#when s2 comes she'll surely be in the cover too

[books-are-my-life-stuff]

This is a world of magic. This is a world in which magic is casually used by everyone. In a deep, dark forest in this world of magic, there is a boy who is single-mindedly working out. His name is Mash Burnedead, and he has a secret. He can't use magic.

[skloomdumpster]

If you were the writer for Fate S3, what would you do with it? (I'm super intrigued)

You know Brian, you're not the first ask I get about this and I'll be real that I've tried sitting down and working on it many times, but I inevitably grow bored, because I already wrote various different fics covering the points I'd want addressed.

A couple things I'd for sure want would be the expansion of the world. I think we end s2 with most of the characters in a pretty bad place, but also with their own plot.

(Btw, a lot of the ideas here are a product of me and Mo spiraling, so credit where credit is due, this is as much hers as is mine @gossipqueen2000 )

So my ideal season 3 isn't in Alfea.

Secondly I wrote all of how I'd see Bloom in the Realm of Darkness in the HEX fic (A Merry Fucking Life), but that fic is heavy in the introspection, which I know wouldn't be that interesting to be watched, so I'd add more threats inside the Realm of Darkness and mysteries too. Not only Bloom's memory is slowly slipping between her fingers and she has to come to terms with the fact that Marion is not her friend and that she already has parents, but she also has to realize that she killed herself at the end of the season 2 and deal with the monsters that are out to get in the Realm of Darkness.

One idea I toyed with when writing AMFL was that the tower would be a safe haven in a hellscape. So the first time Bloom attempts to escape it, she's chased by this sand-shadow creatures, which are manifestations of hers and Marion's fears. The only safe place is the tower, but that in turn has Marion inside it, a glimpse into the future of what she's going to become if she doesn't leave fast: a relic locked in a tower, with no memories of her loved ones or herself.

Bloom aside, the second thing I'd be *dead set* on wanting in season 3 is Burned Ones. They were my favorite thing in s1 and I think it simply makes sense they'd be attracted back now that the Dragon Flame is gone. We can imply they were searching for her for years, thousands of years in the Otherworld, then baby Bloom was unlocked from stasis and taken to the First World, so they stopped attacking people, since they could sense she was no longer in this world. Then she comes back to the Otherworld in s1ep1 and they come back. Season 2 we don't see them as much because they are regrouping after Bloom demolished them in the finale of s1, also Rosalind's specialists are just fucking better.

"But Jo, she's no longer in the Otheworld, so if they're attracted by Bloom, by this logic they shouldn't be in season 3!"

YES BUT- The Dragon Flame and the Shadow Guy are essentially the same thing.

The presence of the Shadow Guy who escapes at the finale of s2 is enough to bring forward the Burned Ones. To them, they're essentially the same thing. Same power.

Anyway and anyhow, now we have B.Os again, hurrah. Then, I'd have the characters divided. I'd put Sky, Saul, Dane, Kat, Riven and Musa in the same package [The Specialists] and have them deal with the Burned Ones.

Sky is a wreck, he's reckless and no one wants to be his partner. Riven is the only one putting up with him, but that's going to cost him too. Dane and Musa actually build a friendship. Musa refuses to use her powers, she's deadset she wants to be a specialist. This has to cost her too.

I've written it before, but I think Musa should get attacked by a B.O, an attack she could've prevented, if she had used her magic. Musa's refusal to grow and avoidance is one of the things about her character that bothers me the most, so if she won't learn via love... Then she'll learn via pain. You don't get to avoid a scar going across your face, sorry. I also just really like scars. + mini arc where she gets to go home and we see more of her father and her mom, or the space she left with her death.

(for the sake of makeup department the scar would eventually fade to a red line on the side of her face, but FIRST we need this big thing that is a testament of how much she's failing herself by avoiding half of her nature).

Riven needs a plot of his own and I guess is a little too late to tackle the gigantic glaring "Internalized homophobia" thing he's got going on. That was a season 2 issue that they did a fucking shitty job on. Time to tackle his self esteem and what future he sees for himself. If Sky already decided he'll die by the end of the season, Riven is the one who realized he'll have to live and now, for the first time, is being forced to make all this mature decisions and pick a future he's not even sure he's ready for. + the weight his own family is putting on him. Let's finally give a face to those gigantic daddy issues we all have sensed since s1.

Talking about gigantic daddy issues... Saul would be headmaster, but he's way in over his head. Not only he had trauma to get past from jail, but he's got a suicidal angry son in his hands, B.Os on the loose that he needs to send his own students to hunt and he has to deal with the loneliness he finds himself on. All of his relationships have been severed, be it by choice (Ben, Sebastian), be it by death (Farah, even Andreas). This man is incredibly tired and alone... Then we give him the new headmistress for the fairies, after ep 2 or 3. Saul cannot lead the fairies, it's obvious the Queen would appoint someone to the position, but he's not ready to allow this stranger into his school, near the kids he's meant to protect, especially not after going through Rosalind all over again. Saul vs Griselda showdown.

That's the "Alfea" people, but they're hardly at Alfea most of the time. They're in the surrounding area, Blackbridge and region to hunt the B.Os.

Meanwhile, Terra and Flora pack their bags to go get Sam and Ben back from Malacoy Academy. Malacoy has been their "enemy" school since always, but there's a difference between petty rivalry and whatever is happening there now.

Beatrix crawled out of her grave once the Shadow Guy loomed over it ominously at the finale and she went in search of her two sisters, Darcy and Isobel, only to find that they were in Malacoy. Naturally, she enrolls and tries, once again, to pull the same thing she did in season 1. Except this Beatrix is not the same from before, now she opened up to Stella, now she had the taste of doing something because she believed it was good... She craves having these two sisters, but she cannot turn a blind eye on how horrifyingly weird they are.

Because turns out that while little Bea was rescued from the Aster Dell bloodwitches (who were extremists) and raised like a fairy, she's not an actual fairy. She, just like her sisters, are the product of what Rosalind says in season 1: Sacrificing fairies to put their powers inside of Blood Witches (#fuck the season 2 B.W lore).

Beatrix was raised believing she's a fairy, but she only has the air powers. Unlike other fairies, her powers can be great but they'll not ever turn into the other elements. This she realizes in Malacoy Academy.

Meanwhile Isobel and Darcy had escaped the blast by fate and they were raised by the B.W who escaped. The extremist ones. They do believe in the ancient practices of sacrificing fairies for their powers and they've done this. Their next victim is Sam Harvey and Beatrix doesn't even like the guy, but she knows him and now she has this horrible thing called a moral compass and ugh... Fine, fuck, she'll save his life- And now Terra's and Flora's too, she guesses? Why can't these people just stay in their own castle.

Talking of the extremist Blood Witches, well... They didn't just get nuked in Aster Dell. A good number of them escaped, enough of them to indoctrinate even more Blood Witches in the future. They were living in the shadows, but Luna's declaration of war in season 2 pushes them forward. They need to take on the fairies, they need to do this in an organized manner. This means they need a leader.

They turn to Sebastian's people- Except Sebastian is no longer there. Grey is. Grey who has a moral compass and people he likes (even loves maybe?) in the fairy side, but suddenly has an entire group of people asking him to lead them. He doesn't budge easily, he's been in contact with Aisha, they're hopeful that they can get the Andros people and other mini realms to see what Luna is failing to see: the blood witches need protection from Burned Ones just as much as the fairies, not all of them are evil.

This can be done in a civilized manner.

This is why Aisha leaves Alfea alongside Stella. Stella needs to be introduced to her court, her training needs to be harder, Luna wants her there. Meanwhile Aisha believes, just like Grey, that they can build a case and being in court, talking to politically relevant people is instrumental for this.

What Aisha doesn't realize is that by going to the Solaria castle she's not just building a political network against the queen and this counts as a coup attempt, one that could put Stella's head on a platter, but also that she is, physically, in Luna's grounds. She's a hostage just as much as Stella is.

Suddenly Grey is out of moves, the things he thought he could do in a civilized manner are no longer feasible. There's a Shadow Guy going around bringing the dead back and attracting Burned Ones, there are Burned Ones attacking his people. He can't afford to let them die just because Aisha is scared for her parents or for Stella. He has to put his people's interests first.

Stella, in the other hand, knows that it was her letter that got Bloom in stasis. She was instrumental in the decline of Bloom's mental health at the last two episodes and this guilt is eating her up. Beatrix's death? Also on her. So many things are directly her fault and she needs to clean it up, she needs Bloom back- But Beatrix is back? How? The Shadow Guy.

Well what if... What if they could catch the Shadow Guy. It came through the same portal Bloom vanished, didn't it? It's the same magic.

Stella believes, furiously, that she can bring Bloom back if she catches the Shadow Guy. Beatrix's resurrection aids this belief.

Sky is angry at the whole lot of them for not making an effort on bringing Bloom back, he's angry at himself for not going with her, he's angry at Silva and Riven for wanting him to live the future that is knocking at his door - He'll do whatever Stella asks. Including lying to Riven and the others about the "burned ones" they're tracking, which is not a Burned One at all.

If only Musa wasn't wearing the cuffs and in denial about her magic, then she could sense Sky is lying to them and weaponizing Silva's and Riven's sympathies.

Beatrix wants to save the Harveys from her own sisters and this is how she gets roped into the Blood Witches fight, this is how she gets to know about the stealing magic ritual, the bidding ritual for the Shadow Guy, she has people of her own that she wants back from the dead... This is how she ends up in Grey's power, her life in his hands.

Griselda, for all that Saul hates her and wants to undermine her, used to work in Malacoy Academy. She knows the students suddenly being amazing at magic tests and tournaments isn't normal, she just needs to find out what is going on. If only Silva would let her get closer to the students, stop shielding them from her prodding, then she could get the full picture of what is happening at Malacoy, with the blood witches right under their nose.

And then they could trace it back to Grey and Aisha and Stella and the fact that Stella isn't seeing that in her insanity to save Bloom, she's falling into the same trap that Sebastian fell in. The same power from darkness that is whispering in her ear that if she sacrifices enough people, they'll be able to bring back her loved ones (in this case just one), she just has to open that portal back again for Bloom.

Surely nothing worse is coming out of it.

[angsty-nerd]

Max + Identity in Season 2

In the pilot, when Max self-identifies who he is to Liz, he tells her, "I'm a son, I'm a brother, I'm a cop...I'm just a guy from Roswell." All of those pieces of his self identity are systematically destroyed in Season 2, to the point where in the season finale he's grasping onto the last thing he feels like might be real about himself -- his role as the savior. A role that he scoffed at before his death, that he didn't really seem to believe, until all of the things he did believe about himself were gone. And then he loses that too, upon the discovery that he's not the only one, that he lacks any form of individuality. That Jones is just like him.

We get our first hint that this is coming in 2x05 when Rosa and Isobel get a glimpse inside Max's mindscape. They are literally traveling through the dying remnants of Max's mind, watching as these pieces of him are slowly fading away. There are three key visual clues in these scenes that give us insight into how he sees himself.

Most obviously, in his mindscape he is fully dressed in his Sheriff's Department uniform. This is the self-identity that he projects to the outside world in Season 1. There are many good metas out there about the layers behind that. How he takes his hat off when he's not on the job because he doesn't feel he deserves it. But all in all, his internal self image is the deputy that the public sees. I’ll add a link below to one where Mo and I were discussing this.

He is surrounded by Liz. And slowly losing her. This could be (and is) a meta all on its own about his psyche in general. He said it himself in 1x03 when he told her that he loves her. "That's what everything is about for me!" And this is the visual embodiment of it. His internal identity completely encompassed and consumed by his memories of Liz and all the things that represent her for him. And yes, their slow degredation are a literal representation. Of his memories of her slowly disappearing, but I also definitely would argue that it's exposing his deepest fear as well - that she'll leave him again.

And of course, he is chained to the floor. We are still, at this point in the season, just getting a glimpse at the layers of trauma hidden within his subconscious, but this is a direct look inside of him and his trauma is right there staring him in the face. These are hidden scars that he hasn't even begun yet to discover, but slowly begin to reveal themselves throughout Season 2b. And I expect will be prevalent in Season 3 as well.

The progression of Max's identity crisis started from the moment he woke up, with a portion of his self literally erased through the loss of his memories of Liz. A lot was made of the sweetness of him telling her at the end of the episode "I am not whole without you." But in a sense that statement could have been almost a thesis for his character arc in Season 2. He spends the entire season not whole, losing little pieces of himself one by one until he's not sure who he is at the end of 2x13.

Once his memory returned in 2x06, it briefly seemed like Max was back to normal, but that quickly got undercut in the opening scene of the next episode when it was first hinted at that he shouldn't be using his powers anymore. In 2x07 it was suggested that Liz was just being overly cautious, but her fears were proved to be accurate in 2x08 when Max does use his powers and immediately suffers chest pain. Its a physical reaction to his powers that's further emphasized in 2x12 when he almost dies trying to kill Flint. Nothing was explicitly stated, but I still speculate he had a full on heart attack in that moment, or that the pacemaker briefly failed, given how hard it was to resuscitate him. But without his powers, he's not complete as an alien anymore.

In 2x09 he loses what he thought he understood about his own origin story. Sheriff Valenti's version of the incident in the group home not only undercut certain facts about himself that he always had believed to be true - that he was the solid, stable one. That he was the strong one. Suddenly he's being told that he's the traumatized one, that he's the one with the behavioral pattern of being a loose cannon.

He loses his job. Okay, officially he quit in 2x07 to search for Jenna, but let's be honest here...if he hadn't quit, then he certainly would have lost his job when Sheriff Valenti arrested him in 2x09. We saw in his mindscape and heard from his lips in the pilot how strongly he identifies as a cop. But now that uniform, and that identity, have literally been stripped away from him...and replaced with a new uniform, sexy Wild Pony bartender man!

So, we have him stripped of his identity as an alien with powers, stripped of his identity as a cop. And in 2x10 he gets stripped of his identity within his family, when he learns that he and Isobel are not related. All of those self-identified aspects of himself have disintegrated, and he's left floundering to figure out who he is without those things. Which is why he begins to throw himself into trying to regain his memories, potentially even at the expense of his health through the use of the serum. Because he is so desperate to find a truth about himself to hold on to.

But that journey is also doomed to undercut him. One of my favorite musical moments of Season 2 is the second time he experiences a memory flash triggered by his own reflection, at the end of 2x10, with the cover of Bullet With Butterfly Wings playing over the scene. @echoapothecary did a great set on this scene right after the episode aired... link below.

Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage

Someone will say what is lost can never be saved

Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage

Tell me I'm the only one

Tell me there's no other one

Jesus was the only son, yeah

Tell me I’m the chosen one

I think in the moment we were supposed to take the visual flash at face value and assume that this was about Max's trauma from being imprisoned as a child, but on rewatch (and frankly, listening to the song over and over and over…) I really think the choice was more about identity, and foreshadowing the reveal of Jones as a mirror, clone, relative, something….to Max?

While in the middle of the S2 experience, one of my favorite gif sets that @maxortecho made for me was this idea of Max, and people constantly cutting him down, while Liz loved him regardless of those things (linked below). At the time I was really focusing on him and his reaction to being constantly told he was a let down. Add to that the appearance of Diego in 2x10, and Max isn’t even trying to hide his low self esteem and feelings of insecurity anymore. But take those constant undercuts and add to it the tidal wave of an identity crisis as all of the things you believe to be true about yourself fall apart, and we're left with the Max we see in the last couple episodes of Season 2. A man on a mission, manic and desperate to figure out who he is now, exacerbated by the fact that he's literally on drugs (the serum).

Only then, in his desperate, manic state, does he find himself willing to believe the implausible (to him) reveal at the end of Season 1 that he might be the Savior. Because it's the last thing that makes him unique, that makes him feel like he has a role, a purpose…until he loses that too at the end of the episode when they release Jones, a literal copy of himself, from his prison.

All of these gifs were gratefully borrowed from @maxortecho, with two exceptions. Wild Pony Max 🔥 is @rosaortecho’s work, and Howdy 🧔🏻 is (I think) @darlingnotso’s. (Please correct me if I’m wrong).