#s5 is supposed to have Will play a big role

[chirpsythismorning]

tbh. birthdaygate makes no fucking sense

There’s a lot of foreshadowing hinting at it, even a couple hints going back to earlier seasons.

If you hate birthdaygate, you can just say that 🤣

[mirai-desu]

On the MSATD News

I didn't have time to post a knee-jerk reaction (which those of you from the Downton days know I was apt to do - thank you to all my long term mutuals of my side blog for sticking with me through those days), as I saw the news as I was getting ready to head out for work and it's been… a bit of a day.

Suffice it to say… I am devastated. And my initial reaction was (well after cursing), that it should have ended with S4, but with a different (happier) conclusion. It's called Miss Scarlet AND THE DUKE for a reason. And after all that happened in S4… it really feels like… what was it all for?? Especially if they knew WHEN FILMING THIS?? "Goodbye for now" is NOT "goodbye forever." They really, really really fumbled this.

There's a lot of theories going around, and I will admit it's too hard for me to listen to Stuart's new interview, but going off what other's have said and the parts of the transcript I did manage to read… I just cannot feel like this was actually his decision unless there's something else going on with him (either in his personal life or maybe he has some secret role he's got, because supposedly he hasn't worked since he did ADR on S4). He's been the captain of the ship, and he has always been enthusiastic with discussing the show and had just great insight into playing William. It doesn't feel like he himself was ready to move onto other things (and that's not even how it's worded - some BS about how the show needed it him to be gone for ~longevity~ of the show), like I've seen with other actors are on shows (e.g. Dan Stevens). He still promoted S3 (which came out in the UK after they filmed S4), he still even promoted S4! He was an executive producer for S4!!! Nothing makes sense!

So if it's due to RN… why keep having the other characters say William was only going to be gone a year? Why bother to have the flashback? why bother to have him stay at at Eliza's to recover?? hell I'm surprised they just didn't keep in the coma then--

But really, why even bother to have Eliza write to him? Or have Ivy say what she said to her?? The time apart was supposed to be them looking at their options. They literally foreshadowed him joining Eliza at her agency upon his return. So… what happened?

If it was actually for personal reasons that Stuart left, he has a right to his privacy. But then they should have rewritten S4 to be the end then, since they knew all this time. I can't believe we are getting the full story on this, one way or the other. The more and more I think about it... I do think it was RN's doing though.

Just two nights ago I drafted up a whole meta extolling how one of the best things this show has done has been how they developed William and how he grew as a character. The progression he made as he not only accepted Eliza having a career but encouraging her. His mentorship of Fitzroy. How he came from nothing, from a teenager living on the streets, to become an inspector at Scotland Yard. But they have chosen to toss that all out the window.

Who knows, maybe S5 ends with Eliza deciding to go to New York. But it doesn't seem like they are handling this like Babington's absence in Sanditon. They will make Eliza quickly fall for someone else, and slap fans in the face who have been following their friends to lovers slow burn for five years (because we had to wait for S2 in the first place thanks to the pandemic). And what sucks is that we still got promo saying they are in love with each other. From Stuart, from Kate, from Rachael New herself. We have still gotten promo promoting the romance. Why not have them have a big fight then or something, idk. They gave us hope. And you know what Fellowes says about false hope.

So I'm just supposed to believe that William gives up on Eliza and doesn't return…? No, I cannot. As much as we hated the deaths on DA when they wrote out actors, at least those characters still died in love with their spouses. And while I'd still be foaming at the mouth in anger if they killed him off… yeah.

William's last lines of the show is a flashback including him saying "is it all worth it?" And the answer is… no it's not.

[sterlingarcher23]

Just showed up in my Twitter TL

From an article of last year Matt confirming by it by saying it three times in a row how important she is... (And that synced hearts therefore)

They try to hide her bc most people believe that "She's been absorbed and doesn't play a big role" stuff.

Just as a reminder for everyone still thinking she doesn't play a a big role in 5...you are looking at 7 Mio USD for S5 (that's Tier 2 like the four boys but they were in S1) as it has been reported. She got a raise.

If Sadie would have been in S1, I would argue she'd get now more than the 4 boys since she now gets equal pay (you can't explain this solely with a "break through" when some of the older actors get way less). - The Duffers are good in hiding stuff, they even invented a name for Jamie's role as a proxy. But through Matt we know that her role is big and I predict that it's big even though I had similar thoughts as others initially (not a big role to play).

But well, when you look at the two 5'6s or 11s in this game, you get an idea that it's not a miniscule role. Superheroes put in coma to wake up from it (changed) isn't new. Ask Carol Danvers aka Binary aka Captain Marvel.

And language...

See, the interactions between El and the boys would then be "They find a girl, a weirdo, and hide her in the basement etc etc"? That doesn't make any sense, so... Oh, he said Eleven. Not El.

(noticed that everyone calls her Eleven? Like they are supposed to do this and not "El"? Especially the Duffers do this. Similar to Brenner only using numbers not names. 😉)

PS: I'm soooo tempted to send a short little message on Instagram like, um, "This is Max"

[bugsbenefit]

more tfs thoughts, really just trying to recontextualize some show lore with what seems to be established in the play

SPOILERS ahead

yada yada you know

1.) so with Henry getting his powers from his encounter in dimension X this could potentially explain the "Will has powers" angle - with a: no one expect the lab kids (that were created via Henry's ?blood?, so via the help of someone who already had powers) was actually born with them, with Henry only having powers post his encounter and acting differently, presumably possessed/influenced by the MF to some degree. which Will was as well in the UD and up to the end of s2. it's possible that with the MF particles being expelled by the end of s2 impacted him to some degree, but he still seems to have some sort of connection remaining at least, in form of the neck thing

2.) also the "vecnaing" powers coming from the MF is interesting because now there's at least the possibility that Will in s2 could have killed people that way too, with having parts of the MF literally inside him. which is honestly, really horrifying but also kind of funny. maybe it was really Really good they knocked him out and didn't find out after all. also raises the question to me if Vecna himself also/still has parts of the MF in himself (and if that's even a requirement to "vecna" someone or if that just works via letting the MF do it's thing or asking it really nicely, or maybe it just really Gave Vecna that power to do it whenever he wants who knows

3.) also with Patty being almost guaranteed to come back, i'd say she's most likely Mrs Kelley. introducing a whole new character would be a questionable move, especially with Patty's caliber. and there have been theories about Mrs Kelley being somehow connected to Vecna since July 2022. with all the Vecna victims visiting her, them trying to find literal keys in her home, and her weird clock-key necklace that's SO specific in the season about the "wizard obsessed with clocks" guy

i think the most interesting place to take that though is if she's Patty and she has been helping/watching what's been up with Vecna instead of just being out of the loop and then being filled in in s5 and swooping in to help. if she's just used in s5 to help save the day and appeal to Vecna's humanity... i don't know how well that would work, especially with Patty and their whole backstory only existing in the play. it would feel weird at best, to me at least. if they made her more morally gray and didn't use her as, essentially, a tool, there would be something interesting there. but. hm, idk if they'll go there

4.) also, the whole boat backstory is kind of cool to me in a way. the original show bible mentions spontaneous vanishings so that turning up in the canon lore now is fun to me. also seems like something that will play into s5. with s4s main tag line about "Hawkins will fall" and the whole concept about the UD becoming a stronger influence over Hakwins (via Nancy's vision, bts interviews, the show bible as well) the idea of the whole town or bigger sections of the town or buildings/people could literally being at risk of "falling into" or merging with the UD in some form is something i was expecting for for s5. which seems backed up with where the play is taking the UD lore. could also be a potential source for cool sets/visuals for s5 if we get merged areas with a desolate UD and a building that's definitely not supposed to be there, or the other way around. i feel like they could do some interesting things with that

5.) and that coming with the by-product of apparently giving Brenner dead-daddy issues is kind of funny. no comment there. the guy who calls himself Papa and is defined in the show by his freakish relationship to his "kids" having daddy issues IS just funny

6.) also, small point, but Allan Munson apparently not having a big role and being very similar to Eddie... i'm shaking my fist, will these people ever stop riding the Eddie Munson wave 😭

[willel]

At first, I was thinking that Willel would be the ones that’d defeat Vecna in S5. Now, I expect a slightly different version: El+Will+Joyce. Why? Because each of them have known him at different stages of his consciousness/identity that are still part of him : Joyce knew him as Henry, El as 001 and Will as who he is now=Vecna. Maybe El could do it without Joyce since she can see people’s memories but at least she’d need Joyce to know what to look for. The mystery to me is Max’ role in this. Any idea?

I'm still not completely sure how Joyce will fit into this even after the play. I certainly didn't like what they did at the end which kinda messes up the plot line

(i speak of how she 'confronts' Henry at school after the murders when he should literally be 'dead' and in Brenner's custody at that point???)

Maybe she will recall the story and Henry himself when she learns everything that's been going on but I just dunno how this will all play out.

All that said, I think Joyce represents something greater. She's the essence of motherhood. She's Will's mom. Now she's El's mom too (respect to Terry as always)

She's the opposite of what Henry's mom was depicted to be. Henry's family is a big sour point of his character so I don't know how it'll play out but I feel like that's where Joyce's place in all this falls.

The same can be said of Hopper I suppose, a mirror of his dad in a way, but less so compared to Joyce vs Virginia.

[becomingpart2]

why do you think cordy ended up being such a better character than caroline? they’re both mean girl characters but i like cordy way better (though i hate c*ngel)

Ohh that is an interesting question. My first instinct is to go with an obvious answer that we usually don't like acknowledging: bias. At least for me I know that played a huge factor. I have no real explanation for why I like certain mean girl characters more than others. Characters like Cordelia, Ruby Mathews from Sex Education or even Jackie from Yellowjackets are all popular mean girls (some more than others) that can grab my interest while others like Regina George invoke PTSD-like responses in me lmao

This ended up being huge so...

Speaking about those two characters in particular, Cordelia and Caroline are similar characters that occupied similar positions in their respective narratives. They also have similar personalities but while both of them are "vain" and have no filter, I think Caroline was always more "vulnerable" and "whiny" than Cordelia. Cordelia didn't show her vulnerability very often; when she did, we viewers were the only ones privy to it. She also didn't put her "failings" on anyone's account, the times she did accuse anyone, it was often Buffy, but those accusations were always so ridiculous that it was hard to take it seriously. I don't think they were ever to be taken seriously. And that's one of the things that made her more "palatable", imo, the obvious humorous tone in the way she acted and the things she said. I know people that do take her seriously and don't like her for those very reasons but honestly I never could. I think those things made her a fun character to have around.

Caroline, on the other hand, was meant to be taken seriously at least to some extent. We were supposed to empathize with her struggles living in Elena's shadow. So I think that's one of the main differences between them that could make people like one more than the other.

Even after both of them become "rehabilitated" by their narratives, I can still see Cordelia taking a more independent, leadership role in ATS; she often challanged Angel's ideas, she fought for respect when she felt she wasn't getting much from him, and she basically had her own life separated from him. When cangel started being a thing, there wasn't any manipulative 'uwu poor me' tactics from any party to get with the other, which is a big thing for me.

Caroline's independent phase didn't last longer than S3. Her character became very man-focused after that: a Stefan cheerleader in S4; then she was possessive and jealous of him when they weren't even a thing in S5; then there was the whole manipulative, guilt-tripping story in S6*. Her story with Klaus also didn't help her image and made her look like a big hypocrite in relation to everything she stood for and relentlessly preached (not to mention how unfair she was to Tyler through it all). It didn't help that both fandom and show seem to hold her to such a high level, almost as the protagonist of the show who could do no wrong while the actual protagonist was so relegated and shitted on.

One thing one could say Caroline had over Cordelia is that she got to be a more complicated (?), successful (??) character in the end. Cordelia suffered a lot from the misogyny in ATS, while Caroline kinda thrived on it.

But ANYWAY lol I think those are a few reasons that make Cordelia be a much more likeable character to me. Some of these are flat-out my own bias, some others have some canon justification (but still, rely on my bias in some extent) lol

*I didn't watch S7 or S8, so I can't speak for those.

[reidsaurora]

"Dopamine" ~ S. Reid

GIF by teenwolf-theoriginals

Summary: Just some snippets of what the author thinks it would be like to take care of Spencer when he got shot in the leg (and didn't get any cookies)

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Wife!BAU!Reader

Word Count: 2,152

Content Warning: based around Spencer's leg injury in S5, one scene takes place in a hospital, mentions of Spencer getting shot, sexual humor/references (sorta implied smut), mentions of alcohol and food, a light mention of painkillers, pretty sure that's it?

Genre: lotsa lovey-dovey Fluff... and a lil implied smut 😶

Extra Notes: AU where JJ became a profiler sooner than S7 lol // this started out with Y/N being Spencer's girlfriend but i changed it to wife since they probably wouldn't give Y/N FMLA time if they weren't married so if it says girlfriend anywhere, i apologize!

Based On: these headcanons by @radiant-reid

Takes Place: during Spencer's medical leave between 5x01 and 5x02

Originally Written: 04/18/2022

Criminal Minds masterlist can be found here!

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"𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐣𝐮𝐫𝐲, 𝐢𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬." - 𝐁𝐨𝐣𝐚𝐧 𝐊𝐫𝐤𝐢𝐜

"Spencer!" Y/N shouted upon entering Spencer's hospital room. "What are you doing walking around?"

"I needed to use the bathroom," he answered, hobbling back toward the bed.

She placed her hands on her hips, knowing he was lying.

Spencer rolled his eyes. "OK, maybe I just wanted to stretch my legs."

Y/N sighed annoyedly. "Spence, you know you aren't supposed to be up on your leg without crutches."

"Well, maybe if that stupid doctor would stop taking all day to bring them in here," he grumbled under his breath.

"He's not stupid."

"He told me that 300 people in America get shot daily."

"And?"

"It's specifically 321," he stated matter-of-factly.

"Oh, well, sorry, Mr. Statistics," she chuckled.

"It's not funny!" he argued. "If you're gonna give your patients statistics, at least make sure they're correct."

Y/N held in a laugh as she sat down on the bed beside him. "Well, statistics aside, as soon as they bring your crutches, you're free to go."

"Yes!" he rejoiced, "The sooner I get out of here, the sooner I get the best medicine in the whole world."

"Which would be?"

He leaned in, placing a delicate peck on Y/N's lips. "Cuddles. But not just any cuddles, your cuddles."

"Can't argue with that," she smiled back as she ruffled his hair, silently praying for the doctor to walk in right then.

☆☆☆

"Did you know cuddles actually play a big part in not only your mental health, but in your physical health as well?" Spencer asked, looking up at Y/N.

Though she'd already heard this spill multiple times before (generally when he was sick), Y/N happily obliged anyway. "How's that?" she replied, continuing to play with his somewhat tangled, curly hair.

"Well, the first and most well-known benefit is oxytocin, known as the -"

"'Cuddle hormone'," she finished his statement.

"Correct. It's actually been known to help in many healing processes, and in times of stress, it's been known to balance out cortisol levels," he gladly informed her. "Cuddling also releases serotonin, which affects anything from your mood to your gut to your circadian rhythm. Having a balanced circadian rhythm is an essential part of the healing process since your body needs extra rest when you're sick or when you're healing."

"Mhm," she hummed, leaving a small kiss on the top of his head.

"Next is dopamine, which affects pretty much everything across the board. Now, in this case, it's good to release dopamine since it plays a big role in pain processing. Dopamine is sometimes called the 'pleasure hormone' since it plays such a big part in our brain's reward system. Now, one of the most commonly known ways to produce dopamine is-"

"Through sex," she answered, knowing exactly where this was about to go.

"Bingo," he snickered, looking up at Y/N with raised eyebrows and a suggestive smirk.

"Nice try, lover boy," she kidded. "I liked your serotonin fact better. You could use some rest."

"That'll work one day," he told his wife, almost matter-of-factly.

She rolled her eyes playfully. "Not when you're sick, it won't."

"Well, anyway," Spencer commented, changing back to the previous subject, "It's good to make sure your dopamine levels are balanced and not too high, seeing as high levels of dopamine have been suspected to cause schizophrenia."

Y/N noticed a small frown appear on his lips as the room went silent for a moment. Quickly, she pecked his temple before mentioning, "Don't you wanna tell me about that last happy hormone?"

Spencer nodded, the frown slowly shrinking away. "As you mentioned, there's one last happy hormone. This one is endorphins. Endorphins are actually the molecules in the body that function as painkillers. Endorphins are most well-known for being produced through exercise, like running. The phrase 'runner's high' actually comes from the fact that running releases so many endorphins in the body that it starts to feel euphoric," he explained. "Now, another way of exercising that releases endorphins is…" his voice trailed off as his eyebrows raised once more.

"Spencer Walter Reid, you just got shot in the leg less than twelve hours ago. You need rest," she rebutted.

"We don't have to…" he stopped himself, opting instead for a hand signal instead of saying the words.

Y/N face-palmed, rubbing the stress lines on her forehead. "Thanks, Spence, I really needed the visual."

"Well, we don't," he argued. "We could always…" The reason was unbeknownst to Y/N, but he once again chose to not say the words. Instead, he opted for holding up two fingers with a grin.

Laughing out of sheer embarrassment, she replied, "Not after those visuals, we can't."

"But-"

"Come on," she pouted, patting the bed beside her, "My circadian rhythm is off and it's all because you won't let me get some sleep."

"Fair point," he replied, finishing his statement with a yawn. Spencer moved from between Y/N's legs to his own side of the bed, careful not to hurt his leg.

"Good night, dopamine," she giggled, giving him a short kiss.

"Good night, oxytocin," he smiled back, leaving another, longer good-night kiss on her lips.

☆☆☆

"Oh, you guys should probably bring clothes for all types of weather," Y/N informed all the team members present on the conference call. "Alabama weather is crazy this time of year. Highs in the mid-80s, lows in the lower-60s. Rain or shine. The heat index has been known to get up to over 90 degrees this time of year."

"Will do, Y/N," she heard Emily reply on the other end. Though Y/N couldn't see it, Emily's eyebrows furrowed as she asked, "Was that water splashing?"

"Uh-"

"Hey, make sure you get my scalp," Spencer's voice could be heard faintly over the BAU's end of the phone.

Not even bothering to move the phone which was wedged in-between her ear and her shoulder, Y/N sarcastically commented, "Thanks, Spence, I can always count on you to keep a secret."

"What's so secretive about washing your significant other's hair?" he rebutted. "By the way, you forgot to tell them about the humidity."

Blinking her embarrassment away, she mentioned, "Oh, yeah, Spencer wanted me to tell you guys that the average humidity this time of year in that part of Alabama is 72 percent," she informed the team, internally chuckling at what she must look like right now.

"Remind me to bring a raincoat," Rossi joked.

"Wheels up, guys," Y/N heard Emily say as she also heard the sound of her straightening her papers. "Thanks, Y/N."

"Hey, pretty boy! Don't have too much fun or you might strain that leg even worse," Derek giggled.

"She won't let me," Spencer pouted jokingly.

"Why are we having this conversation?" Y/N asked sarcastically, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Besides, shouldn't you be getting ready for the flight?"

"Ah, yes, gonna get me some of that southern hospitality." Y/N was sure Derek had a stupid grin on his face.

"I'm hanging up."

"B-" was all he could get out before Y/N actually hung up on him.

Spencer looked up at Y/N with an almost suggestive smile.

"What?" she asked, confused by his expression.

"Will you do that thing after we dry it where you massage my scalp while you braid my hair?"

She giggled, knowing how much he loved that part of their new routine. "I'll humor you since it always makes your curls look pretty," she commented, leaving a small kiss on his damp head.

☆☆☆

"OK, so they were out of those granola bars you like, but-" Y/N stopped mid-sentence after turning around to face the rest of the apartment. She nearly dropped her keys at the sight of their apartment.

It was then that Spencer came around the corner, carrying himself on his crutches.

"Spencer, you know you're supposed to stay off that leg as much as possible."

"I did. I used my wheelchair," he smiled hesitantly.

Y/N once again stopped to take in the scene: their apartment lit by dimmed lights and candles, champagne and pasta on the kitchen table, old music playing softly on Spencer's most-prized vintage record player, and finally, Spencer, who was dressed in Y/N's favorite button-down and his favorite tie.

"What's the occasion?" she blurted out.

"Nothing. I just figured it had been a little while since we had a proper date night that wasn't Chinese take-out or a drive around the city," he answered.

Y/N marched over to him, giving him a delicate but long kiss. "Spencer Reid, I don't know how I did it, but I ended up with the best man in the whole wide world."

"Really? Where is he?" he joked, pretending to look around the apartment.

She rolled her eyes as she bit the inside of her mouth. "If I wasn't afraid of somehow accidentally hurting you, I'd slap you right across the butt."

He pouted. "Come on, don't tease me like that!"

She giggled before changing the subject. "So, what's on the menu?"

"What I could salvage of the breadsticks because I got a little carried away, and chicken alfredo."

"You're gonna lie and say you made it when it's really that stuff I had in the freezer, aren't you?" she kidded, her hands on her hips.

He looked to the floor, hiding the red tinge that had just appeared on his cheeks.

"And somehow, you're the profiler," she laughed.

"JJ always said liaising required just as many profiling skills as being an actual profiler," he pointed out.

"Just means I'm good at my job," Y/N grinned, kissing him once more. "I'm starved."

"Me too."

And with that, the two walked off toward the kitchen, ready for a delicious dinner and a much-needed date night.

☆☆☆

As Y/N exited the bathroom, she found herself looking over to the bed. Sprawled out in a starfish position was Spencer, who appeared to be already asleep.

Y/N silently laughed to herself as she finished pat-drying her hair, tossing the towel back in the bathroom before finally climbing into what was left of the bed. "Spence," she whispered.

"Mmm?" he mumbled, looking somewhat in her direction.

She giggled quietly before asking, "Can you scoot over?"

He obliged, scooting over as quickly as he could without hurting his leg. "Thank you," he mumbled, still in his half-asleep state.

"What for?" Y/N chuckled.

Spencer rolled over to face her, a smirk plastered on his face and his eyes still shut. "For finally giving in," he grinned.

"Well, I figured I might as well. Think of it as a reward for your medical leave ending tomorrow, which by the way, I'm really sad about because I didn't ever want this month to end," she told him, placing a kiss on his lips. As she changed the subject, her eyebrows creased. "Hey, how come you're the tired one? I was the one that did all the hard work."

"Hey, my fingers got tired after a while," he answered, earning him a slap on the chest from Y/N.

"On second thought, maybe I'm ready for you to go back to work," she kidded.

Spencer reached up, leaving a lazy kiss on Y/N's jaw. "Good night, my love."

Y/N sighed contently, leaving a soft kiss on Spencer's head. "Good night, beautiful boy."

☆☆☆

"Welcome back, pretty boy," Derek smiled as Y/N and Spencer walked into the round table room. "And pretty girl."

Y/N smiled as she placed her things down. "It feels great to be back," she laughed, "You know, I never thought I'd get tired of our apartment until I looked at it for a month straight."

"How's your leg?" Derek nodded toward Spencer.

"I'm OK. Definitely wouldn't be as good as I am if I hadn't had this beautiful woman taking care of me," he said, kissing the top of Y/N's head before sitting down.

As Y/N moved Spencer's crutches, she turned to Derek to jokingly ask, "So, how was that southern hospitality?"

Derek smirked with a chuckle. "Got plenty of it, that's for sure." He looked over to Spencer with raised eyebrows, as if he were implying something.

"What?" Spencer inquired.

"You get any of that southern hospitality while you were gone, pretty Ricky?"

Y/N hid her face in her hands, afraid of where Spencer and Derek were going to take this conversation.

"Well, unlike Garcia, Y/N did bake me plenty of cookies and she took really good care of me so I'd say yes, I received plenty of hospitality while I was away," Spencer explained.

"Uh-huh," Derek replied, still smirking.

"However, I believe the answer to the question you're looking for is…" Spencer hesitated, just to annoy Y/N, "No, no southern hospitality. Though, I did get very acquainted with dopamine."

"𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐭'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐨𝐩𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞?" - 𝐒𝐚𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐡 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐚

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As always, small lil shoutout to @bfunsolvedboys for beta-reading and giving me all her input 🤗❤️

Also, I give full credit to Cate for this idea! This is based fully around her headcanons and I take no credit for that. This is just my fun lil twist on things but the credit goes fully to Cate!

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[micer2012]

skizz. 11+12?

5. EX: "What about their backstory makes me emotional?" theres.. theres a LOT.IN . EX. lore, especially with jeff,, but "backstory" doesnt mean much when we dont. even know what they Are8U9HU. but counting "backstory" as just all noncurrent lore,, man. man. S5>S6. the fact ex LITERALLY W A S GOOD. XISUMA BANISHED JEFF FROM HIS MIND, THEY DIDNT HEAR THE EVIL VOICE ANYMORE, they were happy and normal and thought them n x were the "best of friends". they were Shy according to the christmas episode (where. ex apoligized First Thing n x went "oh dont worry abou tit !! ^v^" before Demeaning him n Shaming them later in the episode,,SO THAT WAS A DAMN LIE,) they were fighting crimes n hijacking podcasts with wormman, they were happy,,, before x just decided "no, this is an act. ill catch them in the act!" . luring them into a TRAP when wm was missing. (stuck in s5) and dropping. "aren't you supposed to be good now?" "yes!!" "no one believes that...." . ex being Convinced that they Really Are evil, making that whole His Very Own Episode ep where.. where they are Pretending. they dont have any powers, theyre terrified of LIGHTNINGSTORMS, theyre acting like a little kid amazed by water elevators n things,, Convinced they Have to be evil (which,, w jeffs former control.GGG) and then being banned by xisuma and sent back into jeffs nightmare. xisuma is the villian of exs story change my mind. x plays the same role as jeff in exs story-

6. Skizz: "The moment of theirs that makes me the saddest" the entirety of LL W6. you're the martyr of that group huh. skizz desperately trying to keep his "Family" together and get everyone to sweep it under the rug n forgive eachother BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT HE WOULD DO. and he sees them as extensions of him, he sees the best in them he cant understand Not seein eachother as brothers,,, also "MY BROTHERS LEFT ME TO DIE." from next episode.yeah

(MAKING AN AMV OF THIS ITS ALMOST DONE. >:]]])

7. Wormman: "The moment of theirs that makes me the happiest" THE SQUEE . THE SQUEE when ex says he'll be his sidekick. also when he comes to save ex in evils fault. also "you're eyes arent red-"

11. Skizz: "My favorite relationship they have w/ another character" FAVORITE. NICHE RELATIONSHIPS I ROTATE EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE. Pearlypop his sister,, (I WANT TO EDIT TOGETHER ALL THEIR CLIPS..), LOGIC the only person who looks up to him n he thinks hes the coolest cat on the entire block they are each making u clap for the specialist boy about to enter the room (the other). ISKIZZ REAL. but of course i think Imp's gotta take the cake. thats his damn brother

12. Skizz: "What I like about the way the fandom portrays them" week 5 of LL, when bdubs got yellow again and everyone was drawing art of skizz hugging all of BEST was the best day of my life. when people acknowledge him as impulse's brother who cares Too deeply about his family n is big n strong to give hugs. yes perfect. also shoutout to all the people drawing him sexy for 3L's ending its what he deserves and also made me pay attention to him alright 💜

[chirpsythismorning]

Eh, since Will is pretty much going to be a central character in the next season, I think it is very likely that S5 starts with Vecna contacting Will before Will has a chance of spying on him or using the connection between them. That would put the Will at the center of the story, and that interaction would circle back to S1, this time not hiding behind a Demogorgon or a mind flayer. Vecna interacting with Mike before Will doesn't make any sense as the show's start, sorry.

Will is definitely going to be central to s5! I don't disagree with that!

However I don't think Will being central stops other characters, specifically El or Mike, or even other main characters, from having their moments at the center. That's going to happen regardless of how major of a role Will plays.

And I would probably agree with you if this was just some random character, but this is Mike we're talking about...

I don't personally like how every season starts cryptically in some far away place with unknown subjects. But that's how almost every season starts, and I'm being serious when I say every season is then followed shortly after by Mike being late.

And so I would argue that Mike being late in some capacity at the start of s5, would make sense, as it would just be following the exact formula it always has.

That doesn't mean I don't think Will wont play a big part in how this could play out though, arguably he would play the biggest part, just like he did in s1!

We also have them admitting s5 is similar to s1 with the show coming full circle in a lot of ways, and so what happens could very likely feel like deja vu, assuming it's something we're gonna have already seen play out in the past in some capacity.

Honestly, I think Noah's role will be comparable to s2, either that or a lot more than that, no less though!

And yet, I do disagree with bylers that have sort of convinced themselves that Will is going to be the official main character next season...

But here's the thing, the Duffers also said this about Amybeth's character Vickie when they announced her role on the show, saying she would play a major role in events to come (only for her to get like 3 scenes in s4... praying they do her justice in s5). They even said this in an interview when asked about the significance of clocks, word for word they said that clocks would play a major role in events to come.

This is a phrase they use, which says a lot while saying nothing at all.

And so to be clear, the Duffers saying that Will plays a big role in events to come, wasn't them saying that Noah is now magically the top billed cast member. They were literally saying that he is central because he is, just like he was in s1 and especially s2, meaning he wont be 'sidelined' like he was in s3-4 at the very least I pesornally think.

However, this doesn't mean he is literally the main character, as Noah is not going to get a raise with him literally surpassing Millie and Finn... That's not happening.

What I also want to remind everyone, is that a lot of what they say and do is intentional.

When it comes to Noah being all spoilery and stuff, I do think that is intentional.

Noah, along with David, were the only cast-memers to talk about s5 post-s4 initially. And we all know David is the Duffers known scapegoat, who is known for not being able to keep his secrets to himself...

Noah has also been referred to as the Tom Holland of the show. If you guys don't know, the phenomena of Tom spoiling things eventually got to a point where marketing for Marvel took advantage of all the attention Tom got for leaking things, and created even more hype by making it seem like it was him accidentally spoiling things sometimes, even though it was entirely intentional to create hype... sound familar?

This means that full serious, if Noah wasn't supposed to be doing something, he wouldn't be. It's very likely he has been told to be unhinged because it works out well for them at this time. Seeing as a majority of the audience still aren't clued in on the likelihood of Mike and Will yet, (or even gay Will Byers for that matter), it makes sense to have Noah kind of keep people intrigued, but not enough to sound any alarm bells to the majority. They need a scapegoat rn and it's Noah (David is who they usually use as their sort of voice of speculation for what's to come, and trust me he'll be back eventually).

It just so happens that Noah is great with fanfare, and it's clear at this point he's the only one actually comfortable with doing it, and so they're letting him run wild because he IS a major part of the overall story and his character is finally going to be able to be acknowledged more fully in the story after years of being sort of sidelined. This is what everyone expects, and this is what everyone assumed after those interviews with the Duffers dropped and the reaction from fans also wasn't horrible? Like I remember there was a bunch of hype around that time when they revealed this and that's when the Will focused s5 fan posters started dropping and there was even one with Will and Mike holding hands that got like almost 500k likes on Twitter. And that was probably like a big moment for them, I'm sure in terms of feeling confident about how they should proceed with s5 promotion.

And I think this also contributed to them kind of just going with it, because it also allows them to keep a lot of s5 under-wraps, having Noah who is great with fanfare, keep reminding people of byler as a concept, while the rest of the cast is silent for the most part. It works.

And even despite that, I also think we're going to be getting byler and potentially willel wonder twin in some capacity, which are VERY big revelations to the main audience, which they don't see coming. And them only hyping up Will's role in s5 supports the audience not being prepared to see all of that coming.

Not only does there have to be closure for Will and Mike AND Will and El, we also have Mike and El's relationship to resolve, AND all their personal arcs. Will's importance to the story isn't going to prevent the writers from making sure the other main characters arcs feel fulfilled. I don't think those things are mutually exclusive and I don't know why people think they have to be?

And so even though I do agree that Will's role will be comparable to s2 (most likely more) in s5, I don't think it's going to be enough to bypass Millie or Finn in the credits. Which means that there is still going to be a major component to those characters arcs for El and Mike in the story, alongside Will's. I don't necessarily think this means that their roles will be bigger or smaller in some major way, but more likely equal in terms of how they handle it in accordance with those arcs coming together, and to ensure we actually feel satisfied with where everything ends up.

I'm not saying we won't get any Will focused promotional content like posters and stuff, I do think it will feel like the s2 era again, with him finally being seen as a major focus substantially. And yet I'm willing guess that El will still be the main focus of the main poster, with Will and Mike being more so equal to match the triangle aesthetic (also likely Noah is going to be upped to next to Finn in the credits with Millie getting her own slate, THAT would mean Noah's role is so major they're willing to bump him up over Caleb and Gaten which is saying a lot, though going any further than that wouldn't be standard because it took a lot to have Millie go above Finn, they're not going to do that again.).

What I personally think is more likely is that we'll get something similar to s2, with willel giving reflection (twin) vibes perhaps, and Mike being more secondary to that to also fit the triangle vibes.

With this being like a huge epic series, they're going to want those top first names to match with what the show started as so that it feels right. Why have Millie be above all the other kids if it doesn't feel right by the end of the story? If she's there, it will need to feel right narratively, not just based on their demand as actors by the end of this.

And this is also why I do think they have an obligation to make it more clear to the audience what Mike's arc is as a character, very likely related to him being in the closet for the last however many seasons. This would overlap with Will's arc because it also affected his ability to be his true self and El's arc because it also affected her ability to be her true self. And it also provides layers of importance to Karen's arc and Nancy's arc, and other characters arcs as well. That's what makes for a well rounded story, assuming they want us to be able to rewatch the show from beginning to end, and over and over again, feeling satisfied with how they closed everything off.

And arguably, circling back to the beginning of the show to see Mike at the center, would only really be satisfying if it ended with us feeling truly understanding of where his character ended up, making us root for him all over again.

That doesn't take away from Will being central, as he has always been central, since the beginning. Even when he was sidelined in s3-4, it was technically all preparing us for an end that would truly do him justice.

That doesn't mean they're not going to do all of the other characters justice though by any means. Both can coexist.!

[hanna-water]

Part 3 “I’ll Be Fine”: Talk about Popculture, Druck and Gen Z Popkultur Festival Berlin 2022, wednesday 24.08.2022 with Eren M. Güvercin, Nhung Hoang, Naomi Bechert (social media team during s5 – s6, writer of s7 and s8) Moderated by Aidan Riebensahm Nhungi: To return to the other question. I think especially for Druck media literacy is very important. We are lucky that most of the Druck viewers are very tolerant and open for such conversations so that we can get into a discussion. I myself who really grew up with the internet had been on pages like moviestar planet in the beginning and came into forums and tumblr. Whoever here experienced 2014 tumblr... (laughs) dark times. Back then I experienced fandoms myself and was a part of it myself, of course all unfiltered. Everything that there was came towards me without trigger warnings. And now that I am out of all of this already, I see that the Druck fandom deals with media very differently and the fans are more careful/mindful of each other. It was not like that for me (back then). But therefore it makes me happy that people are more cautious now about what media they consume and what they allow. Aidan: I am also interested in the relationship to the audience. The series relies a lot on the interaction with the audience. How did that change during the covid pandemic? Naomi: I had started to work for the project in 2020 so I don´t know and can only assume. Surely it had an impact because people were spending more time at home, were watching more shows, especially young people. They probably found themselves more in these worlds and were looking for emotional comfort, I could imagine. But I don´t have a comparison. Aidan: What are differences between Druck and the reality you experience? Eren: good question. Aidan: Thank you. Eren: really deep. Naomi: Well, Druck is “larger then life” so you try to create a positive vision of how young people deal with problems and interact with each other, develop, learn from mistakes. And the way the characters are acting, of course is not the way all young people are acting. Also about values or attitudes. You want to create positive role models. Eren: I find it generally difficult to compare film and reality. Especially with Druck…- Aidan: I don´t want to compare it but point out the differences. Eren: … often times I notice that the series or generally many formats are a reality postulate. That it is supposed to show things how they are in reality and this was never what film was. It always has been a very commercialized industry and I also like to hear stories which have nothing to do with me, which are very different. So that I can look at it and try to understand and if I don´t then I don´t. But for myself and Ismail, I do see very big differences. Also in everyday live. Or the things that are important, there are very different problems that the characters are facing then what I experience. But as an actress, I still try to navigate which parts of myself can I bring into this character. And I try to build a trusting relationship on the set to be able to work properly. Nunghi: It also needs to be said that the stories we tell, besides all sidestories, are still existing in a vacuum. You can not expect this from young people in real life, that they handle the same problems as reflected and as adjusted. Many aspects play into this, starting with the family or with the friends in your inner circle. Even if you try to surround yourself with the right people, you can still not take responsibility for how the other person reacts. And because in Druck we have the possibility to direct the descisions of the characters, it’s a very different thing. I think Druck is a form of dream world, how it could be in a best case scenario but I don´t think that Druck really mirrors the reality. Naomi: Yeah and the problems are fittet into a dramaturgic curve which is not the same as real life, where things need much more time or don´t happen as clearly, where developments happen in a very different speed. Its still fiction of course. Eren: In 10 weeks. A season runs for almost 3 month. Naomi: yes also the lovestories happen very fast. Nhungi: But I have to say even in my…I want to say “youth” but I am only 20 (laughs). Back then in school, some things just have a different speed. For example a Theo falls in love with a Lisa within 2 days and then it simply is that fast. But you can´t really show that realistically. Eren: We also do play younger roles. I think this is important to point out. The things young people face in the series or films in which we act, those are things everybody has experienced at some point. Naomi: But actually the age difference between role and actor/actress is for some a bit bigger and for some almost non-existent. I think compared to other youth series… - Nhungi: Riverdale. Eren: Oh yes. Nhungi: Where 30 year olds play 16 year olds. Naomi: That also characterizes Druck that you are very close in age. Nhungi: This was also important in the castings. That we were relatively young or looked young. And this also makes a difference. If we are for example in our mid twenties, have perfect skin, are fully grown and then portray 16-year olds. Eren: fully trained (in shape). Adonis body. Nhungi: I will sue High School Musical for that. Uhm yes this already communicates a certain image, how we look as people. Eren: I find it very important because in the first few month when the series was released, I saw so many edits and videos of the audience who left very lovely comments but also compliments like “oh ideal skin.” or “perfect glow” or whatever. And I did not know… - I had acne during this time (laughs). And that’s totally ok. But this was something I had to think about. What image do I give? I don´t want people to think that I am something, I am not. I also have days where I have pimples, days where I don´t have pimples. In a series you have to pay attention to continuity. You can not have a pimple in one scene and then in the next scene a different one. Aidan: That sometimes happens in real life exactly like that though. (all laughing) Eren: sure, sure. Nhungi: You always have to consider that even though the camera work is very dynamic, the light is set perfectly 24/7. We need like 10 minutes only to set up the light before we start filming. That can not be achieved in reality. It´s not like, the camera starts rolling and lets go. Instead the makeup-artist has to touch up and the hair needs to get styled. Even if it looks authentic, its not. Eren: I think this is very important. Because it can be very toxic if you are not transparent with those things.

[theghostofashton]

What you said about Blaine and misogyny made me think - in later seasons he is not only more emotional etc, his body language changes too, he talks in a higher voice, often sits with his legs closed etc. I wonder how much of that was Darren and how much any specific idea of the directors/creators. Was it to flip the stereotype that Kurt was the "girly" one in the relationship? As Sue later says, that they're both "blouses" lol.

I've come across some old meta saying that Blaine was fem codes from the beginning with things like the fact that he asked his friend to the SH dance where girls are supposed to ask boys; the way people tried to change/criticize his appearance and clothes (like Brittany with her hair gel ban); the songs - Katy Perry, "I'm not gonna teach your boyfriend... ", "Big girls don't cry"; or the way that Sebastian pervs on him. I'm not sure how strong these arguments are and even less sure if the writers deserve the credit of doing it on purpose. Oh and there's the fact that Sue made Blaine the " bride" in her hurt locker which is interesting ;P

I'm very curious what you think, I haven't seen much discussion about it and I personally love Blaine's feminine side! (and please make it as long as you like, I really like reading your thoughts)

hi anon! thanks for the ask!

i think.... there's a lot at play here. i have my own interpretations based on the performance darren gave, and i have some suspicions based on the writers, bc like you pointed out, i don't know how much credit we can give the writers.

whether it was an issue of "flipping the stereotype" is.....possibly true? of course, this is all speculation, but there's definitely something to be said about how s5 blaine really leans into traditionally feminine behavior (s4 too, but i see it more plainly in s5), and how s5 kurt is leaning into more traditionally masculine behavior (combat class, him fighting back against the guys in 5x15 after being adamantly against violence in earlier seasons, and the overall way he carries himself).

this is a generalization i'm making (there's def more nuance to both of them in this season), but i would not put this kind of binary past the writers bc i feel like their engagement w stereotypes as a whole was very surface level. the nuance in all of these characters came from the acting rather than the writing, if you will. (also note - this is not me saying kurt and blaine fall into traditional heterosexual gender roles because that is objectively impossible for two gay men. this is just an observation of biases the writers may have had)

as for the idea that blaine could've been fem-coded.....i think that's interesting, especially with the examples you give. i feel like s2 blaine, ultimately, feels like more of a mask than an expression of his personality. the comment about how blaine likes football so he isn't a stereotype just feels like such a direct call out to distinguish him from the other gay character who has some more "stereotypical" interests (which, as an aside..... feels super heavy handed and entirely unnecessary? it was def possible to depict these two gay characters in distinctive ways without implying anything either way lmfao)

but anyway, i think it's important to note that when we meet blaine, he's carrying the baggage of being gaybashed right after coming out. we don't...... really know blaine before he was traumatized in that way? the narrative doesn't tell us exactly how long it's been since he was attacked and came to dalton (and then 6x12 comes in and messes with the timeline even more lol), but regardless, i think the argument that s2 was a mask he was intentionally putting on to blend in as much as he could and not draw unwanted attention by showing off his true personality can definitely be made. also worth noting that darren was working with what he was given in s2 (which wasn't a lot), and couldn't be sure of whether blaine would even remain on the show, let alone who he would become, and that definitely played a large role in his acting choices.

something i've believed strongly in is the fact that the reason blaine seems so devastated in 2x18, during somewhere only we know, is bc meeting kurt and getting close to him helped him to unlock the part of himself he was keeping underneath the dalton blazer; his real self, that he felt like he had to hide after the sadie hawkins incident. and now the thought of going back to who he used to be is just.... so sad because he's gotten a taste of what things could be like for him. kurt is so sure of himself and so confident in showing that to the world, and blaine wants to be that, too. (this also factors into why i think transferring to mckinley in 3x01, even if he's ostensibly doing it for kurt, was a great decision for his growth as well)

.....i feel like i just went on a huge tangent lol but my point with all of this was that i totally think blaine behaving more traditionally feminine could just be his personality and something he unfortunately felt like he had to hide based on sadie hawkins and other bullying he faced.

back to him being fem-coded tho, i definitely think it could've been possible? i wouldn't put it past the writers lol

i think a lot of it is darren, partly in his attempts to keep blaine and darren separate. but the point about people trying to criticize/change his appearance is very interesting, especially in contrast with kurt, whose appearance was also criticized but never pushed to change (aside from him trying himself in 1x18). the other things you mention (except the sebastian thing), i think do a good job of indicating that this may have just been blaine's personality pre-dalton, and s2 blaine functions as a response to the trauma of sadie hawkins. (i don't necessarily think it was written with that intention, but darren's performance and the subsequent seasons can make that reading plausible imo)

they may have tried to make him fem coded and kind of enforce a binary dynamic, but darren's performance to me reads like a nuanced gay man who is in touch with his emotions and unafraid to embrace his interests whether that be his music taste or his sense of style. things like asking another boy to the sadie hawkins dance feel like just.......him trying to exist as a gay man in a society set up for straight people. in a lot of ways, i feel like his character was ahead of his time in the nuance he has? a lot of criticisms revolve around him being too weak and overemotional which really does say a lot about a society that claims to want complex male characters but doesn't actually lmfao

[dirtydancingdean]

something about how dean so completely parallels buffy summers from btvs like they are two iterations of the same character. i mean, buffy the vampire slayer is an undeniably a big influence on supernatural, even if the show itself wouldn’t exactly advertise that fact. you have sam’s sacrifice in swan song paralleling buffy’s sacrifice in the gift, the borrowing of a lot of demons and (god help me) lore, the weird amount of buffy actors in the show (sometimes playing vampires, which is hysterical), the campiness and horror. hell, even cas’s moment of pure happiness seems like a nod to angel’s moment of pure happiness. (dean and cas did it better though). but the biggest similarity is the way dean parallels buffy. he’s obviously not meant to. he’s supposed to be a gun-slinging, wise-cracking ladies man, but that’s not what he becomes. honestly that’s not even what he comes across as in the beginning. buffy and dean are both meant to be heroes, but buffy is the main character of her show, while that’s supposed to be sam in dean’s. and buffy and sam do share their similarities, particularly in their desire for normality which backfires on them because of their equally weighed desire to help people. but dean is so much more like buffy in so many ways?? like buffy, dean always feels everything is his responsibility (like he says in 7.05, “There’s always something eating at me. That’s who I am. something happens, I feel responsible, all right?”). this is largely in part thanks to j*hn winchester, while buffy’s sense of responsibility comes from the fact that a whole group of old white men have told her she’s the one girl in all the world who can fight evil. both of them kind of know on some level that this is kind of fucked up and even try attempting to fight back against their imposed duties occasionally. dean says it in 2.20: “Your happiness for all those people's lives, no contest. Right? But why? Why is it my job to save these people? Why do I have to be some kind of hero?” which is buffy to a t! that's what buffy is all about! the loneliness and unfairness of having this burden on your shoulders! buffy says this in prophecy girl: “I don't care! I don't care. Giles, I'm sixteen years old. I don't wanna die.” but they both always, always go back to do their job. they both always sacrifice their own happiness for others. none of the writers would have intended to have dean make a speech that is entirely parallel to buffy summers’s prophecy girl speech, right down to both sarah michelle gellar and jackles’s tears. because ha ha, buffy is a girl hero, while dean is the embodiment of every male fantasy about what an action hero is.

the thing is, though, when you make dean every male fantasy in the world - attractive, good with women, tough, strong, likes rock music, hates chick flick moments, knows how to shoot a gun, looks good doing it, etc - you make him every male fantasy about women too. which is how we get those slow, full-body shots of dean that you normally only get with women, how we get dean being a caretaker, dean being a pacifier between sam and john, dean watching dirty dancing and liking taylor swift, dean always being the bait, dean’s interactions with villains being framed sexually, dean getting called pretty twice a season. we joke about dean being a hot action girl but he is often objectified in the particular way only women in media are. the way buffy is - in the show i think they actually did a pretty good job of not objectifying buffy. but there are times where they do, and it’s uncomfortable, and it’s subtle, the way it is on spn. and buffy and dean are both used to this kind of treatment; they often weaponize their sexuality, using it when they feel threatened. in the first episode of s2, buffy’s just suffered the enormous trauma of being resurrected after having been bitten by a vampire whose violence has sexual undertones. when she comes back to her friends, they talk about how closed off and mean she’s being, culminating in the scene where she goes to the bronze. if you haven't seen that scene then i dont know how to explain the way she absolutely uses her sexuality against xander and angel, just like dean uses his as a front to protect himself against everyone. when buffy’s traumatized she pushes herself away from those closest to her, represses her emotions, and uses fighting demons as a distraction. sound familiar? buffy and dean both make witty pop culture references that monsters don’t understand and self-deprecating jokes about themselves to deal with when they feel threatened and their low opinions of themselves. buffy has a lot of lines that sound just like dean’s! @lazarusr1sing mentioned buffy saying, “I may be dead, but I’m still pretty, which is more than I can say for you,” as a line that dean literally could have said and it’s true! they’re both a fan of quirky banter during fights but they’re both so messed up when it comes to their opinions of themselves. buffy in 7x07: “I have all this power. I didn't ask for it. I don't deserve it. It's like... I wanted to be punished. I wanted to hurt like I thought I deserved. [...] I feel like I'm worse than anyone. Honestly, I'm beneath them. My friends, my boyfriends. I feel like I'm not worthy of their love. 'Cause even though they love me, it doesn't mean anything cause their opinions don't matter. They don't know. They haven't been through what I've been through. [...] Sometimes I feel...this is awful. I feel like I'm better than them. Superior.” yeah, that’s...dean.

and they absolutely dive into self guilt and hatred if something goes wrong, even if it’s not necessarily their fault. faith in 3x15 says to buffy, “In the balance, nobody's gonna cry over some random bystander who got caught in the crossfire,” and buffy says, “I am.” the amount of trauma buffy and dean both go through kind of desensitizes them to this idea - dean especially, i think, though that’s mainly the fault of the sheer amount of writers and episodes supernatural has - but if they get someone killed, they will do absolutely anything to make up for it.

the idea of sympathetic monsters in buffy and supernatural is met with scorn a lot of the time by buffy and dean. for buffy this is a matter of mental self-preservation. her job is to kill demons, and if she lets herself think all demons can be good, then that means she might have been killing sentient beings that could have done good or weren’t doing harm, since she was a teenager. she can’t let herself think that way so she closes herself off to the possibility of demons being good a lot of the time. we talk about how supernatural majorly drops the ball when it comes to empathizing with the monsters (where’s that post, you know, the, “saving people, hunting things, white men with guns decide which is which,” post), but when it comes to dean, part of that is because, like buffy, he doesn’t want to face the idea that he’s been killing things that aren’t evil since he was a child. he’ll make exceptions (cas, crowley, benny, rowena), like buffy makes exceptions (angel, spike, clem, oz, anya), but it’s easier if it’s all black and white. they’re both strangely attracted to monsters too, though, because part of them feels like they are monsters themselves. like @s4castiel said they have romantic or romantically implied relationships with things they’re meant to fight - dean with benny, cas, and crowley + buffy with angel, spike, and faith. and monsters change themselves for buffy and dean’s sakes – cas, benny, crowley, angel, spike, all become better for the sake of buffy and dean! like that leviathan in 7.06 who says dean doesn’t have relationships he has applications for sainthood!

they hate the idea of being seen as just a killer (dean in 3.10, “Daddy knew what you were. Good soldier and nothing else,” and buffy in 5.22, “Guess that means a Slayer really is just a killer after all.”) dean says, “[A killer] is not who I am,” to chuck in 15.19, just like buffy says, “A slayer is not a killer,” through the later seasons. spike’s speech in 5.07 i think, really says it: “Death is on your heels, baby, and sooner or later, it's gonna catch you. And part of you wants it, not only to stop the fear and uncertainty, but because you're just a little bit in love with it. Death is your art. You make it with your hands day after day, that final gasp, that look of peace.” their worst fear is that all they can do is hurt other people. they’ve been brought up to think violence is all they can do. but they both are first and foremost protectors, especially when it comes to sam and dawn, whose roles in both shows respectively is to be a reminder of dean and buffy’s humanity.

dawn, who first shows up in season 5 as buffy’s younger sister, is, represents buffy’s most beloved parts of herself, buffy’s humanity. sam is a lot like her in the respect that their destiny was to end the world; they’re both book-smart too, while buffy and dean act a lot like dumb blondes despite being incredibly intelligent in ways that aren’t clear to everyone. (not to go on a tangent but they’re both really good battle tacticians who make a lot of references to literature and tv shows and can perceive people and monsters’ weaknesses, etc.) dawn is dangerous to the world like sam is dangerous to the world in s2-s5, but buffy will not kill her like dean will not kill sam. you know how in the end 2009 dean realizes just how much 2014 dean has changed when he talks about killing sam as lucifer? sam is dean’s humanity like dawn is buffy’s humanity. they both put their siblings over everything else in the world. they sacrifice things that sam and dawn can’t begin to understand because dean and buffy shield them from it - dean in 2.22: “I had to take care of you. It’s my job,” and buffy in 6.14: “Dawn, the most important job that I have is looking out for you.” in s5 of buffy, if dawn lives, the world ends, and buffy doesn’t care because she can’t kill dawn. in 5.22 she says, “I don't understand. I don't know how to live in this world if these are the choices. If everything just gets stripped away. I don't see the point. I just wish that...I just wish my mom was here. [..] If Dawn dies, I’m done with it. I’m quitting,” paralleling dean quitting hunting after sam dies. they’re both insanely protective over dawn and sam - dean in 2.09: “You make a move on [Sam], you'll be dead before you hit the ground,” and buffy in 5.22: “I’ll kill anyone who comes near Dawn.” when sam dies in 2.22, dean doesn’t hesitate to offer up his soul in exchange for sam’s life; when dawn is about to die to save the world in 5.22, buffy doesn’t hesitate to die to save the world in dawn’s place. this all on top of the fact that sam and dawn are the babies, the ones dean and buffy have to take care of, which means that...no one is taking care of dean and buffy. like, dean in 3.10: “Sam, [John] doted on. Sam he loved,” and buffy’s mom in 5.05 hugging dawn and calling her “little punkin belly” and in response to buffy’s question of, “Did you ever have any names for me?” says, “No, I think you were always just Buffy.” when buffy’s mom gets sick in s5, buffy has to shoulder an incredible amount of responsibility - giving her mom her medicine, taking care of her, taking care of dawn, fighting a hellgod - and can’t break down in front of anyone because she has to be strong for dawn and her mom, the way dean has to be strong for sam and john (john in 2.01: “You took care of Sammy, you took care of me. You did that, and you didn't complain, not once.) they’re both so scared of opening up and being a burden - buffy’s nightmare hallucination of her deadbeat dad in 1.10 says the same kind of stuff about her being a burden and unwanted that zachariah’s projection of mary says in 5.16. it really is about the eldest sister complex in the end!!!

but they didn’t ever really mean to have dean be like buffy! buffy was literally meant to subvert traditional male action heroes. buffy summers is the male action hero, but she gets to have feelings and traditionally feminine traits too. she likes cheese and wearing pink and dressing up and having pretty hair, but she thinks about battle tactics and kills a vampire like every episode. dean? dean is meant to be the male action hero without the part about having feelings and traditionally feminine traits...except that backfires spectacularly. i mean, they give dean traits such as liking nightgowns to be like haha, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, isn’t that HILARIOUS. except it doesn’t come off that way, we know it doesn’t come off that way. so dean’s watched dead poets society and rent and he sings along to air supply and is good with kids and nerds out over cowboys, but he drives a classic muscle car and kills death and carries a gun with him everywhere he goes. dean and buffy both become multifaceted, complicated, human heroes – but it was intentional for buffy. it was unintentional for dean, so the narrative actively punishes him for it. i mean ymmv on how you feel about the ending of buffy, but she does get a satisfying happy ending. dean, on the other hand, is silenced and killed off and gets the worst possible ending for his character, all because they couldn’t control him.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

10x21: Diverged - First Analysis

Okay, how did everyone like the episode? Did you see all the symbolism? If not, fear not, I’ll show it to you.

***As always, spoilers abound below for 10x21. Don’t read until you’ve watched!!!***

So let me start by saying this. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. The point of the six bonus episodes it retell, symbolically, every facet of Beth’s story. So 10x17 represented Inmates, but also 4b in general. I said HERE that it reminded me of everyone being split into small groups in 4b. But they were also tracking children’s foot tracks (in this case Hershel Jr) which is weirdly specific to what Beth and Daryl did in Inmates.

10x18 retold most of Beth and Daryl’s story through Leah. So there were elements of Inmates, Still, and even Coda in it. But it’s pretty much a play-by-play of Alone. Play. By. Play.

10x19 with Aaron and Father Gabriel can be called a retelling of Still. They get drunk. Playing drinking games. Play golf.

10x20 is all about Grady recalls, with the imprisonment theme and all.

So, where does that leave 10x21? As with all of them, there is lots of symbolism I’ll point out, but it’s kind of a scene by scene retelling of Them. I know others may go through it in more detail to show the exact parallels, so I’ll just go over the broad themes today. Tomorrow, I’ll do my normal details post.

So, it starts with Daryl giving Carol Leah’s knife, which is a retelling in reverse of her giving him Beth’s. She does try to return it to him at the end and he declines, which is super important. I’ll get into that more as we get into the weeds of this, but let’s go over this template first so you can see the broad strokes.

Starting with 10x18 (and I’m following the Daryl/Carol template here, so put Leah aside for the moment), Daryl and Carol get on his bike and leave together. They’re on the outside together for a while, searching for something. Mostly food in this case, though Daryl might have originally been planning to search for Connie. After a time, they come to a place where they spend the night, that has ties to one of their pasts. (In this case, Daryl/Leah.) Then they have an argument. The next day, they part ways.

We’ve actually seen this exact template before, in S5. It comprised 5x02 and 5x06. Daryl and Carol left together in a vehicle (car rather than bike that time). They were out for a while searching for something (Beth). They came to a place where they spent the night that had ties to one of their pasts (in that case, Carol and the abuse center). 

The next day, they have a fight. In that case, it was about Noah and Carol wanting Daryl to help him. Not nearly as big or impactful a fight as in 10x18, but the conflict parallels are there. Then, they part ways. The mechanisms, again, are different. In 10x21, they chose to part ways. In Consumed, it’s because the Grady cops hit Carol with the car and took her into the hospital. But I don’t think the reasons matter. Just the basic events.

So what happened next in S5? Daryl went back to get Rick and TF, but then returned to where Carol (and Beth) were at Grady, right? Well, we’ve already established firmly that Dog = Beth. And notice that in this episode, Dog went with Carol. Are we seeing the symbolism? 

So what follows with Carol is very reminiscent of Grady in some way. Now, unlike Princess, they can’t actually have Carol imprisoned here, because it wouldn’t work for where they need her to be in the story going into S11. So it’s all going to be symbolic.

Carol/Dog/Rat:

I said a few days ago that Rat = Beth. Think of it this way. Rat was minding his own business when Dog suddenly attacks him. So you could see that as Dog and Rat kind of being synonymous symbols. Actually, if we want to get really granular, Rat was in Daryl’s room. We’ll ignore the obvious romantic/sexual pun and just say it represents that rat (Beth) was hanging out with Daryl. Then someone tries to kill Rat. In this case, Carol. 

We even have rat getting caught in Carol’s trap (Beth being kidnapped and taken to Grady) but escaping. Then Carol traps Rat in the wall by plugging up the way in with the scarf. 

At that point, Rat is not only trapped, but kind of entombed behind the wall. And Carol can’t see Rat. (What is not seen theme.)

Now, in terms of Carol herself, I’ll talk about what they said on TTD, because it’s very helpful in deciphering all this. But in terms of the symbolism, we think what she does here probably equates to stuff that happened during the missing 17 days and whatever role she played in leaving Beth behind. Because of that, it’s kind of hard to pin down.

Other clues? Dog = Beth right? And not only is Dog present with Carol here, but he even watches over her while she sleeps, same as Beth did while Carol was unconscious at Grady. And Carol is definitely a “prisoner” of her own past and her own mind here. She’s clearly obsessing about things like Rat and soup and the scarf because she can’t “fix” bigger things in her life, like her relationship with Daryl or that Connie is still missing and that’s on her. I’ll talk more about this theme in a minute.

Daryl/Bike/Walkers:

Daryl’s arc here is also chalk full of symbolism that I don’t think I’ve even entirely pinned down, yet, but I really love it. In Daryl’s case, the bike breaks down, right? There’s a hole in one of the hoses that’s leaking stuff, which makes the bike stall, and he has to go find the tools and resources to fix it.

So, here’s how we’re interpreting this: bike = Beth. Why? Well, I think we can all get behind music box = Beth, can’t we? (If not, I don’t know why you’re following my account.) And remember that I said this was a replay of Them. Just as Daryl fixed the music box in Them, 

he fixes the bike here. 

The train tracks are another clue. He takes the bike to the tracks and leaves it there. You know I think train tracks are indicative of Beth’s path, but I’m also sure they’re a multi-layered symbol with many meanings.

In S4, Beth was the only one who didn’t actually follow the tracks. She crossed them. Daryl did too, initially, but he later followed them to Terminus with Rick and Michonne. Beth was the only one who never did that and therefore never ended up at Terminus. Her path would be completely different. We saw hints of this symbolism in 6x08, when Daryl crossed train tracks on his bike after being hurt, and we see the same thing here.

The “hole” in the bike hose represents Beth’s gunshot wound, dripping blood. Daryl leaves the bike to go look for something to fix it with. So, this part is kinda non-specific. 

You could say leaving the bike where it was in the woods = leaving Beth behind. But where does he search for the part? 

In a group of 3 cars with a walker inside, which is also indicative of where we think they left her. So, this whole sequence kind of points to the missing 17 days and leaving her behind. With the bike being “dead,” (read: unconscious for a human) Daryl pushes the bike manually, which may parallel him carrying Beth.

My fellow theorists and I discussed the idea that back in S5, Daryl didn’t have the “tools” to fix Beth after she was shot, or the understanding not realize she wasn’t really dead. But at some point, he will. We don’t know what the “fixing” point refers to overall, or how it will manifest in the show. It could be lots of things. Literal, medical, emotional. Who knows? But it’s interesting.

Now, on the one hand, this points backward, to those missing scenes. But I always say every callback doubles as a foreshadow. After all, if Daryl had “fixed” Beth during those missing 17 days, she wouldn’t be missing and presumed dead, right? And in Them, we see him fix the music box, and the next scene is Aaron showing up with “good news” and the music box waking up. Clearly that didn’t happen with Beth in S5. So at some point, this shifts from a callback to a foreshadow of what will happen when he actually finds her again.

Now, in order to understand (as far as we can) this symbolism, I will have to get somewhat granular. Because the whole sequence is very strange. Daryl stops the bike on the tracks and looks through his binoculars. (Binocular Theory). It doesn’t really show us what he sees or what he’s trying to do, but I think the idea is that he sees the military walker and is hoping to find a smaller knife on him that he needs to fix his bike.

Imma come back to the knives, because they’re a theory all their own, but let’s examine the events first. He leaves the bike on the tracks and moves forward. Now, I had to watch this several times to understand it. I think the idea is that there were walkers on both sides of the tracks that hadn’t noticed him. They’re milling around but not focused on him. So he’s hoping to slip, unnoticed, between them. Unfortunately, he snaps a twig under his foot and they all turn toward him.

Everyone’s been asking about the Beth walker. She’s definitely here in this scene. I almost wonder, if she represents Beth, if it’s supposed to be that she’s there, close by, but he’s focused on something else, and doesn’t notice her. I kept thinking he would kill this walker, but he never does, and I think that’s significant. 

Also, these military walkers probably represent the CRM. So, for example, this may represent a future storyline where Daryl has a run-in with some members of the CRM. He manages to get away here, which probably means during that future interaction, he’ll get away, too. But he may not realize Beth is with the CRM. So she’s there, hanging around, but he’s too focused on other things to notice. 

(Disclaimer: I’m not saying this is exactly what this scene foreshadows. As always, the details will probably be wrong, but it’s something along these lines.)

Now, there are a lot of weirdnesses in this scene. He suddenly starts limping, for one thing. He wasn’t limping before this, and he doesn’t have the limp when he returns to Alexandria. So to me, that screams that this is a foreshadowing of something we haven’t seen yet. When whatever this sequence foreshadows plays out, Daryl will probably be dealing with an injury of some kind.

He hurries toward a ravine where a military walker is caught in a tree. (Tree/Trunk symbolism anyone?)

So, in terms of this episode, he obviously saw the military walker and hoped this dude might have a knife on him that Daryl could use to fix his bike. That’s what he’s up to here. And it turns out, he does.

Symbolically, it’s a whole other ballgame. In terms of the binocular theory, I always thought Red Poncho Guy, who Daryl and Aaron looked at through binoculars, represented Beth. Both because of the red poncho (red garment in Beth’s cell in 4x01) and because he was taken by the Wolves. It’s possible the Wolves are the symbolic antecedent of the Reapers or the CRM. Or both.

So, I think this whole sequence where he walks along the tracks, past the Beth walker, and then interacts with these military walkers that probably represent the CRM, is a foreshadow or future telling of how he’ll find Beth. Because of the limp, maybe he gets injured and the CRM take him somewhere—like they did with Rick—and that’s where he find Beth.

How is that represented here? He finds the knife he needs to fix the bike.

And again, we don’t know what the “fixing” will mean in a literal sense when this plays out. Maybe fixing is just finding her. Because that will “fix” the hole she left in his heart when he lost her. Maybe it will mean something else.

But the knife itself is important. Why? Because it’s…kinda cooler than Leah’s knife? It’s bigger. It does more stuff. It’s a better tool and a better weapon. It’s kind of life Knife 2.0. And how many times have we talked about how when Beth returns, she’ll be tougher, stronger, a better survivor. She’ll be Beth 2.0. They even said that in the TTD after Still. Remember the phrase they used? “Raised by Hershel, trained by Daryl, meet the new Beth Green.”

So, remember that Leah represents everything that came before in S4 and S5, so her knife then represents the old Beth. The one that died at Grady, emotionally if not physically. Knife 2.0 then represents the new Beth as she’ll be when Daryl finds her again. And where he did find Knife 2.0? With the military/CRM walker.

See what I mean?

A couple of details that parallel this to Them: When Daryl fights the military walker, he slides down into a dry creek bed. There was a dry creek bed in Them. There’s also a small bridge behind him (Bridge Theory) with a circular opening for water to pass under it. (Beth = Water.)

When he gets out of the ravine, he sort of goes a different way and all the walkers that were coming after him just sort of fall into the ravine. That’s exactly what happened in Them. Remember? TF was on the bridge and they would wait for the walkers to come close and then jump out of the way so they all fell off the bridge? Yeah. Replay of Them.

So then Daryl goes to fix the bike and two more military walkers come at him. Yes, two. At first, you’ll probably only see one because they show it weird. But there are actually two. He pulls ammo off one and food rations off another.

What does that mean? I don’t want to go into too much here, but I think it’s just all part of the CRM story arc, which we won’t truly see play out until the spinoff. I think this lack of food they’re dealing with will continue, and at some point their water will become undrinkable. So, it won’t be a matter of grabbing Beth and Rick and running back to Alexandria. They’ll all die without the CRM’s resources. (Hence why Daryl finds food and ammo on these walkers and is like, “nice.”) Much like with Negan/AOW, they’ll have to find some way to integrate and all live together peaceably. Which is also what Rick’s confrontation with the Governor in 4x08 foreshadowed.

Next clue. It takes Daryl a while to fix the bike and it gets dark before he’s done. I totally didn’t catch it the first time until @frangipanilove clued me in, but we hear a wolf howl in the distance. The subtitles confirm it is a wolf, not a coyote or dog, and Daryl even looks over his shoulder as though acknowledging it. So to me, that’s wolf symbolism, and shows that the Denise/Wolf template will be in play when Daryl finds and ‘fixes’ Beth.

It’s actually way more complicated than that, but this is part of that second rabbit hole I mentioned this morning that I won’t be posting about until after ep 22.

Repeat of Still Theme

Okay, the only other thing I want to draw your attention to today (Details tomorrow) is that there is a theme of letting go of the past in order to move forward. And that’s very much a Still theme. Beth and Daryl burnt down the moonshine shack as a symbol of letting of their pasts and moving forward. And we see that same thing here.

People are going to say this is boring bc Carol makes soup and chases a rat around the kitchen, and Daryl fixes his bike. And on the surface, they’re right. But I’ve already explained the significance of him fixing the bike.

For the rest, not until Carol gave up on the rat did it actually get free and get out of her hair. And I think the scarf represents something that really couldn't be saved, and wasn't worth her time, but she started to obsess over it. She couldn't control or fix the bigger things in her life, so she's trying to fix small things that actually don't matter much. And when she finally made her peace with that, she threw the scarf away because she didn't need it anymore.

Same with Daryl and Leah’s knife. They actually say on TTD (which I’ll post about in more detail on Wednesday) that Daryl letting go of Leah’s knife and letting Carol have it represents him letting go of Leah. So, we still think she’s mostly hallucination anyway, but even if we’re wrong about that, they’ve pretty much confirmed that the Daryl/Leah thing is completely over.

But think about what we’ve said about Leah. She represents his time with Beth IN THE PAST. He has to let that go in order to move forward. And I think he was always going to have to reach this point, emotionally, before Beth could return.

Another way to think about it: just as with Beth’s knife, he probably needed to hang onto Leah’s knife for emotional reasons. It has to do with his guilt and trauma and grief over whatever happened. Now, I don’t think they wanted him to give Beth’s actual knife to Carol because that will probably figure in the plot eventually, but this is a symbol of the same thing. The knife, like the hallucination of Leah, is something he created to get himself through the hardest time of his life. Now, he’s past it, and letting it go. Just as Beth taught him to do in Still.

It's about letting go of small things in order to move forward.

So, I’m really looking hard at knife #1 (Leah’s) vs. knife #2 (leatherman that he gets from the military guy). Because, I think just as we always talk about how Beth from S4/S5 was not only younger, but naïve, innocent, less mature in her character development, etc., when she comes back, we know she’ll be tougher, more badass, Beth 2.0, etc. right? Hence, she just changed. 

And I think the knives represent that. The old model being left behind (by Daryl) and he finds the newer, better knife, which represents him finding the new Beth. Hence the train tracks and the military walkers (CRM). And incidentally (haha not so much) we do see the Beth walker in that same sequence where he finds the knife.

In Still, we learned he has to let his past go to move forward, and he’ll have to let his past go to find Beth. So again, I’m wondering what the knife will represent that he gives Carol when they part before he actually runs into Beth.

I did have one idea: maybe it’s not a tangible object. Maybe he gives her the truth about Leah. That she’s a hallucination. He finally admits it to her, and then later realizes he can’t function without it (just like he needed the knife). But he’s gonna need to let it go and find something better before he actually finds Beth.

And I actually think the scarf/leatherneck thing works with this. I mean, Leah wore the fox scarf. So in that way, it may function similarly to the knife. Something that needs to be let go to move forward, even if it’s kinda painful. And Carol throws away the scarf in this episode.

I was thinking about when Carol went to see him the last time in 10x18, she gave him a scarf, right? But it was kind of a token gift. He didn’t look particularly pleased with it. And she admitted it wasn’t the real reason she was there. First she said something about how she shouldn’t need an excuse to give him a gift, but then she says, “okay, the REAL reason I’m here…” And he took it, but you could tell he was kind of like, “okay, whatever.” And that’s similar to the knife here. She offers it to him, but he doesn’t want it. So yeah, at least in this respect, I think scarf and knife are somewhat synonymous.

Okay, I’ll stop there for today. I have TONS more to say about the specifics and TTD, and plenty about where all this is going. But I’ll leave you with that today. Thoughts?

[yaboyspodcastpalace]

📓!!!!!!!

[send me a 📓 and I'll explain the plot of a fic i daydream about!!]

:D!!! i was originally gonna write down a petermart im writing but ive talked enough abt that one so Here:

au where peter doesnt die at the end of seaosn 4 but instead loses 1. one of his eyes (fr some reason idk) 2. his connection to the lonely and 3. his entire inheritance and finding himself godless and penniless he goes to the few people that actually like him (taddeas??? eh, simon? bit of his money problem is solved but not on the long run, mikaele... Well.) and ends up crashing at mikaele's place

(there was originally a reason why he knew mikaele was alive but i cannot remember rn)

i dont particularly have a plot beyond:

1. hey wouldnt it be funny if peter went to live w/ mikaele somewhere lovely and like neighbors like mikaele bc hes nice but they're So Very Curious abt his... friend.... boyfriend...? house mate....? who looks like a shitty vampire... also peter like needs Actual Food and sleep and all those pesky human things to live that he never thought abt since he was a kid??? mikaele?? how do you live like this??? how do you live w/o the lull of a god and breaking the fabric of reality for yur own purposes and also how do you cook? also potentially mikaele being like my dear old friend im gonna get you a fucking hobby

2. so, the apocalypse happens, and between the long drive from where they lived to that mansion he has in s5 there's a LOT of peter seeing the different domains in the distance and being SO annoyed bc those were supposed to be his, mikaele, he was supposed to have a place there (if not THE central role if gertrude hasn't ruined his ritual)

2.1. mikaele and annabelle and peter shenanigans. annabelle and peter hate each other but they both like mikaele and so sometimes he'd be playing the piano and they'd both appear at different entrance of the room and just hover there waiting for the other to get out so they can sit somewhere close. This amuses mikaele to no end, and also hes glad hes got more ppl to care abt (he misses his crew)

2.2. mikaele and peter and Martin shenanigans once he and jon arrive. and by shenanigans i mean once martin realises peters not only Alive and There but also doesnt have any power whatsoever he decks him, and mikaele just calmly sits at the side like "@ to peter you probably deserved that, but @ martin please dont hurt him too bad, im quite fond of him, you'd understand".

2.2.1. obsessed with the idea of peter learning that martin has a domain and being so conflicted about it... both of them... hhh petermart lonely moments at the end of the world, imagine(!!!!!!!!!!!)

3. uuuuuuuuuuuh honestly i think a lot about the painting of mikaele's personality and the ghosts that haunt him via statements and the man we finally see in s5 and i KNOW in s5 he lies about stuff n puts on part of an act I KNOW it... maybe i want to see how their relationship changes once peter cant feed of such and mikaele cant bask on the cold etc etc!! when all the benefits of his monsterhood are gone and all thats left is two lonely men and their complicated love!

4. it has an open yet hopeful ending bc im a cheesy motherfucker and i love Love :') peter doesnt want to die Again despite the less than ideal ways of living and he doesnt want mikaele to die, also again, so like.......... i dont know, annabelle is smart, she's got ways to do a dramatic reveal w/o the camera, maybe not as glamorous but whatever! when she leaves she wants to leave quietly so they dont notice but mikaele does and gives her a big ol hug bc literally all his friendships ended with a flash, he has no idea if annabelle is going to die or what so just, hug. Annabelle hugs back kinda awkwardly due to not being used to it but still appreciates it. Fambly.......... (peter stays inside bc he doesnt care abt her, plus mikaele has enough warmth for the both of them)

4.1. i think a lot abt mikaele going to rescue his former crew from the domains bc he CARES ABT THEM... GDI... maybe thats what they do at the end... who knows not me...

[romancing-lady-whistledown]

S6 overall thoughts

What I loved

- Lola. While no Skam-main will ever reach the levels of love and attachment I have to Lucas Lallemant, I think that especially concidering that Lola was literally introduced in the last scene of S5, her being my second favorite main of the show is quite an accomplishment and I think Flavie deserved alot of the honor for that. She needed to catch my attention right away, and she did.

- Eliott. Although I have a big complaint about how the later part of his storyline was concluded in this season which I’ll get back to, I still loved what I saw of him. With all his lovable traits and his flaws, to me he felt as well-rounded and lovable and interesting and relatable as I always found him. I loved seeing him get to direct, act in and eventually show his first ever movie, I loved that he got to talk about his illness again in the Luquette-clip, and I also loved how the video-store became a safe place for Lola to go when things weren’t going well with her family or with Maya.

- The Lecomte-sisters. Easily the best executed part of this season. Even as someone who hasn’t been the biggest fan of Daphne since S4 even I still felt their connection through the entire season and it was definitely my favorite love story in this show after Elu’s in S3, although an entirely different type of love.

- A lot of the clips. Although Skam France unfortunately struggle with solid narratives with satisfying endings, they are amazing at creating moments, and this season had a ton of clips and moments that I loved, still probably outweighing the number of clips I didn’t like so much.

- The acting. Skam France owes so much of their cast, they are really carrying the show.

- The cinematography. The blue and purple aesthetic was perfect for this season, and I also loved the red aesthetic of Eliott’s video store alot. I have never had a problem with Skam France’s cinamatic look, in fact that’s one part of their style that they really rock and that I really like even though it gives a totally different vibe from og Skam.

What I liked that could’ve been better

- Mayla’s storyline. The chemistry was there and I liked them, but I didn’t fall in love with them. I think it’s something in how their development was written. The romance was very much a side-plot in this season, which I’m not complaining about because I think it was fitting for Lola’s story, but a side-plot romance like that just didn’t need the Char-drama, especially after we already had Maya avoid Lola for a week. The development of the relationship just kinda lost me somewhere along the way so I unfortunately didn’t grow to love them the way I wish I did. 

- Eliott’s arc. While I’m happy with what I saw from Eliott, his arc doesn’t feel fully completed. The sad thing is it would’ve been so easy. If they just gave Eliott and Lola a longer conversation about the club incident and one POV clip for Eliott and Lucas to talk about the insecurities that were brought up, that would’ve made a world of difference for me. And concidering how short episode 9 was there was time for that, so it’s not like I’m bitter or anything.

- Most of the storylines tbh. Like I really found most of the storylines in this season interesting, I really wanted to see them play out and get to a satisfying conclusion. But because of the way they chose to use their time, so many of those storylines never lived up to their potential, and it’s frustrating.

What I didn’t like

- The ending - This isn’t really so much about the last clip which was cute and all, although I have some complaints about it (Why did Charles have more lines that Lucas? Why did they drag S5 down with a love triangle just for Alexia and Arthur to suddenly get back together in the finale? Why miss the opportunity of a Lucas/Jo interaction when you’ve basically been setting up what could be a really funny scene all season? Shouldn’t Lucas and Lola at least exchange a look after the fight they had? Shoudn’t Eliott at least send a look in the direction of Mayla after he pushed so hard for Lola to bring Maya to the premiere?). But my main problem is about how significant storylines were left without a satisfying conclusion. Yes, there was alot of stuff going on in this season but also there was some poor use of the time they had, by either wasting time on unnecessairy and undeveloped side-characters or making the episodes short for no good reason. A lot could be done with that time. The angst kept going all the way into episode 10 and that shouldn’t be the case when you have this much to wrap up and you wrote this as if it was the last season of the show. In S3 there was angst in episode 9 and a tiny bit at the start of episode 10 when Eliott had his depressive episode, but since they already had wrapped up all the other conflicts in episode 7 they could focus almost entirely on giving that storyline a fullfilling and satisfying conclusion. 

- The lack of communication - the truth is that alot of the issues brought up in this season would never be fully resolved in 10 weeks. Lola’s addiction-problems, Daphne’s eating disorder, Eliott’s insecurities. That won’t go away within the timespan of a season, all we can hope for is to leave them in a better spot where the future looks hopeful. But we can have conversations about these things, and while I’m glad we at least got confirmation that both Lola and Daphne are getting professional help, so many conversations about different issues and between different characters were missing for this season to wrap up in a truely satisfying way. 

- The unnecessairy side-characters and the side-plots that came with them makes their own point on my list of things I don’t like because when I see them all I can think is how they took time away from giving the other stories better conclusions. I’m talking about Tiff and Char. I can see what their roles in the story were, I can see what purpose they were supposed to serve. Tiff and her squad served as a contrast to Lamifex at the start of the season, but then she was also dragged through the rest of the season with a cyberbullying plot that had very little impact and this whole thing was dragged out until the very last episode. As for Char, she sure pushed Lola to admit her feelings to Maya but I don’t think we needed her for that and I think having Maya and Lola making up after Maya avoided Lola for a week only for her to immediately start dating someone and kinda start avoiding her again was a poor use of time, both in the Mayla storyline and in the season as a whole.

- Making the episodes in the second half of the season super-short while the conflicts kept piling up was...a choice. And certainly not one I agree with looking at how everything concluded.

The short version is: I enjoyed alot of it, it was definitely the most I’ve enjoyed watching a season of Skam France since S3 because the parts I loved I really loved, so I would rewatch S6 over S1, S2, S5 and most definitely S4 any day. But the last portion of the season left me highly unsatisfied, both as an ending to Season 6 and as an ending for the original generation of characters. Yes, I know the last sequence of S5 was supposed to be the goodbye to the original generation, but that doesn’t make the situation any better to me because that scene, while there was a type of beauty to it, was just as underwhelming and unsatisfying as a goodbye to those characters as this clip was, and this was the last time we’ll see them. It’s of course bitter because there is so much lost potential to explore in alot of the og characters and even a 5 minute clip for each couple/single character could’ve made a huge difference there, which makes it harder to let go of the characters than it would be if the ending was at least somewhat satisfying. But on top of that it leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth that it shows a certain lack of respect for the attachment the audience as a whole (not just the most passionate fans like us but even the more casual viewers) have to the original characters. I don’t think they can ever satisfy everyone but this kinda just feels like a “Get over it and move on” kinda attitude and it definitely doesn’t make me feel any more enthusiastic about investing in their new characters and seasons. Because for me the strength in this show is in the characters, they’re what keeps me interested when the storytelling is weak which happens...quite a bit. 

[cassnottiel]

maybe a s5 au where instead of deke being all grown up he's more around the age of a teenager? and everyone is super exasperated with him as per usual in s5 but the team takes on a more parental-ish role and when fitzsimmons find out he's their grandson its less skimmed over and more like them taking an active role in being there for him

The first thing May felt was the piercing pain in her leg.  Wherever she was now, she was in no condition to fight.  But she wan't going to tell the man with the glowing helmet that.  

He was good, she would give him that, but she was winning.  Until he shoved his belt buckle into her stomach, and she lost all weight.  He twisted the front of it, and she flew back and hit a wall.  

The man sighed heavily, leaning against a table not far from her.  May watched as the man raised both his arms and took off his helmet, his hair was disheveled and he had a scruffy beard, and he was glaring at her.

"I hate wasting the charge on that thing," he pointed to his belt buckle, and started walking forward.  "Honestly, I wasn't trying to hurt you, but you had a lead pipe at the ready, and I can't r-"

May kicked him in the face.

He reeled back, and his glare was back when he looked up.  He shoved a cloth in her mouth, pulled her right arm forward, and stabbed her wrist.  He inserted a circular plastic thing into her wrist.

"What the hell is this thing?"  May yelled at him when he took the belt buckle back.  "And who the hell are you?"

The man sighed and rolled up his own right sleeve, showing a matching black device as the one he just put in her.  "It's a metric.  Everyone needs one, here.  Now, where are the others?  Because I was paid to give them to all your friends."

May didn't trust this man, who introduced himself as Deke, but she had no choice, he would take her to the rest of the team.  Walking beside him to the holding level of what he called the Lighthouse, he looked way younger than she initially thought he was.  The angry expression and the beard added a few years.  She stopped worrying about his age when they met up with the rest of the team, having bigger things to worry about.  Deke had stabbed her, but he also helped get her friends out of a holding cell.

She would tolerate him.

Daisy had blown past Deke, ignoring his pleading for her to make a better plan, to play the long game, as he put it.  He looked really young when he wasn't yelling at them.  But she wan't about to let Simmons suffer under the Kree, she would get her friend back.

Daisy, dropped down from her whole in the ceiling, looking at the much nicer hallways than the rest of the Lighthouse, and started walking in one direction.  As she turned a corner, and invisible wall blocked her way, and a white vapor hissed out of the wall and into her air ways.

She watched as a Kree with a fancy coat and white makeup sauntered over to the glass, a familiar man following close behind.  

"I told you she'd find her way down here."  Deke Shaw looked straight into Daisys eyes.  "And demonstrating her powers, no less."

He called her a weapon of mass destruction, but his eyes were pleading.  It made him look younger than her.  He had begged her not to do this, maybe he thought he was saving lives by ratting her out, Daisy didn't care.

Daisy coughed, glaring at Deke with all the fire she had in her.  "I'll kill you," she promised, "I swear."

He really did look like a kid.

- - -

Coulson watched how Dekes face completely changed when he heard the recording of the man from the surface, taking almost ten years away.  He recognized that voice.  He wouldn't tell Coulson who it was, but he was willing to help them, when he couldn't get far enough away from the S.H.I.E.L.D team when they first got there.

Deke helped Coulson and May get down to level 35, a big help.

"People don't get pregnant anymore."  Deke told them when they were all looking over the baby.

"What do they do -- sterilize the whole population?"  Coulson asked as May walked around more.

"We think they do it through the food," Deke glanced down at the baby, "so they can decide who has children."

"How long?"  Deke didn't seemed phased, but Coulson was horrified.  This was a full dystopian vibe.

"They've always tried to control it," Deke turned and started walking throughout the room, "I was one of the last ones born the old-fashioned way.  Until Kasias decided that it was easiest to just-"

"Create the children themselves."  Coulson finished.  "How long ago was that?"

Deke shrugged.  "About sev-"

"Phil!" May looked up from a computer screen and stormed over.  "I found something."

"What is it?"  Coulson asked.  May looked angry.

"Him."  May glared at Deke, then she swung her fist.

Deke held his nose, which started to bleed.  "Okay, ow!"

"May?"  Coulson followed May, then saw what made her so angry.

Deke Shaw sold Daisy to Kasius.  

"Okay, well, this is probably the part where I should explain."  Deke glanced at the screen, where Daisys face was pictured.  

"No."  Coulson shook his head.  "This is the part where May breaks your face."

But May did not break his face, he started to explain.  Then, two Kree entered, and Deke tried to talk them down, but Coulson hit one of them with a chair.

"Oh!"  Deke took a few steps back.  "Okay, we're fighting."

Yes, they were fighting.  And they were losing, until Deke decided to help and hit one of the Kree over the head with an oxygen tank.  The Kree took out a small knife and stabbed Deke.

Coulson wanted to leave him, but the Kree had Jemma, Daisy, and May.  And Deke wanted to help them, that counted for something.  So he patched the man up.

"Okay."  Coulson backed away.  "The bleeding's stopped.  How's it feel?"

Deke breathed heavily.  "It's fine."  He was obviously not fine.

"Good.  In that case--"  Coulson punched Deke, who groaned.

"I really need you people to stop doing that."  He stood up and limped to the other side of his room.

Coulson grabbed his arm and spun him around.  "Where's Daisy?"

Deke looked like a scared kid.  "Look, I had to do that.  People have died, and Kasius wouldn't have hesitated to kill hundreds more, and Daisy didn't even seem to care at all!"  His eyes were earnest and shining.  "So, trust me -- it's safer with her out of the mix."

"I don't trust you!"  Coulson shot back.  Those reasons did seem valid, but Daisy was like his daughter.

"Well I did what needed to be done."  Deke was so convinced of this, like a stubborn teenager.

"Oh, please!"  Coulson rolled his eyes.  "That wasn't the first time you went for a payday."  Deke turned away, and Coulson prodded his chest.  "You weren't out to save lives, you made a profit.  So don't pretend your motives are pure!"

"There's so much that you don't even know that-" Deke turned to storm away, but Coulson yanked his arm again, making him wince.

"And now you're doing it again, aren't you?"  Coulsons words were venomous.  "You don't want to help those people on the surface.  You want to turn them over to Kasius for-"

"You don't know me, man!"  Something in Deke broke, his eyes were shining with something else.  "I was nine -- okay? -- when my mother got dragged away and murdered.  Kasius got rid of all the elders, all the smart people, and she was one of them."  He was close to tears, he looked so young.  "And after she was gone, my dad took up the cause.  He carried the torch for her.  And as I got older, I begged him not to.  I said that they were gonna get him, too," his voice cracked, "and I was right.  He got sent to the roaches, just like the rest of them, when I was twelve."

Coulson watched Deke carefully.

"That's why it was pretty strange to hear his voice, after five years."

That one sentence sent Coulsons mind reeling.  "That was your father?"  Then another realization.  "You're seventeen?!"

Deke looked like a scared kid because he was a scared kid, acted like a stubborn teenager because he was one.  No wonder he looked so young, he's just a kid.  A kid who just wants to see his father again.  

Deke fumbled with his things and pulled out a shiny coin. He held out the coin to Coulson.  "Take it.  It's what Kasius gave me for Daisy."  His eyes shone with tears.  "I don't care about it anymore, I just want to help you.  I want to see my dad again."

Coulson thought for a minute, just staring at the kid in front of him.  He shook his head and started walking towards the door.  "No, stay out of this.  You're safer if you stay out of this."  

Dekes eyes widened and he ran forward, but the door slammed in his face.  He slammed his fist against the metal, yelling to be let out.

"What's the plan with Deke?"  Yo-Yo asked as Mack welded Dekes door shut.

"I just grounded him."  Coulson looked back at the door.  "I punched a seventeen year old kid in the face."

- - -

Daisy turned away from Fitz and Simmons, and watched a pair of glowing blue eyes appear out of the darkness.  She grabs him by his shoulders and slammed him against the large tank in front of her.

"Good thing I'm wearing a helmet."

Daisy ripped the helmet off of Dekes head and threw it aside.  "Are you here to pick up the bounty?"

"No!  I'm here to save your ass."  Deke tried to step forward, but she pushed him back again.

"I should kill you right now!"

"Who the hell is this guy?"  Fitz looked between the two of them.

"He works for Kasius."  Daisy kept her hand on his shoulder.

"I don't work for-" Deke stopped himself and addressed Fitz and Simmons.  "I mean, sometimes I do, technically.  But right now, I'm team S.H.E.I.L.D, alright?"  He gave Daisy a fake salute.

"It's convenient, you showing up right now."

"Convenient?"  Deke scoffed.  "No, it's mindblowing that I managed to escape my room after Coulson grounded me and welded my door shut."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?"  Daisy shoved him again.  "Coulson locking you in your room like some teenager?"

"Well," Deke glanced down at the scientists, "some teenager knows how to get you guys out of here."  He picked up his helmet.  "Come on."

Daisy and Jemma helped Fitz stand up.

"How old is he?"  Jemma whispered to Daisy, who shook her head.

"Seventeen," Deke called back from ahead of them, "now, hurry up!"

- - -

"Alright, are you ready to take this thing out?"  Coulson asked Deke when the whole team made it to the Trawler.  Everyone else looked to Deke, who looked at everyone else.

"Me?"  Deke pointed to himself.  "I'm not a pilot."

"What?"  Daisy clenched her fist against the concrete wall.  "You don't know how to fly this thing?"  He's just a kid, you can't quake him.

Deke scoffed with a small smile, the first time his expression fit his age.  "I never said I did."  He jogged up the stairs and climbed the ladder, leaving the rest in the hallway.

Coulson sighed.  "I kind of feel bad about punching him."

"At least you didn't threaten to kill him."  Daisy said and grabbed one of the ladder rungs.  "And I still might punch him."

"He's a child."  Fitz pushed himself off the wall to follow Daisy.

"A child who sold me to Kasius."  Daisy started climbing the ladder with a sarcastic smile.  Deke was sitting in the cockpit, fiddling with the radio.  He didn't look up when Daisy sat heavily in the copilots seat.

"If you want to kill me, can you wait until after we get down to the surface?"  Deke turned a knob on the radio, smiling at the static sound.

"Why?"  Daisy propped her feet up on the control console in front of her.  "You want to breathe real air before you go?"

Deke laughed quietly.  "That would be a good bonus, but that's not the reason."  He finally looked at her.  "My dad's down there."

Daisy didn't say anything to that, just studied Deke.  His eyes looked remarkably like Fitzs, all blue and emotional.  His beard had grown since she had last seen him, making him look well into his twenties, but if he made the right facial expression, like the melancholy one he wore at that moment, he really did look like the teenager he was.  

"What?"  He shifted uncomfortably, winced slightly, and brought one of his hands to rest against his abdomen, around the same spot Fitz had been stabbed.

"Nothing," Daisy shook her head and told herself to stop with the Fitz comparisons, "it's just, you're really young."  

He groaned loudly as Coulson and Fitzsimmons entered the cockpit.  "I liked it better when you all thought I was thirty and hated me."  He closed the cabinet to the radio and stalked out.

Fitz sighed heavily as Simmons helped him into a chair.  "What if we put him in time-out?"  He asked.  "D'you think he'd go?"

"We have to survive this, first."  Coulson turned the key and the Trawler rumbled to life.  "So strap yourself in."

They did survive, but the ship crashed.  Deke threw them all clothes and goggles to cover themselves with, and pointed out to the howling winds when asked why.  "It's brutal out there, with the storms and the roaches.  It's why we thought nobody could survive."  He told them as he pulled on a pair of gloves.

So the five exited the Trawler and walked to the Zypher, thankfully it wasn't far.  May was there to greet them.

"Holy hell," Deke, Fitz, and Simmons all looked up to the small balcony above the cargo hold, where a smiling man stood, "is that Deke Shaw?"  The man started descending the staircase to get to him.  "I thought I was looking at your old man twenty years ago!"

"Oh, my God, Voss!"  Fitz and Simmons watched as Deke hugged Voss, and they could finally see how young he was.  For just a moment, his jaded side melted away and he just looked glad.

"May told me you implanted her metric?"  Voss asked, and Deke nodded proudly.  Voss laughed, "Alya would be so proud of you, you're just like her."

Jemma and Fitz decided to let the two have their moment and look around the Zypher.

"Why'd you bring Deke?"  May asked them while Jemma stitched up Daisys cut.

"We couldn't find a babysitter on such short notice."  Fitz said, which made Daisy laugh.

"What?"  May looked between all of them, confused.

"He's seventeen," Jemma clarified, "just a kid."

May blinked a few times in surprise.  "A seventeen year old has enough medical knowledge to stab through my wrist an not kill me?"

Daisy huffed a laugh and pressed the bandage against her arm, "that seventeen year old kid rebuilt the Framework out of scraps."

Fitzs eyes went wide and his head whipped around to look through a doorway at Deke, fiddling with one of the claws they use to keep the Zypher grounded.  "How did he do that?"

Daisy shrugged and stood up.  "It doesn't seem dangerous, I've seen it."  She took a few steps toward the door, "it's not even realistic.  People pay to see one building with fake beer."  And then she left the room.

Jemma sighed and started packing up her medical supplies.  "He's a genius."  She glanced up at the others in the room.  "Maybe a little annoying, but a genius."

After Voss' people attacked, and Robin was dead, Coulson looked around at his team.  Someone was missing.  

"Where's Deke?"  Coulson met Daisys eyes.  Something like panic flashed across her face, and she twisted Voss' arm a little farther behind his back

Voss hissed in pain.  "Relax, he's fine."  He yelled through his pain.  "He figured us out first, he's in the back."  Daisy started walking him out, and Voss laughed bitterly.  "That kid's too smart, it'll get him killed, the same way it killed his mom."

After locking Voss away with the rest of his people, Daisy started looking for Deke.  She turned a corner and saw him sitting on a desk.  She picked up her pace when she saw the blood matting his hair and dripping down his ear and neck.  He looked up when he heard the keys to the padlock jingle in her hand.

"I thought you'd be dead."  Daisy pulled the door open.

Deke didn't stand up, he just looked back down at the floor.  "Yeah," he looked so small at that moment, "I guess Voss didn't want any more of my family's blood on his hands."

"You're dad . . ." Daisy closed her eyes.  This kid would never see his father again.  He's an orphan.  "Deke, I'm s-- I'm so sorry."

Deke finally stood up, which looked like it took too much effort.  "I just hope Robin can help you find your answers."  His eyes, which were always so expressive, looked red and empty.  The tracks down his face told her that he'd been crying.  Daisy put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it lightly.

"That doesn't look so good."  Daisy gently turned his head to look at his head wound.  "Let's go get you checked out."  

As the two started walking, Daisy was thinking.  She couldn't stay mad at Deke.  He was a scared kid doing what he thought was right, and she can't blame anyone for doing that.

In the short amount of time they had known Deke, the S.H.I.E.L.D team had grown somewhat fond of him.  They would never admit it, but they liked the kid.  So, when Enoch says he has twelve minutes before the Kree capture him, and Deke volunteers to secure the time machine, Daisy says she'll come with.

"I'll come, it'll be better if we take the plane together."  She walks to his side.

"Yeah, no duh."  Deke blocks her path.  "But none of the time travelers can go because you all need to be at the rendezvous when it's turned on, so do the math."

The three adults all understand what he's trying to say, and they don't like it.

"Deke, it's a suicide mission, you can't."  May says.

"You're just a kid," Coulson steps forward, "and you still have your whole life-"

Deke shook his head with a scoff.  "No, nobody who grows up in this place is a kid."  He tells them, taking a few more steps backward.  "Tess has died, Flint's building your magic time travel rock.  You guys gave me a gun and let me decide what to do with Voss.  None of us are kids."  He sighed and glanced behind him.  "And besides-- what are you going to do?  Lock me in my room?"

He turned around and started walking back to the Zypher.

"Be careful!"  Daisy yelled after him.

"You're a pain in my ass!"  Deke shouted back.

- - -

Somehow, through some means, Deke made it to 2018 with the rest of the team.  As soon as Daisy saw his mugshot pop up on the giant screen, relief flooded her veins.  He didn't die with Enoch.  She jumped into action.

The fresh air is heaven to her.  The first time she's breathed it in in weeks and it's amazing.  

"That's my little brother."  Daisy says to the cops in the small town of Rivers End, the ones who arrested the kid they brought back from the future.

Deke stood up, smiling when he saw her through the holding cell.  That was the first time Daisy had seen a real smile on him.

"Are you okay?"  Daisy asked as soon as they were out on the street.  "How are you here?"

"I'm great!"  Deke was still smiling and he was practically skipping beside her.  "I was powering up the time machine, and right before it exploded, the rock kind of melted, and then I ended up here."

"So the first thing you do is commit a crime?"  Daisy raised an eyebrow and indicated an alleyway to walk down.

"In my defense," Deke held the door to the Lighthouse tunnel for Daisy to walk through, "I didn't know you payed for things with paper money in 2018."

"I'm not talking about that."  Daisy shook her head.  "You're only seventeen.  You have to be twenty-one to legally drink alcohol in the United States."  She glanced back and saw his surprise.  "You're lucky the beard makes you look my age or they would have charged you with underage drinking."

Deke didn't say anything to that, except: "Wow . . . "

Daisy hummed in agreement.  "Hey, speaking of your beard," she pointed to a door that lead to the control room, "are you going to shave it?"

Deke gave her a weird look and stopped just before entering the room.  "Why?"

Daisy shrugged and sat down on the spinning chair.  "I don't know.  So you can look your age, maybe?"

The next time things were relatively calm, Deke walked into the control, but didn't say anything for a while.

"What is it?"  Fitz asked, not looking away from his screen.  Deke opened his mouth, closed it, then ran a hand down his face, through his beard that had grown scruffier, if possible.  "Deke?"

"Can you teach me how to shave?"  The kid blurted out.

Fitz stopped what he was doing and turned around.  "What?"

"Never mind."  Deke said quickly, his face going slightly red.  "It's stupid, forget about it."

"It's not stupid."  Fitz stood up and reassured, which stopped Deke in his tracks.  "I'm just surprised, is all.  Nobody taught you in the future?"

"No," Deke shook his head, "it's usually a dad thing, right?"

Fitz winced.  "I'm sorry.  Just give me a minute to finish up and then I'll be free."

"So it's that simple?"  Deke was sitting in front of a mirror, a can of shaving cream and a razor in front of him.

"Basically."  Fitz nodded.  "Just be careful around your neck, it's easy to cut yourself while shaving."

"Thank you," Deke smiled nervously, "this is probably really weird."

Fitz shook his head.  "No, I get it."  He watched the teenager carefully drag the razor down his jaw.  "My dad wasn't around to teach me how to shave, either."

"I'm sorry."  Deke stopped and glanced back.  "Who taught you, then?"

Fitz laughed and leaned against the wall behind him, "My mum did."

"Wait-- girls shave?"  Deke furrowed his brow.  

"Yeah," Fitz laughed again at his surprise, "some of them do."  At the confused look, he clarified.  "Their legs."

"Oh-- ow!"  Deke dropped the razor and leaned closer to the mirror, watching a bead of blood run down his jaw.  Fitz sprung forward and grabbed a wash cloth.

"How bad is it?"  Fitz asked, trying to get a look.

"Not very."  Deke took the cloth and pressed it to his face.  "Faces bleed a lot for minor things, right?"

Fitz nodded.  "Yeah.  You're almost done, do you want to finish?"  He handed over a small adhesive bandage.

Deke covered the cut with the Band-Aid and picked up the razor again.  "I'm guessing this gets easier the more you do it?"

"Yes, it does."  Fitz wiped his hands on a towel then handed it to Deke when he finished shaving.  He clapped his hand on his shoulder.  "Congratulations, you're a man now."  He joked.

Deke rolled his eyes with a smile.  He looked at himself in a mirror, he finally saw what the others did when they called him kid.

- - -

"NO!"

Jemma froze mid-step in the empty hallway.  That was Deke.  There was a crash, and Jemma took off running.  She halted at a doorway to a storage room just in time to watch Deke stab a Kree soldier.  She ran to him as the Kree crumbled to dust.

"Are you okay?"  Jemma put her hand on his shoulder and guided him to sit on the floor.  He fell heavily, staring at a spot just behind her.  "What was it?"

"My . . . my mom."  Dekes voice was hoarse.  "I knew she wasn't real, but I couldn't . . ." he dropped his knife.  "Then the Kreeper just--" he coughed and looked away.

Jemma rubbed his arm comfortingly and sat down across from him on the floor.  "I'm sorry, Deke.  You shouldn't have had to see that."

Deke sniffed and braced his hands on the ground to get up, but stopped and looked at his bicep.  "They're not real, how did it hit me?"

Jemma jumped into action, helping him up and having him take off his jacket.  She ushered him to medical and inspected the deep gash on his arm.  She took out a needle and spool of thread and started stitching the cut closed.  

"I really thought I was done getting choked up about things," Deke said absently while the scientist worked, "I guess I was wrong."

"Well," Jemma didn't look away from her task, "your life has changed very drastically in a very short amount of time.  I wouldn't be surprised if you have mixed emotions."

Deke sighed in frustration and ran his right hand through his hair, showing off the bloody bandage that has been wrapped around his wrist since he took out the metric.  "But everything in the past is so much better."  He stared at the wall in front of him.  "I just-- I don't know what's going on with me."

"You'll figure it out."  Jemma smiled encouragingly as she wrapped his stitched arm with a bandage and then went to change the one on his wrist.  "The steps you take don't have to be big, they just have to take you in the right direction."  The words she had said so many times to so many people rolled off her tongue so easily, but Deke sat frozen on the cot, his eyes wide.  "Are you okay?"

Deke suddenly stood.  "I'm good now, thanks," he took a step toward the door, "I should probably go get my ja--"

"I'll get it."  Jemma gently pushed him back down on the cot.  "Just sit there and rest.  You don't need to risk hurting yourself more."

Jemma felt his eyes on her back as she walked out, but paid it no mind.  She entered the storage room she had found him in, the only evidence they were there being the leather jacket on the floor next to an open box.  She picked up the jacket, smoothed it over her arm, and turned to leave.  But something on the floor glinted and caught her eye.  It was the knife Deke had used to stab the Kree and cut open the tape on the open box.  Jemma bent down to pick it up, and she recognized it.  The number 17 was carved into the side of the multi tool, just the same as Fitz did.  This belongs to Fitz.

"Deke?"  Jemma walked back into the med bay and stopped in front of him, taken off track before she even started.  "I just noticed, I'm sorry, but you shaved?"

He felt his jaw and nodded, looking nervous.  "Fitz taught me."

"Speaking of Fitz--" Jemma set the jacket down and held out the multi took, "why do you have Fitzs knife?"

Deke stopped looking nervous and a confused expression took over.  "What?"  He picked up the knife and examined it.  "No, this is mine.  My grandfather gave this to me when I was a kid.  See-- it's got a little seventeen on it."  He pointed to the number.

That made Jemma even more confused.  "This is . . . this is Fitzs, I swear . . ."

Dekes eyes widened again.  "Oh, my God."  He muttered.

Jemma looked up at him again.  "What is it?"

"This is going to sound really crazy," Deke warned, "but . . . when I was a kid, my mom would always tell me that thing you said earlier.  You know, the steps you take don't have to be big . . ."

"They just have to take you in the right direction."  Jemma finished for him.  He nodded wildly and pointed at her.

"Right!  She said she learned it from her mom, who also taught her a bunch of basic medical procedures, which she taught me-"

"You put Mays metric in without the device everyone else used."  Jemma caught on to his thought process.  "And your grandfather gave you Fitzs multi tool . . ."

Deke smiled nervously, "I think, I think I'm . . ."

"You're our grandson."  Jemma finished for him, and he nodded.   She stared at him, really looked at him for a while.  Freshly shaved, he looked so much like Fitz when they had first joined the team in the field.  She jumped up suddenly and ran to the other side of the room, pulling three test tubes out of a cabinet.  She placed it in Dekes hand.  "Spit in there, I'm going to get Fitz."

She had run out before he could answer.

"Fitz!"  Jemma burst into Control and grabbed her husbands hand.  "Come with me, it's important."

"Jemma, what--?"  Fitz tried, but was cut off as he was dragged away.

"Not now, just follow."  Jemma held one of the test tubes out to him.  "Do you have your multi tool?"

"Yeah, why?"  Fitz held the glass tube in his hand and picked up his pace when he realized they were on their way to the med bay.

Deke was sitting gingerly on one of the cots, holding an empty test tube of his own.

"Deke, I told you to spit in it."  Jemma said, then turned to Fitz.  "You, too.  Spit."

"Why do we have to spit into a--?"

"I'm doing a DNA test."  Jemma answered quickly, hauling out an old microscope from a cabinet and setting it on a lab counter.  "So spit in the tube."

Fitz turned to Deke, a questioning look on his face that was answered with a single sentence.

"I think I'm your grandson."  

Fitz turned away, utterly baffled.  But he complied and spit into his vile, then gave it over to Simmons.

"This might take a while," she told the boys, "the technology is old."

Fitz turned to look at Deke.  "How are we your grandparents?"  He couldn't really comprehend the concept, but he had to try.

"My mom is your daughter, I think."  Deke flushed nervously, then dug around in his pocket, pulling out an old metal knife.  "My grandfather gave this to me when I was younger."  

Fitz furrowed his brow in confusion and dug around his own pockets.  He felt the multi tool Jemma asked about, and he took it out.  It was exactly like the one Deke was holding, just newer.  They both even had the same number scratched into the side.

Minutes passed, with Jemma staring down at the three DNA comparisons the whole time while Fitz asked Deke questions.  

"It's true."  Jemma said suddenly, quietly, but it made both men go silent.  She looked at the two of them from the other side of the room.  "Deke Shaw is our grandson."

The three of them all sat in silence for minutes.  Then, Jemma stood up and walked over to them and hugged them both.

"Should we tell the others?"  Fitz looked to Deke for the answer.

"Why are you asking me?"  Deke tried for a joke.  "You're the adults, here."

- - -

"Woah," Daisy smiled when Deke walked into the room with the rest of the team, what had become the makeshift dining area, "guys, doesn't he look like Fitz when he got out the academy!"  Everyone chuckled at that.  

"Fitz used to shave?"  Elena asked with a smile, fiddling with her new prosthetic.

"Fitz taught me how to shave."  Deke grinned and sat down to serve himself some food.

Coulson hummed and pointed to the small Band-Aid on the teenagers jaw.  "Fitz is rusty, he'd probably do worse the next time he tries."

Even May smiled at that remark.  The team fell into small chatter in small groups.

"Now that I think about it," Mack said when there was a lull in conversation, "Deke's a lot a like Fitz."

The team all made noncommittal noised of agreement, while Deke smiled nervously.  

"You look exactly like Fitz, but with straight hair."  Elena pointed to his hair while, unnoticed by everyone, Fitz and Simmons stopped in one of the entrances to the room.

"The weird little inventions."  Coulson pointed out.  "Fitzsimmons invented the ICERs we use all the time."

Daisy snapped her fingers and pointed to the ceiling.  "You both stand in that weird way!"  She smiled excitedly and stood up, trying to imitate the pose, making everyone laugh again.

Deke looked helplessly at Fitzsimmons with a shrug and a shake of his head.  

"I think we should save him."  Simmons turned to her husband and whispered.

Fitz smiled back at her.  "I think we should wait a little bit, see what he does."

Jemma playfully smacked his arm and walked forward, into the room.  "Stop harassing him."

"He's Fitz with Simmons' hair!"  Daisy pointed between the three.  "I figured it out."

"Deke, you're their son."  Elena joked.

Deke looked to Jemma and Fitz, who glanced at each other before shrugging and nodding.

"Grandson, actually."  The whole team laughed it off, thinking it was part of the joke.  But, upon seeing the serious expressions on their faces, they stopped.

"Wait, seriously?"  May looked between the three of them.  "We brought your grandson back from the future?"

"All of you, line up next to each other."  Mack said.

"I did a DNA test," Jemma told them, "it's true."

"No way."  Coulson smiled wide.  "You two skipped regular children and started with the grandchild!"

"Was this a coincidence or did you know the whole time?"  Elena asked at the same time.

"It was a complete coincidence, we just did the test-- wait-!"  Fitz tried to explain, but couldn't get much further, for Daisy pulled him and his wife into a tight embrace.  

When she let go, she ran to the other side of the room, to Deke, and gave him a hug of his own.  "You're actually family, now!"  She let go and held him at arms length.  "That actually makes so much sense, you being related to them."

"It does?"  Deke shifted awkwardly.

"You and Fitz are both so . . ." she looked at Fitz with a joking expression.  ". . . special."

That was what broke everyone.  The eight of them all laughed, though some more than others.  Piper and Davis stuck their heads into the room.

"What's happening?"  Piper asked.  Coulson explained with one single sentence.

"The kid we adopted is actually Fitzsimmons' grandson from the future."