#Anyways I wish they had pulled on the thread more after s2

[acesammy]

I know I get so blinded by Sams plot when watching spn that I often overlook deans, but do you ever think about deans s2 arc? Bc it’s batshit good.

John sells his soul for dean and dean spends the entire season suffering for it - to the point that he /explicitly/ makes the point that selling your soul for a loved one is a selfish and cruel act - only to do that to Sam. Bc Dean just cannot fathom living while Sam is dead. and thinking about all this makes me want to start chewing drywall bc Dean KNOWS how selfish he is being here, but the idea of sacrificing yourself for someone else’s life - regardless of how much that person WOULD NOT WANT THAT - comes across as the most selfless caring thing you can do.

#Anyways I wish they had pulled on the thread more after s2 #Morally grey dean who is still deeply caring is so interesting #and I LOVE that they spent a whole season focusing on how shitty Dean felt over johns deal #for dean to be like ‘I know how this felt. I don’t care. I need him to be alive’ #and it puts Sam in such a vulnerable position too bc now dean is not only his big brother #but Dean /sold his soul/ to bring him back #good stuff #and it really makes me frustrated when I think about the conversations I’ve had about this show over the years #bc people bring up selfishness as one of sams flaws #and I disagree completely #self righteousness; self isolation; bullheadedness #those are flaws of sams #but he never does anything on the show that makes me go ‘oh yeah that’s /selfish/. That’s out of the bounds of what is reasonable’ #going to college is a /reasonable/ ask #but bringing Sam back from the dead; knowing full well that Sam would rather be dead than /dean/ be in hell? #that IS selfish #but it feels so kind and self sacrificing #Idk id argue this is one of the few truly selfish moves in the show #lea speaks #spn #meta

[whatstrangeloops]

Finished the first season of Scavenger's Reign and wanted to post some thoughts about it.

First, I want to say that the show is gorgeous and the world and creatures are always stunning and interesting. This show is worth experiencing purely for those things alone.

However, as a story I think it was really lacking or, given the second season teaser at the end, maybe just incomplete. Which is disappointing since I can see the outline of some interesting themes going on but the show doesn't seem interested in delivering any sort of coherent statement about those ideas with the characters.

The unifying concept seems to be of humanity vs nature. Vespa is a wild and unfamiliar new ecology to the stranded survivors. While the creatures on Vespa aren't malicious their survival and the humans' survival is at odds and this forms the fundamental conflict of the show. Then later, I think in one of the last episodes, in Azi's flashback with Mia, Mia delivers a classic "this is the theme" monologue about how no matter where they are people should find ways to rely on other people. Which I interpret as the story being implicitly pro-humanity but also makes other things in the show less interesting maybe because I was hoping the show would go deeper than that.

Like here's how I interpret some of the characters and what happened to them. Sam starts out very pragmatic and is even positioned as opposed to Ursula on trying to understand Vespa (a thread that kind of gets dropped I feel). After he's infected with the parasite, at first he's invigorated but after coming to realize having the parasite allows him access to a deeper connection to Vespa chooses to die with his humanity rather than accept that influence. I think the horror framing of the parasite really muddies trying to think about it though. Kamen abdicates his humanity entirely to Vespa through Hollow (the little alien koala is called Hollow in the episode descriptions) unknowingly becoming a force of destruction but on contact with the "true understanding of Vespa" that Levi has is either rejected by the planet or reaccepts responsibility for his actions. Which one it is is kind of unclear. Finally, in Levi's arc the show seems to say that full harmony with Vespa isn't achievable by biological humans. Levi's strength is that they can be fully colonized by Vespa without any messy biological incompatibilities and they're even rewarded for accepting the planet with reproductive capability but that arc puts the human characters in a kind of bleak contrast and doesn't foretell good outcomes for them.

I guess I was hoping the show would give the characters a way to reflect on the idea of humanity vs nature more deeply. Probably the first couple episodes had me subconsciously ready to compare it to Dune and the teaser at the end of the last episode with the cathedral ship and the priests or whatever they were pushed that comparison into my conscious thinking. (Actually that teaser makes me a little worried if they're going about any of this thematic storytelling stuff being improved in S2, if it happens)

Anyway, some minor gripes: Hollow feels too much like a cheap trope. The rest of the ecology on Vespa felt very alien but still grounded. Hollow is just like a Grey but a koala complete with telepathic and telekinetic powers that no character ever really comments on and the transformation into a horror monster is also ungrounded.

I wish the show had spent a bit more time showing us how the characters discovered some of their knowledge about the ecology. Seeing Sam, Ursula, or Azi use the animals or plants in ingenious ways was cool but as they moved toward the ship and through unfamiliar biomes I started wondering about when they had the opportunity to figure all of this out. I'm thinking about the sequence where Azi, Barry and Kris have to cross that river and Azi pulls out this elaborate multi step process just to make sticky tack for their shoes like she'd been living by that riverside for years even though if you think about it I'm pretty sure that's the first time she'd ever been in that area.

#scavengers reign

[raymondebidochonlifechoices]

Are you confident Bughead will be endgame on this show? That’s literally the last strand I’ve been holding onto, but the thread is weakening. I really can’t believe that they would take this ship, their absolute most popular and loved one, and just end it like this forever. I am so angry with the writing!!

Hey there, anon! It is unbelievable, isn’t it?

What a tricky question you ask! confidence + prediction + the Riverdale writers ... As Jughead would say: yikes!

The thing with these writers is that they use a lot of words without knowing their meaning. “Endgame” is one of them. “New” is another. “Exciting”. “Darkness”™. “Adult stories”. “The message”…

Dangling the bughead “endgame” carrot at the end of one or two seasons of no bughead or -worse- of b*rchie and j*bitha f.e. is not an endgame. The general definition of endgame -outside of chess- is: the last stage of a process. If the process (i.e. the season’s content) isn’t about bughead, then bughead coming together at the very end is not an endgame, it's a peripeteia i.e. a sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances.

In shipping, endgame is a couple that will inevitably end together (for ever and ever and ever). In order for something to be inevitable, you have to create that sentiment, you have to build the couple up.

There’s an article about the misappropriation of the word “endagame” that I find particularly funny, as it starts by mentioning Riverdale!

Anyway, this is a long-winded way to say that, yes, I do believe that the show will end with bughead and varchie as their main canon couples. It’s just that, like you, I’m so very tired with these story lines. There is satisfaction to be had at the notion of endgame but a seasonful of investigative bughead would be infinitely preferable. For me (and I can only speak of myself) the journey is more important than the destination -even if for the simple reason that -in TV show time- it lasts longer!

Why do I think bughead is still … that word? Everything’s under the cut, so as not to clutter your dash!

1. A lot of people have been theorising that what happened in 5x18 was not the original plot. I agree.

Let’s start with 5x18 varchie.

Their break up came completely out of left field. Its unexpectedness is reminiscent of 4x17. I make fun of how s5 is a reboot of s1+s2’s leftover ideas, so another copy-paste shouldn’t feel out of place, and yet … really? Another repetition? To what end? If the season’s goal was not varchie, b*rchie was already there waiting at the beginning of the time jump! Why abandon that plot? In terms of romantic varchie time, that was extremely limited, since after their kiss in 5x7, Veronica’s divorce kept them apart until 5x17 … Why have Archie being extremely jealous of Chad, Veronica getting involved in all of Archie’s schemes (firefighters, bulldogs), Archie getting involved in Ronnie’s (rescuing daddykins) or Veronica telling her father she chooses Archie over him in 5x17? Also, for those who remember, there was this by the-writer-who-shall-not-be-named.

The reason of the break up is as ludicrous as Veronica moving into Archie’s childhood bedroom (with its effing slanted roof!) on the premise that long term the Andrews’ residence has more room! (By the way, I don’t know what surprised me more: that Veronica thought that Archie and uncle Frank would know who Ina Garten is or that Jughead didn’t.) Why is Veronica astounded by Archie’s involvement in the same activities he has been involved in all through the season?! For f***’s sake, she’s the one that gifted him the fire truck!

Ok. Now let’s give 5x18 j*bitha a try.

For me, 5x18 could either have gone bugheadwards or j*bithawards. J*bitha had some heartfelt talks, a hand touch, a hallucination and a kiss. Bughead had one unfinished heartfelt talk (the only one in the whole season for Betty), two shoulder touches, two hallucinations and Jughead attempting to reconnect with Betty (without specifying what his intent was, it's true).

While I do think that j*bitha is a ship that has been adequately teased, the way they were explored in 5x18 was … not underwhelming exactly (after all, they’re not my ship, so I didn’t have any expectations about them) but … maybe lukewarm is the word? They had but minimal dialogue, only enough to establish that Tabitha’s parents were in town. Then a song where Tabitha initially rejects Jughead, although she had been supportive before. Then another song, where the lyrics were heavily altered and didn’t make much sense anyway (we hadn’t been properly introduced to the Tates) but where the original lyrics were very compatible with Bughead’s history and state of being as of 5x17. The kisses were ok, I have no problem with the actors’ chemistry. But -and this is strictly a personal opinion- Jughead’s flirting scenes (not the make-out ones, you perverts!) with Cora were better and so was the j*bitha kiss in 5x10. For the 5x18 j*bitha to flow, more dialogue and more flirting was necessary (always a persona opinion). So, no, I don’t think j*bitha were supposed to sing what they sang in 5x18.

Production for s5 wrapped up one week after the official announcement of the 5 special episodes for Riverdale and The Flash: “we expect it will take us until Fall 2022 to get back to a regular schedule” was the official quote. Re-organising the cw’s overall schedule didn’t happen overnight. Yes, more likely than not, the writers knew about the specifics of s6a before shooting 5x18-5x19 and had time to re-write them.

2. The couples spoilers for s6 do not make sense plot-wise.

If the end-goal for 5x19-6x1 had been b*rchie, j*bitha and v*ggie all along, these were pairs already happening (except from v*ggie) at the beginning of the time-jump. As for v*ggie, last time we saw them, Veronica pulled a face when she heard that he had had (still has?) an affair with Hermosa. And what about Nana Rose?! (ok, that was a joke! ... or was it? 👀)

The majority of both the fans and the general audience are bugvarchie shippers. Teasing b*rchie and j*bitha as a means of maintaining the viewers’ interest in a will they/won’t they way, only works if the audience finally gets what they want. In this season. Not the next one! There is so much trolling one can take after all. In the space of 1.5 year (4x17-5x19) b*rchie will have been teased ... THREE times (and still lacking build-up)!

I cannot myself see b*rchie, j*bitha and v*ggie as endgame couples. For the audience to invest in them after 4 years of bugvarchie, the writers have to a) give j*bitha an absolutely incredible development that will surpass bughead and the cinematography to go with it (good luck with that) and b) undo Archie’s character (highly unlikely) and/or give Betty a lobotomy (at which point a lot of people will quit en masse, because Archie as The One All The Girls Want just doesn't resonate with the majority).

I have no idea if s6a is an AU or not. But if it’s not, no one will be left to watch 6b.

Can I guarantee a bughead endgame? Of course not. I have no idea how the minds of the Riverdale writers work. But I do think that Jughead and Betty getting back together is more than wishful thinking.

Fervently shipping Jughead/Betty, Jughead/his book and Betty/therapy, sincerely yours, @raymondebidochonlifechoices

I hope you have fun with the Riverdale universe regardless, dear anon. Riverdale has given us one of the most beautiful getting-together stories in s1 and lots and lots of beautiful canon bughead afterwards. Here's to many more! Much love to you!

#asks #anon #Bughead #Riverdale writer's negativity #(what's new?) #anti-b*rchie #anti-j*bitha #Riverdale season 5 speculation #Riverdale season 6 speculation

[zuzuslastbraincell]

Ty lee (i feel like i havent seen many of you ty lee thots)

honestly love her!! tbh i don’t have many that others haven’t said more clearly and more interestingly

Why I like them

she’s a character with lots of hidden motives, depths, and complexity, who guards her true thoughts and opinions quite closely, but simultaneously *is* what she advertises herself as: a happy-go-lucky girl. like i don’t think her cheerfulness and her enthusiasm for auras and spirituality is entirely inauthentic - it’s just that she’s adept at using her own enthusiasm to mask her real feelings and thoughts. like there’s a lot to her there.

Why I don’t

i mean, she props up an imperialist coup of ba sing se by stealing the disguises of warriors who honour the avatar. objectively not good. 

Favorite episode (scene if movie)

oh, the beach, hands down. we finally get to see a glimpse of what troubles and upsets ty lee, and how she struggles. we also get to see her angry, instead of hiding negative emotions through evasion.

Favorite season/movie

book two. oh sure book three adds depth and complexity but we barely see her. book two just has so many good lines and moments - the clumps or tufts debate, the first time we see how devastating chi blocking is, the match against the kyoshi warriors (underrated), all the stuff with the drill... classic honestly.

Favorite line

okay if i’m honest “you’re not prettier than us!” at the kyoshi warriors cracks me up. i know it’s a line that is almost definitely written by misogynists who believe beauty/prettiness is central to girls/women and how they see themselves and how they should see themselves, but when you remove that context it’s just so jarring and it screams baby gay to me, or some kind of issues that need to be sorted out.

Favourite outfit

oh she looks great as a kyoshi warrior! love her there :)

OTP

okay i love mailee and tysuki equally for different reasons.

mailee i love because the whole concept of love being about communication and building your own language and finding ways to speak only to each other is key to it, especially given the toxic environment they are in s2-3 with azula, they’re incapable of being honest with words and have to communicate in other ways. but also i think there’s a lot of good angst potential. as well as hiding it from azula, they have so little time to themselves, and are so often surveilled, that it is difficult to ascertain each other’s feelings. they’re not sure of whether they can trust *each other*, and there’s a sense of them wanting to reach out and confirm but not being able to... this is complicated further by mai’s relationship to zuko, which does ty lee read as genuine or as one of azula’s manipulations? when mai betrays azula for zuko, does ty lee ever expect to be loved back? the idea of them together is super sweet like goth/pink gfs rights but there’s depth there... complexity

as for tysuki, it’s like... this is very much an *interpretation* of how it could go down, but i love the idea that ty lee is able to find a sense of home and belonging and identity and selfhood in the kyoshi warriors, to build roots, to not just find herself but build herself, despite her expectations that it’d last six months to a year. and i love the idea of suki having an equal, who can take her in a fight, who can help her shoulder the difficulty of teaching and organising but brings some levity and mischief and fun back, after it feels like the war has sapped it out of them with responsibility after responsibility. i think suki’s groundedness could be exactly what ty lee needs and i think suki could do with a partner who can pull her own weight but also, make her smile. i like the idea too of ty lee really finding a place to call her home after all of the mess in the fire nation between her family and azula, away from all of that... it’s a little idyllic, but it’s what she needs. 

Brotp

oh ty lee & zuko!! there’s potential here, for sure. like zuko would need to see ty lee as more than ‘azula’s friend’, but they’re both emotional people who are outspoken about how they feel - it’s just zuko’s earnest and honest and wears his heart on his sleeve, whereas ty lee uses her reputation of ‘wearing her heart on her sleeve’ to hide it, & similar to how i think zuko’s inability to lie/emotional honesty is a big comfort and help to mai, i think it would similarly help ty lee. i really love the idea of these two in particular being able to talk about being hurt by azula together and help each other heal. but also i just like the ‘unlikely friendship’ dynamic of these two, and the possibility of zuko being able to overlook ty lee’s reputation to get to know her for real. they’ve both been overlooked/undervalued in their respective families, and both left the fire nation because of it (albeit in very different circumstance), are both well travelled and very independent for their respective ages, there’s definitely ‘on the road’ stories they could share, and both have struggled to find themselves in different ways. there’s a lot of common threads.

also i think ty lee & aang would be wonderful as well :) i think a lot of aang’s initial gaang - zuko, katara, and sokka - would probably want to head home after their adventures in the war, and i imagine aang ends up finding new companions to travel with. i like the idea of ty lee, after the kyoshi warriors, being one of these.

Head Canon

she’s a lesbian! :^)

just based off ‘the beach’ episode mainly, and how reluctant she seems around boys in that.

Unpopular opinion

hmmm i don’t think i have any?

A wish

asides from being happy and contented in general? would love to see her join aang’s second group of companions. i think toph, ty lee, aang, & potentially two new characters would be a really fun (and chaotic) little crew :^). also would just love her to realise the brotp potential with aang and zuko as outlined above, and get to date a nice girl of some kind.

OH I would also love more family background on her & exploration of the possible air nomad heritage ty lee theory, i’d love to see some of that. would make aang’s relationship even more meaningful (but potentially, complicated! having heritage doesn’t necessarily mean you’re part of that group).

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen

being azula’s designated healer and makes-her-redemption-arc happen. i already outlined today why that’d be bad for zuko and i think, while their relationship is different, it would be a negative experience for ty lee as well. azula is her peer, a peer who has hurt her quite deeply through the manipulation she pulled to get ty lee to give up her dreams and come along and uses manipulation as a primary way of interacting with people (even if like, i think they might have had a genuine friendship as kids, that poisons a relationship quickly), then tried to kill mai when turned against her... like, ty lee has good reasons to want to stay away from her, and honestly ty lee needs to heal as well, needs time and space. she should not be responsible for her well being full stop, but especially in this situation. i’m not ruling out the possibility of reconciliation but ty lee and azula would need to ‘hard reset’ their relationship and that would mean plenty of time apart, azula coming forward with apologies, azula making amends, and slowly, over time, building up trust. but honestly, even if azula is genuine in wanting to make amends, i’m not sure risking her wellbeing for that process would be best for ty lee anyway - i’ve personally cut people off in my life for my own wellbeing for less (although really what decision is best depends on your personality outlook how comfortable you feel your support network etc. a multitude of factors). regardless of your interpretation of their dynamic, ty lee does not exist for azula, and should not exist to further her character development but also as a character in her own right at this point.

5 words to best describe them

cheerful, chaotic, complex, perceptive, pink! 

My nickname for them

“prettier than you <3” (after the kyoshi warriors line, but with a pink heart emoji because of course she would, but also because it’s just funny, lol. ty lee has a mean streak)

#ty lee #sorry this took aaages #sissyspacex123

[strawbrymilkshake]

i just watched the first six episodes of the mp100 netflix show for no good reason other than that i apparently hate myself, so to not put my pain to waste here’s a half-review half-rant thing

i guess ill start with the good and make my way to the shit i hated about this show, but as you can probably guess there’s hardly any good

tome was fun, i guess. she’s got that same chaotic™ energy and had some of the only lines i genuinely laughed at, but also she’s the only member of the telepathy club for some reason? and they merged her character with mezato’s, so i guess she’s got more to do. but judging by the sfx i doubt they had the budget for even one (1) more actor, so ig i can forgive them for that. overall probably the only adaptation that both wasn’t painful to watch and actually warranted the changes they made

teru (from the little i saw of him) was also pretty good. the fight had some....changes, but on his own i thought he was fine, pretty harmless adaptation overall. i stopped watching once i realised that they weren’t gonna go all in and give him the cactus hair so points deducted for that

and the last thing i liked about this show: ritsu! they got a young actor who was good and i didn’t have many issues with him. there was one interaction he had with tome that i liked when she introduced herself and he said ‘oh! tome’s my grandma’s name!’ and tome was like ‘...yeah you and mob are definitely brothers.’ the reason why he’s lower than tome and teru is because. for whatever fucking reason. he is in every. goddamn. scene. like even when it doesn’t make any sense. when mob joins the body improvement club? he’s there. when mob is taking down the lol cult? he’s there. the teru fight? he’s there. i lost count of how many times i was asking myself ‘why the fuck is ritsu here?’ he was inescapable. his presence in those scenes didn’t even add anything to the story. also he’s friends with tsubomi for some reason....i guess to give him more things that mob can be envious of?

speaking of tsubomi.....god. not to be like ‘they didn’t understand the source material!!1!!11!1!!!’ but like. please. it hurt. i get that they were probably trying to lean into the ‘guy gets the girl/high school romance’ type show more but uhh....way to horribly misunderstand the source material, guys. the problem with her is that she is in it so much that it almost entirely defeats the point of her character & what she’s supposed to mean to mob. they interact like every other scene! she’s a pretty close friend to ritsu, so that means they interact even more! she’s their next door neighbour ffs! i only watched the first six episodes and i think i still saw more of her than her entire screen time in the anime put together

and apart from her being so close to mob that it completely destroys the point of him idolising her, it also meant that the writers had to come up with a full personality for her and an actual dynamic for her and mob. and hoo boy they really went and decided that the two of them would have the most awkward, unappealing dynamic ever, huh. like there’s this running gag where she always messes up the words to common phrases, and mob has to correct her, and it’s painful every time. which, i guess (????) makes sense for what their relationship is in the manga & anime, where they’re not close anymore and mob doesn’t even know what she’s like/what he likes about her, but in this show, they were trying to push them together to lean into the romance tropes, so their uncomfortable dynamic doesn’t make sense anyway??

the stageplay got it fuckin RIGHT when they went and cast NO ONE for tsubomi. like. the legend jumped out. they got mob pining for a silhouette. chef’s kiss

holy shit this got long fast. ok the rest is under the cut

i guess im just going character by character now so: dimple. weird guy. the cgi was awful, but you knew that already. but he was just....so weird. and by that i mean he was awkwardly,, never there? when teru exorcises him it’s supposed have at least some impact, but in this show he had like three (3) scenes before it (rather than a couple episodes leading up to it) (and also they cut a shit ton out of the middle of the lol cult arc for...whatever reason) so when he gets exorcised here it’s like...oh no.....that guy...........did mob even speak to him more than once.....

speaking of the pacing of this show: it’s horrendous!! good lord i hate it!! the pacing is shit awful, and it feels like they’re just throwing in ‘’’’’’’’interesting’’’’’’’’ scenes that should take place later in the story bc they know that the audience isn’t going to want to stay around for the atrocious writing! case in point: we see the flashback of mob and reigen meeting in the second episode. the second fucking episode. the reason why it’s delayed so much in the anime (and even more in the manga) has a lot to do with the unfolding of reigen’s character depth and they just?? throw it in so early?? it feels like they’re just going ‘oh by the way, he’s good, or whatever. yeah, he’s totally complex and interesting. just trust us, okay, keep watching the show’ and the pacing of that completely throws off reigen’s character arc

i can’t really remember which episode(s) this was in but they also have this weird subplot with reigen going to the bar alone (yknow..like....s2 scenes...) and lowkey being friends with the bartender guy?? i gotta be honest i wasn’t paying much attention during these scenes but suffice it to say: god i hated reigen. like sure, he’s a sleazy character, but they just made him disgusting. netflix reigen does not drink his respect women juice, and that’s all i wanna say about that

also why is he like 40 years old

anyways back to the pacing, apart from throwing in scenes from wayyy later in the plot, this show also tried to have like four or five plot threads going at once. the place that this hurt the most was probably the teru fight, where the anime spends like two episodes entirely on it and nothing else, but in this show it keeps cutting to the start of the big clean up arc (probably just so they could keep showing ritsu) and reigen’s weird subplot 

and there’s other stuff like that, where they kept cutting to the awakening lab & the scars doing psychic stuff or whatever, i guess trying to entice the audience like ‘we swear there’s plot stuff!! it’s not just slice of life!! there’s evil™ people!!’ and i guess they were gonna pull the ol’ switcheroo™ where the audience thinks the awakening lab and the scars are working together but oh no!! only the scars are evil!! the awakening lab was actually on our side!! but i can’t be bothered to watch that far

also in the teru fight, they got most of the message across (don’t use your psychic powers against other people....mob and teru are the same...) but because they kept cutting away from it they lost the dramatic impact of all of it. the choreography and sfx weren’t as bad as they could have been i guess, but they definitely showed the budget. it also didn’t take place in a school (which...fine, whatever) but it led to something i actually did like: teru attacked mob with glass shards instead of knives, and although i do like the knife metaphor + imagery, you could also argue something about the destructive nature of his power use coming back to hurt him in the shards of glass, and also something about reflections or...something. i just thought it was neat, although i don’t know why they changed the setting from the school in the first place

also in the teru fight: it was raining and ???% stopped the rain katara-style mid air, and even though the cgi still wasn’t all that good, i thought that was a rad concept. but then he just made a tornado instead of ripping buildings apart and you get the idea not a lot of it was good

back to things i hate because i don’t have a good segue!! the writing!! bad!!

i see the writers of this show engaged in the age old storytelling practice of ‘tell, don’t show’

when reigen tells mob to be a good person: “ok, i won’t show off my powers or use them against other people. i’ll become a good person”

when mob loses control of his powers and hurts ritsu as a kid: “these powers are awful and cause nothing but trouble. i’m not going to be using them again”

god i wish i was exaggerating

and, going back to the lol cult, for whatever fucking reason they decided to have that latter line of dialogue to be the full explanation of mob’s complex. like i get that there’s a time for exposition and a time for subtly, but take some cues from the original author and maybe fucking explain the main plot device of the show and not the protagonist’s sad vague backstory rather than the other way around. want to confuse and alienate your audience? good fucking job!! you’ve done it!!

and just because this was my favourite episode in the anime and im fucking bitter!! they cut out so much of dimple’s monologue and just had mob get to 100% pretty much after all dimple says is ‘get a clue.’ like. he puts the mask on, it doesn’t work, ‘get a clue,’ 100%. yeah im totally gonna care when this character comes back to try and manipulate mob later.

also....mob...........

i havent talked about him that much here, have i?

okay specifically w the lol cult first, the whole thing where they put the mask on and he’s not smiling is completely devoid of any impact because!! he’s full on emoting throughout the rest of the show!! like he’ll look worried, embarrassed, he’ll cringe or smile or whatever, and the most it looks like is that he’s just slightly uninterested, but otherwise has a pretty good grip on his emotions. unlike the anime + stageplay where it’s clear that he’s (seemingly) completely unemotional. the reason why i bring up the stageplay is bc, while i know that setsuo ito is 10ish years older than the guy that plays mob in the netflix show, i kinda wish that they just....cast him anyway.....bc they clearly didn’t have any hangups on casting adults for all the other middle schoolers, and ito did such a good job in the stageplay. he’s the only guy who is mob to me lmao (kyle mccarley is on thin ice but he can stay)

i mean mob just straight up showing emotions through the show could have been down to the directing as well. also i’m pretty sure a majority of it is bc he’s constantly around tsubomi, so. stupid decisions lead to stupid outcomes!

and that’s basically it for my weird review/rant on this show. the writing’s bad, the pacing’s bad, they didn’t care at all about the source material, i’m not entirely sure if they cared about the audience either, there was maybe two (2) changes i liked, if that, and everyone should go watch the stageplay. there were probably way more points that i wanted to bring up but i think my brain is already repressing the memory of it for my own safety

if i ever try to watch the rest of this show, shoot me

#not to bring up the netflix adaptation of mp100 on main but #also as the episodes went on it kind of just went from bad in an infuriating way to bad in a boring way #mp100 #gonna be honest idk who i was aiming this at

[margridarnauds]

fandomswillruinmylife replied to your post “grendelsmilf: u know those shows that are so full of potential but...”

Why do you wanna rewrite merlin? I’m on S4E9 (when lancelot comes back from the dead) and it’s good so far (except for Morgana, my baby does not deserve to suffer like this)

Alright, so I’ll TRY not to spoil you too much. 

For me, personally, the show never lived up to its premise, nor did it really....have a consistent view on its own morality? It’s generally acknowledged that Uther did a Very Bad Thing when it came to relentlessly persecuting sorcerors, but then, time after time again, Merlin refuses opportunities to either end or diminish that persecution or to kill Uther, even in circumstances where Uther’s death wouldn’t have been directly tied to magic. Merlin ultimately ended up caring more for ARTHUR and Arthur’s wellbeing than his own people, and unfortunately, Arthur never proved himself worthy of that kind of loyalty. Which could have been a FASCINATING take on an unreliable narrator and the development of a narrative over time, but the writers unfortunately didn’t have the self-realization to realize what they were actually writing on the page. Again, I’ll avoid MAJOR spoilers, but during the time he’s king...a lot’s discussed, the audience is told many things about how he’s A Better Man Than His Father, but then we never really SEE it, just like we’re expected to believe that Gwen and Arthur are True Love™ because the soundtrack decided to add in Swelling String Music in the background. 

And...really...

Look, I GET that the fandom loved Merthur. I really, really do. But at the same time, they never really rise BEYOND the “Hahaha stupid servant” thing. It’s very, very funny when one person tosses things at another, hits them, belittles them, etc., because it’s two guys, amiright! Sometimes, there are these little moments where they come close, and it’s cute (and then the writers pull back), but ultimately? I would say it’s fairly toxic, as a relationship. And normally, I don’t particularly care, because so many things that I ship are absolutely wretched, but this is someone who Merlin’s willing to risk his people for? There’s no...development. There’s this ongoing cycle of taunting, “Oh, look, Arthur’s not a complete tool after all,” and then...whoops, back to Square One because lol emotions are funny. I guess my main thing is: If they’re going to be friends, you have to SHOW them as friends, and you have to show them evolving beyond the servant/master dynamic. Because otherwise, watching a character getting ordered around by someone that’s supposed to be a friend? Isn’t really my cup of tea. Note: BY THE SECOND EPISODE, Arthur was canonically willing to believe Merlin when he was like “lol Valiant’s a little bitch.” Because the writers certainly did in later seasons. 

The treatment of Morgana, you’ve already pointed out. She deserved better as a character; she had SO much potential, but they left her fall to the equivalent of flipping a switch. And...personally, I got TIRED of how sanctimonious the cast could be towards her. Arthur and Merlin can preach about how she should rise above years of Uther’s abuse to her, but ultimately...that was HER experience. Arthur, Gwen, and Merlin ALL suffered at Uther’s hands, but...coming from experience, the way that a given victim will react to an abuser can vary. She’s ALLOWED to be angry. You don’t HAVE to love your abuser, or forgive them, or wish them well, and after what she was put through? Also, I’ll never forgive the writers for making the scene where Merlin POISONS HER about his pain.  “Oh, look at our woobie protagonist, he’s crying :(” YEAH, AND MORGANA’S CHOKING TO DEATH RIGHT NEXT TO HIM, TRYING TO GET AWAY BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T WANT HER WOULD-BE MURDERER TOUCHING HER. 

I’m calm. I’m calm. 

That Fucking Dragon. Get rid of it. If you can’t develop your main cast’s relationships organically and have to rely on Destiny™, you can’t write. IF you’re going to keep That Fucking Dragon, then at least let him be a LEGITIMATELY shady character. Like, Merlin goes from “OH SHIT KILGARRAH’S OFF HIS SHITS AND IS GOING TO BURN CAMELOT TO A CRISP. WHO KNEW HE HAD AN AGENDA ALL ALONG?” to “Ah, well, I’m going to take this action because my BFF Kilgarrah said so.” There’s no real consistency there. 

Also the inconsistencies with Mordred, but I’ll skim that since you’re not there yet. Suffice it to say, they could have split him into two separate characters and it would have done very little. They never knew WHAT to do with the damn kid. 

Okay, but strictly speaking, what I would change: 

The timeline. That’s it. The show stretched itself out too much, ESPECIALLY with Uther. Look, I love Anthony Head, I love Anthony Head as Uther. He’s a delightful asshole who even has a few moments of sympathy despite being a genocidal asshat. 

But Uther had to go. There’s a REASON why most Arthurian adaptations begin with the death of Uther, and that’s because, as long as he’s around, things are kept static. Merlin stumbles around, trying to save the day, Prince Arthur alternates between heroism and prattishness, usually within ten seconds of one another, he and Gwen look longingly at one another as Swelling String Music Plays, Morgana smirks...nothing CHANGES. 

Ergo, you’ve got to get rid of Uther ~S1-2. I lean towards S2, so you can get a little time to develop him/his relationship to Arthur and The Igraine Drama. Cut The Troll Episode, cut a few other filler episodes, and just. Kill Uther. That gives you time to develop Arthur as a KING, while also not making the switch to King Arthur seem jarring. Spend some time on the magical ban, have Merlin GENUINELY try to do something for people like him. I’d probably set The Magic Reveal around S3-S4, with the last episode of the series being the establishment of the Golden Age of Camelot, with Merlin being appointed Court Magician.

 Sometime in those few extra seasons, I WOULD like to see Morgana have an arc of her own. Not even necessarily a full REDEMPTION arc, because I’m not sure there’s anyway for her and her brother/the court of Camelot to be on solid terms, but at least something where she has to really...figure out what’s best for her people, as a High Priestess. She can’t TRUST Arthur and Merlin, but they’re also offering a way out. One of the common things I’ve seen people argue about her sloppy writing was that Morgana HAD to be evil because that’s part of the Arthurian myths, but the figure of Morgan le Fay’s been very flexible throughout the years; in her first appearances, she was benevolent. I would like to see her THERE, having reached a truce with the others. Just as Arthur rises to the kingship, she gains power in her own way. There’s no need to take it to Camlann.

Gwen and Arthur....I would put more threads of it in S1. I’m not sure it would EVER be my Number 1 ship, because it has Arthur in it, but the DEVELOPMENT needs to be there. And, whatever happens with her and Lancelot, I wouldn’t have them being FORCED into it by Morgana. For me, that completely annihilates the pain of Arthur/Gwen/Lancelot. If Uther can make vague references to keeping Morgana’s mother company while Gorlois was away, I THINK the audience can handle Gwen having conflicting feelings towards two men. Maybe Arthur’s different now that he’s king, not the more carefree prince she knew who turned her from a maid to a queen. Maybe the kingdom’s under invasion, maybe he’s finding out that his father left far more of a mark than he thought and he has to reconcile the fact that he STILL loves his father with knowing that the man was a monster, maybe he doesn’t EXACTLY understand the amount of pressure she’s under to be The Perfect Queen, since the court will take any opportunity it can to rip her apart. And she loves him, of course she does, and she’s grateful to him, but Lancelot’s there, and he’s concerned for Arthur too, and he understands what it’s like to rise above his station. I’m not asking for a full on soap opera storyline, but IF you’re going to put Lancelot/Guinevere in there, then you have to do it in a way that respects the characters rather than just ticking points off a checklist. (Especially given that the show completely went away from Arthurian myth at various points, so it’s not like they HAD to bring it in. And the lovely thing with Arthuriana is that you can bring in or take out pretty much whatever you want; the genre is endlessly adaptable.)

Also, we were robbed of a Merlin-style Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. ROBBED. (Christmas special, anyone?)

#fandomswillruinmylife #long post #i'm several years rusty on merlin so this is off the top of my head #but hey it's long enough as it is

[bliphany]

For the end of year writing meme: 1, 12, 18 :-)

Thanks for the ask Ara! Sorry this takes me so long. At least we’re still few hours before the end of year? lol. [from this ask]

1. Favorite Fic You Wrote This Year

It’s ’Leave The Lights On’! It’s my longest fic so far, and the fact that I finished it is one of the reasons I love it - honestly, I’d considered giving it up twice during the creating process for real life reasons, and I’m so glad that I didn’t ditch it in the end.

I also love it for having many characters from the show during the timeframe I chose. It was so fun to plan! Damn hard to write though. I hated me from the planning stage so much while actually writing it. But it’s rewarding to see them be written, too. I like to think that I managed to make their own stories independent enough (having their suspensions and closures etc,) but also have their share of contribution to the main plot so I can say that I did my best not to waste any of them? (Ask me this again a year later lol)

I tried some things in the fic, too, not planned like “I want this effect” in advance, rather like “hey I think maybe I can put sentences this way” seconds before I wrote the part. As someone who just started to use this language to make up stories, I love those tiny parts and no matter whether someone else finds them nice - or finds them at all - those are certainly something I’ll look at and go “hehe” myself. XD

I love those totally unplanned scenes, too. Those I went “Why am I writing this Why WHY ARE YOU ARGUING? There’s NO TIME FOR THIS I got a posting date okay. Do I or ANYONE need a confession scene That long?” while typing and pulling my hair. I’m glad that they exist. Also, unexpected sentences that just came into my head when all I did was putting one sentence after another wondering if those things actually were appealing to read - it was those sentences that came to me voluntarily that convinced me the fic was worth writing. Here’s one of them: “Harold had never been given a chance to say a proper goodbye to his loved ones.” And I really want to share it here because it’s kind of painful and that’s because it’s true and important? Idk, I really love that sentence. :p

12. Favorite Character To Write About This Year

Jessica!

I counted my fics, including WIPs, and found that I’ve written her in different scenarios and I love them all. My 2018 writing started as Jessica binge-watching and being domestic with Kara in my Jessikara series. It was a fluffy one-shot about how their life would be like after the resolution of their relationship in another WIP where they’d broken up, and I hadn’t reached the resolution part yet back then. I stuck. I was like ‘OMG I might not reach the part where you are happy noooo can I write something after that to make up for now?’ XD

As for their resolution in said WIP, hey, I finished their part in 2018! *pat self* I mean, there’s still one last chapter (for Rinch and the rest of the main plot) to be done, and there are some parts I don’t feel particularly happy about yet fall short to fix (it’s the most-edit-even-after-posting fic I have, btw). However, among those parts I love, Jessica’s role is definitely on the top of the list. We got two ex-CIA assassins and Harold Finch, yet if we take every plot point apart and look into how one leads to another, it’s her actions that connect the thread leading to a possible resolution. She doesn’t know or care about the big picture. She is ordinary like she doesn’t need to obtain extra skills or talents to make that happen. All she needs is being who she is, meaning doing what she’ll do, and taking a proactive role to own the life she wants, like what she’d done at the airport in the show.

I remembered I was so worried at the planning stage of this WIP because there’d be so much happening in the foreground: Ordos, gosh Mark Snow, Kara being Kara, John and Harold would want to solve things…, but letting Jessica fade into the background and only show up again after Kara confronting Harold and John confronting Kara didn’t feel right to me. So you can see why I truly love how Jessica’s role turned out to be.

I also worked on another Jessikara WIP which was a Hang the DJ AU (from Black Mirror). In that, she wonders whether Kara’s affection toward her is more about Kara’s belief in the System and less about her, that gonna cause problems, but as always (always as in worlds I build anyway :p) she’ll be the one who points a way out for both of them. I quite like her character in it, including her flaws. Finger crossed for me to finish it in 2019!

The only not-happy fic for her is an AU project for Halloween based on the SCP Foundation setting, where characters get turned into objects is one possible ending. Zaniida invited me to join the project because she could use someone who wrote Jessica or Kara, how sweet was that.

18. Current Number Of WIPs

Haha this. A guilt trip. But actually, I can really take this chance to make my writing plan for 2019 so thanks for picking this out!

I didn’t count those with only an idea but no actual words in a draft, and here they go:

The Hang the DJ AU for Jessikara I mentioned in the previous question, of course. I’m hoping to finish it, if not in time for Femslash February, no later than the middle of this coming year. But it’ll be a long one, so finger crossed!!!

The final chapter of another WIP I mentioned in the previous question, too. Idk why that Rinch resolution part is so hard for me to write? I can read millions of them but why have so much difficulty in writing them? Like, I wrote… three so far? And I’m grabbing from an empty bag from where I might be able to pull out a rabbit, or maybe it’s just an empty bag. Ahhhh.

And there’s another Jessikara WIP where Jessica hates her heels. It’s a one-shot, and I’ve posted part of it on Tumblr before. So it’s proven to me that I can get stuck in a multiple chapter fic, a chapter, and a supposed to be a 1k one-shot.

Then, a translation Rinch fic that brilliantly merged the setting of POI, Inception, and Escape Plan. Hey, I got no progress even in translating too OMG. Is there a WIP bingo? Is there?

Apart from the above POI ones, I also had one WIP for Clare from the Counterpart. It was a monologue about how she was nothing but a shadow and how she married a man she loathed twice. I drafted it when I finished S1, and now S2 has come, and I still haven’t finished it ahhhhhhhh. Is it like I’ve missed a good timing to finish it?

And… four connected one-shots for Miss Sherlock… There are six as a series, and I’ve posted the first two. It felt like great timing to finish and post them all right after the finale, but I’ve missed that timing too. Sign.

So for the coming year, wish me luck, friend. Wish me luck. XDXD

#long post #asked meme #about my fics #jessikara #rinch

[bettsfic]

Whaaaa have u finished s5?????!!!! THOUGHTS???

i mean overall, critically speaking, it was probably one of the best single seasons of any teen tv show i’ve ever watched. like top 10, up there somewhere with buffy s2. the plot was tightly wrought, most things that happened made sense (which is something i’ve learned to let slide with this show), and every character had a reasonable motivation for doing what they were doing. granted, the bar was painfully low after s3 and 4, but i think if i picked up this show at s5 without seeing any of the prior seasons i still would have loved it.

THAT SAID, because i have seen the rest of the series, some of the OOC elements bothered me. i only saw a few glimpses of clarke’s history as the great wanheda (that quick knife to niylah’s throat? NICE). i didn’t like that all of her motivation had been reduced to motherhood when we’ve seen her in the past as a leader and lover and fighter and healer. BUT i also really loved the clexa moments, which didn’t feel cheap at all to me, and made clarke’s relationship with madi much more interesting after several cringey moments of “i’m willing to torture you to protect you.” similarly i didn’t like that abby’s character was reduced to her addiction and that guided everything she did. i like addiction narratives, but only when they’re not a plot device, which this very much was.

conversely, i think bellamy became more complex somehow, and his arc made sense -- he had six years in space to think on shit, and that changes a person. he continues to be probably the only truly trustworthy character on the show (i mean trustworthy to the audience) because his sense of loyalty is consistent and overrides all other traits, and his conflict (like captain america’s) always involves the compromise of his loyalty. in the case of this season, the people he’d spent six years with, or his sister, who is only a shadow of the person she once was. bellamy remains one of my favorite television characters of all time. (also note, i LOVED his fight scenes this season -- i can’t tell if it’s bob or the choreographers but all of them were really beautifully done, and it was a refreshing change of pace to not see him constantly beaten down every other minute. his face was only bloodied in one episode all season!!). 

BELLARKE?? the bellarke moments were so good and so infuriating. as much as i appreciated them, i just kept thinking about what the show would be like if they’d gone canon at different points earlier on, and how that would make their relationship so complex. if they’d been together during praimfaya and bellamy spent six years thinking she was dead. if they had the same ride-or-die loyalty of monty and harper or the passion of murphy and emori, and how much more interesting that would make the show and the characters and -- well, i also firmly believe that any romance arc shouldn’t stretch over 5 seasons, so at this point it’s looking more like a gimmick to keep people watching, and i think if it were really confident in its quality, it wouldn’t need to use slow burn romantic tension to engage its audience. too much build-up ruins the breaking point, ya feel? five seasons is enough.

anyway. raven, sadly, never gets a character arc in order to let her either grow or shrink because, being the engineer, she’s always forced into a function of plot. in every season, her job is to move a machine from point A to B, and her obstacle is always physical torture. it’s a shame because i think lindsay’s performance is so good. i dug zeke’s character and their romance, though, so i hope to see more of that in s6. 

and murphy. wow. for the first time we get an actual internal arc. even if it’s as blunt and heavy-handed as a brick, murphy had no clear-cut external goal, and everything about his growth this season was his internal acceptance of usefulness and heroism. as i type this i’m seeing a pattern, though, because emori, despite having a very interesting potential arc as grounder-turned-engineering-apprentice, was reduced to a function of murphy’s self-realization. i would have liked more development for both characters, because i think they were really close to something epiphanic that never got fully formed and had the potential to advance the moral cornerstones of the story.

ugh, echo. fuck echo. i think the only way she could be redeemed to me is if she showed bellamy the same loyalty she had once shown roan, and bellamy, rather than turning that loyalty romantic, would have dismissed it as being forced and toxic and destructive, so echo would be forced to actually consider herself as an individual rather than a member of a unit. but everything about their relationship was so sloppily done, and i found myself looking away whenever she was on screen. (which is not at all about the performance, which, again, was stellar.)

monty and harper provided a fraction of a wider perspective toward fixing what i think is the ultimate problem of the show, which is that the writing seems grossly unaware of its own moral assumptions. and maybe i’m projecting because i recently got that same feedback from an author i really admire (and he was right) but i may have internalized it so much i see it in other things now. monty and harper provided a much-needed “we don’t have to participate in this, and there are other solutions to be found” pacifist perspective which really helped round-out the season and provided a breath of fresh air to an otherwise exhaustingly dark plot. 

diyoza? stellar. perfect. wonderful. 10/10. a competent, lawful neutral to act as a foil to octavia’s chaotic neutral leadership. i liked that she was pregnant, but i disliked that her motivation and mcreary’s weakness was reduced to their feelings about that pregnancy, so it felt like just a gimmick to manipulate the plot and tip the scales against mcreary. 

kane is always fab, but i’m biased because i think henry ian cusick is the second best actor on the show. i wish he was more coherent as a character. as it stands he’s just kind of silly putty that gets formed into whatever he needs to be. i would be SO HERE for a kane/diyoza/abby triangle (which i would turn into an OT3 immediately). the daddy vibes this season were great. 

one of the most understated characters has always been indra, played by the best actress on the show, adina porter. this season i really adored her relationship with gaia. i don’t think i’ve ever seen a mother/daughter relationship as formal and loving as theirs, and how it seamlessly encompassed their respective love/worship of octavia. they’re a good example of characters how further the plot but also get to be actual characters. idk why it’s so hard for this show to figure out the difference between plot devices and characters but it’s really hit or miss.

aaaaand then there’s octavia. i was pissed earlier in the season that jaha was killed off just for the sake of landing some leadership advice, because i really liked jaha’s character and (like many of the more competent characters who are put into the hands of incompetent writers [see: lexa]) thought he’d been poorly utilized the past 3 seasons. i don’t get why octavia was the leader at all?? like, kane, indra, abby, and jaha were all more qualified, and they were all in the bunker together. i think there was supposed to be some commentary on charisma and loyalty or something but it got lost in the heavy-handed “we do what it takes to survive” and “we pursue violence for peace” rhetoric that oversaturates the entire show because jroth can’t think of anything deeper or more meaningful to say about the complexity of being (and it’s what will probably get the show canceled in the next year or so -- no growth in moral reasoning = no new drama to be found). the only part that really sold me was octavia’s decision to shoot the people who refused to eat, even though i thought it was a dumb premise to begin with, because the flashback was well-placed and the performance was great, and it showed a genuine breaking point between octavia and blodreina. 

if i had written the season, there were a lot of things i would have done differently (we get this ominous shot of the worms that doesn’t amount to anything, and a twist ending that felt cheap even if it was emotionally compelling), but in comparison to the prior seasons, i commended this season on not pulling its punches on the practical details like it’s always done (clarke eating windshield bugs to survive), threading in the consequences and details from all the prior seasons and the show’s own canon (abby using The Blight to motivate octavia into forcing everyone to eat), and overall slowing the fuck down (the entire season leads up to one [1] battle). 

i don’t think the show will ever fully recover from lexa’s death, which decimated its fanbase and lost trust in the writing, but s5 put up a decent mulligan of s4 to wrangle the juvenile moral quandaries the show attempts to assert. if s6 can advance the philosophical implications of its own world, lose the “our people” bullshit jargon, and focus on the fucking characters which is the only reason anyone watches the damn show, then i think it could really be up there with the other cult faves like buffy and star trek and supernatural. 

#the 100 spoilers #100 #meta #this got really long sorry!! #Anonymous

[sol1056]

fixing the clone

Ambiguity has its place, but that lies in giving only certain pieces of information, not in the full picture being muddy. In other words, every clue -- taken as a whole, by story's end -- should add up to a complete picture. The narrative should have a clear position of where it stands, and the mid-story ambiguity should lie in the readers simply not having all the information yet.

three clues in the text and one red herring 

First clue is Shiro’s explanation when he returns. 

SHIRO: The last thing I remember was Zarkon trying to overtake the Black Lion. It told me to use my bayard. Then, just nothing. I woke up, and I was back on a Galra ship.

Most fans concluded that Shiro's memories were taken via his arm. This begs the question of when and how. Were there transmissions, or was Shiro's arm designed for later retrieval? That assumption is based on this exchange back in S2:

PIDGE: The Galra could have implanted fake memories of the escape in your head. HUNK: Oh, come on, that would be so evil, which, of course, they are. But they'd have to come up with some molecular level storage unit, which his hand does have. But, to be linked up to memory, it would need a direct pathway to his brain, which yeah.

Taken at face value, we could interpret this to mean a single set of fake memories were implanted, to override a specific stretch of time. It leaves open whether Shiro's core memories were otherwise intact. The metaphor starts to get muddy, here. Once it’s patently clear Shiro is compromised, we get this:

PIDGE: I recognized [the countermeasure] from the code I scanned from Shiro's arm when we were looking for Galra installations. When I was scanning Shiro's arm, I made a copy of its programming. 

That instance was way back in S1. If this was an adult-grown clone, with a brand-new arm, why would there be no upgrades or new commands? Whether the arm had been a recording device or a supplemental memory storage, the new phase (of active control) would imply the need for new (or at least additional) programming. If the programming required to flip Shiro's switch was present all along, why wasn't it used previously? (I have no answer for that, since that requires a deeper revision than I’m suggesting here.)

The third clue is in S3, when we learn it’s an open secret that Zarkon is severely injured. In other words: Zarkon was retrieved from the battle before that final blazing sword blow became truly fatal. This sets up the possibility that Shiro was somehow captured in the same move.

Last is Black finding the clone. Knowing now that Black had Shiro within and yet still roared for the clone, it feels like the story’s lying here, too. It wanted to present enough to doubt Shiro and see him as 'real' at the same time, but in hindsight, it doesn't work. We needed more groundwork to fit Black's behavior into the metaphor.

Behind the cut: what it could add up to, and how we could clarify the metaphor to fill the biggest plot holes and avoid the ethical issues of the clone’s treatment.

now to add this up

When the dust settles, every clue should add up to a complete and comprehensible picture. Unless Shiro has been a clone all along, there's no need to call it 'operation kuron' except to mislead the audience into assuming this isn't Shiro in any way except appearance (and, apparently, shared memories).

VLD does this several times, which is why I'm suspicious here. In Lotor's storyline, Axca's and Lotor's choices can only be explained by saying they pretended despite the lack of audience. In other words, the scientist calling the project 'clone' was intentionally misleading the viewers, and had nothing to gain, in-story, from mislabelling the project. Taken in hindsight -- and placed against the actual (and unscarred) clones seen in Black Paladins -- if the project title is accurate, the rest of the metaphor falls apart. If the project title is inaccurate, there's no explanation other than willfully lying to the viewers.

Done right, the revelation of Shiro’s presence in Black should make every piece fall into place, perfectly comprehensible in hindsight. Take the metaphor of a divided system -- OS as interface, memory as database. At some point in that final battle, the hardware is ripped away, and Black catches the OS -- the personality, the interface -- and ghosts a copy. If we stretch the metaphor so ghosting simultaneously removes the OS from the original hardware, then we have Shiro's personality in Black, and his body in Haggar's clutches -- and both share the same core memories.

After the final battle, with the replacement OS shutting down, returning Shiro’s mind resolves the split and returns Shiro to himself. There is no clone to be used and discarded; there is only Shiro, taking back his own body.

(This does not evade the issue of the clone’s personality or self-awareness, but it does at least get us around the ethical question of keeping the clone for the sole purpose of having a place to ‘put’ Shiro.)  

fixing the metaphor

S1: make it explicit that the arm has code, and Pidge has removed it. All is safe. Reintroduce the question when Shiro returns, and have Hunk raises the worries, then. 

S2: simplify or truncate the finale to leave five minutes' breather at the end. Add comms visuals so the team witnesses what appears to be Shiro being pulled from this reality, going staticky, something. (It'd be a nice parallel to S6E1 if Keith ditches Red and heads for Black; Allura’s repetition later would prompt fear of the same happening to Lance.) Add an easter egg for the fans, a quick shot of Zarkon's mecha ripped open but the central cabin is empty.

Use those final minutes to show the impact. Show the team's escape, the passage of time, and each person’s reaction. Show Pidge on her laptop, wiping tears as she works. Hunk cooking, only to stop and cover his face. Lance retrieving his armor and seeing the empty spot where Shiro's was. Keith sitting in Black's cabin, watching the empty chair. Coran talking to someone on the overhead screens, then looking over his shoulder at Shiro's empty seat.

Add just enough dialogue to show the team's concluded that Haggar used her magic to tear Shiro apart. They're grieving, but they're also coming to terms with Shiro's death. End with Allura coming to Keith and saying, it's time to find a new Black Paladin. And I'd probably end on Keith's determined, No, and let the screen go to black.

S3: the team has accepted that Shiro couldn't have survived. They tell each other he's dead, but Keith won't stop looking. He wants closure (and the rest of the team goes along, as a way to help Keith heal). Show small reactions from Black, implying the lion has intentions or wishes of its own. Skip the flippant humor and instead have each pilot note something odd. The seat wouldn't quite adjust for Pidge; the sticks wouldn't move for Hunk, the doors hesitated before opening for Lance.

Skip Shiro's return journey -- or don't start it until he's in the sentry fighter; after all, he repeats the crux of it when he's talking to Keith. In hindsight, it should become clear that Black was looking for Shiro's body: the hardware that fits the ghost software. Mid-story, though, it would appear Black had retrieved the real Shiro.

The changes in Shiro can be written off as trauma from being taken, again, but the narrative should be quite point-blank that something is very, very wrong. With S3E5 gone, there's room to add a more significant break between Shiro and Keith, and to show Keith diverting his attention to the Blades. Let characters rationalize this -- frex, Lance telling himself, "no one knows Shiro better than Keith, and Keith doesn't seem worried." Show the imposter's influence by the way the team slowly stops confiding in each other.

At this point, the working theory would be one of two possibilities: either Shiro was ripped away, brainwashed, and returned to the team... or this is a clone who carries Shiro's memories per the arm's programming. In either case, there should be no doubt for viewers that Shiro is not to be trusted.

Remember the metaphor, too. Keep a very light touch on humanizing this new version. Make it like Windows stumbling over Mac: those echoes don't make sense, they're junk. Let someone call Shiro out on his uncharacteristic mood, and have Shiro v2 dismiss his past actions. He's a new OS. He has no need for those artifacts that don't add up, anyway.

When Shiro's switch gets flipped, the team will understand and support Keith's need for closure, but they know there’s no hope. Pidge can lampshade, mentioning previous mindwipes (ie when Hunk was controlled, or how Narti spoke through the Puigian leader). Let the characters put forth a theory that unlike simple brainwashing (where the person remains), Shiro's case is so extreme there's nothing to recover.

I'd wrap up the entire storyline by the end of the full season, since that puts the Black Paladins battle as the midpoint of the entire story, structurally. But if limited to small tweaks, by the thread’s conclusion, the most obvious conclusion should be a) Shiro died and was grieved, and b) Shiro returned broken, with the original personality gone forever.

S6: only a few lines need to change. Shiro's appearance on the astral plane should be the first sign of hope in 20-something episodes. Changed lines are in bold:

SHIRO: Just let me explain. That thing that attacked you wasn't me. Since my fight with Zarkon, I've been here. KEITH: How? SHIRO: My physical form was gone. I existed on this other realm. I didn't know where I was or how much time had passed. KEITH: We thought you died, Shiro.  SHIRO: The Black Lion retained my essence. I tried to warn the others about the imposter in my body, while on Olkarion, but our connection wasn't strong enough...

In the broadcast version, this exchange is too final. It needs to open, not close. Keith needs to begin certain of Shiro’s death -- and then Shiro's reveal can turn harrowing loss into the first glimpse of hope. 

With that, the clues would fall into place to show the full, true picture: Shiro's body was taken, a new OS installed that relied on the original memories, while the ghost in the machine lived on in Black. It would make sense that Keith would still recognize Shiro v2 as 'his' Shiro, and it would also make sense that Keith would continue to protect Shiro's body -- even after knowing Shiro’s spirit is elsewhere. Keith's already thinking he’ll get Shiro back where he belongs, somehow. 

Add a single line from Pidge, checking Shiro's arm, noticing some behavior or code that tells us Haggar has sent shut-down orders, wiped the second OS, something that indicates the personality is gone. Then have Keith ask to put Shiro's soul back into his body.

In terms of continuity and development, it means Shiro would now have access to the memories of everything from the previous year or so (though I'm ignoring for now how traumatic that would be to see yourself doing things against your grain). While it's still torture of a character who's already suffered so much, it at least removes the amorality of treating a created creatures only to hurt and be hurt, as @ptw30 put it. 

Instead, it would be Shiro's body, overlaid with a fake, recovered, and restored. 

#voltron legendary defender #analysis #storytelling #operation kuron

[jennycalendar]

irredeemable evil

ao3

so. nearly 6000 words set in a post-s2 au where jenny got turned, tortured giles for information about acathla, and was given her soul back with willow’s restoration ritual.

(i wrote almost all of this today...for...some reason...)

Jenny-the-vampire, no matter what the kids seem to think, wasn’t in any way bloodthirsty or vengeful; she was pragmatic and thoughtful and kept under the radar until it was time to come out again. She stayed indoors and bought pig’s blood from the butcher at night and waited and waited and waited until it was the perfect time to hurt Rupert. Jenny-the-vampire had a capacity for cold, calculating vengeance, and Jenny sometimes feels that angry hate burning in her. It’s terrifying.

She’s very, very quiet the first few days. Jenny-the-vampire had done a lot of talking, and it’s made Jenny hate the sound of her own voice. She remembers the silky cadence her voice had taken on as she’d cupped Rupert’s face in one hand, the way she’d mimicked her own breathy tones. How she’d kissed him, soft and insistent, and how he’d kissed her back unhesitatingly, his tears warm and wet against her cool skin.

Jenny. My Jenny. Please never leave me again.

Willow comes into Rupert’s bedroom (Jenny’s staying at his place for now) on the second day. “I found your soul spell after you left,” she says quietly. “I—I know that my using it on you wasn’t exactly what you had in mind, but—Giles needs you. We all do.”

Jenny doesn’t say anything.

“I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you,” Willow continues, with gentle compassion in her eyes that no part of this new Jenny Calendar can possibly deserve, “but you should know that Giles is really happy that you’re okay.”

“I’m not,” says Jenny. Her voice is hoarse from disuse.

Willow sits down next to her. Jenny can smell her, and she smells like food, and that’s so profoundly frightening that she all but jumps out of the bed, flattening herself against the wall. “Get out,” she’s saying, barely conscious of Willow’s hurt, teary-eyed expression. “Get out, get out, get out—”

Willow presses her lips together and runs, but she can’t even make it halfway out the door before she starts crying. Jenny can hear her sobs and listens to them die away. Emotions are beyond her capacity at the moment; it seems to be all she can do not to eat people.

Rupert comes in on the fourth day. As soon as Jenny sees the love in his eyes, she looks down at the blanket.

“I’m just—going to sit in here,” he says, and she hears the rustle of him taking out a book. She can’t look at him. The last time she looked him in the eye was when Jenny-the-vampire asked him, sugar-sweet, how to awaken Acathla. She remembers the hollow, broken look in his eyes when he looked back at her, like all the happy parts of him had gone with her when Angelus turned her. Jenny-the-vampire had had no vested interest in whether or not the world was sucked into a hell dimension; she was really mostly just interested in torturing Rupert.

He starts reading, soft and reassuring, as though Jenny’s some kind of wild animal he’s trying to tame. Jenny hates it, and looks up to tell him so, and sees the bandage on his neck. Her throat tightens as she remembers the taste of his blood, not coppery like it had been when Jenny-the-human bit her lip, but sugar-sweet and rich with flavor. She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to live like this.

She doesn’t know if she wants to.

Her Uncle Enyos had always said that vampires were creatures of irredeemable evil, and that the soul was given as a punishment, not as a chance at redemption. Jenny’s starting to kind of get why Angel was so miserable all the time. It doesn’t feel like a second chance to be here, especially when there’s suddenly all this guilt and grief tied up in all of her memories of Rupert. She wishes he hadn’t loved her, because then it would have been so much simpler.

More horrible than any of this is the fact that he loved her so much. He kept on reaching up, touching Jenny-the-vampire’s face with shaking hands. She’d broken two of his fingers, and he’d still looked at her with that same love and sadness. Jenny-the-vampire had hated it. Jenny (whatever she is now) hates it too, but for a very different reason.

“Pig’s blood,” says Xander, and sits down on the edge of the bed. Jenny doesn’t take the mug, nor does she study Xander’s face. Impassively, she thinks about the fact that she could jump out of the bed and snap his neck like a twig. “Come on, Ms. C,” he says, quiet and placating. “You have to eat sometime. Giles is worried sick about you.”

Jenny doesn’t look at Xander. She’s never understood him. Xander had hated Angel, but now Xander seems to treat her like she’s been struck down with some kind of strange affliction instead of being the latest souled vampire. Angelus 2.0, only Angelus had had a longer reign of terror than Jenny-the-vampire both times around.

“Ms. Calendar,” Xander says. His voice breaks. “We can’t lose you again. I know Giles can’t handle that. He—all that’s keeping him going is the thought of you someday being okay again.”

Nothing really feels real to Jenny. The room is Technicolor bright, but Xander’s voice is dulled as though she’s turned the volume down on him. Her entire body feels heavy, and she doesn’t know if it’s the vampire thing or the probable-depression thing (though depression seems too mild a term to describe the situation). She stares at the wall in front of her.

“You know, Angel already did the brooding thing,” says Xander with a nervous laugh in his voice, “but he wasn’t exactly starving himself.”

Jenny rolls over onto her side, sliding down in the bed until she’s lying with her back to Xander, and closes her eyes. She’s been doing a lot of sleeping lately.

She wakes up with Rupert stroking her hair and singing softly to her like she’s some kind of small child. She keeps her eyes closed for longer than she should, because she’s half-convinced that it’s a dream anyway. But then Rupert says her name, barely a murmur, and Jenny jerks awake and away from him.

Rupert spills the mug of pig’s blood all over the mattress.

Jenny stares, breathing hard and shaking. She won’t. She won’t make herself into a monster and drink blood to survive. She’d rather die than live out this punishment for the failures of Jenny-the-human. The woman Rupert loved is dead, and the vampire who wanted him to suffer is trapped. Jenny doesn’t know where she is anymore, but she knows that she can’t live knowing that the vampire is there too.

“I should change the sheets,” says Rupert finally, his voice quiet and sad.

Jenny just looks at him.

“Right,” says Rupert. He hesitates, then, “Jenny—is there anything I can do to help you?”

For a moment, Jenny’s almost afraid to say it. She forces it out. She’s nothing if not brave. “Kill me,” she says, meeting his eyes with nothing but firm sincerity.

The look on Rupert’s face is thousands of times worse than what she’d seen when Jenny-the-vampire had tortured him for fun. He stares at her like he can’t possibly believe what he’s just heard. “You know I can’t do that,” he says, his voice small and close to shattering. “Please—I just want you here with me.”

“Selfish of you,” says Jenny, and curls into the blood-soaked blankets.

Rupert pushes them off of her and reaches towards her, trying to pick her up and carry her downstairs. His shirt is stained with pig’s blood, and he smells like food, and Jenny is so, so hungry, to the point where she can feel the last threads of her control—her humanity—slipping away from her. She imagines snapping and killing him, killing the rest of the Scoobies in a desire to sate this thing living in her chest and forcing her to live with it. “I’d be dead,” she says. Her voice is small. “If you had staked me, I’d be dead, and—I wouldn’t have hurt you like I did.”

Rupert has a badly masked look of hope on his face. Jenny realizes that this is the most honest she’s been with him since she regained her soul. Maybe even before that. “It wasn’t you,” he says. “Jenny, please—”

“I won’t live like this,” says Jenny, wishing she could sound fiercer than she does. “I won’t ever risk hurting you again.”

There’s a silence. Rupert seems to be considering this. “Well,” he says, “if you’re worried about hurting me, you might consider the fact that you’re more likely to lose control if you’re starving.”

Jenny really doesn’t want to admit that he has a point, but he kind of does.

“Up you get,” says Rupert gently, leaning down and winding an arm around her waist so that he can pull her out of bed. He picks her up bridal-style, carrying her down the stairs, and Jenny focuses only on the way his arms feel around her. She doesn’t think about how hungry she is, or how easy it would be to take advantage of how close he’s holding her. None of that. None.

Rupert places her down on the couch and moves into the kitchen. It’s a strangely comforting feeling to be downstairs. She’s been up in Rupert’s room for at least a week, and everything has felt hazy and only halfway real. A change of scenery reminds her, in its own odd way, that she is present and existing.

Rupert comes out with another mug of pig’s blood. At Jenny’s look, he says, “Just a sip, all right?” in that low, soothing voice he uses when he reads to her.

Jenny closes her eyes, and takes a sip. It doesn’t taste like anything she’s had before, and if she closes her eyes, she can pretend it’s not blood. She’s thirsty, too, and all but snatches the mug from Rupert, gulping it down more eagerly than she wants to think about. She focuses on the taste and not on the situation. It doesn’t fix much of anything.

She opens her eyes, setting the mug down. It’s already halfway gone. Without a word, she leans back into the couch.

“Blood sausage,” says Rupert, sitting down next to her. “I-if you’re looking for some semblance of normalcy, blood sausage—human people eat that. I could eat it with you.” He gives her this soft, sweet little smile that makes Jenny want to reach out and kiss him, but she’s pretty sure that that’s not an option.

Or—maybe it is. Maybe Rupert-the-complete-idiot has already somehow forgiven Jenny-the-vampire for torturing him and drinking his blood. But then again, maybe this is all obligation, and the way he’s looking at her right now (hopeful, hesitant) comes from some kind of guilt that she’s like this in the first place. It would really be like Rupert to think something like this is somehow his fault.

“I guess,” says Jenny, and sets down the mug of pig’s blood.

“Jenny,” says Rupert, his voice patient but firm.

“I drank some.” Jenny keeps her tone flat and detached. “I’m not dying on you, England.”

Rupert’s smile falters.

“Not again,” Jenny amends.

Jenny hears Xander and Willow talking in low voices as they enter Rupert’s apartment. She rustles the blanket draped around her in an effort to remind them that she’s still here. They don’t take the hint.

“I just miss her, Xander, and I know that’s stupid because she’s back now, but I miss Ms. Calendar,” Willow’s saying.

“You were her favorite,” Xander says. Somehow the were cuts deeper than anything anyone’s said before—as though Jenny’s dead and gone and not listening from the couch. “Giles says he got her to eat, though, so that’s something.”

“Xander—” Willow’s voice catches. “Buffy and Angel and Ms. Calendar—I just—”

“Well, personally, I’m not all that cut up about Angel,” says Xander, a nervous laugh in his voice, “but we still don’t know that Buffy’s not okay.”

“Buffy?” Jenny echoes involuntarily.

Xander and Willow turn, wide-eyed. “Buffy,” repeats Willow tentatively, a new light in her eyes. She gives Jenny a wobbly smile. “Buffy’s…missing. How are you?”

Jenny wants to flinch away from the hopeful way Willow looks at her, the way she’d done so easily earlier. But she’s eaten now, and her mind isn’t clouded by panic and guilt, and it’s Willow standing near her, the bright-eyed girl who made jokes about programming and cried over every kid who ended up dead. She can’t hurt this girl again. “Getting better,” she says, not sure whether it’s true.

Willow’s smile stops looking quite as wobbly, even if the hesitancy doesn’t yet leave her eyes. “I brought you your laptop and a copy of Scientific American,” she says, sitting down on the couch next to Jenny and placing both items down between them. “And I’m trying to bring over some popsicles for the summer—I mean, I know you probably won’t taste anything as much, but the texture might be nice.”

“My little cousin used to eat ice chips for the crunch,” puts in Xander. “And if you want to get all toasty-warm, I bet Willow can make you some hot chocolate.”

“Xander, what if that burns her up from the inside?” Willow demands in a high, shrill voice. “I don’t know anything about vampire care!”

The absurd sweetness of the statement makes Jenny—it’s not actually much of a laugh, just that quiet, amused intake of breath that there isn’t really a word for, but it makes Willow and Xander both look at her with identical smiles. She finds herself smiling back, which is a little scary. She still doesn’t feel all the way okay, and they’re looking at her like she is.

Willow sets the laptop down on Jenny’s lap. “I brought you fun straws too,” she adds. “And some of your favorite mugs.”

“I can go warm up some blood,” Xander adds helpfully.

Tentatively, Jenny opens the copy of Scientific American. Her fingers linger on the little Post-It note stuck to the front page, where Willow’s written feel better soon! in bright pink pen.

“Lunch,” says Rupert, handing Willow and Xander sandwiches and Jenny a mug of pig’s blood. “Xander, kindly don’t get crumbs on my chair, thank you. Jenny—” He hovers, looking at her tentatively.

Jenny looks at him, then takes a sip from the mug, moving over slightly on the couch. There’s a spot for Rupert there if he decides he wants to take it, but she knows that he won’t. He needs a direct invitation, which makes her want to laugh; she’s the vampire, and yet Rupert’s the one with the best manners out of both of them.

Rupert sits down on the floor instead, seeming unbothered by how undignified this makes him look. “How is everyone?” he asks, though it’s clear there’s only one person he really wants to know the answer for.

Xander seems to catch this. “Everyone is drinking her blood and looks a lot better,” he says significantly. Jenny has to hide an involuntary smirk behind the rim of her mug.

Jenny finishes lunch, and then she slips into the bathroom and showers for the first time since she’d been brought to Rupert’s apartment. The water is warm, comfortingly so, and she’s much more aware of it now that she’s a walking corpse with no body heat. Thinking about that is kind of disturbing. She focuses on washing her hair.

There’s something really comforting about being in here by herself. She definitely doesn’t feel in peak condition (that’s what happens when you don’t drink anything for weeks), but she felt very much like an invalid with all the blankets and the fussing and the whispering. Standing here, she feels almost like things might someday be okay.

It’s nice to finally discard the gross vampire dress, too—a sky blue dress with white polka dots. Jenny-the-vampire wore a lot of pastels, possibly some sick twist on the fact that Jenny-the-human preferred darker colors (her thoughts drift to her favorite leather jacket; she misses that jacket a lot). It seems really fitting that Jenny-the-vampire would share Jenny-the-human’s love of irony. Jenny-the-whatever-this-is stretches, turns off the shower, and wraps herself in a warm, fluffy towel before stepping out of the bathroom.

She leaves the vampire’s dress in there. She feels like that probably symbolizes something.

Willow and Xander have already left when Jenny enters the room, but Rupert looks up from his desk, turning slightly pink. “Um,” he says, standing up and polishing his glasses. “Would you like a robe?”

Jenny adjusts the towel, self-conscious. “Yeah,” she agrees, looking away. “Do you have anything I can wear?”

Rupert hesitates, thinking. “I believe Willow brought you some of your clothing,” he says finally. “Fortuitously, I didn’t manage to finish sorting through your belongings after your death, so your clothing and your things are all at your home whenever you feel up to getting them.” He blushes. “O-or moving back to your home, of course. I wouldn’t want to assume that you’d choose to stay with me—”

“Okay,” Jenny says quickly. It’s still so adorable when he’s flustered, and she doesn’t feel ready to dwell on that.

Rupert heads into the bathroom, coming back with his blue bathrobe and draping it carefully around Jenny’s shoulders. His fingers brush her neck. Jenny’s still a little bit warm from the shower, a little bit flushed from the blood, and for a moment it feels like she’s alive again. But there are still a thousand things broken between her and Rupert right now. Thinking about it, it feels like most of their time together was spent fixing things between them. Something about that really hurts.

“Here you go,” says Rupert awkwardly. “You can change in the bedroom, I suppose. I’ll give you your privacy.”

Jenny nods and heads up the stairs.

There are a few of Willow’s oversized sweaters in the bag, and no sign of Jenny’s favorite leather jacket. She makes a mental note to ask Rupert or Willow about that jacket. Jenny rifles through the bag some more, finding one of her favorite blouses and the skirt she wore on the monster truck date with Rupert. She dries off and changes, combing her hair with a brush Rupert’s left on his dresser, and sits down on the bed, not quite ready to go downstairs again just yet.

“Are you finished?” Rupert inquires tentatively from downstairs.

“I’m decent,” Jenny calls back, lying back on the bed. She hears the sound of Rupert coming up the stairs, and sits up, leaning back on her elbows with her legs stretched out in front of her. Rupert draws in a sharp breath, looking at her, and she can see the desire and love in his eyes.

“I have to go out,” Rupert finally says, looking away from her with visible effort. “I won’t be back until tomorrow morning. I’ll call the children in to keep you company, all right?”

“Where are you going?” Jenny asks carefully.

“Looking for leads on Buffy,” says Rupert very quietly.

Jenny gets up, steps forward, almost touches him, stops herself, and simply replies, “I hope you find something.”

When the kids arrive, Xander plays solitaire with an old deck of cards and brings Jenny a cup of blood with one of Willow’s silly straws. After she’s finished the first cup and changed into some night clothes, he asks, “Do you know how to play poker?”

Surprised by this query, Jenny raises an eyebrow. “Do you?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking,” replies Xander, tossing Jenny his box of cards. They land in her lap, only narrowly missing the empty cup of blood. “Can you play poker?”

Jenny smiles slightly. There’s something wonderfully normal about this conversation. “I tried to learn when I was, like, seven,” she says, a faded old memory coming back to her for the first time in years. “The girl across the street wanted to learn too, so we tried to play together. It doesn’t really work as well with two people, I don’t think.”

“So we start a Scooby poker team,” says Xander. “But I guess that’s something for later. Are there any games you do know?”

Jenny tries to think of something vaguely child-appropriate. Most of the time she uses card decks for magic, if anything. “I know Crazy Eights,” she says finally.

“You’re not serious,” says Xander, giving her a look. “Crazy Eights is a little-kid game.”

“What, and poker is a big-kid game?” Jenny studies Xander with amusement, then adds, “I’ve been drinking everything through silly straws and I’m wearing one of Willow’s sweaters. I’ve got the little-kid thing covered.”

Xander blinks. “That’s Willow’s sweater?” he says in surprise. “I thought you were just going for the plaid-hearts look.”

Jenny throws the deck of cards at him. Xander catches it and gives her a cheesy grin.

Willow comes in from the kitchen, handing Jenny a new mug of blood and taking the empty cup. “Oz called,” she says happily, setting the cup down on the coffee table. “He says he’s going to try and come visit tonight.”

“Hi,” says Jenny shyly.

Willow smiles at her. “You’re looking better!” she says, sounding delighted by this. “A little more color in your cheeks.”

“Metaphorically speaking,” says Xander helpfully.

“We’re about to play Crazy Eights—” Jenny begins.

“We are not,” says Xander indignantly, “we can play poker when Oz shows up. I’m not having Oz come in to see us all playing Crazy Eights.”

“Oz played Crazy Eights with me just last week,” says Willow, taking the deck of cards from Xander and sitting down on the couch next to Jenny, “so we’re playing Go Fish, and you can leave your concepts of mature card games at the door, Xander.”

“Leave my—” Xander repeats with confusion.

“It’s an expression,” says Jenny as Willow deals cards. “She means there’s no place for them here.”

“It just sounds really weird in this context,” says Xander. “I mean—we’re already inside.”

This is when Rupert steps through the door, looking exhausted and more than a little battered. Jenny draws in a sharp breath, feeling a rush of worry and love. “Rupert,” she says involuntarily, and when Rupert’s eyes meet hers, she thinks she would have blushed if she had working blood vessels.

“You okay?” Willow asks anxiously, setting down the cards.

“I was following a potential lead on Buffy,” says Rupert exhaustedly, hanging up his jacket. “Took all night, and all I’ve got is a wild guess from a rather vicious cave-dwelling vampire.”

Jenny wants to get up off the couch and hold him. She wants to pin him against the wall and kiss him. It takes her a moment to realize that the thought of drinking from him hadn’t once crossed her mind, and something about that makes her feel a little better.

She still can’t bring herself to move towards him.

“You’ll find something out soon enough,” Willow reassures him, and Xander nods.

“I think I’ll make myself some tea and head out,” says Rupert with a perfunctory smile.

“Oh no,” says Jenny, forgetting about the fact that she’s a vampire and she tortured Rupert and she all but begged him to kill her. All that she thinks about (all that she lets herself think about) is that Rupert’s just come back late at night with a bunch of demon-inflicted injuries that he’s trying to ignore, and that’s happened enough for her to be thoroughly sick of it. She gets up, handing the mug over to Willow. “Xander,” she says, “get the first-aid kit. Willow, go up to Rupert’s bedroom and get his dark green sweater—it’s the softest one, it’ll work best for this. Rupert, get your vest and tie off, I need to check for bruising. You always get thrown up against walls, it’s ridiculous.”

No one moves. Everyone just stares at Jenny, eyes wide.

“I’m sorry, am I speaking Latin?” says Jenny tersely, words made sharp and angry by the sudden worry in her chest. There’s a gash on Rupert’s neck that she’s just noticed, and it has an odd greenish tint to it. “Because if I am, at least Rupert should be moving right now.”

“I think she’s getting better,” says Xander with a mixture of alarm and appreciation.

“You think?” Willow places the mug down next to the empty cup, heading towards Rupert’s bedroom. Xander throws a look over his shoulder before hurrying into the bathroom for the first-aid kit.

Rupert stands there, looking at Jenny as though this is the first time he’s really seeing her. He doesn’t say anything as she steps closer to tug impatiently at his vest. “Lift your arms,” she says with some exasperation, falling easily into the old routine. It’s better than thinking about how much things have changed. Less painful.

Rupert doesn’t move.

“Rupert—”

Without a word, Rupert pulls Jenny roughly into his arms, holding onto her like they haven’t seen each other in years. So we are falling into the old routine, then, Jenny thinks wryly. She feels a jump in her stomach, wants to pull away, but then she hears the small, broken noise he makes as he presses his face into her hair and she knows she can’t let go of him when he’s like this.

“Okay,” she hears Xander say. “Uh, should we leave them alone?”

“Let’s just leave the stuff here and go play cards in the bedroom,” Willow suggests.

Jenny nestles her head into Rupert’s shoulder and pretends that nothing’s changed. This close to him, it’s not that hard to do. “Hey,” she says, and she’s proud of herself for keeping her voice so steady. “Hey. Snobby. You’re gonna have to let me take care of you in a minute.”

“Jenny,” says Rupert in this small, broken little voice. It sounds almost like it did when he saw her for the first time in the mansion—

And there. The moment’s shattered. Jenny pulls away easily, her vampire strength kicking in. She wants to run outside and away, but it’s morning, and she doesn’t exactly have a death wish anymore (a realization that surprises her, but one that she doesn’t have time to dwell on). She doesn’t want to think about how many times she’s hurt him, how many different ways. She thinks instead that the bite she left on his neck might end up scarring both of them. “I can’t,” she says, crossing her arms in front of her chest and looking down. She doesn’t know exactly what she’s saying she can’t do, but it’s comforting to have conviction about something.

Rupert nods awkwardly. “I—” He wipes roughly at his eyes with his shirtsleeve. “Damn,” he mutters, and hurries into the kitchen to make tea.

Jenny wants to tell him that she just wants him to not be hurting, she wants things to just go back to normal again, but she recognizes the hypocrisy in the statement. You make me feel bad that I don’t feel better—the difference, though, is that the Jenny possessed by Eyghon needed space, and the Rupert bitten by a vengeful vampire wants the person who hurt him to be there with him.

Jenny sits down on the couch and takes a long sip of blood from her mug. It’s weirdly comforting.

“Willow, I know this might be a long shot, but do you know where my leather jacket is?” Jenny asks tentatively before she goes to sleep that night.

Willow shifts a little on the air mattress (Rupert’s set up a sleeping space on the floor for the kids), bites her lip, and says, “I-I know how much you like that jacket, so when I was putting together a bag of clothing for you, I looked all over your place for it. I just couldn’t—”

Jenny shrugs. “It’ll turn up,” she says, snuggling into the couch. Rupert’s offered to let her take the bed, but she prefers it down here.

Jenny wakes up after the kids have left. She tries to make herself a cup of morning coffee, not really feeling like herself in Willow’s sweater. The coffee tastes okay. Not as strong as it should, considering how much time and effort Jenny put into it. Maybe vampires have some natural immunity to coffee. Jenny takes a sip, leaning against the counter, and pretends that she’s as human as the Watcher upstairs.

“Hello.”

Jenny jumps, nearly spilling the coffee. Carefully, she sets it down. “Hi,” she says tentatively. “You feeling a little better?”

“Not really, no,” says Rupert with a small, tired smile. He isn’t looking at her. “I miss you.”

Somehow I miss you is so much more painful than please never leave me again. Jenny lets her hand brush against Rupert’s. She stands shoulder to shoulder with him and doesn’t say anything. She gets the sense he has something he wants to tell her.

“What hurts me more than anything,” says Rupert very slowly, “is the thought that you might think my—attentions towards you—are only because of the way you died.”

Jenny can feel his eyes on her now, can tell that he’s trying to gauge her reaction. She keeps her face impassive, gaze straight ahead.

Rupert is silent for a moment, then says, “I love you.”

“I know,” says Jenny. “You shouldn’t.” Her voice breaks. “Rupert, I fucked up, I hurt you, and that isn’t erased just by the fact that I have some semblance of a moral compass again. That kind of anger still existed in me before I became a vampire.” She can’t look at him. “I can feel her in me,” she says. She’s shaking. “I’m not me anymore. She got here first.”

Rupert tugs on Jenny’s hand, and she turns without thinking. The love in his eyes makes her want to look away. “Were that the case,” he says, “I don’t think you’d fuss over me when I came home from patrol bruised and bloody. Perhaps I’m missing some crucial bit of the puzzle, but to me, that doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a soulless vampire would do.”

Jenny thinks about the way he’d looked at her in the mansion before he knew she was a vampire, smile bright and relieved. “You love me so much,” she says in a small voice, “and I just know that’s going to get you killed.”

To her surprise, Rupert starts laughing, placing a hand down on the counter and knocking over the coffee mug. Jenny’s coffee spills onto the counter and the kitchen floor, and she’s pretty sure that Rupert’s not just laughing anymore. “And that’s not what happened to you?” he forces out. He’s crying. “You told me—told me that day—and I turned and walked away—left you—”

“No,” says Jenny fiercely, stepping forward and forcing Rupert to look at her. “Hey. No. My death was never your fault.”

“You shouldn’t have loved me.”

“You shouldn’t still love me, you British idiot!” Jenny shoves Rupert, hard. He stumbles backwards into the wall, placing a hand at her waist to steady himself, and somehow, suddenly, they’re kissing, Jenny’s hands grasping at Rupert’s pajama shirt as she presses him against the wall. She doesn’t—can’t—think, only feel, Rupert’s hand grabbing at her leg and her mouth on his and he’s warm, soft, alive—

Rupert spins them around, lifting Jenny up onto the counter and sliding the borrowed sweater up, and it’s the warmth of his hands on her skin that brings Jenny some level of reluctant mental clarity. She pulls back. “We can’t,” she says.

Rupert lets his head fall forward, forehead resting against hers. “We never got to be in love,” he murmurs, still sounding a little shaky. “I want that. Desperately.”

“Me too,” says Jenny in a small voice, twining her arms around his neck. “Just—so many things are so fucked up. I want you to be safe.”

Rupert shakes his head. “I was safe,” he says. “I was safe, and I went home, and I found your body in my bed.”

Jenny feels something twist in her. She pulls back a little to look at him, eyes wide. “What?”

Rupert’s hands move up to take hers. “Angelus,” he says distantly. “He set up a nice little tableau. Roses, champagne, candlelight, and you as the centerpiece.” He looks up at Jenny, stroking her hair. “Believe me,” he says. “I know what it is to hurt the one person you wanted safe, and hear from everyone around you that it wasn’t your fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” says Jenny, feeling sick. She pulls a hand away, cupping his face and kissing him deeply.

Rupert breaks the kiss, looking at her with a gently pointed expression. “If you believe that,” he says, “why is it so hard for you to believe that it wasn’t you that hurt me?”

“You didn’t torture me!”

“Neither did you,” says Rupert with emphasis. “But you still had to see me hurting in front of you, and I don’t think you’ve ever really addressed how much that’s hurt you.”

“Pot calling the kettle black, England,” says Jenny. She tries to smile. “Maybe we can figure it out together.”

“Someone should have told me that Ms. Calendar’s back from the dead,” says Cordelia indignantly, breezing into Rupert’s apartment with Willow and Xander following. “I only found out because I called Xander and his parents said he was heading over to Willow’s, and then Willow’s parents said that she was heading over to help take care of Giles’s girlfriend, and then I put two and two together—” She stops, wrinkling her nose. “Oh my god, Ms. Calendar, did your fashion sense not survive the trip back from the afterlife?”

Jenny crosses her arms in Rupert’s button-down and realizes that Cordelia might have a point. “This was more of a romance thing,” she says, blushing a little at Willow and Xander’s incredulous looks.

“You know you could, like, lose your soul if you get a happy, right?” says Xander, sounding very much like he doesn’t particularly want to bring this up, but thinks he probably should.

“Xander,” says Jenny, smiling innocently, “we are inventive, creative adults.”

Rupert looks like he can’t decide whether to be pleased or mortified. Willow starts giggling nervously.

“I mean, still,” says Cordelia. “It would be different if Giles borrowed your clothing, because you have good taste, but this is just—”

“Oh—I did borrow something of yours,” says Rupert suddenly.

All eyes turn to him. “Wait, what?” says Jenny, startled.

Rupert winces. “It’s really just one item of clothing,” he says. “I-I took it from your home while you were missing. I thought that—that then you might find your way back faster. To get it back.”

Jenny smiles, reluctantly touched. What a dork. “Okay,” she begins. “What clothing—”

Rupert holds up a hand, hurries up the stairs, and comes back with something in his arms. Carefully, he drapes the leather jacket over Jenny’s shoulders.

Jenny hugs him, hard.

“Yes, dear, I love you too, but you’re preternaturally strong now,” says Rupert weakly, hugging her back.

“Hmm,” says Cordelia. “You know, she actually kind of makes that lame-o shirt of Giles’s work with that jacket.”

#fic #calendiles #jenny and willow #rupert giles #jenny calendar #willow rosenberg #xander harris