#with the exception of the majority of s7

[agentoffangirling]

"Daisy, are you ever going to drop the whole thing about AoS being canon or not?" no it's my only personality trait

[lover-of-mine]

hang onnn is eddie’s shirt/jacket/whatever blue? are they wearing blue and green in that scene? is that….. something? 😅

Okay, so, first, blue and green buddie. (Blue and Green Masterpost here, it was written mid s7 but it does explain the use of the combo in excruciating detail if you're up for it)

Buddie has 6 explicitly blue and green scenes (when I say explicit, I mean they have a top that is blue or green, in this house the coding counts for every element of the scene, but this exercise doesn't need it). 613 when they are discussing Buck's math powers, 617 when they are leaving the station and discussing the fact that Chim should propose, 704 at the hangar, 706 at dispatch, the street where Chim was and the wedding (I'm counting this as one scene because it's the same outfit), 805 when they are discussing the boils at the loft, and the hotshots scene in 808.

One thing you will notice is that Eddie is always green and Buck is always blue. Which makes sense. Except for the hangar (that has a few different rules at play considering the black jacket for Eddie and the red hoodie for Buck) those are not scenes that have any major developments for their relationship. The blue and green doesn't have to be Something, it's mostly about creating visual unity, since blue and green are analogous colors, which means they are right next to each other in the color wheel, and that's a color scheme used to create a harmonious look, it's about cohesion, bathena also wears the combo very casually, but madney does tend to have big changes happening in those colors, you can read more on masterpost.

Buddie is casual with the combo. Big changes with them tend to happen in blue and yellow, same happens with henren, you can read about that here (this post is very deranged tho).

But Eddie is a green character, Buck is a blue one, that makes sense.

Now though? We have the inversion of colors.

I feel like I made the fact that Buck being in green means something is wrong very clear (I will link my original post about that here because I feel like it's more detailed than the one that also explains the Eddie and maroon thing), and yes, that forest green color that we nicknamed the breakup green is part of something going wrong in his life, even if the breakups are meant to be, they're never fun.

But something about other instances he wears green (times that are not explicitly about his love life falling apart), those being the 316 arc where he's trying to fix Red, the coma dream, the cemetery scene, and the gym scene in 705, have a bigger problem that Buck is not dealing with. (There's also 707 when he burns the lasagna but I remembered it editing this and I don't want to add the image here, that scene has different rules because of the blue apron tho).

The thing with Red is about his fear of ending up alone, the coma dream is about him learning to do it for himself, the cemetery scene is about him not dealing with the way dying made him feel, the gym is about him not being ready to tell Eddie how he feels. But they all have Buck running around trying to ignore the source of the issue. He makes Red about himself, he tries to fix Maddie and Bobby before finally accepting that he needs to decide to leave the coma, "I feel like she sees me", talking around what he wants because he can't make himself say what he means at the gym.

Funny enough the cemetery scene and the gym scene are blue and green coded, because of Buck's green jacket and the blue elements around Eddie. And before you @ me with the fact that I'm using the sky being blue as proof, the sky is only blue behind Eddie, you can check the scene, they desaturated the sky behind Buck.

But anyway, there's an overall theme of Buck being misguided. Even surrounding some of the breakups, he's in green hiding from Taylor at Eddie's because he doesn't want to face it, he is asking Tommy to move in a desperate move to pretend their connection is more than it is. It's almost Buck going overboard to keep things in, because let's face it, this dude has no clue how to process a big emotion in a healthy way.

As for Eddie with blue, it's not a common color on him, but it is a color we see him in enough outside the uniform. That seems to be a denim jacket, and we discussed Eddie in denim a LOT this past few months lol, but I keep coming back to these 2. Deciding to move to LA and giving up the truck to have the chance to fix his relationship with Chris.

Granted that's a lot lighter than the one in the still. I just like the Eddie breaking free trying to move forward aspect of those 2 scenes.

That color is a lot closer to the blue of their uniforms, and the only comparable Eddie outfit I can think of is 701 locker room.

@stagefoureddiediaz talks about this in her meta of disconnected, but there's also the way that they use this shade of blue to keep Eddie connected to LA. It's a similar tone to the uniform, it's an outfit you expect Eddie to wear in LA in a way that the plaid flannels aren't, so maybe there's something there too.

Okay, this is a lot of information, what does it mean for the both of them? Well, realistically, since they don't have big movements in blue and green, not much. BUT I talked about how the combo is about creating visual unity, there's a chance that is the goal, placing them as a unity, partners, because 613, we see bathena and madney in blue and green after seeing Buck and Eddie in it, so it ends up connecting them.

The same way that the couples, including Buck and Tommy (granted in a less obvious way than the rest of them, since the combo tends to be matchy matchy and Tommy in navy and Buck in mint doesn't really match, there's also the fact that Buck is actively matching Eddie, but that's a whole other post), are in blue and green in the same scene 706. (Maddie and Chim are blue and green in different ways throughout the episode, again, details in the masterpost).

So my current bet is that they'll have their own arcs, Eddie with his feelings about not being there and moving forward and maybe even back to LA, and Buck struggling with his own feelings while he tries to be a stabilizing presence for the rest of the team, because Bobby asked that of him and because he's Buck and he wasn't inside the lab, so that boy will feel like he's not allowed his feelings. And that maybe we will see other couples in blue and green, to create that connection in the same way as 613 and 706.

Anyway, this got long as hell, hope it makes sense, if you read this, I love you 🫶

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

STAR TREK DIALOGUE ANALYSIS OVERVIEW

oh boy so i mentioned this project awhile back and after a long hiatus i'm finally done! (the irony that i wrote this and then took a second equally long hiatus but the point stands.)

i went through transcripts for TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise (thanks to chakoteya.net for those!) and calculated how many lines each main character has in each episode (and season & show as a whole), calculated means, looked at who had a lot of high & low line count episodes, made some graphs, and did some analysis on gender and race.

you can find my whole process & results on a spreadsheet here (it's a little messy. i'm sorry. if someone pays me i'll make it look nice and actually learn how to make good graphs in Google Sheets.) and i'll walk through some Big Results & reactions on this post here under a cut. just so this doesn't get too long, i'll breakdown each show, post my gender & race analysis, and a big list of every character with how much of a focus they get on separate posts. they'll all be tagged as "star trek dialogue analysis".

but first just a disclaimer – i do have professional experience doing data analysis but this is by no means a professional analysis and i'm sure there are plenty of mistakes because this was initially a small personal project that snowballed a little bit. if there are any Major Things you see that are wrong (i.e. i copy and pasted a totally wrong value somewhere) please reach out and i'll correct it if i can. also if anyone wants to use this data for anything, feel free but tag me because i'm curious!

see also: gender analysis // race analysis // tos breakdown // tng breakdown // ds9 breakdown // voyager breakdown // enterprise breakdown // who's the most/least used character?

all of the following graphs measure mean (average) lines of dialogue per episode, averaging all seasons (that they were a main character) together. please refer to the spreadsheet for more detailed information about exact numbers.

unsurprising results... this is the one Star Trek show that really never aspired to be an ensemble show. i was actually surprised by how few lines Spock and McCoy have in comparison to Kirk

also unsurprising that the two characters of color have the fewest lines per episodes in the 60s

Kirk had BY FAR the most lines of dialogue per episode out of all characters i've measured (115.20)

again unsurprising that Picard has more lines by such a wide margin

honestly fairly surprised by how few lines Data had (I thought he'd beat Riker by a decent margin) and was very surprised at how few lines Troi consistently has across the season. like i knew it wasn't many but dang... only 18 lines per episode on average.

and here we can see that ds9 really embraces being an ensemble show with everyone (sans Sisko, Ezri, & Jake) having around the same number of lines on average, probably the most equal overall of any Star Trek show.

Sisko obviously has the most lines as the lead and Jake the fewest because of irl work restrictions (and less kid-centric stories).

i was surprised with how many lines Ezri had but then again her entire character was compressed into a single season so it seems fair. (interestingly, Ezri has the most lines out of anyone in s7 (996), even beating Sisko (874))

despite having the most lines in DS9, Sisko has by far the least out of any main character/Captain of the shows i've measured.

Janeway has the highest average line count out of any 90s character and third highest of any character i measured (69.51)

and again, with the exception of Janeway, we see that Voyager tends to be more ensemble focused than TNG which surprised me a bit given how later seasons are often criticized for ignoring a lot of characters but i think the very ensemble heavy early seasons balance things out.

the characters also generally seem to have more lines on average than either TNG or DS9.

and oof... yeah Voyager was it for the ensemble style show

Archer has the second highest average line count (86.68) for the whole study after Kirk (115.20)

apparently the inception of Enterprise was to recreate the TOS style triumvirate and for better or worse they certainly did.

some overall fun stats –

there are 162,455 total lines of dialogue spoken by the main cast from TOS to Enterprise

somehow there's only a ten line difference between the amount of dialogue spoken in TNG (43,148) and DS9 (43,158)

the 5 characters with the most dialogue per episode in Berman era Trek: Archer (86.68), Janeway (69.51), Picard (69.37), Sisko (50.72), & Tucker (46.03). notably only one woman and one character of color (more on this in a gender & race analysis post)

not including kids, the 5 characters with the least dialogue in Berman era Trek are: Mayweather (13.39), Sato (15.99), Troi (18.11), Kes (18.18), & Neelix (19.68). notably including three women and two characters of color (again, more on this in a different post)

the character who has the most dialogue in a single length episode is Quark with 189 lines in Who Mourns For Morn?

[buddieism]

tommy's character, bucktommy's inherent flaws, tommy & eddie as mirrors and buddie endgame; a (lengthy) meta analysis

honestly, what's really confirmed my feelings about tommy (and the imminent bucktommy bones -> buddie pipeline) is that there have now been multiple opportunities for the writers to actually make tommy a likeable/serious love interest for buck and they just…haven’t. because while fans are naturally going to overanalyse every little thing, the vast majority of the show's audience are regular viewers who consume the show at face value and don't think twice about it -- so if tommy was intended to be buck's endgame or anything remotely close to it, they'd absolutely want to make the most of his (very limited) screen time to present him in the best light they could. think about karen, the only non-main LI, and how she was introduced to us -- despite hen's cheating, we can see how dedicated karen and hen are to each other and how karen is a complex character in her own right who is immediately easy to root for and love.

comparatively, when we look at tommy's s7 appearances and specifically his interactions with buck, it becomes abundantly clear that there isn't really much depth to their relationship at all. which is fine! it's just... you know. fine. let's get into it.

following the cruise arc, we watch tommy through buck's eyes in 7x04 where he's basically wining and dining eddie -- flying him to vegas, getting them front row tickets to a fight, sparring with him in muay thai, playing pick up basketball with him -- tommy and eddie are so similar (which we'll come back to later), and we even get that line from eddie about how well they "click." as the audience, we are being subconsciously told to align tommy and eddie together -- and furthermore, we are told that tommy can easily make grand gestures when he wants to. now let's compare that to the bucktommy moments of the season.

bucktommy's first date: tommy makes a shady comment that would have outed buck if eddie or marisol caught onto it and then proceeds to abandon him on the sidewalk because he thinks buck isn't "ready" for a relationship with a man

i'll be objective here -- i understand in a show like 911 there's always going to be "unnecessary" relationship conflict for the sake of drama and i can also see how buck trying to play off their date as platonic to eddie might have put a bad taste in tommy's mouth. but we hear from tommy himself that he struggled with being open about his sexuality when he was at the 118 so he could have absolutely extended some sympathy towards buck for not wanting to come out on the spot to his best friend -- especially when tommy fully knows how important of a role eddie plays in buck's life. at the very least, he didn't have to leave buck alone on the curb. this isn't me trying to woobify buck because yeah, he's a grown man, he's fine -- but that doesn't mean it still isn't a bit of an asshole move.

the bachelor party: tommy doesn't dress up for the theme and dismisses buck when he's clearly disappointed about him doing so

tommy showing zero interest for the bachelor party buck planned is practically the writers waving a massive red flag in front of the camera -- him having to leave because he's on call is an understandable 'conflict' plot point but why not have him show up in an 80s themed outfit? it wouldn't have changed anything except that he and buck would have had a positive interaction; buck would have been happy that tommy cared enough to make that small gesture and it could have been a cute way to establish their relationship as one built on mutual effort. (btw, the bucktommy hospital kiss could be seen as a big gesture, sure -- but from a more practical viewpoint knowing how rushed this season had to be, it was also just an easy way for buck to "come out" to the rest of the 118 without having to spend too much episode airtime on it.)

the medal ceremony: tommy says 'enjoy it while it lasts' (which, LOL) and also is not shown reacting to buck receiving his medal. he also has a conversation with henren in a deleted scene.

again, i'm going to try to give tommy the benefit of the doubt -- i'm not saying he has to be sunshine and rainbows all the time and i have no issue with a character having a snarky/sarcastic side. but when his screentime is so minimal, every line of dialogue matters. and it's pretty damning that the writers aren't taking those few chances to give us something to appreciate about him. with buck, tommy makes a dismissive comment for literally zero reason, and with hen and karen, who are rightfully looking out for their friend, tommy refuses to take them seriously at all.

bucktommy's dinner in the finale: buck displays some vulnerability about losing bobby, and tommy... really doesn't seem to care.

honestly i refuse to rewatch this part of the ep because it really icks me out on another level but iirc: buck says he's glad bobby's okay because bobby is like the father he never had -> tommy says "your father's alive" -> something something joke about daddy issues. ignoring #that joke entirely, it's really insane to me that they have tommy even acknowledge the nuclear bomb that is buck's relationship with his parents. yes, we had a bit of a ham-fisted 'redemption arc' in s6 but that doesn't negate the buckley parents being absolutely heinous and the fact that buck verbalises how bobby played the role of the father figure because philip didn't -- all for tommy to basically deny that to his face -- is absurd. tommy has expressed on multiple occasions that he's jealous of the 118 family bond, so this line is just... very interesting to me.

now, let's recap all these events and bring eddie back into the mix!

post-bucktommy's first date, buck is more torn up about the fact that he lied to eddie than the actual date to the point that he has to vent to maddie about it. he then comes out to eddie, who is incredibly supportive (and oliver and ryan make some very curious acting choices indeed). eddie is reiterated as one of buck's most significant relationships.

pre-bachelor party, eddie is the one to suggest he and buck dress in matching (queer-coded) costumes. he then stays by buck's side at the party when everyone else leaves and although we'll never get to see it (tim minear i'm inside your walls👹), they sing an absurdly romantic karaoke song together. eddie is reiterated as one of buck's most significant relationships.

during the medal ceremony, when the camera pans to each member of the 118's love interest/family, it is eddie we are shown smiling at buck, not tommy. this is especially interesting considering we get buck reacting to tommy. i honestly can't get over how a reciprocated tommy reaction would have been an easy yet significant moment to cement bucktommy as a relationship, but they gave us eddie's instead (with chris in the background and marisol conveniently obscured, mind you). eddie is reiterated as one of buck's most significant relationships.

in the final episode, when eddie is experiencing his personal worst nightmare, buck is the one at eddie's side every step of the way. buck talks to christopher, buck reassures eddie (without judgement), and it's made clear that buck will be there for eddie, whatever he needs.

at every possible opportunity, we the audience are being implicitly told that eddie is buck's person. he is his place of support (buck having his more vulnerable coming out scene with eddie rather than his sister); he has buck's back (the bachelor party); he is his family (medal ceremony reaction), and ultimately, this goes both ways (finale).

some other things worth noting: when buck has his coming out scene with maddie, she tells him he's confused about his feelings in a way that seems to indicate she's talking about his feelings towards eddie ("if you there's something you need to tell eddie, you will"). in bobby's conversation with buck in the firehouse, he's verbally supportive of tommy and even asks if buck is going to see him, but buck goes to eddie's house instead. these were deliberate choices made by the writers; eddie has been consistently intertwined in bucktommy's relationship both overtly and subtextually throughout the entirety of s7. and let's not even get into the whole 'evan' thing, because that could be a whole other post in itself.

from the first moment we start to learn about tommy's character (beyond his... coloured past), we find out that he and eddie are practically mirrors. why not make tommy and buck share similar interests? why not give them something to bond over? why present tommy and eddie as almost identical in every way? because tommy is a placeholder for eddie. buck's initial bisexuality journey can't happen with eddie when eddie still hasn't come to terms with his own feelings. so, in the meantime, tommy is the "safe" choice in buck's mind because buck has nothing to lose with tommy whereas he's got everything to lose with eddie. buck can't confront what he truly wants yet because the risk factor is far greater and it's been repeatedly asserted that buck has an issue with people in his life leaving -- he would never do anything to jeopardise his relationship with eddie.

but ultimately (and in my opinion, fairly soon), we are going to get that moment where it "clicks" for buck and he realises that it is eddie he has feelings for. and when that happens, there's basically only one way it can go. we know buck can't keep secrets from eddie; we know eddie is going into s8 feeling "isolated"; we know tim loves making his characters suffer before they can be happy. in my mind, the narrative is going to go something like this: buck feelings realisation -> pining buck era -> eddie healing journey and a reevaluation of what buck means to him -> some insane life-threatening situation that really doubles down on how buck and eddie care more about each other than anyone else because it is 9-1-1 at the end of the day -> love confession induced by their dramatic near-death experience -> #BUDDIE_CANON !

when we factor in how there was a possibility of eddie having the sexuality arc this season instead, how tim has said buddie is one of his favourite dynamics of the show, and how supportive both oliver and ryan are of the ship, i really can't see how everything isn't building to buddie endgame. every other main pairing of the show has had seasons of development, of conflict, of bonding moments. buck and eddie have gone through that with each other time and time over (tsunami/lawsuit/shooting arc etc), which is why every other random love interest that's introduced for either of them falls flat in comparison. they quite literally are exactly what the other person needs; buck wants the stability of a home, a family, and unconditional love; eddie wants someone he can trust, a caretaker for his son but also a partner. buddie is the ship the audience wants to root for, because we know they work! now that we have canonically bisexual buck and eddie finally having to face his complicated feelings about losing shannon, buddie isn't just the logical conclusion -- it's the inevitable one.

[leothil]

yeah i read a great comment on reddit recently (i wish i could find it again) that talked about for all the criticisms of KR she did let character's traumas and recovery from big events linger and play out over multiple episodes in a way that tim just doesn't really do lately. think maddie's ppd, eddie's ptsd, hen's med school arc, even buck's lightning strike. now maybe some people didn't like the way some of those played out but they were all multi episode arcs with drama more grounded in what they were going through.

whereas tim seems to keep doing this big dramatic stuff but it's wrapped up in 1-2 eps and then it's on to the next big dramatic thing (and god do i wish the exception to this wasn't the kim-eddie-chris stuff dragging on forever)

It's something Tim has been good, or at least better, at in the past too (see e.g. Maddie's whole arc with Tara) - I think it's falling into a bit of a trap trying to judge him solely by how badly he fumbled S7 and the fallout from it. I don't know if we'll ever get a complete tell-all about the behind the scenes of the show, but seeing how much they're rehashing S5 stuff right now I stand by my belief that the major arcs of S5 played out as closely as they could to what was loosely planned before Fox said a hard no to bi Buck and/or buddie. Meaning the EddieAna breakup, Maddie's PPD, Eddie's breakdown, Hen's med school, and BuckTaylor would've happened regardless of who the main showrunner was, even though the timelines likely had to be adjusted here and there.

[raayllum]

Why you can't just regulate dark magic: a practical thought experiment.

A few times in my many years in TDP fandom I've seen the idea presented of "Dark magic can be sustainable, it just needs regulations". This idea, to be clear, isn't inherently a bad one — but it is one that's never quite jived with my understanding of the series, even in the earlier days. So this meta is an attempt to explain 1) why I think said idea simplifies/ignores some of the pitfalls that would arise if they try and 2) doesn't adequately dress some of the core issues that result from dark magic use.

For fairness' sake, I'm going to only loop in the first 3 seasons of TDP's treatment/lore about dark magic, so no "Aaravos possession" or "it rips a hole in your spirit/soul" among other tidbits from arc 2. I'm also not going to argue on the basis of "well we SAW that humans could've regulated it but Chose not to in S7" on account of 1) it being from later seasons and 2) I'd wager some of the sustainability argument is upset with "the show Chose to portray it this way" which exists somewhat outside in-universe rationale. Cool? Cool.

Now, let's dive in:

First off: dark magic's pull on the external environment, which is what the sustainability argument typically focuses on.

Part of the regulations argument that always felt wonky to me was the subset assumption that regulations would, or could be, uniform across the board, and whether it'd exist in just the Pentarchy or in all of Xadia overall.

For starters, if it is just in the Pentarchy, while we know some spells can be done with purely human / non-magical body parts (hearts of cinder, the paralysis cure spell, seemingly tracking spell, Claudia's initial healing spell that involves grasshopper goop), the majority of what we see cannot be (i.e. Clauida's eye of griffon spell, ash defensive spells, fire spell). A reliable cure for famine, for example, requires travelling into Xadia—which, even if regulated amongst the Pentarchy, would still be unpermissible—so more 'greater good' spells would typically rely on legally forbidden Xadian components anyway. There would be a huge restriction on what could be done under dark magic as well as a huge spike in acquiring human body parts (possibly through human trafficking) or taking from the Pentarchy ecosystems to maintain consistent dark magic use (more on this change later).

Secondly, what we see within the first three seasons is that not all magical beings fit neatly into person or not a person category. Animals like Phoe-Phoe and Bait are highly intelligent and communicative; some dragons can talk but not all can't. The Magma Titan's personhood is directly called into question and neither confirmed nor denied, but just because they don't speak the setting's lingua franca (or at all, given that we do have mute characters, like Amaya) doesn't mean that they're not a person.

Distinguishing who is acceptable spell parts on the basis of perceived personhood would be a slippery slope: does a non-talking dragon count or not? What happens if one kingdom decides dragons are off limits, but another doesn't? All of those mages are still going to be crossing over to go hunt them for spell parts because if there's widespread regulation and/or supply and demand (whichever comes first, honestly) they'll have extra incentive to do so... unless the border kingdoms, like Katolis and Duren, don't let them through... which lands us more or less back to where we are in canon in terms of "you can't cross over into Xadia to organ harvest whatever you want" except with humans enforcing it explicitly rather than just Xadia. And if mages do cross the border for plants or animal-animals, there would need to possibly be elven guides assigned to them to ensure they keep to the legal boundaries (similarly to how Lujanne is assigned to the Nexus) or a centre of commerce for bartering... but even that centre would have to upheld by either 1) humans under supervision or 2) elves, who then get to directly control what goes in human hands regardless Again.

The other bigger part is that within TDP canon — throughout, but in the first three seasons... There just aren't that many dark mages. Katolis and Duren should, by all manner, have the most because they're close to the Border and therefore magical ingredients. We know that all the Pentarchy monarchies have mages working at court in later seasons / supplementary material (Neolandia has Tressal, Evenere has an unnamed High Mage, Aanya in S7 reveals she has mages, and Katolis has had a High Mage for presumably 300ish years) besides Del Bar. But Claudia never mentions going anywhere to buy supplies and we don't see the threat of dark mages in any of the towns the kids stumble through in S1 (Ellis') or S2 (the port town, the dragon town which is just hours away from the border); Lujanne never mentions scaring mages away in particular, and despite Viren's magic being very useful in a lot of circumstances in Katolis' immediate history, his daughter is the only other mage adjacent person at court. There's no mention of mage schools or groups of mages work together; Aanya's mages might be a newer thing since her mothers didn't rely on theirs, or they were relying on the crystals > the kind of mage that would know how to rejuvenate the land.

What this can tell us is that there just aren't a lot of dark mages in the Pentarchy. On the one hand this makes sense — the training takes time and expertise to learn, access to numerous tomes and ingredients (as discussed above. On the other hand, it indicates that if dark magic was regulated and became more widespread, there would need to be an increase in mages to fulfil the needs of the people relying on them.

This is more speculation based territory, admittedly, but does make sense. The more useful and reliable a thing is, the more it will be used and relied upon for whatever ends it's effective for. If we took Claudia's basic healing spell that involves only grasshopper goop + flowers (presumably just Pentarchy land ingredients) and treat it as a fail safe for... body aches or a consequence of hard labour (something that'd be useful for a farmer, say), then yeah, people would have reason to want it and pay mages for their services. The more common it became, the more mages you would need, not necessarily just from a geographical standpoint, but from an individualized one

As this is where we get into the bigger issue that the sustainability argument doesn't address (or at least, doesn't address as much: dark magic doesn't just have the potential to hurt the environment/ecosystems and survival of magical species. It also takes an immense toll on the caster's body.

S5 confirms that first time dark magic uses causes the nightmare coma, but this is already indicated in S2, so I'm counting it here. What this means is that dark magic has a very high entry cost. Regardless of whether the spell is big or small (i.e. Callum's first foray was very simple and should've been non-taxing) can send you into a dream coma you may not ever wake up from. It would also mean needing someone to look after your body in a safe and secure care unit of sorts (again, maybe a centre) so you don't accidentally die while passed out (pulling a bit more from scenarios presented in 5x02, admittedly, but still).

But okay, you survive the nightmare coma, and then you can do dark magic whenever you want provided you have the right ingredients for your spells. Great. Each spell that you do throughout your life gradually alters your appearance and breaks your body down steadily from the inside... even if you're using dark magic for good reasons, and while impacted by the scope of the spell, there are no spells that do not affect your body at all.

So there's two options for widespread usage: dark mages are willing, due to pay maybe, to routinely chip away at their bodies for other people's woes and worries (although that may preclude the farmer example from before, as the agricultural class maybe won't be able to afford it?) OR dark mages with expertise rent other dark-magic-coma survivors out with pay (likely those too desperate to choose otherwise) and give them the spells/ingredients to use, but do not do the spell themselves in order to preserve their own body. (This not a new thought, either; more on the cult implications of that here & here.)

Another alternative could be — if we draw from S6 — that mushroom salves made by Earthblood elves can help stave off dark magic corruption, but we don't know if that can apply to regular user dark magic corruption in addition to what we see in canon (dark magic corruption not from usage, but from primal corruption and exposure outside of usage). A dark mage could also pick other routes (purification under the Sun Forge if they ever have a great orb again, or the star ritual) but the former is very painful and the latter is a 1-use-only.

If we're generous and go with the Earth salve one, though, that requires regular usage and upkeep while also not exacerbating the corruption. It also requires rest. This means that you could push a mage to their breaking point and then work them back down, but that'd require a large and experienced workforce to 1) replace them during the recovery period, 2) take care of them during the recovery period, and 3) transporting the goods from Xadia to the Pentarchy and/or tending to an easily accessible batch being farmed within the human lands.

All of this to say — given the toll it takes on a dark mage's body, that alone is an understandable reason as to why there aren't a ton of dark mages and most people aren't willing to take that task on vs primal magic, which while the path there can be gruelling, does not negatively affect you once you're there or for repeated spell use.

TLDR; while there could be ways — if we went the logistical > the thematic route that TDP evidently prefers — to create sustainable sources for dark magic ingredients within the human lands only (and with a ton of other caveats and political maneuvering), these sources would not adequately address the practical barriers to entry that dark magic creates in terms of repeated harm to the caster's body, and the people who would likely be pushed into the roles of the caster. Even a world built to function with dark magic as a core integrated/accepted part of it would not be free of problems, and would create some deeply interesting and/or horrific circumstances to explore. Yet again, no matter which way you slice it: dark magic encourages human and Xadian trafficking all around like crazy.

[ranfordgallus]

Just finished watching one of the new wk episodes called "moose nibbles", and... it's okay, the pacing is a little off in my opinion but its pretty okay

What throws me a bit off when watching the episode is the voice acting..? If you get what i mean? I can't exactly feel the umpfh in the voicing, so it feels less...i dont know how to call it, it feels less passionate, the voices are a bit bland for a better word...especially for the kratt brothers, granted they are getting older so.. I'll be easy on them

The animation is...i dont know how to feel about it, it's OKAY..like its not BAD bad but, it's like smooth but stiff at the same time, i mean it's probably just me though, it's probably because of budget reasons im not so sure?

The storyline is simple, yeah no villains and such but it's a nice treat about rescuing an animal without villain intervention, just the kratt brothers and their crew doing their job, even if they were planning on relaxing, i would like the episode more if the voicing and animation really brings up (i dont know how to describe it) the story more, more emotion in the voice, more exaggerated poses (as in less stiff)

This might be the less favourite episode i have, majority if not almost all the episodes in ech season i love, my favourite episodes in s7 is pretty much all of them for now EXCEPT this episode, it's not becuse of the story but..it overall feels unpassionate if that's even a word

But that's all i gotta say.. now this may be a nit pick of mine, I'm sure people still enjoy the episode and i do too! Just a bit less...excited than all the other new episodes before

[theflyingkipper]

a short crappy essay about emily

The writing of girl characters in TTTE genuinely infuriates me. There’s a lot of girl characters who were done absolutely dirty, but it always comes back to Emily for me.

Emily had agency and attitude and purpose in S8-12 and it was erased in favor of a “hi. I’m nice. Im the girl character” nothing one-note personality. What do we know about post HiT era Emily? (And honestly, S7 Emily too. Her introduction is kind of weak in my opinion). She wants to help out. She’s safety oriented. She’s… I don’t know. You could replace her with Rosie or Rebecca or whoever in the cgi episodes where she’s driving the story, and nothing would change. I can’t name any major differences between Emily post-rewrite and Rosie in her entire tenure. Aside from how they’re introduced to Thomas and interact with him, really… which sucks. They don’t have major differences in characterizations outside interacting with a male lead. 

AND the worst part is that there are moments where you can SEE they were crafting bold, interesting girl characters and they were either completely sanitized or forgotten about. Molly has a very particular basis. It's not a flashy type where the engine’s basis is the center of the character’s entire personality/marketing/etc (Mighty Mac and Hank come to mind). It feels clear to me that Molly was going to be more important. And then… she wasn’t. She appeared like 3 times, said nearly nothing and never appeared again. I wish I lived in a world where Emily kept her bossy personality and had this contrasted by Molly’s shyness and timidity. 

In my perfect world, Emily is bossy and important, and has some complexes about not needing help or knowing more than others. She’s intelligent and rambunctious, feeling like she’s made for more than the fast express duties that she was designed for. She wants to be involved and get dirty. (Which is a sentiment that I think a lot of young girls can relate to!) Maybe this causes other engines to view her as childish, but we know it's because even if she’s an old design- she has youthful zeal. I think that's a compelling personality and character to make from a Stirling Single, rather than just making another “old wise sage” character (we’ve got plenty of those and in different flavors!) An old engine that's hard to register as “old” at all, though not like Edward, she reads like this because she’s childish and immature- Someone immature, but in a distinct flavor of immature than Percy or Gordon. This Emily has so much room to bounce off other characters, and she does. The way she acts in Respect for Gordon comes to mind. Emily’s bossiness brings a much needed shakeup to the monotony of seasons 8-12. 

In addition, big, snooty, important characters are a staple of TTTE, but it's an archetype almost exclusively reserved for male characters. You could make an argument that Daisy and Elizabeth support these, but I think they’re different (or underdeveloped) enough not to fit this. Emily is the exception here. I think it's why she’s remembered so well as the female TTTE character that immediately comes to mind. Emily could be great, and she was great. 

[thetommoway-oioii]

Rant Time™ !!!

so i recently became invested in the 9-1-1 universe. not gonna lie I started with lone star because tk and carlos kept popping up all over my feeds everywhere with their wedding pics and of-fucking-course I immediately looked up the show because I'm not gonna pass up any canon queer rep?? hello!! anyway this ain't about tarlos. after I was done with lone star I started interacting with stuff from that fandom and came to find that one of the characters from the main show recently came out as bi and boy oh boy was I excited as fuck. two days later I'm starting my 9-1-1 binge. I knew absolutely nothing about the characters, storyline or the show except what I saw in the crossover episode and I was so pleasantly surprised that there's already canon queer rep present from the beginning of the show!!! (shout out to henren and michaeldavid absolute legends)

anyway I keep getting sidetracked, what I'm here to rant about is how fucking dumb some of the new watchers like me are?!! I had no idea how this t*mmy person was because all I knew was a gif of him kissing buck. you can imagine my surprise when I first saw him in the flashbacks and found out what an absolute dickwad he used to be?!?! and I could not believe that buck was gonna kiss this dude in the future. there was no fucking way. either there was gonna be a huge redemption character arc or something or he'll have a fuckin twin or something cause no chance they're setting future buck up with this asshole.

anyway lo and behold s2 comes around and in comes eddie diaz with this big brown eyes and slutty tank top and of course I knew who eddie was. come on now be for real. I might have not been a part of the fandom before but there's no way you can exist on tumblr and not know who eddie and buck were. and like any other shipping-prone fan, I thought people were setting buddie up based on subtle sterek-esque subtext but imagine my surprise when slowly throughout the show they became deancas-esque obvious. the connection they developed, the trust, the bond. how they found home and family and sense of belonging and safety in each other. how eddie and chris and buck himself baby trapped himself. I was so sure that buddie would eventually become canon in s7 because there's no other way right. maybe the the whole BT thing was some weird profound realization moment for buck or something.

back to the point. what I'm mad about is how the new watchers are completely Ignoring clear signs of buddie and on top of that shaming or right out calling the buddie shippers crazy all the while blindly supporting a character that is clearly a Major Fucking Dickwad from the beginning. making excuses like he was figuring himself out in the past or he's canonly queer while eddie clearly isn't. as if T*mmy figuring himself out excuses him being a shit person or the literal fact that just because eddie has not come out yet he's not queer. buck was straight UNTIL he came out as bi. anyway that's mostly all I wanted to say. yes I started the show because of a BT kiss gif but once I actually watched the show, it was easy to figure out what was right in front of me.

I urge new watchers like me to take the time and really understand and watch the show and not just look at it from face value or consume information through social media osmosis.

[talas-first-lady]

I tthink in general s5 and s6 lacked in the relationship department. When z1 came she formed bonds with Ray, nate, Amaya, Jax, Sara etc. Z2 comes and she has 1 episode with ava and then nothing till s7, and then it's just behrad and by extension nate and later John. Astra had a connection with John and then just Spooner and in s7 with Gideon and b. Spooner had bonding with behrad and Astra and ava till s7 where she connects with others too. They even say that in s7.

To continue my previous thoughts, I think s5 and s6 had a lot of cast changes happening at the same time (while the other seasons had 1-2 cast changing) and at the same time a lot of things were changing as well, no time bureau so ava had to have a new place in the waverider, there was a new time line, the audience didn't know behrad but the characters knew him, Z2 instead of z1, Ray leaving, Astra, Spooner etc. They could have spare more time for the characters bonding. Last but not least, I tthink even the audience didn't bond with the s5-s7 crew as much as with the s1-s4 crew judging by the amount of fanfictions and other content. But I think that's natural tbh and imo legends did a far better job with constant cast changes than most shows I know.

Personally, I only started watching Legends halfway through season 6. So I can't really speak much to what the fandom was like prior to that.

But a few thoughts:

It's important to consider that the seasons are all different lengths. Season 7 was by far the shortest. So there just literally wasn't as much time to mix and match characters. Season 3, in contrast, was one of the longest.

I don't think we can judge anything on the basis of number of fanfic for the simple fact that there are 6000+ Ao3 fics tagged with a character who died in season 1. Even when you exclude fics that are also tagged as The Flash, Snart has 3200. That would be insane if not for the fact that he had a built-in fanbase before the show started. So the numbers are really skewed.

Sadly we also have to acknowledge that the Arrowverse fandom at large has a racism problem. The Legends fandom is often an exception to this rule (I was honestly really worried that the historical costume tournament I was running was going to turn into a shitshow and could not be more pleased that Amaya and Zari did so well). But we've heard from Candice, Javicia, Azie, and probably others that there are some major issues. So the fact that some people aren't super passionate about Astra and Spooner is *maybe* for reasons besides their relationships with other characters.

Like seriously, there are over 15K Legends fics on Ao3 and not one POC character breaks 2K fics.

I think you're selling short some of the little character connections that didn't get much time but were still meaningful. Spooner had solo time in season 6 with John, Sara, and Mick. Z2 may not have major central arcs with Ava in every episode but she is always interacting with her in the background. Most characters don't get a Here I Go Again level of personal interaction with everyone, but there are definitely relationships when you look for them.

Anyway, time for work!

[lover-of-mine]

I just had a thought regarding the “Tim should punish Buddie fans” of it all. Because at the end of the day it’s a TV show, the thing they care most about is ratings. Tim has admitted that the show got worse and ratings got worse when he stopped writing Buddie scenes (something I’m sure ABC is very aware of). So it honestly shouldn’t matter if some Buddie fans are annoying - we represent the majority opinion, which affects the ratings. Yeah they may lose some of the gained viewers from the BT stans if they breakup but it’s nothing on the viewers they’ll lose if they force Eddie into another straight relationship and separate Buck and Eddie for separate endgames.

Okay, pure speculation here, but the show is a business as much as it is a story and a show has to deal with stuff a book or a movie don't. Since the story is not contained, they need to adapt to the circumstances in which it is airing. We know for a fact that fox was against Buck being bi and that gives us the chance to infer that they were against the buddie thing as a whole. We know this was supposed to happen during s4, we know s5 separates Buck and Eddie physically since Eddie leaves the station, so that reduces their screentime without major problems because while we were getting less casual buddie since they weren't working together, we got a lot of quality buddie during Eddie's breakdown. They continued to reduce the Buck and Eddie of it all during 6a. No one was happy about it. We were NOT happy that we were missing out on their dynamic except for a few moments that were thrown in. That so created a problem that they overcorrect that in 6b. We all knew the lightning was coming but the promo had a lot of Eddie's reaction to it, we even got a bts video of Ryan running up the ladder, the do more was the teaser scene we got, when we got recovery and mixed feelings, with recovery giving us some quality buddie, and mixed feelings giving us a lot of buddie overall. Obviously, the threat of cancellation made them shift things around, we know there were reshoots, we know they tried to wrap things up in case that was the final season, and that made them drop the ball with buddie for a second there after the cemetery, but they fixed that during s7, because there was a LOT of buddie, especially considering it was reduced season. Abc has a lot of good queer rep, they seem to like their glaad awards nominations. We obviously have no idea of why fox was blocking biBuck, and again, pure speculation, but I am willing to bet you that the buddie of it all was part of the conversation while the buy was being negotiated or at least while they were discussing the plans to integrate 911 to abc once the buy was finalized. The abc people have an outside perspective on buddie, the same way we do, and buddie is a compelling dynamic that can be a gold mine if they play their cards right. If, I, a random person on the internet with a blog and hyperfixation and nothing to gain from it, can reach the conclusion that getting buddie together can bring them a shit load of exposure, I guarantee you that someone there reached that conclusion too. I believe they sat down with the team and asked "what's the deal with Buck and Eddie? Is there a plan?" and they reached some conclusion to finally get them there because they took Ryan out of pr jail and continuously put Oliver and Ryan together leading up to the season and the Buck and Eddie talk did not stop once Buck being bi was canonically confirmed.

Logistically, if the plan was to simply make Buck bi and not make the Buck and Eddie a thing, obviously, Eddie wouldn't be involved with Buck's bi arc the way he is in the story, but they would also not involve Ryan in the promotion with Oliver like that. It's 2024, no one wants queerbaiting allegations thrown at them. We lived through the mcu, and teen wolf, and supernatural, and no one wants to be that guy. They have a compelling dynamic that's been drawing people in for years, and they could've gone the whole show with both of them being perceived as straight in universe, keep doing what they were doing, leave us in the will they/won't they, and keep our part of the audience forever because we would keep coming back waiting to see them together. Personally, I think Buck being bi was a trial run in many ways from the business side of it. Buck is extremely well liked by the audience, he is a fan favorite, so people are a lot more lenient with his shit than other characters, that means that if Buck being bi was poorly received by the general audience, they could backtrack him out of it a lot easier and just introduce another pretty girl and not go there. Male bisexual rep is also not all that common, it's usually the pretty girl best friend that you later find out had a girlfriend in college who may or may not be in love with the female lead, so it stands on its own in the conversation. And, well, Buck being bi was extremely well received. Ship war aside, there is a significant part of the new influx of people who are just as invested in the Buck and Eddie of it all even with another male love interest in the mix. And there was a huge influx of people. Somewhere in the 911 team, someone is making predictions and they are aware that Eddie being queer will have the same type of reaction. Eddie might not be as popular as Buck on his own, but with the added fact that queer Eddie means buddie is coming, they get the same boom that biBuck had. They also became the first media to do this. No superhell, no complicated feelings for a car, no going back to the past. Just a compelling relationship between two male characters that's been drawing people in since the beginning that changed into something romantic and requited. They would be the first to take the popular m/m ship that drives the internet crazy and make it happen. I know of a lot of traumatized destiel or sterek or stucky or whatever else who are waiting for Eddie to be confirmed queer to start watching the show with the whole 911 already had queer rep, Buck being bi is no guarantee they'll follow through, I don't wanna be disappointed again. Which is fair, but it is a second wave of people that could come into the show. Buck and Eddie are unheard of rep. It's a 6+ seasons queer slowburn. They are best friends, they have a kid, their devotion to each other is very clear. Abc has the chance to go full Elle Woods "what like it's hard?" to every queerbaity ship that came before buddie. Especially considering we have Oliver on record multiple times saying fox was blocking it. And that would make them so much money. So much exposure. We're talking become subjects in television history classes for the rest of times because they were the first to pull through. We're not just talking ratings, we're talking being put next to genre-defining couples in media. They are a gold mine that Oliver and Ryan are on board with, that Tim seems to be on board with and that abc clearly likes using for promotion so they at least understand the numbers they could bring, so not going there because a fraction of the fandom is being bitchy on the internet is bad business.

Season 6 gave them the perfect opening to separate Buck and Eddie but they used season 7 to bring them closer together than they've ever been. If the plan was to make them end up with other people, they had the chance to make that clear this season, and they didn't. They're not gonna throw it away like this to "punish fans". They would be punishing themselves.

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

DS9 DIALOGUE ANALYSIS

third show breakdown! if you'd like to see this entire project check out my tag #star trek dialogue analysis, this spreadsheet, or the below posts:

overview // TOS overview // TNG overview // Voyager overview // Enterprise overview // gender analysis // race analysis

this post will give an overview of all the DS9 data i collected broken down by season and character.

cast composition:

the DS9 cast first comprised of: Sisko, Kira, Bashir, Odo, O'Brien, Jadzia Dax, Quark, and Jake. in season 4, Worf was added to the main cast and in season 7, Jadzia Dax was replaced with Ezri Dax. for the purposes of this project, i'm considering Jadzia & Ezri to be two entirely separate characters.

season 1:

right off the bat, Sisko obviously has the most lines as the lead – roughly equivalent to Picard's line count in later seasons – with Kira, Odo, and O'Brien having the next most lines and Jadzia & Quark having the least of the adult characters. i do include Jake (as with Wesley) as a main character because he's credited as such but obviously as a child (at least in the first few season) he won't have an equal role to the adult actors and so i'll kind of set him aside from the main analysis. i would also point out that generally all of the supporting characters (i.e. not Sisko) have more lines than the supporting characters of TNG.

immediately in s2, we see a shift in the show becoming much more ensemble focused than any season in TNG with all characters except Sisko & Jake having an average line count within 10 lines of each other.

the pattern from s2 generally holds with most characters getting around equal amounts of lines (except now Quark has the least lines of the adult characters).

this season marks the addition of Worf as a ninth character and perhaps as expected, he gets a lot of focus this season with the second most lines (the first time any non-lead has gotten more lines than Kira). and because there's a new main character, everyone has fewer lines overall.

after settling into a changed cast, the line counts aren't quite as equal in s2 & 3 but still markedly more than in TNG. it's also worth noting that Kira & Bashir have a lot fewer lines this season possibly due to the actors having a baby in the early season and being less available to work. it's also interesting that Worf, after having a lot of focus in s4, becomes the least used adult character in s5 (also partially due to his appearances in the TNG movies). the increased focus on serialization and major recurring characters also leads to the main cast generally getting fewer lines.

some interesting things to note – Quark, often a character with few lines, has a lot of high-line count episodes this season so he has an almost equal amount of lines to Sisko; Worf continues to get fewer lines; and Odo gets fewer appearances despite the ongoing story plot that focuses on him this season.

DS9's last season marks some interesting changes. Ezri Dax is a new character who gets significantly more lines than the other cast this season. Sisko, despite still being the lead of the show, has the third most lines after Bashir & Ezri (the least of any Captain). Quark gets less than half of the lines he got in s6. Jake gets the fewest lines out of any season so far. the disparity in some characters' appearances is pretty stark compared to how ensemble focused the early seasons were (opposite to how TNG was developed).

by character:

SISKO

like Picard, Sisko generally gets fewer and fewer lines as the seasons go on but it's shocking how few lines he gets in s6 and s7 dropping to less than half of the lines he had in s1. across the seasons, he has an average of 50.72 lines, by far the least of any Captain/lead that i've calculated, and appears in all 173 episodes of the show. he has 34 "high line count" episodes (≥80 lines) and 27 "low line count" episodes (≤10 lines). he has the most lines in Second Sight (159), not including double length episodes (which in that case he would have the most lines in Emissary with 190).

KIRA

Kira generally gets fewer lines as the seasons go on though not quite as radically reduced as Sisko. overall she has an average of 32.24 lines per episode and appears in 171 of the 173 episodes of DS9 (not appearing in The Assignment and Let He Who Is Without Sin). of these episodes, she has 20 high line count episodes and 59 low line count episodes. she has the most lines in Crossover with 169 (due to playing both Major Kira and Intendant Kira which for the purpose of this project, i've lumped in as the same character). discounting Mirrorverse episodes, she has the most lines in Return to Grace with 141.

BASHIR

Bashir is one of the few characters who ends up having more lines in s7 compared to s1. overall he has an average of 29.82 lines per episode. he appears in 169 episodes of the show, not appearing in Paradise, Blood Oath, The Collaborator, and For the Uniform. he has 15 high line count episodes and 63 low line count episodes. the most lines he has is 168 in both The Wire and Extreme Measures.

ODO

like many DS9 characters, Odo gets fewer lines as the series progresses. overall he has an average of 28.16 lines per episode. he appears in 168 episodes of the show, not appearing in: Paradise, The Visitor, Rejoined, By Inferno's Light, and Change of Heart. he has 15 high line count episodes and 68 low line count episodes. he has the most lines with 163 in Necessary Evil.

JADZIA

Jadzia has the most consistent amounts of dialogue throughout the show during her tenure. she has an average line count of 26.26 and appears in 145 episodes of the show being missing from all of s7 and the episodes: The Begotten and In The Cards. she has 9 high line count episodes and 45 low line count episodes (interestingly less of both). she has the most lines in the episode in Playing God with 152 lines.

O'BRIEN

O'Brien regularly got the most lines after Sisko & Kira in early seasons but like most of the cast, got fewer lines as the show went on. overall he has an average of 31.60 lines per episode and appears in 161 episodes. he has 15 high line count episodes and 56 low line count episodes. he has the most lines in Whispers with 194 lines of dialogue.

QUARK

Quark, as a character who isn't in Starfleet and as a character with a lot of prosthetic make-up, tends to appear heavily in a few episodes per season and then only have scattered appearances in other episodes which leads to his season line count to be a bit scattered depending on how many focal episodes he got. that said, overall he has an average of 27.09 lines per episode across 155 episodes, the least of any adult character who appears in all seven seasons. he has 17 high line count episodes and 85 low line count episodes. the most dialogue he ever gets is in the episode Who Mourns For Morn with 189 lines of dialogue, the most of any Star Trek character in TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise which was a big surprise.

WORF

Worf only appeared in four of DS9's seven seasons and had a lot of focus in season 4 but faded more to the background in subsequent seasons. he has an average of 20.35 lines per episode (slightly less than his TNG average of 21.47. he appears in 96 episodes and out of those – 6 have a high line count and 49 have a low line count. the most lines he has in one single length episode is 115 in Change of Heart (though he has 127 lines in the double length episode The Way of the Warrior).

JAKE

before running the numbers, i had assumed that as Jake got older, he would generally appear more and have more lines but interestingly the opposite happened where he has significantly fewer lines in the last two seasons as the show became very serialized. he has an average of 9.51 lines of dialogue across the show and appears in 70 episodes. of these 70 episodes, he has 4 high line count episodes. the most lines he has is in The Visitor with 142 lines.

EZRI

i don't have a graph for Ezri as she only appears in one season but still she has 996 total lines of dialogue making for an average of 38.31 per episode, more dialogue than anyone else in that season. across the 26 episodes she appears in, she has four high line count episodes and eight low line count episodes. the most dialogue she has is in the episode Field of Fire with 158 lines.

random things of note:

as noted above, Quark is the character with the most lines of dialogue (189) in any single length episode not only in DS9 but out of all Star Trek i've measured. if we include double length episodes, Sisko has slightly more in Emissary with 190.

Sisko is the only character who appears in every episode.

out of the shows i've measured, Sisko gets the least amount of dialogue out of any Captain (on average, he has 19 fewer lines of dialogue per episode than both Picard & Janeway).

characters who are introduced part-way through the show (Worf & Ezri) tend to have a lot more dialogue in their first seasons than the other main characters.

as opposed to TNG, DS9 started out as much more of an ensemble show and that faded slightly. i would hypothesize that this is because as the show became serialized and introduced a large cast of recurring characters, there was less room for the series regulars compared to TNG & Voyager who both had very few recurring characters.

that said, with the exception of Sisko & Kira (who occupy roughly the same roles as Picard & Riker), all the DS9 characters tend to get more dialogue on average than the TNG characters, though not as much as the Voyager characters.

[lemotmo]

https://www.tumblr.com/lemotmo/780937270099378176/i-didnt-even-realize-some-of-this-q-you-liked?source=share

First I have to say that i love your blog and i also love Ali's answers, they are always a nice read and i love when there's a new one popping up.

Now i'm going to preface this by saying that i love Bobby and Athena as characters, because i do. But i'm starting to get sick and tired of them taking up the majority of the spotlight.

As Ali said, they've had like six storylines each while the rest of the characters sit in the back twiddling their thumbs. And it's starting to affect this series badly.

To put thing into perpective, i've been rewatching 911 with my boyfriend and we just finished Sob stories.

(Btw, on a rewatch season 7 was actually awful except for a few episodes. Getting through it, especially the back half of the season, felt like a chore at times. Tim is lucky most people watch this show weekly, because he fumbled S7 real bad.)

Now to S8. The Brad storyline, while i was pissed that it dragged out so much when i first watched it, i enjoyed a lot on the rewatch. My boyfriend too. It's a fun storyline and a nice change of pace with Bobby, since a lot of Bobby storylines are doom and gloom. However i'm still pissed that we spent so much time with Brad when we could have advanced on the Eddie storyline or given any other character some spotlight.

Either way, after Sob stories, my boyfriend (who is not a stan and watches this show because i'm obsessed, so he would be closer to a member of the regular audience) told me that he was getting tired of Bobby, Athena and Maddie taking the spotlight time after time, while other character like Buck or Eddie (or Hen or Chimney) get barely anything.

So this is not a problem that we have because we stan a character o another, it's a problem that even someone who is not as invested has noticed.

A lot of people who watched Lone Star started hating Owen Strand, partially because Lone Star quickly became the Owen Strand show. Everything was about him and the rest of the characters barely got anything.

I would say Bobby and Athena are much more likable characters than Owen Strand but, by making Bobby and Athena take so much of the spotlight, Tim is making the audience grow tired of them. And if he is not careful some people might start to resent the characters.

We desperatly need a change. Less grandiose two parter storylines and more character driven ones. Less Bobby, Athena and Maddie and more Buck, Eddie, Hen and Chim. More interactions between the 118 members. Less Bobby and Athena and Maddie ndes, they are starting to get repetitive. Even the Chim nde feels repetitive because a virus, AGAIN?

Like i LOVE this show, so of course i'm going to critizice it and of course i want it to do better. This is a problem that needs to be adressed if we want 911 to last longer.

I haven't seen Lone Star so I can't compare to Owen Strand, so I can't comment on that.

But the rest of it? YES! To all of this!

Loving a show doesn't mean that you can't critizice it. I agree.

All of this is why I think that the whole Bobby funeral thing is some kind of red herring and this isn't going to be about him after all. The man has been through enough and narratively speaking it doesn't make any sense.

Like you said, it can't all be about Bobby. They have to take a break from this pattern. So my Buck nde theory fits right into that. Just saying...

Thank you for the lovely compliment about my blog. 🤗

[angelshizuka]

My feelings on HB and its reception are really mixed because I ADORE this show, like immensely, and the last couple of episodes have delivered in what I wanted to see story wise for Stolas and Blitz.

But also I can’t completely blame people for their frustrations with S2 because, with the exception of some takes made in AWFUL faith, a lot problems people have cited to have with S2 are the same problems that I had when I was following Voltron back in the day: one character’s character arc eclipsing most of the main cast, the majority of the main cast either getting very little to do or nothing, plot structure and pacing issues.

Back then I wrote them off as the sophomore slump because Voltron was greenlit for eight seasons and we were a fourth into the story, but as the show went on I realized the S2 problems laid the foundation for BIGGER and more infuriating problems that would plague the remainder of the show and it made me quit on the show by S7 (and from what I have heard about S8 it’s not even worth finishing).

While HB S2 hasn’t done anything to the same extent as Voltron S2 did (because Voltron had the additional problem of having a terribly executed Space Racism plotline), the writing is on the wall for HB to potentially make a lot of the same mistakes and I really REALLY want S3 to prove me wrong.

At least something that's been giving me peace of mind is that Viv and Brandon have made it very clear the ending of the show has already been set in stone and people's opinions on it won't change the direction they wanna take it.

Compared to Voltron where the writers were constantly influended by what people were constantly complaining about, to the point of making last minute changes not even a day before the series finale dropped (which ironically is one of the worst parts of the finale to me and that's saying a lot).

And with HB s3 being 15 episodes long, which is a few episodes longer than s2 and almost twice as long as s1, it does give them more room to give more characters and plot points focus and spread it out more before the season finale.

So, at least right now, HB itself hasn't given me a reason to worry yet and any worry I do have comes from the trust issues the bad experiences from past shows have given me.

[eisforeidolon]

More people watched the Garth episodes in S7 than any of the Cass return episodes. Even if the Hellers didn’t know Cass was coming back in ep 17, don’t you think more of them would have watched subsequent episodes, knowing that Cass was back on the show? Except they didn’t.

That's part of the weirdness, yeah. They're very loud online about how they're the majority and the real audience. But while there are some individual big spenders, for the most part? They neither put the eyeballs nor the money where their big mouths are.

They don't actually like the show, so why tune in when they can just watch out of context gifs of Dean and Castiel's few interactions on tumblr? They also don't actually show up in the numbers they claim to have - which has lead to conventions having to give away Castiel merch, lower the number of seats at his M&G events to create artificial scarcity, drop Misha for demanding appearance fees greater than what he brings in at overseas cons, and the aborted fiasco that was the attempt at non-J2 Creation cons.

Yet they still insist Misha was a lead and they're the majority, because they're that deep into a bubble of concerted shared delusion.

[nicnacsnonsense]

Just finished “Lies My Parents Told Me” and woof, that was rough.

Spike & Buffy are just bizarrely flippant about the fact that Spike’s trigger is still active. Like I am pro-keeping Spike alive, but given that he can be forcibly turned into a bloodthirsty killer at literally any moment, some precautions need to be taken!

Giles meanwhile is the only person treating the trigger with the seriousness that it deserves and is actively trying to fix it, but when he isn’t able to immediately solve the problem, he just jumps straight to murder?

Giles is like, hmmm, I cannot trust Buffy’s judgement about Spike as I suspect she may be emotionally compromised, so instead I am going to ally with Robin, who has point-blank admitted to me that his judgement around Spike is emotionally compromised

The audacity of Giles telling Buffy she needs to be a general while making and helping to execute on a major fucking decision behind her back

Why is Giles on the Spike hate train this season? I feel like he trusts Spike and likes Buffy working with him less this season than he did in season 5. Except this season not only does Spike have a soul, which makes a huge fucking difference in how we treat Angel, Spike went and got his soul of his own accord because he wanted to be a better person for Buffy. And Giles gives him zero credit for any of that. (Honestly no one gives Spike enough credit for that this season, though Buffy does at least try.)

I don’t like Buffy saying she would sacrifice Dawn to save the world if she had to. Not even because it bothers me that Buffy the person would say that, but because it kind of undermines the overall narrative of the show. S3 Buffy kills Angel to save the world. Cool, powerful statement about the character. S5 Buffy refuses to kill Dawn to save the world, saying that she doesn’t know how to live in a world where these are the choices. Also a powerful statement, and all the more meaningful because she has changed her mind since the last time. S7 she says she would sacrifice Dawn to save the world actually, and now I no longer care. None of these statements are powerful any more because apparently Buffy’s just generally wishy-washy about the whole thing.

Spike says he doesn’t feel bad for killing Nikki because he’s a vampire and she was the Slayer and that’s how the game is played; she chose it. No she did not! Like that’s the whole thing, the huge running conflict throughout the whole show, not to mention the big Shadow Men reveal just two episodes ago. The Slayer is *chosen*. One girl in all the world is chosen without her consent to have all this power just thrust upon her and then be forced to fight evil and protect the world.

In general just not a fan of the condescension dripping off Spike in that interaction, like oh my mom loved me but yours didn’t love you.

Oh my god, Spike, that’s his dead mother’s coat. You stole that coat off the body of a woman you had just murdered. Just let him fucking keep the coat.