#like the rest of the plot ends there without any kind of closure.

[bluastro-yellow]

now I get why everyone was obsessed with evangelion

[xbomboi]

thoughts about Epic Winter, & reconciling its place in Ever After High’s story as a whole

i wanna talk about epic winter because it—arguably more than any other aspect of the franchise—is definitely ever after high’s ‘ugly duckling’ piece of media, so to speak.

now obviously, a lot of it has to do with being the final big installment in eah’s main story, its premise being a side quest that sidelines the main protagonists in favor of new characters who are comparably far less compelling as the show’s actual leads, leaving the audience without any actual closure to the story which they were following.

in isolation, epic winter isn’t that terrible (though i think most would agree its better parts are the ones centered around already-established characters as opposed to the new ones), but in context it leaves a sour taste.

i entirely understand why anyone rewriting the series would either heavily rework it, only keep more important story beats such as daring’s arc & faybelle’s side plot, or completely remove the outing altogether.

in my case, however, deleting epic winter isn’t an option; my intentions are to continue where ever after high left off, and organically finish what they started. that means epic winter stays in tact, sanity be damned.

with that writing handicap, i can’t edit any pre-existing media in the ever after high animated lineup, which has forced me to brainstorm ways to recontextualize the purpose for epic winter’s place in the story and make the time spent on its story retroactively feel, at the very least, a little more worth it.

and the solution i found comes from viewing all that is introduced in the special through chehkov's gun.

(if you're unfamiliar, chehkov's gun is a narrative rule that everything introduced in a story must be done so with a purpose to serve. i.e. if you give a character a gun, they must shoot it.)

what's done is done; if we have to go on this detour following crystal winter and the top of the world, so be it. but let's pocket it like a tool that can be used later.

so here's my idea: bring crystal and the winter kingdom back into the story later down the line when the events of the story have reached a far more grandiose scale.

basically, i think the best way to use crystal would be when the story reaches a point of confronting and opposing the ruling powers in the fairytale world. having become the new snow queen, naturally, she'd be included in a gathering of the rulers of the kingdoms in the fairytale world.

i want there to be a moment in the story where the ruling powers gather together, and we see familiar faces return (including ones that we'd be introduced to after epic winter but prior to this), such as snow white, king charming, the queen of hearts, and of course, crystal.

with her outlook that would most reasonably be more aligned with the students at ever after high, she could end up being one of-if not the sole person-those present to voice opposition to whatever unfavorable verdict the rest of the rulers have made, as it would serve as direct conflict for the protagonists. she'd find herself outnumbered and ultimately her voice holding little to no power to sway the decision (especially being disregarded for her rather young age). afterwards we'd see her reflect on her frustrations with her colleagues and their rule of the system, thinking about it in terms of what kind of ruler she wants to be, before seeing her find determination towards something, though we aren’t yet shown what she actually decides to do.

the next time we'd see her would then come a little later, the conflict reaching the most dire circumstances. all hope is lost for our heroes; raven, apple, and co. would be down on their luck against odds they're unable to overcome. and that's when crystal would show up to offer her support, providing the numbers of her kingdom as allies to help better the odds. (she wouldn't be the only ally to show up, as this would be a 'getting help from all the friends we made along the way' ordeal. she would simply be one of said friends.)

crystal's help would ultimately play a part in winning the conflict. and because the audience would be familiar with crystal and the winter kingdom to a decent extent way prior to that point, the inclusion of it in the present fight at hand wouldn't feel like an ass-pull or a deus ex machina of sorts; it would make sense and feel earned for the most part.

and i think that's honestly the best thing to be made of epic winter's main adventure. we can't change it or fix it as it is, but we can create a payoff for it all later down the line. think of it like begrudgingly doing chores that lack any enjoyment factor, only to find that afterwards, you're glad you did.

so, yeah, that's my idea for how to give epic winter a genuine purpose. but i'm just spitballing.

[arumisalbum]

Zaplarizch

"The Zaplarizch, a being not so easily described."

CHALLO THERE - how are you doing? Hopefully it's good!

The short story here is a snippet I made when I originally got a story idea. The actual story itself is what I'm currently plotting, and will also be more detailed and have build up to the events described here :D so mild spoiler warnings for that!

The premise is about a creature I made myself, which a random creature name generator graciously named The Zaplarizch. How do you say that? I don't know, to be honest. But, I can mildly describe it! The Zaplarizch is a rather tall beast, maybe 10-15 feet or so. It's mainly a skeleton base, the spine and bones in its arms very visible. However, its shoulders are really bulked out, and the skin is a mix between large balls of pus, random bloody eyeballs, and patches of human skin. Kind of like an Ed Gein monstrosity given life.

WARNINGS It's graphic, I would say. I'm not sure exactly what people expect warnings for, as I don't get triggered easy and usually skip them. But it does feature a couple of things!

Somewhat vivid descriptions of murder?

MC is fearing for his life

Also mentions of deadly pranks

MC being guilty about murdering his brother :P

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO - let's get started!

The cloth of my sweater and pants stuck to my skin uncomfortably, almost like someone skinned a cow and sewed its skin onto mine. My eyes moved rapidly, my hair stuck to my forehead like wet seaweed trapped in a net. 

I ran fast. Tried to. 

The breath was taken from my lungs as soon as I saw it. Like it was stabbed on a skewer and pulled out of my lungs, leaving nothing but bloodied alveolus. My legs were sore before I even started running, muscles too tense to even run without pain. I bumped into the trees, the tension leaving my body through the blood dripping out of my veins.

The forest was large, and I was too far away from town to get any help. Perhaps that’s why this house was there, in the end of it. That thing wouldn’t want one to find help. 

I thought it was innocent enough. A manor that was rumored to be haunted in the middle of the forest. Spooky, sure. But ghosts didn’t exist, not like anything could be haunted.

What I hadn’t bet on was what existed other than ghosts. What could be still living in the abandoned manor up the top of the hill in the back of the town.

What I hadn’t bet on was my brother’s head hanging off a doorknob. 

It was stupid, really, dragging my younger brother into this. I felt horrible, bile building in my stomach as soon as I saw his hair acting as a noose. But it was too late to save him, part of his spine sticking out of the bottom of his decapitated neck. 

I should’ve taken that as a sign. I suppose the whole body might’ve been closure.

There wasn’t closure.

I was running now, trying to. 

The hill was steep, my feet tripping. I fell down, like a steep dirt slide with rocks slinging onto my face. I tried to stop, a rock hitting my feet at the end. I tripped, falling forward onto the ground.

My arms and legs were cut from the twigs, my face battered from the gravel that hit my face. My palms stung, ripped open by the ground. I looked down at my clothes, ripped open from the fall down. 

I stood up and continued to run, not having time to catch my breath.

I heard the thudding getting louder and louder, whether it was my heart or the thing chasing me I had no idea.

But I didn’t have time to discern it. The world started to go black. 

The trees moved around, the sticks stabbing into the ground like pogo sticks. I slowed down, from running to jogging, jogging to trudging. 

I fell down to the ground, turning around to view the thing chasing me. Its face was burnt, the skin at the top wrinkled and covered in burn marks. Its jaw was gone too, leaving nothing below its top 

Its arms were nothing but bent sticks, destroyed muscles connecting them to the rest of the body. The spine of the creature was sticking out, muscle coming to wrap around it like strings of chewed gum being pulled to its very limit. In the middle of its stomach laid intestines of different sizes, all bloody and hanging out of the muscles holding everything together. There were skeletal arms hanging out, moving on their own free will. Its feet were loud, stomping heavily on the ground. The muscles wrapped around its legs in circles, eventually leading down to the bone and claws that it used to latch into the dirt. 

What scared me most were its eyes. Its eyelids were burnt, leaving him with just white sclera to stare at things. They glew in the moonlight, leaving every other part of him lying in darkness. Like they had a light of their own.

I sobbed as I saw it, trying my best to back away with my stretched muscles and bloody veins. I felt as powerless as a baby, unable to do anything. At least babies could scream. 

The sticks it used as arms stabbed my heart, sneaking past my ribs and directly into the left ventricle of my heart. I sobbed, coughing up blood as it moved to stab my lungs. 

From my heart and lungs to my stomach, down my abdomen and to every part of my body. It must’ve had magic to ensure I was alive, I could feel every single strand inside my abdomen splitting in two as it tore me in half. 

I bled, that was my last memory. Torn apart and stapled together in the weirdest of ways.

fin.

Thank you so much for reading this all the way through! Hopefully I managed to tag it properly, I'm honestly not the best at tags.

I'm working on a more fleshed out story now, but I honestly kind of spoiled the ending here. Which isn't the worst thing in the world! Because I still really like this clip here anyways, it can honestly be used as a teaser to.

TAG LIST

@thatphantomtroupelady

[anthurak]

Crazed Ramblings about the WLW couple we could have gotten in Gravity Falls (no, not THAT one).

Alright, here’s the fairly unhinged crackpot fanspiracy theory I got after rewatching some of Gravity Falls:

Were it not for the corporate Disney overlords keeping Alex Hirsch and the rest of the Gravity Falls team on a tight leash, then we very possibly would have seen Wendy and Tambry becoming a couple in the episode ‘The Love God’, via love-potion shenanigans on the part of Mabel.

Exhibit A: It is well-known by this point about Hirsch’s efforts to include an elderly lesbian couple just in a brief background appearance, only to have even that shot down. I’d say it’s no stretch to imagine that without the corporate over(lord)sight, Hirsch and the rest of the team would have likely pushed for even more LGBT rep.

Exhibit B: Alex Hirsch has confirmed that Wendy is bisexual. Pretty easy to draw a connection between that and Exhibit A.

Exhibit C: It just makes sense in the narrative context of both the episode and the show as a whole. After the first season showed Wendy’s crumbling relationship with Robbie, it makes sense to follow that up with showing Wendy starting a much better relationship in the second season. In just the previous episode, ‘Blendin’s Game’, it’s shown that Wendy and Tambry are longtime childhood friends. And considering that we don’t see young Robbie interacting with either Wendy or Tambry in this episode, I think it’s easy to imagine a scenario wherein Wendy and Tambry showing up together in ‘Blendin’s Game’ lays a bit of groundwork for their present selves to get together in the following episode.

Additionally, Wendy and Tambry getting together also provides a nice, logical conclusion to Dipper’s whole character arc dealing with his crush on Wendy through the show, something we didn’t actually get otherwise.

Here’s the thing; Dipper never really moves past his crush on Wendy. While they do get a chance to address his crush in ‘Into the Bunker’ where it becomes clear that Wendy obviously does NOT return those feelings, it’s still left a bit open-ended. Going through the rest of the show, it’s clear that Dipper’s crush on Wendy is still very much present even if he’s no longer trying to act on it.

It really feels like we’re missing an episode B-plot which follows up on the conversation from ‘Into the Bunker’ where this whole thread of Dipper’s unrequited crush on Wendy reaches some kind of resolution. That episode made it clear that Dipper’s crush is not going to be returned, but without any follow-up that shows him finding closure to his unrequited feelings. Which in turn makes this whole thread feel a bit unresolved.

To that end, a logical conclusion to this plot thread would be Dipper fully recognizing and moving past his crush on Wendy. And a great way of doing that would be to show Wendy getting together and being happy with someone else and Dipper being able to recognize, accept and support it. Wendy and Tambry getting together in The Love God could have provided that.

Heck, going back to ‘Blendin’s Game’, I think we can even see what could have been a hint to this with Dipper and Mable meeting past-Wendy and Tambry. Sure it’s a funny joke that Mable cracks about how Dipper ‘now knows how Wendy feels’ about his crush on her, but it’s also pretty clear that realization struck a chord in Dipper. Again, consider a scenario wherein this scene with Wendy and Tambry together as kids provides a bit of setup for them becoming a couple in the present. In this case, providing setup for Dipper to finally move past his crush on Wendy.

(Btw, for actual example of this sort of character arc playing out in another show, just look at Finn in the later seasons of Adventure Time in relation to Bubblegum and Marceline.)

With all that in mind, I think it’s easy to imagine a version of ‘The Love God’ wherein Mabel, either deliberately or inadvertently, gets Wendy and Tambry together with a love-potion, and then starts to regret her actions. And Dipper is at first driven to help Mable undo the love potion because he is still nursing that crush on Wendy. But by the end of the episode, Dipper recognizes that Wendy is actually happy with someone else, a long-time childhood friend at that, and he should respect that. Thereby finally letting go of the crush he’s had on Wendy for the whole show. It could even lead to a situation where it’s Dipper who talks Mable out of undoing the love potion.

Also, you may ask ‘What about Robbie?’ To which I say; ‘What about Robbie?’

Seriously, you’re saying the show needed to develop someone who is at best a tertiary supporting character instead of developing a MAIN character? This totally could have been one of Wendy’s big character episodes (something she barely gets any of) and you’d rather it be about the human equivalent of rat poison? Again, in hindsight it just makes way more sense that this episode would be focused on Wendy instead of Robby.

Look, Robbie is fine as a character. But ask yourself: Would you REALLY take a Robbie-focused episode over a WENDY-focused episode?

Now, do I have any actual proof of any of all this?

None whatsoever.

Was this mostly an excuse for me to talk about an underrated ship?

Absolutely XD

[erithel]

Not the other two anons from before, but just to give my 2c: it's more like whatever the other characters do, keith reaps the benefits. It's very main character/side character npc behavior, when they really should all be equal.

We can take hunk and keith working together to free Hunk's family in season 7 as an example. The take away and the character development we got from that ordeal was "keith has come a long way emotionally" instead of anything to do with Hunk. Hunk and his family was just the vehicle to deliver the +10 charisma to Keith. Because ultimately, Hunk didn't gain/learn anything from it and it's never mentioned again.

Or Keith getting to kill Sendak instead of Shiro. We're once again left with this "lesson" of "keith is the strongest fighter and will protect Shiro" instead of Shiro getting closure and tying up his own loose ends.

And we're not going to even get into Lance...

I don't think any of us are blaming Keith- but the writers weren't shy about setting up this divide between Main Character Hero Keith and those other guys who does things for Keith's growth.

It's also the common take away from new watchers of this show, people who went in without fandom bias or influence: Keith is the one character they come out saying had the best development and the best stories and they will have walls of text about his character. The other paladins are really just a "who? uh (generic platitude about them existing)" deal.

(I don't know if the below text is from the same person since you were both anonymous, so I'm just going to assume it was and add it on here:)

"Just to tack on that last ask. I ultimately blame the writers for the poor handling of...well everything. I love Keith too with all my heart. It's just not great seeing the writers act like parents with that one golden child and the rest like the step kids they feel obligated to raise."

As I said in a previous ask, I just don't see Keith this way.

I don't begrudge anyone who does, and I believe I can understand where you all are coming from with this viewpoint, but I just don't see it.

Of course it was clear in the later seasons that the other paladins/characters were pushed to the side (seriously was Coran even there?). That is just a fact.

But the way I see it, the only reason why anyone would think Keith got character development/better stories than the others in the later seasons was because he...did stuff.

It came across to me in a similar vein as when they wrote themselves into a corner - oh, look! All of a sudden Allura has the magic power to fix this! Woohoo!

I don't see this as Keith having any kind of character development. I see this as him just becoming the one who could suddenly do things.

"All your paladin equipment is being guarded? No worries, Keith can summon his bayard just by closing his eyes!"

"Need to add some drama? Let's separate Keith from the rest of the team. All the time. For...um...plot reasons."

However, this in no way equates to character development or stories. Because we were never told why he could do things. Or why he was continuously separated from the team.

It was all a just because.

And just because Keith was turned into the stereotype of a Main Character doesn't mean his character arc wasn't also forgotten. The only difference is that he did stuff. And things.

The later seasons weren't written to benefit any character imo. They were written to just get the show over with as quickly as possible. And the only reason I can think of that Keith was given stuff to do in those seasons was because the fandom collectively had the hots for him (seriously, he was shipped with literally everyone).

But, again, to be very clear - that has absolutely nothing to do with character development or even plot.

[patchesjam]

Do people actually think genloss is going to be A Big Thing? Bc last time I checked Ranboo does not have the big audience or the big streamer network they'd need to pull that off. Also, coming from a writer, I have A Lot Of Doubt in his ability to tell a cohesive story. Like I know the DSMP isn't a great example (since it was written on the fly and all) but like... Tommy and Dream figured it out - so did Bad and Hannah and the other Eggpire peeps. Phil gave us some closure, too. But nooooo Ranboo got bored of the server so he had to jump the shark and kill off his character out of nowhere even though Wilbur still needed him for lore. So like. What happens when he inevitably gets bored of genloss? What then? Will it remain unfinished, or will he just start throwing random angst at it in an attempt to get attention? If he behaves how I think he will, then he's worse than 13 year old me writing RotBTD fanfiction. Because at least I gave them endings and stuff, even though they were written 100% without any foresight whatsoever. Basically I have no faith in them whatsoever to tell compelling stories, I hate their fanbase and their fan's extreme radical ideology and excessive bulling behavior, and I mostly hate their 'I'm morally superior to everyone else' attitude. Also I still don't know what went on between them and Tubbo - because I kind of get Mean Girls vibes from the whole situation and it makes me deeply uncomfortable. Unrelated to the rest of the ask: Thoughts on Dream copying other YouTubers and hiring a bunch of actors to localize his vids into Spanish?

oooo a long one :)

i saw a lot of boobers say that sorta thing when the dsmp was in big talks again, like 'ranboo has moved on to Bigger and Better things' and them bragging about how it will leave the fandom and that he doesnt need dream + dsmp for relevancy. i see less of it now because i block anyone who mildly pisses me off on twitter - so basically every boober.

and yeah the streamer network thing is interesting because i was thinking this the other day, all of dtkq, tubbo, foolish etc have quite a lot of good relationships and connections to actual streamer streamers (hasan, rae, sykkuno, ludwig) and ranboo + co seem to very much stick in that group, ranboo and whoever he decides are his friends for that month. i never see them in anything more widely twitch related which is interesting and imo a sign of short longevity

as for the writing.... yeah. i think he will go the way of angst. i personally think that he seems to have very little overall idea for the actual concept and storyline a year into planning so i have little faith in that. its like when authors go 'oooo i want to write a teen fantasy novel' and then try to make a random plot to fit the genre. i could be wrong though shrug.

its been said a thousand times before but one little minor slip up from ranboo will lead to a massacre. i used to feel sorry for him about this but he truly did it to himself being a spineless bastard and never calling people out on their shit. it was easy enough to say 'pwease stop being racist' and he fucked that up 3 times.

annnnd finally i dont know if he's done that already or just something your questioning but its interesting... I dont think he'd get as much out of it as other youtubers because, due to excellent concepts and editing esp for manhunts theyre completely watchable without knowing english. obviously you miss a bit but cool plays are universal. i still think it would be interesting to see though, and it wouldnt hurt at all so i could see him doing that at some point. i think he might not though because he is so protective of his work and still edits everything himself, might not want that, so not sure!

[infinite-hearteyes]

#SaveWarriorNun

(contains spoilers for Warrior Nun, Killing Eve, The Haunting of Bly Manor, The 100)

Well, here we are again. 

If I’m being honest, this kind of not quite unexpected disappointment is becoming really fucking tiring. 

Less than 24 hours ago, I read the news on Twitter that Warrior Nun had been cancelled by Netflix. I've already cried, a bunch of times. I've felt hopeless. And I'm angry. Fuck, I'm mad...

Barely a month after its second season was unceremoniously dropped onto the streaming service without so much as an ounce of promo by Netflix, any hopes for a third season have been stomped into the ground. It’s hard to believe we had to sit through a 2,5 year wait between season 1 and 2 only for this to happen… 

2022 certainly seems to be challenging 2016 for the title of ‘worst year for wlw television’. For me, the year started off with the ending of Killing Eve. Being a show that had unapologetically showcased a queer lead from its very beginning, I must admit I had quite high hopes for how they were going to wrap up this story. Admittedly, the quality of the writing had certainly slipped since its incredible first season, but still. There were so many ways in which they could have brought the storylines of Villanelle and Eve to a close, that I really thought they would’ve had it in the bag. It didn’t even have to be a ‘happy’ ending in order to provide a passionate (and largely queer) fanbase the closure they craved. 

A great example of queer tragedy being done right, to me at least, is The Haunting of Bly Manor. It portrayed the death of Dani in a way that was incredibly truthful to the overall storyline, but also to her character arc. It wasn’t there just for shock; it wasn’t a simple plot device to push another character’s storyline through. It was tragic, and it was beautiful. Moreover, I would point out that Bly never showed Dani’s actual death on screen, which to me, is another huge difference. It showed a sense of respect, not only for her as a character, but for us as the audience too. Whether that was intentional on the writers’ part or not, I definitely appreciated it. Did I still cry my eyes out for an hour after watching the finale? Yes, obviously. But it felt right. 

The writers of Killing Eve season 4, however, clearly did not have this kind of respect for their audience or characters. As someone who was part of the fight against the Bury Your Gays trope back in 2016, it felt like they watched episode 3.07 of The 100 and said, “you know what, we should do that too”. The utter carelessness with which they showed Villanelle and Eve what happiness could be like for them, only to rip it away from them (and us) mere minutes later, was disgusting. And on top of that, unbelievably unoriginal too. Lexa and Clarke, anyone? 

So that was the start of 2022 for me. Villanelle’s death left me feeling like nothing had changed over the past 6 years since Lexa, as though we were back at square one. Of course, that’s not quite the case, but the hopelessness that comes with seeing this occur over and over again is certainly quite exhausting. 

Then came along one of the most campy tv shows I have ever watched: First Kill. Did I absolutely love it? No, not really. But was it a fun watch when I wanted to shut off my brain for a second? Definitely. Besides: campy, cringey, young adult series are found all over the place, and it was great to get to have that for the lesbians too! Unfortunately, it received nearly no promotion from Netflix (hmm, anyone seeing a pattern here?) up until just before it aired. After that, people went crazy over it. Was it the best show ever? Nope, but not everything needs to be! Not that I’ve ever watched it, but how many seasons is Riverdale at again? It was silly, and weird, and over-the-top, and super super gay. Which, of course, sealed the deal for Netflix. Can’t have a successful show about a bunch of lesbians, now can ya? 

During the rest of this year, it’s felt like every other week, you’d hear about a new cancellation of shows centering sapphic, bipoc and trans* characters and storylines. I’ll admit, I haven’t watched many of them, because, well… Hard to commit to a show when you already know what to expect. 

And then, Warrior Nun came back. Oh boy, was I obsessed with this show when season 1 came out back in 2020. I was going through a rough patch (who wasn’t, this is 2020 we’re talking about) and this show was a great escape. Although I was at first doubtful because of its title, once I saw a preview, I was sold. I think I pretty much binged all 10 episodes. After that, I joined the (absolutely lovely) cast, crew, and the bunch of us viewers that had fallen in love with these characters, for the weekly WarriorNunWednesdays. Those nights, watching and live-tweeting along with everyone, certainly made it obvious just how much these people cared about the show. Interacting with the incredible actresses, writers, directors and crew was fantastic. One of the few positives about that time in my life, truly. 

Of course, there was a long wait for season 2. But I was okay with that, because holy shit, we got a season 2!! And in the end, wow, what a season 2 we got! More gorgeous locations, awesome stunts, perfectly paced character development… what’s not to love? I was super invested in the storyline and the characters, who each were fully fleshed out and lovable in their own ways. And Avatrice, oh, Avatrice… The type of quality slowburn that I generally seem to only be able to find in fanfiction. Such incredible chemistry between these women, and oh my god, the dancing scene in the very first episode?! Mindblowing. 

Was I pissed at the lack of promo from Netflix? The fact that it was left completely up to the fans and the cast to take up that work? … I think you can imagine my answer to that by now. But we did great! Let that be very clear, and allow yourself to be proud of that: we supported this show beautifully. And did y’all see those ‘hours watched’ for each week?! All the awesome reviews, and the audience score?! We. did. great. 

Unfortunately, and I think it’s pretty clear by now, Netflix probably never had any intention to renew Warrior Nun for a third season. They don’t care about these delicately told stories, these awesome queer women leads. They have no interest in gorgeous cinematography, or insane stunt sequences. And they certainly don’t give a damn about passionate fans. It sucks that the likes of Netflix hold so much power in this industry, when all that should be important is quality creative storytelling. Fuck you, capitalism… 

It’s sad, and sometimes infuriating, that it never feels like you can fully enjoy a show because of the constant threat of cancellation. But we fought well. And if there’s any chance left, we won’t stop fighting, I know that. This show, and these people, deserve nothing less. I’ll repeat that which we were all saying back in 2016: we deserve better. Don’t forget that. 

If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for sticking with my rant. Know that we can and will bring change to this tv landscape. There are so many of us, so many who care. Seek out community, take care of yourself and others. Let yourself feel all the feelings that come up. Cherish what you love, keep being creative. It will get better. Yeah, cliché, I know, but it will. 

To quote Emily Andras: “Everyone’s happy ending is unique. Don’t settle until you get yours.” 

In this life or the next…

[themattress]

Battle of the Seasons

Once Upon a Time! I’ve gone over my opinion on this dozens of times by now, but given the subject matter I felt like it deserved its own “Battle of the Seasons” post, so here it is. It’s Season 1 (The Dark Curse Saga) vs. Season 2 (The Price of Magic Saga) vs. Season 3 (The Neverland and Wicked Witch’s Revenge Sagas) vs. Season 4 (The Frozen Storybrooke and Operation Mongoose Sagas) vs. Season 5 (The Dark Swan and Underworld Sagas) vs. Season 6 (The Savior’s Fate Saga) vs., regrettably, Season 7 (The Hyperion Heights Saga).

While judging on quality is certainly doable and how I’ve usually presented my ranking, for this post I’d rather focus on how well each season holds together when taken as a whole.

Season 1 obviously reigns supreme here. It manages to tell a complete, coherent and emotionally satisfying story in of itself, with every piece of the puzzle presented in both flashbacks and the present day narrative ultimately clicking together; nothing is wasted. Compare this opening scene with this ending scene, it’s such a great case of book ends, as is what starts with a dark cloud sweeping over everything to create a town where the clock is frozen at 8:15 ending with a different dark cloud sweeping over said town precisely as the now moving clock strikes 8:15, signaling a new beginning. The Dark Curse Saga spent the most time being fine-tuned before production, and it shows. It’s not perfect...but it’s close. 

Every other season is nowhere near as stable, being either seasons where two story arcs are told in each half of the season rather than a single story arc (3, 4 and 5) or a single arc is told and botched due to showrunner Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis’ complete inability to stay on track with what they have without throwing new shit in that clutters things up (2, 6 and 7).

Out of the first kind, Season 3 is the best, which seems odd at first since the Neverland Saga and Wicked Saga don’t particularly have much connecting them story-wise, as the former is closure for all plot threads the show had been pursuing since Season 1 while the latter is something of a fresh start. In addition, the former is significantly stronger than the latter. But what ends up making the season work is the character arcs and themes, which do manage to span both story arcs in a very organic way. Themes of facing your past in order to shape your future, of learning from your mistakes and the mistakes of others, of making your own home, of family and love and redemption: they make the story arcs click together, as do the personal stories of Emma, Snow, Charming, Hook, Regina, Rumple, Belle and Neal (but not Henry!)

Season 5 comes painfully close to this same standard, with its two story arcs being even more interconnected than any other in this format. Unfortunately, it’s plagued by three glaring problems: several missteps in the first half come back to haunt the season in its second half, a number of character arcs presented in the first half don’t connect with those in the second half, and the two-part season finale is almost completely disconnected from everything that preceded it, being more of a lead-in to Season 6 than a satisfying conclusion to Season 5. Season 4, meanwhile, has its core problem summed up in one word: Frozen. Quality-wise, the Frozen stuff is the best part of the season, but when taken as a whole it’s got almost jack shit to do with the rest of the season’s narrative and even the entire series’ narrative, and the stuff that does matter narratively usually feels alien to the Frozen stuff whenever they end up sharing screentime together. The Author, the Queens of Darkness, Regina and Robin Hood’s star-crossed romance, Emma and her dark counterpart Lily, the Sorcerer and the Apprentice, the magic hat, Rumple’s backslide into villainy and how it affects his relationship with Belle, Snow and Charming’s dark past, Hook’s dark past, and Henry’s gradual coming of age...all of this is present in the Frozen Storybrooke Saga, but if you removed all the Frozen stuff that makes up the bulk of that arc from them, nothing much would be missing. It all just feels so shoehorned in...much like the Will Scarlet character from OUATIW does the whole season!

In some ways, Season 2′s structure is weaker than Seasons 6 and 7, since it ended up creating something of a double story arc situation by accident, with the first arc only being its first 9 episodes rather than the actual first half of 11 episodes, whereas Seasons 6 and 7 have a more deliberately distinct first half and second half for their story arcs. However, Season 2 still ends up getting the edge of Seasons 6 and 7 because everything that transpired in those first 9 episodes still end up mattering and continuing to develop through the next 13 episodes. Cora is still the Big Bad who seeks to influence Regina who is still fixated on Henry, Hook is still seeking revenge on Rumple who is still seeking to make things work with Belle and reunite with his son who ends up being Emma’s ex and Henry’s father, with Emma having to deal with that while still learning to bring out the magic in her and to accept Snow and Charming as her parents. Because of A&E’s incompetence, precious little of what happens in the first half of Season 6 and 7 end up mattering to the second half, and even much of what goes down in the second half isn’t important by the time of their finales.

And between Seasons 6 and 7, obviously Season 6 is the superior of the two, since it still connects to the show as it was - Emma as the ostensible lead who fought for screentime and relevance against Regina, Storybrooke as the primary setting, and a certain set of characters and plot points always sticking around for better or worse, while Season 7 is a failed attempt at a reboot that ended up instead being the final season, creating a huge whiplash effect and making everyone wonder why the Hell the show didn’t just end at Season 6, which at least seemed built like an ending. Not an especially satisfying ending, but an ending all the same.

So it’s Season 1 > Season 3 > Season 2 > Season 5 > Season 4 > Season 6 > Season 7.

[nukenai]

finally beat violet’s story so i will talk about it under the cut

warning regarding my personal traumas but mentioning the specific one is a spoiler in itself for the game LMFAO

everyone was like WHOAAA THE ENDING IS SOOO SCARY TOTAL NIGHTMARE FUEL WHAT THE FUUUUCK meanwhile it was just like, malfunctioning robot = scary to some people but i’ve been immune to that for all eternity lol. it is very much “whoa!” but it was not Scary other than that. witnessing actually scary games has ruined me sorry

anyways what really got me was Arven being like “my dad died after I had a very complicated relationship with him, and yeah it was upsetting but now I feel like I’m ready to really begin my own adventure”. I don’t keep up with Discourse but I can’t imagine people aren’t complaining about that. I can’t imagine people are not going “omg how unrealistic why wasn’t he inconsolably sobbing how dare he not be devastated that his neglectful father died” or whatever because like.

idk as a Dead Parent Haver whose relationship was clearly not cartoon pokemon levels of complicated, but was... definitely complicated. My mother was very emotionally abusive, i lived with her, she became sick with a terminal illness and I had to care for her AND my ill grandfather for about a year before they both passed months apart;. My mom went into the hospital when she could no longer really walk or care for herself, she wound up never leaving and was in the hospital for 4 months before passing. A month or so before she died she had become completely unresponsive. So we really never actually got to say goodbye to her and it’s just. Idk I guess SORT OF comparable to “my dad was never home and I barely ever saw him and now he’s dead”.

I don’t know where I’m going with this it’s like, it was kind of nice to see? A real fucking difference from the car crash that was Sun & Moon’s handling of a blatantly abusive psychotic mother being forgiven by her daughter because “;A; she’s my mother! poor wusamine!” fuck off. Arven obviously didn’t hate his father but resented him for how he sidelined his child for his job. And he never really got closure on that. You could argue that the AI was possessed by Dad Ghost or fucking whatever but. In REALITY he did not get any kind of closure and his dad died without him there (I also left the hospital before my mom died, she was just on life support anyways). Obviously with me because I am a real person who exists, the issues took longer to deal with but like. Yeah actually I do feel like my mom dying allowed me to finally start being an independent person and let go of a lot of shit that happened to me. But obviously it’s still a horrible shit trauma to go through. Which is not something a Pokemon game is equipped to handle a whole lot.

It was just a nice take on a “parent dead” plot point, without the character comically being like “i hate you dad! glad you’re dead! fuck you!” or “i am now in sorrow forever because i didn’t get real closure with my dad and he’s gone and that AI is not my real dad and I’m gonna angst about it!”. I think it did a good job of portraying a complex relationship with a parent who probably definitely fucked up without meaning to, and can’t really apologize, truthfully.

Anyways the whole rest of the game made me feel like entirely nothing and I did not care but the ending part was exciting and interesting and cool enough to make me go hey, this game definitely made me feel more than Sword & Shield did. And at the very least, unlike SwSh, it let you ACTUALLY TAKE PART IN THE STORY. The descent into the crater was really nice and just that part alone made me actually start to like the characters I was forced to interact with for the whole game lmfao. I still don’t like Nemona but like, whatever.

Didn’t think i’d find Turbo Solidarity with fucking Sandwich Boy but here we are.

[monsterlibrarian]

Title: Any Way the Wind Blows

Author: Rainbow Rowell

Genre: fantasy

Source: district library

Rating: ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Comments: for as concerned as i was after reading the second book, this one made me feel like i swallowed the sun. i read the first half yesterday (or two days ago? 4am is funny like that) and it was so good i spent the rest of the evening just absolutely thrilled about everything. columbo appeared on tv when i wasn’t expecting and i gasped. i enjoyed my dinner enchiladas more than any meal in years. felt like i was a yellow balloon, or some sort of fizzy lemon drink. incomparable. the long wait in between books really heightened the relief of this one. it’ll be bad for my summer reading challenge since i won’t want to read anything else ‘til i’m done absorbing this one, though. i couldn’t stop reading the second half, just setting it down and picking it back up all day long. i went directly to sleep after finishing it so i could think about it all night, and even now when i woke up at 4am i reread the last part (after the sword and cake illustration) twice. maybe i’ll do a full series reread while i’ve still got this one checked out… but enough of that, i’ve gotta talk about actual literary stuff. plot and characters and all that. difficult without spoiling the biggest turns of the book, so excuse the vagueness. some REALLY great character growth for just about all the main characters. the ending was kind of abrupt and brought some new information for the characters to deal with (though the reader already knew at this point), and i feel like the impact of that specifically wasn’t fully shown, and combined with the open-ended narration from the last time we see the antagonist of this book, it made me feel like things weren’t fully resolved. rereading the end helped me find an interpretation on where simon stood with his wings that i liked, but not much else really settled. it almost feels like setting up for a sequel, but this is clearly labeled as a trilogy and i don’t think there’s enough that these characters could go through to further their growth to make another book about. they’re like 95% done, just give them two more minutes in the oven please. one more chapter to not end things quite so suddenly. the epilogue is solely an agatha point of view, so the last time we see the rest of the characters seems like it just cuts off. i get having an open ending and leaving things to the interpretation of the audience, and i value that especially as an alternative to a far-future epilogue, but there were just so many things i wanted more clearly explained. plot thread potential spoilers in order of importance to me: what about the other people claiming to be chosen ones? what happened with this antagonist, his narration implied there was more going on? what’s up with simon’s magic (the bubble pop especially)? what’s the plan with simon’s wings (<- made up my own answer to this one with the power of willful interpretation)? how do lady ruth (& jamie) fit into everything going forward? ok, the last one is more like it’s hard to imagine things in this new shape especially given that there’s not much to base it off of, but the rest are legitimate core plot involved questions that i think are kind of important to leave just hanging like that. speaking of, i’ve been writing this so backward i haven’t talked about the actual full plot yet. i think of it as sort of three tiers based on time spent and overall relevance to the central conflict: simon & baz relationship, chosen one/simon’s magic/simon’s other relationships, penelope/shepard/agatha plots. simon & baz is the only plot i think had actual full closure to the degree i’d stamp and file as done, but abrupt endings aside i think that all the plots were good arcs that furthered the story, gave space for character growth, and complemented the previous books. i found it a little cliche that everyone was shown paired with a potential romantic partner at the end, but that’s an opportunity the value of an open ending to shine. low stakes suggested futures. oops, tumblr has informed me i’ve rambled too much for one paragraph. i’ll try to wrap up in the next block.

i enjoyed the dynamic of the main antagonist with simon, and the way their conflict reflected some of simon’s self-doubt. i liked that agatha got her own plot instead of being dismissed as unnecessary after no longer being with simon. i think penny’s got some internal biases to work out about her overall treatment of normals, but her plot did a great job of taking her out of her comfort zone without sacrificing her competency. if you still can’t tell, i really enjoyed this book and the time i spent with it. since it’s the third of the trilogy, i can now recommend reading both this book individually and the rest of the series to accompany it. this hardcover is a 580-page beast two inches thick, but that just means there’s more to like. i really had a great time.

[totallynotreadingatwork]

Mini Book Review Dump

Ahahaha so as with all things I'm hopeless at keeping up with updating stuff. Too busy reading to blog about reading, you know how it is. In the time I've been forgetting to post I've read the following books:

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern - I really really liked it; it felt (now bear with me here) like a kind of spiritual successor to Alice in Wonderland. Not with the plot or the characters, but just in the sense of wonder and exploration it evoked.

Slither's Tale by Joseph Delaney, book 12 of The Wardstone Chronicles - It was weird to follow a completely different character to the ones the rest of the series focuses on, but it was interesting to see a new place and meet new species of dark creature. And Grimalkin showed up so I'm a happy gal.

The Sisters of Reckoning by Charlotte Nicole Davis, book 2 of The Good Luck Girls duology - I cannot actually express how much I loved this book without giving away the plot in major ways. Just know that it was a perfect sequel in that all the things that you wish would have happened in the previous book happened in this one, and it was glorious. I love it. I'm going to have to actually buy myself copies of these so I can have them forever (I got both from the library so don't own them... yet)

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan, book 1 of the Heroes of Olympus series - This one is a re-read; I originally read them as they were coming out and just kinda felt like revisiting them since I only read them through the once. I, like everyone else, just adore Riordan's writing and characters, and you don't need me to tell you it was good.

Near the Bone by Christina Henry - Honestly not her best work. I was kind of disappointed; the characters felt a bit flat, there was a lot of repetitiveness to the writing that was more annoying than anything, and the ending was very sudden and didn't really give much closure or any answers. If you're new to Henry's books, don't start with this one (start with Lost Boy).

The Fever Code by James Dashner, book 5 (or 0.5, or 2, depending on how you like to order series) of The Maze Runner series - I would say this is the worst book in the series, but that's only because all the others are so good. This one was decent, but we ultimately knew the fate of the characters and WICKED from the previous books so a lot of the stakes just didn't feel real. We knew Thomas couldn't be harmed or die because he needs to survive for book 1 to happen. Still, it was very enjoyable, and I think if you read it before The Maze Runner then you'd enjoy it a lot more.

The Foundling by Stacy Halls - There was so much nothing that happened in this book oh my goodness. Bess's parts were good, because things actually happened in them, like her working and trying to get her daughter back, and then obviously the escape and all that jazz, but when it's Alexandra's pov you may as well just nap through it honestly that woman was so boring.

Fair Rosaline by Natasha Solomons - Another letdown honestly; I know people are entitled to interpret literature however they want, but 'Romeo is a paedo' is... a bit of a stretch to me. Thing is, I don't think I would have minded if it was done well, but it just... wasn't. I spent most of the book counting the pages until it'd be over.

So yeah, I've been busy, just not busy posting lol. Also work has been a bit manic because it's the summer holidays so I'm running children's arts and crafts groups and those are very mentally draining to me. Hopefully I can post more now though if I put my mind to it!

[curlsofsagesmoke]

TMNT (2012) DID DONNIE DIRTY WITH THE HALF-ASSED LEADERSHIP PLOTLINE AND HERE’S WHY

not to turn into a tmnt blog or anything but I've been watching the 2012 version and I have some Thoughts about the weird leadership conflict subplot between Leo and donnie that the writers started going for and then abandoned. admittedly I've only seen up until a few episodes of season 3 so I don’t know if they ever do go back to this, but from what I've seen this plot had amazing potential but it was handled in a truly awful way!

keep in mind also that I really love this show. I watched it as a kid, I think it holds up pretty well even now. it does have its flaws (many, many flaws) and the worst flaw is the writing imo, which can be lazy, ignorant, or just straight up bad at times. 

with that out of the way, buckle up and hold on to your butts cuz here the heck we go!

you cannot talk about leadership in tmnt without starting with the leader, Leo. the writers gave him a really interesting arc at the beginning of season one where he was really eager to become leader (splinter gave him the job because he asked for it, after all) but then he started to realize the burden that came with the title and started to crack a bit under the pressure. the most well-known character conflict in the entire tmnt multiverse is the tension between Raph and Leo, and this iteration of the show is no different. Raph is very obviously upset about Leo becoming leader and he (and donnie, but we’ll get to him in a bit) tries to argue that he should be leader instead. ultimately he fails and this does create tension throughout the rest of seasons one and two.

this tension comes to a head during an episode where Leo, tired of Raph always questioning his decisions and needling him, decides to fuck off for a little bit, leaving Raph in charge (”New Girl In Town”). from a writing standpoint, this episode is important for many reasons, but in terms of this subplot it is a moment of crisis for Leo which he inevitably overcomes by accepting the burden and responsibility of leadership; and for Raph it is a moment of realization where he finally accepts that he wouldn’t be a very good leader and he doesn’t want the burden that Leo carries all the time. after this episode, Raph and Leo do have their arguments, but overall Raph is much more accepting of Leo’s position as leader and only calls him out when Leo starts to go on little power trips.

which brings us to donnie. donnie also argued that he should be leader in the first episode, but it wasn’t treated as seriously as Raph’s argument, and after that there wasn’t much conflict between Leo and donnie (except for the technology vs. tradition thing surrounding metalhead, but I’ll get to that later). donnie and Mikey are presented as generally pretty laid back. when Raph becomes leader in “New Girl In Town”, they exchange a lot of “yikes” looks in the background but are willing to follow his lead and give him the opportunity to actually be leader. of course, this comes to a head when they confront the villain of the episode, snakeweed, in the sewers. they’re getting their asses kicked, Mikey is knocked out, Raph is having a panic attack, and donnie is left to fend for himself against snakeweed.

instead of having that little “I must meet this challenge and overcome it” moment that you’d expect, Raph gives in to the panic and it’s donnie who not only incapacitates snakeweed to give them time to escape, but also snaps Raph out of his panic attack and tells him what to do (namely, get Mikey out of there and retreat to safety). it’s not given any more attention after this so it’s kind of blink-and-you-miss-it, but this is the first instance we see donnie reveal a bit of his potential as leader.

this is in direct contrast to “Mousers Attack!” which came a few episodes before New Girl In Town. that was the episode that introduced the a-team/b-team dynamic, and in that episode we saw that donnie, while attempting to lead him and Mikey, was able to come up with a bunch of plans to infiltrate dogpound’s operations but wasn’t decisive enough to actually commit to anything. thus in New Girl In Town, we’ve already seen very obvious growth in donnie and the way he approaches leadership, but it’s very much pushed to the background, and for good reason. this is simply laying the foundation for the big showdown between Leo and donnie.

the next significant moment of leadership potential we see from donnie comes in the episode the Pulverizer. donnie gets stuck with Timothy in the lair but soon  becomes willing and even eager to teach him the basics of self defense, because, as he tells splinter, he knows Timothy is going to keep putting himself in dangerous situations and he’d rather Timothy be able to protect himself. splinter tells him that anything that happens to Timothy will be donnie’s responsibility, and donnie accepts this and begins training him. at the end of the episode they all make it out okay, Timothy goes on his way, and donnie seems to have become just a bit fond of him.

significantly, this is the first time donnie is given full responsibility over the fate of another person, and we see that even though he doesn’t really like Timothy, he takes this responsibility seriously. here he shows great leadership potential, as well, though again, it’s not really commented on narratively.

the next significant moment is, as you might’ve guessed, The Pulverizer Returns. in this episode we find out Timothy has joined the foot and is willing to pass information on to the turtles. Leo and Raph jump at the opportunity, Mikey is ambivalent as usual, and donnie is the only one who shows any concern. this is most likely because the last time he saw Timothy, splinter told him Timothy was his responsibility completely, and he obviously takes that seriously still. the entire episode, he tries to get Timothy to leave the foot and his brothers to take this seriously, but his worries are brushed off until they find out the shredder is about to mutate Timothy as an experiment.

so they race off to save him, and donnie ends up in a warehouse without his brothers to help, weaponless (because of some bullshit lesson splinter is trying to teach them, and as a side note, this was the first episode where I started to seriously dislike splinter as a character, because the way he was written here is just awful). the villains of this episode are dogpound and fishface. if you’ll remember, these are two serious villains, and up until this point they’d only ever been subdued, never defeated, and even then the turtles had to double team them in order to win. so it was of course surprising and incredible to see that donnie, armed with literally just a broom, was able to hold off a squad of foot ninjas, dogpound, AND fishface by himself for a good while, all while keeping Timothy away from the mutagen.

then Timothy IS mutated and a bomb is activated, and in just two minutes donnie comes up with a plan and executes it, getting them all out safely. when he starts barking orders at his brothers, they don’t even stop to question him. they listen immediately and that’s part of the reason why the plan succeeds. so what does this tell us? it tells us that donnie has a very strong sense of responsibility, protectiveness, and determination; that he is extremely capable when he’s focused and is good at thinking under pressure; and that his brothers trust him enough to follow his orders when he does give them. these are all incredible qualities for a leader to have!

notably the episode after this is Operation Break Out, where donnie goes off on his own to rescue April’s dad from The Kraang and they only make it out because his brothers followed him and intervened. clearly, then, donnie’s not really ready to be a leader and still lets his emotions cloud his judgement, which is a narratively sound writing decision. the big donnie-as-leader showdown doesn’t come until the end of season two, anyway.

and then season two. the tensions between Leo and donnie aren’t as obvious as the tensions between Leo and Raph, but they’re there, even if no one explicitly challenges Leo’s position as leader any more. here’s a quick rundown of the two significant episodes:

“Follow the Leader”--> Leo wants to stick to the old, traditional ways, but his brothers insist on unorthodox methods of fighting. Leo eventually comes to accept this to a certain degree when he admits it’s a good strategy to use against the footbots.

“Metalhead Rewired”--> donnie upgrades metalhead’s AI and Leo is suspicious of it. on the trail of The Kraang, Leo blames donnie for a few of metalhead’s mishaps, but apologizes when they realize that metalhead was leading them to a Kraang mutant prison. metalhead sacrifices itself to save them. Leo is sympathetic here because donnie is really upset, but it’s clear that these two are still fighting over the tech vs. tradition thing

and then we get to The Invasion, the season two finale. the synopsis makes it clear that this is where all of these moments that I've been discussing come to a head: “Leo and Donnie disagree about their plan to stop The Kraang invasion. When Leo makes a critical mistake, he is separated from the team and Donnie must step up as leader.” So we’re off to a good start as far as concluding this character arc goes. I was excited to finally see donnie live up to his leadership potential (and I thought this could be a good way to give Leo some closure regarding his issues with holding the world on his shoulders/blaming himself for every mistake/basing his self worth on his position as leader).

but I was sorely disappointed! in the episodes, donnie’s and Leo’s tech vs. tradition conflict comes to a head when Leo wants to flee the city (this seems very out of character for him) but donnie wants to stay and fight in his new combat robot, the turtle mech. this disagreement lasts until they are attacked in the tunnels and donnie is injured; Leo draws the Kraang robots away (I assumed this was his critical mistake: separating himself) to give the others time to escape. they go to April’s apartment to hide and regroup while Leo is hunted down and almost killed by the shredder. Raph and Casey rejoin the others, then shredder throws Leo through the window of the apartment, and they escape but barely. donnie then makes the decision to fight Kraang prime in the turtle mech (which is, I assume, his big leader moment, though of course it doesn’t even happen on screen). they fight Kraang prime and almost die, but Casey arrives in the van, saves them, and drives them out of the city. donnie apologizes to Leo’s unconscious body and says that Leo was right, and then the episode ends.

so. let me first say that this was quite possibly the worst way to end this really interesting and nuanced character arc that the writers had set donnie and Leo on. first of all, we barely got to see donnie act in any kind of leadership role. in Leo’s absence, they made most of their decisions as a team, where I had expected at least some sort of “I need to overcome my fears and anxieties and lead my family to safety” moment from donnie. secondly, Leo wasn’t entirely correct. yes, they ended up evacuating the city anyway like Leo wanted, but he was wrong about the turtle mech; it ended up destroying Kraang prime’s robot body thing. and donnie wasn’t entirely correct, either: the turtle mech was a great weapon that did some significant damage, but it wasn’t enough to stop the invasion. so we have these two characters who were both wrong in their own ways, both face the consequences, but no one ever discusses it.

so not only did we not see any significant character development from Leo; and not only did donnie not really get to act in any significant leadership role; but also worst of all, these two characters never got any closure! I'm a good handful of episodes into season three, and not one single character has even mentioned the tension between Leo and donnie during the invasion. everyone acts as if it never happened, so now as a viewer I'm stuck here waiting for the other shoe to drop or for one of these characters to finally snap, but I don’t think it’s going to happen, which sucks. in other iterations of tmnt (like the 2007 movie or the show from 2003) we get to see Donatello act almost like Leo’s second in command. I think that’s a really, really interesting direction the writers of the 2012 show could’ve gone in and I think it’s a waste of this subplot’s potential to just abandon it the way they did. I'm not sure what’s going to happen in season three, but I think a good conclusion of this arc would’ve been donnie and Leo confronting the argument they had, doing a little more maturing, and eventually donnie becomes Leo’s second in command. instead I'm really worried about how the writing of this show is going to devolve as I get further into the later seasons.

(as a side note: I'm currently working on a series of tmnt fics that addresses this issue, as well as the sometimes shitty ways the brothers treat each other and the stupid-as-fuck donnie/april/casey love triangle. so if that floats your boat, keep an eye out! I'll be reposting this with the link attached once I upload the first fic, so give my blog a follow or keep an eye on my ao3 account, heyassbuttimbatman)

[bookwyrminspiration]

Now that it’s official we only have two books to go, I don’t think I could see sokeefe becoming canon and sorting all their problems in that time, but I do believe that they’re going to be the endgame ship, and now I’m waiting in worried anticipation of how shannon is gonna pull this off. I know you’ve talked Sophie/keefe’s chances of being canon before, but do you have any idea how that could work out now that we know we’ve got two books left?

I do have an idea! Not sure how realistic it is, but given the format of the story and how things have gone, it's how I expect everything to work out, more or less (I don't think I'm exact though)

I've anticipated sokeefe being the endgame ship for a while (not that this is necessarily what I ship. I actually don't really ship anything), and I 100% see what you mean! It feels inevitable at this point and with all the pressure from readers, as the majority of the fandom is middle schoolers and younger who haven't all learned what an appropriate and respectful boundary is with creators (not meant to be mean! I think we've all been there and can learn from our past mistakes), I wonder if it has been guided by the audience as well.

but even if sokeefe becomes official, it's been building up for far too long to be resolved in only two books--less than that! I highly doubt they'll become official in the next one. There's too much drama going on in the elven world and neither Keefe nor Sophie are ready for a relationship at the moment--something Sophie has even vocalized about herself. So were sokeefe to come to fruition soon it would feel...off. And forced, as that's not something she wants right now. It'd be out of character for a while without some personal growth, but that growth would be taking up the time left in the last two books. There's only so much she can fit in, and kotlc isn't the fastest paced book you'll ever read.

So how can she balance the growth needed while also giving that closure to the love triangle that feels like it'll inevitably end in sokeefe?

It may just be me, but I think it'll be the kind of relationship you see in Disney movies where there's the whole drama of the story and then the characters triumph and are finally allowed to be happy and they walk off into the sunset together and we don't actually see what happens next, but we know they're now official and cemented in stone. If that makes sense.

We won't get those casual, exploratory couple moments between them or really know how they interact as a couple, but we'll get the briefest introduction to that. Maybe a kiss between the two of them as they realize they're a different person to each other now, not just a friend but more than that (not that friendship is a “just” and unequal to romance. don’t take this wording seriously). Wondering about what the future will bring, perhaps a cheesy line about not caring as long as they have the other by their side. It leaves their relationship really open without Shannon having to make a bunch of the minor details and decisions while also giving that ending. The readers would be satisfied and enjoy the ending, which is something authors want! Yes, the story is their own to write, but storytelling is also entertainment; we want readers to like the story and have fun!

This way, Shannon can use the rest of the now-limited time she has left to tell her story to conclude the plot and resolve the issue with the Neverseen and finish the character arcs without romance interfering the way it has been for like the entire series. She can focus on friendships and individuals, but at the end of it we can come back to the romance once their arcs are finished, once they're new people who are appropriate for each other.

At least, that's how I'm anticipating it will happen! Shannon might pull something completely different and leave me reeling, but I'll trust her with her characters and their story. Shipping isn't something I'm very invested in, so I'm most interested in how the rest of the plot will work itself out and the romance is like a side thing, but it does hold a lot of intrigue!

[papiliona]

Things I would do in the Dream Smp right now if I was writing it:

- give Dream a weakness!!! His character is terrifying and manipulative, but in order to be good for the narrative he needs to have something that evens out the fight a little, whether it be people or personal flaw. I think of Dream as a Greek-god figure, where he has human traits and flaws but is more powerful than others with infinite life. Personally if I was writing the smp I'd defeat him by imprisoning him.

-for the love of all that is holy please incorporate the badlands into the plot more. It would be so cool to see how their lack of loyalties and power could be incorporated.

-Make characters have some sembalance of hope/healing and closure. As much as I enjoy mistrust and miscommunication as part of character dynamics, sometimes it's nice to just...have wholesome bits. Personally I'd make Tubbo reassure Ranboo he doesn't see him as a traitor (I just think he's neat), obviously reunite Tubbo and Tommy properly and also basically just solve some of the conflict between the characters before any big events happen in the foreseeable future.

-Include Miss Niki Nihachu and Miss Captain Puffy into the story more I beg of you. I liked Niki going feral. I want to have her internal conflicts and revenge arc take some kind of Centre stage.

-not bring back schlatt. At least not for a long or important role. Maybe to have his ghost form show remorse for what he did to quackity/tubbo etc, but his arc ended without loose ends.

- personally I wouldn't bring back ghostbur, but if they did I'd want him to not be evil but rather have an arc based in guilt. Wilbur was partially driven to become a villain arc because of his characters desire to control and part because of the circumstances he was put in, but at the start he wasn't trying to be bad. I'd like to see him deal with the repurcussion of his actions without it turning into another descent into being the bad guy (side note Ranboo went off when he said villain arcs weren't a good way to deal with trauma I love a king that makes respectful portrayals of mental illness)

-I don't think that Techno is a fully EVIL character, but I think he's not a good one. He's loyal to Phil, but for the rest of the equally important characters he literally destroyed their home and chance of happiness. I enjoy anarchy, but he was still destructive and violent for personal gain and there should be a consequence for that.

- make them remove the ugly not matching wood on the prime path.

-give Karl dramatic lines that are actually important to the plot

- give Fundy a glock

[firelxdykatara]

Re: your excellent recent metas on stanning Mako and semi-comparing/contrasting him with Katara, do you think Mako should have ever gotten his own TSR-style arc of seeking revenge on his parents’ killer? It’s something I’ve been thinking about ever since re-entering the ATLA/LOK fandom last year. Just, UGH, the wasted potential to use such an arc to really dig into Mako’s psyche and all the hardship he’s endured, and also make said hardship more front-and-center to his audience of antis who unfairly reduce him to a standoffish, philandering asshole. I understand not wanting to re-do TSR in LOK, but Mako deserved SOMETHING of that calibur for a character arc. What are your thoughts?

Oooooh this is a really good question, and it's something I hadn't really thought of before--which, I think, is part of the issue with LoK as a whole. If you'll forgive a bit of a tangent--in atla, we are constantly reminded about the losses that Sokka and Katara have suffered--not in any kind of heavy-handed way (no matter how much the Katara haters will whine about her mentioning their mother, even though they usually won't say boo about Sokka despite him mentioning their father at least as often)--because the narrative makes it very clear that it's something on their minds through everything else that happens. It shapes who they are, and informs a lot of the decisions they make. You can see this with Zuko, too, and the abuse he suffered from his father--even before it is revealed in The Storm, you know that something happened, and that maybe it's not such a great thing that he is desperate to 'regain' his honor and return home. And even Aang, though he only rarely is shown to actually grapple with it on screen, is a constant reminder to the world, as well as to the audience, of the consequences of the war, simply by virtue of being an airbender and the last living remnant of the Air Nomads.

By contrast, LoK doesn't do much with the traumas any of the main cast suffered, particularly not anything that happened prior to the start of the series. Mako has a deeply emotional conversation early on in the show about what happened to his parents, and what he witnessed as a small child, but nothing is ever made of this information. It provides a bit of context, and it allows fans like me who are dissatisfied with the way the show and fandom proceeded to treat him to dig deep and realize just how much he suffered and how much better he deserved--but as far as the show itself is concerned, that conversation was essentially flavortext. It doesn't mean much, the show doesn't seem interested in having Mako or Bolin reflect on their lives or even be shown to visibly mourn their parents (who never show up in so much as a single flashback). Even when they meet their paternal grandmother in book 3, nothing much is made of the connection (and when Bolin has to forcibly evacuate Yin from Ba Sing Se, she makes him wait for her to grab..... the picture of the dead Earth Queen, rather than the picture of her son and his family), other than Yin telling them why their father severed connection with his family and Mako choosing to give her his one memento of his parents.

And like... I get that was meant to be an emotional moment, but... his father chose to cut off all contact with his family. Whatever the reasons might have been, whether he might have changed his mind had he lived, the fact was that what he wanted from his life was to look to the future--to his wife (who he never bothered taking home to meet his parents) and to his children. I really don't think he would have wanted his mother to have his scarf instead of his son--especially not when she had memories of his entire life (adult memories!) to hold onto, while Mako only had the hazy memories of childhood and one physical token to cling to when those might not be enough.

Bolin is glad to suddenly have a huge family, when they meet their grandmother, but again... nothing really comes of this. At some point Bolin mentions that he used to dig through literal garbage for food, and this is played for laughs rather than taken as any kind of serious examination of his life before things changed. The show just doesn't care about the krew as individual characters, not really--they are moved about as needed for the Plot, jokes are occasionally made about their backgrounds, sometimes something is pulled out for an emotional tearjerker moment before never being referenced again (I mean, really, Grandma Yin is around for multiple episodes in book 3 and book 4, and neither Mako nor Bolin spend an episode just begging to hear about their father's childhood?), and... that's about it.

All of which is a very long-winded way of saying yes, I absolutely think that Mako should've gotten his own TSR-like episode. Obviously it shouldn't have been just a carbon-copy, or even necessarily occupy a similar niche in the show--while TSR is very much a Katara episode, it is also a Zuko and Katara episode, because whether you ship them or not, the episode is explicitly about not only Katara gaining closure for here mother's murder, but also about Katara working through her feelings regarding Zuko and choosing to forgive him. However, I absolutely believe that Mako should have been given a chance to confront his parents' murderer, and I think it's a crying shame that this never actually happened.

And the thing is, they wouldn't have even had to 'redo' TSR, any more than you consider Mako as a character to be a 'redo' of Katara just because they have similar childhood traumas--but what they very easily could have done is shown how that trauma lingers. Show Mako's complicated relationship with firebending (he really has no thoughts about his own element, when it is what killed his parents???) and with the Triads that he had to do work for to make ends meet as a teenager so that he could keep Bolin fed. Maybe he knows exactly which of the Triads was responsible for his parents' death--maybe the man's face is burned into his mind, appearing in his own nightmares so frequently he couldn't forget it if he tried.

Maybe he had to do a job for the man who killed his parents, and only the thought of Bolin going hungry or worse if Mako never came home kept him from attacking. Maybe that night, when he got home, after he made sure Bolin had something to eat and went to sleep, he threw up until there was nothing left in his stomach and then he kept retching, throat raw and eyes stinging, because every time he closed his eyes he saw that man's face and felt the hand that killed his parents clapping him on the back for a job well done.

Maybe the man who killed his parents is one of Amon's Triad victims, loses his bending and is pathetic and weak, and Mako struggles against the urge to roast him alive without a second thought. Maybe Korra is there, slowly putting the pieces together, wanting to speak up but knowing that this is Mako's pain and it's something she could never fully understand, believing with all her heart that he'll make the right choice... but still sighing with relief when Mako's shoulders slump, the fire goes out of his hands, and the man who killed his parents runs away.

Maybe, at the end of the book when she is restoring everyone's powers, the man who killed Mako's parents gets to the head of the line... and she refuses. Maybe that's ultimately his punishment. And maybe Mako is standing there, fists clenched against the still-simmering rage in his gut, teeth clenched against the urge to vomit, relaxing only when the man leaves--dejected, rejected and powerless--and smiling, because he can finally begin to heal and move on from the scars left behind by his parents' deaths, but the man who killed them will have to remember every single day for the rest of his life exactly why he's powerless.

Idk, I just think... it would really be neat if Mako had been allowed to get closure for what happened to his parents. It would be... neat. I'm not crying at all shut up.

[shimmershae]

So.  I have some more thoughts.  Shocking?  Yeah, I know, lol.

Let’s see if I can figure out how to purge what’s inside of my overactive brain and have it make some semblance of sense, shall we?  

Hmm.  

Where to start, where to start?  

Okay.  So I think it’s safe to say that the flashbacks pretty quickly establish that Daryl has essentially been set adrift.  He’s been cast back, in some ways by his own choosing, into a solitary searching life that speaks to his past.  He has no anchor anymore, no touching stone--whether that be Rick, who’s presumed dead, or Carol, who’s chosen by default to leave him behind and try to make a new family in Ezekiel and Henry.  

That’s important.  Because until this season?  Until he really matured and assumed, grudgingly or otherwise, the mantle of leadership of the communities?  

Daryl was a follower.  He took his cues from other stronger personalities.  Other people more quick to voice and own their opinions, right or wrong.  Like Rick.  And Merle before him.  

That’s not to say Daryl hasn’t had anything of value to say or add to the communities or to his relationships.  He has and he did.  Remember back at the Prison how Carol told him he was going to have to live with the love?  Daryl was just beginning to find his voice, so to speak.  He was emerging, even if they were only baby steps at first, from other seemingly more formidable shadows, and learning even then how to be more of a leader that people looked up to even if he was still content to be a follower.  

Being a follower was what he was comfortable with and I’m making some assumptions here, but I’d wager that in his abusive past with his old man, in that household first with Merle then on his own, being a follower and sticking to the safety of the periphery is probably what kept him alive.  Being a follower minimized conflict then, I’m sure.  Being a follower when he met up with and eventually connected with Rick and the rest of Team Family was probably the safest way for him to make emotional connections.  

I’m rambling.  I know it and I’m sorry.  It’s what I do.  Ramble, lol.  

Here.  I’m going to place the rest of this underneath a cut because I got more winding words than I have wind and most of ya’ll have patience.  

With Rick gone, with Carol off trying her damndest to live a fairy tale, Daryl floundered.  For all intents and purposes, he was left without any direction, nobody to take his cues from emotionally or otherwise.  

I mean, he literally made ever-widening circles searching for Rick, didn’t he?  Circles have no end point.  They have no real destination.  Not really.  Daryl essentially lived in a spin cycle of pain and regret and inability to really and truly connect with anybody during those years spent searching for Rick--especially since the person he arguably felt closest to and most comfortable with, Carol, basically decided those past connections Daryl was so desperate to find again were too painful for her and attempted to move on.  

He wasn’t emotionally equipped to or stable enough (perhaps still internally dealing with his anger and angst over his torture and imprisonment by Negan at that point in time) to put in the hard work to reestablish those fraying bonds on his own and the man basically lost the plot.  His world narrowed down to this latest search.  This search for a body.  For closure.  For a new purpose perhaps?  

And you know, the man had to be tired.  In some way or another?  He’s probably been searching his entire life.  It’s kind of what followers do.  They look for meaning outside themselves because they don’t feel like they’re enough.  

So then Dog, in the form of this happy, accepting, affectionate puppy appears out of nowhere.  He’s a welcome distraction and knowing Daryl’s propensity to try to reunite the lost with those they love, he started a new little search.  

That led him to Leah. 

Leah, who was alone.  Like him.  Leah, who knew how to survive.  Like him.  Leah, who was stuck in a place of grief.  Like him.  

Leah, who--and I don’t really feel like I’m going out on too far or precarious limb here considering how many parallels they literally slapped us in the face with during this episode--reminded him of someone he felt he couldn’t have, not even her friendship anymore because by her choosing to ‘be there’ for Ezekiel and Henry and the Kingdom she was always leaving Daryl behind and that’s a pattern we’ve all long suspected has really caused hurt for Daryl even if he’s long ‘accepted’ and dealt with it with stoicism.  

Boy, they really blew the lid off that issue didn’t they?  Oh, it was done rather quietly and in a surprisingly controlled manner, but the hurt it caused?  The tears and emotion it elicited was brought about with an almost surgical precision that stunned Carol, but I digress.  

My point is?  Daryl?  Innate follower that he is?  Daryl had grown accustomed to the human connection he found with Team Family.  He was never 100% comfortable with it but he missed it.  He craved it.  And Rick?  Well, deep down Daryl knew the likelihood of finding his ‘brother’ was minimal.  And with Carol pulling away and putting more and more distance between them--how deep and wide was that river, ya’ll, before the episode was done? when it started off looking like a small trickle of a stream?  how wide was that chasm these two idiots in painfully unspoken love allowed to be formed between them?--essentially the two closest people to him were lost to him, leaving him lost.  

So he stumbles upon this woman who is very reminiscent of people that he’s known.  He’s figured out, even though he keeps trying to buck the trend, that you really can’t make it alone in the world anymore.  And when she shows him some small measure of trust by letting him go?  That part of him that didn’t want to be alone kept drifting back into her sphere.  

Now I’m not going to go so far as saying Daryl fell in love with this Leah.  Because, shipping biases aside?  I really don’t feel like he did.  

Daryl found solace with Leah.  

Companionship.  

Remember another time when Daryl was lost?  When he felt he had failed another member of his family? Lost what he thought was the last of his family?  How alone he was at a crossroads when Joe’s group of Claimers came along?  

I’m not equating Leah with the Claimers in any other way except saying Daryl was in a similar headspace when he met her, okay?  Before anybody goes off on me.  I’m just saying that Leah?  She represented what Daryl felt was his one chance NOT TO BE ALONE.  

Daryl’s emotionally stunted, ya’ll. He’s made great strides, but trauma always seems to regress him.  Thankfully, it seems to regress him less and less as he really and truly matures, but it still has a habit of reverting him back to the Daryl we first met.  The Daryl we can easily see growing up in Merle’s shadow. 

When he threw that damn fish at her door, I literally laughed for ten straight minutes because that was funny as hell.  But honestly?  The more I thought about it, the more it dwelled in my mind?  The sadder it actually made me because here’s a grown man essentially trying to connect with another human being on an adolescent level.  

So much of what we were shown in this episode really just reinforced what I’d already suspected to be true--Daryl Dixon just doesn’t ‘get’ the basics of interpersonal relationships.  At least those that could be perceived as romantic.  For all that Carol mused it was like he had become a man back in Atlanta, during Consumed and their search for Beth?  That man is still very much trying to fumble his way out of the starting gate so far as pursuing a woman in any form or fashion.

This is just my opinion and we all know what they say about those, lol, but Daryl has longed for an even deeper connection with Carol since the Prison.  Maybe even before that. I think at the Farm his eyes were opened to her and he started trying to be a better person to match what he perceived as her goodness.  Before he even knew she wanted one, he was trying to be a man of honor.  Then stuff and thangs happened and shit, like Daryl once told Abe, just never settled.  Carol drifted out of Daryl’s reach because he wasn’t equipped with the emotional tools to really go after what he wanted--her in a deeper, different capacity than he’d ever wanted or asked for before--and shit, ya’ll.  If loneliness is a choice then Daryl Dixon was sick and damn tired of it.  

Do I think there’s even really a choice between Leah and Carol in Daryl’s mind though?  A true choice were he to absolutely, 100% realize and know that Carol’s heart was earmarked for him from the very beginning and that she’s suffering from the same delusions that she’s not good enough or deserving of him?  

Absolutely not.  

Leah knew that even if Daryl never divulged any specifics about Carol.  She knew the answer to her ultimatum before she even made it.  

And that ultimatum, ya’ll. 

Maybe it’s weird, but it put me in mind of when Merle pressed Daryl to make a choice between him and Team Family.  

Merle was blood family but like Carol and others said, he wasn’t good for Daryl.  

Leah might have offered Daryl some solace from his loneliness but ultimately staying isolated with her and not reconnecting with those he identifies as family is just as damaging as Daryl choosing to follow in Merle’s wake again.  Similarly to that situation, Daryl was clearly torn as soon as the words were out of her mouth.  

Between loyalty to family and unspoken love.  

In case there’s any confusion here, the unspoken love I’m talking about is his love for Carol.  He felt something for her back at that Prison.  Fight me.  He knew she’d be hurt by him going back with Merle, but obligation and family loyalty led him to make the decision all the same.  

Still. He knew she’d understand.  And she did, even if his choice hurt her.  

My thought is that this time?  At least initially?  Daryl didn’t completely separate his loyalty to family (searching for Rick) and his unspoken love (for Carol) when he made his decision.  They’re hopelessly entwined because Carol is a little bit of everything to Daryl--friend, family, the woman he loves and has been halfway in love with for so many years.  Initially, he chose the hope that both would come back to him if he just kept searching.  Because searching’s what he does.  From Sophia to Connie, he’s always searched in the hope of bringing the lost back to those that love them.  He’s always searched because nobody searched for him.  

Daryl is the ultimate lost boy who grew to be a man and still feels like he hasn’t been found.  

But how can he be found if the one person he wants to find him keeps running away?  

Daryl didn’t choose Leah.  

Not from his heart.  

Daryl turned back to Leah because he felt Carol slipping away to where he couldn’t follow her.  

If it can even be argued that Daryl chose Leah, it was by default.  Of course, he feels guilty.  Daryl wouldn’t be Daryl without guilt.  He wouldn’t be Carol’s man of honor.  

And he is Carol’s man.  

She may not be in the place to see it--YET--but she’s getting there.  She’s fighting hard against her natural inclination to run.  She’s trying.  She knows what she wants, even if she doesn’t believe she has the hope of getting it.  

Daryl knows what he wants, too.  He knows, once and for all, where he belongs.  He’s stopped searching.  He knows she’s right there.  There’s no more circles.  There’s just a final destination if he can convince the love of his fucking life to stop running from what they both want.  

He may have left that note for Leah, but you can’t convince this viewer that he didn’t write those words for Carol.  

And that’s all I got to say about that.  

For now anyway.  

Omigosh, lovelies.  

So sorry for the emotional word vomit but thank you so much for indulging me even if I did lose my original point somewhere up there, lol.