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thehollowprince · 3 years

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Queerbaiting vs. Fan Service

For whatever reason, I decided to take a stroll through The Falcon and The Winter Soldier tags after the second episode, and I was slightly distressed (and mostly annoyed) with how many people were labeling the interactions between Sam and Bucky as queerbaiting. You can imagine my confusion.

Now, as a gay man, nothing would please me more to see a relationship between two men in a big budget action franchise, even if it is just the MCU. Ignoring the reality that this is Disney and that they'll probably never have a gay or bisexual main character in anything, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is not the place to draw that line in the sand.

I've been on this app for about eight years now, and I can't tell you the number of times I've seen people make and reblog posts about the desire to see more men be friends with one another, to not fall victim to the toxic masculinity. How many times have you opened opened this app and seen posts about "let men cry" or "let men be intimate with each other without making it weird"? And yet, every time, almost as if on a timer, the moment two guys (either in a show or actual people) look at each other for longer than .05 seconds, a ship is born.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with shipping. Especially when you factor in the fact that same sex romances are severely lacking in modern media. I myself am attracted to the idea of SamBucky, because they have foundation there that if the producers decided, could be used to build a relationship off of. I did the same with Steve and Bucky in the MCU. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with shipping, but some people take it too far. In this instance, I've been seeing too many people claim "queerbaiting" because Sam rescued Bucky from falling to his death under a moving truck or because of the therapy scene where they had to face each other and get real close.

That is not queerbaiting.

For starters, it's been two episodes. The show isn't even halfway over. Not that I expect Disney to actually do something like that, but it's precisely this need to jump the gun and declare something that makes the problem worse within the fandom. And more to the point, I'm not entirely sure many of you know what the term queerbaiting actually means.

Queerbaiting is when a show or movie or whatever, sets up a relationship between two people of the same sex, has everything point in the direction of them becoming a romantic pairing, only to, at the last second, have one or both of them enter into a heterosexual relationship or be killed off.

A great example of this, and the first that pops into my mind, is The Magicians, specifically Queliot. Now, anyone who followed me, especially when the show as airing, knows I'm not the biggest fan of that ship, but in the fourth season of the show, they spent a great deal of time setting up Quentin and Eliot finding their way to each other, only for the production to kill off Quentin in the finale of the season. One could even argue that having Quentin chose Alice for a reconciliatory relationship after they did everything to set up Quentin and Eliot is another form of queerbaiting, eschewing the same-sex romance in favor of a heterosexual one.

Now, circling back to The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, what we have here is not a case of queerbaiting. Production of the show, and the MCU in general, more than likely scour Twitter and Instagram and whatever else and see the fandom reaction to certain ships/pairings, and specifically make scenes or scenarios where those two characters have to interact. That is called fan service, an entirely different animal.

A great example of fan service would be Teen Wolf. As anyone who has been following me knows, I've been talking about this topic a lot recently, thanks to one particularly persistent anon. If you've ever interacted with the Teen Wolf fandom, you know that the big ship that dominated it was Sterek, despite it being something that wasn't based at all in canon. Jeff Davis, after seeing how fans reacted to the few interactions of Derek and Stiles in season one, gave the fandom a more in season two, such as the pool scene, or when they were both paralyzed by Kanima venom in the sheriff's station, the dream sequence at the end of season three, or the ride to Mexico in season four. Hell, even the comedic sequence in the final season of Stiles "rescuing" Derek from the FBI to make it back to Beacon Hills for the final showdown was fan service. What it wasn't, was queerbaiting, because Sterek wasn't something that the show set up. It was something that the fandom set up, which more power to them, but with that being established, people still got mad because the show didn't go the way they (the fandom) decided it should have gone.

This same thing happened with Stucky. The idea of Bucky and Steve was appealing. If either one of them had been a woman in the MCU then their relationship would have very easily been interpreted in canon as romantic, but as it stands, that's not the case. They were just two very close friends.

Brining it back to my original point, we have Sambucky, and no matter how much fandom kicks and screams and demands, it won't happen in the show. It's alright to ship them, because I do see the appeal, but at the end of the day, too many people are getting upset about something that fandom made up and that canon doesn't deliver on, despite the two being unaffiliated. You want to ship Sam and Bucky, I fully support you in that endeavor. I myself like the idea of it, and often tag posts as such, but calling it queerbaiting in an attempt to shame people for not supporting it is misleading.

Bottom line: queerbaiting is a very specific thing and there are actual shows out there that are perpetrators of it. Please try and actually understand what queerbaiting is before you simply throw the term out at every inconvenience.

#queerbaiting #fan service #sambucky #tfatws #the falcon and the winter soldier

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tennesseetrekkie · 3 years

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Stargate/Leverage Crossover Ideas

I’m surprised I never see more fics/ficlets/prompts/just plain posts about these two universes. They’re canonically connected! (There are Stargate symbols on the wall in Lattimer’s vault in “The Last Dam Job”, the producers confirm it too). It’s actually the main reason I started watching Leverage and my need for a crossover has only grown since. Here’s a few thoughts I’ve had:

I 100% believe that Eliot was a member of an SG team. When Aimee said “it’s like you dropped off the face of the earth”, well, he did. They only take the best of the best and that’s Eliot. He’s fully aware of the existence of the Stargate program and aliens, etc.

While serving there he got involved with Maybourne’s team, he thought it was in the best interest of his country. He was one of the very few who didn’t get caught. I like to think he still has a few souvenirs from his time off-world, several highly classified things he really shouldn’t have. I don’t believe he left the base empty-handed. It’d make sense if he had a Goa’uld healing device, but that would mean at some point he ended up with naquadah in his blood, which given all the crazy things that have happened to him in his life wouldn’t be too surprising, but that’s a whole different story...

Eliot never mentions any of this to the rest of the team, not only would this put them in danger but earth being at war with ancient, parasitical aliens is pretty heavy knowledge. This is a lot of fun when SG-1 shows up...

In a crossover with SG-1 and the OG Leverage for me it would have to consist of Cameron Mitchell (the timeline puts it after O’Neill was promoted), Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson, and Teal’c. I can’t figure out a scenario where Vala is included and doesn’t let it slip to the Leverage crew that aliens and spae travel are a thing.

There are two scenarios in which I can think of where these two would meet: First, the Leverage crew uncover something in a job that Eliot recognizes as alien (either an artifact, or maybe even a Goa’uld, that’d be fascinating if he did have naquadah and was able to spot the Goa’uld), he tries to deal with it without letting the team know but finally has to tell Nate they need to call the Air Force, it takes a lot of convincing especially since he can’t actually say why. Second, SG-1 shows up to a job the Leverage crew is already doing. Eliot recognizes them, they recognize him. Sam might even pull her gun. He gets them away from the Leverage crew to see what’s going on, meanwhile Hardison is running their faces through one of his ID programs and now everyone is wondering why Eliot is talking to “two USAF colonels, some loser who should be on Ancient Aliens, and some guy who... doesn’t exist?”.

Whatever the case, it’s inevitable that these two have to work together. Only thing is, the Leverage crew can’t know SG-1 is here because aliens and SG-1 can't know that the Leverage crew is here because crime. The only one who can and does know everything is Eliot, who is the constant go-between for both of these teams, and also very tired. He definitely knows the Goa’uld language and uses it to talk to Daniel and Teal’c about the more... classified details of the job when the others are around. Yet again Hardison is confused when he tries to figure out what they’re speaking only to find out that it doesn’t exist.

Parker is strangely good at guessing things. She immediately 100% believes that Teal’c is an alien. Nate, Sophie, and Hardison assure her he can’t be, even though they’re not completely sure themselves, this whole thing is too weird.

I can’t really figure out the rest of it, which is why I’m writing it this way instead of in an actual fic, but this is... something. Not sure what. This is really the most realistic version I’ve thought up. Headcannon where the Leverage crew actually do find out include (this is not any specific sequence or headcannon, just ideas):

The crew ends up on a small ship (maybe Eliot used rings to get them out of a dangerous situation or something) and Hardison and Sophie are visibly and audibly freaking out. Nate is trying to remain calm and failing, it’s not as intense as Hardison and Sophie, but he’s definitely freaked out. Eliot, of course, just rolls his eyes and yells at them to calm down as he goes to figure out the controls. Space ain’t nothing when you’ve been there hundreds of times. Then there’s Parker... Her reaction is basically to look out a window, smile, and call it “Cool!”. Everyone is a little taken aback by how she can just be okay with this?

Upon finding out about aliens and space travel Hardison is excited, terrified, and absolutely furious at Eliot for never telling him about it. There’s a headcannon I have of those two somehow getting transported to another planet and not knowing it at first and trying to figure out where they are. It takes Eliot a while to convince Hardison that they’re on another planet, because “yeah, it looks like Canada, that’s just what alien planets look like!”.

Sophie trying to grift aliens... The game has changed and she is loving it! A whole new universe of challenges. Seeing that would be a thing of beauty.

All of it just causes Nate to drink more, unfortunately. It’s a lot to take in. But if Eliot had to tell just one member of the team about it (both to stop them from asking him to explain what’s going on and why can’t he tell them? and to convince them of the amount of danger they’re all in) it’d be Nate. He’d come away from that conversation very visibly shaken and tell the crew that Eliot’s right, they don’t need to know, at which point they accept it and back off.

Parker handles any strange situation well, so aliens are no big deal. I bet at one point someone (not Eliot) brings up Atlantis and she theorizes that “it’s probably actually a spaceship that flew off to another galaxy!”. Nate, Sophie, and Hardison just rolls their eyes or shoot her a weird look or something because what a stretch! But Eliot nearly chokes on his drink! He has to regain his cool really quickly because now everyone is looking at him, but how can she possibly know that?? He wonders if she ever stole classified material, but nope, Parker just made the most random guess possible and nailed it because Parker.

OH! And one more thing! One night in Nate’s apartment when they’re all getting ready for dinner Hardison has it on this weird cheesy scifi show and is all like “look at this garbage!”, Eliot takes a look and is like “wait, what??” and sits down and starts watching. Dinner is now going to be late because this is hilarious! It gets canceled after one episode but he makes sure to catch the TV movie as soon as it airs. This is how Eliot Spencer became a “Wormhole X-Treme” fan and no one has a clue why.

If anyone else has a Stargate/Leverage headcannon, please, please, please share it!! Charater interactions, different senarios, ANYTHING! And let’s all hope that, even though Stargate hasn’t been around for a while, Leverage Redemption will throw us fathful fans a bone with some kind of reference!

#Stargate #Leverage #SG-1 #Eliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Alec Hardison #Parker #Sophie Devereaux #Cameron Mitchell #Samanatha Carter #Daniel Jackson #Teal'c

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postmodernmulticoloredcloak · 3 years

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I'm going to say something that is weird in Supernatural fandom. My favorite season is season 7. *ducks for cover* I started binging when 8 was showing. I never had to experience the drama of Misha being fired so while 7 has very little Cas episodes which is a damn shame it gave A LOT of Dean angst. The villains were unique and campy and it had a formulaic feel to it so I could just put that on the back burner while I watched the boys experience lots of loss. Seriously watching Dean lose Cas, Baby, Bobby and Sam. Seeing his loss and grief (I'm an angst fan) was great (A+ Jackles). But then also seeing him get Cas back just *chef's kiss*. That season made me ship them. Plus you get Frank, Charlie, Kevin. You get the set up with tablets for the next several seasons. You get so much and of course you get Dick jokes. It's an easy season I could watch on repeat because even without Cas it's clear Dean is missing Cas

I get it! Season 7 totally positively surprised me. I suppose it helped that I spoiled myself for Cas’ return, so I suppose that people watching in real time didn’t have that and just felt the gloom. But for me who knew that Cas would come back... it was mostly good. The first few episodes after Cas’ death were kind of hard to go through (I didn’t love the Amy Pond thing) but then it just went up. So many Dean things - Eliot Ness, the ballet shoes, his relationship with Krissy Chambers, the Amazon episode itself. And of course Ben Edlund pulled out the big guns. I mean, Repo Man was... damn.

Lots of good writing in season 7. Also very bad writing, but the bad writing is more of isolated incidents when you look it at a whole? Like, there are unfortunate things written by Bucklemming and Dabbflin but most episodes are written by the good, good ones, Edlund, Gamble, Glass, Thompson. The good episodes are good. Which is actually valid for the entire show. You have really good writing, then really bad writing, then good writing again...

I’m going to say it here, but season 7 made Destiel.

#season 7 #spn #anon

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postguiltypleasures · 3 years

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The Magicians Finale - (over a year later)

I didn’t watch the first season of The Magicians as it aired in late 2015- 2016. I was already watching the roughly estimated maximum amount of television I could watch. I didn’t have the time to make for a new show. It debuted at the same time as The Expanse, and that looks like the “better” show. But I would soon realize that I liked The Magicians more.

While I was watching the first season, I attempted to go back and look at the writing from while it aired. This experience profoundly influenced how I felt about the controversial ending to the fourth season, and the fall out in the fandom.

The fourth season ended after Quentin Coldwater, ostensibly the show’s central character, dying while saving the world. In his orientation to the afterlife there is discussion about was this actually heroic or was it a manifestation of his depression and suicidal identification. The show doesn’t answer this directly, it just has Quentin experience how his friends are mourning him and feel how loved it was. People felt really betrayed by this. It was considered deeply irresponsible. I have already written about it here. In the aftermath, part of me thought back to those recaps and reviews of the first season and wondered “how did we get to place where we could feel so betrayed?” Because reviews from the then seemed certain that it was more problematic than it was. Take for example this recap from Vulture season one, where the writer, Hillary Kelly, wonders who this show is actually for? Or this AV Club recap of the first season finale where the writer Lisa Weidenfeld erroneously thinks that The Beast and Julia, both rape victims, are being set up to be the show’s main villains? And that Eliot’s forced marriage to Fen was potentially a straight washing.

The fact that the worries Weidenfeld put into writing didn’t pan out is probably part of the reason that the show’s reputation improved. It would also have characters within the show call out others’s sexism, racism, etc. which could feel like something of a corrective to a lot of pop culture out there. You might also have noticed that in Weidenfeld’s recap she makes a comparison between Julia and Willow-gets-addicted-to-magic-plot season six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Ads for the first season even looked like they wanted viewers to draw that comparison.

I remember from around the second season coming across a several articles declaring The Magicians a worthy successor to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Emily VanDerWerff discussed it in her review of the second season. As one point she makes the statement that “The Magicians isn’t as politically subversive as Buffy”, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that might be less true than she assumed at the time. In an era of backlash against Buffy’s creator Joss Whedon, The Magicians could be comparatively more empathetic to its characters and had some pretty subversive plot points. But I haven’t watched an episode of Buffy since the early aughts, or The Magicians since it wrapped.

(VanDerWerff’s writing heavily influenced my own thoughts about thee show, which I previously wrote about here. I am also including links to her old podcast, I Think You’re Interesting and the interviews she did with novelist Lev Grossman and show runner Sera Gamble, though I should note those are from before she transitioned and under her dead name. Also I wanted to include that she included it in her best television of the 2010s article.)

In the articles I just linked to, you might also notice frequent comparisons to Game of Thrones. While the comparisons focus on the the vast difference in budget and how ubiquitous GoT was at the same time The Magicians aired, it is worth noting that both series are postmodern, deconstruction takes on their respective sub-genres. While GoT could use that to point out why surprising and awful things happened to their characters, The Magicians mostly had fewer horrible things happen to its characters. But the comparison might have influenced how post Quentin’s death people made a litany of those events/plot points to prove that any faith in the show was misplaced and it was a betrayer better left behind.

The after the fourth season I pulled back from discussing The Magicians online. I just couldn’t deal with other people’s anger. I was never really active in the fandom, but I did write about it here more than probably any other series since I started this blog. This may have given me a false impression about how the media ended up covering the show. While writing this I was planning an arc that would go something like, “at the start of the fourth season the media loved it and articles this one by Kathryn Van Arendonk at Vulture came out saying that they regretted stopping the show part way through season one. But the fan backlash to the finale was so harsh that even the show’s frequent champion, Emily VanDerWerff didn’t write about it at all for the fifth season.” She did write a positive review at the start of the fifth season. I even read it at the time. She didn’t write about the finale, and that disappointed me, which may have led me to mis-remember the earlier. (I did remember this round table discussion about the ascendency of fandom in which she discusses the show’s situation, and it might have also contributed to my misremembering.)

The AVClub had Weidenfeld write a review of the first episodes, but she no longer recapped the episodes as she had for the first four seasons. (Her review is generally about what is missing from the Quentin-less series) While preparing to write this I found out that Decider’s Anna Menta recapped through the third episode, despite being amongst those who felt betrayed by Quentin’s death and the lack of opportunity for Quentin and Eliot to explore their romance.

(I just want to take a moment to say a couple of things here. Firstly, I really believed the show runners when they said Quentin was dead and not coming back so I didn’t see the first couple of episodes as a tease that he might come back. When my grandfather who I was very close to died I would regularly have dreams that his death was incorrectly called and he’d come back. I saw those episodes as a version of that.)

This has been show I’ve written about the most in recent years. But as I was mostly ignoring both professional and fan writing about it for its final season, I only really got around to reading these now. I’m going to start with this post-finale interview with the producers, Sera Gamble, Henry Alonso Myers John McNamara, written by Vlada Gelman at TVLine. It isn’t really a lot of new information. It’s interesting to read about how being renewed or not affected their editing decisions in post production. They seem happy with it. At Entertainment Weekly, Chancellor Agard interviewed Gamble and McNamara. There is more talk about the connection between the final season of the tv show and the finale book of the trilogy, The Magicians Land. (As a viewer I was always pleased when they somehow brought in details from the books late in the season, whether it was big things for the arc like the World Seed page or details that only mattered for an episode like whales being magicians.) In the interview, they also talk about some of the wildest plot points. Gamble and McNamara also gave and interview to Adam Chitwood at Collider. Chitwood is the most enthusiastic about the show. The interview also confirms for those who want to know that Jason Ralph asked to be let go from the show, and that Julia’s pregnancy probably wouldn’t have happened if her actress Stella Maeve hadn’t gotten pregnant. Finally, in an I can’t believe I missed it example, at the New York Times, Jennifer Vineyard also interviewed Gamble and McNamera. This one starts pretty politically with how trying to save the citizens of Fillory unintentionally works as a metaphor for quarantine and how we don’t get through difficult periods of times because of individuals, instead it’s more of a collective. Then it somehow turns into a a thing about being in a mutual admiration society with William Shatner. I truly didn’t see this one coming.

So now I have to get to the actual reviews of the finale, with the caveat that I haven’t watched any of the series in over a year so it’s definitely not fresh in my mind. Over at The AVClub, re-capper Weidfeld is mostly mournful for the series, but also makes the point that when the characters grew up and stopped being so hurtful towards each other and themselves, it was less compelling. It kind of ties back to my “how did people think this was a show that wouldn’t hurt them” question from earlier, but with less interest in fans. I don’t remember if my feelings as it went on would have agreed with it, but it is partially why it was in good place to end the series. At io9, Beth Elderkin seemed to think the finale was rushed and the show deserved better. I don’t remember if I felt like the episode was rushed. But as I read through her recap, I realize that I’ve also forgotten a lot of the episode’s plot points. Over at The Mary Sue, Jessica Mason wrote a positive review highlighting aspects that pleased her as a fan who wanted good things for these characters.

Shortly after the finale Sarah Stankorb at The Atlantic recommend the series to COVID bound bingers. I was shocked to see this. I didn’t think anyone would be recommending it post season for backlash. (Earlier on an episode of Our Opinions Are Correct the hosts walked back what could have been a recommendation for the series, which disappointed me. I don’t remember which episode this was.) It’s a lovely overview of the whole series. I especially like how Stackorb addresses the way the show dealt with Julia’s assault (greatly improving on the source material). It made me wonder if the show will have a legacy, one worthy of celebration. I don’t hope for a revival, but if I had time to re-watch it, I might. And I am happy to read comicbooks building on the source material.

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letmetellyouaboutmyfeels · 5 years

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I just spent hours going through the search results for ‘meta’ on your blog, and there’s so much interesting stuff there, and it’s way too late at night now, but it was so worth it. Anyway, I love your leverage meta and was wondering if you could talk about the leverage crew interacting/working with others? (ie two live crew job, the last dam job), especially when they’re allies and/or people they’re actively working against in different scenarios (like chaos)

First of all, thank you so much nonny, that means so much to see that you appreciate my meta! I put a lot of thought into it and it gives me such joy to see that others appreciate my rambling and overthinking about fictional characters. Truly, you have made my evening. ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Second of all, this is such an interesting meta question and I’m excited to answer it!

Oh man, if anybody was in any doubt that the Leverage team are hugely protective of each other, their interactions with their allies would blow that misconception out of the water. Note that I’m not including Sterling in this because that would be a whole post by itself and I personally don’t see Sterling as an ally. He’s been their ally at times but they’ve never really trusted him--he’s more like a comfortable antagonist. But anyway.

When the team has to deal with an ally, or team up with anyone really, they close ranks. Mr. Quinn is a bit of an exception since Eliot has no personal beef with him (more on that later) but Tara, Chaos, Archie? Slamming the fucking door in their faces. Maggie is the only real exception (gonna tackle her last). No matter how many squabbles might be going on, no matter if the rest of the team wants to strangle Nate with a piano wire (in a loving way), once someone else is introduced, they prove what a family they have become by uniting as one and going, and whom the fuckst might you be?

Let’s start with the longest ally relationship they have: Tara

Tara was, I think, a great addition to the team. I think she really challenged them and in ways that they needed. Eliot, Hardison, and Parker all quickly latched onto Sophie as a mom figure (in different ways--Eliot behaves like an oldest sibling with her, he’s old enough not to need her anymore but he knows he can turn to her if he needs her and she’s his ally when they’re making decisions, but Parker heavily relies on Sophie for guidance). Having Sophie ripped away from them forces them to stand on their own two feet more. It forces them to deal with Nate themselves instead of using Sophie as a shield. And Nate, well, we all see how he falls apart without Sophie and tries to blame her when it’s really himself.

The team closes ranks around Tara immediately. Nate doesn’t kick her to the curb for two reasons only: they need a grifter, and Sophie trusts Tara. Tara’s beautifully unapologetic behavior (insisting on getting a profit from their jobs, not babying Nate) doesn’t help in keeping the team at arm’s length, but Tara knows her worth and knows they’ll come around, and sure enough, they do.

Oddly enough, Tara’s really great for the team because they prove to themselves that they really are a family by her being there. Season one’s theme, as stated by the producers/writers, is all about family, and in season two we see the team really internalize that and realize that it’s true, they are a family. Through the adversity of losing Sophie and having to adjust, they recognize what they have truly become.

(I would argue that this is also the season where the OT3 realizes how deep their feelings for one another are as a result, but that’s another post for another time.)

By the end of the season of course we see them accept Tara as a friend and ally even if they’re loathe to admit it because all the members of the team are loathe to admit when they’re wrong about something. But their interactions with Tara show the team how they’ve become set in their ways, in their dynamic, and makes them question why, and makes them realize what a family they are.

Which is why it’s such a beautiful ending with Nate going to jail and the feeling of betrayal when they realize he’s not coming with them--they’ve spent all season going oh shit, we’re a family, we’re really in this together, okay, and then to have Nate make his plan without them and to abandon them even if you can understand that he did it to protect them...

So yes, the team’s interactions with Tara basically show them what a family they have become and set the entire thing up for Nate’s sacrifice at the end of the season, bless you Tara, you queen, I’m single, please call me.

The other ally that the team has that they’re automatically sort of forced to accept (the way that because of Sophie they were forced to accept Tara) is of course Archie.

That motherfucker.

Look Archie is a charming bastard but he’s still a rat bastard and I will punch him in the face if I ever meet him and y’know what he’ll probably understand. The fact that in The Last Dam Job we see him say to his bewildered daughter “that’s my daughter” about Parker, proving that he STILL, after EVERYTHING, hasn’t introduced Parker to his family? Ahaha. We are in a fight, sir, we are in a MASSIVE fight.

Archie only appears in one other episode but like Nate’s dad shows us so much of who Parker is and why she’s the way she is. We’ve got Parker’s family backstory, her asshole father whom she killed, but there’s still a big gap between that and how she became a thief, and Archie fills that gap. And the way the team reacts to him is fantastic because the only one who closes ranks around him is Nate.

Nate, who also has a rough relationship with his father, Nate who treats Parker like his own daughter, Nate who mentors Parker into becoming a mastermind. Nate who was also a father. Nate hates Archie, because Archie should’ve helped teach Parker to become a person, and instead he taught her to become a weapon.

Hardison, Eliot, and Sophie? They are extremely protective of course and they are not fans of Archie, but they are a bit busy getting Parker to safety, they respect how important Archie is to Parker, and they are proud of Parker. They know who and what she is. They know that Archie will see the proof in the pudding.

But Nate, Nate is so goddamn offended, and I think this is the moment he realizes that Parker really is like family to him, and really takes responsibility for her growth. I think this is the episode where Nate goes, oh, she’s going to be my successor. Parker is going to be the new mastermind.

It’s so great to watch as Nate’s the one knocked off-balance by an ally, rather than the OT3, showing his hand more than the others.

Then there’s the other main player during The Last Dam Job: Chaos

Oh Chaos. We all love to hate you. Chaos is absolutely everything that fuckboy nerds often are, the thing that makes women hide their love of geeky things, he is the gatekeeping asshole that thinks nerds are still the most oppressed class and probably goes on rants about fake geek girls.

The seething hatred that Parker, Hardison, and Eliot have for Chaos is hilarious but understandable, but what’s interesting is how nobody in the team seems surprised by what an asshole Chaos is. Sophie and Nate just kind of roll their eyes at him. Eliot’s angry at Chaos for Parker and Hardison’s sake. Hardison feels that his professional pride is offended, that anyone would ever consider Chaos and Hardison to be in the same category, and he’s angry at how Parker is treated by him. And Parker is pissed off by Chaos’s objectifying comments.

But none of them seem surprised.

You know the moments when the team is taken aback in disgust by someone, we see it all the time when a team member realizes just how awful a mark truly is. Even Nate has his moments where you can see him actively wondering if maybe he should just scrap the whole plan and throw the mark out the window. But with Chaos, it’s par for the course.

Because sadly, very sadly, as I said--Chaos represents what we expect nerds to be.

Okay so brief history recap, the whole ‘nerds get bullied’ was a thing that absolutely happened for a period of time back when reading comics and science fiction was considered lowbrow. Comics were for younger children, not high schoolers, fantasy writers were considered hack writers (you can read Ursula K. LeGuin’s excellent essays on the matter), and in fact a lot of parents thought reading comics and science fiction and the like was bad for you. Then when computers first came onto the scene, they were very new and difficult to navigate. Something parents are finding nowadays is how damn easy it is for their young kids to navigate and use electronic devices, and so kids will often, to the horror of their parents, get onto social media sites and see things they shouldn’t because the parents didn’t realize how easily their child could access and learn to use these things. Because back in the ‘80s, it was a lot harder to navigate the internet and computers. So if you were hugely into them, you were an outlier.

But those days of comic books, science fiction, and computers being things that only fringe communities got into are LONG gone. Women have always been a part of those communities although, surprise, nobody wants to mention it, and they’re even more so nowadays. Even when Leverage was being filmed, superheroes were cool! Several Batman movies had been wildly successful, the Sam Raimi Spiderman films had been box office hits, Lord of the Rings had won A MOTHERFUCKING OSCAR. In fact, it SWEPT THE OSCARS.

Geeks and nerds were no longer someone to laugh at and bully, especially straight white male nerds. And yet, these sad excuses for human beings continue to whine and bully and show their true racist, misogynistic, self-centered mindsets by insisting that they are bullied and ignored and can’t get dates because of their “nerdy” interests.

Newsflash: it’s not because of your interests, it’s because you’re assholes.

Chaos represents that. He is the WORST kind of nerd, and unfortunately, probably the kind of nerd that gets into the criminal world because he has a superiority complex and a chip on his shoulder. So if you watch the crew, they’re all pissed off by him, but none of them are surprised by him.

In fact, that’s why they recruit him for their team in The Last Dam Job!

Chaos tried to murder Sophie, he tried to murder Sophie’s old friend, he makes derogatory and objectifying remarks about Parker, and it’s all EXACTLY par for the course for hackers. Hardison is the hacking exception. He’s a gentleman, he’s black, he’s emotionally mature and aware, he’s thoughtful, and his “age of the geek, baby” catchphrase isn’t bitter and plotting “oh how I shall make you all rue the day you bullied me” it’s ecstatic and fun. He knows that the people who don’t appreciate his skills will come around in time. He’s not going to be an asshole about it.

The team recruits Chaos for the job not just because he’s the last person that their enemies will expect but because if they went out to find another hacker, they’d run into people who were just like Chaos in personality and behavior. Chaos is, at least (and ironically given his moniker), a known evil, he’s someone they understand and therefore can to a certain degree control. The team goes damn easy on him during this job. They could’ve taken the opportunity to make his life MISERABLE while he was distracted working for them. But they didn’t. They just roll their eyes and make quips about wanting to kill him.

Note that the other people in the Two Live Crew Job, the hitter and the thief, are treated very much as novelties. Eliot and Parker seem amused by them like they’re shiny new toys, but we also get the impression that they’re glad to see the back of them because the shine of these new toys would wear off rather quickly. Meeting someone who’s exactly like you is fun for a short bit but it can’t last--you’re too alike for any kind of relationship (platonic, romantic, or otherwise) to work long-term.

Chaos is hated by the team and they absolutely close ranks around him. Eliot and Hardison don’t even take their eyes off him and Eliot tells Mr. Quinn to do the same. The whole team works to keep Chaos away from Parker so that she doesn’t even have to deal with his presence. But given the insane revenge that the team has planned against others who’ve tried to kill them, and especially given that the last time someone made Parker upset Eliot and Hardison literally offered to kill the man, it’s unusual that they let Chaos off so easily. And it’s not out of a sense of “you’re our ally” honor. They screw over Sterling when he’s supposed to be their ally as well (although Sterling is also screwing over them, so...) so it can’t be that.

I honestly think it’s that they feel that Chaos is one symptom of a disease. He’s one type of cancer in a long, long line of cancers. Knock him down, and another incel asshole is gonna take his place.

So why bother? Why bother, when instead they can just keep Chaos on a tight leash. Better the devil you know, and thanks to his inability to shut up and his ego, they know Chaos very, very well.

Then we have Mr. Quinn, who is very interesting in that he’s one of those instances where you have to read into Eliot’s silences to get a lot about him. Now, unlike Moreau, I’m not saying that Quinn and Eliot were ever a thing. They could’ve been, sure, but I don’t personally get that vibe from them. What we get from Quinn is a window into how the rest of the criminal world sees Eliot.

Now, we learn in The Girls’ Night Out Job what the criminal world thinks of Parker. “You’re the Parker?” People know of Parker and how crazy she is, even if they don’t necessarily know her gender. We get a lot of what the criminal world thinks of Sophie, from Sterling to British nobility to everything and everyone in between. Hardison doesn’t have as much of a repuatation yet but as I’ve stated elsewhere Hardison is twenty-two at the start of the series, he’s still establishing himself, even in the relatively young game of hacking. But other than Damien Moreau, we don’t really get a huge look into what people think of Eliot (and Moreau isn’t even a proper look at Eliot the professional, he’s a look at Eliot the person, but I’m not recapping my entire goddamn Moreau/Eliot meta it’s under my tag y’all can go find it).

So Quinn is our one foray into how Eliot is seen by the criminal world, and the overwhelming emotion is: respect.

Unlike Chaos, or even Parker and her counterpart from the Two Live Crew Job, Quinn and Eliot respect each other and don’t take anything personally. They sort of accept that they’re on opposite sides out of a sense of honor--staying loyal to the person writing their checks--but it’s nothing personally antagonistic. And we see this with the other hitmen that Eliot tangles with 90% of the time. There’s no personal beef, it’s just doing their job, (and we get hilarious exchanges like Eliot being frustrated with amateurs, “how are you gonna improve,” etc), and that’s extremely fascinating considering how very personally Hardison, Sophie, Parker, and even Nate take it when they’re up against someone of their own field.

It all, for me anyway, harkens back to the talk between Sophie and Eliot in the boxing ring about Eliot’s rage and violence, and how he explains that he doesn’t let it own him and he has it under control. Being a hacker is who Hardison is, being a thief is who Parker is, being a grifter is who Sophie is (and that’s part of what spurs her season two journey to find herself), and Nate, well, we all see for five seasons how Nate struggles with his sense of identity. But Quinn and other hitter allies show us that being a hitter is what Eliot does, it’s not who he is. Eliot is a chef, he’s a boyfriend, he’s a lover, he’s a protector. He separates his identity from the job and it’s incredibly healthy of him and he’s possibly the only one of the team who can do that and I think that’s absolutely fascinating and another way in which the Leverage writing team uses Eliot to deconstruct the trope of the violent small-town white army boy hitman and blow it up to smithereens.

Because normally, Eliot would be the person most married to his job, the person least in touch with his emotions, the person constantly tempted by violence and to lose himself in his role. But instead he can walk away from it. In fact he wants to walk away from it, he wants to distance himself from the violent person he became and the things he did, he wants to become someone new (and did, when he fled Moreau and Toby taught him how to cook).

Mr. Quinn is our key to going, oh huh, hitters and bodyguards, ‘retrieval experts’, they don’t identify themselves with their jobs the way the other roles do, and that sets up a really interesting dynamic and I love it.

Finally, we have arguably the most interesting ally, which is Maggie.

A quick note on Maggie: While she is an ally, Hardison, Parker, and Eliot seem to view Maggie as separate from most of their other allies because she’s Nate’s ex-wife. Tension with Maggie comes more from Sophie and Nate. Eliot does flirt with her and score the date with her but the moment he realizes who she is he seems to go on the date purely for spying purposes for Nate--her being Nate’s former anything immediately puts her in this special category for the OT3 where they’re more excited to watch Nate responding to her than they are anything else. The OT3 don’t see her as any kind of threat--they rightly recognize that any interpersonal issues attached to her are Nate’s to deal with, and the OT3 have always been good about detaching themselves from Nate’s problems, calling Nate out on them, and not taking on Nate’s problems like they’re their own.

And I love how they write Maggie. She’s an ally who’s a civilian and the team treats her differently as a result. The OT3 want her for juicy information on Nate. She’s never once treated like a harpy, like a bitch, as a one-dimensional prop for Nate’s backstory. Sophie likes and respects Maggie. Maggie is a foil to the team because she reminds all of them of Nate’s fallibility, and she really shows them how they’re seen in the eyes of the public. She likes them, she’ll even join them occasionally, but she doesn’t 100% endorse them, and the team knows it, so they use her judiciously. In The Last Damn Job they use her precisely because she’s not a criminal, and you know that the team would welcome her into their lives if she wanted it, but also maintain a distance out of respect. They all adore Maggie, they find her fascinating, and it’s such a delight with the way ex-wives or ex-girlfriends are usually written.

They say that to really know a person, you have to know their friends and their enemies. And that holds true in this show. To see the status of the team, you have to look at how they treat their allies and their enemies, and so through seeing their allies, you see the team better. And I love that. A+ writing.

So those, nonny, are my random rambling thoughts on the team’s allies! Sorry it took me a few days to get to this, I hope you enjoyed it!

#mads answers things #leverage #leverage meta

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bambihanson · 4 years

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Hoo boy 5x03 let’s do this

Overall: I really liked most of this episode. Even though Kady was neglected this week it was better for them to just focus on these three different stories instead of trying to string together the individual stories of several different people into one episode - like they did in the first two episodes.

Positives

- Someone needs to give Eliot and Alice back massages, they must be sore after carrying this entire episode. - No but really Hale and Olivia were fucking amazing in this one. - Margo going feral is just... delicious. Finally some good fucking food - The Marcus sisters were really cool. - Also just her and Fen fighting in general, and seeing their different styles and watching Fen being badass was great. - They fully confirmed that Eliot and Quentin were in love! - Also that scene between Margo, Fen, and Josh where they basically all have an epiphany about Margo? And also that scene between Eliot and Alice where Eliot talks about his feelings for Q? Brilliant shit.

Negatives

- Who what where when and why would Josh and Fen EVER fuck????? WHAT????? - Actually I never liked the werewolf STD thing it’s just such a creepy way to try to add ~drama~ to the show. - They fully confirmed Eliot and Quentin were in love now that Q is dead. - Literally every single fan theory about who the Dark King was gonna be was better than this. But hey, dRaMAtiC rEvEAL

Nitpicks

- Ah yes, the “character conveniently has a dream about something that already happened in the show” trope. - It really took the showrunners five seasons to be like “Black women... you may now have some crumbs” huh - Yeah I’m adding Josh and Fen fucking here too I can’t get over it and frankly refuse to - I guess “changing things could fuck things up more” is reasonable but at the same time... 40 timelines. You’re literally contradicting yourselves here, people.

Commentary

- Eliot “WHAT THE FUCK, ALICE” Waugh - Margo eating Josh’s cookies is pretty cute, ngl. She really does genuinely enjoy his baking - “Okay, I can grieve AND handle a little cardio, thank you very much” - Eliot “I’m too pretty to hike” Waugh - The guide is getting secondhand stress watching them fight I CAN’T - Fen is a simple woman. She sees knives, she goes feral - The Takers are actually pretty creepy ngl. They kind of remind me of the vampires in 30 Days of Night. - Josh’s reaction watching the fights? Iconic. - BADASS FEN??? WE LOVE TO SEE IT. ALSO MARGO GRINNING WATCHING HER GIRL TAKE BITCHES OUT??? LOVE TO SEE THAT. - “Fenticle... what is your persuasion?” “I, uh, mostly date humans?” I love you Fen - WAIT FEN IS A WEREWOLF??? OR SOMETHING SIMILAR??? WHAT??? - .....JOSH FUCKED FEN???? AND THAT’S HOW SHE- WHAT- I- - Alice and Eliot are mad cute ngl - IS ELIOT GONNA TALK ABOUT HIS FEELINGS FOR QUENTIN OR NAH??? - If they try to pair Eliot off with some rando I swear to god- - THANK YOU FOR ACKNOWLEDGING THAT THEY WEREN’T JUST FRIENDS - Also thank you for not making Eliot fuck this guy - “The weaker sex” girls you need to turn around and prove your worthiness by killing this prick instead. - WHAT THE FUCK - OHHHH LMAAOOOO - Okay but Margo’s face when she thought she actually killed Fen??? Oof - Alice “bitch do you think I’m that dumb?” Quinn - QUENTIN AND ELIOT WERE IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER 100% CONFIRMED - HOLY SHIT THEY’RE BRINGING UP THE MOSAIC TOO?? - “That was brave.” “He was brave.” “You were brave.” AND WE’RE ALL CRYING IN THIS CHILI’S TONIGHT - Yes Eliot THANK YOU FOR TALKING ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS - ...Wow. Just, wow. - “The invention of autotune” SKJDKSSHKS WHAT KIND OF FUCKING BOOMERS DO THEY HAVE ON THIS WRITING TEAM - “Are we... in trouble again?” Eliot baby you’ve BEEN in trouble - Oh... this guy is the dark king... it’s just a new character... okay.

Dumb Sapphic Brain Thoughs

- Werewolf PMS Margo is... sexy

#the magicians #the magicians spoilers #season 5

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eowima · 4 years

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rules: pick 5 shows, then answer the following questions. don’t cheat. tag some people.

Thanks for tagging me, @forasecondtherewedwon :D

Brooklyn 99

Leverage

Lucifer

Doctor Who

Friends

who is your favorite character in 2? Definitely Parker, but a very close tie with Eliot because hello.

who is your least favorite character in 1? This is hard, they’re all genius :O hmmmm if I really had to choose one I’d say... Charles, but it breaks my heart to even say it.

what is your favorite episode of 4? Season 4, episode 8: Silence in the Library (classic I know)

what is your favorite season of 5? Tough one again, I’d say season 4 just because LONDON BABY!

who is your favorite couple in 3? Am I allowed to say Lucifer and Candy? xD I liked Candy, she was fun

who is your favorite couple in 2? Definitely Hardison and Eliot LOL

what is your favorite episode of 1? Oooooh, difficult! Hmmm, the Peraltiago fan in me screams Season 2, Episode 23 “Johnny and Dora” because that kiss at the end ahhhhhhh One of my favorite kiss ever

what is your favorite episode of 5? :O I have no idea!!! Hmmm... I really like that episode where Rachel is not in labor despite the fact that it’s over her due date, and then she finally is in labor but it still takes AGES, because I can totally relate to that. So Season 8, episodes 22/23

what is your favorite season of 2? I haven’t watched it for so long, in my mind pretty much all the episodes are absolutely amazing, and since we binge-watched it when we didn’t have kids yet, the seasons are all blending together LOL so I really don’t know. We’ve agreed with the hubby that it was time for a rewatch! :D

how long have you watched 1? Two or three years? I have no idea LOL

how did you become interested in 3? Saw the add ONE MILLION TIMES on Netflix and finally gave in (worth it, Lucifer is an amazing show.)

who is your favorite actor in 4? Ooooooh I really really love Matt Smith, but I’ll have to go with Karen Gillan ♥

which do you prefer, 1, 2, or 5? THE IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE. Ahhhhh, ohhhhh, hmmmmm okay, Brooklyn 99 I think (I feel so bad for the other two, I love them so much LOL)

which show have you seen more episodes of, 1 or 3? I’VE SEEN ALL OF THEM. No wait, not the last one from B99. But it has to be Brooklyn 99 again because there are more episodes and seasons.

if you could be anyone from 4, who would you be? River Song :D Best character EVER.

would a crossover between 3 and 4 work? Definitely!! Would be interesting too I think! The doctor could make a pit-stop in LA and fight demons alongside Maze and Lucifer and all the others, that’d be pretty fun :D

pair two characters in 1 who would make an unlikely but strangely okay couple? Ummmm, I don’t know, my first thought was Hitchcock and Scully but they kinda are already a couple aren’t they?

overall, which show has the better storyline, 3 or 5? I’d say Lucifer, but it really doesn’t make sense to compare two things so entirely different haha but Friends kinda got lost for a season or two at some point, storyline wise.

which has better theme music, 2 or 4? Oh my, they’re both so cool :O After very careful deliberation, I’d say Leverage’s theme is extremely amazing and so that’s what I’m going with. I mean, listen to this, isn’t it brilliant? That being said, I had the Doctor Who theme as my alarm clock for several years, so yeah. Amazing way to wake up by the way, WAKE UP, ALL ABOARD THE TARDIS FOR AN AMAZING ADVENTURE IN TIME AND SPACE (instead of you know, wake up you have to go to class you lazy ass LOL)

I’m tagging: @fargone5 @machiavelien-main and @ctrls if you guys want :D or anyone who wants to do it really

#tag game #about me

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queerbloodyangel · 5 years

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Hi! I haven’t seen the magicians and probably won’t but I’m interested in the drama/what’s going on?

oof sorry this has taken me so long anon, i havent been home much today and am just now getting time to sit down! i hope you don’t mind that i’m writing out a long thing, because quite a few people have asked me about it and tbh i just want to get it all down :)

so, little bit of backstory here: quentin coldwater is the main character of the magicians. the first episode of the show has him being released from a mental facility after he had checked himself in because he was “getting bad again”. after the doctor expressed concern for his well-being and said she wasnt sure he should be checking himself out so soon. he told her the only way she could stop him was if he said he had any plans of hurting others or himself, which, he didnt.

throughout the course of the show, the writers did an amazing job of showing quentin actually dealing with and talking about his depression. we saw him at his highs, and we saw him at his lows, and for a lot of people who have never seen depression depicted in such a real and non-romanticized way onscreen, it was revolutionary. i mean, it still is, some of the discussions he had with his friends about it were so fucking real that they had me in tears because yeah thats it.

anyway, along with that, quentin also was proven to be sexually fluid first in season 1 by having a threesome with two of his best friends margo and eliot. he also dated a woman (alice) for a while, though that relationship went up in spectacular flames lmao

in season 3, quentin and eliot get stuck in an alternate timeline together for 50 years. during that time quentin met a woman and had a child with her, but shortly after she died, and quentin and eliot raised the kid together, and stayed together until eliot died. time got reversed then, but because Magic, they both remembered what happened shortly after, in a quiet scene with just the two of them, because the taste of ‘peaches and plums’ reminded them, because they had lived near a peach and plum orchard in the alternate timeline. nothing more was said about it after that, though quentin and eliot remained extremely affectionate with each other.

at the end of season 3, and going into season 4, eliot gets possessed by a monster thats more powerful than any of the gods on the show, and completely unkillable. the monster also has an incredibly childlike mentality, so at one point quentin asks it if eliot’s still alive, and the monster says no. since up until that point the monster has been truthful to a fault, quentin believes it.

episode 5 happens, and quentin and his ex, alice, are figuring out a way to kill the monster. during this period of time, quentin makes it very clear to alice that he has absolutely no desire to get back together with her, and with all of the shit going on with the monster/eliot, he doesnt even have the space to even think about them. meanwhile, eliots trapped inside his own mind, going through all of his worst memories trying to figure out a way to get out long enough to tell his friends that he is alive, and needs help. he goes through a ton of bad memories, including ones about his childhood growing up in a homophobic small town in indiana, ones involving betraying his friends, and basically anything else he can come up with.

he realizes eventually what his worst memory is, and we go back to the scene from season 3 where he and quentin remember the alternate timeline. quentin asks eliot if they can give them a shot, because ‘we work. 50 years, who gets proof of concept like that?’ and memory!eliot turns him down. the real eliot apologizes to memory!quentin, kisses him, and he’s able to take control of his body long enough to tell quentin (eliot: 50 years, who gets proof of concept like that?

quentin: what?

eliot: peaches and plums, motherfucker, i’m alive in here)

quentin then jumps in front of eliot so alice’s attempt to kill his body misses, and the monster comes back.

from that point on, quentin’s sole focus is getting eliot back. he sleeps once on screen, for a total of 15 minutes. he’s jumpy, on edge, exhausted, and clearly spiraling as it becomes more and more apparent there might not be a way for him to save eliot. up until episode 10, not a scene goes by without quentin reiterating that they have to save eliot, no matter what.

episodes 11 & 12 happen, and (if memory serves me correctly) quentin says eliots name once, maybe twice. he gets back with alice, and suddenly, is no longer spiraling (????) its as if eliot doesnt even exist.

episode 13 happens, they manage to get the monster out of eliot, and quentin doesn’t even spare a glance towards eliot, who’s lying on the ground bleeding out and need to be rushed to the hospital. quentin and alice have found a way to trap the monster in a rip in the universe, and take off to do that. things happen that make 0 sense, and winds up jumping into this rip in the universe along with the monster, and dies.

after his death, he winds up in the underworld, talking to someone, where he asks, “did i do that to save my friends, or did i finally find a way to kill myself?”

the person takes him back to earth, so quentin can watch his friends mourn him. instead of letting his friends actually talk about him, the writers had them sing a song as they threw their mementos of quentin into a fire, and that?? somehow shows quentin that his death was okay.

the writers (sera gamble and john mcnamara) are acting like they deserve an award or something because they killed off the ‘white male lead’, which, apparently is progressive or something. as if tv show writers haven’t been killing off mentally ill, queer characters for decades already.

the writers didn’t tell the rest of the cast what was happening, until two days before the finale aired. the actor who played quentin (jason ralph) was under a gag order for a year, and they filmed a dummy scene at the end that had the gang realizing there was a way for quentin to be saved.

the actor who played eliot (hale appleman), an openly queer man, spent the last several weeks reassuring fans over and over that quentin and eliot’s story wasn’t over, to have faith, only to find out that he’d unwillingly been a part in this whole fiasco.

they killed off the character that honestly, probably 90% of the fanbase saw themselves in, and had latched onto with their whole hearts because of that. for a lot of us, it felt like watching a bit of ourselves die, and along with it, a love story that deserved to be told, that a lot of us believed would be told. i, personally have watched so many shows where the writers absolutely refused to make the ‘popular gay ship’ canon, and have even been part of fanbases that have been mocked for it. but this just. this shit is on a different level and i dont know what to even call it except for some bizarre take on queerbaiting that’s somehow 10000000x worse than that word can even describe.

again, i’m sorry this is so godawful long but i’m truly devastated over losing quentin coldwater. queer people deserve better, mentally ill people deserve better, and god fucking damn it so do i.

#THIS IS SO LONG IM REALLY #ALSDJALSDJKF #GOD #the magicians #quentin coldwater #ask #anon

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halfgap · 5 years

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This is such a tiny (& likely pointless) quibble that’s been bothering me for a long, long time, way before I got into CR. Basically writers and fandom (esp. recently) are really, really into the whole “found family” or “families of choice” trope, and like. So am I, 100%. But a lot of the thought/language surrounding it -- in all areas of fandom -- tends to veer in a direction that almost always makes me uncomfortable.

Below the cut bc this got rambly & senseless fast lol

Like... it’s sort of this popular fixation on assigning kinship terms to each individual or non-romantic relationship within the “found family” unit. Like, “oh this is the dad of the group, this is the mom, this is the weird uncle, these two are siblings, etc.” And obviously in some cases it’s very appropriate or even comes directly from the writers/characters (which is another issue of its own tbh but.. later). But it bugs me that so many people are so keen on categorizing these relationships through this rigid kinship terminology in the first place.

(And I know I’m looking at this from a very unfortunately Eurocentric perspective, since there are so many cultures that don’t base their ideas of “kinship” on biology at all and don’t automatically prioritize blood relations as “true” family, which is why my weird specific quibbles on this may be entirely pointless, and I’m open to hearing thoughts. But I also suspect that most of the people participating in this popular trend/habit I’m talking about are coming from a similar cultural perspective as mine...)

Anyway, I can’t really articulate why this has always annoyed me so much other than to say... I feel like people refuse to let the word “friends” just be, and be important & valued? And it’s good that people are re-defining the word “family” so that it can function independent of any blood ties, but this obsession with like, “dad, siblings, the vodka aunt etc” to me still feels strongly tied to the older ideas of kinship through blood & marriage, basically this.. strictly defined family tree sort of deal. If people want to push forward the idea that the platonic bonds we choose & create for ourselves can be just as important or even more important than biological bonds or romantic/sexual ones, then why do we have to insist on these older kinship labels that both implicitly continue to privilege older ideas of family (by people “upgrading” relationships from “friends” to “siblings/parents/etc”) and also bear the same limitations? Like, a great fucking thing about these chosen bonds are that they don’t have to be defined or boxed into any one predetermined social role, they can be amorphous and intense and transcend the language we currently have access to.

Like, when people kept asking Ash and Taliesin on TM if Yasha and Molly considered themselves siblings... That made me uncomfortable, especially after they both conclusively said “no.” Ashley’s made it clear that Molly was the most important person in her life after she left Xhorhas, he’s a soul mate and a friend and a confidant and a buddy but she clarified that Yasha doesn’t see him as “a brother, exactly..” Partly I think it’s because there is a potential dimension of some form of romantic bond within their intense platonic love, but even with that they’d never consider themselves dating or anything like that, either -- or they can also ‘just’ be read as 100% platonic past & present & future, depending on where you’re coming from. Like, it’s ambiguous & amorphous & intense & loving & good, and I like that it defies categorization, I like that the best way to describe them is “they’re very close friends” and that doesn’t mean less than if they were lovers or “adoptive siblings” or whatever. The whole circus was kind of the same way, and Tal even said that Molly didn’t consider any of them a “parental” figure when fans asked about Gustav, but decided that Gustav was the closest to that role if we had to look at things that way. But we don’t!!!!

People also asked several times if Beau and Molly considered themselves siblings -- again, no!!!!! (But I feel like that’s probs bc the cast are also largely used to the idea we get from so much media & stories where a friend/comrade is “upgraded” to a “brother/sister/whatever” after a certain degree of trust/intimacy that Beau and Molly didn’t have yet... but still, I don’t think Beau and Molly ever needed to develop into siblings in the first place!! Ahhhh!!!) Weirdly a funny related example I can think of is that one Community episode when they were like “This study group is like a family!!” but then a lot of hidden trysts and scandals and feelings were discussed/debated, and at the end Jeff admitted that maybe they weren’t like a family, exactly, maybe it was more complicated than that. And it is!!! But that doesn’t mean that group bond matters less than family!!! (Also the ‘wholesome as the family on the Brady Bunch’ -> ‘incestuous & dysfunctional as the cast of the Brady Bunch’ joke is hilarious).

Also!!!! In Leverage when people are so fixated on calling Nate the dad, Sophie the mom, Eliot & Parker & Hardison the kids, or like one weird youtube comment I saw acknowledging how Parker & Hardison are dating, well, now Hardison is just the daughter’s boyfriend!! Like ?????? What? Nate has really dad-like interactions, Sophie sometimes has really mom-like interactions, and I love it all and it’s funny, but they’re not equivalent to a mom & dad. Sophie flirts with Eliot, Nate & Sophie can both be really dumb & competitive with all of the other 3.. Eliot has sibling-like interactions with Hardison and Parker sometimes, and he also has love interest-like reactions, and he also has Best Friend-like interactions, and they’re all good & important & only part of a greater, harder to define whole that forms their bond.

And like, I realize that y’know, ultimately all these words aren’t real, like.. language is constantly evolving because all the ‘meaning’ (denotive & connotative) of these words are something we construct as a society in an effort to best reflect what society perceives as reality/truth... And that probably every individual gets a slightly different meaning in their mind when any given word comes up anyway.. Which is why ‘family’ now doesn’t really frustrate me as much when used in the same contexts as I was just ranting about with ‘mom/dad/brother/sister/etc’ but I dunno. I’m just suspicious of what feels like people trying to re-imagine these bio-family words so they can encompass non-biological bonds, rather than maybe instead trying to just? Keep words like friendship and platonic and whatever and push them until they gain a connotation of importance as much as ‘family’ (& related terms) and ‘spouse’ or whatever has? Because if we don’t want bio families to take precedence over chosen families in any way, then I think our language has to reflect that, and people need to stop fckin dismissing friendship in the first place. It weirdly reminds me of some people trying to get literary arts & humanities etc added to “STEM” bc they believe science shouldn’t be viewed as more valuable than the arts, but then in those very attempts to ““elevate”” the arts, they’re just??? Already playing into this assumption that STEM is higher, more important etc?? And treating arts as some form of science just limits it & removes a lot of the dimensions of art that makes it valuable - & different from science - in the first place? Which was what I was saying before about people trying to cram relationships like Yasha’s & Molly’s into a defined familial one?

Okay I realize this is just incoherent unhinged rambling at this point but I’m just trying to parse my inexplicable frustration on the go here lmao. If anyone who might have perspective on this wants to?? Help me out here, it’d be great to hear your thoughts. Am I just being overly suspicious & nitpicky??? Maybe!!!!! But that’s why I called it a quibble!!!!

anyway tl;dr the M9 are a group of friends, best friends even, and that can be just as important & prioritized as family/romantic partners, but if you really want to say the M9 are ‘like family’ or a family then I guess I’m ok with that too, but for some reason anything more specific than that tends to grind my gears bc I’m Weird

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spadesinglasses · 5 years

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Druck (Series)

Oof the first episode dropped and we all died.

Side note: this post may or may not contain several unpopular opinions about certain stuff the fandom is on about)

Another note: okay so this was a lot, so click keep reading carefully.

Okayy so I’ll cut at this point I only care about 3 clips (I watched all of them).

Can we just talk about the 2nd clip? The longing and ache Matteo has for Jonas, the guy who’s literally just inches beside him. How he just carefully caressed his hair? He was so fucking careful that his touches were light as to not disturb the peace, the gap in time where he can be himself.

We all had those moments of ache for someone. We love someone so much that we just want to be physically close to them. To be intimate to them. Having that feeling to someone whose sexuality is not compatible with you hurts.

Jonas, a straight guy (despite that comment thing he did with Hanna) is the person of affection of Matteo. And Matteo already damn well know not to fall in love with a hetero but he couldn’t stop himself to love this fool specially whenever Jonas does something unbearably lovable.

Been there done that, I had a feeling for a guy before and I did so many stupid things just to spend time with him. Looking back at it now, I was definitely obvious and it was humiliating. It’s not humiliating to love someome, but I probably looked desperate or funny.

Next clip would be the 3rd. Matteo shrugging after saying “cool” to Sara’s photo is just damn hilarious. And the fact that it’s like a mindless action makes it better. That action was for himself and nobody else and I just want more of Matteo doing these little actions mindlessly throughout the season.... and then have David notice it.

HOLY SHIT first scene with David holy fuck beanie boy where’s your beanie? Anyways, that shit there was something alluring omfg. Okay let me drag the other remakes for a sec. First was Martino and Niccolo.

If I remember correctly their first major scene together was when Niccolo entered the radio meeting place. During that scene, Martino was preoccupied with himself and Emma and then he heard Niccolo’s voice, and the audio just had this whitenoise thing going on, like a static and just Martino’s senses are recalibrating and sharpening towards that voice and saw Niccolo and fell inlove. What i love with this scene was that it showed the whole sharping to focus situation when we fall in love. I love it so much.

Lucas and Eliot’s first scene was when Eliot entered the common room, Lucas saw Daphne smiling at someone and when he looked over there he saw Eliot. I imagine what Lucas feeling as an ember slowly getting bigger and getting hotter. It’s like this small piece of wood with small flickers of fire, just starting and then getting brighter and brighter until it becomes a fire of passion and sensuality.

They also noticed one another in that scene, with Eliot looking over the noise and seeing Lucas looking at him.

and now David and Matteo holy fuck dudes. Matteo was just there, minding his wee business thinking how to get Abdi’s weed from Amira and then bam there he saw this guy walking (I HAVE THE HUGE NEED TO KNOW WHO LOOK AT WHO FIRST, I MUST KNOW) and Matteo just felt something, something reminiscent of what he feels for Jonas and it was different, it was sudden and now he couldn’t take away his mind about this guy.

I see Matteo’s situation close to Martino and I love it so much. About how they maintained eye contact longer than the others, how David looked back (ooof Andi Mack fandom say wazzup) after he passed him and how he saw Matteo still looking at him.

Matteo dear wanted to look away, that looking at a guy for this long may be weird or whatever but fuck he couldn’t and it was eating him so much because how dare you take my attention like this.

He wanted to look away, he was about to look away but then he saw David looked back at him, and Matteo just grabbed at that time to look longer at David, to see his face, his eyebrows and his hair, and his cheeks and his eyes. Matteo wanted to make that moment longer but his mind just lost control over his body because jesus what is this feeling.

AND NOW THE HOLY 6TH CLIP.

Holy jesus fuck. Okay Matteo goes to this meeting group, with his usual level of enthusiasm, just saw there and let it do its thing. Amira was proud that Matteo was actually going through with what he said. Amira smiling and the girl squad is just happiness okay.

Okay back to Matteo, he’s done with photoshop Markus, he’s done with whatever they were doing because in the end it doesn’t matter for him, he’s just there for the weed and with his friends easily bailing out, he’s just over it. He left and walked away, eyes on the ground. And then he saw pants.

He was just about to warn the guy about the weird meeting but then he sees the guy he locked eyes with and fuck Matteo wanted again.

His body was automatic again, renewed confidence coming out of nowhere was just pushing him. He wanted. He looked at the hallway, thinking about shutting himself in his room, going to play music till everything just glosses over once more and it’ll be tomorrow. But oh he so wanted. He patted himself to find something, maybe they can share a common ground, something to keep him longer beside this person. Then he found his joint and offered it, his confidence wavering at every succinct answer of this guy. He’s like myself. They’re alike.

And then they were just there. Matteo couldn’t help but lean on the wall because he’s just so out of it. He felt like all vigor in his body left and now it’s just peace. I wanna love and be loved. This lyrics reminds me of Matteo completely and just I’m devastated for him. I see parts of myself with how Matteo deals with people around him. And it hurts me to see him go through all these things because it pulls back memories I wanted to forget.

David and Matteo talked, and we can actually see David opening up slowly and slowly, inch by inch as Matteo get closer and closer emotionally. He’s laughing, smiling, trying to pull anything out of David.

And David offered little bits of his life, stuff that he can now joke about, stuff that can be easily misunderstood and he loved doing it because its fun seeing people’s confused reactions and awkwardness because they all pry too much. But Matteo, Matteo was different to the other people around his life.

And then bam Sara enters and ruins this little bubble they made and tried so hard to keep.

And maybe its just me, but when Sara kissed Matteo, I can see David mouthing “okay” and it breaks me.

Because we see these two people again, can’t express their attraction to one another right from the start because society have made it impossible to do so. Made everything toxic.

And now David was there, just feeling lost and all happiness inside him that wanted to burst just simmered and then died. And Matteo who leaned over for the kiss did not even know why he did. It was just an automatic reaction right now.

And then David was leaving, and then he left. David left with Matteo’s heart behind him. And Matteo was left there, like a husk once again numb but deeply, deeply excited for David.

Now for the unpopular opinion warning. Again, if I said something offensive (I always try my best not to be) I apologize and thank you for reading up til here. I try my best not to step on anyone’s happiness or feelings.

I want to express my opinion to the whole “GerEven is Matteo” thing.

First of all I’m tired. Tired of having to see these characters lose everything and just become “The Isak of Druck” or “Even of Druck” and I KNOW that fans didn’t mean it like that. That fans just love the original skam. WE all love the original skam with all its flaws and perfections.

But eventually it gets tiring. David and Matteo share similarities with both Even and Isak because they were in the same position as they were, they are just two guys lost to one another and couldn’t publicly express it. Like this is the case to all remakes. They may all got their start from Isak and Even but please let them soar as their own characters. Let Martino claim who he is. Let Lucas claim who he is. Let Matteo be who he is.

I lost with whatever my point here is, but just let these characters, let these remakes BREATHE. Let them have a space to grow into as themselves and not have the pressure or threat of “they have to be like Isak and Even” destroy the meaning of these remakes and the original.

This week had been troublesome specially up to the reveal of David. It was exhausting, and I wish that this would be the last, but I really doubt it. (I’m honestly scared for Skam españa season 2) So please just enjoy the series as it is. Compare if you like, just to show the difference, but comparing them and then dissing the remakes for not being the same as the original is just ... whatever I’m done with this issue.

ANYWAYS That’s it, I will make another post for some episodes, specially if I have a lot to say. I’ve watched the clips on the same day the subs were released so I just really want to put my opinion out there.

#druck #david #matteo florenzi #other skam remakes im not even gonna tag anymore #glass thoughts #davenzi

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butterflydm · 5 years

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The Magicians Revisited: 1x02 The Source of Magic

Significant moments: We meet reoccurring character Prof. Sunderland as she questions Q after the attack by the Beast. She wants to know how the Beast got in and how he knew Quentin’s name. Martin wants to ‘nip this in the bud’ and sees killing Q as the best means to that end; I feel like Q is the one explicitly mentioned to get killed in every previous timeline, but I guess I will get confirmation about that at the end of the season. If Jane did realize that Quentin was Time Key Old Man, then it makes a lot of sense that she would junk a timeline the second Q gets killed, because he needs to live, grow old, and go back in time to solve the mosaic to give her the key that she’s using to do all this to begin with.

All four of our main first years contribute to the fight - Q materializes the watch that first pushes The Beast away, Kady and Alice both use spells to hurt him, and Penny destroys the mirror that he used to enter and leave.

Q tries to talk to Alice about the summoning spell, but Eliot and Margo find Q and Alice in the aftermath of the attack and are affectionate and coddling, cutting the conversation short. Margo takes Alice off to talk in her room, while Eliot and Quentin talk outside. Margo asks Alice about what happened and about her family; Alice does not tell her about the summoning. Margo tells Alice that she wants to be her friend; Alice does not believe her. Quentin does tell Eliot about the summoning, and he and Eliot also share their respective traumas of depression and telekinetic manslaughter.

So, a thought that I’m going to look at further: did Margo genuinely want to try to be friends with Alice but her manner and general personality combined with Alice’s own biases misled Alice into believing Margo’s actions were not sincere OR is Alice right that Margo does not actually want to be friends but is pretending to want to be for ulterior motives? Because Margo does invite Alice to join them and hang out in 1x01 too, and Alice dismisses that as insincere as well. However, if Margo was being sincere here, she might decide at a certain point that she doesn’t want to put up with having her motives constantly questioned, and so stops trying. I’m going to be watching future Margo-Alice scenes with a careful eye, I think, because it’s possible that Alice’s opinion is being colored by how incredibly selfish her parents are and she mistook a genuine attempt at friendship for something else.

Eliot is obviously, painfully, sincere and genuine with Quentin and Quentin, just as obviously, doesn’t doubt that Eliot’s intentions are good. This episode lays a very strong foundation for their future friendship (… and romance) by having Quentin confide readily in Eliot and Eliot deciding to share just as deeply so that he can have a real emotional connection with Quentin. And this kind of impulse in Eliot is, I think, what Martin takes advantage of when he’s possessing/controlling Mike later on this season. I’ll watch out for that when I get there.

Q and Alice then talk and he tells her about Fillory and that he thinks Fillory is real. The real Chatwins lived next to the author of the Fillory books, and Martin Chatwin went missing in real life and Jane disappeared the year after.

Ah-ha, yes. Penny confirms in his scene with Kady that he went to the lab because the voice that has been talking to him told him to — the voice that he now knows is the Beast. That voice taught him magic before he came to Brakebills. It talked to him all while he was growing up and he considered it his only friend. Ouch. Though, actually, that makes me wonder exactly how early in their lives the timeline loops over, if the Beast was already talking to Penny when he was a kid. Hmm.

Penny wants to leave Brakebills, Kady wants to convince him to stay. At this point, she does convince him to cover for her while she steals from the Physical Kids’ cottage, which… yeah, so Kady is definitely playing him at this point, since she’s actively using him now... which means that’s she’s doing the same thing to him right now that the Beast did to him all his life, tricking him into thinking she’s a source of support when she’s actually using him to advance her own agenda. …ouch again. She’s got some strong mitigating factors on her side but… still, ouch.

Sunderland confronts the group, she questions them individually, Penny throws Q under the bus regarding the spell, and both Kady and Alice let him do it. Eliot finds Q afterwards and tries to make him feel better. Q almost leaves a message on Julia’s voicemail apologizing to her for their conversation in 1x01 and asking her to remind him about magic when he forgets, but deletes it before he hangs up. Q then picks a fight with Penny, and he ends up getting punched and having his battle magic bounce back on him and throw him back several feet.

I had not recalled exactly how brutal the fallout was between Penny and Q in the aftermath of the summoning. And Q’s desperation in general was very apparent, kinda illustrating that if his and Julia’s positions had been reversed in this timeline, he probably would have been willing to go just as far as she was in trying to get magic back into his life.

Meanwhile, Julia meets the hedge witches and Marina (head witch) is pretending to be another beginner like Julia so that she can evaluate her. I mean, it takes up a lot of screentime and I enjoy the scenes but that’s… basically all that happens. We also find out in a scene with Pete and Marina that Kady is under Marina’s thumb, and that’s who she was stealing for.

Q steals the Emerson’s Alloy from Penny to keep his mind from being wiped, but Jane (calling herself “Eliza” to Quentin) is there and she, of course, has no plans to wipe his mind right now. Their conversation is very interesting. She’s evaluating him, testing him to see if she thinks this version of him is up to the task. She tells him not to overthink things, and I’m thinking about 3x05 — also, in 1x01, Julia told Q to “live his life”, which is used in 3x05 as well. “You’re late”, “don’t overthink things”, “live your life here”. I’m going to see if those pop up other places, too. Jane wants Q to think outside the box, to break out of what he might normally do, because she knows he’ll get involved — she’s not sure why it’s Quentin, but he’s inevitable. Jane does take the Emerson’s away from Q, so none of the main group have it now.

Jane talks to Fogg and he is not happy with how things are going. He tells her that she should be the one fixing things in Fillory and killing the Beast, not Penny and Quentin. We do end on a cheerful note, with Margo and Eliot happily welcoming Quentin back.

Magic: 1. Pete locks the door of the meat locker for Julia’s test with Marina. 2. Q “materializes” the watch from Dean Fogg’s hand into his own and uses it against the Beast to push him away. 3. Kady uses battle magic against the Beast. 4. The Beast knocks Kady’s head against a desk. 5. Alice uses a spell against the Beast that drives him back into the mirror. 6. Pete ‘wakes up’ the corpse in the meat locker to try to get Julia looking in the right direction. 7. Magic-sensing map that Sunderland uses. 8. Julia creates the temporary warming spell in the meat locker. 9. Quentin uses battle magic against Penny, but Penny has the Emerson’s Alloy that Kady stole from the Physical Kids’ cottage, so it bounces back on Quentin. 10. Healing magic for Q’s arm in the infirmary. 11. Healing magic is being used on Dean Fogg’s injuries. 12. Eliot uses magic to increase the fire in the BBQ.

Relationships: Dean Fogg & Jane Chatwin: slightly shaky allies Quentin & Julia: estranged friends Julia & James: established relationship -> becoming estranged Quentin & James: estranged friends Quentin & Eliot: friends & confidantes Quentin & Penny: antagonistic & hostile Eliot & Margo: best friends Margo & Quentin: friendship Quentin & Alice: temporary allies Penny & Kady: romantic & sexual relationship Kady->Penny: manipulative relationship Margo & Alice: potentially aborted friendship Penny & the Beast|Martin: manipulative mentorship -> betrayal Marina & Pete -> Julia: manipulative mentorship Marina -> Kady: blackmail/extortion Eliot & Alice: No interaction; Eliot was focused completely on Quentin in the aftermath of the attack Quentin->Kady: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Kady->Alice & Quentin: “losers" Alice->Kady & Penny: temporary allies Penny->Alice: seems okay with her Jane&Fogg->Quentin&co: manipulative mentorship

Physical contact: The Beast covered Q’s mouth with his hand during the attack (to suffocate him, looks like) and left blood on his face. Right before that, he also touches Q’s cheek (somewhat similarly to how Pete touches Julia in 1x01, actually). Penny holds Kady after the Beast attacks her. Eliot puts his arm around Q’s shoulders; Margo puts her arm around Alice’s shoulders and holds her hand. When they get to the Physical Kids’ cottage, Margo takes Alice by the arm and leads her off. Kady grabs Penny by the wrist while she’s trying to talk him out of leaving. I also think she touches his stomach, but it’s below the camera. Eliot and Margo snuggle on the couch in the Physical Kids' cottage. Penny touches a random Physical Kid student while distracting him from Kady stealing things from the cottage. Kady grabs Penny by the arm again after she steals from the cottage and they’re outside. She grabs his chin to get him to look her in the eye. Penny takes Kady by the hand after he leaves Sunderland’s office. Quentin pushes Penny, Penny pushes him back and punches him, then holds him down with his arm behind his back. Sunderland pushes Penny back slightly to keep him from approaching Quentin again. Marina puts her arm around Julia’s shoulder after the test is done. Jane rests a hand on Fogg’s knee as he’s in the hospital bed.

Character Notes: Alice Quinn: unaware of Fillory, never read the books and did not know the main character’s name. Not a fan of fantasy books in general. Marina: level 50 hedge witch; self-proclaimed ‘top witch in New York’.

Students: No new info.

Timeline Notes: Picks up in the aftermath of the Beast attack. We find out that it’s a Monday (classes are cancelled ‘tomorrow’ but pick up again ‘Wednesday’). The last scene of the episode is the next day (Tuesday).

Ways the Loop-aware Messed With Our Kids: 1. Martin was the voice in Penny’s head encouraging him to help Alice and Q with the summoning spell 2. Martin tries to kill them after the summoning spell has been done. 3. Jane talks to Q and encourages him along the path she wants him to take.

#TMRevisited #The Magicians #tmwk1 #long post #text post #keeping track of things

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freakadr0id · 5 years

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The Magicians 4x13

Okay so, I can’t sleep at all. To be honest, I’ll probably end up deleting this later, since it’s 2am as I am typing this up on the shitty Tumblr app and I honestly don’t know how coherent this will actually be. There’s just a bunch of emotions swirling around in my brain and in my heart that refuse to shut up. This episode is quite literally keeping me up at night. I’m hoping that if I vent into the void, then perhaps I’ll be able to get some sleep.

Yeah, you know what this is ultimately about, but let’s back up for a second and focus on the season itself first.

This season was, as I’ve mentioned before, all over the place in terms of pacing. The first 6 episodes were really strong, but started falling apart afterwards. We got an interesting premise in the first two episodes with the main characters under magical witness protection and having completely different memories and personalities. 4x03 - 4x05, although perhaps not the most plot driven episodes, gave me some of my character moments of the whole season. 4x06 was a nice step on track in terms of plot, but started the slip in terms of pacing and conflict. After 4x06 though, I feel like things really just started to get lost. The connection between the monster and the library wasn’t built up well, and the bombshell reveal of the monster’s sister and the Christopher Plover moments kind of made the whole second half of season 4 have a sort of ‘jump-the-shark’ feel to it. And then came the season finale.

This episode was, for the lack of a better term, a bit of a mess, and was ultimately indicative of the problems that plagued the second half of the season. Too many plots were resolved too quickly and with not enough pay off. First, the monsters were both trapped and defeated rather easily, with the monster’s sister being trapped within the first minute of the episode (making her appearance in the show all but pointless), and Monster Eliot being trapped using a basic bait and switch tactic. Then, Julia becomes “normal” (a decision she doesn’t even make and an event we don’t actually see on screen) and is unable to do magic, which is of itself an unsatisfying end to the whole goddess Julia plotline, but that is also resolved by the end of the episode with her able to do magic again. The monster and the library conflict is resolved in a ten minute scene with a confrontation between Penny, Alice, Q, and Everett (which could have been prevented had they just THROWN THE BOTTLES IN AT THE SAME TIME) concluding the conflict the whole season had built up in just a couple minutes. This little confrontation of course ends in Quentin’s death.

Okay. Um. So, yeah. Quentin’s death hit me hard, as I’m sure it did for all fans of The Magicians. Now normally I would be okay with the death of the main character (well, not okay, but you know what I mean), knowing that there was a possibility of bringing him back next season, but several sources have confirmed that Jason Ralph is not returning as a regular for season, which means he’s done. That’s it. No more Q. Which is just....yeah. I knew there had been rumors surrounding Jason’s agent or something like that (I don’t remember quite what it was), which caused some people to suspect that he wasn’t returning to the show, but I never would have thought those rumors would be true. The fact that Jason is not coming back makes Q’s death and the entire season that much worse.

I do not like how Q’s death was handled. Ignoring the whole “bury your gays” thing going on, there’s just not enough resolved in Quentin’s story to make his death something meaningful to fans. For this being a character’s last season, there was very little for Quentin to do this season. Outside of the first and last three episodes (two of which he wasn’t even himself in) he did not have that much significance to the plot, which I get is kind of the point of The Magicians as a series. There is also the fact that Q and Eliot only spoke to each other once in this whole season, and did not get any closure in regards to their relationship. I am admittedly biased as a Queliot shipper, but what was the point of bringing up 3x05 again without a proper emotional conclusion. And again I understand that is the point they were trying to make with this, death doesn’t always happen with a happy ending or a completed story, but Quentin (and all the others) deserves better.

I do not mind that Q sacrificed himself for his friends. In fact, that is how I pictured him going (although not permanently). What I didn’t like was the line implying that his sacrifice was a suicide. Q didn’t have to say that, and the fact they had the Suicide Prevention Hotline number at the end of the episode does not overshadow the fact that they had their majorly depressive main character imply that this was a suicide and that any development that he had made as a character in regards to his mental well-being up until this point was moot. For a show that encouraged discussion about mental illness, it really dropped the ball on that one.

Then, there is the whole meta aspect of this. It seems to me that the writers were so determined to make Quentin’s death an emotional gut-punch that they sacrificed consistent writing and audience trust for the sake of a twist ending. Several sources have stated that both the production team and Jason Ralph knew at the beginning of the season that this was going to be his last, which makes this season look that much messier. Normally I would probably say that excuses some of the sloppy story and pacing of the season but that doesn’t work in this case, since they knew early on that Jason was leaving. They knew that this was going to be Q’s last season, and instead of making this a worthy farewell for him, they pushed him off to the sidelines for the sake of building up the ensemble to compensate for his absence; prolonged the monster plot so all signs would point to Eliot possibly dying due to his possession and included 4x05 and a relationship tease for Quentin and Eliot; all for the sake of an audience midirect and to prevent them from guessing it. And it goes beyond that! From all indications (although admittedly none of this is verified) it looks like the other actors had no knowledge of this, were given fake scenes for the ending and were not shown the episode until shortly before the official airing. Whether or not this was for some weird legal reason or to prevent potential spoilers is unclear, but it seems to be for the sake of keeping the audience in the dark. It seems mean to keep the actors in the dark as well, especially seeing the reactions this episode has gotten and leaving the unkowing actors to perform crowd control, but then again, I don’t know the ins and outs of the television business. Look, as a self-proclaimed writer I get wanting to have that emotional gut-punch land with the audience, and it kind of sucks when people end up guessing it, but it should not outweigh the more crucial parts in telling the story.

TL;DR: The writers did so much in their power to keep Q’s death a secret that they sacrificed the integrity of the season, the audience’s trust and the significance of Q’s death.

Will I stop watching the show because of this? Probably not. I’ll still likely watch season 5 (just as I did when OUaT did this, even though all my favorite characters were gone) and I hope this next season is better. I am curious as to whar they’ll do next season and how they’ll make up for the void Q’s absence leaves.

I watch to reiterate that this is not the fault of Jason, Jade, Hale, Brittany, Olivia, Arjun, Stella, or any of the actors involved in the show. Please do not send hate to them. They don’t deserve it and do wonderful work on the show. Please don’t send hate directly to the writers either. Trust me, they know you’re upset, and they really don’t need to be bombarded with horrible messages. You are valid in your sadness and anger, just please avoid any harrasment of any of The Magicians staff.

I still can’t stop crying though.

#the magicians #quentin coldwater #queliot #the magicians season 4 #the magicians 4x13 #so many tears #seriously #every time i close my eyes i think of q and i start crying all over again #i just want sleep #dont even get me started on how female characters were written this season #serously dont

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pandoradeloeste · 5 years

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Let’s Go Steal A Dystopia: a proposed season 6

(partially inspired by my state being on fire and my country shooting noncombatants in another country with tear gas)

TL;DR: Season 6 is about the actual building of Leverage International. Step 1: do not post the Black Book to the dark web with no context or groundwork. (Guess which step Hardison skipped.)

Season 6 opens with a 30-second recap of the last scene in The Long Goodbye Job: the team gathers around the hard drive containing the Black Book, Hardison talks about putting it on the dark web and building Leverage International, Eliot promises to take care of them until his dying day, and we have the overhead shot of Nate and Sophie leaving with Parker’s line about being OK playing over it.

SMASH CUT to the trio parkouring through a not-quite-dystopian Portland street. Parker is grim and no-nonsense, and has none of the joie de vivre that usually accompanies her skilled physical work. Hardison is holding a tablet and frantically hacking as he runs. Eliot does his best to keep rioters and security mooks from attacking Parker and Hardison. As they reach their destination, Eliot pulls out a gun and methodically shoots the mooks who are about to reach them. Parker and Hardison watch Eliot for a second and share a look that says that this isn’t the first time he’s shot someone on a job since Moreau, and they know what it costs him.

The job for the first two episode is fairly simple, something like “a CEO is holding my husband hostage to make me program a bad thing, help me get him back”. The job takes two episodes and we don't actually see much of it, because we have a lot of worldbuilding to get through. The episodes are structured like an episode of Lost, where a lot of the time is spent in flashback to what happened when the team assumed that Leverage International would just happen on its own when they declared open season on the corporations that caused the financial crisis.

With no organization, it was every thief and team for themselves, leading to complete chaos. Teams got in each other's way, starting fighting among themselves, some of the more amoral people saw the Black Book as an opportunity to exploit corporations' weaknesses and grab power for themselves - it’s basically Game of Thrones by way of Shadowrunners. Meanwhile corporations, who have various world governments (including our own) in their pockets, complain that they’re under attack, and governments respond by removing constraints on corporations (goodbye antitrust laws and consumer protections) and restricting civil rights in the name of “security” - basically the authoritarian bullshit we’re seeing with Trump but turned up to 11. People protested, which made the government crack down harder, and the cycle continued until the US now has fully militarized police using sonic cannons and live ammunition against anyone they think is antifa, and not even pretending to do actual police work anymore.

(And oh yeah, climate change is still happening, probably not being helped by the Louvre and most of Portland burning down.)

Within the team, things are not looking good. The trio is keenly aware that their weaknesses helped create their current global crisis.

Hardison did what he was warned not to do: he got overconfident and made a mess, and then tried to fix it alone and made it bigger, until it was so big a team of three couldn’t contain it. When he’s not trying to put out fires, he’s paralyzed and obsessing about the body counts in Turkey and Estonia, the arrest rates in NYC, the migrant caravans at multiple countries’ borders being met with tear gas and bullets, etc.

Parker hasn’t learned how to be a leader so much as as the team member that comes up with the plan, but she knows it’s her responsibility to do something about the mess they made, and it turns out that being your romantic partner’s boss is Really Fucking Hard. She’s spent the last year making all the rookie leadership mistakes and swinging back and forth between authoritative and lax, micromanaging and overly hands-off, accidentally favoring Eliot and then Hardison, and stressing herself out until she occasionally has to run off and steal some diamonds solo to chill out.

Eliot. Sweet, loyal, gruff Eliot “I said I would take care of you till my dyin day and dammit Hardison I meant it” Spencer. He’s tried to pull the other two out of their guilt and shame spirals too many times to count, and he’s running himself into the ground trying to keep them safe while they try to fix the world, while also run some more mundane Leverage, Inc. jobs on the side (mostly on his own because the other two are too focused on their global crises and personal failings). A few months ago, after they narrowly escaping one of the police militias, Eliot came to the conclusion that the only way to keep his promise to Nate and Sophie was to start carrying a gun again. The only thing keeping him upright and fighting is his determination not to abandon Parker or Hardison.

During the first job of season 6, something happens to snap them out of it (I’m a fan of the “one team member has a meltdown that triggers catharsis for the whole team” method). Somehow they pull each other back, recommit to holding each other accountable and making each other better ("for better or worse we change together") and start actually building Leverage International.

It's slow going because whoever came up with the phrase about herding cats clearly never tried to get forty of the best criminals in the world, only half of whom speak English, to work together. First there's the logistical problem of finding them and getting them together (Tara and Quinn are gone, nobody knows where Nate and Sophie disappeared to, Archie died before things got really bad, and Hardison can't talk about Cha0s without breaking something), then getting them all to agree to the same principles and values. It’s basically several episodes of The Nigerian Job, but in multiple languages and a lot more in-fighting. The finale is a big ambitious job taking down a large company, maybe Wakefield, that solidifies the international team.

Seasons 7 and 8 are the "let's go steal a capitalism" seasons. This is when the major powers (US, Russia, China, EU, etc) have basically given up all pretense of governing, and it's up to Leverage International to basically perform a dozen coups all at once and rebuilds them as socialist states with better antitrust laws, universal healthcare, strategies to rein in climate change, and free housing. I’m bad at building utopias, though - I’ll let someone else plot that out.

#leverage #fanfiction

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themagiciansreccenter · 6 years

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Author Spotlight @cldfiredrgn

Every week we are going to be interviewing a writer from The Magicians fandom. If you would like to be interviewed or you want to nominate a writer, get in touch via our ask box.

First things first, tell us a little about yourself.

I’m cldfiredrgn on Tumblr, Coldfiredragon on ao3

Well, I’m in my early-thirties. College consisted of a combination of political science, english, and psychology. (not a combination I’d recommend unless you want to take it to grad level or beyond), though it is useful for writing. I’m a gamer who grew up on comics and anime. I’m an all around geek who listens to EDM, electro industrial, jazz, electro-swing, and punk. We have 2 cats, no kids, and a spare bedroom dedicated to our toy collection.

How long have you been writing for?

I started posting fic in high school. I wrote a few original pieces for 4-H projects, because mom wanted me to participate but I wasn’t the ‘get dirty/hands on’ kind of kid. I made it to state one year for my writing. I floored the regional judges with something that was more anime inspired and adult, they loved it.

What inspired you to start writing for The Magicians?

Watching the first episode, shortly before season 2 premiered, and my jaw hitting the floor that Quentin and Eliot seemed to be flirting! I was hooked from the first episode. I hadn’t written anything in a couple of years. It was so nice to have a fandom again.

Who is/are your favourite character(s) to write? What it is about them that makes them your favourite?

Eliot and Quentin, but Eliot is the character that hooked me. I kinda share his backstory. I’m the rural farm kid from a heavily Christian family who got out. Thankfully I still have a good relationship with my parents.

Do you have a preference for a particular season/point in time to write about?

I prefer either season 1, or season 3. I’m absolutely dreading when ‘Shoulder to Shoulder With You’ reaches season 2 material and having to fit Eliot’s season 2 arc into that universe.

Are you working on anything right now? Care to give us an idea about it?

I’m also working on ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ (StS). It’s my monster and my baby! We crossed 100,000 words together 2 chapters ago. Hmm, an idea about it? Well, I hate to give too much away, but a few things are coming up.

My version of the Virgo blade storyline is just a few chapters away! The resolution of that will be the end of the current ‘Fall’ arc….

Wait? You still want a Spoiler? I can I can give you one… Arc 3 is titled ‘The Chatwins’ and will focus on the group finding out about the time-loops and the roles that Jane and Martin play in their lives. Then they are off to Fillory!

How long is your “to do list”?

I have a lot of ideas on the back burner. Officially though:

The next chapter of my Queliot soulmate AU -- ‘My Hands Pass Through’

Never Ending StS chapters

My Trials project, which I’m not 100% decided on yet.

What is your favourite fic that you’ve written for The Magicians? Why?

“Shoulder to Shoulder With You’ is the story I’ve put the most work into ever. It has to be my favorite or I couldn’t continue it. I love the universe. I love how it’s already diverged from canon, I love where it goes and how I’ve been able to put my own spin on the arcs from the show so they will be fresh for readers of my story. Quentin and Eliot, the whole group, they continue to surprise me as the story evolves.

Many writers have a fic that they are passionate about that doesn’t get the reception from the fandom that they hoped for. Do you have a fic you would like more people to read and appreciate?

‘All Part of the Deal’ The summary doesn’t do it justice. The fic started as a response to a kink meme but truly is an exploration of Eliot’s relationship to his telekinesis. It explores how he quietly hates his powers even as he clings to them because they’ve given him the only family and home he’s ever had. It’s also a subtle commentary on his addiction and how he’s sought out this thing that he thinks he needs, even if inherently destructive.

What is your writing process like? Do you have any traditions or superstitions that you like to stick to when you’re writing?

Once I write something it tends to be written. I edit and tweak it once its on paper, but the majority of major edits are mental. I’ll think through a series of events a dozen times but the version that gets typed is usually the version I adhere to.

If something gets deleted on accident it tends to be gone. I’m never as happy with a document I have to recreate from scratch as I was with the original.

Do you write while the seasons are airing or do you prefer to wait for hiatus? How does the ongoing development of the canon influence and inspire your writing process?

I write during the season and all through the hiatus. With ‘StS’ I watched season 3 while constantly editing how the events would shift the story. StS is at its core an alternate 40th loop, so the general rule of thumb has been ‘if it happens in the show, then some version of it will happen in StS’

What has been the most challenging fic for you to write?

“Shoulder to Shoulder’ because it has so many moving parts now. Every change I make to canon is a domino effect. Penny and Alice dating now effects Penny’s arc with Kady and Julia later, Eliot dating Quentin before Fillory impacts his ‘marriage’ arc(s). I had to completely change what happens with Loria because he and Idri would never end up engaged. I had to re-arrange who found certain keys because certain people are in different places. It’s a never ending cycle of cause and effect.

Are there any themes or tropes that you like particularly like to explore in your writing?

I like to use music when I can. I have a weird relationship to water and rain. I love the theme of soul-mates and chosen family. Exploring emotion is something I embrace, as most of you know I’m a great lover of angst.

Are there any writers that inspire your work? Fanfiction or otherwise?

Lev obviously inspired me. He gave me my current fandom, but he’s inspired my personal writing too. I love how he can breeze through large amounts of time in a few paragraphs. Herman Wouk is inspirational because of his scale. ‘The Winds of War’ and “War and Remembrance’ managed to put the reader into every phase and conflict of World War II.

J.K. Rowling, I was a huge Harry Potter fan writer for a long time.

Alan Moore for ‘Watchmen’ Dozens of comic writers

C.S. Friedman’s ‘Coldfire Trilogy’ (where my main username draws influence)

Fanfic writers: EdgarAllanCat ( @goddessjuliawicker) Lexalicious70 ( @all-hale-eliot) , Rays ( @under-the-shady-tree) @gwendolynflight, @oneeyeddestroyer, Sullyandlulu ( @highestkingbambi) , LadySilviana, @highkingfen , @echomoon , dozens of others. This has been the best fandom I’ve ever been part of, all of you make it amazing!

What are you currently reading? Fanfiction or otherwise?

I devour fanfic! I’m finishing ‘The Magicians Land’ I follow real world news despite how depressing it is.

What is the most valuable piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given?

That my whole body of work was horrible. I wrote for a comics fandom for several years, and found a rant post on a blog site that tore a lot of what I did to shreds, but ultimately at lot of points they made were valid. I wrote volume instead of quality, to fill challenge tables with poorly executed AU scenarios. They weren’t good, they were dark for the sake of the challenge prompts. It made me stop for a while, and get back into writing with focused projects.

Cringe time:

Are there any words or phrases you worry about over using in your work?

I’m sure there are, and you guys probably know them better than I do.

What was the first fanfic that you wrote? Do you still have access to it?

It was a Gundam Wing fic, and I don’t.

Rapid Fire Round:

Self-edit or Beta? -- Self-edit with an editing program

Comments or Kudos/Reblogs or Likes? -- Comments

Smut, Fluff or Angst? -- Angst

Quick & Dirty or Slow Burn? -- Slow Burn

Favourite season? -- 3

Favourite episode? -- ‘A Life In a Day’’

Favourite book(The Magicians Books)? - 'The Magicians'

Three favourite words? ‘Symmetry, cacophony, sisyphean

Anything you want to add?

My ask box is always open, I love to talk about my writing, and I love user feedback

Want to be interviewed for our author spotlight? Get in touch here.

#author spotlight #author spotlight: coldfiredragon #the magicians rec center

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