#surprised because I suppose in this scenario S1 has not happened

[babacontainsmultitudes]

I was relistening to some of the trial arc stuff the other day (aheem heem), and found myself wondering who on earth Nick went to Universal Studios with, since it obviously wasn't Glenn. Then I remembered this adorable dad fact:

have I mentioned that Darryl's dad facts are objectively the best

So yeah, Darryl acting as a substitute dad taking Nick along with them whenever he brought Grant to theme parks true and real and beautiful to me now!

[Which got me thinking about the very non-canonical scenario in which stay-at-home-cooks-and-cleans-and-really-kinda-does-everything-for-his-son coach dad Darryl finds out that Nick sometimes spends a few months at a time by himself due to his dad's line of work and insists that Nick stay at the Wilson household so eventually he does and he and Grant get quite close as a result but Grant can't quite understand why Nick gets so emotional every time the family sits together for dinner and insists on helping Darryl around the house and laughs so wholeheartedly at all his dumb dad jokes and OUGH SORRY IT'S JUST NICK CLOSE MAN OUGHHHH]

[blueaphelion]

Now that I’m caught up on all the Star Wars visual canon (or whatever you’d call the movies and series), I’m starting to speculate more about the upcoming stuff, mainly The Mandalorian season 3 and Ahsoka.

I wonder if Sabine will show up in Mando S3, since it looks like it’ll heavily be about Mandalore itself. She hasn’t been with Ahsoka during the times she shows up in Mando or TBOBF, which could mean any of multiple things:

1. Timeline-wise, we haven’t gotten to the Rebels epilogue yet, which means Sabine is still on Lothal, and Ahsoka has yet to stop by. Maybe Ahsoka is doing some footwork on her own, until she gets some actual leads on Thrawn and Ezra. Since there haven’t been any leads on them yet, Sabine decides to go get involved with whatever is going on with Mandalore when she catches wind of it. This is also why Ahsoka’s clothing/design in the epilogue is so different from what we’ve seen thus far in live action. She hasn’t yet gone through whatever it is she has to go through to become what fans have deemed “Ahsoka The White.”

2. We are past the Rebels epiologue, but for Mandalorian political reasons Sabine has split off from Ahsoka to help her people while Ahsoka continues the search for Thrawn and Ezra, and that’s why we haven’t seen her accompanying Ahsoka in Mando/TBOBF. Whatever happens in season 3 happens, and then we hop over to the Ahsoka series for the storyline that focuses on the search.

3. We are past the Rebels epilogue, and Sabine is with Ahsoka, but for whatever reason we don’t see her the times Ahsoka is on screen. She could be on the same planet doing other things for their cause, or she could be doing mundane things like sleeping on the ship or something (lol).

4. Something else that I’m not thinking of that is totally different than any of the scenarios I described. (Because let’s be real, we can speculate all we want but in the end, the official writers often come up with stuff we never would have dreamed of.)

It really all depends on the timeline. From what I’m observing, the live action series have all been released in chronological order, since Mando S1-2 came first and then The Book of Boba Fett follows after both in-universe and by release dates. In the future, Mando S3 is next, followed by Ahsoka (from what I’m seeing? Neither have had official, specific release dates confirmed yet.) If that’s the case, the events of Ahsoka will take place chronologically after the events of Mando S3.

Also, they seem to really like having characters cross over from one show to the next, especially if they’re a main character in one show and are just a side in another. Because of this, it seems highly likely that Sabine will be in Mando S3, even if she’s only there for like an episode or two as a background character with only a few lines. I mean, she is a Mandalorian, and we have no idea if anything happened to her family during The Purge, or if Krownest was hit at all, or what that situation is.

Also, as someone who is a former wielder of the Darksaber, it seems fitting that she would run into Din at some point. Lots of very interesting things could happen with that, since Din will have then met two former wielders whom are very different from each other. Sabine even still has Ezra’s lightsaber, which could mean some very interesting scenes and conversations. Just sayin’.

At this point, I’m going to drive myself insane thinking about all the “what if’s.” There are infinite possibilities. Do I hope we see Sabine in Mando S3? I love her and think there’s interesting potential for her character there, so yes. Will I be surprised if she isn’t? No. Again, the official writers know more about where the story is supposed to be going than I do. All I can do is sit back and enjoy whatever ride they’ve created for us.

[k-s-morgan]

Hey K :) do you think Will really intended to kill Hannibal via Matthew Brown? To me that was Will’s half-arsed attempt at vengeance and mostly because “he was curious to see what would happen” which is a recurring theme between Hannigram. I don’t think Will actually expected Matthew Brown to succeed because really, what were that guy’s chances trying to kill the Chesapeake Ripper?

I personally think that deep down Will didn’t expect Matthew Brown to succeed, and was surprised when he actually managed to almost kill Hannibal. Same thing with Hannibal sending Randall Tier after Will - it seems more like a game between Will and Hannibal, these half-attempts at killing each other. It’s like they know they will both prevail.

Thoughts?

PS: I know you wanna keep this blog to your fandoms and writing so I wont get into it but I hope all is well with you, your family and friends as much as it’s possible under the circumstances.

Hey! Thank you so much for your wishes and interesting questions, and for your support in general! <3

Hannibal is an easier character to understand, in my opinion, so I'll cover him and Randall first. I have no doubts that Hannibal didn't even consider Will dying. Hobbs, Tobias, Gideon - these were more of a test. Randall was a gift.

Hannibal always embraced the fact that Will is a more righteous kind of killer: ever since S1, he's been sending Will "bad people" as sacrificial lambs. At the same time, Will never risked turning into a vigilante because his motivation for killing is different - like he says repeatedly, he enjoys the feeling of power he gets, not the fact that he rids this world of the darkness. But Will needs excuses to justify his impulses. In E9 of S2, he tries to shoot Ingram, allegedly in defense of Peter. Hannibal warns him against it.

Hannibal: Don't do it for Peter. If you want to kill, Will, you have to do it for yourself.

He thinks Will's design has evolved enough to make him stop hiding behind the excuses. He stops Will's murder attempt. And he's right: in the next episode, Will admits he wanted to kill Ingram because he wanted to experience the same heady feeling he got after killing someone before. He complains to Hannibal that he lost this chance because of him.

Will: I regret what I did in the stables … The mistake was allowing you to stop me.

Hannibal: So, it's not pulling the trigger you regret. It's not pulling it effectively.

Will: That would be more accurate.

When Hannibal asks Will to imagine a scenario he wouldn't have regretted, Will imagines killing Ingram. To Hannibal's question of what he saw, he answers:

Will: A missed opportunity. To feel like I felt when I killed Garret Jacob Hobbs. To feel like I felt when I thought I killed you.

So Hannibal starts to plan. He sends him Randall as a gift in apology for his interruption - Randall is also a bad person, but the difference is, Will kills him for personal reasons, like Hannibal wanted. He throws away the gun and pounces; he murders him even when he's already incapacitated. He does it for himself, not under the pretence of protecting someone. Hannibal wanted to rectify the situation with Ingram by giving Will another, more appropriate and challenging victim. He never doubted Will would succeed, in my opinion. He took it for granted.

Another piece of evidence confirming Randall-as-a-gift theory is this deleted bit from the script: Will was supposed to attach a note to Randall's body when delivering it to Hannibal:

A piece of paper is pinned to his chest. On it is written: "Return to Sender."

With Will and Matthew, it's more complicated. From the text we have, I would say that Will genuinely wanted Hannibal killed. He was full of dark anger and bitterness; he hated the conflicting feelings Hannibal continued to evoke in him. Thinking Matthew is going to succeed is one of the reasons why Will sees himself turning into Will-digo, as the script calls him, aka Will's personal version of Stagman. This was his first conscious murder attempt, and he was committed to it enough for this transformation to happen. Later on, in the Randall episode, Will also admits he thought Matthew would succeed:

Will: [I wanted to] feel like I felt when I thought I killed you.

But was he having doubts and regrets? Yes, I'm certain of it. It's all in the show and in the script, as well as in Will's nature in general. He's incapable of confidently turning against Hannibal, the only person who accepts and understands him. After Matthew goes on his mission, Will is described like this:

Will Graham sits on his bunk, head down, contemplating Hannibal's murder.

Doesn't feel like he's happy or eager. When Alana comes to him:

Will looks at Alana. Wants to tell her.

Alana: Will? What have you done?

Will: What I had to.

He turns from the bars and walks back to his bunk. Alana watches him for a beat, but he doesn't look up.

Same here: he wanted to confess to Alana to give her a chance to save Hannibal. "What I had do" sounds forced: Will saw this as necessity but deep down, he didn't want it.

So I do think Will intended for Matthew to kill Hannibal, but he would have spent the rest of his life regretting this. This was the first and last time he came this close to seriously planning Hannibal's murder.

[nat-20s]

this is a Wild™ prompt so no pressure to actually do it, but i’ve had the scenario of “somehow s5 martin ends up in s1-s2, has to figure out how to deal with that” and if u want a narrower thing, maybe how he reacts to seeing someone again/for the first time? (Sasha, Juergen Leitner, Prentiss, etc)

Please have fun with Whatever this is:

“Don’t go wandering off in the middle of the apocalypse” seems like a pretty simple rule to follow. “Especially don’t go through any weird doors, Christ, Martin, how can that possibly be a good idea on any level, do you remember nothing from the last five years of your existence?” also seems like a generally easy thing to keep in mind. And yet, Martin is guilty of the same sin that appears to be intrinsic of all of those who find themselves under the influence of the eye, his need to know something overriding his common sense. In his defense, the door was only like 2 meters away and he wasn’t planning on going through it or even touching it at all. He just wanted to look, because it appeared to be made of a liquid version of frosted glass, and it was translucent enough that he could sort of make out the other side of it. As he got closer, he confirmed that the other side of the door a: definitely didn’t match the rest of their own little hell-scape, and b: seemed familiar in a way he couldn’t quite make sense of.  

Of course, in the dream logic of their reality, you don’t have to place your hand on the door knob in order for you to enter some place new. All it takes is getting within a foot of the door, squinting to futilely try and bring the scene across from him into better focus, and a blink and suddenly he is not where he’s supposed to be. Instead, he is staring down the hallway of his former apartment complex, watching as a familiar woman attired in a red dress and countless words is steadily knocking at his door. There’s a weight in his hands that wasn’t there before, and he looks down to find a fire extinguisher in prime position to be fired. Huh. How serendipitous.

Martin’s surprised to find that he doesn’t feel afraid, not in this moment. It appears that for all the two weeks spent hiding from her still frequent more often than not in his nightmares, for all that the sight of canned peaches still makes him nauseous, in his (probably) waking hours, she is far less intimidating than the myriad of horrors he has faced since. Or, perhaps, it’s simply that he is actually equipped to face her, and that takes away some of the teeth of his fear. Any semblance of preparation, of a plan, has given him comfort when he had little else, and that continues on now. Admittedly, though, while he does have preparation for this encounter, his plan is little more than “get Prentiss off of my fucking lawn and then see where we go from there” before he’s striding towards her.

He’s able to get close to her, about as close as he’s willing to get, before she takes any notice of him. Once he’s about five feet away, she turns her head, and briefly pauses that incessant, infuriating knocking. She gets as far as saying, “Oh, aren’t you inter-” before he sends a spray of foam directly to her face. It’s far from enough to kill her, but it’s enough to kill off some of the worms, so there’s no way that it doesn’t at least sting quite a bit. The CO2 makes her stutter and take several steps back, swatting at the foam at an attempt to get it off.

He considers pulling the handle once again, but he’s really more concerned with getting her to leave than hurting her further, and he doesn’t to run out of ammo this early should she recover and decide to go on the attack. However, he likes to think he’s not too much of a fool, so he keeps the nozzle trained on her as she becomes less frantic.

Finally she stills her swatting, breathing heavily and glaring at him, as much as she can make any sort of facial expression with what’s left of her face. “That was rather rude of you, little one. And we are trying to offer you an escape from being so tragically singular.”

Martin raises the nozzle slightly higher, just enough to bring focus to the motion as he replies, “Yeah, well, it was rude of you to stalk my apartment for two weeks and try to kill me and my coworkers, so forgive me if I don’t feel all that grateful for your oh so generous offer.”

“Hmm. So you are his future. That’s a shame. We are made so loneliness is impossible, it would not wrap itself so throughly into your form. Our love could still be given to you, in this time.”

“I have no interest in your hollow version of love. He has no interest in it. Now, leave.”

Prentiss give an airy wave of her hand, and the worms that had been trying to find any crack in the sealed door come crawling back to their home. “Fine, fine. This was just a bit of fun, anyway. I’ll be seeing him soon enough anyway.”

Martin makes a hum of acknowledgement, though he response makes little difference to her taking her leave. There’s a few silver-grey disgusting stragglers that be promptly and throughly kills with a combination of the fire extinguisher and some well placed stomps. It’s only after he finishes this that the hesitation hits him, the trepidation curling low in his stomach until it solidifies into something akin to fear. He’ll take a worm monster over facing himself any time of any day.

What would he even say to himself? Good luck, the next years of your life are completely fucked? Hey, congratulations, you actually made it to your 30s, so that’s a bit of surprise, but you’re almost certainly not going to get to 35? Don’t talk to a man named Peter Lukas, or maybe just avoid any Lukases in general? Maybe he should lie, tell him things are going to turn out okay when they’re definitely not?

Wait, okay, maybe he has something with the Peter tip. If there’s an opportunity to give this version of him some advice that could prevent future grief, he might as well go for it. It’s like, how badly could he actually mess up the time line with his interference? The world could end again? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Upon the realization that basically no matter what he does right now there’s basically no where to go up but up, he makes an executive decision to go in there and confront himself head on. Hell, maybe that’s the Thing that’s needed to get him back to Jon.

As he goes to turn the door handle he also, briefly, thinks that he should bring up that he’s madly in love with someone who feels the same. It’s not immediately relevant for trying to prevent some of the mistakes he’s made, but Martin remembers being 28, utterly convinced both that love was real and something that was completely unattainable for something like him. Being wrong on the second part of that conviction is one of the few true comforting things he can provide.

The door is, of course, locked, so he goes with plan B. Turns out fire extinguishers are rather handy for smashing things, and he brings it down several times in rapid succession until the knob breaks. There’s one step down, but he had forgotten about the furniture barricade that had been put in place. He can get the door open about 7 centimeters before it refuses to budge, and he begins to wonder if all of this is an exercise in futility. At least his voice won’t be muffled when he calls out, “Martin? You in there?”

There’s nothing but silence, and he sighs and leans his head against the apartment door. “Seriously, Martin, could you respond? And maybe move some of this furniture? If you’re dead that means things are way more messed up than I expected.”

After a beat, a strained voice calls out, “Oh, so a bad impersonation of me is part of your dumb monster powers now? Piss off!”

After a groan and an eyeroll, Martin calls back “I’m not-!” before cutting himself off. He meant to say “I’m not a monster, I’m you” but both of those things are only about 60-70% true. Instead he goes with, “I’m not an impersonation. If I was something pretending to be someone else to get inside, wouldn’t I pick one of your coworkers coming to get you? Like Tim or Jon or Sa- you know, um, one of them?”

Silence.

“You have a peephole, right? You could look through it, confirm that I’m not worm-infested?”

He doesn’t hear a response with words, but he does hear the sounds of motion coming from inside. After a few minutes, the furniture is pushed aside, and the door is opened for him. Jesus, the guy on the other side of the door looks like shit. He probably doesn’t look much better, apocalypse grime covering every inch of him, but still. The man in front of him has deep bags under his eyes and a gauntness to his face that will take a while to ease. Worst of all, he looks painfully young and painfully afraid, and while Martin can recognize himself on a logical level, there’s a forced disconnect that makes him feel like he’s looking at a stranger. The knife that’s being held between them probably doesn’t help matters.

His former self’s voice shakes with a mix of adrenaline and exhaustion. “You got the hair color wrong. And the age.”

“That’s because I’m 32. Also, still not an impersonation.”

“My hair goes white in 5 years?”

“Not in the natural way. You know those hokey stories where people are so scared their hair turns white? That’s...sort of what happened. And it’s not going to happen to you, if I can help it.”

That’s the wrong thing to say, apparently, as the younger Martin’s face twists up. It’s a lot, Martin thinks it’s a lot and he’s far more experienced in the reality of the esoteric, but sometimes things being a lot is unavoidable, and he’s pretty sure time travel is one of those cases. He shrugs in response to the younger’s confusion, and says, “Can I come in? I think I’m here to dole out some advice, and I’d honestly prefer to do while not standing in worm corpses.”

He’s studied for a few brief moments, before he’s told, “You broke my doorknob.”

“You’re never gonna live here again, and it’s not like you were getting the security deposit back anyway. Does it matter?”

The younger one’s face collapses, despondent when he replies, “But. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Martin’s been experiencing a nauseating mixture of anger, pity, and compassion while seeing his past self, but that’s enough to kick in his care-taking instincts, and he really just wants to wrap the guy in a blanket. That’s not going to help either of them, but what he says next might. With a frankly ridiculous wave of fondness for that uncomfortable cot (or, more accurately, for the memory of a certain someone offering said cot), “You will. After you go back to the institute, you, um, you won’t have to stay here again.”

Martin, junior edition, only looks more lost, but he does step aside to let Martin inside the apartment even if he doesn’t lose his death grip on the knife. Martin pulls the door behind him, and as he does so, it transforms into the door that got him in this mess, so looks like he made the right choice. It doesn’t immediately take him (hopefully) back to his own time, but Martin’s gut is telling him that he won’t be spending much longer here. “Okay, so, you have a notebook around here, right? Because I’m about to dump quite a bit of information on you all at once, and I happen to know that our memory for things of this sort is not fantastic.”

The younger one glances over to the table where a notebook and pen are laying and while he moves towards it, he’s clearly hesitant to occupy both his hands with writing. The precaution makes sense, but Martin’s getting tired of it nonetheless due to a combination of running out of time and generally being tired of people seeing him as a threat. With a sigh, he tries his best to evenly say, “The next few years are going to be, um, messed up, to say the least, but hopefully if you have more information than I did, they’ll be less messed up.”

Younger Martin finally concedes, putting the knife down to pick up the pen, and flips the notebook open. Primed to start writing, he gives slight nod of his head to tell Martin to keep talking. Martin takes a breath, lets it out, and spills everything he can think of. “Okay, most immediately, CO2 kills Prentiss’s worms, and enough of it will kill her. A fire suppressant system will do the trick, but make sure there’s a way to actually trigger it inside of the archives. Makes sure the weird spooky table doesn’t get destroyed, it seems like it should be destroyed, this instinct is wrong. Generally speaking, you should get a buddy system set up, as it’s usually when people go off on their own that particularly bad things start to happen, whether it’s on an investigation or going to America. Speaking of, don’t let Jon go to America. Don’t let Tim go to stop the Unknowing. The Unknowing won’t work anyway, but you’ll probably still want to have the circus blown up, just make sure everyone is doing it from a distance. Don’t let yourself work for Peter Lukas, actually don’t interact with Peter Lukas, except maybe to, I don’t know, hit him with a shovel. And most importantly, kill Elias Bouchard as soon as possible-”

“-What?!-”

“-and in particular make sure you destroy the eyes, that’s vital to this whole thing. Turns out he’s actually a 200 year old scumbag named Jonah Magnus, you know, the founder of the institute, and by getting rid of him, you’ll save yourself a quite literal world of pain.”

“I don’t, what, I don’t think I could kill somebody-”

Martin felt a sharp tug towards the door, and he knew his time here was up. “Oh, wow, I really have changed, huh. Anyway, uh, final notes: you’re not going to end up alone and unloved and forgotten before you’re even fully gone, so feel free to lay that fear that occupies a disconcertingly large amount of your mental space to rest. Good luck, and try not to die!”

Before he can hear his other self’s response, he’s back in the wastelands he currently calls a twisted version of home, and Jon’s arms are wrapped around his neck in a fierce hug. As far as he can tell, nothing’s changed from his little literal trip down memory lane. There’s a few explanations for it, but since Martin’s not going to go out of his way trying to prove any of them, he choses to believe in the one that’s the most hopeful; that somewhere, out there, with some well timed words, there’s a universe that has turned out kinder than their own.

[aros001]

Going in blind: Watching season 2 for the first time. Random thoughts.

Huh. Only 7 episodes. Not complaining necessarily. For series with an ongoing plot I've definitely become more in favor with their seasons only having as many episodes as they need rather than them having to stretch themselves out to full up a certain number of episodes, which can lead to padding and just bad character moments.

Episode 1: Jeez. Catra visiting Shadow Weaver's cell just to rub her success in her face and verbally abuse her back for once. It's like a twisted version of Zuko and Ozai from ATLA. Catra's upbringing under her was abusive but this is far from a healthy way for her to deal with it. She's basically deliberately swimming in her resentment.

Episode 2: It's not that I'm rooting for her but by-golly was it fun to watch Catra act like just the absolute worst she could while she was Glimmer and Bow's captive.

I touched on this in season 1 but part of the drama of the heroes feeling guilt over leaving Entrapta behind is kind of lost on me a bit simply because it was her own fault it happened. She deliberately went back into the purge room because of her machine obsession, which then closed on her and erupted in flames. It was more than reasonable to assume she was dead and no one but her was to blame, so I'm not really able to be invested in their guilt over it.

That said, weirdly enough I do like that her "abandonment" doesn't seem to be even a blip on the radar for Entrapta herself. She hasn't joined the horde because she resents the heroes or felt left behind, she simply is so obsessed with machines and experimentation that she'll be on the side of whoever lets her do the most of that. Like, it's selfish and irresponsible but it's very in-character and I'd far rather have a traitor motivation be based in that over something stupid like a misunderstanding.

Episode 3: I love the mental image of Shadow Weaver thinking up princess-themed ghost stories to tell Adora as a child.

So, if the previous She-Ra Mara separated Eternia from the other realms/planets/whatever she did and that's what cut off the She-Ra line for 1000 years, I'm guessing Hordak may be from the time before that happened, thus his drive to create portals and calling Eternia a backwards world. Either he's naturally long-lived or his technology is extending his life.

Episode 4: You know, you could maybe argue it was vague enough that it could be taken other ways but I'm definitely getting some vibes here that Scorpia is crushing on Catra. She literally refers to the two of them as soulmates at one point. I know she says she's trying to be friends but this feels a level beyond that.

Fun little reference to the original She-Ra cartoon thrown in there (and maybe Cowboy Bebop...? James Bond...? What was Glimmer's art style supposed to be?). I like how it is more like just playful ribbing than anything outright dumping on the original. Again, I've never seen original She-Ra but whenever remakes/adaptations go out of their way to trash to the original I always kind of wonder why they bothered doing an adaptation if the original is just that bad? Also, I was having trouble sleeping so it was about 2am when I watched this episode and the very Eartha Kitt Catwoman Catra made it very difficult for me not to lose my **** and stay quiet. With how much of a contrast that version is from the one in this series, that was hilarious. Bonus note, it's a nice touch that Frosta's version of Catra is a pretty crasher in that sweet suit, since that's the only impression of Catra she's ever had.

Adora being a chosen one is definitely elevated up simply by how much the pressure of what she's supposed to be is getting to her. I'm likely going to keep making Avatar The Last Airbender comparisons throughout the series but that's partly because I went into this series figuring it'd be at least structured similar to ATLA (season 1 being more episodic and a little more kid-friendly as it builds up the world before getting more serious later). Adora and Aang are interesting to compare here. Aang's worries early on were less apparent because he was more in-denial/choosing not to think about his problems that much, which fit with his character as a free-spirited Air Nomad. While Adora is much more military-minded. She can't keep herself from thinking about her problems and trying to prepare for the worst-case scenario. And jeez, that idea of who/how Catra is in her mind. Not only beating her but making her watch as she takes everything she cares about away. Not Shadow Weaver, not Lord Hordak, but Catra. That whole Lion King Mufasa/Scar moment between them in episode 11 and their fight in the S1 finale really did a number on her mental image of her old friend. Not reasonably so.

Minor note: I'm sure I'm the only one who got this impression but by the look of it, the way the robot's eye moved, and the music, after getting the soda spilled on it that little spybot gained sentience for half a second and then immediately died. It was so darkly comedic I had to laugh.

Episode 5: So that red disc is basically She-Ra's Red Kryptonite, having an effect on the mind rather than the body. The drunk Adora joke doesn't really do it for me but it did get some nice interactions going between Scorpia and Sea Hawk, two characters I certainly wasn't expecting to bond. I did really like Catra's panic when berserker She-Ra nearly beheads her. The implication is that is Adora really wanted to kill her Catra would already probably be dead. It's a thing I like about powerhouse characters like Superman or Aang, who could just demolish everything around them and don't simply because they're a good person...which in turn makes them the scariest person on the planet when they're well and truly ticked off. I'm not going to lie, I do kind of want to see a She-Ra version of Aang when Appa was stolen or when Superman fought The Elite.

Also, Catra's line of "I have control over Adora. I'm not giving that up for anything.". There's a lot to read into there.

Episode 6: I guess my prediction was sort of right. Shadow Weaver became basically a magic parasite and while it did increase the power she's capable of the implication seems to be that she needs a constant fix of magic to keep herself going, thus her attachment to the Black Garnet.

Have we seen Micah before? Given how long ago the flashback seems set, the fact that Shadow Weaver didn't kill him and thus he probably becomes someone important later in life, I'm guessing he's Glimmer's dad and the queen's late husband, since I think he's the only important male character whose face we haven't seen yet. Also, he's voice by Ezra from Star Wars Rebels and that cracks me up for some reason. It's the exact same voice and a relatively similar character.

I compared Catra and Shadow Weaver with a kind of twisted version of Zuko and Ozai and that definitely still fits here. Both Catra and Zuko confront their parent and call them out for the inexcusable abuse they put them through but while that moment was the start of Zuko's upwards journey this and SW's betrayal seems like it's going to cause Catra to spiral even further. Makes sense why Adora leaving affected her so much. She's probably the only one Catra's ever had that she could consistently trust and rely on, even if she did somewhat resent her.

Not surprised Hordak is getting along with Entrapta. She's not socially aware enough to be scared or intimidated by him, so she'll speak frankly, and since all she wants to talk about is the machines, experiments, and how they could get them to work Hordak probably doesn't take much issue with that. She's producing results, which is what he cares about, thus also why Shadow Weaver and Catra started losing favor with him. I wonder if Catra is going through imposter syndrome? Shadow Weaver had that line that Entrapta earned her place next to Hordak and, if you think about it, Catra hasn't really "earned" anything. We saw that she didn't really take her training or studies that seriously, showing up late to combat practice and even getting partial credit for what Adora beat. She wasn't promoted to Force Captain because of her own abilities but because Adora had defected when she was supposed to get that title. She's come close to a few victories but never really had any except for Glimmer and Bow's kidnapping...whom she then basically let escape when she returned Adora's sword to her. She doesn't have the slightest clue how the horde's bureaucracy works when trying to get things done, like simply getting troops armor. Given how much better than her Adora always was and how little she herself has to her name, I wonder is subconsciously Catra believes she doesn't deserve her current position and thus why she's fretting so much over trying to prove herself.

Episode 7: Am I mistaken or did Bow's parents say that he's the youngest of TWELVE siblings? I was going to ask whether Bow was adopted or if his dad's used a surrogate or if maybe there's even just simply magic in She-Ra's world that allows two people of the same sex to have a child together but now I'm just focused on the 12 kids thing. I get nervous just imagining myself having more than one. You should see me when I'm with two cats. I have to pet both of them because I'd feel like I'd be making one feel left out and like the other is the favorite. I'm a mess with kids.

The dad with dreadlocks (Lance?), his design looked familiar to me and I finally realized it reminded me a of a fanart design for a human Grim from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. Very different voices between those two characters though.

I wonder if there's any significance to the robot protecting the crystal having the same design as those in the artic in episode 5? Obviously both have the connection to the First Ones but the robot in the forest who was also protecting First Ones' tech had a more insect-like design over these more worm/Graboid ones.

I'm kind of curious what Hordak would have done if Catra had told the truth. Given his interactions with her and Shadow Weaver he doesn't seem like the time to tolerate failure but I suppose the implication here is that he at least would respect those who own up to their failures. Or I suppose more simply he was just testing to see if she would lie to him and since she did there's little merit in keeping her in a position of authority anymore where she could lie about important things again.

Season 2 verdict: Still enjoying it. Another person on this reddit recommended I view seasons 2 and 3 as one since they are basically just one season split in two. I was going to do that but this ended up longer than I thought I would, so I'll just do 2 and 3 separate to keep them semi-organized and easier to read.

I think overall Catra is my favorite character since she has the most interesting backstory, interactions, and just general path through the story out of everyone. She's like Pearl from Steven Universe or, well, Zuko. There's just so much baggage there that she's trying and kind of failing to deal with. I'm always invested in whatever's happening when she's onscreen. Hordak so far is a good big boss villain for Adora to face but Catra is a good archenemy for her.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/PrincessesOfPower/comments/o027y3/going_in_blind_watching_season_2_for_the_first/

[emberphantom]

Concept: Mac isn’t really in love with Dennis. He’s been faking the entire time as part of a bet/experiment as to whether or not he can make Dennis fall in love with him. As soon as Dennis confesses his feelings, the experiment will end and he’ll be debriefed. (Alternatively, everyone Dennis hasn’t known since school is actually an actor playing characters written by Dee and it’s all a Truman show situation to see how far they can push Dennis.)

I...wow. I totally think either scenario would COMPLETELY break Dennis. Dude is hanging by a very loose thread at all times to begin with but finding out most of everything in his life has been a complete lie? He'd snap. I mean look what happened in Broke Dee. That wasn't even supposed to be a prank on him and it fucked him up. 

Okay and let's talk about the first one because that's super fucked up but I'm kinda living for it? It's definitely a role reversal for Mac and Dennis. Tbh I cannot see current Mac doing something like this but young Mac (s1-5), I'd buy it. 

BUT there’s also no way Mac doesn’t fall in love with Dennis in the process and then feel guilty about the whole thing only to call it off once things get Too Real. 

And whoops my hand slipped and I wrote another mini fic: 

Him and Dee made the bet in high school because they thought it would be funny and Mac is all "Have you seen me? I could make any one fall in love with me." And Dee's all "Prove it." 

Charlie doesn't know the full extent of it because I think he'd probably let it slip to Dennis. 

So because of that, Mac has so be kind of subtle about it around the Gang. He turns it up a few notches when they're alone though. It takes forever. Like years. Because Dennis is stubborn and on a good day, has one (1) feeling.

Dennis graduates college, they get an apartment together. They buy the bar. Dee's wondering what the fuck is taking so long and Mac insists this is all part of his plan. 

The Gay Bar Scheme sets Mac's progress back a bit, and he swears Dee did it on purpose to try to mess everything up. Stupid bitch. 

It takes a while for Mac to get back on track. Dennis and Dee’s dad shows up one day out of the blue and actually sticks around. Mac starts banging Carmen. He sleeps with Dennis and and Dee’s mom which, he really thought would help move things along. It...did not. 

The turning point Mac needs comes in the most insane and unexpected way. They get held hostage by the McPoyle’s in their own goddamn bar. It’s absolutely batshit. 

There’s a real moment there where Mac thinks they’re not going to make it out alive. Mac tells Dennis he loves him, which Dee will argue later is against the rules of the bet, like watching Dennis’s sex tapes. Mac will tell her that there are no rules, that’s strictly for research purposes. He won’t tell her that, in that moment, he’d completely forgotten about the bet. 

Dennis never mentions it. Hell, he barely even acknowledged it when it happened. Mac starts to think God is punishing him for everything. He knows it’s wrong and kind of gay but..it’s a joke. And Mac’s pretty sure God can take a joke. He plans on explaining the whole thing to him when he gets up there anyway. He’s sure they’ll laugh about it. 

But Mac starts to notice something that makes him think God does have a sense of humor after all: Dennis starts touching him. Like. A lot. Like, more than he’s pretty sure he ever has.  

They’ve always been inseparable but now it feels...different. They hang out all the time and when they’re not physically together, they can’t go even an hour without texting one another. 

Mac starts to realize his evil plan is finally working. 

He sits back and let’s Dennis take the lead. Mac’s planted the seed and now he’s got to just wait for the flower to grow. 

He pretends not to notice when Dennis starts inching closer to him on the couch during movie night. He lets Dennis pretend to fall asleep on his shoulder. 

During Charlie’s musical, Mac starts to lay things on a little thicker. He acts like he doesn’t realize how this is all coming off--like it’s all just him playing the character. (The boner he popped on stage is irrelevant. His body was also in character.) 

Mac realizes he wants to kiss Dennis in the middle of a strangers living room in a house they’re trying to flip for a profit. Well--no wait. It’s Dennis who wants to kiss him, obviously. There’s no other explanation for it. You don’t just cup someone’s face like that, call them ‘baby boy’ like that if you don’t want to play tonsil hockey. 

They pretend to be a couple. “Partners in Real Estate and Partners in life.” “He’s my bottom.” Dennis won’t take his hands off him. Mac’s got him right where he wants him. 

That night, Dennis kisses him. 

(It’s about goddamn time.)

Mac doesn’t tell Dee. She doesn’t need to know. Not yet. He wins the bet when the words “I love you,” un-ironically come out of Dennis’s mouth. 

It’s surprising how much doesn’t change between them. Aside from where Mac sleeps, it’s really not that different. He’s just getting laid more and it...it’s fucking great. Mac thinks it’s probably because of all that adrenaline he gets knowing he’s winning the bet. 

Everything’s going great until Dee finally catches on. 

It’s a Tuesday. They just wanted a bowl for popcorn. They didn’t need Dee to stick her giant nose all up in their business. 

“It's funny 'cause I feel like you guys are two codependent losers who are so wrapped up in each other that it's hard for you to see how pathetic your lives are. It's like you're an old married couple.” 

They laugh at it. But, Mac can see the wheels turning in Dennis’s head. 

Dennis takes too long at the video store and that’s when shit hits the fan. Yeah Mac panicked but that’s only because he really REALLY wants to win this bet. And he can’t do that if Dennis is fucking some video store twink. 

They argue. Dennis wants to be left alone. Mac wants to know where this is coming from (he knows but he wants to hear Dennis say it.) 

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what Dee said and I do think maybe we are spending a little bit too much time together.” 

Son of a bitch. 

Mac leaves and Dennis let’s him go. On the way to Charlie’s, Mac calls Dee and tells her that’s cheating--she’s not allowed to interfere in the bet. They had a deal. She tells him she can do whatever the fuck she wants then hangs up because something about her stupid cat. Mac stopped listening. 

He’s at Charlie’s for a few hours when Dennis calls. He’s a Dee’s apparently and Mac’s heart sinks. She’s going to fuck everything up beyond repair. There’s no way he’s going to win the bet now...not because he actually really misses Dennis. 

Mac’s resigned himself to the fact it’s over. The bet, his relationship with Dennis. It’s done. Bye. See ya. But then Dee calls him, and she sounds pissed off and stressed the fuck out. She tell him to be at this restaurant at this time for a “date with a beautiful woman with giant breasts”. Well, Mac thinks, at least she knows how to apologize. 

He gets there early and sits down at the table by himself. He’s nervous, which is unlike him. He’s a badass, he never gets nervous. Mac tells himself it’s because he’s meeting a really hot chick, not because he’s not sure if he’s ready for this thing with Dennis to be over. He orders a rum and coke. Then another. Because alcohol solves everything. 

Dennis walks in with Dee and Mac has never been so close to committing murder. What the fuck is she trying to pull? 

Mac doesn’t have time to ask. She leaves in a hurry, muttering something about getting a bird. 

“She looks like a bird.” 

And...fuck. Mac missed Dennis so much. 

They make-up and make-out on the way home. They invite Charlie and Frank over to watch a movie and once the Grusome Twosome leaves and they’re finally alone again. 

It’s dark, it’s late and it’s quiet. Dennis joins Mac on the couch after he’s tossed some beer bottle into recycling. He’s looking at him like he’s seeing Mac for the first time and Mac feels his throat tighten. 

Dennis starts talking, and Mac starts to panic. He thought he’d be able to see this moment coming a mile away but he’s not prepared for this. Dennis is telling him how sorry he is for everything. How he let Dee get into his head. How stupid it was. 

How he realized the reason why he panicked so much was “Because I think I’m in l-” 

“Dennis.” Mac cuts him off as everything comes crashing down on him all at once.  His heart’s pounding in his chest, ready to burst through his chest at any moment. 

He should’ve called this off when he had the chance. Dee definitely gave him a few outs over the years but he said No. When he made that stupid bet all those years ago, so young and so high, he never thought it would end up like this. 

Mac didn’t think he’d be the one to end up falling in love with his best friend. 

But, if he let’s Dennis say it, then what? They become a real couple? They tell the Gang so Dee can lay everything all out on the table. Tell Dennis that everything was just a big joke--even though it stopped being one for Mac longer than he cared to admit. Mac could deny his part in the whole thing, but Dennis would believe him. 

So Mac has to let him off the hook now, by crushing his best friend’s heart into dust. 

“I think Dee was right,” Mac says finally. He can’t even look Dennis in the eye.  “I can’t--I don’t think we should do this anymore...” 

To drive the final nail into the coffin, he adds, “Plus, y’know I’m not even gay.” 

Dennis doesn’t say anything for a long time. Mac shrugs and tells him “Sorry.” Then he gets up and goes to his room, shutting the door behind him. 

He calls Dee to tell him the bet’s off. To his surprise, she let’s him off the hook. Tells him it was about time he admitted defeat after all these years. Mac calls her a bird and hangs up. That night he goes to sleep alone. 

The next day at the bar, Dennis unveils the D.E.N.N.I.S. System. It’s a low blow, but Mac deserves it. 

They don’t check in much anymore. On movie night, the stick to their corners of the couch. Dennis marries Maureen Ponderosa and Mac thinks that means he’s off the hook. 

Until they’re wasted and dancing and giggling back in their apartment and it feels like old times except Dennis’s wife is there. And he turns but then says to Mac, “I don’t love you Maureen. I...I never loved you.” 

And Mac thanks God he called off the bet. 

[the-nysh]

Waaait uhhh, can I hear about some prominent season one characters; Sonic, Mumen Rider, the S classes (in particular; Tatsumaki) and Lord Boros?

Oho, ok let’s see... :D Again, I read the manga before s1 aired, so I’m basing my honest first impressions off of that (and what I can remember).

Sonic: from his first introductory panels, I remember being excited/intrigued he might be a girl! :O Like, ‘ohh?? A ruthless dark assassin who’s female? That’s pretty fresh/neat!’ Until he was revealed as a dude and I was like, ‘oh. ok.’ Then my interest in him honestly waned. ;o; Simply put, his character’s appeal in the fandom just wasn’t ‘my type’ either. Also because many of his appearances and use in the story were mostly for gags, it wasn’t until ONE finally fleshed out his backstory with Flash (in the webcomic, yes it took that long) that I was like, ‘oho, NOW we’re getting somewhere!’ 8′D That his character finally gained more appeal/substance to me rather than being mostly used as the butt end of a joke. So whew;; I was so glad ONE finally wrote him seriously to be able to appreciate him for real. :’D

Mumen Rider: back then, he went by ‘Licenseless’ in the fandom. A very good, wholesome lad who’s self-aware but also knows what’s best and when to act when it’s the right, helpful thing to do. :’) He feels like the warm comfort of a mug of hot cocoa on a brisk, chill winter morning~

S Class: at first, nothing resonated about them in particular, other than recognizing they were all outlandish & traditional character tropes (on purpose, yes even the offensive/outdated ones to western eyes) that ONE was playing around with and/or deconstructing for the lulz.

Tatsumaki: a little bratty and grating in attitude at first, but seeing how she’s an honest workaholic and asserts her strength brought to the workforce...yes, that’s something I can work with. A bit shockingly heartless in the wc, but the manga fleshing out her character more, and demonstrating both her prowess and efficiently as a hero, now that’s definitely served her well. If it weren’t for Blast’s placeholder then yes, Tatsu would be the top, most active hero! I’m impressed.

Boros: a very flashy and flamboyant dbz parody. Extremely (unfortunately) short-lived too. His presence almost feels out of place in the story looking back in hindsight. But his character marked the end/turning point of opm’s ‘introduction/prologue’ saga, before it could switch from something episodic into something more legit/serious with an ongoing plot~ So I kinda look back at him ruefully, but appreciate how the story transitioned because of him too. :’)

I also wanna hear what you thought about some season two characters other than wolfie; Fubuki, Suiryu (tho I remember going real far back in your blog and you being blunt about not liking the tournament arc, unless I'm misremembering ^^'), Lord Orochi & Gyoro Gyoro. (Also ofc gotta ask if you feel for King's "persona". I remember being genuinely shocked lol.)

Part 2 with s2 characters continued! (Oho other than wolf boy~)

Fubuki: other than her gorgeous face and inferiority complex vs her sister (giving her flaws with which her character can grow), it was specifically her manipulative behaviors (trying to recruit Saitama with ulterior motives, rather than being honest/upfront about it) that honestly put me off about her. Since manipulative characters are not my thing. (Also some trivia: when I showed my mom s2, who yes liked Genos the most in s1 and got feels for Garou in s2, even she disproved of Fubuki too!) So yes, I can honestly say I generally prefer Tatsu over her. However, I feel Fubuki’s strongest character moment is when she finally confronts and asserts herself vs Tatsu in the wc’s post-Garou arc. Which made me honestly proud of her progress. :’) So I hope to see that part (and Fubuki’s true strength) Murata-adapted someday.

Suiryu: so the manga’s tournament arc in general wasn’t my thing either (but I believe gofancy was the one who was most openly blunt about not liking how it overstayed its welcome + real estate.) Simply because it was the first major diversion from the wc, and I remember how Murata’s pace was pretty slow back then too, leading many fans to dropping and/or putting the manga on hold for a while. :’) Suiryu’s initial character wasn’t my type either, for the overconfident, dismissive, sleazy/lazy, self-serving flirty/womanizer traits. Also wasn’t my thing. But I felt his incoming Gouketsu-beatdown was...unfairly brutal. D: Made me feel honestly bad for him. (Yikes, ONE doesn’t hold back at all when characters get their humbling comeuppance.) I’m glad he’s since had a change of heart and seen the value/light of true heroism (which warmed me up to him), but I still don’t know what to think about his wc’s counterpart (which honestly surprised me to see ONE use a previously manga-only character!) Wc Suiryu feels different in vibe, like he’s yet to undergo that same character development. But it seems ONE’s got further plans for Suiryu’s use in the story this way, so I’m eager to see what that’ll be..

Orochi & Gyoro (Psykos): first time seeing Gyoro in the manga I was like !!! 8D because it meant wc Psykos was incoming~ But seeing Orochi I was like w h a t. Because Psykos (Gyoro) was supposed to be the MA’s figurehead, but she was tiny and unassuming compared to...this new guy puppet (??) (She’s now the villain mastermind behind the scenes -played straight- I guess!) So there was confusion at first to what in the world ONE was thinking by presenting them this way! And well, by now Orochi’s inclusion (as the ‘monster king’ to rival what wc Garou would have dominated) has certainly escalated things and wreaked havoc....but we’ve still yet to see how things will resolve following their fusion. So...a big unknown of uncharted territory that’s difficult to form an honest impression about, other than...I’ll wait to see what happens.    

King: I personally found his ‘persona’ reveal to be a brilliant twist. :’D He’s also eternally suffering and can’t easily escape from what others assume of him, so wow, I do feel for him. Also probably one of most self-aware, sound of mind (Reigen-equivalent) characters with the most common sense in opm, so that’s pretty fresh/valuable to have. I also personally find his moments to be some of the funniest/absurd in the whole series (especially his wc staredown vs the MA cadres, that’s hilarious) for how he -an otherwise non-powered but anxious guy- manages to survive and bullshit his way out of increasingly ridiculous scenarios! So yes, a very unique and entertaining character who brings some interesting spice to the opm character roster. :D

[seven-oomen]

Yay, I’m glad you’re feeling better!  I’ve still got some time before work, so have a few more thoughts.  :D

First, re: Laura’s age, I’m pretty sure that if she was allowed to legally take Derek (16 at best at the time) with her to NY (which I assume she was or I’m sure it would have been mentioned by either Stiles or Noah), she would have had to be at least 18, possibly 21 at the time (I think that might vary state to state, I know 18 is CA legal age for sex) that they left (and she wouldn’t have been able to access their money if she was wanted for kidnapping - leather jackets and Camaros don’t grow on trees).  Also, if there’s approx. 6 years between Cora and Derek, there’s no reason there couldn’t have been as many between Laura and Derek.  And even if she was young when they left, to leave him there alone for SIX YEARS?  Yeah, she’s definitely got some explaining to do.

And maybe the wolf only physically manifests when he’s by himself?  Or later on, only with pack mates he fully trusts?

And, omg, I LOVE the idea of the other dad being Noah this time (as long as Claudia was okay with it, though lbr, she probably actively encouraged it), if only for the look on Jackson’s face when he finds out both who his other parent is and who his half-sibling is.  XD

Not sure how I feel about Theo as a lost Hale.  I haven’t really seen any episodes with him, so most of what I know is through tumblr and fanfic.  The general impression I got was that in some ways he was the most genuinely amoral NE type character on the show (most of the others skewed much more chaotic to me), which could make for some REAL interesting drama.

Oh man, I can just see them all meeting up at like a library or maybe an empty classroom because they’ve been down to the vault, and they start talking about the evidence they have so far, and Peter just starts going off on a rant explaining everything he’s learned, and in the middle of it he notices that there’s a fish tank in the room and just grabs a fish out of it and swallows it whole mid-explanation.  Everyone is mildly freaked out and doesn’t quite know how to react until finally Noah and/or Chris go over to stand in front of the tank before he passes by again to keep him from reaching in again.  XD

I think that was all for now, I need to get ready for work either way.  Enjoy your game whenever it arrives!  I hope you keep feeling better!  *Hugs!*

18 seems to be the legal age for sibling guardianship in the US from what I could find in a quick Google search. So she would have to be at least that. Which would still make her a teenager herself but she could also have been older. I’m also not saying I agree with what Laura did just that I can see why, even if I think it’s shitty and that it’s absolutely cause for what Peter did in S1.

I honestly think that the only Hale that was acting out of malicious/ less than good intent was Talia herself and that the rest of the Hales were just unfortunate results of their circumstances. Laura abandoned her uncle to protect her brother and take him away, which is inexcusable but understandable in her situation, Derek had to go along with her because he was a minor. They also just both lost most of their family including both parents and (as far as they knew) their sister. Laura’s biggest flaw in this case was not returning to Beacon Hills for her Uncle when the situation was safe for her to do so. Which could have prevented a lot of blood shed. And honestly, I feel like she should atone for that. She messed up big time on that one.

I like the idea of the wolf only physically manifesting when Peter is alone, or later only around the rest of the pack. Bonus points if no one can figure out WHY it is happening. Was it the fire? Is it Peter’s way of becoming evolved? No one knows.

Jackson has a fucking aneurysm when he finds out. There’s a lot of yelling and bitching and whining and snapping. But eventually, when months pass and threats rise, Jackson is also the first to defend Stiles, Liam, and Noah whenever they’re threatened. Malia is far more the type of person to sit back and watch what happens and doesn’t really mind her newfound family too much. She’s still adjusting to not being a coyote.

Claudia definitely knew, actually, I like to think she was the one who pushed Noah to go ask that hot piece of ass out. And although she and Peter had no romantic feelings for one another their relationship eventually evolved into a more best friends with benefits territory where they’d keep each other warm in bed before Noah got home and took care of Stiles together after Stiles was born but they never dated or felt romantic love to one another. 

For this scenario I’m keeping Stiles’s canon birth date as April 8th and putting Jackson’s birthdate as Malia’s on Nov 28th. Because that way Peter got pregnant when Claudia was 8 months pregnant. By the time Peter found out he was pregnant six weeks would have passed, Stiles would have been born and not long after Peter would have been kept away by Talia. (How she kept him away I’m not sure yet, but I’m sure she broke Peter, Claudia, and Noah’s hearts in one fell swoop.)

I do have to admit that was more like an after thought, and I don’t have much with Theo other than; I like his visuals as in looks. So I just also might not do that and just keep it at that.

Honestly I just like writing family dramas with surprise kids, ahhahaha, idk why, it’s just my thing I guess.

And that visual is honestly *cheff’s kiss* Yes XD

The pure chaotic energy lol.

Can you imagine Stiles’s face? Can you imagine Liam’s? Or Jackson’s? Lol.

Malia is just staring at it like ‘yeah, that makes sense’ when you’re hungry you’re hungry. And they have a  hard time explaining to her that NO, You are not supposed to eat random animals like that, Malia. NO matter what Peter does.. 

Yes, he is your father, yes he gave birth to you, but that does not mean you should follow his example blindly.

Hahhahaha and now I see Peter just trying to cuddle after eating a fish or a squirrel but the others are too disturbed by him to let him. XD

poor peter

[simplylove101]

Random Tangent About Ships & Cheating SLs

So, I was talking with my friend Lauren (@backtothestart02) yesterday about how when it comes to watching our shows and seeing certain ships of ours having cheating sls & how that affects how we feel towards them. This convo kinda came about cuz of the recent development we’ve heard about on Riverdale where Betty & Archie are gonna be cheating on their respective significant others with each other in the next episode... Which, okay, at this point I don’t even watch the show anymore since it sounds like it’s pretty much on crack these days (at least more than usual lol) so this isn’t your typical rant about “OMG HOW DARE YOU MESS WITH MY OTP LIKE THAT” in regards to that sl (re: yes, Bughead was my ship when I watched it but my investment in the show has been pretty much non-existent for way over a year now so that’s not my goal with this rant fyi lol) It’s just more the frustration of the excitement I’ve seen from people being all “YAY CHEATING” Cuz, yeah ok, it’s a silly TV show. Obviously. I get that lmao It’s just the reactions I’ve been seeing that are funny cuz there’s people who talk about toxic relationships and normally how cheating is a dealbreaker but in this one specific case we’re all suddenly cool with it... Okay lmao but yeah, if the ship has to happen because a character died or cheating is involved... doesn’t that already cheapen that new relationship too (and their character development along with it? lol)

Anyway, I actually just really wanted to use this as a chance to rant about my ships that made me deal with cheating sls and why those are basically the worse “obstacles” a show can throw at ships. At least that is, if you want people to root for them long term. lol Cheating obviously happens in real life, but then that’s usually the end of a relationship. Which is why I don’t think it’s surprising that when it comes to fiction, I find the element of cheating to be something that kinda taints my otps for me if it occurs in the story. 

I can think of a couple of cases where I was able to accept it cuz the show mostly did right by them after the situation by showing the growth and how that would never been an issue again. But the cases where the cheating happens and it just feels like this thing that makes it so you can’t enjoy any of the things that came before it with that couple? That sucks. It feels cheap and like, really bad writing.

I think my thoughts on this subject stems all the way back to my very first TV ship: Jackie & Hyde from That 70′s Show. Anyone who really watched that show remembers that 2 episode arc of where Hyde thought Jackie cheated on him with Kelso (she hadn’t ofc but he did see her comforting him in a way that would be suspicious considering Kelso had wanted her back) so he cheated on her with a random nurse as payback. I remember watching the next episode heartbroken at the scene where Hyde has to tell her what he did after he realizes that he pulled that move for no reason at all and Jackie ultimately breaks up with him on the spot. Which I applauded her for. Because the girl had gotten cheated on by Kelso so much that she vowed that she wouldn’t let that happen to her again. Her relationship with Steven was supposed to be different, and up until that point, had been. It was a step back for all the development they had spent with them all season, but with how raw Hyde was during that scene and the scene where he tells Jackie that he loves her (evidenced by the fact that he actually isn’t wearing his usual sunglasses in either of those scenes), it can be said that it was clearly just a momentary regression. Do I think they could have handled it better towards getting them back together? Yeah. But then it was a sitcom so you gotta keep that in mind too. lol Otherwise, they mostly did right by them once they were back together until things got shaky again. But then this rant isn’t about how they deserved the endgame they were supposed to get and were robbed of. LOL But yeah, this is one of the rare cases they weren’t completely tainted for me.

(For those of you that have never seen this ep....)

Another case of a ship where cheating happened, but in this case did have my ship pretty much tainted for me at the time was Joan & Adam on Joan of Arcadia. This is more a lowkey scenario cuz nobody who sees this will know them basically but I loved them dearly and I watched that show (pun not intended at all lol) religiously when it was on so when that sl came very much out of nowhere I was (I’d say) rightfully upset about it. There was no reason to have Adam cheat on Joan. It was just plain character assassination of a fan favorite, and for what? Drama??? I still have no idea. All I know it was a far cry from the boy who charmed his way into Joan’s heart in S1 who wasn’t even thinking about sex when they got together (Heck, *she* was the one who thought they were supposed to have sex in S1 at one point and again, that wasn’t even on his radar at the time lol). Enter later S2, he makes her feel pressured about them doing it a bit and then later he cheats on her with this random girl that we saw a couple times talking to him because of this... Um?? That’s just bad writing cuz it’s OOC. lol What’s worse is that Joan found out about this in the 19th episode of the season so when the show got cancelled, there had been barely any development after that. There was some since there was like 3 episodes or so after that, which meant there was just enough time to get them to a sorta neutral place with each other since they had the same friend group but otherwise, not much closure for shippers. Which was frustrating. You can’t just take that sharp of a turn in the story that late in a season with an unguaranteed next season with your main couple, especially if the cheating is coming out of left field. You just can’t, not if you want me to root for them at least. So.... yeah. That was bad. lol Definitely an example of why sometimes cheating does not need to be a storyline on a show.

(For context...)

I was trying to think if there were any ships before this one that i would want to mention, and there might have been, but I can’t think of them at the moment. Which means next on the list is Zoe & Wade on Hart of Dixie. They’re still a big otp for me, which does show I was able to move past their cheating sl but again, they did get tainted a bit too. In some ways, their sl gave me some deja vu with Jackie & Hyde. At least in the way that the guy chooses to sleep with someone in a very rash way, and you just know this is gonna lead to an automatic breakup the second the girl finds out. There was no denying Zoe was gonna break up with him. It was heartbreaking to watch her come to the realization that he had cheated on her. And it was frustrating because it felt like they only got to be a proper couple for like maybe 4 episodes and then they pulled that move. It was like, you’ve been setting me up to root for this couple and... now what? They had undeniable chemistry so I guess the writers always counted on that for when they would ultimately bring them back together and they were right. I was able to root for them again, and it helped there had been some time that had passed (a whole season of them not being together!) and I was missing them a lot. But that said, it still felt like a misstep. Because when you wanna write a breakup, we should just throw in a cheating sl then? There were plenty of other ways to break up Zade, but they went in that direction. It just felt very lame, lazy and pure character regression in a way that didn’t make sense with the story they were telling imo. They were able to show that Wade had matured later on so it worked out, but this is one that made me upset so thank goodness they made up for it. lol

(I dare you not to tear up lol)

Okay, the last ships I’m gonna mention briefly are both on The Bold Type. 

Everyone in that fandom has expressed their frustration with how they handled the Kadena sl where Kat cheated and then they tried to have a open relationship to let her explore a bit or whatever in S2. I actually get where it wasn’t that bad cuz Adena told her she could see the other girls. Enter the next season, Kadena have sex when Kat is still in a relationship technically (I don’t care if she got the approval to see if there were still feelings there or not from Tia, that didn’t mean sleep with the ex. That meant talk) This is one of those cases where for me, cheating is never the ideal way to bring a ship back into the story. I know it happens but this didn’t make Kat or Adena look that great as characters for me. I know shit happens, just saying from a preference. Not gonna get deep into the awkwardness of S4 between these two, beyond saying that after S1, it does seem like the writers don’t fully know how to write them now still. They were a fan favorite ship for the show, and I think despite the bad writing for them sometimes in these later seasons, still are, but they really gotta start being more consistent with them if they want them to be rootworthy again. And please write Adena in character my goodness. The way they wrote her in 4x07 was just not it.

 Which brings me to Janestripe,

They seriously dedicated a whole first half of a season dragging out the reveal that Ryan did more than kiss the lady he cheated on Jane with. I know beforehand the majority of the fandom hated Ryan already and thought Jane should have been with Ben instead, which honestly... ok, whatever. I still say Jane was having doubts about Ben so she was already starting to check out of that relationship a bit before Ryan declared his feelings for her at the end of S2. That said, once again, cheating isn’t ideal so I liked that Jane turned him down until she broke things off with Ben. I think people forget that the person in the middle of a triangle is making a choice and just cuz it’s not the choice you the viewer wanted doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be the wrong one. Frankly, Ben was kinda dry for me. Idk. Anyway, I appreciated that they were trying to tell a story of growth for Ryan... Until they weren’t. lol They really could have kept it as a kiss but they started planting those little signs that it wasn’t between Ryan looking guilty during convos and then him telling the story again about what happened & it sounding like bullshit. We all knew but they made us wait 9 eps for Jane to figure out. Which was frustrating. I get what message they were trying to send in the end and I respected that but they couldn’t do it faster?? They were sending a lot of signs they were making them endgame by showing how serious they were getting but now? I don’t see them ever interacting again, unless they did find a reason to bring Ryan back but Idk. I just don’t get painting them in that kinda light if you were just planning to tear them down before the season was even over, you know? They could have just ended them in S3 and I would have got it. But they dragged it out into a whole another season and why??? lol

I’m trying to figure out what more I wanna say about this topic. lol Beyond just thinking that I can’t stand cheating sls. I can barely stand any kinda love triangle sls as it is. Why must these tropes exist?? All they do is cause drama in fandoms. Which is prob why I don’t do them in the first place. lol

Anyway, I’m done now. lol

[qqueenofhades]

I know you dont watch GoT anymore. And that Braime and Sansa are your favorites. But I know you've read the books and are obviously really interested in the story. And I was just wondering what your thoughts are on the whole Jon killing Dany thing? Is that something you can see happening in the books? And if it is do you think it'd be in the same context as the show did it?

Ahaha, welp. Just jumping right in there.

(Also, you never have to apologise for asking GOT/ASOIAF questions. I obviously have been a fan for 16 years and wrote fuckin’ TNR with its half-million-plus words, so I clearly do have Thoughts on the story/characters, especially with the bag of lukewarm cat vomit that was s8 of the show.)

I already answered this ask discussing how much I hated the Mad Queen Dany thing, both because a) it was horrifically badly handled and b) these mediocre misogynist douchegobblers have managed to outdo themselves in terms of the gross messages they’ve sent about women, after 8 seasons of that. (These are the same people who made Sansa say that she was grateful for her rapes and who claimed that Dany’s turn into madness was foreshadowed by her having a “chilly” reaction to the death of her abuser, Viserys, in s1, so…. make of that what you will.) I’m not saying that it was narratively impossible, especially since GRRM has been toying with the same thing in the books and has more than his own share of Male Author Syndrome. But at the start of 8x04, Dany is in Winterfell, perfectly sane, toasting Arya as hero of the battle. By the end of 8x06, she’s crazy, a war criminal, and dead, murdered by her boyfriend, because… well, something something plot reasons. Even if you didn’t like Dany or were rooting for her to go mad or whatever, that was wildly badly handled.

I personally think it would be pretty gross for GRRM to also go down the Mad Queen route, though at least if he does, we will have had Dany’s POV chapters beforehand and presumably something resembling a justification and a building narrative momentum toward it. But she also got stuck in Meereen for so long because by his own admission he didn’t know what to do with her there or how to get her out of the situation and moved onto Westeros, which remains, theoretically, her outstanding goal in the books. It would obviously not be outside the realm of possibility for this to happen, given GRRM’s focus on “grittiness” that the show took to max factor 5000. I would still find it reductive and trying to make a Clever Postmodern Point and etc if it happened in the books, because literally why invest us in a character this long, especially one who has tried so hard to overcome the circumstances of her past/to not be her father, and then just do exactly that? Obviously there would be elements of Shakespearean tragedy to it, and if done well it could be compelling, but I personally just have a different approach to fiction and what people want out of a story (especially one now as famous as GOT/ASOIAF and how universally betrayed everyone seems to feel by the ending). I’m not saying Dany’s ultimate ending needs to be sunshine and roses and getting what she wants, because often character arcs and resolutions become all the more powerful for being subverted and thwarted (think the “I said I wanted [x] but [y] was there instead” sort of endings). But whatever it is, it needs to be…. not that.

Also, Jon in both books and especially show has been the epitome of Mediocre White Man. I stopped watching in s4, but Kit Harington’s acting was so wooden and the writing for him was very much Standard Misunderstood Brooding Fantasy Hero that I could barely pay attention to his scenes. I find him somewhat more interesting in the books, though ADWD dragged for everyone and it was obvious GRRM was writing in circles. But everyone has noticed that especially in the show, Jon does absolutely bupkis. His ass is constantly saved by the women in his life, he makes an absolute hash of any power that he is given and doesn’t want it anyway, and his ultimate ending was…. going back to the Night’s Watch (as their idea of satisfying narrative storytelling is to literally put everyone back where they were in the very first episode, apparently). Never mind the fact that there’s no need for the Night’s Watch, but the point is, even the fact that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna’s son ended up being relevant for like half an episode. That has been one of the major plot points/secrets of the books (although not so much anymore) and it just…. fizzled out like a damp squib. Dany actually TRIED for multiple seasons to be a good ruler and to learn how to handle power and become a queen, so for her to have to be the one to die for Jon to once again do diddlysquat is… well, as I have said before, the misogyny leaps out. They ended up wasting so much potential and so many other things that were also foreshadowed (and far more convincingly than “wah wah she was gonna go evil!”). For this? So Jon can just go brood in the snow again? Cool.

Not to mention, I find it gross on principle that Dany’s boyfriend had to be the one to kill her, especially after rape/sexual violence/loss of agency was such a big part of her early-season storylines (and how horrifyingly and grossly that has been handled on the show overall). We’re obviously supposed to sympathize with Jon in this scenario and to feel that it is justified to “stop a tyrant” or whatever. Also, if the episode was going to be called “Queenslayer,” why the fuck wasn’t it Jaime fulfilling the valonqar prophecy, another thing they forgot about, and killing Cersei, at great personal grief/cost, to once more stop an insane monarch from burning down King’s Landing? But that, of course, would be actual character development/overall arc, and they preferred to also trash that by having Jaime “killed Aerys Targaryen literally to save half a million innocent people and lived with his reputation being destroyed ever after” Lannister unironically claim that he never cared about the lives of the innocent and only wanted Cersei. After she again tried to kill him and Tyrion like three days ago, not even to mention what they did to Brienne and with that whole arc, but I will have a ragestroke if I think about it too much. 

Basically, the ending wasn’t “bittersweet.” It was tragic, reductionist, ham-handed, hugely disappointing for everyone who put years of investment into these characters, and ended up in the amusing position of making Bran Stark the younger and more beautiful queen who comes to cast Cersei down. He became king because… reasons? Whatever? And he knows literally everything about everyone thanks to being the Three-Eyed Raven, so there’s no way that can go horribly wrong. He has basically done nothing except sit in a wheelchair and look creepy for several years now, his arc has never been remotely about being king, and Isaac Hempstead-Wright himself is apparently on record as saying he genuinely thought it was a joke script when he read it. This after both Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington broke down over learning what happened to their characters/Kit apparently realized it for the first time at the read-through and was horrified. Emilia already talked about wandering for five hours and having a crisis and calling her mom and asking to be talked off the ledge like….. fictional choices/characters completely aside, that’s a gross thing to do to your actors. I know they’re all proud of their work and they have apparently and understandably been defensive about the existence of the petition to rewrite s8, but they’ve all been pretty clear, while still being professional and supportive, that there is stuff that they’re just as much WTF about as we are.

Basically, as everyone keeps saying, the acting, cinematography, visual effects, music, etc was clearly up to as high a standard as ever, but was betrayed fundamentally and comprehensively by this god-awfully shit writing by a couple of hacks who clearly rushed the final season to get on to ruining working on Star Wars. They have also been on record about saying “you can’t do what the audience expects or it’ll get boring blah blah blah,” which is a profoundly flawed storytelling strategy if you’re paranoid and trying to outsmart your audience and do something that nobody has ever thought of because you’re an Intellectual Postmodern Commentator On Our Violent Society. If your audience can guess where a story is going, but are still surprised by major twists along the way that then make sense in hindsight, you’ve done your job. If you’re relying on grimdark and cramming in gimmicky plot twists and deus ex machinas and Shocking Moments rather than authentically developing your story, it’s going to bite you in the ass in a big way, as was just proven. 

Nobody expected a completely happy ending from GoT. But the fact that they went to such lengths, especially in s8, to build up characters/ships (Jonerys, Braime, Gendrya were all torched after major canon moments completely unexpected by fans, especially the latter two – why even include it unless to just be more Tragique, and Gendrya is the only one that has even a chance in the future since half of it didn’t end up idiotically dead) and then just wrecked all of it…. as I’ve said, good endings don’t need to be rainbows and unicorns and kittens. But if you’ve asked eight years of audience investment, there has to be something that makes it worth it and that doesn’t make everyone feel like they were duped and stupid to get involved in the first place. They have been beating the “it’s a hard world and bad things happen to the characters” drum for all they’re worth, but… it’s just bad. You can analyse and ask why the hell they did things and so forth, but it’s bad. At this rate, the show should have either ended after 8x03, or they should have taken the money HBO offered and done the proper 10 episodes and let Bryan Cogman write all of them. He was the only one who appeared to remotely give a shit about the characters, and since D&D wrote the last four episodes themselves, yeah, this disaster is on them.

Fortunately, I left the show years ago and have TNR and am used to ignoring their version of things. And I knew all along that they never really got the characters or the story. But I feel really bad for everyone who has had this thrown back in their face, and it seems like a communal disenchantment with this ending is going to enter the pop-culture consciousness on a possibly unprecedented level. So if GRRM does do the Mad Queen Dany killed by Jon in the books (though he has apparently called the show’s ending “traumatic”), I’ll probably still not like it. He has a chance to sell me it on/justify it to me narratively, which the show categorically failed to do. I don’t think I will, just because as I said, I don’t like anything about it, but yes.

Anyway. This is a long post already, and I probably have more to say still, but it’s pretty obvious I think it’s just really, really bad, and that’s about the essence of it.

[tatticstudio55]

the third wtf will be jon killing dany, because really, what happened in ep5 doesn't make any sense, and erasing dany from the episode, after that decission that goes against her character? damm, that's bad writing at it's finnest, they couldn't find a way to show her pov because even the writers knew that she would never do that

2/2) if, IF Dany resurrect, it wouldn’t be as the night queen, but she would be resurrected by the lord of light. The song of Pray is in High Valyrian and the god they praise the the lord of light. If she comes back, maybe Drogon gaves her life for her mother, at the end of s1 she enter the pire and got three dragons, maybe the end is that drogon enter the pire to gave her mother a second chance.

yeah, in any case, I’m not expecting a Night Queen scenario, because 1) it’s too late in the game to introduce that, and 2) they didn’t even bother (yet, anyway) bringing the NK’s arc to a satisfying conclusion. The least they could do, before jumping to Night Queen Dany, would be to wrap up properly whatever the NK’s arc was supposed to be about. 

The final twist, if done properly, would have to be something that’s been subtly laid out for a while, and it needs to bring a sense of closure, not of “what happens next?”

And that’s why, imho, if there’s any third twist to be salvaged out of… that, it better explains everything that isn’t making sense right now. Jon killing Dany is neither an explanation, nor the last piece of the Jon Snow puzzle (unless that “puzzle” was all about turning Jon into Jaime Lannister and the story shoving to his face how much of a farce “honor” is). Jon killing Dany would be a reaction to recent events. That’s it. The fact that they are, or were romantically involved before makes it more heart-wrenching, but it doesn’t make it more surprising, or more of an “Aha!” moment.  

Now for your theory that Drogon might give his life for Dany… interesting, but would that be a dragon thing to do? How would it happen anyway? Mind you, the theme of the phoenix has always been shaping Dany’s story line, so a resurrection, either real or symbolic, wouldn’t come out of nowhere. My main problem with a “real” resurrection would be that it would parallel too literally Jon’s resurrection (not to mention, it cheapens the whole point of death when too many characters come back from it). A symbolic resurrection is more or less what Theon and Arya went through…? I don’t know. Maybe the song “Pray” was meant for Arya?

If - if - Dany is meant to be a phoenix until the end, then the burning of King’s Landing was directly mirroring the burning of Khal Drogo in season 1. In both cases, Dany is burning down “home”, i.e., a person or a place representing what she always wanted, but that is now “dead” to her. End of season one, that allows her to move forward and grow stronger. End of season 8? No idea how it’ll go. Although… hey, at this point, why not just have fun and compare the two scenes? Drogo’s pyre vs King’s Landing “pyre” 🥴

-Did Dany become MMD in 8x05? A shell of herself, set on revenge and killing innocents in the process?

-In the end, wasn’t the burning of MMD necessary for the hatching of dragons? Maybe Dany will die, but King’s Landing will be slowly reborn from the ashes? With the wheel broken?

-Or, there’s the whole idea of betrayals (by MMD, by Varys, by Tyrion) going on. 

Tbh, I really don’t know how It’ll go. Oh, I’ve read leaks, but they’re so unsatisfying that I can’t help but be like “gosh… there has to be something more to this…?”

[ettadunham]

A Buffy rewatch 3x22 Graduation Day Part 2

aka miles to go before Buffy can sleep

Welcome to this dailyish text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and rant about it in 10-3k words. What you can expect: long run-on sentences and disjointed observations, often focused on one tiny detail about the episode. What you shouldn’t be expecting: actual reviews that make sense.

And I take it as a sign of me getting older that this episode gets me almost as emotional as Becoming Part 2 these days. They’ve come so far!!! And they’ll go so much further yet!!!

Like, no one tell s1 Willow that she’s gonna roll into her own graduation 5 minutes late with sex hair. She’d have a heart attack.

It’s true though. The Mayor’s speech actually got to me. As the camera panned to all these characters I loved I not only remembered how they changed since their first appearance on the show, but how they will continue changing throughout the series. It really is a hell of a journey for all.

The nostalgia of Graduation Day Part 2 doesn’t really hit you in the head. I don’t think the characters actually have any lines reminding the audience of where they started, but that’s kinda what I like about it. We, the audience, remember, and that’s what matters.

Another subtle thing that I discovered about the episode was the score. It doesn’t have those super memorable notes as The Gift, but that’s why it managed to surprise me here. It adds extra weight to scenes, like the opening with Buffy, as she stands at the rooftop, contemplating what she’s done to Faith.

I also loved the detail of her leaving the knife there. even though I believe that we could’ve done more with that storyline. For part of the episode, Buffy actually believes that she killed Faith. I love how SMG plays that opening, and I understand that Buffy’s still processing that information by the time it’s revealed that Faith survived, but that’s some heavy shit, man. We could’ve explored that.

Still, the scene that I want to spend more time with is definitely the Buffy/Faith coma dream.

I already talked about this, especially with Surprise, but I love the dream sequences on this show. Partially because I love a good puzzle, and Buffy dreams provide an excellent blend of the prophetic and subconscious kind.

The first thing anyone who starts looking up Buffy foreshadowing will stumble onto, is the line “Miles to go, Little Miss Muffet counting down from 7-3-0″. Which is a reference to the 730 days aka two seasons Buffy has left until her death in The Gift.

And that kind of blew my mind when I first read about it (especially with the Restless callback), but this time around, I also took a moment to appreciate how the “Miles to go...” part references Buffy’s “sleep” (”Miles to go before I sleep”) - which now she has to wake up from, as she’s still got those 730 days before she could rest. (To drive it even more home, Buffy keeps repeating at the end of the episode how she’d just like to sleep now, thank you very much.)

There’s also the cat. Which is a she, and mostly symbolizes Faith herself, especially as it fades to her for a moment.

Buffy:  Who's going to look after him? Faith:  It's a she. And aren't these things supposed to take care of themselves? Buffy: A higher power guiding us? Faith: I’m pretty sure that’s not what I meant.

The last part is a bit of an insight into the show’s (and Whedon’s, lbr) stance on religion, and yet the Powers That Be will still be a major player over on Angel the series? The Buffyverse has an intriguing relationship with these ideas, that’s for sure.

But in the context of Faith, it’s a reaffirmation that she always had to look out and take care of herself, because no one’s done that for her. Not her mother, not the Watchers, and not even Buffy in the end. And certainly not some higher power...

A cat will also appear in Restless, but that will be Tara and Willow’s kitty - a different and much younger cat. One that’s much less jaded and is actually taken care of. (Except in season 6 I guess??? I have questions about who’[s feeding that cat during that time.)

Given the foreshadowing we get when we sort of revisit this dream in This Year’s Girl, I guess one could also interpret the cat as a Dawn reference? Maybe a stretch, but one that we could certainly run with as well.

I also wanted to talk a bit about the This Year’s Girl dream in general, because it’s fascinating how this scenario appears in Buffy’s and Faith’s respective minds. I definitely get the sense that there’s a connection and a shared consciousness happening in this dream... But Slayer dreams are still happening inside the head of the person dreaming them. That’s why Buffy’s prophetic dreams in Surprise are full of her own anxieties, and why Drusilla plays Buffy’s role in them as Angel���s doom. It’s how Buffy’s mind interpreted the message received.

Similarly, in Faith’s mind Buffy will be reduced to the role of the villain in those dreams. Even though as we’ll later find out, Faith sees herself as the villain, more than anything, and she’s projecting that onto Buffy in the dream.

That’s not to say that there aren’t more layers still - Buffy did stab and almost killed Faith in the name of saving Angel after all - but I like to think that the Faith Buffy sees in her dream contains some of the essence of the real Faith, despite what we’ll see of Faith’s dreams later on.

The clutter in Faith’s apartment in the dream not so subtly symbolizing Faith’s own mind is an interesting touch to that. Although her line about all the new things in her head feels like something that relates more to Buffy.

Faith:  Sorry, it’s my head. A lot of new stuff.

It’s Buffy who’ll take and learn whatever she needs from Faith as she wakes up. Faith herself will be trapped in her own mind for almost a year.

Buffy: I can’t use all of this! Faith:  Just take what you need.

Probably one of the best dream sequences, ngl.

Graduation Day Part 2 really is a great season finale, and a perfect end to an era in the show’s history. So... I’m not even gonna try and go over all of that.

One thing though... I kept mentioning how Larry will die in this episode, but you know what? He’s not dead. He just got knocked out. He’s fine. He was at Pride with the Scoobies this year, I saw him, it’s true.

They all survived high school. It’s fine.

[paladinspride]

Hopefully this is my last VLD S7 discourse post.

I usually try to stay out of the drama but LGBTQ rep is near and dear to me and I have spent the last few days totally caught up in the discourse surrounding S7, despite my best intentions. Can I blame myself though? It is every where!  

So I am hoping if I just put all my thoughts in an under the cut post, maybe I can move on and go back to enjoying the show for what it is and creating and assuming the fanon content I enjoy. I really do like the show. I just have feelings about some decisions.

Warning, there is an essay under here:

I’ll start by reminding people, I am in my 30s and I came out as bi in the 90s so I grew up in a totally different stage of society than most of the fandom. I mention this because it is important to keep in mind that the western world was not as open and accepting as it is now and my generation did a lot to make progress happen. There is still a lot to be done, but that is another matter.

I grew up in an age where LGBTQ characters, if present, were usually evil, tortured or killed off. At best, they were a comedic side kick. When we started to get LGBTQ content, shows like Queer as Folk, were given late night time slots and considered adult and taboo.  

Shows like Modern Family were an amazing win for LGBTQ rep but animation still had/has a lot of ground work to do.

Dreamworks got flack for Gobber saying, “And that’s why I never married,” in HTTYD 2 and that was super vague.

Conservative groups were adamant that children’s content be free of “discussions of sexuality.” Gosh forbid, someone be gay so any references had to be vague and nearly undetectable. LGBTQ content was heavily censored and often out right forbidden.

Legend of Korra’s Korrasami pushed the envelope and broke ground but it’s rep was still at the very end of the series and quiet enough to sneak by censors.

Right before I watched VLD, I watched Yuri on Ice and was so moved that there was a well written animated series that depicted a same sex relationship where it wasn’t played for comedic effect, tokenism or tragedy.

When I finished YOI, I got sucked into VLD by the fan art. When I watched the show, Keith and Lance’s relationship intrigued me and I had fun imagining scenarios where they could end up together and live in domestic bliss.

The fandom ate it up. There was so much K/lance content to create and consume and so much positive response to it, that I fell in love. They became an OTP and I have dedicated my blog to them ever since.

However, this whole time I have been cautiously optimistic about the likelihood that K/lance could become canon because I imagined the crew would have a fight on their hands to make it happen. My experience with representation in media made it hard for me to let myself hope.  

But I let myself believe because of LOK, Disney having a gay character come out on one of its youth series, and shows like One Day At A Time.

Shipping meta didn’t help.          

But I tried very hard to keep my hopes in check and remind myself that fanon isn’t canon and that I am hear for the fanon. Canon would be nice but it is not the end all be all. I had to repeat this to myself a lot.

The last little while I have found myself growing exceptionally tired of “KICK” and shipper’s insistence that K/lance will be canon because I knew the fandom was getting their hopes up and that fanon and canon are separate things and I didn’t want people to get their hearts broken when fanon wasn’t represented in canon.

Also, I wanted people to focus on creating and consuming fanon content rather than scouring the canon for proof and engaging in petty ship wars, but that is some people’s idea of fun, and I can’t judge them for enjoying the show differently than me.

Anyways, despite my reservations, I let myself hope.

Then we had Shiro’s reveal. I was so excited that we were getting a strong persevering leader and POC as LGBTQ rep in a children’s animation that I didn’t even care that the likelihood of K/lance was diminished for me because there was no way I could let my self believe that we could have three characters in canon m/m relationships.

But then I watched S7 and the rep fell a little flat for me, but I was still happy there was enough insinuation that m/m youth could see themselves in Shiro.

But then they gave Ezor and Zethrid a coded scene and killed them and Adam.

I don’t think the show runners did this with any ill intent. I think they were clueless to the fact that they were committing a dangerous trope.

The show is about war, yes, and people are lost in war, but we need to have enough LGBTQ characters in animation, media in general really, that the loss of one is not such a blow.  They should have predicted the fandom outrage, but I don’t think they did, and now they are on the defensive, seemingly making things worse.  

I also felt queer baited. And I don’t use that term lightly. I have defended them against queer baiting in the past because 99% of the time, the feeling is the result of the fandom building hype by reading into things and spinning things the showrunners and Vas said and not actually baiting.

And that happened again here.

But I feel like the showrunners contributed to it this time.

But I also am not sure how they could have shut it down.

I kind of wish they would not have said anything about Shiro at SDCC and just let the viewers interpret the scene for themselves. LM and JDS saying Adam and Shiro were engaged doesn’t mean anything if they don’t show it in the show. That was their mistake.

If they were not sure they would be able to give explicit rep, they should not have said anything about it. I don’t think people would have cared as much that there was not LGBTQ rep if we were not expecting it.

I get wanting to make everyone happy and being inclusive and not wanting to spoil anything or shut down ships but ugh it made an ugly situation. I  don’t know how they could have been more honest without spoiling things though.  

(But if they really didn’t want to shut down ships, why write Lance and Keith in any romantic arcs at all? They knew how popular the ships were to make some changes? I suppose the verdict is still out on whether A/llurance and K/acxa are gonna be cannon though so I really shouldn’t assume and get upset about that yet)

The fandom is partly to blame for the hype and perceived queer baiting in the past. If people didn’t ask questions that put show runners and VAs in awkward spots or spinning things said, the hype might not be so extreme.  

But this time it feels like the show runners went with it?

Did marketers encourage the hype for ratings though? Definitely. I don’t trust marketers. There goal is to get people talking about the show, be it good or bad. It’s important to remember the show runners and the marketers are separate. Netflix pulled some shady moves with the posters and that whole folding picture thing.

And that brings me back to K/lance.  

For awhile now I am have been thinking they pulled a Zutara with K/lance and S/hallura, (Zutara is the pairing of Zuko and Katara from Avatar the Last Airbender, and the plan was for them to be canon but studio pressure suggested the audience related to Aang more so they shifted gears and made Kaang the canon romance in the last season instead).

S/hallura could have been such a beautifully written loves story of two fierce leaders and no one can tell me they don’t have chemistry and corresponding arcs.

So I was surprised when it was revealed that Shiro was the LGBTQ rep.

This made me think maybe Shiro and Adam were to be just friends and K/lance was meant to be canon after all, which is why so many of us saw canon potential in S1-3) but then it got shut down for any numbers of reasons and they decided to make Shiro the rep instead.

Barlee recently tweeted that Shiro was always meant to be the LGBTQ rep and they had to fight for what they showed though.

So this combined with the fact that they had to fight to show what little they did and the insistence that Shiro “is the rep,” makes me think K/lance isn’t happening for sure.

And I am sad about that. And that is ok. I am allowed to be sad about it. My sadness that my ship won’t be canon should not dismiss my concerns about the bury your gays trope though. They are two different issues and I am sick that people are undermining the argument because of who people ship.

I am also sad, that Barlee’s tweet suggested that LM and JDS did not get to tell the story they wanted to tell because of studio meddling. I’d really love to know what that story was.  

But I will get over it and go back to creating and consuming content for K/lance and VLD because the world that VLD created is rich and inspiring to me. I love exploring the what ifs and alternate story lines the VLD universe has to offer because that is the part of fandom I enjoy.

I enjoy the canon too, but it is just one story in a list of endless possibilities.

[possiblyimbiassed]

What happened to Sherlock? The game is on!

Here’s a thrilling, really dramatic scene from TSoT:

John seems desperate here; a person very important to him ;) is about to die – either from suicide or from a mystic criminal we haven’t identified yet. John’s wedding has become a crime scene! So he orders Sherlock to solve it… But wait a minute - does he now? Why then is John saying that Sherlock is not a puzzle solver?

I mean, we do know that he’s been a drama queen ever since S1, don’t we? Shooting the wall, sulking when John criticizes him, faking his own death in front of John, disguising himself to surprise John after two years, making John forgive him while pretending that a bomb is going to explode…  And in HLV and TAB, Sherlock himself even says that he can’t resist a ‘touch of the dramatic’.

But he has also been a puzzle solver – that’s Sherlock Holmes’ MO. That’s what the Holmes stories always have been about in every adaptation, right? And yet John tells him now that he’s not a puzzle solver!? And then, in spite of this, he still says “the game is on – solve it!”

I always found this conversation a bit weird, seeing as it’s Major Sholto who is the drama queen in this case; it’s he who threatens to kill himself behind a locked door, not Sherlock. But now, in hindsight after Series 4, I finally think I ‘get it’. In fact, I believe they said it already in Series 1, TGG:

Why should we wait for Sherlock to solve the puzzle, when it can take years before S5 airs? This is something new! And John says Sherlock is not the puzzle solver. I believe John’s message from TSoT is directed at us, the audience. Look at John in the last TSoT picture above – for a moment he’s looking away from Sherlock. This is our case – our game, and I believe we’re meant to figure out what has happened to Sherlock!

Because after TSoT, Sherlock is no longer solving puzzles; he fails his cases and has completely turned into Drama instead. We’re supposed to figure out what happens here – not with Major Sholto, but with Sherlock. Look at this girl from TGG. She’s hungry, but Sherlock has given her food for thought money for food, if she helps him to solve a puzzle; I think she’s us! 

And in TLD, Shakespeare Sherlock couldn’t have said it clearer:

I think we have a crime case to solve – in fact I believe the whole show is a case for us, the audience, to try to solve. We’re not meant to just consume BBC Sherlock for entertainment, as passive viewers; It’s a crime case carefully laid out before us, complete with victim, suspects, murder weapon, venue and everything. And I think we’re supposed to use Sherlock’s methods - the science of deduction - to solve it. So, why not have a go? After all, we have plenty of time on our hands until S5 airs. ;)

This is the introduction to a series of metas where I’ll try to see if it’s possible to deduce what has happened to Sherlock. To read the following installments, click theses links: [Part I]   [Part II]   [Part III]   [Part IV (1 & 2)]  [Part V]  [Part VI (1 & 2)]  [Part VIII (1 & 2)]

In this exercise I’ll also try to provide links to a series of truly brilliant metas from different people in this fandom, which are all a great inspiration. And please bear with me if this introduction is getting a bit long (you can find most of it under the cut).

To solve this, I think we’ll need to try to use Sherlock’s methods. On his website, “The Science of Deduction” he gives a fairly brief description of his methods:

This is what I do: 1. I observe everything. 2. From what I observe, I deduce everything. 3. When I've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how mad it might seem, must be the truth.

But what is actually deduction? Is it really a science? According to Wikipedia, logical deduction (or deductive reasoning) is “the process of reasoning from one or more statements (premises) to reach a logically certain conclusion”. Which means that you also need to back up your statements, you need to know that your premises are true (or false), before you can use them to deduce the resolution of your problem. And here is where the actual science kicks in, I believe. Science is based on observations, facts, data that has to be collected. “Data, data, data…”

For anyone not familiar with the scientific method, what I can say is that the procedure is usually something like this:

1. You make observations about the world around you (”I observe everything”).

2. Your observations make you curious; you start asking questions.

3. You formulate a hypothesis, to explain your observations (”I deduce everything”)

4. You make some predictions that you can test (T6T and TLD: “It’s possible to predict the future if you have access to the blah, blah and blah…” Here’s where Sherlock gets a little fanciful I believe :) But in theory he’s right)

5. Now you need to collect more data – evidence - to see if the outcome is as you expected, or if you have to change or reject your hypotheses. Your peers will want to participate in this testing process, perhaps to try to debunk your ideas. (I’m not sure this is the case with Sherlock, though. But at least he does use a Conductor of Light for inspiration ;) Mostly he does the testing himself, though: “When I've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how mad it might seem, must be the truth”).

6. If several of your predictions turn out true, you may have enough stuff to set up a whole theory; a model of explanation. If there are competing theories, you’ll be wise to pick the one that has the most explanatory power, the one that can answer most of the questions that have appeared.

7. To verify and/or refine your theory, you’re back to point 1.

If this was a scientific paper, and I was a scientist, I’d put in references to a lot of other studies by other scientists. And if I’d like to have it published in a scientific context, I’d need it peer-reviewed first. But this is just a blog post, so what I can do is to propose some hypotheses of what happened to Sherlock, provide some suggestions for explanations, and try to back up my ideas with evidence, and also with links to some brilliant analyses from other people in Sherlock fandom. :)  

Example:

Observation: In T6T many scenes seem weird, characters are acting OOC and the plot line is incoherent.

Question: Why does John seem to type his blog posts on a jpg-file?

Hypothesis: This is actually just someone’s imagination, that’s why things are not at all realistic. 

Prediction: “If a character is just imagining T6T, then the things that we see John write on his blog in T6T will not appear on the real blog”. 

Testing with new data: No new posts have, as of date, appeared on John’s blog since before HLV. It even says right out that the blog is no longer being updated. This data indicates my hypothesis might be true. But I would need more evidence to really believe this.

More observations: In T6T we see ‘Mary’ jumping in front of a bullet while it’s being fired:

Question: How can ‘Mary’ do something that is physically impossible?

Conclusion: “When we eliminate the impossible, what’s left must be the truth, however mad it might seem”. Thus, this is just someone’s imagination.

Actually there’s loads of evidence supporting this idea, and I’m not going to go into them here, since so many people have already done it. Some people claim that it’s John Watson’s head we’re inside, but in my opinion these theories have been de-bunked long ago by @loudest-subtext-in-tv, for example by this logical reasoning about the end of TLD: Sherlock could only know Mary was telling him to wear the hat if she’s a figment of Sherlock’s imagination instead of John’s. Or this: “John can’t remember stuff like the waterfall scene from Sherlock’s mind in TAB”. Instead, I subscribe (mainly) to the so-called EMP theory, which suggests that we’re actually in Sherlock’s extended mind palace, where he’s running scenarios to figure out what to do about John. EMP theory was proposed long before S4 aired, by @monikakrasnorada, @gosherlocked and @the-7-percent-solution - truly brilliant people! You can read up on it here.  

So – what about Sherlock; what happened to him?

For a start, after viewing and re-viewing this show ad nauseum - and still finding it amazing - we need to ask some questions and put up some hypotheses about what has actually happened to Sherlock. 

And that’s what I’m going to try to do in a series of meta here – ticking off the hypotheses below, one by one, trying to back them up with evidence, and finally reach a possible theory. It will probably take quite some time, because there’s a lot of data to collect, and a lot of analysis to be made, but time is all we have before S5, right? ;)

Here below are the hypotheses I’ll try to go through: 

(Disclaimer: some of them are not my own to begin with; they are inspired or even suggested by other people and the fandom discussions on tumblr. For example #2 is definitely @raggedyblue’s idea).

1. John’s blog is the most truthful account of the actual events.

2. The show up until John’s wedding is Sherlock reliving their story together in his MP, after reading John’s blog.    

3. The weirder scenes from ASiB to TSoT means Sherlock is influenced by drugs.

4. At some point in time between TSoT and HLV, Sherlock takes an overdose of drugs and ends up in coma. (1, 2)

5. Almost everything we see happen in HLV, TAB and S4 is Sherlock ‘running scenarios’ in his mind, based on a mix of his earlier memories and movies he has watched.

6. In the show’s ‘reality’, Sherlock is slowly dying, which also has implications on a meta level. (1, 2)

7. By TFP Sherlock has managed to figure out some essential things about John and the importance of staying alive, and he has managed to get in touch with his own repressed emotions. (1, 2)

8. John is not the father of ‘Mary’s baby. (1, 2)

9. What remains to be solved in S5 is most of all how to defeat the villains of the show; homophobia and heteronormativity.

I’ll tag some more people in case they might be interested in this:

@sarahthecoat @tjlcisthenewsexy @ebaeschnbliah @fellshish @loveismyrevolution @sagestreet @sherlockshadow @darlingtonsubstitution @devoursjohnlock  @tendergingergirl @kateis-cakeis @csi-baker-street-babes

[twdmusicboxmystery]

No Spoilers from the Spoiler Site - Good Thing for TD

Good morning lovely followers! I apologize for not being very active these past few days. It’s just been a rather busy week. But there’s been an absolute flurry of activity in my FB group about the spoilers (or lack thereof) for the MSF. This is REALLY good for TD, guys.

***I will be mentioning Carl spoilers here. I think most people are familiar with them now, but here’s fair warning that I’ll be discussing them.*** So let me start at the beginning. Back after the S7 finale (when we were all super-disappointed that Beth didn’t show up) @thegloriouscollectorlady and I were talking about screeners. Let’s start there, in case anyone doesn’t know how screeners work. (I didn’t either until it was explained to me a while back.)

Screeners are a pre-screening of the episode that is sent out to various news outlets. So sites like Geek.com, TVGuide.com, ComicBook.com, to name a few. They aren’t supposed to leak what’s in the episode (I’m sure they sign a contract to that effect) but they’re allowed to see the episode roughly a week before it airs so they can get their articles together and have them ready to post as soon as the episode airs. AMC gives these media outlet this advantage because it’s good publicity for the show and generates buzz and discussion when the articles get posted. As soon as the episode is over, people are instantly online looking for articles.

We’re reasonably certain that the big spoiler site that shall remain nameless (;D) gets their information from someone who receives a screener. That’s why, for the past few seasons especially, a few days before the episode airs, they get a play-by-play of what happens in the episode. Their source watches the screener, and then sends them information. I personally don’t think the spoiler site sees the actual script or the actual episode. I think their source just sends them a detailed summary. That’s why they often get details wrong. Small things can get misconstrued if the summary is vague.

Okay, hope that’s all clear. Let me know if it isn’t. So back when S7 ended, remember that in the TTD afterward, Gimple said the thing about the first four episodes being “brain melting,” which they kind of weren’t. So when we heard that, and coupled with the sunset at the end of Sasha’s arc, we thought/hoped Beth would show up after episode 4. So I made the comment to @thegloriouscollectorlady “Wouldn’t it be great if they didn’t send out screeners for those first four episodes?”

See, we’ve often discussed tptb trying to hide Beth’s return and that maybe they simply wouldn’t send out the screeners so no one would know.

Now, obviously we were wrong about that. They DID send out screeners (the spoiler site had spoilers) for episodes 1-4 and Beth  didn’t return.

But during the S8 preview show, Gimple said after the first four episodes, things would get “acoustic.” We didn’t know what that meant, but I’m gonna argue that things DID get acoustic. There’s been a TON of music in these past episodes.

So between that, where we are in the narrative (especially with Daryl), and this “shocking moment” they teased so much last week, most of us were very hopeful that we’d see Beth in the MSF.

So here’s a little convo about screeners we had in the group last Sunday:

Once again, we wondered if tptb would try to hide it. And guess what?

Low and behold, on Tuesday, we got confirmation that screeners were NOT sent out for this episode. Geek.com, at least, did not get a screener, which means no one did. And that means the spoiler site won’t have spoilers. That set off a flurry of discussion in our group. Check out this thread, which is just one of several on which we’re discussing this issue. 

Yeah, 81 comments, lol. I guess you can say we’re all pretty excited. And again, this is not by far the only thread we’re discussing this on.

I knew I wanted to post about this two days ago (on Tuesday), but I also wanted to wait because there was some speculation that, even if the spoiler site didn’t know what the “shocking moment” was, they might post some of the spoilers they had. And just because tptb are trying to hide it, doesn’t mean things won’t get leaked. It’s happened before.

So I wanted to wait and see what happened. Yesterday, the spoiler site posted something saying that after careful consideration, they’d decided not to post any spoilers at all for the MSF. They also say it’s not a legal thing and they’ll explain more after the MSF airs.

Guys, this is HUGE! And very good for TD. Mostly because it’s never happened before. We’ve also discussed (and I know I recently answered an Ask about it) whether or not the spoiler site would post spoilers about Beth’s return, even if they had them. The reason we wonder about that is because the site has been so horrible and petty to TD and Beth’s fans. They didn’t like her at all and have always been nasty to us. So we wondered if they would post her return if they knew or try to hide it. We still don’t have an answer to that because we don’t know if they know.

See, them being so secretive boils down to one of two things: 1) either they really have no clue because the screeners didn’t go out. 2) they got the information somehow and know she’s returning, but don’t want to post it because they know they were wrong and they’re gonna get backlash over it.

Those are really the only two scenarios that make sense. If you’ve been on the spoiler site forum or paid attention to what others are saying, they’re trying hard to push the idea that the “shocking moment” will be Carl’s death, which everyone’s been discussing for weeks. I’m here to tell you that it makes no sense for that to be the case.

As I said in my last, TTD post, they’ve never hyped a death this way. They always stay entirely away from deaths so the audience (those that don’t follow spoilers anyway) are surprised. But the other thing is that they usually send out screeners for deaths as well. We had spoilers for Sasha’s death, Denise, Glenn/Abraham, BETH. Just because someone is dying, they usually don’t cover to the point of not sending out screeners. This has to be something else, and bigger than that, for them to withhold the screener.

Plus, even the spoiler site themselves said they don’t think the big death is happening until episode 9. If that’s the case, it can’t have anything to do with the “shocking moment” in episode 8. 

Now they’re saying they think that character will be injured in ep 8 but not die until ep 9. 

Again, based on precedent, that makes no sense at all. They’ve never had a major character get injured in one episode and die in another. This is where half our survival evidence about Beth comes from. If the character is badly injured, but doesn’t die right away (think Carl’s various GSWs, Hershel’s leg, Tara’s head injury in 5b) they always survive. When we have a major character death it always happens all at once in the same episode.

The only possible exception is being bitten. Two characters, Jim in S1 and Bob in S5, were bitten in one episode but didn’t die in that episode. To be fair, neither of them were top-billed characters, and neither was as big a deal as Carl is. But could Carl be bitten? Sure. I know there’s been some speculation about him having been bitten when he was with Siddiq. For the record, I don’t think he was. It’s night time in the promo for episode 8, which means it’s been hours since he fought walkers with Siddiq, and I think he would at least be showing signs of a fever by then. So I personally doubt he’s been bitten.

But let’s say for argument’s sake that he was. So what would be the shocking moment in episode 8 then? To tell us he was bitten? Sure everyone would be surprised and sad, but it’s really not shocking enough to withhold the screener. Especially if he doesn’t actually die in this episode. And even if we do see him be bitten or seriously injured in episode 8…again, why withhold the screener? If Sasha’s death wasn’t shocking enough to keep it out of spoiler sites’ hands, why would an injury WITHOUT a death, be shocking enough? See what I mean?

Guys, I could go on and on and on. I won’t, but this is what my group’s been doing for the past few days: running through every possible argument and scenario to try and figure out what else it could be (besides Beth) and if we shouldn’t be getting our hopes up. Nothing else makes sense. We’re 99% sure the shocking moment isn’t a death, and honestly, what else would be so shocking to the audience? What else would tptb try so hard to hide? We really think we’re going to see her.

So one more thing about the spoiler site and then I’ll shut up. There was one comment made by one of the admins that make us think they know SOMEthing. We don’t have confirmation that they do. Maybe they really know nothing. Either way is good for us.

The comment was that, after the MSF, a lot of people were going to be “eating crow.” For those who don’t know, that’s an English expression that means “humiliation by admitting having been proven wrong after taking a strong position.” Eating “humble pie” is a similar expression.

So again, they’ve been so nasty to TD, we’re thinking maybe, somehow, they do know that Beth is returning, and this “eating crow” refers to them having been so wrong and us being right about her return. Nothing else makes much sense. Even if the Carl spoilers are wrong, no one’s known about them long, and even the spoiler site has always said their unconfirmed, and to take it with a grain of salt. So there’s no reason to shame anyone because no one’s had a super-strong opinion about it. Just conjecture. So why would anyone need to eat crow over that?

So we’ve discussed what they may post after the episode, per their comment that they’ll explain later. I seriously doubt TD will get much of an apology, but you gotta understand how weird it is for them not to post ANYTHING. And that also makes me think they know something.

Even if they didn’t get the screener and don’t have confirmation of what happens, their usual MO is to post what they THINK will happen and just put a disclaimer on it saying it hasn’t been confirmed and so to understand they might be wrong. Why not just do that if they don’t know? Sounds like maybe they DO know, and just don’t want to say.

And the ONLY thing we can’t think of that would make them do that is Beth’s return. People (non-TDers) have suggested all kinds of things, such as Chandler contacting them and asking them not to confirm certain things. (Again, these people are assuming Carl is dying, which I’m no longer totally convinced of.) But the spoiler site has always said that if they have spoilers, they’re posting them. End of story. Like most ruthless reporters, they don’t have much respect or sensitivity for the human element. They just want to be the first ones to report the big story. When John Bernecker died (he was the stunt guy who took a fall during the filming season and tragically passed away) they reported that with as much callousness as anything else. They wouldn’t not report something just to “be nice.”

On the other hand, we know they have an ego and they might not report something if it was going to threaten their reputation. And let me just say my intention here isn’t to slam or insult the spoiler site. I’m just saying that based on past behavior, this is a VERY odd decision on their part.

And of course I’ve gotten questions about whether it could be something else: the return of Heath or Sherry, something with FG or Eugene. Again, I just don’t think so. I know they’ve hyped things before and we’ve been disappointed, but they’ve never withheld the screener before. While any of those things would be big deals, would they be bigger than a major character death? Bigger than Morales’ return? Bigger than a new romance? (We totally got spoilers for Richonne, Ressie, and Carnid’s first kiss.) 

Do we have confirmation that Beth will return? No, we don’t, but we have more hope than we’ve had in the past three years. I would also like to take this moment to point one thing out. One of the first theories TD-ers pinpointed about Beth is that the rule of 3s is used around her. Everything happens in 3s. 8x08 will be exactly 3 seasons from when she was shot. 3 seasons from when we last saw her for real. (We saw her in 5x09 as Ty’s hallucination, but I’m discounting that for now because it wasn’t her in the flesh.) So 8x08 just makes a lot of sense.

So I’ll shut up now, but I encourage you to read what’s being said and just always ask, would that merit not sending out screeners? Because we can really only think of one thing that would.

Everyone have a great Friday! Can’t wait for Sunday. ;D

[ridiasfangirlings]

Yata and Kusanagi haven't been body switched yet, have they? Scenario of that, please? :) Yata would certainly approve the new heights. Also pre-S1 setting Fushimi comes across Kusanagi-in-Yata's body, proceeds to taunt as usual - but mom is not impressed. :D Thank you for your time!

Yata would finally be taller than Fushimi and also almost everyoneelse. Imagine the rest of Homra walks into the bar and there’s ‘Yata’behind the counter, cleaning the bar and serving drinks and such.Someone mentions that Kusanagi’s not there and then puts their feetup on the counter and is shocked when 'Yata’ proceeds to be like takethose feet off my precious counter. Right at that point is when'Kusanagi’ comes out of the back room carrying some boxes of wine andasking what else he can do for Kusanagi-san and everyone is confused.I feel like Mikoto would figure it out right away, like he walks inand lies on the couch and suddenly finds himself scolded by Yata,which no way that happens. Kusanagi has to get used to being in thisshort body and imagine him taking off Yata’s beanie and borrowing hisown sunglasses back because he doesn’t feel right without them.Yata meanwhile enjoys being taller but he can’t manage to skateboardbecause his center of gravity is all wrong. The first time he trieshe wipes out spectacularly and Kusanagi facepalms and asks ifYata-chan could try not bruising up his body thanks (oh oh imagineYata’s voice speaking with Kusanagi’s accent).

It’s also a confusing bodyswitch for the Scepter 4 members, imagineAwashima walks into the bar and is surprised to see Homra’sYatagarasu behind the counter. She’s even more surprised when hestarts flirting with her, considering that last she heard he wasn’tsupposed to be very good with girls and yet he’s calm enough here.'Yata’ proceeds to make her an anko cocktail, at that point I thinkAwashima smiles in amusement and notes that Kusanagi’s gotten a lotshorter lately. Later on Kusanagi goes out to pick some things up andruns into Fushimi, Fushimi immediately tosses a few knives his wayand prepares to fight. Actually I think this would be interestingbecause Kusanagi likes Fushimi and I could see him just being curiousas to why Fushimi always acts like this around Yata, like what thehell happened here anyway. Fushimi’s all confused that Yata’s notfighting him, Kusanagi tries to calm him down with words and thatjust makes Fushimi even more suspicious. He tries throwing a knifeagain and 'Yata’ pulls out a lighter and knocks the knife out of theair with a whip made of flame. That’s enough to tell Fushimi what’sgoing on and he makes a disgusted face while asking what Kusanagi-sanis doing in Misaki’s body. Kusanagi tries to assure him that it’stemporary and Fushimi clicks his tongue and mutters about howannoying to is as he turns to walk away. (Elsewhere, Munakata runsinto Yata and makes a nice passive aggressive fake polite comment andis very amused when 'Kusanagi’ calls him a creepy smug asshole).