#which is why his s3 arc is so important bc he really is just trying to Live His Life. but he still doesnt know What he is

[diamondcitydarlin]

i think probably the worst part of the whole thing is that I just don't really care anymore, the investment I had at the end of season 1 just straight up no longer exists. no, it's not just bc a blorbo got killed off (and there's a lot of reasons to be angry about that), it's mainly bc most of the characters at this point feel like hollow shells of who they were a season ago, including the stede x ed pairing as a whole (which I really just don't care about anymore at all, sorry). and no it's not bc 'Izzy got all the development and there was no time for anyone else' like of course there was time for everyone else, provided that they hadn't opened the season on all those characters making 180 character changes with no real explanation, provided they hadn't overloaded the damn season with nonsense that goes nowhere. JimxOlu was my OTP after StedexEd in season one, both of them were some of my faves, and not only did neither of them even really resemble who they were in s1, their relationship which was of such great importance in the former just suddenly...is something else now. Not people in love, but 'friends who have fucked once lol' and are wingmen for each other now because...??? Oh but Jim's dating Archie who...*checks notes* was in a Snake Cult? I think? That's about all we get on her, apart from the fact that she likes making out with Jim I guess. And I guess Zheng can't just be a powerful woman character that exists in this narrative without a romance of her own, so let's just toss her together with Olu and never explore or explain that with any kind of depth. Jim has neither trust issues anymore nor do they have ANY interest or investment in their revenge scheme or the Siete Gallos (REMEMBER THAT PLOTLINE?? REMEMBER?? APPARENTLY THE WRITERS DON'T) they're just kind of goofy all the time now for no reason. Olu's leadership arc? His being a confidant to Stede? Where the fuck did any of that go? Are they all a polycule or are they all just separate couple friends? IDK WHO CARES THIS IS HOW IT IS NOW I GUESS. Like, why am I supposed to care about any of that? It doesn't even feel like the characters I watched before.

And StedexEd. Jfc there's so much to say that other people have said better but the constant bringing up of conflicts, breakups, and then immediately resolving those issues with heartfelt reunions/kissing as if that's supposed to be sufficient got really old for me after awhile. The lack of explaining how their 'whim-prone' romance to this point was bad, the lack of explaining how they reconcile their different goals was also bad, but oh they can just go RUN AN INN NOW! Yay happily ever after! ????? "Ed, you've got family" which he immediately leaves to go try another life path he's probably going to suck at and hate WOW so romance. Like either figure it out or break up for good, it just makes them an obnoxious toxic couple who never seem to communicate or bother to try but are supposed to be the one we love the most and are rooting for. And that sucks, because I loved them once! GARBAGE!

There's only so much blame one can put on external factors for this. I worked in production once, I edited scripts and was a go-between for notes and writers, and this is the exact kind of thing I would've felt compelled to point out; we only have x amount of time and x amount of episodes to properly tell these stories, we know this, so maybe lets be realistic about what we can fit in here and do justice and what we can't. Maybe let's not just throw every fucking thing we think of at the wall to see what sticks while completely ignoring/retconning character traits and stories we set up in season 1. But nah, that's what happened!

Like, what is there to watch for at this point if s3 gets greenlit? I fail to find anything that I'd care about seeing continued, even the peripheral characters like Frenchie and Wee John and Roach, whom I also loved before and still do but barely did anything, so I guess I can tune in to watch them do more of nothing? Idk man it sucks when it's not just 'wow that was bad I hope next season is better' but instead 'wow that was so boring and incohesive I have no more interest or emotional investment in this to continue'

[raayllum]

if you have time/want to could you go on a righteous tirade about how the cube hostage exchange theory doesn’t reduce Rayla to just a “plot device” in Callum’s story or make her a nothing but a damsel in distress… getting real tired of That One Person saying stuff like that on reddit

Honestly I stay off reddit as much as possible for a lot of reasons but bc I'm literally always down to talk about my beloved theory:

1) In regards to the "damsel in distress" argument... Thus far, Callum has saved Rayla every single time she's been backed into a corner. Who saved her from the smoke wolves, from the giant fish, from the slug, from Soren Claudia and co. in 2x07? Who saved her after she jumped off the Pinnacle and when she went into the Moon Nexus portal? Rayla is still exercising agency in those scenes, trying or successfully saving someone, but from the start, her and Callum's dynamic has very often been "You save everyone and I save you."

This ties into Rayla's bigger character arc about learning how to rely on other people and that she doesn't have to do everything alone. She's gone from relying on the boys because she had to, choosing to rely on Callum, and is now fearful she'll rely on him too much (and get him killed). She left in TTM because she was determined, specifically, to do things 'alone' - she can't succeed without having that belief reaffirmed. Literally, her only two options are either to see shit going down and somehow book it back to safety, or to get captured. It's not crazy to explore the other half of a 50-50 split.

2) So a "plot device" is something that only exists to propel one character's arc. The thing about Rayla is that while a character hasn't used her against Callum before, the narrative absolutely has. The metaphor arc of Callum getting his wings that's set up carefully in S2 is only fulfilled in S3 because of his love for Rayla.

They literally used the Power of Love trope for it, and Callum says as much: how could he do something so miraculous? "Because I love you, Rayla. I really do."

And Callum is only put on the path of accessing the Sky Arcanum because he does dark magic to protect Rayla in the first place. While Rayla's arc development has typically existed a little bit more separately from Callum (aka her mini arc in 3x09 and some of TTM) which again, reflects her character, Callum is far more relational, which also reflects his character. This has been the case since season freaking one, with Rayla choosing the egg and Ezran choosing her, and Callum choosing her because Ezran did so first. None of this should be surprise.

Cube Hostage Exchange Theory, in what it would cause both of them to choose and/or to learn is really no different than 2x07, but the order would change. In 2x07, Rayla decides to take Callum's worldview (concerning the cycle) as her own and puts her life in danger. Callum follows and does something morally and magically dubious, unwilling to lose her. In Cube Hostage Exchange Theory, Callum would do the dubious thing first (risking potentially the world by passing over the cube or something else important) and then Rayla would take his worldview (that she has worth, in this case, that she cannot erase nor deter him from seeing no matter what she does) as her own, thus completing her character arc, setting her up for a new one, and working to evolve his before they likewise resolve it together.

Just like Ezran&Zym's relationship, Callum&Rayla's is one half of the narrative's heart, so to speak. It's clear from a narrative standpoint they were each designed as pairs, and part of the reason why Callum and Rayla foil each other so fiercely, their arcs constantly working in interlocking circles with each other. This is already shown in arc 2, where Rayla existed in a painful emotional limbo concerning her family in TTM, but by leaving, she has now left that space to be occupied by Callum in S4. In some ways, Rayla kinda has to lose her agency a little, in order for (narratively) circle back around to her realizing what she denied Callum by leaving him behind.

At the end of the day, cube hostage exchange theory is just that: a theory. I think it has real merit, and I'll be extremely curious what route they'll take if it's not this one, as it seems the most straight forward with what's been set up, but no less delighted and pleased by whatever S4 deigns to do in its stead.

And on a closing note, because I know The One Person Troll loves to reference Star Wars, and the creators have used Empire Strikes Back as a comparison time and time again... you know, the film where the hero famously dips on training and prioritizes saving his friends above all else, and loses the battle horribly? (Which ATLA also did with a trope so famous it's called Always Save The Girl?) The movie where in the actual romance plot line, one love interest is taken captive and has to be later rescued? That movie?

[strangeswift]

May I ask why do you like S3 overall, is it bc of vibes and all? I am not judging you, I just find S3 to be the most lackluster filler season to ever exist in the season and if you just deleted it, nothing really would make a huge difference. Some stuff were good but you could just add those good things in S3 or S4.

Overall that season destroyed many characters like Mike, Hopper (by making him a largely comedic relief), Jonathan (by adding sexism storyline which was cringe), destroyed several character relationships that were important in the series in the previous two seasons (Mike and Will, Will and the party in general, making Dustin leave the party and no one really caring about it aside from Will etc).

The only good things that happened were Robin and her coming out plus straightbait, and Max and El's friendship. Overall, there is nothing in that season plotwise and it didnt introduce anything new to the story... plus is destroyed the previous good elements like characters, character dynamics and plot. It was lackluster compared to S2's real horror, the meaty MF was trash, most of the new introducations of new plot lines such as Evil!Soviets were very underwhelming and unnecessary that took too much screen time for no reason. And the Duffers obsession with the Russia plot lines both in S3 where it got introduced, and the continuation of it in S4 where it got drageed for so long, honestly felt so unnecessary and reductive. There was no UD. It was heavily fanservice-y and filled with eye candy elements and relied on just vibes (like summer vibes and shit) and big budget action rather than actually telling a good story with a vision and quantity.

Hi anon!

Gonna try to respond to everything you said sorry if this is a little scatterbrained!

So firstly. I don't feel as if they destroyed Hopper's character. He's going through it this season, but I actually feel like he has a good amount of depth this season, and he's actually trying to be vulnerable. Sure a lot of it is sort of through a comedic lense, but I don't feel like he's been completely reduced to being comedic relief, and I definitely don't think they ruined his character.

The most certainly did not destroy Jonathan's character by any means, especially not with the sexism plotline because... he isn't the one being sexist? Sure, he doesn't completely Get It. Just like Nancy doesn't completely get where he's coming from with his family's financial situation. I don't think he's apathetic to the sexism, I just think he hasn't considered just how much it must be affecting Nancy. Now, if I were him, would I stay at a job like that? I don't know. I would love to say that I wouldn't, but with his financial situation and the lack of jobs? I'd probably suck it up and stay. Yes, even if they were being demeaning toward my girlfriend. However. It's true that he clearly Doesn't Get It. That's not "ruining his character" though. That's a character having flaws. Just like Nancy has flaws, like not considering Jonathan's situation.

I also don't think the sexism storyline was cringe. I think it was important.

I don't think S3 "destroyed" anything except Mike and El's romantic relationship and depending on how S5 shakes out maybe Mike's character. I mean sure if Mike isn't actually struggling with his sexuality and was just being an asshole then yeah they ruined Mike. So fingers crossed that they didn't ruin Mike.

I'd argue that some important shit happened S3. I mean Billy's death set up Max's entire S4 arc. Mike and Will's conflict is important for Will's arc. Steve had massive amounts of character development. Robin was introduced and incredibly well developed which it takes time to do.

I personally thought the horror elements were cool, although S2 and S4 solo S3 as far as horror elements obviously. But I'm not a horror gal really so if you're really into horror then I get how maybe you'd be disappointed? I mean I thought the building of the army and everything was pretty fucking cool. And the rats and shit. I really liked the whole mystery.

And there was Upside Down!! I mean.. that was the whole plot. The Mindflayer was the villain he's from the UD. The Russians were trying to access the UD. So it's not really accurate to say there was no UD.

As far as Russia plotline. Eh. Idk scoops troops whole storyline from cracking the code to sneaking through the vents and getting drugged and tortured for info all within the mall? I thought it was really cool. Yeah the Duffers Russian obsession is kinda weird and they kinda went ham in S4 but I did actually like it in S3.

I do like the summer vibes but also I really like a lot of other things! I really like the plot. All the scenes of El in the void were SUPER SICK. The beginning of El's independence arc and her having fun for the first time in her life? Priceless to me. She means everything so me oh my god. Hopper and Joyce being badasses and the Jopper will they won't they?? Lumax's banter this season is so important to showing how comfortable and real their relationship is. Will's whole arc is super important and amazing. SUZIE MY BELOVED!!! The Scoops Troop MY BELOVED I adore them. Erica becoming a main character? Also everything to me. Stobin? Everything to me. Robin's coming out remains my favorite scene in the entire show.

^ Sensing a pattern? Females. Women. S3 is more female centric, it brings existing female characters to the forefront. Elmax friendship. Independent El. Introduces Robin a smart and fiercely Independent lesbian. Joyce being a badass as usual. For better or worse, Karen having her arc about being unhappy in her cookie cutter marriage. Nancy confronting sexism in the workplace and coming out stronger the other side. Nancy and Karen's talk.

Also. Honestly? After S2 I needed some fun. S2 is my favorite don't get me wrong, but it's dark. It's depressing. Immaculate vibes, amazing horror elements, amazing storytelling! My favorite! But. Depressing. Needed some fun next season as a chaser.

I mean it's all subjective, but these are just my personal opinions and why I do really like S3. Not my favorite though. I like S2 then S1 then S3 then S4. (That might change after I finish my rewatch though S4 might move up idk)

[bendarius]

i started writing this benrius coleadership analysis a month ago and i finally deem it finished after weeks of not looking at it it so here we go

So as we all know their arcs in s1 start of completely on opposite ends. ben is less than psyched to be there while this is darius’ dream. however ben ends up stepping up during the train moment inspired by darius. they go through their struggles in s2; darius w leadership and ben w himself/survival. beginning of s3 they get brought together and are shown sadness leaving jurassic world because of their individual connection to it: darius w his dad through dinosaurs, and ben’s connection to himself through bumpy/island.

s3 has darius fighting to keep ben by their side bc he cant lose ben again bc that’s threatening his promise that he made to get everyone out safely. meanwhile darius’ attempts to do so threaten ben’s own selfhood. their interests are at a standstill both wanting to do what’s best for ben and having different ideas of such. bc of ben’s specific past that darius still feels guilt for is why he’s so unwilling to let ben go again, that much is obvious. ben is the only one able to absolve darius of the guilt in a deeper conversation than the one we got at their reunion, reassuring that he doesn’t blame darius and loves darius. Now that’s important bc even though the others have tried to remind darius that he’s not at fault for ben this was the only one that was able to get through to him fully. brooklynn did remind darius in s2 and sure; bc its ben himself that he’s able to say “i’m the person you dropped and i’m telling you it’s not your fault” but ben makes sure to not only absolve him of that guilt but to remind darius of his doings and how he’s always tried to protect him—to protect everyone (He’s branching out from his specific instance) they couldve stopped there but we got the “I love you bud” which! the bud is important so i don’t want to take it out of context but i just find it so prominent that ben decides to tell him That instead of a “you’re amazing” like. it’s coming from ben’s feelings. “quite a pair” from darius like theyre partners on equal ground (which they are! co-leaders.) anyways.

through the seasons we get shoulder touching. lots of it. it means reassurance from darius, worry from ben in s1; but in s3 the Amount of reassuring shoulder touches we get. they begin to be able to communicate support through this without words. while i did talk abt their arcs entwining from s1, s3 really shows the equal level they get to be on by being able to comfort one another. the thing that differentiates them from the other campers is ben being the cause of darius’ guilt which means he’s the only one able to help darius w that specifically. having ben there is its own comfort. darius feeling down after the historical jurassic park structure was destroyed was pleasantly surprised by a ben comfort shoulder touch. this doesn’t stop in s4; after ben’s speech, ben isn’t sure if it worked and while darius is going through his own disappointment, he takes the time to give some reassurance to ben. even when darius doesn’t know what to say after they think brooklynn and kenji are gone (and ben pulls away, knowing there’s nothing to say. damn his self blame. will get into that in a moment) there’s an attempt. after darius’ love for dinos cause them to miss the plane again, ben touches his shoulder to tell him non-verbally “hey. nothing can be said rn” and as this post explained so well, gives the other campers space from darius. i am willing to bet a convo takes place on the walk there with ben trying to absolve darius of guilt of “holding everyone back” (sound familiar? ben being tired of holding everyone back in s1) despite it being the right thing. ben can understand darius bc of their connections to dinosaurs thats one big similarity of their arcs and why they work so well together along w how darius has dino knowledge and ben w island knowledge. both of them shielding others behind them w their arms at one point showing their inherent need to protect others bc of this advantage of knowledge they have

the traits they inherit from each other in s4 broadcasted so obviously like. ben’s attempts to lighten everyone’s mood with a plan of action (bc darius for once is not coming up w it. Sign one of shared leadership). ben’s “it’s all my fault” self blame taken from darius i see….bc hes the one who made the plan this time, and darius HAS to understand that when plans fail and people are put at risk the crushing guilt that falls upon him. the moment he steps up he feels like he messes things up. however even before this they both tried to do their parts to keep the group running smoothly, most noticeable during the brooklyn/sammy tension where they both try and dismantle it in their own way (sure ben more because of them being loud but. hey i’ll take it) ben goes through a bit of a leadership arc trying to get darius out of kash’s clutches coming up w another plan that nearly fails but doesnt and he gets darius back! wooo reward. i could talk about his reaction compared to the others when talking abt darius’ potential danger and how worried he was that entire arc but i’m gonna save that for the season compilation post

meanwhile the short arc of darius having to choose between dinosaurs and his friends was done excellently (in how it was introduced not how it was…executed). his need to do the overall right thing vs saving his friends…im proud of him for that. even if the season shouldve given him space to explore his feelings and mental state. but Anyways that must’ve created some sort of cognitive dissonance with his self much like what ben had to go through in season 2. i wish we could’ve seen more of his struggle w choosing one over the other…but his little persona he put on was 100% inspired by ben’s with the “i survived all alone and i am amazing for it” aura. not to mention ben single dad w firecracker and darius just. smiling at him???? he wasn’t even there for ben’s struggle w connecting w the dino, although he was in s3 where ben decided isolation was the way to go so he’s probably like Woo my boy is reaching out!! maybe ben confided in darius about missing bumpy and he just automatically got what was going on. or he’s just gay yeah that could be it. and then ben’s little attempts to impress darius where he says the most cheesy line ever and gets all flustered when darius isn’t impressed i was like Ayo whats goin on

just ben’s admiration for darius i really hope that gets addressed because the leadership bit of ben coming up with the plan—they were already coming up w plans together back in s3: to blow up something as a distraction, to defeat scorpius rex (where ben overrode darius’ “IM going to stop then” with “what are WE gonna do”), to save brooklynn (“if your plan turns out as good as this model, we’re in great shape” go co leadership!!!) and had their little meeting upstairs as the files were being copied, and s4 ben telling darius to listen up, then being like “Darius is already on board. Everyone else ready” like darius agreeing is the only thing that matters which to be fair that is the main leader. but it was rly nice to see him falling into this role in darius’ absence. honestly i somehow forgot brooklynn’s short bit of leadership at the time when i wrote this so i think it’s unfair to not acknowledge it. both ben and brooklynn are darius’ right hand ppl but this post is more focused on ben’s role. at the beginning of the season we see darius communicating w ben like they’re already partners, telling him his solo task to pack the food up while they were stalking the compy and then relying on ben to distract it with berries

i’m just really excited to see where s5 takes them because i really do love both of them as characters and their dynamic together bc they just complement each other so well. i want to see more of darius’ emotions and how he/others deal with them. i want to see ben’s emotions and how he acts while finding himself in the new situation. i want to see them comforting each other bc they know how to and figuring out plans together. they’re just so interesting to me bc of how they started w the guilt and how their personalities reflect and work off one another and i hope i can explore that accurately in my writings.

[erenenthusiast]

( post type: humour, bold of u to assume i can take aotnr seriously. Im just reviewing it bc im free rn🤪)

Aot ending went wrong in a few ways but Anr ending is the aot ending which went wrong in all the possible ways hence why u will subconsciously treat it as narrative separate from aot as a whole because it discards the narrative built up from the beginning to season 4. Not only dircard even change and completely twist it to something which wasnt even there. U cannot associate it with s1, s2,s3 at ALL bc its completely different and has no Correlation with it. Its like a tree formed without any roots bc here the roots is s1, s2,s3??? Ok now Lesee

( also: I only mentioned imp things which were excluded, now imagine if I talked bout the irrelevant details that were included 🤡 some other day when I have nothing to do like them perhaps)

1. Erens inner voice of "to protect Mikasa and Armin..." Since season 1 TILL the last arc: discarded. In season 1 thats literally the driving force of how eren manages to get hold of his titan powers. One of erens MAJOR motivation TILL the Last arc. This is A major part of erens CHARACTER itself. Honestly the fact Eren killed his all frnds himself is more than enough to butcher his character given who he was. His actions maybe unintentionally harm his friends BUT he WOULD NEVER kill his FRIENDS INTENTIONALLY??? Are you kidding me? Is this Eren you are talking bout? The guy who can give his life without a second thought for his friends??? Really?

2. Armin being picked over Erwin on Erens belief that he will be the savior of humanity: major foreshadowing and the point of RTS arc: completely discarded and thrown in trash can🤣what's the point of RTS then? (Tho I think it was handled not every well in canon, but EREN made SURE he remains true to his words)

3. Erens sayings and promises: like Armin being saviour, giving his friend a long life, wrapping the scarf around Mikasa (one of the major elements of season 2) completely discarded and no longer exists😂😂😂. Season 2s prominent scene is no longer relevant

4. Erens whole character. In fact u can't even associate it with season 4 Eren let aside pre teen eren because his core is completely changed. One of things of s4 eren is, he is not OPEN with his emotions at ALL which makes him seem very different because one of his defining traits is how openly emotional he is. Thats why eren stans (the ones who liked him since the beginning) including myself was confused. However getting deeper into it, we were shown moments where it was clear that eren was trying to hold his emotions in and maintain his built up composure e.g. when mikasa confronts him in marley attack, armin saying "the freedom to hurt him" during table scene, sashas death + much more. For instances we were shown him bout to breakdown. Along with that we were constantly shown his desires to grant his friends a long life. To erase the titans curse. To protect his people. These all are related to how exactly eren was in the previous season and by that we knew that in the core, eren is the same guy he was. He was always like this. That's how all humans are. No matter how much change they go through, in the core they will be the same. That is what makes them, THEM. HOWEVER in aotnr, erens core is no longer the same. his emotional volatility is not there. his friends are no longer important which literally discards the main elements from the previous season. He is a complete different person in the core. Thats why, that character isnt even eren. Thats why you cannot relate that character with the previous seasons’ eren at all unlike isayamas season 4 eren who is correlated with them.

5. EMA as the protagonists of aot: discarded. Armin and mikasa seems to play a lil bit tiny bit role but apart from that the whole cast no longer exists 😂but insignificant characters like Ymir and historia suddenly is😂😂

6. Ymir being the most powerful in their verse: discarded. Ymir being the goddess of aot world no longer relevant 😂. Canonically Ymir is the most powerful but at the same time incapable because of being struck in shackles of her own beliefs. Despite that she was still the most POWERFUL in their verse and everyone is aware of that. These two contradictory traits was handled well and didn't erase ymirs role as the founder and most powerful. in the fanon ending, Ymir is just a founder by name💀bc instead of her, erenold is given the founders abilities???ymir is just reduced to a child struck in paths.

In conclusion u can't see aotnorequiem with aot as a whole. It's the completely diff narrative and has no actual base from the story so far (and I wouldn't even bother to say it if people acted like it's fanon but the way people think it fits into narrative is funny because it doesn't)

[ifyoulovemeletmebinge]

Why do you hate Joey? And please don't spoil beyond season 2 for me.

hi! 

this is my first ever ask so this is kinda cool alrighty get ready bc this is going to be a LONG post. i’ll try my best to avoid spoilers. 

why i dislike joey potter from dawson’s creek: 

ok so I think what my growing hatred for Joey Potter mainly boils down to is just the fact that she is the type of character who has no personality, she is simply empty. when she does want something it’s because it helps her only, and she’s very selfish. this is hard to explain in the context of s2 which is where you are, but i am almost done with the last season and i feel this is where her character has turned to focus on over the course of the entire show. 

i will say, i completely respect other’s opinion of joey, mine is just that she’s not my favorite by any means in the show. i actually think she’s my least favorite. so i’ll try to explain that! 

let’s start with s1: 

- i actually enjoyed joey a lot in s1, i thought she was fun! she’s sassy and her “im beautful yet unaware of it” thing kinda worked. this aspect of her only works in the beginning though (since she’s young and that’s the entire point of being beautiful and young) and something i find aggravating about later seasons is this continued theme of unawareness that doesn’t fit with her character anymore. by that point, SHE SHOULD KNOW SHE’S HOT OKAY. 

- another s1 point is her relationship with Dawson. i was a strong shipper until ~certain future events~ happened because i liked them together. Girl Next Door is in love with Best Friend who’s oblivious to it, it’s a cute trope! i think for the first season, their focus on Joey’s suffering from just recently discovering her feelings for Dawson and trying to navigate them made for a good complex storyline for the Lead Female of the show. there was an exploration of female sentiment there that i personally haven’t seen a lot of, so i was interested. her relationship with Dawson in s1 was overall pretty good bc it set up excellent foundations character and plot wise for the show. 

- my only criticism (more like character-choice-to-eye-roll-to) for her relationship with Dawson in s1 is her treatment of Jen because of it. we all know Dawson falls for Jen super quick and that’s not his fault or Jen’s or Joey’s yet she chooses to blame Jen and antagonizes her the whole season because of it. basically, she was a bitch to Jen. now, that’s not to say that it didn’t make sense because it did, and i think it worked well since we need some Conflict here, but thinking back on it now after watching almost the whole show, her choices and behaviors towards Jen in s1 shift from a childish jealously funny thingy to outright unlikeable aspect of her character that is only built upon as the seasons continue. i would argue this is the beginning spark or preview into the Bitch she will eventually become. 

moving on to s2: i personally don’t remember much about joey from s2 bc my brain is Pacey Witter centered and he really shined during s2 so i apologize if i get something wrong, i’m outside my lane here teehee

- i feel that joey’s character in s2 starts it’s shift into Bitch Land and also Lost Land. this is where i feel they started to lose control of her, but something i find interesting about that is that the loss of control is extremely subtle up to the point where when you finally look back in retrospect, you can find those seeds being planted as early as s2. 

- let’s tackle her relationship with Dawson in s2. there’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s start with the fact that it started REALLY WELL!!! our queen was getting the boy of her dreams!!!!!!!!!!! and good for her, but ofc, because this is a tv show and they need drama for the ratings (i’m guessing :)) everything falls apart very quickly. i would also argue that the choice they made to break Dawson and Joey up in s2 was very definitive and formative for her character for the rest of the series; the seeds were planted when they broke up. 

- her reasons for breaking up with Dawson were understandable **at first** in my opinion, there wasn’t much reason at all to break up with him. yes, she needed to find herself (just like any young person does), but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t do it with Dawson. i actually thought they would do great at discovering her together, because i think Dawson is supportive and sensitive enough to help her. her excuse that she can’t do her art while dating Dawson was bullcrap. i could go on and on about why that is, but the best evidence of it is the fact that she hopped from Dawson to Jack with no hard feelings and continued with her art the same as before. her art didn’t get any better when she switched boyfriends so she really can’t use it as a scapegoat to explain breaking up with Dawson. 

- this break-up and then her romance with Jack is what really gets me about her in s2 though. i think Dawson actually commented on it: she wanted to be alone to find herself, but then she started dating Jack almost immediately after that decision. this is where Joey first starts contradicting herself. this is where she first starts her ever-running theme of not knowing what she wants from her life at any point in time. for inexplainable reasons, her character is confused and she has to lead everyone else along and confuse them with her. honestly, poor Dawson. she both Wants and Doesn’t Want things, and her inability to stick to one is annoying to watch. and it only gets worse! 

- her mistreatment of Jen continues, but what really gets me about her treatment of other characters in s2 is her relationship with Jack after he comes out. Jack has become one of my favorite characters in the show and his coming-out arc is (in my opinion) done extremely well for a gay character at that time. we don’t even have arcs like those THESE DAYS OF THE 21ST CENTURY WTFF!!!!!! it’s also a very important arc to me. i can’t cite all the evidence, but her friendship with him after he comes out is so messed up. she constantly acts like that weird Straight Girl Who Needs a Gay Best Friend. fucked up. she always apologizes and goes back on it after Jack has to snap at her multiple times, but it still makes her unlikable and inconsiderate to anyone but herself. Joey starts showing through her relationship with Jack that she only cares about herself. when she was dating him, she did it to feel good about HER art not because she really truly liked him, and when he came out, she wanted him to be a Stereotypical Gay Man for HERSELF, not because it was what Jack wanted, and he outright told her various times. she’s selfish. she doesn’t care about breaking Dawson’s heart and using Jack, she only sees her own benefit when she’s playing with these boys as if they’re not real people with feelings. this is another running theme that worsens her character throughout the seasons. 

- by the end of s2 i think her and Dawson are back together (i’m honestly not sure i was invested in Pacey <3) but then the whole thing with her dad happens and that was really interesting to me. her decision to breakup with Dawson in the s2 finale after what he did.... MADE SENSE. i was kind of sad about it, but it was right!!!!! she had to do that!!!! she went through a lot of trauma bc of it and being with Dawson would just remind her of it, it wasn’t fair to her!!!!! i thought, hmmm this is the cataclysm of their relationship here again. this would allow her to finally find herself after being lost all of s2 and then she can be with Dawson again. it was all set up to match together perfectly. s3 proved me wrong :) but that’s for another post. 

Joey is, at her core, an empty shell of a character. she starts off well and full of personality, but either bc of writing choices, or the audience reaction at the time they made this show, those aspects of her character start chipping away and she just becomes this unattainable sorcerer of men, who’s too good for any boy, but never good enough to be by herself. this is not the type of woman i personally enjoy watching, it gets tough watching her break everyone’s heart one by one just bc she “doesn’t know, isn’t sure.” it’s repetitive and makes for crappy drama effect. it’s frustrating. 

i’m sorry this is so long, i hope this makes it clear why she’s my least favorite character in Dawson’s Creek. again, i respect all opinions of her character. hey! if you love Joey Potter, then cool for you!!!! she’s just not that character for me, and looking just at s1-2, these are my reasons why. 

[kingreywrites]

Do you think Eugene was mad at Cass after she crushed him? Or more scared of her? Because I've taken some screenshots of Race to the spire, and he looks genuinely scared in these as he looks at Cass. Sure, Eugene is a tough and not easy to hurt guy, but I mean....

1. He did tell her he had a strict rule about dying in the same place twice, and while I know Cass didn't take it serious(she probably didn't even listen) and Eugene joked about his trauma again, I still think it'd kinda terrify him, he knows she is Gothel's daughter and yes, that makes mo difference, because she wasn't raised by her, but I bet he got flashbacks as Cass clenched her fist, since he remembers the other time a woman had tried killing him in that tower(well, Gothel succeeded)

2 C'mon, its his first real birthday and he almost dies on it? Wow Cass, nice birthday present!

3. Him being used against Rapunzel? Thats his worst nightmare, he hates it. He didn't know what would happen if Rapunzel agreed to whatever Cass wanted, he didn't know what she wanted. He didn't know what would happen to Rapunzel, just like back in the tower on Rapunzel's 18th birthday. And I don't think he really would've expected Cass to go that far

4. Imagine watching a person you see as your sister walking up to you, gripping your chin, being ready to squeeze you until you die, crushing your body just to get your partner to fight her like omg

Sorry for my rant I just think it's more deep than others do 😂

I can imagine Eugene actually being quite nervous about seeing Cass again after she did that to him, but I'm sure Cass apologized for it properly bc if not, I'll shift to Corona and 🧍🏻‍♀️🤛🏻

I love Cass but omg, not to mention that she drugged and kidnapped a child and tried to kill Rapunzel several times lmao she was really on drugs in S3 or smt 💀💀

I love using your ask box as a diary as you can probably tell

gdhhdjd it's okay please use it as a diary I love getting asks!

My answer is... gonna be pretty similar to what I was saying yesterday about his fight with the Brotherhood, which is that in universe, I honestly think he's fine. A little more wary, yes, maybe for a while, but not entirely traumatised by the event. I think the worst part for him was what you said in 3, which is being used as leverage against Rapunzel, because her getting hurt because of him scares him way more than him getting hurt at all, so he'd brush off what happened to him easily while still being mad over Rapunzel being in danger (but since Rapunzel didn't get hurt and even won that fight, I think it'd pass too. He's probably gonna try to make sure it can't happen again)

Now the thing is, as something that could happen between two real human beings, these events ARE traumatising, and definitely could make anyone scared. It is a terrible thing to go through, but like... Eugene getting thrown into a wall by Varian's automaton in SOTS is traumatising too, you know? Or him nearly getting killed by Edmund in Destinies Collide, or even him falling into a pit of snakes in Vigor The Visionary, etc etc etc. Like there are plenty of events in TTS which are fine by cartoon logic, and absolutely not fine in the real world, and this is one of them. It can definitely be interesting to delve into this more realistically, while being aware that all in all, in context, it is presented as bad but not traumatisingly bad

About Cass and apologies, I... wish they got enough time to make her interact with anyone else than Rapunzel in the finale. I'm not asking for her to go grovelling for forgiveness from door to door but just... one discussion, or at least one thing suggesting they had one. I wish more time was spent on the after of her villain arc, even with Rapunzel, because I think apologies should have gone both ways, and it could have been nice to have other conversations like with Cap or Adira! (Adira would have been great imo because their issues date back from s2, and I think it would have been cool to see Cass making amends with her, accepting that maybe they aren't friends (yet?) but they respect each other. Just, I think it could have shown that Cass is also in a better place mentally, and that she's ready to start her journey while not being hung up on the past)

Actually I'm okay with it not happening with Eugene btw! I think in the end he's more or less ready to refer to Rapunzel in this, and forgive her as long as Rapunzel does, because I think most of the anger he expresses is not really about Cass' actions and more about how she's hurting Rapunzel (see the very beginning of NTLP 😬). I do think they would need to rebuild trust between them but I don't think he'd be all that upset for himself, it's more like they spent one year apart, changed a lot as individuals, and they weren't BFF to begin with, so their relationship is far from being really solid at that point

SORRY I'M RAMBLING GHSJDJD i have a LOT of thoughts about the way one can approach trauma in cartoon characters, and what factors are important to keep in mind. While I'm here I'd also say be wary of very biased and dramatised formulations like "Cass drugged a minor" to say "Cass gave Varian truth serum", because it's obviously said in a way to make you think of Cass as this evil, nearly predatory woman when in the context of the episode it's truly... not a big deal, and not meant to be taken as such. It lasts like one minute? And I know when I first read Cass drugged a minor I was like "what when where???" because it's definitely reframing it to make it sound unforgivable gshjdkd

That's why I keep insisting on balancing cartoon logic/real world logic btw, because I know I have a lot of feelings about Eugene, but I also don't want to completely villainize other characters for his sake! It's all interesting to read about in fanworks, but sometimes it turns into character bashing and it's less fun to read 😅

[bellamygateoldblog]

i will never be over the way this show has continuously tried to frame bellamy and clarke as heroes and good people, or the way the fandom has almost completely embraced and supported that narrative

the amount of times i’ve read “[clarke] saved everyone’s ungrateful asses” makes me seriously consider turning evil. like aren’t y’all bored? don’t you have a different sentence you would like to say for a change?

i want to talk about this but i probably don’t remember a lot of the details of this show so if im forgetting something or get something wrong i apologise, but i never have any desire to rewatch past s2.

clarke isn't even the hero of her own side, she took power of them using the military force of the grounders, someone else’s people, she’s forced them into alliances without their knowledge that weren’t in their best interest (while she literally had no idea what they were even going through because she’d abandoned them after upsetting their entire political structure, and this leader she’s bowing to is responsible for the slaughter of their children, has broken an alliance previously with them, has hung the threat of genocide over their heads, and who isn’t even wanted in power by her own people- dragging skaikru into that conflict, too), she’s sacrificed them and what’s best for them in order to cater to/concentrate on the grounders newest demands or pursue her own personal mission, she’s lied to and patronised them, she’s abandoned them and surrendered them to die while they were under her protection and responsibility, and in Book 2 (and these aren’t her people but in canon she’s their leader anyway apparently despite trying to blow them all up a few days before...) she’s abandoned them again, and is speaking for them without consent or any connection to what’s happening with them again,.........her inner circle/her ‘friends’ have to be extremely careful to remain important to her or on her team or they’ll be sacrificed, harmed or become acceptable losses to whatever her newest goal is too (but hey at least she says she cares about them) all while acting very ‘woe is me’ about the whole crushing weight of responsibility she shouldn’t have.

but she’s the hero, she’s beloved, she’s special, she has relationships that were never built, she and only she saved everyone again and has all the lines telling us so no matter how dishonest those statements are.

like this is where i personally see what you said in your ask most: when it concerns clarke.

bellamy on the other hand...i don’t place him at all on the same level as clarke when it comes to this. clarke has privilege that bellamy just never had as a character. and i think that does probably play into why i like him.

him being a hero to the delinquents/the 48 is completely believable to me. he was the original leader, he got them through a tough time, he chose to put himself on the line for them, and he’s the one who stayed. i also think it’s reasonable that fandom might romanticise him this way because he is one who has been shown to value the one life as well as the many of his people, a guy doing his best and making big mistakes along the way, a mixed complex bag of good and bad, i find him very likable and i love the toxic/pained/vulnerable ones lol but more than anything i find him to be one of the more interesting/entertaining characters on the show (Book 1).

we also see him torment himself with his own mistakes instead of just having other people do it for him/remind him like we see happen with clarke- and we all know fandom loves equating that with a “redemption arc” and as much as i personally dislike seeing pity parties i do like self-awareness and responsibility in characters that goes beyond a 3-second-long puppy dog look or straight dismissal of someone else’s pain, and for the most part bellamy’s expressions of this don’t come across as demanding sympathy from others but from genuine self-loathing and an honesty to himself, internalising the effects of his actions/childhood.

i know i personally prefer The Flawed Protector over The Tortured Saviour nobody asked for (same white male hypocritical moral hero in a woman’s body).

i don’t believe in assigning “hero” to any of them though like that’s the whole entire point of the show lol “there are no good guys.” and i also think a major chunk of fandom/shippers have warped bellamy’s character so much that it isn’t even him anymore, so this man they’re celebrating as a hero/good person isn’t even bellamy sometimes.

all of the genuinely “good” and kind people are dead.

i don't think i'd say bellamy was ever framed as a hero. like he was just never important enough to be, he’s just not put into those positions (despite being the male lead), clarke is. as the protagonist ig. bellamy...he’s the protector/knight of the heroes, but not the actual hero himself (applies to octavia too i think, where she acts and he reacts).

like take mount weather, clarke becomes empowered by her “wanheda” status, bellamy’s (and monty’s) part in that is lost...clarke is “bearing it so they don’t have to” (rme) which simultaneously strips the other boys from claiming the ‘victory’ of saving the 48 while still leaving them with the guilt, like it suits how i see clarke perfectly that she’s the only one to refer to the genocide (and shutting down the CoL, i realised) as “i” while monty and bellamy say “we” and it was clarke’s actions that got them to that point in the first place, but this is one of those times she’s clearly The Protagonist. if that makes sense lol.

bellamy is on the opposite side to clarke in s3 and s7 and he needs to be moved to her side in order to be on the ‘right’ one. now i don’t agree with that one bit mind you (when it comes to s3, idc about s7 lol) and i didnt see it that way but imo that’s how the show wrote it, to the point he was either demonized endlessly by fandom or woobified in a way that denied him his own agency. during s5 i don’t i think anyone was framed in a good light. i can see this applying in s6, though- where he was his absolute worst self yet, betraying his own development, failing at every point to “do better” despite claiming it, but still was given that reasurring line that they did better and saved people and was in that “heroic” position i guess? but is that because he was back to being clarke’s “good little knight” tho? (but do we claim s6??? do we really??? do we claim it ladies???)

s6 was 100% dedicated to making clarke look good/like a 'good' or sympathetic person. the bodysnatching plot (and the s6 sheidheda plot because if it was supposed to be about bellamy and address his s5 actions he would’ve been present to experience/observe those consiquences himself but he wasn’t lmaoooo. instead it was to tell the audience ‘actually clarke was right last season and here’s another reason to feel bad for her and how those ungrateful bitches were treating her’) has no other purpose for existing. clarke's character has consistently been elevated at the expense of everyone else's. but im not sure the writing did a very good job convincing me she was a good person if it was trying to do that LMAO like my interpretation of her is so fitted to canon, and no amount of throwaway lines telling me how good she is did anything to change what i saw yk? and in s6, combined with being patronised by the writers, i found her to be at some of her most obnoxious.

i don’t agree with placing bellamy and clarke in the same boat tbh. like they just come from completely different places and come across differently, especially in the way they interact with other characters.

in my experience this fandom (on tumblr) is extremely skewed in favour of clarke, like ive never seen a fandom so obsessed with their protagonist. there’s A LOT of clarke stans who stan her for being one of those “deserves better :(” characters, selfless and heroic, and support that view that she’s the superior character, entitled to other character’s devotion, love and validation yet doesn’t have to reciprocate any of it. the CL/BC ship war was just a bunch of people fighting over clarke, who deserves her more, which character is more toxic to her, which other character would 100% be her bff supportive of that relationship, treating her as a passive whose actions don’t take affect. im not sure how much i blame the writing for that because if so many of us are capable of recieving her character in this way then...why aren’t so many other people? how is there such a massive disconnect between the ways we see her?

and imo a lot of the bellamy love in this fandom comes from shipping him with clarke too rather than being because of who he actually is.

[starfiyah]

okay my final review of 3below is that it’s a fun show but the writing just... isn’t all there. on its own it stands as a good show but since it’s in the LARGE shadow of trollhunters it definitely tends to pale in comparison when u start examining specific components

like in general the pacing is just SO rushed. s1 was unfortunate bc they had to sort of match the pacing of s3 of trollhunters which means we didn’t rly get a chance to see the characters fully fitting into earth life before getting thrown into battle. i feel like there was a lot of telling vs showing. jim got knocked around a bunch before he even started being like halfway decent at fighting and aja is p good at it right from the start and they just sort of tell us that she’s always wanted to be a warrior princess back home. i think krel actually got the chance to make friends while with aja they were just like yea she’s friends with mary and darci bc she’s a white skinny girl so ofc she’s popular lmao. also whenever there was a problem they just kind of threw krel at it and explained it away with alien tech which REALLY took away from the stakes. there’s gotta be established rules about what tech can and can’t do so that it actually feels real and not like a deus ex machina every time.

i would’ve really appreciated some flashbacks to akiridion-5 to show aja and krel with their parents. again, it was a lot of telling us that they loved them instead of really showing us past like one or two repeat flashbacks to the coronation days. i wanted to see aja talking to her dad and krel talking to his mom too! we hardly know what their relationship was like other than “oh we loved them even tho they literally didn’t understand us at all” and they never felt any onscreen resentment about that??? unrealistic. and i wanted to see what varvatos’s family looked like!! truly when the parents died i was like. well. oh well bc we didn’t really get a chance to bond with them

also they threw in a lot of things about how the parents weren’t necessarily good people?? like the stuff about voltar and not saving varvatos’s family. if that stuff was gone more in depth it would have made their characters way more fleshed out and it would have made aja’s decision (to go back and fix things like she promised lightning boy and then never mentioned again lol) more impactful.

i also don’t really understand why aja and krel split up at the end. i THINK the writers were trying to call back how krel wanted to go home and aja wanted to stay at the beginning but it just was not made explicit enough. i feel like they could MAYBE get away with krel’s ending bc they did show even he was surprised to find that he calls earth home now but it could have been tightened up by recalling how he also never really fit in/was lonely on akiridion-5 or something (like in the flashback to how his dad told him that machine making was a silly hobby! they had the groundwork for all of this!!!!). aja got none of that she made a promise to voltar about changing things which could have been used as the start of an important arc of her deciding that she HAS to be responsible for fixing things back home but that didn’t happen.

and i really truly do believe that all of these issues could have been fixed if the show’s concepts were spread across 3 seasons instead of 2. thanks for coming to my ted talk

[pynkhues]

I’m not really sure what I’m expecting to happen in season 3 but I’m keeping my expectations low. I will be extremely disappointed though if we still don’t get any scenes with Rio’s POV. I feel like at this point they have to give us a bit more from his perspective and have him have scenes outside of Beth and the girls but I honestly don’t know if they will. I’m just tired that we always has to headcanon things about Rio’s character bc the writers don’t give us much when it comes to him.

I think that’s all fair, anon. I’ve had quite a few asks in the past about people wanting a Rio POV, and if I’ve ever answered them, it’s usually been pretty vaguely, because honestly? It’s a bit of a loaded question for me - although probably not for the reasons that you think. So I figure it’s finally time I actually sit down and answer it. As always, this is just my opinion, and I’m not trying to invalidate anyone’s feelings or theories in the process of this, it’s just me. Talking, haha.

The reason this is complicated for me is that it requires a bit of a reconciliation in my head between Sophie the Viewer and Sophie the Writer, because honestly as a viewer? I’d really love it too! I find Rio a compelling character and Manny’s performance excellent, and I want to see more of him, and obviously I ship him pretty hard with Beth, and think Manny and Christina perform magnetically together, and I do think he’s a bit underutilised in the narrative sense.

That said, as a writer? I think it not only makes sense, but is important in terms of the narrative structure and the rules they have established that he hasn’t been a POV character up until this point. Up until the finale, he hadn’t connected in a meaningful way to any other character beyond the scope of the girls, meaning that it would make no sense to have him as a POV character. I actually think that for all the damage 2.13 did, we’re actually set up really, really well for that to change.

Beth, Ruby and Annie are, of course, the focus of the show. That’s not exactly new information for anyone, and the suite of supporting characters – namely Rio, Dean, Stan, Greg, Nancy, Boomer, Marion, Mary Pat, Noah and Turner (phew!) – are ultimately defined not just by their relationships to the girls, but by the points where their worlds intersect with the girls’. Whether you have characters like Dean or Stan who are intersecting due to sharing a domestic space / a life with them, or a workplace / job like Boomer or Mary Pat, or a mission like Turner, we only ever really see them in terms of how their stories interconnect with, or disrupt, the girls’.

And yeah, the most common argument I see around this is that Boomer has been a POV character quite a lot, but the thing is Boomer is also a bridging character, which is the main thing that I want to talk about here. Boomer is a character who connects a lot of the story worlds – he brings us to Annie, he brings us to Marion, he brings us to Turner, and then he brings us to Mary Pat. As much as he is an antagonist and, of course, a character in his own right, he’s also a narrative tool who’s being used to smooth transitions between scenes, and connect characters in unexpected ways, and in doing so he drums up dramatic tension, can be used to pass information between the characters he connects with (we saw that early on with him seeing Rio, taking the picture, and showing Turner, thus connecting Beth and Turner), and can plant seeds for future plot points (i.e. recognising Annie’s tattoo during the robbery in the pilot, the pen cap, his ‘death’, etc).

And it’s not just Boomer either. The show has established that supporting characters really only get their own POVs when they intersect in some way with other supporting characters. Think about Stan. He was not a POV character in S1. We never saw him acting as a security guard, and we only saw him at work at the police station when Ruby visited him (and again – Stan became a bridging device in that moment between Ruby and the news of Eddie’s arrest), but by taking the pen cap in S2, his world collided with not only Ruby’s in a way it hadn’t before, but with Turner’s, and he became a POV character. Even those scenes with him though, as much as they were about his own character arc and his own stressors, we wouldn’t have seen them if they weren’t essential to Ruby’s character arc, and to her conflict with Beth. Same with Mary Pat and Boomer. These are C plots that ultimately influence the A narrative – which is about Beth, Annie and Ruby trying to Do Crime and Survive.

Even Dean is the same. With the exception of his new job in 2.12, he’s only ever a POV character when he’s somehow connecting with another supporting or minor character – usually Amber or Turner, in a way that drives Beth’s arc – the former of whom is integral to Beth’s internal journey, and the latter to the pressures dictating her external one. Hell, we didn’t even see Dean take the kids! We didn’t even see him interact with his mother. We saw Beth interact with Judith, not Dean. That’s because the show isn’t about him, and the time that we spend with him is ultimately about the ways his behaviour is going to effect (and usually hurt) Beth.  

The problem with Rio as he existed prior to 2.13 is that he was, narratively speaking, an island. He couldn’t connect any of the subplots, because he wasn’t connected to anyone else.

Rio operates in a world that is almost completely removed from the ones Beth, Annie and Ruby live in. It would make no sense to have him suddenly have a subplot with – say – Mary Pat, or even with someone like Stan. The collisions of those worlds wouldn’t serve the narrative, it wouldn’t reveal anything about the girls, and it wouldn’t be authentic to the overall story. We know that he’d kill Mary Pat, and that storyline would instantly be over. We know that he already has a mole inside the police station, so what use would Stan be to him?

Think about it this way. If Rio was a POV character right now, and he wasn’t interacting with the girls, what would he be doing? What would we be seeing? Likely, it would be his operation, right? Which would require a whole new set of worlds and sets, a whole new suite of characters, likely unique subplots, which would ultimately take us too far away from the central arc. His world does not crossover enough with the girls’ yet to make narrative sense. Hell, we saw that when they did it the one time in S2 – it introduced the country club, and it introduced Gretchen, because he doesn’t otherwise intersect with the girls’ world.

It would be a narrative detour.

(I mean, maybe he could’ve intersected with Fine & Frugal? But I think the fact that Boomer didn’t recognise Rio in S1 means doing so is way below Rio’s paygrade).

That’s why I think that 2.13 establishes us really well. It is deliberately linking Rio and Turner, while also likely positioning us to explore more of the crime world through Beth trying to set up her own kingdom, which will create a narrative overlap in Beth and Rio’s worlds, giving them many more ways to intersect, which pulls Rio closer to the A Storyline. It’d also have the benefit of introducing us to it at the same time Beth is introduced to it, keeping us in line with her perspective, while also opening up the chances to explore other points of view, including Rio’s.

Which hopefully they’ll do! I guess we just have to wait and see. 😊

Phew! That got long, anon, haha.

And for the last part of your question – in terms of the headcanons about Rio’s character – look, I think it’s more obvious that we know so little about him because so much of fandom is heavily invested in him, but we actually don’t have a lot of information about any of the supporting characters. Hell, even our knowledge of Beth, Annie and Ruby’s pasts are sprinkled in very sparingly. We only have a one-off mention for instance of the fact that Ruby has brothers, and we have no idea what’s happened to any of their families except that Ruby’s dad passed away. We know nothing about Stan’s history, or Greg’s, or hell, even Boomer’s. The amount of legwork 2.08 did too in terms of telling us about the girls’ history was massive, given prior to that we actually knew next to nothing.

Honestly, I’d like more backstory for everyone! But that’s only because I’m hungry for every kernel of history this show flicks our way, haha. But yes, more Rio backstory would definitely be nice too, and hopefully S3 positions us in a way we might get some.

[redxblueihateloveyou]

hi, just wanted to say that i’ve always loved your rinharu posts! regarding s3, i feel that naturally everyone has the right to be annoyed bc the pacing was horrendous. imo they either should’ve made ikuya’s arc shorter or taken up the entire season for it (as ironic as it sounds) bc with the way the last 4 episodes were, it felt disconnected. however, i’m sad to hear everyone saying ikuya and the other characters this season weren’t worth the time, considering they were originally in the novel

Hi! I’m so happy you liked my Rinharu posts! It means a lot to me.

I’m a bit confused… how the fact that Ikuya was in the novel connected to the way they wrote him this season? Like.. is just any book character automatically great and worth becoming the main while the main ones everybody loves are sidelined? Tbh if you read it, you know that all the characters are not exactly the same as they were in the novel, still it doesn’t make them bad, plus they grew up, people change, and writers are decided where they will go from there. 

Now I can’t say for “everyone”, but I think most of the fans you’re talking about was like me (if you saw my posts before season started) and were pretty happy about Ikuya coming back since I don’t think anybody disliked him in ‘High Speed’. So nobody originally said that Ikuya from the novel “wasn’t worth the time”, but Ikuya the way they wrote him in s3 definetely wasn’t worth it. It was their decision to take the novel Ikuya and made him this Ikuya, with unoriginal copied from others storylines, which people have been emotionally inversted in for years.

And the fact that so much fans feel that way says a lot in my opinion. So I’ll try not to be very harsh here, but here’s why I can’t be invested in his character. I’ll write this post just once fully, so I’ll reference it in times I needed it. 

So here we go:

Now you know I’m not the person who loves every-every Free! character like many ppl do, but in no way I ever didn’t want them there since they’re all so connected, they all played vital roles in each others lives and we wouldn’t be the same without them. All main-ish characters I mean, of course. Now we have two main characters (who had Rin & Haru in previous seasons ammount of screentime this season) which if you scratch them from the plot there wouldn’t be any difference. In fact if you scratch them, Haru wouldn’t roll back to season 1 and stuck in the past again, wouldn’t feel guilty for nothing, wouldn’t waste shittton amount of time on an egotistical teen, wouldn’t get depressed, we’d see how Rin passed to the All-Japanese, we’d get trio university time and etc. Like wow, what a great deal, bring the eraser. They literally didn’t bring anything to this season. There were no characters in Free! with such huge screen time who’d be this useless to the main plot.

I mean, look at it with a clear head. They introduced way too many characters in s3, but the ones that are vital to the future plot are really Rinharu coaches, Albert and that Kaede guy. They keep putting Ikuya on covers and photos with Rinharu like he’s part of the gang and their bestie, but truly nobody gives a fuck, Haru already said that Rin’s way too special and he’s the only rival who makes him feel that way and they’re in their dream world, so Ikuya can’t compete with that; Rin doesn’t even know him and even if he will what exactly connects them…? I don’t fucking know. Not to mention that Rinharu’s minds are set on Albert already who’s the world champion. I’m like… I don’t see who Ikuya really is for them. Dude Haru knew in middle school?

Now for Ikuya’s great personality (yeah, that was a sarcasm). I don’t know what see creature he was supposed to represent but he reminds me of algae. Like while it gets everything it needs to live and grows, others who are close and live around it get deprived of warmth and light and slowly die (emotionally inside in our situation). He managed to be the only character on Free! who didn’t do anything good for others, which makes him stand out a lot. And because nobody who wrote that got to think about what it’s gonna look like, his story ended up like this: everybody kissed his ass and did what he wanted, and only then he was finally happy, the end. 

Like from the beginning writers strongly pushed the fact that everybody owes him something, everybody did something unforgivable, and he’s the martyr and this is the way his life is, which is a nonsense for Free! The way he treats people is just so unpleasant for me. To know that someone wants to apologize to you for some godforsaken middle school thing, to know that they’re looking for you, to know that your friend throws dirt and them and be like “oh, did they come see me? whatever, let them continue humiliate themselves” is just unthinkable for me. He’s the same age as Haru but acts like a baby sheep, who can’t even talk like adult and being lead by Hiyori like he’s his shepherd. 

That’s why watching this was pretty weird, because while all characters in Free! are very characteristically diverse, they’re all good people. Like even when they don’t have much of a spine they’re still good people. And to see a main like this was very odd to say the least.

Like I can let go of Hiyori since he doesn’t matter in a grand scheme and I know some ppl find creepy type yanderes who think scheduling another’s person poop time more important than their own life romantic, but I just find it weird. Selfless yander-ish characters I like a lot, but this “let’s just keep you away from your friends and let you stay forever sad, because I want you to depend on me forever… wait, did you eat your vitamins today” is just… what?

So bringing this to a logical end… trying to put Ikuya on the same level as Rin and Haru now and say “look he’s also a main” is laughable in my opinion. He’s unoriginal, doesn’t stand out at all, and with his weak character has low possibilities of surviving the professional swimming world (with brother and his nanny by his side maybe). So the only thing he did great is made me appreciate original Free! characters and relationships so much more. 

Like the new friendships seem unrealistic now, they keep shoving new pics with Asahi, Kisumi with Hiyori (who I hardly imagine as friends) and Ikuya with Rin even though they haven’t even met yet. It all lack of feels because we love Free! for amazing friendships but now it’s like we’re automatically friends with people we saw once or people who were assholes to us.

His chances to become as loved as the trio were low (partly because it’s been years and people are way too invested in them), but with such writing it just became even lower. Showing the worst pseudo variations of originals storilines of their faves combined and waste a screentime on this would make people upset. Like now everybody will just forget it and move on because what’s the point of crying over spilled milk. But saying that people should love him just bc he was in the novels seems odd. Yes, he’ll be a part of the group, hell, he can have stans based on his face alone (I mean not all fans are that much invested in characters), but be like a lovable great character…meh. Not with all possibilities of picking a fave in this show. 

P.S. And pls don’t even yell at me about the “representation of depression and panic attacks” because like we said already a) that’s not this kind of a show, b) if it was, then this is such an unrealistically bullshit way of doing it, I hope nobody took it seriously. So my point stands - he’s unrelatable, bland and gives bad example for 13 years old who’s watching. Making him main is a disgrace in my opinion for Free! which is known for such iconic characters. And since everybody brings something to the show and he somehow doesn’t, I think people have the right to call him a waste of time. 

[vrainsrewatch]

episode 8 thoughts

i was gonna watch later, since i’ve got other things to do, but i burnt the shit out of my hands making hot chocolate like an idiot so i watched an episode first LOL. 

this episode starts out with that really strong fairy tale scenery i absolutely adore, with yusaku and ai trying their hardest to get blue angel to wake up.

i seriously could talk about the imagery in this scene for days lmao. i love the sleeping beauty aesthetic, but i also really love the colors. LV goes through so many different color palettes through the series, but i love the purples and blues of this area here. i’m not sure if the intention was to make blue angel seem like she was meant to be there, while in contrast playmaker stands out due to his hair, but i seriously replayed this section twice because it looked so nice. 

i have a lot to say about this episode, and it will also be my most screenshot heavy post so far lol, so once again, buckle up! 

this episode starts to really build up yusaku as a character - his sense of justice, his core values, etc etc. on top of that, it takes its time to flesh out akira, and to show his worse qualities, which we’ll get into in a minute.

first, though, is one of my favorite awkward exchanges in the series lmao:

i’m surprised he even caught onto what akira was getting at, tbh with y’all. vrains started out ship teasing yusaku/aoi really hard these episodes, but drop it almost completely up until the minimal tease we get in s3, which i find really funny. i was always really invested in them becoming friends, though, so while i’m happy we had that happen in s3, i would’ve really liked to see it happen earlier. not this early, though - yusaku’s nowhere near ready for that.

I HAD TOTALLY FORGOTTEN VYRA WAS HERE. yugioh hair makes it known that she’s going to be an important character, but i had really completely forgotten she was working as one of aoi’s doctors during this part lmao. i love this so much, actually.

moving onto everyone talking shit about blue angel on forums and stuff. this kinda shit:

would be really awful to deal with. it’s very real, though - cancel culture, anyone? but seriously, this is so brutal. on top of that, does this imply that she’s never really lost before? she is the number 2 charisma duelist in LV, so i wouldn’t be terribly surprised if that meant that she hadn’t really lost since starting to make it big as an idol. once again showing off how good of a duelist aoi actually is, even if the show makes her lose a lot. tbf, her loss/win ratio isn’t that bad looking at the other main girls - 5 wins, 5 losses on screen, and considering the kind of opponents she faced (soulburner, bohman, ai), that’s seriously not bad.

next up we get the chess pieces again, and boy howdy, does this conversation make me seethe.

i understand it’s partially a cultural difference thing, but i can’t help but get angry about it LOL. 

i didn’t remember how often the chess pieces were actually utilized in these first few episodes, either. i guess i can understand why people were irritated they were just dropped, but i don’t really see them as a plot point, more like... just a kind of weird way to run a company? just show your faces and have normal meetings like everyone else, y’all don’t have to be so extra.

the akira/emma meeting is nice because it shows you more of emma’s character, but it also gives you more of akira’s stupider (and ruthless) side.

you don’t see him like this very often, but honestly, when you think about all the unsavory jobs he was doing to keep him and aoi afloat way back when, it kind of makes sense. even if he was originally a gentle person, you don’t last doing... any of the jobs he’s done, being that way. even a higher up in a company like SOL tech would have to be a bit harsher to get to that point imo. i don’t see a lot of people talk about this side of akira’s character tbh which makes me kind of sad.

also, seriously, he’s an idiot. how did he arrive at this conclusion? when he saw that it was aoi who was baiting him into the duel? no matter what direction i approach this from, i can’t understand how he ended up on that conclusion lol.

also, the worst father ever award goes to....

seriously! i hate that man so much lmao. to say that directly to your own child, on top of everything else...

it’s a nice look into revolver, too, though you wouldn’t know it at first glance. his reply says everything, though. he fully accepts his role in his father’s life and has an incredibly toxic attachment to him, and wants his approval more than anything. we never see him get physically abused by kogami or anything of the sort, but you can’t deny the mental anguish he must’ve been going through in order to keep on his father’s good side. 

i know a lot of people like to say that revolver is kind of not a great guy, seeing the tower of hanoi arc, and how he probably should’ve went to jail etc etc but really, he was manipulated hard core. and extremely suicidal. i could really talk a lot about this all day, but i’ll cut myself off and instead say how much i love how vrains sets up revolver as a character. this, combined with “i’ll fulfill your wishes, father” from episode 3 gives you his motivations nice and clearly, but this specific scene also gives a bit of a hint as to where his character arc goes and what he has to work through. just thinking about this makes me so excited to get to 116 again lmao.

anyways, though. another excellent exchange comes up. seriously, lmao, ai being like “waaaah that’s illegal !!!!” and kusanagi’s just very casual 

makes me laugh every time i see it. they are criminals, even if what they’re doing is for the greater good. they’re not exactly innocent here lmao.

then there’s the talk about the virus infecting her, and it’s a nice way to bring up how that works before the another arc comes up in.. a couple of episodes, right? tbh it’s the arc i remember the least about, so i’m looking forward to rewatching it.

actually though, the idea of viruses in LV being able to infect someone’s body is so, so interesting. i really, really wish they had done more with the whole LV/rl merge idea, but guess i’ll just have to write more fanfic instead lol.

i mentioned at the beginning of this post we get into yusaku as a character more here, and this is one of the lines that really made him interesting to me originally:

he has such a strong sense of justice, but what sets him apart from other ygo protags is that he is not defined by it. he’s not the classic, stereotypical do-gooder who gets caught up in something and has to make it right, his justice is more so that he is not okay with seeing other people hurt because of what happened to him. his justice is driven by his trauma, almost entirely.

revolver even brings it up this episode:

where he talks about how some rando wouldn’t have done them any good because it wouldn’t have been public enough. yusaku doesn’t really care about the little people, not in the same way, say, yugi would. it’s not that he wants them to be hurt or see them get hurt or anything, it’s just that unless it effects him directly, it’s not on his radar. but once he gets involved, he feels fully responsible.

while he didn’t plant the hanoi virus into her, he probably knows it was to intentionally draw him out thanks to ai (and the fact that he beats them up all the time). he feels fully responsible for what happened to her, and he’s prepared to do what is needed to make it right again.

i really like yusaku for this. i find those kinds of characters really interesting, and yusaku is no exception. 

we get the whole emma/blue angel/yusaku scene, which is pretty sick tbh looking at it again - just shoot a church straight up from the ground for dramatic effect! - and i’ll bring up more of akira’s ruthlessness here.

seriously, this is not a line from someone who is just angry about his sister. and it’s also him being fuckin DUMB. playmaker willingly lets himself get caught into your trap, and he tells akira straight up what he has to do to save his sister - no sugar coating it, no trying to make it cryptic or difficult despite being caught in that hand and in that trap. he’s incredibly honest, and akira still does this lmao.

then it’s probably the wildest turn of events in all of vrains:

where’s that post that’s like, “remember when playmaker gets caught in a gothic looking church while he’s getting tormented by a giant demon hand controlled by his classmate’s brother and then his rival who he hasn’t met yet shows up in a lightning bolt to save him”? bc really LMAO what the fuck. it was so hype watching it the first time, and it’s still awesome watching it back.

and why is this never really??? brought up again later???? and when he leaves in that datastorm to go prepare to fight playmaker LMAO i know it’s supposed to look cool but the animation is so dorky, i love it. 

more on yusaku, though. before playmaker goes to fight revolver, who he’s been gearing towards for awhile now, we get this exchange:

to which playmaker responds with “i don’t hate you. i only hate the knights of hanoi”. which is another really good moment for his early characterization and very, very consistent with his backstory that we find out in about 12 episodes.

everyone who wasn’t involved in the LI in any way just... exists to him. they’re completely neutral. if something happens to them because of him, he feels directly responsible, because he feels like he got them tangled up in a mess that nobody should be in. i mentioned that briefly earlier, but this really drives that point home.

he doesn’t even hate akira for torturing him mere minutes ago. because he’s been through worse. because akira was doing what he thought was right by his sister, no matter how stupid he was being.

and even more so than that, he’s not seeing this as fighting for akira. he feels responsible for blue angel, but also, here’s his chance to fight revolver. it’s a two birds one stone situation here for him. 

anyways, i’m gonna stop myself there lol this is really long OOPS. gotta take care of a few things, and then onto the first rev vs playmaker duel!

[lisbonsteresa]

1-27 for the good place

FLKASJDFLK intense! Ok, I’ll try to be as brief as possible:

What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?*Honestly tgp is pretty *chef’s kiss* in terms of shipping possibilities, so there’s not many options I’m opposed to. The only thing I can think of (and I don’t think these are popular or otps for.....anyone?) would be shipping like, Shawn or Michael with one of the humans.

Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?*[see above]

Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion?Yes

Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?*[may I refer you to Q1? it’s a lovely question]

Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?*Not this fandom

Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?*Hmmm......not this fandom

Is there anything you used to like but can’t stand now?*The f*cking reboots I swear to god Schur there’s clever plot twists and then there’s narrative MacGuffins. The end of s1 was a Moment even if you had started to/guessed what was going on, and I love Dance Dance Resolution and how the reboots were used in it but.....every season? we need one every season? we do not

Have you received anon hate? What about?*Very thankfully not (and I’m not looking to change that fact thank you!!)

Most disliked character(s)? Why?Listen.........I love Jason Mantzoukas......but I would have been 100% ok with Derek being completely one-off

Most disliked arc? Why?2.07, which I am calling an arc because the show only used one episode to explore the very complicated and sensitive topic of neglectful/emotionally family members and how they can affect a person’s beliefs, actions, and feelings of self-worth or value and I hated it!(also the s3 chelenor arc which was sloppy and relied too much on the fandom’s love of the pair from the previous two seasons)

Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?Do people actively dislike characters on this show? Or just like them less than others? In any case, Mindy is a gem and I hope she pops up in s4.

Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?I would say the s3!Earth arc, but.......they really kinda kicked the dog into the sun with that one for me

Unpopular opinion about XXX character?Ahhhhh........(I feel like I say this a lot) Kristen and Ted.....I love you......Eleanor and Michael......I could use a bit less of you

Unpopular opinion about your fandom?........we judged Jason x Tahani too harshly. They were cute.

Unpopular opinion about the manga/show?Listen, I GET the short seasons and the points you’re trying to make and the breakneck pace you have to move the plot at to get to those points, but.......it’s really starting to feel like it’s at the expense of your characters[Also, I mean.......see Q13. I get the ‘main character!’ ‘biggest stars!’ arguments, I do, but.......it’s been 3 seasons and we know like, 3 things about Chidi’s pre-Bad Place life, but we’ve gotten the equivalent of like 3 episodes-worth of Eleanor’s]

If you could change anything in the show, what would you change?Either longer seasons or more seasons, because I love character focus and I miss s1

Instead of XYZ happening, I would have made ABC happen…2.07 never happens. it’s fine. Honestly, instead of setting up Chidi and Simone as an adorable and lovable couple (and Simone as a brilliant and well-matched new member of the gang) while positioning him and Eleanor as close friends for 4 episodes before completely dropping Simone as a character for 9 episodes and smashing Eleanor and Chidi back together only to then bring Simone back as essentially a complication for chelenor and a symbol of guilt/anxiety for Chidi that causes him to decide to reset himself back to 0 when he’s already the character we know the least about.....I would have s3 be nearly all-Earth; the gang coming together and becoming friends, Michael and Janet somehow exposing the secrets of the afterlife and the team figuring out what that means for each of them/how they approach life after this (like Jeremy Bearimy but with 2-3 episodes instead of 3-4 plots in one half hour), ideally one episode each for the original four humans to reunite/confront those in their past who were part of what shaped them into the people they are now, Chidi and Simone happily dating while Eleanor enthusiastically supports them as they are two of her best friends and she is thrilled that they’re happy together and the connection she has with Chidi does not need to be romantic in order for it to be impactful and help them both become their best selves. (and meanwhile everybody else dates in whatever arrangements they fall into - but elhani rises and it’s glorious.) And maybe the last.....2-3 episodes are when they make the jump to the Good!Good Place and meet Gwendolyn bc I love her and Simone comes with them and it turns out the new neighbor connected to Chidi is Uzo because friendships are important too! and honestly I don’t have a fancy way around Chidi resetting himself again - it’s a corner well-written into - but maybe we just don’t and his conflict next season is dealing with the knowledge that his best and closest friend has no memory of him or their lives together

Does not shipping something ‘popular’ mean you’re in denial and/or biased?Nah. Sometimes.....popular ships.......are bad

What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?Not one of us could make it through Chidi’s original thesis

What is the purest ship in the fandom?Jason and Janet are both the purest and the most !?!? because they are so cute together but also it’s like where did this come from!?!? we hugged and talked about jalapeño poppers and ps we’re getting married!?!? what?!?! who knows but it’s adorable

What are your thoughts on crack ships?Generally for, so long as they don’t break any of my normal shipping rules

Popular character you hate?Is Trevor popular? I can’t say I hate any Adam Scott character but......he grates

Unpopular(?) character you love?MINDY ST CLAIRE COME BACK YOU 80′s LESBIAN COKE FIEND 

Would you recommend XXX to a friend? Why or why not?Oh absolutely - it is a very smart and very funny show 

How would you end XXX/Would you change the ending of XXX?Literally nothing else matters to me so long as they dismantle the Place system and I get to see Tahani kiss a girl preferably Eleanor

Most shippable character?.......Tahani

Least shippable character?Michael

Salty Ask List

[fba-art]

Just out of curiosity, why don’t you like young justice??

aight, so i knew i was gonna wait to respond to this ‘til i had some time to explain.

and i want to start out by saying that i don’t think Young Justice, as a property, is a bad show. in fact, i think it’s a show that had GREAT potential. i watched every new episode via livestream every saturday lol. and now, i’ll be honest when i say it’s been some time since i’ve rewatched it, and i’m always open to changing opinions. a few years back, i wanted to give it another, fresher perspective and dove in for a rewatch, but ultimately didn’t finish. i don’t remember my reasoning exactly, but i recall being disappointed.and it’s funny i received this ask this week, b/c my friend and i were planning on giving it another rewatch for shits and giggle after finals ( sober or not is tbd ).

but so, here’s where i stand on the show.

i started watching YJ when it was abt 5 episodes into s1. and i binged those first five and stick to my guns that holy SHIT 1-3 are bomb as FUCK. super strong start! Independence Day will never not get me SO HYPE and remind me why i fell in love with DC’s teenage heroes in the first place. it’s so… youthful. a fun conversation for another time.

and now, when i started watching YJ, it was like four months into my making my TT!Kid Flash rp blog, and two months after i’d gotten into reading comics; when i found out Wally was like a biG DC CHARACTER, NOT JUST AN OLD CARTOON ONE-SHOT, i went EVERYWHERE to get my hands on more about Wally West. ironically, the first purchase i ever made from a comic store was a silver age Teen Titans tale, issue #2 of TTY1, and two issues of the old Young Justice comics ( still some of my favorite comics to this day; more on that later ).TL;DRi saw a commercial for YJ, ft. my fave DC char and my fave comic title and went “HOSHIT”.

as the episodes pushed the show’s plot along, it was fun and explorative of a more intense side to the idea of a group of superteens in the DCU. and again, very TEENAGER-Y, which i say in the BEST of ways, considering that was the target audience as well. but, as part of that audience at the time, one of the things that had started to bother me was the character relationships. yeah, i was loving on most of the main cast at the time, but for the first half of the season, the team’s supposedly-close friendships were pushed to the backburner ( EXCEPT for KF and Rob’s, which was one of the only things that got me through the season ). the first season WAS about straining relationships. the social drama was palpable. you NEED conflict in your plots, and char-v-char is especially fun. but i remember feeling like there was little bonding. they were a group of acquaintances, learning to co-habitate the same space- not to say that they didn’t seem like friends, but there was a lack of balance between “teens being professionals in their field” and “teens being immature teens”. both were squeezed in, but both consistently felt forced.

which brings me to the next point: forcing relationships without developing them!i wasn’t sure why i was supposed to care about Roy, like. At all. the team always bringing up that they trained alongside him, grew with the guy, and then??? nada, except when the plot needed edgy tantrumy angst.then there was spitfire. i ship spitfire now, but the ENTIRETY of s1 i was SO FRUSTRATED, because all those two did was bicker. wally was pretty foul to artemis, who was also just plain mean to wally. and i say this with the two of them as my TOP FAVE CHARS.and don’t get me STARTED on the best char on the entire team, KALDUR’AHM!!!! who was shit on by EVERYONE– fandom and plot, alike. actually, i do recall in my last rewatch starting two tallies of everytime kaldur was DISRESPECTED and TREATED LIKE GARBAGE BY TEEN AND ADULT CHARS, versus everytime he was treated respectfully. this boy was BRUTALIZED through s1.m’gann and conner, too– a cute concept, but borderline cringey, even creepy, at times. i was rooting for supermartian. i was. but it was like the writers didn’t know how to write a slowburn. the idea was honestly better on paper than in execution.

the YJ spinoff comics filled in a lot of these gaps, i’ll admit. it explored the chars, their relationships, and their behavior in ways the show seemingly didn’t have time to do, and i LOVE the spinoff series. but i also firmly believe that you shouldn’t need a second media to fix the first. it’s capitalistic and no fun.

through the duration of the show, there were also issues such as the hiatuses. i don’t recall them coming with much warning at a time, nor sticking to much of a schedule. i don’t actually remember what they were for, either. but, before and after each of (three?? was it three?) hiatuses, the showrunners would introduce a new character during a new arc, give said character some liners or plot fodder, and do away with them for the rest of the season ( i.e Rocket, Zatanna, Garth and Tula, etc. ).

i have some other, nitpickier issues– why was wally That Way, why was clark Like That, how come bruce was the ENABLER the entire time, etc– but many can be argued as whether they affected the show as a whole or not.my actual biggest problem was the direction.the director.Greg Weisman.bc idk what the hell he was doing half the time, and i don’t think he knew, either. the writing wasn’t GREAT, but at least it was consistent. Weisman truly had a marketable property, a fan favorite, and one of CN’s best running shows at the time. but between the hiatuses, the writing’s faults, the insufficient character development, and a HUGE ego thanks to his fanbase, Weisman was unable to uphold the integrity of his show. there was both fan-pandering, AS WELL AS consciously going AGAINST fans’ wishes. there was that whole “Ask Greg”-thing, too, where he would get back to a fan once every blue moon and answer background questions about the show’s universe, which became a scene of hot debate. Greg Weisman became the JK Rowling of DC, and lost a lot of my respect with his lack of damage control, and impulse control.

then, with the very inception of the show– and i don’t actually know if i can blame weisman for this or not, but i wanna know who pitched it, otherwise– the show’s CONCEPT. why was Young Justice made with this particular cast of characters, cherrypicked through DC history, aged down or revamped or just cut-and-pasted where they didn’t fit? why was its concept, “COVERT TEAM OF ADOLESCENTS WITH SUPERPOWERS WORKING TOGETHER WITH LACK OF SUPERVISION”? why was the show called “Young Justice” when what they wanted was the TT v3 comics? WHY DID WE NEED TO TURN SUPERMAN INTO THE UNAVAILABLE-FATHER TROPE????? questions that will forever remain unanswered. that’s a lie, i can answer most of them, myself.but all in all, a show with great potential that failed in execution.

season 2, i actually enjoyed more than season 1– it felt like there was more of a handle on the story and cast, alike. did i approve of season 2 and what went down? debatable. but that’s a very subjective view. objectively, season 2 flowed better than season 1, but still didn’t follow through on subplots, nor resolved relationships or even characterization ( m’gann, girl what the fuck?? ). very little team bonding, save for, once again, two chars out of the whole team. again, another season of SO much potential, but one that fell short.

its pros, however– i really enjoyed the darker themes, getting darker as time went on. there was a lot of tragedy in s2, and different perspectives and walks of life to watch through different lenses. a much more diverse cast, and very different conflicts to tackle. i was impressed. i don’t think all the controversies were resolved, but i also wasn’t quite as upset that they weren’t; open-ended conflict is frustrating, but is a great lead-in to another season.

————which, for better or for worse, we weren’t supposed to have.i personally would’ve rather the show ended there, not quite on a high note ( are u fucking kidding me fjaoisdfjoaifio waLLY, this was during the n52, too ), but with a concrete END. of course there was more to explore, the world they’d built was a big one, but we didn’t need to.

i was literally just yesterday chatting w my sis, bc after school lets out, we wanna watch season 3. i really do. i’m upset that there is one, but i do wanna know what happens to my faves. and, on top of that, i’ve been meaning to do one BIG rewatch, anyways, to get me set up for s3. as a student of film, it’s a huge philosophy of mine to rewatch EVERYTHING and go in with the intent of giving it a fresh start and a clean slate– both medias i love, and medias i hate. it’s important to analyze pop culture critically, and even things that aren’t good can still be enjoyable.

for me, Young Justice wasn’t a phenomenal show to begin with, from its technological side to its creative team to its politics, and i stopped enjoying it pretty early on. but, that isn’t to say it didn’t accomplish GREAT things, and isn’t UN-enjoyable; it has its moments. also i would DIE for most of the cast, i fucking love the characters.

i don’t think anyone is wrong for liking Young Justice. i try to stay in the loop about it, and form new opinions based on whatever information is out there until i can get ahold of the source material. and, i do like aspects of the show. but ultimately, it just isn’t my cup of tea. 

[queen-mabs-revenge]

I apologize if this comes off as a rude question to a Killian fan, but I think you’d be the best person to answer in a real and logical way: Do you think, given what we know of how the series went, Killian’s character arc might have ended better had he either died from the Excalibur wound or if he had been allowed to maintain his heroic sacrifice at the end of the Dark Swan arc? Not necessarily ‘would he be better off dead than married’, just whether those would’ve been more Him.

Woo boy nonny, you’re out for my life today, aren’t you? xD

OK arggggk ok this is complicated for me bc those two ‘death points’ are very different imo, and also have different implications depending on how close to the story you’re zooming in. For the purposes of this, I’m going to focus on the Camelot death from the Excalibur wound. 

On the purely ~*~i’m love him~*~ level, of course I’m rather dang pleased that he didn’t die…permanently in either of those scenarios. I’m always pleased to get more of Killian on my screen. Even if the situations leave me feeling frustrated, I think that he’s a character that’s complexly written enough and well acted enough to be someone I can enjoy picking apart in any scenario. 

So OK dealing with both of these scenarios I think you can tackle this from a few different viewpoints (and I hate to always go back to this, but it’s literally like the fundamental way my brain works, so I’m gonna kind of be flirting with those ideas the whole time). Looking at the situations as if I were imagining all the characters in the story to be real people? I think it’s clear what the characters wanted: in the case of the Excalibur wound, Killian would rather have died while helping free his friends than Emma turn him into the dark one, and expressed that clearly. In the case of his death at the end of the Dark Arc, he chose death in part as a way to free everyone from the fate he’d doomed them to, but also to eradicate the darkness once and for all. Because of Rumple’s failsafe, that choice was predicated on false circumstances, and so the idea of Emma going to bring him back, and him not wanting to stay dead as long as everyone else was safe, makes more character sense and is more of a plot point to get everyone to The Underworld. Because the first is more character based and the latter more plot based, I’m gonna focus my attention on the first.

If we’re talking about the character arcs? It’s hard. Basically the way that I would approach that would be “how fruitful were these events in catalysing character progression and growth” and as I’ve said in other posts, I don’t think they—especially the Camelot death—were fruitful at all, and in fact were regressive. This is going to focus mainly on CS in 4-6 as that’s pretty much what I see those events and their value enmeshed with (and, as I’ve stated before, IMO nearly all of Killian’s S4-6 interactions are filtered through CS anyway, so I think it’s appropriate to talk mostly about CS here) and bc I’m a lengthy ho it’s going below the cut.

The thing I had loved about CS was that during the S3 build up to their actually entering a relationship, the relationship was set up to challenge both of their character weaknesses. For Killian, his weakness centres around his desire for freedom and agency (for himself or others), when challenged, leading him to close himself off and/or make pretty shitty and harmful decisions. For Emma, you have the fear from the trauma of abandonment leading her to isolate herself, or sometimes not even enter decisions as to not present the opportunity for abandonment.

So the S3 push-and-pull of Killian giving the reins of the relationship to Emma—stepping in as support when her life or familial relationships were at risk, yes, but in their interpersonal relationship, letting her evaluate him and move at her own pace—addressed both of their weaknesses. Killian explored the vulnerability of willingly giving up control of a situation, and Emma, by going at her own pace, was able to evaluate his steadfastness and begin to trust him for it.

And that was the dynamic that each needed in that moment, and why early CS is still in ways compelling for me — if I ignore the follow through. Because the problem with the two “deaths”, as far as I see, is that they follow this pattern of taking that previous dynamic, and digging in the heels and exaggerating it to an unhealthy level, instead of exploring how the two characters heal together and adopt a new dynamic. The important thing in that push-and-pull exchange is the agency both characters have in it — however, you start to see what, in my opinion, is Emma assuming Killian’s willingness to follow her lead is given, which removes his agency from the exchange…and the narrative starts to romanticise it.

I think you start seeing it from the beginning of S4 with Emma getting angry at Hook when he doesn’t do as she says and stay put with Elsa in 4x03. We get insight into both of their mindsets during the confrontation at the end – Emma is terrified that she’ll lose him and that’s the reason she orders him earlier; he, used to being dynamic, struck out on his own in response. But the point we got by the end of the episode wasn’t that she was right, but that she was expressing her valid fears irrationally by trying to tell Killian to do what she said, no questions asked. And he was wrong in that he didn’t counter a demand he didn’t agree with right away and directly, but took back his agency behind her back when he should have communicated that he had a problem with what she was asking. So you have the unhealthy level of the dynamic being played out, handled poorly, and a set up for forward motion into healthiness being presented.

Except it never really followed through—oh it did in dribs and drabs, which makes this so much more frustrating (their conflict over his holding back information about Ursula, and then the resolution they come to together being one positive move I can think of where they’re venturing more into equal partner territory), but overall the idea of Killian’s capitulating to Emma being a given instead of a choice is the theme that continued—to its unhealthiest apex in S5, with the Dark One arc being the dramatic climax of  Emma assuming Killian’s eventual compliance and overriding his agency with her own desires, and Killian, when confronted with being controlled, going to harmful extremes.

And, what that should have done, and what I thought it was doing at the time, was to drag that increasingly issue-laden agency problem out into the harshest light, to the most extreme situation of life or death, and create maximum drama over it so that it could reach a resolution both through character interaction and plot resolution. So that going forward, you would have the two entering into a more communicative partnership and presenting a united front (and negotiating how to navigate what that means) against whatever conflict showed up next (insert forever bitter I NEVER GOT MY FUCKING BATTLE COUPLE face here), or deciding to step back and change their dynamic by moving away from presenting a romantic unit.

But what happened was more of the same, except this time it was treated by the narrative as being just part of their relationship’s standard operating procedure, part of the new ‘normal’ after the major conflict of S5, and not as a problem to be solved. It was romanticised. So you end up with S6 which makes me just want to fling myself into the sun with rage. Lies about the saviour premonitions are Emma taking agency away from not only Killian but everyone around her — it’s the same story all over again, ***walls*** so it’s OK, but no one has the agency to react and to help her because she doesn’t allow it. And as it relates to CS, you don’t get Killian’s reaction to this at all except in sad looks (and That Fucking Cut Scene That Shouldn’t Have Been Cut).

You get a redux of 4x03 with Killian hiding the shears as a way to try to reclaim some agency behind Emma’s back, because she’s shut him out of any solution they could have reached together as partners. But the narrative focuses on what he does as the only grave error of the situation. You have the agency problem embedded in the first proposal – from going through his private things that trusted as a safe hiding place, to her instigating the proposal over his coming to her for help — but this time, unlike in the Camelot situation, her actions aren’t called into question by the narrative, but his immediately very much are both by her at the character level, and at the narrative by isolating him on the realm-hopping extravaganza. Her taking away his agency is very literally romanticised in a proposal.

You have it again right before the wedding with yet another lie to cut Killian off from being able to actively step back to or to step in and help her as her supposed partner — and again, this time the narrative frames this not only as the act of a hero, culminating in her solo take-down of the Black Fairy (with her family literally frozen out of supporting her), but it actually intersperses her actions of lying to him to force him act as she alone thinks is right in with the build up to their actual wedding. Not only does the narrative not call her actions into question, they’re literally put into the most romantic of contexts. The question at that point is never whether or not Killian will follow Emma’s lead, because the relationship never moved past the S5 conflict of Emma assuming he would and acting on his behalf, except unlike in S5, this isn’t portrayed as a relationship weakness, but as Emma’s strength of character, and their romantic apex.

So that comes back to the death question. And my returning question: narratively what was the payoff? 

It’s not that from a story standpoint I think that Killian’s character arc was finished when he was dying from the Excalibur wound — for me it’s that, if that moment is a pivotal moment crafted to show the height of agency imbalance in the only real relationship he has on the show in S4-6, then it should have been addressed and resolved with a pivot in dynamic after the dramatic fallout — with the characters either moving together or apart. 

As it stands, the dynamic stagnated and regressed so badly into that stagnation that the whole issue that the “death” brought up, with the extreme violation of agency and resulting trauma of S5, was angst for angst sake without resulting growth. Without a complete overhaul of the plot from that point out where CS either grow together or apart due to the consequences of that moment, I tend to view that moment when he’s begging to die in the Middlemist field as just a deeply sad one, now made the sadder for its pointlessness. It’s harbinger of the future unchanging and then utterly romanticised removal of his agency within the relationship continuing through the end of the series. The shower of resulting S5 angst affects his character/relationship arc through S6 about as much as a fridging would have anyway, and it’s really bleeding hard for me to side against the character’s wishes knowing all that in retrospect.

(that said, to reiterate, as a killian fan, i am glad he stuck around? but i’m also glad i get to live in a world where there’s a him that didn’t go through that depressing stagnation? ugh HI YEAH!)

[allexche]

s7

I actually wrote a whole superlong essay about characters’ weird behaviour after S7 and it was just to rant, I can’t hold it(( And I miss Keith tbh. Everything is just my personal opinion and I don’t try to convince anyone, etc etc

There are many things I didn’t like in S7, and the plot holes (as usual) or putting too much action and new characters not having actual screentime to introduce them are one of them. And to be honest I’d be glad to say that VLD is about the plot, the story is important but can’t say it genuinely bc the plot didn’t surprise me in general but made me confused with the ways it was executed, like... basic why what & how are still there lol

But the thing which I’m frustrated the most with is the characters who act as if they weren’t themselves. We were given enough in previous first seasons to get an idea about their behavior and potential actions and this is why I feel deceived. 

Keith made me confused by his sudden step back to S1-2 and S3 when he was that edgy and kind of rude to the others. Here we’re supposed to see 2 y older than the other paladins Keith who was taught by his Mom to become a good leader. And then we see that he actually makes a very sarcastic line towards Allura about her dead father who she’s very proud of and misses as hell. And who’s known as a great warrior btw. I mean, look, it’s Keith and he fought with James back at the Garrison for a bad bully joke related to his passed parents. No way Keith actually thought Alfor was bad. So, do I have to take it like he just knew it would hurt her and did it just because he was as stressed as the others, not that supposedly mature? No way he wanted to hurt her. So, they can tell us it was because of becoming mad in the outer space but sorry. He lost his composure and just made it up at that moment? Is he really that bad in nature? We were shown him being nice, gentle and caring inside and so grown up. What was that? And I really hope that Lance taking Allura’s side wasn’t meant to be romantically coded, otherwise, the idea of defending a person only being romantically interested in them makes me sick.

Next. Hunk & Lance being close friends? I guess I remember that somewhere in S2 where I could actually see and feel it. Last season I watched Hunk making fun of Lance and getting distanced at the moment he needed some friends support. This season I see that Lance, this selfless and caring sweet boy who knows pretty well how bad it feels to be separated from his family doesn’t even flinch and never shows any sign of just feeling some sympathy to his supposedly close friend. What? And it’s suddenly Keith who finds his kind words and supports Hunk helping him. Wow.

Pidge, oh my. I have a lot of questions about her behaving like this last season. Shiro felt pretty bad and sick in front of her eyes and the only thing she did was creating a programme to prevent potential damage from him because “she had some feeling it could happen”. Shiro, her brother and Dad’s close friend, a person who was kind to her and moreover, “legend” as she said. Yes, it was Kuron but she had no idea. And this season she was like “hey Dad, is Matt with you?” Because we were told that we spent 3 years outside of this reality and didn’t find him (or tried?) in the coalition, maybe he just managed it himself lol. Without and lions or other things. Yes, thanks, she even recalled of having her brother who she was so desperately searching for over the seasons. Nice.

Allura! She’s so kind, always ready to sacrifice herself (Balmera arc, saving Shiro in S2, ready to die in Oriende), and so serious most of the time, obviously not having a habit to crush on every handsome man she meets. And trying to be a better friend (admitting being wrong abt Keith etc), she actually was sad learning abt Lance’s feeling. And chose Lotor with this knowledge. And also just crying on Lance’s shoulder after being heartbroken. It’s kind of cruel towards him and yet she’d done it herself, he wasn’t the first who initiated this hug. And yes! She’s over Lotor so fast. There were 3 years in the Universe which paladins hadn’t actually lived, for her it was not that long ago. Woah. It’s so Allura.

Shiro, well. We were told he loved Adam back but wasn’t capable of the romantic relationship (yet Adam still 100% ready to be by his side until the very last end. Okay, the fact he had no any memory about him is really clear that the writers made up Adam rather late, but this time we see that he didn’t think of him coming back and the only moment he expresses his emotions about his death takes 1-2 seconds. And it’s just like I’m sorry, okay I have a lot of errands for today, I gotta go. Really? No single thought about him in the battle with Sendak who actually killed Adam. Like, he didn’t really care and according to the info we were given from the crew Adam was actually a good person and tried to support his bf as he could. So, this indifferent Shiro is suddenly portrayed as not that saint and good as we were shown all the time and it makes me uncomfortable too. Well, Shiro was attacked as usual and didn’t win, and was rescued by Keith again (can’t recall what time it was).

Needless to say that this 3 years thing and shoving Adam to the show (with such a HYPE) just for killing him as fast as it was possible were confusing. And yes, I can’t recall anyone who hadn’t snapped or being rude with Lance by this moment. And he was still the one who tried to protect Pidge (called hideous by her the episode before) despite the handcuffs and being weaker than galran generals. TV show called him DUMB tons of times, Shiro mocked him, Krolia snapped at him, Allura yelled, and even his sister called him an idiot casually (which would be okay between some siblings but summing up all these things it was the last straw for me). Accidentally Sam Holt’s well written arc and Romelle’s cuteness, as well as two Keith & Lance’s really good interactions didn’t cover it for me ((

P.S. animation is stunning and amazing! and the characters I was shown in S1-3 are so so dear to me <3