#but i have a lot of complaints about seasons 9 through 11 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

merlincersei · 10 months

Text

Merlin BBC UK TV Show - A Psychological Analysis Series Part 11

Season 2 Episode 9 - “ The Lady of the Lake”

Writing this post proved to be a challenge as I had to condense all my thoughts and ideas in a coherent manner without it being all over the place.

While providing a synopsis of the episode, I will be highlighting the subliminal themes portrayed here in CAPITAL LETTERS AS WELL AS MY ANALYSIS to cover every aspect of the episode.

____________________________________________________________

Merlin is introduced to the character of Freya, a Druid girl trapped in a bounty hunter's cage (RESTRICTION) belonging to a man named Halig.

Despite Gaius's warnings not to interfere and against a background of a stormy night (INTERNAL CONFLICT) Merlin openly uses magic (QUEERNESS) in-front of Freya to reassure her that he is there to help and frees her, before narrowly escaping Halig.

Merlin hides the girl in the catacombs (THE PLACE THE OVERWROUGHT SUBCONSCIOUS MIND BURIES ALL OF THE PROBLEMS AND SECRETS ) beneath Camelot (SOCIETY) and promises to look after her.

She asks Merlin why he saved her and he says it could have easily been him in the cage (BOTH MERLIN AND FREYA ARE MAGICAL CREATURES LIVING IN A SOCIETY THAT CONDEMNS THEM FOR WHO THEY ARE)

Halig goes to Uther and notifies him of Freya's escape with the help of an accomplice. Uther assigns a detachment of guards to capture them.

The next 30 minutes of the episode becomes the main core of my analysis.

_____________________________________________________________

Merlin performing domestic duties for Arthur:

IN THE PATRIARCHIAL WORLD OF UTHER'S CAMELOT, MERLIN PERFORMS TASKS WHICH ARE CONSIDERED FEMININE.

MERLIN PREPARES AND SERVES ARTHUR FOOD.

MERLIN PREPARES ARTHUR'S BATH.

MERLIN CLEANS ARTHUR'S CLOTHES AND SHOES.

MERLIN FUSSES OVER ARTHURS WEIGHT AND APPEARANCE.

ALL WHICH HE DOES EVERYDAY FOR WHICH HE IS NEVER APPRECIATED OR THANKED.

SOUNDS LIKE A COMPLAINT A LOT OF WIVES HAVE.

_____________________________________________________________

Arthur views Merlin as feminine and lacking masculine traits:

ARTHUR SEES MERLIN CARRYING A BLACK DRESS AND ASSUMES IT IS FOR MERLIN HIMSELF

youtube

_____________________________________________________________

Merlin steals food from Arthur to give it to Freya:

youtube

FOOD AND SEX HAVE BEEN ASSOCIATED FROM ANTIQUITY.

EVEN MODERN STUDIES HAVE CONFIRMED THE STRONG CONNECTION BETWEEN SEX AND FOOD.

SOURCE: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Correlations-between-sex-and-eating-variables_tbl1_290219210

JUDEO-CHRISTIANITY SEES GLUTTONY AND LUST AS INTERCHANGEABLE, BOTH SINS OF THE FLESH.

IN MEDIEVAL TIMES, AN UNFAITHFUL WIFE WAS OFTEN ACCUSED OF HIDING FOOD FROM HER HUSBAND ONLY TO GIVE IT TO HER LOVER (MAKING HER ADULTERY AN ECONOMIC PROBLEM AS WELL).

USING THE CONTEXT ABOVE, IT IS QUITE FUNNY TO SEE HOW MERLIN STEALS FLESH (MEAT) FROM ARTHUR TO GIVE IT TO FREYA.

_____________________________________________________________

Freya reveals to Merlin that she is cursed:

HERE THE CURSE THAT FREYA IS TALKING ABOUT IS HER BEING A TRANSGENDER PERSON.

THERE ARE FEW BETTER SYMBOLS FOR SOMEONE GOING THROUGH THE PROCESS OF FEMALE-TO-MALE TRANSITION THAN THE HUMAN TO CREATURE TRANSFORMATION TROPE.

WHEN YOU ARE ON HRT TESTOSTERONE THERAPY, MOST PEOPLE BECOME HAIRIER AND STRONGER AND GAIN MUSCLE, WHICH IS VERY SIMILAR TO THE BASTET CREATURE TRANSFORMATION BY FREYA.

PLEASE NOTE, I AM NOT SAYING THAT TRANSGENDER PEOPLE ARE CURSED. I AM SIMPLY SAYING IT CAN FEEL LIKE A CURSE CONSIDERING THE BIGOTRY AND HATE TRANSGENDER PEOPLE FACE.

______________________________________________________________

Freya and Merlin profess their love for each other and kiss.

Against this background, Halig is narrowing in on Freya's hideout.

Freya decides to escape Camelot, believing that Merlin is better off without her. She is then confronted by Arthur, Halig and a group of knights.

Arthur manages to badly wound Freya in her Bastet form before being distracted by a gargoyle which was toppled by Merlin.( IT IS A REAL COINCIDENCE THAT ARTHUR ATTACKS FREYA WHO HAD KISSED MERLIN A FEW MOMENTS AGO, SIMILARLY TO HOW ARTHUR WOULD ATTACK LANCELOT FOR KISSING GWEN IN SEASON 4 EPISODE 9)

Merlin runs after Freya to find her mortally wounded. (IT IS THE OBJECT OF MERLIN’S HOMOSEXUAL DESIRES (ARTHUR) WHO KILLS THE OBJECT OF HIS HETEROSEXUAL DESIRE (FREYA) )

A heartbroken Merlin places her body on a boat and uses his magic to give her a traditional funeral by the lake. (I THOUGHT IT WAS VERY POIGNANT IN HINDSIGHT BECAUSE ONCE FREYA DIES AND BECOMES LADY OF THE LAKE THESE TWO NEVER SHARE A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP AGAIN. SHE IS LITERALLY SUBMERGED INTO THE LAKE WHICH IS A METPHAPHOR FOR MERLIN’S CONCIOUSNESS. LOCKED AWAY FOREVER)

Back at Camelot, Arthur aware that Merlin is upset helps cheer him up before delegating him more tasks. (MERLIN'S HOMOSEXUALITY HAS FINALLY WON OUT AND HE HAS ACCEPTED HIS DESTINY I.E ARTHUR ROFLMAO. PRIOR TO THIS EPISODE MERLIN DID SHOW HINTS OF ATTRACTION TOWARDS THE OPPOSITE SEX. THIS IS EVIDENCED BY HIM ADMIRING MORGANA IN SEASON 1 EPISODE 1 AND NIMUEH IN SEASON 1 EPISODE 4. HOWEVER FROM THIS EPISODE ON, MERLIN SHOWS NO ATTRACTION TO ANY FEMALE CHARACTER WHAT SO EVER. THIS IS EXPRESSED EXPLICITLY IN SEASON 4 EPISODE 8 WHERE THE LAMIA SEEMS TO BE ABLE TO ENCHANT ALL THE MEN EXCEPT MERLIN. GWEN EVEN ASKS WHY EVERY MAN EXCEPT MERLIN HAS BEEN ENCHANTED.)

I TRULY ENJOYED THIS EPISODE AS IT IS RIFE WITH SYMBOLISM FOR ME TO PICK APART AND ANALYZE !

#arthur pendragon #bradley james #merlin bbc #merthur #colin morgan #queer coding #gay subtext #merlincersei #lgbtqia shows #FREYA #freylin #merlin meta #Youtube

67 notes · View notes

heyclickadee · 1 year

Text

Some Tipping Point Thoughts about Crosshair (mostly):

1. There is a small part of me that is a little suspicious that Crosshair was allowed to partially escape on purpose, buuuuuut Emerie wasn’t the one who put that blaster within Crosshair’s reach, and she looked genuinely frightened when she realized that Crosshair really was going to stun her. It was one of the stormtroopers who put that blaster there, and, yes, it was a stupid move, but no one ever accused stormtroopers of being smart.

2. “Pushed to the limits of his extreme in the most heartbreaking way,” didn’t just apply to “The Outpost,” I see.

3. Speaking of blasters, these early stormtrooper blasters are the cheapest looking blasters I’ve ever seen in a star war—and I mean that as a compliment to the show. Those things look and feel like something that would be mass produced without much concern for quality or durability, which is exactly the Empire’s approach to the stormtroopers themselves.

4. Sooooo…this might sound counterintuitive, but this episode really put the final kibosh in any lingering worries I had that they’re killing Crosshair this season. You don’t do something like this (gestures broadly at Crosshair’s whole thing) and then kill them off. Especially not in some kind of redemptive self-sacrificial death. Especially when what we watched him do in this episode is so pointedly self-sacrificial. Crosshair might try to die for his family in the next two episodes, but there’s no way the narrative is going to let that happen. There’s no way to kill him off right now that isn’t empty, no way to have him die for anyone that doesn’t make the other person look careless by comparison (if only because viewers react to stories emotionally as much as they do otherwise), and no way to end his story in a way that isn’t just an ocean of untouched possibilities. The writers are sitting on a narrative gold mine with this character and I think they know that, otherwise they could have just let him die on that platform. And I’m stoked, because this means that we’re going to get to watch these characters deal with the difficult mess that’s going to be rebuilding their relationships.

5. Crosshair loves his family SO DAMN MUCH.

6. Evil thought: What if the batch gets to him, and he doesn’t realize they’re really there at first? I mean…he’s going to live, and he’s not getting brainwashed, but he is almost definitely going to be in a lot of pain and potentially pretty disoriented. I could see him taking a few minutes to realize that they’re really there and they finally came for him (but OH NO they weren’t supposed to come for him this time WHAT ARE THEY DOING THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO HIDE).

7. Eviler thought: Man, I really hope Dr. Hemlock doesn’t clock the fact that Crosshair will take any and all abuse that’s thrown at him without complaint but will absolutely lose his shit if that same abuse is thrown at another clone.

8. The look on Crosshair’s face when Omega says, “You’re still their brother, Crosshair. You’re my brother too,” back in Kamino Lost is going to kill me ten times over after this episode.

9. I’m looking forward to the absolute murder we’ll get to see in Echo’s eyes once he sees what Hemlock’s been doing.

10. You know…I’m not sure Crosshair couldn’t have made it outside if he hadn’t stopped to send that warning—if sending the warning wasn’t his only goal in the first place. He could barely stand up straight and he still went through about eight people like they were tissue paper.

11. I don’t know what is up with Emerie besides definitely something, but I sort of like the idea that Crosshair stunned her instead of killing her because he maybe got the sense that she’s a prisoner, too.

12. You know, there sure are a lot of clones in Mount Tantiss. In the cells, being commandos. Sure would be a shame for Hemlock if they all revolted at the same time somehow (I feel like this is wishful thinking, but I can dream).

#the bad batch #tbb spoilers #tbbspoilers #the bad batch spoilers #crosshair bad batch #I have more thoughts but these are the only coherent ones

105 notes · View notes

madsmilfelsen · 28 days

Text

20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @thenookienostradamus, quyanaa!

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 22 :)

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 237, 409, yeehaw!

3. What fandoms do you write for? Magic Mike (allegedly), Always Sunny (allegedly), Killer Joe, True Detective (season one, I get too weepy if I think about season four too long but someday!), Midnight Mass, Shadow & Bone, Tell Me Your Secrets, Loki, and I've got an original work snuck in there, too

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

5. Do you respond to comments? Typically! I have a habit of hoarding my favorites in my inbox so if I take a week or three months to answer you it's because I've been thinking about kissing you on the mouth. Comments really make my day so I do my best to show gratitude to those who take the time to make them.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Maybe Sinhound? I don't set out to write angst.................. ever, but ending with Mildred's funeral wasn't what I was expecting either.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? All of them :) I'm a sucker for love and happy endings :)))))

8. Do you get hate on fics? no and that gets more and more shocking each time I post a new work lately as my ao3 becomes a pit of depravity while I work through everything I can't put in my novel manuscript.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? hell yeah fuck yeah. I like playing in varying degrees of consent, unhealthy or unbalanced dynamics, girls who come too fast and have weird relationships with sex, yada yada. I have a really supportive husband who I am disgustingly, deeply in love with so a lot of genuine warm and fuzzy feelings for one old man in particular generates a lot of material.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? I simply don't have the mind processes for it and admire those who can mix media like that.

11. free space / no question here, send me an ask with one instead please :)

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Not that I know of! would be awfully neat though.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Oh man, I had a fun star wars piece I was writing with my dear friend, Jess, when impostor syndrome struck too hard to finish-- I still have the embroidery she did of our title (the inverse must also be true) in my office hanging below my first rejection letter :)

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? every goblin couple that make out nasty style, so uh, rust/sugar :( they're so special to me and pulled me out of a Hellacious writer's block

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? My only wip is Sunday School Dropout because I sort of forgot where I was going with it, it'll come back with light voyeurism, blood drinking, virginity taking, the usual order

16. What are your writing strengths? I feel like this is question to really sell myself but honestly, hell if I know, creating place? mannerisms maybe? Beyond my general insecurities, some of the nicest compliments I've gotten are for things I did unintentionally so hard to say! I have crafted some fuckin nonlinear bangers I'll give myself that much.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAINTAIN TENSE and I HAVE NO WORKING KNOWLEDGE OF SENTENCE STRUCTURES, which annoy me and are my father's biggest complaints so I can't take them seriously enough to consciously attempt to improve on them yet. Lately, I've been smoking weed and flipping vocabulary flashcards before bed because my diction feels stagnant, a bit repetitive across pieces like.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I can't even speak english well enough to write coherently I'm not going to fuck up further with google translate. I did some ballet au's a few years back that I know have some french in it but I think I did a firmly okay job with the sprinkles of dialogue-- I know damn well my terminology is correct.

19. First fandom you wrote for? technically game of thrones, I have a sansa/sandor reunion very angrily tapped out in my notes app when season eight skipped it. The first work I posted was Seduction of Odile after I saw a post here about the potential of a rey/kylo blackswan au, reached out and asked if I could give it a try and here I am 22 works and years later :)

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? I'm going to be corny but I have a soft spot for every fic that connected me with other writers who are so talented and inspiring and force me to be better so I feel like I can talk to them lmao

tagging tagging tagging @the-heartlines @labyrinthphanlivingafacade @littleredwritingcat @abeadofpoison @teeth-ing @itstendereye @barbie-nightmare-house

#it's spring and there is rain on my metal roof and peepers peeping in the swamp #i'm v happy and the will to write is strong again :)#mads levshakoff

9 notes · View notes

cleoselene · 3 months

Text

the top 5

So I'm not really a film buff. I like a lot of movies, but I'm a tv person. TV is my love, TV is where my passion is. And I've been mulling over the question of what are my actual top 5 favorite TV shows of all time?

I can tell you the top three easily:

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - uncontested favorite show of all time. Perfect characterization. Covers nearly every genre you can think of. Intricate, deliberate, patient storytelling. Gets a reputation for being the "dark" Star Trek but is still loads brighter and more hopeful than anything labeled "Star Trek" after 9/11. The writing is so strong, the characters are so lovingly crafted, there are over 100 incredible episodes to dig into. It doesn't overwhelm you with anything, when the story is very serialized, it gives you a break. When the story gets too intense, it takes a turn and gives you something lighter. I have SO MANY OPINIONS about how fandom kind of lets me down in its appreciation of this show but my appreciation of it is perfect.

Six Feet Under - beginning to end, uniformly wonderful quality. Claire Fisher and I went through a few too many of the same experiences as young women in the early '00s. I think if we're lucky, we find a television show that portrays experiences in a way that are true to us, and Six Feet Under speaks a certain kind of truth for me. Claire and I had the same cynical views, the same confusion in early adulthood, the same flirtations with sinister older men, the same asshole artist boyfriend who got us pregnant and then acted like when she/I had to get an abortion it was all about HIM. That complicated, painful relationship a young woman has with her mother, that's fraught with fighting and pain and a fierce kind of love. And the most perfect, beautiful ending in television history. My only complaint with SFU is that Nate Fisher is an incredibly difficult character to sit through on rewatch (and on first watch honestly) but I forgive it because through Nate we get Brenda, who is the Difficult Woman that fandom always claims they want to have to love but always hates when they get her. Brenda is amazing. I love Brenda.

Twin Peaks - a multi-decade obsession that I don't think I need to get into too deeply here because I have been fawning over it on this blog for months, but a few notes: This show takes a single tragedy and doesn't allow you to get over it, in a television landscape that encourages you to consume a new violence every week and then forget about it, Laura Palmer's death has lingers with us for over three decades because it should. It should be terrible and awful and painful. Twin Peaks also came about when crime media like Silence of the Lambs was telling us that the true evil scary bad guy was a crossdressing serial killer, when television soap operas coded crossdressing as a deviant, evil behavior, and said, "one of our explicitly coded good people is transgender." Twin Peaks told us that the killer is not some weird other, but as it is in reality, someone more familiar and mundane that we try to imagine is a terrifying monster to cope with the brutal mundane reality. And that's just the tip of a massive iceberg when it comes to what this piece of interpretive art is tackling. The wonderful thing about Twin Peaks is that you can read a million theories trying to define exactly what it's about and they can all be correct, because it's not just about consumable tv violence or trying to make monsters out of the mundane, it's about how we perceive our realities and so, so much more. The iceberg's depth is endless.

and then after those top three, I struggle to round out the top five. I have other shows I LOVE, but hesitate to put in with these elite three, for a variety of reasons. I love Star Trek: TNG and Voyager, but the uneven quality I think kicks them off the top five. Voyager has brilliance but some really dog bad episodes, TNG has some whole bad seasons.

HBO's "Rome" is an obsession that was so potent while it lasted that I am tempted, but it was a 2 season show and the quality fell off badly because the plot was majorly rushed in S2. I don't think it qualifies for top five, either.

My most recent sci-fi obsession is The Orville in that it really comes close to hitting the sweet spots the 90s Treks hit within the limitations of shorter modern television seasons, but I don't know if it's a complete work yet. I HOPE NOT. Season 3 was as beautiful and wonderful as modern television gets. It's got major top 5 potential.

Legend of the Seeker is up there with Rome in that the obsession was potent but way too brief: a 2 season affair. It's tempting to put this one in the top 5 because honestly I had almost no complaints about it. It adapted absolutely dog-awful atrocious shit source material and Raimi/Tapert gave it the same magic they infused into Xena to make it a really fun, progressive show. I want to give it a top 5 spot just because IT DESERVED BETTER AND EVERYONE ON IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL. Also the fandom was super fun and I made really good friends in it and it was just a really joyful show to watch. It made me feel happy. TV doesn't make me feel happy enough anymore. Usually it makes me feel depressed *cough all the new Star Treks, cough* but Legend of the Seeker just lifted me UP. It was syndicated and I worked graveyard shift and I would get home after working all night at 7am and watch the new episode before bed and it was just. Such a boost of happiness.

Finally, I think Farscape deserves a slot. I don't know where. I am WAY overdue for a Farscape rewatch. After the roommates and I get through DS9 (one of them has never seen it!!) we are going to Farscape next. I always love telling people that Farscape is like Star Trek if Star Trek allowed itself to be kinky. What was that one TWOP description of Farscape? "American man lost in the Australian S&M scene." Roflcopter. Also, John/Aeryn is one of the more epic ships of all time. OF ALL TIME.

#star trek #deep space nine #ds9 #twin peaks #six feet under #the orville #legend of the seeker #hbo rome #farscape #idk idk idk #i'm inclined to say the rest of the top five is farscape and seeker

15 notes · View notes

naivesilver · 1 year

Note

Oh, and of course, the 'free space' ask. Pick out three questions (from either ask game) of your choosing and three ocs to answer them with 🥰 THAT or maybe number 38 for a handful of them?

I mean I can do BOTH, can't I ☺️☺️☺️💓💓💓

OC Ask Game

Picture OC Ask Meme

9.What is one universe/story an OC would fit in to besides the one they live in?

Grace would be the ideal protagonist for a story like The Haunting of Hill House/Bly Manor, because honestly? She wouldn't be so out of place in a mansion full of ghosts with a candelabra in hand, since it's already most of her life anyway.

11.What’s one canon character all of you OCs LOVE? One they all HATE?

The person they hate is so easy I shall only describe her - blue clothes, magic wand, terribly smug face - but the one they love...honestly, they all think that Emma is THE SHIT. Nova is good and Regina is super cool, but many kids have a sort of complicated relationship with either or both of them. Emma, though? Emma is a near-permanent fixture in some of their lives, she helped others, and a few got reunited with their families because she was out Savior-ing. She'd probably be all of their "one phonecall"s from the police station if she weren't already the sheriff.

33.Which OC has the most genre awareness? Which OC has the least?

It depends what one means with "genre awareness". The genre they think they are in? Plucky modern fantasy that alternates comedy and tragedy and the comfort of domesticity? Pierrot is the most aware of them all, because he notices the wacky rules their life follows, with Eugene as a close second because...he's Eugene. But the genre they're actually in? Well. Currently, none of them. Pinocchio during his stay in Camelot, on the other hand....

The least awareness belongs to Fabian, either way. He doesn't give a shit about the grand scheme of things, so long as he can keep playing Super Mario Maker.

AND, for a great final round, 38. Drop a fun fact about your OC!

(In no particular order):

Igor doesn't like showing up in photos a lot, but he has pictures of Twinkle everywhere - itty bitty girl with missing front teeth, elementary school graduation, birthday party with her friends, everything. He's the kind of parent who puts their kid's most recent school picture in a frame to see how much they've grown, honestly.

you know that thing Emma does in later seasons where she just. Barges into Archie's office and flops dramatically onto his couch? Pinocchio definitely does that, though he probably texts Archie a couple minutes beforehand, just in case - I mentioned it in an earlier reply, okay, but sometimes he does need to recharge. Archie doesn't mind, mostly because hey, after the absolute HELL both of his former charges put him through, a teenager quietly laying on the carpet and cuddling his dog? Piece of cake.

Coppelia does ice skating and her main complaint about the Dark Curse is that it put them all in a town with limited athletic prospects.

Mignon's family (both bio and adoptive) have roots in the Land Without Color, but she has no plans to ever return there.

Marco behaves around Tortilla the turtle just as any other dad who originally said they didn't want a pet does - he spoils her and addresses her very politely, to Leona's fond exasperation.

speaking of which, final one: the boys always treat Leona for Mother's Day, i.e. making her breakfast and getting her a gift, but they also usually deliver a little card to Nova, and she cries. Every. Time.

#bewilderedmoth #ask meme #thousand problems verse #court of misfits #the outfielders #thank you for all of this these kids are important to me but I'd have never dared to imagine them being so important for you too

3 notes · View notes

justsalpals · 2 years

Text

I should be sleeping, but the post-special MisMag thoughts wanna come out NOW. So forgive my late night incoherency as I type out my thoughts in whatever order they come to me.

1. I would pay money to see art of K's legendary Tad Party outfit. They are gorgeous.

2. Any pronoun K my beloved, I will continue to project my entire gender on you

3. I can't remember the exact context, but there was a moment where someone called Evan a man and he said something like "not for long!" Which I'm sure was just an offhand joke in context that meant something else but also: trans!femme Evan my beloved. (Edit post rewatch: this was when Evan made the wild decision to magically track Tad by scent, to which Aabria argued "You're a man!" and his response was "For now!" Clearly a joke but I stand by what I said.)

4. Axelby screentime!!!!!

5. Dr. Boodle is NOT the headmaster after all, which I do like (even if it's a retcon) if this is going to be a continuing story. If things ended season 1 it would've be a nice setting detail for the ending, but this feels more appropriate for both the world that's been established and also for interesting plot moving forward.

6. Mismag timeline my beloathed

7. Evil things suddenly pausing to go "Hey Sam" is now my favorite running bit

8. Pleased and relived that they're actually calling Khan her preferred name now. I'm sure last season it was a mix of forgetfulness and trying to lean into Jammer's nickname angle, but it always set really wrong that they had that whole touching scene and then called her Cleo the rest of the season

9. I ended season 1 completely loving Jammer and Khan's entire dynamic, and mildly distasteful of Sam and Fergus (in that fun "oh they're Not Lasting way" rather than an actual story complaint). The special Immediately made both their relationships feel Doomed in a hilarious, believable, and bittersweet way.

10. In season 1 K was goth and edgy at first, and then overcorrected into Pink Princess territory, and then evened out into a more true to herself middle ground. I adore that Evan went through a kinda similar, though not as obvious, journey. At first he was overly awkward and constantly backpedaling, desperate to fit in and not be weird about his background or literal demons. Then after having his friends for a few months, he kinda absorbed in their personalities and actively seemed to reflect back and match the energy of the others. Now he's more evened out: more confident in himself and outspoken, not shying away from his shitty background especially when he believes that he has helpful knowledge to bring to the table.

11. Similar note: hyper vigilant Evan, ready to commit atrocities at a moments notice for his friends, is so damn important to me

12. I am once again back on my poly pilot program bullshit. Sir I'm love them.

13. If Brennan doesn't tell me what Evan got for the rest of the pilot kids I'm going to Scream. Directly in his ear. For an extended period of time.

14. The little details implying Evan and the nurse meet a lot <3 Evan has a stash of tiny cokes and an adult he can trust

15. Jammer's echo location. Just. That whole bit.

16. Sam wearing a slutty Mrs. Claus outfit, stabbing a horrible cryptid with a broken whiskey bottle, streamed live to thousands (if not millions) of watchers. Icon. Queen shit. I am free on Thursday please call me if you are available on Thursday when I am free.

17. I got you Fortnite coins

#misfits and magic #dimension 20 #mismag spoilers

154 notes · View notes

anarchyforcanon · 2 years

Text

I have a lot of deeply opinionated issues with Gabriel's characterization and arc throughout season 13 so I thought I would create a post compiling them:

I was never happy about how he was captured. The explanation of Loki's children selling him out because they blamed Gabriel for the death of their grandfather was such a reach. I know in mythology, the Norse gods were never the most rational, but Lucifer wasn't present in Hammer of the Gods because he was after Gabriel, so I'm not sure how you can blame him. The second part of this I don't like, is how was Asmodeus able to capture him? We saw in season 13 that Gabriel was able to kill Asmodeus without even being fully powered, so how was Asmodeus able to get the drop on him as only a Prince of Hell? Another issue with the whole capture, what made Asmodeus believe he could survive pumping Archangel grace through his veins? It felt like another reach of just trying to "underpower" Gabriel to then show how powerful he truly was except they didn't...

I'm not a fan of how they made Gabriel almost satirical to the plot. I've made a post about how Lucifer's characterization for seasons 11+ was canon to his Hallucifer personality instead of his actual season 5 personality but this same character mistake can be drawn for Gabriel as well. Gabriel's personality seemed more reminiscent of Castiel's hallucination in season 9? created by Metatron instead of his personality from season 2-5. Maybe this is because he didn't have much screen time in the early seasons to fully flesh out his character compared to season 13, but a lot of Gabriel's actions he made in s13 just rubbed me the wrong way, almost as if the writers had written a more fan favorited personality for him.

This is my biggest complaint; his trashed character arc. There was numerous references to Gabriel's growing importance to the balance of Supernatural that would've surpassed his presence from just season 13. It started with him killing Loki and stating that he was giving up his title as the Trickster. Then we had a scene of Naomi telling Castiel about the lights going out in Heaven as there wasn't any angels powering it and this lead to Castiel alerting her of Gabriel being alive - that he could possibly help. And we had another conversation between Castiel and Gabriel in the AU about the same topic, with Castiel convincing him to return to Heaven after they leave the AU. All this should've lead to Gabriel reclaiming his title as an Archangel and him becoming the new ruler of Heaven, as Lucifer, Raphael and Michael had done before him. Instead we got Gabriel being killed in a piss poor fight to AU Michael. It seems the writers of Supernatural could never understand that dying as a "hero" isn't actually an interesting way to go.

I love Gabriel, he was one of the highlights of season 13 in my opinion but the way every aspect of him was written for it will always be one of the reasons it's my least favorite season.

#this isnt a good post but i need somewhere to be upset #can you tell this wasnt proof read #gabriel spn #supernatural #you revolve around me

43 notes · View notes

vineofroses · 2 years

Text

In Defense of a Mickey-less Season 6

people hate me already, don’t they? lol.

so, some caveats up front so this *doesn’t* get immediate hate: I love Mickey. I love Gallavich. None of that should be in question. But I watched Shameless for the first time about a month ago and have been diving into the fandom since then and have noticed that Ian gets a lot of undeserved hate. Which confused me at first, until I realized just how much people loved Mickey. I totally get the love for Mickey. But what I don’t get is how people can love Gallavich while still holding a lot of hate for Ian, especially for things that happen in seasons 6-9, and then also 10-11.

I just do not get it. To me, loving a ship means you love both people in the ship. You emphasize with both people’s struggles. I don’t think you can truly love a ship if you actively hate or are always punishing one of the characters in that ship.

And nothing gets Ian more hate than Season 6, a season i absolutely adore because of Ian’s journey.

So, this is a defense of why I actually like that Mickey isn’t in season 6. I mean, in a perfect world, Noel Fisher didn’t leave the show, but that’s not what happened, and if you’re gonna engage with media, then you engage with the media that you’re presented with. This was very cathartic to write for me. I just kept running into fic after fic that kept writing Ian to punish him, and I just could not take it anymore lol. Sorry, folks, but this is gonna be long.

THE BREAKUP

To talk about Season 6, we actually need to start with the breakup scene in the Season 5 finale.

Every time I watch the breakup scene, I always feel different about it. Let’s set aside the BTS reasons it happened: Noel Fisher was leaving the show -- there’s nothing we can do about that.

at first, the breakup doesn’t make sense: after Ian spent that time with Monica, it seemed that he realized every word coming out of Monica’s mouth was bullshit, and his journey with her in 5x12 was necessary for him to see what his life could be like before he eventually goes home. but then watching that entire episode again changed my mind a little, if only to play devil’s advocate for a sec: Ian breaking up with Mickey right after leaving Monica does make sense.

In the scene outside the trailer, Monica goes on a monologue to Ian about how much she loves Walter and how people like her and Ian can and deserve to be happy. Ian heard what Monica was saying and basically thought if that’s the kind of love her and him are capable of, then Mickey doesn’t deserve that kind of delusional, fucked up love. For the past few episodes, Ian’s been hearing people say how much like Monica he is, and now it’s fully cemented in his brain.

we can hold two seemingly contradicting truths in ourselves: Ian saw that an unmedicated life with Monica was a bad idea, but still broke up with Mickey upon his return because he didn’t like taking the meds, and Mickey has been advocating for them since the psych hospital.

It’s also important to remember that Ian is unmedicated here. He’s just been emotionally manipulated by Monica, and has gone through trauma after trauma in season 5. He’s reeling, and scared, and still in denial about the diagnosis, and as far as he knows, Mickey believes he’s sick. He doesn’t like Mickey overcompensating caring for him, because that means confronting that there is something wrong, and he’s still in denial about that. So, he pushes him away.

THE MEDS

A common complaint I’ve seen is how it doesn’t make sense why Ian broke up with Mickey because he didn’t want to take his meds, and then when season 6 starts, he’s on his meds. And people are mad at Ian for that.

Well, there’s a bit of a time jump. Don’t know how much of one since Shameless timelines never make sense -- Debbie isn’t that pregnant but it’s clear some time has passed. It’s safe to make some assumptions that something happened in between seasons 5 and 6 to make Ian take his meds. And seeing how much Fiona is on him a lot in the season 6 premiere episode, Fiona somehow convinced him to start them.

And this makes sense. If Ian wasn’t on his meds in season 6 then it’s just a rehash of the beginning of season 5, and we don’t want that. That’s repetitive. Season 6 is a season for healing for Ian, and we need a starting point that isn’t Season 5′s starting point. Having him be on the meds but still disillusioned about it, his life, his diagnosis -- that’s a different but interesting place to start him.

THE PRISON SCENE -- 6x01

Oh, I don’t even know how to explain how much I love the prison scene. It’s bittersweet and sad, but there’s so much love there. And even though it ends with Ian and Mickey still broken up, it doesn’t feel like goodbye. Granted, I viewed this scene for the first time just a month ago, with the privilege of binge-watching and already knowing that Ian and Mickey get married in Season 10.

It is just so important to remember that in this scene, Ian is still very much healing. He’s going through a moment of discovering who he is again, and recovering from a very traumatic 1-2 years where he didn’t understand his mind and his emotions. So he’s distant with Mickey, but he still cares about him. His demeanor cracks. When Svet offered to pay him to visit Mickey, it was a way of distancing his emotions from the baggage that came with recent events. And seriously, it’s not like Svet twisted his arm. She offered 25, then he cracked at 50. Boy wanted to see Mickey real bad, ya’ll.

The lie is such a tender moment. I view it as an out for both of them. Mickey didn’t give Ian enough time to truly answer before he asked for the lie, leaving any answer that Ian gives in question. But it’s what Mickey needed to hear, and it allowed Ian to provide that for Mickey without actually promising to wait, because that’s unrealistic.

Another common complaint about this scene I see around is how Ian isn’t appreciative of what Mickey did for Ian -- getting revenge on Sammi and going to prison for him. Sigh ... I hate that argument because it doesn’t take into account Ian’s feelings at all. There’s also a consent issue here ... Ian never asked Mickey to get back at Sammi and he certainly never asked Mickey to go to prison for him.

When the trauma happens to a person, it’s not up to someone else to decide the best way to deal with the person who inflicted it. And this was a trauma -- Ian confided in Sammi in a moment of vulnerability. She helped him with his hand, told her about the army, and for the first time, acknowledged that he was mentally ill. We know he’s been having delusions and paranoia about the MPs coming for him too, so when they finally did, it was his worst nightmare come true. The way it happens is tragic as well -- ambushed in his own home, tackled and dragged out of his house.

Ian deserved a chance to confront Sammi on his own about that, but Mickey (and Debbie) took that decision away from him while he was in military prison, physically incapable of doing anything about it at the time.

IAN & CALEB

Caleb is ... fine. I didn’t hate him. He started off okay, and it was interesting watching Ian navigate a new relationship that wasn’t with old guys and wasn’t with Mickey. And, it led directly to Ian getting his EMT job, which I love, love, love. But ultimately he was kind of boring.

However, there is one scene I want to talk about: the dinner date scene:

This one gets Ian a lot of hate too because Ian tells Caleb that he doesn’t know how to be on a date and explains that his last boyfriend used his fists and insults to communicate more than anything. Which, is true. Ian’s stating a fact. He’s also clearly only focusing on the beginning of his and Mickey’s relationship, when that kind of stuff did happen more. This is a fair thing to do when you’re trying to date someone new -- you focus on the bad, because it’s easier to move on that way. He also seems vaguely amused by it. Caleb, as an outsider, is going to think it sounds like domestic abuse. Who wouldn’t!!! But who cares about what Caleb thinks -- this scene isn’t actually about how Ian is on a date with a new boyfriend, it’s strictly about showing the differences between Caleb and Ian.

Caleb is a bit pretentious -- he orders for Ian without asking what he wants, immediately writes Ian off when he’s not engaging like Caleb wants him to, and judges Ian’s past relationship based off a one sentence anecdote. I watch this scene and am just so struck by how uncomfortable Ian looks and how Caleb can’t pick up on that, and doesn’t really offer any empathy for Ian’s inexperience. He also makes a snide comment when he has to leave about how well the date is going, after Ian explained that he’s trying but doesn’t really know how to be on a date.

The only reason I like Caleb at all is that he encourages Ian to become an EMT, and I really love EMT!Ian.

IAN “BADMOUTHING” MICKEY

I feel like this is the difference between hearing and listening. The dinner scene in the above section we already went over, but let’s talk about another one:

Mandy returns in 6x09. There’s a scene back at the Gallagher house where Ian tells Mandy about Caleb. His line goes “I miss Mickey, but this new guy’s nice.” He also gets hate for this.

But I think that sentence is actually two statements. He misses Mickey. But the new guy is nice. Meaning, no matter how much he misses Mickey, Caleb’s nice enough to try and go for it. I wanted to go over this scene because I’ve seen people claim that Ian doesn’t miss Mickey in Season 6, but he literally says it right here.

Right before this, Mandy does say: “An upgrade from my brother,” but that’s coming from Mandy, not Ian. Mandy and Mickey never really had a close relationship -- I always wish they did, but I guess the writers weren’t interested in that so whatever. But her saying that isn’t really out of the realm of possibility -- it makes sense for her to say that.

Any other time throughout season 6 that Ian “badmouths” Mickey, he’s not actually. It’s always under the guise of trying to get over a bad break up, and that ex still being in prison. He’s trying to move on, gain stability, and lead a healthy life. People do that after break ups. The “I miss Mickey” line is the clearest indication that Ian still loves Mickey, and he’s still really sad about how things went down. I don’t know how you can watch that scene and not hear it -- Cameron Monaghan delivers that line perfectly.

There’s a weird exchange in 6x07 at the wedding where Ian talks about the last wedding he was at, and very bluntly refers to what happened in 3x06. Caleb laughs at it. Idk why this exchange happens in this episode -- I hate it. Caleb’s awful for laughing, but something I think people forget is that Ian experienced the trauma from 3x06 too -- yes, it’s different, but it’s a trauma for him as well that he’s allowed to talk about. I hate that this is the only time Ian or Mickey talks about 3x06. Still, I can see why he talks about it -- they’re at a wedding, and the last wedding he was at was Mickey’s -- he sort of says it all with this hysterical huff, like holy shit that happened and I’m just now remembering it did.

EMT IAN AND HIS JOURNEY TO SELF-ACCEPTANCE

This is why Season 6 Ian is so good. It’s a great season of a solo journey to self-acceptance (although I definitely could have done with out Caleb). It’s also why we needed to start Season 6 with Ian back on the meds but disillusioned still about life, his diagnosis.

It’s a season with an Ian plot line I’ve been waiting for since Season 1. Since the beginning, Ian’s character has felt pushed to the side a lot, especially amongst the Gallagher family. His scenes always seemed shorter, and he never seemed to have as many of them. And when he did, it was always about relationships and the guys he was with. Of course, he did get a lot of focus in 4 and 5, but to be perfectly honest, Season 4 never gave us Ian’s perspective, and Season 5 only gave it sparingly. In season 6, he finally gets a storyline that’s about bettering his life in some way, and it works so well because of all of the trauma from seasons 3, 4, and 5. I truly think Ian needed the time away from Mickey to learn how to be himself again, and find a new path after the army fell through. And nothing speaks to this more than the scene in 6x12 when Ian fights for his job.

Ian’s been fighting his diagnosis since he got out of the hospital. Even when Fiona and the rest of the Gallaghers kept comparing him to Monica, even when he was swinging baseball bats at Debbie’s head, and even when Mickey was caring and supportive, he was fighting it. And I don’t blame him.

As well-intentioned as everyone was, yes including Mickey, I never got the sense anyone gave Ian the time to come to terms with the diagnosis. To them, it was clear how much help Ian needed, and the solution seemed simple: take the medication, and things would be better. But it wasn’t that simple. And Ian didn’t get the proper time to come to terms with that in Season 5.

But Season 6 gives him that time. He struggles with it throughout the whole season -- he’s scared to tell Caleb he’s bipolar, he begins the season believing he’s only good enough to be a janitor now, hell, he ends up looking over a bridge. The show plays that scene kind of ambiguously but we all know what was happening there. Ian was suicidal. But even every time he says he’s bipolar throughout Season 6, he’s always saying it like he’s distancing himself from it still. Like, yep, everyone’s saying I am and I’m taking medication for it so I guess I am. That “I miss Mickey” scene also features Ian believing that Caleb will eventually leave him because of the bipolar.

But when Ian advocates for himself in 6x12 in order to get his job back, that’s when he’s truly accepted himself as someone with bipolar disorder, and that it’s not his fault, he didn’t do anything to deserve it, it’s just a disorder he has. Here, he’s finally setting aside all of the self-hate, insecurities, and doubts he had right after the diagnosis, which directly led to him breaking up with Mickey. A truly remarkable season of learning how to love yourself again. He needed to figure that shit out on his own before he could really let anyone else in. It’s after this he finally brings Caleb fully into the fold. And while Caleb was there this season and told Ian he should fight for his job, I don’t really think he matters in the long run -- Ian still did this for himself.

ALTERNATE SEASON 6

Of course, I would have loved it too if Mickey was in Season 6. But I still think Ian needed to go on a self-healing, self-acceptance journey by himself, without Mickey. I think this still could have happened with Mickey in the season, because if Ian is on his own journey, that means Mickey would be on his own journey as well.

They would have come back together slowly, and gently, but with all of the love and understanding in the world. They wouldn’t punish each other. They would acknowledge each other’s feelings without any blame. They would heal, individually, and then together.

But it didn’t happen that way. I love what we got anyway.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I really needed to write it all out. I’m sure there’s a lot I still missed. I might do something similar for seasons 7-11, because Ian still gets a lot hate there as well, and while there’s some not great stuff in those seasons, I still really love Ian Gallagher, and he deserves some compassion.

#shameless #gallavich #Ian Gallagher #mickey milkovich

40 notes · View notes

parachutingkitten · 3 years

Text

Y'all suck at dissecting Kai's character, so I guess I have to do it.

And I'm not even a Kai stan. He's a bottom tier ninja for me, which I guess means you can trust me, cuz I'm not biased, but also why am I the one doing this? I don't know about y'all, but recently on my dash, the method by which Kai fans try to make him sound good is... saying the writers hate him, ignore him, and that he isn't written well? Which... I mean there is a little bit of truth to, but like yikes guys, is this the best you got? Kai is a wonderful character with plenty of attention from the writers, a meaningful piece of the cast when put in secondary rolls, fairly consistent character writing with actual progression and valuable qualities that help the team without having to be the smart one- despite what some posts might tell you.

Let's get one thing cleared up: Ninjago isn't the best written show. By high level Hollywood standards, most the character arcs are kinda weak or too heavy handed, character consistency can be iffy, and most things serve the plot rather than the characters. There is no character you can point to and say "wow, this character is written so well! No complaints!" Nya and Jay were butchered by their weird love plot, Cole's one season doesn't actually give him an arc, Zane's been nothing but the robot numbers guy for like 10 seasons now, and Lloyd seems to be incapable of doing anything but relive the same one piece of dad angst for depth. Sorry, it's true. All the characters suck when you look at it from a large scale writing perspective. So when I say Kai is well written, I mean by ninjago kids show standards- cuz that's the scale we're working on. No, you couldn't drop Kai into a well written drama, but as far as ninjago goes... he's got a lot going for him, and by no means is he the biggest victim of poor writing.

(fair warning, wall of text below)

The title is a bit disingenuous. There are plenty of good Kai character break downs. What I am presenting here is a more positive perspective. On the whole, I will tend to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, and credit for what they do right writing is hard guys. That's what I'm doing here. I don't see much sense in getting mad the writers on behalf of Kai, or any other character. Ninjago is a simplistic ensemble show that works because of the identifiable simplicity of its main characters with some deeper layers hidden underneath if you keep watching. They've given us a damn good show with some damn enjoyable characters, so here are some criticisms I feel are a little flawed:

First, let's get the 'focus' thing out of the way. Apparently there are people saying Kai doesn't have a season yet? Which... what? I mean, I get that the pilots aren't a full season, the first two seasons, though he is the central protagonist, aren't "Kai seasons" as we've come to define ninja focus seasons, season 7, though he gets majority focus, he shares with his sister. But like... did y'all just forget about season 4? You know, the season where he had the title card, was on the box sets, got the love interest, and the majority of the A-plot? not to mention it's the best season don't @ me Like... if season 4 isn't a Kai season, I can make a damn good argument that season 3 isn't a Zane season, and I doubt anyone wants to go down that rabbit hole. I really can't wrap my head around this one. And I get that the fandom hates season 11 for some reason, but like you can't just pretend it doesn't exist. Kai has a consistent arc across 30 episodes in which he takes his powers for granted, loses them, and learns that, not only does he have value within the team without them, but that his element is intrinsically a part of him that he reclaims, bringing them back more powerful than ever, and with new respect for them. That's one of the most solid arcs in the whole series- the location is even thematically connected to his element. That's some good stuff right there! (Quick plug for season 11 if you haven't watched it in a while. Give it a rewatch, you might be pleasantly surprised)

Not to mention the writers give him fun side stuff all the time. Lots of fears of tech and water to overcome, a deep protective streak with Lloyd, becoming a chancellor, having a true potential actually relevant to the plot as a whole, blacksmith responsibilities, befriending dragons, hanging out with his dad. Not to mention actual focus stuff we haven't talked about yet, like his whole "my dad is evil" phase, and his "I might be evil" phase with him and Skylor. And on top of that, even when he doesn't have an explicit side plot, he's always just a fun and dynamic side character to make jokes or give exposition.

Now, into character stuff. Let's start with Kai's hot headed-ness. Some people say he's been loosing this quality, and I will admit, that's true! But those that claim this makes him inconsistent... I strongly disagree. In early seasons, Kai's temper would lead him to snap at his friends or make stupid decisions that set the team back (see episode 2 Zane freak out)- these are bad things. These are character flaws, yes? Now, in newer seasons, people say that he's inconsistent, cuz sometimes he'll be hot headed, and sometimes he won't. I'd say, this is exactly how being hot headed... works? It flares up without warning, and as an individual gets control of it, it'll pop up less and less often because they're channeling it into productive things - like say directing the anger towards an enemy (see season 11 end freak out). Kai has gained control of a character flaw, and though it still pops up on occasion, the fact that it's a once in a while kind of thing speaks to his growth. I have a little brother who has this exact personality, and watching him grow up, I can tell you, this is how it is. He used to snap all the time, and he still does sometimes, but much less frequently, because he's a more mature person with better control of his emotions. This is a good thing. This is overcoming personal flaws. This is progression we're seeing.

And while you're hyper focused on this one aspect of him, things like his cocky confidence haven't changed a bit. I mean, that season 3 bit between him and Pixal, and his season 11 "fire maker" streak have the exact same energy. You can not convince me otherwise.

Another adjacent quality that hasn't been dampened is Kai's impulsiveness. This can be a good quality of his, he'll get into a fight without thinking, getting the jump on the enemy. Good stuff. But, this has become such a well defined trait of Kai's that it has been used in a comedic capacity. This is what happens when a character is extremely consistent to the extent that both the audience and the characters in universe would be able to predict their actions. Kai's impulsivity used to be a more serious quality that put himself and others at risk, and was a big power move whenever he did something rash, but it's become such a staple of the show that it's now being used for comedy. That isn't Kai's impulsivity going away, that's Kai's impulsivity being recontextualized for the sake of the show. The season 9 "Who's stupid enough to jump on that thing" isn't a joke at the expense of Kai just for being dumb, it's a joke at Kai's being so predictably impulsive that everyone already knows he'll be the one to put himself in an insane amount of danger without thinking twice (you know, something stupid that might get him killed). But because in this instance, the danger is warranted, this is bravery. It's a complement to his character- it's what ends up defeating the colossus. Why are some people so bothered by this joke?

Oh right, cuz for some reason people want to peg Kai as the smart one? Look, Kai isn't stupid, none of the ninja are. All of them have smart moments (all of them have dumb ones too) and Kai can certainly handle himself, but "smart" is definitely not one of his defining characteristics- I think some people are confusing smart for his actual strength. Connected to his impulsivity, Kai has very good simplistic instincts. He sees the big picture and looks at the most surface level solution- which when the situation calls for it, that does indeed make him smart. But the same logic that led him to think "This snake has a glowing target on its head, lets hit it" also led him to think "I'm in a video game, therefore I am immortal." Are you really going to look at me and say he figured out Lloyd was the green ninja through logical deduction and a careful consideration of the facts? No. He had a gut feeling, and he trusted it. Instincts- instincts paired with his impulsive following of said instincts is what leads him to solve problems- and sometimes, that can be extremely effective. This goes for other ninja too. Jay isn't the smartest ninja- I would really only classify Zane and Nya as having intelligence define them (hence their ship name). But Jay is extremely creative and crafty. He also knows his was around mechanics, and as such, this will lead him to come up with creative tech based solutions which are smart. But, idk about you, if I had to point to another ninja as being 'dumb' it would 100% be Jay. Kai is a lot of things. He's passionate and determined and confident and persistent. He's a good improvisor, he's powerful and he's charming! These are all wonderful qualities, he doesn't also have to be the smart one. I am the worlds biggest Pixal stan, and she's a smart, sassy, powerful character, but I'm not gonna sit here and tell you she's also hilarious and adaptable and strong willed. She's a straight man to all the ninja's antics, extremely tied to her samurai x suit, and lets people push her around all the time. That doesn't mean she can't be funny, or self interested, but when she does act these ways, it stems from her other more prominent qualities. That make sense?

And while we're clearing up what Kai isn't, please stop characterizing Kai as an overly protective brother - especially romantically. The only two times he's been romantically protective to Nya are in Wu's Teas which I mean, come on and in the pilots when Jay is literally a stranger. For crying out loud, by the end of the pilot, he's smiling when Jay and Nya hug. That's not overly protective, that's just normal, any reasonable person would react this way, protective. And it's such a great stereotype break for a kids show like ninjago, having an older brother who actually trusts his younger sister to be her own independent person who can make her own decisions. I mean, I guess it's fine if you HC differently but like... idk, I don't buy it.

Now, is there still room to criticize the writers? Yes. Hell yes. But not to an extent greater than any other character. Could he have had more of a defined reaction to events of the most recent season that I won't name for the sake of spoilers? Yes. But could Zane have reacted for more than .5 seconds at being an evil war lord for apparently 60 years? Yeah. Has Kai taken a back seat in the past 4 seasons? Yeah. But so has Lloyd- and he's literally the main character of the show. Not to mention two of those seasons have gone to people who had to wait over ten seasons to get one to themselves, and one of them is a 40 minute special. Kai's doing just fine.

Anyway. Kai is great. He's a fun, stereotype breaking, impulsively driven, ball of energy and confidence who gets a good amount of screen time and some fun side plots.

One last thing to clear up: no hate to anyone. This isn't targeted at anyone specific, this post has been a long time coming, I've just seen some weird overblown claims on various platforms over the past few months and I finally sat down to write about it.

I like the Kai content we have. After all, if the writers were really that bad at writing him, then no one would like him.

Wow this was so much longer than I thought it would be. Um... if you have other long winded rants you'd like to see from me... let me know I guess?

#ninjago #kai ninjago #kai smith #parachuterants #analysis #lets add this tag:#/lh

230 notes · View notes

pair-annoyed · 4 years

Text

Anime I Watched This Summer

Summer 2020 has officially come to a close. It’s fall in Animal Crossing and the trees are beginning to turn. Much like quarantine, I spent a lot of my free time watching anime when I wasn’t stressing over starting college. Now that the school year has begun, I thought it would be nice to reflect on everything I’ve watched!

These Anime were seen between 6/14 - 8/31 (my Birthday!) and are listed in chronological order.

They will be rated on a 1-10 scale; 1 meaning complete garbage, 10 meaning masterpiece. I will offer my thoughts on what I did/didn't like about each show!

1. Bakemono no Ko - 8/10

This was such a great way to start out the summer! I love the dynamic between Kumatetsu and Ren. Overall its a little cliche, but it’s also very wholesome. It’s by the same studio that made Wolf Children (which I loved!). so I knew it was going to be good. My favorite aspect of this movie was its backgrounds and world building!

2. Wan Sheng Jie - 9/10

Oh my gosh! I know that this is technically a donghua, but its on MAL, so it counts. This show quickly became my favorite slice of life of all time. I adore the art style and all of the characters. The comedy, plot, and design blends so well together. Everything in Wan Sheng Jie feels warm and comfy. It’s also confirmed for a second season! After seeing its cliff hanger ending, I’m so anxious for what comes next!

3. Dororo - 7/10

I’ll be honest, I’m a sucker for studio MAPPA. I really liked the historical aspects of Dororo. From the outfits to the ways characters behave, its grounded in the constraints of feudal Japan. I would have given this show a higher score if it was a little more grounded in science. I feel like more time should’ve been given to the demons and antagonists of the show. Our MC was so over powered, which made the final fights of the series more lack-luster. I think its less of the anime’s fault and more because the original source material is from the 60s. That being said, I loved this show! It was cute and action packed. Though it isn’t perfect, it holds its own.

4. Bungou Stray Dogs - 5/10

The concepts and action are misconstrued in Bungou Stary Dogs. This is one of those shows that I chose to watch because it was all over Tumblr. The powers themselves are cool, but I can’t understand why this series is so praised. At it’s core its predictable and basic. The fights seemed low stakes and low energy. None of the humor really felt like it belonged. It tried too hard to be something it isn’t. I don’t think I’ll watch beyond this first season.

5. Kami no Tou - 4.5/10

First off, fuck Rachel, me and my homies hate Rachel. I really really had high hopes for Tower of God. It paves the way for Webtoon adaptations in the future. Its such a shame that this adaptation SUCKED. I have not read the source material, I’m going solely based on the anime. It wasn’t good? It was horrible. I hate Bam, I hate Rachel. I think all the characters expect Rak were awful. Please don’t make a season 2. Please. If you’re interesting in Tower of God, just read the webtoon.

6. Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun - 7/10

Shoujo anime is my guilty pleasure. I especially liked the way Gekkan Shoujo tackled Sakura and Nozaki’s relationship. Besides just the main characters, even the side characters were enjoyable! It was a fun and creative show. My only complaint is how dense Nozaki is, but I also absolutely love that part of him.

7. Jojo no Kimyou no Bouken (Parts 1-2) - 6.5/10

Jojo is not the saving grace of shounen anime. It isn’t something super revolutionary and it certainly will never be a 10/10. Part 1 was so slow and boring. Jonathan was just mediocre at best. I definitely liked Joseph a LOT more than Jonathan. Part 2 overall was much easier to watch than part 1. The fights are good, but there’s just something about Jojo that I can’t get behind. Although I’m completely bashing this series, I’m going to keep watching it. At this point, I wanna know what a stand is.

8. Clannad - 5.5/10

I was expecting Clannad to be sad, but instead I got a cute, slice of life, romance. It wasn’t unenjoyable, but it was also a pretty slow-burning show. I loved watching Nagisa and Okazaki slowly fall in love with each other. It was funny at times and sad at other points. I am currently watching Clannad: After Story (which I’ve heard is heartbreaking), so I’m hoping to get some catharsis out of that.

9. Otome Game no Hametsu Flag shika Nai... - 6/10

This show is only 12 episodes, and yet it still has filler episodes for some reason? I’m a person who doesn’t typically watch isekai because the genre is so over done. However, when it’s done in a very specific way it’s really fun to watch! This show was definitely a lot of fun, it’s also cute and has so many interesting character-character interactions. The ending is painfully cliche, but I think it adds to this shows charm.

10. Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Tensai-tachi no Renai Zunousen - 8/10

I loved Love is War so much! I love their weird romantic dynamic. I love the characters, and I love the animation. It’s over the top and executes it humor masterfully. The entire show fills you with anticipation for the two main characters. Kaguya is my favorite character. Although I haven’t seen season two yet, I most certainly will! I’m so upset I hadn’t seen this show sooner.

11. Great Pretender - 8.5/10

This show is so colorful and bubbly. The animation is so smooth and they are able to tackle so many different kinds of things given its plot. The whole show itself just feels like summertime. It came out not to long ago, so some people may not be familiar with it. On top of the show itself, the music is great, with a Jazzy OP and and ED that features Freddie Mercury

12. Steins;Gate 0 - 8/10

I loved the original Stein;Gate so much! So it’s no surprise how much I liked the second season. It builds significantly off the first season in a sort of “off shot” OVA kind of way. The events of Steins;Gate 0 don’t actually happen, but that doesn’t stop it from being meaningful. The big “twist” was predictable and a bit of a let down, but I still enjoyed this. Granted, I’m bias.

13. Seishun Buta Yarou wa Yumemiru Shoujo no Yume wo Minai - 9.5/10

I sobbed. So much. This movie was phenomenal, it was such a trip. Having watched the original series, this tore my heart apart. It gets a high score for being able to take the characters I love and creating a wonderfully emotional experience. If you haven’t seen Bunny Girl Senpai, please watch it, and then watch this movie. You won’t regret it!

14. Hotaru no Haka - 6/10

Grave of the Fireflies made me stop watching anime for a while. Studio Ghibli created something grim, something that leaves the viewers feeling hollow. Its a movie about WWII from Japan’s perspective. As an American, all I could feel while watching this was immense guilt. I will say though, that some of the movies main plot could have easily been prevented if the main character had swallowed his pride. His younger sister was also my least favorite character. I get that she’s a kid and that kids are fussy, but you would think that during wartime, she’d be more understanding and at least try to eat the things she dislikes.

15. Yagate Kimi ni Naru - 9/10

This was a great way to end the summer. This is more that just GL romance, its a love story. Its about growing up and learning to understand your feelings. I related to Yuu so much, which made this more emotional than I expected. It’s really unlike another romance anime I’ve seen. I hope it gets confirmed for a second season. If not, I’ll be reading the manga.

Seasonal Shows: (Things that are still airing as of 9/5/2020)

1. The God of High School 7.5/10

Another thing done by studio MAPPA. Are you surprised? I absolutely love the action in GoH. The plot however, is all over the place. The story seems fragmented and hard to follow. Like Tower of God, it was poorly adapted. I’m giving it such a high score, because it’s SO much more enjoyable then Tower of God.

2. Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou - 4/10

My thoughts on season 2 are about the same as my thoughts on season 1. The only difference is that this season has more Jojo references. I’ve rated it lower because its so repetitive. I’m so sick of watching it, but I’ve got to see it through the bitter end.

3. Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu 2nd Season - 8.5/10

All I’m going to say about Re:Zero is that I love it. I can’t give an accurate review of it because I’ve been hyping this season since it was announced. If you’re into non-typical isekai, watch Re:Zero, its so enjoyable!

1K notes · View notes

liliaeth · 3 years

Text

Fix it’s for Teen Wolf

I can think of a few things that would have made Teen Wolf better.

1. I wanted more focus on Scott’s emotional response to what happened to him. I don’t mind that Scott isn’t the type who complains about getting hurt. The problem for me was that the show rarely dealt with the consequences of Scott’s pain, and thus to the casual viewer often made it look like he simply didn’t mind, that being hurt didn’t bother him at all. Or worse, that nothing all that bad had happened in the first place.

Doing this undermined many of the hallucination scenes. For example, in Season 2’s Party Guessed, we get hallucinations for Stiles, Jackson, and Allison which give us a view into psychology, letting us know their issues without spelling them out. For Scott, we got Allison making out with kanima Jackson. Compared to the others, it felt shallow and confusing. The writers couldn’t even bother to give us dialog. He received the same treatment in Season 5, when they read the book designed to trigger their memories about the Dread Doctors. Stiles gets yet another scene about his dead mother who has been crucial to his story since Season 1. Lydia sees her grandmother and her connection to both Lydia’s powers and Eichen House, as well as foreshadowing her treatment at the hands of Valack. Malia about her Mom and sister’s death at the hands of the Desert Wolf, which is her entire arc. And Scott? He gets a nightmare about a dog that was never mentioned before and would not be mentioned after.

2. I wanted more focus on Scott’s trauma in general. In Season 1, Scott was repeatedly mentally and physically violated by Peter, terrorized and abused by Derek, and hunted by the Argents, and it was taken as a given. Even the recaps at the beginning episodes in other seasons barely show any of that. For example, Gerard attacking Scott in clear view at the hospital, stabbing him, and threatening his mother, never appeared in any of the recaps, even in episodes where it would have been important to remind the viewers about it.

While the show had no issue showing us over and over again how Stiles or Derek or Isaac or Allison or any white character really was hurt, they did not focus on the pain Scott was put through, and thus let the viewers conclude that those events didn’t matter.

The show literally had Scott try and kill himself, twice in less than two days, first in Frayed, by refusing to let himself heal, and then again in Motel California, yet neither of those suicide attempts are mentioned even once afterwards. And this while it would have been a good call back in s5b, when Scott is once again not letting himself heal after Theo killed him. and yet again, no mention whatsoever.

3. I wanted more consequences for certain characters. I liked that Scott and to a lesser extent Derek were confronted with the consequences of their actions. When they screwed up, they got called out on it. When they did something wrong, it wasn’t excused. Then they made up for it.

In contrast, certain characters, especially Stiles, got to do whatever they wanted and it was either dismissed as funny or used to make them look sympathetic. Stiles got to be mean and cruel, and the narrative still treated him as if he were the best friend ever. He got to assault people, hurt them, and it was treated as if somehow he was the victim.

For example, I would have liked Stiles a lot better, if when he tortured Scott with lacrosse balls, punishing him for who-knows-what, if someone else had called him out on it or if Scott had got to defend himself, instead of just taking it because Stiles was angry. Scott allowing Stiles to hurt him to maintain their friendship was a pattern between them, just as much as Scott taking responsibility for things that aren’t his fault. He keeps on doing it over the course of the show, but it would have been nice if the show at the very least had made it clear that that didn’t make Stiles behavior acceptable.

Just like I wish that Peter had actually faced consequences for his actions – and/or shown some kind of true remorse for his misdeeds--instead of the others just letting him hang around after all the horrible things he’d done or reduce it pettiness.

4. I would have liked more time spent on Melissa and the McCall family in general, especially on Melissa’s initial reaction to Scott being a werewolf. In the show, they barely spent two minutes total on Melissa’s reaction to finding out her son has been turned into a werewolf. By the end of s6b, she was barely even behaving like a mother anymore. Even to the point where we don’t even get a conversation between her and Chris about his attacks on her son before the two of them start dating. Now don’t get me wrong, I liked Chris and Melissa in a relationship, but it was missed opportunity to humanize both her and Scott that they didn’t bother to show her finding out about that and her reaction to it.

Instead we got the whole horror reaction, of her being horrified at seeing her son’s other face, the reaction that any LGBT kid fears when they come out to their parent. Which could have been a great metaphor, especially if they had then made it clear that Scott was bisexual.

5. I would have liked more focus on Boyd. The production time spent on Isaac and Erica, while Boyd’s arc was treated as almost an afterthought. We barely even got any hint on his past, in the episode before they killed him off. They started out with Boyd as the one who wanted to be like Scott, and then never explained it. Why not focus more on that, and their relationship?

(similar complaints go about Mason, and how little we knew about Mason, outside of him being Liam’s friend. Like... what was his relationship like with his parents? What is Mason interested in, what does he want to do with his life... how did he deal with the after effects of the Beast...

6. I would have liked more focus on Alan Deaton. The show had such huge potential with this character’s backstory, not just with the Hales but as an emissary in general. There was this whole mythology about druids that they barely even delved into.

To not even start on how little we knew about his personal life? Why did he and his sister have different last names? What was their relationship like?

Does he have any romantic relationships? Friendships, relationships in general?

Or how about more time spent on his role as a father figure to Scott, we got so few crumbs of their relationship when we should have gotten so much more

7. I would have liked more focus on Scott and Theo’s interaction in Season 6. I get that in 6a, they had Scott primarily focused on getting Stiles back, but I’ll never understand why they then didn’t use 6b, to deal with the fact that Theo had tried to murder Scott and was trying to make it up to him and the pack for what he’d done to Scott and the others.

I don’t mind Theo interacting with Liam. Those scenes were great, but they should have at least one scene with Scott and Theo dealing with the issues between them. For Theo’s sake, as much as Scott’s.

8. I would have liked a complete rework of Season 6A in its entirety. If you’re going to focus a season on an actor who isn’t available, then you have to make it about his impact on the others. Show us what difference this character made, by showing us the effects of his absence, rather than just try and make it about a romantic ship. (I’ve written a post about this already in greater detail, so limiting it to that, but seriously, that season was such a huge wasted opportunity.)

9. Actual character growth for Stiles. For a character who had as much screentime as Stiles did, it’s shocking just how little character growth Stiles had over the course of the entire show. This contrasts in a really bad way, when you look at how much every single other character grew and changed over the course of the show.

Just look at the last four episodes of 5b, to give an example. After almost an entire season of watching Stiles at his worst, focusing on emotional scene after emotional scene with him, he suddenly got relegated to comic relief. Why? Because they didn’t want Stiles to grow, because unless he grew, there was no way for him to go but down. If Stiles had taken responsibility for his actions, then they’d have had to admit that he did wrong in the first place. And they couldn’t have that happen.

10. And last but not least. More moments of the kids being kids. Even if it’s just proms and beach parties. Moments where we see the characters spend time together, when they aren’t trying to stop some bad guy. Where we can see them be friends, hang out with kids their own age. Even just to remind the audience just how young these children are. And where the viewers along with the characters can rest in between the horror, because doing so makes the horror hit far more strongly in contrast to the light.

11. Also, a better lighting budget, pretty please Davies, were a few more light bulbs that much to ask for?

#teen wolf #scott mccall #anti stiles #teen wolf fandom problems #alan deaton #vernon boyd #mason hewitt #theo raeken #melissa mccall #anti peter hale

120 notes · View notes

quickspinner · 3 years

Text

Month of Miracles - Change

Find the prompt list here!

She was crisp and professional, her makeup perfect, and she stood easily, if not comfortably, in the heels she had spent years trying to master. She’d done her hair up in a professional, competent style, and she looked every inch the businesswoman she was, and the fashion mogul she one day hoped to be.

The only thing out of place on her was her jacket, and Marinette took it off and folded it over her arms before she opened the heavy wooden door.

“Much better,” Audrey sniffed as Marinette walked into the atelier, on time to the minute despite the obscenely early hour. “I’m glad to see the country rube look was just a temporary affliction.”

“I was on vacation,” Marinette reminded her, laying her jacket over a chair. Her fingers lingered on it a moment before she took off her purse and set it down in the seat of the chair.

“What was on vacation was your taste, clearly. Sabrina!” Audrey’s assistant jumped up, hurrying to remove the dust covers from the row of mannequins standing there. “Look at this disaster,” Audrey snapped, and Marinette winced as the garments emerged. “If I put this on the runway, the audience will be asleep in minutes!”

“This is fixable,” Marinette said thoughtfully, circling the mannequin. “It’s not ideal, but, there’s parts of this we can work with. This is an opportunity, really.”

Audrey snorted. “Do tell.”

Marinette turned to her. “Audrey, all the complaints on the last line were that it was too commercial, too—well, too safe. We can have these remade, but it would be a waste. They’ll still come out boring and unoriginal, because they are. But if we can get creative and think outside of the box, we can turn this whole thing around. Look—Sabrina, hand me those scissors—” She moved towards one of the dresses, and reached for the fabric. “If we just—”

“What do you think you are doing?” Audrey snarled, grabbing her wrist with a perfectly manicured hand. “You won’t touch anything here without my approval first!”

“Audrey,” Marinette sighed, facing her again, aware that her exasperation was showing in her face and not particularly caring to hide it. “I can’t do this. You hired me for my vision. Let me use it! This, this process you’re trying to force me through, it’s crushing me. I understand, you want some control over the final product, and I’m fine with that, but there comes a point where I need you to trust me. I’ll make mistakes, sure, but Audrey—” She turned and held her hands up as she gestured to the line laid out in front of her. “This whole season is a mistake right now! We tried it your way and we got this.” She turned back to Audrey. “Let me be the designer you hired,” she pleaded, eyes alight. “This is what I’m good at. Let me turn this around for you! Just...trust me.”

Audrey’s eyes narrowed. “Are you finished?” she said coldly.

Marinette’s mouth dropped open a little, and her back straightened.

“Apparently,” she murmured, as Audrey stalked past her.

“Trusting you is what got me into this mess,” Audrey fumed. “I brought you under my wing, and you made me a laughing stock—”

“That’s not true, Audrey, I know I still have a lot to learn but I’m not—”

“I put my name in your hands—”

“I was inexperienced, I made some mistakes, but that line was not a—”

“Despite your multiple failures, I keep giving you more chances. And now you ask me to trust you? Don’t make me laugh.” Audrey whirled and bent down so that her eyes were level with the petite designer. “And if you can’t handle the pressure,” Audrey sneered, “then maybe you’re not cut out for this business.”

“Maybe I’m not cut out for your business,” Marinette said softly.

They stood, eye to eye for a moment, and then Audrey’s eyes narrowed. “You know how to find the door any time you’re ready,” she bit out, and for another, completely silent moment, neither of them moved. Apparently feeling her point had been made, Audrey straightened and turned around. “Now,” she said crisply. “Here’s what we’re going to do—”

Marinette took a deep breath, and while Audrey prattled on, she turned on the point of her heel and started walking. Sabrina stared at her with wide eyes as Marinette picked up her coat—Luka’s coat—and walked calmly out of the office, sliding it on and pulling it tight around her.

She heard the scream just as the elevator doors were closing, and began to giggle, putting one hand across her mouth and feeling her eyes crinkle up with her mirth.

Several heads turned to her when she arrived at the lobby, and she smiled brightly at all of them. More than one smiled back, but Marinette didn’t slow or speak, just turned towards the tall glass doors.

She was only halfway across the lobby before Audrey burst out of the other elevator.

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” Audrey roared. “Get back here or you’re fired.”

Marinette choked on another slightly hysterical laugh, and her step only quickened, her heels slamming into the marble tile of the lobby, the clacking loud enough to make the guard at the desk turn and stare. She flashed him a quick smile as she passed, and he grinned at her, sitting back in his chair. Out of the corner of her eye, Marinette thought she saw him mouth, about time, but then she was walking through the doors and the winter sun was blinding her. She stood for a moment in front of the doors, blinking, and then took a couple of quick steps forward and threw up her arm to hail a cab. One veered out of the traffic and pulled up at the curb.

Marinette jerked the door open and nearly threw herself inside. She picked both feet up off the pavement and swung them inside, and then pulled the door closed after her.

“The 6th street bus station, please,” she said breathlessly, buckling herself in. As the cab pulled out, she fell back into her seat, and brought shaking hands to her cheeks.

#quickspins #monthofmiracles2020 #hallmark au #lukanette #endgame lukanette #lukanette endgame #luka couffaine #marinette dupain-cheng #miraculousladybug #miraculous ladybug

59 notes · View notes

shadlad24 · 3 years

Text

More Funny Little Moments #1: Season 1, Episodes 1-12

So, I decided to do this post after all. Halp. LOL Because I apparently LOVE giving myself a bunch of unnecessary work, I decided to choose two to three extra moments, per episode! SUPER halp! X’D Anyway, these are moments that didn’t make the cut for my FFLM series because: my sense of humor is a little weird, they were gonna be too much work (LOL/Siiigh), I like to highlight patterns, and I don’t like a lot of repetition. [Links to each FFLM along the bottom of the post. :)]

Let’s start with something I originally agreed with other fans on but have since changed my mind. A lot of people didn’t like this part of “Chariots of War” because it seems so ludicrous that Xena would forget her chakram anywhere. Well, let me tell you! This lady has left her weapons behind most episodes thus far. I didn’t note it every time here (and especially didn’t bother with her whip) because that’d really overrun the post buuuuut… You’ll see. XD

1.01 Sins of the Past

Xena’s shift being so much dirtier than the little boy’s clothes though she’s high up off the ground, and he lives in smoked-out rubble.

Yup. Xena forgot her sword (and later, her main saddlebag) at her mother’s tavern. Pft.

Sorry these were kinda lame, but I didn’t want to re-use any more of the original fifteen points I made about this episode... Ah well. Moving on! (heh)

1.02 Chariots of War

Xena loses her sword after the chariot crash, taking up and discarding Sphaerus’s but walking off without her own. (See her front and back and both of Argo’s sides.)

Gabrielle chewing Xena out, Xena being bummed about it, and Argo being surprised. X’D

1.03 Dreamworker

This got me good. Gabrielle does Xena’s war cry so well here that I really thought it was Xena for a few seconds. Realizing it was GabbyWabs only made me chuckle more because she apparently can’t do it when it really counts in “The Greater Good.”

Argo NOT being on Team Gabrielle. XD (Their feud is a little funny to me.)

1.04 Cradle of Hope

Xena tossing aside her sword after killing Nemos. Extras even dance and celebrate right on top of it! Wut thuh?

I decided to avoid mentioning Hope in the FFLM because Xena’s quote here is more ironic than comedic, and Gabrielle’s little face is just so sad, but I didn’t want to let it pass by entirely unremarked upon. At least GW gets to show off her oracle skills again? :’)

1.05 The Path Not Taken

So, Xena and Gabrielle walk into a bar… Heh. No, but really, they enter this tavern for the first time ever, yet the bartender not only knows what they want, he knows that they’re coming and has their drinks waiting for them too. All Xena has to do is knock on the counter and nod to get her fire-breath alcohol/oil, and Gabrielle barely has the word “cider” out of her mouth before the guy hands it to her. Xena, like me, is duly amazed.

Lucy, through Xena, making another timely anti-peanut statement. I just didn’t want to do the same thing twice back-to-back in the FFLM. X)

1.06 The Reckoning

Gabrielle thinking along the same lines Xena and I did about this poor excuse for a judge.

Me not being well-versed in ancient Greek heroes and picturing the fool who Draco killed so handily in the first episode. heh

1.07 The Titans

I’ll let Xena explain this one. …Mostly. I can’t believe Gabrielle not only sassed the Titans such that she unashamedly put Xena and Phyleus in danger too, but also kinda got this (admittedly awful) town demolished and didn’t lift a finger to actually help anyone in the temple. Tsk tsk. XP

So… Hyperion here can smash homes and businesses that were probably well-built and reinforced and all, but he can’t get his hand out of a stocks-cuff that was made in a single evening with scraps from those destroyed buildings. He also, inexplicably, has no use of his left hand or the power-breath that he used to knock Gabrielle over. Okie. XD

1.08 Prometheus

Is this really a thing? I was giggling quite a bit in disbelief that severed windpipes can heal. Like, perforated is one thing; completely bisected? Yeah, I don’t think so.

Gabrielle being incredulous upon learning that Xena has other friends, realizing what the warrior princess means, and then wondering if that could be her one day.

1.09 Death in Chains

Gabrielle enjoying watching Xena kill someone for the first time, then quickly realizing that fact. Whoops.

I found this moment really odd and then kind of hilarious. This poor dying old woman begs for water and goes ignored not only by the hospice workers, but also Talus and Gabrielle. Then Talus decides to be helpful. Gabrielle goes to the woman and lets her talk a lot (undoubtedly drying her mouth and throat even more), hears that Xena might be in danger, and then just… leaves. Talus goes with her, not having gotten water from the well after all. What a couple of jerks! XD

1.10 Hooves & Harlots

I really don’t know why Gabrielle kept making this face as Terreis died, but it tickled my funny bone too. So, I provided alternate subs to go with it. [Did you notice how she kind of cringes when Terreis tries to hold her hand and then just lets the Amazon flop once she’s died, flinging her hand aside like, “Ew, get it off me!”? What was that all about? X”) Hm… maybe she has an aversion to dying people, and that’s why she abandoned the old lady last episode?]

Gabrielle being a smart aleck, just like me, because Phantes’s complaint here is so ludicrous. But then you see the close-up of little hoofies in cuffs too, and, if you’re anything like me too, kinda just topple over laughing. The poor actual horse they did this to, though, man! What even?

Gosh, this episode was chockfull of hilarity, eh? Why did this happen? Gabby, take it away!

1.11 The Black Wolf

I laughed at this too. But now I wonder. Is Xerxes related to Caesar and/or connected to Rome or something? Because Xena does this twice around them too. In “When in Rome,” she jokes that the two guards lost playing tag with her, and in “A Good Day” she informs Pompey that if there were more guards hiding around their meeting space, then she would have had more helmets. heh Oh, Xenie. I think I know why Gabrielle’s turning out to be such a little punk ...or vice versa? Is Gabrielle actually a bit of a bad influence on Xena? XP

So, this fight just struck me as really odd. Xena passes her sword to Flora though she (Xena) needs to battle the big boss of the episode, and… actually, is totally right. The king throws a single wide-ass punch, waits while Xena kicks the guy behind her a few times, lets himself get kicked in the face a couple of times, and then comes at her with a little piece of chain, presumably from the restraints that were intended to keep Flora in place during her execution. Sir, you have a sword! A giant sword, right there on your hip! What are you doing? Then, when Xena kicks him a final time and sends him flying, his (supposed-to-be) metal armor is no match for the splintered wood of the axe she broke earlier. …Okie. XD XD XD *gif below*

Xena once again leaves her chakram somewhere. …And I am now imagining this being part of Gabrielle’s maid duties: the poor kid has to go find Xena’s weapons each night and bring them back to her. I’m especially imaging the fluffball hilariously, adorably struggling to get the chakram out of things like this wall, as she did with Xena’s sword in the tree stump in “Dreamworker,” but more parallel to the floor. Cuuuute! XD

This plus this

*pic + GIF below*:

1.12 Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts

This scene too really made me wonder, though amused as well. Why is Gabrielle so surprised that the only city nearby, that they were headed to, is the one they find? Is she really being that loud? Is Xena goofing around with the bootlaces question? Why startle Gabrielle and then yank her into enemy territory screaming, when what you want is quiet? What’s with the trapdoor-spider soldiers? Xena’s pose throwing the chakram. XD Gabrielle mostly featherlight dance-y moves through the battlefield. XD XD XD Why is it that when Xena tells Gabrielle to stick right behind her, Gabrielle disappears? And what was with the bucket-sitting soldier? Gabrielle is like, “Oh; no, thank you!” when she sees him and turns tail. Then Xena ...follows her. “We’re goin’ this way! Now we’re goin’ that way!” But they still end up dead-ahead from where they burst out of the bushes. XD That was ridiculous and nonsensical, and I’m very confused but had lots of fun. heheheh *gif below* [ETA: Darn! The original file was too big, so I had to remake the GIF and cut quite a few things out. :( Sorry]

Xena’s outta-nowhere crusade to emasculate Deiphobus coming full-circle. What was that all about?

Welp, I hope you had as much fun as I originally and then later did. Not so much in the middle with the collage-and-GIF-making and editing and redoing, but; y’know. XD Wouldn’t trade it for …Hm… Nevermind. LOL

If you missed any of the FFLMs, then please click on the corresponding number-links below. :D

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12

#xwp #xena #xena warrior princess #gabrielle #xena and gabrielle #fflm #funny #comedy #season 1 #forgetful #magic #shenanigans #argo #chakram #sword

22 notes · View notes

hangrypa · 3 years

Text

s/p first year as a PA

I was hired as a hospitalist primarily for the transplant service. However, in the setting of the pandemic and staffing shortages, I am all over the place now and work in almost everything non-pediatric and non-surgical.

In my first few months as a PA, I was incredibly overwhelmed. I went from being a learner who switches specialties every month to a fully-fledged provider making life-or-death decisions on an hourly basis. Oftentimes I’d find myself in the room of a patient actively crumping, surrounded by the patient’s family and multiple nurses awaiting instructions on what to do to save the patient. I thought that I faced a lot of pressure in school, but it was nothing compared to this.

And just when I started to get a hang of it all, the pandemic hit. What a nightmare. As mentioned above, I was hired to work with with transplant patients. Prior to the pandemic, my transplant colleagues and I were masking and gowning for almost every patient: 1 surgical mask and 1 gown per patient and per patient encounter. But once COVID hit, we were rationing PPE. 1 N95, 1 pair of goggles, and 1 face shield for the pandemic. 1 surgical mask per week, and 1 gown only if a patient had Cdiff or a history of MDRO bacteremia.

What did the pandemic mean for our transplant patients?

Our patients are on immunosuppressant medications to prevent transplant rejection. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult for them to fight infections.

Our department did what it could to prevent COVID. We'd test patients on admission for COVID, regardless of symptoms or exposure history. If they were positive, they went to the COVID team and quarantined on their unit for a period of time and had to test negative before returning to our unit and being transplanted. We took many other measures to reduce COVID risk to the best of our ability.

People still died. To see someone get transplanted successfully and then die of a virus is horrifying. Unfortunately, despite our admission tests, sometimes patients contracted COVID within the hospital. Patients would be happily FaceTiming their family one moment, telling them all of their plans for once they were discharged- then the next day they'd be intubated. We tried Remdesivir, Dexamethasone, prone positioning, etc. But the virus moved through them quickly, and these efforts often were too late. No amount of hoping and praying brought them back.

As a first year PA, I learned to go to an empty conference room, close the door, and remove my mask before calling to the family of the deceased. This way, as they gathered around the phone in their homes, the family could hear me unmuffled as I delivered the news. Also, this way my tears didn't ruin my mask for the rest of the week.

I learned a lot this year. It's been a mixture of crying and laughing. There are times that I question why I ever became a PA, and then there are times when this career feels like home. In addition to transplant, I’ve also been working in the ED, IMC, ICU, inpatient hospice, clinic, and infusion center these past 6 months. I’ve learned quite a lot along the way.

Lessons learned as a first year PA:

1. Check your pager hourly: This is in addition to checking it whenever you get paged. Sometimes I’ll get paged while I’m rounding, read it, and then forget about it. Now I go through my pager at every hour to ensure that I already responded to all my pages and then answer ones that I missed/forgot. On a semi-related note, a while back I wrote about good paging etiquette.

2. Let people know when you're out: I work a rotating schedule. As a result, it’s hard to predict when I’m in or out of the hospital. Sometimes I’ll come back on service and find urgent emails or texts that are a few days old. Now I leave an away message with my return date and my supervisor’s contact information on both email and hospital text. If someone really needs to get a hold of me, my supervisor has my personal cell phone number.

3. Be conscientious of what time you consult: I generally try to get all of my nonurgent consults done before 3pm. Many services have only 1 resident covering after 3pm, so I try not to page/call unless I have an emergency.

4. Call the nurse if something needs to be done urgently: Being a nurse means being the ultimate multitasker. Room 5 is due for his IV Amphotericin, Room 2's Foley is supposed to come out prior to void trial with Urology, Room 1's infusion completed and is beeping, and Room 4 is a bit altered and yanked out her PICC. Now I’m placing an order for Room 3 to get IV Lasix due to concern for pulmonary edema. However, the nurse may be preoccupied with Room 4 and not see the order in the computer for some time. If I really need to the patient to get the Lasix right way, I’ll place the order through EMR and then call the nurse and see what their situation is. If they’re crazy busy with Room 4 and likely to be unable to get to the Lasix within the next 15min, I ask whether they’re okay with me asking another nurse to give the Lasix now. Usually the answer is yes.

5. Value your nurses: Nurses know the patient best. They’re the ones answering call bells, giving meds, doing dressing changes, etc. Unfortunately they oftentimes bear the brunt of everyone’s frustrations, from patients to patients’ families to attendings to managers. Not to mention, they’re the ones doing the dirty work. Bedside nurses are the heartbeat of healthcare, but they also are high risk for burnout. Always support your nurses, whether that’s volunteering to answer a patient’s family member’s 17th phone call of the day or responding to a patient’s call bell yourself.

6. Know how to get a hold of someone quickly: It’s less than ideal to page someone repeatedly. At my hospital, if I need to talk to an attending urgently, I call the operator and ask them to connect me directly to the attending’s cell phone. If a patient is crashing and we’re not in the ICU, I dial the emergency number and call a rapid response, which sends people running into my patient’s room.

7. Plan your discharge meds from Day 1: The goal of every admission is to treat the patient and then discharge them safely. Send medications early for prior auth and call the pharmacy to make sure that they have medications in stock. (One time a patient’s insurance didn’t cover Levofloxacin, of all things.)

8. Keep social work and care coordination aware of all needs from the start: Does your patient looks unsteady? Place a PT/OT consult and let social work and care coordination know that the patient might require home therapy services and/or DME so that they can start looking at services and companies that may be covered by insurance. Does your patient have a central line? They’ll likely need a home health service to teach them how to care for it daily at home. Do they seem to require frequent transfusions? They’ll probably need labs on discharge. Is the patient’s living situation safe (no heat/AC, possible abuse at home, financial difficulties, etc)? They may need alternative housing.

9. The attending is not always right: Generally speaking, the attending has the last say on how the team manages a patient. However, I’ve come across situations in which an attending’s decision put a patient in more danger. Sometimes asking them about their decision can help steer the care plan toward better patient care. Other times you just have to stand your ground and be okay with being on the receiving end of an attending’s misdirected rant. Report these instances to your manager and to other higher-ups.

10. Always have gloves in your pocket: You never know when you’ll find a mess. Or which part of the body someone asks you to examine. Or how hygienic a person is (or is not).

11. Verify weird vitals: I was very new when I walked into work, opened a patient’s chart, and promptly bolted down the hallway when I saw a patient’s O2 sats recorded as 15-20s. I found the patient sitting up in bed, eating breakfast, and bewildered by me bursting into the room. Turns out that overnight someone mistakenly recorded his respirations as the O2 sats.

12. Remove whatever tubes you can: Anything entering the body is an infection risk. Does your patient still need that Foley placed by the surgery team? No? Yank it (don’t actually yank because ouch). Is your patient A&O and able to eat without aspirating? Remove the NG tube. Does your patient have good veins and require infrequent transfusions/labwork? Pull their central line.

13. Take a buddy with you to emergencies: Two heads are better than one. Even if you’re a seasoned provider and well-equipped to manage an emergency, you might need another body to help with performing CPR, making urgent calls, grabbing supplies, etc.

14. Ask your patients about premeds for procedures: We all have different levels of pain tolerance. A procedure goes far more smoothly if your patient is comfortable. Note: if you’re going to premed with Ativan or an opiate in the outpatient setting, make sure they have a driver.

15. Be good to your charge nurse and unit secretary: I don’t know how they do it. If I had to manage the unit’s signout, patient complaints, calls from other floor, being yelled at by providers, verifying paper orders, and finding beds for incoming patients- all at the same time - I’d lose my mind.

16. If your patient is mad, just shut up and listen: There are many things that you can’t control: the time it takes for a patient to get a room, the temperature of hospital food, the dismissive attitude of your attending, etc. And oftentimes the patient knows this. My reflex is to want to apologize for things and overexplain why different things are happening. But sometimes the patient just needs to rant. Take a step back and just listen. That can make all the difference.

17. Fact check your notes: The framework for your progress note often is the note from the day prior. It sounds obvious, but make sure that you go through the note and make updates and changes accordingly. If today is 01/15, there’s a good chance that the Fungitell from 12/31 is not still pending.

18. Try to learn some nursing skills: This is one of the areas in which I most envy my NP colleagues. If a patient’s IV pump is beeping or their central line need to be flushed, I oftentimes awkwardly step out of the room and look vacantly into the distance for a nurse. I’ve finally figured out how to spike a bag (albeit I do so very slowly, and it certainly makes the RNs giggle some). I talked to our unit’s nurse manager, and she’s willing for me to learn some nursing skills from the staff during a slow day- we’ll see when thing slow down!

19. Be kind: Generally speaking, being in a hospital is stressful. Patients are feeling out of sorts, and staff are working with constant dinging in the background. I rant plenty on this website, but I’m kind to everyone at work (with few exceptions) because it makes things more comfortable for everyone. Additionally, if you are always kind to your patients and colleagues, your reputation will speak for itself. One time I was walking down a hall with poor reception while on my ASCOM with a notoriously standoffish nurse from another unit. My phone cut out. She called my unit’s nurse manager to complain, and the nurse manager told her that I would never hang up on purpose. My interactions with the nurse going forward were always more pleasant in nature.

20. Support your team: The best colleagues are not the smartest colleagues; the best coworkers are the ones who have your back. Whether it’s a medical emergency or just a strange situation, it’s important to be supported and to give support.

I know that I’ve learned a lot more than this, so I’ll likely be adding to this throughout the year. Happy Snow Day, all!

#hangrypa #PAblr #physician assistant #PA-C #PA

25 notes · View notes

jackstarbrightisaqueen · 4 years

Text

Thoughts on the Alex Rider TV show...

Some background: I’ve been reading the books since Point Blanc came out, so we are going back a few years (actually quite a few more years than I care to credit). I thought the Stormbreaker movie was a pretty awful adaptation all round. Definitely lacked the grit of the book series. Imagine my fear of what they were going to do to Point Blanc, one of my favourite books of the series...

So, thoughts (in no particular order):

1. Otto Farrant is brilliantly cast. OK, one can nitpick. He’s been aged up, but I think that works - the TV series has tried to go grittier than the movie, and if we’re honest, a 14 year old being treated the way Alex is would just be extremely uncomfortable viewing. The books are written for children - they put up with a lot more than adults. And Farrant manages to strike an excellent balance between being old enough to make the whole thing believable, and young enough to provoke the right amount of outrage. His portrayal of Alex is really very good - the unwillingness to let something drop when he’s curious about it, the coldness, the desire to just be a schoolboy, the fundamental streak of doing what’s right. Sorry, Alex Pettyfer, but no matter how good looking you were, you weren’t Alex Rider for me. Otto Farrant has nailed it.

2. Alex generally. The writing is pretty faithful to his character. There are a few tweaks - he’s a bit more of a rebel than he is in the books. The foam party - one can see Alex doing that in the book because it’s part of the bad-boy act he’s supposed to be putting on, but I’m not sure that was the motivation for the foam party; I think he did it because it was fun and he’s someone who likes to rock the boat a bit. But I liked this Alex. It made his snarkiness and impulsiveness that much more believable. And, let’s be honest, what kid is taught to withstand interrogation techniques without becoming a bit of a loose cannon? One thing that was changed that I’m still not sure about was his determination to go back to Point Blanc. Book Alex didn’t want to go back; TV Alex says he’s going with or without MI6′s help because he’s got friends there. This was admirable, and I think probably the right move (I don’t think “leaving it to the professionals” would have come off well on screen when he’d made such good friends), but I did miss the scene from the book where Jones more or less manipulates him into going back in.

3. Jack. I love Jack as a character. It’s a bit more of recent phenomenon - I think since I became about the age that Jack is and suddenly woke up to what she must have felt - but the book Jack puts up with so much without complaint. The thing is, she’s a very tricky character to portray, because it’s a fine balance between making her powerless and useless. I think they did a good job here. They’ve changed things - Jack gets her degree at the start, and hints to Ian that it might be time for her to think about leaving. It’s not faithful to the book, but it’s a brilliant move, because as soon as Ian dies and she sticks around, you think - wow. She’s just given up her plans for this kid. She really cares. And that’s what the book series hints at throughout but has only addressed explicitly in recent books. I also like that they showed her having a bit more agency, which is realistic. I mean, she’s got a law degree. She’s not helpless. Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo does a good job here. OK, she’s not the red haired Jack we know of the series. But so what? Representation matters (on a side point of which, good job in making Alex’s crush at school black too). And didn’t that thing about Immigration strike just a bit harder because Jack was black? Didn’t it make it that much more realistic and scary? This shit happens, people.

4.Ian. I didn’t have strong views about this. I’ve seen that others didn’t like how his death was changed. I’d argue they wanted to get away from what had already been done in the Stormbreaker movie, and, anyway, it set up the mystery of Scorpia’s involvement and the MI6 leak quite effectively. I don’t care about the speeding/seatbelt change. They probably did it because these days any decent car (like Ian’s was) screams at the driver if they’ve not got their seatbelt on.

5. K Unit generally. We didn’t get too much of Fox, Eagle and Snake, but we got a bit, and what I saw, I really liked. I liked that two of them were women (one of them an excellent sniper!). This show generally handles women much better than the book series - far more balance. I liked the introduction of K Unit - the whole interrogation scene was really well done, from K Unit following orders but being quite uncomfortable with the whole thing, to Alex’s reaction to it, to his escape. I think the lack of SAS training camp was again an attempt to shift away from the Stormbreaker movie and, although it has spawned a lot of fanfiction, it doesn’t actually serve any purpose that couldn’t be addressed elsewhere. For K Unit lovers, I think this move was a good thing. It is pretty difficult to justify K Unit’s attitude towards Alex at Brecon Beacons, and translating that situation to one of trust between Alex and Wolf would be very difficult. This approach worked because, although K Unit was introduced in circumstances where you think they’re acting badly (following orders to interrogate Alex), you’re immediately introduced to the idea they’re not comfortable about it - so they might be good guys after all.

6. Wolf. So this gave us ALL the feels (the apology, the blanket wrap at the end...), but I (possibly controversially) think they could have done more here. I would have liked to have seen a bit more of what we saw in the book - Wolf not liking Alex, and then them turning that around. Don’t get me wrong - obviously, the more Alex/Wolf trust, the better. But I thought they made Wolf into a bit more of a softie than they really needed to. They had 8 episodes - they had time to build more of a character arc for him.

7. Jones. Mixed feelings. Vicky McClure is really good, and I think the way they’ve set it up, there’s room for a good character arc here; at the moment, the Department is portrayed as basically being under Alan Blunt’s rule, with others disagreeing with his approach but getting overruled. If they make it far enough, Mrs Jones is going to need to have adopted some of his ruthlessness by the time Blunt gets the sack at the end of Scorpia Rising. A bit like Wolf, I thought Mrs Jones could have been a bit more complex than she was. But I’m happy to wait and see what they do in (hopefully) future seasons.

8. Setting. Generally pretty well done. Thank GOD they were wearing proper school uniform (what were the directors of the Stormbreaker movie thinking...this is Britain, y’all). The Point Blanc academy was suitably creepy and isolated. My only criticism re setting was that the “Department” was in a basement. I can see why they did it (dark and mysterious setting, OK), but it didn’t strike me as a particularly realistic place to run a Government department from. Even MI6 has a decent building in Vauxhall.

9. Kyra. I didn’t want to like this deviation in principle - I was really suspicious they were just setting up a love interest (the same way as in the Stormbreaker movie, where they elevated Sabina’s character in a way that just wasn’t appropriate). But Kyra was a brilliant addition. Complex but good-hearted. And nothing cringey happened - even that nearly kiss before Alex leaves Point Blanc was actually pretty believable and went just far enough. Be interesting to see if she comes back - that hanging ending, man. Poor Kyra. On a side point, I think for the purposes of the TV series it was quite important to give Alex a good friend at the academy. Solitary spying works well on the page, but not so much on screen - viewers need dialogue. I thought the way they did it worked well.

10. Plot. Yes, there were tweaks. But I thought the way it was put together was well done. There was no dramatic baddie revealing all at the end. I liked the way it gradually unfolded, and that although MI6 had managed to piece some of it together, it was ultimately Alex who solved it through the spying he’d done. Interesting that they have decided to introduce Scorpia so early on, but it’s given us something to drive the series forward rather than it just being one mission after another, so probably a good move.

11. Tom. The relationship between Tom and Alex was well done (when Alex comes to Tom’s rescue at the end!). O’Connor is good (though, please, PLEASE can we ditch what my husband and I have dubbed the gnome hat?). I thought he got slightly too much air time at this stage, personally - and turning up at the Friends’ house was a bridge too far for me. But I can forgive this. I liked the way they targeted Tom because he and Alex are such best friends. This bromance was something missing from the series and it was a welcome introduction.

I could go on, but I think this is long enough. If anyone has anything they’d like to chat about or to hear my opinion on, do PM me or comment on this post. Meanwhile, I’m off to rewatch the series.

#alex rider #alex rider tv #otto farrant

110 notes · View notes