#in my rewrite i made her like the og plan for her in s1 and s2

[sethdomain]

why did they make chloe sound so boring in all the newer season, erm boo

[sometimesrosy]

Hi there Rosy! I know you don’t do much The 100 content anymore (and I totally understand; I still can’t rewatch even s1-6 yet) but I keep thinking about this and would love your opinion if you ever feel up to it (don’t worry about it if you don’t): since we know that the last season had a different story/script before rewrites and that big changes were made, and we know Bellamy was originally supposed to be on the beach, and from hints from some actors in the show (and simply just following the story every season ourselves) the OG scripts most likely originally had Bellarke finally reaching the culmination of their seasons-built love story, if you follow the way the story was going in s1-6 and had it continued to follow the same sorry for the last season, how do you think it most likely, logically, was going to end, for the show’s overall message and for Bellarke? I hope that makes sense. I have a few scenarios when I follow the original plot and the story threads we had going for s1-6 but I can’t decide which is most likely. One thing I can’t stop thinking about is that there’s a line Murphy says to Emori, “You’re the most important person in the Universe,” as well as this line between Hope and Jordan, “Can friends do this?” that I keep thinking were meant to be one of those Bellarke parallels we always got to other cannon couples. Idk...I feel like the only original story that may not have changed in those last minute rewrites is Memori’s. I think the complete and nonsensical deviation from the original story is what drives me the most crazy as a writer. I keep trying to puzzle out what the real story conclusion was supposed to be to give my writer brain some peace, lol.

I put this off because I honestly DON’T know what they planned. There were a few things I thought were obvious... but then they just ditched the main, long term plots and character development.

I know I had plenty of speculation about how the story should or could go. Clearly, Clarke and Bellamy should have ended together. They wouldn’t have had to erase them all together to stop it if they weren’t supposed to. And we’re talking about not just Clarke and Bellamy being erased, but also everyone closest to their stories, like ESPECIALLY Octavia and Echo. 

I think only Murphy’s story ended up following with the narrative the story built. 

I guess the thing is, I don’t know if the purple sparkly aliens were part of the original story. Deus ex Machina is so tacky. The aliens story line erased the Eligius mission story line. I mean. We know the eligius folks landed on Sanctum and Sky Ring. But we saw no sight of them anywhere else. Why? What happened to them? How did Cadogan take over? Eligius should have an advanced civilization on Sky Ring. There weren’t even any predators there. Why didn’t they survive and grow? IDK. What happened to the eligius ships? 

So there’s too many discrepancies there. You CAN’T erase your own story. If you want to change it you have to show the shift. 

I DO think they were meant to go back to earth. And I DID say that it would seem like Clarke and/or Bellamy died until the very end where we’d have the happy ever after... which they did... but they pretended they didn’t need Bellarke to have a happy ending. Even WITH the changes in story, they were going to do a Bellarke happy ending. 

But Eligius might have been the story instead of sparkly aliens. I do think Cadogan was going to be the big bad... why they made him the hero of the entire apocalypse is beyond me. He’s CLEARLY the big bad. 

Why they made CLARKE the big bad of the entire apocalypse is beyond me. She’s CLEARLY the hero. 

They shifted that. They made the cult leader who sacrificed his own family and didn’t believe in love, but believed in absolute tyranny into the hero. They made the rebel bisexual woman who believed that doing the right thing was the way into a vindictive bitch who caused all the darkness. This was WAY off the story.

Clarke was supposed to be the hero and she was supposed to save humanity and the world with the help of her delinquents, most especially Bellamy, because she save the world and he saved her. That’s how the story goes. Head and the heart. 

I do think they probably meant for bellamy to die, or bellamy and CLARKE to die, but I my old theory was that Bellarke were saving  humanity by “diving into” the black hole or anomaly or whatever to keep something from happening and in the end, the anomaly shot them out on earth. Where their friends found them or their descendent years later. Because the anomaly was closed and the delinquents got on the eligius and flew back 75 years later. That was MY spec. 

Was it meant to be? There’s no way we can know, because stories CAN go anyway. That’s why I was reluctant to say season 7 failed until I couldn’t see a way for them to wrap it up together. 

Even strange narrative choices, like making it an ensemble show instead of having duo protagonists, could work if they pulled it all together. But they didn’t. 

The complete reversal of Clarke from hero to villain makes me wonder if the change actually came from the outside. Did someone TELL him to make the rebels into the bad guys and the tyrants into the good guys? To make the nazi anology of MW into who we were supposed to empathize with? It’s too far from his original narrative and philosophy. And it’s too coincidentally similar to the rise of the far right in national politics and the vicious silencing of the kind of people that the delinquents represented. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s like someone else was telling the story and had an agenda to demoralize all rebellious delinquents who were identifying with The 100.

This doesn’t answer your narrative question. I really don’t know. Maybe some day someone will tell us what happened, what was supposed to happen, and why the about face.

[bestworstcase]

farran rereads lost lagoon: chapter 13

- *sigh* dahlia.

- i’ve got to admit, at this point i really just... don’t care. about these characters. my vague memories of thinking this was an alright book but not really my cup of tea and with some very questionable moments wrt to the handling of the saporian issue have morphed pretty rapidly into. i flat out do not like it. there is no aspect of this story that i’m enjoying. the characterization is poor, the plot is falling down, there’s no tension, the prose is passable at best, and i’m getting very tired of reading conversations that feel like they were written by an AI. so i’m going to press pause here, because i don’t want this reread series to just turn into me bitching about the things i don’t like, and do a little autopsy. 

let’s talk about varian and the seven kingdoms for a minute.

for the uninitiated, v7k was a varian-centric tts spinoff comic proposed by a couple of tts storyboarders, which disney chose not to pursue. it was developed as a fan project for a while, fell by the wayside for other projects. semi-recently the plot outline, some worldbuilding notes, and character concepts were all made public and the crew members involved gave the fandom carte blanche to do whatever with it. 

now! the interesting thing about v7k, and the point of this little tangent, is that because much of the development process happened during s1, a lot of the worldbuilding is contradicted directly or indirectly by tts canon and some of the characterization choices feel... incongruous with the way tts s3 ended. i’m not going to get into that too much, but it seems to me that v7k and lost lagoon have a problem in common, and that problem is that they are stories that diverged from the main trunk of the story that inspired them but are still pretending to be canon compliant, to their own detriment.

some of you may remember og bitter snow, which began as a pre-s3 speculative fic about what cassandra might have encountered in the HOYT and spiraled into a kind of cass-centric s3 rewrite... which stalled out about a quarter of the way into the story i had planned because i ran into a similar problem: i was writing a s3 au that was ostensibly canon-compliant for all of s1 and most of s2, but the direction i wanted to take the story just didn’t fit naturally on top of canon s1 and s2... my options were to start retconning things from canon after ~20k words of implying canon compliance, or to force the story i wanted to tell to stay within the boundaries set up by s1 and s2, and i didn’t want to do either of those things, so i stopped and started over completely from scratch with benighted. 

v7k began with the intention of being licensed fanfiction, and lost lagoon is licensed fanfiction, so they both needed the disney stamp of approval, and that meant they couldn’t take the revamp bitter snow approach of going ‘my city now’ and just changing whatever pieces of tts they needed to to make their own stories make sense. they had to fit their stories into the canon framework as best they could while ignoring or glossing over the inconsistencies and pretending it all fit together in a logical way. 

and i think this is why lost lagoon is so very boring. 

lost lagoon is marketed as a prequel to tts s1, but that’s not really what it is. only the first third of the novel actually takes place before tangled: before ever after. the rest of it is supposed to take place in the empty spaces between episodes of s1, and—because this is licensed fanfiction that needs to meet a certain threshold of being plausibly canon compliant—that means it can’t do anything that would meaningfully disrupt the story of s1. the events of lost lagoon cannot be big enough to influence any of the episodes of s1 that take place concurrently. the plot of this book must be absolutely self-contained, or else the thin illusion of canon compliance falls apart. 

hence: rapunzel has no problem keeping the lagoon a secret from everyone, despite her refusal to keep the black rock excursion a secret mere pages later. hence, the ultimate reveal that the secret ‘power’ hidden in the lagoon is that it represents shampanier’s and der sonne’s love. it’s hard to have an interesting plot about intrigue and mysteries and such when you have to tip-toe through a series of light-hearted fluffy character establishing episodes instead of just writing your own story.

so i do have some sympathy for ms howland. i do. i think she probably did the best she could, story-wise, within the restraints that were imposed on her by the existence of tts itself. i would probably write a boring story given those same restraints to. 

*deep breath*

- anyway, cass and rapunzel do market stuff, the dahlia jealousy subplot gets seeded, and then we head to xavier’s, where he shows them some daggers whose key features are being extremely light and able to “cut through armor as though it were paper.”

no 💜

- blah blah they ask xavier about the henge(?), it’s a saporian “ceremony circle,” blah blah. they show him the lost lagoon book and he waxes on about how rare and special it is and how “even those cartographers who made it their life’s mission to chart every inch of this kingdom” couldn’t find the cenote that cass found in a matter of hours because she is just! that! special! gag.

- xavier gives the date of the saporia-corona war as “more than two hundred years ago,” which i am taking to also mean “less than three hundred years ago.” i had actually forgotten that the gave a semi-hard date for all this nonsense so. ha. ha ha. ha. this is fine

- in this telling of the tale, shampanier steals der sonne’s journal with the intention of using the tunnel maps to invade the capital city, but she finds his confession of love at the end (“he was head over heels for this strong, intelligent woman” GAG). frankly this makes a teeny, tiny bit more sense than the story as told in under raps, where shampanier and der sonne duel for hours before she... randomly reads the journal? but then again—if shampanier herself infiltrated the coronan palace to steal herz der sonne’s personal journal, why did she not simply assassinate him in his sleep?

- xavier describes shampanier as “the ruler” of saporia, implying saporia was an autocratic stratocracy. remember this. it will be important later. 

- der sonne and shampanier’s marriage heralded an “era of unity” during which they “joined the countries together to create corona as we know it” and there was an “explosion of romantic poetry” during this time, with the lost lagoon being “one that really captured the people’s imagination.” 

- the only thing i’m going to say about the saporia stuff for the time being that is that if this doesn’t scream conquerer propaganda, i don’t know what does. but we’ll get there, don’t you worry.

- they are interrupted by the entrance of xavier’s assistant, marco, who is so transparently a bad guy that i really can’t do anything but laugh. xavier is like the ancient power is definitely one hundred percent not real and cass immediately bustles rapunzel out of there because she’s annoyed, which is fair, i’m also annoyed. 

- there is a character named monsieur lafleur and i am choosing to believe that this man is tromus, because this book is sorely lacking in the demons department. 

- queen arianna randomly walks in at the end of the chapter to make cassandra nervous and remind us all that cass is worried about her role in the black rock excursion getting out. i resent this scenelet because it reminds me that i could be watching tts instead. i miss tts cass. a lot. but anyway that’s the end of the chapter. 

[shiroallura]

I find it interesting that despite the fact that you hate Keith, you still make sure to treat him with compassion in your fic (have him hugged and comforted by the team, have Allura sympathise with his tears). Meanwhile the EPs claim to love Shiro, but do their damnest to fuck him over, as well as fuck over other versions of him, like Kuron, Sven (never confirmed he survived), and the hundreds of dead clones (including activated ones who died trying to find the team, like Kuron almost did).

you know what, i’m gonna give myself this, because honestly? it’s because i’m a good fucking writer, and i know that my characters all deserve the same attention and grace awarded to them.

because, not that i ever would have decided to kill shiro off for good in the first place bc it is a shitty story arc and still ends up with keith getting everything he never wanted on a silver platter, but if that had been my original plan, and i’d been forced to change it, i would have fucking made it work.  i would’ve sat back and taken a long, hard look at my story, and recognized that where i wanted to go originally probably wouldn’t have worked, or at least needed to be seriously revitalized. 

because the fact that LM and JDS had enough time to rewrite and animate all of their mid-series arc, and include tidbits like OG shiro in the void, and everything with the clone arc, and entire episodes like the Journey, the Black Paladins, etc, but didn’t realize their endgame bp keith still wasn’t working is…. atrocious storytelling and a complete lack of self-awareness, honestly.

why they ever thought one character doing all the work so another character could, as far as narrative go, reap all the benefits was good storytelling is beyond me. but i guess it shows that they were surprised by everyone’s investment in shiro, even though he’s literally the most interesting character since fucking episode one. hell, he’s the first one we meet, and he gets captured by aliens! he’s the catalyst for the whole show of him being rescued by his future team! he’s the only one with a missing bayard! he knows pidge’s family! all of that is so interesting and we’re immediately endeared to him because we know A) he’s been through a lot and B) he’s ready to make a difference and beat the bad guys. shiro is the only character that is so connected to as many of the other characters as possible (pidge, her family, the galra war that until very recently allura and coran were sleeping through, lance as his hero, keith as his brother, etc.) the sole exception largely being hunk!! and audiences like connections!! they like rooting for characters!!

and now i’m here sifting through shit for any gold and let’s be honest? there’s not a lot. i remember when i sat down and started writing my fix it fic, back after s2 had aired (and as i’ve spoken about previously, i started noticing issues and gaps in vld’s writing as early as 2x01, because yes, they were there) and trying to decide whether i wanted to write from post-s2 onwards, or do the work of rewriting all of s2 first. it seemed like a daunting task—why bother, right? s2 was good enough, wasn’t it?—but now that i’m almost at the close of my s2, i know i wholeheartedly made the right decision. because the issues identified in s2 are the ones that have led us to s7, and the practically inevitable shitshow of a television program we have now.

because yes, i hate keith. or, at least, i hate what they turned him into. i hate they took him, like they took everyone else, and squeezed the characters into archetypes, wrote “arcs” (seriously beyond s1, how tf have pidge and hunk changed?? AT ALL?? and don’t get me started on coran) for what the writers thought the characters were (categorizing keith as emo, hunk as a foodie, pidge as perfect and snarky, allura as wrong, shiro as too perfect and needing to be taken down a peg, etc etc) instead of what they actually were: kids stuck in a space war who all had natural progressions for their arcs that were then chucked in a bin to die.

so yes, i don’t like canon keith. and bit by bit, i’m learning to love my version of fanon (or actual canon) keith. someone who’s hot headed and makes mistakes and gets called out for his mistakes and learns from them. someone who knows he’s not good with people but makes active attempts to do better. someone who has to stretch his support circle beyond shiro. someone with actual abandonment issues instead of just someone we’re told has them. someone who’s problems don’t suddenly go away just bc he has his absent mother back in his life and who develops entirely off screen. someone who never needed or wanted a ‘leadership arc’ that quite literally, screwed everyone else over supremely, including himself.

but when i took keith on as my character i knew i had to care about him despite the bullshit canon and the bullshit fandom that surrounds him. i had to dig into him and think about where i wanted and knew he needed to go: to someone who feels part of a team, not because he leads them, but because he needs them and has accepted that and is a team player. not someone who, in one of his ‘worst’ moments, starts questioning if they’re even friends and lashes out at everyone trying to help him in the worst ways, and gets awarded respect he didn’t fucking earn whatsoever.

and kuron. i could write so many posts about why kuron deserved infinitely better, and how he is the epitome of how careless, cruel, harmful, and lazy voltron’s storytelling can be.

i’m a young adult who’s never had a professional writing job in my life, and i’m writing TSBS all on my own. i shouldn’t be a better writer than paid professionals who have worked on other projects and have a team of other writers to help them. i’ve developed the blade of marmora more as an organization in three chapters than voltron has done in seven seasons. so yes, i shouldn’t be a better writer than LM and JDS, and yet… here i am.

because i know what it means to adapt and love a story and fucking care about it, all of it, and LM and JDS have made it very, very clear that they don’t. i’ve put more thought into this story in what, three months, then they have in years?

because let’s look at all the inconsistencies vld never fucking addresses / things that don’t make sense because they assumed we’d be stupid enough to overlook it:

coran (and possibly allura, although i can’t remember off the top of my head) knowing that zarkon and honerva were zombified by quintessence, which is already a very poor drug allegory, but then in 2x13 allura was still surprised that haggar was altean

keith and allura going off in the same pod together in 2x06, even though if zarkon tracked them they wouldn’t know which one of them was being tracked so it wouldn’t fucking matter!!

treating kuron’s “i wanna be a paladin again” as a complete joke to kill him off and then rob shiro of everything he ever knew and loved

the lion switch. just… the lion switch

that keith and krolia were on the space whale for two seasons and nothing… fucking happened. their mission went nowhere

why lotor was introduced as being an exiled prince when that never actually affected his status whatsoever and didn’t keep him from being heir to the throne!! he just waltzes in and gets it and then when zarkon dies the second time there is a kral zera!! why wasn’t there a kral zera the first time??

that fact that the only mute, disabled general was the one who died.

and i knew lotor was a snake, i always knew he was using allura, s5 made that obvious to me in every goddamn way, but him suddenly wanting to destroy the galra and having been harvesting alteans for years and that having been his master plan the whole time? made no fucking sense it was bullshit

lance never getting over his crush and being possessive and jealous in a way that wouldn’t have been okay even if he and allura were together, never mind that they weren’t!! and he never gets called out for it!!

wow pidge has changed so much she decided to stay with the team and learned how to like plants wow what a great character arc what do you mean she’s been completely stagnant otherwise and all those things happened in the first season and a half of the show

not getting to see coran’s reaction to keith being galra and the narrative painting allura, a black woman, completely in the wrong for mistrusting a white man based on him belonging to the race of her oppressors

adam. just… everything to do with adam. (he deserved… better)

fuck it kuron’s going on here too they made us empathize and then care about him but still killed him off and used his body and had shiro call him a thing and an evil clone like wtf

shiro’s disease. brought up in show, never again. shiro’s connection to black, never addressed. if you have to explain major character and plot points in interviews, you’re doing your job fucking wrong

having keith unlock black’s wings/powerups with shiro’s help, and having him be bp even though shiro could do those things on his own

beyond s1, what is hunk’s arc. what is it. seriously. he cares about his family, we got to see them. he learns about galra history, great. but does he ever change? does he ever change?

and you know what, the fact that we know more about galra history and culture than we know about altea’s is also bullshit. LM and JDS just need to say they don’t care about oppressed peoples. they really really do

how allura gets treated and used

what are the rules of altean alchemy. where are they. what can alteans do and cannot do. where are your limitations for fucking anything, mossantos. where are they

i could go on and on, but you get the point

so yeah, when i write this fix it fic, i don’t just think i’m a better writer. i fucking know i am.