#like i know people love making women characters 1 dimensional but its ok she can be interesting and have a fucked up backstory as a treat

[luckyemocode]

wait people know tsumiki was abusive to patients before being accepted into hpa/meeting junko right like thats 100% canon and the reason she went into nursing was because she enjoyed having people dependent on her and isnt above making them be dependent on her

[lesbianmarrow]

ok heres my thoughts on legends of tomorrow 4.06. overall i thought it was good. the main plot with nate and his dad was not perfect but it was enjoyable enough. the b plot with ava and nora and mona all stuck in a room together was perfect. you all know i dont like nate much but i actually liked him a lot in this episode. when charlie is telling the story of the minotaur hiding in the labyrinth because he feels ashamed of not living up to his father’s expectations and nate is like :( i thought that was so good. 

my biggest issue was that nate’s father did not seem believable to me. first off i didn’t believe that he would idolize hemingway. i havent actually read much (any?) hemingway but i feel like nate’s father is not the type to idolize writers even if they are so manly. felt very contrived for the plot and i couldn’t quite get past that. i also thought that nate’s father’s insistence on following hemingway and fighting the minotaur with brute force and being very stupid was hard to believe. like it was just a level of stupidity that i didn’t buy. nate’s father came off as a very 2-dimensional character in this episode which i thought was a shame. however i thought the resolution was sweet and him singing the minotaur to sleep was a nice moment. overall it was a pretty decent way to wrap up the nate storyline. like it could have been executed better but i get what they were going for and it wasn’t terrible to watch. 

b plot with the ladies stuck in the prison cell was so so terrific. i am so fond of the trope of people who don’t like each other are stuck in a room together and eventually come to understand each other better. and i like that in this case it was 3 women who are totally different and none of them really get along (although mona tries to get along with both). legends isn’t a show that makes a big deal of its female representation (the way supergirl does) but this b plot shows that they are quite good at writing women as complex and dynamic people whose lives dont revolve around men. 

of course, mona is the least developed of the 3. i feel like the writing for her is a little weak and the writers are relying on the actress’s charm to pull off the character. which mostly works in this episode but i’m hoping they will add more complexity to her character in the near future because otherwise her shtick is going to get old. i do enjoy her though and i like that shes a woman of color who gets to be silly and funny without being the butt of every joke. shes like felicity smoak crossed with gary green, except that shes asian. wasian? holy shit i just looked on the actress’s wikipedia page and shes only 1 year older than me. scary....

anyways nora and ava were delightful. this is the most ive ever liked nora probably. i think the actress is maybe not the best but her performance is really good here, solemn and a little bit prickly. she’s able to play a more withdrawn nora really well. i liked ava because i always like ava but i think she and mona play off each other quite well. there was a lot of humor in their interactions but mona also challenges ava and forces her to reconsider her perspective. love when that happens. however i didnt buy it when mona talked about shipping nora and ray and ava knew what shipping was. i dont think ava should know what shipping is shes too cool for that. it was so cute when ava finally relented and allowed them to celebrate her birthday. i hope later she and sara were able to celebrate her birthday....in private ;)

was literally so funny when they opened the letter and RAY was there. i thought it was a fantastic joke how zari and constantine were like “ray you could walk right off this ship and nobody would notice” and then he was absent from the episode and i DIDNT notice until he showed up in the envelope. a little unfortunate that the 3 women need a man to save them but what can you do it happens sometimes. i was a bit disappointed to see zari on the sidelines again. we need another zari-centric episode asap! 

the treatment of the topic of incarceration in this episode is troubling, as it usually is in arrowverse. ava comes off as a real monster after sitting side by side with nora and eating birthday cake with her and then going right back to imprisoning her despite nora’s total remorse. its just one of those things you gotta look past but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. mona’s care for the magical beings does so much to humanize them, which is emphasized in this episode, and i wonder if that’s going to be a major plot point later in the season, because they obviously need mona around for something. but yeah even though i like ava her treatment of the prisoners is just appalling :( 

forgot to talk about nate and charlie. um it was funny i guess. and kind of sad. but nice in a bittersweet way. not talking about the avalance scene here because i need a whole separate post to talk about that. there is so much there that i am completely obsessed with. 

[dapper-chicken]

Ok so. Carmen Sandeigo season 3.

I mean. It was alright?? I don’t know, I have mixed feelings with this season, and not because it was only five episodes long - I mean, yeah, that part was a let down, but I heard they had issues with budget cuts, so I get it. It just felt like some parts were?? Off?? Idk, here are some of my takes as a writing minor. Spoilers ahead.

- Did something change?? With the writers?? Something about the characters just felt a little skewed, and at some points it felt like they were parodies of their established character. 

- Like, if Zach was kinda one dimensional before he definitely was this season. There was no attempt to give him any kind of personality aside from Dumb Funny Side Character Man. 

- I was sad Julia got sidelined this season, but I think it was a necessary step for her to be able to later be involved with Carmen without ACME holding her back - since she’s putting an art/history degree to use now, it’s very likely Carmen will have to rob the place she works at later on. And, fingers crossed, maybe we can get some JULIA BECOMING A PART OF TEAM RED BAY-BE

- I really appreciated Devineaux coming to his own conclusion about Carmen, that was some good characterization. 

- What was the deal?? With the dialogue?? That’s that only part of the writing I have any problem with. A lot of the lines where Carmen and VILE are doing their usual banter just felt really stiff, and some just didn’t make any sense at all. It felt like they were trying way too hard with some of it, especially with the line “School is going to be cool” being said in a completely serious context was just. Such dogshit writing. 

- Speaking of Sonia (Was that her name??? I don’t remember??) I actually really wasn’t a fan. Like, her character had SO much potential. Her parallels with Carmen and what she could do for the story were so great but. I think it was a combination of bad character writing and bad voice acting that just made the character really stale. A lot of the lines were said with just not the right tone, (i.e. the ‘School is going to be cool’ line, but to be fair there was no saving that line). Idk, I feel like they just threw that character away with how they wrote her. Like, when she saved Carmen on the plane, It was because it was a line she wouldn’t cross, like Carmen said, but it was really kind of out of the blue I guess?? I wish Sonia would’ve been told more about why Carmen was there so she could get a full grasp of what she was getting herself into, and her connection with Carmen would’ve been established more. 

- We stan Shadow-san getting that familial redemption. That episode was the best in the season imo. And NOT just because My Boy was in it (I’ll get to that later). Shadow-san was actually really good this season, I really enjoyed the found family dynamic he has with Carmen and being able to reconcile with his brother. 

- FOUND FAMILY!!!!

- I was surprised at how Halloween based this season was. I see it now that a user pointed it out that it was a way for the writers to use masks as a literal and figurative driving force in the plot, which was actually Really Good so kudos to them.

- Countess Cleo seemed a bit out of character this season. Like, with the scene where they dig into candy she’s straight up eating cheap Halloween candy. Which is. Kind of against everything her character stand for. Indulging in excess fits, but indulging in something that, in her eyes, would be so lower class was really surprising. 

- Also can I talk about the faculty for a sec? I know a lot of people enjoyed the faculty getting really into Halloween but for some reason I didn’t get into it. I feel like a lot of it made the faculty into a kind of comedic relief, which took away from a lot of the threat they’re supposed to have. They didn’t feel intimidating this season, they just felt like they were… There (all except for Roundabout). The dressing up and goofing around felt out of character too. I know it humanizes them a lot, but I feel like an international evil empire isn’t going to put up Halloween decorations, and if they were its going to be Top Of The Line Shit. I feel like going full clown was a little much even for Maelstrom. I feel like they could have gotten the same idea across and it might have even been better if they just gave him a single clown nose on top of his usual attire. It would have made for some (in my opinion) better visual humor. Then again, I have to keep reminding myself that this show is directed at a younger audience and I really shouldn’t be as critical as I am about it given that fact, but they set a really high bar for themselves with season 1. 

- You know now that I think about it the faculty being given some comic relief this season would have been fine if they didn’t drive Zach’s character into the ground for it at the same time. Like, they’re milking Zach for all the not great comic relief they can, and are at the same time trying to do it with the faculty, which just makes everything feel a little campy.

- You know what was great comic relief????

- TIME TO TALK ABOUT THE MAN OF THE HOUR, BOYS.

- LETS TALK ABOUT MIME BOMB. LETS TALK ABOUT MIME BOMB.

- Oh my god. Oh m y go d. This. This guy. When I tell you I laughed at all of Neal and Mime Bombs scenes I am not joking. The dynamic between these two was golden. Just. *Chefs kiss*. 

- Mime Bombs visual humor was fucking outstanding. The miming at the closed window, pretending to untie the boat, just everything he did was so FUCKING GOOD.

- And can we talk about Neal??? Personally I wasn’t a Slime Bomb shipper, but these two were written so well together that I’m actually starting to reconsider. Neal is just so great. He makes every character he’s with all the better, and just has such a great dynamic. 

- FUCK I loved this episode. 

- I love how they made Mime Bomb kinda fugly so they wouldn’t have to deal with the thirst this time around, but y’all FAILED LMAO. 

- I Can And Will Smooch The Mime What About It.

- I like that they didn’t find Carmen’s mom yet. It’s not great how they stop looking after the first episode, but I feel like finding her mom in just 5 episodes would have felt so incredibly rushed. 

- Women wrestling. WOMEN WRESTLING . 

- The final episode was good. You knew Carmen was gonna get out of it somehow but it felt like a nice final episode. It left some good cliffhangers and felt like a nice tie to what was an entirely too short season. Can’t wait to see how ACME handles Gray. 

- I was disappointed some of the OG cast in VILE didn’t get screen time, but it was, again, only 5 episodes, so there really wasn’t anything they could do about it. 

- I am not a fan of The Troll. Like, his character is needed, because eventually VILE would need a natural counter to Player, cause that’s just how things need to play out, but I think he’s going to be a victim of writing. Like, his introduction establishes his ties to internet culture with that glasses drop meme and that in of itself is going to kill this character. Like, I’m so scared he’s going to fall victim to what every show tries to do, and that’s the ‘What’s up fellow cool kids’ (And by that I mean reference internet humor and trends, which will ultimately do nothing but date the show). Like, The Troll has SO MUCH POTENTIAL. WE’VE NEEDED AN EVIL COUNTER TO PLAYER FOR A WHILE NOW BUT DON’T MAKE THAT COUNTER PART A GUY WHO TALKS LIKE HE’S FROM R/INCELS. 

- With all that being said, I really do still care for the show. I was lowkey disappointed with this season but I look forward to seeing what they do in the future and still hold a lot of love for this show in my heart. Fingers crossed for another season!!!

[nikkoliferous]

Phase One: Thor

Since I was looking up my past live-blog of the novel and realising how annoying and repetitive reading through it all is because of my having structured it as a bunch of reblogs, I’ve decided to organize it all into one long-ass post instead. In case anyone else wants to read it in the future. Or in case I decide to re-read it. Because I’m hilarious. 😅

SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO

My Hilarious Yet Wrathful Overview Of Phase One: Thor, Redux

—

If your son who’s to become king requires a babysitter to not screw it all up and also the idea of him being king is stressful enough to put you into a coma, maybe, uh… reconsider doing that? Just a thought.

But you see here why Odin was so deadset on Thor becoming king, despite him being ill-suited for the role. It’s not about what’s best for Asgard; it’s about personal legacy. Thor is Odin’s mini me, and Loki is very much not. There are places within the text where Odin laments Thor “lacking his father’s wisdom” (he’s definitely inherited your humility, though, Odin!), but he hopes for Thor to grow into a “wise king” like himself. Whereas he holds no such illusions (lol, pun) that Loki will ever take after him.

now with tag commentary! #this scene is in the script and both novelizations #(though in reading this novel seems to just be a more complete version of the junior novel? #idk i'm confused because they're supposedly written by different authors but so far the text is identical) #and it drives me insane each time i read it

“Haha, I’m a warmongering piece of shit, isn’t it funny?”

I know, I know. I try to cut Asgard some slack for being such a militaristic culture because social changes happen slowly and when you live for thousands of years per generation, it makes sense that your views on things like war would be regressive. The text says Odin has ruled Asgard for tens of thousands of years (so much for taking Loki’s “give or take 5,000 years” line literally; sure, the Odinsleep would have extended Odin’s lifespan, but by that much? Idk).

Still, fuck Odin. Especially since he’ll eventually try to shame Loki for doing the same thing he’s fucking boasting about here. And on a much smaller scale too.

…is it, though?

I actually think Loki’s relationship with being the centre of attention is really interesting in its complexity and we don’t discuss it enough. I’ve said this before, but he strikes me as the sort of person who craves attention but also wouldn’t really know what to do with it if he had it. He craves it as a result of neglect, because he’s never been shown recognition or validation. This is why he seems to revel in it in Stuttgart, even in (or maybe especially in?) his brainwashed state. But he also frequently comes across as pretty introverted and has horrible self-esteem, so I think on another level, sustained, genuine attention would make him feel kind of uncomfortable. Loki seems to believe that in order to be loved or respected, he has to literally be Thor, though. And Thor has always been the centre of attention, so for Loki, attention is synonymous with respect.

I find Loki’s relationship with wanting attention especially fascinating because I too both crave and fear it. As a borderline, I need it. When no one is paying attention to me, I lose my sense of identity. I feel as though I literally cease to exist. It’s excruciatingly painful. And yet, I have no authentic sense of self; I’m just a chameleon, and the closer people get to me, the more likely it is they’ll see behind my mask. They’ll realise it’s all a show and that I’m actually no one. And then they’ll leave. I can’t help wondering if that’s how Loki feels sometimes too.

Wait, what? You mean goat. His horns are shaped like a goat’s. This is a ram: 

This is a goat:

This is Loki:

Do you see now? They’re like a goat. Not a ram. Not a cow. A GOAT.

This book was written before Ragnarok was a thing, so it may be unfair to connect the two, but it still seems worth noting that it was Thor who reduced Loki to being no more than a trickster to begin with. “You could be more,” my ass. Loki’s problem has never been that he was one-dimensional; it was always that the people in his life, including Thor, refused to see any other dimensions to him. Which makes those words particularly cruel—as if they aren’t cruel enough already, what with the physical torture and all. 

Always happy to have cause to point out that

Loki was on Thor clean-up duty their whole lives; he certainly was not trying to kill Thor.

People like to point to Loki’s attempted genocide of the Jötnar and attempted(-ish? lol) conquest of Earth as proof that he’s some kind of violent maniac. But in a little place I like to call reality, Loki was historically far less aggressive and bloodthirsty than his peers.

Question: why is one conqueror evil and the other is righteously entitled to ruling over the Nine Realms?

Asgardian exceptionalism FTW

I can’t even begin to imagine what would lead you to expect such a thing, Odin. 😂

Uh, ‘cause it is?? And also their planet is MELTING without it??

This is all only within the first two chapters, btw. Lmao

—

—

—

“Looking for answers,” my foot.

YOU WOULD THINK SO, WOULDN’T YOU??

#i mean unless you knew heimdall #he only commits treason on days that end in y

—

—

What’d I say? Thor clean-up dutyyyyy 

Just wanna remind everyone that this 

is why he’s smiling during this scene 

because it makes me laugh every time. 😂 

—

My heart breaks every time I remember that second excerpt because literally ALL OF IT happened to him when he survived falling through the wormhole. My poor boy. 😭

But also of note… Loki gets cold (and also does not like being cold). This interests me because 1) as many are aware, the prevalent headcanon that Loki has a low body temperature irritates me and 2) it possibly(?) lends weight to the theory that he may not be fully Jötun, whether by virtue of his birth or Odin’s spell.

Haha, look at this Feminist Icon™ trying to take credit for his female friend’s accomplishments! Truly inspiring. 

#for some reason the ragnarok lovers have somehow decided that thor is both a feminist and lesbian icon #whatever that means 🤷‍♀️ #and i'm still trying very hard to figure out why #is it literally just because he *says* he respects women or whatever in that dumb rambly conversation with valkyrie?

Ooh… you were so close to getting the point, Volstagg. So close. Take your tongue off Odin’s boot for just a couple minutes longer.

Also, the author just forgot the name of the Casket. How did this book get published? 😂

JUST LOOKING FOR ANSWERS, HUH?

Because fuck Loki, amirite? He, uh… he’s a prince too, you know.

Also… Fandral, you dweeb 😂

…am I reading too much into this, or did Odin just literally forget that Loki exists?

On the other hand, the author also seemed to forget Loki existed for most of this chapter, so who knows. 🤷‍♀️

lmao @ Jane immediately trying to convince herself she’s too rational to be attracted to a stranger 

Honestly, though, big mood. 

Just your periodic reminder that Thor’s sycophantic friends KNEW Loki was right and decided to throw him under the bus anyway. 

Just as I’ve always said: That was it. That was their ENTIRE rationale. That Loki *could* have done it, therefore he must have. Please tell me these people have nothing to do with Asgard’s justice system.

…lol, jk, Asgard has no justice system.

Ok, first of all, no.

Second: thank you, Fandral. You’re a self-absorbed cad, but also evidently Thor’s least stupid friend.

Thirdly, how…? First, it was, “Loki arranged all this because he’s jealous of Thor.” Now they’ve suddenly jumped all the way to, “All of Asgard is in danger.” What exactly does Sif think Loki is planning? He’s gonna, what… assassinate Odin and then sell Asgard to the Jötnar?

—

Please stop hurting me.

Just so there’s no confusion: this one sentence explains everything Loki did for the rest of the movie. It explains how a person who has been historically non-aggressive suddenly transforms into a warmonger. To prove himself a real Asgardian, like his brother and father and grandfather. 

—

…why did Odin fall into the Odinsleep in two completely different scenes in this book? I’m super confused.

Also, we really need to talk about how cruel it is of Marvel to keep forcing Loki to prove his loyalty again and again and again when he’s been doing so almost literally since we met him. And by “we need to talk about it”, I mean I need to tie Kevin Feige and co. to a chair and spend a minimum of five hours lecturing them on how poorly they understand their own fucking character.

Let’s just be clear here: they’re talking about Loki. They’re saying Loki, their LEGITIMATE king, is an enemy of Asgard, based on evidence so paper-thin it’s practically invisible. Just… please, let that sink in. Take a moment to appreciate how utterly fucked up that is. 

I’m sorry (not really), but Thor was so much funnier before Ragnarok.

This scene has always kind of bugged me. If Odin removed Thor’s powers, how come he can still control the weather? Confusing.

So what exactly was Thor’s plan anyway, before he realised he couldn’t lift Mjölnir? He was just gonna call on Heimdall to help him commit treason AGAIN, show up on Asgard against the expressed command of his king, and… Odin would just shrug and be like, “You got me, son! I guess I can’t keep you down. Welcome home!”?

…I mean, I guess that more or less is what happened in the end, but it’s hard to imagine it would have still gone down that way without all the stuff that happened with Loki. Idk.  

#look what i'm saying is... thor is not exactly a thinking person #no one on asgard is a thinking person #except loki but he's crazy now so he's also thinking somewhat poorly lol

Cool, Thor. Now imagine feeling that way for ONE THOUSAND YEARS and develop a little fucking empathy for your brother.

But you won’t.

You’ll brush off his feelings of worthlessness as “imagined slights”. 😒

Nice that somebody knows how the royal line of succession works, I guess… 

That sound you hear? Yeah, that’s just my heart breaking. NBD. 

First, they mislabelled it the Casket of Eternal Winters. Now it’s the Cask of Ancient Winters. Author must have been thirsty when they wrote this. Lol 

Look, not to nitpick, but this is not the recommended procedure when you see a storm that you don’t believe is of supernatural origin coming. I’m just saying. Lol 

Uh… ‘cause he is?? And your pals are committing treason AGAIN, Thor, so it technically is responding to a threat to Asgard. Just FYI.

Anyways, this is an important point that doesn’t get made often enough. People want to act like Loki illegally usurped the throne somehow, but even without the deleted scene that explicitly shows Frigga passing rulership to him (a scene which is, for some reason, entirely skipped over in this book, but whatever), understand this: Loki could not have controlled the Destroyer unless he was legitimately King of Asgard. The fact that he’s able to do so is irrefutable proof that his rulership is valid.

lmao you little shit

So… here’s my issue with this scene (and with Thor as a character): He always assumes that Loki’s acting out specifically to hurt him. That Loki’s entire life and thought process revolves around Thor. He does it in this scene, he does it in The Avengers… it’s just a chronic thing with Thor. Everything is viewed through the lens of Loki inexplicably hating him.

But that’s… just not accurate. Yes, Loki harbours a lot of jealousy towards Thor. But that’s not what’s happening in this scene. Loki is not trying to kill Thor here because he wants him dead; he’s doing it because Thor (and his friends) are getting in the way of Loki completing his ultimate goal. Loki tried to solve this problem non-violently, by lying about Odin being dead. It’s Thor’s friends who all but forced his hand by going behind his back and trying to bring Thor back to Asgard against Loki’s (and Odin’s!) direct orders.

For all the humility he’s learned in the past few days, this entire speech is still really all about Thor. About assuming that Loki’s doing this for personal reasons, because he holds a grudge against Thor for some unknown reason. This is implicit in his request to “take [my life] and end this.” It never even occurs to him that his friends are traitors to the Crown and Loki, as King of Asgard, is perhaps justified in pursuing them.

It also needs to be acknowledged that Thor’s apology here is hollow, even if it’s ultimately coming from his heart, because he has no idea what he’s apologising for. “Whatever I have done to wrong you” is not an apology. An apology addresses specific hurtful actions taken and commits to not repeating those mistakes in the future. Thor cannot commit to not repeating the hurtful things he’s done, because he doesn’t know what he’s done. Despite his best intentions, what Thor is doing here is actually kind of manipulative. He’s not addressing any substantive issue between the two of them; he’s just trying to talk Loki down. And it ultimately fails not because Loki doesn’t care or because he wants Thor dead, but because it doesn’t actually change anything.

Finally and only semi-relatedly, we should maybe at some point talk about the fact that Loki, who is stated to be a master tactician, has displayed a weird pattern of hardly ever being as lethal as he could be. He freezes Heimdall in place instead of killing him outright; he backhands Thor with the Destroyer instead of incinerating him; he, well… *gestures vaguely at almost the entirety of the first Avengers movie* Anytime the violence is even a little bit personal, he seems to hedge. Odd behaviour for somebody who’s supposedly super evil.

I’m sorry, I know I’ve pointed it out at least a hundred times before, but I just can’t encounter this scene in any form without taking a moment to appreciate how underrated and hilarious it is.

I also genuinely wonder how many Ragnarok stans who have accused me of having no sense of humour, have failed to laugh at moments like this one. Kinda feel like if you need to have the comedy spoonfed to you in the form of ass jokes, maybe you’re the one whose sense of humour is lacking. 🤷‍♀️

Let’s be super clear: this is not what happened. Loki did not betray Odin; he was betrayed by Odin. He did not open Asgard to its enemies; he attempted, misguidedly, to destroy Asgard’s enemies. And he most certainly did not commit suicide out of a sense of guilt.

I’m not saying Loki did nothing wrong, nor am I saying he feels no regret for the lives he has taken. What I’m saying is there’s no indication that he believes he betrayed Odin or Asgard in the process. Which makes perfect sense, because he didn’t. Everything he tried to do was for Odin and Asgard. It was misguided and horrible, yes, but it can hardly be classified as a betrayal.

The insurmountable burden on Loki is not that he did terrible things, but that no matter what he does or how hard he tries, Odin will never look at him with anything but contempt. Consider once more these passages from the very beginning of the book, at Thor’s coronation:

—

Consider that this book goes to great pains to point out that Odin favours Thor because Thor is a warrior like him. And yet even when Loki embraces that, even when he acts more war-like than ever before, Odin rejects him— just as he always has.

There is a reason why this moment is the last time Loki will ever call Odin his father. Because he realises once and for all that, no, nothing he tries will ever be good enough; no, Odin won’t ever look at him with pride. That is Loki’s burden. That is why he lets go.

The epilogue is really just two pages of making me want to vomit. 

There’s your party where Thor and a certain subset of the fandom insist that Loki was mourned. There’s barely an indication here that anyone even perceives his demise as a negative thing.

“[Sif] could see Frigga thought [Loki was dead] as well” also contradicts the tie-in comic for TDW, so I don’t know what the author is on about there. Unlike the majority of Marvel comics, the tie-in comics are canon to the MCU, so it’s a bizarre statement to make.

COULD YOU SMEAR THE DEAD* ABUSE VICTIM A LITTLE HARDER, PLEASE? Fucking hell.

No matter how many times I encounter this scene, in whatever format, I still fail to become desensitized to how disgusting it is. I realise there’s a good chance that whatever version of events Thor has been told was twisted at best; but how you can look at a man whose son has just committed suicide under any circumstances and say there will never be a better father than that guy, is utterly beyond my capacity to understand.

And Odin’s “you’ve already made me proud” line just feels like extra salt in the wound because, again, Loki let go because he realized Odin would never say those words to him. And yet they come so damn easily when it’s Thor.

Fuck this entire family so much. I think I hate them more than Loki does. Sometimes I wonder what he would think about that. How he would react to knowing that not only is he actually loved, but that he’s so loved that people are genuinely furious at the way he’s been mistreated. That there are people who regularly devolve into full-on rants because they just can’t contain how much anger they have towards the people who hurt him. I think he’d have a hard time wrapping his head around that concept, tbh.

Anyways, to end on a not-completely-depressing note, I’m still waiting for someone at Marvel to explain how Loki knew what Thor said in this scene after plummeting into a wormhole. ‘Cause he references this conversation as Fauxdin at the end of TDW. So like… ?? Did he steal Odin’s memories before he erased them? Because that would be… kind of neat, actually. And very clever. Not entirely ethical, of course, but it’s Odin, so fuck ethics.

WELP, THAT’S IT. Thanks for following along with my dumbassery, hope you enjoyed yourselves. Lol

[thegreymoon]

giuliano de medici?

Obligatory disclaimer here, anon, I’m really not a fan of this show and Giuliano de Medici. I think it’s a terribly written show and he’s a terribly written character, and even though it’s no secret I find Bradley James to be one of the most beautiful people alive, I’m going to go with 

Not My Type | Alright | Cute | Adorable | 🤗Pretty🤗 | Gorgeous | LORD MERCY

Mind you, when I say ‘pretty’, I mean so goddamn beautiful I was willing to wade through THREE seasons of utterly infuriating bullshit just for him! (OK, two, because I still haven’t summoned the willpower to sit through season 3 even though I absolutely still plan on doing it 😭😭) I mean, just look at this man’s eyes: 

He’s so gorgeous, I could weep 😭

Also, I’m not going to pretend even for a second that the fact that the costumes gave off such strong Arthur vibes didn’t have anything to do with me sitting through this nonsense and almost enjoying it. When he said ‘I don’t have time for this,’ in this very scene, I got hit over the head with so much deja vu, because it is Arhur’s line, and it was totally Arthur’s delivery! His battle scenes gave me life, but why were they so short? Why was there not more? Why does everything about this shitty show have to be so goddamn unsatisfying? Did the Medici producers not see Merlin season 5? Did they not see what this man can do? Such a wasted opportunity, oh my fucking God! 

Anyway, rant incoming: 

Mind you, I don’t blame Bradley for the unsatisfactory mess Giuliano turned out to be, he did the best he could with the nothing he was given. Only Lorenzo got some semi-decent writing (and even this was not consistent), but Giuliano got such nonsense story arcs, I was sitting there not believing my eyes and ears! I’ve seen gutter trash soap operas with more believable cliche romance! Hell, I’ve seen twelve-year-old girls write better self-insert fanfiction! Even cartoons have better villains than that caricature of a husband, I was laughing out loud at what they were trying to get us to swallow! I mean that line, “It’s not the mask that attracts me, it’s what lies beneath it,” OMG, YOU’VE SEEN HER TWICE IN YOUR LIFE AND SPOKEN THREE WORDS TO HER, JUST SHUT UP!! 😣😫😭

It never gets better, unfortunately, and they wasted the character on this laughable romance instead of doing just about anything else with Giuliano! More of his relationship with Lorenzo, with Bianca, with Lucrezia, or even with Francesco! Hell, I would have even taken Sandro (even though the guy playing him can’t act to save his life and the character is beyond annoying)! Or, I don’t know, and this is just a radical idea here, they could have made Simonetta less two-dimensional and given us an actually believable romantic sub-plot with properly developed characters!

Oh, Gwen, how I missed you! I was forced to eat my words on each and every criticism I ever made about how poorly Arwen was written on��Merlin, because it was perfect, perfect writing in comparison! So good, it could be taught in a literature master class! Oh my God, just how do you take two such beautiful people like Bradley and Matilda, put them together and end up with something so infuriatingly nonsensical, forgettable and bland? Colin Morgan has spoiled me and I confess that there was a moment in all my frustration where I had an ugly thought that Bradley James just has no chemistry with women on screen at all, but that’s not really true, because even at it’s worst, Arwen was never this bad and there was never a time when he and Angel actually made me roll my eyes at some of the worst pieces of dialogue I’ve ever heard. Then, of course, there was his performance with Barbara Hershey in Damien, which was on a whole another level of intense, so I have to conclude that the reason Giuliano and Simonetta and that whole ridiculous subplot were so terrible is because the writers could not write for shit. 

Also, as much as I love Bradley, I feel like he was tragically miscast in this role. I just didn’t buy him as Daniel’s younger brother at all. Not only is Bradley older IRL, he has the older brother vibes as well. It’s in his voice, his posture. Better writing for Giuliano notwithstanding, I feel like this show could have been vastly improved if Bradley and Daniel had switched roles. Again, did none of these people see Merlin? Did they not see how iconic Arthur was and what Bradley can do? Because, damn, that man has presence when you give him the proper material to work with, and they took advantage of none of it! I like Daniel, I really do, but even though he was given the best material on this show, he just didn’t fully deliver and I have yet to see him in anything where I am impressed by his performance and not just sitting there for his pretty face.

And since this has devolved into a looooooooong post that no longer has anything to do with the hotness of Giuliano de Medici, let me just mention him: 

Who is this guy and how do I get more of him, because, OMG!  😍🔥🔥🔥😍

He has the most fascinating face I’ve seen in a while, and the way he moves and carries himself is mesmerising! He deserved better-written villainy than what he was given! This show truly did not deserve its cast! Francesco Pazzi was so terribly written, it’s laughable, and yet, here was this guy, stealing the show left and right, in spite of the shit material he was given to work with! Somebody please cast him in something more worthy (preferably in English, or at the very least with English subtitles so that I can watch)! 😭😭

The thing that infuriates me about this series is that they had some fantastic actors here that totally deserved better, such a fascinating period to work with and some of the most interesting figures in history and they spent all their time and money on making them as cliche, two-dimensional, cartoonish and bland as possible.  

Also, I can’t end this post without mentioning how much I loved Sarah Parish as Lucrezia! The woman is perfect, OMG! 😍 The wives, in general, were too good for their husbands in both the seasons I watched so far. The mistresses can go choke, though, and I hated how much they tried to white-wash adultery all over the place. In addition to the poor writing, this show sent out some really gross messages and did nothing to call out all the misogynistic tripe. 

I must exclude Simonetta from my mistress-hate because she died a horrible death, and frankly, other than that, there was not much there for me to perceive her as a real character anyway. I wanted to like her so much because I saw the gifs on Tumblr before actually watching the show, but the writers gave me absolutely nothing to work with and in the end, all I was left with was that she died all alone and with no help or comfort, sick, cold and thirsty, which is one of my big personal fears. The fact that the writers did this to her for no logical reason but to play up Sandro’s and Giuliano’s selfish man-pain - after I really did not buy either of them actually loving her - was just an additional disgusting layer on this poorly written story arc. She deserved better. 

In conclusion, if it wasn’t for Bradley James being pretty, I would have quit this rubbish halfway through season 1 (if anyone is interested in reading just how much I hated it, you can find all my bile here). Season 2 was just as bad, but Bradley, Daniel and Matteo made intolerable characters bearable, which was something Richard Madden was unable to pull off. Of course, all my pure love goes to Contessina, Lucrezia and Clarice, because they were the only characters that I genuinely enjoyed in this mess and didn’t just put up with because I liked the people playing them.

[willidleaway]

Doctor Who, series 12, episodes 1 and 2

In short: I love two-parters and I’m glad Spyfall was a two-parter. The conclusion wasn’t entirely satisfying, parts of this felt like a retread of old favourite story elements (including from The Curse of Fatal Death—seriously!), and I think there was a bit of disjointness between the two parts, but this is still a very good start to series 12, and I’m 90% sure I’m not saying that just because he’s back.

In slightly less short, still without spoilers:

—Positives: good tension throughout part 1, including the cliffhanger (hangar?); loved seeing historical characters tag along and interact in part 2, in one of the better attempts of Chibnall!Who at being educational; strong performances all around from heroes and villains.

—Negatives: part 2 has me fearing for a regression from some of the positive aspects of series 11; the villains weren't really fleshed out enough, especially in their motivation.

Verdict: Go watch Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death. It’s quite funny.

Oh, you mean about this two-parter? It’s good. Could have been great, though—almost should have been with its set pieces—and it didn’t strike me as great.

In less short, with spoilers:

OK, so I don’t even have much to say about part 1 because it really is all setup. We’ve got weird higher-dimensional ghosty things, they’re attacking spies all around the world and swapping their DNA out with something else, except they either won’t or can’t attack Yas and send her instead to some weird alternate dimension. Yas and Ryan go off to find out that Google are involved [0] in some sinister fashion because their CEO is totally in league with the aliens and is himself 7% alien, but it turns out the real mastermind is ... the Master! Dun dun dun. Very much the Dark Water reveal, right down to the gender swap.

So at the end of part 1, the situation is that the Doctor is in the same realm that Yas had ended up in, and her companions are in a crashing plane. So how is this all resolved?

Well, the second one is easy. It’s a time travel show. Do the Blink gambit! [1] Just go back in time after everything’s done, plant some signs and a recording on the plane, and they can land completely unscathed! In Essex! (I’d say ‘unscathed/Essex: pick one’, but obviously Graham feels differently.)

This is fine, but ultimately the companions don’t ... do much from there? It’s the series 3 finale thing again where they’ve got to go off-grid, except in series 3 where Martha is planting the seeds for, well, that conclusion. But she’s at least got some kind of agency in the story. Here, Graham and Yas and Ryan are ... chased? I mean, it did give us Graham laser-tap-dancing his way out of those situations, and I will be forever happy that that was a thing that happened, but overall they had so little to do other than have villainous speeches and antics spouted at them. Frankly, from a purely logistical point of view, it would have made very little difference if the Doctor had just picked them up on the plane before it crashed, because of course the Doctor had sorted everything out about the Silver Lady and the Kasaavins and all.

So I found that fairly unfortunate, especially given Yas and Ryan’s crucial actions (and their rather excellent performances) in part 1.

Resolving the Doctor’s cliffhanger seems a little trickier, and it leads to some of the disjointness I was talking about at the start between parts 1 and 2. In part 1 we’re led to believe that these pointy-hat white ghosts [2] are alien spies spying on Earth’s spies today. Here it turns out that, no, actually, they’re also spying on the Who’s Who of Earth computing and telecommunications.

This includes Ada Lovelace [3]—why she was also known as Ada Gordon is baffling to me given she was Lord Byron’s legitimate daughter and it’s not like Gordon was Byron’s surname (not blaming the show, just baffled at the apparent historical fact)—and later Noor Inayat Khan, the pacifist SOE hero with expertise in wireless telegraphy. It was really good to learn about them and their contributions, however briefly (although I have mixed feelings about the episode avoiding discussing Noor’s ultimate fate).

Thankfully they also get more to do than the companions—Ada hijacks a gun and fights off the Master while he’s distracted, while Noor hides Ada and the Doctor from Nazis and later feeds information to the Nazis to trap the Master. They then both go out and track down the Master’s TARDIS (although given his hubris it turns out to be not so difficult). That’s way more than laser-tap-dancing and being rather ineffectual otherwise!

My main gripe is how the Doctor wipes both their memories at the end—it’s not like the Doctor’s wiped the memories of Dickens or Shakespeare or even Queen Elizabeth! Anti-STEM discrimination, this is.

But overall I very much liked the Doctor in this power trio of women, although I think Ada got the short end of the stick out of the three of them. I suppose it may have been difficult because her abilities are relatively abstract—computer science is a bit more difficult to get across on screen compared to telegraphy and disinformation, so she has to make do with a gun instead.

So: strong companions in part 1 (although not so much in part 2), strong Doctor and historical figures in part 2. All fine and dandy. But let’s talk about the villains, because of course that’s the meat of the story.

OK, first off: that’s Lenny Henry?! God he’s unrecognisable. Goatee suits him, though. He looks sharp.

Daniel Barton, though, seems not so sharp, and not terribly interesting either. First off, he has all the information in the world yet can’t seem to be bothered to run a face recognition routine on Yas and Ryan when they’re undercover in his office as journalists. (Maybe he’s wilfully ignoring it. Maybe he just wants attention.) Then it turns out he’s 7% non-human, which is intriguing at the start but gets rather casually dismissed towards the end of part 2 as just him test-driving the DNA replacement idea.

But the real trouble was that I never found it terribly clear why Barton would have been interested in joining forces with the aliens to wipe out humanity. Did he just find the idea of using seven billion humans as data centres really appealing? Maybe, but what’s the use of all that data? Barton is most powerful as the head of basically Google, and all his data becomes utterly useless without the civilisation that actually needs it, surely.

Oh, then there are the Kasaavins themselves.

At first, their basic plan seems like it’s to wipe out Earth’s intelligence network, which makes sense as a step in an invasion. But then it turns out the ultimate point of their invasion is all about ... computers? And disk space, basically???

Why did they attach themselves to people like Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing and Steve Jobs? Was it to influence the evolution of computing in ways that made today’s computer architectures more vulnerable to ... whatever it is the Kasaavins later do through the Silver Lady and all of our modern devices? Sure, Ada Lovelace’s notes on computing engines were prescient and unquestionably influenced her spiritual successors like Turing, but I would personally have said more in the abstract. You'd definitely want to go after people like Woz, doing design on microcomputers much closer to our modern laptops and phones. I guess they figured it couldn’t hurt, anyway.

What exactly were they going to do with all that disk space? Why don’t they have their own massive storage devices? Why do they need to overwrite human DNA? Can’t they just build more DNA?

I dunno, maybe I’m overthinking it. I thought they were building towards a Matrix-style thing where all of human civilisation was going to just be someone’s cloud computing instance—but no, it’s hard drive space. It seemed a bit weak.

I think the Kasaavins suffered mostly for being in the same story as the newest incarnation of the Master.

The good thing about the Master, at least, is that he needs little motivation. He’s just mad. If he wants to wipe out all of humanity and the Kasaavins needing storage space happens to mean there may be a common interest there, the Master can just do that. That’s how the Master works.

He cuts an imposing figure at the start, I suppose—maniacal slick sort of fellow, shades of Simm’s incarnation in series 3 but still his own thing. But the way he works in this episode is just ... goofy. I mean, really? He just keeps tracking the Doctor through time? Can’t be bothered to keep tabs on whether someone’s trying to sabotage his master plan?

And then there’s the way the whole situation with the Nazis gets resolved.

I really thought he was going to go ‘seventy-seven years ... in a sodding twentieth century ...’, à la Jonathan Pryce’s excellent Master from Steven Moffat’s Comic Relief special. You know, the one from all the way back in 1999 where for the first half-ish, the Doctor and Master basically try to outwit each other through increasingly ridiculous time-travel hijinks, ending up with the Master having to crawl out a sewer for over nine hundred years.

Totally unlike this story, where the second half-ish involves the Doctor and Master trying to outwit each other through time-travel hijinks, and the Master ends up having to crawl out of his predicament for almost eight decades.

I’m not sure that’s a complaint, myself, frankly. For one thing, of course, when a show has gone on for over half a century, it’s difficult to avoid new stories running into old ones. But for another thing, saying something feels right out of a Comic Relief special isn’t necessarily a, erm, fatal flaw for Doctor Who. I prefer it when Doctor Who isn’t taking itself too seriously, just seriously enough.

Still, when you look at the big picture and look at all the retreads, I can’t help but think we’re heading back into the worst excesses of past new!Who.

For all its faults, I really enjoyed series 11 for how the narrative focus returned to the companions after much of the Moffat era’s obsession with ridiculously overpowered characters—Clara as the impossible girl, the Doctor as the Hybrid, the Doctor as literally where we get the word ‘doctor’, and so forth.

Well, now we’ve got the Master back and he’s gone and destroyed Gallifrey (negating the big winning moment of the 50th anniversary special, to boot) and it’s all because of some mysterious lie and it involves the Timeless Child that was mentioned for a hot five seconds last series??? It smacks of past new!Who arcs, especially under Moffat—and at least in my eyes those arcs have never gone terribly well. Those arcs have come at the expense of good companion characterisation as well, so overall it has me a bit concerned about series 12.

Sure, all these aspects of pre-series 11 Who returning to the show—the Daleks last year, and now the Master—maybe makes the show feel more like itself, much like how having a functional rebel force that’s not just confined to a single light freighter makes a Star Wars film feel more like Star Wars. I just worry that it’s a instinctive reaction against some of the mixed reactions to series 11, and that ultimately it’ll be an overreaction.

Good start, though, this two-parter. I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be the best story that series 12 gets.

Footnotes:

[0: Sure, they’re called Vor in the episodes, but first off they’re clearly meant to be Google, and second off it’s very awkward talking about ‘Vor’ being everywhere on the Internet and on everyone’s devices ... so for the purposes of this write-up I’m going to call them Google.]

[1: I know that in Blink, the Doctor and Martha are trapped in the past and have to plant the message in DVDs to get someone to get them out of trouble. But you know what I mean. Timey-wimey out-of-order rescue plan.

Maybe I ought to call it the Arrival gambit, after the excellent film from a few years back.]

[2: Makes them sound like alien Klansmen, doesn’t it?]

[3: What’s the opposite of née for the purposes of distinguishing maiden and married names in time travel stories? I guess mariée is as good as any ...]

[humanbludgers]

Just curious but why do you hate j*ly and h**ny? I'm actually genuinely really interested to know cause so many people love them!! (not trying to start anything)

[You got it, fam! Under a cut just in case, but it’s more anti-JKR/anti-fanwank than ship bashing. I don’t judge anybody for shipping them and they can be written in a way I’m fine with, which I describe below. It’s not like I go ragey every time I see them on the dash. I just have some hangups from an analytical perspective.]

[With Hinny, it’s not so much something fundamentally wrong with it as just the way it’s written in canon. It feels VERY forced and rushed. Ginny gets sidelined for aaages before swinging back in at the last minute to be Harry’s manic pixie dream girl, and she deserves better. 

There’s also the awkward detail that they both kinda chew up and throw away their non-white exes, as does Ron. Literally every interracial relationship in the series is presented as shallow and/or unhealthy, and FIVE are trampled underfoot to make way for the Hinny and Romione classic endgames with 2.5 kids and a very white picket fence. It’s like they all go off and have their Exotic Flings before settling down with the perfect fellow white person we all knew they were going to be with from Book 1. :/// I don’t think JKR is racist, but she can be rather dense, and I think she missed the implications of setting stuff up like that.

HOW TO REDEEM HINNY (to me): literally just give it some history and depth. I actually like seeing this RPed. Dw about the interracial ships, I’ve got them covered.

With Jily it’s the opposite. I don’t necessarily have a problem with how it’s written in canon so much as I dislike how sugarcoated it is by Marauder stans. I was surprised by its popularity when I first got into the fandom tbh? Like it seems to me like the typical “perfect popular girl dates jock bully” and I couldn’t be less interested in shipping it, myself. But to each their own. The issue is not that James is a bully. The issue is that people like to pretend he isn’t.

Yes, Sirius says he changed, and narratively it makes sense to believe he did, though realistically Sirius isn’t the most reliable source. But actions speak louder than words and we’re not shown any of that change. It seems like whenever a fan mentions what a jerk he is, someone else writes a 5000-word fic based on the line “his head deflated” and then points to it like SEE HE’S A GOOD PERSON and I’m like you do realise you just made all of that up right?? I sincerely doubt James was sainted in his seventh year, and tbh I think it’s a discredit to JKR to pretend he was.

(“Asher are YOU seriously defending JKR” she did so much wrong that she deserves to have the things she did well appreciated ok)

As I say often, one of the things that I found best-executed about HP was breaking down the dead angel parents trope, and in that sense I like James as a character even as I loathe him as a person. Sometimes people are losers and relationships are unhealthy, and it’s interesting to see Harry come to grips with the darker reality of James after building up this golden image of him all his life. In a series of one-dimensional stagnant characters, James is a really gloriously messy and complicated and controversial individual, and intentionally or not, canon emphasises his flaws. It’s unfortunate that the fandom is hellbent on turning him right back into a perfect dead angel parent.

tumblr: no means no. ‘boys will be boys’ is toxic. respect women’s right to choose what they do with their bodies and relationshipsalso tumblr: aww how cute that James wore Lily down by harrassing her for years and terrorising her best friend to literally threaten her into dating him. he was just trying to show how much he liked her! True Love™

To reiterate, I do not take issue with people shipping “problematic” things. The way I write Frangelina and all of Fred’s ships tbh is pretty unhealthy. It’s fiction; conflict is what makes it interesting. I actually wish more people would realise that, so they can stop trying to downplay or straight-up erase the ugly parts of their favourite characters and ships. Fred fans are the same way, and in my other main fandom people are always trying to push the narrative that Darth Vader spent twenty years crying over his mistakes when he was actually just straight-up slaughtering people. With ships especially, it’s like there’s this cycle of falling in love with a ship for its problems, realising “oh no I’m not allowed to ship problematic things,” and then desperately trying to explain away those same problems, defending things like bullying and abuse that they would never defend in any other context. You don’t have to explain anything ok?? Just stop???

HOW TO REDEEM JILY: Don’t deify James. Don’t pretend like he never did anything bad, the circumstances of his getting with Lily are perfectly healthy, and poor baby James is just misunderstood. Your fave is problematic. Accept it, get over it, and then ship whatever you want.]

[ozyman-dias]

I'm back on my ozark kick and i wanna talk about how i kind of feel like there are soooo many differences between it and breaking bad (sorry to anyone on mobile) and why people shouldn't really compare the two

1. Female characters

ok i love brba as much as much as anyone else but you cannot look me in the eye and state that the writers treated the female characters well. 2/4 of the main ones died (lydia and jane), marie’s husband was killed by skylars husband, and skylar was treated like absolute shit by walter/ many of the male fans who wanted her to just “LET WALT MAKE METH”. there is honestly not a point in the series where we see the woman orchestrating their own scheme/plot (yea yea i know skylar did the whole car wash money laundering thing but its bc she was roped into it-- and dont come after me w/ the whole “lydia is a strong character” like i know she is but..... she's only added in season 5 and she's killed off for no reason other than to add to Walt’s body count ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ jus sayin’). like it’s so damn obvious from season 1 all the way to season 5 that the women are just there to add to whatever plot the men are seeking and/or whatever issues the men have caused. 

ozark, however, has the female characters fleshed out and rounded by the END of season 1, something that breaking bad failed to achieve. Sure, wendy is marty’s wife but we see that she has her own troubles and struggled with depression before all of these events. she has a conflicted relationship with marty, where the audience can see them go from yelling and shit to business partners and put on the mask of happy husband n wife. difference between her and skylar is the fact that she knew the moment marty started to get into the ‘criminal’ business of money laundering-- and was OKAY with it right out. not only is wendy interesting, so is her daughter Charlotte. in the wake of having her whole life uprooted and moved out to the ozarks, we see charlotte grow up faster than she should and struggle with the fact that she can NEVER go back to her life in Chicago. most importantly however is the wonderful Ruth Langmore, the young gal who stole some of marty’s money and becomes his surrogate daughter of sorts. Ruth is fascinating with the fact she's cutthroat with her uncles but also a good big sister to Three and Wyatt. she even cares about the byrde family to an extent (like when she helped wendy get charlotte back at the bus station)

tl;dr: ozarks female characters are more three-dimensional and real than breaking bad’s

2. Money 

in breaking bad, we see that walt gets into the meth business for the money so he could provide for his family. ozark has marty byrde struggle to pay off a huge (like 7,000,000 dollars huge) debt to the drug cartels. though both shows point out the dangers of money thats where the similarities end. walter gets his money but keeps doing criminal work because of his love of power. marty, on the offhand, is FORCED to make and clean bucketloads of cash so he can save his neck and his families. money is only something that martey knows he has to make a lot of otherwise he will die-- unlike walt who CHOOSES to go down the unholy meth path, marty is forced to move to ozark all because of his shitty business partner.

tl;dr, ozark is not solely about a guy going after the money or power

3. Family

lets be real y'all. theres no such thing as family in breaking bad. sure u got the whites and schraders and pink mans, but they all feel just... meh. walters family has no sense of togetherness or any familial bond. even tho walter says they’re family in the “ozymandias” episode its clear that they’re just victims roped into his shitshow meth house fun festival. shit man sometimes i forgot about their baby (holly gonna be such a fucked up mess). 

ozark has the whole fam wrapped up and tossed into marty’s shitshow from the beginning. wendy tells her kids their father launders money. the kids are put to work to help out the new businesses at the blu cat lodge. fuck man jonah is all strapped with his gun from the guy downstairs and ready to fuck shit up and he only what, 12???? 

like man... ride or die with this fam

[avelera]

“The Lying Detective” Analysis

Sherlock 4.2, putting it below the cut!

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Oh that was MUCH BETTER!

Oh that episode was such a relief!

So I had to go read some other people’s thoughts on 4.1 before writing my own because frankly... I didn’t really like. In retrospect, that’s because it was “putting to bed” season 3, wrapping it up and since that was overall a rather disjointed season, the episode was disjointed. But I suspected that we were heading towards a reset and boy howdy was I right. Talk about a reset!

Because that, ladies and gentleman, was a fantastic reinvention of Season 1, episode 1 of Sherlock. 

In the starring roles:

Mary Watson as Afghanistan

Culverton Smith as The Cab Driver

Moriarty as Eurus Holmes 

The Cane in a returning role as itself AND as a symbol of their relationship

I could go on, but the send offs to previous GOOD episodes were very, very interesting.

A few quick observations:

The moment I realized we were truly doing my heart’s desire of a reset episode was when Culverton began to confess, perhaps I was a bit slow on the uptake that it took so long. BUT he really was less of a Trump figure than I feared he would be (thank god, I really am sick in anticipation of how much we’ll have to rehash that particular figure in the coming years as every artist out there reacts) and actually much more of the Study in Pink Cab Driver. I liked the discussion of how a wealthy serial killer would get away with it, in fact I’m surprised they didn’t bring up the suspected royal family member who some believed was Jack the Ripper for the very reason that there was no trace so it must have been covered up. BUT I actually gave a round of applause at the call back to the Holmes Murder House of the 19th c. (and another one JUST NOW to the Eurus Holmes murder house of the psychiatrist, very nice!). 

So I expected to hate Culverton’s character as a pithy, 2-dimensional reference to current events and was very pleased that he was really more of a further exploration of the Cab driver’s particular brand of serial killer who needs an audience. The salvation scene of 1.1 was also reinvented in fun and interesting ways that gave me a tear of nostalgia. 

On to the next topic, Mary. As I discussed, Mary has struggled to fit into the Sherlock narrative for all that she’s a fantastic woman, she hasn’t quite fit into the dynamic. Mary the Ghost, however, is a fantastic use of the character. For several reasons:

- We don’t have to wonder why she isn’t coming on cases. She can add her wonderful sardonic insights without real world logistics. 

- She is quite literally now the war John carries with him. She is his new Afghanistan. John was recovering from a horrible loss in 1.1 when he went to Sherlock, and now we’ve had a very real reset there but in a way that adds depth and shows the passage of time. 

- The plot device of Ghost Mary allows John to make deductions. Watson in the ACD books makes explicit that he’s actually not as dumb as his fictional counterpart, mostly he can keep up with Sherlock but he dumbs down his own character in order to explain the deductions to the audience. John is not stupid. John by virtue of being a doctor AND being Sherlock’s colleague for so long, is quite probably the second best detective in the world right now. But he doesn’t allow himself to believe it. The Ghost of Mary making deductions is John making deductions, John freeing himself from his view of himself and how others see him to actually exercise a his very well-trained brain. It’s absolutely delightful to behold him coming into his own in that respect. Interesting too within the context of him seeing himself as a better man in her eyes.

- As I said in my previous analysis, it’s too soon to dissect her “Go to Hell” comment, or John’s infidelity, or anything else because we didn’t have the whole picture yet. Very pleased to be vindicated (albeit on what should have been a very obvious point IT’S A CLIFFHANGER FOR A REASON FOLKS).

- On to other characters, Mrs. Hudson kicked ass in the most delightful way, I’m so glad for the call back to her husband being a drug dealer, I love that it’s her car, loved every second she was in the show. Loved too how she was the one who was first able to crack John’s wall with Sherlock because she knows him. 

- I was incredibly relieved that Eurus not Moriarty is revolving into the season’s villain, it’s a great character to pick, and knowing it’s almost certainly not Moriarty means we can start focusing on the real clues. 

- For example, people assumed Sherlock’s slip up with missing “daughter” instead of son was because Rosie doesn’t exist. But I’ve always taken issue with that. If you want to show a character is an unreliable narrator in film you use their lens. You make sure that a certain event or person is never seen outside that person’s perception. However, we had multiple scenes where Rosie was discussed when Sherlock wasn’t in the room, between characters we know are real and not in any way impaired. So the daughter thing was a good catch by theorists about Rosie, but really it’s about Eurus, which I love. Also as a side note, the Rosie thing probably came out of viewers who worried over how the baby logistics will work out, but the show has already mostly dismissed them in the same way they dismiss John’s need to make money by being a doctor. 

- (As the writer of Bilbo having a child he can’t handle though in No Heir of Durin, I was particularly proud of how similar were my depiction of Bilbo and John over being parents who can’t currently handle raising a child after a romantic partner has died.)

- I’m also proud of deducing that we shouldn’t leap to conclusions about John’s affair as of 4.1, and that it was indeed a trap. What blew my mind was that it was all the same actress between the therapist, “Culveton’s daughter” and the Eurus. Was it the same actress? I’m blown away if so!

On to shippy things!

- Ok so A Study in Pink is really the episode that launched Johnlock, so it’s one more reason I’m delighted because we really, really need these two to reconcile and they finally, finally did. And literally just as I was thinking they were going all heteronormative with the Irene talk, I mean my heart was really sinking, all of a sudden Sherlock didn’t call her and my Johnlock feels were like

- I’m going to have to go back and watch it again but it certainly felt like all that talk of infidelity, “it’s just texting” “we’re only human” etc was really very much about John, Sherlock, and the women in their life vs. their own relationship (and its exact nature). As we recall, Irene said John and Sherlock were a couple. 

- John insisting that Sherlock not let love with Irene get away from him as an expression of his anguish over Mary was wonderfully poignant but also interestingly desperate. As if daring Sherlock to go seize a woman’s love now that John is unattached himself. Also interesting that texting was the nature of John’s infidelity, but it was also his infidelity towards Mary while planning their wedding, when he was constantly texting Sherlock (and she was fine with it, btw, as she is very fine with Sherlock and John being together even in John’s head). 

- And really, Sherlock saying that there’s nothing between him and Irene, that it’s “Just texting” is really him saying “I’m not having an affair, and I’m not interested in her.” It’s his birthday, so she sends him a cheeky text. He doesn’t text back because he’s not and never has been interested. The Night in Karachi is all in John’s head, John assumes there was sex or passion, but we know more than he does and know the interest was never really there. 

- Jumping around slightly, but the moment I knew we’d get an actual, real reconciliation between John and Sherlock the kind which we never truly got in season 3 (because of Mary’s presence, which wasn’t her fault, it was John’s guilt not allowing him to have two people he loved in his life even though she insisted that it’s fine). The reason is... Culverton talking shit about Sherlock. Humiliating him. What John can’t stand about Sherlock is when he’s arrogant and when other people fawn all over him, but he will always defend Sherlock from others who insult him. His heart will overrule any bad feeling to protect him. Culverton tried to drive a wedge between them by undermining Sherlock in John’s eyes which is the exact opposite of what he should do. Call Sherlock crazy, call him an addict, call him scum, and John will remember everything he loves about Sherlock oh and also he’ll beat the shit out of you. 

- (The one thing John can’t stand and which does drive a wedge between him and Sherlock is when Sherlock uses his brain to outsmart John. That is the trust that was violated at the end of season 2, in particular with Sherlock going away and using his brain to convince John he was dead. John is very wary of Sherlock’s intelligence because he respects it so much, and he’s terrified of Sherlock using it against him because he gives Sherlock so much power over him, he has to trust Sherlock won’t violate that trust, that they’re always on the same team. That’s why he’s put up such an unbreachable wall between them since that betrayal. Seeing Sherlock vulnerable though allows them to be on the same team again).

- John’s self loathing over the infidelity is very interesting, and I suspected what it’s really about is showing John is a good man rather than the opposite. He’s tearing himself to pieces, and they never actually did anything. He had locked himself inside a wall of self-hatred, and that’s why Sherlock and Ghost Mary’s forgiveness of him, and the understanding that he was human which meant he could now allow Sherlock and Mary to be human was the thing that needed to finally give way for him to be ok again. He held them both to such high standards, but no higher than he holds himself. John is the pillar of morality, that’s why we were all so outraged over that tawdry little affair (I suspect it’s why Eurus went for that route too, to tear him and Sherlock down by hitting them where it hurts, Sherlock in his deductions and John in his morality). Anyway, allowing himself to be human, and Mary and Sherlock to be human, was the catharsis John needs to be ok again and for him and Sherlock to be ok again and for them to grow as people and reconcile. 

- So I’m still not sure we’ll get canon “johnlock” as in an openly gay relationship, I’ve always been unsure we’d get that in main characters of such a popular show. BUT I’m super relieved that we seem to be heading towards an actual reconciliation where they’re at least together again. That hug between them was hugely cathartic (have they hugged before?) and Sherlock being there for John so they could be ok again. I think Sherlock being in love with John and not straight was made all the more clear. Still not sure we’ll get canon bi John, to be honest. It’d be amazing, but we’ll see, I’d love to be wrong but I won’t be upset if it doesn’t happen. But it’s very interesting that they’re talking about women, infidelity, texting, that we’re seeing the cane again, the serial killer who needs an audience, the mastermind, they’re emotions being played by a villainous figure. In short, we’re getting a retelling of the first episode, when they “fell in love” as a way for them to reconcile in this one and move forward. The reset was very clear, and it’s very clear that Sherlock loves John and John is now ok again to be around him again, so I’m curious to see what happens next. But this was a much, much better episode. The series feels back on track (knock on wood!).