#if you think this episode was useless don't talk to me

[lifeandlies-of-regulusblack]

MULAN! AU

The Black Brothers

Regulus goes in Sirius' stead, because his brother never fully recovered from the last great war. Sirius has really bad PTSD and his knee occasionally gives out, requiring the constant use of a cane.

Regulus is trans.

When he goes to the war, he comes, AS HIMSELF. He's not a woman pretending to be a man. He's Regulus Black, the second son of Orion Black.

To his parents, he runs away in a foolish act of love for his brother. They think he's going to die for Sirius for either one or both reasons: that they find out Regulus is a "woman", therefore committing treason and/or Regulus dies because they don't expect a "woman" to survive the war.

But for Sirius? It's worse than that. Because Regulus actually comes to Sirius and begs, pleads, and cries to let him do this for him. It's a long, horrible fight where scabbing wounds are sliced open and new ones are made. Never, in Sirius' entire life, has he ever imagined his sibling to go to war in his stead. It's humiliating, it tells him he's a horrible first born son — weak and useless, when his whole life he's been protecting his little brother. He wants to throw up. He wants to rage at the world.

And Regulus begs him. Sirius will die in the coming war, and everyone and their mothers know it. A war hero, yes — but injured, almost crippled by trauma. Regulus has been his brother's caretaker six years since he came home from the war. He's bathed an unresponsive Sirius more times than he can ever count. Fought off a crazed brother lost in an episode, seeing nothing but enemies to kill so that he can come home. He's held his brother up, carried his entire weight when his knee locks up and the ability to walk loses out to pain. Sirius, is in no way, helpless and Regulus will cut down any man who dares to challenge his brother's honor. Even better, he'll hand the sword to his brother and let Sirius do the talking.

However, Sirius isn't made for war anymore.

Their fight ends up in an impasse, where Sirius irrationally feels betrayed and insulted.

"I can't lose you, Sirius."

"And you think I can? In what world do you see me capable of sending you off to war?"

"Well it's not fair to me! It's not fair to think I'll be okay waiting for your death when we all know you're never going to come back from this!"

"That's not true—"

"No! How dare you! If I leave, I leave you with a question until I come home! If you leave, you may as well tell me how to bury your remains once they get shipped back. And I'll hate you for it, Sirius. I'll hate you forever if you die."

On Regulus' last night, Sirius is the one to cut his hair. He teaches Regulus how to wear his armor, teaches his little brother the different knots to keep them in place. Sirius tells him which tent to look for, what to say and what not to say... Which papers to bring.

He can't look Regulus in the eye quite right, but he wills himself to help Regulus.

This is his baby brother. And his baby brother is going to war wearing his armour, wielding his sword. It's an ugly thing, the whole lot of sending young men to war.

Every piece of armour he puts into place on Regulus' body, a piece of his soul withers away — he'll be a dead man walking, a husk of himself, the moment Regulus leaves. Until he comes back, Sirius will be living day by day in purgatory.

But when he cries, looking at Regulus one last time, he cries because he finally, finally gets to see Regulus. His beautiful brother. That's him! He looks so much like Sirius, not their parents — him! Regulus takes after him in so many ways. In the slow horror of the coming war, this is the first time they both see Regulus. This is the only time Regulus is ever allowed to come out, and as long as he's away, he'll be Regulus to everyone he'll ever meet.

Brave, Regulus Black. Beautiful, Regulus Black.

"Hi, Regulus," Sirius says, shakily.

"Siri,"

"It's okay, little brother. You're perfect."

"I'm sorry!" his brother blurts out.

"What for?" Sirius laughs through his tears. "For going to war and breaking my heart, or because you've given me the honor of finally seeing you?"

"I've always wanted to grow up just like you."

And oh, Sirius thinks. Doesn't that completely make and unmake him? "You're all that and more. It's an honor to be your brother."

It's a boon and a curse, this moment shared between them.

Soon, Regulus is up on his horse, looking at Sirius with so much emotion, they probably mirror each other. With one last goodbye, Sirius watches his brother until Regulus disappears into the distance and he no longer can.

*Tbc for Jegulus. Just kidding i have NO idea what to write for Jegulus. But yes, Zhang is James.

[multifandombullshitbabes]

Random Merlin Rewatch: Where a random number generator gives me a season and an episode from BBC Merlin; and then I comment on it as I go.

Today's episode: Season 2 Episode 11 - The Witch's Quickening

First off, before I start. It's got Mordred on the cover, so I'm assuming it's the episode where Merlin tries to kill little baby Mordred? And bby Mordred fucking shows off some of his magic in it as well. Don't remember much else but that, so.

LET'S FUCKING GO INTROOOOOOOOOOO

Oh, it's that ugly ass blonde guy that's gonna manipulate Morgana or whatever it is. Ugh. I don't like him. Glad to see him on the floor, but I know it's all a ruse.

Why is every Camelot knight fucking useless, y'all cannot be serious right now.

Was he. Fucking floating or something??? That looked goofy as shit, brother. Loser.

LET'S GO MUSICCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC

It is a testament that Camelot must have a lot of different knights and guards, 'cause they don't recognize the guy but that's alright. I'm assuming they're so used to seeing each other with the helmets that they just. Forget each other's faces?? I don't know, maybe it's me, but I can recognize a face.

Oop, not Merlin snooping in on some random telepathy convo.

Before that, I wanted to comment. Absolutely bonkers that they're carrying Mordred (? maybe) inside a barrel. At least I'm assuming that's what they're doing.

That must've been so goofy to film, thank god colin just puts his whole pussy into everything he does.

A rare occasion of some guards being useful. Too bad magic's a thing, huh.

Does the druid speak give Merlin headaches?? Poor boy looks like is getting one. Also he looks so comfy.

NOT MORDRED INSIDE THE BARREL, MY GOD. That cannot have been comfy. Also him just. getting out like that. So creepy, I respect it.

Oh the two people just lifting him up like that, he's so smol!!

Why does the blonde guy has such a slutty shirt, wtf.

Why is Morgana sleeping with a big ass bracelet on, girl, take that off!!! You don't need it babe.

Morgana smiling :((((( My love.

OOP ICONIC ARTHUR CHOKING MERLIN UP THE WALL SCENE, LET'S GO

Ohhh the way Arthur just get's so protective when Merlin tells him they're in Morgana's chambers. They love each other so much, I'm SICK.

Ugly ass man, no one asked for you to talk, BITCH. fucking Alvarr or whatever the fuck, he can suck my dick, his vibes are SO OFF.

Morgana is so empathetic, like, she GETS IT!!! Of course she has some degree of privilege by being Uther's ward, but she is so fucking afraid everyday of being found out!! I'm SICK.

NOT MERLIN GETTING ALL GIDDY BY A COMPLIMENT FROM ARTHUR, OUGHHHHH

Hate seeing Morgana get so manipulated, hate it hate it, I'm SICK OF IT, LET MY GIRL LIVE HER FUCKING LIFE

EWWWW GET AWAY FROM HER, EWWWW

AHHHHHHHH MORGANA'S ACTING IS SO GOOD, FUCK I LOVE THIS SCENE, SO GOOFY!!!

She's so gorgeous. But also I love Merlin's little head tilt at Morgana's excuse "Don't you think if there was someone in my room, I'd know about it?" because, frankly, no you wouldn't!! And merlin knows this, but she says it with so much confidence they just take it.

Damn, Arthur getting so sassy n aggressive 'cause he was so scared of finding a horrific scene in Morgana's chambers, and now he's got nothing but Merlin to let out steam to. Damn, damn, boys.

I don't Mordred understands that his role in this mission is nothing more than just ensuring they get the crystal via manipulating Morgana with his existence. Very sick game Alvarr is playing. But Mordred could also be in the know. Hmmm.... we'll see.

Merlin IS very smart, he understands people, but most of all he understands magic users and what they need to do to survive, even if it means sacrificing yourself for others to survive.

Ough, that braid and that green dress. Morgana is just stunning.

"I was looking for Arthur." immediately looks down, guilty as fuck. Morgana is a good liar, but that doesn't mean she likes it all the time. This is Merlin, someone she supposedly trusts. And she is committing a serious crime. Tense.

God, I do love the aesthetics of this show. Love it love it, the fire, the stone walls, everything. And they never played about the clothes.

Merlin can never sleep in peace, and Arthur can never eat in peace.

Well. I do have to say, I was wondering why Arthur's door wasn't locked if he's known to be away. Merlin babe that's kinda on you, you should've locked it :///

Love the difference between Merlin apologising to Arthur n him just walking away, and then Uther being very harsh to Arthur for the same reason. Something something if Arthur can, he'll bear the burden/blame of others since he already feels responsible for a whole kingdom even as a prince, so what's more of that weight on his shoulders right? Technically, the fault is Merlin's but if Arthur can help it, Uther will never know it. He cares so much for Merlin.

Arthur lying through his teeth for Merlin, ohhhhhhhhhhhhh

This damn fucking dragon, fuckkkkkkkkkk

"Because you don't have a choice." OOP MERLIN ATE WITH THAT ONE.

God, the way Kilgarrah talks abt Morgana, I hate it!! UGH

Hm. The fact that Mordred possibly can use the crystal but Morgana can't (KIlgarrah's words). Interesting. So, from least to most poweful: Morgana<Mordred<Merlin.

Gwen just trying to spend as much time with Morgana because I bet they normally chat and stuff.

Oof, the mix of anger/fear/apprehension on Gwen's face with "My Lady." i bet it doesn't happen often when Gwen is reminded that Morgana is a lady and has the power to fucking execute her at will, she's that powerful. It must be so scary when she gets reminded of that. Of course, she knows Morgana would never; but what if?

The difference between Morgana's pristine tall white horse and Merlin's smaller black horse. Love that. Loveeeee it.

Oof. The fact that Morgana balks at Alvarr and his strategy of just. Killing anyone at Uther's side, even innocents. Like, she just cannot understand that, but!! She's at her most vulnerable at this time. Right now, she's not sure what's right or wrong. She doesn't know if what she thinks it's the right thing to do anymore, if it's what's needed for magic to be free, for her to be free of this fear and be herself. Is cruelty the answer? Is she being too merciful? I wonder if these are thoughts that she's having, knowing that what feels right is that she doesn't want to kill civilians, just bring Uther down. But what if her approach is wrong, and they fail, and it makes it all worse? What is there cannot be any "half measures"?

DONT FUCKING TOUCH HER BITCH EW

"I dont want to be alone anymore." THIS!!!! This is what leads to Morgana becoming what she becomes in season 3. Ultimately, she feels so alone. What other friends she has besides Gwen? Arthur? And now those two are poisoned because of her secret. She doesn't know if she can trust them fully anymore. She was already bitter, and full of hatred for Uther, and she was already capable of being ruthless and brave. But this? Being alone? This is what sets her off at her path. Even if she has allies, in the end she will always feel isolated, separated, alone. Even with Morgause. The second she gets into the mindset of "I have nothing of value to lose." She goes down Uther's path. The second she convinces herself that everyone either wants her dead or gone or whatever, she's on Uther's path. And Morgause doesn't count; she helps with this actually. Because Morgause is also very isolated and alone, but still puts herself in a certain distance with Morgana. Yes, they're sisters, they're High Priestesses. But they know their roles are much grander than themselves. Morgause even makes Morgana sacrifice her for their shared goal. The connection she has with Morgause only intensifies this idea that Morgana does not need others, she has a purpose outside of herself, and nothing else matters. This is what leads her down Uther's path. And once you start self-destructing, you realize how easy it is; and how much harder it becomes to put yourself back together again.

EWWWW THEY ALMOST KISSED!!! Another proof that Morgana is just so desperate for connection. First sign she sees of pure acceptance without fear she wants to dive right into that "safety". Ugh. Hate Alvarr and his manipulation.

EWWWWWWWW FUCK I HATE THIS GUY BROOOO

Oop, cult leader esque vibes. Should've known.

Not Gaius straight up telling Merlin "Let's lie to the King." Bet Merlin teases him abt that.

Goddd, I love their sibling banter. Also love how Arthur just cannot seem to tell when someone's hiding something when they're someone he truly deeply loves n trusts. Hope that doesn't bite him in the ass or something.

DON'T FUCKING KISS HER EWWUHHHH

Not Arthur just bullying the fuck out of Merlin. Too bad he's too busy listening to a telepathic convo.

THIS IS SO FUNNY, MERLIN JUST BEING LIKE "There's a footprint!!! (Oh fuck it's not enough, um-) LOOK!! MORE!!!"

"Yes they are" says Merlin prophetically and then somebody get shot with an arrow. Seriously, how did nobody get that Merlin was a sorcerer?? Did they just think he was. very weird???? Actually, that's exactly it.

Not Merlin aiding in the death of a child.

And just like that, another part of the prophecy solidified. Welp!!

Not Merlin seeing what Kilgarrah will do if he releases him and then that's exactly what he does.

OUGH??? MORGANA SENDING AWAY THE GUARDS WITH JUST A FLICK OF HER HAND??? HOT?????

OOP??? I FORGOT HOW HARD SHE WENT IN THIS SCENE HOLY SHIT???? This was, lowkey, Morgana sealing her fate. She was just so done with being passive and just taking the luxury of being Uther's ward. She saw what Alvarr and the druids and anyone with magic has had to do to survive and to end this reign of terror and she got so sick of just being on the side-lines. No wonder it was so easy for her to just betray them past this point. To her, she was already alienated from Uther and Camelot and everything it stands for. Alvarr being sentenced to death, not even telling the whole truth of her aiding him, radicalized her here. The title of this episode makes so much sense, this is Morgana getting more and more cold and ruthless towards Camelot whether before she just hated it and suffered under it. Go off queen.

OUGHHHH NOW THAT BROKE UTHER'S HEART, DAMN!!! She fully just. resigned from this family (I don't think she's fully processed that this means resigning from Arthur as well, she's just so focused on Uther).

OUGH THAT LAST LINE. UTHER'S SHOOK BITCHHHHH

"The future is as yet unshaped." This is why I believe destiny is not set in stone, but!! Once you do a set of actions, one path of the future solidifies and it is basically impossible to erode yourself out of it. But not truly impossible.

Morgana lying to Gwen, separating herself more n more from those she loves but that could hinder her new path. Oof...

Not Morgana bribing the guards with alcohol, jesus they're so stupid.

Fucking HATE ALVARR UGHHHHH

Oh, the way that Uther knows, and Morgana knows he knows, but Uther just cannot bear the thought of the truth, cannot say it out loud. OOOOOHHHH DELICIOUSSSSSSSSS

Damn what a good ass episode bro. This is really where we see Morgana become herself, I guess; or the hateful, ruthless version of her. It is both sad but so freeing to see. But I do think she only really wanted Uther to be gone, her hatred for Arthur and Merlin came later, through Morgause and her manipulation, but also their own actions.

[hungryandtiredgay]

Episode 5 of Ahsoka reminded me so much of the moment in Jedi: Fallen Order where Cal too confronts a vision of his master who died long before.

Both padawans had their training cut short. Both masters have one last lesson to teach them about forgiveness and moving forward. Or maybe they're just visions their padawans are imagining to deal with their grief, ptsd and guilt (in Ahsoka's case for abandoning Anakin and not preventing his fall, in Cal's case because Jaro Tapal died to protect him). Maybe this lesson comes from the Force itself.

Both protagonists are at a moment in their journey in which these negative emotions and immense pain are pushing them dangerously close to the dark side, both outside of their visions (Ahsoka threw Shin like a ragdoll in a fit of anger, Cal grew resentful towards Cere) and inside of them (Ahsoka got Sith eyes when she briefly considered slaying Anakin, Cal destroyed his lightsaber). Both masters turn against their students, but the solution is not to kill them, rather to forgive them (and forgive themselves).

The main difference is of course that, where Cal needed to learn to pick his battles and truly think about the consequences of his fight and fighting for fighting's sake, Ahsoka needed to be reminded why she was fighting, what her end goal was and why it was important for her to keep going. Cal learns to live with his powerless young self and Ahsoka learns to live with the powerhouse that is Vader.

[novantinuum]

Steven's Breakdown Was Inevitable From the Very Beginning

I feel like the thing that fucks me up the most about Steven Q. Universe and how well conceived he is as a character is that the fundamental building blocks of why he reached his breaking point in SU: Future were laid out as clear as day in the span of legit only the first four episodes of the original show. The writing was literally always on the wall that future him would struggle with matters of self worth and identity in relationship to the others around him.

Let's take a look:

Gem Glow

"Awesome! What are these things?"

Foundational Trauma #1: Steven's home is always either under threat or actively being wrecked by antagonistic forces/beings, and he constantly copes with this by pushing down his fear in favor of a curiosity and silver linings based mindset.

Look at his initial shock when he opens the door and gets tackled by one of these things, and then his response when one of them spits acid:

The kid's freaked the hell out about all this, and while I do think there's a part of Steven that genuinely IS curious about what these lil critters are, I think he's subconsciously using that curiosity as a way to distract himself from his own fears and anxieties. This is Steven actively learning how to ignore the deeper problems in favor of emoting a facade to the others in his life that he can totally handle himself in scary situations like these.

The underlying reason why is incredibly apparent, when you look at the example from the next episode-

Laser Light Canon

"I don't know what a magic lady like her ever saw in a plain old dope like me..."

Genuinely- from the bottom of my heart- I think the above quote from Greg is a moment where his own insecurities around the Gems actually rubbed off on Steven.

At this point in time, Steven may be living with the Gems... but he hasn't started to harness any of his powers at all, so in his own head he might as well be the same as his dad- another human, just one who happens to have a gem! But the way Greg talks about himself... given Steven was living with him in the van for years before moving in to the beach house, he had to have heard negative self-talk from his dad like this before.

And then there's the rest of the Crystal Gems... always speaking of Rose with such reverence as if she were an all-powerful goddess... and Steven can't help but look back at himself, and his gem that won't work... the gem that the others still identify as Rose's...

"Your gem-! You have Rose's gem!"

And maybe he starts to wonder if- without any working powers- he's just a plain ol' dope like his Dad, too.

"Please work... Unlock! Activate! Go! Please-!! Everyone's counting on you, you can't just be useless!"

Foundational Trauma #2: Steven has Rose's gem, and as such, is constantly living under the silent expectation to live up to a standard that he simply cannot ever hope to achieve, because he doesn't KNOW her and he never will.

I want to highlight one of Steven's expressions while his dad is talking about Rose- look at that sad look. My god, I just wanna hug him. This is the expression of a child who has already come to terms with the fact that his only relationship with his mom is through the rose tinted stories that other people tell him about her.

Cheeseburger Backpack

So. Steven has learned so far that he needs to push down his feelings and emote a false veneer of cheer and bravery even when he's afraid, because the rest of the people in his life have expectations and hopes for him due to the legacy of his parentage and he can't bear the thought of letting them down. (And in a sad way, at this point "letting them down" literally just means... being an ordinary human boy. I believe Steven at this stage of the show is flat out scared to be human, because to be human is to fail at being a Gem, and no amount of love and sacrifice in the name of humanity in the seasons to come could've ever saved him from the fundamental fact that the wedge between him and this whole half of his being was already drawn long before the events of season 1 even started. But I digress.)

Let's see where we go from there. Let's check out Steven's first "mission." Or as Pearl puts it about 35 episodes later, his first "test."

"Yeah... they can't all be winners."

This episode is tinted with a little bit of tragedy for me on rewatch, because I genuinely do think the Gems handled the situation as well as they could've. They were supportive of Steven's successful ploys, and (for the most part) responded with grace when he majorly blundered and left the Goddess Statue at home. The main problem, however, is that Steven has already developed a bit of a complex about impressing the three of them-

Foundational Trauma #3: Even when they claim otherwise, Steven has convinced himself that affection from the Gems is transactional, and that when he messes up he's not truly a part of the Crystal Gems.

Of course we the audience know this isn't true- I mean, hell, Amethyst even said as much in episode one after her slip-up ("and you're fun to have around, even if your gem IS useless!")... that the Crystal Gems wouldn't be the same without him. But Steven... the poor kid is a complicated little guy living a complicated life, and whether they intended it or not, the language used they've used around him thus far has not backed up their attempts at fully embracing him, human parentage and all.

Thus, Steven just spends the entire episode wracked with anxiety trying to find creative non-power using ways to make the mission easier so he can convince them he's useful to have around.

Look how nervous he gets even when all three of them are visibly and vocally supportive of his presence here:

This is the face of a boy who feels like he's under constant judgement and scrutiny from those around him.

Blessedly, viewing this episode in isolation, he experiences a brief moment of mental respite where he finally accepts the Gems' encouragement and agrees that his ideas 'can't all be winners,' but this lesson does not stick for him moving forward. A shame, really.

Together Breakfast

"What's the matter, Steven?" "I wanted us all to have breakfast together, so I made Together Breakfast! But everyone keeps leaving..." "Oh, that's nice..."

Taken in context with what we've learned already in the last three episodes, Steven's desperation to spend quality time with the Gems here and his sadness that they keep leaving him alone doesn't just exist within a vacuum. He spends the whole morning watching them shuffle in and out of the temple, or come back from missions he wasn't invited on, and with the disastrous result of the LAST mission he went on probably fresh in his mind it's not hard to understand why this bothers him.

Foundational Trauma #4: Steven internalizes that the price of "not being useful" is that the Gems actively ignore him, meaning that the only way to guarantee their attention is to work as hard as he can to become a stronger member of the team.

I know this screenshot is usually used as a lighthearted meme, but I wanted to include it because I think it's a good example of how Steven's intense desire to impress permeates every facet of his personality at times. Just LOOK at how desperate he is to make Garnet laugh at his joke, to be the one that's at very least "fun to have around," as Amethyst put it in episode one.

The Gems do eventually drop what they're doing to spend time with Steven by the conclusion of this episode, but this only comes after Steven shows his growing strength and "proves" himself by saving their butts from the breakfast monster.

If he successfully gained their attention in literally any other way he might've come away from this episode with a different lesson, but no. Instead, his fears were proven true- the Gems value strength and utility, and if he's not exhibiting that, then what use is he to them?

These fears of his can be seen weaving throughout the foundational fabric of the entire show, but I think Steven lays out what he sees as his "stakes" in the clearest way possible in the episode 'An Indirect Kiss.'

"But- if I don't have powers, then I can't hang out with Amethyst, or Garnet, o-or Pearl, and- I-I can't go on missions!"

And these same insecurities even rear their ugly head as late as the movie.

"I can't believe this... for the first time in years, everyone's in danger, everybody needs me, and- I'm useless!"

Powers = Utility = Worth = Other's love, for Steven. Everything is transactional to the end, which is a hilarious double standard he's set for himself when he's made his reputation as the kid who always listens and encourages and gives others a chance to change, no matter their messy history with him.

__

So let's recap and restate those foundational traumas from Steven's perspective.

One: The only way to cope when your life is constantly under threat is to bury the damage and pretend to be fine.

Two: Everyone expects you to live up to the standards of someone you're not.

Three: The Gems only love you when you're of use to them.

Four: If you ever stop being useful, the Gems won't want anything more to do with you.

In sum, Steven's habit of burying his feelings for the benefit of others was there from the very beginning, not just since 'The Test.'

Those unreachable standards he felt so daunted and intimidated by all his life were the ones set by Rose, at first... but over the course of the series, the dynamic of this shifted. As Rose's influence fell into the background, Steven's rose into the front. And so it's with great irony that- by the time of Steven Universe: Future, the expectations this exhausted, worn down teenager is fighting to once again achieve are the ones HE set for himself. Many of young Steven's selfless actions during the war are quite admirable when analyzed in isolation, but almost none of them are sustainable. He set himself on fire just to save the world, but teen Steven is genuinely unable to see this for what it is yet- as a tragic sacrifice of his own childhood. You can't burn your own ends for others forever, not at all. His breakdown was simply inevitable.

When it comes to the interconnected beliefs three and four, these are exactly why the ultimate confrontation at the end of I Am My Monster HAD to be one fueled by selfless love. Steven is at his absolute lowest at this point- he's everything he fears he's become, trapped in a form that's nearly incapable of reason. He's big and angry and spiky because that's a part of the facade- because a part of him WANTS to scare the Gems away, wants to be left alone forever, believing this the fate he deserves as price for his misdeeds.

In this form, by his own definitions he is NOT useful to the Crystal Gems at all.

But they don't care.

Because it never WAS about Steven's 'usefulness' to them, they simply love him for being Steven.

With this in mind, the conclusion of Steven Universe: Future wasn't just a salve to teen Steven's immediate struggles, it was a salve to the foundational insecurities that have been plaguing him his entire life.

And hopefully... from this point on... his family's shows of love and encouragement will be enough to finally convince Steven that he's more than worth their time...

No matter what path the future leads him on, and no matter what form he takes.

[showtoonzfan]

Now that the episode is out officially, here’s my rant review of Oops!

PROS:

- Fizz and Ozzie were adorable and I honestly love them. Despite the sex jokes, you can tell they love each other for who they are OUTSIDE of sex. While I did wish we would have seen more, (like how Ozzie took him in and fell in love) they’re still adorable to watch. They’re the better version of Stolitz, can the show be about them instead?

- Brandon’s voice acting holy shit, he really knows how to sound like he’s in tears or is broken. As much as I hate the character and feel no sympathy, he displayed genuine and broken emotion very well.

- Alex Brightman Alex Brightman

Okay that’s it. Moving on to the Cons. Bear with me, it’s a lot and I go back and forth a bit. 😭

CONS:

So for a quick short summary, this episode:

- Once again puts more focus on the filler plot rather than actually focusing on the relationships between the characters, so all we're left with is a 10 second clip of Fizz being burned while the rest of the episode is surrounded on sex jokes/petty bickering and Stolas and Ozzie sitting around.

- Completely erases what made Blitz and Fizz's dynamic interesting in the first place because it retcons it with a dumb miscommunication trope about how Fizz actually wanted to see Blitz and Blitz tried reaching out to him. Not only does this feel like a cheap attempt to make Blitz out to be sweet/sympathetic and NOT the one in the wrong so Fizz can suck up to him, but this also makes no sense within the narrative.

- Has Fizz forgive Blitz despite him being the last person anyone would think would forgive him. (So honestly ruins Fizz himself because it turned him into a soft boy who's forgiving compared to the asshole he was in Ozzie's) All because Viv would sell her whole soul before she even remotely considers painting characters like Blitz and Stolas out to be the one's in the wrong.

- Takes Stolas out of the hospital completely, erasing all the drama/tension Western Energy had and proves that that episode was utterly pointless.

- Turns Striker from an interesting complex villain to a Saturday morning cartoon goon.

- Proves to us that Crimson is just a flat tool and gives us more prove that the world building rules Viv set up in season 1 legit don't matter.

-Ruins Blitz/Barbie's feud now because now you're making Barbie look like the one in the wrong since the fire was an accident. God forbid a female characters emotions in this show are justified.

But if you want my more in depth rants, it’s under the cut! (There’s a lot so bear with me lol)

- As usual WAAY too many sex jokes and swearing. It gets annoying and repetitive at times and some of them distract from the main plot. There’s a long and I mean LONNG dragged out joke of Fizz talking about Ozzie’s dick, then later saying he’s hard when Striker has a gun to his head, as well as Blitz making a joke about him and Fizz making out once they hug. Again, Viv can’t be serious for 2 seconds without an unfunny shitty gag. I genuinely wonder if Hazbin is ganna be like this, where a character is in a life threatening situation or a deep dark serious scene happens only for the next scene to be sex related.

- This is one of those “shit happens because the plot demands it” and it shows. Crimson and Striker COINCIDENTLY meet up with each other, and Fizz and Blitz just so HAPPEN to be in the same exact area they are. Viv wonders why we call her shit a fanfic and this is what we mean, when she creates wild wacky plots and focuses more on THAT rather than the actual character writing. This entire episode hinges on a useless poorly last minute planned kidnapping plot that didn’t need to happen. Also way to once again make the characters idiots so the plot can happen, cause Fizz KNOWS Ozzie worries for him and that the Greed Ring is dangerous, yet purposefully puts the spotlight on him.

- Stolas did NOT need to be in this episode. The plot completely ignores the fact that he was in the hospital the last time we saw him, and he’s only here for Stolitz banter. You’d think that a character admitting they have feelings for someone would be a big deal but he just flat out says it and it’s so underwhelming and feels half assed with no weight to it. Fan comics have made more dedication to this than Viv has. We're supposed to believe him too despite the show failing to actually SHOW us this. Same for Blitz ranting about how “nice” Stolas has been to him, laughing at his jokes and liking his posts…hey Viv, can we actually SEE that on screen so it’s more believable? Or are you only determined to show them sexually flirting? 😑

- Once again Viv felt the need to shove a B plot into this episode and this one sucks because it’s just two characters sitting and doing fucking nothing. It felt like Viv had no idea what to do with Stolas and Ozzie, and I refuse to believe that Ozzie just sat there knowing Fizz was in danger. If anything he would have said “fuck the paperwork” and went to save Fizz himself. Way to show that gif of Ozzie getting mad as a sneak peak to get fans excited, only to see that Ozzie spends the rest of the episode sitting in a dark room LMAO what a let down.

- Ozzie is weirdly chill and cool with Stolas and it’s something I don’t get. While he did say that Stolas had the real “spirit of Lust” in S1E7, it still gave you the impression that he was also more poking fun at Stolas rather than respecting him. The whole point of House of Asmodeous was that Ozzie outs him and publicly embarrassed him. Stolas literally was intimidated just by Asmodeous’s mere name, and hid his face around him. It seemed like Stolas certainly didn’t want someone like Ozzie to know about his private life especially since they’re both part of the Ars Goetia. Now here Ozzie is just cool with him and it feels like a missed opportunity for their dynamic.

- Stolas confessing his feelings about Blitz also makes…no sense narrative wise. I thought the whole point of The Circus and the ending to Western Energy was that he was realizing that Blitz didn’t like him that way and was finally waking up. I thought that’s why he was doing this whole crystal deal in the first place, so he can let Blitz go, yet the show keeps flip flopping and insisting that these two love each other and are good for each other. It’s really making you realize how this season and the previous stuff set up is becoming nonsense because the writers retcon EVERY damn episode. Also….why the hell is Stolas telling Ozzie his feelings for Blitz? Out of all people, why is it Ozzie, the person who outed Stolas and embarrassed him. Why is Stolas even respectful of Ozzie? He has no reason to, and he’s not under the impression that he’s dating Fizz either. I get that he needs the crystal but mentioning his love for Blitz makes no sense.

- Striker and Crimson teaming up to kidnap Blitz and Fizz was such an ass puller last minute decision. It feels overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time, more because it feels like Viv has no idea what to do with these two villain characters other than give them something evil to do to start the plot. Also…why…are they working together? It feels so random.

- Striker’s character especially is all over the place. First he’s working for Stella, then he’s painted as the best assassin in hell, and now he’s…looking for more work I guess and working for Crimson? Why? Does this guy even have a motive anymore? It feels like his character is just dangling around until Viv wants to use him for another wattpad kidnap plot and it ESPECIALLY shows when Striker escapes for the THIRD fucking time. Can this character/storyline actually GO somewhere or are you just going to keep introducing him and have him run away. 🤦🏽‍♀️

— How did Crimson not know who Striker is despite him being labeled as “the most popular assassin in hell”, and how the hell does Crimson know Ozzie and know all the information about him being in a relationship with Fizz?? Oh right because we needed the plot to happen somehow. Still, even if Crimson did know that Ozzie was the "weakest" and loved Fizz, (which….what about Beezlebub?)) he still should have known he was playing with fire. I get that he's supposed to be evil and intimidating but how could he have predicted that Ozzie would actually stand down and fill out the paperwork? He could have immediately came there and killed Crimson for all he knew. It's just distracting how..not planned this shit was.

- Fuck this episode for calling Striker a supremacist. It makes no sense?? Viv is trying SO hard to villainize him despite him being the one in the right and it pisses me off. He has every right to be mad at the upper class, he’s part of the lower class that we’re said Hell takes advantage of, but god forbid we call out Rich and powerful Stolas because that would mean he’s a b-bad person and we can’t have that complex morality! This is so not a “eat the rich” story and it shows bc Vivzie is rich as hell. Striker as a character deserves so much better man. Congrats writers, you had an interesting character and motive set up for him, now he’s nothing but a silly goon that you might as well kill off already cause you clearly don’t care about him. Crimson meanwhile is just a piece of paper, a boring plot device I could give less of a shit about. I thought his motive was to go after Moxxie, now he’s just doing fuck whatever because this show desperately wants a bad guy for their filler fanfic plots.

- We get more world building issues, Ozzie and Fizz are so determined to hide their relationship for obvious reasons, but then at the end of the episode just say “fuck it, no one would dare tell anyway”. So now they’re being open about their relationship and lmao I told y’all the newspaper scene of Ozzie being called out for being a hypocrite wouldn’t go anywhere. Even if Ozzie did threaten his workers to not tell, they can’t be so sure that someone wouldn’t see or snitch, it’s kinda a retcon too cause they were pretty lovey dovey in Ozzie’s. Still, it makes the characters look dumb and it makes the rules Viv set up for Hell once again not mean anything.

- We finally get to see Fizz’s backstory in action and it’s executed in the most underwhelming way possible. It’s literally a fucking 10 second clip of what went down, and rather than experiencing the event for ourselves, it’s in flashback mode but with Fizz’s voice talking over it. That’s it. I’ve seen fan comics/fanart that built this shit up better than Viv did, that actually took the slow time and dedication it needed, and here it feels like such an afterthought, like Viv could care less. Maybe if this actually was a character driven show like Viv claims, Stolas, Striker, and Crimson would be taken out of the picture and then that would leave us with PLENTY time to actually explore and develop Blitz/Fizz, bc most of this episode is just them pettily bickering and Stolas and Ozzie sitting around. But nah, we gatta have our fanfic kidnapping plot. Same goes for the reveal of Blitzo’s mom dying in the same fire. Glad to know that she got the same treatment Moxxie’s mom did, where we don’t even know her and yet we’re supposed to feel moved and care about her death. You nailed that one Viv. 👍

- I predicted that this episode would victimize Blitz and have the fire incident be an accident, (because Viv is a pussy writer and can’t make her characters actually do bad things like god forbid) but I never thought they’d actually have the balls to have Fizz forgive Blitz immediately in the same episode and pull the “actually turns out that horrible thing you did to me helped me in a way”- trope. Biggest flaw of the episode, fuck you Viv. I was actually going to applaud Blitz for taking accountability, but then the dialogue reminds you that an abuser wrote this, and he shifts his apology to “okay but I lost something too see so it’s not all about you” as if he’s fucking dismissing Fizz’s trauma and making it about himself. “I love flawed characters” my fucking ass. I would have smacked a bitch if I was Fizz because Blitzo loosing his mother in the fire too isn’t an excuse?? Fizz lost his fucking ARMS AND LEGS, and at the end of the day Blitzo STILL KNEW HE WAS HELPLESS IN THE FIRE BUT LEFT HIM BEHIND. He could have gotten help and came back, but didn’t. If this were a good show Fizz would have threw that apology back in Blitzo’s face and said “I don’t care if it was an accident or not, you still left me there and then proceeded to loathe me for years”. This is why Helluva will never be Bojack cause at least characters in that show who got treated horribly by him knew when to say “no, fuck you.”

- The episode retcons again, this time they make it out to be that Blitz TRIED contacting Fizz the years they were apart but no one would let him see him. Then they say that Fizz actually WANTED to see Blitz but assumed he didn’t want to, so their entire feud was solely because of miscommunication?? Number one, show don’t fucking tell omg. And number two, that makes ZERO sense. Blitz talked badly about Fizz in Loo Loo Land, and when they finally reunited in Ozzie’s, it was clear they fucking loathed each other. You got the impression that Blitz was petty and jealous just because Fizz was more popular, and Fizz not only loathed him for the accident, but liked to rub in his face about how much of a big shot he was. They literally do that in this episode too, so the episode is literally contradicting itself. Blitz and Fizz had multiple chances to meet up with each other, you can’t just say “oh they couldn’t because no one would let them”- So which is it? Did they hate each other because of bad blood, petty drama, or that they thought the other didn’t want to see them? Pick ONE Viv and stick to it, but she never does. Their feud was interesting and now you ruined it just to have some sweet happy ending. “Adult mature show” my ass lol.

-Bottom line is Fizz shouldn’t have forgave Blitz so easily, or forgave him period. I find it funny how he says “it’s hard to just forgive you” and then he literally does lol. I feel so bad for Fizz fans, him and Blitz’s feud was honestly interesting, so to see all of this go down in a half-assed piss poor way as if this was Care Bears is….wow. The fan interpretations had more thought and care put into this storyline but what else is new lol.

- I’m really tired of these shitty annoying songs. If you’re going to get Broadway actors, please put effort into your songwriting and actually have them sing something good, not something that’s literally nonsense. This Fizz song sounds like it took less than a minute to write and Sam Haft was just thinking of anything he could think of at the top of his head. Also Why the fuck are Striker and Crimson just STANDING there while Fizz sings. They look like idiots, just SHOOT them omg. If this were a funny show, Fizz would have started his first note and Crimson just rolls his eyes and pulls his gun out.

- Fizz and Ozzie kill the lawyer but not…Crimson? Despite Fizz knowing what ring he’s in and even Ozzie knowing what he looks like? Same for Blitz, he doesn’t try to make sure Striker is dead. I get that the plot demands for these two to still be around, but there’s a way to keep them alive without making the main characters look like fucking idiots. Also Stolas just leaves without doing or contributing anything to the plot yay.

- Fizz: “Let him have it, you could say he’s earned it”— Uhm….Nope. Blitz did NOT earn shit. He didn’t even earn Fizz’s forgiveness. Last time I checked, the moment Blitz cried and said it was an accident, Fizz forgave him, knowing he didn’t mean it. What effort did Blitz do to “earn” that as well as the crystal? Because he saved Fizz and didn’t leave him behind for the SECOND time near the end?? Cause if so than the bar is extremely low. That’s the bare minimum, just because Blitz cried and felt bad about it doesn’t mean he should be let off the hook Viv. I hate this so much, what a shitty conclusion, it feels forced just so Blitz can have the crystal and just so the writers can once again paint him as the one in the right. It’s almost insulting that they make it seem like Fizz was in the wrong for assuming Blitz starting the fire too, same for Barbie.

God what a shitty day it is to be a Fizz fan, I’m sorry. The episode did NOT do him justice. Fizzarolli deserved better than that half assed gaslighting apology for someone who lost their arms and legs man, and I’m tired of the show letting every character suck up to Blitz and Stolas for their horrible treatment just because they feel bad. Not only that but the episode (as most recent HB episodes) was a huge time waster. Everyone was really hoping for an in depth walkthrough of his character/backstory but again, when he’s not with Ozzie, the rest/most of his screen time is dedicated to him being helpless and pointlessly arguing with Blitz, plus a long dragged out nonsense song that didn’t need to happen. It felt like SO much time was wasted when we could have used the runtime we have to dive deeper and see more, like….again it would have been nice to see Fizz’s life AFTER the accident and how he became well known as well as how he fell in love with Ozzie, but his backstory is briefly scratched upon in a single scene and that’s it, all because Viv wanted this filler plot and wanted to dedicate more time to THAT rather than actual character expansion/development, something we could have got had you took out Stolas and Ozzie’s B plot and Striker and Crimson.

Viv is so on her way to murder/ruin every character that isn’t Blitz and Stolas and I won’t be here to watch further. I’ll check out the Mammon music video thing but that’s it man, this show is going off the rails, Adding Fizz to the character adoption list!

[ineffably-human]

We're going to scream about Nandermo all week, but right now I need to talk about Baron Afanas. Because the Baron's arc, so to speak, always felt like a big part of the series DNA for me - and oh fuck did this episode deliver on why.

I think we can agree: in the show, vampire society is fucked up, right?

Vampires on their own have plenty to deal with that can make them crazy. They have to live by killing. They lose everyone from their old lives. They have to find new reasons to keep going on, forever, so shit can get decadent really fast.

But holy shit, what that's turned into in vampire society? Where you actively put cruelty over mercy, and violence over solving your problems? Death cults and scam artists roam free, but if someone has depression the best thing to do is ignore them. Someone can get their mind wiped or be locked up for centuries, and that's just what you do to your species.

--

So: the Baron's arrival is the first conflict of the whole show. The joke is about an ancient powerful creature of pants-shitting terror, vs three lesser vampires who just want to live their lives and not get murdered for being too lazy to conquer humanity. There's a lot of talk about how to please him: do you keep to the old ways, or pick up some new traditions? Decorate with flayed skin, or with glitter? And the Baron says: who cares, you're all soft and useless. All that matters is getting more control over this world, until people are cattle and we have no reason to hide anymore.

But later he confesses: that shit stopped mattering ages ago. He's not even real nobility, he's literally impotent, and he talks about doing horrible things because he doesn't know what else to say. He's angry and half-crazy from boredom. And admitting that, owning those feelings, means suddenly he has three new friends and a whole new world of things to enjoy.

There's the Baron the rest of the vampire world knows, but for one night we see the ancient, unknowable terror was just a guy. Maybe he's always been just some guy.

That fun puts him in a vulnerable position, and he's killed by the most unwitting vampire slayer in fiction. But Baron Afanas is changed. He sucks dirt for a year and still comes out of it with a new lightness and joy to him. He saves the Sire, another ancient terrifying monster everyone was eager to kill or send away. They adopt the hellhound. They get cozy and give advice. They make popsicle stick houses and go on walks. They live.

And that seemed like the end of the story until last night - when the Baron suddenly felt like the butt of a joke everyone knew but him. Spurred on by someone else who feels lonely and ignored, the Baron felt vulnerable. And he snapped back to how he lived for centuries.

'What the hell are you all doing, enjoying yourselves? We're supposed to be unhappy. We're supposed to live centuries of unhappiness, bringing pain to everyone in our path, and we're definitely not supposed to cheer up our friend who's sad.'

--

Nobody liked the Baron before Guillermo killed him, not even other powerful vampires we meet; they saw the Baron as a crazy far beyond their own crazy. But this is also how vampire society values you. It's how they measure Nandor's worth when they think he's dead, too: how old and powerful you are, how much you've been able to conquer and kill.

Vampire pods are both cliquish and aren't expected to last in the first place. If someone dies, you literally paint them out of your lives and forget. Everything we see discourages feelings, sincerity, or even basic companionship. The only way to earn respect is to be cruel. The more cruel you are, the more powerful you are. The more powerful you are, the more feared you are - the lonelier you are, the crazier you are. It's practically designed to create the Baron, or worse.

But new vampires don't behave that way. And the vampires we follow in the show don't behave that way - because they have each other, because they've been encouraged to have each other, often by Guillermo. (Holy shit, Nadja saying maybe she'd be fine dying, and Nandor immediately asking if she's okay? Nothing changes in this house, except everything does. They're not going to almost lose one of their own ever again.)

The vampires in the heart of vampire culture never seem happy to be like this. It doesn't have to be like this.

--

The Baron doesn't become a tyrannical monster for long. Because he never actually was one - and because he spends two evenings and a fireball to the face, watching Nandor and Nadja fight for Guillermo. Watching them plead and cling and defy, seeing Guillermo's earnest feelings in spite of his bloodline and the mistakes he's made. Seeing Nandor's perfect trust, and then his grief, the way he insists that Guillermo was never 'just' anything. The Baron can't find real fulfillment in hurting someone (because that ship sailed ages ago). He can't deride them for caring, because he's cared for a long time now.

And when the Baron admits that's who he is, when he says it out loud, he only gains more in his life. He finds new depth in the happiness he'd felt for a while now, because he's admitted and allowed himself to be happy. And now he has the children he's always wanted. Living together, the Baron and the Sire are still ancient and powerful - and they're also family, finding real joy together in a world that was ready to dispose of them.

"I suppose with the right company, it can be beautiful, this eternal existence."

--

There's an inherent selfishness to being a vampire, taking from someone else in order to live. But there doesn't have to be inherent cruelty, or lack of love.

They're all ready to admit they care. The Staten vampires have all cared for Guillermo or each other in their own ways this season. And Guillermo doesn't lack for flaws, but loving his monster family has never been one of them. (When he and Nandor work their shit out, they're gonna be insufferable.)

Now they just have to let the Guide in. Because she's absolutely starved for love, and vampires get pretty fucked up when they're on their own.

[gabrielsbubblegumbitch]

I’m sorry but can you write more stuff about Vox being a gaslighter? I’m actually obsessed with your analysis

Thaaanks I'm obsessed about them too~ 🩵❤️

So, Vox is like the ultimate gaslighter. Manipulation and brainwashing? That's his whole freaking business plan. I mean, come on, the Voxtek slogan is "Trust Us," and somehow, people actually do.

Oh, let's talk about Voxtek - he's the worst, most manipulative boss ever. He's always pulling stuff like withholding essential information for a task someone's supposed to do, then publicly blaming them for screwing up. And he's sneaky about it too, acting all concerned and disappointed instead of just yelling. It makes people feel useless and insecure, so they bust their butts trying to please him and win back their colleagues' respect, never daring to stand up for themselves. Plus, he's a pro at keeping relationships between higher-up managers tense and distrustful by spreading rumors and creating a competitive vibe. And don't get me started on how he's a total hypocrite - Voxtek, like every other company, preaches its values and missions to create this fake sense of safety and purpose, but then he goes and acts against them or lets someone else do so. It leaves people feeling confused and helpless because they can't play the game when the rules keep changing. Let me tell you, Satan might work hard, but Voxtek's HR department works even harder.

And manipulating people on a personal level? Way too easy for him. People who don't know him well enough think he's some kind of genius (bless their hearts), so they give him way too much credibility. It's crucial for him to be seen as competent because that's how he stays in control. That's why he loves to question the competence of his business partners (Not to be that guy, but those numbers don't look great. Are you sure you can handle this? I don't want to waste my money.) or Valentino (Babe, I've got this. We both know you're not great with financial planning.). Thought hardly ever works on Velvette because she's got zero bullshit tolerance.

Now, when it comes to Valentino, Vox has zero remorse about gaslighting him. To him, gaslighting isn't even violence; it's just a way of handling things, all neat and effective. Why bother yelling and arguing when he can just manipulate Val into agreeing with him? It's like what we saw in episode 2. And even when Val has every right to be angry because Vox acted like a jerk, Vox tends to devaluate his emotions (I don't have time to deal with another temper tantrum, Val; You're always so pissy, why can't you just chill?) or tries to make him doubt his own reality (Maybe you'd remember it better if you weren't high all the time.). He hates arguing with Val, but also is unable to admit that he's wrong, so in his mind, undermining Val's ability to call him out on his bad behavior is a way of keeping their relationship healthy. But it's risky because sometimes Val sees through his manipulations, especially when they're about his feelings, and then things get even messier.

I like to think they trust each other when it comes to serious stuff, like protecting each other from outside dangers, but at the same time, it's like Mr. Gaslight Gatekeep Girlboss is married to Mr. Manipulate Mansplain Manwhore - you never know if he's being genuinely nice or if he's trying to get you to do something.

[maximumkillshot]

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Warnings: There are a lot with this one and it hits close to home. Mentions of S/A. The R word is used, sobbing, anxiety and mental episode. mentions of self harm, mentions victim blaming and slut shaming. MDNI. There is fluff spattered around.

Pairing: BangChanxReader

Characters: Bang Chan, Reader, mention of the person who S/A, people Slut Shaming and Victim Blaming. 

A/N:  Okay so this one is heavy. The things you are about to read have happened to me. I had a mental episode a while back. I wrote most of this during said episode. This is what I think Chan would do for his S/O if they went through and go through what I did. This blog has always been a safe space. I use my fictions to entertain as well as a platform to have safe conversations. If you need me as always I will hang around after drop.

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“YN?” Your husband called out to you. You couldn't hear him from the pressure of today. It created a seething pool of frustration and anger as you kneeled at the foot of the bed, wanting to pray, but now that you think about it the pain of being on the floor was a sweet torture in and of itself. 

Usually, anger like this wouldn't be a problem for you. You would go down to the basement and punch granite with your poorly taped hands, yes you were only a kid then, not knowing how else to get the anger out only stopping when you'd hear a crunch. Yes, that was the start of negative coping mechanisms, and yes you are trying to either bury that anger or let it consume you fast before Chris gets home. He's dealt with enough, we don't need to add on to it.  

Now you're no longer a child… as a matter of fact, you are now an adult, an adult with a hairpin trigger vaguely yet expertly disguised as comedic sarcasm. Depression that you don't remember not having… maybe when you were 8? You weren't sure. Not to mention a cast made of a myriad of physical and mental health issues…. Disabilities… and the cast of characters just keep growing! You have the medicine and the “coping techniques”, they called it, for success! Even those fail. 

Trying to talk it out just made you more angry, the injustice looking more and more ludicrous by the second. Okay, let's try breathing. Yeah no. That didn't work either, it just gave your brain more oxygen, so your brain went from quantum computer speed to Sonic the fucking Hedgehog. Oh… ok oh oh! Let's try soundboarding. You know, talk to people, not yourself. That ended in yet another game of useless catch phrases like “calm down” and “you shouldn't be thinking of that.” 

TELL ME SOMETHING I DON'T FUCKING KNOW THANK YOU! Oh, and I almost forgot the “Your method of thought isn't changing because you don't want to change '' DO YOU THINK I AM POKED ALL DAY AND SAY TO MYSELF…

‘OH I WANT TO FEEL MORE LIKE SHIT… I KNOW LET ME RUN MY FACE INTO A BRICK WALL OF ANXIETY REPEATEDLY UNTIL I CAN'T CONTROL MYSELF ANYMORE.’

You reverted to hurting the people around you due to your anger and frustration, plus you darkened the mood, you've always been a multitasker. My friends were right. I'm depressing, I was only kept around because of my ex. That was before they kicked me out… because they didn't want to believe he assaulted me. You go back to that night often… 

“I didn’t want to do that, I felt icky” You told him after he came back from cleaning himself up in the bathroom, while you were left to clean the traces of himself from your own mouth. No aftercare, no thought about you. The ghost of a boy who used you, who was an on and off friend of almost 10 years…

“I know.” he answered with no emotion.

“Then… why?” You asked, your head cocked to the side.

“Because I really wanted it.” He puts his hand on your shoulder, “But I’m sorry you feel that way. Shit now I feel bad.”

Then it switched to those friends, on another night… “ I just don’t buy it. That DID NOT HAPPEN, I know him better than you.”

“I mean you did it anyway so you must’ve wanted it.”

You tried to explain that you were assaulted, it’s called coercive consent and it’s the most common form of assault. You were raped. You didn’t want to do it and he knew that but you wanted to make him happy. You tried to explain, to educate. They weren’t having it.This conversation at times whirls in your head. Making you itch to pull a trigger, do something to make the torture stop.

“You always overreact and you’re so annoying why don’t you just go the fuck away!”

“You’re so depressing just fucking go away! We only tolerated you because you are his girlfriend, just go the fuck away!” The intent in her voice. The reality. You trusted her most out of the entire group. She helped you emotionally… Now shaming you, blaming you.

Her boyfriend rendered you speachless when you called it what it was, it was rape via coercive consent:

“Oh I get the kind of person you are, you’re the type of person who gets felt up in the middle of the night by their significant other because they’re trying to get laid and you call it rape.”

You know the right method to take now, right… Yeah you do.

Isolate… process… torture yourself…cry… alone. Contain the monster, so it doesn't hurt anyone else… You're just a monster parading as a human. Don't forget it. This happens when you forget Y/N… stop being reckless. Always so fucking reckless… 

You started clenching your hands one over the other, wanting to rake the top of your hands until they bled, trying to ground yourself. Until subconsciously, you did. You rocked as you did it, trying to soothe yourself.

Sometimes you swear people don't see you drowning right in front of their fucking eyes. You know how to swim, you know how to get out, to scream, punch, fight. You want to swim, you really do. But you can only do so much in a rip current. The lifeguard sees you. But instead of helping they yell “PADDLE! JUST PADDLE YOU'LL BE FINE!” It's a different level of patronization. It just makes you want to let the tides swallow you. Because why fight when the waters are so warm?

“Y/N?!” Chris yelled as he saw your bag tossed haphazardly on the couch, never where you put it. He stopped and listened carefully. He thought back to the last text you sent him. “Shit hit the fan at work …I don't want to feel right now. I'll see you at home.” 

That middle sentence made his heart stop. He knows you… something was up. He tried texting you back, sending words of encouragement, calling, and leaving cute messages when you didn't pick up, and nothing was heard from you. As soon as he could get away from schedules he did. When he looked at the clock you had sent that message three hours beforehand, he never raced home faster. 

He knows what your mind does to you. He sees the battles every day. When he’d compliment you and you would look down, not shy, but contradictory. When he’d pick you up you would freeze and he’d remind you that you aren’t too heavy, that he loves you in every single way that you think is impossible to love you. He’d always encourage you to wear what you want, do what you want. He would caress every single curve, never being able to keep his hands off of you. Whispering into your ear in public as he tilts your head up gently after asking for permission. He’d kiss you so delicately in front of a sea of people. On the red carpet, on stage, it didn’t matter. You were and are his person, and he loved showing you off. He couldn’t win the war in your mind for you, but he damn sure would fight those battles with you.

He would fight away those negative thoughts, he’d wrap his arms around you and sing to you to will those images, the anxiety and fear away. Until those thoughts were rendered useless. He’d wrestle with them for control, as soon as he won your mind back he gave it to you. He reminded you that you are here with him for a reason. He adores you, and nothing would change that. 

It was something he promised you when he saw you breakdown while doing your medicines. You told him that you were ashamed of it all. All the illnesses, that you weren’t perfect and that you’d understand if he didn’t want you. He looked at you and helped with your medicines, learned about each of them, and their dosages. He was so gentle, smiling at you, wiping your tears. He looked at all the medicines and said, anything that keeps you alive is nothing to be ashamed of. You aren’t something to be ashamed of. He knows that sometimes you can’t hear him until he’s right in your ear. Now looked like that case.

You couldn't hear him calling out to you, your mind too loud, too vicious, bloodthirsty. When pain and self-deprecation are your main moods, all others seem like an abnormal concept. Something that is stolen, was it even real in the first place? You know one thing that was real… Chris. You hated being this… the medications, the constant fires in your mind, the barrage of hate aimed at yourself, of unbridled strength turned inward to rip yourself apart for no reason other than things piling up. He didn't deserve that. He deserves peace, the best… just like what he demands of himself, perfection. 

You got through the gauntlet at your job. People undermining your authority, people on a power trip of their own. Sending others to try to intimidate, embarrass you into submission… as if you weren't a bloodthirsty wolf that could snap any second, biting their heads clean off. “An Alpha through and through,” that's what Chris would say, “Even Alphas have to bite their tongue, Love.” 

That made you cry more because at this point you don't even know if your tongue is still existent, or if you swallowed the damn thing after you bit it off. Or worse… you still have it… but you lost your voice. You know that can't be it, we're too fucking stubborn for that.

But the hits didn't stop coming, traffic happened, then going to the doctor who said that the physical therapy you needed would eat into your personal time, your time to write, to cook for Channie and the boys, to spend time with Channie and the boys.. then you forgot the doctors note so you had to walk back in for it. Then you had to go home while you tried to talk about everything… and well now here we are. 

Even now you try to problem solve, try to nitpick at yourself, the person he loves so much. You collapsed more on the floor of your shared bedroom, cross-legged thinking of the ocean, the violent, dangerous, tumultuous ocean… something simultaneously so beautiful and scary. You want to say you are like an ocean, but you don't see beauty in yourself, only a beast. That's all we'll ever be.

Chris freezes in the hallway hearing a sob break loose from you. He hadn't heard a sob like that before, it chilled his core. How does he approach this? He sees the doctor's note thrown next to your purse… He was happy you were approved for physical therapy, you really were in a lot of pain daily from the muscle and tendon weakness, but he looked at the times…

He looked to the hallway, “Oh…Baby Girl.” He had one piece of the puzzle. He knew you loved to cook for him and the boys but this schedule meant you couldn't do that for the foreseeable future. You enjoyed seeing the boys eating, and staying fueled, knowing without that they'd opt for less healthy options. Then he saw the paper right under it. A typed log… a leger of interactions throughout your day… “No…” 

Right there, in black and white, was what you went through today, everything down to the sarcastic smirk your coworker had as you were barraged with pressure to break the rules… and you didn't break. He never would've expected you to. You are the strongest person he knows. Even under these conditions, Chris himself would break. In front of fifty plus people being berated, pushed to do something you knew you couldn’t do. 

Right at the end of it was a line, written in plain ink by hand. “Vacation not given as described by supervisor. No week off.” With tear stains smudging the ink. 

Chris started walking down the hall to the shared bedroom. As he walked closer he heard you mumbling as you sobbed. Things like “stop crying” and “it's nothing.” But one made him freeze right before he opened the door, “Chris is going to worry. You already take too much from him, get it together so he won't worry. It’ll hurt him. Stop hurting the people you love. You’re a monster.”

That made his eyes sting, you were worried about him above all else. He slowly opened the door and you couldn't find it in you to look up. You knew who it was. The aura you know and love, like salve on the holes you ripped into yourself. The small steps were only weighed down by his sneakers as he slowly spoke. 

“Hey…Baby Girl?” The tone was even more soothing. We don't deserve that. “Can you look at me please?” You just shook your head. Too embarrassed at the shambling mess you are. The real you that you hide. 

Before you knew it you saw two big hands undoing the laces on his sneakers, shortly after he toed them off. Slowly he sat in front of you groaning “Oooooookay criss-cross applesauce it is…” making you smirk as you wiped your nose with the inside of the collar of your shirt. Finally, as he settled he said “aaaaaughh” with a big puff of air… 

You just tucked your head into your chest as you hid as much as you could. He waited for a few minutes, until he said, “We can address what happened in a few minutes. But you need to know. You don't take from me.” 

Your tears kept falling as you listened, his tone calming the raging currents in your mind.

He looked at the engagement and wedding band on your left hand. He watched the tears fall, he saw the holes in you. He wanted to lunge at you, take that emotional knife away from you, smother you in affection. Hold you, his heart burned for it. Needle and thread ready to patch you up. To heal you.

 He spoke softly, “You are my everything, Y/N. You aren't a burden, a disappointment, you aren't a chore, the only thing you took from me was my heart, but you had that before I even heard your voice. The second I saw you… I gave it to you. I don't want it back either.” 

You hiccuped breaths as you listened. He scooted a little closer and he put his hands out, palm up into your vision… asking for your hands. That was when you realized you were scratching at them again. 

You unfurled them from one another, hissing where one nail was slightly deeper, the tiny droplet of blood following soon after.

He looked at your hands, humming in the back of his throat, “One second.” He didn’t want to show it, but he was worried. You feel so much and he just wants to be there to hold you, to love you. 

Then popped up and left. He came back with a first aid kit, “Oooooookay heeaarr we goar again... criss-cross.” That made you giggle the tiniest bit. Chris always loved to hear your laugh. Your laugh is infectious and it always never fails to brighten his day. He knew he was making progress.

You couldn't see it but Chris was smirking at your tiny cute form. And hearing that little giggle made him want to channel Changbin and squeal at the cuteness overload. 

“Okay my Koala Bear… hands.” When you both had started dating, he noticed you always hung on to him. You explained that he was warm and you were always frozen, especially in the colder months. You asked if it was okay for you to hold on to him like that. Internally he was trying his best not to giggle like a school boy at the prospect of you holding on to him like this naturally. He looked at you and said, “It’s no problem, you just remind me of a Koala Bear, so cute and tiny. Can I call you that? My Koala Bear?” And you nodded blushing. Since then, you’ve been his Koala Bear. 

You presented your hands to him wincing at the stretch of the new scratches and he said “So tiny… so cute. Okay tiny sting” he cleaned the bigger scratch and put a bandage on it, and checked the rest. Once he deemed it all good to have your hands back. He kissed them then returned them to your lap. “Thank you for letting me clean them.” 

You nodded and hummed. The voices slowed down. They always slowed down around him. He always was your safe place. Like home base in a baseball game. If you made it there, you’re safe. You’re home. That thought made you sad, surprisingly. How are you safe with only one person? You should have security in yourself not in someone else. Your brain was waiting to start assaulting you again. 

“Is it loud in there?” Chris asked. You've told him about all of this before, this is the first time he's seen it this bad though. The voices, memories attack you. You explained to him that sometimes your brain will do this, you try to hold it back but sometimes it just can’t be helped.

“Mhmm”

“People don't help… right?”

“mhmm”

“Can you tell me what's going on in there?”

You told him. Some.. not all. You also told him about that pesky intrusive thought about your ex and your friends. 

His body went rigid as he said, “No… they're the ones that are wrong, not you. Your ex…” He wanted to choose his words carefully. He knew that you blame yourself at times. The memory of you explaining why you were hesitant to go further when you were dating. He assured you there was no pressure. That he loved you for you, the rage boiled in him and it still does because you were never at fault for this. Especially when you trusted that asshole enough to experiment with him. He was going to be your first for everything but after what he did. The trust was gone, rightfully so.

Chris continued, “He took advantage of you, and coerced you into consent, that is not love. That is not okay? That is sexual assault. The way that your friends acted was disgusting, the way he acted was sub-human… You are not depressing, you are one of the most beautiful, talented, funny, caring, loving people I have…” his voice gave out and he cleared his throat, “You are one of the most amazing people I've ever met in my life. I love you so much and I know you feel like you're a burden on me but being with you has been the most amazing thing I've ever experienced.”

He tilted your head up and you let him, he had tears in his eyes as he said, “You have never been nor will you ever be a monster.” Your tears picked up as you looked into his eyes. You could tell, Chris doesn’t lie. He’ll tell you the truth. His tears started falling as you leaned forward, reaching for him, needing contact. When you saw him you needed his warmth, you need him to heal you. You were losing hope, faith, everything as you watched the holes in you. Seeing him holding the needle and thread. By holding you, being with you, just being himself, it heals you. You whimpered, “Need you…” As your tears switched from self-hate to desperation… you needed him and he could tell. 

He untangled his legs and scooped you up, cradling you in his arms as he rocked you petting your hair back, “You are my inspiration, my eternal love, you are the best part of my past, my present, and my future. You are the future mother to my children, the woman I'm going to grow old with, my forever and always. You are my Y/N, and I am never going to let you forget who you are and why I love you, okay?” He started crying, shielding you in his chest, protecting you. Stitching you together as you heard his heartbeat. You cried on him, relieved that you were with him.

You pulled back from him nodding. He tried to kiss your lips but you said “I'm all snotty” and he giggled. Leave it to you to be worried about snotty kisses. You looked so adorable, cheeks and nose red, nose running, tears stopping, the twinkle coming back into your eyes as he looked at you. 

“Are you denying me my snotty kisses?” He giggled as he said “Okay fine. There's no snot on your forehead” he pecked your forehead, “none on your cheeks”, and laid another peck, this pattern continued for any expanse of skin he could get his lips on as you giggled at him and his barrage of affection. When he stopped he wiped your nose with his sleeve and he kissed you gently on the lips. He savored moments like this, being able to heal you, to pick you up. He looked into your eyes as he said, “now I am thinking I’ll draw up a bath for us and I’ll give you a nice massage. After that we order take away, from your favorite place, then we watch something, Hm?” He looked at you for an answer as he kept wiping tears.

You nodded and gently, he placed you back where you were and went to get the bath ready. You'll always have hard days, but those days turn into amazing nights with Chris. Your home.

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[starmistz]

HxH - Dodgeball Scene

Note: This isn't really an analysis but more of a rant, hence it being messy, haha .. (^^ ;) Everything is based on my own opinion too, so I don't guarantee it would satisfy everyone. But anyway, enjoy ur read! :3

(Chapter 166, episode 70.)

If someone asks me which HxH scene is the most misunderstood one, I would say it's this:

I've seen almost EVERYONE in this fandom say that this scene was very "selfish" and "insensitive" of Gon. But dude, c'mon. Do you really think Gon wouldn't give a flying fuck about Killua getting hurt just for his own benefit? He isn't that type of friend. In fact, he literally hates it when Killua willingly hurts himself, like he gets so mad and bothered.

Take this scene for example:

But what piqued my interest was how he still kept this moment in mind after a bunch of chapters later:

It shows how he still didn't forget about that situation, and thought about this self-destructive trait of Killua carefully. Pretty ironic for getting mad at Killua for being like this when Gon himself is also self-destructive, haha. It's like it's indicating that Gon knows how it feels like being self-destructive, so he's trying to stop Killua from feeling that aswell. Keep that in mind though, I'll be talking about it later on. :3

In the mean time, I think it's important to look carefully on to details even if it's tiny. I noticed a few things about this panel too:

Only Gon is drawn with a 💢, and he's also doing a ❌️ finger sign (it's so funny.) I get it probably doesn't have any deeper meaning but the fact that it's like that shows how much he dislikes it if u ask me. 😭😭 I mean, bisky just looks disappointed, not mad. Why not add a 💢 on her too? That's 'cause she's not THAT bothered by it, and it's implying the difference of how they take this trait. And well, Gon takes it SERIOUSLY. So point is, he's not insensitive when it comes to Killua intentionally hurting himself as we see him clearly despising it.

Anyway, remember how I told u to keep that one thing in mind? Yeah, Gon knowing how it feels like being self-destructive and all. We all know that the reason he does this is because he feels weak, and so he has this need to prove himself strong and useful to feel better, right? Well.. I feel like as time goes by, Gon thinks that Killua is also doing this because of the same reason. He notices how far Killua goes just to prove himself worthy too. So when he voluntarily decides to take painful hits in the dodgeball game, Gon encourages it instead. He knows how it feels to be seen as weak, not useful, and not needed. Taking risks for something, but people don't encourage that. They just tell you to stop, not knowing that it would just make you feel even more useless, making you feel like you did all of that for nothing because it was never enough. Gon is aware of that, so he does the opposite to Killua. Don't you guys get it? If he told Killua to just stop, Killua would feel unworthy and not good enough. He's going out of his way to help Gon, he free-willingly decides to take those hits. If Gon told him to stop, it would feel like rejection–that Gon didn't appreciate all that effort, and is techincally telling Killua that his help meant nothing. You can see how Killua was so desperate, he was so pushy with the "I can take one more hit!!! Gon, let me do it!!" and now imagine if Gon said no💀 That would be rejecting his help/an act out of love (platonic or romantic idc.) THAT would be the one that's ACTUALLY insensitive to Killua.

So Gon shows appreciation and encouragement instead, letting Killua's effort not be in vain. Saying stuff like how he NEEDS Killua to be the one that holds the ball for him, how he can't focus if it's not Killua–he needs Killua's help and Killua himself. All of that, is definitely what Killua needed to know too. It literally made him smile and felt more upbeat after, how could people say it was insensitive and would hurt Killua's feelings? 😭 He's happy to know that Gon does care about his efforts for him after all. ᵔᴗᵔ ♡

One thing I'd like to say though is that; That was still unhealthy for both of them. They think self-destructing is the only way they'll feel loved. 🙁 Of course I agree that it was most definitely bad, and it's not a good thing that Gon just fueled up Killua's self-destructive tendencies even more..😭🙏 BUT the point here is that, it wasn't insensitive and selfish of Gon in that moment, okay!?!? They both saw it in a positive light, even though.. it was definitely bad... but uhm anyways yeah, everyone should stop being so upset with this scene. You all are misunderstanding it and it's painful. 😔

But hooray thanks for listening!

[pookietv]

friend's best friend | george clarke

this was a rec! smau where george meets max's best friend (and maybe simps a little)

liked by georgeclarkeey, andrew_spanndy and 3,496 others

yourusername: he told me we were going out for a walk and a coffee, ended up in the pub at 3pm

max_balegde: you were literally the one that said it was pint weather

↳ yourusername: all weather is pint weather with the right mindset

andrew_spanndy: getting a drunk call from max at 5pm was not what i had expected x

↳ yourusername: i told you that he has to be kept on a leash :/

liked by yourusername, andrew_spanndy and 8,839 others. tagged yourusername

max_balegde: she forced me to go outside and experience nature

yourusername: you're the laziest person i know i had to force you outside somehow

↳ max_balegde: untrue and rude

↳ yourusername: you literally had to be set a fitness challenge to start going outside

georgeclarkeey: not another thirty minute walk max

↳ yourusername: to be fair it was a couple hours long

↳ georgeclarkeey: please don't enable him

liked by georgeclarkeey, arthurtv and 4,857 others

yourusername: not going to tell you guys what i did today but i can indeed say it was very useless ;)

username: omg are we finally getting y/n on useless hotline ???

max_balegde: never talking to you again after today x

↳ yourusername: you're just salty i told the stories andrew was too scared to x

↳ andrew_spanndy: did you tell the spain story??

↳ yourusername: you already know i had to tell the spain story x

liked by yourusername, georgeclarkeey and 17,830 others. tagged yourusername

theuselesshotlinepod: Max's Best Friend Y/N talks Max's Embarrassing Moments, Dating and More in This Weeks Episode! (Dressed as 1920s Reporters, for some reason)

yourusername: still very confused as to why you made me dress up, but thanks for having me on!

↳ max_baledge: we honestly thought it would be funnier then it was

View 2,835 comments

liked by georgeclarkeey, arthurtv and 4,279 others

yourusername: when max promises me that we will have a quiet one and i end up plastered and dragged to the kebab shop with arthur and george

georgeclarkeey: you're lucky i shared my chips

↳ yourusername: you literally dragged me there what do u MEAN lucky ??

↳ georgeclarkeey: next time buy your own then x

arthurtv: to be fair it was mostly george that insisted you join at the kebab shop

↳ yourusername: true true but you played a part in the peer pressure

max_balegde: so this is where george dragged u when he made you leave ??

↳ arthurhfhill: i honestly thought they were leaving to do something else

↳ yourusername: @/arthurhfhill please never comment on my instagram again

liked by georgeclarkeey, max_balegde and 5,739 others

yourusername: george thought it would be funny to mock me

georgeclarkeey: it is a little funny to mock you

georgeclarkeey: plus, i did pay so i'm allowed to mock you

↳ yourusername: since when are they the rules?

↳ georgeclarkeey: since i paid and i wanted to mock you

usernameone: they went out alone and he paid ??

max_balegde: when i literally get excluded from my only two friends going out together

↳ yourusername: sorry next time i promise u can come on a date we will be a great throuple x

↳ usernametwo: THEY'RE ON A DATE????

liked by georgeclarkeey, max_balegde and 7,730 others

yourusername: guess who finally got a girlfriend (spoiler, it's this prick)

georgeclarkeey: i have never looked more attractive

↳ yourusername: i think the bloody cheerleeder fit and no eyebrow must have topped this x

↳ georgeclarkeey: brb about to post the worst photos of you ever x

↳ yourusername: okay you go do that then x

↳ georgeclarkeey: okay there aren't any bad photos of you i lied

arthurtv: jeeez whose that fine fella

↳ yourusername: no clue i found him on the street, he's free to a good home

[familyabolisher]

Apologies if you've answered this before, but I've been following you for a while and the way you approach literary analysis is so interesting, and your takes have made me reflect on and reconsider the way I approach a text and how to respond to it! So I wanted to ask: when you read other people's takes/analysis for a particular piece of media, how do you determine if it's good or not? And not in a way where you decide it's "good" in the sense that the person you're reading has uncovered the One True Interpretation you could get out of that piece of media, but in the sense where you feel like it was worth your time, and hit the spots that you're looking for in particular when it comes to media analysis.

I'm asking because I've taken to reading more media analysis and commentary online a lot more nowadays, and sometimes I'll read something I'm not quite satisfied with but can't exactly articulate why I feel that way. I never know if it's in the particular language used or in the length, or in the details, because frequently I find that at the end of my reading I don't even disagree with the take or its premise, which makes my dissatisfaction all the more confusing. So I do like hearing about how other people approach things to try and figure things out for myself, and I respect a lot of your positions, so. How do you do it?

Thank you! I feel like “good/bad” is a very broad framework to be using here; I wonder if it might be more helpful to come to conclusions about analytical work based on how useful you found it. There’s a lot of critical work that I consider to be completely useless to me, but that doesn’t necessarily make it ‘bad’ or even ‘wrong’; it’s just not doing what I want it to be doing. Some questions you might want to ask could include:

Is this elucidating? Does this explain what it purports to explain, does it answer the questions it wants to answer and/or pose new questions that weren’t immediately legible in the text? Has it developed an idea clearly? Has it given you some new angles from which you can think about the text? In short: did you get something from reading it?

Is the argument followed to its furthest possible conclusion? What I mean by this is like, media analysis is often a process of asking a lot of “why” questions: why is X like this? Why is this significant? Why X and not Y?—over and over until you run out of questions to ask. I think the big thing to watch out for here is whether or not a piece of analysis lays out its observations as though events, characterisation, relationships, etc., are phenomena emerging organically (as though it were “real life”) rather than being narrative choices made with intention (and some impetus towards figuring out what that intention is). Saying that X character is like Y is far less compelling than saying X character is like Y because Z when Z is an argument that extends beyond the boundaries of the narrative itself. Narratives are a series of deliberate choices; we want to know why those choices were made and whether we agree with them.

To give an example: let’s say we’re talking about the significance of Shiv’s pregnancy in the final episode of Succession. Following it through to its conclusion might look like this:

I start out by saying, “Tom being favoured over Kendall as CEO of Waystar is in part due to Shiv’s pregnancy reaffirming the Roy family bloodline, something that Roman establishes Kendall as being functionally incapable of doing.” The first question we should ask here is: why is reaffirming the bloodline significant?

From here we can say, well, we know it’s significant because Roman uses the word ‘bloodline’ to mark Tom/Shiv as favourable, and this tells us that there is a logic of eugenics running through Logan’s empire. This is good, but we’re still operating in wholly diegetic territory ie. the only terms we’re setting for our argument are those of describing conditions internal to the narrative. The next question we’re asking is: why are the Succession writers bringing this question of eugenics and bloodlines into play here?

From here, we can go in a bunch of different directions—for argument’s sake, we can think about Succession’s relationship to imperial/monarchic narratives of dynastic succession crises and how the show generates tension in part by transposing those narratives onto an American capitalist media empire in order to suggest that networks of capitalist hegemony and the means by which such a hegemony is sustained can be discursively linked back to such dynastic interplay. We might then point to eg. Caroline and the British aristocracy and this question of blood purity that Logan’s relationship with her + his discarding of Connor introduces; can we think about the British imperial aristocracy as a crutch on which American capitalism rests, or are we being asked to consider how these imperial superpowers are a) functionally interchangeable and b) mutually sustaining, or? We can look at the fact that Sophie Roy is brown and Iverson is implied to be autistic (and obviously the fact that neither is biologically related to Kendall and the suggestion that social ‘inferiority’ is therefore hereditary) to identify whose bloodline a practice of eugenics within hegemony seeks to retain and who it seeks to dispossess, and how this links back to the willingness on the part of the siblings to collude with (or even openly support) a fascist when it becomes in their best interest to do so. We can ask questions about reproduction of the bloodline as a means of reaping the rewards of hegemony (Shiv) or punishment within the borders of said hegemony for impotence and sexual deviance (Kendall and Roman). All of these lead us from arguments about the internal conditions of the Roy family towards conditions of the ruling class articulated through the family structure. All of this is compelling, but it begs the question of: why are we able to extrapolate all of these conclusions from the narrative configuration of the Roy family? Where in the text is it evinced that this kind of metonymic reading is coherent?

Finally, we link this back to Succession by understanding the Roy family as effectively metonymic for the ruling class as a united body (and why it’s effective for a family unit to take on such a metonymic role! What does this tell us about the relationship between the cluster of kinship relations we call the “family” and hegemony?) as is pretty transparently evinced throughout the show, and which is what gives meaning to this series of observations and allows us to extract an argument towards thematic significance out of what was initially just a set of observations about what was ‘happening’ on-screen.

I hope this is a clear example—I just went with it because most people on this website are at least passably fluent in Succession by now, lmao. The point is, you keep asking questions until you’ve followed the throughline through as far as it can be followed. In evaluating a piece of critical writing, you always want to be asking: why is this there? Why is this important? A weaker piece of critical writing will often avoid or else seem not to consider these sorts of questions. As a general rule of thumb, the more a work of critical writing seems to take for granted, the weaker it tends to be.

How well does the argument match the expectations you might have? Is this line of interrogation something that you’ve considered before, and what conclusions did you draw? Does the argument fall in line with your conclusions; does it challenge or develop them by introducing something you hadn’t considered, or do you think that your understanding identified something that the argument missed? If you were asked the question that the piece purports to respond to, how would you respond?

What are the blind spots of the argument? This is similar to the above, but is specifically concerned with asking what the piece might have missed or what assumptions might be limiting its scope. This means looking for the assumptions upon which the argument rests and trying to unpack and challenge them in order to understand how they took the form that they did. An example of this might be the kind of “female rage”/“teenage girl ferality” arguments you often see circling about Yellowjackets: what narrative does this idea of girls’ youthful ‘rage’ implicitly exonerated from harm contribute to? What do we do when we reify the idea of ‘teenage girlhood’ as a unique, impenetrable state that affords those who ‘experience’ it a uniquely elevated condition, or when we flatten these characters into the apparently equalised category of ‘teenage girl’? How do these arguments elide questions of race in Yellowjackets as regarding eg. Lottie or Taissa, and how can we follow them through to think about blind spots not only in the argument but in the show itself? No argument can feasibly encompass every possible nuance and perspective that one could bring to a text, obviously, but a stronger piece of critical writing will try to get into these underlying assumptions with depth and thoughtfulness and try to put some work into showing why they came to the conclusions that they came to; again, it’s about what gets taken for granted, what the writer presumes can go unspoken, and whether we ought to drag it to the surface and take a better look at it.

How well is the argument substantiated? Here I would expect reference to the source material—how well are these references selected? Are they consistent? Is there some cherry-picking happening—can you think of a point in the text where the claims being made might be challenged or contradicted? Does the argument impose stasis or unilaterialism onto something that in the text is in fact depicted as dynamic or otherwise in development? How well does this hold up with your interpretation of these moments—can you interpret them differently? What do you make of that ambiguity?

Can you place a value judgement on the argument made? In other words: do you agree? This is basically just about synthesising your responses to all the other questions and evaluating how on the mark you think the argument is; how you would respond to it, how you might develop it, how it might have developed your understanding of the work or else can be applied to other parts of the text (or indeed, other texts).

Ultimately I think the best thing you can do here is develop your own positions on texts to the best of your ability—I find that writing my arguments out helps me to get to grips with them better—and engaging with analytical work relative to that, ie. going in with your own solid sense of understanding from which your response can be crafted; I have an older post here on some of the questions you can start asking when you’re looking to do so. Obviously this means keeping an open mind towards arguments that contradict your own or that you may not have thought of before, but knowing what you think and why you think it will make it a lot easier to notice what might be missing or contradictory in someone else’s work (or, again, what you yourself might have missed). Critical work is (imo) best thought of as a dialogue rather than a straightforward imparting of knowledge; how someone else’s analysis informs your own, and how yours informs theirs, without flattening this dynamic into a deference of superior authority on either end, is the clearest and most productive way to think about it all.

I hope this is helpful!

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids,

I keep seeing "panic attack advice" online that shows a profound lack of understanding of what a panic attack actually is, so here is a quick refresher:

Panic attacks are intense feelings of fear that

come on suddenly (and often without a clear trigger)

feel strongly disruptive (you feel unable to carry on doing what you were doing before the attack, such as keep watching the movie or keep talking to your friend)

bring severely distressing physical symptoms with them, such as shortness of breath, nausea, trembling, feeling like you are about to black out, a feeling of tightness in the throat (like you are choking), chest pain, a racing heart, hot flashes, numbness in your legs, suddenly feeling too weak to stand...

The physical symptoms often "overshadow" the fear: You may not think "Oh, I am really worried right now" but instead believe that you are having an health emergency and are about to die, for example from a heart attack or stroke. You may feel detached from reality, like you barely know where you are and what is going on around you.

Panic attacks usually last from a few minutes up to half an hour - but can leave you feeling physically exhausted and emotionally drained for hours.

First aid for a panic attack often focuses on "pulling you back into reality" (grounding techniques):

Focus on a breathing exercise ("Inhale for X, hold for X, exhale for X" - the exact number doesn't matter as much as just concentrating on it)

Focus on the things around you (The famous "5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, 1 thing you can taste" exercise)

Focus on a strong but safe sensation (smell something with a strong scent, touch something cold etc.)

Repeat "This is an panic attack" silently or out-loud

Some people make fun of these techniques or say they are useless, like "Naming 5 things I see doesn't make me any less sad" or "I have been worrying for hours about the economy, how is smelling something supposed to fix that" and that's what I was talking about above. These feelings are valid and deserve to be taken seriously! But they are not panic attacks, so techniques meant for panic attacks are most likely not going to help. That doesn't mean they are useless, it just means they don't apply to your situation.

If you experience intense levels of sadness or emptiness, maybe to the point that it physically hurts, it could be a sign of depression rather than a panic attack. If you experience episodes of excessive worry and distress that last for hours but do not cause sudden, intense physical symptoms, you could be dealing with an anxiety attack rather than a panic attack (Yes, those are different!).

With all my love,

Your Tumblr Dad

P.S: As always, I am not a medical professional - this is general information for educational purposes, not an individual diagnosis.

[lollytea]

Unfortunately due to TOH being cut short by Disney a lot of character arcs and more storyline could not be fully fleshed out and finished as Dana had to wrap up everybody’s story in just a few episodes

I'm fully aware that Disney's intervention is responsible for a lot of the plotlines getting suffocated. Which is why I don't think it's fair to go harassing crew members with "why didn't THIS happen??" and all that, because nobody really knows what they endured working on those final episodes and how much they had to cut and rewrite. But from things Dana has said, it was likely a very stressful and exhausting experience. So I don't like to make assumptions about the crew being incompetent. Nobody knows how the season WOULD have turned out if they had been granted full creative freedom and breathing room to develop it to their hearts content.

However, me not directing personal ire towards the crew doesn't mean that I think that the show is immune to criticism. Its flawed. It might not be entirely the crew's fault but that doesn't mean we can't talk about how it's flawed. If anything, I think acknowledging and dissecting its weaknesses is a good learning opportunity for what we should consider when creating our own stories.

Season 3 is a bit of a mess. There's good stuff. There's some less than good stuff. I think ultimately, as a story about Luz, King and Eda, it knocks it out of the park. When they were left with no other option, they decided to prioritize the writing of their three protagonists and I think that was the correct choice.

But I've been thinking about the three specials and how they stand on their own, quality wise, and honestly, there's valid criticism to be said that is completely unrelated to the shortening.

Bear in mind that the crew has known since Follies that the show was getting cut short and they needed to start wrapping up loose ends. So it's not like they started writing Thanks to Them believing it was the first of 20+ more episodes. They knew that they were going to be writing a 40 minute special. So the execution had to be tight, concise and satisfying, right?

Well...it was....weird. Definitely fun. Good for fan service. The main hook was the witch kids navigating the human world in their dorky witchy way. And initially, that was enough. But once the novelty of that wears off and we focus on the plot of the special, what do we have left?

Thanks to Them is very guilty of lore baiting. Dropping in stuff that they know damn well that they're never going to elaborate on, leaving the audience with a feeling of intrigue that is never going to be satiated.

I personally think that is just bad writing. They knew they didn't have a full season 3 and rather than rewrite the means of which the hexsquads finds answers, they still made the choice to drop in what are most likely vague ideas from the initial draft.

I think, if they had no intention of developing it in future specials, there was no point to that scene of Masha telling the Wittebane story. It was just...filler. To stretch out the running time. Which is....kind of precious. Only 40 minutes. If you're obsessive enough about lore, you already knew the story from the Hollow Mind paintings. That scene was for casual viewers. Which is useless, because there's no point in casual viewers learning about Evelyn and Caleb because it never went anywhere.

Also. I personally think that if there was any value to learning the Wittebane lore without making it plot relevant, it would be for the sake of character development. We wanted to know how the kids would react to this knowledge.

Well how did they react?

*Shrug* They seemed a little unnerved but they kinda forgot about it the second they got off the hayride.

So what was the point of all that? What was the point?

Is it because we wanted "Goodbye, Evelyn," to be more of gut punch?

Was it worth it? Was "Goodbye, Evelyn" worth it? We know fucking nothing about Evelyn.

I think the rebus was a stupid and lazy means for the kids to discover Titan's blood. You introduce this mysterious object that was hidden under the floorboards and then you just use it as a plot device.

When the kids uncover the rebus and find the secret code inside, the viewer is not thinking about how it can be used as a means to an end (finding blood) The viewer is thinking "what the fuck is that thing and how did it get there and how did Flapjack know it was there?"

Questions that will not be answered <333

ALL IM SAYING is that I'm sure the crew could have come up with another way for the kids to have a Titan's blood treasure hunt. Maybe they could have dug a little more into the history of Gravesfield and follow leads on weird things happening on this one spot in the graveyard (which turns out to be because there's magical energy there, revealed when Luz realizes she can use glyphs)

I just think that if you're gonna leave the mystery box a mystery, you shouldn't have included it.

And I know. Its subtle storytelling. There's elements of what could have been a far more complex story and they're leaving hints of it here and there.

Well the thing about that is I think the hints are very unsatisfying and weaken the episode's plot significantly.

Also I don't think they should get to just pick and choose what parts of the lore are subtle and what parts are ham-fisted.

YES we are going to be reminded like three times that Flapjack is being secretive and hiding things from Hunter.

NO we are never going to get a payoff for that because he gets shanked and dies first.

BUT!! BUT!! If you squint, its IMPLIED that Flapjack belonged to Evelyn and blah blah blah

You don't get to rub things in the audience face and then choose to be all subtle about it at the last minute. Pick one or the other.

Anyway....I think they could have written Thanks to Them as more of an intriguing and suspenseful horror mystery where they spend forty minutes gathering clues and everything finally clicks together at the very end. That's not what we got.

We got a very weak attempt on the Hexsquad's part to be little detectives, but like a minute of screen time was devoted to them dicking around in a library, a costume shop, and a zoo.

I don't think we can blame the shortening for this.

[autisticlilith]

Something that always struck me about this 'fight' is that it felt really one-sided. Not because the Raven Beast is bigger, but because she's also way more aggressive. We see throughout the show that Eda in her Owl Beast form acts mostly on instinct (and her inner beast, once she starts talking to it, seems to just be hungry or cranky most of the time). We don't get much insight into how Lilith copes with the curse (like none at all after this), so this is going to be a lot of inference.

Off the top, I would like to reiterate that Hayley Wong has repeatedly asked that nobody repost or edit her art without permission. I'm going to be referring to stuff from the boards in this post, so here's the link if you want to look for yourself.

So, in this episode, Eda and Lilith are both angry—specifically at Gwendolyn, and with good reason. They both end up turning into beasts due to a combination of that anger, stress, and the fact their mom thought she was "helping" by taking away their medication.

But here is where they differ. Eda was angry about the current situation: her mom refusing to respect her choices, and causing unnecessary harm to her all day. And Luz even joined in. As Eda says, she has a right to be upset, though I don't think she meant to lose control over the beast.

That's just what happens when she reaches her limit. And she knows her limits, she's been dealing with this curse for 30 years!

Meanwhile, Lilith has been dealing with the curse for... a few weeks, at most? Unless you count dealing with the guilt of cursing Eda as part of that. We see that she's quite unaware of the effects of the curse, as she experienced some symptoms for the first time this very day. She essentially gets told to take an elixir if she starts feeling stressed, and then is left in the house to stew in her guilt and insecurity all day.

Gwen's lukewarm greeting, and the realization that she's paid consistent visits to Eda over the years, is enough to send Lilith into a downward spiral. She starts stress-eating ice cream, and makes cruel comments about King's dad abandoning him (a clear case of projection, and I don't think he really internalizes it after this episode, but seriously that's no way to talk to your 8-year-old nephew), and unfortunately the only voice of reason around is Hooty. Well, he tried.

I want to note here that she doesn't cry. She mopes, she complains, she gets rude and cynical; these are all things we've seen her do before. But she doesn't allow herself to honestly express her feelings, her wants and needs. What's she gonna say? "Hey Mom, can you please pay attention to me?" You can't just ask for things like that. And she's a grown adult, she's more mature than this. She was the head of the Emperor's Coven, for Titan's sake. Didn't she get enough attention there to last a lifetime? And didn't she learn how to repress all her useless emotions and craft a perfect persona to hide behind until she could no longer tell the mask from her face?

She realizes she's indulged her worst thoughts a little too hard when the feathers start popping up, and goes to take an elixir and calm down...

And there are no elixirs.

And she panics. She has no coping strategies for this. She doesn't even know what's going to happen to her, only that it's going to be really, really bad.

It has to be terrifying, and painful... and maybe, just a little bit deserved? This is the fate she forced upon Eda, after all.

We don't see any signs that she damaged the house after she turned, unlike the havoc Eda caused back in The Intruder. King runs to get help, because Eda or Luz would know what to do better than he does, and Raven Beast Lilith seems to pursue him, but she's not after him. She goes after Eda directly. There is no distraction (King also notes that light glyphs had no effect on her), there is no behaviour that can be explained as animal instinct. There is a violent, visceral anger, and instead of addressing its source, she flies out there to take it out on Eda.

This is why I don't buy the interpretation that Gwen started favouring Eda only after the curse. By that point, Lilith was an older teenager almost out of the house, and it's completely reasonable for the parents to be focusing more on the younger kid with a new mysterious illness. I think Eda was always the favourite, or at least got more attention in ways that made Lilith feel overlooked. Part of it was that Eda got in trouble more, whereas Lilith was usually quiet and well-behaved, so everyone just decided that Eda needed more help (which she didn't necessarily want) and Lilith needed none. Lilith got very good at needing nothing. So good that instead of talking to her sister about their impending duel, she decided to curse her in the dead of night instead. And then to keep it a secret until she found a way to undo it, because she never wants to upset anyone or cause a scene. And then to give 30 years of her life to an evil man's crooked system for nothing—less than nothing, she's only going to realize later.

Lilith's breakdown isn't about the fact Gwen is paying attention to Eda again. That's just the trigger for a lifetime of repressed emotions bursting to the surface all at once, and it's been coming for a while.

The Owl Beast seems to be mostly defending herself. At a few points she tries to flee, but the Raven Beast catches her. The Raven Beast is malicious, with exaggerated expressions of rage and what can only be described as cruel glee when she inflicts pain. This seems to come out of nowhere... but only if you haven't been paying attention to Lilith.

We know what Lilith is like at her worst. It wasn't even that long ago she threatened Luz's life in order to capture Eda. All while convinced that she was doing the right thing. She doesn't even have that shield now. She doesn't have much of anything, really, except her sister who refused to leave her out in the cold even after everything she's done. And this is how she repays that trust...?

We also know that Lilith wasn't in control of her actions as the Raven Beast. But that doesn't mean the beast was just doing beast things. I believe it was acting directly on Lilith's intrusive thoughts. Hurting Eda was her greatest shame, and the idea that she could do it again is a constant fear that she has. Unlike Eda, who has long been seen by others as a monster and had to fight her internalized shame about it, Lilith considers herself a monster while everyone around her is unaware of her inner turmoil. She's afraid of herself; she thinks her feelings are ugly and violent and unmanageable. And so that's what they became.

There was a sequence in the storyboards that was cut from the episode, presumably for time, where Gwendolyn tries to use a beastkeeping spell in order to communicate with her beast-daughters. It proves completely ineffective, so she goes to plan B, which is just trying to talk to them like a normal person (also in the boards, Gwen summons firebees to lift roof tiles for her to walk on, which I'm glad got changed to the tiles themselves being flying creatures. it's less distracting). There was something really affecting about watching her try to do things her own way one last time before finally admitting that she's failed the both of them. It painted the picture of this whole family who never talk about anything that's difficult or painful.

Then the scene plays out the way it does: Gwen's words get through to Eda, and allow her to finally face the beast and have an important revelation about herself.

And Lilith? Well, for all the violence she just showed, she breaks down in tears the second she is shown loving care.

When they've changed back, her anger is gone. There is no sign of the monster; there is only a sad, lonely woman who hasn't allowed herself to cry in so long that she almost forgot how. But she's safe now, and she's seen, and she's allowed this healthy expression of emotion. She collapses in the arms of her mother and sister.

After this, Lilith and Gwen had an off-screen conversation, where Lilith admitted she was the one to curse Eda, and decided that she was going to move back home. I could write a whole other post on that first point, but we've reached the end of the episode. I think a major reason why Lilith wanted to stay with mom and dad instead of with Eda is because she's afraid of hurting Eda again. Any time the curse acts up, she becomes a danger to the people around her, but especially to Eda, because of how much of her energy and guilt and shame has been focused around Eda over the years. She needs some time away while she figures out how to deal with the curse, to recover and build up her own identity. And of course, to build the relationship with her parents that she needed as a kid. Better late than never.

[ikamigami]

I don't think that many people realized what actually happened at the second therapy episode Sun had with Earth..

Sun was even more quiet than in the previous therapy episode. His responses were.. actually they weren't even full sentences.. He was just saying "I don't know" and "yeah" or "uhh" most of the time..

And whenever he was talking he tried to give Earth hints to how he actually feels.. he was silently asking for help.. but unfortunately Earth didn't pick on any of those hints..

Cause first thing that Sun said was that he feels stuck.. and I think that he meant that he feels like that in general.. he's just stuck his whole life.. as an evil one.. unable to change..

Later he said that he feels like he should feel more about Solar's death.. that hit too close to home ಥ⁠‿⁠ಥ It's not that Sun wasn't upset about Solar's death but he feels like he doesn't feel as upset as he supposed.. He saw how much everyone was upset about Solar's death and he realized that his reaction just doesn't fit.. that maybe he wasn't actually upset..

It happened to me too many times.. I often felt that if I wasn't shooketh by bad and upsetting things.. that means that I just don't care.. which only fuelled my delusions more..

And later what Earth said sounded as if she was implying that maybe Sun didn't like Solar that much.. as if it was Sun that chose not to hang out with Solar and not the other way around.. this part upsetted me slightly :/

Sun saying that Solar's death just just happened so suddenly.. he wasn't prepared for it.. and later saying that Solar and Moon were doing things cause they were smarter than him.. confirms to me that Sun wasn't expecting that someone will die because Solar and Moon are smart so that shouldn't happen.. Sun wasn't involved this time and yet someone still died.. and like always it wasn't him even though he's the one who should've been dead..

And ofc Sun felt useless and bad that he can't do anything to help..

Later Sun brought up a topic of drinking.. and like always he said that he doesn't have any problem and that he doesn't drink that much.. and even if alcohol doesn't affect Sun that much.. how Earth reacted to this didn't sit right with me.. Why she completely dimissed that Sun most definitely is drinking as the way to cope.. like come on she can't be that dense?! But you know what he's drinking to relax! Which isn't a good reason to drink especially if you have mental disorder..

And she said that Sun seems the happiest now.. What?! Did you see Sun's reaction? That silence and "yeah" like.. it had to hurt him so badly.. like Earth, you can't be serious.. And when was talking about his dumb cat trying to get his head to a glass of wine.. he sounded like he covered his mouth.. as if he was embarrassed about something or maybe lying..

Also dumb cat trying to get to glass of wine seems weird.. especially if you realize that dumb cat is some sort of representation of Sun..

Before I went to the last thing that Sun told Earth, he like always said that he's worried about Moon.. because Moon is working non-stop.. hmmm.. Doesn't that sound familiar? And when Earth proposed that she'll help Sun talking with Moon.. Sun was awkwardly silent once again.. I bet that it reminded Sun of the last time Earth made them a family therapy.. We all know how poorly it went..

And Sun tried to redirect conversation onto talking about Earth's situation..

And he also said that he appreciates that everyone is there for him.. but he said that almost as if he felt bad about something.. maybe that he isn't as much helpful to others as they are to him?

And the last thing that Sun told Earth was that he wonders if it'd be better if he and Moon never separated.. which means that Sun thinks that it'd be better if he was dead.. that if he died at the beginning none of this.. these bad things would happen.. Sun hinted here that he's suicidal.. but Earth's response shows that Earth didn't pick on that something is wrong.. and Sun's reaction is so heartbreaking.. because you can feel how his "yeah" sounds defeated.. because he realized that no one will help him.. because no one sees how much he suffers..

Sun seems to be the most comfortable around Foxy. And that's why he so openly drinks wine in his presence.. and that's why he's swearing a lot, saying some awfully horny shit around him.. he can basically say anything around Foxy. And that's why he said those things to Foxy sounding as if he tried to flirt with him.. He feels like he can say and do any shit when he's Foxy because Foxy won't judge him cause they both very similar in their misery..

Sun seems to hang out with Foxy more than with others and he's doing it more as of recent because I think that he just tries to not think about anything. He just tries to be in the moment and I think that Foxy is able to give him that. That blissful "living in the moment"..

I often did the same.. and even more when my mental issues were getting worse. I was spending time on playing games and laughing at stupid shit with my sisters as an escape from my awful reality.. and I see that with Sun as well..

Unfortunately Foxy also doesn't see that there's something wrong with Sun.. I mean that he also doesn't see the hinted Sun gives..

Now Sun knows that he's completely alone with all of this.. he's alone with suicidal thoughts that plague him.. he's alone with his suffering.. Like Earth said to her and everyone else Sun seems the happiest now.. while Sun is dying inside without anyone realizing that..

That's why I'm 100% sure that Sun will try to kill himself.. I'm not sure though how he'll try to do it exactly.. hang himself, drown himself, jump off the roof.. or maybe something else..

I can only hope that someone will try to stop him.. or at least someone will find him on time..

[10underoot2]

I finally rewatched Queen of Tears Episode 16.

Its given me a lot of clarity on why I didn't like it all that much. The episode feels very filler like, reiterating what I already know, no development nothing to draw me in. So here's a list of thing I really like vs things I had beef with: 

The Good:

- Hyunwoo's understanding of what marriage is is very profound and beautiful. Really appreciate that bit.

- The employees in this corporate sector have been 10/10 throughout. I cannot with how much I love them to bits. Still not over 'I just want to see the rich argue' 😭😂

- Yangi's bond with Hyunwoo is absolutely 10/10 

- I like Haein trying to find the reason of their divorce. It's important for her cause why did two people who love each other want to divorce each other. But again I hate how this wasn't a main cause of comcern around epsidoe 7. Like don't brush over it fam. Don't you wanna know why the man you love and who loved you to bits wanted to divorce you?

- Those last 7-8 mins. Though I wish I had more of them. I needed a linear passing of time. Something like the Germany Montage at the start would've been perfect. But at the very end just 'Way home' playing, Hyunwoo seeing Haein as an angel to pick him up, the familiar happiness and love just spreading around them was beautiful to witness. Really got me teary eyed both times I watched it. 

The Bad: 

- I'm not even getting into the uselessness and bad execution of the whole Yoon Eun Sung plot line since episode 14. 

- Still have no idea why Mol Soo Hee she wanted Suwan dead? Like there's no rationale? Why not kill Hae-in or SeoCheol in all those 20 years as well? It makes no sense to me.

- the episode felt so unnecessarily dramatic. I get it he got shot and was in a car accident but I was so sure he'd be okay? Did not understand or appreciate the over dramaticness also those Yangi shots in that sequence were a little tooo dramatic for me

- I don't like Haein getting back her memories cause they said the hippocampus would be destroyed. It's my fault for looking for logic in the first place but can we please stick to what we established writernim. Also wasn't this the whole problem that she's not getting back ANY memories EVER?!

- The scene between the mothers at this point was also unnecessary. We could've gotten to this realization back in the episode this was brought up the first time. She knew the location and date I don't see how reviewing her album was the light bulb moment.

- I feel super bad for this one but for me even Hae-in's bedside speech, once Hyunwoo woke up, lacked sincerity. As much as she might realize she loves him. He's still a stranger. Who does she miss? Her husband who's love she has no recollection of? The man she loved but she has no idea how she loved him? Take out the loss of memories and it would've hit me like a truck. Like she's not even holding his hand as she waits cause she recently met him. What am supposed to cry over here? What could've been? The pre ep 15 Baekhong I dearly misssed at this point?

- More on the Hyunwoo hospital scene. When he says 'I had forgotten' As sweet as it is I already knew all of it. It was so ill placed I didn't have to see it here.  Also like what does she care? She doesn't remember if you forgot or not in the first place 💀

- The Yangi x Haeina acene in the hospital - what notebook are we talking about? Did I miss something? Did I fall asleep somewhere like what?! Also I feally do like Yangi but I thought all of the scenes with him were kinda forced this episode.

- The conversations where Haein tells Hyunwoo he's perfect. Is it just me or is Haein extremely expressive after the surgery? I can never imagine Haein telling Hyunwoo that he's perfect even if she think so. It was a little off putting for me being introduced to this new character in the last episode. I miss my inexpressible power girl.

- Just the voice over off what happened with Mol Soo Hee would've sufficed but I guess we had to see that SNU degree in action. 

- The turn in Da hye's emotion - as sweet as it was also felt forced. They just showed me earlier she didn't care for him and bullied him. Now you want me to belive she mistook her feeling okay sureeee 🙃

- This is what meant by killing the temperment. They start Hyunwoo's monolougue 'We forgave those who we used to resent and then we cut to this long scene of Aunt Beom ja. Then we have Hyunwoo, then we have his brother's scene. The editing was off here. I wish we had a monologue of just them. It all threw me off so much.

And here's why a sequence of Baekhong was so necessary cause remember the first episode we instantly fall in love and get curious because of that lovely montage of BaekHong Germany scenes. 

All in all good ending, horrible last two epsiode. Kinda left a bad taste in my mouth. It makes me long so much for the show I saw and fell in love with before. I have never felt this way about a last episode, I think I just expected better from this show.