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purrincess-chat · 1 year

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In honor of this fine April month, what are your favorite things about Adrinette?

This ask is like 2-3 years old I think, but I never forgot about it. I just needed time to assemble my thoughts, and I think now is the best time to answer it because hooooo how far they've come since this ask was sent.

I'm going to break this up into sub-categories so that it's not 8 pages of me just rambling about how cute they are, though I will probably still ramble a lot about how cute they are. But we're going to look at the entire span of their relationship from Origins through Revelation in s5. So, if you haven't watched the out of order episodes from s5 or are waiting for everything to air before you watch, this is your spoiler warning. Let's get into it.

Enemies speedrun

We all love a good enemies-to-lovers story. There's just something inherently satisfying about seeing two people go from hating each other to falling in love. One aspect of their relationship that I appreciate is that sparks didn't fly immediately when they met as civilians. It's not a true enemies-to-lovers, more of a speedrun if you will, because Marinette did lowkey kind of hate him at first. It wasn't until she realized there had been a misunderstanding and saw Adrien's true character that she fell in love with him.

Y’all know the umbrella scene has me in a chokehold always and always will because that moment is just imprinted into my brain. The moment when she truly sees him. Not a marketing image or magazine cover. Not a spoiled rich boy that's friends with her bully. Him. She sees his vulnerability, his desire to be accepted, his kindness. That's what she falls in love with. That was the moment when Adrinette became my favorite side because it was just so raw and genuine and beautifully crafted, and I think that moment has only become more impactful as their relationship has progressed. To see two people who started off at odds, even for a short time, grow to love each other so much is just *chefs kiss*

Seeing beyond the mask

Another thing I love is how Marinette has always been the person to see Adrien for more than what is presented. Yes, she spends a lot of time ogling over his pictures in magazines throughout the show, which some people seem to think is a cardinal sin because how dare a teenage girl think the boy she likes is hot apparently, but when push comes to shove, she has always been the one to look deeper. The umbrella scene is the first instance of that. From the beginning, people wrote him off as being a rich daddy's boy model. Alya literally calls him as such in Origins. They make assumptions based off of his image/status. The difference is Marinette eventually sees past it, and she continues to see past it.

And I know some people are going to say, "What about Nino?" But Nino has taken a huge step back since s1 when it comes to their friendship. Yes, Nino is the first person to give him a chance, but any other time he just waves stuff related to him away. Oh, his dad said he can't come? Oh well. Everyone, including Nino, always writes Marinette off when she's worried about him as Marinette just being Marinette, but she has always seen more than other people when it comes to him. And that's no shade to Nino or saying Nino isn't still his best friend because Nino has tried and failed to help Adrien before. He understands Adrien's life is complicated, but he doesn't think anything more than that. (that we have seen on screen anyway) It's a winless fight that can't be helped.

Marinette always pushes further, like in the NY special when everyone is like oh, Gabriel doesn’t want Adrien to come to NY, what a shame, and Marinette is like I will fight that man myself if I have to, and she does. People have mixed feelings about the canon-ness of the Specials, but I deeply appreciate the Adrinette we got in the NY special, even if it was angsty in the end. I love when Adrien expresses his gratitude to her for sticking up for him because it’s truthfully the first time he’s really gotten to see it happen out of all the times she’s stuck her neck out for him. I think that moment aided his confession in Risk because Adrien feels like he can confide in her and be understood rather than dismissed. Because why should the rich boy complain about having nice things and money and girls falling all over him and getting to travel the world? But Marinette pays attention to him, not just the shiny filter everyone else sees. He's unhappy, and she sees that when all of their other friends don't.

Season 5 has given us a lot of insight into Adrien's home life and how he feels about it. A key moment I think a lot of people have glossed over is in Transmission when he tells Marinette that the Adrien most people know is just a marketing image, and how the two of them can be different. He is inviting her into his world that other people have only scratched the surface of, and as their relationship progresses, she gets to see how thin the glamour really is. I know her speech in Emotion went to the wrong person, but the message still rings true. She doesn't think less of him for being trapped and doing what his father asks. She knows he doesn't have another option and feels stuck, and she wants him to know that she loves him and will always be there for him until they figure it out together.

Another key moment along that same vein is when Marinette goes to talk to Gabriel about their relationship after Emotion, and they have the pancake conversation. Gabriel literally offers her fame and fortune, a successful career in the business she's always wanted. He could hand that to her, but she says no. She sees beyond the shiny glimmer Gabriel presents to the rest of the world, and she values Adrien more than anything. That whole scene where she fights back and disobeys Gabriel's order to find Adrien and tell him it will be alright shows how deeply integrated she's become in his life. She doesn't care if it's hard. She wants to fight the dragon with him, and she's not giving up until they can have their happily ever after. I just think their whole narrative where Marinette is the knight fighting to save the prince is incredibly sweet, and it makes me want to root for them. They're made for each other because they fight for each other and see sides of each other that no one else sees, and I think that's beautiful.

Learning how to love

I absolutely love the way they’re approaching their relationship this season, and how we can see the impact of Adrien’s past loves in the way he approaches her. With Kagami he wasn't decided enough. With Ladybug he was too decided. I've talked about how Glaciator 2 completely changed things for him before, so I won't rehash that too much, but we can see it in the way he approaches Marinette gently and patiently this season. He doesn't push his feelings onto her or demand that she hurry up and decide her feelings. In Migration Adrien isn’t pushing her to open up to him completely right away. He knows she has things she’s not telling him, but rather than focusing on what he wants or thinks their relationship should look like, he worries that she is stressing herself out and hurting herself for his sake, and he doesn’t want that. In Derision, he is patient and constantly checks on her when she’s not doing well. When he finally learns what’s wrong, he listens to her about what she needs and comforts and supports her instead of insisting that she hurry up and figure it out. Both of those things came from his prior loves. With Marinette, he's finally figured out the right amount of push and pull, and the two of them are learning together what they both need and how to love each other in the ways they need to be loved.

One of the reasons Protection is one of my top episodes so far this season is because Adrien realizes that Marinette needs more out of him than he’s been giving, and he puts in more effort! He wants her to feel comfortable with him and puts in the work to help her overcome her anxiety around him. The whole picnic set up is so incredibly thoughtful and sweet and clearly tailored just for her. I love that a message of their love is that you don’t need anything flashy. Adrien is filthy rich and could provide a lot of flash, but instead he sets up a romantic picnic in his backyard. They play games and talk and laugh and watch the clouds in their pajamas. And it’s so sweet! Even the song he sings her in Perfection is about how he doesn’t care about any of those things. He just wants to be with her. Their love is beautifully simple, and I love to see that after several seasons of Marinette making everything overcomplicated. They care about each other, and that’s enough.

She fell first, he fell harder

I am so obsessed with how once Adrien realized he loves her, he was all in, immediately asking her out, swooning over her. She literally spouts nonsense around him half the time, and he's just like aww, she always knows what to say. I love her sm! I dunno. It’s just refreshing after seeing Marinette have zero chill for 4 seasons to see him having absolute heart eyes at her now. When everyone else is shaking their head at her Marinette-isms, Adrien just smiles and laughs with her. One of my all time favorite things when writing their pairing is portraying the moment Adrien realizes he loves her and seeing how his perception changes after that, so seeing that be canon is everything I could have ever asked for. And he doesn’t hesitate to let her know how he feels and how deeply he cares for her. We love to see it.

Love built from friendship, trust, and mutual respect

I know this aspect is hotly contested and controversial in fandom, but I don’t care. Other people’s inability to watch media with their eyes open and understand what’s happening on screen isn’t my problem. Their development from being uncertain and even hostile to each other to being so supportive and caring toward each other is so sweet and satisfying. Seeing Marinette go from barely being able to get a coherent sentence out around him and constantly being jealous of every girl that talked to him to confidently holding his hand, telling him she loves him, and not being threatened even when his father’s marketing campaign is coupling him with his ex-girlfriend is such satisfying character development.

Marinette fell in love with Adrien for his kindness and sincerity. Slowly but surely they became friends, then good friends, and along the way they developed a sweet love and respect for each other. When people challenge Marinette’s honor, Adrien speaks up. When their friends think Adrien sent a mean message, Marinette knows it couldn’t possibly be from him. They see each other, even when others don’t, and I love that about them.

Protective/Sacrificing

Along that same vein, I love how much they protect and sacrifice for each other. Since s1, we’ve seen Marinette sacrifice chances to impress him for his ultimate happiness. When he thinks her scarf came from his dad, when she quietly returns his father’s book so he can come back to school, when she gives up her feelings when he’s in love with someone else. Marinette has always wanted him to be happy, even if that’s not with her. She swallows her feelings when he’s with Kagami, and even tries to help Kagami reignite her feelings after they break up.

In Adrien, we see a protective nature come out in him when it comes to Marinette. How many times has he tackled her away from danger and cradled her head? When she gets bumped to the back of the class, he goes back to join her so she’s not alone. When trouble breaks out, he tells her specifically to find somewhere safe. He took on a statue Hawkmoth with an umbrella to protect her. When he thought she was sad, he tried to cheer her up. When he found out another boy broke her heart and felt no remorse, he snapped. When he realized how bad Chloe used to bully Marinette, he cut ties with her. When Kagami got the wrong impression of Marinette, he set the record straight. They both pay so much attention to each other and are always trying to keep the other one safe and happy. They’re so sweet.

Literally the softest ever

Okay, this is my section to gush about how cute they are. I mean look at them.

You could make several collages of all of the soft looks Adrien has given her over the course of the show.

Look at them blushing

And holding hands

They are the cutest couple! Literally soulmates, made for each other, perfect in every way for each other wow.

Two absolutely unhinged halves of a whole idiot

Even with as cute as they are, these two are still a chaotic duo, and I love that for them. She literally had him pick up constipation capsules for her once, and he didn't bat an eye. She kissed him when she thought he was a statue, and that was the moment he realized he might like her. She full on panicked about sitting next to him on an airplane, and he was totally unfazed. Even hugged her the next morning and talked about how grateful he was to have her as a friend. When she couldn’t figure out an automatic door, he stayed with her the whole time and jumped to catch her when she fell. We stan two halves of a whole idiot.

Slow Burn

Listen, I know that we were going crazy over the will-they-won’t-they all this time, but seeing them together now has made it all worth it. Watching season 1 again knowing that someday Marinette does confess her feelings and get the boy is just everything. All of their little moments, the soft looks Adrien always gave her and how much we clowned on him for being in denial about his feelings for her. How he finally wised up and realized he loved her. Watching their relationship grow and develop over the last several years has certainly been a journey, but looking back at it now, all of those little hints and pieces we picked up but didn’t know if they’d ever pay off have finally paid off. They’re canon. Like actually, properly canon. And I’m loving that they didn’t wait until the very end for them to confess, but instead are continuing the slow burn by addressing their trauma and Adrien’s complicated home life. They’re dating and still fighting to be together. I love that their love wasn’t just an end-all-be-all prize to win in the very end. They got together and things weren’t perfect. All of their problems didn’t magically get solved. They still have to work together to figure things out and are continuing to grow together. It’s the goodest shit.

Carving their own path

The last thing I want to talk about is how much I appreciate that they are carving their own path for their relationship. Their friends all have this image in their mind of what they need to be happy. Adrien’s father has his own image for what Adrien needs to be happy, but the two of them? They’re like thanks but no thanks. We’re gonna figure this out on our own. Their fairytale love story has been anything but since they got together. Marinette was still having nervous breakdowns around him and running away. Adrien’s father was constantly trying to keep them apart. But despite all of that, they continue to work together to sort through all of the messes and be there for each other. After Adrien learns that Marinette has unresolved trauma that he’s been unknowingly triggering all this time, he makes a change to help her work through that. When Adrien is stuck between what he wants and what his dad wants, Marinette promises not to give up on him.

They’ve told us since the very beginning that these two are made for each other, and we’ve gotten bits and pieces over the course of the show demonstrating the ways they work together in perfect sync, but this season is really showing us why these two are made for each other. It’s because they work for it, and they work together for it. Yes, they have undeniable chemistry and are a perfect team, but when things get hard, they don’t give up on each other.

I dunno. I just think they’re neat.

#cat replies #asks #adrinette #adrienette #adrinette april #them #rip to the haters but i stay winning in life #ml spoilers

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stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale · 3 years

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Top 5 Character Deaths That Made Me Side-Eye the Writers

There are a lot of character deaths in TWDG... obviously. It a series about the literal dead walkin’ around and eating people, so as you’re playing, one of your favorite characters is bound to meet such a fate. To give this series credit, it does have quite a few well-executed deaths that, while I hate them, they have a purpose in the story that works.

The best example of this is Lee’s death-- we all hate that Lee dies, but it’s well-done. It serves its purpose, it acted as both a shock and a slow-burn for the player, and left us all an emotional mess.

However, we’re not talking about the “good” deaths today. No, we’re talking about the character deaths that are poorly executed, cheap, lazy, and just plain dumb... they’re the deaths that make me side-eye the writing team and wonder what the fuck happened there.

By the way, it was reeeeeeal fun narrowing it down to only five deaths, because it seems like for every great death, there’s at least two bad ones.

5. Mariana and her death that ruined ANF’s potential story

I’ve talked at length about Mariana’s death and how much I hate it. Like, I get it TWDG... you love your sudden deaths and you’re so edgy for killing off a child character because you’ve never done that before... but maybe consider things a little further before pulling the trigger?

Yeah, killing off Mariana the way they did got a reaction outta people when it happened, and we got the burial scene if you stayed with Clementine... but you didn’t consider the future of this storyline? You pretend you did by name dropping Mari when it’s convenient, but then throw it out the window when it comes to characters like David or Gabe.

Listen, I know that ANF is a mess and what’s the point in telling the mess that it’s a mess? Well, I’m still annoyed at the writers for wasting the biggest opportunity for this game’s story, something that could’ve saved it from being a mess.

And I get it, you gotta make a death quota, so instead of killing Mariana off... why not kill Kate off instead? Oh no? We don’t get the stupid love triangle that no one actually enjoys or is engaged in?

Instead of this dumb story about Javi falling in love with his sister-in-law but oh no David’s back.... we could’ve had a story about Javi losing Kate and being left to care for two children by himself. Mariana and Gabe are all he has left, and he going to do whatever he can to keep them safe all while the three of them are mourning Kate.

Then David comes back, and he immediately takes these kids away from Javi.

There is no stupid storyline with Kate, but an actual conflict between two brothers who were never on the same page and two kids caught in the middle.

Plus, Mariana herself as a character really could’ve brought something to the table. She could’ve brought out a lot in David’s character since she seems to be more like Javi.

Her death is just... annoying. It’s frustrating when you know they could’ve told a better story with her alive, something ANF desperately needed.

My side-eye is one of disappointment and annoyance.

4.Luke and his easily preventable drowning

Ugh.... where to even begin?

Luke really just gets butchered as a character throughout the second half of S2, and the writers end up demolishing the set up they placed at the beginning of the season for a Luke vs Kenny thing.

Why? Well, Luke vs Kenny was the initial ending they were gonna go with, but because this season went through all kinds of bullshit, they scrapped that and replaced Luke with Jane... and it’s so dumb.

Hell, it kind of ruins a lot. Not only did it ruin Luke, a character that many players loved, but it forces the new character of Jane, who we only get two episodes to get to know, so they can fade Luke out.

But that’s not all.

His death is so... ugh. It’s stupid, okay? Stupid and easily preventable, but noooo... we gotta kill Luke off for reasons because all we know is that S1 killed off a lot of characters and we’re gonna do that again but worse because we failed to understand what made those deaths impactful in the first place.

Lots of character death and despair = good game.

Yep, uh-huh. Okay.

So we all know that Luke’s leg is hurt, yeah? Great, so you’d think that the group that has an injured man and a new born baby would be extra cautious and go around the frozen lake. Yeah, Arvo says that it’s safe but let’s not take any chances.

But no. We gotta go across like a group of dingdongs and whattya know-- the ice begins to crack beneath Luke’s feet. Now, even here, we coulda got him outta there safely... if Bonnie wasn’t a dingus.

Think about it. If we shot the walkers who were coming towards Luke with all their weight, he could’ve slowly scooted away, even if he’s already fallen through. BUT NO. Bonnie either guilts Clementine into going towards him, adding more weight to the already fragile ice as Luke tells her to stop, or Bonnie will go over there herself... and she’s a full grown woman soooo her weight breaks the ice.

Good job, you dipsticks.

When you have to make your characters into morons in order to move the plot along and kill off characters....maybe do some rethinking, yeah?

3. Mitch and his shock-value death

This death is so dumb... so incredibly, dumb. Even now, I can’t help but give full side-eye to the writers every time one of them tries to justify this death.

I’m sorry, but this death didn’t have the impact you wanted it to have. And because there’s always someone who says, “Mitch didn’t die for shock value, you just can’t tell the difference between a good and bad death” lemme tell you a thing.

What was the point of killing of Mitch? Well, according to those who worked on TFS, it was to show that Lilly and the delta are serious. This is when shit gets real, and when Lilly is established as a bad bitch who will do whatever it takes to get what she wants. We should be scared of her now.

Except no.

This scene doesn’t tell me that Lilly is a bad bitch. It tells me that she has good reflexes, and going off her reaction after killing Mitch.... I’m not fucking scared of this dumbass. If anything, this scene says more about Mitch than it does Lilly. It says that Mitch is also a dumbass for running at her like he did.

Y’know what would’ve been more impactful? If Mitch didn’t immediately get stabbed in the throat, but instead, actually got her on the ground and struggled with Lilly. Then, Lilly gets the upper hand and when you think she’s about to send Mitch to the cart, she fucking murders him in front of everyone to prove a point.

There’s no remorse, it’s slow enough for Lilly to actually process what’s happening and show that she does know what she’s doing. That would scare me. That would show me that these people aren’t fucking around and they’re willing to kill some of them if that means getting the rest for their army.

You still get your shock value death but it actually does something other than kill a character off.

I’m really supposed to believe this is the same Lilly who can order to have Louis’ tongue cut off?

But it doesn’t end there. No, no... there’s another part to Mitch’s death that annoys me, and it’s how insistent everyone was that his death is going to have a greater impact on the second half of the story. It had a purpose within the story, we did it for a reason.

...I mean, it has an impact on Willy and his arc for the second half.

But that’s it.

Oh... oh, what’s that? Oh, you were referring to those throwaway lines about Tenn? “He was screwing up again, just like when he got Mitch killed.”

OOOOOH.... I see, that’s what Mitch’s death was really amounting to... some lines dealing with whether or not AJ shot Tenn. Well, I guess I was wrong. Mitch’s death wasn’t just shock value. It really had a big purpose. In fact, Mitch’s death has the biggest impact on the series. Fuck Marlon and Brody’s deaths, and Lilly and James, and hell, fuck Tenn’s death, too. They’re meaningless compared to Mitch’s death. You did it, guys. You really did it.

....Okay, I’m done. I’m just... salty, I fully admit.

Being serious again, Mitch’s death is probably the worst in TFS as far as unpreventable deaths go and the real reason I side-eye the writers is because they tried to tell us it was going to have this huge impact in the future and it just... didn’t.

2. Nick and his offscreen death.

I’m sorry, but what the fuck happened here? Why- what are you- how the hell did this happen??

I’m actually baffled.

Someone wrote this.

They set up at the end of ep3 that Nick is shot.... then ep4 comes and we find him like this. I just... did someone on the writing staff not wanna do their job that day? Someone was working on the story and at the last minute forgot Nick was a character, so they were like “Eh, he’s not important anyway, and it adds to the shittiness of everything so we’ll pretend this was 100% intentional.”

Nick was one of your more interesting characters and you really thought killing him off like this was the way to go, huh?

Like, his first death is shitty, but in the very least it kind of makes sense.

But this?

This is horrible. If I wrote this, I’d be embarrassed.

I just... I’m so tired of S2 right now.

This is at #2 because it’s just lazy, bad writing. At least with Luke, Mitch, and Mariana, we got to see their deaths and they had some, even if just a little, impact on the story afterward.

But Nick?

Nothin’.

Even Luke, who is the closest person to Nick, name drops him maybe twice? It’s just.... nothing.

And yeah, you can come at me with the “oh well not every death has to have meaning!”

This is a story, okay? This is a story crafted with characters who have arcs by people who wanted it to be a success, and usually that means having satisfying conclusions.... or, intentionally unsatisfying if that acts as a natural conclusion to their story or is a reoccurring theme.

Nick’s death is just the writers falling flat on their faces and hoping no one would notice.

1. Sarah and both of her shitty deaths.

Ugh. UGH.

Okay.

I’m not even side-eyeing anymore-- I’m fully glaring.

I don’t have to tell you how shitty both of Sarah’s deaths are. We all played S2, we all know that no matter what you do, Sarah dies in ep4. You can try to save her, she lives a little bit longer, and then falls to her death... and both deaths have her being devoured alive by walkers.

Now, this is enough to annoy me. First off, I guess my choices don’t really matter. Sure, you can justify this as one of those “sometimes you can’t save someone, no matter how hard you try” ...and fine. Sure, if they had bothered to execute that point well, then great.

But I disagree that the writers had that in mind when they were killing Sarah off.

In fact, I know what what going on in their brains-- “God, can’t wait to kill Sarah off! Give us any reason to do it! She’s so damn annoying!”

The writers have openly admitted that a lot of the team were just waiting to kill Sarah off, waiting for any reason, so when the major part of the community who take everything at surface level because why think? kept complaining about Sarah, they jumped on the opportunity to kill her off.... but the deaths are dumb.

Listen, this isn’t like when the writers planned on killing Lee off. You can plan a death and even be excited about it because you’re excited about the story and execution of it all. You can be excited to see the heartbreaking end of this character’s story that you crafted because you know you put everything you had into it.

These deaths were lazy and the product of a team who didn’t care about the character. Sarah dies and no one cares.

Sure, you leave her to die the first time and Jane does her thing about how you can’t save everyone, she talks about Jaime, and then Luke exposes himself as the fake Luke by agreeing that leaving Sarah behind was probably the right thing. Like what?

Now as much as I hate that first one, the second one is even worse.

For some reason, Sarah is standing in the corner while they’re trying to fight off the walkers instead of being inside with Rebecca... y’know, where she would be if this was logical.

Then the deck breaks and Sarah falls, trapped under a pile of wood. Jane, despite being the one who sees Sarah as a liability, goes down there to try and help her after Clementine begs her to.

But because the writers don’t know what they’re doing, Jane gets hit by a random piece of wood and can’t get Sarah out in time, leaving her to be eaten alive by walkers.

Then AJ is born and no one cares about Sarah ever again.

I just....

Could’ve had an interesting story arc with a character who just lost her father in such a gruesome way, a character that already deals with anxiety and other problems that you never bothered to explain other than “she isn’t like Clementine” and you could’ve had her grow.

But I guess that would’ve taken effort.... and screen time away from Kenny, and god forbid we ever do that.

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Honorable Mentions

-Ava falling to her death in the most comedic way possible, made even more hilarious by David’s two seconds of mourning. -Omid.... because hope is dead. Do you get it? Hope? is dead? Because Omid means hope? Do you get it?? -Honestly you could put most of S2′s deaths on this list because oh my god. -Ben because I’m still a salty bitch. -I also wanna add Louis and Violet’s deaths on the bridge mostly because they die, Clem is sad for two seconds, Tenn says sorry, and then no one cares. Yeah, yeah, they mourned off screen and I call that lazy bullshit. -Hell, throw Tenn’s death on here, too, for similar reasons-- no one but Louis/Violet and AJ seem to care. Even Clementine is like “whatever” after it happens.

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Y’know, picking this one seemed like a good idea at the time, but by now I’m just annoyed by all these dumb deaths. So, what are your thoughts? Are there any deaths that make you question the writers that didn’t end up on the list? Do you agree or disagree with my list? Lemme know, we can have a friendly discussion about it.

Have any suggestions for future T5F’s? Feel free to send ‘em in! :D

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Next week’s T5F Top 5 Favorite Louis Moments

#twdg t5f #twdg clementine #twdg javier #twdg kate #twdg mariana #twdg gabe #twdg david #twdg luke #twdg jane #twdg kenny #twdg nick #twdg sarah #twdg mitch #twdg willy #twdg louis #twdg violet #twdg tenn #after this i need to talk about muh boy #louis content coming next friday

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dramaticviolincrescendo · 3 years

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Okay, what are your thoughts on Ian's relationships? With his family, his boyfriends, and Mandy (since I think that's the only friend he's had)

Oh, no. Ohhhhhhhh, no. Now you’ve done it. You’ve asked about my dear, darling favorite character on the show. My love for one Ian Gallagher runs deep, which means this answer is going to run super long. The good, the bad, and everything in between—Ian Gallagher lives rent free in my brain and always will. I derive so much satisfaction from seeing Ian interact with other people, in whatever capacity that might be. I admire and aspire to the compassion he has shown for others over the years, even and perhaps most especially those who arguably haven’t earned it. He tries so hard to be good to people, and seeing their love for him manifest when he’s reached such lows where he can’t even fathom why the love of his life would want to be with him forever? That’s powerful.

So, yeah. I said I could write essays on these characters, and that’s exactly what you’re about to get: five hours and 6k words’ worth of my thoughts. (I am so sorry. There will be text walls.)

Let’s dive into Ian’s many and multifaceted relationships—his family, his friends, and his romantic pursuits.

Ian and Family

Ian told us where he stood on this in the very first season, and it set the standard for his character for eleven years to come. Faced with a prospect that others in his position could only dream of—not being Frank’s son and having a wealthy father with a functional, prosperous lifestyle mere miles away—Ian refused to buy into it. He refused to do what might have been objectively better for his future by seeking a relationship with Clayton. In that household, he would have had access to a better public school, more financial resources, a tutor to help him where he was struggling, and less urgency for him to work so that he could enjoy being a kid. When he got sick, he would have had access to better healthcare, too. Perhaps he would have had a better shot at West Point from that background than he did at home. But that’s just it: home was with his family, and he was very clear that they didn’t live in that nice house. All he wanted—all he wanted—was to be with his brothers and sisters. He has never referred to them as only half-siblings or half-cousins; he has never even used the words, “you’re not my dad,” on Frank. That’s his family, the people he loves most in the world, and he’s always been at his best when he’s with them and at his worst when he’s not. Let’s look at each of them:

1. Frank: It is so striking to me that Ian doesn’t appear to hold the outright contempt for Frank that Fiona, Lip, and Debbie have exhibited at different points over the years. Aside from the handful of instances where they’ve gotten into physical altercations (which Frank always initiated) and kicking him out of the house on occasion, Ian is simply indifferent to him. But there are these moments, these brief glimmers of mutual attachment and loyalty, if those are the right words. In the scene where Ian famously doesn’t count to three before using the pepper spray on him, Frank starts saying how his New Gallaghers weren’t his real kids—that Ian is his real son, and Frank is his real father. It’s a passing thought uttered while trying to manipulate his way into the house that neither of them think much of, nor does the audience…until you remember that biologically, Frank isn’t his father, and he certainly hasn’t behaved like one either. Ian has more right than anyone to comment on that, but he doesn’t because Frank is his father. He’s the father that Ian idly hoped wouldn’t come to his wedding yet sat joking about with Debbie rather than getting pissed off that he was making out with some lady in front of everyone. He’s the father who sat at the table with them eating breakfast in 11x03 and claimed Mickey was the man in their relationship without Ian saying a word to him about it, and who Ian saw no issue with taking Franny to school when no one else could. In s4, as far removed from his family as he’d been for a while, Ian still went straight to the hospital when he heard that Frank was at death’s door. We focus so much on his attitude towards Monica because of how obvious it was that we frequently miss these tiny moments and their implications. It would take an awful lot of patience, compassion, and love not to write Frank off completely after all he’s done. Not necessarily our standard definition of love between a son and his father, perhaps, but a loving soul.

2. Monica: I have actually written a pretty lengthy post about his relationship with her because while their shared mental illness definitely plays a role in his feelings toward her, that grew complicated far earlier than his diagnosis. The first time we meet her, we see that he has a visceral reaction to news of her presence. He runs. When Ian can’t process strong emotions, that’s what he’s done in the past. I happened upon an interview Cameron did just after the end of s1 where he mentioned something I had already been thinking: Ian’s age when Monica left is extremely important. He was a kid in s1, but one who could roll with the punches, sometimes literally. She left them two years before that. Ian would have been in middle school, roughly as old as Debbie was when she still called Frank “daddy” and forgave him for everything he did. It’s an awkward age that once again set Ian in something of a danger zone—too old to accept an excuse or no explanation at all, but not old enough to process the situation in a healthy way. And then she’s back all of a sudden with no warning. Ian doesn’t cry like Debbie, and he doesn’t typically get explosively angry like Fiona. He can’t deal, so he runs. He hangs back. He only speaks when he has to and compartmentalizes: Monica wants to take Liam, and they need to stop her. It doesn’t have to be about her leaving. They have a goal—he can focus on that. And then she’s back a year later, saying she’s here to stay while Fiona seems to take her at her word and Lip isn’t there to ground everyone. Ian tries so hard to behave like Lip would with his biting sarcasm and attempts to stay emotionally distant in a way that seemed pretty exaggerated for Ian, but he’s also dealing with a fresh wave of guilt over Mickey going to juvie—and Monica gets it. She’s the only person to acknowledge that he’s in pain and actively try to make it better. She’s the only one who really knows at the time, but that hardly matters. This poor kid, whose mother left him when he still needed her, has her standing in front of him and saying she’s sorry and listening when he speaks and taking him dancing—just the two of them. Embarrassing as it was and harmful as it could have been, she tried to facilitate his dreams when no one else wanted him to go into the military. She was there for him when he went AWOL. She came for him when he was arrested and even wanted to make a place for him in her new life, unrealistic as it was. This goes so much deeper than them both being bipolar. Ian’s comment about her parachuting into their lives in s7 wasn’t about Mickey or her role in them breaking up. He trusted her. He wanted her. He needed her. And she’d convinced him that she would be there—until she left. Over and over again. She was there for him and unintentionally took advantage of how desperately he still needed his mother. She made him keep loving her, and that’s both a blessing that has him crying into a voluminous man’s arms when she passes and a curse that wrecked him more than once.

3. Fiona: The trust these two have for each other cannot be understated. Fiona has discussed things with Ian that she never brought up around any of the other kids throughout the entire series. In the pilot episode, she tells him about feeling needed and takes his opinion on the matter to heart. At the end of the season, he’s the one she talks to about the car because she can trust him to give her an answer even without speaking. In s2, she tells Lip that the two of them are her rocks, and we see that time and time again. That’s part of what makes their falling out over the church hit that much harder: it’s Ian and Fiona. The only time they’d been on the outs in any serious manner up to that point was when Ian was adjusting to his new reality and they were trying to find a balance between sister and caretaker. Otherwise, that bond of trust had never been severed—not until Ian literally sold himself only for it to amount to nothing in the end because she had no idea the lengths to which he’d gone to get that building. That damage gets mended, thankfully, but what a powerful period of time when those two were the only ones who’d never really been at each other’s throats. There is a downside to that trust, though. As I mentioned before, Ian was so responsible and put together when he was younger that Fiona didn’t think twice about his situation with Ned or that he ran away. Not even seventeen yet, and she was telling Debbie that she didn’t like his decision to leave but trusted him. That is one of the things I love about this show—even something like trust that we always prop up as an important factor in our relationships can betray us in the most unexpected ways.

4. Lip: I won’t go into it here, but the relationship they share is something that means a lot to me on a personal level. It’s part of how I knew that Ian would become my favorite character pretty early on. The way he simultaneously admires and envies Lip, loves and is annoyed by him, relies on him and is desperate to pave his own path in the world—what a beautiful and accurate depiction of what it means to be a younger sibling. Lip is the first person to discover that he’s gay and openly accept him for it. (I think what he tried with Karen came from a well-meaning place even if it was horribly, horribly misguided.) Lip is the one who tries to get him into West Point, hate it as he does. He helps Ian when Terry is after him, takes care of him in the aftermath of the wedding when he realizes just how deeply Ian feels for Mickey, searches the whole damn city for him when he finds out that Ian is in trouble, gets him a job, leans on him in his own time of need… He’s not perfect. He slips up, just like Ian does. Some things break my heart, like Lip insisting that he’s earned his own space when his little brother is asking him for safe harbor or Ian thanking him for being his brother outside the prison. But they love each other so much, and I just… I can’t possibly put into words how much I love their dynamic.

5. Debbie, Carl, and Liam: I’m grouping these three together because they’re further separated from Ian in age, so we see a lot of the same trends with them as a whole. Ian loves taking care of people. We know this. We also know that Fiona and Lip don’t typically want him taking care of them—they’re the ones who take care of him when he needs it, specifically Lip. With the younger three, however, Ian can be the Big Brother. He can shake his head in utter bafflement at Debbie’s obsession with holding her breath for two minutes, walk Carl through what he needs to go camping, and promise his baby brother postcards when he leaves. The difference here is that his relationship with them is so much less fraught with conflict. We don’t see him fight with Debbie, Carl, or Liam the way he has with Fiona or Lip. While Ian tends to be the voice of reason during conflicts overall, I think it’s also because he relies on his older siblings in a way that he doesn’t with his younger siblings, and the latter don’t tend to rely on him as much as Fiona or Lip as well. There’s a lack of tension in most of their interactions growing up because that pressure isn’t there. Perhaps this is where Ian’s age and standing in the family is a bit more beneficial: young enough to have people he can rely on while too young for anyone to really rely on him for more than his share of the squirrel fund.

Ian and Friends

I’ve seen it mentioned that Ian (and Mickey) not having more friends is bad or lazy writing. I tend to believe that that fails to take something into account that, admittedly, most of us don’t really have to think about: having friends is a luxury. It requires time and effort to cultivate friendships, especially lasting ones. As a kid, Ian spent a lot of his free time working or helping to manage one family crisis after another. Going AWOL, losing his health, struggling to acclimate to his illness, trying to find a new career path, spiraling into the Gay Jesus movement, going to prison, adjusting once again to normal life, getting married, a pandemic… I’m sure he’s had plenty of acquaintances over the years, but having a family to support and constant upheavals would have made it extremely difficult to really forge strong relationships with them. I think that’s part of what makes his relationship with Mandy so special and valuable to him: she’s sort of the same way.

When we met Mandy in s1, she had other friends. We saw her meet up with them and go shopping; she told Ian a story about how one was mad at her for not sharing her make-up. As the trauma in the Milkovich household reached its zenith for her in s2 and she started thinking seriously about getting out of there, we saw those friends fall by the wayside—all except Ian. He saw her and let her see him early on. That’s a level of trust and respect that nobody else in their neighborhood would have displayed, certainly not to her. But then there’s this guy who defended her against their creepy, perverted teacher and treated her like a human being, not an object. It’s no wonder she developed an obvious, unrequited crush and sought physical comfort from him occasionally. It’s no wonder she tried to repay the favor by giving Mickey a hard time in s3 and s4, misguided and rather uninformed as we know it was at the time. (It’s also no wonder that she went for the closest Gallagher to Ian, either, but that’s for another meta.)

And Ian… Ian is loyal to a fault. We have watched Ian cut out his own heart and let the blood drip down his arm to pool on the floor at his feet if it would make a damn bit of difference for the people he loves. Like Fiona and Lip, Mandy immediately accepted him for who he is and suggested an arrangement that would protect him as well as benefit her. That is enormous where they came from. To him, that had to feel like the ultimate sign of friendship: he could trust her with a part of him that he hadn’t even entrusted to most of his family yet. From that point on, she was on the List of People Ian Gallagher Would Do Anything For. Finding out about Terry and what had happened? He held a bake sale, of all things, to fundraise for her. Seeing that his brother—his best friend—was treating her like garbage? He put him in his place. Her boyfriend was beating her? He brought her home and made it his goal to find a safe place for her to stay, even if it ultimately didn’t work. She was going to move away from all of her meager support with that boyfriend? He didn’t just rally his own arguments—he brought in outside help with Lip, who he thought might tip the scales. It’s usually just a saying that true friends will help each other hide a body, but Ian literally tried to do that. Lucky for him, he has a good head on his shoulders and used it.

No, Ian doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends. We’ve seen that he has spheres of influence, if you will, and acquaintances that he can call upon when he needs them. (For example, the guys that helped with the preacher.) However, Ian has always struck me as a “quality over quantity” type of person. Being a soldier or an EMT isn’t lucrative, but they’re meaningful for someone who sees them as vehicles for helping people. Seeing more parts of the world than just Chicago has appealed to him in the past, but he seems perfectly content to carve out a spot for himself right here at home. Having only three best friends—Lip, Mandy, and Mickey—doesn’t seem like much of a hardship for him.

Ian and Romantic Pursuits

I hate to say that there were five, but from Ian’s perspective, there were. So, let’s talk about all five. Even though…there weren’t five. There was only one. We’ll save the best for last.

1. Kash: The first of Ian’s perceived romantic pursuits that really wasn’t. I hope it goes without saying that I hate this man with the passion of a thousand burning suns. I hate him so much. However, their interactions taught me a whole lot about how kind and compassionate Ian really is—and how naïve. Of course, he would believe that Kash loved him. The man was buying him all sorts of expensive gifts, and that’s what we see on all the commercials and in so many movies, isn’t it? Grand gestures of affection through expensive gifts. Poor as they were, Ian still scraped together the money to buy him baseball tickets and CDs, convinced as he was that that was all part of what you did in a relationship. That desire to do things like a “normal” married couple in s11? Yeah, that starts here. Ian has always been a planner, and he’s always bought into certain stereotypes. We can see that here. What we can also see is Ian’s compassionate, kind, loving soul. He cares so deeply for other people, even ones that he doesn’t know very well, especially if they are living in circumstances that mean something to him. (For example, the mentally ill woman they tried to help at work and the shelter kids whose situations were so similar to Mickey’s.) Kash being a closeted gay man living in misery with a wife he didn’t love and two children he never meant to have clearly tugged at Ian’s heartstrings. Even after everything that happens, even though Ian behaves as though they’re awkward exes who just happen to work together, he still covers for Kash. He gives him that head start and takes it upon himself to break the news to Linda that he’s gone. He defends Kash to Lip when the latter finally says exactly what we all know: he was a pedophile who deserved to rot in prison for what he did. As with Fiona’s trust, Ian’s loving soul, compassionate heart, and desire for love outside his siblings are virtues that have done him harm in the past. This is one such instance.

2. Ned: The second of Ian’s perceived romantic pursuits that really wasn’t. To be honest, I don’t believe that Ian would even characterize it that way. He seemed very aware that Ned was a distraction from his problems—from Mickey being in juvie, Monica falling into a depressive episode, the money in the squirrel fund being gone, Lip moving out, losing his shot at West Point, and getting denied for service due to his age. Again, though, Ian has always wanted to feel valued, and this rich dude was letting him stay in a fancy hotel room with anything he wanted readily available. This (disgusting predator) guy was giving him attention and a distraction with no strings attached. Then the complications roll in, and he’s once again faced with being the mistress to a closeted, married man. The difference here is that he’s not comfortable with it. He tries to tell Fiona twice, which is enormous for Ian when he has never been very good at communicating if it means burdening others with or even merely facing his own problems. But he tries to tell her. He rejects the GPS unit and tells Ned that he has a boyfriend, boxing him into a strictly sexual arrangement. (This, unfortunately, makes sense. It aligns with how Fiona viewed things: where Jimmy was concerned about it, she told him that it was “just sex.”) He is also visibly embarrassed to admit to Lip and Fiona what has been going on with Ned. By that point, Ian is a year and a half older and, while still scarred and warped in his views because of Kash, perhaps a bit wiser. Emotionally, he kept Ned at arm’s length most of the time. He used Ned not just as a distraction, but as a way to galvanize Mickey into taking their relationship a step forward. But Ian is still Ian, and Ian is compassionate to a fault. Ned played that card by asking if he could have a little understanding for a man whose life was falling apart. Sure, he can. He’s Ian, the Gallagher too empathetic for his own good at times. We know how that spirals out of control. It just goes to show that even when Ian was trying to maintain some emotional distance, his heart is simply too big and his perceptions too heavily impacted by the grooming he’d experienced with two different people by then, and so he [SPOILER ALERT] still feels enough of a connection to Ned after all these years to be mildly bothered that he passed away.

3. Caleb: The third of Ian’s perceived romantic pursuits that really wasn’t. Ian’s relationship with Caleb strikes me as being similar to what he had with Ned. While more age-appropriate, Ian was very much using Caleb, just as Caleb was using him. That’s why it was so easy for both of them to walk away. Ian was in a difficult spot when they met. He was grateful to the firefighters who saved his life, but he had also just saved someone else at a moment when he was perhaps at his absolute lowest. That’s what he’s always wanted, isn’t it—to be a bit of a hero and help people? So, he’s understandably drawn there, first out of gratitude and then to be surrounded by very attractive gay firemen who helped people, saved his life, and invited him to be part of a function they were holding. But he made himself pretty clear from the start: he was interested in sex with Caleb. That was the draw. He still hasn’t come to terms with being bipolar and losing Mickey, but Ian has never not been with anyone for any extended length of time. That’s just who he is: he’s always sought some level of outward validation—from the army, Kash, Monica, Mickey, and so many others. We’re seeing him struggle with that now as he deals with the opportunities available to him as a mentally ill ex-con felon. So, he pursues Caleb as a distraction just like he did with Ned, only Caleb is a predator in his own right and can smell that his interest is coming from a place of weakness. He immediately (and initially unintentionally) preys on Ian’s desperate need for structure and order by insisting on a traditional date where Ian is very much out of his element and even goes so far as to instruct Ian on how to be intimate. It’s no wonder he mentions Mickey in these moments, as Mickey never wanted him to change, and Ian leans heavily (even slightly hyperbolically) into the fact that Mickey wasn’t a paragon of order and stability like Caleb outwardly appears.

And I think why Ian puts up with it so long—being taught like a child, being used to upset Caleb’s parents, being paraded in front of his friends to make them jealous—is because he was getting something out of it too, just like with Ned. A stable place to live when their home ownership was in flux, a place away from his family when they weren’t providing the support he needed as he adjusted to his disorder, someone who validated his desires to help people regardless of their ulterior motives, and a physical distraction from his own problems. All of these parallel his relationship with Ned very closely. It was never going to last, of course. Ian is a strong person who temporarily forgot how strong he was because he forgot who he was, and Caleb didn’t want to be cared for—he wanted a project, like all of his sculptures. Being a project, being something that others see as needing to be fixed? That’s a hard no for Ian. It always has been. There’s a moment I love later in their relationship where Caleb tells him to turn off the lights when he goes out and lightly reprimands him for leaving one on the day prior. Ian is in a better place at that point, having regained a lot of his sense of self, and stares after him with indignation at being treated like a kid. He’s then lied to and cheated on, but I think that to mention those things to Caleb when they break up is to admit weakness on his own part—that he stuck with Caleb knowing that he was being mistreated, and Ian is not one to be called a victim. So, while we know from his discussions with Lip and Sue that the cheating and distrust bothered him most, he merely focused on Caleb lying about his sexuality, which removed a lot of the emotion from the situation—just like he did with Ned. It ultimately turned out to be a bad move since Caleb, being a skilled predator, made him question even his own sexuality in return, but we’re starting to see that Ian isn’t here to be someone’s toy anymore. Not an older, married man like Ned, but definitely not anyone his age either. I’m glad this pseudo-relationship happened because it showed Ian how strong he really was and that he could be in control of his own life. Sure, it destabilized him a little in the aftermath, but he worked through it. He leaned on his family, specifically Lip, who has always been his rock without the blurred lines that Fiona represented between sister/mother-figure/caretaker. Caleb is a garbage person, but Ian was the one who pulled the treasure from the trash, not him.

4. Trevor: The fourth of Ian’s perceived romantic pursuits that really wasn’t. Trevor is perhaps the first relationship where we don’t see Ian dive in. Whether that’s because of his confusion over Trevor’s gender identity or the fact that he was really beginning to fully mature as an adult by that point (ostensibly finishing his education, getting a career, being fully self-sufficient, etc.), he tried to take his time and not jump right in. They hung out, talked around the neighborhood, and yes, engaged in some casual intimacy at the club. Again, Ian might not be in a full relationship, but he’s never without someone for long. At that point in the series, all he was missing was a relationship when it comes to traditional, “normal” goals for people to have. But Trevor posed a situation he’s never been in before since, while gay himself, Ian has never been very interested in activism or engaging in the LGBT community. It’s just not in his culture or environment, so to be faced with someone he’s interested in that challenges a lot of his views of gender and sexuality is something he takes his time with. Unfortunately, Trevor is younger than him and not quite as mature, not quite as experienced. He tells Ian he has plenty of friends and doesn’t need another, which is an ultimatum that has never really sat very well with me personally because I’m generally of the mind that if a person needs time and you really care for them, you’ll let them have that time. I’m not unsympathetic to Trevor: he’s been burned before and has his own trauma stemming from responses to his identity, so it makes complete sense for him not to be patient in this regard. He shouldn’t have to be—but then, Ian shouldn’t have to rush into anything he’s not 100% certain he wants either. That’s exactly what he does, though, because Ian does for others without thinking of the implications for himself a lot of the time. They make great friends, but they don’t make great partners. Trevor treats Ian similarly to Caleb in that he’s a bit of a project. Trevor educates him on the LGBT community and incorporates him into his ventures for the shelter without ever really showing much interest in Ian’s life or family, which suits Ian just fine because for as interested as he is in helping with the shelter and as attracted to Trevor as he is, he seems to know they’re not compatible. Ian, who has been having sex since he was far too young, takes a step back from it when they run into compatibility issues. (And pushes back on the pressure to bottom with some of his own—neither of them were in the right on that.) He doesn’t ask much about Trevor’s family or try to be part of his personal life. They sort of embody the “friends with benefits” stereotype: they hang out, they have sex, and that’s really all there is to their relationship.

The reason Ian doubles down on trying to make it work isn’t because there was a future for them before Mickey broke out. It’s because he thinks he’s lost Mickey forever, he knows he’s lost Monica forever, and he’s not going to get the support he needs from his family when they couldn’t stand Monica and Fiona told him what he already knew to be true, namely that Mickey being an escaped convict would destroy everything Ian worked so hard for if he got involved. So, he does what Ian does. He needs that distraction—he needs to run from these strong emotions he can’t process, so he bottles them up and unfairly hopes that Trevor will provide some of that comfort after cheating on him with Mickey. (Had Mickey been released, I think they would have broken up. Instead, that was the first match Ian lit, but certainly not the last.) Now, the thing is, Trevor said at the start that he didn’t want to be Ian’s friend. He’s also younger and less mature in a relationship, which means he threw the concept of love out there prematurely, just like Ian thought what he had with Kash was love. The death throes of their relationship were a back and forth where Ian was spiraling and seeking comfort, and Trevor was providing some while keeping their relationship pretty amorphous. (Were they exes? Were they friends? Were they people who shared interests and danced around each other? Were they going to get back together? They never officially broke up—it fizzled and resurged, then fizzled for good.) Ultimately, whatever it was that they had couldn’t survive Mickey, Monica, or Gay Jesus. Trevor wasn’t prepared to deal with a full-blown manic episode, and based on his hands-off approach with involving himself in Ian’s life even before the Mickey-shaped bomb got dropped on them, it doesn’t seem like he really wanted to anyway. He did what he’s always done: prioritized his shelter, which I’m not deriding in the slightest. By that point, Ian was too far gone to care that he disappeared anyway. Had the situation been different and he was getting the support from his family that he needed, it doesn’t seem like he would have cared much there either.

5. Mickey: Finally. Only took over five thousand words to get here. I’ll preface this with something that anyone who knows me from other fandoms is already well aware of, namely that I don’t do romance. Ever. Never been interested. The relationships I’ve always been most passionately interested in are platonic ones, especially “found families” and siblings, which is probably obvious from the other five thousand words here. Ian and Mickey are the first relationship I’ve actively shipped or written for in a fandom. They’re the first I’ve been invested in to this extent. As such, one of the biggest pet peeves I had when I first joined this fandom was the saying, “Ian fell first, Mickey fell harder.” These two wonderful dumbasses face planted on the concrete in front of the Kash and Grab in s1 and never recovered. I could go on forever about these two, but that particular wall of text would probably be too daunting for even the most avid Gallavich stan to traverse, so I’ll keep it fairly brief. As we can see above, Ian has a very strict sense of what he “should” want in a partner. Someone who is moderately successful in their chosen field, makes enough money to at least live comfortably, and typically does something that helps other people (a doctor, a fireman, a youth counselor). These aren’t passionate people. They’re not men who operate on instinct the way most of the people in his life have always had to by virtue of their social standing. They have life goals and opportunities that he envies, and Ian has a great deal of compassion for them when they hit a roadblock or things don’t work out. The amazing dichotomy of Ian Gallagher is that he straddles a line most people can’t between the rough neighborhood that has instilled in him all of his values/behaviors and the middle-class mentality of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and aspiring to more. Ian has always aimed for what Lip said wasn’t possible for poor people: being successful without having to scam or steal. But as I said way back at the beginning of this manifesto, the South Side is his home. His family is his family. And none of the people he’s been with personify the South Side quite like Mickey—they don’t personify home like Mickey.

And I think that’s where the initial draw for Ian is. (I’m going to focus on Ian’s side since he’s who your question focused on.) The other guys look great on paper, and Ian’s brain says that that’s what he should aim for. We know better, though. We know that Ian has an enormous heart that belongs first and foremost to his family and their home. His heart says that this person—this dirty, rude, mean, violent person—is home. His heart says this person is everything about himself that he denies having, just like Ian was everything about Mickey that the latter declined to openly acknowledge for so long. I don’t like relationships built on “making each other better.” I really don’t. The wonderful thing about this is that it’s never been that way. Ian didn’t change Mickey. He’s exactly who he’s always been, but he’s grown past the fear of his own emotions and Terry’s response to them. He’s still a thief, a con artist, violent, and rude. Mickey didn’t change Ian either. He’s still rigidly conforming to certain stereotypes of what he thinks he should want, seeking structure (to his own detriment at times), and not a great communicator. The point for them is that they complement each other, not that they make the other a better person—not even that they bring something out of each other that wasn’t already there. That’s what Ian’s other relationships did. They made him shave off his edges so that he could fit a square peg into a round hole, and that’s not happiness. It’s simply what he thought he was supposed to do—what “normal” people did.

With Mickey, he doesn’t have to worry so much about what is normal or acceptable. He doesn’t have to worry about whether or not his life is objectively “on track,” not until fairly recently. Mickey is the only person he’s ever been with who has accepted him for who he is, faults and strengths alike, without the underlying insinuation that he should be aiming for something else or pretending to be whatever the other person needs him to be in order to care for them. Kash needed an escape—Ian provided it. Ned needed a very specific brand of toy—Ian played that role. Caleb needed a project to feel fulfilled—Ian went along with it for a bit. Trevor needed someone who accepted him as he was but did things his way—Ian did that. To care for Mickey has only ever meant being himself because all Mickey ever really needed was him. Mickey didn’t need an escape from his home—his relationship with his family is more complicated than that. Mickey didn’t need to be saved from his upbringing—it’s what made him the person Ian fell in love with and who he is happy to be. Mickey didn’t need someone to change who he is on a fundamental level because unless it is going to get him into trouble and separate them, Ian never wanted him to. (Even then, it’s about what he does, not who he is.) And yes, I’m sure that there’s a level of excitement that Ian finds exhilarating where Mickey is concerned, but I tend to believe it goes a lot deeper than that. What he finds exciting about Mickey is what Mickey embodies about the South Side—about home. About his own upbringing, but also Ian’s. About Frank and Monica, his siblings, school, work, ROTC—existing and surviving in an environment where it’s not guaranteed that you’ll have money to keep the heat on this winter or feed your family. They spent the early seasons living in a constant state of fight or flight. They couldn’t afford not to. And there’s excitement in that. Look at how many people say that the first seasons are their favorite! There hasn’t been a huge shift in the quality or direction of the writing, just the trajectory of the characters. They’ve gotten older, and their problems have been different. It’s not about survival so much of the time anymore, but those are the storylines that excite us. For Ian, that exhilaration in the constant battle of survival in their neighborhood is sewn into the fiber of his being just like it is Mickey’s. He saw his home in Mickey before they truly fell in love, and when that followed, Mickey became home.

In Conclusion

Ian has spent his entire life looking for the “right” path only to realize that it was laid before him: his family, his small circle of friends, and Mickey. I love that that is coming full circle this season, where [SPOILER ALERT] marriage has almost made him regress a bit to that place where there must be a right way of doing things going forward, and slowly but surely, we’re seeing him loosen up.

Good morning. It’s Ian Gallagher loving hours.

#shameless #ian gallagher #it's ian gallagher loving hours #shameless meta #well that took six hours #and I didn't get more writing done #but I feel accomplished

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thoughtsofanexcitedspacechild · 4 years

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Kataang: An In Depth Analysis

Hello again! I apologise for the inactivity. It’s been a busy month as far as school goes for me, so let’s just say I’m a lot busier solving chem equations and working on stuff for AP art. Don’t get me wrong though! These analysis and essay format posts are my favorite and I wish I could do them more often! Seriously, it’s the only thing that keeps me wanting to write! I’ve also decided that I’m going to make these little intro paragraphs separate to the actual essay, because while I’m at this, why not kill two birds with one stone and practice writing essays for my actual AP Lang. class? I mean I’m obviously not gonna turn them in or show them to my teacher, (unless this gets 1000 notes or more, in which case I’ll show this to her ;)) but this is a good way for me to work on formatting a thesis and developing arguments, all while doing and talking about something I love! Speaking of which, let’s dive right on into today’s topic; the much debated, and thoroughly analyzed ship: Kataang. (Buckle your seatbelts hotmen, because this is gonna be one hell of a sky bison ride) I got inspired by a creator on Tik Tok that I follow, Amanda Castrillo, to write this. Her username is @theamanda2d and I highly recommend you go check her out and give her a follow. A lot of the arguments in this are my own, but I also sourced a lot of information and arguments for Kataang from her series “a case for Kataang”, which I highly recommend you go watch. I’ll insert her quotes directly so you know exactly where her points are coming from as well as mention where I elaborated on a point she made but didn’t directly quote her. I’ll also be sourcing a lot of information from the show and including exact episodes and scenes that support my case. So without further ado, here is my *unofficial* case for Kataang.

In our lives, there’s usually one point at which most of us make a choice. That choice is to love someone. Yes, you heard me right. You make the choice to love someone. Of course, the feeling that most people know as love, but is really just sexual or romantic desires, tends to be confused with real love. Authentic love that comes from the choice to love someone. This kind of love persists through even through the darkest times. This kind of love truly does burn brightest in the dark.

It stems from a strong base of mutual understanding and friendship first, and doesn’t rely on a spark of passion to keep burning although it can fuel the flame that already burns strongly. There are many great examples of this kind of love, both in our own world and daily lives, but also in literature. One of the greatest examples of this, is the relationship explored between the fictional characters Aang and Katara from Avatar: the Last Airbender. (Oh, what? You don’t think Avatar is a legitimate form of literature? Pity, you must not have read my previous posts or even watched the show at all, because it IS.)

From the time I first watched the show, I was rooting for them to end up together. Right off the bat, Aang and Katara have this instant connection. Within the first episode, they already become friends, and not only that, they act as if they’ve been friends for years, almost like they were meant to meet each other. Aang finally getting together with Katara just feels right, but there’s more to their relationship than the feelings that Katara and Aang both experience and the feelings that we the audience feel seeing them together. Throughout the series we see them both make the choice to love each other, not only as lovers, but as friends too. Their relationship thrives, and we’re able to see them both grow as people and better themselves because of each other.

Firstly I want to address the counterargument that many people bring up and that is that Kataang, in and of itself, is one sided. Fans (often Zutara shippers. More in depth analysis on why this ship DOESN’T work out realistically to come) will argue that Kataang is forced and one sided, and that Katara doesn’t share Aang’s feelings. Although I can see where this is coming from from a first time viewer’s perspective, this argument can be extinguished by looking deeper at Katara’s actions and intentions towards Aang. We see them bond as friends very early on in the series, but the earliest hint at a romantic relationship actually shows up in season one episode four, when they go to Kiyoshi Island. Katara acts snarky and jealous when Aang gathers quite a fan club of little girls.

Nevertheless, when this fan club fails to stick around for Aang’s encounter with the unagi, Katara’s the one that’s there making sure he’s okay. (S1, Episode 4, The Warriors of Kiyoshi) This is ultimately foreshadowing for their relationship as a whole. Although his role as Avatar lands him many friends, and in this case fans, the only person that truly stays with him the whole time is Katara. She’s the one who shows up and has his best interests at heart. Most of her intentions are in fact platonic in this episode, but the hint of romance comes out when we see that Katara doesn’t like the idea of Aang with another girl.

After half way through season one, specifically the Fortune Teller episode, we do see that Katara does in fact have feelings for Aang, albeit complex ones. In this episode we see her pester Aunt Wu for information about her future husband and she’s informed that he’s a very powerful bender. She doesn’t consider Aang until Sokka mentions that it freaks him out how powerful of a bender Aang is while Aang protects and saves the village from it’s demise by an erupting volcano. Her hopes were set high on a muscley, extremely strong looking bender, and I’d like to imagine that before her realization, Katara was probably picturing someone more like Haru or even post redemption Zuko as her future husband. For the first time, that image is replaced by Aang, and she doesn’t mind it. (S1, Episode 14, The Fortune Teller) We see these new found feelings develop further in the Secret Tunnel episode, when Katara is finally forced to confront the romantic feelings that she’s pushed down while trying to sort them out. At this moment, Katara finally acknowledges her romantic feelings and attraction to Aang. (S2, Episode 2, The Cave of Two Lovers) The creators intentionally showed us the story of the two lovers for a reason. “Avatar is a very smart show,” says Amada Castrillo, Avatar fanatic and creator of the Tik Tok and youtube series “A Case for Kataang,” “and we’re never told or shown anything for no reason...A war was keeping them apart maybe not physically, but romantically.”

Later in the series during the season finale of season two we see her absolutely distraught when Aang nearly dies and she does everything in her power to save him. We see her almost break. Only when he wakes up does she feel better, and start to be happier again. She doesn’t care about anything else but making him feel better, and even when he does wake up, she still focuses mainly on healing him. Here we see Katara make the choice to love Aang both in sickness and in health. (S2, Episode 18, The Guru/The Crossroads of Destiny and S3, Episode 1, The Awakening) She of course would have done this for any member of team avatar, but the way in which she treats Aang when he’s nearly taken away from her points to the extreme love and affection that she carries for him every day. This happens multiple other times throughout the series, with many of the occurrences being in book three. When Zuko joins the Gaang, she flat out tells Zuko that if he were to hurt Aang, (not Sokka, not her, not Toph, but Aang specifically) she would personally see to his demise. (S3, Episode 11, The Western Air Temple, 23:30) (Some Points taken from, but not directly quoted from Amanda Castrillo’s “A case For Kataang Part Nine: Text and Subtext”) This is why the assumption that Kataang is one sided can be proven wrong.

Two other arguments stem from the previous argument, one being that Aang is a simp, and/or that Katara is a trophy. First of all, the later argument is easily disproved by the fact that Katara is not a prize to be won. “Katara is, and was never a prize for Aang,” says Castrillo, “And to say that she was, grossly mischaracterizes and undermines her as a character.” (Amanda Castrillo, (@theamanda2d) “A Case for Kataang: Chapter 2, Katara the trophy) Katara is shown multiple times throughout the series being able to speak up and defend herself without Aang’s, or anyone else’s help.

Aang, although viewed as a simp, is not. Yes he respects Katara, and all other women for that matter, but he doesn’t fawn over her. He allows her to defend and take care of herself. The definition of the word “simp” is the abbreviated term “simpleton”, meaning “a silly or foolish person.” Although Aang is silly at some points, he’s also not foolish. He’s a smart and capable individual that many fans fail to recognise as legitimate because of his innocence and softness. So no. Aang isn’t a simp that bases his entire self worth on his status with Katara.

Another point that must be acknowledged is the fact that Aang and Katara are actually complementary characters. Although many people would bring up the argument that Air and Water aren’t opposite elements, the type of bender they are doesn’t necessarily tend to point to the exact type of person they are. The creators aren’t dumb, and the characters in this franchise are so well developed, that there are many sub personalities in each type of bending, and all of them can be analyzed further than the type of element they bend. Judging a character solely by the element they can bend is like judging a person on the color of their skin or a book by it’s cover, and when diving deep into each of their personalities, we can see that their personalities are actually complementary. Katara is high strung and anxious while Aang is usually calm and collected. Aang is very good at regulating his emotions while Katara is not. This aspect extends further than their personalities as well. Katara grew up in a very family oriented and close family while Aang only had one parental figure in the form of Gyatzo and occasionally a few friends. Katara is also more grounded and a home body while if he could, Aang would probably continue to explore whatever corner of the earth that he could. (Some points taken, but not directly quoted from Amanda Castrillo (@theamanda2d), “A Case for Kataang: Chapter 10, Balance”)

Another thing that I found is that when looking at color theory, Aang’s signature orange toward the end of the series and Katara’s signature blue are actually complementary colors. I’d like to think that as Katara develops and explores her feelings for Aang, Aang’s color palette changes slightly. It goes from being red and yellow in the beginning when Katara didn’t know she had feelings quite yet, to eventually shifting to orange when we see her feelings start to fully become clear. I thought this was a super interesting detail and despite it being a bit far of a stretch, I think it must have been planned. If you consider the time when we see Katara start to develop feelings, it’s about the same time that Aang’s outfit choice shifts to orange. Of course, this piece of evidence is mostly based on my personal observation and knowledge of color theory, but it’s a detail that I personally found super compelling.

Kataang also works because of the extremely well executed communication and dialogue that happens between them. There are multiple different examples throughout the series and as their character’s develop, we’re able to see a beautifully efficient and respectful form of communication between them. We see Aang clearly express his feelings of anxiety to Katara, and in return, Katara is able to help him and offer advice on what he’s feeling. Katara also is able to confide in Aang in return and oftentimes he’s the one that she’s most comfortable being vulnerable in front of. We see her almost mother Aang alongside Sokka in the first season, but her relationship with him changes and shifts to one where both her and Aang feel comfortable and contribute and receive equal care from each other.

One issue in particular also comes to mind when talking about this ship, and that is the issue of boundaries. Counter arguments against Kataang often bring up one scene in particular, specifically in the Ember island players episode about halfway through when Katara confronts Aang on the balcony. (S3, episode 15, the Ember Island Players) Episode Aang is understandably upset with the way that he and specifically he and Katara’s relationship is portrayed in the play. He obviously has feelings for her and at that point we know that Katara also has feelings from a few episodes prior when they kiss before the invasion. That kiss was mutual, and she kissed him back, meaning that from that point on, both of their feelings towards each other are very clear. The night of the play on the balcony, Aang does cross a boundary that had been established. The kiss before the invasion made sense, and Katara didn’t do anything to stop him from doing it, and Aang had her consent in this case. Aang’s kiss on the balcony was a mistake, and in this case it was uncalled for, but many people misread Katara’s feelings of confusion. When Katara mentions being confused, she’s not saying she’s confused about her feelings for Aang. Since season one, we’ve seen her show multiple forms of affection towards Aang, and not only that, she was usually the one initiating the many hugs, cheek kisses, etc.

She’s not confused about how she feels about Aang. She’s confused about the timing and if it’s a good idea or not. (Some points taken from, but not directly quoted from, Amanda Castrillo (@theamanda2d) “A Case for Kataang Part 7: The Camelephant in the room)

Regarding the consent for the kiss, yes. That was Aang’s mistake. He’s human, and he did mess up there. But his intentions weren’t meant to harm anyone. He, like so many of us watching at home, read Katara’s confusion to be about him, and wanted to see what she really felt. Afterwards, he knows he messed up, and feels bad about it. “...[Aang’s] very self aware. He knows how he feels about Katara, and he’s said it multiple times...Aang is human. He f***s up. He says the wrong thing. He makes mistakes. And he was just as confused as Katara at this moment.” (Amanda Castrillo, (@theamanda2d) “A Case for Kataang Part Seven: The Camelephant in the room)

Lasty, I want to acknowledge the visual and audio parallels portrayed in the show and how they can effectively work towards supporting Kataang. If you observe the angles at which characters are shown as well as the framing, it visually sets up and can represent how two characters feel about one another. First let’s consider the framing of a scene from the very first episode after Katara breaks Aang out from the ice. Aang is lying down and katara is directly positioned above him. When he wakes up from being trapped in an iceberg for 100 years, her face is the first that he sees.

This positioning and framing is shown multiple more times throughout the series, establishing their strong connection. So is this one:

(For a better visual reference please see Amanda Castrillo’s video “A Case for Kataang Part Four: Parallels) “Its built up and set up for us time and time again. Their interactions aren’t framed like that for no reason. Scene framing matters.” (Amanda Castrillo, “A case for Kataang Part Four: Parallels.”

There’s also the fact of the score and what specific music points to what character or what mood the creators were trying to enforce with the music. Avatar’s score is genius and every song and note was hand crafted to set the tone for each scene and help explain what’s happening. (This is one of the many reasons Avatar would translate well to be a musical or even a ballet. Post/informal rant on this later to come.) There are many great examples, like how Azula is represented by a clash of chords, (To quote my previous post: “I love how Azula is just represented by a pair of clashing chords and when you hear it you know that she’s about to f*** s*** up.”) or that Aang has a lively flute melody that plays when he gets really happy/excited, but perhaps the best example of the use of music in the franchise is the use of the “Avatar’s Love Theme.” It’s my personal favorite song from the show, and it’s used extremely effectively and efficiently throughout the show to provide a very specific and recognisable feeling: romantic love. When you hear it play, Aang is ALWAYS with Katara. Go back and listen to the times where it plays, and it’s always when he and Katara share a special moment together. We only hear part of the melody for the majority of the series, but in the final episode, right towards the end when Aang and Katara are left alone on the balcony looking above the city by themselves, we hear it play again, and this time, we hear all of it. The kiss between them also happens right at the crescendo and peak of the music, emphasizing and establishing that Aang and Katara are officially canon. The music plays a huge part in this story, and all musical elements as well as visual point to Aang and Katara being a team, and not just that, but a romantic couple.

In conclusion, Aang and Katara are a couple that was meant to happen. Throughout the series, their love is shown through their undeniable chemistry, complementary characters and personality, and the visual and musical elements set up for us within the show. Aang and Katara love eachother very much, and although their feelings were often being confused by looming threats to their lives or tainted by the war they were both fighting, in the end they’re able to fully and completely allow themselves to love each other. Despite their romantic love, they are ultimately friends before they are lovers, and don’t rely on a spark of passion to be able to keep their love for one another burning. They love each other wholly and in so many different ways, and that my friends, is why Kataang works and will always work.

#avatar: tla #kataang #katara #aang #atla

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firelxdykatara · 3 years

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omgg i'm so glad you liked forwood, I was so bitter about how they were so blatantly screwed over by the writers jfc (in fact I'm bitter about Tyler's character assassination in general tbh but yeah I think that contributed to why forwood was butchered uGH)

forwood used to be SO good anon oh my GODS

like, it had everything, right???? i was already ride or die for the excruciating slowburn that was delena, but forwood was like that in miniature--kind of fast-tracked, but still a similar arc in like. the shape of it, you know?

tyler was THE quintessential asshole jock in s1. he assaulted his girlfriend, he was a prick and i honestly hated him and figured he was just there to be a one-note quasi-antagonist for jeremy, like i wrote him off pretty much as soon as he opened his mouth in the pilot. but then season 2 happened. like the end of s1 was already hinting that there was more to him, when his father got killed by the council and his eyes did the werewolf thing, and just like caroline seemed to come into her own as a vampire, it was tyler going through not only the shock of accidentally killing someone but suddenly becoming this monster he’d never known existed that forced him to examine himself. and it was so beautiful that like, in helping him caroline was also helping herself, and yeah she still loved matt but there was a connection with tyler she couldn’t deny because they were both monsters and they both had trouble coping with it, and that was something matt just couldn’t understand and couldn’t connect with caroline about, even after he knew the truth and nominally seemed to accept the fact that she was a vampire.

i think that’s why maroline could never truly get back together or last.

but forwood like, all throughout season 2 it was clear that they connected with each other, and caroline refused to leave tyler even at tremendous risk to herself and i don’t think he had ever had that with anyone--like it’s very clear even in season 1 that his father was abusive and his mother didn’t, probably couldn’t, do anything to protect him, and it’s one of those situations where you can understand how tyler grew up to be the kind of person he was in s1 even though that doesn’t excuse his behavior, obviously. but caroline got to see the scared young boy underneath the ‘obligatory psychotic jackass’ exterior (and honestly, looking back, there are a lot of similarities between forwood and LoVe and im getting emotional about it) and she fell in love with the man she knew he could be, and tyler started to become that man in part because of his love for her and how he wanted to be able to do right by her--even when she was with matt, even when he thought she wouldn’t ever want him, because she’d gone so far out of her way to help him and he wanted to make that count, he wanted to be worth something.

and caroline fell in love with him too, and it’s just this beautiful journey of mutual growth and healing, and then season 3 comes along and.... it’s just sex.

and like, i’m hardly one to sex-shame my otps. i love it when my favorite couples have sex and enjoy it and love kissing each other but like...i need more than that. and in season 3 it felt like they had replaced all of forwood’s emotional depth and growth with physical attraction and nothing else, all they ever did every time they were alone was make out or have sex or get ready to have sex, and their relationship started to feel incredibly hollow even before klaroline was, i think, a blip on the show’s radar.

and it’s really a damn shame because their relationship was so good in s2 and even early s3, and i kept waiting for them to go back to that! i thought they’d move past this weird, hypersexual ‘honeymoon phase’ and get back to the emotional depth they had when they were at their best, but instead, tyler got repeatedly put on a bus, and then character assassinated, and then caroline got hit with the ‘character assassination’ stick too, and then there were moments like stefan punching tyler in the face for daring to get angry that the girl he loved fucked the man who murdered his mom and i just.........

it was terrible. and as angry as i am about how dirty delena and damon were done, forwood got hit just as hard--except possibly even worse, because they didn’t get anything really like that blissful period in early s5 where delena were domestic and in love and adorable while also having lots of sex. they just got a great journey, then Nothing But Sex once they were finally a couple, and then destroyed like everything else on the show that used to be good.

and it’s really upsetting because, in the process, a lot of tyler’s potential relationships just never got explored like they should have. i adored the glimpses we got of his friendship with elena, and of course with jeremy, and he could have had a great bond with bonnie too--but no, all of that potential was tossed aside, he was off the show for tons of episodes at a time, and then he went over to the originals to die????? i guess. and it’s just a sad and pathetic waste and im still really mad about it.

#forwood #anti tvd #tyler lockwood #caroline forbes #they both deserved so much better #asked #Anonymous

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andsmile · 4 years

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I agree that this whole situation is different from One Tree Hill /Brucas /Leyton not the cheating part obviously because cheating is cheating. What Im trying to say Lucas cheating on Brooke with her best friend Peyton happened in season 1 while they him and Brooke were a relatively new couple (OTH s3 different story). Still no excuse to cheat but there's a huge difference from the two shows writers. It's a little too late for RD to do this cheating story in s4.

Welcome to my OTH ted talk, and I care a lot about OTH (it’s my favorite show), so it pains me when people make this comparison. I am a Brooke/Lucas shipper but I have watched OTH a thousand times (and I was watching in 2005 while it was airing, before endgames were set on stone) and I think I have some property to talk about this lol.

So, the thing with OTH is: first of all, it’s character-driven, not plot-driven like Riverdale, which means the plot stems from the build-up of characters and relationships. Everything a character says or does has consequences and continuity. Riverdale, as we all know, is not that show.

The fundamental part - the build-up of the love triangle - is completely different. I’m talking about s1 here, btw. What happens after is another story.

Lucas starts OTH in love with Peyton since he was a kid. There are about 8 episodes of a slow, careful build-up to Leyton’s ship with some ICONIC moments like “your art matters, it’s what got me here” (that are brought up throughout the entire show). Lucas loved Peyton but he didn’t really know Peyton, however, they get to know each other and it only affirms his feelings. She has a complicated life and he sees through a lot, and she opens up to him like she hadn’t to anyone (but Brooke). So, Lucas and Peyton hook up and the feelings are there for both of them, but Peyton gets scared and Lucas gets hurt.

Brooke is at first a rebound therapy to Lucas. We all know it! Me, a Brucas shipper through and through, I KNOW she was at first. He likes her, but he’s not in love with her like he is with Peyton, and the audience knows it. We’re all expecting the moment Peyton will give into her feelings and drag Lucas back with her.

That’s the brilliance of how OTH played this triangle though: when the cheating happens, you’re holding your breath. You’ve learned how to cheer for Leyton but you’re also very much in love with Brooke too and you see how much the three of them have their own thing going on, so it’s HARD to see it. It’s hard to watch it. That’s what’s gut-wrenching (not this BA mess).

Brooke and Peyton have been friends for years and years, to see Peyton throwing that away is HEARTBREAKING, and we get to actually SEE all of it. We see how much Lucas KNOWS he’s screwing up, we see how much Peyton feels guilty, how HARD it is for them to hide their feelings and not hurt Brooke. They have a whole affair behind Brooke’s back but they suffer through every step of the way.

Ultimately, when Brooke finds out, Lucas and Peyton have all the chance of being together but they both feel SO SHITTY for how they acted and what they did to Brooke, who was nothing but kind and true to them, that they decide NOT to be together. When this cathartic thing happens, their characters grow: the hurt Brooke goes through has her no longer feeling inferior to him. Good guy Lucas realizes he’s actually not such a good guy and that he should do better. Emotional problematic Peyton realizes she needs to be selfless.

So, the big difference between what’s going on in Riverdale now, is:

1) Archie and Veronica have had ups and downs but they’ve been dating for years now. It’s not a phase or something that happened as a rebound.

2) It’s not a triangle: Jughead exists. Betty is also dating him (continuously!) for years now. In fact, Betty and Jughead happening had the same cathartic feeling: character growth. Characters going forward instead of backwards. Growth!

3) Even if BA do go on with their cheating plot, it’s not the same as BLP, because LP had one thing that BA doesn’t: BUILD UP. Who saw this shit coming if it wasn’t for spoilers and the annoying amounts of BA promotion? The casual viewer must be completely confused right now. They’ll see those flashbacks that happened 3 years ago and be like: “wait, what?” Of course, some BA shippers will say it’s always been them etc, but whoever really watches this show knows that this makes absolutely no sense. BLP made A LOT OF SENSE. LP had FEELINGS for each other. BL had not been dating for long. BL started as a rebound. You were EXPECTING it to happen. It was heartbreaking, but no one said “oh, what the actual fuck” when it happened. Everyone went “oh, fuck”.

4) After the cheating Leyton spent 2 entire seasons as friends before they even thought about jumping back into that ship. And as much as I LOVE Brucas and will ship them to the rest of my life, it’s undeniable that Leyton had substantial content during those seasons. Again, WRITING. BUILD UP!

5) It’s not a love triangle! I repeat, it’s not a triangle! BLP was a love triangle, but this isn’t. This is about friendships on top of it all. The Core 4 is a character on its own, in Riverdale. The craziest plots only “worked” so far because of how strong the Core 4 are. There is no Bughead without Varchie, Beronica without Jarchie, B/rchie without J/ronica (not meaning ships). Breaking up the Core 4 is indeed the most powerful thing that can happen to this show. Even if you want it to be JAB or BAV, it CAN’T be. Veronica and Jughead are equally important in this (as much as the writers don’t give Ronnie too much to do). The whole foundation for a plot-driven show is ruined.

6) Lucas ending up with Peyton made sense. If Lucas ended up with Brooke, it would make sense. If Brooke and Peyton said fuck Lucas, it would make sense. What won’t make sense? BA ending up together (unless they go completely rogue and have JV end up together too) because Beronica can’t walk back from that and Jarchie can’t walk back from that. The friendship between Bughead can’t walk back from that. The Core 4 either ends this show as a Core 4, or it ends as nothing. And without the Core 4, this show has no foundation for its crazy plots.

OOF. Sorry if I wrote too much. I can write even more! lol

#re: riverdale #re: one tree hill #rd negativity #anon #reply

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inmyarmswrappedin · 4 years

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Isak season rankings (so far)

I’ve seen people doing this, and while we wait for SKAM Austin to get renewed 🤞 I thought I’d rank the Isak seasons that are out so far, according to my personal preference. People who wanted to read my Matteo and Cris meta, this is the very short version of it.

Warning: I am super critical in this ranking. If you’d rather read only compliments, don’t click the Read More.

SKAM s3 – Isak: I don’t consider myself a Skam supremacist or whatever the term in vogue is these days. There are many things about Skam that I’m not happy with. I wasn’t really into the idea of the remakes at first, but when they started coming out I hoped that some of the stuff I had issues with in Skam was handled better in the remakes. That said… I never had issues with season 3. I think it’s as perfect a TV season as it can get. The writing, the acting, the music, the cinematography… Everything has a reason for being there and nothing got unresolved. I don’t feel Isak’s season needs “fixing.” A good remake of Isak’s season, for me, is one that takes what Skam did and flips it and does entirely different things with it, not one that aims to tell the same story with cosmetic changes here and there.

DRUCK s3 – Matteo: I’m not sure if Matteo’s season would be as high for me personally if it weren’t for David, tbh! I fell in love with David before I even knew his name was David. My main issues with Druck s3 are these: Druck put a lot of effort in adapting the original storyline to David and Matteo’s personalities, but I don’t see the same effort with the internalized homophobia storyline. I don’t think the writing is consistent there. I also didn’t like the way they hinted at Matteo having a MI, but never committed to it. In fact, I’m not even sure the writers think Matteo has a MI? When the writers have done interviews they’ve talked of Matteo as a “slacker-type” character, not a character with mental health issues. I also have really mixed emotions about the way David’s outing clip was scripted and shot. But overall I had so much fun watching the season, I love David, I love David and Matteo together, and I love a lot of the musical moments. And honestly, it’s amazing that the writers decided David’s movie was going to be Only Lovers Left Alive, built the whole character around that idea, and that single trait explains so much about how David views himself, Matteo and the world.

SKAM España s2 – Cris: If it weren’t for David’s existence, Cris’ season would have the second spot. My issues with Cris’ season are that I feel like the writers had a much firmer hand when adapting Eva’s season. With Eva, they seemed more confident about getting rid of iconic moments or putting their own spin on them. With Cris, I felt like the criticisms they got in Eva’s season about getting rid of iconic moments made them try and include them even when they didn’t make sense for Cris and Joana. I’m thinking specifically of using 21:21and the pool scene, which had no significance for Cris or Joana’s characters. I also thoroughly hate Lucas getting hate crimed, and yes, it was handled better than in other remakes, but still. I’m from Spain, so yes, I’m aware of the cultural reasons for doing it, and I still think it was unnecessary on every level. (I’ll probably write something longer on this, because I do want to get into the ~cultural reasons,~ but not right now.) The music isn’t amazing because the music licensing costs in Spain are more expensive, but it does affect my overall enjoyment when the use of music was one of the things I loved about Skam. I also think Skam España tried to keep every fandom satisfied, which led to a more scattered season. (That said, compared to Skam’s Sana season, the POV was tight as fuck.) I don’t like that Cris and Joana didn’t have a sex scene. I understand that Irene was a minor at the time, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that Skam and Druck delivered extremely beautiful, non objectified sex scenes, and Skam España didn’t. Now, for the good: aside from the moments I mentioned, Cris and Joana were fully their own characters, Cris isn’t Isak and had her own struggles and character flaws she had to overcome, same for Joana. Cris and Amira’s friendship is everything, and considering how other remakes have handled friendships between a LGBTI character and a character of color, it’s almost enough to declare Skam España the holy grail of remakes. Also, one of the reasons it’s sad that the focus on the girl squad moves to the boy squad for Isak’s season is that the squad is at its most supportive and loving of the main in Isak’s season. By contrast, Eva, Noora and Sana’s seasons are full of betrayal and infighting. It was really so gratifying to get to see the girl squad support and love Cris. I also really liked that it was almost two queer seasons in one, with Cris and Lucas having their own journeys on Youtube and the episodes, which sometimes converged. I also loved the exploration of Viri’s character. Loved the borderline PD awareness content on instagram, for me the only valid use of Minutt for Minutt by a remake. I’m aware of the elephant in the room I’m not mentioning, but I feel like if it hadn’t been for the actors going wild on social media, that scene would have been a non event. Which brings me to…

SKAM Italia s2 – Martino: I really liked Eva Brighi’s season and I was really looking forward to Skam Italia’s take on Isak’s season. I really liked Martino in season 1. Martino’s season opened with a very powerful, factual voiceover of queer Italian people calling into a helpline to set the tableau of what it means to be queer in Italy. And then… it just got off the rails, man. Now, I did finish season 2 (racial slur and all), but I’m not sure I would have if it hadn’t been the first remake of Isak’s season. First off, they switched the order of the seasons, but instead of doing their due diligence and keep developing the Eleonora and Edoardo relationship (like Skam España did), they simply sent Eleonora to the cornfield to avoid having to deal with it. Second, the Skam España writers forced a few Isak and Even elements on Cris and Joana that didn’t fit them… Bessegato forced plenty more elements that didn’t have any relevance to Martino and Niccoló onto them. The obvious network interference when it came to Martino and Niccolò’s intimate scenes. And when I say intimate, I don’t mean sexy sex sex scenes, I mean the scenes that in Skam were Isak and Even existing in their own bubble. In Skam Italia, these scenes were intruded upon by the boy squad again and again. I’m not sure whether the Skam Italia fandom realizes that the reason the Italian boy squad is so loved is because they had a much larger role in Martino’s season that infringed on Martino and Niccolò’s dynamic. Anyway, I thought the boy squad was gross, honestly. The way the volleyball scene was shot was less about Martino’s discomfort and more about close up shots of a 14-year old actress’ sweaty butt and crotch. And for my money, I can’t understand why keeping Francesco Centorame meant they absolutely couldn’t cast an actor of color to play Luca. People talk about wtFOCK using certain tropes for shock value, but can we talk about the way Skam Italia had Niccolò literally run around Milan naked and giggling for the viewer to see? It appears that Skam was too tactful only giving us a glimpse of Even’s bare ass leaving the hotel room. We really needed to sensationalize the whole event, or otherwise it would fly over our heads how serious Niccolò’s crisis was. And Bessegato’s instagram tantrum when called out on Niccolò randomly dropping a racial slur mid-conversation was just the cherry on top. Oh, and I also hated the inclusion of Martino’s mom, but that’s more personal, so I’ll leave it at me having an issue with that decision because of hugely personal reasons I won’t go into. (Edit: I forgot to say that Filippo’s Pride speech is one of the best remakes of that scene, if not the best so far.)

Didn’t finish:

SKAM France s3 – Lucas: Okay, so here’s my Skam France story. Unlike a not small part of the fandom, I did watch s1 shortly after it came out. Now, I love Eva and Isak on Skam, they are two of my very favorites. I didn’t like Emma or Lucas. However, I love Jonas Vasquez and I felt like Yann was the only phase 1 remake Jonas that really did Jonas V justice. Not Jonas A, not Giovanni G, not Marlon F. Yann. So I came into s3 not very interested in Lucas (or Eliott to be completely honest), but fully pumped to see my boy Yann be the supportive friend Jonas had been in Skam and Yann had been in s1 and s2. Folks… I ragequit Skam France the moment Yann abandoned Lucas in that bench. And yeah, it can be argued that, while they used that moment for shock value, they stuck the landing. I personally disagree, the damage was done there, but it can be argued. Anyway, that was the end of episode 6, and by then I knew I didn’t vibe with Lucas (hadn’t liked him since s1 as aforementioned), Eliott had done nothing to get me onboard, couldn’t care less about the girl squad being forced into the season through network mandate, hated Basile and the Daphné/Basile storyline, and was bored as hell of people fawning over Arthur when the character was as lacking in substance as Mahdi, but fandom never went crazy over Mahdi in the same way (fun fact! Despite Skam fandom being much larger than any remake fandom, there were never essays about how great Sacha’s acting was, how carefully constructed his character, there weren’t people fighting for Mahdi-related usernames… I could go on). I simply can’t understand how the writers came up with the whole Polaris thing and then dropped it entirely after episode 4, and didn’t bother coming up with a twist on that motif. (You know, like the R+J and Pretty Woman twist, or how Druck used the vampire motif, or how Skam España used the Dangerous Liaisons motif throughout the season.) Like… Instead of using an existing piece of media, they created one tailored to what they wanted to do, but they didn’t follow through with it? Almost completely wasted the potential of the Lucas/light/darkness symbolism/motif. And, as I’ve mentioned with Skam España, I realize that the music licensing costs for France are astronomical, but again it does affect my overall enjoyment of the show, and the piano music didn’t make up for it.

wtFOCK s3 — Robbe: I gave Skam France six episodes before I quit. By the middle of week 2 of wtfock I was already checked out. The decision to delay Sander’s intro just completely ruined the pacing and anticipation for me. The lack of a tight POV was another nail in the coffin. How utterly loathsome Moyo and Jens were in that first week and a half was another factor. The way they resolved the issue of Milan leaning in for the kiss with Robbe was yet another. The wtfock characters having no nuance (most of them have one character trait, the most any of them have is three) was another. Initially I quit watching because I thought I’d write episode by episode posts, and I wanted to keep my reactions fresh. So I just read the transcripts. And every single thing I read in those transcripts only served to prove I was right in dropping it. But here’s one thing I liked! I liked the blurring of the fourth wall with the spray painting of the garbage truck and the garbage truck servicing Antwerp at the time the season aired. (I could draw a parallel between the garbage truck being the first motif the season deployed, and how the rest of the season turned out, and... well, I guess I just did.)

#skam #druck #skam españa #skam italia #skam france #wtfock #brain vomit

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mylifeiskara · 4 years

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Thanks to @imunbreakabledude for tagging me, since she knows how much I like to talk about all the tv I watch!

rules: pick 5 shows, then answer the following questions, don’t cheat. tag 10 (or however many) people.

1. The 100 2. The Magicians 3. Single Parents 4. Schitt’s Creek 5. Gossip Girl

who is your favorite character in 2? Eliot Waugh has my whole entire heart. So everyone on this show is ridiculously smart, but I love how quiet Eliot is about being smart. Like he’s so extra in every other aspect of life, but his intelligence is the one thing he doesn’t really flaunt. I also relate to how guarded he is, and all I want for him is happiness.

who is your least favorite character in 1? I feel like with a bunch of characters on The 100 I’m pretty indifferent to them, but I think this is a tie for me between Finn and Jaha. I pretty much found Finn annoying right off the bat. And I think I was pretty indifferent to Jaha before the whole City of Light mess? But then I was like, mmm nope.

what is your favorite episode of 4? WOWEE this is very tough for me, because I feel like I say a lot of episodes of Schitt’s Creek are my favorite. For this I’m picking 3x13 “Grad Night” because it has so many sweet moments between different characters. I love how Ted comes to Alexis’ graduation, and then Moira surprises her with the Jazzagals performance. And of course Patrick asking David out to dinner thinking it’s a date, but then David invites Stevie not realizing that. Ugh, the whole thing is just so great.

what is your favorite season of 5? So Gossip Girl does get a bit crazy (even though it was already crazy) when they go to college, so I think season 2 is my favorite, though I almost picked season 3 because it has the best Thanksgiving episode (The Treasures of Serena Madre for anyone interested). I really like watching Chuck and Blair’s dynamic throughout s2, so I think that’s a big part of it for me.

who is your favorite couple in 3? Um, they’re not together yet, but Angie and Will? I absolutely love their dynamic, and it’s the perfect set up for good slow burn, which has been really fun to watch so far.

who is your favorite couple in 2? Quentin and Eliot. They’re just so soft with each other, and I think about the Mosaic Timeline at least once a day, tbh. Don’t mind me, I’m making myself sad haha.

what is your favorite episode of 1? 4x07 “Gimme Shelter”. Emori is my favorite character, and this is such a good episode for her. Every moment she thinks she’s safe, she has this realization that just because she’s with Murphy doesn’t mean that people will necessarily accept her or treat her as one of them? And like Murphy says, she made a survivor’s move because she’s spent her whole life working to stay alive. I also think it’s a very good Bellamy episode, because he has to wrestle with the not being able to save everybody thing and all the guilt he carries. Good episode for my two faves.

what is your favorite episode of 5? 2x18 “The Age of Dissonance”. Because oh my goodness, I love when characters participate in the school play. There’s so much drama surrounding their real lives and college acceptances which is very real omg. And as a theater person, I really feel so bad for that poor stage manager because the whole production just went terribly wrong.

what is your favorite season of 2? Season 3! It has my two favorite episodes (A Life in the Day and All That Josh). And I think just seeing them all on this quest throughout the season is a really good way to connect all the events. It was definitely the most fun. And there was a lot of singing? All around great time.

how long have you watched 1? I started watching The 100 in the summer of 2017. Me and a friend binge watched the first two seasons when I was visiting her one weekend. I started s3 myself but only got a couple episodes in before someone (it might have been Octavia at the time?) was getting on my nerves so I put it down. I didn’t pick it back up again until last January, and by then I had forgotten so much of what happened in the first couple seasons that I watched the rest and then watched s1 and s2 again just to remember what happened. But then I got to watch s6 live! So truly, I haven’t watched it for that long, but it feels like it’s taken over my life.

how did you become interested in 3? I missed having Leighton Meester in my life, since I haven’t seen her in anything since Gossip Girl. So I said, well guess I’ll watch this.

who is your favorite actor in 4? Catherine O’Hara. But Annie Murphy comes in close second.

which do you prefer, 1, 2, or 5? Gossip Girl will always hold a special place in my heart, so if I had to choose, it would be that one for sure.

which show have you seen more episodes of, 1 or 3? The 100, since it has more episodes.

if you could be anyone from 4, who would you be? I would be Alexis, definitely. Her outfits are my aspirational style goals (I also already kind of dress like her?), and I was her for Halloween. Also now the executive director where I work told me that whenever he watches Schitt’s Creek now he just thinks of me when Alexis makes her hand gestures, because I do a lot of those.

would a crossover between 3 and 4 work? I could kind of see a Single Parents and Schitt’s Creek crossover being funny? Like I think that all the characters are pretty ridiculous, so it would be fun to see them interact. But would it make sense? Probably not.

pair two characters in 1 who would make an unlikely but strangely okay couple? I’m actually very into Niytavia? I just think Niylah is such a calming presence and person, and Octavia needs that. They would have a really chill relationship. Also if someone told me they hooked up in the bunker, I would believe it.

overall, which show has the better storyline, 3 or 5? It’s kind of hard to compare Single Parents to Gossip Girl since they are so wildly different. But I’m gonna say Single Parents, only because I find it to be more realistic.

which has the better theme music, 2 or 4? I really love the horns in the Schitt’s Creek theme, like it’s super distinct.

Well this took up a very long time but it was so fun to think about! Also ask me about tv anytime, I love to talk about it, I want to write it for a living.

Tagging: @mobi-on-a-mission @katsbakers @shaeheda @catastrophic-chloe @captainwilldameron and whoever else wants to do it, because I am always v curious about the other shows people watch!

#tag games #i briefly forgot every tv show i've seen #but then i remembered #also always open to show recs #kara says things #the 100 #the magicians #single parents #schitt's creek #gossip girl

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ayankun · 4 years

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AoS S2 Rewatch Briefest of Thoughts

Maybe watching a thing five times is too many times lololol

First I have to admit, I found myself spacing out through a lot of this season. I mean, my annual rewatches are typically always in the background of other activities, but this time through I definitely just didn’t pay attention to a lot of it.

Even so, here is a list of Things I Noticed This Time:

Not sure if watching S1 directly before this really made a difference or not, but this time I have a much clearer understanding of “S2″ and “S3.” When I first started watching this show, I shotgunned 2 and 3 back to back, and have done that once a year since, causing the two seasons to feel like one mega-season in my mind. Not this time!

A lot of the stuff I consider to be “the show” is introduced in S2, sure, but isn’t developed until S3.

Daisy Johnson

Terrigenesis & the Kree (wow my new band name)

Mack and Daisy brotp

FitzSimmons as an actual item

Collecting/protecting Inhumans

Talbot and Creel

The Monolith

Lincoln (gross)

And a lot of the stuff in S2 doesn’t even make it into S3!

Cal :<

Raina :<<<

Afterlife and all those poor fools who just wanted to grow up and get wings or whatever

Edward James Olmos

Agent 33 lol GOOD

Fitz’s brain injury

And of course there’s also big S3 specific stuff that hits you right away in the season opener, like Rosalind and Maveth.

I feel like ultimately I’ll have to say from now on that S3 is my favorite season. More on this as it develops -- only just started ep 2 today.

A note about Lincoln. Since actually he’s going to be way more important in S3 than he was in S2, let’s talk about his introduction. So far, there’s really nothing about the character that warrants my knee-jerk dislike. The character is supposed to be good for Daisy! He’s soft and patient and sort of cool and is one of the first people she’s met who is honestly supportive of her new situation, a situation that he understands from experience.

I guess maybe I don’t like the trope of pairing people up with their primary physician? There’s a conflict of interest there, I think.

Also that dude’s performance rubs me the wrong way (and I only found out like 35 minutes ago that he’s Australian so I’m going to blame it on the fake American accent?).

There’s no narrative symmetry in the structure of S2. I got really excited at first because there’s a ship in ep 3 and I know that the season ends on Edward James Olmos’ ship, but that was about it.

However, they did purposefully split it down the middle, 10 eps and a break for Agent Carter, and then the last 12 eps.

The story of part 1 takes us to Daisy and Raina’s Terrigenesis, and part 2 is about A) Daisy has superpowers now whoops and B) Edward James Olmos is in charge whoops and these two storylines smash together at the end.

But the story of the whole season is trust. Not an exploration of the concept, not “what does it mean to trust” or “how is trust earned” but a literal “man nobody trusts nobody and it’s probably for the best.”

Heck the season straight up tells us we shouldn’t trust anything by opening with with Team Coulson monitoring a black market deal between an ex-SHIELD agent and some mercs -- the mercs are also SHIELD agents and it’s a sting -- the sting team doesn’t know Team Coulson was sent as backup etc etc

Ward swears never to lie to Daisy ever again

Fitz can’t trust his own physical self

Nobody can trust Simmons because she’s undercover at Hydra

Nobody can trust Coulson because he’s whacka-doodle (see what I did there) cray cray

Hunter whining about his she-devil ex-wife, but she’s delightful and perfect

Hunter’s ongoing and ACTUALLY QUITE VALID protestations that he can’t trust Bobbi when it comes to her angle on their relationship

Brainwashing is a thing now

Hydra’s still doing Hydra things and blaming them on SHIELD

Man, anything either of the Ward brothers say at any moment is to be distrusted as a Rule

The heads of Hydra can’t trust each other

Daisy gets powers and she and Fitz decide they can’t trust anybody else with this information because errybody acken’ cray cray

Simmons is SO MAD that Fitz didn’t trust her with this information

Daisy is never quite sure if she can trust her dad (because he cray for sure)

You can’t trust May because half the time she’s Agent 33

You can’t trust Bobbi and Mack because they’re working for Edward James Olmos

Edward James Olmos doesn’t trust Coulson AND doesn’t trust that Fury left SHIELD to Coulson and also I guess just doesn’t trust Fury

Turns out Coulson was doing some secret stuff, too, so better not trust him even if he’s not crazy anymore

Nobody can ever trust Ward, no matter which side you’re on, even if he’s actively helping you at the moment

You can’t trust Raina’s vision until you can

You can’t trust Jiaying after all!! Edward James Olmos wasn’t going to be the bad guy!!!

I think a lot about how this show has such active characters. Like, there aren’t just plots for plots sake or characters for characters sake*, events happen to shape character motivations, and then character motivations go on to shape events. I’m thinking about how Fitz’s condition in the first half is almost complete plot-less -- he’s just a character living through some stuff, and it effects ... his interactions with other characters, mostly. There’s no narrative “point” or payoff to it (other than to remind that Ward Is Bad), until -- until Daisy comes through the mist and

12 episodes of frustrated aphasia, feeling like he’s letting the team down and they’re letting him down, of struggling to cope with Simmons’ abandoning him and then struggling even more with her return ... until ep 12, the only real, uh, utility Fitz’s condition brings to the story is as a means to introduce Mack as 100% Best Guy.

And then ep 12, getting to see these two beloved OG characters have this moment that only the two of them can have

.... as far as moments go, second best only to the Skimmons quake/hug in 4x15. My ship sails, my dudes.

I got way off track here, sorry

Anyway my point is sometimes, in other shows, giving a lead character a brain injury is probably a Major Plot Point that is Meant To Be Resolved (and within 40 minutes if at all possible), but on our perfect show, characters are allowed to Just Be -- and the things that they Are will always manifest in narratively satisfying turns of events.

I’m trying to think of any of my “this time I noticed” items and

Not to be all down on 2/3 of my OT3, but especially after watching their siblings dynamic in S1, and seeing just how painfully awkward their relationship is throughout S2, the Simmons-has-feelings-for-Fitz moment REALLY came out of left field.

S1 gave you the Exact Moment that Fitz realized that his crush was on Simmons instead of Skye, and you saw him live with that information for like 16 episodes.

Knowing that they end up together AND always starting my series rewatch with S2 makes her coming to him at the end not just reasonable but inevitable.

But lol no? They literally never talk about it for the duration of the season? Fitz talks to Mack and Simmons talks to Bobbi, but they never talk to each other. Her change of heart is strictly subtext. Which isn’t the worst, but given their literal text is either antagonistic (see: his reaction to her abandoning him; her reaction to his hiding the truth about Skye) or just ... their regular schtick.

They’re antagonistic until Edward James Olmos comes on the scene, at which point they bond enough to play the I’m-on-to-your-plan doublespeak shenanigan, and the sandwich moment is arguably the best thing to happen to this ship up until that point BUT she made him away mission sandwiches when he was just her friend too so!!!

Ok when they see each other next there is a specific moment mentioning The Sandwich in the context of love that makes sense (unlike whatever it is that Agent 33 and Ward have) -- but it’s very subtle and the scene is really just a set up to Simmons’ plan to splinter-bomb the hell out of Ward as revenge.

Their next scene together is bonafide FitzSkimmons OT3 grilling Sky about her time at Afterlife which, again is vanilla S1 schtick, and it’s immediately hijacked by Ward and Mission Talk anyway.

It goes straight into the mission where their only interaction is Fitz telling Jemma to be careful but not in a way where she can hear.

Next they debrief Mike Peterson after rescuing him, which is just an excuse to see Simmons not own up to her killing Bakshi on accident.

New episode, now they’re just stalking Skye and (rightfully) giving her new boyfriend the stink eye, then they talk to Agent 33 about her brainwashing -- just a moment for Simmons to feel guilty about never admitting to killing Bakshi/setting up the fact that Bobbi saved Simmons and not Agent 33 so that Agent 33 has a revenge plot for the remaining 2.5 episodes of the season

THEIR NEXT SCENE TOGETHER IS ANOTHER OT3 MOMENT WHERE SIMMONS PRESENTS SKYE WITH THE HULA GIRL ORNAMENT FROM SKYE’S VAN AND FITZ RIBS SKYE ABOUT HAVE EARTHQUAKE POWERS -- FITZSIMMONS DON’T EVEN DIRECTLY ADDRESS ONE ANOTHER.

Ok and then Fitz makes up a reason to go talk to Simmons, and opens up to her about how he’d have tried to kill Ward if he’d been a lesser man, only to find out that Simmons DID try to kill Ward and is actively upset that she failed, so they’re still at odds, philosophically at least, at this point.

Then they split up again and aren’t on the same continent until a third of the way into the next episode, where they’re STILL talking about Agent 33.

The only other thing they do on screen together in this episode is to fight Skye’s dad like they’re on Scooby Doo running away from a guy in a monster mask

Season finale, they have two scenes working with Coulson on mission stuff in which they don’t speak directly to one another, and then

As Fitz is gearing up for his mission, Simmons pops up out of nowhere and drops her bombshell on him

ok, no lie, as I started compiling this and getting closer and closer to the end, I figured it out:

everyone was so collectively heartbroken at the prospect of Bobbi not making it that they all had to go talk to their loved ones before it’s too late. May does it, too, and it’s framed with Hunter standing over Bobbi’s hospital bed in the background, and Simmons goes directly from Bobbi’s bedside to Fitz to say “because I just saw Hunter with Bobbi, and it made me realize” --

ok, my bad. I did state up front that I wasn’t always paying attention, okay?!

I take everything back. We do see the moment Simmons realizes she has feelings for Fitz. It just comes at the tail end of a string of episodes where they barely interact, is all.

Man, I gotta pay better attention next time.

Anyway this is not as brief as I thought it would be, nor have I covered all the thoughts I had. Real quick, though:

Agent 33 is the worst. I’m not sure what else they would have given Ward to do (gross double entendre intentional :< ) this season, though. But did it have to be this? Did you notice that when she picked faces, it was either May or Daisy? And then used them on Ward, someone who sexually and/or emotionally manipulated both these women in the previous season? Gross gross gross. And obviously the grossness of this pairing is literally called out by several in-world observers, but, still. I’m not sure that they actually wanted me to believe that there was still some humanity in Ward, that there was still a person who could settle down and buy succulents to put on windowsills in houses he shared domestically with another human being, but mostly I’m wondering why they thought they wanted to want me to believe that.

*as stated previously, one of the weaker parts of S2, that I still find weak having rewatched S2, is the use of the character of Trip. POOR GUY. Watching S1 first doesn’t do him any favors, either. At least when you forget exactly the contents of S1, his being in S2 just feels like “guess this is how things always were, oh wait, sucks he's dead now.” BUT NO things were NEVER like this. We don’t know who this guy is at all!!

His purpose in S1 is to be Not!Ward,

and his utility is to have some sort of internal logic to the team getting their hands on the low-tech WWII spy gadgets.

and he’s a very slight catalyst to Fitz’s needing to get his act together and get Simmons off the market before it’s too late (which is a couple of different yikes in my book, as far as "here’s what this character’s here for”)

So I kept my eye on him in S2 and the results were not good. I think the only time he had lines was to ask questions to allow another character to respond with exposition, or to make jokes that any character could have been on screen to make.

I want to say he was a side character dressed as a lead character, but HELL he shared scenes with a Koenig and those fools got WAY more character building/backstory/motivation over the course of the series than what Trip got.

Dearest Trip, our very own Red Shirt. Rest In Pieces

#Agents of Shield #a long and winding rant #about nothing in particular

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mysterylover123 · 5 years

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BNHA Rewatch: Season 1 Episode 7 “Deku vs Kacchan”

mysterylover123

Here. We. Go!

Backstory time. (I guess this episode is all about Deku and Kacchan, BTW, so no corner this time. Too much stuff would be in there). Deku recounts their past together. The phrasing is different in different translations. I like how honest Deku is about his rival’s character - how he’s not necessarily “good” or “evil”, but became kind of an asshole after developing his quirk. Also, cute!

More below the cut

Poor Iida, BTW. Saddled with the Worst Teammate Ever. (at least right now. Contrast point: JTA Bakugou)

Though Deku isn’t much better! Sure, get rid of Uraraka! it’s not like you’re fighting a powerful opponent or anything! Not like that Zero G couldn’t solve this problem easily! (You just really wanna mono y mono him, don’t you Deku?)

Deku being strategic! (Why isn’t Bakugou considered captured then and there? All Might said! Capture tape! Shouldn’t that have…oh never mind, who cares. Fight!)

Here we have the explanation as to why Deku tells Kacchan about his quirk: Kacchan thinks Deku’s been lying to him. And the thing is, he…well, has. Not his whole life, but he has lied to his mom, and presumably via sin of omission, to everyone in his middle school (and UA), including Bakugou. Which Deku is fine with - for everyone else. Because it’s All Might’s secret, and it’s understandable, and Bakugou later reprimands him for telling even him. But that’s the thing. Deku doesn’t feel comfortable lying to Bakugou, and Bakugou alone. For some reason.

Yes, he has a good, rational explanation of why he didn’t work with Uraraka and let her go off to fight Iida. But he immediately undercuts it by reminding us that he does, in fact, wish to fight Kacchan himself. Again, why Filler!Deku is so scared of meeting Kacchan’s challenges head-on when he’s been fully committed to being his rival since Episode7/Chapter 9 is beyond me.

I kinda like how Bakugou has no Tragic Backstory or reason to be the way he is beyond being told his whole life that he’s better than everyone else. It’s such a perfect deconstruction of that Main Hero mindset - you see this same setup in so many other stories, where the Chosen One hero is told from a young age that he’s Destined for Greatness or whatever. And he’s always a perfect cinnamon roll. Instead of the kind of person that treatment would really create. Basically, someone like Bakugou.

More adorable/mean flashbacks. (It’s like watching South Park. They’re so mean but the art style is so cute!) I like how Deku, even LilDeku, doesn’t take shit from Kacchan. He talks back. And he never stops following him around.

Ah, the defining moments. Deku is declared Quirkless and therefore worthless (somebody hug him!) Then the creek incident. This scene is so cute, and it starts this big visual motif throughout the series pertaining to these two: Deku’s outstretched hand. (one translation I heard of “The Day” translates the line right before they fight in the OP as “reach out and finally take my hand”, which is perfect). But yes, there is this long buildup for Bakugou to one day cast aside that pride, realize that Deku just wants to help him, and Take. That. Hand.

Iidaraka! This scene is so hilariously funny. If I wasn’t already in love with this series before, this moment clinched it. Iida pretending to be a villain, complete with monologuing (I bet the dub was intentionally referencing The Incredibles there.) Cute Iichaco moment here, I love how he cracks her up. (Though Iida also makes the mistake of taking it too easy on her here. He doesn’t go for the knockout punch and loses for it. Thankfully a certain hothead does not make that same mistake in the sports festival.)

This freaked me out hard the first time I saw it. It’s such a hit. Like damn, how is Deku even alive now? The way it’s animated is so brutal! Though there is an explanation for the giant gauntlets and Bakugou’s quirk that makes a ton of sense here though; Hori even explained how his parents’ quirks made the power later on! It’s all so well thought out.

So again, this also freaked me out the first time around. He looks fucking crazy (And I loooove crazy characters. Deku the Absolute Madman and Bakugou’s crazyface are a big part of why I watch this series). But later on this gets a callback when All Might is talking about Bakugou “smiling in the face of a wall”, compiled with his smile when facing Uraraka and All Might. So this puts Deku on the same level as those two, the only two opponents Bakugou truly respects. Well, well. :)

BTW the second of the two manga chapters this episode is based on is called “Breaking Bakugou”. Just a funny bit of trivia.

Uraraka’s main character flaw at this point, her general lackadaisacal attitude and lack of willingness to just jump in and take initiative, shows up in this arc, and she makes her first step towards overcoming it. She’s inspired by how much Deku wants to win to Go Plus Ultra. I think Uraraka is a character who tends to mold herself after the people around her (her parents, Deku, even Bakugou post Sports Fest briefly), hence why Toga is her Evil Counterpart. This is her flaw, that she doesn’t quite know who she is outside of copying others, and what she needs to overcome.

We get some comedy as Bakugou gets jealous of Deku ignoring him again. Notice me you damn nerd! You idiot baka!

Kirishima’s first impressions of Bakugou are all so terrible. It’s hilarious in hindsight since they end up BFFs, but he really thought Bakugou was a reckless asshole the first time around. Also Todoroki’s first line is talking about how Bakugou is smarter than he looks. So let’s enjoy some of my personal headcanon, namely that if Kiri has a crush on a member of Wonder Duo it’s actually Deku, and for Todoroki it’s actually Bakugou. Yes, the reverse of what everyone else thinks.

This fight is so damn brutal. Bakugou pays Deku back in kind for bodyslamming him. Of course, I loved that Deku was planning something that whole time (I knew, first time around, when his dialogue with Uraraka was muted, that he had a plan up his sleeve. And what a plan it is!). But still, watching him get beaten up this badly is hard to see.

Now the big buildup moment. Deku confesses the truth: He wants to beat Kacchan because he thinks Kacchan is amazing. Bakugou thinks Deku is looking down on him, which is such a weird way to twist Midoriya’s behavior - but makes sense if Bakugou, deep down, knows that Deku totally can. And Deku, he just wants to surpass him. As he puts it later on, his image of Victory.

YOU SAY RUN. Drink! As an aside, All Might has a very interesting role in the whole Deku vs Kacchan thing. Not only is he the reason for their conflict (each idolize him/wanna be like him in different ways), he also perpetuates it willingly here by not stopping the fight. And he does so because he wants to support Deku. Which is interesting. All Might has some perception into Midoriya, and he comments here that this is the most pumped up he’s seen Deku. Bakugou brings that out in Midoriya, and that’s why All Might is, overall, rather supportive of them mending their friendship, ending up as Wonder Duo, the best heroes who Win and Rescue. Because Deku needs that challenge in his life to amp him up. To keep him going.

And now Deku’s plan. I’m not sure if the Entrance Exam bit counts, because at the time he didn’t know how badly his body would be effed up, but this time he does. So I’m calling it: The first instance of Absolute Madman Deku. My favorite Deku moments are always these bits, where he does something so crazy and brilliant and self-destructive that it shouldn’t work, but because he’s also clever, it totally does. And with Uraraka’s teamwork, the Hero Team wins!

We end on a moment between Deku and Kacchan, where Deku (pulling the first of his true Crazy Eyes faces) tells Kacchan that he was not, in fact, looking down on him, and only holding back because he’d be hurt. And the anime adds, from the Manga, Kacchan looking kind of shocked about what he’s seeing, maybe even a little guilty/horrified by Deku hurting himself. What an ending!

So the first time around, after watching the first four eps day-by-day at work, I had a weekend where I binged through the rest of Season 1, so my first impressions of the rest of the season aren’t as clear to me as those first few episodes. In hindsight, I think this is one of the best episodes of Season 1, and one of the first that really started fleshing out these characters into the complex little tragic heroes they are today. It’s all just glimpses of the surface; little to indicate how much is really lying beneath. But it’s important, nonetheless, as an early indicator.

Best Girl of the Episode: Mina Ashido!

Ranker: Favorite BNHA Fights (So Far)

10. Deku vs Kacchan 1

This is my favorite fight of S1. I love the strategy that Deku uses.

9. Deku vs Muscular

So hard to watch. So much pain. The tears the joy. Everything.

8. Todoroki and Momo vs Aizawa

Momo needs more fights. But she and Todoroki make a great tag team.

7. Deku and Kacchan vs All Might

As do Wonder Duo. Fighting All Might is just cool. Character Development!

6. Deku vs Overhaul

Season 4 is going to be Lit.

5. Hero Killer Stain vs UA Students

Such a multilayered fight. Three great fighters vs one unstoppable villain.

4. Uraraka vs Bakugou

Absolutely astounding. Full of surprises and emotional and cool.

3. Deku vs Todoroki

An absolute tearjerker and unbelievably brutal. Cannot watch without getting nervous.

2. Deku vs Kacchan Part 2

Partly the animation, which is so beautiful it should be in the Louvre. But also the fight itself. Of course. Strategy, emotion, Deku and Kacchan.

Hon Mention: The Movie’s Class A and All Might vs Metal Villain, All Might vs Nomu, Todoroki vs Bakugou, all the Beta Sports Fest fights, Jiro and Koda vs Present mic, Tetsu and Kendo vs Mustard, Deku vs Gentle and La Brava, Endeavor vs high End.

1. All Might vs All for One

4 words. “Now it’s your turn.”

#my hero academia #midoriya izuku #katsuki bakugou #uraraka ochako #tenya iida #season 1 episode 7 #deku vs kacchan #katsudeku #bakudeku #iichako #this episode is great overall #the animation is so good #they throw themselves into it #So much meta in this one #there's a lot to unpack #with deku and kacchan #there will be more #oh so much more #i need a madman deku counter

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televisor-reviews · 5 years

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Everything of note that I have to say about Wakfu season 3:

I get that it’s old news at this point, but I finally got around to watching the new season of Wakfu & I really do have a ton to say about it... in list form!

1. It’s very good.

2. SPOILERS... duh...

3. I think I should’ve watched The Search For The Six Eliatrope Dofus first. I think the characters reference what happens in that a few times & whenever they did, I was like “what the fuck are they talking about?”

4. I don’t know why they changed the English voice cast, but it wasn’t a very good idea. It took me a few episodes to get used to them, & though I did get used to it & they did a fine enough job. Just not as good as the original cast.

5. I think this is why half of the words change pronunciation. Iop & Ruel are pronounced like how they’re spelled, which sounds like a good thing, but I always felt like pronouncing them like “Yop” & “Ruul” sounded more realistic. Adding that extra syllable is creating more work for whoever’s saying it & I think in a world that’s supposed to seem like it’s existed for millenniums, those kinds of words would’ve been shortened down to 1 syllable. I wouldn’t be complaining if that’s not how they were pronounced in the first 2 seasons.

6. Adamai is a surprisingly good villain. Of course, I think he’s much better as a protagonist, but as the antagonist; he’s a menacing figure that every member of the Brotherhood Of The Tofu have a history with, & the animation does a great job at showing the struggles he has when fighting them & vice versa.

7. I fucking hate the Dragon Ball Z-esc design for Adamai! It could just be my general disliking of DBZ, but that design really doesn’t do anything for me.

8. I think they made Adamai a bad guy because Oropo isn’t a very interesting main antagonist. Granted, it’s not like this show is known for its great villains (in fact, Oropo is by far my favorite of the them so far), but he ends up being pretty disappointing. Particularly because the framework is there for a great villain: a connection to the heroes, a memorable plot, a great motivation... it just never comes together for a very interesting villain.

9. I think it’s because most of that stuff isn’t really focused on until the last couple of episodes, making him uninteresting for most of the season & when it’s finally focused on, it’s too little too late.

10. Evangelyne & Percedal are great parents! This really is the natural continuation of their relationship after they had their “happily ever after” at the end of season 2. And whenever they’re on screen together, they have so much romantic chemistry it literally kills me.

11. I fucking love they’re kids too! It’d be so easy to make them one-dimensional slabs to motivate Percedal, but they have just as great & interesting personalities as any other member of the Brotherhood. Of course, I prefer Elely mostly because we spend more time with her, but I also just prefer her character type.

12. I don’t like that they have Eva, probably the most badass protagonist, as the “damsel in distress”. I get that they don’t want a pregnant character out in the front lines of battle, but still.

13. Every season has a fake-out death: S1 had Percedal & that lasted for a few episodes into the next season, S2 had a scene & a half of Ruel faking a heart attack, & S3 had Evangelyne almost die. It was kinda ingenious: for a minute, it genuinely had me worried, wondering if they had the balls to kill off a pregnant main character. Good thing they didn’t, probably for the best.

14. Holy shit, they actually had the balls to show a baby’s birth! I’d imagine they’d have an easier time getting that death past Netflix!

15. I haven’t looked up what the consensus is on this, but I’m willing to bet I have a controversial opinion on this: I actually really like the romance between Amalia & Yugo. It feels very genuine & natural; they have a ton of chemistry between them. Unlike with most romances, where it’s pretty obvious they’ll end up together by the end, I honestly didn’t know if that was the route they were going to take because Yugo still looks 10!

16. Keeping Yugo looking 10 was a great way to add more tension & drama to the already dramatic & tension-filled story.

17. Past seasons have had a good mixture of dramatic & comedic elements, but this season pumped up the drama & backed off of the comedy. I guess this is expected since this is the first season made by Netflix & their shows have been significantly more dramatic than most cable TV animated shows, largely because they’re meant to be binge-watched instead of once a week.

18. Netflix also tends to strip down its shows to the bare minimum for the story it’s telling. This is normally a good thing, but I think Wakfu was one of those shows that utilized filler episodes really well to show more of a connection & backstory of the characters. Basically, I wanted more filler episodes.

19. I don’t know why Ruel was in this. I get that he’s one of the main characters & they try to have him seem like he has a point by throwing in his wife for no real reason. He’s getting too old to fight & he doesn’t throughout most of the season. I’d bet he’d end up staying behind to babysit Eva & Dali’s new baby next season (if there is one).

20. Each of the demigods the Brotherhood fight are interesting & unique in their own right, they all feel like they’ve always existed & were merely waiting to be introduced in the show rather than feel like they were invented in a day for their exact episode.

21. The show in the past has always felt like it was aiming for a pretty young audience (like “Baby’s First Engaging World”), but between the focus on more dramatic elements, all of the couples getting together, & Adamai’s new design; I think the new target audience is closer to older children/young teenagers. Those just old enough to be nostalgic over anime like Dragon Ball Z & Naruto but just young enough to embrace the more childish nature moments of past seasons. A natural evolution of this long-running franchise.

22. The world & universe this show has spent the better part of 2 seasons to build is built up even more throughout the entirety of season 3. It really feels livable, like you could just walk right into your TV & right in this world! This is an element that’s really hard to nail (only done well in the most prestigious of franchises with huge fanbases like Star Wars & Harry Potter... & My Little Pony) & it does so perfectly!

23. This is easily my favorite season of the show so far, building upon the incredible blocks already created by the first 2 seasons.

24. I really hope there’s a 4th season! There’s been word from random websites & blogs by so-called writers saying there will be one either 2019 or 2020. I do think it’s inevitable considering the show is at peak popularity & critical praise & this season ended on a cliffhanger. I just want it before I die of old age!

25. I think Wakfu, though more popular than ever before, is still nowhere near as popular as it deserves to be. I always called it, “that show all your animator friends really like,” & that still rings true. If you have any doubts about whether or not to watch it, just do it! It’s a great show that deserves all the praise it’s gotten from fans & critics (& that’s a lot of praise!).

#wakfu #adamai #yugo #persedal #evangelyne #amalia #ruel #season 3 #oropo

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travllingbunny · 5 years

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The 100 rewatch: 1x06 His Sister’s Keeper

I’m a new fan of The 100, who first binged it last year, August to November. This is my first full rewatch of the show. I was planning to start it anyway and finish it before the season 6 premiere on April 30, and when I saw that Fox Serbia was airing a rerun (Monday to Friday, 40 min. after midnight, with repeats the next day), starting on 1st February, it was a great opportunity to start my rewatch in HDTV on my beautiful new TV. I decided to do write-ups and tag other fans on SpoilerTV website, as I did when I was first watching the show. But my posts turned into full blown essays. So, finally, after over a week, I’ve realized: Why don’t I post them on my Tumblr blog, too? I’ll copy my write-ups of the first 7 episodes, and then I’ll post my rewatch posts after I watch each episode. (The next one, 1x08, is on Monday’Tuesday.)

Spoilers below for all 5 seasons of the show. I go of on a tangents and make a lot of references to future events.

Rating: 8/10

Flashbacks to characters' past on the Ark are always one of my favorite things. i wish we'd get more of them. So far, IIRC, there's just been 3 episodes with flashbacks - 1x03, this one, and Join or Die in season 3. They really did a good job making both Bob and Marie look younger in the flashbacks. I do think that telling a 6 year old child it's his responsibility to take care of his sister is messed up, but on the other hand, what choice did Aurora Blake have? I can't judge her for it, since she was in a terrible situation, and it's the Ark system that's to blame for it all. And I've seen people hate on Aurora way too much. Some even go as far as to bring up that terrible "poor people should not have kids" argument, which is awful (classism, eugenics..). . (Another mini-rant upcoming) Speaking of weird things I've seen said in the fandom, I was really puzzled to learn that a lot of people did not realize Bellamy and Octavia have different fathers, and act like that's a big surprise, or that I've even seen people say that "the show never gave indication that they were half-siblings"?? WTF? The show never gave any indication that they were anything but half-siblings. For starters, I don't know why those two being full siblings would be anyone's default assumption, or why some people apparently think that women can't conceiving children with more than one man in their lifetime and that half-siblings are such a weird, rare and unheard of thing? But once you've seen this episode, the probability that they have the same father becomes microscopic. They're 6 years apart, there is no father in sight when Octavia is born, no one ever mentions a father, and Aurora is not in a regular relationship with anyone at the time Octavia is born. If Octavia's father died or was floated, it would have happened very recently, and they would have certainly mentioned it. In fact, I think that they would have definitely mentioned it if either of them knew they had a father who had been floated. I'm not sure what the deal was with Bellamy's father, whether Aurora had a serious relationship with him, whether he was around when Bellamy was very little and what happened to him (but even if he was in the picture at any point, he clearly couldn't have been around much, because Bellamy never mentions him), but in case of Octavia's father, he's clearly not in the picture and it's almost certain Octavia doesn't even know who he is. The two biggest revelations of the flashbacks were: that Octavia was discovered when Bellamy tried to let her have a life, for the first time, by taking her to see the Moon through the window and taking her to the dance to have fun and meet people; and that Shumway was the one who made Bellamy shoot Jaha in exchange for a place on the dropship. Not the greatest mystery The 100 has done - it was always going to be one of the few notable characters on the Ark, it was getting obvious it was not Kane, Diana hasn't even been introduced at this point, and the show never made the whole Jaha - Diana conflict remotely interesting or meaningful. Just how awful would have the lives of the Blake siblings been if they had spent their lives on the Ark? Octavia would have probably never met anyone other than her mother and her brother, never had a chance to have any kind of life except hiding. And Bellamy would have probably never had a real romantic relationship or a close friend (I always assumed he never had any of those on the Ark, because he kept people at a distance), never giving himself a chance to have a family of his own other than his sister, because of having to keep such a huge secret from everyone. Re: the Earth/present part of 1x06, it takes place fully on Earth (which was such a relief for me at the time, because at this point, I was sick of the Ark and hated pretty much every major character there other than Abby) and it's mostly about Bellamy taking a group of Delinquents (including Finn, who was asked to come as a tracker, and a bunch of kids who volunteered) to find Octavia, who was caught saved by Lincoln at the end of 1x05. One of the kids who volunteers is Jasper, the others include Bellamy's FwB Roma, John Mbege, some kid named Diggs, and Monroe (her first appearance). Three of those are redshits that end up killed by the Grounders. The rest almost meet the same fate, if Octavia hadn't asked Lincoln to help save her brother, so he used the signal horn to send a fake warning about the acid fog. which of course had the Grounders running away. I've seen a theory that Bellamy stopped sleeping around (minus that thing with Raven later in S1) because he felt guilty over Roma's death, because, as he says, she only joined the rescue party because of him. It may also be the turning point where he notably starts caring more about all of the Delinquents and not just his sister. As for the scenes with Lincoln and Octavia... eh. Lincoln will get much better writing and become one of my favorite characters in season 2, but in season 1, they were writing him really poorly. He was clearly meant to be mysterious and give the wrong first impression as a scary dangerous dude, which is why he doesn't talk until the very end of 1x07. But that doesn't actually make sense - there's no reason whatsoever, if he's already helping Octavia and doing things not sanctioned by the other Grounders, that he couldn't just talk to her and explain the situation, rather than chaining her up in the cave after healing her. The B subplot is again the love triangle. Or to be fair, the development of the relationship between Clarke and Raven, which is not just about the love triangle. Clarke reveals the info about the shelter to Raven (which Finn is not happy about) and they go together to search for things Raven could use to fix the radio with and contact the Ark. They have a conversation about their mothers, too. Clarke is still very angry at her mother because she blames her for her father's death, but won't talk about it, while Raven thinks Abby is awesome and wishes she had a mother like that, comparing her to her own alcoholic, neglectful mothers. We also learn more about Finn's role in her life - they knew each other as children, and he was the neighborhood boy who was giving her things and helping her survive. Which is consistent with Finn's character - he's always focusing on the girl he's in love with, doing everything for her and doing everything to make sure she feels that she needs him.

Then Raven figures out that Clarke and Finn had hooked up, because she found the origami deer and she's smart, and confronts Clarke about it I don't like the way Raven is catty to Clarke here, as opposed to the fact that she later doesn't confront Finn about it (until much later, when she realizes he's in love with Clarke). I always hate it when women blame only the "other woman", but not their own boyfriend/husband who's the one who cheated. But, again, I love the fact that Clarke absolutely doesn't do the "catty and fighting for a guy" thing. Instead, she points out that she didn't know about Raven.,but also tries to smooth things between Raven and Finn by pointing out that they thought Raven and everyone on the Ark would soon be dead and they would never see them again. This is, however, way, way too generous to Finn, because he was flirting with Clarke already on the dropship and pursued her constantly from day one. But I'm not sure that Clarke is even fully aware of it. She may be thinking that he really wasn't planning on hooking up with her till that moment at the end of 1x04, when he lost hope in contacting the Ark. She has very little romantic experience, after all, and seemed too distracted by everything else happening around them, the fight for survival, trying to save Jasper, Wells' death, the drama with Charlotte etc. to even notice how much Finn was hitting on her. The same way that, in season 2, she was far too distracted by planning the war and worrying about Bellamy and the Delinquents at Mount Weather and didn't seem to notice Lexa giving her heart eyes, until Lexa surprised her by kissing her. She's really not the most attuned to these things. Raven\s remark that "he could have waited for more than 10 days" (yes, exactly) gives us the first explicit clue about the exact timeline. The painful Octavia/Bellamy confrontation at the end of the episode is one of the best dramatic moments on S1. It gets resolved at the end of S1, but now I can't help thinking that it's just the first of the many times throughout all 5 seasons where Octavia blames Bellamy for pretty much everything ever. I remember that Bellamy takes back what he said here in the S1 finale - telling Octavia his life didn't end when she was born, it began - but does Octavia take back any of what she said to him, blaming him for their mother's death and her imprisonment and all? I don't remember that, but I'll pay attention in 1x13.

Timeline and body count at the end of 1x06:

The first 6 episodes took place over 10 days. The first 3 episodes must have been something like a day, then there was a week between episodes 3 and 4, and 4--6 were about a day or two.

Body count:

at least 320 dead people on the Ark, 10 dead Delinquents on the ground: 2 killed in the crash landing (and due to their own stupidity), 3 (Trina, Pascal, Atom) killed by the acid fog (that is, the Mountain Men) - though technically Clarke mercy killed Atom, 2 killed by the Delinquents themselves (Wells - murdered by Charlotte, Charlotte - suicide, mostly sue to pressure from Murphy),, 3 killed by the Grounders (Doggs, Mbege, Roma). "The 100" are The 90 now. As of the start of season 6, they'll be The 4.

#The 100 #the 100 rewatch #the 100 1x06 #His Sister's Keeper #bellamy blake #octavia blake #clarke griffin #raven reyes #lincoln kom trikru #aurora blake

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shipcestuous · 6 years

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(Submission)

My Thundermans asks got a bit out of hand, so I decided to switch to a submission. Less copying and pasting for you, maaaaybe more coherence. No promises. Also, my previous ask was rude and I’m sorry for that. Like, I didn’t even say hi. I should know better than that. Just, to my slight defence, I was still affected by the show ending and some personal stuff. But I’ll make it up right now.

Hiiiiiiii!!! Thundercest anon back here for the final finale. Unbelievable. Well, mostly I can’t believe it’s been almost exactly a year since I binge-watched the entire show right up to the mid-S4 finale and then cursed (and also thanked) all of you guys who turned me onto the show. For a non-canon pairing, that was some A+ content and a fairly decent amount of it, too. Siiiigh. All good things must come to an end, I suppose. Happy watching, by the way!!

So, Looperheroes. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, or, if so, which version was intentional, or if it was just a plot hole that didn’t matter to them as long as they could conveniently advance their plot, but anyway, it is very, very, veeeeery interesting that Phoebe was the only other person besides Max who was conscious of the time loop. At first, you think it’s the Z-Force conducting another test and it makes sense. But when we find out it’s Max who’s created the time loop, with a device he made, and he might even be resetting it every morning to start the loop all over again, one has to wonder how come Phoebe is in the loop about the loop when nobody else is (besides the guy who actually makes it happen). As far as I could tell, there didn’t seem to be any “logical, science-y” reason that could explain it. Like proximity. Unless Phoebe and Max were sleeping in the same bed behind the scenes, and Phoebe had woken up early because she’s Phoebe, and anyway, the point is that Colosso and the rest of the family had logically equal chances of getting pulled into the time loop, but it was only Phoebe who ended up in it. So, any way you look at it, it’s all very… Thundercestuous. Now, I’ve come up with three scenarios so far. 1) “Blame it all on the superhero twins bond.” It’s been a recurring theme throughout the show that superhero twins have special bonds that manifest in multiple ways. So, Max and Phoebe had to stay within a few feet of each other when that meteor was close to Earth, and in the finale, that is “Thunder Games”, we also learn they’re supposed to have a special superpower that they can only activate together. So maybe this bond dragged Phoebe into the time loop. Not as Thundercestuous as the other scenarios but still a very nice thought. 2) Keeping the superhero twins bond, we add to the mix the actual emotional bond between Max and Phoebe. They’ve always had it, no matter what, even when Max was dead set on being a villain, but in S4 it’s developed so much more. They still mess with each other in true Phoebe and Max fashion, but now they are not enemies. On the contrary, they share a common goal and dream and they have to work together to achieve it. And we’ve seen them overcome their antagonism in order to do so. So, both bonds, one of them by nature, the other built by the twins both consciously and not, could have been what pulled Phoebe in the loop. Another factor might have been their mental and emotional states those few days before the final Z-Force announcement. I imagine both could only think about that and were very anxious over it. I mean, Max definitely was, he created the loop out of fear of failure, and it’s in Phoebe’s character to freak out over it. And taking it even further, this was a perfect case of suffering or going through something, and wanting to be around only someone who understands you perfectly, maybe even goes through the exact same thing. It’s all very Thundercestuous in any case. 3) Max chose to pull Phoebe into the loop with him. Just Phoebe. Not even Colosso. In a semi-crack, semi-serious take on this, Max knew that messing with time could have world-ending consequences (he admitted as much) and might have also been uncertain about the level of functionality of his device, so he decided his best bet was to have Phoebe in the know. Who better to brainstorm or share the responsibility of a catastrophe with? (Exhibit A through Z: Max hunching down in a protective position while Phoebe destroyed the looping device and then explaining that messing with time could have had world-ending consequences. Oh, Max.) Anyway, back to the main point of this theory: Max chose, especially if he had to reset the device every day, to spend at least 95 repetitions of the same day with Phoebe. And I say with Phoebe specifically because Max can put two and two together pretty easily. If Phoebe was the only other person conscious of the day repeating but not aware that Max was the one causing it, then she would think it was the Z-Force testing them (which is exactly what she theorized and Max was there conveniently going along with it) or some villain attacking them etc. With Phoebe working off of such an assumption, they would be forced to work together to come up with ways they could break the loop (and pass the test in the case of the Z-Force). And of course, it’s not like anyone would believe them easily or at all about the loop (as was evident when they told Barb, not to mention that Max was trying to deter Phoebe from asking for help). All in all, Max had to know beforehand that he and Phoebe would be spending a whole lot of time together, brainstorming ideas and putting them into effect. And so they did. From partying hard like there’s no tomorrow to saving the world from the smallest perceived evil, they were joined at the hip most of the time. That is a lot of time spent in each other’s company. Seriously, 95 mornings of Phoebe coming down to Max’s lair, of going to school together, of working closely together. They ended up in such a sync, too, even simply in their enjoyment of Bradford’s and Wong’s misfortunes. And one does have to wonder: what things did they try and what would have they tried or been willing to try in order to break free of the time loop? And the Thundercest kicks up a notch or two or a dozen when you keep in mind that Max was behind the whole thing and could have stopped it or even changed the settings at any time. Also, once again proving people over the age of 20 should not be watching teen Nick, can we talk about Max throwing in Phoebe’s face her “kink” about following direct orders? No need to get up. I’ll see myself out.

Thunder Games. Oh, boy. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: actual physical battle between Phoebe and Max is the stuff of legends (and Thundercest dreams). Phoebe and Max have been training together and under the supervision of the same people their whole lives. And in the past… however long S4 takes up in canon, they have been training together to be a team, in sync. To complete each other. Sort of like Jaeger pilots (where’s my AU fic?). So, the choreography is inevitably a thing of beauty. How they attack and deflect and it ends up looking more like an intimate dance, an intimate exchange, than a fight. I’ll say, this battle was a beautiful summation of Max and Phoebe’s relationship. It was their individual characters and mutual feelings summed up and put into the most prominent display.

Phoebe giving up her lifelong dream of becoming an acclaimed superhero so Max would get to live out his own dream of becoming a famous superhero? That’s peak Thundercest, in my opinion, and characterization consistency of a rare kind, because Phoebe loving Max so much that she would make this kind of personal sacrifice for him has been a recurring theme since S1, in spite of lapses in between that were convenient to one plot or another, and who even applies that kind of thoughtful criticism to the Thundermans (besides the very much adult audience that metas the hell out of Thundercest. Anyways).

And I think that Phoebe sacrificing her Z-Force dream for the sake of Max’s Z-Force dream is as consistent a characterization as is Max finishing Phoebe off in that battle. They mutually agreed beforehand that they would essentially give it their all until there was a winner (obviously without killing each other, which however didn’t seem like an undesirable outcome as far as the Z-Force and its commander were concerned… seriously, what even. Another case of misguided and harmful jokes on the writers’ part). So anyway, the point is that Max didn’t do anything wrong, but the twins’ individual choices in that fight made prominent my favorite, I would say, contrasting aspects of their characters: the quality of their individual goodness/their “good” alignment and the quality of love they have for each other.

(Fair warning: I don’t have the right words to clearly express what I mean. But I think you’ll get my point for the most part.)

Phoebe’s love for Max is, in a sense, pure. Of course, I’m not going to dwell on petty rivalries, pranks and the like. No, I’m talking about the love that’s there underneath everything, once you strip away all superficial layers, all antagonistic shenanigans and exchanges. Phoebe doesn’t want Max to be just alive and safe and well. She wants him to be happy. And when it came down to choosing between his happiness and her own, she chose his. You can argue, of course, that the Z-Force is only one thing that could contribute to her happiness in life and also that seeing Max happy would make her happy, as well. But I’m going to circle back to a point I made when we got the episode with the visiting Thunderman grandparents, where the Thunderkids’ grandpa, who until then was all about Phoebe because she wanted to be a hero and Max was the black sheep who wanted to be a villain, was now all about Max, neglecting Phoebe entirely. And Phoebe was hurt and rightly so: we know and we’ve seen her do everything right on her way to becoming a hero. Never skipping school, always a diligent student with straight A’s, forgoing parties and other outings, always following the rules. I’m not going to look into Max’s psyche and talk about the reasons he wanted to be a villain etc. That’s a whole other talk that involves the analysis of Hank and Barb’s parenting, the superhero society and it’s status quo etc. Still, Max did try hard to be a villain, topping it all with the S3 finale that almost got his entire family killed. He was stubborn and reckless and it was his instrumental involvement in his family’s near murder that finally acted as his wake-up call. And then the Thundermans had to face the consequences of being exposed as superheroes, which was also Max’s fault for the most part, and if President Kickbutt hadn’t chosen to leave their powers intact in secret, the consequences would have been: a) Phoebe, Nora, Billy and Chloe stripped of their chances to ever become superheroes, and b) the Thundermans officially and publicly powerless and at the mercy of all their superpowered past nemeses. And yet, even with all that, when Max realizes he doesn’t actually hate his family and he wants them alive, he works to rectify his mistakes but that isn’t the same as him setting out from the start to perform some heroic act, but all is still forgiven, he earns a superhero cape and then chooses to compete for the Z-Force. Now, with the lives Phoebe and Max have led, if Phoebe objected to Max getting a cape or was annoyed at everything being forgiven so easily etc, wouldn’t she have been in the right? But she doesn’t object and she cheers him on and teams up with him, essentially sharing her Z-Force dream with him. And I’m not saying Max should be constantly punished for his past or deprived of his chances to be as great a superhero as Phoebe (or any other superhero that has always walked the “righteous” path), but Phoebe has fought and made sacrifices for that Z-Force spot her whole life while Max had been working up until the S3 finale to be, one could argue, at the top of the Z-Force’s Most Wanted list. Anyway, even I’ve lost my train of thought. The point is, with all this in mind, Phoebe letting Max win is a huge sacrifice on her part and speaks volumes of the amount of her love for him and the quality of that love.

Max, on the other hand, has always had this extra touch of “darkness” -for lack of a better word- when compared to Phoebe, which is what differentiates the type of good he is from the type of good Phoebe is, and which is what led him to finish Phoebe off while her “good” alignment and “purer” love led her to fake defeat for his sake. Max loves Phoebe, possibly just as much as she does. (I can’t make up my mind on this issue.) But I think Max may never shed some other key parts of his feelings and his love towards Phoebe: his obsession and dependency on her. Max has always behaved and acted in a way that put Phoebe at the epicenter of his activities, made her the focus of his energy, even his target at times. And he probably doesn’t realize it, at all or mostly. I’ve said before that Max wants to be the center of Phoebe’s attention, he wants to monopolize her interest and her actions and her energy. I am personally certain that had he become a master villain, he’d have wanted and chosen no one else as his archenemy but Phoebe. And we’ve also seen him be aware of the kind of love Phoebe has for him, of its quality and quantity, and he took advantage of it again and again, until the S3 finale where he saw Phoebe react to his actions, his villainous shenanigans, in a way she never has before. Right then, Max realized with terror for the first time in his life that even Phoebe and her love for him have limits and he had been pushing her towards her breaking point for a long time now. And now, dealing the final blow and winning the Z-Force battle, I think he was still partly satisfying his need to be the prominent figure in Phoebe’s life, unforgettable, the leave-a-mark kind (which is what would have happened), while he was also beating her fair and square, winning a years-long competition that he never managed to put behind him (unlike Phoebe, who proved that she did by letting Max win). Frankly, I’m not so sure Max would have taken it so well if he’d lost to Phoebe. This is where the contrast between the quality of his goodness and that of Phoebe’s comes into play. I know for certain that had Phoebe truly lost, she would have still been good, heroic. She might have gone through some depressive phases but she’d eventually go on performing superheroic acts, just like tons of superheroes who weren’t and aren’t part of the Z-Force. But Max needs to be the best, needs the recognition (again, parenting etc are factors here). The Z-Force has been a big driving force in his heroics, and his leap over to the side of the heroes is still very recent. He’s still too volatile. Winning that official fight against Phoebe and choosing himself later on to quit the Z-Force in order to save his family were essential, I believe, in his tame reaction to losing his Z-Force spot. It matters a lot for his mental and emotional health that he won the spot and chose of his own volition to give it up. It makes all the difference in the world. Max loves Phoebe but he also has some deep-rooted issues and he needs to officially be better than her. Going forward, he would know Phoebe might feel some resentment and misery that she didn’t get to be on the Force, but she would hide it, and he would gladly pretend, and it wouldn’t taste unpleasantly to be the big Z-Force superhero and teaming up with his regular superhero twin when she needs him. In the end, what I’m saying is Max clearly hesitated to deal the death blow, but he still did, while Phoebe thought of his happiness and sacrificed her own.

Siiiiigh. I don’t know. I’ve put my Thundercest goggles on and I’m dissecting a teen show on Nickelodeon. What am I even doing? Truth be told, though, I don’t know if it was intentional or not on the writers’ part, and it probably wasn’t, let’s be real, but Phoebe and Max are written so much like an archetypical pairing of incestuous heterosexual siblings that you just go there straight away if you’re so inclined. Phoebe’s morality, Max’s moral ambiguity, the rivalry and the tension, the times he’s managed to make her stray even in a tiny, insubstantial (in the grand scheme of things) way, the times he’s pushed and pulled and stretched thin all her good will and love for him, his need to be better than her, but on one condition: Phoebe has to be second best. Because I think that’s how Max’s obsession with Phoebe manifests: he wants to be the best on a global scale, hero or villain, and he needs, he wants Phoebe to be second best, to be able to keep him on his toes but, in the end, individual battles aside, he always ends up having the upper hand in the war. Again, hero or villain, whether the war is them two against each other or together against the bad guys of the world.

Okay, the goggles are coming off because this got waaaay out of hand. I’ve gone from reading into things to reaching and someone needs to take the idea of a grown-up Thundermans show and run with it. No need for anything canon, we take care of that ourselves juuuust fiiiiine.

Oh, I forgot about the special twin power. I probably have more to say about this but I’m still very deep in the Z-Force fight thing. It’s left a mark. But holding hands and creating that kind of a bang? Incestuous pairing or not, that gets a shipper’s heart beating wildly. Also, I haven’t watched any Gifted, but from all the gifsets I’ve seen on this very blog, the way Max and Phoebe’s superhero twins power is activated and the explosiveness of it seems reminiscent of the twins (or just siblings?) on that show. And then, Phoebe and Max as heads of the T-Force? The through-the-roof cheesiness and ridiculousness factors aside (that commander needed to be gone ASAP but Max and Phoebe as the successors? Come on), the twins heading the Force conjures up all kinds of Thundercestuous images and I’m so down for it.

Well. Thank you for reading this monstrosity and for turning me onto the Thundermans. I don’t regret it for a second. Thundercest is dream incest and I’m glad I joined the rest of you guys on this ship. And I hope my mistakes aren’t that many. This was so huge. About 37 asks huge, to be precise. I’m so so sorry??? And I can’t wait to hear your own thoughts and meta and anybody else’s who wants to contribute. How on Earth did this ship come to matter so much to me? Okay, I’m done.

❤❤❤

First of all, let me apologize for taking so long to answer this, Anon! I have just not been able to find the time/energy the past couple of weeks to make any significant progress on clearing out my inbox. And of course The Thundermans 5-episode finale blowout is a big deal and you sent in a lot of thoughts (BUT AM SO GLAD - and also glad you did a submission instead of 37 asks haha) so I couldn’t just sit down when I had 10 minutes and do it. But I really do feel bad because I know you and others were excited to talk about it and I just always let everybody down when it comes to time-sensitive things. Every day I was thinking I would answer asks after I got home from work, but then I was just too tired. So, enough excuses, on to the good stuff!

I’m so glad you joined us on The Thundermans ride. It has been a pleasure discussing the show with you and especially just reading your insights and thoughts! Max and Phoebe really is dream incest. I’m still over the moon that the show ended with the two of them single and teammates like that. Unlike some other shows which drift more and more towards canon love interests, The Thundermans never did.

Oh Looperheroes. What a gift! When we learn that MAX is the one who has been making the day repeat over and over again, which means spending all day every day with Phoebe, and Phoebe being the only one in on the secret (well, part of the secret)…the thundercest is real. It took me back to season 1, to that episode when they spent the day at school alone having snowball fights or whatever. (Haha, I can’t even remember why anymore.) It was like Max wanted three months of days like that. Regardless of why Phoebe was in the time loop with him, the fact is that they spent that time together and he could have stopped it at any point but never did.

It’s wonderfully impressive that any explanation for why Phoebe is in the time loop with him is hella shippy, but I do very much like your theory that he has pulled Phoebe into the time loop with him. Maybe he really is thinking more and more like the two of them are a team, and he wants his teammate there with him in case something goes wrong. And also just to be with him!

I think your character analysis is spot-on. Max loves Phoebe in a way that manifests itself differently from the way she loves him. She doesn’t hesitate to self-sacrifice for his happiness, whereas Max can not entirely rise above his competitive feelings towards her or his own selfishness. But we see how much she means to him again and again, and there is what you mentioned - that obsession with her, almost, and that desire to put her at the center, and for her to come in second only to him. I really think it’s best described the idea that if he had become a super villain, that she would have been his nemesis, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way. That he probably became a super villain just for that.

But let’s just take a moment to appreciate how much Phoebe Thunderman loves her twin brother. Because damn. After everything he has put her through, and she lost the Z Force challenge on purpose for his sake. *slow clap*

I am so thrilled that they gave us this last-minute twin power. It was exactly like Andy and Lauren on The Gifted - twins, who hold hands, and then basically the same thing happens too - white light and an explosion of some kind. Of course on The Gifted it gets all windy and turns slow-mo and is ridiculously romantic but this is Nickelodeon after all. It’s a comedy not a drama. This officially means that Phoebe and Max will always be strongest together - but we already saw that in the episode when they figured out that only together they could make each other fly.

I am so pleased by this show in general and particularly by those final 5 episodes. Both The Thundermans and The Middle knocked their finales out of the park.

I’m honestly on overload. Thank you, The Thundermans, for this incest playground. And than you, Thundercest Anon!

#asks #anonymous #thundercest #r: brosis #nc #tw: incest #the thundermans #the thundermans: episode: looperheroes #the thundermans: episode: the thunder games #submission #max and phoebe #max and phoebe: commentary #nr #noiv #commentary

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happymeishappylife · 3 years

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TV Shows I Watched in 2020

Now some of this list are just seasons I watched for the shows I’m currently watching and are still airing while others I watched the entire show. I was only really able to do this because I worked from home for 6 months and when I started in my new position I was close enough to come home for lunch where I could watch quick 20-25 minutes before going back to the office. Still I was able to finish a lot of shows that were on my Netflix queue for years and catch up on ones I fell behind on. I also started a few that I’m excited to keep watching into next year. Here’s what I watched:

1. Good Omens

Thank you Neil, for all your hard work and creative input to make this delightful mini-series. This is how I wish all books were transformed on screen. With enough time and attention to detail to make the story shine through. Yes there were some differences between book and show, but ultimately it is one of the most true-to-book versions of live screen adaptation that I’ve seen. Plus everyone loves Michael Sheen and David Tennant and they were absolutely fabulous in this.

2. Parks and Recreation

I watched all seven series over the summer and not only were they hilarious and fun, they were a comfort. Leslie’s dedication to do good in her public service role and her devotion to make change in her town, no matter how crazy or ridiculous the plan was. It also it nice to think that their were people that dedicated to their job in a service line I work with pretty closely in my own work. I also loved the crazy personalities of all of her friends and enjoyed the character growth throughout.

3. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (S6 & 7)

I may have mentioned this, but this was one show whose finale I felt did its characters justice. Yes the seasons have gone all over the place, yet it never felt so far fetched because in the end, it was just fun. Even with some of the more heartbreaking cliffhangers. I feel all the characters growth was organic and not forced and that the actors’ relationships, shine in their characters which made whatever crazy story was going on that much more engaging. I don’t think I’ll be watching any of the Disney+ series, but I am sad to see this Marvel series end. It’s been a great right.

4. Doctor Who (S12)

Anytime there is new Doctor Who, it’s a good year. Especially having gone a whole year without it (please don’t do that again! >.<), but I’ll admit it wasn’t my favorite on my first watch. I’m in the process of watching Jodie’s seasons again before the New Year Special, one to be in the mindset for the special, but also to give series 12 a better shot because I’ll admit, I had a lot of bad mental stuff going on while watching the rollercoaster of the season. I still enjoy it, despite the canon breaking/making shenanigans that is Doctor Who and I still can’t wait to see where they take it next. Also Sacha Dhawan, had an amazing performance of the Master (even if I’m sad that the Missy arc got completely ignored, lol).

5. Penny Dreadful (S2 & S3)

I started Penny Dreadful a couple years ago and got busy so never finished. What I enjoyed was that picking it back up where I left was easy. That and just the nature of the storytelling to be a good horror/drama show and really give new life to some of our beloved monsters and horror heroes. Victor Frankenstein’s arc working not only to love or accept his monsters, but the team up with Dr. Jekyll in a question of morality was great. Seeing a werewolf have mythology in Native American roots (even if the main actor was white... small pet peeve though I enjoyed Josh Harnet’s character) and having the final enemy be the one and only Dracula was great. Vanessa Ive’s story was also great through the whole series. My only dissapointment was Dorian’s picture wasn’t that scary and more just pitiful which is a shame because Reve Carney’s potrayal was fantastic.

6. Legends of Tomorrow (S4 &5)

When I caught up on the DC shows this year, I mentioned this but its still true, Legends is the best show of the bunch and it purely because they don’t take themselves seriously. Yes, you can have good drama and good moral lessons in super hero shows, but part of the show should also be to have fun as heroes. And Legends embodies that for all of them. It does genre episodes like Bollywood, Horror, Sitcoms, and its just fun. And it still makes its characters matter which is why it was sad to see Ray Palmer leave. But it has that energy of Doctor Who which is constant evolution in the cast and the characters which also makes it fresh and something the other shows lack.

7. How to Train Your Dragon: Race to the Edge

When I added this show to my queue a few years ago, I didn’t know if it was supposed to be purely a goofy kids show or still embody the spirit of the movies. It’s set between movies 1 & 2 through all six seasons and while yes it has its silly moments where it tries to do modern things in a viking setting, I still found the heart, bravery, and kindness that came from the original movie. Watching these six teenagers on the verge of adulthood tackle huge issues and learn more about dragons and the world around them was just as rewarding. I also think it is a great show to enjoy as an adult but also for kids to understand big ideas like grief. And at the end it just felt comforting to watch.

8. Black Lightening (S2 & 3)

I know I just said that I love Legends because it doesn’t take itself seriously, but the one show that did and did it well was Black Lightening. It’s a great new perspective on super heroes in the eyes of Black America. And at times it was hard to watch, but necessary. It tackles racism, injustice, and poor systematic issues that the Black community has had to deal with and still deals with and also gives them power via the Pierce family being incredible new and fresh superheroes. The representation of also having strong leads, most female with one of them being a Lesbian, is also huge and matters in the media landscape. It’s one of the few shows I enjoy on the network and I’m curious to what other stories can be told.

9. Stargirl (S1)

The main reason this show is good is because it doesn’t follow most other superhero shows. The ‘heroes’ don’t know how to keep their secrets because they are all goofy teenagers, the villains are well established while the heroes still are missing their full team, and the dilemmas of high school are some of the main focus in the show. Plus the musical soundtrack is amazing! It’s fun, it doesn’t have grit, but the problems are real and because I don’t know anything really about the Justice Society of America, I’m excited to learn about new and not as mainstream heroes.

10. Supernatural (S14 & 15)

An era has ending and everyone on this site knows this because Destiel ‘happened’ and Tumblr exploded, lol. To think that this show won’t be on anymore is kinda sad, but at the same time it ended and at least to me, ended as satisfactorily as I could have hoped given the amount of time these characters have died and come back, ended the world and saved it, and have just done random stuff that doesn’t make sense. I enjoyed the ending. I was super sad about Castiel, but it did tie up a loose end. And now that its over I can say I did watch it. I was in a super special place to have started it when I did in college and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to anyone, but it was an interesting ride all told.

Other Shows I watched:

11. American Horror Story ( S1 & 2)

12. Nokdu Flower

13. Batwoman (S1)

14. Supergirl (S4 & 5)

15. Knights of Sidonia

16. Street Foods Asia

17. World’s Most Extraordinary Homes (S3)

18. Arrow (S7 & 8)

19. The Flash (S5 & 6)

I also rewatched a couple shows because thanks to Netflix I could. They were good comfort shows to get back to when I was going into the unknown this summer:

1. Avatar: The Last Airbender

2. Avatar: Legend of Korra

3. Cardcaptor Sakua

4. Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card

#2020 rewind #TV Shows I watched in 2020

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miss-musings · 7 years

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Why I want to stop watching the Blacklist (a.k.a., A Rant by Me)

This used to be my favorite show. Hands down. I would legitimately schedule things around it; I would leave events early to make sure I could watch it live; I would post about it on Tumblr and read other people’s posts the rest of the evening; I would search through multiple review site’s posts the next day.

I loved the dynamic between Red and Liz. I loved the mysteries and the little morsels of answers that we would get. I loved how, in the S1 finale, it felt like no one was safe: Meera got killed; Harold got attacked and nearly killed; Tom was shot and left for dead.

But, over the past few seasons, this show has become the bane of my TV-watching experience.

(EDIT: this post, which quietly keeps gaining notes, was written post-S4, pre-S5. So, there’s still plenty of relevant things in the post, but just keep the timing in mind.)

I would watch it, sure. But that was because I didn’t want the folks on Tumblr spoiling it for me. It was because I thought we were finally getting answers – which is what they teased us with every other week – only to feel so disappointed.

This last year, I made reaction videos for a friend of mine for every single episode. You know what one of the most commonly said things in those videos is? “Well, at least next week’s preview looks good.” Only to be disappointed in that episode, and to say the same thing about next week’s preview, and the cycle repeated itself until we actually got a half-way decent episode (which was usually some kind of finale or premiere, because that’s the only time actual shit can happen – during Sweeps Week).

Over and over again, both online and in person, I compared this to those scenes in cartoons where someone puts a carrot on a fishing pole in front of a donkey, and the donkey runs so hard to reach the carrot, only to never get there.

That’s how this show has felt the past season or two.

It’s only a shadow of what it once was, and I’m tired of it. I wish I could stop watching it.

So many other people I follow on Tumblr have said they’ve either stopped or thought about stopping. By comparison, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and the Walking Dead seemingly increase their viewership every season; the Blacklist has been NBC’s lowest-rated show in the demo for the last year, IIRC. The ratings for the Redemption spin-off were so low, the showrunners tried to pass it off as a one-off miniseries, when it was ALWAYS intended to be its own full-length show.

I understand that the show does well in DVR viewership numbers, and it was the most expensive TV show that Netflix had purchased when Season 1 was released.

But, this show continues to disappoint me. There’s hardly anything I like about it anymore. Hell, even James Spader, who’s a master at his craft, seems to be bored with it. His monologues are becoming more and more cliche, and even his amazing performances can’t save this dumpster-fire.

Its protagonist, Liz, is all over the fucking place in terms of characterization. First, she was naive and learned her “husband” had used and abused her. Then, she went to the dark side, chained him up on a boat and said she’d never forgive him for what he’d done. Then, she apparently forgave him, slept with him, had his kid, tried to remarry the guy, and then faked her death to get away with him and is now living her happy dream life with her little girl and her ‘perfect’ husband.

What happened to the dark, morally questionable, grungy Liz? What happened to the Liz who was jaded and afraid after being on the run for several weeks, or months?

She just settled down with a guy who she used to hate and she’s living the dream.

What in the literal fuck?

And, for all the time that has been invested in Liz, she has made little to no progress in her characterization these past few seasons. In fact, she’s done more of a 360. She’s right back where she started, more or less.

Why should the audience give a shit about her journey if she’s not making any progress? Why should we care that, halfway through this show, she has everything she’s ever wanted?

The side characters, like Aram, Samar, Ressler, Cooper and others are there just to serve the plot. Any time there’s a semblance of some character development or plot progression, the showrunners regress everyone back to Stage One so we can do it all over again. Aram and Samar look like they’re making progress in their possible romantic relationship? Fuck that, we’ve got to make sure Aram runs back to his abusive girlfriend and string this thing along another season! Remember when Ressler got shot, had prescription drug problems, and was in Narcotics Anonymous? Yeah, me neither.

Mr. Kaplan, who was best when she was on-screen to sass and help Reddington once every few episodes, gets pushed into the spotlight for some made-up bullshit reason that had never been discussed or hinted at previous to the “Mr. Kaplan used to work for Katarina Rostova” storyline. And while Susan Bloomaert is a fantastic and underrated actress and did her absolute best to make those scenes between her and Liz feel emotional, I didn’t really care about their dynamic at all because it felt so forced, underdeveloped, and out-of-nowhere.

Whereas the relationship that I care the MOST about – that between Red and Liz – that has been the most built-up and developed over the course of the show keeps getting thrown under the bus as Liz does the whole “love Red, hate Red, forgive Red” song-and-dance routine. She claims she agrees with Red when he tells her not to go back to Tom in Season 2… only to go back to Tom later in Season 2. She’s totally down with asking Red to help her whenever she’s a criminal on the run… but the minute her wedding gets shot up, she yells at him and says it’s his fault.

And now, as far as the Lizzington fans go, which I count myself as one of them, the show has written itself into a corner. Because all the amazing chemistry and romantic tropes throughout the show feel incredibly creepy now that Liz believes Red is her dad, regardless of whether he actually is or not. I don’t care how they try to pull themselves out of the ginormous hole they’ve dug for themselves on that one – why the hell would a woman ever end up with a guy that she once thought was her dad, even if it turned out he actually wasn’t?

And the only real way out of it is the Impostor Theory – a well-written and well-researched theory, but one that makes people have to do fucking mental gymnastics for it to work. You have to assume a lot of people like Naomi and Reddington’s former roommate from the Naval Academy who’s now an admiral, are in on it. Whereas dudes like Finch or the Director aren’t…

Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s a wonderful theory and it explains a lot. But, if it ends up being true, it means one of two things:

1) The writers didn’t plan this from the beginning and lucked their way into it

2) The writers DID plan this from the beginning, which means they have the ability to be really good writers, but then they fell into all this other bullshit – like Liz’s weird arc and other things – which really means that they’re not that good of writers; they just had the one good idea.

And if the Impostor Theory DOESN’T end up being true, in some form or fashion, that means that Red really IS Liz’s dad, and this whole fucking show – Red’s entire characterization, his relationship and dynamic with her – has been a lie. Canon can be throw out the window to rot in the sewer and fuck itself in the interim, because the writers don’t even care any more.

Which, I realize is unfair, because I know there are hundreds of people who work really hard to make this show happen, and while it’s not, like, the worst show of all time, the fact that it had such potential and has fallen so far, almost makes it seem worse than a show that was so bad from the beginning I never invested time in it.

And what makes it even WORSE is that the showrunners continue to act like this is the most groundbreaking show on television, and put it on a pedestal On High, along with the likes of Game of Thrones, The Americans, and The Sopranos… you know, actually good shows.

That would be the equivalent of the Taken director demanding that his movie should’ve gotten an Oscar. It’s like, you know it was a fine movie, and I had a good time watching it, but like, bring yourself back down to earth. Taken is okay, but it is NOT Oscar-worthy material, so get off your high horse, dude.

I guess, if nothing else, it shows that the showrunners, writers and actors are so talented that they got me to invest in the show to the point where I can’t not watch it, even though it’s fallen so far and I feel like it’s nowhere near as good as it used to be. They hooked me and got me to care about these characters and their dynamics so much that, even though it frustrates me week in and week out, I will still keep watching it.

It’s just that, now, I might be doing it with a bottle of vodka, taking shots every time:

Red has a monologue that proves James Spader is too damn good for this show;

Liz is bitchy to Red for little to no reason, while continuing to be lovey-dovey with Tom;

Ressler survives a fight or car accident or some other action sequence with no injuries whatsoever;

Harry Lennix is completely underused as Harold Cooper in an episode, because he only tells his employees to do the obvious… and literally nothing else;

Samar and/or Aram take a step back from getting together, despite hints that they’ve liked each other since Season 2.

So, bottoms up, Blacklist fans!

#blacklist #nbc the blacklist #the blacklist #raymond reddington #lizzington #keenler #elizabeth keen #harold cooper #aram mojtabai #donald ressler #samar navabi #dembe zuma #mr kaplan #katarina rostova

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