucky that our version happens to be by a truly excellent writer. And did I mention they’re really, really hot??? I love them all (and there are more to come!), but the second one in particular, just...guh. (Rated E)

[mild-lunacy]

TFP and The Transgressive Writer's Problem

I mean... the thrilling thing about writing this one was the transgressive nature of it. It was like, well... we're not gonna have a pun in the title: it's The Final Problem. We sent a message saying: 'look out!' And really, from the moment Mycroft reveals what's inside his umbrella, you kinda go, 'oh shit!' And that was thrilling, wasn't it? It was just like, well... you know, we wanna present it as if there's absolutely no way back. And so once you've got that in your head, it sort of becomes this succession of things, and... sort of, the modular nature of the problems, and then the rug pulls of, you know, 'she's in charge', and the glass and everything.... It was just a thrill to do, because it had such a 'finale' feel to it.

-- Mark Gatiss, the BFI screening of The Final Problem.

You know, I do believe in Ivy's approach to Authorial Intent: it's effectively not there, so don't worry about the things you will never really know about. But well... sometimes the things the creators say are too interesting and enlightening to ignore. So I'm definitely still thinking about this.

This may ultimately be partly why you have posts like @marsdaydream's, claiming that much of S3 as well as Series 4 in general (and TFP in particular) defies analysis. If analysis depends on predictability-- or a certain *kind* of continuity, understood to mean that the narrative behaves within firmly established rules-- then I can see why TFP (and TSoT, certainly TAB, not to mention TLD) would all present a problem. As I said in my earlier response specifically about TFP shifting the genre, the genre of BBC Sherlock has always been a lot roomier and more flexible than people seemed to think, and we've been moving in the direction of more and more dramatic 'rug pulls' for quite a while. Still, TFP is definitely when anyone can see 'there's absolutely no way back', as Gatiss said (naturally ignoring a major, extreme retcon). This extreme shift was clearly not 'thrilling' for a lot of fans, though I think I had the intended response of edge-of-my-seat excitement at the time. But what did Gatiss really mean by TFP being 'transgressive'?

This is where I find that the context of @notagarroter's TRF to TFP mortality arc meta really helped me understand and put it in context of Sherlock's arc in general, as I did yesterday. Basically, as @notagarroter points out, there are many cues that something very different-- and disturbing-- is afoot. It's not just that reveal of what's really in Mycroft's umbrella, as Gatiss mentioned, but the fact that we're in this sterile, artificial environment away from Baker Street and London in general, and there are no typical visual cues of BBC Sherlock; there's no case, client or even texts on screen, not to mention Sherlock's classic deduction sequences. 'Vatican Cameos' probably didn't work for the first time just to further the effect, at least in part: that feeling of 'oh shit!' The entire episode opens with a horror movie-style sequence! It's clear that the narrative is trying to unsettle and discomfit the audience, leave the viewers off-kilter and open to anything. Specifically open to the idea that 'anyone might die'.

I definitely find that frame very helpful, but I think it goes deeper than that. They're not trying to just up the suspense, but to make the audience question what we think we know about these characters on a much deeper level. Both the viewers and John himself had already spent TST upending our understanding of Mary yet *again* after her sudden self-sacrifice, and people like @archipelagoarchaea quit the show because of that sudden shift. Basically, John hating Sherlock for something he didn't do, letting his issues with Mary fall by the wayside as he realized he'd been so unhappy and frustrated with his marriage while Mary took the high road and expected him to be a better man, as @ivyblossom described to me. We then spent TLD learning some uncomfortable truths about John, and a lot of the compiled fan responses to John's violence were both negative and purely disbelieving, claiming his psychological break was either simply OOC or perhaps in-character but unnecessary or unsuitable for a Sherlock Holmes story. Of course, I think both John and Sherlock's characterization has only opened up and blossomed in many ways through all this drama, as Ivy has written about so eloquently, but for many viewers, there was already 'no way back', and that's too terrifying and disorienting to enjoy, especially with beloved characters. While the alternative of gentle stasis isn't necessarily desired, and people do want some growth, I definitely think there are intended to be limits; the audience wants to be reassured of things like Sherlock Holmes won't die, or John Watson would certainly never beat him. The needs of continuity are sometimes invisibly overwritten by the concept of predictability.

I guess I really think the idea of the 'transgressive' story, and what that means and how it can possibly be done well merits sitting with and thinking about open-endedly. Assuming that Moffat and Gatiss *wanted* the audience to be disoriented and disturbed-- as narrative transgression has the unique power to accomplish-- TFP becomes a fascinating case study of the needs of the story for continuity. This, as opposed to the ends of the writers in experimenting with a diversity of structures and approaches. Finally, we have the needs of the audience for *predictability*. More to the point, as any experimental writer learns, stylistic experimentation isn't what sells. Fluff, action, smut and/or romance and above all, pure consistency is what really gets you the audience in numbers.

Obviously, a lot of us wanted to see that sort of 'rug pull' translate to canon Johnlock, and we looked forward to others' disorientation. There's certainly some schadenfreude in that. But the actual experience of extreme disorientation, especially in a long-running and well-established series, tends to not go well for most people, who seem to develop a set of expectations about the narrative the longer it continues. I remember people being very upset at the 'rug pull' endings of Lost and HIMYM, for example. I definitely think these are valid responses. While I can see both plot and characterization continuity in Series 4 in general and TFP specifically, what TFP really interrupts is the comfort of the viewers' *emotional* continuity. We just... place emotional value in certain things: it's our Baker Street, our London, and it's even our Belstaff. Questioning the foundation of the narrative we're experiencing in fiction is only slightly less traumatizing in fiction than it would be in real life, especially if you thought you had an expected and well-ordered pathway ahead, and I empathize with anyone to whom it feels like gaslighting, as in @delurkingdetective's post. To Gatiss and Moffat, it's their show they're playing around with self-indulgently, though perhaps particularly for Mark Gatiss. He enjoyed 'flirting with the homoeroticism' in the show, so he did. He never felt the need to justify himself, and you could certainly argue that's because he didn't. The writers get to write their own story their own way, and then the audience decides.

As a writer myself, I'm torn between the idea that the story needs to follow the natural process of its own logic and the demands of its characters, and the idea that you're there to shake things up. It's not that you can't 'shake things up' and remain in-character (as I'd say TFP still has done), but any experimentation with the preset 'narrative settings' can leave a sort of weirdly artificial or meta feel that the audience can pick up on. In TFP, you can get the sense that the drama has been paced awkwardly, stylized to the point that it becomes self-consciously artificial, as in @plaidadder's critique. The classic Holmesian format of the character arc driven, episodic plot style of narrative logic is inherently conservative, I think, being what @porcupine-girl has called the 'archplot' based story. Conversely, it figures that privileging the plot, the pacing or the 'thrill' of the reveal will eventually lead to stuff where the audience sees a conflict between the needs of the story and the character they saw in their minds-- and to overcome this reluctance would take more time than a fast-paced story would allow. And so, here we are: it seems like transgression was the real villain of Series 4. That's what makes it feel *fake*, basically.

Initially, I addressed this critique by saying that one essentially can't have a rational response to saying that a narrative 'feels' wrong, but perhaps that's not quite true, given you have something like Gatiss acknowledging he set out to induce this response in the viewers, more or less. In retrospect, this is why long-form structural continuity (or the 'archplot', which is at least 60% about John and Sherlock's interpersonal relationship) really is so important to follow through on explicitly rather than leaving the emotional satisfaction of resolving Sherlock's arc to implicit or hinted-at scenes between TLD and TFP. The audience would follow along with the gaps if they were explicitly pointed to first. Gatiss would probably consider this 'warm paste', but if you're writing for either a wide enough or an analytical audience-- and Sherlock fandom has both in spades-- a certain amount of warm paste might help the thrills last.