#I love the episodes where someone from somebody’s past shows up and we’re like ‘oh this is how that person was before’

[my-weird-news]

20 Epicly Awkward Prom Pics from the Funky Past 🕺📸

Prom Night Follies: Groovy Awkwardness That Ages Like Moldy Cheese 🕺👑 What is it about peeking into our pasts that tickles our funny bones? Seriously, it's like a nostalgia-induced comedy show where everyone's dressed in the silliest outfits, parading around like they just found a stash of enchanted dress-up clothes. Is it the thrill of seeing folks rocking their bizarre getups without a hint of irony? Or maybe it's the relief that we're no longer wearing powder blue top hats and curtains-as-dress fashion statements. Whatever it is, let's dive into the chuckle-worthy world of awkward prom photos from the Groovy era. Leave the Top Hat Alone, It’s Bored of Your Company Hold the phone, folks, we’ve got a guy in the back sporting a top hat that thinks it's starring in a soap opera. I mean, that thing has more drama than a Shakespearean tragedy. Meanwhile, Mr. Caught-Off-Guard on the side just wants to have a normal picture, but nooo, top hat guy is stealing the limelight. Let’s give it up for the gals though, who are pulling off their looks like they’re getting ready for a blast. They probably wish they left that top hat at home, locked away with all the ghosts of fashion past. Flannel Fever: The Key to Everlasting Love Step right up, folks, for the most '70s prom pic you'll ever lay your eyes on. We've got shag carpet squares, paper mushrooms that look like a failed art project, and dual plaid suits that scream, "Hey, let’s match like a married couple!" These two deserve applause for their coordinated flannel, but someone please get them a towel – the prom dance floor doubles as a sauna, apparently. Magic and Mismatched Expressions: A Perfect Recipe Attention, prom photographers: Can we get a matching expression coordinator, stat? Nothing says “I’m thrilled to be here” like a split-screen of a guy who's hyped and a date who's mentally grocery shopping. Seriously, it's like watching a buddy comedy where one person didn't get the memo that it's supposed to be a comedy. A Puff of Smoke and a Splash of Style Catastrophe Cue the smoke machine, folks! Behold the wide-lapelled flannel jacket that thinks it’s the real star of the show. Bowtie, you're cool and all, but let's be real – the jacket’s hogging the spotlight. This was clearly the golden age of experimenting with fashion, when everyone took a detour through Crazytown before arriving at Promville. But hey, at least this guy has the crown for the greatest 1970s mullet. Congrats? From Prom to Mortuary: The Unenthusiastic Guy Meet the guy who treats prom like a funeral procession. Hands folded, pet gecko missing, and an overall aura of doom – it's like someone swapped his prom ticket with a burial plot reservation. Buddy, cheer up! It's prom, not a séance. Life’s too short to mourn your own prom night. Moonlit Bananas and Peasant Fashion Hey, remember that time the school decided the prom theme was “Jungle Love”? No? Well, neither do we, because it's bananas – literally. Those gals are perched on a moon that could easily double as a giant banana in another life. Maybe the school mascot is the Fighting Bananas. Who knows, it's the Groovy era – anything's possible. ’70s: When Dads Took Over Teenage Bodies The 1970s: when teenage boys turned into middle-aged dads overnight. This guy's got more wedding vibes than a justice of the peace. Did they card him at the entrance? Or did they offer him a briefcase and a 9-to-5 job as a dad-joke enthusiast? Ah, kids these days. Blinds, Blinds, and More Blinds: Oh Yeah, and Teens In this thrilling episode of "Prom Pics: The Next Generation," our young lovebirds are upstaged by the real stars of the show: venetian blinds. Because who needs prom memories when you can have window decor? But hey, at least the kids look happy. Somebody tell the blinds to chill. Last Known Photographs and Prom: A Perfect Match Look, folks, it's the "Last Known Photograph" series, featuring two teens who look like they're posing for an FBI witness protection program file. Are they having a great time? Is this a prelude to a crime spree? We need answers. But we also secretly hope they had a redo for a less ominous prom pic. When TVs Were Prom Dates: An Awkward Love Affair Guess what, folks? The '70s brought us the golden era of prom dates – enter the disembodied head! Because who needs a whole person when you can just go with the floating head option? Half-price tickets for half a person, anyone? Growing Pains and Cloudy Dancing Being a teenager: a tumultuous journey from 4'11" to 6'1" with legs that suddenly think they're in a growth race. These younguns are trying to walk on clouds made of cotton, but in reality, they're just tripping on clouds. Disco dance meets accidental acrobatics – it's all part of the '70s magic. "Jungle Love" or Just Plain "Oh No"? Someone needs to explain the '70s' obsession with bizarre prom themes. "Jungle Love"? Really? Did the school mascot have a stroke of genius, or did someone think, "You know what kids need? A dance that raises questions about cultural sensitivity!" Let's all agree that "Jungle Love" should've stayed in the jungle. Captain Awkward: Ready for Takeoff Breaking news: Prom pic rule #1 – thou shalt not look excited. This guy’s suppressing his inner cheerleader so hard, he's about to explode in a burst of restrained enthusiasm. Inside, he's doing Olympic gymnastics. Outside, he's trying to win the medal for "Most Chill Dude at Prom." Flashback to the Groovy-est Gagworthy Trends Ta-da! If you ever wondered what a single frame of the '70s looked like, here you go. Behold the high collars, wooden wall panels, and oversized glasses that together create a montage of fashion crimes. It's like the '70s threw up in one picture, and we can't look away. Mickey Ears Are So Yesterday, Meet Mickey Dots Who pulled the Mickey Mouse prank on this guy's prom photo? Did he willingly become a# Prom Night Follies: Groovy Awkwardness That Ages Like Moldy Cheese 🕺👑 What is it about peeking into our pasts that tickles our funny bones? Seriously, it's like a nostalgia-induced comedy show where everyone's dressed in the silliest outfits, parading around like they just found a stash of enchanted dress-up clothes. Is it the thrill of seeing folks rocking their bizarre getups without a hint of irony? Or maybe it's the relief that we're no longer wearing powder blue top hats and curtains-as-dress fashion statements. Whatever it is, let's dive into the chuckle-worthy world of awkward prom photos from the Groovy era. Leave the Top Hat Alone, It’s Bored of Your Company Hold the phone, folks, we’ve got a guy in the back sporting a top hat that thinks it's starring in a soap opera. I mean, that thing has more drama than a Shakespearean tragedy. Meanwhile, Mr. Caught-Off-Guard on the side just wants to have a normal picture, but nooo, top hat guy is stealing the limelight. Let’s give it up for the gals though, who are pulling off their looks like they’re getting ready for a blast. They probably wish they left that top hat at home, locked away with all the ghosts of fashion past. Flannel Fever: The Key to Everlasting Love Step right up, folks, for the most '70s prom pic you'll ever lay your eyes on. We've got shag carpet squares, paper mushrooms that look like a failed art project, and dual plaid suits that scream, "Hey, let’s match like a married couple!" These two deserve applause for their coordinated flannel, but someone please get them a towel – the prom dance floor doubles as a sauna, apparently. Magic and Mismatched Expressions: A Perfect Recipe Attention, prom photographers: Can we get a matching expression coordinator, stat? Nothing says “I’m thrilled to be here” like a split-screen of a guy who's hyped and a date who's mentally grocery shopping. Seriously, it's like watching a buddy comedy where one person didn't get the memo that it's supposed to be a comedy. A Puff of Smoke and a Splash of Style Catastrophe Cue the smoke machine, folks! Behold the wide-lapelled flannel jacket that thinks it’s the real star of the show. Bowtie, you're cool and all, but let's be real – the jacket’s hogging the spotlight. This was clearly the golden age of experimenting with fashion, when everyone took a detour through Crazytown before arriving at Promville. But hey, at least this guy has the crown for the greatest 1970s mullet. Congrats? From Prom to Mortuary: The Unenthusiastic Guy Meet the guy who treats prom like a funeral procession. Hands folded, pet gecko missing, and an overall aura of doom – it's like someone swapped his prom ticket with a burial plot reservation. Buddy, cheer up! It's prom, not a séance. Life’s too short to mourn your own prom night. Moonlit Bananas and Peasant Fashion Hey, remember that time the school decided the prom theme was “Jungle Love”? No? Well, neither do we, because it's bananas – literally. Those gals are perched on a moon that could easily double as a giant banana in another life. Maybe the school mascot is the Fighting Bananas. Who knows, it's the Groovy era – anything's possible. ’70s: When Dads Took Over Teenage Bodies The 1970s: when teenage boys turned into middle-aged dads overnight. This guy's got more wedding vibes than a justice of the peace. Did they card him at the entrance? Or did they offer him a briefcase and a 9-to-5 job as a dad-joke enthusiast? Ah, kids these days. Blinds, Blinds, and More Blinds: Oh Yeah, and Teens In this thrilling episode of "Prom Pics: The Next Generation," our young lovebirds are upstaged by the real stars of the show: venetian blinds. Because who needs prom memories when you can have window decor? But hey, at least the kids look happy. Somebody tell the blinds to chill. Last Known Photographs and Prom: A Perfect Match Look, folks, it's the "Last Known Photograph" series, featuring two teens who look like they're posing for an FBI witness protection program file. Are they having a great time? Is this a prelude to a crime spree? We need answers. But we also secretly hope they had a redo for a less ominous prom pic. When TVs Were Prom Dates: An Awkward Love Affair Guess what, folks? The '70s brought us the golden era of prom dates – enter the disembodied head! Because who needs a whole person when you can just go with the floating head option? Half-price tickets for half a person, anyone? Growing Pains and Cloudy Dancing Being a teenager: a tumultuous journey from 4'11" to 6'1" with legs that suddenly think they're in a growth race. These younguns are trying to walk on clouds made of cotton, but in reality, they're just tripping on clouds. Disco dance meets accidental acrobatics – it's all part of the '70s magic. "Jungle Love" or Just Plain "Oh No"? Someone needs to explain the '70s' obsession with bizarre prom themes. "Jungle Love"? Really? Did the school mascot have a stroke of genius, or did someone think, "You know what kids need? A dance that raises questions about cultural sensitivity!" Let's all agree that "Jungle Love" should've stayed in the jungle. Captain Awkward: Ready for Takeoff Breaking news: Prom pic rule #1 – thou shalt not look excited. This guy’s suppressing his inner cheerleader so hard, he's about to explode in a burst of restrained enthusiasm. Inside, he's doing Olympic gymnastics. Outside, he's trying to win the medal for "Most Chill Dude at Prom." Flashback to the Groovy-est Gagworthy Trends Ta-da! If you ever wondered what a single frame of the '70s looked like, here you go. Behold the high collars, wooden wall panels, and oversized glasses that together create a montage of fashion crimes. It's like the '70s threw up in one picture, and we can't look away. Mickey Ears Are So Yesterday, Meet Mickey Dots Who pulled the Mickey Mouse prank on this guy's prom photo? Did he willingly become a Read the full article

[stupidredsuspenders]

the way Carlye says something like “has it been hard for you over here?” Like she knows it’s fucking with Hawkeye in particular ways that other people aren’t going to know to check for is so..... like they really knew each other and were in love for a time and then it all fell apart

oooh yeah the way that they obviously care a lot about each other but just can’t make it work is so 🚬😑 also like Carlye is a nurse, which means she had to sign up to be there, and seeing her intensely pacifist ex in a warzone she must have known this this was affecting him in a different way than everyone else just from the virtue of knowing him before and like their whole “cheers to surviving” toast and how that can really be their only goal in this situation

#combefferre #I love the episodes where someone from somebody’s past shows up and we’re like ‘oh this is how that person was before’ #carlye and tommy with hawkeye. lorraine with margaret. leo with bj. #it’s so interesting! especially when they’re as charming as carlye #ask

[gra-sonas]

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Was the year time jump because of the pandemic? To sidestep making that too central to the plot, or was that always the plan?

JEANINE MASON: That was always our intention and it was just sort of a saving grace in that way. We also don't acknowledge the pandemic in real-time on our show. There are no masks and that was just so wonderful just to get work in that way and have that time where it was a little more normal. Also, that's just our show — we want you to come to us the way you always do, which is for nineties nostalgia, sexy Cowboys, brilliant scientists, you know? CHRIS HOLLIER: So we wanted to drop our characters in a year later, let them stew in their individual decisions that were made last season. We want everyone to root for our poster couple but we want to honor what happens in real life, which is sometimes you step away from that person, even if you are entwined with them in a very particular way. So we wanted it to be a real enough time and distance so that they could live a little life on their own.

With showrunner Carina Adly MacKenzie departing at the end of season 2, has much changed? Or are you still working with ideas she had in place?'

HOLLIER: It's a little bit of both. There are things that Carina and I built that live all the way through and then once the story got up on its feet, discoveries were made with our new crop of people that we were like, "Oh, we're going to bend it this other way."

Jeanine, how is Liz doing in her new life in L.A. when we pick up this season?

MASON: Well, it's been a year and at this point, her life is actually pretty great. She just hasn't taken a second to acknowledge that. She's doing what she does best, which is just full head in her work and trying to figure out what she could use of her discoveries and her brilliance to save Maria. She has a great job, a really nice place, and an awesome partner at work who is a good time and a real match for her in terms of intellect and ambition. He begins to ask her to recognize that and to maybe give something a chance that she's been reluctant to because of how drawn she is to Roswell and to Max. It's a fun first episode. It's sexy. It's fun to find opportunities for her. She's our hero so she's got a lot on her shoulders and anytime where we can find levity for her is always a real treat for the writers and for me.

And no Crashdown waitress uniform must be nice?

MASON: Honestly, I miss it quite a lot right now. I have a note in my notes with Chris, I'm like, "I gotta tell him we gotta find him more opportunities for it."

Should Liz and Max shippers be worried about them finding their way back to one another after he destroyed her work and didn't follow her to L.A.? Should we resign ourselves to a season apart?

MASON: This season really is about these characters having themselves mirrored to each other. Max and Liz need some growing and ultimately they can't do anything but be orbiting each other. We found so many opportunities to have such a beautiful language around the cosmic element of their connection. They're asking, "Is this our decision, or are we just acting off of a decision that the cosmos made for us?" It was so fun to navigate that. I always have such a good time with Chris Hollier and with Nathan Dean, just finding the little tiny notches, a tiny bit of movement towards where they're going next. I really loved following them. It's my favorite Max and Liz season to date.

HOLLIER: It's not a season apart. I'll tease that they, in an unexpected way, end up in front of each other relatively soon. But it's really about when am I ready? And what does it mean to talk to my ex? When someone makes such a big influence in your life, when do you know it's over and when do you know you should fight again? We tried to give them real grown-up lives.

Steven Krueger (The Originals) also joined the cast as Heath this season. What can you tease about his character?

HOLLIER: He's just an awesome human being. I know him from The Originals and we were like, "If we're going to have to be stuck with people in the desert, who do we want?" You want to be stuck with a handsome and lovely and charming Steven Krueger. So really this was looking at, "Well, what did Liz want and what does it look like when you start to give Liz versions of what she wants?" Heath is somebody that is beyond being just a lovely person, he is smart and wants to advance science and that's appealing to Liz. It becomes, "What does it look like when the man that I hang around with all day is also into the same things that I am?" MASON: I love him. Heath is just such a fun, whip-smart, fantastic character. His humor was so fun. We've been having a good time with kicking the humor up really through season two and in season three, we just took it up another notch. There are some moments that are like, "Is this a drama or is it a sitcom?" Looking back on it, he was such a fun partner to spar with. They're both such intellectual characters and I love that there's a real meeting of the minds. It makes it competitive and sexy. I know a lot of fans are so excited because they know him from The Originals and he's going to be a great addition.

Technically, Mr. Jones is a new character too. Can you tell us anything at all about him?

HOLLIER: I'd say he's a new character — and a fully-fleshed interesting new character. Mr. Jones has an awesome beard. At some point, he might lose that beard. A lot of people are asking me, "Is Jones good or bad?" And what I would argue is that's a perspective based upon who you are in the conversation that you're having with him. He knows a lot about our heroes' story and he knows a lot about home. He'll be able to answer questions for them. This season our heroes will get to learn why they ended up here on earth. One of the things I think that people will love is that they're going to get to see that home planet this year. We asked ourselves a lot about this whole season, "What have we set up for the past two?" We look at these first three seasons almost like a trilogy so a lot of things are going to be paid off.

Has Nathan enjoyed pulling double duty this season? Or is he just exhausted?

MASON: He's exhausted, but he's such a champ. That really is the beginning of this mirroring thing that starts with Max and Jones with him actually getting to look at himself to a degree and those questions that come up. The self-analysis that it provokes in him is really the beginning of what is happening to all of our characters this year; everybody's being confronted with themselves. I loved that the Max/Jones of it was also a real sci-fi element.

Did he really grow that beard or was that not possible if he had to go between the two characters?

MASON: That was a prosthetic beard and our makeup team killed it. He was not accustomed to early mornings, which, of course, all of us babes are. It was a lot of extra time in the chair for him.

Can Jones dupe Liz into thinking he's actually Max since she doesn't know he exists?

MASON: You're totally on to something. It's a real and pressing threat. I mean, she's totally in the dark and he looks like her cosmic lover!

HOLLIER: What I will say is that, Liz — beyond her being number one on the call sheet — is integral to this story in a way that she and none of our characters are going to perceive when they start episode one. We're bringing [the characters] to a new crossroads moment in their lives and they're getting, through Jones, a mirror into their own lives to decide what they're going to become next.

How's Rosa (Amber Midthunder) doing this season?

MASON: By the end of season two, Rosa really makes the decision to start taking care of herself. She really becomes an incredible asset to the Scooby-Doo gang. It's something that Liz is in constant adjustment to. As much as she's the younger sister, she feels very protective of her sister and Liz has had to make adjustments in her trust and faith in Rosa. I loved it because it just felt like a real personal, authentic thing that sisters would go through, but also that Hispanic sisters would go through. I think we sometimes, culturally, have a tendency to baby our women — maybe that's the wrong word — but just to underestimate their physical ability and what they might take on, and sort of 'queen' our women in a way where we treat them tenderly. I hate that. I'm a tough bitch and so is Rosa. So Liz has to confront that and go, "I'm an idiot to underestimate you. You've done nothing but prove me wrong."

What about Maria and her visions?

HOLLIER: This year I think Maria has the most complete arc of any season, as she recognizes things about herself that cause more questions about who she is, who her family is, how she's linked to this story. We dive into it in the present-day and we dive deliciously back in time too.

In the exclusive clip above we see her have a vision of a funeral, can you tease anything about who potentially might be about to die?

HOLLIER: Maria is front and center in driving the first half of the mystery for us. She's burdened with trying to figure out whose death she is seeing. It takes a few episodes to unravel and we use it to ask, is this linked to our supernatural stories or real-world stories that are going on politically? Is it bad luck? Is it herself? There's a whole gambit at play. We joke that we solved a past murder, now we're going to try to stop one.

Can Malex (Michael and Alex) shippers have hope that this might finally be their time?

HOLLIER: What I would say is that I think that Malex fans are really going to dig this journey. We, as writers, put them at the same level of importance as Max and Liz. So we wanted to really honor the next step in what they may or may not be. How did they grow up and how did they have those hard conversations just like Liz and Max are going to have?

Is Isobel going to continue to date women this season?

HOLLIER: Isobel is going to go on a more personal journey. You got to love yourself before you can love someone else. We lean into those possibilities by the end of who she might love. It's not something that is dropped all season — it is something that you'll see. We play some romantic comedy stuff with her character this year and with Maria that I think fans are gonna dig. There's a lot going on in the world and wanted to pump some humor and hope into it.

Will see more of Liz fighting to challenge the perception of the Latinx community?

MASON: I think that just by nature of it being one of such few shows that are led by a Latin woman, it's always going to be, to an extent, a protest or an assertion of the space that I get to fill and that Liz Ortecho gets to fill on network TV. I was really excited to just have Chris as a collaborator. Over our hiatus, before the season started, I was doing a lot of reading. I chronicled the books that play into Liz every season on my Instagram. I was reading some Sonia Sotomayor. Her book is just incredible. I was texting him screenshots of pages of the book with things underlined. Ten episodes deep into season 3, he's like, "Remember that page you sent me?" He's a real dream collaborator. I loved him for that. A pressing struggle for people of color is going through the ranks in these big corporations and then sometimes coming to find out that those corporations are purporting to support marginalized groups but actually aren't following through. So how do you, as someone who's having your success, your dreams become reality, navigate supporting the company and giving so much of your intelligence and your work — that they often legally own, especially with science — to a company that isn't going to be for your people?

Roswell, New Mexico returns Monday at 8 p.m. on The CW.

#long post is long #jeanine mason #chris hollier #liz ortecho #max evans #echo #isobel evans #rosa ortecho #malex #alex manes #michael guerin #rnm spoilers #maria deluca #rnm cast interviews #roswell new mexico s3 #roswell new mexico

[vidavalor]

Mobius' backstory delay = a really good sign for Lokius

The writers didn't just pull showing us Mobius' family from S1-- they likely shifted all the storytelling they wanted to do with that family onto the Other!Mobius we just met at the end of the S1 finale...

...and all of that is very, very good for Lokius.

How, you ask?

Consider that the one big difference from the Other!TVA to the one where we spent the rest of S1 is that they all know that a variant of He Who Remains runs the show. That heavily implies that none of the Other!TVA agents, including Mobius, are kidnapped variants. They all *just work there*. It's a regular, bureaucratic 9-5 job. No need to kidnap & brainwash people in this timeline: people are just recruited & work of their own free will. They have choices and their own lives. They go home at night when their shifts are over. Some of them likely have families. If you think the show just kicked Loki in the teeth over him realizing that he's in another timeline and this Mobius isn't his Mobius, wait until he meets this Mobius' *goddamned perfect, totally sweet, equally cinnamon-roll-y f*cking romantic partner*...

Other!Mobius: Oh, Agent Loki! I don't think you've met my other half yet. Honey, meet my new partner on the time force.

Ben Stiller (lol): So, you're the guy my husband can't stop talking about!

Loki: *dying a slow death inside* Ah, I do believe I hear B-15... Barbara... whatever her name is... summoning me for ah, some very important reason!... lovely to meet you!...

Y'all, Our Loki is going to have spent time during S2 in an alternate timeline where Mobius has a sweet guy and maybe a jet ski and probably a dog and maybe possibly a kid and definitely all the free will he can imagine and will be a lovely guy as all Mobi fundamentally are but won't be *Loki's* Mobius and won't have the experiences specifically that Loki's Mobius has that specifically make him the man who he is, who is also the man that Loki loves. All the boldly gluttonous amount of angst that the show wants to play with by giving Mobius a family around Loki just as Loki is realizing he wants to be Mobius' family is now something I'd be willing to bet they're doing with Other!Mobius in S2... for the express purpose of pushing Loki into action when he reunites with his Mobius.

The show spent time in S1 setting up the idea of Mobius regaining his memories and even had space to explore that in. I predict it was a consideration for Episode 5, when they all spent some time chilling in The Void and there was a strong theme in that episode in particular surrounding family and found family. Could they have had Mobius get his memories back and given him a family and would there still have been hope for Lokius? Of course. Mobius was almost certainly a younger adult in the 1990s, which means giving him a family without an express ability to get back to that family without, y'know, destroying the fabric of time (at least at this point in time) would have resulted in a really good, angsty plot. Or, hell, he could have *had* a family and might have even if we see his memories at some point. Maybe that husband from the other universe that Loki theorizes could be the love of Mobius' life in every universe? Maybe Loki's theory isn't wrong. He could enchant Mobius and we find out that the partner died or something. Ben Stiller could well be an universal constant, y'all, and even that might not even destroy Lokius. That's just truth.*

The point of doing anything with Mobius' various backstories on the show is going to be to advance Loki and Mobius' relationship in the present and that's going to be true even if these stupid time agent idiots don't just kiss at some point. It's true of their friendship as well as any potential romance. I think that learning what Other!Mobius' life is like in the other universe is going to lead Loki to continue to act very selflessly when it comes to his Mobius' happiness when they reunite (continuing off of having told him he was a variant in the first place in S1) and to make sure that he knows about IGiveUpOnCallingTheHusbandAnythingButBenStiller in the other universe. Loki will offer to enchant Mobius' memories back to try to reunite him with this potential long love. This'll kill them both dead inside, of course, as Loki was last seen doing the Rom Com Run of Love Awareness and Impending Confession at the end of S1 and Mobius had a scene so overtly jealous of Sylvie that they named the damn score to it "Lokius" so these two, by the time they reunite, are well aware that they are in love with one another but haven't *told* one another that yet.

Hell, this could even be how they do. What if Mobius' response is just to tell Loki that he doesn't need his memories back because who he was then isn't who he is now and he knows that he doesn't love Ben Stiller because he loves Loki and he knows without a doubt that he's never felt like this before?

Yeah, oh yeah, Lokius Nation, we're going there...

What else is the point of admitting that Tom & Owen, I mean, the writers!, decided to scrap the idea that Mobius has a guy waiting for him in a Texas Blockbuster in 1997 if not for making sure that, while there can be angst a-plenty, there ultimately isn't somebody else that our Mobius decides he has to honor his commitment to and shatter Loki into pieces over? The writers want to play with all the pain of these two, for sure, but this is Marvel, not The English Patient. (I'm making all the '90s references here, I know.) There's plenty of tragedy already here in this show that has an unusual obsession with hinting that they're steering this boat towards a version of Peggy & Steve's Endgame ending in the short term.

Kate Herron said they cut Mobius' family because they aren't sure what exactly his backstory is yet which is a way of saying that the one thing they *are* sure of is that they don't want him to have had a normal family life in the past-- otherwise, they would have just done that already. Why would you yank out all that angst when it's clear you still need to play with it because of the nature of Loki and Mobius' relationship? Why toss it to another Mobius to have the family and provide that scenario for Loki's development and his and Mobius' relationship development when there was an option to give it to our Mobius? Easy answer there:

they need a clear romantic path for our Mobius to Loki.

One could still have existed-- and still will exist-- if they give our Mobius a family in S2 but it's really suspect to me that they had plenty of opportunity to do that already and decided they didn't want to give him one and just said basically "we'll figure out exact details of his life as we go next season but it ultimately doesn't matter what the specifics of those are when it comes to our overall S2 story plotting because we know what we want the *jist* of it to be and that's that Mobius isn't missing a heck of a lot in his past life-- that the loneliness and need for adventure that he has that we know in the present is possibly also some spillover from who he was before-- and that whatever he's going to find in his memories are not going to ultimately impede furthering his relationship with Loki."

He can have a jetski empire or have been a private eye or was an accountant whose nexus event was trying to kill himself, who the hell knows-- it'll all be *interesting* when we see it but the second the writers decided that Mobius wasn't a man with a wife and 2.5 kids in '90s Texas... that's the moment that the path to Lokius just became quite a bit easier and I say that as someone who is fully aware that the two characters I am discussing are presently trapped in different timelines.

So yeah, just some writer's two cents but we'll see.

*Ben Stiller as Other!Mobius' husband in a jealous-off with our petty God of Mischief... no wait. WAIT. Ben Stiller as Other!Mobius' *Loki variant* husband... not sure how that works since this universe doesn't seem to have Lokis that we know of yet but let's deem it so and will it into existence...

#lokius #mcu loki #lokius nation #agent mobius #mobius #mobius m mobius #loki show #loki series #loki laufeyson

[beginagainunsolved]

RYAN: This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved, we’ll be talking about the mysterious “death” of Jason Todd.

SHANE: Why is death in air quotes there?

RYAN: You’ll see.

SHANE: I love it when you get all mysterious. Really draws me in. You’ve got me on the edge of my seat here, Ryan!

RYAN: Oh, it gets edgier.

SHANE: Don’t think that works in this context, buddy.

RYAN: It does. You’ll see. This guy’s a real edgelord.

SHANE: Gross.

RYAN: Shut up. Anyway, this is actually one of our most highly requested cases. We get comments to do this one every time we post a new video, so —

SHANE: You guys can SHUT UP now. We’re DOING IT. Get off our BACKS.

RYAN: Okay, maybe don’t — maybe don’t yell at them.

SHANE: Hey, I’ll yell if I want to yell.

RYAN: Okay.

RYAN, NARRATION: Jason Peter Todd was the second ward of billionaire Bruce Wayne, adopted shortly after his first ward, Dick Grayson, was emancipated and moved away from Gotham city.

SHANE: Why is this guy always adopting kids? Can that be the next episode?

RYAN: That would be so boring. “This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved: A Billionaire is Lonely.”

SHANE: There are better ways to deal with loneliness, Ryan.

RYAN: I don’t know. He seems to like his way.

SHANE: I guess.

RYAN, NARRATION: Not much is known about Jason’s life prior to his adoption. Unlike Wayne’s previous ward, Dick Grayson, it doesn’t appear that Todd had any sort of public persona. Most reports claim he was born to a poor family and largely grew up on the streets, but it’s difficult to confirm.

SHANE: You mean you couldn’t find it on Google?

RYAN: Yeah, I couldn’t find it on Google. I typed in “Jason Todd - Street Youth?” And nothing came up, so I called it a day and got a smoothie.

SHANE: (wheeze)

RYAN, NARRATION: Most accounts of Jason’s life begin shortly after his adoption. During this time, it appears that Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne weren’t on speaking terms, at least to the general public. Shortly before Jason’s adoption, Dick stopped making public appearances and attending galas with Wayne. Many speculate that Jason’s adoption was Wayne’s attempt to fill the void left by his first ward’s departure.

SHANE: Oof.

RYAN: Yeah, oof.

SHANE: And I thought my family had drama!

RYAN: Your family has you. That’s enough drama.

SHANE: Didn’t your dad cut someone’s head off once?

RYAN: Please stop telling people that. Someone’s gonna believe you! The FBI are going to show up at his door!

SHANE: I hope they do. I hope SHIELD interrogates him.

RYAN: NO!

RYAN, NARRATION: People who knew Jason Todd in the years immediately following his adoption into the Wayne family paint the tale of a troubled young man vying for the attention of his newfound father. After his supposed death, many of Wayne’s high status acquaintances who had met the boy at galas and public events were quick to come forward with their own accounts of his demeanor and personality.

SHANE: Ryan, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…

RYAN AND SHANE, IN UNISON: Rich people fucking suck.

SHANE: Rich people fucking suck!

RYAN: On this, we absolutely agree.

SHANE: This one thing!

RYAN: This one thing, yeah.

SHANE: Anyway. Eat the rich!

RYAN: Okay.

RYAN, NARRATION: The real mystery of Jason Todd, of course, doesn’t lie in how he became associated with Bruce Wayne. The real mystery comes from how this association ended.

SHANE: Here we go!

RYAN: Here we go.

RYAN, NARRATION: Then, in 2010, not long after his adoption into the Wayne family, Jason suddenly disappeared from the public eye. Much like Dick Grayson before him, he stopped attending galas and public events. Unlike Dick Grayson, no one seemed to know where he ended up at all.

SHANE: So this wasn’t a “I’m mad at my dad so I’m gonna crash on my buddy’s couch” type situation.

RYAN: Oh, no, definitely not. This kid seemingly vanished into thin air.

SHANE: Like Amelia Earhart! We all remember her!

RYAN: Don’t say anything about the —

SHANE: She was eaten by crabs.

RYAN: Jesus Christ.

RYAN, NARRATION: This went on for some time, with Jason out of the public eye and Bruce largely dodging questions about him when asked. Then, one day, Bruce Wayne called a press conference and made a startling revelation: Jason Todd was dead.

SHANE: Not a fun press conference.

RYAN: Not really, no. It’s — You can still watch it on YouTube. It’s bleak, man.

SHANE: Well, he’s announcing his son’s untimely death, Ryan. There’s not gonna be confetti.

RYAN: Yeah, but I mean — he pretty much just gets up on stage, makes a depressing ass announcement, and leaves right away.

SHANE: Imagine being a reporter there. Just standing out in the rain. Was it raining? I bet it was raining.

RYAN: I think it’s just, like, perpetually raining in Gotham. It’s got those kind of vibes.

SHANE: Depressing noir detective vibes, yeah. That’s why all those people dress up like bats and clowns. Nobody does that in L.A.

RYAN: No, we don’t get a lot of bats or clowns in L.A.

SHANE: We had the flame head guy! Miss him.

RYAN: He comes up in this.

SHANE: HE DOES?!?

RYAN: Spoiler alert!

SHANE: No, she lives in Gotham, too.

RYAN: Shut up.

RYAN, NARRATION: Life seemed to move on for the Wayne family after this. Jason was buried in a Gotham cemetery following a private funeral. Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne seemingly reunited. Some time down the line, Wayne adopted Tim Drake, a boy whose recently deceased parents ran in his social circles. Jason continued to be a rarely mentioned subject in any public appearances made by the Wayne family and their close associates, and any time he was brought up in interviews, journalists were categorically shut down.

SHANE: This is getting depressing, but I want to circle back around to this guy’s kid adopting addiction. Nobody should have this many orphans, Ryan.

RYAN: I mean, he’s helping them, right?

SHANE: Is he? He’s just replacing one with the next! Like a congo line!

RYAN: A congo line of — You know, I say this a lot, but this time I really mean it. You are going to get us so sued.

SHANE: It’s like the Macarena. You put an orphan in and take an orphan out.

RYAN: That’s the Hokey Pokey.

SHANE: And shake ‘em all about.

RYAN: Please stop.

RYAN, NARRATION: With most cases, this would be the end of it. A bleak end to a bleak story. But instead, this is where things get weird.

SHANE: Hooo boy. This is where the air quotes come in.

RYAN: This is where the air quotes come in!

RYAN, NARRATION: A few years after his death, Jason Todd seemingly reemerged. He was spotted leaving Wayne Manor, a few inches taller and with a new hair do.

SHANE: I’m just gonna put this out there, like, as an unofficial theory.

RYAN: Oh god.

SHANE: Are we sure this wasn’t just some other random orphan? The guy likes orphans, Ryan. He has an orphan problem.

RYAN: If it was another random orphan, it was a random orphan that looked exactly like Jason Todd.

SHANE: Wouldn’t put it past him!

RYAN: How would he even manage that?

SHANE: I don’t know! He’s rich!

RYAN: That can’t be your answer to everything shady you accuse someone of doing.

SHANE: It can, and it is.

RYAN: I really hope Buzzfeed has lawyer lined up for us. We’re gonna need so many lawyers.

SHANE: I’m sure we’ll be fine.

RYAN: (long sigh)

RYAN, NARRATION: When asked about Todd’s sudden reappearance, members of the Wayne family dodged the question just as thoroughly as they once dodged questions regarding his death. Their excuses, typically flimsy, varied from person to person with some saying the man who appeared to be Jason was actually someone else, and others saying said man didn’t exist at all.

SHANE: Pfffft. “Oh, no, there’s no man here! No man at all!”

RYAN: I actually looked up a lot of the denials, and some of them get… wild. Dick Grayson once claimed that no one ever said Jason Todd died at all.

SHANE: The press conference is on YouTube!

RYAN: He said it was a prank.

SHANE: A prank? Man, fuck this guy!

RYAN: I think he just panicked.

SHANE: He can panic more smoothly than that, at least! Have a little respect!

RYAN: (wheeze) You’re telling people about respect now?

SHANE: I’m very respectful, Ryan.

RYAN: You told a ghost to eat your ass last week!

SHANE: We’ve been over this. I don’t respect ghosts because they aren’t real. I told an empty room to eat my ass. And it did not comply.

RYAN: You accused Bruce Wayne of stealing orphans three minutes ago!

SHANE: I don’t respect rich people, either, because fuck ‘em.

RYAN: (wheeze)

RYAN, NARRATION: So, what ever happened to Jason Todd? Let’s get into the theories.

SHANE: I’m sure they’re all perfectly reasonable.

RYAN: As always.

SHANE: Oh, no.

RYAN, NARRATION: The first theory is that Jason Todd’s “death” was a coverup for a ransom attempt.

SHANE: That kind of makes sense.

RYAN: Yeah! Like, obviously Wayne wouldn’t want people to know his kid was abducted for ransom. Especially if he was going to plan on paying it.

SHANE: Well. I don’t think he’d say “yeah that kid’s dead” if he was planning on paying the ransom.

RYAN: You think he left him to die?

SHANE: RICH PEOPLE SUCK!

RYAN: God. I can taste the lawsuit.

RYAN, NARRATION: This theory is a rather straightforward one: After receiving a ransom note for his son some time after his disappearance, Wayne announced Jason’s death to cover it up and prevent the kidnappers from getting the publicity that would have made them infamous.

SHANE: Like a big ole fuck you!

RYAN: Yeah, I mean, you’d get a lot of clout for kidnapping a famous billionaire’s son. Especially in Gotham, right? Out there, it’s like… Crime is currency, almost. You build up a reputation like that, you can rule the city.

SHANE: Exactly! So by taking that away… Kind of ruins their whole thing.

RYAN: Right! And then they’ve got no use for Jason anymore and, you know, killing somebody’s a lot harder than kidnapping them, so…

SHANE: Oh, I don’t think they let him go. That kid was scrappy. He probably gave ‘em all rabies and ran.

CAMERAMAN, IN BACKGROUND: Guys. Defamation —

SHANE: Yeah, yeah, we know. Let’s move on!

RYAN, NARRATION: The next theory ties back to Jason’s alleged life before his adoption as a street kid. This theory states that Jason, like many young people in Gotham, got tangled up with some of the neighborhood’s local gangs and got in over his head.

SHANE: His sordid past as an eight year old came back to haunt him?

RYAN: Well, presumably he stayed in contact with people he knew at the time and got pulled into the gangs later.

SHANE: Nah, I want an eight year old with a shiv. He’ll shank you… but only from the waist down. Can’t reach any higher.

RYAN: (wheeze)

SHANE: Except for on you! You’re, like, the size of an eight year old. Man, he’d crush you.

RYAN: Yeah, well, you’d be fine, Gumbo. He wouldn’t be able to reach anything above your foot. You’d be like a giraffe stepping on a thumbtack.

SHANE: I keep telling you, Ryan, I am average height. You’re just abnormally short.

RYAN: Fuck you, buddy.

SHANE: Ouch.

RYAN, NARRATION: According to this theory, Jason’s death was faked in order to save his life from mobsters associated with famed Gotham gang leader Oswald Cobblepot, otherwise known as the Penguin.

SHANE: Why does everybody in Gotham have a stupid name?

RYAN: You don’t like the Penguin?

SHANE: I don’t care for it, no, but I also don’t love the name ‘Oswald Cobblepot.’ Like, that sounds ridiculous.

RYAN: Maybe that’s why he chooses to go by the Penguin.

SHANE: He should choose to go by Stan.

RYAN: Stan?

SHANE: Stan.

RYAN: No clarification there?

SHANE: I don’t believe it needs any.

RYAN: Okay.

RYAN, NARRATION: Our third theory is by far the most simple: Tired of the life of a billionaire’s son, Jason asked Bruce to fake his death in order to allow him to disappear from the public eye.

SHANE: (wheeze)

RYAN: I will admit… There are probably better ways to duck out of the public eye.

SHANE: YOU THINK?

RYAN: Like, faking my death might not be my first resort.

SHANE, IN AN EXAGGERATED IMITATION OF A CHILD’S VOICE: Oh, I’m tired of people taking my picture. Papa, will you tell them all I died a gruesome death? I’m going to Fiji!

RYAN: (wheeze)

SHANE: And then Wayne, what, just went along with it?

RYAN: Well, I guess he was due for another orphan soon anyway.

SHANE: I’m so glad you’ve warmed up to these jokes.

RYAN: I’m getting sued anyway, I might as well have fun with it.

SHANE: I am loving this development for you, Ryan!

RYAN, NARRATION: The next theory ties into a legend that some of our viewers from the Los Angeles area may be familiar with, —

SHANE: OH HELL YEAH! HERE IT COMES!

RYAN, NARRATION: — the Ghost Rider.

SHANE: (cheering)

RYAN, NARRATION: This theory states that Jason Todd’s anonymity exists to cover up his identity, and that the initial ‘death’ occured when he took up the mantle. Some believers of this theory claim that Wayne may have actually believed Todd was dead at the time, as he may have dropped off the radar entirely in order to pursue work as the Ghost Rider.

SHANE: This is my favorite one.

RYAN: I don’t think there’s any merit to it.

SHANE: Oh, absolutely not. But you’ve gotta love the theater of it!

RYAN: It does have a certain level of aesthetic appeal, yeah.

SHANE: Just some random rich kid out here with his head on fire, killing guys with crowbars.

RYAN: (wheeze) Why crowbars?

SHANE: I don’t know. Crowbars feel right here.

RYAN: That doesn’t make any sense.

SHANE: And the rest of this does?

RYAN: Good point.

RYAN, NARRATION: Perhaps supporting this theory is the fact that Ghost Rider tends to go after gangsters much like the ones Todd would have been dodging as a young man in Gotham. It also seems to tie into the rash, angry personality that many people claim he displayed. According to this theory’s supporters, Todd became fed up with the state of the city.

SHANE: And… what? Decided to light his head on fire?

RYAN: Well, maybe he was a metahuman.

SHANE: I guess that’s why he didn’t stay in Gotham. Doesn’t Batman kick them all out?

RYAN: That’s what people say, yeah.

SHANE: Man. Dick move of Batman to kick Bruce Wayne’s kid out of the city. (chuckles.) Get it? Dick?

RYAN: Oh my god.

RYAN, NARRATION: Our fifth and final theory is that Jason Todd was abducted by aliens.

SHANE: Nope.

RYAN: Don’t you at least want to hear the full theory?

SHANE: Absolutely not.

RYAN: Well, they do.

SHANE: Who is ‘they’ ?

RYAN: The people!

SHANE: They don’t want to hear your alien theories, Ryan. No one does.

RYAN: Well, it’s my video. And I’m going to tell the alien theory.

SHANE: (long sigh)

RYAN, NARRATION: This theory states that aliens, in an attempt to gain power and intel in preparation for an invasion, targeted Jason because of his close relationship with one of the richest and most prominent men in Gotham.

SHANE: So they interrogated him and then just spat him back out?

RYAN: Let me finish!

RYAN, NARRATION: According to this theory, the Jason Todd who returned after his ‘death’ was not Jason Todd at all but, rather, was an alien clone.

SHANE: I regret letting you finish.

RYAN: (wheeze) I knew you would!

RYAN, NARRATION: Believers of this theory claim it’s supported by the physical differences between the Jason Todd who disappeared and the one who lives in Gotham now, including his hair and his height.

SHANE: Or, hear me out. He grew. And he dyed his hair.

RYAN: Aliens seems more plausible to me.

SHANE: I hate you.

RYAN: (wheeze)

RYAN, NARRATION: So, what really happened to Jason Todd? Did he fall in deep with the wrong crowds and have to give up his life to find his way out? Was he kidnapped in an attempt to get money and influence from his wealthy adoptive family? Or is there something otherworldly about his disappearance and reappearance into the world? With the Wayne family refusing comments and no other sources to consult, it looks like the truth behind the scenes of Gotham’s most prestigious family will have to remain… unsolved.

WHAT UNSOLVED MYSTERY DO YOU WANT TO SEE NEXT?

#beginagainunsolved #episode: jason todd #true crime

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

We learned a lot about each of Jesus's followers from episode 3. A lot of what's been beautifully displayed/shown for us had a chance to be articulated and told to us here (in a natural way--great storytelling!). So let's break it down in a meta longer than what any of you asked for:

John - the themes explored in S2E1, which are very present in his gospel, are here again! He expresses awe at the fact that he--"a nobody"--is not only alive at the time of the Messiah, and not only sees Him, but travels with Him and is close with Him. That wonder at the personal, loving relationship we can have with God--that defines both John and his writings. But, we also see him give in to pride (setting up James to be better than the others, and his comment to "ask Matthew") and anger (accusing Simon, even if ostensibly in Matthew's defense, showed both anger and pride (a "you're no better than the rest of us!" mentality)).

Big James - we learn that he loves to study and has more theological/Torah knowledge than almost all of the group. He's a rule-follower, who loves the law and its structure (a foreshadowing of his eventual reluctance to accept Gentile converts who did not first convert to Judaism). More importantly, we see him acting as a moderating influence on the group. He comforts Mary when she expresses her insecurities about her past, and tries to get Simon to stop attacking Matthew. But, we also see how quickly he can become indignant and proud (telling Simon to sit down, instead of simply sitting down himself--"someone else must give in first, not me").

Simon - finally finally FINALLY we get to understand why exactly he's so mad and spiteful towards Matthew. He comes off as kind of a jerk half the time, but this moment (although heart-wrenching for Matthew's sake) helps to humanize Simon too. We get to see the roots of that protective, communal nature that will eventually make him such a good leader, and we see how deeply and passionately he cares for Israel. But we also see that he still struggles to accept those who are unlike him, and this will be a theme for the rest of his life, as he is called to minister to the Gentiles and told that all foods are clean. "Different" is something it takes Simon a long time to get used to. Additionally, his refusal to forgive Matthew is setting up his conversation with Jesus where he asks, "If my brother sins against me, how many times must I forgive him? Seven times?" (This was two-and-a-half times more than the required amount, so he probably thought he was going above and beyond.) I can just see Jesus knowing who Simon is thinking of and telling him, "No, you must forgive your brother seventy times seven times!"

Little James - we get to know a little about him! I just threw him on here since previously we haven't seen much of him and now we understand him a little more. We get to see him bond with Thomas, who's the first person we see really reach out to him, and we see his insecurity and his worry that Jesus will think less of him or change His mind about him. (What a relatable struggle!)

Thomas - what we learn about Thomas surprises us! We're told earlier that "being methodical is his thing" (S2E1), and he seems fairly shy at points, so we assume he must be like Matthew, or Philip. But he's not! He doesn't like the rules. He's somebody who questions things. (Shocker--he questions Jesus's resurrection too! Great set-up and character-building there.) He even says "I'd like to ask Him about that" (referencing Jesus losing His father, but showing that Thomas is someone who naturally asks and seeks). His innate drive to search out the truth is an asset, similar to Nathanael, but also similar is his hesitancy (and at times, flat refusal) to accept the truth because it seems hard to believe. It can also make him combative with those who have more faith, or more respect for the rules (there is some brief tension between him and Big James when discussing Torah, for example).

Mary - we learn that she is eager to learn the Scriptures, something that she as a woman was never allowed to do--and also that she feels she needs to relearn her Jewish-ness. She is ashamed of who she was before and felt that she turned her back on her true identity...sound similar to anyone?? It's no small wonder that she's sympathetic toward Matthew. Simon's outburst directly paralleled them (and Mary did not seem pleased that he used her past in that way). Mary feels that she has a lot to make up for, and has no expectations that Jesus will give her special honors or power--she is humble, and this is why she is more receptive to and understanding of His teaching, despite her lack of knowledge, than the other disciples are.

Ramah - she, too, is eager to learn; for her, this stems mostly from a feeling of never having been allowed to be anything but a dutiful daughter. Her worth was limited and defined by the men in her life. Now she is beginning to explore the possibilities of being defined by God instead, which is a distinctly counter-cultural move. This is why it's so important that she goes with Jesus despite her father's reluctance--she is showing she's willing to be someone other than who she's told to be. Instead, she'll be who she's called to be. But she is still insecure about her lack of knowledge and her inability to take initiative; she is more passive by nature, and even when recounting her imaginings of the Messiah, she doesn't imagine helping Him, just being rescued by Him. This sets her up as someone more able to be used by Him, as, like Mary, she has no delusions of grandeur, but she is still unsure of her role in the group.

Andrew - (this has been more "professional" so far but oh my gosh BABY boy I love him) we learn that he is considerate of others' needs and doesn't want to be a burden (through the "sorry" stories). He likes the rules and is comfortable in order, and things like apologies are meaningful to him because they show respect and consideration for the other person. This is why Andrew gets hung up on the fact that Matthew never apologized for his past and putting them in such a predicament--but John has a point when he stands up for Matthew. Although Andrew is doing it in a nicer way than Simon, both men are setting themselves up as someone who can forgive sin, ignoring the fact that Jesus has already forgiven Matthew (edit: what I mean by this is Simon is loudly excluding Matthew from the group because he's valuing his refusal to forgive over the grace Jesus extended Matthew. Andrew is nowhere near as extreme in this, and is justified in wanting an apology (naturally) but in jumping onto Simon's comments, he seems to indicate that he agrees with Simon's overall attitude--if you don't apologize, we won't accept you). It shows that despite his sensitive nature, Andrew is still proud, and feels that the respect he shows is also what he deserves. He will have to learn, throughout his time with Jesus, that the beauty of grace is that we don't get what we deserve. We are called to forgive those who persecute us, even if they don't ask for forgiveness.

And I'm sure I missed some (I can't even find the energy to cover Jesus's mother Mary, but I loved how they handled her as well) but even with just these we can see how the showrunners are taking such care to develop these characters in a way that their eventual interactions and growth in the later portions of the gospels make sense! They feel so genuinely real, and you can see in them the seeds of who they will become--seeds that Jesus had seen all along. Excellent, excellent work, and an even better witness to the transformative power of Christ!

#the chosen tv series #the chosen #it's so long that it took me like. a day and a half to finish this post #meta #my meta posts #quality meta seal of approval #not to hype my own post up i just put that on all meta posts so that i can find them #kay can i just catch my breath for a second #christianity #my christianity

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E111 (Redux! Oct. 13, 2020)

Gooooood evening good evening good evening, all! I started the VOD late for this recap and somehow the first four or so minutes of the show have a Twitch audio copyright claim, so I am reduced to only reading Brian's lips when he asks if we're on the internet. Hilariously, Marisha's background room is a comfy-looking blue/gold fabric wall with a ceramic colorful abstract lamp and a yellow silk scarf over the lampshade, and Taliesin's is an industrial looking games room in grey and black with multiple monitors, overhead speakers, and mysterious metal fixtures behind him. What a treasure this group is, honestly.

Tonight's guests: Marisha Ray & Taliesin Jaffe, discussing episodes 110 and 111 again. I wildly speculate once more about what might have caused their absence: jury duty? Sam appearing on The Masked Singer? Something to do with the animated show? One day, we’ll know, one day... (One day this “copyrighted audio” section will come back from the wars, too. Ugh!) Finally! The audio comes back to reveal Brian discussing the endless reality of digital meetings and Marisha talking about (I think) her glare-reducing glasses she’s wearing. Welcome to the New Age (welcome to the New Age, to the New Age).

Announcements: Marisha suggests checking out Dimension20, another live tabletop gaming group, which premieres live on Wednesdays at 4pm (CollegeHumor). 

Brian immediately wants to know how they feel about the revelation that Molly is alive. Taliesin’s personal reaction: he “knows some things” he can’t talk about and is aware of several possibilities that might be going on, but had a sneaking suspicion that there would not be a body for them to find. He says it’s almost all there for anyone to see in past material. Marisha’s personal reaction: she just wants to know how she’s doing with her theories, & was trying to block Tal’s face out deliberately as she was going off on her theories in the last episode. Taliesin says he thought her ideas were pretty good!

Cad has no clue what to think - it’s like listening to your friends talk about Buffy. Marisha thought it was a 50/50 Molly would still be there, but Beau had no idea. Not that it mattered, because as soon as Matt went through with it the reveal still blew their minds. Tal laid out his plans for the character with Matt during Campaign One (towards the end) after they all got their VM tattoos.

It is a “horrifying and gross” thing to dig up a body, and Beau was pretty reluctant to do it. Tal, as Cad: “Sometimes dead’s better.” The moral quandary of trying to speak with a dead friend was very different here than the frequent occasions they used the spell in C1.

Taliesin says his poker face is very bad, so it’s easier for him to over-react and let it all play out. The only other player he can see very easily from his place in their current setup is Travis, and because he knows Travis doesn’t watch TM, tweet, or participate in social media, he admits he thoroughly enjoyed watching Travis freak out at his freaking out. He says he only knew about 20% of what Matt described at the end of that episode. He was picking things to mug to increase Travis’s surprise. I love this so much.

Taliesin provided the table left leg shake; Travis provided table right. Ha!

Beau is really accepting her role in the Cobalt Soul. It’s good when “as a person, you feel like you can settle into your calling. Sometimes you can do more from the inside than fighting from the outside.” It’s a mirrored but opposite path of Keyleth from C1; Beau felt like she was too good for her duty, while Keyleth thought she wasn’t good enough.

Caduceus is not a big believer in jumping to conclusions. He does have an idea/notion of the “city of the undead” and thinks all this necrotic energy must come from somewhere, and wonders if this is the “capital of anti-death.” He’s willing to believe whatever he sees. This is one of the few things that trigger a bit of loathing and disgust in him. It was terrifying that the Wildmother didn’t know anything.

Beau is pretty confident in her Charlie Day impression laying-out-the-research last episode. She enjoyed taking the things that were known & extrapolating around them; this is a huge facet of Marisha’s own personality and she really enjoys it, so she built a character this time that would allow that kind of puzzle-solving. It’s also why she repeatedly notes when Beau journals, so she can avoid metagaming. Trent’s mention of Vess Durogna’s tomb raiding was completely circumstantial, and the only reason she’d made the connection to the Tombtakers was because she’d recently reviewed those notes for a separate unannounced project. Sometimes she tries to make connections and Matt is like, “It was...just descriptive. Just flavor. The curtains were red...” and she has to discard a paragraph of notes. She feels like it’s still something they have to do because of “look at what he does! Look! It’s totally valid!”

Cosplay of the Week: @kitsunstudios with a gorgeous Caduceus with a very intricate silk vest.

Caduceus’s takedown of Trent! One of my favorite moments in the entirety of C2. Taliesin felt Trent was an asshole; Caduceus felt sorry for him because of how dumb he thought he was. Caduceus’s response was "this is the dumbest man I’ve ever met in my life. He’s so dumb! Is nobody going to tell this guy how dumb he is? Oh, they’re all freaked out. Somebody needs to tell this guy he’s an idiot before somebody gets hurt.” (Marisha: “Before?”) Tal says it was the product of several years of therapy and many drunk conversations with Whitney Moore. It was from a genuine place of concern from Caduceus. “How are you allowed to have this much power and be that dumb?”

Brian loved how funny it was to watch everyone tiptoe around Trent and then Caduceus bulldoze through the end of the meal.

Taliesin: “Damage doesn’t make you interesting or better. It’s not what makes you good. Character isn’t found in damage. Just recovery.”

Brian & Marisha commiserate going through the stage where believing surviving something automatically made you a stronger person, better for the pain; instead it just meant you had to pick up the pieces after. Marisha talks about how strength through survival may be true for some people, but it shouldn’t be considered a necessity. Taliesin talks about how he used to think he had to be miserable to write. Brian talks about how believing he liked reading and writing miserable things only limited him for years.

Marisha feels it’s a C2 theme that almost all the PCs have someone trying to handwave or take credit for their accomplishments or explain their pain as being for their own good (Trent, Beau’s dad, Obann). She thinks it’s interesting to see all the various ways people try to take credit for your work/delegitimize you as a person. She loves that RPGs allow you to explore these odd moralities in interesting ways. The only way to fight it is to have a sense of your own self-worth, which is a problem a lot of the M9 started with.

Caduceus likes everyone, and really likes people who appear to need role models (Eodwulf). “With the right friends and the right bar and the right attitude, I think he’d be okay. Come over here where it’s so much better. That seems like an exhausting friendship that you have there.”

Marisha loves the mix of personalities in the M9; Veth, Cad, & Jester were all “we kind of like them!” after the dinner, and she immediately made eye contact with Travis and they both shook their heads. She knows Beau has to go along with it for Caleb’s sake for now, but she & Fjord are pretty sus of Trent’s proteges.

Beau is less concerned about Artagan’s relationship to Jester because “he showed his ass--she’s less worried about Jester now because a little of the magic is gone.” It’s a little like becoming an adult and realizing your parents are also just adults & human. Caduceus wasn’t suspicious of the Traveler for a long time until they got to the island. Aside: Taliesin loves the pantheon in D&D. “The notion of attempting to apply common Western conceptions of religion to a world where you have a pantheon of interventionist gods as baseline makes no sense to me. Everyone admits that every other god is there and doing shit; it has more in common with ancient Rome than anything else.” Now that he knows it was a con, he feels the wind had been taken out of it. He does have a sense that Jester’s gotten back together with an ex: “I hope that I’m really happy for you.” They’re both interested to see how Jester navigates the new relationship.

My internet goes out, of course. I panic for a second, thinking I’ve lost everything above, but all is well! Thanks, Form History Control addon!

Marisha loved punching Artagan, but regretting rolling so poorly. “I miss violence.” Dani lets us know it’s been about four episodes since the last battle.

There’s no way the Cobalt Reserve doesn’t have a single document on the Eyes of Nine. Beau believes “there are no real secrets” because people are just bad at not writing things down. For there to be no information at all seems really suspicious for her.

Fanart of the Week: @oddalchemist on twitter with some awesome Beau conspiracy red-thread boards overlaid a distant shadowy Molly walking away.

Caduceus feels a little guilty for really enjoying his time right now with the M9 and not wanting to go home. He’s starting to suspect that he’s going to go home very different than when he left. “He has the softest problems. I don’t know if I want to move back in with Mom & Dad.”

Beau is trying to get comfortable with the idea of being happy. Jester is probably Beau’s first real best friend & one of the first healthy female friendships she’s ever had. As long as she still has Jester in her life, she doesn’t care. For Yasha... “At the end of the day, Beau is a lonely person and has always been a lonely person. And I think you kinda reach this point where once you’re not lonely anymore, you can kind of come out of the fog and realize that was horrible! And terrifying! And is even more terrifying now that I know what I could have, and I don’t want to go back to that. At the end of the day Beau doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. There’s always been that flirtation with Yasha, but everyone had to figure their own shit out. And now it feels like it’s coming out a little bit of that haze, maybe this actually could be...” There are a lot of ways they complement each other & are good-different from each other. Marisha believes people can be attracted to more than person at once.

Caduceus doesn’t think nature turned against him on Rumblecusp, it was just a reality of nature being dangerous and violent. “He has a complex relationship with nature.” He doesn’t expect special treatment.

Thoughts on the mansion: “Man, it’s nice to be seen.” Marisha: “I don’t know how I ended up becoming the Scanlan of this campaign, but I’m living for it.” It felt like an echo of “I’m better for having known you.” They compare Marisha taking specific notes on the campaign to Liam taking specific notes on people’s favorite tapestries, comics, etc.

They talk about missing theme parks and daydream a park version of the mansion in CritRoleLand. It’s lovely.

Taliesin never expected Divine Intervention to work; he just wanted to roll some dice. He’s still processing what he saw/heard. They all agree it was very useful in the Vokodo fight.

Vilya! Marisha: “Ah! Ah! Ah!” As a player, Marisha was so deep in Beau’s eyes she didn’t pick up it was Vilya at first (especially since Matt really emphasized they should not be looking for C1 NPCs). Marisha’s brain melted. She bawled her eyes out on the ride home after that episode. Right after it ended, Laura told Marisha “Keyleth finally gets her happy ending,” and it makes Marisha emotional again since Keyleth’s story ended so bittersweetly. She talks about the very real feelings of “just wanting them to be happy, though!” She went back and listened to all her old Keyleth playlists. Everyone was teary after the episode. “Everyone has these 100% real memories of being these characters and having these good times.”

And that’s that for that! Thanks for your patience, all, and is it Thursday yet?

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #talks machina spoilers #long post for ts

[michaelsheenpt]

Prodigal Son star Michael Sheen on the 'absolute joy' Martin takes in the Claremont murder

The actor takes us inside the mind of a serial killer.                

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Prodigal Son season 2, episode 4, "Take Your Father to Work Day."

The titular offspring on Prodigal Son had plenty of time to bond with his serial killer father on this week's episode of the Fox procedural.

When a murder took place right under Martin "The Surgeon" Whitly's (Michael Sheen) nose, his son, Malcolm (Tom Payne), and the NYPD crew were brought in to help solve the crime — and as you can imagine, Martin was just delighted at the prospect of quality time with his boy.

Of course, Ainsley (Halston Sage) wanted to tag along to see if there was a newsworthy story to uncover, but once she started remembering more about what happened the night of Endicott's (Dermot Mulroney) death, she turned to her father for answers about what was going on. To make the family reunion complete, Jessica (Bellamy Young) also found herself calling her murderous ex for some insight into their children's minds.

With all the drama taking place inside Claremont, the prison where Martin is incarcerated, the episode allowed for a lot more time spent with Sheen's bafflingly charming serial killer. We chatted with the actor about getting inside a murder's mind and what's to come for the Whitly family in the show's second season.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: In this episode, the team is in Martin's territory. Is this the most screen time you've had in this series so far?

MICHAEL SHEEN: It's a funny, the thing about the way we shoot the show, and particularly the way we shoot my stuff, we now shoot multiple episodes at the same time. I can sometimes find it quite difficult to remember what's in each episode. But this particular episode was a very, very different field for me. My experience of working on this show has been a kind of opening up as it's gone on. There were actors in the core cast that I hadn't even met, let alone worked with, when we got to the end of the first season. I didn't get to do a scene with Aurora [Perrineau] or Frank [Harts] or Keiko [Agena] until really late in the first season. I would just do scenes with whoever walked into my cell, unless it was a flashback, and then it'd still be with people within the family. So things have opened up more and more as it's gone along. So in this episode, the fact that the investigation comes into Claremont opened it up again, and of course for Martin that is just absolute joy.

Right, it's safe to say Martin is having a lovely time throughout most of this episode.

Yes, because they're all coming into his world and I meet Edrisa [Agena], and Gil [Lou Diamond Phillips] has to come in, and my kids come in! I'm working with my own son on a case in my prison. Martin's just in heaven. It was very enjoyable to do because I got to work with people I haven't worked with before and work with the same people in different ways. I got to play basketball, for instance.

Yeah, you got some outdoor time!

It's funny because Martin would love having outdoor time. Michael doesn't love it that much because it's quite cold. I quite enjoy being in my cell with my cardigan on.

One of the people Martin gets some quality time with in this episode is his daughter, Ainsley. How much do you think he's enjoying this newly discovered murderous streak in her? Or is he more interested in just spending time with her regardless of the reason?

I think it's a lot of things for him. There's a real delight in seeing this flower that has grown in the dark. Malcolm is the flower that has grown in the light, and that he has watered and fed as much as he possibly can to try and bring to bloom. She's this extraordinary flower that is actually grown in the dark, without him feeding it at all. There's a special delight to that. For all of Malcolm's experiences that are on the edge of murderous and psychotic and violent, he's never quite tipped into just pure murder, and Ainsley has, whether she's aware of it or not. That creates a special connection for Martin.

That's kind of terrifying.

Yes, it is terrifying. For Martin — and I always try to see it from Martin's point of view — it's both the opportunity to feel known in a different way because somebody else has experienced the thing that he experiences, and it's also an opportunity to feel connected and bonded to someone. It's the same way as a couple of episodes ago, where there was that scene where Malcolm talks to Martin about what it feels to walk around having got away with murder, and that the scary thing is that it didn't feel bad and all that. Martin can now talk about those things that have been such a part of his secret life with someone who's also experiencing aspects of that. That's even more so with Ainsley, because the part that Malcolm hasn't done is to actually feel the liberation of murder, and Ainsley potentially has.

Well, so as not to play favorites, Martin also had a couple of really intense scenes with Malcolm. How much do you think Martin resents Malcolm deep down for sending him to prison? Is that something we're going to get to explore more?

Yeah, I think so. The version of Martin that he allows people to see is such a tiny portion of him. It has an oversized place in the world because it's how he interacts with the world. Even before he was put in prison — when he was still actively pursuing his addiction to killing — the reason he was so good at it was because he was able to develop a persona that put people at ease, that made people like him and not suspect what he was doing. That is a construct he has created. What is actually going on for him is very different. We just don't see that very much because it works for him for people not to see it. But for someone who is so obsessed with control and needs control, there are moments where he loses it and we do see something else. We get a sense of what's really under there. I think there are currents within him that even he only vaguely understands. There are times when stuff comes out that he has decided to let come out, but there are times when stuff comes out that he hasn't decided to come out. In that moment in the cell with Malcolm, something comes out that he's not even aware of. I think he really does have the capacity to feel strong, positive emotions towards Malcolm, but I think he also has massively negative emotions towards Malcolm, because Malcolm is the one who ultimately — as far as he sees it, anyway — took away his control. There is huge oceans of rage in Martin.

It's so great when you're watching it because you can find yourself siding with him and believing he could be a good dad.

Yes, because it's in his interest for people to not think that he's a monster. It works great for the show because the more I hear and read people saying, "Oh, I can't believe I really like the serial killer," I'm like, "That's right. That's how it works." You use what will work for you. There were people who had crushes on Ted Bundy. Use what you've got. Martin uses that and it works very well for him, and it still does in prison.

Do you know a lot more about Martin's past than we've learned on the show so far? Have the writers filled in some of those years of serial killing for you?

We've had conversations about that, and we've got lots of different ideas of things that we could explore. It sort of depends on what the big picture is for the show and what is useful to go into and what's not. A lot of the time it's quite useful for people to not know his past. We know more about him than the audience does, and as to how much we reveal about that — who knows… We'll see.

We'll still be finding out about people he's killed come season 10. So Martin and Jessica also had a cute — but not really cute at all — co-parenting moment in this episode. Is there anything you can tease about what's to come between them this season?

In a way, that's the motor of the show, isn't it? That you've got a family where there's one member that everyone would really rather not have to deal with, but they have to. Jessica is never going to be free of Martin. At the same time, you also don't want to overplay that, so when the moments come between them they're able to have zing to them. I think that that scene between them says so much about the relationship, particularly from Martin's point of view, that he's able to lie so easily to her. He takes a real pleasure in knowing how much she's been duped by him and shocked by him and how much she doesn't know about him. Having spent years and years deceiving her, she now knows who he is and he's still able to deceive her. There's a very special enjoyment in that for him, which is very dark. There's also a real rivalry between them, a parental rivalry. When he has something that connects him to them that she doesn't have, whether that's a piece of information or a connection, both of those things delight him in different ways.

Eek, poor Jessica. Speaking of women in his life, Catherine Zeta-Jones is joining the show soon. Can you tell us anything about her character and how she'll affect Martin?

I think what will be enjoyable for an audience is not knowing what's going on at any given point. What I will say is that it puts Martin into new territory and therefore the audience will be in completely new territory, in terms of what they're seeing Martin doing and how he's reacting to things — and that's really exciting.

Prodigal Son airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

SOURCE

#michael sheen #prodigal son #martin whitly #tom payne #lou diamond phillips #prodigal son s2 #bellamy young #malcom bright #catherine zeta jones

[panharmonium]

dreamersscape said: 

Firstly, my deepest condolences for what you had to watch last night. I get so eager to know what you might think about some things, I lose track of “Ah crap, but they’ll have to see That Part, too.

Yeah, I didn’t want it to sound like I was knocking Guy for his ‘clumsy’ moments, but just acknowledging that his framework in interacting with the world and people can sometimes cloud his understanding of other people’s circumstances/motives/behavior. I’m glad that came across as I meant it. But exactly! It didn’t ultimately hinder him in supporting his friend through all those rough years and we love to see it!

I love the Guy & Kakashi race episode too! I have so many emotions about Kakashi and the burdens of leadership and how he lost Obito on the first mission he was appointed a captain and how he was always uncomfortable with Yugao and even Tenzo calling him ‘sir’ or 'captain’ sometimes and how right before we saw Kakashi being nominated Naruto says to Sasuke something like “How can I ever become hokage if I can’t even save one friend?” and how much more that would weigh on Kakashi if he applied it to himself…. so obviously looking back on that episode is A Lot, even moreso now… But goofing off with Guy and Guy making it clear that he’ll ALWAYS be there by Kakashi’s side no matter what, that Kakashi’s not alone, Guy’s there if he needs help carrying the burden, is truly exactly Kakashi needed! *insert weeping heart-eyes emoji here*

ASUMAAAA. :( :( :( I’ve been re-watching that part of shippuden, when Kakashi is helping Naruto develop the rasenshuriken, and now I’m thinking of the scene at the hospital where Asuma is trying to gather the courage to ask Kakashi for advice about the Kurenai-and-I-are-having-a-baby situation that Kakashi is completely oblivious to (at least, I think that’s what was being implied) and how the characters’ grief they focus on at Asuma’s funeral are not just team 10 and Kurenai, but also Kakashi… NO IT’S TOO MUCH! 

(BTW, don’t ever feel like you have to respond to everything I ramble about. I love our gush fests, but I don’t want to take up too much of your Naruto-fun space or not be helpful in preserving your experience with the show!) (x)

@dreamersscape Oh gosh, don’t worry at all, you’re not taking up space in any way; our conversations about this show are making my viewing experience MORE fun, not less!  Talking to you is a joy; I’m so happy to have connected with you - it’s amazing to find someone who I really vibe with thoughts-wise; I can’t tell you how happy I am to have someone to share all these Feelings with!  I know that avoiding the wider fandom during my watch has been the right call in so many ways, but it does cut me off from making friends to gush with, so this has been wonderful!

Ahaha, thank you for your condolences XD  I might type up something later just to get all my thoughts down on paper…all of my feelings are subject to change based on what happens later, obviously, but still, that was…a Lot for one twenty-minute block.  Yikes.

“Guy making it clear that he’ll ALWAYS be by Kakashi’s side no matter what, that Kakashi’s not alone” - Yes!  And the fact that this scene is deliberately juxtaposed with the elders at the beginning of this episode telling Kakashi “don’t take on everything by yourself/you would do well to find a confidant to stand beside you,” except the reason they’re saying it is for the purpose of defending Danzo’s past actions, and they’re advising Kakashi to find somebody like Danzo to work in the shadows and do the things Kakashi himself doesn’t have the stomach for - but instead, Kakashi flat-out rejects everything they say and chooses GUY, the purest heart in the village, the person least likely to ever consent to do the village’s dirty work (listen, guy, i truly find it reassuring having you there, and i hope you always will be.  i can’t bring this whole village together by myself).  Now that I’ve seen the ANBU arc, the fact that Kakashi deliberately turns to the very person who Danzo once said was utterly devoid of “darkness” is SO significant, especially given that Kakashi in this episode has just been made aware of Danzo and the Leaf administration’s past crimes.  Kakashi can’t say anything about it yet, because he doesn’t have proof that it’s true, but the fact that he rejects the elders’ advice for him to get his own “Danzo” and instead picks the very person Danzo thought was least suitable for anything - THAT MEANS SO MUCH.

Oh my gosh, you mentioned how much Kakashi hates being called “sir” and captain”!  Literally just yesterday I was thinking about that in relation to the last two episodes of the ANBU arc, because those episodes are also the first time we hear Kakashi being called “sensei,” and I was having so many feelings about how Kakashi has never felt comfortable with any of the other titles he’s been forced to use, and how he always tells people to stop calling him those things, but then, in this arc, as he’s finally finding out where he’s supposed to be, he also finally acquires the title we’re used to, and never once in the entire show has he chafed at being called “sensei.”  That’s the title that suits him.  That’s the title he becomes comfortable with.  That’s the one that feels natural.  It’s like how Yamato rebels at being called Kinoe and chooses a name that feels Right for him - “sensei” encapsulates who Kakashi is and what he wants to be far better than all the other honorifics he’s been saddled with.  It has none of the baggage of “captain” and none of the potential military connotations of “sir.”  It means he’s a teacher, and a teacher is exactly what he wants to be.

And that’s not to say that Kakashi doesn’t have insecurities about his suitability as a teacher, either - he definitely does, particularly given Sasuke’s situation - but hearing people call him “sensei” still doesn’t make his skin crawl the way other things do.  He’s a teacher still, regardless of whether he feels like he’s failed at it or not.  (We know he’s not a failure, obviously…he needs a little convincing still, I think.)

Semi-related, but on that last note, how much was I losing it last night to hear Naruto yelling at Obito that Kakashi “isn’t trash!  He’s just like me!”  Same damn vibes as Sakura protesting “But you’re not” in response to Kakashi saying “I’m sorry you have such a careless sensei” during that confrontation with Sasuke.  That is just…hgnghhhhhh.  I’m LIVING for Kakashi’s kids telling him how Good he is and how much he’s done for them - LIVING for them defending him not just from others, but from himself...  *pointed cough in Sasuke’s direction* get ready, kid; you’re up next!

#omg yes and the fact that asuma wanted to talk to kakashi about (what i assume was gonna be) the baby...agh!!!!!!!!!!!! #the feels just keep on coming #😭😭😭 #pan watches naruto #naruto #conversation

[itsivyberry]

always forever

Sokka x f!Reader

a/n: HI this is a request !!!! it’s a long fic because I couldn’t help myself !!!! there are also quite a few time skips because it was getting too long and I didn’t want to kill my fingers trying to finish it LMFAO enjoy ❤️

warnings: jealousy, heartbreak, major character death, hella long for no reason so sorry also TIME SKIPS!!!!! I take out important parts of the sotn episodes!!!!, also blood my bad I added that in last minute

word count: 4556

request: -hi! i saw that your requests were open, i hope i’m not bothering you but may i request sokka x jealous female reader x princess yue, and can you end it with fluff with sokka and the reader confessing their feelings for each other and getting together ^-^?

to anon: I love you and I love this request, thank you<3

music recs: lookalike - conan gray, f song - strawberry guy

taglist: @tomshollandz​

gif credit: @fireladyazula

“I’m not one to complain, but can’t Appa fly any higher?” Sokka called from the back of the saddle.

“I have an idea! Why don’t we all get on your back, and you can fly us to the North Pole?” Aang turned around, sounding rather agitated.

“I’d love to. Climb on, everyone. Sokka is ready for takeoff.” Sokka pointed to his back, shaking his bum at his companions.

“We aren’t even that far, Sokka.” Y/N lay on her back, staring up at the sky and watching the clouds drift.

“Look, we’re all just a little tired and cranky because we’ve been flying for two days straight.” Katara tried to reason.

“And for what? We can’t even find the Northern Water Tribe.” Sokka argued back. “There’s nothing up here.”

Almost as if on cue, a giant shard of ice formed just in front of Appa. Aang yelled, steering the bison away from the hunk of ice.

Y/N, Sokka, and Katara were all holding onto the saddle for dear life as Appa flew away from the forming shards of ice.

The tip of a newly formed iceberg managed to snag one of Appa’s paws, and he was sent spiraling into the cold water below.

Multiple rafts full of water benders came out from behind the large icebergs, freezing Appa in place.

“They’re water benders! We found the water tribe!” Katara exclaimed, looking around.

~.•*✰

“There it is!” Aang stood, pointing at the massive ice walls ahead.

“The Northern Water Tribe.” Katara confirmed, awe written all over her face.

“We’re finally here.” Sokka said, almost in a trance.

“See! I told you Sokka, we were almost there that entire time.” Y/N punched his shoulder playfully, earning snickers and giggles from the boy.

~.•*✰

A raft was soon leading Appa through the icy river, giving all the citizens of the Northern Water Tribe a chance to see the avatar.

As the four kids drifted through the water, Y/N couldn’t help but find herself lost in the beauty of the structures.

Everything was an amazing shade of blue, ice everywhere.

A boat with a young girl, about Y/N’s and Sokka’s age drifted just past them. Y/N was snapped out of her thoughts when Sokka jumped off the saddle, sliding down Appa’s tail.

“This place is beautiful.” Katara pointed out the obvious.

“Yeah, she is.” Sokka mumbles just loud enough to where Y/N could hear.

It hurt quite a bit, seeing her crush fall for yet another girl so quickly. Another girl, that wasn’t her.

The girl in question, however, was breathtakingly beautiful. She had icy white hair, beautiful tanned skin and these beautiful blue eyes.

Y/N understood why he was so entranced by her, but it didn’t hurt any less. Katara must’ve noticed how sour Y/N’s mood had turned, and gave a sympathetic look to her. She shrugged, standing up and plopping down right next to Aang on Appa’s head.

This was going to be a long trip.

~.•*✰

Y/N watched quietly as four members of the water tribe brought out a large platter of food for Appa. She giggled to herself as Appa growled loudly, scaring the four men off.

“Tonight, we celebrate the arrival of our brother and sister from the Southern Tribe.” The Chief motioned the Katara and Sokka. “We are also welcoming a friend from the Earth Kingdom. And they have brought with them someone very special, someone who many of us believed disappeared from the world until now... the avatar.”

Cheers erupted from the citizens surrounding the main table. Aang smiled and waved, the rest of the gaang clapping along.

“We also celebrate my daughters 16th birthday. Princess Yue is now of marrying age.” The Chief stepped aside to welcome the girl who the group saw from earlier. It all made sense to Y/N now. She looked regal because she was royalty. No wonder Sokka likes her and not Y/N.

“Thank you, father. May the great Ocean and Moon spirits watch over us during these troubled times.” She announced, looking over to the members of her tribe.

“Now, Master Pakku and his students will perform!”

Y/N fell silent again. She disconnected, watching lifelessly at the waterbending show before her.

It was embarrassing to her, watching her crush of many months pine after a girl whom Y/N could never exactly compare to.

Before she knew it, the food was served and everybody was digging in. Well, everyone except for Y/N.

“What’re you doing, Y/N/N? Eat! We have all this food now.” Aang pushes her plate closer to her.

“It’s okay, Aang. I’m not hungry.” Y/N pushed the plate back.

“It’s Sokka, isn’t it? That’s why you’ve been oddly quiet since we got here, and why you’re not eating.” Aang lowered his voice, leaning a little closer. Y/N gave a shallow nod, dropping her eyes.

“I’m pathetic. I just want to leave already.” Y/N said. “But you and Katara need a waterbending master. So I’m stuck here with my stupid crush.”

Aang fell silent once again.

Princess Yue walked over and sat beside Sokka, and the dull ache in her chest grew.

“Hi there.” Y/N heard Sokka say. “Sokka, Southern Water Tribe.”

She cringed, listening to how this boy tried to act cool in front of a pretty girl.

“Very nice to meet you.” Yue bowed her head.

“So, uh... you’re a princess, huh?” Sokka attempted to continue to conversation that was already slowly dying. “You know, back in my tribe, I’m kind of like a prince myself.”

“Ha! A prince of what?” Katara scoffed.

“A lot of things! Do you mind? I’m trying to have a conversation here.”

“My apologies, Prince Sokka.” Katara dramatically bowed, sarcasm lacing her voice. Y/N and Aang snicker from beside her.

“So, it looks like I’m gonna be in town for a while. I’m thinking maybe we could... do an activity together?” Sokka asked the princess.

Y/N choked on the piece of bread she was chewing on. Aang lightly patted her back.

Did he really just ask a princess on a date? Right in front of everyone, right in front of me? Y/N thought.

“Do an activity?” Princess Yue asked, and Y/N could tell she was trying not to laugh at the boy.

Sokka stuffed his mouth with food, coughing in the process in attempt to escape the embarrassing conversation he was so eager to continue before.

“Very smooth.” Katara leaned over to her brother.

“I’m heading back to where we’re staying. Anybody need anything? No? Okay, bye.” Y/N stood abruptly, not giving her companions any time to respond before she bowed at the chief and his daughter.

“What’s up with her?” Sokka asked, watching as Y/N scurried off.

“You did just ask out a princess in front of her.” Aang leaned over the table to speak to him.

“So what? It’s not like she likes me, or anything.” Sokka rolled his eyes. Katara and Aang shared a look, before continuing eating the lovely dinner.

~.•*✰

The following day, Aang and Katara made there way to Master Pakku’s waterbending lessons. Y/N stayed at the small house they were given, along with Sokka.

“I really like that princess, you know?” Sokka said for the tenth time in the past five minutes.

“She’s pretty. You deserve someone like her.” Y/N said despite every cell in her body screaming at her to just say she likes him then and there. She was drying off his coat with was soaked because he allegedly tripped into the ice cold river.

“I get to see her tonight.” Sokka said again, tucking his arm underneath his head as he watched Y/N dry off his coat.

She didn’t respond.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She answered just as quick as the question left his mouth.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.” Y/N huffed, laying his jacket on the back of a chair. “I’m going for a walk.” She stood, slipping on her own winter coat and walking right out the door.

Part of her hoped he would follow her, pressure her into telling him what was truly wrong. But the door never opened behind her, and her heart broke a little bit more.

~.•*✰

Y/N didn’t return until sundown. She walked on the icy paths back to where her and her friends were staying, smiling warmly at citizens she passed by.

As she approached the bridge that led straight to where the gaang was staying, she saw two figures leaning over the railing. Y/N stopped for a moment, not wanting to interrupt them.

That was, until, one of the figures ran away from the other.

She could feel the anger radiating off of the other person, and she barely had time to register the small wooden carving thrown directly at her.

There was no way the person on the bridge could’ve seen her, the only light available was the moon above. Nonetheless, it smacked her right on the side of her head, and hard.

“Ow..” Y/N groaned, rubbing her temple. She leaned down to inspect what had just hit her, and it looked to be a messy carving of a fish.

~.•*✰

“Y/N! Oh, I’m so glad you’re back. You’ll never guess what happened- oh spirits! What happened to your face?” Aang exclaimed, standing from his place in front of the small fire.

“Somebody threw something at me and now I have a big goose egg on my forehead.” Y/N frowned, unbuttoning her jacket.

“What hit you? It’s already bruised..” Katara trailed off, lightly touching the side of her face. Y/N winced and smacked her hand away.

“Some weird wooden carving thing. I was trying to get up on the bridge but it smacked me right when I turned the corner.” She pulled out the messy carving to show them.

“Oh, Sokka made this. Maybe he dropped it and somebody tried to throw it in the water.” Katara took it from Y/N, inspecting it.

“Oh, right. Made it for Yue. How could I have forgotten.” Y/N’s voice began to waver.

“He’s just a stupid teenage boy, Y/N. Don’t worry about it, he’ll come around.” Katara consoled her friend.

Aang was confused as to what Katara was implying. “Come around to what? Katara, what is Sokka going to come around to?”

~.•*✰

Y/N was already fast asleep when Sokka returned. Her sleep was light, though, and she could faintly hear them talk about warrior training.

As Aang listened to Sokka ramble about Princess Yue, something clicked in his head.

Y/N likes Sokka. Sokka likes Yue.

This explains Y/N distancing herself from everyone and disappearing every couple of hours since they arrived.

He thought for a moment, about how he could’ve missed this, even after consoling her at the feast. And how Sokka was so oblivious to Y/N’s feelings.

Aang understood completely why Y/N was suddenly standoffish and jealous.

He would just let it be for now, though.

~.•*✰

Y/N had fallen into a deeper sleep, and found herself trapped in one of the worst scenarios her brain could’ve come up with.

After Aang and Katara left to train, Sokka had decided to get some rest along with Y/N. He was awoken by the small cries, and the thrashing of a sleeping bag across the room.

He sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes and looking around for the source of the noise.

Then he spotted Y/N, whipping her head back and forth, her eyes squeezed shut.

“Y/N- hey, wake up- Y/N, it’s a dream-“ Sokka attempted to wake her, shaking her lightly. She woke with a gasp, sitting up so quickly he was sure she was going to have whiplash.

“You were having a nightmare.” Sokka kneeled by her sleeping bag, softly rubbing her back up and down.

“Spirits, I’m sorry.” She whispered out, not meeting his eyes.

“Do you want to go for a walk? Maybe it’ll help clear your head. I noticed you haven’t been getting much sleep, maybe it’ll tire you out a bit.” He offered, standing up. She nodded lightly, slipping out of the sleeping back.

Sokka handed her the soft winter coat she brought, slipping on his own right after.

They walked silently through the icy paths, eyes stinging from the cold breeze.

“What was your nightmare about?” Sokka asked once they reached a bridge, overlooking the entrance of the Northern Water Tribe.

“Don’t want to talk about it.” Y/N mumbled, leaning over the ledge to prop her head in her hand and closing her eyes.

“You know you can talk to me, right?” Sokka’s voice almost sounded offended, like he knew Y/N was holding back.

She hummed lightly, nodding with her head still in her hands.

“I know you don’t like Yue.” Sokka said after a few moments of silence, letting out a breath he seemed to be holding for hours.

“Why would I not like her? She’s a princess, the nicest one I’ve ever met. I don’t have a reason to not like her.” Y/N furrowed her brows, turning to look at him.

“I bet it’s because you want to hang out with me, but I’ve been hanging out with her.” Sokka said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. He was right,

Y/N did want to hang out with Sokka. And as much as she wanted to hate Yue for stealing him away, the princess didn’t know. Y/N was jealous, and it was bad.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I would much rather hang out with her than you.” Y/N smirked playfully, punching him lightly in the shoulder. He laughed, leaning away from her touch.

This is nice, she thought. Seeing him laugh because of her was a really nice feeling.

“Are you okay, though? You haven’t been yourself since we got here.” Sokka said, putting his head in his hands in a similar manner to her.

“Yeah. Not used to being in the freezing cold all the time.” Y/N gazed at the reflection of the moon in the icy water.

“We should go back.” Sokka’s voice snapped her out of the trance she was in. She muttered a soft ‘okay’, following him back down the stairs and to the building they were staying in.

~.•*✰

Y/N could barely comprehend what happened the following day.

Katara challenged the waterbending master to a duel. Y/N knew what was coming and was preparing to console her friend.

But, Katara ended up making an impact on the entire tribe. It was revolutionary, the way she singlehandedly destroyed a major gender norm and tradition.

On the other hand, both Sokka and Katara learned about how their grandmother ran from an arranged marriage. Aang and Y/N were beyond confused, and the day had barely started.

When Yue was brought to tears about the realization, Aang didn’t hesitate to tell Sokka to go after her.

It hurt Y/N to see him care for her so dearly, knowing he would never treat her that way.

The moon was high as Yue sat on the bridge her and Sokka first talked at.

“What do you want from me?” Yue asked through years as Sokka stepped up next to her.

“Nothing. I just want you to know, I think you’re beautiful. And I never thought a girl like you would even notice a guy like me.” Sokka said quietly, avoiding her gaze.

“You don’t understand.”

“No, no. See, that’s the thing. I think I do understand now. You’re a princess and I’m... I’m just a southern peasant.”

“No, Sokka-“ Yue tried to reason, but he cut her off before she could finish her sentence.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. I’ll see you around, okay?” Sokka turned to walk away before Yue grabbed his arm and pulled him into a kiss.

Y/N watched below in tears. She didn’t know how she kept finding herself watching them together, it just kept happening. What she didn’t hear, was what came after the kiss.

“Oh, I shouldn’t have done that. I’m engaged! And somebody else is in love with you...” Yue’s cheeks took on a red hue underneath the moonlight.

“Somebody is in love with me? What are you taking about?” Sokka’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, completely forgetting about what was happening moments ago.

“I see the way that girl in your group looks at you. I can’t do that to someone else. I’m sorry. She’s pretty, you deserve her, not me. We can’t see each other anymore. I’m sorry.” Yue’s voice broke as tears formed in her eyes again. Similar to the night before, she ran off, leaving Sokka alone on the bridge.

Y/N... in love with him? He couldn’t wrap his head around it. Then, it clicked. Sokka knew why she was acting weird.

He couldn’t just march right up to her and say he loved her, too. It wouldn’t be a complete lie, considering he had always thought she was a beautiful soul and a strong fighter since the day she joined them on their journey. Sokka was conflicted. He was just kissing Yue underneath the moon, but now he could only think of Y/N, and how miserable she must be, having nothing to do but watch and hear Sokka pine over a princess.

He needed to do something.

~.•*✰

The attack on the tribe was frightening. Y/N didn’t know her place, where to fight. She barely had the suitable weapons for the environment she was in, and she was badly outnumbered.

Escaping to the oasis, she spotted Yue and Katara. It started off as such a beautiful day, the sun shining bright above the tribe, making the ice glitter.

The snow turned black in the blink of an eye. Sokka and Yue came barreling down on Appa, rushing back to the tribe. It was frightening, seeing the once sparkling fountains turn a musty grey.

But, here Y/N was, rushing to the two girls in the warm oasis, moonlight leading her on the path.

“Katara!” Y/N called, sliding as fast as she could along the walls. She crossed the bridge, skidding to a stop when she saw both Yue and Katara standing over Aang. “Oh- Princess,” Y/N bowed clumsily, so out of breath she could barely still herself.

“No need for formalities, Y/N.” Yue said kindly.

“What’s going on? We’re being attacked bad out there!” She exclaimed, pointing over the entrance wall to the oasis.

“The Avatar is communing with the spirits. He’s looking for help.” Yue stated, looking almost solemnly down at Aang.

“He’s fine. We just need to make sure his body doesn’t move.” Katara slid down the base of a tree.

Y/N gave out a groan, feeling just as helpless as before. “He’ll be fine, Y/N. He got out all those people back at that village because of Hei Bai, remember?” Katara reassured her as she sat down next to her, staring at the back of Aang’s head.

“Maybe we should get some help.” Yue began to walk over to one of the bridges. “No, he’s our friend. We are perfectly capable of protecting him.” Katara stated, giving her a hopeful smile.

“Well, aren’t you a big girl now.” A scary familiar voice called from the other side of the oasis. “No...” Katara said, as if it would simply make the figure walking towards them go away.

“Yes.” The banished prince said, stopping at the end of one of the bridges. “Hand him over and I won’t have to hurt you.”

Katara readied herself, getting into a fighting position as Yue ran to most likely get help. Y/N jumped up, putting herself in front of Aang in a poor attempt to guard him. She was defenseless, all her weapons no match against the firebender.

Zuko began throwing punches of fire to Katara. She fought them off gracefully, using water from around the oasis pond to burn off each hit. Y/N drew one of her swords, readying herself as the two fought closer and closer towards her.

“You again, huh? I thought you would’ve backed off the last time you fought me.” Zuko snarled, bringing back a painful memory of Y/N’s, when he burned the side of her neck and part of her shoulder. The scar was faded now, just discolored, but still noticeable.

Y/N swung her sword out of instinct, fighting him off of both her and Aang. Katara brought out a thick pillar of water, slamming Zuko right in the middle of the chest, throwing him back from her friends. “I see you’ve learned a new trick. But I didn’t come this far to lose to you-“ just as he was about to throw another punch, Y/N ran and tackled him, pinning him and his arms to the ground.

“Do you ever stop monologuing, like ever?” Y/N scoffed, keeping her grip tight despite his skin growing almost unbearably hot. He growled loudly at her, trying to fight her off, but it was no use.

Just as Katara was settling down, Zuko managed one hand out of Y/N’s grasp, throwing her so hard towards a wall. She slammed into it, knocking her out. As she rolled onto the grass, Katara watched as blood began to seep from her ears.

Katara couldn’t do anything. She needed to protect Aang, but she was watching hopelessly as her two defenseless and unconscious friends lay far away from her. Zuko began fighting Katara again, slipping past her with just enough time to grab Aang and escape.

“You rise with the moon. I rise with the sun.” Zuko said, holding Aang by the collar of his shirt. Katara watched, all hope dying from her eyes as he dragged her best friend away. She looked around, locking her eyes back on Y/N. The sun began to rise, lighting the injuries she had endured with the small fight.

“Y/N, hey- come on, wake up.” Katara shook her, helping her sit up. “Where’s Aang? Where’s Zuko?” Y/N said after mumbling something incoherent, blinking from the rising sun.

“He took him. They’re both gone.” Katara’s voice was wobbly. Appa landed just as Y/N was registering what had happened before she was slammed against the ice. “What happened? Where’s Zuko?” Sokka jumped off Appa’s head, helping Yue down too.

“He took Aang. He took him right out from under me.” Katara looked at the ground in defeat. “Y/N! You’re bleeding! Oh, no...” Yue drawled, rushing up to the girl to look at the side of her face.

“Are you okay? What did Zuko do?” Sokka did the same as Yue, inspecting her for any further injuries. “He slammed her against a wall just when she had him pinned down. Then he took Aang.” Katara had tears in her eyes.

“Where did they go?” Sokka asked, more to himself than the three girls and flying lemur beside him.

~.•*✰

Y/N was devastated. The moon spirit was dead, Tui and La were no more. The sky was dark, everything surrounding them was now black and white. The moon was gone.

She could see the pain in Yue’s eyes. After being told her life story, Y/N felt so guilty for not protecting the koi spirits as much as she could’ve.

Katara screamed after Aang as he stepped into the pond. Y/N held her back, allowing him to commune with the spirits again and avenge the fallen spirit. Waterbenders bowed down to the water spirit that was protecting their tribe.

~.•*✰

Iroh solemnly placed the dead koi back into the pond.

“It’s too late. It’s dead.” Katara leaned over to look at the spirit. Iroh’s face lit up with an idea, and he looked over to Yue.

“You have been touched by the moon spirit. Some of its life is in you.”

“Yes, you’re right... it gave me life. Maybe I can give it back.” Yue spoke softly, her voice contrasting against the silence that filled the oasis.

“No!”

“Yue, no!” Sokka and Y/N called at the same time. Sokka reached for her hand, trying to pull her back.

“You can’t do this, Princess.” Y/N pleaded.

“You don’t have to do that.” Sokka tried to tell her.

“It’s my duty, Sokka.” “I wont let you! Your father told me to protect you!”

“I have to do this.” She walked, her hand slipping from Sokka’s grasp. Yue delicately placed her hands atop the fish, letting the life it gave her pass back through to it.

The bright light went out just as quickly as it shone. Yue fell limp, one last breath passing through her lips. Sokka caught her just before she hit the ground, and Y/N had to cover her mouth to stop the sobs.

“She’s gone. She’s gone.” Sokka found his voice, hugging Yue’s body close to him.

“Oh, spirits.” Katara whimpered, hugging Y/N close. It was as if all of them had lost a close friend, even though they had all only known her a few days.

Y/N turned to the sound of soft humming, seeing Sokka’s arms now empty and a puzzled look on his face. She wiped the tears from her eyes, sniffling in confusion.

The fish, now alive, was placed back into the pond, allowing the water to glow a bright white. A misty figure rose from the water, and took the shape of a beautiful young woman that Y/N recognized as Yue. She looked ethereal, practically glowing.

“Goodbye, Sokka. I’ll always be with you. Don’t be afraid of loving the right person, ever.” Her voice echoed across the oasis. Y/N watched quietly as her spirit traced the side of his face, before turning to where she and Katara stood.

“Thank you for showing me kindness. I’ll miss you all dearly.”

Her presence was gone as Sokka looked where she once was. Y/N couldn’t feel any more guilty, walking up to Sokka and pulling him into a hug. He cried quietly into her shoulder, squeezing her so tight she thought he might break one of her ribs.

Sokka has just lost another girl he loved, and he wouldn’t be letting this girl go anytime soon.

~.•*✰

Team Avatar now flew on the back of Appa, riding silently as the sun rose once again.

They all recounted the previous couple of days’ events, from the Fire Nation attack to losing a Princess.

Y/N hadn’t left Sokka’s side, and was there whenever he needed comfort. She had come to terms that he needed time, and that he wasn’t going to be okay for a while.

Little did she know, that his feelings for her has resurfaced since they left. Sokka was grieving, of course, and didn’t want to dump his feeling into Y/N in fear of her not taking him seriously. But Yue’s words stuck with him, and he truly wasn’t going to be afraid of opening himself back up for love.

Weeks passed, and he was growing closer to her every night they camped out. Katara picked up on his feelings, and didn’t hesitate to tell Aang.

The first night he kissed her was under the stars. The two teenagers were stargazing, Y/N telling Sokka everything she knew about each constellation in the sky.

She turned her face to find he wasn’t looking at the sky with her, but rather studying her profile. Before she knew it, he surged forward and pressed his lips to hers. Y/N barely hesitated before kissing him back.

“You will be my always forever.”

A whisper, a promise in the wind. And he meant it.

~.•*✰

a/n: god this request is literally five years old I’m so sorry anon I really tried my hardest. I love this tho lol hope y’all enjoyed

#sokka x yue #sokka of the southern water tribe #atla sokka #sokka headcanon #sokka x you #sokka x reader #sokka imagine #sokka #sokka fanfic #avatar sokka #sokka x y/n #sokka and katara #atla #avatar: tla #avatar aang #avatar the last airbender #avatar: the last airbender #aang #katara #princess yue #northern water tribe #seige of the north

[roswellnmsource]

Jeanine Mason and Roswell, New Mexico showrunner preview season 3 of the extraterrestrial drama

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Was the year time jump because of the pandemic? To sidestep making that too central to the plot, or was that always the plan?

JEANINE MASON: That was always our intention and it was just sort of a saving grace in that way. We also don't acknowledge the pandemic in real-time on our show. There are no masks and that was just so wonderful just to get work in that way and have that time where it was a little more normal. Also, that's just our show — we want you to come to us the way you always do, which is for nineties nostalgia, sexy Cowboys, brilliant scientists, you know?

CHRIS HOLLIER: So we wanted to drop our characters in a year later, let them stew in their individual decisions that were made last season. We want everyone to root for our poster couple but we want to honor what happens in real life, which is sometimes you step away from that person, even if you are entwined with them in a very particular way. So we wanted it to be a real enough time and distance so that they could live a little life on their own.

With showrunner Carina Adly MacKenzie departing at the end of season 2, has much changed? Or are you still working with ideas she had in place?'

HOLLIER: It's a little bit of both. There are things that Carina and I built that live all the way through and then once the story got up on its feet, discoveries were made with our new crop of people that we were like, "Oh, we're going to bend it this other way."

Jeanine, how is Liz doing in her new life in L.A. when we pick up this season?

MASON: Well, it's been a year and at this point, her life is actually pretty great. She just hasn't taken a second to acknowledge that. She's doing what she does best, which is just full head in her work and trying to figure out what she could use of her discoveries and her brilliance to save Maria. She has a great job, a really nice place, and an awesome partner at work who is a good time and a real match for her in terms of intellect and ambition. He begins to ask her to recognize that and to maybe give something a chance that she's been reluctant to because of how drawn she is to Roswell and to Max. It's a fun first episode. It's sexy. It's fun to find opportunities for her. She's our hero so she's got a lot on her shoulders and anytime where we can find levity for her is always a real treat for the writers and for me.

And no Crashdown waitress uniform must be nice?

MASON: Honestly, I miss it quite a lot right now. I have a note in my notes with Chris, I'm like, "I gotta tell him we gotta find him more opportunities for it."

Should Liz and Max shippers be worried about them finding their way back to one another after he destroyed her work and didn't follow her to L.A.? Should we resign ourselves to a season apart?

MASON: This season really is about these characters having themselves mirrored to each other. Max and Liz need some growing and ultimately they can't do anything but be orbiting each other. We found so many opportunities to have such a beautiful language around the cosmic element of their connection. They're asking, "Is this our decision, or are we just acting off of a decision that the cosmos made for us?" It was so fun to navigate that. I always have such a good time with Chris Hollier and with Nathan Dean, just finding the little tiny notches, a tiny bit of movement towards where they're going next. I really loved following them. It's my favorite Max and Liz season to date.

HOLLIER: It's not a season apart. I'll tease that they, in an unexpected way, end up in front of each other relatively soon. But it's really about when am I ready? And what does it mean to talk to my ex? When someone makes such a big influence in your life, when do you know it's over and when do you know you should fight again? We tried to give them real grown-up lives.

Steven Krueger (The Originals) also joined the cast as Heath this season. What can you tease about his character?

HOLLIER: He's just an awesome human being. I know him from The Originals and we were like, "If we're going to have to be stuck with people in the desert, who do we want?" You want to be stuck with a handsome and lovely and charming Steven Krueger. So really this was looking at, "Well, what did Liz want and what does it look like when you start to give Liz versions of what she wants?" Heath is somebody that is beyond being just a lovely person, he is smart and wants to advance science and that's appealing to Liz. It becomes, "What does it look like when the man that I hang around with all day is also into the same things that I am?"

MASON: I love him. Heath is just such a fun, whip-smart, fantastic character. His humor was so fun. We've been having a good time with kicking the humor up really through season two and in season three, we just took it up another notch. There are some moments that are like, "Is this a drama or is it a sitcom?" Looking back on it, he was such a fun partner to spar with. They're both such intellectual characters and I love that there's a real meeting of the minds. It makes it competitive and sexy. I know a lot of fans are so excited because they know him from The Originals and he's going to be a great addition.

Technically, Mr. Jones is a new character too. Can you tell us anything at all about him?

HOLLIER: I'd say he's a new character — and a fully-fleshed interesting new character. Mr. Jones has an awesome beard. At some point, he might lose that beard. A lot of people are asking me, "Is Jones good or bad?" And what I would argue is that's a perspective based upon who you are in the conversation that you're having with him. He knows a lot about our heroes' story and he knows a lot about home. He'll be able to answer questions for them. This season our heroes will get to learn why they ended up here on earth. One of the things I think that people will love is that they're going to get to see that home planet this year. We asked ourselves a lot about this whole season, "What have we set up for the past two?" We look at these first three seasons almost like a trilogy so a lot of things are going to be paid off.

Has Nathan enjoyed pulling double duty this season? Or is he just exhausted?

MASON: He's exhausted, but he's such a champ. That really is the beginning of this mirroring thing that starts with Max and Jones with him actually getting to look at himself to a degree and those questions that come up. The self-analysis that it provokes in him is really the beginning of what is happening to all of our characters this year; everybody's being confronted with themselves. I loved that the Max/Jones of it was also a real sci-fi element.

Did he really grow that beard or was that not possible if he had to go between the two characters?

MASON: That was a prosthetic beard and our makeup team killed it. He was not accustomed to early mornings, which, of course, all of us babes are. It was a lot of extra time in the chair for him.

Can Jones dupe Liz into thinking he's actually Max since she doesn't know he exists?

MASON: You're totally on to something. It's a real and pressing threat. I mean, she's totally in the dark and he looks like her cosmic lover!

HOLLIER: What I will say is that, Liz — beyond her being number one on the call sheet — is integral to this story in a way that she and none of our characters are going to perceive when they start episode one. We're bringing [the characters] to a new crossroads moment in their lives and they're getting, through Jones, a mirror into their own lives to decide what they're going to become next.

How's Rosa (Amber Midthunder) doing this season?

MASON: By the end of season two, Rosa really makes the decision to start taking care of herself. She really becomes an incredible asset to the Scooby-Doo gang. It's something that Liz is in constant adjustment to. As much as she's the younger sister, she feels very protective of her sister and Liz has had to make adjustments in her trust and faith in Rosa. I loved it because it just felt like a real personal, authentic thing that sisters would go through, but also that Hispanic sisters would go through. I think we sometimes, culturally, have a tendency to baby our women — maybe that's the wrong word — but just to underestimate their physical ability and what they might take on, and sort of 'queen' our women in a way where we treat them tenderly. I hate that. I'm a tough bitch and so is Rosa. So Liz has to confront that and go, "I'm an idiot to underestimate you. You've done nothing but prove me wrong."

What about Maria and her visions?

HOLLIER: This year I think Maria has the most complete arc of any season, as she recognizes things about herself that cause more questions about who she is, who her family is, how she's linked to this story. We dive into it in the present-day and we dive deliciously back in time too.

In the exclusive clip above we see her have a vision of a funeral, can you tease anything about who potentially might be about to die?

HOLLIER: Maria is front and center in driving the first half of the mystery for us. She's burdened with trying to figure out whose death she is seeing. It takes a few episodes to unravel and we use it to ask, is this linked to our supernatural stories or real-world stories that are going on politically? Is it bad luck? Is it herself? There's a whole gambit at play. We joke that we solved a past murder, now we're going to try to stop one.

Can Malex (Michael and Alex) shippers have hope that this might finally be their time?

HOLLIER: What I would say is that I think that Malex fans are really going to dig this journey. We, as writers, put them at the same level of importance as Max and Liz. So we wanted to really honor the next step in what they may or may not be. How did they grow up and how did they have those hard conversations just like Liz and Max are going to have?

Is Isobel going to continue to date women this season?

HOLLIER: Isobel is going to go on a more personal journey. You got to love yourself before you can love someone else. We lean into those possibilities by the end of who she might love. It's not something that is dropped all season — it is something that you'll see. We play some romantic comedy stuff with her character this year and with Maria that I think fans are gonna dig. There's a lot going on in the world and wanted to pump some humor and hope into it.

Will see more of Liz fighting to challenge the perception of the Latinx community?

MASON: I think that just by nature of it being one of such few shows that are led by a Latin woman, it's always going to be, to an extent, a protest or an assertion of the space that I get to fill and that Liz Ortecho gets to fill on network TV. I was really excited to just have Chris as a collaborator. Over our hiatus, before the season started, I was doing a lot of reading. I chronicled the books that play into Liz every season on my Instagram. I was reading some Sonia Sotomayor. Her book is just incredible. I was texting him screenshots of pages of the book with things underlined. Ten episodes deep into season 3, he's like, "Remember that page you sent me?" He's a real dream collaborator. I loved him for that. A pressing struggle for people of color is going through the ranks in these big corporations and then sometimes coming to find out that those corporations are purporting to support marginalized groups but actually aren't following through. So how do you, as someone who's having your success, your dreams become reality, navigate supporting the company and giving so much of your intelligence and your work — that they often legally own, especially with science — to a company that isn't going to be for your people?

#jeanine mason #chris hollier #roswell new mexico #press #cast #rnm spoilers #follow link for a maria/greg/vision clip!

[chaoticdean]

SEAL Team, the parallels and Jason Hayes’ journey

[Spoilers for 4x01 and 4x02, read at your own risks!]

I don’t know if my mind keeps going there because I’ve been watching Supernatural and reading between the lines for so long, but the way SEAL Team highlighted Jason’s journey through these last two episodes absolutely blew my fucking mind.

THE GODDAMN PARALLELS, PEOPLE.

The first and obvious one are the parallels they’ve started to set between Jason and Cerberus, all the way into season 3: Cerberus not being on top anymore, making mistakes that could potentially be dramatic (which he does on that op, effectively taking Brock down at first and then Jason), and Brock having to make the hard decision of taking him off duty; Jason, on the other hand, is left wondering what’s left of his life, if he still has a purpose as Forces leave Afghanistan and J-Bad behind, if Jason Hayes can exist outside of War. 04x01 was set to parallel both stories and it’s been done so very effectively (also side note, gotta thank Director DB for these gorgeous wide plans — boy might have taken a page out of the Lord of the Rings playbook, as per @camille-williams’ comment​). The parallels between Jace and Cerb ends with the scene where Brock brings him back into the cages’ room, and there’s an interesting bit of dialog from Jason here that directly highlights Jace’s path:

“A warrior’s place is on the battlefield. That dog was bred to be in the fight. But I think he’s suffered way too much stress, combat and trauma. I think it’s time for him to just be a dog.”

………… sirs, is that foreshadowing?

(yes, it is)

The way they set the flashbacks between current-Jace and 13-years-ago-Jace was absolutely spot on, basically highlighting Jason’s self-doubts as they’re going into their final mission with Bravo Team ‘as it stands’ (because both Ray and Clay are set to leave at that point). The way Jason’s mind went from “Family first” to “Bravo Team always comes first” takes a wide place, also highlighting all the in-betweens — Jason wanting to be a family man, having more kids/opposed to Jason walking on Ray and Naima being sweet as fck (The Perrys, man, do I love the Perrys ❤️) and looking at that picture of Alana and Mickey with blank eyes. We get a glimpse at what Jason used to be, carefree, always in for a fight and a laugh, which is now being paralleled by the team-leader who gets shit done. I also loved that we got to see what Ray was like before he turned into what he is now, paralleling with his current family situation (again, THE PERRYS ❤️).

The parallels between Jason’s ex team leader Guzo and present team leader Jace was one I didn’t expected but ended up loving. We get to see how Jason evolved and morphed into the warrior and team leader he is today, and truth be told, I don’t think he’d be here without Guzo. We see him knock some sense into young Hayes, and we get to see the exact moment where Jason’s head shifts into the Team mode we’ve been seeing him in ever since the serie started. I also personally loved some of the tidbits we got from the dialog (“You can’t be half a gangster, Hayes”, “All in all the time”), including the “When you’re outside the wire, home is where you hang your helmet” because that’s a direct callback to a line that Jason said to Ray in season 3. There’s a lot of Guzo in Jason, and this episode put a lot of effort into making sure we get to understand Jace’s journey… which I loved, because we didn’t get to see a lot of that in the past.

Then comes the parallels between Clay and Jason, set so carefully since season 1, that turns into a very blatant show of “Clay is Jason from a decade ago minus the goddamn trauma”. There’s a whole different meta post to be made about Clay’s story arc over these last two episode, and I’m not sure I have the strength to dive in just yet, but I’ll say this bit: Clay’s story has been crafted from day 1 to be paralleled with Jason’s, and if that wasn’t clear enough before, I think these two episodes gave us the most solid view of that. If not for the fact that it’s Clay who get’s to take out Al-Hazred Jr. when we know Jason took out Al-Hazred Sr. 13 years before (effectively moving his career forward onto the path he’s now been on for a decade), I think the plan has always been to follow Clay’s journey as he works up the ladder of Bravo Team, and with STA-21 taken off the table and Bravo 1 stepping down, I wouldn’t be surprised to see both Ray staying and Clay effectively starting to train as Bravo 2 (although there are probably going to be disciplinary consequences, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see that pattern unfold later on during the season). 

Which brings me to my best friend’s question from last night: when do you think Jason’s “Oh” moment happened? Was it there all along, or does he work up to it during those two hours and come to realization later on in that bar?

I do think he works up to it. It’s clearly highlighted throughout the entire episode, but the first thing that struck me is the way the flashbacks are carefully crafted to give off a “what’s my place in all of this, and do I still have one” vibe. 

The scene where Ray is Skyping with Naima when Jason arrives was incredibly powerful to me. The dialog itself (“Just come home safe, that’s all that matters to anyone in this house / People in that house is what matters to me the most”) highlights Jason’s family situation, the fact that he’s coming home to an empty apartment, and it’s directly shown by him taking Alana and Mickey’s photo in hand. That’s when we get the “Family always come first” flashback, and it’s maybe the most painful of it all.

We see Jason’s doubts as to where he stands in this, and it might be the first time ever. The parallels (again!) between now-Bravo-1-Jason and then-Bravo-1-Guz is so carefully set that I half-expected him to show up at the end in that bar, knocking some sense into Jason (I guess he kind of did, since Jason is looking at Guzo’s picture on the bar’s wall before he gathers the Team to say his piece). 

Then there’s the conversation between Chaplain Walker and Jace, and boy, oh boy, is it foreshadowing (no pun intended) (okay, maybe a little). 

For the sake of it, let me just pull up dialogs real quick:

J: Whole place will be scrapped in a month. You’ll be out of business.

W: I’ll be reassigned. Address will change, job never does.

J: You ever wish you had a job where at the end of it, there was a sign that, I don’t know, said that you were done, that it was over?

W: What would that look like?

J: My Flyers, when they win the Stanley Cup, they go down Broad St. and they have a parade. It’s a victory… you see it.

W: Unfortunately for us, the war on terror doesn’t have a goal line to cross. But you know, you don’t strike me as the type who need to spike the football. 

J: Just be nice to know that it was worth the cost. 40 fallen brothers, a broken marriage, broken body… broken head.

W: You told me last time we spoke, you know you’ve made an impact that will last forever here.

J: The only thing that’s gonna last forever is this war. I’ll — I’ll see you around.

W: You know, I —  I think you’re wrong about them just scrapping it all. Somebody’s gonna sort through it. You know, ask the questions that we all should ask.

J: I don’t understand. What do you mean?

W: End of the day — what do you take away from here? What can you pull from the rubble, to be cherished? What do you need to leave behind? And what can you pass on to someone else?

SEAL Team 04x02 — Forever War

This is the first time I’ve ever seen Jason voice his doubts, in public, to someone who is NOT Ray, or for that matter, Sonny. This is Jason acknowledging that he doesn’t really know where he stands, or what’s left for him. We’re starting to see the “where does Jason Hayes stands in all of this, and can Jason Hayes exists outside of the battlefield”.

(Also, I love Chaplain Walker, can we keep him pretty please?)

Then they go home, and Mandy drops the hammer on him (“If I don’t walk away now, I’m gonna lose myself forever”). He sees firsthand someone he loves and connects with deciding to walk away. The whole conversation between them is Jason trying so hard to hold onto the threads and Mandy basically saying “this is me walking away because I can, we can, you still can. You’re not just a shell of a man doomed to be sent on the battlefield, Jason, there’s more to it.”

We get the cages’ room scene with Cerberus coming back and Jason voicing the fact that it’s time for Cerberus to “just be a dog” because he’s seen enough war, enough trauma. 

And then comes the bar scene with a steel chair. 

First and foremost, and that is not entirely Jason related, but I’m a big fan of the song choice in the background of the Savis scene (Matt Costa’s Make That Change), if only for the exact part of the lyrics that have been chosen to be played at that exact moment (“Because the start is the finish line, even if you take two steps back / You gotta make that change to see a brighter day”). Now, I don’t really believe in coincidence, and even if it is… It’s a really nice nods to what’s about to unfold.

And boy, does that unfold. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a sobbing mess all through the entirety of Jason’s speech. 

I think learning that Clay’s taking the fall for Ray is the final straw for Jason. We see the realization on his face right before he turns to Guzo’s portrait on the wall. I’m not going to go much further than that, I’ve giffed the whole dialog of Jason explaining he’s standing down earlier right here. 

All I’ve got to say at this point is that this was supposed to be our season finale last season, and it culminated the whole arc of Jason’s character over season 3. I’m incredibly excited to see what’s in store for the rest of season 4, and how/if Jason adapts. I see growth through a man that spent a lot of time trying to ignore and override the signs of his body and mental health to keep grinding, because he truly believed that’s what he was meant to be. I wonder what his next step is going to be, and where it’s going to take him.

This is incredibly all over the place, but I swear I’ll get better at sorting through my ideas overtime. Until then, enjoy that mess of a meta and feel free to add to it if you’ve got anything else to say.

#good lord spn really did broke me #i know for a fact that literally NO ONE is going to read that long ass post but i also DON'T GIVE A FUCK #this is 2k words about jason hayes and i'm not sorry #seal team #seal team meta #seal team cbs #jason hayes #character meta #character analysis #jus.meta #seik-o #archer-and-lionprince #usersamanne #overtimeme #mutteringghost #abcdefuk-off #usermone #userbravo

[angelsndragons]

Okay, since I see a lot of people either straight up panicking or saying that Caduceus’ playlist is straight up depressing (neither reaction I get)....I’m gonna offer a different reading of the songs here, how does that sound?

Death Bed Salesman - This is straight up about Caduceus’ family and his upbringing. His father even says some of the lyrics almost word for word in ep 96. Growing up surrounded by death and all the rituals created for the living left behind made Caduceus into the person he is. ‘This is how it has to end/So love somebody while you can’ like talk about a thesis statement for Caduceus’ outlook.

How are You Doing - Wow this song is pulling double duty. Caduceus is not a character who likes burdening other people with his own problems, preferring to keep a calm, polite distance between others and his feelings. The style of this song harkens over to Jester, it’s very bubbly and sweet sounding. Of course, this is also one of Jester’s primary issues (someone please tell the clerics they can be people with problems too). Now, if you do what I did and go watch the music video for this song, two things will stick out. One is the increasing ridiculous scenarios the singers find themselves in while going about their day to day lives juxtaposed against their ‘nothing’s wrong, everything’s fine’ lyrics. Two is the fact that these singers come out at the end of the song together, they have triumphed over the madness and nothing stopped them from doing what they wanted and needed to do. This song encapsulates early Caduceus, while he was getting a feel for the Nein and being drowned every other second, ultimately his contributions to the Pirate Arc were fundamental to the group’s success. 

Vegetables - Honestly, this song just reminds me of that early conversation with Fjord in the Sour Nest. Caduceus is cooking omelets and just casually asks Fjord if he could look for veggies down in the torture chamber since it would ‘make a good root cellar.’ Fjord is so caught off guard by this request, and understandably so, he just repeats ‘Roots?’ Caduceus then just lists off root vegetables like Fjord’s an idiot. Oh, Cad. XD Honestly I like that the beat line is being made by vegetable chomping, it just feeds into the ‘Caduceus is a giant magical cow man’ vibes and I love it.

When the World is at Rest - Xhorhaus! In the middle of that street! Xhorhaus! In all seriousness, this song pulls double duty as well. ‘I miss the sun but the moons will do in a pinch’ anyone? The first and most obvious thing this song reminds me of is when the group is given the house and Caduceus asks, ‘are we putting down roots here?’ With the single act of planting that tree on the tower, Caduceus turned the house into the Mighty Nein’s home. Can’t get your deposit back after that, after all XD. I think of how this home in the dark has sheltered and protected the Nein so many times. I think of them befriending Essek and how that wasn’t part of the plan (you know, like Caduceus himself). I think of how their plans to end the war were hatched in darkness, how violated they all felt when one of their own was taken and when another was assassinated under cover of night, because the darkness had come to feel safe to them. I think of how much the Nein has blossomed since this house became their home, since they all had a place to go back to that was theirs. I think of how the Nein has given the world a breather, a chance to rest, all because they returned a beacon and befriended a traitor. 

Wildflowers - So, there are a couple of interpretations of this song. One is setting a lover or loved one free from your own feelings and letting them go. Another is that the singer is trying to find a place to bury a loved one (’that home by and by’ around where I live and grew up is a roundabout reference to heaven). Honestly, both interpretations are apt for Caduceus. He does his best to not burden others with his worries and feelings, he was the one who stayed home, which granted his siblings the freedom they needed to leave, etc. The second interpretation fits Caduceus as well because we know one of his secret hopes is that the Nein will let him tend their bodies and graves when the time comes. And now I’m gonna put on my TeaHaw hat for a goddamn minute bc holy heck, this is such a good song for both of them, Caduceus reminding Fjord that he deserves freedom and his beloved sea again, Fjord teaching Caduceus to follow his heart and embrace new experiences. ‘I have seen no other/Who compares with you’ really fits their complimentary and praise styles with each other. Thank you, Tal.

Never did No Wandering - Don’t have much to add to what Taliesin said about the song. For once. I think of Caduceus’ loneliness in the Grove and his regret that he didn’t leave sooner. I think of how he could only leave in the context of duty, of just how much his duty as a grave cleric to Melora has defined and shaped his understanding of himself. I think of how long it took for him to voice his own desires and wants. I think of how he insists he isn’t wandering, that he is following a pre-ordained path. I think of how much work he still has to do when it comes to knowing what he wants and making peace with getting it just for his own sake. Also, hello more sailors.

When You Get to Ashville - Oof, so this song works both ways for Caduceus, both as the singer and the subject of the song. I think of him, home alone for ten years, wondering what was going on with his family, if they were safe (he knew they weren’t, he knew what it took to keep them from him), how he didn’t actually want to know unless he could help. As the subject, I see his family, having only been away for what was maybe two years for them, looking at the changes in him in awe and confusion. Nothing’s changed for them but boy howdy has Caduceus changed. The homebody has left the nest and saved them all and he very obviously doesn’t want to go home yet if at all. Caduceus has waited so long to get them back and to be a family again yet when the time comes, he can’t bring himself to return, as the singer implies about the subject. He knows his family will be there to catch him if he needs it but I think this episode is where it really hit him that he’d been trying to recreate a past that never could be again because he could never go back to being who he was. 

Fuck it I’m a Flower - Another Caduceus anthem. Upbeat with a few melancholy lyrics. You can take it as the singer divorcing themself from humanity or you can take it as the singer using flowers as a metaphor for their growth into someone who becomes more involved (the singer goes from not marching to taking on other people’s pain from their place of safety to fully embracing the movement to change things while they can). I don’t have any context for this song but it really freaking reminds me of those protest photos where a protester offers a flower to the riot police (fuck the police). Caduceus is blossoming into a man who genuinely cares about the wider world and the people within it. Not just abstractly, which I would argue he did back in the Grove. But being up close to the ordinary folks in the Dynasty, in the Empire, the Coast, has given him a new perspective on not just his place but where he wants to stand. I think of Jester’s conversation with him back in Oh Captain Who’s Captain, the world is much bigger and messier than Caduceus could have ever dreamed. I think of Caduceus befriending and being kind to their crew and Avantika’s. I think of ‘Nott, you went to find help, we’re here to help.’ I think of ‘one day someone will pray for a miracle and that prayer will be answered because you showed up, that’s what this is all about.’ From rescuing Yeza to saving Giants to shattering the chains binding two of his friends to bringing peace to two warring nations to separating justice from vengeance, just look at where he is now: no longer passive or uncertain of how they can contribute to the world, Caduceus and the Nein have brought so much good into it. Caduceus knows where he stands now. Some people say that he’s the Nein’s moral compass and I disagree with that entirely, he’s become the courage to act on their moral compasses. 

Oh Bury Me Not - Okay, so I know this is where some listeners start to get antsy with all the death talk in this song and the ones after it so breathe, it’s fine. Caduceus is a Grave Cleric, y’all. Tal says that this song is an expression of Caduceus’s religious beliefs, which, uh, yeah. There is no stained glass in the Blooming Grove temple, they do all their work outside the traditional structures of religion and civilization and do it gladly, etc. The ending Bury Me Not, okay, guys, Caduceus is the singer here, not the kid being sung about. It really drives home the Wildmother’s philosophy on death: when you’re dead, you’re dead and you have no say over what happens to the corpse left behind. I think of the corpse of the Great Hero and the founding of the Blooming Grove, the Menagerie, and the Kiln. I think of Caduceus’ onscreen death and how through it, he finds his path to the Kiln. I think of him reviving Fjord. I think of him and this island and how much of a perversion it is of the ‘natural order’. Also, just given how much Fjord has impacted has impacted Caduceus’ ideas of faith and signs and stuff, it’s so fitting that this piece is here. I also think cowboys and how Tal said he’d planned on using the Ocean Burial before he came across this, I see you, Tal. 

September Song - So that build up, huh? I think of Caduceus and the Nein readying themselves for a battle to the death to save Yasha and stop Obann. I think of all the close-calls and near misses. I think of how every day, these people choose over and over and over to stay together, in spite of the coming winter, in spite of the obvious danger, in spite how much safer they would all be if they went their separate ways and planted their heads in the sand. I think of how that, their time, is the most precious gift any of them could give the others. This is not a sad thing, by the way. All these people, who have been so badly wounded by others, who are so skittish and so distrustful and so guarded, choose to stay together over and over again. No matter the hardship. They choose to spend their lives together, they choose to be better together and for each other.

22 (Over Soon) - Guys, this is 100% an Episode 95-96 song. 100%, no question in my book. I think of what Caduceus doesn’t say to his family. I think of what he does say. I think of how overwhelmed he is when the Nein saves them, I think of how he can only muster ‘It’s been a long time.’ (All these years) I think of him trying so hard to be given permission to stay with the Nein without explicitly asking for it, the subtext of ‘would you forgive me if I don’t come home yet’ threaded through his every interaction with his family. I think of how Caduceus hands the seeds over to his sister and tells her to be the hero the Grove and their family needs. I think of how easily and willingly he gave up what he’s called his destiny and charge since the beginning in order to stay with the Nein. This is Caduceus saying good-bye once and for all to the dreams of things going back to the way they were. I think Caduceus had been hoping that his family had changed just as much as he had. I think if they had, he might have gone back with them. But they haven’t changed and he has. So he can’t go home. Not yet. He cloaks his desire to stay with the Nein once more in duty but make no mistake, it’s desire that’s keeping him with them, people who may not understand him but who try and who are there and who accept the new person he has become. The build-up Tal was talking about? This is it. The moment where Caduceus first puts himself and his desires above what he thinks is his duty. The moment that Caduceus fully realizes how much he has changed and what an earth-shattering revelation it is.

We’ll Meet Again - Meetings and Partings have always had a special place in Caduceus’ arc, especially metatextually. He was the character who replaced another, who was rescued from his static seclusion by three of the Nein and who in turn rescued the three captive members. I think of how this song is a promise that, come what may, the singer will do their damnedest to return and make that promise a reality. I think of all the weird and wonderful people Caduceus has met in his short time outside the Grove. I think of all the shop keeps who just love this pink fuzzball and how many times they tell him to come back. I think about the Dusts, the meeting and parting and sanctuary they gave him. I think about Reani and Nila and how his kindness to them has come back threefold (Reani escorting his family home, Nila protecting the Grove). I think about Essek. I think about how driven Caduceus became to reforge the sword after Yasha was taken, to bring her home. I think of Caduceus prodding the Gentleman into reconciling with Jester. I think of his delight in the coincidences that keep lining up between him and Fjord. I think about Caduceus and Beau and how proud he is of her growth. I think of his declaration in the dome that ‘We aren’t done until we’ve saved each other.’ 

Enjoy It - And we wrap up our playlist with another Caduceus thesis statement: don’t worry about the things you can’t change, find the goodness and light in all of your experiences. If it’s meant to be easy, it will be and if it’s meant to be hard, it will be hard. You’re the green bean and you can choose to become jaded at the storms or enjoy the water flooding your roots. This song also fits the lightness we’ve seen from Caduceus since sending his family home. His big quest, his reason for leaving home, has been fulfilled (so he thinks, pretty sure Molaesmyr will be calling in the Nein’s near future) so now he can just sit back, relax, and fully enjoy the ride.

TL;DR - Growing up and moving on is hard and painful but it is also triumphant and necessary. Learning to be who you are and to place yourself on your list of priorities is a journey full of quiet work that few rarely glimpse. Caduceus’ whole arc has been about who he is and what he’s going to do with the strong moral compass he’s got - Is he going to continue to live in the world, even with all the pain, struggle, joy, and goodness that comes with it, or is he going to retreat from it, go back to his little patch of green and forget about it? All signs point to the former, not the latter. In tarot, Death means transformation and sweeping change even more than it does literal death. Caduceus’ playlist is all about the transformation of his self even as he remains true to his core beliefs.

#cr spoilers #caduceus clay #caduceus #cr playlist #caduceus playlist #ohmygod what am i doing with myself #this is what happens when i get annoyed #i write thousands of words about a fucking playlist #theyre good songs brent #theyre not depressing just bc they include death metaphors #there is so much love #and light #and beauty #and i really hope this helps others see that #critical role #cr2

[aion-rsa]

How Final Destination Went From Real-Life Premonition to Horror Phenomenon

https://ift.tt/30jSLcc

The year 2000 was a scary one for horror films and not always in a good way.  

While American Psycho and The Cell offered up visually striking nihilistic thrills to genre fans, the majority of horror movies released at the dawn of the new millennium were at best forgettable and, at worst, lamentable – yes, we’re looking at you, Leprechaun in the Hood.  

This was the year of duff sequels like Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Urban Legends: Final Cut and, though it is painful to admit, Scream 3. Horror fans were screaming out for something different, something exciting. They found it with Final Destination.  

Discarding the stalk-and-slash thrills that had enjoyed a revival in the years following the release of Scream, Final Destination centered on a group of high schoolers who end up avoiding a fatal plane crash thanks to a premonition, only to discover there is no escaping death’s plan as one by one they are offed in a variety of brilliantly inventive “accidents”.  

Released in March of that year, Final Destination was a sleeper hit with word-of-mouth helping the film to clean up at the box office, earning $112 million off a $23 million budget with more than half of that coming internationally.  

To date, it has spawned four sequels as well as a variety of novelisations and comic book spin-offs while a franchise reboot is also on the horizon.  

Read more

Movies

The Final Destination Movies, Ranked

By Sarah Dobbs

Jeffrey Reddick has worked on several films during his career to date but he’s probably best known as the creator of Final Destination. It’s something he has come to terms with.  

“It’s probably going to end up on my gravestone, it’s such an ironic title,” he tells Den of Geek.  

“Sometimes I’ll be out and I will hear someone say ‘you just had a Final Destination moment’ and it will make me smile. The whole thing just took on a life of its own.”  

Nightmarish Origins  

A screenwriter and director, Reddick recalls how his neighbors in rural Jackson, Kentucky, would laugh when his six-year-old self would tell them about his plans to work in the movie business.   

An avid writer and reader of Greek and Roman mythology, he recalls spending his formative years watching horror movies with his friends. His mother was only too happy to indulge his burgeoning interest too, knowing it kept him out of trouble elsewhere.  

Reddick’s life began to change after he saw A Nightmare on Elm Street.   

“That film cemented my love of horror. I was this 14-year-old hillbilly from Kentucky but I decided I was going to write a prequel. I went home, banged it out on my typewriter and sent it to Bob Shaye.”  

The legendary head of New Line Cinema initially dismissed Reddick’s draft out of hand, returning it with a note explaining the studio did not “accept unsolicited material.”  

Undaunted, Reddick sent the script back with a note telling him “Look mister, I spent three dollars on your movie and I think you could take five minutes on my story.”  

Shaye was impressed and struck up a bond with the youngster that saw him sending everything from scripts to posters to Reddick during his teenage years.  

When Reddick moved to New York to study acting, age 19, he was offered an internship with New Line, which would become a full-time role despite acting being his “main passion.”  

“Diversity in casting was not a thing at that time,” he recalls.  

“My agent was like ‘I don’t know what to do with you as an actor. We can’t put you up for gangsters or pimps and you don’t rap and you don’t play basketball.”  

“So  I figured, screw it, I will just write stuff and put myself in it.”  

Reddick was present at New Line during their company’s early 90s creative heyday and credits the experience with helping him get Final Destination off the ground.  

“I learned a lot about how to get a movie made. I knew that to make a movie that connected with an audience you had to tap into something that was universal. Death is the ultimate fear.”  

As luck would have it, the idea actually came to Reddick while on a flight back to Kentucky.  

“I read about a woman who was on vacation and her mother told her not to take the flight she was planning to take home as she had a bad feeling about it. The woman changed it and the plane she was supposed to be on crashed.”  

At that point however the idea wasn’t Final Destination. It wasn’t a film either. It was an episode of The X Files.  

The Truth Is Out There  

“I was trying to get a TV agent at the time and they recommended I write a spec script for something already on the air. I was a huge fan of The X Files and thought about a scene where somebody has a premonition and gets off the plane and then it crashes and used that as the plot.”  

“It was going to be Scully’s brother Charles who had the premonition. He gets off the plane with a few other people but they start dying and Charles blacks out every time there is a murder so people suspect he is doing it.   

Read more

TV

I Still Want to Believe: Revisiting The X-Files Pilot

By Chris Longo

“The twist at the end was that the sheriff who had been investigating alongside Mulder and Scully the whole time had actually been shot and flatlined at the same time as the plane crash.  Death brought him back to kill off all the survivors, including Charles.”  

It would have made for a great episode except it was never submitted to The X Files. Reddick showed his spec script to some friends at New Line who were so impressed, they told him to develop it into a treatment for a feature, which was eventually purchased by the studio.  

Producers Craig Perry and Warren Zide were brought onboard to develop the story and set about tweaking his idea.  

“Originally the cast of survivors were adults because I wanted to explore more adult themes but Scream had come out and teenagers were hot again so New Line got me to change it”  

In a twist of fate, two established writers from The X Files, James Wong and Glen Morgan, were brought onboard to rejig Reddick’s script.   

“My version was definitely darker and more like A Nightmare on Elm Street,” he says.  

“In my script, death would torment the kids about some kind of past sin they felt guilty about. They would then die in these accidents that ended up looking like suicides.”  

For example, Todd’s death saw him chased into the family garage by an unseen specter where he accidentally ended up rigged in a noose triggered when his dad opens the automatic garage door.   

Death is all around us  

Ultimately that death scene and several others were ultimately scrapped in favour of what would prove to be the franchise’s calling card.  

Reddick credits Wong and Morgan with coming up with the idea of having the film’s key death scenes kicked off by a Rube Goldberg machine-like chain-reaction that would see everyday things colliding to create a lethal scenario. It was nothing short of a masterstroke.   

“It created this notion that death is all around us,” Reddick says.  

“Death would use everyday things around us. It made it more universal and allowed us to set the deaths in places where people go all the time. The payoff would be fun but it was the build-up that had you on the edge of your seat.”  

There was one major sticking point for the studio though: the presence of death, or rather the lack of.  

“I fought really hard to make sure we never showed death because for me, if you didn’t show it, it could be something someone, no matter their belief system, could project onto our villain. That was a tough sell for the studio. They would be like ‘this doesn’t make any sense, you can’t see it and you can’t fight it’ but that’s the point, it’s death.”  

“Luckily both James Wong and Glen Morgan were very insistent we never show it and tie it in to a specific belief system.”  

Reddick credits the move with helping Final Destination become “an international phenomenon”.  

“It struck a chord with people around the world. It broke out beyond the horror audience.”  

Casting dreams   

When it came to casting, Reddick had a clear idea of who he wanted in the lead roles, even if the studio’s opinion differed drastically.  

“I had a wish list with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst as my two leads but New Line was like ‘well…’”  

He might not have got his first pick but Final Destination boasted an impressive cast of up-and-comers who had already made waves among teen audiences.   

Devon Sawa had starred in Idle Hands, while Ali Larter was known for Varsity Blues and Kerr Smith was a regular on Dawson’s Creek. There was even room for Seann William Scott, fresh from his breakout turn in American Pie who was drafted in on the recommendation of producer Craig Perry, who told Reddick “you’ve got to get this kid, he’s going to be huge.”  

Even so, Reddick was left a little unhappy.  

“One of the conversations we had early on was like ‘Just remember this is set in New York, which is one of the most diverse cities in the world so let’s make sure we have some diversity in the cast’ and they were like ‘oh we will’ and then there wasn’t anyone who wasn’t white in it.”  

New Line chief Bob Shaye did find a way to make amends on some level at least, casting Candyman horror icon Tony Todd in a cameo role as a mysteriously foreboding mortician.  

“He called me up and said they had got Tony Todd and I flipped out. He is an icon. Such a talented, serious actor.”  

As well as co-write the film, Wong took on directorial duties while each of the film’s death sequences would require careful planning, his first aim was to have the film start with a bang by creating as terrifyingly realistic a plane crash as possible.  

“We want to do for planes and air travel what Jaws did for sharks and swimming,” he declared in one interview.  

Yet the film would later garner criticism for its eerie similarities to the explosion and crash of TWA Flight 800 off East Moriches, Long Island, New York in 1996 where 16 students and five adults died.  

“There was some criticism that the movie was written to exploit this real-life crash,” Reddick recalls.  

“I even realised later they used footage from one real-life crash which I wasn’t particularly happy about.”  

Indeed, much of the news footage shown in the film actually came from the 1996 crash.  

That didn’t stop the film becoming a major hit and spawning a sequel within three years.   

Final Destination meets Game of Thrones  

Reddick returned to write the treatment for Final Destination 2, determined to move the franchise away from its teen Scream origins.   

“We had tapped into that zeitgeist and didn’t have to do that again. I wanted to expand the universe and subvert it, so I had it open by following a bunch of teens who are then killed off.”  

Once again, divine intervention led to divine inspiration for the opening set piece.  

“Originally, I was going to have it open with some kids going to spring break and they stop off at this hotel and there is a fire but the producers were not sure. Writers always say you should go out and live life – life informs you and a lot of inspiration comes out when I go out for a walk.  

“I was driving back to Kentucky to see my family and I got stuck behind a log truck and the idea just came to me. I pulled off the highway and called Craig and was flipping out with this idea for a log truck on a freeway.”  

The resulting freeway pile-up that leads to multiple deaths is one Reddick ranks as his “favourite scene in the entire franchise.”  

“The second film is my favourite. I wanted to create a sequel that didn’t feel like a remake of the first. It went in a more fun direction – but it’s still scary.”  

That first sequel also represented the last of which Reddick was formally involved in, though he remained very much in the loop as the Godfather of the franchise, revealing that producers had been “looking at scripts before Covid hit.” 

He also revealed that, at one point, things looked to be heading in an altogether different and thoroughly fascinating direction.  

“There was talk about setting a Final Destination back in Medieval times. Like Game of Thrones in Final Destination. Craig Perry worked with a writer and they talked about the idea and put a teaser trailer together [which has leaked online].   

“I would go and see that movie in a heartbeat but the studio said that the reason Final Destination was so popular was that element of deaths in normal, everyday situations.”  

Future Destinations  

Reddick hasn’t given up on a return to the franchise though, hinting at a “unique” idea he has for a new film that is simply too good to reveal yet.   

In the meantime, he has been busy writing and directing Don’t Look Back, a film that shares some surface similarities with Final Destination and is painfully relevant to society today.  

“It’s a mystery thriller about a group of people who witness someone getting fatally assaulted in a park and don’t help the person and somebody films them and puts it online. The public turns on the witnesses and someone or something is coming after them.”  

Eager to make more horror films and celebrate diversity in his work, Reddick remains immensely proud of Final Destination and the impact it has had on audiences.  

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“It’s cool. To have one movie that is going to be talked about after you die is a life goal. If that’s what I leave behind as a legacy that’s enough – but I still want more.” 

Don’t Look Back is available on DVD & Digital from 14th June

The post How Final Destination Went From Real-Life Premonition to Horror Phenomenon appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3oUb1UD

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[pynkhues]

What do you want most for 1.) Rio and Beth 2.) Annie and Beth 3.) Annie and Greg this season?

Oh! That’s such a fun question, anon, thank you for asking! 😊

Below a cut because it’s a little long, haha.

Rio and Beth

I’m actually pretty open these days as to what I’d like for Beth and Rio in season 4. I’m not overly beholden to them pursuing a romantic relationship (that’s what we have fic for! Although I will of course be thrilled if they do get together again, haha), but there are definitely some things that would make me really happy! In particular: 

- As much as I love the 3.06 conversation where they talk briefly about the  shooting, I’d really love for them to have a more direct and honest conversation about everything that happened in the loft. I don’t need it to be long or weepy or punishing or overly revealing – this is Beth and Rio we’re talking about, a pair of lying liars, haha – but I’d love for it to just be a brief moment of real emotional honesty between them over a trauma they are both victim and perpetrator of. 

- I’d also really love for their working relationship to hit a good stride again. I’m pretty excited at the concept of Rio as a partner of Boland Bubbles and what that plot point could open up in the story; and I’d love to really see them as partners in the way we got glimpses of across 2.05 - 2.08. 

- Two words! Bottle! Episode! Bonus points if it’s Beth and Rio doing a job together, haha, and like, triple points if it involves either or both of the above!

Annie and Beth 

As much as I didn’t particularly like how the show handled Annie’s therapy plotline in s3, I actually really liked the intent of it overall, and the way it started to reframe not just Annie’s relationship with Beth and herself, but also the way she started to think about the future. 

So much of Annie, Beth and Ruby’s choices are driven by this urgency around the moment, because their needs are always, well, urgent. Beyond Beth’s brief foray into planning for the future way back in 1.06, all three girls have been so focused on the here and now of their individual and collective experiences, that they can’t ever really think beyond it.

Teasing out Annie making plans for the future – and a future that doesn’t involve crime – is such rich territory for the show to explore, and if they can utilise that as a catalyst for both Beth and Ruby to start really thinking about it too, I think it could be explosive.

After all, more and more, it doesn’t seem like Beth wants a future without crime, and given the roles Beth and Annie have always adopted in their relationship with one another, this is a huge emotional and mental shift for both of them.

I’d love to see that conflict explored in full, particularly if it could be used to tell us more about their past too! So yes, lots of angst, haha, but all that said, I do want some more fun bonding scenes with all three of the girls in s4.

Annie and Greg 

This migtht be a bit of a weird thing to want, haha, but I actually really, really want a scene with Annie and baby Dakota. I think there’s this really interesting contrast with Annie where she’s so impulsive and devil-may-care, but she’s also someone who very much holds herself accountable in the aftermath and faces up to her wrongdoings. We’ve seen that time and time again now – from her returning to Marion after robbing her, to helping Nancy give birth, to not letting Ben create distance between them. She’s a fuck up, but she’s also somebody who tends to take ownership of her actions in a way that Beth point blank avoids, and Ruby tends to overcompensate for with charity. 

I like that Annie is inherently a bleeding heart, but also someone who’s able to connect with people in unusual circumstances. In that sense, I’d love to see Annie with Dakota, but also for her to see Greg again as a father to a baby, but this time to one that’s not her’s. I’m curious as to what that could bring out of Annie (and Mae Whitman, who always delivers with emotional scenes), and how that could shift how Greg and Annie interact with one another. 

There’s lots more I’d love to see, haha, but these feel like the big ones! What about you guys? What would you like to see?

#beth boland #rio #annie marks #annie + beth #beth x rio #annie x greg #greg #gg season 4 #wishlist #nbc good girls #welcome to my ama #Anonymous

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

TATMILB, CHAPTER 6

Penelope spent her life writing love letters, which didn’t seem like a terrible idea until the letters were mailed out and Schneider received one of them. Hoping to fool their exes, they agree to fake a relationship. But are they lying to everyone around them, or to themselves? aka my To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before-inspired AU.

Penelope x Schneider, ODAAT. available on ao3 with extra author’s notes.

Chapter 6: Penelope and Schneider reveal their new relationship to Lydia and Alex, but Penelope decides not to tell Elena. When Schneider arrives to take Penelope out, he interrupts their videochat.

“Okay you two,” Lydia said before Penelope had even shut the door behind them all. She threw both arms out, a human barrier to any member of the family moving past her spot in the living room. “Tell me what is going on right now.”

“Abuelita? What’s going on?”

Alex’d had a good game, so while the silence on the way home was been tense, it didn’t prepare him for whatever was currently happening.

“That is what we are going to find out, Papito. Your Mami and Schneider, they are...I do not know what they are, but they are something. They have been keeping it a secret from us!”

“Keeping...what a secret?”

“They kissed! While you were at the bat.”

“Aw, man! I got a great hit off that last pitch. You missed it?” He looked at their guilty faces before catching up.

“Wait. You kissed?!? Like, the two of you?” He pointed to his mom. “You and Schneider?”

“Yes. Okay. Yes, we did.”

“We didn’t want the family to find out this way,” Schneider interjected, trying to take some of the pressure off her. She shot him a grateful look. Plus, what he was saying was true. Technically.

“Yeah. I know this might be a surprise, but Schneider and I are...dating.” She reached over and held his hand. “And I’m sure that you will both have lots of opinions about that, but we’re all free until dinner so you know what? Go for it. Let’s get it all out there.”

Schneider took the cushion next to her, their hands still clasped, and Lydia watched them for another moment before she shook her head.

“Eh.”

Penelope gaped at her mom as Lydia waved her hands dismissively and went into the kitchen to fix Alex a snack.

Even more alarmingly, her son looked ready to follow her. “Alex!” Penelope gestured at him, then at the floor near the couch, calling him back. “You don’t have anything you want to ask, or say?”

“Not really.”

“Oh. Okay.” She stared at Schneider, eyes wide and helpless.

“You’re not, I don’t know, surprised?” he ventured.

“No. Should I be?”

Alex, with the usual level of cool radiating off of him, shifted in his baseball cleats and rolled his eyes. “You’re always hugging and stuff, and you’re already in the family. It kind of felt inevitable.”

Lydia was vocalizing in the kitchen to mambo music, but she waved a wooden spoon in agreement with Alex’s words before returning to the stove.

As soon as Alex headed to his room to change and her Mami’s back was turned, Penelope snatched her hand away. What the hell was wrong with her family? What was she supposed to do with that reaction?

Schneider looked as baffled as she felt, and sat silently beside her, scrolling on his phone until dinner.

Lydia waited until the food was ready before she returned to the subject.

“So, mija. Does Elena know?”

“About--oh.” Nice job, Penelope. If you’re going to have a fake boyfriend, maybe try to make it seem like you remember that. “No, Mami, I haven’t told her yet. I didn’t want to tell her such big news in a text. It can wait 'til the next time we videochat.”

It could wait forever, she thought, shrinking from the very idea of that conversation. Alex was perpetually in his own world--as long as the people he loved were okay, he was content to leave them alone and do his own thing. But Elena had opinions. She was affected by the lives and the choices of everyone around her, and this involved two of the most stable adult presences in her world.

It had seemed like a much better idea before Penelope really thought about how it could rock Elena’s foundations. Telling her that her mom and Schneider were dating? Lying to her, to tell her that?

It was horrible.

Unless...what if Penelope said nothing at all?

Elena didn’t have to be baffled and shocked, or upset over being kept out of the loop like her Abuelita, if she never knew it was happening. The contract could be over before she came home from her semester away; she would hear about it secondhand and Penelope could explain it then.

The only other kind way to handle it would be to tell Elena the truth, Penelope knew, to make her the one person who knew it was all a sham.

Hi baby, how’s London? Have you seen the big clock yet? Is it really that big? Oh yeah, by the way, I’m dating Schneider now, in case your brother or your Abuelita happen to mention that in one of your texts or conversations.

Yeah, I know that sounds crazy. You probably feel really confused, but I have good news for you, it’s all fake!!

That’s right. It’s an elaborate conspiracy that Schneider and I came up with over ice cream and baseball because I wanted to avoid Max and he needed to make Nikki jealous.

She sighed and shook her head, tucking that conundrum away until Sunday, when she and Elena had already planned to talk. Maybe when they got on the call, she would know what to do.

****

By the time her phone buzzed on Sunday evening, Penelope had begun to worry Elena wasn't going to call.

“Hey, Mom,” her daughter said, beaming through the tiny screen. “Sorry, I know I’m late. I just realized I got the time zones off--still working on that.”

“Baby, it’s fine. I'm just happy to see you. Tell me everything about your week. How are your classes? What have you gotten to see? What do you think of the food?”

Elena laughed. “Slow down! I can only answer one question at a time. Let’s see, my classes are good. Really interesting, a totally different style than I’m used to--but in a fun way. I’m still having to catch myself when I start to panic, about being so out of my element. I think I’m doing okay though.”

“That’s good. You’re supposed to have fun, not just try to ace your classes,” Penelope agreed. “Not that you should be aiming for less than acing your classes!”

Striking that balance between encouragement and adding to her daughter’s anxious tendencies was still a work-in-progress, Penelope thought to herself, smiling at Elena.  “I miss you, mija.”

“I miss you too--all of you. We went on a tour this week,” she added, with no attempt at a segue. 

It was refreshing to see Elena overflowing with excitement, unable to hold it all in--a welcome change from her glum mood since her breakup. Penelope nodded along. 

“A tour of what?”

“Oh, well, it was with my Religious History class, so it was a lot of old religious buildings, mostly. Landmarks and functioning spaces. Alex would have hated it, there wasn’t a single good selfie backdrop. But I had a blast. We saw Southwark Cathedral!”

“Ah. Cool,” she said, trying to remember if she should know what that was. 

“It’s from Doctor Who, Mom.” Elena’s quirked lips were patronizing, but only a little. “The Tenth Doctor was there in an episode, and I couldn’t believe how big it seemed even in person. You expect movie magic, you know? But it was just...really cool.”

The quiet awe in her tone carried through the videochat. Apparently her daughter was in fact picking up culture and independent experiences overseas, just like she was supposed to. Penelope ignored the pang of separation in response and focused on the pride underneath it. 

“So you went to a Doctor Who church, where else?”

“It’s not a Doctor Who church, Mom, there’s no such thing. Though if there were, I’d seriously consider joining. Sadly, none of the other spots on the tour were show locations, at least not today. I’m pretty sure the exchange student group events will do more of the classic tourist stuff while we’re here. Which should cover some Who basics. Buckingham Palace, Tower of London, London Eye...”

She trailed off, looking away from the screen. 

“Is somebody there? Do you need to go?”

“No.” Elena shook her head. “No, I’m fine. How are you, by the way? You aimed so many questions at me, I want to know what I’ve been missing.”

Penelope had already decided to keep the conversation focused on Elena, to avoid any slip-ups about her new arrangement with Schneider. But with the way Elena was focused slightly past her, eyes a little glassy, she had a good reason to now. 

“You’re not missing anything, everything’s boring and the same here. Your Abuelita may be planning to turn your bedroom into a shoe closet, but I’ll hold her off until you get back. Don’t try to change the subject though--I can see you, Elena. What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing, Mom. I just had a second where, well...the London Eye is one of Syd’s bucket list items. They--we--talked about it a lot. Before. I think seeing it on the tour with the other exchange kids is going to be hard.”

She held back a sympathetic sigh, remembering how much it hurt to lose someone at Elena’s age. Even her last adult breakup was so hard that it was still haunting her.

“Oh, honey, I understand. Breakups come with moments like that, I promise. It’s normal.”

“I really would rather talk about anything else. Please.”

”Okay.” It had been so easy for her Mami to make Penelope’s relationship woes worse without even meaning to, when she was a teenager. Now that she was the mom, treading lightly was the best she could do. “Why don’t you tell me about the food, then?”

Elena was in the middle of describing a dinner she’d had at a pub called The Ivy House when Schneider opened Penelope’s bedroom door. 

”Hello, privacy!” she snapped at him, tugging a throw blanket over her toes as though he’d caught her in a compromised position. Really, she was just startled. Schneider never knocked on the front door but he still knocked on her door, most of the time. He wasn’t completely oblivious to boundaries.

”Hello, person who didn’t respond to my texts,” he replied, unfazed. “Hello, Elena.”

”Hey Schneider.” She waved across the continents, matching his grin. 

”In case it escaped your attention,” Penelope pointed out, “I haven’t replied to--or read yet--your texts, because we were busy catching up.”

”Well, it’s not like you told me,” he said. “Six messages, Pen. I thought maybe you were standing me up.”

She froze, aiming her coldest look his way but keeping it below a glare that Elena could catch long-distance and wonder about. 

“Ha, very funny. Of course I’m not standing you up,” she said, hoping Elena would interpret that to mean if I were, it could mean we’d planned a date, which is a funny and impossible idea while Schneider would know she meant something else entirely.

”Hey, gimme the phone,” he said, ignoring Penelope’s careful parsing of words and taking her pocket-sized daughter right out of her hands. 

”How’s life in jolly old England?” Schneider asked Elena, his gaze flicking to Penelope, who started gesturing wildly as soon as Elena was out of sight. 

Do. Not. Tell. Her. She mouthed, punctuating the words with a mimed zipping of her lips. He watched her and then went back to chatting with Elena with no reaction at all, leaving Penelope panicking. Leave it to Schneider to let the secret out. It would be even worse if Elena found out from him when Penelope had completely avoided the subject, wouldn’t it? Maybe she should come clean now, while he was there. Safety in numbers. 

”Yeah, your mom and I are gonna go grab dinner,” she heard him say, and she squeezed her hands into fists, calming down on purpose. “There’s this place on Sunset I wanna try.”

”It’s a vegan hipster place, isn’t it?” Elena fake-groaned through the phone, like he was still the most embarrassing adult she had ever met. “Schneider, organic local food is fantastic, but you have got to start looking outside the box for places that aren’t trendy. You know where I had dinner last night?”

Penelope took advantage of that moment to snatch her phone back. “And as I’ve heard this story already, I think now might be a good time to say goodnight, honey. You can talk Schneider’s ear off about the superiority of legacy recipes and family-owned bars another time. Preferably while I am very far away.”

”I’ll have you know, though,” Schneider interjected, leaning over so his face was partly in the frame next to Penelope’s, “that we’re getting Italian tonight. Your mom has very kindly agreed to give me her opinion cuz I’m still trying to find a new Italian fave ever since La Vite Blu had that little rat problem.”

”Ew, your old favorite place used to have rats?” Elena shuddered. 

”No, not rats like the animal. It had ties to the mob, apparently--somebody told the authorities, and bing bang boom, no more La Vite Blu.”

”You are so weird.” Elena swallowed hard, offering them a slightly trembling smile. “You guys have fun at dinner though, okay? If you like it, maybe I can come with next time, when I’m back. I miss you.”

”We miss you too.” Schneider put his arm around Penelope and she leaned back against it a little, comforted. Her baby was so far away, and not all the way grown yet after all. 

”Call or text if you need anything, okay? And keep checking in. I love you, Elena.”

”Love you too, Mom. Bye, Schneider.”

The screen went dark, before lighting back up to tell Penelope that she had six text messages.

”Jeez, you weren’t kidding. You know where I live, Schneider...obviously,” she added, gesturing around her bedroom. “There was no need to freak out because it took me a minute to get back to you.”

”I wasn’t freaking out.” He walked away, his voice carrying back to her as he headed for the living room. “I was just trying to make sure we were still on the same page.”

She followed him, still annoyed but unable to articulate why. Was it the barging into her room? Because that was rare, but not unprecedented. Was it the way he told Elena about dinner? Because Elena’s comment about joining them made it seem like she’d missed any possible date implications. And when Penelope thought back, all Schneider said was that they’d be eating dinner together. They did that all the time.

”Well, I have to get ready,” she said, emerging from the hallway to find him standing next to the dining room table. 

There were flowers sitting on it. Once he realized she was there, Schneider picked the bouquet up off the table and held it out. “For you.”

“Uh. Thanks.” She glanced around them, then stared back down at the flowers. “You know, nobody can see your romantic gesture, right? Kinda ruins the public effect.”

“Well, it would be a little weird if we walked into the restaurant together and then I handed them to you. But it’s our first date. It seemed appropriate.”

Now he was watching her, she could feel it. Trying to tell if she was about to get upset over his attempt at a nice gesture, Penelope guessed. Her temper tended to hit him harder than the members of her family who shared her quick moods. 

She gave in to the desire to lift them to her nose, breathing in for a long moment. They smelled like springtime, if it were springtime in a Disney movie. Sweet, but also earthy.

“I love them,” she said honestly. “Thank you.”

Schneider beamed, bouncing on his heels a little. “You’re welcome.”

“Okay,” she decided, “now I have to get ready and I have to put these in a vase. Give me a few minutes, okay?”

“No problem.” 

Schneider sat on her couch in her empty apartment, perfectly at home while Penelope arranged the flowers in the family’s only vase. She was already trying to decide what to wear, now that his flowery touch had her feeling a competitive need to up her own standards. Her mind was so focused on the contents of her closet that she didn’t stop to read the card tucked into the bright bouquet.

Whatever nerves she was now feeling about their first fake date night, it didn’t seem like Schneider shared them. Penelope was pretty sure that as she went back to her room, she heard him pulling up a video on his phone about London’s best lesser-known pubs.

#alvareider #one day at a time #odaat #penelope x schneider #to all the men i've loved before #penelope alvarez #schneider #lydia riera #elena alvarez #alex alvarez #odaat fic #alvareider fic #my fic