#didn't serve as foreshadowing for endgame either | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

apatheticlexicographer · 1 year

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okay but real talk

if m!leven was really, genuinely, unquestionably endgame then there would not be this much doubt and disbelief about it. there would be some, sure, but it would just be a tiny vocal minority like the byler community was before s4. somebody always wants to be contradictory. hundreds of thousands of people don't invest themselves heavily in that contradiction. millions don't feel casually favourable toward it.

it's an undeniable fact that the way season 4 was structured, on many levels, caused a large (large!!!) amount of people to doubt the stability of m!leven. for SO many people to switch over the course of just a month from either favourable to or actively shipping mike and el, to at the very least disliking their relationship and in many cases actively supporting the idea of mike and will instead??? that doesn't happen. it just. doesn't.

it's also an undeniable fact that, having been given an unfavourable perspective on m!leven's relationship by s4, many people have looked back on the previous seasons and noticed in retrospect how both the flaws of their relationship and the strengths of mike and will's have been present since the beginning. s4 didn't change the core of either relationship. all it did was finally strip back the layers that had always been a little transparent and put those cores on full display.

if m!leven was truly engame that wouldn't just mean that s4 was bad and it did such an inadequate job of making people root for its ship that it turned them away; it would mean that the entire show has been terribly written from the beginning concerning only these specific relationships.

it truly baffles me that so many diehard m!leven supporters (or at least, diehard byler antis, and we all know what that's code for😒😒) will happily take that as an explanation. they WANT their show to be badly written, because if it's well written then it's all too clear that the narrative is no longer in their favour. more than that: it never really was.

think about all the other relationships in the show, that fandom and GA alike concur are well written and compelling. think about jonathan and nancy, how the tension between them was evident from the beginning, but nancy was stuck in an increasingly unhappy relationship with steve. think about joyce and hopper, who have had painfully obvious chemistry for the whole show but took until well into the penultimate season to kiss. think about lucas and max, about the growing pains their relationship has gone through and how they only served to strengthen their connection. lumax in particular is the ultimate anti-m!leven, going through the same motions but with a natural chemistry and genuine connection that mike and el have never quite made believable. both the contrast between all three of these relationships and m!leven and the similarities they share with byler have been painfully clear for at least two seasons, and the elements that clash have been built since s1.

all of these relationships have had broad arcs that span across the seasons, and the dynamics have shifted accordingly every time. but mike and el??? their dynamic is the same as it was in s1, on the surface at least. and that's not cute or romantic, as much as the shippers would like to think it is. that's bad for them on an in-universe level and on a writing level as well. a static relationship is never compelling. the writers know this. they have demonstrated their ability to develop relationship arcs in new directions, that are predictable not because they're badly written and trite, but because they're well written and have been foreshadowed and eased into by the narrative whole seasons ahead of time.

if mike and el were truly meant to be, there wouldn't be this clash between them and every other pairing in the show. if mike and el were truly meant to be, their predictability would be like that of jancy, or jopper, or lumax. we know they'll work it out, we know they'll get together in the end, we know they'll grow closer as they grow up.

but, they don't. they don't work out the issues in their relationship. they argue about them, and then they ignore each other, and then they ignore the problems, and then they argue again. and again. and again. they don't get together in the end. if you count their first kiss as the unofficial beginning of their relationship, then they've been together in some capacity since s1. that's a whole season longer than any other endgame couple in the show. they don't grow up together. they grow up separated while el is hidden away, and then separated by tension from their breakup, and then separated by states' worth of distance and all the lies they build up between each other to lengthen it.

if they were "true love" then not only would these issues be either addressed and resolved in a satisfying manner or clearly primed for resolution in the next season, as is the case with the other ships, they wouldn't have been included in the first place. they wouldn't have been strewn throughout the early seasons for later consideration. they wouldn't have been overwhelmingly present in s3, but brushed off as comedy. they wouldn't have been put on full blast in s4 and shown for just what they truly are.

but coming up to s5, the show truly is reaching its climax. none of the relationships have been fully resolved yet. jonathan still needs to come clean to nancy, and nancy needs to let steve down. joyce and hopper still need to have their date at enzo's, and properly establish their relationship. max still needs to wake up, and i'm sure lucas will be responsible in some way for finding her. all of these relationships, however, have mirrored the main plot in their progression toward a climax. they're on the tipping point. if mike's monologue is to be taken at face value and the tension that follows it for the remaining runtime is ignored, el and mike have already reached the climax of their arc. never mind that their problems only continue to fester, unaddressed. never mind that mike and will sit on the same tipping point as the rest: half-addressed, with will's confession hidden in plain sight in the same way his feelings have been all along.

the last points to resolve in both relationships are obvious to us, not because we are "geniuses" for noticing them, but because they should be obvious, just like they are with every other relationship. not now in s4, when they aren't the focus and frankly shouldn't be, when the writers want to preserve one last layer of transparent mystery for the sake of an unbeatable talking point. it will be obvious in s5, when your dad and screenrant and the myriad reaction youtubers will all see as much as they always do: the surface level. and then they'll think back, remember the scenes that flashed by in the season recap. they won't feel decieved then, or even particularly subverted. they'll just see the story that has been told since the beginning. they'll feel satisfied, and if they don't then it has nothing to do with the quality of the writing and everything to do with their own prejudice.

#byler #okay sorry this is so rambly but the brain decided to go back into september mode or whatever #it's just. they are written into the show. into its DNA.#i'm not talking abt subtle coding either i'm talking about very clear narrative beats that confused people at the time #but become obvious to them looking back #this isn't me talking from a 'let me stare real hard at every frame of the show til i can remember every blue or yellow prop' POV #this is me talking from a 'basic narrative structure. like literally just the beginning middle end shit u learn when ur a kid' POV #byler meta #byler analysis #stranger things meta #stranger things analysis #stranger things #byler proof

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froqgy · 1 year

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tunic endgame (???????) latergame/major PUZZLE spoilers.

ou yeah. fishing fox

anyways now the TRUE horrors begin. vague puzzles.

we got the manual pages needed to figure out how to open those doors FINALLY... that was easy enough to figure out. it's like a konami code situation. it was very fun to type in the directional keys and see if you did it right at the end and then something would happen :-o so i went to all the areas i remembered having those doors... wish i kept track of them earlier. i went to the giant gold pillar as well, and even attempted to do the broken one, but the pieces you find strewn about don't seem to match up...? maybe ill try again but it is also broken..

so now we have these memo pages right. we still haven't figured out exactly the ones on page 52 (we're getting there??? maybe????) but we did manage to solve the ones on 53😤😤😤 top ten most awesome moments in gaming history.

we wrote figured what the windmill guide meant and wrote down the arrows but it didn't work... actually, roger wanted to look at it again later and realized we did the wrong order but shh that didn't happen yet.

we kept it on the backburner, and i went to the forest fortress, to see what's in that cave. there were leaf piles.. i destroyed them but nothing happened...then a bit later roger noticed there was a hidden one and we got special iridescent chest!!!!!! there was a golden bell in it!!!! it disppeared to who knows where!!!! not in my inventory. so. idk.

eventually we went back to the windmill and lo and behold, put in the correct keys and BAM... a golden three triangle shape thing!!!!!!! i immediately recognized it as the shapes formed by the intersection of the three keys in the startup of the game!!!!!! It also disappeared!!!

the other thing on the memo we forgot where that location... but when i found the east forest teleport and saw the slime like WHAT THE.

the hint made sense too... and after i did it, i realized what happened, and the game introduced yet another mechanic that was possible this whole time since i had all three magic items... crazy that it can do that. anyways, you can shoot a frozen bolt rather than a fire bolt if u press both the dagger and staff at the same time, and you can pull yourself to frozen enemies rather than the other way around, serving as a makeshift and temporary grapple hook. and in that chest.... a golden crown!!!!! you guessed it!!! gone from sight immediately!!!! remember what i said about my drawing the laurels as a crown to simplify it... yeah... foreshadowing somehow.

so here we are with our collection of golden items that disppear immediately. what do we do with this. i feel like there's more...

speaking of golden..

haha...

yeah... golden...seek the golden path...

insane.

all of these hidden golden lines ?!??! these arent even the most ridiculous ones.

roger is the mvp for real.. she figured the numbers probably corresponded to the pages, and so set out to transcribe every part of the "path" for each page.. but we're missing 3 pages😱 so the blue is just an estimated guess. we also don't know what the cross marks mean. we went to page 9, which was data management, and there was seemingly no path on there... until roger brought up that the second entire save file? yeah. it is the golden path. but i dont know if that was the only purpose for the file.

anyways, this is so complicated to input i can't help but wonder if you really have to... it'd be so easy to mess up and it's so long and it's not mirrored on both sides like the other ones were... also the windmill ended up not being so either, even if there was no visual line guide. it might have something to do with the door on the mountain since the pages are next to each other... but...

and what of those constellation like things to enter... the fairy spring... the final treasure.... where is that damn holy cross... also why did ky save file time change from 20 hours to 36 something minutes and was that intentional...? find out next time if we can figure this out.

#tunic lb

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worstloki · 3 years

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the death of Mobius' salad served more purpose than Loki's in infinity war 👊😔

#that's it #that's what im getting from this #the salad's death was more respectable too #the Loki show #loki spoilers #loki show spoilers #at least the salad added to character and made sense in explaining the important metaphor AND loki ruining his food AND showed he's smart #meanwhile the infinity war death wasn't really brought up again #didn't serve as foreshadowing for endgame either?????#it's hilarious #thor already had plenty of motivation to kill thanos and even says he's getting payback for heimdall and everyone's deaths before loki died #so uhhhh yeah lmao what was up with that #Loki’s hardly served for shock value I mean he’s died before too and the most shocking part was how he didn’t exactly fight back :/

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esther-dot · 2 years

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That interview of Martin subverting exoectations it's what makes me dread John's ending. Because show ending and s8 was about subverting expectations instead of giving the character a satisfactory ending.

PS: sorry if This question reach you two times. I lost My connection and didn't know if the ask was sent.

Is there a new interview in which he talked about that? I remember one in which he was highly critical of creators who changed things because fans guessed it. Has he said something else?

Personally, I really don’t know what to make of Martin’s comments sometimes! He has said that people figured out his ending years ago, but he wouldn’t change it, and I’m pretty incredulous that people called Bran becoming king of Westeros that early. I always assumed those comments had to be about Jon’s identity (which naturally leads to the speculation of him being endgame king) because there’s so much R+L=J foreshadowing early on in the series. Maybe he meant he wasn’t going to up and decide Jon isn’t Rhaegar’s son just to mess with people, but damn, is that referenced a lot knowing he won’t be king.

That’s why I’m a believer in the Jon and Aemon parallels as foreshadowing for how Bran becomes king. Jon’s parentage has to play a role politically (IMO), and it’s very satisfying that a Targ (I mean, the kid is a Stark, but you know) places a Stark on the throne to right an ancient wrong when they were forced into subjugation. It’s also a very good way to end the Targ history of family v family (some of which Jon will have to partake in) because peace will be made by a Targ refusing a crown/throne and instead giving it to a brother, and thereby, ending the Targ claim forever. Like, it’s very tidy how it cross references so many things in the story. I just reblogged the wonderful drifting-snowflakes post about Jon giving up the throne to be with Sansa because it seems this is the only way to justify so much emphasis on Jon’s parentage without him becoming king. It has to be about the solution otherwise it feels like a red herring? It also places all the power in Jon’s hands. He isn’t forced into a role by society, he is given a choice and he chooses not to be king, he chooses to not be a Targ, and then Sansa gives him everything he ever wanted. Which is self serving because what do you know, Jon’s everything she wanted too. ☺️

And, all of that would count as a subversion of expectations, so you don’t necessarily have to be afraid of that. I’ve written some stuff and I can tell “well, this is what should happen next” and then out of sheer perversity, wrote a joke instead of the romantic or dramatic beat. Sometimes that’s fun for a writer and the reader because it’s a surprise! Subverting the expectation of what happens next doesn’t have to be about punishing your audience. D&D just…well, I think they despised the audience by the end. The finale felt very mean spirited!

Anyway, Jon in Winterfell is the ideal. Should the best happen and we get Jon married, living in Winterfell, overseeing the Gift, we will all be very happy. Should the worst happen and Jon goes to the Wall after refusing the crown, I’ll hate it, but I still think we can find solace because either way, I think Jon will have a child with Sansa because of some suspicious quotes that make me 👀👀👀. And, even if he deserves to live the rest of his life in Winterfell, I think Martin can write a choice of self-denial in a meaningful way. If Jon chooses to give up a crown and live in the North, to fix the Watch and oversee the Gift as LC so that he can be near Sansa and his child, even if he can’t be with them in Winterfell (for some inexplicable reason), that’s still something. If Jon sacrificed everything, even his freedom, to secure peace and protect his family, to hold his son in his arms, he’d think it was worth it. And if the he believes that, we will believe it too.

Personally, I’ve accepted the worst, but it doesn’t make sense to me, I don’t see the build up for it, so I’ll always hope for the best. Either way, all is not lost. Whatever happens, Jon will be at peace with his decisions, and he will have some joy, one way or the other. It just sucks that we’re still unsure! 😩

#ask dot

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