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oneatlatime · 7 months

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More Zuko Alone Thoughts

Last season our expository Zuko episode was The Storm, an episode which I loved. It was both a well-written and well-animated piece of media, and enthralling to watch. I don't want to say enjoyable because of the subject matter discussed, but it was certainly good.

This season's expository Zuko episode was Zuko Alone, and I didn't like it. Although it was animated fantastically, I found the characterisation of Zuko in the present day sections to be completely off. I found it embarrassing, awkward, and frustrating to watch. Now, I've seen the rating this episode has on IMDb, so I know this is just my opinion, and a fairly unpopular one at that. I'm also aware that I'm biased because Zuko is not my favourite character. But I want to explore why, in my opinion, The Storm stuck the landing while Zuko Alone flubbed it.

Here's what I think is the main reason: The Storm is Aang's story about his past, juxtaposed with Iroh's story about Zuko's past. Aang and Iroh are our storytellers; Aang and Zuko are the stories being told.

Zuko Alone is Zuko's story of the present, being experienced through Zuko's perspective, juxtaposed with Zuko's story in the past, being experienced through Zuko's memories. It's too much Zuko, and unlike the characters in The Storm, Zuko has no idea what's going on.

Despite his flightiness and inability to take things seriously, Aang is perceptive, socially and emotionally intelligent (as much as a 12 year old can be), and able to be subtle when the situation calls for it. Look at The Great Divide: as soon as he had the appropriate backstory info, he saw right to the heart of the conflict, he saw that it was stupid as Hell, and he saw and successfully executed a way to fix it that relied entirely on an accurate assessment of all involved parties' stances. And it worked.

Iroh has easily the highest perception stat in the whole show, when he isn't being deliberately obtuse. His wisdom is off the charts, if his one liners are anything to go by.

So despite some very (very) notable differences, Aang and Iroh have similarities in their personalities and their perspectives, and importantly for this post, in their self-knowledge.

Then we get Zuko, who has the perceptiveness and subtlety of a mud brick to the teeth, all the wisdom of a bandaid wrapper, and the social and emotional intelligence of something that starts to grow in your sink when it's been too long since you did the dishes.

Aand and Iroh can see the themes, lessons, mistakes, and places for improvement in the stories they're telling, about themselves and others. Zuko is stumbling through both his past and his present. The Storm is compelling because the audience gets to simultaneously learn expository detail and watch Aang and Iroh go through a process of self-analysis, recrimination, and commitment to doing better. It's an info dump with a hefty dose of character building on the side.

Zuko in Zuko Alone is a dumbass blindly stumbling into the same mistakes we've already seen him make, learning nothing in the process (that I could detect - maybe he'll run into the family's older brother in a few episodes and work up the courage to save him based on what he learned during his time with that family, who knows). Zuko has been trained to be a fighter, not a person, so of course he's going to fail at the 'soft skills' parts of being human. So Zuko needs someone with him to do/model that soft skills work until he learns how to do it for himself. But Zuko is alone in Zuko Alone, so the character development that could have happened doesn't.

I don't need morals and themes explicitly spelled out in the narrative; I'm fine with subtext. But Zuko in Zuko Alone so thoroughly misses what's going on in the episode that it's annoying to watch. And there's no indication at the end of the episode that he's learned anything from having missed those things. There's no indication that he's aware that there was anything to miss.

In The Storm, Aang has Katara to bounce off of and help talk him through his story. Iroh's wise enough not to need a foil, but he does have the ship's crew, both as a reason to tell the story and as an audience to play off of. Heck, in Bato of the Water Tribe, Sokka has Bato giving the speech about the lonely wolf to help him understand the point Sokka's dad was trying to make in the flashback, and avoid the wrong course of action (leaving Aang behind). Aang moves on from self-recrimination and Iroh has won back Zuko's crew's loyalty at the end of The Storm; Sokka has finally understood 'being a man means being where you're needed the most' by the end of Bato of the Water Tribe. But Zuko is alone by choice in Zuko Alone, so he finishes the episode exactly where he started, his mother's last words entirely misinterpreted. No wiser, probably unable to even articulate where he went wrong beyond fire = bad in this context.

There seems to be a theme in this show of the necessity of friends and family networks and support. Aang (with Katara's help), Iroh (with the crew as audience and motivator), Sokka (with Bato's help), all come to better understandings of their responsibilities and/or their mistakes by working things out with the help of at least one other person. Zuko ditches Iroh to play at being a lone wolf and fails in a way that's frankly embarrassing to watch.

So the reason I don't like Zuko Alone is that he's doomed to fail from the start. Zuko is (trying to) go about his character development in a way this show has already showed us is opposite to how it should be done. I'm not fond of 'doomed from the start' narratives as a general rule, mostly because to me they feel like a bad investment. If you know it's all going to end badly (because it started wrong), then why bother committing the time and effort the narrative asks of you? (She says, having read The Silmarillion twice).

So if I became Queen of the world tomorrow and decreed that Zuko Alone needed to be changed to fit my personal tastes, how would I do it? The obvious answer is to shove Iroh in there, but it probably wouldn't work anyway, because Zuko is not showing any signs of being ready to listen - REALLY LISTEN - to those wiser than him. I'm not sure if he's even ready to admit yet that there are people who ARE wiser than him. He's already admitted that there are people with more martial prowess than him, like his sister, but I don't think Zuko actually values wisdom enough to see its worth. So it's probably not even on his radar. If Iroh's presence wouldn't work, what about having a removed narrator, like Iroh did for Zuko's story in The Storm? A narrator who is not as thoroughly blind to what's going on in the past and the present as Zuko. Maybe a single episode character, who tells the story of that time a stranger came to town? That might work. It would fit with the genre this episode is paying homage to. Or you could have an interesting juxtaposition, where the narrator character is not omniscient, narrating the present only, and Zuko is completely alone during the flashback bits. That would probably lead to Zuko making the same mistakes anyway, since it's really his past that he needs to work through.

Or maybe I'm reading way too much into this and I just don't like Zuko enough as a character to like a Zuko-centric story, no matter how it's told. Or maybe 24 minutes of second-hand embarrassment is 24 too many for me. At least he's keeping Song's horse bird fed.

#atla #avatar: the last airbender #avatar the last airbender #zuko alone #the storm

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pinktoonie · 1 year

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Haven't seen anyone talk about this so I will because to me it seems like the biggest obstacle in Rei and Kazuki's relationship and an important through line in the show.

Here comes a long, unpolished post.

As far as Miri goes, the family unit has been established and the two dads are settling in and relaxing into their roles almost a year into having Miri. Ep 7, 8, and 9 established that Kazuki, Rei, and Miri in that order respectively are in this family thing for life 100%.

But we still have 4 episodes left.

Obviously angst is coming, but along with that, Kazuki and Rei still need to address this barrier between them.

Listen to me. These lines from episode 3 have been nagging me since they were first said. They're IMPORTANT.

"I won't ask."

"I wouldn't tell."

The context here is Rei and Kazuki talking about their pasts. Whenever Kazuki brings up a tidbit about his past, Rei will agree if it also applies to him, but he will not elaborate, and Kazuki won't ask him to. Kazuki knows the gist about Rei's family. Who they are and what they do. He doesn't know how badly Rei was/is treated. He can see the scars. I doubt he's ever brought them up though.

"I won't ask."

"I wouldn't tell."

It's a constant in their relationship. But this lack of communication is problematic for two people who have decided to spend their lives together and raise a child.

Here's another example from episode 8

Rei here is bleeding from his forearm. The show even has him pose in a way to show us that it's clearly within Kazuki's line of sight.

But Kazuki doesn't ask. Because Rei wouldn't tell.

However concerned he may be, he doesn't bring it up. He doesn't know where Rei was that night or why he's injured. He can assume it had something to do with his family, which should be worrying in itself. Kazuki is endlessly patient and understanding, but that's not fair to him.

The show even makes it a point to bring this issue up again in the same episode:

So where do we go from here?

There will need to be a moment in the show, where Kazuki WILL ask, and Rei WILL tell.

Or Rei will just open up on his own without prompting. What Rei will tell Kazuki, we don't know, but it'll be something that matters. Something important.

What could it be?

My predictions:

Rei opens up about his past abuse in detail to Kazuki to fully make him understand what his father is capable of (because of the upcoming danger)

Kazuki gives Rei some sort of ultimatum, which results in Rei admitting something, whether that's "I love you", "I need you", or some sort of confirmation that he has no intention of leaving Kazuki's side, not just Miri.

They just have a moment where they open up to each other just because they're simply changing and comfortable enough to talk about the past now. "You didnt matter much to me" is the closest we've gotten.

A "what are we?" convo.

Regardless of the reason, narratively it will have to happen before Rei and Kazuki can move forward with their relationship, whatever that entails. But this lack of communication and vulnerability with each other is what's holding them back.

Lastly, this may be completely unrelated because the show is set in Japan but still caught my eye.

"I won't ask."

"I wouldn't tell."

Sounds a hell of a lot like the old, "Don't ask, don't tell" policy in the USA, which basically stated that non heterosexual members of the military must keep their damn mouth shut about their sexuality. No openly queer people.

Which if we apply it to Rei and Kazuki's unclear partnership... Fitting.

And also considering Rei's homophobic ass speech about carrying on the family and Kazuki sullying Rei's blood (which literally implies he thinks they're sleeping together because the only way to "sully blood" is through sexually transmitted infections), seems like the organization might've also had a sort of, don't ask don't tell policy.

I'm sure I've missed stuff, but these are the points that have been stuck in my brain. All in all, whatever this important thing that Rei will tell Kazuki is, it'll be the catalyst for taking their relationship to the next level of "partnership."

#buddy daddies #suwa rei #rei suwa #Kazurei #unasaka miri #Also please let them show some sort of physical affection toward each other after #Is a hug not reasonable and appeasing to everyone?#Doubt it'll get romantic since the title is called BUDDY and this is Japan and it's not a BL #I can dream though #Clown

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darkscorpiox · 8 months

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Utena - Analysis on the (first) ending

I did an analysis on the opening, so here’s one on the first ending.

Warning: very, VERY long post and mention of scenes from the show, enough to be considered spoilers (sorry)

Missing truth and forever, kissing love and true your heart. Hold me in your arms so true. The key to unlock tomorrow is reality.

We start with the silhouettes of two individuals, male and female respectively, close to each other with reddish/orangish roses in the background. A picturesque depiction of the fairytale romance between a man and his woman: we only see the superficial layer of the individuals and the roses are there to maintain the illusion of a romantic narrative. Then, we have outlines and colors. And though we get to see the princess’s face, it is not the case with the prince. The fact that one is more exposed (vulnerable) than the other shows some degree of inequality between them. It doesn’t help that Utena, unlike the outspoken way we see her in the first episode, appears subdued in the arms of her beloved Prince. This shows that things aren’t as they seem. And that’s without the lyrics of the song.

Missing truth and forever actually mean the same thing. The latter is another way to say “eternity” and eternity is the pain Anthy suffers at the hands of patriarchy, the truth kept hidden behind the veneer which is the Prince. In contrast, kissing love and true your heart allude to the climax of the last episode, when Utena’s sincere love for Anthy reaches the heart of the latter’s authentic self. Knowing this, the arms so true aren’t the prince’s, but Utena’s and / or Anthy’s.

The third line refers to the “revolution” everyone seeks. To change the world, to be free of the limbo that is the past, they must face and move toward reality.

I want to keep on smashing lies apart.

This line shows similarities to the Student council’s speech about “crack[ing] the world’s shell”, so they must share the same message. Interestingly, Utena closes her eyes and Anthy opens hers. It can imply that the former refuses to see the lies presented to her, but the latter is the one aware of the machinations behind the scenes and Akio’s true nature, so it might be opposite, the denial of the truth.

No matter how much the two of us may talk… …you still just can’t see anything. Excuses are fitting for the adults who just cling to old stories.

The first two lines are a good summary of the dynamic between Utena and Akio. The former is under the princely charm of the latter, but subconsciously, she knows that he only sees her as a frail little girl to use as he pleases, meaning he might as well see nothing (denying the ugly truth). When the third line comes, the trail of roses ends, indicating Utena’s realization that the Prince is not who she thought he was (Akio). It’s the end of the fantasy, the lie, created from her idealized memories.

The angels who were passed over don’t need wings to fly!

As a witch, a fallen woman, Anthy is spurned by society. However, that doesn’t mean she has to settle with the little given to her (Dios / Akio). That’s what Utena wants to tell her (hence why she occupies the screen for a moment before we focus on Anthy). By choosing Anthy instead of the fairytale happy ending, Utena becomes a fallen woman as well, but she refuses to be just that. Her self-worth should not be determined by others, especially a system which limits her to a “good” or “bad” social standing (Madonna-whore complex). If the world won’t give her the same path as everyone else’s, especially men’s, then she will make one for herself (and Anthy).

Missing truth and forever, kissing love and true your heart. I like who I’ll be tomorrow and… …I’ll believe in myself because I want to believe. I want to keep on hating lies.

(Sorry for the quality. I had to lower it to stay under the limit allowed for the image/GIF file size in one post.)

A repeat of the first four lines. This time, it’s about the belief in a better future and the lack of regret in leaving the past and the lies behind.

Utena and Anthy are both in the clutches of the Prince / patriarchy, but this time, the greenish wilting-looking roses are in the background. It can imply that the illusion is now dead to them and that they can finally see the truth.

In conclusion, the ending summarizes and foreshadows Utena’s and Anthy’s character development.

#revolutionary girl utena #shoujo kakumei utena #rgu #sku #utena #utena tenjou #anthy himemiya #utena x anthy #anthy x utena #prince dios #akio ohtori #revolutionary girl utena analysis #rgu analysis #revolutionary girl utena meta #rgu meta #truth #mine

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buckybarnesss · 11 months

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laura hale: darling, dearest, dead

welcome to where i care way too much about teen wolf in the year 2023.

i have no shame.

i've been working on this meta for a few weeks now and it’s definitely grown past its original scope. at first, i just wanted to do a deep dive into the weirdness around laura’s death but of course that expanded as i sat down and hashed out my thoughts.

@renninflight 's tags on one of my posts really gave me the push for this because i've apparently just been waiting for the opportunity to talk about the mysterious murder of laura hale

shoutout also to my teen wolf buddy and tumblr mutual of forever @dear-massacre our teen wolf talks definitely helped, probably wormed their way in here and this wouldn’t have existed without you.

laura's death is the core mystery of the first season and i’ve always been intrigued by the circumstances surrounding it.

i’m definitely not the first to question the circumstances surrounding laura’s death but i’m going to put on my tinfoil conspiracy theory hat and discuss the events just prior to wolf moon and how laura hale haunts me the narrative.

buckle up buttercups this is long.

just to get this out of the way immediately, i need you to understand that teen wolf's plots and timeline were apparently written on a soggy napkin found crumbled up under the seat cushion of jeff davis's couch. season 1's story is the most cohesive but there wasn't a show bible for a long time, which explains its loose relationship with keeping consistent canon. this post on the teen wolf wiki from september 2013 says explicitly that some assistant was tasked with writing one. this would've placed it after 3a had aired but before 3b did.

while i won’t be digging into the teen wolf timeline here, i will be working from my own understanding of it.

a lot of teen wolf is left to implication, inference and subtext as we the audience are locked into scott mccall's point of view and his knowledge of what's happening. this allows for scott to be ignorant about the world he unwittingly and unwillingly enters so that information can be doled out at a steady drip and the mysteries heightened.

that said, onwards to what has become my teen wolf magnum opus.

introduction: the dead girl

laura hale is the ultimate dead girl trope in teen wolf which is a show littered with the corpses of dead girls. it makes sense of course when you know she is the narrative sister of laura palmer of twin peaks fame.

unlike laura palmer though, laura hale never gets to tell her story. she is dead before the show begins.her corpse is treated cavalierly by scott and stiles, desecrated by the argents and stripped of her personhood.

interestingly, david lynch’s daughter jennifer lynch not only a authored a spin off novel for twin peaks told from laura palmer’s perspective called the secret diary of laura palmer but also directed four episodes of teen wolf (silverfinger, i.e.d, perishable and codominance).

it's a cool connection.

i like this quote from esquire about laura palmer and the creation of the dead girl trope:

“we don't see laura with any control over her circumstances. we meet her after she's been wrapped in a plastic bag and left to rot, which essentially leaves her narrative and legacy to be largely determined by those who are investigating her. we don't learn about laura through laura—we learn about laura by piecing together what she left behind.”

laura hale’s murder also invokes a visual similarity to a real life beautiful dead girl as well.

elizabeth short.

elizabeth short is known to history as the black dahlia. her naked, posed, and bisected corpse was discovered in a vacant lot in january 1947. she was 22 years old.

when betty bersinger discovered elizabeth that morning she thought she’d stumbled upon a mannequin. in a way, she had. the person elizabeth short was is often lost amongst the sensationalized headlines, salacious gossip and speculation surrounding her case. instead, she has become the perfect, posable victim unable to tell her own story.

elizabeth short is the template for all the dead girls in modern media.

what makes laura hale different though is how she’s a non-character within teen wolf despite her death’s significance as the unpreventable, fixed event within the show’s universe.

laura hale has the most in common with the other dead beautiful girls erica reyes and paige krasikeva. each of them killed before their full potential could be realized their ghosts left to haunt the narrative.

as i said earlier though, the circumstances surrounding her death have always intrigued me. i’ve always believed there was a sort of convergence of events happening prior to wolf moon that led to the inciting incident of laura hale's murder.

we’re even told this throughout the show if you’re paying attention.

one of the things i always wished we’d gotten from teen wolf was more information about not just laura herself but what exactly she knew prior to her death but we can infer quite a bit.

let’s take a look at what we do know.

a history lesson: drinking poison from the same vine

to understand what happened to laura hale when she was killed we have to step back and look at what happened before the first scenes of the show.

in particular we have to take a look at peter hale, the argents and the alpha pack. this means revisiting visionary among some other relevant episodes.

visionary is probably one of if not the most central lore episode within the series and it also gives us a glimpse of both talia and laura hale while they were still alive.

laura herself is more of an afterthought in this episode as she's never named on screen.

so what does visionary tell us about laura?

it tells us that she was already in a leadership position within the hale pack by this time and is clearly put forth as talia's natural, intended successor due to her very presence at the summit. it also tells us kali, ennis and deucalion knew laura hale personally even if it was a fleeting acquaintance.

in the finer details of the episode we learn a few other things such as talia, laura and peter were all aware of the threat of the argents. we learn one of ennis’s betas was killed in retaliation for killing two hunters. the death of the beta seems very cruel and unusual as we learn that he was shot through the throat, his claws were ripped out and he was cut in half.

the last point in particular is notable as there’s only one hunter we know of that cuts werewolves in half.

gerard argent.

motel california is just a few episodes prior to visionary where it’s revealed that alexander argent killed himself in 1977 at the glen capri motel after being bitten. gerard claims it was deucalion that bit his brother which is how he justifies his actions in visionary.

is it the full truth? doubtful. maybe alexander argent was bitten by deucalion and maybe he wasn’t but gerard seems to believe he was and that is what matters.

belief in the teen wolf universe is a real, tangible concept but it’s incredibly important to the narrative conceit of this episode. gerard and peter are both unreliable narrators who purposefully minimize their roles in the stories they tell. maybe they even believe their own lies to a degree.

what we know as the audience as it’s proven multiple times throughout the series is that gerard rejects the idea of peace and is known for being brutal and cruel in his methods.

visionary also goes a long way to illustrate that peter hale has always been, you know, Like That. he skulks around the story even in his own version of events where he’s trying to minimize his own role in paige’s death.

i believe that the non-existence of laura in his story except for a throwaway mention about how laura told derek about the packs being in town is two fold. one, peter was jealous of laura’s position in the pack and two, his guilt over killing her.

peter’s guilt is an interesting thing because he is first and foremost all about the survival of peter hale but he does care about those he perceives as his. for him, killing laura was something he regretted but was necessary so that peter could gain the alpha power.

laura was a sacrifice.

another thing about visionary is the absence of peter and talia’s relationship but who else would’ve told her about derek and what happened? talia isn’t surprised when she finds derek in the cellar.

over the course of the show we do not get a lot about talia and peter’s relationship which is a thing that keeps me up at night but i don’t think it’s too far of a leap to conclude that talia knew her brother’s nature and probably saw it as useful in it’s own way so long as she was the one holding the leash. the way peter advises derek is probably not too far off from how he advised talia.

there’s a tiny glimpse of this in season 4’s monstrous.

meredith walker is subjected to peter’s inner ravings while he’s comatose as they somehow connected mental frequencies.

there’s parts in there about how he’ll be a vengeful god and remake the supernatural of beacon hills in his own image and blah blah blah it all tracks for peter but the parts about talia are interesting not only because it gives us a glimpse into how peter perceived talia but also because he specifically name drops the argents as the threat.

is it the full truth? no. peter subscribes to the from-a-certain-point-of-view version of the truth and we have to remember this is peter just after the fire. he’s comatose, horrifically injured and on some level he’s aware that most of his family is now deceased.

what looking at this gives us is peter’s perspective and what he latched onto post-fire thus creating the peter we meet.

“i predicted this. i told talia this was going to happen. something like this was going to happen. i said they were going to come for us. the argents. they’re going to come for us. they’re gonna burn us to the ground. they’re going to burn us to the ground. did she listen? of course not. did anyone listen? they listened to her. yes! say that everything was going to be fine. that we were all perfectly safe. but she made us weak! she made us weak. and what happens to the weakest in the herd? they get picked off by the predators. we used to be the apex predators. until talia turned us into sheep.”

there is another key point about talia and peter that i think cannot be overlooked. the removal of memories. she took the memory of the nemeton’s location from both him and derek after their experiences there and she also took the memory of his tryst with corrine that resulted in malia’s birth.

i think what these things together tell us is that peter hale is vengeful and resentful but not just towards the argents but also talia but talia is beyond his reach. laura isn’t.

the last player that needs to be examined is the alpha pack. visionary gives us a version of events of why deucalion is the way he is and it ends with him killing his beta marco absorbing his power. this in itself isn’t actually all that interesting as this was the foregone conclusion.

when you combine it with what jennifer tells derek in the overlooked though it was just a few months after this she is attacked by kali at the base of the nemeton, which means the creation of the alpha pack was already underway mere weeks after deucalion is blinded by gerard.

we know talia hale was aware of what happened to deucalion along with gerard argent’s involvement so it would also stand to reason she would then be aware of the creation of the alpha pack. i cannot imagine it would escape her notice that both ennis and kali’s packs were decimated by their alphas and then they joined with deucalion. that seems like a cataclysmic event that’d get through the supernatural grapevine quickly.

if talia knew then so did laura as she was like i said clearly talia’s successor.

the mysterious death of laura hale part I: who cut laura in half?

let’s revisit the scene of the crime to examine the absolutely hinky circumstances surrounding laura's death and what the hell was happening in the woods the night scott was bitten by peter.

if i learned anything from gil grissom the first piece of evidence is the body. this is how we and scott meet laura hale.

i don’t think it’s speculation to say that peter hale killed laura but it was gerard argent who cut her in half.

in the season 2 opening episode omega we meet gerard argent and learn of his propensity to use a broadsword to cut werewolves in half but it is chris that gives scott the warning.

chris: "scott do you know what a hemicorporectomy is?"

scott: "i have a feeling i don't want to."

chris: "a medical term for amputating somebody at the waist. cutting them in half. takes a tremendous amount of strength to cut through tissue and bone like that."

this foreshadows what happens to the omega at the end of the episode but it reminds the viewer that we’ve already seen a corpse like that.

it may be a drop in the bucket compared to all the trauma scott has experienced since that night but i don’t think laura’s severed corpse is a sight he’s forgotten. which is what i believe argent is counting on here.

he knows what his father did.

he’s intimidating scott as much as he’s warning him not just about lydia but also about his father’s impending arrival and what gerard is capable of.

by this point chris knows kate broke the code by killing the hales in such a gruesome fashion but what does kate say when chris confronts her in code breaker?

chris: “i know what you did.”

kate: “i did what i was told to do.”

gee, i wonder who gave kate the carte blanche on killing the hales? i bet he also used paige’s death as a way to manipulate her as we see him do with allison. he was in town after all when paige was attacked by ennis and subsequently died. it's not a stretch to believe that a seasoned hunter like gerard would be able to spot a supernatural death cover up via animal attack.

the argents talk a big game about their women being leaders but gerard is the puppet master tugging on kate’s strings just like he did allison’s in season 2. this doesn’t minimize kate’s own sociopathy. kate can be a victim and a perpetrator.

we know from visionary that the argents have been known to operate around the beacon hills area to hunt but they don’t live there until chris and his family move there just prior to wolf moon.

i think we can infer that gerard ordered chris to move to beacon hills in response to laura hale being back in the area for the first time since the fire and i don’t think he aimed to just keep an eye on her.

there’s another overlooked aspect as to why gerard would be very interested in laura hale. he wants to cure his cancer via the bite. in fact, i wouldn’t be surprised if he would have offered her kate in exchange for the bite.

sure, it’s speculative, but i think there are enough pieces to support it as a working theory.

unlike peter there is never a confession from gerard about his part in the crime so why am i certain he did it?

let’s go back to the body for a moment.

while there’s a lot of gore, most of the blood is on laura herself.

there’s a significant lack of blood either around or underneath laura. with the amount of trauma we can see on her body there should be a bloody mess but there isn’t.

also notice how her arms are splayed out. it’s like she was dropped there.

she also doesn’t appear to be all that decayed so she’s still pretty, uh, fresh.

so again why do i believe gerard cut her in half if peter killed her?

not only can we infer in the subtext from the conversation chris has with scott in omega but looking at the cut on laura’s body it is too clean to be from being ripped in half by an animal or a werecreature.

however, a person with a sharp, heavy sword with the know-how that we know does this? seems a bit more plausible doesn’t it?

also kate literally tells us that hunters did it. she doesn’t name gerard but she informs derek in the tell:

“yes, your sister was severed into pieces and used as bait to catch you. unpleasant, and frankly a little too texas chainsaw massacre for my taste, but quite true. but here’s the part that’s really going to kick you in the balls. we didn’t kill her.”

neither the audience nor derek know if kate can be believed. i don’t think she’s lying here. she’s taunting but not lying.

why lie when she knows how badly this knowledge will hurt derek?

she goes on to add:

“found bite marks on your sister’s body derek. what do you think did that? a mountain lion?”

this i believe was a fib. were there bite marks? possibly, but more likely from savangers than peter taking a bite out of laura.

also the fact that laura’s lower half was found by joggers probably means it was visible from a path which gives some credibility to the idea that the hunter's strew laura’s corpse around the preserve. they wanted it to be found.

not only would two pieces be less heavy than a whole body but it just shows how they don’t care. laura isn’t a person to them. she’s vermin, she’s subhuman, she’s not worthy of respect.

she’s no better than bait to other werewolves to them.

they leave laura to rot.

notice how kate never refers to laura by name instead calling her “your sister” to derek. kate lured derek out with insults towards laura but this one is the greatest of them all. kate is refusing laura hale’s personhood.

the final reason i don’t believe peter tore laura in half is we’ve seen how peter kills. claws from behind are consistent with how he goes at derek at the end of heart monitor and jackson in master plan or throat slashing which we see in the tell with the video store clerk, kate in code breaker and jennifer in lunar eclipse.

or he mauls them viscerally like we see with the mute in the benefactor.

a creature of habit he calls himself.

in none of peter’s kills either as alpha or as a beta does he tear someone in half.

while peter hale is a dramatic king and doesn’t mind getting his hands bloody, i think he’d be offended if someone accused him of tearing laura in half.

the mysterious death of laura hale II: why does peter kill laura?

speaking of peter, why did he kill laura?

the obvious answer is for the alpha power so he could fully heal..he says as much in wolf’s bane.

peter: “yes, becoming an alpha, taking that from laura pushed me over a plateau in the healing process.”

but with peter hale nothing is ever so simple. there’s always layers.

in alpha pact, peter gives derek this speech when he’s winding derek up about how to heal cora:

“you know, normal wolves never abandon an injured member of the pack. they care for it. they even bring it food from a kill and then regurgitate it into the mouth of the injured wolf. they even give it physical and emotional comfort by intensely grooming it. in a way they can do more than just ease pain. they can be instrumental in healing their own."

as i mentioned earlier, i think peter not only holds a lot of resentment towards talia for what he perceived as inaction but also towards laura.

after the fire, laura did what cora says in visionary they were taught to do when hunters find them.

cora: "waiting. hiding. that's what we're told to do when the hunters find us. hide and heal."

in all the trauma and grief, laura did the only thing that she could reasonably do in response to such a horrific tragedy. she packed up her little brother who she’d suddenly become the guardian of and put an entire continent between them and beacon hills.

in doing so she left behind peter. i don’t blame her for leaving beacon hills. she was reacting to the threat of the hunters by trying to protect what little was left of her family and herself.

you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help others.

however, in leaving peter behind he was left to not only slowly go mad but he was also left vulnerable.

peter may have felt laura not only abandoned him as a member of the pack but abdicated her right to be the alpha.

derek tells scott in riddled:

“my family didn’t just live in beacon hills.they protected it.”

laura left beacon hills unprotected and she left peter alone.

peter killed laura for the alpha power he always saw as rightfully his so he could heal and do the job he felt talia and laura were both too weak to do.

while peter killed laura his culpability does come into question.

in co-captain he performs the memory sharing ritual with scott which gives us a small glimpse of peter’s memories in the moments before laura’s death.

laura enters the scene looking around as if she hears something and then laura calls out his name in question. when peter turns he doesn’t look like a man in control with his eyes rolling, mouth agape.

his actions look autonomous. peter the man is not at the wheel.

if we take what peter says in wolf’s bane at face value about how he was being driven by pure instinct then we can surmise that the wolf was in control and acted on impulse and peter’s deepest thoughts and desires.

the same ones we hear peter raving and ranting at meredith in monstrous.

vengeance.

i think the truth seems to be somewhere in the middle.

peter often downplays his own involvement as a manipulation tactic. so while he lacked inhibition, killing laura for the alpha power was premeditated as we know his nurse was acting on his behalf. i do wonder though if laura’s body hadn’t been severed by hunters would peter have resurrected her?

what’s a little murder between family members, you know?

the mysterious death of laura hale III: the conspiracy

there are two conspiracies in season 1.

the conspiracy to kill the hales and the conspiracy to lure laura hale back to beacon hills.

about three months before her death laura was sent the picture of the revenge spiral on the deer which brought her back to beacon hills. to the territory she had left unattended for six years. in pack mentality, derek says that laura came back to beacon hills looking for the alpha and that she told him she was close to figuring something out about the fire.

luring laura back to beacon hills wasn’t just about killing her. that was the endgame, but first peter needed her to do the leg work in finding the conspirators that set the fire.

the conspiracy itself hinges on one person since peter was still unable to do all of it himself due to him still recovering and we know nothing about her.

nurse jennifer plagues me. her motivations for helping peter were never given. she’s merely a tool to help peter enact his revenge.

all we have are theories and i have found precious few in my searches through old meta.

the most popular theory and i use that word loosely is that she was jennifer blake sowing the seeds for her eventual return to take on the alpha pack. i’ve considered this one and i think a skilled writer could make it work, but within the context we’re given i don’t think so.

i do believe jennifer blake definitely scouted out beacon hills just as the alpha pack did but i don’t think she and nurse jennifer are one in the same. besides, we do see nurse jennifer’s corpse in code breaker.

another theory i came across was that she’s a banshee compelled in the same way lydia was by peter. again because we have such little information there’s enough room for it to be possible but i doubt it.

the conclusion i have come to about nurse jennifer is that she’s someone like dr. fenris and brunski from eichen house. while we do not learn about eichen house until season 3b dr fenris is introduced in wolf’s bane and is in the search for a cure.

mostly, i think she’s simply a reference to nurse ratched from one flew over the cuckoo’s nest. her nurse's uniform is even anachronistic.

but what was nurse jennifer’s role in the conspiracy?

she is the one who sent the picture of the deer spiral to laura hale to spur her to come back to beacon hills. nurse jennifer is also the one who sent allison the text to come to the school during night school. like laura, nurse jennifer did a lot of footwork for peter to make his plans work and it’s a damn shame we’ll never know why.

the mysterious death of laura hale iv: the fixed point

laura’s death is what i think of as a fixed point in the universe of teen wolf. the idea of which is something i shamelessly took from doctor who.

in doctor who a fixed point is considered a lynchpin of the structure of ordered history. they cannot be altered as any attempts to do so would unravel linear time.

laura hale’s death is that fixed point. it was unavoidable, unpreventable. poor laura hale doomed by the narrative.

in the events surrounding the murder of laura hale there are two more players i haven’t really discussed. they exist on the periphery but are no less important.

doctor alan deaton and the nemeton.

cora says this in visionary:

"they keep us connected to humanity but they're a secret even within the pack. sometimes only the alpha knows who the emissary is. derek and i had no idea about deaton."

as talia’s successor laura would’ve had to know who their pack’s emissary was.

this is confirmed in fury when deaton not only insults derek to his face but reveals that he made a promise to talia to help her children and derek recalls laura mentioning deaton indirectly as some kind of advisor.

i say indirectly because if laura had told derek explicitly that deaton was someone who could help and advise than he wouldn’t have suspected him as the alpha in season 1.

did laura see deaton at all during her time in beacon hills? i would say it’s probable but i get the impression laura played her cards close to her chest. deaton was very unnerved by what was happening and with laura’s death probably concerned for his own wellbeing.

deaton doesn’t reveal himself to derek because he has no idea if derek’s the one who killed laura or not. there’s no established relationship between the two for trust to go either way.

truly the greatest villain of teen wolf is miscommunication, but i digress.

now here comes the part where i put on my tin foil conspiracy theory hat. i believe laura was killed near or at the nemeton.

an unintended and unacknowledged sacrifice.

peter may not have consciously remembered its location, but who's to say it didn’t draw him there.

we know from jennifer’s speech in the overlooked that the nemeton had a small spark of power from paige’s death. it was enough power to keep her alive after kali left her for dead so it isn’t difficult to believe it could’ve drawn peter to it as well.

we know gerard knows its location despite what he tells allison about him not remembering. i don’t believe that geriatric bastard anymore than i believe peter as peter is able to find the nemeton easy enough because he shows up to kill jennifer there.

now, i have zero proof of this. it’s all speculation from vibes and what we see in lunar eclipse but considering laura’s body was moved from wherever she originally died and was severed it’s possible.

it’s easy to imagine a scenario where laura finds peter at the nemeton where he kills her and leaves her body where it fell. later, gerard and his hunters discover her corpse and in frustration and anger at his plan falling through, gerard decides to use laura as bait for either the werewolf that killed her, derek or whatever other werewolves come along. waste not, want not after all.

either way an alpha’s blood is spilled there giving the nemeton just a little bit more power.

in lunar eclipse allison, scott and stiles perform a proxy ritual sacrifice to find out the location of the nemeton so they can rescue their parents. it’s successful, but only because the nemeton allows them to know its location.

in revealing itself to them it chooses them as its champions and.it’s magic takes them back to the night scott was bitten, to the fixed point in the teen wolf universe.

laura hale’s death.

haunting the narrative: laura hale’s uneasy ghost

“and so, the woman dies. the woman dies so the man can be sad about it. the woman dies so the man can suffer. she dies to give him a destiny. dies so he can fall to the dark side. dies so he can lament her death. as he stands there, brimming with grief, brimming with life, the woman lies there in silence.”

by aoko matsuda, translated by polly barton

once the first season comes to a close and laura hale’s murder is solved she is no longer mentioned save a few precious times, but the ghost of laura lingers.

laura haunts the narrative.

derek has forgiven many transgressions against himself and his person but he will never forgive peter for laura’s murder. her death underscores every single one of their interactions.

laura’s the specter that hangs between cora and derek. cora loses her sister twice and derek’s words “sorry to disappoint you” only speak to how he feels he cannot live up to the ghost of not only his mother but also laura.

this, however, is not the only way laura remains in the narrative. they allude to her in other ways.

in anchors scott reprises the scene from wolf moon where he tells stiles they’re going to go out into the woods to find a dead body but in a reverse uno of wolf moon though, scott is able to save the naked hale girl in the woods and bring her back to her family.

at the beginning of party guessed, lydia has one of her banshee visions. if you pay attention you can catch a girl in the bleachers that doesn’t quite belong. in fact, she’s crying out distressed and frightened.

that girl is laura hale.

while uncredited the actress looks a lot like haley roe murphy who played laura in the first season and the necklace around her neck has a red pendant that alludes to her alpha status.

lydia sees an echo of laura hale as a warning.

i like this shot in second chance at first line when scott is at the morgue. he pulls out the drawer containing laura's lower half and the pov for the shot is almost like laura is watching despite her upper half not being there.

the very last time we see laura’s body is after stiles and scott dig it up.

from this new perspective, laura’s stare has gone from vacant to accusatory.

it’s a jump scare, the transition from laura as a wolf to laura as human. it’s meant to freak stiles and scott out and confuse them.

what it’s always said to me though is how dare you.

whether or not it was intentional (and let’s be real this is teen wolf so it’s probably half and half if we’re being generous) the murder of laura remains one of the most intriguing incidents on teen wolf and her being one of the most untapped characters.

i said earlier i wanted to know what laura knew before her death. what had she uncovered about the fire? had she learned about cora being alive? did she know about kate and derek?

the answer is that it doesn’t matter. It no longer matters because laura died. we can never know what she knew.

in teen wolf it doesn’t matter because laura is a non-character while being the most important character of them all.

laura hale is the beautiful dead girl.

she is the inciting incident, the fixed point, the name unsaid and the spirit unexercised.

“an anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young-- a dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.” lenore by edgar allen poe

#my blog #teen wolf #laura hale #teen wolf meta #thoughts on teen wolf #did i have a lot of thoughts? yes

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petals2fish · 12 days

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1. Fortnight - functioning alcoholic 🥲 YOUR QUIET TREASON. All my mornings are Monday stuck in an endless February. POSTIC GENIUS. Magical move on drug YIKES. I love you you tis ruining my life. I touched you for only a fortnight but I touched you. “My husband is cheating I want to kill him.” MOOD. I love you it’s ruining my life. I’m calling ya but you won’t pick up. Went to Florida?!?! 🫡🫡🫡 thank you post Malone for your service.

2. The tortured poets department: “I’ve seen this episode but still loved the show.” Aka I THINK IVE SEEN THIS FILM BEFORE AND I DIDNT LIKE THE ENDING. “Who’s gonna love you if not me.” Lol “We’re modern idiots!!!!” JUSTICE FOR CHARLIE PUTH!!!! “A tattooed golden retriever” made me laugh out loud. “I chose this cyclone with you.” Is so Jily plz. “You’re not Dillion Thomas and I’m not patting smith.” Okay Tay. NO FUCKING BODY: 👍🏼 “Sometimes I wonder if you’ll screw this up with me.” Spoiler ‼️ he did. “Everyone we know understands why it’s meant to be.” I didn’t thanks. “Because we’re crazy.” Okay mood. HE PUT THE RING IN HER RING FINGER?!?! “CLOSEST IVE COME TO MY HEART EXPLODING?!?!” PLEASE?!?! “You left your typewriter at my apartment straight from the tortured poets department.” Five stars!!

3. My boy only breaks his favorite toys: ‘I’m queen of sandcastles he destroys.’ Jumps out at me. “Cause I knew too much.” WHAT DO YIU KNOW TAYLOR. “Should have known it was a matter of time.” Taylor is the queen of ignoring red flags. 🚩 This is a fun beat though besties. “Once I fix me, he’s gonna miss me.” YEAH. TELL EM BESTIE. “Stole my tortured heart and left all these broken parts. Told me I’m better off.” Sorry Taylor you were better off babes.

4. Down bad: NICER BEAT OKAY. “Dawn bad crying at the gym.” Mood. “Fuck it if I can’t have him I might just die.” No why is this so FUNNY. Like this is Matty we’re talking about for sure. “Everything forms out teenage petulance.” I mean yeah cause you were still developing a prefrontal cortex when you met him. “So fuck you if I can’t have us.” HAHAHAHAHAHA I LOVE THIS PART. Honestly I feel you Taylor, I’ve been dumb for a dumb boy before too. It’s okay.

5. So long London: EXCISE ME OPENING WITH A CHORAl. THESE KYRICS WHATLFHAKRHS FUCKKKKK. How much sad did you think I had??? Oh the tragedy?! So long London, you’ll find some one???? “You left me at the house by the heath.” “I stopped CPR”?!?! 😿😿 “YOU LET Me give all that you for free?!?!” SHE GAVE YOU A FUCKING GRAMMY YOGURT BOY AND YOU DIDNT EVEN WANT IT. “too graves, one gun?!” Good for you baby girl. “I’ll find someone” SHUT THE FUCK UP. I’m gonna throw up. Fuck fuck fuck. Taylor 😿😿😿😿 “I DIED ON THE ALTER” ALDBSKAHDBSJSKS NOOOOO. I’m crying. My Shakespeare queen. You’ll find someone RIPS at my heart.

6. But daddy I love him: “bedroom eyes like a remedy.” Fuck how many matty songs are we getting. This reminds me so much of a faith hill song. No I will not elaborate right now. Very country narrative. This one will be fun to scream in concert just for the “I’m having his baby…no I’m not!!!” Very chaotic. 4/5 stars.

7. Fresh out of the slammer: daily disappearing just to see him smile?!?! Girlie pop you really do lie to yourself don’t you??? “He was with her in dreams” I mean it’s really joeover. This song is fun, I like it, very chaotic as well. 5/5 stars.

8. Florida!!!: Florence my queen you make this song beautiful, I need more listens to deconstruct it though:

9. Guilty as skin: girl just write self insert fanfic if you want to fuck someone this badly (can’t wait to write and read fics based off this one hahahaha) 5/5 stars 🌟

10. Who’s afraid of little old me?: shit I’m crying. Fuck fuck fuck. She truly hates most of the new fans huh. Lmaooo SHE SINGS THIS IN ALL HER REGISTERS OMGGGG. It’s all her past selves screaming at us!!! Aldhaksjdka she’s so fucking clever

11. I can fix him no really I can: AHAHA THE ENDING KF THE SONG ALDBSKAHDKAJDHAKDHW SHE REALLY SAID “OH SHIT DAMN I FUCKED UP DIDNT I” 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

12. Loml: Joe Alwyn you need witness protection

13. I can do it with a broken heart: oh god this was hurts me more than so long London because it hits home for every damn time I had to preform on stage and then go cry in the shower between shows 🥲

14. The smallest man who ever lived: 🚨🚨🚨 found at the scene of the crime: Joe Alwyn's Small Dick

15. The alchemy: AHHHHHHH!!! HOLY FUCK WE GOT A TRAVIS SONG ALDBSLAHDBSKSJDBWKEHDBAKWJD HE GOT A SONG FUCK YESSSSS

16. CLARA BOW: the outro. The OUTRO. THE FUCKING OUTRO. I’m dead. 😵

Overall: I love it. I love it. I love it SO DAMN MICH. you can tell how much time and effort she put into production and story telling. FUCK. I love this album as much as I loved Folklore the first time I heard it!!

#petals talks #taylor swift #petals liveblogs ttpd #ttpd era #ttpd spoilers

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noxcorvorum · 29 days

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Do you have any horror podcast recs

I liked tma and old gods of Appalachia but I'm caught up and need to BINGE

hello! youve come to the right place :)

Ghost Wax feels kindof similar to tma, especially tma season 1, with the main character (Owen Voncid) taking statements of people who've encountered the supernatural. However, Owen is a necromancer (the last Reclaimer!) who briefly reawakens the dead so that they can tell their final story, and all of the statement givers are dead. He also has an assistant, Luca Eso, who made the wax cylinders that he uses (he's been around for a very long time, and the remembrances are beginning to slip from his brain) and is a pop culture nerd. They work with a seer, Pip (or Phillipa Le Fay, to respect the stagecraft), who uses her grandmother's tarot cards.

All three of these people work for the Order of Hamsa, which fights the supernatural. Hamsa are incredibly powerful entities who have magic such as geomancy and necromancy, and usually inhabit a human body, though generally not for an incredibly long amount of time. There are several Hamsa in this podcast, including Owen. Owen has remained in his body for much longer than usual. Some other characters I enjoyed are Emea, the apiarist as well as Owen's best friend and a Hamsa, Cosa, the android librarian/archivist, and Azem, who is very thoroughly haunting the narrative. Don't look away.

I absolutely love this podcast, its easily in my top three. There's several incantations/spells which are so fun to me, found family, and really fun sound effects. It has 46 episodes as well as 2 Tales from the Vault, which are filled with smaller stories (I submitted a story to the second one!), there's content on patreon, and season 2 is in production.

Malevolent is about Arthur Lester, a 1930s private investigator from Arkham, Massachusetts, and the voice in his head and his eyes. Episode 1 opens with Arthur coming to on the floor of his office, suddenly blind, a strange entity speaking to him, and his business partner dead on the floor. Arthur and John, as the entity comes to be named, must now figure out how to navigate the horrors, try to find a way to separate themselves, and figure out where John came from. There's lots of cosmic horror/lovecraftian influences in here, and they have so many miles to go before they sleep.

There's a LOT of audio gore/squishy flesh sounds/Arthur screaming because the horrors love ripping into him, so if that's no good then this podcast is not for you. Some of the more eldritch characters also have voice filters, most notably John, which could make them hard to understand, though there are transcripts available. the plot can also be a little hard to follow sometimes.

I really enjoy this podcast, I'm currently relistening to it and having a great time. It's kindof forced family? because Arthur and John physically cannot get away from each other and yet they Have To communicate. They're so so much "its rotten work" "not to me, not if its you" AND "its rotten work" "especially to me, especially if its you, ill do it but christ alive". It's currently 42 episodes at usually 40ish minutes each, and still going, with new episodes releasing mostly monthly. There's also one voice actor, everyone sounds similar because it's the same guy.

Hello from the Hallowoods is a post apocalyptic show about identity, grief, family, and survival. It's formatted as a radio broadcast by an entity named Nikignik, who narrates everything. There is one voice actor for the majority of this show (save for the occasional character speaking outside of Nikignik's broadcast), and they do an amazing job, especially considering the amount of characters.

Some of the characters I really enjoy are Diggory Graves, a nonbinary frankenstein's monster with knife hands and a leather jacket, Percy Reed, a transmasc piano ghost, Riot Maidstone, the lesbian punk daughter of a rockstar, Olivier Song, a genderfluid cloud witch, Ray, a ghost possessing an automobile, Moth Scarberry (moth/mothself), Ray's adopted kid, Walt Pensieve, the asexual groundskeeper of the Hallowoods, and Polly, a devil in a floral suit. Some of the antagonists include Lady Ethel Mallory, a gaslight gatekeep girlboss of a marketing specialist for an evil corporation and the Instrumentalist, a religious fanatic who keeps killing people and turning them into instruments. Darker than your dreams, and farther north than you remember, the Hallowoods loom.

Each episode has a different theme based on the title (such as Keys, Names, and Bones), and is split into several different stories that follow different characters as Nikignik jumps around. There's not very many voice filters, because Nikignik is doing the voices himself, though I think there are a few, and transcripts are available. There's 145 episodes at usually 30 to 50 minutes each, and a new one releases every wednesday.

Sidenote, the Instrumentalist is *really* religious as well as homophobic and transphobic, and he regularly misgenders/deadnames a trans main character. He only exists in the show for about 50 episodes, and definitely gets what he deserves.

The White Vault is a found footage podcast with the first two seasons comprising a repair team's trip to Outpost Fristed in Svalbard. They go up to repair some damaged equipment as well as look at some weird readings, and then have to wait out a massive storm. They find a hatch in the auxiliary bunker, and explore the tunnels beneath to find a village beneath the ice. Theres Graham Casner, the survival guide, Walter Heath, the repair technician, Karina Shumacher-Weiß, the geologist, Rosa De La Torre, the medic, and Jónas Þórirsson, the representative of the company sending them. Travel is not advised.

I listened to the bulk of the first 2 seasons at 2 am while playing powerwash simulator, and it made me so incredibly anxious that I had to have my back to a wall *in the game* so nothing could sneak up one me. Highly recommend. There's so much fear and helplessness surrounding what could be hiding in the storm and in the ice, and I absolutely love the concept for the antagonists.

Seasons 3 and 4 are about a different team in Patagonia, season 5 checks back in at Svalbard, and season 6 is somewhere else entirely. 3-4 are pretty alright in my opinion, maybe a bit repetitive as it follows a similar pattern to the first two seasons, but I don't hate them. I think 5 is pretty good, though it has my favorite character in it, so, you know. I think 6 goes in a bit of a different direction, though I'm not caught up so I can't really comment on it. Seasons 1 and 2 are absolutely stunning, though.

The creators and cast of seasons 1-2 also have a horror dnd podcast called Dark Dice. I must admit I haven't finished the first campaign, though I really liked what I did listen to. I'm told the second campaign has Jeff Goldblum in it, and has 2 different parties with one hunting the other, though I haven't listened to it yet, so take that as you will.

Jar of Rebuke follows Dr. Jared Hel, a cryptid scientist with amnesia in a small Midwestern town, and perhaps closer to the cryptids than they realize. They're also immortal, and (for a reason I don't remember at this particular moment) he has to wear a key around his neck, and never take it off. I'm not caught up, though I really liked what I did listen to. There's lots of fun cryptids and supernatural happenings, such as Jared getting a hellhound as a pet. The episodes are about 10-20 minutes each, and it's ongoing.

As someone on tiktok so aptly said, if you have trust issues with your therapist, you probably shouldn't listen to this podcast. Jared is manipulated by their therapists, and we sometimes hear them talk about him like he's a test subject or creature, not a person.

Do You Copy is another found footage podcast surrounding Redtail National Park, which more or less contains an area called the Dead Zone, in which technology doesn't work and other spooky stuff happens. The Dead Zone has a possible imminent ecological disaster, and though the park is evacuated until the emergency is over, there are a couple people still inside. These include two ghost hunters, a hiker and their dog, and two park rangers who have been instructed to stay inside in hopes of hearing from the three others. I found the Dead Zone and what lies inside VERY interesting, both from a horror perspective and a speculative biology/ecology perspective. It is finished at 14 episodes.

The Hyacinth Disaster is a space horror found footage podcast, and easily in my top three (the other one on that list is tma). It is set in 2151, when Jupiter and Mars have been colonized, and the asteroid belt is being mined for resources. There are two main mining companies in the show, Halaesus Mining Co in Lagrange 4, Greek objects, and Lykaeon Minerals Corporation in Lagrange 5, Trojan objects. The Corvus, a ship contracted to Halaesus and ordered to survey and harvest an asteroid in Lagrange 5, was captured by Lykaeon and held for ransom, and Halaesus denies the ransom broadcast is true, unwilling to pay. The skeleton crew of the MRS Hyacinth has gone rogue in the slowly dwindling time limit to survey a possibly incredibly valuable asteroid, hoping to pay the ransom themselves. But they are 6 people manning a ship meant for 53, and there are so many things to go wrong.

Conlin Hynes is the captain of the Hyacinth and is a good friend of Ember Roth, the captain of the Corvus. Con isn't the greatest captain, not by a long shot, but he's incredibly loyal, and maintains a talented crew. Famke Hynes, or Blue, is Con's sister, and the captain of her own ship, the Sibirica. She would have been the captain of the Hyacinth had she won the rock paper scissors match when they first bought it. She's returned to the Hyacinth to run comms for her brother as they bring Ember and her crew home, and to blow things up along the way.

Finch is Con's wife, and doing an admirable job at being an one-person engineering and seismology team. She's doing her absolute best with the equipment they have that corporate refuses to replace or reapir. Dreadnought in exosuit 2 is by far the youngest of the crew at 24. He's a surveyor, and in fact surveyed Saniss 130991, the very rock they're at, himself. He saw the potential and purposefully misfiled it, hoping to make a bigger profit if corporate didn't know about it, and told Finch, who told Con, and now they're all here.

Grimm is in exo 4, one that he bought himself and has carefully maintained. He refuses to tell the others what he's named it. He moves around a lot, as he gets bored of jobs quickly. Seems like a hardass, but he's actually a pretty nice guy. Argus in exo 7 is one of Con's best friends, having worked with him and Grimm on several jobs. He's a pretty optimistic guy, and follows Grimm as he moves from job to job. His lucky object of choice is a surprise tool that will help us later.

There's lots of angst and horror but also lots of comedy. I've seen a couple reactions that thought there was too much comedy for the situation, but personally I really enjoyed it. It's 7 episodes long, at about 2.5 hours total. There's a lot of sound effects for the ship controls that could potentially be irritating, Dreadnought's dialogue is full of static and sometimes difficult to understand because his radio is partially broken, and there's a loud, extended, high pitched static sound often in the first few episodes (It's when they activate the squealer device, it lasts for about 10-15 seconds each time and there's a countdown from 5 right before), so if you have issues with mechanical/static sound effects, this probably isn't for you. There's transcripts for episodes 1-4 on the website, along with a database of more information about the world.

I'm so so normal about this podcast, I have a note full of facts and trivia (Ember was voted into captaincy by her crew, and according to dreadnought, the ratio of greek names to jovian objects is about 1 in 50,000), my senior quote was from here, I've relistened to it so many times. I cannot recommend this enough.

Among the Stars and Bones is another found footage space horror, but this time it's about anthropology and alien technology. The format is mission files being sent back to the company from a large team investigating an abandoned alien settlement. There's about 7 different perspectives, one from each branch of the team (xenoanthropology, IT, etc).

I really enjoyed it the first time I listened, there were a lot of good anxious moments. A couple of my favorite characters are Dr. Celia Pannella, who heads the xenoanthropology section, and Ben Kelleher, who heads the xenoarchaeology section. I found the alien science/speculative biology really really interesting.

Given you liked tma I'm assuming you know of The Magnus Protocol, but if you don't, it's pretty much Magnus but in a civil service job instead of archiving. It has such characters as Colin the longsuffering IT guy, Alice, who is coping with the horrors by ignoring them, Needles, and Chester and Norris, two text-to-speech voices who we have definitely never heard before (/s).

It has 10 episodes plus an Easter/April Fools special, and it's on a break until April 11th.

Mabel is a podcast about ghosts, families, secrets, and connections. Anna Limon is a carer who has been hired to take care of Mabel Martin's mother Sally. The house is odd, the house is alive, and the house is hungry. Anna is unraveling a mystery as fast as she can find the thread, and Mabel, having grown up half-feral and half-faeral, is somewhere under the Hill.

I will admit I haven't finished this show, but I would definitely recommend it. I actually had to restart it because I wasn't expecting to be as invested as I was. It is very much a faerie story, with riddles and all.

The Silt Verses is a story about faith, and what people will do to keep it. It follows Sister Carpenter and Brother Faulkner as they travel upriver, looking for revelations of their outlawed god, the Trawler-Man. There's a whole cast of gods, many of which are capitalistic, and most of the ones that are not have been outlawed. Some examples are the Trawler-Man of the river, the Waxen Scrivener of decay and books, the Saint Electric of radio and electricity, and the Cairn Maiden of graves and death.

I'd say it has semi similar vibes to Old Gods, mostly with the many deities and monsters. I'm only about halfway through it, but I'd definitely recommend it.

Hope you find something you enjoy!

#long post #podcast recs #podcast recommendations #horror podcasts

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aangarchy · 1 year

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I feel like i need to reiterate what my opinion on the southern raiders as an episode is bc my previous posts about it are like 3 years old at this point, so here goes. I want to preface this by saying all of this is in fact my opinion and not me trying to state facts. I'm not going to argue who's right or wrong. I'm not going to debate it either. If your opinion is different: great! You're a human being that can also think for themselves!

In my opinion, the southern raiders is not a good episode. The only reason it exists, is because Katara needed to stop hating Zuko and start trusting him, and thus Zuko would be officially and fully part of the gaang. There's a reason they didn't give Toph a life changing field trip episode. It wasn't necessary in the narrative because Toph already pretty much trusted Zuko. Sokka and Aang had their respective Zuko trips, and Suki rode along in Sokka's episode. Katara was the only one left and for some reason this is what they came up with, and they crammed it in right before a filler episode so they could start of the finale.

I particularly dislike Zuko's behavior in this episode. I'm not saying it's out of character. I just feel like at this point in the story he should know better. First he doesn't understand why Katara is still angry at him. Then he gets to the conclusion that Katara has connected her anger towards her mother's murderer to him, which isn't false, but Katara is still justified in her anger because Zuko has also been very shitty towards her. Then once he has the information he needs from Sokka (who didn't ask to get involved and just wanted to have a fun night with his girlfriend and now had to recall one of his most traumatic memories) he just drops it onto Katara, first cornering her by waiting outside her tent to make sure he's the first thing she sees. He also tells her he "knows who did it." Only he doesn't actually know does he? He just knows it's the leader of the southern raiders, but he doesn't know where to find him yet, but he does know where they can find out so it's okay. They only need to ninja sneak into a highly guarded tower and get a the map. No biggie. Then they march over to Aang and tell him they "need to borrow Appa". They don't even ask him nicely, they just say "we need him". Aang is rightfully sceptical.

Now i know Appa is their only mode of transportation in this episode bc the airship is with Hakoda. But can i remind everyone that Appa is more than just a vehicle? He's a living breathing animal and also Aang's pet. And Aang has already lost him once. They're planning on taking Appa straight into the danger zone without Aang or any armor. And they don't even ask permission! They were planning to sneak out with him at night without Aang's knowledge too! What if Appa got hurt? What if they get captured along with Appa?

Then when Aang points out how this plan sounds insane (bc it fucking is), Katara immediately tells Aang he doesn't understand. What's weird about this is Aang is actually one of the few people there that DOES. Aang is a victim of genocide just like Katara. Within a few days he went from wandering the airtemples with the other kids and playing pai cho with Gyatso to learning his entire civilization and culture has been dead for a century. He was faced with his mentor and father figure's skeleton, and with the knowledge that whomever did it has been dead for a long time. He points this out to Katara, and Zuko dismisses him saying this is what Katara needs.

It's funny how Zuko's entire motivation for this plan in the first place is for Katara to stop hating him. It's entirely selfish, and he's essentially using Katara's grief for his benefit. But all of a sudden when they get stopped by Aang and asked to explain themselves Zuko believes this is what Katara needs. Now i am willing to believe that Zuko genuinely thinks this will help Katara at this point, as it seems like he's living a bit through her. After all he too lost his mother (although he recently discovered she is alive) and boy wouldn't he like to hurt Ozai for being responsible for his mother's disappearance. But this doesn't take away that this plan started with selfish motivations.

Aang rightfully points out that this isn't about closure but about revenge, and tries to explain to both of them the airnomad philosophy around revenge. Zuko, still wanting to go ahead with his plan bc he wants Katara to stop hating him, dismisses this and calls it "airtemple preschool". I'll rephrase that: a direct descendant of the nation that eradicated the entire airnomad population dismisses and insults the teachings of said eradicated culture. And it's played of as a joke? Because it's a funny phrase i suppose? Hardy har the oppressor is making fun of the beliefs and culture of the oppressed! And as if this isn't enough, he decides to drive this home even further by calling Aang a "guru goodie goodie" when Aang asked Katara not to choose revenge. Again we're supposed to find this funny, and sure as a kid the line on its own is funny. But growing up and realizing the context around it, it very quickly becomes not funny and actually kind of infuriating, because again the reason Zuko is trying so hard to dismiss Aang is that he wants this plan to succeed so Katara will stop throwing insults his way. Katara is also very mean towards Sokka this episode, claiming he didn't love their mother the way she did. Poor Sokka really got put trough the ringer this episode.

I also again want to point out how dangerous this plan is. The first field trip with Aang was different. They were visiting ruins for the benefit of Aang learning firebending (a skill he needs to face Ozai), so this trip was very necessary. Sokka's trip was "selfish" for other reasons than Katara. He felt like he failed his dad by letting him get captured, and so he wants to prove himself by getting him out. At least we can applaud Sokka and Zuko for not endangering Appa into enemy territory this time around, and for going into the trip with good intentions (aka saving Dad and later up saving Suki). But the consequences of Sokka's trip show up almost immediately because Azula was able to track them down and bomb the place. The southern raiders trip could have very well had the same exact consequences. They could get captured, they could die, they could get tracked and lead the fire nation to the location of the Avatar (who they now know is alive and is once again their biggest threat), Appa could get hurt. All of this to murder a man and they don't end up doing it. (Just to be clear i'm not mad that Katara didn't kill Yon Rah, i'm actually really happy with that choice and how it foreshadows Aang choosing not to kill Ozai. I'm mad at the fact that they did this dangerous plan with bad intentions and didn't even complete it.)

Now by the end, i'm not saying Aang was completely in the right this episode. He told Katara to forgive this man when he knows damn well she would never. I'm not saying she couldn't. She just wouldn't. But he was right in saying that Katara needed to face this man and come to a non-violent closure. He was also correct in the assumption that Katara needed to forgive. He only wanted Katara to aim this forgiveness at the wrong person. Katara did forgive at the end. She forgave Zuko (who still didn't really deserve it in my opinion because we never even see him apologize to Katara personally for what he did to her?) Zuko even admits at the end that Aang was right in saying violence wasn't the answer. Aang's methods were just a bit off this episode, because there was no way Katara was going to listen to him.

To round this off: this episode could have been done differently. The only thing that really needed to happen for the plot, was for Katara to forgive Zuko and for Zuko to ask Aang how he was going to apply his pacifist upbringing into defeating the firelord. Everything else wasn't narratively necessary, and brought up some very questionable scenes. You could argue that we needed to find out what happened to Katara's mother, but honestly we kind of already knew. She died at the hands of the fire nation. We didn't really need to have it laid out, so it wasn't necessary for the story.

Anyway, that's it. Like i said above, i don't really want to debate this. If you disagree with it you can make your own post about it, i'd rather not get into arguments in the reblogs or comments.

#i just really dislike the way katara's grief is being abused for people's own intentions #the southern raiders #avatar the last airbender #atla #avatar #katara #aang #avatar aang #zuko #prince zuko #sokka #long post

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avelera · 2 years

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Stede & Ed, Old Money & New Money

This is potentially an unpopular opinion (?), but I will say there is a slight nuance to the class discussion in Our Flag Means Death specifically around Ed and Stede and where they meet in the middle as far as class and wealth. It is not rich vs. poor, or at least not just that. Rather, it's the trope of New Money vs. Old Money.

(I know Tumblr cuts these long posts automatically these days but this got rather too long for me to take the chance.)

(By the way, race is an element of this discussion too, absolutely, I just don't feel I'm the right person to talk about it and it deserves its own deep and nuanced discussion independent of this narrow one around class and wealth I want to ruminate on here.)

The fact is, Ed is rich when we meet him in the show and he behaves like someone who is "New Money" rich. As much as Ed had a poor upbringing, he doesn't currently, on-screen relate much to other poor or working-class characters of the Revenge. Ed's not stuck-up about it, to be sure, but neither is Stede (for the most part). But the people Ed relates to directly are not members of the crew. His familiarity is really limited to his First Mate Izzy (and I personally think even that is a stretch and that he treats Izzy as a trusted employee but not a friend) and Stede, as a fellow ship's captain. Ed's friendly and even familiar with other crew members, like Frenchie in the fancy party episode, but they never connect on a personal or intimate level beyond the level that Ed is friendly with everyone. The other person Ed relates to as an equal is Calico Jack, who also introduces himself as a ship's captain, if a temporarily embarrassed one having recently been mutinied upon.

Much of the narrative tension Ed feels around the upper class when it comes to wealth and prestige is based on the fact that he has, "more riches than you can shake a stick at," but he doesn't know how to use them. This is the classic New Money vs Old Money trope. Ed wants Stede to teach him to, "live the high life," because he doesn't know how, since Ed achieved his position through skill and necessity, which precluded the "elegance" of Old Money.

Ed is in awe of Stede packing the hold with marmalade for his personal comfort and how he privileges that over his own survival, not as a foolish act (though it is) but as a rather supremely elegant one, bordering on arrogance, where having the superlative marmalade for one's enjoyment at breakfast is deemed as more important than grubby concerns like having extra stores of gunpowder for a potential battle for one's own survival. Ed might know intellectually that for Stede it really is a foolish oversight, but he can't help but be impressed by how it plays to the brand of the "Gentleman Pirate" who is so far above such concerns that he can prefer the elegance of a gentleman's lifestyle over the necessities of pirate life. That's part of what makes Stede fascinating to Ed.

The New Money vs Old Money trope is a fairly well-trodden one, going back thousands of years (Marius vs Sulla of the Roman Republic are one of my personal historical favorites). The trope, for those unfamiliar, is that Old Money doesn't respect New Money, but while New Money has more power and vivaciousness at its disposal it feels keenly the gatekeeping of Old Money, even if that Old Money is tired and in some cases almost spent. New Money desperately seeks the respect of Old Money, who will never give it, while Old Money jealously desires the fresh wealth of New Money and needs its vivaciousness to survive. Old Money, therefore, uses the byzantine restrictions of its wealthy lifestyle to lock New Money out of its inner circle, isolating and mocking New Money for not understanding things like which silverware to use and other silly rules that take a lifetime to learn.

What makes Stede interesting in OFMD and prevents the tired cliche of this meeting of Old vs New from playing out the same way as it does everywhere else is that Stede is giving up his privileged Old Money position to meet Ed in the middle. More importantly, Stede lacks the class arrogance of Old Money and respects pirates like Ed far more than he cares about the refinement of other people's upbringing or lack thereof. As far as we can tell within the story, Stede is fairly class-blind and as noted, seems to see the refinements of a gentleman to be a lifestyle choice one can be worthy of simply by having a sincere wish to do so, rather than something that is based on birth. (This is a huge part of why Ed finds him so fascinating and attractive by the way, in my opinion.)

Now, Stede is privileged enough that his "abandoning" of his Old Money fortune still puts him ahead of the pack, he can "start" with a well-appointed ship (though only a single one and not one that's competitive against a British naval vessel) and pay his crew a salary. But what makes Stede in some ways redeemable is that he does not trade on the overwhelming wealth of his Old Money to give himself a fleet or frame himself as better than other pirate captains (beyond dressing better, which goes back to Stede seeing being a gentleman as a lifestyle choice open to anyone rather than a birth privilege). Rather, Stede's reducing his personal wealth down to "upper middle class" or perhaps "lower upper class" to be the pirate captain of a single vessel because it's what he passionately wants to do. He cares about being a pirate captain more than being extremely wealthy and comfortable.

(Interestingly, in S2, we're going to see Stede without any wealth or property, even the Revenge, truly forced to rely on his own wits to survive and that promises to be a very interesting story.)

To go back to Ed, while he is a man of many uncertainties with a great deal of self-consciousness around his upbringing that still plays directly into the New Money trope. Ed these days is not poor or of a lower wealth class. He's also not insecure about his ability to rebuild his wealth again should he lose it. These days, he has supreme confidence in his ability to succeed in any industry he sets his mind to.

Rather, Ed's bashing his head against the glass ceiling of the next level of success. He wants to be respected and comfortable by those who are also wealthy and he wants to be welcomed among them. He craved the acceptance of the fancy nobles at the party and didn't want to hear from Stede that they're awful and not worth his time. It was shattering for him to be so roundly rejected by the French aristocrats. The New vs Old Money trope becomes a romance rather than a competition based on the fact that both Ed and Stede are meeting in the middle and the lesson conveyed from that encounter isn't that Ed as New Money will never be accepted by the Old Money elite, but rather that he doesn't need to be because the best part of that group, Stede, wants to meet him in the middle and there they get to be themselves and create a world that makes them both happy, away from society at large with all its restrictions and prejudices.

I think the point I'm trying to get to is part of a larger one I've been ruminating on around Ed's well-earned pride, that so often goes unremarked upon or unacknowledged. Ed deserves to be proud. He clawed his way to the top of a difficult and brutal field to become the most famed and feared pirate on the sea. His meeting with Stede is a meeting of two people who have reached the top of what society says we should want: to have a successful career or to have a spouse and children, and both have reached that goal and found themselves to still be unhappy. They meet in the middle in forging a new path. But Ed still deserves, for better or worse depending on the views of the audience, to be acknowledged for what he is on the page in the story: a wealthy man, albeit one who came up through a criminal enterprise (not to say that Old Money didn't!) who sees in Stede the final step that has been denied him, the final privileges of the life he has earned: luxury and the respect of his financial peers.

Clearly part of what drew his fascination to the idea of Stede, the Gentleman Pirate, is that someone would be born into the life he wants and then choose the life he has. He was immediately fascinated, perhaps seeing Stede as a means to an end only, perhaps in love with him a little from the first time he heard of him (as I believe) but definitely one way or the other set on an idea that he couldn't explain to Izzy (who wouldn't understand): that Ed hoped by interacting with this Old Money Gentleman Pirate to achieve by education or by violence that final step of respect and luxury that is so often denied to New Money, according to the age-old trope that is also often the reality.

#our flag means death #ofmd meta #I'm a little hesitant to put this one out there #but also I can't help but word vomit I guess so here we are #cw classism

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windslar · 7 months

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People You'd Like to Get to Know Better

i was tagged by @druidberries. Thank you!!

Tag under the cut because I went on a whole spiel about a popular novel that catches a lot of flak online and I don't know how to shut up (spoiler: it features 20-something-year-olds who open up brick-and-mortar businesses in downtown Boston like it's nothing, and trash in the form of a man named Kyle with an R).

Last Song: From the Start - Laufey

Favorite Color: Sage Tint by Benjamin Moore

Currently Watching: Only Murders in the Building and Modern Family (I watched the first couple seasons but never finished it. It's such a good background show).

Last Movie: Last one I watched in the theatres was Oppenheimer, but the last one I watched on streaming was Disenchanted (lol). I need more James Marsden in my life, especially after his performance in Jury Duty.

Currently Reading: It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover. Before you get the pitchforks, I'm only reading it because of the ~discourse~. Besides, I had it downloaded in my Kobo long before it really blew up on tiktok and my curiosity was reignited after I saw the uproar about the casting. I have a lot of problems with this book: (1) it's not well-written and I should've put the book down the moment she started writing letters to Ellen Degeneres and thought she was a good celebrity for being charitable, (2) it doesn't delve into the systemic issues that play a role in why women stay with their ab*ser, (3) the marketing for this book ain't shit for categorizing it a romance novel. BUT, all my problems aside, I don't think the story itself romanticizes domestic ab*se and I think most readers recognize this (see this Slate article that talks about it better than I could). Here's an excerpt:

It seems like this part of the novel’s plot could be read in two very different ways: one, which the Mary Sue seems to pursue, is that Lily doesn’t react to ab*se in the appropriate way, and the book endorses all of her choices, and therefore both deserve condemnation. The other is an exercise in empathy: Hoover wrote an imperfect book on domestic violence, but if we require all of these narratives to be morally unimpeachable, there’s no room to acknowledge that there is no such thing as a perfect victim.

I haven't finished the book, but I read Kyle with an R doesn't get a satisfying comeuppance proportional to his actions. And while it would be nice to see the trash taken out, isn't this ending plausible and representative of a common experience among families with a history of ab*se?

I think my big criticism with the backlash surrounding this book and others like it is the assumption that their readers are "impressionable young girls". Not every work of fiction needs to portray the protagonist as a hero in every sense of the word. Not every positive quality assigned to a villain is "making the character redeemable". Not every work of fiction is meant to be didactic and scrutinized as if it were instructions on how to live a perfect life. Maybe I'm giving more credit where it's due, but I really think most readers are able to think critically. People love reading about complicated characters in messy situations. And while I think the characters in Hoover's book could be written better and fleshed out a lot more, that is neither here nor there. My point is: stop assuming women are stupid and incapable of forming their own opinion. Enjoyment of fiction is not endorsement of the actions exhibited by deeply flawed characters.

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: Savory. But after writing all that and posting it here on tumblr, maybe SPICY.

Last Thing I Googled: That Slate article so I could link it and before that I googled Blake Lively and learned that she has 4! children.

Current Obsession: Rowing! But only if I have an episode of Modern Family playing.

Currently Working On: TJOLC posts, Lightflower is kind of on the back burner right now on account of I-hate-posing-sims and the next few scenes require a lot of it. I just wish there was AI that would pose my sims for me based on dialogue I've written. I would betray my principles, climb up the paywall if I have to.

I'm tagging anyone who sees this and

(ETA: look at me getting cut off by my own self. Sorry I was distracted and heating up some food while typing this, but yeah, I tag anyone who sees this.)

#text post #get to know me #tag

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amtrak12 · 2 months

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Thinking about this post about the mainstreamification of fandom and it was both too relatable and got me thinking about the early days of fandom going 'mainstream'.

I'd argue Community was one of the earliest fandoms to really become -- if not mainstream, then at least highly visible as the show was still airing. But it was so so different to what's happening now.

I think the main difference, other than it was 2010 and again one of the first fandoms to hit mainstream, is that no one treated what the writers said as the gospel truth. Fans and the showrunner/writers were in a two-way conversation with each other, and usually the format of that conversation was "No but...." It was a mutual rejection, while still inspiring a cult level of adulation from fandom. Because Community writers engaging with fandom was just another fourth wall broken, another genre parody in a show chock full of them. The writers didn't purposefully spite the fans (only the haters). They didn't shift to bashing a character because the wrong people loved them the wrong amount. They didn't stuff plot points down the garbage disposal because fans understood how to read foreshadowing. (Of course, Community was a sitcom that didn't have long term plot points to foreshadow, but still.) At most, the writers lovingly mocked the fans ala spoofing the Jeff/Annie S1 Gravity fanvid with their own Gravity edited montages in a canon episode -- which in turn only spawned more Gravity spoof fan vids by fandom. It was a mutual mocking the way siblings poke at each other.

And vice versa, no one in fandom cared whether the writers would ever make Jeff/Annie (or any ship) canon. If the writers couldn't see it, that was their problem! The fans could see it! And wrote a shit ton of fic about it. That was the point. Most people didn't even get upset when Dan Harmon and company claimed the Jeff/Annie shippers were all teenage girls shipping themselves with Jeff. We just busted up laughing because MOST of the fandom was 30+ year old women. Me at 22 was on the younger end. And sure, most of them did want to date Jeff themselves, but lbr being attracted to a fictional character is 90% of shipping. (And some people like myself were subconsciously shipping themselves with Annie because Alison Brie is absurdly hot.)

IDK what my point is here. I guess just that I was there at the beginning of fandom going mainstream and it's hard to regret that exact moment in time because it was fun! And rewarding! And spawned so so many creative works and discussions just like fandom is supposed to do.

But my god is it depressing that it ended up rotting fandom from the inside out. To the point that I try and say a S4 plot point is connected to S6 in a recent show when there's absolutely nothing to contradict this in canon -- and immediately get someone 'well actually'-ing me about what writers said their intentions for those plot points were in interviews and how that meant I was wrong. And it's not even because that fan preferred the writers' interpretation! They hate it actually! But they're so convinced that what a showrunner says is the absolute, irrefutable truth that they refuse to analyze the show for themselves and draw their own conclusions. Oh they'll complain about it all day long, sure. But engage with the narrative on a structural or meta level? Literally beyond them, and I can't wrap my head around that at all.

Fandom is not bound by writer intentions and never has been. Fandom isn't even bound by canon!!! Why the FUCK would writer intentions that can only be found in outside interviews be binding? Why would you slap shackles on yourself and then get mad that the chains cut into your wrists? Babe, look at me! No chains! I am free and happy not giving a fuck about what a show runner said! So why do you think I'm a problem that needs to be solved instead of your new life goal? Join me over here in headcanon land! Please!

#my meta #fandom history #some ranting #idek anymore

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teaandcrowns · 2 months

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Live Action: Thoughts and Etc. Episode 1

Whenever some new AtLA surge happens, whether animation renaissance or new series, I rise again from the grave and this time is no different.

This isn't anything formal, but I wanted to collect my thoughts as I go through rewatching episodes. I'm still not done with an initial watching of the new live action, but I've started rewatching the first couple of episodes anyway to note down what I liked about what the new series is doing and also where I think the narrative could have been stronger.

I don't mean this as a critique of the show on any other level other than on a narrative level—I'm not a film or visual studies person; my forte is in storytelling.

I also didn't want my reactions to just be seeming criticism, because there is a lot that I really like about the show (especially as I get deeper in episodes), so just consider this an initial reaction & thoughts on what could have been improved upon. So far, the first two episodes have been the weakest to me, which is really unfortunate because I worry a lot of people won't get beyond them. I know my opinion and thoughts don't matter because a) I'm not part of any kind of decision-making group that could actively affect this and b) it's already done with and out and it's not going to be changed, but we all love meta and thoughts around here, right? Right.

The format of these I'm imagining as follows: I'll go over what I liked or loved first, because there's more and more as episodes go on, and you should always, always start with what you appreciate and enjoyed about a work first before going into what might be improved upon. Next, I'll go into where I felt the narrative could have been improved upon, just from what I know with my Literature™ and in-progress MFA™ eyeballs. Finally, if applicable, what I personally didn't care for that doesn't actually impact the narrative one way or another. This final section will be potentially be under a cut if the post is too long. Everything will be noted as I do my second watch of the series, and will be in chronological order. I don't know that I'll have time to do proper paragraphs, so I hope a list format will be acceptable to anyone who's made it this far and remains interested in my thoughts.

Of course, this will contain spoilers for each episode, and all posts will be tagged "atla la ep#" and "atla la ep# spoilers" (where the # in each tag will be the corresponding episode number) so folks can blacklist as needed.

Now, on to the main event—

What I liked:

-The settings are lush and gorgeous! Holy moly! -The costumes are phenomenal so far. Absolutely fantastic. -Even if some of the actors are a little stiff, I am loving all of them. -Loved the airbenders fighting back. No notes. -The dialogue between Iroh and Aang in the brig is actually perfectly nuanced. I really like it. -REALLY love Aang pilfering Zuko's Avatar journal -Also love Katara being the one to extinguish Zuko's final fire blast with her waterbending. Setting up that good rivalry between them in s1. -I like the expansion of the SWT village and Katara being in the old FN ship in lieu of the otter penguin sledding scene -Love Zuko being an artist. I like to think it's a nice, early nod to learning under Piandao

What Could be Improved Narratively:

-Stop the Sozin scene right after he burns the earthbender -When Gyatso has Aang in the room with Yangchen's statue, the exchange should have stopped with: "You have always been special." "I never asked to be special." "But you are," and the writing should have allowed Aang to put together that he is the Avatar without explicitly saying "Aang, you are the Avatar." If they took that line out and let the silence hang and then taken out all explicit statements of "You are the Avatar," so they would have been talking around actually saying it, it would have improved the scene. -Remove Aang's little monologue with Appa before the fly off except for maybe hugging Appa and saying, "I'm scared" -Show Aang and Appa getting caught in the storm. There's a very small missing piece of that scene. -Could pare down the exposition in Zuko & Iroh's argument about following the light to not explicitly say "and take my rightful place as heir," as Iroh saying "it may be time to consider the throne isn't everything," and Zuko replying, "Maybe it wasn't to you" does that work. BUT I actually don't think this is as clunky as other dialogue-exposition parts. -Either excise Aang's flashbacks to saving himself with the Avatar state before he wakes or remove it from earlier in the episode; we don't need it twice. -the WT kids running outside of the village to play is awkward. Why wouldn't they play inside the walls? If it's so Appa wouldn't land inside the village, this is easily solved by having Aang airbend over the walls when searching for Appa. -I know Kanna's monologue about the FN attacking is an homage to the original, but it feels hamhanded. I would excise it. Remove everything she says in this scene in the tribe meeting except, "The last time a comet was seen was 100 years ago." -Honestly, excise most of Kanna's dialogue. It's all hamhanded exposition; we're seeing the "hand of the author(s)" here. When Zuko's ship arrives all she has to say is, "They're looking for him." Let the reveal be Katara saying it to Sokka when he's going to give Aang up. -Replace the repeated scenes with Gyatso when Aang discovers his skeleton with other memories. We don't need a rehash of something in the same episode.

What I Personally Did Not Care For:

-I want bigger fire from the firebenders. It's a comet that powers them up ffs. -Katara needs to express a great desire to learn waterbending in this episode somewhere -Sokka and Katara being caught in a current should have been from Katara's angry paddling to echo her angry waterbending from the original -I also wouldn't reveal Kya's death in flashback flashes so early -When Zuko sees Aang for the first time it's a perfectly missed opportunity for "You're just a kid!" "Yeah, well you're just a teenager!" -Unsure why Katara said, "The thing about losing everything is that's when you find out how strong you are" instead of something like, "I can't imagine how this must feel. But you don't have to be alone. We're here with you."

#atla la ep1 #atla la ep1 spoilers #i hesitate to tag this #atla meta #or #atla analysis #because it's not really either but for internal blog searching purposes i'll do it #i'm not at the point where i'm ready or prepared to do a close reading of the text yet

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