#but bc the writers have avoided telling us for a season and 2 films it's funny to imagine them purposefully being cagey

[butch-reidentified]

anyone here seen the show Resident Alien?

bc holy shit am I obsessed with the portrayal of 30-something women, their solidarity, feminism, friendship, and fun and self-expression! GODDD I did not realize how BADLY I needed to see a tv show actually depict (attractive but not "bikini models" by any means) adult (and admit they're adults, real adults not 20 yr olds) women as human beings with deep complex personalities and relationships, who really stand with each other despite being flawed humans who do sometimes hurt each other, who are silly and goofy and get into shenanigans bc oh my god WOMEN CAN STILL HAVE FUN AFTER TURNING 30.

Especially later in season 1 and in season 2 (I'm still on s2), there's just so much female badassery and solidarity that I love. there's also a gym workout scene in s2 with my favorite character D'Arcy and tbhhhh that scene is 😨🥵 Like, my wife said "this scene was definitely filmed by a lesbian, right?" 💀 It really did feel like celebrating an attractive woman build muscle without the typical male gaze-y lens. it actually focused on her flexion, facial expressions, sweat, flushing, yk, the things we are supposed to pretend women don't do even while vigorously exercising.

this same woman leads her friends on a drunken midnight raid of town hall where they review the town budget and discover they're paid less than the men. cut to the entire group of women (one of whom is the mayor's wife) standing in the mayor's bedroom in the middle of the night, standing over him and informing him "no, this isn't a nightmare, what the fuck is wrong with you, pay us fairly" like?? holy shit lmao. D'Arcy then proceeds to RENT A HELICOPTER to drop fliers all over town telling women about this and encouraging female solidarity in fighting back. this barely scratches the surface of her character's feminist heroics. in another seen she cuts the brakes on her best friend's abuser's truck and sends it down a hill in front of him, before telling him she'll happily kill him if he gets near her friend again. it's just so much fun to see. she also rescues herself and 2 others from a crevasse in the glacier by climbing 30 feet in a storm with a broken wrist. oh and shes a FORMER OLYMPIC SKIER bc fuck you

I've actually been very impressed with this show in a number of ways. they have a young girl character whose family is Muslim, and the writers seem to want to critique Islam while being aware that they have to avoid performative liberals picking up on this too much. so at first I was a bit 👀 thinking they were going a certain way with the character, but they ended up sneaking in a lot of critiques of Islamic patriarchy. they keep surprising me.

#mine #resident alien

[buttclench-ryugazaki]

makoto: it's great to see you! have you figured out what you're gonna do after graduation?

nagisa, rei, and gou: yup!

makoto: great!

nagisa, rei, and gou: ...

rei: ...so are you going to ask us about our VERY CONCRETE, REAL plans that we've definitely made, with complete finality, that we've CERTAINLY already disclosed with each other and not been at all vague about?

makoto: no need! i'm just glad that you've all got your lives together. haru and i were complete messes last year. turns out i don't have to worry about you at all!

nagisa, rei, and gou:

#free! the final stroke #nagisa hazuki #gou matsuoka #rei ryugazaki #free! fs spoilers #free! #i know that the story is actually establishing that the kids are adjusting to the prospect of graduation just fine #(better than makoto and haru which is admittedly a low bar so maybe not that fine) #but bc the writers have avoided telling us for a season and 2 films it's funny to imagine them purposefully being cagey #in this scenario where they're all INCREDIBLY lost and stressed #og iwatobi first year trio #free!posting #<- (once again that's the tag you can block if you don't wanna see my shitposts)

[cheddar-the-dog]

b99 podcast episode 2:

relationship goals

@jake-and-ames and I have summarized what we think are the highlights of the second episode of the brooklyn nine-nine podcast. maybe those of you who can’t listen to the podcast for whatever reason can profit from it a bit

it’s under the cut because it’s quite long

[[MORE]]

Part 1 with David Phillips, Tony Nahar, Dirk Blocker, Joel McKinnon Miller

a season that’s focussed on Ensemble rather than singular performances

not filmed on stage usually but practical locations (rooms with walls)

3 cameras and their crews —> “single camera” style but multiple cameras that open opportunities to cross-shoot scenes

MEJ plays in the B99 softball team

they have 35 background actors of which 90% were there since s1

Scully and Hitchcock almost never have full storylines and often have punchlines or chime in (requires timing)

S7 spoilers around minute 14 but I blanked out tbh

Episode 12 of Season 2 The Beach House is a very significant episode for the cast and crew

Beach House Cold Open is where Holt spilled soup on his pants and Andy only needed one take for him to go into Holt’s office and spill soup on his own pants

Whole episode was originally Boyle story and his divorce but they went ensemble because it didn’t work

the Amy-Drink-Scale and 6-Drink-Amy (aka Gina’s Sasquatch) is elaborated throughout the episode (not revealed though if there is a 7-Drink-Amy)

Boyle’s borderline creepy lines are discussed around Minute 25

they spent 2 days shooting on location in Malibu and some of the cast stayed overnight and got to know each other more (Andy, Joel, Joe, Melissa and Chelsea and her then boyfriend now husband Jordan Peele)

it was so far away that on the first day when their call time was 7 AM they started shooting at 10:30 AM and it was hot but they had to pretend it’s winter

“Scully is a quintessential rennesaince man” - Joel McKinnon Miller

The bubbles in the hot tub were silent

there were lots of alts and the cast and crew just had fun and tried making each other break and corpse the scene - especially Andre

they intentionally made Holt apologize as an example of how a boss can behave vs how he would be expected to behave (Jake apologizing to him)

Part 2: Stephanie Beatriz, Laura McCreary, Luke Del Tredici

relationships (friendships, romantic relationships, bromances and Rosas coming out)

Steph doesn’t get recognized on the streets because of voice and mannerisms

in the beginning it was more focused on the Rosa/Charles relationship than Jake/Amy because Jake needed a lot of character work before they could think about getting them together/ him more fitting to Amy

Jake/Amy: pacing but also they don’t know how long they have, there’s no opportunity to really plan years ahead - if they would’ve know how long they have they would’ve held back longer with the romance but they knew from the beginning that they’re endgame

they try to avoid making Amy only “the wife”

“RIP Cheddar Number 3” - Laura McCreary

Rosa/Charles: they had Charles pining over Rosa in the pilot and according to Luke you repeat a lot of storylines in the beginning of a series because you’re trying to figure out who these characters are but as the show grew older so did the writers and eventually they realized it felt very inappropriate to not take no for an answer (Luke describes it as a “mistake” to not resolve it sooner)

Steph felt like it was inappropriate early on but didn’t have the courage to go to the writers and tell them how she felt because she was scared of losing her job and she didn’t know how things worked in that particular workplace bc she originally is a theatre actress

Charles and Rosa remain friends though and their relationship grows stronger. So much so that Rosa comes out to him first which Steph loved a lot

MEJ is still waiting for the vow renewal of Holt and Kevin (he pitched another idea during that episode)

Boyle/Peralta: McCreary said that because Jake can’t really mess up at his job because of stakes and he’s not perfect they made him mess up a lot with Charles’ friendship (also the ladies but mainly Charles)

Rosa had a good amount of relationships

“She’s trying. I don’t know if she’s living it but she’s trying.” - Steph

Rosa/Adrian: very opposite characters and she described Jason abd Pimento respectively as loose canons. Mantzoukas also taught Steph how to relax more in scenes (she’s praising his improv skills a lot as well as “he’s like a thorough bred dressage horse but kinda like crazy” - Stephanie Beatriz)

Rosa/Marcus: first on screen relationship that the writers used to get a Rosa/Holt dynamic going

Steph played Rosa queer from the beginning (she built on talking about Tonya Harding being hot for example)

the coming out episode: Steph was involved in creating the 99th episode and the coming out of her character a lot - she wanted Rosa to use the word bisexual repeatedly and the language that was used is a lot of what she had to hear personally. She talks about bi-erasure as well

The writers wanted to incorporate real life experiences into their show more to make it authentic and it was important to them to involve Steph and not just go for it because they had nobody who could speak for her specific experience

they emphasize the complexity of the characters and not just token diversity for brownie points. also different takes on classic masculinity tropes (a subject that repeats often also in Episode 1)

it’s meant to be a socially relevant show but they want to normalize the subjects they target and don’t make it 30 minutes of education and “here’s everything that’s wrong with x”

Terry/Sharon: a stable loving marriage between two black people

“Title of your sex tape” is a favorite joke, and since the series starts with established dynamics everyone in the squad is cool with joking about it/ it doesn’t feel inappropriate in their workplace because they’ve known each other for quite a long time

there’s a cut scene from the s6 finale where the vulture heard Jake say “title of your sex tape” and stole it to use himself which Jake in return hated more than anything he did, ever. And a similar instance (also a cut scene) where Hitchcock heard it and stole it as well

#b99 podcast #b99 the podcast #b99 #brooklyn 99 #brooklyn nine-nine the podcast #brooklyn nine nine #brooklyn nine nine podcast

[zani-is-a-stan]

suzani watches the Sherlock unaired pilot

Opening

-       This version of John looks way more old and way more dad

-       That close shot on the gun tell the viewer that John is suicidal

-       The dark silhouette of the cupid statue kind of stands out. Given how the cinematography and shot framing is a lot sloppier in this version, I don’t think this is intentional. But if it was intentional, this would be a signal to the viewer that this is a love story.

-       Mmm, pass on both Anderson’s beard and this way of introducing the concept of a Sherlock

-       This title & credits sequence is so dated

-       Anderson with no inflection is boring

-       Dinner with wine is not a great place for John to be saying he’s broke

We meet Sherlock & Molly

-       We start to see the beginnings of the geometric and precise framing that are the signature of the show in that one shot of Molly behind the glass

-       Its nice to see that Molly’s character required almost no adjustment between the two versions. Given that she was the first character original to the show instead of the books, it’s nice to see that she stuck the landing so perfectly

-       It’s starting to be really obvious how loose the editing is. There’s a lot of dead air at the beginning and end of every shot before each cut. Much better in the final version.

The lab

-       This version of Sherlock seems a lot more accurate to the book Sherlock from Study in Scarlet than the series ultimately ended up being. He’s softer, more interested in interacting with other people than the antisocial, high functioning ASD (where’s the fic that explores that?) twanging brain haver he is in the first episode of season 1

-       I want to read a take on Sherlock that discusses him as having ASD and interprets the violin playing and the mystery solving as his stimming techniques

-       The camera shots in this scene are really starting to stand out as very different from the show. It’s not just the editing which is kind of thoughtless – these shots are poorly composed and poorly planned. I don’t think it would stand out so much if the final version of the show didn’t make so many deliberate and stylized decisions regarding with the shots and editing.

The apartment

-       The extrapolation of john’s family based on the phone became much cleaner in the aired version

-       Comic sans! I mean, mrs Hudson is better than that.

-       Mrs Hudson definitely checked out john’s butt …

-       “can I just ask … what is your street?” this was very good, if repetitive

-       Sherlock needs an assistant? This sherlock has a need for human connection that the other one doesn’t – and he has a lava lamp.

-       Ugh the apartment at 221B baker st looks so much more vintage in this setup. Not a fan.

-       This sherlock definitely cares more about what other people think than the final version.

-       Mrs Hudson is a much softer, premade character in this version. I like the final version better. She seems stronger that way.

The cab ride

-       So boring. Such greenscreen. Wow.

-       not just the greenscreen. the difference in the shooting and finishing of this sequence in the pilot and the aired episode is so incredibly improved that you can hardly believe there were part of the same thing.

-       TOO MUCH SYNTH

-       Sherlock has a far too human response to john’s compliments and more doubt in how accurate his deductions are

The crime scene

-       Im glad they changed sally’s outfit, and smoothed out sherlock’s taunting of her and Anderson’s affair. Ugh I wish they’d kept sally around. This show needed more normie/casual sherlock opponents. Lack of closeups in this scene do it no favors

-       They cut the Rache/Rachel clue. And btw, I do love how this was inverted from the book presentation in the show.

-       “no, there are two women and three men lying dead, keep talking and there will be more” – this sherlock prioritizes people over mystery solving, and that’s a little more humanizing as well.

-       When he’s deconstructing the scene around the woman in pink, there’s a switch in sherlock’s voice when he’s off camera. I’m wondering if maybe that’s a stat actor reading the script for some reason, or if they recorded the dialogue and the camera angles at the same time and forgot to switch when they were editing that shot? Makes sense given how messy the editing is throughout the pilot.

-       “do you know you do that out loud?” “sorry, I’ll shut up” “No, don’t worry, it’s fine” (pleased smile) --- this exchange is so accurate to book Sherlock and Holmes

-       This is not the same sally as the first episode. I had to check because I have a little bit of face blindness and there weren’t any closeups, but it’s definitely not her. Interesting how the actress who ultimately played her changed the inflection but brought very little new to the blocking.

a bit inbetween and the pink case

-       No Mycroft, hmm. Don’t care for it. It added a lot with a really nice red herring feel.

-       John returns to his place for absolutely no reason narratively.

-       I don’t care for the red herring moment where john looks at the pink case and wonders if sally was right and talks out loud about it.

-       The end exchange of this scene is awesome and should have stayed. “Donovan said you get off on this.” “And I said danger and here you are.” “DAMNIT!” It’s very funny, and it’s a fun spar between the two rather than the ultimate resigned tolerance that series John seems to settle into by season 2.

do you have a girlfriend? a boyfriend?

-       Sherlock not eating is a brilliant touch, I think that should have been there.

-       This version of the girlfriend boyfriend conversation is far more successful than the aired version, although I prefer the setting in the aired version. It’s flirtier, and the “Everything else is transport” line carries implications I prefer to the one we saw on on the official version.

-       Sherlock knowing the cab thing ahead of time really lowers the stakes.

-       Angelo and the headless nun thing is fucking beautiful. (although angelo is a bit of an upstager) But, the change in the plot to the John running and leaving the cane behind in the final version is much more relevant to the story.

-       Ok, so the cabbie drugging Sherlock did show us that John is smart in his own right (we never got enough of that), but it showed us Sherlock fucking up in a way that is inconsistent with the show version of that character. For us to buy that Sherlock is other level super genius instead of just very smart, he can’t make this kind of mistake. If he can’t make a mistake, then John can’t prove his own intelligence. I do think it was a good idea to put the police back in his apartment now, as it gives us more interesting and fun things about those characters, and the ultimate build to the cab ride and the incorporation of modern technology really contributed to the modernizing of the adaption.

which pill

-       WHOA that cabbie did just very much threaten to molest or rape Sherlock. Although if there were no women or gay men on the script team, I can totally see the writers not realizing that this line had that connotation.

-       And this version requires a lot more explaining of plotholes with dialogue in a way that is avoided in the final verion. This is unquestionably good, because there’s nothing more graceless in filmed stories than having plot explained with words, especially by a villain.

-       Taking the pills out of the bottle looks silly.

-       Final version cabbie is better. More self-satified and mean.

-       “Either way, you’re wasted as a cabbie” is a way better line in the final.

-       Taking him out of the apartment and away from the police phone call was A+ the right choice.

-       Everyone know the best cops scream “Who is firing, who is firing?” when someone fires a shot.

i’ve got a blanket

-       Sherlock saying “Yeah, maybe he beat me, but he’s dead” is a far shot from the man who shook a dying man and demanded to know if he was right or not. Again, this Sherlock is far more human and far less computer.

-       That bit with mrs Hudson at the end was unnecessarily mean, I’m glad they cut it

-       “I’m his Doctor.” – this lines should have stayed forever.

Overall thoughts

Ok, so overall changes between the pilot and the aired first episode. Plot was a lot more polished. They scrubbed every trace of human need from Sherlock, which I think was a good choice, at least for the beginning of the show. His literal only love is his own abilities as the show airs, which leaves him with a very interesting and exploitable weakness – his arrogance, where as pilot Sherlock doesn’t seem to care all that much when he makes a mistake. We did lose a couple of scenes that had a lot of good chemistry in them, but I think the plot was much improved overall for the changes. The change of Sherlock from being casually mean to people like Anderson to swatting away an irritating fly is very successful. The focus of Sherlock’s relationship with Lestrade seems of a higher priority than Watsons a little bit, so I’m glad that changed. The lead up to John shooting the cabbie was much better in the final

Honestly the pilot doesn’t look like a pilot as much as it looks like a proof of concept piece. The budget was obviously smaller: that’s why they reused the same restaurant set, it’s why the final confrontation took place in the apartment rather than a second location, that’s why the effects are missing or budgety, that’s why the editing was low-end. This as a pilot was sold on the impact of the actors and the bones of the script, not on any of the look that would ultimately make the show what it was. The color work between the first and second version of this alone was amazing.   I also think that the hair change in Sherlock was an excellent choice. It offsets BC’s face/head structure in a way that plays into the strangeness of the character in a much better way. Similarly, the coat and scarf that he wears in the series do exist in the pilot, but aren’t really a signature of Sherlock’s on-screen shape design in the same way.

I think the only thing I would’ve kept is the inflection, delivery & read on the girlfriend boyfriend scene, and the return of the “I said danger and here you are” exchange.

There’s a lot of talk about Sherlock’s sexuality and what was cannon in the books. TV Sherlock they seem to be confused about (Belgravia as an episode left me really confused about what statement the writers were trying to make there, which implies that they’re either not completely sure either, or they’re too straight to understand what they’re doing). In the books, Holmes chooses not to have romantic relationship because it stops his brain from working clearly – it’s a deliberate choice based on the Victorian concept of sex (and women, because they are clearly only sex objects) diminishing the capacity for clear thought and mental performance. This is not the same as him being asexual or aromantic as we not aro/ace people understand the concept in 2019.

Based on the scene as it airs, the girlfriend/boyfriend scene would leave me with the opinion that Sherlock is not just asexual but also aromantic. Possibly one of these by choice rather than nature. Based as how the scene plays out in the unaired pilot, I would think that Sherlock is celibate and also attracted to John, more likely gay than bisexual. (There was quite a bit of smoldering going on in the Sherlock to John direction.)

#sherlock #sherlock pilot #suzani watches #suzani watches the unaired sherlock pilot

[sootonthecarpet]

if it's not too much trouble to answer, can I ask what's been the going on with doctor who that's bad? I've seen little bits of it when my parents watch it in the other room but not enough to really get a good sense of it?

heyyy sorry to keep ya waiting on this. i tried to keep this as short as i could, but it’s about five paragraphs long, sorry. it’s not in any way a comprehensive list of problems with the last few seasons, just a quick tour of the moments i shouldve let be my ‘i can’t keep watching after this’ point. i wanted to write it objectively but i got pretty aggro, bc this show that in some part i genuinely adore has been producing unforgivably bigoted content. (it’s kinda a ship of theseus situation, except where the parts of the ship were replaced with worse, shittier, fake-woke parts.) i ask ppl to avoid reblogging this, because i don’t want my words to contribute in any way to online buzz surrounding this show or make anyone want to see it, even if ONLY to hatewatch or criticize.

content warning for misogynoir/antiblackness, racism, bury ur gays, some shit with nazi germany (yeah lol) and just the slightest kiss of antisemitism.

(edit: i seem to be having some problems with the read more cut. it’s there on dash view and when i edit the post, but doesn’t show on some instances of my blog. i can’t fix this but gksfkgls. wanted to at least be overt that i wouldn’t post this kinda long ranty stuff without a cut.)

in the last season where peter capaldi was the doctor, two seasons ago now, he had a new companion, Bill. she was a black lesbian and literally the only reason i started watching doctor who again. i loved her, and i was really glad to see the show moving back towards the more diverse cast of characters that we saw in the late aughts. then the season had a repeated theme of FORCING her to either repress or not feel her emotions. there are two scenes that stand out most to me. in an ep set in like, early 19th century london, she and the doctor are talking to a racist rich white dude who is being super nasty to Bill. the doctor keeps telling her to cool it and not show how angry she is. then HE gets to punch the guy out and knock him to the floor.

this theme of the white man being the only one allowed to get angry was big all season, iirc. then at the end of the season, Bill is turned into a cyberman. they’re usually like. soulless scary automatons, but some characters keep their individuality, which has been explored in a few past seasons, usually leading up to a tragic/heroic death. in Bill’s case, they did this trick with filming where we could see her perspective of herself in some shots–an intensely emotional performance, Bill was completely traumatized and her actress was working her ass off–and in others, just this metal body incapable of expression, scaring people like she was a monster and monotoning these otherwise very emotional statements. it’s an interesting narrative device, but after a whole season of this show putting Bill through all kinds of terrible shit and forcing her not to show her feelings on the matter, it hit me as like. this nauseating exaggeration of how society treats actual black lesbians as monsters and tries to make them bottle up their emotions and especially their justifiable anger. anyway, then Bill died and got to be with her dead girlfriend from her first episode. wow, cool.

idk what made me watch the season after that. i guess i wanted to see the new doctor, and i liked her companions (one was like. a young man with disabling neurological symptoms, tbh even if i’d missed Bill’s season that might have had me back on board). i had plenty of problems with how the season played out, obvs, but nothing was standout horrible to me the way the shit with Bill had been (except maybe the episode that started out like ‘space amazon is a hellhole’ and somehow ended with ‘space amazon was taken advantage of by a broken AI that hurt some people and they didnt fix the infrastructure we explicitly showed harmed their workers but now it’s fine!’ if that sounds weird and heavy handed with an unsatisfying ending, it’s because it was). the new season tho? the OPENING EPISODES OF THE NEW SEASON, THO? it opens with alexa product placement, in an episode about how a fictionalized google was actually run by a black man who had ties to a large number of aliens who had secretly infiltrated our society, altered our dna, and shit like that. so uh, 1. brand war lmao, sellouts etc etc 2. y’all remember those conspiracy theories about jews? and white supremacist beliefs that black people are ruining the world but aren’t smart enough to do it on their own so they must be agents of jewish corruption? HUH. HUH! that’s not even my big problem with the fuckin thing, but it’s FOR SURE a suspicious writing move from a tv show with suuuuch a huge viewership. (and it’s just plain embarrassing for a show with alexa product placement to try to go all scary panopticon tropes specifically @ a google analogue.)

anyway, we run into an old recurring antagonist, the master, a time lord like the doctor. he’s a guy again after having been a woman for a few seasons, and now played by an actor of color. i figure the reasoning at least partly relied on “dude, how fucked up will it be if we force the doctor’s black friend to call a white dude master” but i was immediately afraid it might go to the like…. Righteous White Woman Gets The Better Of Evil Brown Man tropes and oh boy!!!! i tried to be good and give it the benefit of the doubt until i saw something racist but it wasted no time. the doctor got stuck in the past at one point, and met the master, who was currently a military official with the third reich. oh boy. so she asks him why they let him work with them and he explains he’s using a device to psychically disguise himself, they see him as white. (we missed a great chance for him to monologue about how they were willing to bend their morals when they saw how evil he could get or something.) this was awkward enough for me as a viewer, but i wasn’t prepared to go into it, in case there was some tiny shred of nuance somewhere that would make this situation anything but a clusterfuck.

well, the doctor executes a genuinely clever scheme and makes a radio transmission to the brits that she knows won’t reach em, talking about how helpful this officer has been–setting up the master to be falsely outed as a double agent when the nazis intercept it. she tells the master this and then skedaddles, letting him be arrested by his own men. could be a satisfying karmic victory where he presumably gets a military trial and weasels out of his fate, although i don’t like the implications of a white woman punishing a brown man for racism. BUT IT DIDN’T STOP THERE! she disables his psychic filter, causing his men to see his true identity as a man of color–she exposes her oldest frenemy and Basically The Only Time Lord Who’ll Talk To Her to nazi racism when he was ALREADY about to fall into their hands as a prisoner. what could have been a marginally satisfying defeat was instead a kind of emotional horrorshow for me as i had to stop and wonder what kind of hell they’d put him through and why the writers decided that the doctor (who has literally since the show began in like the sixties been set up as an enemy of naziism via allegory and has always been firm in the idea that NOBODY, including literal maneating space monsters, deserves to be treated as less than human) would DO that. IT’S LATER IMPLIED HE ESCAPED FROM A CONCENTRATION CAMP. the narrative DOES NOT allow time for that to sink in before moving on.

i dont have a conclusion 2 this. im just hurt as fuck about it. i hope i gave u the info u were looking for without getting too deep into my personal feelings, but it’s difficult, maybe impossible to be objective about stuff like this.

[sometimesrosy]

so if madi is telling the story like fairy tales and legends or myths,than bellarke love story is gonna be also a legend/love story like in myths and tales,adam/eve,romeo/juliet,tristan/isolde,greek myths,fairy tales you know years or centuries later they are gonna be still remembered the king and the queen(princess) of the new world,really Jason wants to create his own myth legend love story in a postapoc show,i don't know if you follow me.he loves trag love stories he is making BC one of them.

Although we know next-to-nothing about the S5 overall plot, I’m coming to you with this question from a storytelling perspective. Because you’ve read & studied so much literature & film. When is it realistic for Bellamy & Clarke to get real with each other in the course of S5 from an entire series pacing viewpoint? Imo so many obstacles were thrown at them in s4 to purposefully avoid it & drag it out. But is that likely to occur again in S5? Are the writers really going for true end-of-series—

-endgame to get them to finally confess and be together? Like end of S5 or S6 if it goes another season? I want the battle couple you do, Rosy. I’m just not sure if the show wants it. The show has them as a battle platonic couple, they’re already most of the way there. Now it’s telling their love story’s development or re-development after 6 years. So, does that up the odds for it being drawn out. Because I’ll just sit here dyyyyying. Thanks, Rosy! xoxo

Yeah. I know, right? It’s crazy and hard to deal with. So here’s what I’m figuring out about this show and these writers. They are using a lot very traditional story telling techniques. They’re pulling on archetypes and mythology and tried and true tropes and conventions, but they mix them all up so you never know what is going to come up on top.

And it turns out that while I have a pretty decent background in traditional story telling techniques and modern fiction and post modern concept and mythology and psychology and all that good stuff, what I’m NOT an expert in is tv. Hollywood is not my thing and perhaps I think it’s not as *literary* or something. I’ll examine that as my bias. But it’s clear, I’ve stated, that I don’t like soap operas. And the thing is, soap operas sell. And a lot of the pacing they’re doing with the show is based on the soap opera thing and the rules of hollywood and tv and sweeps week and what works for this medium which is not my medium…. so I’m not so sure I can speak to you about the pacing of tv stories.

In my world, you put a chekhov gun at the beginning of the story, you use it by the end, so the romance story put into play should have been clear at the end of the season. Except a season in tv is not a novel. Not quite. A season needs a cliffhanger. At least the way they do this show. So they didn’t shoot the gun of the Bellarke romance, they just cocked it and pointed it, and… didn’t pull the trigger. They showed it to us, but no bang.

We have to wait for next season. Now according to that, they have to give it to us next season. But tv has different rules. And a lot of people have been saying all along that they would wait until the end of the show to make it canon, so I can’t say for sure. I don’t like it. I don’t like the time jump. I don’t like holding off on the romance. Stupid Hollywood. 

But what I can tell you is HOTDAMN I was right about the creation myth. I’ve been saying Bellarke was a mythic love story and origin story about the beginning of the world since 2.05. 

This pacing is a lot slower than we usually see in tv and that can be really frustrating. I’m not even just talking about Bellarke, but also character development. They let their stories sit and grow. They let them backslide. They start a story and then pick it up again later, they drag a redemption out three seasons. Healing takes time. People don’t get over trauma. They hold grudges for seasons. 

It’s very much more realistic. 

They give us the tropes, and then hold out on the payoff. 

I do think it is realistic that they might give us romantic Bellarke. It could happen. I don’t know if it’s guaranteed. Because what if they’re waiting. I think they should read their audience better than they did season 3, because people are getting frustrated. They’re going to need to give us something and not just SELL Bellarke in marketing but start giving us a little in canon, besides the subplot and cinematography and non explicit narrative development.

The clues I’m seeing that they MIGHT be ready for canon romantic bellarke, full on relationship and kissing and everything is 

They hired that romantic scene director. Not a random guy, but they guy that wrote the best primetime love scene I’ve ever seen. Like I can’t believe that made it to PG it was so hot. Olicity. SUPER HOT. 

They ended last season with the near confessions, head and heart, hug, together, then separation going immediately into Clarke being, basically in love and committed to Bellamy, although he’s been gone 6 years. You just can’t have her in love like that, PINING like that, and not do anything with it for the season.

The sizzle reel was a bellarke fan video and only spoke Bellamy’s name (also true for the 6 year later finale scene) It was refocusing the story on a fairy tale that feature Clarke and Bellamy as the heroes. 

The way they are talking about Clarke and Bellamy in marketing and cons is as Clarke and Bellamy being the story. JR once said Clarke and Bellamy weren’t the story they were telling right now. They didn’t. They told other romantic stories. Now they are saying it’s Clarke and Bellamy’s story. No ambiguity.

Does Clarke love Bellamy? YES CLARKE DOES. Again. No ambiguity. Oh y’all didn’t understand the hug and head and heart and gun scene? Didn’t understand the talking to him for 6 years although he wasn’t there? HERE HAVE A SCRIPT TO SCREEN where Clarke talks about Bellamy WHO SHE LOVES. 

I feel like the marketing and social media conversation is getting people ready for Bellarke, both fans and antis. Please note. All these reasons, except #2 which is about narrative, are all about hollywood and the business and the marketing. Because going by just the narrative, I can tell you what story they’re telling, but I can’t tell you WHEN they’ll do it. 

Does this help? The story is definitely Bellarke. The pacing? Mix a soap opera with an action flick and a mythic fairy tale. I can’t tell which pacing they’re using. Action wants it quick and dirty. Soap opera draws it out. Fairy tale makes it inevitable. Hollywood is a mess. What’s wrong with a nice novel, huh?

#the 100 #pacing #bellarke #hollywood #idk really